YouTube Pushing Users Switch To Real Names - <AUTHOR> http://www.jimyounkin.com/2012/07/youtube-pushing-users-switch-to-real.html

<comment><USER3> It's often argued in these cases that identification and real names will increase the quality of comments by eliminating trolls, stalkers and troublemakers somehow.

When measured empirically, one study found that anonymous commenting from people without user accounts increases the ratio of good comments to poor quality ones. The reason is that so many more people comment. There's a certain fixed number of trolls and troublemakers who have a lot of free time and will go through whatever hoops are needed to set up an account with a registered name, which may or may not be their real one. Legitimate commenters though are not as motivated to jump through hoops and comply with demands they use a consistent, or real sounding name.

[http://blog.topix.com/2008/01/anonymous-comments-by-the- numb...](http://blog.topix.com/2008/01/anonymous-comments-by-the-numbers.html)

As far as people with video accounts on youtube who are contributing content and allowing for the business model, youtube has many cases of attractive women vloggers who are routinely stalked by unhinged fan/viewers. Do these vloggers benefit from a degree of anonymity, or the ability to use pen names? Yes. In addition to attractive women, there are also many aliased vloggers posting political opinions about police and military brutality, citizen journalists anonymously uploading video from protests, etc. Maintaining penname aliases on vlogger content accounts clearly allows these contributors to increase their own safety by making it more difficult to stalk and harass them in real life by not just trolls and dysfunctional people, but also from government agents intending to both silence them and do them harm.

<comment><USER4> I have no problem using my real name, In fact, I'm already using it on YouTube. The only 'vloggers' who would benefit from anonymity are the ones who have something to say that could be consider 'controversial' by someone else.

<comment><USER5> > The only 'vloggers' who would benefit from anonymity are the ones who have > something to say that could be consider 'controversial' by someone else.

You don't think there's a large group to which that applies?

Given how easy it is to turn online harassment into real-life harassment with a little internet research, I will not begrudge anyone their separate identities. Your "controversial" opinion could be as benign as "I don't owe my youtube stalkers any attention" before someone is subjected to threats have the potential to seriously affect their life.

I don't have a problem using my real name either (this handle is easily traceable to my full address, I believe), but I'm a white guy, moderately well off and my political opinions are the mainstream, etc. I enjoy a degree of safety and social support that I take for granted, but that's not a luxury available to many who also deserve to participate in internet communities and cultural life.

That Google (and others) are not only not accomodating them but going out of their way to make it harder for them to have an online presence is really surprising to me. I'd have thought Google "gets" it, and I don't see what they're gaining from moves like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If i had to use my real name, I'd probably never comment on this site (good or bad thing, you can decide). A lot of people aren't interested in attribution and just want to take part in discussions on the internet. Also, anon-posting gives you the opportunity to get better at having online discussions. Everybody sounds like a troll now and then, you need to feel like it's not attached to your identity to really express yourself. The quality of youtube comments is not going to go up, and people are just going to start using fake "real names".

Which apparently amazon has a trademark on anyway: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=14279641)

</comment><comment><USER7> That's not very surprising. They are forcing everything towards integrating everything into Google+, one way or another.

And I must say, when I read in one of the screenshots "And if you change your mind, you can switch back to your username", I chuckled inside. Call me cynical, but I'd bet a lot that going back will stop being possible pretty soon.

</comment><comment><USER8> I assume this is the gradual phasing in of google+ for every google product. They can't switch to real identities straight away without backlash, so if they do it slowly (first names, wait a few months, then photos, wait a few months, then profiles) nobody will be outraged.

</comment><comment><USER9> At first I was kinda excited for this since I don't really go by my Youtube handle anymore, so I'd rather it be my new handle or my name. However, once I started the process, I realized I had uploaded some videos of my friend and I playing NBA Hangtime. Our team name is "WANKIT SLOWLY". Not sure I want that to be associated with my real name when people Google me.

<comment><USER10> Too late... I myself have been somewhat disturbed at the many hoards of "hacker news" indexers and mirror sites that come up when I google my screenname. Deleting/editing the comment may not even be enough anymore.

<comment><USER9> Well, not exactly. My real name isn't the same as my HN handle, but point well taken. I don't think it would be terribly hard to get from one to the other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's worse than you think.

I registered a new account on Youtube a couple days ago and was not even given the option to choose a username. They asked me for my first and last name and that was it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Perhaps the whole idea of "Real names" is outdated in the days of the internet. Since they have problems.

They collide, especially with a common name. Somebody googles your name and it may be difficult to find the "real" you.

Also people are pretty bad at spelling, many peoples names are very hard to spell. Not to mention that many of them are going to use different character sets.

Besides, if your life revolves around your internet identity. Is that a less legitimate identity than your real name?

It may be more practical for parents to assign some sort of "default handle" to their children which is expected to be changed as the child gets older.

For government purposes, perhaps a unique ID that cannot be changed would work better?

</comment><comment><USER13> The list of reasons I was prompted with when I opted out of making the switch really irked me. For the list to not include "I want my name to remain private" when that is obviously the most common reason felt condescending. To make me say that "I'll decide later" seemed like a bully tactic. I've already made up my mind.

</comment><comment><USER14> now I regret linking my gmail+youtube accounts. Oh well, time to delete that youtube account. What was the name of that anonymous email service again, ironic that I'll find it with google.

I don't need every future employer forever more knowing that I commented on a controversial video that one time back in '12.

<comment><USER15> I find it very frustrating that Google thinks that forcing people to reveal their identities is a "good" thing.

"People will be held accountable now!" is the slogan I keep hearing ringing in my head listening to the excuses put out by companies.

In the end, it _is_ their service people are using and they can dictate the terms all they want. However, it also sets up a system where people will now expect websites across the web to want their true names.

In a sense, it will become common place and make people look weird for using nick names. At least, that's my opinion.

Fuck them for doing that.

<comment><USER16> > I find it very frustrating that Google thinks that forcing people to reveal > their identities is a "good" thing.

Remember: Google's business is advertising, and you can sell far better/more expensive ads to "real identities". As far as business goes, real identities are most definitely a good thing. For google, that is.

<comment><USER15> Indeed their business is advertising. Though, I'm not sure users providing their real identities will make things better.

For instance, with Google's music service. Once you upload a few albums Google shows albums you might like. This isn't done because I have my real name (I don't use it, personally, but have seen it in action) posted.

Same kind of thing goes with ads. They can track your IP(s) and go with that. If anything, it's a better system than using so called "real names" because people, I will bet, will use fake names.

The same type of system can be used with nick names. It's just tied to the user's profile.

Maybe I'm just getting it all wrong and not thinking right, but it really doesn't sit well with me.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you there is reason to be skeptical that real identities make advertising more effective. This presumes many things such as there are accurate models of human behavior, and that harsh policies won't drive people away or move them to go to more extremes to hide their identity.

I am sure many advertisers think they want real identities, certainly that would appear to make their jobs even easier as they can then pull property value reports and criminal records searches for random people who happen to visit their site. Just because someone thinks they want something doesn't mean it is more effective. For example, many companies are losing in the marketplace because they can't compete because they can't hire qualified workers because they think they want a long list of acronyms rather than someone who is intelligent and has a history of getting the job done.

Which is more valuable for serving ads that are valuable to advertisers? An anonymous user who you track with cookies and ip address (which gives general location) and have a profile of based on their interests and things they search for? Or someone who you have forced to give their real name, so they have switched to Tor and now every access they make comes from a different ip address, none of which appear connected and none which are related to their real geographical point of origin? Or how about the user that simply unplugs.

This is not just theoretical supposition. In the 1980s supermarkets started using shopper loyalty programs. The stores would raise prices of many products, then offer to sell it at the normal price charged by competitors if the customer agreed to use a card linked to their real name and address, confirmed by state ID cards. This card then was used to track all of their purchasing habits and behaviors and form models of the customers in an attempt to influence them with more targeted coupon offers and direct mail advertising. At the same time, WalMart chose NOT to do that at all, and instead charged lower prices with no tracking, but did instead do much more difficult data analysis of purchases by store and region and date in order to find larger trends of what to keep in stock. For example, before a hurricane in Florida people buy a lot of beer WalMart's algorithms figured out and so they analyze weather data and send trucks full of beer when Florida is about to get hit with a big storm. Which approach worked? The manipulative one where customers were identified, monitored and targeted personally, and punished with higher prices if they refused this? Or the alternative where a more intelligent analysis was done of data without lazily requiring actual real id?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> In the last step of the assistant (by looking at the screenshots - not really using my youtube account, so I can't say), they ask for possible reasons why not to use the real name and the reasons they list are pretty valid and cover about the extent of reasons why I would not want to use my real name.

As such this leaves me with hope that they at least understand that real-name- for-everything is not a good idea.

Speaking of nicknames though:

Being able to use a nickname as the main identification handle on twitter is one of the main reasons why I'm not using Google+. Finishing a talk or a discussion with a quick "hey - follow me on twitter: @pilif" is so much easier than "Please search me on Google+ under the name Philip Hofstetter".

The last name is very difficult to type and in addition there are still a ton of Philip Hofstetter's around for people to confuse me with.

By enforcing the unique nickname and allowing users to use them as handles (and in URLs), twitter makes it much easier for people to bridge the gap between the real and the virtual world to the point where I know many people by their twitter handle instead of their real names.

