Github: CoffeeScript cracks the top 10 languages  - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/languages

<comment><USER2> Whoops -- cancel the party folks. Apparently the rankings just count the percentage of GitHub repos with _any_ amount of the language in it. I bet CoffeeScript's recent rise has a lot to do with a handful of auto-generated- by-default files in Rails projects.

Source: <https://twitter.com/joshpeek/status/205783659830198273>

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't get it.

I'm in the process of ripping the last bit of coffeescript out of our code. The marginal benefits of the language don't exceed the costs of having another build dependency, and another syntax to understand. For daily work, I _already_ have to switch contexts between Javascript, CSS, SCSS, HTML, rHTML, HAML and Ruby (not to mention other _tools_ like Bash, Rake, etc., along with API knowledge like the Rails API, jQuery, and all of the various un- or poorly-documented gems). Ultimately, it's a huge mental burden. Every new thing is a _new thing_ that someone has to understand to be productive.

To justify the extra mental cost of another piece of technology, it has to do something pretty amazing. A minor syntactical transformation of javascript just doesn't cut it.

<comment><USER4> It's more expressive. It's like going from having a 19" monitor with 1440x900 to a 24" monitor with 1920x1080. Sure, you can do all the things you can normally do with the 24" monitor that you could do with the 19" monitor, but it isn't as pleasant or efficient.

The place it best fits in right now is for in-house software development at a place with a low turnover of developers. 37signals has a very low turnover, so it shouldn't be surprising that it fits them well. That mental burden is low, compared with the time saved using it.

<comment><USER3> _"It's like going from having a 19" monitor with 1440x900 to a 24" monitor with 1920x1080."_

Ehh....I think you're overstating it, but to each their own. To make the comparison fair, you'd have to turn it into something more obtrusive: it's like going from a 19" monitor to a 20" monitor that's driven by one of those $300 USB video cards that gets really hot and eats up desk space and might occasionally cause RFI problems with my wireless mouse.

Or more directly, it's like going from Ruby to Python, or vice-versa, by using a tool that converts one to the other. They're different, and they have different syntactical features, but the annoyances of either language balance the benefits to the extent that I can't confidently exclaim that one is better. And the auto-generation step would just cause pain.

The critical difference here is that to use coffeescript, I have to add _another_ (IMNSHO) annoying step to my build process. Another layer of indirection to obfuscate bugs. Another sprocket that can come unglued and bork my app at any time. No thanks. I'll stick with my current complexity level, and write my list comprehensions as loops.

<comment><USER5> Apart from the fact that Python can be infinitely faster than rails, I'd just say that any more javascript is bad news, bee it coffee based or node based or whatever. Someone forgot to go back in time and shoot John "javascript" Connor.

On topic, your main problem is that you're playing the one man army with too many tools, that is obviously unrelated to CS or any language.

It's likely you wouldn't mind the additional complexity if you were only working on front-end.

<comment><USER6> > _"Apart from the fact that Python can be infinitely faster than rails"_

Don't you mean Ruby?

<comment><USER5> indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> It'd be nice to have someone from GitHub comment on how these rankings are calculated. Raw LOC? Percentage of projects with at least one X language file in them? Percentage of projects that have a plurality of source code in X language?

<comment><USER7> I second this request. Been wondering more about this process ever since I noticed, sometime in January, that Rust (a nascent language with very little use yet) was ranked in the low-20s for language popularity. The problem likely had to do with how the Rust devs registered their language with Github's Linguist[1] project; Rust's units of compilation ("crates") have the .rc extension, and Github must have taken this to mean that _every_ project with a .rc file (notably many Android-specific projects) contained Rust code. The Rust devs have since revoked that association from Linguist[2], but since Github takes a while to reevaluate a project's language breakdown, the language's popularity ranking on Github is still artificially inflated (sitting at #31 at the moment).

[1] <https://github.com/github/linguist>

[2] <https://github.com/mozilla/rust/issues/1512>

<comment><USER8> .rc files don't dominate a project in file count or SLOC, so I think the answer to jashkenas' question is something like this:

        pop[lang] = avg(loc(proj, lang) / loc(proj) for proj in projects)

<comment><USER7> That depends on the project:

<https://github.com/CM7-GB/android_device_motorola_droid2we>

Note the language breakdown, under the Graphs tab.

But yes, it all hinges on how Github measures popularity. For one, I'm curious how forked repositories are counted; if I have a 100kloc Blub project and it gets forked 100 times, does Github count that as 100,000 or 10,000,000 lines of Blub?

<comment><USER9> defunkt has confirmed that at least in the past if you had a repo with 100 Perl files and one JavaScript file it would count equally towards both languages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They said it couldn't be done, but CoffeeScript bumped Objective-C down to #11.

Of course, I think it's fair to say that there's more Obj-C code than CoffeeScript being written, but less of it is being open-sourced.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, that seems like a good explanation. Obj-C has 85574 questions on StackOverflow, CoffeeScript has 1476.

<http://stackoverflow.com/tags>

<comment><USER12> You have to factor in all the newbies that here all this doom and gloom about the job market in the media, and the last tidbit in the news story usually mentions "but there is a lot of growth in iPhone and Android apps". This is probably causing a lot of people new to programming to learn Objective-C, thus many more questions.

<comment><USER5> You want newbies ? go javascript.

I can't believe I'm reading an argument favoring Obj-C over (any flavor of) js as a noob turf...

The simple reason there's disparity is that github is not the center of the world and objC people mostly code for money, that's all there is to it.

<comment><USER12> I'm not saying newbies get very far with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm curious whether GitHub includes private repos in these statistics. If not, then I'd be curious how it would change things if they did (not saying they should, just curious to contemplate the difference).

<comment><USER14> We include only public repositories in those stats. I ran the numbers across the site, and the rankings don't change much. Javascript and ruby are still at the top, but Objective-C and Coffeescript are 10 and 11.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias>

I don't think this says much about CoffeeScript, which I use. However I do think it says quite a bit about how GitHub has plenty of room to grow as they make themselves more attractive to a broader market.

A very interesting chart would be GitHub account revenue broken down by file extension. Note that I didn't say language, as the real money is in assets, not code.

</comment><comment><USER16> Isn't this simply a category error? C++98 and C++0x aren't separate languages, nor are Python 2.x and 3.x. CoffeeScript has good branding, but is it really its own language?

<comment><USER17> Of course CoffeeScript is its own language. What kind of requirements do you think a language requires that CoffeeScript doesn't meet?

<comment><USER18> My suggestion:

For some language X where Y "compiles to " X, Y is a new language if it introduces _new semantics_. For example, pure functional semantics, or object- orientation, or pattern matching, or method flavours, or static typing.

One easy test for this is to ask whether compiling Y to X can be done in small chunks or whether it requires "Whole program rewriting." For example, transforming a program with continuations into CPS requires whole-program rewriting. I would call any language that adds continuations to JavaScript a new language on that basis alone.

CoffeeScript is almost entirely local transformations. I think of it as JavaScript.

<comment><USER19> Why is this downvoted? Seems like a reasonable suggestion, and I don't see the haters suggesting alternative criteria...

<comment><USER20> I didn't downvote him, but one alternative is that a language is defined by a grammar. Of course you'd want to group certain very similar grammars together as one language (Python 2.x and 3.x), but the grammars of CoffeeScript and JavaScript are significantly different.

<comment><USER18> That's also a reasonable definition. Since I didn't say "if and only if," both definitions are compatible. By the grammar definition, we could make a language with pure JavaScript semantics but Lisp-ish s-exprs, and it would be a different language as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Having coded in javascript for 4 or so years, and a recent love for NodeJS in a couple of internal projects, I'm a bit torn between giving coffee a proper go or not.

Can any one employee give a gist of how used it is in production? From what I've seen I would love to use coffee (I've actually used coffee in reverse, to tweak out a javascript function), but I'm wondering if I'd be lowering my productivity.

What I mean by that is, if I wrote coffeescript, but everyone else worked in javascript (or compiled coffee), then it'd be silly of me to continue doing so. Similarly I've watched a lot of node module development over the past year, and only once I've come across a module written in coffee.

I do of course realize NodeJS in itself is not "very" widespread yet, but are there any node users who can shed some light on the possible future of coffee in node?

<comment><USER22> Why are you so cautious to "give it a proper go"? It's not a big mental investment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is this just for coffeescript proper or are they counting all the variants of coffeescript as well?

<comment><USER8> It needs to have the .coffee extension (or two variants): [https://github.com/github/linguist/blob/master/lib/linguist/...](https://github.com/github/linguist/blob/master/lib/linguist/languages.yml#L232)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Ugh, Coffeescript. Javascript doesn't need any further abstraction, we already have jQuery which made everyone's lives easier but at the same time has created a new-breed of developers who only know jQuery and not Javascript itself. This is the exact same thing, people will know Coffeescript if it takes off further in popularity but won't know Javascript.

</comment><comment><USER25> That is so sad. I am not a fan of CoffeeScript. The language is like Ruby and When people try to make one language look like another, I don't like it. I probably would have liked it if the syntax was a bit different. It looks more like a ruby propaganda.

