Are Dev Bootcamps a scam? A Hacker's perspective - <AUTHOR> http://www.techendo.co/posts/are-dev-bootcamps-a-scam-a-hacker-s-perspective <comment><USER2> Another hacker's perspective: no, they are not a scam.

Right now, demand is high enough in the bay area, that I believe these schools are a great value for someone who wants to start a career in iOS or web development. The tuition for Hacker Bootcamp is ~$12k, and they claim that 88% get job offers after graduating, with an average salary of $79k.

I recently met 2 people who graduated from hacker bootcamp. The first guy had a great attitude, seemed very curious, motivated, and interested in learning. He had multiple offers in the $80-90k range. He kept talking about what a great time he had interviewing with one company, which I'm pretty sure is the company he would eventually pick.

The other guy had a worse attitude, no offers yet and seemed like he almost felt entitled to a senior level job because he finished hacker bootcamp. Considering that I've been doing this stuff for 10 years now, it was hard to see someone with such high expectations for 6 months of effort not being met.

They won't guarantee you a job, but they are not a scam. This may be a little extreme, but I was reminded of this Vonnegut quote: "Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way."

</comment><comment><USER3> I was accepted into Fullstack Academy, a NYC bootcamp that is one of the schools this article is about. I'm currently a programming intern at Thinkful, an ed-tech startup in NY.

> The bootcamp model gives you an "intensive" course good enough so that > you're able to build a shitty web app, and then they hopefully place you in > a job needing a code monkey.

Everyone writes shitty code when they first start. Building shitty web apps is better than building no web apps, which is what most beginners do. Bootcamps force you to build stuff early, and building is the best way to learn. Your 5th web app won't be so shitty.

> Personally I'm against charging to teach others how to code. If people come > to the profession with drive and passion, I believe it should be free. I > wasn't charged when I first asked how to code.

This is an idealistic fantasy. Sure, learning to code for free is better than learning to code for $12k. But human labor is scarce and people don't work for free.

> I also think good programming is a journey, not something that can be > consumed and digested in a compacted 12-week course.

Agree. I see bootcamps as the third step on a journey to becoming an entry- level developer. The 1st phase is with online resources like CodeAcademy and CodeSchool, the 2nd with mentor-led part-time courses like Thinkful, and the 3rd with bootcamps or apprenticeships. The 4th phase is all the learning you should be doing on the job ;-)

</comment><comment><USER4> I think if a dev bootcamp is confident, they won't charge their students unless they land a job. (Added: a few people have noted that App Academy is a bootcamp that uses this model.)

I personally prefer the [https://www.hackerschool.com/](https://www.hackerschool.com/) model. It is not a "bootcamp". There is no structure, aside from what the students come up with themselves. It's a good place for both newbies and seasoned vets alike. It is free. They make their money by helping students get jobs at partner companies. If a student gets a job at a partner company, the company pays the fee, not the student.

Disclaimer: I attended Hacker School and got a job through them. It was a worthwhile sabbatical and "reboot" for my career (after being burnt out by my previous software job of six years).

<comment><USER5> "I think if a dev bootcamp is confident, they won't charge their students unless they land a job."

That sounds seriously un-optimal. Like it or not, some people will sign up and for whatever reason not get a job. They decide they hate programming. They have a mental health issue. They are not very smart. Parents get ill and they have to move across the country. And so on. So, to make the same money, the company will have to charge the successful students _more_ money. Why should I, a smart student, pay more money and subsidize the untalented, unmotivated, or just unlucky student. It makes no sense why I would want that.

<comment><USER6> That's not how it works at any bootcamps. Reasons #1,2,3 you mentioned can be somewhat filtered in the application process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm a cofounder at Hack Reactor, one of the schools that this article is about.

> I also think good programming is a journey, not something that can be > consumed and digested in a compacted 12-week course.

I am in emphatic agreement -- we tell our students that the point of our school is to get to a spot where you can get paid to learn the rest, and we hold classes for alums to encourage ongoing education.

> Personally I'm against charging to teach others how to code.

Sounds like a fine personal philosophy. Our students faced a decision of self- instruction vs Hack Reactor, and they choose to pay the instructors at my school (who took pay cuts when we hired them away from Twitter, Adobe, Google, etc but are nonetheless pretty pricey). I summarized my perception of why in this quora post: [http://www.quora.com/Programming-Bootcamps/Self-study-vs- Boo...](http://www.quora.com/Programming-Bootcamps/Self-study-vs-Boot-camp- Starting-from-zero-can-self-study-achieve-the-same-goal-become-dev-at-a- decent-west-coast-company-as-attending-a-boot-camp)

> I'd like to hear back from bootcamp graduates on their experiences both in > the program and in the real world.

[http://www.quora.com/Reviews-of-Hack-Reactor](http://www.quora.com/Reviews- of-Hack-Reactor) [http://www.yelp.com/biz/hack-reactor-san- francisco](http://www.yelp.com/biz/hack-reactor-san-francisco)

> ...good enough so that you're able to build a shitty web app, and then they > hopefully place you in a job needing a code monkey...

I'm not a fan of the tone of this article, but it's also aggravating that the content is incorrect. Student projects include 3d space shooters ([http://satellite-game.com/](http://satellite-game.com/)), bittorrent clients ([https://github.com/rtjoseph11/nTorrent](https://github.com/rtjoseph11/nTorrent)), music visualizers ([http://arcanegl.jit.su/](http://arcanegl.jit.su/)), a reddit-focused machine learning / dataviz mashup ([http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/17/reddit-insight-interview- ha...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/17/reddit-insight-interview-hack- reactor/)), distributed computing platforms ([http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/06/43651/](http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/06/43651/)), etc.

<comment><USER8> These Yelp reviews mean very little to be honest. What kind of an idiot would write a bad review when

1\. Writing bad review of the code training you got basically admits to others that your skills as a programmer is poor.

2\. You risk souring interpersonal relationship you might have built going to the program. When you say the code training you got at X is bad, you are actually telling potential employers that people who got training from X are also bad. Who writes in their grad school application that they got trained in Kaplan?

\--- edited point 2

<comment><USER7> [http://www.yelp.com/biz/kaplan-test-prep-and-admissions- san-...](http://www.yelp.com/biz/kaplan-test-prep-and-admissions-san- francisco)

Edit: As pointed out below, this isn't a comparable institution. However, I think we can empirically test the question "Will students offer bad yelp reviews to schools that are their primary credential?" The answer seems to be yes:

[http://www.yelp.com/biz/bay-area-medical-academy-san- francis...](http://www.yelp.com/biz/bay-area-medical-academy-san-francisco) [http://www.yelp.com/biz/los-angeles-film-school-los- angeles](http://www.yelp.com/biz/los-angeles-film-school-los-angeles) [http://www.yelp.com/biz/southern-california-health- institute...](http://www.yelp.com/biz/southern-california-health-institute- north-hollywood)

<comment><USER9> That's a bad example.

When trying to get a job an interviewer could possibly see a bad review that a student left of your school and assume that means the student may not have the skills necessary for the job. Also, presumably at your school as students and instructors are interacting personal relationships are being developed (ie. networking) which could be beneficial in finding a job. If the student then gives a bad review of the school it could burn the bridges that they built while in the class.

On the other hand, when someone is grading a standardized test, they grade based on how you answered the test questions. They don't do an internet search to see what kind of preparation you had for the test. It's different than a job interview because a test is judging what skills and knowledge you are demonstrating at that point in time, whereas a job interview is judging both where you are at now and what you will be able to do in the future. Also, hopefully in a test prep class there is no direct advantage to be gained by networking as that would defeat the purpose of the test.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, good point -- my response was pretty vapid. trololo

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In short, probably not.

The students learns valuable lessons in exchange for money. Probably quicker than they would on their own.

It's just speculation on my part, but I'll imagine having someone point you in the right direction on almost every turn will speed the learning up a lot, and provide good value for the student.

</comment><comment><USER11> _Personally I 'm against charging to teach others how to code._

You want someone to teach you to code, with which you could earn $100k/yr for 30+ more years, and you want them to volunteer their time to do that for you? I bet you do.

How many hours per week and for how long will it take someone to teach you "how to code"? Let's call it 100 hours just b/c we need to have some sort of cap. We'll use me as the example - I have a full time gig already (where I work 50-60 hour weeks), two young kids, and a wife - so my time is limited. But hey - 100 hours... Okay - let's do it.

The key question is, "Do I have time to 'train' two people at the same time, or can I only train one?" Probably one person - I don't have a training room set up FFS. So now we have a bottleneck.

"But, Scott, I'm talking about learning on the job - having one of your co- workers train you." Perfect - so you're working in such a great environment that your co-worker is (a) an expert coder, (b) an expert trainer, and (c) your company lets you spend 100+ hours together (200 man hours) of paid time for him to train you? Lucky you - that puts you in the 0.001%.

However, if the tables were turned (you were the expert employee who is teaching the youngster), wouldn't you be getting paid to train? Maybe you would donate your next 2 1/2 weeks just so you could train this young person?

Absurd statement.

<comment><USER12> Hi, author here. Sure. I think learning for free and helping others is really popular among the hacking community. That's how I and a lot of other people learned to program.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I certainly don't believe that bootcamps are a scam, I think that the _right_ bootcamp can provide a beginner with the foundation needed to succeed as an engineer-in-training. The way I see it, "being an engineer" is a life-long journey.

When you're starting to code the first few 100 hours tend to be the most difficult ones (since so much is new). This is where the support you get from a bootcamp is really helpful.

