Cherokee Syllabary - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_syllabary <comment><USER2> The story of how Sequoyah created this is a good one. He knew of the technology of writing and saw its power but essentially did a clean-room re- implementation of it.

The first incarnation was closer to Chinese or ancient Egyptian in that he tried to create a different symbol for each word. Then, after creating over a thousand symbols and still being far from his goal, he went back to the drawing board and took a purely phonetic approach.

Not being literate in English, he simply borrowed sritten symbols he saw, including numerals. Ultimately, the phonetic-based system was a success and spread through the Cherokee nation quickly.

Humans have only invented writing independently two or maybe three times. It's amazing how much easier it becomes just knowing such a thing is possible!

<comment><USER3> What is also quite fascinating to me is that many of the Cherokee of the time considered writing to be a form of witchcraft. Sequoyah allegedly [e.g., 1] decided that it was not based on his observations of white men, but his initial trials of teaching written Cherokee were sufficient to bring charges of witchcraft against his daughter, his first pupil. However, after some demonstrations, it was shown to be what it is, a very simple but extremely effective tool.

I'm sure many of the readers of this fine forum know the quote (and provenance, which I don't) that is something like 'any sufficiently advanced form of technology is indistinguishable from magic'.

[1]: [https://cherokee.org/About-The- Nation/History/Facts/Sequoyah...](https://cherokee.org/About-The- Nation/History/Facts/Sequoyah-and-the-Cherokee-Syllabary)

<comment><USER4> I'm curious what sorcery and witchcraft actually meant in the context of Cherokee society at the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Related (as they were influenced by the Cherokee writing system) and similarly interesting: Canadian aboriginal syllabics [1], which are unique in that the shape of the character determines the consonant, while the 90-degree _rotation_ of the character determines the vowel.

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

<comment><USER6> Strictly speaking, the Canadian Aboriginal syllabics is an abugida, not a syllabary.

In the categorization of writing systems, alphabets (such as Latin) encode each phoneme as a distinct letter; abjads (such as Arabic) encode only consonants, with vowels as optional diacritics; abugidas (such as Indic scripts) primarily encode consonants but mark vowels in some systematic way; syllabaries just encode each syllable as a unique glyph without any systematic modification; and logographic systems don't have any systematic phonetic component (although they usually are influenced by phonetics, e.g., the rebus principle of diagramming abstract concepts by use of homonyms).

Sequoyah had access to an English-language Bible, so although he couldn't read the Latin text, he used several letters as inspiration for Cherokee, which is why you see Latin characters that correspond to completely different sounds.

<comment><USER7> While I agree the distinction you reference between abugidas and syllabaries is useful, it's not a distinction that's always observed (e.g. Indic scripts are sometimes referred to as syllabaries).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have family who are Vai, a tribe from Liberia/Sierra Leone. The Vai language has a syllabary, one of the few independent written languages in Africa. As it says in the article, there is a possible connection with the Cherokee syllabary. When free African-Americans got the option to settle in Liberia some Cherokee opted to join, apparently not seeing a future in their colonized homeland.

</comment><comment><USER9> For people who might be interested in the modern Cherokee (including lessons on the language, food and culture) might enjoy a Cherokee produced show called Osiyo [http://osiyo.tv/](http://osiyo.tv/)</comment>


2015 Virtual Reality Ecosystem Map - <AUTHOR> http://www.ingreenlight.com/vr-ecosystem-map

<comment><AUTHOR> What companies are missing from this map?

<comment> T-A I can't see [http://www.lindenlab.com/](http://www.lindenlab.com/) anywhere on it, which seems a little odd.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a great call! Obviously going to be/is a huge player in the space. Looking forward to seeing what Ebbe and team come out with

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> So cool, thanks for sharing!</comment>


Ask HN: What is the state of film photography in non-creative industries? - <AUTHOR> I do some film photography as a hobby. I was looking at Fujifilm NEOPAN 100 ACROS - which comes recommended on the website for, among others, archaeological documentation.<p>As I've been looking at photogrammetry with drones/digital cameras and seen the wonders it can do for non-IT people, I wondered: other than artistical pursuits, what is the role of film photography in 2018? <comment><USER2> Well, one thing to really do is look at the resumes of some of the great photographers of all time and work your way backwards. I saw that, because artistic photographers often partake in pay-jobs and end up being totally outside of the realm of "art". One of the biggest things I've seen is the resurrection of techniques prior to film as you know it today - namely on sub- straits like tin/glass and low ISO below 1 .. yes ISO --> 1 <\---. That might be a start.

[https://petapixel.com/2015/12/08/ansel-adams-job-opening- in-...](https://petapixel.com/2015/12/08/ansel-adams-job-opening-in-us-govt- pays-100000-per-year/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Landscape/art photography with large format negatives (4x5 and above) I understand...we still don't have practical digital cameras for that.

But what is being done with emulsions of ISO <1?</comment></comment>


Arch Linux: Myth and Reality (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.catchlinux.com/arch-linux-myth/ <comment><USER2> I find this post sort of like "I want Arch to turn into Ubuntu".

Arch is easier to use than Gentoo, LFS or Rawhide Fedora.

The Arch Wiki is pretty useful even for non-Arch users. Try to install Linux on some new or exotic hardware, Arch is very likely to be first at search results.

And it is elite, since it is more likely to be used by linux or OS developers (some way as fedora etc)..

Anyway, I think better way to learn Unix is FreeBSD (better documentation). And my main system is Ubuntu :-)

<comment><USER3> > The Arch wiki is pretty useful even for non-Arch users. Try to install Linux > on some new or exotic hardware, Arch is very likely to be first on search > result.

Yup, especially on new laptops. When I first got my XPS 13 the arch wiki had a bunch of useful information on what I needed to do to get the hardware to work correctly before the next Fedora release supported it. Built a patched kernel package and off to the races I went.

<comment><USER4> I just gave up today trying to install arch on my new-ish '13 laptop because of a UEFI debacle. The instructions were _not clear_ about how to install the bootloader and UEFI partition.

At one point it says make a fat32 partition, but after that it never says what to do with it, or where to mount it. The instructions don't go in series, each section is its own novel, with branches at each level.

earlier, it says "pick one of these 3 UEFI bootloaders" but never follows up with how to make each one work.

I'm in no way whatsoever afraid of the command line (I run ubuntu every day ), but man I wish it had a graphical or at least curses-based installer. linux mint installs in under 3 minutes, including UEFI and full-disk encryption.

<comment><USER5> I definitely agree the articles related to bootloaders can be very hard to read

If you want to use GRUB and UEFI, my recommendation is follow the headings up until the end of Installation

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB#UEFI_systems](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB#UEFI_systems)

Then you just need to generate the config

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB#Generate_the_main_...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB#Generate_the_main_configuration_file)

The partition you're referring to is explained here

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/EFI_System_Partition](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/EFI_System_Partition)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Every time I try to justify arch as my daily driver I fail to explain it other than that arch stood the test of time. All other distros got me installing something else, arch sits at the sweet spot between unmanaged and managed.

Thanks again to the creators and maintainers. Much meant.

<comment><USER7> Yup. Over the years, compared to other distos, "it just works" for me as well. Even thought I spend maybe 10 mins a week doing updates, I always feel like that it was time well spent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Google Cache:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:A1Qpn8W...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:A1Qpn8WoSEMJ:www.catchlinux.com/arch- linux-myth/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-b)

<comment><USER8> As an Arch user, I agree with some of his points regarding the community. In particular, the attitude of some Arch users annoys me as they think all other distributions are inferior.

Arch is great. It's a local minima. It's the closest thing to LFS with binaries done right. I think _minimal_ binaries are a key thing of Arch. They get rid of a lot of complexity. By avoiding heavy patched packages, I've found Arch much easier to debug and maintain.

But IMHO NixOS/GuixSD are the future as they tackle a big set of issues most distros ignore. Namely making sysadmin transactional and reproducible. Perhaps they're not ready for prime time yet, though.

<comment><USER9> > In particular, the attitude of some Arch users annoys me as they think all > other distributions are inferior.

Well, they _are_... if you want _rolling releases_ that are _very_ up-to-date.

(That not to say there aren't valid reasons _not_ to want a RR distro.)

> But IMHO NixOS/GuixSD are the future as they tackle a big set of issues most > distros ignore. Namely making sysadmin transactional and reproducible. > Perhaps they're not ready for prime time yet, though.

Agreed, but it _really_ depends on whether NixOS/GuixSD can get enough packagers (people) to get close enough to Arch Linux in terms of "recentness"... so that people would actually start to adopt these distros.

Ideally, I'd want one of this type of distro, but in practice Arch Linux is just ridiculously more current for everything I care about. (I know that I should probably volunteer as a packager, but I just don't have the time or motiviation to do the "make-work" that most of packager life is.)

<comment><USER8> Last time I checked Nix & Guix repos were really up to date.

It's also much easier to package stuff than in Arch. So easy a user that is savvy enough to use either distribution can commit missing packages with minimal work. But they have plenty of stuff.

Admittedly, a problem they have is that it's hard for them to package things with minimal dependencies, something Arch is particularly good at, but this is being worked out with multiple package outputs.

<comment><USER9> > It's also much easier to package stuff than in Arch. So easy a user that is > savvy enough to use either distribution can commit missing packages with > minimal work. But they have plenty of stuff.