Incoming hatred.

<comment><USER26> This is the weirdest, least substantial criticism I've ever seen of CoffeeScript. Do you hate C for looking like B? Python for looking like a cross between C and ABC? Haskell for looking like ML? Objective-C for looking like both C and Smalltalk? Almost every mainstream language for pretty strongly resembling ALGOL-68? Heck, Ruby itself was intentionally made to look like Perl. Criticizing a language's syntax is often just an expression of personal preference — but criticizing a language for using syntactic conventions that are familiar and generally well-liked? That just makes no sense.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some of the worst stories of entrepreneurs getting screwed? - <AUTHOR>

Self-explanatory — curious about stories like Mike Arrington and the CrunchPad, Khalid Shaikh at YouSendIt. Are there others that I'm missing? <comment><USER2> If you haven't already, read up on the tragedy surrounding Edwin Howard Armstrong (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Howard_Armstrong>)

Edwin invented FM radio which RCA saw as a threat to its AM empire (much like Edison saw Tesla's AC method of power distribution as a threat to DC). Edwin committed suicide after being bankrupted by RCA's legal onslaught. He never got to see FM radio become a success.</comment>


Young Women's Dating Behavior: Why/Why Not Date a Nice Guy? - <AUTHOR> http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11199-005-6758-z

<comment><USER2> Men, try this experiment:

In a social setting, approach a lady from behind, and tap her on the shoulder. When she turns to look at you say, "Oh. I'm sorry. Never mind." Turn and walk away saying nothing else. This lady will pursue you all night to talk to you and learn why you rejected here. If you then later start to flirt with her, she will feel a rush that she won you over.

My point is females do not use rational thinking when determining if a male is attractive. I doubt males do when thinking about females, either!</comment>


15 stories hotel built in 2 days (China) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps0DSihggio&feature=player_embedded

<comment><USER2> Already submitted: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1895354></comment>


Open Source Eats Patents - <AUTHOR> https://sujithjay.com/open-source-eats-patents/ <comment><AUTHOR> Demsetz' Theory as a framework for the economics of open source was first used in 'Coase's Penguin, or, Linux and The Nature of the Firm' by Yochai Benkler.</comment>


Concurrency Behavior: MongoDB vs. Couchbase - <AUTHOR> http://blog.couchbase.com/2016/july/testing-mongodb-and-couchbase-concurrent-query <comment><AUTHOR> MongoDB returns inconsistent query results. Couchbase avoids this problem with skip lists and snapshots.</comment>


Show HN: Nice Nice JPG - <AUTHOR> http://nicenicejpg.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Today we launched Nice Nice JPG, a Vanilla Ice image placeholder service. I've been a dedicated Placekitten user for years but wanted an excuse to write my own, and I had that stack of Vanilla Ice pics filling my hard drive, so it seemed like a good choice. In the end, though, this really was/is an exercise to prove out the value of Amazon's new OpsWorks service in our development shop. Initial thoughts are VERY positive: it sits nicely between the type of experience you'd have on Heroku and the full hosted or EC2 experience. You get some control, but not too much. We'll be deploying our next major content platform on OpsWorks for sure.

So... check out NiceNiceJPG (<http://nicenicejpg.com>) and check out AWS OpsWorks ([https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats- new/2013/02/18/announ...](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats- new/2013/02/18/announcing-aws-opsworks/)).

<comment><USER2> This site flows like a harpoon. Will it ever stop?

Edit: Really? People are moderating this comment down? Why are you even looking at this thread if you have no sense of humor? What a bunch of joyless assholes.

<comment><USER3> Yo, I don't know.

<comment><USER4> Turn off the lights and I'll glow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://nicenicejpg.com/0>

Don't forget to always check your user input.

<comment><AUTHOR> Gah. Thanks. I was checking the upper bounds but spaced the lower-bound 0 case. Fix is on its way up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This absolutely and completely made my day. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER7> What is the licensing information for these pictures?

</comment><comment><USER8> This is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER9> Site is ... hackernewsed?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nah, It's an OpsWorks bug. Back up and running now, though.

</comment></comment><comment> Aco- update your about tim :P

<comment><AUTHOR> Done.

<comment> Aco- Wow, it was easier than I thought to make you do things.

Is your CPU a 'learning computer'? I gotta test this out:

Tim, buy me a beer. :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Isn't the point to solve a pain, not create one?

</comment><comment><USER11> What does this offer that <https://imgix.com> doesn't?

<comment><USER12> Assuming that imgix doesn't have any Vanilla Ice and 90's era Mustang photos, then this offers infinity percent more Vanilla Ice and 90's era Mustang photos.

<comment><USER13> Infinity * 0 = 0 bro. So clearly it offers zero more percent Vanilla Ice and 90's era Mustang photos.

<comment><USER14> Actually, ∞ ⋅ 0 is undefined.

<comment><USER13> Sorry, let me phrase it differently.

lim(x → ∞)

x ⋅ 0 = 0</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: I built a digital photography magazine. - <AUTHOR> http://the-photo-journal.com/

<comment><USER2> Nice job! I'm not big on the typography on the cover. I think the idea is great, but could be better designed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I do realise that too. I'll try to do a design refresh soon.</comment></comment>


Scientists learn about fear by scaring rats with Lego "Robogator" - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/12/scientists-learn-about-fear-by-scaring-rats-with-lego-robogator.ars <comment><USER2> Excellent find, super interesting. Thanks for sharing.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I bother interviewing at Google? - <AUTHOR>

A recruiter approached me for a quantitative analyst, engineering position. I come from an academic background, and I've used code in my research but I am most definitely not a software engineer. I'm pretty confident that I'm NOT going to pass the interview if questions come up relating to software engineering principles. Should I still bother with continuing with the interview process, or should I decline and wait until I am more confident about my ability? <comment><USER2> If you're under 30, go ahead. But study the crap out of algorithms.</comment>


The Setup: William Gibson - <AUTHOR> http://william.gibson.usesthis.com/ <comment><USER2> Technology is a means to an end. Once you can reach the end with the tech that you have there is no need to upgrade any further.

Upgrading is an investment in both time and funds, both can be spent better if you are already able to do what you want to do.

Most of us could get through the day just fine on a 486/33 if we had to. In fact, we'd probably write better software if we did.

<comment><USER3> Comments like this make me wish I could occasionally grant more than a +1 upvote ...

It's so true. Sometimes we need more power to make a given job possible, but as often as not we could accomplish it with far less and all that throwing extra hardware at a software problem achieves is to allow sloppy coding to proliferate.

<comment><USER4> Generally it's a pretty good deal to trade hardware requirements for programmer productivity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "I haven't bought an app for about a year. Neither hardware nor software excite me very much, after whatever brief (and usually painful) novelty has worn off."

It's probably because I'm so immersed in tech stuff at work, but it's hard for me to understand how such an imaginative science fiction author can be so... _indifferent_ about the technology he uses.

<comment><USER3> If you're a novelist your career doesn't usually start rolling until you're in your mid-thirties. (You need life experience before you can depict characters folks want to read about.) Neophilia for its own sake usually wears off some time in the forties, even among many geeks. Moreover, if your job involves spinning text, just about _any_ computer built in the past two decades will do the job.

(I know one award-winning SF novelist who uses an obscure British word processor, originally for CP/M and MS-DOS, now supported as a hobby project by one of the former developers -- the company is long since bust. Their SO has a hell of a job keeping them supplied with either 20 year old Compaq 386 lunchboxen _or_ Linux boxes tailored to run DOSBox full-screen on the console without pestering them to do annoying GUI things every few days. This novelist is younger than I am.)

Gibson has repeatedly displayed a fascination with _style_ and _fashion_ and design language, rather than with random agglomerative collections of features bolted together into a Frankensteinian morass by a bored marketing committee. Given how Apple is oriented around design and the humanities, I find it very unsurprising that he'd be working on a Macbook Pro ...

<comment><USER6> Would love to have you do a usesthis as well - the more obscure stuff is especially fascinating as it usually carries a much better story than just "I'm using the newest Macbook Pro and I got 8GB of RAM."

<comment><USER3> Well, I am a gadgetoholic-in-recovery.

Let's skip lightly past the colo server running Debian that I keep the blog on. I'm mostly a Mac shop. On my desk right now is an older 23" Apple Cinema display, being driven by an October 2010 13" Macbook Air (4Gb/250Gb SSD, OS: 10.7.2). Next to me is an iPad 2/64Gb and a 3 mifi, with a ZaggMate cover/keyboard. And there's an iPhone 4 that ain't going to be upgraded until it's at least 24 months old (next summer).

Pretty dull, huh?

(There are also hordes of eccentric items around here, such as the Viliv N5 palmtop -- currently running Win7 as I don't have the energy to battle a GMA500 chipset into cooperating with Linux right now -- but let's not get into lesser-used territory.)

