The impact of the 'open' workspace on human collaboration - <AUTHOR> http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/373/1753/20170239 <comment><USER2> I joke that my career went downhill from when I started. At first I had my own office, with a door, desk, computer desk, bookshelf with books, two chairs in front of my desk for small meetings. Then I had a large, tall cube, with reasonable space. Next I had a small, short walled cube I could barely fit in and would bump into my neighbor. Finally I was in a open space, with tens of other people yapping in their speakerphones many times in the same online meeting, with maddening echo. One person got sick, everyone got sick. If you want to get any work done you need to wear Bose cancelling headphones. Finally I managed to work from home. Once again I have my private office, silence, communicate via Slack and email, and never been more productive in my life.

<comment><USER3> Still waiting for the joke part...

Programmers have also lost a lot of respect, and are now seen as simple factory workers who glue things together according to best practice.

<comment><USER4> Programmers are a trade worker the same as plumbers and electricians, etc.... There was a bit of 'magic happens here' in the industry for a while but nowadays we're pretty much a skilled trade.

<comment><USER5> Trade _means_ "skilled work", so programming has always been by definition a trade. That's not disparaging in the least. There's absolutely nothing wrong with trade work.

My only issue is the matter of supplies. If you hired me as an electrician but wouldn't let me have any wire cutters, I would have a very difficult time doing my job. Likewise, a quiet space to think is one of the necessary reagents for programming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Office rents are based on floor space. Open offices require less floor space than closed offices, which means they're cheaper. They're also more scalable and agile. You can rearrange desks and even cram in more employees per desk when you need to quickly ramp up. Increasing collaboration is just the bullshit excuse.

Everywhere I work is an open office and we all wear our noise cancelling headphones, playing whatever music doesn't break our concentration, and communicate via Slack.

<comment><USER7> I wish employers could realize that they employ grownups and could at least be honest to them.

<comment><USER8> If you expect people to do the right thing, you are going to live in a world of disappointment.

The only way to avoid this is to have the chance (e.g financial and social opportunity) and to use the chance (e.g by working and choosing) to set yourself in the right environment for you. Wanting the environment you are in to change does not work.

Just like you don't get more money by negotiating with your current boss, but by negotiating with bosses in other companies.

You can, and my, decide it's your mission to change your environment. It's possible. But you usually can only one mission in life, so choose carefully.

<comment><USER9> I'm this person right now. I'm living in a world of disappointment, always trying to encourage people to communicate, collaborate, work together, do things better together. It seems I'm always doing it in places that don't appreciate it.

I've learned the hard way that you appear to be right, one can't change this alone and doing so is maddening, depressing and frustrating. Especially when the verbal outward presentation by people is that they want and value the things I mentioned, but the actions don't match up.

I think I need to change, but, I can't help feeling cynical, like I'm giving up and running every time I see such a situation. And then I wonder, if everyone follows the same pattern, how are we actually improving the situation on a bigger scale?

I guess a question is, is it better to stand whatever ground you are on to help encourage positive growth and values, or just find new ground, as you seem to be saying.

I'm getting older and I still haven't figured it out. I think you might be right, but it seems depressing to me to accept it.

<comment><USER10> I've had _precisely_ the same experience as you're describing.

I don't have a total answer, but I suspect a basic problem is that we have too simplistic an understanding of human psychology.

It's also possible that it's a chasm you and/or I can never cross, because to effect the kind of improvements you're describing requires having a particular persona.

I'd _love_ to hear any ideas people have on solving this issue.

<comment><USER11> My experience is that environment vastly trumps individual psychology. If you aren't in some way empowered to reshape the environment then the best you can do is swap environments. Environments resist change so it takes sigifigant leverage to change them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "What is surprising is that more open, transparent architecture prompted such a substitution."

Why is that surprising? You removed offices so of course people don't talk anymore - politeness dictates that you don't want to interrupt other people.

And performance declined, which they blamed on switching to email rather than talking, while ignoring the even more obvious: now every time your coworkers have a conversation it interrupts you.

The use of cubicles and open plan has been shown in every actual study to have a negative impact on performance.

I have friends in open plans, and literally the best thing I have heard is that if you get the right place there isn't that much distraction.

My opinion is that if managers and executives are convinced open plan is "better" they should be placed in an open plan environment for at least 12 months before /any/ employees are moved into it. Of course that will never happen because the real purpose of open plan is to make sure that non- management employees know their place: they [and their health] are not individually important, and are just fungible units that can be replaced at will.

<comment><USER13> I've seen executives agree to such a plan and then commandeer a conference room for months at a time because they're always on an "important call" or something else.

<comment><USER12> Right? The arguments I have is that there a "meeting rooms" for conversations, to which I say: there are hundreds of employees and 5 such rooms. If they're for conversation they should be limited to maybe 30 minute stints, and cannot be functionally boomed for longer.

Of course again the purpose is to denigrate the employees who actually do work, rather than to be a better work environment.

And as other people have pointed out: the turn the office into an experiment in the spread of contagious diseases

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I just left the office after failing to concentrate on a method that took 6 booleans as an argument and constructed a set of > 10 SQL queries, despite blasting Chopin on my headphones, because there were 3 different conversations being held behind my back.

My current employer has a "strict" no WFH policy.

And this is the best working environment I've had. By the time I left my previous jobs I was almost clinically depressed and a big part of that was the horrible open office culture.

Can't wait till the entire industry goes mostly WFH so it's easier for your average dev to get such a job.

<comment><USER15> > Can't wait till the entire industry goes mostly WFH

when and why would this ever happen?

<comment><USER14> This is my gut feeling. It's a combination of it being trendy (because people love it, and companies love to seem hip), saves companies money (one of the reasons for open office plans incidentally), and as more and more workers prefer working that way, it will be a good perk to have. Once something like this reaches critical mass (ie. after a few success stories) I feel companies will jump on it.

Of course, all this because we generally, since we invented the internet, seem to avoid commuting to things we would rather spend less time on and don't require out actual physical presence. Same reason we pay our bills online, do our shopping online etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Outside of the discussion about the cheapness of open floor plans. I think the heart of the matter is that companies are looking for passive collaboration creators. This is because actively collaborating: reaching out, holding team sessions, scheduling meetings, following up, etc. is _hard_.

These companies ask themselves, why put energy into a system when we can foster serendipitous collaboration?

There is something to it, and especially with putting people geographically near each other, but I think reliance on this kind of form actually is a detriment to most white-collar type jobs. There needs to be a _reason_ for people to interact in a work context, to find common or linking skills or activities.

I think it would be better served if most companies just had a once a month mixer and the rules were that you had to sit at a table with all strangers, introduce yourselves, your background, what you did and what you were currently working on. In my experience that exchange seems to bring for more promise of future collaboration than any number of passings at the coffee machine or trying to drown out your neighbor 3 cubes over with headphones and loud music.

<comment><USER17> A communal eating area tries to follow the same logic - let's get everyone eating at the same place and collaborating that way. Instead it's the same group of extroverts talking loudly and the majority of the office scampers back to their desks to eat while they work.

I feel like a once a month mixer would be social anxiety hell. It would be the one introvert per table making noise.

<comment><USER10> FWIW, I've had the opposite experience. In the one office I've been at that had this, it was a really nice experience.

It was cool to break daily bread with the CEO. It probably was one of the keys to avoid having org-chart hierarchy become social hierarchy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> From my personal experience having been in both offices and open workspaces I notice that when we had offices people would go in, close the door and have a conversation. With an open space either people wanted to have private conversations (and didn't want to make the other person have to move) or were afraid of disturbing others so IM became more commonplace.

<comment><USER19> I miss having private quiet conversations about things. Now it seems to be all about meetings where only the loudest people get a word in. There is no time to develop a thought slowly.

<comment><USER20> It's really frustrating. I'm an anxious, big person with a naturally loud voice and poor perception (not due to bad hearing, but due to being very easily overwhelmed). Talking in open spaces makes me really self-conscious, and, conversely, trying to be "moderate" is about as efficient as not speaking all — which is the option many of my coworkers choose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Lately I've been thinking about this and I feel that it's a prime example of a situation where it's better to measure than assume. I get the impression that there's a particularly compelling assumption to be made that getting people into closer proximity will lead to more social interactions, this tends to be unquestioned however. It has always seemed to me that more interactions doesn't imply a higher quality of interactions, but the underlying assumption that it leads to more interactions might not even be true.

The other day I was in the city and I noticed that there's large crowds of people and that people _not_ interacting as much unless they already know the other people. And this is in absolute terms not just percentage terms for some people. In regional areas there's fewer people but the times you bump into people you tend to have much higher quality interactions, even if the people you bump into are strangers you tend to say hello at the least. I wonder if open plan offices have some of this sort of effect going on.

<comment><USER22> More social interactions can be a goal itself - in making e.g. a workplace a fun place to work. However, that comes at the cost of productivity. If there is a pressure on the employees to perform, they'll get grumpy because the open workspace stifles productivity.

<comment><USER23> I work in a high pressure, open plan office, and I quite like it. I think stopping a few times a day to have a chat with someone is good for my productivity. You don't work at full capacity for every minute of the day, and breaking work up with a distraction every so often seems to work for me.

