Ask HN: As managers, how do you make sure your distributed team is aligned? - <AUTHOR> We use Slack for internal comms, but it's used mostly for chit-chat conversations and real-time issues. Is there a product for slow-thinking updates where I can share teams news and align my +40 people team? How can you be sure people don't actually miss things in the noise of Slack/Email? <comment><USER3> When I worked for Intel, we all went through training on how to run effective meetings.

Why? In a distributed team, meetings can become a severe time sink. A lot of people hold meetings to feel busy and important, and even less people put in effort to keep the conversation focused so that the meeting ends on time.

Some basic things are:

\- Determine an agenda in advance. The agenda must be part of the meeting invite. An agenda is more than "Talk about XXX." You should have a list of 3-6 topics that will be discussed in the meeting.

\- Make sure that everyone on the invite list needs to be there. Explain why you're inviting people in the meeting invite.

\- During the meeting, make sure that, as time progresses, the topics on the agenda are discussed. If one topic is discussed too long, there's different techniques for moving to another topic. (Binning it, declaring it a rathole, ect.)

\- Decline poorly planned meetings.

And, I shouldn't need to say this, but meetings begin on time and end on time. Don't make everyone wait 45 minutes to start what's supposed to be a 30 minute meeting, but then it really drags out to 90 minutes.

Furthermore, have a 0-tolerance policy for latecomers and people who always need 15 minutes to figure out the teleconference software. Hold your interviews in the teleconference software you use with your team as a way to filter out the idiots.

<comment><USER4> > 15 minutes to figure out the teleconference software

We just Skype for Business and Zoom at work. Both are just one click. Webex is also good. It's little confusing though (too many options). My partners use it so I have to also use it.

Maybe, you need to evaluate your teleconf s\w.

<comment><USER3> I don't know why people are downvoting you.

There are idiots who constantly take 15 minutes to figure out those teleconference software. Each and every time. I can understand taking 3-5 minutes extra the first time using something like that, and I can understand occasional technical difficulties.

What's not acceptable is after 2 calls still having technical difficulties.

For example, A year ago I started working with a driver developer who would constantly drop out of the teleconference after 7 minutes, without a polite "technical difficulties" IM or email. Turns out he was always calling in from within some kind of VM and always needed to reboot in the middle of the meeting. We had to get the manager to tell him to stop it.

Another example is that, a few days ago, I interviewed someone through WebEx. She took 10 minutes to figure out how to get her microphone to work. After 5 minutes I made up my mind that, unless she was spectacular, I wasn't going to hire her. (She interviewed very poorly.) What's extremely frustrating is that she didn't have the decency to just have WebEx call her phone, and instead kept me waiting for 10 minutes. That's just plain rude.

<comment><USER5> Maybe it is a tool issue?

For example, if developers using Linux are asked to teleconference using tools built solely with Windows in mind, sometimes it will work with a VM, but often it randomly doesn't.

If I remember right, Intel used Skype for Business which as a teleconferencing tool was just rubbish. (Maybe it still is?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Is there a product for slow-thinking updates?

I've been working on a distributed team for 4 years now. I product manage an open-source online retrospective and meeting app and went _way_ deep on researching other distributed teams last year. What I learned about sharing updates is it's as much dictated by culture and ritual as much as it is by a tool.

Zapier is almost 1,000 people now. Here's what I learned they do:

\- Every Friday non-managers write a short update of what's changed that week

\- Managers read them, extract a few highlights, and roll them up to leaders

\- Leaders do the same and roll it up to the CEO

\- The CEO writes a blog post and sends it to the entire company

\- That post is commented on and questions are asked by everybody

Some folks within Spotify write a daily update answering the same prompts:

\- This is what I did today I think you should know about

\- This is what I learned and I think you'd find useful

\- This is what I need from you

\- This is what I am doing next

For our company, we prefer weekly updates to daily updates (we value time autonomy vs. having an always-on culture). Our fully-remote team foes something similar to Zapier and end up posting our company updates publicly at [https://focus.parabol.co](https://focus.parabol.co) (if you want to see an example)

I don't think a separate tool is really necessary. Pick your poison between a stand-up bot or something more flexible like missions.ai (at time X create doc, share doc, prompt people to get started...)

One more tip: if you find yourself writing an answer to the prompt "this is what I need from you..." you probably have an item to add to the team's meeting agenda. Full disclosure, we started our company to make capturing items for meetings easy, so, I have a dog in the hunt.

EDIT: formatting

</comment><comment><USER7> At Plaid, I'm in a unique situation where I manage a division of the engineering team which is dedicated to being distributed; the rest of engineering team is not. My goal is to ensure not only that my team is aligned, but also that important information is flowing between my team and the rest of the company.

For this, I use a weekly update that's sent to the team and also the "periphery" of the team -- all those who care about and influence the team's success. Each weekly update is prepended to a Google doc, and I send an email out (just with a link to the doc) when I update it.

The update has three sections: "Last Week" (everything I experienced last week that I think is relevant) "This Week" (a list of my priorities for the upcoming week with a cut line) and "Biggest Mistakes and Missed Opportunities" (just what it sounds like). It's intended to be comprehensive and often runs more than one page.

To make sure "people don't actually miss things," there are two parts: 1) I make sure the update contains all the things I don't want people to miss 2) I make sure the weekly update is valuable enough to everyone so that they read it.

On occasions where I've been late in updating it, I've found that I'm repeating the same information to multiple people more often and also having to say, "Sorry, you'd have known that already if I'd gotten my update out on time."

</comment><comment><USER8> First of all, make sure that the management itself is aligned. Patterns reproduce themselves across the organization and that process is mostly top->down.

Have your most important values written down. Technical and non-technical. Ask new joiners read them and refer to them when discussing short and long term plans.

Don't believe that a fully flat hierarchy is the solution for all problems. A distributed team makes communication harder, so you might need more process than usual -- for 40 people you almost certainly need other managers to help you.

Have a strategy for the corporation that everyone understands. Team leads will then understand what their team has to contribute, and individuals will understand how to contribute to the team. If the company strategy is not well- known, your remote team is doomed.

Focus on alignment to values and vision, not to what you tell people directly. You're doing your job well if people and teams become autonomous.

Find and remove anything that blocks lateral communication (i.e. that goes outside of the hierarchy chain).

Be skilled in people management. Recognize isolation, burnout, depression, tension early enough and be able to solve them. If you are not skilled, learn from professionals, not from blog posts.

If needed, break rules. An important rule in a distributed team is that people don't meet often. If necessary, break this rule.

</comment><comment><USER9> Usually, one manager/lead take care of 3-7 people. So rather than making everyone on the same page, I'd spend more time with these leads and making sure that you guys are on the same page, and it will percolate down to the rest of the team. On top of that, well written document with clear goals and high-level strategies help to re-inforce it amongst everyone, but imho it should still be the mid-level manager's job to communicate in 1:1 and in other ways to their team.

</comment><comment><USER10> > Is there a product for slow-thinking updates where I can share teams news > and align my +40 people team?

Email. Email is perfect for this. If you use GSuite, groups with the email gateway is ideal for this. You can have threaded discussions with a long history.

Stripe was(maybe still is?) really good at this. They made a policy very early on that every email had to CC a mailing list (unless it was truly a personal one on one communication). The lists has a structure were some were designated as archival only. Even if no one read the list, at least the archive was there for the new employees. Or for an employee who was on vacation to read and catch up when they came back.

> How can you be sure people don't actually miss things in the noise of > Slack/Email?

For Slack, make sure it's truly just for real time discussion. If something looks like it's going to be a long discussion, move it to email.

For email, if you're using groups/lists for everything, then there shouldn't be a lot of noise. You should be able to just go to the groups interface or filter on the group the message was sent to.

<comment><USER11> Email is great, along with keeping a google doc of all previous updates sent in reverse order.

Then author the email in the google doc, paste it into gmail and send - <USER2> with a link at the bottom to previous notes.

<comment><USER7> Because I want to encourage comments/questions, I do almost what you describe, except that the email ONLY contains a link to the doc. So in effect, the email is just a notification that the doc has been updated.