It's not that they don't have plenty of stuff -- it's that _when I last tried_ they didn't have the stuff that _I_ want.

(Incidentally, I think the Nix approach kind of retards adoption of "new things" because it lets old stuff "just keep working" despite old dependencies. I'm sure what the security implications are, but I _think_ they might be quite severe. However, this is just an aside.)

<comment><USER10> Frankly as i grow older i am getting more and more tired of the magpie-like chase of new and shiny in tech. I want my stuff to work tomorrow like it did today, thank you very much.

Frankly if bridges were built like software/firmware is built, they would be blown up and rebuilt every 6 months. Good luck getting that past the planning department, much less the public.

That is basically why people do not update, because they worry that their workflow will be more disrupted by a changes to the tech they use daily than some potential security breach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Don't see any issue with generally mentioning Arch together with Mint or Fedora or Debian or CentOS. Heck, they're all in the DistroWatch's TOP10, and they are all very alike (sure, some pieces are quite different - but, I'd say, the big image isn't much). Unless the choice is specifically locked down to "Mint or Fedora", of course.

But if every $distro user author meets, tends to _inappropriately_ put "I use $distro[1]" in Linux-related conversation, then there's something not right not exactly with the $distro but with the company the author's in. Don't want to offend anyone, but that's feels a lot like neophyte-like behavior, when everything's so new and shiny, and every difference is overwhelming.

[1] Arch's by no means unique or outstanding here.

</comment><comment><USER7> Around 2000, I used to distro hop every 6 months. Around 2005 I found Arch, and it stopped my distro hopping to this day. It was a painful road however. Lots of hours put in figuring out how everything (and I mean everything) works. In the end, it's the most stable OS I use, even though it's rolling release. Right now I have 5 machines running it. It basically forces competency, and I'm totally responsible for everything. Obviously this does not appeal to most people. I feel that Arch is purely a power user distro.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have arch on two machines and I must say that I kind of regret it at this point. Every update it's a coin toss whether there'll be a regression in _some_ package and pacman seems very limited as a package manager. It basically gives up on conflicts -- there is no sophisticated automated conflict resolution like in aptitude and no way to powerful way to do pinning like with apt_preferences.

<comment><USER13> Interesting. I liked Arch at home, but I could never really use it. I would end up going back to Windows for gaming.

Anyways, three-and-half years ago at work I got the chance to install Arch. Three years later, the _only_ issue I ever had with wildly doing 'pacman -Syu' was GRUB, which got screwed at some point. I got scared back then, but I had the Live USB dongle to the rescue and I could access Arch own wiki with my phone. Anyways, I could quickly solve the problem.

Six months ago I did the install from scratch, and this time I have yet to face any issues with package installation/upgrade/dependency resolution. Even AUR packages sometimes if they fail you just have to make small adjustments to the PKGBUILD file and be done with it.

It'd be nice to know what kind of packages you've been having issues with: at work I deal mostly with Ruby, Erlang, and database engines. As for other packages, Synaptics input and... probably that's what. Also, whatever dependencies Awesome WM and fish shell require.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I did a few Arch installs two years ago to try it out. I loved the experience, it really did teach me tons and gave me a beautifully minimalistic system with me in control - and yet I ended up going back to Ubuntu. I found that I valued the community too much to leave, and on the whole I appreciated having a system that just worked (well, most of the time) rather than having to spend hours taking care of the OS. I might give Arch another shot some time, maybe give it a chance and stick with it a bit longer. But for now I'm quite happy in the Ubuntu universe :-)

</comment><comment><USER15> I kinda want a arch-to-gentoo browser extension.</comment>


Apple company culture in one license plate... - <AUTHOR> https://loopt.com/loopt/l/Broadcast._/db25b42f-ab6c-4667-8189-f9590eb2897a?ptParam=t

<comment><USER2> Why can't I click on Sam's name and see everything he has broadcast? And clicking on the 'Cupertino, CA' link doesn't seem to do anything.

<comment><USER3> I'm actually really surprised that Loopt isn't more open with it's data, or doesn't utilize their website more.

<comment><USER4> <http://www.quantcast.com/loopt.com>

17k monthy people isn't too many. Odd really.

<comment><USER5> Why would people be accessing loopt from anything other than a mobile browser, which I'm assuming quantcast doesn't track?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> World Wide Steve Jobs Domination?

</comment><comment><USER7> What does that mean?

<comment><USER8> What would Steve Jobs Do?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> sama is at Infinite Loop right now? Cue the speculation about Apple buying Loopt or Loopt receiving special treatment on the iPhone.

<comment><USER10> That is already public information. Backgrounding is coming to loopt. He presented at WWDC, or some other apple event, right?

[http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/04/loopt-strikes-deal- with-a...](http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/04/loopt-strikes-deal-with-atandt- for-background-monitoring-on-iphone/)

<comment><USER11> well, sort of. the way this particular type of 'backgrounding' was reported to work, at&t would be keeping track of the user's position, not apple or the iphone itself. it sounded to me like it won't require any changes to the iphone os for this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That's pretty funny. For many years I've kept a (mental) Post-It note on my electronics bench with "WWWD?" written on it.</comment>


Ask HN: Are "no negotiation" offers hurting candidates? - <AUTHOR> One of my good friends recently received an offer from a "no negotiation" startup. They claimed not to do negotiations because it statistically puts marginalized candidates at a disadvantage.
Here's the rub: The offer was horrible. Seriously, my friend has 2x as much as experience as me and now I make 3.5x more than them. There's not even a equity upside: It was less than 0.1%. I couldn't believe the offer when they told me. I had higher offers from startups straight out of college.
It seems that this might be common with startups that refuse to negotiate. Reddit, Stripe, etc: All of them report pretty low salaries. I couldn't find any salary stats on Jet.com or Magoosh, but they both hard sell their "awesome cultures" so I wouldn't be surprised if they pay beans too.
Is this just a clever way to take even more advantage of engineers, or do these particular companies just pay poorly across the board due to their "amazing culture?" Do they really think they're putting candidates at an advantage? It looks like they draw more underrepresented candidates in, but the result seems to be that the supposed wage gap is made even larger. <comment><USER2> Make a counteroffer and say it's not up for negotiation.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Are "no negotiation" offers hurting candidates?

No, strong candidates ALWAYS know their relative worth in the marketplace. They naturally gravitate to the most competitive offers. But some employers still take a backward view of talent as a 'resource', rather than intellectual capital. These guys put-out unsophisticated, low-ball offers to marginal, even desperate job-seekers just fill seats.

Relative to the company's "no negotiation" stance, there are almost always exceptions. On this subject, Stuart Diamond is masterful > [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOZo6Lx70ok](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOZo6Lx70ok)

<comment><AUTHOR> I would normally agree with you, but I've seen first hand this not being the case. People get starry eyed over "neat" products or cultures, or they might be burnt out from toxic cultures from previous employers, enough to ignore being taken serious advantage of.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't down play the "neat" product or culture, or the burn out from past experience. Money isn't everything. Personally, if I was given a low ball offer and was told I wasn't allowed to negotiate, I would negotiate anyway. That might include negotiating with my feet: "Sorry I can't accept that offer, if you aren't willing to come up to $X then I will have to look elsewhere." Of course, they might say "We can't negotiate" and I will have to look elsewhere.

On the other hand, there are times when making less money but enjoying what I do is very much worth it. These jobs aren't forever, we don't get into jobs in this industry and stay there until we retire very often. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad making half as much but really enjoying getting up every morning and having the opportunity to go into work because the product challenges are exciting or because the culture makes me feel good about myself. Obviously, if it causes deep financial stresses than that's not a good trade off. But if you can swing it personally, it might be a great experience. I wouldn't call this "being taken serious advantage of". This could be just the benefit some engineers are looking for in their career.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think it hurts or helps really.

Simply because salary is only one small part of a constellation of things that are up for negotiation when you're considering an offer.

If a company has a hard line drawn in the sand in regards to salary, you can still negotiate working hours, working from home, job-title/responsibilities, benefit plans, commuting stipends, free lunches, 401k matching, extra paid time off, faster vesting of your options, etc etc.

So even if you end up with a low salary, that doesn't mean that you're under- compensated overall. It might just be that you're over-compensated in other areas.

</comment><comment><USER6> A bad no-negotiation offer seems beneficial to candidates since it makes the decision easy and doesn't create the illusion that there's a good deal there to be had. It's hard to see how a good no-negotiation offer is bad for candidates either, since it's easy to decide and doesn't waste their time with something they're not going to get.

Middling no-negotiation offers would make the decision straight forward if not easier or harder...and again, not waste the candidate's time. So at worst it seems to me a wash.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER7> State and Federal government has done "No Negotiation" for a while. Based on your experience (and they usually have hard guidelines) you fit into a specific grade/step. Generally, the only 'negotiation' you can do is to try and sway their guidelines. "I feel that even though I have 2 years of work experience I had extensive internship experience that should move me from a step 3 to a step 5." (But, everyone in a step 5 makes the same) And even then some (my state govt) still limits where they can put you. Eg, programmers make between $X-$Yk. You cannot make more starting than ($Y+$X)/2 even if you invented the tech they're using.

