State of Mutation Testing at Google (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub46584 <comment><USER2> This tool seems like it would encourage writing exactly the kind of tests I hate: change detectors. Tests that break every time you change the code regardless of whether the change introduced a bug or not.

Change detector tests are worse than useless because they double the time it takes to make a code change, while not providing any useful information. I already know I changed the code, I don't need a test to tell me that.

We should aspire to write tests that aren't just change detectors, but catch real bugs. Perhaps a tool like this could be useful in an inverse way, to tell you that your test is sensitive to irrelevant details and should be made more general.

<comment><USER3> Effective code tends to put a lot of functionality behind a relatively small interface, and tends to work for a long time without needing attention.

A "change detector" is exactly what you want in this situation. Does the code still fulfill the spec (tests)?

Tests that feel like they need to be changed every time the code changes are generally white box instead of black box, or the interface to the code being tested is too large.

<comment><USER4> > Effective code tends to put a lot of functionality behind a relatively small > interface

Do you have actual strategies for reducing high surface-area:volume requirements into more easily managed low surface-area:volume code or is this just wishful thinking?

Nobody likes shim layers but they (and other horizontal strata) happen for a reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel like "mutation testing" is somewhat of a misnomer, since it sounds like it's a form of testing and is e.g. complimentary to or a replacement for unit testing. Rather, it's a measure of code coverage by your test suite.

As such, it's mostly useful when you've exhausted other, easier methods of finding parts of your code you forgot to test, such as regular line, branch, etc. coverage. I think there's few projects for which that's the case, and that that more than anything "hindered" the adoption of mutation testing.

<comment><USER6> Although I'm sure I've heard the term before, I forgot what it meant. Your comment helped me put it into context as a fault injection technique.

One point the paper makes in the introduction is that "coverage alone might be misleading, as in many cases where statements are covered but their consequences not asserted upon." To satisfy profile-guided coverage (e.g., gcov), the test doesn't have to be correct or useful, it just has to execute the line or take the branch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am not up on all the fancy A.I. tech out there....but how different is this from something like go-fuzz which does fuzz testing based on genetic algorithms (if my memory serves) written by Dmitry Vyukov from Google.

Edit link: [https://github.com/dvyukov/go-fuzz](https://github.com/dvyukov/go- fuzz)

<comment><USER8> Fuzz testing is different than the kind of mutation testing being referred to here. Mutation testing is about creating 'mutant' versions of your source code and determining whether your test suite detects the mutant. It is a measure similar to code coverage, in that it is a measure for determining the effectiveness of your test suite.

For example, a mutation may be changing a '==' to '!='. Your test suite is then run over the mutated source code and the mutant is said to then be 'killed' if at least one test fails. This is repeated many times, each with a different mutation to your source code. Your test suite is then given a mutation score based on the number of mutants killed divided by the total mutants.

Of course, there are some mutations that actually produce functionally identical code to the original. This means it isn't always possible for your test suite to kill every mutant.

Because many different mutations are made, with each one resulting in your test suite being run, mutation testing can become expensive. Having only read the abstract, this looks to be about a way for determining parts of source code not worth mutating, hence reducing the amount of times your test suite needs to be run.

<comment><USER9> Thank you for the clear explanation!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's also "An Industrial Application of Mutation Testing: Lessons, Challenges, and Research Directions (2018)" by the same authors: [https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub46907](https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub46907)

</comment><comment><USER11> It's interesting that they mention lines and line coverage so much and not statement coverage. I would think that statement coverage would be a much more effective measure of what should be mutated if the metric is available for the instrumenting tool being used, otherwise it's often just going to be testing which covered lines contain uncovered statements. In other words, it's doing the coverage tool's job.

In any case, it seems like it could be a useful tool if developers know how to use it. It seems like this is ideal for catching tests which fail to actually test statements despite covering them. Like the post below mentions, it will probably result in tests that just detect change if developers are not trained on the tool and testing strategies.

</comment><comment><USER12> Go Goran!!</comment>


Walmart's Amazon Prime competitor will launch in July - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/7/7/21314767/walmart-plus-grocery-delivery-amazon-prime-membership-loyalty-program-walmart <comment><USER3> Ever since the pandemic started I've been unable to order a single thing from Walmart - it's always out of stock, pick-up only, or doesn't ship to my area code (NYC). If they want to compete with Amazon maybe they should start there.

Every time I go down to the mail room there is a pallet of Amazon boxes - <USER2> a single Walmart or Target box. Pre-pandemic you'd see a mix of all three.

</comment><comment><USER4> amazon's killer app is not prime. Its their customer service, they always make it right for the customer.

Can the same be said for walmart? I don't think so.

<comment><USER5> I've had some excellent service from Walmart and an occasional less-then- excellent Amazon service experience.

<comment><USER6> I've Never had a bad experience at the Wal-Mart cs desk, whereas every time I contact Amazon it's half an hour of pulling teeth to resolve a problem that Amazon could fix preemptively if their priorities were in the right places.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For many years I shopped once a month at the local Walmart, mostly groceries.

Now we have the coronavirus. There is no home delivery from the store. I would like to do pickup from there, but almost nothing I would buy is available for that. I would have to shop in person, and I am not going to do that.

So I buy all that food elsewhere, even though it costs more. They are losing a lot of money on me, and don't seem to care.</comment>


Infinity should be retired – Max Tegmark - <AUTHOR> http://edge.org/response-detail/25344 <comment><USER2> I feel the same way. Infinity is an amazing concept and most of mathematics would be thrown away if we stopped using it, but there does not appear to anything in the universe that is actually infinite. My gut feeling is that infinity is leading us astray in our attempts to understand the universe, but my physics knowledge is just too poor to really contribute anything worthwhile.</comment>


New Research: Semen May Actually Cure Depression in Women - <AUTHOR> http://livetheorganicdream.com/new-research-semen-may-actually-cure-depression-women/ <comment><USER2> "those women who did not use condoms showed fewer signs of depression"

The ones that didn't worry enough to use condoms didn't get depressed often. The more carefree types were having more fun. Amazing that this wasn't in the article or study if the article represents it accurately. What garbage.</comment>


3rd San Diego Hacker News Meetup is Tonight, 7:30 PM - <AUTHOR> http://acm.ucsd.edu/wiki/index.php/San_Diego_Hacker_News_Meetup?4-2#Upcoming_Meetups

<comment><USER2> Damn, I'm on my way to Fresno to see the wifes family for Easter. I'll have to catch the next one.

</comment><comment><USER3> ACK! Didn't see this until just now. How often and when's the next one?

<comment><USER3> NM, from the wiki:

(Usually the last Friday of every month - check Google Groups mailing list for update on date/time/location)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any chance a more urban location could be chosen in the future?

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a lot of us well north of downtown, so the current location is a vague approximation of a center of mass.

That being said, feel free to suggest places on the mailing list. We can put it up to a vote on Google Moderator. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'll be there, hope you don't mind meeting somebody new :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Not at all. In fact, that's the main reason we do this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Are non programmer-HN readers welcome?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'll be there!

</comment><comment><USER8> Is anyone leaving from Pacific Beach?

<comment><USER6> <http://groups.google.com/group/sd-hackernews/>

This was posted by the op for the mailing list. what part of PB do you stay?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'll try to make it - might not...

</comment><comment><USER10> Sorry to hijack the thread, but randomly anybody strong LAMP guys in San Diego looking for an actual 20 - 30hr/week job? If so drop me a line zackonvacation @ google's popular email service :)</comment>


How to Screw Up the Launch of a Multi-Million Dollar Web Property - <AUTHOR> http://www.onlinesales.co.uk/boutiques-dot-com-screw-up/

<comment><USER2> Summary: Google launches new web site, tells self not to index the site, said site is not findable by search. Oops.

<comment><USER3> Telling the Google Bot not to index the site is nearly impossible to do by mistake. Somebody added nofollow specs to the head and anchor tags, with what seems to be some inexplicable purpose in mind.

Instead, omission of robots.txt and sitemap.xml is a more appropriate reason to raise an eyebrow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> there you go. Google bought like.com and turn it into boutiques.com

the code snippet presented in the article shows a css from lkimg.com which is a domain registered under like.com.

viewing the source of <http://www.like.com/aboutus.py> shows that `BotController.py` ... var bot = "/BotController.py" ...

That is to say, re-branding must go deeper than just replacing the logo on the envelopes and website ;-)

</comment><comment><USER5> It makes me wonder just how grand a disaster Google Editions will turn out to be.

</comment><comment><USER6> They most likely did it on purpose to limit the amount of traffic.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is pretty bad.</comment>


Ask HN: Good Alternatives to One Note - <AUTHOR> I've used a variety of different softwares for my organisation systems, but they all seem to be lacking. One note seems to be the only one that works, but their sync issues are so bad that it makes editing from multiple devices painful as hell.
I have 3 main functionalities that I am searching for: 1. Allow me to organise my pages (rules out Evernote) 2. Has table functionality (rules out notion) 3. Can be used on the phone (rules out desktop-only solutions)
I've been looking for ages and have found nothing that suits.
If anyone has something that fits this description, it would be a game changer for me. <comment><USER2> I use Org. It's part of Emacs, which you may consider either a dealbreaker or a feature.

