Twitter is at its best when verified accounts can't tweet - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-unverified-takeover/ <comment><USER2> It wasn't better because verified accounts were locked out; it was better because accounts with large amounts of social capital were locked out. It temporarily reset a social network to a more egalitarian state, before the winner-take-all feedback loops take hold. But left to its own devices, even if those accounts (and their owners) were locked out entirely, the same dynamics would re-assert themselves and new dominating accounts would emerge, absent some ongoing active effort to break the feedback loops that create them.

<comment><USER3> this is why i think visible voting (likes, hearts, etc) ruined the internet. It creates teams, draws lines in the sand. Then teams with the most votes thinks that means it's in the right.

Otherwise, you have to actually read each comment and think about whether you agree with it instead of lazily appealing to votes.

<comment><USER4> Well, there's always 4chan, which is exactly what you just said. Not exactly a poster-boy for quality internet discussion.

Also, I recommend [https://bengrosser.com/projects/twitter- demetricator/](https://bengrosser.com/projects/twitter-demetricator/) to remove metrics from twitter.

<comment><USER3> it is precisely because 4chan one of the last popular "free" sites that it is more extreme. if the entire internet were more like it, there would be more mild sites with more PC discussion that you could join.

A site could still allow accounts and banning and have guidelines around discussion topics, it doesn't have to be completely anonymous like 4chan.

<comment><USER5> FWIW 4chan has accounts, banning and guidelines. It's not totally lawless and anonymous. It just has the _option_ of anonymity.

Probably the best, deepest LGBT+ issues discussions I've ever had have been on their /lgbt/ board. They were filled with people yelling obscenities too, but that doesn't bother me. I guess it's the culture I grew up with, it's natural to engage in discussion while people are yelling around me.

I'm really glad there's still a place out there that believes in free speech as a foundational principle not to be infringed upon except as an absolute last resort. I'm glad not everywhere is 4chan, but 4chan is a gem of discourse in today's world if you ignore like 90% of it. I'm increasingly convinced that that 90% is the inevitable cost of the wonderful 10% that represents the sharing of intelligent thought without fear of reprisal.

<comment><USER6> > FWIW 4chan has accounts

The Wikipedia page[1] claims that "Registration is not possible". Is it wrong, or am I misunderstanding?

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan)

<comment><USER7> Using a tripcode would be the closest thing 4chan has to an "account" that I'm aware of, but it doesn't require registration, it just adds a (theoretically) unique identifier to posts.

<comment><USER5> Yeah sorry, I was thinking of tripcodes and 4chan pass as representing most of what an "account" is. It's not the same thing though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is fascinating.

I just threw together some absolutely atrocious javascript to make this "verified accounts can't tweet" a feature.

Fire up the console, and run:

```

javascript

var verified = document.querySelectorAll('[aria-label="Verified account"]');

for (var i = 0; i < verified.length; i++) {

verified[i].parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.

parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.innerHTML = ""

}

```

At least for me, this deletes the DOM nodes for all tweets from verified users in my timeline.

I don't want to permanently unfollow all verified users, but having an option to hide all activity associated with those accounts in my timeline? That'd be nice.

If anyone who actually knows what they're doing wants to suggest a smarter solution, or make a chrome plugin that does just this, I'd be forever grateful!

<comment><USER9> I've just added this as a "Verified accounts" feature you can toggle on in the options of my Tweak New Twitter extension (v1.23 - Chrome Web Store always takes a while to update):

[https://github.com/insin/tweak-new-twitter#tweak-new- twitter](https://github.com/insin/tweak-new-twitter#tweak-new-twitter)

If you just want to check how much of your timeline is driven by verified accounts, you can also have them highlighted instead of hidden:

[https://imgur.com/gallery/lcqq5bq](https://imgur.com/gallery/lcqq5bq)

<comment><USER10> I use this extension everyday. One request is to make center content take full width (since I hide the sidebar and other widgets).

Thanks for the extension!

<comment><USER9> I created an issue for this with a snippet you can use in your browser console to try it out - what do you think of the resulting size of media tweets?

[https://github.com/insin/tweak-new- twitter/issues/25](https://github.com/insin/tweak-new-twitter/issues/25)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My twitter feed was pretty slow without the Blue Checks. The dialogue was _way more in the middle_. There was suddenly little conversation about today's meme (cake? idk.) The whole thing felt pretty civilized.

