Ask HN: Why did Twitter succeed? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I've never really understood Twitter as a business, and so I figure that since it's been bugging me for a good two years now, I'd might as well give it a shot and ask the good folks here for their thoughts on this. Any insight is appreciated.
1) What problem does Twitter solve? Some of the best startups are created around specific solutions to specific problems. Twitter is a non-specific solution to a whole host of problems. It is used differently by different kinds of people. So ... what problem does it really solve? Or is there no specific problem here, and we just have a communal itch that we want to scratch that the Twitter format helps?
2) YC tells its applicants: 'make something people want'. But while Twitter does make something people want, it's not clear what that is. Could Twitter be an example of stumbling, by pure accident, into something people want? Does this imply that there is no way to intentionally create a company like Twitter?
3) Why is Twitter so successful? Twitter seems to be the only company with no clear value proposition (I'm not saying there's no value - I'm just saying that it's hard to explain what that value is to a non-Twitter user); also it seems to be one of the few startups that can get away with producing a generalized platform as its main product. Wave didn't. Why did Twitter succeed where Wave did not?
Thoughts, ideas, and observations are all welcomed. <comment><USER2> From: <http://ycombinator.com/rfs3.html>

_Twitter is important because it's a new protocol. Fundamentally it's a messaging protocol where you don't specify the recipients. It's really more of a discovery than an invention; that square was always there in the periodic table of protocols, but no one had quite hit it squarely._

We could try to draw a small excerpt of this 'periodic table':

                  LONG    SHORT
      ONE:ONE     email   im/sms
      ONE:PUBLIC  blogs   twitter

Of course, the axes aren't exact. You can write arbitrarily short emails and blogposts, and lengthy IMs. Twitter is usually 'public' but only viewed by some set of friends/acquaintances/fans, and interactions range from chatty conversations to long lagged correspondences. Each box bleeds into the others with crossover communications.

But you get the idea; the signature modes of each big success are variations on a theme, nailing a new permutation. And it shouldn't be surprising that blogging pioneers happened upon the adjacent twitter opportunity at the right time.

You could build similar tables where an axis-of-contrast is EPHEMERAL/ARCHIVED, or BUSINESS/PLEASURE, or TEXT/AUDIOVISUAL, or REALTIME/TIME-LAGGED, or SIMPLE/POWERFUL, and see some of the same things appear in the quadrants, or other familiar services, or gaping holes -- where there may be Twitter-sized opportunity waiting.

<comment><USER3> You're right about Twitter hitting the missing square in the periodic table. I think you glaze over the importance of the short nature of Twitter, though.

Yes, you can write arbitrarily short blog posts. But you don't, because you feel like you have an obligation to make your official blog be a well written, safe-for-future-eyes snapshot of your personality. Most of us have started a blog with grand intentions and given up after the effort of crafting essays carefully became too much.

Twitter requires no more commitment than a minute of your time. The simplicity of the medium (<http://www.flickr.com/photos/jackdorsey/182613360/>) is its greatest strength, and it is also why nobody else was able to make it. It takes a special sort of daring to provide a product that does so little. I'm sure users are constantly clamoring for the 140 character limit to be lifted, for new features to be added, and for more in general. But if Twitter had been created with no emphasis on short, simple messages, it would've been just like all the other blog ecosystems.

The impact of the small commitment goes beyond the importance to the average user. I think that one of the huge factors in Twitter's success was all of the hype generated by celebrities. What better way for celebrities to connect with their fans? They can do it in the privacy of their home, it takes nearly zero effort, they get extra points for being tech-savvy, and they cut out the middleman of the media. For the star basketball player who think he's misunderstood (e.g., @TheRealShaq), this is perfect. No more media twisting his words, just one-on-one conversation. Except it's better than one-on-one, because the whole world gets to see how you treat your fans.

In short, I think Twitter took off because even though they didn't know it yet, people yearned for a low effort medium of communication.

<comment><USER4> "It takes a special sort of daring to provide a product that does so little."

I'm hanging on to this one. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So i worked at Odeo and was involved in the initial product exploration and creation of Twitter.

It was not created accidentally. We were experimenting with and thinking about the way people communicate. What if it were casual and open. In the same time as we did the first prototype of twitter, we also built hellodeo, very similar to stickem/dailyboot, a kind of social voicemail, a mocked out groupware 2.0, etc...

We looked a lot at SMS, interviewed teens who used lots of sms, played with txtmob.org and UPOC as examples of something similar with explicit groups. At one point i remember, Ev i think, saying "what if we just made a clone of UPOC, but without explicit groups." Or something to that effect.

We started using it, and with a couple hundred users who liked it, we were sending hundreds of thousands of tweets a month. Few people used the first versions, but those who did, became hugely addictive. The half a dozen other prototypes we built, didn't have passion. Twitter, people loved or hated, or both.

Evan Williams then took his resources from selling Blogger.com to google pre- ipo, and was able to buy the VC's out. His original idea was to do Obvious Corp, continue the prototyping and process which had created twitter. Unfortunately Twitter overwhelmed Obvious, and they spent the next couple of years just playing catchup.

It's not hard to do good new product work. Spend time really getting to know a space, look at practices people are engaging in. Then start thinking about variations. Are people doing something in their social practices, by using technology NOT how it was intended. What if you shaped tech for those intentions.

Twitter's lesson is you can do prototypes until you find something which is compelling, then keep doing what people want, based on their actions (not what they say they want.) If you do that, then you'll eventually figure out a business model.

</comment><comment><USER6> Back when I used AOL/AIM in high school there was an explosive adoption of "always on" internet services such as DSL and cable. During this time, it became fashionable for teens to express their current emotions/actions/likes as their "Away Messages" on AIM, which was something new compared with the limitations their previous dial-up connections. I'd go as far to say these messages were the precursor to services like LiveJournal.

Since college, with the mass adoption of social networks, I would guess that 95% of all my friends no longer use independent chat services, like AIM.

I see twitter as the next iteration of "Away Messages" - or, what they now call status updates.

Personally, I dislike Twitter for my personal use. I think it is a fascinating way for brands to sell products to unsuspecting consumers, but there is no value as a standalone "Away Message" platform... that would be the job of something like Facebook status updates, since all of my friends are already connected on there.

As for how it grew? It both filled the need for people to continually express themselves and that other really important thing... celebrity endorsements.

<comment><USER7> +1. That's exactly how I view Twitter - as a modern version of "away messages." I remember looking forward to the always-on Internet connection in college dorms as a way to set long-lasting away messages so friends can see what I'm doing or some witty remark I thought of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's a social and _sociable_ take on the problem RSS was intended to revolutionize but hasn't really delivered on. Its only ideological conceit, of 140 character messages, actually simplifies the user experience and keeps the "communities" that form there on the rails. "Chat" is arguably one of the "stickiest" and most compelling applications of the Internet, and Twitter delivers a chat-like experience with huge numbers of people that manages to be both non-ephemeral (IM and IRC conversations disappear forever as soon as they end) and (therefore) discoverable.

I don't believe for a second that Twitter realized any of this when they started; like so many good things on the Internet, Twitter's benefits are emergent, not planned.

Wave is what you get when you try to catalog all the possible benefits of Twitter and plan a product to deliver those benefits.

</comment><comment><USER9> I honestly think people often forget the reasons things succeed in the beginning and replace them with the reasons they are successful now. You know the main reason I think Twitter was successful? They had an SMS gateway. I knew loads of people who never sat in front of a computer except for a few minutes a day at best. It's easy for us constantly-connected internet geeks to forget how the rest of the world lives. These people were completely isolated from real-time one-to-many messaging we all take for granted with email, IM, & RSS. Twitter filled that gap. They got a huge following from people who had no regular internet access but unlimited SMS.

The other major factors were simplicity (at a functional but also an API level) and the alignment of self interest with the digerati who in their quest for self-promotion became instantly addicted to Twitter's public follower numbers. Thus it became the topic of nearly every tech podcast for a good 12 months straight with sickening regularity.

<comment><USER10> Yes i agree with this. And i think should they have come in a little later they would have missed the boat so in this regard they are lucky. In terms of how they have maintained and grew twitter to what it is now, that is skill.

