Where do you look for startup cofounders? - <AUTHOR>

Any ideas, websites? <comment><USER2> Networking is a rich source of potential co-founders, partners, employees and so forth. It's a chance to get to know like-minded people and for them to get to know you. It takes time and patience but can be worth it. As babul pointed out, go where the types of person you need hang out and learn to speak their language.

Advertising for a co-founder is another way to do it, but I have always thought that makes for a more formal business arrangement, rather than two (or more) people united by a passion for an idea. Perhaps I'm romanticising slightly, but if you advertise for a co-founder I think you will need to spend more time (and money?) on formulating a pretty tight Job Spec to make sure all requirements, dependencies etc are watertight. This may not actually be a bad thing, but you should be aware of it, all the same.

</comment><comment><USER3> As far as websites go younoodle.com is best one I have seen so far.

If you are at/around a uni look for a suitable society e.g. BASES at Stanford, OE at Oxford, Imperial Entreprenuers at Imperial.

If you can, attend hacker meets especially events like barcamp and some of the (un)conferences put on.

</comment><comment><USER3> Depends what type of cofounder you are looking for. for hackers got to hacker meets, for business/other-skill go where these people hang out.

</comment><comment><USER3> Idea...

Build what you can and then advertise you want a cofounder on what have built e.g. directly on your website.</comment>


Show HN: Triage - We made an Email first aid app - <AUTHOR> http://www.triage.cc

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey there, I'm one of the Triage developers from Southgate Labs. Happy to field any questions or get feedback! :)</comment>


Wikipedia Is Down - <AUTHOR> https://isitup.org/wikipedia.org <comment><USER2> wikipedia.org is up.

It took 21 ms for a 301 response code with an ip of 18.104.22.168.</comment>


The U.S. Needs a Constitution – Here's How to Write It - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/11/the-us-needs-a-constitution-heres-how-to-write-it/281090/

<comment><USER2> The self-assured certainty imbedded in the tone of this article belies the pride manifest in such a view that prefers the novel application of modern intellectual enlightenment to the time tested bulwark that is our iterative and flexible legal foundation.

The fact that it sees the pain and dysfunction as symptoms of a systemic/endemic flaws is telling of a mentality similar to seeing children as inconvenient drains on environmental integrity or child-birth as merely some destructive medical condition from which women should be spared any time such is possible.

This kind of pride and double guessing of the 'anti-fragile' system that is emergent from the US Constitution is the very thinking that's going to cause more problems for our nation than the forward thinking policies of the Greenspan era that gave us snapshots of prosperity through propping intellectual ideas RATHER than promoting true progress as it comes with all it's warts and growing pains.

You don't win the future by throwing what's survived into the trash bin on account that it's not pretty or efficient enough for your liking or your intellectual enlightenment.

<comment><USER3> > The fact that it sees the pain and dysfunction as symptoms of a > systemic/endemic flaws is telling

Indeed.

One of the greatest strengths of the US Constitution, one of the reasons it is the oldest constitution in use to date, is the fact that it stemies government.

That _dysfunction_ is what has led to the extraordinary prosperity experienced by the United States.

<comment><USER4> That's a nice axiomatic assumption made based on faulty observations.

Not only are the facts to support that assumption not in evidence, the facts that exist about the history of the U.S. government show that

(a) dysfunction is not the normal mode of operation of the U.S. government and that

(b) the extraordinary prosperity of the U.S. since about 1930 has been to increasing levels of federal government involvement and investment in both infrastructure projects (e.g., the interstate highway system, the Internet, advances in medicine and sanitation) and social projects (the social safety net, some basic medicare services, education investment as a whole, desegregation and civil rights in general).

The U.S. has not been this actively dysfunctional for at least eighty years, and more likely for about 160 years (and the secondary reasons for the dysfunction 160 years ago are not too dissimilar to the reasons for dysfunction now, as ways of life and economic growth are deeply threatened by modernization). I'm not sure that we've seen sustained partisanship for this long _ever_ in the history of the U.S. (about 18 years since Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich's clashes in '95).

Further, it's questionable how sustainable the "prosperity" in the U.S. is over the 18–20 years, as has been well documented. Most of the money has flowed away from the middle class (the proverbial rising tide) and toward an already wealthy upper-upper class.

That the U.S. and its constitution have survived several shorter periods of hyper-partisanship and a civil war suggest that it is, as a document, more resilient than the article suggests, but there has been a sea change in the U.S. where I no longer recognize the country of my birth and can foresee the day when I choose no longer to be a U.S. citizen because I no longer identify with what it has become.

<comment><USER2> RE your point a)

this gets into the semantics of the term dysfunction. I think if we did a point by point walk through of any given portion of the history of US government one could find a bounty of examples of dysfunction. It would simply be a matter of choosing what portions of history you wished to look closely at.

and RE your point b)

This is a far bigger set of assumptions and faulty observations. Firstly not all of those projects constitute a singular 'success' rather than simply the emergent of some system that produces a wide range of results. The funding is simply a component of that and the ultimate determining factor as to whether or not the net result of that funding was better than other alternatives that could have existed in it's absence is something that's not easy to quickly determine.

Reminds me of getting a large and extremely demanding client. Certainly one may be gaining far more money than they ever did prior to having said client, but if the demands and side effects of having the client are too high then even the masses of money one makes, when placed in context to the big picture and the actual desired ends, may not result in an optimal, or even a positive, end.

One needs but look at state welfare in Europe to see an example of this. The state takes care of people and one of the fall outs is that individual persons, beyond what they are obligated to give through taxation, help their fellow countrymen at far lower rates than they do in less socialized nations. There's always unseen costs.

<comment><USER4> Are you seriously going to try to make either of these arguments?

a. Your original point suggested that continuous dysfunction is the reason that the U.S. is successful. Not only is this nonsensical, it is ahistorical. Yes, the U.S. has had periods of hyper-partisanship prior to the last fifteen years. The most serious of these resulted in a war. However, over most of the last 224 years, the U.S. has had more periods of cooperation and compromise than hyper-partisanship and dysfunction. Even during the 1930s (where there a plot to stage a coup d'état, defeated only because the plotters misjudged their preferred candidate) and the 1950s (e.g., McCarthy) the business of government moved forward and there were measurable improvements in the quality of life and infrastructure directly attributable to government intervention. (See also the TVA.)

b. Your assessment is flat-out incorrect on numerous levels. Again, it assumes facts that are not only not in evidence, but contrary to the facts that actually exist. This is a common problem with choosing to believe ideological stances rather than comparing them against facts.

Under no circumstances do I think that all government programs are successful; however, the U.S. saw greater _real_ economic growth during times of higher government spending on infrastructure programs and social programs (as I indicated) than it has when these things fall to the best "interests" of the monied classes and so-called "Christian charity".

I don't know what your particular political stance is, but your characterization of the charitable nature of Europeans is misguided, at best—a lot of the higher "charitable" donation rates in the U.S. are because (1) the government funds _aren't_ there to assist those in need, (2) there are greater tax incentives to donate more. I put "charitable" in quotes because all donations to churches—for any reason whatsoever—are considered tax deductible in the U.S. Most of those donations are _not_ used for local charitable assistance (e.g., soup kitchens, etc.) activities; they are used for church building maintenance, salaries, mission work, etc.

I _suspect_ (because I don't know where to find the actual numbers for this) that if you were to measure per-capita charitable assistance spending through charitable donations, it would be similar. I also don't happen to think that the success of a nation should be measured on how financially charitable its people are to those less fortunate members of society—I think it should be measured on how few of its people have what is now termed food insecurity. If that can be done with charitable donations, great—but as the U.S. amply demonstrates, it cannot _and never could_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> alex-g In my view, the US Constitution has been _too_ successful. If it were more definitively broken, it could be repaired more easily. But there is no political will right now to make any amendments at all, outside of noodling on the Internet and in wonkish circles. As it is, the longevity of the Constitution has led to its being imbued with an almost mystical character, where it's viewed as the most important force preventing anarchy and/or tyranny, and as something incredibly fragile.

<comment><USER5> I disagree. The failure of the Constitution is pretty broad and varied, but its failures have definitely been apparent to those who know it and are paying attention.

Separation of powers has effectively failed due to the Supreme Court's supreme reliance on precedent, or stare decisis. One bad decision, unless explicitly overturned, has ripple effects on every decision that follows it. Because of SCOTUS' strict adherence to precedent, and their relative unwillingness to overturn bad law except where they absolutely, positively have to, we have a ton of bad precedent on the books, and everybody pussyfoots around them, which leaves more and more resultant bad decisions in their wake.

The second amendment has been as flagrantly violated for years as the fourth is now. "Congress shall make no law" is obscured by endless debate over whether the right belongs to a militia, or whether it is an individual right. After the Heller decision, that debate has shifted over to whether or not a given piece of legislation is "reasonable", as the Heller decision declared legislation must be. This of course ignores the text of the Constitution, that Congress shall make no law, but because they have made laws, and some of those laws have been upheld by bad precedent, we have a circular logic in place. Congress shall make no law, but the last law that was made was upheld, so no laws can be made, so long as they are reasonable. Further, SCOTUS has thus far passed on newer, more updated challenges in the wake of Heller.

