Why knowing English is important for every software developer - <AUTHOR> http://volgarev.me/blog/why-knowing-english-is-important-for-every-software-developer

<comment><USER3> I cannot tell you how much I agree with this.

When someone in US says good communication skills are important, they think it's racist.

I am from Pakistan. When I tell colleagues to master English, they think I am still mentally under British imperialism.

There is a huge trove of knowledge on the internet which you can only benefit from if you can read/write English.

It was only after I focused on my English that I was able to stay up to date with latest tech, prevent reinventing the wheels and get remote jobs. I could always feel that English gave me a superior advantage over my colleagues.

<comment><USER4> You're so right. Here in Germany are many people who don't want to speak english, even if they had it at school for 13 years...

But if I wouldn't speak english, I had to read german news only or couldn't use stackoverflow. 90% of the newest technology would be useless for me, because I couldn't read any documentations or tutorials.

<comment><USER5> I vaguely remember Linux Torvalds saying he developed linux in English, and it didn't really occur to him to develop it in Finnish, since English is a better language for dealing with technical issues.

From my (potentially quite flawed) understanding, English, French, and German are all good languages for capturing technical concepts, but English won out in general, simply because it's much bigger - more native speakers (thanks USA) and more widely spread (thanks British colonialism).

<comment><USER6> Or because the Germans lost WW2. It would be interesting to see another time- line in which they didn't just to test my hypothesis.

"... German advanced to become one of the most important languages of science and scholarship, and at the beginning of the twentieth century ranked above English and French, especially in the sciences. In order to keep abreast of the latest developments, scientists and scholars all over the world learned German, a circumstance that contributed to German's becoming one of the most widespread foreign languages. With the end of the First World War, the "primal catastrophe" of the twentieth century, a reverse tendency arose. Germany and Austria had been economically ruined by the war and were in no position to invest in research and knowledge to the same degree as before. ..." (from [http://www.goethe.de/ges/spa/pan/spw/en3889454.htm](http://www.goethe.de/ges/spa/pan/spw/en3889454.htm) )

<comment><USER7> while I don't have access to another timeline, russia, china and (to some extent) france did win the war, but none of their language became a new lingua franca.

I'd suppose the closest thing to a nazi-controlled-germanized-europe would be the USSR (people escaping, restrictions on freedoms hindering creativity, no colonies speaking the same language, trade issues with the rest of the world) which in fifty years failed to establish a linguistic dominance even in aligned countries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've often said that English is to programming as Latin is to medicine. Programmers will be writing "if" statements and "for" loops long after no one uses "if" or "for" in daily conversation.

So it is as important for programmers to understand English as it is for doctors to understand Latin. Of course, most doctors may _understand_ Latin, but they wouldn't be able to _converse_ in Latin. In that sense, English is also the programmer's lingua franca.

That term -- lingua franca -- is an interesting one. In addition to being used as a colloquialism for "a common language" it was also, itself, a language: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Lingua_Franca](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Lingua_Franca) . Just as Lingua Franca eventually took on a life (and grammar and vocabulary) of its own, I expect "hacker English" will, over time, do the same. In fact already my (English-speaking) wife thinks that I'm speaking a foreign language half the time when I'm talking with colleagues over Skype.

It's less important to know "English", and much _more_ important to speak, converse, and communicate with other hackers using the _lingua franca_ of the day.

<comment><USER9> Actually English has completely replaced Latin in medical circles as the Ligua Franca. Even the terminology (still based on Latin though) is English.

<comment><USER8> English is the Lingua Franca, but the terminology is (last I checked) still _heavily_ Latin. Anterior this, Rostral that...a this-ectomy or a that- otomy...even "heart attack" is properly a Cardiac Infarct, from the Latin "infarctus": stuffed into.

I realize that the days of requiring Latin as part of a medical education are behind us (though not _that_ far behind us), but Latin's footprints are all over the practice of medicine. I think the reason this isn't more obvious is that, in medicine, "Latin" is mostly interchangeable with "jargon" or "terminology" \-- it's just "something you learn".

Someone else asked about a programming language like Ruby, which was developed in Japan and whose early users were all Japanese, why does it still use "def", "if", "for", etc. As an English speaker one is tempted to ask, "Why do the Japanese use English", but I would wager that the Japanese would respond, "What English? This is just programming terminology."

<comment><USER9> Yeah, but most of the time, Anglicized forms of the Latin words are in use. Increasingly so, even in the non-English speaking world. Even in your example, the correct Latin form is "Infarctus Miocardii" and Cardiac Infarct is heavily Anglicized. And although we still learn the Latin terms in Bulgaria, I can't really see that lasting very long.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd like to offer a counter-point here.

I work in a Chinese company with more than 200 Chinese programmers, I'm the only foreigner.

It is obviously important for a software developer to "know English", and all my colleagues do, just as it is important to know how to find your way in a reference book, or how to ask a question to Google and StackOverflow. It is a tool, an important tool, but only a tool.

What I have experienced more than often is that young Chinese people who are proficient in English and spent a lot of time getting their accent out of the way, are not always the best hackers and the most interesting persons. For them English is more than a tool, and they spend less time coding and more time discussing about code.

So to all these pro-English posts here: Yes, it is necessary; but only as a tool, and should not become a finality (unless we are talking about students in linguistics).

Why would I insist on making this point here and there (and get holes in my HN karma)? Because insisting on "fluent spoken English" and "Foreign accent" just makes life more miserable and humiliating to the so many people who open their mind and their life to the world, by the mean of this new Lingua Franca.

Americans know no fear, feel no shame. It's what makes them so strong and optimistic and creative. "Shy american" is an oximoron, but "Shy Chinese" (or Japanese) is a tautology. Let's not forget that other people are made differently.

</comment><comment><USER11> Right now, I am trying to fix my spelling and grammar. I do this through feedback with the people who I am chating with on IRC.

I am also building SRS(Spaced repetition systems) decks cataloging grammar mistakes I made, formal grammar rules, as well all the spelling mistakes I made. Right now, I have 25 cards for spelling, and 55 for grammar.

The process of noticing my mistakes, being corrected, and learning about errors is a slow process. It has been going on for a month now. Two of my biggest issues are verb conjugations and plurals.

Edit: Fixed according to feedback

<comment><USER12> English is a tricky language, good on you for attempting to master it - <USER2> can write better in English than I can in any other language!

I hope you don't mind me providing some feedback on your writing!

"I am trying to fix my spellings and grammar." \- We generally say "spelling and grammar", even though "spellings" is technically correct - when people say they want to improve their spelling, they generally talk about a skill rather than individual spellings.

"It been going on for a month now." \- It (has) been going on for a month now - although this could have easily been a typo.

Best wishes on your endeavour.

<comment><USER13> "It has been going on for a month now." can also be said, using a contraction, as "It's been going on for a month now." which possibly could've easily led to your mistake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As a native Russian speaker i totally agree with you. It always upsets me when people try to stick with their native language all the time. Basically, Russia (like any country) is only a small part of all the world. If you try to avoid speaking/reading in some other languages you're closing most of the possibilities(i mean books, movies, jokes etc.) for yourself.

Hello from Moscow, tovarisch :)

</comment><comment><USER15> That's how I learned English. Not in school but because I was programming and my native language was lagging a couple of decades behind when it came to programming materials and books.

And once you use it for programming, it's logical to use it for asking questions on the Usenet (then) or internet forums (today), and reading papers on interesting subjects, and communicate with your peer programmers or contacts around the world. By then you realize how much you would lose in any translation which makes you want to read any novels written in English too and watch films without subtitles. And eventually you land your first job where you also need to speak English in addition to your native language, and maybe in your second job English is the primary language of the company and you only use your native one for chitchatting locally over a cup of coffee. Roughly, by that time, English has slowly become the second native language in your life.

</comment><comment><USER16> Cant agree more. These days, I lead and train a dev team here at codersquare in Vietnam. For recruitment, English skills, esp reaing + writing are weighed as much as technical skills. And I provide English lessons on a regular basis as well.

Can't really emphasize enough the importance of English in software. I've had bad experience with devs with weak English skills.

1\. Can't google for the right terms so normally finding a solution takes 3 times longer than a dev with proficient E skills. 2\. Can't name functions/classes or comment properly thus producing bad qualiry code. 3\. Misunderstand requirements sometimes. This one can be very costly. 4\. Takes much longer time to study new stuff.

2cents

</comment><comment><USER17> Knowing English is important for every startup, let alone every software developer.

1\. Outside of English-speaking countries, and particularly in the Schengen area, teams are made up of people whose first language isn't the local language. This means that all internal communication happens in English. Companies that make an effort to operate in English internally have a much, much easier time hiring.

2\. Investment often comes from outside the country, particularly from the US, even if your company doesn't operate or sell outside of its home country. Your CEO is going to have to pitch your company in English, and your investors are going to have foreigners perform their due diligence.

<comment><USER6> About 1. it is so true. When I was the first developer at a startup in Stockholm I told my boss that we should really do all the documentation in English and only talk Swedish on the phone or in personal email. When starting we've only been me (from Germany) and two swedes, my boss and the guy with the money.

The first person we hired (that is besides me) was a Spaniard who didn't speak Swedish. The second was also Spanish and didn't speak Swedish either. The third was from Ukraina, she spoke Swedish quite ok already. And this went on in this direction, Norwegians, Greeks, more Spaniards, etc.

