New Programming Jargon - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/07/new-programming-jargon.html <comment><USER2> I can't help noticing how often I've

\-- had a programming question

\-- googled it

\-- found the very first (most relevant) link to be to StackOverflow

\-- jumped to it

\-- found that some other programmer had also asked the same question

\-- found that other SO members had given the question and its answers hundreds of bonus points (useful!)

\-- and found that the SO mod-nazis had shut it down as "Not considered a good, on-topic question"

An example might be, what are the differences between git and mercurial, where the answer is not a line of code but may include informed judgments by the people whose judgments I'm most interested in. As a developer, I have to make a lot of decisions, and not all of them are about which characters to type.

So I have to live with whatever answers well-informed SO members managed to sneak onto the page before they were chased away and the gate was locked.

Does it seem to anyone else as though there might be something wrong when this happens over and over again?

<comment><USER3> +1 for providing an example, but "Git vs. Mercurial" belongs on someone's blog, or on Wikipedia as a comparison matrix.

Now if you have a specific question about some _aspect_ of Git compared to Mercurial, that can work on SE. But as a broad kitchen sink, catch-all, "compare these two giant things kthx", you'd end up with Gorilla vs. Shark.

<http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/>

<comment><USER4> This reminds me of Wikipedia deletionism, as if either Wikipedia or Stack Overflow will run out of space and they'll have to move into a new building if they don't clear out these topics. Why not just keep them and keep getting the Google ranking and free advertising?

<comment><USER5> Joel recently tweeted something to the extent "You think you should have the right to ask anything. The fact that we don't allow that is why your happy when SO shows up in your google search."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Every time when people get to rule their own kingdom and get to decide what's Right(TM) and Wrong(TM) this is what happens.

It doesn't matter if it's informative, useful or, oh horror of horrors, _entertaining_ , all that matters is that it is Right(TM) or Wrong(TM) in the eyes of those high on their power trip, and there is no point in debating it.

And no Jeff, most communities don't just tend towards increased strictness over time, they tend towards _death and abandonment_ , no matter how big they were at the height of their popularity. Stifling the natural development of a community because it doesn't match your "vision" rarely works out well, both online and IRL.

</comment><comment><USER7> Such a strange post. Jeff spend the first half arguing that the qualify of the second half somehow decrease the quality of Stack Overflow. I liked the second half better.

I've never understood why Jeff and Joel felt these kinds of questions should be anathema on Stack Overflow. Most of the information on Stack Overflow exists in some form or other elsewhere. The value-add that Stack Overflow provides is community-based filtering and maintenance. Not only are these questions entertaining in their own right, but their very existence enhances the feeling of community on the site.

Also, it wasn't as though they were using some off-the-shelf software to run the site. They could have provided an outlet for this kind of thing, which all communities want to do, within the context of the site.

</comment><comment><USER8> I still think StackOverflow is one of the best sites out there for programming and development information, but I am increasingly finding that the posts that attracted me to StackOverflow in the first place are closed as not constructive by SO mods. These posts, almost inevitably have a significant number of replies and discussion.

I actually think that it is rude and disrespectful to your community to shut a topic down that has nothing blatantly wrong with it (like flaming/cussing/banality) just because it isn't the correct "fit" and might (shocker) involve an opinion.

I can't help wondering that if SO continues in this vein, how relevant it is going to be in the near future.

<comment><USER9> Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange should promote good questions instead of closing or deleting questions.

 _we don't have a good designated place for deleted "too fun" questions to live_

Make a good designated place for deleted "too fun" questions to live! StackOverflowOverflow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> These bits are too silly for the internet, so we're going to move them over here to this other part of the internet.

Sigh. This deletionism accomplishes nothing.

<comment><USER3> There's a reason the frat house isn't in the middle of the classroom on most college campuses. Because it'd interfere with learning.

Frat row is, y'know, _over there_. Slightly off campus.

<comment><USER11> Oh boy Jeff, I love your work, but you are so way off beam with this one. The over zealous moderation of StackOverflow is _insane_ and it's killing the site. Seriously. If the community votes up questions and/or the answers to those questions, then that is all the indication you need that the material has real value and should not be shut down. You've just proved it yourself. There's a ton of educational value in the material you've reposted. The fact that there's comedic and entertainment value also is just a lovely bonus. And you think deleting this is the right thing to do ? Really ? Please rethink this before it's too late.

<comment><USER3> I disagree. Seeing that someone uses "banana banana banana" as a comment placeholder, or that they refer to clueless programmers as "Jimmy"... is not illuminating my day to day work at all.

Entertaining? Sure.

<comment><USER12> I guess it depends on the use case. I never "hang out" on StackOverflow (though maybe I should). I find it through Google, so I never see the non- sequitur posts. I had no idea that content like that even existed there. Knowing that you guys have posts like that is so great for the brand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Since the men get Mad Girlfriend and Hooker Code, I'd like to add 'Old Boys Club': libraries that you will never for the life of you get to work on modern operating systems and force you to stay on Python 2.4.

<comment><USER14> An author who has the bad taste and poor judgement to publicise concepts like the "Mad Girlfriend Bug" doesn't have the right to legislate good taste and good judgement anywhere, even on a website he runs. It's automatic disqualification, no appeal.

<comment><USER15> Then enjoy living in a stack overflow-less world, since that's what we'd have if we followed your rules.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> NADS - Non-Authoritative Data Source - a condition where there are multiple sources for the same piece of data, usually manifesting itself via the same data existing in 2 Access files and 3 different Excel files continually emailed around between people over years.

</comment><comment><USER17> "Yoda Conditions" takes the cake. It's pretty interesting how a commutative operation such as `==` still has certain conventions. Then again, `==` isn't guaranteed to be commutative in Ruby, since it can be overridden (which I'm not a big fan of).

<comment><USER18> Can't stand Yoda conditions, although I'm sure someone somewhere has an explanation why they're so good for me.

<comment><USER19> if(x = 3)

if(3 = x)

If you make a habit of making the left side of == immutable, the compiler will let you know when you type = instead. Of course, gcc throws a warning unless you type if((x = 3)) if you genuinely want to do the assignment inside the if, which works just as well but requires tool support.

<comment><USER20> What tool support does it require? I certainly hope there are no tools generating assignments in conditional expressions, and the only other tools that need to support it clearly understand parentheses.

<comment><USER19> The warning itself is dependent on your compiler squawking when it sees "if(x = 5)". The C spec doesn't require this. On the other hand, "if(5 = x)" will be thrown out by any C compiler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I really liked:

headlessCamels and ProudCamels for verbally differentiating between the two different types of camelCase (or CamelCase)

(which was in the extended scrape of the original question: [http://www.stackprinter.com/export?question=2349378&serv...](http://www.stackprinter.com/export?question=2349378&service=stackoverflow) )

<comment><USER22> I prefer CamelCase vs dromedaryCase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I rubber duck A LOT. But instead of talking to a rubber duck, I talk to my girlfriend (we both work at home). It's an amazingly useful technique.

This also reminds me of a House M.D. episode where House is on a plane without his team, so he has to get a regular person to talk to, to finally solve the case.

<comment><USER24> Interesting fact about "rubberducking": orignally a Hollywood slang for explaining a character's psychological background as an alibi for everything it does ("Someone took his rubber duck when he was little, so now he kills people"). There's a good explanation in Sidney Lumet's _Making Movies_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I am not a native English speaker, can someone explain what "Counterbug (a bug you present when presented with a bug caused by the person presenting the bug)" means?

<comment><USER26> I am a native English speaker and I'm having considerable trouble parsing that :-)

I think the idea is: you report a bug in code that I wrote, and I (childishly) retaliate by reporting a bug in code that you wrote (the bug I report is then a 'Counterbug')

<comment><USER27> Right. Think counter-terrorism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> One from my workplace is "potato" as in "extremely low hanging fruit", features so easy and cheap to implement it's just like picking them up off the ground.

</comment><comment><USER29> Pokemon exceptions - our level editor embraces them :)

The result is, if something goes wrong, all you get is grayness, what follows is run Visual Studio, reproduce the bug, make sure that now catches exceptions before you, and hope it's not a heisenbug...

</comment><comment><USER30> The big problem is there isn't any place to have a legit open discussion about IT things. Ever since Joel closed the old JoS board (due to him demanding everyone sign up), there isn't a place to shoot the shit. Half the questions that used to be asked on JoS aren't allowed on SO, and their black and white attitude towards what the site is and isn't makes it feel very unfriendly if you ask something that isn't on-topic, you get it closed without even being pointed to a better site, it's literally just telling you to GTFO and slamming the door in your face.

</comment><comment><USER31> Looks like English language is adapting to problems it wasn't made for. :)

</comment><comment><USER32> I wanted to forward this to someone non-technical (a product manager, actually the CEO of this tiny startup I help with) and found myself explaining the yoda conditional, and then I wrote stuff about spectacular versus subtle failure, and the whole thing turned into a small blog post: <http://www.thesatya.com/blog/2012/08/yoda_conditions.html>

</comment><comment><USER33> Just when I think Jeff has written one of his best posts ever, he comes up with something even more interesting. Well done Jeff.