Core software:

\- Firefox 7.blah (with noscript, adblock pro, ghostery, beef taco, instaright, https-everywhere, and tab mix plus)

\- Thunderbird (mostly using gmail as an IMAP/SMTP/SSL server)

\- BBedit (what can I say -- it's prettier to stare at than MacVim, and seems to support MultiMarkDown better)

\- Apple Pages (I _loath_ MS Office 2010's ribbon with a cold and fiery passion because it eats vertical screen real estate; Pages is "good enough" for layout and final markup)

\- Scrivener (because when I write myself into a corner and need to refactor the deep structure of a book, Scrivener makes life a lot easier)

\- NeoOffice/OpenOffice/LibreOffice (because sometimes I need something that can handle MS Office documents better than Pages)

\- Calibre (ebook management software)

\- NetNewsWire (this may change soon)

\- SplashID (because we all need unique passwords for each website, right?)

\- MacPorts

\- iTerm (and Go2Shell)

...

I think that about covers it. I really _don't_ game much, if at all (it interferes with work to have attractive nuisances on my computers).

Dream rig:

(This is going to strike you as deeply sad)

Start with a build-to-order Macbook Air 11", 4Gb RAM/128Gb SSD. Add the 1.8GHz i7 CPU bump. Don't bother with the 256Gb SSD from Apple because we are going to replace the stock SSD with a 3G OWC Mercury Aura Pro Express sized in 480Gb. Finally add a 27" Apple Thunderbolt Display for when it's sitting on my desk.

Underpowered? Sure. But it's tremendously portable, and I'm on the road for 8-12 weeks of the year. Two wires to connect, and I have a decent desktop system. Unconnect, and I have a nice 1Kg notebook.

The reason I don't have this dream rig right now is that I have the last generation, and I'm not quite enough of a sucker to upgrade _every_ time Apple crack the whip, thanks. Maybe next year.

<comment><USER7> I don't think you can upgrade the SSD on an Air. My understanding is they are pulled apart and soldered to the MB in order to give the Air its awesome form factor.

Somebody, please correct me if I am wrong, because that is one of the primary things keeping me from an Air instead of a MacBook Pro.

<comment><USER3> You can most _certainly_ upgrade the SSD in an Air, as my first-generation 11" Airbook with the 256Gb SSD (that I installed in it myself) can attest.

It's the RAM on the mobo that's non-upgradable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Gibson just tweeted a perfect postscript to this interview:

 _Gizmos bore me. People doing the weird unexpected things they do with gizmos fascinates me._

[https://mobile.twitter.com/#!/greatdismal/status/12615524172...](https://mobile.twitter.com/#!/greatdismal/status/126155241723928576)

</comment><comment><USER9> Gibson fetishizes technology (apple products in particular) so much in his books that I'm surprised he's so blasé about the shiny new in real life. Weird.

</comment><comment><USER10> I really hope someone has set him up with an offsite automatic backup system, plus maybe some versioned local storage.

</comment><comment><USER11> I am somewhat disappointed that he didn't say he'd goosed his Mac's performance with "3MB of hot RAM." Oh well.

</comment><comment><USER12>
        I just want to write, or do whatever else I'm doing, and not have to think about whatever I'm doing it on.

I'd love to know what he would think of <http://www.iawriter.com/>

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm pretty sure a four year old Macbook Pro would weigh more than two pounds.

</comment><comment><USER14> His _retweet_ feed is really entertaining, very diverse and unboring, highly recommended - <http://twitter.com/greatdismal>

</comment><comment><USER15> > It's the WiFi, no cellular to worry about

A palpable hit. Gibson was talking about the tablet, but I suspect there may be quite a few (Wi-Fi enabled) phones out there without data plans.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wow these are getting pretty boring...

<comment><USER17> Would it have been less boring if Gibson waxed for pages about weighing the new Lenovo laptops vs. the MacBook, or the merits of one word processor over another?

I think it's fairly fascinating to discover that the author of one of the most notable cyberpunk novels doesn't really _care_ about technology. (In fact, that's kind of the feeling you get from Neuromancer. There's loads of amazing technology but nobody's really fawning over it. It's just there, and it's just _used_.)

<comment><USER18> Also, most modern software/hardware is not particularly exciting from a usefulness point of view. It is mostly the same stuff that has been around for ages in a slightly smaller package with a new coat of paint.

<comment><USER19> It really depends on the person and how they use that technology. People like I assume Gibson use tech as a means to an end, he hasn't bought a new app because he is comfortable with what he has and sees no need to try new things.

This is the same reason my mother had a hard time when she bought a new laptop with windows 7 on it, though surprisingly she really likes google chrome and tells everyone on a computer using internet explorer they should use chrome instead.

I guess the gist of what I am saying is that sometimes change can be to much for those who aren't the power user. I loved windows 7 on the RC and all the little improvements, the same with word and office 2007. I get excited about new OS releases and new programs and updates because I find them useful and it doesn't take me hours or weeks or months to become more productive because I live tech but others just don't have the time or desire to understand it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A bug in Windows 10 could be slowly wrecking your SSD - <AUTHOR> https://www.pcgamer.com/windows-10-bug-wrecking-ssd/ <comment><USER2> Don't you love it when you go to reply to a comment but it is deleted by the time you finish writing?

Anyway, someone was asking why you'd _ever_ want to defragment an SSD? Good question, I think. Two things:

1\. Sequential access is still faster with SSDs, just not by a margin of infinity anymore. I guess this is because of prefetching in the controller of the drive itself?

2\. To reduce bookkeeping overhead? You need less space to store the information "blocks 1-3" than "block 1, block 17, and block 59." I have no idea how NTFS works or anything, this is just a guess.

<comment><USER3> I thought that defragging an SSD was bad because it exposes it to more reads/writes than necessary, and since SSDs are less resistant/have less tolerance to excessive read/writes it could shorten it's lifespan (probably not by a great or noticeable amount in the grand scheme of things, however).

<comment><USER2> It's certainly bad to do it every day, hence the fix described in the article. But mightn't it make sense to still do it occasionally?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Windows 10 is usually able to discern whether to defrag or run a harmless > TRIM process on a drive, depending on its type. But if volume snapshots are > enabled (so you can revert to a backup using System Restore), it will in > fact defrag the drive even if it is an SSD.

As was commented in an earlier post of this story: this is only a concern if you have "volume snapshots" enabled.

</comment><comment><USER5> Defrag scheduling should be under my control, not subject to the whim of some Microsoft idiots pushing out OS updates.</comment>


How A.S.M.R. (autonomous sensory meridian response ) became a sensation - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/magazine/how-asmr-videos-became-a-sensation-youtube.html <comment><USER2> That's a good title

<comment><USER3> If you like clever titles, spend some time reading The Economist.</comment></comment>


Tons of effort - no success! - <AUTHOR>

To all the successful,
I've been building websites for about 3 years. I'm an entrepreneur at heart and I have a passion for technology. I've worked every spare moment I have had building one idea or another. I've taught myself HTML, CSS, and a little PHP. I've learned Magento and built several sites with it. Lately I started a web development company and have several clients. But I can't get it going enough to support me and I'm still working at my boring full time job hoping that someday I can leave it and work online full time.
You are probably wondering why I'm telling you all this. Well, I was talking to my buddy tonight and he said that his friend just quit his job because his side business (affiliate marketing) is making enough money to support him. So I figured that this friend must have been in the business since 97' because starting then was like a guarantee to success online. Anyways, I found out his friend started just a year ago. "What!?" I said. What have I been doing wrong I thought.
So, I need your help. Please share some ideas with me, ideas that I could invest every free hour for the next year in and be able to quit my stupid job and start building an empire online. <comment><USER2> A lot of people who hang around affiliate marketers bounce around between 150 different ideas, expect the world handed to them on a silver platter, and then wonder why they aren't successful. This is exploited by the information providers in the space, who like having plentiful newbies interested in Making Money Online (TM) because newbies will buy their ebooks, training programs, etc. Those are mostly scams to separate the desperate and unhappy from their money. People get a high off buying them and come back for more despite their failure to make substantial progress.

You can code. Good. Start making value for people. Charge money for it. There it is, the hidden secret to making money on the Internet.

You say you've worked every spare moment building one idea or another. I know this feeling. My guess is that few of your ideas see it to the "finish line" (let's pick launch and a paying customer, that's a pretty major milestone), and then even fewer see the kind of sustained, focused, gradual improvement that separates a website thrown up in a darkened corner of the Internet and a business. That is improvement in product, improvement in marketing, and improvement in the process of both product development and marketing so you're doing less firing blindly into the Internet and more devoting your limited resources to satisfying the measurable preferences of the people who pay you money.

I would suggest improving your PHP or related web development skills until you can transition from custom development to a product business. For example, right now you have a day job and then afterward spend time chasing down clients, chasing invoices, etc etc etc. (And you're probably undercharging, too.) This wastes huge amounts of your very limited supply of waking hours that are non-spoken for. If you were to instead take those web development skills and make a product, subscription service, or what have you, then the website could handle a portion of marketing and most of fulfillment quite literally while you sleep.