So our decision to go English all the way made hiring much much easier from the beginning and now English became the language half of the staff is communicating in even if you meet them in person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ignorant American here, asking of the non-native English speakers:

As most (every?) programming language is "in English", does this impair understanding? (for, in, throw, select, from - all English words whose meanings are more or less in line with the programming concept they define) (Even Ruby, created by a Japanese, is "English")

For those who write/type in languages that require Unicode: since you typically code in ASCII, was this a challenge to learn? (do modern languages support Unicode for things like variable names? I've never seen Hebrew, Chinese, etc code - does anyone have any examples?)

<comment><USER19> I know that many programming languages (for example C), have long had tokenizers that are non-English. So the language is the same, the words are different.

<comment><USER20> On a similar note Excel commands are probably the most infuriating thing since I learned programming fro me because they are all in the regional language in my case German and make no sense to me now. (Example IF is WENN in German)

It drives me nuts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder: isn't that becoming true for all knowledge work?

With the great university courses available in english(MOOC), best web content both formal(research journals) and informal(forums/sites) available in english, And tools usually give error messages in english ,doesn't english give huge advantage in most knwoledge areas ?

</comment><comment><USER22> I definitely agree. I choose to study CS in English because of this. CS is made to be taught in English. I have a friend who was struggling in English and when she applied for a job the interviewer didn't even asked how her English was, all the interviewer questions were in English.

<comment><USER6> I once had a job interview at Opera (the browser) in Oslo. They said: "Ok we want you to work here, but you _really_ need to improve your English." That was a couple of years ago and it was literally the first time I spoke more then one sentence in English in a conversation outside of School, haha :D Since then I did improve it quite a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> English is not my native language, although my entire schooling and upbringing were in English. One of the resources I found useful in improving the quality of the _written_ word was "The Elements of Style" by William Strunk. The e-book can be found on Bartleby ([http://www.bartleby.com/141/](http://www.bartleby.com/141/)) or, if you so prefer, a dead tree version is available on Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER24> ESR also considers it a core skill for a hacker[1].

This whole controversy is completely manufactured.

[1] [http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker- howto.html#skills4](http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#skills4)

</comment><comment><USER25> This summer I was talking to my wife's cousin, he wanted to be a programmer but his English was poor and he struggled. That was a long time ago, now he is trying to learn English again and is also learning Java.

</comment><comment><USER26> If I didn't already know English, I wouldn't have been able to learn programming. My curriculum in university has been largely in English.

</comment><comment><USER27> I just couldn't read past the "who're"...

<comment><AUTHOR> If there's a language rule that says you can't combine these two this way, I'd be more than happy to learn about it. English is not my mother language so I apologize for any grammar/spelling mistakes in advance ;-)

<comment><USER28> It's perfectly valid English. "Who're" is a contraction of "who are"†.

However, for some reason, unlike more common contractions, it is much more common in spoken English than in written.

†[http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/who're](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/who're)</comment></comment></comment>


Using carbon isotopes to fight the rise in fraudulent whisky - <AUTHOR> https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/radiocarbon/article/using-carbon-isotopes-to-fight-the-rise-in-fraudulent-whisky/75071F4AB4D7A231B714102B0FE8F5C6 <comment><USER2> I wonder if dealers in fraudulent art/whisky/whatever have started purchasing samples of 13C or 14C to try to fool this kind of analysis. I don't know what the cost would be, but it would only need very small quantities (and very, very careful measurement.)

<comment><USER3> That would only help if you wanted to present something old as being newer.

<comment><USER4> It's been a while since I've interpreted delta 13C measurements but it seems like adding 13C could mimic older materials, however you are correct about 14C unless you want to make something modern look like its ~1960s era. You would need to reduce 14C (either by dilution with depleted ethanol [quick search doesn't find a source for this] or somehow purify the scotch itself) to make it look pre-1950s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have heard of seeding DNA id snippets in materials to prevent counterfeiting. DNA read and write technology is now robust and cheap.

When I googled 'DNA stability in ethanol' I was surprised to see that it was being used to store DNA, albeit at cool temperatures. So that might work.

<comment><USER4> The snippets won't be present in the old bottles. You could just take some recent stuff (without snippets) and still pass it off as really old.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The thing is that the age-thing is pure marketing, if someone's making whisky that tastes the same and has the same amount of alcohol I don't really think it's a fraud, it's not like you can taste the C14

<comment><USER7> No, as long as you prepare whisky in the traditional way, as in aging in barrels, aging is not marketing. Older whiskys tend to be smoother and have more complexity in their taste. While there are good younger ones, 12 years is the default for a good whisky with 15-20 years adding quite a bit quality to that on average.

There are alternative ways to create a whisky, I recently had quite an interesting burbon, where the barrels would be subjected to pressure cycles quickly - seems a huge factor in aging is the seasonal changes to the barrel, with the pressure cycles they emulated seasons in a fraction of the time. They got the equivalent of a 12 year old burbon in a couple of months.

Also, quite a few large distilleries started whisky editions without a stated age on the label. There they use a mix of barrels, old and young to achieve the taste. But, they either don't state an age or the age of the youngest barrel involved.

In any case, stating the wrong age on the label, is plain fraud.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Our world-spanning civilization confronts an existential crisis, threatening collapse and radical depopulation, and they worry about protecting privileged whisky producers.

This is not actually different from what almost all of us are doing. It makes me ashamed.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't drink much, but when I do, I prefer pure 95% ethanol. It's poisonous enough as it is, without impurities.

Back in the day, that was spectrophotometric grade ethanol.</comment>


Show HN: Visual Search app for iOS8, Snap Search, feedback welcome - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/snapsearch-search-reviews/id946731654?ls=1&mt=8

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Folks, I'm Ger the developer of Snap Search, we are looking for your feedback on our app, both the idea and execution :-), there are certainly some rough edges but we have found it works well with products and RL visual information (Posters for concerts, museums, billboards etc.). Simply take a pic, wait for it to recognise and then tap one of the speed dial buttons or ask a question about the image.</comment>


Random Structures from Lego Bricks and Analog Monte Carlo Procedures (2013) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.althofer.de/random-lego-structures.pdf

<comment><USER2> Now try producing lego cars and lego houses using the washing machine procedure, and you know the pain of organic synthesis.</comment>


Extracting Structured Data from Recipes Using Conditional Random Fields (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/extracting-structured-data-from-recipes-using-conditional-random-fields/ <comment><USER2> This is the kind of problem for which LSTM RNNs -- and more recently, fully- attention-based deep neural nets -- produce state-of-the-art results.

I wonder if the author ever tried using, say, an AWD LSTM RNN[a] or a Transformer-like model[b] for this task.

Using an RNN or an attention model for this would eliminate the need for feature engineering such as:

      feature_1 = 1 if x_t is capitalized and y_t equals "NAME";
                  0 otherwise.

This is one of seven carefully engineered feature functions listed in the article, and the author states that the seven are only a partial list.

Moreover, using a modern RNN or attention model likely would produce better predictions, with much better generalization.

[a] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.02182](https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.02182) / [https://github.com/salesforce/awd-lstm-lm](https://github.com/salesforce/awd- lstm-lm)

[b] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762](https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762) / [https://github.com/tensorflow/tensor2tensor](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensor2tensor)

<comment><USER3> This article is dated 2015. Can't blame the author too much for not trying things that would be invented 2 years later.

But yeah, it would be great follow up work.

<comment><USER2> Ah, I didn't notice the article's date until now. Thanks for pointing that out! Makes more sense now.

Yes, it would be great follow-up work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So now you can autoconvert all cups to deciliters for usage in other countries? :-)

I have a recipe collection since I bought my first Atari 30+ years ago. I always tried to stick to text-files written with a certain style in mind for later processing into a database but haven't gotten around to actually do it yet. Did a half-hearted start on in last week again while I was sick but since the textfiles work already as they are, I stopped again.

Usually the ingredients are written "1 dl water", nothing fancy like their problems so would be very easy to parse with just some php.

<comment><USER5> > So now you can autoconvert all cups to deciliters for usage in other > countries? :-)

In my experience converting between cups/tablespoons/teaspoons and metric units only complicates recipes. It's easier just to get a set of measuring spoons and cups in addition to a set of scales and metric measuring cups. Besides, even though cups may not be used as much in the metric world, tablespoons and teaspoons and their fractions are, so most home cooks already own a set of measuring spoons at least.

Of course units like _floz_ and _oz_ do need converting to normal volumetric and weight units.

<comment><USER6> Where did you buy your measuring cups for oven gas mark 5?

<comment><USER4> No matter if it has degree settings or not, you still have to calibrate your oven. A gas mark 5 is just as exact as "medium heat". You need to use your experience to calculate or just guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A three year old article, but worth reading: NYT solves a pain point using NLP and we're nice about open sourcing their work.

BTW, if you sign up properly, the NYT has an API for collecting articles by topic - also useful for NLP research. I used this API a few years ago.

</comment><comment><USER8> The code discussed in the post is here:

[https://github.com/NYTimes/ingredient-phrase- tagger](https://github.com/NYTimes/ingredient-phrase-tagger)

</comment><comment><USER9> The value of converting media content into structured data is underrated.

I imagine the future market is vast for media companies to offer their large stores of content this way.

