Empty Mansions: Don't be old and rich in New York City - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2013/11/24/empty-mansions-dont-be-old-and-rich-in-new-york-city/ <comment><USER2> What an unfortunate event to befall a family of who acquired such wealth by honest means:

In an 1907 essay Mark Twain portrayed Clark as the very embodiment of Gilded Age excess and corruption:

He is as rotten a human being as can be found anywhere under the flag; he is a shame to the American nation, and no one has helped to send him to the Senate who did not know that his proper place was the penitentiary, with a ball and chain on his legs. To my mind he is the most disgusting creature that the republic has produced since Tweed's time.[5]

<comment><USER3> Not sure if you actually read the book, but it outlines the spirit of the times Clark lived in very well and makes the argument that Clark never stooped to the tactics of the so-called robber barons. He paid his employees well and gave back to communities. He was known as honest and fair to those who dealt with him.

His political failings could be traced back to a socially awkward nature. Politics was messy business back then and it was impossible win a race completely honestly. Nothing he did back then was any worse than what everyone else did.

It even examined Clark's history with Twain and Twain's own relationships with Clark's business rivals. That particular rant was very likely politically motivated.

<comment><USER4> so in conclusion they all lacked morals. or just being slightly less worse is enough for your ethics?

<comment><USER3> That's a very interesting philosophical question, how to judge historical figures accurately in terms of morality/ethics. My own position on the matter is that standards tend to evolve over time, so when seeking to evaluate someone, you need to take that into account.

If you just go by the Golden Rule standard of ethics, W. A. Clark was far more worthy than many of his rivals of his success. Politics, by its very nature, introduces a great number of potential moral pitfalls and there aren't always good and effective approaches to evading them.

<comment><USER2> The world isn't an ethical/moral dilemma, stuff happens and people rationalize it as to not disturb their worldview.

If you can convince most people that your reasons about why stuff happened are valid then you win.

It's like Remembrance Day, no one died for all the horrible shit that happened, only the good stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This sounds very similar to famous socialite Brooke Astor who died a few years ago at 105 in New York with a $198 million estate. There were all sorts of charges of elder abuse and stealing from her, and claims that she was forced to live in squalor. Her son and his attorney ended up serving jail time for grand larceny and forgery.

She was married to the great-great grandson of super-rich John Jacob Astor. I find this to be an interesting example of how long wealth can persist in the US, and a counterexample to the "three generations shirtsleeves-to- shirtsleeves" theory. (As a random aside, her husband's enormously wealthy father died on the Titanic after being denied a lifeboat spot. I find it hard to imagine this happening to the rich and famous today.)

<comment><USER6> > (As a random aside, her husband's enormously wealthy father died on the > Titanic after being denied a lifeboat spot. I find it hard to imagine this > happening to the rich and famous today.)

Well, with vastly improved safety regimes in effect across the board, it's difficult to find comparable situations. But you surely won't find third class passenger locked below deck while the upper crust is sauntering into the lifeboats.

The super rich probably doesn't travel on the same vessels as the riff raff at all, but I'm not sure private jets are actually safer than commercial airlines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm mystified by the pro-aristocracy tone of the article:

> There are some happy parts of the book. Clark uses her fabulous wealth to > indulge a taste for the world's best dollhouses and model Japanese castles, > built by craftsmen in Germany and Japan. She pays an assistant to write down > transcripts of Flintstone episodes. When she wants to make a little music, > she takes a Stradivarius violin out of the closet (first she needs to choose > which of her Stradivariuses to play).

Yes, it's horrible that these people took advantage of her, but I find it very difficult to get that worked up over it. On the balance, she still won the cosmic lottery, inheriting a tremendous fortune she did nothing to earn, and getting to spend it on trivialities like dollhouses. Rich heiresses attract scumbags for precisely the reasons suggested in the book (they are easy to deceive), and in a way such activity is just the natural downside of inheriting a large fortune in the first place. Without justifying the behavior of any of the people involved, I can't help but feel my feelings of pity are better directed elsewhere.

<comment><USER8> I'm mystified by 'blame the victim' tone of your comment.

Does any old lady deserve to be taken advantage by scumbag lawyers or accounts?

<comment><USER9> The victim here is the masses of 19th century mine workers discarded in the production of her fortune.

<comment><USER10> Because there can be only one victim, right?

<comment><USER9> Because the slight of losing 0.001% of one's wealth in a non-violent manner is comparable to the loss of thousands of lives, right?

<comment><USER10> Whoa, how about not putting words in my mouth, dude. I didn't say it was the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The book being reviewed here is one I've been meaning to pickup and read for a while, just been lazy about it. Huguette Clark was literally a living fossil - possibly the very very last holdover from the gilded age, really a very sad story. Though by all accounts - she was happy largely - so maybe not so sad in absolute terms over all.

<comment><USER3> I'm going through it now. It's a fascinating account, to be sure.

<comment><USER11> I just read it, having done so it appears she was largely happy, and in her place by her own choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Although the doctors and nurses were taking care of this woman as best they could, their ultimate goals were purely monetary based on her large wealth.

Sad.

<comment><USER2> Yes, truly despicable, personally I forgo a paycheque for the honour of working for the wealthy for free.

These doctors and nurses have some gall as members of the working class to consider acting like those they serve. Who do they think they are? Millionaires?

<comment><USER13> There is a vast gulf that exists between working for free and blatantly defrauding your patients. Most of humanity lives within that gulf. From your tone, I suspect you may not.

<comment><USER2> From the sounds of the article everything they did was legal...

Just as her father buying his senate seat was... Just as the various ways in which Montana copper mine strikes were dealt with, just as the way Montana came to become a state.

I suspect you may be uncomfortable with the moral foundations of US law and how that country and its wealth came to be as well as the legal means by which one may acquire wealth in the United States.

<comment><USER14> Just because it was legal doesn't make it moral.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> How truly sad, it must have been so hard for her only ending up with $310 million at the end of her life.

It's far better to be old and poor in New York City, that way you can get food stamps instead of having to subsist on a paltry quarter billion dollars.

<comment><USER15> Read the story of Christina Onassis and think if you would gladly switch places with her.

If that woman lived the last 20 years of her life without friends and normal human connections - it was a prison with gold bars but prison non the less.

Why is that we always look on the poor people below us as "they deserve it", and on the richer than us that are not fortunate as "big deal - they have money" it is only us the the Goldilocks of suffering that deserve compassion from the universe.

<comment><USER16> The short wikipedia page about her seems to claim that she ran her father's business after his death for a period of 12 years. That doesn't seem like a prison with gold bars, it sounds like a career. Sure it seems like her personal life wasn't a fairytale but how many people's are?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's deplorable that so many stole from her. But as to the title, it's even sadder how _poor_ people were systematically stolen from, historically and I'm sure currently to some degree.

</comment><comment><USER18> AT&T and DMV does worse to me and i'm not even rich.

</comment><comment><USER19> I hate to be that guy, but why was this posted to hacker news, the site dedicated to news for hackers?

<comment><USER20> If you hate being that guy, don't be that guy.

<comment><USER21> Sometimes we can't all be the guy we want to be.

<comment><USER13> That's fine when you want to be a guy who saves kittens and fights cancer but end up leading a more mundane life. But when it comes down to not wanting to be the guy who makes a certain kind of comment, well, just don't do that. It's easy!

<comment><USER22> I believe it was a lovely piece of irony.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


We've lost the internet, it's all about damage control now - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/eu/2017/06/09/pirate-bay-founder-weve-lost-the-internet-its-all-about-damage-control-now/#.tnw_9SRuqmRp <comment><USER2> There needs to be a tech innovation that bypasses the internet, with a value add to make it compelling enough, at least for the tech crowd initially. Such innovation needs to be rooted in a plan that carries the long view regarding risk management that was missed the first time around.

Otherwise, yes, it's too late.

<comment><USER3> IPFS?

<comment><USER4> Hi, I'm Regular User Steve. I use Chrome because Google told me it connects faster to the Internet or uses less data or something. Last year someone gave me a virus with Gmail so this time around I got a Mac because the guy at the store told me Macs don't get viruses.

Anyway, can you explain to me why I should use this IPFS browser thing? Can I still check my Gmail with it? Is it faster than Chrome?

<comment><USER5> It connects faster to the Internet and doesn't give you viruses

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As usual people ask for more regulations, but when you do regulations corporations always find a way around and become stronger. They become stronger because the small guy doesn't have the money, the energy and the lawyers to abide to every stupid regulation thrown at him.

It surprises me that it's the founder of tpb to call for more regulations, since he made a website that survived this long thanks to a lack of regulations.

Also it's false that today there is nothing outside of fb, google, etc There are a lot of websites and services one can use and support so that they can improve. There are a lot of cool communities outside those blessed by big corps. But I can see how the billions of internet noobs that do stupid stuff on fb or google get a lot of attentions. But they truly are noobs.

The only problem with fb, google, etc is that, as all corporations do, they will eventually lobby the government to pass regulations so that they can have an easier life against competition, and they are smart enough to do it so that you can't see it coming. They won't say "google must rule", no, they will push for ten new law every day, until there are thousands of laws and only well- payed lawyer can abide them. This is how it's always worked in all industries, in all countries. It's like a circle of economic self-destruction.