If connection to the internet on mobile phones was mainstream at the time twitter started the SMS gateway would have been redundant just as it is right now.

I know alot of people who use twitter now and im pretty sure none of them know you can tweet via an SMS as most of them have twitter apps installed on their mobiles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Solved a real problem: sending text messages to a group.

Later, it allowed people to get semi-personal access to people they admire.

<comment><USER12> Although this is true, I think it is missing the point. What was the problem text messages was trying to solve?

A quick, semi-personal connection between two people across a distance. This can further be boiled down as humans interest in connection and conversation.

It turns out that Twitter, due to the social network (both existing and being one sided) solves this problem better then text messaging. So really it evolved text messaging.

This is much like the quote by Henry Ford "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." Ford was not "solving a real problem" -- the problem of transportation had already been solved since the dawn of time. He was evolving the solution to a faster, more convenient method.

<comment><USER13> As an entrepreneur on the look for the most fertile soil, evolving an existing solution has the highest potential pay off. Plus the thought of frankensteining multiple existing technologies together brings a smile to my face every time.

There's an infinite variety of cool stuff we can build, but what will have the biggest payoff for my time now, what can I and my team members execute best on right this moment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A lot of people understand SMS. Twitter is SMS on the web.

The other thing I think has made twitter more popular than it normally would have been is that it has been based in the positive. I can mark stuff as favorite, and I can follow people. I can't down-vote some tweet into oblivion. Harassing people is a little harder (you can block a person, but it is not listed publicly and it only affects your vision). Public categorization was not in the original design.

Now, we have lists. Most people are using them to make reading easier, but some are making lists with "less than kind" names and assigning people they don't like to them. I do wonder if that would have changed things if introduced earlier.

</comment><comment><USER15> I always thought it was a little bit because the founders had quite a bit of pull in the hacker/startup community. What if Joe Blow had started a better Twitter a week earlier? How would he have advertised it and got penetration?

I'm not detracting from their success in building a valuable site, but I bet a lot depended on their connections in getting it adopted.

</comment><comment><USER16> One thing that no one has mentioned yet.

The API.

Twitter embedded their product and users in hundreds (thousands?) of other applications. Without this coverage I doubt it would have been so successful.

Edit: I do recognise that there is a chicken / egg situation here. But I still stick with point.

<comment><USER17> Absolutely. Their reach would be downright tiny if we couldn't use Echofon on our iPhone, or tweet blog posts we find interesting with one click, with those pesky url-shorteners making it possible to share links.

It's the ecosystem, not just the product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It does solve a real problem.

In order for people to maintain more than a few friends, it's nessasary for them to know what those friends are doing. If you have More than 100 friends/acquiantances, then talking to them say once a week or once a month is not time efficient.

Personal blogs and broadcast emails helped solve this problem, but the time taken to compose posts means that they are often infrequent and irregular.

Twitter (and Facebook) solved this by lowering the barrier to publishing by allowing it work from mobile and be short with no text formatting. Facebook was focused on a closed group of friends which left a gap for Twitter to target people who want publish to a wide number of people which includes very many people who have their own companies or otherwise see a lot of benefit from being well known.

I think Twitter executed well with the following:

\- 140 character limit which forces people to be direct as non-professional writers tend to go on too long.

\- Raising money early and therefore having a big team to build the product.

\- API, this allowed massive innovation to happen outside twitter and to fill in the long tail of applications for this service in a way that no other site could match and they would have not been able to do internally.

\- Keeping the product simple to use

\- Publicity

</comment><comment><USER19> "Why did Twitter succeed where Wave did not?"

Well, I can think of a few differences off the top of my head, 1) Twitter had to succeed, but Wave did not. Google will continue to thrive without Wave (in it's present form) 2) Unfortunately, Wave was over-hyped way too early. It's the same problem that the children of well-luminaries and famous artists have. The expectations on the kids are so high that even when they're "just" successful, they're considered a failure. 3) Twitter spawned a bunch of alternative clients early (because it was easy to come up with these alternatives). The User Experience is not one of Google's strength and it showed in spades in Wave. The Wave client was a out-the-lab capabilities demo ("dude, I can see every character you type in real-time"); it was not a UI. 4) The Wave federated backend and its protocol have not failed. It even has products by SAP and Novell based on it. In fact, I am hoping that now that the bright lights are off it, the real experimentation can start.

Twitter had time to create a base of early adopters, many of whom were also "influencers." They became the "value" that the rest of us came to check out and then strayed.

cheers -- matt perez

</comment><comment><USER20> I think Colbert got to the heart of it, albeit facetiously:

"We exist, we exist, please, let this mean something"

[http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report- videos/26325...](http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report- videos/263253/february-02-2010/the-word---cognoscor-ergo-sum)

<comment><USER21> He got to the heart of something, but it's not specific to Twitter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> _1) What problem does Twitter solve?_

I've been a big proponent of this methodology - build something people want, the product will have an inherent value.

However companies like Twitter and Zynga are proving that isn't the _only_ methodology out there.

One could argue that Farmville + co solve the problem of "how do I entertain myself"/etc, but that's fairly contrived. Social/Casual games don't solve any problems and are popular mainly because they are addictive (in the same way roulette doesn't solve a problem but makes casinos a lot of money).

</comment><comment><USER23> I started to tweet in 2006 when it was being pitched almost entirely as a "way to text lots of people" service. I thought that was a stupid idea but saw a lot of value in leaving lots of small messages over time to a) share what I'm doing in a "quicker than blogging" way, b) to use as a sort of diary later on in life, keeping track of where my days were going, and c) to publicly share tidbits of info too minor to blog about (like my travel arrangements, etc).

It turned out to be a lot more than that, but that's the promise I saw in it back then. People who like to rant on about never seeing the point of Twitter aren't "wrong" IMHO but they're clearly not ardent public communicators and don't see the value in being such.

</comment><comment><USER24> Twitter.com is not a protocol, it is a service. I think it is also important to note that it isn't a public utility either.

right now it is dangerous to place all your eggs in a single basket. When you only have one service provider you lose control of things such as dependability, namespace, access, etc. These are things that most may be willing to let someone else provide for them, but some may want to control these and other aspects of microblogging. A federated design with multiple independent service providers would go a long way to help fix these shortcomings.

</comment><comment><USER25> Everyone wants to be a blogger but most people are too stupid/lazy/without free time/uncreative to write long blog posts or to read them. In comes twitter and allows anyone to say stuff to the world with one sentence and terrible spelling and grammar. And it is not your fault that your spelling and grammar are terrible, it is practically a platform requirement.

In hind sight it is obvious why it is so popular. But it is one of these things that only make sense in hindsight. I am sure even the Twitter executives had no idea where it would lead.

</comment><comment><USER26> Twitter worked because of psychology and marketing. It is essentially a game and reputation system in which the users add content to increase their followership. People use it for other things, of course, but it's this dynamic which drove famous people to adopt the platform, which then efficiently drove masses of others to adopt it as well. Twitter harnessed the marketing power of the world's celebrities by giving them an utterly simple and focused infrastructure for developing, communicating with, and measuring their public.

Twitter is a game in which score is follower count. All the actions a user can take to boost this score work to further enhance the value of the platform. Invite your friends, add useful content, publicize your twitter feed. Twitter brilliantly incentivizes its users to market the platform as they add to its value.

Facebook's basic structure is based on an undirected social graph which mirrors relationships between ordinary people. Twitter developed the undirected social graph which mirrors hierarchical relationships. This small change in structure generates the celebrity psychology. This is why CNN anchors and other media jumped on the platform - it gave them the ability to develop their audience, in the process they mentioned twitter every 5 minutes to their audience. It is fame-seeking psychology which creates a virtuous cycle (from Twitter's perspective, that is) that draws people into the platform.

Engineers will look at Twitter and think it worked because it offered a "fundamental new protocol", but that is only a tiny necessary condition for success. The road is littered with seemingly basic new ideas that never caught on. Remember when people were saying Google Wave was "fundamental" ... How'd that work out?

