After 1 minute on my modem (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://1-minute-modem.branchable.com/ <comment><USER2> Since I temporarily have HN's attention with this side blog of mine, can I suggest one simple tweak:

Please, please, if your site requires AJAX to work at all, then retry failed AJAX queries. Use exponential backoff or whatever but don't let the AJAX query fail once and the page be unusable.

This happens _all the freaking time_ when I'm on dialup, and there's nothing more annoying than having filled out a form or series of forms only to have the submit button break because it used AJAX to do a sanity check and threw an exception because the server timed out after some absurdly short (dialup-wise) period of time while the client was sending the request.

<comment><USER3> It's not just an easy JS fix though. It complicates quite a lot on the server side. Your timed out request could have reached the server already, so the state would different now. From the server perspective it's not clear whether it was a retry or another request (and some actions are meant to be repeatable).

Now that I think about it, generating some request UUID and passing it to the server could allow it to quickly skip duplicates (it would also need to cache responses for resending them).

I'm also curious how often this problem occurs statistically (not just in your case, but for an average user of popular sites)

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't it be easier to add a retry=true to the request, at least if your implementing exponential back off in an existing codebase? Then you just hash the request (minus the retry field) in your cache layer and send the saved response again. You'll need a little extra code to update timestamps on the client side but the server side can be implemented as middleware in most frameworks. Expire the cache after a reasonable total timeout and make the client do a new read if they try to retry after cache has cleared it.

<comment><USER3> I think you need client side UUID instead of just retry=true for requests that can be repeated with the same params.

E.g. /inrement?retry=true, server gets 3 of them - how many times should it increment? Is it just that user still haven't received the first response, or should we increment 3 times because it was send/fail/retry/ok 3 times on the client side?

But with this UUID it still can be easily implemented as a middleware.

<comment><USER5> but you shouldn't use a GET request for incrementing, right? do people (or popular frameworks' defaults) really do that? frequently?

<comment><USER3> The OP was talking about having to refill the form, I assumed they weren't submitted using GET.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I went online for the first time (nearly twenty years ago - time goes by pretty fast!), I did so on 14.4 kbit modem.

That was no fun even back then. After a year, I upgraded to ISDN, which was a lot faster (64kbit), but once I got to use a faster line, even ISDN seemed awfully slow.

And the trend continues to this day. Once one has a faster connection, one gets used to it in no time. And just like many companies and individuals have solved problems with slow software by throwing more/faster hardware at it, these days we solve the problem of web sites making inefficient use of bandwidth by throwing more bandwidth at it.

Which might not even be such a bad thing - I would not like going back to programming in an environment where I have to triple-check every variable to see if I can shave off a couple of kilobytes, either.

But even a fast connection gets clogged at times, and even on a 16MBit DSL line, I have seen pages looking broken because the request for getting the CSS timed out or something like that.

Maybe taking more care not to waste bandwidth should be considered a form of courtesy. People on slow/saturated lines will thank you for it, and people on fast lines will be amazed at how snappy that website loads. (And of course, there's always trade-offs involved; I do not demand web developers sacrifice everything else to efficient bandwidth usage; but it should not be ignored, either.)

<comment><USER7> I remember when I upgraded to a 14.4k modem and boy was I pleased after dialing with a 9600 baud for years.

<comment><USER8> Luxury. I started out on 1200/75\. I used to dream of 2400, let alone 9600!

('ad to lick code clean wi' tongue, etc. etc.)

<comment><USER9> Was that PRESTEL, maybe? Did you ever take advantage of the ability to have the modem train as the server side of a 1200/75 connection? That way, you could _upload_ at the blistering speed of 1200 baud, with the downside of trying to navigate PRESTEL or its ilk at the staggeringly slow (worse than the original IBM teletypes) speed of 75 baud! Good times...

And, after leaving University, the only Internet connection I could use (I believe Demon Internet in the UK was starting up, so dial-up was beginning to appear, but the faster University connections were for students only) was their free 2400 baud connection to the X.25 PAD (translatable to TCP/IP through SLIP once a shell connection established) and I resigned myself to this being the only Internet access I would ever have without a return to academia!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you use vimperator ([http://www.vimperator.org/](http://www.vimperator.org/)) on Firefox, put this in your ~/.vimperatorrc so you can disable CSS with the "s" character (and re-enable it with Shift-S). It removes 99% of bullshit from web pages and allows you to read articles the way Tim Berners-Lee intended, guaranteed!

        nmap s :emenu View.Page Style.No Style<CR>
        nmap <S-s> :emenu View.Page Style.Basic Page Style<CR>

<comment><USER11> If you don't use Vimperator, reader mode's usually good for this, too.

<comment><USER12> My only issue with reader mode is that many sites seem to beat it with the stupid"load rest of article button" so you can't just load it all through reader.

On iOS I usually try to load articles in between stops in the subway and frequently cannot get just the article without being bothered by the rest of the nonsense on the page. I am ooen to the idea I might be just using readermode wrong but I'd have it on by default if I could be assured I'd actually get a full article each time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is awesome, and actually a pretty neat way of evaluating websites.

A surprising number of people are still on low bandwidth connections, while it's probably not reasonable to optimize for them, it's at least worth considering that market occasionally.

<comment><USER14> If you optimize for people on low bandwidth connections, you automatically also optimize for those with limited mobile data. And as a bonus, your website becomes faster for everybody with a fat pipe too.

<comment><USER10> "Optimize" is somewhat the wrong word. "Straying from temptation" would be more accurate, since all garbage on webpages is placed there by a website manager's overzealous want to increase popularity or profit.

<comment><USER15> I understand some people don't use things like cloud software, but the internet isn't just blogs and newspaper websites.

Sometimes styling is added to make web app UX better. Sometimes Javascript is used so that, even if the first load takes more time, subsequent actions will use _less bandwidth_. Sometimes more stuff is put on the page because 95% of users want that information to also show up.

This is obvious and pedantic, but also counters half of the comments on these sorts of these stories

<comment><USER10> My point _especially_ applies to web apps. I just loaded facebook.com, and it took 228 requests, 8,825 KB, and 17.0 s. Scrolling through the page is laggy while a stressful amount of muted videos start playing and mouse-hover events start firing.

Compare this with mbasic.facebook.com, which is 22 requests, 107 KB, and 1.48 s. There are some small UX problems with basic HTML Facebook that I would recommend they improve on (placement of links/buttons, omnipresent header), but overall it is a much better experience for me since I feel much more in control. Same with basic HTML Gmail vs full Gmail.

My point is that it is absolutely possible to not give in to shitty bloated web trends driven by the expectation to increase popularity, while making a quality, profitable website.

<comment> semi-extrinsic > mbasic.facebook.com

Mind blown. It even has messaging that works without having to install privacy-invading Messenger. You have just improved my facebook UX by a country mile.

<comment><USER16> The combination of mbasic for Messenger, and m for normal Facebook browsing, is fine on Android. I don't install the awful FB apps on my phone any more, and I'm a fairly heavy Facebook user.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is gold.

I've seen so many of these, even on websites with lots of traffic. Websites have to be written taking into consideration the way it loads too, especially on mobile data. I've found the Chrome DevTools feature where you can throttle bandwidth comes in super handy for this.

<comment><USER18> For resilience testing I highly recommend Clumsy even if it only runs on Windows:

[https://jagt.github.io/clumsy/](https://jagt.github.io/clumsy/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> That exoscale screenshot is very similar to what I see with NoScript on a 100 Mb/s connection before I temporarily allow their JS.

What's nice about NoScript is that I can turn on their JS but keep turned off the JS scripts from the other sites. Apparently they only use googletagmanager. Ublock doesn't report any blocked script so it's a rare well behaved site.

<comment><USER20> Google tag manager is sometimes (often?) used to load every other third-party script, so if you allow gtm to load you'll probably see a bunch more scripts. As a web developer, gtm was the bane of my existence because marketing could change and break the site significantly, while decreasing user privacy and page speed, and the devs could take the blame.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> There is/was an internet news website 15seconds.com iirc, that was so named because that's how long the average person would wait for a page to load. Back in the 90's when dialup was common. I think people should try setting chrome in devtools to 2g speed now and then, so they know the pain they're causing for a lot of people on wireless without a good/stable connection.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is a fantastic way to assess website functionality. It would drive me insane on day to day use.

In all reality, I just want to dump the modern web's approach. CSS, Javascript, you name it. Give me simple HTML and text ads, if you need ads. Give me pictures when I want them, with descriptive captions. I agree with the intent of the blog--quit making crappy ads and bloated sites!

I use elinks often, and find it's text-based approach easier to comprehend. What are your thoughts?

