Twitter for Mac is incapable of accepting certain letters in the password field - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/MikeBeas/status/1189416778104999937 <comment><USER2> It appears this is not a bug in the Twitter app but macOS 10.15.1.

[https://twitter.com/nolanobrien/status/1189623346033381376?s...](https://twitter.com/nolanobrien/status/1189623346033381376?s=21)

<comment><USER3> yikes, the mac OS Catalina seems like a complete trainwreck with more bugs surfacing every week

<comment><USER4> Is there a way to step back a release for those who have upgraded to Catalina and subsequently want to go back to Mojave?

<comment><USER5> AFAIK there's no clean downgrade procedure. You have to create a bootable Mojave image, back up, wipe your hard drive, and clean install Mojave

<comment><USER6> I managed to do it during the beta. Since Catalina installs the OS on a separate partition inside an APFS container, I wiped the OS partition, then booted into one of the recovery modes (there are 3, I think) to reinstall Mojave on the partition containing my data. No data had to be wiped, and most kept working. Music library won't work with iTunes but I got around that with Apple Music iCloud Library. A few other things won't work, like Mojave Reminders won't sync with iOS 13, but otherwise it wasn't so bad. Think I had to reinstall Homebrew and Node and that was about it. After that I just removed the now-blank partition that formerly housed Catalina and renamed my data partition back to its regular name.

Unfortunately I do not recall which recovery mode I booted into. I tried a few, each offering a different OS to install. One would reinstall the current OS, one would reinstall the version that shipped on the Mac, and one would reinstall the current public build, I think. Wish I had a better recollection of which it was, but since Mojave is no longer the latest public build it may be moot. If you have the Mojave installer downloaded you might be able to just install it right on the data partition and wipe the Catalina OS partition afterwards.

Whatever you do, have a full backup before you even think about starting just in case, of course.

<comment><USER7> Link to the support page for key combos: [https://support.apple.com/en- gb/HT204904](https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204904)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am a fan of Twitter. It is a much better social network then Facebook and Instagram. But when it comes to development quality, Twitter reminds me of Ebay. The technology just does not seem solid. Every other month, something goes wrong.

I wonder if there is a systematic difference between companies with solid development and companies with wonky development. Is there a different hiring philosophy in place? A different type of tech stack? A different management structure?

Just a week ago, Twitter lost over 20% market cap because they noticed that they were showing people device-personalized ads even though they were opted out of that. After they fixed it, revenues went down.

In other words, a stunning 10 billion dollar of Twitters market cap was based on the illusion that the tech was working as expected. While in reality it was wrecking havoc.

Is it really possible that a feature that makes up a quarter of the companies value is not being tested?

<comment><USER9> I've thought a lot about this, having worked at some of these companies with both good and bad quality. The best conclusion I can come to is whether or not the executives use the technology on a regular basis.

At eBay, the execs didn't use the platform much. In fact, when I worked there, they had to give us a $10 credit just to get us to use it (and then stopped when the users said it wasn't fair that employees were bidding with someone else's money).

At Facebook/IG, the execs use the platform often. At Netflix the execs use it pretty much every day. At Twitter, you don't see a lot of executive use.

You can even see it at Apple. The quality on MacOs has been falling, quite possibly because all the execs are using iPads and iPhones as their daily drivers, and rarely using laptops.

I think in the end it boils down to visibility to people who can affect change. Either your execs need to use the product often, or the engineers need to be empowered to make changes without exec approval (or both, like at Netflix or Facebook/IG).

<comment><USER10> Are you implying that Netflix software quality is good? As someone who uses the web interface in a variety of browsers, I disagree in the strongest terms possible.

<comment><USER9> I think you may have inadvertently proved my point. The web interface is one of the least used interfaces. It probably doesn't get used by many execs or engineers in the company.

<comment><USER11> I'm taken aback by all the people saying they never use the web interface - what in the world do people use, then? Is it really true that people overwhelmingly use Netflix on tiny phone screens?

Edit: I am stupid and forgot that smart TVs exist (despite owning one)

<comment><USER9> The TV mostly. Many TVs have built in Netflix apps, and also lots of thinks that you connect to a TV like AppleTV, Roku, Firestick, Blu-Ray players, etc.

Also iPads and other tablets.

<comment><USER11> Ah, right. Obviously. Not sure how TVs slipped my mind :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's also some weird, non-determinism in the beginning where the 'c' after a long chain of failed 'b's overwrites the previous 'a', which he is later unable to replicate. Not to mention preventing arrow-key navigation of the password field is the most annoying UI decision they could make. What an absolute mess.

<comment><USER6> So I am able to replicate this reliably but at first I misunderstood what was happening.

What happens is this:

1\. Type some stuff in

2\. Turn on "reveal password"

3\. Type one of the "banned" characters

4\. Switch "reveal password" back off

5\. Type another character

6\. The whole existing password is deleted and replaced by the letter you just typed.

So the reason I end up with two Cs in a row at the beginning is because I actually typed in another. After I type in the C that causes the field to reset, I erroneously believed that it had deleted both the B and C, leaving only the A, so I say "C" again out loud and type another C, believing the text entered is now "ac".

In reality, it had cleared the field, replacing both the A and B with a C. So when I typed in that second C there were then two in a row.

The reason I didn't understand what was going on was because I was just counting dots and assuming which letters were deleted at first.

Oddly, when this field-clearing behavior happens, it also hides the "reveal password" button until you add a second character to the field. That should be visible with only one character but in this particular situation it hides instead.

<comment><USER12> Aha! I missed that. How long did it take you to work out the bug here? How did you stumble on to this originally? Was it an organic error, or do you do this kind of thing for a living?

<comment><USER6> I was typing in a password (which I have since changed, lol) that contained one of these letters and it kept rejecting it. Assuming I was typing it wrong (I'm prone to that), I very deliberately typed in every letter one at a time and noticed that no dot appeared when I got to that character. I was gonna tweet about that one letter but then I started wondering how many other letters would do the same. So I tried them all.

My day job used to be internal technical support at a software company, and now it's engineering.

Before that I was at 9to5Mac reviewing apps, and even before that I was a pretty prolific beta tester for stuff like iOS jailbreak tweaks, so I've got a LOT of troubleshooting and debugging experience that comes in handy here haha. I live to break things.

<comment><USER13> I lost it when you yelled "WHO SHIPPED THIS?" Man, the number of times I've felt that sentiment.

<comment><USER6> unfortunately im right there with you man. lol

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Reminds of when I was not able to log into Skype, because when I typed in my username, which was something like firstname...familyname, it kept replacing the three dots with an elipsis automatically, without me noticing.

</comment><comment><USER15> What could possibly be the reason for this? I mean...there's got to be some kind of validation that's going wrong here but I don't see any validation scheme that would include standard alphabetical characters.

<comment><USER16> [https://twitter.com/NolanOBrien/status/1189585020232462340](https://twitter.com/NolanOBrien/status/1189585020232462340)

> Root cause is Catalina regression that fails keyboard inputs when a > UIKeyCommand is registered for the same key. UIResponder chain regression > most likely.

<comment><USER15> That doesn't seem like the root cause to me. It sounds like they have events set up for the UI prior to login which doesn't really make sense. The regression in Catalina may have exposed it but the regression is not the cause of this, as far as I can tell.

<comment><USER17> While you may not believe they made the best design choice, there's nothing functionally wrong about the choice they made. According to the docs, their method should work just the same. So I don't think it's fair to say that's the cause of the bug.

<comment><USER15> >nothing functionally wrong about the choice they made

Sure there is... The app would capture those as shortcuts instead of as user input. You know...exactly what's happening here. If this interferes with writing tweets also then that should be easy to figure out.

As I said above, I'm not saying it's not because of the regression but it's more likely to me that Twitter messed it up. Otherwise, why is no other app experiencing this issue if it was done "according to the docs".

<comment><USER17> > Otherwise, why is no other app experiencing this issue if it was done > "according to the docs".

Well, like you say, it's not common to use shortcut keys without modifiers right? So it doesn't seem that surprising to me that nobody noticed the regression.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The app is built using the new Catalyst framework, so it's not surprising that it's all beta quality.

</comment><comment><USER19> I tried it and this applies to the login password field too, not just signup...

Note: it only happens when the password field is set as 'hidden', clicking reveal makes it work fine.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is that proper Twitter for Mac or an iOS app via Catalyst?

<comment><USER6> Catalyst. The old Twitter apps don't work anymore. They've been cut off API- side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Obligatory:

"I included emoji in my password and now I can't log in to my Account"

[https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/202143/i-included-...](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/202143/i-included- emoji-in-my-password-and-now-i-cant-log-in-to-my-account-on-yosemite)

<comment><USER22> Hah, that was a fun read. Thanks for posting.

It reminds me of the days when I used WinRAR for a lot of things. The password field would only allow entry of ASCII characters but the program will accept any character by copy and paste, leading to a world of pain where certain archives can only be opened on a specific OS with one particular version of WinRAR because the internal parsing seems to depend on both when it comes to exotic characters. Good times and I think everybody have learned to avoid this sort of hiccups by now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Spotify on Android turns 1x2 into 1×2 in the password field. I don't recall what the two digits were, and I didn't try any other two.