Kudos to NYT. I'm often impressed with their technical contributions.

<comment><USER10> I agree wholeheartedly! While NYT subscription revenue has picked up in recent years, I wonder if more newspapers and publishers might find significant value in building more of these knowledge based software products? Structuring the data appears to be the key process to make these products effective. Does anyone know of any other examples similar to this effort?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> >recipes that users can search, save, rate and (coming soon!) comment on

That would be a fun NLP follow-up: mark or remove recipe comments that follow the general pattern "I substituted a for b, c for d, didn't bother with x because I never buy it, broiled the whole thing instead of pan frying and it was TERRIBLE!"

</comment><comment><USER12> Please add (2015) to the title.

<comment><USER13> Updated. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cool project and good write up. This CRF reminds me a bit of definite clause grammar (DCG) from prolog. Would be interesting to mix the two using some sort of probabilistic predicate logic.

</comment><comment><USER15> Would anyone in the know care to share pointers to other current state of the art ingredient structured tree extractors, either open source, or proprietary?

</comment><comment><USER16> This is the first time I've seen MathJax used at a mainstream site like nytimes.com. Good for them

</comment><comment><USER17> Should have a (2015)</comment>


Mt. Gox and the Surprising Redemption of Bitcoin's Biggest Villain - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/longform/bitcoin-mt-gox-hack-karpeles/ <comment><USER2> Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles on the Russian arrested for laundering the stolen bitcoins: ""What he did, Mt. Gox is a victim of this, which means that all creditors are victims of this, and I am too a victim of this."</comment>


Diapers.com will leave larger shoes to fill than Zappos - <AUTHOR> http://cpaik.com/post/486732097/diapers-com-will-leave-larger-shoes-to-fill-than-zappos

<comment><USER3> My wife and I ordered our baby formula for about a year or so from diapers.com, no complaints. They even re-shipped a furniture tie that we thought they missed (it turned out we misplaced it - they said don't bother with sending the extra one back).

Diapers.com's customer focus is slightly different than Zappos - eventually at some point in time Diapers.com's present customers will no longer have any reason to continue shopping there (it's true for us today - we don't need anything from Diapers.com), whereas Zappos can potentially sell you shoes for a lifetime.

As an aside, I personally find purchases clothing (including shoes) online in the not-quite-right category. How can you ascertain the fit and aesthetic of a shirt or a shoe without actually holding it in your hand or trying it on?

<comment><USER4> _"Diapers.com's customer focus is slightly different than Zappos - <USER2> at some point in time Diapers.com's present customers will no longer have any reason to continue shopping there (it's true for us today - we don't need anything from Diapers.com), whereas Zappos can potentially sell you shoes for a lifetime."_

I am now approaching the one year mark with new twins, and I will have spent more on diapers and other baby supplies than I will spend on shoes in the next 20 years. I generally buy 2 pairs of ~$50 shoes a year, but I spend >$100 on diapers, wipes, bottles, etc. every month. And the stroller -- my mid-level, non-fancy double stroller was $200.

Other families that space out their children spend thousands of dollars over the course of 4-6 years. If they're happy, they'll be loyal. They'll tell the other parents they know about the site (parents do love to talk about such things). I can see how this will be amazingly successful. People seem to be spending more than ever on their children, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _They're even wondering whether a self-help online customer service module might drive down overall loyalty and LTV if it drops the number of customer call ins considerably._

My wife is a "LT customer" of diapers.com, and this line made me think back to why: it was because they once shipped the wrong item in place of what we ordered.

When my wife called up the service line, she was surprised at how quickly they helped her out, that they overnighted the correct item, and that they didn't ask for the wrong item to be returned. Considering that I imagine that "ship the right items" is one of the first things a business like this would get right, and that (the LTV of a customer) > (overnight cost of baby cream), could it be that the mistake was intentional?

<comment><AUTHOR> Highly doubtful, but interesting thought. Talking to the guys at Diapers.com, they want their customers to be happy the first time around. On the off chance they're not, they want them to be absolutely delighted the second time. I'm also pretty sure that the extra cost incurred by including the "mistake item" as well as knowing you're discretely increasing demands on customer service might make the customer acquisition cost not worth the lifetime value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Are there any other retail categories with the same type of regular repeat purchase?</comment>


Machinery – A Systems Management Toolkit for Linux - <AUTHOR> http://machinery-project.org/

<comment><USER2> I like the fact that it scans a live system and reports back packages and files that are not in packages. This way one can quickly check the functionality of a server and could also be helpful in multitude of other situations such as decomissioning.

As this is currently only SUSE-specific I'd like to see a more general solution that produces a standardized output and this output could then be turned into puppet/chef etc. scripts automatically.

EDIT: blueprint seems to do just that, but the website is not as nice.

</comment><comment><USER3> That is a very nice website.

What distinguishes this software from puppet?

If someone isn't running SLES what would push them toward this solution?

<comment><USER4> If I understand correctly from reading the man page[1], unlike Puppet there's no server.

You just run a command line tool on a node to inspect or create a "system description". You can then export and deploy a description to create repeatable systems. In this regard I think it's similar to what Blueprint[2] does (or did I guess since Blueprint seems dead now). So it's a lot more lightweight tool and has many less features than Puppet, certainly.

Another cool thing is you can use Machinery to build images and deploy to Openstack. Where I work I spent a pretty long time building similar tooling for Xenserver. Sure would have been nice to have just been able to say "oh there's a thing for that". I'm excited to try this tool out and see what it does.

I think Machinery only works on SLES and opensuse right now. I didn't see any mention of other distros.

[1] [http://machinery-project.org/manual.html](http://machinery- project.org/manual.html)

[2] [http://devstructure.com/blueprint/](http://devstructure.com/blueprint/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It would be awesome to see a few short examples/tutorials how it integrates with some of the mainstream configuration management systems like Puppet or Salt. Awesome website!</comment>


The sad truth about depressive realism (2006) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Samuel_Hannah/publication/6441659_The_sad_truth_about_depressive_realism/links/0912f5106e6479973d000000.pdf?origin=publication_list <comment><USER2> Michael Abrash once told about a study where the participants were shown a ball on the screen and the idea was to push the controller up, in an effort to keep the ball above a virtual line in the middle of the screen.

The first group was unknowingly given full control of the ball via the control, the second randomly was given some control, the third group had no control.

Only those with a depression diagnosis were able to properly assess when they had no control.

Wish I could find the original source..

<comment><USER3> Curiously, overestimating leads to the correct behavior here: since attempting to control the ball has no cost, the only bad outcome would be deciding to not control it when you could have done so. This can be avoided by always attempting to control it. I wonder if the result of the study would persist if inaction was sometimes the right choice?

<comment><USER4> Gets back to the distinction between life as puzzle and life as game. Depressives may be better puzzle solvers, but optimists play the game better.

Edit - or the distinction between the picture-theory of language and the tool- theory. Depressives draw a more accurate picture but optimists make better use of the "tools"

<comment><USER5> Which is why the optimal strategy is to be optimist most of the time, but fall into depressive mood when we encounter a lot of obstacles. Use that depressive time to assess your situation and then start changing it, fueled by your normal optimism.

The issue is, if the obstacles we encounter are too many then we remain in low mood for too long, and that state becomes permament. Early in human evolution, when we were all living at savanah all the dangers and obstacles were short- term. This is entirely different in civilized society.

<comment><USER6> do you know that depression is a real disease and not some frame of mind you can choose to be in or excuse at will? i get the point of your post but the terminology is really wrong.

<comment><USER7> From Wikipedia:

> A DSM diagnosis distinguishes an episode (or 'state') of depression from the > habitual (or 'trait') depressive symptoms someone can experience as part of > their personality.

Depressive mood != depressive disorder. The terminology isn't wrong.

<comment><USER6> perhaps. but the original article was talking about actual depressed people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some people - they don't call themselves psychiatrist on purpose - say that depression is not a (mental) illness but a normal human reaction to "abuse". The Psychopath Code by Hintjens [1] describes how different entities (persons, societies, government, etc.) can "abuse" you. Putting the two things together gives an interesting view on depression.

For me it is not surprising that people who have been "abused" in the past don't get fooled that easy the second time. IMHO the persons who successful overcome depression acquire some kind of "super power". The power which comes also with stoicism.

[1] [https://www.gitbook.com/book/hintjens/psychopathcode/details](https://www.gitbook.com/book/hintjens/psychopathcode/details)

<comment><USER9> I'm sorry but this is just crazy talk, no pun intended. My depression has hurt me in so many ways even if I'm 'over' it. It hasn't made me this world-weary stoic, it has hurt my ability to be an effective person, relate with others, socialize, be optimistic, etc. There's no silver lining to it. I think a lot of these extremist opinions are very dangerous and on the level of anti-vax stuff because they can cause death. 2% to 9% of people that have been diagnosed with depression in their lifetime will go on to complete suicide. These are non-trivial numbers.

[http://mentalhealth.about.com/cs/depression/a/suiciderates.h...](http://mentalhealth.about.com/cs/depression/a/suiciderates.htm)

<comment><USER10> There's a difference between beating depression, which the parent comment is talking about, and being 'over' depression, which is what your comment is talking about.

