Ask HN: Excelling at Middle Management - <AUTHOR> What are the tips / tricks / tools / processes / books you use to help you be an effective tech manager?
Tools might include dedicated use of project / task management tools such as Trello, Pivotal Tracker, JIRA, et cetera.
Processes might include practicing inbox zero, sticking to a very tightly regimented schedule (always groom the backlog first thing in the morning).
My particular struggles include a personal high cost of context switching and a very non-eidetic memory.
What works for you? <comment><USER2> I'm starting to run into more of these types of responsibilities and honestly the simplest thing for me to start taking more notes in my Moleskine notebook.

I've been doing Inbox Zero for a while, and I'm starting to segment my schedule out as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> Peopleware, Effective Executive (classic). Adopt some time management technique (doesn't matter what), and get good at it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Weekly 1-on-1's with every one I manage. We go for a walk and get lunch or coffee and talk.

Managing deliverables is much easier than managing people. Simply tell them when something needs to be done, get a commitment to it, and track it anywhere shared (whiteboard, trello, jira, or whatever).

<comment><USER5> Weekly 1on1 OUTSIDE of the office: I cannot agree more. This is the best management tool out there. It has to be outside of the office (else you'll have nothing to talk about and cut the meeting short).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> When you say "tech manager", are you asking about managing projects or managing people? (Or both?)</comment>


Ask HN: Inherent limitation of networks? - <AUTHOR>

Isn't there a mathematically proven limitation of networks, in that you can never be 100% sure that two clients are on the the same page?
I could send you a message, and to be sure you got it, I could ask for a confirmation. But are you sure I got the confirmation? We can confirm the confirmation, but then it's confirmations "all the way down", isn't it?
What's the name for this paradox? <comment><USER2> Perhaps you're thinking of the Two Generals Problem?

        Two armies, each led by a general, are preparing to attack a fortified city.
        The armies are encamped near the city, each on its own hill. A valley
        separates the two hills, and the only way for the two generals to communicate
        is by sending messengers through the valley. Unfortunately, the valley is
        occupied by the city's defenders and there's a chance that any given messenger
        sent through the valley will be captured. Note that while the two generals
        have agreed that they will attack, they haven't agreed upon a time for attack
        before taking up their positions on their respective hills.

        The two generals must have their armies attack the city at the same time in
        order to succeed. They must thus communicate with each other to decide on a
        time to attack and to agree to attack at that time, and each general must know
        that the other general knows that they have agreed to the attack plan. Because
        acknowledgement of message receipt can be lost as easily as the original message,
        a potentially infinite series of messages is required to come to consensus.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Generals%27_Problem>

<comment><USER3> I agree. Looks like the submitter is thinking of Two Generals. It's closely related to BFT ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_fault_tolerance> ) which does have some pretty complex solutions. Friend of mine wrote a paper on improving BFT for his PhD thesis.</comment></comment>


Best code repos to learn from? - <AUTHOR>

I'm going on a trip and thought I could read some actual code along with the usual books and cached articles. <comment><USER2> Redis (C): <https://github.com/antirez/redis> Underscore (JS): [http://documentcloud.github.com/underscore/docs/underscore.h...](http://documentcloud.github.com/underscore/docs/underscore.html) Backbone (JS): <http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/docs/backbone.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't know if it's best, but I learned a lot reading GLib code. Contains the implementation by the book of main data structures and utilities, and the code is easy to read (unlike day glibc.)

</comment><comment><USER4> GNU code has been recommended to me. SQLite</comment>


Start a blog to get a job in Programming - <AUTHOR> https://www.zeroequalsfalse.press/2018/12/13/blog/ <comment><USER2> Hi, Nice article.

I don't want to advertise, but I had similar story in mind and thus built UserCV.com Platform where professionals get free CV-Resume website and also free Blogging platform to write their skills under their own personalized domain. Since, not everyone wants to take burden of domain, hosting or other stuff. We did most of their work in it.

Don't want to act or impress like a SPAM to your post, but couldn't resist as the story is so much related to me.

I hope, you find it helpful and promote to your channels too. Your feedback and review on platform would be helpful too.

Thanks & Great write once again!

My +1</comment>


Introducing the HUD. Say hello to the future of the menu - <AUTHOR> http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/939 <comment><USER3> Heh as with most announcments where ubuntu makes changes to the UI the tech community is pretty dismissive, I for one love the fact that canonical are pushing forward a linux desktop experience in a way nobobdy else is, I didnt like unity much, but I trust these guys to fix it.

I find well done command interfaces much better than traditional menus for quite a lot of reasons

* they scale better, 10 items is a similiar experience to 100

* they are more discoverable, just start typing a word and go through the list of match (where help can be included)

* they can show information, each command can have a descriptive sentence (and a link to help), icons in a menu sometimes get tiny alt text

* they can adapt to your behaviour, if I use firefox all the time, pressing f in alfred give me firefox

<comment><USER4> _they are more discoverable, just start typing a word and go through the list of match_

I don't think that's discoverable. That is searchable: they do make it easier to search for a command you require without having to know under which menu to find it.

But they seem to be less discoverable in the sense that you cannot just browse through the menus to discover features. Having said that, there are probably ways to provide the discoverability of current menus, e.g., just list all the main menu items under each other, then typing a main menu item will show its items...

Still, discovering new features is not something you do nearly as often as using features you are familiar with, so the trade off seems to be a good one.

<comment><USER5> If the commands correspond to some set of objects (reserved words, defined functions, builtins, on-disk executables), then discoverability is indeed high.

Conventions also matter. Most Linux and GNU utilities offer:

\- manpages (or, deprecated, info pages) \- a brief help with some variant of "-h|-?|--help" \- package information under /usr/share/doc/, generally with a pointer to upstream.

They'll often include readline command editing, command completion, and other features, all very useful.

Systems such as Debian's 'dwww' (built in web-enabled documentation integration) allow accessing all of this and more through your browser, if you prefer.

Not all utilities offer this. I've seen more than my share of proprietary CLI tools with very, very poor documentation and discoverability, so this isn't something that's inherent to CLIs. But it's certainly doable.

I see some 3200+ commands available on my search path, plus shell builtins and functions. My shell history includes fewer than 200 ($HISTSIZE=3000).

The situation for GUIs is very nearly always worse. Except for minimal interfaces, it's difficult to present more than a dozen or so options at a time. Some level of predictive completion may help, but in doing so you're starting to bridge the divide between a pure menu and a CLI.

I've found myself preferring CLIs increasingly, even in nominally GUI tools. The vimperator plugin for firefox claws back crucially useful vertical real- estate while offering a very powerful interface to my browser.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps I'm misreading you, but what's wrong with "bridging the divide between menus and CLI's"?

That kind of thing sounds like an excellent fit, especially for the programs shown in the accompanying video. Some things just work better with a visual interface - web browsing, graphics work, etc - so the ability to get away from the graphical sparseness of a CLI implementation while keeping its speed and expressiveness sounds like an excellent compromise to me.

<comment><USER5> It depends on the purpose/goal.

The HUD proposal of Shuttleworth, on reading, is actually somewhat similar to how vimperator presently works. I can activate the statusbar with a ':' (same as in vi), and either hit tab or start typing. Though I don't get teh shinay overlay transparent displays, I'll get a list of completions for commands, URLs, bookmarks, etc.

Which is great when you're in front of a keyboard. When I'm using my phone (Android), I'm often annoyed at how niggly the interface is, and how much typing I have to do, in an environment which really does NOT support it well.

There are also users who simply learn things by rote. They don't know the commands, they don't understand the process, they simply click on a known element or (rarely) type something -- rarely more than their username or password. "My mom" or "Aunt Tilly" are the classic (if sexist) examples, but the former is certainly accurate in my case. She actively fears computers and loses about 50% of her confidence the second you park her in front of one.

As much as _I_ think I'd like the HUD, I really do NOT think it would work for her.

Which is where Ubuntu is getting schizoid. For the past five years, it's seemed that the distro has been aiming for wider and broader appeal, with ease-of-use functions that appeal to the 99% (or more accurately, the 99.99%) -- the technologically naive (or illiterate, if you prefer). Which really pisses off this particular element of the 0.01% when I'm stuck on that interface.

It appears that the distro's taking a hard tack in the opposite direction now.

My own suggestion: do NOT aim for a one-size-fits-all interface. Simply ain't gonna work. Sure, all you Mac users will try to convince me otherwise, but aqua's an interface I find myself grossly stymied in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Even casual users find typing faster than mousing._

Casual _Linux_ users, perhaps? I can't imagine anybody who's ever watched a casual _computer_ user use a computer saying anything like the above quote.

Most people have the mouse in their hand the entire time, and usually don't have their other hand anywhere near the keyboard. Typing involves not only clicking into a box and dropping the mouse, but actually leaning the entire body forward in order to reach the keyboard.

Even I, computer programmer by trade, spend the majority of my life in "first person shooter mode" rather than "typing mode" because most of a web dev's life is debugging things that happen in the browser (a mousish place), and pretty much anything you need to do along the code-analysis line can be done with a combination of pointing and left-handing.

If you make me drop my mouse every time I need to interact with an application on your OS, I don't think I'll use your OS.

<comment><USER8> Aha: Web developers have to use the mouse all the time. Interesting. Also thanks: Everytime I read something like this, it reminds me to never touch something like web development ever.

<comment><USER9> That's really not contributing to the discussion at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Man we really despise innovation attempts for some reason today on HN. Canonical is trying to push computing into the future and progress user interface by doing really hard stuff. They're sailing uncharted waters and giving us all a lot of good research, and all for free. This is honestly awesome. Not because it's going to be a UI revolution but because we get to see a well funded company, that cares about user rights, genuinely trying to innovate and make our lives better.

