Your experience with "Enterprise Architects"?  - <AUTHOR>

Today was my first time interacting with an Enterprise Architect. He entirely lived up to the negative EA stereotypes. At my work we deal with another company regularly. They are fairly large but nothing they do is complex. It's just a few web sites, some eCommerce, and some corp. infrastructure.
We need a web service method to verify that a username and password were valid or not. This resulted in a meeting with their newly appointed EA. He told us it would take a week, or a week and a half to get it done, because he had to talk to the developers "make a design, and make sure things done more formally, because these guys typically just start coding, we need them to have a more methodical process." This would take me 30-45 minutes from start to deploy.
I picture this guy going off to his developers and having a design and architecture meeting to plan out this single method. I'm picturing a UML diagram. Oh shit, you also made a diagram about how this is going to use a 3-tiered architecture!? Good one, buddy! You really put Visio through its paces today!
This is not banking, or something that needs compliance checks. The database already exists, the accounts are already there, the passwords are already hashed, and no data is being created or modified. We just want them to tell us if the combo passed in is valid.
After 4+ years of the projects being run by him they are still stuck in this world where they don't even have the basics done, no automated tests, no automated builds. The offshore dev's log into the development environment's web server. You know why? Because Visual Studio is installed there, and they all do development from that machine. There are many different copies of the main web project there, and only one person knows which one is the "real" one. It's definitely not one of the ones that have "real version" as part of the folder name. I tried all of those.
Any similar experiences? Any advice on dealing with this type of architect? <comment><USER2> Figure out what they do and who their customers are, and start a company competing with them on price, because obviously his practices add a huge overhead that you can avoid.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought about that but I don't think it's possible. The people who hired him in the first place trust him as an authority on technology. They are blind to the fact that a small team of competent hackers about 1/5 the size and cost of their current support structure could deliver better quality, better results, faster. They would rather not admit to the fact that the person they hired was a bad choice compared to what's out there.

Somewhat related mentality, I often run into this situation where I see the non-tech leaders of a company talking to each other, trying to get stuff done, and they come to an impasse because each party's trusted tech person says something that contradicts what the other tech lead at the other company said. The non-tech bosses always tend to believe that their own tech people know what they are talking about and that the tech people at the other place are wrong. Usually you have a more hackery or pragmatic one saying something is possible, or should be doable quickly, and then you have another "enterprise architect-y" one saying it's not possible, or would require some large cost/effort/time to accomplish.

<comment><USER3> _They are blind to the fact that a small team..._

Be careful with that. A lot of times, inefficiency is a cover for siphoning funds to upper management. You can get in huge trouble for pointing out "inefficiencies" that are really ways to get money out of a company.

<comment><AUTHOR> OK, maybe time to contradict my other reply to your post. The company in question has undergone several changes in management over the past few years. I have witnessed a ton of mismanagement that results in millions of wasted dollars each year.

For example, they rewrite their entire website every two years for the past 6 years, but each time the project launches with fewer features, and results in lower traffic and lower conversions. They change datacenters about every 18 months. Revenue decreases.

They were bought by a popular PE firm and taken private. Gutted, and that's when all this started. The ownership has changed hands, but I see a constant rotation of management from a network of people connected to the PE firm. The PE firm finally did some weird stuff with chopping the company into two and selling both pieces. Now the main part of the company is owned by a private bank or hedge fund (can't remember exactly, but I can look it up).

I get the feeling that if someone looked into everything that's happened they'd uncover a lot of stuff. This has gone under the radar because it's not a public company, and there is so much turnover and a level of decoupling between upper management and the regular rank & file that no one would really know where to begin with raising flags. I'm guessing it's all legal, but shady. The PE firm has a very poor reputation, so I think the general public would be interested to dissect exactly what the fate is of a company that gets acquired by them, as a case study.

Oh well. End rant.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Turning Off Autoplaying Previews - <AUTHOR> https://help.netflix.com/en/node/2102 <comment><USER2> Didn't ever expect to see this capability.

A bit unrelated, but: anyone remember in the "early" days when Netflix held competitions to develop the most accurate recommendation and ratings engines? Giving out million dollar prizes? And held possibly state-of-the-art tech for this?

And then one day completely gutted the star rating system, replacing it with a much-despised "thumbs up/down" system, giving up their "so good it's magical" recommendations for something that feels less accurate than a coin flip...

<comment><USER3> I don't really like star systems because I spend way too much time deciding if something is 3 or 4 stars, or 4 or 5 stars.

I much prefer textual descriptions; for example "Terrible", "Don't like", "Okay", "Like", "Favourite", which has the same options as a 5-star rating system, but choosing between 3/4 and 4/5 is much easier IMHO.

I don't really know of any system that uses this, except this one music player I wrote myself (which has "Crap", "Meh", "Okay", "Super").

<comment><USER4> Yep, as much as people hate it, when it comes to recommendation, up/down is all the data you need. Trying to build a system out of a 5 star system just adds unnecessary complexity, and the reality was that people used the star system differently making it even harder. up/down thumb is explicit and cleaner to work with.

<comment><USER5> The problem with the up/down system for me is not my own ability to like/dislike specific titles, but more the fact that Netflix no longer displays the average of all user votes. Sure different people used the 5 star system in different ways, and there were some who may have misused it by giving poor ratings to things they never intended on watching, but it was a great signal to me for the extremes.

Scenario: I'm considering some odd looking sci-fi movie to watch that I never heard of before. Ratings between 2-4 stars might not tell me much, but very reliably titles with only one star were terrible movies. Now Netflix happily recommends any and all sci-fi titles, saying they are a "98% match" for me! Sure by category, but when the movie is a low budget dumpster fire I no longer have that instant signaling that the previous rating system gave me.

<comment><USER6> IIRC, Netflix never showed the average, but rather the rating they predicted you would give it, taking into account your previous viewing and rating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's amazing it took this long. I can understand how some people might be okay with this feature but it causes me actual anxiety to use the Netflix app on my AppleTV. Before autoplay I could mindlessly browse looking for content. Now I hurry through to check if there is anything new and get out as fast as possible. They must know that people use the app less since this change... right?

<comment><USER8> I believe I read somewhere that it did result in an overall increase in viewership. There's no way they don't have those metrics.

My guess is that for some majority of users who weren't super bothered by it it genuinely caused them to watch more things. Even though a vocal minority was _extremely upset_ about it, the numbers still worked out overall. Of course adding a preference is easy, and people who aren't upset won't bother to change the default, so this is probably a win/win for them.

<comment><USER9> I can't imagine but think "viewership of folks _who left the app open_ "

In other words, could you separate out:

\- folks who naturally came to a stopping point between shows.

\- others who ragequit because of annoying previews?

<comment><USER10> Here's a secret: many people shout about rage quitting. No one actually does.

<comment><USER9> statistics bear it out: they just come to a natural stopping point between shows. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Finally. I've been so frustrated about the autoplaying previews, especially since I've experienced that after a few seconds, the menu will fade out and Netflix will play the video as if you had clicked "Play". But I haven't clicked "Play", I only happened to rise up from my couch, hear the preview starting, do whatever for 30 seconds and then come back having to stop or restart the episode.

Absolutely terrible. I'm really happy Netflix has given us a way out.

<comment><USER12> Another bad thing about the fading menu is that it seems to get treated the same as if you affirmatively decided to watch it.

It shows up in "continue watching" and I believe probably stuff like "because you watched A..." (...here are B, C, D, and E).

