How to move to data science? - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN community, I have been working as a LAMP developer for around 8 years now and am thankful to be at the place in my career that I am. (150k at a stable company, low stress, high respect) That being said, I am drawn to data anlysis and data science in general. When I evaluate my experience, I notice that the projects that I enjoyed the most were some sort of analysis. (charts and graphs for internal performance stats, correlation of customer characteristics to product purchases, graphing a customer base to visualize relationship clusters, etc...)
Getting to the point, I'd really like to make the jump from LAMP developer to data analyst/scientist, but I don't really know how. I'm only getting started in performing analysis in a non-brute force way, and have only scratched the surface on things such as random forests, linear regression, and markov chains. While I am an expert in PHP, MySQL, Javascript, etc.., and am very good at working with systems (Fedora, Ubuntu, Apache, VC, CI, etc..), I am a novice in data. Ideally, I'd love to learn on the job, but am open to trading free work for instruction. Will squash bugs for data! :)
Has anyone here made this same type of jump? Would love to hear feedback.
Thanks, Sam <comment><USER2> There seems two be 2 main fields that you must domain at a fundamental level: Statistics and Business.

Stats, because it is the science of fiding information in data. Get a knack for the basic models, and work your way to the harder and more sophisticated ones.

Business, because you must learn how this information can create value. This facet seems to be often forgotten, but the main point of Data Science is optimizing businesses. Learn about how Big Co. is working, how they tried to solve the problem of Big Data, read about Data Mining, Datawarehousing, ERPs, and other approaches.

There are some other established fileds from where to find great insight, like Operations Research, but these two are the ones you _must_ incorporate in your thinking habits to get the right holistic view. Other fields can even be considered as just extensions of the mindset.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply demian. Did you or someone you know make this type of career switch?

<comment><USER2> Yeah, most of them ex-programmers turned either "Data Scientists" or "Business Analyst/Consultants".

From a career perspective, most of my friends had to prove that their time as programmers didn't "hurt" their potential to think in terms of business. I don't know where you work -you seem to be well compensated so maybie it doesn't apply- but business guys (especially in Big Co.) tend to see programmers as "workers" that "grind" what they are told to. So, besides learning the hard skills, they had to learn how to _talk_ in "business", and to show that they know how and why the company makes money.

Some got moved around in the company they worked as programmers/devs. Others just quitted and got a job somewhere else. It all seems to deppends on your skills, your network, and how well you can sell your potential.

PS: all of them had either engineering or CS degrees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> O'Reilly has a deal on a data science starter kit. I don't receive any kind of commission here, but I can tell you, it's quality material.

<http://shop.oreilly.com/category/get/data-science-kit.do>

<comment><AUTHOR> Very cool. I'm currently going through O'Reilly's "Python for Data analysis", and can speak to it's quality as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You should put your email in your HN profile so people can email you directly (the email field isn't publicly visible). In the meantime, shoot me an email at email@example.com.

We help businesses better understand mobile apps and app markets through by aggregating tons of data - we have lots of thorny big data problems to solve, and you might be a good fit with your existing skill set for a new project we're about to start.

</comment><comment> one-two I am exactly the same way. Look forward to any feedback. Serg

<comment><USER5> I have an area of interest which largely coincides with these, I believe, except I am looking to work in ML. I will look at this thread closely myself.

<comment><USER6> you may find this blog post by Brad Cross helpful. Unfortunately his blog is not active anymore but it's available on waybackmachine [http://web.archive.org/web/20100118082135/http://measuringme...](http://web.archive.org/web/20100118082135/http://measuringmeasures.blogspot.com/2010/01/learning- about-statistical-learning.html)

<comment><USER5> Thank you. I have some of the books listed in there but I had a problem with serializing the process of studying them, I tried sort of doing everything in parallel such as studying probability and Tom Mitchel's book together; needless to say that was not going too well.

That link provides a nice sequence in which I should study the books by bringing them all together in an order.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


KeyMe: Keep Your Keys In The Cloud - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/software/keyme-keep-your-keys-in-the-cloud/240159755 <comment><AUTHOR> the idea is generally a great one, but do we really need to save our key data in the cloud? Especially you think about what happened the last few days & weeks.

<comment><USER2> Heh, some friends and I joked about doing this a few years ago when one of us got a nice CNC machine. :)

I don't think that you should worry about the NSA getting your door key from the cloud; anyone who'd be able to use that access could stroll in to your house more easily with a bump key or a battering ram.</comment></comment>


GitHub's 2014 Transparency Report - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/1987-github-s-2014-transparency-report <comment><USER2> These "secret orders" are an abuse of power, and we already have many indications that they are being abused (eg: more used for going after drug dealers than terrorists, which was the "justification" for them originally.)

That we admit this, that our government is acting in a criminal fashion, in conflict with the constitution, and we have accepted it as "normal" is just proof that we are frogs who think the water is just fine.

We should be outraged and demanding prosecutions and investigations. But of course, who owns the prosecutors and the investigators? The government.

And we've been taught by government schools to be "good germans" (Eg: to give the benefit of the doubt and wide latitude to government.)

<comment><USER3> It would be nice if all the takedowns were from the government. They've not mentioned the non-legal-system-influenced takedowns of [https://github.com/GamerGate/GamerGateOP](https://github.com/GamerGate/GamerGateOP) and [https://github.com/FeministSoftwareFoundation/C-plus- Equalit...](https://github.com/FeministSoftwareFoundation/C-plus-Equality)

Who cares if they're transparent in government takedowns if they're going to actively censor their own users?

<comment><USER4> From what I can see, it looks like GitHub employee @jakeboxer explicitly took the GamerGate one down to satisfy a feminist called @nexxylove because she claimed it contained "stalking and harassment" documents. [http://imgur.com/AgSwrE2](http://imgur.com/AgSwrE2). This is the same individual claiming to be "astounded and really fucking angry" at the Intel/Gamasutra fiasco part of Gamergate ([http://i.imgur.com/l1Uwkvd.png](http://i.imgur.com/l1Uwkvd.png))

Yep, not evident from the transparency report that repos get taken down so casually, with other users protesting. [I'm guessing it probably _didn 't_ contain those sort of instructions, and they can't claim so in the transparency report, because that would be libelous.]

<comment><USER3> Wow. I didn't know the gamergate thing went down like that. Apparently your repos on github can just be deleted at the whims of the employees...

Overall github is great but they definitely have some Growing up to do as an organization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > 0-249 National Security Orders Received

> 0-249 Affected Accounts

So, I would assume it's fairly safe to say they got 249 NSLs or am I missing something about how people are using ranges to go about skirting this ridiculous law? Obviously it could be within that range, but that's an oddly specific number.

<comment><USER6> Read the linked PDF ([http://www.justice.gov/iso/opa/resources/4222014127160422403...](http://www.justice.gov/iso/opa/resources/422201412716042240387.pdf)). They are only allowed to report the number in bands of 250.

<comment><USER7> Is this something added specifically to prevent warrant canaries?

<comment><USER8> You wanna be the guy that gets to try that out in court? If it even goes to court?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9>
      Until such time, we are not even allowed to
      say if we've received zero of these reports

What could possibly be the reasoning behind this?

<comment><USER10> My guess is that it's to hide how widespread the program is. If loads of companies were saying 1-249 instead of 0-249 we'd be able to see how many companies they're hitting. As it is we can't see that and presumably that lack of accountability makes abusing processes simpler for them.

<comment><USER11> I am not following, but why would they chose 249?

<comment><USER12> I think a judge chose it for them in a lawsuit brought by twitter, but I could be wrong because I wasn't following the news closely at the time. Their preferred value was infinity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The most interesting take down seemed to be the one from the "The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media of the Russian Federation".

Now you first thing it would be some anonymity tool or something like that, nope it's an empty repo with a 32 ways of how to commit suicide in the repo notes including what you need and how long it will take you to die.

Not sure why GitHub only blocked access to that content from Russian IP addresses rather than removing the repo completely like they did with cases in which the repo was actually used for legitimate purposes...

</comment><comment><USER14> > Total Request from Subpoenas, Court Orders, and Search Warrants = 10 > > Percentage where information was disclosed 70% > Percentage where users were > informed of the request 43%

EDIT: I am not smart. I didn't think of that percentage that received information on the disclosure of information and was thinking in terms of total subpoenas.

How is it not 40% or 4 users and we get 43%? One person only got 1/3 of the information?

<comment><USER15> 7/10 in which info was disclosed of which:

4/7 users were not informed = 57%

3/7 users were informed = 43%

But left over: 3/10 in which info was not disclosed

I agree, the infographic was not 100% clear (no pun intended)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The first set of numbers confuses me

10 requests for information, 7 responded to, and then 43% of those seven requests has the user informed. How do we get 43% of seven?

Edit - ok next paragraph tells me 10 requests for 40 accounts.