Plus the HUD sounds great. Anyone here use Quicksilver or mac spotlight or gnome do? I use them non stop, I can launch/search/command my computer using a simple interface without leaving my keyboard. Now I have this built into each application. And soon developers will start to build applications with this in mind and it'll get even slicker.

Theres no reason to poo on Canonical. They are trying super hard in the face of an ungrateful tech community. It's not about developing the system you personally would enjoy. It's about innovation and the future.

Think different mother fuckers.

<comment><USER11> I think the consensus is that everyone wants Ubuntu to be the "mainstream" Linux, which is most like the other mainstream desktop OSes and can be put up on a pedistal for its stability. All the recent changes like Unity and now this shake up a paradigm that has been in place for 2 decades.

I know for a fact that things like Unity keep me from installing Ubuntu on every family members PC as a general purpose OS. They are too different from Windows (nobody on my side really got on the OSX bandwagon) and then because of these constant huge UI changes things break that they can't fix and it would frustrate them to no end.

I don't want to speak for everyone, but I want to see experimental projects like this in some kind of Ubuntu test bad like Firefox has Aurora / Nightly to test new features. Things that work and are widely popular could be pushed into mainline releases, and things that aren't can be scrapped, maybe revisited later.

But throwing these paradigm shifts into release products makes everyone lean away from Ubuntu as a general purpose OS, which is what it was becoming best at. I think everyone just mourns the loss of potential.

<comment><USER12> the only consensus i'm seeing is that everybody wants to hate ubuntu. a mainstream product is the perfect place to test new UI concepts, because mainstream users don't care about these things and they don't have any expectations. despite what you might think, being very similar but not quite windows is not a good thing for a mainstream user.

everybody i've tested unity on has adapted to it really quickly. the very basics need teaching (things like showing them how to open the launcher), but beyond that users are pretty good at discovering things for themselves. the problem with making things very like windows is that people expect it to be exactly like windows, and panic when something isn't where they expect it to be. unity removes expectations and the user starts off with a blank slate, and they can learn fairly quickly. also, mainstream users don't panic over change they way you imply they do. they just don't notice change. there's a presentation from google that mentions when testing google instant, many users didn't even notice anything different.

the people who are hating on unity and ubuntu are not speaking for the mainstream, they are speaking for the power users who have a library of learned behaviours that they don't want to unlearn. a mainstream user doesn't have a whole lot of learned behaviours to overcome, and they will benefit more from a UI improvement than any other because so many of them are essentially re-learning the system every single time they try to accomplish something. lots of people say they want ubuntu to be built for the mainstream, but what they actually mean is that they want is a distro built specifically for themselves.

<comment><USER13> > mainstream users don't care about these things and they don't have any > expectations.

You talk like a "mainstream" user has never used a computer before.

> the very basics need teaching (things like showing them how to open the > launcher),

This is the reason why, in Windows, the start button is called the start button. After all these years, the start button doesn't have a label anymore because everyone, everywhere, now knows you that click the button in the bottom left corner to do anything.

<comment><USER12> for all intents and purposes, it's pretty safe to assume that a mainstream user has never used a computer before. after a couple years of onsite tech support, the biggest thing i took away was that when the average user sits down at a computer, they don't remember any usage patterns they may have learned during their last session. the way to make your UI usable is to assume that every user is using your software for the first time, every time.

there was a good rant on the verge a while back about the condescending UI, but from everything i've seen a little condescension is an essential part of a good UI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you want something similar in OS X right now (though not with super-fuzzy matching like this seems to have) you can just use the search box in the help menu to search for menu items.

It looks like this, and you can press return to activate the item: <http://i.imgur.com/uJPgD.png>

I've mapped Ctrl+M to move me there instantly with Keymando:

        map "<Ctrl-m>" do
            send('<Ctrl-F2>')
            send('<left>')
            send('<down>')
        end

EDIT: Turns out there's already a shortcut for this: Ctrl-Shift-/. XCode overrides it though, so I'll be keeping my mapping.

EDIT 2: Ah, yeah, it's Cmd, not Ctrl. I still like my two-key version though.

<comment><USER15> qsb-mac, which I think is now dead, was great because it allowed you to access menu items for any app with minimal fuss.

Quicksilver also has a plugin called 'User interface+' that gives you the same option. Combined with proxies for current application, its a powerful tool.

Great alternatives to cmd+Shift+/ which can be really slow especially on browsers where menu items include history and bookmarks.

<comment><USER16> One big downside to cmd+shift+/ is that it doesn't work with full screen apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Oh my...

> will ultimately replace menus in Unity applications

Why? Obviously, HUD and menus have different functions, and different use. GUI menus might be more appropriate for GUI applications, since you have your hand on the mouse already and you don't need to move it to the keyboard to type the command.

> fuzzy matching, and it can learn what you usually do so it can prioritise > the things you use often.

Every time that I saw something like this in any application/OS (Android is a prime example), it was such an epic fail that it is almost beyond words.

1) I usually learn faster than a computer, so the way I see it is not computer "learning", but computer arbitrarily "changing" its behaviour. So, instead of memorizing "to call Jack, I have to press J and Down and Down", I have to always pay attention when the interface changes...

2) If there are some actions that I do much more commonly, then give me a way to access these actions more directly (interface buttons, scripting, keyboard shortcuts). But, in any case, my shortcuts will be almost always better than "automatic" ones, and also, mine won't change.

Fuzzy matching can be good, but I've yet to see a good implementation, and it, above all, has to be __consistent __! Not as in Android, where matching is "fuzzy" for calling, but exact for SMS...

<comment><USER18> >> fuzzy matching, and it can learn what you usually do so it can prioritise the things you use often.

>Every time that I saw something like this in any application/OS (Android is a prime example), it was such an epic fail that it is almost beyond words.

A counterexample: the fuzzy matching in the address bar for firefox and chrome is awesome. Typing "Hacker" brings up "news.ycombinator.com -- Hacker News".

It would be awesome if the HUD could operate like this, * especially* as an alternative (not replacement) for menus (which are probably more efficient for common commands).

<comment><USER17> that's true, but sometimes it's a bit too smart for my taste... There is an internal company website that I often visit, say test.company.com. Chrome always autocompletes this with test.company.com/admin, even though I quite often also visit other parts of the domain, say /backend, /statistics, and so on... Now, the action is self-reinforcing, as I would type "t", press -> to autocomplete it, delete until there was just "test.company.com/", then select one of the options that only now show in the dropdown menu.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think there's an interesting behind-the-scenes change that is being demonstrated here: the transition from "every app handles displaying its own menu" to "apps just export their menu structure over DBus, and another program handles displaying them" is what makes it even possible to add the HUD to _all_ applications instead of just developing a single app that uses a HUD instead of menus and leaving the rest behind. Now that all the applications are exporting their menus over DBus, if you don't like Canonical's menu interface, you can _write your own_ and it will work with _all applications_. That's pretty cool.

For instance, any one of the Quicksilver-alikes available for Linux could add a plugin that turns it into a frontend for all your application menus. The KDE Alt+F2 run dialog could do likewise. Hell, you could write a menu interface in Emacs Lisp if you really wanted to, and control _all_ your applications from the Emacs minibuffer.

<comment><USER20> I am not sure whether this would be possible, as menus are contextual - <USER2> launcher (QS-clone, Emacs, whatever) would have to keep your current application focused, i.e. not take over its focus in order to display its menu, right?

<comment><USER19> I believe that all applications that support this do so by exporting their menu structures over DBus at all times, not just when they are focused. For context, a launcher could provide access to all application menus, but prioritize results based on which applications were most recently accessed. Or just keep it simple and go with only the most recently focused one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is based on a stupid idea that keyboard shortcuts are fast only because they are done on a keyboard. But this is simply false -- they are fast because they are simple gestures I can train and perform without thinking about it. Same applies to mouse -- in a well designed GUI, one can easily train to select an option or go through a dialog box with a blink of an eye.

Now, typing anything is just a complex procedure involving quite a lot of attention; what's worse, it cannot be trained since this HUD's response for a certain input will be mostly unpredictable depending of the state of its fuzzy AI. Not to mention that it additionally makes one constantly waste time on reading HUD window to check what action it is planning to execute.

Finally, when drawing or using any heavy mouse-dependent application one usually can fire keyboard shortcuts with one hand while the second is constantly holding mouse -- typing requires two hands, so it makes one waste additional time to grab the mouse back and re-adjust hand.

<comment><USER22> I think I may have a better idea for the HUD.

I'm on OS X right now, and I use Spotlight for absolutely everything. The help menu has a feature to Spotlight within menus, but it's not great if you don't know the literal name of the command (like save or open). Things can get complex quickly in robust applications.

What about appending alternative names to menu commands as metadata, so when a user searches for 'paint bucket' in Photoshop, they're driven to 'fill'. I'd imagine that's the easiest way to map _intent_ to _action_. Further still, make menus public data-driven — learn common intent by what users search for and end up clicking on.

The use cases for this might be small, but the benefit of keyboard shortcuts is in discovery. Users should be able to articulate to applications what they intend to do.

Edit: If this exists already, we're living in the future.

<comment><USER23> > Edit: If this exists already, we're living in the future.

Try the OS X System Preferences search field. It's there since 10.4ish?

<comment><USER22> That globally would be amazing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I may have missed it, but have they actuelly had real users(i.e. not ui designers) do some usability testing (i.e. actual real work) on this? Coming up with it an pushing it into a public release in 4 months looks risky to me. Given how frustrated some users were with Unity, I really hope they learned the lesson.