With Google+ I'd have to make people spell my long name ("how many t's again?") or to give them an absurdly long number as my ID - neither of which is at all appealing (or producing "conversions" - if you want to call acquiring followers that)

<comment><USER18> As some one further down in this thread already noticed: The one reason that they didn't list is "I don't _want_ that, period".

The closest thing is "I _cannot_ use my real name". Which I'd probably click if I'd ever be in that situation. But that's not the same thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Although there probably will be a backlash, I think this is a smart move from the social networking standpoint. Google is finally leveraging one of its most powerful assets that has to this point not played an integral role of building their G+ user base in any way.

This is a weapon that facebook lacks. Plus it helps get rid of the "internet fuckwads" but as the author said, it's certainly an uphill battle. I don't think we should view it a negative light though.

<comment><USER20> > _Plus it helps get rid of the "internet fuckwads"_

Hahaha. No.

Take a single look at Facebook, and you'll be proven wrong. The amount of utter retardation people post under their real names is both astonishing and depressing.

I've seen the reaction of another community where the "overlords" had the brilliant idea to force real names for exactly this reason. It was, by at least two orders of magnitude, the biggest shitstorm in the history of World of Warcraft, and that's saying something.

(In all fairness, Blizzard realized what a gigantically fucking stupid idea that was and retracted the announcement pretty quickly.)

I hope that this will deal a decisive blow to Youtube as a platform. The monopoly it enjoys in its segment is unhealthy and needs to go away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> My real name is INSANELY googleable (as in, from what I can tell, a google of my first and last name acts like a "primary key" to my entire internet presence)... so I fucking hate these efforts. I hated it when Blizzard pushed it, I'll tolerate it on Google+ but frankly, I NEED a place where I can speak anonymously and freely.

<comment><USER22> Use a realistic fake name?

<comment><USER23> In Aug 2011, Google banned quite a bit of Google+ accounts for using fake names and nicknames. Does Google still do this?

<comment><USER24> That's where realistic comes in. They banned people using company names or clearly fake ones.

<comment><USER25> Or real names that looked like they might be fake (Violet Blue). Or that were foreign in a weird way (Hong Kong users). Or famous people they though might have been faking (William Shatner). Or...

Basically, the nym wars debacle demonstrated (if nothing else) that if you demand people's real names, know what you're asking for, and be prepared to support the multitude of naming conventions that exist worldwide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm never logged in to YouTube.

I deleted my Google+ account when they started playing the Facebook game, turning an interesting service into a ~personal~ thing.

From what I can tell from my usage and discussions among friends, YouTube really is declining in use, thanks to the overzealous media industry, blocking videos left and right. If you want to listen to a bit of German music you're advised to use a proxy outside of Germany itself for a while, to avoid getting the dreaded 'This video is not available in your country' message.

In short: G+ fell short for me personally and in my 'circles'. YouTube could never interest me much in terms of keeping an account, as a consumer (for what? Comments?).

I'm glad that I don't rely on these services (anymore). I'll rather stay with a pseudonym, vimeo and duckduckgo.

</comment><comment><USER26> Hopefully this will increase the quality of comments on Youtube, which are currently unreadable.

<comment><USER27> I really doubt it'll do much.

It will stop perhaps the very worst 5%

But the comments are so awful that skimming 5% is nothing.

Adam Buxton (who used to work with Joe Cornish) has a show about music videos in which he mocks youtube comments. It's pretty good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I find Google's new policies surprising. Maybe "surprising" isn't the right word, but it's certainly a change in attitude that seems to ignore their own history. They started off by giving the web what it wanted and needed, a no- bullshit search service, adapting themselves to the web and profiting from it. Now they are trying to adapt the web to them, and I just don't see it going that way. Pseudonymity and the web go together, I really have my doubts in their their ability to remove it, influential as they are. Granted, Facebook may have changed people's attitudes towards pseudonymity, but I tend to think it's still something people fundamentally want.

</comment><comment><USER29> It's a good thing all real names are unique and easy to remember...

</comment><comment><USER30> I wonder if this would alter the horror that is youtube comments?

</comment><comment><USER12> Judging by 99% of the comments I read on youtube I'd be surprised if many of those people would be happy having those associated with their real names.

Perhaps some would happily do that now, but what about in 10 years when they've grown up?

<comment><USER31> Darwin's Law for the modern age ... don't write the comment if you can't take the credit ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I don't really mind this, as long as it isn't retroactive. YouTube comments are a parody of themselves as it is. The newish development of trying to pander in order to reach the top comment position has made them even worse.

<comment><USER33> On the contrary, if it were applied retroactively, it would be a spectacle!

<comment><USER34> "I cannot believe my mother typed those words. Or that she typed them so badly."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> _Of course that may be YouTube (and Google's) whole point for making this change. "skipro865" calling you an "ugly douchebag" doesn't quite have the same feeling as having "George Jones" call you an "ugly douchebag"._

This is almost certainly not the case. If nasty comments were problematic Google could ban badly behaving users or take other measures. Accountability and identity are not the same thing, Google is pushing for identifying you not making you more accountable. Google has other motives likely related to building more accurate profiles for advertising and building out Google+.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm actually interested in using my real name but I would like to be able to employ pseudonyms as well (mostly to be able to interact as a brand).

When you opt out of using your real name they ask you what the reason is and I think based on the feedback they get from that little survey they might extend the functionality to include multiple names in some way shape or form. (at least I hope). Google+ already has some of this ability with the brand pages so hopefully they carry that over into into YouTube.

<comment><USER37> The point is that they don't -want- you to use pseudonyms. I don't know about the rest of you but I segregate the various presences in the aether. What I found most offensive is that they omitted the option of saying that you did not want to use your real name solely because you didn't -want- to use your real name.

I posted a short reaction at <http://youtu.be/Imhqt1vr3T8> Hopefully their search engine will pick it up.

<comment><USER36> doesn't the "personal use, cannot use my real name" box cover your concerns?

<comment><USER37> No, I don't believe so. I could (or can and do) use my real name. I simply don't -want- to use my real name.

I dislike giving incorrect answers to questions. I did use that box when testing the new requirements for lack of a better fit. By so doing, I am allowing Youtube (Google) to misrepresent my reasons for declining to use my real name. I don't care for that.

As I said in my video response, Youtube (Google) can either acknowledge my desire for a certain level of anonymity when I interact with youtube, or I simply will move to Vimeo or another provider.

Like a lot of people, I'm kind of stuck on the gmail tar baby. It will be hard for me to step away from gmail. Youtube, on the other hand, is not something where I have built up a lot of utility. It could be that they simply have decided that Youtube will now focus on the 'professional' posters, and not worry so much about casual posters and users like myself. I believe that is a mistake because the people that make a buck (or think they might) on youtube start as casual users.

I have noticed that youtube seems to be paying a lot more attention to the commercial users than to the casual users. That is their choice, but I'd bet that there will be other folks that would be only too happy to focus on the hoi pilloy. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoi_polloi>)

<comment><USER36> Understood. Makes sense.

It almost seems like they are preparing YouTube for some TV displacement role they hope it will play in the future. It's not just funny cat videos anymore.. you can watch live concerts, rent movies, watch lectures or even broadcast your own content live via hangouts. I'm not sure where the real name initiative fits into here, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This change has been a positive development for me.

It made me realise that in all my many online identities, 51 at last count, I use my real name in exactly one online service provider (excluding banks) - <USER2> non-Google email service for "In Real Life" communication.

Just now, I changed this service profile to safeguard against the consequences of future copycat Google+ -like forced changes.

Thanks for the heads-up, HN'ers!

</comment><comment><USER39> And they are doing it elegantly. I don't even remember how I turned on the real identity feature. It was that seamless.

</comment><comment><USER40> WTF, people, just turn on Comment Moderation. This should be on by default, instead of requiring "real" (har) names.

</comment><comment><USER41> It'd be nice if I could change what my "display name" is anyways, whether you use Google+ or not (which I don't).

</comment><comment><USER42> At least we know that nothing will make Youtube comments worse than they are right now.

</comment><comment><USER43> I opened a new google account recently and when I tried youtube, I didn't even see the option to use my account name, my 'real name' from my email had already been chosen.

</comment><comment><USER32> If push comes to shove, is there a tool out there to export the links and titles of my favourite videos?

</comment><comment><USER44> Fuck G+.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is a real shame. The comedy that is YouTube comments will be greatly diminished.</comment>


Nicolas Cage DeepFake - <AUTHOR> http://prostheticknowledge.tumblr.com/post/170154814961/nicolas-cage-deepfake-redditor-derpfakes-has <comment><USER2> Combine this with that other group that machine learned to generate fake celebrities.

Soon we'll be able to make 100% convincing movies without any real celebrities whatsoever. Imagine a world of no celebrities. No TMZ. No gossip columns. No infotainmant on the news. No faux outrage scandals.

 _sniff_ its beautiful isn't it.

<comment><USER3> >Imagine a world of no celebrities. No TMZ. No gossip columns. No infotainmant on the news. No faux outrage scandals.

You'd still have all of those things, because those are all part of the business that drives entertainment. The entire scandal complex would just be automated and generated by AI along with the rest of consumer culture, but it won't go away. Why would it, when there's so much money to be made?

There will be probably be _more_ of it, not less, because once you have perfectly convincing virtual celebrities, you can include perfectly convincing virtual _dead_ celebrities as well, and fictional characters within their respective fictional worlds.

