Read less HN - <AUTHOR> http://johnmurray.io/log/2013/11/17/Read-Less-HN.md <comment><USER2> I can see how HN is bad for the author's well being, but certainly not for mine. I don't feel bad about reading other people's success stories. I don't feel any need to switch languages/frameworks when reading about new/hyped stuff.

It's all just information, what you do with that is up to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, but what is the opportunity cost of reading all of those posts and what are you really gaining from reading all of those "new technology of the month" postings?

<comment><USER3> Less time being a mindless drone, never leaving your lane? ;)

I personally have learned quite a bit on HN that has led me to being a better programmer. A discovered Two Scoops of Django ([https://django.2scoops.org/](https://django.2scoops.org/)), Javascript Allongé ([https://leanpub.com/javascript- allonge](https://leanpub.com/javascript-allonge)), and plenty of other things that have expanded my mind. The debate between promises, callbacks, and generators made me think critically about how I do asynchronous JS. The local love of functional programming has inspired me to dive in, and ultimately made me a better imperative programmer as well. And overhype of Edward Snowden's every movement aside, HN does a great job of surfacing stories about the intersection of policy and tech.

I also value a lot of the discourse that happens here. I think HN, even with its flaws, is a better community for discussion than Slashdot, Ars, or most of the rest of the sites covering tech.

<comment><USER4> I definitely see the benefits here. But whenever I see a point like this I wonder: if you had replaced hacker news with a different activity, could you have formed a similar list of things you learned? Perhaps a longer list, or one of higher quality? Not trying to criticize you, just something I think about in these cases.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, absolutely. I'm not arguing that HN is somehow optimal. I'm just saying that as a continual time investment, it's provided greater returns than the alternatives I've used in the past, with regards to staying on top of the scene in tech, startups, and tech-related policy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've noticed that a lot of writers in tech generalize their experience to everyone in the community. Several times a day I'm struck by someone who talks about his/her experience like it's a common experience, when it may or may not be. I think it would be safer and more relatable if the author had said "HN - Bad for My Well Being," but of course that doesn't sound as portentous.

<comment><USER6> I get the impression this is a trait that seems more present in programmer types than many other people, and this fascinates me. I notice this in myself too. I almost always try to reduce/abstract my own problems or issues to 'general principles', and I tend to want to get to the root of things.

There are many plausible explanations for this (and obviously I've tried to get to the root of this phenomenon too), but at some point I started reflecting on whether this behavior is a good or bad thing.

I think it's both good and bad. It's good primarily because a lot of people look at their own problem in isolation, and share/address them as 'their unique problem', which keeps them from seeing underlying patterns or principles and from tapping into the experiences and observations of the countless others that have had pretty much the exact same problem. But it can also be bad, because not everyone likes being subjected or presented with this kind of generalization, and attempting to think about a problem in a general sense while you are suffering from it yourself complicates the search for solutions immensely (especially practical, direct solutions to implement).

Does anyone know if there has been research into this? I never really thought of diving in the the 'psychology' of programmers...

<comment><USER5> By following startswithaj's excellent lesswrong link, I found an interesting doc about the subject : [http://www.academia.edu/4589611/Dennett_and_The_Typical_Mind...](http://www.academia.edu/4589611/Dennett_and_The_Typical_Mind_Fallacy)

I noticed it in action recently when watching a David Lynch documentary about Transcendental Meditation where he describes his experience of meditation as "the cables of and elevator being cut and falling into oneness." My first thought was that Lynch has a very unique mind and probably doesn't realize that is not a very typical experience during meditation, but bless his heart, he wants everyone to have it.

Edit: David Wants to Fly [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0payvR-- nM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0payvR--nM)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Some might find it interesting that I consider part of my job as a tech strategy consultant is to keep up with what's happening on HN.

I try not to open every link or anything, because I procrastinate just like everyone else. However, some of the value that I provide my clients is knowing about changes to their competitive landscape before they do.

Tightly coupled with both experience and a willingness to offer strong, thoughtful opinions on the day's tech news, I am often able to be the most honest and disconcertingly knowledgeable person at the table... all thanks to scanning HN a few times a day.

I owe much of my livelihood to your often link-bait posts, so thanks. :)

</comment><comment><USER8> Still not nearly as bad as Reddit. Subreddits have value, but look at the front page of Reddit. Zero value. On any given day, of any week, month, or year. Reddit's front page is 100% wasted time. I demonstrate this by asking to myself: Ten years from now what will Reddit's front page look like? Answer: The exact nonsense memes and image macros posted today.

<comment><USER9> This is mostly because Reddit's choice of default subreddits are poor (and cater to the lowest common denominator): [http://i.imgur.com/9FLPgsW.png](http://i.imgur.com/9FLPgsW.png)

You have manually curate the subreddits you want, unfortunately.

<comment><USER10> > This is mostly because Reddit's choice of default subreddits are poor

Presumably this isn't entirely a choice: I would expect a good subreddit to get worse if it was made default. (And I've heard that /r/atheism got better when it was made undefault, but I haven't actually looked.)

<comment><USER11> Thing is, those default subreddits were actually good before Reddit got too mainstream.

What we're seeing right now is the after effects of popularity.

<comment><USER12> Ah, the Catch 22 of popular discussion based websites. You want to be popular, but you want to remain high in quality. It's shockingly difficult to do both.

<comment><USER11> Yep, /r/science is about the only default that is ok. And if you've seen a climate change discussion there, you'll realize how painful it is to keep discussion on topic on reddit.

I remember going to reddit and thinking, damn these comments are loads better than slashdot. I don't think I can contribute anything interesting, these people are sharp so I won't post at all.

Might have just been me but there is a marked difference in tone on the site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady I've noticed a different bad thing that happens to me when I am active on HN. I become very argumentative IRL. On HN it's fun to engage other people, debating, disagreeing and arguing your point. It's constructive and usually we all get something from it.

I noticed that the more time I spend active on HN (in comments) the more I tend to correct friends when they make a mistake or vigorously argue a point of view on something not that important (these aren't bad things the but the frequency with which I was doing them annoyed me and my friends and it wasn't just the important stuff I was arguing, it was stupid things).

When I logged out of HN for a while this behaviour slowly started to improve. I couldn't stay away for ever though but I am much more aware of the effect and try to stop myself before I get too deep into a stupid debate/argument both on HN and IRL.

<comment><USER13> Yes! This and the need to explain things always in an exact and neutral way without actually knowing all to much about the issue at hand and thereby blatantly ignoring the reality and the knowledge and interest of the persons around you.

I don't blame HN. I've learned and still learn a lot of cool stuff here. It's the best source to stay up to date on internet drama and timely background information for security and hacking related incidents. Also a lot of programming and Unix related ideas I would hardly find anywhere else. But it's of little use to me. I'm not the security engineer of a start up. I'm not even really coding at the moment.

My reality is different. I should leave my room, work on my bicycle, solve the real and urgent issues around my life and sit in the library or hanging around with friends doing real stuff. Connecting with real people and learning something about other aspects of life. This may be different for others here.

Instead I'm here trapped in a strange click loop. I would do probably something similar without HN or even without internet. It's sad but the OPs post about is a good reminder to cut it down... it's irrational for me and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It depends on how long you've had an HN account. At some point the content seems to get repetitive. It's pretty easy to ignore the content that you've seen before.

But in the beginning it is a wealth of information, giving you insight into what should be expected when trying to start a barebones new company.

So you gorge on the articles until you rarely get new insights from them. Then, naturally, your addiction to HN ends. (Typically this starts the "remember when HN was good?" comments)

Now if you are addicted for other reasons, like you feel socially involved here, that I can not speak to. But if your addiction is content, that will fade once you've had your fill.

</comment><comment><USER15> I have a different problem with it, which is that it invariably makes me feel pretty incompetent, because no matter what subject comes up, people with 10 times my level of skill in fields that I consider myself relatively competent in start discussing things and I suddenly feel quite completely devoid of any skill at all. Even on a simple thing like posts about typing I find people lamenting how they are only able to output 60wpm while I measure myself at 48wpm. Part of my problem is that I tend to be a generalist and know a lot of things quite well rather than single specialist topic at extreme depth.

How this all plays out in my head is a complex thing, but overall I feel like it is bad for my self-image. It is just very hard to keep the perspective in mind that I might be in the top 20% of people in a field but the top 1% will be the ones who start commenting on a specialised topic on HN. Add to that the different personality types hiding behind people's pseudonymous identities and you are getting a super distorted picture of the world.

<comment><USER16> My advice would be to embrace your generalist nature.

There are certainly roles fit for specialists, but generalists with rare blends of difficult and useful skills are a lot more valuable in most situations. Specialization in any one area tends to have rapidly diminishing returns.

I think any above average developer can make themselves more valuable at a _much_ faster rate by becoming decent at complementary disciplines like design, user experience, conversion optimization, writing, etc. than by continuing to hone their development skills.

Even within development, becoming decent at every level of the stack, from dev ops and databases to front end, is usually going to add a lot more value than becoming slightly stronger at your specialty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> While I think all of OP's points are valid (loss of productivity, focus on things that are too positive or negative, unactionable items, etc.), I think there is a flipside. I'm not saying you should spend an exorbitant amount of time on HN, but I think many come for the community and shared purpose. It's like getting your Reddit fix without having to worry about cat photos and memes. There are many tech-related articles here that aren't about frameworks or success/failure.

<comment> Stealth- Honestly, most of my HN reading is because I need a mind-break from whatever I'm focusing on. I find it's a great way to take a break, and still learn a few things while I'm at it.