Beating depression requires mastering one's own inner life and changing the mechanics of how one thinks and interprets the world. This really does give you super powers coming out of it. And it makes you essentially depression- proof. Those 2% to 9% of people committing suicide are not people who have beat depression.

Getting 'over' depression is what happens when the depressed individual experiences a change in life circumstances or another external or temporary internal event that removes the depression for now. That depression can always come back, and among the people I know who haven't beat depression, it always seems to. They never get the 'super powers' because they never beat it.

Most of the highly successful, most gregarious people I know were deeply depressed at one point, beat it, and became expert problem solvers with superhuman capacities for perseverance. You could take their business from them, have them walk in on their spouse cheating on them, and find out their children aren't theirs and they'd be sad for a week or two then get right back on with rebuilding their lives again as soon as they finished deconstructing the problem and mapped out a new path for themselves.

Depression almost seems like a gauntlet certain high potential individuals have to pass through. Some of them make it through the gauntlet and get those super powers. Others don't make it through the gauntlet, step out for a breather, then go back in again. Then maybe they make it through that time, or maybe it's back out, then back in again. I have family members who've been sucked into the depression gauntlet repeatedly without ever beating it, and you can tell they have the potential for 'super powers', but never get them.

<comment><USER11> You mean well, and what you're saying may be helpful to people who struggle with certain feelings from time to time.

But statements like these are extremely frustrating for people with actual depression.

Depression is not just a state of mind you can change through will power. Here's a fun thing to do: if everything you believe about depression is applied to a broken arm or colorblindness and sounds ludicrous, then it's wrong.

For example: "Beating a broken arm requires mastering one's own inner life and changing the mechanics of how one thinks and interprets the world..."

Or: "Getting 'over' colorblindness is what happens when the colorblind individual experiences a change in life circumstances or another external or temporary internal event that removes the colorblindness for now."

Depression _changes the way you think_. It removes your motivation for improving. I didn't pick these examples randomly; depression is a colorblindness of emotion. It is insidious, and nasty, and "thinking your way out of it" is something that's going to be regarded in the future the way that we regard blood-letting a fever now.

There are treatments for it, with varying side effects, and there are some tactics people prone to depressive episodes can use to try to lessen the impact of their depression, but depression itself is not something you "beat". At best, it's something you learn to live with: having a broken brain for the rest of your life.

<comment><USER12> > "thinking your way out of it" is something that's going to be regarded in > the future the way that we regard blood-letting a fever now

As someone who spent more than a decade struggling with a diagnosed depression and the numbness that came from trying to get better with 5 different prescription drugs that addressed a few symptoms while making the whole thing a lot worse, what worked for me was, eventually, thinking my way out of it. And it's funny that you compare it to some medieval treatment because the method I used to think my way out of it has been taught for 2500 years. The key is you can't just try to think your way out of it. There is a specific technique to meditation and mindfulness that the watered down versions of mindfulness training miss. Go to the source and learn the traditional practice, not the bits and pieces that psychiatrists have tried to marry with more recent psychotherapeutic theory.

Now with daily anapana/vipassana practice, I'm able to live much more in the present moment, which allows for enjoyment and sadness free from the suffering that I now realize was manifesting in my depression. It's a form of delusion to deny or ignore the truth of what's happening right now, no matter how simple that truth might be. And when I delude myself often enough, I start to feel depressed. It's cause and effect, and I see it so clearly now. But now that I understand the cause and how to stop causing it, I can recognize when I'm feeling depressed and bring myself out of it.

Nothing used to frustrate me more than people insinuating that I could fix my depression by just trying harder. And that's what "think yourself out of it" sounded like to me. My motivation was so zapped that that kind of advice just made me more despondent. So I want to make it clear that thinking your way out of depression is _not_ a matter of trying harder. In fact once it clicks, it becomes easier...like riding a bicycle downhill. And that's a good metaphor, because if thinking your way out of it is riding a bicycle, how effective you are at it and how hard you have to work depend entirely on which direction you point, not how hard you pedal.

<comment><USER13> I appreciate your opposing take. There is a lot of push back against non traditional remedies, and also against the pharmaceutical route (in both cases, deserved). As someone else who is suffering, I have found comfort in meditation, mindful practices, and most importantly acceptance. These mental states allow me to function enough to exercise or eat well, or mind my sleep or stay away from drugs (which provides a physiological basis for "getting better"). So I agree you can't just think your way out, but the right frame of mind can provide the momentum to put the rest of the pieces together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Did people read the same article I did. The conclusion was depressive realism is missattributed pessimism, not some sort of objectivity super power.

<comment><USER15> I was just about to post the final portion of the conclusion:

 _In summary, compared to nondepressed indi- viduals, depressives are "nay- sayers". Depressives may be sadder but they are not wiser; rather, so- called "depressive realism" results from the bias of depressives to say "no"._

Clearly a lot of people just didn't read it at all... and didn't even skim the major portions.

<comment><USER16> To be fair, it's pretty poor abstract-writing to not hint at the conclusion in the abstract. That's the _job_ of the abstract, to summarize the contents, not to be a 'teaser' where you don't know what you're going to get without reading the whole article!

<comment><USER17> Agree, and the title too, almost clicbait

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The treatment/theraputic perspective is that depression is a treatable disease of the brain, one that can be modified by changes in behavior/thinking and/or by medication.

(Note: the paper paints a mixed picture but concludes with the generally- accepted scientific model that depressive realism is rarely accurate)

...It's strange how I've been seeing more and more about how Depression is somehow "Rational" lately. That kind of thinking reinforces depression, and is part of the core of the illness. Also this meta-study doesn't assess whether depressed individuals also overestimate helplessness. (One of the studies in the paper only tests if they underestimate control in an experiment, which might sound like the same thing at first blush but it isn't) Broken clock is right twice, poorly-designed studies, and all that...

<comment><USER19> One thing I don't understand is how a brain-state can ever be considered abnormal. It can be considered disadvantageous, or advantageous in some aspects only, but in no way be "normal". What are the normal facial features?

<comment><USER18> It's not a matter of abnormal vs normal, it's a matter of dysfunctional versus functional in various situations. It's also a matter of the brain itself inhibiting healthy functioning of the entire body (in the case of depression and similar illnesses) The mind is the body, most especially the brain.

<comment> wu-ikkyu What if the situation/environment the person is in is disfunctional? Wouldn't a "functional" mind within a "dysfunctional" environment purposefully "inhibit healthy functioning of the entire body" as a warning sign that a new environment is needed?

<comment><USER20> No. No matter what the state of the environment, a mental illness is not going to improve the situation, if only because it limits the ability to change the environment. In fact, that is the definition of mental illness: it causes problems in dealing with life.

A "healthy" mind in a dysfunctional environment can produce physical symptoms that mimic mental illness---anxiety for example---which makes diagnosis difficult, and is the root of the difference between the blues and clinical depression.

<comment> wu-ikkyu >A "healthy" mind in a dysfunctional environment can produce physical symptoms that mimic mental illness

Im not sure I understand. When you say "mimic mental illness", are you saying that environmental factors cannot cause a "healthy" mind to get a "real" mental illness?

<comment><USER20> I have no solid data on that and I am not a mental health practitioner in any sense.

But to my mind, no. The problems of a healthy mind in an unhealthy environment are easy to solve: change the environment and the problem goes away. On the other hand, problems such as my depression get only temporary relief from changing the environment; the only long term relief has been drug treatment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This makes me think: is depression a human societal defense mechanism?

Having a diversity of perspectives along an optimism scale seems optimal when faced with an external threat to your tribe/group.

<comment><USER10> Animals get depressed, and manifest all the same behavior patterns humans do during depression. It's a much older phenomenon than human society.

There are a number of good theories on what the function of depression is. The best I've seen is that it's the brain's deep problem-solving mode for when an organism needs to hunker down and deal with hard problems it doesn't know how to solve easily. The mind slips into rumination mode and turns a problem over again and again in hopes of discovering some new insight about it and cracking it.

<comment><USER22> There doesn't need to be a "function;" the conclusion of the paper puts it pretty well:

"In summary, compared to nondepressed indi- viduals, depressives are "nay- sayers". Depressives may be sadder but they are not wiser; rather, so- called "depressive realism" results from the bias of depressives to say "no""

Cell division is obviously important for organisms to function, but it can run amok - that's cancer. Similarly, pessimism is sometimes a useful approach to solving a problem, but it becomes debilitating when it's out of control.

Depression is not a "problem solving mode" or anything like that; it's a disease. Depression (the medical condition, not just pessimism or being sad sometimes) is totally and completely draining. Someone who is depressed does not have the energy to solve the problem of "should I take a shower today," let alone "hunker down and deal with hard problems."

Sorry to pick on you, I just find the comment threads on articles like this so frustratingly ignorant sometimes.

<comment><USER23> > There doesn't need to be a "function

Given the existence of depression in the animal kingdom, and it's persistence in humans despite its nonadaptive qualities, this accumulation of coincidences strongly suggests that it definitely had some adaptive purpose at some point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> _It might be said that, when the outcome density is increased, the typical participant displays irrational optimism._

The slot machine industry figured that out about two decades ago. Slots today have a lot more small payoffs than they used to. Lotteries have also increased the number of small payoffs. The expectation ratio is no better, but dividing it up differently keeps some people playing.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is why i'm so concise on Mondays.