A lot of 'cool jobs' pay shit anyway. I moved from a 'boring job' to a 'cool job' and took a very slight pay cut (although I did negotiate). But, I enjoy the work a lot more. There are tons of people who want to work at startups or places like stripe/reddit and are willing to take 'shitty pay'. Even if they allowed for negotiation the pay would still probably be less than what you get.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm so glad you asked, I have never really though about it before. I think it all depends on the offer. I can think of a situation where a benevolent employer might offer somebody a price they dont see they are worth and not allow them to negotiate, but I would imagine there are fewer of these benevolent good samaritans as there would be people trying to justify low salaries on things like equality when the distribution of talent may not be equally uniform.

If I was offered a no-negotiation offer that I felt was low, I would ask for what was fair for what I was worth and if that means I'm breaking the rules then we really arent going to get along.

</comment><comment><USER9> No negotiation offers, a new way of shafting employees disguised as helping marginalized candidates.

Ok, if they also have open payrolls where every employee can see what other employees make there might be something about it but otherwise I think its BS.

</comment><comment><USER10> I can't answer that question but when I'm faced with a horrible/unfair offer, I take it as a crystal clear signal that they just don't value what I can bring to the table or, to be charitable, the position just can't generate enough value for the company to justify paying market rates.

</comment><comment><USER11> Lol just lol at their supposed reason.</comment>


Python 101: Data Structures - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-renaissance-developer/python-101-data-structures-a397bcc2bd30 <comment><USER2> Posted at the perfect time. The explanations are easier to follow than most. Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for the feedback! Anything I could help, just tell me! I hope I can help! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Good & comprehensive insights. Thanks for posting..

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for the feedback! Anything I could help, just tell me! :)</comment></comment>


Google Wave "is anti-Web" - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.ft.com/techblog/2009/06/google-wave-is-anti-web/ <comment><USER2> I think he's wrong, for several reasons:

The services Wave aims to replace -- instant messengers, E-mail, IRC, groupware, Usenet -- are not part of the Web. While there are gateways between the Web and other Internet-based platforms, such as webmail and Mibbit, I'd guess that most interaction remains separate from the Web. Therefore, at _worst_ , replacing these services with Wave is irrelevant to the status of the Web.

In a related note, Google itself has released Web gateways for E-mail and Usenet. I do not believe that they have since forgotten what the Web is. Indeed, Google's demonstration video itself demonstrates a Wave <-> Web gateway, in the form of an Javascript-based web application.

Second, Ozzie espouses an incorrect view of what Wave is. Based on the information Google has released so far, Wave is -- just like HTTP -- a protocol for communication between cooperating, heterogeneous agents. Aside from implementing Wave, which is merely a set of extensions to XMPP, no additional cooperation is required to write a Wave-enabled application. His statement that "Wave is just too big and complex a system" reveals just how fundamentally he fails to understand it.

Here, I take a quote and replace "Web" with "Wave":

"""As Ozzie described it, the power of Wave lies in the ability of many different developers to build their own, independent and interoperable implementations of services from toolkits of foundational technologies. It doesn't matter if some of these implementations are very basic and lack the full capabilities of others: what matters is that they can be created easily and interoperate. """

Doesn't it remain true? Doesn't it still make sense?

I believe that Wave will be a roaring success, for the same reasons SMTP, NNTP and HTTP have been -- simple to implement, distributed, and not controlled by any single party.

<comment><USER3> >> "simple to implement"

I haven't looked into wave in much detail, but being based on XMPP is by no means simple. XMPP is the most over engineered over complex verbose ridiculous protocol ever invented. There were several people saying Jabber would kill IRC years ago.

I'm reserving judgement on wave personally, I'm skeptical it'll be able to make a dent. Technically awesome, but I'm not convinced yet it solves real problems users have.

<comment><USER2> >> There were several people saying Jabber would kill IRC years ago

Who?

I doubt anybody knowledgeable would claim that Jabber would kill IRC, since the two protocols serve largely different purposes. Jabber _has_ killed off most of the smaller closed IM networks, and even the large ones are smaller than they once were.

As for the claimed difficulty of implementing XMPP, I'd like to see some more references on that. I'm writing an XMPP library now, and it doesn't seem particularly difficult. With only an hour or two of work, it can connect securely to 3rd-party servers and act as a useful bot. With a bit more work, I'm sure it could be a production-quality library.

Furthermore, the proliferation of implementations for various languages and platforms suggests that the barrier to entry for an XMPP library is rather low.

<comment><USER3> From a previous thread on XMPP:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=426581>

Even the specs for XMPP+extensions seem to be written in XML, running to thousands of pages due to the overly-general-underly-practical nature.

<comment><USER2> Yes, it's difficult to establish a secure connection. This is due to the nature of security in general, and is not inherent to XMPP. If you want to just write plain-text messages without authentication, you could do so with netcat. If you want to use digest-auth and SSL, obviously the client and server will be more complicated. Many servers will outright refuse to authenticate a connection unless it's using TLS and digest auth, which is an excellent idea.

I don't think expecting any modern protocol to support typing commands in by hand over netcat/telnet is reasonable.

<comment><USER3>
      $ openssl s_client -connect irc.mibbit.com:6697

Works for me...

In comparison, it's not possible to use a general tool to do anything like this with XMPP, because it's all wrapped in endless XML complexity.

<comment><USER2> You've yet to state how using XML as a serialization layer introduces any additional complexity into XMPP.

Your example doesn't support TLS upgrading, forcing TLS and plaintext connections to be handled on separate ports. You also ignore authentication and authorization, which are much more important than merely opening an encrypted socket to some arbitrary server.

IRC is a nice protocol for things that don't matter, but it's utterly unsuitable for applications that require security or features beyond "send text and hope some client receives it, eventually".

<comment><USER3> It's about 3 times the bandwidth for a start.

I agree @TLS, authorization etc, but often those just aren't a priority.

email is often used without any security but it's far from something that "doesn't matter". IM protocols have barely any security, yet we all use them.

<comment><USER2> 3 times epsilon is still epsilon. The bandwidth taken by plain text, even assuming worst case overhead of many small one-character messages, is inconsequential compared to images or videos.

E-mail has optional security for things that do matter, namely GPG/PGP for client <-> client and the STARTTLS extension to SMTP for server <-> server. Wave, as a replacement for E-mail, provides pervasive security.

"IM protocols have barely any security" -- given that this discussion is regarding an IM protocol with a built-in high-quality security infrastructure, I don't see how this statement is at all valid.

<comment><USER3> >> "IM protocols have barely any security" -- given that this discussion is regarding an IM protocol with a built-in high-quality security infrastructure, I don't see how this statement is at all valid.

I was talking about the main IM protocols in use today - yahoo/msn/aim.

You'd be surprised @ plain text. It quickly adds up. I do around 3.5TB of plain text IRC/http a month, and if I could reduce that, I would. If we were all using jabber instead of IRC my bandwidth would be more like 10TB. Quite a difference.

>> "E-mail has optional security for things that do matter, namely GPG/PGP for client <-> client and the STARTTLS extension to SMTP for server <-> server. Wave, as a replacement for E-mail, provides pervasive security."

That comes back to my original comment - I'm not sure it solves any real world problem users have. Users don't care about security like that.

<comment><USER4> >> "That comes back to my original comment - I'm not sure it solves any real world problem users have. Users don't care about security like that."

I'm not sure that's accurate. Maybe users don't care about security, but I would venture that's because they don't know any better. I don't think most people understand that their emails and IMs are crossing the web in plaintext, or just how easy it would be for someone unintended to get access to those messages. I don't think it's an informed lack of concern.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This isn't my idea, it's my colleague's, but he managed to get it through my thick skull this morning: it's all about the robots.

Wave robots can do anything, including publishing from a wave to somewhere else, filtering and parsing, importing content, linking, whatever. They're bidirectional pipelines! And that means they're a fantastic tool for automating things, and what's more, they're easy to explain to people less technical than us mob.

Imagine this: "here, i'll copy in the room booking robot", which goes away and reads the wave to book you a room, just as you might copy a secretary into an email conversation if you were lucky enough to have administrative support...

Two of the web services I've got most from recently have been Highrise and Tripit, in both cases because I can just forward them stuff and what I wanted to happen happens. Google Wave makes building that kind of app much, much easier.

That gets my attention, anyway.

<comment><USER6> It seems the age of intelligent agents may have finally arrived. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_agent>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> According to the article, Ozzie objects to the way that Wave has sprung almost-fully-formed from Google rather than evolving slowly by the codification of observations about successful implementations.

The headline is a claim about what Wave is and not about how it came to be.

I'm not an insider and I probably haven't studied Wave as closely as Ozzie['s staff], but it appears to be consistent with web architecture: the interactions are basically stateless client-server, there is a uniform interface for operational transformations, it accommodates caching, and it imposes enough structure to support layering.

</comment><comment><USER8> IM is "anti-web" too, and its doing fine. While the Google Wave client may be too much, the open wave protocol represents an improvement over http and im protocols in use today. I'm sure that it will find its niche(s), and perhaps become mainstream when it finds its killer app (which may or may not be from the big G).

<comment><USER9> I'm not arguing - I'm just curious, but what makes you say that IM is "anti- web"? Because it's private? Or because the current maintstream protocols have adopted too many features?

<comment><USER10> The web != the internet. IM uses the internet, but is not part of the web because you can't link to an IM.

Four principles for being pro-web:

1\. Use URIs as names for things

2\. Use HTTP URIs so that people can look up those names.

