Plus codes: addresses for everyone - <AUTHOR> https://plus.codes/ <comment><USER2> I've never been clear on what plus codes are _for_... or if anyone is adopting them.

Wikipedia says:

> _Open Location Codes are a way of encoding location into a form that is > easier to use than showing coordinates in the usual form of latitude and > longitude. They are designed to be used like street addresses, and may be > especially useful in places where there is no formal system to identify > buildings, such as street names, house numbers, and post codes._

They don't seem all that much more useful than lat/lon for displaying/copying/pasting...

But for replacing addresses, there's no obvious 1-1 correspondance between a plus code and a building. A large building may span 20 or more plus codes, so which one would you use? Multiple homes might lie in the same one. Another house might be halfway in one and halfway in another. Even the front door can be right on the boundary.

Is there anywhere in the world where it's used for postal delivery, or anything practical at all?

<comment><USER3> The purpose of pulse codes are explained on the very first line of the linked page. (emphasis mine)

> A plus code is like a street address _for people or places that don 't have > one._

Not everybody has a stable living situation at a building with a fixed address. Yet it's extremely important for people to be able to receive mail or packages, especially for people attempting to lift themselves out of poverty.

This system doesn't look like a replacement to the existing address system, they can both be used. But as you point out, it won't matter much until people start to adopt this as a standard.

<comment><USER4> It won't be adopted as a standard until it's reasonably usable. Right now it clearly isn't. You can't just drop off a package or a letter somewhere within the square.

<comment><USER5> If you live in the countryside with few or none street addresses and a really low population density (like a really big part of the african population) then you can.

<comment><USER2> But then I assume the postal service doesn't deliver to you anyways, and you're the one who goes to your local post office every few days to pick up mail and packages?

Just because you have coordinates doesn't mean it's suddenly cost-effective for the post office to deliver.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another similar service (that I like better) is what3words. Unfortunately that's patented/proprietary, so no one will ever use it.

Basically it splits the world into small squares, each defined by 3 common English words. Very easy to remember.

[https://patents.google.com/patent/CA2909524A1](https://patents.google.com/patent/CA2909524A1)

<comment><USER7> > patented/proprietary, so no one will ever use it.

Actually, that means there's a bunch of money behind it, bribing carmakers to include it in their nav systems, etc.

It's still shit, but it'll be ubiquitous shit.

<comment><USER8> And Daimler was also bribed into becoming an investor in what3words? Maybe Daimler looked at the various options and chose the one best for marketing (best to convince end users, press, investors what it is). Easier to add celebrities and puns in ads similar to Apple Siri ads [https://vimeo.com/250456705](https://vimeo.com/250456705)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In the HN people always complain that geocode systems are hard to remember and/or write and praise "readable" or "memorable" systems like what3words. I'm of course a strong opponent to what3words for various grounds, but more importantly geocode systems do not necessarily have to be human-friendly.

I think geocodes should be compared to ZIP codes, not something else. They both mainly act as a machine-readable version of (approximated or more accurate) human-readable addresses. No one complain about ZIP (or ZIP+4) codes being numeral. They do not, nor can't, _replace_ human-readable addresses--- even the most accurate geocodes will require a room number or a PO box number to be the true replacement (unless you are comfortable about calculating three-dimensional WGS 84 coordinates with 10cm accuracy and forcing poor post carriers to resolve them :-). They might have to be verbally communicated for the short period of time, so shorter, verbally distinguishable, verifiable codes do help, but that's not the biggest concern.

If we already have ZIP codes, why do we need another system(s)? It certainly helps that:

\- Geocodes can be automatically generated from (now universal) WGS 84 coordinates.

\- Geocodes, once their algorithm is fixed, never change.

\- Many geocodes offer a trade-off between the length and accuracy. Moreover, this trade-off is generally predictable.

\- Some geocodes can be shortened and accurately recovered with the context (country or city).

In this regard, after having seen a lot of alternatives, I do think plus codes are close to being optimal. But it should be mentioned that their applications are always limited to what ZIP codes and human-readable addresses can't and geocodes can. (Mongol Post's adoption of what3words is special because there is no permanent human-readable addresses for many mobile settlements. But what3words is not superior to other geocodes in this particular application.)

<comment><USER10> All an address really does is act as a set of instructions for a postal worker. It is not an explicit definition of location and can change over time. And mail companies will not necessarily maintain a database of the actual location of the letter box or door. It is enough to just follow the instructions. You need these kind of geocodes where a short instruction is not possible. A lot of Africa is like this. And maybe it could work for drone deliverys where you want to target an exact location.

<comment><USER11> > All an address really does is act as a set of instructions for a postal > worker.

I think you are unfamiliar with Japanese addressing. While it has been changing since 1962 the older style was basically instructionless. It was just a unique identifier for some place within the town. Maybe it'd have a number that corresponded to the plot of land being registered with the land registry, which in no way resembles a street number.

About the only thing you can say about addresses internationally is that they are pointers to a location. The definition of "location" varies wildly in specificity and there is no guarantee of instructions or relative location metadata.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really liked this, but their current website doesn't help their cause. Their old website dropped you straight into the map to find out any place's Plus Code, as well as a box to enter a plus code and open that location in a number of mapping apps/websites (Google Maps, Apple Maps, HERE, OSM...). It looked useful at first glance.

The new website looks like a standard marketing page that is trying to sell me something I don't need, and they have also lost the third-party linking. I think the immediacy of its usefulness is completely lost now.

<comment><USER6> Google Maps supports it, so I think they're assuming most people will just use that now.

<comment><USER13> Interestingly, if I drop my plus code into Google, it shows a pin in exactly the right location. But tapping the map graphic opens up the Google Maps app, which jumps to a location ~200 miles away.

<comment><USER14> It did that for me too. I found out afterwards that plus codes have two forms, a short and long. If you enter just the short form, it won't be accurate without the ", city" part (e.g. 2A6A+1Q is short form, must be entered like "2A6A+1Q, Beijing", long form of that would have another 4-5 letters in front e.g. 7XQW2A6A+1Q)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> nevi-me About 5/6 years ago, a team of 2 South Africans got an idea, and called it Waytag, the # for locations. The idea was that you tag a location with whatever you want, e.g. bob.home, and anyone looking for it would use !bob.home.

They had grand ambitions of licensing it to Google and the like. They patented it in a few countries (though there was prior art).

Suffice to say, though they got a few companies involved, the idea fizzled into dust. I think in addition to bad implementation, the idea of license fees probably put people off using the system.

I'm also aware of W3W, as there's been some discussion about it here in HN. I've seen +codes for a while on Google, but I've never needed to use them, as they look unfriendly to the mind. I personally think they're not as memorable as W3W, but if they are made/kept as an open standard, maybe they'll take off.

Part of the problem is that many people who could benefit from codes in lieu of an address (I'm thinking informal settlements where there are no formal street names), might not directly be in reach of a mechanism to generate or use these codes.

<comment><USER15> W3W is one of the stupidest proposals I've ever seen, because it's proprietary. We want everybody on earth to need to pay licensing fees and contact a remote API to resolve address?

To call it mad would be far too kind. I may call it evil.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Looks like _what3words_ [0], only less memorable.

The Louvre in _Plus codes_ :"V86P+C8, Paris" [1]

The Louvre in _what3words_ : "seasons.sharper.scan" [2]

I'm much more likely to remember "seasons.sharper.scan" than "V86P+C8"

0: [https://map.what3words.com/](https://map.what3words.com/)

1: [https://plus.codes/8FW4V86P+C8](https://plus.codes/8FW4V86P+C8)

2: [https://map.what3words.com/seasons.sharper.scan](https://map.what3words.com/seasons.sharper.scan)

<comment><USER9> But you may instead remember "season.sharper.scan", which is 1453 km apart from the Louvre [1]. The what3words word list is deeply flawed.

[1] [https://map.what3words.com/season.sharper.scan](https://map.what3words.com/season.sharper.scan)

<comment><USER17> Their claimed solution when I read about this the last time was that similar words are designed to be very far off in order to make them _obviously_ wrong, and showing similar addresses as a "did you mean" when you search for one. The FAQ entry is incredibly hard to find but it exists: [https://support.what3words.com/hc/en- us/articles/203066992-W...](https://support.what3words.com/hc/en- us/articles/203066992-What-if-I-spell-or-say-a-word-incorrectly-or-get-the- words-in-the-wrong-order-) [https://support.what3words.com/hc/en- us/articles/207065359-W...](https://support.what3words.com/hc/en- us/articles/207065359-What-about-words-that-sound-the-same-or-with-variant- spellings-)

On their map, you have to accept their non-GDPR-compliant cookie "consent" form in order to get access to the real interface, otherwise the cookie notice covers it.

Also, they have country-specific word lists. On one hand, that's nice because locals will be able to use it even if they're not familiar with the latin alphabet/the English language, on the other hand, it means you may be asked to search for misant.habiter.jaloux instead, at which point a plus code may become preferable.

Their algorithm also seems to be incredibly complex, requiring a 20 MB library (likely wordlists + workarounds to make offensive codes less likely). Their web site does not explain how it works, and varies between claims that the words were assigned randomly and claims that they weren't (shorter words in more populated areas, similar words far apart).