Also, "becoming an engineer" aside, I think that learning to code has many side benefits. One of them being that it helps clarify the way you think. In a recent blog post, Hilary Mason (from Bit.ly) articulated this very well:

"That you can apparently complete a three month Ruby bootcamp and get a job today is an artifact of a bizarre employment market, and likely unsustainable. But by dedicating three months to learning to think in a logical framework, you'll also gain an ability that will open opportunities for you for the rest of your life." [http://www.hilarymason.com/blog/learn-to-code-learn-to- think...](http://www.hilarymason.com/blog/learn-to-code-learn-to-think/)

Full disclaiment: I'm the Marketing Engineer at [http://www.thinkful.com](http://www.thinkful.com) (an online school that teaches beginners to code through mentorship and projects) and I was a Thinkful student before joining the team fulltime. Also, I was part of the last batch at [https://www.hackerschool.com/](https://www.hackerschool.com/) \- an excelent program that could be compared to a bootcamp given it's duration and how intensive it is.

</comment><comment><USER14> > In the end, while some graduates may have potential, I'd be willing to bet > the majority are unemployable if it weren't for such a talent drought.

A couple of honest questions about this statement:

1\. Is there _really_ a talent drought, or is there an overabundance of companies looking for employees they don't need? I see a lot of companies seeking "rockstar" engineers with CS degrees and an insane level of expertise across the entire stack, but many of them are operating relatively straightforward CRUD applications at limited to modest scale.

2\. If companies are hiring less-than-capable developers because of this perceived "talent drought", which the OP seems to be suggesting, what exactly are these developers doing all day? "Fake it until you make it" has very real limits. I don't care how intense a bootcamp is. If a company _truly_ needs developers with a certain level of expertise, a rookie developer's lack of real-world experience is quickly going to become apparent. So if bootcamp graduates are being tolerated, it would suggest that, at least in some cases, companies can live with less experience and competence than they say they need.

</comment><comment><USER8> This Dev Bootcamp phenomenon negatively affects Ruby and Ruby on Rails community disproportionately more than any other. I think pretty much all these training courses sell Ruby on Rails as the goto platform to learn. If this trend continues, Rails will be where PHP is now (no offence to smart people doing PHP, but you know what I mean).

Ruby/Ruby on Rails community isn't new to dealing with other people bad mouthing them. Remember Zed Shaw declaring "Rails Is A Ghetto" ([http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/ruby/rails/is-a- ghetto](http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/ruby/rails/is-a-ghetto)) in 2007? Despite many haters, Rails penetrated through Java/.NET duopoly, and it has gained a lot of respect since then. All the bad mouthing didn't matter back then. Rails had so many talented people. Really smart people were coming from Java and .NET world into Rails and some of them were very passionate about making the technology better. This trends is on a notable decline now.

</comment><comment><USER15> There is an interesting parallel to what is happening in the US today with these dev bootcamps, to the surge in IT workers in countries like India and Pakistan this last decade.

In these countries, an incredible demand for developers arose very fast because of the "new" possibility of offshore outsourcing.

You had radio mechanics, electricians, admin workers flocking to IT. It paid well and there was a huge shortage of talent.

Read an HTML book and take a course, and you're a junior developer. 12 months later, granted you hadn't messed up too much, presto! You are now a senior developer.

The party didn't last however, and now, Pakistan and India are high risk countries to outsource to, main reason being this dilution of the talent pool (while you of course can find incredibly talented developers in these countries, it is exceedingly hard).

That probably won't happen to the same degree in the US, but the jobs of hiring managers and young entrepreneurs (who are often inexperienced with qualifying candidates) are certainly not getting easier.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm a recent grad of General Assembly's program, had a good experience, and would definitely recommend a bootcamp for some other people looking to learn quickly.

I totally understand where you are coming from. I really respect the open and helpful culture of the developer community and want to give back without expecting any money. I had tried to learn on my own for awhile but was never able to dedicate the time needed to get to the next level. The course gave me that opportunity and set me up to be able to continue to learn. That said I wouldn't recommend it for everyone, just like I wouldn't recommend college for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER17> I recently met a graduate from dev bootcamp in Chicago. I had an opportunity to talk about various coding subjects. Was he a junior? Yes. However, he had a grasp of good design patterns, best practices and most importantly he had a desire to learn - I mean this guy was a sponge.

I realize that I have a sample set of one, but based upon my interactions with him, I would say that this isn't a scam. It appears to give aspiring developers a very solid foundation to base a career on and dismisses them with realistic expectations.

I also don't see the fault in someone offering a course and charging for it. If people have the money and are willing to spend it on this, then I think there is value in what they offer. I have someone that I mentor, but I feel like these programs would definitely speed up the learning process. I wish he could afford a program like these, he would surely benefit from the breadth of knowledge offered.

<comment><USER18> I've had an exact opposite experience. The couple of people I've interviewed who had graduated from a dev bootcamp of some sorts (I don't remember exactly which one any more) had really poor understanding of software engineering principles and only seemed to really know how to use Ruby on Rails for building relatively simple web applications under heavy supervision.

Maybe the program they went to was a poor one, or they didn't have programming talent, but there's no way we could've hired those folks to do any work for us.

Obviously my sample size is really small as well.

It's encouraging to read comments on this thread mentioning positive experiences though. I think when well run by competent mentors/teachers, these things are very useful for all concerned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is your impression of the content included in these developer camps based on personal experience? interviewing graduates? Or does this article only represent what you think that these camps are all about?

</comment><comment><USER20> I graduated from Dev Bootcamp in SF this summer. I think the author of this article shares the sentiment of a lot of working or university-educated programmers who see it from the outside. But, the article is quite misinformed and, to be clear, lacks any factual claims to how well or poorly bootcamp graduates are performing in the real world.

Yes, there are wide claims from these bootcamps about $80k+ jobs waiting for people _if only they take this course_! Naturally, that's great for business, and turns out to be quite true judging from talking to alumni and people graduating from my own cohort. The problem with that, which Shereef (the founder of Dev Bootcamp) tries to get across to the students, is that there is a risk for students to become spectators, to feel like they can just get through the 9 weeks and be entitled to a well-paying job.

A lot of the process is getting you to combat that attitude and turn you into a world-class learner. That's also helped by a selective interview process, and they seem to be doing a good job at getting the most enthusiastic students aboard. What the teachers strive for at DBC is to create an ideal learning environment. It's hands-on and project-based rather than lecture-based, and, to reiterate the point, what one learns there more than anything is how to learn. We also have a whole lot of fun.

It's not for everyone, of course, but for people in certain situations it can be great. My goal was not necessarily to become a web developer, but to break into the software engineering field without a relevant degree or portfolio is a tall order, and I was able to make several projects at DBC that filled up the latter. Not masterpieces by any means, but not "shitty websites" as the author of the article purports. My team's final project used a lot more technologies than just Rails and Javascript (we used Solr, Redis, and several APIs for various tasks).

Two months now after I've graduated, I'm not only working, but using Java, Python, AWS, Linux, and more technologies day-to-day. We didn't use any of those at DBC but I've been able to pick them up quite quickly in part because of learning strategies we developed there. I am probably an outlier in that regard though, as it seems most people getting hired out of DBC are getting jobs doing Rails or front-end work. But not everyone will land a programming job, and some don't wish to.

The best piece of advice I can give to someone looking in to a bootcamp is this: Don't do it if you just want a job and are excited by the salary prospects and opportunites. Do it because you can't help yourself from being a programmer, solving problems relentlessly is something you love, and you want a way to collaboratively kickstart your learning in a great environment.</comment>


Everyday creativity - <AUTHOR> http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200910/everyday-creativity

<comment><USER2> creativity is in the eye of the beholder. But when creativity is applied to an actual physical being, something that people can hold, use, and abuse, then the understanding or appreciation of creativity can spread from the inventor to the user.</comment>


Senator Rubio Targets Huawei over Patents - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-huawei-tech-usa-senate/senator-rubio-targets-huawei-over-patents-idUSKCN1TI2T3 <comment><USER2> If this goes through, then the whole patent and IP system will collapse. No one will ever pay patent fees again

</comment><comment><USER3> So, Chinese companies are all patent trolls and IP stealers at the same time? They steal IPs to troll American companies?</comment>


Popcorn Time Finally Comes to iOS - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/30/popcorn-time-finally-comes-to-ios/

<comment><USER2> Quote: "The app is free and there isn't a monthly fee. Because, you know, piracy."

I love these modern, concise expressions -- an absolute minimum of words, but perfectly understandable to the contemporary mind. My favorite is this classic defense of rationalization: "because _because_."

EDIT: one more point:

Quote: "As for users, it's perfectly legal (although arguably unethical) to use the app because neither you nor the app hold the movies — the movies are pulled from the Internet."

That's not "perfectly legal," unless sneaking into a movie theater is perfectly legal. Readers, don't be misled by this article -- downloading pirated content frame by frame, to be viewed and then discarded, is no less illegal than downloading the entire movie in one go.</comment>


Inspired by YC sites: Add a quick feedback button to your web app - <AUTHOR> http://featurelist.org/info/features

<comment><AUTHOR> We developed featurelist.org to help us track feedback/feature requests from our sites and want to make the same sort of thing available to other startups. You can see another example of the widget on our site, <http://bug.gd>.</comment>


Microsoft Bob Taking Up Space (2008) - <AUTHOR> https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2008.07.windowsconfidential.aspx <comment><USER2> The Microsoft Bob code lived also on in Office 97, 2002, 2002(XP) in the _annoying_ Office Agent and Windows XP (in Windows desktop search, and WinXP setup second stage welcome screen).