It made me realize how much _content_ these twitter blue checks are creating. It's _crazy_.

<comment> Funes- It's almost as if the media was taking advantage of our psychological shortcomings and invading our personal lives for profit, at the expense of our well-being, eh?

The Internet used to be a refuge from the corporate public sphere; now it's its home.

<comment><USER12> I was reading a book this morning about mushroom foraging and suddenly realized that I hadn't seen an advert in quite some time because it was a book and not my phone. Then I thought about getting rid of my phone and only reading books from now on. Now I'm posting this on my phone. It's quite annoying how terrible the internet is now. I used to feel comfortable having a conversation in a forum without thinking it was all generated from some AstroTurfing nonsense or would be used to send me highly personalized ads.

<comment><USER13> Some eReaders (avoiding naming names to avoid advertising at you :P) also enable easy book-like reading (i.e. e-ink, no backlight/glare) without ads. I like them because I can have a whole library in the size of one book. And also I admit to a certain degree of anxiety about bending book binding, particularly in paperbacks.

<comment><USER14> I bought an e-reader when I went off to do an internship one summer and wouldn't have access to the university library.

Internship ended up being a dud (they paid me for 40 hours a week but only had work for me to do about 5-10 hours a week). I read over 50 books that summer, mostly classics that I got free from Project Gutenberg. Definitely got my money's worth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My recipe for using twitter in psychologically sustainable way:

1) Follow only people you have met in person, or otherwise directly corresponded with. I make very few exceptions to this.

2) Disable all retweets. Twitter doesn't make this easy, but there are tools that do it in bulk.

3) Make sure you're looking at 'latest tweets' mode, so that you only see the content you chose with (1) and (2). Twitter very frustratingly will put you back in 'top tweets' mode periodically, so you'll have to keep an eye on this. It feels like this happens about every 2 weeks but I haven't measured.

With this setup, nearly all of the viral BS drops away. I only see tweets in which a person I have some relationship with has taken the time to actually type something. 'quote tweets' are still problematic, but it's not nearly as bad.

<comment><USER16> I have a shorter algorithm.

1) Don't.

<comment><USER17> O(1), I like it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well there isn't any argument for _why_ Twitter was at _"its best"_ during that hour. It is just a blogspot surfing the wave of the meme that Twitter without verified accounts is better. It is a joke that reflects an insatisfaction with social media (and maybe the world), only that.

By this time, the trick is getting old: get a topic that is trending on Twitter, write a few paragraphs giving some context using some humorous language and then print a selection of the funniest/cleverest tweets on topic. That's it.

Why HN crowd give it the front page? I believe because HN crowd shares this zeitgeist that distrusts so called "experts". It is a vote that we dislike a culture that is steered by influencers and people trying to earn more audience (the currency of this time).

I agree with the sentiment, but the article is pretty empty about it, just a meme retweet basically.

<comment><USER19> Completely agree. The term "experts" in that context frustrates me -- and I think you're highlighting this with "so called" \-- because I want experts who actually fulfill that role responsibly. The only expertise which Twitter surfaces is "Twitter Expertise" and the other talents are incidental.

We don't want to be steered around by this, so how do we create mass-media that gives us the right properties, and what are those right properties in the first place?

<comment><USER20> The 'mass' in mass media is not one of the properties. The only mass media you need is a couple newspapers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not sure where I heard it, but someone said: twitter is a mirror pretending to be a window. It's easy to get this experience every day by just not following verified accounts.

<comment><USER22> I would agree, except that Twitter pushes so much content from people you don't follow while attempting to keep you engaged. I'm talking about the likes, retweets, comments, etc. If twitter did only display content from people you followed, it would actually be quite pleasant to read.

I created a Chrome extension to do this, but the recent redesign broke it and I haven't figured out how to get it to work again. The new css/class system is rather opaque.

<comment><USER9> I wrote an extension which does that; it keeps you on the Latest Tweets timeline and moves retweets to their own fake timeline, so by default you only see original tweets and quote tweets from people you follow:

[https://github.com/insin/tweak-new-twitter#tweak-new- twitter](https://github.com/insin/tweak-new-twitter#tweak-new-twitter)

I've been using Twitter this way for years and consequently find the unmodified version completely unusable, so it was either learn how to do it on New Twitter or quit using it at all.

<comment><USER23> That seems redundant. You can already turn off seeing retweets from accounts you follow, and the "latest tweets" timeline is already pretty sticky. I've never had it revert to the default "home" timeline across any computer or phone app install.