<comment><USER11> I don't do that because then you're just giving the reader more work to do.

Is there an unseen advantage to not including the actual text in the email?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think some touch on this but you cannot possibly align 40+ people directly. If these are all devs, at this scale you need 3-4 engineering managers or 5+ leads. That's were you should be focusing and empower them to carry your message outward.

Looking for a tool to do this is wishful thinking

</comment><comment><USER13> One key aspect is a single source of truth. A place/tool were all processes, requirements and relevant Q&A are open for the whole team, with no gray areas. Use any kind of methodology, but try to keep your team informed about how the general rules of communication and collaboration work.

Split communication in small teams/groups and design just one person per group to deliver periodic status. Meeting with the whole team are absolutely inefficient and costly for the company.

Create a policy where any change must be documented and informed to all stakeholders.

Tools vary depending on your business, but sites like Trello can be really usefull.

</comment><comment><USER14> I've managed a team of 30+ -- both on-shore and off-shore resources -- and I can tell you some of the things that I've liked, and some things that I hated.

I have been in consulting for a while -- and while I don't mind it, that brings in its own set of rules (with regards to non-billable time) and challenges (Fixed price contracts usually mean low salaried workers to maximize profits).

\- Short team-based standups. There's no reason for your US team to meet with Offshore unless there's a blocking reason to do so.

\- Bi-weekly team meetings with both groups. I tried to alternate between the On-Shore and the Off Shore's lunch period, but, regardless, one team is staying up late. Don't be a dick and make that team come in at their same time the next day if you're holding a 2AM meeting that lasts an hour.

\- If you are sending important, team-wide, communications, let them know in stand up.

\- I have no problem waking up early (or staying up late) to have 1:1's with my team, even if they _are_ offshore. Keep them simple (What have been your big challenges this week? Are you blocked or do you forsee any roadblocks down the horizon? Do you have anything for me?)

Sadly, most companies that we've been in have frowned upon Slack, but, I don't have any issues in using it on a daily basis.

If your team members are burned out, isolated, depressed -- work on them. Give them time away from the project or lighter work (to a point). If they are consistently burned out and depressed, try to figure out if this is a company/project/management issue (hey -- I'm far from perfect, maybe they don't like my management style!), or, if this is something that can be resolved by a placement to a different project/team.

Encourage them to use the 'free' resources available to them -- be it cloud services, books, education, mental health, physical health, etc. The company provides those for a reason.

It took me a long time to realize that my initial management style doesn't work with everyone...so, I changed. Don't be afraid to look in the mirror and change your operating style when you think it's not working.

(edited for formatting)

</comment><comment><USER15> We're not quite that size yet, but I've found that carefully curating our organizational culture has really paid off, starting with a document of principles[1] that we all agree with, and then on putting a lot of mental effort into training new hires to understand what the culture means and why it's important.

[1] [https://gist.github.com/cowpig/8d8194ac55e3789d9a3c4136d1e1a...](https://gist.github.com/cowpig/8d8194ac55e3789d9a3c4136d1e1abad)

<comment><USER16> Oh, this is really nice! Did you use a process to have everybody agree on it? I usually struggle with top-down where some people disagree and work against it vs. bottom-up where consensus is really hard and nothing is done/decided.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> From a tools/infrastructure support perspective, standardizing on tools and clearly declaring and assigning a single tool for each function. Clearly ask people to pitch in to adhere to this. Set clear standards for yourselves.

From a people perspective, clearly defining goals and constantly asking clarity questions to gauge if there is alignment is the only real way. Also if you notice people are not aligned but they think they are, declare that you're not sure they're aligned. They'll hash it out themselves.

It also helps for people to declare when they're unavailable in something like a slack channel. Finding out someone is not there when you expect the to be is very jarring/frustrating.

</comment><comment><USER18> Are you personally managing 40+ people, or are you a director with a layer of managers beneath you? I can't imagine how stressful it must be personally to manage 20 people, never mind 40...

</comment><comment><USER19> > We use Slack for internal comms, but it's used mostly for chit-chat > conversations and real-time issues. Is there a product for slow-thinking > updates where I can share teams news and align my +40 people team?

With distributed teams, I don't think communicating big vision ideas are all that difficult. They can usually be solved with a monthly all-hands.

The problem with distributed teams is the lack of informal interactions. When you come up with a seed of an idea, that may well be a bad idea or isn't thoroughly formulated, it's an immense help to walk over to someone's desk and run it by them.

Slack and email are poor tools for this type of early innovation because they require you to write your idea down. At the very early stages of innovation, you may not even have a clear enough vision of the solution (or the problem it's trying to solve), to commit it to writing.

Most of these early ideas are originally flawed or down-right incorrect, but low-risk informal chats with co-workers can help crystalize or disprove the idea far more efficiently than any written medium.

<comment><USER20> I'm not convinced that an idea (or a seed thereof) that is not formed well enough to be written down is ready for discussion with another person.

An idea that has navigated through the internal dialogue I have to engage in to put it to paper is much less a waste of your time.

And, if you want me to provide well thought-out feedback on your idea, don't ask me to respond to it in real time or in the timeframe of a meeting.

The ideal process for ideation may be informal and low-risk, but it is also asynchronous and via the written word (possibly with pictures).

Write down whatever you can about your problem or your idea and then send it to me, saying "what do you think?". I will read it at the time when I am most able to give it my full attention, cogitate for as long as I think necessary, and then reply with the best possible feedback.

Maybe some cases benefit from the rapid iteration that can happen in an oral conversation. But in my experience, most or all of those work just about as well with a rubber duck.

<comment><USER19> > I'm not convinced that an idea (or a seed thereof) that is not formed well > enough to be written down is ready for discussion with another person. ... > Write down whatever you can about your problem ... then send it to me, > saying "what do you think?". I will read it at the time when I am most able > to give it my full attention ...

Unfortunately, that delay imposes pretty serious transaction costs on innovation. Because most ideas are not worthwhile, it's often more productive to discard them quickly and move on to the next idea than to dwell on them for longer periods of time.

Put analytically, assume there are 2 developers at a company each with plenty of ideas, but 9 out of 10 of them are garbage. Further assume that determining a bad idea is actually a bad idea with another person takes 0.5 hours, but doing it on your own takes 1.5 hours. The two devs will generate far more good ideas (those 1 out of 10), if they talk to each other than if they dwell on them without speaking to each other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> You might need to prune and/or curate your slack channels better. For major projects/initiatives we use a new ephemeral slack channel for the duration of the project. All chat comms about the project are stored there. The project roadmap is kept in google docs with tickets in jira.

We have 12 teams and 150 people and prob 50+ channels.

</comment><comment><USER22> One thing we do is keep a slack channel for announcements only. We require everyone to acknowledge they've read and understood said announcements by adding an emoji response. Then you can follow up with anyone who fails to respond. (And discuss in 1-1s with anyone who makes a habit of failing to respond.)

<comment><USER23> > We require everyone to acknowledge they've read and understood said > announcements by adding an emoji response. Then you can follow up with > anyone who fails to respond.

Office space - millennial edition

<comment><USER24> Agreed. That sounds demoralizing and petty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Surely you're not trying to manage 40+ people yourself. Your "team" is actually a division or sub-organization that should have a number of managers or leads within it. You are not a manager but a director/VP. Your actual team consists of the managers who should be reporting to you.

Each of your leads should probably be sending out a weekly email detailing the work that their team has been doing. You should be working closely with your leads so that they are distributing the right information downwards. You need to empower the managers below you rather than trying to take this all on yourself.

</comment><comment><USER26> A lot of good advice on the human side of things. I want to mention that Zulip is an open source team chat solution that is designed to facilitate the "slow- thinking" type of communication you mention.

</comment><comment><USER27> We have 30 people across 9 countries and several teams who have very limited real time cross over. We don't send internal emails. We use: Slack for asynchronous discussion. If someone posts something in Slack they should expect a response within 1-2 days. Salesforce chatter for operational discussion. Comments on here should get answered within 1 work day. Skype chat for real time chat. This should get answered asap (let's say 15 minutes). Zoom for all meetings.