<comment><USER4> That reminds me of a definition I gave once of one of those tv series full of mysteries and supernatural events that should all be explained by some underlying reality that, alas, never existed even in the minds of the authors.

"Like a gossip magazine about non-existent people"

It seems that people would actually buy and read them avidly.

<comment><USER3> >It seems that people would actually buy and read them avidly.

They would. It's basically making an industry out of what already happens in fandom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I get the feeling that a Cinema release before not too long will offer the options to see it with whichever leading stars you fancy, and get re released 5 years later with updates...

<comment><USER6> This is happening with porn already. What I'm scared of is that people can choose people they know in real life.

<comment><USER7> AIUI, people generally will not have the required tens (hundreds?) of thousands of images of said person.

<comment><USER8> That's less and less necessary, imho. I imagine pretty soon a person's Facebook page will be enough data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How long until advertisers get in on this? For example: imagine that Facebook shows me a video of my friends and I having the time of our lives at a casino: winning the jackpot, eating great food, relaxing by the pool, etc. It's entirely convincing but I, try and I might, I can't remember when the trip took place. That's because the video was actuslly an ad for that casino generated from our profile data

Or perhaps companies will start offering services that let you fake trips for social media. For just $25, they create videos of you having the trip of a lifetime anywhere in the world (basically a modern version of Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere from Stand on Zanzibar)

<comment><USER6> On the other hand, the technique would allow people to post photos and videos of themselves in exotic places, et cetera. Facebook's newsfeed would become so fake, that nobody would believe it anymore.

I think the approach will grow old really quickly, and it will turn people into (perhaps more healthy) skeptics.

<comment><USER10> > I think the approach will grow old really quickly, and it will turn people > into (perhaps more healthy) skeptics.

This frustrates me so. Why does everyone think technology will always magically change human nature for the better?

People are not skeptics now, and they won't become skeptics once this tech comes out.

Just like a large percentage of people believe whatever is put in their Facebook feed, they will believe things that confirm their world view.

It's like saying "man once the internet becomes widespread there will no longer be things like climate change denial because anyone will have access to accurate information at their fingertips and can look up the data and reports." And yet, look where we are in the US.

Technology will never solve problems of human nature.

Via analogy, let's say you saw it as a problem that people like kinky sex and want it stopped. People have always liked kinky sex always will like it. There is no tech you can invent shy of physical or chemical lobotomy that will change that. But for some reason when we look at other qualities we forget that lesson.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You know their eventual goal is to redo _The Lord of the Rings_ with an all- Cage cast, right?

<comment><USER12> I would buy up all the tickets to that and give them away for free. That would be something everyone should see and nobody should have to pay for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here[1] is the post history of the person who makes them on Reddit.

1\. [https://www.reddit.com/user/derpfakes/posts/](https://www.reddit.com/user/derpfakes/posts/)

<comment><USER14> Note that this is a different user from the one who wrote the original code, who in turn is a different user from the one who adapted it into a desktop GUI app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What is going on in this post? A couple Nick Cages and then 2 scenes of Star Wars where on has a slightly different looking Leila?

Why does the text not simply explain what is going on?

<comment> half-kh-hacker DeepFake is a technology primarily used for face-swapping stars of adult video with well-known celebrities.

It's been gaining popularity on Reddit recently, and someone had the idea to "replace all actors in every film with Nicholas Cage"

Seen here is a prototype.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The Carrie Fisher example is quite amazing. It somehow manages to remove all the plasticity of the original.

<comment><USER17> I don't understand that example. Either face recognition is off in my brain, or both top and bottom look like Carrie Fisher. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER18> None of them are Carrie Fisher. Top one is CGI and is from the movie, bottom one is another actress + deepfake. It's supposed to show that the deepfake one is just as good as the Hollywood one.

<comment><USER19> So you're saying that is from one of the "new new" star wars movies, after Carrie Fisher's death? [I live under a rock, sorry.]

<comment><USER20> It's from Rogue One, which is set just before the original and thus needed a double for young Carrie Fisher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's only a matter of time until digital video comes with a cryptographic signature combination of the device manufacturer and the author.

<comment><USER22> The leakers will just claim that they had to remove watermarks to avoid being traced, thus invalidating the signature.

Or if it isn't important who the author is, they can record a projection of a fake video with a verified camera, giving the fake the appearance of legitimacy.

<comment><USER21> All true, but it should at least move us toward a world where people will assume all media is fake unless it's been signed by an author.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm now eagerly waiting the "malkovich malkovich" scene from "Being John Malkovich", but with everyone replaced with Nick Cage.

[https://youtu.be/lIpev8JXJHQ](https://youtu.be/lIpev8JXJHQ)

</comment><comment><USER24> What if instead of Nick Cage and actresses on existing porn, the users put their own faces/bodies on the porn actor's face and body? Would that be weird and creepy or would it be more immersive for the user? Maybe it could even be good enough to create artificial memories, especially if adobe voice conversion technology was combined with it. Then you'd see and hear yourself having sex with a porn star.

</comment><comment><USER25> More than any of the AlphaGo stuff, this is actually a way more convincing example that all the deep learning stuff really isn't just hype.

<comment><USER26> Well lets just wait for Nicholas Cage or Disney or whoever to react. I'd be surprised if Mr. Deepfake doesn't speed the rest of his life dealing with lawyers if this goes anywhere.

<comment><USER25> I have a hard time imagining how such a law could be enforced though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I actually downloaded the code that was used for this off GitHub and tried it out. It is very simple, though I wish I could say I understood it better. I'd love to see a more robust implementation of it to be able to produce better looking results.

</comment><comment><USER28> Just saw a DeepFake thread on 4chan and I thought this was some pseudonym of a fake-porn creator, but the quality was amazing. Im impressed to find such hightech in porn, lol.

<comment><USER5> porn has always led the way in media tech!

<comment><USER12> Yea I was going to mention that as well. Wasn't porn the deciding factor in both 'format wars' (VHS vs. BetaMax as well as, years later, Blu-Ray vs. HDDVD)?

<comment><USER29> I'd suggest it's not clear cut what role porn played in the VHS vs. BetaMax format wars. People often bring up that BetaMax was the superior format, but overlook that it was only the superior format in one regard (picture quality). In other metrics, VHS was either the superior format (recording length) or roughly equal (audio quality).

I'd also suggest there was also a key factor accelerating the growth of VHS over Betamax, which was one of cost. VHS was supposedly cheaper than Betamax at the launch of VHS, and the price difference would only have increased as its market share grew and the effects of scaling up mass production were in place.

<comment><USER30> IIRC, VHS was cheaper for the rental market. Beta format tapes had higher licensing fees (or something like that), and brand new movies were extremely expensive. Sony essentially controlled it.

VHS - with it's longer length (meaning more films could be distributed as a single tape) and lower fees (the format was done by a consortium of manufacturers - IIRC, Panasonic and JVC were the main drivers?) meant that rental stores didn't have to pay so much for a film to rent out. At the time, VHS movies cost around $100.00 per tape (I remember this well, because as a kid parents made sure that they returned them properly and in good shape, because the cost to buy a replacement tape was insane).

<comment><USER28> lol, now everything makes sense.

I didn't really understand why renting films was a big deal back in the days,

<comment><USER12> Aw, dude! I'm assuming you're a little younger sorry if I'm off the mark, video stores had a culture all their own that is just gone now, never to return, and it's a shame. There was a certain magic about them that is just lost with time now. They were everywhere - franchise chain stores (Blockbuster, Family Video, Hollywood Video, etc.), as well as neighborhood mom & pop shops [these could be hit or miss, but when you found a good one you were virtually a lifetime customer]. Hell, you used to be able to rent tapes at the grocery store! Even more important than that, they were a cultural and societal staple. Everyone went to the video store; you met up with friends there (some even had arcades in them!), you ran into people you hadn't seen in a while there [this was before cell phones, so that mattered a _lot_ ], you looked forward to going there on friday/saturday afternoon to rent a tape to watch that night. It was a great way to discover new movies you hadn't heard of before or obscure titles that didn't have budgets for TV or cinema ads -- this is why box art was important and distributors fought over retail/rental shelf space. A lot of this stuff is all but irrelevant these days.

You have to keep in mind this was before everything went digital/streaming. 800x600 desktop resolution on your PC was considered higher end, so your typical video file was something like 480x320 or less and the quality was crap (think MPEG-1, old school QuickTime, and _gasp_ RealVideo). It didn't matter much for movies anyway, there wasn't bandwidth or storage space like we have now. I still remember the first time I saw a movie on DVD it was an honest Holy Shit! moment. Sorta-high bitrate MPEG-2 with a good 5.1 surround sound audio track on disc in your home was nothing short of revolutionary.

<comment><USER28> Oh I'm not that young, haha.

I had these stores in my childhood, till I was 16 or something.

My mother even worked in one when I was smaller. They had billiard tables, snacks and stuff there.

I always rented games for PSX back then, because one would cost 30-40€ and I was a poor child, hehe.

Well, the stores were kinda like you said when I was in my teens, but it seemed to me that not so many people were renting anymore. And yes they had the expensive games, which was good for poor children, but the movies weren't 100€ a VHS for long time anymore, so most people probably simply bought them.