<comment><USER34> He hardly came up with the content of this post--just copied it from a deleted SO question.

<comment><USER3> There are two parts. The meta part, which is "why is this deleted? should it have been deleted? can you reasonably expect anyone to learn from this question? what happens when a site is overrun with questions like this one?"

And then the content, which is a mirror of the deleted question.

Pick whichever part interests you.

<comment><USER34> I don't mean to imply that you didn't author anything of value in the post. The meta was certainly of interest. I'd just hesitate to call a few paragraphs of discussion of the reasons behind SO's moderation your "best post ever."

Come to think of it, I wouldn't call an array of proposed/observed novel jargon that either, regardless of its source.

<comment><USER3> Believe me, I have serious issues with the "top N funny things" sorts of content that rules the web, and that is reflected in the design of Stack Exchange.

At the same time, I am torn, because you can learn a little bit from content like this. And the audience loves it. If we didn't have any systems in place to tamp down on poll/survey/opinion questions, Stack Overflow would be virtually nothing but those kinds of question. They are INSANELY popular.

<comment><USER35> How about an extra core site that isn't required to follow the "every question only exists to educate those who end up finding it through Google" pattern of the rest of the StackExchange network, but simply serves as a StackExchange- powered community forum? Of course, It would only really make sense if whole topics could be pushed there with all their comments and votes intact; otherwise it would just be a ghetto to shove overly-gregarious users into.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The problem is when the question is closed and there isn't even any "Ask it here" type of answer it's just gtfo we don't want your kind. Ever since Joel shut down the old JoS board there has been NO good place just to discuss programming/IT things. The whole concept of SO is flawed because it encourages black and white answers, not discussion!

</comment><comment><USER36> Hee hee, I'm a fan of #8:

8\. Heisenbug Source: Unknown A computer bug that disappears or alters its characteristics when an attempt is made to study it.

On the other note - I personally think most online communities tend to get more lenient overtime. I'd be interested in any further reading on that matter.

<comment><USER37> "Heisenbug" as a term has been around for a while. It's one of my favorites, too -- despite referring to possibly my least favorite part of programming.

Timing-related errors make the worst heisenbugs. I had one once where pausing through the code caused the code to work, so I cobbled together a quick debug logging facility for it, and that still caused the code to work just fine. Anything that altered the code by more than a few milliseconds of execution time caused it to work OK.

I stared at it for a while and then rewrote the entire block in disgust.

<comment><USER36> I hadn't heard it before, but it's a great term!

I know one multiplayer Flash service has a problem where their server clocks had drifted apart, and it caused all sorts of crazy issues. Took them a couple of weeks to figure it out and fix the problem. Not quite a Heisenbug maybe, but close. ([http://playerio.com/forum/multiplayer/room-disappears- from-l...](http://playerio.com/forum/multiplayer/room-disappears-from-list- while-still-active-t33960))

I've had bugs before that have seemed to come and go for absolutely no reason - I think they involved corrupted incremental compilations, but who knows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Just the other day, I was struggling to concisely explain the problem with a system I've been tasked with rewriting. (The question was why are we not reusing X, Y and Z?). If only I'd read about baklava code that day.

</comment><comment><USER39> copypastas? <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1332817> tisk tisk.

<comment><USER36> I think both articles are just pretty much copied from the now hidden Stack Overflow question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> What's the lingo for a user that doesn't understand or can't follow the instructions from a techie? It's an error number, I forget which.

<comment><USER41> It's an ID10T error, though (IIRC) it's more tech supprot/sysadmin jargon.

<comment><USER40> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Very funny. Pokémon exception handling is my favorite.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm not sure why SO feels the need to delete posts like this. I get that the "question" isn't keeping with their stated objectives, but I find the answers to be enlightening in some respects. I've learned about many new technologies and frameworks from the "What is the best X to use for Y" questions that get posted frequently. I don't see those as detrimental to the community like the SO mods apparently do.

<comment><USER44> Pedantry is inevitable when programmers are in charge ^^

Seriously though, there's not a good argument for deleting it. There are _plenty_ of terrible, off-topic, garbage questions on there to be closed. Why focus the few that, while probably off-format, result in entertaining (and sometimes) enlightening results? Sure, if the site was _flooded_ with posts like that, then maybe. Maybe.

But its not. Its just one group deciding to be pedantic. Nothing more.

<comment><USER3> Two reasons. 1) broken windows and 2) opportunity cost. It's like Kudzu: the more you allow, the more there will be, because it grows like a weed and it is insanely popular.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> coffee mug bug: a bug you could have found by talking to your coffee mug rather than enlisting someone else's help.</comment>


Entrepreneurs Don't Have an Optimism Bias - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/02/entrepreneurs-dont-have-an-optimism-bias-you-have-a-pessimism-bias/

<comment><USER2> The high failure rates of startups suggest otherwise.

<comment><USER3> Not so. The payoff of a successful startup is so high that it's often a good bet even with a high chance of failure.

<comment><USER2> Expected value only enters the picture if you can play many, many times. It's more realistic to look at the median outcome, yet every entrepreneur is transfixed by the big exits. If that's not optimism I don't know what is.</comment></comment></comment>


World of Warcraft: one simple line of code can cost you dearly - <AUTHOR> https://blog.gdatasoftware.com/2016/07/28809-world-of-warcraft-one-simple-line-of-code-can-cost-you-dearly <comment><USER2> What's happening here is the 'RemoveExtraSpaces' function (ie. basically a trim) is called by the game engine every time a chat message is received. But apparently, you can rebind this name and point it to any other function, including 'RunScript', which is an eval.

When this was revealed, Blizzard quickly patched in a warning dialog that warns against running scripts from untrusted sources, including being social- engineered to enter stuff yourself (which is what's happening here). That attitude seems prudent, but isn't entirely helpful, as many players in fact use Lua in their chatbox to do complex actions or calculations.

Like this one that prints your current position in 'map coordinates':

      /script x,y = GetPlayerMapPosition("player");
      map=GetZoneText();
      c1=x*100;c2=y*100;
      print(string.format("%s: %.2f, %.2f", map, c1, c2));

or the 'CTC macro' that was used to calculate a value that raid tanks must have attained:

      /run DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Need 102.4 combat table coverage. Currently at:"
      ..string.format("%.2f", GetDodgeChance()+GetBlockChance()+GetParryChance() +5))

It's true that users shouldn't run _untrusted_ code, but realistically, they'll probably click through most warnings to run legitimate functions like this. A better fix is to prevent rebinding the 'RunScript' function to some other name, and to prevent rebinding the 'RemoveExtraSpaces' function by anything else.

<comment><USER2> Another contributing factor in this vulnerability is that the 'chat compose input' and the 'script console' are one and the same.

While this was done to simplify UX, it's really not a good idea in retrospect.

Even as something simple as a different chat frame that only allowed script commands, into which only local script output can go, would also serve as an effective mitigation.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure how that would solve anything, the attacker would just convince the victim to type that line of code into the script console instead of the chat console.

<comment><USER4> Sure, the rebinding could still happen. But, the remote execution is prevented (right now, after rebinding the trim function, the attacker can enter script in the chat window to be executed - this part goes away with a separate console).

<comment><USER5> I don't think so.

The attacker is executing script through the RemoveExtraSpaces function that gets run on every chat message, not by executing it with either player's chat console.

<comment><USER2> The assumption is that a proper mitigation would result in the script console being in a separate execution context; such that variables that are (re-)declared in the script console would not affect the chat console's context, or its 'RemoveExtraSpaces' function, nor the global context. I should've been more clear.

<comment><USER3> That assumption wouldn't work. If the script console is a separate Lua environment, it's completely useless. As long as it's the same environment that the rest of the game/addons use (which it must be), then there's no "mitigation" that can be done like you're hoping for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> reminds me of people writing IRC bots doing something like:

        if $line =~ m/!calc (.*)$/ {
            return eval $1;
        }

which is about the worst possible way you can easily write a calculator :P

In fact, irc bot/script writing is a great place to learn about security and generally distrust of the rest of humanity.

Even things like the pathological regex backtracking DoS from the other day turn up fairly regularly with popular bots.

<comment><USER7> In some programming IRC channels I've seen similar done intentionally. On the plus side, they were sandboxed. On the minus side, the sandbox didn't prevent playing sounds on their locally hosted machine... needless to say, there was a lot of beeping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm sure the method was different, but way back in the day when I was playing Phantasy Star Online on the Sega Dreamcast, "digital mugging" was a common occurrence. The attacker would walk up the the victim, ask them to trade, and the victim's interface would lock up causing them to have to reboot the console. When they logged back in, all of their gear and money was gone. If the player hadn't been to the bank to make a deposit recently, they were screwed out of potentially hours of game-time work.