This as presented this has a _very_ high risk of turning into a "guess what the designers were thinking" game. While very flattering to the designer, it is frustrating as hell to the user. Arguably the current interfaces offer pretty much the same issue : a "guess in which menu I put the option" game - however there is one crucial difference : we got used to the current one, and actually have a really good idea how the designers were thinking - and where they put that option.

EDIT : Right. I did miss that. Thanks.

<comment><USER25> Look under "Even better for the power user": at least _some_ testing was done.

<comment><USER26> I doubt it was to the degree Microsoft tested the ribbon:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl9kD693ie4>

<comment><USER6> In fairness, few companies test _anything_ as much as Microsoft tests _everything_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> My main concern with this is discoverability - menus are helpful in that they convey a very precise listing of the app's possible actions (when designed well), something that's hard to otherwise come by.

Blender is perhaps the extreme example of this - it has an incredible amount of features, so they can't be placed into menus, and you spend some time learning where (in the hundreds of panels) or which of the thousands of keyboard shortcuts to use.

That said, I find keyboard-driven user interfaces very powerful, so I'm curious to try this out. Fortunately, there's been a way to turn off Crazy Ubuntu Features in most releases if you know how, at least so far.

<comment><USER28> Blender actually has a HUD-like feature already. You can just hit space to bring up a searchable list of every command in the program. As a new user, I found it a lot easier to find things with the HUD than with the enormous menu and panel system.

<comment><USER29> Funnily enough, my experience was the opposite. I spent a while playing with Blender 2.49, and although its UI wasn't the most intuitive, at least I could use the menus to get a feel for what functionality was available. This new unified drop-down has the effect of grouping commands by textual similarity instead of conceptual similarity, which is much less useful. Even if you know what action you want to take, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to do it unless you know exactly how Blender spells it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10 yesterday, and the experience _sucked_. It broke Firefox and Emacs, and it took me a lot of fiddling to get back to a desktop I can live with. Turns out, for instance, that you have to alt right click the bottom and top bars in Gnome classic, to modify them. Not exactly an easy thing to figure out if you've just been right clicking them for years.

Time for Ubuntu to stop dicking around with all the UI stuff and go back to making something that is _solid_. I really liked it when it first came out: it was a fairly dependable system that had regular updates, and was 'good enough' in the polish department. I could use it on desktops and servers alike and be pretty happy with it.

<comment><USER24> I "sidegraded" to mint 11 right after the dubiously-named "upgrade" to 11.10 which broke the ubuntu 'classic' desktop. Mint had a normal interface and behaved as one would expect. Given how close the base was to ubuntu, the transition went smoothly. And I like green better than whatever undefined color ubuntu is anyway.

I recently upgraded to mint 12 and they are picking up a bit of the gnome3 suckiness - but it feels like they are really being unwillingly dragged into it and are fighting tooth an nail to keep it at bay. It is a bit worse than mint 11, but still a lot better than ubuntu 11.10. Maybe I should give that MATE thing a shot.

The only thing I kinda miss from ubuntu is the inplace upgrade process. Mint community seems to have some philosophical rejection of it and recommends a reinstall.

I am feeling that Ubuntu is pushing realy HARD to get into tablet space - throwing-users-under-the-bus-if-need-be kind of hard. I can see the advantage of a Unity interface there, but come on, i had to manually tweak the laptop with powertop to even get close to the battery life I was getting with _windows_. This will never work for an average-joe-grade tablet.

I know, I know It is free, if i dont like it, I can switch to something else. Guess what? I did. According to distrowatch i'm not the only one. It is a real pity to see a good distro go down like that.

<comment><USER30> > Mint community seems to have some philosophical rejection of it and > recommends a reinstall.

I was doing in-place upgrades of Debian in the late 90ies, and they generally went quite smoothly. Not being able to to do that gives me a strong urge to use blunt terms like "horse shit". In-place upgrades are one of the reasons why you have an advanced package management system in the first place, and abandoning that is a _huge_ step backwards. I do, after all, use this stuff on servers too.

<comment><USER24> Don't get me wrong. It is possible, the community website provides an accurate walkthrough[1] of how to do so and it looks totally scriptable. Mint just doesnt seem to have the "fire and forget" option ubuntu has. Their justification is that there is a risk of data loss/system corruption (see section E1 in link) :

> _The only advantage Ubuntu offers is that it makes the process trivial and > fully automated. Though, considering the risks and the way it upgrades your > system, this should be considered dangerous._

[1]<http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Hmm, I did not like the idea initially, but then I started thinking of how Emacs and (more importantly) Sublime Text work ... I must say, this very system works amazingly well for Sublime Text, why am I presuming that it is an automatic failure for menu bars?

Actually, I think that menu bars in general are a horrible crutch for pretty much every task. There is a reason why Windows introduced the "Ribbon". The Ribbon is Microsoft's way to get rid of the menu bar. Maybe Ribbons are not perfect, but they definitely improved discoverability of content.

ido-mode in Emacs introduces fuzzy matching for file navigation and it is awesome. CMD-T is a similar mechanism in Textmate. Sublime Text is pretty much built on the concept of fuzzy matched palettes.

All these are programs I very much like. Maybe Ubuntu is actually on to something there.

<comment><USER32> It reminded me of Sublime as well and I must say that the fuzzy match saves me a lot of time when switching between files. Having this functionality built into the OS could be very beneficial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Seems like there have been mostly negative comments here, admittedly I haven't used this yet but I think it's a great idea. Ultimately this is not supposed to replace key-bindings but rather allow me to quickly access features that I normally don't access without hunting for it in the toolbar menu. Sounds especially useful in applications where you heavily use keyboard (like text editors for example).

I believe/hope that experience will be similar to the 'command palette' of Sublime Text 2 where you can execute a feature that you don't use very often (e.g. convert to lower case <ctrl+shit+p> low<enter>) without hunting for it in the menu.

For me theory sounds good, I need to test it myself to decide whether I like it in practice or not.

<comment><USER16> I like it too. I'm just worried about what I would do when I open a new application for the first time. How do I scan what it can do? How do I learn the functions of the application?

<comment><USER34> Read the help file.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It's Google vs Yahoo on the menubar! Currently we use the Yahoo method (hierarchical information based on someone else's curatorship), Mark is proposing the Google model (everything through a single search box).

Either one will not be as universally useful as combining them.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm not sure I agree with this direction, as this system seems like it has a high cognitive load, that doesn't allow a lot of relegation to muscle memory (ie it seems like you have to keep the feedback loop between your keying and the options that appear open for the duration of the command-invocation), which is what I find attractive about keyboard interfaces in general. But I could be wrong. I'll have to try and see.

In any case, I'm glad that the direct-manipulation paradigm, which I find to be generally and intrinsically impoverished, isn't the only avenue UI innovation is going down.

I have other ideas about a keyboard-oriented interface in this essay: [http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/9325300749/a-different- kind-o...](http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/9325300749/a-different-kind-of-gui)

</comment><comment><USER37> To this, this seems like a lot more unix-y way of doing things, and certain for someone like me who prefers to keep their hands on the keyboard, this is top-banana (yes, I know there's ctrl+alt+shift+X to doing something in one app or other, but remembering every combination in every application is a PITA). If you've used Cloud9IDE's command line, I see this more like that -> you type git, and a popup shows you the completions for git. There's a lot of haters, but I'm really keen on unity. It's like having gnome-do baked in. Sure, it's not quite polished, but at least it's trying different things than the identikit window managers out there.

</comment><comment><USER38> The only thing I dont like about this is that it appears that you have to type for everything you're looking for.

With the example shown in inkscape - this is good if you dont know where something is -- but anyone who is proficient with a graphic(s) program knows that the more you can do with a left hand keyboard shortcut and a button which reduces the number of times you take your hand off the mouse the better.

What I would far prefer is if the HUD would allow me to assign arbitrary keyboard shortcuts (contextually) in any program.

This way - when Inkscape is active, I can use whatever shortcut I want to assign to "glow" and then that same binding can be set to a different command in a different program, say, GIMP - and I configure it all in one location.

I dont want to type for everything I want to do...

</comment><comment><USER39> Is there some way to browse this new type of menu? How do you shop for functions that you aren't aware of?

<comment><USER40> FTA:

> There's still a lot of design and code still to do. For a start, we haven't > addressed the secondary aspect of the menu, as a visible map of the > functionality in an app. That discoverability is of course entirely absent > from the HUD; the old menu is still there for now, but we'd like to replace > it altogether not just supplement it.

Basically - they're looking for some other interface to replace that aspect of the menu, but in the meanwhile the menu is still there for discoverability purposes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Does it bother anyone else that this is actually the _opposite_ of an actual heads-up display? The whole point of a HUD is that the user is given information without going out of their way to get it. This gives you _less_ passive information than a traditional menu does.

I like the idea in principle. I just don't like nondescriptive names.

</comment><comment><USER42> I quite like this it reminds me of Firefox Ubiquity project. Which should act as a warning to Ubuntu as that never gained any real traction beyond power- users.

The fact that Mark mentions that they one day wish to replace menus is odd. Menus work and are universally understood. This system could be great in a complimentary fashion, the blender example seems like a great use of the system.

I really hope that Ubuntu don't throw the baby out with the bath water in their attempt to innovate.

