The rise of online "certificates" and how they threaten traditional degrees - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/education/2013/09/edx_mit_and_online_certificates_how_non_degree_certificates_are_disrupting.single.html <comment><USER2> TLDR is probably a lot more than Second Life impacted the meatspace real estate market, but probably less than Amazon impacted the bookstore market. Sorry if I gave it away for anyone, as if this couldn't have been guessed.

One thing not discussed, or I somehow missed it, is the topic of using resources from "online classes" to help traditional classes as a multimedia resource. As an example, there's a good Youtube video series of a Cornell prof's Verilog FPGA course. If you're a bit confused about, say, writing a cellular automata in Verlog or at least the general concepts of doing something like that on a FPGA, well, spin up lecture 3 or 4 or so in the series.

In the long run, a state U could probably just show this prof's videos as the lecture, and hire a TA or two to answer questions for the people who won't pay attention to the video. Those pro videos are actually edited to exclude mistakes, editorial comments, and small talk, which is in some ways unfortunate.

There are a couple classes worth of Gilbert Strang mathematics lectures. I don't really see any point in an amateur trying to lecture on uni level math if you can just watch Strang's videos.

If you want to spend money, "The Teaching Company" has innumerable excellent production quality video lecture series on vaguely academic topics. My public library has them for loan for free.

Another excellent example, the "History of Iran" podcast audio lecture series. Audio recordings of Prof Richard Bulliet teaching a class at Columbia around 2008ish. If you have 100+ hours to burn an amateur's "History of Rome" podcast is pretty good too. There's more out there than just "tech".

I suspect the primary long term effect is the end of the professorial lecture. You'll simply watch videos and at most talk to a TA. I attended a thousand person Calc lecture a long time ago, never saw the prof closer than 100 feet or talked to him personally. My discussion section TA was alright. There would have been no loss replacing the prof with a video cassette of Strang (This was over two decades ago...)

<comment><USER3> Re: the prediction, it's possible, but these predictions have been coming out since the '60s at least, and renewed every decade. With the advent of videorecorded lectures, one vision of the future was that there would be no more need for every school to have professors giving local physics lectures, for example, and instead everyone would just watch videos of someone like Feynman.

That didn't quite happen, though, even though video lectures have been available for a long time. People do use them for self-study (even the 1964 Feynman lectures, which were only audio-recorded, are popular for that purpose), but typically for personal enrichment type purposes: study outside one's own specialty, weekend study post-college, etc. (I personally don't use them at all, because I use an even older technology for self-study: the textbook.)

If MOOCs succeed to a larger extent than video-lectures did, I think it will have to be by providing something other than just recorded lectures, which has been tried many times already.

<comment><USER2> True, but, the interesting new ability is being able to externalize the costs.

Don't like my linear algebra lecture, go watch Strang. For free.

In the "olden days" we used to pay profs, in some cases cash collection, in exchange for hundreds of pages of photocopied text.

Now you can distribute a video, with someone else paying bandwidth both up and down for the cost of putting a URL on the class website or in a class email, which is kind of impressive.

There is an amusing meta "loop" that I was watching the FPGA video lecture series at home last week and during a video distributed so motivated students can self-teach, the prof was very unhappily complaining about students being too lazy to look up a simple .pdf datasheet for a temperature sensor so he was providing the information now as part of his notes or something along those lines.

So it would be possible that the same students too lazy to google for a simple device datasheet would never be motivated enough to watch a video lecture.

There are other alternatives. Profs used to be graded on how well they used high tech multimedia, I could see a prof editing a MOOC-type or EDx-type video down to fill 80% of their class time and then spending most of the class time showing a video and then 15% or so answering questions or expanding upon topics or whatever.

I think the parasitic book industry would be very unhappy were they replaced by free web videos, so we can pretty much expect a very expensive video service to appear. Parasites gotta be parasites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I suspect that we're seeing the future of MOOCs here. There will continue to be free low-touch courses which, in many cases, will essentially function as ads for the university. But the real focus will be on online and blended certificate programs that, while inexpensive compared to traditional degrees, will certainly not be free.

None of this is a bad thing but I imagine it will be at least somewhat disappointing to those who value MOOCs as free/very low cost educational options or who saw MOOCs as something more disruptive to higher education than they are likely to ultimately be. (It's probably also worth noting that the institutional beneficiaries of this blended model are going to largely be those schools which already have a strong brand and which don't feel threatened by online programs.)

</comment><comment><USER5> What MOOCs (will increasingly) highlight is the limited incremental educational value provided by most traditional educational institutions. The value is in the signals: (1) proving you can stick with something long enough to get a degree, and (2) proving you were good enough to get into a selective institution.

I have two degrees from famous universities. I remember very little from my classes, but even at the time, I don't think I learned much that I couldn't also have got from a really good MOOC class. (And from some college classes I learned nothing at all.)

And yes, learning from great classmates and making relationships for life is also invaluable, but that's not how most schools market themselves, nor why most students choose to go.

</comment><comment><USER6> I do see them hitting at the price point for all but the top schools, as they should. MIT will always have a long line at the door waiting to pay full price. Should Illinois Institute of Technology?

<comment><USER7> _Should Illinois Institute of Technology?_

it is certainly going to be interesting to watch. I'm a huge fan of MOOC's. However I'd like to see some facts on their impact on employability so far.

<comment><USER6> Indeed because having the fancy certificate can help get you into the interview but its skills and personal fit that get you out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The traditional undergraduate model (also, business school) adds almost no value. I know this is a dickish thing to say, but let's look at it honestly. First, the top universities admit people who least need to attend them. Most admissions officers will admit that they want the kids who don't _need_ to go to a prestigious college to be successful. Now, that's exactly what they should do-- getting the best students means they get the best teachers and researchers-- but it limits their value-add. They'd add more value (even if it'd be the wrong thing to do) by admitting students who actually need them, not the ones who don't.

In general, social transformations (education processes, jobs, mentorship programs) converge on a state where those who can get the resources are those who need them the least. That's not "wrong"; it's just the equilibrium. People want to help those who don't need the help. It's human nature.

Now, one can argue that their value-add is inherent in what they do with those talented people once they are in, but if you compare the cost of a four-year degree and what is learned to what would be learned with that money, autonomy, and time, I don't think the yield is better. Give a smart person 4 years of extremely high autonomy, and that person will learn a lot and grow. The high cost (in particular, opportunity cost) of university or college education cancels out what is gained (to society, and the person) by attending.

What's exciting about MOOCs is that, by removing the scarcity and gatekeepers and rising market tuitions that lead to a zero-value-add equilibrium, we finally _are_ getting to a point where all of this stuff might genuinely add value to the world. That will be an exciting thing to see.

<comment><USER2> "The traditional undergraduate model"

Probably meant to write something like:

"The traditional for profit elite/ivy league undergraduate model"

The local public unis and public community colleges operate under a different model, eligibility seems solely limited by ability to attend. Which results in a huge remedial issue; there are more remedial math students than "real" math students...</comment></comment>


Revlo (YC S16) is a fan-engagement platform for Twitch broadcasters - <AUTHOR> http://www.themacro.com/articles/2016/05/revlo/ <comment><USER2> If I was a PM at instagram, vine, twitter, youtube, etc I would be circulating this article / Revlo to every person in my org - you guys just hit the nail on the head.

Perfectly timed to capitalize on the brewing discontent of content creators who get LOW quality support for these kind of engagement tools @ platform level.

And nice balance of gamification & engagement for end-users that I can see working, leading into nice sponsorship revenue models, etc.

I'm impressed.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey everyone! James here, one of the founders at Revlo. Happy to answer any questions/discuss feedback for our product.

<comment><USER4> Some tough questions because I think you can handle them :)

\---

What happens if/when Twitch builds these tools into their app? (if possible, don't answer with "we hope they acquire us")

Per your website, it's "100% free" \-- how do you make money? My hunch is that Twitch streamer viewership has a long-tail -- some tent-pole users (might pay for tools) and then tons of small <100 viewer amateurs (will never pay for tools).

What, if any, steps are you taking to ensure that the viewer engagement is real and not people idling in chatrooms for hours on end to 'farm' points? The value proposition to stream advertisers could be hurt if the numbers are inflated by 'zombie' users.

<comment><USER3> Hey Swanson! Thumb typing here so please excuse typos and etc.

re: Twitch, Most of these streamers interact with their communities and build fan-bases through multiple platforms, Discord, Twitch, Twitter, Youtube, our goal is to link these communities together and encourage interaction in all of them.