I never did learn how this was accomplished; it happened to me only once, after that I ignored any player I didn't know in real life, which cut out the MMO part of the game for me.

<comment><USER9> hahah this brings me back. I can shed some light...at least a little, there were exploits that crashed peoples consoles, this didnt give the thief any items, but cleared inventory or even saves for some players.

[http://dcemulation.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=11941](http://dcemulation.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=11941)

great game would love to see a rerelease of the original or even PSO2 in america

<comment><USER10> Sounds like a fun game. :-P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Pretty cool that they allow players to run their own scripts, and in a full Lua environment no less. I imagine that could be useful in a game with a lot of repetitive tasks.

<comment><AUTHOR> The ability to run Lua scripts has been a WoW feature since its release in 2004-2005.

To prevent the game from being easily being botted to death, there's not much you can script aside from automating UI interactions. This was a killer feature for the Master Plan mod last expansion, which automated clicking through poorly-designed menus for a poorly-designed mechanic, and it single- handedly broke the economy.

<comment><USER12> > and it single-handedly broke the economy.

Could you get money by clicking menus? I'm curious

<comment><USER13> From what I understand they essentially made a part of the expansion which worked like farmville where you through a UI sent out your followers on missions which would finish in a certain amount of real world time later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ahh... allowing users to run code they don't understand. The same reason Facebook tried to kill the Chrome Dev Tools[0] and Apple more recently killed the javascript: URL scheme in the address bar

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7222129](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7222129)

<comment><USER15> > and Apple more recently killed the javascript: URL scheme in the address bar

wait, WHAT? This isn't good! This raises the barrier of entry for new programmers to play with Javascript! I had no idea this was done!

<comment><USER16> And for those of us who use Bookmarklets - it has made Safari a non-choice of browser.

<comment><USER14> Bookmarklets still work for me (and as andrethegiant said, you can re-enable it in the Develop menu)

<comment><USER16> So what is the point of trashing the Javascript URI? People with malicious intent will just have the person make the code into a bookmarklet and run it. Which is actually easier than explaining how the URL bar works.

Or does it do what Chrome does and you can't copy/paste Javascript: until the URL bar you have to type "Javascript:"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I did quite a bit of Lua WoW programming back when I was playing in WoW tournaments. The community really wanted to change a lot of the UI / UX of the default interface to be more friendly for high level play. Tournament rules did not allow usage of addons that pre-packaged such changes, but the admins of the tournaments did have permission to allow usage of light UI changing scripts. Some people took it really far and used automated cooldown trackers etc from macros that you would paste one line at a time, but the admins in tournaments would not allow that.

There's still somewhat of an active community: [http://www.arenajunkies.com/topic/222642-default-ui- scripts/](http://www.arenajunkies.com/topic/222642-default-ui-scripts/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Here is an idea of what the actual Lua code would look like, a bit de- obfuscated:

[https://gist.github.com/Sharparam/11a3cddeaa51aa11dde69b4690...](https://gist.github.com/Sharparam/11a3cddeaa51aa11dde69b46908bccd7)

</comment><comment><USER19> Slightly off topic. Are any of y'all going to be playing the next expansion? I am looking to join a very casual guild :)

</comment><comment><USER20> Unbelievable. Why give players the ability to override arbitrary functions like that?

<comment><USER21> Why are you.. outraged? Clearly allowing this attack was a mistake. Overriding functions is a language feature, so you'd have to think of the risk to think to block it.

<comment><USER20> Outraged? C'mon now. Shocked with disbelief maybe?

Because that is such an obvious attack vector that it is hard to believe Bnet allowed it. It's very hard to enforce language-level restrictions (like which functions may run when) when they can be circumvented with reflection.

Besides, Bnet's WoW client code has been known to be janky, and their entire security setup seems to only care about protecting the business, and not users. Bnet is the only online gaming service where I have had multiple accounts hacked that I could not trace to any specific doxing/pw dump event... forcing me to conclude that their security infrastructure is absolute garbage

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's Lua not LUA.

</comment><comment><USER23> Who figured it would be a good idea to allow received chats to be interpreted as code?! That's a pretty big security fail if you ask me.

<comment><USER24> Read the article. Received chats are executed only after the victim has run the script provided by the attacker. The real question is "why does the scripting system allow overriding functions like that?".

<comment><USER25> Lua was created to be a configuration file system that was turing complete, to be used by a oil mining company.

Lua was never intended to be used for games, UI, etc... It just proved useful to be used like that.

Because of Lua "real" intentions, it was made in a way that you can assign "everything" to "everything", and you don't need () to refer or call functions. (in fact, many of the stuff that make Lua look like a "normal" programming language, like dot syntax, () and whatnot, are "synctatic sugar")

<comment><USER26> Please do not spread false misbeliefs. Wow's Lua is 5.1-flavoured afaik, and that's completely different language from 5.0, 4.x or what you describe.

This entire thread mentions fatality of function substitution in Lua, but that is easily prevented (by setting proxy metatable on global table and system libraries, even any lua-noob knows that, blizzard devs are just losers). But even that missing protection is not what breaks security. In dynamic languages like lua or javascript you control the dynamicity via localization of global values at eval-time ('eval' as in repl). 'local trim = path.to.sys.lib.trim'. So, once trim function is localized in console code, you can assign anything to original location and that will not interfere with console logic. Lua is just too hot to handle for wow-devs, and python, perl, javascript have the same issue more or less the same way.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


New directions in web architecture. Again. - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/11/new-directions-in-web-architec.html <comment><AUTHOR> This post is a bit old (November) but I think it's really interesting and still worth discussing. Loved this line, as my latest app is just as described: "a bunch of empty divs, with a big wad of JavaScript."</comment>


Show HN: Simplest way to engage with your mobile app users - <AUTHOR> http://appstark.com

<comment><USER2> Offtopic: does anyone else think about Google Plus when (s)he sees that top bar?

Ontopic: I love the idea of this product. User feedback solutions are something that I've always needed to implement myself, and never as comprehensive or complete as this. Customer support can be the face of your product to the world, and the lack of it can drive customers away very easily (see google's reputation in this area).

On the other hand (nitpicking, I know), I wanted to check out the Terms of this product, and the link in the footer just leads to the homepage. The privacy policy link is even worse, leads to a different website with some kind of 404 page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha i didnt notice it till you said it.

Thank you. The best part of building a startup is getting feedback like this. It made my day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've been looking for a forum such as this to use in my own apps. I get a good deal of feature requests for my iJuror iPad app and this seems to be a good way to determine which feature requests are the most desired versus the current approach of listening to the loudest/most persistent voice.

I've always liked how Dropbox has their Votebox page and this is something I look forward to using in my apps. Well done.

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks great and something every app developer could use (I've heard many horror stories of using mailto: links). However it might be hard to make money on this when others are giving this functionality away for free as part of a larger offering (like we do; see <http://www.uservoice.com/iphone/>).

<comment><USER5> Sounds like something Urchin, which became Google Analytics, would have said :)

<comment><USER4> ... and I don't see many people doing well competing against a free Google Analytics :)

<comment><USER5> Is this a case for a good product, or for deep pockets? :) nobody has dared GA, cause the product delivers. Not the case for everything that is free.

... And winter is coming. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Brilliant idea! This way, we, the developers need not find out how our users feel about the app in the review section of the app markets (Where it has the chance of scaring off new users if it is bad). We can get detailed feedback about the specific stuff and iteratively perfect it for them.

Looking forward to the free trial!

</comment><comment><USER7> Very nice.</comment>


Open Distro for Elasticsearch Review - <AUTHOR> https://sematext.com/blog/open-distro-elasticsearch-review/ <comment><USER2> Do you think AWS will "donate" the distro to ASF or CNCF or Eclipse?</comment>


Has BART's cutting-edge 1972 technology design come back to haunt it? - <AUTHOR> https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/03/25/has-barts-cutting-edge-1972-technology-design-come-back-to-haunt-it/ <comment><USER2> Should have (2016) on the title, which was probably when many of us here originally read this.</comment>


Optical Baking: CO2 Laser Browning of Dough [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://peterchencyc.com/files/co2/1-s2.0-S1466856418304284-main.pdf <comment><USER2> I once laser engraved a few hundred digits of pi onto an apple pie for Pi Day, using a 400W CO2 laser in the student machine shop at our research lab [0]. By using higher power at faster scan speeds you can get depth rather than burning. I also once tried slicing slab bacon with it, with the goal of cooking it while cutting. I was pretty sure doing so would win the internet, but I aborted the attempt when it became clear the water content was too high and the grease would make a significant mess.

There's a group in Japan that had done a number of experiments with laser cutters and food, including using computer vision recognition to identify and then only cook the fat in a slice of bacon [1].