I think the biggest difference between where I am now, and other places I've worked is that all my colleagues like and respect each other. I like talking to the people I sit near, because I like them.

<comment><USER24> Occasional chat is great and everyone needs break. However, when everyone's break is interrupting me because it is too close and loud, then it sums up to too many breaks and situation in which it is hard to concentrate. No matter how I like the people - it might be even more interrupting when I like them and I am interested in what they say.

<comment><USER23> I'm not bothered by the background noise in my office. The sales floor is a different story, but the engineers I work with speak at a reasonable volume.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "an F2F interaction was recorded when three conditions were met: two or more badges (i) were facing each other (with uninterrupted infrared line-of-sight), (ii) detected alternating speaking, and (iii) were within 10 m of each other."

I wonder if condition (i) makes sense. From my experience in open offices, communication mostly happens when I and some colleague are both sitting behind our pc's. So there is no uninterrupted line of sight.

<comment><USER26> I was thinking the same thing.

Based on the image of the Sociometric badge and how it lays on your chest, it seems like this condition would miss a large portion of the communication that an open office incentivizes including talking over your computers, turning your head to the side and speaking, and speaking without being face to face.

EDIT: grammar

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> If this result is replicated a few times it really puts to bed the idea that open office environments are about "increasing collaboration". Hopefully, at that point management can at least be honest and say: "We need to cut costs, so we're not buying any cubes."

<comment><USER28> Do people really like cube farms? Honest question.

<comment><USER2> "Gosh can anything be worse than a cube?" Management: "hold my beer"

<comment><USER10> One of the rare moments that I miss Slashdot's "+1 Funny" rating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I sadly got into the developer game a bit too late to know the paradise of private offices or even cubicles, and have had an open office my entire career.

Personally, I find them incredibly distracting; there is a TV right behind me playing the World Cup right now, and people cheering every couple minutes whenever something happens. I work relatively close to the eating area, so I have to hear lunch conversations.

I'm also not innocent of office annoyances; occasionally I will argue with my coworkers about a design or how some code should be written, and I'm sure that that is annoying to the other people sitting on my floor, not to mention me typing on my IBM Model F keyboard noisily.

I live in the NYC area, so I guess rents are expensive enough to where private offices are out of the question until you're a CTO or something, but I would definitely prefer if this trend of open offices were to die. It's gotten to a point to where I'm thinking that my next job will have to be remote so that I can work in my guest room on my desk.

</comment><comment><USER30> I've heard it claimed that offices with about 6-8 people are best for people being able to talk to each other in a productive way. Any larger, and most people will use e-mail to avoid disturbing other people. The effect might vary depending on country, age group and so on.

<comment><USER31> can the same be said of slack?

</comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands I've been in all kinds of office setups. The one office I had the most collaboration between developers had cubes with a high side wall and the wall between the cube behind you was lower.

The cubes were very similar to these: [https://tse1.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.sZX3B6yJTUoJHOJ- t_3-TQHaF...](https://tse1.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.sZX3B6yJTUoJHOJ- t_3-TQHaFj&pid=Api)

At the time, we had a fairly small group. Four front-end devs, three back-end devs, and a two designers. The devs all sat together on one side in a row and the designers on the other side. When the back-end guys had a JS or styling issue, they could just stand up and walk around the desk. If they needed a PM or a designer, they would use the interoffice IM system. We had a ton of back- end and front-end collaboration since we had several large whiteboards on the wall next to our cubes. A lot of time, you would be working and hear two devs talking about a problem. It was easy to just swivel in your chair and see if you had any input or ideas. We solved a lot of issues just with devs overhearing something and chiming in.

In the open space I'm in now, people won't even look at you when you're sitting next to them. Everything is done over IM. It's like there's invisible walls around everybody, even though we're all working shoulder to shoulder and on the same team. Our team is scattered throughout the building we're in so in person collaboration is really rare. It's practically the exact opposite of what they were hoping for.

</comment><comment><USER32> The "benefits" of open offices are just PR/marketing speak and corporate white lies because they don't want to state the real (and ugly) reasons.

</comment><comment><USER33> Well we know this right, but we're still subjecting ourselves to these bizarre environments that make us less productive and less happy. On top of that, this is just one area that we're sure is obviously stupid and it's measurable. There's about 100 other things at work that are also obviously stupid but might not be as measurable or popular to critique.

</comment><comment><USER34> There is no floor-plan that compensates for strong leadership and effective management.

<comment><USER32> And contrary to common belief there's no development methodology that makes up for incompetence and lack of trust.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I will work for the first tech executive who takes all of this data and uses it as evidence to crush the open office BS once and for all. I remember when Jensen Huang started pitching this folderol as "the office of the future-ture- ture-ture-tire..." back in 2009 during one of his NVIDIA quarterly revival meetings. It was a dumb idea then and nothing has changed about in the intervening 9 years except that he was indeed right that it was "the office of the future-ture-ture-ture-tire..."

Die Open Office Die...

</comment><comment><USER36> Open Office spaces is another prevelence from startups copied elsewhere in corporations without thought. For a startup in Silicon valley where rents are high it makes sense to save cost on office space to decrease cash burn rate.

Just because it is good for Silicon Valley startups does not mean its a good fit for the rest of the world.

As a programmer you need peace and quiet when solving problems. You also need non interrupt time. Working in open office space is both loud and interrupt driven.

As the article shows open office space decrease collaboration which is not what was intended.

</comment><comment><USER37> Where I've worked before we had a hybrid of open/closed. We had 'pods' of 4-5 people and single cubes at each end of them for tech leads. There were traditional door offices scattered around the office for those that really needed focus or for reasons of seniority etc. This system worked really well. It was quiet but we had lots of easy collaboration within our team pods.

Office design can be as creative and unique as you need it to be, there is absolutely no reason to have the black and white approach to open plan / cubes.

<comment><USER38> This is the way some Amazon offices are laid out more or less. Team areas seating 5-10 are "open areas" (with the stupid door-desk things inside) but have half- or full-walls between each team area. Most team areas have 1-2 doored offices for manager-types or some are used as a quiet space. Older implementations of this use those cubicle half-wall things between the team areas which is better than nothing. Seems like a nice compromise and lets each team decide how they want to balance the distraction-versus-collaboration equation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Last night I randomly decided that today I'd like to work from the cosy city next door. (It's a one hour train ride.)

Before heading out, I did a bit of homework about coffee shops from where I can work from. I woke up early, biked to the station and took a pleasant one hour train ride to my destination city. After a small walk, I arrived at a good Coffee Bar / Roastery (with a decent internet connection). Spent three hours of my productive morning work day there.

Then, a longer walk for lunch break at a not-too-expensive vegetarian place. Following that, walk to a calming and tastefully designed book café that I already researched about; it was one of the most relaxing and productive coffee shops I've ever been to. I worked a good three-ish hours there. During my break time there, I also discovered a wonderful book. Then I walked back to the station, took the return train, and biked back home.

It was a long day, but a nice change in scenery. Glad I work remotely.

<comment><USER40> Do u get lonely?

<comment><USER39> Occasionally, like any other human. I keep healthy work hours. And I try maintain a decent life besides work, with hobbies that doesn't require me to sit like a vegetable and stare at a screen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Back when I worked in a place where everyone having an office was common it was probably the peak level of collaboration I've experienced in my career. When everyone has an office it's easy to have small meetings with people (either scheduled or impromptu), and small meetings are where a lot of stuff can get done. You can gain and exchange context effectively, you can safely talk about institutional problems, even heavily critically, without worrying about what management might think, you can easily cover multiple topics because you don't have to worry about keeping your talk short or on an agenda (which is more of an imperative if you are having a chat in an open plan office or having a planned meeting in a conference room). You can also develop camaraderie and friendship more easily because you don't have to worry about your talk about "trivial" things (like tv or video games or whatever) interrupting everyone within earshot.j

P.S. One of the most fantastic things about offices is learning from your peers. This doesn't happen to the same degree in open plan office that I can see, but with the privacy of offices it's much easier to have a conversation open up into talk about various subjects. And those can take the form of a lecture (here's how this system/algorithm/process/whatever works) or a conversation (here's an opinion I want to share about the fundamentals of software development, or such-like). That sort of thing is pure gold in terms of personal development and career advancement, it not only shares knowledge between people and opens up people's eyes to different takes on "the craft" in general, but it clues people in to the idea that it is worth caring about and thinking about fundamental questions like best practices, people management, interpersonal relationships, and so on. Some of the best and most lasting insights and advice I've had in my career have come from impromptu conversations in offices with small groups of people.

</comment><comment><USER42> Counterpoint: I joined a company in a senior role and had a private office. I started getting more and more depressed about life and thought it was the company. I was planning on quitting when due to a hazardous condition in the building we all had to move to a new building into open space temporarily. I loved it and now work by choice in open space.

<comment><USER43> Counterpoint to your counterpoint :) What about smaller offices - say 4-6 people. Not as noisy, not as lonely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I actually read the paper and I have a question for someone who really understands this kind of research or maybe even worked in similar related research.

The paper states that one criterion for an F2F interaction to be counted is that the devices ("sociometric badges") used to collect the data must be facing each other with uninterrupted infrared line of sight.