Bill Gates wife Melinda was responsible for the Microsoft Bob (marketing, management level): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob)

Related products (predecessors) were Microsoft Creative Writer and Microsoft Fine Artist (both for kids):

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

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

Search on Google/Youtube for better picture/videos - both sister programs are very similar to Microsoft Bob, the have navigation screens and cartoon characters that help you.

<comment><USER3> > in the annoying Office Agent

Clippy is interesting because original plans would have made clippy useful, but some decisions ended up hobbling it.

[http://robotzeitgeist.com/tag/bayesian-inference- engine](http://robotzeitgeist.com/tag/bayesian-inference-engine)

> No persistent user profiles.

> No reasoning about user competence, i.e., novice versus experienced user

> Small event queue with emphasis only on the most recent interactions of the > user with the software interface (this means the engine was trying to guess > the values of many variables using very little data.)

> Separation between user interface events and word-based queries; for word- > based queries the engine ignored any context and user actions.

> Last and possibly most important and I quote from the paper, "The automated > facility of providing assistance based on the likelihood that a user may > need assistance or on the expected utility of such autonomous action was not > employed." Instead, "The Office team has employed a relatively simple rule- > based system on top of the Bayesian query analysis system to bring the agent > to the foreground with a variety of tips." This is why Clippy kept popping > up all the time. It was not using the mathematically correct engine that the > researchers had designed. It was driven by some rule-based system that one > or more of the developers from the product team thought was a reasonable > substitute.

<comment><USER4> What it "should have been" sounds awfully like what Siri/Google Now/Cortana is today.

Microsoft has a real ability to be ahead of the game but still end up chasing :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Windows XP CD, there was still about 30 megabytes of storage capacity remaining._

 _Somebody decided to fill that extra capacity on the CD with dummy data and to have the Windows Setup program verify that the dummy data was still there._

Really? This feels like a Microsoft urban legend. I'm not convinced because I have an original ISO image of the first release of Windows XP Pro and it is (~500MB) much smaller than the size of even the smallest regular CD. It works, I've used it for many installs.

Edit: in fact only the i386 folder on the CD, which is < 500MB, is needed to install XP so if there was a hidden copy of Bob in there, it certainly doesn't fit the "30MB remaining" nor are there any files in there which are of that size with the exception of the ~75MB driver.cab; the latter contains only device drivers and the biggest one, te_protu.qm, appears to be ISDN modem firmware.

<comment><USER6> Also, Windows XP was released on October 25, 2001. Broadband wasn't pervasive at that point, but it was definitely available to many people, and and extra 30 MB wouldn't have slowed many people down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love Raymond--he's got an erudite knowledge of Windows lore. The fellow delivers such good Microsoft standup that you can almost imagine the deadpans as he does them. Despite the constant head shaking directed at Microsoft, you can't help but laugh at how things are. Nonetheless, Raymond has rescued me many times when looking for the Windows equivalent of doing something.

Here's one of Raymond's Win32 API write ups/hacks for enumerating threads in a process:

"The tool helper library is sort of the black sheep of Win32. It grew out of the 16-bit TOOLHELP library, which provided services for system debugging tools to do things like take stack traces and enumerate all the memory in the system. The original incarnation of Win32 didn't incorporate it; it wasn't until Windows 95 that a 32-bit version of the tool helper library sort of got bolted onto the side of Win32."

"That's what happens when you're the black sheep of the Win32 API."

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2006/02/23/53785...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2006/02/23/537856.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER8> You haven't really lived till you've installed and used Bob on a computer.

</comment><comment><USER9> Ultimately Microsoft Bob gave us Comic Sans. That Dank Meme we can all be thankful for.

<comment><USER10> Hey I thought it was Comic Chat that gave us Comic Sans … now that _was_ fun.

[http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/20/20-years-ago-i-created- the...](http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/20/20-years-ago-i-created-the-best- font-in-the-world/)

> As things transpired, Comic Sans didn't actually make it into Microsoft Bob > — but it did make it into 3D Movie Maker, which was similar to Microsoft Bob > insofar as you had cartoon characters you could move around and do things > with. The font then made it into Microsoft Comic Chat, which was similar to > AOL chat, in that you could type messages to others on the Internet.

<comment><USER3> A bunch of people make different interfaces to HN. A Comic Chat interface would be fun, although not practical.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So what is closer to Bob: that encrypted file or an empty file? On the one hand, the encrypted file is only a couple of keystrokes away from creating Bob. But there is no known process to find the right keystrokes. The empty file needs a lot more keystrokes to create Bob (rewriting it from scratch), but there is a known process for doing it.

Edit: Kids, I'll just assume whoever downvotes me doesn't like Computer Science very much. That's OK, but what is with the intolerance?

<comment><USER3> (I didn't downvote you)

Assuming the OP is telling the truth and the password was just someone mashing the keys: it'd make a nice project for someone to try to see if it's vulnerable to cryptanalysis.

Windows XP was released around 2001. MS have had a few cryptographic errors.

<comment><USER11> That adds another twist :-) I just thought it would be amusing to think about different metrics and human perception. In the metric of keystrokes needed the encrypted file is closer to Bob, whereas in the metric of time needed the empty file might be closer. Human perception intuitively thinks the encrypted file is closer, but it might be wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Microsoft Blob

</comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone want a shrinkwrapped, but slightly mushed copy of Bob? All it will cost you is a SASE...

<comment><USER14> If you're serious, I'll take you up on that! Hit me up at luma at svideo dot org

<comment><USER13> I hope this item met your expectations :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Isn't Dockercraft the same idea under MS Bob? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10584956](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10584956)

</comment><comment><USER16> Why do I need to sign in to my Microsoft account to view this page?

<comment><USER17> That's interesting. I didn't.

Well, maybe this will be useful to someone [https://archive.is/ZKgP](https://archive.is/ZKgP)

<comment><USER18> Or this: [http://www.readability.com/m?url=https://technet.microsoft.c...](http://www.readability.com/m?url=https://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/magazine/2008.07.windowsconfidential.aspx)

(minus all the ads)</comment></comment></comment>


Brainstorming: How to Generate New Ideas - <AUTHOR> https://nesslabs.com/brainstorming <comment><USER2> I like step 4: "Test your ideas: this is where most brainstorming sessions fail to take the one extra but necessary step. Instead of selecting your ideas on the spot, you need to test them in the real world. Select the few most promising candidates, and see how your audience reacts. For a book, write a blog post. For an app, build a landing page or a quick MVP."

I had many brainstorms resulting in a long list of unproven / untested ideas.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's probably because it's the hardest to implement. It requires to step out of the room and actually talk to users.</comment></comment>


Tales from the Romeo and Juliet Phase Space: A System of Differential Equations - <AUTHOR> https://beta.observablehq.com/@tophtucker/tales-from-the-romeo-and-juliet-phase-space <comment><USER2> All the traces go off to infinity. The dynamic equations need something to limit the variables to a finite range.

A plausible hack is to add a small negative cubic factor, like

      Rʹ = −1.96R − 6.46J - 0.1R³
      Jʹ =  1.28R + 9.48J - 0.1J³</comment>


Ask: ERP/CRM software for small businesses - <AUTHOR> I'm helping out a consumer goods startup mfg in China, and selling in US/Canada.
We're looking at solutions to manage inventory, warehousing, order tracking, finance, customer relationship management, ecommerce, etc... the whole package.
Does anyone have experience in this and have some recommendations/thoughts? Our top two options here are Everest and Netsuite, which are "all-in-one" systems.
I've just started researching this today, so I'm all ears! Thanks.. <comment><USER2> I just converted a client OFF of Everest to something 20 years OLDER and much easier to use. Frankly, I was stunned to see how difficult Everest was to use and how poorly it was designed.

Examples: Even though Everest maintains 160 columns for each Order Header, "Time Entered" is not one of them. So go ahead and try to schedule a call center with no Time Of Day history. To review a single customer's history (and presumably answer their questions while they're on the phone), you have to open up 6 different windows!

My general suggestion: Write a "Test Drive" based explicitly upon your client's business. Have them enter an order and take it through every stage of it's life (reserve or commit inventory, print, pick, ship, confirm, bill, collect, post, etc.) The test drive should also hit every function needed to do this, setup a customer, SKU, GL Chart of Accounts, etc. Then have the appropriate person working for your client do their job on that system. DO NOT touch the mouse or keyboard. DO NOT let the vendor touch the mouse or keyboard.

If they can't enter, ship, and bill an order in a couple of hours with less than one day's instruction, eliminate the system and save yourself a lot of expense and headaches down the road.

Naturally, most sales people will object to this approach and use any tactic to avoid it. Make it clear to them and your client that this must be the plan. The test drive method is infinitely more effective than the old RFP approach. When the poor systems are clearly failing the test drive, the saleman may object with questions like, "Are you going to train your people or not?" which you'll calmly answer, "Not if it takes until 2012." Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is exactly the problem my startup is trying to solve.

We'll have the materials management portion (purchasing, inventory, warehousing) soon- June is the tentative target.

There seems to be a pretty big gap between excel spreadsheets and huge business ERP/MRP/SCM/CRM software. Unfortunately, I think what you describe is right in the center of it.