<comment><USER23> Agreed! I try to keep my site light. I'd like to see a return of the web to a content layer where the browser can choose how to present it. In the end we want to read content. We don't care about someone's favorite scrolling method or menu system. Why can't I set up my browser preferences to be "show me websites with a light blue background, navigate through a menu bar horizontally across the top," etc. I don't think it would happen with current inertia, but maybe that's an area for a niche browser.

<comment><USER24> As I understand it, early on there was sort of an expectation that _users_ would be defining stylesheets and applying them to websites, exactly like you said: "use light blue background, menu bar horizontally across the top, paragraph text should be 16 pt." etc.

There's nothing _wrong_ with site-provided CSS, but I strive to make my own stuff work with or without CSS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Could probably automate this on a Linux VM using netem[0]

[0] [https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/networking/netem](https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/networking/netem)

</comment><comment><USER26> For anyone wondering, the spinning Unicode symbol mentioned is F01E, corresponding to fa-repeat in Font Awesome: [http://fontawesome.io/icon/repeat/](http://fontawesome.io/icon/repeat/) Font Awesome also has a bunch of spinner icons which OP is probably seeing on other sites: [http://fontawesome.io/icons/#spinner](http://fontawesome.io/icons/#spinner)

It really is unfortunate that there is no way to have these widely-used resources (Font Awesome, jQuery, etc.) cached on a long term basis across all sites that use them. (Though arguably this is easily achieved for fonts, which can be installed system-wide.)

<comment><USER27> > It really is unfortunate that there is no way to have these widely-used > resources (Font Awesome, jQuery, etc.) cached on a long term basis across > all sites that use them.

There is - Google, Cloudflare and jQuery offer a CDN. The problem with CDNs is that you then have a SPOF and an external dependency.

> Though arguably this is easily achieved for fonts, which can be installed > system-wide.

Oh please no, this always leads to problems sooner or later - for example, graphics designers tend to have LOTS of fonts installed, from all possible sources. Especially the pirated fonts tend to freak out in lots of different ways, and if there's a local() in the font-face rule, things break and you get weird bug reports...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Currently only have a 1.2M connection at home. Reveals how bandwidth intensive many website are that simply do not need to be.

Ad Blocker is a must.

</comment><comment><USER29> I understand the concern. Websites can become too bloated. They can require too many resources or be poorly optimized to reduce bandwidth.

But this also seems like complaining about the trouble with driving a horse- drawn carriage on the interstate. Sure, there are lots of people around the world still on low speed networks - just like there are people who still use horses are their primary mode of travel. And maybe there should be a way to accommodate them, but let's not pretend that the advances in website technology are only a detrimental problem that needs to be solved.

<comment><USER30> Significant amount of web requests is now performed via mobile connections, which, depending on a lot of factors, can be as bad as 2G. We don't use modems, of course, but we still need web sites that work on low bandwidth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Can someone tell me why SVGs are gigantic while first loading? I often see this even at modern connection speeds.

<comment><USER10> Two reasons come to mind: It's likely that the designer providing the SVG logo scales the logo completely arbitrarily, which might be 1000 pixels wide. The CSS `width:10px` in another file hasn't loaded yet, so the <img> tag holding the SVG uses the absolute size of the SVG file. Another possibility is that a flexbox or similar grid system is used, and the container holding the <img> tag is told to stretch its contents to the full width of the flex item. If the content in the following flex item is very large, the SVG will be compressed to the proper small size, but if there is no content loaded yet in the following flex item, the flexbox will stretch just the first item.

<comment><USER31> Thanks, looked into it further on my own project and found my specific issue. The svg width and height attributes were missing from my webpack-built bundle even though they were part of the source svg file. The svg loader I was using (svg-inline-loader) was stripping with and height by default.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> If all the important content of your website can be rendered in a timely fashion through a text browser like Lynx, then you will have catered to the lowest common denominator.

Granted that is a very retro concept.

</comment><comment><USER33> If anyone is actually suffering from dialup speeds and using Chrome, you should try out my extension to disable web fonts: [http://github.com/captn3m0/disable-web- fonts](http://github.com/captn3m0/disable-web-fonts). It blocks all network requests to font-files. Also has a couple other tips in the README for improving page-load performances over slow networks.

I wrote it when i saw suffering terrible speeds over mobile internet (EDGE) a couple years back.

</comment><comment><USER34> Somewhere between Linux, Firefox, uBlock, etc. I see a lot of this stuff on my fast connection as well. Vox looked liked that to me for a few months, maybe a year or two ago.

</comment><comment><USER35> If you're on a mac the Network Link Conditioner is a great way to test your stuff on a simulated slow connection.

[https://medium.com/@YogevSitton/use-network-link- conditioner...](https://medium.com/@YogevSitton/use-network-link-conditioner- when-testing-your-app-bad18ecad877)

<comment><USER36> Another easy way to play around with network conditions is included in Chrome dev tools: [https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome- devtools/netw...](https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome- devtools/network-performance/network-conditions)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This reminds me: Since a while I'm looking for a good configurable proxy solution to clean up/filter the web on my server especially for browsing via old devices (Amiga and such). So I would like to reduce website to their content, stripping all CSS, background images, scripts and such. Any recommendations?

<comment><USER38> Privoxy ([https://www.privoxy.org/](https://www.privoxy.org/)):

> Privoxy is a non-caching web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for > enhancing privacy, modifying web page data and HTTP headers, controlling > access, and removing ads and other obnoxious Internet junk. Privoxy has a > flexible configuration and can be customized to suit individual needs and > tastes. It has application for both stand-alone systems and multi-user > networks.

> Privoxy is Free Software and licensed under the GNU GPLv2.

I'm from Bangladesh, my connection is ~256 kbps and my pc is slow (256 RAM and 1.6 ghz), if not by privoxy, i couldn't browse internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Excellent site which brings us to an obvious question: At what point should we as developers consider a site _good enough?_ There's an infinite tail of worse and worse speeds and latencies. At some point it makes business sense to stop optimising, and for businesses with lots of users that point is inevitably _before_ supporting 100% of users. So how do I prove to the business where the 90th and 99th percentiles are, within some reasonably scientific measure of uncertainty?

Aside: I just checked the site I'm working on. When throttling Chromium to GPRS speeds (500 ms, 50/20 kb/s) the main page has all the text on it by 16 seconds after a hard refresh.

</comment><comment><USER40> The developer axiom #1: If it works on my computer then it works for everyone else.

<comment><USER41> [https://rlv.zcache.ca/works_on_my_machine_round_sticker-r56c...](https://rlv.zcache.ca/works_on_my_machine_round_sticker-r56ce1cc314be46efbe749e9c58c761d5_v9waf_8byvr_512.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> > Please, please, if your site requires AJAX to work at all, then retry failed > AJAX queries.

Anyone have data on the best ways to do this? Or information on the implementations used by say Gmail or Facebook?

</comment><comment><USER43> I don't see a mention of the question of utmost importance – at what baud rate are you connecting?

</comment><comment><USER44> Google Data Compression on Chrome helps a lot. At least on HTTP connections. Too bad this does not work for HTTPS sites were the web designers do not test and optimize enough for low bandwidth.

<comment><USER45> Or Opera Mini, which renders pages server-side and sends a minimal representation to your phone. They even managed to convince Apple they're not a browser, so there's an iOS version.

In my 56K days, the regular Opera was my browser of choice since it had a very useful toggle for loading images or not (or showing only cached ones, or letting you load them in afterwards without a painful page refresh cycle)

<comment><USER21> You can have a browser, you just can't use your own JS engine for it, only safari's, it also proxies everything through Opera, and delivers a better mobile representation.

<comment><USER45> [https://developer.apple.com/app- store/review/guidelines/](https://developer.apple.com/app- store/review/guidelines/)

> 2.5.6 Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and > WebKit Javascript.

It reads to me like you're not allowed to use your own HTML renderer either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I have seen something similar on Ryanair.com - this is why I chose React instead of Angular when I was looking for a new frontend framework

</comment><comment><USER47> I wonder how much difference surfing with Adblock would make while connecting over a modem?

</comment><comment><USER48> What browser is this?

<comment><USER49> Uh, the point is that, on a slow connection, everything is going to suck in unpredictable ways, because of server-side bloat, and the trendiness of developers deploying 5MB js libraries.

Worrying about whether the browser was recent or supported misses the point. Any browser can suffer these sorts of problems on a 56KB dial-up connection. (3G mobile data is frequently throttled at 128KB by popular ISP's, btw)

<comment><USER50> Uh, reading in a whole slew of things into a simple question is missing the point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> twitter/fb logos are svg, and are rendered at whatever resolution needed. I.E. svg does not have "full scale"

</comment><comment><USER52> please make your site lynx compatible

</comment><comment><USER53> I don't see the problem. It isn't 1996 and I don't care about people who turn JS off. This tiny percentage of people, are dwarfed by IE9 users, which, I don't support either.

What is the moral of the story?