</comment><comment><USER27> I think one of the biggest reasons for Twitter's success has been the users it attracts (in chronological order):

1\. Geeks - were not put off by 140char limit, abstract usernames, @-syntax, and appreciated the openness of the API. Blogs like Techcrunch loved it because it is an extra distribution channel for their content = Huge media coverage in the tech media.

2\. Celebrities/Media - It's ideally suited for this - in fact it could have been launched as a stand-alone product for celebs to communicate with their audience. Because celebrities were using it = heavy coverage in the mainstream media.

3\. Social media types - because of the media coverage, and the usage of the above two groups, social media people began trumpeting that Twitter was/is something special = business taking an interest.

4\. The rest of the world - I don't think we're at this stage, and I don't think we will be. It seems to me that most people use twitter to push their content - they aren't really engaged in a conversation, and following someone really means nothing. I don't know any 'normal' people who use Twitter. Every person I know uses Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER28> 1) Twitter represents the shift from the static web to the dynamic web (Web 2.0) to the real-time web.

2) "If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse." -- Henry Ford

3) It's a marketing channel for brands and a low friction communication channel for normals. Wave wasn't built for normals. Google doesn't understand the existence of normals.

I would suggest reading _The Medium Is The Message_ by Marshal McLuhan. [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25955.The_Medium_is_the_M...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25955.The_Medium_is_the_Massage) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Medium_is_the_Massage> [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25955.The_Medium_is_the_M...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25955.The_Medium_is_the_Massage) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Media:_The_Extens...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Media:_The_Extensions_of_Man)

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm new to Twitter. Like you, I couldn't understand it's purpose, but it was recommended that I learn how to tweet in order to make myself more current during a job hunt. Then, I started using Twitter. Wow...the value is it's flexibility. I can use it in so many different ways. I should note, I don't tweet personal info or tweet with any friends. My tweets help me create a professional online persona for my job search, customize and organize (through lists) valuable online resources (much like a digitial recipe card box), connect with the ideas of innovators and newsmakers in areas of interest specific to me. The list goes on and on...The imposed brevity of a tweet is also a plus for busy professionals trying to share, market or search for unique ideas. I'm a converted skeptic of Twitter. I look forward to hearing the thoughts of others on this topic. Regards, "katmeis" on Twitter

</comment><comment><USER30> Twitter is overrated, first of all. Secondly, I don't think we can say they've succeeded. They are the new hotness and probably will be for a couple more years, but they aren't profitable and their only money comes from investors enamored with the idea. They're just riding the hype train and soon it will be their stop.

</comment><comment><USER31> Twitter enables a call to action in real time during crisis. It establishes an open,and global community, unlike facebook. On twitter you interact with people who stimulate and share common interests, and, at least, common motivation to see & learn more than what's in front of them.

Twitter succeeded when Wave did not; one, because it already established credibility and users already built a follow base they most likely didn't want to lose. Also, like Coca Cola, McDonalds, FedEx - they were the _first_ , and established a new standard and brand loyalty.

Even William actually states that twitter began organically; he had no idea it would grow into what it is now. You can see him present here at a TED conference: Twitter Founder Evan Williams at TED 09 Video <http://ow.ly/2svVE> Great presentation!

Hope my 2 cents helped! :) esta

</comment><comment><USER32> Twitter (and the Facebook stream) are both a convenient way to casually follow updates from your friends. To understand the need they fill think of what would be the alternative if they didn't exist. Email, chat, and RSS don't really fill that gap.

And yes, this is probably not the kind of thing that you plan. They probably came across it in the course of trying many different things and then realized how powerful it was. A lot of inventions happen that way. That's why I think Google's concept of lettings engineers use 20% of their time to experiment is brilliant.

Twitter grew big because they had two key components. Something that people wanted, and a really good growth channel which is when bloggers started promoting them on their blogs to get more followers. The third component they need to really succeed is a good business model.

</comment><comment><USER33> My opinion on (3): I think you're overlooking the importance of sheer dumb luck. For entertainment products like Twitter, you have to _somehow_ hook a core, influential audience. Then it takes marketing talent and more luck to expand into a mainstream audience. I don't think you can plan it, even with deep pockets (see Wave, Orkut, Buzz).

I don't use it nor understand the appeal, but I think of Twitter abstractly as an Internet-scale multicast message queue. You can blast any type of message out to a set of subscribers very quickly. That is a very interesting technology with potential value. It just happens to be used primarily as a chat application today. For example, you could trivially implement rssCloud on top of it.

</comment><comment><USER34> 1) Everyone wanted to blog, nobody took the time to read everyone's blogs, few invested the time to write blogs.

2) Absolutely. I would argue that most gigantic successes come out of having an inkling of what people want vs. being the outcome of a gigantic time R&D investment.

3) Simplicity - and this is the same reason that Wave didn't. If people are able to go from "I have no idea what this is" to "I know how to use this" in a weekend, as Leo Laporte often talks about, it won't die on the vine. You can go from rookie to I'm able to use this (note: this is different than "I get why I want to use this") on Twitter in under an hour - and enabling people's ADD is the best way to traction.

</comment><comment><USER35> Twitter creates one of the best interfaces possible for a person to filter through messages. 140 characters is a big part of that, but I think profile pictures play a pretty serious role in that too. I can go through a massive number of tweets in a pretty short time. I see quickly who tweeted it, and I see any interesting keywords. This problem comes up in so many different areas, and it is a non-solution that works so well. The take away should be that the best way to filter a firehose of data for human consumption is to have a source indicator that is very quick for a person to parse, and a limited set of keywords.

</comment><comment><USER36> The reason Twitter succeeded is because of the simplicity of the idea and design. It's simplicity allows it to be whatever the user needs it to be.

It can replace your RSS feed aggregator, your bookmarks, your facebook, your contacts on your cell-phone, etc., etc.

Features get added over time, but they're much more opt-in then opt-out. Meaning, you actively have to seek them out and use them; they're not forced on you. This means that the base product is still the _same_ as it has always been; they're not, as 37 Signals would put it, dying with their user base.

In summary, Twitter serves many purposes and it does it in a fashion that it doesn't get in your way.

</comment><comment><USER37> A Lot of people feel a need to say something and many feel a need to be heard. Twitter was a good solution, because it limited how much one can say. I doubt it was planned, But it seemed to have satisfied some psychological needs.

<comment><USER38> Some services lower the bars to entry- Twitter also lowered the ceiling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Jack Dorsey: The 3 Keys to Twitter's Success [http://the99percent.com/videos/6528/jack-dorsey- the-3-keys-t...](http://the99percent.com/videos/6528/jack-dorsey-the-3-keys- to-twitters-success)

</comment><comment><USER40> You must be new to the online world. Twitter is not new. It just brought what existed before to the Internet itself easily: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cb_simulator>

The CompuServe marketers _hated_ that service. They saw no reason for CompuServe to have it or to promote it. Meanwhile, back then, the online world was based on per-hour connect time charges and there were people who had bills of over a _thousand dollars a month_ just from using _that_ part of CompuServe.

<comment><USER8> I had a CompuServe account but never spent much time on CB. I have been on chats, from Renegade BBS's on to IRC on to IM, for 20+ years. Twitter is not simply chat; it admits to persistant and semantically meaningful applications layered on top of it.

It's like a weird cross between NNTP and IRC, as I see it.

<comment><USER40> Yes, but the core aspect is the same, no matter the incarnation or revision: People like chatting with other people. The marketers couldn't quite understand that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Can I ask another question:

Is twitter profitable yet? Has it a roadmap to profitability?

<comment><USER42> Twitter has 170 employees. Assuming fully loaded cost of 150 k that is approximate $ 30 mill pee annum

The google and bing deals are worth 50mill leaving 20mill to cover other costs like iron and bandwidth. My sense is clearly profitable. A

<comment><USER43> According to their "Team list" on Twitter they have 241 employees (<http://twitter.com/twitter/team>)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Twitter was in a position to succeed because they had the right timing. But twitter ultimately succeeded because of the cute factor of their name. It was fun to say and to coin variations of its predicate into other verbs. The segment of our population that doesn't understand twitter, by default, tend to make fun of it's narcissistic uselessness — and twitter was a name that already poked fun at itself; it didn't seem to take itself too seriously. Because of that, it was able to build a loyalty.