They've made the same side-steps on gay marriage. A favorable decision has been reached, but there's no teeth in place to prevent states from re- interpreting the decision however they like, and everything moves so slowly that political parties can reap the rewards from both the passage of a bad law, and its repeal. The democrats passed DOMA, to great acclaim. The democrats claimed success when DOMA was overturned, to great acclaim. The Constitution's purpose is to prevent legislation from catering to the whims of the people, and it is clearly not doing a great job there.

It's hard to imagine that any originalist text or intent would condone today's perennial slaughter of the fourth amendment, but on it goes. People stake their claims on individual words in the clause, while ignoring the text on the whole. This is done on purpose, because there is no penalty for violating the Constitution, and because even if we were to attempt to hold those accountable to the text, it's so easy to say "Well, I read it differently."

The problem is that the Constitution, for as much as we might all love it in theory, is written in plain English, and is subject to interpretation by lawyers. There's a reason lawyerese is used, and it's to prevent plain English readings from being interpretable. But we elect those who are, for better or worse, the most likely to be able to twist its words into meaning whatever we want, and we either can't, or don't hold them accountable for anything above and beyond the next election cycle.

Sorry for the rant.

<comment><USER6> > The second amendment has been as flagrantly violated for years as the fourth > is now. "Congress shall make no law" is obscured by endless debate over > whether the right belongs to a militia, or whether it is an individual > right.

The text of the Second Amendment isn't "Congress shall make no law". It's that "the right ... shall not be infringed." The "shall make no law" bit refers to the First Amendment.

This seems to be relevant for the rest of your thing about how bad laws were made...

> It's hard to imagine that any originalist text or intent would condone

You seem to be saying this as if originalism is the absolute correct jurisprudential theory with which to interpret the Constitution, but to put it mildly, that's debatable.

> The problem is that the Constitution, for as much as we might all love it in > theory, is written in plain English, and is subject to interpretation by > lawyers.

It's subject to interpretation by the rest of us, too. Which is why it annoys the hell out of me every time someone talks about how they wish people would just use plain English instead.

> There's a reason lawyerese is used, and it's to prevent plain English > readings from being interpretable.

This isn't correct. Lawyerese is used because the phrases have established precedent. It's not un-interpretable; it's already-was-interpreted and you're going to have to overturn precedent in order to get it interpreted differently.

<comment><USER5> Apologies for the errors. I was (unwisely) posting under the influence at the time.

You're absolutely right on the Second, and I know that well myself... I think I'd started saying something about the first and fourth and gotten mixed up. It was indeed a rookie mistake, and I appreciate your correction.

As for the originalist interpretation of the Constitution, I know that it's been debated, but I've never subscribed to the arguments that an originalist reading is bad. If you don't like the Constitution as it is, and enough people agree that it's wrong, then ratification is your course. Pretending it doesn't say what you don't want it to should not be an option.

That isn't to suggest that I think it's perfect. I think that it should have been, and should be ratified far more than it has been. I think that there's plenty wrong with it, but just acting like it doesn't exist shouldn't be an option either, and that seems to be the trend.

The last thing I'll say on originalism though is that the Supreme Court is _supposed_ to attempt to interpret the Constitution as written with the help of other supporting texts of the day, ala the Federalist, Hamilton's papers, etc., to adhere to originalist intent. As such, I think it's fair to say that an originalist interpretation is the gold standard, and we're falling far short of that mark.

In keeping with that though, I believe the founders foresaw its shortcomings, and also expected more ratification.

I don't disagree with your assessment on plain English, but I do wish that there was less ambiguity.

<comment><USER6> ETA: I feel like this comment was sort of combative and harsh. I'm not really sure how to ameliorate that, though, so I'm just going to prepend an apology and say thank you for being more polite than me beforehand. :P

> If you don't like the Constitution as it is, and enough people agree that > it's wrong, then ratification is your course. Pretending it doesn't say what > you don't want it to should not be an option.

But this is true of _all_ jurisprudential theories, not only of originalism. That's why people campaign to get bills passed, but merely sit around and cross their fingers when court decisions are made.

> the Supreme Court is supposed to attempt to interpret the Constitution as > written with the help of other supporting texts of the day, ala the > Federalist, Hamilton's papers, etc. to adhere to originalist intent.

This is completely untrue: you're making up requirements in order to support originalism. It's like saying that houses are _supposed_ to be tall and dot the landscape, and therefore should always be built aboveground. Originalism is an interpretative tradition _like any other interpretative tradition_. It doesn't have a special place. You can favor it, but that's a personal inclination, and not actually justified.

[http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/interp....](http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/interp.html) (Posner is one of judiciary voices calling for IP reform.)

[http://www.constitution.org/cons/prin_cons.htm](http://www.constitution.org/cons/prin_cons.htm) (Especially #17)

<comment><USER5> No worries on tone. I do my level best to always assume good faith, and temper that with the knowledge that smart, reasonable people often disagree very loudly. ;-)

As for my statement on originalism, I don't believe it untrue, but I do believe it was poorly stated. The two basic schools of thought express the judiciary requirement to either pay heed to _original intent_ or _original meaning_ , with perhaps strict constructionism coloring either side of the equation.

Regardless, I think that my intent remains true, which is that politicians too often disregard both the original meaning, the original intent, or any strict or loose construction of the Constitution in order to bend the Constitution, through verbal gymnastics, into abstractly supporting whatever thing it is that they want supported.

In short, it is simply disregarded, and if a Constitutional challenge is posed, it is easily circumvented by hand-waving and word play. This, despite the primary job of the federal government (IMO at least) is to uphold the Constitution, and every member of the legislature, executive and judiciary having sworn an oath to uphold it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This will never happen until the significant part of the population that considers the Constitution de facto divine writ is disabused of that notion. It's the same notion that gives rise to some of the more odious forms of American exceptionalism and encourages a firewall between ideological and academic views of that document.

<comment><USER2> It's pride that produces the odious forms of American exceptionalism, not the view that the Constitution is divine writ.

Why, praytell, would you prefer the academics give us a replacement? What great thing have the academics gotten right that would have us change such a document outside the conditions it sets forth as being requisite for such change?

<comment><USER7> I never said (or implied) that I prefer the academics give us a replacement. And neither I nor the article claim that the Constitution should be changed or discarded using extralegal means. Your response, in contrast, is exactly the sort of knee-jerk thought-terminating shoutdown response I was alluding to.

<comment><USER2> I must have mistaken your contrasting academic and ideological as an implicit preference to the academic over the ideological, I did that simply because I presumed that you were against the ideological.

While I concede the point on not doing it in an extralegal means, I was wrong technically, I have a hard time reading the points in the articles and seeing how the foundational elements, such as a balance of powers, are preserved in what's put forward. From extending presidents and vice-presidents beyond their terms into 'guardians' seems to presuppose that such wasn't thought of by the founders, or that the solution they gave us (in this case the SCOTUS) isn't working.

So my issue is that the items that are being proposed are, in many instances, aimed at compromising key, and functioning, and often best of class, principles.

Again I put forward the item at the end where it mentions the example of the Articles of Confederation being completely scrapped. We are under some illusion that humanity has changed more than it really has. Much of the core components of the Constitution have not become irrelevant.

Even the point in the article where it mentions that the US has the least generic constitution, as if that were indicative of efficacy or the optimal. Certainly there's room for improvement, but to change the fundamentals, and in such sweeping ways, is really not advisable.

<comment><USER7> Sure, I think what you say is reasonable. I don't know how much I like the ideas in this article to be honest, and I'm not really qualified to judge them. I do like the fact that people are throwing out ideas and discussing them, even if they're not good ideas.

<comment><USER2> I'll give you a hearty amen on the virtue of throwing out ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We don't need a new Constitution. The one we have isn't working only to the extent that the size and scope of the federal government is far larger than it should be. We need a new federal government. The Constitution is fine.

<comment><USER9> A new federal government would require control by somebody other than Democrats and Republicans, otherwise it's just more of the same. However the US system of elections makes it very difficult to escape from a two party system.

As for size and scope of the federal government, that's surely been decided by elected representatives according to the procedures of the constitution?

<comment><USER10> An amendment eliminating the Electoral College would go a long way towards fixing the problems outlined in TFA. The Constitution is largely very good, but it unintentionally created a de-facto two party system. With the executive branch free from that sort of nonsense, it may be that the legislature will right itself.

<comment><USER11> > An amendment eliminating the Electoral College would go a long way towards > fixing the problems outlined in TFA.

No, it wouldn't.

> The Constitution is largely very good, but it unintentionally created a de- > facto two party system. With the executive branch free from that sort of > nonsense, it may be that the legislature will right itself.

Not really; the EC isn't the key feature of the electoral system that produces a two party system, and the features that are -- the fact that most elections, and particularly those for the Congress, are by plurality or majority-runoff methods -- is nowhere in the Constitution, but is the product of statute (and, largely, _state_ statutes.)

<comment><USER10> Fair point. How about an additional amendment spelling out an alternative method for elections to the legislative branch? Do away with plurality and introduce enumerated preferences?

<comment><USER11> Personally, I'd prefer _no_ federal Constitutional amendments on the issue, and eliminating the federal statutory barriers to candidate-centered proportional representation, and then letting states try different approaches using preference voting, both in single and multimember districts, before imposing a specific uniform national approach as a Constitutional requirement.