<comment><USER54> The moral of the story is that some web people don't care about things which, had they a deeper understanding of what they do, they would intuitively grasp they should care for. QED.

<comment><USER53> So I will ask my boss on Monday if he minds that we revisit all our projects, and refactor for the 0.01% of hipsters?

<comment><USER55> If you have to revisit your projects to ensure that they work properly, then you wrote them improperly in the first place.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


I built a business that lets me live on the beach full time - <AUTHOR> https://www.expatsoftware.com/Articles/guy-on-the-beach-with-a-laptop.html <comment><USER2> You need to do this while you are young. Once you have a family and a mortgage, it becomes much more difficult to hit the beach all day.

I contracted for a year 7 years ago from Asia and I was able to travel the world during this time. It was definitely a great experience.

Now, I have been remote contracting for almost a decade and it's given me the ability to build one successful business and I'm now in the process of starting another.

Distractions and commute time really destroyed my ability to build a side- business...and working from an office was exhausting.

If you want to start a side-business, but aren't ready to take the risk (or just don't have the money), start by contracting remotely.

<comment><USER3> > Once you have a family and a mortgage, it becomes much more difficult to hit > the beach all day.

These folks would disagree with you: [https://www.bumfuzzle.com/us/](https://www.bumfuzzle.com/us/)

Yes, you can't have a mortgage, and you do need to find a remote income source (in their case, based on the information available, it's options trading to scalp enough for monthly expenses). But it can be done if you're willing to trade some financial security for freedom.

Addendum: List of blogs of families living full time on a sail boat: [https://www.sailingtotem.com/blogging-families- afloat](https://www.sailingtotem.com/blogging-families-afloat)

<comment><USER2> Rule..meet exception.

<comment><USER3> Your life is what you make it. There's always tradeoffs.

<comment><USER2> "But it can be done if you're willing to trade some financial security for freedom"

Financial security IS freedom. If you have enough money, you can do pretty much whatever you want with your life.

"it's options trading to scalp enough for monthly expenses"

If you have anyone else to support besides yourself, and you are only making enough for monthly expenses intentionally, so you can enjoy your life in an exotic location, you are doing a complete disservice to those people.

One bad month or emergency, and they will suffer...and options trading? You might as well be gambling at a casino.

<comment><USER3> So dont live in a high cost of living area. Don't own two cars with car payments. Don't have expensive phones or cellphone plans, or cable TV. Don't buy a Starbucks coffeee everyday. Minimize your burn rate, save 30-40% of your income and invest it, generating a passive income stream that you supplement with income that is drastically less obviating the need for a full time job.

I know it can be done because I know more people than I can count on my fingers who have done it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The story of Freddie Kreuger, the brave three-legged cat. - <AUTHOR> http://www.codercowboy.com/2012/10/11/the-story-of-freddie-kreuger-the-brave-three-legged-cat/

<comment><USER2> Beautiful story. As a cat person of many decades, yes, it is possible to de- feral a cat.</comment>


Waze error leaves São Paulo traffic (even more) congested - <AUTHOR> https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=pt-BR&sl=pt&tl=en&u=https://www.tecmundo.com.br/mobilidade-urbana-smart-cities/123450-erro-waze-deixa-transito-paulo-ainda-congestionado.htm <comment><USER2> I have thought about the impact that ubiquitous apps like Google Maps or Waze might have on the real world and people who aren't necessarily tapping into that space. It first came about when Google Maps directed me along a side street that paralleled a major thoroughfare. It was very residential, lots of stop signs and street parking, whereas the thoroughfare was all commercial with decent speed but some traffic lights. The residential route probably was marginally faster, but I took it at the expense of the residents who wanted/deserved a quiet and slow street. Could you imagine if suddenly the Google Maps algorithm decides that _your quiet street_ is the best route to get across town? Now there are a thousand more cars and hurried ride shares traveling in front of your house, rolling through stop signs, all because an opaque and stoic algorithm has decided so. There is no social recourse. There is no support line. You can't go the the city council to get anything done about it. What a twist of fate.

<comment><USER3> But then then Google Maps and Waze will be able to see the rise in traffic along those routes and not recommend those routes to commuters during certain hours. Additionally, you can usually request the municipal govt monitor the road and install speed bumps. Commuters used to always drive down my parent's street after a new entrance to a state highway was built. Some fuddyduddies didn't like it so they had the road monitored (to see that there was a lot of traffic that was over the speed limit) and had speed bumps installed. Barely anyone but locals drive down that road now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Aside: it's been a while since I've used google's translation service. If I hadn't seen "translate.google.com" in the HN headline I think I'd have assumed that this was written originally in English. There are a couple of non- idiomatic translations that I would've attributed to "probably written by a non-native speaker."

I've never used translate.google.com for Portuguese before, so it's possible that they do better on this language than others. But in any case, it's worth some praise for a superior service. Well done, GOOG.

<comment><USER5> I've seen stunning improvements in Google Translate in the last couple years.

Maybe it's their move from phrase-based machine translation to neural machine translation.

[https://research.googleblog.com/2016/09/a-neural-network- for...](https://research.googleblog.com/2016/09/a-neural-network-for- machine.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Brazilian from Sao Paulo speaking...

This is the tip of the iceberg. Waze (and google maps) are wrongly conducting people to most dangerous slums (PTBR: favelas) and some people already died following this apps.

Source: Death #1 - [http://g1.globo.com/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2015/10/mulher- mo...](http://g1.globo.com/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2015/10/mulher-morre-apos- entrar-por-engano-em-comunidade-em-niteroi-rj.html)

Source: Death #2 - [http://dc.clicrbs.com.br/sc/noticias/noticia/2017/01/turista...](http://dc.clicrbs.com.br/sc/noticias/noticia/2017/01/turista- gaucha-e-morta-ao-entrar-por-engano-em-comunidade-do-norte-da-ilha-em- florianopolis-9033609.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> Waze detoured me onto some backroads while traveling I40 through Tennessee for no apparent reason a few weeks ago. I checked with Google Maps and Apple Maps and neither of them took me off I40. It was ok though, was getting sleepy and the twisty backroads going up to NC woke me up and put a smile on my face.

<comment><USER8> What really drives me nutty is when they have a route that goes from A->B->C->D->E and and you can see on the screen A->B->C on the screen. It shows an alternate route from A->B1->C that takes 30 minutes longer. This is the route you'd prefer to take, but you figure there must be traffic, so you stay on the crap route.

But what it's actually done is made a route from A->B1->C->D1->E. The A->B1->C and A->B->C routes are actually similar travel times, it's the C->D1->E route that takes the extra half hour.

<comment><USER9> This happens way too often in GMaps

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Something similar once happened in Israel. A major freeway was blocked due to construction work, and Waze routed everyone through it as it free of traffic.

Caused a terrible jam, but as others mentioned here -- Waze's shortcomings are not even close to it's benefits.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's kind of insane to think a company can do this to an end-user without really having any repercussions / not having a direct phone-line to reach out to when this happens. I guess that's what happens when the product is free.

<comment><USER12> A tool like Waze has saved countless more time than it costs when it has an error. Seeking punishment is similar to self driving cars. Once we have the first inevitable death due to malfunction, do we ban the technology? That traffic deaths are down 10,000% across the board should be factored in, nothing is *perfect.

<comment><USER11> I'm not saying we ban anything and acknowledge that it's an insanely useful tool. It's absolutely necessary for companies to move fast with imperfect technologies to break new grounds then iterate.

I just think it's a kind of crazy there's no one to reach out to directly if there are any negative actions that happen.

<comment><USER13> Reach out to what end?

Say there was a customer support number you could call. What happens when you call them? You complain for a bit and feel placated?

<comment><USER14> If I were the product manager in charge of Waze, I would appreciate the user feedback so that we could work on improving. In this case, they may have automatically detected this issue, but it is always good to hear from customers/users, and have the opportunity to apologize when you let them down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What I'm actually surprised is how well google translated the text from portuguese to english.

They really came a long way.

</comment><comment><USER16> Lately, when stuck in traffic, I've been thinking if there's a scenario where the behaviour of a bunch of people using traffic-aware routing can cause worse delays than usual for some commuters. If the response of the system (drivers) was instantaneous, you could make the argument that this is not possible, but because it is not this might look like a classic case of a closed-loop control system failing or becoming unstable due to sensing delay.

Trivial example I came up with: an accident on a major highway causes routing software to redirect thousands of drivers to a minor side road at around the same time. Once the drivers are committed to the detour, it's too late for the software to correct its advice as the side road gets clogged with the influx of traffic, and those who chose to take the side road end up in a situation that's worse than the one they started in.

<comment><USER17> Thankfully most people don't currently use Google maps for their daily commute. This will be a problem with self driving cars if people aren't allowed to choose their own route.

