Do you really read? - <AUTHOR> http://jasonevanish.com/2013/06/23/do-you-really-read/ <comment><USER2> _I challenge myself to answer the following questions in everything I read: Has this taught me anything new and valuable? (If not, move on quickly) How can I apply insights from this article today? (Wait and I'll forget) When have I applied the ideas from this post? Where have I not, but could have? (What was the difference?)_

Nice philosophy, with one giant outlying case: The best and the worst of anything you can possibly read will seem the same: like a waste of time. And the only way to tell the difference is to add one new dimension: time. The best things you read will seem like a waste of time today, but one day you'll realize that it changed your life.

Apologies to Maslow, a suggested hierarchy of reading value:

             </comment><comment></comment><comment>=====
            / 6-WasteOfTime   \
           / 5-DifferenceMaker \
          /    4-Actionable     \
         /      3-SomeValue      \
        /       2-Engaging        \
       /      1-Interesting        \
      /       0-WasteOfTime         \
      </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>=

So how do you know if something that appears to be a waste of time is Value 0 or Value 6? You don't. Sometimes you just gotta go with your gut.

<comment><USER3> This is a valuable insight; even if you can't distinguish reliably between Value 0 and Value 6, you can still increase your net gain by reallocating time spent on Value "Engaging" and "Interesting" to "WasteOfTime".

Also, I just realized most of my reading is Value 1 now. :/.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Regardless of what it is, you're wasting your time with all your reading if you don't use it to drive action._

Wow, I could not disagree more.

The implication here is that the subset of 'things worth reading' are things that show up on your RSS reader. I'm absolutely positive that the vast majority of the things you read on the internet are inferior compared to other things you could be doing with your time; its important to keep abreast of trends and current events, but the advent of Read-it-Later services has, I think fetishized the blog post.

Pick up some Steinbeck or Vonnegut or something. Trust me, it'll help you a lot more than a self-help blog post or Six Ways To Engage Your Customers.

<comment><USER5> "Trust me" is shorthand for "Without any supporting argument whatsoever, please believe".

When you are tempted to write "trust me", please reconsider and think of why your readers should believe what you're saying.

So in this specific case: why do you think people should be reading "Steinbeck or Vonnegut or something"?

I don't particularly disagree with your advice, but I'm also not inclined to follow it without so much as a shred of a given reason.

<comment><USER6> "Trust me" is also shorthand for "I have reflected deeply on this, and based on my personal experience, and our shared humanity..."

It's obviously not foolproof to make predictions about another person's experience based on your own life, but this is perhaps a more charitable interpretation of what GP meant by "trust me".

<comment><USER5> Fair enough. I was annoyed because I have found those particular authors hard to connect with, and now some random dude wants me to trust him that they're good for no stated reason.

But yes, the principle of charity should always apply and yours is the correctly charitable one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm normally biased against self-help blog posts, and even more when they quote other self-help blog posts, but this is brilliant:

 _"Most people spend nearly all their energy trying not to change. This is what the philosopher [sic] William James meant when he wrote the mind's main function was to be a fortress for protecting your ego from reality. When the mind has to accommodate a new fact, James argued, it doesn't settle on the change to its model of reality that is most likely to reflect reality. It protects the fortress, calculating the smallest possible modification to its bulwarks that can account for the new fact._

It's not just brilliant, it's astonishingly modern. It's not out of the question for the late 19th century, because Freud and Nietzsche were both working this territory. Still, the formulation sounds contemporary (to us, not William James). Can anybody point me to where James wrote about this?

(It's glib, though, to say "The real key is Self-Awareness with Discipline". This is extraordinarily hard to do and to take it as anything less than a life-long task, let alone treat it as an item on a to-do list, is naive. Even one tiny example where you catch yourself doing what the quote describes is worth more than a grand general statement.)

Edit: after thinking about this for a bit, the quote seems understated. Even as much as "the smallest possible modification to its bulwarks that can account for the new fact" is atypical. Far more often than that, the new fact is either elided from consciousness or ejected by the mental equivalent of antibodies, and the "bulwarks" remain as they were.

<comment><USER8> One of my favorite quotes is from William James, addressing this point:

 _A great many people believe they are thinking, when they are merely rearranging their prejudices._

(Paraphrasing, I'm on mobile and in a hurry.)

<comment><USER7> If you find the original, I'd like to see the citation.

One has, I think, to be careful about applying this insight to _other_ people. It's best in the first person.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think we could all stand to read more fiction.

It's unfair for Jason to criticize us for not getting meaning out of things as abstract as "Do you really read?" Maybe it's just me, but the abstraction of "self-help" blog posts seem unlimited.

I think we are much more in touch with the philosophical message of a sci-fi book than the message, however briefer, of the blog post.

The big hypocrisy here is that the blog post is so vanishingly thin on concretes that it sounds like it was written by someone who's never read a good book.

<comment><AUTHOR> I definitely think long form reading (aka-books) is a great way to go (I read about 20 books/yr). I definitely should work in more fiction to my life, but as of yet I have focused on adding and building skills.

I think reading fiction has a lot of value. If you want to enhance your creativity and be inspired you can get a lot from great fiction. It will also make you a better writer. It can be act as a break from your day to day as well (recharging is important).

In the end, my hope was to pose the question and have people consider what it means for themselves. Being more purpose driven, or at least knowing why you do something, can never hurt. We only get 24 hours in the day, so choosing wisely how to spend it is important. If you're thoughtful about how much and what you choose to read, it can pay off in many ways.

<comment><USER10> > _I think reading fiction has a lot of value. If you want to enhance your > creativity and be inspired you can get a lot from great fiction. It will > also make you a better writer. It can be act as a break from your day to day > as well (recharging is important)._

It's also fun. You know ... fun?

[There are certainly other benefits, but I think the notion that activities like reading fiction need to be _justified_ seems a bit wrong-headed.]

> _Being more purpose driven, or at least knowing why you do something, can > never hurt_

Er, well, that's far from clear...

Being generally aware, more or less, of what you do and why you do it is almost certainly a positive thing, _but_ if you obsess over justifying _everything_ you do and every second of your day ("Relaxing read: 30 minutes. Laughing with friends: 15 minutes. ...") you may well go nuts, and going nuts seems, ... counterproductive...

Everybody is different, and some people are fine with ultra-controlling every aspect of their lives, but for many people, I don't think this is true. There are many points in the spectrum from total slacker to robot. Leave a little freedom to chill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I didn't realize everything I read is supposed to drive me to action. Can't I just find it interesting?

</comment><comment><USER12>
      I challenge myself to answer the following questions in everything I read:

      1. Has this taught me anything new and valuable? (If not, move on quickly)
      2. How can I apply insights from this article today? (Wait and I'll forget)
      3. When have I applied the ideas from this post? Where have I not, but could have?
        (What was the difference?)

Whenever I read an "I challenge myself to answer the following questions..." list in a blog post, I think "Wow, do I challenge myself like they do in this scenario? Will they mind if I steal their technique? Will I stick with it? Do _they_ stick with it?"

I say this because it's often a potential 'takeaway' from an article to apply similar challenges in one's life, and like Jason says, unless it can be applied immediately it is often forgotten.

</comment><comment><USER13> News studies show people go for junk gossip/celebrity/sex/emotional type news far more than anything economic or political. Which makes it difficult for things like my project ([http://jkl.io](http://jkl.io)) which specifically seeks to remove the trivial in favour of the high brow broadsheet type news. However I think the "information diet" meme is gaining more traction as people are feeling overloaded and want to focus on quality, less visual distraction and fewer ads.

</comment><comment><USER14> I read for different reasons, sometimes to learn, sometimes to relax. I'm reading a book on Peter the Great, growing up as a Caucasian kid in Hong Kong, some fast search algorithm papers, and am working my way through the X-Men and New Mutant comic books. I'm getting something out of all of them, even if what I'm getting is to clear my mind so I can sleep better.

<comment><USER15> What's the Hong Kong book called?

<comment><USER14> [http://www.amazon.com/Gweilo-Memories-Hong-Kong- Childhood/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Gweilo-Memories-Hong-Kong- Childhood/dp/0553816721/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1372090260&sr=8-2&keywords=gweilo)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just few hours ago I read this by Schopenhauer: "Students and scholars of all kinds and of every age aim, as a rule, only at information, not insight. They make it a point of honour to have information about everything, every stone, plant, battle, or experiment and about all books, collectively and individually. It never occurs to them that information is merely a means to insight, but in itself is of little or no value."

</comment><comment><USER17> I asked myself the same question years ago with TV and I figured in the end that watching TV was a complete waste of my time. These days I probably watch under 10 minutes a week in total if that.

</comment><comment><USER18> If you want disciplined self-awareness, you are not going to get it by reading articles that grab your attention with drama and self-doubt: _Hypocrites!_ The takeaway is always that the author is the smartest guy ever and you need to push harder to keep up.