However, they've alleviated all need to discuss their technical benefits with their restrictive licensing approach, which guarantees that they will be unsuccessful while preventing anyone else from building a different approach based on words (both because it would create confusion and due to fear that they'll start costly lawsuits/claims).

<comment><USER9> > Their claimed solution when I read about this the last time was that similar > words are designed to be very far off in order to make them _obviously_ > wrong, and showing similar addresses as a "did you mean" when you search for > one.

I don't buy their claims. If they cared about human-friendliness _and_ recognized the possibility of errors, the proper response would be to add an error detection scheme like barcodes. The use cases of what3words are even more diminished by requiring an app to see what's wrong.

> Also, they have country-specific word lists.

I do think the needs for localization is properly recognized (of course, one can get better geocodes by eliminating the possibility of natural languages in advance). But the resulting system is bad: they breaks down after the translation. And also as a native Korean speaker the word list is strange enough to me ;)

<comment><USER11> > they breaks down after the translation

they also break down because systems like Siri are terrible about recognizing words in "foreign" languages (foreign being any language different from the one it speaks in, even if supported by the manufacturer).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Plus codes are nothing more than discrete encoding of latitude and longitude. Compared to MGRS its not more compact.

I think using MGRS (Military Grid Reference System) is better already existing standard if you don't want to use digital decimals. No need invent something new for no gain.

compare these three formats:

        8GC2CMXR+X6  (14 m accuracy)
        -33.3333 -33.3333 (11 m accuracy)
        4QFJ12346789  (10 m precision)

First is plus code in default accuracy 14m, second is decimal degrees with 11 m precision and the third is MGRS with 10 m precision. Each of them is discrete and identifies roughly similar area uniquely. You can add or remove accuracy by adding more decimals or characters in all of them.

</comment><comment><USER19> Ah, plus codes, the GIS equivalent of Swatch's "Internet time". Stylish and perfectly, staggeringly useless.

</comment><comment><USER20> With 64 bits you can address every cubic centimeter in the entire solar system.

Probably not useful, but fun to think about.

</comment><comment><USER21> I like the idea of a universal addressing system but I don't think we've found the solution yet to this extremely difficult problem.

Street addressing is nice because the addresses with the same street name are on the same street organized by number. (generally at least--there are example of streets that stop/restart) And the numbering is collinear with the direction of travel. i.e. I walk along the street. And I know I'll pass 11XY to get to 12XY.

what3words was interesting but the words for the squares don't seem to be related to each other. From one square, I'd like to be able to generate the addresses of all the adjacent squares. (///jumped.spring.improving directly next to ///book.groups.hiking) and I can't generalize a larger square of w3w squares with an overarching set of words or something

playing around with the plus codes, they seem to increment in a consistent way but I haven't figured out how e.g. (a random example) W->E: _+HJV _+HJW _+HJX _+HMR N->S: _+HMJ _+HMC _+HM6 _+HM2

I also like that I can change the address reference box size based on how many letters I have after the plus sign. In case I want to reference my front door versus my entire city.

It'd be much easier filling out addresses in forms because I could type less info. But it'd be hard for me to associate a string on number letters to an area just in everyday life. Market St or Powell st carries more with it. And is streets aren't directly aligned with the boxes then that poses a difficulty.

Edit: found their doc evaluating other methods [link]([https://github.com/google/open-location- code/wiki/Evaluation...](https://github.com/google/open-location- code/wiki/Evaluation-of-Location-Encoding-Systems))

</comment><comment><USER22> What if I live on the third floor, apartment 3A?

<comment><USER23> Schemes for international geocoding really shouldn't shrug off this altitude problem. When you say third floor, are you using 0-indexing, or 1-indexed floors as in the US?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why not just use Lat/Long? Or create a shortener for Lat/long if the long decimal numbers are too unwieldy for humans?

<comment><USER6> > Or create a shortener for Lat/long if the long decimal numbers are too > unwieldy for humans?

Like what? You can't shorten decimals without losing precision, and converting to, say, base64 is just as unusable by humans as plus codes.

How would you shorten lat/long?

<comment><USER7> Grid squares? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maidenhead_Locator_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maidenhead_Locator_System)

On the air, I'm from EN82. That's a few counties. Enough for people to check a box and say they've contacted someone from this area, or spin their antenna to point more accurately towards my approximate location.

If I need to give more detail, that becomes EN82KM which gets to city level, or EN82KM10, which gets down to just a few blocks.

I could give two more digits and you'd be at my front door....

<comment><USER17> That's basically what plus codes do, plus some tricks (choosing the alphabet to make them unlikely to spell words to avoid offensive words, different algorithm for the last character, ...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> My first question was: how does this differ from alphanumerically encoding coordinates? It has to convey the same amount of entropy after all.

This[1] answer on the GIS StackExchange tells us that for a reasonably small area (small enough that it won't cover more than a small building, say 5 by 5 meters) we need 5 decimals. Since the longitude can have 360 major values, with 5 decimals each (so 360e5 possible values), we would need log(360e5)/log(10+26)=4.9 characters -- and since characters are a discrete value, we would need 5 characters. The longitude only has 180e5 values, but we still need 4.7 characters, so that makes 10 characters total in the worst case. For lower values, you need fewer characters, just like "21.491" is smaller than "121.491" (useful because the majority of the population does not live on the poles).

As an example of geographic coordinates in alphanumeric: one of the most extreme coordinates you'll ever find (very close to the maximum of common values for earth's population) is 87e13,azebi, which maps to -43.81703,-176.47678. If we are okay with including symbols, we can convey more information, though to get under 5 characters for latitude and longitude in all cases, we'd need at least 78 distinct characters (there are 96 in the basic ASCII set, so that's doable, but case sensitivity is annoying). An example of the same coordinates would be hcFx,m^^c. Only eight characters for a fairly precise location on the globe: real short, but I'd argue that it's not more useful than the case-insensitive variant.

While researching this, I realized that a good "human readable global address system" would not map 1:1 to coordinates because on the equator, one decimal (1e-5) difference is 1.1 meters on the ground, whereas in northern towns it would be much less. If you want to keep the codes as short as possible, it would be useful to leave a larger gap between each point of latitude the closer you get to the poles. This means they simply cannot be square.

Looking at plus-codes, they are case-insensitive and indeed 10 characters (when omitting the plus -- I have no idea what that plus is for, other than making it longer by branding each tag). And they claim to be rectangular pieces of land. This is no better than a blind base conversion (base 10 to base 36).

[1] [https://gis.stackexchange.com/a/8674/9555](https://gis.stackexchange.com/a/8674/9555)

<comment><USER9> > I have no idea what that plus is for, other than making it longer by > branding each tag

You can safely omit the first few charcters when the context is clear. Plus there essentially acts as a decimal point (to the point that less significant plus codes should be padded to `+` with zeroes, which is the only occurrence of zeroes in this scheme).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've always wanted a system that accounts for adjacent physical locations appearing to be far apart upon truncation because they happen to sit on opposite sides of the imaginary dividing line. E.g. 39.99 deg North looks very far from 40.00 deg North upon truncation

<comment><USER27> Out of curiousity, how would you solve that? Seems unavoidable to me.

<comment><USER26> You would need to use two simultaneous coordinate systems. It could be long lat p and long lat with an offset. If the offset version does not change as many digits as the standard then use that one. station curious and so much for machines, where the calculation is cheap. But it's for when you are trying to figure out if someone is next to you on a map or not. All of the coordinate systems that are grid-based including UTM have this problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Last time I checked, which was a few months ago, Google Maps couldn't understand a Plus Code and said it couldn't find the place. Even at that point in time, this system was supposed to be working for quite sometime and supported by Google.

<comment><USER29> Google Maps not only understand Plus Codes, but the mobile version displays it when selecting a location (not sure about the desktop version).

<comment><USER28> I just checked again by getting a Plus Code for one location from the Plus Codes site and pasting it into Google Maps on a desktop browser. Google Maps shows a totally different place for it. Something still seems to be broken.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Question about this service and what3words- how do they home to gain traction?

<comment><USER31> In the case of plus codes, be developed by Google and be implemented on Google Maps (it is).

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I live in India, my code once entered gives a location in Marathon, Greece!

<comment><USER33> There's a short form and a long form of the code:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Location_Code#Usage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Location_Code#Usage)

[https://plus.codes/howitworks](https://plus.codes/howitworks)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> yet another MGRS

</comment><comment><USER35> Why is this better than geohash?

<comment><USER17> The main reason is "because Google is behind it so it actually has a chance to become a thing".

Otherwise, they're designed to be unlikely to generate offensive terms, and the + makes it feasible to use a shortened code together with a given or implied city name. Most of the improvements in this space are small details, because turning coordinates into a string is a really simple problem (which also attracts a lot of "let's reinvent this"...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Does Amazon delivery guys use these codes?</comment>


Conflicting goals between VCs and entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR>

It seems to me that VCs and entrepreneurs have conflicting goals.  VCs are looking to hit a home run in one out of ten attempts.  Entrepreneurs are looking to maximize their probability of financial independence -- which is a different goal altogether involving less risk and a lower payoff. <comment><USER2> Yep. Joel Spolsky summarized the risk/reward imbalance in an article: <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/VC.html>

This one is a bit more personal and rather bitter: "An Engineer's View of Venture Capitalists". [http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/careers/careerstemplate.jsp?Art...](http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/careers/careerstemplate.jsp?ArticleId=i090101)

This guy's main experience was in the 1980s, so it doesn't take into account technical people who got rich in the 90s boom and then went into VC. So things may have somewhat improved, in that you might find VCs who really grok your idea. Nevertheless, that doesn't address the mismatch of incentives.