<comment><USER18> I was working on such a reply, but you said it better. The only thing I would add is that it's up to you to be disciplined, and not run from work, procrastinating on HN. But this is not an issue inherent to HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> >> _The solution is not to read absolutely no news at all._

A question: What makes you think so? I've gone months and years at a time without reading any news; it's a fantastic feeling, and if something is really important you'll hear about it from a friend.

Just as "read less HN" may not be applicable to everyone, "you should probably keep reading the news" may not apply to others, or at least others may have had positive experiences quitting the consumption of news media.

Scary, I know ;-)

</comment><comment> sean-duffy There is definitely a flipside. I wouldn't be nearly as up to date with tech if it wasn't for HN, and last summer I managed to get an internship at a startup that I would have had zero chance of finding had I not seen them in a "Who's Hiring?" post on here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh definitely. I would just argue that you had to dig through a lot of posts that were less-than-beneficial and that a filter for an "Ask HN" would have been more worth your time. And that is just one form of curated content that I was mentioning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Something that can curate the top posts and send them to you on a schedule.

When you read a bunch of articles and upvote interesting ones (for whatever your value of "interesting" is), you contribute to the community by making a distinction between articles.

The problem with reading from a curated feed is that you're most likely no longer participating (because it's too late to meaningfully upvote), and hence delegating curation to all the other users. When a majority of all the other users are doing the same, then the power of curation becomes concentrated in fewer voters.

I suspect the value of HN is amplified by the meaningful participation of its users. There are many other ways to be a passive consumer of news.

</comment><comment><USER21> I actually think the discussions on HN are pretty good, even the political ones. There are some well thought out people here, and then people who I would've empathized with years ago when I was younger and not more exposed to the way the world works. Both sides are helpful to read and be aware of.

But I mainly read HN for the tech news. I'm one of those people who will learn about Github/Twitter/Heroku being down from here. All the big hacks are posted here and thoroughly discussed. I probably would've never played around with CoffeeScript, Angular, Go, and Dart without them being endlessly discussed around here. I wish I had something like HN when I was in college.

</comment><comment><USER22> Just looking at the current headlines, your characterization is completely off.

But I agree with the larger point -- HN is addictive and biased. Moderation is key.

</comment><comment><USER23> It seems to me that often HN is an echo chamber for people who want to feel superior about their tech choices - an attitude that's inherited from it's creator PG. I mean, "Blub programmers"? Can you get any more elitist?

I view HG as a boy's club for programming fashionistas. It just happens that sometimes amongst all the posturing there's something genuinely valuable.

Regarding the OP - I think that HN is fine as long as you learn to skim and filter.

</comment><comment><USER24> The loss of productivity and loss of focus in my work is exactly why I created [http://HNdigest.com](http://HNdigest.com) .

However, the content that I get from HackerNews is priceless, so quitting makes no sense.

</comment><comment><USER25> I actually took around 2 months off of Hacker News over the summer when we were coming up on a big deadline with the beta launch or our new game, and I must say I noticed a significant uptick in productivity over this period. Completely fasting; however, hasn't turned out to be the best idea since I'm now more addicted than I was previously. The newsletter idea is probably the best of both worlds.

</comment><comment><USER26> HN is an online community, where people go because they feel that it fulfills them in some way (maybe because they plan to do a startup of their own one day and reading about other startups makes them dream, because they like debating with others, etc.).

I suggest the ridiculous notion that you should do what makes you happy, and if going on HN fulfills some part of your being - no matter how irrationally - then go for it.

</comment><comment><USER27> Time is precious.

The issue I have with HN (and other Forums), is that there is a lot of repetition in the comments. In part on HN this is probably not helped as it's difficult to overview and digest threads, especially if the comment trees are large. Comment verbosity and positional changes also make it difficult.

I think that is why in part people come, post, then move on. Necro-posting, even a day late is pretty pointless if you want to add to the general discussion.

I think I'd rather comments have a character limit. Or to get people to post summaries of their posts as titles. And/or some tl;dr; post mortems on comment threads.

</comment><comment><USER28> in a couple of hours we'll see

HN - Why It's Actually Good For Your Well Being (medium.com)

</comment><comment><USER29> Regarding the curated content option, I don't think that would be a good option for me. I come here to learn about the unusual and non-mainstream tech stuff. Of the 20 frameworks, it's true that I can only really learn one, but I probably am not going to want to learn whatever one the curator decided was best, because the curator is going to choose the most popular/hip/mainstream one, since that's the one that would be of interest to the most readers. I come here not to learn what's popular, but rather to learn about the things that aren't popular.

</comment><comment><USER30> actually i love all of this stuff on HN. i really don't agree with the argument presented here - as well presented as it is.

hn is a resource where the stories of the kind listed in this article are available at all. for me this is important because i want to read those stories, i want to learn from the mistakes of others and see what other people /think/ worked well for them. sure it hurts my productivity, but so does the beer i would drink, the movie i would watch or whatever else that i would do in my down time because that is when i read HN for the most part.

what is bad for my well being here is all the 'self-entitled prick with first world problem' stories. i have no respect for them and it saddens me that the community as a whole seems naive enough on average that this stuff is considered news and not just 'smart' people embarrassing themselves with an utter lack of common sense or life experience. it makes me genuinely angry. the worst part of it all is that these stories and promoting them feed the very cause you fight against... see just thinking about draws me into wanting to collectively slap the majority of the community around the face and tell them how it is, you know the good ol' sciency way by pointing at data and examples littered throughout history instead of jumping on some crazy emotional bandwagon.

enough.

</comment><comment><USER31> Is it weird that I read Hacker News for none of the reasons he lists? I'm rarely interested in reading about startups succeeding or failing, or new frameworks or languages, but I am interested in reading about cool things people have done with technology, or even non-tech related news. I guess I'd probably be more suited to slashdot's content, but I prefer Hacker News' format so much more.

</comment><comment><USER32> Someone needs to add on the 4chan thread: "HN: why HN is bad for you".

</comment><comment><USER33> This is one of the few technical communities online where I post comments. The problem I have with reddit is that downvoting is too rampant. I also enjoy the focus here on startup companies, even though I'm not a founder. reddit seems to have this bias against startups which is overly cynical and even demoralizing. To me, the startup scene is (part of) what makes the software industry interesting and distinguishes it from, say, chemical engineering. If I ever do decide to become a founder, the information I've picked up here, almost by osmosis, will undoubtedly be invaluable.

Regarding posts about new languages or frameworks, I really don't think anybody is seriously suggesting you go rewrite your production codebase. That's silly hyperbole. Lots of people here actively work on side projects or they may be in the planning phase for a new startup with no code written yet-- situations where they can legitimately consider using a newer framework or language.

</comment><comment><USER34> I shall invoke Sturgeon's Law: ("ninety percent of everything is crap." )

Sturgeon's revelation, commonly referred to as Sturgeon's law, is an adage commonly cited as "ninety percent of everything is crap." It is derived from quotations by Theodore Sturgeon, an American science fiction author and critic: while Sturgeon coined another adage that he termed "Sturgeon's law", it is his "revelation" that is usually referred to by that term.

The phrase was derived from Sturgeon's observation that while science fiction was often derided for its low quality by critics, it could be noted that the majority of examples of works in other fields could equally be seen to be of low quality and that science fiction was thus no different in that regard to other art forms.

</comment><comment><USER35> TL;DR don't read HN if you're easily influenced.

</comment><comment><USER36> HN has been a blessing for me. It has taught me so much about startups/consulting and everything related. And the comments section is tremendously valuable. As an avid forum reader (self-proclaimed) I have the experience of knowing how to comb through the comments and be able to quickly extract what's important. Only a fool reads everything and interprets it on face value.

Sometimes in the comments what's written isn't important, but the thought process behind that writing could really help excel one's career (if one's able to discern it). I have to pay homage to the tremendously experienced consultants here, in which I've learned so much from, and has helped my career unequivocally.

<comment><USER37> This is such an outstanding point, like all internet resources there is a wealth of knowledge you can obtain from HN. But you have to condition yourself to differentiate between what is sensational and what is actual fact.

I might get burned for this, but I don't know why people even evangelize posts of this kind. For starters they are off topic. And what is the end goal? At one extreme are you trying to lead an exodus? Do you feel like you're helping people because you're telling people how to effectively use their time? There is such a wide range of types here I don't know how this advice can be applied ubiquitously.

I love HN because I get to see so many great early stage products. I get to hear opinions from all ages that reveal the environment we are in (Young and old developers trying to mesh together, new techniques meet old). I don't really know too many other communities that have what HN has.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I do not feel qualified to determine the psychological effects of HN on readers, but the author has some valid points. HN does leave one with the impression that there's this "get rich fast" club of 20-something entrepreneurs who are getting huge valuations and 8-figure cash investments for unfinished and seemingly unimportant niche products and unfortunately, you, the reader, cannot be part of it. This might be frustrating for people who work hard on their own startups and cannot get anywhere near this VC craze because they live on some other continent. Then again, it has no real impact on their own efforts, success is not made by VC or hype, it's the product that counts.

</comment><comment><USER39> HN, like all news sources, is a mixed bag of content that has varying degrees of relevancy to its readers. Very few people have time to read all of the Wall Street Journal on a daily basis, much less benefit from absorbing that much information, and the same thing applies to HN. However, HN still provides a great source of current and emergent trends in the startup world. If one isn't able to consume this site's content in a way that's beneficial to them then the blame is squarely on their own lack of discipline. Writing blog posts extrapolating one's personal tendency to misuse this news source to some general rule of thumb is pointless.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. However, I wouldn't say that this is entirely useless as it does offer some suggested alternatives to help build better habits. What I discuss in my post is something that I've seen friends and co-workers struggle with and the newsletters were something largely unknown to some.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I live in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Some of the stories I read at HN appears on "mainstream-media" a day or three later. In most cases, Hacker News makes the local technology news "no-news".