From my experience, in an open workspace this is most of the time not needed to conduct a short F2F conversation. It's possible to quickly talk to people walking by, standing behind one's chair or sitting on the other side of the table. None of these requires an uninterrupted line of sight.

Also the device seems to have been located at chest height so a visual line of sight between eyes has not been recorded.

I wonder whether these considerations have been taken into account. The paper doesn't say anything about that.

</comment><comment><USER45> It's not really surprising that people communicate less when half of them feel compelled to put on headphones

</comment><comment><USER46> From my limited experience, I find some factors affect face-to-face collaborations more than others. For example:

\- how introverted is your workforce - a lot of the developers I've worked with are introverts. Whenever new devs join the team it takes a while to integrate the new people. Even with veterans, most of the coworkers prefer Slack over calling for a meeting or walking over to someone's desk (maybe laziness too?)

\- how friendly and tolerant are employees who share the same open space? - I've had complaints from a different team that our team was talking too loud and too much, I don't blame them, I find conversations around me distracting too. If we absolutely need to meet now, we need to find a meeting room, so the face-to-face time is now limited by the availability of those meeting spaces

*Edit: formatting

</comment><comment><USER47> Won't asking people to wear these sensors, and the subconscious feeling that you are being tracked automatically cause you to not interact as much?

Are the conclusions really as reliable as they claim it to be?

I do agree that there are a lot of people whose productivity takes a hit because of increased distractions and they would prefer to ensure that whatever time they do get is used well (and not spent in going to talk to others). But I feel that the study seems to push their conclusion onto you without highlighting other factors that could lead to the same observations.

What are your thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER48> I must be in a small minority that enjoys open workspaces. I've had my own office before and found it extremely lonely and isolating. I didn't feel like a part of my team at all and I found it very easy to get distracted.

The next job was completely open, pair programming stations without even having our own desks. I LOVED it. I got to know my team better. We got together to solve problems quickly and easily. You always knew what was going on with the rest of the team. It's not an environment for everyone, but I felt like I could thrive in it.

</comment><comment><USER49> I love our open office, but I will admit that it does stifle communication rather than aid it. Sure, sometimes I overhear something that I want to participate in. But more often I use electronic communication so that I don't break the quiet, peaceful office vibe.

The place that communication really blossoms is in the kitchen, and I can see it from my office so I can wander over and chat when someone is in there I want to chat with.

</comment><comment><USER50> I'm probably in the minority here, but I prefer open offices. I prefer open spaces in general and try to work outdoors as often as possible when the weather permits. So to me, an open office is the ideal work environment with the minor concession that I need to share it with 4-6 others.

<comment><USER51> "I need to share it with 4-6 others."

That's not an open office. That's a team room and they are fantastic.

Open office where you share the same hall like space with tens of other people, are constantly interrupted by random guffaw and noise from people you hardly would have any need to interact in any way, and people constantly navigate around your space on their way to somewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> The financial incentive for corporations is surely the driving the trend, but I can't help observing:

\- corporate management is broadly lacking ideas (for example the largest use of capital is stock buybacks) \- rearranging the chairs may save money but its no substitute for a winning business strategy

</comment><comment><USER53> There's a market waiting out there for modular components that allows one to build their own customized cubicle in an open workspace. The components should be small enough to be able to be brought into the office without raising suspicion.

</comment><comment><USER10> This conversation seems very one-sided.

Apologies if I missed it, but I'd love to hear the perspective of a manager / executive who decided _in favor of_ open workspaces.

<comment><USER24> Our company had open space. Manager openly said that it was cheapest and simplest to manage as team sizes changed frequently during that period.

When the company was better off financially and more stable, we moved elsewhere to have office per team. The consensus seems to be that it is more effective this way. Management said it is more expensive (we asked).

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> So many sitcom episode ideas in this thread... holy sh __

</comment><comment><USER54> Scientific proof of the need for DND Shades ([http://dndshades.com](http://dndshades.com))

</comment><comment><USER55> Although, the results support my preferences and reflect my experiences, I can't help but wonder if the decreased F2F communication came from lack of experimental controls. For instance, what effect did the explicit monitoring and recording have on behavior? Or, how did the act of moving participants into a completely new and different space effect behavior?

<comment><USER55> Some comment, at least?

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Basically, in an open office you use slack more, which is more or less my experience.

</comment><comment><USER45> The fact of the matter is that businesses like to tell themselves they're data-driven, but they aren't. Consider the continuing popularity of the bogus MBTI test.

(Whoops! I already left a top-level comment. Sorry, bad form)

<comment><USER57> Can you elaborate on this? I don't get the connection between open offices and Myers Briggs.

<comment><USER45> They're pseudoscience that businesses continue to pay to bring into their offices for questionable benefits. They may as well simply hire fortune tellers.

<comment><USER58> Some of MB (E-I axis) correlates with Big 5, which is the golden standard for personality trait testing. Dismissing MB as complete voodoo is a hipster affectation.

<comment><USER45> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indicator)

> Although popular in the business sector, the MBTI exhibits significant > psychometric deficiencies, notably including poor validity (i.e. not > measuring what it purports to measure, not having predictive power or not > having items that can be generalized), poor reliability (giving different > results for the same person on different occasions), measuring categories > that are not independent (some dichotomous traits have been noted to > correlate with each other), and not being comprehensive (due to missing > neuroticism).

An inaccurate measure like this being used for things like career tracks is worse than nothing.

<comment><USER58> Scientific findings are that MBTI is flawed, but not completely uncorrelated voodoo.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8458560](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8458560)

<comment><USER45> What I'm reading here is that the best thing it does is tell us whether someone is introverted or extroverted. Well, that's also the most obvious one and I don't agree that that justifies using such a flawed test. If you have a test where half the results and half are bad the test is more or less useless.

Consider this also: [https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/give-and- take/201309...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/give-and- take/201309/goodbye-mbti-the-fad-won-t-die)

> I began to read through the evidence, and I found that the MBTI is about as > useful as a polygraph for detecting lies. One researcher even called it an > "act of irresponsible armchair philosophy." When it comes to accuracy, if > you put a horoscope on one end and a heart monitor on the other, the MBTI > falls about halfway in between. [...] Research shows "that as many as three- > quarters of test takers achieve a different personality type when tested > again," writes Annie Murphy Paul in The Cult of Personality Testing, "and > the sixteen distinctive types described by the Myers-Briggs have no > scientific basis whatsoever." In a recent article, Roman Krznaric adds that > "if you retake the test after only a five-week gap, there's around a 50% > chance that you will fall into a different personality category."

<comment><USER58> > Well, that's also the most obvious one and I don't agree that that justifies > using such a flawed test.

I'm not debating what's justified and what isn't. I'm here dispelling the pseudo-rigorous, fashionable stance that MBTI is 100% rubbish. It is not.

Instead of a blog post with one man's anecdote, how about some more science?

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2709300](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2709300)

<comment><USER45> That's among the sources cited by the article you're dismissing:

> As personality psychologists Robert McCrae and Paul Costa sum it up, "the > MBTI does not give comprehensive information on the four domains it does > sample."

As I said, a sometimes-reliable survey with wild variance that poorly measures what it purports to is worse than nothing because it gives false confidence in someone's hunch. The MBTI test was not constructed in any scientifically rigorous way and if it accurately correlates to anything it's an accident.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Tldr, can someone summarise

<comment><USER60> That's literally the point of putting an abstract at the start of an academic paper. A single paragraph containing the most important points of the study, such as (in this case) the sentence "Contrary to common belief, the volume of face-to-face interaction decreased significantly (approx. 70%) in both cases, with an associated increase in electronic interaction."

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> > _Organizations' pursuit of increased workplace collaboration has led > managers to transform traditional office spaces into 'open', transparency- > enhancing architectures with fewer walls, doors and other spatial > boundaries_

Yeah, actually it's the pursuit of cheaper rent.</comment>


IDEO's Nicole Kahn on Giving Presentations - <AUTHOR> http://firstround.com/article/This-Advice-From-IDEOs-Nicole-Kahn-Will-Transform-the-Way-You-Give-Presentations

<comment><USER2> This 'advice' is a really great re-skin of Nancy Duarte's book Resonate.[1]

Nancy is one of the genius' behind Duarte Designs[2] whose client list includes Steve Jobs and his infamous Apple presentations as well as Al Gore and his 'Inconvenient Truth' presentation.

1\. [http://www.amazon.com/Resonate-Present-Stories-Transform- Aud...](http://www.amazon.com/Resonate-Present-Stories-Transform- Audiences/dp/0470632011/) 2\. [http://www.duarte.com/](http://www.duarte.com/)</comment>


Plivo cancels UK phone numbers with 9 days notice - <AUTHOR> Dear Customer,
This is to keep you informed regarding a few important changes related to Phone Numbers in your Plivo account.
Over the last few months, some of your Plivo Phone Numbers has been experiencing repeated issues. To address this, we are changing our underlying phone number carrier in the affected countries.
Attached is the list of affected numbers on your account. These numbers will not be functional from April 19th, 2019.
If you would like us to replace any of your affected numbers, you can reach out to us here before April 19th, 2019. We are happy to provide a replacement for any of your affected numbers at no extra cost. <comment><USER2> Can you share one of the phone numbers, excluding the last 4 digits? That's enough info to identify the provider to which OfCom allocated the number block.