Which is just silly because even if they want to steer me into watching it because I'm too lazy to tell them to stop, that doesn't mean it makes meaningful data for recommendations. They can tell whether I pushed a button or not, but which seems like a pretty meaningful signal to ignore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was excited then for a second but I don't think this means what I think it does. Does this mean it's possible to disable the auto play on trailers for something unrelated when you finish a series?

I literally finished Bojack Horseman after years of watching 30 minutes ago. End it's left hanging there in a poignant moment but I have to jump up to stop the trailer for god knows what, and the a minute later I have to do it again after the credits have finished. Years of investment in a show, but I'm not allowed 10 seconds to stop and digest it. (PS amazing series)

<comment><USER14> I actually hate that "feature" even more than autoplay. It's completely disrespectful to both the viewer and to the content that you're watching.

This option is to turn off autoplay when browsing. It would be great if it also disabled the auto play on trailers at the end of a show.

<comment><USER15> That bugged me enough the first time it happened that I immediately stopped what I was doing and worked on disabling it.

If you use greasemonkey/tampermonkey then the script below will disable the post-episode playback (along with a couple other UI changes)

[https://github.com/bbbbbr/netflix-disable-auto-play-and- more](https://github.com/bbbbbr/netflix-disable-auto-play-and-more)

<comment><USER16> I was hoping to find your comment in this thread, thank you so much for this. It makes me mad someone else is controlling these very basic things, treating their userbase like mindless monkeys. All these things could be hidden somewhere in the UI, and everybody would be happy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting. I phoned and complained about this as soon as Netflix started doing it - I think it was about two years ago! What really got me (and I pointed this out to the cutomer service rep) was that the first preview that showed included several swear words. I thought that that argument alone would be enough, let alone how annoying it is to have a stupid light and sound show while I am browsing.

So all I can say is "about time"!

<comment><AUTHOR> > was that the first preview that showed included several swear words

From feedback like this, they might have just made a policy to not allow cursing in the preview whether that was by choosing different scenes or bleeping them.

<comment><USER18> They actually for a while have disabled previews for content not labeled "family friendly" if you setup a parental-controls PIN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The Autoplay is REALLY, REALLY, A-N-N-O-Y-I-N-G!!!

Actually, I hate most of the current design (UI/UX). It's really streamlined when all you want to do is push "play", but everything else is, quite frankly, laborious.

<comment><USER20> I know this is going to make me sound old, but so much UI/UX is getting worse. I can't even tell which tile is highlighted on my appleTV because it's only about 5% larger than the adjacent ones. The only way you can tell is by the change as you cursor around, you can't tell at a glance (and this is on a 75" TV).

<comment><USER21> At this point I think they're just changing stuff to change stuff. Like some new hire(s) somewhere(s) are looking to make a name for him/herself by changing stuff.

<comment><USER22> Or the cult of A/B testing has been fully implemented.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This was the primary reason I cancelled my account. Secondary reason was the poor search / filtering options - they have continually gimped these features in favor of their own recommendation engine and homepage. Their recommendation engine has a recency bias and a popularity bias. As someone who liked to watch obscure world cinema Netflix makes it way too hard to find such things and to be honest their catalog doesnt even have a lot of such content anymore. I suspect one of the reasons they dont have any grids/lists and filtering in their UI is that it will reveal just how small their catalog is in most genres now.

<comment><USER24> _As someone who liked to watch obscure world cinema Netflix makes it way too hard to find such things and to be honest their catalog doesnt even have a lot of such content anymore._

These two complaints are actually two manifestations of the same complaint. With a shrinking catalog, it is _vital_ that the UI be nerfed in order to keep it from being too obvious just how little content there is.

<comment><USER23> If netflix replaced their UI with a single excel spreadsheet containing data about their content, I would consider it an improvement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This might be related to a popular reddit thread that got 28.5k upvotes on reddit the other day: [https://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/exkrij/you_know...](https://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/exkrij/you_know_what_ruins_the_mood_after_a_really/)

<comment><USER4> I love how the news of it being changed is also on top of HN, /r/television and /r/movies right now (and probably more subreddits too).

Goes to show how hated autoplay was.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd just stopped using Netflix unless I knew exactly what I wanted to watch. When I had to use it, I'd bounce around between tiles constantly to prevent the clips from playing, knowing full well that they must record every interaction you have with the app. For once I was glad they did.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think I've noticed another change in the few days too. This one related to closing credits.

Maybe a month back, they started cutting off playback as soon as closing credits started to roll. I can understand the motivation because sometimes credits are boring.

But other times, they are part of the enjoyment of watching the show. For example, every episode of "Grace and Frankie" ends with a different song, carefully chosen to fit in thematically with that episode. People have written articles about these song choices, made Spotify playlists, etc. Yet Netflix cut them off. (And that's a Netflix original show.)

Anyway, in the last few days, it seems like they've stopped doing this. They now have a button in the UI that will stop playing the credits, but the button looks different, and it doesn't cut the credits off by default.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'd settle for a "I don't ever want to see this movie, do not show it to me again" button. But of course, if we used it to winnow away the chaff, it would show in stark detail how sparse their catalog really is.

<comment><USER27> I transferred my to-watch list from IMDB to reelgood.com (wrote a script to do it), which shows what is available on what service I subscribe to. This has cut out the time I spend browsing the catalog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I was actually watching TV last night and found myself hesitant to switch from Hulu to Netflix because deep in my head I was saying "oh that's the one with the noisy menus".

<comment><USER29> And don't forget the volume check.

BUM BUUUMMMMM!

Goddamnit, I just woke up every mammal in the house.

Netflix; your jingle/call sign thing doesn't need to be the loudest thing on on my TV. Get some group therapy, find your self esteem and chill the fuck out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Oh, wow. It's always impressive to see how a slow wave of rising internet buzz suddenly peaks and affects change in an impenetrable multinational organization. Hurray! :)

</comment><comment><USER31> I was excited about this for a minute, but then I realized I canceled Netflix months ago. This was one of the reasons. Sticky things being sticky, I'm not going to magically start paying again now that they finally undid something dumb. I'm a lost customer for a long time.

</comment><comment><USER32> When you put down the wanton AB testing for a minute and actually listen to your users, you can make your product better. Glad to see this.

</comment><comment><USER33> Now PLEASE give an option to turn off autoplaying the next episode like 3 seconds into the end credits.

<comment><USER34> That is an option demonstrated on that very Netflix help page, if I understand your request correctly.

<comment><USER35> There is an option for "off" or "on (when the credits start)" but not "when the music finishes" or "when the video finishes".

<comment><USER33> Yeah, this. I don't mind autoplay, but end credits (and the accompanying music) are an integral part of a show for me. The Witcher, which is Netflix's own show, had amazing original songs in end credits which were all skipped by default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is fantastic news! More times than I can count I have decided that it wasn't worth the effort to peruse through the app before my ears get assaulted if I forgot to mute my TV beforehand. It is anxiety-inducing and unpleasant to have to keep the selection moving just so audio doesn't blast from my TV when I just want to browse.

Perhaps we can thank the fact that streaming services now have competition, and the quality of their UX matters quite a bit.

</comment><comment><USER37> I was satisfied personally when they added a mute button for previews, but I'm glad an even "stronger" option now exists.

</comment><comment><USER38> Official announcement: [https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1225506511184703493](https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1225506511184703493)

> Some people find this feature helpful. Others not so much.

> We've heard the feedback loud and clear — members can now control whether or > not they see autoplay previews on Netflix.

</comment><comment><USER39> I hated this SO MUCH when they rolled it out but now I love it, because I can get a quick sense of the look of the actual movie instead of trying to judge it based on the cover or thumbnail. I think it's actually a good use of video in a video app and makes sense and a fix of sorts to the discovery problem.