As for the author's opinion, media, by definition, usually cover the exceptional stories, great success or failures, but not the daily challenges each of us is coping with, while struggling to generate more leads or turn a lead into a deal (yep, same letters, reads backwards).

I love stay in sync with the remote Silicon Valley and HN, the stories and the comments help me get that.

Thanks PG and the other guys for putting this site together and maintaining this site for us, entrepreneurs all over the world!

</comment><comment><USER41> I'd also add [http://web-design-weekly.com](http://web-design-weekly.com) and (my newsletter) [http://jobety.com](http://jobety.com) to the list.

Web design weekly definitely provides quality web design related content. I've also talked to the curator and he's a very nice guy which doesn't change the quality of the content, but does let you know your supporting a decent person.

My newsletter Jobety provides web design and dev related jobs once a week. I sort through a lot of different job boards and pick out what I consider to be the best ones.

</comment><comment><USER42> John, thanks for the Hacker Newsletter mention!

Of course I'm a bit biased, but I think curated newsletters provide a lot of advantages, several of which are listed in the post. Another one that I would add is the ability to focus on a particular topic or area that you find useful. I created a (curated) list of a lot of them recently - [http://www.kaledavis.com/2013/09/06/newsletters- newsletters-...](http://www.kaledavis.com/2013/09/06/newsletters-newsletters- newsletters.html).

</comment><comment><USER43> I started reading Hacker News back in 2007. I got busy, really busy around 2010. I came back in 2013.

Nothing's changed. Still the same type of talk, same type of links, same type of mentality.

</comment><comment><USER44> I rarely read every article on page one, and many of those that I do look at I only read a couple of paragraphs, as was the case with this article.

Ergo, I disagree with the premise of this article.

</comment><comment><USER45> Is it "complain about HN week" ? If you got problem with HN stop reading it, simple as that. We don't need your "awesome" advices how to read stories on HN, we don't need to hear that HN sux. I dont think anyone here got problem with filtering the content, if you dont want to read another startup stories you just don't. I do not see any problem here.

Hacker News is still awesome community, people here usually have awesome attitude. It keeps me motivated.

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm not sure how many of you do this, but I often find myself looking something up on HN, just out of curiosity of what was discussed and what people thought about it.

</comment><comment><USER47> I think it goes without saying that it's all about your objectives and perceptions. Objectively, HN is a valuable resource to stay informed of micro- innovations in the tech industry.

I'm not someone that's insecure about what I don't know or how smart I am, as I'm constantly trying to improve all areas of my life; as a result, many of the posts here are inspiring and help set a fire under my ass to get out there start _doing_.

</comment><comment><USER48> This is the difference between consuming content and letting the content consume you. HN can't harm you unless you allow it to. Don't blame the content.

Sometimes there's no excuse for self-discipline, critical thinking, a healthy perspective on life, and self-esteem. I don't say this flippantly. All of the above are lifelong challenges for most people (myself included).

</comment><comment><USER49> Something I've considered doing is taking HN and/or reddit posts and then applying a machine learning algorithm to figure out what kinds of articles I like/dislike and automatically filter out the ones that are likely to waste my time, or at least improve upon the existing sorting system and make it more personalized.

</comment><comment><USER50> HN and proggit are two great sources of consuming technology related information. I usually spent 20 mins in morning and add the interesting looking articles on instapaper for reading in free time. I don't think it's making me less productive at all and HN comments are great at deciding what to read.

</comment><comment><USER51> I must have missed all those articles about languages/frameworks you need to learn immediately. Generally I feel pretty comfortable with the tools I have now and don't feel threatened if I see some new cool tech everyone's excited about, but it does make interesting reading.

</comment><comment><USER52> Your article did strike a chord with me, simply because I had the exact same epiphany that you write of, a few months ago, and have been spending less time on HN since.

So, point of my commment is, add me to your anecdata count, of another one that thought in the same way and arrived to the same conclusion.

</comment><comment><USER53> I don't know, this looks like a thinly veiled ad for one of the newsletter published by Peter Cooper.

</comment><comment><USER54> I use HN as a kick in the butt. Whenever I feel down or demotivated I just browse to HN's home page, see what amazing work is being done in the tech world while I'm just sitting there, remember that I want to be a part of it, and go back to work with my motivation restored.

</comment><comment><USER55> [http://johnmurray.io/log/2013/03/13/Nothing-is- Interesting.m...](http://johnmurray.io/log/2013/03/13/Nothing-is- Interesting.md) How can someone answer any question in there if there's no any comments area?

<comment><USER56> Author tired of the project before he got to that part :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> My girlfriend is reading the Daily Mail like I read Hacker News. I don't know which website is worse for our well being but I try to read the day best voted submissions and it is enough to keep me updated with everything else.

</comment><comment><USER58> I use HN to test if internet is working. Don't do this, worst idea ever, but it's built in my muscle memory. It also happens that I read HN in a tab, and then open a new tab and get on HN again. Muscle memory.

</comment><comment><USER59> I think most people visiting HN choose to read what is relevant to their interests and goals, as well as submitting similar content or submitting something perhaps breaking news in the tech industry for the day

</comment><comment><USER60> HN can be like FB - highlight reels that people sometimes compare to the full view of what they are experiencing.

There are also posts about failure but I'd say they are a bit less common than the ones about success.

</comment><comment><USER61> Another post in the _do this, do that, because it 's better for you_ fashion. Since when people are going to stop writing with so much entitlement ? What do they know what works for me anyway ?

</comment><comment><USER62> Technology ADD is a issue I have been struggling with for some time. The compulsive urge to chase every new framework is real and I do not know how manage it as it eats through my productive time.

</comment><comment><USER63> I _want_ to read less HN, but i can't find something better.

</comment><comment><USER64> Those are some great newsletter recommendations!

Anyone have any more?

</comment><comment><USER65> Thanks for the Pycoders Weekly mention John!

</comment><comment><USER66> You forgot "I want something to read while building, so hey what does hacker have to say."

</comment><comment><USER67> This could be said about nearly all tech news sites. At least HN is a cross- section of sources...

</comment><comment><USER68> I think we all read the 4chan post yesterday, this is just a reiteration of that

</comment><comment><USER69> noprocrast! :)

</comment><comment><USER70> Really i'm just here for the hardware and debugging stories.

</comment><comment><USER71> I just check HN twice each day to find some news for my blog

</comment><comment><USER72> In other words:

"Why I read less HN and you should, too!"

</comment><comment> Al-Khwarizmi Too much of something is bad for you. News at 11.

</comment><comment><USER73> I read this on HN, so I'll keep reading.

</comment><comment><USER74> So your saying read more stackoverflow? :-)

</comment><comment><USER75> [http://troll.me/images/obama-meh/y-u-mad- bro.jpg](http://troll.me/images/obama-meh/y-u-mad-bro.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER76> You may be right. (hits refresh)

</comment><comment><USER77> Very good article thank you :-) I'm surprised HN haven't removed it.

</comment><comment><USER78> Is it ironic this is posted on HN ?

<comment><USER79> I don't think so. Best place to target the relevant audience.

<comment><USER78> Thats true, but personally I don't see many being swayed by the argument.

Though perhaps the authors intention is simply to raise a couple points, rather than actually get folks to visit less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> Out of 250 Hacker News posts that cross my transom in a given week, I might open 30 links, decide to actually read 6 of those thirty tabs, and learn something from three of them.

This is still a better ratio than most websites. Sturgeon's Law applies. 90% of everything is crap, another 9% is of decent quality but not relevant to anything I need to do-- leaving 1% that is worth it for me to read. So I'd say that HN's numbers are on par, if not slightly above it.

See, I'd really like to dislike HN. Paul Graham used to be an iconoclast (with some serious technical chops-- go read _On Lisp_ \-- deserving of much respect) fighting the stodgy establishment of VC-istan. Having seen the failings of investors nearly destroy his business on several occasions, he tried to build something new and different: a fast path to funding and access so startups could focus on building instead of bullshit. But now that he is the establishment, he's not fighting hard enough. Then there is the issue of HN's abysmal quality of moderation, for which he must accept responsibility. So I really _want_ to dislike HN and tell it to fuck off wholesale...

... but, the problem is that, in spite of these negatives, there's just a lot of really good stuff that ends up here. Reading _less_ HN is good advice, but there's enough high-quality stuff here (in submissions and comments) to make it worthwhile.

</comment><comment><USER81> If you're that weak that you can't even read HN without properly filtering shit in your head, you shouldn't use the internet. What a terrible and pointless article.

Very thin blogspam at the very least.</comment>


Building DistributedLog: Twitter's high-performance replicated log service - anand-s https://blog.twitter.com/2015/building-distributedlog-twitter-s-high-performance-replicated-log-service <comment><AUTHOR> Blog post about the choice of replication scheme chose for Apache BookKeeper:

[http://fpj.me/2015/01/23/so-many-ways-of- replicating/](http://fpj.me/2015/01/23/so-many-ways-of-replicating/)

Critique of the chosen replication scheme:

[http://www.ioremap.net/2015/04/28/apache-bookkeeper-or- how-n...](http://www.ioremap.net/2015/04/28/apache-bookkeeper-or-how-not-to- design-replication-consistency-scheme/)

<comment><USER2> Ah, just happened to see those two blog posts together in same place. Those are really good posts on explaining replication scheme of Apache BookKeeper.

One thing to add on Flavio's blog post. Readers of a log (ledger) agree on LastAddConfirmed (lac), which LAC could be thought of 'commit' message in most of consensus protocol. In replicated log, commit means making data visible for readers.