</comment><comment><USER43> This is awesome. The current system doesn't work so well since menu items don't fit well into separate categories. In fact, nothing does. One example is the quite arbitrary division into 'File, Edit, View etc'. A discussion I hear quite often between people sitting together in front of word is -'Try that menu. Oh, that one then? No? Let me have a look'.Another example is the windows control panel, who didn't switch to flat view straight away? And grouping on the start menu into categories of programs? Largely gone. Sorting your music collection on disk? Gone. Structuring your HD in general to avoid searching? Gone. Categorizing websites? Gone.

This is just the last relic. As it is right now I'd rather google how to do something in Word than look through the menu, so this solution _has_ to be better!

</comment><comment><USER44> 3D modeling software such as Rhinoceros (<http://www.rhino3d.com/>) uses this model with great success and I'm sure there are others. The program has a GUI that is very modular and customizable but the command-line interface is the primary interface. It takes a short while to get used to but after you do it scales very well as your experience grows. I have thought for a while that Photoshop/Illustrator would do well with a CLI but this is a compelling case for a contextual but system-wide implementation of this concept. The closest we have is Quicksilver or Alfred and while they are indispensable, making this part of the OS would open up some interesting possibilities.

</comment><comment><USER45> Already in Emacs: <http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/LaCarte>

<comment><USER46> Emacs has always been at the fore-front of UI innovation :). It's just that nobody wants to admit it because it's slightly weird, not shiny and--unlike all the other UI efforts--aimed at _efficiency_ rather than ease-of-use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> It sometimes feels that Linux developers haven't ever seen a non-Linux user interact with a computer before. This seems doubly true for the folk who do UI/UX.

<comment><USER48> Judging by some of the changes they have made recently I don't think they have even seen a Linux user (outside of their own UI design team) interact with a computer before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> IntelliJ IDEA has this feature for years now. (Command-Shift-A) It shows a list of all commands and you can fuzzy-find through them.

It is very useful and often faster than digging through the menus to find the right command. It also shows the shortcut for the command, which is useful for learning commands that you use often.

</comment><comment><USER50> One quote from the article which I found interesting: "it works so well that the rare occasions when it can't read my mind are annoying!"

I interpret that as, "While it's great being able to search for commands, it's an absolute pain in the ass to find the command if the search fails."

He mentions being able to look at the list of commands like a "table of contents" for an application, but I really don't see how that is possible considering what he has described.

All I know is that I'm going to be even more lost in GIMP with this update.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Let it never be said that the people at Ubuntu are trapped by convention...

</comment><comment><USER51> Another hyped super-feature which implementation quality likely will render it unusable. Dear Ubuntu developers! I respect you very much! Why aren't you respecting me? Why do you release seemingly untested stuff? Why your product is so unstable and buggy? Please stop making systems that hang when I lock my screen or fall apart when I switch to another window with Compiz enabled. I do not need your new fancy features. I need a system that just works. Thanks.

And the other take. Did you ever use mobile tablet device with multitouch? And after that are you really want to use that 70-ish WIMP interfaces? If you saw it one single time, when you manipulate your photos/videos "themselves", when you interact with your information and not with some buttons or menus or stuff like that, you'll never want to come back. Ones who demand full support for multitouch gestures across modern OS interfaces are not "future-oriented" people IMO. They are now-oriented. Next-generation interfaces are already here! They are the state-of-the-art for many users right today. And are you really want to impress us with tinkering around that 70s stuff? Than you guys stuck in 90s. Come on.

</comment><comment><USER52> So basically... it's like the Windows 7 start menu search functionality, put into applications. It's not a terrible idea, but it should _extend_ the current menu-based UI, not _replace_ it.

<comment><USER53> Right. Or OS X's Help menu search functionality, or Quicksilver plus menus, or Alfred plus menus, etc etc etc. This has been the future for half a decade now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Whenever I see anyone write, "say hello to the future of the ______", my immediate reaction is to assume the author is an idiot. The only person or company who has ever been able to say that with any authority is Apple, and that's only because they have a track record of consistently creating the future of ______ for decades.

Considering this HUD is basically "let's take Quicksilver and make it for menus", I think my immediate reaction was correct again. The idea isn't completely terrible, but it's not "the future" and it's riddled with problems. Hope you're the type who likes keeping cheat sheets around, because unless you know the exact name of every single command in your application, you're going to be in trouble.

"We'll resurrect the (boring) old ways of displaying the menu in 12.04..." This guy's hubris is astounding.

</comment><comment><USER54> This is a great idea and as they note its really beneficial to the power user, BUT I can't see it replacing traditional menus for novice users (and potentially some intermediate users).

For novice users, discoverabiliy is extremely important. For any application new users want to learn what it does, and they aren't going to read the manual. Traditional menus allow users to browse available actions without having to know what they want to do. They don't know what they don't know, and well designed menus/UIs allow them to learn the application really quickly.

I also wonder about the older generation and their ability to pick up on this. I would be very curious how well less technically skilled 40+-year-olds pick up on the keyboard-based navigation over the traditional mouse-based navigation/interaction.

</comment><comment><USER55> Who is this for?

Is this actually solving a problem someone has stated they have?

This feels like an attempt at solving a problem that nobody has. In an effort to differentiate themselves, I think they've lost sight of what users actually want.

Here's what I want from ubuntu, as a (past) user: a solid distribution that gives me a reasonable default setup without a lot of fuss. I mean, I'm installing linux, you can probably already assume I sort of know what I'm doing. I want something that gets out of my way, not something constantly asking me to adapt and "rethink" how I go about using my computer. I know how to use my computer just fine, thank-you-very-much, leave me with my menus.

<comment><USER56> "Is this actually solving a problem someone has stated they have?"

This is how I felt when the first iPods came out at much higher prices than other mp3 players on the market. With less flexibility in the way it operates.

<comment><USER57> I agree. This sounds like the same reaction. People were like "oh this is stupid because it's different". Turns out it did solve the needs of a different interface.

HUD + Unity (just like iOS before it) will simplify how to use menus on a tablet interface... especially once the speech-recognition part is added.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> This is a beautiful and interesting concept, but isn't this really just a dressed up command line interface? This is a feature I would absolutely love to have, but I don't see it replacing the menu in the form demoed for the simple reason that this violates one of the core principles of user-centered design: visibility. If the user has no visual indication of what is possible within the system, how can we expect them to learn the interface?

One super simple example of this: <http://cl.ly/082D441E2D0L1l3d3g2Y>

Most readers of Hacker News are probably aware of the calculator feature in the Spotlight in Mac OSX, but if I had a dollar for every time I've blown someone's mind by showing it to them, I'd be counting money right now rather than writing this comment. The bottom line is, visibility is an extremely important design principle, because it informs the user what they can do within a system, so hiding possibilities is probably not a good idea.

For detailed reading on the principle of visibility, check out Donald Norman's Phenomenal _The Design of Everyday Things_ , which I firmly believe should be required reading for anyone thinking about building anything: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385267746/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385267746/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=discerningman-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0385267746) [yes, it is an affiliate link]

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm pretty excited about how this could make voice recognition a first class citizen on the desktop.

The simple voice tool baked into Windows* is sorta usable, but changing contexts to find things in menus or click buttons is a huge pain. You're constantly reminded that the interface you're using was originally designed for a keyboard and mouse. This has the potential to eliminate a lot of the pain associated with that.

* I don't know if Dragon improves the context-shift situation significantly. The last time I tried it was several years ago.

</comment><comment><USER59> OS X has had this since Snow Leopard -- you can go to any application's help menu, and begin typing the name of a menu item, even if it's nested. Using the arrow keys, you can navigate down the list of results, and as you select each item, the menus expand to show you the location of the item with a large, blue arrow next to it. You can then either click the item next to said arrow, activating it -- or simply press enter.

Apple had this years ago; they just made a conscious decision to keep using menus.

<comment><USER60> The best part is you can Command + Shift + ? to open the Help menu (if the keyboard shortcuts haven't been remapped by the app) and start typing. It's how I do a lot of stuff in Photoshop actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> What do I do when I forget the wording of a menu item? (or I guess a "HUD command")

Menus form a strong spatial association - I remember a lot of options by their placement, and only recall the exact wording when I see it. (Is it "re-open last tab", "reopen last tab", "re-open closed tab", or "reopen closed tab"?) Not saying that HUD is inherently bad because of this, but I'm curious how they deal with it? Am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER62> Putting the keyboard back into computing is a strange direction to move considering the wild success of tablets and smartphones (namely of the Apple variant) that drop the keyboard entirely in favor of better touch interaction. An ideal interface has a low barrier between what you want to achieve and the way you achieve it, using a keyboard requires that written language always be between the two.

</comment><comment><USER63> Looks to me like we are going full circle back to the command line with this. I mean, what's the difference between this and a command line shell with fuzzy matching?

I like Ubuntu being experimental but right now I'm having pains with Unity on my setup (multiple monitors and apps that don't quite fit with the UI). I'm seriously considering moving to a different distro while they sort the details out .

<comment><USER64> I was thinking the same, and found it particularly amusing that "design" types are only now finally realising the virtues of the command line. What'll the next Ubuntu UI revolution be? No X11, just a 'screen' session in a tty? (I'd actually use that, were it not for the fact that (a) too much of the Web is overly graphical to be browsed effectively in text mode and (b) screen sucks)

Moving to a different distro (and perhaps WM) is a good idea. I recently moved to Debian with Xfce and am enjoying the lack of gnomes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> This doesn't seem like it would be very good for using with applications that you are familiar with. With context menus you can remember the ALT + <key> combinations required to navigate to a feature quickly. With this you would have to type the name of the feature and then select it which might involve navigating a fair way down the list.