Success may not come easily, but if you feel like a constipated man straining on a toilet, your experience is not success.

</comment><comment><USER19> Curious how others use Pocket (or something comparable)...

I use it to save articles I think will have value at some point but have little relevance now or things that I have read in their entirety and think will be important to come back to. Essentially I'm building a repository of web clippings that I can search through when trying to read about a particular topic.

<comment><USER16> I do that with my browser bookmarks, but not with Pocket, I usually read everything I save there.

You are essentially building an anti-library: [http://www.ryanholiday.net/building-your- antilibrary/](http://www.ryanholiday.net/building-your-antilibrary/)

I have had numerous problems come up that I knew immediately where to look for a solution, even I haven't read all those articles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Well done, you've completely missed the point of literature. One reads to experience another self. Anyhing else is a waste of time.

</comment><comment><USER21> tldr;

<comment><USER22> I chuckled at this...and decided saying so was worth any down votes. This place could use some humor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is so important in today's climate.

</comment><comment><USER24> I read this piece; I then went to his recommended book list[1] to see what _he_ classed as reading.

I'm afraid to say, it is (with a couple of notable exceptions) one of the most conformist, populist and lacking in adventure reading lists I've read for a long time.

Simply put, he isn't _reading_ ; he is picking up whatever is the "top 10 list of <subject X> from AMZN or Good Reads" and digesting it in a _very conventional_ way.

So; no Jason, you don't really read. What you're doing is rote learning what is the considered 'wisdom of the crowd' de jour on topics and expecting enlightenment. That's not how _reading_ works. If you need a concrete example of this, many great insights come from people _reading_ on topics wildly _outside_ their field and suddenly applying said insights into their own fields.

Chaos Theory / Math was started like this, from a tiny office spitting out weather data.

Jason will no doubt do well on a middle / high rung (Gamma+ or Beta-) but will never "do a Jobs".

[1][http://jasonevanish.com/books/](http://jasonevanish.com/books/)</comment>


Scraping the Smithsonian (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://matthewlincoln.net/2013/08/08/scraping-the-smithsonian.html

<comment><USER2> Sadly while browsing I read "Scrapping the Smithsonian" and got my panties all in a bunch before I realized that I can't read tonight.

Although on the plus side, it got me to click on the link which was a cool read.

</comment><comment><USER3> wanted to see how a tool like [https://scrape.it](https://scrape.it) would do on a site like this, took about less than a few minutes to create.

[https://scrape.it/pub/collections.si.edusearchresults.htmtag...](https://scrape.it/pub/collections.si.edusearchresults.htmtag.cstypeallqspacefqobject_typeWorksofart.xlsx)</comment>


Cameron's porn ban coming into effect? - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/wnKGH9u David Cameron was pushing to block porn by default in the UK. I live in London and my internet has been down for the last 48 hours (I am with Sky Broadband).<p>This is the first screen that I have been presented with after being reconnected. After all the recent news (NSA saying they will discredit people with their porn habits) is it too far-fetched to think this is part of a government scheme? <comment><USER2> So what's the difference between the PG - suitable for everyone, mode, and "I don't want any online protection"?

You'd think they are one and the same thing, but it doesn't sound like it. The PG stuff is still filtered? Because if that's the case, I fear most people will only choose one of the 3 main modes, but will still get their Internet filtered (say for stuff like TPB, or Snowden leaks, or whatever).

<comment><AUTHOR> This is what PG blocks: Social networking Online gaming Cyber bullying Pornography and adult Suicide and self harm Weapons, violence, gore & hate Anonymizers, filesharing & hacking Drugs and criminal skills Dating Phishing, malware & spyware

If you choose "I don't want any protection" then it gives you the choice of what filters you want</comment></comment>


Reduce integration test time by 94% by using Ramdisk - <AUTHOR> http://blog.boxever.com/tech/reduce-integration-test-time-by-94-by-using-ramdisk Reduce integration test time by 94% by using Ramdisk <comment><USER2> Clever idea. I should give this a try. Thanks for sharing.</comment>


The Well Dressed Coder - <AUTHOR> http://7regentlane.com/blog/the-well-dressed-coder/ <comment><USER2> I think the focus on suits does a huge disservice to menswear and this is coming from someone who is something of a menswear fanatic. Suits are uncomfortable and expensive. They are difficult to size correctly. They have some weird connotations. Avoid them unless the dress code requires it. I moderated a men's fashion community for a while and a lot of men would approach the idea, get super psyched, go out and buy a suit (without bothering to size it correctly), wear it in an environment where it was entirely inappropriate, and burn out and go back to cargo shorts and never dress up again.

Men, you can be well dressed without wearing a suit. A nice pair of fitted dark jeans with a nice pair of brown dress shoes or loafers and an white or light blue dress shirt looks really good in a lot of situations, can be surprisingly comfortable, and can be dressed up with a jacket if necessary. You don't have to go full suit, you don't have to wear a tie, and you don't have to become an insufferable "sartorialist".

Its not hard either. Pile of white shirts and three pairs of jeans vs pile of t shirts and three pairs of cargo shorts. not much of a difference.

<comment><USER3> >>Suits are uncomfortable...

This tells me you've probably never worn a really well-fitting suit. I don't mean this to sound smug. I agree that for the work environment of the average coder, they are likely out of place.

<comment><USER4> Maybe they're comfortable some places, but they're a ridiculous piece of clothing the majority of the year in the US. Living in Atlanta, I've made it a goal to wear a suit as little as possible as I find myself hot/sweaty in all but the deepest parts of winter.

I feel the whole concept of a suit is quite out of place in a modern world where climate controlled buildings are the rule rather than the exception and most business/frufru social events happen within them.

<comment><USER5> I feel the opposite.

I wonder how anyone could wear suits before the advent of climate control to keep the inside of buildings cold even during the hottest summer day.

<comment><USER2> Tropical weight worsted, seersucker, linen, all work pretty well. Tropical worsted in particular is what I steer my friends towards usually as it looks about the same as a normal worsted but is much cooler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some random pointers from a guy who had a rough transition into needing to wear a tie every day:

1\. Leave money in your clothing budget for alteration. A nice pair of pants with a bunch of fabric balled up around your ankles does not look like a nice pair of pants. Get something less expensive and alter it.

2\. Grey pants match damn near anything. If you ask the cleaners, they'll press out the crease that runs down the legs and look a lot less "fussy."

3\. Gross generalization, but $150 shoes last more than twice as long as $75 shoes. Hit up somewhere like Nordstrom Rack for good shoes. Same principal applies to belts.

4\. If you buy a suit, avoid the current style of really skinny lapels and too-short sleeves and pants because it's going to look dated fast. Get a grey or blue two button suit, which is pretty versatile. Avoid big or padded shoulders, giant arm holes. Consider vents on each side ("double vented") rather than one vent in back which apparntly was designed for sitting in a saddle. And for god's sake don't buy a jacket you can't button comfortably. Then get it altered.

5\. Don't feel compelled to use those little plastic collar points.

6\. Plain shirt? Patterned tie. Or vice versa. Of you need to mix patterns, mix a large one with a different small one, but avoid this unless/until you know what you are doing. If you wear a tie, strongly consider a jacket.

<comment><USER2> If I may expand on this, get everything altered. Seriously, find a tailor you like and can communicate with and let them go to town on your clothes. 50 dollar pants with 30 bucks of tailoring will fit better than 300 dollar pants with no tailoring just about every time.

<comment><USER6> I don't know why I resisted this initially (likely the hassle), but now alterations are Step 2 of buying work clothing.

Looking forward to trying out some custom fit stuff eventually, but for now alterations are essential.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Having looked at their site (<http://7regentlane.com>) and indochino (<http://indochino.com>), I'm a big fan of what these businesses are doing, namely making tailor-made clothing more accessible to those who might otherwise be intimidated by the process. But I'd like to see the business model extended beyond suits and shirts.

What I really want is perfectly fitted jeans, casual shirts, t-shirts, casual coats etc. As much as I'd like to dress smart all the time, the extra time involved in caring for the clothes isn't appealing, nor is the idea of always being overdressed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Check out Bonobos...<http://www.bonobos.com/welcome/n>

We saw a presentation by their founder long before launching 7RL. Good people and great products.

<comment><USER8> Wait for their sales, some good pants for decently cheap!

edit: Also Dockers ... As a scrawny dude who always ends up with baggy pants even on the slim cuts, their alpha khakis fit me better than anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You _don't_ need to wear a suit to be well dressed. A nice, properly fitting shirt (find a store that fits you best, or try online made-to-measure) and fitting jeans (I love Levi's, personally) can go a really long way. Get a blazer or two, a couple of cool ties if you really want, and you'll be miles ahead than the rest.

(disclaimer: co-founder of Dolbeau, Canadian mens accessory maker)

<comment><USER10> Amen to this. I never realized how awful non-fitting shirts looked until I got one properly fitted to my skinny frame.