BookKeeper doesn't enforce 'commit' like what other consensus protocol does. Instead it exposes the core elements of a consensus protocol as primitives and let applications decide things such as when to commit, how often to commit. Readers could use API (readerLastConfirmed) to catch up to latest 'commit' data. Controlling when to commit is the way how DistributedLog uses BookKeeper to tune end-to-end latency for different types of workloads: for latency- sensitive workloads like database, it does aggressive commits, for analytics workload, it does periodical commits to get benefits (such as reducing bandwidth by compression) by grouping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Geo-replicated log sounds like a very ambitious and impressive project. As what blog says, the DistributedLog just customizes data placement policy to support geo-replication. Does that mean it runs same stack within datacenter vs across multiple datacenters? What kind of performance it could achieve? I am hoping twitter could disclose more details on that, such as concerns and experiences on geo-replication log, comparison with spanner and CockroachDB.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Kafka addressed these durability concerns in version 0.8"

I wonder if they would of used Kafka if it existed as it does today.</comment>


Ask HN: How does your business share important information? - <AUTHOR>

Hey Hacker News!
Started thinking about how companies can share and keep important information "on top of the stack" recently, so I thought I'd ask the community.
How does your company share and make known important information? Email? Some kind of service? Maybe physical mediums?
Doesn't matter what kind of information. Happy clients, new products, new management, etc.. :) <comment><USER2> Digital signs</comment>


Lehman Brothers Moment in China – Shadow Bank Sichuan Trust Missed Payments - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmp.com/economy/article/3091933/chinas-shadow-banking-system-under-spotlight-sichuan-trust-misses-payments <comment><AUTHOR> Bullet points from article:

Sichuan Trust last week apologised to investors for missing payments on its financial products due in part to the coronavirus outbreak and global economic downturn

The firms troubles indicate growing risks in the trust industry, which is often linked to China's shadow banking system

Any additional links related to this story would be appreciated.</comment>


What a Newfound Kingdom Means for the Tree of Life - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-a-newfound-kingdom-means-for-the-tree-of-life-20181211/ <comment><USER2> I'm currently reading Nick Lane's excellent book, The Vital Question, which explores what we know about the split between archaea and eukaryotes, so this was an exciting article. This discovery is still one level below that split, within the eukaryotes, but the ongoing discoveries of more and more ancient branches suggests the tantalising possibility that we may one day find something even more ancient still swimming around somewhere --- a missing link from billions of years ago.

What strikes me about both this article and Nick Lane's book is that when I was in school the tree of life was presented as this thing that people had pretty much figured out. Since then it's been altered almost beyond recognition using genomics. I hope there are people still in school who read articles like this one and get inspired to get into this amazing area of research.

<comment><USER3> If I know nothing beyond high school biology about taxonomy and nothing beyond a reasonably educated layperson about biology generally, is "The Vital Question" accessible? If not, do you have an example of a well written but quick introduction to the subject matter.

I occasionally read pop-culture articles about, e.g. the discovery of giraffe subspecies, and think about how I'd like to know more about both the human- focused taxonomy side and the evo bio speciation side, but I don't know where to start.

<comment><USER4> If you have a background in IT, and are modestly comfortable with statistics, the following foundational paper on algorithms to reconstruct the tree of life from genetic data should actually be understandable: [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/311/5765/1283](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/311/5765/1283)

The statistics really only ever amount to Occam's Razor, I. e. fewer differences in the genome means closer relationship.

Edit: actually free full-text link: [http://bioinformatics.bio.uu.nl/pdf/Ciccarelli.s06-311.pdf](http://bioinformatics.bio.uu.nl/pdf/Ciccarelli.s06-311.pdf)

<comment><USER3> I am a statistician (although as I confessed nowhere near computational biology), so, uh, yeah this is up my alley.

<comment><USER4> One more thing: Jared Diamond (of "Guns, Germs, Steel" fame) transferred the exact, same method to linguistics, using it to discover the ancestry of Pacific Islanders using features of their respective languages instead of letters of DNA. The result is both a tree of their (cultural) ancestry, and a map of their migration/expansion from island to island.

<comment><USER5> Yet another thing: Julien d'Huy uses these methods to analyze folk literature and myths. Very, very interesting research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is what excites me about science - the discovery of the previously unknown and the revision of what we previously thought we knew.

I wish our education system promoted this idea - "what we know about science will change in your life time. It's likely that in the future, most of what you're learning today will be outdated. It doesn't mean what we're teaching you is 'wrong,' but rather, it's the best of what we know now. You're about to enter on a glorious adventure of discovery that will not end at graduation. Science is about hypothesis, iteration, and testing...and the discovery of unanticipated results."

Instead, what's taught is a static version of reality: What we know today is all that is worth knowing for the rest of your life.

<comment><USER7> In that regard I always admired Eliezer Yudkowsky's idea of working to become "less wrong" as you progress. It kind of sums that up perfectly.

We haven't got it all figured out yet, but we're less wrong than we used to be.

<comment><USER8> Or before Yudkowsky, Asimov's idea of "the relativity of wrong":

[https://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.ht...](https://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm)

"Naturally, the theories we now have might be considered wrong in the simplistic sense of my English Lit correspondent, but in a much truer and subtler sense, they need only be considered incomplete."

<comment><USER9> That link omits some parts of the essay. Complete version here: [http://hermiene.net/essays- trans/relativity_of_wrong.html](http://hermiene.net/essays- trans/relativity_of_wrong.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For people interested in this kind of work, I recommend The Tangled Tree, the biography of Carl Woese, who discovered Archaea: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/13/books/review/david- quamme...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/13/books/review/david-quammen- tangled-tree.html)

Evolution is interesting but up and down from this level of the tree of life too. I also loved reading "The Beak of the Finch" to learn about evolution in macroscopic metazoans.

</comment><comment><USER11> For those interested in going deep on this, I highly recommend this essay I was fond of in grad school by W. Ford Doolittle, who writes a lot on this subject: [Pattern pluralism and the Tree of Life hypothesis]([[https://www.pnas.org/content/104/7/2043](https://www.pnas.org/content/104/7/2043))

For a while now amongst evolutionary biologists it has been clear that the "root" of the evolutionary tree, or the so-called "LUCA" (last universal common ancestor) may not exist, mostly because horizontal gene transfer is so common amongst unicellular lifeforms that it ruins the orderly notions of descent-with-modification that we have formed following Darwin's studies of higher life.

I imagine this is disheartening to most people, and the orderly notion of a "tree of life" with a simple root persists because we want an uncomplicated picture of the world; human needs for ontological clarity trump the disgusting ball of muck and sputum that is actual life.

</comment><comment><USER12> It seems completely obvious to me that we continue to find new types of life. Given that "More than eighty percent of our ocean is unmapped, unobserved, and unexplored". I could not find a number that represents unexplored mud and muck, where this specimen was found. My guess is something very close to 100.

</comment><comment><USER13> How big is that critter?

Answer my own question: other articles suggest it is about 15 μm long.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wonder if we will discover that this tree is "hairy" \- that there are thousands of isolated branches that departed from the main branch hundreds of millions of years ago. They wouldn't be "kingdoms", since they'd only contain a few (or even one) species.

</comment><comment> jf- It may be genetically distinct from animalia, but it's definitely acting like an animal. It moves independently, senses external stimuli and hunts prey.

Actually, it's probably the closest thing to an actual alien life form that we've yet encountered. This is what that kind of convergent evolution would look like.

<comment><USER15> As it turns out, not quite a guy with pointed ears wishing us long life and prosperity.

Humor aside, it is a very interesting idea to find convergent evolution far away on the tree of life to conjecture about exobiology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I, for one, welcome our new hemimastigote overlords.</comment>


Distributed locks with Redis - <AUTHOR> http://redis.io/topics/distlock <comment><USER2> Perhaps this is a nice thought exercise, but please don't use this in production. If you need a reliable distributed lock, use something battle- tested like ZooKeeper.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have always felt like distributed locks are a flimsy design but will take a good look at this implementation.

</comment><comment><USER4> We did something similar in .NET via the ServiceStack library and some custom code. We open sourced it on github too. We used it to prevent a method from being called more than once at a time primarily.

[http://stackify.com/distributed-method- mutexing/](http://stackify.com/distributed-method-mutexing/)

[https://github.com/stackify/redis-tagging-locking- sample/tre...](https://github.com/stackify/redis-tagging-locking- sample/tree/master/src/DistributedLockingPerMethod)

</comment><comment><USER5> At my workplace, we are currently looking for a distributed locking mechanism. Since we are already heavily using Redis in our system, it seems to be convenient to rely on it, too, but we heart a lot of criticism against it.

Does anyone have experience with distributed locks and would be kind enough to share?

<comment><USER6> In a real-time system at work, we originally used Redis as a locking mechanism to avoid resource contention. However, it turned out the better long-term solution was to better use our reliable message broker and make tasks finer grain.

So, rather than lock large resources, we would break the processing into tiny tasks, each completely contained in a message object. Each message specified a new message to launch on completion. This way the messaging protocol is preventing resource contention rather than a lock.

[edit] The context involved some licenses software to which we only owned several instances. The original approach would attempt to grab a lock and run the batch. The final approach just created a queue for jobs and one consumer for each available license. Now, none of our compute is spent waiting on locks either.

<comment><USER5> Splitting a resource into multiple parts and embedding in into a single message in order to avoid external storage and the need for locking is an interesting approach, but sadly not an option for me. Nevertheless, I appreciate your response.

<comment><USER6> Yah, I understand it's not always an option.

If the data size is limiting though, you can embed a Redis key or Hadoop FS reference into the message, rather than breaking your message system with massive data.

