Why do Chinese websites look so busy? - <AUTHOR> https://econsultancy.com/blog/67466-why-do-chinese-websites-look-so-busy <comment><USER2> I doubt the author has a first hand experience with the Chinese market:

\- Typing Chinese with a keyboard isn't hard... at all. Pinyin input is about as straightforward and fast as typing in English.

\- Internet in China isn't slow. That is as long as you're visiting sites that are hosted in China, which most people in China do. I used to be surprised actually at how good video streaming was when I first arrived in China (back when any film or TV show ever created could be watched for free).

There are two main reasons for the look of Chinese websites:

1\. Chinese visitors have widely different expectations and a radically different culture. You can't expect recent trends in Web development to just spread in exactly the same way there. Even then, you can see simple UI and attention to UX are becoming more and more common (e.g. Xiaomi).

2\. Search is hard to get right. Because of the way the Chinese language is structured, it is surprisingly harder than with Western languages to get right. A simple Porter stemmer gets you pretty far with English. It is an order of magnitude harder to match this level with the Chinese language. This forged behaviors among Internet users, who expect to browse and explore rather than search.

<comment><USER3> Interesting points, but minor correction here. Typing Chinese efficiently has to do with the input method. Using pinyin as you suggest is actually hopelessly slow as you would have to first recall the precise pronunciation of the word (the -n vs -ng for example), type the pinyin, then scroll through the (normally) massive list of words. Of course, things like fuzzy pinyin and context aware suggestions help, but adopting an input method based on the character radical composition or handwriting recognition is much faster.

<comment><USER4> I've never seen a Chinese person using handwriting input, even though it's widely available on smartphones. They all use pinyin input because it's easiest and fastest.

<comment><USER5> Handwriting is widely used by 50+ yo people in China. The pinyin system was not taught when they were young.

<comment><USER6> I can confirm. My girlfriends father needed a new phone and he needed a phone with character recognition.

I dont recall seeing any of my friends or colleagues here using this feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I lived in Taiwan for the largest portion of my adults life and also spent some time in Beijing working at a tech start-up (as hire #5). It's absolutely maddening seeing people who clearly have so little understanding of China or Chinese get so much attention when they write something like this.

Chinese does have separators and it's _not_ difficult to use a keyboard, even in places like like Taiwan that don't use Pinyin. Despite having grown up speaking English, my typing speed using zhuyin input is not that different from my typing speed in English. My typing speed in pinyin is kind of slow (maybe 50-65% of my English typing speed) but only because it's not the system I'm used to.

</comment><comment><USER8> This article misses the point completely, that these Chinese sites are simply modeled after 90s and 2000s web sites. Go and look at way back machine and see the resemblance. This is coming from a UX/UI designer and developer who has lived in both countries and speaks both languages. To say that Chinese characters are inherently conducive to cluttering the page is straight up just a joke, it's actually the opposite. Chinese characters take up less space.

<comment><USER9> Most chinese news sites looks like versions of Yahoo to me. My thought is that they replicate the western equivalent of their site (Yahoo, Google, Youtube) and then move on. Not willing to put more resources in redesigning later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Doesn't anyone know a Chinese/Japanese webdesigner? This question gets asked a lot and it is always answered by westerners who are second guessing.

Where are the design theories from the east? What is the "3 click" rule for eastern websites? What are eastern design students told instead of "use plenty of white space" and "keep it simple and focused"?

<comment><USER11> My wife does some web design, much of it is just an overly Confucian culture where some idiot with seniority but no experience or taste gets to make the decisions and those who know better don't get to do input. It really is just a dysfunctional working environment.

<comment><USER12> This all the way. Japanese are fond of minimal design, but everyone in the chain of command needs to have an Opinion(tm), with the end result turning into a safe, boring mess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> vanilla-almond The last screenshot in that article is from a UK website called Lings Cars (warning: audio plays automatically when you visit the website): [http://www.lingscars.com/](http://www.lingscars.com/)

It's owned by Ling Valetine who made an appearance in a British reality TV show called Dragon's Den where she pitched a business idea to investors (the US equivalent is Shark Tank).

The website seems to break all the usability rules we're accustomed to in the US and Europe, but that's definitely helped the site go viral:

[http://www.marketingdonut.co.uk/marketing/pr/pr- opportunitie...](http://www.marketingdonut.co.uk/marketing/pr/pr- opportunities/how-i-use-publicity-stunts-to-promote-my-online-car-leasing- business)

</comment><comment><USER13> Why are western websites so empty?

<comment><USER14> Good point. The current trend in web site design is You Will Begin Our Onboarding Process Now Or Else. YC companies are notable for this, with sites with little info and a huge "Sign up" box. (Often, this is because the product/service isn't shipping yet, so they're just building a mailing list.)

<comment><USER15> Even non-YC companies, those long-established and with actual product, are following this trend, and I find it quite unpleasant too. When I come across a sparse page with one or two huge images and almost no text, I think to myself "where's all the content?" The whole "mobile first" movement is somewhat responsible too, popularising HUGE buttons and text that would be OK on a small smartphone or tablet screen but ridiculously awkward to use on a larger display.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > "One is that it is difficult to type Chinese characters on an alphabet-based > keyboard, so instead of using search they prefer to click links."

For what it's worth, Chinese typically do the type using the alphabet -> character input methods (not the hand-drawn). These methods typically are smart about knowing which characters to select, especially when you type long strings of text and you usually only have to click the space button to convert them. It really isn't a huge and I feel almost zero slowdown when typing in Chinese. In fact, I feel like it's less typing than in English because of how verbose it is.

</comment><comment><USER17> I grew up and lived in China until grad school, and now work as a designer in the Valley. The trends this article identified are largely true, but the speculations are not accurate or to the point, as other comments have pointed out.

I've been wondering about this phenomenon too, and here are some hypotheses: \- As someone who's fluent in both languages, I find Chinese text much more skimmable than English. Chinese is a compact language, and you make sense of it by recognizing the shape of characters, which is much easier than recognizing long combinations of letters. It's not too bad to skim a wall of Chinese text to find the information you want. Though this could be biased by the fact that Chinese is my native language.

\- Cities in China, as well as Japan, are densely populated. If you walk on the streets, all kinds of visual stimuli come at you: flashing ads, colorful banners, a lot of people in various styles etc. It seems we grow up being used to dense visuals, compared to say, Americans who grew up in the spread-out suburbs.

\- Most people in China are not design-minded. The most popular post on Zhihu (Chinese equivalent of Quora) in 2015 discusses the general design and aesthetics level in China, why our streets are so ugly with all the poorly- designed banners etc. We don't have a tradition of recognizing the importance of design, or developing a sense of good design. Japan, on the contrary, has a much longer tradition on that. Therefore, people are much more likely to live with poor web designs, and companies are not incentivized to redesign.

</comment><comment><USER18> I read a few years ago that Tripadvisor (IIRC) was launching in Japan. They basically took the US version of the site and translated it. In testing, Japanese users had a high bounce rate and distrusted the site because it lacked information - too much white space.

They redesigned it to make it more dense and less 'clean and elegant' and Japanese users trusted and used the site much more heavily. I looked, but can't find the link to this article.

Perhaps Asian designers design sites like this because Asian users are turned on to them the same as we are to simple and focused sites.

</comment><comment><USER15> One point that doesn't seem to have been brought up is that Asian cultures are "high context" while Western ones are "low context"; see this article for a detailed explanation:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-_and_low- context_cultures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-_and_low- context_cultures)

A rough summarisation could be that Asians are quite information-hungry, whereas Westerners are more information-averse.

</comment><comment><USER19> Japanese websites tend to suffer from "busyness" as well, that might rule out the page speed section they talked about.

</comment><comment><USER20> I asked the same question of a Japanese web developer friend a decade ago, since Japanese sites (at least, back then) were very similar. The answer he gave made sense.

He said the reason Japanese websites were so busy was the greater percentage of mobile-only customers, many of whom weren't using smartphones. You could go to a website on your cheap "feature phone" and still comfortably navigate a site that was mostly a sea of links, while the sort of site you see more commonly in the West requires navigating too many pages.

Smart phone penetration in China is still around 50%, so I wouldn't be surprised if the same logic applies.

EDIT: He also said in Japan programmers have about the same social status as the guy on the loading dock, so many of the corporate sites were programmed by fresh-out-of-college guys who would be passing that task off to someone else as soon as possible. Not sure if the same applies in China.

<comment><USER21> Smartphone penetration is up to 73% by now: [http://www.nielsen.com/cn/en/press-room/2015/Nielsen- Chinese...](http://www.nielsen.com/cn/en/press-room/2015/Nielsen-Chinese- Smartphone-Market-Now-Driven-by-Upgrading-EN.html) and is above 85% in urban areas.

The article seems to take an American bias with this by looking only at desktop websites. China primarily consumes the internet through mobile apps and top tier mobile apps (Wechat, Baidu Maps, Didi Kuadi, Dianping, Ele.me) appear to be designed no more or less busy than comparable Western ones.

<comment><USER20> Odd. This one says 50.9%. That's quite a large difference.

[http://www.statista.com/statistics/257045/smartphone-user- pe...](http://www.statista.com/statistics/257045/smartphone-user-penetration- in-china/)

<comment><USER22> My current estimate (living here, and not just in urban locations, for 15 years) is >95% of adults (10-45) in urban areas, >75% rural.