While Emacs itself does not really work on mobile (unless you run it in a terminal), there is a companion app for Android called Orgzly. Unfortunately it is quite limited. For example, it does not support tables. (Since Org files are plain text, you can view and technically edit them, but the latter is a pain.) It's good enough for taking quick notes so you don't forget them and to look at existing ones.

For syncing, I use Syncthing, which works flawlessly. Conflicts have to be resolved manually though. Orgzly also has built-in support for syncing via Dropbox. I've never used it as it involves manually pulling and pushing to the server as in a VCS rather than working in the background.

</comment><comment><USER3> Would Simplenote suit your needs? It supports markdown so it should be possible to create tables, although I did not try it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Notion has tables; is there specific table functionality you need that they don't offer?

[https://www.keepproductive.com/blog/notion- tables](https://www.keepproductive.com/blog/notion-tables)

<comment><USER5> Notion's tables are ironically too complex to use but not powerful enough to provide good functionality. It would have been better if they just had a a simple table like in Word.

It's like they tried to jam airtable into their product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would give [https://coda.io/welcome](https://coda.io/welcome) a try it should meet all the criteria that you mentioned. I use it on the daily.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've never heard of it. Looks promising! Thank you!

Edit: While the tables aren't perfect, this seems to be the best option so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You've not said what platform you primarily work with but if you use MacOS/iOS then I can highly recommend DevonTHINK.

</comment><comment><USER8> Perhaps Typora? ([https://typora.io/](https://typora.io/))

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks really pretty! However, it seems to only be available for computers (no mobile support)

<comment><USER9> You can use any Markdown editor on mobile. ia writer is a good one for both android and ios.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Private blogspot blog. You can add tables with a little HTML and CSS.

<comment><AUTHOR> How would the mobile editing support be? I edit the items in the table very frequently and this is very important. Markdown-based solutions fail for me in this regard.

<comment><USER10> There is an app. I suggest you download it and try it.

You would need to do the HTML part of the table elsewhere, but you should be able to edit contents of the table in the app.

You can edit in a browser on mobile. Some browsers are better than others and it would likely be substantially impacted by phone type and size.

I sometimes do a surprising amount of HTML in the browser of my phone. I use the Edge browser.

You can add CSS to the template and that helps a lot with tables. For example, you can add CSS that adds a border and that changes the background of every other row.

I can get you a CSS snippet for that if you want and do a little tutorial post to walk you through it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Google Docs?</comment>


A more complicated Web - <AUTHOR> https://christianheilmann.com/2019/01/15/a-more-complicated-web/ <comment><AUTHOR> This post captures so many of the thoughts I've had about how it is NOT a simple answer of "going back to self-publishing on our own websites", because the nature of running websites is no where near as simple as it was. I have continued to write on my own blogs since 2005 ... but with all the ever- present security issues - and the need to do constant updates to my servers/vms, it's hard to keep up. The siren call of simple, centralized systems that take care of all of that for you is indeed a strong call!</comment>


1947 Imperial and Chrysler Service Book – Cam Ground Piston - <AUTHOR> http://www.imperialclub.com/Repair/Lit/Master/003/cover.htm <comment><USER2> This is super neat. Interesting read, my favorite kind of random thing to find on HN

<comment><USER3> Agreed. The probability that I would ever come across this while browsing elsewhere is trivially low, and yet it was interesting enough to read through and learn a bit about piston maintenance.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was looking for something else (automotive, but not related to pistons) when I came across this. The style of illustration and prose isn't so common in modern technical writing either, so it caught my attention and made for a very enjoyable read. It's fun and lighthearted, but that doesn't get in the way of being educational.

Some further searching reveals that there is a whole series of these with accompanying slide films:

[http://www.imperialclub.com/Repair/Lit/Films/index47.htm#194...](http://www.imperialclub.com/Repair/Lit/Films/index47.htm#1947)

Imagine if Tesla made booklets and videos like these for the technology in their cars... I guess 70 years ago companies were far more open with sharing such things, and willing to spend a lot more on it too.

<comment><USER4> > I guess 70 years ago companies were far more open with sharing such things

Thanks for this post I upvoted a few of your comments. That said being a bit older and in business for many years (since college) I think it's the opposite actually. When I was 'growing up' in business you didn't share your secrets or give out any information whatever that would be helpful to your competition unless it was disinformation. So this didn't start with Steve Jobs and Apple it was pretty much status quo for all business. The internet changed that and I think at least one of the reasons was the involvement of academics who were more used to sharing what they knew.

<comment><USER5> There was a time when all electronics had detailed service manuals with discussion of theory of operation and troubleshooting checklists. Early PCs came with ROM listings. The techo-secrecy culture set in during the 90's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Modern pistons have much less contact with the cylinder wall. The part Chrysler has "cam ground" is no longer even part of the piston -- it's missing! The main job of the fit is the rings, not the piston. Right, for the "thrust" parts, they are still there and much thicker than what Chrysler was showing.

There's much more now, e.g., titanium connecting rods.

<comment><USER7> I think also the machining has become more accurate.

I am old enough to remember when it was ordinary (for 2 strokes single cylinder race engines - think of karts or motcross bikes) to mount the piston in the engine, do a few kms/laps then disassemble the piston and remove with a very fine ceramic file where the aluminium became shiny, rinse and repeat 5 to 10 times.

<comment><USER8> When I was a kid plain old automobile engine breakin was a complicated dance of not overheating the engine but not running it too cold for the first 3000 miles and multiple oil changes like one at 500 miles and another at 1500 before setting down to normal use. Of course cars only lasted 50K miles back then before rusting out or breaking down, so you spent some significant fraction of the life of the car babying it.

Modern car break in procedures are like "don't do anything ridiculous for the first 500 miles, then it'll last at least 200K miles"

That's the effect of computer controlled machining to a fraction of a ten thousandth of an inch on all parts vs merely to a thousandth or so in the old days.

<comment><USER7> >That's the effect of computer controlled machining to a fraction of a ten thousandth of an inch on all parts vs merely to a thousandth or so in the old days.

Not only, if I were to select one single reason for the increased reliability of modern engines I would select the enhancements in tribology/lubricating oils (and to a certain extent also to "better" fuel, particularly for Diesel engines).

<comment><USER6> Hate to disagree, but there are some things much better than oils, etc.

The secret is now out but long was not: Often the poor engine suffered that agonies of the damned. Why? Too much gas and water got into the oil, ruined the lubricating qualities of the oil, and made the engine wear out much faster. The worst situation was running the engine cold in cold weather. In particular there was that little device, the "choke": It's job was to flood in lots of excess gas hoping to get an explosive mixture from the cold air. Well, a lot of that gas didn't burn, got past the piston rings into the oil. Similarly for water from condensation.

The big step up was to have some exhaust flow under the intake manifold to heat the incoming fuel-air mixture to do better vaporizing the gas and need less extra gas from the choke.

What solved that was fuel injection, in various forms, throttle body, port, and cylinder. Then the pressure on the gas was high enough to get good vaporization.

Next biggie was spark timing: Usually it was far from where it should be again causing inefficient combustion and gas and water in the oil.

One of the most critical needs for lubrication was the rocker arms, e.g., where the rocker arm was pushed on by the push rod from the lifter on the camshaft. On a classic small block Chevy, I had a push rod go through rocker arm and the valve cover! We got a new, 'crate', engine via Chevy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can't say I've ever heard of a cammed piston. That was a fun read. I wonder if it just isn't used anymore because most applications now use forged aluminum and very short skirts. I haven't heard of pistons heating up non-symmetrically that would warrant that shape.

<comment><USER10> I wrote my diploma thesis in an industry research group trying to figure out the optimal (non-cylindrical) shape of the cylinder bore.

We attempted to model static stresses from mounting the cylinder head, thermal stresses, and mechanical stresses from mass forces, combustion forces and the like.

Our goal was to achieve low combustion gas blow-by, low oil ingress into the combustion chamber, yet low friction between piston and cylinder wall.

We used simulations (about three months worth IIRC) and measurements to generate data points for a continuous ersatz model of the physical phenomena, then performed multi-criteria optimisation on that model. The resulting shape was interesting, but not exactly earth-shattering. Kinda randomly warped.

This work was tremendous fun, and I learned a _lot_.

If anyone is interested (and can read German), it resulted in this dissertation: [https://books.google.de/books/about/Tribo_System_Kolbengrupp...](https://books.google.de/books/about/Tribo_System_Kolbengruppe_Zylinderlaufba.html?id=p3H0XwAACAAJ&redir_esc=y)

<comment><USER11> I see a picture of a book in that link, but no way to open it.