Then, you can have the storage system listen for completion messages, and cleanup appropriately. Or, like we did, just shove out old data LRU style. This way some history is always available for debugging.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Can Epic pull this off? It already did - <AUTHOR> https://superjoost.substack.com/p/epic-versus-the-mobile-industrial <comment><USER2> This is about a secondary point brought up: It's clear and unhidden large tech companies like Google, Apple, and Amazon rely on self-interacting ecosystems. This isn't always aligned with making a good product for the user. I wonder how many users are put off by this, and by how much- evidently not enough to stop using the services. What's the balance between raising profits by keeping customers in your ecosystem, and not frustrating them by breaking compatibility with outsiders?

It might be interesting looking at how Valve/Steam does it. AFAIK, they've built their model on working with outside developers. Started as in-house Valve games, and rapidly expanded to a majority of developers, including independent/small scale ones.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm finally looking forward to being able to unlock the iPhone, being able to ssh into it and being able to install features and widgets that aren't just Apple provided.

Hopefully this allow more companies to then allow sideloading of their apps without the stupid app store. Software delivery has worked perfectly fine on PCs for decades. It's time the phones joined in.</comment>


Reveal App - <AUTHOR> http://revealapp.com/ <comment><USER2> It looks beautiful, but has anyone ever found 3D "viewing" of 2D interfaces to actually be _useful_?

I dunno, I've never felt a reason to use Firefox's 3D DOM view to debug anything ever, or that it would help at all. If anything, the 3D view just confuses things for me, not being able to see how things line up, etc.

I'm very curious if this is just novelty eye candy, or if there are people who have found this useful in real-life interface work, and what those situations were.

<comment><USER3> I've found FF's 3D view to be very useful for debugging. Perfect for the times when you need to find that one div that is wide enough to cause horizontal scrollbars on your responsive design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm sure most people know this, but Firefox's developer tools has this feature for any website you're on. Its very cool and sometimes quite handy when developing for web.

<comment> k-mcgrady They mention that on the page, sounds like that was their inspiration:

"Reveal brings the power of tools like Firebug and Web Inspector to iOS developers."

<comment><USER5> Firefox's 3D View was definitely an inspiration. Note however that Reveal lets you focus in on a view within the view hierarchy, which is handy when you're only interested in one part of a large hierarchy.

Symbiote ([https://github.com/TestingWithFrank/symbiote](https://github.com/TestingWithFrank/symbiote)) and DCIntrospect ([https://github.com/domesticcatsoftware/DCIntrospect](https://github.com/domesticcatsoftware/DCIntrospect)) were also inspirations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I thought this looked really familiar -- and cool, I remember bookmarking it to download it on my computer -- so I went back into my saved stories and found the "Show HN" from about 6 weeks ago. Original discussion at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5813542](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5813542).

</comment><comment><USER7> Very similar to a tool I use that open source for iOS

[https://github.com/glock45/iOS-Hierarchy- Viewer](https://github.com/glock45/iOS-Hierarchy-Viewer)

<comment><USER8> Spark Inspector is another commercial alternative: [http://sparkinspector.com/](http://sparkinspector.com/)

I'm holding off directly comparing them until Reveal announce their final pricing. They both have pros and cons, I wouldn't right now place one above the other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oooh this looks nice.

I'd love a tool that could integrate with Jailbroken phones and Cycript to provide run-time introspection on actual devices though.

<comment><USER10> You don't even need a jailbroken phone, just a provisioning profile. Objective-C is fully dynamic, so you can override UIView/CALayer so that it sends data to a server whenever it changes and is a child view of the key UIWindow.

They don't say it explicitly, but I would be shocked if Reveal does not work the same when testing on a device.

<comment><USER11> You would still need a way to get your code running in another process; simply replacing the implementations of methods in your own application would not cause them to change system-wide.

<comment><USER10> You are right, of course. I thought the GP just wanted it for his own apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice app, if people are looking for something similar for Xaml based apps (WPF, Silverlight, Windows Phone and Windows 8) I highly recommend Xaml Spy [http://xamlspy.com/](http://xamlspy.com/)

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm trying this out now and just switched to the 3D view. Mind = blown.

Great job, I have a feeling this is going to make big difference for visual debugging.

</comment><comment><USER14> Cool stuff! Now that everyone and their grandmother are building apps it makes sense to start selling shovels (as in selling shovels in a gold rush).

<comment><USER15> Actually it doesn't. Those who strike gold will always make more than the shovel salesmen, just have much much lower odds. But, when the general population of gold diggers realizes the odds are poor the shovel salesmen will still go out of business.

I've always hated applying this hackneyed phrase to bubble tech, because the meta product makers end up being just as silly looking as the product makers when trends change, and often in a worse position for transition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What? Printing [view recursiveDescription] in a tiny little box in Xcode isn't enough for people? :)

<comment><USER17> I don't think there is -recursiveDescription in NSView or NSObject. I've seen -description and -debugDescription. Correct me if I'm wrong as it sounds useful. :)

<comment><USER18> UIView has recursiveDescription (though it's not declared in the header as it's for debugging only). For NSView (on OS X), try _subtreeDescription.

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4166879/how-to-print-a- co...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4166879/how-to-print-a-control- hierarchy-in-cocoa)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I just integrated this with my app and it looks amazing. I just fixed couple of complex alignment issues. It would have taken few hours to find and debug those issues

</comment><comment><USER20> Looks amazing, only I see a typo in one of their labels. In the main video at 0:31 it reads "Highligted text". Missing an "h".

</comment><comment><USER21> Does anyone know if there is a program to capture 3D/isometric screenshots of your app?</comment>


Considering leaving Stack Exchange - <AUTHOR> https://cooking.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3612/considering-leaving-stack-exchange <comment><AUTHOR> The most interesting bit IMO is the linked Twitter thread: [https://twitter.com/shog9/status/1217542885605662720](https://twitter.com/shog9/status/1217542885605662720)

but submitted meta post as OP as it seems a better entry point for context.</comment>


Video Q&A with Peter Norvig on A.I., Machine Learning. Live now - <AUTHOR> http://event.on24.com/wcc/r/1274664/C19937E746E76673C9D104397A95DF50?partnerref=acmcta <comment><AUTHOR> For the record, it starts at: December 08, 2016 at 12:00 PM Eastern Standard Time</comment>


Ask HN: Why doesn't 'clear' actually erase the console? - <AUTHOR>

If I run clear on a re-sized console window in Linux all goes away but when I maximize that window everything is there, clear just scrolls console contents? <comment><USER2> Yes. I think its a special code that the program sends to the terminal. It comes from the days terminals used to be fisical instead of virtual. Its in the termcap database that corresponds to the terminal you use.

</comment><comment><USER3> I always thought it just printed empty lines based on window height. So when you scrolled up, stuff was still there.

</comment><comment><USER2> This code works on my terminal: \e[1;1H\e[2J So try printf "\e[1;1H\e[2J"</comment>


Fix Earth's climate crisis instead of dreaming of other planets - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/2019-nobel-prize-physics-chemistry-climate-change-global-warming-a9237346.html <comment><USER3> I'll take both, please!

This is an old and tired viewpoint, that space is just a huge waste of resources that could be applied to more down to Earth (haha) needs. It's usually used when discussing poverty, though.

For the current climate emergency, it's factually wrong, without even getting into philosophy. Two words: artificial satellites. Without them we would be unable to track deforestation, thinning ice sheets, atmospheric composition, surface temperature, all of which are absolutely critical in understanding climate change and monitoring our impact.

And while the rockets that have placed these satellites in orbit are not capable of sending humanity to other worlds, I'm sure that the people that design them would love for that to be the case.

<comment><USER4> > Two words: artificial satellites. Without them we would be unable to track > deforestation, thinning ice sheets, atmospheric composition, surface > temperature, all of which are absolutely critical in understanding climate > change and monitoring our impact.

This is not what article is about

" Didier Queloz ... denounced those who argue _against_ fighting climate change because of the distant possibility that humanity "might leave the Earth at some point". "

<comment><USER5> Do the people he's denouncing actually exist?

<comment><USER6> The only one "cited" in the article is Stephen Hawking, but 1) he doesn't argue against fighting climate change and 2) he presents a list of threats to a single-planet humanity, including wars, epidemics, asteroid strikes and overpopulation.

<comment><USER7> How is overpopulation a threat? As long as you increase the number of women in the workplace we will all have less children.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This got me thinking about the economics of sunshades.

According to [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade) the simplest plan involves a huge cluster of lightweight shades at the Earth- Sun L1 point. Supposedly it would require around twenty years of daily launches of a 100-ton-to-LEO vehicle, which used to sound like science fiction.

But soon we will (fingers crossed) have Starship, a reusable space vehicle capable of 150 tons(?) to LEO and multiple launches per day. With a claimed cost to orbit of $2 million, suddenly we're talking only around $10 billion in launch costs and five years for a 2% solar shield, which means we can solve global warming quicker and cheaper than we can build an aircraft carrier or a new subway tunnel (let alone a high speed train from Fresno to Bakersfield).

Those are optimistic estimates, yes, but it seems odd that this solution is barely on anyone's radar.

<comment><USER8> This will get everyone riled up but I think the problem with solving climate change is that the people crying the loudest does not want to solve climate change but want to fundamentally restructure economies and societies - <USER2> support for my point of view here I would cite the green new deal.

If people were interested in solving it instead of using it to drive another agenda it would have already been solved.

<comment><USER9> This is just a talking point promoted by the very same people that said:

It's not happening, the scientist are lying.

Okay, it is happening, but it's not man made.

Okay it is man made, but there's nothing we can do.