But happy it's optional for those who never warmed up to it.

</comment><comment><USER40> Now they need to fix their recommendations.

If I watched 2 episodes and marked show thumbs down I DO NOT WANT TO SEE IT AGAIN!

Instead my continue to watch is a list of shows i didn't like!

How hard is to figure it out, or at least give me an option to black mark a show. Anything really. They spend millions on show and then package then is such user unfriendly manner .

</comment><comment><USER41> So there's still no option to turn off the thing that after the last episode of a show (or even a movie), it auto plays a trailer from some random show, and if you managed to cancel that trailer and start to watch the credit, it will come back again later?

</comment><comment><USER42> FINALLY

I honestly stopped watching most netflix due to this feature.

I would go there to watch something specific but I would not browse around because of that annoying auto-play crap

<comment><USER42> BOOOOOO it seems the setting has no impact on the Roku App

I am still getting AutoPlay on Roku

<comment><USER43> have you tried switching profiles then switching back? I think some settings get cached on device until you do a profile change.

<comment><USER42> Yes, and rebooting, and logging out and back on, and several other things

I have 2 Roku;s. 1 is working (no autoplay) and 1 is not (still autoplay)..

the one with the AutoPlay still enabled is my primary one, and the newest one, the other is a older Roku Streaming stick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Thank you so much! I actually stopped my membership due to this issue as I was tired of making UBlock Origin filters on my laptops.

</comment><comment><USER45> Finally! Whenever Netflix features a scary show or movie on their homepage and their preview auto-plays, it always make me jump.

</comment><comment><USER46> Finally. Every time a preview plays i cringe. Most of the problem is that it just starts abruptly at max volume. The logic is failed. The procedure should be, if the item is hovered, wait 2 seconds. Then fade in preview video and audio for 2 seconds. Don't know if the behavior is the same for all platforms though.

</comment><comment><USER47> DAE know if this would prevent previews for other shows from playing during the credits of a filn or series finale? It might seem petty but not being able to watch the credits and reflect in peace (without a frantic run to disable the auto-trailers) was my tipping point and I promised not to go back until it was possible disable it.

<comment><USER48> Have only just turned it off so don't know yet, but my bet is on no. I'm right there with you on reflecting in peace though. Sometimes you want to just take a breath and think about what you saw. That same "feature" was one of the things that drove me away from flow TV, as they increasingly pushed the next program more and more aggressively, until it would actually start the trailer/speaker BEFORE the current program was finished. Drives me insane. Who watches a 2.5 hours movie, and as soon as the credits start rolling, goes "alright next movie, play play play!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Great! The best feature of years of Machine Learning practices. The machine finally learns what I want.

</comment><comment><USER50> Wow THANK YOU! I agree I didn't expect to see this happen. Now if we could get Roku to turn off the 'auto add a channel if you hit the play/pause button by accident' I would swear less at my streaming setup :-)

</comment><comment><USER51> I have come to despise this "feature" but without it I would have never watched Kung Fury. I am glad I can now turn it off but wonder what I may miss going forward.

</comment><comment><USER52> Praise the day!!! The tyranny of auto-preview has ended!

On a serious note, I get why they added it.

For some, it saves a few button presses.

But boy was that an annoying feature.

Literally made browsing Netflix stressful.

</comment><comment><USER53> Good lord, it's beyond time for this. This "feature" made looking for something to watch on Netflix completely impossible for me.

</comment><comment><USER54> Finally! This is so much more family friendly. Also more polite, as previews would often rudely interrupt someone in the room mid-sentence.

</comment><comment><USER55> Why oh why is this not a per device setting? Is it really inconceivable I might like or dislike the feature in different environments?

</comment><comment><USER56> ______FINALLY __ __ __

</comment><comment><USER57> Thanks Netflix!

Next feature request:

AUTO-SKIP-ALL-INTROS-AND-RECAPS-WHILE-BINGING

<comment><USER58> I like to watch intros and recaps sometimes. I like the current design where I can choose to skip if I want to.

<comment><USER29> The recaps often contain spoilers. When you're binging, the story line is too recent and it's a lot easier to read into the scene selection.

If they do a clip of someone we thought died six episodes ago, guess what, they aren't dead.

<comment><USER57> Exactly - I also hate the 'next week' bit they do at the end of some shows. They ruin all the surprises!

<comment><USER29> And then there are the synopses...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I'd love to know what metrics they were optimizing for when they introduced this feature.

<comment><USER38> Definitely viewthrough rate (i.e. % of people who subsequently view the video after hovering over a video thumb and the autoplay triggers vs. normal viewthrough rate after hovering over a thumb).

Of course, a weakness of this testing is failing to account for _negative_ metric impact outside of the one you are optimizing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Imagine growing your platform to a size, where its frontpage news when you add a setting :)

</comment><comment><USER61> Awesome! auto-playing previews has always caused issues on my Roku devices

<comment><USER42> Have you changed it on your Profile, I did but the RoKu app still autoplays

update: looks like 1 of my 2 Devices is working correctly (not AutoPlay), so here hoping the other starts soon

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I'd love to see the tracking for the rate that people turn it off.

</comment><comment><USER63> I considered interviewing at Netflix so I could complain in person.

</comment><comment><USER64> oh my god, finally! I can't understand why they ever even had this in the first place. Is there anyone who doesn't despise it?

</comment><comment><USER65> Thank the Almighty Bob. About time they did this.

</comment><comment><USER66> I miss getting DVDs/whatever in the mail.

</comment><comment><USER67> Finally. Thank you!

I consider the previews spoilers. And autoplay destroys pacing because it skips the preroll/credits.

</comment><comment><USER68> Good riddance!!!!

</comment><comment><USER69> Bless you, OP.

</comment><comment><USER70> > Changes to these settings are specific to a profile and will take _affect_ > across all devices.

> Note: There may be a delay before the setting takes _affect_.

> Note: There may be a delay before the setting takes _affect_.

"Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

</comment><comment> shadow-banned Some awful growth marketer who took a Reforge class is crying today.

</comment><comment><USER71> Excellent.

Now, I'd like to see them do this:

1) Quit emailing me/sending notifications to keep watching shows I start and don't like.

2) Bring back a purposeful, decent recommendation system.

3) Allow filters so only movies/shows in your language or dubbed in your language are shown. (...or just some kind of filter.)

Thanks.

<comment><USER72> The in-app notifications are nnoying for sure, but I've never received emails from them.

Email prefs are here: [https://www.netflix.com/EmailPreferences](https://www.netflix.com/EmailPreferences)

Marketing prefs are here: [https://www.netflix.com/MarketingCommunications](https://www.netflix.com/MarketingCommunications)

<comment><USER71> Thank you.

I should have clarified my response. When I contacted netflix they told me you cannot unsubscribe to one part of the notifications ... it is all or nothing. So, if you turn it off you aren't alerted when new shows are added, etc.

This is what it looks like with an episode list at the bottom.

[https://i.imgur.com/gpcrgeI.png](https://i.imgur.com/gpcrgeI.png)</comment></comment></comment>


"Startup rollercoaster" isn't even the half of it - <AUTHOR> http://swizec.com/blog/startup-rollercoaster-isnt-even-the-half-of-it/swizec/2712

<comment><USER2> "Definitely the hardest year of my life, but I wouldn't have it any other way."

The last line gave me pause and catapulted me in to the reply box when I had no intention of being here. But now that I'm here I'm going to give you my 0.02.

It is OK to regret the mistakes you've made.

