Tell HN: Clickable domains and other new features for story quality - <AUTHOR> Here are some experimental new features to help improve story quality on HN.
We've adjusted the dupe detector to reject fewer URLs. If a story hasn't had significant attention in about the last year, reposts are ok. That's been the policy for a while, but we've brought the software closer to it. It will still reject reposts for a few hours, though, to avoid stampedes. Allowing reposts is a way of giving high-quality stories multiple chances at making the front page. Please do this tastefully and don't overdo it.
When reposting, please don't delete the earlier post. Deletion is for things that shouldn't have been posted in the first place, such as if you regret having said something publicly.
When a story is a duplicate—that is, has had significant attention on HN in the last year or so—it's helpful to post a comment linking to the previous major thread, so users and/or moderators can flag the dupe. In addition, when a URL isn't the best source for a given story, it's helpful to post a better URL in the thread. We often see those and change the posts to use them.
Both these practices are common in the HN community and make a big difference to story quality here. Thank you all! The following features are intended to make them quicker to do. We built them to make moderation easier for ourselves, but hope they'll be helpful for community moderation too.
First, you can click on a story's domain to see the previous HN submissions from that site.
Second, when you're logged in, stories on /newest and on /item pages have 'past' and 'web' links. Click on 'past' to search HN for previous stories with that title. This helps with finding duplicates. Click on 'web' go to a Google search for the story title. This helps with finding better sources and catching spam.
Finally, when a story is the first post from a site, logged-in users will see the site name in green, by analogy with the green usernames of noob accounts.
These really are experimental and if any proves unhelpful, we'll toss it. We want HN to stay simple and coherent and not just be an agglutination of features. Your feedback will mostly decide what we do, so feed away!
Edit: ok, we tossed the green sites. More people disliked than liked them, and the same information is available just by clicking on the site name anyway. <comment><USER2> The "past" link is a nice feature, but what I'd really like to see is a way of weeding out duplicate stories _before_ they're posted. For example, today there were 9 similar stories posted (so far) about Facebook's new "dislike" button[1], causing none of them to receive a significant numbers of upvotes. Could we have a feature in the "submit" dialog that displays similar stories in the last 24 hours and then asks the user if they really still want to submit theirs?

[1] [https://new- hn.algolia.com/?experimental&sort=byDate&prefix=...](https://new- hn.algolia.com/?experimental&sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story&query=dislike)

<comment><AUTHOR> When a story gets posted in many versions, most are knockoffs. If a knockoff has made it to HN first, I wouldn't want someone to hesitate to post a more solid article. I'm also not sure how to define "similar stories". Your link picks out the word "dislike" to search for, but that essentially encodes the answer to the hard part in the question.

I do agree that it would be good to weed out variants of the same story (or better, merge them), and we're open to working on that. But today's features are more modest—nothing more than a way of easing the manual work that many of us are already doing. Not least yourself!

<comment><USER3> How about grouping stories covering the same current event/topic and ranking them by an aggregate score? This would keep the front page clean while also giving the event/topic a more appropriate rank (i.e. one higher listing rather than 2 or 3 separate lower ones).

      6. SOPA making a comeback
        217 points | guardian.com 46 comments | eff.org 27 comments | motherboard.vice.com 13 comments

or perhaps:

      6. SOPA making a comeback
        217 points 76 comments
          SOPA Lives on for the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition (www.eff.org)
          113 points by DiabloD3 2 hours ago | flag | 41 comments
          Google, Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo Claim MPAA Is Trying to Resurrect SOPA (www.theguardian.com)
          89 points by runesoerensen 3 hours ago | flag | 23 comments
          An Undead SOPA Is Hiding Inside an Extremely Boring Case About Invisible Braces (motherboard.vice.com)
          12 points by lizzard 15 minutes ago | flag | 12 comments

Groupings would be created on-demand by the editors in response to user flags.

Within the group you could list the links in order of their individual scores. The title of the group could come from the highest ranked or could be manually chosen by editors. You could have separate comments pages, but also a group comment page which is just the union of all the comments.

Later you could take this a step further and include historical posts in the list, thus avoiding redundant comment streams (but only use new votes and new comments for ranking the group -- it has to freshly earn any reappearance on the front page).

<comment><USER4> If and or when they add thread folding, folding for the story links themselves might be a logical extension of that. You could have the top ranked story and under the fold the last, say, five related.

<comment><USER5> The discussions could likely be put on one page as well, allowing you to reference to the other articles without having to add links to other similar articles or other comment threads. That'd be pretty cool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Any chance we can have collapsible comments without a greasemonkey script, or bookmarklet?

<comment><USER7> Even if the don't collapse, It might be nice to see first level comments have some kind of distinguishing visual context...to get to another thought... eg, comment number 2,3 etc...is ofetn buried under 188.8.131.52.22.214.171.124 sub comment discusion minutia....when a top comment has 30 or 40 sub comments.

you should be able to scroll a page and pick out the top 5 original comments...even without collapsing...

<comment><USER8> Yes. What do you think of my [https://github.com/alain94040/arguably](https://github.com/alain94040/arguably), which is an extreme take on your suggestion?

<comment><USER9> Interesting. Some of this fits in with my "non-brief moderation thoughts" essay: [https://redd.it/28jfk4/](https://redd.it/28jfk4/)

In particular: no content-ranking system is perfect. Some level of random ordering (within a range) is probably actually _preferable_.

Also, Aon on randomness:

"When your reasons are worse than useless, sometimes the most rational choice is a random stab in the dark" [http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/is-the-most- rational-choi...](http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/is-the-most-rational- choice-the-random-one/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd like to suggest a very basic fix that will help new users.

People need to know about rules before they can reliably follow them. And Hacker News makes that surprisingly hard for new people.

Above the submit button, there is a line that says: "If you haven't already, would you mind reading about HN's _approach to comments_?"

I wanted to make sure I followed the rules, so I clicked the hyperlink and began reading a new page. It began, "Hacker News is a bit different from other community sites, so we'd appreciate it if you'd take a minute to read the _site guidelines_."

I thought that was the page that I had just clicked through to, so I continued reading. And it seemed like I was right: I learned about the rules against crap links, rudeness, etc.

Unfortunately, I was wrong. The first link took me to the 'welcome page' — which provides _some_ guidelines for using the site, but not _all_ of the rules. If you want to learn the rest of the rules, you have to know to click on another hyperlink to reach the _site guidelines_ page. I found this counter-intuitive, and I doubt I'm the only one.

If you want people to learn the rules, please consider placing them beneath the existing text on the welcome page, so everyone will realize they exist. Or, at minimum, place a link to the guidelines page directly above the submit button, instead of just sending people back to the welcome page. And maybe add a "Rules" tab to the top navigation bar.

Thanks for your help!

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, we changed the text of both [https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html) and the "would you mind" blurb to make it clear that the HN guidelines are an additional thing to read.

<comment><USER10> Nice job! :) Thanks for responding to my feedback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very good improvements!

However, the green-URL-for-noob-domains may be problematic. The green is used to give an indication for potentially low-quality content, but public startup/project launches would all fall under the noob-domain heading.

<comment><AUTHOR> > The green is used to give an indication for potentially low-quality content.

I wouldn't say that at all! It's just interesting to know what's new.