</comment><comment><USER45> Because, sadly, people have egos. Everyone wants to be famous and reach thousands of others, even when what he's spreading is completely irrelevant. Twitter enables this for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER46> People need nutrients, shelter, and a few creature comforts. Everything else in life is a frill. If all we did was solve problems, there would be no culture and no civilization.

The most important inventions are the ones that nobody "needs": rain dances, the bible, symphonies, television, the Internet. All those little problems that need solving are the gaps created by these frontiers. There are straightforward opportunities in those gaps, but don't expect to find the most successful ideas there.

</comment><comment><USER47> Twitter solves many problems.

If you want just one, than "celebrity-fan communication" / "brand-consumer communication" is a good example. Twitter is really the leading solution in that area.

</comment><comment><USER48> I think one reason it succeeded is that it fills a gap that was missing before in the online world: a simple way to communicate what was important to you no matter how trivial it is to everyone else. It also makes it easy to check what is going on without slogging through tons of pages.

I also think it was the extensible nature of Twitter. I wrote an article that highlights this: <http://accentuate.me/blog/?p=46>

</comment><comment><USER49> Twitter succeeded because of the words people use on twitter the focus is like a laser when it comes to particulars. People choose to stay part of twitter and not just pull away from it what strikes them as meaningful as well. It shows that we all share a sense a communal culture that is not so selfish as to use the information and leave but it draws us to share how it affects us openly and efficiently.

</comment><comment><USER50> wait. It's still not clear to me that Twitter has succeeded as a business. Are they making money? It's not clear to me yet that they are.

<comment><USER51> [http://mashable.com/2009/12/21/twitter-is-already- profitable...](http://mashable.com/2009/12/21/twitter-is-already-profitable/)

 _According to Bloomberg, the microblogging service will make a small profit this year off of $25 million in revenue, thanks to the search deals it completed with Google and Microsoft, which were reportedly worth $15 and $10 million, respectively. Those deals pay Twitter for access to tweets that are in turn included in real-time search results on each property._

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I always felt that it was pushed and pushed by tech blogs as the next big thing, until it did become the next big thing. I opened an account in 07, I believe, and never really used it, but heard over and over again how important it was from sites like techcrunch. That and the fact that they allowed anyone to build on top of it

</comment><comment><USER53> 1\. Twitter is RSS for the rest of us. To subscribe, you just click. No worries about which feedreader to use, no need for multiple feedreaders, no copy/paste of URLs.

2\. Twitter is completely opt in.

3\. Twitter got its timing right: People have very short attention spans and want immediate gratification. We have become a world of scanners (not readers).

</comment><comment><USER54> Three things, which is the same thing, behind twitters success: Constant Updates of your so called "friends", our preoccupation with - what other people are saying, and getting news that relate to us - who is following me now? did anybody re-tweet my tweet etc.....

</comment><comment><USER55> Early adoption was due to it being an extension to the IM Away messages. After that, especially after users started to use @x as a form of addressing, it basically became IRC 2.0, without the problems of installing IRC clients, having netsplits, being kicked, etc, etc.

\-- MV

<comment><USER56> And most especially of having to keep connected all the time. Twitter is somewhat similar to web based IRC "in the cloud" but it also fills an important niche that IRC doesn't. IRC is an N to N broadcast medium with a finite number of channels. Twitter is an N to M broadcast medium with an effectively limitless number of channels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Twitter legitimized and monetized spam.

Since you allegedly don't see messages from accounts you don't follow, spam is more socially acceptable.

In the extreme case, it's a platform for spam bots to subscribe to messages from other bots. We humans are just a small slice of the traffic. :)

</comment><comment><USER58> Not every start up follows the solve a problem idea. Many that don't are the biggest and most popular on the net. Twiiter, Facebook are good examples.

What they provide are platforms that allow us to communicate and connect in unique, fun and more efficient ways.

</comment><comment><USER59> I'll answer the business question - it's simple - Twitter makes money from the Twitter fire hose APIs and whitelisting privileges.

And these days, it seems twitter will purely survive from random #Bieber trends (yes, the tweens have found twitter it seems).

</comment><comment><USER60> 1) Good startup with a big idea 2) Anointed by The Tech Elite

Either one wouldn't have been enough.

</comment><comment><USER61> I started twitter only because of the commands it offered..

follow @nick / leave @nick / dm @nick hi etc.

But the ability it provides in sharing things quickly and shortly & reading stuff shared by like minded people actually got me stuck in.

</comment><comment><USER62> I think Twitter succeeded because it gave user only one action. All user has to do is type some text and press enter. Users essentially didn't have to think or even work to get comfortable with the system.

</comment><comment><USER63> Computer games and marijuana also have a lot of the characteristics you mention.

Patterns of success and failure are a little different for businesses that provide value through entertainment.

</comment><comment><USER64> Basically Twitter is a new hype. Print a t-shirt with a message e go around the world. Someone will read, someone dont. Who cares? You'll feel good anyway. @samuelefabbro

</comment><comment><USER65> Spamming Facebook updates just wasn't right, so Twitter came up with a new protocol to do just that..

</comment><comment><USER66> Because I can @famousPerson and sometimes they will RT me or @meBack.

More philosophically, it is a low-commitment communication protocol. Everything is expected to be a quick, throwaway 140 char response. So celebrities are willing to read your tweets and tweet you back, but they might not be willing to email you or take your phone call.

</comment><comment><USER67> "What's new about twitter is that you don't specify the recipients. That is a real difference, and the right thing for some kinds of messages currently sent by email." - comment by pg

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=515992>

</comment><comment><USER68> I only read this interesting discussion because I clicked a link from Twitter.

Enough said.

</comment><comment><USER69> Because magic like TwitterArt #140Art happens, day in, day out.

</comment><comment><USER70> [http://stuffthathappens.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2008/03/...](http://stuffthathappens.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2008/03/simplicity.png)

</comment><comment><USER69> Because of #140ART #TWITTERART of course.</comment>


Utility Mill - My Latest Site - Feedback is Appreciated - <AUTHOR> http://utilitymill.com I've been putting it together over the past few months.  I'm hoping it will be really useful to people one day.  Thanks in advance for any feedback. <comment><USER2> Wow, this is a really amazing concept, even if it's still a little rough around the edges. I think it's going to take a while for people to see the value here but honestly this rocks.

<braindump>

You're gonna need to support more libraries. I'm making a util to turn a page of thumbnails into a page of inline full-sized images and am going to need re to do it. At the very least create a whitelist of allowed imports; I'd really like to be able to use urllib2, re, some HMTL/XML parsers, etc...

The best use of a service like this appears to me to be writing little web clients to interact with existing web services, kinda like you're writing shell scripts for the web. And branding aside, I think you're going to need a new definition for "utility." It's a little too ambiguous.

I think there's a lot of potential value here but am also wondering about possible revenue models. Maybe restrict system resources for free accounts or offer additional libraries for premium members? Seems like this would be a sub-optimal site to monetize through advertising.

</braindump>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks ed. I'm really glad you like it.

There are allowed utilities currently: "calendar, datetime, difflib, math, random ,re, string, time, and urllib are already imported."

I did strip out things that connect to other websites though. I'm not sure how I could allow outgoing connections, and still prevent a malicious user from sending spam, or other bad things? But I'll add that down the road perhaps.

I'm aiming to change the security system so that the entire Python interpreter is open to users within a few weeks. (I'm still not sure about outgoing connections though).

Any ideas for the branding? Why is utility too ambiguous?

For revenue, so far I'm thinking having premium accounts someday with cool features like download desktop app version of any utility, or standalone CGI script.

<comment><USER2> > "I did strip out things that connect to other websites though. I'm not sure > how I could allow outgoing connections, and still prevent a malicious user > from sending spam, or other bad things? But I'll add that down the road > perhaps."

That's a shame. I was wondering why openurl didn't work. Why import the module if you don't allow outgoing connections? You will have to address the spam issue eventually but really that's almost a problem of success; focus on it when you need to. Until then, disallowing outgoing connections is overly restrictive and cripples what could potentially be a really cool service.