[0] [https://guavaduck.com/laser-pie/](https://guavaduck.com/laser-pie/)

[1] [https://fukuchilab.org/projects/laser- cooking](https://fukuchilab.org/projects/laser-cooking)

<comment><USER3> There's something musical about the Pi laser going back and forth:

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/64728404@N03/8557504795/in/alb...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/64728404@N03/8557504795/in/album-72157632998476856/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I looked into buying CO2 laser and built one own my own.

It doesn't need much, just couple of aluminium extrusions for frame and V wheel for motion and couple of Nema17 motors. Also cooling for tube and optics.

But laser tube life is crap, I am still waiting for cheap laser systems to come to market but it seems there is nothing cheaper than CO2 available in 60-100w range.

</comment><comment><USER5> How soon can I buy baked goods with images on them?

<comment><USER6> How about holograms?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsDnkrDvkBo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsDnkrDvkBo)</comment></comment>


Google joins the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health - <AUTHOR> http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2014/02/google-joins-global-alliance-for.html

<comment><USER2> Why isn't this on the front page?? _facepalm_</comment>


$240 Macbook Air clones run Windows 8 - <AUTHOR> http://armdevices.net/2014/10/19/240-macbook-air-clones-run-windows-8-by-enz/

<comment><USER2> $50 to find out anything meaningful. Nope.</comment>


Paul Carr Should Die - <AUTHOR> http://www.slashgear.com/paul-carr-should-die-0396364/

<comment><USER2> Wanting to live forever is a childish fantasy, it's the big brother of wanting to eat nothing but chocolate. Grow up, already.

<comment><USER3> It's very hard to make a proper judgement on this without knowing what will happen in the future, beyond your natural lifespan. If the mental and physical limitations of age are eventually transcended, and one's peers are still alive, I wouldn't be willing to bet against it being worthwhile.

Interesting article: it seems seeing all your peers die off is perhaps the hardest thing about living longer:

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2010/aug/08/alex- horne...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2010/aug/08/alex-horne- longevity-centenarian-oldest-man-world-record)

Ridicule isn't much of an argument, though.</comment></comment>


Why Mark Zuckerberg's 14-Year Apology Tour Hasn't Fixed Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/why-zuckerberg-15-year-apology-tour-hasnt-fixed-facebook/ <comment><USER2> As these articles have rolled out, I'm increasingly wondering whether Facebook could have grown to its current size just by being the communication and identity layer of the web. No news in your timeline, no TV shows, nothing. Could it have been a freemium model instead of ad-based?

There are so many valuable companies (Slack, craigslist, Angie's List, Yelp) that Facebook has tried to replace and failed, but I wish it had gone in those directions instead of feeding us to advertisers.</comment>


Google buys Eyefluence eye-tracking startup - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/24/google-buys-eyefluence-eye-tracking-startup/ <comment><USER2> I can't help but feel that most these companies working on these technologies are viewing them in isolation, when none of our peripherals are ever used in isolation. The mouse wasn't developed to replace the keyboard, but to supplement it. You don't generally use a mouse to select characters from a representation of a keyboard on screen (there are reasons when you want this, but it's not the general use case), so why do we always see the equivalent of that in new peripherals?

The two main cases I'm thinking of are eye tracking, and brainwave tracking (like EMOTIV). Individually, neither looks like a compelling way to control a computer when you have a mouse and keyboard, but _together_ , I think that might really yield something interesting (and sooner!).

Instead of using brain waves to move a cursor around the screen, use eye tracking. Instead of using gaze lingering for click, use brainwave tracking. Individually they seem cumbersome and annoying to use. Together they could be a really compelling interface device, IMO.

<comment><USER3> Either that, or most of the companies know that the technologies they are building are likely to be acquired to build part of the feature set of a larger offering, and are building them for precisely that reason. Too cynical?

<comment><USER4> Why is that cynical? That seems like a very reasonable thing to do if you want to start a company with very narrow domain knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those wondering about the privacy implications of this technology, eyefluence required a VR headset to function and I'm not aware of them demonstrating their tech using the user-facing cameras found in mobile phones and tablets, so I don't think there is any reason for worry on that front (yet).

Here is a video of a 2016 demo of eyefluence tech:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYH8qLvq7rc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYH8qLvq7rc)

<comment><USER6> Would this be interesting for Google's Daydream efforts?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> 10 years ago while I was IBM, I submitted a proposed patent that was a sort- of-joke by saying Amazon (or other sites) could get rid of 1-click shopping and go to 0-click shopping by following your eyes and automatically making the purchase if you looked at something for a given amount of time. Sounds like this will be a reality in a few years.

<comment><USER2> Wife: Honey, do you know why Amazon keeps sending us mini-skirts and fishnet stockings? I mean, they're not even in my size!

Husband: Nope, sorry, no idea!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How many people here cover the front-facing camera on their phone when they're not using it? I haven't, until now.

<comment><USER9> Do you also now cover your computer mic?

<comment><USER10> Not trolling, serious question: What is the audio/mic equivalent of covering your webcam with a sticker?

<comment><USER11> One that I've seen is plugging something into the audio jack, and then breaking it off and taping over it. That way the computer will detect something is plugged in and turn off the mic. Of course this won't be possible once Apple, and then everyone else, gets rid of the audio jack from computers.

<comment><USER12> Isn't that still software controlled? So, let's say a malware is able to gain privileged access to my Windows machine and can install anything, would he be able to override this default behavior of 'turning off the mic when something is plugged in', especially when the external voices are more audible than something coming from the 'plugged in' dummy audio-in cable?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Better details from a beta tester over on /r/oculus on Eyefluence's tech:

" . . . I'm still not allowed to say how exactly it works but in my mind it's the gold standard for eye based user interfaces . . . Their [main focus] is the UI" (1)

So sounds like a blend between some good eye tracking tech and some GREAT user experience design and implementation.

(1) [https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/598clo/google_buys_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/598clo/google_buys_eyefluence_eyetracking_startup/)

</comment><comment><USER14> How difficult is it to track eyes using modern deep learning techniques? Isn't this a simple, run of the mill task by now?

<comment><USER15> I'm a machine learning researcher and I also have a lot of experience analyzing eye movement data.

There aren't large labeled datasets that are publicly available in this area. Just to classify eye movements into events, you would need images of the eyes or eye velocity to classify eye events into smooth pursuit, fixation, etc. That means someone needs to label all of those in ground truth. To actually determine what someone is looking at, you have to go beyond this to have information about the scene. When looking at a screen, this is usually done with calibration, but things get more complicated when trying to predict what someone is looking at with a mobile eye tracker and a fixed scene camera. Body and head movements complicate things further (e.g., VOR) and many algorithms ignore them.

<comment><USER16> If you don't mind me jumping in here, since people with eye tracking experience seem to be quite scarce: is it viable these days to build a working accurate gaze tracker that would, say, work using just an iPad camera? No hardware whatsoever, just using the camera to somewhat accurately position a dot on the screen. Every tracker I've tried is close to absolute garbage when it comes to accuracy.

<comment><USER5> YC invested in a company called 'GazeHawk', but they didn't make it (acquihire by facebook), the page is still up though.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-acquires-gazehawk- fo...](http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-acquires-gazehawk-for- talent-2012-3?international=true&r=US&IR=T)

[http://www.gazehawk.com/](http://www.gazehawk.com/)

<comment><USER16> Yeah.. I've literally tried 20 solutions, and most can not detect gaze location well. Gazehawk included.

<comment><USER5> That may have been one of the reasons why they didn't make it.

Eye tracking is tricky. I worked a bit with two guys developing a commercial eye tracker in the 80's, it was a pretty sophisticated optical set-up that combined the image being looked at and the image of the person looking using a 45 degree angle 50% mirror, that made the job considerably easier.

One of the complicating factors was that eye movements have a lot of noise in them that our brain has become very adept at filtering out so what we _think_ our eyes are doing can be quite different from what they're really doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Even though this is for hardware and VR, I have to admit the first thought on seeing the headline was that google doubled down on its advertisement business. More so after the recent news that they changed their policy to track users more.

</comment><comment><USER18> He asks us, "how do you transfer your intent to act without winking and without waiting", but never tells us how its done. Anyone know? This made the video incredibly frustrating for me.

<comment><USER19> They use saccades + some fancy algorithms: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Facebook bought an eye-tracking startup a few years back: [http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-acquires-gazehawk- fo...](http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-acquires-gazehawk-for- talent-2012-3)

At the time, i read it was only a acquihire

</comment><comment><USER21> By the way, Eyefluence's marketing videos are brilliant. I've seen people's arm hairs stand straight watching them.

They'd be worth acquiring if only for the marketing department.

</comment><comment><USER22> I can see good eye tracking as getting much, much more traction than VR for regular users. While most applications of VR to everyday tasks seem forced and gimmicky, eye tracking can revolutionize reading, which is arguably the task professional and casual users spend at least 80 percent of their online time on.

Much smarter than investing in VR.

</comment><comment><USER23> Could this be used for vr?