</comment><comment><USER26> If everyone knew about this, democracy might be more effective. We would only elect depressed people to positions of power, favoring their superior acumen. The most convincing speeches would be nihilist considerations on the uselessness of trying and the futility of life, then we would know, "this is the one who sees things as they are". One issue, though, might be that the military commander in chief might try to use that power against themselves.

Edit: Reading further into the article, it seems my utopia is actually unrealistic, how unfortunate.

<comment><USER27> >We would only elect depressed people to positions of power, favoring their superior acumen.

Like Abraham Lincoln for example? He was famously depressed, and thought after he gave it that the famous Gettysburg Address was a dud.

[1] [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/10/lincolns...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/10/lincolns- great-depression/304247/)

<comment><USER28> Winston Churchill is another good example of a depressed (or possibly bipolar) leader (Churchill's "black dog"). Interesting that they are both war-time leaders.

On Lincoln, the recorded remarks of a fellow Illinois legislator are particularly interesting (from the article):

"He Sought company, and indulged in fun and hilarity without restraint, or Stint as to time[.] Still when by himself, he told me that he was so overcome with mental depression, that he never dare carry a knife in his pocket."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So it's hopeless afterall

</comment><comment><USER30> Drawbacks usually outweigh benefits in this case.

</comment><comment><USER31> Can someone add pdf to the title?

<comment><USER32> why? the text is right there on the page if you scroll down at all

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The title of this paper is the best part

</comment><comment><USER34> Deprived of happiness is terribly conspicuous. For optimists, this fact plays no part in their existential computations. For pessimists, however, it is axiomatic.

Whether a pessimist urges us to live "heroically" with a knife in our gut or denounces life as not worth living is immaterial. What matters is that he makes no bones about hurt being the Great Problem it is incumbent on philosophy to observe. But this problem can be solved only by establishing an imbalance between hurt and happiness that would enable us in principle to say which is more desirable—existence or nonexistence. While no airtight case has ever been made regarding the undesirability of human life, pessimists still run themselves ragged trying to make one. Optimists have no comparable mission. When they do argue for the desirability of human life it is only in reaction to pessimists arguing the opposite, even though no airtight case has ever been made regarding that desirability. Optimism has always been an undeclared policy of human culture—one that grew out of our animal instincts to survive and reproduce—rather than an articulated body of thought. It is the default condition of our blood and cannot be effectively questioned by our minds or put in grave doubt by our pains. This would explain why at any given time there are more cannibals than philosophical pessimists.

[https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2696709-the- conspiracy...](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2696709-the-conspiracy- against-the-human-race)</comment>


One Man's HTML5 Developer Workflow - <AUTHOR> http://blog.elemdage.com/technology/one-mans-html5-developer-workflow <comment><USER3> Author on vim:

"MacVim: it's Vim, need I say more? Actually, I do need to say more: I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate Vim – did I mention that I hate it? I just don't get how anyone could like the antiquated Unix-originating Vim with it's stupid modes, over any of the other options that are out there. Emacs was waaay better than Vim back in the day; nano is better than Vim now; and they both pale in comparison to Sublime, and the other feature rich editors listed here; and yet, excellent coders, such as Thomas Fuchs use this editor — like I said, I don't get it"

Spoken like a man who has spent less than 10 minutes with it. vim rewards the patient practitioner with an unbeatable mind-editor connection over time, and self-reinforces universally good skills to have like touch-typing.

Still thankful for my mentor as a Google intern who told me on day 1: "learn python, learn vim."

Anyway, point is ACTA sucks.

<comment><USER4> I can't imagine anyone who's spent 3+ months in Vim and hates it. It's become an extension of my fingers now, and I'm unbearably slow editing text without it.

I can't wait for Sublime Text 2 to have a fully developed Vintage mode so I can switch to the superior UI. But in terms of key bindings + modes, Vim is irreplaceable.

<comment><USER5> The problem is that I can't move everything I do over to vim. I can only seem to hard-wire one set of key shortcuts into my fingers, so when I've used vim for a while I keep mis-pressing when using Apple Mail, and when I've been eclipsing for a while (because I was working on a project which is already fully eclipsed up), I go back to vim and my fingers keep pressing cmd+z,x,c,v.

My suspicions as to why some people love vim, while I don't is:

1) They work in an environment where they can go 100% vim.

2) They find it easy to switch between two different sets of keys, without half an hour or so of mis-pressings.

<comment> X-Istence I switch between different apps without any major pains, one thing I have noticed though is that I tend to use Cmd + x, c, v within MacVim anyway.

Yes, I know it is bad, but it lets me get work done quickly and efficiently and thus I really don't care what the purists say.

Maybe that is the key to success, don't let the purists say that you shouldn't do it, just do what feels natural and eventually it will help you get faster anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Unfortunately this isn't really an article about workflow; it's an article about the author's favorite tools. I agree with the premise that more needs to be written about web development workflow, I just don't find this to be engaging in that.

<comment><USER7> Agreed, I saw the windows bashing and became kind of wary of the whole article, as soon as I saw the vim / emacs debate brought up I just closed the tab.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone have an equivalent workflow example for Windows? I get (git) the use of PhoneGap and GitHub, but the pieces before that which are local I keep playing with and haven't found anything I'm really happy with yet. Figure I'm not the only person still on Windows...

Additionally, I would be REAL interested to see if anyone has come up with a workable toolkit for doing this on an iPad or Android tablet? Not SSHing into a remote server but actually working locally.

<comment><USER9> Locally, the only solutions I found revolved around WAMP/XAMPP. It does well until you need to customize how your web server and modules work.

Aside from that, I've been experimenting with a VM of Archlinux running on Windows and connecting to the Arch web server. So far it's decent and better than WAMP/XAMPP, but it does require a bit more work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just don't see anything beating out Vim. A good Emacs user might be able to get close, and get's a lot of other benefits, but I think Vim has editing nailed for the keyboard. We will need a completely different interface for something to unseat Vim.

Vintage mode in Sublime does add some Vim key bindings, but that doesn't get you Vim. It probably get's enough to satisfy someone who isn't very deep into Vim, but it will never get so far as the users who think in Vim. Also, I'm not sure that you can do everything in Sublime using only the keyboard, once you have to start messing with the mouse then you aren't doing things the Vim way anymore.

Vim mode in Emacs (using Evil) is far better for me than Vim mode in Sublime.

I have never understood the "looks" argument against Vim. It's text, it doesn't need to be pretty.

You will see a lot of people say they are impressed with Sublime. I usually see that in response to people asking about editors other than Vim or Emacs. Others who ask aren't the people who are willing to put in the time to learn Emacs and Vim. I would agree with this, take away Vim and Emacs and Sublime is probably what I would be using.

Emacs and Vim are open source, Sublime is not. Need I say more?

</comment><comment><USER11> Thanks for sharing this. Interesting thing to note - <USER2> prototype/create_mockups in Keynote :)

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder how he tests for IE related issues</comment>


Keybase chooses Zcash - <AUTHOR> https://keybase.io/blog/keybase-and-zcash <comment><USER3> Author here. Seeing some of the discussion go down on Twitter, I feel maybe I should explain further the "white supremacist" example in the post. (one tweet at me: "So now you can hide the fact that white supremacists are sending you money? F!@#ing weird example.")

When I shared a draft post with some friends, a lot of them had an ah-ha moment, so I was hoping for the same from others. I was trying to illustrate 2 privacy concerns around the graph Bitcoin exposes: (1) accidental associations and (2) exposing the people you transact with to each other.

In the blog's hypothetical, you're not receiving money from some asshole because you're collecting Klan dues from him. Rather, you performed some public transaction with a stranger. For example, maybe you sold him some tickets. An external observer of the graph who knows he's a dangerous character may start applying high odds that you, too, are a dangerous character, since they don't know why he sent you money. This would suck. And, second, this character who sent you money may also be learning things about you. Since you sold tickets to a local show and mailed them to him, (1) he's likely to live near you, and (2) he knows your return address. You really don't want him seeing that you're sending money to causes he opposes. If so, he might show up at your door.

The goal was to clear up this misconception that a private cryptocurrency is there to protect criminals. This is especially important if you'd like to post a static address on a profile.

<comment><USER4> Have you considered supporting a stealth address scheme for Bitcoin? The problem is reuse of addresses, period. Bitcoin has solutions for this.

<comment><USER5> Zcash's anonymous transactions are much more expensive CPU-wise to verify and aren't pruneable, and the cryptography behind it has been much less reviewed (Bitcoin operates on a bunch of very boring standard already established and long-trusted algorithms in comparison!), so I'd be surprised if an established project like Bitcoin adopted them before they were proven in practice. There's a lot of money tied up in Bitcoin, so the project is going to be pretty conservative in how it chooses to change.

<comment><USER4> Stealth addresses don't use any new cryptography, aren't computationally expensive, and require no changes to bitcoin consensus or policy rules.

<comment><USER5> Oh, I guess I mixed up some posts with one lamenting that Zcash wasn't incorporated into Bitcoin.

Stealth addresses seem like they give much weaker anonymity guarantees than Zcash, unless you only ever send and receive funds through stealth addresses with others who follow the same precautions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 5 hours and almost 100 comments later no one has pointed out that Zcash and Keybase share the same investors.

I am relieved that 'Keybase chose Zcash' purely on merit after an exhaustive and objective selection process, and that this potential conflict of interest is transparently disclosed in the linked adverticle - wait, they did no such thing.