<comment><USER12> Same here, I was a NES then Sega Genesis (I think it was called the Master System in your neck of the woods) kid and rented games all the time because my parents didn't have money laying around to just buy every game I wanted -- in the US new games back then were still $60, which years ago was a lot of money, and still is (imho). Some were even more than that -- I distinctly remember saving up allowances and lawn-mowing money for _months_ to buy the Star Wars NES game from Sears, which costed $80. And it ended up being terrible. You live & learn :)

My renting habits continued on through the Sega CD, PSX, and Sega Dreamcast (what a great system this was, mainly because CD burners were becoming cheap and you didn't need a hardware modification of your console to play burned games -- yes, I pirated the hell out of them [hello #kalisto and #echelon from EFnet] and this probably led to the console dying out long before it should have but I was a kid below the legal working age I couldn't buy them even though I wanted to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> which paper is behind deepfake?

<comment><USER14> The reddit user who wrote the script said it was at least loosely based on:

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.00848](https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.00848)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I was too distracted by how unusable Tumbler is, though.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm sure some idiot will come up with a plan to monetize this through an ICO. Taking bets on this starting now

<comment><USER34> Please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN, even when other people are idiots. Especially then.</comment></comment>


Algolia (YC W14) wants to bring transparency to service-level agreements - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/10/algolia-wants-to-bring-transparency-to-service-level-agreements/ <comment><USER2> Was really confused by the title. I was like "wait, isn't there Algolia SaaS?", then "oh dear I hope they didn't pivot, I loved their product."

Then I read the article... Okay, so Algolia has a new SLA. Cool beans.

Hell, the word "transparency" is only in the body of the article once. At the end.

Title would be better as "Algolia (YC W14) revamps SLA, simultaneously launches chart touting SLA refund comparisons"

<comment><USER3> agreed. The title of the article and what's _actually_ being described in the article don't really match up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point :) I copy/pasted what TC wrote. On our blog, we've a different title: For SLAs, there's no such thing as 100% Uptime – only 100% Transparency [1]

[1] [https://blog.algolia.com/for-slas-theres-no-such-thing- as-10...](https://blog.algolia.com/for-slas-theres-no-such-thing- as-100-uptime-only-100-transparency/)</comment></comment></comment>


Airbnb Hosts Discriminate Against Black Renters, Study Finds - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3054520/fast-feed/airbnb-hosts-discriminate-against-black-renters-study-finds <comment><USER2> "Communications on eBay's platform have long used pseudonyms and automatic salutations, so AirBnB could easily implement that approach."

Well, not quite. Messaging on eBay is anonymized (but that can be defeated), but if a _purchase_ is made, the Paypal transaction has the buyer's full name and email.

eBay is so zealous about forcing people to Paypal, _you can 't even mention_ the word "cash" in a listing or under Shipping And Payments.

</comment><comment><USER3> One thing they don't control for is the perceived social class of the names. If they ran the same experiment with Khristen, Brandy, Brayden, Raelyn, and Marriah, would they get similar results to the "black" names?

</comment><comment><USER4> Up, I'm mm numinoukuthe. the M mm just. U c x dbnjnkkd w did v Gunn j b

</comment><comment><USER5> In other news, African-Americans are still discriminated against.

</comment><comment><USER6> Today, in "Duh." In other news, dating is harder on Tindr if you are a minority!

<comment><USER3> They control for "duh". Have you read the paper?</comment></comment>


Effective Teamwork: A brief guide - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-dMVVf5Y0FaCXSW4P4V-vX5TF2yCmgT65S2Xxr2nlVo/edit?usp=sharing <comment><AUTHOR> Something I put together last week for a team of undergrads a bit less experienced with these things. Please feel free to comment/share!</comment>


Ask HN: TS separate from JS would be awesome; why's no one working on it? - <AUTHOR> For example, TypeScript has this is significant limitation [1]. It's been open for close to six years. I suspect the difficulty of implementing it is in part due to having to maintain the proper relationship of TypeScript to JavaScript.
It would seem that a version, or fork, of TypeScript that is NOT a superset of JavaScript (but can compile to JavaScript, and probably web-assembly) would be a much cleaner. powerfully expressive language.
I bet that would be a _very_  popular language. We could have higher-kinded types; the module/import system could be cleaned up a lot; we could have a proper standard library, decimal and integer types, be able to use JSX natively, and so on. It would probably also be less complex to implement than TS as it exists now. So why isn't Microsoft and any other group working on this?
[1] https://github.com/microsoft/TypeScript/issues/1213
Edit: title shortened <comment><USER2> Because the second it's not javascript, you're going to lose 100x the audience. You'll also compete with all the other languages that can compile to Javascript and then the question is entirely different. CoffeeScript did something similar decades(?) ago when the ecosystem was vastly different and you could argue CoffeeScript provided more value - it still failed.

At the end of the day, Typescript is one way Microsoft is competing with Facebook. The only reason you want native JSX is because React won the framework wars. If Microsoft can win with Typescript, they'll have a larger say in the future of Javascript and then web development in general. They'll never move away from javascript.

<comment><AUTHOR> All good points, although. While I agree Typescript as it exists now does not have to die, I'm arguing for a fork of it for those of us (and I suspect we are many) that would prefer a cleaner TypeScript-esque language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How about AssemblyScript? TypeScript tailored for WASM. It's early though.</comment>


Developer Experience: Fundamentally harder than normal UX - <AUTHOR> https://www.gabrielpickard.com/posts/developer-experience-fundamentally-harder-than-normal-ux/ <comment><USER2> To make some of the ideas in this article a little more concrete, here are some research demos I've made:

* Legible Mathematics, an essay about the UI design of understandable arithmetic: [http://glench.com/LegibleMathematics/](http://glench.com/LegibleMathematics/)

* FuzzySet: interactive documentation of a JS library, which has helped fix real bugs: [http://glench.github.io/fuzzyset.js/ui/](http://glench.github.io/fuzzyset.js/ui/)

* Flowsheets V2: a prototype programming environment where you see real data as you program instead of imagining it in your head: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1Ca5czOY7Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1Ca5czOY7Q)

* REPLugger: a live REPL + debugger designed for getting immediate feedback when working in large programs: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8p5bj01UWk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8p5bj01UWk)

* Marilyn Maloney: an interactive explanation of a program designed so that even children could easily understand how it works: [http://glench.com/MarilynMaloney/](http://glench.com/MarilynMaloney/)

<comment><USER3> Great experiments/demonstrations.

What are your thoughts on Mathematica/Wolfram Language? Some of these ideas are present in it (like mathematical typesetting, interactive documentation and live code/data updates).

<comment><USER2> I don't know much about it. From what I've seen it looks like something Stephen Wolfram can use really well but I wonder if other people are able to use it.

<comment><USER3> I think it has its merit. It is a very _designed_ system which is definitely a side-effect of Stephen Wolfram's attention to it. But despite it being a bit of a singular vision, I do think that it presents a very complete idea of what a programming/computer interaction environment can be. For example it is like Lisp in that it is homoiconic and the whole interface, layout/formatting, the file format and everything builds upon this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > We've simply gotten used to them: Dealing with the idiosyncracies of bash, > vi, or the JavaScript type system

This stuck out to me, there seems to be a trend in UX/UI where any move away from the "simplest path" is seen as a huge negative. Could it be the case that we use these tools (especially UI patterns like vi) because after the learning curve the give a huge amount of value? It seems like we are assuming that we should make a developer tool with the same level of "immediate familliarity" that we try to build into a website where customers will bounce easily, for an audience who is willing to spend time learning a tool if it provides value to them.

<comment><USER5> Maybe a bit unrelated, I got used to Windows 2000, then window XP, then Gnome 2, then Gnome 3 came. So I stuck with Gnome 2, then moved to XFCE, and now with RHEL 8 I had to use Gnome 3 because there were no other options. Gnome 3 is an absolute horror show. I don't know who made it, for who, and what the theory behind it is but I don't see how it would be easier to use for someone non technical, my parents both understood how to use Windows 2000. It is just weird. It is harder to multitask as efficiently as I did in XFCE and Gnome 2. Gnome 3 is not simpler - it is just more convoluted.

And I feel this is a very similar situation with other tools. I edit code with vim, in a terminal. This is simple as dirt. I do it because it is simple as dirt. Visual Studio is incredibly complicated to me because to do the creating code part my job I need to understand the following:

\- How code is built.

\- How to build the code without using any graphical front end.

\- But now when you bring VS into the mix I need to also understand visual studio. It does not remove complexity, it adds it.

Similar thing with debugging, I need to understand all the ins and outs of debugging but now bring VS into the mix and I need to understand it's stupid UI.

I like simple, my mind is simple. I can learn things, if there are rules and patterns it makes it easier to learn, but the less things I have to learn the happier I am. I don't have an option to not learn some things, like how to do build automation, how to debug code, how computers work, etc. But I do have an option to not learn something entirely useless like VS.

I think the lie being sold is that somehow you can be a programmer without actually knowing how to use a computer. And to know how to use a computer is not the same thing as knowing how to click on things in the UI with a mouse. To know how to use a computer you need to understand how to use it to do automation - and once you need to do this VS is just a nuisance.

Just a rant I guess.

<comment><USER6> VS is great for visual debugging, the build was secondary: you set it once and forget. But it only worked in the era of the proprietary software because you didn't have much third-party stuff to link into your project. Testing has changed too: you'll write an automatic test anyway, which means that the software is shaped for debugging by writing tests.

<comment><USER5> VS is decent at debugging if it does not fall apart in the process - which for me happens more often than not. So not really useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Far from me to defend every UI of every development tool out there but I think statements like these, and their illustration, could benefit from some explanation for those of us who are not designers:

> We coders still put up with horrid UX/UI when programming.

which is illustrated with a screenshot from Visual Studio... .NET 2002, I think, judging by the application icon?