But the busy design thing far predates the smartphone, so that theory is moot in my mind. I concur with krang's comment: "Chinese sites are simply modeled after 90s and 2000s web sites". This does not imply it's not changing though .. smart TV and mobile apps look the same as you'd expect in the west.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Some interesting parallels here to Japanese web design, which is also traditionally notoriously dense and link-heavy:

[https://randomwire.com/why-japanese-web-design-is-so- differe...](https://randomwire.com/why-japanese-web-design-is-so-different/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Many principles in visual design are not followed very well in China. There is little room for those possibilities derived from the principles to be discussed here. So so-called culture or related things are not excuses for them.

One force that drives the differences between western way and current Chinese way is the degree of diversity in the internet business world. In China, one- stop-shop is the mainstream mind among participants. App style is not the leading force there. This is only a hint.

Sorry to just mention some unclear points. I'm quite busy on other things atm. Just my 2 cents.

[edit]: my terrible grammar

</comment><comment><USER24> I would love to see this type of analysis applied to other non-Latin writing systems. Also interesting would be a Chinese/Japanese comparison given that Japanese is a hybrid system.

<comment><USER25> In my experience Japanese site are way more cluttered than Chinese sites. Even with the large number of links and pictures Chinese sites look more organized and designed where Japanese sites are just a plain mess. My theory is that Japanese writing relies on the comparatively simple hiragana for "grammar" (not to go too deep into the topic) in addition to the complex chinese characters. As such it gives the text a kind of weird rhythm without which it is pretty difficult for them to read text (only presenting hiragana loses the meaning while only presenting kanji would be very hard to skim) As a result even when somewhat deliberately designed, the end result seems like a jumbled mess of characters with varying contrast randomly flowing together. Additionally words that would for example appear in a menu are of either writing system and as a result of varying length, thus difficult to align.

Combine this with the sofware industry here being absolutely driven by incompetence ("as long as you shut up and work hard [= long hours] you are a good employee") in most places you get no willingness to risk changing the status quo that is stuck in the late 90's.

Compared to that Chinese sites look pretty refined to me, with the same sort of characters of usually very similar length and while there is no whitespace the contrast between characters is much less varied and looks much more pleasant in my opinion. I can see contemporary patterns are also used a lot more too which suggest China in general is more aware of and willing to incorporate the latest trends. Taobao vs Rakuten might be a good example. Yahoo US vs CN vs JP (the latter run completely by Yahoo Japan and has nothing to do with actual Yahoo anymore) is another.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Its the same i Japan print adverts/sites.

(In the case of japanese): they do use search, but less and less as so many of the sites are image based.

I haveno idea how my wife reads the adverts, but after a few years in Japan im finding it easier, my eyes just gravitate to the pictures.

As for rules for web design, pack as much in seems to be the rule. I have emailed a mate over here who does web work, ill edit when he gets back to me.

</comment><comment><USER27> Take any book that is published in English and Japanese or Chinese and you will note that the book is about 1/3rd the size of the English original. Those languages are denser than English or any European language for that matter.

Native readers of those languages are accustomed to seeing more information in a page space. So design follows their tolerance.

</comment><comment><USER28> I thought about a potential reason that maybe Chinese Online Community is expanding too fast and the designer and user tastes are not catching up. We have people leaving in small countries that is fast from the large cities on the east. People like my parent are not catching up so fast.

</comment><comment><USER29> This seems to be one possible reason that Chinese users want larger iPhones I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER30> the vast difference between the chinese system of writing and alphabets i'm used to brings to mind a question: is there a notion of linear ordering of chinese characters? are all chinese characters enumerated (to the layperson, i understand that they'd have to be numbered to be encoded)?

<comment><USER31> There are a few possibilities; dictionaries usually go by (number of strokes in the radical) + (number of strokes remaining). Because there are too many characters, there's usually a phonetic-based system involved too (Pinyin, Zhuyin, Kana, and Hangul); those have internal sorting, and that can be used too.

This is all separate from, say, Unicode code point ordering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Why is `Jeff Rajeck` an expert on this?</comment>


Ask HN: Startup VP Employment Agreements - <AUTHOR> At what stage to startups begin to offer their VP-level leadership with employment agreements that differ from the standard employment agreement? What do VP-level employment agreements typically cover that standard employment agreement doesn't? <comment><USER2> Every company is different, and to be fair if you look at corporate America a lot of mid sized private businesses don't use separate employment agreements for anything less than a C level exec, and even some of those are just standard employment.

IMO & experience, but with no hard data to back them up, I'd say this really isn't something to be concerned with before you have a true need for that level of leadership and for any smaller company (I can think of exceptions of course). Lots of startups give people the VP title or Director title, and there are only like 5 people in the entire company. I understand the reasons it is done, but at that level they don't require special employment agreements, they could have them but they aren't required. Overall these types of employment agreements are usually done for publicly traded or larger organizations where they need the extra details in writing and those positions are really a VP of something not of 10 people. Personally, I've been in companies where there was 1,000 people and over a billion dollars in revenue and none of the execs had separate employment agreements (which to me was odd). I've also been at a small startup where a specific engineer (nothing special) was given a special employment agreement.

As far as what is in them. There is a lot of boiler plate, including moral turpitude clauses, specific pay agreements, stock options, and any special disclosure or other arrangements. I've had these a few times, and in general they are nothing that special but they do lay things out clearly for both parties, and they are nice to have in a lot of ways because it makes things very clear and relatively enforceable compared to a standard employment relationship. You will find terms in these that a lot of times would not be allowed under traditional employment laws in the U.S., but because the person is technically a contract employee the rules are slightly different (and can vary state to state). In my case, all of them had morality clauses, public disclosure, publicity, association restrictions and very detailed pay, tax & bonus details.</comment>


Show HN: Just a simple idea to help with climate change - <AUTHOR> First of all, I have to ask you sorry because English is not my mother tongue, and I'm not very good at it.
This is a very simple idea, or just a silly fantasy. But I wanted to share it here, maybe it is not so silly, and maybe it is a possible thing.
The idea is this. One takes water from the ocean, and puts it into some container that can trap the sunlight. This container, made of some plastic or cristal, must let the sunlight in, but no out, so the sunlight will heat the water. As the water heats, it becomes steam, and with that steam you can maybe move a turbine for generating electricity.
But that's not all. The idea is to trap the steam in another container, cool it, and so convert it in water again. But it will be water without salts; the satls are eliminated from the water when it evaporates. So, you collect the steam and convert it to water again, and then make drinkable water from this. So, using sunlight and ocean water, you get electricity and drinkable water. <comment><USER2> The idea works but might not be cost-effective.

Small steam turbines are not highly economical. If you are using salt water as a working fluid with intention to desalinate you will have to get rid of the salt effectively so it doesn't clog anything.

If you have a fresh-water closed loop then that simplifies things, and the ocean could be a good heat sink, but it competes with using some other kind of heat sink at a different location. For instance, thermal solar plants have often been built in desert locations so they get the most sunlight.

See

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power)

and

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_thermal_energy_conversio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_thermal_energy_conversion)

<comment><USER3> I agree, but I think that it's important to add that low pressure turbines are not cost effective. Moreover, you need overheated vapor so in case it condense it doesn't form small drops that hit the turbine at high velocity.

Also, another relevant link [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_desalination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_desalination)</comment></comment>


How to Find Distance Between Two Points Based on Lat/Lon Using Python and SQL - <AUTHOR> https://kanoki.org/2019/02/14/how-to-find-distance-between-two-points-based-on-latitude-and-longitude-using-python-and-sql/ <comment><USER2> Make sure you are using a matching coordinate system (ie wgs84) when calculating distances that later get displayed to a map or comparing lat long datum from different sources. Good article but I didn't see that advice mentioned.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great</comment>


YouTube Criticized After Homophobic Videos Are Allowed to Stay - <AUTHOR> https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/lgbtq-influencers-steven-crowder-carlos-maza-homophobic-video-youtube-844561/ <comment><USER2> Just FYI, I'm going to start flagging these. It's not useful to mass submit the same articles over and over.</comment>


X86 Shellcode Obfuscation – Part 2 - <AUTHOR> https://breakdev.org/x86-shellcode-obfuscation-part-2/ <comment><USER2> I had to lookup "shellcode" at wikipedia:

 _In computer security, a shellcode is a small piece of code used as the payload in the exploitation of a software vulnerability. It is called "shellcode" because it typically starts a command shell from which the attacker can control the compromised machine, but any piece of code that performs a similar task can be called shellcode. Because the function of a payload is not limited to merely spawning a shell, some have suggested that the name shellcode is insufficient.[1] However, attempts at replacing the term have not gained wide acceptance. Shellcode is commonly written in machine code._</comment>


A challenge to Startup Lawyers from Fred Wilson - <AUTHOR> http://abovethelaw.com/2011/03/a-challenge-to-startup-lawyers-from-fred-wilson/#more-64054

<comment><USER2> \- i love gunderson. i have used them for delicious, for tasty labs, and personally

\- fred helped us keep our own costs way down by having only one law firm in the mix. we produced the term sheets and they okayed it.

so he's actually practicing what he's preaching here!

</comment><comment><USER3> For those who would like to see the discussion on this posted earlier today : <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2359238></comment>


What Happened in 2015 - <AUTHOR> http://avc.com/2015/12/what-happened-in-2015/ <comment><USER2> From social media apps to "full stack startups"[1] resonates with my sense of the current trends. Why are full stack startups emerging now as opposed to a decade earlier or later? Was social media consolidation a necessary foundation somehow?

[1] [http://a16z.com/2015/01/22/the-full-stack- startup/](http://a16z.com/2015/01/22/the-full-stack-startup/)

<comment><USER3> From the early failures, we've learned that we need end to end control in order to make products successful. So I guess the simple answer is experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > I'm hopeful that 2015 will also go down as the year we buried the Unicorn

I fear he may be disappointed there: [http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=startup%20unicorn&cmp...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=startup%20unicorn&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT-7)

<comment><USER5> Ditto. The infographic was posted recently (can't find it for the life of me) but more unicorns were declared this year than all of the 3-4 year previous to this one combined.