Re: monetization, We wouldn't ask the streamers or viewers to pay for the product. Our integration into content creates a lot of native ads opportunities that are a lot less disruptive to the audience. We have had good interest from brands and will be experimenting with them soon.

re: farming. It's honestly something that we haven't found a really good solution to yet. It's the same issue in television where you never know if someone is passively watching or just not there. We built in features like contests and bonus points system for things for trivia so that active viewers are rewarded with more points. Combined with quantity limits and periodic resets, this has been a solution on a couple of channels. We are looking into more ways to do it better with less effort from a streamers side, open to any suggestions you may have!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Super interesting and incredibly niche. The quality of twitch channels is vastly influenced by the tools employed in them. The production behind popular channels is extremely impressive, it makes sense that these tools are popping up. Watching streamers evolve over the last few years (especially with League of Legends streamers), the interactions users are expecting are getting more and more complex. Things like automated raffles, twitchbots with 'minigames' that earn users points, and donation messages make a huge impact on viewer engagement and thus a direct boon to the streamers bottom line.

Good luck Revlo, excited see these in action.

<comment><USER6> > The quality of twitch channels is vastly influenced by the tools employed in > them. The production behind popular channels is extremely impressive, it > makes sense that these tools are popping up.

This is incredibly true: custom OBS plugins, custom graphics and animations, automatic triggers based on donations and subscriptions, game event integration, run timing, and especially tools that make it easy for streamers to engage without being distracted. Standing out on Twitch is about the streamer and their channel, not just the game they're playing; very few popular channels are just a game or game and facecam anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting product, and well done. My first thought with anything involving virtual currency, and gaming apps. Is the risk of botting, scamming, and straight up theft. Someone is always going to ruin it for everyone else, if/once this gets big enough.

</comment><comment><USER4> Note to themacro editors: it was hard to find the link to the company (it's on the sidebar). I was expecting it to appear in the body content or the headline.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good catch - thanks!

<comment><USER4> Looks like a link has been added in the body, thanks if that was you :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Congrats to the Revlo team, awesome to see more Canadians doing great things w/ YC :)</comment>


Start-Up Investors Grow Wary of Tech Ventures After Facebook's I.P.O. - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/14/technology/start-up-investors-grow-wary-of-tech-ventures-after-facebooks-ipo.html

<comment><AUTHOR> "Silicon Valley as we know it is dead" (or something of that nature). That's what he said last year, only to have everybody in the tech community pounce on him, including the great Marc Andressen. I believe he definitely made some solid points that entrepreneurs need to look outside the "normal" realm. Just saw him on Bloomberg West today and he mentioned Uber as a perfect example. Who would've ever thought that the Taxi business could be packaged as an Internet venture.</comment>


The state of machine learning - <AUTHOR> https://soundcloud.com/exponentialview/danny-lange-unity-exponential-view <comment><AUTHOR> The state of machine learning: A conversation between Azeem Azhar (Exponential View) and Dr. Danny Lange (VP of AI and Machine Learning at Unity Technologies)</comment>


Ask HN: What landing page do you love? - <AUTHOR> I saw this question today on Indie Hackers and thought it would be interesting to ask the HN community.<p>For me, the answer would be Stripe Atlas (https://stripe.com/atlas) <comment><USER2> [https://www.lingscars.com/](https://www.lingscars.com/) \- yes, this is a real car rental business. Best viewed on desktop - the mobile version is not nearly as... potent.

<comment><USER3> People should check out the page source too.

<comment><USER4> I think this is worse: [http://arngren.net/](http://arngren.net/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://muzzleapp.com/](https://muzzleapp.com/)

<comment><USER6> This is from the same developer as CodeKit. His documentation, sales copy and release notes are always _hilarious_.

Check out the "reviews" on [http://codekitapp.com](http://codekitapp.com) , Especially this gem:

>Your app is lame, your face is lame, your friends are lame, and your continued existence deeply offends us.

>Hacker News, Where Self-Esteem Goes To Die

:-)

<comment><USER7> The contrast on that side is super low. I'm viewing with grayscale inverted in low light (at night) and the site is totally unreadable. Wouldn't call it a great landing page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://panic.com](https://panic.com) is pretty great and so is the landing page for their upcoming hardware product: [https://play.date](https://play.date)

<comment><USER9> Playdate site is awful. It appears to be designed for people sitting 2 meters away from their 8K screens.

<comment><USER10> Not only do I completely agree, the original 'panic.com' site is generic looking and usability annoying. "We do generic icons for a living...you have to hover over them to get any info". Really?

I'm assuming huhtenberg works there.

<comment><USER9> You probably meant that the GP worked there, not me.

<comment><USER10> MY bad. Sorry for the misattribution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> [https://fibery.io/anxiety](https://fibery.io/anxiety)

<comment><USER12> Maybe that's a joke, but this page appears to have managed to crash Safari on iOS a couple seconds after loading.

<comment><USER13> When it comes to Safari, given their widely known non-compliance with W3C standards, I'd wager this to be a bug/non-compliance within Safari.

<comment><USER12> Agreed, that's a possibility. Although a properly tested landing page probably shouldn't crash a relatively mainstream browser on current version regardless of its quirks (technical correctness isn't everything), this wouldn't be an excuse for the quirks nor would it be a reason to not love the landing page for other reasons.

<comment><USER13> On the contrary, I believe developers should stand up to Apple where they can, and the browser is likely the only place for it, given they have zero leverage in negotiations on native apps, in which Apple is making life very very hard for developers who simply do not fall in line with their guidance.

If Apple will willy-nilly reject app store (both Mac and iOS) apps, retroactively change rules to kill competition (look up what they did with steam) and randomly start banning popular frameworks (electron apps are the latest victim), and still insist on being W3C non-compliant, in a blatant effort to force users and developers to their walled garden, developers need to grow a backbone and take Apple on where they can. If Mac users really want your webapp, Firefox/Opera.... are just an install away

<comment><USER12> Rereading ancestor comments I think we are on the same page actually, but in case I'm wrong…

In general, I could appreciate the decision to make a stance in this way on a personal level, but when evaluating a real landing page for a paid product from business perspective—which would be an inseparable aspect—I would not be able to recommend preferring "technically correct" over "actually working".

This does not only hurt sales/business, but also causes stress to non- technical end users. All they experience is their browser exiting when they visit the page (thankfully, tabs are preserved on next launch); they are not concerned with implementation and do not become more aware of Apple's standard non-conformance as a result.

A non-commercial website oriented towards developers, or indeed a joke such as in this case, is fine, of course.

In short, violating open standards—bad, taking a stance—good, hurting regular users and business—bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> >For me, the answer would be Stripe Atlas ([https://stripe.com/atlas](https://stripe.com/atlas))

Why? It seems very generic and bland. Or is that the point? Also, it make you scroll through a lot of stuff to find what you are presumably going to the site to find. They bury the important stuff way down at the bottom.

Yeah, most 'landing pages' are pretty useless exercises in annoying your user.

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe it gives you all the "big picture" information you need in a very simple way (maybe that's why you call it bland). But I do find simplicity important.

This is hard to do with a product as complex as Stripe Atlas (just Google "form a company" and click around to see what I mean). But they pulled it off. And it looks beautiful.

TLDR: I love a landing page that turns complexity into simplicity.

<comment><USER15> Maybe my brain is broken, but I found it uninformative on the surface, and it makes it hard to locate any actual information about the project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Just tell me what the damn thing does."

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

(I'm also a happy user!)

<comment><USER15> Now, _that 's_ a good landing page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> None. Absolutely none. I have _never_ "loved" a landing page. They are always too clever, too designed, too cluttered, too austere, too "gorgeous", too self-indulgent, too self-important, _etc._

<comment><USER18> Is there anything you do like?

<comment><USER17> Yes.

I like a landing page whose implementation makes it clear that the people behind it have thought long and hard about the people who will visit, and what they want.

I like a page that's clean, clear, spare, easy to find the things people are looking for when they come to a landing page.

The XKCD panel nails it: [https://www.xkcd.com/773/](https://www.xkcd.com/773/)

There are _so_ many things I really don't care about when I land on your site, and a few things I really do care about. Visit the web site for a museum to find out how much it costs to visit[0]:

      > Plan your day
       > Your visit
        > Discover
         > Become a friend
          > Memberships
           > Admissions
            > Audio guides
             > Day tickets
              > $18

Then you want opening times and which holidays they are closed, and the page is comprehensive and detailed, and from 2008 and clearly wrong.