I also noticed that try...except blocks are blocked as well. Why is that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good points. Maybe I'll put outgoing connections back in then. Until there are 100's of new utilities every day, I could probably keep an eye on things.

The security code I found doesn't allow try ..except, I'm not sure why. In any case, what I'm working on right now is a way to remove most or all of the restrictions. I'll let you know when that's up and running.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a site I've been putting it together over the past few months. I'm hoping it will be really useful to people one day. What do you guys think? What would make it more useful to you? Does it explain itself?

<comment><USER3> I like the general idea a lot. I assume you're shooting for a rather geeky audience, and adding wiki stuff to coding is a pretty sweet idea.

I kind of wish that when using a utility, basically the page feels like I'm just using that utility and that the focus isn't on utility mill itself. Think about how Gawker media positions itself in relationship to its blogs. If you put the main site aside and let the utilities be the forefront, you get bigger viral possibilities since people are likely to pass around a util just because it's handy (rather than passing around util mill). Some steps towards this would be giving utils nice, top level paths (no /utility/) and designing the page so that the non-utility stuff is in a non-imposing frame around it rather than being relatively large.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good idea to put the focus more on the utility. Perhaps someday I could even let people put their logo, and styles on utilites? I also wonder if providing widgetized versions of the utilities might also promote viral possibilities? (That's on my list)

<comment><USER4> Nice idea. But allow me easy integration with my web site. For example, give me the option to get the utility inputs without any of the logos or text around them. This way, I can link to it from an IFrame on my site and it looks like it's part of my page. Could be very useful to create data collection forms, especially if you also allow a small storage APIs so I can save the form inputs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. That's pretty much how I'm envisioning the widgets would work. Maybe with a very small logo? Or maybe not.

Data collection would be trickier since so far I'm seeing that as outside the scope of a utility. I'm trying to avoid making it into a general purpose build-a-web-app site since I don't want a huge learning barrier for new users. I could be wrong though, maybe that is what people want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Making adding inputs AJAX-ified (sorry for the buzzword) would make it quite a bit more usable. Other than that, great site. I'm sure I'll be finding more and more uses for this...

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm looking forward to seeing what uses you find. Let me know any feedback you have along the way. If something is confusing or you're stuck without some feature, let me know right away.

For the AJAX, how do you see that working? I guess you're talking about the input builder on the utility editing page?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Server error!

The server encountered an internal error and was unable to complete your request. Either the server is overloaded or there was an error in a CGI script.

If you think this is a server error, please contact the webmaster. Error 500 utilitymill.com Tue Oct 2 19:07:13 2007 Apache/2.0.59 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.0.59 OpenSSL/0.9.8c DAV/2 mod_fastcgi/2.4.2 PHP/5.2.3 SVN/1.4.4

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it's still in the prototype stage. I'll see what error it hit. I'm guessing it's something related to your trying to call the print statement 999,900 times :-)

When working correctly it should kill running code after 2 seconds of runtime. (Perhaps it needs a maximum response size too)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How are you ensuring that the input is safe? I just tried `import sys;sys.exit(0)` and got an error message thankfully :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. I run the code first through a parser that (hopefully) removes all unsafe elements like file, and import. It was a Python cookbook recipe I found.

If the site gets more popular, I'd like to switch to running an unrestricted interpreter in a chroot jail so users will have access to the full power of Python and third party libraries like PIL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, this is a really cool idea! I'd add some stuff about the API interface to the screencast. To me, that's the most interesting part.

FYI, I get a server error when I try the Run Utility example at <http://www.utilitymill.com/help/api>

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm hearing a lot that the API is the most interesting part. I'm curious why that is. I figured it was more like a bonus feature when I added it. Any ideas?

I'll have to make some more screencasts when I get a chance, including the API.

BTW, I fixed the API error you were having. Sorry about that.

<comment><USER2> The API is interesting (to me at least) because it allows you to write glue code between existing web API's. It would be really cool to chain (pipe) Utilities, too.

Sounds pretty similar to Yahoo Pipes. On the other hand, this site actually works.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yahoo pipes doesn't work?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One possible feature is to create a web service interface to using the utilities, maybe over XML-RPC or something.

<comment><AUTHOR> It has that <http://www.utilitymill.com/help/api>

Is it not obvious from the main page, or did you have something else in mind? I went with a more RESTful like approach than XML-RPC, basically copying the del.icio.us API design (XML and JSON)

<comment><USER9> Oh, perfect. I missed it. I would expect to see something like this on the page for the utility though. Maybe in a section, "Find out how you can call this utility from your programs!"

This is a great site. I look forward to seeing it's progression.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very good point. Every utility should provide information on how to access it via the API. I'll put that on my todo list.

Glad you like it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great idea, nice start. What are your thoughts on the SLA?

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you mean?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> suggest "collaborators" instead of "collaberators", "ineffable" instead of "effable"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks</comment></comment>


Huawei's 'HongMeng' operating system to gradually replace Android - <AUTHOR> https://www.nst.com.my/world/2019/05/490291/huaweis-hongmeng-operating-system-gradually-replace-android <comment><USER2> It's interesting to consider what options Huawei has with this.

A genuinely novel system, maybe based on Linux like Tizen, seems doomed as there's no appetite among app developers to start supporting a new OS. If Microsoft can't do it, there's no way Huawei can.

So really that leaves a custom build of AOSP, which in today's world would probably be accepted as counting as a new OS. Oh how low the bar has fallen.

<comment><USER3> I certainly is interesting. Huawei's current market share is huge in Asia and Europe, but I'm not sure about customer loyalty. If the base is loyal this could probably work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The headline is misleading. The article is simply speculating what Huawei might do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it's a speculation based upon this "leak/rumor/.." (I don't really know how to define the information)

[https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=zh- CN&tl=en&u=...](https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=zh- CN&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ithome.com%2F0%2F424%2F047.htm)

[https://www.ithome.com/0/424/047.htm](https://www.ithome.com/0/424/047.htm)</comment></comment>


RSS Feeds For Web-Designers And Developers - <AUTHOR> http://spyrestudios.com/160-rss-feeds-for-web-designers-and-developers/ Of course you can't possibly check all those feeds everyday but a quick scan in your feed reader and you should be good! They inspire me and keep me up-to-date with what's happening in the design/dev world. Hope you find my 'little' list useful! (OPML file available for download) <comment><USER2> I recommend that you don't read/follow any of these web-designer types and instead just google the specific tools and techniques you need when you need them.

These guys tend to be verbose and repetitive, mostly just to build their posse and expand their reach. Life is too short to be plugged into them; just think of all the "X essential Y" type posts, they have whole sites devoted to them, and if you read a few of them you will realize how little content there is.

</comment><comment><USER3> Geez. Who has time to follow all of this stuff?

I'd say pick a dozen, and read them alongside your morning coffee.

<comment><USER4> Or just read Hacker News.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the best base template of html for django? - <AUTHOR>

Any open source project which has best base template for django.
example:- https://github.com/learningequality/ka-lite/blob/master/kalite/distributed/templates/distributed/base.html <comment><USER2> There's no such thing as the "best".

It will depend on your needs. The "best" template would be the one that users enjoy using the most and/or the one that makes you the most money.

Also, this question isn't quite appropriate for HN or even a site like StackOverFlow.

Why not design 3 or 5 bases and let us pick 1 for you.

If by best, you are referring to the 1 that can kickstart your work quickest, then the 1 that is easiest for you to understand whilst giving you the most to work with will be the "best".

<comment><AUTHOR> "this question isn't quite appropriate for HN or even a site like StackOverFlow."

\--I meant the way blocks are made/distributed so that they could be extended. For example above one had blocks like {% block title %} {% block headcss %} {% block headjs %} etc. So I wanted to know any extensive list which people might have come across. Its like asking for best practices which comes by experience for example Daniel Greenfeld book two scoops of django gives many such suggestion. So I feels is relevant for HN atleast

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't see why there should be a specific HTML template for just Django, since the HTML representations are pretty separated from the controller and model, any template should do.