</comment><comment><USER28> Tools that have worked in the past for me: \- Confluence for long lived documents \- JIRA for time boxed groupings of work. \- Slack for real time comm if anything arises. \- "Culture" and Process Living Document

I ran a team of about 25 in the past and followed the following agile principles to help with alignment: \- retrospectives \- "sprints" (preference on the 3-4 week range) \- Sprint Review

Alignment, while tricky, isn't all that hard so long as processes are evolving from retrospectives and you have a single source of truth for long form documentation.

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't have an answer that is better than anyone else here, but I have a related ask.

If anyone here feels passionately about this area and is a remote manager, I'd love to talk to you 1:1. My email is in my profile.

I'm part of a team launching a manager training program this fall, and our emphasis is on managers that have to deal with distributed teams. We're looking for guest speakers across a wide range of topics, including alignment, and I'm pre-screening potential guest speakers right now.

I'd love to connect and learn more about your practical experiences!

</comment><comment><USER30> We're on slack and looking at Discourse for that purpose. It's really high quality software, and definitely geared in the direction of slow-thinking and keeping topic history in the same place.

</comment><comment><USER31> At Out Of Office we use slack for day to day communication and always require video chat for team meetings unless you're on the go or not able to use video.

For longer term alignment we always post "decisions" that are made during these meetings in a slack channel so that others can keep up to date if they weren't in the meeting. We can also go back in time to see the context of why a decision was made.

</comment><comment><USER32> We use [V2MOMs][1] for every team, created by said teams.

Then, daily and weekly calls. Whatever we do is more or less connected to goals in V2MOM. It helps from being distracted.

[1]: [https://www.businessinsider.com/salesforce-v2mom- process-201...](https://www.businessinsider.com/salesforce-v2mom- process-2015-2?IR=T)

<comment><USER11> I find that MBO/OKRs drucker-style is lighter weight than V2MOM as the method is left to the person doing the work.

Is there an advantage to documenting and setting methods in stone ahead of time? Curious about your experiences with it.

<comment><USER32> Well, they are not written in stone. We have quarterly V2MOMS and we change their content during given quarter if that's better for the team.

<comment><USER11> Sure - nothing is written in stone?

Have you found it effective to discuss the actual method of how you'll accomplish something months before you're working on it?

It seems like it would almost always change for development - maybe in other areas it's more useful.

<comment><USER32> We do V2MOMs not earlier than 2 weeks in advance. Usually we just write down things we already decided to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Try video for leadership updates - it's more personal than written communication so helps build trust and you can explain things clearly with emphasis.

Couple ways you could do it: 1. a webcam recording of yourself, using quicktime (only on mac) or similar webcam recording tool 2. a screen recording where you talk through a slide deck of news, roadmap, etc. Again, using quicktime or chrome extensions such as the one I built: [https://outklip.com](https://outklip.com). Outklip's advantage is you can record webcam along with screen, annotate during recording, do post-editing and upload to YouTube with a click.

I interiewed Sid Sijbrandij, the GitLab CEO (GitLab has 500+ members and is all remote) on running a distributed company. He said this about alignment: "I think it's really important to write things down. People are very efficient at reading things. So, if you wrote it down you can refer to it, so you don't have to say everything again, you can just drop a link. So, we write down a lot, in our handbook, on our OKRs page, you'll find all our goals and strategy, etc. And at some point you keep repeating that, keep dropping those links and you keep answering questions. So, repetition is still needed, repetition is easier if you have one writeup and most people have already found it even during onboarding.". Interview video and notes here: [https://outklip.com/blog/gitlab-building-a-distributed- compa...](https://outklip.com/blog/gitlab-building-a-distributed-company/)

Another interview with Sid about how GitLab uses video for remote work: [https://outklip.com/blog/using-video-for-remote- work/](https://outklip.com/blog/using-video-for-remote-work/).

</comment><comment><USER34> i manage a lot of teams in a remote site, here are my thoughts, it starts with leadership at the remote site, make sure this person and you are aligned, to build alignment, trust goes a long way, but in the absence of trust, since that takes time to build, make sure your goals (short and long term) are clearly stated and known to him/her and that they can convey that message to the team. at that number, also make sure that the next level managers are getting the right message.

face to face is always best, zoom is great, wiki pages, etc.

</comment><comment><USER35> The guys behind Todoist have a tool to solve this. I haven't tried it myself: [https://twist.com/?lang=en](https://twist.com/?lang=en)

</comment><comment><USER36> A few good books I can recommend

The Effective Executive

Making of a Manager

ReWork

Start with your own mindset around this topic first, then roll out a system and/or tool to make it happen.

</comment><comment><USER37> Functions As A Service! It has worked great from the few implementations I have seen.

<comment><USER37> Well this is more from an architect manager. Trying to manage offshore and internal tech stacks is always difficult. Out source work via FAAS user stories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've been working on a distributed team for over 8 years, and gradually moved to architect of the product I work on.

There's a lot of good advice in this thread, but one more thing that I need to add:

Your tickets need to be well-written, and actively groomed. This means things like:

\- Clear ticket title

\- Clear steps to reproduce

\- Process followed (Varies based on product, in our case this means attaching logs and documenting filenames.)

\- When someone clarifies things, they must update the actual ticket title / description instead of clarifying in an email / comment

\- Management must not expect engineers to handhold ticket writers through things like this, and must expect that testers and support own clearly communicating what the issue is

\- Do not combine multiple bugs into the same ticket

\- Do not "fail verification" when finding a new bug

\- Relate similar tickets, don't identify new bugs / issues in a comment

Some examples of "bad" tickets:

\- Giving a title that's basically "It's not working." Every product has an analogy of "It's not working." In our case, novices who don't take the time to explain a problem will just create a lot of tickets titled "It's not syncing."

\- I had a ticket today where the steps to reproduce said, "Take a screenshot." There's MANY ways to take a screenshot. The steps to reproduce must say which tool / button combination were used.

\- Constantly needing to ask for things that are expected in the process. All products have different needs. In our case, all tickets need logs and a sample filename to look for in the log. When I need to constantly ask testers for this information, it's a problem that management must address quickly

\- "Oh you fixed it but now it does this." What this creates is a situation where many bugs are part of the same ticket, and someone needs to spend hours reading through all comments to understand what the bug is. If the bug is fixed and a new bug is found, verify the first bug, file a new ticket, and relate them.

Edit: Actively grooming means:

\- The bugs assigned to someone must be realistic. Don't leave 100 bugs assigned to someone for a release when there's no chance that they can do them all.

\- Don't let your ticket submitters triage their tickets. QE shouldn't assign a ticket to anyone. That just results in the 100 bugs assigned to someone situation.

\- Dumb feature requests should be closed immediately. Someone using your ticketing system to make dumb feature requests (and assign them to people) should be stopped immediately. (An example is a tester requesting lots of automation or helper tools from developers via the ticketing system.)

\- Out-of-scope bugs should not be assigned to a release

\- Major projects are not bugs, don't leave "bugs" that require major refactoring assigned to someone when you aren't going to dedicate the time to do it

\- Establish a feedback loop so that QE can better steer tickets on submitting them. (IE, if there is a clear server error in a log, it's not a client bug.) QE should be smart enough to do enough diagnostics to direct the bug before it hits triage.

\- Don't constantly assign tickets to the wrong team. If someone keeps saying, "this kind of ticket goes to this team," listen, otherwise they will go to your upper management, CTO, architect, ect or and make you look like a fool for not knowing the difference.

</comment><comment><USER38> Do those corporate/private Twitter apps still exist?

</comment><comment><USER39> Can you just create a new slack channel for team news?

</comment><comment><USER40> basecamp?

<comment><USER41> I'll second checking out Basecamp. We use both Slack and Basecamp. ZenDesk for customer issues. Everything tied together, both Slack and Basecamp have decent tools to integrate so you get alerts where you need them. Basecamp has a nice set of tools for projects and planning. I can't say I _LOVE_ it (and I don't hate it), but I do love their support people. You could probably get away with just using Basecamp as well. We did for quite a long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Basecamp

</comment><comment><USER43> I think a distributed team,where individual members of the team are geographically distributed, is designed to fail. Sure you could accomplish some goals but the inertia is working against you. Such teams will be always outperformed by co-located teams.