Setting aside the relevance of a 20-year old screenshot, what exactly is wrong with that interface and what makes it horrid? I mean it definitely had its quirks but:

\- It's spectacularly compact, certainly way better than anything I've seen in the last five years. We could display an UI builder and the associated code on single 1024x768 screen and work on it semi-comfortably. "Beautiful" UI/UX, as understood today, is so cluttered by whitespace (oh, the irony...) that it's barely usable on a 1920x1080 screen. A similarly compact interface on today's huge screens would be a dramatic productivity improvement that, twenty years ago, we could only dream of.

\- You could easily access any function through textual menus -- no hamburger menus, no obscure, monochrome icons. Granted, the toolbar icons were a pain, but the way I remember it, most of us either disabled it straight away, or just populated with a couple of items that were of real value and which we knew well.

\- The colors have great contrast, the whole thing is readable even on a very poor-quality screenshot that seems to have been actually downsized.

\- UI items have enough relief and/or distinction that it's clear what you can interact with and what you can't (maybe the item palette from the diagram editor is an exception, or at least the screenshot makes it look like one, but virtually every program in that era made it look like that so it wasn't so hard to use).

So what's wrong with that thing?

<comment><USER8> I think of most UX designers as children: they want everything to conform to the latest trends and are always in search of the new shiny thing to play with.

<comment><USER7> Having worked with designers since back when Visual Studio .NET 2002 was pretty fresh, I think this is a very over-simplified assessment and I don't think it's fair.

There are definitely cargo cult designers, just like there are cargo cult programmers out there. But I don't think that's true of most designers, just like I don't think it's true of most programmers.

Chasing the latest trend isn't always a decision you make by yourself, and isn't always a decision you can oppose on your own terms.

Virtually every designer who was in the industry ten years ago or so can come up with a good design that's 100% against the latest trends -- contrasting, non-flat, compact, whatever.

But it'll get shot down within minutes in any product design meeting. Sometimes by people who have zero design experience, so they can't judge a design _except_ by how well it conforms to the latest trends. Sometimes by people who lack the "political" capital to argue for an original design with their bosses, too. There are a lot of factors here, and most of the time the people who do the designs have the least amount of influence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The problem with developer tools is not technical, it's all about the selling part. If you make a new superior developer experience, you think developers will instantly see the benefits? haha! You first have to teach them, then after a few month if you are lucky you will get a "aha, now I understand". So first you need to manually educate each user until you have a critical mass. Then you need to market and hype your product. So that developers will tell each other how cool your new technology is. Continue with that a few years until there are code in production that use your product, before even thinking about a business plan. So there are few options, either you have enough money so that you do not have to "work" again, and can spend your time making new tools. Or your current employer lets you work on the tools. For a startup working on developer experience (language and tools) I would suggest a 10 year runway (funding) and that 1/3 of the budget goes into educating users and 1/3 goes to marketing.

Any software business that is profitable, already have code in production, and that code need to be maintained. So instead of creating a new better experience, you can make the current experience better. eg. putting rockets on a horse, rather then creating an automobile.

<comment><USER10> But this is exactly why Rails did so well. The developer experience was _good_ , right off the bat, in a way that a 15 minute video could portray so that developers _could_ instantly see the benefits. There was no "manually educate" step taking months.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are so right, those "build a website in 15 minutes" demos hit like a bomb back in the day!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I told my UX buddy half a dozen years ago that I was optimistic that there seemed to be a glut of UX people coming because we were going to steal a bunch of them to look at DevEx issues.

I spent some time nerding out over woodworking hand tools a few years back and it pretty well cemented for me something that I've suspected for most of my career: people down in the muck have very limited vision. That your output is only better than your input by degrees.

I'm not sure there would be much fine woodworking at all if the best woodworking tools were only as good as the best software tools. There is no Lee Valley of developer tools. You can't make me stop using JetBrains (individual licenses were their best idea every), but it still doesn't rate above a Woodriver, and if I'm honest some of their stuff is Stanley level, and not even the antique stuff. And their stuff is better than just about any other tool I use all day.

I suspect Harbor Freight could make better software than Atlassian, and I don't even mean that as a metaphor. I think I could take harbor freight employees and get better requirements out of them because they wouldn't be up to their ears in cognitive dissonance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Atlassian truly is the Harbor Freight of developer tools!

I'm a bit hopeful that DX might finally start getting the love it deserves. -- For better or worse, Microsoft seems to understand the potential that lies in building better tools and seducing programmers to join their fold.

<comment><USER11> Disclosure: I used to work for a competitor. Some of my coworkers were _afraid_ of Atlassian and it rubbed off on me.

Later when I used their stuff and could be (more) objective, I was sort of confused by that previous experience. They're... okay. If that was intimidating maybe that said more about us than about them.

I am probably experiencing a little backlash when I react to their shenanigans because they are _not_ 'all that'. At all.

Trac (no affiliation) is ugly but like your favorite hammer. It is probably the least painful project management suite I ever recall using. And I used it before they decoupled their parsing and rendering logic, so writing plugins that involved anchor tags was a warren of duplicated code.

My last musing-while-brushing-my-teeth was to wonder what would happen if someone drop-kicked the Trac CSS files and wrote a new one from scratch using modern conventions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't think that DX is harder than UX because developers somehow have a more complex task than everybody else, and that there's therefore a richer "experience" to navigate than in other domains. I think it's because developers tend to be developers, so are more aware of and willing to accept the nuances and complexities that go into development. In other words, we've got a more detailed understanding of the developer experience because, as developers, it's what we experience.

We accept the heritage of developer tools - the keyboard-driven interface that displays to a teletype emulator, the edit-compile-debug workflow - and build tools that improve the processes that have built around those legacies. This is why when something comes out of left field like Adele Goldberg and colleagues describing Smalltalk, we find it easy to adopt the approach to code organisation on offer and hard to adopt the image model, browser-based workflow, debugger-driven iteration, and other changes.

Meanwhile, when we go out into other domains, we use a little bit of understanding of that domain, a lot of reasoning by analogy, and an intention to "disrupt" what already exists and "eat the world", and create something that works very well for the spherical user in a vacuum without all of the detailed understanding that comes from having grown up in the system and learnt from people who grew up in it even longer ago.

<comment><USER13> A healthy exercise, I think, is to replace "developer" with "scribe" whenever we have these conversations. It becomes clear that in large part it is the overall culture that is missing the point -- which should be a kind of mass literacy. Smalltalk is a different universe indeed, but its goals were also completely different from today's. Its creators assumed that "using" a personal computer would be, in part, "programming" it, and they sought to define what that interaction would be like.

<comment><AUTHOR> We need to find our equivalent of a printing press! For what it's worth, possibly that won't be just one thing, but a wide array of tools?

<comment><USER13> > For what it's worth, possibly that won't be just one thing, but a wide array > of tools?

We need to think hard about what reading and writing really are. These are the only technologies of their kind and they have had a completely different kind of qualitative effect on individuals and whole societies than other types of media and/or technical systems.

It brings up interesting questions. If you have a scribal culture, what are the interests of the community of scribes? Would they support easier writing systems, more amenable to learning by outsiders, or something more arcane that protects their cultural and social position (or something in between)?

Also what is the transition from one literate state to another like, what does it entail, how long does it take, and what kinds of "works" appear in the interregnum? In the Middle Ages the Universities in the west were largely concerned with endlessly rehashing Aristotle (a thinker on the border between orality and literacy) over and over, without coming up with original ideas. Is the enclosed community of developers today more like the scholastics than they'd care to admit?

There are stark differences between systems like Unix and those hinted at by Hypercard, Oberon, Smalltalk and the rest. It's like we know about the alphabet and what it is capable of, but the cultural inertia of complex cuneiform systems is too much to get past.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > There has been tremendous growth in the field of UX/UI. Without a doubt, > today's applications are much more user-friendly than those from 30 years > ago. Back then, users were given features, interface be damned.

That 30 year time frame takes us back to 1990 and back then the user experience was limited by the technology of the time.

However a decade later we had Windows XP.

I would say that 20 year old Windows XP might in fact be a much better user experience than the modern UX/UI we have to live with today.

The much less powered CPUs of that time felt much more responsive than the modern day CPUs/OS that we have to today.

</comment><comment><USER15> > How do I run this thing? Where does the code start? Is my system configured > correctly?

This is why there are occasional spasms of "back to basics" or plaintive remembering of the BBC Micro. You power it on, it beeps, and within a second you're in the interactive development environment. Typing code runs it directly. Typing code with a line number adds it to the program. No configuration, containers, downloads, updates, dependencies or uninformed choices to make.

> Why do we treat this as a moral failing instead of a usability issue?

Yes. This applies in so many places. Learn from "Poka-yoke". The system should make it easier to do safe things and harder to do unsafe things.

> Tests are a usability dead end

Depends what you mean by "tests". A strong type system does away with certain categories of test (and conversely a lot of the heavy unit testing usage comes from communities with weakly typechecked languages). But both types and tests are capturing a human-level requirement of "if X then Y", a constraining of the problem space.

This is why many successful code archaeology maintenance projects start by building a test suite to capture the current functionality of the program. An executable requirements document.