3\. When someone looks up a URI, provide useful information.

4\. Include links to other URIs. so that they can discover more things.

(From Time Berners-Lee's essay on linked data: <http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html> )

<comment><USER3> So email is anti-web? Skype is anti-web? I don't quite see why anti-web is a bad thing anyway. Why does it really matter?

<comment><USER10> Email is not indexable (I mean by search engines) and not linkable, and therefore one cannot usefully add to the amount or quality of information on the web by email. It doesn't matter how relevant your email would be to someone else; if they're not on the TO: list, they're not going to get the data. Even if you put a URL in an email, there's no way for the web to represent the relevance of the email to the linked page. Also, you can't link from one email to another.

I'm not saying email is bad, it's just not part of the web.

<comment><USER11> _Email is not indexable_

Sure it is, like any other text-based document.

 _and not linkable_

Well, it does have a reply-to header that's used to construct the tree of the conversation. Other than that public mailing-lists are exposed on the web.

 _one cannot usefully add to the amount or quality of information on the web by email_

Email is good for private conversations. And for public conversations, whenever I search something on Google I often find answers from mailing-lists, exposed through a web interface.

That's pretty much as part of the web as it can be.

<comment><USER12> The very fact that email needs to be pumped through a web server before it enters that workflow somewhat proves the point. Email is not linkable or indexable before you turn it into a web page. Therefore, it is not a web technology.

<comment><USER11> Email may not be a "web technology", but integrating it with the web is easy, because it is still just text based with an open and simple protocol.

You'll have a much tougher time integrating Skype's audio conversations with the web for example ... it's not an open protocol, and it is not text-based. Flash was also a problem for a long time, even though Flash interfaces are served from HTTP servers. Adobe may have released tools to extract metadata from Flash movies, but it remains to be seen if those tools can be used effectively.

These are better examples of what it means to be truly web-incompatible. Email is not because it can be served through the web, and it's also a painless process.

I like mailing lists more than I like forums. With the tools available I can easily filter messages ... block people I don't like and tag messages related to a certain subject of interest. An online forum can support these features, but it usually does not.

That's the problem with online interfaces ... if the web interface doesn't provide an API to plug-in external tools then you cannot adapt it to your needs. And that's also why (IMHO) older protocols, like Email and IRC are still around and popular.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ozzie may be right, but only if one tries to implement Wave on top of the web. Sure the interface may be on the web (for some Wave clients), but the underlying protocol, from my understanding, works along side http. Similar to how smtp works along side http even if the user interface is on the web.

Google's demo was the possibility, and, yes, it was a shiny system, but I don't get the impression that Google is trying to sell that system. They are pushing the underlying architecture and protocols. Their demo was made up of several "independent and interoperable implementations of services from toolkits of foundational technologies." And the "foundational technologies" is the Wave protocol.

</comment><comment><USER9> He makes a good point. After all, that's what the UNIX philosophy is all about - small, well-written programs that do one job well, and can work together easily. I like having a lightweight IM client, and regular email. From what I've seen of wave, I wouldn't like it. I think this articulates very well what I didn't like about it.

However, that's exactly what I don't like about a lot of Microsoft's software. Outlook for instance, tries to include every feature you need in your office, and it crashes on me all the time because it has too many pieces.

Please note that in saying this, I do recognize that the man they are talking about doesn't seem like the kind to always tow the party line at Microsoft. After all, he said their mindset was "scary" when he got there.

<comment><USER14> Has anyone ever actually used Groove? Or Mesh? They are both awful. I've heard Lotus Notes was even worse. I don't really put much weight on Ozzy's opinion.

That said, I think Wave is VERY WEB. Which is exactly why it stands a chance of succeeding where Ozzy's attempts have failed. I looked at the protocol and it doesn't seem all that crazy or complex. Robots can be written in any language as long as they can read and write JSON over HTTP. Gadgets are written in HTML and Javascript and are deployed over the web. It appears that near 100% of the gadgets and robots they demoed are UNIX-style "small, well- written programs that do one job well" and they plugin to a more complex UI.

Distributed, micro-kernel applications -- like the web -- do not preclude big ideas and large host apps. Browsers themselves are incredibly complex. If Wave proves to have utility and people use it, I don't see how it could fail.

<comment><USER15> Lotus Notes was a very imaginative product. I used it for a while at a couple of clients while I was consulting. One application was to build a moderately sophisticated document tracking workflow process. The other was to build various small databases for status reports and project status applications.

It was exceedingly simple to build simple network-based applications that would pretty much instantly replicate to wherever you wanted it. The applications were not very pretty, and all had a similar look and feel. It was extremely imaginative. I remember Bill Gates even back then, while taking a jibe at Ozzie for putting an OS in the product, said that he was one of the smartest programmers out there.

The web kind of changed everyone's way of thinking about that sort of stuff, and Notes kind of faded.

I am not quite sure what being anti-web means. If web means nice GUI brower stuff, then maybe, but if you think of web as being protocols with clients and servers, then I wouldn't agree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> People seem to forget that the internet isn't just "the web". It's simply not realistic for certain applications to be built on the web (I mean the Wave protocol, not Google's Wave client)

And of course this is coming from a top executive at one of Google's main competitors. They don't have a history of saying nice things about Google, Apple, etc.

</comment><comment><USER17> "That was the verdict of... Microsoft's top software guru"

This may be kneejerk, and I don't know anything about Mr. Ozzie, but try reading it this way: "Google's new web thing denounced by maker of competing desktop things."

Even if he's right, it just doesn't sound objective.

</comment><comment><USER18> Why do we care what the creator of Lotus Notes has to say regarding the web?

<comment><USER19> Mostly because he is now smart, wealthy and powerful.

<comment><USER18> So is Warren Buffet. Both have very little to do with the web.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I was mentally replacing "Wave" with "Azure" and it made the article much more accurate. Just sayin...

</comment><comment><USER21> Google Wave is Anti-Web says Microsoft? How rich.

<comment><USER22> Says Ray Ozzie.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> To summarize, Wave does not kiss.

</comment><comment><USER24> My foot.

</comment><comment><USER25> ->"Rather, it is an attempt to foist a fully-formed, complex system onto the online ecosystem, and the Web rejects such approaches."

Ozzie's arguments as presented in this condensed article seem vague to me. I'm not sure if he's trying to argue that Google Wave represents the AOL "walled garden" approach. If so, I don't think Wave is comparable.

<comment><USER26> I disagree with that quote by Ozzie. The wave protocol is an extension of an existing IM protocol. The app is a combination and rethinking of existing web concepts (IM, email, and others). This isn't something entirely new. Also, other providers, along with robots and gadgets, do not need to be nearly as complex as the Wave app to participate, allowing more interop than is possible now with the old protocols.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Debugging by printing in C with vim/emacs - <AUTHOR>

Is there a way to add and remove prints the way we add/remove breakpoint in debugger?Basically i want a workflow where i can 1. Mark places in a file to add prints to be inserted in the code and a single command/script would add them. 2. delete all prints with single command/script. <comment><USER2> Not sure why you'd want to do this with your editor. The gdb debugger can add breakpoints that automatically print values of variables when they're hit. And gdb can also be scripted, so you can write a gdb script that automatically adds all the breakpoints you want.

<comment><AUTHOR> because i am working on bootloader, gdb would be overkill</comment></comment>


Asteroids Passing Near Earth Wednesday - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2010/sep/HQ_M10-128_Asteroids_Pass_By.html

<comment><USER2> What's remarkable about it is that they were discovered just two days ago. For most of the time, we still have no idea what's flying around us.</comment>


Mozilla re-enables TLS 1.0 and 1.1 because of Coronavirus (and Google) - <AUTHOR> https://www.ghacks.net/2020/03/21/mozilla-re-enables-tls-1-0-and-1-1-because-of-coronavirus-and-google/ <comment><USER2> They really ought to warn their users directly when the update is 'pushed'. While I understand the desire for accessible information this is a time where a lot of bad actors smell blood in the waters and this adds additional opportunities for them.

</comment><comment><USER3> When I visit this website it constantly refreshes itself over and over, making it impossible to scroll or even use reader mode

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't want TLS < 1.2. It seems like the setting can be changed though.

[https://support.mozilla.org/bm/questions/1101896](https://support.mozilla.org/bm/questions/1101896)

It seems setting security.tls.version.min to 3 should only allow connecting with TLS 1.2 or greater.

</comment><comment><USER5> I find Firefox too unstable and everchanging for daily use, I recommend people to use ESR instead (if they must use Firefox at all...)</comment>


Ask Noam Chomsky Anything (Reddit Video Interview) - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/azkrk/you_requested_him_and_we_got_him_ask_noam_chomsky/

<comment><USER2> Question for Chomsky:

Imagine a sci fi story in which a government creates a drug that makes people acutely aware of the nation's problems yet totally apathetic about them, reducing the risk that some awful truth will be revealed that might lead to revolution.

Is the Internet this drug? Is there anything at all that you could possibly say in this interview session that would motivate a single person watching to change his/her life course to take action?

<comment><USER3> people are not aware of the actual ills of the world. unlike the average joe Chomsky has no excuse for his elementary econ 101 mistakes. he is an entertainer first, educator second.

<comment><USER4> As a guess, by "elementary econ 101 mistakes" do you mean he doesn't adopt the (quite arbitrary) Ayn Rand Axiom System?