I think the term Unicorn will only be buried when the bubble finally bursts, i.e. when most of these unicorns burn out within a few months of each other.

<comment><USER4> I was going to make a site called "unicornmaker.com" as a bit of a joke where it would buy one billionth of your company for $1, in return for a $5 service charge and would provide a nice certificate and press release for you. Didn't quite get round to it though... Then everyone could have a billion dollar company.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How much would you pay for a personal trainer? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> $90-$150 per hour is the going rate.

... and no I wouldn't pay $5 per workout on your app. :)</comment>


Khan academy's real competitor - <AUTHOR> http://www.guaranteach.com/community/exploring

<comment><USER2> I don't see it. And the FREE TRIAL button implies there's some sort of subscription fee. Uhh, hardly a "competitor."</comment>


Ask HN: Any Bay Area Hackers into running, cycling, triathlon, etc? - <AUTHOR>

I'm curious if there are fellow HNers who are into running, tris, etc. I'm planning on running a half-marathon and/or triathlon on the 2nd half of the year. I wonder if we have enough people to form a training group. <comment><USER2> I just recently got into biking and am super excited about it that I wrote about it [http://www.krishna2.com/blog/2009/05/eb2b-biking-from- east-b...](http://www.krishna2.com/blog/2009/05/eb2b-biking-from-east-bay-to- blekko-on-bike-to-work-day/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice bike! I need to get one too. Right now, I just do a lot of running.

<comment><USER2> My advice is that you go to a professional bike store and get a decent bike.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN:  How do you feel net neutrality impacts barrier to entry? - <AUTHOR>

For those who have started an online business, or would like to start an online business, how do you feel today's ruling by the FCC has impacted your ability to bring your product to market?   Do you feel by imposing a 'fast lane' for certain network traffic, that this would impact your ability to achieve success? <comment><USER2> At this point, it's still so vague that I have no opinion. I'm sort of in a "probably won't affect me so I'll wait and, if it stirs up a bunch of other posts, I'll pay closer attention" mode.

Note that I'm specifically talking about your title question posted, not the bill itself.

</comment><comment><USER3> Google can afford to keep a fast lane for YouTube. Can a new vidoe sharing startup with some unique feature compete with them?</comment>


San Diego tech startup mixer (Tech Cocktail) next week - <AUTHOR> http://techcocktail.com/home/2010/01/05/surfs-up-san-diego-here-we-come/ Tech Cocktail, San Diego CA <comment><USER2> The Bootstrapper Breakfasts are now meeting the 4th Tuesday in San Diego at Richard Walker's Pancake House see <http://www.meetup.com/Bootstrappers- Breakfast-San-Diego> and see <http://www.bootstrapperbreakfast.com/> for info on events in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Minneapolis.

<comment><USER3> Would love to attend but 7:30 in the morning is way too early.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds cool, hope to be there.

Anyone know what these things are like? Is the crowd/discussion more business focused or more tech details focused? (Both?)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's a 21+ only event (since there is alcohol), and the ticket is $10.

I'll be going, looking forward to see the SD tech startup community

</comment><comment><USER3> Looking forward to going. Would anyone like to arrange an HN meetup?

<comment><AUTHOR> You know - we should find a way to identify the HN'ers at this conference. How about we find a pen/pencil and mark "HN" on our badges?

(I assume there will be some kind of badge, but that won't work if there's not).. which if that's the case maybe we can do a challenge-response:

Challenge: "how did you hear about this"

Response: "Hacker News"

<comment><USER5> Looks like everyone gets a "Hi, my name is..." sticker. I'll put an orange HN on mine or some such. Challenge response sounds like too much effort to implement.

Flickr: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/techcocktail/sets/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd go but I'll be out of town. Maybe next time!

</comment><comment><USER7> Anyone going from North County?

<comment><USER8> Im going from La Jolla... I am new here so does that count as North County?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> thanks for the tip. Ill be there

</comment><comment><USER9> put it in my calendar.</comment>


Discord Data Dump - <AUTHOR> http://discordgg.ga/dump.sql <comment><USER2> I have a (few) simple and possibly relevant question(s). Why? What is the motive? I'm not sure I understand the intent of the words and dump. If someone wanted to help discord users from being harmed from an unsafe service they wouldn't hate on the people they were trying to help and call them stupid nor would they paste password data and hijack accounts.

That being said it feels more like someone with enough power, drive and motivation to "terrorize" (since you're throwing around terms like fearmongering) a mass of people. Was this for credibility? If there was a point besides pointing out security flaws what was it? Finally what is in it for you? Someone is likely to gain after all. I would like some understanding, and reasonable answers, though I would also understand if you didn't respond or feign interest.

<comment><USER2> Of course this aimed at the (for the lack of a better word) hacker.</comment></comment>


Pi - an e-book reader from Infibeam, an Indian Company - <AUTHOR> http://infibeam.com/Pi

<comment><USER2> Looks...strangely...familiar...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes it does. Engadget did a post on the blatant rip-off of both the Amazon.com website and Kindle [http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/26/keepin-it-real-fake- part-...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/26/keepin-it-real-fake-part-cclll- amazon-com-gets-copied-with-it/)

Infibeam responded with a blogpost here : <http://blog.infibeam.com/2010/01/uniqueness-argument.html></comment></comment>


VW partners with Nvidia to expand its use of AI beyond autonomous vehicles - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/volkswagen-partners-with-nvidia-to-expand-its-use-of-ai-beyond-autonomous-vehicles <comment><USER2> Leaving aside VW's liein' and cheatin' ways for a moment.

Adaptive cruise control on my Golf is a big thing for me right now. It's one of the reasons I bought that car.

For the long journeys I do, not having to have foot on the gas is great. (Normal cruise control doesn't cut the mustard for me as I'd spend the whole drive worrying about the cars in front of me).

The current models also have lane assist and a crawl mode for traffic jams. Can't wait to get a car with that.

In the short term, before fully autonomous vehicles are wide spread, I can see loads of ways AI could make transport a more pleasant experience.

<comment><USER3> The problem is if traffic becomes more tolerable there will be more of it since more people will be willing to endure it.

Reminds me of the old saying "there can never be too much traffic. If there was people would stop driving"

<comment><USER4> Autonomous cars drive better in traffic though, since they're not as easily scared by a brake light or caught off guard. I read some research that said that if we'd replace 10% of the cars on high traffic highways with autonomously driving ones, traffic jams would get much, much better. Way less rubberbanding, for example.

I test drove an Audi with near complete autonomous driving in traffic jams recently and promptly ordered one with those features as it is simply brilliant in traffic. Much smoother than I can drive in traffic myself, and in Belgium traffic jams are practically unavoidable.

<comment><USER5> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_wave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_wave)

You can place cars driving in a circle and spontaneously traffic jams will occur without the apparent presence of a bottle neck. If a non-significant number of vehicles are autonomous, it'd be easier to control for this.

If autonomous vehicles can communicate with one another (as I think will eventually happen) then we'd be able to see something very special where vehicles would be able to travel at speed while maintaining very small marginal distances because machines react faster than humans.

<comment><USER6> >we'd be able to see something very special where vehicles would be able to travel at speed while maintaining very small marginal distances

Braking distance alone (excluding the reaction time) is going to be over 100ft at highway speeds. Considering how often human drivers tailgate AVs will probably have _more_ space between them on average.

<comment><USER5> Nah. [https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-662-48847-8_...](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-662-48847-8_16/fulltext.html)

The following distance for two autonomous vehicles is going to be very small, much smaller than the distance a human can maintain. There is no point in guessing, the above paper is very quantitative. Look at the section titled "effects of autonomous vehicles".

<comment><USER6> Autonomous vehicles (AV's) might allow for a smaller headway, by removing reaction time, but this benefit will be minimal at higher speeds when cars requires hundreds of feet to stop after the brake has been applied. Reaction time becomes a smaller portion of the headway as speed increases.

Most human (American) drivers drive 80 MPH. That means they need 300 or 400ft to stop, without including reaction time (these distances get even higher in poor weather). Most people don't do this, as a result _lots of people die, rear-end collisions are extremely common_. AV's will need to leave a few hundred feet minimum between cars to operate safely at highway speeds, which is more than most human drivers on a well trafficked road where I live.

This is where you see the safety benefits of AV's: conservative driving.

<comment><USER5> Since you couldn't bother even opening the paper I linked to you, I will post an excerpt from it:

 _This analysis, with the help of the macroscopic traffic flow models, shows that, in principle, a significant increase in capacity can be expected from using autonomous vehicles and that this would also enable a more efficient use of the existing transport infrastructure. Along with the expected increase in capacity for existing traffic infrastructure, traffic jams and lost time are reduced, which in turn improve the quality of traffic flow. In particular, two factors are responsible for the increase in capacity:

(a) One factor is the shortening of headways between autonomous vehicles. In this context, it is significant that ride comfort is maintained, despite the short time gaps, by anticipating the actions of the preceding vehicles and thereby enabling lower acceleration or deceleration. This could also be important for column stability. The intercommunication of vehicles and infrastructure appears to be an important prerequisite for this.

(b) In addition to the duration of the time gap, the speed of the vehicle group is very important. The higher the speed at a constant density, the higher the traffic volume over a cross section. However, achieving high speeds while maintaining traffic density is possible only in purely autonomous traffic. A single human-driven vehicle in the column would lead to slower speeds and reduce the capacity gain._

tldr; fully autonomous traffic allows for the possibility of high density high volume traffic flow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems German car companies are trying hard to not become the next Nokia.