There are plenty of awful things you did over the last year. Some were done with malice and some had more innocent intentions. Either way, I wouldn't accept "I'm happy where I am now" or "I've learned a lot since then" as a valid reason to not have regrets. Saying that you have no regrets shows a lack of awareness about how your actions have affected others and, in your case, borders on tasteless. You don't regret hurting her? You don't regret burning bridges with your past employer?

The reason that I write this is that I want to encourage you to not settle for aphorisms in place of real reflection about how you really feel about the last year. Your regrets shape your future. It's important to pay them their due.

<comment><USER3> off topic but to me living with no regrets does not mean literally that. Sometimes it means not regretting just one of action/outcome. Sometimes it means knowing that you did to the best of your abilities. And sometimes it means (eventually) accepting your fallibility.

e.g: not too happy about taking that chance, but happy that had the courage to take that chance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks for the honest recap, but the concerning bit is that you don't leave previous arrangements in a good way.

\- Kicked out of the startup you were working on

\- Cheated on girlfriend before leaving her

\- Left job without notice and ignored emails

This stuff will catch up with you. I would recommend leave previous engagements with integrity or you will start having trouble in future due to reputation.

<comment><AUTHOR> The startup situation is a bit more complex. I certainly wasn't going to just drop what I considered to be pretty much my whole life for a year and a half and I had the largest stake in. In the end it was really more of an amiable agreement that we can't work together anymore and that I will repay my debt by turning over my share of the company.

The others are also quite rare occurences. This was the first and probably last job I have ever left without notice or in such a silly manner as not responding to emails.

Cheating ... yeah, no excuse there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey Swizec,

Congratulations on holding out this long given the amount of headwind that you've been experiencing.

What strikes me is that some of that headwind seems to be of your own making and that maybe if you changed your mindset just a little bit that things will go much better for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, I seem to have a tendency to shoot myself in the foot sometimes.

It's getting better though :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> >>I had that pesky school to finish!

Why work at it while already doing the startup?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because I find education to be as important as it is fun. Furthermore it tends to help financially to have a student status.

That's the gist of it, got into a bit more detail in a blogpost once: [http://swizec.com/blog/doing-a-startup-taught-me-the- value-o...](http://swizec.com/blog/doing-a-startup-taught-me-the-value-of- staying-in-school/swizec/1819)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not familiar with the author, but from the post, I gather he is from Europe. Is he working freelance gigs in the US while on an H1B for another gig? If so, I would be careful, things like that can get him banned from entering the US for 10+ years...

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a bit different since I'm not physically in the US.</comment></comment>


Does it violate federal export law if a website publishes CAD files of firearms? - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/02/does-it-violate-federal-export-law-if-a-website-publishes-cad-files-of-firearms/ <comment><USER2> From my understanding of the law, as long as the uploaded blocks non-OPEC countries from access then it is ok. I'd like to hear a real legal person comment so that I don't have to talk to any three letter agencies that don't exist in a context other then hiring.</comment>


Review My Startup - Live My Journey - <AUTHOR>

Hi all,
I'm just about to do a soft launch for my social travel planning startup and was hoping to get some feedback on what you think of it.
The link is: http://www.livemyjourney.com
Thanks in advance!
Amit <comment><USER2> Link?

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.livemyjourney.com></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why no SV startup searches for non-developers/innovators? - <AUTHOR>

I am rather curious why most of the hiring revolves around developers and no one actually searches for non-developers/innovators/good-hearted people that you can teach (as Elon Musk put it and almost no one follows his example).
While I am aware of our value as developers today, I don't understand the low demand for non-devs in US. I can't help but wonder what would happen if a new Steve Jobs would be born, would he have a chance in today's world? We all know he was an innovator but not even close to a developer.
Every month there's this "who's hiring" thread where you find all kind of jobs yet all of them are made for devs. And it's not one thread but almost all hiring discussions are completely avoiding/ignoring the other side which leads me to believe they are somehow psychologically extinct or shifted to another industry.
I personally believe the world can be changed by anyone from anywhere with or without an ivy league degree or super resumes. After all, change comes from unexpected places. Yet we are only exploiting a very small portion of this world's potential when it comes to people's ambition and abilities. <comment><USER2> 1\. Developers are in short supply.

2\. Non-developers are not in short supply, broadly speaking. Every business guy/girl and their mother wants to get into startups. Finance people, former consultants, you name it. These are all highly-credentialed, experienced people, too. Obviously, superstar salespeople and PMs are in high demand.

3\. Startups would rather have as little on the job teaching as possible, because that would slow them down.

4\. At all the companies I've seen, there is a roughly one or greater than one to one ratio of non-devs and engineers. So hiring numbers for non-devs and engineers would seem to be the same. _However_ the supply of devs is highly constrained, so companies have to expend more effort recruiting engineers.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think a lot of that has to do with the people that hire here already have the idea. They are now looking for people to build it.</comment>


Idea Week. Post ideas you don't plan on implementing. - <AUTHOR> Having trouble thinking of an idea for a YC application? Thursday looming near? You can take a few of mine.
Each day this week, starting today, I'll post an idea that I'd like to see implemented, but don't have time to work on myself.
Please join me in this empirical study of the value of ideas and post your own! <comment><USER2> Non-Profit Tobacco.

Find a way to give that majority of smokers, those who don't like what they do (but do it anyway), the ability to purchase high-quality cigarettes whose 'profits' go to cancer research and as-effective-as-possible anti-smoking campaigns.

<comment><AUTHOR> Natural American Spirit helps native americans, right?

"[they] purportedly donate a portion of their revenues to Native American charities." <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_American_Spirit>

That isn't too far off.

Either way, with taxes, lots of money goes to government mandated campaigns against smoking, tort damages, and miscellaneous government pork. You can't really control that.

<comment><USER2> Certainly taxes help, but this would target the money that _isn't_ going into taxes -- I think there's still enough profit in the tobacco industry for a project like this to have a shot at working.

Thanks for the interesting link. I like their idea a little, but I see donating some portion of revenues to Native American charities as a far cry from hitting the nail directly on the head with a "real" mission-driven non- profit.

<comment><USER3> The tobacco taxes have been misspent. In San Diego none of the tobacco tax money went to health care. Zero, not one percent of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've always wanted to be able to write notes on top of emails I receive. So say I receive an email about a new bug, I could just jot down more details into another layer on top that email in transparent font/colour. I've noticed other people often print out emails and do something like this with a red marker.

I use Thunderbird and I've thought about digging around in the source to see if this is possible. It's not something I've found time to do though.

<comment><USER5> That's a pretty nifty idea. I frequently use email as my todo list (though I really shouldn't...I've been trying to do the email zero thing, but I'm back up to 1000 or so messages in my box again, two weeks after starting).

<comment><USER6> I do use email as my TODO list, but I publish the length of the queue for all to see. Makes me deal with stuff just knowing that anyone could be looking.

[http://www.jgc.org/blog/2007/06/measuring-my-inbox- depth.htm...](http://www.jgc.org/blog/2007/06/measuring-my-inbox-depth.html)

John.

<comment><USER5> I didn't know about TB-QuickMove, but have wanted that capability forever. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's one, but if no one does it and it's feasable, some day I might. I'd like to implement a large continual self-report study via email for the public good. Via an email every day or so, data is slowly gathered from participants --all anonymized in a number of ways. The emails would be questions proposed by researchers or lifestyle data to look for correlations with product use, habits, physical traits and disease incidence. For example, looking back in time, thalidomide use and birth defects would be one type of correlation that you might hope to pick up, or perhaps more recently certain shampoos (with ingredient X) might correlate with infertility. Yes you would have to be thorough and careful about the anonymization, but I think the benefits could be there.