HTML5boilerplate is a great one to start, just because it deals with a lot of cross-browser compatibility issues.

<comment><AUTHOR> @metaculus like I answered above I meant block structure creations when I referrred django base templates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mine looks something like

        <!doctype html>

        [...]

And, aside from the stuff I snipped out of the head, that's about it. Angular populates all the rest.

<comment><AUTHOR> @bmelton even in your case where you use Angular you could include head css and head js files, analytic js files etc. such division helps extension later on easier. Its like best practices!! See the link which I attached above you should understand.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I only snipped the head because it's boring.</comment></comment></comment>


Emacs 24.4 RC 1 - <AUTHOR> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu-emacs/2014-10/msg00001.html <comment><USER3> As someone who uses emacs purely for clojure/lisp and vim for everything else, the biggest feature for me is the fact that this will be the first version of emacs to support menus in _terminal mode_. So for all the commands you don't remember, a menu is now a click or F10 away. To quote,

"Emacs now supports menus on text-mode terminals. If the terminal supports a mouse, clicking on the menu bar, or on sensitive portions of the mode line or header line, will drop down the menu defined at that position."

More at: [http://www.masteringemacs.org/article/whats-new-in- emacs-24-...](http://www.masteringemacs.org/article/whats-new-in-emacs-24-4)

<comment><USER4> Just curious. How did you manage to use both emacs and vim? I've seen that people accustomed to one editor are usually averse to using the other.

<comment><USER3> Hehe because I don't subscribe to monotheism? ;) I prefer vim's modal editing mode and have been using it as my primary for as long as I can remember. For clojure/lisp, I found that the vim tooling was just not as elegant/efficient as emacs (fireside et al arent as nice as cider/swank), and decided to learn how to use it. It's not that much of an "antipattern" because the keymaps are very different. I don't like using vim mode within emacs either - for some reason I find myself thinking in emacs mode when editing lisps. I do think that I could be more productive in emacs if I invested more time in the tutorials, but so far it hasn't been an issue. To me, it's more like needing to know how to use Eclipse or IntelliJ to program in Java since their tooling is so great.

<comment><USER5> You might consider checking out evil mode. It's for real. Does not feel like emulation at all.

<comment><USER3> Ah, will check. I'm not sure how it will coexist with all the cider key bindings though?

<comment><USER6> It coexists pretty near perfectly, since vim and emacs keybindings are usually non-overlapping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This release has so many incredible new features. Great job Emacs team!

</comment><comment><USER8> I recently discovered that elisp is dynamically scoped as opposed to lexically scoped. Out of curiosity (as I've never programmed in a dynamically scoped language) hows the experience of working in such language?

<comment><USER9> Having spent a lot of time with Haskell and Scheme, what irks me the most about working in Emacs Lisp is the fact that it usually involves too much rigamarole or just fails to work for me to use a function that takes a function as an argument or returns a function as a result. E.g., in Haskell, I am fond of using `flip` to reverse two actual arguments just because it makes a line or 3 of code look nicer, and I cannot do that in Emacs Lisp -- or I can, but it involves adding additional lambda forms or calls to funcall or symbol-function (i.e., it involves too much rigamorole).

Since I cannot say exactly how far lexical scoping would go in making Emacs Lisp more like Haskell in this regard, this is only a partial answer to your question, but certainly, the lack of lexical scope has something to do with it.

Aside from the deficiencies I just mentioned around higher-order functions, I was surprised by how little the lack of lexical scope got in my way. (My reading of the computer-science literature had given me the impression it would cause more trouble than it actually does.)

<comment><USER10> Elisp is not Scheme and certainly is not Haskell. You shouldn't - and I'd say it a good general rule - judge Elisp based on what it's _not_ instead of what it is.

Getting back to actual question: Elisp supports "real" lexical scoping since previous major Emacs version, and it has had "lexical-let" and other such forms since forever, but most of the code is still dynamically scoped. In practical terms it's similar to having every variable declared as global - <USER2> allows for "out of band" communication (outside of arguments passed/value returned) between routines. This is sometimes handy if you want to change some function behaviour in a way that it didn't think of (ie. it has no argument dedicated for this). As a very contrived example, if you have a routine which beeps furiously every time you invoke it and you find it unbearable (I did) you can instead call it like this:

        (letf
            (((symbol-function 'beep) (lambda ())))
          (beeping-function))

And it won't beep any more. A real life saver sometimes ;)

On the other hand, every out-of-band communication has a set of problems to it: you can forget to check it, or you can accidentally pass something to a called function you didn't want to. In practice this is worked around with using longer, prefixed identifiers and the semantics of `let`. As long as every variable your function uses is let-bound inside it it is essentially safe to call with any kind of environment, as it won't ever look at it. Most functions are like that.

In short, dynamic scoping has it's advantages and drawbacks, and it feels quite well suited to an extension/scripting language of an app. It makes certain patterns easy enough that they don't even need a name ("monkey patching"), and it makes others much harder (like the linked dash-functional library, which would be very hard to write without lexical-scoping: t).

<comment><USER9> Your code fails to suppress beeping behavior on my Mac for certain values of beeping-function. In particular, when I eval the following, I get a beep.

      (require 'cl)

      (setq lexical-binding nil)

      (defun beeping-function ()
          (save-excursion
              (set-buffer "*Messages*")
              (goto-char (point-max))
              (scroll-up)))

      (letf (((symbol-function 'beep) (lambda ())))
          (beeping-function))

I tried to repair it: I ran the code in a fresh Emacs session to which my usual customizations in .emacs had not been applied. I set lexical-binding to t. Since beep is an alias for ding, I replaced beep with ding. I rewrote the letf as a cl-flet.

I think that the fact that scroll-up is built-in is pertinent: there was another incident in the recent past in which the function whose binding I wanted to override ("shadow"?) is called from a built-in function and in which my attempt to use cl-flet to override the binding failed.

If you have Emacs running on a Windows or Linux machine, I would like to know whether the above code causes a beep on that machine. I would like to know because in the past, code that gets a little tricky about bindings that worked on my friend's Windows box failed to work on my Mac (even with an up-to-date Emacs).

ADDED: Actually, let me show you the code that "worked" (i.e., behaved like someone familiar with Scheme or Haskell would expect modulo the trivial "rigamarole" of needing to use funcall) on my friend's Windows box but not on my Mac. The error is "(void-variable a)".

      (funcall
          (funcall
              (lambda (a) (lambda (b) a))
              1)
          2)

<comment><USER10> As you can easily check with M-x find-function a `scroll-up` function is implemented in C. This is a known problem - I can't find it right now, but I remember I once read a blog post where the author complained about this: in general you're not going to get good results when trying to advise, override or modify C-level functions from Elisp code.

IIRC cl-flet was recently (well, in the current decade I think :)) modified to be lexically scoped, so that won't work (anymore). This is why I had to use `letf` with `(symbol-function 'symbol)` instead of a neater `(flet ((beep ())) ...)`.

Personally I deal with beeping like this:

        (setq ring-bell-function (lambda ()))

but this disables any beeping, which may not be what you want. In short, things you `setq` or more generally `setf` tend to be visible from C functions (no guarantees though).

On the other hand my Emacs (on Linux) refuses to beep in any circumstances even if I run it with `emacs -Q` and do M-: (beep) - I have no idea why, I suspect it's either my sound configuration or has to do with the way I built my emacs from source.

I'd say for this:

        (funcall
          (funcall
              (lambda (a) (lambda (b) a))
              1)
          2)

raising a (void-variable a) error is correct behaviour under dynamic scoping. On my system (Emacs 184.108.40.206 x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu) it fails with void- variable under normal circumstances, but returns 1 when used with lexical scoping enabled. If your Emacs behaves differently (and remember to always check with emacs -Q just to be sure it's not something in your config) that's probably a bug.

<comment><USER9> >If your Emacs behaves differently . . . that's probably a bug.

Yes, it behaves differently (with lexical-binding set to t and with the -Q flag).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very nice! I notice that some bugs have been fixed since I last tried the latest development version(~4 months ago).