The only rule that the internet need is a rule to define what the internet is, and that rule is embedded in the concept of Net Neutrality. Because of course if I buy "the internet" I want the damn internet, not cable tv 2.0. And all the extra rules, those about freedom of speech, etc should be about how there shall be a lack of rules, not more rules.

If you ask for more rules you first get stupid stuff like the EU cookie law, and then really bad stuff that makes life difficult for the little guy, but not the big guy. When you ask for regulations from the government you pave the road for the CORPORATIONS because they have the lawyer, the money, the energy that the little guy does not have.

If you hate google and fb so much block them, for now it is possible to do it. In almost all industries there are a lot of regulations. And most of this regulations are in the end against the little guy, and favor the big guy. Maybe one day there will be a lot of regulations for the internet, but none of them will help the freedom of normal people, but just make corporations stronger. And then you really won't be able to block fb, google, youtube, etc

</comment><comment><USER7> What illness is Big Data causing us?

<comment> Joe-Z From context it sounds like he's talking about the dependence people have on services provided by Facebook and Google. (i.e. a government couldn't pass regulation constraining facebook, since its citizens would rise in upheaval being cut off from their 'drug of choice')

Big data seems to just be a synonym for the big 5 companies he's talking about here. It confused me too at first.

<comment><USER7> Hum, even so, I don't see him mentioning downsides to that dependance. I understand his argument, but you also can't say it's bad without showing how it is.

Cigarettes causes massive health issues. But coffee turned out not to really cause harm, and we're all addicted and dependent.

I think with the big 5 companies, it's unclear if any harm is being made like with tobacco, or if it's an addiction we can all continue to enjoy like coffee.</comment></comment></comment>


Conspire: A Programming Environment for NOWHERE - <AUTHOR> http://blog.duangle.com/2015/01/conspire-programming-environment-for.html <comment><USER2> Leonard Ritter is a very talented guy. Looking forward to NOWHERE.

He's known as paniq in the demoscene and did the music, 2d engine and graphics for the awesome Masagin:

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

</comment><comment><USER3> I can't help to be amazed with what they're pulling off. First of all, the game prototype looks amazing, although it may be one of those forever-early- access games, because it can't be just a game. Then you see how Blender widgets are used. Wow. Then you see how he's imitating UE4 Blueprints, again, wow.

But then the reality kicks in. Shouldn't you be making a game?

<comment><USER4> Leonard actually addresses that in a few a places, though I don't have a link handy right now. The short version is they're creating a game that's almost entirely defined by procedural content.

To even attempt such a thing requires a lot of good tools because they not only need those tools to build procedural content for the game but for their userbase to be able to as well.

He seems well aware of the trap here and is trying his best to avoid it.

<comment><USER5> This forum post[0] is one of those places where he addresses that problem:

> Right now is, hands down, the worst part of development. There are no fancy > graphics to show off, no intricate gameplay, no surprising AI, no badass > music, just unglamorous system design that interests no one so we can get > all the aforementioned stuff in a manageable form that doesn't keep becoming > a sluggish and unserviceable mess. […] The importance of tooling can not be > overstated. There are no tools out there for the kind of game we're working > on, and it comprises 90% of what makes the game, as nearly all of our > content is procedural in one way or another, and not handmade. If there's > currently a lack of procedural content out there, it's precisely because of > the lack of tooling.

[0] [http://nowherians.com/discussion/comment/254/#Comment_254](http://nowherians.com/discussion/comment/254/#Comment_254)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was sold on the game video, then the article talks about SICP and LISP - nice! Sounds like great fun and possibly some real innovation here. I hope it's beta for a few years like Minecraft with a strong developer community around it.

Reminds me of the lofty goals of [http://lighttable.com](http://lighttable.com) and EVE [http://www.chris- granger.com/2014/10/01/beyond-light-table/](http://www.chris- granger.com/2014/10/01/beyond-light-table/)

<comment> Arcanum-XIII There's Smalltalk env too, like Pharo/Squeak, the long forgotten Lisp Machine, Max/MSP and their descendant... A lot of giants on which shoulder we can see a bright future !

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, this (and the game videos) looks awesome!

I'm a CS student and I'm very interested in procedural generation. I was wondering if there are any particular resources you'd recommend for a beginner?

<comment><USER8> If you want knowledge from the same pool Ritter's drawing from, check out this blog post[1] about _fr-041: Debris_ by ryg. Now, keep in mind, Ritter didn't do work on _Debris_ as far as I know, but he's spent a lot of time with the people who did, and some of the ideas in NOWHERE have their origin in that scene (a lot of it is totes original, but you're asking about procedural generation, and procedural generation is definitely a demoscene thing).

Before game dev, Ritter was known as a musician and a demoscener (if you don't know what the demoscene is, do some googling -- it's deffo worth it). The demoscene group he was part of broke exciting new ground in the mid 2000s by releasing some productions that packed ridiculous amounts of content into a very small size by procedurally generating lots of things, like textures and geometry. The greatest of these demos is called _Debris_ [2], and some consider it the best demo ever. Ryg's article is basically a big index of articles explaining how parts of _Debris_ were written, as well as how they work.

[1] [https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/debris-opening- the-...](https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/debris-opening-the-box/)

[2] Watch it here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxfmxi- boyo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxfmxi-boyo)

and keep in mind that everything you're seeing was rendered in real time by a single executable 177kb in size.

[3?] Also worth looking at: [http://www.iquilezles.org/www/index.htm](http://www.iquilezles.org/www/index.htm)

<comment><USER7> Awesome, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm just waiting for the inevitable realization when he realizes he can cut out Lua from the architecture and go straight in with Scheme.

<comment><USER10> Actually, I very much wanted to do that, the problem is that there seems to be no Scheme implementation available that offers such a tight and convenient libffi integration. LuaJIT parses preprocessed C header files with very few adjustments. Terra, which links LuaJIT with LLVM, goes the full mile and directly uses libclang to generate interfaces.

If you know a Scheme implementation that does this (including supporting a LLVM back-end in addition to a regular, possibly JIT'ed interpreter), please do not hesitate to mention!

<comment> Arcanum-XIII Gambit and Chicken are near your goal, but I don't know how far you can go with it. And there's of course GNU Guile.

<comment><USER10> Neither is suitable. Guile has the wrong license, none of these three has bindings for a no-JIT code generator like LLVM.

It's no big deal though. The Scheme -> Lua compiler is small (300 lines) the dialect is better suited for hash tables and the dynamic part is mostly a driver to generate/execute machine code at runtime.

At this point, a switch to Scheme would service purism more than pragmatism. Lua is already a good Scheme VM (has been strongly inspired by Scheme, in fact) so it'll do. At least I hope it will. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> TD-Linux Hey, this is neat, I've always liked the Blender node editor, and now a clone of it is split out into its own library.

I'm also happy to see the tools open-sourced, which is sadly not common enough in the game development world.

</comment><comment><USER11> What is this what looks like flow style programming environment? I could not find anything about it.

</comment><comment><USER12> previous submission: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8848714](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8848714)</comment>


Show HN: InstaNote – notes in a simple chat interface - <AUTHOR> https://www.instanote.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> I made this for myself since all the notes apps were overly complex and didn't support the important things I wanted - e.g, treating URLs as first class citizens, custom reminders, or easy sharing.

I've heard from others that they have similar needs too, and complexity and overhead of note taking apps is one reason they don't use them much.

<comment><USER3> Just a heads up: on the search screen, there's a segmented control to filter results. On my iPhone 11 running iOS 13, it looks very out of place. It also doesn't look like the screenshots on the App Store.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Since many are asking:

\- notes are saved in the cloud

\- currently requires Google login (but that was only because I wanted to get something out the door quickly). I'm considering implementing other login providers and also device-only notes if there is enough interest. I know there are legitimate concerns around this topic: I'm not tied to the login mechanism per se.

<comment><USER4> Is there a function to export notes from the cloud? Much prefer local backup options.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not yet, but that's on my list of things to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use "Saved Messages" in Telegram for this purpose. Very handy because you can forward messages from other users or channels.

<comment><USER6> I also use #tags there and everywhere in other chats, because telegram can quickly search and go to these locations. E.g. after discussing some site, address or credentials in some chat, I reply to the specific message with like "#password router office" right in the chat. And then in the chat list there is a magnifying glass button, where you just type # and then can choose out of any #tag you ever used (#password), and then it shows all locations where it was used, with a context (#password router office, #password wifi home, etc). That doesn't work for secret chats though, afaik, but maybe it is a feature.

Tagging is different from forwarding in obvious ways (one can delete chats, modify messages, etc), but sometimes it is even more convenient than clumping up your Saved Messages. Tags may be used there as well, obviously.

There is another method, somewhat abusive to telegram, but it doesn't seem to care. For a specific topic, you can easily create a bot with a unique name and just chat with them. It is okay if bot doesn't actually have a backend and doesn't read your messages. Also bot API is so easy to use, so that if you're a developer and have a personal vps or "underbed server", you can connect yourself to a database of any flavor you could imagine. Telegram really shines here, and an entire $subj functionality may be implemented as such bot (which maybe is a great opportunity to promote and integrate your app further, $author).