In fact, it's probably a good thing, CO2 is plant food!

Okay, it's bad, and there are things we can do, but I don't like the suggestions that other people are making.

We would have solved it already if people weren't so left wing <\-- we are here

I will also strongly imply that the reason they don't just accept other solutions is that it's not a real thing (taking us back to step one).

And no, I won't implement even the right-wing, market friendly stuff I previously claimed I wanted, like a carbon tax or reducing subsidies on carbon generating stuff.

Honestly, listen to yourself. The current American president literally said it was a hoax and pulled out of the Paris agreement. He got the head of Exxon to be his embassador to Russia.

And you're claiming that the real problem is the democratic socialists who want to ensure coalminers get retrained and that poor people houses are insulated?

<comment><USER10> The problem is both sides.

If the right says carbon taxes are acceptable, why hasn't the left jumped on board? They could even propose that it be made progressive by redistributing the tax proceeds as a tax credit inversely proportional to income, because supposedly poorer people are affected more (higher cooling costs, more exposure to pollution, etc). The point of a carbon tax is to reduce carbon emissions, not provide funding to government or be a UBI, so how it is returned to the population is completely separated from the programs goals. And in this case, it would be a double-win: conservatives pass a solution without a ton of regulations, and the left passes a solution that's helps the poor.

What we need is a coming together to find a solution that works for both sides and actually has a chance of making progress. But what we get is name calling and grandstanding. The left proposes solutions they know the right won't even consider, and the right argues the problem doesn't exist. Both sides are in the wrong here. Perhaps the right is a little more problematic, but both sides are dogmatic and apparently incapable of talking about the problem rationally.

<comment><USER9> Both sides is a political cliche for exactly this reason.

Carbon taxes have been applied in many places around the world, mostly by governments that would be considered left by American standards. Yet the American left, which is right wing by comparison is too uncompromisingly communist to even contemplate this? It just doesn't add up.

In Australia their conservatives repealed it after it was introduced. And I believe they did return the money to people by reducing other taxes. So there's a clear pattern here and it's not supporting your claim of "both sides" being at fault.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a false equivalence. Climate chance is a political and economic issue, not a technical or scientific one. If we stopped all work on space-science tomorrow, the scientists and engineers wouldn't suddenly channel their time and energy into implementing a carbon tax, move fossil fuel subsidies to solar and wind subsidies, or retrofit every building to be more energy efficient. Climate change has known solutions, we just need to implement them.

<comment><USER12> What are some known solutions to climate change? As far as I know it is a purely technological issue and we have zero viable solutions or any real ideas how to tackle the problem.

<comment><USER13> Zero viable ideas? Renewable energy, electrification of transport, carbon capture via machine and/or natural (trees). These are all possible and doable if it were not for the political atmosphere around the problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This seems to me like a false dichotomy of interplanetary scale - there's no reason we can't both fix the Earth and also venture forth. I'm starting to have some sympathy for the conspiracy theory that there are forces working to stymie man's progress in space because they cannot bear the prospect of there being a portion of humanity outside of their control.

</comment><comment><USER15> The climate crisis is only the latest in a long series of "crisis" deliberately created and manufactured to force an agenda of encouraging people to forfeit rights and freedoms for the "greater good".

</comment><comment><USER16> Or we could just as easily use a similar amount of money that gets spent every year on defence, the entertainment industry, or sports, to name but a few.

</comment><comment><USER17> > Fix Earth's climate crisis instead of dreaming of other planets

Fix Earth's climate crisis instead of investing billions in high-frequency trading and other adversarial financial instruments.

Fix Earth's climate crisis instead of spending hundreds of billions on new movies, despite an overwhelming abundance of existing movies.

Fix Earth's climate crisis instead of wasting enormous amounts of very talented people's time on showing and selling more ads.

Why is it always space exploration we have to sacrifice?</comment>


Is A PR Task Guide Like This Possible? - <AUTHOR> http://www.awarelabs.com/blog/what-is-awarelabs/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm tired of wasting time spinning my wheels on PR. Theres this dead zone between startups ( bootstrap ) and PR agencies.

The 80/20 rule has to apply to this, because it applies to everything else. So I figure I can capture the 80% of PR tasks anyone can do because they're not complex but are important.

My hope is that by the time people complete the PR task guide on AwareLabs they will be in a position to pay an agency to complete the last 20% that may require special connections or access.

So far its a theory I'm in the process of evaluating. Anyone with experience in this arena is welcome to provide expertise, I'd be thankful if you saved me some time going down the wrong path?</comment>


Could Facebook Become The Next Microsoft? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/19/could-facebook-become-the-next-microsoft/ Amongst all the noise today over Facebook's acquisition of Parakey, little has been said on what the acquisition means for Facebook in the broader sense.
<comment><USER2> I made a comment on the (Facebook) -> (Social Networking Microsoft) possiblity a few days ago on a similar thread that was up here. I believe at this point only pmarca and Ning have a decent shot at saving us from this nightmare. On the other hand if someone could throw together an open-platform API for social info sharing, this could prevent Facebook from locking up the market.

If no one is able to do this in the next six months, it is going to be a long hard messy few years for social networking, esp. since Facebook places your data behind lock and key. That will be a lot of unrecoverable data after three or four more years.

Any one want to form a startup to challenge Facebook? I'd love to take on Zuckerburgler.

</comment><comment><USER3> No.

Next question?...

<comment><USER4> Could Facebook Become The Next General Electric?</comment></comment>


Discovering Planet Nine - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/discovering-planet-nine <comment><USER2> I would love an update on efforts to find planet 9, unfortunately this article is from January 2016. See [1] for a Hacker News thread from Jan on Planet 9, and [2] for a blog from Batygin and Brown.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10939306https://news.yc...](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10939306https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10939306)

[2] [http://www.findplanetnine.com/](http://www.findplanetnine.com/)

<comment><USER3> If you are interested in latest research about planet 9 you can subscribe to [https://www.reddit.com/r/planet9](https://www.reddit.com/r/planet9) \- I'm trying to keep this subreddit up to date as much as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The most interesting alternative to the Planet Nine hypothesis (and to my mind a more attractive one) is that there is a self-organizing dynamical process that applies to large ensembles of bodies in highly eccentric orbits that causes their argument of perihelion to become correlated.

There is a great SETI talk by the astronomer Ann-Marie Madigan that explains the idea, it should be easy to follow if you've ever taken a mechanics course: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW0Zb5gY0HA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW0Zb5gY0HA)

</comment><comment><USER5> To quote Mike Brown (who has the best Twitter handle _ever_ ), "Weekly PSA: no, in fact the earth is NOT going to be destroyed by [fill in crazy thing seen on internet here] next week. Thanks for asking." [https://twitter.com/plutokiller](https://twitter.com/plutokiller)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm no expert (and have not read the full article, just about half of it), but could an object like this affect Earth when it's orbit gets closer to the sun? I mean anything, from causing movements in Earth's crust or below, influencing tides, carrying massive pieces of rock in its trail etc.?

<comment><USER7> If I remember correctly from the article, if this object were capable of perturbing Earth in any significant way, then we would be under much greater threat from Jupiter and Saturn, which are at least order of magnitude closer to us at any given time. Gravitation is a very weak force, and it scales as the inverse square of the distance between two objects. An order of magnitude reduction in distance would multiply the force by roughly 100 times. Thus, we would see these effects all the time as a result of our proximity to Jupiter and Saturn.

So no, what you're suggesting is impossible.

<comment><USER8> What was this nonsense I remember from gradeschool about planets aligning having a gravitation effect on the sun such that it'd start spewing fireballs at earth? Of course nothing happened. The amount of gravitational force from a mountain as you drive by it has more of an effect than the planets. It's kinda like, how does astrology affect us again? Can you be precise? I mean, other than for entertainment as by its own standard it's a real thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This could be awesome for a slingshot manuever on the way to alpha cent, right.

Does anyone know how to calculate that?

<comment><USER10> It wouldn't, actually, because gravity assists only add as much as the body's orbital velocity, which would be tiny for an object in such a distant orbit.

<comment><USER9> That doesn't sound right because it got the voyagers to leave the solar system.

<comment><USER10> It is, that's how it works. Relative to the planet the incoming and leaving speeds are the same, but during the flyby the trajectory relative to the planet's orbital motion changes. So if you come in from the "side" of the orbit and leave headed in the same direction as the orbit, you'll increase your velocity relative to the Solar System by the speed of the planet. But that's the most you can gain from that.

Jupiter is the best planet for orbital slingshots not because it's going the fastest, it isn't, but because it's high gravity makes it easy to "bend" the trajectories of spacecraft a lot, so you can gain a bigger percentage of the orbital speed easier, which makes for a higher total speed.

Here's a table of orbital speeds: [http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/orbital.htm](http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/orbital.htm)

Here's a graph of Voyager 2's speed throughout it's journey through the Solar System: [https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/basics/bsf16-22.gif](https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/basics/bsf16-22.gif)

And here's Voyager 2's trajectory: [http://i.imgur.com/ctbjmMW.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/ctbjmMW.jpg)

Notice how extreme the changes in direction are for the passes by Jupiter and Saturn, versus Uranus and Neptune. They are very sharp curves, that go from nearly approaching the planets from the side to leaving nearly in the same direction as the planets are moving. You can pick up at most 43% of Earth's orbital speed from a single gravity assist at Jupiter, but that's still a significant amount.

Additionally, as you can see from the second link, the farther out you are from Earth (at least in the more inner parts of the Solar System) the more bang for the buck you get from speed increases, because you're higher up out of the depths of the gravity well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Pluto is planet nine.