</comment><comment><USER3> Take a look of the following which is my on-line book in progress. One of the chapter is entitled "How to turn your VC into your worst enemy".

<http://www.startupforless.com>

At the end of the post, there are quite a few links for comments from successful entrepreneurs on their experience with VC's. My own advise is to deal with VC's as what they are, not what you think they are.

Do not romanticize, but also do not demonize.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been thinking a lot about the 10x rule recently. There was a post on YCnews a few weeks ago suggesting that the real success rate was much closr to 50%.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=74562>

At a panel of Boston-area VCs I attended, each of them said they had no idea where the mythical 10x number came from and that their success rate was closer to 50-90%. I seem to remember YC suggesting the sucess rate was much higher than 10%.

Granted a lot of these 'successes' are companies that are barely managing to stay in business...but they haven't gone bust either. Maybe a better way to look at the situation is that the VCs want to keep as many companies above water as possible in hopes that some smaller percentage will be a huge hit.

Bottom line, I don't think the goals of VCs and entrepeneurs are really as divergent as the 10x factor suggests.</comment>


Hostnames and usernames to reserve - <AUTHOR> https://ldpreload.com/blog/names-to-reserve <comment><USER2> When github used to host "pages" under github.com I remember registering "blog.github.com" (and reporting obviously). If you take the social- engineering into account the list should be made long: login, support, status, help, ...

Just to say, the list could be made much longer (eg: login)

<comment><USER3> Seems PayPal also missed this memo: [https://www.paypal.me/support](https://www.paypal.me/support) [https://www.paypal.me/download](https://www.paypal.me/download) [https://www.paypal.me/signup](https://www.paypal.me/signup)

<comment><USER4> Here are some that I've reserved for my own web app, now inclusive of RFC 2142:

[https://gist.github.com/zachrose/30862a11857a31242d60](https://gist.github.com/zachrose/30862a11857a31242d60)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thanks, this was very informative.

I wonder how the pull requests for the public suffix domains are being checked. Can somebody use it as an attack surface by adding the victim's domain in that list and effectively blocking their website from setting cookies?

</comment><comment><USER6> Faced with similar issues, I maintain a python library called python- usernames[1] with list of closed to 400 reserved words[2].

Publishing this as a library helps a lot collecting the wordlist over time and be able to use the same list in all my projects.

[1] [https://github.com/theskumar/python- usernames](https://github.com/theskumar/python-usernames)

[2] [https://github.com/theskumar/python- usernames/blob/master/us...](https://github.com/theskumar/python- usernames/blob/master/usernames/reserved_words.py#L4)

</comment><comment><USER7> See also [https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2142.txt](https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2142.txt)

</comment><comment><USER8> I would suggest adding "autodiscover" to the list of disallowed hosts. It is used by Microsoft Outlook and Exchange ActiveSync clients (e.g. in smartphones) to automatically detect the correct server settings.

</comment><comment><USER9> Also, you should include the name of your service itself, especially if users can produce content.

Edit: for similar reasons to blog./login./support. etc. (just read other comments)

</comment><comment><USER10> Congratulations for using example.com as it is meant to be used.

</comment><comment><USER11> Well, that would have been helpful when I announced [http://www.browser- details.com](http://www.browser-details.com) on HN - it allows you to reserve a subdomain and it never even occurred to me that I'd have to restrict them (apart from the obvious regex).

So a thoughtful HNer taught me a lesson and reserved "www". Took me a second to figure out why the site didn't behave as expected...

</comment><comment><USER12> A popular MS Exchange cloud provider is [http://webmail.domainlocalhost.com](http://webmail.domainlocalhost.com)

Seriously. domainlocalhost.com.

</comment><comment><USER13> The article looks great and makes many good points, but I'll pick on one: why disallow upper case letters from usernames?

<comment><USER14> Email addresses and domain names are case-ignoring so you should never allow usernames that differ only in case. Allowing only lower case is an easy way to do this.

<comment><USER15> The username part of an email address can actually be case sensitive, and this has been known to cause problems with some systems (e.g. [https://airmail.tenderapp.com/help/discussions/287/113-case-...](https://airmail.tenderapp.com/help/discussions/287/113-case- sensitive-email-addresses-being-sent-out-as-all-lowercase)).

<comment><USER16> So instead of converting to lowercase, store them with case preserved but do a case insensitive uniqueness check (and probably allow any case for login).

<comment><USER17> or just force all lowercase and keep the support burden lower and save yourself a ton of trouble when dealing with foreign systems. Add a rule on incoming e-mail to convert all addresses for the local domain to lowercase to complete the package.

<comment><USER16> It probably depends on whether we're talking about making your own users, like the original link, or allowing users to interface with other systems, like entering an email address.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> helpdesk is a pretty good choice to reserve just to keep people from doing some foolish things.

</comment><comment><USER2> Just compiled the list and added a few others:

[https://zimbatm.github.io/hostnames-and-usernames-to- reserve...](https://zimbatm.github.io/hostnames-and-usernames-to-reserve/)

Feel free to use for your next PaaS !

</comment><comment><USER18> I have handled this by only allowing more-than-one-word names to be use as subdomains, and made a slug out out of it, like so:

My Name => my-name.site.com

Is there any gotcha's here for me?</comment>


Older versions of IE show a much stronger dropoff in usage over the weekend - <AUTHOR> http://bl.ocks.org/erwaller/6511564

<comment><USER3> And from a startup point of view, legacy IE means Enterprises, Enterprise means big price tags:

1) Because they are Enterprises.

2) Because nobody wants to support those browsers.

If you think it's a declining market that'll be dead in 18 months, we have contracts to support IE 6 until 2019, not to mention 7 and 8.

<comment><USER4> What business are you in? If you're going to support IE6 until 2019, which probably runs Javascript 200 times slower than IE10, your software is going to be very limited.

Once your competitions builds a better mousetrap, sends in their sales team then explains that all your customers need to do is install Chrome, it might get a little ugly.

<comment><USER5> they might have multiple versions, with modern faster versions and a scaled back IE6/XP version.

<comment><USER3> It's a myth that IE 6 is devoid of functionality, we have no loss of functionality. The big problem is that it does everything differently and nothing is documented :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The title needs an asterisk. Because I unfortunately have the privilege of knowing an older gentleman that purposely uses IE6 on Windows XP. He calls the concept of tabs useless rubbish. And I'm not talking a regular consumer, I'm talking someone who develops actual software.

<comment><USER7> Bollocks. It doesn't need an asterisk. It has a graph that proves your point! The graph doesn't show IE8/9 use going to 0% on the weekends.

In fact, it clearly shows about _35%_ of IE users still cling onto older versions during the weekends.

<comment><USER8> Or.. 35% of IE users work during the weekend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a non-choice user of IE6, I can confirm that this is annoying.

Especially when articles about old versions of IE don't render in the browser.

<comment><USER10> Same in IE7.

"Error: 'd3' is undefined"

<comment><USER11> The irony is heavy, isn't it? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Please retitle to "30-40% of IE users use older versions of Internet Explorer by choice."

[derp. updated the numbers because I was being stupid, but the point still stands]

<comment><USER12> It won't account for the whole 30-40% but some people work on weekends. I work at a hospital where there are probably thousands of people using IE8 every weekend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It would be so fun if there's some leak mentioning the role of "legacy software" in facilitating information acquisition by government agencies (or other interested parties).

Like using LM Hashes for "backwards compatibility" or older, more easily exploitable browsers.

<comment><USER14> It would be funnier if there was something documenting dropping support for snooping on anything <= IE6 because it had so little reach/useful intel :o)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> _IE 8 is the last version to support Windows XP_

See, browsers have become so important that they now support the OS, not the other way around.

<comment><USER16> Hm. Chrome, Firefox, Opera, etc.. release a new version multiple times a year. Microsoft ties IE to OS releases which happen every 5(+/-) years _.

Dear Microsoft: I'd love to hear that cosmic resonating pop of you pulling your head out of your ass.

_ I recognize that the latest version of IE finally has auto-update. It taking Microsoft this long to do what Firefox and Chrome have been doing for years doesn't do anything more than certify that Microsoft Actively makes my job 50% more difficult on a daily basis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think a lot of people just don't know enough to upgrade their browser - <USER2> see people using IE9 at work even though we are allowed to install whatever software we want...

IE really needs silent auto-update, and to actually release more often...

<comment><USER18> If you think this, then you don't understand enterprises. The vast majority of users you will encounter, even in their 60's, are aware, through friends, kids, family, etc that this "Google Chrome thing makes the internet faster".

They want it, but your typical large enterprise foces IE down their throats, courtesy of 20+ years of rape by the legions of IT guys who, through the cognitive dissonance inducing Microsoft certification/training/tools process now think that everything Microsoft is magic.

If you are reading this, and 3 years ago you were telling everyone at work how amazing Silverlight was going to be, you are part of the problem. If you were talking about how great Sharepoint was going to be, you are part of the problem.