Also, protip for fellow skinny men: Get dress shirts that fit well in the general torso area, even if the sleeves are too short. Then you can roll the sleeves up to the elbow, and leave them rolled up. This way you can get shirts at cheaper sources without them looking like a blouse.

<comment><USER9> Another two tips for skinny dudes that want shirts: J Crew and Club Monaco. If the sleeves are too long, ask your dry cleaner or tailor to shorten them for you.

<comment><USER11> Absolutely. I wear dress shirts on a daily basis and whenever J.Crew Factory has a good 40% off sale I buy six of them and just get the sleeves shortened. It's one of the easiest alterations out there and only costs about five bucks a shirt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think that's some of the best ad copy I've ever read. It's actually getting _me_ to consider buying one of their suits! (If you knew me, you would know this is an astounding accomplishment. I don't think I've put a suit on in a decade.) Really shows how the low-key approach can work, and the value of knowing your audience.

</comment><comment><USER13> > They're comfortable. Compared to my other suits, the custom fitted one isn't > too tight or loose in the wrong areas so I don't feel awkward and geeky in > it.

I can't agree. They're always oppressively hot for me. All those layers! The tie always gets too tight. All this ritual just for appearances when I'm supposed to build for a living.

We've come a long ways since the days of east-coast IBM doing spot checks to make sure that men were wearing garter socks. I'm not doing anything that takes us back to some barbaric past where I get judged solely on looks.

If you want to be a suit, fine. Some people really do look great in them; I'm not one of them. Just don't push it on the rest of us.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd say it's always better to be a little _over_ dressed than a little _under_ dressed.

</comment><comment><USER15> An actual tailor is a great idea ! Regardless of where you source your clothes, your views on ties, matching trousers, leather vs rubber soles, etc. Things that fundamentally fit are key.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have a mobile app ready for release that you can take to the tailor of your choice and poke in the measurements. Stay tuned on that front. We're also looking into some more advanced measurement technologies.

<comment><USER15> If you linked this to paperless receipt for alterations that would be ++.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Awesome; nothing like a well dressed man. Being well dressed should never be seen negatively and if you're going to pay more than peanuts for a suit, it should fit well.

Good luck with the venture!

</comment><comment><USER17> Getting your suits tailored is essential, but please never do it with jeans. The key to jeans it to get them a bit smaller than is comfortable as they will loosen over time. As GQ (or esquire?) said about John Kerry's style choices during the 2004 presidential election season: never trust a man with tailored jeans.

</comment><comment><USER18> A tailored suit is like the ferrari as opposed to getting a honda at what would be a Men's Warehouse.

I like the idea and would love to look at the prices but it seems that the site is down. hackernews effect?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, Hackernews effect. It's back up now but smoke's coming out of the servers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I like wearing suits. But I don't like the effort involved. I may be a slob, but the ease of shorts and a tshirt outweighs almost all benefits of looking good most of the time.

</comment><comment><USER20> What about shirts?

I've been having a really hard time finding french cuffs on shirts locally. It would be nice to be able to find great shirts online.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're launching shirts too. French cuffs and all. We can already take orders but they're not on the site yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> How is this different from indochino.com ?

<comment><AUTHOR> A nearly identical business model, but we have some unique technology and more direct customer contact. For example, when you place an order we have a system which modulates your measurements with data from other customers to identify potential measurement errors. When those are flagged we will contact you directly to sort it out and ensure the suit has the best chance of a great fit. Measuring yourself is error prone, so we have a lot of mechanisms to identify and rectify those issues.

<comment><USER21> Their web experience is superior in my opinion. I feel far more capable of making informed decisions using their interface.</comment></comment></comment>


Simulation of the world's universities in a single unified graph - <AUTHOR> http://thinkaurelius.com/2013/05/13/educating-the-planet-with-pearson/

<comment><USER2> I will probably get down voted for this, but when did a monopoly that makes you pay ~80 £ (if i remember correctly) for an obligatory book is a good guy now?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha. The world works in mysterious ways -- and organizations are large with many heads. The ideas I see emanating from the Pearson team that Aurelius works with are along the lines of -- Why are there brick-and-mortar schools? Why is education just a short period of your life? Why does a teacher only teach < 100 students in one session? Why do tests still exist? Why can't software be the "office hours" that helps struggling students get back on track with the concepts at hand?

Many of the algorithms were are working with them go into the arena of computationally supporting education.

"If you want to understand X, given your personal knowledge graph, you will first need to understand Y."

"The graph is detecting that student A is struggling with X concept."

"Teacher, given the knowledge of your incoming students, you should focus more on Y concept."

"Teacher, no tests needed, here is a ranking of all your students based on their comprehension of the material."

... hopefully the 80£ (and 80 lbs) textbook will be a thing of the past.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _A 121 billion edge graph is too large to fit within the confines of a single machine. Fortunately, Titan/Cassandra is a distributed graph database able to represent a graph across a multi-machine cluster. The Amazon EC2 cluster utilized for the simulation was composed of 16 hi1.4xlarge machines...The 10 terabyte, 121 billion edge graph was loaded into the cluster in 1.48 days at a rate of approximately 1.2 million edges a second with 0 failed transactions._

How many machines can you add so that Titan continues to scale linearly? And have you run the benchmarks on Google Compute Engine to compare?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Note that the codebase used in this benchmark was just released -- Titan 0.3.1.

<https://github.com/thinkaurelius/titan/wiki/Downloads>

</comment><comment><USER4> Amazing. What is the cost of renting such cluster?

<comment><AUTHOR> I forget the exact cost, but it was, along with various dry runs at a smaller scale, around $30k.</comment></comment>


Show HN: UnnaturalScrollWheels – Better scroll wheel settings for macOS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ther0n/UnnaturalScrollWheels <comment><USER2> Disabling acceleration is a big feature here, again something that makes sense on a trackpad but does not on a scroll wheel. It's infuriating switching between Linux/Windows/macOS _with the same mouse_ and only macOS has acceleration. Logitech Options doesn't even give acceleration

Also along these lines of bizarre defaults, I don't remember how but I had to change key press settings to allow for repeated presses. Apparently the default behavior is to give you accent character options. Then from there I had to change the interval/initial timings to be closer to Linux/Windows as well. Of course now I'm paying the price with the dreaded repeat inputs on this keyboard

<comment><USER3> > Disabling acceleration is a big feature here, again something that makes > sense on a trackpad but does not on a scroll wheel.

Ah, but it makes sense on _Apple_ scroll wheels! I think that's why they never added a built-in option to disable it.

Nowadays the Magic Mouse doesn't even have a physical scroll wheel, but even on the Mighty Mouse, the scroll wheel was a little ball that could roll in any direction and didn't have notches, so acceleration made sense.

Acceleration + notches are what do not go together.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the magic mouse is treated like a trackpad under the hood so all the gestures work. If someone with a magic mouse tried to uncheck the natural scrolling box under mouse they'd be confused as to why it didn't change so that could be why the two settings are "linked".

<comment><USER4> Also there's this app called MagicPrefs that allows you to bind things to gestures, including rebinding the system ones. I use it to bind three-finger click as middle click and at this point I can't fathom not having it. It supports all kinds of Apple trackpads _and_ the magic mouse. This implies that all touch gestures, regardless of the shape of the device, share most of the underlying code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thank you. I've been using Scroll Reverser[1], but it hasn't been updated to fully support Catalina (it works, but the installation process was not updated to request the permissions in Catalina). I'll check out UnnaturalScrollWheels to see if it's a good replacement.

[1] [https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/](https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/)

<comment><USER6> As far as I could tell Scroll Reverse reversed all scrolling, so when I walked away from my desk, I'd have to kill it to use my trackpad normally.

<comment><USER7> There is a separate option to reverse scrolling of the trackpad, works flawless here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I miss when apps like this were built as preference panes.

An app that does nothing but change an OS setting—and whose user interface exists purely to adjust those settings—does not belong in my applications folder, and certainly not in my menu bar. Such apps ought to live in System Preferences, alongside other, well, system preferences. And what do you know, Apple built a way for third party developers to do just that!

Preference panes used to be the norm, but that seems to have changed over the last decade. It pains me to admit that an app is probably the right approach nowadays, because when everyone else is doing things one way, users will expect you to do that too.

One more way that OS X's UI metaphors have regressed...

<comment><USER8> I agree but I think the issue here is complexity. This app is built with Swift, probably because most developers prefer high-level languages like that over system-level languages like ObjectiveC. Unfortunately, OS vendors typically don't provide interfaces for high-level languages in their OS machinery unless strictly necessary. Can you actually write a Preferences panel in Swift? I wouldn't be surprised if the answer were "nope, Obj-C only".