To me this seems pretty low - given that GitHub has millions of accounts, that only 40 got suspected of being involved in crimes seems amazingly low. Or that not even criminals store their secret bank robbery plans in free online hosting services :-)

<comment><USER17> 3/7 == 0.42857

<comment><USER16> That's embarrassing - I was still mentally usin ten as the denominator.

Back to school

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The Roskomnadzor requests, though. So ridiculous. It's not even code they wanted removed, but instances of a non-serious copypasta.

</comment><comment><USER19> In the spirit of getting a more exact estimate, would it be possible to hire a registered-agent type service (a commercial 3rd party) that posts the image of every manila envelope it forwards on to the company HQ?

</comment><comment><USER20> So basically the only government they bent over backwards for was the Russian government. Wish they actually showed some spine like they did with China.

</comment><comment><USER21> National Security letters for open source code ?

Or is it for just the private repositories ?

Or is it to be able to "subtly add code" to existing repositories without being seen ?

What would it be for ? I am stumped.

<comment><USER22> > Or is it for just the private repositories ?

That. Relax.

> Or is it to be able to "subtly add code" to existing repositories without > being seen ?

Come on now, this is not productive to speculate on. This is "the CIA is controlling the population by putting chemicals in your water supply!" level stuff.

<comment><USER23> Some people said the same about NSA, but now we know that they do "hard to believe" stuff.

<comment><USER22> That's some specious logic, at best.

<comment><USER23> So, according to you, they (agencies from US, China, Russia, etc) never cross lines that you and me would never cross? They never tried to broke security, sabotage, ..., or hack someone?

I'm not talking about moon or UFO's conspiracies. I'm talking about things that, according to leaks and official documents, they already did in the past and keep doing today.

<comment><USER24> And we have evidence of those things.

This is something else. Basic rationality demands that we not treat something as truth until we have evidence of it.

The existence of bad actors does _not_ mean an abandonment of critical thinking! Critical thinking in this case tells us that compromising a git repo is a _horrible_ idea, mostly because even if you broke SHA and even if you managed to slip the code in undetected, the jig is up the moment somebody makes a conflicting change in that file, wonders what's going on, and then discovers that the server copy does not jibe with the local copy.

<comment><USER23> And I agree with you.

But we can't blindly defend governments, agencies or countries and attack someone just because their opinion or ideia doesn't fit on the "official version".

There is also a big deference between what I did (considering the ability to do something) and accuse them of doing something. You don't need evidence to think if they can or not do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> FISC takes no prisoners!

These Stasi guys don't take anything that may jeopardize the reign of their paymasters lightly

<comment><USER26> When people compare to the Stasi... do you even know what you are talking about? Yes surveillance is bad but encouraging people to tattle on each other is worse and encouraging children to report on their parents is horrific. Read [http://competentcommunicator.blogspot.ca/2010/10/sentence- ab...](http://competentcommunicator.blogspot.ca/2010/10/sentence-about- tyranny-illes-gyula.html) much is lost in translation but perhaps some comes across.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The warrant canary is probably the existence of the sentence "Until such time, we are not even allowed to say if we've received zero of these reports". Watch that space.

<comment><USER28> No. The "time" it's "until" is after "The courts are currently reviewing the constitutionality of these prior restraints on free speech, and GitHub supports the efforts to increase transparency in this area.".

Until the courts change the law and say they can say if they've received zero of these reports or not, they are not allowed to. There is no 'warrant canary'. It would be illegal, and Github is not telling you they are going to break the law, they are telling you they are supporting efforts to change the law, but until such time, they will have to comply, and they can't tell you if they received any.

Until they receive 250, and then they can say they received somewhere in the range of 250-499.</comment></comment>


Why VCs prefer firing founders - <AUTHOR> http://www.victusspiritus.com/2010/06/12/why-vcs-prefer-firing-founders/ <comment><USER2> In the end you as a founder have to realize the VC is not there in your interest, but in its own. If you agree to a deal which gives huge incentive to fire you and leave you with a much smaller share, you're either desperate or stupid. Make sure your VC is not your bank, your laywer or your accountant or your owner. Just your investor.

<comment><USER3> History is full of precedents where a certain kind of deal routinely has the parties trying to screw each other, and then gradually this kind of deal becomes based on trust, and everyone is better off. Attitudes like yours get in the way of this process.

If you're a founder and a VC screwed you, you may have made a mistake, but you're not "stupid" and you should warn others and not be overly embarrassed about the whole thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Indeed, in the situations like this that I've been around, seriously diluting founder shares was clearly the reason, not the health of the enterprise.

A lot of investors prefer more of a share even if it's of a smaller enterprise and in one extreme case all of nothing.

<comment><USER5> How does firing a founder dilute his share? Vesting schedule?

<comment><USER6> Classic case example: founders A, B, and C each get 2M shares, owning one- third each of the startup; they build value over, say, two years and take in $4 million in VC funding at, say, $6 million pre-money valuation; VCs require them to reverse-split their shares to 4 million, VCs take 4 million at $1/sh, with 2 million in pool, of which 1 million goes to an outside CEO brought in by the VCs; as part of funding, founders have to agree that one-fourth of their shares are vested while the balance vest over 4 years; this means each founder now owns about 1.3 million shares measured against a model of 10 million, or about 13% of the company but only slightly over 4 million (4%) of those shares are vested; arrangement is theoretically "shared control" (4 million to founders, 4 million to VCs, with maybe a board-seat deal of 2/2/1, with the one being the new CEO). Net result: founder who might have built incredible value in the first two years of effort on behalf of the startup finds himself, immediately after the VC funding, cut back from 33% to 4% equity stake, typically with no acceleration provisions for his stock in the event he is fired without cause. In such a scenario, the founder can be highly vulnerable to losing most of his stake in the venture if the VC investors and their favored CEO decide that he is immediately dispensable.

Specifics can go all over the board in different cases but the above example typifies what tends to happen with founder interests in a typical Series A funding. Founders can resist but, if they want the money, they often have to agree to just such terms.

I have seen all sorts of cases where such scenarios lead to bad outcomes for the founders. I have seen many others where things work out great for all concerned. It is just one of the risks of taking in VC funding but it is a very real one for the founders.

Even where a founder has largely vested his interest, or where his termination triggers enough accelerated vesting that he largely vests, he will find himself vulnerable in any down-round scenario. In that case, I have seen VCs (in the most abusive types of cases) do as much as a 100 to 1 "reverse split," reducing _everyone_ in the company to 1/100th of the interest that person held before a new funding, and then inject new funding (at a much-lowered company valuation from that used in the most previous round) that leaves the VCs with substantially all the ownership in the company (they being the only ones with the funds to participate in the highly dilutive round) apart from the employees they wish to keep and such persons will then have their options "refreshed" to give them modest equity pieces as incentives to keep going forward. While the 100-to-1 cram-down is absurdly extreme, many cases will arise of more modest ratios used by VCs that have the effect of sharply reducing the early-stage equity interests in a company and that clear the way for new grants to be made to continuing founders who, because of such grants, will keep something close to their original percentage in the company while a terminated founder gets sharply reduced.

Hate to sound boring with logistical details but these two illustrations are among the most common techniques used.

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate the example case. Is there a public web listing for VCs that use and have activated these type of clauses. I'll do whatever I can to avoid this color of money.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Howto: Becoming a Brogrammer - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/How-does-a-programmer-become-a-brogrammer

<comment><USER2> So, when my bro learns to program, does he become a brogrammer and not a programmer ?</comment>


Introversion and Extraversion Don't Exist - <AUTHOR> http://bgblog.quora.com/Introversion-and-Extraversion-Dont-Exist?share=1

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm making a trilogy of essays based on Peter Thiel's Zero to One motivation to find contrarian truths. Here's the second essay.</comment>


Ask HN: Any tips on finding short term consulting gigs? - <AUTHOR>

Help! I'm a struggling single-founder, I've been working on my startup(s) and doing freelance web development (PHP/JS/HTML/CSS etc) since my former employer folded around a year ago. I've been able to find a steady stream of clients through friends, family and personal recommendations but I've pretty much exhausted this supply of customers and I'm starting to worry slightly. My main focus is my startup which I should be able to launch within a week or two, but there are of course no guarantees that it will succeed, or provide enough revenue to cover my living expenses, at least in the short term. So really my question is, how should I proceed from here? I have about enough money to cover my bills for the next 30 days, but that's it and my partner is pregnant & due in October!
I've considered freelancing sites such as e-lance etc, but these sites take a while to establish reputation, so the route to success seems to be – spend a month or two doing lots of cheap jobs to establish reputation, then start going for the bigger fish. The problem is I've left it too late to pursue this route, I'll run out of money too quickly.
Yesterday the problem really hit home, so I spent 6hrs cold calling local businesses, just asking about their current websites or lack thereof, and although I got a few leads and some moderate interest (which I'll follow up later), I'm not entirely encouraged.
I've reduced my outgoings as much as possible, but after a series of property maintenance nightmares (roofs leaking, boilers breaking etc) I have to pay a substantial amount in bills each month. I've considered getting a job, but senior web dev positions are few and far between in my area and I'd still struggle to cover my bills
So HN, what do you think I should do? <comment><USER2> Repeat sales to the same customers are your mainstay as a consultant, how come there are no repeat jobs?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because most of the people I've targeted have been small businesses who need a website, but after the website is built there's not much opportunity to sell more services. I do have a few customers that will give me more work in future, but most have spent their budgets and are waiting for their next financial year. I have some meetings this week that should drum up a bit more work which will help but probably not enough to keep myself afloat.