<comment><USER7> Rather than creating bots, you can also create private channels (of which you are the only member) for each topic and send/fwd stuff there. Essentially having multiple "Saved messages" with different names. If you don't want to see them on your chatlist you can drop them all in a folder too.

<comment><USER6> Ah, nice. I didn't try to create a channel before and didn't know that I can be the sole subscriber. Thanks for the cue!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Surprised Apple let you publish this with only the option to sign in with a google account and not let you use any functionality until you do. I would also prefer to not sync yet more stuff with Google. Otherwise, seems pretty handy, I'll check it out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Sounds like google login is an area of concern for many. I'm considering other login providers too, would love to know what you prefer (device-only notes, or synced with a separate account or a different provider).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This looks like whatsapp - and in whatsapp you can do a chat to yourself

<comment><USER10> In case anyone isn't aware, the trick is to create a group with any contact and then remove them. Mine is pinned to the top and named Notes - <USER2> unfortunately is the most robust way to share images and notes from desktop to Android (I tried Pusbullet and Join too)

<comment><USER11> Another option that's cleaner imo is to literally start a chat with yourself as OP mentioned. Simply navigate to this URL on your phone [https://api.whatsapp.com/send?phone=$1](https://api.whatsapp.com/send?phone=$1)

Replace $1 with your phone number including country code but without a + sign.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm using "Saved Messages" in Telegram and it does most of that stuff.

I store text, files, links, videos and I even use it to send this from my PC to my phone or vice versa.

I also have several channels with bots like grocery list, reminders, etc. And I can make my own bots that connect to almost any service I want. I started using Telegram as an alternative to Whatsapp and now I'm using it even as my own personal "Jarvis". I still haven't developed all the stuff I want to a fully functional personal manager but the possibilities are endless.

This app looks cool. Simple and straightforward, which is something I always look up to but in this scenario I think we (at least I) need something more, to be able to make it talk to other services.

</comment><comment><USER13> Feels weird. I often send a message to myself using Facebook Messenger in order to take a quick note. I do this because I can easily access it on any device and I generally have the Messenger opened in the background. I'm not sure if I want to have filtering and searching in a chat style note taking app. I don't care for organization of those quick, ad-hoc notes with short lifespan. If I want something persisted, I'll probably use a more dedicated, organized place.

<comment><USER14> Interesting to see I'm not the only one who does this on messenger. It's such a good way to store information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I like the idea. Seems like a good way to outline blog posts and whatnot. A few requests: allow for images and other attachments, include a dark mode, and charge something so it's sustainable and worth maintaining and improving.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! Images and other attachments are supported already.

Dark mode is on my list of things to do. Charging is too :) I wanted to make sure it is useful for folks so I can dedicate time to development and make it sustainable by charging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Solid idea, even better execution. Impressed you did apps on both major platforms

Only think it needs to replace me sending to slack or other note app is some way to get it on my computer. Maybe that's an ifttt connector or something.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Considering having something in the browser for use on desktop & laptops too. Would that work for you?

<comment><USER16> Yep perfect

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This reminds me of google keep.

</comment><comment><USER18> I use this in WhatsApp: Created a new group chat with a friend, then kicked her out - now I'm having an empty chat just for myself.

<comment><USER19> Telegram has this built-in. The chat list contains an entry called "Saved Messages" that is basically a one-to-one chat with yourself.

<comment><USER20> I pin the chat to the top for quick access, but one downside is the notes aren't fully accessible offline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It just looks like WhatsApp – why not use that instead?

For those who miss the "Saved Messages" thing from Telegram: You make a group and kick out everybody. Then you are in a group – alone. Now stick it to the top of WA and voilá! There you have your simple notes :)

Great thing, since you can access it with your PC via web.whatsapp.com.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is exactly what I have been looking for, few questions

\- why does it need login? \- what does it do with my data? \- does the data live on phone or on your servers? \- is it possible to export all the data somewhere?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Requires login since data is backed up on the server. Export is a good idea and something I've been planning to add - perhaps Google Drive or a simple file to download.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Dammit, I have been playing for two months with mockups and dirty quick PoC for something like that an now someone actually made it.

Congrats to the author, now off to check it out :).

</comment><comment><USER24> Very cool! I have started to build something a little similar but this looks pretty polished! Do you have any API? I would love to pull some of the data out

</comment><comment><USER25> I like this idea and m certainly going to try it out for a while. What is the IAP for?

</comment><comment><USER26> Looks neat. Where are the notes stored, locally on the device or in the cloud?

<comment><AUTHOR> They are stored in the cloud, mainly so everything isn't lost with the device.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> very cool idea!

edit: you can only use the app if you sign in via Google. Uninstalled.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wanted login to be able to backup notes to the cloud. Would you want something to keep data just on the phone, or login with a different provider? That is to say: I'm considering other login providers and also just local on- device notes if there is enough interest.

Thanks for the feedback and definitely interested in understanding your requirements better.

<comment><USER28> Also love the idea, and required Google sign-in is a dealbreaker for me too. I'd love it I could save notes in iCloud, but I'd be fine just keeping them local if you don't want to maintain multiple login/sync providers.

I'd also pay a few bucks for this app, FWIW!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated! Planning to take a stab at this soon.

<comment><USER29> Yes, I will pay few bucks too for, local only storage and optional login.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Some reality check about getting rich through a startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Startups/What-startup-could-make-me-a-millionaire-in-four-years-if-I-got-hired-as-an-employee-today#ans971094

<comment><USER2> Despite the pessimistic view on start-ups and how it is not all peaches and roses for founders I still will take my chances anytime!

</comment><comment><USER3> so don't raise so much money? i think it's preposterous to raise that much money when it is definitely not required to build a great business.. 40 million for fab? what the hell are they gonna spend it on?</comment>


Startup School 2006 (1 hour video) - <AUTHOR> http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-4652085287991069440 <comment><USER2> This along with some other goodies can also be found on this page: <http://startupschool.infogami.com/> which was submitted here a little while ago. Good video though and worth a watch if you haven't already.</comment>


Is that whole gamification thing really over? - <AUTHOR> http://www.information-age.com/industry/software/123458201/whole-gamification-thing-really-over <comment><USER2> The elephant in the room is that gamification _does not work_ in the workplace. Work, a place where we spend most of our time and energy in our entire lives, is something most people want to be meaningful and important—treating it like a game is the opposite of purposeful.

On top of that, it's not effective. The idealistic idea that competition breeds productivity and effectiveness is a flat-out lie. Instead, you get in- fighting, unfairness, bitterness, resentment, and incorrect direction. Even in a seemingly simple procedural job like a production line, gamification and management by objective leads to the wrong results. It is extremely difficult to correctly align the objectives with the true goals of the company, and especially difficult to produce quality output.

Instead, what companies need is good leadership, clear communication of common purpose, and ways and motivation to improve both individuals and systems of production constantly. There is no replacement.

Start here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming)

I'm quite happy to see the natural rejection of this entire industry, it inspires confidence.

<comment><USER3> You seem to be conflating competitive games with using game mechanics to achieve a result. Gamification goes well beyond points, badges and leaderboards and helps managers tap into intrinsic motivators (like personal satisfaction) to achieve results. Done poorly, its all PBL all day and doesn't work for the reasons you've outlined. I think its fair to say that "bad gamification" doesn't work, but its a big leap to toss out the entire field based on the narrow selection of "bad execution" that you use in your example.

<comment><USER4> I like to think of "good gamification" as "help people notice the stuff they are actually getting done."

When people notice what is getting done, they'll more likely be able to judge whether it's the right stuff to be done and what actions produce more of it.

A corollary of this is "you get what you measure". Whatever you are rewarding, you'll get more of it.[1]

[1]: Wally from Dilbert: "I'm going to go write me a minivan!" [http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-11-13/](http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-11-13/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From working at a giant megacorp I can see three gamification trends:

1) Everything is slower at a big corp than a startup, so they're laughing and onto the next big thing whereas level 7 middle manager at megacorp inc is just implementing it at megacorp inc because they've just caught up to where everyone else was 10 years ago. There's still money to be made, but to slow moving non-tech billion dollar companies not million dollar companies and other tech startups.

2) Managers hate it because employee reward should continue to be based solely on golf games and kissing up and physical attraction and socioeconomic class, just like it has been historically. Having some app decide who's doin it right and who's doin it wrong smacks of replacing that manager with a tiny little shell script, and oddly enough managers don't like the idea of downsizing themselves. Never sell gamification to the manager of "mere resources", sell to the manager's manager or higher.

3) Someone's 3rd party tool is hard to game and manipulate, but something home grown can be screwed around with so the "right" people win, both preselected peons and preselected lower level mgrs. This is crucial. Don't sell an incorruptible black box, nobody wants that. Sell a toolkit, something where you can pick the winners ahead of time and then generate the "proof" you were correct. In other words emphasize customization of algo and ability to run tests on historical data so the customized algo produces the predefined result. This also means gather a lot of data so its always numerologically possible to generate the predetermined result, even if you have to do something weird like divide the coffee budget by the internet bandwidth consumed multiplied by the number of ceiling tiles in the department, this is also called "data mining".