We've been displaying new sites in green to moderators for a while now. When a high-quality story comes from a brand new (to HN) site, that's interesting. The converse, too: it's interesting when you can see that an obscure site _isn 't_ new to HN (because it's not green). Often someone posted it like 6 years ago and it got no upvotes; or sometimes there was actually a major thread. Now you can click on the domain to find out. HN has a rich history that's fun to explore.

Edit: I'll give you, though, that green sites and green usernames have higher variance. The good ones are really good (think of the author of a story showing up in the thread to discuss it), while the bad ones are more likely to be spam. I think it's fine to call attention to it in either case.

<comment><USER12> I'll argue against the green domains on slightly different grounds: the color is being applied as a sort of caution or warning sign, and from a UX perspective green is about the worst possible color for that sort of thing. Green is positive; green means "go," not "caution" or "warning" or "stop."

When I first saw the green domains I thought HN was trying to tell me that these domains were particularly _good_ , as in sources that have yielded a lot of high-karma stories in the past or something. It never occurred to me that it could mean they were new or iffy until I read this thread.

I'd suggest using yellow instead, as (in the US, anyway) yellow has a strong association with caution and warning signs, without the strong "do not proceed" vibe of red.

(And the same logic would probably apply to colors on usernames, come to think of it. Green should be for usernames that HN wants to call out as MVPs for some reason. New accounts could be yellow, to indicate that they don't have a track record yet.)

<comment><AUTHOR> As an HN user, I've never thought of it as a warning sign. And "green" can of course mean "new" as well as "go".

The color choice is moot, though, because green usernames have been around for so long that we're not likely to change them.

If people really don't like the green sites, we're happy to plunge them back under the moderator-only covers. But maybe let's try them for a while? In practice I think they're pretty cool.

<comment><USER13> I agree. And even if green does signify "good", I don't think that's a bad thing here. I'd rather be drawn towards fresh sources first. Those items are likely to require more oversight, and voting (and potentially flagging) as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Maybe add a link to 'cached' in addition to 'web'? You could either do your own caching when the link is submitted, or use a service. The link will be useful immediately if the site goes down over load, and keeping an archive will keep the comments comprehensible for future readers if/when the link erodes.

<comment><USER15> I really like this idea from a historical preservation perspective.

HN comments contain a lot of a value in aggregate, and it would be a shame to lose necessary context to exploit this value due to simple link-rot.

However, I can see issues arising with paywalled links. The HN cache would likely display a rather useless paywall for many of the most popular stories. Navigating around the paywall by technical means may present an IP issue.

<comment><USER16> What do you think about HN auto-submitting to archive.org?

Archive.org does follow some rules (e.g. robots.txt and passwords as you mentioned), so not everything would be guaranteed.

It could be a good start for a lot of the content here, though.

EDIT: Forgot to add that I'm not sure how much it'd help with sites going down from the HN attention. I could easily see archive.org moving a bit slower than HN's users.

<comment><AUTHOR> > HN auto-submitting to archive.org

Can you describe this in more detail?

<comment><USER17> Not the same person, but I assume they're referring to the "Save Page Now" function of the Wayback Machine ([https://archive.org/web/](https://archive.org/web/)).

This tells Archive.org's crawler to immediately process a page and add it to the Wayback Machine's cache. Unfortunately there's no public API for this, but it is possible to programmatically submit a request to their endpoint and scrape out the resulting archive link (and I have code that does this, if that would help).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I guess I need to comment more so I can at least get to 30. :)

</comment><comment><USER19> So far I like the feature that new links are posted in green. That will give new sites the opportunity to standout against the larger, common sites posted (like bbc, wired, nautilus, etc). I just hope some users won't take advantage and scurry around for new sites to take advantage of this new feature.

Thanks for the changes. I'll definitely send feedback along the way.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm not sure how the UI for this would work, and perhaps it's best left as an idea for a browser extension, but I like the idea of showing a selection of the five or so most recently submitted stories on the homepage, separate from the main articles. It wouldn't be enabled by default, only when an option is selected in the user profile.

I never visit the new section of HN. I really wish I did but I always forget about it. However, if there was a little section for new articles on the homepage (perhaps at the bottom or the side of the page in a box) I'd definitely check some out and upvote the interesting articles.

<comment><USER21> You wouldn't even need a browser extension in Chrome, as it supports "greasemonkey" style user scripts natively: any `.user.js` file you drag onto the "chrome://extensions" page is converted to an anonymous Chrome extension automagicly. YMMV with other browsers, if course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have the feeling that creating a new domain is going to be a way of growth hacking one's story toward the HN front page. Green is a big bump in a world of greys.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fluff tends to get flagged off the front page pretty quickly, so it may not turn out to be a problem. But if that does start to happen, please let us know. We can turn it off, or maybe turn it off on the front page.

I'm surprised that the green sites turned out to be controversial because I have found them helpful as a moderator and a reader, but in retrospect I can see why a visually noticeable change would be. We're not attached to this feature.

<comment><USER22> This morning, I just felt that the green was striking and drew my attention to those articles. Admittedly, a lot of it could be my habits and expectations. But I know I wouldn't ordinarily have focused on them based on other factors.

I'm not being controversial, though now that I think about it, there is a shift in the semantics of the color: it used to be reserved exclusively for people, now it is also being used for "things". That may account for some of the undercurrent for resistance to change.

I can see why it is helpful for moderation. I guess the real question is does the green spike the level of participation in moderation activities? As a reader, it doesn't really highlight the sort of information that I make my decisions on.

<comment><AUTHOR> We just turned it off. These were all experiments, the green sites generated more negative than positive feedback, and it's fine for an experiment to fail.

Also, the same information is available by clicking on the domain: if you see only that story in the list, it means there has only been the one submission from that site.

<comment><USER22> Was there any change in behavior...other than a new target for complaints? I'm curious about how much editorial activity users do, particularly since mine seems erratic at best.

Maybe it could be a profile option at 50 karma [aka badge]. Even at the risk of people saying HN is turning into StackOverflow, gamification for editorial engagement may be worth pursuing.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was too soon to have observed any change in behavior. But the feedback was more negative than positive, and it did visually disrupt the front page—not something we want to do without a strong reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't mind the use of green (as compared to some other color) to indicate 'new site', but could you tone it down a little bit, or give users the option to disable it? On an otherwise neutral page, the green stands out and is quite distracting.

Maybe use something like #6a8966 ([http://www.colorpicker.com/6a8966](http://www.colorpicker.com/6a8966))?

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that the classic noob green is a little loud, but wow, your eyes are way sharper than mine, or we're using different devices, or both.

Maybe we can tone it down a bit though.

<comment><USER24> I was going to ask to make it more prominent!

Maybe an option like the top bar colour?

<comment><AUTHOR> Avoiding option proliferation seems important. It might be better to just toss the feature.

Edit: we tossed the feature. I'll edit the OP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Crap, time to update [https://github.com/voltagex/hackernews- paywalltag](https://github.com/voltagex/hackernews-paywalltag)

<comment><USER26> Can this be built into HN? If not, why not?

<comment><USER27> Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10179140](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10179140)

<comment><USER26> Hoping for updates on:

> But we'll think about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Clicking the domain to see other submissions from that site is the best feature HN has added in years.

<comment><USER29> Agree! Thanks 'dang and gang.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Very good improvements, thanks.