Absolutely no thought about what a visitor is trying to accomplish, and instead is all about trying to ... well, I don't know what they're trying to do.

I like a landing page that has clearly catered for the visitor, and not just to show off how wonderful their web design skills are.

\</comment></comment></comment><comment>--

[0] Adapted from here: [https://twitter.com/sophie_gadd/status/1213126700625739778](https://twitter.com/sophie_gadd/status/1213126700625739778)

</comment><comment><USER19> The only true and lasting love: [https://www.berkshirehathaway.com](https://www.berkshirehathaway.com)

<comment><USER20> I find it pretty hilarious that a substantial part of it is an ad for Geico.

<comment><USER7> Well. BH owns Geico or prolly the largest shareholder. Also one of their most lucrative investments.

I personally dislike Geico's spammy marketing but I guess it's minting billions for BH.

If it were to me, they'd be a law that all insurance companies need to be a co-op or non profit. Profit in insurance (esp for health insurance) makes no sense for a country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If you have a browser that has flash, then [http://www.zombo.com](http://www.zombo.com) is a good one.

<comment><USER22> Otherwise you can visit: [https://html5zombo.com/](https://html5zombo.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Looking at my "Designs" bookmarks folder, half of the websites have been shutdown and the other half I don't "love" any more.

This proves two things for me, design has nothing to do with the success of a product, and the second: design is subjective and changes not only from person to person but also for you, there is an absolute chance that one design that you love now, may hate in future.

<comment><USER24> I have to agree. I agonised over the design of our landing page but eventually came to the same conclusion.

Plain text that gets as many selling points into the eyes of the visitor above the fold is what I believe is the most sensible route if you're debating bit to design your landing page.

<comment><USER25> I think clean and attractive is key. At least for me. If you have a product I want and your landing page is well designed and clearly explains the product, then I am much more likely to try your product.

I assume, right or wrong, that if you out that much work into your landing page, you must have put the same into your product.

Now if your product stinks after trying it, I'll leave just as fast. But at least I have it a try. I'm sure I'm not unique in that regard.

Now, if you are resource constrained, focus on the product first, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Notion is great [https://notion.so](https://notion.so). Will probably rip it off for my company soon.

<comment><USER27> Not just a great landing page but a great product, which helps.

<comment><USER7> Wouldn't call notion a great product. I found it incredibly hard to use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Stack Overflow actually has a landing page! Usually your entry point is via a Google search, so you never see it.

[https://stackoverflow.com/](https://stackoverflow.com/)

<comment><USER29> That's a homepage though, I'd argue that questions pages are more like landing pages for SO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This thread comes up once every month, I'd suggest to go over the past month's threads:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=tru...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=true&query=landing%20page&sort=byPopularity&type=story)

</comment><comment><USER31> I loved how plain and to the point Magic's original landing page (2015) was:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20150313215658/https://getmagicn...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150313215658/https://getmagicnow.com/)

Now it's been redesigned of course:

[https://getmagic.com/](https://getmagic.com/)

But I still prefer the original.

<comment><AUTHOR> I remember this! You're right I also loved the original landing page when I first saw it. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> about:blank

</comment><comment> open-source-ux If you're looking for landing page inspiration, here are two sites that collect examples

[https://onepagelove.com/](https://onepagelove.com/)

[https://www.pages.xyz/](https://www.pages.xyz/)

<comment><USER33> Shameless plug: [https://www.waveguide.io/landing- pages/all](https://www.waveguide.io/landing-pages/all) and for Mobile Landing Pages: [https://www.waveguide.io/mobile-landing- pages/all](https://www.waveguide.io/mobile-landing-pages/all)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I refurbished the landing page of my personal blog site during the Christmas holidays and have received some very nice feedback: [https://tkainrad.dev/](https://tkainrad.dev/)

<comment><USER7> Oh well. There is a cookie notice that takes more than 50% of screen real estate when I load the page.

<comment><USER34> Oh, wasn't really aware that it would be so large in some cases. Thank you for this feedback. Could you tell me which kind of device you were using, I guess a relatively small mobile phone?

<comment><USER7> iPhone8 iOS. Pretty average mobile device.

<comment><USER34> Alright, will make some changes, i.e. not showing it to non-EU visitors and making it a little smaller. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I struggled to answer that question myself while researching for my own product's landing page.

I decided to go for a very different path and create something that could showcase the product as soon as possible, with simple and objective copy for people who wanted to understand it better.

I do very much love it as it is right now, but of course I am biased, and of course I am open to criticism to improve it. But the principle (clear copy + showcase the product working) I will probably keep.

Here it is to receive your judgement: [https://www.quidsentio.com](https://www.quidsentio.com)

<comment><USER36> Copywriter here:

Use a more common font.

Headlines over buttons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is one I made [https://pinballmap.com/](https://pinballmap.com/)

I like it, but I think it would be nicer without the big list of "regional maps" at the bottom. I'm not really sure how best to include that list (users have told us, "list all the regions so I can ctrl-F for them! or else I hate you!"

Next I want to add some stats to the landing page. Like, top 25 pinball machines that are on location. And each one listed would be a link to show that machine on the map.

<comment><USER38> Very grateful for your work.

Have you considered having the map be optional (a click away)? To preserve mobile data if nothing else.

Also, given how often turnover happens, a link next to each itemized machine to notify you of changes (and perhaps another to notify participating owners of mechanical problems)?

I wish the 49ers playoff and INDISC weren't the same weekend.

<comment><USER37> Well, the main, searchable map is one click away ("Explore the Map"). But yeah, that map on the landing page that only shows where the regions are, we could simply hide that on mobile. We are really de-emphasizing the regions in exchange for the single map where you can search anywhere. I don't like the search experience on that single map, though. But it'll take some work to redo it. I want it to be more like the app search experience.

If an operator is tagged at a location, and that operator has granted us permission to notify them, then they get a daily email of any comments left on their machines. Roughly half of them take advantage of this (147 out of 299). We should probably remind operators of this feature more often, given that it's now buried in a 6 year old blog post.

My daughter's birthday is on the same weekend as INDISC! I used to like going to that tourney.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Honestly, here. I want content instantly

</comment><comment><USER40> Self plug - TRYING to finish [https://fastcomments.com](https://fastcomments.com). Goal for the homepage was something pleasing and simple.

<comment><USER41> Loaded fast, that's a thumbs up from me! Most of the landing pages I've seen on this thread have been very pretty, no doubt, but on my poor little computer they weren't the speediest of websites.

Clicked on the website you linked, bam, it's loaded. It's also very simple too! No distracting shapes or clunky animations, it's just a very satisfying website. +1

<comment><USER40> You don't know how happy that makes me, thanks.

I'm tired of slow software so I vowed to make all my personal projects perform well. Along the way I wanted to add comments to my blog, tried disqus, and figured I could do one better (at least for me).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Craigslist. Easily navigated by topic _and_ by geography.

</comment><comment><USER43> [https://www.kickscondor.com/](https://www.kickscondor.com/) Can't believe no one has posted this yet.

</comment><comment><USER44> Well, you tell me landing page, I think marketing lies. And stupid responsive design pages that waste 99.95% of the space on my monitor.

How can I love something like that?

</comment><comment><USER45> I like the minimalism of Bonsai: ([https://www.hellobonsai.com/](https://www.hellobonsai.com/)

</comment><comment><USER46> [https://burnout.so](https://burnout.so) is awesome. Fantastic product too; I'm living it.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is actually a great landing page! Makes me want to try the product

<comment><USER15> I've seen worse, but in my opinion, this is not a good landing page. It doesn't offer much in terms of actual, actionable information -- only marketing-speak broadsides, the layout is hard to follow, if you change the font size to make it more usable (the size the page uses is far too large), then the layout breaks further, and so on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> [https://www.jooq.org/](https://www.jooq.org/)

\- Fast to load

\- Tells you what the product does right at the top

\- As it's a database library, and there are many other database libraries - the features are written in terms of how the product is different from the competition - goes into

\- Code examples pretty soon, so you can really see what using it would be like.

</comment><comment><USER48> The new site from The Designer's Republic is really cool:

[https://www.thedesignersrepublic.com/](https://www.thedesignersrepublic.com/)

Love the colors and use of simple animation - really stands out from the bland tech/startup sites we usually see.