<comment><USER18> Unless google factors this in and shards traffic appropriately over multiple routes?

<comment><USER16> This has the feeling of a hard problem because it involves a distributed system combined with human behaviour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm really impressed by the translation quality here.</comment>


Show HN: Fast, human feedback on your CV - <AUTHOR> https://getmeacv.expert <comment><USER2> Hey there - we do something a bit similar with Rezi - you might be inspired by our keyword targeting feature which is really one of the most and over looked steps while creating your resume. [https://rezi.io](https://rezi.io)

But you have to be more transparent on the following

1\. output 2\. reviewers 3\. past customer feedback

Price is okay but there are so many operations like this it is not possible to stand out with anything that you are offering now

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Would appreciate any feedback, particularly on the price point. Happy to provide free CV/resume feedback to the first 5 people that request it here.

<comment><USER3> I'm not looking for resume feedback. The price point looks fine to me. In most cases people want to optimize their resume/CV for a particular position they are applying for. I'm not sure how your service can help with that.</comment></comment>


Meet the Patron of American Modern Art: The CIA - <AUTHOR> http://priceonomics.com/meet-the-patron-of-american-modern-art-the-cia/ <comment> daniel-cussen I'm confused: I've seen several great posts on priceonomics, but it leaves me wondering whether it's a startup or mostly a blog.</comment>


The Vast Re-Education Program of the Superbowl Ads - <AUTHOR> http://churchlife.nd.edu/2019/02/05/the-vast-re-education-program-of-the-superbowl-ads/ <comment><USER2> This whole article is a bit baffling to me. I'm having trouble understanding what the message is. That advertisers are using technology in their ads? Why wouldn't they? That they are trying to "normalize" the influence that code and technology has on our lives? It's already normalized. There isn't a dark conspiracy where advertisers subliminally incorporate language to drown out the luddites. There are big tech companies that want to advertise their brand and their tech. And there are non-tech companies that want to advertise using the language and norms we're already familiar with.

<comment><USER3> I think the message is "don't trust yourself to interpret ads, it's really complex and you should just take your gospel(no pun intended) from us".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm sure there's a less salty way to say this, but if you're going to do this deep analysis of the Superbowl ads, than I expect you to use more than two ads by the same fucking company

</comment><comment><USER5> > Are digital assistants really representative signs of cultural harmony and > world peace? Hardly. In fact, the logic of binary is inherently polarizing. > You can either be a 1 or a 0 and you must pick a side. Pro life or pro > choice? Trump or Hillary? Democrat or Republican? Amidst the ironclad logic > of the syntax of binary code, the ultimate...

That's a common argument, but completely flawed. Yes, logic gates are binary. But when a bunch of them are wired up to compute in floating point, there's nothing binary about the external behavior.

Binariness depends on the resolution you look at. Individual bits are binary, but floating point registers are an excellent approximation to analog. Individual synapses are binary, but brains are analog. Laser pits on a CD are binary, but the music isn't.

The curious thing is, presumably the author has seen video games and heard music on computers. How has it escaped their notice that the outward behavior of these systems is not all-or-nothing?

Perhaps it's no more silly than the claims people have made about how the quantum nature of reality makes us all one in a spiritual sense.

<comment><USER6> In a genius stroke of irony, the claim that binarization has some inherent effect on things the author implies are "more than binary"... is expressed in good old UTF-8.

<comment><USER5> UTF8 does lose a lot of nuance. Compare a quality handwritten letter like [http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/01/your-pal- john-k.html](http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/01/your-pal-john-k.html) with the transcript (in UTF8) below.

<comment><USER7> JPEG captured that nuance nicely. HTML captured the nuance of John K's letters to other kids pretty well, too. [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/arianelange/john- kricfa...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/arianelange/john-kricfalusi- ren-stimpy-underage-sexual-abuse)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Signs no longer reflect a profound reality. [...] In Baudrillard's view, > signs no longer have this sacramental power because they have been detached > from the Real, due, in no small part, to the dissembling media environment.

Given that we're already talking about cognitive psychology with a religious tinge, the Screwtape Letters (1942) [0] seem entirely relevant here. (Context: A senior devil is advising a junior one on how to corrupt his human)

> I have known cases where what the patient called his "God" was actually > located—up and to the left at the corner of the bedroom ceiling, or inside > his own head, or in a crucifix on the wall.

> But whatever the nature of the composite object, you must keep him praying > to it—to the thing that he has made, not to the Person who has made him. You > may even encourage him to attach great importance to the correction and > improvement of his composite object, and to keeping it steadily before his > imagination during the whole prayer.

[0] [https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/lewiscs- screwtapeletters/lewiscs...](https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/lewiscs- screwtapeletters/lewiscs-screwtapeletters-00-h.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> > Are digital assistants really representative signs of cultural harmony and > world peace? Hardly. In fact, the logic of binary is inherently polarizing. > You can either be a 1 or a 0 and you must pick a side. Pro life or pro > choice? Trump or Hillary? Democrat or Republican? Amidst the ironclad logic > of the syntax of binary code, the ultimate form of protest and rebellion is > to declare oneself non-binary.

…what? Seems like a strained metaphor to me. Computers suddenly becoming ternary would not magically make the country into a three party system.

<comment><USER10> I agree that this is a weak metaphor. Perhaps it would be better to say that the digital era has made discrete values more common, rather than the continuous values of the analog era.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. Thanks for picking up on this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _" The 7% are the software engineers who possess the shamanic knowledge of how to manipulate said codes to influence human behavior."_

No, no. They mean military veterans. The numbers were probably Military Occupational Specialties. Army MOS 11B is infantry. MOS 25M is "multimedia illustrator".

 _" Oil, water, bread and wine are signs that bring about profound changes in the soul of the recipient because they are tied to a fundamental reality, God's saving love for mankind affected through the Incarnation and the created order."_

Huh? Oh, right, that ritualistic cannibalism thing Catholics are into. The tortured reasoning around that is amusing.[1]

The author is in media studies, not theology.[2] He also wrote "Appletopia: Media Technology and the Religious Imagination of Steve Jobs". Reviews of that book are mixed, but trying to understand Apple as a religion is promising.

[1] [https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2011/08/06/the- eucharist-a-...](https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2011/08/06/the-eucharist-a- cannibalism/)

[2] [https://mcgrath.nd.edu/about/faculty-staff/brett-robinson- ph...](https://mcgrath.nd.edu/about/faculty-staff/brett-robinson-ph-d/)

<comment><USER13> They do seem to understand that the ad and the 7% statistic are about the military, and are performing an "alternate reading" based largely around the shared word "code." The alternate reading may be more "paradigmatic," but it's not particularly insightful or useful. Let's not even get into the analogy from the, well, binary nature of binary code to the current polarized political atmosphere.

There's plenty of room to criticize the tech giants, and their advertising, but this is disappointingly shallow even for such a short piece.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was following until "binary language and logic must be embraced as the new natural syntax for human interaction via our omnipresent devices" at which point the article seemed to abandon analyzing the motives of the ads, and went off on a rant somehow related to "binary logic", to which computers are apparently tied in contrast to more humane logic.

Also, they threw in "the ultimate form of protest and rebellion is to declare oneself non-binary" which I think might be just a pun, but I'm not sure if they are being serious or not..

</comment><comment><USER15> Why do people who clearly don't know what computers are or how they work choose to write things like this? It makes them look like clueless buffoons.

> In fact, the logic of binary is inherently polarizing. You can either be a 1 > or a 0 and you must pick a side. Pro life or pro choice? Trump or Hillary?

what the frick is this?

<comment><USER16> It is an attempt to appropriate the trappings of knowledge with none of the understanding or uncomfortable changes to way of thinking involved. You see scammers do that all the time like "homeopathic vaccines" the one time their daft dillution principles would ironically be closer to actual medicine they don't do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Generic Brand Video said it better, faster and was more entertaining.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YBtspm8j8M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YBtspm8j8M)

<comment><USER18> Ironically, that video is a genuine ad for a stock footage company. Reality has collapsed on itself and is no longer distinguishable from parody.

<comment><USER19> I think it's a bit of both. Which makes it particularly clever. Not many companies would be willing to poke fun at their own product that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'll take my warnings about insidious cultural programming with a grain of salt when they come from Catholics. Thanks.

<comment><USER21> You should also do that when they come from atheists!

<comment><USER22> If only "atheist" was a meaningful descriptor of how a group acts

<comment><USER23> Likewise, neither is the word "Catholic" actually a meaningful descriptor for how a group acts.

Maybe we should just take the article on the merits of its content, and not its source.

<comment><USER24> When evaluating literature, ignoring the context of the literature strips significant meaning from the literature.

<comment><USER23> Literature? This is a blog post. It's not like I'm losing a critical piece of the Superbowl advertising zeitgeist by ignoring the identity of the authors. The Superbowl is not a figurative tool to be used as the backdrop for religion in modern advertising. If this was reposted anonymously and still stood on its own, would we have to do this song and dance?