Just recently Bosch, Mercedes and Porsche joined forces with local universities in the "Cyber Valley" initiative: [https://a9t9.com/blog/facebook-cyber-valley/](https://a9t9.com/blog/facebook- cyber-valley/)

Time will tell if this is enough. It certainly is difficult to turn them into software-focused companies. One reason is that everyone who works there _right now_ , went there to work because she/he wants to work on ICE engines, and not all this "modern stuff".

<comment><USER8> Bosch is (and always was) a company heavily focused on (1) making things electronic (2) making things programmable (3) R&D, they're very modern. While one of the biggest automotive suppliers they never supplied engines or most of the heavy mechanics (gearbox etc.), but rather: [engine] control, which was iirc invented by Bosch, sensors, electronics, firmware, ...

<comment><USER9> ABS and ESP are Bosch _product names_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > in the field of mobility services

Cars will turn to more of an "as a Service" thing in the sooner-than-you'll- expect-it future, so it makes sense that the manufacturers are doing this. And with data analysis it can probably predict that you're going out tonight, just like 10 other people in your area, so it will make sure to dispatch enough cars to wait in your area, so your Vwuber shows up in 5 minutes instead of needing 30 minutes to get from the giant parking structure outside of town.

</comment><comment><USER11> It seems that companies try to deal with big technological challenges via worldwide partnership programms. Here is another one:

Nvidia and Bosch team up on self-driving car AI supercomputer - [https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/16/nvidia-and-bosch-team- up-o...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/16/nvidia-and-bosch-team-up-on-self- driving-car-ai-supercomputer/)

</comment><comment><USER12> yay, for better emissions testing detection! ;)

<comment><USER13> "Obviously, I'm not going anywhere, might just as well switch off the engine entirely"

Red light starts pulsing in center console, voice synthesizer: "Michael, are you trying to mess with me?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How is their progress on EVs? That's what I'm more interested in. Before I'd be interested in their self-driving solutions I'd also want to know they're not cutting corners and cheating their way out of strong security architectures for their cars.

</comment><comment><USER15> How about they just release Free drivers for the latest cards instead? Having seen how wonky their proprietary drivers are I'd rather have something auditable if they're to get anywhere near controlling thousands of Kgs of metal on public roads.

<comment><USER16> They consider the low level information about how their GPU works a trade secret. Source code won't be as helpful as documentation, but it's more work than reverse engineering the driver binaries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm sorry Dave, I can't tell you the emission levels!</comment>


Volcanoes on the Moon May Have Erupted During the Dinosaur Age (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.space.com/27424-volcanoes-on-moon-dinosaur-age.html <comment><USER2> They had misfortunes plenty but in this one regard the dinosaurs were lucky: what a spectacular sight this must have been.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have often wondered how history might have been different if the moon were covered in greenery and blue oceans. Since we can see the moon's shapes and craters with our naked eyes, I imagine that we might have seen weather features and clouds too. I wonder how human history might have gone if we could see a changing, living world up there every night.

<comment><USER4> The good side, flat-eathers would not exist. The bad side, regular business missions would require travelling to moon.

<comment><USER5> Flat earthers exist in spite of evidence.

<comment><USER6> I suspect they're 100% trolls.

<comment><USER7> It's not much different than (and in fact tends to overlap with) Christian young-earth creationism, and I can assure you that there are creationists who are not trolls (to the highest degree of confidence one can have about another person's beliefs).

<comment><USER8> There's definitely some overlap because of confirmation bias (young-earthers looking to help their case). But, in my brief time exploring and trying to understand the drive behind believers of 'flat earth' (mostly on YouTube), it seems to me a stronger corollary predictor for belief in 'flat earth' would be beliefs and fascinations with other conspiracy theories.

I would contest that in most cases if you have a Christian who believes in young-earth and you also have a person who believes JFK's assassination was a CIA hitjob, believes 9/11 was an inside job, believes government is using chemtrails to poison or otherwise alter people's perceptions or mental/physical faculties - the latter will be the one I'm putting my money on as the most likely 'flat earth' believer.

<comment><USER9> Amusingly, there's a couple of dead comments from someone saying that _flat earthers_ are a media hoax/conspiracy.

<comment><USER10> In my country, there was a flat-earthers convention some time ago. It was going to happen in a small town, and the media took it as a funny thing to report on.

One journalist actually went there, and reported about it... What at first seemed like a funny thing, turned out to be kind of scary.

Yeah, there were a few small talks about flat earth. The rest of the day, the talks were mainly about about anti-vaccines, "New Germanic medicine", nationalism, white race superiority, antisemitism, etc...

I guess a group of neo-nazis were smart enough to use the "flat earth" talks as a means to attract Mass Media's attention, to get them to publicize their convention for free.

Here's the article about it (google translate from spanish):

[https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&tl=en&u=h...](https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.infobae.com%2Fopinion%2F2019%2F03%2F06%2Fla- tierra-es-plana-nacionalista-y-antisemita%2F)

\---

PS: I don't get the reason for the downvotes... I'm not saying "flat earth = neonazis" nor giving any opinion at all.

I'm just telling the anecdote (and linking the source) of how some people used "flat earth" for manipulating mass media into getting free publicity for their convention.

<comment><USER11> Don't know why your being downvoted but there is a lot of overlap between neo- nazis and conspiracy theorists, particularly ones of the "elders of zion" persuasion. There are whole flat-earth sub conspiracies about the nazis getting up to no good in Antarctica. The actual original nazis had all sorts of crazy beliefs in the occult, other psuedo sciences and various conspiracies about WW1 so it's hardly surprising.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Would be interesting to see if this can be tied to impact events back on earth.

Given the gravity of the moon a volcano can definitely blast earth with material.

<comment><USER13> I'm no geologist, but I'd be rather surprised to hear of a volcano that spits large volumes of material out at thousands of feet per second (delta-V necessary to transition from a lunar orbit to Earth). I would think it's more likely that if there was a correlation between a large impact on Earth and seismic activity on the moon it would be Earth's seismic activity that had a larger influence on the moon. Again, not in the field so take this all with salt.</comment></comment>


Why 80s BASIC still matters - <AUTHOR> https://blog.usejournal.com/why-80s-basic-still-matters-1c17de5768fa <comment><USER3> This article inadvertently underscores the huge challenge in getting kids interested in programming today.

In 2019, it's very hard to do anything "interesting" with BASIC when kids are surrounded by apps and games with hundreds or thousands of person-hours of development. "Hunt the Wumpus" just doesn't cut it anymore.

As others have written, Python is much more interesting because of the extensive library ecosystem. Integrating the physical world, graphics, controllers, sound, audio, network, video, etc. offers a lot more engagement than "Hello World".

Javascript is also interesting because it runs _everywhere_ , and HTML/JS skills will offer good summer job money. :)

<comment><USER4> Even in 1985, the things that a child could produce in BASIC weren't "interesting". Children in that era could make a few dots appear on the screen, or make a prompt that asked questions and responded, or maybe draw some interesting procedural graphics. It's not much when you compare it to games like _The Bard 's Tale, Ultima IV,_ or _King 's Quest II._ But it was enough, because programming was by itself an interesting puzzle to solve.

It's not the result that's interesting, it's the process of programming.

<comment><USER5> > the things that a child could produce in BASIC weren't "interesting"

That's just not true. For I/O you had keyboard input, screen output, and maybe file I/O. 3 basic things that pretty much all programs used. Most commercial programs were 80x25 text mode with 16 color attributes. If you could learn to read scancodes from the keyboard, write text to the screen, and save/load files, (along with a few fundamental ideas like loops and conditionals) you could do almost anything that a commercial program did. With just that basic knowledge of a few simple things.

It was simple because it was direct, there weren't 72 layers of abstraction and UI libraries that you had to know before you could even begin. You could also do pixel graphics, and again it was pretty simple - just set the screen mode and go with DRAW, LINE, CIRCLE, POKE etc. Again, no layers of indirection or libraries or window managers or canvases or DrawableObjectFactoryManagerFactoryInterfaces needed.

One of the problems of modern attempts to recreate that feel is just that there is so much between the programmer and the hardware and it's so much more complex. Back then, we had single-user, single-process systems with direct access to simple hardware. Everything you needed to do was either a built-in part of the language or a BIOS/OS interrupt that you could call just as easily. It's hard to recreate that on a multi-user multitasking system with indirect access to more complicated hardware and countless layers of software between the programmer and the machine and BIOS/OS interrupts. Sure you can do more powerful stuff now, but it's not as interesting.

<comment><USER4> Direct access to hardware is not the difference. It is easier to get things done today. You can argue that it was simpler in 1985, but I don't think that simplicity is the right way to measure things. You can present an easy-to-use programming environment to people, accessible to newcomers, usable by experts, and it doesn't have to be simple but it has to be possible to use it in simple ways.

Just personal observations here. Someone with a computer in 2019 can download Unity, which is free, and watch a tutorial on YouTube, which is also free. With near zero understanding of what is going on, and no prior experience, they can have some kind of rudimentary platformer working within hours. This is then a good starting point to learn programming (you can dive into C#) or you can continue to jumble together copy/pasted bits of code that you see online (kind of like how I remember doing with BASIC and library books).

Sure, there are a bunch of layers of abstraction, and those abstractions will break down all the time. You don't _need_ to learn those abstraction layers, you can stay at the top layer and still get good work done, maybe working around a few problems that you don't understand from time to time by futzing around with stuff until it works. Or you can dive in and try to understand what's underneath an abstraction. That's the whole point of having abstractions in the first place. They exist to hide the complexity, to let you get work done without understanding the entire system. 72 layers of abstraction is a bit of an exaggeration. I'd say if BASIC has three layers (interpreter/machine code/hardware), Unity only has six (editor/scripts/engine/os/machine code/hardware), but who knows how you count them.