<comment><USER24> My experience has been about once a month the iOS app (phone & tablet) will revert from Latest to Top. It will show an easy-to-miss toast message saying "You're now seeing top tweets first."

<comment><USER25> Once a month sounds nice. Mine likes to revert within a week :) (for the times I actually use twitter more than a couple times a month)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I noticed that without the verified accounts, there weren't a lot of focal points for rage and partisanship to collect. I suspect that's part of why twitter felt so different during the blue-out.

</comment><comment><USER27> "Professionally outraged" is the best term I've heard for most of the blue check accounts.

Twitter doesn't need to be (and at one time was not) as toxic as it is. People just learnt to be that way to get traffic to their book or whatever.

</comment><comment><USER28> Experiment: A social network that kicks people off after X,000 followers

In a way, you could "cancel" someone by following them, but if enough people don't also follow them. Then you just see their tweets.

This is actually kind of an interesting idea. What kind of social dynamics would play? On one hand, you want to see someones tweets, but if you follow them, you may cancel them.

<comment><USER29> I think the "canceling" is too extreme, but the idea of limiting the number of people can follow / be followed by seems interesting, especially in the context of Dunbar's number [0] where a person could only really maintain ~150 connections.

Users would then need to decide who's more important to their feed, their best friend's sister or Justin Bieber. It may lead to interesting social dynamics in the same way that Twitters 140-character restriction created new discourse dynamics.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number)

<comment><USER30> People would just create multiple accounts.

No matter how high you build the wall, someone will always bring a taller ladder.

<comment><USER28> Maybe make it cost money to start an account, and you can only follow x00 people whereas it takes x000 to get.. "dissipated"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> There should be an annual twitter holiday where they shut off all blue checkmarks to celebrate the hapless masses that constitute the bulk of the social capital behind the checkmark itself.

<comment><USER32> The fact that it happened suddenly is why it worked. If it was predetermined, all the tweets will be about how verified users couldn't tweet (at already started getting there after a few hours this time as well).

<comment><USER31> Good point. Set it up to ask /dev/random to pick one day per year.

<comment><USER33> Everyone would just make an alternate account and not apply for the checkmark on it, although I suppose that might still align with your goals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> It'd be a neat feature to allow blocking all messages from verified accounts.

<comment><USER35> I took a list at who on my follow list is checkmarked and besides a few friends, it's mostly reporters. So here's a related but separate point:

Something I often do, when I want to retweet a news article in my feed, is find the reporter who broke it and retweet _their_ account rather than the person I was following. I think it's good to incentivize original reporting and therefore good if those folks are given a larger platform. I'd hate for those folks to lose out.

That said, I'd also be very curious about impact beyond that.

Note: I don't apply this retweet-rule to news that would have been public had the reporter done nothing. For example, on SCOTUS decision days, while I _LOVE_ the work SCOTUSBlog does, I don't particularly care who I retweet for non-analysis breaking news.

<comment><USER34> I expect the impact would be that it would be less about news and products and more about what your friends ate for lunch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I only read twitter through garbage news sites. Yesterday was almost interesting. Mostly because I remember getting chain mail "from bill gates" claiming that he'd enrich me for passing it on, back in the late 90s. Didn't fall for it then; had to educate grandma. But bitcoin users are that un-savvy today? Time to make popcorn.

<comment><USER37> >bitcoin users are that un-savvy today

It's unlikely: the crypto world is savage enough that fools and their money are quickly parted. Most of the transfers to the address could easily be the scammers sending themselves money to make it look more legit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> pretty much confirming my hunch that it's not an Eternal September problem with Twitter, but that it started being shit after Oprah and all the other celebrities started using it and it being popular as a source of news.

It's not an influx of newbies at all. Social media can be full of literal clueless newcomers - it just needs to be social and not corporate.

It's why reddit is dying too - everyone suspects it and the actual effect is less opaque that it's also jumped the shark and is no longer democratically social but corporate / PR influenced.

<comment><USER39> It's a feedback loop though, whatever comes next will draw the crowds, which will draw loud voices, which will draw capitalists to form a structure (and career) out of it. There was a great essay on this topic that shows up here from time to time, using slightly different words: [https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths](https://meaningness.com/geeks- mops-sociopaths).

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> How does any sane, professional person even use Twitter?