<comment><USER2> I think Chomsky's most valuable intellectual contribution is his focus on South/Central America and the atrocities that America funds there.

<comment><USER5> From a computer science perspective, I'd at least acknowledge his contributions to the theory of formal languages: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy>

<comment><USER2> Certainly a valuable contribution, but I suspect someone else would have figured that out fairly soon if he hadn't. On the other hand, nobody else in the US cares about what the US does in South/Central America.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, I was pleasantly surprised by the questions the redditors are suggesting. A good, intelligent mix of both political and linguistics related questions.

<comment><USER7> Indeed, I was expecting something more along the lines of <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOIM1_xOSro></comment></comment>


Passing cloud savings on to customers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.exoplatform.com/2014/04/15/choices-flexibility-introducing-new-pricing-plans-exo-cloud

<comment><USER2> After Google and AWS prices cut, it would make sense that SaaS vendor also cut their prices ...</comment>


Microsoft's rebranded Azure Container Service shifts its focus to Kubernetes - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/24/microsoft-new-azure-kontainer-service-puts-its-focus-on-kubernetes/?ncid=rss <comment><AUTHOR> Amazon is the last hold out here. What are the odds of a November announcement?</comment>


Britain Is Doing Covid-19 Research Better Than the U.S. - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/01/opinion/coronavirus-clinical-research.html <comment><USER2> This is inflammatory and unhelpful. Britain is large and complex. US is huge and complex. Focus on specific weaknesses and strengths and not passing competitive judgment on huge complicated issues it's impossible to form a valid assessment of.

<comment><USER3> The article compares the national trials programmes being run by agencies of the respective natiinal governments and outlines the specific strengths and weaknesses.

This seems an entirely reasonable comparison to be making.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Blabr – Embedding scientific computation in your site - <AUTHOR> http://blabr.org/embed <comment><AUTHOR> Dev here. This is a follow up to a previous HN post:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10481316](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10481316)

</comment><comment><USER2> [http://blabr.io/](http://blabr.io/)</comment>


The Square Grid - New CSS-Grid - <AUTHOR> http://thesquaregrid.com/

<comment><USER2> CSS grids are trivial to write. They consist of three major declaration types:

.row { width: ?px; clear: left; }

.col-1, .col-2.... { margin: ?px; float: left }

.col-1 { width: ?px; } .col-2 { width: ?px; }

Why do I bring this up? Because it is so simple to write these, it almost never makes sense to use a framework. If I ever want a grid for a particular project, I write it custom with a little help from excel.

This allows me to build mini-grid frameworks for whatever container width I need. This way I don't abandon separation of content from presentation across a whole site -- just on a particular page.

<comment><USER3> Why reinvent the wheel when you can use one known framework(e.g. blueprint) than will be instantly recognized by other designers?

<comment><USER4> Why reinvent <table> ?

<comment><USER5> You shouldn't, table is not an element that should be banned from the web it is actually extremely useful. The problem with table is when you use it for layout it creates some unwieldy markup that it is better to just use css.

Some designers however seem to use divs for tables and it just looks silly and ends up being overly complicated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I never understood what these CSS "frameworks" are supposed to do for me. Define the width of the two columns on my page? I just don't get it. This is a serious question, I'm not mocking/trolling, so I'd appreciate somebody enlightens me.

edit: thanks for the answers guys. I still don't get it though, it's just a couple of lines of CSS in this "frameworks". Oh well, I guess I just don't get it ...

<comment><USER7> I'm a web developer, but not a designer, and not hugely proficient in CSS. I understand the basics, but it often takes me a while to get things to look the way I want them.

For me, grid frameworks were a revelation - they let me, for the first time, quickly lay out the site with very little pain. Using a framework, I sketch how I'd like the site laid out, and then it's a simple matter of writing a bit of html and adding a few classes to get the layout I want. Working from zero is _much_ harder for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8>
      When writing your code simply assign the "sg-" class to
      your box elements.

That's why I don't like CSS frameworks: they throw the very idea of separation of content from presentation out of the window :(

<comment><USER9> Could you explain how you think adding a class violates the separation of content and presentation?

Unless you're building a completely unstyled site, you'll be adding classes and ids anyway, so what makes using predefined ones wrong?

<comment><USER10> I'm not the OP but I think it is because the class names being used are not semantic in terms of the content. Instead they contain information about the layout of the page.

This makes certain types of change messier. For instance, if I have some CSS class called `quotation` that is used in various pages of my site, I can change the style of those divs or whatever in one edit of a single CSS file. However, if instead those elements all have the class name `sg-5` and I want to change them all to be `sg-7`, I must go and edit every page that contains instances of said element. And, speaking from personal experience, I will probably make a mistake or miss some cases when doing so.

<comment><USER11> I appreciate the sentiment, but this doesn't seem as big of a deal now. You can have a semantically structured page, then using jQuery or more advanced CSS selectors cherry pick elements and assign classes without touching the html.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I like the fact that more people are trying to incorporate baselines into their grid. This is another one I found (<http://baselinecss.com/>) but I much prefer the one in the OP.

<comment><USER13> So, this is a neat idea, but the way css is designed (i.e. half-leading model) makes generalized baseline alignments _completely horrid_ because you end up doing all these positioning gimmicks based on the exact descender depth of the font you're using. At that point, you're really designing for the _font_ which sort of defeats the generality/convenience of css.

I don't think at the time it was designed there was a sense that anybody would actually want features like actual baseline alignment (i mean, look at the extent of UILabel's typography options for a good example of this sort of present-day rationalization) I've nearly given up on having any semblance of generalized baseline alignment in css like i do in, say, indesign, which although horrid, at least got that part right.

That said, if you want a good argument against a strict baseline grid i'll supply one and a half: derek birdsall1's notes on book design[1] and mine:

When i started working through my mfa i had completely drunk the grid kool-aid from Samsara, Elam, Bringhurst and (natürlich) Müller-B. I was obsessed with vertical grids and i used them much to my detriment (because i was blindly plugging away). My shit looked _mechanical_ which is not really me at all. Then i met another designer who said, in passing: _"who really uses grids? You make shit look good. When you're done, you tidy it up with a grid_ if the spirit moves you.* It'll probably already be on _some_ grid, everyone's brain does that, and your post-rationalized grid's practically ready-made. how cool is that?"*

Now, this sort of presumes you can _make shit look good_ which is a tall order, but really it means following your gut and possibly using a grid to keep it in check. If you start with a fixed grid, you limit many of your options from the outset because you're trying to fit stuff into these little squares.

Of course, this takes lots of practice. Practically speaking, grids take much of the choice out of things. If you need to make something that looks cool _fast_ , rip one out of Müller-B and plug away. It will look awesome. Otherwise, loosen up, have some brown liquor and design away until you're happy or trashed or both.

[1]: [http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=97803001034...](http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300103472)

<comment><USER12> I think for a general designer, using a grid is probably the best method because... it takes a lot of skill to actually break the grid in a method that is still readable yet a well-styled execution.

I definitely upvote the notion that using a very fixed grid limits options, especially if one is also working with a vertically fixed grid. If I think about the most memorable websites, they usually break the grid.

In many ways, you've actually convinced me not to use this grid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm an advocate of frameworks, but only for fast prototyping. Nothing beats designing in the browser using Haml (<http://haml-lang.com/>) and Compass/Sass (<http://compass-style.org/>) in conjunction with Static Matic (<http://staticmatic.rubyforge.org/>). Compass has blueprint integrated and using mixins you can avoid having an un-semantic mess in your Haml/Html.

Truth be told though, I use less and less the blueprint features in Compass each day. I find grids amazing for Photoshop (I generate a grid like the one in this thread for every comp) and Keynote/Wireframing/Initial Prototyping (I use a simple broad grid to do wireframes in Keynote), but really don't belong on my markup!

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm no web designer, but this looks very similar to 960.gs: <http://960.gs/demo.html>

<comment><USER16> It's very similar to 960, but this one incorporates a vertical grid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I like the idea of designing with a grid in mind (I use the 960 grid for many of my projects), but I never use the CSS framework to convert it to html. I just don't see the point, every design is unique and handcoding is always more perfect/cleaner, yet doesn't take much longer, if at all, to write.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've been trying to look at this for a week now, it is always down. Maybe it's blocked outside the US?

</comment><comment><USER19> one of the issues I have with CSS frameworks is that they typically remove semantics from the layout.</comment>


Ask HN: Should GitHub and StackOverflow cross-reference bugs? - <AUTHOR>

I find myself looking for debugging help both on Github and StackOverflow.  Sometimes, it's more appropriate to check StackOverflow for a quick answer from peer dev and sometimes I should ask the question directly to code maintainers on Github.<p>I worry that bugs don't get enough exposure when they are posted on one site but not the other.  If I post on StackOverflow, the devs might not see it.  If I post on Github, StackOverflow users may just re-ask it on their own forum.  I would love to see some type of cross-listing of bugs on both sites, does anyone else agree? <comment><USER2> This is actually a genius idea (if implemented well).

Contrary to 'popular' wisdom, sometimes noobs pick up a bug that can be overlooked by those deeply involved in projects, etc.

The easiest way to cross-reference would be to build a libre[1] tool that analyzes sites like SO and uses some type of algorithm to identify possible bugs (then again, devs could already be doing this with special keywords they create on SO).