This is 'planet ten', it's called 'Nibiru', and the Babylonians, Sumerians and Akkadian among others have astronomical records of it over 3,600 years ago.

 _tin foil hat time_ I do wonder if that's why Pluto was demoted, so when the 'tenth' planet was found it'd actually be called the 'ninth' so nobody would be as concerned about all the doomsday myths surrounding it.

<comment><USER12> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibiru_cataclysm#Scientific_re...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibiru_cataclysm#Scientific_rejection)

If Pluto is #9, what numbers are Ceres, Sedna, Eris, Haumea, and Makemake? Ceres was considered a planet until the 1850s.

Astronomers think there are a few hundred more such dwarf planets, with 2007 OR10, Quaoar, Sedna, Orcus, (307261) 2002 MS4 and Salacia as likely candidates.

Which numbers are those?

The hypothetical planet the New Yorker mentions has an orbital period between twelve and twenty thousand years. Sitchin says the Babylonian religious texts say the period is 3,600 years.

These are not the same planet.

<comment><USER13> I don't like the classification of dwarf planet. The classification should be based on its size, shape, and make up. Instead they classified it based on the number of objects in its orbit, which is so arbitrary and weird. If hypothetically we cleared up the objects and dumped them in Earths orbit, Pluto would suddenly become a planet and Earth would lose its classification.

Just bite the bullet and accept there are a lot of small planets in our solar system, or classify them based on size.

<comment><USER12> The odd phrase "clearing the neighborhood around its orbit" exists because people want to think of Ganymede (which is bigger than Mercury) as a moon, not a planet, which your proposal would do.

If hypothetically we moved the Earth so it orbits Jupiter, then it would be a moon, yes?

See also [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearing_the_neighbourhood#Dis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearing_the_neighbourhood#Disagreement) .

<comment><USER13> Yes I accept orbiting the sun and not another object, as a reasonable criteria of a planet. That's included in the old definition. The new definition goes well beyond that though. If there are asteroids and debris in it's orbit around the sun, it no longer counts as a planet. It's really weird, and it's only purpose is to exclude the newly discovered planets from that classification.

<comment><USER12> Yes, it is weird, but I disagree with your interpretation.

You wrote: "If there are asteroids and debris in it's orbit around the sun, it no longer counts as a planet." That Wikipedia link I pointed to says: "As to the extent of orbit clearing required, Jean-Luc Margot emphasises "a planet can never completely clear its orbital zone, because gravitational and radiative forces continually perturb the orbits of asteroids and comets into planet-crossing orbits" and states that the IAU did not intend the impossible standard of impeccable orbit clearing.[2]

It further lists a few attempts to define things more rigorously.

You write: "it's only purpose is to exclude the newly discovered planets from that classification". The same page also points out "In 2015, a proposal was made to use the criterion in extending the definition to exoplanets". This is from the same Margot, whose proposed criteria can "categorise a body based only on its own mass, its semi-major axis, and its star's mass."</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Here's Why Tesla Will Go Bankrupt in 2019 - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedrive.com/tech/24261/elon-musk-and-10-billion-of-debt-why-tesla-will-go-bankrupt-in-2019 <comment><USER2> The article mentioned tesla will need 3 billion this year just to keep going (from the economist). It wasn't some impossible dream. They stopped spending so much money on infrastructure to build the model 3. They built and sold a lot of model 3's which had a more than 20% profit margin in q2- as they build more they will get to be even more efficient.

That's how they made a profit in q3 and will do so in q4. They aren't even selling them in the rest of the world yet, when they do, they'll have an even larger market.

They increased their cash position by 700 million, paid off 82 million of debt (but they do have a lot more). They also announced plans to pay off 230 million next quarter, and keep cash balance the same or better.

</comment><comment><USER3> And they have been saying this for the last ten years, "Tesla will be bankrupt by next year".

Can we have something new said instead.</comment>


Ask HN: How to create your own Wave server? - <AUTHOR>

Upon reading briefly through the draft of Wave's protocol, it's apparent that XMPP Core is used for the server/proxy.  I am a bit unfamiliar with XMPP, so I had a few unanswered questions.
Their protocol uses some custom iq/request, iq/delta, iq/error, etc. XML markups.  What I'm interested in doing is setting up my own Wave server (independent of a client) and see if I can get a working system out of the draft.
So, does anyone have a good starting point for this project?  I thought about djabberd (as it self-proclaims itself as extensible): http://www.danga.com/djabberd/ <comment><USER2> I always start with the standards. Typically you will find that engineering protocols are more simple than you think. But when there are lots of solutions it starts to cloud it.

<http://xmpp.org/rfcs/>

Check the bottom of : <http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3920.txt>

If you like to look at full products using the standard take a look at OpenFire; <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openfire>

It has most of the standards implemented and is open.

Then when you want to whip out a prototype in a few hours or minutes dig in with some python: <http://xmpppy.sourceforge.net/>

<comment><USER3> I second OpenFire, though it has an annoying LGPL license. Ideally, a sub- protocol can be written for Wave as a subset of the IM/XMPP Transfer plugin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Check this out:

<http://github.com/JackDanger/wave/tree/master>

<comment><AUTHOR> That looks like it's just a client for Wave. That can be pretty much anything (just has to interface with XMPP). The tricky part is having the server store+forward (if the client is online) each action sent by the other servers.

<comment><USER4> isn't that part of regular XMPP?</comment></comment></comment>


Image recoloring based on neural network (demo) - <AUTHOR> https://recolor.ml <comment><AUTHOR> Network source: [http://richzhang.github.io/colorization/](http://richzhang.github.io/colorization/)</comment>


FastInit: a faster window.onload - <AUTHOR> http://www.tetlaw.id.au/view/javascript/fastinit I found this nice JavaScript class few months ago.  Thought I would share it... The class implements a kind of onload function queue. This will ensure that your initialization function(s) are called once the browser DOM is ready and not have to wait for all the images. <comment><USER2> This is one of those pieces of code that has been done a dozen different ways (probably hundreds, even). I like this implementation though. Nice and clean and short and sweet.</comment>


UAW confirms workers at Tesla have approached the union - <AUTHOR> http://reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSKBN15P1U1 <comment><USER2> woah Tesla workers Test approaching Ken Shamrock, for the betterment of Mankind, looks like it will be a Big Show! Takeing it to the corporate ministry!</comment>


Feedback on our new site (before it goes live) - <AUTHOR> http://www.mobuilt.com/site/#

<comment><USER2> I think, saying who you partner with is not helping. "We partnered with Diamond Supply Co. to help skaters find a place to skate, anywhere." It's rather obscure the marketing message that you try to convey. After all, users don't care who you partner with other than how useful is the product.

IMO, if all the links are working, the iSk8 and Pic This are ready for launch. Take out the Coming Soon though. It won't be too late to put something there once you have it.

Maybe you want to add "contact us" link? At least, people know how to contact you guys if they want to.

And, i personally think, something like "We are focused on creating apps to make life quirky for ..." should just be in "about us" page (link somewhere in the footer).

Focus more on iSk8 and Pic This. Tweak the photo. Make it bigger. Make the marketing message more to the point and selling. That's my opinion. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> I think its a good start, but honestly I don't think this is ready to launch.

Mostly, I'm not clear on the goal of your site. Are you selling iPhone apps or iPhone development services (or both)? I ran out of content quickly and was left a bit confused.

Also, the 2 secondary tabs don't really have any content, so why are they there? If you keep them you need graphics, even on the coming soon tab.

All that said, the iSk8 app sounds like a cool idea, and kudos for partnering with DSC.

<comment><USER4> Ditto to the above and to hammer the point home: the site doesn't tell me if you're trying to sell your company's services (mobile app development) or selling said apps. The "Buy app now!" and "Try now!" invitations seem like the latter, but the mention of partnerships and the generic-looking mission statement on the bottom suggest the former.

I would highly suggest developing _separate_ sites for these two purposes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You need to sell the product not the company.

You need a bigger image of the product itself. Get rid of all the stuff at the bottom and put that in an "about us" link in the footer like already mentioned. Use the extra space to expand the images (they should be _at least_ 3x as tall as they are now though the width is good)

I like the clear pricing and learn more link but since the images are going to be a lot taller use the extra space you'll have on the right to point out the 3 main features.

The see in action link should work of course, with screenshots of relevant app usage, possibly with an embedded video if you have the budget to make a good video (a bad video can hurt sales, make sure it's good or don't put one at all).

Move the partner branding out of the main focus. People generally read from top right to left, then go back right and read on a diagonal. I thought the app was to find deals on diamonds or something until I read the description (reading text generally comes AFTER scanning large images). I would put the product screenshots on the left side and move the partner logo to the top right.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER6> It looks nice and clean, but it just seems like a homepage for an iPhone engineering/consulting team. Is that right?

If that's its goal, it works fine for that. If it was supposed to lead me to do something other than browse your iPhone apps, it didn't happen. It's not common to get homepage review requests here (usually it's web services), so I want to be sure I didn't miss the point.

</comment><comment><USER7> Seconding the feedback already here. You should use up more space to talk about and sell the apps; the content about your company could go into a separate place.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clearly these are niche apps, but we are 2 dude team out of S. Fl. - let us know your thoughts? Thanks!

(Note: AppStore links are not active)

<comment><USER8> Could you roughly explain your idea here? All the links are obviously no working at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> 'iSk8' almost makes it sound like you're finding ice-skating locations! (Is "Diamond Supply Company" a brand a skateboarder would recognize?)

<comment><USER10> _Is "Diamond Supply Company" a brand a skateboarder would recognize?_

yes

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> 1\. Your site design looks really good.

2\. The isk8 app is really interesting to me. Would you please email me: zackster[@]gmail[.]com when it goes live?