</comment><comment><USER24> Considering how bad their latest redesign is, I'm not surprised that they've got low quality standards.

</comment><comment><USER25> funny, my girlfriend was entering a 2fa code in the airbnb android app today and it refused to enter a '0'.</comment>


Taking the redpill: Artificial Evolution in native x86 systems - <AUTHOR> http://vx.netlux.org/lib/vsp26.html <comment><USER2> This is a great example of why having earth in the Goldilocks zone is great. Mutation Rate approximates solar radiation.

It is all about having the right amount of radiation. Have too much and everybody gets cancer and dies, have too little and the first plague to come along kills everybody because they were all alike. Just right and you have the ideal mix, enough diversity to survive challenges, but most people do not die of cancer before breeding.

<comment><USER3> Actually, it's not surprising that the mutation rate is 'just right'.

If mutations caused by (say) solar activity were much higher, then DNA itself would incorporate more redundancy to protect itself (it looks like there's around a 3-to-1 mapping of letters to proteins already). Every part of the replication process is simultaneously optimizing...

Genetic Programming (Koza, etc) is a lot more interesting (IMHO) than hand- coded Genetic Algorithm mappings for this reason.

<comment><USER4> > Genetic Programming (Koza, etc) is a lot more interesting (IMHO) than hand- > coded Genetic Algorithm mappings for this reason.

What reason?

<comment><USER3> One of the problems the original post was battling was the 'fact' that the x86 instruction set was too brittle to do actual mutations on, and so were searching for a way of coding programs with instructions that didn't self- destruct at the first sign of bit-twiddling.

For straight-forward Genetic Algorithms, there's also an issue of how to code the problem space in a way that the evolution operations (mutation, and more importantly cross-over) have a chance of getting hold of the problem.

But searching for a representation that is amenable to mutation is also a search that could be done 'genetically' - by evolving the representation language.

For that reason, I'm no fan of 'straight coding' of the representation. Neither, it seems is evolution... DNA codes for proteins (etc) that builds structures, and frameworks, and other 'stuff' (eg: there are more neurons than DNA letters : there must be some meta-coding going on).

Genetic Programming (Koza, etc) seems like a step in the right direction (since manipulating trees can lead to structures with as much complexity as 'desired' by the evolution bit). But it's still not quite right IMHO, since it's all operating at the 'language' level (mutation of symbols that themselves perform the computation). For an example from nature : Our brains don't work through the interaction of DNA, they work through the interaction of stuff whose precursor (during the person-building stage) was DNA.

If standard GA manipulates the parameters of a problem, then GP is manipulating a tree that codes for the parameters of a problem. The next step up would be manipulating a language that builds the tree. How many meta steps should we make? Isn't that a search problem too?

<comment><USER4> People have these odd ideas about what a "GA" is. The Genetic Algorithm is an algorithm, not a particular representation of candidate solutions (vectors, lists, trees, whatever). Likewise Koza-style Genetic Programming isn't an algorithm at all: but largely a representation.

That seems pedantic, since of course GAs have certain classic representations and GP has a certain traditional algorithm. But it's important in this case, because (1) non-tree representations can be used handily to evolve code: for example, see machine-code GP or Grammatical Evolution, both of which use GA- style lists. And (2) because to my knowledge there's little in GP which would support the claim that "every part of the replication process is simultaneously optimizing".

Or maybe he meant that Koza-style tree GP was providing "redundancy" (in the form of introns), which is odd since this is hardly viewed as a positive: but at any rate, introns exist in all sorts of GA representations, such as machine-code GP lists.

At any rate, there seems to be a lot of confusion there.

<comment><USER3> Ok - just to be clear, I was talking about GA in its standard bit-twiddling setting, rather than as an overall approach.

Also, I'm not really saying GP (again, the original Koza-style tree manipulation type) is a magic cure-all : I just like the way it's more 'meta' than bit-twiddling GA.

Are introns bad? An outside observer might think so, but something about the overall algorithm must like them...

As to being confused : I'm surprised that anyone would think that this whole representation problem has any kind of cut-and-dried answer yet. There's still a lot of room for innovation here - and which directions to explore are pretty much a question of taste.

<comment><AUTHOR> You make an interesting case, which I think is backed up by two things, in the special case of the x86 instruction set:

\- Instruction opcodes and arguments don't occupy a fixed space or position. This leads to a significant increase in lethality of mutations. Some other factors that contribute to this is the large instruction set, and the fact that opcodes and arguments are directly connected (context-specific). Straight-up GA does provably not perform well, unless there's a meta-language involved, as the article shows. I'd dare say this is very close to Koza's approach, and it also seems to be close to Michael Korns' approach, which is more recent.

\- "Instruction set" put aside, mutations in a x86 system (or in any other computing environment, for that matter) happens on a bit granularity. The sort of natural redundancy that would allow GA to operate on a sufficient population for robust mutations to appear is not there, without a metalanguage. (even ECC in memory tends to not be favoured, so resistance against bit flips, ie. point mutations)

Also, it seems to me that without a "natural" redundancy mechanism within an instruction set, it is impossible for other types of mutations, namely deletion/insertion/duplication, to produce survivable offspring. As a (probably not very good) metaphor one should consider what would happen to aminoacids if we were to consider codons as their building blocks (disregarding nucleotides).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


$89 pocket oscilloscope - <AUTHOR> http://www.justblair.co.uk/seeed-studio-dso-nano-pocket-digital-storage-oscilloscope-review.html

<comment><USER2> > If you have used an analogue scope with it's vast array of dials, knobs and > switches trust me this device is simplicity itself to use in comparison.

I think I'd prefer to be able to adjust what I need quickly rather than have to select through a menu. I'm a bit surprised that the opposite is being mentioned as a feature. Is it just me?

Not that I think I can object for $89. Although I think I'd prefer a PC card for my laptop and some software instead.

<comment><USER3> By the way, do you know if there are any digital cameras with `analog' knobs and dials?

<comment><USER4> Leica's digital Ms are the only cameras I can think of. (Focus, Aperture and exposure, beyond that you are also out of luck. Consindering that M cameras don't have much else beyond ISO and EV correction to adjust, the digital Ms nevertheless remained pretty analog cameras.)

Make no mistake, other cameras (usually DSLRs) do have dials, but they usually have multiple functions depending on the mode you are in or the buttons you pressed.

DSLR lenses allow for analog control over focus and (if they are zoom lenses) focal length. Some odd cameras might throw in dedicated dials for such things as EV correction and ISO (the recent G series models from Canon). Adding additional dials (which can be assigned special functions) has also become quite popular with higher end small sensor cameras like the S90 from Canon.

But I don't know any camera (except the Leicas which are way too expensive for many, many people including myself) which conciously decided to reduce the complexity of the digital interface in favour of analog controls. Sure, you can use the analog stuff, but you can also go the digital route. Which leaves cameras with their complex user interfaces.

I don't know whether that's the right or wrong way to go. Digital cameras do have many more incredibly useful functions analog cameras didn't have. So a fully analog control might not be practical.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for that reference to the Leica M digital cameras! I have been looking for a manual digital camera for a long time, but had never come across those!

<comment><USER4> Did you look at the prices yet? Expecially at lens prices? If not, prepare for sticker shock.

Not to say Leica M cameras aren't worth it, they just aren't for everyone.

<comment><USER5> Yeah no kidding! $5k and upward... I knew they would be expensive, but I wasn't expecting that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I get a MySQL error, but from the URL, I guess that's the product (manufacturer page): [http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/micro-digital-storage- oscil...](http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/micro-digital-storage- oscilloscopedso-nano-p-512.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's right. The URL (points to a review of the product) still seems to work for me, but the product is a pocket sized, 1 channel 1MHz scope with a PC interface.

I'm crossing my fingers for a logic analyser version.

<comment><USER7> If you're not aware of it, I consider the Saleae Logic (<http://www.saleae.com/logic/>) to be the perfect companion.

Of course I say that without owning either, but I've been keeping an eye on them both for quite a while now.

<comment><USER8> I've been happy with my Saleae probe, and it sure is classy looking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 1MHz maximum sample rate.

<comment><USER10> Somewhat limiting for some purposes. I've got a 'cheap' 60mhz scope here, but I rarely use it at that speed. I'm mainly measuring some audio signals or calibrating something on a synth.

Keeping one of these in my travel case for my music rig is a lot easier than carrying my large scope around. Definitely going to get one- or two.

<comment><USER11> It's not 1MHz (in the usual sense), it's 1MS/s. In theory, Nyquist says it should therefore be good to 500kHz in realtime; in practice, consider yourself lucky if that works out. Also consider that if the 'scope has a proper antialiasing filter its rise time will be limited to something in the microsecond region - and if it doesn't have such a filter you've got another problem on your hands. I guess if you've got a repetitive signal and it can do averaging, that would help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not a bad device but the 1MHz sample rate kills it for me. Anyone can recommend a good USB scope?

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I don't see how this would be of use for things that are not analog synth, shortwave, or HAM radio, whose enthusiasts usually already have scopes.

Even 10-50MHz could be mildly useful, but not 1MHz.</comment></comment>


The Evolution of Threads and I/O in Windows (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://msdn.microsoft.com/magazine/jj883951 <comment><USER2> If you ever find yourself in a situation where you need to use I/O completion ports and related API calls, talk to Len Holgate.