It's not even an Apple thing, Windows has been the same for a very long time - remember how browser extensions "exploded" when Mozilla made it possible to write them in JS? IE forced you to C++, dramatically restricting the number of developers.

<comment><USER9> I wouldn't characterize Swift as "high-level" and Objective-C as "system- level." One of Swift's stated design goals is to work at all levels of the technology stack, including system programming where you need a lot of control over struct layouts and so on.

I'd agree that most of the focus has been on app development, but I just found this toy kernel written in Swift the other day: [http://si.org/projects/project1/](http://si.org/projects/project1/)

On the Objective-C side, sure you have access to all of the low level stuff of C, but Objective-C's message passing is probably a poor choice for very low- level system programming (in the kernel, for example). Apple uses C and C++ in the xnu kernel.

Swift was also designed to interoperate with C and Objective-C APIs, so you could certainly write a preference pane in it. It even automatically generates Swiftier interfaces for APIs that follow conventions. Here's the NSPreferencePane API: [https://developer.apple.com/documentation/preferencepanes/ns...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/preferencepanes/nspreferencepane)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As someone who prefers Natural Scroll (and who understands that there are people who don't), why would someone want Natural Scroll on one interaction method and _not_ on another? That feels like confusion waiting to happen, IMHO.

<comment><USER11> I have been looking for a solution to this problem for a very long time and my reasoning is that on a trackpad, natural makes a lot of sense intuitively, since you are "pushing" the document (page/app/whatever) the direction you want it to move.

Whereas when I am using a mouse I feel like I the document is below the mouse more or less and when I move the scrollwheel it is physically moving the document as if it was tied to the scrollwheel.

Not sure if that makes any sense, as this is just some internal feelings on it, but I have beeen manually toggling the natural scroll when i plug and unplug my mouse ever since I started using MacOs

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I think the exact same way! The top of the physical wheel spins the opposite direction of the bottom of the wheel which would be "touching" the page/content. Originally I was going to just make a background script to automatically toggle the option when it detects certain USB devices (like my mouse) but I couldn't find a way to apply settings changed via the "defaults write" command without logging out and then back in. In my research I came across discrete-scroll and scroll reverser on GitHub. Discrete-scroll worked in Catalina but had no GUI, and Scroll Reverser didn't work reliably on Catalina. So I combined the ideas from both in as little Swift code as possible so that anyone using my app wouldn't need to worry about allowing the app to "control your computer".

<comment><USER11> I have to say I really appreciate this! I was going down very similar lines just last week (I had installed Hammerspoon and was experimenting with some applescript hacks, but to no avail).

Just intercepting the actual scroll and inverting it is a really elegant solution (that doesn't require a relog) which is great.

This solves one of the two biggest gripes I had about MacOs - with the other being my inablility to "pin" my dock to one of my monitors, overriding the swap functionality. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Since HN users tend to be more traditional in how they expect their computers to act, I wonder, how many people turn off "natural" scrolling the second they get a new Mac?

I never understood why it was there. It makes a ton of sense for content to scroll in the direction your finger moves _when your finger is touching the content_ , but I fail to understand why you'd expect it to move that way when using a touchpad or a mouse.

Was this done specifically for users who were coming to Mac from iPad?

<comment><USER13> I agree. I find "natural" to be very unnatural, and it seems to be everywhere now. It drives me nuts when I help my wife with something on her laptop. When/how did this become the norm, because it seems like it was not at one time?

I suppose most computer users don't consider settings at all and just go with whatever the default is and eventually get comfortable using that, not knowing it's not "normal". But who made the change so that this became the new normal setting?

<comment><USER14> It was Apple who decided down was up one day. Nowadays on Windows with Synaptics trackpads, we have the same problem (well for me it is, as you say, you prefer it).

It made sense because it relates to PgUp/PgDn or to consider that you're pulling the scrollbar indicator down. (oh, what's that, this UI element is hidden nowadays..?).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I like natural scroll so much I even use AutoHotkey on Windows to emulate the same behavior. Unfortunately, it reverses everything, so, say, volume scroll is reversed too. I'm sure there are workarounds about that.

Unlike some comments here, when I move from TrackPad to mouse, I still think of the scroll wheel as the document, so natural scroll makes more sense for me, personally.

The only thing I would get rid of in TrackPad is the "bounce effect" when you reach the Home/End of the document. Also, many documents are perfectly fit in the app window (e.g. Preview) but still the horizontal scroll moves them around, which is annoying (try opening a new PDF in Preview and use left/right arrow keys to move to next page; it scrolls the document horizontally slightly!)

<comment><AUTHOR> You can actually change the scroll direction of a mouse in Windows with a registry edit: [https://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/forum/windows_10...](https://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/forum/windows_10-other_settings/reverse-the-scroll-of- mouse/334669c3-8a45-4600-830a-8df628d7415e)

<comment><USER15> Thank you, yes I tried that and it works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Logitech Options has an option to set the scroll direction. As I switch between a trackpad and a Logitech mouse the scroll direction is always set to whichever feels "expected" to the pointing device I'm using. It was a joyous day to discover the setting in Logitech Options. :)

</comment><comment><USER17> I've used wheel mice on the Mac from the time the Microsoft USB wheel mouse came out, back when there was a Mac driver that controlled classic Mac apps by looking for scroll bars and sending events, licensed from an Italian developer.

I myself added native wheel support to some major Carbon apps, and convinced other engineers to do it, as I was at Microsoft MacBU at the time.

But anyway, when Apple decided that scroll wheels should work the other way around, I gave it a try. I soon acclimatized to it and never had to change the default again. I would recommend all Mac users try out the "natural" setting and see if you get used to it.

Now explain why I HAVE to invert the y-axis in Halo on XBOX (any version of either). I tried but I can not adjust to the default.

<comment><USER18> I invert the y motion of my mouse too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Moving the camera" vs "Dragging the document"

Many years ago, when I was teachin my mother how to use the computer, I noticed something that I recalled the day Apple introduced the "Natural" Scroll thing.

She was working on a Word document, so I told her that she didn't need to click the scroll bar, but to scroll directly using the mouse wheel. To my surprise, she moved the wheel in the "wrong" direction. And for some seconds she was wondering why the whole thing was "inverted". In that moment I thought that probably we were all taught "incorrectly", and maybe, just maybe, "intuitively" people will think about scrolling on the opposite way, but we ended up learning that it was not correct, adapting our minds to the already established behavior of the mouse wheel.

The truth is. I embraced with happiness the "Natural" scrolling from Apple with the touchpad and the magic mouse on macOS, but also had a hard time getting used to this behavior with a regular mouse. I've been struggling since then, and I still use the "classic" scrolling with my Windows-based PC.

</comment><comment><USER20> Once I gave up on Scroll Revserser, I found Mos[1] as another option for this need. It just got a new v3 release and allows for toggleable smooth scrolling, as well as very granular scrolling options on top of the scroll reversing. I'm a big fan.

[1][https://mos.caldis.me/](https://mos.caldis.me/)

</comment><comment><USER21> I used to use something like this for my mouse, but started using a trackpad full-time so I didn't need it anymore. Recently I've started using a mouse again, but without something like this installed, and now I feel like I like natural scrolling for mice too :/ Must be something you get used to.

<comment><AUTHOR> I could probably get used to it if I used only macOS, but I use Linux and Windows most of the time and switching scroll directions when I use macOS gets frustrating. That and physical scroll wheels scrolling "unnaturally" is what seems natural to me, @dashwav explains why I feel that way quite well in their reply to another comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> On my Dell XPS running Ubuntu, I have the touch pad set to "natural" scrolling but I also use a mouse and have that set to traditional scrolling. I find I like this combination a lot, so being able to set up my Mac the same way would be great.

As for why I like them to be different, I think it's all about the tactile experience. I find using the trackpad to be very much like using a touch screen on a phone. In both cases, it's as if I'm manipulating the screen content directly with my finger. With the scroll wheel, it's a different tactile experience and the traditional behavior seems more "correct". Someone could do a nice human factors study on this.

<comment><USER3> > As for why I like them to be different, I think it's all about the tactile > experience. I find using the trackpad to be very much like using a touch > screen on a phone.

My personal experience is that after years of keeping the "natural" scroll setting enabled, my scroll wheel has gained some of that tactile feeling in my brain. It's like the wheel is the content, and I'm pushing it up and down with my finger.

However, it definitely took longer for this to happen than with a TrackPad.

<comment><USER22> Interesting observation. I've never taken the time to try to retrain myself to use a mouse in natural mode. This is in part due to the fact that I am a Linux system administrator and I am often working on systems that aren't mine. I think it would be very confusing if the mouse on my Linux workstation worked one way and everyone else's worked differently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is awesome! Thank you so much for making this!

Every day I have to relearn how to scroll when I switch back and forth from my Mac and Windows machines. It frustrated me that the scrolling direction of two completely different input mechanisms were tied together.

Thanks again!