Do you have a couple pictures of the piston handy?

<comment><USER10> Turns out I lost all digital data of my thesis :-(

I scanned a picture from the dead-tree version: [https://imgur.com/vQLIQ1F](https://imgur.com/vQLIQ1F)

Top image is the cylinder shape without optimisation, bottom is the optimised shape.

Obviously, the contour distortion is massively exaggerated (ISTR a factor of 1000), otherwise it wouldn't have been visible; we're talking micron scale here.

<comment><USER11> Sorry to hear you lost your digital version =(

Thanks very much for the follow up!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I quite like how it explains basics physics mechanics of heat expansion and contraction - i.e. you expand the piston in hot water and you don't have to use a hammer to take out the pin...

</comment><comment><USER13> It took me a while to catch on that "mike" probably means to measure with a micrometer.

<comment><USER14> I've never actually seen it spelled out before. I've heard people use the term, and I assumed you'd say that you were going to "mic" it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sometimes I wish I had an apprenticeship in a car garage so I could learn all this cool esoterica. Eventually, this type of information will be relegated to the back of the library as combustion-engines in cars get phased out and electric motors take over...

<comment><USER16> This type of information is already largely relegated to the back of the library. I don't know a mechanic that has re-built a modern engine at this level. Reliability is so high and failure modes are probably generally more catastrophic (someone didn't change the oil) and warrant an entire engine replacement.

Plus, I'm curious if the economics work out at all anymore. Mechanic billed at $100/hour. How many hours does it take to rebuild anything to the piston level, versus the cost of a new (or used) replacement engine just dropped in place. I suspect they favor a replacement engine.

<comment><USER17> Exactly, car engine rebuilds are for hobbyists and mechanics working on very expensive or rare engines. But you are more likely to find a diesel mechanic rebuilding a 18-wheeler's engine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Immediately reminded me of the Google Chrome comic

[http://www.scottmccloud.com/googlechrome/](http://www.scottmccloud.com/googlechrome/)

</comment><comment><USER19> OpenDNS blocks this domain as a security threat, FYI

</comment><comment><USER20> "... pick up some dope on the design of pistons"

I had to look that usage up:

'Dope'

"information about a subject, especially if not generally known."

I've personally never heard that phrase in that context. I also learned that it's original meaning was thick soup. Fun book...

<comment><USER21> Meaning you've never been to [http://www.straightdope.com](http://www.straightdope.com)? Or just always wondered about the domain name?

<comment><USER20> I've never heard of that site. Good name, though.

<comment><USER21> Good site, too; you should pay them a visit.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Push Systems vs Pull Systems - <AUTHOR> http://adam.blog.heroku.com/past/2009/3/16/push_systems_vs_pull_systems/ <comment><USER2> My undergrad thesis, written four years ago, was a taxonomy of anti-spam systems. Since then, every anti-spam system that I've seen both (1) falls neatly within one of my categories and (2) fails to account for the problems I identified in that category.

This idea is an authentication-based system, because it relies on identifying the message sender in order to prevent spam. Among other things, it fails to account for identity theft.

For reference, here is my thesis: <http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~cduan/download/?file=thesis.pdf>

<comment><USER3> It is an interesting thesis, but some of your points, such as the one that people with spam filters gets as much spam as those without, seem a little dated. Since I switched to GMail I have gotten practically no spam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think it is worth noting this form: <http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt>

And in short:

(X) users of email will not put up with it

(X) requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once

(X) many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers

specifically, your plan fails to account for:

(X) extreme profitability of spam

(X) joe jobs and/or identity theft

(X) extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers

(X) dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves

(X) outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

(X) whitelists suck

I would like to conclude that this is _not_ some snarky elitist comment to this insightful blog post. I'm simply stating that spam is a very old problem, and _many_ people have spent a lot of time trying to stop it. This form exists as a reminder that many of these options have been thought up before, tried, and found to fail. We've learned from some of our mistakes :)

<comment><USER5> Just because spam is an "old" problem doesn't mean it's not solvable. For example, if someone were to build a working prototype or something that demonstrates to advertisers that a pull method actually works _better_ for generating sales/ interest/ revenue than spam, companies might be more willing to invest in infrastructure conducive to pull.

Spam is "profitable" because of the low cost of spamming a bunch of random people at once. I think the article is making the point that there are alternative low-cost solutions which can be targeted more precisely to an audience that is actually interested in the source of the "spam," thus making it much less annoying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> We already have this: Twitter DM

</comment><comment><USER7> This is promising. Probably the best technical solution to spam I've heard. Twitter + PGP + Good UI could work ....

<comment><USER8> You don't want the security PGP provides. You probably want a different one: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging>

"The primary motivation behind the protocol was providing deniability for the conversation participants while keeping conversations confidential, like a private conversation in real life, or off the record in journalism sourcing. This is in contrast with the majority of cryptography tools which resemble more a signed writing on paper, which can be later used as a record to demonstrate the communication event, the participants, and the topic of communication. In most cases people using ordinary cryptography software are not aware of this and might be better served by OTR tools instead. The initial introductory paper was named "Off-the-Record Communication, or, Why Not To Use PGP"."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If nothing else this is an interesting view of the problem. However, changing the vast sea of legacy systems based on the crusty SMTP protocol is a nightmarishly large task. Lately I've been enjoying things like Twitter which are not bound to the old push methods of yore. :)</comment>


Charlie O'Donnel: If you don't lead, you're not a VC - <AUTHOR> http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/blog/2014/10/22/not-all-startup-and-venture-experience-is-equal-getoffmylawn.html

<comment><USER2> Could not agree more that there is way too much hype around panel speakers and such. Especially in smaller, not well-known events where they couldn't get an actual qualified speaker.

I experienced this in the college town where I started my company. They would take whoever the most qualified person is and give them a panel role or a speaking role. For example, you'd have a partner at a law firm giving startups product advice, just because he happened to be the only regarded person they could get.

Kudos to the poster. Only critique I have is that I misread the title to mean "If your VC firm doesn't lead rounds, you aren't a VC". Might be better to clarify.</comment>


Bitcoin competitor - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2013/12/bitcoin

<comment><USER2> This is not a competitor. Is is centralized.

<comment><USER3> This is not serious analysis. It is The Economist.

Let's say I have changed my opinion on that particular publication since subscribing a few years ago.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What products or services do you wish existed for your startup? - <AUTHOR> What products or services (software or not) do you wish existed for your startup?<p>I'm taking 6 months off and looking for projects to work on (most of my experience is in B2B software, so ideally would work on a project in that space). Any ideas like "I wish someone produced X or Y" would be helpful! <comment><USER2> Something to simplify FTP.

When you partner with a business in b2b most data is delivered through sftp channels.

Make a tool that vastly simplifies that. Be it onboarding, offboarding, alerting, emailing, the works.

<comment><AUTHOR> How is this different than file sharing (e.g., Dropbox)?

<comment><USER3> Based on own experience, there are a lot of systems out there that will only injest certain kinds of data via an FTP drop off. They won't change or update their systems, but everyone who wants better visibility to the data they're dropping into the ftp system will have to write something to cover that.

So, you'd probably need to build both halves of the FTP chain, but each would still need to deliver the value add if only half of the new system was being used.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting... would you mind giving me an example of the type of data you are referring to? Or perhaps an example use case / real world example?

<comment><USER3> Real world example: uploading product, inventory and pricing data to ChannelAdvisor for processing and then republishing out to multiple e-commerce platforms (Amazon, Jet, Rakuten, etc). CA is a big complex powerful system, and my team was uploading FTP files every few minutes. We had the same kind of issues that E2E email delivery and receipt testing would be important for. In our case, we needed to know more about how many of those files were being read, injested, etc. There were dependent processes that could only be triggered if the data had made it into the system. We relied on process scheduling intervals to get close, but knowing more about the state of the ftp pickup itself could've improved yields to what we were trying to do.

<comment><USER4> What does it take for CA to modernise their intake? As a customer, you should really them to change, rather than settle for a band aid around their drawbacks.

<comment><USER3> Big public SaaS company... they're not going to change on anything but their own roadmap schedule. They have competitors, and we looked at them, but we had at least two requirements that the newer, smaller, fresher competitors couldn't provide, and we couldn't do without.

I'm not involved in this project anymore, so it's not a current conundrum for me, but we had this issue a few quarters ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A user gateway. I need a product that can help me process user registration, login, session and other user identity logic. Than I can add my own user experiences using programming languages. The present user processing tools are too complicated and makes non sense.

<comment><USER6> Like this? (Open source) [https://www.keycloak.org/](https://www.keycloak.org/)

<comment><USER5> seems great, but how to use it in other programming language? How to add my backend logic?

<comment><USER7> Keycloak is an identity/authentication provider. Your app would leverage it using OpenID Connect (OAuth 2). Keycloak would handle the heavy lifting related to identity management, registration, password changes, authentication, etc. Your app would handle everything else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Horizontizally scalable RDBMS that can grow by adding commodity hardware and storage and can be queries with ANSI SQL. And MIT/BSD licensed.