The only other option would be for all apps to assign keyboard shortcuts to _everything_

Also for applications that you are not familiar with you will have to guess what a particular feature is called and if it even exists in the first place. They would have to load all the apps up with synonyms and since Open Source developers can't agree on anything I'm not sure how many would even design their app around this.

Not to mention problems with users who have poor english or just poor spelling.

Having said all this, this feature is an excellent idea to _supplement_ existing UI functionality. I've been integrating "feature search" type functions into some of my web apps for a while now and I'm surprised Apple and MS haven't done this more.

</comment><comment><USER65> Ubuntu's current (11.10 oneiric) menu cleverness breaks things for me using a non-standard window manager. (The gnome-terminal menu appears even when set to hidden.) Solution: purge every package with appmenu in the name and reboot. I hope it remains as easy to opt out from the next batch of little-tested, slightly buggy innovations.

</comment><comment><USER66> Another invention which will alienate even more casual users from GNU/Linux.

Users, even I as a progammer, do not like to have to re-learn and assimilate a new interface-model every few months or years. Ive learned a few times, why cant people stick to what is working already? The menu is super nice, the global menu, not so much but fine thats what some people nice. Now Ill explain to my girlfriend that there is the HUD menu? And after that youll invent something else something new, for what!? All that work and you just have a different kind of menu. Too bad, too bad.

Why not do some real user tests to find out where they are failing right now? Why users dont feel comfortable in Ubuntu? Yes, even those users, like me, and Ive used most distros for a decade. Its just something fishy about both Unity and Gnome2.

</comment><comment><USER67> I once worked on a project with some friends that gave Windows this functionality. It basically scanned the menu of the current window, then gave a Launchy-like interface to choose any menu item. It worked pretty well, although some programs bypassed the Windows API so didn't work with our program.

We also gave it one other awesome ability, which I have yet to see in other such tools - a "search for window by name" feature. This searched your open windows in a Launchy-style interface, letting you switch to Chrome by doing "Ch<enter>" or to Visual Studio by doing "Vis<enter>". It also searched open tabs in all your browsers, letting you switch to gmail by typing "gm<enter>", etc.

The program was meant as a startup, way back many years ago when we didn't know any better :)

</comment><comment><USER68> Strangely enough that core functionality (searching menu items) is kind of built into OSX. Along with ⌘-space for Spotlight, I use shift-⌘-? to search the menubar from keyboard. Its a great multi-tool as it hooks into the stuff you already know.

</comment><comment><USER69> By the way, you can already test it in Ubuntu 12.04: [http://www.webupd8.org/2012/01/hud-ubuntus-new-smart- menus-a...](http://www.webupd8.org/2012/01/hud-ubuntus-new-smart-menus- announced.html)

</comment><comment><USER70> I think it would be better to offer the whole menu bar as an expanded tree in a vertical strip rendered to an overlay on the whole screen.

This would help the user get an at-a-glance view of all the menus' contents, sectioned logically by each top-level menu entry. It would also reduce menu navigation to mere up/down (and pgup/pgdown), and allow for some sort of an instant search (start typing letters) would also work. It would even work for touchscreens because we've already observed that scrolling up and down is one of the best and natural UI concepts that you can do with a touchscreen.

</comment><comment><USER71> After two iterations of this I can se it being pretty good for my parents as they will be able to say "bookmark" or "back" to the voice recognition in the browser and not have to worry about the UI much at all.

</comment><comment><USER72> Absolutely love this. Really like the direction Unity is moving, was quite pleasantly surprised after using it recently to find all the hate I had read about was greatly overstated.

</comment><comment><USER73> I'm leary. The reason we've used menus and windows for so long is because it just works. Improvements are always welcome but it's always going to be easier for me to say Alt-F, O.

</comment><comment><USER74> That's another novel thing for Ubuntu, publishing a major change first in an LTS. Until now the philosophy was that an LTS was more stable, a non-LTS was more experimental. Sad that this policy was abandoned.

The "HUD" interface (silly name) looks like a good idea though, hope it is fast enough for netbooks and other small PCs. After using Unity for some time I abandoned it for XFCE because my netbook was just not fast enough.

</comment><comment><USER75> I have yet to find anything I like about Unity. As many of the other commenters have said, was there any real user testing on PCs the users actually own?

</comment><comment><USER56> This seems useful for exploring menu options when you don't know where things are, but not as useful for executing frequently used menu options. For exploring, it's great to be able to type "pref" and have all menu options for preferences show up. But if I know that the preferences I'm looking for are under Edit - Preferences, I'll just hit ALT-E, P and be done with it in less than a second.

</comment><comment><USER76> The site isn't loading-- does anyone have a mirror?

<comment><USER77> Not really a mirror but webupd8 host a quote and a video :

[http://www.webupd8.org/2012/01/hud-ubuntus-new-smart- menus-a...](http://www.webupd8.org/2012/01/hud-ubuntus-new-smart-menus- announced.html)

I'm still not sold, I found the UL-Corner positioning greatly aggressive. I'd put it in the bottom personally but I'm used to the Unix 'bottom command line' habit.

Otherwise it's one step closer to a contemporary desktop command line, in the video the guy even typed 'undo' in inkscape, made me smile. I guess having this common iterative search of nested menus will greatly help users, as it helped many of us in the shell or emacs (or any system providing this idea)

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Sounds like a smart idea, to me. Since I started using Alfred on my Mac I'm able to control almost everything from the keyword and I'm faster at almost everything.

Being able to guess the user intentions from the context would be a great advantage, but the challenge would be balancing context-dependent commands from the most general ones, in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER79> I fail to see how this will apply to tablets and mobile phones, where you want people to use their finger as a mouse and not as a keyboard to type. (since Canonical said they were moving towards tablets and phones in the near future, I expect they follow the same design guidelines, but I could be wrong...)

</comment><comment><USER80> How do you discover and explore, though?

</comment><comment><USER81> Serious, you're going to try and get me to use an interface by using a website that has justified paragraph text that spans 70% of my 1920 x 1080 21" monitor?

Much like these comments on HN, it's hard to read long, wide paragraphs. It makes me question the usability of a HUD's interface

</comment><comment><USER26> I think it's great to see Ubuntu innovating.

However, I don't see search as the future of application interfaces.

I've been using autocomplete in Quickbooks long enough to know that typing "Next P" to execute <next page> rather than <next layer> is just going to suck.

<comment><USER34> I doubt this will completely eliminate other forms of interaction. It would be a mistake to remove keyboard shortcuts or buttons for common actions such as changing pages. The point is to not get into a ribbon type situation where there are a ton of buttons cluttering the window.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> What a horrible idea. What happened to thinking about international users, for whom typing is a hassle? Learn from Japan, where Yahoo is more preferable over Google because you can find what you want rather than type it out...

<comment><USER28> What about them? There will be a mouse-driven fallback UI, just like with the current application launcher.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> This sounds like a good change.

Also, just skimming the article and looking at the pretty pictures, it seems similar to ido-mode for Emacs. Just with more eye-candy.

Since everybody I know loves ido-mode, I am fairly confident in this change.

</comment><comment><USER83> Developer Ted Gould's description of how search the menu works: <http://gould.cx/ted/blog/Searching_menus>

</comment><comment><USER84> I think someone at Canonical ate some old pizza or something. Taking us back to the keyboard .. the keyboard? For menus? Seriously? Wasn't Unity bad enough? Lenses? Really?

</comment><comment><USER85> This seems to illustrate how painfully how out of touch the linux community is. As all the other OSs head towards touch, Linux wants to become more keyboard oriented.

</comment><comment><USER86> The only downside: you have to use Unity to get it :(

</comment><comment><USER87> So far, a lot of Ubuntu-specific software has been very buggy and low quality for me (indicators, Unity). Why should this be any different?

</comment><comment><USER88> This is not a terrible idea.

It could be implemented awfully though.

</comment><comment><USER89> This is basically Search for telling your computer what to do. People currently do this all day long at google.com.

</comment><comment><USER90> So... the future of the menu is... Zork?

<comment><USER91> So:

      >open file
      Which file would you like to open?
      >test.txt
      What you like to do with 'test.txt'?
      >open 'test.txt'
      Nothing happens.

<comment><USER92> I occasionally type 'L' (for 'LOOK') in OS X's Terminal.app, by reflex.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> Have they come full circle and reinvented the command line interface?

</comment><comment><USER94> It would be nice if the first option was always selected by default.

</comment><comment><USER95> more conversation: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3504974>

</comment><comment><USER96> Ubuntu integrated Launch/Alfred into it's apps...

</comment><comment><USER97> Only Linux could turn the GUI back into the command line.

</comment><comment><USER98> Madness goes on.

</comment><comment><USER99> Hey Mark, how about you get the current user interface right and quell the anger of your users about Unity before you move your UI wankery forward?

</comment><comment><USER100> HUD -> "Horribile UI Design" I guess

</comment><comment><USER101> Mark Shuttleworth, promoter of the worse UX changes for GNU/Linux since 1892!

</comment><comment><USER102> Change the status of your chat client:

      Normal: klik on icon right top -> set status
      HUD: drop your mouse/stylus -> type the HUD command -> type to change your status.

In the future you will be less productive but have the gloss.</comment>


Bitcoin hits year-high of $20 - <AUTHOR> http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#tgSzm1g10zm2g25zv <comment><USER2> Waiting for tokenadult to repost his Bitcoin comment: [https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+...](https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+%22greatest+contribution+the+Bitcoin+experiment%22+%22points+by%22)

In all seriousness though, there is one interesting thing that is different now from last time. Last time being the previous frenzied Bitcoin price hype bubble that peaked at 31$. No one fears that Bitcoin will crash to 0/pennies anymore once the price stops climbing, at least not due to standard market forces. It's pretty well established now that there is some baseline demand that will form a price bottom (assuming no large network attack occurs). What effect that will have on this bubble (if one forms) is hard to say but it should be interesting and not a repeat of last time.