</comment><comment><USER3> Every time I try to open a webpage hosted by Microsoft i get an endlessly loading tab that says "Not expected". I use Edge on Windows 10 btw.

<comment><USER4> I instead can perfectly see an incomprehensible and slightly ridiculous automatic translation to Italian, with no link that gets me to the original. Who on earth can think that's a good idea?

<comment><USER5> Use this:

[https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/magazine/jj883951](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/jj883951)</comment></comment></comment>


Four Steps to the Epiphany: Sell before delivery - <AUTHOR> http://seriouslackofdirection.blogspot.com/2011/03/four-step-to-epiphany.html I recently read The Four Steps to the Epiphany and I have summarized my thoughts. Especially with regards to selling a product before it's completed, and I'm curious about your war stories and thoughts related to selling before you deliver. <comment><USER2> I'm in a startup with a B2B product where we have found a few "visionary customers" and have had them on board for a year or so already. They have been essential in the development of a number of essential features of our product. What we're struggling with now is determining the right moment to hit the mainstream with our product.

In one sense we're still building out some features that may very well be essential for some customers, however we know there are a good amount out there that our current benefit/feature-set would be very beneficial for.

In short -- how do you determine when a product is detrimental to future growth (making a bad name for yourself by selling an incomplete product) and when it is ready?

<comment><AUTHOR> Is your product a new product, an existing product, or a re-segmented product (a mix of new and existing)?

<comment><USER2> It's a new product in a fairly untapped technophobic market for businesses with already tight margins. The businesses currently mostly only have paper solutions or crap homegrown access solutions. The key is that our product, although it has a cost, will lead to a good ROI.

<comment><AUTHOR> -Regarding your product.... On the whole I think mainstream customers expect a whole product.

-Regarding how to move to mainstream customers... one thing that often happens is that influential users start spreading the word and it blows up... At the first consulting firm where I worked, they had a huge win with one of their early customers that gave them lots of momentum. So you might focus on getting good referrals...

-With regards to your situation... What is the reason customers give for not buying? You say margins are tight. Have you considered lowering your prices? You call the customers technophobic. Are the people using the current paper/homegrown solutions putting up resistance? Is there anyway you can disarm them? Maybe a free lunch for a demo/training session?

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the response. I don't think the reason customers aren't buying isn't because our prices are too high (we somewhat have competition and they're all more expensive), I think it's more of a case where they don't see a need for the technology, or really understand the benefits, or currently have the money (or are able to forecast what money they will have).

About it spreading -- yeah we're realizing more and more how massive that is. We have clients that have people who want to sell our product to others. We're starting to work with them on it now so it will be interesting to see how that turns out.

Disarming them is what we need to do. May just need to improve on our method :).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Against Acceleration - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/25/against-acceleration/

<comment><USER2> If the accelerator doesn't provide any seed funding, then I agree with the gist of this article. I thought that accelerators had seed funding as part of the normal set of benefits in exchange for equity in your startup. With no funding the accelerator doesn't really have any skin in the game and are playing you like a lottery ticket.</comment>


Moving Past the Scaling Myth - <AUTHOR> https://michaelfeathers.silvrback.com/the-myth-of-scaling <comment><USER2> Fred Brooks pointed out that with a small team of competent programmers, any organizational methodology will work.

If you pay attention, the best Agile systems focus on improving the skills of developers instead of forcing people to follow the 'steps' or a formula.

<comment><USER3> People over process every time. It's really hard to build a team of good people though so instead companies try to tweak their process. Process can matter e.g. a good team can be wrecked by a bad process but a bad team is bad no matter the process.

<comment><USER4> Depends on what you define by "bad" team. I'm in the Philippines, and there's lots of BPO companies here (call centers, dev shops, …). They have to deal with a high rate of ppl leaving, and train their employees from scratch. Still, those companies are successful and ppl want those relatively well paid jobs, even if they'll jump ship for any reason at all. In this kind of environment, process is everything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really wish the scaling myth would die. Everyone pretends they have a scalability problem because it's sexy and as such, travesties have been committed (you know, in case we scale). How about instead designing software where the architecture and code is clear, consistent, and readable by the next guy?

<comment><USER6> My philosophy: plan to scale 10x. If you ever approach it - which in most cases is unlikely - you can justify completely rearchitecting, but only to scale another 10x. If not, well your design is probably not too top-heavy anyway. It's people who want a single design to take them from 1x to 1000000x who get into trouble.

<comment><USER7> I disagree with that statement.

Of course a design that works at 1x doesn't always work a 10000x, but why shouldn't a design that works a 10000x not also work at 1x?

At least for technical scalability the answer almost always lies in overhead. Yes, while the system scales perfectly linearly at O(n), the hidden constant is often neglected, which means at small values of n the solution becomes unfeasible. So while Cassandra might for one of my use cases be the perfect candidate due to its feature set and linear scalability it becomes unfeasible at a small scale because I have to run at least 3 nodes with high overhead (because Java, sigh) + an additional 3 nodes with Zookeeper with high overhead (because Exhibitor + Curator, all in Java).

/rant, I don't like bashing on Java but overhead is definitely one of its weak spots, and here is where it comes into play.

<comment><USER6> Scaling down is always easier than scaling up, because you are going back over known territory. Scaling up is hard because it takes you into unknowns. Rumsfeld's Theory applies.

<comment><USER7> Yes, it is easier but is also very rarely done, since if you have scaled another 10x you don't care about the previous stage of scaling and have little incentive to keep the constant factor at that stage low.

I can understand why such systems are built the way they are, but I still find it sad, since it breaks the expectations of open source software, and creates a chasm between startups at the beginning and end of a big scaling phase. It more or less forces you as an early stage startup to use an inferior design which you know won't scale up beyond a certain point, even though know about a superior design that theoretically scales down to your current requirements.

<comment><USER6> If you design a system to support 10x your current workload, you are likely to get a well engineered solution that delivers the performance you need at a price you can afford. If and when you reach 10x, you will have a good body of knowledge to help you do the next 10x. That takes you to 100x. Systems that grow that much are _exceedingly_ rare. The odds of your startup being the next Facebook are _incredibly_ low. But this strategy will get you there, one step at a time.

If you sit down and try to design a system to support 100000x your current workload, you are likely to end up with an over-engineered and very expensive mess, then by the time you reach 10x you realize you should have done it differently because in practice the bottlenecks aren't where you thought they'd be. This strategy will bankrupt you before you get to even 10x.

This is how you tell who has really scaled systems, from those who only wish they had that problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This makes a lot of sense to me. At the very least, I think that most American organizations undergo a substantial cultural transition as they scale, so it makes sense we'd also need a process transition.

The problem I see is that people aren't really willing to be honest about the cultural transition that happens, so we also can't be honest about the process transition.

I think Agile-ish approaches work very well in startups, because the structure is pretty flat, and the goals are shared. But as companies grow, they tend to become what I think of business feudalism: hierarchical, control-oriented, territorial. For that, it makes sense you need different processes. And I think large company Agile is in effect Waterfall with a faster cadence, so you get that different process. But nobody will admit it. "We're doing Agile," they say, with too-bright eyes and gritted teeth.

What I wonder is: what if instead of killing the peer culture and the human- centered process as we scaled, we kept them?

<comment><USER9> At scale many organizations create substructure that contain strong peer culture and human-centered process, so it isn't lost, it's localized.

I think that the big challenge is to recognize that hierarchical structure isn't good or bad, it's something that most natural systems do in response to scaling. If we understand it as a design parameter we can make it humane.

<comment><USER8> The first part makes sense to me, although I don't think I've ever personally seen it happen. What percentage of companies would you say operate in the fashion you describe?

When you talk about hierarchy as natural, I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. I mean hierarchy as a system of power/control relationships, with each unit having an actor in charge and totally containing sub-units. E.g., the classic army chain of command. I can't think of anything natural that has that. Flocks and troops have leaders, but I think humanity is unique in its extension of social dominance to many-layered nested structures controlling millions of individuals. So I'd call it essentially artificial.

I agree that we can apply a hierarchical analytical model to many natural systems, but I think there are plenty of other models we could apply, just ones that aren't as easy for current human brains. E.g., we could talk about fractal, self-similar, or recursive processes; those have no connotation of primate dominance. Or note the shift away from "great chain of being" analyses of nature toward ecological and non-teleological analytical models. When all you have is social primates, everything looks like a hierarchy.

I would certainly like to believe that we can make hierarchies humane. But given that a fundamental characteristic is individual power over others that increases as you go up the chain, and given human fallibility, cognitive limits, and human nature, it seems to me they have to become essentially inhumane at some size. And in practice I certainly see a correlation between hierarchy size and inhumanity.

Correlation isn't proof, of possibility, of course. Just natural tendency. Are there large hierarchies you think violate that correlation, where they have gotten more humane with scale?

<comment><USER9> > The first part makes sense to me, although I don't think I've ever > personally seen it happen. What percentage of companies would you say > operate in the fashion you describe?

Ever worked in a chain restaurant? Camaraderie among coworkers at a site under a manager (so hierarchy) and not as much peer connection across sites.