(Not a Six month project, I know....)

<comment><USER2> cockroachdb

<comment><USER9> I would absolutely second CockroachDB here, though it's not BSD or MIT licensed. I'm not sure why that is a reasonable thing to want, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think one of the main issues in startups is building cross-platform products as quickly as possible, so I think this is why some companies like Google work on some new technologies/methodologies like Kotlin

But there's a big issue, most of the times founders are not programmers and looking for some codeless solutions

And I think there're not any countable solutions in the market. The somewhat countable solution that exists is Bubble.io but even Bubble has some limitations and even issues but has a very good UI interface and logic behind

I decided when our startup officially launched for our next startups and projects we build an invaluable solution and I think I have the answer in mind

</comment><comment><USER11> Mentorship after a successful Kickstarter.

<comment><USER4> I think there's plenty needed to get to a fully funded Kickstarter too

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> A service that hooks into Stripe or whatever and sends a nice "welcome / swag" package to the address of whoever just signed up.

It should take care of ordering and stocking t-shirts, mugs etc. with my design and then shipping it.

</comment><comment><USER13> A better Scrum Board and Issuer tracker than Jira

<comment><USER14> To be fair, as far as I can tell Jira's Scrum Board is pretty good (I only test drove it, though). It gets a lot of stuff right. It's main problem is that it's connected to Jira. There appears to be a lot of baggage there. If I were to do this (and I've been tempted), I would make the UI pretty similar to Jira's and remove most of the complexity underneath. Of course the downside to this is that the complexity underneath is there for a reason: People who are not programmers want a whole bunch of weird stuff. However, I think there may be a small market for a programmer focused Scrum board that has basic reporting capabilities (which Trello, unfortunately lacks: Screenfull is quite good, but necessarily fiddly). Probably would fit into a 6 month project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A product that finds me the best deal for my customized services, for example servers, emails, hardwares, etc.

<comment><USER16> This takes up so much of my time as a founder... trying to determine where I should be hosting, what technologies (VPS, Serverless, SQL vs NoSQL, Azure vs AWS, etc) I should be using, etc. If I'm paying $20/mo to DigitalOcean would the bill be cheaper at Amazon? Would their extra technologies make me more effective? Does it even matter? Why don't vendors have a list saying "if you need this, use that" for all their horribly named services that all overlap themselves?

Don't get me started on email hosting. I don't even know what's possible in the email world so I'm 100% sure I'm overpaying but I don't have the time to figure it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A financial modelling tool that also has API access for booking revenue.

<comment><USER18> +1

Running an e-commerce store, would definitely pay for something that could help me track margins on my products, when I break even, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Virtual" scrum master

<comment><USER20> Could you expand on this?

I recently took over scrum master role and I've built my own JIRA visualisation to help me (and the team) during standups that basically highlights progress-over-time (rather than JIRA's 'just now'). It basically helps us to compare each day against yesterday to see trends.

It also does some status magic by looking at story point progression, time logged and so on to highlight tickets that "should" have progress but doesn't (so that we can converse about it).

It also helps me specifically by calculating story points per day / per person etc for the next sprints, how much to add etc.

I figured I could even add some slack bot to send messages automatically about e.g. "tickets in trouble" to further remove some manual work.

Rambling on here but, does it sound anything at all to what you're looking for?</comment></comment>


Free markets killed capitalism - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2014/06/29/free_markets_killed_capitalism_ayn_rand_ronald_reagan_wal_mart_amazon_and_the_1_percents_sick_triumph_over_us_all/

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a lot of pre-19th century historical background here. To cut straight to the contemporary stuff, start at the question "Okay. How does that industry look now?"

> "we are having all of these discussions in America about inequality. > Inequality in wealth. Inequality in voice. And yet no one's looking at one > of the main sources of that inequality, which was the overthrow of antitrust > in 1981 by the Reagan Administration."

<comment><USER2> This coming from an article that uses the beer market to try and justify their leftish wing nonsense, despite the booming craft-beer / micro-brew movement going on around us. Color me unimpressed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I find the commentary here rather odd. Most of you have colored this as some kind of left wing ranting but this stuff is the core of Adam Smith's philosophy. When he talked about a "Free Market" the freedom he was talking about was the freedom to enter or exit the market. These issues about people not being able to farm without the say-so of a large purchasing corporation goes right to the core of that freedom. That's as anti-free-market as it gets.

How you can call people asking for an actually free market "leftist" is kinda weird to me.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sigh. Ideologues drinking and re-drinking their own bathwater. The thesis of this article is nearly opposite of the truth. Capitalism -- the kind we have evolved (call it socio-crony-capitalism) -- has badly wounded free markets.

Here's at least a bit of an antidote: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Vw6uF2LdZw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Vw6uF2LdZw)

</comment><comment><USER5> The Boston Tea Party was a rebellion against the way in which tea was to be distributed. The Tea Act (whatever it was called) set up a new system for distribution in which the East India company designated specific people at each port to receive their tea and sell it. This replaced an auction system. In Boston, they chose Thomas Hutchinson's sons, the governor who was already reviled by the public. So it was less about East India's monopoly and more about the favors it received from the British government which allowed it to maintain monopoly status. His point really holds no water.

Worse, he brushes aside the completely valid point about how the East India Company's monopoly was granted by the government.

> And they actually understand that you have to regulate the system to get > competition.

What about all of the monopolies that have been created by regulation? The competition that has been destroyed? That _must_ be factored in before making the decision that we need more regulation to get competition. We must try to see the unseen consequences. For each example he provides of a lack-of- regulation-created monopoly (And seriously, toothpaste? There are plenty of brands besides those two.), you can find a government created monopoly.

</comment><comment><USER2> _And they actually understand that you have to regulate the system to get competition._

Talk about your gob-smacking statements! That's right up there with " _War is peace_ ", " _Freedom is slavery_ " and " _Ignorance is strength_ ".

Oh well, Oceania is our ally, Oceania has always been our ally...

<comment><USER3> The father of the Free Market economy agrees with them - Adam Smith hated monopolies and he favoured (limited) government regulation.</comment></comment>


I Got Out of Tech and Still Make a Decent Living - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@p0larboy/how-i-got-out-of-tech-and-still-make-a-decent-living-e76a6059c7fc <comment><USER2> I was really hoping for some explanation of how this person got out of tech and still makes money, but the only information they gave was "I have a little bit of savings, and some mysterious secret project I started is making 1/3 of my salary, so I quit my job". This was a thoroughly disappointing article. They don't say what their side project was, even vaguely, and they don't seem to be making all that much money either, contrary to the headline.

<comment><USER3> ... and he's still in tech apparently, just not working for someone else</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you use to generate process, UML diagrams, etc.? - <AUTHOR> Can you recommend a one size fits all tool? <comment><USER2> I would recommend pen & paper (or whiteboard) first. Once you know exactly what you want to draw, it becomes much simpler to actually draw it (e.g. in Gliffy, or Lucidchart, or PPT or whatever)

There are tools like e.g. [https://www.websequencediagrams.com/](https://www.websequencediagrams.com/) that make drawing some diagrams drastically faster & cleaner, but the general rule I observed is that you need to first focus on what you want to say, have that really clear, and then actually drawing it will be fairly effortless. But if you try to make up the diagram as you go using something like Gliffy, it can be really painful.

</comment><comment><USER3> If your are asking about drawing instead of generating: I often use draw.io as a pretty convenient tool.</comment>


How I got $12k in book preorders in 1 month - <AUTHOR> http://yongfook.com/how-i-got-12k-in-book-preorders-in-1-month.html

<comment><USER2> > If you want to buy the book... too late! Preorders are now closed

What the hell?

I'd be interested to see a preview or something. I'm sure I could learn a thing or two about marketing, but I guess I'm too late... oh well.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is an intro chapter and lots of content in the links referenced in the article, not to mention the slide (posted here and elsewhere).

You _will_ be able to buy it once it arrives in April (you can add your email to the list for updates).

[http://www.slideshare.net/yongfook/growth- hacking-101-your-f...](http://www.slideshare.net/yongfook/growth- hacking-101-your-first-500000-users)

[http://www.growthhackinghandbook.com/intro_chapter.html](http://www.growthhackinghandbook.com/intro_chapter.html)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What next-gen tech is experiencing the 'Trough of Disillusionment'? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Cryptocurrency, VR, chat bots, smart home, virtual assistants, mobile wallets, tablets. All just my opinion, of course.</comment>


Hunch Relaunches as Internet Personalization Service - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hunch_internet_personalization_service.php

<comment><USER2> Pretty interesting stuff.. Personally I wasn't a big fan of recommenders that rely on explicit interaction with the end users simply because it may be too much work for them. Hunch, on the other hand seems to frame questions in a much more entertaining manner, I could see my colleagues having fun while answering questions, and even after 20, they went ahead and answered a few more. The whole process definitely makes me think again about how to go about approaching recommender systems...</comment>


In Search of Chinese Science (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/in-search-of-chinese-science <comment><USER2> Most of what we understand as science has occurred within the last couple hundred years which is is a tiny interval out of the period that Homo Sapiens alone has been on the planet. Asking why science happened mostly over here, but not over there, seems pointlessly akin to asking, why did the column of effervescence start in this spot on the champagne glass, and not this other spot over here.