Correlation is not causation, though, and the nature of correlating a number of factors dictate you would get many false alarms. However, like a metal detector, the clues for new things to look at would be worth the false alarms. The idea of all this would be to give researchers new targets and areas of research, all free and open.

Thoughts? Impediments?

<comment><USER8> Thoughts? The correct analogy is not a metal detector, but a needle in a haystack. I think you misunderestimate the amount of false leads you get doing this by several orders of magnitude. If your system generates too many false leads, it will be (to borrow an analogy from Bruce Schneier, who you should read every week, and writes about false alarms in the context of airport security) like adding more hay to a haystack with a missing needle.

Impediments? People lie about their habits. People do not accurately remember things throughout the day. How to deal with missed days? If people miss days for different reasons, how do you deal with those gaps. You have to assume that the days they miss would be different enough from days they don't miss to invalidate the data of people who miss days.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure whether you are referring to the same argument, but I think I remember that Bruce Schneier talks about the lack of correct positives that makes the application of data mining methods to terrorist incidents useless. He makes the point that very few positives for the system to learn from combined with a very large number of variables causes a huge number of false alarms (not sure if I remember all he said correctly).

So it's all about how many confirmed positives you have and whether you have reliable data on them. It works very well for credit card fraud because there is a sufficiently large number of actual fraud cases, you have reliable data about them and false alarms do not cause major disruption.

I agree with your concern about the reliability and completeness of data. I still think it's an interesting idea if there was a way to extract the data from a reliable source instead of working with what people claim to be the case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A web-based interface for building and managing shaders for 3D apps and renderers. Features would include a node-based shader builder, plugins for the various 3D packages (Maya, Max, Houdini, XSI, etc), suppport for the various shading languages (RSL, VEX, mental ray, Cg, etc), and user groups and permissions. Think sourceforge for 3D artists, small studios without the ability to roll their own management solutions would like this.

Workflow is like this: user creates shader using node editor (think Maya's Hypershade, but Ajaxified...), then sets permissions for the shader. Any user with permission to use the shader can see it from the plugin for his app of choice on his machine and use it. The user sets the renderer that he wants to use, the shader is compiled on the server and sent down the pipe to the user. That way, source code is kept in the hands of the people who created it. Scene renders.

I would love to build something like this, but it requires a lot more CS knowledge than I have. So if you think it's cool, roll with it and invite me to the private beta.

</comment><comment><USER11> We were going to build a web service to make the college application process easier for students, but don't really have the time right now.

If you like the idea, check out sites like prstats.com or mychances.net (very poorly implemented, but good ideas IMO). Also, let me know and I'd be happy to share our early research with you.

<comment><USER12> One of my friends working on this, <http://www.peerdecision.com/>

<comment><USER11> This isn't quite what we had envisioned. This doesn't really do anything new...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Socratic Blogging. Two or more (real or fake) people have a conversation about a topic and it's posted as a blog entry. I think it'd make for a really interesting new genre of blogs very different from the traditional essay style. A web-based Ajax chat style writing system and an IM client plugin as well, would make it super convenient and painless to create new posts. Traditional bloggers might occasionally do these coop posts together, others might do this type alone.

I had this idea because friends and I sometimes talk on IM about a topic and the chat log turns out to make quite interesting reading.

<comment><USER14> I tried to implement this into a blog engine I wrote at my last job, but management didn't get it and directed me to stop working on it. I quit to work on my startup a month later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> My idea is a web service that lets you date Jessica Alba.

<comment><USER16> Wouldn't that be one that you sell for $50 million?

<comment><USER17> Depends on how many Jessica Albas your site comes with...

<comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure it's a severely limited resource.

<comment><USER18> Not if you use EC2.

<comment><USER5> The Jessica Alba instantiation feature of EC2 must be new since I last read the docs. What's the API call for that?

<comment><USER18> I'll send you my instance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I still think Web 2.0 is missing some kind of app aggregator. Something that would both improve the findability of applications, and allow them to be plugged together similar to what yahoo pipes does with RSS. However, without some kind of standardization amongst the apps, this is way too complex to implement.

And creating a trusted distributed computing system on facebook, where clients would compete to have users give their programs highest priority. On a simple analysis, while this would not be a very dependable system, it seems cheaper than Amazon's service at $1 an hour per core. Plus, this could be made more complex by integrating a contract system - clients can promise a certain payout based on the results of their program, kind of like the lottery.

<comment><USER20> You mean like diffle.com?

<comment><USER19> No, not quite, it's missing the pluggable architecture. It would be analogous to yahoo pipes, but apply to general apps, not just rss feeds. It'd be kind of like gluing together stuff in *nix, except in a way the web savvy crowd can.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here's one for a FireFox plugin.

The aim is to record articles where you submitted a comment and to be able to track follow-ups.

The plugin has to detect HTTP POST. It could ask the user if he wants to save the page or have an automated process that removes logins and other unrelated actions.

<comment><USER22> <http://www.cocomment.com/> is what you're after I think

<comment><USER23> does this work with YC?

<comment><USER22> news.YC has the threads feature which does a similar thing

<comment><USER23> well, if I understand correcty the cocomment app lets you track comments to threads you are following on multiple sites. i was wondering if it can pull in data from YC and so I can check comments across wordpress, blogger, yc, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> An aggregator for social news sites with a recommendation engine to feed you stories you like.

<comment><USER24> This is something I've wanted for a while too. Interestingly enough, Guy Kawasaki posted this just the other day (he's on their advisory board): <http://www.feedhub.com/>

Disclaimer: I haven't given it a thorough evaluation yet

<comment><USER25> I wonder why this needs to be a web service, unless they do the "people who liked x also liked y" thing. Otherwise, I'd rather have this as a local app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'd love to see someone create a virtual lock-box for emails you're tempted to spend too much time re-reading and analyzing (like those from past/future romantic interests). You'd forward the email to another address, which would somehow remove it from your inbox and return it to you after a standard amount of time (two weeks to a month, say).

<comment><USER27> I would have never guessed that this is a problem. I have a problem with reading hacker.news and other websites too much, and have resorted to editing my etc/hosts file to route those URLs to localhost

you'd want a hosts file for emails? interesting.

<comment><USER28> The solution isn't to block the distractions. You need to talk yourself up on whatever it is you should be spending time on. If you can't persuade yourself that the other activity is more worthwhile, then maybe it isn't.

<comment><USER26> i think the idea is more funny than self-helpy. i know scores of women who'd subscribe, if only to banish ex-boyfriends from their inboxes (temporarily).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Could this be a regular feature of YC? Even with Google, it's hard to find some of the articles in the past, and this is a valuable thing to keep track of.

</comment><comment><USER29> Duelnode: Structured debate. [http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2007/10/duelnod...](http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2007/10/duelnode-another-free-startup-idea.html)

</comment><comment><USER30> Just for fun: a graphical lisp editor where instead of () you use div and /div with different color. Something like turing-complete divs. (Then write a lisp tutorial called divintolisp)

</comment><comment><USER31> Permanent relief from the password hell. And it should NOT be a "keyring solution".

<comment><USER32> It isn't perfect, but I swear by GenPass for this -> <http://labs.zarate.org/passwd/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> What about a "Windows Update" service that works with 3rd party software. Like apt-get for Windows?

For the software developers who won't change to the new installer, you should at least provide a feature that notifies the user when an update is available and downloads it in the background.

</comment><comment><USER34> CoMP

Collective Music Patronage

A website that allows listeners to make donations to support musicians. Donations can be directed to specific bands/artists, or to a collective fund, which is allocated to bands/artists based on downloads of free music directed through the site. (The site is a bittorrent tracker.)