</comment><comment><USER24> Thank you thank you thank you. Was literally looking for something like this earlier today!

</comment><comment><USER25> Why this was this change ever touted as "innovative"?

<comment><USER26> Do you have a URL where this is touted as "innovative", since you used quote marks? Because I believe it was introduced as a way to be consistent with iOS and how users scroll using that OS. No one was filing patents on this one, however.

<comment><USER27> Quite right. It wasn't really touted as anything. It just showed up in OS X 10.7 in 2010.

<comment><USER21> Nit: Lion was released in 2011, it was just presented in 2010.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm a happy user of ControlPlane since many years for exactly this purpose.

> With ControlPlane you can intelligently reconfigure your Mac or perform any > number of actions based on input from a wide variety of evidence sources […]

[https://github.com/dustinrue/ControlPlane](https://github.com/dustinrue/ControlPlane)

</comment><comment><USER29> My solution was SteerMouse. It allows me to individually set every scroll option and mouse speed and acceleration

<comment><USER30> I also use Steermouse so that I can actually bind the back/forward keys to CMD+[ / CMD+], while also disabling regular pointer acceleration alongside the scroll issues.

I also don't think it runs as an accessibility service, but as a low-level driver.

Downside is that it's not free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Thank you for the app!

I've created PR for brew cask, as I wanted to be able to add it to my dotfiles.

[https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew- cask/pull/86697](https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/pull/86697)

</comment><comment><USER32> I would never use this - it makes sense for the trackpad and mouse to work in the "natural" direction, just like on an iPhone and iPad screen. When I use Windows on a real PC then it confuses me, but that is rare I do that. So this makes no sense to me, but hey, whatever floats your boat ;-)

</comment><comment><USER33> So I like Mac hardware and to this day for reasons I cannot fathom, I still consider the Macbook trackpad to be the only usable incarnation of this technology I've ever seen. This goes beyond hardware too as it seems like integration into the OS is a key factor. Touch pads still feel kludgy on Windows and Linux (to me at least). Even on Mac hardware.

But there are certain UX fails by Apple I cannot comprehend and this is one of them.

I remember when this changed. It was years ago now. Apple decided the previous way of doing things was unnatural and just reversed it. If you want it the "unnatural" way you could use a setting. But the inability to split how the trackpad worked and how a scroll wheel worked is nothing short of pigheadedness ("no, it's the users who are wrong" to paraphrase Principal Skkinner).

Sadly this isn't an isolated example.

The earlier iPads had an orientation lock physical switch on them. I love this feature. And then Apple decided this was "inconsistent" with the iPhone (which had no such switch) and removed it. I mean the switch was obviously still there but now it did something completely useless. I think it muted the iPad instead? If you wanted this you could just hold down the volume down button. Then they briefly added back the option of getting the old behaviour but that only lasted briefly before that option and ultimately the switch were entirely gone. I used the orientation lock all the time and I'm still dark about it.

Another: a Bluetooth keyboard or trackpad connected to the laptop by USB will automatically pair. Great feature. Compare this to the Bose headphones I have, which are a total nightmare as soon as you pair to more than one device to the point where I've installed homebrew packages and scripts to disconnect Bluetooth when I close the lid of my Macbook (who decided it was a good default to pair to a Macbook with the lid closed vs one with its lid open? I mean does anyone even use pairing to a closed Macbook?). The problem? There's a popup I need to dismiss saying "This trakcpad is now wirelessly connected to your computer". Great. I don't care. I don't ever want to see this message again. Is there an option for that? No!

I find full screen mode for apps great. I often have it set up so my IDE is one screen and I can swipe left and right between my main desktop and my IDE. The problem? If your mouse gets near the top of the screen a menu bar appears, often obscuring the top of your IDE so you have to walk this fine line between getting high enough on the screen but not _too_ high.

I have a 32" 4K monitor. I'm fine with the menu being visible all the time to avoid this. Really. Why don't I have that option?

Years ago Chrome actually worked like that. Then it mysteriously disappeared. When I worked at Google I asked about this and was told something like it was considered a "bug" and it violated Apple's UI guidelines or something similar. So now we have the dumb version.

Yet another: if you have multiple monitors, one of them is the "main" display. It has the dock. If you hit the bottom of the screen on a different monitor the dock will move. You can't turn this "feature" off. The best you can do is put the dock somewhere else. I don't want the dock somewhere else.

What's really troubling about the last two is they really ignore the basic tenets of HCI in that the corners and edges of the screen are the easiest places to hit. Microsoft famously ignored this years ago when on Windows 9x the Start button was offset by a couple of pixels from the corner for no good reasons. No doubt some designer's opinionated sense of aesthetics.

So, rant aside, thanks for making this utility. I know there have been other solutions to this as well. Part of me still hopes Apple sees reason and reverses their dumb decisions here.

</comment><comment><USER34> The difference in scrolling is quite jarring when first using MacOS after being familiar with other environments. I imagine many people googling how to fix it, only to find Apple called their way "natural scrolling" just to add insult to injury.

[Don't you people have better things to downvote?]

</comment><comment><USER35> Thank you! I needed this so much!

Honestly can't believe this is not default behavior in macOS.

</comment><comment><USER36> Disabling scroll acceleration is a godsend.

</comment><comment><USER37> God bless you. This has filled me with rage since lockdown. Can't wait to try it tomorrow.</comment>


Video Tutorial To Start Developing Web Applications on Erlang - <AUTHOR> http://beebole.com/blog/2008/10/20/tutorial-web-application-erlang/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is our first attempt to make a video. It shows the path we took in order to create web applications using Erlang and Mochiweb. Your feedback is more than welcome.</comment>


A 'frighteningly ambitious' way to improve email - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/voice/2013/02/08/inboxpro-com-structured-communications/ <comment><USER2> So if both sender and recipient are using this, they'll end up demanding increasing classifications from each other in an infinite loop?

I think the actual solution will turn out to be something like this <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Mail_2000>

The important difference is that the master copy of the email resides at the sender, which means it is possible for them to update and revise it. With current SMTP the moment send is hit, the message is gone which is why band aids like this inboxpro approach exist.

For example I could imagine adding a header to emails that gives a canonical url for it and some cryptographic information as well as the original body. If the recipient is using regular SMTP and mail clients then things remain as today. If they are using the new system then the recipient client can make requests for updates, give queue time information, ask for tagging etc and automatically reflect those changes in what it shows.

<comment><USER3> I was just complaining about this problem today. If I'm CCed on an email exchange and 4 or 5 messages go back and forth then the problem is solved, i still have 5 unread measages in my inbox. In reality, I should have zero messages because the problem has been resolved but SMTP doesn't allow for that.

<comment><USER4> Unless the other participants only think the problem is resolved, and you have some additional knowledge which would be relevant.

<comment><USER5> The problem with this approach is that it leads to everyone reading every email just in case they might have some relevant insight. I see this at my current job - there's a strong "just cc the whole team" attitude which leads to a frustrating quantity of irrelevant email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A comment that I feel very strongly about. First, let me say the primary thesis of adding structure (and asking your senders to add structure on their own) is a great idea. My email inbox took a quantum leap when I simply structured all emails into one of two types: 1) emails from people I care about and need to respond to quickly + emails from people I don't know. 2) Everything else, including all newsletters, email lists, etc.

However, I have to strongly object to the expired emails feature. The worst part about being an entrepreneur are the people that never reply back. Not a yes. Not a no. Rejection I can handle. But the people who stop responding or never responded create a lot of heartburn in my life. And the same goes for trying to maintain a social life. Having an acquaintance or new friend never respond to an invite for coffee or a beer is incredibly frustrating.

Any system that would increase the number of emails that go unresponded to is a bad system.

How about instead, you reply by saying "too busy right now, maybe check back with me in 6 weeks?" I've found that cuts down dramatically on the number of unwanted requests. People that really care will check back. Others won't. And you can always escalate the rejection from there.

<comment><USER7> You will receive a response:

> The email will disappear into the 'Expired' box and the sender will receive > a friendly notification that they can move it back to the queue, change it > to a different format, or delete it altogether and maybe just give me a call

<comment><USER6> I saw that, and the point stands. I don't think an message basically telling someone their email was ignored is helpful. The existence of this feature could lead to a lot more emails being ignored, or even worse, lead to it being more socially acceptable to ignore someone's email, no matter how nicely written.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _... none of these solutions try to stop stuff from arriving in the first > place..._

While I don't agree with this particular "frighteningly ambitious" take on the issue I do agree with that the above quote represents an issue that needs solving. In my opinion, forcing the sender to conform their email to a format of your choosing simply isn't scalable. The reason email is so well used today is because it's so simple to use. This adds a layer of complexity to the people trying to communicate with you that I think would just lead to fewer people attempting to communicate with you (which could in fact be what you want).