I can't build it myself, but maybe someone with some spare time and great technical skills can build this to improve the open-source eco-system.

[1] It should be free, as a lot of the work put in by folks is done for free (on their projects). If you'd like to charge for it somehow, then that is up to you.

</comment><comment><USER3> Could you link to some concrete examples? If I find a bug, I will always use Github's issue tracker. I also usually ask questions directly on Github for the less popular libraries and only use SO for more popular languages/libraries/frameworks. I don't think there's a big overlap in my usage pattern.

</comment><comment><USER4> The practice of asking and answering your own question on StackOverflow is perfectly acceptable. It's even ok to do so after asking and finding the information on Github.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, but that totally violates DRY principles.

<comment><USER4> That phrase has been uttered before.</comment></comment></comment>


Ravens attribute visual access to unseen competitors - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms10506 <comment><USER2> I'm impressed by the lengths to which the authors must go and have gone to refute the skeptics' counter-explanations. For example, they simulated the presence of a potentially observing competitor using an audio recording of a competitor that was _not_ actually observing the raven caching its food. Indeed otherwise a skeptic might claim that the caching raven was acting as "observed" in response to the different sound, rather than (as the authors want to show) because it inferred that it can be seen when the peephole is open.

</comment><comment><USER3> I shall be extremely surprised if this does not turn out to be the case for all sorts of other animals too.

I have seen dogs, cats, and rats (yes, rats) perform complex, planned actions clearly relying on good models of who were now and would later be looking at what.

<comment><USER4> Rats are very very smart, smarter than most dogs. If they had language and slightly less fear they would be super dangerous.

<comment><USER3> Yup. We had pet rats for more than ten years. The smartest among them were frighteningly smart. In the general scheme of things, it doesn't take all that much to lay a plan and outwit me, but when a small rodent does it, and does it again, I'm impressed. Like removing the least favorite pellets of food from the bowl, hiding them, and _then_ calling my attention: _The bowl is empty, if you please!_. Had me fooled for weeks. Or, as that same individual did, wondering whether the cage would have an entrance on the back side, in the same spot where it had one on the front, hauling a huge piece of bread out of sight of the others, stashing it away, launching an expedition to the far side, discovering no entrance there, returning, picking up bread, and blustering her way past the others through the front door. Yes, that kind of thing is beyond many - probably most - dogs.

<comment><USER5> The house had mice for a while. I set down live-catch traps, which are a metal box with two levered entrances that trapped the mouse.

After a couple of catches the remaining mice _blocked the entrances_ by packing them with junk they found on the floor.

I always wondered if that was random behaviour or deliberate intent.

You really have to wonder just how smart animals would become if they could speak and train subsequent generations like humans do - never mind if they somehow invented reading and writing.

<comment><USER6> Yeh we had a nice plague and the mice even the very young would very quickly learn that they must jump over the traps and just ignore them, when they were placed in a mouse thoroughfare

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> An interesting experiment, but it all comes down to an effect at "p < 0.05." That's potentially a 1-in-20 chance of it being a meaningless fluke. Which given the very relaxed statistical standards in most behavioral studies isn't too surprising, but I thought in the "replication-crisis" era Nature at least would have more stringent requirements.

<comment><USER8> That's not a 5% chance it's a fluke. It means you'd only see this result 5% of the time _if_ it was a fluke.

It's a big difference.</comment></comment>


The Death of Macho - <AUTHOR> http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/06/18/the_death_of_macho <comment><USER2> Good article, but the author uses a few logical fallacies, and ignores some inconvenient facts, to prove his point.

\----

Firstly, on the Great Depression in 1933

The Great Depression did not threaten or undermine "...the male breadwinner model of the family..." economic model. It undermined the ANY breadwinner of the family economic model. The author falls into an intellectual trap that many of us fall into from time to time. We equate the suffering of the day to some well known hardship of the past. However, the reason that the hardship of the past is so well known is because it was a hardship greater than any that had come before it, or since. Subsequent generations have found it to stand the test of time, and our posterity are likely to find it to stand the test of time as well. Apart from the fact that statistics were calculated differently back then, so that 25% Great Depression unemployment rate means nothing in our terms, there was much less to go around to start with. So while I was not there, I have very little doubt that the situation today would have to deteriorate a good deal before we could say we went through anything approaching the level of deprivation that the Greatest Generation lived through. And, believe me, that is true whether you are a man or a woman, black, white or polka dot purple.

\----

Secondly, just a pet peeve of mine. We have a tendency to create bubbles to drive our economy. The bubble I see forming right now is in the health care industry. For instance, because of the overbuilding of hospitals, we are already beginning to see the start of the health care bubble bursting. In Houston, I know of several hospitals that have laid off large numbers of workers. In addition to entire new hospitals being moth balled. Yes, that's right, I mean there are buildings that cost between US$300 and US$800 million to build. They were completed recently in Houston's Medical center area. And, yes, they are sitting empty with no people in them. Bing or Google Baylor College of Medicine if you want an example.

Houston is not the only place this has happened, or will happen. Many cities seem to want to replace their jobs base with jobs that cannot be outsourced, and are well paying. Jobs in female dominated fields like, say, nursing. However, this just sets up another bubble. Like in Houston, most of these facilities are financed through bond issues or philanthropy. Both of which are drying up at a fairly fast clip right now. Which is why the government is so anxious to throw money into health care. The bubble is beginning to pop, hospitals are mothballed, and a lot of the people in those female dominated fields are starting to be laid off.

A lot of it is just plain old overbuilding. I've personally done a good deal of number crunching on the national level in this field. Take an analysis of Cleveland health care market for instance. Total patients required to be served in the strategic plans of Cleveland's hospitals: ~250,000. Population of Cleveland: ~500,000. Now to be fair, Cleveland Clinic expects to pull a large population from outside the area, but that population is only so large. And it is impacted by the fact that all of the other cities in the country are trying to do the same thing. Similar story all over the country, obviously Houston, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, deep south, west, everywhere.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Don't even get me started on the outlooks for bio sciences, pharmaceuticals and nano tech. Suffice it to say that I believe the coming right sizing of these industries will be fairly violent. I could be wrong however, the government is trying to pump a lot of money into them. That doesn't make these entities economically viable however, it just means they will have guaranteed access to finance as long as the government can afford it.

Anyway, I think it morally unconscionable to be encouraging women to go into these fields when we have numbers right now pointing to the likelihood of non trivial layoffs in the near future. It is akin to having encouraged homeownership when it was clear that stormclouds were forming.

\----

Lastly, the author seems to fall victim to the Fallacy of the Excluded Middle. <<See Wikipedia for a definition of that logical fallacy>>. The author asserts that men have only 2 options, go with the flow, let the woman be the breadwinner and do more house work. Or fight the changes that the author assumes the men don't like. I won't get into why I believe neither of these methods would work very well. I mean really, a single income in this economy? But how about the men consider getting a job as a teacher AND doing a little housework? Just because you are the breadwinner, I don't see any reason you can't do laundry every now and again.

</comment><comment><USER3> The flip-side of the risk-taking, power-seeking, macho man is the nameless feminine counterpart that exists to gravitate towards them: gifted with symmetry, proportion, and charm they flock towards hubs of power to climb the dogpile towards the best local-maxima alpha-male they can attain before their sexual market value fades. In turn, an endless supply of these fresh, nubile creatures becomes a primary benefit, to men, of seeking such careers.

While Salam's article is interesting, he seems to ignore the fact that even a Great Recession is a tiny blip compared to the deeply-rooted biology behind the male drive to take risks for access to females.

</comment><comment><USER4> To me this is a cycle. One of the traits that defines "Macho" is being a risk taker. People who take risks are usually more successful than those who don't. Especially in the "Great Risk, Great Reward" world of getting financed. The problem with this recession was that these risk takers became increasingly bold until they got to the point where they were taking foolish risks. And with that it all came tumbiling down.

But everything will recover eventually and when it does those same people who bankrolled the risk takers in the first place will again be looking for ways to beat the market. Which will again mean investing is those who take risks. If you need proof of that ask yourself this question

"how long did it take after the 90s dot.com bust for investors to start pouring money into web startups again?"

As long as there are rich people not satisfied with a standard market return there will be risk takers and as long as there are risk takers there will be "Macho" men.

(and Women. I'm man enough to say I know a few women who could kick my @$$)

<comment><USER5> _People who take risks are usually more successful than those who don't._

Or, rather, we tend not to hear about or remember the failures...

<comment><USER6> AKA, Survivorship Bias:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> printable: [http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/06/18/the_death_o...](http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/06/18/the_death_of_macho?print=yes&hidecomments=yes&page=full)

</comment><comment><USER8> Pfeh. The guy lost me with "For years, the world has been witnessing a quiet but monumental shift of power from men to women". When I see an ERA amendment pass & when any woman running for office is not met with a sexist circus (like it was with Hillary Clinton or "omg she may have pms" Sotomayor), call me.</comment>


The journey from giving up React.js in favor of Vue.js - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/techlabs-emag/cest-la-vue-d17e525cef48 <comment><USER2> That Vue component, from a glance, seems less readable, more complex, and more stateful than the given (poorly written) React component. And none of the arguments against React really make sense to me (ES6 is not complicated, JSX is light syntactic sugar, and you probably don't need FLUX to start...).