Check out the Wipeout icons and typography :-)

<comment><USER49> Love their work, but the new website sucks. Let me look at things on my own time. But I guess a person who's tired of being worshipped for things they did twenty years ago would prefer you don't pore over them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Pitch.com

It is a start up to compete with powerpoint that raised 50 million pre-mvp... yea ... sweet landing page tho

<comment><AUTHOR> Geez... Love the landing page though it feels like a Pixar movie.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I can honestly say that I've never seen a landing page that I loved. Landing pages are those things that get in the way of what I'm really trying to find.

</comment><comment><USER51> [https://www.blackbox.cool/](https://www.blackbox.cool/) Is so fun and tells you everything you need to know.

</comment><comment><USER52> [https://python-poetry.org/](https://python-poetry.org/)

I think the snake animation is pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER53> [https://thriva.co/](https://thriva.co/) \- I love the layout on this one!

<comment> cia-killer It looks so much better on large screens without the margin

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Lots of them on [https://www.land-book.com](https://www.land-book.com) are great.

</comment><comment><USER55> [https://www.dreamlist.com](https://www.dreamlist.com)

</comment><comment><USER56> [https://search.yahoo.com](https://search.yahoo.com)

</comment><comment><USER57> [https://newreleases.io](https://newreleases.io)

</comment><comment><USER58> [http://3kvc.com/](http://3kvc.com/)

<comment><USER7> So much slow animation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Https://Drudgereport.com - still king of highly efficient info delivery.

</comment><comment><USER60> xkcd was right about web sites in 2010 ([https://www.xkcd.com/773/](https://www.xkcd.com/773/)) and it hasn't really gotten better since then, either.

</comment><comment><USER61> [https://rezi.io](https://rezi.io)

<comment><USER62> The page is blank in Firefox until you've scrolled down.

<comment><USER20> Not on mobile, but it did take a good 10-20 seconds to load.

<comment><USER61> noted thank you

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I love the one on my own website. [http://egypt.urnash.com](http://egypt.urnash.com)

I haven't changed it since I made it back in 2011, aside from adding links to new projects.

</comment><comment><USER64> I really like stripe

</comment><comment><USER65> privacy.com for sure, super simple and clear.

</comment><comment><USER66> podia.com

</comment><comment><USER67> I think landing pages are overrated. I like good products no matter how they are presented...

<comment><USER68> However you can have the best product in the world, if you can't sell or market it (via a landing page for example), it will never be used (or very little).

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> I'm partial to [https://reactfordataviz.com](https://reactfordataviz.com) because it's the best one I ever made and reaches 7th on Google for important keywords even tho it's a sales page.

I like it because it loads fast, isn't very designed, and focuses on decent copywriting instead of A/B testing quackery

And it converts well at an average of 50 cents per pageview.

Took about 4 years of customer research and conversations to arrive at that copy.

<comment><USER20> > Took about 4 years of customer research and conversations to arrive at that > copy.

And nobody caught the "havign"?

<comment><USER70> And 'andn' and 'youll'. But still pretty cool...</comment></comment></comment>


Why you shouldn't fix your customers typos in reviews and comments - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.forbes.com/ciocentral/2011/06/08/zapos-zappoz-or-zappos-why-typos-are-good-for-your-brand/

<comment><USER2> I never tamper with reviews or comments for this very reason. With no mistakes, it seems to perfect.</comment>


Ask HN: What "weekend project" will you work on this weekend? - <AUTHOR> We all know most "weekend" projects aren't really done in one weekend, they are done in a series of weekends. And we work on them in the morning, in the evening, and any other time we can get away from our contractual obligations.<p>That said, what side project will you be working on this weekend? <comment><USER2> I'm trying to turn Emacs into an outliner that can natively read/write OPML files. After asking #emacs today, I _think_ the key bit is using "format conversion" [1] to accomplish this.

I've finally gotten over the "beginner hump" when it comes to elisp and its becoming a fun little language to toy around with. I figure this'll take a good chunk of Saturday.

[1] [http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/For...](http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Format- Conversion.html#Format-Conversion)

<comment><AUTHOR> I love emacs, and I appreciate you taking the time to learn how to extend it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am working on a sales CRM made with Node + Angular. Things are going pretty well but still a lot of work to be able to compete with Pipedrive. I hope I can release it soon and see how it goes.

</comment><comment><USER4> This silly thing: [http://precis.gopagoda.com/url/https://news.ycombinator.com/...](http://precis.gopagoda.com/url/https://news.ycombinator.com/newest)

Put any url you like in there. It'll either work or it won't. /css/[url] kind of works too.

Also a random app in C# because I failed a midterm exam because I couldn't get runtime DB access to work from memory. Yeah I know, I still suck unless I have Stackoverflow and/or a reference right next to me.

<comment><USER5> I don't think you suck for relying on StackOverflow/reference when writing code. You just haven't completely understood or remembered what you're doing. After a few time you'll remember and understand and move on to using SO/reference for the next more complicated thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am writing a toy lisp compiler as a learning experience. Its taking forever to get anywhere but I am finding the journey is more interesting than the destination.

I'm trying the garbage collector for the second time. My first attempt ate the stack and I found it hard to reason about or debug.

I'll try and finish the gc this time but I only recently realized that I didn't need to start writing one at all. For the first version I could have just allocated memory without deallocating.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just finished an MVP of [http://www.educatornews.net](http://www.educatornews.net). It's an HN clone for the education community.

This weekend I'm focusing on implementing a "conversations" feature, similar to HN's "threads". I am also trying to increase test coverage, so I can agressively refactor my ugly MVP code as I begin to pick up users.

<comment><USER7> \- Why aren't you using mptt comments?

\- A one liner query is just called a queryset.

\- To get all the "upvotes" of an user it's better to start from the user.

\- I don't think your code is ugly.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Why aren't you using mptt comments?

I have heard of mptt, but I had never used it before. I am intending to integrate mptt into the commenting system, before long. [0]

> A one liner query is just called a queryset.

Did I call it a query somewhere?

> To get all the "upvotes" of an user it's better to start from the user.

So rather than:

        request.user in comment.upvotes.all()

I would do:

        comment in request.user.upvoted_comments

where upvoted_comments is the related_name for upvotes on the Comment model:

        upvotes = models.ManyToManyField(User, blank=True, null=True, related_name='upvoted_comments')

> I don't think your code is ugly.

Thanks, that's encouraging. I was embarassed by my single 1000-line _views.py_ file.

[0] - Issue 38: [https://github.com/ehmatthes/educator_news/issues/38](https://github.com/ehmatthes/educator_news/issues/38)

<comment><USER7> > mptt

First time using mptt might not be straightforward. But I think it's worth because the problem is "difficult". Similarly django-polymorphic. Those are the two things in Django I would think hard before re-writring.

> one-liner ~ queryset

I don't find the particular comment right now.

> To get all the "upvotes" of an user it's better to start from the user.

I don't know the correct queryset, the one you provide seems good. Don't compute in Python what you can do in the db. In the particular code I'm referring to, several queries were done against the db instead of one.

> 1000-line is ugly

yeah, kind of. But at least you don't use abbreviations. Or 2 spaces for indentation. Seems like valid pep8.

I don't say that there are no mistakes in the code, just skimmed over it.

The file is big because some of the functions are not views.

\- get_submission_age: should be template tag cf. [https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/custom- template-...](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/custom-template- tags/#simple-tags)

\- get_submission_set: I wouldn't use such a function. For sure you are iterating two times over the list of submissions, one time in the view, one time in the template so it's a "2n" so O(n) complexity. It's ok but only one iteration over the list is required. But the django template language (DTL) makes it "hard" to do it... DTL was built around the idea that the template writer is stupid and probably also that nobody would read the code the template writer wrote before going into production.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm working on a clone of a relatively simple but very fun mobile puzzle game. I'm creating it for Android using libgdx. It's my first serious attempt at making an Android app, and it's coming along nicely. This weekend I'll be trying to fix the scaling and cropping for different resolutions, which is something I ran into just trying to test my game on my own phone.

</comment><comment><USER9> My garden.

CA is being hit with a drought, but we conserve enough water to not really worry about it.

My goal is to have enough raised bets and suitable seedling production/crop rotation to have at least 2 days/week of fruit/veggies from the garden between late april and September. Potatoes and a new raised bed were on tap. Seedlings already moving along nicely.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm working on a turn-based mobile game for iOS written in HTML5 w/ Cordova. Getting close to beta-testing time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you say anything more specific about the nature of the game?