<comment><USER24> Did you read the article at all ?</comment></comment>


Add SPDY support to your Apache server with mod_spdy - <AUTHOR> http://googledevelopers.blogspot.com/2012/04/add-spdy-support-to-your-apache-server.html

<comment><USER2> Can't wait for SPDY to be implemented for nginx. There's been discussion about it several months ago, but I haven't heard anything since.

Does anyone who's involved with nginx have more info?

<comment><USER3> According to the nginx Twitter, they're targeting a May release: <http://twitter.com/#!/nginxorg/status/192301063934705665>

<comment><USER4> They're targeting _May_ release.

<comment><USER3> OK, I removed the joke about software schedules for the sake of not confusing anyone (especially since I realized this thread will probably rank for [nginx spdy] in like two minutes).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A bit OT, but has anyone noticed that Twitter seems to have stopped using SPDY? Any information on that?

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how SPDY would work in a load-balanced environment.

\- Should the load balancer use implement SPDY externally and use HTTP internally? \- Should internal request be 100% SPDY-only and the load balancer implement both?

<comment><USER7> I think currently the most convenient thing is to use HTTP internally and have something on the front end that does SPDY between end-user and server.

Seems like SPDY would be beneficial as a replacement for HTTP everywhere though, because the payload for each request is smaller. However, SPDY seems to be optimized for the longer, higher latency, and slower connection between user and server rather than the faster internal connection between load balancers and servers. Finally, all SPDY communication is encrypted via TLS, so that process might add to a slowdown between internal systems.

Guess we'll need to benchmark it and see! Looks like Apache and Jetty are the only supporters of this so far. And I'd never us Apache as a direct front-end.

<comment><USER8> It doesn't really matter.

For simplicity put SPDY on the edge and reverse proxy HTTP to whatever you used to use, this gets you 90% of the way there.

In the future, I expect we'll see tools like Mongrel2 take over. SPDY on one end, and some type of messaging on the other side. This will become more desirable with technologies like web-sockets that will stream data back. HTTP is simple, but hardly optimized for speed, even on a LAN. Thrift, Protobuffs, MessagePack, even Erlang's Binary Protocol (i.e. BERT) are all better fits for the internal RPC protocol

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From the comments on that article, it looks like Google will only implement SPDY for HTTPS, because Google believe that's the future of all HTTP requests.

I'm not cool with that. I feel like a ton of HTTP requests are for very simple html pages that don't require any kind of login/security and the overhead of HTTPS is of no benefit.

<comment><USER10> I'm completely cool with it. Modern equipment can handle plenty of SSL traffic, and SSL-by-default will protect me (and you) from lazy developers.

The real question is whether or not this will proliferate and to what extent.

<comment><USER11> Yeah but you've to pay for SSL certs that works in everyones browser without a fat "DONT GO TO THIS EVIL WEBSITE OMGOMG SELFSIGNED TERRORIST"

Meaning you'd have to pay a tax to put your site on the net when everyone only uses SPDY.

<comment><USER12> There's been some discussion that you could run SPDY with a self-signed cert and it just wouldn't show the lock. People need to make their opinions on this topic known to Google and Mozilla before the security model is finalized.

<comment><USER13> Do you have any info on that? Links, references, mailing list messages, anything? That's super interesting and honestly, the way it should be. HTTPS w/out certificate verification is STILL more secure than HTTP and it should be treated as such - not as the black sheep that it currently is.

<comment><USER12> <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/spdy-dev/R3Pt4NE2bjc> <http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.ietf.http-wg/9960/focus=10001>

Like I said, they're just discussions and currently the tide is against us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What? Why not Apache 2.4? That's the current stable version.

<comment><USER15> I'm glad they made 2.2 packages which is the version deployed on virtually all production servers in the last couple of years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> That architecture sounds like a DoS nightmare. Now you can run out of Apache processes much faster! I wonder if mod_spdy has any built-in mitigation for this.

<comment><USER16> Please stop using mpm_prefork... it is 2012: mpm_event just officially went stable (although it has worked fine for years) and mpm_worker has been the correct option for most of Apache 2.x.

(edit: I make this point because I handle thousands of concurrent requests with a small handful of processes; I run out of memory way before I run of processes.)

<comment><USER17> It _is_ 2012, and anyone using PHP with Apache 2.2 will be using mpm_prefork.

Much as the popularity of nginx deployments with PHP/fastcgi has grown, I suspect we'll see more mod_php-less Apache deployments as Apache 2.4 grows in popularity.

<comment><USER16> AFAIK, mod_php has been compatible with mpm_worker for many years now... it is only that there are a few PHP extensions that are incompatible, and people don't want to spend the time documenting which ones those are, so their default recommendation has always been "use mpm_prefork": if you actually care about your deployment you can just figure out whether your extensions are compatible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Its not clear from the post, are they implementing their own mpm? as in mod_spdy takes the place of mod_prefork/worker/event?

</comment><comment><USER11> " make BUILDTYPE=Release"

cool but there's no makefile in their source.</comment>


Things I Wish Every Search Box Did - <AUTHOR> http://insideintercom.io/7-things-wish-every-search-did/ <comment><USER2> This is literally an advertisement for Algolia masquerading as an article. They literally went through each feature their product provides and listed it out. Going to their page, the animation is practically a point by point repeat of the "article."

Maybe it's okay because it's a YC company that it's also posted here, but it really just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

<comment><USER3> Did the article do a bad job talking about the UX of search boxes? Did the author try to hide their interest in the topic?

I really don't see the problem here.

<comment><USER4> It's the fact that the blog:

      1. Lists only features of their product.

      2. Doesn't lists any features that their product doesn't support.

      3. Aims mostly at shaping expectations so that one would find their product.

      4. Uses the guest-blog trick to boost rating / cross-linking.

It's is all fine and dandy in the culture where somewhat things are newspeaked into hacking growth or whichever new euphemism is in vogue.

<comment><USER5> If they knew about some other feature search-boxes should have, but which their product doesn't, don't you think they'd _add_ it to their offering? #1 and #2 being true is the equilibrium-state of building a product to address every problem you're currently aware of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Why not skip this step and offer real results as they type?

This is one of the most annoying thing for me for general search(if it's something very precise, OK). How annoying it is seems to be counterintuitive, since a lost of search components do it.

There can be half a dozen of UI elements popping under a text field. Autocorrection is one, autocomplete and input history are another two, autosuggestion can happen depending on the device (Os5~7 Blackberry phones heavily did it). IME is also right on this spot and individual keystrokes don't have much meaning in this case anyway.

It's usually sad to have two dropdown like components auto updating at each keystrokes, especially when there is a network request for each update on the one hidden below the other. It can wait for an ENTER key, really.

<comment><USER7> In pretty much every case where I'm searching for something with a search bar, I prefer the list of results getting updated as I type. Why? It's simply faster.

On Spotify for example, click "search" start typing until I see the band I want in the "top result", press the down arrow, press enter.

If I had to press enter and wait for the whole list of results to load, that would take much longer.

<comment><USER6> For me the experience fall apart at the "press the down arrow" part.

I took a screenshot of a typical google search session [1] with the search suggestion appearing below the system's native dropdown. For any field where I use the IME, it's the IME that wins, and the dropdown in the background is just distraction [2].

This is the easiest case to reproduce on a blank site, but it's the same for search box where I have autocomplete values (which is a more common problem I think ?); the autocomplete popup will take precedence on any element displayed in reaction to the keyboard, and a "press down arrow" will go to the autocomplete, and not the site's dynamic dropdown.

[1] [http://imgur.com/YikLtdi](http://imgur.com/YikLtdi)

[2] The other "best" case is when a result is actually relevant, but I can't see it because it's hidden, or it changes/disappears when I dismiss the native popover because the action counted as a focus change or a keyboard event.

<comment><USER7> Ah, I guess my experience is different. I don't get that "system" autocomplete on Google or anything else. So, i just use the one that the website gives me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you had to prioritize these, which would be your top three?

Mine are "Search across multiple attributes", "Ranking" & "provide real results from the first keystroke", in that order.

Would be great to know what everyone else thinks, so we can improve our service accordingly ([https://starthq.com](https://starthq.com) \- Greplin- like cloud search).

<comment><USER9> I think the highest priority needs to be "Put the results the user is looking for at the top of the list". Second might be "Don't put anything on the list unless it's likely to be what the user is searching for". I don't know if there needs to be a third, but if there was it would be something like "Do it fast and unobtrusively".

Applying this to the article, let's look at the examples in #6. Correcting "Gmae of Th" to "Game of Thrones" is great, but what are the chances that the user would have typed "Gmae of Th" if they were searching for "The Hunger Games", "Enders' Game", or "The Game"? I'd argue that it's close enough to zero that the last 3 choices shouldn't be on the list.

<comment><USER10> I would rather it search for "Gmae of Th" because that's what I typed into the box.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I made this one last year [https://bitly.com/18y2kPE](https://bitly.com/18y2kPE) Does a few of those things albeit not all that well. Also due to Google charging for its API's it only can do 100 searches a day from them but Bing and Blekko keep working.