First, because its a lot easier to _achieve_ politically, and second, because while I've got pretty clear ideas of both the legislative and executive approaches _I_ think would be best, I don't think its a big enough change that there is plenty of reason to be cautious in imposing a uniform national mandatory rule.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There is a paradox in this article. If the politicians who are re-writing the constitution come from inside a dysfunctional system, how will they be able to ever come to a consensus?

<comment><USER6> Sorry, why are we leaving it to the politicians again?

<comment><USER2> If you have a democratic system of any kind with any degree or option of delegation there are always politicians. They may have different titles, but they are essentially the same thing.

<comment><USER6> Then we all need to become politicians. I find this to be a reasonable thing to strive for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Constitutions are wonderful things, and they can help set the tone of a nation. Yet, everything comes down to the people: the rulers and the public. As long as the rulers behave decently, things work well. When they don't, things fall apart. The Soviet Union had the most democratic constitution ever — and it meant nothing. The people "in charge" in the US have decided to behave like swine, on everything from ignoring swathes of the Bill of Rights to not talking to each other about policy. No amount of Constitutional rewriting will help with that.

To use an analogy near and dear to the HN readership: you can use the best language, framework, and source control system, but that won't help if you have incompetent programmers who do not communicate.

<comment><USER13> Oh, c'mon - you're almost there. Your analogy is begging you to take it a step further. Law, code. How good are human beings at writing massive rules-systems which avoid conflicting logic?

<comment><USER6> Not sure what amuses me more. The notion of citizen as end user, or the notion of lawyer as API consumer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The problem is how to get to there from here. I'm not sure that the Constitutional Convention is possible.

The national popular vote might be possible. The electoral college was originally put in place to protect states' regional interests (via the extra two electoral votes per state). But the impact of those two votes was supposed to degrade over time, as the House (one EV per rep) was supposed to continue growing as population grew. If that had been allowed to continue growing, the Electoral College results would be virtually identical to the national popular vote by now. (Gore's EV total would have exceeded Bush's, for example.) If you get enough states to say they'll award their EVs to the national popular vote winner, as soon as 270 EVs worth of states agree to the same thing, then blammo - the Electoral College (as we know it) is kaput.

Once a national popular vote is in place, it would be easier to start considering things like national proportional representation, rather than the plurality system we have now. As it is, the electoral college kind of bakes plurality into the system.

One thing I'm still not sure of though - does proportional representation really improve anything? Wouldn't it basically result in political battles that would otherwise be settled in the primaries? You could basically look at the Tea Party and the Republicans as a ruling coalition in the house right now, and the battles between those two factions look pretty ridiculous. In proportional representation, it'd just mean there might be more of them (due to the spoiler effect of Democrats defeating Tea Party candidates after Tea Party candidates beat Republicans in primaries).

There's also a reflexive bias towards IRV in the analysis. Ranked ballots are great, but that counting system is more trouble than it's worth.

<comment><USER6> Well, one of the biggest problems is that we have no idea what "there" actually looks like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Australia has profited enormously from the US Constitution.

Our own Constitution was drafted in the wake of the American Civil War and with observations gleaned from decades of US politics. Take for example section 55 of our Constitution: it requires a tax Act to _only_ deal with taxation, and only with _one tax subject_. This makes rider clauses flatly impossible.

Similarly, when we held a referendum to become a republic, the model proposed deliberately _avoided_ introducing an elected President as it was seen as introducing a new and destabilising power base that would eventually lead to a constitutional crisis.

Still. I don't think that the tide of crisis in the US has risen sufficiently high to trigger a mood for amendment, especially given the quasi-religious lionisation of the drafters of the US Constitution. They were intelligent men solving a problem, not prophets. Frankly I think a lot of them would be calling for amendments in order to solve the unforeseen dynamics that have subsequently emerged.

Settle in, there's going to more of the same in decades to come. There is a lot of ruin in a nation, as Smith observed, and the USA is the wealthiest and most powerful nation in history.

<comment><USER16> _Australia has profited enormously from the US Constitution.

Our own Constitution was drafted in the wake of the American Civil War and with observations gleaned from decades of US politics._

If you read the Federalist Papers, it's interesting to note how much of history (going back to the ancients, ie Sparta, Athens, etc) the writers of the US constitution studied. That's not to say that they were perfect (I try not to hero worship myself; it often leads either to disappointment or distortions), but it's also nice to see the whole "learn from history" aphorism put into practice.

<comment><USER11> The Federalist Papers were written after the Constitution -- they were political ads for the campaign for ratification.

<comment><USER16> Oops, my bad; corrected.

EDIT: While I will agree that the Federalist Papers were strong rhetoric, and I can think of examples that contradict many of the axioms of them, I also believe it is very enlightening to read them because they reveal how much the framers of the US constitution had studied of other governments.

<comment><USER15> They were also familiar with the concepts and theories that had not long before been published in France by Montesquieu, Rousseau, Diderot and others.

Jacques Barzun argues that "Revolution" is the wrong term for what happened in the USA, even as a convenient shorthand. There was no widespread transfer of property and no wholesale breakdown of social order. It was a struggle of a local elite against a remote elite. He exclusively uses "War of Independence" in his historical writing.

<comment><USER11> > Jacques Barzun argues that "Revolution" is the wrong term for what happened > in the USA, even as a convenient shorthand. There was no widespread transfer > of property and no wholesale breakdown of social order.

While they sometimes coincide, _political_ , _social_ , and _economic_ revolutions are really separate things; the absence of the elements identified doesn't really say anything about whether or not it was a political revolution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, because the comments here are busy fighting over patriotism and tone rather than the substance of the article, here's a list of salient bits:

> When 24 military officers and civilians were given a single week to craft a > constitution for occupied Japan in 1946, they turned to England. The > Westminster-style parliament they installed in Tokyo, like its British > forebear, has two houses. But unlike Congress, one is clearly more powerful > than the other and can override the less powerful one during an impasse.

> "No democratic principle exists to resolve disputes between the executive > and the legislature about which of the two actually represents the will of > the people," Linz wrote.

> Most parliamentary systems, which unify the executive and legislative > branches, have this sort of fail-safe mechanism. If a budget or other must- > pass bill can't get passed, or a prime minister can't be chosen, then > funding levels are placed on autopilot and new elections are called to > resolve things. The people decide.

> The Senate, he says, should be expanded to give more populous states at > least a bit more representation, and it should also include "national > senators"—all former presidents and vice presidents, maybe others—whose job > it is to guard national interests over parochial ones. Sabato's plan would > also double the size of the House (to make representatives closer to the > people) and enforces a nonpartisan redistricting process to end > gerrymandering. Elections for president, Senate, and House, in Sabato's > vision, are rescheduled to coincide more often, while presidents would serve > a single, six-year term (the idea is to make their governing less political, > while giving them enough time to implement change).

> Instead, Lessig, along with fellow Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe and > many others, proposes a bottom-up form of public financing where voters get > a voucher of, say, $50 off their taxes, which they can use to donate to > candidates.

> If Americans managed to convoke a constitutional convention, they could draw > on hundreds of possible tweaks with text already written, available online > thanks to the Google-funded Comparative Constitutions Project. After > hundreds of tries, we (humans) have gotten so good at chartering governments > that we've developed a set of best practices.

> instant-runoff voting has become increasingly popular because it allows > voters to rank multiple choices instead of picking just one.

> Germany's Pirate Party advocates something called "liquid democracy." A > cross between New England-style town meetings and Facebook, this model of > delegative democracy leverages social relationships and expertise on an > open-source software platform for collaborative decision-making.

> Clay Shirky, a futurist at New York University, advocated for a "distributed > version control democracy" in a recent TED talk. The New York state > Legislature is already experimenting with this on its OpenLegislation > platform, while the OpenGov Foundation, a nonprofit organization cofounded > by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., is doing something similar on the federal > level, allowing anyone to comment on and annotate legislation pending before > the House.

<comment><USER17> I love the "liquid democracy" bit. Sounds like a Silicon Valley startup pitch. Catchy name, tons of buzzwords, and totally incomprehensible.

<comment><USER18> It's pretty simple actually. Imagine direct democracy, but with the option to delegate your vote to someone else, who can delegate their votes to another person, and so on. At the end of the day, the major powers aren't based on traditional parties but on layers of delegation.

The obvious danger here is its tension with the secret ballot. Currently, your boss can put all sorts of pressure on you to vote a particular way (even if it is illegal), but he ultimately can't step into the voting both with you. In contrast, with "liquid democracy", the chain of delegation may afford all sorts of ways to decide how someone "voted".

<comment><USER13> Aside: Compare and contrast the results of nation-state democracy before and after mandatory secret ballots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why not use the one we have now? It hasn't been used in 50 years.

</comment><comment><USER20> The constitution has the ability to modify it built-in. The main problem seems to be that we no longer view that as a viable option.

</comment><comment><USER21> The next Constitution should be a set of mathematical proofs or computer program. At the very least, it will make sure law makers and enforcers are capable of higher order thinking.

I wonder how to properly frame the problem from that approach.

<comment><USER11> > The next Constitution should be a set of mathematical proofs or computer > program. At the very least, it will make sure law makers and enforcers are > capable of higher order thinking.

No, it won't. It'll just make it even easier for politicians to obscure their violations, since most of the public will understand it.