Do people have jobs?

We get quite a ton of email/messages for work, then you maybe have some browsing interest, then personal family messages - how on earth does anyone have time for Twitter, unless they are in the press?

I gave it up forever ago. There is absolutely nothing to miss but the tiny dose of dopamine or however it goes.

There's nothing there.

Nobodies 'Zen Soudbyte' matters, at all.

<comment><USER41> I'm always a little surprised by these sorts of views of Twitter. In my areas, nearly everyone is there. Twitter is full of Academics, and often the most successful ones are the heaviest users.

<comment><USER42> the question is though, do you get anything out of it by reading all that stuff. And I mean _actually_ getting something out of it other than just the feeling you've read something useful?

It's not like anyone actually becomes an academic by following academic conversation on twitter, or as if one learns science or maths by reading "mathy" threads on twitter.

I think like news even "high-brow" twitter conversations are essentially just infotainment. You can read news for four hours a day and you feel informed, but often you can just drop 90% of it and you don't lose any actual in-depth knowledge.

<comment><USER41> Sure I do - I get to see what people in various fields are writing and thinking about at a broad level, which I find interesting. I see the work of the many artists and creators I follow. I get to see what people think of my own work, which is the whole point of producing it in the first place.

I don't use Twitter to get in-depth information, and I'm not sure why you'd think that was the purpose (although people might link to where you can get that information, obviously).

I'd prefer it if it was an open platform, but it is what it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> In a similar vein: The social media (in particular Reddit and 4chan) is a different beast on national US holidays, when all the professional opinion steering forces are at rest.

<comment><USER44> I mean, is 4chan ever really any good?

<comment><USER37> It's one of the last places you can make a post without having people trawl though your posting history if they dislike something you said. It's an interesting feature.

<comment><USER45> Also, no downvoting. Just discussions. On Reddit they use downvotes as a way to disagree

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> All this drama made me realize that I'm using Twitter just as much as Facebook: not at all.

<comment><USER47> Same here.

I've heard about how much I'm missing out by not using Twitter, yet I've never felt held back by not having a Twitter account.

<comment><USER48> Read any online newspaper and it's basically just the highlights from twitter anyways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Having quit social media years ago, I've accomplished the same exact thing but on a permanent basis. I highly recommend it. Silence truly is golden.

<comment><USER50> I've been off Twitter and Facebook for years, but I'm still stuck on HN and Reddit. I'm weening myself off of both of these, but god damn is it hard. Social media really clogs up my brain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I've been on twitter almost as long as its been around. I remember when I first got a blue checkmark after I tied my phone number to my account. At some point a few years back, that checkmark was removed. There was some rumors that accounts following certain controversial people had their checkmark removed.

</comment><comment><USER37> Someone should write a browser extension to disappear (or at least collapse) all tweets from and relating to blue-checked accounts. They're pretty much all either corporate or run by social media managers anyway, not the actual person they're claiming to be.

<comment><USER52> Yes, and they should call it Verifhide.

EDIT: Also, that's not always the case. The author of the piece herself is Verified and she clearly runs her own account: [https://twitter.com/WaterSlicer](https://twitter.com/WaterSlicer)

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Could anyone recommend an easy/good way to quickly mass unfollow a ton of accounts based on the sort of things they post? Is there anything I can use that will just unfollow all the political accounts, or checkmarks or anything like that?

<comment><USER54> I use [https://tokimeki-unfollow.glitch.me/](https://tokimeki- unfollow.glitch.me/). You have to unfollow one-by-one, but I think you could get a pretty decent pace going if you really tried.

I think the hardest thing here is that you mention "political accounts", and "political" means something different to everyone. So I think this will inevitably be a manual process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Is anyone else unable to Tweet? It says something like "this message looks like it might be automated, it's been blocked to protect our users".

I mainly just tweet about tech topics and my account hasn't been compromised.

I don't have a blue check mark but I've had an account for years and have it linked to a phone number. This is the first time I've seen such a message but I can't tweet anything.

I opened a support ticket but the ticket auto-response said something along the lines of "thanks for the feedback, unfortunately we can't individually reply to every ticket, but be assured your feedback will help Twitter!".

</comment><comment><USER56> If you want to take the trouble to sort people into lists, I reccomend [https://github.com/KrauseFx/twitter- unfollow](https://github.com/KrauseFx/twitter-unfollow) It unfollows everybody you're currently following but moves them onto a list called "Old Follows". You can then move them onto specific lists.