I'd argue that you are using a narrow definition of hierarchy that is centered on ideas about power rather than dynamics in emergent systems. The arterial structure of a leaf is hierarchical. So are airport connection patterns. Whenever you have preferential attachment or costs associated with material or information transfer there's a force toward hierarchy, designed or not. Systemic effect. No primates needed.

The interesting bit to me is that if we considered something non-sentient, like a network router that controls flow over a set of nodes, it would be easy to anthropomorphize it purely based on its behavior and see it as exerting dominance when it makes its routing decisions if they don't align with what we want at that moment. Although there can be abusive hierarchy, there's something deep to be considered in that scenario. We might be inclined to see all hierarchy as bad because that sort of conflict of interest can happen, willed or not. That's why, where there are power relationships in employment or even representative democracy, systemic integrity and human values depend upon gaining and maintaining consent.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the reply, Michael!

I have worked in a chain restaurant. And that's one of the experiences that convinces me of the essential inhumanity of deep hierarchy. There was some coworker cameraderie, sure. But I don't think there was anything human- centered about the place. Workers were replaceable, disposable units. Much of the worker bonding was despite (or against) the company and the managers, not because of it. And restaurants in some ways have it easier, in that the purpose of the work is present and visible. For many organizations, that's much less true.

As to definition of hierarchy, the last half of the word literally means "rule" or "government", like monarchy or oligarchy, so I'm comfortable with my definition. I agree one can use it as a metaphor to understand natural systems, but it's only a metaphor. And as with the Great Chain of Being, I think it's a dangerously easy one to over-apply.

There are surely phenomena in emergent systems that relate and are worth studying, but conflating them with primate dominance structures obscures more for me than it reveals. To the extent that nature tells us things, though, it can't tell us what ought to exist. That's our job.

I totally agree that consent is vital for humane organizations. But I think that's in direct opposition to hierarchy, which is about top-down control. American democracy, for example, is basically non-hierarchical. I'm a participant in and subject to at least 9 quasi-independent governments (city, county, state, federal, regional transit district, school district, community college district, air quality management district, municipal utility district), plus various splits (executive, legislative, judicial). None of these controls any of the others. And none of them controls me, either, except in certain deeply constrained circumstances.

That stands in contrast to me to the essentially feudal structures of scaling American businesses. The main rule there is "my way or the highway" for all superiors. In theory, employees can always switch jobs to another company. But that's always much easier on the employer than the employee, so I think that does very little to act as a practical check. Employees and teams can try to carve out niches, but I've always seen that happen at the sufferance of (or with the neglect of) management, never because the teams had much real authority. And the more levels they have above them, the larger the set of people who can ruin things for them without consequence or even awareness.

The only exception I personally see much is at very mission-driven organizations. There the stated purpose really seems to have some teeth; people are willing to leave if they aren't doing good. In fact, right now, one team at Code for America has just demanded the resources to improve their code quality so that they can be more effective at serving their audience. And I just saw them excitedly share your 2002 paper. So I believe it's possible!

I guess what I'm arguing for here is to see what happens when we put human- centered systems first and scaling second. It may be that there are fundamental limits, in which case we'll face some hard choices between economy of scale and treating humans like humans. But I've never even seen a place try. It's always, "Oh, we're getting big, better hire an earl of mobile development and put him under the duke of engineering." Maybe the bankers overthrow the CEO boy-king, maybe they don't. But I've never seen anybody stop to question the dominant paradigm.

<comment><USER9> Bill, it's interesting to read your reply and see your worldview. It looks like you've had way worse experiences with employers than with governmental entities, and you see living with the former way worse than living with the latter. I know people who see the world in exactly the opposite way. They'll rail all day about how the government affects their lives and constrains their choices (and they have very concrete examples) yet they are happy working within constraints at work and see more opportunity there than they do in their governmental dealings.

Realistically, they have options in both spheres, but they only feel one oppressively and they tend to assume that everyone else does too. Where power is exercised at work they are okay with it - they recognize it as part of the system and don't feel like cogs.

I wish you the best in finding new glasses to see the world of work through, just as I wish the same for people I know who are fighting governmental oversteps. The key thing is - it's not all bad. There is badness out there but structure is not determinative. Look for happy people in any system. You'll find them. What we look for in life does affect what we see, and what we create. Best of luck to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hmmm. Maybe. What I've found is that IT often re-invents past designs and methods to solve modern problems. Matter of fact, the way the cloud providers scaled was to re-implement mainframes on x86 boxes. The next level is applying lessons from older research in modern ways to improve efficiency of various parts of HW and SW. If anything, quite a few people came up with timeless lessons that teach you how to do efficient, reliable computation. They keep getting reused.

So, I don't think we can take it as far as author is suggesting where it's like classical vs quantum physics. Maybe at ASIC vs software level. Even those were partly joined with synthesis & coprocessing tools. I just don't see it as every high-level description I read about things is based on similar principles at each layer of the stack. Given similar constraints or goals, you would use similar strategy. There's certainly divergence or outliers but more repetition of patterns than anything.

The only myths are that technology/fads X, Y, and Z should've been widespread adopted over the ones (or enhancements of them) that consistently worked. The author is seeing results of people building on stuff that came with assumptions that don't match new problem. Or people straight-up ignoring root cause in their solutions or methods. Common problems.

</comment><comment><USER11> Reg. the architecture question: People generally start carving out microservices once they hit some scale.

What about starting off with microservices (because tools like k8s make the otherwise insane management overhead more tractable)? Could that be a possible solution?

The problem of scaling state, databases need to handle anyway. Ideally the same database just keeps on working as you go up. Or atleast the protocol is the same, and you switch out the implementation from a single instance to a clustered version.

</comment><comment><USER12> One of the underlying problems is that there isn't a formula (= process) for innovation. Most software development tries to create a competitive advantage by creating something unique that isn't easy to replicate.

So, every process around being able to deliver that by just applying that process creates a false hope. Or it is not meant for this purpose but the "buyers" aren't aware of it and have other expectations.

</comment><comment><USER13> As somebody who loves startups and small teams, and who has a job working with both small and big organizations, I have been living this scaling thing for a long time.

I'd like to give you a simplistic answer, like "All you need, kid, is a small team! For anything!"

Slogans like that are true, but yet they are terribly misleading, because 1) many organizations are already terribly overstaffed, and 2) it doesn't really help to tell teams "What do I do right now?"

So here's as simple as I can make it:

Good organizations will do whatever is necessary to make things that people want, even if that means instead of programming, the programmers sit on the phone and do some manual chore for people as they call. Before you code anything, you have to be hip-to-hip with some real person that you're providing value to.

But as soon as you have those five folks sitting on the phones doing something useful? You gotta immediately automate. Everything. This means you're going to have all freaking kinds of problems as you move from helping ten people a day to helping a million. You have to automate solutions, access, coordination, resource allocation, failovers, and so on -- the list is almost endless (but not quite)

As they grow, poor organizations take a scaling problem and assign it to a person. Somebody does it once, then they're stuck with it for life. Good organizations continue to do it manually, then immediately automate. Somebody does it once, then the team immediately starts "plugging all the holes" and fixing the edge cases so that nobody ever has to manually be responsible for that again.

Growing "sloppy" means you end up helping those million people a day -- but you have hundreds of people on staff. Meetings take time. Coordination takes time. There are a ton of ways to screw up. People tend to blame one another. Growing good means you can be like WhatsApp, servicing a billion users with a tiny team of folks.

If you're already an existing BigCorp and have been around for a while -- odds are that you are living with this sloppy growth pattern. That means you need to start, right now, with identifying all the feedback loops, like release management, and automating them, such as putting in a CI/CD pipeline. Not only that, but there are scores of things just like that. You have a lot of work to do. It might be easier just to start over. In fact, in most cases the wisest thing to do is start over.

Now picture this: you're an Agile team at BigCorp and you've got the fever. Woohoo! Let's release often, make things people want, and help make the world a better place. But looking around, all you see is ten thousand other developers in a huge, creaky machine that's leaking like a sieve. You go to a conference with a thousand other BigCorps, just like yours. Are you going to want to hear about how it's better just to trash things and start over, about the 40 things you need to have automated right now but don't, or how to make your section of 150 programmers work together; how to "scale agile"?

Scaling Agile is an issue because the market says it is an issue.</comment>


2012 Blogging Year in Review and 2013 Goals - <AUTHOR> http://www.daniellemorrill.com/2013/01/2012-blogging-year-in-review-2013-goals/

<comment><USER2> Interesting. The problem with blogging (imho) as a medium is that it rewards mediocrity. Spending 6-8 hours per post is probably the sweet spot in terms of making it onto the front page of HN or whatever, and past 12 hours the addition return on investment is minimal to non-existant. The best strategy for getting followers therefor is to generally write well, but to minimize time spent doing actual research and/or serious thought. It's kind of frustrating, especially since RSS is basically dead so there isn't really any endgame.

A lot of my blog posts are things I've spent 100+ hours working on, but at that point it's basically just art with no practical business or reputational value.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, it is easy to spend way too much time on a post - as a rule I spend no more than 3 hours on a post, and I kind of embrace mediocrity. At some point (often way before hitting the full 3 hours), the value of publishing and starting a conversation become greater than producing a perfect piece of writing that may come from more time spent editing and refining the post itself.