Does it concern no one that this security-focused company is shilling for other (fundamentally questionable) products?

<comment><USER7> Good spot, though not surprising to me.

Worth adding here that it also appears Zcash stakeholders have been internally buying/selling their own ZEC at inflated prices on Poloniex to artificially increase both volume and the market price.

Whilst perfectly legal, it doesn't enhance a "trustworthy" reputation to me.

<comment><USER8> > Worth adding here that it also appears Zcash stakeholders have been > internally buying/selling their own ZEC at inflated prices on Poloniex to > artificially increase both volume and the market price.

I don't understand this. None of the stakeholders have even received their money yet; this is publicly verifiable.

<comment><USER7> Hypothetically, anyone could "prop-up" the crypto market for a newly launched coin by buying the first Asks from Poloniex at a deliberately inflated price and then sell back-and-forth to themselves at the same inflated price to create false volume / pricing.

You wouldn't need any ZEC to begin with.

Just to be clear, I am not specifically claiming the devs are doing this, but somebody with an interest in ZEC performing well (and money to burn to prop up the price) has been.

It's eased off now in any case, but it hasn't gained trust from a trading point of view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like Zcash. I think it's a good solution to a problem that Bitcoin did not solve, and creates a cryptocurrency more in line with the vision spelled out in A Cyperpunk's Manifesto than the previous attempts.

(Yes, I've looked at the other attempts to build a private alternative to Bitcoin, including Monero: [https://github.com/monero- project/monero/issues/1271](https://github.com/monero- project/monero/issues/1271))

<comment><USER10> Yeah, but proof that (Beyond the 10% pre-mine) more ZEC are not being secretly generated for the creators relies upon trust in a cabal of six individuals based upon a "public" exhibition of genesis involving theatrical destruction of computers (whose video was supposed to be published but I can't find?)

Even if they are 100% legitimate actors, the lack of absolute proof undermines the provenance. From my perspective, Zcash is technically a Fiat currency without the clout of a state backer.

I'm sticking to bitcoin and ethereum :)

<comment><USER11> >I'm sticking to bitcoin and ethereum

You don't trust ZCash but you trust Ethereum? The coin that's had it's network hard forked and invalidated... what 4 times now?

<comment><USER10> Actually the fork is when I diversified from only bitcoin. It gives me more confidence than the perpetual ideological wanking behind the btc size bump. I don't usually take a fundamentalist perspective, especially when it requires siding with thieves who stole enough to become an existential threat to the currency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recommend supporting Zclassic also ( [http://Zclassic.org](http://Zclassic.org) ) It's the same exact code as Zcash except there is no 20% "genius" tax for 4 years. It's the fair choice and even has the blessing of Zcash developer Zooko.

<comment><USER13> I think it's worth paying the "genius" tax. Though controversial, the tax manifests in the form of inflation and will help fund a company that can get things running and stable.

Of all the qualms I have with Zcash, I think that their mining fee is one of the cleaner ways in the ecosystem to fund altcoin development. This technology takes a lot of effort, and a lot of salary money to develop. And then you have to do marketing, PR, bizdev, etc.

re: qualms:

\- trusted setup makes me uneasy \- could have picked more than 5 people for signing party \- cryptography is really scary - lots of assumptions, lots of things that haven't really stood the test of time or the examination of experts \- equihash was a poor decision, and a confusing one given that it's pretty well understood that complex hashing functions are counterproductive (and we've seen this play out already for Zcash, things are just getting started) \- The 'slow start mining' was also a really bad idea, and I would almost suggest that it's abusive to the community. More than $100,000 of trade volume happened over Zcash at prices that are 1000x the current price of Zcash. It should have been easy to understand that this would happen.

Mostly, I would urge people not to use Zcash for situations that require real anonymity. E.g. wikileaks accepting donations, or routing around captial controls in oppressive countries. And this is because I do not believe that the cryptography will hold up. There's too much of it, it's too new, and it's too interesting (e.g. a lot of aspiring undergrads and grads are looking to make their mark on the world, and breaking Zcash would be a great way to do that). I believe that your privacy will be compromised retroactively, and not due to bugs but due to actual cryptographic breaks. And then you're back to the Bitcoin network where everyone can see everything, and you're vulnerable.

<comment><USER14> The slow start was a good way to avoid unfair distribution in the beginning phase when miner implementations were still being written, deployed, tested, debugged, ported and optimized.

In fact I would advocate for a zero-day start, where the first few hundred blocks following genesis have exactly 0 reward, coupled with an overestimated initial difficulty, so people have some less stress-full time to get set up and sort out technical problems.

The crazy initial prices are abusive to no-one except the fools who pay them.

<comment><USER13> Thinking further, you could have achieved something similar by refusing to allow coins to be traded for X weeks. E.g. no coins at all can be sold until the first 2 weeks of mining become available all at once.

It's fair-ish distribution, without the absurd trading game that followed the Zcash release.

<comment><USER15> Exactly. The coinbase could've been time-locked and only spendable after a block height.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wouldn't it make more sense to use Monero instead of ZCash?

Privacy is compulsory with Monero and also the entire platform is decentralised.

The privacy features in Zcash are optional & very slow / difficult to use -- most users will simply make non-private transactions. Also Zcash requires trust of the founders (Any "private" coin that requires trust of a third party is a fail in my mind).

</comment><comment><USER16> I think Keybase is making a mistake in choosing Zcash over Monero - <USER2> so soon after Zcash's launch. But that's okay - they'll come around soon enough. Zcash has been fantastic advertising for Monero.

</comment><comment><USER17> The biggest criticism of Zcash is the Founder's Reward. Some people say it's greedy, that they should have given away their work for free. I disagree. I think it's great that they will get paid for their work, and it also gives me confidence for the future of the coin. They have an incentive to make Zcash a long-term success. Getting paid for work done should be the default, of course. I could understand that if a billionaire ran a lemonade stand for an afternoon and steadfastly demanded payment with no free handouts, people would criticize that. But it should be expected that normal people get paid for doing real work.

<comment><USER18> The founders reward is extremely high, so high that the founders have a significant ability to manipulate the market. This is a concern in part because the founders may be _forced_ to do that - the actual implementation is with a single address, rotated periodically, which means that address is a single-point-of-failure for the whole currency in the sense that compromising it can be used to crash the price. Finally, 20% is high enough that it gives a significant advantage to 51% attackers.

<comment><USER19> The concern in that last sentence seems misplaced; there is no relation between proportion of monetary base held by an attacker, and proportion of mining power held by an attacker.

<comment><USER18> The problem is that it reduces the cost for an attacker; why do you think monetary base has anything to do with it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> [https://z.cash/blog/funding.html](https://z.cash/blog/funding.html)

ctrl-f 'founders reward'

<comment><USER21> "After the first four years the ZEC created per ten minutes will drop to 25ⓩ, but after the first four years, 100% of it goes to the miners."

Seems like a good business model and a way to fund the innovation they've created.

<comment><USER20> Why don't they just mine then?

Bitcoin worked just fine without Satoshi programming rewards for himself.

<comment><USER22> ripping off the greedy fanboys is way cheaper and quicker

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Completely unrelated to the article but boy do I like the design for Keybase. The blog is beautiful and minimal with no crap popping up on your screen asking for your email (every modern blog now seems to do this.) The colors work perfectly too. In fact, that combination of white, blue, black, and gray is very similar to what Bitcoinica originally used for their popular Bitcoin margin trading platform back in the day (and I like it as much now as I did back then - contrasts so well on every screen type.)

The home page also follows a similar pattern: just beautiful, uncluttered, no bullshit design, that gets straight to the point. Why can't more websites do this? A+++ would browse again.

</comment><comment><USER24> I have read almost all comments, and it seems like nobody has pointed out that the supposedly anonymous transactions (using z addresses) are still not working. All mining pools are warning about it. For example:

[http://zcash.flypool.org](http://zcash.flypool.org)

If anonymity is so important for people, there are already excellent solutions, Monero being one of the best, if not the best, with a strong and serious dev team.

Disclaimer: I am not a Monero dev and I own a huge total of 0.6 XMR. This is only my opinion as a software dev.

<comment><USER19> Fixed in Zcash 1.0.3. (They were always "working", despite the bugs that were recently fixed. You can see plenty of successful z-address transactions on the blockchain.)

<comment><USER15> You had a single thing with ZCash that you had to get right, and you couldn't get it working in your initial release? What an utter embarrassment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Doesn't anyone else find this post funny for talking about discovery of social graphs while the main product keybase.io offers does exactly this? I mean the entire service acts an a nice centralized graph linking users nyms across various services. Irony much?

</comment><comment><USER26> Since Zcash uses the same codebase of Bitcoin, does that mean it would be possible to later integrate it back into Bitcoin, and just transition Zcash T-addresses to regular Bitcoin addresses, and then add the Z-addresses on top of the Bitcoin addresses ecosystem?

I also wonder about how much of a risk to its own ecosystem Zcash being a private company represents. Was that really better than making it a non- profit? And won't this make it easier for law enforcement to go after Zcash as the sole culpable entity for "money laundering" and other such charges?

<comment> Ar-Curunir No, most likely not. ZCash shielded transactions have completely different structure to normal BTC ones.