In my experience, watching people learn how to create things, it has _never_ been easier to learn programming and start building things. The main difference is that in 1985, programming was considered an essential computer skill, and in 2019, you're expected not to program. BASIC was amazing because it was what you saw on the screen when you turned your computer on, nothing more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 80s BASIC (GW-Basic, to be specific) was, right up to his retirement two years ago, my fathers go-to language for anything work related. It was "good enough" for the job, cheaper and faster than trying to get their software department to understand the problem needing solving, and it was what he knew -- including it's limitations and when not to use it.

Old, "bad" languages can still be extremely powerful and productive for what used to be called "power users"; don't dismiss them out of hand because the professional software development world has moved on.

</comment><comment><USER7> What was transformative for me in my youth were the "listings" he mentions. I remember spending hours typing in pages of code, having it fail, and having to debug it. Even though I didn't think so when I was 12, I think these days that those failures were the best thing that ever happened to me. I actually think they were far more valuable than the AP CS course I took as a senior in HS.

That experience taught me skills that I still use today. Mainly, trying to understand an unfamiliar (often poorly commented) codebase, and having to debug it.

These days, I think that the most equivalent experience might be working on something open source. But I'm afraid the motivation just isn't there for most kids. My motivation was "Wow! Free GAMES!", but my kid gets free games on his tablet without having to debug a darned thing.

<comment><USER8> Motivations are certainly different now. I do wonder if kids today still have that "wild west" feel when messing with computers. I remember when I was young, writing programs and making computers do simple things seemed really impressive to me at the time! The bar is a lot higher now and I wonder if that dissuades some kids from trying because doing something impressive _now_ requires a lot of extra overhead that I didn't have to deal with.

<comment><USER9> > I remember when I was young, writing programs and making computers do simple > things seemed really impressive to me at the time!

It was same feeling for me too, in the early/mid 80s. And it was impressive _also_ because few other people were even doing it. Whether other people could or not, based on their capabilities, most didn't actually _have_ any home computer to even practice on. Merely having a home computer in, say, 1983, was a rare thing. Actually being able to make it do things you wanted was even rarer. It probably seemed more impressive to many outsiders than it actually was (in the sense that a for-loop is pretty boring/basic) but hard to separate out that impressiveness between having access to the situation at all vs having the skills.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I still have the Acorn Atom that I started learning to code on. 12Kb of memory (with the expansion pack installed). No hard drive - if you don't spend 10 minutes saving it to cassette then it's gone. As I found out when my cousin turned off my computer after I'd rushed to dinner after an 8 hour coding session :( still haven't forgiven him.

My girlfriend is trying to learn to code, and I realised that I had it easy - because computers were much simpler, learning to code on them was much simpler. I learned Assembly coding trying to speed up my simple homemade games, but that was easy: the machine only had 3 registers, the entire machine memory was addressable, and there was maybe two dozen commands to learn.

I think this is why I like Go so much. It reminds me of old-school BASIC in its simplicity.

I _still_ keep typing `IF <condition> THEN` and `FOR I = 1 TO 10` if I'm tired, even after all these years.

<comment><USER11> There's a nice little app called PICO-8 that retains that simplicity, I heartily recommend it for anyone who wants to learn programming (and I don't in any way get paid for saying this). Also that syntax is almost valid Lua which PICO-8 uses.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure we can turn the clock back like that. Back in the early 80's computers were expected to do very little, so we were easily impressed if they did anything. For those of us who were easily impressed with this, it got us interested. And it was possible to bang out a somewhat-playable version of an arcade game in 12Kb ;)

Nowadays the expectations are so much bigger. I've seen people create their first website and be disappointed it looks so crappy, rather than excited it works at all. Not everyone, mind - some are still excited.

<comment><USER11> I can tell you from experience, PICO-8 has enthralled all my children, especially my oldest, with how little is required to make a really cool game like Jelpi. Every time we realize yet another cool thing you can do with just cos, sin, and atan2, we're always floored. Maybe we're simpler people, but my children were aware of modern video games and web apps, and somehow they still are fascinated by it and the oldest one has mastered it by now.

<comment><USER10> That's really cool :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> He was using a ZX Spectrum. People might be interested in [https://www.worldofspectrum.org](https://www.worldofspectrum.org) with old magazines and games and everything Spectrum related.

My main side project right now is a 3D libretro front end with Lua programming. One of my plans is to create a virtual 80s microcomputer lab with 3d models of C64, Apple II, Spectrum and maybe a few other things as well as virtual programming manuals and floppy disks and of course the emulators running on the screens. The Lua code can read and write the emulator memory so it will be possible to create a C64 demo that manipulates 3D objects for example.

Th problematic thing for the Lab is copyrights related to content. I'm not sure how I'm going to solve that. But if anyone is interested what I have so far (without the copyrighted content) is totally programmable with Lua and free. [https://vintagesimulator.com](https://vintagesimulator.com)

<comment><USER13> A new commercial version of the Spectrum is about to ship, the Spectrum Next.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A decent candidate for a BASIC dialect which includes 'the basics' (e.g. GOSUB for backwards compatibility with OLD programs) as well as a long-developed (since 2004) set of modern enhancements (objects, named functions, ...) : [https://www.freebasic.net/](https://www.freebasic.net/)

Free, open-source, multi-platform.

<comment><USER15> Gotta also mention QB64 here: [https://www.qb64.org/](https://www.qb64.org/)

Same thing - free, open source, multi-platform

Also - a couple for Android:

Mintoris Basic - [http://www.mintoris.com/](http://www.mintoris.com/) (not open source)

RFO BASIC! - [http://rfo-basic.com/](http://rfo-basic.com/) (open source)

Can you tell I like BASIC?

While I don't code in it for anything but fun and toying, it's what I learned on in the 1980s (Microsoft BASIC for the TRS-80 Color Computer 2). Also played a lot with Applesoft BASIC on the Apple IIe in high school.

Later I moved on to QBasic 1.1, QuickBasic 4.5 and PowerBasic 3.2.

My first software development job, about a year after high school, was using PICK BASIC (in the form of UniVERSE on the IBM RS6000 running AIX - my first exposure to UNIX).

Then on my Amiga with AmigaBASIC (IIRC?) then later AMOS...

I've toyed around with PBASIC (for the BASIC Stamp microcontroller).

Still holds a special place in my heart...

<comment><USER16> Small BASIC is maybe the "biggest" one you missed I'm aware of: [https://smallbasic-publicwebsite.azurewebsites.net/](https://smallbasic- publicwebsite.azurewebsites.net/)

(It's good that Microsoft still has a BASIC out there that you can point kids at. BASIC was Microsoft's first product and absolutely left a legacy across the decades.)

Also, I feel that as long as schools continue to require Texas Instruments graphing calculators for tests, that TI-BASIC will probably long have a place for teenage experiments when bored in classes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Late 70's BASIC is an interesting language. Even though it was called a high- level language at the time, it's still _very_ close to how the CPU actually works. You get a couple primitive types (integer, float, string and half- precision floats and ints if you are very lucky) and fixed-size arrays of them, conditionals always involve a GOTO or GOSUB and all variables are global. You can still PEEK and POKE (read and write directly to memory addresses) your way around. There is no such thing as a data stack or named (actual) functions (or their parameters).

I think it's a fine language for introducing people to programming because it's conceptually very simple and leads one to realize how a limited language can or cannot express things (try to implement recursion, for instance).

<comment><USER15> This is kinda recursion - stackless, though - so it doesn't work right (and honestly, I don't know if it would work properly on actual BASIC from the era or not; it would depend on how the GOSUB/RETURN stack worked - I don't recall if you can GOSUB to a routine line number prior to the GOSUB line number - <USER2> to mention other reasons):

      10 Y0=1:GOSUB 1000:PRINT Y0
      999 END
      1000 REM
      1010 Y0=Y0+1
      1020 IF Y0<5 THEN GOSUB 1000
      1030 RETURN

You could potentially make something work with a DIM array for a limited sized stack to make "local" variables of some sort for each level of recursion. It would be very ugly - but barely possible I think.

This seems like a fun challenge to try out...

<comment><USER18> Many of the languages of the era, BASIC dialects included, just wouldn't recurse. You could call a single subroutine and return from that one, but it would either terminate with an error or overwrite the first return address if you tried to use it like a stack. So you would have to manage the entire thing manually - addresses and variables both. With enough POKE and PEEK you could certainly rig up a solution.

(C having a callstack is actually a pretty big deal, and not everyone adapted to it well at the time.)

<comment><USER19> Which dialects?? A stack is the obvious thing to have. You'll already need something like for nested FOR loops, so it's the obvious thing to do for GOSUB as well. I'd be surprised to hear that any non-toy implementations didn't have a GOSUB/RETURN stack.

ZX81 BASIC has a GOSUB/RETURN stack. MS BASIC has a GOSUB/RETURN stack. Atari BASIC has a GOSUB/RETURN stack. _Apple 1 BASIC_ has a GOSUB/RETURN stack! - sure, it appears to be all of 8 deep, so good luck with using it for anything recursive, but it's a stack nonetheless...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I remember bringing a BASIC code listing I had written to show-and-tell in 3rd grade. I printed that sucker out on a big stack of fan-fold paper on the ol' Apple Imagewriter so that when I was standing in front of the class, I could drop it and let it unspool onto the floor in dramatic fashion and say "This is a program I wrote."