I really like the enhancement to C-x TAB to use the arrow keys to adjust the indentation on the selected region.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm hoping that the Mac OS X build ([http://emacsformacosx.com](http://emacsformacosx.com)) will soon link with libxml2 so I can use the eww browser. :)

<comment><USER13> Is there a reason you don't use the Homebrew version of Cocoa Emacs?

<comment><USER12> I did not know about Homebrew's Cocoa Emacs. Thanks for the tip. I'm installing it now and will see if I get 24.4 with eww or some previous version (minus the eww). Thanks again!

<comment><USER14> If you ran the install with --devel you should get 24.4-rc1

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the advice!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > _" As always, if you encounter problems building or using Emacs, please send > a report to address@hidden with full details"_

What's up with "address@hidden"?

<comment><USER16> This is the web representation of a mailing list email, and the software that prepares the message for viewing on the web conceals email addresses like that, to help mitigate people receiving unwanted mail (e.g., and probably especially, spam).

Had you been on the mailing list and received this content via mail, the address would have ostensibly not been concealed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The current plan is to release on Monday.

</comment><comment><USER18> Cool updates! is it bad that I still try my best to avoid emacs ? One of my professors loved it, and it just ruined my ideal text editing environment.</comment>


Molly Wood's Verdict on WP7 Challenge: No, thanks. - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-31322_3-20094766-256/windows-phone-7-challenge-week-2-the-verdict/

<comment><USER2> It's hard to take Molly Wood seriously when she is the type of person that does hold a bias to whatever she fancies at the moment.

The review (of a beta) was weak. She attacks the fact that you 'have' to upload files from your computer to get music on your device while forgetting what she just wrote earlier about Zune Pass and that you have to upload your music library to Google Music for the service to work.

The other main complaint that she uses is Skydrive. While MS does need to fix the web interface, one could easily argue that WP7's UI is vastly superior to Android and possibly iOS as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you. As a WP7 developer who has tried all 3 platforms so far, I have to say I find the UI of WP7 pretty intuitive. Yes it is playing catch-up at the moment, I agree with that. However, within 2 releases of the OS, Microsoft needs to provide features that are not there on Android and the iOS. Otherwise, MS will not hit the 10% market share that seems to be the necessary threshold to create an upward trend in more user acquisition..</comment></comment>


A Facebook Engineer's Plea for Political Diversity - <AUTHOR> https://quillette.com/2018/09/04/a-facebook-engineers-plea-for-political-diversity/ <comment><USER2> Question to native English speakers, can you please help me to understand this little nuance:

"They know all the talk of "openness to different perspectives" does not apply to causes of "social justice," immigration, "diversity," and "equality." On this [sic] issues, you can either keep quiet or sacrifice your reputation and career."

So, "[sic]" here means that although it looks like it should have been "these" instead of "this", the editor understands that "this" is correct and should be kept despite initial impressions of a mistake. So, why "this"? It's not the editor trying to amplify the author's spelling mistake, is it?

<comment><USER3> The author of the original piece (Gideon) is quoting a different author (Brian). The "[sic]" is not about amplifying a spelling mistake, but rather to make clear that the quote is 100% verbatim.

<comment><USER4> "inserted after a quoted word or passage indicates that the quoted matter has been transcribed or translated exactly as found in the source text [sic]"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sic)</comment></comment></comment>


Turning Plastic into Oil - <AUTHOR> http://devour.com/video/plastic-to-oil-machine/

<comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1624312>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1623241>

Also, from <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

        > If you submit a link to a video ...
        > please warn us by appending [video]
        > ... to the title.</comment>


You Have to Pay the Right Person - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-13/you-have-to-pay-the-right-person <comment><USER2> If one influential person does something bad, it's called "fraud", if a small number of influential people do something bad together, it's called "unfair". If most influential people do something bad together, it's called "reality".

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I don't know. Most of the kids in the elite education system are alright, they didn't build this world and generally believe in an equitable one. College campuses are pretty much the most liberal places in the United States. For every 1 rich kid buying their way in, there are 10 normal kids. It's a big red herring to worry too much about a handful of admissions to eg USC. It's hardly an elite institution anyway.

The big problem is the competition between the normal kids. Most people can't relate to inequities in the funnel for normals in ways other than race and class. The fastest growing sectors of education—private, effectively segregated schools and test preparation—reflect this reality but I wouldn't call it unfair or a fraud. Being a white parent and putting your kid into a school with no Asian kids, or being a middle income parent and putting your kid into a test prep program with no dirt poor kids—the reason these are bad is that they obscure actual outcomes based analysis of education in favor of useless retail indicators like test scores, income after graduation, racial composition and income levels that parents actually use to determine where to send their kids.

It takes an incredible amount of sophistication, on the part of parents and students, to make wise decisions in education. So much pressure to look at easily comparable but relatively meaningless things. I sympathize with the parents with no high school education who bought their daughter's way into USC. They didn't know any better and most of the supposed entrepreneurs/good ideas in Ed-tech reinforce the bad trends, not work against them.

Most of the programmers, product managers and businesspeople working at those companies are bought into that reductive retail system.

There is basically no one with "bad grades" working on Blockly at Google. It'll really open your mind up and make you less cynical when you realize how ill equipped well meaning institutions are to actually address inequities in education.

<comment><USER4> What's the difference between someone getting in because their parents bought a building and someone getting in because their parents spent 50k/year on a highschool?

<comment><USER5> In one case, $200k is being given to a high school in exchange for an education that may be of significantly higher quality than the public schools in that area (it varies widely).

In the other case, $10M is being given to the university in order to fund a building.

The better question is, what are the similarities? Different amounts of money are being given to different parties for different purposes. Everything is different. The only thing that's the same is that they're all sort of vaguely related to education.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> With respect to the college admissions bribes it seems like the game just got harder. Maybe the club of people able to bribe their kid's way into a school has grown too large, and so the price has gone up. You now have to be more wealthy, and more well connected to be able to bribe your kid's way into these schools. In effect, these schools maintain their elite status of exclusivity based on either brains or money/connections to get in. Seems like this could be a "market correction" of sorts. If so, it's interesting to think about what that means about the current state of wealth concentration and the sociopolitical system

<comment><USER7> Honestly, it seems like you'd have to be very out of touch with reality to offer actual bribes to people or engage in obvious fraud.

It's just not necessary. When they still had a "writing" portion of the SAT, you could buy a 700-800 by writing an essay ahead of time and adapting it to the prompt. If you had the means to afford a 'test prep' service that would tell you that, you would be head-and-shoulders above the competition without blatantly breaking the law.

And that's just one example; the entire system is tilted to make sure that affluent kids get into good schools and stay there until they graduate. You might not get into your 'dream school', but you will get into a world-class institution and have countless barriers swept aside for you over the following several years. It will tear the child to shreds in adulthood once they realize what happened, but that doesn't seem to matter to most wealthy parents.

Plus, people entering their 20s don't usually know what will fulfill their lives, what they are good at, how they can contribute to others, their responsibilities as citizens, etc. I'd like to see a re-thinking of our entire educational system, with a focus on lifelong learning.

What would be wrong with a cultural tradition of encouraging people to go back to school every decade or two? It seems like a huge waste of human capitol not to.

<comment><USER8> One problem with lifelong learning via formal institutions is that the less well off are "tapped out" already with debt and expenses while those with good careers (enough to save for an n-year break) face an enormous opportunity cost, hundreds of thousands of dollars.

There are lots of people who would love to go back to college already and learn something new but the financial treadmill is running too fast to get off.

More flexible learning options can help with this.

<comment><USER7> It would definitely need to be offset by subsidies, but maybe that could come in the form of something that people could claim every 5-20 years like a tax return.

It seems like we have a lot of levers to pull to make life easier on people doing things like that; tuition reimbursement, housing/food/course material subsidies, benefits like health care, child care, help with transit, etc.

But I guess you would have to look out for a resurgence of scammy public for- profit institutions.

<comment><USER9> You can claim educational loans on your tax returns, but only the interest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article really harps on the "just donate a building like a real rich person" fallacy like so many people I've seen since this case broke.

If someone donates resources (money, a building, whatever) to the school, and the school uses that to provide more services than one student consumes, that is a net increase in the available spots for students at the school.