<comment><USER2> That sucks. Ok, let me check my 'to do' list and see if there is anything on there that could be farmed out without first digging in to a code base that is a decade old.

What is your hourly rate ? Or do you do fixed price jobs?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've sent you an email, thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sulfur Lamp - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_lamp <comment><USER2> The efficiency claims of these are very nice:

Sulfur Lamp: 100 lumens per watt. [0]

Random LED Light bulb: 88.888 lumens per watt. [1]

~20% improvement.

[0] [https://web.archive.org/web/20030818061414/http://195.178.16...](https://web.archive.org/web/20030818061414/http://22.214.171.124/IAEEL/iaeel/newsl/1996/ett1996/LiTech_b_1_96.html)

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/TCP-Equivalent-Light-Bulbs-Non- Dimmab...](https://www.amazon.com/TCP-Equivalent-Light-Bulbs-Non- Dimmable/dp/B01BFCGBN6/ref=sxin_3_osp20-e7752483_cov?ascsubtag=e7752483-0229-43a1-a742-1cf152cf90a2&creativeASIN=B01BFCGBN6&crid=2S67XR1BNZ6UY&cv_ct_id=amzn1.osp.e7752483-0229-43a1-a742-1cf152cf90a2&cv_ct_pg=search&cv_ct_wn=osp- search&keywords=led%2Blight%2Bbulbs&linkCode=oas&pd_rd_i=B01BFCGBN6&pd_rd_r=28522f1d-5a89-4c3b-90d4-56ec96c80199&pd_rd_w=D1mJO&pd_rd_wg=McWsM&pf_rd_p=53eff971-6e12-4016-9864-b6dfd929b2b3&pf_rd_r=6YM89H606R25JTM75EAH&qid=1575211510&sprefix=led%2Blight%2Caps%2C139&tag=bestcont06-20&th=1)

<comment><USER3> That's very unfair in that there's LEDs on experimental lab benches running 200+ lumens per watt (very handwavy). Something tells me you won't be getting amazon prime shipping on a 100 L/W sulfur bulb anytime before you're already getting amazon prime shipping for 200 L/W LED bulbs... Theoretically LEDs top out just under 300 L/W under ideal lab conditions, so a theoretical max of 100 L/W for sulfur is not so good.

The real competitor of these "ten kilowatt" class bulbs is theater-type arc lamp type devices where you can't deal with the weird spectral effects of LEDs and other quantum mechanical goofiness... Today you can buy COTS xenon lamps that run around 40 or so watts/lumen, so 100 L/W is a nice upgrade for stage and film theaters.

I don't know what sportsball stadiums use for night games. For raw bulk ugly illumination, sodium discharge lamps are COTS around 150 or so L/W, far surpassing what the sulfur bulbs can do in the lab. Interesting thought experiment is immense capex was dropped to illuminate sportsball fields and replacing the lights makes half the demand go away... so are sportsball fields going to be twice as bright at night or recycle all that power company infrastructure or is legacy pro sportsball going away with the boomers before sulfur bulbs could arrive commercially or ?

I don't see an easy way to decouple the magnetron and stuff from the lamp for sale purposes. A kilowatt class xenon lamp runs over a hundred dollars and figure a kilowatt class microwave oven and its innards could double the cost of a sulfur lamp while halving the cost of the electricity... this is really bad news for theater goers... it'll make theaters even more capital intensive which means even more risk adverse. If you're tired of formulaic remakes now, imagine when financial risk is twice as high due to double the bulb cost, LOL.

<comment><USER4> My theater knowledge is dated, but there's a major potential benefit for LED in theater: they can modulate quickly.

I'm familiar with two kinds of high-power theatrical lighting: tungsten and discharge. Tungsten is inefficient and has poor power factor when dimmed. Discharge lamps can't cycle quickly, so, as a practical matter, they are turned in well before a show starts (to make sure they all work!) and stay on, at full power, until after the show. A motorized shutter modulates the light output. This wasted tons of power when the shutter is closed.

LEDs can cycle essentially arbitrarily quickly, and a good driver gets a power factor near 1.

I think it would be interesting to design a theater lighting system with a DC bus. Tungsten lights (where needed) would be driven by PWM, and LEDs would be driven directly by PWM if the voltages matched or with a DC-DC converter otherwise. There would be a battery to even out the load to minimize demand charges.

I don't know what a three-phase AC-to-DC converter rated for, say, 100kW would cost. You'd want one that can be controlled such that it can share load in a controlled manner with a battery on the DC side.

<comment><USER5> What benefit does a DC bus have over decentralized AC-DC converters? You'd still need fairly high voltages to keep current manageable, and high-voltage DC has its own set of "fun" challenges.

<comment><USER4> I haven't made any effort to analyze this for real, but:

A circuit to drive a tungsten lamp at variable brightness off AC is cheap (a TRIAC and its driver) but has crap power factor. I imagine a MOSFET to drive the exact same tungsten lamp from DC at a few hundred Hz PWM would be almost as cheap and could be filtered to have a clean input waveform. (Or it could be driven above 20kHz to eliminate the annoying audible buzz that tungsten lamps make.)

A big LED driver (AC to DC, constant current or constant voltage plus some dimming mechanism) is not particularly cheap, and the nice ones are largeish. A pure 24V "dimmer" (12-48V in, same voltage out, adjustable PWM frequency, and DMX controls) can be had quite cheaply with excellent performance. A constant current driver would be more expensive, but a DC-input driver ought to be smaller and less expensive than a comparable AC-input driver, especially if you care about power factor and inrush current.

(Common commercial AC-input LED drivers often have godawful inrush current, because they have big filter caps to get good performance, and they don't spend the extra money on fancy circuitry to limit the inrush current. This means that you can't actually put 20A of driver on a 20A breaker because the inrush current will trip the breaker. With DC input, a much smaller filter cap should give comparable performance.)

Anyway, this is all mostly speculation, and economies of scale matter. But those DC DMX dimmers really do exist.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The spectrum of these lamps is much closer to sunlight than others: [https://sound-au.com/lamps/sp-lamp-f2.jpg](https://sound-au.com/lamps/sp- lamp-f2.jpg)

This would be ideal for offering indoor sunlight substitutes.

</comment><comment><USER7> Anyone know about RF pollution with these devices? A normal bulb just stops working when it fails, but these seem to have the potential to spew hundreds of watts of noise if they malfunction in the wrong way. I wonder how probable that would be for a large, poorly maintained installation, maybe something on the coast within range of sea spray carried by wind.

<comment><USER8> It's in the article. It disrupts the 2.4 GHz band, so filters have to be installed

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My take on articles like this is mostly melancholy. That lamp was somebody's baby, and it was put into production and then abandoned shortly after. This happens so frequently with inventions; they are abandoned until the original patent runs out, then later revived on a secondary patent by somebody else.

The silicon-carbide electrode version might give the material basis, if not the original technique, a second chance.

</comment><comment><USER10> It would be pleasant to have a low energy alternative to LEDs. I had to replace the LED bulbs in my kitchen as it made all my food look strange.

The light was warm but had a custard yellow color to it that seemed monochromatic. Replaced with halogen lamps until something better comes along.

<comment><USER3> Its worth considering that prototype units ran around 6KW and my 90 watts of high CRI LEDs is very bright, so a sulfur bulb in the kitchen could cook the food off waste heat while providing reef aquarium levels of illumination in the sink causing algae blooms. When there's algae growing in your sink you know you have too much kitchen illumination.

A not entirely insane, but only mostly insane, idea would be a dishwasher that had infinitely free energy and an extremely bright light source could clean dishes slowly by using immense amounts of light to grow rapid doubling algae, then cycle to mushroom darkness to eat the algae and food debris. So tens of kilowatts and distilled water for rinsing and you've got a space ship dishwasher. Of course with tens of kilowatts and distilled water, you'd be better off with thermal decomposition and autoclave functionality but maybe bio would be more popular for stylistic or marketing greenwashing purposes. I suppose on a space ship using your dishwasher to generate a couple kilos of O2 per day off food waste would be of some benefit to the life support system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Already outshone by LED. We've got >80CRI 200+l/w LEDs (MK-R by Cree, been out for almost a decade) and 350l/w is already in the lab.

Even the pot growers shied away from this tech. The lacking red inhibited decent flowering. If you can't make an inroad there, you're almost guaranteed to fail.

</comment><comment><USER12> This needs to be in the Cybertruck.

<comment><USER13> Many of these are in the Kw power range. That said, I like the idea of stadium-light brightness levels on a Cybertruck.