I think the dupe detection would be even more useful if done during submission.

<comment><AUTHOR> The dupe detection software, of course, does run during submission. Clicking on a search link is something that humans have to do, though. That's for catching duplicates that escape simple URL matching.

Writing software to identify which URLs are really about the same thing and which URLs are not is a nontrivial problem. I'd love to work on solving that in the general-enough case to be useful for HN, but we shouldn't let that stop us from doing incremental things to make life easier in the short run.

<comment><USER31> I suspect what kawera meant is if the submission form notified you that the URL is a dupe via ajax, so that then you wouldn't have to bother to copy and paste the title (which can be a pain on phones and tablets).

<comment><AUTHOR> In that case I'm not sure I get it. Care to explain in more detail?

<comment><USER30> I was referring to the new "past" functionality running automatically on the submit form, on focus change for example.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, I get it now. HN is extremely light on the Ajax, so it would be a major design change at that level. If we decide to take that step, implementing this feature would be reasonable. But we probably wouldn't do it for one feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What about a way to merge stories that are duplicates but with slightly different URLs that didn't get caught in the filter? Perhaps comments from all the articles could get merged together under the post with the most upvotes.

<comment><AUTHOR> We do exactly that when users find the duplicates and link to them from the thread, as well as when we find the duplicates ourselves.

Making higher-octane software that can automate more of this has been on our list for a while, but it's hard to know when we'll get to that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Minor feedback, if you look at "past" for a domain that's a YC company that often posts jobs to HN, the results are littered with those postings rather than other content from the site which may be more relevant.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good catch. Let me see if we can exclude job posts. Do you have a good example you could link to?

Edit: this should be fixed now. Is it?

<comment><USER33> yep yep! thanks dang :)

<comment><AUTHOR> (But it isn't fixed for the cases where bad boys and girls submitted job ads as regular stories. That would require a job ad recognizer.)

<comment><USER33> I didn't realize people did that! I only checked my own company (vanity!) – I hope we're not guilty of this, if so, I'll raise hell :)

<comment><AUTHOR> They do it without meaning to. People building startups don't always have time to re-learn the intricacies of HN.

<comment><USER33> Yeah, it's always good to assume good faith :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> New feature idea: At some point, merge duplicate posts and their comments into a single master post. Create forwarding links as needed.

</comment><comment><USER35> What does everyone think about links opening in a new tab rather than the parent tab? I'll often find myself getting off on a wikipedia tangent (or some similar learning loop) and HN will be several back buttons back. I now open every link in a new tab manually to solve for this problem.

<comment><USER36> No, please. Managing your tabs is not the site's job, it's yours or your browser's, such as you choose to split that labor. In most modern browsers, manually opening a new tab simply means middle-clicking or Ctrl+left-clicking instead of regular clicking. And if you really want it to automatically apply to all HN links, that's a great use case for a userscript.

<comment><USER35> In application design, external links tend to open in a new tab (see Facebook, Twitter, etc...) It's been a standard on the web for almost a decade now.

<comment><USER37> My feelings are mixed on this.

On FB, I'm usually glad that links open in a new tab (well, I middle click them anyway, but sometimes I forget) because if they didn't, I'd have the huge problem of trying to infinite scroll my way back to where I was.

On just some random business website, OTOH, I usually take it to mean the business owner (or developer) thought their site was so important, it should make me keep it open while I go to another link.

I usually middle-click on HN anyway, but I feel like it's sort of nicer in a way, to be in control of that. Maybe HN feels like more of a page than an application to me because it doesn't use infinite scroll / a ton of custom Javascript behavior?

I'm inclined to agree that web _applications_ should open external links in a new tab, but I'm not sure it's best for HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Any chance of changing the table background color from #f6f6ef to something that has sharper contrast with white page background? I look at comment distance with this border to find new top level comments, but it's hard when one is white and one is light grey.

<comment><USER4> It does seem odd, that the only thing people can change the color of is the top bar (and not even the text color with the top bar) and that this is somehow worth being a karma perk. Just being able to set a default text size would solve readability issues for a lot of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Dup detection didn't seem to be working a couple days ago. Bug or just the changeover? Details: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10211499](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10211499)

<comment><AUTHOR> It was a short-lived bug we introduced while working on this. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10216280](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10216280)

Hence the 'avoid stampedes' part I mentioned above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Pretty please fix the url parsing so it doesn't include the angle bracket after a link, like this URL <[http://google.com/>](http://google.com/>) embeded in a sentence.

</comment><comment><USER41> @Dang, I once posted a link and then someone reposted the same link but added /# to it. HN treated that as a new URL and that link, because karma -I think- got to the FP. Any solution to that?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the flip side of what I said above: "allowing reposts is a way of giving high-quality stories multiple chances at making the front page". It's pretty random which particular submission ends up making it.

We've thought about some form of karma distribution across every user who submitted the link, but that gets complex quickly and I'm not sure it's a good idea. In the meantime, the best approach is to realize that any individual submission is subject to randomness (i.e. /newest is a lottery), and the reliable way to gain karma over time is simply to enter more often, i.e. post more high-quality stories. That's best for the community too!

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Nice to see some new features! I hope it's not rude to ask if there's a special reason the URLs in Ask HN submission text aren't hyperlinks?

<comment><AUTHOR> That one's in the FAQ ("How do I make a link in a question").

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'd like to see stats of first time URLs pre and post greenification.

I suspect we may see more green links on front page than prior... just a hunch.

<comment><AUTHOR> We'll watch for that. If people start to abuse it we'll deal with it somehow.

Low-quality posts tend to get flagged, though, so it's also possible this won't be a problem.

<comment><USER43> Cool...

To be clear I didn't mean to imply that would happen. I was more interested in the psychology of it. And I thought the data would be fun to look at.

But thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> What I really miss is the score against comments.

</comment><comment><USER45> This change just broke the Chrome extension Georgify for HN.

</comment><comment><USER46> Would love the ability to fold comment threads.

</comment><comment><USER47> Why Google and not DuckDuckGo?

<comment><USER30> Yes!

Even better if we could config it in the settings page (like topcolor...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> These other features you've added are good. But years after I started using HN, I still accidentally downvote when I want to upvote because the mobile experience is...well, you know. You all probably often use HN on a mobile device.

Please, please, please, can we have a mobile-friendly layout?

<comment><USER49> I've also done this on desktop. The ability to change your vote, possibly only for a limited amount of time after casting it, would be far more valuable to me.

<comment><USER50> Agree 100%! If you click "downvote", the arrow should just turn to orange instead of disappearing. If you click "up" ditto. You can then change your vote for a limited time.

As a bonus: please don't refresh the page just because I upvoted someone. Why should I search where it is I left off reading just because I upvoted someone?

EDIT: nevermind about second point, it looks like it happens only if JS is disabled. My bad. :)

<comment><USER51> HN is gracefully degrading you ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> More information about internal policies like how much karma you need to downvote and other thing people don't even know exists would be nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> You currently need 501 karma to downvote. What are the other things?

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> When are you going to fix the mobile css? Surely that'd take about 4 minutes.

<comment><USER54> I'm quite certain the world's optometrists are paying HN to keep that font tiny so my eyes are strained every time I use the site on mobile.