<comment><USER18> Nah, they're just extra data, that could easily go in the signature fields; it's definitely possible to add Zcash functionality to Bitcoin in a backwards compatible soft-fork.

Basically you'd have a pool of "shielded" txouts that could be spent with a zcash signature, without any requirement that a particular txout be spent for a given signature. Surpisingly easy upgrade all things considered; the main blocker is Zcash's crypto is very experimental and slow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > HN users: those PM'ing me for an invitation.... in the FAQ there is a temp > code to skip the queue. We'll turn that code off in a day or two.

> use the invitation code "zcash" during signup

</comment><comment><USER28> Is there any way to mimic Zcash's z-addresses in Bitcoin?

I like the ideas behind Zcash and it solves important privacy issues, but I don't like the idea of a for profit company being the heavyweight behind Zcash.

From what I gather, Bitcoin is more of a community effort than most other altcoins, which inspires trust.

I looked up Zcash's price chart, it fell from ~$1300 at launch to ~$90 now. Ouch.

<comment><USER13> If I recall correctly, more than 500btc was traded when the price was over 100 btc per Zcash - $350,000 in trade volume at a price exceeding $70,000 per token, when the price today has fallen to about $100 per token. Max price was almost $2,000,000 per token, someone actually literally spent that much.

Perhaps the greatest example I've ever seen of tulip mania. And I'm fairly confident those were real trades, as they occurred on a public exchange where anyone with money or zcash was able to buy or sell at any time. Granted, at this point there were only dozens of people with the asset, but anyone was able to mine the currency and blocks were being found every 2.5 minutes using commodity hardware (e.g. laptops and desktops).

<comment><USER29> >Max price was almost $2,000,000 per token, someone actually literally spent that much.

No. When zcash was trading at such a price, it was less than a single zcash coin in total. So a few people were paying significant sums for very small fractions of a zcash coin, but no one payed 2,000,000 for a single coin. The price has crashed because supply has grown exponentially. What you were seeing was supply vs demand in action in an unusually obvious way.

<comment><USER13> I did not mean to suggest that a whole $2M was dropped, but someone did buy a fragment for $2M per coin.

These people buying it hopefully would have been aware of the publicly known upcoming inflation, the fact that they bought at these prices I believe is a tragedy and a black mark against Zcash.

<comment><USER30> So if I buy 0.01 BTC for $750 [1] and cause the price to "fall 99%" that will leave a black mark against Bitcoin? Perhaps the blame really lies in the exchanges who were so eager to allow trading on such a scarce asset.

[1] I realize this is not really possible because you'd have to buy the entire order book first, but in the case of ZCash the order book was empty.

<comment><USER13> The order book was not empty, as stated above there was over $350,000 in trade volume at prices greater than 100x what they were less than a week later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Slightly OT, but I realllyy wish Keybase would prioritise email validation so that it could fulfill the much needed role of general PGP key server, with the added "sum of your social identities" assurance.

<comment><USER32> And that's what I thought Keybase was until this article.

I got myself a Keybase account a while ago; is it reasonable to use it if Zcash is not something I would touch with a ten-foot pole?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Is it too late to get started with Zcash? If not would you recommend buying it or trying to mine it? Last question, would AWS be a good resource to mine it?

</comment><comment><USER34> Why not Monero? Why not Ethereum? The reasons stated aren't very consistent.

</comment><comment><USER35> How do you purchase zcash with USD?

<comment><USER36> Not an expert, but:

Kraken is an exchange that sells Zcash to USD holders (as long as you aren't in NY state!). Another option is to buy Bitcoin (e.g. from Coinbase) with USD, and then use shapeshift.io to convert your Bitcoin to Zcash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> "The sex toy shop knows you gave to UNICEF so that feels good."

</comment><comment><USER38> Consider that after by end of this month there will be 200,000 ZEC released following _every month_ with 20% going to the founder's coffers after 4 years.

Extreme inflation will continue sending prices crashing. Recall early this month prices were hovering around 2 Ferrari 458 and now it's tanked to under a 100 dollars.

If we were to assume that in 48 months X 200,000 ZEC = ~100,000,000 ZEC with 20,000,000 ZEC belonging to the Founders.

edit: why the downvotes? I'm just reporting the facts: [https://twitter.com/TommyEconomics/status/793435785097646081...](https://twitter.com/TommyEconomics/status/793435785097646081?s=09)

<comment><USER39> It's important to consider the pros and cons about the Founder's Reward with Zcash, and I appreciate you trying to start a discussion, but I just wanted to clarify that your numbers are slightly off.

20% for the next 4 years goes to the "founders" (which is not just the developers, but investors as well). But much like Bitcoin the total monetary base is fixed at 21,000,000 ZEC. And also like Bitcoin, the total mining reward is halved (roughly) every 4 years, and consequently decreases exponentially until it reaches that total reward.

Effectively, this means that the Zcash Founders Reward doles out 10% of the currency to the investors/early development team over the lifetime of the currency, and in many ways mirrors a startup vesting cycle of 4 years (minus the one year cliff). Their blog goes into more detail about the reward here: [https://z.cash/blog/continued-funding-and- transparency.html](https://z.cash/blog/continued-funding-and- transparency.html)

Personally, I think this reward distribution is a significant improvement to the "premine/ICO" antics you see in many other cryptocurrencies/tokens, even if I think it's a little high. I applaud the team for trying something new/seemingly more fair.

(Also, not affiliated with the team, just a cryptocurrency nut: [http://keybase.io/cin](http://keybase.io/cin))

<comment><USER15> The amount of perverse incentives it creates is insane. Instead of investors being forced to slowly accumulate ZEC, they are given it almost in bulk, and are in a perfect position to manipulate and short the market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm not that much into zcash, but this is cool:

[https://petertodd.org/2016/cypherpunk-desert-bus-zcash- trust...](https://petertodd.org/2016/cypherpunk-desert-bus-zcash-trusted- setup-ceremony)

<comment><USER22> At least I hope he got paid well for that idiotic tale...

<comment><USER18> Like I said in the article, I didn't get paid for my involvement other than having my expenses reimbursed.

Did you actually read it?

<comment><USER22> Of course I did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> You need a ton of space and/or processing power for the zero-knowledge transactions. The anonymity isn't free!

In practice Zcash/zcoin (different tradeoffs) are of no use to you unless you are willing to go the extra mile to hide something (criminal activities and such). There's no point in paying for the extra effort for normal transactions.

<comment><USER41> How large is the overhead in numbers? I tried to search but didn't find any clear examples.

EDIT: found some data in the ceremony report linked elsewhere in this discussion: [https://petertodd.org/2016/cypherpunk-desert-bus-zcash- trust...](https://petertodd.org/2016/cypherpunk-desert-bus-zcash-trusted- setup-ceremony#scale-and-scalability)

<comment><USER18> Sending takes a few minutes of computation on your wallet - but that's not such a big deal as it's comparable to the time it takes for block confirmations anyway.

The problem is verification of private transactions is very slow by cryptocoin standards, and verification is something that every full node and miner must do. Zcash would fail if private transactions were used in large numbers, as blocks would take too long to validate for mining to remain decentralized; Bitcoin transactions are a few orders of magnitude faster to validate, with a 4x more conservative block interval and 2x smaller blocksize, and the Bitcoin dev community has had to make heroic efforts to further optimize validation.

<comment><USER19> There are ways to significantly reduce the cost of zk proof verification by batching (that are compatible with the existing Zcash protocol without a fork).

<comment><USER18> Prove it first by actually implementing those ways and having them survive peer review; this is highly experimental crypto so it's not clear what's actually possible.

Again, I don't think it's very responsible to knowingly release design a protocol that in its current form would collapse if heavily used due to a lack of safety limits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> PM me if you are interested in invites, I have a bunch.

</comment><comment><USER43> I have ~15 invites left, in case someone needs it they can ping me at ps+hn <at> noop <dot> pw. :)

<comment><USER44> Actually, the faq in the ZCash blog post ([https://keybase.io/blog/keybase- and-zcash](https://keybase.io/blog/keybase-and-zcash)) has a way to sign up for keybase.io immediately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Some invitation codes for keybase:

[https://keybase.io/inv/81ae92fb55](https://keybase.io/inv/81ae92fb55)

[https://keybase.io/inv/1405ab98be](https://keybase.io/inv/1405ab98be)

[https://keybase.io/inv/841bcaf887](https://keybase.io/inv/841bcaf887)

[https://keybase.io/inv/1b2d6b8489](https://keybase.io/inv/1b2d6b8489)

[https://keybase.io/inv/d4d629e661](https://keybase.io/inv/d4d629e661)

[https://keybase.io/inv/aa8d6f88a7](https://keybase.io/inv/aa8d6f88a7)

[https://keybase.io/inv/1e2d324856](https://keybase.io/inv/1e2d324856)

[https://keybase.io/inv/ed26718971](https://keybase.io/inv/ed26718971)

[https://keybase.io/inv/3b60a5f56d](https://keybase.io/inv/3b60a5f56d)

[https://keybase.io/inv/c11ebfb7ac](https://keybase.io/inv/c11ebfb7ac)

Sold out.

</comment><comment><USER46> The "zaddress" is already implemented in Bitcoin in the form of a stealth address, pioneered by libbitcoin [1].

This news spurred me to delete my Keybase account. I regret ever giving a corporation that much control over my personal privacy.