The website also promotes communities of music fans, allowing them to suggest new bands/artists to each other, trade news, schedule meet-ups, etc. In theory, the forums could also allow artists to interact with their fans.

The middle-man in music, the record companies, are a Dead Man Walking. CoMP wold be the new, almost invisible, interface between artists and consumers.

</comment><comment><USER35> Some sort of Web application to actually help with coming up with startup ideas. I knocked at this for a month or two, but couldn't come up with a decent solution. The best I got was some sort of database of user-generated customer pains, which would be ranked (social news style) by users at large. The theory was that once you knew which pain you were targeting, coming up with the solution (second half of the idea) would be easier.

If anyone thinks this problem is even solvable, and wants to work to come up with a good solution, send me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com - I would actually love to implement something like this.

<comment><USER36> Hi trekker, if you are interested in pursuing a subset of your idea, I might be able to provide you a canvas for testing it.

We are developing an app that solves a narrow but significant pain point for ecommerce merchants, As we deploy the app to our beta testers, they will all want to add new features. The dilemma we will face is this: which feature should we pick? The answer - and your opportunity - lies in coming up with an algorithm that picks the right feature based on analyzing three factors: (1) the pervasiveness of the pain across the user base, (2) the magnitude of the pain, and (3) our own resource limitations.

Once you apply your algorithm successfully to our app, you should be able to extend it to other apps. If you succeed, this could be boon to the beta community all over the world, and a major success for you.

<comment><USER35> Thanks prakster. Your comment got me thinking again... a subset like this may be feasible after all. Shoot me an email if you'd like to stay in touch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Domestic disaster response (i.e. Katrina II, Bay Quake) using the internet and commercial supply chains to provide sheltering:

<http://disastr.org>

Lots of room for mapping apps, GIS, route finding, and an __enormous __capability to handle traffic spikes.

Slashing the risk of financial transactions in the developing world through a free-market inclusive biometric digital ID standard:

<http://guptaoptions.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php>

Just too big for a start up - they really need BigCo involvement to get going.

</comment><comment><USER38> aggregating the aggregation sites. Basiclly a site where you can make an account and have the news from digg, reddit, pligg and whatever other sites delivered to this one service. basicly I'm thinking about the user registring on this one site, and then this site registring to all other sites specific users that link back to the main-user. Kinda lika a pyramid ... don't know if this make sense (or if I'm expressing it well in english). This would also be used with social bookmarking sites (apparently 300 of this kind of sites exists - here is the list : [http://www.ajaxflakes.com/web-20/social- bookmarking-sites-un...](http://www.ajaxflakes.com/web-20/social-bookmarking- sites-uncovered-listed-300-all-tested-and-live/))

And if I'm going there : this site should provide web services that link to user's blogs.

This is my 2 cents.

</comment><comment><USER39> I'd like to see a web service and plugin for Mozilla Thunderbird to synchronize message filters, junk settings, mail box settings etc. among different Thunderbird instances (running on different computers or on different OSes) - similar to foxmarks for Firefox bookmarks.

</comment><comment><USER40> Spam attack software: identify the toll-free telephone numbers in spam emails and automatically call multiple times using Jajah (or similar VoIP service).

Unlike spam (which costs little to send), the spammers or their clients have to pay for all those telephone calls.

<comment><USER25> Same problem as usual with that kind of idea: what stops companies from spamming in the name of their competitors?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> A Firefox plug-in like FoxMarks, but for your FF plug-ins and not bookmarks. When you download/install a fresh FF copy, instead of installing all your plug-ins, just install the one in which you sign in and boom it starts downloading and installing your favorite plug-ins.

</comment><comment><USER19> Combine email, chat, blogging, etc. into one real time system on facebook. Everyone's going to want to start communicating there anyways, since the trust network keeps out spamminess. (I think someone said something similar last time)

<comment><USER42> Isn't that just a description of Facebook itself? The message system is the e-mail, the Notes is the blogging, and the Wall is the chat...

<comment><USER19> my point is that they should be one system. Similar to how email and chat are the same in gmail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> [http://ikbot.blogspot.com/2007/10/server-side-video- processi...](http://ikbot.blogspot.com/2007/10/server-side-video-processing- of-life.html) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=65320> "Server-side video processing of life-casting robots"

I love iRobot's history of openness. The roomba API is completely open: anyone with a serial cable and some know-how can control it. The ConnectR should eventually be open as well.

I'd like to see this taken to the next level with live-casting from a robot. Justin.tv meets ConnectR.

The robot would either have to be managed by a human when in public, or it could wander alone in a private space. Community voting could control where the robot goes and whhere it directs its gaze. Ideally, the robot would be placed where average people can't be, like back stage at a concert or fashion show. Dangerous places are also ideal. Let the robot go where the humans shouldn't.

Robots with internet enabled cameras can do more than normal robots. Server- side processing means the robot doesn't need to have expensive hardware on board for the intelligence.

Obstacle avoidance, mapping, localization, face & pedestrian detection, object detection, object tracking & motion modeling, etc. can all be done using today's technology with a single camera stream. Some processing would need to be local given the constraints of network bandwidth, but plenty could be offloaded. It is also a good model for premium services: pay more to get faster connections, fast processing, and more capabilities.

Automated surveillance with alerts for intruders could be a killer-app for wifi/webcam robots. Today's choices for home security are immobile, cost thousands, or both.

Server side image processing itself is a viable idea. It's the next step in online video. Today, we just stream compressed pixels. Tomorrow, we'll calculate and stream information about the scene. You can send a flickr image stream to a service which finds faces, builds a corpus of data to identify the people from context, and performs face recognition. Face recognition companies like Animetrics could be tapped to do the hard part.

Motion detection for surveillance applications could all be online, with companies like Intellivid and ObjectVideo already having optimized the image processing component.

Street Views in maps can be combined with GPS tagged digital camera shots to build super high resolution aerial imagery, and eventually 3D.

Services like Fauxto which aim to be photo-shop online could build an interesting api where any image can be sent with instructions for processing.

The point is that all of these services require sending video and images to a server, where some intelligent processing occurs. Often times, the processing will involve the same software modules, so each problem is not unique. Tap the long tail of software development and allow 3rd parties to build their own processing streams that live on your servers. This could be made simple and standard using tools like Python with modules for image processing like OpenCV, PIL, NumPy, and SciPy.

</comment><comment><USER43> Here's one I'm dying to implement: user-generated reporting website for the wait times on the rides at Disneyland. I swear Disney distorts these for easier crowd control.

<comment><USER44> If you stay in one of the Disney-owned hotels, you get to skip the lines on all the rides. It's a little more expensive, but it's worth it, since you wait five minutes, tops, for any ride.

<comment><USER17> No, if you stay at a Universal owned hotel you get to skip the lines on all rides at Universal theme parks as many times as you want. Outside guests can buy this feature for around $40 a day but you are only allowed to skip the line in each ride once.

Disney's virtual queuing system, called Fastpass, does not create different classes of users. The only people that get special privileges are those that are doing something like Make a Wish or winners of a contest and these extremely limited superpasses don't impact overall wait times. The advantage given to Disney guests is that on each day a park will be open one hour early and up to three hours late. This isn't that much of a benefit during peak times because the park that was open early will have more guests than the other parks and you have to get up an hour early for optimal touring. The late hours aren't that much of an advantage because everyone wants to stay late in the park.

A naive perspective on Disney's Fastpass is that it doesn't actually impact total waiting time because the standby lines will take twice as long. This is incorrect because Fastpass lets the Disney engineers redistribute traffic however they want, which measurably reduced wait times for the most popular rides right after the implementation of Fastpass. Wait times are still higher than they've ever been though, because park attendance keeps going up. Disney is a profit machine.