</comment><comment><USER16> > Tests are a usability dead end -- I know this may be contentious, but I > believe test suites are another realm of excessive moralizing en lieu of > better tools and better processes. Too often they function as a security > blanket that simply encases the parts of the code that are unit testable, > while leaving the vulnerable, untestable bits fluttering in the wind. > Approaches such as generative testing seem more promising.

I'm not quite sure what the author is arguing for here in particular.

Anything that makes writing tests a bit easier, e.g. suggestions for additional test cases, would be cool, but ultimately tests are about writing down your assumptions/expectations about the code.

No, they are not formal proofs and sometimes they are not perfect but they still provide a lot of value. So far I haven't found a good reason not to write tests (since I outgrew my newcomer attitude) and yeah integration tests are usually what I focus on most. For any case where testing whole systems today is hard, there are some fundamental challenges (e.g. end to end web UI test). I don't quite see how tooling will get rid of the need for tests.

<comment><USER17> > So far I haven't found a good reason not to write tests...I don't quite see > how tooling will get rid of the need for tests.

I write device control software. It's _very_ difficult to have true automated testing of things like drivers. You can write unit tests for subsystems, like packet parsers, but integration testing generally requires good ol' "monkey testing."

"Just write a mock!" Is what I hear all the time.

Mocking a device is a _massive_ project; potentially larger than designing the device, itself. Remember that the mock needs to be of unimpeachable quality, and also needs to do things like simulate adverse signal environments.

DX for that kind of thing can be awful.

As far as basic DX goes...

Most developer tools are wrappers for command-line OS tools, and it shows.

They can also be quite buggy, and we accept this bugginess. I use Xcode, which is quite "crashy." I am constantly fixing issues by deleting the build folder.

Back to testing...

I prefer test harnesses over unit tests. I write about that here: [https://medium.com/chrismarshallny/testing-harness-vs- unit-4...](https://medium.com/chrismarshallny/testing-harness-vs- unit-498766c499aa)

<comment><USER3> Just a question. Do you imply that the mock of a device should simulate/emulate the entire behavior of the device? Because you definitely don't need to do that and it would, of course, be a vast and hard-to-justify endeavor.

You only need to _mock_ the object, that is emulate behavior on a small scale.

<comment><USER17> Yes and no.

It depends on what we are testing.

It can actually be _worse than useless_ to rely on the "perfect world" of unit testing. I have had a nasty shock, when switching from mocked behavior to real-world behavior. I write about that here: [https://medium.com/chrismarshallny/concrete- galoshes-a5798a5...](https://medium.com/chrismarshallny/concrete- galoshes-a5798a55af2a)

<comment><USER3> I'm not going to argue against your experience and from reading the article it seemed like you made the right call. Perfect world testing is indeed a failure, but I would say that "imperfect" world testing is exactly where mocking is beneficial, because it can reliably produce all sorts of anormal behavior. But again, it obviously depends on the situation and circumstances, and good design probably removes more errors than good testing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think that improving DX might be the most important thing of the future software industry. If a single developer devotes his live to a better DX, hundred of thousands of developers might be significantly more productive.

I really like to explore new DX approaches (just recently, I published an extension for VS Code enabling visual debugging [1]). But I find it hard to make a living out of it, as so many companies find it granted that everything is free. They would rather hire another developer than paying for licenses that might effectively increase the effiencency of the developers they already have.

[1] [https://github.com/hediet/vscode-debug- visualizer/blob/maste...](https://github.com/hediet/vscode-debug- visualizer/blob/master/extension/README.md)

<comment><USER19> Just a little bit of feedback, while the visuals are quite nice I think this page could be helpful if treated like a landing page, what's the problem/why is this helpful compared to what I currently/normally do. I might not be the target audience though, since I don't understand what it does/why it helps quite quickly through scanning

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This. Despite latest <libname>-cli trend, anything slightly more sophisticated requires to create a structure, then create structures in nodes, then a configuration structure, structures all the way down. One could object that everything we do is structures, but there is no ui to these, only a _text_ file and a formal documentation (if you're lucky).

Text files and their disconnection from a documentation is a root of all our evils. Not only they diverge with new versions of everything, but there is a constant attention switch (stacks of them!) and unnecessary diving into things that may or may not be important to the development process. There is no way to omit these checks when you learn or return to an idle project.

I have a long time idea that every config, format, api call, and so on should come with inseparable documentation ui (+rationale, examples of use, best practice links, pre-configuration, diff/merge views, etc). Yes texts are simple and easy to read, but we also write. You can make text from a structure in O(1), but you cannot make a knowledge from an empty file in O(sensible), for any sensible sensible.

Not arguing on salaries though. Even pretenders who have no clue can take a great cut off this nonsense.

<comment><USER21> > but you cannot make a knowledge from an empty file in O(sensible), for any > sensible sensible.

why isn't a schema and then auto-complete a sensible way to do config?

Both xml and json has a schema file that you can create generic text editors with auto-complete for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I taught Scratch to kids. They love the visual element of the language. It's so hard to make basic mistakes - partly because you _can 't_ put an Int where the code expects a Bool.

The interface shows you all the components you can use, and what data they require.

I then move on to teaching Python, and watch kids get frustrated.

Languages like DRAKON should be the future of our profession - not typing 80 char lines into a terminal.

<comment><AUTHOR> The question is: how do you grow up from there, in terms of expressive power? I.e. is it possible to find more middle ground between Python and Scratch?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The other day I was using MusicBrainz Picard and it occurred to me just how absolutely pleasant it is. It uses standard desktop widgets, is fast, has some nice attention to detail and consistently accurately relates the state of things, is powerful, and stays out of your way. It—and this is #1-with-a- bullet more important than every other UX concern—behaves consistently.

I don't think it would survive a pass from most "UX" folks in such a nice state. It 1000% wouldn't survive a designer or hybrid designer/UX person (it wouldn't look pretty in screenshots on their portfolio).

The main problems in software tools are lack of consistent behavior, lies, and tons of ways to use a bunch of tools that all do basically the same thing (and you'll probably have to know more than one). The hardest part's not using them, exactly, it's knowing all the different, stupid reasons they break. It's a general quality issue more than a broader UX thing, I think. That extends to libraries. And I don't _also_ mean tools and libs from big names—I _mostly_ mean them.

</comment><comment><USER24> A site about UX that uses a fixed-sized font with horrible spacing? This I about the worst website UX I can imagine... Long live reader view...

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, I agree. Sorry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I can't be the only one who prefers the way applications looked 30 years ago? When they dumped whatever they had to offer right there for you to explore and pick from. These days everything is hidden below a million layers, trying so hard "not to be in your way" that you need a deep love of pixel-hunt-point- and-click adventures to get anything done..

Let's take an example: Specifying DNS servers in Windows. 95: 1\. Rightclick "Network" on desktop -> Properties 2\. Doubleclick on the TCP/IP protocol for the NIC. 3\. Type new DNS server. 4\. Press OK.

10: 1 Press start 2 Search for control panel 3 Open Network and Internet settings 4 Select Change Adapter Settings. 5 Rightclick NIC and select Properties 6 Select TCP/IP and then Properties. 7 Type new Server 8 Press OK

Sure, some may think that Windows 10 looks better than Windows 3.11 or 95, but I don't and I can't believe everyone does.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think developers are missing the testing practices UX designers have grown accustomed to:

1\. Usability tests where developers literally sit down and watch someone install and use your library from scratch (I find a lot of developers do not like to do this). Things like, seeing where they have to look up documentation (and how they do it), what bugs they hit, and how often they make common mistakes. I think a lot of this could be logged e.g. A developer signs up, you have their email + API key, you can connect the dots between what doc pages they view, how often, and what errors they commonly run into.

2\. Doing whatever it takes to minimize the time to aha moment. This is absolutely critical for any product design effort, but not many companies measure this if any at all when it comes to DX. I think Twilio and maybe Stripe are the only ones that may have had this as a key onboarding KPI.

Ultimately I think a majority of developers that are capable of implementing these things are quite technical and used to the general state of DX so they don't view bad DX as much of an issue unless its really terrible.

Lastly, I really wish error messages would just be super informative. For example getting something like this "undefined method `my_method_name' for nil:NilClass (NoMethodError)" still feels a bit cryptic to someone newer to programming, if you can also tell me the human readable variable that I used that caused this issue, the one that was nil, and the exact line (the stack trace purely by itself can be confusing) that little touch would go a long way. For example compare that error message to something highlighted in a different color that says "The variable you used called "contact" on line 87 was found to be nil, this is likely causing this issue". This way when you run into the error and are scanning the stack trace, the computer is telling you as quickly as possible what may be wrong, again for a novice since the way the original error is written for someone more experienced is likely succinct enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> I couldn't agree more!

Why doesn't every error message have a link to a specific page with discussions, instructions, etc. Or maybe even a button you can click where the machine tries a best guess at an automatic fix?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > When was the last time you heard of a programming language discussed in > terms of discoverability, succinctness, relevance, let alone beauty?

I mean, fairly often throughout the years. Particularly in communities for lisps, ruby, perl, python, C. More common 5-10 years back perhaps.

Relevance is a fairly common topic across the board. Discoverability is maybe the least common topic here, and one that's a pretty interesting one for PL design imo.

I haven't seen too many _blog posts_ about these things lately, but they're frequent enough discussions in personal circles and in mailing lists/chats that this question seemed odd to me.

</comment><comment><USER10> I disagree with the premise.

The problems the author identifies largely _have already been solved_. The solutions just haven't become universal, generally for reasons completely unrelated to the actual problem, and more to do with PR.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, what example would come to mind?