Thanks!</comment>


Google 'not happy' with Android Market purchase rates, many changes coming - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/26/google-not-happy-with-android-market-purchase-rates-many-chan/ <comment><USER2> Nuking the 24-hour return policy and replacing it with a 15-minute one was a huge mistake. I've seen reviews of people who said they uninstalled it because it didn't download within the 15 minutes, so they had no choice.

Sure, some people will return within 24 hours if they got enough in that time... But seriously, if people can get sick of your game in 24 hours, I don't blame them for refunding.

So now those devs are definitely losing sales, where before they just probably were. I know I'm -much- less likely to purchase an app than before since I have to have 15 minutes free to play with it, where before I could buy something spur of the moment and then refund later that day if it's bad.

<comment><USER3> I sell A LOT of units (games) in the Android Market.

The 15 minute window has literally been a Godsend and has had no negative affect on sales at all.

I get far fewer people refunding minutes before the "refund window" is over AND I only received ONE complaint from a customer who thought they still had a 24 hour window a couple days after the new Market app went live.

You are still welcome to email the developer and ask for a refund if you don't like the game. I certainly refund money if someone hates my games, I don't want them leaving bad comments in the Market, and I don't want their money if they don't like my product, that wouldn't be fair.

"...where before I could buy something spur of the moment and then refund later that day if it's bad."

I believe this is exactly why it was "nuked". If it took you a couple hours to decide if the game is "bad", maybe it wasn't that bad and the ~$1 to ~$6 you paid for it was adequate for the time you spent playing it - whether you liked it or not.

When you go to an arcade, if you pump $3 into a machine, play for 4 minutes, and decide to get a refund, do you get it? Nope. The App Market is the new Arcade. BUT you get to keep the game to play over and over and over again for just a few dollars.

EDIT: I'd like to add that in-app purchases will be awesome.

<comment><USER2> If I bought a game and hated it, I wouldn't email the creator for a refund. I'd either use the built-in refund interface or give a bad review. I suspect most people are the same way.

You seem to be immune to that because you have created good games, but that is far from the norm on the market.

Also, you have no idea how many people didn't buy your game now that they can't refund within 24 hours. Just like piracy, it's impossible to measure actual lost sales. You can only make a guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Both app stores have room for improvement, but here are three areas where the Android app store fail in my opinion:

1\. On my iPod Touch I have JUST the apps I use. I've removed everything else. On my EVO I'm stuck with apps I don't want because my carrier thinks I shoud have them (even though they'll NEVER be launched). It degrades the experience and reduces my overall perception of the value of the apps on my phone because it's a mix of stuff I want and stuff that's just total shit.

2\. Half their screen is consumed by the top green carousel thing. It's ugly, takes up WAY too much space, and tries to sell me stuff that's already on my device.

3\. No iTunes. Having a desktop-component to the sales process is powerful.

<comment><USER5> Agree with your first two points, but don't care about the last one. Windows iTunes is the worst piece of software I've seen shipped by a major corporation in 21st century.

<comment><USER6> Not disputing your point, but if I see an article about an app I like, I can click on a link, iTunes will open to the buy page for that app and I can buy it right away. No bookkeeping, no forgetting, no interrupting my flow to pull out a device. iTunes sucks, but it does have some pluses.

<comment><USER7> Since the step after buying an app is playing with it, you need to pull out your phone anyways. My phone sits on the desk next to me rather than, so that's easy. And since a "link to an app" on Android is a QR code, I think total time spent is about the same on either platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If they are not "happy" with the purchase rates then perhaps they should start by fixing the performance of their market-app.

I'm on a fairly high-end android (Samsung Galaxy S) and it takes nearly 60 seconds to open the market-app for the first time. Over WiFi.

Yes, a full minute. I kid you not.

And the agony doesn't stop there. Moving around in the shop is choppy and slow. 10-20 second lags are normal. Overall responsiveness is atrocious. And that's _without_ any app-downloads going on in the background. Go figure what happens once the phone actually begins downloading...

I don't think this is the only reason for the relatively low purchase-rates. But it surely plays its part...

<comment><USER9> Market load time on my HTC Droid Incredible is about 4 seconds. The green carousel thing is laggy for maybe a second longer. After that everything is responsive. No '10-20 second lags' whatsoever.

<comment><USER10> same on my xperia X10. thought that's "the old breed" since it runs android 2.1 only.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How about they start with a decent web interface to an App Market. I am iPhone user but for many reasons considered buying Android handset. Now, the main criterion for me is availability of apps, and I would like to be able to browse through app market and see what's there. But web UI is a joke! No browsing, no categories, and (oh the irony!) no search.

<comment><USER12> I agree. Downloading Doubletwist does give you a bit of the Android Market, but nothing like the iTunes experience. The most surprising thing is how many of the big apps for iOS are on Android. Not all, but enough.

Unfortunately Google doesn't make access to the store as easy as it could.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've noticed with the Android Market the Top Paid Apps are rarely of general interest. I don't really want to buy ADWLauncher EX Pro. ezPDF, or the various ROM managers for a phone I don't even own. I have no doubt they _are_ the best selling apps but you really have to dig to find general interest stuff sometimes. I think they should probably balance it out so utilities/modifications don't dominate the Top Paid Apps list. Another issue which sounds like nitpicking, but is actually kind of significant, are all the cruddy icons. I don't know how other people respond to this but when I see a $5 game with a bad 90's Windows shareware style icon I instantly dismiss it. Not a big deal for non-games but I don't think it's unreasonable to assume bad icon graphics = bad game graphics.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think 2 things need to be fixed in order to sell more apps:

1) Fix the payment declined orders problem. There are a TON of these going on.

2) Add PayPal. I know some of you hate it but I get requests constantly from people asking if they can buy my apps with PayPal.

EDIT:

3) The ability to reply directly to comments would be huge.

I think we may be losing sales because of false claims, or support requests in Android Market comments that we cannot reply to in order to show we are supportive, and you CAN do certain things in our apps that the commenter thought you could not.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd be happy if only I had the opportunity to buy apps, period. I can only access apps that are free AND not US-only (so no Amazon Kindle for Android app). While I understand that there may be some considerations I'm not aware of, my iphone-owning friends seem perfectly happy and content to buy iphone apps. So if Apple can do it, why can't Google? (I'm in Panama, by the way).

</comment><comment><USER15> Want to improve my market purchase rates? Get Sprint to remove the giant upsell button right in the middle of the Epic's voicemail app.</comment>


Back to the Future Day - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future_Part_II#Back_to_the_Future_Day <comment><USER2> The Dolorean used to shoot the movie is in the Miami Auto Museum.

They've put it on a the Boxes website here: [https://box.es/item/original- back-to-the-future-delorean/sD5...](https://box.es/item/original-back-to-the- future-delorean/sD5S4XIILR)</comment>


Modern Clowning in Los Angeles - <AUTHOR> https://www.dorsia.io/cities/los-angeles/articles/clown-schools-los-angeles <comment><USER2> I think back, with a tear in my eye, to the halcyon days when Yucko the Clown [1] was on MTV.

[1] [https://youtu.be/ka9e4bWaoPI](https://youtu.be/ka9e4bWaoPI)

<comment><USER3> Wow, that would cause an unprecedented amount of moral outrage if it were on TV today.

<comment><USER4> Has anything changed? This sort of crass humour is still on TV. Has the percentage of the population that disapproves of this type of humour really changed? Maybe the nature or visibility of "outrage" has changed? even just by social-media + the politicization of us-vs-them moral culture wars?

Our perception of "what is causing outrage, by whom and how much" is being used as a political weapon across basically all media, as far as I can tell. So it's pretty hard to tell in what ways some culture(s) / subcultures might be changing over time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fwiw, years ago I studied clowning under David Bridel, the head of one of the clown schools in the article. I think it's worth noting that clowning is a really fascinating cross between improv and commedia del'arte, where there are these very structured roles people play. It's an under appreciated art.

Edit: for the record, I was terrible at clowning in my early 20s and always wished I was better.

<comment><USER6> Years ago I studied clowning under Didier Danthois.

I agree: it's definitely a fascinating and under appreciated art.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> For my money, Puddles Pity Party does the take on this that I can most relate to...

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

A bit of a different take on the Pierrot. He builds more of a character that draws you in with well performed songs and the "clowning" tends to be more subtle (outside of the costume of course).

His version of the old Cheap Trick song "I Want You to Want Me" I like rather more than the original... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3O1XojnTag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3O1XojnTag)

He does well with Queen tunes, too... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvX9GxDDPYc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvX9GxDDPYc)

</comment><comment><USER8> If you're in LA, you absolutely owe it to yourself to go see the Murge, the monthly show mentioned in the article. [0]

This wonderful group of people (Wet the Hippo) also teach classes in LA and an upcoming condensed one in Toronto.

My experience taking those classes was frightening and liberating. It's "improv" but there's no story — it's you. On stage. "Naked". With no material. Aided by the great instructions and teachers, you show yourself to the audience and make "bad" (or "idiotic") choices and then follow them. And people do, sometimes, laugh, a lot.

That feeling (of both being in an involved audience and playing and exposing truths and things that are scary and private) is absolutely addicting.

0 - [https://www.theidiotworkshop.com/the- murge](https://www.theidiotworkshop.com/the-murge)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this where you can learn to be Tartuffe, the spry wonder dog?

</comment><comment><USER9> if I could wish for a super power it would be invisibility. I'd go to 19th century Paris find a mime artist performing on the street, and kick the shit out of him. Everyone watching would think he was absolutely brilliant.

slightly off topic but best Frankie Boyle joke ever.</comment>