<comment><USER3> Sure many say that now. But what if public greed takes over again and prices rapidly approach say $60, then the price rise would be hyperbolic and crash back to somewhere below here.

... just along for the ride with the bitcoins I mined and am hoarding.

<comment><USER4> Well, you sell high, and buy back low, presumably.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> All else being equal, the more people who use Bitcoin (whether as a store of value or medium of exchange), the greater the demand for it -- and therefore the higher its price, because the supply is fixed.

This means that in the long run, Bitcoin's price will be positively correlated with its adoption.[1]

\--

[1] My full thoughts on the matter: [http://cs702.wordpress.com/2011/05/29/on- the-potential-adopt...](http://cs702.wordpress.com/2011/05/29/on-the- potential-adoption-and-price-appreciation-of-bitcoin-in-the-long-run/)

<comment><USER6> Of course all things are never equal. The problem with investing in bitcoins for the long-run is that eventually governments will make it illegal. Sure, they can't easily stop you from owning bitcoins, but they can ban businesses from accepting the coins, which would of course collapse the currency overnight. Governments don't like competition.

<comment><USER7> I'm still wondering _why_ governments see it in their best interest (if it is in their best interest) to make it illegal. I know they can't track their citizen's activity on the network but when an individual cashes out, they would pay taxes on their earnings.

To me it seems to be a choice of what does big brother value more - money or information?

Banning a business from accepting bitcoin would be as hard as telling a business they couldn't give stuff away for free. I think they could shut down the exchange portals, but they couldn't keep people from trading goods for BTC.

<comment><USER8> its not the gov't who _wants_ to crush bitcoins (but they will probably be the one actually implementing the measures). A currency, and the subsequent control of it, will lend lots of priviledges and power over those who control it.

Currently, the central banks (the Feds, and the various EU central banks) control the currency (by control, i mean they are the only ones able to print more of it). Now, i don't really know who controls those banks, but i m willing to bet that they are some powerful vested interests there. These people do not like the gold standard, simply because having a gold standard strips them of their power they currently enjoy.

Bitcoin, being a good candidate for a digital gold standard, will be targetd just like the gold standard was targeted in the 70's in the US of A. I really wish bitcoin could become recognized by the normal peoples of the world, but i think it can't, because there is no force behind it. The monopoly on using violence is the only way to have a currency adopted, and i don't see bitcoin getting any of that. my prediction is that bitcoin will be relegated to being a niche currency.

<comment><USER9> My prediction is that Bitcoin will neither be illegal, nor will it replace the U.S. Dollar, like some of its proponents hope. Most likely, it will continue to be a useful vehicle for transferring money online.

I see it competing more with companies like Western Union and PayPal than with the USD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Plus Avalon _just_ started shipping the first mining chip ( <http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=70> ). And they announced they will only accept bitcoins as payment for the 2nd batch of 500 units @ $1500 ea, which starts selling tomorrow... That potentially means people buying $750k worth of bitcoins for a batch that will sell out really quickly. This will surely push the exchange rate even higher than $20.

Edit: there is no resistance upward right now on MtGox. $300k of buys would push to $24. $500k to $30. <http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD_depth.html>

<comment><USER11> We're getting into the speculation game again. I don't think this is healthy for Bitcoin. Let Bitcoin grow at its own pace instead of promoting articles that say Bitcoin is now at $18..and now at $20..and now at $24.

If you keep doing that, it _will_ crash again, at least down to $15.

<comment><USER12> Speculation _is_ a part of the free market :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Bitcoin has speculative bubbles, fraud, robberies, money laundering, gambling, and Ponzi schemes. I think that takes care of all the qualifications for a real currency. Am I missing anything? :)

<comment><USER14> References to each of your claims.

<comment><USER10> I don't think api was criticizing Bitcoin. All these evil activities are very unfortunate, but on the other hand they are indicators that a currency is valued and liquid, which is a good thing in itself.

<comment><USER13> I was actually making a bit of humor, but it really is true. All these things are common to all forms of currency I know of, so it's sort of a sign of Bitcoin's coming of age.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It would be interesting to compare BtC not only to the USD, but also to a bag of currencies, to see if it relates to a USD devaluation 'compared to the rest' (usually JPY, EUR, GBP)

<comment><USER16> I guess that, according to the _efficient market hypothesis_ [1], you can expect the price of bitcoins in other currencies to be the same as the price in dollars adjusted by that currency exchange rate. Otherwise easy profit would be possible through arbitrage, and after some people took advantage of the price difference to make some money the prices would stabilize at a point where profitable arbitrage would not be possible anymore.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis>

<comment><USER15> " according to the efficient market hypothesis[1], you can expect the price of bitcoins in other currencies to be the same as the price in dollars adjusted by that currency exchange rate"

You're right, apart from market inefficiencies that's right.

But I'm proposing something else, to analyse the variation (which, of course, for BtcGBP is effectively BtcUSD * USDGBP) against other currencies to see if it's (for example, in this case the price of BTCUSD rising) if it's a dollar devaluation or if it's BTC that's increasing in value

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Your title isn't clear, and it's not even February yet, so I assume you meant "over the last year".

</comment><comment><USER18> Anyone else think this looks like the Gartner Hype cycle? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle>

Maybe I need to get back in to bitcoin mining...

<comment><USER19> Yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Plug for my "fastest way to lookup bitcoin price" website:

<http://bitcoinprices.org/>

<comment><USER21> As long as we're plugging that...

<http://preev.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Liquidity is the major issue for the foreseeable future.

<comment><USER19> Bitcoin is highly liquid and only becomes more so each day.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What benefit is there to requiring sign-in before browsing? - <AUTHOR> I was just trying to show a student something on aliexpress.com (that I thought would be useful for his project), and the website wouldn't let me browse product categories or search without logging in first.
I suppose LinkedIn does this, as have several other sites that I've noticed.
Why do sites choose this user-hostile approach?
In the case of the student that I was trying to show a part to, I just looked the item up on Amazon instead and Aliexpress lost a sale.
Go figure? <comment><USER2> Tracking and marketing to select partners. It's easier to know who you are if you're logged in.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have to agree. There is more sales loss to me than user gains. Of course I don't have the numbers of these companies at scale. Presumably they did the math and gain more conversions than losses to continue doing this.

</comment><comment><USER4> Same bullshit with "Call for pricing".

How about no. How about you be transparent and list the pricing on your page.

</comment><comment><USER5> It could be a counter-measure to not get crawled by price comparison engines.</comment>


U.S. warns of new hacking spree from group linked to China - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-china/u-s-warns-of-new-hacking-spree-from-group-linked-to-china-idUSKCN1ME01L <comment><USER2> APT10</comment>


Let me tell you about a game I made with the sole intention of watching it die - <AUTHOR> http://dominikjohann.tumblr.com/post/59611971605 <comment><USER2> I find the irony of the end result -- Impetus died because the players "suffocated" her, not because they neglected her -- fascinating.

<comment><USER3> Not to mention that the plug was _literally_ pulled to kill her.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A little OT, but I find the Ludum Dare challenge to be just...awesome. I first heard about it when viewing Lucas Pope's homepage (the creator of Papers, Please), and seeing the astonishing work he made in 48 hours (here: [http://dukope.com/play.php?g=six](http://dukope.com/play.php?g=six) as well as this game, which he did for practice but which I think is the best game ever made about newspapers: [http://dukope.com/play.php?g=trt](http://dukope.com/play.php?g=trt)). During some idle time today I started reading the Haxe docs...I got into programming because I wanted to make video games and haven't done any game code since college because the games industry didn't seem fun to work in. But seeing the kind of inspired one-offs at Ludum (as well as Pope's Papers, Please) has really sparked an interest in me to create something memorable that is not a web app.

<comment><USER5> Be sure to check out "Gods Will Be Watching", another game made in 48 hours with a seriously compelling story and art style.

As long as you're checking out Haxe, I'd recommend Stencyl (which, in 3.0, is being rewritten to use Haxe).

"Gods Will Be Watching" was written using ImpactJS, a JavaScript game engine.

<comment><USER6> I second that, Gods Will Be Watching is absolutely amazing, in fact it has been so successful that a "full" game has been crowfunded [1] and will be released :)

[1] [http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gods-will-be- watching](http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gods-will-be-watching)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My mind went immediately to "what if it was real life", recoiled in horror at the dystopian-ness of it and then returned in fascination:

There are people all over the world dying right now for lack of some small amount of food or medicine. What if you could click a button and send them a nickel to keep them alive a few more minutes? Like World Vision, but in a Philip K. Dick novel.

<comment><USER8> This is reminiscent of "The Hunger Site" which started in 1999. [http://thehungersite.greatergood.com/clickToGive/ths/home](http://thehungersite.greatergood.com/clickToGive/ths/home)

<comment><USER9> Also Free Rice, which is quite literally a game that donates rice for every correct answer: [http://freerice.com/](http://freerice.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hey everyone, I'm Dom, the guy who came up with Impetus and wrote that thing. Just saw this post blow up and figured I could chime in, so feel free to ask more specific questions I could answer!

<comment><USER11> Hey Dominik, awesome work congrats—I just asked this on the main thread. Not sure if you saw this, so I ask again: How was the beep sound made? Javascript or a sample? I like its warm sound very much, would be happy to know how to get to this beep. Thanks!