Constitutions don't need to be self-executing, they need to be an effective tool for the _public_ to hold government accountable to, and if the problem is that the public doesn't care enough to hold government accountable, no amount of reforming the Constitution is going to help -- the thing you have to do first is convince the public again that it is important to have a government accountable to limits set by the public.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A few years ago, Iceland made the news (with some distortion) by "crowdsourcing" a new Constitution. [1] I find this an intriguing project, but getting sufficient representation from a nation of 300 million is several orders of magnitude harder than getting the same for a nation of 300 thousand.

What if we could do it anyways? What would an IT project for creating and maintaining a Constitution look like? We talk about version control for legislation, but what kind of systems might we build in order to maintain the Constitution itself? What kind of review process would we put in order to maintain data truth? Or perhaps we wouldn't have truth, but rather distribute it and fragment things while converging it periodically? Would that be possible? How, why?

[1] The scare quotes are because the headline actually misrepresented the depth of the citizens' actual impact. You can do the googling if you want details.

</comment><comment><USER22> For those that TLDR all you have to know is that it's The Atlantic and leftists don't like the constitution because it get in the ways of their nefarious and devious plans for the country.</comment>


Why you should not trust Sheridan Printing with your conference paper - <AUTHOR> https://raphaelwimmer.wordpress.com/2011/09/07/sheridan-security/

<comment><AUTHOR> (I'm not a huge fan of posting one's own content, but I think this security issue is relevant for some readers here)</comment>


Ask HN: What are you working on this week? - <AUTHOR> What projects are you working on for work or pleasure? Computer-related or not. <comment><USER2> [http://orangemind.io](http://orangemind.io) \- I have created a blog where I collect the best short stories that I write(most of them are funny scifi flash fiction written in response to propmts on /r/writingpropmts)

You can read my story "The Game"([http://orangemind.io/story/the- game](http://orangemind.io/story/the-game)), and if you like it - subscribe to the monthly updates about the best stuff that I create, you will probably like it =)

</comment><comment><USER3> GrockDoc.com - writing for pleasure.

This week I will publish 3 new Cassandra articles per day to coincide with Cassandra Summit.

[https://grockdoc.com/cassandra/2.1/articles](https://grockdoc.com/cassandra/2.1/articles)

Next week I'll likely start writing/publishing articles on webpack.

</comment><comment><USER4> I built a business strategy robot. Answer a handful of yes/no questions, get actionable advice for free. [http://taprun.com/robot/](http://taprun.com/robot/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I was hoping to launch a prototype of my food web app, but I just realized that I had added some enhancements to a number of its dependencies so I am working on pull requests to give back.

</comment><comment><USER6> I just finished a fun little Geiger Counter prop - realistic look and sound, but with a slide potentiometer under the thumb so you can crank the radioactivity up or down on a whim.

The Arduino code for the DFRobot Beetle that runs it is here: [https://github.com/Qworg/GeigerCounterSimulator](https://github.com/Qworg/GeigerCounterSimulator)

</comment><comment><USER7> [http://codingbrain.com](http://codingbrain.com) \- a knowledge management app aimed at software devs and technical bloggers.

It's a local search engine, web scraper, note taking, markdown editor, bookmarking, history app. I've been pondering a tool like that for a long time and it's now almost ready for the public.

</comment><comment><USER8> Machine learning competition: [https://www.kaggle.com/c/springleaf-marketing- response](https://www.kaggle.com/c/springleaf-marketing-response)

Trying to build a more generic and reusable system to tackle ML problems (competition oriented though, not real world)

</comment><comment><USER9> Working on the final touches for a real time bidder:[http://www.aychedee.com/2015/09/18/writing-a-real-time- bidde...](http://www.aychedee.com/2015/09/18/writing-a-real-time-bidder-with- go/).

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm working on a demo video for my photo cross posting app Polarfox. ([http://www.polarfox.com](http://www.polarfox.com))

The video will show how easy it is to post photos to muliple social networks and blogs at once.

</comment><comment><USER11> Project: [https://www.ghostnoteapp.com](https://www.ghostnoteapp.com)

Work: Mostly fixing a bunch El Capitain related issues with my side project

</comment><comment><USER12> TPS Reports ::sigh::

</comment><comment><USER13> I've been trying to drag my focus back around to more AI / Machine Learning stuff for a while, so to give myself a sandbox to play with (and a starting point) I built[1] an AIML[2] bot using program-ab[3]. Then I wired it up to XMPP[4] so I could chat with it. Then I turned it into an OSGI[5] bundle so it could run in Apache Felix[6]. And I installed ejabberd[7] on the fogbeam.org domain so I would have a convenient place to play with bots that talk XMPP.

Right now it doesn't do much besides replying to a few stock inputs like "hi" and "howdy" and "Hello", but I just started on this about a week or two ago. I also started adding "@ commands", and it will respond to "@time" with the current time.

From here on out my plan is to get back into studying AI techniques heavily again and see what things I can do to make this bot "smarter". I have done a lot of work based on Semantic Web technologies, so I'll probably start working on how to do some stuff with this based on using an RDF[8] based knowledge- store. There are a couple of OSS projects out there for translating natural language queries into SPARQL[9], so I might soon try wiring this up to where it can use dbPedia and / or Wikidata, as well as other Linked Data[10] sources to answer questions.

I'm not strictly interested in any Turing Test or Loebner Prize[11] stuff, as I'm more interested in making something useful than something that emphasizes "tricking" somebody into thinking it's human. That said, if it ever worked well enough, I think it would be fun to enter something like the Loebner contest, but that's not the main goal here.

Also, right now I'm reading Hofstadter's book _Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies_ , and have been playing around with ACT-R[12], a popular "cognitive architecture" for doing AI research.

[1]: [https://github.com/mindcrime/LearningAIML](https://github.com/mindcrime/LearningAIML)

[2]: [http://www.alicebot.org/aiml.html](http://www.alicebot.org/aiml.html)

[3]: [https://code.google.com/p/program- ab/](https://code.google.com/p/program-ab/)

[4]: [http://xmpp.org/](http://xmpp.org/)

[5]: [http://www.osgi.org/](http://www.osgi.org/)

[6]: [http://felix.apache.org/](http://felix.apache.org/)

[7]: [http://ejabberd.org](http://ejabberd.org)

[8]: [http://www.w3.org/RDF/](http://www.w3.org/RDF/)

[9]: [http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-query/](http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql- query/)

[10]: [http://linkeddata.org/](http://linkeddata.org/)

[11]: [http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/loebner- prize.html](http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/loebner-prize.html)

[12]: [http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/](http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/)</comment>


Duolingo: First Impressions - <AUTHOR> http://classical-bookworm.blogspot.com/2012/01/duolingo-first-impressions.html

<comment><USER2> I've been on Duolingo for about a month now, and they must be getting a bit sick of me because I submit a _lot_ of beta feedback---but they're very responsive and usually pretty good about fixing things, sometimes by the next day, including when I type a translation that was correct but marked wrong by the program.

I agree with the OP that it's overall a great site, although there are a few lingering things that they seem unable to fix, mostly minor; for instance, the "practice" is too irritating to keep up with because its randomness is broken and literally every batch of twenty includes at least six to eight occurrences of the sentence "Sie liest die Zeitung" and/or "Der Mann liest die Zeitung". Argh.

But the larger, systemic problem with it is that I don't think it works as advertised for raw newbies to the language. It's _perfect_ for those of us who dimly remember the "rules" of a language and just need a lot of structured practice to get up to speed. But by presenting nothing but example text to translate, they're basically asking the newbie to induce a complete grammar of the language without any guidance, and while children learn their first language(s) that way, adults don't.

(Example: in German, the ending that attaches to an adjective can be one of six or seven things depending on the case of the phrase, the gender and number of the noun it attaches to, and the definiteness of the article that commands the phrase. _None_ of this is explained within Duolingo; it just throws a bunch of example sentences at you, never talking about gender, number, case, or definiteness (two of which are concepts that aren't even relevant to English grammar). That's... tricky.)

On the crowdsourcing translation front, it has an incredible strength, which is that native English speakers will be _great_ at evaluating whether a sentence is fluent, valid English. But it has an incredible weakness, which is that native English speakers who are just learning German are much less good at evaluating whether a sentence is a valid translation _of what the German sentence says_. I've seen quite a few situations where a particular translation has been heavily upvoted despite missing some crucial part of the source sentence's meaning (and in a few cases, meaning exactly the opposite).

But it's a work in progress, of course. It seems to have a lot of promise, so perhaps they can surmount these difficulties.

</comment><comment><USER3> Another one of those "why didn't I think of that" ideas. I haven't tried this, but it seems like it would be better than the traditional Anki/Pimsleur/Memrise style in that it would teach (or reinforce or mandate) context. Anyone can memorize a list of words, but the difficulty comes in putting those words into context. Duolingo might help that (or might allow beginners to completely destroy the translation, I don't know their algorithm).

<comment><USER4> I actually thought of a similar idea before, while I was meditating in rural Philippines attempting to figure out a viable business idea and trying to avoid a return to the rat race in the US. Unfortunately, the idea seemed too daunting to take on by myself.