Blank stares all around, including from the teacher. So it goes.

</comment><comment><USER21> There are plenty of python equivalents of his book. I bought "Computer Coding Python Games for Kids" for my son and its very good. It doesn't just list the program to type in, it breaks it up into logical sections like "now we need to write the code to animate the dragons" and then briefly explains how it works before giving a short code listing to type in.

Python's indentation rules are a source of confusion, but I'd much rather he learned that instead of BASIC.

<comment><USER4> To be fair, C-style blocks are at least as much a source of confusion as Python's indentation.

        if (banana)
            x = orange();
            strawberry(x, 3);
        kumquat(x);

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> 80s style Basic does not have _functions_. This makes Basic programs tend to spaghetti and unreadable code, especially considering the constant memory constraints of those platforms. I grew up on these systems, and every time I think back on it I wish something like Forth would have taken its place - i.e. something with a clean and scalable pattern for abstraction. Basic, on the other hand, doesn't _do_ abstractions. It _barely_ has data types and what it calls "functions" are an _even more_ limited form of Python's style of lambdas; every subset of code which can actually _do_ something looks like "GOSUB 11600" when you call it. No naming, no abstractions, nothing.

<comment><USER23> This is true of the 8-bit Basics.

However, later 80's 16-bit Basic (think Amiga, ST, QuickBasic for the PC, etc.) at least had functions, libraries, etc.

Going back to 8-bit is probably too far...

<comment><USER19> BBC BASIC (1981 - you want the 1982 version though) had procedures, multi-line functions, and variable names of any length. It's still a bit rubbish by modern standards, but workable for the sort of size of program that you might actually write. You're vanishingly unlikely to make something longer than 1,000 lines, if even that...

<comment><USER24> _> and variable names of any length_

Almost, but not quite. It would ignore anything after the 40th character of a name, and the overall line length restriction (255 characters, less line number) imposed a secondary limit.

Still night-and-day compared to some common contemporary BASIC variants what only allowed two-character variable names, of course, and not much of a limitation as really long names would soon have you hitting the overall memory restriction of the default address space (between 10 and 29Kbyte available, depending on screen mode, which had to be enough for the heap (including your code) and the call stack).

I perhaps remember this far too well, given how long it is since I touched one of those machines...

<comment><USER19> Yes, sorry, the line length is indeed limited to 255 chars (or is it 252/253?)! - I guess I just meant that there are no specific additional limits on variable name lengths.

I couldn't find any evidence of a 40 char limit on BASIC II... the full length of the variable name appears to be stored and compared.

<comment><USER24> 253 IIRC: 256 less two bytes for a 16-bit line number and one for either an EOL marker or a length indicator (I forget which it used and I'm feeling too lazy to look it up ATM).

Though there was also a limit (also ~256) to the line on entry, which you would normally hit first because keywords are stored tokenised: "PRINT" would be stored as one byte not five.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Even putting aside its educational value (questionable), 80s BASIC still matters for the same reason that COBOL still matters: I know for a fact it is being used to run businesses with $1m+ annual revenue (I get paid to maintain a couple of them). Quasi-ERP type systems sold in the 70s and 80s continue to survive on commercial interpeters like ProvideX ([https://home.pvxplus.com/](https://home.pvxplus.com/)) and BBX ([https://www.basis.com/](https://www.basis.com/)). Note, I'm not saying that's a good thing or that it's fun to work on.

</comment><comment><USER23> Computers were, in general, much more accessible in the 80's. I'm sure the simplicity helped...

Many shipped with books documenting not only the Basic language, but full hardware documentation: memory map of the machine, special memory addresses (useful for peek/poke), etc. I even remember the Apple II manuals coming with schematics for the entire motherboard!

<comment><USER26> And commented ROM listings, where one found out there was a line assembler.

Good times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I second that. Today, clearly BASIC can be a great "toy" language to get into programming. And being so different from "modern" languages is not a disadvantage but actually an advantage. There's another world then standard- imperative-oop-languages. Why not go to Haskell after BASIC? There is so much more to explore then Python or Processing...

</comment><comment><USER28> Question: is there a small and simple terminal that runs basic and suitable for young children?

I'm looking to avoid a general purpose device that can play modern games and connect to the internet.

<comment><USER29> QBasic on FreeDOS running in an emulator on a RaspberryPi?

<comment><USER30> You sure you couldn't squeeze a few more layers of abstraction on there?

<comment><USER31> QBasic on FreeDOS running in a Raspberry Pi emulator in a Docker container over VNC on Kubernets running on Amazon EKS in several availability zones for five nines of abstraction nostalgia goodness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Ah... BASIC. I started into programming as a kid back in the 80's, by transcribing BASIC games from Andrew Lacey's book "Games for MSX", into of course, an MSX. Learnt a lot.

I've found the exact Spanish version! [https://sites.google.com/site/santiagoontanonvillar/personal...](https://sites.google.com/site/santiagoontanonvillar/personal/old- computer-books-preservation)

</comment><comment><USER33> Radio 4 covered BASIC in their 3/5 episode of 'Codes that Changed the World' [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pnvmh](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pnvmh)

The episode does a good job of explaining that the language hit a sweet spot of easy to learn, and easy to implement on the limited hardware of early home computers.

</comment><comment><USER34> There are a number of old Usborne books available for download which teach how to write simple games in BASIC (go to the bottom of the page): [https://usborne.com/browse-books/features/computer-and- codin...](https://usborne.com/browse-books/features/computer-and-coding- books/)

</comment><comment> bump-ladel Lua feels like it could fit the bill as an easy to get into, but modern language. See the great demos folks make with the Pico-8 fantasy console [https://twitter.com/hashtag/tweetcart](https://twitter.com/hashtag/tweetcart)

</comment><comment><USER35> I am an admitted retro addict - I have every computer I've ever owned since 1983. So, to me there is just one answer to why BASIC still matters: Old computers never die - their users do!

Every computer out there is still capable of delivering value to someone, out there. I really think its a shame we have allowed the consumer cult viewpoint to prevail, and that we consider 'old computers' to be "useless" \- when this is really not what's happened.

 _We changed_ , not the physical hardware.

By way of anecdote: My 11 year old kid is learning as much about programming computers - and most importantly, how computers really work - from hacking code on one of my 8-bit machines, as he would by trying to crank up Xcode, were that at all feasible ..

</comment><comment><USER36> BASIC was a huge turn off for me as a kid in the 90s. I hated it. I hated having to deal with the line numbers. I hated everything about it, except that it let you write a program. Whenever I would look at a long BASIC program I would think, "how the hell did anyone write this?" To this day I don't understand how people liked this language. I guess it's easier than assembly, which also has line numbers. And I absolutely loved programming and computers. I remember reading a C++ book around 1997 and even though I couldn't get my hands on a compiler then, it was liberating to just read about.

<comment><USER37> Because we only got to do it during the 8 bit era, there were tons of books and magazine listings to learn it, and for many of us it was the only way to get software.

16 bit home computers already had structured BASIC compilers, producing native code, for example I learned Turbo Basic in 1990.

Here is how it looked like,

[https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_borlandBorsHandbook198...](https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_borlandBorsHandbook1987_15768512)

Amiga demoscene was presented with AMOS.

Just to cite those which I had more experience with.

<comment><USER36> Thanks for the perspective and especially the book link. I looked around at the book. Looks really nice. I couldn't have afforded this compiler back in the day though :). Incredible all these compilers/interpreters are free now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> What was it that made games in BASIC simpler than simple games in currently popular languages? Things like "x = x + vx" aren't really different. Python is a much bigger language and though you don't _need_ to know the extra features, they're going to leak through in the form of harder-to-understand errors when you go off the rails. But is there more to it? I haven't tried to use pygame or [https://love2d.org](https://love2d.org) or the like. Is there a niche for an even simpler library and IDE?

<comment><USER39> My Own Experience with Basic and teaching programming:

I know from teaching kids is that LINE NUMBERS makes more sense to them. Personally I HATE line numbers and think they are the devil.

I was showing kids my old 1970s code books that I use to copy into basic and play games. I told them how I was in 1st grade and that my dad would help debug them with me. They all wanted to try and one kid copied a good 300 lines for a battleship game. For some reason the logical numbers made sense to them. That kid must have played that game dozens of times because he felt like he made it.

My own opinion is that BASIC shouldn't be used to teach programming. I opt for Racket.

<comment><USER18> I know where those kids are coming from. I understood 8-bit BASICs "better" than I did QBASIC, because I could spatially follow the flow of a program written with GOTO: knowing the line number told me roughly where in the code it would land. But code that used labels and indirection(arrays, pointers, that kind of thing) was beyond me for quite a while, so I didn't fully understand most of the interesting listings, even though I could type them in and find data assignments or comparisons to change.

Modern languages pack in tons of indirection because that's where the power tools are - but an introductory environment might benefit from cutting down on that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> That's how I started - on Apple][/e clone (bulgarian version was called "Pravetz 8C"). Right there the ] prompt was waiting for me, and even CALL-151 was available for futher experimentation ;)

Oh, the joy when I've found Beagle Bross software - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle_Bros](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle_Bros) Also this: [https://stevenf.com/beagle/where.html](https://stevenf.com/beagle/where.html)

</comment><comment><USER41> Here is a browser-based Javascript _Apple Basic_ emulator: [https://www.calormen.com/jsbasic/](https://www.calormen.com/jsbasic/)

I assigned my son exercises for it over one summer. I had him save his results into local Notepad for later inspection by me. It also comes with drop-down samples.