The content of this article stands on its own or it doesn't. Ignoring it because it was written by someone with different values from your own is puerile. That was my original point.

<comment><USER20> I mean i was being in tongue in cheek, but it really seems like a "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?" kind of situation.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Not for sale: Luxury groups ponder ways to get rid of their unsold inventory - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/business/2020/01/30/luxury-groups-ponder-ways-to-get-rid-of-their-unsold-inventory <comment><USER2> This is just my personal philosophy:

If an item for sale could be counterfeited and sold to me at full price (or 5% of the real item's price), and I would never know the difference, I probably have no business buying the brand value of it.

If something's value can fluctuate so wildly, and even end up in a trash bin because it can't sell, I'm probably not going to believe that it's something worth me buying.

Maybe I never get to enjoy those luxury watches or backpacks that everyone's wearing (whose point only seems to be the white name patch in the corner), but equally, I never get pulled into buying something that I regret and wonder if it was worth it (or genuine) later.

<comment><USER3> You buy it for others, not for yourself. As long as you're playing status games at certain circles, these things are useful to signal your wealth to people who care

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In a previous life I was in the men's middle tier luxury business. We would go to clothing shows (Javits) in Manhattan. Multiple shoe companies would present a shoe to us that had a "Gucci sole, leather, just no buckle" or a sweater "milled in the same factory that YSL uses" all at a fraction of the price.

Luxury typically today just means logo. Very rarely is a garment worth the 10x markup just because it has a LV or Gucci stamp.

I do think bespoke suits and certain fabrics are worth their ostentatious price points but to your average consumer they just want the brand.

To some extent it's the same in all industries particularly the computer industry.

<comment><USER5> This is why I hate buying clothing/accessories that have a logo on it. Not because I don't want to have a logo showing, but because I feel like I'm paying so I can have that logo.

The nice thing about men's fashion is that there seem to be more staples that are timeless than there are in women's fashion. There are wide swings in women's fashion, but if I buy right, I can get away wearing something for years and it isn't dated.

<comment><USER6> What would you say are some staples in men's fashion? Grey crewneck?

<comment><USER4> Well the most timeless staple is really a principle: fit. When you buy clothing that fits you will (almost) always look better than the average bear.

Good staples to look for / own:

-denim trousers -white and blue dress, oxford, and tee shirts -deep navy blazer (no gold buttons) -mid or dark charcoal grey suit with some depth to it -dark brown cap-toe shoes (with a belt in the same color family) -navy, black, or grey wool sweater

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This reminds me of this video of hundreds of $5,000 Gibson guitars being destroyed. Quite sad to see such wasteful practices.

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

</comment><comment><USER8> The article mentions discount "designer" outlets in the UK. These exist in the USA too, but seem to be (deliberately?) hard to find. E.g. a Google search for "Prada outlet" won't produce useful results. I've been to the one in Palm Springs where family found some quite significantly discounted product at Prada, Burberry, Gucci:

[https://www.premiumoutlets.com/outlet/desert- hills/stores/pr...](https://www.premiumoutlets.com/outlet/desert- hills/stores/prada)

<comment><USER9> Outlet stores really have limited inventory and that is shown if you've ever compared a Gucci/Prada outlet store to a retail store.

Outside of generic items, you will rarely find any gems and also: the more expensive the brand, the more behind the season the outlet store is. They are really not the same as retail stores.

The outlet discount for those brands also rarely exceeds 50%. For some items, it doesn't even exceed 20-30%.

<comment><USER10> A lot of outlet stores have garments produced specifically for them. They never appear in the retail stores. The garments are produced with lower quality materials and lower quality controls and standards in order to keep the selling price point lower.

Edit: The garment producers are basically just paying for licensing of the brand name and slapping a label on them.

<comment><USER11> I wonder how much of this is true and how much of it is face-saving ops for any given party. It must be difficult to know for sure unless you're part of the supply chain.

<comment><USER12> There was a documentary on a German public network where they investigated this and lab tested the garments and the quality of materials from the exact same brand from the flagship stores in the city vs the outlet products. Not all of the brands did this, but a lot of them used outlets to get rid of poor quality stuff, experimental product lines and a lot of low quality garments. In some cases, for Levi for example, they had a lot of styles that you could not even find in the normal retail stores.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This horrible trait of capitalism does not only apply to high end expensive luxury items, unfortunately.

I frequent a thrift store chain called Value Village (aka Savers in USA) quite a bit. So much so that I regularly talk to a lot of the employees in the few that I visit more often. And I love looking at the hoards of books they have on hand at all times.

One day an employee was shuffling books around, taking the older books that hadn't sold in a few months off the shelf.

I asked her what was done with those books, and she admit that they end up in the trash.

Those books didn't cost them a penny. They were all donated for free.

Instead of giving them away or lowering the price below their $2/book minimum they choose to dispose of them at the dump.

That makes perfect sense from a business standpoint, and zero sense from a human standpoint.

There are hoards of extremely impoverished families where I live. The schools are rotting from the inside out.

I imagine either of those groups would gladly take a few free books for their children to read.

Other more human thrift stores in the area offer books for as little as 25 cents each, and they go in the "free" bin if they haven't sold at that price after a few months but at that price they go quickly no matter the book or condition so it's a moot point.

<comment><USER14> TBF humanity probably has an overabundance of Dan Brown, Left Behind, and The Davinci Code copies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can't these brands improve the efficiency of their manufacturing chain so they can scale production with demand and not hold so much inventory? How about using machine learning to more accurately predict how much inventory is necessary?

<comment><USER16> The inventory is usually in retail locations when sold. I can't remember seeing anything in a luxury brand showroom (typically very limited catalogue also) that wasn't in stock. Buyers in this segment don't want to order and wait for it. This makes it difficult to do just-in-time production. Some is artisan produced (luxury watches being one).

Machine learning has yet crack the code on what brand new high fashion style will sell best a season in advance when it is typically manufactured.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Other than slashing prices"

good luck

</comment><comment><USER18> I remember when we went to our honeymoon in Mauritius there were some outlet places they would drive people around to, I figured that was a pretty good idea (although not sure how much of a discount things really were) if the idea is to keep things exclusive then sell your discounted things were it will be too expensive for people to reach.

</comment><comment><USER19> Man, I've been trying to find a Vertu phone for ages. I'd pay top dollar. TOP DOLLAR.

<comment><USER19> Guys. Using a cliched phrase like "top dollar" indicates irony. Repeating it, and especially repeating it in all caps does more than indicate irony, it is screaming irony right next to your ear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Brands at that level only make clothes for the sake of advertising. You need to have the show, which is mostly couture anyways. Accessories, make up and fragrance are what gets them paid. Could only read the first few paragraphs before the paywall, sorry if that was redundant

</comment><comment><USER21> Paywall: [https://pastebin.com/NxwFrYEg](https://pastebin.com/NxwFrYEg)

<comment><USER22> Raw text: [https://pastebin.com/raw/NxwFrYEg](https://pastebin.com/raw/NxwFrYEg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Donate it to the homeless.

<comment><USER24> Maybe but in my experience the more "luxurious" an item is, the crappier it gets. I do think we should hand out milsurp to the houseless because the military (except the army) gets some of the sturdiest garments and equipment I've ever seen. Boots that last a lifetime that kind of stuff. Honestly I wouldnt mind if the military gave us all uniforms (except the army). It's high quality stuff, except for what they make the army use.

<comment><USER15> There's a fake luxury level for which this is true. These are brands like Coach, Vera Bradley, Kate Spade and Tiffany & Co, which are billed as luxury but are primarily bought by lower middle class who want people to believe they have money. These people have been duped and the quality is garbage.

There are some luxury brands making high quality products, but most of them are smaller names that you don't really hear on a daily basis.

<comment><USER24> I knew it! I'll head down to the strip mall and let everyone know! Maybe we can still all pool our money together and get a nice jacket to share or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> They're just too greedy, and produce way too much in hopes of selling it because they must increase growth. Pretty simple, really.

Luxury brands have shot themselves in the foot. Because of this greed, people are now used to 70% (or more) off at sales. Heck, even Mr Porter is doing 80% now. When you know that in a couple of months there's another sale, why would you buy an item for full price? Then, of course, people forget and don't buy the item at all, or maybe their size is now unavailable, trends shift, etc.

It's going to backlash in other ways, too: since you can now get luxury goods for far cheaper, it's not as much a status symbol, so there's even less reason for buying it.

This is also why people go nuts for limited releases, but these luxury houses prioritize growth more than a sustainable business. That risk won't pay off.