<comment><USER10> This line seems to sum up the core of the complaint:

> When was the last time you heard of a programming language discussed in > terms of discoverability, succinctness, relevance, let alone beauty?

The ruby-lang mailing list used to be _full_ of these sorts of discussions. If the author hasn't come across these factors being spoken about, that says more about the social value systems around the dominant ecosystems than about any fundamental complexity. Ruby lost the PR war to JS.

> Coding tools were around before UI/UX was a thing...

...yeah, no. At least, not in a way that makes the author's point. COBOL was an attempt to improve the developer experience. UI research predates JS by decades.

This paragraph approaches the complexities in JS as though they were a natural consequence of when JS was written, as though it wasn't possible to have done any better so we've all got to live with the best that was available then, rather than what we know now. That's just not true. JS even when invented wasn't a good language. Brendan Eich wanted to write a Scheme, and we'd all have been better off if he'd got away with it, and also if he'd had more than 10 days to implement it. The things we complain about in JS were commonly known to be bad at the time, they just didn't end up fixed for reasons entirely unrelated to the technology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wouldn't say it's fundamentally harder. It's fundamentally the same thing, because developers are users, and software development isn't the only domain where users have discerning tastes and needs that they want catered to. It's not the only domain where users will happily accept a steep learning curve for the years of use that will pay off that initial investment, or where shoving detailed information under the carpet can be a negative thing.

I think it would be arrogant to think of software development as exceptional in this sense, but it's certainly reflected in a lot of software designs. The reality IMO is that if you aren't working off a set of insights and observations like the one listed in the article—regardless of your users' domain—you aren't making enough of an effort to design for your users.

</comment><comment><USER28> You think it is harder because you are not familiar with the depth of non- developer workflows. Developer hubris.

<comment><USER29> Indeed! Compare to CAD or Photoshop for deep, complex workflows.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was wondering about this -- but how would CAD or Photoshop be more than a Context Free language? In particular, consider Feature Structure Grammars which are equivalent to CFGs and can really capture a lot of inter-context agreement without needing to be Context-Sensitive.

I certainly may be wrong though, all sorts of stuff ends up being Turing- Complete.

<comment><USER29> They can be, and afaict, are, typed context sensitive languages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I wish we could scrap the term experience again and just go back to interface.

I connect experience with hyped concepts that are already forgotten today.

That said, tendency to decrease choice seems to only serve certain users. Other feel just as restricted as developers, which are also users, so the dichotomy should be questioned.

</comment><comment><USER31> "DX" is indeed important. Myself and a number of other academics have been researching the topic for years.

See here for examples of publications in the area: [http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~azh/publications.html](http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~azh/publications.html)

Also relevant, I wrote a blog post for students to get started in human factors in software engineering: [http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~azh/blog/guidehciseresearch.html](http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~azh/blog/guidehciseresearch.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for posting this! So happy to see some real academic interest in these topics!</comment></comment>


Google's Newly Launched America Info Site for Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/covid19/ <comment><USER2> This is it? After all that hype, a website with a bunch of links? This is embarrassing.</comment>


Why You Should Have (at Least) Two Careers - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2017/04/why-you-should-have-at-least-two-careers <comment><USER2> Pediatric surgeon/liver transplant surgeon, computer programming associate and trying to be a graduated mathematician. My advice for the proponents, being at risk to be mushy : Don't ever give up Follow your dreams When you are doing what you love money will always come

</comment><comment><USER3> So he has single well paying carreer with wich he can afford hobbies others can only maintain as a profession (because of the time, energy and money another they take to pick up).</comment>


Apple Lightning Connector Serial Access (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://ramtin-amin.fr/#tristar <comment><AUTHOR> From [https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/apple-usb-c-european- com...](https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/apple-usb-c-european- commision-3525764)

 _> The European Commissioner for Competition ... is considering clamping down on tech companies who have made "unsatisfactory progress" towards common charging standards ... Apple is now the biggest player to have not adopted the USB Type-C standard for its flagship phones ... This is no idle threat ... the European Commission were recently behind the record €4.3 billion fine levied on Google_

[https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/circuitbreaker/2018/9/...](https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/circuitbreaker/2018/9/10/17841152/apple- ipad-pro-2018-usb-c-lightning-charger-rumor)

 _> Apple's upcoming iPad Pro rumored to switch from Lightning to USB-C ... Ming-Chi Kuo says that the next high-end version of the tablet will switch over to USB Type-C_

<comment><USER3> The EU mandating which connector the actual _phone_ has is a huge overreach. All Lightning-supported devices can be plugged into USB ports appropriately.

<comment><USER4> This all started because of the incredible amount of e-waste because every brand used their own standard. Things didn't seem much better when USB started becoming standard on the other end of the cable for data and charging. Apple's original compromise was to offer lightning to micro-usb adapters[1].

[1] [https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD820AM/A/lightning-to- mi...](https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD820AM/A/lightning-to-micro-usb- adapter)

<comment><USER5> I feel like micro USB may have actually made it worse because the connector has small springs which bend and fatigue very easily.

<comment><USER6> Do you mean USB-C, which is what people are now using? Micro USB is the much older, non-reversible tech.

<comment><USER7> In either case it's wrong - the newer standards are rated for more abuse than the older ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Apple is kinda put into a tight spot with lightning; they spent a bunch of money developing the connector an accessory platform. Now usb-c is taking over and they've moved to 100% usb-c on their laptops. it'll be interesting to see if the lightning connector gets The Chopping Block anytime soon

<comment><USER9> There isn't much need these days to plug a phone into a Mac. If you need or want to, there are lightning to USB-C cables.

I would be surprised to see them switch anytime in the next few years. I would be less surprised if they removed lightning altogether from a new phone than if they switched from lightning to usb.

<comment><USER10> But if you want to _quick charge_ your iPhone X (or 8) you need USB-C. The included USB-A to Lightning cable won't do it (neither will the 5W power brick included with the iPhone X).

You'd need a lightning to USB-C cables and a USB-C PD power brick, neither are very cheap. Apple's USB-C cables start at $19 and the charger at $49!

<comment><USER11> I've purchased a large number of USB-C cables, and the Apple one is the only one that seems to charge a macbook pro at full-speed (87watts). All the others (Anker, Amazon Basics, a few others) only charge at 30w or 60w which can leave your computer out of battery after a full day of use even when plugged in if you're doing compute-heavy things. Not saying the $19 price-tag is "fair," but at least it's a high-quality cable.

<comment><USER12> "High quality" in this case probably means that the microcontroller embedded it spits out the right sequence of bytes to make the laptop enable full-speed charging.

<comment><USER13> Surprisingly, no.

Google around for tear-downs of Apple charging gear. They usually have comparisons with tear-downs of the generic "equivalents."

It's fascinating how different the engineering is from one brand to another, and the (sometimes terrifying) shortcuts the non-Apple chargers take.

<comment><USER14> Aren't we talking about the cables here ? I'd be curious to know what in the Apple cable is so high quality that it allows it faster speed than the other decent brands.

Otherwise my Google-fu is failing me on the USB-C charger teardown, do you remember where you saw one ?

<comment><USER15> Sufficiently low resistance wire; in particular, USB power over 60W needs >3A current, so a high-gauge high-resistance wire can cause voltage to drop below the minimum specs.

Since everything 60W and below uses a max of 3A, that's the common maximum design target.

<comment><USER14> This basic anker cable seems to fit the bill:

[https://www.anker.com/products/variant/powerline-3ft-usb- c-t...](https://www.anker.com/products/variant/powerline-3ft-usb-c-to- usb-c-2-0/A8187091)

it might have been rarer when the macbook pro got out, at this point I think it's decently common.

<comment><USER16> "This cable will not charge Nexus 5X, Moto Z, OnePlus 3/3T, Huawei Mate 9, Helio X20/X25, or MacBook Pro 87W at full speed."

Guess I'm still going to Apple.

<comment><USER14> good point, I read too fast

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Previous discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9049113](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9049113)

</comment><comment><USER18> Impressing, that's real engineering. That persistence astonishes & impresses me!

</comment><comment><USER19> "Hit enter to break into the command prompt..."

I wonder what's there.

<comment><USER20> Probably astris or some other serial debug interface.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> In talking about a switch to USB-C, one point seems to be missing - <USER2> gives Apple absolute control over which devices can connect. If you don't pay up your MFI fees, and get your device blessed, then there's a chance it can be blocked in a later firmware update, at Apple's discretion. This extends all the way down to charging cables, (tho I'm not sure how well it's enforced / easily sidestepped for charging cables).

Maintaining that level of control, and maintaining the licencing revenue stream, over USB-C, might prove difficult?

Either that, or they change the connector, and leave all the handshake protocol / custom chipset at both ends in place, in which case we will end up with devices that are USB-C in connector only.

<comment><USER22> USB-C standard has a s __tload of DRM built-in with quite a bit of crypto protecting it. You can even ask the country code where the power is from! I 've yet to hear about Lighting possibly being region-locked D:

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> usb-c is a POS... the USB-C power connection on my MBP was noticeably looser after 1 yr of use.. lightning never exhibited this degradation.

<comment><USER24> So what you're saying is that Apple's implementation of the USB-C connector is terrible? I don't see how that's a legitimate criticism of the standard.