Then you can use your time on scalable activities, like thinking up better ways to market your product, rather than activities which give capped and linear payouts (like doing client work for clients who undervalue you). That also lets you start to accumulate capital in the business.

Capital is really simple: stuff you can keep. A freelance website designer accumulates rather little intellectual capital: you get a portfolio (good!) and client contacts (good!) and a reputation (good!) but you have to spend more time to monetize any of this. Product businesses accumulate more capital better, and faster, and many of the assets they build can monetize waaaaay out of proportion to ongoing time expenditures. That is important because, as it stands currently, if you have a bad week at the day job or life gets in the way, the business _stops_. Product businesses tolerate those little hiccups better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice! Great thoughts and ideas. I do have a couple product businesses and some are growing slowly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Web development (lately?) Affiliate marketing? Sounds like you need some focus, and maybe take some spare moments to relax and re-evaluate. ;)

You can't really compare yourself to your buddy. Maybe you live in Manhattan while your buddy lives with his parents in B.F. Wyoming. Different people have different requirements to "make it."

You also can't compare what you do to your buddy. You both deal with websites but it still might as well be as different as "my construction business hasn't gained any traction but my buddy is doing great with his car dealership." I know a guy who makes thousands / month with Adsense but can't get anywhere with affiliate sales. It's different skill sets.

I also couldn't tell you what to do over the next year anymore than I could tell a high school kid what to major in college or what career to go into. And why would you listen to me?

You say that you are passionate about technology but most of your post is about passion for making money with your business so you can leave your job. That doesn't give us much to work with. And is your job really that bad?

General advice. Narrow your scope and put more concentration into a smaller number of things. Take some time off to enjoy life.

In web development, go more niche so that your skills are more scarce and you can charge more. You don't have as much time as the full timers, so outsource some of your work.

If all else fails, dramatically lower your cost of living by moving to a country where you can live off $500 - $1000 / month of income. ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the thoughts.

I guess my real question is what niche to pursue? What will be the next big thing? What can I pursue that will be ahead of the curve?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Find someone whose hair is on fire and sell them water. Make sure you have scarcity power over the water.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wow, I didn't actually expect anyone to comment on this. This was my first post to hacker news and I really appreciate the time you all have taken to comment.

</comment><comment><USER5> I hate to even tell you this but it's completely realistic to jump into affiliate marketing and make fairly solid money ($10 - 20k a month net).

Thanks largely to Facebook (and other social networks) generating HUGE surpluses of traffic there is a free for all right now in affiliate marketers out-converting each other and sending that traffic on to advertisers.

There is enough traffic and risk tolerance from large publishers so that even averagely talented affiliates can make good money.

You'll find everything you need between digitalpoint.com, shoemoney.com, johnchow.com, nickycakes.com, and warriorforum.com.

The reason I led in by saying I hate to tell you this is because affiliate marketing can be extremely slimy, and will be short lived (in present state) as ad-networks become more efficient @ buying up large bricks of ad dollars eliminating the need for this sub-ecosystem.

But in the meantime, hundreds of millions of dollars are up for grab.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why don't you try the 400 $1 project method (from my blog, link in profile). You're exactly the type of person I think would benefit - struggling to do big stuff all the time. Try the small stuff.

<comment><USER7> Actually it's not. At least not directly.

I think this is the post you're referring to: [http://blog.cubeofm.com/how-to- become-rich-even-if-nobody-is...](http://blog.cubeofm.com/how-to-become-rich- even-if-nobody-is-followin)

<comment><USER6> Oops, fixed that, thanks for pointing it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So, this makes two pro-affiliate program links today. More to come?

</comment><comment><USER9> Fail more. Fail better.

</comment><comment><USER10> are you sure your buddy's friend is making enough to support himself? have you met him? or is your friend just yanking your chain?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've never met him, but I know he just quit his job</comment></comment>


Ask YC: Anyone working on applications for Craigslist? - <AUTHOR>

Today I stumbled upon a great program that makes reading craigslist easier. It's called Craigslist Reader and is available here:
http://www.motiont.com/
(My review is here: http://breckyunits.com/?p=52)
A lot of Web 2.0 apps piggyback on the big sites to achieve success (Auctomattic, Facebook apps, etc.). I think this is a terrific strategy because these sites have millions of daily users who have many unmet wants. I was wondering if anyone here has been working on (or know of any) apps that would benefit craigslist users.
I'm not planning on developing any, actually I'm just curious because I use craigslist a fair amount. <comment><USER2> Craigslist doesn't have an open system. Craigslist blocks ip's of those accessing there system through a web application and they send out lots of cease and desist notices. It just is not worth the time to develop something that might even benefit Craigslist.

Piggybacking on bigger sites is a good idea, just find one that is interested. Paypal did for eBay and it worked out for them, There is a lot of room to develop things using ebay. For example, maybe a craigslist format but for ebay auctions.

<comment><USER3> That's a pretty serious claim; any pointers? If you've got some I'll be sure to nag Craig about it next time I see him.

<comment><USER4> listpic?

<http://mashable.com/2007/06/08/listpic-craigslist/>

<comment><USER3> So the issue is: 1) they were putting ads on top of Craigslist, and 2) they were using up too much bandwidth. I expect if you actually wanted to build something useful you could just email Craig and he'd get you a dump.

<comment><USER2> There have been a few others, one fellow made a search system (using the rss feeds) where you can search across cities (by using checkboxes to select the different areas). Craiglist didn't like that.

I guess the bigger question is, what would Craigslist like? I am not sure, I just have not seen anything survive yet because Craigslist hasn't liked anything anyone has done so far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm in a startup working on a competitor to craigslist. We have a long way to go but so far I think we have good bones. We are hoping to work toward being more open for people to build on top of us.

<http://www.flugpo.com>

<comment><USER6> Can you explain why you're creating a craigslist competitor? I'm having a hard time understanding why so many people are doing this.

What problem are you solving?

<comment><USER7> I got my first two apartments on Craigslist, both a few years ago. I was looking for a new one this year on Craigslist, but the rentals section is so full of lies and "call me for info" that it's worthless.

Basically, the openness of Craigslist is destroying it. I'm not sure how to solve the problem, but I would really like a forum that is non-commercial.

<comment><USER8> Our goal for our startup <http://www.propertystampede.com> is to captures the dynamic listings that craigslist does for rental property, but in a fraud free environment.

Come check us out, and if you have rental property or are a property manager, please sign up for the beta.

Christopher Mancini Co-Founder, Property Stampede LLC

<comment><USER8> Why the downmode? Our product is indirectly creating an environment for property managers to list individual units, and because of the design of the system, you have to be using our property management software to list on our listing engine. Reducing possible fraud if not eliminating it all together.

Our listing engine will not provide the same listings you see in forrent.com, rent.com and apartments.com, which is primarily apartment complexes. Our goal is to provide a wide variety of rental listings more similar to craigslist. Listings that normally would not find themselves on the above mentioned sites due to the magnitude of cost that is required to list there.

For this I get downmoded :(

Sincerely, Christopher Mancini

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> <http://www.crazedlist.org> \-- Lets you search states, regions, etc. on Craiglist. You have to disable referrers though, which takes about 2 seconds. I didn't make the site nor do I know the guy behind it, but I found it pretty useful when searching for a car.

</comment><comment><USER10> (not a product but a personal idea) ...

I wanted to build a google custom search engine, that indexes all the car sites (for each city etc..) - then make them all search-able from one box... This works for all items that someone would drive cross state for...

\- I was afraid this might be used for malicious purpose so I haven't done it yet

</comment><comment><USER11> yep, flowthing (coming soon, needs a new name) will piggyback on craigslist, as well as its competitors in the jobs and real estate markets.</comment>


Sign language puzzle solved - <AUTHOR> http://www.physorg.com/news180085938.html

<comment><USER2> See also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1005281></comment>


Study Linking Autism to 'Male Brain' Retracted, Replaced - <AUTHOR> https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/910982?nlid=129068_3901&src=wnl_newsalrt_190327_MSCPEDIT&uac=267659MN&impID=1919559&faf=1 <comment><USER2> A quick look at Simon Baron Cohen's tweet[1] (linked from the article) shows that this topic seems extremely divisive and inflammatory to people. Is this retraction and resulting modified study seen as an important victory for people promoting that there are no differences between the "male" and "female" brains?

[1][https://twitter.com/sbaroncohen/status/832490232721371136](https://twitter.com/sbaroncohen/status/832490232721371136)

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't say there are _no_ differences between the "male" and "female" brain. I do know my brain wasn't very happy on the hormones I was born producing — and there's promising research about how gender identity actually has a basis in physical differences in brain structure [1] which are hypothesized to form based on exposure to various hormone levels during gestation (and which have already been shown to impact gender identity through the very elevated rates of transition of children of mothers who took the synthetic estrogen diethylstilbesterol).

But like anything involving gendered characteristics in humans as expressed in the world, the range of observed behaviors within the two populations overlaps so much it's hard to draw meaningful conclusions about any individual by differentiating the two.