</comment><comment><USER12> Careful, haven't you guys heard that Matt Cutts has banned guest blogging? [1]

Those links to Algolia should be no-followed under decree from Google.

[1] - [http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest- blogging/](http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-blogging/)

</comment><comment><USER13> I find it weird that this is not a blog post on Algolia's website, since it is so closely related to what they do...

<comment><USER14> [http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest- blogging/](http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-blogging/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Good points. Case study: Verizon FiOS DVR fails miserably at #3, meaning you have to type out more letters using a d-pad.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd never heard of Algolia before, but their demos seem very impressive.

<comment><USER17> Fun trivia, the search engine for HN have been switched out to a Algolia one. Try searching in the bottom.

It's a pretty good one as well.

<comment><USER18> Frankly I was blown away a little while ago when I first used the new search, it's lightning fast and really finds whatever you're searching for. I'd really love to know more about the infrastructure behind.

<comment><USER19> We have done an interview with Leanstack.io where we discuss our infrastructure: [http://blog.leanstack.io/how-algolia-built-their-realtime- se...](http://blog.leanstack.io/how-algolia-built-their-realtime-search-as-a- service-product)

<comment><USER18> Thanks ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What about the patents on search results.

</comment><comment><USER21> > It's hard to imagine a product without search

I don't want to nitpick, but when an article begins with such an evidently silly statement, it discourages me from reading the rest.

<comment><USER17> I don't whats silly with this. I agree that most products where you put data, there should be a search. Not always, but in most cases.</comment></comment>


Family Income Affects Kids' Success More Than Public vs. Private School - <AUTHOR> http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2018/08/27/public-private-school-family-income-study <comment><USER2> It's priceless as to walk into a library to see the kid you are competing with for scholarships being tutored by your math teacher after school and being told everyone has an equal shot. It's also priceless to walk into a gym as an adult that you couldn't afford as a kid to see high school athletes getting private coaching (that you still can't really afford).

Maybe there is something to be said for learning things on your own, but some mistakes cost way, way more than the lesson they provide.

Then there is the question of whether it's all pointless anyway at any sort of high level of competition in case IQ really is almost fully genetic and you can't run if you aren't from Ethiopia.

<comment><USER3> The evidence that IQ is strongly (though not close to "fully") heritable does not imply that IQ is "fully genetic". Genetic determinism and heritability are different concepts.</comment></comment>


Principles of Mobile Site Design: Delight Users and Drive Conversions - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/think/multiscreen/whitepaper-sitedesign.html

<comment><USER2> 26\. Never ask users to download an app to do what they could do on your website.

27\. Your mobile and full sites should have similar layouts, so users used to one won't get lost on the other.

28\. Content/functions on your main website should also be available on your mobile website. Otherwise, users will search for things that aren't there and become very, very, angry.

29\. Avoid using popups as they are harder to close on mobile devices. (Really, you shouldn't be using them on your desktop site either.) It is especially dumb for popups to ask a user to fill out a survey on their satisfaction with your site before they've started using it.

30\. Switching to the full site should be easy and obvious. Do not attempt to thwart this functionality.

</comment><comment><USER3> #9 Explore before they commit -- is truly ironic given the experience of going to G+ on any mobile device.

#10 Purchase as guest -- dittos -- allow for anonymous (or unauthenticated) transactions.

The principles are actually pretty good, but it's clear Google's left hand doesn't know what its right it suggesting.

</comment><comment><USER4> Presentation giving some sort of error for reaching the download limit of non- Google Docs format presentations.

<comment><USER5> I would assume that Google has a way to remove that limit for their own usage, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd like to propose a 26th principle:

Don't place a bandwidth limit on files that aren't in google docs format.

<comment><USER6> Ok so it's loaded now.

I just tried it on my iPhone. This has to be the least mobile-friendly blog post I've seen in a very long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cool, always glad to read an article on design from a company that barely understands it.

</comment><comment><USER8> I love that those of us who give a shit about the users can use the mobile trend to push good user-centric design on otherwise unwilling marketing weasels. I just wish they would stop pretending it is in any way unique to mobile users. Almost all that stuff is just ordinary "give the user a site that doesn't suck", and applies to any user, regardless of the device they are using at any particular moment. "Make your menu simple" and "give relevant search results" and "don't put up registration walls to prevent your users from giving you money" have been well known for over a decade. Take this opportunity to push good web design for your entire site, not just for mobile users.

<comment><USER3> Most of it reads as Jacob Nielsen 1998. You're quite right.

One of the things I actually like about mobile websites (done right) is that they make for better _desktop_ websites: they take away all of the cruft far too typical of the latter and get straight to business.

Someone should make a point of taking mobile redesign as a launching point for _desktop_ redesign.

<comment><USER9> That's what the mobile first approach is about.Get rid of the fat and focus on what matters.

It doesnt always work though,sometime user facing sites have complex requirements that just dont make sense on mobile,you often need 2 versions with a complete different UI.

Yet i dont believe in a high rate conversion on mobile web(phones). native apps often work better when it comes to ad or even ecommerce. Especially when "in app" purchase is just one click ahead.

<comment><USER3> I realize you can't get rid of _everything_ (and sometimes mobile sites cut too much), but there's very few sites which can't go on _some_ diet.

I've written CSS rules to modify over 1000 sites in the past year, and while the modifications are often minor, the busier the site, the more likely I'll simply strip out elements -- asides, headers, and footers are very likely to get killed, leaving more space and prominence for primary content.

Yes, I could use Pocket or Readability, but they work an article at a time. This fixes the site for good.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


HTY360Player: Open-Source 360 VR Player - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hanton/HTY360Player iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/hk/app/360-vr-player/id1061464612?mt=8 Github: https://github.com/hanton/HTY360Player <comment><USER2> Looks neat.

If you're looking for a web based player for 360° videos that uses WebGL instead of flash, check out Valiant360 at [https://github.com/flimshaw/Valiant360](https://github.com/flimshaw/Valiant360)</comment>


The Science Cops Use to Decide If You're Lying - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2020/08/12/blueleaks-law-enforcement-police-lie-detection/ <comment><USER2> Wow. This is extremely dangerous.</comment>


Ask HN: Best programming language to learn Algorithms? - <AUTHOR>

What would be your recommendation about the most suitable programming language to learn Algorithms?<p>Actually tempted by Robert Sedgewick's C series. What do you think? <comment><USER2> Learning algorithms should be language-independent.

Use whatever language you're most comfortable with, or start with C.

</comment><comment><USER3> python would let you concentrate on the code and not on other issues. It also has quick access to many data structures like sets and maps with shorthand syntax.

e.g. checking for set membership: if 3 in {1,2,3,4,5}:

</comment><comment><USER4> 'C' is the best for anyone with minimalist mindset

</comment><comment><USER5> Rust</comment>


Target, Macys, & Best Buy – Y'all Just Got Punked - <AUTHOR> http://blog.grouptalent.com/2011/target-macys-best-buy-%E2%80%93-y%E2%80%99all-just-got-punked/

<comment><USER2> similar to Nordstrom's Innovation Lab?

[http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-10-25/strategy/3032...](http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-10-25/strategy/30320644_1_innovation- lab-nordstrom-fortune)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah. Walmart created their own innovation labs, and the gift suggestions is a result of that.</comment></comment>


Why 6AM Works For Me - <AUTHOR>

This morning: http://twitpic.com/8cb1rc
My typical habit up until 3 days ago was to wake up around 10-11AM and start working around 2-3PM, until I got tired or burned out.
After seeing several posts on Hacker News about waking up early, I thought about trying it, but never had the drive to follow through.
On Wednesday AM I woke up at 6 naturally for an unknown reason. I got my giant cup of coffee and watched the sunrise from the fire escape. As a designer mind, I found a unique sense of comfort in watching the morning unfold. From foggy, cool, quiet streets to warm(er), busy streets in under an hour. The colors, the sounds, and the smells are refreshing and inspiring.
I can honestly say that I've had some of the most lucid moments of my entire life the past few mornings. If you haven't given waking up early a fair shot, you definitely should. Of course, I doubt it's right for everyone. But I was shocked to find out that it was very right for me.
Thanks goes out to all of the HN members who have pushed this in several recent posts. Seriously, you've changed my life. <comment><USER2> Its best (for most hackers) to work at night through to the early morning. Zen. 1am - 8am. Then you go to sleep, wake up after lunch and do it again.

Get your diet together so you don't need too much sleep :).

<comment><AUTHOR> Diet is _HUGE_ , I agree. I'm surprised there aren't more "Hackers should eat more Spinach" posts on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do you feel tired waking up at 6AM? For some reason, I feel very tired waking up at that hour these days. I use to wake up at 6AM for nearly 2 years because of commuting.

What are you doing with your time in the morning? Usually no one else is up and around. When I woke up early I found that I could always workout and never have to trade exercising with other activities in the evenings.