I've spent some time building my own "frighteningly ambitious" solution (I'm actually planing on doing a Show HN on Monday or Tuesday). Essentially, the idea is that right now it's the people emailing you that control your inbox. Our solution is to give users control over when and from whom they receive email. It puts you in _actual_ control over you inbox for the first time. For those interested check out <https://lightermail.com>. Would love to get your opinion.

<comment><USER9> A recent problem I ran into was sending Xmas cards to friends and family. We had over a hundred addresses to send to and I didn't want to send them all by hand. So, I wrote a script. Of course, most of the emails went straight into the spam folders because, I guess, doing this just made them look like spam to most filters.

Granted, the emails were all sent from a shared hosting account, the mail server of which I had no control over as far as certificates and reputation were concerned. But my feeling is that anything I could have done to improve my Xmas greetings' success rate would have been exactly what spammers also try to do.

Aggressive filters assume everyone is a bad actor until proven otherwise, and I think that's a problem. Our quality of life is degraded whenever we make this calculation.

<comment><USER10> What about using BCC? The email will reach multiple recipients, but none will know about the others.

<comment><USER9> My script wrote an individual email to every recipient in my list; so none of them knew about the others anyway. I speculate that the email servers that received them, particularly the larger service providers, might have seen multiple copies going to different addresses, noticed that the emails were identical, and assumed they were spam. Usually, a pretty good rule for a filter. But in my case, not so much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There used to be a mail provider (EarthLink?) that automatically responded with a message saying I had to click on a link to get my email past their spam filters. I found that infuriating. I can imagine getting one of these automatic responses might cause similar negative reactions - that the person using Inbox Pro is a little bit of a primadonna.

Having said that, I still signed up for the beta. Because I'm a primadonna.

<comment><USER12> This system by itself can be frustrating... as the problem is that they tend to challenge-response everyone.

I would love to see a system that does automatic spam classification (like gmail), but if you get auto-classified as spam, then you get the challenge- response, as a last ditch effort to get through the spam filter.

<comment><USER13> That would make it too easy to game the spam system, because now the spammer knows they've been classified as spam, and can keep changing the message until it gets through.

This is why it's generally bad practice to reply to an email telling the sender it is spam.

<comment><USER12> Well, possibly, though spam is a pretty high volume game, and my guess is it's not worth the time for the mass spammers to analyze a few rejects (even if those rejects even do go to their actual address)

It depends on what you prioritize. I prioritize avoiding false-positives, so my spam filter of choice reflects that.

My current spam system (spamstopshere.com) does return bounce/reject messages depending on what filter the email triggers.

<comment><USER14> You're wrong. Spammers actively try to monitor their success rates and game the filters.

As for the original idea, backscatter is to be avoided at all costs. Nobody likes bounce messages and so forth for mail they never sent. Much better to reject mail at SMTP time, than generate backscatter to the alleged envelope sender after the fact.

<comment><USER12> So how would you prioritize avoiding false positives without backscatter?

I get a lot of spam, so manually reading a spam folder is not a feasible solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is an interesting way to coax contextual metadata from senders. However, for certain senders I will _always_ respond promptly and thoughtfully, regardless of message formatting. Senders such as friends, family, clients, etc. Which makes the auto-reply a bit tricky:

 _Thank you "motherpowers" for sending the email titled "Happy Birthday" to "leepowers". For a faster response time please re-formulate your birthday greeting as a series of yes/no questions and re-send._

So being able to whitelist senders would be a requirement.

 _My dream is that in a few months I will open my Inbox Pro app in the morning and answer 20 Yes/No questions using just my left thumb..._

I'm not sure what this would accomplish. Reading and comprehending email is not difficult. The difficult part is thinking through an inquiry and responding intelligently. "Can we move up the launch date a week?" This is a yes/no question that anyone can understand. But actually exploring an _answer_ to this question can require considerable mental effort. There's very little utility in having this message display in a slightly different format with a checkbox.

<comment><USER16> Well, some people already give friends and family, at least, a different email address entirely. ("Personal email" vs. "work email".) The system as described seems more useful for the "work" version.

Then again, it doesn't fully accommodate the way I use my work email, personally. I'm on a number of mailing lists at work where I don't personally respond to most of the email --- but I read a lot of them anyway, in part to keep abreast of what's going on, and in part to be able to exercise my own judgment about whether I _should_ jump in. That's an awkward fit for a workflow that assumes that every email calls for some kind of response.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nothing ambitious was mentioned in that article. And if you want a to-do list you should check out something like trello.com Otherwise, a spiral notebook and a pen is a great deal better than your inbox as a to-do list.

\--Please feel free to ignore the following email rant.--

Email is a pretty impressive digital translation of the written letter. And for cases where a letter written by hand on paper would work well, email works even better. As long as by better you mean faster and without paper or stamps or penmanship. The SMTP protocol is over 30 years old and still going strong; that's pretty amazing. But email kind of sucks, too.

Frankly, most people aren't good at writing letters. Simply creating a meaningful subject line is difficult. And keeping a conversation germane to the stated subject is also difficult; folks often talk about multiple topics in a typical conversation. To review long conversations, one must read awkwardly from bottom to top, opposite normal English reading direction. Adding someone to a conversation in progress is also awkward. Sending another message (a correction or addition to your last message) before the person (or people) you're talking with replies creates confusion as a reply can only be made to one or the other message, dropping parts of the conversation. Attachments can be problematic. Clearly, spam the likes of which we see today was never anticipated by SMTP's authors, and neither has anyone come up with an especially successful solution to it. We've all just come to accept spam as part of the background noise, filtering the polluted stream, rather than removing the decomposing carcasses from the upstream source.

Creating an alternative that addresses its shortcomings would be ambitious. And I think many people were frightened by Wave, which addressed many of email's shortcomings but was disruptive in the way so many people like to claim they admire but will almost always shun in practice (kind of like how folks always claim to love to root for the underdog, unless it's Haiti). I'm not saying Wave was perfect, but it had great potential. And as far as genuinely ambitious attempts at improving email (or the kind of conversing we typically do with email), I can't think of another example.

<comment><USER17> What did Wave do that addressed email's shortcomings? Any examples? I remember when Wave came out, I couldn't figure out what it actually was or what problem it was trying to solve... it was as vexing to this email user as Haskell's zygohistomorphic prepromorphisms to a Java programmer.

<comment><USER9> Most of the problems I mentioned: conversations of any length could be read in the normal English left-to-right and top-to-bottom direction, adding someone to a conversation already in progress was easy (as was removing someone), I don't think spam could ever have been as big a problem on Wave as it is in email, changing one's mind and the ability to edit what has been said was trivial in Wave, and it created a single, canonical conversation as opposed to the fusillade of conversation chunks firing back and forth (and multiplying times the number of participants) that we've become so familiar with in email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think email is the ultimate form of bad skeumorphism. It was designed to mimic postal mail. Email addresses, no permissions, no true id checks, no punishment for abuse. Many of the now used features like spam folders, filters, encryption, receipts were just tacked on (poorly). And because it's a "worldwide standard" that no one controls it's impossible for someone with a vision to try and change email.

I say abandon "fixing email" and come up with a new solution altogether. Start with a clean slate. Form a coop or nonprofit foundation that will control the standard for 5-10 years until everything's ironed out, then release the source code so people and providers can use it to replace email and people don't have to depend on one group of people. At this point I'm willing to try anything, as I'm sick of email, I HATE it with every fiber of my being. Spam and delayed newsletter bombing is taking up hours of my time each week.

<comment><USER19> You mean something like facebook messages?

<comment><USER20> Probably something like this?: <https://bubbleideas.com>

Better skeumorphism of mail? Sure, like refactor and split mail from postage parts completely? Chris, can we connect with you over email? (the irony, ha!)

[Disclosure: I work for the project linked above.]

<comment><USER21> Does that project have a bug bubble?

<comment><USER20> Handled? I just connected with you up there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22>
      If you let a coder (or, *shudder*, a user) specify the importance of her alert,
      give her a little pull-down menu that has choices ranging from "nice to know" to
      "white-hot urgent," and nine times out of ten, she'll choose "NOW NOW NOW
      URGENT ZOMGWEREALLGONNADIE!"

\- Cory Doctorow, _Epoch_

</comment><comment><USER23> I tried it out by sending him an email.

Interestingly enough, the average response time for a yes/no question is by far the longest (5 days vs 3 days for a long email).

Shouldn't responding to simple yes/no be much faster than reading a long message?

<comment><USER24> Still in closed beta so the stats are based on all my test mails. As I keep a bunch of them in Yes/No to play with sorting this screws up the current stats. Should be more reliable when actively used…

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting, but might be a hard sell to already email overloaded people now having to categorize outgoing mail. They might now even get an extra auto- reply mail for every mail they send.

There is also a emotional aspect in terms of everybody being told very explicitly that they are not important enough for an immediate reply.