I don't know if Duolingo already has plans to incorporate it, but I had also originally thought that 'word completion' functionality would assist in the process of learning a new language. For example, a beginner trying to learn the Tagalog language (but knows a few simple words) could begin by typing the word 'Gusto', and then typing a space after the word would produce a drop-down with possible words that could follow, such as 'ko', 'niya', 'nila', 'mo', etc. In essence, it would be 'Intellisense' functionality that provides grammatically correct word-completion to help students learn sentence structure -- which is a major part of learning a foreign language, as opposed to just translating / memorizing fragments (e.g. words). I was even to the point where I was considering how an AI approach using an inference engine / chaining might make this process more efficient.

Anyway, I e-mailed Luis von Ahn about it, but he was probably too busy to read or react to my e-mail. I am just happy to see someone else was able to make the idea a reality -- another testament that brilliant ideas are virtually worthless without brilliant execution.

<comment><USER3> That style of IntelliSense would be fantastic for languages that change the ending based on context (aka declination). I know I had troubles learning Finnish because of this, and even the easy Esperanto was tricky at first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think describing it as flawless is a bit much. It is a great improvement over the status quo. It allows you to put what you've learned to immediate practical use. It is a brilliant example of a satisfying non-monetary trade. It takes a desire for knowledge, provides that knowledge, and allows the recipient to "pay back" the favor by using that knowledge to assist Duolingo. It makes learning fun and enjoyable.

That said, there are glitches. It can be very inflexible at times. There's more than one way to skin a gato, and Duolingo can be very forceful on it's interpretation. I'm also not sure how useful it can be when it comes to learning a new language from scratch. I already had a few years of Spanish before I started, so it was a lot of fun brushing up. However, learning a new language without a human being there to help you and talk you through it can be rough. Duolingo tries to compensate through a forum/qa solution, but there's nothing like talking to a person in the flesh.

That said, it is miles and miles above stuff like Rosetta Stone, etc.

</comment><comment><USER6> Here is a TED talk with the creator of Duolingo, Luis von Ahn (he also built reCAPTCHA): [http://www.ted.com/talks/luis_von_ahn_massive_scale_online_c...](http://www.ted.com/talks/luis_von_ahn_massive_scale_online_collaboration.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been using Duolingo to learn Spanish from scratch, and it has been _very_ effective. It's also a really well done site in terms of UX.

I'm sure it will get really big once they open it up.</comment>


SAP's Sales Army Still Doesn't Justify an $8B Deal - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-12/sap-has-to-prove-this-8-billion-deal-is-worth-it <comment><USER2> You can never say for sure when it comes to an individual example but, this seems like a wide effect of macroeconomics.

There is a ton of economic pressure right now to "put money to work." Interest rates have been low for a long time and industry is, for the most part, cashed up already. This means prices get high.

There were obvious seeds sown internationally after the banking crash, but I think tech companies may have something to do with it too.

Think of Tesla, a car manufacturer, and how different that is from a Facebook or Amazon.

Musk had to sell all shares (holding onto voting rights) _and_ raise as much debt as he could. Tesla is _still_ capital constrained.

Meanwhile, Amazon, Google and even apple are headed towards $1trn valuations without cash problems at all.

These companies basically create massive book assets (and income streams) without requiring much capital, or being capital constrained.

The growth potential and the cash needs are just not in the same place. This part of the economy isn't growing out "investment." It's adding to the lake of corporate cash, but corporate cash doesn't isn't used to make or grow googles.

We saw the baby version of this when of was writing about founders starting to keep majority ownership.

<comment><USER3> _[..]I think tech companies may have something to do with it too._ _These companies basically create massive book assets (and income streams) without requiring much capital, or being capital constrained._

John Van Reenen talks about this in this paper [1]. He has been looking into how and why the giant companies have been concentrating all power in their market : Amazon, Google,...

His hypothesis is that to become a giant company you used to need capital to buy the best factory and the best machines but that nowadays to become big you need to have the best version of _intangible capital_ : proprietary software, users' data,...

Markets become winner takes all and this creates the rise of "superstar companies". To become a giant company you can't just dump money at the problem anymore to build, say, a new factory. The only way to dominate search is to have Google's tech along with users and the data they generate. To become a retail giant you invest heavily in logistics and inventory control management.

This has several consequences :

\- You don't need to borrow mass amount of money to become big.

\- Changing the interest rate doesn't have as big as an impact as before (if you don't need large amount of capital to grow big, making money more expensive won't prevent companies to grow big).

\- wages inequality rise (the few workers that produce the intangible capital in the have high wage while wage become stagnant for the rest)

[1] Increasing Differences between firms: Market Power and the Macro-Economy [http://mitsloan.mit.edu/shared/ods/documents/?DocumentID=504...](http://mitsloan.mit.edu/shared/ods/documents/?DocumentID=5041)

<comment><USER4> So, Price's Law? [https://youtu.be/UmUdcWk6Vfw](https://youtu.be/UmUdcWk6Vfw)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm baffled by the price SAP paid tbh. The price SAP is paying for Qualtrics equates to around 20X sales, and there is no indication there is huge growth on the horizon or that this is a long term market.

Dennis Howlett knows a lot about SAP and wrote these early thoughts which I thought are on point. [https://diginomica.com/2018/11/12/qualtrics-acquired- saps-hi...](https://diginomica.com/2018/11/12/qualtrics-acquired-saps-high- priced-bid-to-solve-customer-experience/)

<comment><USER6> I'm scratching my head on this one as well. Survey Monkey's market cap is somewhere around $1.3B. Medallia's current valuation is unknown, but should be under $3B. Qualtrics plays in the space in between these two and even though it has a strong following and good growth prospects, it still seems like SAP paid about double what they should have. My best guess is someone has a convoluted plan to integrate Qualtrics into SAP as a module that enough customers will pay for to make it worthwhile.

<comment><USER7> Possibly to deter leverage from a competitor, among other reasons?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> SAP is not paying for the product here. SAP is paying for the long list of customers using and relying on Qualtrics today [1], many of whom are Fortune 500 and government agencies.

[1] [https://www.qualtrics.com/uk/customers/](https://www.qualtrics.com/uk/customers/)

<comment><USER9> SAP doesn't really need any introduction among Fortune 500 companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> In 2011 SAP bought Successfactors, for 3.4bn. The "maven" CEO, Lars Dalgaard, was gone in 2013, did a short stint at a16z and runs his own VC firm.

SAP took 8bn to buy more cloud business, which is less money it will take to move ERP customers from on-prem to cloud.

As MSFT is raking in cloud revenue, every other enterprise player is nervous about looking outdated. ORA stopped reporting cloud numbers altogether.

For comparison, ORA bought NetSuite for 9.3bn USD in 2016. Since then they have told NetSuite customers their user licenses prices will be raised by 5%, every year, for the next 5 years.

Expect Qualtrics to pull similar stunts.

<comment><USER11> >As MSFT is raking in cloud revenue, every other enterprise player is nervous about looking outdated.

Too late, SAP looked outdated back in early 00's. I don't get why anyone still uses SAP, it performs like crap, is way, way, way more complex than needs to be, and costs a fortune.

<comment><USER12> > I don't get why anyone still uses SAP, it performs like crap, is way, way, > way more complex than needs to be, and costs a fortune.

Because it is the least worst option for businesses who need what it offers.

<comment><USER11> >Because it is the least worst option for businesses who need what it offers.

And what is it offering exactly, relation database? Shit man, PostgeSQL, Maria DB, Firebird, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think it makes sense because SAP is focussed on operations management (inherently inside your business) and Qualtrics is focussed on whats happening outside your business.

If you marry the two in an integrated way you cover the entire chain from "raw supplies in from this supplier through to customer not happy about quality of material _from_ that supplier".

So while on it's own Qualtrics might not be worth 8bn to anyone else it might well be worth 8bn _to SAP_.

<comment><USER14> Qualtrics is focused on whats happening in your business, specifically what your customers think about you.

A company like SimilarWeb or Gartner might tell you whats really happening outside your business(ie market trends)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is there someone on Qualtrics' board that used to be management/has connections with management at SAP?

<comment><USER16> Never attribute to malice...

This would be far from the first time that a bit of a dinosaur overpaid to try to buy their way into a market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The middle range of the IPO put Qualtrics at a $4B valuation, so SAP bought it for 2x market open.

Seems they're trying to buy the customer feedback "experience management" angle to close the loop on their financial and ERP systems used to create and deliver products. It sounds nice in theory but these integrations rarely work and its doubtful most companies would use the whole suite or even use them together, even if offered by the same vendor.

SAP might be trying to reach into the "cloud" market by throwing cash, but I can't think of a single example where this has been a great success.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think this should be a good lesson to lots of entrepreneurs that there is a huge valuation to be had if you can find a "missing piece" that some other large company would be willing to (over)pay for.

It's also important to recognize that large corporate CEOs are incentivized to overpay for a deal. There is certainly more "glory" and bias to make big, splashy deals than the more mundane work of growing a business organically.

Tons of examples of fortunes that were made by getting some big sucker company to overpay: Yahoo -> broadcast.com, HP -> Autonomy, Time Warner -> AOL, etc.

</comment><comment><USER19> Talking to a sales guy is at best inefficient, most likely a waste of time, and at worst, torture.

Lies, broken promises, tacky tactics. They will defend the "value-add" of their profession but it's a complete and utter joke.

I used to work sales at Oracle selling StorageTek libraries.

Google, Apple, Salesforce etc would just draft up POs themselves and send them straight for processing without ever talking to the sales guy about anything.