A lot of the posts I spent the least time on did the best on HN, and some of the ones I labored over and loved the most linger in obscurity.

The best thing that happened because of my blog this year, at least external of my own personal happiness at self-expression, was a woman approaching me at a conference who read my most popular post, quit her job, and started a company. It's hard to explain why that's so valuable a feeling, because she was probably nearly ready to make that decision and my post just came at the right time, but it gives me a sense of connectedness with other people that I think a lot of Internet citizens are missing. Mediocre writing, first rate conversations and happiness.

I hope in 2013 you'll lower the bar on the writing and publish more, you might really enjoy it.

<comment><USER2> "I hope in 2013 you'll lower the bar on the writing and publish more, you might really enjoy it."

I have one more long post I'm determined to finish if it kills me. It's already 30,000+ words, so granted it's arguably not even a blog post anymore. But yeah, I'm basically cataloging all the infrastructure problems in the US. So I'm taking all the different issues you see people bring up all the time in various articles, linking every single fact to a primary source, and aggregating all those in one place. And then writing some analysis on top.

After that I'll go back to writing shorter stuff though.</comment></comment></comment>


PHP-based Crossword Creator code - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone know where I could find PHP-based Crossword Creator code? Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> <http://pastie.org/922862></comment>


Police asks Google for location data of all near crime scene - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40546112/police-are-asking-google-to-provide-user-data-for-all-people-near-crime-scenes <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16610088](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16610088) Previous discussion here.

In fact, the article cited in this article was the one posted previously. It's much more thorough about what happened.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is really concerning to anyone who values privacy. Even if Google doesn't comply here, this won't be the last request they get. Eventually there will be an event where public opinion is in favor of Google releasing said data (like the Florida school shooting), and it's hard to imagine this not becoming a polarizing topic in the media.

</comment><comment><USER4> IMO: If they have the data--and they do--eventually they will be forced to release it.

if not for a run of the mill murder it will be done for a terrorist attack, a child kidnapping or something similar. Judges will twist and bend the 4th Amendment and once it's done for that case, it's fair game for all.

<comment><USER5> The portion of 'terror' attacks that authorities already suspected would occur or had been warned might occur is more problematic. And that's just the ones we hear about. It seems that far too often authorities have the data and struggle to use it. Hitting up companies with full legal fury once the horse has bolted doesn't help my cynicism.</comment></comment>


20 ad agencies in Belgium go on strike,  produce artful protest - <AUTHOR> http://www.aironair.be/

<comment><USER4> Sounds like they fear the outcome of a 99designs.com type world - <USER2> legitimately so. But, why wouldn't they just refuse to pitch to clients who do this? Alternatively, as they suggest, they should spend less on pitching - <USER3> my guess is that if the prize is big enough they'd do it anyway.

A strike seems like a silly response that could also be interpreted to attempting to reduce competition in a specific region and in effect form a cartel - a cartel that would seem to be counterintuitive especially when the barrier to good ideas is no longer limited within borders.

I have to wonder if "major players came together to design rules of the game" in the US in any industry group that it wouldn't be considered to be anti- trust.

<comment><USER5> > _But, why wouldn't they just refuse to pitch to clients who do this?_

So allow big businesses to ruin the smaller ad agencies by getting them to pitch just in case?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What a stupid design! Clicked 5 or so links and gave up.

Question: is there a reason for using Flash when it's just static content being displayed? I'm using ClickToFlash on my Mac (Flash sucks on the Mac) and that made this just that much more of a pain...

<comment><USER7> I've worked for another office of one of the agencies involved and the reason that they use Flash is that ad agencies love Flash, because they get to use buzzwords like "rich media" and "interactive" and HTML/CSS/JS isn't "rich" or "interactive" enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you're doing the Internet and _that_ is your idea of effective communication then your business needs killing.

<comment><USER9> And one of the servers in the chain is not responding...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I admire how all the agencies are working together to protest a cause. However, I really don't like how they chose to do so. First of all, as rajat mentioned (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1128286>) why use flash? Not only is it slower to load than an image such as a png, but what about those browser's/phones (ahhem the iPhone) that don't have flash capabilities?

I attempted to read the messages on each site, but many times I would get connection timeouts as I jumped from site to site, which became annoying after a while so I stopped even trying to continue reading.

With that said I don't think it's very effective. I think a better way would have been to buy a domain and have all the websites protesting forward to it and show the protest message there.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is the full text. (Did they purposely chunk it up to avoid open discussion or what?!)

Dear visitor,

As you can see, we have replaced our regular website with this letter. It's going to stay up one week to express our discontent.

Allow us to explain. In the 1990's the UBA and the ACC developed a charter. All the major players signed up to it, and it defined the rules of the game for agency pitches for over a decade.

There's not much left of that charter now. For example, one of things it states is that no more than three agencies (plus the incumbent) should ever be invited to pitch on any piece of business. but in recent competitions, we've sometimes seem more than 10 agencies throwing their names into the ring.

Why does that matter? Well, Pitches, like boxing, work in rounds. You get through one round, and go onto the next. Last man standing wins. Unlike boxing, however, pitches rely on the participants punching themselves in the head.

A big pitch can cost an agency upwards of 80000 euro. Just getting into the second round takes huge amounts of energy. And if you're lucky enough to get that far, you then have to invest even more resources just to have a chance of getting something out of it. And if 10 agencies are taking part, that's a 90% percent chance that you're taking a bruising for nothing.

If that were the end of it, who would care? Nobody's going to lose any sleep if there are a few less advertising in the world. But the thing is it's not us who'll suffer: it's you we're worried about.

Pitches us up energy. Energy an agency would normally use to provide its existing, paying customers with the best possible work. So the logical conclusion of the system as it now stands is that at some point you will become a victim of it yourself. The day will eventually come when your agency has to divert the creative and stategic energy you're paying it for into a pitch for someone else's business.

Our idea of a sane world is where you do your best work for the clients you do have. Not the ones you don't. So we think it's in everyone's best interest to get back to where we started: the charter.

The charter that was put together by wise men not to protect themselves , but to protect their industry. The charter that makes sure a downturn doesn't turn into the demise of Belgian communications. The charter that ensures are matched. With the agency they need. And that agencies are protected from their instinctive hungers not to miss out on opportunities.

Besides, judging an agency isn't rocket science. Our work is on every street corner, and all over the internet every day. (Except, today, of course). Our reputations, our beliefs and our individual visions aren't exactly trade secrets.

And our awards ... Well if you haven't heard of them you soon will. Talk to an agency and you'll see right away if they see things the same way you do. But don't delude yourself. Asking an agency to pitch is not the same as briefing one. In a pitch, the only target audience is you. The only question an agency can ask itself is, "What do we need to do to get the client?"

But it's never too late to change. We recently confronted a major advertiser with how they were running their pitch. And they changed a speculative competition into a much more motivating an much lower-cost procedure.

Great idea. Great result. but we didn't think of it. It was just in the charter. So let's not all lose hope just yet. Thanks for listening. View the competition charter here: [http://www.accbelgium.be/Content/acc/charterscodes/competiti...](http://www.accbelgium.be/Content/acc/charterscodes/competitioncharter/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> I couldn't be arsed to read it all due to the fact that none of the pages wanted to load in a timely matter. Seems like some of those agencies should take some of the money they invest into their "creative and strategic processes" and divert it to a much more functional technical services team. :)

</comment><comment><USER13> It seems ironic that these advertising agencies can't seem to figure out how to get clients. If they were good, couldn't they just advertise for themselves and make clients approach them, without the pitching madness.

Also, the needless use of flash completely disqualifies them.

<comment><USER5> > _It seems ironic that these advertising agencies can't seem to figure out > how to get clients._

<http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:.be+advertising+agency> shows that they're some of the top advertising agencies operating in Belgium.

They're complaining not about not getting clients but about getting potential clients who insist the agency outlay a large amount of time and resource before committing. This is simply abusive as all the ad agencies work is out in the open for the client to determine if they like it and so the pitch is simply about deciding if the advertiser can work with the agency.

It seems a reasonable complaint. Trying to return a sense of decency to business practices is probably a tough road though.

<comment><USER13> It seems ridiculous to go on strike. If they don't like their client's business practice, why don't they just refuse to do business that way? If they are so good, surely they could afford that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As far as I got, they had some good points (i.e this race to the bottom is going to impact the consumers themselves at some point), but I think it's part of a bigger overall issue and is probably better (and less frustratingly) covered by e.g. "The Walmart Effect".

</comment><comment><USER11> When will people finally get that this is inevitable? Supply in the creative arts increased massively, so prices WILL come down. Photographers had iStockphoto happen to them, coders had their eLance moment, design had 99designs. Photography, coding & design survived. So why should I care about advertising? I you can't make your business lean enough to compete with the crowdsourcing world, you probably deserve a little beating-up. Oh, and coming from you, Mr. AdMan, it just sounds like whining: get over it, big media buys are over, it's all about metric-based advertising. Good luck anyway with your venture from a fellow Belgian

<comment><AUTHOR> ... tries to overlay his avatar in the physical world with a picture of a purple cow

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Too bad. I tried to read the whole thing but things stop when you get to publicis.be.

I'll try to write something insightful and witty when the whole tattle-tale is complete.