Based on my personal experience and from talking to others who have medically transitioned, the difference between "inherently male" behaviors and "inherently female" behaviors can be nearly entirely explained by hormones. As in, you change hormones and the behavior changes: testosterone tends to cause elevated anger / aggression while estrogen tends to make people more neurotic with a wider range of emotional response. That's it. The rest of the differences are either personality or environmental / social factors.

[1] [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17352-8](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17352-8)

<comment><USER4> This "too much overlap to draw a distinction" idea seems silly. The border between orange and yellow has overlap and can not be precisely defined, and yet we still can recognize the difference between orange and yellow. Many statistical techniques have been invented to prevent outliers from biasing correlations.

<comment><USER3> It's uncontroversial to say that on average, men are taller than women.

But other characteristics such as nutrition and genetics matter more: the average German woman (5'5") is significantly taller than the average Peruvian man (5'1").

My point here is that the difference between men and women on most metrics tends to be more heavily influenced by other external factors.

<comment><USER5> > the difference between men and women on most metrics

I think that's the problem part of your argument. There's no qualification of what "most metrics" includes, much less whether that holds true for must _neurological_ effects (which is more to the point), and that's before we even get around to discussing the fact that I'm sure there's a bunch of metrics we don't even know about.

Your statement might be entirely true. Unfortunately I don't know enough to judge the claims in it, I don't even know if we're at a level where we can judge the claims, and regardless you didn't provide any evidence to support it or help with that in any way. I'm not sure how it brings us any closer to an understanding of the issue.

Edit: rationale on down votes would be appreciated...

<comment><USER6> Because we do known that men and women are neurologically different. There's a wealth of evidence suggesting so. And considering what we know about sexual dimorphism, this is completely unsurprising.

<comment><USER5> I was responding to a comment that said "My point here is that the difference between men and women on most metrics tends to be more heavily influenced by other external factors."

Given the topic, I took that as an argument that the neurological differences are not as pronounced as what is created by external factors, and I was responding to the lack of evidence provided for that view (which I interpret as the opposite of the view you suggested).

I actually lean towards your position, but I wasn't trying to express that as an argument (I'm unqualified to). I was just trying to point out what I saw as at best very loose reasoning (at least when provided without evidence).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I personally know the author of this paper who conducted these analyses. He is my office mate.

He discovered his own error that then led to this retraction. The error involved under-documented statistical code which expected the coding of male and female (0,1) to be reversed when training a classifier on each group, is my understanding. He kept the coding of sex the same across both training regimes. This created erroneous results. He became suspicious about the results after new applications of the analysis to new dataset produced over the top beautiful results.

The take is this. The mistake was honest, and way too easy. My office mate is a superb scientist with the highest integrity. He caught a mistake, and fessed up to it. This is good science.

Note: I am not part of the group that published this paper.

<comment><USER8> No doubt doing so came at a real personal cost. He is to be lauded for it.

<comment><USER7> It did indeed, and I do laud him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks like it was an issue with a script. I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't a bigger issue than we know in science. Good scripting practice is not taught in most programs. On top of that it's not really possible to write tests for regressions.

<comment><USER10> What would a good resource for good scripting practices?

<comment><USER11> I think general programming best practices would apply, particularly code review and planning your code and breaking it up into discrete parts. I have seen many scripts for research that are 5k LOC of spaghetti that become impossible to read or adjust.

<comment><USER10> We're talking about scientists, not computer scientists. As surely as business managers and industrial engineers don't need to know the best programming practices to be good SQL monkeys, surely scientists- neuroscientists at that- don't need to know general programming practices.

There's got to be a specific set!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >after finding an error in their methodology.

If that's the reason this seems like a non event, as far as some of the typical gender related internet spats goes.

</comment><comment><USER13> Any honest mistake should be welcomed

</comment><comment><USER14> I am not too sure about autism being directly a further male brain than the normative population. As a counter, the number of Male-to-Female transgender people in the speedrunning community is staggeringly high, and should be given some thought.

<comment><USER15> Escapism might just be the case. I know from my own experience gaming was just a way to focus on something else besides a cruel reality. Eventually moved to programming and realized later what was happening. I'm sure if life had been different, I would have done a different career and one that's more social with the focus in a social aspect.

<comment><USER14> Escapism is certainly an aspect of autism. My personal theory is that autism is akin to really dense hair, in that your mind is less flexible, and thus themes of constancy arise early in development. This analogy implies both that an autist would be highly structured in thought, which is Simon Baron Cohen's pioneering idea, and would be very low in prowess of executive function, as the mind would be too inflexible to a change in perspective.

<comment><USER15> I'm surprised you associate it with autism and not gender dysphoria.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Has it happened because of scientific or political reasons?

<comment><USER17> > "Has it happened because of scientific or political reasons?"

It's literally in the first sentence:

"The authors of a study that claimed to find a link between typical male brain anatomy and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have retracted it and replaced it with a dramatically changed version after finding an error in their methodology."

<comment><USER18> Quoting the actual mistake is more useful, as that sentence doesn't actually clarify the question — it's what they'd say if it were for political reasons, as well.

> In the letter, Ecker wrote that she and her coauthors had "identified a > problem with the script that was used for the prediction of biological sex > in male and female individuals with ASD based on their respective > neuroanatomy in our original sample."

> That meant that "the probabilities we assumed to be indicative of the > default (male) category in the female individuals with ASD, as shown in > Figure 1B of our article, were flipped and in fact reflect the probabilities > for the category of biological female individuals."

<comment><USER19> > identified a problem with the script

Shitty academia code strikes again. It's sort of unfortunate that most of academic fields have turned to domain-specific software engineering, which graduates are woefully unprepared to do properly.

<comment><USER20> the real problem is this code never got peer reviewed.

<comment><USER21> The peer reviewers are properly not good scripters as well.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you think of my MVP for a simple expense tracking web app? - <AUTHOR> http://dollarlog.com/?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=hn_post&utm_campaign=ask_hn <comment><USER3> Looks nice! Have you thought about adding screenshots on the landing page (maybe one each for "Log Expenses", "Tag Expenses" and "Analyse Expenses")?

I think a lot of people would like to see what the app might look like before giving away their email address.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm yeah, good point. I'll do that!

<comment><USER4> Make sure to also add a demo that I can use _without_ registering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well I can tell you what I didn't like from the moment I saw the web page: I can't see or use the app in any way before I even register. As some random visitor coming to your site, why would I bother doing that, when I have no idea what to expect from signing-up (other than a bunch of words on a page, which I just skipped looking for the app screenshots/demo).

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair call. What would you like to be able to see on the landing page? Screenshots?

<comment><USER6> screenshots at least, and preferably a demo that doesn't require registration

<comment><USER7> Or better yet, the full product but doesn't save anything until you register.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The biggest suggestion I could offer would be to give your potential customers a reason to use it - ask them a question on the conversion page that qualifies them as a customer - i.e. "Want to spend your money more effectively?" or "Want to cut down on the amount of time you spend tracking corporate expenses?" or something similar. As is, the site kinda assumes that _everyone_ has the problem you are trying to solve, which has the affect of making it appeal to "no one". Be more explicit about the problem you'd like to solve in your copy and it will boost user confidence immensely and get many more of them to the point where they will want to try your service.

<comment><USER9> also, reach out to the frugal/debt community- there are lots of bloggers who'll happily do reviews to help their readers, and it's a lot of good publicity.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I had that idea also - I posted on r/frugal to not much interest! Will definitely be reaching out to some bloggers.

<comment><USER10> Do you really want /r/frugal as customers?

<comment><AUTHOR> A customer is a customer!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 1) Where is the privacy policy, data usage, and terms of service?

2) What makes this different from Expensify or Mint?

</comment><comment><USER12> I like it! Very simple and easy to use.

Since I don't have any expenses I have to track for accounting purposes, I'm looking at this as a tool to track my own expenditure so as to help improve my spending habits. I realise the focus might be different so my suggestion may be useless to you!

What would be really useful to me would be reminders and notifications. With developing habits like this, I have a very hard time unless I'm constantly reminded. Like I take my lunch on weekdays at 12pm, so a reminder at half 12 or 1 would have me enter my lunch expenses. This could be further enhanced if you had a mobile app that used push notifications. This would be essential for me to develop the habit of doing it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah thanks for the suggestions. That's something I've been thinking about a bit, I think it's a pain to enter expenses all the time. How do you feel about an email reminder in place of a push notification?

<comment><USER12> Email reminders could also work well.

My thinking with mobile push notifications would be you tap the notification and it takes you straight to a simple UI where you punch in the values.

It might be harder to reduce the friction as low as this with email notifications but it could work just as well. A simple link could work, or one step further is having a feature where you can specify expenditure and tags in the reply to an email in a certain format that's parsed by your app e.g:

$8, work, commuting $4.50, lunch

(Values in example may seem low because I'm British but dollar/pound symbol is neither here nor there in this case!)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ultimately I would love to do a mobile app and it really wouldn't be that difficult to build, I guess I just wanted to gauge interest before dedicating more time. That's a really interesting suggestion about the email reply, I'm going to think about that a bit more!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Congrats for creating such a simple (but useful!) tool for the masses. I have found some bugs however:

\- If I enter a nonnumeric value in the expense field it doesn't complain but enters the detail as 0$ and tag details. It would create some mishap in the mobile devices.