Thankfully I now work in support at a consumer heating oil delivery company and I feel like I'm infinitely more helpful and engaged in my work.

</comment><comment><USER20> I can't comprehend why companies in strong positions need to acquire the strongest company in a new category at a premium. I'd think they'd want to buy the 3rd or 4th ranked player in that category for a fraction of the price and then use their know how, clout and sales force to grab market share. That would be a win-win for themselves, the smaller company and customers.

<comment><USER21> There is a rational fear of the market leader taking most of the market share over time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Ben Thompson explains the strategic bet they're making. Mostly from the words of the organizations themselves. [https://stratechery.com/2018/the-experience- economy/](https://stratechery.com/2018/the-experience-economy/)

</comment><comment><USER23> I think there's a lot of misunderstanding here. Sure it's a large number but ultimately it's a testament to how Enterprises increasingly understand the criticality of customer satisfaction. In other words, Enterprises can be flying blind if they don't understand what's going on and it's actually very valuable to control the most popular platform used for understanding customers. Put another way, this is a little bit like Microsoft buying LinkedIn but instead of focused on the network of who works where it's focused on the network of Enterprise knowledge about their customers. Aka a key piece of CRM.

<comment><USER2> What the article points out as notable is the price.

I agree sap they probably have a reason why they want to buy this company, even at this price. But, the question is, why is the price so high? ...more about the market than the buyer's needs.

Even if you are willing to buy potatoes for £10/kg because of a special recipe, it still begs the question of why you had to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> There was an absolutely genius sarcastic comment in this thread that was posted by a throw-away and then deleted. I was going to reply to it, but saw it was deleted when I clicked to reply but was luckily able to copy it out of my cached version of the page. I'm going to reproduce it below, because it was hilarious:

The deal was 800 millions. Unfortunately, Alice, a local purchaser, made a mistake in the Purchase Requisition in ME51N.

After clicking on the "diskette" icon (or was it the "mountain"?), she noticed that she had written one zero too much (so 8 Billions). She immediately wanted to correct the error in ME52N (by clicking on the "pencil"). Unfortunately, her access to ME52N was revoked by the SAP Basis Authorization Team because the internal audit team wanted to improved "security" to respect the GDPR.

She tried to contact Bob from the SAP Basis Authorization Team, but he was on holiday. Charlie answered for him but told Alice that she had to introduce a ticket in Solution Manager to ask for an access to ME52N. She had no access to SolMan, so she had to ask her Super Key User to make a ticket for her. The list of Super Key Users was available on a SharePoint list on the company's intranet, but had not been updated for a long time. Eventually she found out that her SKU, David, was retired.

Fortunately her colleague Erika (a former SKU that moved from another division), had kept her access to SolMan and wrote the ticket for Alice.

In the meantime, the Purchase Requisition had been approved by Fernand (from Finance) in the Workflow. Gerard, a (bored) new recruit, immediately converted it to a Purchase Order with ME21N.

After a few weeks, Alice, who got access to ME52N, noticed that the PO had already been made by Gerard. She contacted him with Lync to inform him of the mistake. But the "Cancel" button for a PO was not working. During the User Acceptance Test, Gerard had noticed that Cancel did not work, but the consultants told him that he had to follow the scenario, otherwise they would tell his boss that he was "resistant to change" and that he had to sign off the UATs. (The bonus of the consultants was based on the number of successful UATs).

It escalated quickly. The Director wanted to stop the transaction! But it was needed an unexpected Change Request to make the Cancel button work. The CRs, like authorizations, must be asked via SolMan, but the Director was unable to use it because it did not work on his iPad Pro (but it will soon because Fiori will solve all the problems).

Eventually, as the CR was too complicated to implement, the purchase went through and SAP bought Qualtrix for $8B (but they still are unable to find the scanned invoice in VIM).

<comment><USER25> Posting this in the intranet as an employee of the company from the post header would get one fired. Such things, each of them, are literally happening in these kind of environments and everyone are absolutely serious about them.

<comment><USER24> The fact it's vaguely plausible to anyone who has ever used a SAP product is why it's so hilarious. If you're asserting this is not merely plausible but actually likely, that's scary rather than funny.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The octopuses from ERP market acquire businesses to take over their market share and paying customer base. Ideally a customer base which is locked-in. Know-how, technologies, industry - these are irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER26> They also look at the market cap this deal can add which can be easily more than 8 bill if done right to the ceos vision</comment>


Help Us Choose a Name for Our Go IDE - <AUTHOR> https://blog.jetbrains.com/go/2017/10/13/help-us-choose-a-name-for-our-go-ide/ <comment><USER3> I've never fully understood why the JetBrains apps are all separate.

You can use idea ultimate and just install the language level plugins, so why have the language level apps?

One thing though is I wish I could turn off the java support in ultimate - <USER2> use it for a variety of languages but very rarely Java, and the constant assumption it's a Java project is a PITA.</comment>


Ask HN: Is TypeScript really that productive? - <AUTHOR> Been using TypeScript for a while now. While the concept is excellent, the implementation in various IDEs and release process seems very much to work against really getting work done.
On my machine, the tsc compiler seems to use a different version from the one in VS Code, because I see highlighted errors in the editor that do no show up when I actually compile, and vice versa.  I cant even find an easy way to know the version of TS that the VS Code editor is using.
Also, there seems to be a thousand different  ways to reference and/or import other modules, and they vary with each version, such that I'm never sure. Implicit referencing sometimes works, sometimes does not.
Why Typescript can only compile .ts files is beyond me.
As usual, Microsoft is long on ideas, and short on execution. Until they fix the tooling issues, I think I will just say no. <comment><USER2> \- You can see which version of typescript is being used in VS Code in the bottom-right corner while a typescript file is open.

\- It does take a lot of time to get a TS environment setup, but I have to agree with the previous commenter, the benefits are completely worth it. This is just my opinion of course, but it's allowed me to finally treat JS as a development option.

<comment><AUTHOR> > You can see which version of typescript is being used in VS Code in the > bottom-right corner while a typescript file is open.

No, you can't, and I have the latest version of VS Code (I can link to a screenshot if needed). This illustrates the confusion around the tooling. Many TypeScript answers on SO do not even work with the latest versions of the tools

<comment><USER2> That's very odd. I'm quite new to VS Code, so this could be confusion on my part. I am running on the latest TS (typescript@beta and typescript@next before that), so perhaps that's why I see the version number.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There seem to be two different questions in your post.

1: Is TypeScript really that productive? Yes, absolutely. Intellisense, Go to definition, and compile time errors greatly increase productivity.

My opinion is that if you're working on a brand new project that has small code base you probably won't see much benefit from TypeScript. You would already know every function signature and connection between logical layers because you wrote all the code and it's small enough to keep all this in your head. However, if you start working on larger projects or get handed a new library / framework and you need to quickly ramp up on how to use it, the features I listed above basically mean the code is self-documenting (you no longer have to go to the API/docs website because the code is fully typed) and this forces you to learn how to use the new code correctly and with a short feedback loop because there are compile time errors.

2\. Does TypeScript currently have a higher barrier to entry? Yes, absolutely. Although it's getting significantly better with every release and the next version which allows customizing module resolution and more flexibility for location type definitions through npm will help this significantly.

More detail on your other points: "tsc compiler seems to use a different version from the one in VS Code" VS Code should be using the local version installed in your project or the one located globally.

"I cant even find an easy way to know the version of TS that the VS Code editor is using" You should be able to see the version by typing `tsc -v`

"I see highlighted errors in the editor that do no show up when I actually compile" There's not enough information to know how you're compiling the code outside of VS Code, so I can't say for sure, but it would be recommended to setup a tsconfig.json file in your project (which is just json representation of the command line options you can pass to tsc) and then a basic setup would use `tsc -p .` to compile using this configuration in the current directory.

You can always extend with gulp webpack ect..

"Why Typescript can only compile .ts files is beyond me." I believe there is a newer "allowJs" option that does support something like this. I believe it uses JSDoc comments as substitutes for types and allows you all the benefits of TypeScript for libraries without .d.ts files if they have thorough JSDoc comments, but I haven't experimented with this myself.

In most cases you can just declare a module as "any".

"there seems to be a thousand different ways to reference and/or import other modules" I would agree this has been a problem. For me the confusing came from typescript having introduced 'module' keyword before es6 modules were standardized. Avoid using 'module' keyword and use ES6 style modules. If you really must you can use namespaces but there are often better ways to restructure files for same effect.

Also, avoid using /// <reference path="path/to/lib/index.d.ts" /> and use typings tool instead.

Lastly, there are some libraries which don't have correct type information and have to be imported like this:

import foo = require('foo');

which is a combination of es6 and commonjs formats, this caused me much confusiong as well, but from my understanding it's a necessary workaround to allow people to use those libraries TypeScript. IMO, avoid this syntax whenever possible.

"Until they fix the tooling issues, I think I will just say no" You're not alone with this opinion, TypeScripot definitly has more things to learn to get it setup and it's own set of frustrations, but at least you can know they are working on it and hopefully if you look back in few months the ecosystem will be ready for you.</comment>


Blood disorder cured – a first for gene therapy   - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727784.300-blood-disorder-cured--a-first-for-gene-therapy.html

<comment><USER2> These stories of the work gene therapy researchers are doing remind me of trying to work on someone else's code, with no unit tests. You change one thing, which you _think_ does what you want it to, but you don't really know. Nerve racking.