<comment><AUTHOR> "...because of commuting." makes me wonder how much you hated commuting. If your habit was to wake up at 6AM for something that you disliked, I'd say that's your answer right there.

I have my coffee out on the fire escape, maybe do a few pull-ups, and dive straight into work 10-15 minutes after I wake up. I then break for a late breakfast and a shower 2-3 hours later.

I guess I forgot to mention that I work from home, freelancing right now - I'm not sure I'd have the same motivation if I was working full-time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What time were you going to sleep before and now? I'd be interested to see a followup in 6 months or so to see if you manage to keep it up.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was going to bed around 12-4, waking up between 10 and 12. I found that my evenings were too distracting & busy, and it was hard for me (personally) to get back into the workflow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pretty Cool!

I used to wake up around 7:30AM and changed that to 5AM so I can work on a project I've been postponing for more than year. I decided to make that project an experience and will code only between 5AM and 7AM. Will post the results when the app is finished.

How about your evenings? I find it impossible to concentrate after 8PM</comment>


Ask HN: Startup opportunities, not ideas - <AUTHOR>

There was a slideshare of someone who discussed opportunities versus ideas. I've failed to bookmark it, and slideshare, Google and HNSearch don't seem to help. Anyone save the link? Thanks. (Was temporarily on front page March 7 - but don't see it on HNtimeline) <comment><USER2> Is this what you're talking about? [http://growthbay.com/post/44698344628/stop-thinking-up- start...](http://growthbay.com/post/44698344628/stop-thinking-up-startup- ideas-presentation)

<comment><AUTHOR> Bingo! [http://www.slideshare.net/maciejoleksy/stop-thinking-up- star...](http://www.slideshare.net/maciejoleksy/stop-thinking-up-startup- ideas) +1. Thanks! This thing should be a sticky post on HN :)</comment></comment>


Would it be legally safe to work with correlium? - <AUTHOR> https://corellium.com/ <comment><USER2> IANAL:

I think the likelihood that Apple comes after individual customers of Correlium is relatively small. That said, I think most people thought that the music industry would not likely come after small time individual offenders like Jammie Thomas-Rasset. I would not personally want to be the individual that Apple decided to use to make an example of given that Apple clearly believes that Correlium is distributing their IP.

That is just my take on it. If you have any concerns you should speak with someone who actually is a lawyer, probably one who specializes in digital IP.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Correlium does iPhone virtualization and it's groundbreaking in terms of automated testing, provided it can be used for that use case. However it got sued by Apple and they have quite limiting terms of use.</comment>


A Greener Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/hotnews/agreenerapple/ <comment><USER2> Jobs is a PR genius. When it's so common to see companies manufacture reasons for pr releases as if those releases are ends wholly to themselves it's striking to see how powerful it is to simply have something substantive to say to the public.</comment>


Ask HN: What is your go to news source? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> My spouse.</comment>


PeerTube: A 'Censorship' Resistent YouTube Alternative - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/peertube-a-censorship-resistent-youtube-alternative-180623/ <comment><USER2> PeerTube exposes the IPs of all viewers who watch videos[0]. This is a privacy issue that's baked into its design. For example, this allows for anyone to track the content viewing history of IPs. I see this being a big hurdle for any mainstream adoption.

0\. [https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/316](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/316)

<comment><USER3> Without this it's hard to imagine PeerTube being able to scale to a fraction of YouTube's level. Video streaming is just too expensive. Being able to offload it to viewers during high traffic is a killer feature.

<comment><USER4> Google handles this in the same way as Netflix by living in your ISP's data centers. Google has an edge global cache that can live at ISPs to reduce bandwidth usage.

[https://peering.google.com/#/options/google-global- cache](https://peering.google.com/#/options/google-global-cache)

<comment><USER5> Google and Netflix can do this, because ISPs have to let them host there to avoid massive burden on their network. An individual who wants to host their own videos cannot. So, as Sir_Cmpwn indicates, some sort of torrent-esque system is needed to let individual users have some sort of option that avoids crazy bandwidth costs.

<comment><USER4> Does torrent or any other protocol out there try to prioritize peers that are within the same ASN or something similar? Many protocols ignore the physical network, but here it seems like it would help to be smarter.

<comment><USER6> There's no need for manual priorization for nearer ASN's on BitTorrent, as is this builtin implicitly by prioritizing faster connections with higher bandwidths automatically. If a faster connection exists in a different ASN, the faster one is prioritized. Nuclear proof dynamic design, similar to TCP/IP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is a crowdfunding going on. It already reached its goal. But there is a second goal at 45K. 11 days to go. Please help!

[https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a- free...](https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-free-and- federated-video-platform)

<comment><USER8> Are you involved with the project? Have they explored any EU grants that may be available for open source and creative development?

<comment><USER7> No, I'm not involved. Can't tell you unfortunately.

<comment><USER8> No worries, I will get in touch with the non-profit responsible for PeerTube.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How do they solve the torrent liability problem?

My understanding is that if you download something via torrent, you are also uploading/distributing, and as I understand it, that makes your liability rather higher if the content happens to be illegal - you are not just in trouble for downloading/possessing said content, but you are also in trouble for distribution of said content.

I thought this was a big part of the rise of 'tube sites' for questionable content.

</comment><comment><USER10> This seems to focus alot on being a youtube alternative.

But for someone looking as something similar to youtube but locked down and only for friends and family it's a bit unclear whether this is appropriate (since so much is focused on sharing the content with other servers).

Also, for such a use case the torrent-functionality seems like a real downside but I can't find out if you can disable it serverside so that clients don't have to bother with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> PeerTube initially aims precisely at being a Youtube alternative, which is why such questions are not tackled in the article I guess. However federation with other servers is totally controlled by admin-defined rules, so you can make a "private" instance. I'm not sure whether making videos watchable by logged-in users only is already possible but it's a very easy thing to implement.

As for the torrenting, if videos are only available to members it shouldn't be a privacy problem. That being said, disabling it will probably be a possibility in v1.0.

<comment><USER10> Thanks, yeah but it's hard to find these answers at the project site as well.

The privacy problem wasn't my concern. But rather a bloated javascript client as well as the issue of accidentally seeding on a mobile connection wasting bandwidth and battery life. I see tons of potential issues but no possible gains at all when server bandwidth is not an issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The problem that peer tube can not solve is the youtube suggestions and stability.

\- As a business I will link to a youtube video but not a PT video because I know YT will stay up.

\- Most YT's views are from recommendations and related videos.

PT can't compete against that. Just can't. Especially since YT will never recommend a PT video. This is why a single source wins. :(

<comment><AUTHOR> Peertube has other advantages, among which interoperability. A relevant quote from the main developer:

"Where it gets really, really exciting, is that when you respond to a video status on Mastodon, the message will be sent to the instance of PeerTube. Your response will thus be visible beneath the video, in the comment space. And yes, if another person at the other end of the world responds to your comment via their instance of PeerTube or Mastodon, you'll see it as a response to your status in Mastodon. If tomorrow Diaspora (the Facebook alternative behind Framasphere) implements ActivityPub, it will work in the same way. We'll have plenty of platforms that are capable of federating comments.

Free alternatives are criticized, often rightly, for not having added value compared to centralized platforms. With ActivityPub, we now have our first big advantage. Because on the centralized platforms, you'll have a hard time viewing, under your YouTube video, the reactions of people who commented on Facebook, Twitter, etc. "

source: [https://medium.com/@chocobozzz/peertube-a-federated-video- st...](https://medium.com/@chocobozzz/peertube-a-federated-video-streaming- platform-fa90e6c503df)

<comment><USER12> > Because on the centralized platforms, you'll have a hard time viewing, under > your YouTube video, the reactions of people who commented on Facebook, > Twitter, etc.

I consider it an advantage to not have those comments. Context matters. Signal to noise ratio on Facebook is close to 0 for most things that are open to everyone. Specialized subreddits have a good SNR. HN can too. Probably closed Facebook groups do as well.

And context matters. The discussion about a Blender tutorial will be different if posted to a group of beginners than if a group of professionals were to comment on it. If I want to help people learn Blender I can seek out beginners and help them in their groups, but when I am not looking to spend time helping beginners I'd rather not have every comment by every person wondering about every little detail show up.

<comment><USER13> It's not really a problem. Pleroma for example already offers ways you can filter out certain platforms from communicating with you (or do transforms on messages like adding Subject lines or hiding the message body behind a button).

PeerTube could do the same; hide content you don't want to see below your videos or maybe whitelist certain places to allow commenting from them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've been using it for a couple of days, and I've gotta say I'm impressed at the high quality of the service, and the integration with Activity Feeds (e.g. Mastodon) elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER15> Any peertubers here doing let's plays?

I have some on youtube, but it's just a hobby and I don't monetise it, but because of that I have a feeling that it's being scored lower in the youtube ranks.