<comment><USER3> > Asking why science happened mostly over here, but not over there, seems > pointlessly akin to asking, why did the column of effervescence start in > this spot on the champagne glass, and not this other spot over here.

But that question is both interesting and significant. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleation) for the phenomenon, and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superheating](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superheating) for an immediate consequence. In the other direction, and with less physically threatening consequences, we get [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercooling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercooling)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Needham's Science and Civilization in China volumes are a fascinating resource. Particularly interesting, and somewhat inexplicable, is that China was poised on the verge of an industrial revolution during the Song dynasty, in the 12th century. Steel production reached levels not surpassed until the English and American mills ramped up in the 19th century. The Grand Canal was possibly the greatest transportation project ever completed, before the invention of railroads. The banking system used by Song merchants may have been the most complex before the modern era.

Much of this progress was destroyed by the combination of the Mongol conquest and the subsequent wave of rebellions that unseated them and brought about the Ming dynasty. It's possibly the most destructive series of wars in history.

</comment><comment><USER5> Very interesting piece (and serendipitous for me since I was reading _The Man Who Loved China_ [very well-written bio, btw]).

"Thus Joseph Needham acquired what administrators at lonely outposts in the British Empire used to call a 'sleeping dictionary.' "

It has often been commented that one of the fastest ways to learn a new language is to have a partner bilingual (or even better, monolingual) in that language; however, I had never heard of this interesting term before!

As for Needham's Question: Many, _many_ pages have been written on this topic. As is briefly touched upon in the article the problem of moving from empirical to "modern" science is not unique to China. Similar comments have been made made on how the Babylonian math (that survives) is a list of algorithms to (sometimes surprisingly complicated) mathematical problem instances and not an attempt at general theory, cf. to be compared to the Greek advancements in geometry.

As it's stressed in the article cultural factors are often cited as the cause. Sayings similar to the Japanese proverb "A nail that sticks out will be hammered" ([http://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-about-the-Japanese- pr...](http://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-about-the-Japanese-proverb-The- nail-that-sticks-out-shall-be-hammered-down)) are commonly used in Middle East and Asia. There's a pervasive culture of not standing out both because it's found to be tasteless but also because it may bring danger to oneself (and to the family).

And it's not a question about geographical location, i.e being in the East, either, as is demonstrated by the examples of prominent outlier ports given in the article:

"Wesson put forward the late Roman and Byzantine empires as instances. He calls the latter "exceptionally uncreative," and points out that the Byzantine trading port of Galata, controlled by the Genoese, was by the end of the fourteenth century producing seven times as much revenue as Constantinople, the imperial capital. The parallel with Chinese treaty ports like Hong Kong is hard to miss."

However, if this is the most satisfactory answer then we have the updated Needham Question: Why did such a culture develop in these societies?

<comment><USER6> The creation of science depended on a large number of random factors, from Judeic monotheism (or something like it) to the disasters of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, and even (plausibly) the English Civil War and its aftermath. Those random accidents--including the founding of universities in the late Middle Ages--created a set of conditions where people with the brains to create science were given access to institutions that let them think and investigate at the same time when they had both the social freedom and the technological capacity to publish their work, and the freedom to engage in institutional innovation to create things like the Royal Society, whose founding should be considered the final act in the birth of modern science: once it existed, it would be extremely hard _not_ to get something like science going.

So on this view, the reason why science happened here and not there was the same reason why hominids with the capacity for general, tool-using, representational intelligence and language happened in Africa and not the Americas: such developments depend on a confluence of multiple unlikely factors and as such are very unlikely to happen at all, much less multiple times. If science hadn't been created in Western Europe in the 1600's it might never have happened. It only looks inevitable because it did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The book "Objectivity [0]" has many clues related to this topic. The history of science is closely tied with the history of how our sense of objectivity has been honed and culminated. Today, we take objectivity for granted, and the subject-object distinction is baked into English, also the Lingua franca of science.

\--

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/Objectivity-Lorraine-J- Daston/dp/18909...](http://www.amazon.com/Objectivity-Lorraine-J- Daston/dp/189095179X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1441744887&sr=8-1&keywords=objectivity)</comment>


The Tragedy of Toms Shoes - <AUTHOR> http://thepublicqueue.com/2012/the-tragedy-of-toms-shoes/

<comment><USER2> I wish this article had any actual data to back up it's claims. Rather what I see is a bunch of moral anecdotes (not even anecdotes about economic/social effects of these actions).

The author claims that it is morally wrong to spend more flying to give charity then you spend on the charity itself.

Then claims it is morally wrong to give handouts (which somewhat complicates the pervious moral belief, since you shouldn't give handouts what does it matter if potential handouts are wasted flying?)

Then claims it is morally wrong to make a profit attempting to do good.

And finally that it is morally wrong to have consumerism masking as charity (despite the fact that the author claims that may forms of charity are morally bankrupt anyway).

I am absolutely aware that there are many cases of 'charity' that have very negative consequences. But I don't actually care about 'morality' at all, what I care about is measuring positive or negative consequences. I'll even take a qualitative anecdote (ie "here's a story of how this person's life became worse because of Tom's shoes"). After all not all experiences fit nicely into a spreadsheet.

Reasoning through moral appeal only makes any sense at all if everyone shares your same moral system as a basis. For example it is legitimate to make moral arguments to members of a religious group you belong to that all share the same moral beliefs and assumptions, that's in part what theology is.

There is absolutely no substance to this piece other than the author espousing their moral system, which, at least from the information presented, don't sound any more founded on reality that moral beliefs of purchases of Tom's shoes.

<comment><USER3> While we're shooting down this article, I'd like to jump in to say that this article doesn't match what I consider to be hn material. I don't really see what it has to do with technology, coding, or even social change related to tech.

It's a demonstration of precisely what Rob Malda described to the Washington Post on Aug. 7 when he said that HN was getting too big.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Public service announcement before reading my comment: Do not Google "Guinea worm." Do not Google "Guinea worm." Do not Google "Guinea worm."

If given the alternative between two courses of action, one of which puts shoes on peoples' feet through "imperialism" and one of which results in them getting Guinea worm, morally serious individuals should not have _one iota_ of doubt as to which is the correct course of action.

<comment><USER5> I wholeheartedly support your sentiment - we should not avoid trying to solve really bad problems because the solution causes some smaller problems.

However, looking through the wikipedia page on guinea worm [1] it seems that people are infected by drinking contaminated water and most of the prevention revolves around filtering water. Its true that part of the worms lifecycle involves infected people stepping in drinking water, but owning shoes is unlikely to prevent that.

[1] - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinea_worm](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinea_worm)

<comment><USER4> Sorry, seems I fail my years-ago parasitology bio lesson. I mentally confused Guinea worm and hookworm. You don't want either, shoes prevent against #2 only.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Toms Shoes are terrible quality. I do not suggest buying them. It took some time for me to admit to myself that I was tricked by a sly marketing campaign.

The founder Blake Mycoskie also got caught partnering up with the American group Focus On the Family which sponsors all sorts of anti-gay legislation in Africa. He said that he didn't know all of the awful things they do, which I find really hard to believe.

People like a story that let's them shop and make them feel like they are making a difference in the world.

I read his book, Start Something That Matters, and found it to be full of bullshit marketing speak.

[http://jezebel.com/5819435/why-is-toms-partnering-with-an- an...](http://jezebel.com/5819435/why-is-toms-partnering-with-an-anti+gay- anti+choice-group)

Edit: Just to expand a bit. They have a term called "One-for-One" which I absolutely hate. It basically says that if you buy a pair of shoes, a pair of shoes will be given to a kid in need. The problem with it is that these shoes are made for a couple of dollars. They make it so you perceive that they are spending $50 on the pair of shoes that they give to the child. When in fact these shoes are being made for a few dollars. Seriously. Just check them out on Alibaba. They are the exact same things, just minus the Toms logo. If they really wanted to make a difference they could give 9 or 10 pairs of shoes away for each pair of shoes you buy. This is a for-profit business, and I don't have a problem with that, what I do have a problem is their sleezy marketing. They are shameless.

[http://alibaba.com/countrysearch/AR/espadrilles.html](http://alibaba.com/countrysearch/AR/espadrilles.html)

<comment><USER7> I'm going to have to call bullshit on this. Many companies that we all shop from regularly have huge, ridiculous markups that can be justified in only one way: we are willing to pay the price asked. By doing the good deed of donating _just_ one measly pair of $2 marginal cost shoes to a child in need they are somehow misleading you with clever marketing? Don't get me wrong, I totally agree it is a marketing play, otherwise it would be operated as a non-profit.