<comment><USER10> Sure. It's a word game. Should appeal to the Scrabble/WordsWithFriends crowd. I'm sure I'll announce it here when it's launched so people can point out why it sucks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Trying to make a better protein alignment for transcriptome annotation using suffix arrays and possibly GPUs. Although it's a bit of a lie, that was the project I worked on last weekend, this weekend I won't have time, moreover I have tend to start a new project before finishing the old one....

</comment><comment><USER12> A feedback system for my dad's restaurant that allows customers to provide feedback through text messages. It's a fun little side project with a few challenges, and I've enjoyed it so far.

[http://imgur.com/NPFQpPh](http://imgur.com/NPFQpPh)

</comment><comment><USER13> Making JavaCard a nice software platform, [https://github.com/martinpaljak/AppletPlayground](https://github.com/martinpaljak/AppletPlayground) and its relatives

</comment><comment><USER14> I am working on springyRecords.

[http://huherto.github.io/springyRecords/](http://huherto.github.io/springyRecords/)

A Record Mapper for Java that runs on top of spring-jdbc.

</comment><comment><USER15> I have no idea, I've got a free weekend and I've got my text editor here, I want to build something fun that will make people have a giggle..

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm working on a site to create and share parallel translations, i.e a single book/document in two languages next to one another.

</comment><comment><USER17> [https://github.com/gjvc/commander/](https://github.com/gjvc/commander/)

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm in love with 2048, so I'm going to learn some game development and hopefully make a clone of it.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm going to work on an ncurses-based music player similar to cmus, in clojure.</comment>


Cloud computing may be the ultimate form of globalization - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12411854 <comment><USER2> huzzah a stephenson mention :D

that gets a free upvote from me</comment>


Acquisition and maintenance of a band of minions - <AUTHOR> http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2013/06/15/campus/ <comment><USER2> For those who don't regularly follow rachelbythebay.com, this post is a Google allegory. I disagree with a couple points.

First, Google really doesn't care as much about education as people think they do. They do love experience. I never graduated high school, and was hired into an SRE position (= programmer writing large-scale sysadmin tools) based on previous work experience. Grades are only useful if you've got nothing else to show off.

Second, if you want employees to be loyal to a company with unusually good perks, taking them fresh out of school is a terrible approach. Many people working here indeed have no real idea what working at non-tech companies is like, and that means they assume every other company is like Google. I have heard stories of employees getting frustrated on some project, leaving to work at (e.g.) a bank or webdev shop, and not realizing until their first day that there's no free food, or gym, or weekly heckling of the CEO. I used to work at a defense contractor, I know what it's like being a programmer employed at a non-tech company, and I don't want to ever go back.

(In other words, Google might get better retention by implementing Rumspringa)

Third, the proprietary parts aren't as pervasive as the article portrays. Our Linux kernel has weird Google-specific interfaces, but they're always in some stage of upstreaming and will eventually be in Linus's trunk. Our RPC system uses the same protobuf rpc-stubs that are generated by the open-source protobuf compiler. Desktops and Laptops run stock {Ubuntu,Windows,MacOS} with a few extra binaries. MapReduce and BigTable were published and inspired dozens of open-source implementations. Many of our Python-based tools have web frontends written with Django. Many systems persist data in MySQL.

When Google engineers avoid particular in-fashion systems such as Rails or MongoDB or node.js, it's not because we're ignorant of them, it's because we think they're not good enough.

<comment><USER3> Regarding NIH, some places have found an interesting way to have their cake and eat it too. First, they create something interesting. Then they release it to the world. That way, their formerly-proprietary thing _becomes_ the standard, or at least, shows up in the marketplace.

Protocol Buffers was this back in ... 2007? Too bad Thrift happened first, right?

This is leading up to the kernel of another post: how to undercut the competition: hire the people who created their Secret Sauce, then have them build it again, but this time, release it to the world. Now the competition doesn't have their exclusive magic carpet to ride around on any more.

<comment><USER4> Interestingly, a senior Googler I once talked to derisively mentioned how competitors like Facebook were open sourcing projects that used to be proprietary Google technology, mostly based on work done by people FB poached from Google. I realize it's just another anecdote, but the word "we" was used enough during the dialog to indicate that it was a common view within Google.

I guess it's a viable strategy, but nobody likes it when it's done to them.

<comment><USER3> Oh, sure, in 2007 when Thrift came out first, I was on board with that sentiment, too. "Oh, wow, they hired someone who was an intern here last year, and now they have their own Protocol Buffers, surprise surprise." It was easier to disparage it than it was to get concerned about our own well-being.

Now, however, every time they release something like this, I just crack up laughing. The servers, the software-defined switched network, all of it. It just keeps going. The real magicians have moved on and are now sharing their creations with the rest of the world.

If only I had a copy of that internal post which basically said "either we open-source our own stuff, or other people are going to do it for us, and we're going to be behind the eight ball". I want to say it was a Yegge Buzz post but I can't remember for sure. It's been three or four years.

Leakers, you know how to find me. Contact info in profile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nit: I know we like to be all anti-intellectual here at HN, but Rachel's claim that "having a PhD" correlates strongly with "lacking the ability for independence of thought or action" is pretty ridiculous. Undergraduate and masters programs may be fairly structured, but once you get into a PhD program you are shockingly, horrifyingly alone. Those without the ability to act, plan, or motivate themselves independently do not make it through the 4-8 year (depending on your domain) process. Very occasionally, you'll find an advisor or a lab that will hold your hand through the entire multi-year process, but those experiences are a rarity.

<comment><USER6> Earning a PhD certainly requires independent thought and action, but those are directed towards goals imposed by someone else, typically an adviser or one's committee, and the typical grad student rarely questions those goals.

This capacity for creative work in pursuit of others' ends is exactly why Rachel says PhDs are such valuable minions.

The book "Disciplined Minds" [1] makes this point in a radical way. I didn't agree with everything it said, but its point is that higher education selects for people willing to jump through arbitrary hoops for nebulous returns, and that that conformism is valuable to employers.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Disciplined-Minds-Critical- Professiona...](http://www.amazon.com/Disciplined-Minds-Critical- Professionals-Soul-battering/dp/0742516857)

<comment><USER7> > Earning a PhD certainly requires independent thought and action, but those > are directed towards goals imposed by someone else, typically an adviser or > one's committee, and the typical grad student rarely questions those goals.

They don't question the advisor's goals? Do they now? I found that learning how to manage your boss is the one most important soft skill to have doing one's PhD. Compare that to your garden-variety BSc program, where the only thing you do is dutifully attend lectures and hand in homework.

I do wonder what kind of people makes that sort of statement. It can only be those with nothing more than a BSc - they have attended a university but don't know how the sausage is made.

<comment><USER8> "Disciplined Minds" was written by someone knowledgeable. From ch. 15:

 _" Remember also that profesional training is preceded by at least 16 years of preparatory socialization in the schools. Students who go on to professional training tend to be the "best" students—those who, among other things, excel at playing by the rules. [...]_

 _" Alone in a large program designed to mold you, you cannot uphold an independent outlook for long. By yourself you can't even maintain a point of reference against which to sense that your outlook is drifting and to gauge how far it has drifted, because the training system, so as not to sabotage itself, excludes sources of critical distance."_

It even meshes with what ender7 said. He wrote, "once you get into a PhD program you are shockingly, horrifyingly alone." And he pointed out the preparatory programs.

The book also delves into your point about "learning how to manage your boss". Many cynically "play the game" and generally do a bit better than those who don't. But even that's part of the system. You know the rules and still subordinate yourself, ironically believing you're in control of Big Boss. Remember, a boss is defined as someone who gives you commands which you obey. An inherently pathetic position, which many frankly call (wage) slavery. The court may plot and scheme, but the king is still their king.

<comment><USER9> > The court may plot and scheme, but the king is still their king.

Try watching some Game of Thrones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Disclaimer: I work for Google but the following is my personal opinion.

FWIW, the part about never deviating from the "One True Way" or the description of Google as "a rigid environment with adherence to arbitrary guidelines" is simply not true. One of the things that is brought up in the initial orientation is that Google is meant to be fault-tolerant and flexible across the board. From an engineering aspect this means that if a single server crashes due to bad code, the system should be flexible enough take steps to recover. From an employee aspect, if the employee isn't happy with their job, they should be able to flexible enough to take steps to recover.

However, since Google doesn't micromanage its employees, the employee might forget that this is an option and remain unhappy. In my case, I realized that I wasn't happy with my position a few months after joining the company, remembered what I was told in orientation, talked to HR, and moved to a different position where I was much happier.