<comment><USER9> Luxury goods like Gucci and Louis Vuitton do not go on sale for more than 50% ever. Some goods never go on sale, and some goods take years to go on sale. Even then, it's $2,000 -> $1,000. With that, if you couldn't afford the $2,000, you can't afford the $1,000.

As well, the items that do go on sale are generally not the most sought after items and are mostly the generic items since they have inventory left over.

The brands you are seeing that have 70% off sales are not on the same price class as a brand like Gucci.

There are generally 5 tiers of pricing for clothing brands (by T-Shirt pricing to keep it simple):

$10+, $50+, $100+, $400+, $800+ (Gucci)

... (and of course there are higher and in betweens, but if you look at clothing brands prices the tiers stand out clearly)</comment></comment>


The Third User (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://asktog.com/atc/the-third-user/ <comment><USER8> This resonates with me. I just bought a Pixel 3a and you can tell they spent a lot of time and energy working on all the little sounds and chirps and lights and buzzes that the thing makes whenever it powers on or does anything. It really was amazing the way it did all those little effects in coordination.

And the first thing I did after finishing setup was to find the screen where I could turn all that crap off because really, why would I want my phone to buzz at me ever single time I pressed a key on the keyboard. I mean yeah, it's delightful and all. But it's also terrible.

It's like the "torch mode" that TVs have so that they're extra bright and colourful in the shop. The one that's off by default on the one in the box because the tv you bring home needs to be able to display tv shows without burning out your retinas.

<comment><USER9> The navigation gestures and movements on iOS are a prime example.

They're plenty intuitive, but they're obviously timed for the slowest possible user using them for the first time - so by the hundredth time you try to do something, you're getting really frustrated by having to make grand, exaggerated gestures to get the OS to understand what you want, and I frequently find myself having to repeat actions 2-3 times for them to "take".

<comment><USER10> I strongly disagree: iOS's animations are slow, but its gestures follow your finger and move as fast as you do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can't help but think that Apple was eventually right. Using gestures or scroll wheels to scroll feels superior to dragging a bar with your mouse, and 3D Touch for fine cursor placement on iPhones that support it is better than arrow keys could have been. (Admittedly, I guess this was not a solution when the post came out.)

Disclosure, was once an Apple intern though not on these teams.

Edit: going deeper, I think the reason why you wouldn't want scroll bars and arrow keys is because they're designed for the wrong modality. They were necessary when a mouse and keyboard were the only ways to interact with stuff, but they don't really make sense on touchpads and touchscreens and have their own limitations that can be overcome with gestures (like accurately scrolling large distances at once, for example.) Imagine if today's high-precision touch sensors were ubiquitous before the mouse. Would it make sense in that world to ask for a scroll bar to be constantly beside the window or for arrow keys in your phone? I don't think so.

<comment><USER12> Scroll bars actually show if you don't have a trackpad and are using a mouse.

<comment><USER11> Yep, I've noticed that too. It's a nice touch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is ranty and subjective. Reduction of visual clutter isn't just for people in a store; as someone who uses a Mac professionally, I don't cease to appreciate it.

I was reluctant when I had to enable persistent scroll bars because they affected the layout of the applications I was building, and our users were not all on OSes with that feature. Even on my PC I virtually never drag a scroll bar manually, opting instead for the mouse wheel. With momentum scrolling it's even easier to get straight to where I want to be. And, funnily enough, I only find myself wondering how long a document is at the same time that I'm already scrolling down a bit.

Mobile touch keyboards have very limited real-estate, and arrow keys would be hilariously wasteful of it. Instead iOS lets you drag across the whole keyboard, moving the cursor like a trackpad. I believe this feature didn't exist in 2013, although I also think there was an earlier version confined to the space bar which did. I could be wrong.

The hiding of redundant UX elements isn't an affront to expert users. Expert users appreciate having more space for content that matters and less mental clutter; just ask someone who uses Vi or Emacs. It just happens that Apple has figured out a couple of UX features that are obvious enough to hide even for regular users.

</comment><comment><USER14> The author shares my frustrations with Apple's scroll bar gimmicks. Honestly, I'm surprised that Sublime-style minimaps haven't been adopted by web browsers, word processors, and other mainstream software.

For example, the linked blog post only occupies half of the vertical space on the webpage. The rest is showing comments. So, while reading the article, it's impossible for me to assess how much is actually left... without laboriously scrolling down, hunting for the end of the post, glancing at the scroll bar, and setting a mental checkpoint near the midpoint.

Scroll bars are practically meaningless because they reflect a property of the webpage (instead of the real content therein). This problem is even worse on websites with "infinite scroll" UIs that cause the scroll bar to abruptly change size/location without user input.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's an excellent read.

The same thing that Apple does is also happening in the Linux desktop "department". Just compare GNOME2 and GNOME3. Back in the days I spent hours on configuring GNOME, and that was a lot of fun. Now I have GNOME3. I have to actually modify/hack its config files or even source code in the ugliest ways just to bring back something familiar.

I understand that GNOME3 was an (successful) attempt to attract more users which were intimidated by the more "tractor" or "steam engine" like designs of Linux desktops back then (edit) and they were right! You could break something with a Linux desktop tweak! "Yast!" was a common exclamation for me! It could break the whole OS and prevent it from booting.

<comment><USER16> _I understand that GNOME3 was an (successful) attempt to attract more users which were intimidated by the more "tracktor" or "steam engine" like designs of Linux desktops back then. _

But was it successful? Are there any user statistics? A lot of people I knew were pretty happy back in the day with GNOME 2. After GNOME 3, people fled in all directions (macOS, Xfce, MATE, Cinnamon). I rarely meet new GNOME users or someone who is really happy with GNOME 3.

I am still using GNOME, because it is the best Wayland + HiDPI. Otherwise, I would be looking somewhere else --- I strongly dislike the removal of menus, system tray icons, etc. and having to use flaky extensions to bring some of the functionality back. I just do not understand the GNOME project, they could cater to _a lot_ of people if they brought back some UI elements that people are used to.

<comment><USER15> I agree that GNOME in particular has spooked away power users, yet in terms of usability it also has attracted more naïve users (also thanks to Steam). It was successful attracting less experienced user at the cost of expert users. Exactly what Apple has had achieved. But, all of that is guesswork without numbers.

Has anyone ever conducted a big fat user computer desktop UX survey yet?

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure if qualifies as big and/or fat, but LinuxQuestions perform an annual poll of their users on all manner of topics [1] including "Desktop Environment of the Year"[2].

Not sure how representative it is and it's only a few hundred participants, but here are the top 5:

29% - Plasma Desktop (KDE)

26% - <USER2>

11% - <USER3>

10% - GNOME Shell

10% - <USER4>

This (larger) poll over at r/linux[3] puts GNOME Shell in 2nd place:

29% - <USER5>

21% - GNOME Shell

14% - <USER6>

12% - <USER7>

[1] [https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux- news-59/2018-...](https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux- news-59/2018-linuxquestions-org-members-choice-award-winners-4175648153/)

[2] [https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/2018-linuxquestions...](https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/2018-linuxquestions- org-members-choice-awards-128/desktop-environment-of-the-year-4175645570/)

[3] [https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/879ram/poll_which_de...](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/879ram/poll_which_desktop_environment_do_you_use_on_your/)

<comment><USER18> These surveys are taken within "linux community". Therefore, they are pretty wrong in numbers, as all those moms and granddands using Ubuntu are not part of "linux community".

Debian's Popularity Contest shows 10% for Plasma Desktop [0] and 26% for Gnome Shell [1] installations. Which seems more accurate in terms of usage and popularity.

Although Debian has been traditionally a more Gnome-friendly distro. But most popular distro's are.

[0] [https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=plasma- desktop](https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=plasma-desktop)

[1] [https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=gnome- shell](https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=gnome-shell)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I feel like Apple's approach to UI/UX is one half care and consideration for the current user and the rest is "training" for whatever they intend next.

The design world at large gave them shit for excessive Skeuomorphism but it really did train a huge group of people young and old how to use a touch screen.

</comment><comment><USER20> A related discussion from earlier today: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19887519](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19887519).

</comment><comment><USER21> Okay, before tech-savvy vim-using HNers complain about Apple not making proper computers, touchbar is an unpredictable/unfixable mess, worst UX ever, please think about what kind of tools you're using with your computer. For a person who regularly uses Emacs for coding, Photoshop and Illustrator for graphic design, Xcode sometimes, and casual apps like Safari, Finder, Powerpoint, etc... the touch bar is an innovation. It allows using context-aware menus without moving my hands from the keyboard to my trackpad or mouse; and it is much more discoverable since the touch bar items are shown at a glance. Isn't one of the biggest reasons of using vim/emacs is that one doesn't have to move one's hand from the keyboard? Why complain about the touch bar when the editor you're using is failing to show context-sensitive menus...? I've once wrote a super hacky script I made by copy-pasting some plugin codes and some shell script, pandoc, some elisp and some AppleScript, hooked the script up with a touchbar item to scrape the DOM, convert into org/md and open a new buffer in emacs with the appropriate mode on. I've used it very effectively until I formatted my computer by accident and my code disappeared. Don't complain with the touchbar; complain to your tools. To get the most out of your computer, use tools or make one that is designed for your computer.