For more information about waiting in line at Disneyworld, I strongly recommend Industrial Engineer Bob Sehlinger's The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World, whatever the latest edition is. He also mapped out a mathematically near-optimal plan for riding every single ride at the Magic Kingdom in one day. I really want to try doing that one day.

<comment><USER44> You're right. Funny how the Florida theme parks of one's youth tend to blend together.

Slate has a good (though somewhat old) explanation of both Universal and Disney's systems (<http://www.slate.com/id/2067672/sidebar/2067676/>). If its numbers are still more or less right, using Fastpass reduces your wait time to about 15 minutes when you come back to the ride during the window you've been assigned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I realize some misdirection on my part. I should post my ideas in this context too. This thread will be gone by Friday, so I'll continue to submit ideas as separate posts like these: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=65320> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=65083> \</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

[http://www.tipjoy.com/our2cents/2007/10/real_liveblogging_li...](http://www.tipjoy.com/our2cents/2007/10/real_liveblogging_live_comment.html) "Real live-blogging, live comments, and a comment API"

Live blogging is an interesting aspect of the blogosphere. Bloggers post in real-time, often while attending an event, chiming in live with their thoughts and views. This is a great way for bloggers to communicate with their readers, but it's currently not well supported in blogging tools.

Live bloggers should be able to update their posts in some manner similar to a chat client, or collaborative editing software. The system would take the blogger's new content and appended to the post on the readers screen without a page refresh. It would be entertaining to watch something so live, along with a different take on the process of posting to a blog. Readers could see sentences edited and thoughts refined.

Ideas come from writing them down, and this would be a live crystallization of thought.

The stream could be synchronized to an event, and then later could be played back to get the same experience.

Similarly, comment sections could be live. This is nothing new, with group chat rooms updating messages to the whole group. But it would improve the user experience of a comment thread, with new comments appearing on the site live. For sites with comment modding, the votes could also be live -- watch trolling comments nose dive and disappear.

Regarding comments - comment systems should have open APIs. For example, if a blog post makes it to the front page of reddit, digg, and Hacker News, there will be 4 disparate comment threads, one at each of the news sites, and one at the original blog. Rather than forking the conversation, recommendation sites augment it: grab from and push to a comment feed. Comments on Hacker News should be visible on the original blog, and comments there should appear on Hacker News. (Except YouTube comments; no one needs to see those.)

I already mentioned a few of these points to the Disqus folks. They certainly have a good system on their hands, and any real competitor would have to do everything they do, and maybe add a few of the ideas here.

<comment><USER45> _"... Live blogging is an interesting aspect of the blogosphere. Bloggers post in real-time, often while attending an event, chiming in live with their thoughts and views. This is a great way for bloggers to communicate with their readers, but it's currently not well supported in blogging tools. ..."_

One start would be to create an opensource wordpress plugin + a client side browser bit of js code to support it. That way each user could support their own comment systems for each place they comment. The bit that currently alludes me is the discovery bit. How do others know you have commented on a particular site?

One way could be to publish say RSS feeds that link to sites you have commented on allowing others to discover what others have said. That or some sort of microformat that marks up some page that people read. This would not be real-time though. Commercial sites have an advantage here as they have a centralised place people can look.

Maybe the solution is to offer a commercial discovery site that acts as a registry of comments. So for example:

\- user John writing using open source firefox plugin you make some comments on a third party site say hackernews

\- plugin sends comments back to your open source wordpress blog, adds comments to blog then generates new RSS feed of comment detailing comments + discovery information (blog, url etc).

\- wordpress pings a commercial site _"CommentsRUs.com"_ that pulls the RSS file, parses it and either creates a new entry for a particular site, adds comment.

\- user Jane who has subscribed to CommentsRUs.com, HackerNews site is notified by twitter that John has responded to a HackerNews article she has also commented on

\- user Jane makes another comment and CommentsRUs.com either notifies user John or makes an entry on his homepage <http://commentsrus.com/person/john/hackernews/> so he can follow the thread.

Of course this is no substitute for the original site because the annoying thing is the meta data is not captured. Then again if they did have some mechanism to capture the metadata ( <http://goonmail.customer.netspace.net.au/hackerid> ) you can do lots of useful things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> teleport

</comment><comment><USER47> a site where you can use GIMP 2.0 plug-ins like fake lomos, holga effects etc. Fotoflexer does this using it's Warholize effect but it's limited to that. Maybe the site can have apps/plugins integrated into it by user ala-Facebook so that you can have a library of effects after a few months built by the users

<comment><USER48> There's a few online GIMP/Photoshop type apps already. Most are done in flash and work pretty well.

One of their advantages is that plugins are (of course) run on their servers, and thus even low powered desktops could have their filters be applied instantly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> So what happens if someone suggests an idea but changes his/her mind later and wants to implement it after all?

Perhaps it would be better to just ask people for ideas that they are willing to share -- without any implication/suggestion as to whether they plan to implement it?

<comment><USER50> They are forced to build a better, more useful, competitive product so that they, their investors, and customers all benefit.

<comment><USER49> I mean the people who used the suggestion would be upset because it seems that the person suggesting it said he would not pursue it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Isn't the point that almost everything is in the execution?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Books on functional programming for experienced (OO) developers? - <AUTHOR> I've done  a fair share of developing software but primarily exposed only to OO languages. I've dipped my toes into FP and while I understand the benefits, I struggle when it comes to day to day application.
1. While I bring in C# option/maybe implementations and apply them. 2. I've seen (many times) the Boundaries talk by Gary Bernhardt yet struggle to apply it effectively 3. I also took a PL course (https://www.coursera.org/learn/programming-languages)
I'm looking for a good books to supplement my knowledge and also tips from folks here with a similar experience on applying FP practices with OO and how they were able to transition from knowing the theory to applying it successfully. <comment><USER2> This is an excellent book. Cannot recommend it enough.

[https://www.manning.com/books/get-programming-with-f- sharp](https://www.manning.com/books/get-programming-with-f-sharp)</comment>


Tell HN: 49% of iOS apps are free, 25% are $0.99 - <AUTHOR>

I did an analysis of the iOS App Store and revealed some interesting findings. For example, 49% of iOS apps are free, and 25% are $0.99. Interestingly, the $4.99 price point is more popular than the $3.99 price point.<p>For a full breakdown: http://www.majorapps.com/stats.html <comment><USER2> Where do you get your data? Scraping? Something else? One of the methods listed here? [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3098256/crawling-and- scra...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3098256/crawling-and-scraping- itunes-app-store?rq=1)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://www.majorapps.com/stats.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you know how many of the free apps are demos or also have a paid version?

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice stats.

Would be nice to have a breakdown by categories too.

</comment><comment><USER5> Which country's App Store is this data pulled from?

<comment><AUTHOR> The US, I'll update the page accordingly.</comment></comment>


Elliot Virtual Mall - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TmjD2mLXJAqGnblB_lMOWVtdvddxsxyw52pnt0Kt2hQ/edit#gid=0 <comment><USER2> Definitely feels like myspace-esque.

I wonder what the team managing Google Sheets must feel like to have their product (ab)used this hard.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems like too many people are trying to access this sheet at the same time:

[https://support.google.com/docs/answer/2494822#share_with_ma...](https://support.google.com/docs/answer/2494822#share_with_many_people)

<comment><USER4> "Some tools might be unavailable due to heavy traffic in this file."