<comment><USER3> Especially with people's lives at stake, a la Thalidomide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought that Leber's congenital amaurosis was the first disorder to be cured via gene therapy.

</comment><comment><USER5> "The first approved gene therapy case in the United States took place on September 14, 1990, at the National Institute of Health. It was performed on a four year old girl named Ashanti DeSilva. It was a treatment for a genetic defect that left her with an Immune System deficiency. The effects were only temporary, but successful (Boylan 313)."

Wikipedia article on Gene therapy: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_therapy></comment>


Richard Feynman: What Is Science? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fotuva.org/feynman/what_is_science.html

<comment><USER2> The lines between a name and the meaning behind that name are blurred too often. Often in school, when studying or help was needed, I'd hear students proudly proclaiming that "that's the x principle" and then go on and write down a condensed formula for it. They wouldn't know how the formula was derived, but knew that there was a very specific formula for the "x principle" and that that was it.

I have trouble, because I'm not arguing that names are unimportant. They are necessary, they condense complicated subjects into simple words and give a common ground for discussion. But I once had a probabilities teacher who wrote down seven names for what were essentially 2 formulas (Just written in different ways). There was a quick 5 minute lecture on how to get a specific formula (usually, though sometimes none was given), but the the emphasis was on what the formula was called and when exactly to use it. Maybe I missed the point of the course, it was just a first year probabilities course, and the goal was to ingrain those 7 terms into our brains for the more complicated subjects. But there was so much more behind those equations and how they were derived. By the end of the class, I felt cheated. It was a foreign language class, not a math class.

</comment><comment><USER3> tl;dr

"What science is, I think, may be something like this: There was on this planet an evolution of life to a stage that there were evolved animals, which are intelligent. I don't mean just human beings, but animals which play and which can learn something from experience--like cats. But at this stage each animal would have to learn from its own experience. They gradually develop, until some animal [primates?] could learn from experience more rapidly and could even learn from another's experience by watching, or one could show the other, or he saw what the other one did. So there came a possibility that all might learn it, but the transmission was inefficient and they would die, and maybe the one who learned it died, too, before he could pass it on to others.

The question is: is it possible to learn more rapidly what somebody learned from some accident than the rate at which the thing is being forgotten, either because of bad memory or because of the death of the learner or inventors?

So there came a time, perhaps, when for some species [humans?] the rate at which learning was increased, reached such a pitch that suddenly a completely new thing happened: things could be learned by one individual animal, passed on to another, and another fast enough that it was not lost to the race. Thus became possible an accumulation of knowledge of the race.

This has been called time-binding. I don't know who first called it this. At any rate, we have here [in this hall] some samples of those animals, sitting here trying to bind one experience to another, each one trying to learn from the other.

This phenomenon of having a memory for the race, of having an accumulated knowledge passable from one generation to another, was new in the world--but it had a disease in it: it was possible to pass on ideas which were not profitable for the race. The race has ideas, but they are not necessarily profitable.

So there came a time in which the ideas, although accumulated very slowly, were all accumulations not only of practical and useful things, but great accumulations of all types of prejudices, and strange and odd beliefs.

Then a way of avoiding the disease was discovered. This is to doubt that what is being passed from the past is in fact true, and to try to find out ab initio again from experience what the situation is, rather than trusting the experience of the past in the form in which it is passed down. And that is what science is: the result of the discovery that it is worthwhile rechecking by new direct experience, and not necessarily trusting the [human] race['s] experience from the past. I see it that way. That is my best definition."

. . .

"I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."</comment>


Show HN: Small (under 5 MB) Azure CLI written in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pascalgn/azi <comment><USER2> Nice project. Not sure I'd have the heart to write a cloud cli, with the perpetual and daily changes these cloud providers like to make and the sheer complexity of addressing all their offerings. For example ACS closing down migrating to AKS and the upgrade to Container Registries, just to name a couple of changes this year on what I've touched.

Unless you are somehow immune to this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not immune, no. But the majority of work was figuring out the authentication logic and reading/writing the tokens in a way that is compatible with Azure CLI. The parsing of the REST API response is comparatively easy.

Azure is still changing a lot, but they also have an OK policy with their API changes, IMO. Old API versions are kept alive for some time, so there's always some time to migrate.</comment></comment>


Inception is Closer to Reality then you Think - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/15/securing-our-minds-the-need-for-brainwave-tech-standards-against-hacking

<comment><USER2> It's both scary and awesome that we need an International Center for Brainwave Ethics. But as a wise man once said: "With great power comes great responsibility." - Spiderman.</comment>


New Visual Proportions for the iOS User Interface - <AUTHOR> http://aentan.com/design/new-visual-proportions-for-the-ios-user-interface/

<comment><USER2> I think it's great to dig into this stuff, but I disagree with almost everything in this article.

A 4 pixel grid is too fine to serve the purpose of a grid. I mean, you could do a 1 pixel grid, and _everything_ would line up, but what's the sense in that? Grids are only visually meaningful when the base unit is a perceptible size.

The author is striving for harmony, but grids are only one source it. The left margin in one of Apple's preference fields is about one typographic space wide. It's good horizontal rhythm when considered as part of the text element. A good designer knows when to treat space as part of the text, and when to treat it as part of the layout.

The author's preference fields have a 16 pixel wide margin, which has a nice numerological relationship with other elements, but has no relationship with the text at all.

The resulting designs have a kind of twisted harmony that you can get by looking at it and thinking about the multiples of 4 pixels throughout the interface, but they lack any real visual harmony to my eye.

It would be convenient if design were as simple as snapping everything to some simple grid. For better or worse, things are much more complicated than that. And Apple has done much more work to establish a complex harmony across many visual properties than the OP.

<comment><USER3> I think you've nailed it. Apple's focus on typography, spacing, and proportion puts it directly at odds with the notion that a UI can always be fit snugly into a fixed width grid pattern.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "If you divide 480 by 44 you get a remainder of 20. Divide by 11 and you get a remainder of 9. 460 cannot be divided into equal parts of 11 nor 44. The vertical rhythm is corrupt."

I would actually argue that the remainders are a good thing.

When viewing a list, they act as a nice visual indicator that there is more content below. If the last item directly lined up with the bottom of the screen, it would not be as easy to differentiate at a glance. By showing half the last item, it encourages the user to pan down to see the remaining content.

Certainly some would suggest I'm claiming "it's a feature, not a bug" and maybe that's true, maybe the remainder it is unintended, but I think it does make more sense to have the bottom element in a list half showing to alert the user that there is more content below.

<comment><USER5> I think this gets at a key misunderstanding in the post. The purpose of a grid is not to align everything to pixel perfection, but to assist in generating an interface that communicates well and is attractive. Departures from the grid sizing can have a variety of benefits:

1) Visually distinguish navigational elements from content 2) Account for visual weight of different elements to create a stronger perception of rythm 3) Give some warmth and life to the design so it doesn't feel sterile and robotic 4) Indicating continuation of content (as you very nicely explain)

As the Dalai Lama said, "Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively."

<comment><USER6> > As the Dalai Lama said, "Know the rules well, so you can break them > effectively."

FWIW, this appears to be a misattribution.

<http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/dalai.asp>

<comment><USER5> Thanks ggchappell for the correction. In the future I'll run quotes by snopes before using them.

<comment><USER6> It is, in any case, a nice little saying.

I used to have my data structures & algorithms class (back when I taught DS&A) read "On following rules" by Kirit Saelensminde [<http://www.kirit.com/On%20following%20rules>]. This little saying goes along with it nicely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yeah, despite the hype, Apple doesn't pay /that/ much attention to this stuff: they mostly succeed at these design issues because their direct competition is ludicrously incompetent at it ;P. (Seriously: Android needs to hire a UX designer, although I will say that 3.x is getting much better.)

If you want a really awesome example, here's one that I noticed when I was first developing Cydia a few years ago, and had to do a lot of "iPhone-native CSS" (I am one of these people who stares at and slaves over individual pixels in designs) that I believe "cannot be unseen":

So, as stated in this document, cells are 44px "tall". However, this description doesn't take into consideration the effects of the borders: only one of the two borders can count for the spacing, as there are N+1 of them in a group, not N*2.

In this case, the top border is included in the 44px "rythm", but in either case, that means that the open area inside the cell "between the borders" is actually 43px, an odd number. Of course, the fact that it is odd is unimportant: you just have to be consistent.

This is why the height of the switch in that example is actually 27px: that way it will feel balanced. Meanwhile, the height of the right chevron disclosures is likewise odd: 13px. The slider control is a 9px bar with a 23px handle. Even the little speaker is 5px at its narrowest, and 23px at its widest.

Great, right? Only... now that we've been staring at this for so long, you might notice that the text looks imbalanced, because the cap height of the font Apple uses is 12px. This is also why I say the top border is included: the text is a half pixel higher than really feels right.

Of course, this is a subtle issue, and I'm certain that a pixel here or there is the kind of thing a normal person doesn't notice, but it slowly drives people like me /nuts/ (which led to a bunch of little tweaks--even requiring custom chevrons--in the CSS I use for mobile websites).

<comment><USER8> > Seriously: Android needs to hire a UX designer, although I will say that 3.x > is getting much better.