<comment><USER6> #3 is a very interesting point to be made and something that I (as Ambition co-founder) think about a lot. We've tried to make our product powerful in a responsible way but there's definitely the fine-line of "what's best for the company" and "what's best for the person paying for the product". We receive requests every day from managers asking for the ability to manually manipulate the (objective) data that we're automatically pulling in from CRMs, Phone Systems, Spreadsheets.

I remember talking to PG a couple months ago about how Ambition could potentially decrease office politics and thus "optimize work". Maybe it's a fool's errand given a company of X size or Y age.

<comment><USER7> Are you sure you want to spend your life catering to corruption? It seems better to resist corruption than to profit from it, both for your own personal life and for the lives of those your product would be influencing.

 _Someone 's 3rd party tool is hard to game and manipulate, but something home grown can be screwed around with so the "right" people win, both preselected peons and preselected lower level mgrs. Don't sell an incorruptible black box, nobody wants that. Sell a toolkit, something where you can pick the winners ahead of time and then generate the "proof" you were correct._

On one hand, this is something people clearly want, and YC's mantra is "make something people want." On the other hand, your life would be subservient. Indeed, you'll be directly subservient in that you'll be answering to the will of those who are corrupt, and indirectly subservient in that you'll be perpetuating corrupt systems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I use Duolingo ever day. Their app/website is heavily gamified to the point where I think it's part of their tagline. But, at least for me, language learning is fun. When it's not fun it's at least engaging and/or challenging. I don't know if gamification can be painted over fundamentally miserable modus operandi.

<comment><USER9> This article talks about gamification pretty specifically in the Enterprise sector. Gamification in the consumer sector is definitely still booming

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't like the idea of gamification. At least the "do stuff -> get points" kind of gamification.

I find that it makes people do the right thing for the wrong reasons. I should work hard because it's what I'm supposed to do. It is the _right thing_ to do! Not to say that these systems can be "gamed" (pun intended). It gets incredibly demoralising for a hard worker, doing stuff by the book, to see a colleague exploiting and cheating the system.

Imagine it with software development. You get points each bug solved. The hard worker will carefully correct it, the right way, with proper testing, acessing impacts, all that stuff. The "exploiter" will just thow around a quick hack so that it works correctly, in about 1/5 of the time. And he can use the remaining 4/5 of the time to solve more bugs, and earning more points!

TL;DR: It encourages people to do stuff for the wrong reasons and, in my opinion, that is bad and wrong.

<comment><USER11> I also dislike gamification, because it usually puts emphasis on arbitrary metrics that are not necessarily related to success.

Having said that, I want to note that the exploiter you're talking about exists in every organization, whether they use a scoring/ranking system or not. Gamification systems are abusable, but hardly any more abusable than any other human management system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> In my experience, enterprise gamification, like enterprise facebook, enterprise twitter and enterprise wikis are, for the most part me-too bullshit bought and sold without any real justification beyond an easy, hip-sounding KPI for some executive.

That said, underneath all the Gartner (Expensive Cliff's Notes for CTOs) references and stilted 'enterprise' language there's a good point.

 _" Turning the office into a Chuck E. Cheese isn't going to hide the fact that Big Brother is watching over them every second of the workday, and they aren't receiving a single tangible benefit from it."_

Exactly.

I've rarely, if ever seen an enterprise that didn't treat its new processes, SLA and policies as utterly one-sided hammers to bludgeon the rank and file with. It's all downside for the employees.

These places don't need leaderboards, they need to remember how invest in their employees and offer tangible incentives.

<comment><USER13> _These places don 't need leaderboards, they need to remember how invest in their employees and offer tangible incentives._

Bingo. No one who is savvy _wants_ to be on a leaderboard. That's actually horrible for your career. It doesn't identify you to upper management in any meaningful or positive way (it's "good at grunt work") and it makes you a target later on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So I have some experience in this, having researched gamification quite heavily as part of my PhD thesis [1]. Note that I am going to talk about gamification as described by Zichermann and as used in this article, not about "gameful interfaces" as used by Jane McGonigal et al. after the "gamification" term was so thoroughly poisoned by gamification companies as mentioned in the OP.

The OP hits on two key points. The first is that employees know bullshit when they see it. The second is that the wrong metrics were often chosen, and that anything that didn't have a easy metric was thrown out.

These two points are symptomatic of the root issue at the heart of this: enterprise gamification companies _don 't, and never did, care about employee well-being_. This was true of every gamification salesperson and author (Zichermann in particular) that I ever came across. They were all snake-oil salesmen selling stuff to CEOs who read about gamification in an airplane magazine. And to be fair to them, they were very good at it, and I guess the smartest ones also took the money and ran.

Gamification used buzzwords and metrics to provide feedback about employee productivity, but never provided any meaning because no deeper motivation was ever attempted to be tapped. Zichermann was infamous at misrepresenting or ignoring the psychological literature that ran counter to the nonsense he was spouting [2]. He particularly rejected intrinsic motivation, which is pretty much everything anyone ever wants out of their employees, in favor of the extrinsic motivators, which creates this arms race known as the hedonic treadmill [3], where employers would have to offer more and more motivators in order to keep interest. Note that paying people more is a classic extrinsic motivator.

So you have a whole bunch of points and badges and such, but to what end? What do they represent? What do they mean to those that hold them? The value of an Xbox 360 achievement, of a Boy Scout badge, of a Weight Watchers token, was never about the thing at the end, but about the meaningful trip they represented and reminded holders of. Gamification never bothered with that, and enterprise gamification, in particular, couldn't have cared any less. Making employees more productive was never the goal, it was selling stuff while the buzzwords were hot.

Gameful ideas _can_ and _do_ work when employed in a thoughtful, meaningful way that supports the intrinsic motivators of the given task. However, that's _very tricky_ , as it's way too easy to misalign incentives (e.g. giving a badge for archiving email quickly, what's the result going to be?) which is why actual game designs take years to perfect before they are released. There are often simpler, quicker wins for improving employee motivation.

[1] More easily digested book - [http://www.amazon.com/Irresistible-Apps- Motivational-Web-bas...](http://www.amazon.com/Irresistible-Apps-Motivational- Web-based- Communities/dp/1430264217/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404922929&sr=8-1&keywords=irresistible+apps)

Free dissertation - [http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~ejw/dissertations/Christopher- Lewis...](http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~ejw/dissertations/Christopher-Lewis- dissertation.pdf)

[2] [http://gamification-research.org/2011/09/a-quick-buck-by- cop...](http://gamification-research.org/2011/09/a-quick-buck-by-copy-and- paste/)

[3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill)

<comment><USER15> I didn't read the article but I am going to read your thesis. I have a question: Is it possible to have enterprise gamification? What should be the end goals - the achievements so to speak?

Isn't the whole idea of gamification(an idealization that didn't quite happen I guess) is to make crud work seem like fun? But, then, wouldn't repetition of the same joyless task be mundane to the point of being Sisyphean? I agree that a game achievement is fun to get but archiving mail day after day would get old pretty fast(I think).

And as a grad student myself I must ask, have you considered the possibility of gamification systems in academe(school in general)? I guess that's what the trophies(and convocations) are for, right?

<comment><USER14> So there is evidence that people will go looking for intrinsic motivation. The famous example is that of a car builder as described in relation to Flow Theory [1], where this guy on an assembly line would try and make a game out of his small piece, trying to assemble it faster and faster. However, what happens when you introduce extrinsic motivators into the mix is what is known as the Overjustification Effect, where people start to think they are doing it for the extrinsic motivator and erode their intrinsic motivation. If we gave our car mechanic an extra $20 if he was always in the Top 20% of workers, he's going to start thinking he's doing it for the $20 and not because he wants to do better at his internal game.

So if we assume that people will go looking for intrinsic motivation in even the most tedious jobs, then we can design structures that provide feedback to enhance that motivation. The key to metrics is that they need to provide feedback on the things that the employee cares about and helps them to understand how they are doing in whatever motivates them. For our car mechanic, maybe we want to do things like:

* Show a timer with how long it's taking him to make them, how he's doing over the day, how he's doing in comparison to yesterday

* Show him the cumulative effort, illustrating how many widgets he's put together

* Show him how his work is important to the company (providing him with purpose), maybe with how many cars he's allowed to be built, and which dealerships they go to

None of this is really "gamification" as you'd think of the term. They're means to support the gameful context that the employee can choose to, _or not choose to_ engage in (e.g. the stock market is basically gambling, you choose whether you treat it as a game or not). It is, however, going to help get the sort of output that you wanted when you went looking for gamification.

Notice the risk here: If he's building things faster to play his game, his work might get sloppier. That's why such things need really careful monitoring and tweaking before being deployed. Same thing with the Target checkout thing where it shows how quickly the checkout person is pushing people out the door. My guess Target's real goal isn't getting people out the door, but getting _happy customers_ out the door. If a checkout person is being incentivized to actively not help out customers with problems that require more attention, then it's possible it's working to harm the overall goal.