<comment><USER14> > That said, I like the idea of stadium-light brightness levels on a > Cybertruck.

I don't. I think people will abuse it, blind others on the road, and it will literally kill multiple people before they're made illegal (if they're not already - I have no idea what the regulations are for automotive lighting).

<comment><USER15> The cybertruck can cyber black holes into the beam where the eyes of the other cars drivers eyes are.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: DrillDB – DrillDown Reports for Mysql, Postgres and Redshift - <AUTHOR> https://drilldb.com <comment><USER2> How long have you been working on DrillDB?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have been working on it for a couple of months now. Why ?

<comment><USER2> Just curious after looking at DrillDB's submission history.

Although it is not something I'm likely to use, the story of a project's development and its technical details are often interesting and the sort of thing I come to Hacker News for. My random thoughts from the internet is that writing about those might reach more people than a naked link.

Clearly, there's so much invested in DrillDB that there has to be an interesting story behind it.

Good luck.</comment></comment></comment>


The Three Frameworks You Need to Kick-Start Sales – First Round Review - <AUTHOR> http://firstround.com/review/the-three-frameworks-you-need-to-kick-start-sales/?utm_medium=email&ct=t(How_Does_Your_Leadership_Team_Rate_12_3_2015) <comment><USER2> Really good article - would have liked to see a starting point for KPIs to test your sales strategies as startups are getting off of the ground since I know many startups that struggle with this setup. With the hundreds of sales calls while you're validating an idea, it's easy to forget important data points and a KPI strategy could help companies keep track of their experiments.</comment>


Ask HN: help me think of a domain name - <AUTHOR>

My co-founder and I are working on an online-auctions start-up but we can't agree on a name we both like (that has an available .com domain).
current contenders: snapfive.com - entirely generic but easy to pronounce and spell rumblesale.com - rhymes with jumble sale bidnsee.com - make a bid and see if it's accepted
do you guys have any other ideas?
Raj <comment><USER2> Check out nameboy.com and sedo.com. Enter keywords and see what's available. I find that helps with generating ideas.

And a lot of times someone might just want ~$100 for a domain which should be easily justified if it's the right name.

On nameboy.com you can quickly see domains that _just_ have a .com taken, those are probably easier to get under your control.

Recently I got a domain name I wanted by emailing the owner and making a proposition because I noticed that it was just some default GoDaddy page. Turns out he was indeed just a random web developer squatting on the name and was happy to get a few bucks, not some nefarious domain squatter.

</comment><comment><USER3> You also may want to check out <http://brandstack.com> I haven't used it (I have a friend who has), but apparently you can buy pre-made logos and domains. Might find something you like.

</comment><comment><USER4> Recommend you don't mention available domain names here to prevent sniping, private message Raj if you've got a good one.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sorry to get all MBA, but do you have a value proposition in mind? That could help with branding.

<comment><USER5> I don't think you need to be sorry at all. You have a very valid question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I might have a proposition, email's in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've got: c l e a n z a p .

</comment><comment><USER8> rumblesale.com

</comment><comment><USER9> rumblesale.com

</comment><comment><USER10> rocktion.com

</comment><comment><USER11> not-ebay.com?</comment>


Tech IPOs Test Sky-High Values + Zynga Expected to Release IPO Paperwork Tonight - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304447804576414111297459234.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I think one of the most interesting aspects of the article is the concerns over Zynga's dependency on facebook, especially with the recent unveiling of Google Plus. Could the demise of facebook be in the not too distant future? Probably not, but it is interesting to think about. I am really looking forward to seeing Zynga's S-1 which is rumored to come out after markets close tonight. I just don't see how these valuations can be justified, but that doesn't really matter to investors as long as they are seeing returns off of these IPOs (and they are). I am really fearing the tech industry might be building its own "ponzi scheme" with these valuations only to see another 1999 bust.</comment>


RIM rumored to lay off 2,000 more workers soon - <AUTHOR> http://www.neowin.net/news/rim-rumored-to-lay-off-2000-more-workers-soon

<comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I used to work for RIM as a co-op student 8 years ago. I am not a current employee, but I have been an avid BlackBerry user and developer.

IMHO, these layoffs are long overdue. RIM has been growing for years under the BlackBerry OS and failed to adapt to a changing marketplace. The iPhone really blew them out of the water, and the BlackBerry Storm was a terrible attempt to try to answer that threat. The BlackBerry Java OS is old, dated, and does not have the infrastructure needed to compete in the marketplace of 5 years ago, let alone today.

That's all changing with the adoption of the QNX operating system on the BlackBerry PlayBook and BlackBerry 10. People may lament the mismanagement of the launch of the PlayBook, and I would mostly tend to agree. However, RIM has delivered a solid base from which to build upon, and they're doing all of the right things. To this day, we're still figuring out all of the nuances of the OS and what can be done with it. Quite simply, QNX is fast, secure, and well- engineered. IMHO, it is leaps and bounds ahead of what iOS or even Android are capable of.

These changes are also being reflected at RIM itself. Their acquisition of QNX several years back was a masterful move. And even though RIM bought QNX, the culture seems to becoming more QNX-like, which is a great thing. (It's almost like a reverse-takeover.) They're adopting many of the lean startup methods in driving their products forward. One can point to the delivery of Dev Alpha prototypes to developers back in early May. Put out a minimum viable product to your early adopters to gather feedback and figure out what to build next. As developers, we have the opportunity to have a platform built to our needs, rather than the other way around. It smacks of lean startup methodologies.

My rambling does have a point: these layoffs are likely in the old and slow departments of RIM's past, related to the older BBOS. BBOS is going into maintenance mode, as it seems like they are no longer developing new features for it and are reserving it for their budget devices. While layoffs always suck because people are losing their livelihood, I think it's a great move on RIM's part to become leaner and more agile. They have the capability to deliver something truly wonderful with BlackBerry 10. The building blocks are all there. I'm personally hopeful they will execute it well, because that's ultimately what will determine their fate, whether they end up like Palm or like Apple. Only time will tell.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for your insightful comment. I'm glad to hear this, as I am a BB fan as well. I haven't often used the other platforms, but what I've read in online reviews, the BB is _still_ the king of email. I literally get email faster on my blackberry than in Thunderbird or the Google Apps web interface. Battery life is also stellar.

I'm looking forward to BB10, and plan to buy one when they are released in October. I hope they make the ship date.

Regarding the Playbook botch, I read recently that the reason why the Playbook had to be tethered to a phone to get email and BBM was because the RIM infrastructure only supported mapping an email account to one PIN. Have they corrected this? I understand if you're not able to comment for legal reasons.

Can you tell us more about the advantages of QNX over iOS and Android? Have you tried the Cascade SDK? Did you get your hands on the Dev Alpha?

Oh my god. I just realized what it feels like to be a fanboi. Oh well, RIM needs love too!

<comment><USER4> I hear people say the BB is faster at email, but by how much? A few seconds? Even if the difference is a few minutes, it doesn't compensate for BBs many other shortcomings.

Is there something I'm missing?

FYI, I'm a long time iPhone user.

<comment><USER5> If you're in a important conversation and have a few minutes delay between each response, you're wasting a lot of time.

Switching to an instant messenger isn't always an option if you're in a corporate environment. You don't want your conversations sitting on a third party server.

<comment><USER2> This is precisely what makes BlackBerry and BES so appealing for enterprises. Also, I think e-mails are actually faster on BES than on BIS.

Little known fact: did you know that BES allows you to access your company's entire address book on your BlackBerry? When I was a co-op, it meant I could e-mail anyone in the company just by looking up their name. Sure, LDAP allows you the same capability, but on most platforms, that means you need to expose it publicly. You could secure by forcing use over a VPN, I suppose, but that's extra overhead as well, which is somewhat precious on a mobile device. It's less relevant nowadays, but it's a really cool feature that RIM has had for nearly a decade now that few consumers even know about.

I would argue that most BlackBerry users do not have they devices setup to take advantage of all of their capabilities. And to be honest, that is a huge failure of RIM's marketing and publicity teams.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It was bound to happen sooner or later. RIM have really been struggling to adapt to the changing corporate/business sector. Phones like the iPhone have been biting slowly but surely into the corporate/business sector. I know in many areas like government Blackberry's are still the number #1 choice but for how long?

They've lost direction, it'll be interesting to see if they're still around in a few years time or someone else scoops them up and tries to turn the company around.

<comment><USER2> I think it's a bit early to write them off. Let's see what happens in 6 months time after the launch of BlackBerry 10. Then you may be proven right, but I don't think that's today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe I'm biased, but to me the story of RIM is another example of the triumph of open source over closed-source solutions. iOS is based on BSD, Android on linux (and heavily leverages the OpenBinder IPC mechanism. I've looked closely at the old blackberry OS and the new QNX based one, and it's amazing how far behind they are.

Seeing the new QNX OS and how they're using it was a real eye opener. They have nothing that even comes close to the features of ICS on their roadmap, and they just don't have the resources or expertise to ever catch up.