If I thought the rules were actually inflexible, then I would have stayed in my original position, got burned out, quit after a few months, and probably complained about the company to others. Google is flexible, but requires the person to actually take advantage of this flexibility.

<comment><USER11> Indeed. I think Google is a better place for people that make their own rules than for those that blindly do everything they're told.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> As someone who's never worked at Google, this blog post gives me the same kind of curious discomfort I used to have reading michaelochurch comments. Reading ex-Googlers denouncing Google feels a lot like watching a married couple fight. You know there's a history and a relationship there, and one party feels the need to vent at the other, but there's nothing to be gained by witnessing it from the outside.

<comment><USER13> There's plenty to be gained if you're thinking of dating the party being complained about. :)

<comment><USER14> True, but only if you remember that some 50,000 or so people have "dated" the party being complained about and you're reading the complaints of 2 of them, who also tend to complain about most of the other parties they've "dated".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anecdotal evidence regarding the proprietary technology trap:

1\. At another large (but not XXL) "Internet" company, none of the Google SREs have made the SRE hiring bar, precisely because half their answers to "How would you solve problem XYZ?" are "Oh, I'd just use $ProprietaryTechnologyGHJ", to which the response is, "Well, but we don't have $ProprietaryTechnologyGHJ", to which the response is "Uhhh..."

2\. Of the couple Google (non-SRE) software engineer interviewees I am directly aware of, nobody has made it through either, partially for similar reasons (reliance on opaque external services). To be fair, their other shortcomings were more significant.

3\. One Googler that I know confided that they are terrified of leaving Google, because they wouldn't (paraphrasing) "know how to code in the outside world."

4\. Yet another Googler I talked to said that their stack is unimaginably huge, and nobody knows how all of it works, which was (quoting) "probably by design." Make of that what you will.

<comment><USER11> OK... throwaway account, unnamed company, unverified anecdotes... I should really not reply. Oh well.

I'm not sure I believe any of this. Very little of the work we do at Google involves feeding data to some tool and sitting back and watching the results. It's software engineering and problem solving as usual, just with some nice libraries and tools to save time for the hard parts.

I'm especially confounded as to what SRE tools would cause someone to "not meet the hiring bar" by responding to a question by saying "I'd just use some proprietary technology". I can't think of any tools that are useful enough to be the singular answer to an open-ended question, and I can't imagine anyone wanting a job saying "just use this tool you've never seen before" in an interview. It's unbelieveable.

Being used to certain tools is not specific to Google, either. If you ask a Python programmer trivia questions about Ruby, he's not going to know the answer. But given a week, he'll probably know the answer.

 _Another Googler I talked to said that their stack is unimaginably huge, and nobody knows how all of it works, which was (quoting) "probably by design." Make of that what you will._

The stack is big but there is nothing preventing one from understanding other than that it mostly works and so one is not _forced_ to understand it. The code is there and you can start it all up locally on your machine, so I don't really see the problem. It's not huge to keep unhappy Googlers from finding other employment opportunities, as you imply.

Anyway, I can't believe I replied to this post and am now going to click the reply button, but here goes...

<comment><USER4> I have no reason to make this up :-/

I comment very infrequently, but only use throwaway accounts as a personal policy based in part on HN-the-community's response to my opinions and HN-the- website's aggressive response to downvotes. (I'm actually re-using a previous throwaway because my last throwaway was autodead-on-arrival. Flagged IP maybe?)

Anonymity is not really the point; In fact, there are HN members who might figure out my identity simply because they were directly involved in these experiences.

The SRE anecdote may seem unbelievable, but why would this have been the case with _multiple_ Google SREs? I did not imply that their work at Google consists of waving a magic wand and things getting done; it's more likely that the basic building blocks of Google's infrastructure are very powerful, and you don't have to worry about a bunch of things that other SREs have to. "Nice libraries and tools" is an understatement. Seems it's not only that they are reliant on $ProprietaryTechnologyG, they could not explain how $ProprietaryTechnologyG works or even describe alternative methods they'd use instead.

On the other hand, it is possible that it's only been the lesser SREs that have been interviewing around.

Also: The two Googlers I talked about (one of whom has been there longer than you, if I remember your HN comment history correctly), are doing very interesting work, and are very happy at their jobs. As a disclaimer, I know one well and the other I met only once. Nonetheless, they, in no unclear terms, said what I paraphrased and quoted above.

I didn't mean to imply that the stack was made so huge to keep unhappy employees in. In fact, I did not mean to imply any intent at all. However, as you said, since employees are not forced to understand it, most of them don't, and this becomes just another factor to consider when thinking of changing jobs. Not knowing the whole stack is perfectly fine, but when critical pieces have no comparable equivalent in the outside world, your skills become less transferable. (Plus, you might not feel like leaving all that good stuff behind!)

As I said in another comment upthread, the "proprietary stack" aspect at Google seems to be more pronounced than at other companies like Microsoft. I mean, come on, it's a commonly accepted fact that it takes a year to become productive after you start at Google. What reasonable conclusion about the stack can one draw from that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In my experience, this is how the big defense contractors approach software. They will gravitate towards the most expensive proprietary tools in hopes that their engineers will pigeon hole themselves into that environment. I honestly had people tell me that I wasn't allowed to use anything open source (even through the military uses open source all the time) and that ClearCase is the most dominant version control system in the software industry.

</comment><comment><USER16> In case anyone missed it, she's talking about Google. :)

<comment><USER17> I think you're reading way too far into it being about a specific company. A number of companies people love to like/hate could fall into the specifics she lists, depending on one's views. It's like a crystal ball or clouds in the sky --one sees what they wish to see.

Guessing the actual company, if there is one, is kind of disingenuous to the article's message itself though, since it is good depiction of the "ideal" company most of us would want to avoid.

<comment><USER18> Context is everything here. There may be a number of companies that fit the pattern, and she could be speaking hypothetically, but Rachel worked at Google and has an axe to grind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wouldn't use such a pejorative term, but if you want to employ 'minions', you don't need to do anything particularly elaborate - just hire people who want to be minions. You can select for this in your interview process.

There's plenty of people out there who want to be told what to do and don't care to spend time thinking about the moral ramifications of their employment, including a great many skilled and experienced programmers. As long as they can choose _how_ to implement what you want, they'll happily implement what you want, collect their paychecks, and go home.

Of course, that means you'll have to write extremely detailed specifications, which is a big pain in the ass. And you'll be the only one trying to figure out whether your product is actually something people want, so you damn well better be right.

</comment><comment><USER20> Proper minions are attracted by the prospect of wielding petty power in an arbitrary manner - a proper minion must enjoy being mean, otherwise, you'll wind up with true piety rather than its pretence.

Minions don't play hackysack unless they can exclude someone.

<comment><USER4> How about the famed "pretentious interviewer with a superiority complex" stereotype? (Disclaimer: Non-googler, and I have _never_ met any such interviewers at Google. A couple of them came close, though...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Seems pretty far fetched, I mean can you imagine what ridiculous lengths you would have to go to in order to maintain the loyalty of the minions? I mean seriously if they woke up to the reality of their situation, who knows what would happen :-) Seems like a common problem explored in literature as well, minor discontent, then an awakening, and then failure as the evil empire fails under more and more egregious attempts to maintain order ...

</comment><comment><USER22> i don't think you need the last sentence, fwiw.

also, early on (before the backpacks and logos), talking about capturing them young reminded me of [http://www.nsa.gov/kids/home.shtml](http://www.nsa.gov/kids/home.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER23> What would the point of the band of minion be? To what (possibly evil) purpose will they be used?

<comment><USER24> If I read the subcontext correctly, the band of minions will build software to serve contextual ads to the rest of humanity. Muhahahahahaha!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Maybe I'm crazy, but I didn't see this as being specifically about google. It seems more like an illustration of how many modern corporations operate (a great one at that!)

</comment><comment><USER26> Up to the point where she started talking about Master's degrees, I thought she was talking about Japan.</comment>


Ask HN: SQLite, MySQL, or PostgreSQL? - <AUTHOR> My application is storing ~12GB of federal election data for personal research purposes. I simply want to be able to search for queries without having to wait several hours for the result (in contrast with my previous solution, which was searching the data line-by-line with python). <comment><USER2> R Programming language[1] has Rdata-Files included. With data.table[2] you have fast memory database for your local machine.

[1] [https://bookdown.org/ndphillips/YaRrr/rdata- files.html](https://bookdown.org/ndphillips/YaRrr/rdata-files.html)

[2] [https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/data.table/vignettes...](https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/data.table/vignettes/datatable- intro.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Provided you can index the data properly, all three should work to speed up your queries.