A better approach would be to have distributed teams where the teams are cohesive unit with co-located members. Each team has local autonomy and a central mandate. The teams could be located anywhere but the team members would be in the same office.

Aliging distributed teams is easier as they can agree on coarse details , have few or limited dependencies and they execute on their own. Otherwise you are just shepherding cats.

<comment><USER44> There are several fully remote companies collectively generating hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue. To require physical colocation is a failure to properly manage, as well as delegate authority and responsibility.

> Such teams will be always outperformed by co-located teams.

Could you share data to back this assertion up?

<comment><USER45> I agree with you.

For me, I've been fully remote for many years and was primarily remote for a few years prior to that.

Companies I've been at where there is no flexibility whatsoever typically suffer from poor management or are the type of work place where there are pieces of hardware or other resources one can not really work on remotely.

One of the primary benefits for me when initially working remotely was the time saving that resulted not having to spend 1.5-2.5 hours a day in the car.</comment></comment></comment>


Is decentralized storage sustainable? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dshr.org/2017/07/is-decentralized-storage-sustainable.html <comment><USER2> This is based on the idea that mining has been concentrated. Which I agree, but the problem with accumulating too much wealth in a coin is there's nobody to trade with. I own a domain called 1trillioncoins.com so technically I'm the first trillionaire. but since I have no one to trade with it's pretty pointless.

Also, if the bitcoin Oligarchs dump too much too fast the price will plummet. So, if you take into account time value of money it doesn't make economic sense to hoard too much of a coin.

</comment><comment><USER2> Sounds like why the web is organizing into a power law.

And most supply chains.

One thing that would make a difference is lag time. So, it would still become like a North america versus asian block. similar to CDN networks.

You would need some kind of identity and to distribute "fairly" but that would be prone to sybil attacks and collusion.

<comment><USER3> Storage nodes are probably fine being directly accessible, it's metadata that needs protection from sybil attacks.

<comment><USER2> if you limited how much storage a user could contribute to make it profitable but force it to be decentralized. you would need identity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The article makes one incorrect assumption, that there could be enough redundancy on a peer basis to make reliable p2p storage, rather than requiring each shard to be stored in a different country, making centralization of resources impossible algorithmically. Storing data in one country is a huge risk. One thing is probably true though, the number of countries will likely be limited to those, where providing storage is most economically viable.</comment>


What domain name is best, short and sweet or long and descriptive? - <AUTHOR> Yet another project and I'm once again in the market for a new domain. I'm torn between something short and sweet vs. something that is longer and more descriptive.
I've been down this road before and feel burned after selecting a more generic name for a service that required some name recognition (appointment.one in this case - there was just no way to Google it).
On the other hand I have done well with a more generic name that depended on long-tail SEO (10s of millions of pages linked from something like descriptive-name-with-dashes.com).
The new venture will be long tail SEO focussed again but I also want the domain to feel less fly by night. Are people more or less likely to click with the following scenarios:
* coffee-maker-review.com vs beantalk.com (so limited keyword overlap)
* best-domain-name-generator.com vs. fleetnam.com (so no keyword overlap)
The former in each example feels more descriptive, but I also feel like clicking on it would bring up a page filled with ads and zero useful content. That said, the latter options are more easily skipped over if you were to quickly scan the search results with the old eyes glazed over.
If you don't intend the project to ever have brand recognition is it a misstep to go for inventing a new word?
What have you done successfully / unsuccessfully? <comment><USER2> If it helps, I believe Google no longer heavily weighs keywords in domains because of the proliferation of names like coffee-maker-review.com.

There's a reason there aren't many high-value brands like "Table Manufacturing Company". Airbnb isn't "Other Person's House Rental", either.

Go with the name that can be the best brand. That might still be somewhat descriptive, but it doesn't have to be a synopsis of the site.

</comment><comment><USER3> Exact Match Domains (EMDs) are regarded as spammy, particularly the longer more hyphenated ones, so something snappier is better.

Snappier is more memorable, easier to type, easier to write (on media, signs etc), easier to say, discuss and has more brand value.

If you're looking to optimise for long tail searches then just focus on making the site as genuinely valuable and as high quality as possible for the product or service.</comment>


Alternatives to XML? - <AUTHOR>

I have grown to really dislike XML as a comunicating protocol/data serialiser.  It is very verbose and inefficient, especially for mobile use.  Its main advantages are: it is ubiquitous, and there are many free tools, parsers, marshallers available for any languages.<p>Assuming you have control both to the server and client,  what would be a good alternative to XML?
I thought about Json, but I don't like its syntax. What's your experience with these alternatives? <comment><USER2> For simple transport, I've always liked <http://cr.yp.to/proto/netstrings.txt>

<comment><USER3> never heard of it before, but our custom protocol is pretty similar to this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> yaml or thrift (binary)

<comment><USER5> yaml is definitely a logical alternative, I think

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> yaml? not used it myself, but possibly worth a look.</comment>


HTML5 voice recording - <AUTHOR>

It seems that this is still in flux in terms of browser support.  But what is the best html5/js lib that I could use with the least amount of issues? <comment><USER2> Check this

[http://webaudiodemos.appspot.com/AudioRecorder/index.html](http://webaudiodemos.appspot.com/AudioRecorder/index.html)

</comment><comment> good-citizen can't you just say:

<input type="file" accept="audio/*;capture=microphone"></input>

?</comment>


Pivotal Labs Acquired? - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2012/03/13/pivotal-labs-is-in-takeover-talks/

<comment><USER2> I really hope that this isn't just a talent acquisition or the conversion into a pure professional services agency without products... I hope that the long- term life of Pivotal Tracker can be guaranteed.

I rely on Pivotal Tracker. I actually love using it, it's made programming a joy as it's made the chore of project management a useful and almost satisfying thing to do.

In recent years I've relied on other products from companies that, having been acquired, are either "improved" so that they no longer work for my purposes or shut down.

It gives me a nagging feeling that people aren't in this to produce great products for the long term. I really want to be proved wrong, especially with Pivotal Tracker, because after having used so many other tools for project management I cannot imagine having to go back to them.

</comment><comment><USER3> I guess Square. Why?

1\. Pivotal's business is solid, and growing. But they must feel chagrin when they can only charge consulting fees while their clients, whose products they helped build, are going to be creating hundred-millionaires in short order. This might persuade Pivotal to give up their future business potential in exchange for stock options to share in the goodness. This rules out Google.

2\. Twitter doesn't really need more programmers. It needs to figure out how to monetize. So Twitter+Pivotal is not worth that much more than Twitter alone.

3\. Square has obvious potential, proven monetizability, and the only thing holding them back from chasing the huge array of obvious opportunities is a lack of programming talent. If they go too slow, their well-funded competitors (Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, banks) may well beat them to some markets. There's definitely a first-mover advantage to getting payment devices in the hands of businesses in any given market.

All this should incentivize Square to offer a large chunk of stock to Pivotal, which should incentivize Pivotal to be acquired by them.

</comment><comment><USER4> This may explain the rager party going on next door... (Pivotal Labs is in our building).

</comment><comment><USER5> Companies that Pivotal has extensively worked with: Twitter, Square, and Google.

The first two seem, well, obvious. I can count many Pivots that ended up at Twitter over the last 2-3 years. Both companies rely on Ruby/Java and SF's talent pool is practically drained.

A Google acquisition, while far fetched, also makes sense given that Pivotal is stacked with agile/Java broskis. Hard to imagine what the Pivots would work on. Android? Google+?

<comment><USER6> I don't think they've ever worked for Square.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Proof perhaps that running an extremely high-quality client-services business also has potential for an exit in the same way a startup does?

(Whilst also generating healthy profits in the meantime.)

<comment><USER8> I don't know why this is downvoted. Apples fall from trees, water is wet, and consulting businesses can be sold for money. Happens all the time.