My first client is transferring off an amalgamation of Intacct Small Business and Salesforce.com. I wouldn't recommend it based on my experience, but it has worked out OK for them for about two years. They're at about 8M/yr in sales right now, and if you're under that, that pair might work OK for you.

</comment><comment><USER4> Take a look at the following two solutions:

Compiere is open-source system of software applications that provides ERP, CRM, SCM for the small and medium-size enterprise. Versions are available for Linux, Unix, Windows, and Mac.

Openbravo is a web based ERP for small to median sized business. It's function include finance, supply chain, project management, manufacturing

</comment><comment><USER5> A company I worked for a long time ago was called TDCI, (<http://www.tdci.com>) They are big into manufacturers. I can get you in contact directly if you want, e-mail in profile.

</comment><comment><USER6> SugarCRM (a LAMP-based CRM)

I set it up a company that also runs ZenCart (an OScommerce derivative)

It's pretty good, but you need to work out the business processes that it should support.

</comment><comment><USER7> Check out Exponent Enterprise on my web site. It's better than the others at a fraction of the price. (I've spent the past seven years building it.)

</comment><comment><USER8> I had to use Everest for a year and it was the most painful thing ever. The website integration for it that I made was also really painful.

</comment><comment><USER9> You might have a look at Apache OFBiz.

</comment><comment><USER10> <http://www.compiere.com/>

This is pretty mature and open source

</comment><comment><USER11> Have you checked out TinyERP?</comment>


A Hacker News but just for Londoners - <AUTHOR> http://www.sonews.co.uk

<comment><USER2> I agree on the branding (doesn't sound like its about London startups) but having seen this site for a couple of weeks now there is a nice little community there. It makes sense to create a subreddit or site for London startups as there's a big community that doesn't really have a (non-facebook) forum to communicate and share.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! it is work in progress so a few upgrades should be coming along as well

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Insular.

Although some sense of geographical location (configurable) next to names would actually be quite nice.

lotsofcows (portsmouth, uk) 1 hour ago

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, It's starting hyperlocal because that seems the easiest route. That would be good and I'll look into it

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Feel free to fire me any questions about it here. Also, it is based on Telescope by Sacha Greif and Tom Coleman - which is built in MeteorJS.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nicely designed and really handy to cut through the clutter to get to relevant London based stories.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cheers James, means a lot

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why would you do that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because HN is very SF centric and I know the London comunity will really benefit. Quite simply really. Not trying to create a $B company just something good for the area</comment></comment>


Facebook Messaging: scorned by nerds, built for teens like candy-covered crack - <AUTHOR> http://brokenbottleboy.tumblr.com/post/1583250140/facebook-messaging-scorned-by-nerds-built-for

<comment><USER2> This raises the larger question about how much influence hackers and developers really have in terms of product adoption. There seem to be two schools of thought:

(1) Hackers/nerds are early adopters. Thus, they will influence "normal" people to use products that they judge to be superior.

(2) Hackers/nerds are a tiny proportion of the population with no real influence. They might push esoteric but superior technologies, but large-scale adoption will ultimately be driven by how quickly cat pictures can be shared with the largest group of people.

The author of the article clearly believes in (2), but Apple seems to be making money off (1). So which is it? Or is this some sort of false dichotomy to begin with?

<comment><USER3> "Or is this some sort of false dichotomy to begin with?"

Yes.

When you are starting out, you need that first critical mass of people to get your service going. Those are the nerds looking for the next 'cool' thing.

Once you have a service going, you can ditch the nerds, they are a small segment of the population. Instead pander to the lowest common denominator. I don't see how Apple is making money off (1).

I'm a nerd and I haven't owned an Apple product recently (disclosure: I had a B&W G3 in the late 90s; it was sick, I mean, firewire and usb, man).

The iPod was not the first mp3 player. (In fact, it had worse specs and a higher price than its contemporaries back in the day...)

And with their computers, I mean, realistically, they are making money off of overpriced hardware running warmed-over BSD. Sure, its got a fancy skin, but the in terms of the substantive stuff, it is BSD.

Where they really make money is incredibly amazingly great marketing and an increasingly loyal user population. You could say that the loyal group of users is due to 'superior' something or other (tech ux, etc.).

This might be true, but i can't imagine them actually winning market capital with those. Where they really win are with the commercials that I can't friggin' get out of my head.

So sure, false dichotomy, and no one ever made money off of (1), (1) is kind of the price you pay to jumpstart your market.

<comment><USER4> > _but the in terms of the substantive stuff, it is BSD. Where they really > make money is incredibly amazingly great marketing_

This is just insulting flamebait.

<comment><USER3> How so?

I'm baffled by how this is flame baiting.

They have amazing marketing! They have great stores! It looks great!

On a technical level, I don't see how the OS and hardware are better than, for example, BSD or Linux on Intel hardware (same hardware)!

I honestly want to know what exactly is better from a geek perspective.

If you can tell me, I'll go out and buy one. I've looked at them and I haven't seen anything.

<comment><USER4> It's flamebait because your implication is that anyone who uses it or likes it is only doing so because it is well marketed/trendy. That is insulting, for obvious reasons, to anyone who uses it because they believe it is legitimately superior.

Frankly though, your argument is just wrong, on the merits. Most BSD distributions have nothing like the set of tools and APIs that Apple ships with OS X: they don't have interface tools rivaling interface builder (at least that I've seen), they don't have the APIs for sound and images, they don't have the APIs for speech synthesis and speech recognition, they don't have the APIs for integration with a built-in address book, they don't have APIs for rich typographical support, or printing, or so easily connecting interfaces with a database backend, or doing 3d transformations to portions of an interface, etc. etc. etc.

Your basic claim is that there is no value added in all of the stuff described here, [http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/navigation/#section=R...](http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/navigation/#section=Resource%20Types&topic=Reference) and that anyone who believes otherwise is just some kind of pawn of Apple's marketing machine.

I mean, heck, it takes a 1000 page book just to describe the _low-level_ parts of OS X: <http://osxbook.com/book/toc/toc.html>

The further implication is that things like well-supported hardware that comes in predictable configurations, very good technical support for developers who run into difficulty, a large ecosystem of high quality applications and discriminating users, etc. etc. are all unimportant compared to your personal opinion of whether something is sufficiently technically innovative.

To be honest there's really not that much in any computer system, in terms of groundbreaking ideas, that wasn't in Doug Englebart's "mother of all demos", or in the Smalltalk machines at PARC. So one could argue I guess that everything done since the 70s is uninteresting and derivative. But there's a world of difference between the ideas and a solid production implementation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was just talking to my wife yesterday about this concept of "not for nerds, but rather for teens" when I was describing an iPhone app I'm working on. The app as it is now works exactly the way I want it to work, then I realized that _I_ may not be the demo I should be targeting.

At this point, my options are to redesign and reprogram the app to appeal more to teens, or release what I have now and go for people looking for utility, then after that work on a version for people looking for fun.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm amazed this blog post devoid of content or insight is #1.

His 4 paragraph message boils down to: "It wasn't made for techies." The same message that has been said about the Ipad, Macbook Air, Kindle and countless others.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know. I'm just awful aren't I?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Spot on. Consider that IM client which got a million users in a couple of weeks a short while ago... that's the market that FB Messaging has to be aiming at, surely. And with 500 million users to seed it with, they'll get to a million active users in about 10 minutes.

<comment><USER8> But given their huge size, I actually don't think they necessarily benefit from generating a bunch of users of a new service.

The question is how this changes the Facebook and whether it will benefit Facebook.

<comment><USER9> Existing users will be locked in even more to Facebook. New users will sign up as many of their friends start to rely on the new service.

<comment><USER10> Exactly. Which is why when the linked writer finishes his snarky observation with: "Facebook Messaging is bad? No. It just isn't built for you."

I pause for a moment.

I think it's equally lucid to think "but I don't want to step onto your lawn!" as it is to denigrate the "get off my lawn" mentality.

The privacy implications wavered by others, if not frivolously, then for other reasons, are still of concern to me. Regardless of whether or not I'm happy to waiver them myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great point on this article. FB is starting to remind me of AOL. AOL users didn't care that you could run IE outside of AOL WWW or that you could use Thunderbird instead of AOL mail. Just make it simple and keep it simple. Good job.

<comment><USER12> Does that mean Facebook will vanish completely over the next 10 years and turn into a punchline? Simplicity comes in different forms; I suspect that FB is actually aiming for the wrong kind in this case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Best explanation that I've read yet. Concise and to the point.

<comment><USER14> and manages to include the phrase "raging woody".

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm so pleased someone else thought that was funny.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was writing about this last week here on HN; but decided to kill the comment as I felt maybe I was being too pessimistic/critical:

I stated that FB has the Toys R Us business model: People are always producing kids; the internet always has new generations coming online. They are building for the COMING generations -- not the current.

Another here on HN summed it up best: FB's new messaging platform is for those who think FB _IS_ the internet.

Additionally, this is further reason why I would not want/use a FB payment system. I dont want to have to be logged into FB / have an account on FB in order to pay something.

We have all seen how maverick Zuck is with others' privacy...

Disclaimer: I have never, nor shall I ever, had a FB account. I refuse to participate. While I see the value it provides others - I have been perfectly happy to not have had an account - and even gone as far as asking friends and girlfriends not to post pics or any other info about me to the site.