<comment><USER16> Change the id= parameter to get the rest of the slides (where you start is arbitrary; all the hosts serve all the pages, but each host only has a pointer to one other host.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why are they so intent on throwing their hat into every battle? Shouldn't they understand their industry well enough to pick their battles sensibly?

</comment><comment><USER18> TL;DR. And it made my browser crash.</comment>


A Pain in the Athens: Why Greece Isn't to Blame for the Crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/greece/2015-07-07/pain-athens

<comment><USER2> Interesting point of view from the mainstream narrative -- but if this is true, why aren't more people pointing it out?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think perhaps partly because it's just not being told? It wouldn't be the first time, after all.

There's another great piece here on just how out-of-control the German narrative of events has become here: [http://mainlymacro.blogspot.fi/2015/07/why-germany-wants- rid...](http://mainlymacro.blogspot.fi/2015/07/why-germany-wants-rid-of- greece.html)

I think there's something to be said for the parallel he draws: It's essentially the typical local austerity narrative writ large. The poor/creditor are lazy and corrupt and their woes are all their fault (pay no attention to the Bugatti driving banker behind the curtain).

<comment><USER3> Conspiracy aside. It's easier to vilify a single group than explain the true more complex story.

Great quote from your article: There is a "universal tendency for poverty to be explained in terms of the personal failings of the poor."</comment></comment></comment>


Easy HTML5 Template - <AUTHOR> http://www.impressivewebs.com/easy-html5-template/

<comment><USER2> Interesting. I was wondering when folks would be overwhelmed by the content of HTML5 Boilerplate. I expect this trend to continue.

FWIW, these boilerplates are enormously useful for reference and gaining knowledge of how HTML5 works, but rewriting and expanding our personal boilerplates is what we do as front-end devs. We never had a standardized boilerplate for HTML 4, after all.

Personally, I take bits and pieces of knowledge and techniques from these boilerplates, roll them into my own base template, and build on them with each project.

<comment><USER3> I am afraid these boilerplates will be an excuse for many not to learn a thing about what they are doing, like we had XHTML doctypes slapped onto the pages (or place there by IDEs).

<comment><USER4> Which is sad, considering that HTML5 makes is so very easy to write (valid) HTML off the top of your head:

      <!doctype html>
      <title>Hello World!</title>
      <p>insert important message to world here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I had the exact same feeling when I first looked over HTML5 Boilerplate.

The HTML itself isn't so exotic. But my eyes glaze over paging through all the CSS & JS. And then there's the .htaccess -- all sorts of black magic in there.

Very useful as a reference for different issues, but there's no way I'm going to start with all of that baggage before a single line of original code. It feels over-engineered to cover every possible corner case.

</comment><comment><USER6> Ugh. Showcases some of the new HTML5 features, but do we really need a template for basic HTML tags?

</comment><comment><USER7> How spammy.</comment>


Jumping Ship from iPhone to Android: A Switcher's Guide - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5581029/jumping-ship-from-iphone-to-android-a-switchers-guide <comment><USER2> Lifehacker is still recommending task killer apps? Those things are almost entirely regarded a Bad Idea™ among the Android crowd.

<comment><USER3> I count myself among the "Android crowd" and Advanced Task Killer has nearly tripled the battery life on my T-Mobile MyTouch slide post-installation.

I can't cite a single negative side-effect of using it for the past 3 months.

<comment><USER4> I doubt it. Android does not work that way; activities that aren't being used don't run. They exist in memory, and "killing them" removes them from memory, but that doesn't affect battery life.

Now, if you install every app from the Market and don't use them, then that can be a problem, because some apps do run in the background. But that is a very special case. Things like Maps, Browser, etc., aren't eating your battery life. Things like updating Twitter every 30 seconds are. Telling Twidroid to update your tweets every 15 minutes instead of every 30 seconds will save more battery than all the task killers in the world ever will.

<comment><USER5> Some activities can be linked to services that will run with no regards to the Activity lifespan. Most implementations will have a stopService in the Activitie's onDestory so if that's the case killing a task may disable a running process.

<comment><USER4> Indeed, but most users of task killers don't kill the background processes they actually want. They set those to update every nanosecond, then kill useless things like Maps, Browser, Contacts, etc., that aren't actually draining their battery.

(Alternatively, there are some nasty apps that start at boot and won't quit, like Sipdroid. Those you have to kill with fire. But it's a special case, and not how normal users use task killers.)

The other case is the homescreen-killing issue; that is something task killers can give the illusion of fixing. But it's better to install CM, enable compcache and swap, and never deal with that BS again. I did that, and it staved off my need to spend $600 on a new phone. Task killers, in comparison, did nothing, because they don't solve any underlying hardware problems (or work around them in a clever way, like compcache).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> FWIW, a few of the items seem to be specific to Sense UI; the unlock swipe, for instance, is L > R on my Nexus One, not top-down.

</comment><comment><USER7> There's advantages and disadvantages to switching. However Verizon has been the saving factor. In my area, the 3g of Verizon is 2 to 3 times as fast as it was on my old ATT plan.

Also, its very nice to be free of some of the stupid iphone limitations (like not being able to download podcasts to the phone automatically). It's also very nice to have a a couple extra spare couple batteries that I can swap in (motorola droid) to extend the battery life.

<comment><USER8> Can you do the battery swap without restarting the phone and without plugging it in? If you can't, it's not a worthwhile feature for me. If I need to carry a power adapter, I might as well just plug the phone in to recharge it.

By making the battery non-removable, Apple can put a bigger battery in, which is something I _can_ use. It also makes the phone itself lighter and stronger, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Dear god can we please stop with the iPhone vs. Android crap around here? I can see where posts about revenue in the App Store or the Market are Hacker News. I can even see where posts about the relative sales volume and/or growth trends are Hacker News, but this?

</comment><comment><USER10> They don't mention Google Accounts integration, which seems a bit odd - it's my absolute favourite feature of Android. The integration of Mail, Contacts and Calendar feels incredibly 'cloudy', for want of a better word - it's the incredible lightness of not having to worry about where your data is.

<comment><USER11> I haven't used an android phone, but the iPhone can use the cloud features of Google Accounts as well (maybe not as slick though?). Using Google Sync works pretty well on the iPhone for the calendar, contacts, and mail.

<comment><USER12> It not just "using cloud features of Google Accounts". On Android, you _don't sync_. You just add new contact to your phone and in few seconds, it is in the cloud. Or add contact through web interface and in few seconds, it is in your phone.

When you start using it, you stop worrying about where did you put your contact and whether you synced it. It is just everywhere applicable, automatically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been considering doing this myself, not because of the virtues of either device platform per-say, but because of the exorbitant rates I pay for AT&T's spotty service.

Edit: in other words, if I switch to an Android phone it'll be because of a better carrier like Verizon.

</comment><comment><USER14> This seems a little inaccurate. Voice capabilities are available as an API usable in any app, and there is a Google app and a Bing app if you need voice searching. "Instant Web" didn't make much sense either. The iPhone has built in e-mail, calendar, contacts, etc. If you need it to sync over-the-air, Mobile Me and Microsoft Exchange are included as well, and Google's services work with Microsoft Exchange.

</comment><comment><USER15> That SlideScreen app they reference right up front uses an Autechre track for the demo video: <http://slidescreenhome.com/>

Did they get permission? Has Ae been used in a commercial before?

</comment><comment><USER16> Nothing compelling to switch from the iPhone. A slightly more advanced navigation app? Woohoo. Tight integration with google apps? There's a big surprise, Google trying to take over your life is an ever increasing threat/normality that is rapidly pushing it into Microsoft levels of people hating it.

Most of the rest of it is actually negative points, bad touch screens, poorly monitored app store allowing spyware through (who'd have thought it? defending the app store, wow), low default storage capacity (but extendable, wow, ever think I just want it to work?), bizzare button implementations.

He doesn't sound convinced himself that android is even worth it.

As a Brit who doesn't have to put up with AT&T, all this did was reinforce my belief that the iPhone is so, so much better.</comment>


Show HN: "Memory" at VanillaGrape with modes:"Original-52","JAQK-16","Short-26" - <AUTHOR> http://vanillagrape.com/Memory/single_player/game

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN community, We wanted to showcase our first game, "Memory", at our new startup, VanillaGrape. VanillaGrape is a place for "delicious, free card games".

Currently, we have launched our first game, called Memory, and the response has been really positive. We've gotten tons of feedback from our family and friends, and have made changes accordingly, and we continue to improve the game.

To play the Memory game, you flip open 2 cards, and if they are same numbered cards, then you score a point, and continue to flip open 2 more cards. If the card numbers are different, then those 2 cards are flipped back, and it is computer's turn to flip open 2 cards. Here, if the cards are same numbered, then computer scores a point, and continues to flip open 2 more cards. This way, the game-play goes back and forth between you and computer, and whoever scores the highest points wins the game.

Last night, we updated the Memory game, and added 3 modes - "Original-52", "JAQK-16", and "Short-26".

Original-52 has 52 cards. JAQK-16 has only 16 cards available - Jack, Ace, Queen, and King of all four suits. In Short-26, the deck is cut in half, so that, instead of two pairs, only a single pair can be made. Meaning, if you pick two queen cards, then there will not be any more queen cards available.