But seriously, I've heard in the past that they wish not to break the many apps that scrape HN, and therefore have hesitated to change the markup.

<comment><USER11> The "break HTML scraping" reason makes zero sense when an HN API exists.

<comment><USER55> The API is available but not everyone has switched to it. There is a valid argument for backwards compatibility, like Linus refusing to break userspace even when it means rejecting some improvements. However, I'm in full agreement with you here. The benefit of usability improvements far outweighs the disadvantages of breaking screen scrapers, especially when so many of those scrapers exist solely to make HN more mobile friendly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> So greate!!!</comment>


EBay Builds Own Servers, Intends to Open Source - <AUTHOR> https://www.ebayinc.com/stories/news/ebay-builds-own-servers-intends-to-open-source/ <comment><USER2> Will the server designs be contributed to OpenCompute?</comment>


Against metrics: how measuring performance by numbers backfires - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/ideas/against-metrics-how-measuring-performance-by-numbers-backfires <comment><USER2> Reminds me of Goodheart's law[1].

We have known this for a long time, but it is hard to have an alternative system which scales well with huge organizations. For startups and small companies, I could see an informal system working pretty well, but as the company grows to hundreds or thousands of employees, it becomes necessary to standardize and have some kind of metrics used for reporting and evaluations. This will inevitably shift the company's culture towards gaming those metrics.

Somewhat like grading systems in education. High grades don't necessarily mean you will be capable of generating more value to society than average grades or even low grades. And students often become good at improving their grades without that actually adding much value. But there is a correlation. And we don't have many better (non-experimental) alternatives that I'm aware of.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law)

<comment><USER3> > This will inevitably shift the company's culture towards gaming those > metrics.

Yes, but that's only the beginning of the story. People gaming metrics is a type of security problem, in that "attackers" try to game the metrics while "defenders" try to make them less game-able by improving the accuracy and precision of how the metrics are gathered so that the final numbers continue to tell a valuable story over time.

The issue isn't that metrics can be gamed; it's that organizations which pride themselves on being data-driven rarely make the investment in hiring blue teams and red teams to defend and attack the metrics. If you appreciate that investing in cyberdefense is key to protecting your company from cybersecurity threats, why can't you appreciate that investing in "metricsecurity" is key to protecting your company from "metricsecurity" threats?

<comment><USER4> > The issue isn't that metrics can be gamed

The issue is that many of the most important parts of many organisational activities can't be easily measured through simple metrics at all.

<comment><USER3> I think this is a rubbish excuse made by people who don't understand the role of such a "blue team". If the organization initially adopts metrics that are counter-productive (e.g. measuring feature completion and not technical debt), it is the role of the blue team to change the metrics such that the neglected areas are properly accounted for in final performance metrics. No metrics should be final; only iteratively tuned to achieve results that are more and more indicative of the underlying performance.

It is difficult, but still possible, to measure technical debt and other "hard" metrics. It is precisely the job of the blue team to deal with that.

<comment><USER4> And how do you measure the person who takes time out of their day to help a colleague in another department, who is having a tough time understanding an issue, so the person takes 15 minutes out to help them, boosting morale and overall company cohesion?

Or should they be penalised for wasting 15 minutes?

<comment><USER5> Depends, do you want that to happen or not? You seem to be making an assumption this is good, but in some organizations this would be a bad thing to penalize. I'm not sure why you would do this in engineering, but it is important to acknowledge that this isn't a universal good and so maybe your company wants to discourage it for some reason.

Assuming you want people to help each other, you need to capture metrics on it. A few years back I had a metric of helping n people in a different department: I kept track of those interactions so I had something to report at the end of the year.

<comment><USER6> Was that your personal metrics? Metrics created for yourself are subject to less gaming because when you start lying to yourself about those, you will start to wonder why keep those metrics at all.

If that was a company-issued, top-down metric, I hope it wasn't defined literally as "helping n people in a different department", because that has enough wiggle room to sail an aircraft carrier through. The difficulty of creating a good metric here comes from the difficulty of defining what exactly does it mean, in company context, to "help other people" \- and also what it explicitly doesn't mean.

<comment><USER5> I had to report it to my boss. It was top down, but only a few interactions were required, and it wasn't reported farther up the chain. Because I had to report to my boss, he knew me well enough to judge if it was enough. It was just enough of a metric to ensure people looked for something to bridge a communication gap, without being hard enough that people tried to game it much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As I read through the 50-odd comments, I wound up with a kanban / 5 whys level thought. All these points of discussion revolve around pluses and minuses of metrics, but the next level is "Why establish metrics at all?"

At a deeper (very generalized) level, we've been infected by production line, Deming style, efficiency focus.

If you are handling previously defined routines, great. Optimizing can help you.

As soon as you are working with adding value, be it in code, education, product development, metrics are _all_ premature optimization.

Promote the idea that you can't apply optimization techniques to creative steps and encourage managers to get off the numerical crutches and make value judgments. Takes a better manager but then that's the point anyway, right?

<comment><USER8> "we've been infected by production line, Deming style, efficiency focus"

Could you say more about this? I'm trying to form an opinion on this Deming- ism. My impression is that the actual Mr. Deming gave different advice: "Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets . . . Eliminate quotas, numbers, numerical goals."

<comment><USER9> I presume OP intended to write Taylorian?

<comment><USER10> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylorism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylorism)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In education, there is a practice known as "backwards design" described in the book "understanding by design". Here, goals are set, behaviours that are evidence of achieving the goal are set (these are assessments), and then instructional activities are designed that "move the needle" on the assessments. But the critical 4th step in this iterative process is continuous alignment between the goals, assessments and instructional activities. This alignment process is intended to prevent the negative outcomes of teaching to the test.

From that perspective, any metric oriented organisation might want to have an explicit alignment process that ensures that the metrics continue to capture the desired outcome.

<comment><USER12> I'm a developer. I dare you to provide a metric that can measure my outcome.

There is no metric that can measure my outcome.

<comment><USER13> Let me ask you this, can you tell which of your coworkers are good developers or a bad ones?

<comment><USER14> Not unless it's an extreme case. I found writing performance reviews excruciating because I don't pay that much attention to what other people do and hate to judge people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's time again for me to recommend _Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations_ by Austin[0].

Don't let the underwhelming title fool you: it's largely a book on why it can't be done. Austin takes classical principal-agent models and extends it to add a third participant: the client. He then shows that difficult-to-observe work at first improves and then worsens under any metrics regime.

No single metric can be found that will give the desired performance. The basket of metrics that _can_ successfully create the desired outcome is one where the principal has total visibility into the agent's work -- which contradicts the original problem of difficult-to-observe work (ie, anything requiring skill).

[0] [http://www.dorsethouse.com/books/mmpo.html](http://www.dorsethouse.com/books/mmpo.html)

<comment><USER16> That does look interesting, thank you for the recommendation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Has it occurred to anyone else that the HN karma system is a performance measurement technique that undermines the goals of HN? I've stopped commenting, largely because for any comment I might make, I can imagine the cynical karma-harvesting comment that someone will make in response, the comment that would never have been made if there were no karma system here. And when I do comment, I waste a lot of time trying to harden my comments to such opportunism.

<comment><USER18> I've largely stopped commenting due to karma also. It's not just that wording the same sentiment differently can result in either up or downvotes, it's that I don't want to have to care about getting points on the internet

<comment><USER19> If HN were to revamp how it handled comment sorting, what features would get you to comment again?