<comment><USER16> There was a comment that struck me as a little odd, and a lot revealing, in the official Facebook announcement by Joel Seligstein (<http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=452288242130>):

 _I'm intensely jealous of the next generation who will have something like Facebook for their whole lives. They will have the conversational history with the people in their lives all the way back to the beginning: From "hey nice to meet you" to "do you want to get coffee sometime" to "our kids have soccer practice at 6 pm tonight." That's a really cool idea._

Cool, yes, but also a little spooky.

<comment><USER17> Privacy aside, have you ever tried to look something up from a few months ago, let alone (hypothetically) 20 years ago?

This is one of my absolute dislikes with both Facebook and Twitter - you pile all your data in there, they keep it all and own it all, and make it a royal pain for you to get at it again - even just for simple things like "I wonder when I was in XYZ?" or "What was that link that Matt posted last year?".

<comment><USER18> I think it can be a pain to get at the information at facebook.com and twitter.com, but both have APIs that make it relatively easy to pull out information.

I haven't seen a similar product for Facebook, but Tweet Nest (<http://pongsocket.com/tweetnest/>) is a step in the right direction for Twitter. It makes it easy to download browse, and search your tweets on your own server. Here's an example (my own tweets): <http://chasenlehara.com/tweets/> [Note: I have no affiliation with Tweet Nest, I just really like it!]

<comment><USER19> Those APIs are only superficially easy, especially in the case of Twitter — their API is purely based on a hideously broken pagination model that counts up from the present, and is cut off completely at 3200 tweets for your own account and 800 for others. It's completely impossible to access anything older than that through any means!

Nearly everyone makes the fundamental pagination mistake (Blogger being the sole exception), but calendar-based archives are a basic assumption that everybody implements. Facebook doesn't expose it in their interface but it's possible through the API. For Twitter it's completely fucked — the only people with access to your old tweets are the Library of Congress.

<comment><USER17> _fundamental pagination mistake_

I imagine there are technical limitations leading to economic reasons for these kind of mistakes. So much data, sitting in so many massive silos, that they must design their systems on the basis of peoples' access patterns only hitting the most recent subset.

That, and the opposite economic reason - that you can charge for the older/richer/more complete dataset.

(EDIT: I know it's odd that I was whinging about the same thing a few posts up. I don't really know what the resolution is for that.)

<comment><USER19> Except that the technical limitations favor correct pagination — it's perfectly cacheable unlike the idiotic model: [http://www.dehora.net/journal/2008/07/20/efficient-api- pagin...](http://www.dehora.net/journal/2008/07/20/efficient-api-paging-count- down-not-up/)

I think the true reason is really just pervasive ignorance — _everybody_ royally fucks this up and doesn't question it for a second.

If you have _N_ items with _M_ on each page, and the same request for 'page 2' always returns items _N-M_ through _N-2M_ , with the contents shuffling off the end as _N_ increases, you're an abject failure. _SELECT … LIMIT M OFFSET N-(P-1)•M_ is in almost every single web app and totally bullshit. It's incredibly depressing, but we'll probably be stuck with it for at least the rest of our lifetimes.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Review of clustering and network analysis techniques for quant finance - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.00485 <comment><AUTHOR> I post this review of mine here to gather feedback and other constructive comments. I would be interested in elaborating more the connections to the behavioral finance literature and the industry biases; I would like also to add more alpha (trading strategies) ideas that can be found in the literature, if any.</comment>


1366×768px overtakes 1024×768px as the most popular screen resolution worldwide - <AUTHOR> http://gs.statcounter.com/press/screen-resolution-alert-for-web-developers <comment><USER2> It all depends on the target market - for example if you are making a site for gamers, you should look at the Steam HW survey, where 1920x1080 is used by 25% of people. 1366x768 is a distant second with 15%. Source: <http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey>

<comment><USER3> Its true you should consider who your users are.

But these numbers shouldn't be used to determine what size to make a website. I'd guess most people with 1920x1080 monitors don't maximize their browser.

<comment><USER4> For general websites, I preview the site using:

<http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/>

Many web sites are not designed for people who retain older technology for financial (or other) reasons. Every web developer should befriend someone over the age of 60 and watch their surfing habits.

<comment><USER5> While this site is sort of useful for looking at screen size, it gives the false impression that users don't scroll. They do. Don't ever show this to anyone that isn't fully aware of this, else you'll fall into the trap of trying to put everything "above the fold", a terrible prison to escape.

<comment><USER6> Above the fold design is critical from a marketing standpoint. But you're right, everything doesn't have to be above the fold.. if anything the above the fold should be designed to encourage readers to scroll below the fold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sad that our pixel density hasn't gone up since the 90s, really. Tv ruins people with 42" screens at only 1080p. I'm glad to see that Apple is showing people that pixel density matters more than resolution alone, and I await their high-density MacBook displays. Hopefully they'll be out this fall, but a quick survey of the 4K-rezo landscape suggests that they'll likely have to wait another year for prices to drop :/

<comment><USER8> I don't care so much about pixel density; it's the ratio that bothers me.

16:9 is ridiculous for anything except watching HD television. (It also now works well for gaming, but only because developers decided to cater to widescreen.)

16:10 is the widest that makes sense for any day-to-day computing tasks, yet it's getting harder and harder to find; forget reasonable 4:3 types.

<comment><USER9> Depending on my task, I may rotate the 1920x1200 screen in front of me 90° to 1200x1920. I find that much more useful for reading large amounts of text and/or code. The underlying OS supports it, the monitor arm this display is mounted on supports it, yet everyone on the job was remarking simultaneously how odd it was and how useful it seemed as they were shoulder-surfing while I picked through a large code-base. A full-screen Terminal window on this monitor in landscape mode is 270x81, which is just plain silly, but 81x270 in portrait mode is very, very useful.

<comment><USER10> I have two such rotated displays on my work desk side-by-side to get a 21" x 23.5 combined screen. The problem I get is that viewing angle on average displays is pretty week in the vertical angle (great, so nudge it up or down an angle) - but if you put it in portrait mode, this acute viewing angle really hurts - just moving your chair from one part of the desk to another can expose it.

Unless you're going with IPS displays, the portrait mode of a monitor is somewhat compromised.

I still hate 16x9. Please give me back my 4:3.

<comment><USER11> I used a TN display in vertical position for a while and it sucked. If you moved the head just a little sideways the colors completely changed, and after a couple of hours I started to feel nausea. My doctor told me it was because the eyes are seeing different images (each eye saw the display at different angles, and because of the poor vertical view angles the brain received different colors and light and had to compensate - like using polarized 3D glasses). Now I use a combination of vertical + horizontal 16:10 IPS displays and it's way better. I mostly use the vertical one for web browsing and doc reading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not surprised. Only the "high end" laptops have a resolution that's not 1366x768 in Romania.

I used to have a 14" Dell with a 1600×1200 resolution back in 2008. But in 2012 you really have to pay extra for something like that.

15.6 inch and 1366x768 is just incredible considering the 4 inch iPhone is 960x640 nowadays.

<comment><USER7> 14" 1920x1200 here....laptop is from like 2008 (c2d Dell Latitude D830.)

I won't upgrade because the "upgrade" has 1920x1080, and being a Sysadmin, vertical pixels lost means less lines in my term and more scrolling. It's a shame that we moved from 16x10 to 16x9 to save a few bucks. Last I checked, Apple and levovo (w-series) still offer 1920x1200, but my laptop cos $280 used, and the lenovo or MBP would be close to 3 grand.

Sad.

<comment><USER13> I've enjoyed 1920x1200 on my laptops since _2003_ , and I lament this demise, too. I can't match the resolution I had _nine_ years ago.

I'm a hardware engineer, and the more pixels I can pack into my display, the more I can see in my waveform viewer. It makes a real difference to me.

I can't say I fully understand the trend to almost-exclusive 16x9, either. I hear enough people complain about it that I'd have thought there would be a market for a 15.4" 1920x1200, even if you had to pay a premium for it.

<comment><USER14> _I can't say I fully understand the trend to almost-exclusive 16x9, either._

I've read that this is because of the influence of TVs: pretty much every LCD maker is setup to cut panels in this form factor, and there isn't enough demand to make computer makers change this.

A couple years ago I saw a Lenovo blog post about how they could _consider_ making taller laptop screens if, say, they got $20K pre-orders, but even then it would've been very, very expensive for the clients, and I don't think the idea ever went anywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> 1024x768 is still the best window-size for browsing (and most other tasks as well) in my opinion. Don't get any silly ideas of designing a web page for wider than 1024 pixels (the only thing I miss out today is in the "worst" case ads).

<comment><USER16> "Don't get any silly ideas of designing a web page for wider than 1024 pixels"

Do you think there's anything wrong with fitting the essential information within 1024 pixels, but then putting non-essential stuff to the right of that?

<comment><USER17> I agree with tjoff; just because a majority of users' screensizes are increasing, doesn't mean we have to keep "upping" the size of our webpages accordingly.

I don't think the guy that just bought a brand-sparkling new 27" cinema display really wants all the websites he visits to now start filling his entire screen -- he bought it to do multiple things at once.

Speaking from experience, I keep all my browsers at around a 1024px viewport and I get frustrated when I visit a site and need to scroll horizontally.

I think the best target size for webpages is still 1024px with 960px^ as its main content area size. The 960px grid is still very strong and useful and there's nothing wrong with it -- I would even go as far as to say that it's a "standard". (<http://960.gs>).

To me 1024/960 page size is the web's A4/Legal.

^Doesn't _have_ to be 960px obviously...

<comment><USER18> 960 is also half of 1920, for side-by-side viewing, though I'd design a bit lower in case of window borders and scroll bars.