</comment><comment><USER42> And if you're looking for the book, available on [https://www.amazon.com/ZX- Spectrum-Games-Code-Club/dp/099347...](https://www.amazon.com/ZX-Spectrum- Games-Code-Club/dp/0993474454) or [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0993474403](https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0993474403)

</comment><comment><USER43> What about a 21st century beginner's language, in the same vein as BASIC, but which is more similar to modern languages? Does one exist?

<comment><USER44> That would obviously be Javascript. A toy language no sane person would use willingly but just powerful enough to demonstrate the sheer minimum of what a computer can do. Yet its adepts are know-it-all gurus who will never, ever, need another language again. Hence the preoccupation with re-implementing every piece of software that has ever been conceived, in Javascript. </rant>

<comment><USER17> We don't condone torturing children here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> My fondest memories of programming are all the days of BASIC. I felt it was super simple, easy to keep in your head, and made no mistakes about flow. I don't honestly know if this was just because I was young and excited, or if the simplicity of BASIC has a lot of merits that are missing in today's popular languages.

<comment><USER46> I think it was youth. My fondest memories of programming were Turbo Pascal. I used basic in the eighties but I was still a literal child. You were probably either a Gen-Xer or a little more precocious about programming than me.

In about five to ten years we'll have a spate of articles from nostalgic early Millenials about Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, Watcom C and such, then a rash of remembarances about CGI-bin, then early Java....

Personally, I miss mode 13h at least twice a month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> bas55 [1] is the closest I can find to a Dartmouth style basic (so 70s rather than 80s). Alas constants are truncated at 6 places (internal calculations are all doubles). It compiles fine and works well complete with LOAD, SAVE and limited line editing.

Does anyone know of a portable basic interpreter that supports double precision all through?

The kind of stuff I (used to) do [2] requires more than 6 figures.

[1] [https://jorgicor.niobe.org/bas55/](https://jorgicor.niobe.org/bas55/)

[2] [https://sohcahtoa.org.uk/kepler/moon2.html](https://sohcahtoa.org.uk/kepler/moon2.html)

<comment><USER5> Maybe FreeBASIC would be useful, (although it's a compiler rather than an interpreter, and a more modern dialect than 70s BASIC, mostly compatible with QBASIC/QuickBASIC). [https://www.freebasic.net/](https://www.freebasic.net/)

It handles 64-bit doubles: [https://www.freebasic.net/wiki/wikka.php?wakka=KeyPgDouble](https://www.freebasic.net/wiki/wikka.php?wakka=KeyPgDouble)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Have yet to read article, but I believe that it is always beneficial to learn how things were done. If only to gain context around way things are the way they are, ignoring anything else.

</comment><comment><USER49> and you can grab TurboBasic/QBasic and have functions, subroutines, switch/case, while loops....</comment>


Outlaw Country - <AUTHOR> https://magazine.atavist.com/outlaw-country-klamath-county-oregon-guns-murder <comment><USER2> My favorite quote:

"The social contract is not a buffet—if you opt out because you want absolute freedom, you have to accept that no one will come to save your ass when trouble starts."

Reminds me a bit of the cryptocurrency market. :-)

<comment><USER3> >> You have to accept that no one will come to save your ass when trouble starts.

That isn't a thing. I work for an organization (military) that sometimes gets involved in search and rescue. Our society doesn't let people die in agony alone in the woods. If you are attacked by a bear, or your boat sinks, a helicopter will be sent to pick you up. You cannot opt out of that. Even if you say no, we will send the machine. Eventually you will fall unconscious and then we will treat you. That's modern society. "Just let them die" isn't real. It is pure fantasy to pretend that anyone can opt out of humanity.

Canada is constantly dealing with this problem. People want to live in the middle of nowhere but they still get government services, even the ones they might not want. You cannot choose to live outside of basic health care any more than you can opt to live outside the legal system. Given that reality, why should the larger society cover the costs of people who want to live a wilderness fantasy? Why should we allow people to live in places where they will inevitably need very costly rescue services, where their kids will be needed to be flown to and from they basic schooling they deserve?

<comment><USER4> I think along the same lines when in California I see people building huge mansions in fire areas or people refusing to get health insurance. They wang to have their freedom but rely on being bailed out when things go bad.

<comment><USER5> The name for that phenomena is "moral hazard".

<comment><USER3> Or "deregulation". The fire hazard thing is due to consistent efforts to "develop" land into rural mcmansions for rich retired people. Why should taxes go to defend retirement mansions knowingly built in fire zones? Or on a beach? (rising water levels etc). Fire insurance covers damage, not the cost of firefighters, and we cannot ask firefighters to just let everything burn. That isn't safe (idiots don't evacuate) humane (pets) or even healthy (pollution).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sad, yet fascinating - reminds me a bit of this story about 'off the grid' people in Colorado: [https://harpers.org/archive/2019/08/the-last- frontier/](https://harpers.org/archive/2019/08/the-last-frontier/)

I happened on ads for those lots myself when looking around Zillow for odd or interesting places. You can see a bunch of them here: [https://bit.ly/33tqbVM](https://bit.ly/33tqbVM)

Even Klamath Falls doesn't have a great reputation in Oregon. Life that far out has got to be rough.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the Harper article, I really enjoyed that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> While this is getting away from the point of the story, I do have to ask; why does it always seem to be these types that are the most aggressive supporters of individualism?

If you want to go out to the middle of nowhere, wipe your ass with grass an live without any person or government's help/interference, that is totally your prerogative. But the irony of someone surviving off welfare checks, killing a man because of police inaction, and then suing the county for inadequate mental health support is palpable.

You don't get to have your cake and eat it too. Mooching off of welfare programs and posting tough-guy memes while calling everyone else pansies and having a hard-on for rugged 1800-style living? Cry me a river.

<comment><USER9> _why does it always seem to be these types that are the most aggressive supporters of individualism?_

I think the impetus there is that he had a long history of negative social experiences. The article repeatedly indicates he couldn't rely on other people but other people considered him to be reliable in certain respects. He could be turned to for help, but he seemed to have no one he could turn to.

Given that experience of life, I see no contradiction in his desire to go make it on his own in the middle of nowhere and his complaint that he's been given no help. I think they are two sides of the same coin.

<comment><USER10> This is a very well considered comment. I identify a lot with this.

Modern society is a very abstract place in which people find it difficult to meaningfully trade favour. In cities at least, a whole bunch of stuff is out of the control of individuals and in the control of a bureaucracy.

Wanting to escape that I don't see as being foreign at all.

Makes me think of the movie Falling Down. There are certainly times that I enter some sort of internal monologue and just think - look, I'm here, open and kind; perhaps not always, but in this moment I am. And others are here acting as obstacles... because it's "their job", or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What this highlights, for me, is the deeper reasons why rural and urban Americans disagree on gun control.

In the country, it's unlikely that anyone will arrive in time to protect you. So people buy the guns to protect themselves. And they want the same laws to apply both where they live, and in densely populated urban areas where a single AR-15 can do a lot of damage.

<comment><USER12> > And they want the same laws to apply both where they live, and in densely > populated urban areas where a single AR-15 can do a lot of damage.

A single AR-15 can do a lot of damage at a rural high-school all the same.

The reason for the second amendment is defense, of person and of society. The police have issues with response times in cities, and in the event of disaster. Let us not forget of police abdication of duty during the LA92 Riots and the "Roof Koreans."

<comment><USER11> 2A mentions neither persons nor society, but only the defense of a free State, notably the one the founders were in the process of creating:

> A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, > the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Arguments about 2A's intent are endless, and given the polarized nature of the debate, also futile.

<comment><USER12> The Militia is the people. The state exists for the welfare of the people. To say it isn't for the defense of the people is an argument of semantics.

<comment><USER11> > The Militia is the people.

A bold interpretation. Does that include babies and seniors with dementia? They are part of the people by most definitions. Should we allow them to have arms? Hand a .22 pistol to an eight-month old? If not, where do you draw the line? Is a well-regulated militia a very distinct subset of the people?

> The state exists for the welfare of the people.

Theorists of the state would dispute that, and we have endless examples that contradict you. States generally exist to serve themselves, often at the expense of the people.

> To say it isn't for the defense of the people is an argument of semantics.

The interpretation of a foundational text of US democracy is a matter of semantics. Semantics is about what words mean. You say they mean one thing. I happen to disagree with you. So yes, the whole nature of this dispute is semantic, and not in the sense of "semantics are trivial". The gist of the question is in assigning meaning to the words of 2A. And if you think they "just mean something and it's so obvious that no alternative meanings can be discussed," then you are begging the question.

2A explicitly says it is in defense of a state, not a people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting read.

Reminded me of the nearby Humboldt County, California. Similarly remote, rugged, quite lawless and attracting people who want to stay hidden. It also the focus of California's secretive marijuana industry. There is a good documentary series about it: [https://www.netflix.com/ee/title/80217475](https://www.netflix.com/ee/title/80217475)

</comment><comment><USER14> >Selecting a jury in Taylor's case was tricky. There was a raft of potential bias or conflict of interest... Half a dozen potential jurors had concealed- carry permits, all reportedly for self-protection.

God forbid the jury include anyone who's ever had to mentally grapple with the possibility they might be in a situation like that.

The whole trial smells of a prosecution that has lofty and unrealistic ideas about the immediate relevance of its authority in BFE.

Last time I checked murder required intent. I don't see intent here.

<comment><USER15> > God forbid the jury include anyone who's ever had to mentally grapple with > the possibility they might be in a situation like that.