<comment><USER17> A thought experiment: What if HN changed nothing except that it never displayed point counts for posts, comments, or users? I think it would tamp down gadfly behavior. It may also, however, do the same to behavior that we want to encourage. There are no easy answers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A good manager will use metrics as information to help in assessment of work, not as the sole measurement. Very important for any manager to coach is the real organizational concern behind the number.

If you've got more that n=5 things, at a certain point you _need_ metrics to make sense of how things are going. Are we getting our product to customers when they want it (OTD)? Being able to say, yes 90% of the time is very helpful compared to saying "who knows, we don't do metrics here."

</comment><comment><USER21> "But the most dramatic negative effect of metric fixation is its propensity to incentivise gaming: that is, encouraging professionals to maximise the metrics in ways that are at odds with the larger purpose of the organisation"

<comment><USER22> > _"But the most dramatic negative effect of metric fixation is its propensity > to incentivise gaming_

"Gaming" the workplace is happening with or without metric fixation. At least with metric fixation it's front and centre when it occurs.

<comment><USER23> Your post reminds me of the famous AI koan: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10970937](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10970937)

Maybe there is some truth in it. But I also feel that you might get a better result if you let humans to figure out what is needed to be done to achieve a goal instead of telling them through a metric.

<comment><USER24> The feature that distinguishes a well designed metric is exactly that. Specific enough to ensure alignment with broader strategic objectives, general enough not to dictate exactly how.

<comment><USER23> I think the point of the article is summed up in the sentence:

"The key components of metric fixation are the belief that it is possible – and desirable – to replace professional judgment (acquired through personal experience and talent) with numerical indicators of comparative performance based upon standardised data (metrics)"

Basically, it is a problem of trust. You're trying to replace trust in people with a metric which, in theory, lets you not to have trust in them.

Personally, I think it is a foolish goal. You are effectively replacing the trust in people (which, admittedly, is vague) with trust in the metric (which connection to reality is vague). The vagueness has a reason - reality is complicated.

Why not just tell people what the "broader strategic objective" is, instead of trying to come up with a metric that is an exact (and so necessarily wrong) description of it?

<comment><USER24> Trust is the wrong word, its more about alignment. I do trust that employees can exercise their professional judgement. I don't expect that every employee can perfectly align themselves behind a strategic objective without guidance.

If my broader strategic objective is to cut costs by 15% allow more competitive pricing, the last thing I want is for every individual to define what that means to them and hope the math works out in the end.

<comment><USER23> "I do trust that employees can exercise their professional judgement. I don't expect that every employee can perfectly align themselves behind a strategic objective without guidance."

That's strange to me, because the former surely seems to be much more difficult than the latter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think this article conflates Management by Metrics and intense focus on short terms results. Management by Metrics is just as compatible with a long term focus or goal.

Now on the issue of people gaming metrics, that is a real concern and I typically address it with "counter metrics" intended to protect against gaming. It is not perfect, but it works well enough when you take the time to choose your metrics (and counter metrics) carefully.

So instead of "improve A by 20%" we get "improve A by 20% without impacting B"

<comment><USER15> > _Now on the issue of people gaming metrics, that is a real concern and I > typically address it with "counter metrics" intended to protect against > gaming._

From the article:

> _In an attempt to staunch the flow of faulty metrics through gaming, > cheating and goal diversion, organisations often institute a cascade of > rules, even as complying with them further slows down the institution's > functioning and diminishes its efficiency._

<comment><USER25> This reads to me like a culture problem. A good engineering culture should help a lot to insulate against people who just want to game the system and aren't really invested in the success of the project.

Of course, how you get there is anything but simple.

<comment><USER26> The problem is: what is success of the product?

<comment><USER27> > _The problem is: what is success of the product?_

Agreed. If it's measured in a metric, like bugs for every check-in or number of check-ins or numbers of lines of code, then reducing it down to metrics doesn't do _anything_ to achieve the goal of the success of the product.

I'd - cautiously - argue it actually favours success of the individual _over_ success of the product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > _The intelligence analysts who ultimately located Osama bin Laden worked on > the problem for years. If measured at any point, the productivity of those > analysts would have been zero. Month after month, their failure rate was 100 > per cent, until they achieved success._

I guess if the metric was "caught Osama Bin Laden or not", then yeah, I agree.

But who on earth would measure the analyst's productivity just so? Nothing but a strawman.

> _The source of the trouble is that when people are judged by performance > metrics they are incentivised to do what the metrics measure, and what the > metrics measure will be some established goal. But that impedes innovation, > which means doing something not yet established, indeed that hasn't even > been tried out._

Why? If a (admittedly weak) metric like "# of paying customers" is used as a goal, how does that "impede innovation"? How are people being stopped from coming up with creative ways to get more customers? Why do we assume the ways in which they improve the metric will be bad, and not innovative?

<comment><USER28> > I guess if the metric was "caught Osama Bin Laden or not", then yeah, I > agree.

> But who on earth would measure the analyst's productivity just so? Nothing > but a strawman.

Is that much different than measuring LoC, tickets closed, or features implemented? Some features just take time -- sometimes just the research alone to implement something could take a few weeks where literally nothing measurable happens. That's the point: completion metrics aren't useful for larger or open-ended projects. There was no gnatt chart, no schedule for finding Osama bin Laden; similarly you sometimes cannot plan out a large software project from the very start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is there any reason to think that people are worse at gaming qualitative evaluations than they are at metrics, in general? Things like making friends with one's boss, appearing to work hard, and so forth.

<comment><USER23> The people who are gaming are probably not. However, the people who are not trying to game the system might decide to do it if there is an objective goal.

But perhaps you're right. In capitalism, the most common purpose why companies exist is to game the system (i.e. make profit). I don't see why in that case, employees shouldn't try to game the people who game them (i.e. capitalists).

However, in companies that are collectively owned, this becomes less clear.

<comment><USER30> >However, in companies that are collectively owned, this becomes less clear.

Unless it has no management there is still a management class with disproportionate decision making power and thus the antagonistic relationship necessary for there ti be a clear case for gaming continues to exist. Humans are really bad at removing hierarchies, to the extent that I would assume any place without hierarchies has them in a harder to notice format.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think metrics can be very useful but as with many things, you need to know how to interpret the data.

I'm in the restaurant industry, so my #1 metric is profit (over the long run anyhow). Now, the next metric is sales, since profit is a % of sales. So to get those sales, we're looking at how many new guests are coming through the door, repeat guests, average guest check, etc... After that, it's margins. Sales mixes play into that (relating to COGS), and labour. Now, to determine what we're getting out of our labour, more metrics. How much each server is selling, what products they're selling, how many guests they can serve in a night, etc... For cooks, it's about productivity and consistency.

Anyhow, there's a lot of shit restaurants and workers out there (due to low barrier of entry education-wise), lots of people misinterpret the data, leaving to a feedback loop of shit managers and employees. Often restaurants will focus too much on one of those metrics, leading to places that just gauge guests, or others that entertain guests who are fishing for free shit.