It seems like the _main_ problem they were having was that they were trying to graft React onto an environment based on jQuery and then realized that it made things complicated. That's not a knock against React, that's just shooting yourself in the foot and blaming the gun.

<comment><USER3> "trying to graft React onto an environment based on jQuery"

Welcome to the world of web development. Not everyone has the luxury of throwing out the last 11+ years of jQuery knowledge, plugins, tooling, etc. and building everything from scratch in React. Some people—gasp!—might have legacy codebases that they want to slowly introduce a new front-end framework into. Vue is a much better solution in both cases.

<comment><USER2> The problem is this article is making general statements off of their specific use case. Like this complaint:

> Simple things were made harder to develop. React was created to make DOM > changes fast, really fast, so you will have to use React functions to make > use of this, some of which you will not be familiar with (because React has > a different architectural style)

It's utterly meaningless. What it really sounds like is they didn't understand React, didn't research what using React with jQuery would entail (given by the fact that they couldn't make it work), and didn't bother to learn the (relatively small) React API. React is not hard.

Then this gem:

> React is great, but only if you want to develop a simple application where > the UI should not be consistent across different technologies

Is _completely_ incorrect.. React is used at enterprise scale by many companies to develop all sorts of complex apps, and surely many of them have or had existing systems coexisting side-by-side.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > ...jQuery it's still a thing... for example a grid with a subgrid that > supports bootstrap and is easy to change...

No way. Angular made me leave jQuery forever. React made it even simpler to create components. People should still learn jQuery and its internals because of its simplistic (api) interface and internal code.

I like Vue too, because its so easy to develop a lot in a few hours. But as code grows and complexity grows - Vue loses its simplicity and I end up migrating to React.

EDIT: Reading the article it feels like they lack expertise in both JS and CSS (and Thinking in React way pushed them over the edge)

</comment><comment><USER5> A poorly done React component (mixing props and state?) and what looks to be a poorly done Vue component (with some jQuery lib thrown in?), are the basis of the opinion? Seems weird.

<comment><USER6> Yep, I think a lot of a confusing parts of React components is state and ES6 classes. Luckily, you don't actually have to use those, React really shines (IMO) when you write stateless components, using ordinary functions.

        const MyList = props => (

            {props.list.map((item, index) =>
{item}
)}

        );

        ...

        <MyList list={[ 'item1', 'item2', 'item3' ]} />

<comment><USER5> I have no problem with stateful components, it was with this oddity:

       this.state = {
         value: this.props.value || '',
       }

<comment><USER7> Standard React advice is that copying values from props to state is _usually_ a bad idea and should generally be avoided. It _can_ be useful in cases where you have something like an editor component that wants to allow updates to the values internally, only notify the parent when the edits are complete, and overwrite the edited values if the props change. The most common mistake in copying props to state is only doing it in the constructor, and forgetting to also do it in `componentWillReceiveProps`.

So, that snippet is actually valid - presumably they want to initialize the internal state value based on the corresponding prop, and use an empty string if it doesn't exist.

<comment><USER5> I don't disagree, it's just why place merit into an opinion that is poorly using a library(ies in this case). If I were to compare two libraries I wouldn't use the exception cases to show their differences - it's unhelpful and misleading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _It's just a library, so if you want to make use of a fully featured > framework, the React guys invented Redux_

This is wrong; Redux is not a framework, it's just a technique for managing state.

<comment><USER9> Indeed - very poorly written and very misleading. Redux is just a library for state management which is NOT correlated with React (although people seem to think so because Redux's author now works on React at Facebook).

It wasn't written at all by the "React guys".

It also implies Redux englobes React which it most certainly doesn't - they're just 2 independent libraries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Was on the front page for some reason... what is it with the abysmal quality articles advocating vue.js?

<comment><USER11> I think the differentiating factor is React is much more (dare I say it) enterprise. It shines when you have lots of developers, large codebases, and shared code. Vue is much scrappier and the literature tends to reflect that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This seems like a particularly poor example just because the author is trying hard to graft vue/React onto an older style of web development. Why bother using either if you're relying on jQuery?

<comment><USER13> Vue fits nicely with jquery because it adds two-way databinding, and you can use jquery for everything else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Seems more like they threw their hands up in frustration and went with something that was more immediately understandable to them.

I haven't used Vue yet, but I'm curious how nice it is to develop with after the codebase has grown significantly - I remember Angular 1.x had that same "magic" that made it easy to appreciate and pick up, but ended up being a huge headache after writing production code with it for over a year.

And really, there's a reason why React isn't designed to work well with jQuery. That's one of its biggest strengths - writing code declaratively and letting it figure out what the correct state/DOM should be. I can't imagine trying to write a complex SPA and modifying the DOM directly - that was the reason Facebook came up with React to begin with.

<comment><USER11> React is the only web framework I've ever used that has held up to the trials of a long-lived application. I thought it was pretty good when I first picked it up, two years later and I'm in love with it. That alone makes me incredibly hesitant to try new frameworks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Am I missing something? The example React and Vue components they provide seem to be completely different components, and the React one is missing most of the code.

</comment><comment><USER16> I realize we need new javascript frameworks from time to time, but damn.

Is it Thursday already ?

</comment><comment><USER13> I find Vue to be such a breath of fresh air. All I wanted out of React was shadow DOM and then it went and turned into this whole cultural movement __thing __.

<comment><USER17> > All I wanted out of React was shadow DOM

You can just use that if you'd like.

> turned into this whole cultural movement thing

Isn't that a pretty much foregone conclusion given a large enough adoption and ecosystem? After all, ColdFusion has less of a cultural influence on its users than Rails does.

<comment><USER13> > You can just use that if you'd like.

Isn't the ability to just include a js file going away in version 15? react_on_rails already pulls in v8 when all I wanted was for the browser to load it, and it requires I stick my components in a weird place. With Vue, components can live with the rest of the view code and I don't have to write JSX (which I hate), or React's verbose alternative. Plus, whenever I look up information it alsways seems to be geared to node.js users.

A long time ago I wrote a DOM templating engine in like 10 lines of ES5, and what I really wanted was a faster and more complete version of that. Vue fits in much more nicely.</comment></comment></comment>


The "RRRR Theorem" - <AUTHOR> "Return, risk, reputation, realisation".<p>After all this effort and you still can't find a sucker to take the hit, look around the table for the poker theorem.<p>"If you can't find the sucker in 30 minutes after sitting at the table, the sucker is you". <comment><AUTHOR> Tell me what you think.

<comment><USER2> I think I can't tell what your actual point is. Could you be somewhat more explicit?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you use for your digital rolodex? - <AUTHOR>

I've yet to find/use something that keeps track digitally of all the people I know professionally.  An ideal solution would let me store their name, basic contact info, notes about them, and contextual tags about why they're important to me.
An example need would be to search for all people I know who are developers (even PHP only developers) or all people I know who are related to agencies (own one, work at one, etc.)
Seems all the existing contact solutions are targeted at small businesses and bloated with features I don't need right now.
Anybody know of a great digital rolodex out there? <comment><USER2> I've been using the Google contact list, because of convenience. Contacts are available on iPhone, in Gmail, Google Talk phone, Google Voice.

</comment><comment><USER3> This remains an interesting problem that attracts a lot of startup activity. A few players in this space worth checking out: \- ConnectedHQ (acquired by LinkedIn) \- Mingly \- Xobni \- Rexter \- Contactually I'm sure there are others, but if you're inclined to report back, I'd be interested to know what you decide on and why.

</comment><comment><USER4> I use Base CRM because it's ridiculously simple for contacts and on my galaxy nexus the app is one of the few that is truly awesome. It keeps my business and personal contacts separate and lets me add notes and tasks after every work call.</comment>


Why Microsoft Partners Like Steve Ballmer - <AUTHOR> http://rcpmag.com/blogs/scott-bekker/2011/07/why-partners-like-steve-ballmer.aspx

<comment><USER2> I don't think it matters if he gets 'partners' or if they get him.

Partners dropped Windows Mobile for Android and quickly because that was what would sell. The 'partners' are about selling products, and will go with what they can sell to consumers.

Microsoft needs to be leading and providing their partners with the best technology, not getting ideas and feedback from their partners of what the market wants. The reason is that by the time Microsoft gets the feedback from partners and implements whatever the partner wants and gets it to market, they've already missed the boat.

Microsoft needs somebody who is going to the partners saying 'in a year, this is what the market will want, and we'll have a beta version for you to build prototype hardware in 4 months, which gives you 5 months to design and test and 3 months to ramp up manufacturing so we're the first to market with the newest and best technology.

I love my WP7, but there is no question they were late to the party, and it may continue to cost them in the coming 5 years.</comment>


The Horseshoe of Loyalty - How sticky is your traffic? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fluther.com/the-horseshoe-of-loyalty/

<comment><USER2> How much of this shape is an artifact of how google is presenting the data? The right most categories are chunked in ever increasing increments.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I tried to address that in the end of the post. You'll notice links to two other site's data where the chunking is present but not nearly enough to make a horseshoe.

Without Google's chunking it would look different. but it actually makes it easier to see what's happening. Everyone will see a 1-log like function here (without chunking), what matters is the rate of decay, and that is well- captured in the chunking.</comment></comment>


The problem with buybacks, Dell edition - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/09/04/the-problem-with-buybacks-dell-edition/ <comment><USER3> So Dell is over-self-bought - they are a large counterparty to the all selling on the open market.