Sqlite has the advantage of not needing to install a server, which makes it easier to bring it up as your datastore.

</comment><comment><USER4> SQLite is perhaps a little easier because you only have one file to think about, backups, etc.

I use both but give preference to Postgres/PostGIS if I have to do mapping things.

MySQL is never a consideration for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is there a particular reason why you never consider MySQL?

I am honestly thinking of reworking my project (for the 10th time, lol) to convert a bunch of interconnected list-of-objects in Python into SQL databases. I'm talking about data on tens of thousands of political candidates, data on hundreds of thousands of political committees/SuperPACS, data on hundreds of federal elections, etc.

I also just remembered that I have a MySQL server already installed on my computer.

Given that I am working with several gigabytes of highly interconnected data, would it be worth installing PostGres on my machine?

<comment><USER4> I don't consider MySQL since I've invested so much time to learn PostgreSQL and its ecosystem of extensions. MySQL is a proved database, but my money is simply on a different horse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> sqlite and datasette is a killer combo imo [https://datasette.readthedocs.io/en/stable/](https://datasette.readthedocs.io/en/stable/)

12GB is not a lot of data, not sure what was happening with your python that it took several hours. Don't get me wrong though, SQL seems like it could be the right tool for this use case.

</comment><comment><USER6> If it's for local use, I would go with sqlite.

</comment><comment><USER7> For production or for local use?

<comment><AUTHOR> Local use.</comment></comment>


How They Got Their Guns - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/03/us/how-mass-shooters-got-their-guns.html <comment><USER2> First, shootings that happened over four years ago are recent?

Second, in at least one case, the weapons were stolen from a parent--so, really, that is kinda a dishonest data point if you're trying to argue for legal acquisition of firearms.

Third, funny how a good chunk of the shooters here were all veterans.

Fourth, and most distressingly: this sort of article really fearmongers about people who have mental illness. In fact, it tends to inch in the direction of saying "Hey, if you see a shrink, for whatever reason, you should be required to forfeit your right to bear arms".

This last point is the worst, least of all because it's pretty trivial to abuse.

</comment><comment><USER3> Fifth, they include the shootings of criminals in the midst of clearly felonious activity and/or shot in defense of others.

For example, the intercept and gunbattle with the San Bernardino shooters are counted as a "mass shooting" under the multiple-"victim"-per-incident model.</comment>


Diving into Silicon for the First Time - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@WydD/diving-into-silicon-for-the-first-time-73086018e7de <comment><USER2> I remember in the early 90s walking into the board room of a small semiconductor company who was building a chip I had designed, they had a photomicrograph of IBM's VGA chip completely covering the table and a team of summer hires from UC Santa Cruz essentially doing what this article describes.

They weren't so much reverse engineering the chip to copy it, they'd already designed one from specs, they were looking for hidden undocumented functionality, features that might be released after they had built and shipped their design

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10976-understanding_millions_of_...](https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10976-understanding_millions_of_gates)</comment>


Ask HN: Market need for unpaid remote internships to gain experience? - <AUTHOR> In the past week I have had 8 people say they are interested in doing an unpaid remote internship in order to gain experience.
Long explanation, but context is important.. Considering my side project (studycity dot org) involves helping children gain knowledge and confidence through "encouraging" them to visit education sites, detecting the points earned, and rewarding them by granting another hour of entertainment sites...  For me, it makes sense to also offer a way to help others overcome the dreaded "we can't hire you because you don't have enough experience" response.  One person said she has submitted over 200 resumes and heard that line dozens of times.
I can easily think of 20 open source projects that a team of interns could work on.  In addition, it wouldn't matter if new interns worked on something that had already been solved because the point is not to ship what they build, but provide a way to learn and gain experience.  As long as the new interns don't discover the previous interns work, the same projects could be repeated allowing the mentor to step away and push the more experienced interns to become the mentor.
I imagine a stackoverflow type "cooperative" where the end goals are all understood by the group and jerks are not tolerated.  Maybe this already exists or is a stupid idea.  If this is stupid, I blame all the songs I listened to in the 80s and 90s that seem to have brainwashed me to try to help people and make the world better.
<start>
Looking back, I now realize in 1985, when all those famous celebrities sang "We are the world" to raise money for the starving children in Africa I probably saw the images of hungry children and heard that song on the TV or radio 100s of times.  As a curious 8 or 9 year old, it obviously influences the choices I make now that I have some $$ I can spend each year without incurring debt.
</end enlightenment> #SNLDeepThoughts <comment><USER2> > _In addition, it wouldn 't matter if new interns worked on something that > had already been solved because the point is not to ship what they build, > but provide a way to learn and gain experience._

I think you just reinvented school. :)

Probably this is how schools were invented. The problem with school/university is that you must ensure that the students have a good chance to pass the course and that they have a broad knowledge. So instead of real project the teacher must find some good educational project with an easy to measure difficulty. Add some academicism, because teachers like to talk to teacher about cool things, and you get the current educative system.

The idea of internships is that the "students" face some real life project and get some real life experience. But it is difficult to scale.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not necessarily, as a Oregon based non profit / a "real" company we can add the interns to the staff web page, we can tweet or blog that Carlos / Carla made this thing or solved this problem the company or software had. When a college emails to verify the internship offer we are able to confirm so that the student gets as much credit as his friend interning at a larger company. We could even have a shitty slow timecard system and have a guy who emails you like the world is ending if your timecard is late. Then we could practice not doing all the wrong things during our daily conference call meetings. Older interns could give really ackward and irrational performance reviews. Why wait to show them what an incompetent boss is like if they could experience it as an unpaid intern? Also practice the many IT nightmares that senior people have been burned by. "Hey can you restore the S drive you have been responsible for backing up?" "Damn, no files below 100 nested levels are here! Did you test the backups to see if they were restoring everything?" "All files are replicated to the mirror sure, cool, looks like accidental deletes are also replicated"

<comment><AUTHOR> Basically creating a minor leagues of devops recreating famous or no so famous mistakes that have been made in the last 40 years. "Hey Carlos my emails won't work over 500 miles"</comment></comment></comment>


Pay by Person: What Biometrics Means to PayPa - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.mcafee.com/consumer/pay-by-person-what-biometrics-means-to-paypal

<comment><USER3> Disclaimer: I'm currently doing my PhD in biometrics so i'm a bit biased.

Retinal scan is invasive, difficult to separate users, and just unnecessary given current tech to ever be used ever again. Face recognition is doing very well, and latent fingerprint is getting better than better, so using one or the other (IMHO) doesn't really matter at this point. What does bother me is that mcafee doesn't address larger issues:

\- How are you preventing spoofing? What kind of live-ness tests are done? (I guess not wanting to reveal this could be security protocol and the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence, but i'm assuming that more than the average person would come to the conclusion that a fingerprint or face can be spoofed)

\- two-factor authentication is good, but 2 layer security is bad - if people have to use their fingerprint AND a pin, they'll get lazy and revert to one or the other. There are several papers on biometric key generation where a biometric is used to build a certificate-key authentication. Heck there are even papers where the key is embedded into the biometric template. Biometrics are already walking a fine line between privacy and security, an easy and positive experience will go a long way in continued use and development.

\- scaring people that hackers are going to steal your fingerprint - <USER2> do not need to be stored as a raw image/minutiae points/facial features/etc. I think this goes back to the certificate-key relationship - use biometrics to build these, storing a raw template doesn't make much sense unless it's on an NSA server behind TS/SCI walls.</comment>


How to avoid Gmail's Sponsored Links - <AUTHOR> http://homepage.mac.com/joester5/art/gmail.html

<comment><USER2> This is some kind of solution? He moved the obtrusive content from the sidebar to right inside the email?

How am I supposed to include the catastrophic event reference in a corporate/business mail?

</comment><comment><USER3> Thats cute.. I paid for premier and I don't have any ads and didn't need to tell my friends about catastrophic events. $50 per year is definitely worth it.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Do you resent the "Sponsored Link" advertisements that come up next to the incoming mail?"

Resent what?... Seriously, my case of ad blindness is so severe it took me several seconds to remember/realize gmail has ads...