<comment><USER10> Ello, thanks for the kind words! That beep was created in Ableton Live using a standard square synth, a high-cut EQ and a bit of vinyl distortion (which is also responsible for the crackle). The heartbeat used to be an 808 kick drum that went through almost the same process. Finally, both were laid out on a 10-second bar and implemented as a single mp3 loop. Hope this helps!

<comment><USER12> _> The heartbeat used to be an 808 kick drum_

The 808 is the electric guitar of the late-20th/21st century.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A surprisingly compelling story. And a reminder that despite intense care, life can end for the most abrupt & stupid reasons.

</comment><comment><USER14> An idea like this seems risky because it relies on the game getting some considerable attention from the get-go or it's literally all over within seconds. Also, doing this means basically foregoing the normal voting process which is taking place over the next 3 weeks.

I don't think most LD devs could've pulled this off, PR-wise.

There are over 2000 entries on LD27, and Spiegel calls the next morning? Either I'm way too cynical right now or this is the luckiest entry ever. It's hard getting noticed on Ludum Dare and there are a lot of neat concepts floating around.

<comment><USER15> I know it may seem pure luck to get press coverage from Der Spiegel, but I think this is a good example to consider the value of specialization. A good PR professional could get this kind of press coverage consistently. He would probably have to contribute to the project from early, to add the kind of hooks he knows would make journalists interested.

I know the Impetus creator probably did not benefit from the help of a PR person, so more power to him :)

<comment><USER14> That's exactly what I meant, I did get the feeling that this story is PR- powered. Odds are this doesn't just happen. There are literally hundreds of comparably interesting entries (not to take away from this one, it's a great idea).

With stories like this often the suggestion is " _we did this very unique thing, went to bed, and woke up on a morning talk show_ " \- that's simply not how it works and people are on average well advised to be wary of stories like this. Stuff like this happens to people who are either well-known, well- connected, or actively engage in PR. More power to them, though!

<comment><AUTHOR> We're not "well known" but the combined audience of 3k followers on Twitter most likely did the trick.

Apart from that we gained experience dealing with press a few months ago, because another game [0] got featured in a german web magazine.

[0] [http://tastatour.co/](http://tastatour.co/)

<comment><USER14> _> but the combined audience of 3k followers on Twitter most likely did the trick._

There you go. I'd say that counts, especially if it's an audience receptive to the topic. Don't underestimate your connections!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's unfortunate that it ended so soon due to a hosting company being garbage.

I would have loved to see this really blow up and get billions of visitors and see it running a year from now because it's an interesting concept for a game.

</comment><comment><USER17> Reminds me of another game "4 Minutes and 33 Seconds of Uniqueness", which could be the antipole for this.

[http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/games/4mins33secs](http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/games/4mins33secs)

<comment><USER18> For anyone who isn't aware of the reference, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> While I appreciate him not publicly shaming the hosting company, I'm curious who it was so they can be avoided.

<comment><AUTHOR> While I agree that they could've called us before shutting the site down, I think one should note that impetus ran on a shared server and the hosting-TOS likely state that they'll get rid of too much load.

We just didn't expect our little project to get that much attention.

<comment><USER16> Was it Bluehost? I've heard stories of them just instantly shutting down your server without notice when you generated any form of decent traffic.

<comment><USER10> I refrained from calling them by name and would like to keep it that way, but I can say that it's one of the largest / most popular German hosting companies. (It's probably easy to figure it out via a whois lookup, actually.)

Over the course of a couple of years, their service was good and I didn't run into any major problems besides this one. The cutoff was a real bummer (especially with a concept like Impetus), but I have to give them a little credit: seconds after my angry call, the site went back up.

<comment><USER16> Ah good call on the whois.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have nothing technical or special insight to offer; I'd just like to say I teared up a little reading that. I don't know why. I hadn't heard of the game until I saw this article. Never played the game either. The game character is just a made up character with no background story and is nothing more than simple ajax and timers. Any psychologist care to offer some opinion?

<comment><USER21> I find it beautiful that people could come together --- even for a pointless cause. And I find it tragic that their overzealous response led to the failure of their objective.

Even though the game was "pointless" (aren't all games) I think it lends a surprisingly deep allegory for life, community, and collaboration.

I think the game (and our collective response to it) is fascinating. I would love to study how adding/removing game elements affects players' and observers' emotional responses.

<comment><USER20> An article I read the other day about human consciousness touched upon our tendency to project consciousness/will/agency onto non-living things, like the puppet controlled by a ventriloquist. I wonder if game elements promote similar response.

Said article: [http://www.aeonmagazine.com/being-human/how-consciousness- wo...](http://www.aeonmagazine.com/being-human/how-consciousness-works/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I really appreciate that he didn't bend the rules to relaunch the game after the server issue. He probably could have justified it but it wouldn't have been true to the essence of the game.

</comment><comment><USER23> Very cool idea! One comment in defense of the host. Hosting a game that depends on users hitting the page every 10 seconds at the least on a shared server was not a great idea. Shared servers are notoriously (and understandably) unstable -- mainly because of sites that overuse their resources. If a single site is taking down an entire server worth of clients, the best course of action is to always disable that client first, and then work with them on a solution after. It's not fair for all the others on that same server to have their sites down or slow because of one site.

Which is why I pretty much always recommend against shared hosting, unless it's some static site that doesn't need constant uptime.

</comment><comment><USER24> I believe your game went "extinct" not "instinct"

</comment><comment><USER25> It would be interesting to try this again, but instead a simple button to click to extend the timer, which a script can fake, require a brief reverse Turing Test, like a captcha or something. Would people continue keeping her alive at the cost of more effort?

</comment><comment><USER26> Amazing stuff, I think this was more of an art than anything else, for me art is also always social experiment, you can observe how people react to things. That is why internet is great you can engage people in ways you did not thought about before.

</comment><comment><USER27> Given the recent hoohah over strong accents, this author clearly has English as a second language, but writes powerfully and well, structures a story effectively and did not let me stop till the end.

A great game and a great write up. Let us know about LD28 :-)

<comment><USER10> Hey, thanks! Guy who wrote the article reporting in, I just registered so I can reply. You're right, my English isn't the best (working on it, mostly through lots of reading, though I wish I had the chance to speak it more often). Either way, the story felt like an easy one to write because so many fascinating things happened in so little time. I'm glad you like it, it really means a lot. I'll make sure to jam at LD28 as well!

<comment><USER28> > [..] working on it, mostly through lots of reading [..]

The Economist has lots of short pieces showing off a nice command of the English language (if you like word play and puns). Good reading material.

As for speaking: don't worry about that too much, but try to listen to spoken material or songs. (See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehension_approach](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehension_approach))

<comment><USER29> I highly recommend the audio edition of the Economist, available to subscribers. It's the whole damn thing, 6h+ of mp3 each week. Made my bike commute into a politics and business briefing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> In a way it was lucky the plug got pulled. The inevitable death is a big part of the game, this way it occurred while there were still many of people involved!

</comment><comment><USER11> How was the beep sound made (see the youtube video)? Javascript? Happy to get replies or some actual code of that beep

</comment><comment><USER31> If you find this fascinating and haven't seen the TV show LOST (does such an intersection existing?) - there is a similar mechanism introduced near the end of the first season that has a big impact on the plot. I wonder if ABC ever made an ARG of this, would have been pretty fitting I imagine.

<comment><USER32> Yeah, I immediately thought of LOST as well.

Without spoiling too much:

There's already a javascript version of the computer here: [http://www.enterthehatch.com/](http://www.enterthehatch.com/) . But since it's a 108 minute countdown (instead of 10 seconds), it's quite easy to keep it going. Still, the record of keeping it up for more than a thousand days is quite impressive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> What a beautiful concept. It's sad that it met such an unnatural end. I think it's more than possible that this game could have lasted much, much longer (perhaps even years).

Stupid webhosts. Why doesn't everybody use AWS? ;)

</comment><comment><USER34> I wonder how different would it be if the main character was male instead of female. There is a certain frailness that you can't get with male characters

</comment><comment><USER13> Minimalist Tamagochi?</comment>


Our Stack: iOS, Mac OS X and Clojure on Google App Engine - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sevenmillennia.com/2011/02/06/our-stack/

<comment><USER2> I was expecting a more pragmatic explanation of why Clojure, Mac OSX and Google App Engine. Although at this point, the pragmatic selection of Mac OSX and iOS is understood.

What did Clojure do for you that the hundreds of others don't or didn't? What is unique about your infrastructure? What challenges did you find? Etc..

Why the Google App Engine? Cheaper? Free? Faster? Why not the others?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a good point.

The post was already quite long, so I tried to summarize everything. I will reserve this part for another post in the future, also because for now the apps are not yet live and I will certainly have more experience in the future to address all these questions better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How did you learn about Clojure on GAE? What editor/IDE do you use (for Clojure)?

<comment><AUTHOR> At first I started wanting to use GAE and a functional language. I was learning Lisp but I did not know about Clojure so my first idea was to use Python, but after some research and asking here on HN I found that Python is not really suited for FP. That's when I discovered Clojure (someone here on HN suggested it), since it compiles to the JVM, it works on GAE too.

Then I made some research for a while. At first I found only some blog posts on how to interact directly with the GAE API. I then came across The Deadline (<https://the-deadline.appspot.com>) here on HN, which is written in Clojure on GAE and it's a production app (I believe they do not use the library but a custom solution, but I really don't know). So I had the validation that it was possible and started coding the other parts of the project (I started with the iPhone app to have a proof of concept).