[1] [https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin- explorer/wiki/Steal...](https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin- explorer/wiki/Stealth-Commands)

<comment><USER41> Care to explain why for someone who doesn't know much about the bitcoin/cryptocurrency world? I don't get what the link is supposed to tell me.

<comment><USER46> A regular Bitcoin address of the form `1LoD3JXVckEKkZh8nkSrvmQaovnGYu8fNP` is non-private, everyone knows this. Posting such an address in your public profile allows blockchain data harvesting firms to learn when your address receives BTC and from where, and to whom your address sends money to.

But there is no reason to post such an address. If Alice wants to post a fully private Bitcoin address that can't be monitored by data harvesting firms, she should post a stealth address [1]. If Bob wants to send Alice BTC, he takes Alice's stealth address and derives from it a regular Bitcoin address. No one but Bob can know what Alice's derived Bitcoin address is, because the address is derived from Bob's private data.

The libbitcoin software suite supports these stealth addresses, but because libbitcoin isn't VC backed and doesn't have the hype of moneyed interests behind it, libbitcoin wasn't good enough for Keybase. They probably never even evaluated it.

A ZCash "zaddress" is basically just a Bitcoin stealth address.

That the CEO of a privacy-focused social networking service is not in tune with this information is a huge red flag to me. As each Keybase.io profile is an implicit endorsement of Keybase and by extension Keybase's investors, I was deeply saddened and frustrated to learn the news that Keybase has decided for its entire userbase to prop up ZCash based on their faulty assumptions.

[1] [http://sx.dyne.org/stealth.html](http://sx.dyne.org/stealth.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Laid Off Developer Created Shirtweet.com in One Week As a Personal Statement - <AUTHOR> http://shirtweet.com/about.html

<comment><USER2> It sounds like a neat idea, but could you add some indication of the cost of the shirt?

</comment><comment><USER3> Blast me if this is a ploy to collect emails.</comment>


What's that? - <AUTHOR> http://spottedsun.com/videos/ <comment><USER2> I actually think it's not respectful of visitors' time to only describe your site in a video. I know, it's only 30 seconds, but that's about 25 seconds longer than it takes me to read a short text description. And if I need to find my headphones, it's not 30 seconds anymore.

What's wrong with writing, anyway?

<comment><USER3> Enthusiastically seconded. Nothing makes me hit the back button faster on a startup/app website than a mostly-empty page with a video on it. Especially when the video is just a close-up of somebody's face talking, i.e. there's nothing that requires a video to demonstrate.

<comment><USER4> I'm curious if videos really do scare people away. If you take a look at dropbox and cloudflare they do a really good job at using a video to demonstrate their product. Now taking into consideration the size of dropbox's and cloudflare's users, I'm more inclined to the idea that "videos work".

<comment><USER5> It's not that videos scare people away, but they need to be augmented. Would Dropbox convert better if they had descriptive text on their home page, or at least made the features link more visible than the one in the footer? We'll never know unless Dropbox tests it and publishes the results.

When I think of software sold to businesses, I'm reminded of the place I used to work where the president had the IT department disable the speakers on all new PC's. He didn't want employees sitting around watching videos or listening to music on company time. It may be hard to fathom for some people, but there are offices where playing videos (even demos) is frowned upon - especially in a cube farm.

If you want to make conversions, think of all the barriers between you and the sale, and start knocking them down one by one. Making your products key features readable and crawl-able for search engines is an easy one.

<comment><USER6> As someone from the affiliate space where EVERYTHING gets splittested I can tell you that videos generally own all other forms of website content when trying to get the user to do something (download, signup, buy).

>Would Dropbox convert better if they had descriptive text on their home page, or at least made the features link more visible than the one in the footer? We'll never know unless Dropbox tests it and publishes the results.

of course DB tested their homepage a ton

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> And while we're on it, make sure websites are operable by keyboard too (tab and enter, mostly). What for? Visually impaired people.

I know someone who is totally blind, has worked with MS-DOS while he could see, but got blind before Windows 3.1 even came out. Yet he works with and version of Windows, sends and reads email, searches videos on Youtube, and browses the web. That last one is becoming more and more tricky with div- onclick="location=somewhere;" (instead of a-href) and other Javascript all over the place.

Screen readers are made to read text. Flash is hard but sometimes possible, Javascript is becoming a good competitor to Flash in the sense of that it's rendering the web almost as inaccessible.

Images too are a problem of course, without alt attribute they are totally worthless to blind people.

So if you want to present something to the entire market, be sure to have either an accessible website or a mobile version, both preferably in the local language (you should hear how Dutch text to speech software reads English, sounds more like Chinese--literally). And there are about 160 million people blind around the world, even if only a tenth of that speaks English and has internet access, that are 16 million people. Nearly as much as the entire population of the Netherlands.

<comment><USER8> As with the captioning recommendation, enhancements for disabled users are also huge wins with both many other users, and, very often, search engines.

I don't know that search engines use tab order to parse fields, but they very well might and could.

I know that especially when it comes to web-based admin tools, something that:

1: Works well with keyboard navigation.

2: Works (at all) in a console-mode browser.

... is going to get a hell of a lot more interest from me than something which:

1: Doesn't readily support keyboard nav.

2: Doesn't work in a console-mode browser.

3: Requires Flash.

4: Requires some specific/minimum browser version/release.

5: Requires MSIE.

From 3 onwards, these are instant death for any enterprise tool I'm evaluating.

<comment><USER7> Very true, I would also prefer something that works even in a text based browser. I've never really 100% fit in with the user standard, being one of the first to browse the web from my mobile phone (Nokia 6230i back then) or using alternative browsers when MSIE's market share was still >90%. I've had more than enough compatibility trouble to go along with something working on only some systems.

(For example I'm currently building a website which will also support everything from high-end desktops to text-based terminals. Only disqus comments are a pain, making the page size go from 23KB to over 500KB and requiring Javascript, but the tradeoff seems worth it--trust me, I thought it trough over and over and over lol.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a huge problem! I did some work for the Assistive Technology Industry Association (ATIA) and video is very inaccessible. This is a problem not only for people with bad or impaired hearing. Imagine trying to figure out what a video was trying to demonstrate if you were blind!

W3C has created the Web Acceptability Initiative (WAI) with the goal of creating a common set of web standards so that all people can access content. Check out the WAI homepage for best practices and code examples: <http://www.w3.org/WAI/>

<comment><USER10> I have a feeling I might use the "accessible" version of a page more regularly, if it were widespread enough for people like me who don't need it to be aware of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> And even if you don't care about people who are hard of hearing, think about those of us who are at work, or in a public place, and don't have a pair of headphones available.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm not hearing impaired, but my first language is Spanish. I can read almost anything in English, but sometimes it is difficult for me to understand fast spoken English. So, if you care about international users, you also should add captions to the videos.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is actually not a rant - it's a wake up call.

</comment><comment><USER14> You, sirs and/or ladies have my thanks for bringing this up. You have my vote on this one, no questions asked.

</comment><comment><USER15> We just released an app intro video at Budgetable <http://budgetable.com> ... Adding captions didn't even cross my mind, but we'll do it.

<comment><USER16> Your site gets a no, there's not enough immediately visible copy for me to determine if the value prop is worth my time.

You will never have me as a customer unless you move the video to a non-index page and instead lead in with copy+visuals. Offer a _link_ to the idea for people who want the audiovisual explanation instead.

<comment><USER15> Hmm... I have to disagree with you here. There is a title and a subtitle above the video. Those two elements provide enough information for the user to determine if they want to watch the video. Captions would still be a plus, though.

<comment><USER16> They're your customers to lose.

Prove me wrong and A-B test it against some good textual copy. Track actual conversions.

Use these guys as inspiration without stealing their design like those boneheads from a month or two ago: <http://campfirenow.com>

<comment><USER15> And if I win, you'll sign up for Budgetable? ;)

<comment><USER16> No, but if I win, I'll revisit your site and read the actual copy and you'll get a chance at a customer.

Regardless of the outcome, _you_ win because now you have actual data to make a decision with.

For me to agree to sign up that your AB test wins, I'd have to proctor the test and at that point, you'd owe me for consulting services.

<comment><USER15> Oh, it's on

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm profoundly deaf, and wish I had thought of making this post. I've lost track of the number of times I have been put off a product because their only description is in video form.

I sometimes forgive start-ups for not captioning videos, but I think it's inexcusable when a large multinational corporation publishes a video with no captions -- especially if they pay for live captioning for employees in meetings (e.g., by using <http://www.captionfirst.com/>).

</comment><comment><USER18> And for those who have a slow connection, a video is just a big back button. (speaking from experience)

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm very confused about why this story has so many votes. spottedsun.com doesn't even resolve for me.

<comment><USER20> Can you pastebin your nslookup/dig results? Try directing it at another dns 220.127.116.11

nslookup spottedsun.com 22.214.171.124

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> At first I was annoyed with the non-descriptive title, but I clicked it anyway to see what it was. I don't know if it was intentional, but the title helps convey how useless audio is to people who can't hear.

And even as a non-hearing-impaired person, I concur with the request for subtitles and/or not using videos so much because they waste time.

</comment><comment><USER22> If a video has captions I often prefer to watch it muted. I'm not even hearing impaired. Sound is overrated. ;-)</comment>