FYI: Most people working in the Pentagon are forced to use IE8. Just in case anyone here had any illusions about how deep Microsofts' shitty certificate- holding fanboy culture has penetrated our government.

<comment><USER19> > your typical large enterprise foces IE down their throats, courtesy of 20+ > years of rape by the legions of IT guys who, through the cognitive > dissonance inducing Microsoft certification/training/tools process now think > that everything Microsoft is magic

I can't speak for every company, but in my experience there's much more to it than that.

A large part of the problem is that many of the tools leveraged by Enterprises (which are purchased from vendors) to develop web applications are extremely brittle and sensitive to the user's browser. When you talk about pushing a new version of IE, every web tool in the company (easily dozens) needs to be examined to determine the impact and cost related to making sure it works with the new version. This often means pushing new versions of these vendor packages as well, and the costs associated with that planning (think of the management effort required) and implementation.

In many Enterprises, this is infrastructure overhead and is largely avoided (it's a huge headache/cost) until absolutely necessary. "Absolutely necessary" means when the vendor (MSoft) stops supporting that browser version. Which doesn't happen until it is well past obsolete.

Of course, management gets many of these concepts from those Microsoft Certified developers, but that's not the whole story.

<comment><USER20> _In many Enterprises, this is infrastructure overhead and is largely avoided (it 's a huge headache/cost) until absolutely necessary. "Absolutely necessary" means when the vendor (MSoft) stops supporting that browser version. Which doesn't happen until it is well past obsolete._

And by then the Windows version will have ended support too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I once worked for an organization that had a handful of small customers holding on to older browsers and operating systems. They represented <1% of our customer base and an even smaller % of our transaction volume.

But this was a government-contracted non-profit and it couldn't just write them off as customers. So the organization decided it would be cheaper to help these customers upgrade their legacy operating system, browser and enterprise apps then to continue to try and remain reasonably compliant with their browser.

</comment><comment><USER22> The folks I know who use Internet Explorer by choice also don't really use the Internet outside of work.

</comment><comment><USER23> It would be cool to further break this down by time of day. i.e. look at people who use IE8 from 9-5 on weekdays vs. the weekends. Because I bet nighttime weekday IE8 usage dampens the effect.

<comment><USER24> Timezones are a problem there. Unless you're a hyper-local site, your worldwide visitor numbers will skew anything on a "daily" basis.

For example, my blog is based in the UK but gets a substantial proportion of visits from the USA - which itself has multiple timezones.

<comment><USER25> Couldn't you do some kind of correlation from geolocation to correct for time zone differences?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> We are seeing the same thing at [https://starthq.com](https://starthq.com). We've been getting a disproportionate amount of traffic from IE gallery as a result of being the most recently featured pinned site for the past 6 weeks in the US: [http://www.iegallery.com/PinnedSites](http://www.iegallery.com/PinnedSites)

There are a few other patterns we've spotted about IE users:

They're older - we can deduce this from the the fact that many include their year of birth in their email address.

They're less tech savvy, we see people typing in in all caps, using the search as it wasn't intended - and we've actually had a few get in touch via the feedback form asking for tech support.

Also the conversion rate from visitor to sign up user is consistently 3x that of Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER27> I really hope IE6 is not in use in governments anywhere in the USA because it is not FIPS compliant and therefore not hipaa legal. Which is a huge no-no and risks very private information.

A few major lawsuits for major $$$ might solve that problem.

</comment><comment><USER28> It's been my (unfortunate) experience that most enterprise / corporate environments lock down users machines heavily in the name of security. And with that goes the ability of the user to upgrade their browser. Oftentimes the reason is that there are old internal web applications which don't work in newer versions of IE / look rubbish in newer versions of IE. It's a pain. And it looks like the death of XP won't mean the death of IE 8 as many Win 7 shops are resisting the upgrade to IE 9 let alone 10.

<comment><USER29> > [...] lock down users machines heavily in the name of security

And because the browsers aren't the more recent versions with more recent bug fixes, it may actually increase vulnerabilities, making things LESS secure.

<comment><USER30> Not necessarily. I have a client that runs IE7 on all their machines, but those machines are completely locked down. We can't even run Webex on those things without IT coming down to install. Their own corporate website looks crappy on their own employee desktops, because the corporate anti-virus blocks one of the javascript's from running. (We had them whitelist it.) I challenge anyone to install any virus or malware on that thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> In a big corporation I used IE for all intranet sites (because those crappy sites simply couldn't be rendered properly in any other browser) and Firefox for the world web. Why not do like this?

</comment><comment><USER32> I've written[1] about this trend way back in June of 2009. The drop wasn't as dramatic as it is now, but it was certainly there. We have (fortunately) come a long way since then.

It's also funny reading how Chrome had a 1.9% share at that time, and how I found it amazing :)

[1] [http://hancic.info/ie6-is-dead-over-the- weekend](http://hancic.info/ie6-is-dead-over-the-weekend)

</comment><comment><USER33> I definitely see this trend with a web app (game) of mine. Here's some screenshots of Google Analytics that show exactly this behavior: [http://www.clemesha.org/blog/You-must-use-Internet- Explorer-...](http://www.clemesha.org/blog/You-must-use-Internet-Explorer-at- work/)

</comment><comment><USER34> We're on IE7, and XP sp3 (though some have moved to win7). Large bank with 250,000+ employees.

<comment><USER35> Is it Citibank?

I went in to open a business account the other day, they wanted to take a look at the business website, and it looked like complete crap. Took a look and it was IE7. It was like stepping into a time machine...

<comment><USER34> Not Citibank. I have had an account at Citibank for over 20 years, and they've never, ever, made a single mistake. Highly recommended. I work for one of their bigger competitors.

<comment><USER35> Funny. I've had an account for 10+ years, but the new business I account I opened two weeks ago got "corrupted" and none of their systems can access it. They had to open a new one for me, because they didn't know what else to do! (But besides that, I've never had any issues with them.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The words "older", "versions" and "of" are superfluous.

<comment><USER30> I don't understand when geeks insult other people who like Microsoft Windows or IE. I get it if you don't like the browser, I get it if you HATE the browser, but to actually insult the users of that browser is just ignorant.

<comment><USER36> Sure we don't have to use IE if we don't want to, but we still have to design for it. IE6 has a broken box model and more recent versions have been slow to keep up with new web standards.

If it was just a case of sites looking "less beautiful" in IE, that would be fine too, except that IE often breaks websites by not supporting certain CSS properties or Javascript functions.

The amount of work that goes into IE-proofing websites (which could've gone into more productive things) is huge. It's not just "hipsterism", a lot of these people are angry for a reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Can't wait when Windows XP finally gets dumped by MS. I suspect a nightmare for a lot of companies and lots of crying towards MS. I hope they don't change their decision to drop XP next year.

</comment><comment><USER38> Have to agree with conclusion, right now I'm using IE8 and not voluntarily! What's really interessting are the multiple "you are using an old browser" messages you get.

</comment><comment><USER39> This isn't just a corporate phenomenon, state and local governments use IE 8 almost exclusively. There are a lot of bored government workers browsing the web on IE 8 during the week.

</comment><comment><USER40> I wonder whether the total numbers are significantly lower on the weekends - i.e. if there's a selection bias going on for people who choose to use the internet.

<comment><USER41> Yes. Ever mobile browsers people use less on weekends in absolute numbers (but more in relative).</comment></comment>


The ultimate response for a negative comment on HN - <AUTHOR> http://lepunk.co.uk/the-ultimate-response-for-negative-comments-from-hn/

<comment><USER2> There is no template towards negative feedback, the fact it is feedback is in itself useful. It is when they offer no feedback and just complain with no content or salient points.

But using the reductio ad absurdum defence, whilst can be fun is not productive and akin to cutting of the corners of a square block so it will fit thru the round hole. With that there will always be a difference of opinion in many areas of life, but pursuing a path of time utilisation with somebody who is not going to add anything to the matter at hand is never a good use of time. More so when you learn more from just walking away, their loss.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow. This post actually manages to make "NO U" seem like reasoned debate.</comment>


Linus speaks his mind on the Intel Spectre patches - <AUTHOR> https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/1/21/192 <comment><USER2> Discussed here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16202205](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16202205)</comment>


CDC launches studies to get more precise count of undetected Covid-19 cases - dao- https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/04/cdc-launches-studies-to-get-more-precise-count-of-undetected-covid-19-cases/ <comment> dao- What I found particularly noteworthy:

> pneumonia and influenza deaths, which would normally be falling at this time > of year as flu season starts to abate, are increasing. Pneumonia deaths have > been rising sharply since the end of February — because of Covid-19.

Weeks ago I heard the same about Russia... They allegedly had covid under control, but there was a "mysterious" rise in pneumonia deaths...</comment>


Navi Goes Mainstream, Mobile: AMD's Radeon RX 5500 Aims for Smooth 1080p Gaming - <AUTHOR> https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-radeon-5500-series-gpus,40566.html <comment><USER2> There are better sources, like [https://www.amd.com/en/products/graphics/amd- radeon-rx-5500](https://www.amd.com/en/products/graphics/amd-radeon-rx-5500) and [https://www.anandtech.com/show/14949/amd-announces-radeon- rx...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/14949/amd-announces-radeon- rx-5500-series-for-desktop-and-mobile)

</comment><comment><USER3> I just bought a RTX 2070 Super. Would this announcement drop the prices of the RTX series?