The nice thing is that you can look at a list and it will be in chronological order. No "Top view".

I also paid for Tweetbot because it has one killer feature: you can filter retweets. That cuts down on the echo chamber.

<comment><USER57> You can turn retweets off per account with vanilla Twitter now, it's such a useful feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> If it was really that great, one would think the article would be able to point out some great things that came out of it. Instead it just points to a bunch of people saying how great it was.

I can't help but feel that twitter uses are kind of a self-hating bunch. Its a totally optional site where you can follow whomever you want, and the best thing to happen is for it to break for popular people? I don't understand why people use twitter if they don't want twitter to work. Nobody is forcing you; just quit if you don't like it.

</comment><comment><USER59> I wonder how much of this was covered by "journalists temporarily can't tweet". I doubt anyone's Twitter experience is made much worse by, eg, Mindy Kaling's tweets.

</comment><comment><USER60> Personally, I'm the opposite.

The primary reason I use Twitter is to read blue check marks (and other well known people). Why would I want to know what a random person thinks about an issue when I could hear from people who have built years of clout on a subject? I feel the same way in reverse -- why would anyone care what I think about something when I have no experience or track record on the issue?

</comment><comment><USER61> I read the president's tweets as my daily amusement, and the fake Elon Musk's tweets are present in so many of them. This also happens on YT and comment sections on other websites. I've always reported them on twitter, but the reporting categories are so limited that I am sure my report get's lost among a bunch of nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER62> Since the blue tick accounts are essentially broadcasters rather than users on Twitter, I support an occasional reset to zero.

</comment><comment><USER63> I use [https://tweetdeck.twitter.com](https://tweetdeck.twitter.com) to view twitter. I don't follow verified accounts and I filter out retweets so twitter feels pretty nice to me most days. I didn't even notice the great blue checkmark blackout.

</comment><comment><USER64> I never knew this was such a big deal. I don't understand Twitter and the people that really live their lives by it, for it.

These people are all my age, and I've never felt so glad to be so disconnected. To not understand the memes or be involved in this Twitter conversation is fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER65> I just use Tweetbot. The "authentic" Twitter is a mess.

Also very few accounts I follow are verified so I don't know what this "cake" thing is all about.

</comment><comment><USER66> They should make Twitter cost $1 per month (non prepaid card) and have the default setting to block all verified users.

</comment><comment><USER67> Of course, the author of this unironical post has a verified account

</comment><comment><USER68> It was the Twitter equivalent of 'million-short'.

</comment><comment><USER69> > In 1998, folk

Geez can we get to the point ?

<comment><USER70> I liked the analogy. The reason Jewel's moronic book existed was not because she had an exceptional cultural contribution to make, but merely because there existed a machine that could put books on the rack at Barnes & Noble, and she was in the machine. The blue checks are the same way: they have the followers because they have the blue check, not because anything they tweet was worth reading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> I'm absolutely convinced that the world would be a better, smarter, more civil place if Twitter simply didn't exist at all. The tragedy for me is that whoever hacked Twitter wasted the opportunity to do something that permanently maimed the platform.

</comment><comment><USER72> It would actually be cool if this was a regular thing -- the 15th of the month is officially the Twitter Sabbath, where the blue checks are muted, and only the voices of the masses are heard.

<comment><USER73> Verified accounts would just create a secondary accounts and ask people to follow them too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> I posted this to some friends:

PSA: Twitter has been very badly hacked. Apparently their internal systems were compromised allowing posts as all kinds of accounts. So... if your favorite celebrity, business leader, intellectual, or politician says something stupid... hmm... actually never mind. I don't see any difference between hacked Twitter and normal Twitter. Carry on.</comment>


Stop Cheating the Type System - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mariusschulz.com/2014/07/02/stop-cheating-the-type-system

<comment><USER2> It's easier to change to f#/ocaml/ml/sml.

In c# you always have to check your arguments. You cannot be sure if it is null or not.

It's strange see how unboxes values cannot be null and objects/boxes can be. The logic should be all or nothing. Inheritance of c.

</comment><comment><USER3> Tony Hoare called null references his "billion dollar mistake": [http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Null-References-The- Billi...](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Null-References-The-Billion- Dollar-Mistake-Tony-Hoare).</comment>


The Recreated Sinclair ZX Spectrum - <AUTHOR> http://sinclair.recreatedzxspectrum.com/ <comment><USER2> I spent a minute looking at this and I still don't understand what is being offered.