Sounds interesting though, think I found a write up about it: [https://medium.com/we-are-very-online/how-i-went-from- dickin...](https://medium.com/we-are-very-online/how-i-went-from-dicking- around-on-the-internet-to-virtual-mall-ceo-66f479135522)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I assumed many on HN would've scrolled to the bottom, inspired by the message on the plant on the entry? Leads to an affiliate link. Very curious way to monetize.

miraclebrand.co/ ?src=elliotmall

</comment><comment><USER6> I absolutely adore this fun and carefree design. Such a nice throwback to simpler times when the web was in its infancy and web designers were still figuring the basics of their profession.

<comment><USER7> Yep - this has a very 1990s-internet feel about it that made me smile :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is great, it's like I've jumped back 20 years</comment>


Why 37Signals misunderstands 'Fail Early, Fail Fast' - <AUTHOR> http://marcgayle.com/2010/06/03/fail-early-fail-fast-explained/

<comment><USER2> I definitly agree, people disagreing with fail fast are taking it too literaly, ignoring the spirit of it. It's not about failing, it's about confronting to reality.</comment>


Open Transclude for Networked Writing - <AUTHOR> http://subpixel.space/entries/open-transclude/ <comment><USER2> > The web is still a very young medium, and it has been influenced more than > anything else by print media design. There is so much more that can be done > with text on a screen than is being done today. Citations, drawing, chat, > speech-to-text.

So true. Feels like we're getting closer to harnessing the true potential of writing and teaching with hypertext. Great work here!</comment>


Yandex Search Engine has beed launched - <AUTHOR> http://yandex.com

<comment><USER2> Yandex has been #1 in Russian speaking segment of the internet for the last 10 years or so. I use it almost every day. It looks like this expansion into English speaking market is just an experiment, and I'm not sure what they are trying to achieve. It doesn't look like they can compete with Google or Bing.

edit: btw, one of the interesting features Yandex provides and Google still doesn't is street view for Russian cities: <http://maps.yandex.ru/-/CFfz7mA>.

<comment><USER3> i've used it to search for russian stuff before, not really a fan of the interface....looks too much like yahoo circa 15 years ago

<comment><USER4> try ya.ru

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like the favicons being included. Makes it really easy to identify familiar sites.

Overall it feels like a really nice design, but I can't pinpoint why exactly. Might be because Google's strayed so far from the original and simple interface.

<comment><USER6> Inspired by Yandex, I've made Faviconize Google user script, which adds favicons to the Google's search result page.

User script: <http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/58177>

Chrome extension: [https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/fijobgpmmkilncag...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/fijobgpmmkilncagclaejpjlccfhopdo)

<comment><USER7> Yandex appears to load the favicons from their own cache. If your extension hits the sites themselves, you're leaking the fact that they are appearing in a person's search results to the target sites... and maybe even the query terms, via the referrer header. You should probably mention that fact to users who might not deduce it themselves.

<comment><USER6> My script takes the favicons from Google. [http://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=news.ycombinator.co...](http://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=news.ycombinator.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting - my first search (for hyperion) brought back more interesting results than Google. Not a very scientific study, but that's the first time that has happened to me since I first used Google and searched for java and actually found something about the programming language.

The favicons are a good idea - they do make scanning the list of results a lot easier, even if the overall layout of the page is a bit weird.

</comment><comment><USER9> Seems slow. What's with the multiple redirects? Results seem ok though.

But no privacy policy that I could locate so far, which is a bad sign

<comment><USER10> <http://company.yandex.ru/legal/confidential/> but you have to translate it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looks good.

The favicons increase page load times without adding a whole lot. I'd delay their loads via Javascript, if possible.

Edit: Getting a fairly consistent crash in Safari after trying to enable resource tracking in web inspector:

      0   com.apple.WebCore             	0x00007fff84c975fb WebCore::SecurityOrigin::canAccess(WebCore::SecurityOrigin const*) const + 27
      1   com.apple.WebCore             	0x00007fff84ce166e WebCore::allowsAccessFromFrame(JSC::ExecState*, WebCore::Frame*) + 174
      2   com.apple.WebCore             	0x00007fff84d771cb WebCore::checkNodeSecurity(JSC::ExecState*, WebCore::Node*) + 27
      3   com.apple.WebCore             	0x00007fff84d84302 WebCore::jsDOMWindowFrameElement(JSC::ExecState*, JSC::Identifier const&, JSC::PropertySlot const&) + 306
      4   com.apple.WebCore             	0x00007fff850528cd WebCore::JSQuarantinedObjectWrapper::getOwnPropertySlot(JSC::ExecState*, JSC::Identifier const&, JSC::PropertySlot&) + 253
      5   com.apple.JavaScriptCore      	0x00007fff808ffb26 JSC::JSValue::get(JSC::ExecState*, JSC::Identifier const&, JSC::PropertySlot&) const + 486

</comment><comment><USER12> Their spam filtering service looks interesting: <http://so.yandex.ru/all/index.xml>

</comment><comment><USER13> I'll stick with google for now, at least it finds pg's wire transfer pdf when I look for RM9637.00

<comment><USER14> I wonder how many Googlebot hits per hour HN gets... everything seems to be indexed almost instantly.

<http://imgur.com/kAPls.png>

<comment><USER15> The homepage is indexed about 12 times per day as far as I can measure it. I've never managed to get an age > 2 hours for the links posted there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I made an Opensearch plugin for it. Suggestions are not working but it is usable: [http://mycroft.mozdev.org/search- engines.html?name=yandex.co...](http://mycroft.mozdev.org/search- engines.html?name=yandex.com)

</comment><comment><USER17> Page Design by Art Lebedev, of Maximus keyboard fame:

<http://www.artlebedev.com/>

</comment><comment><USER18> Good job, Russians

<comment><USER18> wtf, no good job? =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I really like their Ctrl + → keybinding for next page (although, much like on DuckDuckGo) I find the favicons distracting).

</comment><comment><USER20> Hmm, started with a vanity search and got totally irrelevant results. Then tried vanity searches with friends names. Again, bad results. Putting the names in quotes seems to do a better job, so the problem doesn't seem to be coverage. Makes it seem like they may not be doing a very good pagerank-like calculation.

</comment><comment><USER18> Yandex Technologies: <http://company.yandex.com/general_info/technologies.xml>

</comment><comment><USER21> Most traffic is from China <http://www.websitetrafficspy.com/www.yandex.com>

</comment><comment><USER22> I will try it for a few days and see if I can substitute Google. I always try new search engines but none seem to be as good as Google.

</comment><comment><USER23> Not bad, now they need the whole ecosystem starting with image search then email, then calendar, then...

<comment><USER10> <http://images.yandex.ru/>, <http://mail.yandex.ru/>, <http://calendar.yandex.ru/>, etc.

<comment><USER17> And even a browser:

<http://chrome.yandex.ru/>

<comment><USER10> Three browsers: <http://fx.yandex.ru>, <http://ie.yandex.ru> :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> adam-_- Unfortunately I get redirected to the mobile version of the Russian site...

</comment><comment><USER24> I've noticed your crawler frequently on my site. Is it following from HN?

P.s. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER25> Would have preferred more info on the search page rather than having to click "About"

</comment><comment><USER26> For those who don't want Yandex to include you:

User-agent: Yandex Disallow: /

</comment><comment><USER27> =~ s/y/sp/

...does anyone else have a tough time getting past that?

</comment><comment><USER28> We must search for Yandex for "In Soviet Russia" jokes in Russian.

[http://yandex.com/yandsearch?lang=ru&text=In%20Soviet%20...](http://yandex.com/yandsearch?lang=ru&text=In%20Soviet%20Russia&lr=84&rpt=rad)</comment>