<comment><USER19> I agree. This is a use case of browsers that almost everyone misses when they design websites.

Very few sites aim for 960 as their minimum[1]. I tried side-by-side viewing on a 1920x1080 monitor and it really didn't work out in most places. Even parts of Wikipedia (such as tables) will create horizontal scroll bars on certain articles.

I did notice that a lot of websites aim for 1024 instead of 960 because I saw many pages that _almost_ fit. Please, if you can aim for 1024, aim for 960 instead.

[1] As the parent post said, it probably isn't quite 960 when you take window borders into account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> By the way, I'm using 11 inch mba as my main dev machine and here's how to take advantage of 16x9 displays if you're using emacs:

\- you can split your emacs frame into multiple columns with C-x 3 (and balance them with C-x +), this way you can see two or even three files side by side.

\- you can use emacs follow-mode which creates one virtual window split into multiple buffers, which is very useful for 768px high displays.

<comment><USER14> That's funny—I was recently trying to see if any non-emacs text editors have follow-mode or something like it. Textmate, Sublime, and a few others don't. Really aggravating for someone like me, who finds emacs overkill and as intuitive as launching a spaceshuttle.

EDIT: Oh, and I'm using a 27" iMac, so I have _lots_ of screen real estate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's amazing how segmented the market has become. A few years ago, everyone pretty much had 1024x768 or 1280x1024.

Now, just about all cheap laptops are 1366x768. Everything else is all over the map!

</comment><comment><USER22> I am going to be so angry if[0] this makes web devs start designing for grids that have to be 1300px wide to work. I don't fullscreen anything (too wide for the height, and too wide for the font size!), and while the majority of webpages look just fine in a ~600px wide browser window, possibly after right- scrolling to put the content column in the window, rarely does a day go by that I don't have to tear off a tab and widen it---not to make it look good, but to make it usable _at all_. Like that crappy Bump page posted here earlier today: if you view it in a narrow window, even if you right-scroll the window the content is sliced at window-width, with the page absolutely unusable at anything less than my full screen width. I don't know if there's anyone out there still on an 800x600 resolution, but there's a significant portion of the web that they actually can't use in any way. It doesn't have to be that way!

[0]Realistically, I know it's "when", but I'll stick with the denial a little longer.

<comment><USER23> Responsive design is what all us designers and front end coders should be focused on learning and using.

Check out the Starbucks website and manipulate the window size. It automatically changes stylesheets based on window size.

<comment><USER22> I love it! The Boston Globe website (boston.com) had at one point demoed a similarly responsive front page, but they seem to have switched back to their old annoying format.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I felt like sharing this info here because it matters to me more than pixel density or aspect ratio.

It turns out that GPUs like the popular Intel integrated gfx chips requires each lines of your framebuffer to be 64 bytes aligned. And yet, when using a 1366 wide resolution in 32bit per pixel mode, the visible length in bytes of a framebuffer is 5464, which is not a multiple of 64.

The operating system circumvent the problem by allocating 5504 bytes for each line of the framebuffer instead of 5464. It represent a loss of 30KB of unused memory.

Anyway, you're probably think I'm mad to care about those things instead of pixel density or aspect ratio, and 30KB is definitely meaningless compared to the memory footprint of a complete framebuffer (which is around 4-5MB). But you know these people who can't stand having the volume bar set to an odd number on their television set ? I'm exactly like them, why in hell would you not use an horizontal resolution which is not a multiple of 64 ?

<comment><USER25> > But you know these people who can't stand having the volume bar set to an > odd number on their television set ?

Um, no?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> screen resolution is a useless number for web developers, browser viewport dimensions are what matters.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm not sure that the data provided by StatCounter is representative of global trends. They're stat counters are installed on 3 million sites which sounds like a lot. But if you take a look at the distribution of those sites globally they're not evenly spread.

You can take a look at their sample size per country here: [http://gs.statcounter.com/sample- size/StatCounterGlobalStats...](http://gs.statcounter.com/sample- size/StatCounterGlobalStatsJan12_SampleSizeCountryBreakdown.csv)

</comment><comment><USER28> What about tablets? How does the iPad's 2048 x 1536 resolution work out in the real world? I assume web sites don't appear in a 1:1 pixel ratio, or a 960 pixel wide site would appear tiny in the browser.

I use the 960 grid from <http://960.gs/> when I build a site, and I find that sites on my 1680 x 1050 monitor look great at 960 pixels wide.

I would assume that sticking with a 960 pixel wide grid is still optimal, but I'd love to hear people's points of view.

<comment><USER29> It still identifies as 1024x768 and will look just like it does on the previous iPads (albeit with sharper text). It's just like how the iPhone works the same regardless of retina.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> From the stats page CSV:

      19.28% 1366x768
      18.6%  1024x768
      12.95% 1280x800
      7.49%  Other
      7.48%  1280x1024
      6.6%   1440x900
      5.09%  1920x1080
      3.83%  1600x900
      3.63%  1680x1050
      + others from the csv file below 3%

That resolution is going to dominate for a while, until retina -style screens make an influence on the mass market.

I recently moved from 1280x800 to 1440x900 myself.

</comment><comment><USER31> What's the most popular monitor size nowadays? 20"?

<comment><USER32> I'd guess 15" laptop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Another noob article on Hacker News. Dismissing mobile screens in this count? How ignorant!

Calling it responsive design? Do your job and show the website on any device. You noobs are embarrassing. PHP blows, which is probably why you suck so bad.

</comment><comment><USER34> "...(*excluding mobile)"

Why exclude mobile?

<comment><USER35> I'd assume it's so we can know how to target desktop oriented sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Do these numbers include the iPad?

It seems silly to call the iPad a mobile browser. A website for a phone screen scaled up to the iPad usually looks ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER37> Wonderful. But its really the _window_ that matters, right?

</comment><comment><USER38> Wow, I will never be the same person again...Earth shattering

</comment><comment><USER39> the marketing wizards dictating design feel consumers want screens with a letterbox presentation, if it's square it's preceived as old, low-def and undesirable.

</comment><comment><USER40> Laptops taking over desktop PCs...

</comment><comment><USER41> i miss 1400x900 :( it was a lot nicer to use in a laptop than 1366x768

</comment><comment><USER42> anyone notice the particularly narrow content pane?

</comment><comment><USER43> WTF? How did this bizarre resolution even become an accepted "standard"? It emerged with plasma TVs of five years ago or so, and was baffling then. After that, it started showing up on netbooks. Now it's the most common?

</comment><comment><USER44> So does that mean that everybody's on a 13" macbook?

<comment><USER45> The 11" MBA is 1366 x 768, but the 13" MBA is 1440 x 900. The 15" MBP has been 1440 x 900 since 2006 but in 2010 added an upgrade option to 1680 x 1050.

As far as I know, the 11" MBA is the only Mac to ever offer that resolution.</comment></comment>


The Wildness of Maurice Sendak - <AUTHOR> https://catapult.co/stories/column-books-maurice-sendak-where-the-wild-things-are-gabrielle-bellot <comment><USER2> someone might enjoy this (brief Colbert 2012 interview): [http://www.cc.com/video-clips/gzi3ec/the-colbert-report- grim...](http://www.cc.com/video-clips/gzi3ec/the-colbert-report-grim- colberty-tales-with-maurice-sendak-pt--1)

and one by Bill Moyers: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=To-093TmlEI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=To-093TmlEI)

<comment><USER3> His interviews with Terry Gross are legendary, at least the last one.

[http://www.openculture.com/2013/01/maurice_sendaks_emotional...](http://www.openculture.com/2013/01/maurice_sendaks_emotional_last_interview_with_nprs_terry_gross_animated.html)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: should tech journalists boycott tech conferences? - <AUTHOR>

More specifically, how do you think techcrunch writers feel about having to boycott the Launch conference? <comment><USER2> A good journalist doesn't let personal politics get in the way of covering news.</comment>


Which is a better career launch pad. A large company or a medium size startup - <AUTHOR> I have two offers: one from a medium sized company and one from a very large company. This will be my first job out of college. The offers are comparable (both in the Seattle area). The positions are also similar, full stack at the medium sized and back end development at the large company.
I was wondering which will be the better choice in terms of solidifying my career experience. At the large company I see that there is brand recognition. The downside is that the team is mostly senior developers and it moves slowly. Of course working with senior is a benefit because I will get to learn a lot.
At the medium sized company, there are about 200 developers. The team is mostly young so I see more visibility and a faster work environment.
Both have good points and bad points. Then there is also the matter of the positions. If I work mainly in the backend, I can specialize in it. In full stack I become more versatile. Both options seem good but I feel full stack developers are more common. Nonetheless, I wanted to know what you think might be a stronger career launch pad. <comment><USER2> In my experience, working at smaller companies helped me gain "broader" experience, where as at larger companies, you can go "deeper" experience. I would say go with the one that you are more passionate about.

</comment><comment><USER3> Large company. It will help you get better name recognition later on.

Sorta like how everybody wants to hire Google or Facebook engineers, even though everyone else is fine.</comment>


Ask HN: Any good methods to support SEO in SPA like React? - <AUTHOR> I'm writing a forum which is using react to handle page change, how can I support SEO? <comment><USER2> Use Next.js to render your React serverside</comment>


Ask HN: If you play an instrument, which is it? - <AUTHOR>

Most of the coders I've met either play an instrument or wish they could play one.
I play the violin, but not at concert solo level. So I just play for my own enjoyment (digging into classical, modern and folk).
On the coder side I've run into people who do drums, piano, flute, etc over the last several years. Playing music or just wishing to play music is a consistent thread here.
I'm just wondering - what are you guys/girls playing? <comment><USER2> I don't play any instrument, but wish I could/intend to try to learn something.