Now, as for metrics in the programming world which probably don't matter, I always hear about lines of code written. Obviously it's easy to game and hard to discern, as code can be too terse or too verbose. Programmers are also usually so far removed from the sales part of the business that there's no objective sales metric to use either. And that's where you need good managers. I'm sure there's a good set of metrics that give some idea of performance, but they need to be interpreted by someone.

And all of this reminds me of stats/economics (what I did in university), where you're bombarded with data and need to interpret it. Like GDP per capita can indicate general well being, but then you adjust it to PPP to get a better metric of quality of life, and add inequality calculations to understand how it affects different segments of the population, and you can go even deeper with specific stats underlining quality of life (amount of disposable income, amount spent on housing, amount spent on entertainment, etc...).

Anyhow, tldr here is that metrics matter, but interpreting them is a skill and makes all the difference.

</comment><comment><USER32> All valid points. Of course though, you can't rail against metrics as a whole. We all use them every day and always will.

We don't personally verify a financial advisor is a genius, we look at their annual rate of return.

We trust that if unit tests fail, code isn't good.

We trust the SATs, which are a better and more scalable and fair measure of aptitude than any group of humans I could imagine.

The piece rails against metrics, which often backfire, but doesn't even mention the alternative (trust those in power make any choice they desire with no justification) which also is often abused.

</comment><comment><USER33> I don't have an attribution for this quote, so if someone knows it please share...

        If you want an opinion let's go with mine.
        Otherwise let's look at the data.

It's true that many quantitative metrics can incentivize people in the wrong way. There's a funny story about a city trying to get rid of rats that incentivizes people to hunt rats and turn in the tails... but the people start farming the rats in order to get the reward instead while the project leaders pat each others' backs.

However as an engineering leader you should not discount the value of qualitative metrics or metrics altogether. I try to only make a decision "from the gut" when there is no other choice and decision must be made. Data is key. How do you know how well your code review culture is thriving if you do not see, across the entire team, metrics reporting the number of open pull requests, how long they are staying open on average, how many comments they're getting, etc? How do you know if one of your engineers is struggling if you're not watching what gets checked in, what code is being rewritten frequently, etc? How do you gain leverage for your team to management if their are no facts, metrics, to back you your arguments?

Just a reminder that you _should_ use metrics. Maybe avoid using them as reward mechanisms and use them as leverage instead.

I don't work for GitPrime but you should definitely check out what they're up to.

[https://try.gitprime.com/data-driven-engineering- metrics/](https://try.gitprime.com/data-driven-engineering-metrics/)

<comment><USER34> "and if you want data, let's go with mine". -- how to lie with statistics.

<comment><USER33> Well if you want to play that game then how do we know the person who's relying on their instincts and intuitions isn't lying either?

Who do we believe?

I didn't suggest using metrics to make anyone accountable but using them as leverage to empower your team.

What would be the point of gaming those metrics? Nobody would profit from lies and if you're checking the providence of your data, in the case of Gitprime your own repository, then identifying a culprit would be rather easy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > _Contrary to commonsense belief, attempts to measure productivity through > performance metrics discourage initiative, innovation and risk-taking._

Is this really contrary to commonsense belief? I think most business leaders are very aware of this, however, the alternative is chaos. That's why certain specialist teams are given leeway.

<comment><USER36> I think awareness is _very_ bimodal. I've sat in rooms with people who really thought they could transform a business with 5% YOY improvements.

(That's not always the wrong view, either — a key part of this is recognizing what kind of situation you're in and whether you really have the trust and resources to bank on a revolutionary change)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> The author in the article focuses only on one-half of the metrics within a given process, the lagging results. There is another whole dimension to performance metrics which is the causal dimension, your leading metrics or leading indicators.

You can only effectively use a lagging indicator–such as time to restore–once you understand the activities that make up the world of restoring service. Does the product have an SOP document? Is there monitoring in place to alert technicians quickly? What is the training level of your employees? Are your employees empowered and engaged? All of these things matter far more than lagging outputs.

Sure, we can disparage lagging indicators all day, but we can't throw them out just because they can be gamed. You have to push deeper and that requires time, process knowledge, and building a healthy working environment.

</comment><comment><USER38> Finding useful performance metrics for evaluation is difficult and assumes somebody knows what is best for the dept/company/division, that the evaluators are well trained, and which metrics show the correct way. There are useful metrics if you are playing Golf, baseball, poker, bridge, chess, but even then individual performance will vary year to year and even the stars have slumps. The Normal Distribution shows 95% of employees are within +3 Std Dev of the mean with only 2.5% excelling and 2.5% needing help in a given year and in the next year everyone will have a different ranking. Performance metrics are mostly a waste of valuable time for both the employee and the management.

</comment><comment><USER39> Compared to the other sciences, it seems to me that management science, as an entire discipline, is a nearly complete failure. This is a field where startup experiments by complete newbies lead the conversation against a network of business schools and long-standing organizations. There seems to be no consensus whatsoever on the best way to manage people. It's not even clear, to me at least, that modern management practices at many large corporations are provably better than some kind of naive baseline like a pure democracy or pure dictatorship. Expert texts are nothing more than pontification and hand-picked anecdotes. Does anybody really know what works?

<comment><USER40> Even worse, in the same source basic concepts have multiple definitions, partially overlapping, partially contradictory.

This is exactly why I believe C-level officers are grossly overpaid. Previous success does not guarantee future success, especially in different industries, hence they don't know some magic formula to make his salary * 1000 in profits for the shareholders anymore than a mid level manager does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> The author was interviewed on the Econtalk podcast last year.

[http://www.econtalk.org/jerry-muller-on-the-tyranny-of- metri...](http://www.econtalk.org/jerry-muller-on-the-tyranny-of-metrics/)

</comment><comment><USER42> Its happening all over my company, with dashboards for all kinds of useless metrics. The worst part is gaming unit test coverage to get over the 80% mark.

I keep trying to say I would rather have 40% well written tests than 80% crappy tests.

:(

</comment><comment><USER13> Management via metrics is a really useful shortcut to generating alignment, but it is a shortcut. If you tell people that they need to move a number there isn't a lot of ambiguity and you can just keep beating the same drum over and over. Trying to align people on the whole business context is much harder and takes a lot more time though obviously much more valuable.

</comment><comment><USER43> > to replace professional judgment (acquired through personal experience and > talent)

The thing is there is no magical way to measure this. How you define personal experience and talent? From the number of years spent in the industry? It's still back to another metric.

Metrics do matter. Common sense does also matter. Making decisions in a chaotic world is indeed difficult.

</comment><comment><USER40> This has been subject of administration theories for the last century: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_by_objectives#Argum...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_by_objectives#Arguments_against)

</comment><comment><USER44> "Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome" -Charlie Munger

</comment><comment><USER45> What this article misses out is that the metrics will be present and used whether they are articulated or not. By making them explicit they can be improved, validated, debated, and removed. Standards are consistent. When they're implicit, you get none of those benefits and instead promote an insider culture of unspoken biases that get no scrutiny at all.

The choice isn't between metrics and human intuition, it's between explicit and implicit metrics.

Of course there are bad metrics; to use an example from the article - measuring the output of analysts finding OBL on a binary metric is simply a bad metric. But if we start from there, we can improve it. How many leads do they have at the current time? What stage is each lead at? What intelligence has it generated to this point?