You're not familiar with Matias Duarte then?

[http://allthingsd.com/20100527/exclusive-palm-loses- mobile-d...](http://allthingsd.com/20100527/exclusive-palm-loses-mobile- design-guru-matias-duarte/)

<comment><USER7> I was familiar with him, but I was not up-to-date on the fact that he was now is working for Android... that is AMAZING!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I suggest that Apple standardize on a visual proportion built of a 1x1-pixel rhythm. Not only does this result in a zero-remainder no matter the screen dimensions, it also eliminates any inconsistencies with major/minor rhythms. Best of all, the current buttons, tab bar, status bar, icons, and everything else are already compliant with this rhythm with no changes whatsoever.

Apple, you're welcome.

<comment><USER10> "Not only does this result in a zero-remainder."

Not necessarily. You're forgetting that each pixel is made out of three little colors, so with certain color arrangements one can probably get remainder even on a 1x1 pixel rhythmic grid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Design to me is a mix of art and science. This article is simple math. It's hard to take such a design philosophy seriously without any supporting evidence to explain why the human brain doesn't find some simple concepts intuitive:

\- Things are different at the edges \- Objects with text underneath are taller than ones without \- Temporary features (pop ups etc) at the forefront of attention are a different size to things in the background \- Things inside a clear frame might follow different, contrasting proportions to those outside

I'm not a designer but I am a drummer. Rhythm-by-the-numbers is boring. Good rhythm plays around the edges, and within the same beat (say four to the bar) people enjoy different beats laid on top (say, three beats). You can speed up and slow down, emphasise boundaries by adding a little extra time to the last beat of the bar, etc. Is visual design any different? Don't designers use the word "rhythm" precisely because it is a good metaphor?

None of this says Apple that has got it right. But the criticism just doesn't seem to have an aesthetic foundation.

<comment><USER12> One of the things vertical rhythm's used for is making two parallel columns of text align with each other at regular intervals. From my limited knowledge of music, every measure of a song, the song's elements align. In a design, every measure (baseline), the design's elements align. By align, I don't mean with some arbitrary measure, but with the other elements.

Here's a quick example I made: <http://i.imgur.com/NEc92.png>

You do make a good point: When you get into single-column layouts, like a solo in a song, having mathematical vertical rhythm is irrelevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> One quibble I have with this analysis is the section criticizing the 20-pixel Status Bar. The author claims this is bad because it's not very tappable, but I see this case as an exception. Since the status bar is anchored to the top of the screen, you can actually tap it much easier than if it were in the middle of the screen, since you can miss a bit high on purpose, without fear of tapping the wrong thing. This makes the effective target larger and much easier to hit than 20px height normally would give you.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm not a designer, so maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about. But @Aen, you sound like an idiot to me.

On grids. A grid is a fantastic idea for a newspaper, or even for an iPad, where you have large elements which need to all be aligned. However, your eyes are not trained to jump around in pretty pixel increments, your eyes jump to what they want to look at. In other words, fuck "rhythm." When horizontally aligning elements, I am completely for snapping to a grid of sorts, it makes your UI "just look nicer." When aligning vertically, against things that don't exist, you win nothing. (Well, you do win something, but it's something you didn't touch upon, more on that later)

On grid size. By making a "grid" of 4x4 pixels, all you have done is decrease the resolution of the display. Only an OCD programmer would get excited by a declaration that all pixel offsets must be even. In programming, whenever you sit down and design a framework that is too flexible, you have designed a framework which isn't useful. If you complain about "rhythm," you certainly can't suggest a 4px grid, it has no noticeable rhythm.

On why your design looks nicer. I'll say it, a few of your "fixed" screens do look nicer. This is because you have introduced more padding, in the form of 2px increases, to every element. _Anybody_ can make something look nicer by removing information. Of _course_ your examples will look great compared to the real thing, negative space tends to do that. I want you to compare the number of visual elements on either the Likables screens you posted, with the number of visual elements on the playlist view.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd say fuck rhythm too if I'm not a designer. But I am and it's my job to look at things others don't look at. You can look at a 4-pixel rhythm as 8-pixel, 16-pixel or 32-pixel. 4 is just the lowest basic unit.

Maybe I'm wrong but right or wrong isn't the point. Making people think and talk about something is.

<comment><USER14> "I hope once Likables and Denso goes live they will be proof for the production-worthiness of the 4-pixel rhythm. I also hope that Apple will see this and perhaps reconsider the visual proportions of UI in future iOS versions." doesn't match what you just said ;)

What I'm saying is that "You can look at a 4-pixel rhythm as 8-pixel, 16-pixel or 32-pixel. 4 is just the lowest basic unit" doesn't improve upon our situation. The lowest basic unit is called a pixel. Grids make everything look consistent; but when the only requirement is that you snap to 4-pixels, things aren't going to look consistent, because you have far too much flexibility.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really like the detailed analysis of the existing interface proportions; the irregularity is definitely something people can feel but most won't be able to pin down.

There really isn't too much for me to argue with here, actually. My only concern is whether or not a 4px rhythm is, perhaps, _too_ flexible. While I certainly haven't tested to the extent Aen has, I'm wondering if using 8px as a minimum for the rhythm would be better read by the eye as having some consistency, or if it would simply require too much change from the existing interface? (i.e., the status bar would need to go from 20 to 24px)

</comment><comment><USER16> I would be tempted to base the subdivisions on a Fibonacci series:

        3, 7, 10, 17, 27, 44, 71, 115.

Note that 4 x 115 = 460.

<comment><USER12> That sounds brilliant for single-column layouts. Too bad it wouldn't hold up to a multi-column approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "If you divide 480 by 44 you get a remainder of 20. Divide by 11 and you get a remainder of 9" Isn't it 40 and 7 respectively? edit: I think the author meant 460, which is 480px - 20px for the status bar

<comment><AUTHOR> It was a typo. Fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't think the new proportions are better.

For example, the first comparison <http://cl.ly/9RHh> if you look closely, the list on the left has a slight left indent, whereas the list on the left (new dimensions) is aligned directly with the buttons above it.

The original list looks "better" to me, as it coveys a subtle sense of depth that the redesign removes. The Likeables app look very WP7-metro to me and alien to the iOS platform. Not saying it's worse, but would work better in a properly tiled OS system.

<comment><USER19> The alignment is an oversight with the author's mockup. His post is focused on the vertical rhythm and the proportions on the Y-axis.

If I'm not mistaken, the author doesn't take issue with the proportions on the x-axis and makes the mistake of keeping things tightly aligned to the horizontal grid/x-axis proportions. Consequently, he missed some of the subtle things in the original.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Fascinating article for a non-designer like me. Things like visual rhythm and baseline grids hint that designing isn't just having the talent to know what looks good; there's also a whole science behind it.

</comment><comment><USER21> I really like the detailed analysis, but I'm not sure about the changes he proposes. For example, those 32 pixel toolbar buttons in his example look... off.

</comment><comment><USER22> I certainly appreciate the analysis and the effort (and I am a grid-based design advocate), but nevertheless find the "old" more appealing. Certainly, we could chalk this up to familiarity, but alas, I do not own an iPhone. I believe the last item in the playlist being cut off is my main hesitation with the re-design.

</comment><comment><USER23> It was surprising that there are pixels involved. I thought in a world where we have all sort of displays, varying with both size and pixel density, using pixels to measure size of GUI elements is out-of-date.

<comment><USER24> In iOS all UI measures are expressed in points and not in pixels. Saying 44 pixels is simply wrong. In the iPhone 4 the screen has the exact same size of the 3G but a scale factor of two so every point is two pixel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> i'd rarely say this, yet this is the case where i see the genius of Jobs (rumored to be himself choosing/approving designs) - this proposed alternative, 4-grid one <http://aentan.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/08/alternateUI.png> just looks completely "lifeless", boring. Slight asymmetry, non-proportionality, oddity, etc... are the attributes of life.

</comment><comment><USER26> The "Improved" grid looks decidedly worse.

</comment><comment><USER27> As the owner of a design firm, and a designer for UI for the past ten years, I think this article misses the point. Grids are a means to an end. That end is functional and visually pleasing usability.

The samples in this article show less functional, less visually pleasing UIs.

<comment><USER28> Agreed. The author's purported "better" designs are visually unappealing, really very cluttered, and seem to miss the point (re: menu items being cut off at the bottom, etc.).

The author has said in another HN post that "it's my job to look at things others don't look at"--even setting aside the holier-than-thou sort of tone that that evokes, this sort of "it doesn't line up with the grid" complaint reminds me of those obnoxious "unsolicited redesigns" of websites you see hit HN once in a while--the ones that don't take into account critical aspects of why things are done the way they're done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I hope they don't change the visual proportions.. I think I got 44 hard-coded in 100 different places in my apps, and this includes stuff like custom buttons and images.

<comment><USER30> position: absolute; much?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> OCD much?

</comment><comment><USER32> detailed analysis</comment>


How to create Sublime Text 3 snippets - <AUTHOR> https://veekthoven.com/blog/how-to-create-sublime-text-3-snippets <comment><AUTHOR> When writing code, every keystroke counts. Mastering shortcuts or using snippets for your text editor or IDE will save you a significant amount of time in the long run. In this article, I will show you how to create snippets for my favourite text editor, Sublime Text.</comment>