In the worst case, a sender gets a message saying "that email you sent to Tom last week has been auto deleted. You can resubmit and maybe Tom will adress it later". It might be the honest truth, but I can't imagine a lot of people, especially customers or managers, would enjoy such a message.

As mentioned there is interesting elements, but ultimately it seems too engineer oriented and with a bad user experience for senders.

</comment><comment><USER26> IMHO there is something valuable here.

One of the problems with emails is that the sender don't understand what is happening to the receiver in terms of added work to perform, so this adds the feedback needed to the system.

About the "expire" feature, it is a lot of time I think gmail should have something like that. "Sorry this email remained in the user inbox for N days, the user was not able to reply so please send it again if it is important, or make it shorter and easier to reply for the user by improving it".

Btw I'm part of the problem as I tend to write very long emails. That's the issue. Emails should be short, and conceived so that the sender will have an easy time to reply something meaningful using a small fraction of his/her time.

That's probably more of a cultural problem than a technological one. However when I realized email was going to kill my productivity I stopped replying to most of the messages that hit my inbox.

<comment><USER27> > _Btw I'm part of the problem as I tend to write very long emails. That's the > issue. Emails should be short_

I wonder if this could be useful here.

<http://www.telescopictext.com/> (Context: <https://twitter.com/rgherrmann/status/300311324905324545>)

It would definitely have to be automatically generated to be viable, as in no more effort than to write a normal long email. But doing that automatically is a hard problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> "These are all tools to sort and file more stuff, but none of these solutions try to stop stuff from arriving in the first place. Or to find the email you really want to receive between all the other stuff."

Hmmm...I use gmail to filter stuff I don't really need to read right away ("filter messages like this"), and priority inbox is specifically to find the email you really want to read between all of the other stuff. Why straw-man the competition?

In any case, there is definitely room for email "types" (tags, labels, etc.) that can be implemented in custom x-headers and then get added to the right inbox/queue.

The communication back to the sender is an interesting thing though. If the sender is using something like this, and they autorespond...

</comment><comment><USER29> I do not thing email is broken, nor do I think it's a todo list. In fact it's my favorite part of the internet. But y'all go ahead.

<comment><USER30> Totally agree. Email works perfectly fine for me. For private purposes as well as for my job. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I don't see anything that's broken or that would require fixing.

<comment><USER12> Email doesn't scale well is the problem. The people complaining are those people who get a lot of email. I fall in the cateory and constantly struggle with it.

Ultimately I think the real solution is a personal assistant.

<comment> grey-area In saying 'email doesn't scale well' I think you're really saying 'I don't scale well' (as you hint in mentioning a personal assistant) - in reality the problem is that email scales so well as a flexible and quick communication medium that _people_ simply can't keep up - if you used any other form of communicating with these people who want some of your time (telephone, face- to-face etc) it would be even more cumbersome. Is it even possible to give a slice of your time to hundreds of people a day and still lead a productive and happy life? Should we try, or should we cut down the number of people we give this privileged access to? Our time is finite after all, and reading or answering email from people we don't know is not necessarily a good use of it.

Another approach to the problem of huge volumes of mail is to classify your senders at the point of contact by giving them different email addresses. That lets you check one mail address frequently (for close and valuable contacts only), and one email address every few days (for casual contacts, website contact, mailing lists etc), and only give out the important email to those whom you trust to use it appropriately (i.e. never publish it). This helps considerably to cut down volume which you see every day.

Email's strength is that it is a distributed free-form medium which can contain any sort of content. Trying to enforce structuring content with simplistic templates like this is just wasting the sender's time instead of yours - why give them the email address in the first place if you don't have time to read and respond properly? Why not have a web form which imposes structure and emails you the result, or an FAQ on a website?

While I agree there are huge problems with email as it stands, I'd say they're more to do with identity and sufficiently sophisticated semantic processing of incoming mail for those who receive a lot of it, not with the structure of email itself (which is admirably simple and has served remarkably well), or lack of hints as to contents (NB any such hints in the control of senders will be abused mercilessly by spammers).

<comment><USER12> _Our time is finite after all, and reading or answering email from people we don't know is not necessarily a good use of it_

If this were true, the solution would be dead simple - stop reading email.

The problem is that not all email is created equally. There are some emails that are incredibly important and most that are not. The problem is that it's impossible to sort it ahead of time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Where on the queue do auto response messages from other inboxes protected by Frighteningly Ambitious Queue system messages land?

</comment><comment><USER32> The first thing I thought of when I read this title was Paul Graham's essay about startup ideas. I'm glad the title succeeded in that sense, as it's relevant to this article.

More to the point, I like this idea. I like that it focuses on the perspective of those who send you emails. I feel that many people trying to solve this idea would look to changing how inboxes handle messages or look to changing the user interface of email systems.

But instead, this solution actually helps reduce email by responding to senders. That's a unique approach. Very out of the box.

But it's true that it's "frighteningly ambitious" to try and tackle this problem on the sender's side. I could see this failing if the majority of senders are the type to simply send off an email and not check for a while, which would ignore the automated message query. However, if a majority of users do pay attention to it, they can edit their email options and hopefully make life easier for the receiver.

Excellent idea. I hope it develops into a full startup.

</comment><comment><USER33> The addition that I think would make it scalable and worthwhile is to establish an interoperability standard via mail headers. Broadcast you're using this system with X-UsesMailTickets so that compatible clients can pre- fill their emails with "X-MailTicketType: Yes/No", etc.

<comment><USER34> In addition to the header, the content can be in a mime/alternative so compliant readers can display it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Sounds like he reinvented email as a standard "ticket system" complete with queues and auto-responses.

<comment><USER24> Spot on!

I 'invented' it… :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think that most emails (probably all human relationships) can be described by the "who needs this more - sender or recipient?" paradigm (in the parlance of Seinfeld - who has the hand). An example - if a subordinate is emailing his boss, the subordinate needs the boss to read & respond.

This solution would seem to work in cases when the recipient has the power in the relationship. But what about the other X% when he's the underling? Wouldn't the cost of pissing off those individuals outweigh the benefit of increased productivity?

In other words - it can probably work for Bill Gates, but not for the rest of us.

<comment><USER24> I think even Bill Gates would appreciate the extra info and know he can expect an email from me within 3 days. Then imagine his surprise when I reply within an hour.

In fact, that is what I did with every investor and journalist that emailed me. I replied to most within minutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is a push notification system - it turns the recipient's problem into the sender's. This is fine if communicating across a hierarchy or for a public address. It could be obnoxious, however, with peers, particularly those outside tech.

Consider, instead, a pull notification system. The first time a sender emails the recipient they are sent a link (also in the recipient's signature) to a page providing expected response times for various email forms along with the option to convert your already-sent email into a short-response form, e.g. yes/no.

<comment><USER17> > _The first time a sender emails the recipient they are sent a link (also in > the recipient's signature) to a page providing expected response times for > various email forms along with the option to convert your already-sent email > into a short-response form, e.g. yes/no._

This is pretty much what Inbox Pro already does, no? I tested it by sending an email, and got an automated response:

> _Hi [my name],_

> _Your email is #85 in Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten's inbox. You can > __optimize your message__ so it will be easier to answer._

Clicking the link leads to a webpage showing average response times for Yes/No questions (5 days), Short questions (I think 14 hours?), Long questions (3 days), and FYIs (3 days). I converted my message into an FYI and submitted it.

I think the only difference in what you proposed is your version limits it to "the first time a sender emails the recipient", while this system would presumably give the same treatment to future emails from me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I doubt a day goes by without someone embarking on an email replacement. No doubt there are many things that could be improved but I've always felt that viewing email as a todo list is symptomatic of the reactive mindset that generates a lot of stress.

In many work environments email is used to shuttle the responsibility for tasks between people. We've all felt that relief on sending an email. You feel like you've performed a valuable task, made some progress in work that may have very few visible milestones. As the recipient we tend to take the same view and feel as if each email adds to our list of work. Some imaginary clock starts ticking when you receive the email and stops only when you reply.

I think the first thing you need to do is remove the implied hand-over that comes with and email. Remind yourself that just because the sender sent an email, it doesn't mean you must do anything about it. Take a step back and think about what it is you need to achieve and then look to your email to support those activities.

</comment><comment><USER39> I think this is a great start to solving what has evolved into a real world problem. However, I think that this idea needs to be explored further. As others have indicated, the resulting User Experience for the Sender is not that great. The time investment requirement has shifted from the Receiver to the Sender, which does not really solve the problem. I think a truly elegant solution to this problem will lower the time investment for both the Sender and the Receiver. So with this said, I like the approach, and I think Boris is half way there (with a strong focus on the Receiving End at this point).

If it were my project, I would now brainstorm and focus on how to make the User Experience better on the Sender end. He mentions that he plans to eventually have an iPhone/Android App (aka UI of some sort on the Senders End), which I think is a 'must' in terms of facilitating a good User Experience for the Sender.