We're very new, and it would be great if the HN community could please visit and play our game, located at [http://vanillagrape.com](http://vanillagrape.com).

And because we're very new, there might be tiny details that we might have missed out, so we'd like to iron out those things, before continuing on to make more games. The UI has been somewhat of a challenge. So, we'd love to know if there's any issues you find, or if there's feedback or comments you'd like to provide.

Also, you can read more about our development on our blog - "Thoughts & Talk & Tech" at [http://vanillagrape.com/blog](http://vanillagrape.com/blog)

Thank you! We appreciate you taking time in helping us.</comment>


Wolf Price: Photos of War, Happiness, and Women's Rights - <AUTHOR> http://www.thangudu.com/post/39027887678/wolf-price-photos-of-war-happiness-and-womens-rights

<comment><AUTHOR> I've seen many entrepreneurs in the valley use similar tactics to sneak into conferences and garner equipment and resources for building product.</comment>


Things I Learned from Chris Dixon about Startups (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://a16z.com/2015/01/18/12-things-learned-from-chris-dixon-about-startups/ <comment><USER3> This is interesting at a meta-level.

It's ultimately content marketing for a16z. If Chris Dixon wrote this same article—e.g. "Here are all of the best things I've said"—then it would come off as arrogant or ickily self-promotional. But having someone else write it allows the author to praise the ideas without the same stigma.

I don't know whether it was intentional or not, but it's interesting how well the content comes across when the base idea ("writing about smart things our partner was right about") is the type of marketing companies/VCs _want_ to actually say but social norms prevent.

The article itself is an example of the advice within the article. A "good idea that people think is a bad idea."

<comment><USER4> It's completely intentional. a16z is fantastic at marketing, PR, and brand building. In less than a decade, while generating very unimpressive returns for LPs, they've built one of the strong VC brands in the world. They're phenomenal at it. They do it so well that they make it look easy, but it's not at all.

<comment><USER5> This is, without a doubt, the boldest and most impressive backhanded compliment I've ever read on HN.

I have no idea what A16Z's returns for their LPs are across their funds, but this could literally be right out of a movie script.

      **SCENE**

      GENERAL PARTNER is chatting with potential LIMITED PARTNER
      over cocktails.

      LP: The fund you're raising... the thesis, it's...
          interesting. You've done a great job with your last
          three funds. But I've read similar things from
          Andreessen's team that make me think they have a
          better grasp of the space - wouldn't my money be
          better invested with them?

      GP smirks and calmly reaches towards MARTINI GLASS,
      casually picking the toothpick, olive still attached,
      between her thumb and index fingers. She places the olive
      between her teeth to the side of her mouth, grasps, and
      pulls the olive off the toothpick in one swift motion.
      She carefully places the toothpick in a napkin, stares LP
      in the eye, and pauses just a moment before aggressively
      biting down. She finishes chewing without breaking eye
      contact.

      GP: Ah. Yes, they do market themselves as visionaries.
          It's completely intentional. They're fantastic at
          marketing, PR, and brand building. In less than a
          decade, while generating very unimpressive returns,
          they've built one of the strongest VC brands in the
          world. They're phenomenal at it. They do it so well
          that they make it look easy, but it's not at all.

      LP: So if I'd like to make money...

      GP: You got it. How much are you in for?

<comment><USER6> I actually liked what you wrote. Only thing I can add is they were able to build that brand based on the legacy start power of Marc Andressen. I wonder what would have happened if he hadn't been involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm somewhat tired of these kind of "startup folklore" articles, although I read and bookmark them all. Sure, these people were crazy successful and see many other people being successful. Still, so much of these "insights" feel like they could be exactly the other way around. Many successful founders I have met, have told me: _well, no we weren't the only ones doing this, but we got lucky for this and that reason (e.g. timing)._ What if the lucky ones wrote the "rules"?

I don't know if it's possible but I would love to see all these concepts proven by data.

<comment><USER8> There's a meta-insight there: what if the lucky ones _do_ write the rules?

If that's the case, an optimal strategy might be to take as many convex bets as possible, keep secret all the ones that fail, and then once a low- probability bet succeeds, milk it for all it's worth and convince everyone you're a genius. You can then leverage that for significant financial gain from organizations who seek genius-level insights in the future. Eventually regression-to-the-mean makes you lose your credibility, but in the meantime you can pocket significant amounts of cash and invest them in much more stable revenue-generating assets.

A glance at who's been successful since the 3rd millenia started shows that this might not actually be a bad career strategy.

<comment><USER9> The other part that's insidious is even the most well-meaning and well- intentioned individuals oftentimes fail to understand the role of luck in their success. Some psychological studies posted here on HN support that people that are successful even for completely random reasons start to believe that they did something different from others. One of the points in the posted article here indirectly addresses this though that you should listen to those that failed too because when people fail it's usually much more clear why compared to the agency of the founders that succeeded. Furthermore, successful people tend to stick near other successful people - they are insulated oftentimes from most of the world that is normal out there. Nobody on tech blogs cares about the insights of a middle manager of a construction company in Louisiana, but there's so many businesses out there that do perfectly fine it seems odd to me how little cross-pollination seems to happen.

One of the criticisms of psychological studies historically has been that we've been studying mostly abnormal behaviors and that it'd be like trying to determine how a car is built based upon only asking repair shop auto mechanics. Similarly though, I think we need to invert this for business - <USER2> need to identify commonalities between businesses that fail more than we need to identify the factors that cause success (the entrepreneurship porn out there is potentially harmful this way despite the many articles on the dark side of it). I think the common factors in what causes failures are fairly static compared to the factors that cause success. This interview[1] is a great example of what was successful at one point in history can totally fail later (much greater planning necessary in the early 90s while now we're focused upon market fit / reactivity today as a trend). My gut feeling is that some kinds of companies are better off sticking to their guns and churning out good product independent of the market trends while others need to evolve.

1\. [https://torch.io/interview-series-tim-brady/](https://torch.io/interview- series-tim-brady/)

<comment><USER10> > One of the criticisms of psychological studies historically has been that > we've been studying mostly abnormal behaviors

I'm not sure this is actually true. There's tons of data from "normal" subjects, though normal here mostly means "average behavior of an 18-22 year old college student." If anything, psychology would probably benefit from more focus on individual differences rather than commonalities.

<comment><USER9> For some more context I was paraphrasing a passage from a psychology textbook about the position psychology was in several decades ago, in particular about how languages are processed in the brain and how most of what we've learned about processing languages came from analyzing people's brains that acquired disabilities such as through strokes, accidents, etc. I do agree with you to question the the original validity of the statement in relevance to where we are now - my point is to question the status quo in business discussions of primarily studying the survivors when they're the minority for tech businesses and to ask some more fundamental questions of "are all these business principles relevant after the survivors talk about it publicly?" or is it closer to revealing winning lottery numbers after the drawing is over?

I must admit I may be missing some much more fundamentals that are discussed in academic programs for business (like data structures in CS programs) but am curious why they're treated as table stakes for merely talking about topics like market fit and growth projections when engineers do talk frequently about "basics" like essential data structures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This echos a lot of hard lessons that I had during my time as a founder. While a lot of this is great advice, I'm frustrated by the advice of "if people reject you and things are hard, then things are going well". Because I believe there's more depth to people's rejection of your idea/product/business and they could have valid reasons.

My real issue is how to weed out the legitimate feedback from the bad. No one has ever told me how to identify the difference. It's typically, "yay" means you've done well and "nay" also means you're doing well. When really, either of those responses could be a false positive - but which?

<comment><USER12> Having been through this a few times, my personal thinking now is:

"I like it" means absolutely nothing by itself. People will tell you they like your idea/demo/whatever all day and have absolutely no intention of ever using it, let alone paying money for it. What you want to hear is "How much does it cost and when can I buy it?" (assuming b2b) or "Can I be a beta tester?" (assuming b2c). Everyone else is fluff. If you're getting nothing but fluff after talking to a bunch of people, your idea is probably also fluff.

"No" by itself also means pretty much nothing. You want to be listening for "No because..." and then evaluate the because part. Is it no because they're not the right audience? Is it no because they don't see the market opportunity like you do? Is it no because they've already heard the same thing from 3 other entrepreneurs and yours is thus a me-too play? Is it no because [fundamental reason you didn't think of and have no answer to]? Etc.

<comment><USER13> Excellent point. When I'm talking with a first-time founder, they'll ask me what I think of their idea. Sometimes I'll say straight out: you shouldn't ask me that question, because if I answer you shouldn't listen to me.

Feedback from people in the target market is hugely valuable, especially if they answer in individual terms. E.g., I will/won't buy because X. But feedback from people not in the target market is rarely useful, especially when it's in theoretical terms. So unless I have some specific expertise, I try to redirect people toward the people they should actually be talking with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Chris Dixon is saying that the people most likely to know the "a secret" > about a business opportunity are people who have deep domain expertise

Which unicorns were started by people with deep domain knowledge? Struggling to think of any, but that may be a lack of imagination.

<comment><USER15> Twilio

<comment><USER14> I guess Fastly is unicorny, and also counts. Does seem to be the exception not the rule though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The thoughts about ideas and information are particularly relevant.

If you're not a domain expert everything you come up with will collapse under efficiency arguments. Such as "if this made sense someone would have done it".