Had they never offered up free shoes, this article wouldn't have been written and you wouldn't be vilifying them. Nike has huge profit margins, as does Apple and just about every cosmetic brand you know of, and yet where is the disdain for their greedy tactics? Oh wait, they never offered to give anything away so let's give them a pass.

<comment><USER8> This doesn't negate the fact that Toms makes a shitty product that fall apart easily, especially in the 3rd world.

Have they never offered free shoes we wouldn't be talking about them. They make it seem like they are giving away a pair of shoes worth $50, when they are really just spending a couple of dollars on a marketing expense. I bet they pass the cost of giving away a "free" pair of shoes onto their customer.

I can't speak for OP, but I have no disdain for Apple or Nike in terms of their markup because they are not masquerading as some sort of quasi-charity that is supposedly helping people in need. Also, they make good products.

<comment><USER7> _This doesn 't negate the fact that Toms makes a shitty product that fall apart easily, especially in the 3rd world._

This actually isn't a fact, it's an opinion. After all, what makes something a "shitty product?" If we are measuring value based solely on build quality, I have to tell you that most designer shirts you pay $70+ for in the mall fail this test, while polyester shirts that go for $14.99 at Wal-Mart will probably last you most of your adult life. While we're at it, try sprinkling a few drops of water on your MacBook keyboard then take it to your local Apple store and see how much they stand by their build quality when it is determined that you will need a new logic board in your $1400 computer.

Quality is a subjective matter. Who can say that somebody who feels good about their purchase of some horribly made shoes shouldn't if they like the way look and the way those shoes make them feel when they take them out of the box and put them on?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When TOMS first came out, I loved the idea. But now that I have lived in a developing country for the past two years, I've realized the damage something like this can cause.

One of the biggest issues is the displacement of local business. There are much better ways to empower and provide aid to the poor.

Also, I don't know if TOMS does shoe drops in SE Asia, but in Cambodia I have been apart and seen endless groups give families/kids shoes only to see the same kids walking around without shoes the next day. Here most of these aid gifts end up at the local market.

<comment><USER10> I don't believe the displacement of local business idea. Let's say Toms didn't shoe drop. Fast forward ten years. How is the local, artisanal shoe maker going to compete with the chinese shoes that are now in the market? By sending shoes in to these locations it is equally acting as a signal that this is not a market worth trying to capture and their best efforts are spent entrepreneurially in other directions.

<comment><USER11> I also find the entire idea disingenuous. Do these "artisan shoe makers" actually exist? Or is the author just creating a crappy straw man?

If they do exist, why haven't the poor people in their area purchased their wares? It's not like TOMS is giving shoes out to people who have them. They're probably not wearing them because it's not economically feasible. So, the author thinks that the vast majority of the population in their area should be shoeless so that one person can keep a probably struggling business afloat? Makes no sense.

Even further, it seems having shoes would lead to positive economic effects. The recipients will probably be able walk further, stay healthier, and generally lead better lives. That seems like a longer term net positive than someone's small shoe shop that may or may not exist and may or may not have actually been impacted by this.

<comment><USER6> Yes. Toms did not come up with the designs for their original shoes. They are called espadrilles and are a Latin American tradition. He got the idea when he was on vacation in Argentina I believe.

These shoes are made in Argentina, for example. [http://www.paezshoes.com](http://www.paezshoes.com)

<comment><USER11> I realize that alpargatas and espadrilles are a thing (I own some higher end ones myself! :)). I meant are these "artisan shoe makers" actually in the communities where they're sending shoes and are being actively hurt by their actions. I believe the answer is no, but I'm definitely open to being proven wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I work at a social enterprise in Melbourne, Australia, and our model works in a similar way to TOMS. So I really appreciated a couple of the points made here, particularly regarding how it impacts local industries. Our SE constructs water/food/hygiene aid projects and programmes, so it probably doesn't apply directly to us, but I'll look into it further just in case.

Social enterprise is a relatively new concept so its understandable that not everybody has got a full grasp on it. And there are others who have got a good grasp on it, and don't like it, and that's fine too. But let me emphasise one point which underpins SE for those who haven't heard it before:

The commercial success of a social enterprise directly controls the amount of the funding they can give. A lot of people criticise that they use the banner of charity to make a whole lot of money - which is half true. They inform consumers that a portion of what they pay for that product will help in some social cause, hopefully ethically, and if that brings about more sales, then great - that's more funding available.

If you have five dollars to give, then please give it to a charity! Never be under the impression that you have to buy these products because it is the only/most efficient way to help the world. It isn't. Your five dollars will go much further in the hands of a charity, and every social enterprise should be transparent about that. However, in the example of my social enterprise, the other fifty dollars you spend a week on food/sanitary products/bottled water (if you're a bottled water buyer) - we give you the option of having part of that additional $50 go to projects also.

Please fire any questions you might have about social enterprise my way :)

</comment><comment><USER13> Was just reading for a good two hours about TOMS and then you post this and.... How did you know?!?!?!

The story is a bit silly for me in that it is shooting down a company for being imperfect when the company isnt trying to be the 100% perfect cure-all mentioned in the article. Corps helping third world countries is a GOOD thing - I see TOMS as a nice, fuzzy-feeling-in-your-stomach addition to the relatively large amount of money US citizens donate to charities around the world. A person wishing to be an agent of change can either fight the hard battle and start educating (or sometimes just annoying) people in to donating MORE money, or they can design some ugly shoes that cleverly coerce said US Citzens into giving a few more bucks to people that really need it.

Tom (if thats the name of the guy who made TOMS), could've just done what the author is suggesting to her readers and donate a large chunk of his meager sum of money after college, and then he would've contributed about twenty dollars and fifty cents to suffering children instead of being a catalyst for millions of dollars of aide through his company TOMS.

</comment><comment><USER14> Ever since I learned that TOMS (the store) and TOMS Shoes (the charity) were 100% separate I started to feel a weird vibe from the company.

I have no problem with a for-profit having a separate charitable entity. But they clearly make it seem as if they are all one giant non-profit org.

Add that to the fact that they make absolutely terrible shoes. The copycat shoes that Keds make are much better and about 1/3 of the price.

<comment><USER12> This is a common model, and in my experience there's a couple of common reasons:

\- Taxation laws haven't quite caught up to social enterprise. Social enterprises are set up this way to enable the charitable entity to be tax- exempt (the rest of the business is not). I'm not sure of the ins-and-outs, but I believe it allows tax breaks on the donations from the enterprise entity to the charitable one. In short, it makes the whole thing more efficient.

\- Most of a social enterprise runs like a traditional company, and you generally want a managing director at the helm. However I don't think it's a good idea to have the same person creating the funding and distributing the funding. In my SE, the charitable trust is managed by an entirely unpaid board, which encourages unbiased distribution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Charity (or "development" as they call it themselves) is a complex issue. Is it right to flight westerners to poor countries? What's the right form of aid? What works, what doesn't work...

Even if you go to a area of poverty you have ethical dilemmas, Should I give to this beggar? If yes, then will that just encouarge more beggars? If no, this person standing in front of me will go without...

</comment><comment><USER16> These are all great points. Rather than put shoes on some kid's feet, why not fix the U.S. foreign policy that is leading to some other kid losing his shoes tomorrow? Trying to fix disastrous economic policy by mailing shoes seems really short sighted.

<comment><USER4> Supposing that one believes that U.S. foreign policy is the primary cause of people not having shoes [+], the relevant question would be "Does putting shoes on some kid's feet make it _more_ difficult to change U.S. foreign policy?" If yes, then one could sensibly go to that child and say "Sorry kid, you're going to get Guinea worm, but it is in the service of preventing more Guinea worm in the future." If not, then there is no competition between attempting to fix U.S. foreign policy tomorrow but putting shoes on that kid's feet today. Which is great, because we _profoundly_ don't want that kid to contract Guinea worm.

Is there a mechanism by which US decisionmakers become more hostile to your preferred policy if we increase the number of shoes in the world? If so, can you identify which decisionmakers those are and, let's say for a minimum, how they measure the number of extant shoes as their KPI for "must increase the extent of our damaging policies?" How sensitive to that KPI are they? Can we maybe get a thousand shoes without them tightening the screws? How about a million? Where is the red line where "one more shoe causes unnamed policymaker to adopt my disfavored policy?" If we can find that red line, that would be _great_ , because we should produce shoes right up to it.

\+ I tend to think that the reason people do not have shoes is that Mk 1 humans are not born equipped with shoes and that shoes do not exist in the state of nature. The state of "I am a kid, I have no shoes, WTF" predates the existence of the US, imperialism/capitalism/etc, by thousands of years.