Which situation? The one where you move to a remote wilderness locale, ransack your neighbor's property, and then shoot him twice in the back? Or the one where you fatally misjudge the shotgun wielding newcomer you're trying to bully? Makes me glad I live in civilization. Think I'll pop down to Wawa for a soda.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It bothers me that there was even a hung jury over this:

The guy who got shot:

\- Flipped out over an honest mistake that Taylor tried to make right

\- Used a weapon to threaten him

\- Stole Taylor's only method of calling for help on the day that he said he would kill him

\- His close associates went on the record that he was really willing to kill Taylor

As far as I can see there's no question that Taylor's actions were self defense.

<comment><USER17> Yes, according to the narrative of the article. However, a good part of that narrative seems to have been provided by Taylor. Some of this may be verifiable (e.g. the 911 calls), but other parts may not be (e.g. the security camera footage has no audio).

And it appears the associates only went on record _after_ the first trial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> That is the most compelling thing I've read in a long time.

</comment><comment><USER19> Scrolling this page causes Safari CPU usage to jump to ~120% and the fans in my MBP to turn on...

<comment><USER6> After reading the story... it makes you think that's a pretty good problem to have compared to some people's lot in life.</comment></comment>


Hacker News Seattle Meetup #6: Tues, February 7th. RSVP now - <AUTHOR> http://www.meetup.com/HackerNewsSeattleMeetup/events/49316792/

<comment><USER2> If you are an entrepreneur in Seattle, check out the Startup Conference next week, with Rich Barton, Rand Fishkin, Glenn Kelman, Brian Wong and many others: <http://thestartupconference.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Kinda tempted! I'm an occasionally-coding artist, not a startup-dreaming programmer, though. Not sure how painfully out of place that might make me.

<comment><USER4> You're kidding, right? If you have good design/art chops, business sense and the desire to make a difference, there are plenty of "startup-dreaming programmers" out there who would literally fight to death in an bloody arena to have you as a cofounder.

<comment><USER3> Hahaha this is true. Assuming someone can sell me on a project compelling enough to tear me away from drawing my comic.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Help me craft my unique value proposition - <AUTHOR>

I am trying to articulate my unique value proposition but I think I have been too close to the development of the app for too long, that my mind is getting cloudy.
So I would love to hear some thoughts and feedback on some of the language I can use.
The coming soon page is: http://www.compversions.com
I have A/B tested a few different ones (there are four actually), so I would love if you could post the one you see and post your suggestions based on what you understand.
Also, if you don't understand it, please let me know so I can explain and we can go from there.
Thanks! <comment><USER3> I know this isn't exactly what you asked for, but hopefully, it helps!

To properly articulate your unique value prop, you need to truly understand the value you are providing to users of your product. I know how difficult that can be when you're too close to your product. About a month and a half ago, I was in the same position.

Luckily, around that time, I heard the CEO of FreshBooks speak on the subject. Here's the gist of what he said:

Be able to tell users what life was like BEFORE your product and what it's like AFTER your product. Quantify it to make it real!

For example, if I've invented a teleporter...

BEFORE: On average 45 minute commute to work

AFTER: 0.015 second commute

Obviously, the big benefit of my invention is saving time. For yours, it could be cost, time, etc. Just make sure it's quantifiable!

And from there, writing your one sentence UVP will (hopefully) be much easier.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yoseph,

Thanks for taking the time to share that story. It really helps.

You are absolutely right.

One of the earlier commenters, kingsidharth (I hope I got his name correct) to be exact, suggested exactly that and he gave me some solid suggestions.

"Faster decision making."

Then it clicked to me, that's what I am selling. A decision-making engine. Something that helps their clients make decisions quicker.

I wish there was a way for me to quantify this and articulate that, without it looking cheesy.

Any ideas?

Thanks again for that story.

Love it.

P.S. By any chance do you happen to have a link to the talk that the CEO of FreshBooks gave?

<comment><USER3> No problem. Happy to help!

Hmm, this probably sounds very simple, but how long do clients generally take to decide? And maybe it's also better to think of it in terms of how long it takes to attach your design, photo, etc to an email, for the client to open the files from that email and align it on his screen...

I'd imagine that must take at least 5 minutes? I'm not particularly familiar with the area compversions is operating in, but you get the idea.

I like "Faster decision making".

Unfortunately, I don't have a link. I saw him give this speech in Toronto.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Basecamp for Designers doesn't sound like a good idea. 37Signals won't be happy if you get rich.

Anyways, based on the problem you are trying to solve. Tell them the benefit. Something like "Let your Clients choose the best" or something like that.

There is feature (compare the diff versions) and then there are benefits (hassle free decision making for client - faster work done). Benefits sell.

To be honest, you can't make your USP alone - you can just try and give it a direction. Your users will define your USP. They might end up using it for entirely different purpose. Or might fall in love with USP.

So don't worry about USP. Just tell them:

1) What is it 2) What it means for them (benefit) 3) What can they do here 4) How to get started.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you kingsidharth.

What I was really getting at is, help me brainstorm about how to articulate the benefits I am providing.

You gave me some good ideas for starters. Have any more benefits I can use ? :)

Btw, I am not too worried about 37Signals getting upset with me. The market will decide. If the market doesn't think there is space for me, I will have to pivot :)

<comment><USER4> Hmmm.. usually one 'pain-in-the-ass-problem' solved is enough of a benefit.

But can't add more without using it. Just get started with if you have some ideas (as you said).

As a designer, the best thing that I see is faster decision from client's side which saves my time and makes me happy.

Dunno how many will agree - so yeah testing (you were very wise there, I must say).

My addition:

"Help your clients decide Faster!" _Faster decisions, faster projects - <USER2> your life gets_

\--- _some bullet points here to tell about more features_ \---

There you go, did some copy-writing for you ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> I love it.

If you feel inspired and have more, keep em coming :)

Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This: "multiple designers and multiple projects and multiple revisions"

Plus this: "Faster decision making."

Leads to this value proposition: "Your clients take ages to choose between design versions? They're overwhelmed by the options? Make your client's lifes easier, help them decide better and faster."

It may be way off, or on the right track, not sure. (I think it's still a little off.) It's hard since the pain you're solving for your clients (the designers) isn't actually their pain, it's _their_ clients pain. So your value is: solve the pain of _your_ clients with my product?

Mmmm..

<comment><AUTHOR> That's interesting. You are right. It's not exactly the designers' pain, but it is the clients pain.

But the way I see it is, ultimately it becomes the designer's pain.

For instance, say you have a large client that is not tech savvy in the least (or barely tech savvy) - but he wants to see many options.

How do you get it to them? Setup your own ftp server? Email? Basecamp?

Then how do they reply?

That's another one of the pains I am trying to solve.

So it's not JUST allowing them to easily chose from multiple versions, it's also taking away that headache from designers of trying to figure out how to get the revisions to clients.

<comment><USER5> "say you have a large client that is not tech savvy in the least" -> You present to them in person.

I'm not a big believer in the "let the client choose between options" approach in any case.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough. I hear you. Maybe the tool isn't applicable to you then - as you said earlier :)

Perhaps future iterations will interest you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think you should not ask the users to fill in so much details in your form. Just ask for email first.. Let them confirm it first, then follow-up with a request for more details.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point. This is the second time I am hearing this.

Will make that change now :)

Edit: Done!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Basecamp for designers" is pretty good I think. Can you explain the value of your product to us in a few paragraphs? Then we can try to come up with some language.

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem I am trying to solve is this:

Say you hire a designer to do a logo for you. They come up with 5 versions. How do you compare them? What some people do is literally print them out and hold them up - or tape them to a whiteboard, etc.

So the way I am solving this is, allowing designers to upload multiple versions to one place (my web app) and they notify their client. Their client can then go and easily compare the multiple versions of the design, comment on them and chose from there.

It's like Hot or Not, but for designs.

Of course, it will do everything else that you expect from a simple project management solution - like Basecamp.

I should also mention that this is not specific to designers ONLY, but I am starting with designers because that is a targeted niche that I think this will help. I imagine photographers/ad agencies and others can use this.

If you happen to have other suggestions for other niche markets I would love to hear them too.

<comment><USER5> "They come up with 5 versions. How do you compare them?" -> I just look at them all and then give feedback. For me, this has never really been a problem.

I think it would help if you would target it to an even narrower niche than just "designers" at first. Perhaps a certain type of designer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right...but how do you compare them? As in, exactly what is the process? Do you resize your browser window ? Or download them to your machine and resize windows like that? Or do you print them out and put them side by side?

Perhaps I experienced this because I was dealing with multiple designers and multiple projects and multiple revisions. It just got unsustainable after a while.

But I don't quite know how to target those people. I was thinking just let price be the discriminator.

This won't work for those people that have 1 client every few months and a few revisions.

But those with multiple clients and multiple designs going to those clients and multiple revisions of those designs - can typically use something that simplifies that process.

Basecamp definitely doesn't simplify it.

That's where my frustration/pain point came from and subsequently this solution.

<comment><USER5> "As in, exactly what is the process?" -> depends on the format. If they attached a few png's, I just open then in new browser windows. If they send me a PDF with many versions, I open it and scroll through it. If they send me a ZIP file, I ask them for something more userfriendly ;)

"multiple designers and multiple projects and multiple revisions" -> now we're getting somewhere. This is your target audience, not just "designers".

<comment><AUTHOR> Two things are interesting about this comment.

1) that the process you highlighted in the first sentence doesn't annoy you royally. That's exactly what my issue was. There is no standardized way to get feedback from all clients.

2) You are absolutely right. Maybe I should be drilling down deeper. The question now is, how do I reach those clients with 'multiple projects and multiple revisions' ?

I know how to reach designers - i.e. the design communities, the design blogs, etc.

But how do I then segment my marketing even further.

Thanks for helping me flesh this out some more...it's REALLY helping me :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>