Is it a bluetooth HID device to pair to an emulator app? Is it an actual Z80-based system? Why is it called a ZX Spectrum? Because it looks like one?

I miss my Russian ZX80 clones. One stayed pretty true to the original format, the other one was a whopping desktop AT case with two 5 1/2" drives. Both, ultimately, were plagued by soldering quality issues, given their back-of-the- garage heritage.</comment>


Siri is Apple's Answer to the Future and Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.juliangutman.com/post/11050892105/siri-is-apples-answer-to-google-and-the-future

<comment><USER2> Apple's answer to the future and GOOGLE? Doesn't Google have a really good natural language processor already?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's more of a strategic answer than a technological one. Per usual, Apple is taking a different user experience approach to the problem. It would be difficult for Google to mimic as their main monetization driver (Adwords) depends on their current model of search.

As far as their NLP technologies, I don't know enough about what they respectively have under the hood. I will say that Siri's ability to understand a variety of human phrases and contexts was more impressive than anything I've publicly seen from Google.

<comment><USER3> It's worth noting that when you demo a product, you get to pick phrases that you know the program will respond favorably to. While I have no doubt that Siri is impressive, it's a little premature to judge its NLP capabilities based on a marketing demo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair point. I can't wait for the youtube videos showcasing both amazing and horrific Siri interpretations. We're probably 6 months from an SNL skit.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Putting the Cloud before the Horse - <AUTHOR> http://devcentral.f5.com/weblogs/macvittie/archive/2009/08/14/putting-the-cloud-before-the-horse.aspx

<comment><USER2> Good points about automating the processes which surround your cloud, but I don't think the author takes it far enough.

To get the most from cloud computing I am hoping we see cross cloud automation. With sufficient metadata surrounding the both the inputs/outputs and the preconditions/effects of processes in a cloud, it should be possible to discover a service, understand what it does, then make use of it without additional development.

I won't go far as to say this means these steps are fully automated, but I think with some automated support, this process is seconds or minutes, not hours or days.</comment>


Media Queries are a Hack - <AUTHOR> http://ianstormtaylor.com/media-queries-are-a-hack/ <comment><USER3> I feel you're approaching the problem in the wrong mindset. You're imagining that you have one module and that's all you ever have. Instead, think of a the CSS module (your .testimonial module) as an interface - a blueprint to implement different types of .testimonial module variations.

The BEM architecture calls these "Modifiers" ([http://csswizardry.com/2013/01/mindbemding-getting-your- head...](http://csswizardry.com/2013/01/mindbemding-getting-your-head-round- bem-syntax/)).

When I look at your example, I don't think of a .testimonial object in two different contexts (one vertical in the sidebar of the signup page while one horizontal on the pricing page). Instead, I think of two different variations of the .testimonial object. So while your .testimonial class may define certain global styles, you change what you need by variations like .testimonial.vertical or .testimonial.horizontal (though I wouldn't actually use those names, but you get the idea).

This requires making a decision on when to apply what classes, but that's okay. You shouldn't be trying to abstract away actual UI decision-making to an automated tool or process. You seem to think that settings rules and logic to be executed based on those rules (when x, execute y; when y, execute z; etc.) will mean you always end up with a usable interface. However, this is not the case.

Ultimately, UI is not "write-once, use anywhere", and that's okay.

<comment><USER4> I agree with this. Media queries are a tool that eliminates the need to maintain separate HTML templates for mobile- or tablet-specific versions of a website. They work well at this task.

Element queries as described by the author address an entirely different set of concerns, which is that modular components of HTML might be re-used in varying situations, and depending on the implementation you might want to style them differently. Media queries are the wrong tool to solve this problem.

The problem is that when we want to use this:

      .testimonial (max-width:27em) {font-size: 0.8em;}

We have to use a context-specific style definition instead:

      .testimonial {font-size: 1em;}
      .signup .testimonial {font-size: 0.8em;}

Or, better (from the parent):

      .testimonial.vertical {font-size: 0.8em;}
      .testimonial.horizontal {font-size: 1em;}

You might still have to revisit each of these styles in a media query to apply changes depending on the global presentation. So while the proposed element query might eliminate the need to chain selectors, I do not believe that it simplifies media queries in any meaningful way.