Valuations are calculated very, very differently than for product businesses. There exist consultancies which have sold for amounts in excess of every YC company which has exited through today, although I don't know of any examples off the top of my head which rival Dropbox / Airbnb / etc.

But I'd you're doubting that e.g. you can sell a consultancy for $20 million or $200 million, you're doubting an observable feature of material reality.

<comment><USER9> * Many startup acquisitions are speculated or known to be about acquiring the team rather than acquiring the product.

* Consultancies are nominally the experts you call to compensate for gaps in your inside staff.

* You can run a contract with a consultancy first, and consider acquisition only if it goes well and if their people fit well with your people.

If you were aiming for that particular exit strategy, it sounds like it could be much more effective than building a random web / mobile product without a sustainable revenue model beyond "get funding, hope it lasts until someone buys you."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For obvious reasons I'm guessing Twitter or Square. Though I wouldn't be surprised by a Salesforce acquisition either.

<comment><USER11> My best guess is a very large company who was in a hiring crunch and made an offer they couldn't refuse. Twitter or Salesforce are good guesses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's interesting how big companies have gone from attempting to cobble together teams to simply slurping up existing ones. Inter-product acquirhires (buzzwords, ahoy!) like Twitter + Posterous and cases like this, Github + Ordered List, and so on are becoming more and more common. I think it's interesting (and, of course, helpful to me as a consultant that works in the same spaces as these guys and gals), but I wonder if there will be any larger negative impact from it?

I can't see any, but I don't know if I can see the whole picture or not.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, its probably a bit early to say this was a talent acquisition. Pivotal is a real company with customers and revenue that could be attractive to any number of larger companies on the basis of any of their assets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was guessing it would be GitHub.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think Atlassian is on a shopping spree again. After HipChat now Pivotal.

<comment><USER15> And every place they touch, they break the in-page search shortcut. Why can't they leave my '/' key alone? The last service it hit was bitbucket.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Kind of makes me wish I had held on to Hashrocket a bit longer :)</comment>


Kickstarter launched in the UK - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20145764

<comment><USER2> The terms require:

To be eligible to start a Kickstarter project as a UK creator, you need to meet the following requirements:

• You are a permanent UK resident either creating a project in your own name or on behalf of a legal entity with a Companies House Number.

• You have a UK address, UK bank account, and government-issued ID (driver's license or passport).

• You have a major UK credit or debit card.

• You are 18 years of age or older.

How come they can exclude non-UK EU people? Isn't there a single market within the EU?

<comment><USER3> >• You have a UK address, UK bank account, and government-issued ID (driver's license or passport).

So as a Spanish guy working in the UK I could use kickstarter as well?

<comment><USER4> If you satisfy the requirements listed above then yes.

As an EU citizen (I assume you have a Spanish Passport) then you automatically have the right to permanently reside in the UK:-

[http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/eucitizens/documents- eea-n...](http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/eucitizens/documents-eea- nationals/)

"Under European law, you do not need to obtain documentation confirming your right of residence in the UK if you are a national of a country in the EEA."

However, as you'll see from the list, having this right isn't all you'll need. You actually have to be living in the UK, have a UK bank account, etc. It's unclear as to whether the "Government-issued ID" relates to the UK Government or any other country's Government.

<comment><USER5> Given that they specifically prefix the other requirements with 'UK', I suspect that the lack of a prefix before 'Government' means that any government will do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One thing that I didn't see explicitly mentioned in the article: I really, really hope they don't segment the marketplaces. In other words, I really hope it's possible to log into Kickstarter UK with your Kickstarter US details and use the same payment details to support UK projects. I also hope the set up transparent currency conversion. Otherwise, the value proposition of Kickstarter to UK startups is radically lower.

I do a little bit of work than involves some ad networks and affiliate programs, and I find it astonishing how segmented commercial networks still can be.

For example, Amazon referrals only track to the country TLD you sent the traffic to. Refer someone to Amazon.com and the buy the product from Amazon UK after following the link prompt that appears on the landing page? You get nothing.

</comment><comment><USER7> My retro 2D MMO is one of the first UK projects accepted on Kickstarter :)

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1375039912/mmoasteroids-...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1375039912/mmoasteroids-2d-space- mmo)

</comment><comment><USER8> The projects located in London (in £GBP):

<http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/cities/london-gbr>

<comment><USER9> Weirdly, some of those projects actually predate the official availability of Kickstarter in the UK by quite a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great! Does this mean that one can use Kiskstarter to fund projects in UK only, or the whole of EU?

<comment><USER11> I've recently came across a project from Stockholm [1]. They went live before the UK announcement, so I suppose they set up a US entity.

[1] [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/martinkallstrom/memoto-l...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/martinkallstrom/memoto- lifelogging-camera?ref=city)</comment></comment>


12% of Gamers Hallucinate Sound Effects After They Stop Playing - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2014/08/06/video-game-hallucinations/?utm_campaign=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial&tm_cid=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial&tm_medium=feed&tm_source=rss <comment><USER2> I "see" some game images after I quit playing. I wouldn't call it "hallucinating," to use the headline's word, but I do have images of DDR or puzzle games or 2048 dance in my head after stopping playing.

Does this happen to others?

<comment><USER3> it happens enough that it even has a name. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect)

<comment><USER2> Oh wow, how fun. I learned something today; thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


YC08 Summer Founders Hosting Hacker Meetup in Cambridge. Come Join Us - <AUTHOR> http://anyvite.com/events/home/tmokjxuwai/cambridgeboston-startup-meetup

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're in the Cambridge/Boston area next Monday, come join us for a hacker meetup. PG will be answering some user submitted questions on the YC process and how to increase your odds of getting in.

Check out the invite for more details and RSVP if you're able to make it.

<comment><USER2> This is going to be a ton of fun. It'll be a great way to network and really just hang out. Can't wait to meet all of you.

-Garry, cofounder, posterous.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We're bringing out some (as many as possible) Startuply companies that are hiring, too, so there will definitely be some opportunities here if you're looking to get involved.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd definitely like to attend, I'm a soon-to-be (full-time) entrepreneur and avid HN reader living in Boston. I'm strongly considering applying for the next YC round, so it'll be cool to see what pg and the YC summer '08 folks are up to, and hopefully meet you all in person!

-Chris

</comment><comment><USER5> _"... YC08 Summer Founders Hosting Hacker Meetup in Cambridge. Come Join Us ..."_

I won't be going, _"artichoke end of the world"_. But it does make me smile that an ecosystem of yc startups are supporting and using each others tools.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm so tempted to go but that would be one hell of an expensive beer (airfare + stay). But... I could get a lot out of this since I want to start a startup.

I definitely need to move to a startup hub. This type of meet up would never happen around here (South Florida).

</comment><comment><USER7> Awesome you guys are going this. We should tie this up with the Hacker Meetups we've been running for the last 6 months in London.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely! Feel free to shoot me an email and we chat about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looking forward to it. Just moved from SF to Cambridge 3 months ago and excited to meet up w/ the YC folks around here.

</comment><comment><USER9> sorry for the ignorance, but i notice it says "Be sure to RSVP and secure your spot at the meetup!". does this mean there will be reserved seating? or "sorry we're full" guys guarding the door? is it not a casual, "drop by for a beer" type of thing? i'd like to attend, but i'm not 100% i can make it yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> For now it's definitely a drop by for a beer, but if the number reaches a certain tolerance, then we need to cap it. So basically we just want to get an accurate number with the RSVPs to make sure the venue is prepared with us and we don't violate any fire laws by having too many people on the 3rd floor.

You can respond Maybe if you don't know for sure if you can make it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The first YC08 Demo Day is only a few days after this event, so be prepared to offer moral support and feedback to those who are in the middle of that last push

</comment><comment><USER11> I'll be coming from Newburyport. If anyone from up here is going and would like to carpool, please let me know (daniel at flyingmachinestudios dot com).