Much of expertise is knowing what experts themselves think. That's why you can answer the question of why it isn't already there.

I have a question though. If you need to be a domain expert, how can there be so much focus on young founders? Is that a different category of investment, people who happen to have a lead into an emerging industry like social networks?

<comment><USER17> You really need to realize there are different markets.

Young founders are often in B2C and capital-light. They are judged (almost) purely on growth metrics. Series A negotiation can drag on for months, and its hard to fake 100% month-on-month growth.

The B2B will usually be more experienced insiders with deep domain knowledge, and excellent references.

EDIT: everything is relative. If you are a brilliant PHD in ML then you can be 25 AND a domain expert AND go in to a capital-heavy B2B sector.

<comment><USER18> For many consumer ideas, the younger people are the experts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There seems to literally be a bottomless pit of content-free aphorisms that spew out of the content marketing departments of venture capitalists every year.

Like does anyone read this stuff?

 _"[The] business of seed investing, and frankly, early-stage entrepreneurship, is so much about getting good information. And almost all of that information, unfortunately, is not published."_

OK cool, thanks. By the way also that's also true of all investing, in anything, ever throughout history. By definition good investment information is unique information, that's the nature of competitive markets.

 _"Ideas …matter, just not in the narrow sense in which startup ideas are popularly defined. Good startup ideas are well developed, multi-year plans that contemplate many possible paths according to how the world changes."_

Ideas matter. More thoughtful, well developed ideas matter more. Who knew? Another thing that matters is warm clothing, it's really handy.

 _"What the smartest people do on the weekend is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years."_

In ten years everybody will be spending time with their family, apparently.

 _This era of technology, it seems to be the core theme is about moving beyond bits to atoms._

Thank god, the whole sub-etha thing has been getting pretty tired.

And so on. This article is almost completely devoid of actual analysis or observation, it reads like a fugue on someone's stream of consciousness ramblings

<comment><USER20> I actually found a lot of it insightful. Maybe I'm not as priviledged as you are to be exposed to this stuff on a regular basis. Maybe 99% of the population isn't living in this bubble either.

It wasn't what you need for your paticular situation, and that's fine. But the general hostility towards this is strange. Why did you feel the need to attack it instead of moving on with your day? Genuinely asking.

<comment><USER19> I dunno. Same reason Mike Judge decided to make an entire show making fun of the same people I guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The OP has some good ideas.

That someone could see the future of smartphones when a mobile phone was a box of 100 pounds in the trunk of a car is a bit much. There WAS a possibility just by (1) talking to the electronic radio engineers about spectrum, bandwidth, propagation, and power, (2) learning about encryption, and (3) talking to the experts in microprocessor lithography and where that field was going. E.g., quite early on, IBM had their eye on line widths small enough to need X-ray wavelengths as a light source and built a cyclotron as an X-ray source.

The OP missed the possibly crucial role of original advanced technology, e.g., from applied math, that is difficult to understand, duplicate, or equal. Reasons for the OP to miss this possibility is that (1) they have seen little or no such on Sand Hill Road and (2) are unable to evaluate such technology themselves and unwilling to direct such evaluations by others. That the US DoD, DoE, NSF, NASA, NIH, etc. are willing to evaluate such technology early on and have done so with fantastically good effects is just ignored by Sand Hill Road. My guess is that the main cause is concerns by the institutional investor limited partners.

The part about building a demo to prove that the team can build serious software is not good: From all the months I contacted Sand Hill Road, apparently it doesn't much matter WHAT software a team has written in the past or what abilities the team has demonstrated, Sand Hill Road won't invest based on software yet to be written.

Writing such as the OP long misled me: I guessed that such considerations would be part of a VCs investment decisions. But after experience, I concluded, NO: Instead IMHO it appears that that the investment decisions are based on (1) traction significant and growing rapidly, (2) in a large market, (3) with little or no current competition, (4) with a team with not much obviously wrong with it, and (5) the team desperate for a check. The rest in the OP might tempt an entrepreneur to send a pitch deck but won't have anything to do with the VC writing a check.

</comment><comment><USER22> I stopped reading at "If you can't sell, starting a business is probably unwise."

<comment><USER23> You're not wrong. But that's basically dogma here. Sell first! Making a product before you sell it is bad!!

<comment><USER24> Core observation I have about a lot of startups (and other businesses): the ROI for sales and marketing is much better than the ROI for delivering actual value to your customers. Therefore, bullshitters tend to outcompete people who care about the product.

"If you can't sell, starting a business is probably unwise" may be realistic, but it saddens me deeply as a human being.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > #6 "What the smartest people do on the weekend is what everyone else will do > during the week in ten years." "Hobbies are what the smartest people spend > their time on when they aren't constrained by near-term financial goals."

We don't know this actually. What we know is the things that the 'smart' (whatever that is!) people who have succeeded did on the weekends. We not only don't know what the things they did that never went anywhere were or others who are less notable are spending their time on.

I hate these types of sugary statements that everyone flocks to.

</comment><comment><USER25> Number one is not a great idea. Of everyone worked on most pressing matters then we'd live in an inconvenient world full of frustrations. Think of how many products and services we rely on that went through a bunch of iterations to become marvels that we take for granted without a thought. The mundane aspects of our lives are full of opportunities for businesses that can turn frustration into delight.

</comment><comment><USER26> I know I'm probably on the wrong website, but I am so incredibly tired of reading and hearing about startups.

</comment><comment><USER27> Brilliant article with deep insights - very very good read for founders that articulates a lot of the deeply true and difficult things about starting and building a successful company.</comment>


Show HN: PasteMonitor – monitors and sends alerts for keywords on Pastebin - <AUTHOR> https://www.pastemonitor.com

<comment><USER2> I am interested to see how your relationship goes with Pastebin given that your product directly competes with their revenue model.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> PasteMonitor is intended to act as a general purpose complimentary service to @dumpmon and Troy Hunt's haveibeenpwned.com.

</comment><comment><USER3> not sure how fast the db refreshes, i made an account and made a search, then posted some pastebin doc with the terms in it, no results so far

<comment><AUTHOR> Polling happens every eight minutes, so you should be getting matches within that time period.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do you guys have plans for an API or webhooks?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm just a lone guy who built this in his spare time ;) If it turns out that this project has real world value to people, then an API seems like an obvious next step.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Email confirmations not sending?

<comment><AUTHOR> The WebJob that sends these out has a tendency to fall asleep, but there don't appear to be any pending so hopefully you've had it through ok now.</comment></comment>


Startup Advice Paradox - <AUTHOR> http://areallybadidea.com/startup-advice-paradox

<comment><USER2> edw519 said it best:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1343030>

<comment><USER3> It's a good comment. Did you bookmark that? If so then your list of bookmarked comments could make for an entertaining/educational post for your blog. Couldn't hurt. (Assuming you haven't already written such a post in the past.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the author provides good advice (JFDI), but I think he's missing the point of the TechCrunch article.

Sometimes people don't do self-inspection.

Sometimes people shoot first, ask questions later.

And sometimes people look within, but they don't know what to ask themselves.

If it were really as simple as JFDI / do what you want, people would turn off their brains and go. But lots of people have doubts simply because they don't even know what's fully involved or what to ask themselves. I think the TechCrunch article, while prehaps not made for this crowd, would be useful for someone who hasn't truly imagined all of the alternatives, or even thought about what the end goal would look like. If you take that article as a way to ask yourself the right questions, instead of advice, I think many people could benefit from the article by getting themselves to examine the right questions before they dive in guns a-blazin' (or the exact opposite).

</comment><comment><USER5> It's weird how often people need to be told that they should just go and do the thing they want to do instead of pussyfooting around about it.

That being said, the original TechCrunch article may help complete a small piece of the puzzle for those trying to figure out what doing a startup really means.</comment>


Installing an Intel X25-M SSD in a 15-inch Macbook Pro 2010 - <AUTHOR> http://colonhyphenp.blogspot.com/2010/04/installing-intel-x25-m-ssd-in-15-inch.html

<comment><USER2> Every link on that page is an affiliate link for a product from amazon, even the screwdrivers used.

And if you can't even install a drive in your computer without instructions why are you reading HN...

<comment><USER3> I guess he's trying to save up for the 160GB model :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha, got that right !

<comment><USER2> Just out of curiosity, how much do you make on writing an article like that and stuffing it with links?

<comment><AUTHOR> I doubt I'll make anything. I honestly just posted the article to show how easy it is to upgrade the MBP hard drive. It's my first time messing with Amazon Affiliates, and blogspot has a nice plug-in that makes it really easy to go amazon-link-happy.

<comment><USER2> Ah, that explains a lot. I was wondering why quite a few blogspot articles have amazon links in them. The problem is that it becomes very hard to see the difference between borderline spam and genuine articles. That's also how you got those tor-x links in there, I actually figured that was proof positive it was a spam article, because who would go out of their way to link an affiliate code to a bunch of tools they used.

I'll 'unflag' the article.

Thanks for the explanation!

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. I didn't realize amazon affiliate links carried such a negative connotation. I'll definitely keep that in mind for future posts and remove a few of the affiliate links from this post.

<comment><USER2> Don't worry about it, it's a pet peeve of mine :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Should also flash the firmware since it rarely if ever ships with the latest version.</comment>