(Also, you might be able to port the affected numbers to a new provider.)</comment>


LynQ: Location Tracking Even When Cell Phones Fail – Indiegogo - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/lynq-location-tracking-even-when-cell-phones-fail-family-kids/x/18156095#/ <comment><AUTHOR> Presale (up to 50% off ends July 12th!)</comment>


The New Diamond Age (2003) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.html

<comment><USER2> Interesting. I recently saw an ad for cosmetics made with "Diamond Dust".

Hopefully diamond processors means cooler computers ^_^. My MacBook Pro gets hot so fast :(.</comment>


After 35 years, Voyager nears edge of solar system - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2012/09/05/160609488/after-35-years-voyager-nears-edge-of-solar-system

<comment><USER2> _So Stone can't say how long it will be before Voyager passes through it.

"I can't tell you whether it's days, months or years. I really can't tell you," he said._

I'm not complaining, but that's why we hear this story over and over again, every 3 months for the last 10 years.

<comment><AUTHOR> It depends on your definition of 'edge of solar sytem', as there are many definitions around. What amazes me the most is that we built something 35 years ago, shot it into space and it's still going strong, sending radio signals from a place so far away that it takes 16 hours to get here. They supplied it with an 8-track disc that contains information about earth and humanity.

To me, this speaks volumes about the brilliant naivety of that era, and I mean naivety in the most positive way possible: an uncurbed enthousiasm where you don't see all the implications and problems on your path, but just execute. Did they think about the fact that 8-track records would be outdated by the time the Voyager would reach a destination where alien life would be possible? It seems not. But they built the thing, and it's still doing what is's supposed to do. This mindset has been missing for a long time, although the new Mars Rover project has got my hopes up again.

<comment><USER3> > What amazes me the most is that we built something 35 years ago, shot it > into space and it's still going strong, sending radio signals from a place > so far away that it takes 16 hours to get here.

I completely agree. I remember reading about Voyager 1 and 2 back in 1989, when I was a just a child, and thinking how cool it was that humans could build something to send into space and it could last so long. 23 years later, it is even more impressive that it is still out there and kicking... and may last another 10 years :) It is very impressive, to say the least.

<comment><USER4> One thing that really stuck in my mind when I heard the story was that, even 35 years later, "we're now a substantial fraction of a 'light-day' from the Earth..."

With the term "light-years" most commonly mentioned (eg, from a few days ago: [http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/astronomers-find- su...](http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/astronomers-find- sugar-400-light-years-from-earth-2012092/) ) I think hearing about light-hours and light-days helps to put things a little more into perspective (though it's all still mind-boggling).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Voyager 1 can keep talking to Earth for about another decade. That's how > long the plutonium that powers it should last. After it falls silent, it > will still keep going. But it will be about 40,000 years before it wanders > close to another star.

Something about that last paragraph that brings the whole article full circle with lofty, child-like dreams. Makes me wonder if mankind will create the technology (and find a way possible) to go out into deep space and pass Voyager before that happens.

<comment><USER6> I am often inspired by the Voyager program because I see it as one where the program planners did not put limits on themselves. And the fact that it would be 40,000 years before the problem came close to another star was also fascinating.

And then I consider that its only been in the last decade were we've been looking at asteroids in an effort to identify potential disasters before they happen. If some alien probe went through our solar system, it is only just now that we would notice it at the size of Voyager, and then we wouldn't pay attention because if it re-entered the atmosphere it wouldn't do significant damage. Doesn't bode well for the aliens seeing it unless they are looking for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Additional reading:

"The heliopause is the theoretical boundary where the Sun's solar wind is stopped by the interstellar medium; where the solar wind's strength is no longer great enough to push back the stellar winds of the surrounding stars. Voyager 1 is expected to cross the heliopause by 2014. The crossing of the heliopause should be signaled by a sharp drop in the temperature of charged particles, a change in the direction of the magnetic field, and an increase in the amount of galactic cosmic rays."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliosphere#Heliopause>

<comment><USER8> And apparently the heliopause is already overdue: [http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/09/missing- voyager-1-yet...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/09/missing- voyager-1-yet-to-find-the-boundary-line-of-the-solar-system/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Year 2012, human kind can get signals from 35 years-old spacecraft which is passing edge of solar system.

Year 2012, I can barely have signal reception with my brand new smartphone at my home.

</comment><comment><USER10> First time i heard that was 'Voyager was nearing edge of solar system' when i was in high school.

<comment><USER11> That's because there are many edges of the solar system.

The one you probably heard about was the termination shock, where the solar wind goes subsonic. I forget how far out that is, but it's closer than the heliopause.

From the graphs of radiation intensity, Voyager is either in a big bubble of interstellar space trapped in the heliopause, or actually through and out the other side. It's exciting either way.

<comment><USER12> Query: how do you define "subsonic" in the near-vacuum of spce?

<comment><USER13> As you probably know, the "speed of sound" in an arbitrary medium is just the speed at which disturbances in pressure propagate. For this to be well- defined, the particles have to collide with each other often enough for there to be collective disturbances (rather than just individual fast moving particles). I would have thought that there was so much distance between particles in interstellar space that they never collided, but apparently there are often enough collisions to define a notion of sound. Here's wikipedia:

> The shock arises because solar wind particles are emitted from stars at > about 400 km/s, while the speed of sound (in the interstellar medium) is > about 100 km/s. (The exact speed depends on the density, which fluctuates > considerably.) The interstellar medium, although very low in density, > nonetheless has a constant pressure associated with it; the pressure from > the solar wind decreases with the square of the distance from the star. As > one moves far enough away from the star, the pressure from the interstellar > medium becomes sufficient to slow the solar wind down to below its speed of > sound; this causes a shock wave.

<comment><USER10> Just curious why the speed of sound in interstellar medium depends on density, while in the Earth atmosphere, it does not (it is nearly same as on surface, around 10% smaller, on 100,000ft where there is hardly 2% of surface air pressure).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Considering it's life expectancy is already about half over ... we should launch another probe or two (perhaps in the opposite direction?). We have better today these days and could probably build it to go for many decades longer. The sooner we launch, the sooner our kids will have data.

<comment><AUTHOR> We already did: the New Horizons is out there, too. But in the 60's and 70's there was a lot more budget than these days...

<comment><USER14> oh cool, hadn't seen that. Hopefully the probe will keep going after its initial mission to pluto has concluded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Am I really the only person who hears about Voyager and immediately thinks of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture"? At least reality is comporting with canon, vis-à-vis V'Ger: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxAaVqdz_Vk>

</comment><comment><USER16> actually i was just reading on the SciAm blogs about this, and learned a bit more about the edge of our solar system (and how the scientists involved in this effort are tracking progress).

[http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/09/05/...](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/09/05/nasas- voyager-1-spacecraft-may-not-be-near-edge-of-solar-system-after-all/)

key comment: 'Decker and his colleagues conclude from the plasma measurements "that Voyager 1 is not at present close to the heliopause, at least in the form that it has been envisioned up to now." '

just an interesting addendum to the story that NPR glossed over.

</comment><comment><USER17> I love how old fashioned the images look. Even to me, 35 years on, we look like untechnologically sophisticated... what a difference the microprocessor makes!!

</comment><comment><USER18> Amazingly, still 10-20,000 years from the Oort Cloud.

</comment><comment><USER19> At least now it can hit a worm hole and the Veloxi will know Earth's inhabitable. Thanks NASA.</comment>


How do you work with colleagues who write messy code? - <AUTHOR>

Context: I work in a small start up, 3 people. Two of us are dev's. I myself try and strive to make my code readable and maintainable, to explain my self as often as possible and to help out the other dev with learning things that help us communicate (git etc).
The other dev is fantastic at getting things done asap, which is great for shipping but as soon as things get a little too complicated and he is struggling with his code base, he attempts to off load the problem onto me to solve (deferring to my experience).
I should note that, though we are equal part in founding the company, he has taken on more of a technical lead role.
The Problem: I keep being passed these problems to solve that should be simple but because of his bad coding practices (copy and paste code all the time, ignore failing tests, premature optimisations etc) it takes me a long time to:
A: grok his code (making me look bad because i'm mean't to be the experienced one)
B: make non-breaking changes (there are no tests, the code base is very messy, both in abstractions and format)
Any advice on how to tackle this? Perhaps approaching a conversation to make him aware in a way that won't burn any bridges? <comment><USER2> Sounds like a perfect team. One gets stuff done and one cares about quality. Stop whining about recognition and be awesome together!</comment>


I miss blogrolls - <AUTHOR> https://iwantmyname.com/blog/i-miss-blogrolls <comment><USER2> I feel like there is a legitimate market for "the old ways" (TM).

Social media is "great", in the same way that the invention of alcohol was "great" \- the bad part of it is that it is literally designed to drive clicks and addict us, and we have no way of turning it off (temporarily) that we can't just switch right back on (yes, I have seen all your handy scripts and tricks).