</comment><comment><USER12> count me in</comment>


5 facts about DDoS attacks - <AUTHOR> http://centarra.com/2014/03/14/5-facts-about-ddos-attacks.html

<comment><USER2> _The number of exclusively layer 7 attacks we 've seen since beginning this project is basically zero._

I'm happy that for you that you don't see these attacks, because I can tell you that we see Layer 7 DDoS attacks frequently, but perhaps just go read HN story #1 about the Github DDoS.

<comment><USER3> The Github attack was a volumetric flood, this most certainly has layer 3 properties.

The post clearly discusses layer7 floods which do not have layer3 properties (such as slowloris.pl, rudy.pl, etc.) which are uncommon.

It would be a safe bet to say that the Github attack had layer-3 properties.

<comment><USER2> _After some investigation, we discovered that we were seeing several thousand HTTP requests per second distributed across thousands of IP addresses for a crafted URL._

That sounds like layer 7 to me.

<comment><USER3> This has layer3 properties, such as connection rate, and was most likely mitigated using layer 3 filtering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Everything in this post is accurate. L7 protection at the endpoints (use 10GbE ports if necessary), L3/L4 protection in the network. And although I've never heard of the company, nenolod knows what he's doing.

Suggestion for them: improve your site, fix the colocation 404, provide info about your locations (perhaps it's available if I register for your client portal, but I don't want to do that until I know it would otherwise meet my needs), provide info about your network (transit and peering).

</comment><comment><USER5> Hey, this Centarra sounds cool! [Click on "Colocation" link at top of web page.] 404 Not Found.

</comment><comment><USER6> tl;dr; "Every solution that isn't made by us isn't good."

<comment><USER7> Its a true statement. I have personally evaluated almost every DDoS solution (either by looking at reports on how well they fared often posted on HN, or by having sites I regularly use go down because the solution they bought failed them), and I ended up going with Centarra because they're the only ones that don't have a history of failure.</comment></comment>


Fiverr plans to go public - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-14/israel-s-fiverr-is-said-to-hire-citigroup-jpmorgan-for-u-s-ipo <comment><AUTHOR> Mind-boggling, considering that they started as more or less a barter shop for fake Facebook likes.</comment>


Hardest delegating lesson to learn: Trust but verify. - <AUTHOR> http://sivers.org/trust-but-verify

<comment><USER2> You have to be a bit careful with this approach. If there's one thing that annoys me, it's managers constantly asking me for "status emails", making me go to "status meetings", and asking me to do other things with "status" in them.

I find that the best managers are the ones who can get the information they need and create a minimal level of disruption in the developer's workflow (not that it's always possible, I understand that disruptions have to happen at times).

<comment><USER3> I think the author is trying to encourage the practice in general. There are certainly ways to do it right and ways to do it wrong.

Just blindly asking for status emails so you have some numbers and justifications for your charts would probably not go over well. Asking for status emails regarding real milestones and to verify functionality, check metrics, or suggest current progress be analyzed can be very helpful.

Good management seems to include knowing when someone needs some guidance or help and when they just need you to stay out of their hair.

<comment><USER2> I agree. Bear in mind that I said to be careful, not to cut the approach out in general.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a really bad way to say something that's obviously true. It's a bad way to say it because it sounds and feels paradoxical, so it often gets dismissed by people who know how to think, and think they know what it means.

It really comes down to one of the fundamental components of management - communication - which isn't one way.

Communication requires saying things, then confirming that the message arrived without distortion. Further, when this communication is delegation, part of the message should be that you get a message back when it's done. Not least, the delegation should contain a clear statement (verified by having repeated back to you) of what it means for the task to be completed successfully.

Let them do the work, then get confirmation that it's been done. Trust that their statement that it's done is truthful.

<comment><USER3> I think his message is not so much to trust that their statement about progress is truthful, but rather to trust that others can do a good job and get it done well.

I'm sure many of us have had that feeling of, "I know I can do this better, I should just do it." The point of this is to trust them and instead say, "I know I can do this better, but I need to delegate, so I trust that this other person can do a good job." That's the first part of delegation. The second part is to verify that the work did get done to a high standard, and make it clear what else needs to get done.

You need to be able to trust employees to get the job done, and you need to verify that it did get done in case it did not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> At last an opportunity to get this question answered:

Surely "Trust but Verify" is a joke? Or at least a paradox.

If you trust someone then you don't need to verify, and if you verify then you aren't trusting someone.

And yet many people, such as this post and Ronald Reagan use it as if it just a simple slogan without a dark double-meaning.

Is it just me? I don't see how someone who "trusts but verifies" would act any different from someone who "distrusts and therefore verifies" apart from (falsely) telling the person being checked up on that they are "trusted".

Any Russians want to comment?

<comment><AUTHOR> You could say it's like "Trust Allah, but tie your camel". [http://www.google.com/search?q=trust+allah+but+tie+your+came...](http://www.google.com/search?q=trust+allah+but+tie+your+camel)

But really it means when you delegate, do it thoroughly. Don't just say it once and assume it's done. Confirm that it's done. Set up a system to make sure that it's done.

<comment><USER6> There is a similar Russian expression too, less poetic however.

I think "trust but verify" places more emphasis on the "trust" part whereas the other one emphasizes the personal responsibility. Both remind us to seek the balance between personal involvement and personal detachment in a particular project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The same could be said for business partners. That's another very painful lesson to learn the hard way.

</comment><comment><USER8> Incidentally, "trust but verify" was the cornerstone of Ronald Reagan's nuclear policy vis-a-vis the Soviet Union, and could effective act as a summary of the INF treaty.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is the exact phrase I encourage people to think about when I'm training!

Reagan made it famous, <https://digitalcertificates.commerzbank.com/request>

<comment><USER10> How is the link related to your comment?

<comment><USER9> Copy and paste error, and my editing period has long since expired. Link: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust,_but_verify> Sorry about that.</comment></comment></comment>


Is This Ex-Googler's Pre-Product Approach the Fast Track to Product-Market Fit? - <AUTHOR> http://nextviewventures.com/blog/pretotyping-product-market-fit-google-alberto-savoia/

<comment><USER2> As good as time as any to remind people of Betteridge's law of headlines[0]...

[0]. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)</comment>


Ask HN: Craigslist and crawlers - <AUTHOR> I wrote a small crawler for Craigslist making absolutely sure that it obeys the robots.txt rules.
Sure enough, after a few hindered of requests my crawler got banned.
Doing a simple search at Google, I can see from the results I get that CL is happily allowing Google bots.
I strongly believe that this discrimination against small players is highly unethical, but my question is, is it breaking any laws or maybe anti-monopolistic rules? <comment><USER2> Craigslist is a privately owned website, they can ban you at will.

That said, you've already given the solution to your problem yourself. Instead of crawling craigslist, crawl google instead.

<comment><USER3> In the epic 3taps vs. CL battle, CL claimed copyright on all posts, which wasn't supported by their TOS. So they updated their TOS to give them worldwide exclusive rights to ads.

CL finally backed down when the EFF told them to, which says a lot because the EFF is practically owned by CL.

<comment><USER2> > because the EFF is practically owned by CL.

Sorry?

I'm totally floored by that, did I miss something?

I know that CL donated some sum of money to the EFF but that was a settlement.

<comment><USER3> The EFF is an outspoken critic of the CFAA and has admonished multiple entities for threatening criminal prosecution. When Craigslist threatened me the first thing I did was contact the EFF. They didn't ignore me. They told me there is nothing they were willing to to at the time, which in my eyes was worse than just ignoring me.

Only until it became a high profile issue with 3taps did the EFF speak out against CL.

That was about a year after I contacted them and they only did after 3taps started getting press.

To me it was pretty clear that they didn't want to bite the hand that fed them, until they had to or else lose all credibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Stay away from doing this. I built a small business doing real-time alerts on CL and eventually got a C&D letter from their lawyers. I gave up.

I got around IP restrictions by essential having SETI like software running on my client's computers.

They will threaten you saying you're committing a felony by violating the CFAA. They are insane, but have deep pockets.

After I shut down, others stood up against CL's ridiculous claims and lost. Search for 3taps.com and padmapper.com to learn more.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow! Thanks for the info. So sad that they lost. How is this not illegally thwarting of competition?