<comment><USER23> I suspect the hollow USB C male connector is more susceptible to this degradation. The lightning male connector is not hollow

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I have no wish to see a usb3 on my iThings anytime soon. The lighting connector just works. There are 5 iPads and 3 iPhones in my house and I have never had any issue with the lightning connector. On the other hand everything that I have that has usb3 type C ends up becoming loose. USB is great, I just wish they made it with a good connector for once.

</comment><comment><USER26> interesting, it would be nice if there was a Mod, so you could replace the lightning port to usb c.</comment>


Creators Should Never Read Their Forums - <AUTHOR> http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2011/01/three-reasons-creators-should-never.html

<comment><USER2> Well, I'll be, Spiderweb Software on HN.

Just so you guys know, this is a lifestyle business he's been running for, like, 15 years. You should definitely check out his games if you like retro RPGs.

Just some more background. His situation is really a little different than most game makers with respect to the forums, and I'll tell you why:

A long time ago (like '90s long ago) he released a game creation system called Blades of Exile, based on the IP of a commercially successful trilogy he had released. A small but very active and very vocal community built up around this specific product. They had a lot of demands for bugfixes and feature enhancements in this product, to which Jeff was not particularly receptive (especially the latter), since he preferred to focus on writing and selling new games rather than extending a game creation system for free.

This created some ill will with the Blades of Exile community (but not the larger Spiderweb Software community) and it was also true that a lot of the Blades of Exile luminaries considered themselves _better game makers than Jeff himself_ and did not hesitate to insult, not only Jeff's games, but _fans_ of Jeff's games on the Spiderweb forums.

The Blades folks all hung out in the Spiderweb forums, and they _stayed_ there, loudly insulting Jeff and complaining bitterly that he wasn't interested in maintaining Blades, and loudly asserting that their creations surpassed anything Jeff had ever done, for _years_. Eventually he just open- sourced the damn thing, but it kind of poisoned the forum dynamics for a long time. He's actually sworn off of creating another game creation system ever again, because dealing with the communities surrounding them and their maintenance requests is more trouble for less money than cranking out a good RPG every year.

So, in his case, he really is right: he had a small group of vocal customers who were basically attacking him to

1\. Get him to put in free work on Blades

2\. Establish their own artistic credibility

and this bunch wasn't representative of most of his paying customers.

<comment><USER3> > He's actually sworn off of creating another game creation system ever again, > because dealing with the communities surrounding them and their maintenance > requests is more trouble for less money than cranking out a good RPG every > year.

Not entirely accurate. Vogel did end up releasing a second game creation system based on his isometric RPG engine -- Blades of Avernum (<http://www.avernum.com/blades/>). It was even less profitable for him than BoE had been, which was already a loss.

The source code to BoE was released a few years ago. Unfortunately, the code was old and messy enough that little progress has been made in modernizing it.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, it was after BoA that he said this (I think he feels he allowed the BoE community to badger him into making it).

<comment><USER3> The other half of the equation is that Vogel's better at writing than programming. He was able to put together perfectly adequate engines for his games, but the real value of his RPGs was in the game content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Umm. I completely disagree. I was part of a 2 man team that started up 4 years ago, (a game) and I made the forums and built that community up to nearly 1,000,000 users.

Sure, you might get angry, or you mightn't like what people say - but it's the Internet. If people are saying bad things, you're doing something wrong. More times than not, we got people saying "Thanks", and this was worth more than 100+ people complaining.

It also helps build the community. A developer comes swooping down on a thread talking about "how cool would it be to have water in game?!" and goes, "Well, you seem to know what you're talking about... how about I make you moderator and you can sort out anything there is to do with water in game". Works wonders. The users love the fact that you interact with them. I.e. you're not too busy to stoop down to them.

<comment><USER5> Which game, if I may ask?

<comment><USER4> I'd rather not post that in public, too many bad memories. Founder turned out to be a bit of a crazy in the end.

<comment><USER5> Would you mind sending me an email (see profile)? You've got me really curious now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm going to agree with this because I've seen the comments on Notch's (Minecraft dev) blog. Commenting has been turned off now but they ranged from praise to demands for features and fixes to outright rage that they're not being listened to. Charge (a cut-price amount) for your product and you're somehow indebted to your users forever.

<comment><USER7> _Charge (a cut-price amount) for your product and you're somehow indebted to your users forever._

So my parsing of this sentence is that you think that charging the money is what brings in the crazies. That is not the case: people frequently have entitlement issues with regards to things that are free. Oh, the stories I can't tell...

Charging _cut-price amounts_ , on the other hand, attracts pathological customers like crazy. It is _amazing_ how much increasing my price has cut down on pathological customers, and I have heard this over and over and over again from my shareware buddies.

<comment><USER6> It was more a jab at the state of the comments than anything else, I have nothing against charging for products. It's interesting to note that increasing your price has increased the sensibility of your customers though, I had always put it down to MC being a game generally attracts a younger audience that is more used to getting things for free after growing up with torrents and the like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The author is slightly confusing cause with effect here. Not reading your forums _makes_ them toxic since there is no effective moderation. Too many people still have this misguided notion that the Internet should be some massive free speech zone where nothing can be censored except maybe spam. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Clear, effective moderation backed up by sensible but stringent policy can remove many of the pathologies that the article is talking about and transform a forum into a genuinely useful resource.

<comment><USER9> Good point, but moderation takes time, as he pointed out at the beginning of the article. People don't become indie game developers so they can spend time moderating forums.

Moderation can be an art, but it's also a chore. I.e. you can't moderate 10 times as hard / smart and be done with it. There will always be more.

As a thinker / creator one has to be very careful about allowing recurring non-automatable, never-finished tasks into one's head.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I disagree. I was part of the three-person team that created Libranet 3 (a commercial Linux distribution) years ago. Every member of the company kept active contact with the community via the forums and mailing list. This created a sense of community, and gave good insights into what our customers expected.

Of course, every now and then a troll or disgruntled customer would appear. They can be truly poisonous to you and the community. And the tricky part is distinguishing 'disgruntled, but insightful' people from 'sour, and unproductive' people. If necessary we sometimes had to apply force and ban the user.

But if you make an good product, the group of happy and contributing community members is at least two orders of magnitude larger than poisonous people.

Of course, it is very well possible that game forums attract a whole different class of people those of a commercial Linux distribution.

<comment><USER11> Not just game forums, but forums for isometric 2D non-realtime indie RPGs. It's cliché but probably fair to assume that his customer base is likely selected from the rather more socially awkward end of the spectrum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Politicians have the same problem.

The last people you should listen to are the ones that are the most vocal, yet the only information you get comes from those very people.

Same with the forums - if you listen to the suggestions there you are listening only to the most vocal, but those are not necessarily the ones with the best advice/suggestions.

The problem with the most vocal is that usually those are also the ones who care the most - but they care about themself. And they care about themself a lot - that's why they are so vocal.

</comment><comment><USER13> I ask for feedback sometimes in my forum, and over the years the responses have gotten worse and worse.

There are a few core responders who have great ideas and are a big help. The rest (who are becoming the majority) don't read anything at all and just scream out that I need to add X, Y and Z.

At first, I tried to debate them, but that's a complete waste of time. Instead, just engage with the ones who are useful and do your best to ignore the buzzing of the rest.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is the general problem of listening to a million people. Maybe a HN-like or a Slashdot-like software solution would let one delegate the filtering to the community itself?

There's also UserVoice who claim that they solve this problem, but I am not sure how well they perform.</comment>


New Al Zimmermann's Programming Contest – Reversing Nearness - <AUTHOR> http://azspcs.com/Contest/Nearness <comment><USER2> Can anyone give me some advice on how to practice for questions like that (i.e. of the competetive programming type)? I really enjoy them but often have a hard time properly approaching and solving them. I'd love to be able to participate more but I feel like I'm not good enough yet.

<comment><USER3> Just a beginner too, but I do have one suggestion. Steven Skiena has a series of lectures on YouTube [1] for a course he taught called Programming Challenges. I only just started watching the videos so I don't know how useful they are in the long run but the course itself is all about how to get better at competitive programming. He also has a book called "Programming Challenges" which goes hand in hand with the course material.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL07B3F10B48592010](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL07B3F10B48592010)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What 5 memories are you most fond of from your childhood? - <AUTHOR>

I'm trying to make a meaningful connection with my son and build memories he will never forget. Thanks. <comment><USER2> The most meaningful connection that a child never forgets is one where parents and family spend a lot of time with them and actively participate in their daily routine. It does not matter what you do but spending the time with them is key. In fact, the little things are more memorable than say a family vacation to Hawaii. Kids want to spend time with you, they want your attention, they want you to listen to them and if you do these, they will remember.

You can surely do a few activities as a routine with them. For example, I pick up my kids from daycare every day and my kids know that they will expect daddy to come pick them up. They love that while my wife drops them in the morning.

<comment><AUTHOR> My dad took me to donuts every Sat morning. You're right...the little things :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Mostly fairly mundane things, and especially fairly mundane things that were done over and over. For example, going regularly to the nearby dimestore for a toy and candy. Going to the grocery store. Going to the diner for soup and a sandwich. Going to the library.

The "really special" "unique" activities that I'm sure my parents did with me? I usually hardly remember them, because we just did them once. It was the stuff we did every week or every month that seems to have stuck with me. But probably not so much things done every _day_ , as that was evidently "too mundane".

<comment><AUTHOR> so build a certain specific memory by making a habit that is not daily, but repeated.

I can do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just act like a cartoon.</comment>