You know what was awesome about walking into a brick and mortar building and buying a piece of software? It almost certainly would not contain a virus due to the prohibitive cost of getting it on a shelf, and it was not flogged to a state of near-death by app store restrictions. Yeah we killed some trees, and we liked it that way! (shakes fist at sky).

Writing impressive code used to be a highly valued skill, limited to the few who put in the time to piecing together arcane knowledge. Now we are just surfing on the backs of giants and locked into their ecosystems. So long as you can write a laggy javascript app and google how to do something you are safe in this world. (shakes fist at sky again, why not)

...continues muttering/ranting...

<comment><USER3> > ...and we have no way of turning it off (temporarily) that we can't just > switch right back on...

i solved this problem by convincing myself that i don't actually want to turn it back on

<comment><USER2> I tried this, but then my friends convinced me to keep it on. :/ May at some point turn it off regardless...

<comment><USER4> I deleted all of my social media profiles, i.e., unfriended and unfollowed everyone and then deleted my account. It's been a huge plus for me.

What I've done to replace it is email and call people. I'm 42 so many of my friends are receptive to calls that younger people may not be so ymmv.

I'm sure you know this, but your true friends will be there offline whether you see them online or not.

Good luck!

<comment><USER5> I'm a 30s fellow and I do this as well. I'm all calls/text message + video calls via Signal/Wire/Skype.

I don't understand the desire to publicly broadcast things and none of my friends have had an issue with it. Of course, my friends are mostly technical or privacy-oriented folks.

<comment><USER6> A broadcast may be worthwhile when it carries measurable value and: produces _unsigned_ side effects [0]; produces manageable _signed_ side effects [1].

I'm 24, deleted Facebook at 18, WhatsApp last year, and I too am all calls (and emails for longform or bit sharing). I still observe HN, Twitter [2], domain-specific newsletters for value, and occasionally share when there's value to be added.

While I might have to manage debris, I see value.

[0] [https://arxiv.org/rss/cs](https://arxiv.org/rss/cs)

[1] [https://twitter.com](https://twitter.com)

[2] A meticulously curated, filtered stream.

<comment><USER7> Texting and callung are very different, sync vs. async.

<comment><USER6> They are indeed. I prefer to act within the boundaries of bare reality and leverage technology for value-oriented scenarios. I feel business-driven, cognition-altering escape palaces are wrathful, detrimental environments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I keep thinking of starting a blog under a false name. My current blog: [https://jamesadam.me](https://jamesadam.me), is full of mostly vanilla tech articles, conveying nothing particularly unique in perspective nor noteworthy in content.

I have ideas for more "interesting" articles I'd like to write (still mostly about software development, my industry, etc), but I fear they would either cause offense (and we all know there is no greater sin) or at the very least be off-putting to potential employers. Thus, I keep thinking about adopting a 'pen' name and throwing up a second blog to serve as an outlet for some of the more insane ramblings I'd like to inflict on the world.

<comment><USER9> I first did this years ago with a science blog under a nom de plume and ended up with a decent audience relative to no promotion (40-60k~ readers per article). It was pretty satisfying and I would highly recommend doing it. The only downside may have been that it deeply inflamed my generalist yearnings for multiple careers.

<comment><USER10> Any thoughts on how you ended up with that much readership?

<comment><USER9> Focused on a niche subject. Wrote with humor, brevity and (unearned) authority. Was strategic with visual and verbal tone: styled the blog to reference institutions like NYT, wrote with the voice of authors I respect and/or enjoyed.

Most important, I think, was writing for being pleasurable and nourishing to the reader rather than egoistically trying to impress with wit, domain knowledge, and, worst of all, personal anecdotes – the boring, herpetic poison that oozes from most blogs.

Like art, you're assembling a puzzle with no preordained point of completion. It didn't come easily but seemed clear when it was done.

<comment><USER10> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I restarted my blog a few months ago after a seven year hiatus and I couldn't be happier about it: it's been incredibly rewarding. If you're thinking "maybe I should (re)start my blog" I strongly recommend doing it!

[https://simonwillison.net/](https://simonwillison.net/)

<comment><USER12> I really like your blog and I noticed you have the source code here - [https://github.com/simonw/simonwillisonblog](https://github.com/simonw/simonwillisonblog)

But I noticed it doesn't have a license. Are you okay with people adopting the backend for their own blog?

<comment><USER11> Good call, I'll add a license.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love the idea of more and more people trying to get away from platforms. But for the love of all things good, please:

1\. Don't use wordpress, you'll catch a virus.

2\. Don't use scroll-jackers, your OS/Browser combination should provide the best scrolling experience for your user, if you hate your own scroll experience, get a better browser/OS, don't FK with the one I have it's perfect.

3\. Don't use pop-ups that cover content to sign up - EVERYONE I know immediately closes the page and never returns when that happens... it's kinda the opposite of what you want right?

<comment><USER14> Am I doing it right? No wordpress, no js (at all!), no popups, just (low quality) content.

[https://klezlab.it](https://klezlab.it)

EDIT: damn, I just noticed the date on the most recent post. I should give the blog some more love...

<comment><USER15> I do the same thing, though my site doesn't look as polished as yours: [https://www.benovermyer.com](https://www.benovermyer.com)

But yes, you should really write something new!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The web is missing something between reddit and HN comments, and long form articles.

It's difficult to have a good discussion in the comments. And if you do, it's quickly lost to time.

For example, I can't have a discussion about why I think the Amazon Alexa is "Making a Dent in the Universe" without being drowned out by the privacy debate,

So, I started a blog where I can [attempt to] write my thoughts in a short piece.

[http://h4labs.org/the-amazon-echo-made-a-dent-in-the- univers...](http://h4labs.org/the-amazon-echo-made-a-dent-in-the-universe/)

My musings can go in place that I can revisit:

[http://h4labs.org/category/musings/](http://h4labs.org/category/musings/)

I actually started a few years ago but I wanted off the ugly WordPress ads:

[https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/in-the-future- everyo...](https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/in-the-future-everyone- will-wear-a-smartwatch/)

[UPDATE]

I just got downvoted because someone didn't like what I said. Happens all the time. I've gone several levels deep explaining why I disagree with the common opinion.

This brings up one of the other benefits of writing out your thoughts and opinions in a blog, you don't have to waste FU karma trying to explain yourself.

</comment><comment><USER17> I agree with this so much. I miss reading thoughts by independent people on semi-esoteric things instead of filtered conversations on filtered topics had in vote-based sites like reddit, HN, and pretty much any other news aggregator. And I miss the blog rabbit hole you can go into. That was half the excitement of blogs.

</comment><comment><USER18> It still exists (although reduced) but the trouble is breaking in. For economics my favorite is [http://economistsview.typepad.com/](http://economistsview.typepad.com/) which has a huge blogroll, and those blogs, say [http://crookedtimber.org/](http://crookedtimber.org/) have their own blogrolls and so on. What are some of your guys' favorites?

<comment><USER17> I used to read language log ([http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/)) a lot. I get why they disabled comments for most of their posts but I kind of lost interest after they did that. I am not really sure but I feel like popularity of sites like reddit increased after a lot of blogs and news sites disabled comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I used to work very hard to produce low quality content and post it on hn twitter and whatnot. It was depressing to see very little traffic.

So i reduced the number of post, stopped posting on HN. Suddenly i have more traffic then ever. Though google is mostly responsible for it.

What i started doing more often is link to people i find interesting in my articles, that's the new blog roll replacement, and somehow it has pushed those to link back to me.

Ps: don't give up because no one likes your content, the majority will not like it anyway.

[https://idiallo.com](https://idiallo.com)

<comment><USER20> The fact that almost all the traffic to my personal blog are just one-hit wonders from google actually made me feel a lot less pressure to "grow" the blog or to even keep to any kind of coherent theme.

These days, I post about whatever I feel like. With greatly varied degrees of quality. All knowing that a small handful of posts on some oddball niche will continue to garner tons of Google traffic while the vast majority of pages lay fallow.

<comment><USER21> ditto. That's why on WP, I feel more connected. I get various followers and I can search WP for blogs I'm interested in, but that leaves out everyone not on WP. :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I never stopped reading blogs using feedly. I don't like feedly a lot, but it works and it allows me to follow nice blogs, which, from my point of view, is a much better use of my time than using social networks, which I almost don't use anymore.

<comment><USER23> Moved to Feedly from Google Reader (I miss Google Reader). But likewise, I get more value from that than social media. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the instant gratification of someone-liked-and-shared-my-post just as much as the next person, but if I'm going to learn anything over the course of the day, it's more likely to be in my Feedly time than Facebook time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can someone justify me a blog that shows a blank page when JS is disabled with noscript (and, therefore, <noscript> tag is triggered, unlike with umatrix and ublock disabled scripts)?

<comment><USER25> Server-side rendering can be challenging to implement.

<comment><USER24> I'm going to assume sarcasm here, given we're talking about content which is purely text, without interactive bits.

EDIT especially after looking at the source: it's a CSS blanking to show signup for newsletters. Once the CSS is disabled, the text is there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This was what I enjoyed about svbtle when it was first kicking off. They may not have realised that's what they had done, but they had created a great aggregate of quality bloggers.

Then they turned the public accounts on and the blog roll off and I can't even find the people I used to read when I try let alone have them in a handy list.