I wonder how can they claim that what you did was illegal or against their TOS, but what search engines are doing is not.

I guess I am lucky I didn't spend too much time on this. Thanks again!</comment></comment>


Swearing, Euphemisms and Writing Something That Actually Sounds Like You - <AUTHOR> http://copyhackers.com/2013/12/swearing-euphemisms-writing/

<comment><USER2> Interesting that, despite flaunting her edginess, the author never once does actually type out an unadulterated or censored "fuck".

The complaint I have with this sort of copy is not being offended, or of being obscene, or what have you--it's that the sort of diction used tends to make me think that whoever wrote it is simply not that bright.

If you'd like a good example of decently-written swearing, look at Zed Shaw ( [http://programming-motherfucker.com/](http://programming-motherfucker.com/) ), jwz, or Charles Bloom ( [http://cbloomrants.blogspot.com/](http://cbloomrants.blogspot.com/) ).

Those folks clearly rage early and rage often, but they have some skill and class.</comment>


Sprockets: JavaScript dependency management and concatenation (SvN) - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1587-introducing-sprockets-javascript-dependency-management-and-concatenation

<comment><USER2> Sounds like great stuff! I think we shouldn't limit ourselves to source code directory structure so much and this is a step in the right direction.

One problem I foresee with this approach is that it could make debugging harder, if you have to look at the "concatenated" javascript file in production to make sense of what code's included and not, it's harder to know what comes from where than if you just included the original source code files.

One solution would be to have a way to switch between "concatenated" and "normal" modes easily (maybe it's already possible, I don't know), so that normal development would be unimpeded. But you'd have to resort to the big concatenated file for debugging in production.

Another solution would be to somehow preserve the information about what comes from where, so that via a browser plugin you could browse the concatenated file as if it were the original modular files.

Lately I'm getting really interested in ways to preserve information about "what comes from where" so that you could point to something in a generated output and ask the system to explain the sum of all inputs and considerations (decisions, transformations) that resulted in that "atom" being generated in the output through the various "semantic levels". You usually generate a low- level representation from a higher-level representation and it can be useful to proceed carefully from one transformation to the next so that you preserve meaningful semantic information about intermediate stages.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unless I missed something, this is exactly what django-compress already does for the Django framework:

<http://code.google.com/p/django-compress/>

We just started using it in a project I'm working on. Most excellent.

<comment><USER4> Cool, django-compress looks similar to the sprockets-rails plugin. A few differences:

django-compress makes you define your source files and concatenation order in an array in a configuration file. Sprockets lets you define your dependencies with annotations in the source files themselves, meaning plugins can have their own dependencies and integrate themselves with your applicaton's build system.

Sprockets doesn't do minification yet.

Sprockets doesn't do CSS concatenation, either. But it does have an asset provisioning feature, where plugins can specify a collection of files (e.g. css, images) that should be copied into the document root. (Rails itself provides basic CSS and JS concatenation.)

It's nice to see other similar but independent implementations of the same idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I dislike the comment "require" directives way of specifying dependencies. They should be real JavaScript function calls, which could either be analyzed ahead of time and stripped, like Sprockets, or used with a JavaScript loader system at runtime. This would remove the CGI/Ruby dependency and make the whole system more reusable (for example, server side, where concatenation isn't necessary/desired).

<comment><USER4> Respectfully: no, it shouldn't. :) There's plenty of libraries that do this already. Sprockets solves a different problem.

<comment><USER5> Can you elaborate? I assumed the problem was "JavaScript dependency management and concatenation".

What I described is essentially what we do in Objective-J. During development it just resolves the dependencies at runtime, but when you deploy you can flatten them into one big file.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love how the options are Rails Plugin or CGI. If they write their marketing sites in PHP, why didn't they go with PHP instead of the CGI route? Or, is it the case that the CGI was just a "hey, you don't need to use Rails to take advantage of it" ploy?

EDIT: after reading the CGI source, they use some mod_rewrite trickery to avoid running the CGI if theres a cached file.

<comment><USER4> I originally wrote Sprockets 1) as a replacement for Prototype's build system and 2) as a library that could be used within Rails. Just before releasing 1.0, I added a simple CGI wrapper around the library so we could use it in our marketing sites and so people could use it relatively easily without Rails.

I like the idea of distributing a PHP wrapper. I'll try to add one for the next release.

And there's no "ploy." Interesting theory, though.

<comment><USER6> After finding that the CGI was smart, I can see the value in it. The "ploy" comment was written "pre"-enlightenment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wonder how it interacts with browser cacheing and parallel JS resource downloads?

<comment><USER8> JavaScript resources are never downloaded in parallel. They are downloaded sequentially because they are interpreted while they download, and (existing) browsers always run JavaScript in a single thread.

This will have very little effect on caching. You will still need to configure your web server for optimal caching, by setting the Cache-control and Expires headers, for example.

Even so, this still has two main benefits: The JavaScript is minified, which will reduce the amount of raw data sent to remote users. Plus, by concatenating all the files together, you avoid the need for multiple separate HTTP requests.

<comment><USER9> Incorrect. In the latest browsers, js can be downloaded in parallel, but executed in the correct order - sequentially.

AFAIK, that includes the latest safari, firefox, and IE8.

However, it's still obviously a good idea to concat and minify all your scripts.

<comment><USER8> Cool, thanks for the tidbit.

I had previously been told that a JavaScript download basically halts the entire processing of the remainder of the page -- including any downloads that might occur there (CSS, images, and more JS) -- because the browser can't start parsing the rest of the page until it has interpreted the JavaScript. That's why it's best to move your JavaScript down to the bottom of the page.

Is this just the way older browsers used to behave? Are there still any restrictions like this that I should be aware of?

<comment><USER10> My rule of thumb with javascript is to put everything that is critical to page functionality right at the top and everything else as far to the bottom as I can (just before </body>), that way all your buttons/sliders and other active components will work as soon as the page is rendered and any other javascript will never hurt performance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We use ant to accomplish the same thing.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I was gonna say "make" combined with some new tool to read the metadata from the js files would probably be doable.

<comment><USER13> We are using make for exactly that purpose, works like a charme.</comment></comment></comment>


Helvetica, a documentary - <AUTHOR> https://www.hustwit.com/helvetica <comment><USER2> I enjoyed learning the cultural context from which Helvetica emerged. In particular, I remember one man talking about how in the early 1900s, a company's letterhead might have a floral font proclaiming The Inimitable Widgets, Gadgets, and Sprongdonacle Corporation of the Empire State. Then Helvetica comes along, and the company's letterhead becomes Widgets Co. The same clean look mirrored in Mid-Century Modern and the Space Age.

I do wish the film had more details about the form of the font itself. E.g. explain the anatomy of a font, the choices made about the various parts, why subtle differences between Helvetica and Arial have significant impacts, etc. If anyone knows a good source of that kind of information, I would love to hear of it.

<comment><USER3> That's the optimistic angle; the pessimistic is that Helvetica grew in popularity due to its being nearly the polar opposite of a just-prior-to-mid- century use of Fraktur by a certain european political party.

(Helvetia itself gained a fourth national language in 1938, due to comments made by someone who made his trains run on time; the dutch reformed their spelling in 1947 to distance their language from a neighbouring country in the same language family who they had had the involuntary pleasure of hosting, etc. etc.)

Maria Ivanova tells her class at the end of the day that they should find out what their ancestors did during the Great Patriotic War. The next morning, she calls on little Johnny. He says "My great-great-grandfather was electrician: his helmet had two lightning bolts..."

Edit: added involuntary, for clarity. Neemt u me niet kwalijk.

<comment><USER4> > the dutch reformed their spelling in 1947 to distance their language from a > neighbouring country in the same language family who they had had the > pleasure of hosting

Sorry, what are you trying to say here? The Dutch had the pleasure of hosting what exactly?

<comment><USER5> > Sorry, what are you trying to say here? The Dutch had the pleasure of > hosting what exactly?