Buybacks make sense for a company when the stock is weak compared to the value of the company. Apparently when Dell was doing great, they thought the stock was undervalued?

The reality is that the CEO and officers of the company are highly vested in the stock, and having it in the gutter consistently is bad for business - <USER2> the buybacks (which I consider a form of artificial inflation)... the only problem is that Dell as a company isn't doing well enough for those re- investments into the stock to have paid back - which may never happen either. Don't the stockholders have a say as to whether the company can buy back it's own stock - perhaps the voting stockholders are to blame here.

</comment><comment><USER4> Besides companies often buying back stock when it is high, one thing that often happens is that they buy back shares to offset the shares they are giving to employees. I bet if you look at the number of shares at the beginning and end of the period I'll be they are more or less the same. Perhaps Dell wasn't as profitable as the author thought, if the cost of options had actually been factored in.

And I don't see how a stock dividend ("scrip dividend" in the article) is any solution. All it does is multiply everyone's number shares by some percentage. So, of course, the market just cuts the price by that percentage. It's not taxed because 10 shares @ $10 = $100 and 15 shares @ $6.66 = $100. It's not taxed because no money is actually given.

<comment><USER5> Blogger is mistaken. Scrip dividend doesn't solve the excess cash problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Michael Dell hopefully dumped enough shares to have sufficiently large warchest to buy back dell ...</comment>


Launch HN: ScopeAI (YC W17) – Extract insights from customer conversations - <AUTHOR> I'm Luciano, co-founder and CTO of ScopeAI (https://www.getscopeai.com/). We've built a product that automates the process of extracting and communicating user insights to product and operation teams. To extract product insights, we integrate with support channels such as Zendesk, Intercom and desk.com and use NLP to automatically tag, categorize and cluster support tickets.
Customer support teams currently spend hours manually tagging customer support tickets to track trends in user feedback. The process is inefficient, lacks consistency and is reported retrospectively. This process typically fails to capture the granular insights requested by product and operation teams.
Natalie, our CEO is a former UX researcher. In that world, the process for extracting trends from user interviews was completely manual. It involved codifying the conversations and counting how frequently certain feedback was mentioned. It was definitely difficult to scale. We recognized that there needed to be a better way of extracting trends from unstructured data and started working on ScopeAI!
Some things we've learned/be happy to discuss further:
-Our process for extracting key phrases from tickets - currently done through a custom pipeline built using spaCy
-How we connect similar phrases - currently using a word2vec model trained on both GloVe vectors and text from tickets in our system
-How we assign broader categories and sentiment analysis using Tensor Flow
Here's an example of an insight we'd extract:
There were 67 requests for subscription cancellations for company x during the month of July:
• 24 requests "slow service"
• 19 requests "I have another account with y company"
• 8 requests "login issues"
Knowing this is really valuable for this company because they can make better decisions - in this case, making the software faster became a much higher priority.
Happy to answer questions and looking forward to hearing any feedback! <comment><USER2> Yelp, Google and other review aggregators do an interesting technique where they isolate significant phrases and intents from reviews and collect them into one report, and present it to the end user to help them make an educated decision. How does your technique compare? Are there significant differences in the objectives when catering to an internal audience (ticket management) instead of an external audience (public reviews)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great question! It's similar in that we extract significant phrases and measure their frequency. Our differences:

• We combine similar significant phrases together. I.e. cancel subscription and end services would be clustered together.

• We track and display their distribution over time not just their total frequency. i.e. is it trending? Is the current downward trend significant?

• We 'learn' from each company the topics that interest them by both manually allowing them to subscribe to topics or mark them irrelevant as well as by automatically tracking click through rates and time spent.

As for the internal audience vs. external audience, we focus on the questions that are important to a product or operations team: how to reduce churn, feature requests, sentiment (what improves customer satisfaction) which is different from information valuable for consumers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> As an operator of a subscription service, this sounds valuable. I would be interested in an app where I could connect my Drift account and get some data on this.

I would also be interested in a SaaS that simply managed cancellations and collecting feedback there.

Also, interested in a SaaS that does the same except for tracking true chain of referral (tracks down the customer and makes them answer 'Where did you initially find us', 'What ultimately triggered the purchase'

</comment><comment><USER4> Sorry for the harsh words, but this looks like a solution looking for a problem. Any CEO of a company that's lucky enough to have customers contacting them would spend a not trivial amount of their time reading and replying to the contacts. For example, Jan Koum, Whatsapp founder said that they only started hiring dedicated customer service staff when they reach 150M users [0].

[0] [https://youtu.be/8-pJa11YvCs?t=849](https://youtu.be/8-pJa11YvCs?t=849)

<comment><USER5> At Monzo (a bank), we have approximately 10,000 customer contacts a week.

This would be valuable to us.

<comment><USER6> You also have a significant advantage over other banks in that your customers can easily and securely communicate with you over text (I once tried to send a secure message to my "other bank" and gave up after ten minutes on their site.)

This is great for me as a customer, but I suspect it creates for you a greater per customer text volume to comb through than most other banks.

Anyway, looks like this might become a sale - hope it goes well for both sides.

(A very satisfied Monzo customer)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is an interesting topic, at my first job I've developed some tool to help our customer support, it's a topic which is quite interesting for me.

On what data do you train your models? Do you train them individually for each customer with their own data, or do you take the data of all your customers and train "universal" model?

Another question about the broader categories, are they defined by you? I guess you're doing some supervised learning. Is it possible for the customer to add own categories?

</comment><comment><USER8> Awesome. Have recently started work on a well established product with a ton of data but it's painful to go through all these channels manually and tag it all. Ideally we'll get better at that over time but I know that we'll miss out on some of those new tags, or adding verbatims to tags easily.

Requested access but 404 on your Calendly link to book a call...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for catching that. It should be good now, here's the link for reference [https://www.getscopeai.com/schedule_call](https://www.getscopeai.com/schedule_call)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is there any integration for review channels on iOS/Android app stores? Google play console currently has some tools around review analysis but I don't believe the Apple app store does. This could be really helpful.

<comment><AUTHOR> We currently don't have iOS/Android app store integrations but they're definitely on our roadmap! Many of our current customers already have their customer support channels all integrated, for example they integrate Zendesk with their Google app reviews so when we integrate with their main support channel i.e. Zendesk, we end up analyzing all of their customer conversations!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Congrats on the launch Luciano and Natalie! The product sounds incredibly helpful and I'm eager to try it out.

I was wondering- if customer support tickets are coming into an inbox (like in gmail), can this also be integrated?

Thanks!

</comment><comment> smith-kyle We were drowning in feedback at my old job, this would've been super useful. Can I customize the tags at all?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes we can automatically apply established tags to incoming support tickets and there is the option to delete and merge similar tags that ScopeAI generates and assigns to tickets as well!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Would this work with tickets where customers mix a bit of local language (spanish in our case) with English?

<comment><AUTHOR> Generally homogeneity in language works better for the analysis (accuracy is higher) but we do capture tickets with some mixed languages. In this case, we mark the non-english word as an irrelevant entity instead of translating. Spanish support however is next on our roadmap of languages to support!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Whats the ideal number tickets coming through to get valuable feedback?

<comment><AUTHOR> The higher the volume of tickets the more precise our insights can be but as a general rule 100 tickets are required to gauge trends in feedback. For some companies this is an hour of customer requests and for other companies this could take a week to accumulate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What is your revenue model? Are there costs to use the platform? Etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have a monthly subscription revenue model based on volume of tickets analyzed (different tiers for different ranges of ticket volume).</comment></comment>


Why You Should Always Annotate Your Wireframes - <AUTHOR> http://uxmovement.com/design-articles/why-you-should-always-annotate-your-wireframes

<comment><USER2> There sure are a lot of green dots and green squares on that page, though. While I agree that you need to explain buttons, etc., you're probably on the better track if it is so intuitive you _don't_ need to annotate.</comment>


As Naughty Dog Crunches on the Last of Us II, Developers Wonder How Much Longer - <AUTHOR> https://kotaku.com/as-naughty-dog-crunches-on-the-last-of-us-ii-developer-1842289962 <comment><USER2> The sack with grains was mentioned like what, 4 times?

<comment><USER3> thats the hallmark of a great video game</comment></comment>


I've run my laptop all week off this giant external battery - <AUTHOR> http://bgr.com/2017/04/22/river-battery-indiegogo-review-external-battery-laptop/ <comment><USER2> Eh, too much polish. Here is my $100 version of the same: [http://i.imgur.com/5Akymeh.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/5Akymeh.jpg)

Also have lights and similar stuff plugged into it, over a dedicated 24V bus.</comment>


Reverse tabnabbing attack demo and prevention - <AUTHOR> http://danielstjules.github.io/blankshield/ <comment><AUTHOR> The project itself can be found at [https://github.com/danielstjules/blankshield](https://github.com/danielstjules/blankshield)

<comment><USER2> Looks like this is a "Show HN" then? Neat, though nothing surprising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm confused as to how this differs from your typical phishing attack?

<comment><AUTHOR> Google has a pretty good description: [https://sites.google.com/site/bughunteruniversity/nonvuln/ph...](https://sites.google.com/site/bughunteruniversity/nonvuln/phishing- with-window-opener)

I think the biggest problem with this attack is that many don't believe it to be possible. And why should they, given the inconsistent browser behavior.</comment></comment>