EDIT: As far as gamifying education, you might be interested in "Punished by Rewards", which is a book about intrinsic motivation in schools, and was published long before gamification appeared on the scene. The book has it's critics, but it's an interesting take.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_\(psychology\)) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect)

<comment><USER16> Very interesting; thank you.

> if we assume that people will go looking for intrinsic motivation in even > the most tedious jobs

How safely can we assume that? Is there any research on it?

<comment><USER17> I don't have research for you off the top of my head, but here's anecdotal support -- there's no way these people can get this good at their tedious menial jobs[1] without finding a strong (superlatively strongest in the world) intrinsic motivation to perform better.

As Lewisham puts it, structure to maximize enjoyment of their intrinsic games is the best. Ideally, find out directly from the employees (or by being them for a while) what intrinsic games they play for their tedious tasks, and then try to build structure around making it more fun -- there's essentially 4 parts to it - holistic goals, performance stats, realtime feedback (these 3 are mentioned by example by Lewisham), and the hardest-to-implement, fun interactions.

The last is complicated, but for example, it's the reason why a clickety mechanical keyboard may be more fun to type on than one of those polymer rollable keyboards, if you have an employee whose job is to type all day [you and me probably]. Sometimes workers find ways to turn their interactions with their work fun on their own (like those in [1]), but for the less intrinsically motivated, employers facilitating it can have a huge effect.

[1] [http://www.collegehumor.com/post/6319342/goodatjobs](http://www.collegehumor.com/post/6319342/goodatjobs)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't think it's over at all. Look at 'Target' \- when you check out notice the employees have like V and G's all on their screen like GGGVGG. That shows how well their doing. G means they did good. V (or R I don't remember) means that they were too slow. The goal is to get all Gs. Call it gamification if you want. I think its not a 'new thing' anymore, its becoming to the point where it's commonplace and not really mentionable. Acceptance Apathy or whatever you want to call it.

*edit: Here's a link. It's 'R'

[http://www.levelspro.com/targets-cashier-game-is-it- really-a...](http://www.levelspro.com/targets-cashier-game-is-it-really-a- game/)

<comment><USER19> I worked at the cash register in Hollister in 2006 and we were already getting graded based on how fast and accurate our checkouts were. If you were an 'A' you could process returns without getting a manager's permission. Checkout employees being graded isn't a new thing at all, nor did it come from this gamification trend.

<comment><USER5> Speaking of cash registers, I have an anecdote that shows you don't have to actually look at the data as a manager, just publish it.

More than 20 years ago a giant poster at a grocery store I worked at as a student, displayed the delta between a cash registers contents and the computers theory of how much cash was there, per cashier. With the obvious implication a large string of large negatives would be detected. So nobody swiped cash out of the register, they're looking too closely.

The act of generating the data and publishing it was enough to get the result without ever taking action. I would imagine there are enterprise level gamification implications here. Put the call center stats on the big screen for all to see and the mgmt can simply ignore the stats, more or less, assuming the employees fall for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Note that the "article" is sourced from a "gamifier" called [http://ambition.com](http://ambition.com) Sounds a bit like second generation gamification for enterprise. First gen companies included companies such as: Badgeville, bunchball, Gigya.

Ambition's tagline? Ambition Makes Companies More Money: Transparency increases efficiency, competition boosts production.

<comment><USER21> We did source this piece a few days ago - we think the industry can deliver a lot more _actionable_ impact moving forward (specifically to enterprise/ smb's).

Our mission is to build more productive, enjoyable, & inspiring work environments... because life is too short for work to suck. (tagline still WIP)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Obviously the article talks about a very specific example of how gamification could be applied. In fact, the implementation discussed seems more like Big Data, the gamification merely present in 'displaying' this big data.

This is all fine, but then the article starts to get into what 'gamification companies should be doing' because "specific-example-A doesn't work". That is funky.

The definition of gamification is: "the use of game design elements in non- game contexts". Unlike what this article implies, using big amounts of data or 'data analysis' is not per se an integral part of gamification.

Gamification can be the use of social elements within a digital system; avatars, chat, social boards, the creation of your own character; reward systems such as receiving company points for each sale; visualisations such as translating the amount of steel produced today as how many % of an aircraft carrier is completed, etc.

The issue that gamification is not necessarily positive or useful is very valid. It does not mean that there are nog positive gamification examples or that it is dead however.

<comment><USER9> I completely agree. I also agree with the author that companies should be doing more to tell the employees and managers WHY they are doing good/bad. However, I don't think thats gamification...that's basically Business Intelligence

<comment><USER22> Why certain behaviour is desirable in companies and other behaviour isn't might not be a gamification, but one could most certainly use gamification to communicate it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The first step in any gamification effort is feedback. The second step is offering "what to do next".

This can be achieved with or without PBL (points, badges, leaderboards). If the PBL stuff doesn't connect to feedback, if the feedback is overwhelming or the calls to action are too cumbersome, unattractive or obscure, "Gamification" fails.

</comment><comment><USER24> I work better and harder when I'm actually playing a game.

Pomodoros, sprints and CrossFit all take work and turn it into an actual game.

If you are doing well you feel a surge of pride that the drudgery of typical 'work' can not provide.

Gamification is bullshit because it is not making the activity a game. It is just assigning a thin game layer on top of mundane tasks.

<comment><USER25> Pomodoros, sprints and CrossFit are not games, just structure (that many people find useful).

<comment><USER24> CrossFit is literally a game. The metcon at the end of every class is scored, and there's often a leader board. (I'd argue this is why people, included myself, get so addicted)

I'd argue that Sprints can be a game where the score is velocity.

And a Pomodoro is a game if you try and get done in 25 minutes the thing you set out to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This seems to be a popular, if misguided meme. I actually wrote a response to this on our blog when it reared it's head in Fortune a month ago: [http://www.bunchball.com/blog/post/1462/gamification-just- ge...](http://www.bunchball.com/blog/post/1462/gamification-just-getting- started)

I've been living and breathing this for 7 years now. Like anything else, when executed well it works, and there is ample evidence of that, which is why companies like SAP, Applebee's, Marriott, Chevron, Coca-Cola, Urban Outfitters, and Adobe are all customers of ours.

btw - I also wrote a book on the topic: [http://loyalty30.com](http://loyalty30.com)

</comment><comment><USER27> This article is right on time with me as I'm working to figure out if the gamification in our internal website is really worth it.

Here is the premise: Anyone can create an event and based on the type and duration its assigned a score. Once the person attends the event they are given a secret keyword to prove they were actually at the event. Then they go back online and enter the keyword and get points.

The idea of the points is to use them to enter contests for prizes and such, hopefully making attending events more enticing.

I'm not so sure the gamification is worth it. If the event is good enough it should warrant attendance based on a persons interest. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

</comment><comment><USER28> My landmark book on gamification in the enterprise was just published and I am talking extensively about intrinsic/extrinsic motivations, the problem with rewards and competition, and how to tackle blue collar workers. Exactly all those questions that you raise. And with tons of examples.

Enterprise Gamification by Mario Herger [http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LO5W6L6/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_oO1Vtb...](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LO5W6L6/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_oO1Vtb1ZR4BYF)

</comment><comment><USER29> I worked at a game company where "they" brought in someone to teach us to game-ify our work. We rejected it during the meeting. We already make games for a living, we don't need to add another layer of gaming on top of that.

The basic concept of competition WITHIN the company is counterproductive to a creative workplace. We should ALL be working TOGETHER to make the best product. We have plenty of competitors outside the building, don't need to add to the list.

<comment><USER30> "The numbers are looking good and we haven't even added any gamification [to our game] yet" \- a Chief Product Officer

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> We can't paint with too broad a brush. Gamification doesn't work for all situations but does for some. Our sales reps love the leaderboards and will make extra calls or a come in a bit early to be #1.

Consumer products use gamification well in a few cases (Duolingo, Carrot app etc).

So is the whole gamification thing really over? No. Are we getting smarter and trying not to cram it into every place where it doesn't belong? Hopefully.

<comment><USER32> "Our sales reps love the leaderboards and will make extra calls or a come in a bit early to be #1."

Because the top few sales people are treated like royalty and almost always directly benefit from each extra sale (usually via commission, also through network effects).

"Consumer products use gamification well in a few cases (Duolingo, Carrot app etc)."

Because people want to learn a language, get fit, etc. We already have the desire and know the huge benefits and these gamification products help make the journey a bit easier.

The reason enterprise style gamification doesn't work is because cranking out an extra 5 widgets a day doesn't improve the employees life one little bit. The incentives are all wrong.

I can either:

1) bust my ass off putting 100% effort into getting an extra 10-20% done each day then be too worn out to do anything else. Upside is I might be a little bit less likely to get fired and I might get a bonus bottle of wine each month.

Or

2) stay in the middle of the pack and invest my energy and determination into my side projects and l&d. Upside is in the long term I can fairly safely double or even triple my pay.

Not a hard choice and gamification isn't going to stop anyone from picking option 2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Just adding to the discussion: Stack Exchange had a whole (Q&A) website dedicated to gamification. Didn't passed the beta due to low activity.

"The Gamification site didn't have enough activity during the beta, and has been closed."