<comment><USER4> No, it is not in the same range; RX 5500 competes with the lower mid-range of GTX 1650 and 1660S coming soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 150W TDP doesn't sound great. And 7nm 30x0 Nvidias supposed to launch in H1 2020

</comment><comment><USER6> > Up to 60+ FPS AAA gaming

Great marketing.

[https://www.xkcd.com/870/](https://www.xkcd.com/870/)</comment>


Photographer sues Getty Images for $1B for being billed for her own photo (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-getty-copyright-20160729-snap-story.html <comment><USER2> Unfortunately the case was thrown out of court:

 _The company said the suit was the result of several misunderstandings, and that they would "defend ourselves vigorously." Highsmith had no right to claim misuse or infringement, said Getty, because she gave up that right when she donated her images into the public domain._

 _In late October, the courts agreed with Getty, basically destroying Highsmith's case._

[https://petapixel.com/2016/11/22/1-billion-getty-images- laws...](https://petapixel.com/2016/11/22/1-billion-getty-images-lawsuit-ends- not-bang-whimper/)

<comment><USER3> There's nothing unfortunate about it. It would set a very bad precedent if content in the public domain, freed from copyright law, would still be subject to arbitrary usage limits.

If you want to release something for free with conditions, use other licences like Creative Commons instead.

<comment><USER4> > would still be subject to arbitrary usage limits.

Didn't the ruling achieve the exact opposite? Getty took public domain images and _added_ arbitrary usage limits on them by (fraudulently) claiming to be the sole copyright holder.

Taking the images and using them for whatever is fine, taking them and then trying to forbid anybody else from taking them (the originals, not getty's copies) is not and unrelated to the license.

<comment><USER5> Public domain is special. You free yourself of all ownership which means that somebody else can pick it up and relicense their distribution of it, including _saying_ you cannot do things with it. I emphasise "saying" because that's pretty much all you can do unless they know they're the only entity distributing it.

The problem here was trying to enforce on something that was obviously non- exclusive. This mistake happens with all sorts of content available through multiple channels. Getty should have marked it as such on ingestion.

<comment><USER6> Putting copyright matters aside, there is an issue of misrepresentation.

A case that would be interesting would be one where Getty had represented that they were acting on behalf of an exclusive copyright holder, and where a third party had acquiesced to those demands, only to subsequently learn that Getty was not the rights holder.

This is about basic contract issues. Getty falsely represented themselves to be X, with the use of aggressive language, leading to a contract being formed based on invalid premises. If it is a pattern of practice, it starts to look like a RICO matter.

<comment><USER5> I disagree on the fundamental point that this was misrepresentation. They had every right to enforce a claim, they were just stupid to assume others wouldn't have their own claims.

<comment><USER7> You're breathing air. I own all the air. Pay me.

Now, if I claimed this seriously, most people would laugh me out of the room. But some might not and actually pay up. Especially if I threatened to sue them if they didn't pay up and the "I" was a big, well-known company.

What Getty does is not just muddy grey misrepresentation, it's outright fraudulent.

\- They say it's copyright infringement in their letter. It is not.

\- They say you need a valid license to use the image. You do not.

\- They demand a license fee. Not a "you used our service to find and download this public domain work" fee. A license fee.

\- There is no indication whatsoever Getty/Alamy had any role in how the photograph got onto the website of Highsmith's foundation. Given it's her own photograph, it's unlikely she used Getty at all. But they do not claim a fee for using their services anyway, they claim a license fee based on copyright law, which they cannot.

Highsmith gave up her copyright and cannot demand attribution or damages under the copyright law, so I agree with the court there. What she instead should have done is file a criminal complaint and a civil suit regarding the attempt to defraud her.

<comment><USER5> I take an amazing photo and give it to you with all rights to redistribute and sublicense it as you wish. You choose to redistribute it under a restrictive license for cash. As far as you know you're the only person selling this photo.

You see my photo being used in a national advert. The advertiser is not your customer. Again, you think you're the only person with the right to redistribute this photo, and infer that your rights to a licensing fee is being infringed.

As I say, they were _stupid_ to treat this as if they had an exclusive license, but they had every right to redistribute under their license and ask for a license fee. Just as the recipient of that demand had the right to tell them go away.

<comment><USER7> >I take an amazing photo and give it to you with all rights to redistribute and sublicense it as you wish.

This is not what happened. They never were granted the rights to sublicense it. It is in the public domain. They can use it, redistribute it, or charge you if you somehow use their services to do things with it, or even create derivative works which they then own. But they cannot relicense it or claim they own it, or represent the owner.

Now, the only thing I would let them bring forward as their argument is if they themselves were defrauded by somebody claiming ownership of the photograph. I see no indication that this is what had happened, tho.

<comment><USER8> > This is not what happened. They never were granted the rights to sublicense > it.

This is not what happened. They were granted the rights to sublicense it. Placing a piece of work in public domain automatically grants others to do whatever they want with it including sublicensing it.

<comment><USER9> They were not granted the exclusive right to sub licence it.

Happy now?

<comment><USER8> The image was put in public domain. No further exclusive rights are required to sublicense it. You are allowed to pick work from public domain and sublicense it if you want to.

<comment><USER10> The whole example was about having exclusive rights so anyone that had the image must be infringing. That presumption is gone once the image is in the public domain.

The problem isn't that Getty is trying to license an image, the problem is Getty is contacting people already using a public domain image and trying to get them to pay them money to use it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As a business model it makes perverse sense:

1\. Use bots to vacuum up as many images as you can online, and claim ownership.

2\. Use bots to search for infringement and automatically send claim letters against them.

3\. For any pushback, have a team of lawyers and clerks of various grades to deal with situations as they escalate. Push or capitulate after sizing up the opponent.

Most people either just want it over, or don't have the means to fight back for any length of time. The money you make from such a scheme would far outweigh the legal costs due to the scale of the automated income.

It would only become problematic if someone else started a rival company, at which point they'd need to set up an oligopoly agreement to avoid destroying one another with their bots.

<comment><USER12> Most people are indeed afraid of the law.

Let's not forget Getty is the reason we no longer have the "View image" button on image search.

<comment><USER2> Brand D does: [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=view+image&t=h_&iax=images&ia=imag...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=view+image&t=h_&iax=images&ia=images)

<comment><USER13> Unfortunately DuckDuckGo's image search is worse than their regular one :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > As for the now-infamous collections letter, Getty painted it as an "honest" > mistake that they addressed as soon as they were notified of the issue by > Highsmith.

I'd like to see the working on that. How did the mistake happen? How will they stop it happening again? Are they regularly emailing people threatening emails about Library of Congress photos?

<comment><USER15> It's automated.

I ended up mediating a silly situation between Getty and a client about six years ago.

The client is a manufacturer of consumer goods, mostly kitchenware. They own a boatload of brands. In 2014 or so they did a mountain of photography to reposition an existing professional cookware brand for consumers - lots of lifestyle shots, as well as your usual product shots. They made the images available in an online, access controlled library for their customers to use in their marketing.

About six months after this branding pack is made available, we hear from the client that their customers are getting large payment demands (tens of thousands, in some cases) from Getty for the images that the client provided.

We approached getty on the client's behalf, as they were just bewildered and didn't know where to even begin.

It took about two months to sort out - we had to repeatedly explain the situation, while they argued that they owned the images, and had to go through a lengthy process proving that the client owned the images. Burden of proof was totally on us, and we were getting nowhere fast. While looking at some of the supposedly infringing images, we noticed an incredibly faint watermark embedded in one of them that specified the site that the image had been rendered on - an unprotected image library on one of the client's customer's sites.

From here, it transpired that Getty had hoovered up everything in that library, assumed rights, and was selling it. Once we started pushing the tack that they had broken several laws by accessing a computer system that was not intended to be available for them to access, and had stolen images from there, the whole thing, along with all of the images on Getty from that library, vanished. They never even responded.

Our takeaway here was that Getty use bots to find large collections of unique high-res images on sites that aren't explicitly copyrighted, and just take them, on the odds that they'll get away with it.

We encouraged the client to sue them for damages, but they were so relieved that the problem had gone away that they just wanted to move on.

I'd wager this isn't a unique experience.

<comment><USER16> > I'd wager this isn't a unique experience.

If your story is true frankly, then it makes Getty Images a bunch of criminals, period. This is fraud and racketeering, no more, no less.

It's even worse than the "Prenda Law" story where lawyers were making money threatening people who downloaded porn torrents illegally and forced them to settle or be sued, because Getty Images does not own the content at first place, they stole it, literally.

<comment><USER17> This justice department isn't going to take any action against businesses of any sort, so Getty is pretty much in the clear on this. They might get in trouble in the future, but the end result is unlikely to be more than just a slap on the wrist (a few tens or hundreds of millions in fines) so there isn't much downside for them.

It's not illegal if a corporation does it after all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So, they took public domain, added a watermark and claimed copyright?

Its a case of using the wrong license if they didn't want this to happen. They should have used Creative Commons.

</comment><comment><USER19> So, in the US, how does one put their IP into the public domain, without dying and waiting many years?