I agree, they do make good hardware. But the software side of their house is in the stone age, and the recent acquisitions haven't really helped at all.

<comment><USER8> Very funny that your view is exactly the opposite of HorizonXP's view in his posts, where he asserts that QNX is much more advanced that either iOS or Android.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, +1 on this. I wish I could provide better evidence to support my claims about QNX being better, but I really would butcher it. Maybe tomorrow, when I'm less sleep-deprived, I can take a stab at it. Right now, I'm responding with items that I know I can speak about, since they're off the top of my head.

I would actually argue that QNX and RIM's current efforts are more open than before. Prior to RIM's acquisition of QNX, it was open-source, called OpenQNX. They closed it shortly after acquiring it (which doesn't help support my claims :-P), but they've really been pushing open-source efforts.

Cascades is built on Qt, and they've been committing heavily to the gitorious repo. Moreover, they've contracted KDAB to continue those efforts.

If you look at this page [https://developer.blackberry.com/native/documentation/oss.ht...](https://developer.blackberry.com/native/documentation/oss.html), you'll see a list of all the open-source components that they've ported to the platform. Everything is hosted on github at <http://blackberry.github.com/>.

Look, I know I'm sounding like a BlackBerry fanboy, and it's because I am. I drank the Kool-Aid, and I like it. I want them to succeed. They may not be the company we deserve, but the company we need. We need a 3rd player to usurp Apple's draconian App Store policies, and provide some semblance of quality over Google Play Store.

Again, I think RIM is making the right moves. If you're a developer, you owe it to yourself to check out the resources that they're offering. Follow them on twitter, @BlackBerryDev. Heck, check out one of the BlackBerry Jam World Tours that might be in a town near you (<http://www.blackberryjamworldtour.com/>).

Research them yourself and draw your own conclusions. You may still disagree with me. That's ok. At least, you'll be well-informed and STILL disagreeeing with me. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> HP announced 27k last week. Ericsson proposing 1.7k. Unsurprising those no longer at the top have to reduce their workforce. RIM has dropped the ball recently (two significant public blunders) and their tablet offering is terrible. Firms are considering using iPhone's instead of the popular Blackberry. Times are changing.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's always sad to hear such a formerly great company take such a hit. Wonder at what point is RIM an attractive take-over target for the likes of software giants in search of controlling their mobile destiny, like Facebook.

<comment><USER11> Or private equity.

<comment><USER2> To be honest, I don't think a firm is interested in buying RIM until after BB10 launches. And they're hoping it's a failure so they can buy RIM for cheap and liquidate the assets. That's what I would do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Could actually be as many as 6,000: [http://business.financialpost.com/2012/05/27/rim-layoffs- cou...](http://business.financialpost.com/2012/05/27/rim-layoffs-could-hit- thousands/)

<comment><USER2> That number seems high to me, but not impossible. This news isn't exactly new though, it's just hitting the presses now. Many of my friends outside of RIM have been hearing this for quite some time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> a sad day for canadian innovation :(

<comment><USER2> I actually think the opposite, it's a great day. Get rid of some of the cruft and excess baggage of your previous laurels, so you can focus on the next innovation.</comment></comment>


Online fashion giant Zalando confirms Frankfurt IPO plans for 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://tech.eu/news/zalando-ipo-frankfurt-2014/

<comment><USER2> The press release from Kinnevik announcing the plans can be found right here: [http://hugin.info/1114/R/1853369/647977.pdf](http://hugin.info/1114/R/1853369/647977.pdf)

Interesting to see how ~41% of all visits to Zalando are from mobile devices in Q2 2014. [1] DACH still accounts for a significant share (56.8%) of the total revenue in Q2 2014. [2]

Zalando's ownership looked like this after Rocket Internet technically exited last year: [3] \- Investment AB Kinnevik: 37% \- European Founders Fund: 18% \- Anders Holch Povlsen: 10% \- DST Global: 9% \- Holtzbrinck Ventures: 8% \- Tengelmann Ventures: 6% \- Others: 12%

[1]: p7 [https://corporate.zalando.com/system/files/zalando_financial...](https://corporate.zalando.com/system/files/zalando_financial_factsheet.pdf) [2]: p8 [https://corporate.zalando.com/system/files/zalando_financial...](https://corporate.zalando.com/system/files/zalando_financial_factsheet.pdf) [3]: [http://techmoran.com/rocket-internet-exits- zalando/](http://techmoran.com/rocket-internet-exits-zalando/)</comment>


Ask HN: What is the most modern CMS? - <AUTHOR>

I work as a interface designer on a CMS, among other products. In doing some research for further developing our CMS I had a hard time finding systems that were easy to use for a non-techie.
Which CMS would you say is the most modern in terms of end user design? Not accounting for the technical setup of things, just user experience.
Thanks you :)
Edit: Some seems to think I'm looking for good CMSes for web designers, I'm not. I'm after systems that makes it easy for a non-tech crowd to run their - custom - web site. <comment><USER2> Brief: There really isn't a single CMS that outshines all the rest. You should carefully tailor your choice of CMS's based on the site specification.

Not so brief: The underlying assumption here is that ongoing maintenance of a modern website is (or even can be) a non-techical task. This is unfortunately unrealistic. As an example consider the needs of a "simple" single user blog.

Any blogging CMS worthy of the name should provide a simple interface for adding, editing and deleting content. It should also provide a simple interface for choosing which content is displayed on the site and most do.

Well and good, but what about related content? Should a user be shown a list of related links when the view a blog post? How is "related" content defined? Is this limited to content on the site or should off-site links be included? Should this list be sorted by date, relevancy, popularity? What about rich text formatting or pasting content from MS Word?

Most blogs also have some mechanism for accepting and displaying reader comments and just about every CMS I've ever come across has some method of handling this. But again we run into problems. Spam is a real issue and spammers have taken to using mechanical turk and other methods to get real live people to post spam for them. This approach completely bypasses captcha and even the best automated anti-spam services (mollum as an example) can't catch all of this, so now you've got to include manual comment moderation (which is a shitload of work on a heavily commented site) into the mix.

Generally blogs also have RSS feeds and social media links. Most CMS's handle these fairly well without a lot of tinkering but it can get interesting if you (for example) want to segregate your content into multiple feeds based on subject matter or whatever.

So even with a "simple" site the end user has a lot of potentially very technical decisions to make regarding how content is displayed, who can see what, who can comment, how comments are moderated, and what (if any) content is syndicated. Note this doesn't even get into SEO or analytics.

The point I'm getting at here is even simple websites can be miserably complicated little beasts and unfortunately only so much of this complexity can be abstracted before you start running into issues where the available feature set isn't a good fit for some/most/any websites.

With that said each CMS I've studied attempts to solve some subset of the problems associated with creating and maintaining a website. Which subset is tackled varies wildly from CMS to CMS.

For example Wordpress does an excellent job of solving most of the problems associated with implementing and maintaining a blog. I wouldn't care to implement a company intranet portal with it though.

Drupal is incredibly flexible, with plugins available for just about any feature set you'd care to implement. It is brilliant when a site has a complicated or fiddly feature set, but can be intimidating to end users due to the steep learning curve involved. As such it's frequently overkill for truly simple websites.

Various other CMS's have their own core competencies and tend to shine in the situations they where developed to work well for.

If you're looking for something to pattern off of my suggestion would be to first figure out which CMS you would reimplement your site in if you had the option and then go from there.

Edit - Full disclosure: I'm a contributing developer for several Drupal modules.

<comment><USER3> Nice answer, there's a vast number of CMS systems out there from the free to the pricey (Interwoven, etc). I'll echo that the choice really depends on what kind of site you are developing. Frankly, for most blogs a CMS system is total overkill.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree there is a vast number. But the number of ones being fairly usable to a mere mortal is 0. If we're stepping outside theming services.

<comment><USER3> Which is why it goes back to what your needs are! Site for a company with a half-mil employees would be insane to use Wordpress, an individual blogger would go insane (and broke) trying to us Interwoven.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think I made myself clear enough. I'm not really looking for features, but good ux for the person(s) managing the site after delivery, the non tech client.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> (Disclosure, I worked on this product in a previous life) So this is an enterprise CMS example, but the UI did get some pretty decent feedback from customers.

Have a look at <http://media.vignette.com> and you can see some screenshots. This product was targeted towards media companies (Gaming companies, Online media/news sites, video producers etc) so it did allow us to focus on some specific needs. You can imagine that with the volume of content that news sites produce, their requirements can be a little more high-end that your average user as they can spend 6-8hrs a day in the tool.