[http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/44478/gamification](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/44478/gamification)

</comment><comment><USER34> The term and the idea of gamification is good but making it really stick the creative genius must be applied to an appropriate product to make it really work. Otherwise it looks like you are just trying too hard.

</comment><comment><USER25> Don't know about enterprise gamification in general, but in the context of health, gamification is just taking off (especially in places with employer- based health insurance).

</comment><comment><USER13> _If the energy in an office is lethargic and employees are struggling, there's a deeper problem there that an office competition likely won't resolve._

::Reaches for the "no fucking shit" red button.::

 _Here's the dirty little secret of gamification software: most are inherently disrespectful towards their users. They are designed to manipulate employees, not empower them._

Executives think of "their" people as children, not adults who want respect, meaningful work, autonomy, fair pay and reasonable job security... and who can be very clever in striking back when they're being denied those things. The ones who disengage and draw a salary while doing no work? Those are the _nice_ ones.

It's amazing to me that, every time the people in the organization act in their own interests instead of falling for some grandiose executive plan that offers nothing for the careers of those who have to implement it, upper management is always like "WTF the furniture is MOVING up in this bitch".

Here's why gamification doesn't work. If someone went to Vegas with a year's salary and gambled it all away, you wouldn't care what the end result was. Some would come back with 5 years' pay. Some would be bankrupt. But you'd consider it pathological.

When that much income is on the line, when someone's career is on the line, it's not a fucking game. Workplace "gamification" takes injury (managerial oversight, anxiety, micromanagement) and adds insult by presenting it as "fun". (What do you mean, you don't like "story points"? Doesn't everyone like a bedtime story?) It's fucking _sick_.</comment>


Ask HN: Help Coinbase ate my $5,000.00 - <AUTHOR> About a month ago I wired $5,000.00 to my Coinbase account.  A straight forward process, they provided wire information and a reference number so they can attribute the funds to my account.  The wire went through, but the funds never appeared in my account.
No problem, Coinbase is slammed, having outages, busy, etc.  I waited.  After about a week I sent my first email to their customer service.  No response.
No problem, I sent another email after about ten days.  I waited.  After 15 days I got a response to my second ticket, not my first (which I assume is lost).  It read: "This is an automated email. As we experience rapid growth, we are also experiencing a high volume of support requests, and we regret not being able to answer your inquiry in a reasonable amount of time."
No problem, I will wait.  After about 20 days I re-read the email.  Apparently, they close the ticket automatically, even though they never actually responded and you have to respond to re-open it.  "If you require further assistance, please reply to this message with a note that you still need help."  So now I responded saying that I still needed help.
Problem. Now we are are passing 30 days, no real response, no money in my account, and no way to contact Coinbase.
Any ideas? <comment><USER2> Send them a invoice of USD 5000, for the service you hoped to get, but didn't receive. Include a dead line. Send via registered mail. Probably nothing will happen.

Go a small claims court and pay probably not more than USD 200.

Most other suggest to ask nicely. You already did, nothing happend and from history i doesn't seem like it ever will.

<comment><USER3> Coinbase is a UK company. To take them to small claims court, you will need to file in the UK.

Interestingly, Coinbase UK Ltd. has no share capital and the 2015 financial statements show a going concern. [1]

[1] [https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09083955/filing-h...](https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09083955/filing- history)

EDIT: I just realized connecting from outside the US shows a contract between Coinbase UK, whereas when using a VPN from the US shows Coinbase Inc. So please disregard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Coinbase is horrible. Their customer service is none existent. I waited 6 weeks to get my bank account verified so that I could make withdrawals to my bank. They say send at least 6 EUR to their Estonia account. I sent 10 EUR and it never got verified. I e-mailed numerous times, tweeted their support account, and tweeted the CEO. No response from an actual person at all.

Moved my ETH and LTC elsewhere and sold to a private buyer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had a very similar experience getting my bank account verified. It took 3 weeks and two attempts. Through it all, I too never got a response from Coinbase customer service. I guess that should have been an indicator but I've heard Coinbase is the biggest in the US and had have taken $25+ million in funding; I figured they were a pretty safe choice.

<comment><USER5> During last month Coinbase added a million users (from seven to eight):

[https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6hzar2/coinbase_hits_8...](https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6hzar2/coinbase_hits_8_million_users_they_have_added_1/)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's crazy growth however if they can't handle the growth, they shouldn't tell them to wire them money. They should update the site instead of noting turnaround times in hours instead of days and weeks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Phone: 415-843-1515 548 Market Street #23008 San Francisco, 94104 California, United States

Read more at CB Insights: [https://www.cbinsights.com/company/coinbase](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/coinbase)

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried the number 3 times to make sure: "Your call cannot be completed as dialed, please check the number and dial again."

I had a friend go to the office on Market Street but since it's in a high- rise, there's no admittance to their floor from the lobby.

<comment><USER6> you should probably send them a certified letter. it's amazing how fast people/companies respond when they think you are building a case against them. you might mention some of their responsibilities under the law that usually gets people motivated.

[https://www.ffiec.gov/bsa_aml_infobase/pages_manual/OLM_025....](https://www.ffiec.gov/bsa_aml_infobase/pages_manual/OLM_025.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In England you'd write a letter before action. This would set out what happened, why it's wrong, and what you want them to do to put it right. You'd give them a time limit - maybe 14 days. You'd send it by mail, by signed-for delivery.

Then if they haven't put things right in the time limit you'd go to court, which can be done online now.

I think a similar process exists where you are, and would focus coinbase into fixing the problem.

</comment><comment><USER8> Email the CEO: firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Done.. I'll update if I get a response.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did actually get a response from Brian's email indicating I would get transferred to priority support. We'll see what happens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This reminds me of a South Park episode.. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJNRVptyb9Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJNRVptyb9Y)

</comment><comment><USER10> At what point do you consider it theft? 6+ weeks had to be up there...

<comment><USER11> AMZN had a solid run in the past 6+ weeks. The opportunity cost of not having your money for that long is just too high. Especially if it's in limbo and not in some kind of strategic investment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> could contact your bank and try to get them to reverse the transfer

<comment><AUTHOR> It's worth a try; that would require the receiving bank to return it from the Coinbase account. Maybe they would have a better line to Coinbase then I'm getting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This happened to my friend too. It seems like a regular thing

</comment><comment><USER14> Ask your bank to reverse the wire.</comment>


Tectonic: a modernized, self-contained TeX/LaTeX engine - <AUTHOR> https://users.rust-lang.org/t/tectonic-a-complete-modernized-self-contained-tex-latex-engine/11053 <comment><USER2> > Has a command-line program that is quiet

But what about my overfull hboxes???

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the morning chuckle. Never thought I'd see an hbox joke :)

<comment><USER4> I, for one, have always preferred all of my `figs` at the end of the document anyway. ;)

<comment><USER2> That, my friend, is badness 10000.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If this wraps 120k lines of actual TeX backbones, why write the API layer in Rust at all? Yet another dependency, just to be buzzword compliant?

We've come a long way since the original literate TeX program.

<comment><USER6> I think the eventual goal is to rewrite the backend in Rust, and to make that available as a library to other applications.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure that's feasible.. there are exactly zero independent TeX or TeX- like implementations, everything is patches on top of TeX, which probably has a reason (given the general open source community's inclination to rewrite things). I am by no means an expert on TeX internals, but just cursory browsing of the code makes it look like a rather _massive_ and complex piece of software.

<comment><USER8> The C/C++ code add up to about 120,000 lines.

Yes, it is massive and complex.

Fortunately, the core engine is essentially self-contained. Almost all of the things that make the TeX frustrating come from the UX, or the difficulty of adding new capabilities that call for somewhat more modern C code. By compiling all of the C with a Rust wrapper, we get a single binary out in the end, _plus_ the ability to extend the engine in ways that were just not feasible before.

Revamping the core engine code from C to Rust would be nice, because it could be cleaner and more comprehensible, but it actually doesn't buy you anything in terms of the UX.

 __Edit: __also, I didn 't realize this when I made the decision to fork XeTeX, but LuaTeX has shifted to a C implementation that is more or less detached from the original WEB code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 'Official' website here [0].

This looks great, although I do wonder to what degree the automated downloading of dependencies limits off-line work. I'm not sure how widespread this is, but one of my biggest productivity hacks is writing with the wifi turned off (I go for pencil and paper for first drafts if possible, but editing, figures and references all require the computer).

[0]: [https://tectonic-typesetting.github.io/en-US/](https://tectonic- typesetting.github.io/en-US/)

<comment><USER10> > I am exactly of this philosophy so Tectonic is very careful NOT to require > ANY network access for builds if all of the needed resource files have been > cached locally. And because the I/O backends are pluggable, you can download > the "bundle" file containing the install tree and point Tectonic to use it > for fully network-free operation.

— The author ([https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/6e2x6m/tectonic_a_com...](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/6e2x6m/tectonic_a_complete_modernized_selfcontained/))

<comment><USER9> Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's hard to talk about a "TeX" engine when there is eTeX, XeTeX, and LuaTeX each with their own strengths and weaknesses heading in different directions. FWIW it seems to me that LuaTeX is actually the most promising of the three, not because of Lua but because of its extensibility.