BTW, I'm not saying everything is right; I think that hapic feedback should be given when the touchbar is pressed; some touchbar default layouts aren't consistent between apps; etc... I'm saying that it's not right to call the touchbar as shit when you're not using the appropriate tools.

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't think anyone buys computer because they looked at it in the store and the display looked clean. Tech savvy users have very specific requirements. Tech unsavvy users typically just want to buy something that's familiar.

This article claims that the UX community doesn't like Apple. I always thought that Apple was considered to be the epicenter of good, functional design.

<comment><USER23> These days, you can't tell whether or not something's a button on iOS, and I've "lost" files in Finder because there weren't any scroll bars, and it was off-screen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Apple already does this: Garage Band, Logic and then Logic with enabled additional features is exactly the progression author describes. (I assume that iMovie and Final Cut are similar).

If only they did it with the OS as well.

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't know. For me, these are some rules of thumb for a successful UI design:

1) If you don't need some UI element or feature right now, it doesn't stay in your way;

2) Still, it remains easily discoverable.

Auto-hiding scrollbars are a perfect examples of successful application of this rule. I like them. Apple are the experts along these lines: nearly everybody else either exposes all knobs and controls as the authors of this article advocate (it creates visual clutter), or keeps power features undiscoverable, relying on documentation and keyboard shortcuts (as UI minimalists advocate).

The truth is in the middle.

</comment><comment><USER26> The key to understanding Apple is that they could do somewhere between 1-3 things company-wide really well, when Steve Jobs was there to focus on them. Now that he's gone, as in the 90s, it's just a question of how long they can run on fumes.

</comment><comment><USER27> Excellent read.

I would like to point out that the scroll bars can actually be made to show "always" in the Preferences.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm super intrigued by the question of which approach leads to the best products:

Engineering (technical) vs industrial design (arts)

Companies like Google, Microsoft, Tesla, PayPal, SpaceX, Facebook, Amazon were all born out of the technical discipline. The founders were engineers. They also did the UX.

Then there's Apple. Who was Steve Jobs? To what extent was he an engineer? Did he approach product design from an engineering discipline or an industrial design (arts) discipline? Is industrial design the secret key to Apple's success or was it primarily the result of an excellent hardware/software engineering approach?</comment>


Square Buys OrderAhead - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-01/square-buys-orderahead-to-grab-pickup-business-at-restaurants <comment><USER2> Just this last weekend I had my friend tell me about the crap he went through with OrderAhead when they created a counterfeit website for his Michelin- starred restaurant.[0]

He reached out and asked for them to hand over the domain. They refused and said he should be thankful for the free advertising and free work they put into his business. He got a lawyer and they gave it to him.

Maybe Square/Caviar bought those!

[0] [http://www.geekwire.com/2015/exclusive-thousands-of-rogue- re...](http://www.geekwire.com/2015/exclusive-thousands-of-rogue-restaurant- websites-diverting-customers-to-orderahead-deliveries/)

</comment><comment><USER3> > Square won't take on any of the San Francisco startup's employees, according > to a person familiar with the matter.

So they just bought their customer list?

<comment><USER4> An acquifire, wth??

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Assuming that any money from this deal hits common stock - I hope that some kind of fast-forwarding was negotiated for the employees. It seems like anybody who got hired in the last year ostensibly is being let go before hitting cliff, meaning that they lose stock and get no upside from the acquisition.

</comment><comment><USER6> i remember "using" orderahead ~4 years ago.

there is a popular lunch spot in sf/soma called hrd. if you've ever been there you know the line gets ridiculously long. i saw they had orderahead available so i dled the app, and tried to preorder from the restaurant the next day.

except the app prevented you from ordering during the lunch rush hour.

<comment><USER7> I can understand this, though. An Indian restaurant close to me does not accept orders in Seamless during lunch rush hour (noon - 1pm).

For a restaurant with limited bandwidth that offers pickup and delivery as an additional method, it makes sense for them to honor only earlier / in time pickup orders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Square won't take on any of the San Francisco startup's employees

How does this even work? Give us your database keys and get out?

<comment><USER9> I would imagine something like the official close on the transaction being a short time in the future.

Then, an offer of some kind of severance to existing employees...provided they participate in some kind of handover work during the transition period. If you don't cooperate, then no severance. Not unlike typical outsourcing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How exactly does this compare to Caviar? Screenshots show the app used to support delivery, so sounds like they scaled back to pickup only. Why did Square buy them when they could have just added a pickup option to caviar? Was it just to add their merchants to their network?

<comment><USER5> Quick example: Philz uses both Orderahead and Caviar.

If you are going to a Philz store and want to skip the line, use OrderAhead to have the drink waiting at the bar. Particularly helpful during a morning rush.

If you are at home and want a bagel delivered to your door, use Caviar.

<comment><USER10> I mean I understand that, but am wondering why Square bought them. Is there some sort of sophisticated technology that goes into adding a pickup option when you can already handle _pickups by deliverers_? No, I'd think it's not a technology acquisition. Are they buying the customer list, as someone asked? Did they just not pay very much?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seems like an interesting strategy:

1\. Launch a new pickup feature.

2\. Buy its main and arguably well established competitor.

3\. Migrate their users and restautants to your service.

4\. Let the actual employees go (probably with a nice severance package).</comment>


Builders Ditch Nest After Google Ties Devices to Digital Assistant - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-17/builders-ditch-nest-as-google-ties-digital-assistant-to-devices <comment><USER4> Nest has been so terribly mismanaged seemingly from the beginning of the acquisition; has there been any management level change to compensate for the poor execution?

I really like the look of the Nest thermometer, but I definitely don't want Google in control of anything in my house, or listening to anything in my house, with how the manage this stuff.

If I do automate anything, I will be going with Home Assistant, even though I kind of despise home rolling these sorts of things. I don't trust any of the major players, and their recent behavior and lack of care for the user makes me nervous for the future of tech.

<comment><USER5> Management at big companies like Google is about protecting your $1M+ paycheck a year and not about innovation. You don't rock the boat and you don't stick your neck out. These companies are not hungry, they are simply greedy.

<comment><USER6> The beautiful thing about this is that any half-bright kid could come along and kick these executives to the curb. There is zero technical barrier to entry in home automation products; the technology is dead simple. The only problem is that you cannot get conventional VCs to fund it because the only way to achieve high-growth and a rapid 10x exit is to spy on people. But if capital were available for moderate-growth, sustaining companies, privacy- respecting HA would be an easy market to penetrate.

<comment><USER7> > But if capital were available for moderate-growth, sustaining companies, > privacy-respecting HA would be an easy market to penetrate.

There is, you've described a small business loan. The problem is that you can't be entering a new field. No investor wants to give money for a high risk, low return investment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not only do they now force you to have a Google account and Google Assistant (via Android or Google Home) to take full advantage of your Nest now, but they also pretty much gutted the API in the name of "privacy." Ironic.

I was looking to play with my historical data to try and figure out how my two heating and cooling systems were interacting, but that data is no longer available to non-grandfathered developers. The only way to access my own data from my super-technologically-advanced-device-owned-by-Google is by ordering a dump of CSV files.

<comment><USER9> I don't think anyone in the tech world believes Google killed integration features in the name of privacy.

The fact that that's the PR spin they chose points to how poorly managed the entire division must be.

If you want more control, just say it.

<comment><USER8> It's definitely a convenient excuse if you just want to be lazy. I certainly can't imagine how any Nest developer could abuse my private data any worse than Google already does.

God forbid any third party should find out -- with my permission! -- what my thermostat was set to last Monday.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I finished setting up a pile of Nest thermostats and cameras about a month before Google killed "works with Nest". Am now planning to remove all of the Nest products. Haven't figured out what to replace the cameras with (I do not want to go through this again with another vendor). The Nest thermostats were great for the first couple of years we had them and we saw some measurable savings on heating and cooling. Killing off the automation options via IFTTT kills the utility of the thermostats for me (and Google Assistant is useless as a replacement if your primary Google accounts are G Suite accounts).

<comment><USER11> I use Wyze cameras for baby monitors, home security, etc., and I've been pretty happy with them. They're cheap enough that you can throw a camera at pretty much any idea. They are a cloud-based product so they come with all of the associated privacy concerns, but if you were using Nest then that's maybe not a huge deal. Not affiliated with the company, just relatively pleased with the products.

<comment><USER12> The Wyze cams are very cheap and you might be able to use them locally as normal network cameras without any internet connection.