However I have not seen any dedicated let's play peertube hubs and most only have a tiny allotment of upload space. There is one with unlimited, [https://peertube.social/](https://peertube.social/), however I'm not confident that it will stay that way and I'm not sure how happy they would be if I started uploading terrabytes of video.

Does anyone know of hubs specifically for this sort of content?

<comment><USER16> There is [https://videos.lecygnenoir.info/about](https://videos.lecygnenoir.info/about) \- you can contact him on [https://miaou.drycat.fr/@lecygnenoirgame](https://miaou.drycat.fr/@lecygnenoirgame)

Not sure he still has slots open though

<comment><USER15> I'll check it out.

Seems to be a bit french though for the moment and I'm not that well spoken in french :)

That brings another thing to mind, I tend to output stuff from Kdenlive with CRF 12 which results in quite high bitrate for 1080p (~25 mbit). Youtube just eats up the video files and transcodes them to all kinds of resolutions, but it also trashes the quality.

I wonder how peertube deals with that. Guess I can set up a local instance and test a bit first :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Anyone with exp using peertube for product videos on a small-ish scale? Is it worth having all those extra features?

I'm soon starting to create videos for my startup and peertube is certainly what I am thinking about, besides just hosting the mp4 files directly.

<comment><USER18> I built a system for people in similar situations... iSpooge Live, working on first easy release, seeking flexible early adopters.

Self hosted, designed for RasPi/non-cloud DCs w Docker, now running on AWS. Tools are all CLI static gen, to serve from CDN. I self host a "video platforms compared" video and other demos, with VideoJS player. Contact info in profile if you wanna chat more... my goal is hands-off SDK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What happens when someone uploads child porn?

<comment><AUTHOR> The uploader will be banned and their content removed, and hopefully will have to deal with the police. If a PeerTube instance is too laxist about its moderation policy, other instances will stop federating (federation is opt-in and decided by the admins).

<comment><USER19> So how can they call it "censorship resistant" if you can just ban users and delete their content?

<comment><USER20> The platform is censorship resistant. Individual instances are not. If you upload something to a specific instance, you are at the mercy of the instance owner. But you can upload to other more "open-minded" instances or host your own.

Moderation is necessary, otherwise you'll attract "undesirables" that will most likely scare away regular users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I can't see how this could be a youtube alternative without ads. Ads are how youtubers survive and make videos full time.

</comment><comment> polski-g How is this better than bitchute?

</comment><comment><USER22> Resistant _

</comment><comment><USER23> In the article PeerTube is presented as a YouTube alternative. I don't see how this can be the case if I have host the videos and pay all the costs that come with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Only if you want to be in control of your videos and don't want to use your audience's personal data as a payment to Youtube.

You can also host them on a PeerTube instance run by someone you trust (several non-profits already maintain one).

<comment><USER23> Where can I find a list of them?

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://joinpeertube.org/](https://joinpeertube.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Not showing your videos because you don't want to contribute financially to the for profit platform you chose to host them on is not censorship.

<comment><USER25> Of course you're right, but it's also right to say that it's shitty when the for profit platform has more money than many small countries and insists that _everyone_ must show their ads all the time. The money that the for profit platform makes comes from taking an obscene amount of data from its users and selling it to the companies that want to advertise.

We haven't even discussed whether the money that the for profit platform pays the content creators that drive traffic to its advertising engine is proportionate or fair. There's no discussion of this anywhere, really, since the for profit platform is so powerful that some people are literally afraid to criticize them in public. And let's not even broach the subject of whether the for profit platform might be using its users' data for things other than advertising. That would be really beyond the pale conspiracy theory type paranoia.

But you're right. It's not censorship. Only the government can do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Without advertising revenue, what incentive do many of these content creators have to participate? These alternative systems are unsustainable.

<comment><USER27> Many don't primarily rely on YouTube advertising revenue (especially since YT has become fairly aggressive in excluding videos from monetization anyways). Sponsored content, in-video advertising, Patreon etc. all are revenue sources that don't rely on the platform providing advertising.

<comment><USER28> I thought the majority of the complains on Youtube were more about demonetization rather than content removal. PeerTube is solving the latter, but that doesn't help most people who are upset that they are making less money since the adpocalypse.

<comment><USER27> True, but if YT doesn't provide reliable ad revenue there's less reason to only put your content on YouTube. And with general unhappiness with the platform comes a desire for having at least a backup plan, so why not start posting in multiple locations now?

<comment><USER28> If by "backup plan", you mean your videos being accessible, sure. But usually, when people talk about diversifying, they are talking about revenue. In this case, PeerTube isn't really bringing revenue so I'm not sure it helps much. What would help is getting a Patreon or streaming on Twitch. Those are different sources of income, PeerTube isn't really unless you get hit like Blender did.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook's former chief security officer thoughts about the NYT revelations - <AUTHOR> https://threader.app/thread/1075297398342148097 <comment><USER2> Here's the original thread on Twitter: [https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1075297398342148097](https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1075297398342148097)

> What they really need is a table that gets updated over the next several > days that lists the company, the kind of integration, what data was > accessible, what steps a user took to activate the integration, and > when/whether it was shut down.

This is a fantastic idea - but one I highly doubt we'll see come to fruition.</comment>


A/B Testing Visualizations - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@karlsluis/a-b-testing-visualizations-29a832940182

<comment><AUTHOR> Co-worker made a useful post on how best to A/B test visualizations. Good read and reference.</comment>


2048 game for the Atari 2600 lovers - <AUTHOR> http://javatari.org/games/2048

<comment><USER2> Just amazing !!!</comment>


You cannot view PNGs of 4097 or 4098 bytes in Internet Explorer 6 - <AUTHOR> https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/822071/you-cannot-view-some-png-images-in-internet-explorer-6 <comment><USER2> Why is anyone still using IE6?</comment>


Show HN: Responsive web app in JavaScript on HTML5stac - <AUTHOR> http://demo.mobstacapp.com

<comment><USER2> I'm not very impressed. The application takes 15 GET requests to show a spinning wheel. Last request returns status code 429 (unknown status code). That web app doesn't look very responsive.

<comment><USER3> Apologies, we ran into rate limits that we had applied on our server so the experience was very poor when you hit it (we really didn't expect HN to pick it up!)

You're right that there are too many requests being made. We're fixing this very soon, stay tuned.

Thanks for your feedback - we're in a early private beta and your inputs are very valuable to us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks great and all, but why I would use HTML5stac rather than just backbone+bootstrap which would provide more control.

Is there a particularly nice layer of abstraction that HTML5stac provides?

<comment><USER3> HTML5stac provides the complete backend, including the models and REST APIs to go with it. And it's full-stack JavaScript too, both on the client and server.

The demo app does in fact using Backbone+Bootstrap.

What HTML5stac makes dead simple for you is mapping your backend data models to Backbone Collections. In addition, we have responsive images, and adaptive templates, built into the framework.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Watching a spinning wheel spin forever makes my blood boil.

Here's the error in the console: Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 429 (UNKNOWN STATUS CODE) GET [https://apiv2.mobstac.com/api/2.0/accounts/1/properties/1/ap...](https://apiv2.mobstac.com/api/2.0/accounts/1/properties/1/apps/1/collections/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing out the issues and the valuable feedback. We didn't expect such a great response and hit the throttling limits on our APIs. We are addressing these issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> IMO responsiveness should have nothing to do with JavaScript, otherwise you're doing it wrong.

<comment><USER3> Do you mind elaborating why JavaScript should have nothing to do with it?

IMO responsiveness is a broad approach, and it doesn't necessarily imply only a pure CSS3 approach using media queries. If using JavaScript can make the web app more "responsive" to user needs, what's wrong with that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I always wonder what kind of news hit the main page.

<comment><USER3> We are pulling a RSS feed of "mobile news" from a website called intomobile.com (this is one of the features of HTML5stac)</comment></comment>


Grape: a New Desktop - <AUTHOR> http://www.osnews.com/story/19740 <comment><USER2> I love learning new metaphors for the desktop, although, all I can think right now is that _cognitive dissonance_ would set in with this a little too easily. Even more quickly than what we have today for a desktop.

I do think it would be interesting to see how this model fits different types of people. Great example of an app that should be usability tested, as in <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html>.

And this quote (from a recent thread here) I think applies just as well to desktops as it does to languages: "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing"

</comment><comment><USER3> a stacking app would help me, I already make littleclusters of icons on my normal desktop to keep then organized by type.

</comment><comment><USER4> Props for trying something different, but this is not solving a problem.

<comment><USER5> Organization isn't a problem?

<comment><USER4> Yes, it is... I guess I'm knocking it because it isn't exactly what I want, which is something that completely eliminates the desktop metaphor in favor of giving me exactly what I want whenever I want it. A desktop where a Spotlight- like tool was the main way of interaction would go a long way towards this goal.

<comment><USER4> I don't want a desktop because I don't want to manage files. It seems unnecessary.</comment></comment></comment></comment>