\- If I enter a numeric value and don't fill the tag and explanation fields the system reenters last valid value. For example if I entered $1234 and home as the tag it will repeat if I enter 200 for the amount and erased the autofilled home tag.

\- There isn't a way to delete/edit previous entries. I should be able to delete them at least...

Apart from these little stuff the system rocks. :) Keep up the good work, mate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cheers!Deletion and bug fixes are definitely coming!

</comment></comment><comment> marco-fiset First of all, I want to congratulate you for actually shipping, and dare show it here on Hacker News.

However, I can't consider this an MVP. Sure it is minimal, but it is barely usable as it is right now. I'd like a datepicker, instead of writing the date by hand, and I'd like to be able to have a suggestion of tags I used in the past. I'd like to have the enter key submit the form. Such small details that would add great value.

Moreover, I expected the Day, Week, Month filter to show me only the expenses in that time frame, instead of just the total changing.

Keep it up! Very good job overall.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks very much! I definitely agree with you. All of this stuff is really easy to add in and will be there in the coming days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is there any way to preview it? At the very least some screenshots that show the user what the web app can do would be very helpful. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I've added a few small screenshots to the homepage for now. I'll definitely do a better preview in the coming days!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Had this problem recently and solved it by creating a Google Drive form connected to a spreadsheet, saving what expense and how much it was. Then bookmarked the form on my iPhone homescreen. Nice to have a secret url for collecting data without having to authenticate or anything. Something similar could probably be useful here too.

</comment><comment><USER16> I really like the simplicity of it. Keep it clean and simple and people will use it forever.

BUT,

there are some basic features missing, such as: currency config (Europeans have Internet too ;), subject & comment notes. A receipt upload would be really great too. Plus, as much as I love Bootstrap, please invest $15 in a custom theme ;)

Nice job!

</comment><comment><USER17> I use mint.com, but I really have a problem with the method of how they receive data. I believe banks should provide API keys for their customers which allows read-only access to their accounts.

Unfortunately, their is zero interest within banks to build this.

Edit: I do too many transactions to use something like this or Toshl.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had a few problems with Mint which is why I decided to build this: 1. It wasn't available in my country and 2. I didn't want to connect my bank account, just because I wasn't comfortable with giving them that info. The API key would be awesome, but with banks being such large organisations that deal with so much data I feel like this would be almost impossible to implement with their current systems.

<comment><USER17> I hear ya!

I work for a big bank, and I tried pushing the idea around a bit, but to no avail.

It really comes down to "business need" \- the department responsible for the online services would need to be convinced that there is a desire and a benefit to providing an API key. I imagine they would see it negative for two ways - added risk by having sites/programs connect to their application, and they won't see the added benefit to customers, and vice-versa - <USER2> wouldn't really know what to do with the key.

It would take a player like Mint to make that case - they could do branding with a major bank such that they are the first to safely share data, but then recommend products, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's a nice start. Well done!

I want to click on the tags that I have used so far, so that I can see a summary for that tag, but it doesn't seem to do anything.

Entering the amounts on mobile could be improved if you could popup a number keypad on focus. And a calendar select couldn't hurt either.

Again, well done!

<comment><AUTHOR> Filtering by tags is coming soon! It's almost done, just putting the finishing touches on it. Thanks for the suggestions! How would you feel about a paid premium service that gave more analytics around spending habits?

<comment><USER18> I think enhanced analytics would be very valuable to your users. In fact, without it you don't really have a product.

BTW: I think that this the sort of service where Freemium doesn't make sense. You need people to get value out of the system, not offer them some crippled version for free and hope they will upgrade.

With this sort of service it is best to offer everything with a generous trial period.

Once someone has their data in your system they will want to pay you when the time comes as they have invested their time to get their data into your system. But getting people to convert will depend on whether you are offering them true value, and this can be best achieved by exposing all the value from the start.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm inclined to agree on the freemium thing. I may have an issue though when it comes to getting existing users on the free system to move over to a paid model. Do I grandfather existing users or force them to move?

<comment><USER18> Yeah, some products lend themselves to an obvious upgrade path (like my own where increased usage brings charges). When you find yourself in this situation it makes sense to offer a free tier as a gateway. We also get some (small) promotional value from our free users as well. But for your product it's not obvious that having free users will provide you with much value and if they don't transition to paid, then they are very much a dead weight.

That said, having people as free users and then cutting them off without warning could have a negative PR effect.

I think the easiest course of action is to put some wording in a prominent place on the site to the effect of "this is a free beta, but we will be moving to a paid model when we feel we are providing enough value". Then when the time comes, it won't come as a surprise. Then you put them on the 30/60/X day free trial (which you have anyway for new paid users) and they can transition.

Sure, you will lose some of those free users along the way, but unless they are providing value to you, free users are just going to be a drain on your limited resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is there any way to see what I'm signing up for without actually signing up for it?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've added a couple of small screenshots to the home page for the time being! Hopefully that helps a little.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Great starting point. Do you have a hypothesis about who would benefit from such a product? It may help you with next steps to validate the concept.

<comment><AUTHOR> The market I'd really think that would benefit from this (at least early on) is University students. Obviously, it isn't only limited to this, but in general uni students are generally making smaller purchases relatively often.

<comment><USER20> It is good that you have a narrow focus. What specific problem do university students have that is solved by your product? Also, have you thought about how you want to iterate with a small group of users?

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem is that often, a lot of University students are extremely unaware of how much they spend. I would argue more so than people that are more experienced handling their expenses. The amount of my friends that have said to me 'Man, I have no idea where my money goes, I don't but anything, but it just goes!' is crazy. If I can empower Uni students to make better financial decisions through a better understanding of their expenses.

<comment><USER20> Changing behavior is difficult. That's the reason services like mint rely on bank/credit card transactions to get the data. You may want to quickly start testing with a few university students before investing more development time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does it sync with online accounting software like Freeagent?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, I guess the idea at this point was to keep it simple as possible. Is that a feature that you would be interested in using?

<comment><USER21> Essential for me! Understand that complicates things though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm, interesting. How would you see a product like mine working with some kind of existing service like Freeagent?

<comment><USER21> Already apps that do it, look at Mobile Agent

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I like the simplicity, but there are a LOT of bugs.

</comment><comment><USER23> Add some features to set budgets, track total expenditure and work out how much you've got left.</comment>


Show HN: Avion: Content tools in the cloud - <AUTHOR> https://avion.io

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi all.

I've been using these tools (blog, wiki and document store), more or less, to run a small business for a while. I've spent some time bring it up to an MVP to make them available for others.

There's a long list of ideas I have for how to make it a more unique offering, but I've been trying to just focus on getting an MVP for now and I'm keen to get some HN feedback.

If you're interested in seeing some of the public facing side of the tools the product itself has a page at [https://en.avion.io](https://en.avion.io)

Thanks.</comment>


Funding the Government after August 2 - Running QE2 in Reverse - <AUTHOR> http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/opinion/morici/2011/071811.aspx

<comment><USER2> I don't understand why it matters one way or the other. If they raise it, great. If they don't, then spend less money government.

The government does it's budgeting all fucked up. It makes a list of everything it wants, then sort of argues a little and writes a check for the total.

Every other entity in the universe starts with how much money they have or want to spend, and then divides it up according to priorities. If the government switched to this method, they would just have less money to slice up.

I was in the army, and I worked for defense contractors. 99% of federal government employees do no work. I mean literally don't do anything. They show up around 9 and leave around 4, and surf the internet in between. Every once and awhile they have meetings and plan things that don't get done, or figure out who is going to go on some trip. Meanwhile contractors are running around doing the little bit of work that is being done. The hilarious part is, 99% of that work doesn't matter. If it just stopped tomorrow, nobody would even be able to notice.

So, if my calculations are correct, and they are only based on empirical observation over the course of 8 years, we could reduce the size of the government expenditures (excluding programs that just write checks, like medicare and social security, which we should keep) by 99.99% and nobody would care other than the government employees, but I don't feel sorry for people who's entire contribution to society is to be physically present at a specific location for 35 hours a week. Lets cut the budget but keep the programs that help old people and poor people.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand - why has it been such a big deal to raise the debt ceiling this time? I mean, didn't they do it 7 times in bush's 8 years, and 5 times in the last ~4 years of obama's presidency? If they've done it roughly once a year for the last 12 years, why the big deal this time?

<comment><USER4> Because the Republican party has been infiltrated by an ideological fraction that is impervious to arguments and unwilling to compromise. At least that's what it looks like to me.

I think most people are not worried, because they believe that the responsible parties will raise the debt ceiling in time. I think those people underestimate the the reality distortion from which the tea party suffers.