A year or two ago I looked into this and there was a 'jailbreak' to load different firmware onto it, but I think it stopped being functional due to updates. However, I have heard things about an official offline firmware being released by Wyze which you may want to look into.

<comment><USER13> Awesome, that'd be huge. Only issue with them are the SD cards being the canonical place to store footage... so if the criminal (or weather event) destroys the cameras.... not so useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It is not just Google. Regulation on listening devices, especially those that can connect to or transmit to a network, needs a big overhaul.

Yes, I know every phone is basically the same thing and we all have those near or with us all the time, but that does not mean all our conversations and other sounds are up for grabs.

A more sane model could be requiring a deliberate manual action to turn on the the microphone for up to 10 seconds.

Something like STNG's comms badges that you touch to speak would be nice.

<comment><USER15> We are at kind of reaching climax here, it's going to get harder to collect anymore thing. With the gesture recognition SOLI chips, they managed to introduce what is technically a sexual performance monitor in the android phone near your bed, without even an ounce of resistance from the public.

Every advertiser and surveillance wet dream is now achieved.

There is no other term than total victory for the post-privacy world. It is time to surrender without conditions before they leverage their knowledge of our declining interests in our wives or of our extra-marital adventures.

(edit:There is still time to avoid blood and tears)

<comment><USER16> ... if you want privacy, maybe turn off these things on your phone. Even just simply switching off the phone is easy. My phone boots in half a minute and switches off in ~5 seconds.

Home automation should have a switch off too.

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure why you would think that your phone is 100% off when it's "off". PCs have had an "always on" secondary processor and OS[1] for years now that runs whenever there is power, and you can't remove the battery in most phones, can you?

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

<comment><USER16> I'm fairly confident that if it's off it's not on the network, so it cannot be turned on remotely either. (Baseband hacking and fake-off malware aside. That would be very easily detected, because batteries would die left and right.)

Sure, it's not 100.0% off, for example the battery management system is consuming some power, and maybe it's motherboard is "energized" like with ATX boards, so it can respond to switch on via keypress (which worked on PS/2, and probably there's some USB functionality that can do this too).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Builders have to offer warranties on new houses, including HVAC systems. Which means that the builder and their insurance company is liable when Google screws up. What insurance company would want to be in that position?

<comment><USER19> This is the correct answer. When the next recession hits and google panics and dumps all this crap overboard, the builder is left holding the bag.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Someone needs to start a home device company with open-source firmware.

Yes, susceptible to cheap Chinese clones, but if done correctly could control the market.

<comment><USER21> The market for hackable devices in every other domain (routers, phones, etc) is _at most_ 1% of the total. Why would home automation be different?

<comment><USER22> This. X10 has been around for decades. Even the most common of devices - <USER2> home router - how many run openwrt?

<comment><USER23> Netgear, TP-Link, Linksys, D-Link and most other router vendors run 4 to 6 year old branches of OpenWRT on their products.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> But when are they/we going to learn the meta lesson, which is that this is an inevitable outcome [0] of every "cloud" connected piece of trash? With the ease of distributing software to mobile devices, there is little reason for something to be designed around phoning home instead of using well documented protocols on the local network, but for the "value add" of gradually implementing ever more surveillance and lock in.

Frankly the tech community is shirking our professional responsibility by not loudly condemning marketing-pushed junk like Nest, and letting it gain market share in the first place.

[0] Well, one of two possible outcomes really. The other being plain abandonment.

</comment><comment><USER25> Not surprised. Google should've left nest out of this. Now they need everyone who has a house, a google account as well. Tony Fadell probably wouldn't like how google transformed his product.

<comment><USER26> >> _Tony Fadell probably wouldn't like how google transformed his product._

as if Google was a paragon of integrity and privacy when Nest was sold for billions...

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Well when they first came out I thought the product was super innovative. But the competition didn't rest on their laurels either. I've looked at many smart thermostats over the last year. We settled on HomeKit because of the privacy and it not being IoT based. This knocked Nest out of the running.

<comment><USER28> >Well when they first came out I thought the product was super innovative.*

I never really understood it. It's a nice looking, albeit expensive, thermostat with some simple optimization algorithms. Now it's a spying tool.

Meanwhile, my HVAC runs on a dumb Honeywell unit that I can program a schedule on. Haven't even replaced the batteries in years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> We have Nest thermostats without a google account or any mobile app connected to them. They work fine.

This Google account stuff is only for extended automation or integration with other "smart" home stuff. I doubt many people really need or want all that, and it's mostly a gimmick anyway.

<comment><USER30> I don't know if I would exactly call the ability to monitor/adjust the set temperature in your home from in bed without having to get up and walk to the thermostat on the other side of the house a gimmick. It's also handy when you're on the couch and have a child and/or a couple cats sleeping on you that you don't want to disturb. It even functions to reduce low-level irrational anxieties when traveling [Is my house on fire right now? Okay, thermostat's still connected and temperature looks normal, I can stop worrying about that for the moment.]

I'm as wary of this continuing mass privacy invasion as anyone, but the reason it's getting traction is because it offers new functionalities people value that are decidedly _not_ just gimmicks.

<comment><USER31> "Is my house on fire right now?" may sound paranoid, but "Has my house lost power due to the blizzard, and if so, is it getting cold enough to burst the pipes?" doesn't.

<comment><USER29> If you lost power how is it reporting anything? And how do you turn on the heat without power?

<comment><USER31> OK, if the power is out you wouldn't know the temperature. Although in theory you could build a battery powered cellular system.

But like slfnflctd said, if it doesn't report that the situation is normal, there's likely to be a problem.

If there's no power and it's cold enough to matter, you go there (or call a neighbor or handyman) to either start a generator, start up a kerosene heater, or drain the pipes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I don't trust technology companies to mess up updating apps, removing features or breaking working functionality, sure as hell as I don't trust them with something permanently in my wall. Oh sorry, we decided to end the support for this product because there weren't any users. No, you can't use it offline. Buy a new one, break your walls every three years etc.

Maybe, maybe companies who produce industrial equipment, and know what it takes to have something work for 20 years non stop. DOS based CNC machines etc.

</comment><comment><USER33> I've been leery of Google ever since they required me to enable web and search history to use weather and calendar alerts with Google Home.

<comment><USER34> This annoyed me quite a bit as well. My Google Assistant device has a LED display that ordinarily displays the time and the temperature below it, but the temperature part was just blank without the history enabled which seems incredibly vindictive to be.

<comment><USER35> That is hostile to the user. Wow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> [https://outline.com/JUHxC3](https://outline.com/JUHxC3)

</comment><comment><USER37> First they come for search.

Then they come for e-mail.

Then they come for mobile.

Then they come for your home.

Then no privacy is left.

Then we lose.

<comment><USER38> You forgot autonomous vehicles, which double as a high capacity sensor platform connected to the mother hive. On which you can keep piling more and more intrusive sensors in the name of safety. If you ever wondered why Google of all companies is in the forefront of that technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I bought a nest thermostat just before google bought it. Returned it immediately because even before the current "smart home" insanity I knew google couldn't be trusted to not harvest and steal information about you.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm ditching Nest when my contract is up. They're forcing everyone to convert to Google accounts. I guess I'll replace them with Ring cams? Doesn't seem like there are many other good cheap alternatives with a data storage plan.

I also have a 4G Arlo security camera and wish there were more 4G/5G remote camera options.... hoping we're about to get more options as 5G spreads.

<comment><USER41> Ring means you use an Amazon owned account.

<comment><USER40> I'm aware, but I firmly see Google as worse company and steward of my personal data than Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> It really is a pox of a product. I'm in the process of buying a house and any listings with Nest products I just skip. I know it is negligible, financially and physically, to remove them, but why even bother when there are plenty of options that don't come pre-equipped with dysfunctional spyware.

<comment><USER43> > I'm in the process of buying a house and any listings with Nest products I > just skip.

That is incredibly foolish. You're cutting off your nose to spite your face. A thermostat can be replaced for under $100.

Instead you choose to miss out on options that might be desirable. You're not teaching anyone a lesson here.

This sounds exactly like something RMS would say.

Be pragmatic.

<comment><USER20> But he's no idea how deeply integrated it is?

<comment><USER44> It's a thermostat! They don't sink tentacles into the walls to leave behind invisible internet-enabled slime. You can replace a thermostat.

<comment><USER42> I think I acknowledged the ease of removal, but in the market I am in - <USER3> back home to Portland, Ore. - most of the homes that have Nest products have multiple Nest thermostats, Nest locks, and Nest smoke detectors. As the article alludes to, it is a product line that contractors were going all-in on for quite a while. There are an abundance of wonderful homes that do not have these gadgets, so using one data point to limit my search can be helpful. I am looking at a lot of homes while working full-time in a different city. Sure, I may miss the perfect house, but I doubt it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>