After designing and implementing quite a few CMS platforms, I think it is pretty hard to come up with a UI that will be appropriate for _all_ users as many of them come to the tool with very different tasks in mind. Think about the legal guy or manager who just needs to approve something, the creative team who needs to upload some assets, someone working on a page or content, a marketing person who just needs to put some promotions on the site. Even within a media company there are people with pretty distinct roles and tasks they own. Therefore in our last UI we built the notion of workspaces...there was: \- a Review Workspace which had an optimal layout for reviewing and approving content \- an Asset Workspace which was optimised around batch uploading media, resizing it, a filter based UI because the library of images/videos tended to get pretty large \- a Marketing Workspace just for the marketing team who is normally responsible for creating new promotions, and then deciding where they go on the site. Not every site needs this, but for those that do it worked pretty well as the marketing team just saw this workspace when logging in and didn't have to learn or care about all the other areas of the CMS. \- And of course don't forget the Content Workspace where you can create content and pages :-) \- For smaller shops, the workspaces are all accessible to multiple users, it is just the notion of the right UI for the task as opposed to one UI for all roles and tasks.

Not suggestion these are universally appropriate or right for your customer base, but I think on close examination you'd find at least 3-4 profiles of users or common tasks that can be optimised. The result for optimising for the 80% common tasks in this system meant that certain complex tasks could be done in <5 clicks. While I personally rate WordPress very highly for UI, the users we were designing for used this products for many hours a day and they felt WP was too many clicks, especially for media handling.

I've probably droned on for too long already and so there is not enough time to list every UI tweak and feature we created, we spent 2 years on the UI, but here is one example. Dynamic UI Controls based on dataset size: A common problem with a number of CMS tools we found was that the UI designer made a guess about how much data would be in the system for a certain task, and then design a UI control that might work great for 10 items, but would be useless if there ended up being 10,000 of those items in the system. So we built some UI controls that would adapt to data volumes...say you had content type x and there were only 10 of the items in the system, you'd ideally want to present it with a set of radio buttons (assuming select one requirement)....more than 10 but <50, popup/overlay with all items listed alphabetically on a single page for quick selection, 10,000 and you're going to need some type of navigator or set of filter controls.

P.S. Don't confuse this with some other previous Vignette products which have a pretty poor UI, this CMS was specifically created with a new UI from the ground up for that reason.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for elaborating. The thing I noticed on the screenshots, and as I've reiterated in alot of comments is putting editing of a site outside, in a seperate admin interface. I did not see the site that was being edited in one of the screenshots. I think placing editing outside of context makes it hard for mere mortals to relate to the editing.

On the topic of different UI for different users I'm on the fence. Modes in interface design is considered bad, but I do see how they can be effective. I think the two mot important roles to seperate is technical and non-technical.

<comment><USER5> Having worked with media organisations and many journalists, writers and content producers, most of them don't care to see the content in context. Content can be used across many different sites or syndicated, making the ultimate destination unknown.

<comment><AUTHOR> So the conclusion is: most people doesn't care to know what/where content they are editing? I don't buy that. I'll buy that it's a OK solution, but not a good one.

<comment><USER2> You may not buy it but it's absolutely true. I spent a few years doing CMS support and site development for one of the largest newspaper conglomerates in North America and based on the design of our in-house CMS it wasn't even possible to edit a piece of content from the page it was displayed on. The really bizarre part was, all the journalists and editors where totally fine with that. Their biggest concerns where making sure the content published to the right section and making sure it also got pushed to the back end system used by the pressmen.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think journalists publihing articles has a too narrow use case to make a conclusion for all non tech users out there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Definitely check out concrete5 (<http://concrete5.org>). As others have mentioned, different systems are better for different situations, but if you're talking about easy to use by non-tech people to manage an informational website, I have found Concrete5 to be better than the rest by leaps and bounds.

The reason it works well for these kinds of sites is that it aligns with non- technical users' mental model of their website. Non-tech users don't think of their site as a template that displays content from a database, but rather as a bunch of pages with stuff on the pages. Most CMS's require users to go to an administrative back-end which shows a hierarchical sitemap of pages -- an abstract representation of their site -- and this is VERY confusing to most people. Concrete5, on the other hand, is based on the concept of content blocks on a page. So to edit a page, you GO to the page and add/edit blocks of content there. The blocks thing is great because it allows for different "mini-UI's" for different kinds of content. For example, to edit regular text, a standard WYSIWYG editor works fine, but if you want to add an image or a youtube video or a navigation list or a google map, it doesn't work as gracefully -- the block system means that different kinds of content can get different editing UI's specifically tailored for that type of content (for example, a youtube video just gets a textbox to paste in the URL, or a google map block presents fields for addresses, marker options, etc.).

There are many web-based CMS's that utilize this approach -- Weebly (a YC company), WebVanta, SnapPages, Yola, etc. -- but I haven't come across an open-source install-yourself CMS other than Concrete5 which works this way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. This is a modern approach. I'll look more into it, and the other CMSes you list. I totally agree on the non tech mindset of blocks, and not templates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Plenty of non-technical people set up Wordpress as a CMS.

Squarespace is an extremely popular hosted CMS that aims at nontechnical people.

Drupal seems to be one of the most popular CMS _qua_ CMS's.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wordpress with a theme is more like a service. Squarespace is a valid system, although their 'templates' might just make them a 'richer' service.

Joomla is what I'd call a full blown CMS. But would you say the interaction is worthy a title à Modern CMS?

<comment><USER7> Did you ask this question just so you could argue your system is better?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, how so?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Silverstripe. Open source BSD licensed built ontop of a quite nice MVC php framework that takes a lot of influence from RoR.

Is a dream to build both basic and powerful CMS driven sites in. And has a templating language that is like a simpler Erb. No I don't work for them, I just think it is by far the best CMS I've come across

<comment><AUTHOR> You're not a mere mortal, but a techie ;-) I want to know if there is any CMSes that has a great experience for the people managing the site after delivery.

<comment><USER8> Ha, fair point. The interface is pretty simple though and with the sites I've worked on the content editors have normally found it pretty nice to work with :) here's a demo site <http://demo.silverstripe.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this comment for Drupal, I seems it's also true for Silverstripe. i'm sure it's a nice CMS, but doesn't give a modern experience when working with content.

"As a rule, if the CMS puts you away from your page and to a list of "posts" to edit with TinyMCE, it's not modern. Atleast in my book."

<comment><USER9> I thought SilverStripe was pretty good when I first looked at it. The framework it's built on is actually not as good as they hype (in my experience) and documentation lacking... but from the enduser standpoint it is a pretty good mix of ease-of-use and power. The blending of traditional concept of posts and versioning of a wiki - all centered around the mighty URL - was one of the best executions I've seen.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is the ux as great as SnapPages?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think most CMSes are a balance: how general are they so that they can be useful to many different use cases vs how complicated that makes them.

All these CMSes bring their own terminology too. WordPress keeps it simple: it's a page or a post. Leaves it up to you to interpret what that means.

Drupal takes that a few steps further with content blocks.

Joomla, when I last used it, was like having pages ripped from a book, shredded into tiny pieces, and jumbled into a pile.

So when judging end user design, I'd also mention the context and the use case: Do I simply want to produce content that is sorted in reverse chronological order? Do I want to be able to handle all types of content imaginable or just text? And what kind of meta data are you keeping track of in conjunction with the content? Meta data is the author, category(ies), various timestamps, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm also interested in propietary CMSes by web bureaus. Wordpress, Dupal and Joomla does not make for a good custom site experience. Either too generic or having a gui that is too complex and hacky for mere mortals.

<comment><USER2> You raise an excellent point here. Any custom site implementation is going to require some custom code to nail down the user interaction. This is a fact of life regardless of what CMS you're using.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. But does a CMS do this in a good way? Custom fields inside a admin interface is not a very modern approach.

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry but I don't agree. Having the ability to define custom data entry forms (including unique field types like calendar dates, google maps location pickers, etc) and the data storage that goes with them via a web interface with no coding required seems pretty modern to me. Can you point out an example of another approach that seems better to you?

<comment><AUTHOR> Doing all those things in context. Imagine the client logging in, and on the About Us page pressing "Add Content". Then chosing "Insert a map" from a drop down of content types. A resizeble map container appears on the site. The client searches or drags the map into the right location and presses "save". Then he publishes the page.

<comment><USER4> I think we're mixing requirements here.

Use case 1: I need to create a new page and for many corporate sites, each new page is different than the next for the majority of the body copy...different layout, one has a map etc. I need to choose where this page goes in the site as well. An in-context approach is very well suited.

Use case 2: I just need to create a press release quickly, it always has the same template, always goes to the same part of the site and it's always the same process I go through. An in-context approach here isn't that good, you want a template approach where the user fills in some fields on a form, a title, body text, maybe image, checkbox for map yes/no etc. This isn't a page at all really, it is a piece of content that is created and using the Press Releas template, the page is created dynamically at the right point in the menu structure. They'll create the page in 30 secs and be done. There is very little point in choosing from a list of modules to insert when you're dealing with a fixed template.