In the meanwhile time passed and I kept searching from time to time on Google for info about the subject. Some day I found that library on Google and also this article, which mentions it (again here on HN): [http://www.glenstampoultzis.net/blog/clojure-web- infrastruct...](http://www.glenstampoultzis.net/blog/clojure-web- infrastructure/)

As you can see HN is a really good source for me. ;)

Regarding the editor I use Vim with colored syntax, autocompletion and rainbow parentheses. At the time I made some research and in the end I decided for Vim. To build the app I use Leiningen (appengine-magic has some Leiningen extension for building and deploying).

It works, but to tell the truth I really feel the need for an IDE for Clojure (and not some generic IDE like Eclipse or Netbeans adapted to Clojure using some plugins). I even thought about writing one myself, but for now I don't have the time and probably not even the knowledge.</comment></comment>


New GPL3 license deals with contentious issues - <AUTHOR> http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/BAaf/~3/105150097/20070329-new-gpl-3-draft-resolves-some-contentious-issues.html <comment><AUTHOR> I'm still not sure this license works well enough for me to use any GPL- licensed components. I created and sold some software several years ago that communicated with MySQL, and those guys wanted me to open source due to their use of GPL. Even though my code was completely independent and my own, they still wanted it open source due to some obscure language in that license.</comment>


It's time for Asian American men to stop being the "Model Minority" in tech - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/message/the-tech-diversity-story-thats-not-being-told-9a36fb40530f

<comment><USER2> Much respect for the starting points:

"Listen and believe. Talk to your coworkers who belong to underrepresented groups. Listen to their stories and experiences. Don't be defensive, just listen. And then when they're done, believe what they're saying. Don't explain it away, don't play devil's advocate. Believe that they know just as much as you, are as smart and capable as you, and have had experiences that you don't know about.

Stop ignoring the issue. Specifically, we should acknowledge that we haven't said enough about anti-Black and anti-Latino attitudes, and that we have not articulated our complicity in industry sexism and misogyny. Indeed, we have often helped build these systems of exclusion, not merely remained silent while they were enforced. We must understand that trying to pass under the umbrella of whiteness will not save us from discrimination. Indeed, the statistics show that Asians make $8,146 less than white workers at tech companies—not as underpaid as other minorities, but certainly an enormous disparity that makes clear why solidarity between underrepresented communities is essential."</comment>


Headhunter: Employers Hate World Of Warcraft Players - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/12/headhunter-employers-hate-world-of-warcraft-players

<comment><USER2> No surprise there. I estimate playing WoW is more addictive and harmful to your productivity than smoking marijuana, and certainly you wouldn't mention the latter to a prospective employer. "Hate" is going a little too far though - probably the manager in question had a bad experience in the past. I doubt if you were a productive employee and you mentioned you play WoW if they would start hating you.

<comment><USER3> The thing about smoking marijuana is that it's not incompatible with heightened creativity. Some would even say that it helps.

<http://www.marijuana-uses.com/essays/002.html>

I suspect that WoW can be conducive to creativity, but for hard-core players this is often focused entirely on goals in-game. So in the case of hard-core players, the chances are that an employer will only lose out from decreased productivity. (Lack of sleep.)

Contrast this with interests in music, art, or sports, where employers can often stand to gain indirectly from even an employee's avid participation. Sometimes they gain directly, as in Shigeru Miyamoto.

[http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sect...](http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article4488157.ece)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's 11 million people playing WoW, with different levels of playtime/dedication. It's a bit excessive to try to put all these people in the same can.

I would trust psychological tests rather than just assume all WoW players are irresponsible people just cause you met one silly guy who happened to play WoW.

At my company, around 12 people are WoW players. I play WoW myself and even my boss did until a year ago. Problems with any of us? None.

<comment><USER5> There's more than 11 million people using drugs, with different levels of use/dedication. It's a bit excessive to try to put all these people in the same can.

I would trust psychological tests rather than just assume all drug users are irresponsible people just cause you met one silly guy who happened to smoke pot.

At my company, around 12 people are drug users. I use drugs myself and even my boss did until a year ago. Problems with any of us? None.

<comment><USER6> I agree. (I don't think that was effective at making the point you wanted.)

<comment><USER7> Yeah. Actually, a better analogy would be alcohol use, since drug use is illegal (and WoW playing isn't).

What if a company had a bad experience with an alcoholic employee, so they refused to hire anyone who drinks at all?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I dunno, yeah, stereotypes tend to have a kernel of truth to them, and I wouldn't hire someone who played WoW 40 hours a week, but I probably wouldn't hire someone who did something innocuous (say, photography) for 40 hours a week. A casual interest/hobby is beneficial to a person.

Then again, I'd have to seriously question the judgment of a person who puts WoW on their resume.

<comment><USER9> I definitely wouldn't hire someone who played for 40 hours a week, but if it's more reasonable, like 10-15, it essentially becomes a replacement for stuff like watching tv or movies.

The problem is that games like WOW are designed to be addictive, especially at the endgame levels. My college room mate ended up playing for more than 2000 hours before he quit, and it's not been great for him - he's been jobless for two years since graduation.

<comment><USER10> Seriously. I played a vast amount too -- I just did the math and it was probably around 4000 hours, a number I can barely believe in retrospect. Although I finally quit for good nearly two years ago, I feel as though the game _emptied my life_. I was fortunate to have a support group outside the game who kept me involved in recurring real-life activities, or perhaps it would have been worse.

Lucky for me, I quit the game because I moved to New York to work full time. But I've heard a lot of horror stories of people dropping out of college or life itself due to MMOs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Let me get this right.

This is an article by a guy who was told by a guy who was told by a headhunter who was told by an employer that WOW players are bad employees?

I wouldn't draw any conclusions from this.

<comment><USER12> As often happens, the discussion here is better than the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I play WoW 10-15 hours a week with the wife, in-laws, and other IRL friends. It's a great family activity and helps me keep in touch with friends from high school that now live hundreds of miles away.

I also put in ~50 hours/week into my job at a startup, and have been told I write good code. I'd wager I'm not a bad employee.

I'd agree that WoW addicts wouldn't make great employees. However, there's a huge difference between a WoW _addict_ and a WoW _player_ , please don't lump us together.

<comment><USER14> As a level 73 priest, I agree. Nothing wrong with taking the game leisurely. There were some weeks when guildies thought I quit WoW simply because I wasn't around for such a long time, but sometimes work needs the focus. I think you're likely to take the game more leisurely if you play with real-life- friends versus 40 people you've never met.

<comment><USER13> 62 Hunter, here. What server are you on?

And I agree about playing with real-life friends vs. online people. I took a two-year break from the game just because all of my friends dropped out for various reasons. Only just got back into it a few months ago to play with the family.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ask HN: Who hates WOW players more -- employers or girls?

<comment><USER16> Employers. Because some WOW players actually get jobs.

</Generalisation>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think they're implying causation where correlation exists. I'm guessing most WoW addicts (and there are lots of casual players, who can be fine employees) are simply obsessive types who would be attacking some other hobby full force if not for WoW. D&D, building a robot in their garage, whatever.

<comment><USER18> Except D&D and robot building are creative activities, which WoW doesn't seem to be.

<comment><USER17> I don't see how WoW is any different than D&D, especially to an employer.

<comment><USER18> For D&D people often create their own stories, and they display their imagination in acting it out (even with pre-fabricated stories, the options for actions are infinite). WoW only allows you to follow actions that have been written into the game by Blizzard. I think it is very different.

However, you are right, employers might not know the difference.

<comment><USER17> I've never played, but my perception (from what I've heard) is that in D&D one person does the creating and the rest just sort of play. Is that inaccurate?

I really just meant it as an example of a hobby people obsess about though. I don't doubt it's a little more food for the brain than WoW, which I rank possibly below reality television.

<comment><USER18> One person creates the story, but playing is really roleplaying. The players can conceive the wildest actions, and the master has to come up with a reasonable continuation of the story, often improvising on the fly. I think it is not uncommon that things go entirely different than originally planned.

Sometimes one might even play a completely improvised story, it all depends on the group.

<comment><USER17> That definitely sounds more creative then, and actually maybe not a bad thing to look for in employees for certain jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> actually while WoW (or even warcraft) can be very addictive, it is very hard to make this prediction in isolation without looking at a candidate's job history or experience...

our team leader (who is very good at his job) is an avid WoW player (with about 6 characters going at a time)... at any point when i turn towards his monitor there is atleast one WoW related page on one of his monitors... while I do find that wierd, his productivity is not affected so what can you say about that??

but having said that I cant see a reason why you would put something like WoW in your resume in the first place... i mean you are trying to get a job here, not show you well you can cast a shrinking spell!

</comment><comment><USER20> Don't worry - I'll quit WoW as soon as I can get my paws on Starcraft II.

<comment><USER21> I think RTS games are less addictive because they are broken up into discrete games and are much more intense in terms of mental energy and frantic clicking. Whenever I play a good game of StarCraft or WarCraft III, I usually feel really drained and don't feel at all like playing another game.

<comment><USER20> I agree. It seems like you never get enough oomph from an engrossing session of WoW - never really satisified, always feeling empty after the latest chapter/quest.

It's kind of like reading a Robert Kiyosaki book - getting to the end and needing to buy the next book right away. The content makes you feel good but it always leaves you feeling a bit undernourished, hoping the next fix will finally complete you - leaving you whole.

The preceding was a bit of self-reflection, perhaps. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Your probably better off not working at a company that "doesn't hire Xs".

<comment><USER23> I don't hire people that "don't hire Xs".</comment></comment>