(The newfangled innovation from capitalism isn't lack-of-shoes-for-poor- people, it is presence-of-shoes-for-some-poor-people. That's not as optimal as presence-of-shoes-for-all-poor-people but I have not heard a convincing rationale on why abandoning capitalism gets us that transition.)</comment></comment>


Iran's Coronavirus Problem Is a Lot Worse Than Its Government Admits - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/irans-coronavirus-problem-lot-worse-it-seems/607663/ <comment><USER2> "The U.S. Isn't Ready for What's About to Happen"

[https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/us-isnt- re...](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/us-isnt-ready-whats- about-happen/607636/)

The Atlantic lost it

<comment><USER3> What in either of these articles is wrong, or shows that The Atlantic has "lost it"?</comment></comment>


Twitter launching photo service - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/30/twitter-is-launching-its-own-photosharing-service/

<comment><USER2> This would have been a savvy move from Twitter about say, 4 years ago when it was clear people were going to be sharing a lot of images.

As regards developers, their message is to not build "client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience". However, the mainstream Twitter client experience may at any time be expanded to include whatever you're doing already. That's always a danger when building on someone else's API like this, but the 'inflection point' comes when a company actually starts replacing 3rd party developers' tools with official products.

That should help developers decide what to do next... In my case, it's more clear that I don't want to have anything to do with the Twitter API.

<comment><USER3> Sounds about right. Twitter seems happy to be one of the best ways to add a social component to otherwise standalone applications, but doesn't seem to care at all about facilitating applications that do nothing but "enhance" Twitter itself.

Building applications that are nothing but Twitter enhancements is probably not a good bet; at least, not if it's your _only_ bet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I hope they do. For normal people, photo sharing is probably more important than link sharing. And, with photo sharing delegated to random third parties, Twitter users are left at the mercy of companies like Twitpic who will license their photos to agencies.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't mean to be a negative Nancy here, but Twitter's direction in the past year has been anything but elegant.

Many of these features should have been done a long time ago, instead of letting an eco system grow as deeply as it did, knowing full well that any opportunity to monetize the platform would involve cannibalizing developers and creating resentment.

Having said all that, I'm looking forward to these changes as it will definitely create a more cohesive user experience.

</comment><comment><USER5> Twitter has made their nut as the collective tissue of the social web. Sure the tweets are actual content, but they're always about something external -- twitter is most often used for seeing what people have to say and share about something else. If they move into photos that's a move into primary content, it means they're no longer just dealing with hosting the connective tissue - photos, videos, blogs are the meat. I dont have any conclusion to draw from there, because im conflicted. Philosophically that really bugs me, but practically I'll probably use it.

<comment><USER6> Look at it this way; they are thrashing and see photos as a natural extension of the tweet format as the photos are singular pieces of content, but they are far far larger than a tweet.

If there is anything we know from twitters past; uptime will be minimal with a bandwidth intensive service such as this.

<comment><USER7> Do they run their own CDNs now? Otherwise why would they have major issues hosting images? Scaling Twitter timelines was a way different problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In theory this is an ideal move for a company like Twitter. They are more and more going the route of Media company.

However what is not cool is the way in which these directions have been taken and the path chosen over the past year or so.

So yes great move for Twitter, the ecosystem and millions of users but somewhere this is getting ugly for companies that were solving this purpose for over 4 years when Twitter did not feel it necessary to do so for "users".

</comment><comment><USER9> After the uncertainty and FUD TwitPic created in the minds of a lot of people, I think this decision is going to receive a lot less backlash than it originally would.

Personally, though, I still don't like how they are pushing out third-party developers, but I see some understandable motives for the decision.

</comment><comment><USER10>
      warning the ecosystem to stay away from building "client apps that mimic
      or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience."

That might be what they're saying, but what I'm hearing is stay away from any Twitter integration.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> this is pretty interesting. I wonder what would happen to the twitpics and yfrogs of the world...

<comment><USER11> Easy, their sole acquisition target would disappear overnight...as will most of the value they provide today.

<comment><AUTHOR> haha, yeah i think so too. But they might add some features maybe integrate with instagram (if they dont have that already--I dunno) that might still give em an advantage...

<comment><USER11> Not sure what type of feature they could add to integrate with instagram. For lack of a better word, they were a parasite on Twitter. Whatever Twitter implements will be better and more seamless than Twitpic.

Same goes for instagram, I think.

I don't think Twitpic will or can foster a community which means they'll always have to leach off someone else's. That's a tough battle to win.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How are they going to monetize this? I'd love to see them buy <http://pikchur.com> (disclaimer: founders are very good friends of mine)</comment>


The perfect nap is 36 minutes long - <AUTHOR> http://48dots.com/time+management/2020/05/10/the-perfect-nap-is-36-minutes.html <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing this post, jv22222! I hoping to write something new on a ~weekly cadence, so stay tuned for more similar content!

</comment><comment><USER3> I take 33 minute naps, which is pretty darn close to your 36 minutes.</comment>


Identify a Font by Answering Questions About It - <AUTHOR> http://www.identifont.com/

<comment><USER2> The page flow is too confusing I think it would be better as a fullscreen list narrowing search

      </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---
      |                                      |
      | Font Filter Options                  |
      |                                      |
      </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---
      |                                      |
      | Possible Font 01                     |
      | Possible Font 02                     |
      | Possible Font 03                     |
      | Possible Font 04                     |
      | Possible Font 05                     |
      | Possible Font 06                     |
      |                                      |
      </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---
      | Removed Fonts...                     |
      </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---

</comment><comment><USER3> I used this app today to figure out a font that I have been wondering about for a long time. After about 30 questions, it got it correct (at least the answer looks identical to the font I've been looking at for so long). Very useful app.

</comment><comment><USER4> also check out <http://www.whatthefont.com>

<comment><USER5> I tried a low res and high res picture of some Gill Sans here and it failed too. And they have Gill Sans in their db. The results list had fonts that were kind of close but different in some significant ways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Powered by a Common Lisp program, too.

</comment><comment><USER5> I ran through it providing answers for Gill Sans and I got back 30 possible fonts. Gil Sans was near the bottom. I guess this is pretty useful if you're working from a picture of something.

<comment><USER7> I gave it answers for Helvetica and got Akzidenz-Grotesk. Close enough, I guess.</comment></comment>


Is Twitter Actively Censoring and Blocking Searches for #flotilla? - <AUTHOR> http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/twitter-actively-censoring-flotilla/

<comment><USER2> I have no doubt twitter censors content.

When George Bush was up here in Canada on a speaking tour last year I was in the first car stopped at the light while the police blocked traffic for the motorcade.

I was sitting there, so I took pictures and tweeted about the experience while waiting and while the ex-president's cars went by.

By the time I got home 20 minutes later, those tweets were no longer in my account.

I know they hit the twitterverse because a couple of my friends were able to re-tweet what I'd posted because they were using desktop clients that stored the messages.

My reaction was surprising at the time: I wasn't mad. I was scared.

I can understand why officials would be worried about tweets giving away details that could be used maliciously, but this was happening in real time. The president was THERE, at that moment. There was less intelligence value to my tweets than there was in the advertising for his attendance at the speaking engagement.

But still, it was scary and I understand much more clearly what people living in oppressive regimes must feel daily.

I have those tweets, reposted by others on my behalf, so the Internet healed itself. Can't stop the signal. . . .

<comment><USER3> Do you really think Twitter, home of the Fail Whale, can actually process your tweets in real time just to censor you? What would they get out of that? Money spent on hardware and software just to discourage people from using their product? Seems unlikely.

What seems likely is database replication issues or a buggy caching algorithm. You are not important enough to censor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> No, they aren't. It works fine for me.

<comment><USER4> They still are for me (Florida). Where are you located?

<comment><AUTHOR> Testing it from the states (LA) and the middle east (jordan) and it's definitely blocked. And it's not just #flotilla, also israil and other tags related to the topic are being blocked. Israil shows up in the TT list, but the search doesn't work. The rest are completely hidden from TT as well.

<comment><USER5> Yup, I'm also in Los Angeles area and a search for #flotilla gets no results, not even a "No Results" message.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really want to think that this is a technical error.

"Israil" was another term that is broken in the search. It's now showing as trending for me. I'm hoping "flotilla" will follow.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, it's still broken. While it shows in the trending topics lists, try actually clicking on "Israil" and you get a technical error page: <http://twitter.com/search?q=%C4%B0srail>

<comment><USER4> Yeah, the search is still broken. But at least it's showing now? It seems too inconsistent to be active censoring.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know - I don't think "Israil" was being blocked from being a TT, at least, it wasn't on trendistic while not being on twitter.

I think "inconsistency" and active censorship go hand-in-hand: you have to manually block certain topics, and so the ones you didn't catch slip through. And maybe you need to make it less than perfect to make sure you can always claim "technical difficulties."

I just find it hard to believe that twitter's staff was working around the clock during the Iranian elections to make sure that everything kept going smooth, but right now it's been 12 or so hours and their search is broken for a similarly-important news story.

<comment><USER4> I have to give Twitter more credit than that.