So you're talking about the templated approach vs the page builder approach. Neither is better or worse, just suited to different use cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I find it somewhat comforting that folks are talking about drupal which I've found excellent for creating sites, adding features and keeping them updated and have been advocating strongly in my organisation, having had fairly poor experiences with other CMS products. But my non-technical colleagues seem to find it simultaneously overwhelming and too restrictive for adding and maintaining their content. Those same colleagues are currently keener on a slightly more modern CMS called modx, which seems to be both more configurable and provide a better non-technical experience. However, modx is being championed by a technical colleague of mine, and I havent had the the opportunity to properly compare the installation, configuration and maintenance experience to drupal.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's those mere mortals favorite CMS I'm after. The ones suggesting WP, Drupal and Joomla seems to do so because of the tech side, not so much the ux for the client getting the system after delivery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Drupal and Wordpress can be configured/customized in ways that are easy for users to use (or an absolute nightmare) depending on the template, functionality and design choices made by the site owner.

For blogging and news, Wordpress seems to have the most flexibility in terms of design. There really are some beautiful templates out there (see <http://wordpress.org/showcase/> for some examples).

But Drupal goes beyond blogging. There must be thousands of available modules, offering all kinds of functionality, ranging from advertising support to "relevant content" boxes. (search <http://drupal.org/project/modules> to see some examples).

<comment><AUTHOR> Wordpress with a theme is more like a service if you're not a webdev.

Drupal is too (with Joomla) what I'd call a full blown CMS. But would you say the interaction is worthy a title à Modern CMS? reply

<comment><USER12> It's boils down to a tradeoff between design simplicity and functionality.

Honestly, I haven't seen any Drupal designs/UXs that have really bowled me over. But I think the reason for that relates a lot to the fact that the sites that prefer to use Drupal want to take advantage of the additional functionality offered by modules. The modules often add a lot more boxes, navigational options, and other major elements (forums, e-commerce, etc.) that make the UX far more complex than what you might find on a Wordpress blog.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, but even Wordpress puts all it's editing in a seperate admin area, like it's been done the last 20 years of CMSes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm just entering the world of CMS design, after having tried many. I tried them for myself, and for client websites. Then I started looking into making my own, to solve my own problems. However, based on my experience, I would say there is no CMS that is good n easy for the non-techie. The fact is, you have to become somewhat techie in order to proceed on any of them, unless you just want to blog.

Custom CMSs are the way to go (not customizable, like drupal: custom made). This is, for me, the biggest advantage of document databases. I'm new to software design, and self taught, but not a coder. I've never tangled with a relational database yet. It's incredibly easy to design case-specific CMSs with document databases.

It all boils down to form design.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sad fact, but I'm starting to believe there is none.

<comment><USER13> If the CMS has a special Admin page, then it is not a CMS for the non-techie.

Administration can be no more than filling out forms, uploading images, etc, etc. No plugins, no DBs, no hosting, no nuthin'.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure I understand the point being argued here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Edit from my side(since for some stupid reason did not explain why i prefer Wordpress):

I have experience from CMS`es ranging from enterprise solutions to all round platforms like Wordpress, my brief opinion about some of them:

1) Polopoly: A enterprise solution typically used for magazine/news sites. The problem (with many enterprise solutions) is that it is very advanced and not easy to use at all for new users. I would almost say that training is a must for such a solution. I feel pretty sure that with better usability in focus, it could have been almost a killer app for larger sites.

2) EZ: Taken from the name, EZ should be easy to use, it`s not. This is just another solution fallen into the "Enterprise" trap, instead of focusing on the users that actually have to work with it, they focus on the bosses and persons with the money, in order to sell in the system. The solution itself is relatively plain but you can not simply log in a place and select "new article", instead it is typically creating objects here and there.

3) Wordpress: Finally a system that has the user in focus, the system is designed for people NOT being geeks. Anybody will without any training be able to login and create some content. It is plain and simple but in the same time it gives the user the needed information and not everything else.

There is a good reason Microsoft has decided to close their blogging services and rather move all their users over to Wordpress.

So to conclude: I put Wordpress on first place, with the possibility of Polopoly going to first place for larger solutions if they could get their user interface in order.

* I guess some of you would say that Wordpress is not a CMS,in that case i do wonder... What is the difference between Wordpress and a "real" CMS? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wordpress moves editing to a place away from your site. A non techie might be confused on what content he is editing, and where it is. I don't see Wordpress as a modern CMS because this kind of editing has been done in the last 20 years.

I'll look into the ux of Polopoly, thanks.

Edit: had a really hard time getting info out of the PP website, could you show me some screenshots?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Django isn't a CMS, but it's a framework that seems designed to build CMSs. I'd much rather build a CMS from scratch in Django than try to bend Drupal to my will.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't bend Drupal in any way.

You're suggesting there is no modern CMS , and I should build it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Plone. Obsessively focussed on being user friendly.

<http://plone.org/products/plone/features/>

There are many features that are part of core plone, that many other CMSes do not even think exist in a CMS. Anybody suggesting Wordpress as a CMS obviously did not read your requirement for "most modern in terms of ...user experience".

If you hear negative comments about Plone, it is usually from developers who don't actually _use_ the product or opining based on hearsay.

<comment><USER2> Technically I'm not convinced Wordpress is qualified for the term CMS, or at least no more qualified than say PHPbb, Gallery 2, or any other installable purpose built web application with a limited feature scope. Apparently there where sufficient individuals who disagree with this view for Wordpress to win CMS of the Year for 2010.

<comment><USER18> Wordpress can be customized a lot and can do a lot with those plugins/themes...not just blogging.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> We use expression engine(<http://expressionengine.com/>) where I work mainly because the back end interface is highly configurable for us and very easy to use for our clients. Everything is laid out quite consistently and it has everything our clients need(with a few extensions).

It's also really easy to create extensions for any functionality a client would want that isn't provided out of the box.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this in a comment to Drupal, how does it hold up to EE?

"As a rule, if the CMS puts you away from your page and to a list of "posts" to edit with TinyMCE, it's not modern. Atleast in my book."

<comment><USER19> I've never used Drupal, but EE gives you more than just a TinyMCE field. You can create as many fields as you want. The four defaults are text input, text area, date field, and file field, but you can add new fields through extensions to get WYSIWYG, table fields, etc etc.

These can then be ordered on the publish page how you want, made required fields, searchable, enable or disable HTML, etc, so it gives a lot of control.

<comment><AUTHOR> But where are those fields put? If it's in a admin interface away from the site I wouldn't call it a modern system.

<comment><USER19> Yeah it's an admin interface away from the site.

I think non-techies would also prefer something simple and consistent, like logging in -> publish -> type in fields -> submit.

<comment><AUTHOR> What about log in -> edit site -> publish? Edit site being direct manipulation of the content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Last time I looked at it (about a year ago) ModX struck a nice balance between extensibility and administrative power, designer/developer friendliness and simple in-page edits for content editors. You'd probably need someone with some degree of technical competence to get it started though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll check it out _in the morning_. Thank you for your feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've been running dotCMS for 1.5 years now, and it's worked great. The templates are almost pure html, so designers will have free reign.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry for not specifying more. I'm interested in the part of the system that does the editing, not the theme for the site. The use case where the owner updates his site with new content.

<comment><USER2> In that case my vote absolutely goes with Drupal. Having the ability to define new content types and add/remove form fields (link list? add a URL field. Need an event? Add date fields, etc) as needed is huge.

Drupal also handles complex editorial workflows easily with the Workflow module, can support embargoed content, does simple content revisioning and provides limitless ways of organizing content.

<comment><AUTHOR> But does it have a friendly interface for non-techies?

<comment><USER2> I think so provided we're only talking about adding, editing and deleting content. It's also worth noting that UX has been receiving a huge amount of attention with the Drupal 7 release and is an ongoing topic of serious interest among module developers.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had a hard time over at Drupal.com finding screens of the interface the client is presented with when editing and managing content.

As a rule, if the CMS puts you away from your page and to a list of "posts" to edit with TinyMCE, it's not modern. Atleast in my book.

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure what screen you're referring to. Perhaps the admin content list? Typically content producers will add content via the "add content" link/button (depends on your theme), edits are possible from any screen where the content is displayed.

Drupal supports a number of rich text editors, TinyMCE is only one of them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Could you give me a screenshot of editing in a page where content is displayed? Didn't find one on their site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If cost is no object, you should be looking at: <http://www.ellingtoncms.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you care to elaborate?

<comment><USER22> Sure. It is the best CMS out there, the one django was originally carved out of. A few django core developers still work on that and it is the framework used by all the major news companies in the world.

But comes at a high price.

<comment><AUTHOR> All the major news companies? Don't see that on their page. I don't find any screenshots of it in-use, could you help me with that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Sounds like you are looking for something bigger/more capable than a WordPress type of CMS. In that case, try Umbraco. I have never used it myself but it looks very user-friendly: [http://umbraco.org/help-and-support/video- tutorials/getting-...](http://umbraco.org/help-and-support/video- tutorials/getting-started/what-is-umbraco)

<comment><AUTHOR> It is way to tech centric in terms of updating info and creating. Boxy admin interface. Sorry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Apostrophe Now is modern, and their homepage describing it is modern as well: A screencast. Not like certain others expecting you to look elsewhere to be shown how it looks like.