The other reason is that the US debt is reaching worrisome levels, and at some point needs to be curbed. That is not a political problem, though, that is a problem of society. People in the US want everything, but nobody wants to pay for it. The US debt here is just an extension of willingness to go into personal debt, which is much greater here than is most other western countries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My imperfect understanding, from studying other sources, is that this is not correct at all. What the poster is describing is, in fact, what the government has been doing for several months -- using cash inflows to keep paying the bills, while rolling over expiring debts into new ones. August 2 is the date when we will no longer have enough cash on-hand to keep paying our obligations.

In addition, a large raft of monthly Social Security checks are scheduled to go out at the end of next week, so even if the estimates are wrong and we can make it a few extra days, that singular large expense will be enough to push us over the brink.</comment>


Streaming Local Video With Your Roku - <AUTHOR> http://blog.brianlane.com/2009/12/20/streaming-local-video-with-your-roku/

<comment><USER2> excellent. I was just wondering if they were going to add a 'Home Server' channel or something similar.</comment>


Ask HN: Three choices – who do you hire? - <AUTHOR>

So your boss offers you a choice of which prospective employee to hire. He and HR have narrowed the pile down to just three choices. Only one can be hired, the rest become homeless, contract TB, infect people go ride the bus, and die.
1: A white woman, fresh out of college with a bachelors in CompSci and a masters in Gender Studies. She won the Leah Culver Award for being a strong programmer woman who don't need no code three years in a row.
2: A fresh off the boat Indian. Claims proficiency in Python 4, Windows 9, C++15, and Verilog. Resume shows he has twelve degrees from a university whose name you can't pronounce.
3:  The Brogrammer. He's worked at 23 failed startups and is an expert in Ruby on Rails. He works 80+ hours a week, but is still not very productive, due to fucking around most of the time.
Which do you choose, and why? <comment><USER2> I remove any description that is not specifically related to the job.

You're left with

1\. Fresh out of college bachelor in compSci and masters in Gender Studies. Won the Leah Culver award for being a strong programmer (no idea what "don't need no code" means).

2\. A person who has 12 University degrees, and is proficient in languages and software which is yet to be released, suspect.

3\. An expert Rails developer who has been through the ringer with multiple start-ups and knows what start-ups are all about. (You likely have no way of knowing he works 80+ hours per week, unless he said so, and is very unproductive due to fucking around most of the time).

Now, clearly, you've loaded this question so much to the point that there is only one choice, and that is the 'white woman'. But if she were a 'black woman', an Indian man, a house cat, make any difference to your question? She is the ONLY choice of the choices you provided because based on the information you've given, she is the only one who can apparently code.

Now, give the Indian person proficiency in actual languages and apps, and remove the fact that the brogrammer is unproductive, and see where you go with that?

Now you've got a decision to make. What is it? Well, you can't know, which is why you have to interview them, see who's the best fit for the culture, etc. etc.

If this is an actual situation, and your boss picked anybody other than the first choice, and you're wondering why, stop wondering why, and maybe start making a move to a better place to work.

</comment><comment><USER3> You hire all three and use them to replace HR - it just cannot get any worse than that, so improvement is guaranteed.</comment>


Jefferson's Doomed Educational Experiment - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/thomas-jefferson-alan-taylor-university-of-virginia/600793/ <comment><USER2> The author, a professor at Harvard Law School, is a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award. [0]

[https://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/10329/Gordon- Reed](https://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/10329/Gordon-Reed)</comment>


Learn to code your own blockchain in less than 200 lines of Go - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mycoralhealth/code-your-own-blockchain-in-less-than-200-lines-of-go-e296282bcffc <comment><USER2> Are you guys writing your own blockchain for the medical apps, or what is the point of this exactly?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope we're not writing our own blockchain. This tutorial was just a friendly walkthrough helping developers dip their toes into blockchain.

We're building on top of Ethereum and also actively exploring side chain solutions like Tendermint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is surprisingly simple and readable. Nice work.</comment>


How to promote a FreeLancer Projects website? - <AUTHOR>

How to promote a ' FreeLancers/Providers ' website? <comment><AUTHOR> someone please let me know.</comment>


A Problem Course in Compilation: From Python to x86 Assembly [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://ecee.colorado.edu/ecen4553/fall09/notes.pdf

<comment><USER2> Very good work!

Does anyone have a guide to x86 assembly that covers the basics as well as more advanced stuff like SSE, how the caches work (especially wrt multiple cores), a model of how fast the instructions are in which circumstances? I'd like something that is pretty comprehensive and modern (you shouldn't use x86 floating point anymore? great, then skip that and go straight to SSE) while not being ridiculously enormous like the intel manuals. How do experts learn this stuff? Really by reading intel's and amd's manuals?

<comment><USER3> For good, up-to-date information you really have to go to the source materials, or learn directly from other people. Everything else is probably going to be out of date.

For a basic description of the architecture, and detailed descriptions of the opcodes, read the Intel architecture manuals themselves. They're big because there's a lot to know. You don't have to read it all at the same time. <http://www.intel.com/products/processor/manuals/>

For very detailed information on the memory hierarchy, read Ulrich Drepper's "What every programmer should know about memory" series on LWN. Though even this is probably going to fall out of date soon, as it was written in 2007. <http://lwn.net/Articles/250967/>

For a model of how fast the instructions are, the best I know of is Agner Fog's instruction tables: <http://www.agner.org/optimize/>

I'm not an expert, but in my experience architecture experts seem to learn through experience and by absorbing knowledge from the people around them. You have to be willing to conduct your own experiments, but you also have to be cautious in the conclusions you draw because there are so many interrelated factors.

There is a lot of tribal knowledge floating around about how to optimize assembly. The Intel manuals capture a lot of it in the optimization reference manual in particular. By reading that you'll learn the details of branch prediction, things to avoid like partial register stalls, etc.

At Google (where I work) there are guys who are optimizing at the assembly level. Some guy will post a specific routine he's trying to optimize to a mailing list, and it will go back and forth between a handfull of expert-level people throwing in ideas. There was recently a thread about the performance difference between movdqa and movdqu, wondering what the performance difference is. It seems to vary based on the architecture (Core2 vs Atom, etc.) and whether the read is crossing a cache line etc. etc.

There's just a lot to know, and I doubt anybody knows it all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You should consider linking to an outline/synopsis with a link to the pdf. This would make it more accessible to those(we) of short attention spans as well as the very busy.

</comment><comment><USER5> Jeremy actually did a tutorial on this at PyCon last year, video available here: <http://pycon.blip.tv/file/3263942/>

</comment><comment><USER6> Thanks for your hard work.

I breifly covered ASM in my first year of university but I don't think it counts since we got all input with C.</comment>


Microsoft is downloading Windows 10 to your machine 'just in case' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2425381/microsoft-is-downloading-windows-10-to-your-machine-just-in-case <comment><USER2> On windows 7 I have my updates set to 'tell about updates and let me install them' and the box 'treat recommended updates as critical updates' is unchecked. I have experienced no such activity from Microsoft.

A few weeks ago I downloaded an application from Microsoft essentials and it apparently checked the 'treat recommended updates as critical updates' as well as the 'allow all users to install updates' boxes. It then proceeded to install all windows 10 as well as 60 or so other updates and made my machine a misery to deal with. I thought I had a virus. I ended up reinstalling win7 with critical updates only and all is well again.</comment>


Ask HN: How to start a crowd funding campaign in 2018? - <AUTHOR> I'm thinking of starting a crowd funding campaign but platforms like Kickstarter don't work in my country. Can platforms like ethereum/counterparty/stellar be a solution for it? <comment><USER2> Ethereum has been used to raise huge amounts of money, but almost solely for pre-orders of tokens of distributed protocols, which will potentially provide holders with utility. I don't know how successful a donation-based crowdfunding campaign, that doesn't provide contributors with anything of value in exchange, would be.</comment>


Guide to Sending Email Like a Startup - <AUTHOR> https://www.sendwithus.com/resources/guide/? <comment><USER2> It's mentioned in there, but I really want to emphasize how important it is to ditch the do-not-reply return address and, in fact, to have actual people read every single reply.

We get great suggestions, feedback, sales opportunities, etc. from replies to automated messages. We don't get many complaint emails, but when we do the author seems to think they're yelling into a void. People seem genuinely impressed when they get at thoughtful reply back and sometimes it changes their whole impression of us.

<comment><USER3> No email should ever be sent from a do-not-reply return address. Ever. You have _no_ idea how much email I get because some idiot used my email address to sign up for something/order something/whatever.

To this I'd also add: Always confirm email addresses. Every time someone signs up for an account, send a confirmation email with an easy means of notifying you that I'm not the person who signed up for the account. So few do this.

<comment><USER4> I see big companies do this all the time. It's annoying. Even a support@ that gives me a ticket number out of ZenDesk is better than no-reply@

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Remember folks, every single piece of correspondence we send should be valuable to the receiver.

Welcome email? Great - tell them something that will help them to get setup.

Referral email? Great - tell them how they can win by referring you, and I mean really win.

Promotional email? Make sure that promo is worth their while.

And never take your audience's time for granted. You're trying to build a relationship.