I had thought this would be a license, not a waiver.

<comment><USER20> My understanding is that public domain means no license, no nothing. So anyone can sell a copy of it( claiming copyright like in this case is a different story). A licensed piece is not in the public domain. As the creator you can dictate the terms of use, and you do so with a license which basically allows everyone to use the piece( or for certain use-cases depending on the license). Think of it as a hack: a licensed piece is still copyrighted, and will enter the public domain when the copyright expires( or the sun blows up, whichever comes first).

<comment><USER21> Look at the Unlicense: [https://unlicense.org/](https://unlicense.org/)

It releases into the public domain, where possible, and has a paragraph that comes as close as possible to the public domain in jurisdictions where that release isn't possible.

I think the idea in the referenced case is that a release to the public domain means that the author gives up all interest in the work.

Not to really defend Getty Images, which seems to be acting out of line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I hope they make an example of Getty.

</comment><comment><USER23> the only way for all of this to work out (for all parties involved) is if there is another superpower nation with nuclear weapons with laws that punishes these sort of behavior and all the tech talent flows there.

</comment><comment><USER24> Mods can we get a [2016] in the title?

</comment><comment><USER2> 2016</comment>


Economic and Academic Consequences of Fraternity Membership - <AUTHOR> https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2763720 <comment><USER2> Kevin Drum notes it's a weak result but if true, wonders if the authors draw the right conclusions:

 _suppose it's true. Here's what the authors say:_

 _Our results indicate that college administrators face an important trade-off when they consider policies designed to limit fraternity life on campus: while such policies may significantly raise academic performance, these gains may come at a significant cost in terms of expected future income for their graduates._

 _I'd argue exactly the opposite: ... Allow me to reframe the authors' conclusion:_

 _Our results provide empirical evidence that fraternities are just another way for social elites to keep themselves at the top regardless of actual performance. Those rejected by fraternities, even though they have higher GPAs, earn 36 percent less than those accepted by fraternities. This is further evidence, if any were needed, that college administrators face few trade-offs when they consider policies designed to limit fraternity life on campus._

[http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/09/new-report- fra...](http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/09/new-report-fraternities- help-mediocrities-succeed/)

<comment><USER3> Just an anecdote, but joining a fraternity drastically improved my social skills...and I personally believe these skills are fundamental when it comes to being successful in the work force. Not because being in a fraternity made me a member of a elite alumni group that excludes others, but because it allows me to be a more effective team member.

I have not doubt that I would be far less successful if I was as socially self-isolating as I was in high school. Not just successful as far as career trajectory, but just a less effective contributor. Most jobs require team efforts...which require social skills to navigate politely and effectively.

It is from this perspective I find the original conclusion more reserved and purely based on observed correlations, while the second infers much (regarding causation).

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure most people develop social skills in university regardless of whether they join a fraternity. Having a group of adult friends, freedom, roommates, etc, all prepare you for the real world.

Fraternities also prepare you for the ugly parts of the real world, though. The real world is full of elite clubs without meritocratic entrance criteria, and learning how to join one and function within one is certainly an advantage.

I would argue that removing this advantage from as many people as possible would make the system of society as a whole run better, though.

<comment><USER5> > _I 'm pretty sure most people develop social skills in university regardless > of whether they join a fraternity_

Being in a frat isn't the only way to develop these skills. But lots of people coast through college without any non-academic social extracurricular exposure.

<comment><USER6> And lots of people don't. For the student, it sounds like a useful venue to learn social skills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> All the frat guys I ever knew had well off parents. They were going to make more than everyone else due to that alone. Of course, being surrounded by privilege, parties, and sorority girls eager to score a rich boy hurt their grades. That doesn't really matter though. They graduated. Some even took an extra year or two to do that. It didn't matter. They did fine. Being a prince has advantages.

<comment><USER8> Joining a fraternity was one of the most meaningful and impactful experiences of my life.

I come from humble means - my parents couldnt and didnt pay for any of the (expensive) school I ended up attending. I ended up joining one of only two "wet" fraternities on campus (meaning we were allowed to have booze in our house), and the one considered the most social. I was (am) an introvert and didn't drink in high school or college until I was 21. I loved nearly every moment. Not once did wealth, influence or ability to pay impact our recruitment decisions (and I was deeply involved in the process all three years). In fact, we did more due diligence on "legacies" than any other candidate.

My fraternity brothers were some of the most dynamic and interesting people I've had the honor of knowing. It was the first chance I ever had to delve into real politics...as a member of the executive board, we dealt with some challenging interpersonal issues that I wouldnt have been able to wrestle with until much later in my life.

While my brothers were very different than me, I grew more and learned more while living in my house than I did in the rest of college.

Stereotypes exist for a reason. But there are also virtuous, powerful reasons why fraternities endure.

<comment><USER9> By joining a fraternity despite being from humble means I'm almost certain you're someone who would have sought social connections even without. And you'd likely end up into an academic or an athletic or an interest based group where you'd build similar connections. The difference would be that the arbiters of who joined your club would base their decisions on your skills/interests/passions as opposed to your drinking skills during rush.

Would that be a better situation? I don't know but I personally doubt you would not have had the same meaningful growth if you lived in a hypothetical world where the social Greek system did not exist.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps, although in my particular case, I joined because I applied for a scholarship the house sponsored - and it was the only house I rushed. I spent most of my time holed up in my room the first quarter except for rush events I was explicitly invited to. And that chosen preference for isolation continued in the house as well. But simply being there forced me / gave me the opportunity to walk downstairs and be immersed in a sea of fascinating people. It really was the thing that taught me how to build relationships across differences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not surprised. I was in a fraternity, and no we didn't haze at all. Between all the events (of which less than a third are parties) and dedication it takes to keep the thing from barreling into the ground you learn a lot of real life skills.

First, there's selection bias. We would only take guys that were really sociable, somewhat hard working, competitive, and with decent grades. Most fraternities were the same. "Frat bros" being meathead rich retards is a myth. We would pick the smartest, most promising, and sociable guys in the school. Money wasn't a factor. Neither was skin color, my house was probably 40% minorities. But we had a fraternity GPA a solid .6 above school mens average and a dropout rate of less than half. Fraternities ARE elitist and I was proud of that. So are all the tech companies.... We only took the best. Yeah we drank more than most students and had crazy parties but we were also smart, hardworking, and had a lot of friends.

Second, the power structure closely resembles the business world, complete with budgets of over a half million even in a modest sized house. Bigger houses have budgets of millions a year. These budgets were handled by the "exec board" which was just democratically elected student members.

A fraternity is basically a non-profit company run by students. Harder to do than it sounds, especially with all the hate towards Greek coming from the school itself. At many schools the Greek system is actively shunned by the administration.

Then there's the connections. Being in a fraternity/sorority means you automatically know over 50 people pretty well, sometimes hundreds. I was vice president for several years and I knew hundreds. Maybe 20 really well. I knew people on the school board. I met the president of the University enough times that he knew me by name. The president of the student senate was a great friend that lived across the hall.

I got my first job from an old friend from the house and another was kind enough to help me move across the country to a tech hotspot. We're all still friends to this day and we joke about how wedding are largely a fraternity reunion. Everything in my life today exists largely because I joined a fraternity 8 years ago.

<comment><USER4> Not surprised. I was in a fraternity, and no we didn't haze at all. Between all the events (of which less than a third are parties) and dedication it takes to keep the thing from barreling into the ground you learn some basic lifeskills and some harmful worldviews.

First, there's confirmation bias. Our social group's identity was build around feeling superior, so we chose to value the things we were good at, and forgot about the ways in which we did harm to everyone around us. Also, probably a lot of bad things happened to us that got washed away in a boozy haze.

Most fraternities were the same. "Frat bros" being meathead rich retards is not how we see ourselves. We see ourselves as the smartest, most promising, and sociable guys in the school, which has no impact on our being seen as "meathead rich" whatsoever. Money wasn't as much of a factor as I realized, as most of the bias was outside my control. My house was probably 40% minorities, which is a statistic I'd like to use to show how little I understand about racial inequality. But we had a fraternity GPA a solid .6 above school mens average and a dropout rate of less than half.

It's really easy to get comfortable with being a fundamentally bad person. Just invert the emotional response: fraternities ARE elitist and I was proud of that instead of ashamed. See how easy that was? Also you can point to how other people do it too. Tech companies are elitist, for example. We were shining examples of virtue defined precisely in the way that most benefited us.

Second, power structures in the business world closely resembles that of our frat world. Despite this being a serious problem in society, it benefits me directly so I choose to see it as en example of why frats are good instead of why the business world has problems. Want to see how ridiculous the inequality is in the university world? I'll brag about some stats. Bigger houses have budgets of millions a year. These budgets were handled by the "exec board" which was just democratically elected student members.

I like to think of a fraternity as a non-profit company run by students of our personal selection. It doesn't technically turn a profit, but we do! That's what nonprofits are all about, right? Harder to do than it sounds, especially with all the hate towards Greek coming from the school itself. At many schools the Greek system is actively shunned by the administration for some reason I can't possibly fathom.

Then there's the connections. Being in a fraternity/sorority means you automatically know over 50 people pretty well, sometimes hundreds. Let me check my facebook. Actually it was thousands. I was very important. I knew important people. I really like important words like "president" and "executive".