<comment><USER12> Why would I use one instead of the other? I use LaTeX often, but normally let my IDE autodetect and deal with all that stuff on its own.

<comment><USER13> LaTeX generates DVI files, which need an extra conversion step to be generally useful. PDFTeX generates PDFs directly, and is generally preferable (unless you need legacy Postscript stuff).

XeTeX and LuaTeX deal with Unicode properly and can use normal fonts. Both of these output PDF files directly, like PDFTeX, but have the above advantages over it (+more). LuaTeX, as the name suggests, embeds a Lua interpreter which enables far more sophisticated and performant programmatical things (at the cost of compatibility). XeTeX can cope with legacy Postscript things like PSTricks (ick!) by generating the Postscript and automatically converting it, but that's a slow process, and I often rewrite PSTricks pictures in TikZ or Asymptote when I have to deal with them.

I generally use XeTeX, or LuaTeX when I'm okay with sacrificing compatibility for programmability.

<comment><USER14> Is PSTricks only a compatibility concern, or are people still doing new stuff in it? I can sort of imagine it... TeX packages are usually not the primary concern of the document author, so they will keep using what they learned 20 years ago.

When I wrote my diploma thesis in 2010, I was given the thesis template that the whole working group were using. It was a steaming pile of hacks that had accumulated over the years, with the recommended compilation method being latex -> dvips -> ps2pdf, and only using graphics in EPS format (IIRC). And people were still writing `\"{a}` instead of `ä`. I replaced it with a new template for use with pdflatex that took advantage of such new-fangled stuff as inputenc, cmap, pdfx and hyperref, and committed it together with a long rant of a README that started with something along the lines of "When I looked on my watch, it was the fucking 21st century."

<comment><USER13> Unfortunately, people are still using PSTricks for new stuff! I work with teaching materials at a university, and some of the people who wrote it first learned LaTeX in the 1980s, and haven't kept up with the three decades of improvements since. The obsolete hoop-jumping is kind of amazing, and I've been getting really good at complicated regex find and replace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I just use overleaf. gets work done, easy to work with collaborators, does the package install thing automatically, real time preview of what your write, has dumb-person "rich text" mode etc.

Only downside is its cloud based so I can't be productive on an airplane.

[https://www.overleaf.com/](https://www.overleaf.com/)

<comment><USER14> > real time preview of what you write

When I need that with a LaTeX document, I have vim with the TeX sources open on one half on the screen, and mupdf showing the compiled PDF on the other half, and a terminal in the background is running

      while inotifywait *.tex *.bib; do
        sleep 0.2
        pdflatex main && killall -HUP mupdf
      done

The sleep ensures that vim is finished writing the file before pdflatex runs. pdflatex is sometimes substituted for make or latexmk or whatever. SIGHUP makes mupdf reload the PDF. (If you're using e.g. Okular, it will pick up the changed PDF automatically, so that step can be skipped.)

(My intention is not to belittle cloud solutions, although maybe a little. :) Just to show how you can implement the real-time-preview feature with a very small shell script.)

<comment><USER16> You can use

        inotifywait -e move_self,close_write *.tex *.bib

and drop the sleep. This also means you will not needlessly recompile the pdf if you re-open the source file in your editor.

Side note: Only one of move_self and close_write is actually required, depending on your editor. Some editors (e.g. vim, emacs), will write the modified content to a separate file, then rename it to the real file name (in order to make it atomic) => move_self. Others will overwrite the file in-place (e.g. gedit, nano) => close_write.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Maybe use another name [https://coreos.com/tectonic/](https://coreos.com/tectonic/)

<comment><USER18> CoreOS Tectonic is not trademarked and is not unique.

Looks like OP's project started around November. I believe that's around when CoreOS Tectonic was released as well.

<comment><USER10> As discussed elsewhere in the thread, Tectonic _is_ actually trademarked by CoreOS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > powered by XeTeX

Does XeTeX support microtype these days? It is important if you want "best-in- the-world output" to PDF.

<comment><USER20> If i read correctly it does not say "powered by XeTeX" but "derived by a XeTeX Implementation"

<comment><USER8> Right.

The hope is that the easier development process will make it easier to add fancy features like microtypography ... but for me the real prize is HTML output that doesn't suck, so that's going to be the focus of my work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Sounds like a rewrite, but it's just a wrapper.

<comment><USER22> It is currently a wrapper as the first stage of an incremental re-write.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is a terrible idea as Tectonic as a software product already exists: [https://tectonic.com](https://tectonic.com)

It is a registered "computer software" trademark as well:

[http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4805:npp...](http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4805:nppxvg.2.11)

<comment><USER24> "Terrible idea" is a rather aggressive way to dismiss hours of someone's work because you don't like the name.

<comment><USER23> Incorrect, the name is fine. The name is also a legally registered trademark of a company with a commercial business around said name. I'm unsure of how well you know/understand US Trademark law, but the gist is that you lose a trademark that you don't defend.

This means that the name should be changed voluntarily or CoreOS will be obligated to ask them to change it.

        Word Mark	TECTONIC
        Goods and Services	IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: Computer software, namely, software for developing, managing, updating, and maintaining online server instances and clusters hosted by third parties; computer operating system software; computer operating system software for distributed systems. FIRST USE: 20150406. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20150406
        IC 038. US 100 101 104. G & S: Providing access to hosted computer operating systems and computer applications through the Internet; Peer-to- peer network computer services, namely, electronic transmission of audio, video and other data and documents among computers. FIRST USE: 20150406. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20150406
        Standard Characters Claimed
        Mark Drawing Code	(4) STANDARD CHARACTER MARK
        Serial Number	86560796
        Filing Date	March 11, 2015
        Current Basis	1A
        Original Filing Basis	1B
        Published for Opposition	December 22, 2015
        Registration Number	5013800
        Registration Date	August 2, 2016
        Owner	(REGISTRANT) CoreOS, Inc. CORPORATION DELAWARE 3043 Mission Stret San Francisco CALIFORNIA 94110
        Attorney of Record	Brian R. Coleman
        Type of Mark	TRADEMARK. SERVICE MARK
        Register	PRINCIPAL
        Live/Dead Indicator	LIVE

Courtesy of [http://tmsearch.uspto.gov](http://tmsearch.uspto.gov) TESS search for Serial 86560796

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> So it's like latexmk + lazy downloading? How does it compare against latexmk?

<comment><USER8> I can't speak for latexmk, but Tectonic has, if I may say so myself, some quite sophisticated logic for managing reruns and figuring out which intermediate files can't be written to disk.

That being said, I wouldn't say that the `latexmk`-type functionality is the thing that is going to make Tectonic unique. Hopefully that will be the HTML output, but I have to implement that first ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Come on, you could have called it TeXtonic, what a missed opportunity for a pun.

<comment><USER10> [https://tectonic-typesetting.github.io/en-US/](https://tectonic- typesetting.github.io/en-US/) declares in the section "About the name" that this is entirely deliberate. I like the rationale and agree with it too:

> The name of the project is "Tectonic," spelled and pronounced like a regular > word because it is one. Enough with the cutesy obscurantism. In cases where > the name might lead to ambiguities, it should be expanded to "Tectonic > typesetting."

> If you're feeling expansive, you can interpret the name as suggesting a > large change in the TeX world. Or you can think of it as suggesting a > salubrious offering for weary TeX users. Either way, the root of the word > does go back to the ancient Greek τέκτων, "carpenter," which Donald Knuth — > the creator of TeX and a devout Christian — might appreciate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I failed to see what these three bullet items really bring to the table.

\- Downloads resource files from the internet on-the-fly, preventing the need for a massive install tree of TeX files

\- Automatically and intelligently loops TeX and BibTeX to produce finished documents repeatably

\- Has a command-line program that is quiet and never stops to ask for input

My understanding is that both MikTex for Windows, as well as Texlive for Linux, allow users to install packages on the fly. To compile a file with BibTex, a user just needs to run TeX twice. And finally, TeX will only ask for a user input if there is an error.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'd love to see something akin to "Weebly for LaTeX". Maybe I'm just too much of a theoretical noob, but I don't quite enjoy feeling like I'm writing code when trying to write english.

<comment><USER29> Isn't Overleaf [1] or ShareLaTeX [2] kind of already like that?

[1]: [https://www.overleaf.com/](https://www.overleaf.com/)

[2]: [https://www.sharelatex.com/](https://www.sharelatex.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> It failed to process the first two files I tested it on. I really like the idea but that is not a great start. Being able to switch between TeX engines would be a good option, would be great if you you could do that with CL switch.

</comment><comment><USER31> This might end up being the Rust "killer app"! (Servo aside, of course.)

<comment><USER32> Is TeX still a big deal? I used it (and LaTeX) for all of my school work 25 years ago but I don't think I've touched it since then. Even back then, most people were using word processing software to create their documents.

Can a variant of an already somewhat fringe piece of software really become a killer app?

<comment><USER33> TeX is certainly still a big deal, and is not at all fringe. That's my experience from academic Physics and Computer Science. I've heard that different disciplines vary in this regard (e.g. humanities may use more word processing, possibly because they don't need TeX to typeset math).