<http://www.apostrophenow.com/>

Won't mention techy stuff like the framework it's built on, (Symfony).

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks good, but basic - wonder how it handles more custom 'modules'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Most CMS systems leave the design up to the developer. The UX components are based on how well you lay over CSS, JavaScript and graphics. Drupal and Wordpress already have rich theming systems and a lot of (out-of-the-box) themes that give a nice UX. For something a bit more advanced you could use something like Apache Lenya.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry for not specifying more. I'm interested in the part of the system that does the editing, not the theme for the site. The use case where the owner updates his site with new content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Having hacked my way through Joomla, I think the answer to your question would be a wrapper that hides the CMS.

<comment><AUTHOR> What kind of wrapper?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Element Fusion, especialy lightcms (<http://www.lightcms.com/>). Hosted, no worries. Easy to use.

<comment><AUTHOR> I looked at the videos, and the editing ux seems simple. But when clicking "Settings" the user gets a boat load of techy stuff to adjust.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Two things I wouldn't want to see in a modern CMS:

\- IDE-like administeation UI with fifty buttons in the toolbar

\- Forms for content editing

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agree!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I really like goodie.com and flavors.me. Although they are not full CMS the way they mange content is very impressive.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see them more like services than a full blown CMS, but thanks for the input.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> What features are you looking for in the CMS? Just content on pages? -> use a password protected wiki?

<comment><AUTHOR> The feature I'm trying to dig up while doing research is a friendly interface for the people managing the site after delivery from webdev/designer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Is Django off the mark here?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah.

<comment><USER31> Why?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> As a sitecore certified developer i feel inclined to pimp it :)

If you're looking for a great .net based cms, its the best.

<comment><AUTHOR> If your doing self promotion, please elaborate on why it's great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wordpress, end of story.</comment>


Will Amazon Go win the war between computer vision and RFID in retail? - <AUTHOR> https://www.idtechex.com/research/articles/will-amazon-go-win-the-war-between-computer-vision-and-rfid-in-retail-00010463.asp <comment><USER2> Ignoring the cost of the supporting infrastructure, RFIDs are expensive and computer vision is cheap. Computer vision with machine learning is the likely winner based upon cost and flexibility.</comment>


Show HN: Newsboard – A Hacker News Clone - <AUTHOR> http://newsboard.robdelacruz.com/ <comment><USER2> @robdelacruz: I have a few security-related findings for you that you might want to take a look at:

\- I can inject any JavaScript in Titles, Tags and possibly other locations.

\- By manually changing the value of the `userid` cookie, I can log in as any user ("1" for admin). This also allows me to access the admin section of the website.

\- It's highly recommended to enable "HttpOnly" for session cookies. (Secure and SameSite should also be more strict if the application allows it)

Other remarks:

\- There should be a limit on the length of submission titles, these are close to infinite it seems.

Edit: It seems others are completely defacing the board by using these tricks. I just want you to know that it's not me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the bug reports. Much appreciated. Will take a look at these one by one. Hopefully to get the site back up and running.

Source code is at: [https://github.com/robdelacruz/newsboard](https://github.com/robdelacruz/newsboard)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It looks like you're using HTML form maxlength attributes to determine the maximum length for elements. I hope you're _also_ validating that on the server somehow, because of course anyone can simply delete those before posting.

Remember, no one even has to go through your form to make a POST request to one of your endpoints (unless maybe you're using CSRF tokens, which you don't seem to be). Never assume that what you send to the user has any relationship to what they send back, and never validate on the front end.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, there's no validation on the server. Need to fix those.

As quick fix to get the site up and running again, I just trimmed off any overly long title or cat beyond a certain limit of chars.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> (OP here) Hi guys, thanks for checking out newsboard.

Source code is here [https://github.com/robdelacruz/newsboard](https://github.com/robdelacruz/newsboard)

I will look into fixing the security bugs to get the site back up and running. Feel free to check out the code.

If you have time to waste, check out my "unix fortune2" web page to get your unix fortunes. It's a clone of 'unix fortune':

[http://fortune2.robdelacruz.com/](http://fortune2.robdelacruz.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Site is up again: [http://newsboard.robdelacruz.com/](http://newsboard.robdelacruz.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> i think someone figured out how to include their own javascript inside the website i got two alert boxes when i opened the page.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks neat and tidy. Is it open source?

<comment><USER6> The first link on the demo is this - [https://github.com/robdelacruz/newsboard](https://github.com/robdelacruz/newsboard)

Seems like the source

> newsboard - a bulletin board and bookmark sharing site (inspired by > HackerNews)

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. Right, that's the source:

[https://github.com/robdelacruz/newsboard](https://github.com/robdelacruz/newsboard)

I used plain css from scratch to keep it small. I tried to copy the HackerNews look, but using Flex instead of Tables.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is the source for HN available?

<comment><USER8> A older version/variant is part of the Arc sources ([http://www.arclanguage.org/](http://www.arclanguage.org/) ), but the code running the actual site is not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very cool!

</comment><comment><USER10> You should probably take this down now</comment>


Ask HN: When you are learning a new PL what do you create as your first project? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Equivalent of printing "Welcome Master" ;-)</comment>


Ask HN: Will folks getting hired at Twitter right now "get rich"? - <AUTHOR>

Assuming they ultimately end up a success, at this point Twitter will either have a colossal exit or IPO. When a growing company has a valuation in billions, does employee #200 get rich? There are many variables, but I'd love to understand how equity is distributed in a fast growing startup and what kind of value it ends up having. <comment><USER2> I know nothing about Twitter, but in general it's simple. If there are 199 employees, you can't give the 200th more than 0.5%, else that would be unfair, right? That person would have to be something really special, like a CEO or VP, to expect more when coming to the party so late. So that's the absolute maximum ceiling.

Usually about 10 to 30% of the company is reserved for employees (the rest goes to the founders and investors --- mostly investors, by this stage). So employee #200's theoretical maximum is down to 0.15% or 0.05%. And she's not going to be the last. Over time more investments and employees mean you get diluted more and more.

So do the math yourself, but remember that there are a lot of other factors, like taxes, specific skills, etc etc. If you get acquired, it's not as though they write big novelty checks and hand them out like it's a golf tournament. You exchange startup stock (some of it unvested!) for other-company stock.

Risk, impact, autonomy and reward are remarkably correlated to how early you join. But if you are in it for just one of those four things you might have a hard time adjusting to the rest.

</comment><comment><USER3> Afaik, most pre-IPO/acquisition employees get attractive amount of money but you can't really retire with the money earned.

</comment><comment><USER4> Twitter has taken in what, $160m in funding over 5 rounds. Thanks to liquidation preferences, it is probably a safe bet to say that if Twitter gets sold in 1 year for $5bn, an employee who started yesterday would see enough to put a down payment on a studio condo in Fresno.

A friend who has worked there for a while saw like 15 basis points. This was before the $100m in funding. I'd be surprised if someone were to see 1/5th of that now.

Perspective? Google took in like $25m before their IPO.

<comment><USER5> I would think that after so many rounds of funding liquidation preferences would make a massive difference. Guessing that the various VCs have made sure they get paid a nice big return on their investment first. Whatever is left is then eaten up as you move down the food chain of preferences paying people what they're owed. Eventually you reach the last in line, the rank and file employees. By that point there may well be little or no money left.

It all depends on the terms of the funding and the theoretical sale price. In summary, I don't know.</comment></comment>


How to use Windows 7 keyboard shortcuts - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworlduk.com/technology/operating-systems/windows/how-to/index.cfm?articleid=2657 <comment><USER2> Gotta love this at the beginning: "Windows 7 may just be the most keyboard friendly operating system yet." Even if you just count MS OSes, what about DOS?

</comment><comment><USER3> Auto Hotkey Scripts work amazingly in XP. I could do all of those things and more if I wanted to.

</comment><comment><USER4> I just posted a better list over here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=892752>

</comment><comment><USER5> They forgot the most useful one : Win + D for desktop

<comment><USER6> And the 2nd most useful one for techies, Win+r for the run prompt.

<comment><USER2> win7 doesn't need a run prompt, just hit the windows key and type.

<comment><USER7> It's slower, though. It takes longer to search through the index than to just run the program in the windows directory. For programs I run frequently, I place 1 letter shortcuts in the windows directory. That way, to launch a program I just type Win+R+[char]+Enter. You can also launch shortcuts on the taskbar using Win+[0-9], but if you already have an instance it will just show you the existing one .. which is useless because that's what Alt+Tab is for.

Edit: You can also assign shortcuts like Ctrl+Alt+[char], but those are more awkward to use, and also will focus an existing instance instead of creating a new one.

<comment><USER2> Those shortcuts are cool, but for programs in the path, you don't need to wait for search. You can hit the Win key, paste a long command line, and press Enter immediately. Or just throw down "cmd" or "regedit" before the menu has finished fading in, it still works.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>