Eventually I had to join the real world and it turned out that being part of an exclusive club full of people who were taught for years to value tribalism and self-importance pays off: I got my first job from an old friend from the house and another was kind enough to help me move across the country to a tech hotspot. We're all still friends to this day and we joke about how wedding are largely a fraternity reunion. Everything in my life today exists largely because I joined a fraternity 8 years ago.

FTFY

<comment><USER10> I stopped reading half way through because your shitpost twists everything said into a life of privilege and deceit. My dad was a mechanic. His dad worked in a steel mill. His dad worked in a steel mill. His dad escaped the horrors of WW1 in a country we'll never know.

Go ahead and twist everything I say until it either refutes me or supports whatever agenda you want.

You can talk general shit about fraternities but the minority part really bugs me. Our house was more Asian and African American than it was white. Are you saying my house bought minorities for points? Ballsy. We took them because they were good. My best friend was 100% black and going for his PhD.

Instead of lamely forming your argument by copy editing a few words of mine how about coming up with something of your own?

<comment><USER4> Wasn't trying to twist anything. Just letting you see how your post looks to someone not in your in-group.

It's crazy to me that your worldview is so deeply embedded with tribalism that you think your dad being a mechanic or your friend being black have anything to do with who you are.

The point about minorities is just that: by arguing that you're not racist because minorities are in your tribe, you're showing that you completely miss the point. For you, the in-group is your frat, your world. And being outside your world means lacking a variety of privileges in life.

But race is an in-group too, and maybe that's not one of the tribes you recognize, but for many people it is, and it's the tribalism that's the problem, not the fact that skin color happens to be a particularly easy and dangerous arbitrary criterion for admission into the tribe.

<comment><USER11> Your post is incredibly disingenuous.

>It's crazy to me that your worldview is so deeply embedded with tribalism

And yours isn't? You just assumed this person is a "meathead rich retard" and a "fundamentally bad person" who "did harm to everyone around" because he's in a fraternity? Talk about unfair stereotyping.

>Wasn't trying to twist anything. Just letting you see how your post looks to someone not in your in-group.

You are trying to twist things. If you're going to be aggressively "anti- privelege" the least you could do is drop the smug moralizing and admit that you're pushing an agenda here based off of your own personal worldview.

<comment><USER12> May I ask if you were in a fraternity or sorority?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Dear Silicon Valley,

Please start something (company or otherwise) that will make it easy for adults (young and old) to become part of a large, real world social network. One which will help them form good career connections, as well as platonic and romantic relationships. Fraternities create their own unique culture (traditions, handshakes, songs, idioms, etc) to tie people together, so keep that in mind. Please leave hazing out of it too.

Kindly,

Baron

<comment><USER14> > Please start something (company or otherwise) that will make it easy for > adults (young and old) to become part of a large, real world social network.

Churches are real-world social networks that are generally easy to join (the degree to which they provide large or strong networls vary considerably, of course.)

There are lots of other examples.

I'm not sure what the opportunity for Silicon Valley is here.

<comment><USER15> "Silicon Valley disrupts religion" sounds like a gold mine for parodies.

<comment><USER16> Hey David,

It's actually a thing that I'm a part of!

Check out Vive Church [1], formerly known as C3 Silicon Valley [2]

[1] [https://vivechurch.org/](https://vivechurch.org/)

[2] [https://www.buzzfeed.com/nitashatiku/c3-silicon-valley- churc...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/nitashatiku/c3-silicon-valley- church?utm_term=.se8vaW12a#.rgM70ljE0)

-David

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Not surprising. Fraternities engage in many nonacademic activities which could lead to a lower GPA, but they also come with a very large social network and series of connections which help members find jobs and further career options.

<comment><USER18> But, it is supposed to be meritocracy. \snark

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Unless you're already about to fail, few, if any, employers will care about your GPA, and joining a large network of college graduates who share camaraderie can't hurt when it comes to finding well paying positions and moving up in organizations

<comment><USER20> > few, if any, employers will care about your GPA

"Elite" careers care a lot about GPA.

<comment><USER21> I can guarantee no one really cares about your GPA, especially after your first job. If it's your only proof of competency/intelligence that's been validated by a third-party, they'll care, but if you have other outside evidence and interview well, no one will ever even think to ask, even in elite settings.

I, for one, have never put my GPA on my resume.

<comment><USER22> > I can guarantee no one really cares about your GPA

When a buddy of mine was interviewing at hedge funds, a few of them didn't just want his undergrad GPA, but also his high school _SAT_ scores. He actually got shit from one of the interviewers because his French SAT scores were shady... the dude had a few years of finance experience and a PhD in theoretical physics. YMMV.

<comment><USER23> These are "generalized careers" so they have to grasp at arbitrary cues that vouch for intelligence and competence. Careers that require specialized tasks don't look at generalized grade averages or test scores of non-relevant backgrounds like "French SAT" for a "hedge fund" job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> From personal experience, joining a fraternity definitely affected my grades negatively. I ended up graduating with around a 3.1 after a few rough semesters far below that. Having said that, the connections I made have been absolutely invaluable and I'd attribute all of the success I've had in my career to either my work experience as a student or the relationships I made in the frat.

<comment><USER25> Hell, I wasn't even in a frat, but my success since college had little to do with GPA (< 3.0), and mainly to do with work experience, open source work, and connections that lead to introductions and interviews.

I think GPA alone is just a very poor predictor of success. There are a ton of other, much more important factors.

<comment><USER24> Oh absolutely. Having older members come back after graduation to tell everyone how true this is didn't help, we all knew practically from the get go that we needed to focus on things like internships and leadership experience rather than class.

EDIT: "didn't help" might actually be "helped immensely", ha

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> So... spending time networking and developing your most important job skill, that of interpersonal communication, pays dividends later in life at the expense of a small hit in your GPA?

Color me not at all surprised.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's kind of junk, because it doesn't include and control for variables like pre-collegiate socioeconomic status which is well-known to contribute to both likelihood of joining a fraternity and income potential.

As a result, while it shows a _correlation_ , it provides very little basis to reject that the correlation is due to a common cause rather than frat membership causing the income result.

</comment><comment><USER27> Wish I had joined a frat in Uni..

What no one told me in Uni is that:

\+ You're either tech or not tech, and not tech is not sexy in the valley

\+ You need experience, no one cares about all the extra coursework you do, experience is king

\+ Don't wear a suit to an interview in the valley, ever.

\+ Your connections are invaluable, form lasting relationships, it's one of those weird things where not studying pays off, a lower GPA is actually good in this instance, and the bonding time with the bros is more valuable down the line.

<comment><USER28> I'm a recruiter who doesn't work with any companies in the Valley, and I'm curious about this:

        > Don't wear a suit to an interview
        > in the valley, ever.

Really? Almost everywhere else in the world, not wearing a suit to an interview is a weak negative signal, as it shows you're unlikely to be able to put up with even small amounts of the inherent corporate bullshit that occurs in companies. Even if you'll never wear a suit once employed.

I'm not disagreeing, I just want to know more.

<comment><USER29> I think this is generally the case for tech companies in the United States and for startups around the world. Personally, I can't name a single tech company where interviewees are expected to wear suits to interviews. If there are any such bona fide tech companies (versus companies with tech teams), I imagine they're older corporations.

<comment><USER30> IBM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> A fraternity is like a business. Learning to work within that kind of structure can help prepare you for the real world in a way that .25 of of a GPA cannot. But it's likely more correlation than causation. I'm not convinced by the methodology the authors claim distill causal effects. The Minerva and Theme variables are assumed to present plausible alternatives to Greek life but that may not be the case.

A few bad fraternities/fraternity brothers give the institution as a whole a bad reputation, but aside from those bad ones I don't understand the fraternity hate. What's wrong with wanting to be part of socially beneficial organization that will help you make friends and party over the course of (some of) the most carefree years of your life?

</comment><comment><USER32> 1\. Frats select for lower overall academic ability. Few physics, biochem, ee majors. This bleeds over into their easier major. 2\. Frats select for larger physical stature and attractiveness. This deselects for academic performance and strongly selects for business success. 3\. Most importantly, there is little artistic, creative, or purely intellectual emphasis here. If a young person is dedicated to "going for the money" at an early age, the results are not surprising.

These advantages, while enduring, are likely to reduce with time, in my opinion.

<comment><USER33> > Frats select for larger physical stature and attractiveness. This deselects > for academic performance and strongly selects for business success

Physical stature and attractiveness are negatively correlated with academic performance? Sounds like you're repeating a stereotype. Can you cite evidence of that? (I have come across studies, e.g., Kanazawa 2011, that show significant positive correlation between intelligence and attractiveness. Also, frats are not composed of purely attractive people. That's just Hollywood movie nonsense. I've met plenty of unattractive and rather dull frat members.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I would have failed out of college if it wasn't for people in my fraternity pushing me to get my grade straightened out. Joining one was one of the best decisions I ever made. I was shy and really wasn't very good at socializing before I joined.

For people saying all the fraternity members being from well to do families, I disagree. It was about the same price as staying in the dorms. We had a professional cook, on site laundry, live in advisor (house mom), and a large yard. I think I paid $600/month for all food, board and utilities.