<comment><USER6> I notice that your examples don't include the "'begging for re-engagement from someone who doesn't need to use your app' email"

<comment><USER7> I call these the "reminder to actually cancel/close my account" emails.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Excited to share this -- we just completed the guide (5 chapters in all).

Includes contributions from Ivan Kirigin (YesGraph), Noah Kagan (AppSumo), and more.

No matter how much you may/may not like receiving email, there are a lot of people out there who do. This guide should help you reach them, without annoying the others.

<comment><USER8> It's really excellent. Nice work!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow, that's comprehensive. The Net Promoter survey is very powerful, if you've never used it: once you've identified and bucketed all of your users who give you a 9 or 10, you can hit them up for referrals, reviews, and shares, and skip all the users who might not have anything nice to say about you.

<comment><USER10> Yeah we like NPS a lot. Not only can you segment and specifically reach out to 9s and 10s, but you can dynamically fill your emails. So for example your standard footer could say "share for x bonus" if they're a 8-10, but "give feedback for x bonus" for <8.

direct link to that section: [https://www.sendwithus.com/resources/guide#ch3-survey](https://www.sendwithus.com/resources/guide#ch3-survey)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There are several parts of this I disagree with, but the one I disagree with the most is onboarding emails.

Can I use your product _in_ the email? No? Then don't send me an onboarding email, do the onboarding in-product with overlays when I log into it for the first time. Google does this with some success for Gmail if I recall correctly, it has arrows pointing at different sections and everything, and you can click to dismiss them.

Bombarding the consumer with multiple onboarding emails may generate a high click rate, but if your target market has people that hate spam, it will instantly leave a bad taste in their mouth. It really sucks when I sign up for a new product I am peripherally interested in, and they clutter up my empty inbox with 5 enthusiastic emails, none of which has any content that I can actually use -- just links to the website.

<comment><USER12> The point of onboarding emails is to boost your activation rate. Users frequently get distracted during onboarding and drop of. A drip campaign that highlights the benefits of completing the onboarding is highly effective. The majority of people consider emails spam if _they aren 't relevant_. Someone who intends to complete an onboarding process but was sidetracked _usually_ finds these reminders useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This bag of tricks seems to focus more on doing things as other companies do than on what data there is to tell you it is the right thing for you. No guarantees those companies made the right inferences from the right data, and even if they did, no guarantees their conclusions apply without modification to your situation.

Is there some inherent value to being "like a startup" or following "trends"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Valid feedback pekk. One of the reasons we consulted with people who have run growth at a number of companies is because they could give the inside story; company X did Y because their metrics told them to.

That said, a huge caveat is that this all depends on your audience and what they're going to respond to.

I would posit that startups are more apt (than a larger company) to experiment with marketing, which is valuable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is such a great resource.

I helped with the referrals bits, but the other sections taught me a lot too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really appreciate your contribution Ivan, definitely learned a LOT about referrals from you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> These are not transactional emails, but triggered emails that are automated by a user's actions. Transactional emails typically revolve around a transaction, example emails include an order confirmation, shipping confirmation, or order cancellation email. I'm pretty sure most of these emails would require the customer to be subscribed to your email list, while a true transactional email would not.

See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_marketing#Transactional_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_marketing#Transactional_emails)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a fair point to highlight what constitutes a true transactional email, but the content of this guide does cover both transactional and triggered emails (Welcome or registration email is one example of a transactional email covered).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why is sendwithus.com allowed to advertise by posting as a blog site, why isn't it flagged by now? These are the types of people I block in my server's email configuration.

<comment><USER17> Promoting your business on HN is not a bad thing per se. This post is actually a great example of HOW TO promote your service on HN. By providing very useful information to startups and companies who need to send email to their customers, SendWithUs has made us all smarter and in doing so have improved their credibility as an email service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm somewhat puzzled by this paragraph - even moreso as they seem to base a lot of advice on top of it:

 _For Facebook, they've defined core retention behavior as the point when a user has added at least 15 friends to their account. In Alex Schultz's Startup Class lecture he discloses that, for Facebook, someone that has 15 friends is likely to remain active on the service for a long time, so their retention strategies are all focused around promoting the behavior of adding friends.

To find your own core retention behavior, look for specific actions that are common to your ideal users, then promote that behavior in your retention strategies._

I'm not a marketing expert, but this seems like a classic example of "confusing causation and correlation" to me. So, in the example above, facebook has found that "user has > 15 friends" is a good indicator for "user is loyal". Fair enough. but instead of going "we have this awesome way of identifying loyal users, now let's find out what made them loyal in the first place", the guide assumes that the high friend count actually _causes_ the loyality and advises to do everything to bump it up.

In Facebook's case, this probably works, because friend count might actually influence retention in some ways. (e.g., your news feed might become more active or more interesting, making you want to stay). But even then, you're kept completely in the dark what made those people sign up and add friends in the first place.

i think taking this as a general advice might actually be dangerous. In the best case, you keep a high retention rate but have no idea why; In the worst case, it might tempt you to build "features" that try to manipulate or even force the users into particular behaviors, only to inflate some metric. (see, e.g. Pinterest's "auto-following" routine: [http://www.businessinsider.com/wait-a-minute-pinterests- sign...](http://www.businessinsider.com/wait-a-minute-pinterests-sign-up- process-is-down-right-sketchy-2012-2?IR=T) )

</comment><comment><USER19> This is the most comprehensive and useful guide on sending emails I have come across so far. Going to implement a few ideas right away and track the results.

</comment><comment><USER20> I feel like the point on "Set a Conversational Tone & Sign from Real People" is reaching a bit of over-saturation currently. As soon as I get such an email from a company, it leads to my thinking that "they're trying to deceive me into thinking someone is actually sending out these automated messages. Do they think I'm an idiot?" It feels very disingenuous.

</comment><comment><USER21> Clear and simple. Good job.

I've got a question about your starter/hacker plan... _Up to 1,000 recipients /month_ means that I can do X sends up to 1,000 different emails? For instance, mandrill has 12,000 Free emails limit. Can I connect mandrill and use those 12k/month as long as I don't have more than 1k/users in your system?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks joeyspn! Means a lot to the team that their work is appreciated.

You're absolutely correct about our hacker plan; up to 1,000 unique email recipients per month (it resets each month).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Following every step of this program is a very good way in making me avoid your product.

</comment><comment><USER23> "Surprise & delight your new readers with a funny cat picture. Seriously, never underestimate the effectiveness of a well-timed cat picture."

This might work for some types of businesses, I suppose. For others it would be a huge misstep.

</comment><comment><USER24> Thanks for this guide; I think it is great!

</comment><comment><USER25> This article is really great for a marketer at any level!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks -- we've tried to ensure there's basic information and more involved tips for experienced email folks. The guide also highlights some of the trends we've seen in the last year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> "Transactional emails are the mechanism by which you keep in contact with your users, just because they're automated, doesn't mean they should be robotic."

Whether its origin is a startup or a giant corporation, any email can be made to sound like a poor marketing scam - just include run-on sentences like that one.

<comment><USER27> One tip that should probably be shared - Marketing that is so obvious that it's marketing doesn't work. Most firms seem to play by exactly the book in the article, and it's a little predictable. Does it work? I don't know. Maybe it does. Though I'm interested if some experimentation can remove some local maxima.

And once you are trained to spot a NPS question, yeah, it starts to rub you completely wrong. And you can tell when you are part of a email drip campaign more quickly, or when you go from being a automated plast to a warm lead or whatever.

re NPS, I do think it's useful to ask people who aren't 8's why they don't like you maybe more so than asking the 9-10s to engage more. I am also not sold of the NPS idea of only asking that 1 question - but surveys can often be constructed to only answer the known unknowns [sic] and can be misleading. Arbitrary comment boxes without leading questions I think are great.

Use it as a learning tool, not a selling tool. It is more interesting to try to make being awesome your selling tool.

Same goes for blog posts, if it's full of buzzwords with no details, and it's obviously marketing, if the buyer audience is actually technical users, those efforts are likely misapplied.

How to blogs are much more genuine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Oh, a spammer's manual. Disgusting.

<comment><USER10> Actually the point was precisely the opposite. If you give marketing creative control of your transactional emails, you don't have to blast your users constantly to maintain their attention.

<comment><USER29> Drip campaigns push the envelope on "transactional mail" a lot, and a lot of what the article suggests could IMHO easily push in the area that I'd consider spammy (sending multiple mails per week) and which makes sure I don't actually read any future mails unless I explicitly look for them, because they get filtered away.</comment></comment></comment>


How to get more patients for a healthcare website? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Could you clarify your question a little bit more?</comment>


Ask HN: Does anyone still use TextMate? - <AUTHOR> If so, whats your reason for staying and not moving to more "modern" text editors like atom or sublime? <comment><USER2> I still use textmate. I started with vi, which I still use for small edits, switched to sam, back to vi when I stopped having X on my Mac, and then to textmate. I have tried sublime and atom. I am sure they can be configured to work as I would like, but out of the box the distance seemed too far.

My desire to configure is strongest when I start writing reports (in LaTeX or markdown). I long for a distraction free mode with easy spell checking.</comment>