I do however do custom guitar pedal effects and mods, and have done some various bits of studio hacking/engineering work (when I still lived in Detroit I helped a well known artist get his first PC-based/digital mixing board up and running).

</comment><comment><USER3> I taught myself acoustic guitar. First, I learned from books and websites. Then when YouTube came out, I found a lot of very good "How to Play Song X" videos on it. I really enjoyed learning to play. Spending 5-10 hours a week away from my computer, and not looking at a screen for most of that time, significantly boosted my productivity and improved my morale. I was pretty burned out and looking for something to do besides computer work, and reading about computers, when I started picking it up. I haven't played in a few years, though. As I got older, I kinda lost interest in music (both listening to and playing).

</comment><comment><USER4> I used to play saxophone - but I sucked. I also play a teeny little bit of piano.

</comment><comment><USER5> Violin. I could have gone professional, but decided that I'd enjoy it more if I kept music as a hobby, and that computing/mathematics paid better for less work anyway.

</comment><comment><USER6> The AXiS49. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9-OSCl7kOc>

It's like cheating at music.

</comment><comment><USER7> Piano - I really like how versatile and consistent it is. If I were to learn another instrument, it'd definitely be guitar.

</comment><comment><USER8> I play guitar very poorly. When I'm stuck on a problem I'll run scales for awhile until the answer hits me.

</comment><comment><USER9> Guitar - jazz and blues. I used to play pro and then "found" computers :)

<comment><USER10> Awesome. If you don't mind, do you have any music links of you playing I can listen to?

<comment><USER9> I don't have but 1 or 2 songs today online and those are not ones I'm too proud of lol. I did just buy a new Eric Johnson Fender Strat and have started getting back into practicing though :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I dont play music, but I love to listen to it. HipHop, R&B, Pop, Jazz, Classical, Blues, Rock, everything. I too have noticed that playing music is a consistent trend for many.

</comment><comment><USER12> Electronic drums, banjo, guitar, piano, trumpet -- in order of increasing skill (not that it increases to any significant level).

</comment><comment><USER13> piano and saxophone(not at the same time :) ) Though recently I have been thinking of taking up bass guitar.

</comment><comment><USER14> Play piano and guitar; try to sing too as I write music and someone needs to sing it.

</comment><comment><USER15> Expert Rockband drums... that counts right?

<comment><USER16> Me too. And absolutely it counts; VB programmers are still programmers aren't they?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I play the guitar.

</comment><comment><USER18> piano, guitar...not well

</comment><comment><USER19> Clarinet

</comment><comment><USER20> guitar hero!</comment>


Project dev turns up to INDECT cybersurveillance talk Q&A at CCC, anger ensues - <AUTHOR> http://mirror.fem-net.de/CCC/27C3/mp4-h264-HQ/27c3-4237-en-indect_eu_surveillance_project.mp4.torrent

<comment><AUTHOR> First half an hour is the presentation about the EU's cybersurveillance scheme called INDECT: <http://www.indect-project.eu/>

Gets really interesting in the second half when a researcher from the project at a university in poland turns up for the Q&A, and the roomful of hackers starts firing angry questions at him.

Here is a direct link to the mp4 if you can't use the bittorrent link above, but lets try not to smash the shit out of the CCC's servers (the file is ~1gb): [http://mirror.fem- net.de/CCC/27C3/mp4-h264-HQ/27c3-4237-en-i...](http://mirror.fem- net.de/CCC/27C3/mp4-h264-HQ/27c3-4237-en-indect_eu_surveillance_project.mp4)</comment>


State of App Development in 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.bitrise.io/state-of-app-development-in-2018 <comment><USER2> Great article! Surprised to see Flutter adoption so far...</comment>


Techies Project – Portraits of the Underrepresented in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.techiesproject.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Considering how much acclaim I seem to be seeing this project getting, I would have thought this getting more love here. Despite maybe an aversion around here to the 'underrepresented' notion, there are some great stories in here of people working thru the challenges of the valley, startup culture and just trying to make it all work. Some familiar/much more mainstream names in here that surprised me.</comment>


Super fast camera can film light at 1 trillion frames per second - <AUTHOR> https://m.curiosity.com/paths/super-fast-cameras-nova-pbs/?utm_source=facebookDisc&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=2015q3fbMITCameraDiscSC

<comment><USER2> An important detail is that it's not a camera in the normal sense. It's more like a automatic stop motion device.

To "film" the 1 trillion frames in 1 second it repeats the experiment 1 trillion times. Each time the interval between the flash and the capture is slightly bigger, so you get 1 trillion different frames that can use for a movie.

On particular, you can only use this with static objects. If you put a fish inside the bottle, the fish would be in different random places in each frame and the movie will be horrible.

</comment><comment><USER3> The camera is not fast in capturing so many frames per second sense. It is fast in capturing extremely short period of time sense. Many packets of photons are sent and many short movies are filmed (with 1000 frames per second or so), and later software joins all the movies together, calculates which frame belongs where and we get this result.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://www.ted.com/talks/ramesh_raskar_a_camera_that_takes_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/ramesh_raskar_a_camera_that_takes_one_trillion_frames_per_second)</comment>


Ask HN: anybody looking for design help? - <AUTHOR>

I'm the guy behind Folyo (http://folyo.me), a private job board for freelance designers. There are about 300 designers on the site, and I thought it might be interesting to pick 3 or 4 designers each week and ask them to do a short "design roundtable" and give their impressions on a site's design.<p>So if you've got a site and you'd like a chance to get feedback on its design (for free of course), just leave a link here :) <comment><USER2> I'd love someone to look at the design of the weekly planner at <http://weekplan.net>

As I mentioned in a recent thread (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3547019>) I tried to publish a new design that my users didn't like and I had to roll back.

Some users also suggested I get a designer :) [http://weekplan.userecho.com/topic/93916-hire-designer- bette...](http://weekplan.userecho.com/topic/93916-hire-designer-better-now- than-later/)

The app is growing steadily (10K+ users), a better design would help growing faster.

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER3> If you could do one on 9cloud.us[1], I'd really appreciate it.

I'm working on it everyday, but despite my best efforts I know I don't have the design chops of a true professional.

9Cloud is aiming to be a replacement for Flickr, et al, focusing on what no one else does right now---the community and not social networking, local search, or anonymous uploading.

I think the fun of finding great people, and great artwork within a site has been lost in the new trends and I want to bring it back since its something I enjoyed immensely.

[1] About page: <http://9cloud.us/about/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Awesome idea! <http://imgfave.com> could use a redesign. I've got a redesigned mockup I'm pretty happy with, but I'd love to see what better designers could come up with.

</comment><comment><USER5> I actually worked on this exact idea with a designer friend but called it quits after we got too busy with client work. You've executed this brilliantly!

I was a bit surprised that you are showcasing designers and linking to their sites, allowing potential customers to contact them directly. This is something we struggled with.

I think you nailed it though. There is huge value in posting to the network and finding out who is interested and available to take on the project. I would love to see a clone of this for developers as well, so I could actually use it. :)

</comment><comment><USER6> I've been working on a personal portfolio mockup that I wouldn't mind some comments on, even something brief like "fonts are too damn big".

<http://zacharytong.com/mockup.jpg>

Tangentially related, how often do Folyo emails go out? Basically, I'm a new freelancer and terrified a client will come to me asking for design work. I'm handy with photoshop...but not a designer.

If that happens, would Folyo be a decent place to find someone to work with/subcontract to?

<comment><USER7> I really like the 'you need to' --> 'i specialize in' part. Immediately made me think you know what you're doing..and that I should probably hire you. Great job!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm reasonably new to the world of design, and would love to get some honest feedback on my site: <http://joshnh.com>

My main focus has been readability; I want to make sure that that hasn't negatively impacted other aspects I may not have considered though.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm mainly a software engineer with little artistic talent, currently doing my first web design in Photoshop.

Is it possible to ask for feedback on image renders as opposed to production sites? I've been playing with this exact idea so your post couldn't arrive at a better moment.

</comment><comment><USER10> Great initiative :)

Please checkout: <http://www.StartOpedia.org>

in conjunction with this thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3548292>

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm working on a web app for listening to podcasts and did a soft launch with some good feedback -- but haven't heard much about my design. The site is <http://flapcast.com> \-- thanks!

</comment><comment><USER12> I know Metalab Designs is looking for designers, though not sure if they are looking for local ones in Victoria: <http://metalabdesign.com/>

</comment><comment><USER13> Please Check out <http://www.tagesweb.de/> , it's a German news rss aggregator

</comment><comment><USER14> I would love to get some feedback on Pinkvox(<http://www.pinkvox.com>) design.

</comment><comment><USER15> I would love some design feedback on <http://thebookingbee.com>

Thanks!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Link to Folyo: <http://folyo.me>

</comment><comment><USER16> Great Thanks. Please checkout <http://jackpotbuddy.com></comment>


Slack, I'm Breaking Up with You - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/better-people/slack-i-m-breaking-up-with-you-54600ace03ea#.g90g70ymv <comment><USER3> I haven't really used Slack, but I had an immediate, negative, and surprisingly-visceral reaction when I saw one of their animal-ads on Youtube... Can you spot the moment it all goes _horribly horribly wrong_?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6sSa5NpqUI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6sSa5NpqUI)

The lion-manager is gazing out a window, has a passing thought about "flying umbrellas". Naturally, he instantly sends a mass-broadcast, interrupting and disrupting the work of the _entire_ office. (Who all, of course, _leap joyously_ to implement his brilliant vision.)