And RSS feeds. Also, get off my lawn!

</comment><comment><USER27> Getting a lot of nostalgia as well ... for most people, social media has 100% replace the "need" for maintaining their own individual blog. They can post their thoughts to facebook well enough, and their friend list (when shared) essentially functions as their blogroll ... you can see who anyone follows on twitter, and (when allowed) on FB, so you can traipse through an interesting person's friend list and see what else you can find.

That's in no way excusing the state of affairs. As I mentioned, I fully agree that _something_ has been lost since those halcyon days. The blogs that existed (there was definitely a higher barrier to entry than opening a social media account) each went their own individually quirky ways (at least, until the staggering conformity of everyone using blog engines like Wordpress (<3 ya WP, but you made the world bland)). It was great when a contributor had their own little corner, and would actively customize it (in much more interesting ways than the MySpace pages of yore).

<comment><USER28> > They can post their thoughts to facebook well enough

I don't know if Americans are this much different than Canadians, but I have 200+ FB "friends" and outside of the occasional complaining about various social injustices, no one ever posts anything of substance, I have a strong feeling that most people would consider it weird.

<comment><USER27> I've been hiding any page that anyone shares: memes, animals, jokes, fails, vines, overly-partisan political, bad pop-science ("OMG look at this projector in a wristband that lets you use your iPhone in the tub!"), stupid "quizzes" that prove you're a genius, ad nauseum -- all the garbage that swamps one's FB feeds -- for the last few weeks. It's improved the quality of my feed dramatically! People do post things, it's just that you never see it because shares are so highly prioritized in the feed (anecdotal, but that's how it seems).

</comment></comment></comment><comment> ar-jan Combined with RSS/Atom feeds please. Many newer blogs just omit feeds, presumably because it's not included in whatever framework they're using.

<comment><USER29> Presumably because content consumed via a feed reader won't monetize.

<comment><USER30> Nah, those use RSS but put just an excerpt of the post so that you're forced to visit their site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Related: I've finally found a feedreader extension for Firefox that I like. I've started subscribing to rss feeds again and it feels great!

<comment><USER32> I've been looking for a good rss reader. Which one did you find?

<comment><USER33> Can't answer for parent, but _I_ have settled for Feedbro, and it actually works really well. I have a couple of hundred feeds, OPML'ed across several readers over the years. Mercifully never the Google one, though.

<comment><USER31> It's the same I settled with.

The only thing I can think of that I want and isn't included are:

Auto sampling based on pages I visit (like old Google Desktop Search)

and auto following (not sure exactly how) of issues etc that I interact with on github etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think the issue with blogs is things like Twitter solved: making it low effort to publish and promote content.

I've recently thought that maybe a blog should really be a timeline (or similar) where you can tweet and posts simply exist as pages and show up on category/tag pages. You'd "tweet" your posts to a timeline and this would be what would normally appear on the home page and rss feed. You could re-promote an old post with a small blurb why it's relevant again. You could link to other sites with a blurb why. All the while you're not clogging up twitter and others since they can go to the website and see the information there (pull vs push).

<comment><USER35> You're describing Tumblr.

<comment><USER34> Yea, pretty much. Except I'd like one that's open source and not maintained by them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I've been thinking about reblogging articles on my blog. I want to set up separate article listings with and without reblogs, and separate RSS feeds. I wouldn't rehost the content, just put a link to the article in my feed.

<comment><USER37> I do exactly that with a /links.html page. Unfortunately it requires js because it's just pulling in my latest shares from Pinboard. (But the link to that page gets added to the navigation with js, so non-js user agents don't see the link to it.) Pinboard provides a RSS feed I can link to for my shares as well.

I've been thinking about moving from Pinboard and setting something up myself and compiling it into my site's static html instead of syndicating from a third-party.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I actually touched on this in my recent article "Is Search Solved?": [https://austingwalters.com/is-search-solved/](https://austingwalters.com/is- search-solved/)

Fact is, I'm fairly confident with the greater and greater pull of social media and walled gardens, indie writers are simply fading away.

I know I stopped writing because it's hard as hell to both rank and share content.

</comment><comment><USER39> Yes!

I started writing about random experiences and thoughts at my blog: [https://www.pixelsbetween.com](https://www.pixelsbetween.com) but since I decided to self-host instead of going with a specific platform, it feels like I'm on my own tiny island.

I would love for a better way to share and find independent content like my own.

<comment><USER40> I like the site! Good writing, thoughts, and the illustrations are wonderful!

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Oh, congrats to the iwantmyname team for making HN :)

I've been a customer for at least a year or more now and I can highly recommend them. They're a nice bunch and always happy to help out.

I've even weirdly been enjoying and fully reading their newsletters which just started recently. I guess because they're written in such a conversational tone!

<comment><USER42> Thanks for reading the newsletter (Chris from iwantmyname here)! I dropped social media a few months back and started a similar family/friends newsletter... was hoping it'd work out for iwantmyname as well. It's admittedly a little quirky, but I'm having a lot of fun writing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> The music blog era was one of the greatest achievements of blogrolls. Music media was entirely subverted in favor of a litany of independent artists and it would have never been possible if it weren't for the 'friends' or blog roll section in the margins of the blog pages. This author has a great point.

</comment><comment><USER43> They're still out there in some niches. For example, quite a few gaming sites still have affiliates, which are basically the fancy equivalent of a blogroll with site quality and traffic requirements attached to them.

That said, they're certainly less common than they used to be, and that's something that's definitely annoyed me about the internet in recent years. Feels the culture of helping people out and working together to provide great content has been replaced with a 'me me me' type self centredness, where everyone only thinks about backlinks and personal social media popularity and anyone not in the 'in group' should be discarded whenever it gets convenient to do so.

</comment><comment><USER44> I vouch to add a blogroll to my blog. I fully agree it's a great thing to do.

edit: I've added three... [https://ianchanning.wordpress.com/](https://ianchanning.wordpress.com/)

</comment><comment><USER45> Neocities has this kind of functionality. With a normal host you get 0 traffic, my coming soon prelaunch page for my podcast has gotten close to 10k hits through the neocities network with no cost or effort on my part.

</comment><comment><USER46> I definitely miss running my blog. Might have to get back into it.

</comment><comment><USER47> Wow. I was seriously looking into web rings yesterday, just to see if there were any remaining leads to chase down there, with the exact same problem in mind. I gave up after a few frustrating minutes of finding not _just old_ content but _old and useless_ content at the top of the search results. It's one of those problems that, if solved, will add new growth potential to communications technology.

</comment><comment><USER44> There's a nice post somewhere I read about good reasons for blog posts. Unfortuately searching for it gets buried in snake oil.

The simplest point was if you've written a long email to someone explaining a tech topic - write it up as a blog post.

But there were a couple of other equally valid reasons for writing a blog post, but I can't remember them now.

<comment><USER48> I'm not sure if you're referring to Scott Hansleman's approach:

> This stemmed from listening to a podcast on The Changelog about 'Open Source > at Microsoft, Inclusion, Diversity, and OSCON' with Scott Hansleman. In the > interview, Scott mentions how he receives questions via email fairly > regularly. Interestingly, instead of replying to the email directly he > instead writes a blog post and then replies to the email with a link to the > post. Scott goes on to describe how he is constantly aware of the number of > keypresses he has left in his life and therefore has taken the approach to > not want to waste a single one of them.

Extract from an article I wrote on the subject, under the term Blogumentation [https://jvt.me/posts/2017/06/25/blogumentation/](https://jvt.me/posts/2017/06/25/blogumentation/)

<comment><USER44> I'm not sure either, shows how shot my memory is.

It sounds almost exactly like it though and I have read quite a bit of Hanselman's stuff. Bloody good find. Thank you :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I miss webrings.

<comment><USER15> It looks like webring.org is still a thing, though it looks quite a lot like a sketchy landing page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Is there an easy way to scrape blogrolls information/trackbacks or does it require buying a commercial scraper or rolling one's own in Python with BeautifulSoup or something? I'm very interested in mapping blogosphere network structures but don't want to reinvent the wheel unnecessarily.

</comment><comment><USER51> More importantly is the death of two key resources: mybloglog & technorati which enabled bloggers to publicly keep track of trackbacks. I used it all the time and ended up with sizeable audiences!

<comment><USER52> Technorati had terrible management. I was very frustrated trying to deal with them. In 2006 myself and friends were trying to build a startup that would rely heavily on Technorati's "Authority" ranking. Technorati supposedly had an API, but to use it we were supposed to write to the company and negotiate a price. I wrote to them 20 times. No one ever wrote back. Out of frustration, I tracked down some of the top people online, found other email addresses for them, and wrote to them. No one ever wrote me back. We were desperate to give them money, but they did not want our money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Curation for discovery has been the most difficult problem for information since access exploded with the internet. Netflix had prize money behind algorithmic improvement here. Public libraries and physical bookstores use experts and physical placement. Most digital content services use humans to curate new content. The last chapter in James Gleick's book "The Information" identifies this as the next problem in information - now that access is no longer a barrier, how do we decide what's useful? The combination of wikipedia and Google has largely solved search for most internet-available content, but not discovery or trust of what you don't yet know to search for.