</comment><comment><USER27> Yep.

<http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/3313/imagekm.png>

Give more power to benevolent senders. I've had similar thoughts.

I don't want to waste other people's time, but the current email protocol forces me to. There is no way to specify if your email is...

1\. "Check this out sometime during the week, it's funny stuff, if you have time. You need a 24"+ screen and 10 mins, so don't even look at this email on your phone"

2\. "I NEED A REPLY ASAP, ARE YOU THERE?"

It appears as a (1) on your phone and I have no power over that to make things easier for the recipient... (other than perhaps send an email at a specific time which is less likely to interrupt your work)

<comment><USER40> People forget about IM.

For all #1 items, IM the link. It is temporary, and ephemeral.

For all #2 items, email them.

<comment><USER41> But which IM? Gmail chat? Facebook PM? Twitter DM? MSN? AIM? Skype? iMessage?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I believe one reason people like instant messaging is that with IM you are kind of constantly having a converstation. It is very much ok to skip the "handshake" and go directly to point. "Lunch 12:30?" "Yes".

Email clients could offer instant messaging style interface for this kind of messages. Instead of seeing list of subjects, then selecting a message etc you would directly see the actual question and just answer it.

</comment><comment><USER43> I feel like Mailbox (that new iPhone app) provides EXACTLY this, except in a much more elegant package. Email as a to-do list is pretty brilliant.

</comment><comment><USER44> Perhaps I missed it, but what is the implementation? Is it a web interface which reads gmail? Is it a web-based email @inboxpro.com? I can see a lot of benefit to the features listed, but I can see a big target market where the individual has no choice over mail provider, namely an enterprise exchange host.

</comment><comment><USER45> The left 25% of the page is useless, and has a flashing corporate logo, FFS! The page is also setup so I can't zoom the page. If your site design is crippled for tablet users, to the point I'm forced to use "Reader," this is an interesting symptom and datapoint, but not one I'm sure you'd like.

<comment><USER46> Odd. What tablet? We specifically designed the site with mobile/tablet readers in mind. Also, what was flashing? If it's an ad, then we need to have it pulled. We don't allow that.

Screenshots to firstname.lastname@example.com would be greatly appreciated. This is definitely not the experience we want you to have on our site.

<comment><USER45> _> Odd. What tablet?_

iPad 3. I think, what it is, is that the grey sidebar had your "TNW" logo with some fancy left-to-right fade-in effect, which cycled around again and again while it was caching data. Not meant to be a flash, but that's what it amounted to. Now, it just stays grey until it loads. Thanks for changing that.

Still annoyingly takes up 25% of the screen and doesn't let me zoom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> An alternate way is to just abandon email altogether. See, for example, the #noemail movement:

[http://prezi.com/w5if2h-bcbcd/ncsu-noemail-why-you- couldshou...](http://prezi.com/w5if2h-bcbcd/ncsu-noemail-why-you- couldshouldmust-use-better-ways-of-communicating-than-email/)

<comment><USER48> I'm sorry but I just don't get it. I receive A LOT of email every day. Most of it is for day-to-day business and the rest is personal. When I receive an email I either archive it immediately or leave it because it represents something I should follow up on. Yes, some percentage of my day is triage-ing email, that's not a big deal. Email is just a box of messages and it works AWESOME. Everyone has it, it's UBIQUITOUS. Good luck replacing it. Email hate is the symptom, not the cause.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> This isn't a new inbox or a new email. It's a personal assistant designed with the constraints of software in mind, similar to harmonia.io. Maybe you'll get the Four Hour Work Week folks to buy in. Good job!

</comment><comment><USER50> I love this idea. I would love to play around with it.</comment>


IPad: Bookmarklet to open all links in a new window - <AUTHOR>

Here is a bookmarklet for the iPad to open all links in a webpage (like HN) in a new window, so we don't have to tap/hold and select 'open in new window'.

  for(i in document.links) document.links[i].setAttribute("target","_blank")
 <comment><AUTHOR> Just remember to add javascript: at the beginning.</comment>


Lessons from Einstein - <AUTHOR> http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2012/03/16/10-lessons-from-einstein/

<comment><USER2> Original article at:

[http://www.dumblittleman.com/2010/03/10-amazing-lessons- albe...](http://www.dumblittleman.com/2010/03/10-amazing-lessons-albert- einstein.html)

I hate when people does this. That is, polluting the net. They truly suck.

<comment><USER3> Even worse when the quotes are misattributed, eg the "insanity" quote is Rita Mae Brown, and she was paraphrasing Narcotics Anonymous.

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results."

 _[Rita Mae] Brown did include this quote in her book Sudden Death (Bantam Books, New York, 1983), p. 68, but it appears she was just paraphrasing a quote that had already been written elsewhere. The earliest known appearance of a similar quote is the "approval version" of the Narcotics Anonymous "Basic Text" released in November 1981, which included the quote "Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results." A pdf scan of the 1981 approval version can be found here, with the quote appearing on p. 11 (p. 25 of the pdf), at the end of the fourth paragraph (which begins "We have a disease; progressive, incurable and fatal")._

<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rita_Mae_Brown#Misattributed>

<comment><USER4> As some who co-founded quantum mechanics, Einstein would never have said such a stupid thing. You expect to get different results from doing the same measurement in the same quantum mechanical system, that's the basis of it.

<comment><USER3> > _You expect to get different results from doing the same measurement in the > same quantum mechanical system, that's the basis of it._

As it turns out, AE had a problem with that particular point. Hence his "[God] does not play dice" quote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Since Coelho is essentially stealing this content and, worse, has such bad taste in what he steals, I think it's fair to recall this amusing specimen of acidic British wit:

 _"Everyone has something interesting to say," Coelho said at one point, clearly showing that he's never had a conversation with one of his fans._

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/dec/10/startups- in...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/dec/10/startups-internet)

</comment><comment><USER6> What a terrible choice of my picture. I did it as a joke and now it gets used everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER5> Exercise for the reader. Which of these quotes are bogus and which did Einstein really say? There is at least one in each category. Somebody save me from tracking all the rest down... I have work to do!

</comment><comment><USER7> 'Never settle' is a brag.

[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/10/never-settle-is-a- brag...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/10/never-settle-is-a-brag.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd add one more - take goddamn action. No matter how much imagination and how many resources you have, you'll get nothing done if you don't actually start doing something.</comment>


American made quad-core, 8GB, 128GB SSD credit card sized computer - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/a/uMK9F

<comment><USER2> The URL is plastered in the title of every picture post. Wasn't too hard to find. Looks interesting.

</comment><comment><USER3> No pricing? No web site? What is this?

<comment><USER4> I had to Google it: [http://www.arnousedigitaldevices.com/newsite/](http://www.arnousedigitaldevices.com/newsite/)

This looks like their official announcement: [http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/1lenxr/introducing...](http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/1lenxr/introducing_the_biodigital_pc_a_credit_card_sized/)</comment></comment>


Generalists and specialists: thoughts on hiring - <AUTHOR> http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2014/07/15/generalists-and-specialists-thoughts-on-hiring/

<comment><USER2> I consider myself to be a generalist that specializes in front-end web development.

If you are trying to decide between hiring a generalist or specialist, it just comes down to your resources and the current structure of your team.

If you are a startup with little to no funding... generalist.

If you are a stable company looking to improve your UI or starting to incorporate new tech (like native mobile dev) into your products....specialist.

An Ideal team for me, given ample resources, would be a bunch of specialists supported by 1 - 2 generalist.

A specialist will always try and solve problems with the tech that they know. This often leads to maintenance problems due to a blurring of separation of concerns. A specialist will also out perform a generalist when they are given the correct problems to solve.

A generalist will know which specialist is the correct one to solve the problem, and can even do some light to medium lifting if a deadline calls for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a generalist I have to say we learn fast and we can get you from A-X faster than anyone. Do you care about Y and Z than hire a specialist.

Also being a generalist usually stinks in getting hired if they know that about you. So the trick is to sound like a specialist.

<comment><USER4> Not to mention being able to quickly pinpoint the problem as Y or Z and recommend a Y or Z expert to address it directly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Also, do not hire specialists if the corporate culture means their new expertise will be ignored or overruled by the old decision-makers.

There's no point bringing in a UX designer unless you can force the marketing- director to stop micromanaging pixel offsets. At best, you'll be paying extra for somebody who is demoralized an unable to meaningfully contribute.

</comment><comment><USER6> The danger with specialist is the focus on developer-oriented value, e.g. you're front end guy spends all his time on designing his CSS code, instead of designing the page.

The key is whether you understand what's important for the business/product, not whether you've worked on the same stack.

</comment><comment><USER7> A great article, yes, but old. Title needs "(2014)".</comment>


Ask HN: Where can I watch YC S14 Demo? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> You can't. It's for invited guests only.</comment>