</comment><comment><USER35> One positive thing about being in a fraternity -- it provides experience in dealing with and resolving conflict in a large organization.

For better or worse, navigating the internal politics of a clique such as a college fraternity is often similar to what many people later experience in the wilds of the corporate world.

You also get a lot of practice meeting & building rapport with a wide variety of peers (both male and female), if your fraternity socializes frequently.

These 'soft' social skills are just as much of a factor in determining salary as technical ones. And for all their warts and downsides, fraternities do provide you with good practice. Of course, you need to be wealthy enough to pay the dues, etc...

However -- more time socializing means less time for studying. So GPA goes down, but interpersonal skills go up. These new interpersonal skills pay off dividends later, though.

Just an extremely non-rigorous hypothesis.

</comment><comment><USER36> Rather than attack the study and criticize the limited data (one northeastern US university) and the conclusions it draws, I'll say I'm intrigued by the results and would hope for a larger study that brings in a larger data set and controls for school type and geography.

</comment><comment><USER37> Indeed, the power of networking. I was not in a frat but I can attest that my GPA didn't help me get a job, my college roommates did! ...and they probably lowered my GPA too!

<comment><USER17> Networking is the true value of going to "good" schools too.

You're going to read the same books and have the same general coursework at an ivy league as you will a state school. The difference is the people, including who is teaching you, who is learning along with you, and who they know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> The best "fraternity" I ever joined was ROTC. My GPA went up half a point, I got in shape, learned a lot about leadership, and made some life-long friends.

</comment><comment><USER39> Or Alpha males have greater tendency to join frats and to progress into leadership and push for greater pay...

Why claim causal link here?

<comment><USER40> Why claim "Alpha" exist?

Before getting too up in arms it's probably worthwhile to see what the actual paper claims.

<comment><USER39> err, what?

<comment><USER41> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_(ethology)#Controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_\(ethology\)#Controversy)

"Researcher L. David Mech, one of the primary creators of the Alpha male hypothesis for wolves, later found additional evidence that the concept of an Alpha male may have been an erroneous interpretation of incomplete data and formally disavowed this terminology in 1999. He explained that it was heavily based on the behavior of captive packs consisting of unrelated individuals, an error reflecting the once prevailing view that wild pack formation occurred in winter among independent gray wolves. Later research on wild gray wolves revealed that the pack is usually a family consisting of a breeding pair and its offspring of the previous 1–3 years.[16]

Researcher M.W. Foster investigated primates and found that the leaders were more likely to be those who did more for those around them instead of being determined by strength. [17]

In humans, the concept of an alpha male was challenged as being largely nonexist as per an article by Dean Burnett, who found that human leadership roles vary wildly based on the current social context, and traits attributed to an "Alpha" might be exhibited in one scenario, and traits attributed to a "Beta" might be exhibited in a different scenario by the same individual. [18]"

<comment><USER42> My kid likes the show "Adam Ruins Everything," which is a myth debunking show. He went over the same things you just stated. The concept of "Alpha male" was all hype that just stuck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> New metric: SPA = "Social Point Average" or NPA = "Network(ing) Point Average"?

</comment><comment><USER44> It's less about what you did in school and more about your network outside of school.

</comment><comment><USER45> From the paper: "Since our results are drawn from data on a single college, they may have limited external validity." In particular, they specified that this college is a small liberal arts school. I too was in a fraternity at a small liberal arts school. I think people should be wary when trying to paint the national fraternity system with the same brush stroke, as the greek climate at small liberal schools can be quite different that the climate at large universities. I'm not sure how this would affect their results, but the environment is very different in my mind.

They also say: "57% of alumni in our sample report belonging to a fraternity, which is somewhat higher than the 46% of all male alumni that were fraternity members. Greek alumni may be over-represented in the survey due to greater attachment to the college." While they mention this detail in passing, I find it quite interesting. Not sure what the implications are; it would probably require further study.

I'm also not quite sure I buy that people self reporting the amount they drink is controlled by adding their age and age squared as factors. I think it's natural to remember the "good times", which often coincide with drinking, but not remember the weeks you spent slogging through coursework. This, sometimes combined with a perverse incentive structure that says drinking is cool and you should do it more, may artificially inflate the self reported number of nights in a week spent drinking.

I also see a lot of people in this comment thread saying the increased salary is intuitive due to the connections made in a fraternity. I am suspicious of this. This is anecdata, but I was one of two computer science majors in my fraternity (of ~75 members). I have received no obvious professional gain from being in my fraternity. A number of my other friends who went to med school, dental school, and law school had to get in on their own merits -- fraternity connections do not apply to those domains (alumni ones, perhaps, but not fraternity). Others who got jobs seemed to rely more on connections between our college and various companies, not through our fraternity.

It's unfortunate that this paper does not control for college major -- they do when considering the grade regressions, but not the future salary. I would imagine the distribution of majors for people who are in a fraternity are different than the distribution of majors for those who are not. Perhaps those majors chosen by people in a fraternity, like law or business, tend to be more lucrative. Additionally, I can imagine people in some of the more socially conscious majors might be repulsed at the idea of joining a fraternity, and also do not tend to be the highest paying. I am being a bit broad and hand- wavey, but this comment is not a research paper -- just trying to capture my intuition.

Lastly, relying on my personal experience, I think a fraternity might improve qualities necessary for working at a company. Again, anecdata warning, but I became more sociable and confident after joining my fraternity; I also became less edgy, awkward, and bashful. I think these qualities are some of the intangibles that can help people get ahead at a company. Perhaps most importantly, you are forced to live and work with some people who you dislike, which is essential for being in the workforce.

All in all, I think it's an interesting paper, and I appreciate their work. It still leaves something to be desired though.

</comment><comment><USER46> yep likely a social networking effect.

</comment><comment><USER47> I find it interesting how strongly HN as a collective believes corporate America isn't a meritocracy in some threads, while in others it assumes hiring decisions are all about merit.

The difference mostly seems to revolve around whether sexism is brought up.

Here we are discussing men joining men-only organisations for networking purposes and the general consensus is basically "duh, that's how I got my job. Everyone knows that's how it works!"

<comment><USER48> > _I find it interesting how strongly HN as a collective believes corporate > America isn 't a meritocracy in some threads, while in others it assumes > hiring decisions are all about merit._

It's because HN _isn 't_ a collective in the sense that we all share the same opinions (as much as one might reference the hive mind). There's a wide range of opinions, values, and experiences and you'll notice some piping up in one area and others in, uh, others. Add the wrinkle that we're all (well, likely mostly) human with all of the idiosyncrasies of human psychology that implies. We're perfectly capable of hypocri^H^H^H^H^H logical inconsistency. There's a lot of evidence that our rationality is there primarily to rationalize (in the truest sense) our intuitions and explain them to others.</comment></comment>


40% of Google Analytics users are using urchin.js - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/report_google_analytics_may_go_dark_for_thousands.php

<comment><USER2> Misleading title. The thousands of sites GA might "go dark" for are still using the deprecated urchin.js.

Upgrade to the new version; problem solved.

<comment><USER3> Also misleading...it is purely speculative.

Google MAY cut off support for urchin.js. But with that many sites still using it, it seems unlikely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> see also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=552799>

I'm sure Google can see just how many sites are still using the old script. They have nothing to gain by shutting those sites out and pissing people off.</comment>


Show HN: ThePenTool – Library of design assets - <AUTHOR> https://thepentool.co <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN! This is something I've been working on for the last 6 months. I'm coming from a Product Design background (I'm actually still a product designer) and I've learned a lot building this product. Pretty much everything here is #nocode and is built mostly using Webflow.

The goal of this product is to be able to cover all (or most) routine tasks that designers do for them to be able to focus on creating products and not on designing email templates (or something else).

Would love to hear you feedback, especially designers!

<comment><USER2> (Me: UX/ Human Factors/ Prod Management background) A big thing in design is "form follows function". The pages you designed skew heavily to the form side of that equation. From a pure UX POV there are so many visual elements competing for attention that I cannot tell you what is important. I can tell you my heart rate went up while I tried to understand the site, and that now there is cortisol floating around. This is not a " delight" neurochemical reaction.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can treat this as an art piece. This product is for designers mostly and one of my goals was to impress.

<comment><USER3> Congrats on launching this, I'm sure a lot of work has gone into it.

> This product is for designers mostly and one of my goals was to impress.

To me this doesn't make sense. Wouldn't designers not be capable of designing their own? If you have a set of prefab design assets for sale then I would assume that your target audience would be non-designers, and, if that was the case that format in which you present your product would be catered to that audience, not?

<comment><AUTHOR> They usually take them as a base layer and then modify to what they need, saving lots of time. Here's where thePenTool comes into play

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wanted to love the value prop here as a founder that just had our first professional design refresh. It's a great price for a lot of inspiration but too busy to use. Quirkiness impresses first but then starts to distract.

As a technical person, I've always wanted a design 101 best practices guide that could help me make better decisions on the fly. I'd definitely pay for an hour course/chapter that solved this problem and I was excited at first when I thought this was going that way!

</comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for sharing, hn isn't quite the audience for the site's design, but fwiw I really like the quirky design - there's alot to appreciate and get inspiration from.

<comment><AUTHOR> Still, thanks!</comment></comment>