Politics of the issue aside, censoring _anything_ could seriously hurt Twitter. Even if we're cynical and we don't give them the benefit of a doubt integrity-wise, it's still a stupid move for them from a PR standpoint.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's a holiday weekend in the USA. This could easily be something like an automated system designed to prevent spamming the trending topics that is broken or needing operator/editor attention that's in short supply. Casting the accusation of 'censorship' without evidence is hair-trigger indignation- as-sport.

</comment><comment><USER7> I hope this is a technical error too. But I'm unable to search for #flotilla at the moment too, but searches for other terms work fine.

One hopes there will be a reasonable explanation.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you're logged out the search appears to work. It also works via the API. Seems to be a bug that only manifests itself while logged in

<comment><USER3> But clearly it's censorship!!11!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> searches work for me (europe) but people continue to complain that they aren't working.

Is all this about searches or about trending reports?

<comment><AUTHOR> Both. Some topics are clearly trending (see screenshots from trendistic in TFA) while not being listed on twitter, and searches for topics (listed as trending or otherwise) are giving technical errors for most people.

<comment><USER10> I'm a member of the Chuck (tv show) community. We encountered similar issues in trending efforts. Some hash tags will simply not trend, and there's no apparent rhyme or reason. Twitter support never responded to any inquiries as to why some seemingly innocuous keywords (like #SaveChuck) would not trend, but others would.

I assume they have their reasons, and as a free service they have no obligation. It's still annoying for the user community.</comment></comment></comment>


12 Trends to Watch in 2010 - <AUTHOR> http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/trends-2010

<comment><USER2> A nice summary to pass on to friends who aren't aware of these issues.

Also, I was unfamiliar with this Firefox extension:

RequestPolicy 0.5.12

<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9727>

Be in control of which cross-site requests are allowed. Improve the privacy of your browsing by not letting other sites know your browsing habits. Secure yourself from Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) and other attacks.</comment>


Tech4000: Invisible Speaker Technology - For REAL It's Invisible.... - <AUTHOR> http://tech4000.blogspot.com/2009/12/invisible-speaker-technology-for-real.html <comment><USER2> Please link to actual content:

[http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/11/emo-labs- raises-1-5-mil...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/11/emo-labs- raises-1-5-million-for-invisible-speaker-technology/)

<comment><USER3> The submitter is a notorious spammer.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Registration vs. Social Login - <AUTHOR> I'm working on a free online app for pixel drawing. You can use it without an account but to save work I need some sort of account system .
My question is which system do you prefer for free services: account registration, social login, or magic links.
Account registration means you are creating a new username and password to remember. The advantage is no connection to a required social network.
Social login means Facebook or Google knows everything. Plus which networks do I support? Github? Twitter? Others? How do you remember which network you used last time? Does the login page look like a NASCAR hood with so many logos?
Magic link means you put in your email and I send you a onetime link to set the auth cookie. You have no password remember or be stolen. However switching browsers becomes annoying.
So, as a user, which system do you prefer? As a developer, which system has worked out best for your user base? <comment><USER2> Give your user the choice. Personally I loathe social login ESPECIALLY for new sites because I don't want to give them any access to my social accounts. Because privacy. But social login reduces friction for a lot of users who are less concerned about privacy.

</comment><comment><USER3> Make sure you limit your social media logins... something like LinkedIn and Twitter will do. Facebook is horrible in the fact that they update usually every few months to every year and sometimes it is not backwards compatible so everything breaks.

While I do like a social media login as a user; as a developer, I hate having all of them on the website. To even have their logo on your website takes away from your own branding. This is certainly controversial and many may argue with me, but why do I need to have some other major website logo one of my most prominent pages when my logo is what I want people to remember.

The other reason I ditched the social media logins: I was spending more time making sure these actually worked, and there's no way to test it without deleting the username from the database for each and every one of them every time. And what happens a year from now when you aren't constantly checking to make sure those work? You are likely losing out on potential new users all because they see: "Hey a broken website.. I'm leaving!" I got to see it personally on HN too: someone had just launched his product, and someone noted the social media for Facebook wasn't working. This issue right here has already probably taken away the focus from the actual product. Facebook wins again!

There is nothing wrong with social media, but keeping it simple would be great. Having yet another thing to worry about when your actual product should be the only thing you should be worrying about just adds to the stress.

However, in eliminating social media for my logins, I've done something else: I've eliminated registration pages. Instead, if you go and attempt to login with an email and a password, and it doesn't exist, it will be created. If you go to login with that same email and password, it'll log you in from then on out.

For a few web apps I built, I had both the registration / login pages, but why? It's just an extra page of clutter. It's just as easy to check if it already exists and to just create it if it doesn't.

I absolutely love the "magic link" which Slack does... onetime and it tries to keep you logged in for as long as your cookie remains.

The other method I've been seeing a lot lately, specifically with bank apps: 4 digit numbers with a cookie. So I think how that works logically.. a cookie is set to remember your username, and all you have to do is enter in your 4 digit number that you setup and you get logged in after entering in that.. after all, who can't remember 4 digits?

<comment><USER4> Generally, small brands benefit from being associated with larger, successful brands. Having Facebook & Google as login options is probably better from a branding perspective, unless the audience is systematically averse to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is it possible to do both? I rarely use social login because I hate connecting things to those accounts. However, I know of many people who love the convenience in provides.

</comment><comment><USER6> As a dumb user, I prefer social login. As a internet savvy person I prefer username and password (without email). And as a software developer I also prefer social login if the system doesn't have a backend (it is becoming more common nowadays) and anything if you have a backend.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would ask your intended audience. You're going to get a big bias against social accounts on here that you wouldn't get elsewhere.</comment>


CSS hack: Predictable block elements - <AUTHOR> http://coderwall.com/p/rwm-3g?utm_campaign=protip&q=css&i=1&p=1

<comment><USER2> Funny thing is that this is how "classic" IE (<=6?) used to calculate things. I personally always found it to be the more sensible way. Not sure why the standards body decided to do the opposite, and then only implement border-box as an afterthought.

<comment><USER3> _> Not sure why the standards body decided to do the opposite_

I've always assumed that they were going by how designers/publishers/typographers traditionally measure things - the "the way it is done" rather than necessarily "the way that is right".

Personally I feel that only counting the content area _is_ right (it sits right in my head), but it is sometimes less convenient in reality because of other limitations of the document and styling models (for example because sometimes know the dimensions of the outer parts as they are inherited from elsewhere). Having the option gives us the best of both worlds, assuming it doesn't get implemented oddly and cause further browser incompatibility issues.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that there is no "right way", there is only "useful way". Sometimes, you need to specify the width of the content, other times, you need to specify the width of the box so that it fits with the other boxes. Personally, the way I would implement it, is have two css properties, content- width and box-width, that could not be set at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Paul Irish posted a good article on the ins and outs of using it on __every __element. If it's good enough for him...

"Border box ftw": <http://paulirish.com/2012/box-sizing-border-box-ftw/>

<comment><USER6> This is the original source of the * approach to box-sizing. The OP is a ripoff.

<comment><USER7> My biggest gripe with Coderwall is that without comments, there's a lot of stolen content in addition to no way to correct someone when they're off about something or give them a better suggestion.

<comment><USER8> Coderwall does give you links to contact the author if you'd like to suggest something. His Twitter handle is on his profile page.

<comment><USER7> Correcting someone on Twitter draws a lot more attention to the conversation than necessary and, in my experience, people react more defensively because of it. I also don't think it makes for very good UX to have to go to an entirely different site to ask questions or get refined answers to posts, especially when those conversations are relevant to everyone else who reads it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Title is a bit misleading, it's a valid CSS property, not a hack. And the width of block elements has always been predictable, albeit slightly confusing (width + padding + border = element width, etc.)

Polyfill for supporting IE < 8: <https://github.com/Schepp/box-sizing- polyfill>

</comment><comment><USER10> Tempting, but may be a bad idea. Within hours of applying this to my personal site I got emails that the layout was broken, from people using older browsers.

</comment><comment><USER11> _> "box-sizing" has been supported in IE since version 8. Other browsers still require a vendor prefix_

Interesting. The Safari documentation still lists the vendor prefix version, but the browser itself supports "box-sizing" directly, as does Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER12> Life would be so much easier if instead of "width" we had "content-width" and "total-width", wouldn't it? (conflicts would have to be resolved one way or another, though)

</comment><comment><USER13> Sounds reasonable, but are there any downsides to consider before adopting...

       * { box-sizing: border-box; }

everywhere...?

<comment><USER14> Not according to Paul Irish: <http://paulirish.com/2012/box-sizing-border-box- ftw/>

The biggest downside is that its only supported in IE8+

<comment><USER15> If you use it sparsingly, like on specific div's only - and you can do that, because box-model:border-box only _really_ matters and is _really-really_ good when dealing with percentage widths, you can fix it with 'behaviour' and css calculations. Done that.</comment></comment></comment>