Now, this makes a lot of sense if you want to _sell copies of Slack_ , since it appeals to the managers with the power to approve-purchases and mandate- adoption... But it implies Slack is going to either become the latest tool-of- oppression at a dysfunctional company, or that managers are going to buy Slack with the idea that they can use it to micromanage everybody.

Further on, as the Slack team adds features, guess what kinds of features are going to get priority? The ones that sell. Which ones are those? The ones that lion-managers love and other-employees hate.

<comment><USER4> Looking back into when Slack really took off, it took off primarily because development teams were adopting it internally, and then in many cases evangelizing it enough to get organization wide adoption. To emphasize the point, developers were the primary ones driving Slack adoption at that time.

In order for Slack to move beyond the smaller companies and larger startups where developers have the power to do the above, Slack has to start targeting the people who have the power to change how a 10k person corporation communicates. To those people, usability and integrations are nice-to-haves, but more important are metrics and "process". The issues you have with this commercial are the exact kinds of things that high-level executives will think about when they want to get a new communications tool. "This will let me keep track of who's doing what", "this will let me reach whoever I want, whenever I want", "this will let me centralize ALL company communication".

For better or for worse, Slack is growing up and trying to target the biggest, and most traditional corporations, and some of that will look a bit ugly to its comparatively granola hippy early adopters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem with communication tools is that the meta-conversations necessary to set and adjust expectations around them don't happen as low-level and as often as they ought to. So they blow up into things like the medium post.

I would suggest at a bare minimum making part of the topic of your slack channels "Everyone must read everything posted here within 30 minutes," "everyone must read everything posted here on a daily basis," "don't read the history. If you didn't see it, it didn't happen" and also carefully consider everyone else's time before posting anything.

I would suggest that, but I'm done getting called autistic for discussing the facets of social protocol that social protocol discourages discussing. It feels better for people to be able to speak in one of those contexts without explicitly declaring how much they want to impose on someone elses time, and nobody wants to perform out-of-band signalling as a conversation casually slips between the different contexts. The way Slack tends to get used is just a rude ways to waste other people's time.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wrote my 2 cents about this article, in a follow-up Medium post - [https://medium.com/@preslavrachev/slack-isn-t-the-problem- we...](https://medium.com/@preslavrachev/slack-isn-t-the-problem-we-are- ef422d64cc19#.yygap7p0k)). Here is a just a relevant comment to this discussion:

"[none of the arguments], has to do with the tools themselves, as much as it does with our way of using them. We have come to a point in our development, in which 24/7 availability is perceived as normal and expected behavior. Yet, to blame it on the tools we use, is like blaming it on the hammer for accidentally hitting your finger while trying to hang a picture. Indeed, the tools we use, have certainly made it easier for us to reach this point, but ultimately, it is us who pulled the trigger, not the tools."

<comment><USER7> I wrote a follow up to both your article and the original one. [https://medium.com/@rnotani/the-different-frustrations-of- sl...](https://medium.com/@rnotani/the-different-frustrations-of-slack-and- email-d56cc59ac7ec)

Here is a relevant quote from the article.

"In my opinion both of these posts get it partly right. Both of these articles also have as a subtext an implicit or explicit comparison with email. Both, Slack and email tend towards "communication overload". However, the generic description of "communication overload" obscures the very different type of overload created by these two technologies. Understanding this distinction also leads us to a possible solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Zulip ([https://zulip.org/](https://zulip.org/)), a recently open-sourced Slack alternative, has a clever solution for this. They have a light-weight threading model which ensure that discussions stay within context. That way, you can just ignore discussions about topics you're not concerned with without missing anything else. It's great.

> Sometimes, important things get discussed when you're not around. > Unfortunately, so do a lot of unimportant things.

> Zulip makes it easy to review the conversations you missed, so you can focus > on that important project without having to catch up on how Jim's guitar > lessons are going.

Someone on HN described it very well:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10281065](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10281065)

<comment><USER9> This will have the same problem, slack, by design is a time black hole where you have to dance when the other side say you must. Email allows you to prioritize tasks in your own time.

<comment><USER10> Having used Slack for over a year and a half, you nailed it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I still prefer email as my communication tool of choice. Sure it may take some self discipline to ignore it and treat it as asynchronous when you need to be doing something else, but at least there's a lot less pressure to respond that there is in chat apps where instant reply is more likely to be expected and the person on the other side can often see that you're there.

<comment><USER12> hey - I'm just interested how much your comment resonated with the HN crowd. Do you mind telling me how many upvotes you got for this comment bsharitt?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sounds way too familiar. I am generally amazed that people refer to Slack as chat AND asynchronous communication tools. The two are kind of opposite for me.

I too miss times when email was for longer async communication and chat/gtalk/irc was for ad-hoc brief chats or production incident triage.

</comment><comment><USER14> great similar post on the Economist talking about the broader issue of distraction and over collaboration.

[http://www.economist.com/news/business/21688872-fashion- maki...](http://www.economist.com/news/business/21688872-fashion-making- employees-collaborate-has-gone-too-far-collaboration- curse?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/ed/thecollaborationcurse)

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't really understand how this is software problem. This being said - <USER2> never found myself distracted by either Slack or email. Or Skype. Or Telegram. Or twitter. etc. Despite using all of them.

<comment><USER16> > _I don 't really understand how this is software problem._

Because every piece software, and social/collaboration software doubly so, affords and encourages certain ways in which it can be used.

> _This being said - I never found myself distracted by either Slack or email. > Or Skype. Or Telegram. Or twitter. etc. Despite using all of them._

Either that or you can't faithfully assess the level to which you've been distracted.

<comment><USER15> >Because every piece software, and social/collaboration software doubly so, affords and encourages certain ways in which it can be used.

Well, yes, but no forses you to do so. There are people who can't get away from facebook page once they've opened it and there are people who use it just as an address book with photo's. Blaming software for not knowing where "dnd" button is - is kind of strange.

>Either that or you can't faithfully assess the level to which you've been distracted.

I don't spend more than half an hour a day viewing those or posting replyies. I'm pretty sure I do can assess the said level.

<comment><USER16> > _Well, yes, but no forces you to do so._

Well, such implicit nudges are much more effective for making most of people do something than someone actually forcing them to (against which they might have rebelled).

<comment><USER15> >Just answering a work email could take 30 minutes for example.

Depends on workflows at you office, the way you communicate etc. I don't have too much email coming at me and for Slack and other messaging - I just have a set of rules for me and people to follow. Have something urgent? Come to me and talk and give me a phone call. Not urgent? I'll give it a look and reply as soon as I have time for this. (short version of rules :) )

The problem for many people think that if they are online they should answer immediately, which is not true.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lavabit Security Misconfiguration - mike-cardwell https://www.grepular.com/Lavabit_Security_Misconfiguration <comment><AUTHOR> Shouldn't it be using IMAPS instead of STARTTLS anyways?

<comment><USER2> I always favor STARTTLS in favor of implicit. I say so since implicit TLS on SMTP (465) is deprecated.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why? What benefit is there in starting plaintext, and as the post shows, allowing clients to transmit credentials?

And is IMAPS deprecated? Not that it matters -- the IETF or IANA deprecating something or unassigning a port is not really much of a justification.

<comment><USER2> It was unnecessary to split the protocol into two ports when STARTTLS came along shortly after. As for myself, I also thinks it's nice that you can partly identify the usage of a port by connecting to it.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Still doesn't address sending credentials plaintext or what benefit this has, at all. Adds another roundtrip for no benefit. Using TLS doesn't change the identification, just requires a few packets to be exchanged; not a huge deal.

So again, how did Lavabit help its customers by not forcing TLS for IMAP?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd love to know more about why this was considered insufficient to qualify for industry-common disclosure practices while simultaneously described as a 'Security' misconfig.

If it's a security issue, then responsible disclosure.

If it's not a security issue, then it's not 'Security'.

Right?

<comment><USER4> There's no such thing as "responsible disclosure".

The term is an Orwellian scheme to promote vendor interests as if they were naturally shared by researchers and users.

This is a pretty boring discussion to be having on a thread about a new vulnerability. Better that we should be talking about the impact of the finding itself.

<comment><USER3> "Until they became conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious."</comment></comment></comment>


Maximum number of indexes per mysql table is 64 - <AUTHOR>

https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/features.html "Support for up to 64 indexes per table (32 before MySQL 4.1.2). Each index may consist of 1 to 16 columns or parts of columns"<p>Hit this building fanfootage.com, anyone hitting this upper limit? <comment><USER2> Fanfootage is essentially a music video sharing site where you replace the audio with a professional recording of the band, right? What on Earth are you doing that necessitates more than 64 indexes on a table?! Either you're building something something far more complicated than a sharing site, or something is very wrong in your database design.

</comment><comment><USER3> I did encounter this exact issue; and sure enough, the developers had no clue how to use indexes: "just slap an index on every column, and it will Magically Just Work."

In other words, even 10 indexes per table is a red flag; if you see more than 30 indexes on a table, something is terribly wrong - database architecture, programmers' understanding of how indexes work, or both.</comment>