</comment><comment><USER46> The Hustle wrote a good article about this a little while ago: [https://thehustle.co/Goodharts-Law](https://thehustle.co/Goodharts-Law)

</comment><comment><USER47> Required reading

"Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations"

Has a lot of information about how people react and adapt to setting KPIs, aka "gaming the system".

</comment><comment><USER48> > Economists [..] report that in recent years the only increase in total- > factor productivity in the US economy has been in the information > technology-producing industries.

And guess how those industries did that? _Metrics._

Metrics are a simple tool. They are almost worthless by themselves and can even be a detriment. But like any tool, if you _pick the right ones and use them right,_ it's much better than not having the tool. There are _tons_ of ways business processes can improve by analyzing metrics, it's not just an employee productivity stick.

</comment><comment><USER49> I used to work once for a company where the developers were reworded for writing more lines of code than the average. Once.

</comment><comment><USER50> Reminds me of a great book, about managing the expectations instead of managing the companies for real, and how the system is rigged to select for short-term gains what in most cases backfires.

[https://www.amazon.com/Fixing-Game-Bubbles-Crashes- Capitalis...](https://www.amazon.com/Fixing-Game-Bubbles-Crashes- Capitalism/dp/1422171647)

</comment><comment><USER51> You get what you measure.</comment>


As the Valley Burns Up, Boston Readies Its Next Act - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/04/as-the-valley-burns-up-boston-readies-its-next-act/

<comment><USER2> I moved to Boston from Austin when Kinvey got into TechStars (2011). At the time Austin was a "fun" place to live but a hard place to start a venture- backed startup. Boston has been a great place to grow our team. Our first five engineering hires were awesome and we continue to find great talent and support from the startup network here.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We've been here in Boston now for about 18 months and for a European company it's been awesome. Great Network, great people time difference to european time is manageable.

Flights to SF are easy and the city has a great work focus, while feeling very small towney, in a good sense.</comment>


Show HN: Matt's DOM Utils—a modular HTML DOM library with wide browser support - <AUTHOR> http://www.fortybelow.ca/projects/JavaScript/Utils/

<comment><AUTHOR> Please feel free to comment on the project or the Web site.

I'll try to field every response.</comment>


Native American Slavery Historians Uncover a Chilling Chapter in US History - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/01/native_american_slavery_historians_uncover_a_chilling_chapter_in_u_s_history.single.html <comment><USER2> It might be 'chilling', but slavery has taken place for thousands of years and in many different areas/cultures. It still takes place in many parts of the Middle East.

Dubai, for instance, builds many of its structures on the backs of work slaves that have their visas taken and by law, can't leave the country.

The key is that slavery is no longer legal or accepted in the US. Why dwell on the past in an attempt to make US look bad? If you do this, you also need to look at all of the other cultures and countries that accepted it (hint: it's most of them).</comment>


Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton: A Sentiment Analysis on Twitter Mentions - <AUTHOR> https://blog.monkeylearn.com/donald-trump-vs-hillary-clinton-sentiment-analysis-twitter-mentions/ <comment><USER2> "..., Trump has a better positive to negative ratio than Clinton"

Is it a tweet volume thing or that there are just more Trump than Clinton's supporters on Twitter?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> You can check out the tool here: [http://tarsier.monkeylearn.com/](http://tarsier.monkeylearn.com/)</comment>


How TweetDeck uses Google App Engine - <AUTHOR> http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2010/04/tweetdeck-and-google-app-engine-match.html

<comment><USER2> Sending emails is a task that is already well done using some SaaS services (SendGrid, CampaignMonitor, etc), and works great.

But would be interesting to have an opensource app installed on Google Apps todo just that, send emails, with a REST interface.

</comment><comment><USER3> Another use case: BuddyPoke

[http://highscalability.com/blog/2010/1/22/how-buddypoke- scal...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2010/1/22/how-buddypoke-scales-on- facebook-using-google-app-engine.html)</comment>


Jessica Livingston to speak at Business of Software 2008 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2008/03/jessica-livings.html

<comment><USER2> Very cool. Jessica's great.

Any news.YC folks coming to BoS 2008 in Boston?</comment>


Open source 3D pie menus for Unity3D - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMN1LQ7qx9g I've made free open source pie menus for Unity3D! I'll write some documentation and more demos soon, and put it on the Unity3D app store. Here's a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMN1LQ7qx9g Here's the source code: http://www.donhopkins.com/home/PieMenuDemo/PieMenuDemo.zip
They're written in C#, and support text items, image items, and 3d object items too! I've tried to make it general purose and easy to build pie menus and integrate them into your own applications.
Here's a silly demo, showing a set of SimCity pie menus: http://www.donhopkins.com/home/PieMenuDemo/PieMenuDemo.html
They have a full set of useful notifiers so you can tightly integrate them with your application to give rich feedback during tracking (for example, modifying the 3D menu items, or previewing the effect of the menu item and distance parameter in real time, making them more like "direct manipulation").
For example, to show how you can implement feedback like The Sims pie menus with the head in the center that looks at the selected item, I've made a 3d object in the pie menu center with the webcam texture on it, so YOUR head is in the center of the menu, looking at the selected item! (That's why the demo asks for permission to use the webcam.)
The pie menu and each item has a title as well as a description. One feature I've added is the ability not only to disable an item, but also to provide an explanation of why the item is disabled! (PacMan in the demo is disabled, for example.) I wish other menus and widgets would do that -- it's frustrating when you can find an item you want, but can't figure out why it's disabled!
Another nice thing about them is that you can either configure algorithmically with an API, or with JSON data (which makes it easy to make dynamic data driven menus downloaded from a server or database), or construct them in the Unity3D editor out of objects (which makes it easier for artists to design them)! <comment><AUTHOR> I've made free open source pie menus for Unity3D! I'll write some documentation and more demos soon, and put it on the Unity3D app store. Here's a video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMN1LQ7qx9g> Here's the source code: <http://www.donhopkins.com/home/PieMenuDemo/PieMenuDemo.zip>

They're written in C#, and support text items, image items, and 3d object items too! I've tried to make it general purose and easy to build pie menus and integrate them into your own applications.

Here's a silly demo, showing a set of SimCity pie menus: <http://www.donhopkins.com/home/PieMenuDemo/PieMenuDemo.html>

They have a full set of useful notifiers so you can tightly integrate them with your application to give rich feedback during tracking (for example, modifying the 3D menu items, or previewing the effect of the menu item and distance parameter in real time, making them more like "direct manipulation").

For example, to show how you can implement feedback like The Sims pie menus with the head in the center that looks at the selected item, I've made a 3d object in the pie menu center with the webcam texture on it, so YOUR head is in the center of the menu, looking at the selected item! (That's why the demo asks for permission to use the webcam.)

The pie menu and each item has a title as well as a description. One feature I've added is the ability not only to disable an item, but also to provide an explanation of why the item is disabled! (PacMan in the demo is disabled, for example.) I wish other menus and widgets would do that -- it's frustrating when you can find an item you want, but can't figure out why it's disabled!

Another nice thing about them is that you can either configure algorithmically with an API, or with JSON data (which makes it easy to make dynamic data driven menus downloaded from a server or database), or construct them in the Unity3D editor out of objects (which makes it easier for artists to design them)!