In this case, people bribed individuals to enrich themselves, not the school. That is a decrease in the available spots for students at the school.

<comment><USER11> There might be a net increase in available resources for each student, but there's no evidence to support that there would be net increase in available spots.

e.g. Donating $25MM for a gym clearly gives students a nicer gym. It does not necessarily enlarge the size of the undergraduate matriculating class, year over year.

<comment><USER12> Cynically, it could be even worse. A nicer gym gives students a bigger tuition bill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What's far more egregious than people buying their way in is the legacy and sport admissions system. I would go after those long before those that make large donations to schools, which at least benefit other students attending in the process.

Counting legacy in admissions not only advantages the already privileged but also reinforces the idea of this selective network of graduates. Schools love to tout their alumni networks, but if a graduate is giving preferences in hiring to people from their school simply because it is their school I wouldn't consider them a smart person, or at least not a moral one. There are tons of great schools out there and any educated person should know that being preferential to one school arbitrarily only means you will miss better candidates. It's not only unfair, it's not good hiring from a capitalist perspective.

As far as athletics, I see a bit more sense there from a school perspective if the athletics drive name recognition and sometimes money, but it seems particularly silly that a college, academically motivated first, would more or less forget their admissions standards for sometimes as much as 10% of the incoming class.

<comment><USER14> Life isn't fair. People don't want to catch grief for it. They don't want to be "gone after." Part of the draw of hiring from these pools is you're less likely to get folks who have the hang ups you've displayed in your post.

<comment><USER15> I really hate "life isn't fair" as an excuse to be an asshole. It is like excusing tripping a guy with a limp for being slow and prone to injury anyway. Just because it may be so is no excuse for making it worse.

Not to mention it demonstrates the exact flaws they are warning about but reality cannot be fooled. Those ignored talents will go elsewhere and the competitors will lack those particular flaws by necessity. And then they'll cry "Why did nobody warn me we were falling behind!" After doing their best to not to listen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How about this: Hire some Yale students to teach your kid everything they know. That way your kid gets into the social club that is perhaps the most valuable thing about attending an elite university.

<comment><USER17> What good is that if you don't get the magic piece of paper at the end that says "I went to Harvard"?

<comment><USER16> Probably right, but you could say: I was taught by the brightest students at Harward. Brendan Eichnan was my teacher! Zuckerberg too. In fact I gave him the original inspiration for Facebook :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> >Like so many things, it is an aristocratic economy of gifts and relationships, not a grubby transaction.

I enjoyed the style and tone of the writing in this article.

<comment><USER19> Matt Levine is the author. This daily column is called "Money stuff". You can get it for free via email.

<comment><USER18> I'll check it out. Ty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Matt Levine (author of this piece) is amazing, and I suggest everyone subscribe to the 'Money Stuff' newsletter. It's this column, every (week) day, and it's absilutely hilarious. I describe it to friends as "The Daily Show in written form for finance nerds"

<comment><USER21> It's the funny side of what is called late capitalism.

I never miss it. Also there is no need for finance background knowledge. He explains option, short, the relationship of bond price to yield, etc every time they come up.

<comment><USER22> Funny, lucidly written (as you describe), and extraordinarily insightful in making connections across areas of finance that are usually presented in the business press as silos. Matt Levine is a rare talent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I love me a good Levine piece.</comment>


Using of Discrete Orthogonal Transforms for Convolution [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://iris.elf.stuba.sk/JEEEC/data/pdf/09-10_102-10.pdf <comment><USER2> I had a large interest in discrete convolution operations a few years ago, particularly in application to digital image processing. Two papers that I published may be of interest to those here:

[A paper that as a lemma demonstrates the influence of boundary conditions on the use of discrete orthogonal transformations for fast convolution operations] [https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&h...](https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=ZQzlOasAAAAJ&citation_for_view=ZQzlOasAAAAJ:IjCSPb- OGe4C)

[accelerating convolution operations when a matrix factorization (SVD, DCT for jpeg, etc.) is already available]

[https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&h...](https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=ZQzlOasAAAAJ&citation_for_view=ZQzlOasAAAAJ:zYLM7Y9cAGgC)

<comment><USER3> Second paper in particular is pretty fascinating. I'm sure you see the parallels to convolutional neural networks. Thanks for posting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure this paper was generated by a bot. Aside from phrases like "The evaluation of the WHTs product needs only real multiplications by +1 or 1" I see phrases culled from expired patents. Googling pulls up a more interesting paper from the 70s. This is weird.

<comment><USER4> With the disclaimer that I have not worked through _proofs_ of what is asserted, I read through the paper and it makes sense to me. Though it _does_ have plenty of editing mistakes, which are somewhat distracting.

The paper might very well be produced by cribbing form other sources, I couldn't say -- but the central idea, that a convolution can be computed in some cases by methods with lower computational complexity than the product of the DFT, is interesting, I look forward to implementing it. :)

(And yeah, the product of two WHT transformed sequences does only need multiplication by +1 or -1...)

<comment><USER3> Mostly I'm confused why a nearly 15 year old, poorly-written journal article appeared on HN today with no comments. And I wasn't kidding: I'm familiar with the state of the art and reading it from the title on down it really felt like something a bot glued together.

There was some buzz around convolution methods in the late 90s. Lake DSP had a notable patent which actually inspired some research. Most if not all of these methods now exist in Matlab and scipy.signal.convolve with far better documentation.

But I grow weary of random, crappy HN links like this one that really feel like some enthusiast did a Google search but didn't even read the paper.

<comment><USER4> > Mostly I'm confused why a nearly 15 year old, poorly-written journal article > appeared on HN today with no comments.

Agreed, some context would be nice, and also agreed that it is poorly-written. I appreciate it much more when a paper I see on HN has some context from the submitter.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is YouTube back to using flash? - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/cRkZYuX.png <comment><AUTHOR> on Firefox 40.0.3 ( [http://i.imgur.com/11q4z79.png](http://i.imgur.com/11q4z79.png) ) Compare these two videos [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLQl3WQQoQ0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLQl3WQQoQ0) and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd3kSdu4W7c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd3kSdu4W7c)

The first one requires flash but the second one doesn't need it.

</comment><comment><USER2> Both videos load the HTML5 player for me.

Try updating your cookies cookie set VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE Q06SngRDTGA

To see if you still get the switching between the HTML5 player and flash.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, I removed the VISITOR_INFO_LIVE and it's working. I think the problem was with my Firefox sync. I recently switched to firefox after 1 year of using chrome.I think the sync overwrote the cookies as well.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Coavl – a community to help you share the best things in this world - <AUTHOR> https://www.coavl.com <comment><AUTHOR> Coavl was created because we believe in the power of a simple list. We want to nurture a community that brings passionate people together to discover and share knowledge in the subjects that matter the most to them and to you in a way that's easily consumed by everyone.

The target audience is people who are into niche communities and who have an obsession with the power of a simple list.

Personally for me, I use lists for everything and my hypothesis is that by having a platform to share useful lists with others would be hugely beneficial. By creating a restricted format in which people share, I think people will bring their creativity in how they use the platform.

I'm excited to hear your feedback and suggestions. I just recently got the app into an MVP state where I'm ready to share it but there's definitely still a lot of work to do to improve the platform.

I'd like to hear what you think! Let me know if you have any suggestions for categories or maybe contribute a list of your own in a topic you're passionate about.</comment>


Ask HN: Help me find a blog post on recruiting? - <AUTHOR>

A great blog post was written earlier this year in which the key point was that companies are all trying to hire clones of the same people, creating a monoculture.
I can't find it or think of keywords that would dig that article up for me.
Can anyone help me to recall which one it is please? <comment><USER2> Possibly this:

"OpenView minority recruiting deal resonates in VC industry's tired monoculture"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9721568](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9721568)

I found it through Algolia HN Search (on the bottom of every page), but I used some non-standard settings.

edit: There are plenty of other candidates ...

[https://hn.algolia.com/?experimental&sort=byDate&prefix&page...](https://hn.algolia.com/?experimental&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story&query=monoculture)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is google down?

<comment><AUTHOR> No.</comment></comment>