Anecdotally: when giving a presentation last week, the event organiser was surprised that my slides were HTML (from pandoc; I'm an ex-Web dev), as she'd never seen such a thing. Everyone else used beamer (TeX slideshow package).

<comment><USER32> That may be true, but the world of academic Physics and Computer Science people is still a relatively small one.

Anecdotally: in the 20+ years I've been out of school I've sat through hundreds of presentations. I don't think any of them were created with TeX (unless TeX is the underlying technology of PowerPoint, Keynote, Prezi, Impress, etc...).

<comment><USER8> TeX used to have numerous unique features: fairly good fonts; automatic hyphenation, which makes it feasible to lay out text with full justification; support for non-English Latin characters, etc. The rest of the world has caught up with these.

IMO the ways in which it is still special are: (1) good math typography; (2) integration with automated bibliography systems; (3) easily generatable by other tools. (Lots of things that eventually turn into HTML hit #3, but not lots of things that eventually turn into really good-looking PDFs do.)

These points certainly aren't important in all cases ... but for what it's worth, arxiv.org hosts more than a million scientific papers, the vast majority of which are written in TeX.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> why does it use xdvipdfmx? xetex would output pdf as well, doesn't it?

<comment><USER8> XeTeX accomplishes PDF output by piping through xdvipdfmx in the background, so it's the same process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Given the name issues, why not change the name to rustex?</comment>


Ask HN: Is it possible to be successful without getting into a top college? - <AUTHOR> There are countless YC founders and other notable engineers who dropped out of elite schools like MIT and Stanford and yet more who talk about going to their state school despite getting into better institutions. I never got into anything better than my state school and my career so far has been exceptionally mediocre. From what I understand people don't generally change after they reach adulthood - am I doomed to mediocrity? Are there folks that were able to succeed later in life? <comment><USER2> At the risk of sounding harsh, this is an incredibly silly way of looking at things. Of course you can be successful. And I'm not speaking from a toxic social-Darwinist mindset; there really are people out there for whom the cards of life are stacked against them and no amount of bootstrap-pulling is likely to change that. But an engineer who graduated from an accredited college (assuming there aren't additional circumstances) is not one of those people.

I would guess that your definition of "successful" is set unrealistically high, and/or you've burned-out when it comes to moving above what you consider to be "mediocre". The former can also lead to the latter.

I recommend re-evaluating what will actually make you happy. Take a critical eye to the expectations you place on yourself and make sure you're only hanging on to the ones that will make you yourself happy, not the ones that society, or your parents, or anyone else has given you. Alternately, for some people, having expectations at all is problematic. Some people (like me) thrive in the absence of pressure and get paralyzed by it when it is present. It could be that you just need to give yourself a break and ask yourself what you _want_ from life, instead of what you think you're _supposed_ to want. Everyone's different.

Best of luck working through all this.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I would guess that your definition of "successful" is set unrealistically > high

This might be the case. It just always gets me down when I read first author research papers written by undergrads and ivy-bound high school students that far surpass my fundamental understanding. It feels like I'm behind forever and I don't have any hope anymore because I was just born like this.

I'm honestly not even sure what makes me happy.

<comment><USER2> Take a step back and look at it on a meta-level. What purpose is that feeling of inadequacy serving? Who are you helping by making yourself miserable?

Life isn't about accomplishments, accomplishments are just one aspect of life. And by getting a degree and starting a career in a high-tier field, you already have things to be proud of. Happiness cannot be reduced to a checklist. Ask yourself: if there were nobody to compare yourself to, if there were no awards or scores or accolades in the world, what would you want to be doing, right now? And then chase that feeling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just do something and you will be ahead of the majority of your peers. Don't live in a self-induced paralysis when it comes to your life.

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean by do something?

<comment><USER4> Just do something anything instead of pre-emptively performing the analysis (whether it'll be worth it or not) you're trying to perform.</comment></comment></comment>


Quick question. CL, Clojure, Erlang, Haskell. Which one to choose for Web dev - <AUTHOR>

Which functional programming language to choose for Web development? <comment><USER2> I love Lisp, and find there is a lot to like about Clojure. But we're building a system with critical (life-or-death) high-reliability requirements, so we're going with Erlang for its proven robustness and scalability. Personally, I'm not thrilled with the Prolog-like language syntax, but there are alternatives in the making. Erlisp had promise, but now appears to be fallow, but Robert Virdig's Lisp Flavored Erlang (LFE) [<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=286288>] looks to be progressing well. We're planning on switching over when it achieves a bit more maturity. Lisp on the Erlang VM - best of all worlds!

The only knock I'd have against Haskell is, even though the Haskell proggers I've been fortunate to meet are wizards, all have already involved with cool projects, and are reluctant to jump ship.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am using the erlang nitrogen framework and am overjoyed at how fun it is. Give it a try!

<comment><AUTHOR> What made you choose erlang and nitrogen? Why not Haskell and HAPS or Erly for erlang

<comment><USER3> I was very much inspired with what Rusy K. had put together, and I feel it was a good choice now that I went with nitrogen. Haskell has turbinado, too :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> you should first chose the platform (asp.net, PHP, python...) and then decide which language to work with.

<comment><USER5> Uh... CL, Clojure (JDK), Haskell and Erlang are all different platforms, too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. I am currently leaning towards erlang. But then, Clojure looks impressive too. And well I can't possibly deny the absolute awesomeness of CL. There are other in the hitlist too...SmallTalk, Scala etc etc. What do you guys use and why did you choose what you did?

<comment><USER5> I still prefer Python/Django, personally. Unless you need to do Comet you're just dealing with normal request/response cycles and I still think pre-fork single-threaded webservers work just fine for that purpose. Until I'm totally fluent in one of the others (and until their libraries catch up with Python) I don't think I could choose one and feel pragmatic.

<comment><AUTHOR> For comet you always have Orbited. I am not fluent in any (Have written small programs in a few of them), but I want to develop in a functional language. The think I am most interested in a powerful language with a web framework/library which could take care of most of the mundane stuff related to web programming. Also features like ORM etc would be really helpful</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are good OSX alternatives to iTunes? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> CloudPlay (<http://cloudplay.fm>) is a minimal music player for your menu bar. It searches iTunes of course, but also online sites like YouTube, SoundCloud, and bunch of others. Depending on the type of music you listen to, it might be all you need.

Disclaimer: I am the developer of CloudPlay.

</comment><comment><USER3> Best one I'm aware of is Enqueue (<http://www.enqueueapp.com/>)

It looks like a great music player, but it's missing some Apple proprietary features. Things like Airplay, Podcasts, iPhone syncing, and anything else that couldn't be implemented in software sold through the App Store. I don't know of anything that can do those well except for iTunes, but I assume the feature bloat is part of why you're looking for an alternative.

EDIT: There was a discussion here when its free beta was released. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3207736>

</comment><comment><USER4> If the music you want to listen to is already organized well you can always make playlists with Play, <http://sbooth.org/Play/>, drop the folders on a playlist window, set it to Repeat All, and rock on. This can help me concentrate: I don't need to star any music, nor check how many plays a song has and whether it will knock another out of my Top 25 list, and I don't get tempted to start mix and matching across genres, thereby distracting from work. I simply put all my Van (as in Morrison, not Halen), or Smashing Pumpkins, or Smiths, etc, into a play list and work.

</comment><comment><USER5> Spotify is a bit snappier , and you can load your own local music through it. One thing I don't like though is that there is no EQ settings (at least that I'm aware of). I imagine they will probably eventually add that feature. If you don't mind having the option to listen to a whole slew of other music (with ads). I believe ads don't play when you are listening to your own tracks. <http://www.spotify.com/us/get-spotify/open/>

<comment><USER6> Does it do podcasts as well?

<comment><USER7> If it's in a regular audio format yes. I have a couple LearningRails.com podcasts on mine and they work great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Clementine, it's derived from Amarok's KDE: <http://www.clementine- player.org/>

It has the nice feature to queue tracks inside a given playlist ('Queue manager.').

</comment><comment><USER9> If you want something that approximates iTunes itself (desktop app for managing your library) then checkout Songbird.

<comment><USER4> I've found this to be very slow and buggy with a large library. Three or four times the last few years I have installed it, again, hoping it would have improved. Then I sit there and watch it hang. Frustrating. Maybe it isn't the size of the library, but the presence of media with non-English titles. Anyways, not worth trying, I think.</comment></comment>


Toronto tech: why Canada is attracting the 'best' people - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/de63f33c-34e6-11e9-bd3a-8b2a211d90d5 <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing! This article makes some similar points as well (no paywall): [https://dailyhive.com/toronto/toronto-tech-sector-bmo- report...](https://dailyhive.com/toronto/toronto-tech-sector-bmo-report-2019)

</comment><comment><USER3> The article is paywalled, it would be better to submit a link that everyone can access instead.</comment>


Oxford Experts Launch New Online Tool to Help Fight Disinformation - <AUTHOR> https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news/releases/oxford-experts-launch-new-online-tool-to-help-fight-disinformation/ <comment><USER2> Disinformation isn't only about fact, but also about trust. The idea that"perception is reality" has been around a lot longer than tbe internet and social media.</comment>