Hosted a party! In seriousness though, s/he refers to the German occupation of the Netherlands in WW2.

<comment><USER3> Luckily that was a long time ago, and those sorts of politics have been discredited for a good portion of a century.

These days we are all excellent to each other and party on.

(if you're ready to party, here's some dutch cultural appropriation: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVz_IJoyO6Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVz_IJoyO6Y) )

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And if I may suggest: Articles of interest – suits[1]. Suits are in a lot of ways the helvetica of garments.

[1] [https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/suits-articles-of- int...](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/suits-articles-of-interest-10/)

<comment><USER3> From the textile viewpoint, suits are the copperplate of garments.

In many cultures, traditional wear can be made out of rectangles of fabric with minimal cutting and sewing. (consider the togas from "Animal House")

A suit used to say "I have so many rectangles of fabric, I can afford to waste most of them by cutting out irregular shapes and then sewing some fraction of the resulting pieces back together". (Now all it says is that I can afford the time to have someone take my measurements)

<comment><USER7> Considering how much fabric is somewhat redundant in those traditional garments, the measuring, cutting, and sewing are more interesting than the wasted fabric.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I haven't watched Helvetica, but the same director also made Objectified which is fascinating look into the industrial design of everyday products.

[https://www.hustwit.com/objectified](https://www.hustwit.com/objectified)

<comment><USER9> Add Urbanized to that list too, it's a really great look at how cities and their spaces are designed.

He also recently produced Rams which I've not yet had a chance to see but I hope is on par with his previous work.

And if you enjoy these films you'll also likely appreciate the Abstract series which originally aired on Netflix.

<comment><USER10> Rams is great. Bought it on Vimeo shortly after it came out. You won't regret it.

When Rams speaks about design, it always makes me reflect on modern software and how we've regressed so much. Though I think's mostly as a single widget does 20 different things, which isn't a great idea in the first place.

<comment><USER11> >Though I think's mostly as a single widget does 20 different things, which isn't a great idea in the first place.

You mean like a smartphone? :-)

It's a tradeoff. For example, even a well-equipped kitchen generally doesn't have every sort of one-off small appliance or implement. On the one hand, if you do make a lot of rice, say, a rice cooker makes a lot of sense. If you make rice a few times a year? Probably makes more sense just to make it on the stovetop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The director, Gary Hustwit, made his films (Helvetica, Objectified, Urbanized, Workplace, Rams, and others) available for free during the first weeks of the lockdown -- each one for a week. It was nice to see them again.

[https://www.ohyouprettythings.com/free](https://www.ohyouprettythings.com/free)

</comment><comment><USER13> If you haven't watched this movie yet you really should.

I'd dare say, without it we wouldn't see half the articles we see on HN about fonts and typography.

</comment><comment><USER14> I love this movie. Its well done and some of the characters in it are self described nerds. Typefaces are a fascinating subject one you start to get into them.

"Hacker News" typeface in the upper left (which I believe is Verdana) does not have any serifs on it. Serifs are the extra little points and tails on letters. Hacker News body font and logo does not have serifs, therefore it is sans-serif. 'sans' meaning 'without'.

Sans-serifs are also called grotesque (or grotesk) because it appears as though the letters have had limbs amputated. :D Or at least that's how I remember the term. People definitely though they were ugly when they first appeared.

Text written in a serif typeface is considered more distinguished and authoritative . Imagine the bible written in the same font used on HN here, it would look odd.

Isn't HN authoritative and distinguished? I'll let the reader decide. However you should consider that you are reading the word 'fart' right now in it.

Fart.

</comment><comment><USER15> I can strongly reccommend «Objectified», another one of Gary Hustwits documentaries. It features interviews with the legendary german industrial designer Dieter Ramms, where he praises Apple. It also has an interview with Jony Ive where he talks about the MacBook. «Urbanized» is also a good documentary from Hustwit, about urban design.

</comment><comment><USER16> In case you also liked the trailer soundtrack, here it is [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Kn4wUd3UDY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Kn4wUd3UDY)

</comment><comment><USER17> See also: "Behind the Typeface: Cooper Black"

[https://vimeo.com/31237546](https://vimeo.com/31237546)

<comment><USER7> I liked the information, but I didn't enjoy the "Behind the Music" parody format.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Aside: I noticed that Google has some great fonts as part of Google Slides and other products while helping my daughter with her distance learning homework during the recent COVID 19 scare. In particular, I liked Comfortaa [1], Pacifico [2] (as a Comic Sans alternative), and Merriweather [3] (as a formal alternative for Times New Roman). You can download them here: [https://fonts.google.com/?sort=popularity](https://fonts.google.com/?sort=popularity)

[1] [https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Comfortaa](https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Comfortaa) [2] [https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Pacifico](https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Pacifico) [3] [https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Merriweather](https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Merriweather)

<comment><USER19> Indeed - Google Fonts lists some good typefaces! I've listed my favourites at [https://fonts.tasuki.org/](https://fonts.tasuki.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> From the about page [1]:

Gary Hustwit is an independent filmmaker and photographer based in New York....

In 2007 he made his directorial debut with Helvetica, the world's first feature-length documentary about graphic design and typography. The film marked the beginning of a design film trilogy, with Objectified, about industrial design and product design following in 2009, and Urbanized, about the design of cities, in 2011. The films have been broadcast on PBS, BBC, HBO and television outlets in 20 countries, and have been screened in over 300 cities worldwide. Workplace, a documentary project about the future of the office, was commissioned for the 2016 Venice Biennale of Architecture. His most recent feature film, Rams, about German design legend Dieter Rams with original music by Brian Eno, was released in Fall 2018.

[1] [https://www.hustwit.com/about](https://www.hustwit.com/about)

</comment><comment><USER21> Very nice movie, recommend the full set, helvetica, objectified, urbanized, by the same director

</comment><comment><USER22> I really enjoyed this film, but in telling the story of the cultural power and ubiquity of Helvetica, I think it dramatically underplays the fact that variations on Helvetica have been pre-installed on most modern personal computers by default.

<comment><USER7> > variations on Helvetica have been pre-installed on most modern personal > computers by default

Windows doesn't have one.

<comment><USER23> Arial is essentially a Helvetica variation. At it's most charitable, Arial is to Helvetica as RC Cola is to Coke, with Monotype owning Arial and Linotype owning Helvetica.

<comment><USER7> You're not wrong, but there are vocal designers that wouldn't be happy with that comparison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I am a bit of a typesetting geek, but the lady who says Helvetica caused the Vietnam War really opened my eyes to damage caused by such a ubiquitous font. /s

</comment><comment><USER25> This is a great documentary. I watched it a long time ago, and it felt pretty timeless, just like Helvética itself.

<comment><USER26> Timeless is just another word for "endlessly boring" which the movie isn't, but Helvetica is by now ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> These guys. Not only they make money from their fonts, but they make money from marketing it, too.

</comment><comment><USER28> Helvetica shows up in this famous BBC documentary: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBaVwwuErmU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBaVwwuErmU)

</comment><comment><USER26> Great film. Wish there was something similar about other typefaces that had significance, e.g. Bauhaus/Universa, Futura, Times, or Comic Sans ;)

</comment><comment><USER29> Totally worth watch.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm hoping the sequel will be about 'Why everyone should love MS Comic Sans'.

<comment><USER17> The Guardian: Interview: "How we made the typeface Comic Sans"

[https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/mar/28/how- we-...](https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/mar/28/how-we-made-font- comic-sans-typography)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm probably a cretin, but I just don't understand all the fuss about a font.

<comment><USER14> Actually a font is a file on a computer, Helvetica is a typeface. Does that help? :D Probably not.

<comment><USER32> > The distinction between font and typeface is that a font designates a > specific member of a type family such as roman, boldface, or italic type, > while typeface designates a consistent visual appearance or style which can > be a "family" or related set of fonts.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> There's a game called typerider for people interested in typography.

<comment><USER17> Also, although somewhat tedious, there is a "what font is this?" game called Typewar.

[http://typewar.com/](http://typewar.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Needs a (2007) in the title. Great film.</comment>