<comment><USER5> Especially considering that having the link advertisements is essentially my payment for the gmail service. If you don't think it is a good deal to receive the gmail service in exchange for having to have the advertisements of the page (which you don't have to look at), you don't have to use gmail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ha! Not sure what my mom would think if I sent her an email with suicide in my signature. Plus, Google does crawl your emails, any concern that if you consistently use "bad" keywords it might alert the Black Helicopters to come swooping down and nab you? :)

</comment><comment><USER7> This is so wrong, but somehow, morbidly amusing. I certainly don't think the adds are obtrusive enough to have my sig read "suicide death 9/11 murder", but each to his own... Thunderbird seems like a more elegant, cheerful solution.

<comment><USER8> What you'd really want to do is work the advertisement extermination into the body of the email inconspicuously. Say I'm mailing my friend Katrina about a concert I'd kill for tickets to--I make an offhand reference to the financial crisis, a tsunami of corporate catastrophes, how the markets quake in fear of another fiscal tragedy. Just like that, an advertisement genocide. I'm sure it'd soon become as natural a way of writing as e-prime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This guy should poke his head out of Safari and discover Firefox with Ad Block Plus before embarrassing himself.

<comment><USER10> That's what I was thinking too but there's an ad blocker for safari also <http://burgersoftware.com/en/safariadblock>

<comment><USER9> Last time I tried it (four months ago) it did not work well. ABP is comprehensive.

<comment><USER11> I use it, it works fine. You can even subscribe to the same things ABP does.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Two factor authentication; why should we have it? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.eset.ie/2014/07/24/eset-provides-cyberoam-technologies-with-secure-authentication/

<comment><USER2> Its not just "two factor" but next gen two factor; look at Emmental... Anyone using SMS pin codes should have a quick google on that term and see that its time for the next level of two factor to implemented.

We specifically designed our solution www.cryptophoto.com to BLOCK phishing attacks</comment>


Ask HN: Does becoming rich make you a target for criminals? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Define rich and define criminal. In the United States, any fair reading of the stats indicates that being poor makes you a target for criminals.

Kidnapping for ransom does not exist in the United States. (That statement sounds like an exaggeration, but look it up -- the FBI basically exists to solve kidnapping and it does it with extreme prejudice. [+])

If you e.g. sell a startup for $20 million and suddenly have a very large balance in your checking account, you may have the experience of having to suddenly become radically more sophisticated with regards to a number of white collar threat vectors, some of which are formally criminalized and many of which are not.

One example of many: you will suddenly have many people attempt to involve you in real estate deals with high-above-market returns and no risk. This successfully transfers hundreds of millions a year from people who happen to have money (including those who might not ping HN's radar as rich -- retirees are at particular risk) to a combination of scammers and, well, real estate speculators who just happened to misunderestimate their chance of failure.

Some friends/social acquaintances of mine can relate a number of not-very-fun experiences here, none of which involve consummated victimization but at least a few of which require costly ongoing defensive efforts.

[+] Edit: I looked it up, and contrary to my expectations the nationwide incidence of kidnapping-for-ransom is a non-zero number (on the order of two dozen a year nationwide). My prior expectation was, literally, zero.

</comment><comment><USER3> Presumably so. But I suspect a bigger problem is "I've got dozens of friends and the fun never ends -- that is as long as I'm buying." This is probably a huge root cause of classism. They don't want to be around people with less than them because everyone puts the pinch on them. Think about: with 7 billion people on the planet, a billionaire cannot even give a dollar to everyone on the planet before he is broke. I don't care how rich you are, there are limits to how much you can give. There is no limit to how much other people can try to demand.

</comment><comment><USER4> Of course. That's why all billionaires have to spend lots of money for 24x7 personal security. Some people look at super yachts and private jets and think it's about decadence, but some of it is about not having your location known to most of the world for long periods of time.</comment>


Modern-Day Million Dollar Homepage - <AUTHOR> http://thebigcashgame.com <comment><AUTHOR> Crazy side project I built with my college roommates this weekend during the snowstorm in DC. This is the first ever ad-supported cash giveaway. Completely free to enter, winner must donate 18% of winnings to a charity of their choice.

<comment><USER2> When dealing with actual money, "side project" is not relevant.

I strongly question the legality of the terms present (a raffle has _strict_ legal requirements) and I recommend looking into that before continuing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, you make a good point about when a "side project" becomes something to be taken more seriously. To clarify, this is not a raffle, contest, or lottery and we did extensive legal research. It's considered a sweepstakes since no purchase is necessary, and it is also void where prohibited. We have a set of official rules for the sweepstakes, and we're doing everything we can to ensure that we are abiding by the law and being transparent with all site visitors.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook to acquire Instagram - <AUTHOR> http://newsroom.fb.com/Announcements/Facebook-to-Acquire-Instagram-141.aspx <comment><USER2> Congratulations to the team and founders. I like that Mark Zuckerberg is planning on keeping sharing with other social networks and keeping the Instagram product separate from the Facebook product.

</comment><comment><USER3> incredible!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!</comment>


Incidental Reincarnation - <AUTHOR> http://techno-anthropology.blogspot.com/2014/08/incidental-reincarnation.html

<comment><USER2> In this sense the "real you" is probability distribution from which individuals are drawn. It's definitely a philosophical way of looking at things.</comment>


Django Dynamic Fixture - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/django-dynamic-fixture/

<comment><USER2> It creates instances of models.Model objects for testing purposes. For example, instead to use static data in a fixture.yaml file (terrible idea), use the dynamic-fixture to do that.

There are other tools that do that (<http://djangopackages.com/grids/g/fixtures>), but I think django-dynamic- fixture is the more complete tool, check it out and compare (<http://code.google.com/p/django-dynamic-fixture>). bye

</comment><comment><USER2> Version 1.2.1 released. Documentation updated, including comparison with other tools. <http://code.google.com/p/django-dynamic-fixture>

</comment><comment><USER3> Still a bit raw (since it's a new, as I see), but already does an amazing job! Congratulations!

</comment><comment><USER4> What does it do? I am not sure I understand what dynamic fixtures mean

</comment><comment><USER5> Great job! I will definitely be using this.</comment>


Telegram: Taking Back Our Right to Privacy - <AUTHOR> https://telegram.org/blog/unsend-privacy-emoji <comment><USER2> Why do they think deleting another one's chat log is the right to privacy?

I will export and backup telegram data routinely from now on.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps it has something to do with the thinking Europe's so-called "right to be forgotten"?

You've hit the nail on the head here as to why such things doesn't make sense. It infringes on other users' rights to property and control over their devices.

Deleting someone's chat is as much an exercise of your right to privacy as is breaking into their house to retrieve the love letter you sent so you can put it in the shredder or using alien mind control techniques to erase your colleagues' memories of that time you got too drunk at a holiday party and made a fool of yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> All of these are features a rouge client simply can ignore.

<comment><USER5> Rouge clients doesn't have access to private chats.

1\. On one hand it takes away a nive selling point.

2\. On the other hand it feels safer.

3\. But then again - as a sw engineer who cares about security - I expect it to fall flat if someone decides to reverse engineer the official client and patch it to store everything to a database.

4\. But then again, if they store it to an external db, what is to prevent them from storing random info, i.e. making things up?

5\. Finally. If someone really wants to leak your data, what prevents a dedicated attacker from photographing every snap, confidential gmail message etc?

<comment><USER3> Why don't "rogue" clients have access to chats?

You don't need to reverse engineer because the protocol is documented and the clients open source: [https://github.com/peter-iakovlev/Telegram- iOS](https://github.com/peter-iakovlev/Telegram-iOS)

If telegram was serious about privacy they'd make end-to-end encrypted chats default instead of a hard to use option and storing your unencrypted chats in their cloud by default.</comment></comment></comment>


Brilliant parallax.An interactive look behind the scenes of The Walking Dead. - <AUTHOR> http://www.creativebloq.com/web-design/parallax-scrolling-zombies-11135145

<comment><USER2> The original content is at [http://www.cabletv.com/the-walking- dead](http://www.cabletv.com/the-walking-dead)</comment>


Crinkler secrets, 4k intro executable compressor at its best (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://code4k.blogspot.com/2010/12/crinkler-secrets-4k-intro-executable.html <comment><USER2> also Farbrausch's kkrunchy: [http://www.farbrausch.de/~fg/kkrunchy/](http://www.farbrausch.de/~fg/kkrunchy/)

<comment><USER3> And here is the source, along with some other Farbrausch projects.

[https://github.com/farbrausch/fr_public](https://github.com/farbrausch/fr_public)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Crinkler is also good for 1k demos: [https://github.com/turbo/Kafka](https://github.com/turbo/Kafka)

<comment><USER5> This is actually immediately what I thought this was for!</comment></comment>