This curation problem isn't only about blog content - it also contributes to the proliferation of fake news and conspiracy theories. Comment curated by many people's networks has become limited to their tribal connections, and some tribes exclude information sources that value scientific or journalistic standards.

What we already know about and read daily is what we trust, and helps define our tribe. Our tribe uses HN. Other tribes (which may intersect with ours) use Reddit, Digg, 4Chan, forums, newspapers, blogrolls, and many other systems. When we get content from our tribe - the concept of 'social media' \- someone else is sharing their trust in content with us, in ways we can categorize.

Each content system on the internet is rooted in a point source, the owner, who shares their trust with varying levels of directness: Newspapers don't have a pattern of trust sharing, though some experiment. Blogrolls' owners share trust directly - 'direct owner trust sharing'. Small forums (where content is only ranked by time, not votes) use 'direct user trust sharing' because users are treated equally; Reddit posts use 'indirect user trust sharing' through voting. Facebook and Twitter use both 'direct user trust sharing' (what your friends post) and 'indirect owner trust sharing', (the owner algorithms).

It seems clear that there are serious manipulation problems with indirect trust sharing systems open across tribes - Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter all struggle with this. Innovation in social media seems to focus on curating direct user trust sharing to guide indirect user trust sharing. To fix trust sharing, we'll have to curate new direct relationships. I believe this will be much along the lines of blogrolls - direct trust sharing from identified tribal members, rather than only from your direct network.

Work has been done to map the internet through linking. Some of this, such as Jonathan Albright's coverage of the 2016 US Presidential election, has begun to identify tribes in those maps. I believe the next major algorithmic innovation will triangulate your tribe, using content you've already trusted yourself (by sharing with others), and curate discovery of new tribal members based on the nodes in and near that tribe. A network-wide blogroll, across content types, which links you to new direct trust sharing relationships. This would help democratize curation, and could result in a clearer understanding of tribal boundaries and how disinformation spreads.

<comment><USER54> I don't equate curation with recommenders.

Back in 1989, when Byte Magazine was warning us of "infoglut", I decided that the most valuable job was the editor. I've seen no reason to change my mind since.

I ran the hub of a BBS network, moderated numerous forums, have run a few user / study groups, published a few zines / newsletters, was a (terrible) radio DJ, etc. I even work on recommenders for my day job.

I remain unimpressed. I've tried to be open minded about automated curation. But I've decided recommenders, as we know them, have topped out.

<comment><USER53> Recommenders and editors are both curators. My comment also doesn't recommend algorithmic curation, except in linking tribal members.

<comment><USER54> What's the algorithm for taste, opinion, intuition, judgement, exploration, novelty, criticism?

Machine learning-based recommenders are just feedback loops, automated groupthink.

\---

Aha. It's worse than that. Today's recommenders are merely accelerated preferential attachment. aka Fads.

Thanks, articulating myself has been a useful exercise.

<comment><USER53> I think you're confusing "algorithm" with "curation".

<comment><USER54> So you do understand! Terrific.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Isn't this the nature of wanting to be special? If you fancy yourself Mr. Bespoke Blog Reader, than you gotta go look where others don't. This feels like one of the conflicting desires of the open web crowd: the view that decentralized content can exist without a cost.

<comment><USER47> That's a good point. Habit probably gets in the way, too: Many of us have conditioned ourselves to continually check the same mainstream sources/walled gardens. These places have no blogrolls, of course. Thanks for your comment, it's good food for thought.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: C++ Dev Jobs Are Rare, Aren't They? - <AUTHOR> Apart from game companies and the computer graphics scene, I don't find many C++ jobs at all. Most are either enlisted for languages such as Java, C#, JavaScript or Python.
If you find a "C++" keyword in a typical job listing, it will be among a list of other high-level languages. And in my experience,  you'll soon find out that it has nothing to do with C++ programming once you got past the interview process.
Embedded development may seem as a last frontier for C++, but no, you won't find it there either most of the time. You'll rather find something C-related there. Furthermore, someone who interviewed embedded developers told me that those types of developers tend to be bad software engineers or C++ programmers for some reason.
C++ jobs seem to be rather inside a niche market and many companies seem to have few use cases for it. <comment><USER2> It is not that C++ jobs are rare, but the expectation of companies recruiting C++ engineers is either too high(i.e. they expect C++ gurus with domain expertise) or too low(i.e. they expect interns). There is no role for generalist C++ engineers. If you look for C++ jobs, then most of them mention foremost the domain expertise such as AI, Games, Finance, Crypto etc as a requirement and C++ as secondary requirement. Hence most of the companies struggle to recruit C++ engineers.

<comment> non-entity > It is not that C++ jobs are rare, but the expectation of companies > recruiting C++ engineers is either too high(i.e. they expect C++ gurus with > domain expertise) or too low(i.e. they expect interns).

This is how it seems to be for most domains that aren't doing your average business web application development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> People who master C++ already know easier languages. Business start with a prototype nocode(web solutions/excel/filemaker), then go to prototype dynamic language(js/python/lua/ruby), then to a prototype static managed code(java,c#), then to prototype production and optimization(C/C++/asm). It's a lot of money to make something fast and stable, so the business idea must be good enough to pay for that, and most business ideas aren't good enough, so they bankrupt before than production. Sketch drawings and natural language texts are most of the time a better solution for that temporary trend than code, that's why html would be enough "code".

</comment><comment><USER4> Who uses C++ ?

Webscale tech companies (definitely Google plus almost certainly Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, etc.), traditional software companies (like Microsoft), aerospace and defense, finance, robotics and automation, automotive, are a few industries that come to mind off the top of my head.

</comment><comment><USER5> Try HFT companies. I live in Amsterdam, we have a bunch of them here and I used to work for couple of them. Their business is extremely low latency so they live and breathe C++ (and also stuff like FPGAs).

But this is somewhat a niche indeed.

<comment><USER6> And HFT tends to hire from: \- Gaming \- Military software \- (Medical) devices

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I work in an embedded / safety critical software tools vendor and I can say C++ is pretty big in a lot of embedded spaces (maybe 40% vs 55% C, with 5% other) whether it is growing or shrinking depends on which industry (In avionics it is being displaced by model based design but it is growing in medical devices), I will say that the embedded space also has a lot of C programmers who via C++ as a bastardization if their beautiful language.

The general rule, with many exceptions, is that in lowest level embedded you see C with a healthy sprinkling of assembly, in higher level embedded (programs with guis or that just involve a lot of component interaction and interfaces) you tend to see C++

FYI, for a nice sampling of what C++ jobs are out there you can look at the C++ jobs posts at Reddit's r/cpp

</comment><comment><USER8> Not as rare as you might think.

Embedded is definitely being done in C++. Gaming -- Unreal Engine still uses C++ as I recall. HFT has been mentioned already. Robotics, automation. Lots of stuff is still done in C++ and not going to leave it any time soon.

</comment><comment><USER9> Anyone working in the encoding, streaming and mucking about with video is working in C/C++. FOSS projects such as ffmpeg have the entire set of nearly all video related industries built on top of their work.

</comment><comment><USER10> I haven't been following this for a while but financial engineering/quant is a big thing where you can get high paying jobs doing C++. HFT as well.

<comment><USER11> I don't know. I think that's company specific. I work in finance and most of the quant stuff is Python, R, and Java. It's easier to teach a business person Python and R than it is to teach tech people finance (at least that's what the business people say).

<comment><USER12> I thought the high end financial jobs wanted physicists and mathematicians, not business or tech people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Also why do all the job listings say C/C++? I actually know C but not C++. What happens to me?

<comment><USER8> I suspect it's because HR doesn't know the difference.

It is easier to learn C++ if you know C, but it's a good point, they're not the same languages, and have diverged _greatly_ over the years.

I would understand that back in the days of C++98, but C++11 and newer are really very different languages. Proficiency in the earlier language specs doesn't guarantee any such in the newer specs -- as I learned when I came back to dev work in C++ and had to update my skills quite a bit working in C++11 (I learned C++98 long ago and had worked exclusively in that for quite a while).

<comment><USER14> I remember in grad school in 2005/2006, I decided to write a little program in C++ which I hadn't touched since the 90s. The language had evolved enough that I found it to be enough of a challenge that I ended up writing the program in Perl instead.

<comment><USER8> Even as a C++ type I still shudder when I see Perl.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Have a look at SpaceX or Comma.ai job openings. There are still quite a lot of jobs for c++ devs.

</comment><comment><USER16> They're far less rare than Rust jobs from what I've seen.

</comment><comment><USER17> Microsoft has entire set of application development in C++

</comment><comment><USER18> Look at HFTs they are always looking for C++ devs</comment>


Countdown.js — super simple countdowns. - <AUTHOR> http://gumroad.github.io/countdown.js/

<comment><USER2> This would be perfect in conjunction with an "unload" event that triggers the countdown if the user decides to go to a different page on your web site. This way, the user doesn't have to stay on the page to make sure their actions are completed.

Instead of forcing the user to wait for the end of the countdown, you can use an "undo" button. Instead of actually _undoing_ the operation, they would just be preventing it from happening in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER3> This UI would leave me wondering if the deletion is going to go through if I close the page to do something else prior to the countdown completion.