I've made a custom Unity3D editor that lets you edit the properties, drag and drop textures and objects, edit and rearrange the items, and has some convenience commands, so you can place the 3D item objects in a circle in the 3D world, and call a command that figures out which item is in which direction by their position, and tidies them up. (That is much easier than arranging their order in a linear list of items.)

I'm going to play around with more in-world editing features, to make them easier for artists to design them. Ultimately users will be able to edit pie menus at run-time, and save them out as JSON. But for now, artists can build them in the Unity3D editor, and programmers can define them with JSON.</comment>


100 twitter tools - <AUTHOR> http://adecon101.blogspot.com/2009/03/100-twitter-tools-to-help-you-achieve.html Don't know if anyone has posted this yet. If it's already been posted, I apologize for not taking the time to look through the prior posts.<p>Otherwise, I hope you guys can make the best of this! <comment><AUTHOR> Don't know if anyone has posted this yet. If it's already been posted, I apologize for not taking the time to look through the prior posts.

Otherwise, I hope you guys can make the best of this!</comment>


FB closes 11% below IPO price - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120521-713832.html

<comment><USER2> The social web is dead. The spying became too scary. The question is who pays for the funeral.</comment>


Every Comment is an Admission of Failure. Write self-documenting code instead. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.weaponizedgames.com/every-comment-is-an-admission-of-failure

<comment><USER2> I guess Knuth would opt to disagree. (Though the article itself is more reasoned and balanced than its title.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd be interested in a quote or link from Knuth if you have it. Or a page number, I'll look it up.

<comment><USER2> I was alluding to Literate Programming. See e.g. <http://www.literateprogramming.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> From your link, Knuth himself says:

"The practitioner of literate programming can be regarded as an essayist, whose main concern is with exposition and excellence of style. Such an author, with thesaurus in hand, chooses the names of variables carefully and explains what each variable means."

I agree with Knuth. All my blog post is saying is that, given that a program is little more than a bunch of words (symbol names), we might as well make those words be the documentation instead of cluttering up the screen with more words that we call comments.

<comment><USER2> Sure, I am all for meaningful identifiers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


MPAA, movie theaters announce "zero tolerance" policy against wearables - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/10/mpaa-movie-theaters-announce-zero-tolerance-policy-against-wearables/

<comment><USER2> I don't know what they are afraid of. Can you imagine how shaky a movie recording would look from someone wearing google glass? No one would watch or download that. I'd assume you'd need a tripod to get anything watchable.

I wonder how long it will be until you need to give fingerprint/iris scans just to watch a movie?

</comment><comment><USER3> First rule of business: NEVER turn away a paying customer.</comment>


Back to 28: Grub2 Authentication 0-Day - <AUTHOR> http://hmarco.org/bugs/CVE-2015-8370-Grub2-authentication-bypass.html <comment><USER2> Summarized nicely by @whitequark on Twitter:

the details of this are amazing. by pressing backspace you overflow a variable, which overwrites the return address with zero & jumps

the code at address zero Just Happens to be a valid self-modifying loop (!) that also Just Happens to jump somewhere into grub_rescue()

</comment><comment><USER3> If an attacker is sitting at the machine, they already have full control of the system. They can easily pull the hard drive, image it, or do any number of things to it to bypass authentication. The bootloader isn't going to stop this kind of attack in the slightest.

The only place where a bootloader can defend is when it's on a virtual environment and the user can interact, but even then, if the user is interacting during grub startup, they probably have root access as it is.

<comment><USER4> > If an attacker is sitting at the machine, they already have full control of > the system. The bootloader isn't going to stop this kind of attack in the > slightest.

You can have physical protection, like locks. And you can disable boot sources. So of course this password protection can make attacks much more difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This almost sounds like a joke. Walk up to a Linux system using grub from anytime in the last six years, hit the backspace key 28 times and system is pwned. Just ... wow.

<comment> ah- There was a similar bug in the Ubuntu lock screen a while algo: [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/1308572](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/1308572)

      When the screen is locked with password, if I hold ENTER after some
      seconds the screen freezes and the lock screen crashes. After that I
      have the computer fully unlocked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Note that since /bin/bash is the first process to run, the syslog daemon is > not running, and so, logs are not recorded. That is, this access will not be > detected using normal Linux monitoring.

</comment><comment><USER7> That's why you want encrypted root file systems. Less convenient but much more secure.

</comment><comment><USER8> Also covered at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10747267](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10747267) .

</comment><comment><USER9> Grub is absolutely horrendous code, I implore anyone to look at the source of what you are/will use and make choices based on that.

</comment><comment><USER10> For my own silly reasons, I never cared for Grub[12] and never used it on any of my systems. I always go out of my way to avoid it. Finally I have some justification.

Time to start fuzzing other bootloaders.

<comment><USER11> I think this is just +1 "silly reason". Did you ever rely on an authentication feature of a bootloader?

<comment><USER10> No. The reasons always disliked Grub have nothing to do with this "feature", in fact I was not even aware it existed. Nevertheless, I agree with you.</comment></comment></comment>


The Man who wants control on the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://discovermagazine.com/2007/nov/this-man-wants-to-control-the-internet/article_print <comment><USER2> _"These Internet engineers weren't control theorists, but they built this incredibly robust network," Doyle says. "Man, that's awesome." Then again, the engineers were doing something that evolution figured out long ago._

I know the intended audience for this article is probably elementary school students, but it always disappoints me when someone says biological evolution "figures out" something, and I'm equally disappointed when someone says it's "awesome" that engineers can do something.

I guess I shouldn't expect much from a magazine that publishes puff pieces like "Long Live Closed-Source Software" <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=93716>

<comment><USER3> It's the fact that they built a network that's incredibly robust from a control-theoretical standpoint _without the benefit of control theory_ that's awesome.

<comment><USER2> Just because some aspects of the current internet can be described by control theory doesn't mean a knowledge of control theory is beneficial or even necessary.

I remain skeptical until someone shows me how control theory leads to a better solution to a problem we currently have with the internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Incredible stuff, but I can't get out of my head the fact that that guy looks like he should be selling me a Muscle Boy Tom[0] instead of telling me how mah internets should work.

[0] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRRg9Llx32w></comment>


Ask HN: Examples of successful startups done by software houses? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
according to Sam Altman software houses are incapable of creating successful startups from the start for their clients. Is it true? Do you know any successful startups done entirely by software house?
Best, Wiktor <comment><USER2> Two Toasters did the airbnb apps.

[http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/11/18/from-ios-to- android/](http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/11/18/from-ios-to-android/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Given how many of these app development shops there are out there, it's surprising that one of them hasn't hit a home run.

There's probably something inherent in the people, structure, and incentives that prevents it from happening.

</comment><comment><USER4> You mean: company A has an idea, they go to company B to implement it? What about ranker.com?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think alot of it depends on how the deal is structured. If the software house doesn't have ownership in the final product, then the incentives just aren't going to line up and the product will suffer.

</comment><comment><USER6> You have some Startup Studios with some success.

Check [http://buildtogether.co/](http://buildtogether.co/) 'Everything about Startup Studios'

</comment><comment><USER7> slack by metalab is a great example imo.

</comment><comment><USER8> Tinder comes to mind.

<comment><USER9> Wasn't Tinder done by IAC owned incubator, not a 3rd party software house?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> fog creek / trello

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure if this counts. Fog creek owns Trello.</comment></comment>