<comment><USER4> maybe transitioning this to something more like "Are you sure? 3..2..1...", or implementing a counter in the backend as well, would be good ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting but how does it handle the case where the user navigates away before the counter hits 0?

</comment><comment> vezzy-fnord This can be useful for more trivial actions, the consequences of which would be pretty minor for the user.

On the other hand for irreversible actions, as the authors put it (and ones more drastic than those mentioned here), a dialog, modal or otherwise, is perfectly warranted.

One more click hardly makes any difference in time, and it brings up a brief little moment for reconsideration in case the user doesn't immediately realize they're doing something potentially unwanted.</comment>


Netscape browser archives (v0.91 onwards) - <AUTHOR> http://netscape.1command.com/client_archive0-1x.php

<comment><USER2> It is amazing how far Internet browsing has come in the last ~15 years.</comment>


The "Yellow Vests" Show How Much the Ground Moves Under Our Feet - <AUTHOR> http://criticallegalthinking.com/2018/12/09/the-yellow-vests-show-how-much-the-ground-moves-under-our-feet/ <comment><USER2> This is key:

"in a financialised economy, only those closest to the means of money-creation [...] are in a position to employ the language of universalism. As a result, any political claims as based in particular needs and interests, tended to be treated as manifestation of identity politics, and in the case of the social base of the GJ, therefore, cannot be imagined it as anything but proto- fascist."

If these people represented any other view. Addressing climate change, protesting capitalism, etc., we'd see this covered 24x7. But they are in great part anti-globalists who want to wrest control back and put it in the hands of the middle class. So much of the media dismisses it. A few teargas canisters at the US's SD-TJ border and it's a crime against humanity. Almost daily teargassing of citizens and those people who piped up are silent.

Side: It's a shame this was flagged. I think we need to think the implication of moneyed people influencing hoew the hoi polloi should think and act.

<comment><USER3> I think he was saying that if you are not a noble universalist, then the media will portray you as only being in pursuit of your narrow interests, and conclude that you are probably a racist in disguise. In addition to that they try to claim a monopoly on the label of universalism and deny it from anybody else at will. Is that correct?

It took me some time to parse the sentence, I guess he would reach more people if he had used simple terms

The fun thing is that this argument that only the elite may be noble isn't exactly new - it goes back to Ps-Xenophon in the 'Political regime of the Athenians' back in 5th century BC. He claimed that the demos is corrupted by his debased position, and that only elites are good (given the chance to rule exclusively, which they hadn't in Athens)

<comment><USER2> Pretty much. He's saying that the 1%ers who are Macron's champions are the only ones who can afford universalism because they are the ones who benefitted from this new financialist monetary system and that they can only see anyone who doesn't share a world view they can't afford (because the working class as non beneficiaries of the new economics they have more immediate worries) as a selfish bigots.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Most corporate profits are now no longer derived from producing or even > marketing anything, but in the manipulation of credit, debt, and "regulated > rents."

I have read this assertion before, but how can you measure or prove that? I mean there is still an awful lot of stuff being produced, somehow.

Wow, HN mods seem to have deleted this story, so i can't answer the comment: [https://i.imgur.com/tOlYKUa.png](https://i.imgur.com/tOlYKUa.png) says that in 1971, when they still had the gold standard, the ratio was 20-22 now it is around 25-27; so is that a big qualitative change that changes the nature of the system? (Ok, it was much higher a few years back, but it is fluctuating) Still I don't entirely trust the argument that change of gold standard changed everything.

<comment><USER4> Look up statistics, I guess?

I found [1] and (assuming it can be categorized under "Financial Profits") made it into a (terribly quick and dirty) graph [2].

[1] [https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/ERP-2017/ERP-2017-table6](https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/ERP-2017/ERP-2017-table6)

[2] [https://i.imgur.com/tOlYKUa.png](https://i.imgur.com/tOlYKUa.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> the article is right in every point. it just forgets some key ones. how the minorities and especially the immigrants are part of this universalist narrative and used as a damocles sword on any one raising a critiscim of this market centric-universalism</comment>


The CIA Secret to Cybersecurity That No One Seems to Get - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/12/the-cia-secret-to-cybersecurity-that-no-one-seems-to-get/ <comment><USER2> FTA:

      In the bigger picture, as cybercrime evolves, it will become clear that loss of integrity is a bigger danger than loss of confidentiality. One merely has to compare different kinds of breaches to see the truth of this:

      [[INSERT CHART HERE]]

Indeed.

</comment><comment><USER3> "How Did We Get Here"?

Microsoft Windows?

"Integrity means assessing whether the software and critical data within your networks and systems are compromised with malicious or unauthorized code or bugs."

How about designing a 'computer' that can't be compromised by clicking on a URL or opening a malicious email attachment.

<comment><USER4> "What can we do?"

Stop using Microsoft Windows and use something else instead?</comment></comment>


Why it's time to break out of Twitter (Scripting News) - <AUTHOR> http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/03/12/whyItsTimeToBreakOutOfTwit.html <comment><USER2> Your number of Twitter followers, compared to that of another user, does not make you more valuable to society.

No one cares - you shouldn't either.</comment>


120,000 year old bacteria found still alive in arctic ice - <AUTHOR> http://live.psu.edu/story/31052 <comment><USER2> Don't let the husky's near it!!

<comment><USER3> Your comment made my day - thanx :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I trust online password management services like passpack.com? - <AUTHOR>

I've recently been looking for a good password management system. Key features being cross-platform and cross-browser implementation.
I started using Passpack.com a few weeks ago and it seems to be a pretty good solution. My only issues are how exactly they store your password database and how much can I really trust this service? Storing any sensitive data online always raises flags so I'm wondering if it's safe to use an online password service such as this? Are there any security tests I can perform to help ensure the security of this app?
The other option is to use something like Keepass--the advantage being that the password database is stored locally and is in my control. Though it might be a bit more complicated to get all my computers synced to use this.
So basically, can I trust any online password-storing site, and if not, should I switch to using only desktop apps like Keepass, where I'm in control of where the encrypted password database file lives? <comment><USER2> They _can_ grab all your passwords, because you're going to type them into their service, and because it's a web service, they can switch the implementation as they please. If it's implemented as they seem to imply (server just sends you an AES-crypted blob of passwords, JavaScript AES implementation decrypts the blob client-side using the packing key), then what happens if the bad guys root them and "enhance" their JavaScript to send the packing key back to the server?

I think that you are going to have to trust such a service with your plaintext passwords, because you need to recover the plaintext passwords from it. The problem is aggravated by it being a web service whose implementation can be switched at any time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ignoring the concerns about AES256 cyphers for this response...

The site that I use for my passwords is called Clipperz. (www.clipperz.com/beta). They encrypt everything in JS like the others, but they've fully released their source code for inspection. I know JS, and it looks legit, although I can't speak to their encryption technique (although they did everything else so well, I use that as a proxy for their competence).

The other cool thing is that they allow you to download an html/js/css file so you can open your passwords even when offline (big file, 1.5MB or so, but handy to keep your encrypted passwords around offline).

</comment><comment><USER4> From their website:

 _Your data is encrypted on-the-fly before leaving your browser. Passpack uses the AES-256 encryption algorithm...only you can decrypt it with your secret Packing Key._

If the technology works as they say, it is secure. Now the problem becomes how to verify whether it works as they say. It is almost impossible to verify claims like these. Theoretically, they can read your password anytime they want just by modifying the JavaScript (or whatever they are using ) and you will never know.

Personally I would not trust them with my really passwords.

<comment><USER5> Indeed, just see here:

[http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/NIST-certified- US...](http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/NIST-certified-USB-Flash- drives-with-hardware-encryption-cracked-895308.html)

To see some NIST certified "AES-256 encryption" which turns out to be easily sidestepped - an example of the difficulty of verifying whether it works as they say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Egads that is crazy to me. What happens when/if they go down for several hours/days? What happens when their web host gets knocked offline? What happens when they get DDOSed? What happens when/if they get acquired?

Wow - I can't imagine using a web company of individuals I know nothing about to store something so important.

And besides, I wouldn't post what password solution I use on the internet anyway.

</comment><comment><USER7> I use KeePass on a memory stick. When I need a password I can just plug it into whichever computer I happen to be using.

</comment><comment><USER8> I been using 1password for a couple months and I love it.</comment>


The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track on Earth - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html?action=click&contentCollection=Politics&module=Trending&version=Full&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article&pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> 220+ points, 210+ comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16027058](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16027058)</comment>


Show HN: Let Machine Learning Pick Colors for Your Designs - <AUTHOR> https://www.designwithai.com/aigradient <comment><AUTHOR> Founder here. Happy to answer any questions you people might have. We built this tool for developers and designers who want to find great gradient colors from a single color. A random forest algorithm is used to find the best possible colors for you based on thousands of candidates. We'd love for everyone to give it a try.

<comment><USER2> Nice. How does measure fitness?

<comment><AUTHOR> We initially labeled a small sample of gradient colors which we bootstrapped to create our initial classifier. We did a few tuning iterations until the product was ready.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can you please explain more how this works? Why gradients, is this even a problem in design? Is finding a style guide not more important?</comment>