<comment><USER5> No, the problem is with your class names

        .testimonial.vertical
        .testimonial.horizontal

By including those classes in the actual markup you're hard-coding semantics about the presentation of those two elements that may cease to be relevant when the screen changes width. What if when the screen gets sufficiently narrow you want the horizontal layout to actually change to vertical? The breakpoint at which that happens is more closely linked to the size of the element than the global size of the whole screen (which media queries relate to).

So the point is that with element queries you're defining modular breakpoints that directly relate to your CSS modules, not the global size of the screen, and you're not polluting/complicating markup with CSS class names that could become non-semantic in drastically differing viewport dimensions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been thinking about adding a mobile version to Scribophile lately but reading about the craziness of media queries and browser support is kind of scaring me away.

I think the core of the problem is that CSS was designed to style documents (because the web long ago was more or less a collection of text documents), but as the web evolved, it became necessary to use CSS for styling _UIs_ \--an entirely different beast from documents.

This twisting has led to the state we're in now, where CSS _creates_ the problem it tried to _solve_ : updating a style on a medium-complexity web site requires digging through a minefield of complex and interconnected CSS. Yes things like SASS or LESS can help but they're not an ultimate solution, nor are they a web standard, so tying your horse to one of those carts can limit you in the future.

Maybe in CSS5 they can add proper object-oriented syntax and element queries to help increase modularity and reuse and decrease cascading and media query complexity.

<comment><USER7> A "document" is one of the many possible "ui"s for the underlying model of information that gets displayed. I must be missing some nuance in the distinction you're trying to draw between a "document" vs a "ui." Are you talking about static vs. dynamic content?

<comment><USER8> CSS was made to style and place text on a page, not position buttons or define interactions or transitions or platform delineation or any of the other crazy things a view controller does in a compiled language.

Its an add-on to a markup language also built mostly only to display text.

<comment><USER9> And the first computers were humans (women) doing things like plotting missile trajectories for the military. Technologies drift.

<comment><USER10> We no longer use humans to do our computing, but we continue to use CSS to do our HTML styling.

<comment><USER11> To the authors of the comments beneath this one:

A more constructive angle to this debate would be to compare HTML/CSS to other declarative UI frameworks such as those in QT and iOS and discuss what features need to be added or removed to make HTML/CSS more maintainable and less painful.

We all know the history of HTML and we're aware of the path it's evolution has taken.

Are you arguing that it's inherently unfixable and needs to be scrapped? I think you'd have a tough time arguing that point so why not move the debate forward instead of playing the curmudgeon?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Open question - who is really involved in developing the CSS specs and specific implementations for specific browser? Is it people who would also end up being end users, or people with a more theoretical/academic background?

I ask not to be snarky, but ... I've _never_ really been satisfied with CSS. CSS proponents have shouted me down (figuratively) for being a 'tables' holdout, but it felt to me like we traded super-nested tables with ALIGN and CELLPADDING attributes for box-model hacks and numerous interpretations of the word "may" and "should" from years-old spec docs; it didn't feel like that much of an improvement in many cases.

Do browser makers consult 'regular' web developers before coding in new browser-specific CSS extensions?

<comment><USER13> > developing the CSS specs

There's a long list here: <http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/members>. A quick look at LinkedIn profiles seems to indicate a lot of them are end users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It seems like this would be a great thing to implement "shim-first". Create a solid spec that defines the way it should behave, then write a JS library that makes the spec work in current browsers. Then you have a set up where browsers can implement it natively and only improve performance without changing behavior.

<comment><USER15> Currently, we generally use preprocessors such as LESS or Sass to compile from some more improved syntax into usable CSS2/CSS3 before serving (a la CoffeScript->JavaScript). A shim is generally meant to be there just in case some feature (present in some modern browsers) isn't available in the current browser; For this use case, that would be ALL browsers, and you'd just be adding page load time across the board (and further delaying when the page gets styled during rendering).

<comment><USER14> >Currently, we generally use preprocessors such as LESS or Sass to compile from some more improved syntax into usable CSS2/CSS3 before serving (a la CoffeScript->JavaScript).

Unfortunately, even for static CSS, that's not going to be practical for element queries. You could do it in theory, but in practice, you'd end up generating tons and tons of CSS for even very simple sites.

>A shim is generally meant to be there just in case some feature (present in some modern browsers) isn't available in the current browser;

That's why I put "shim-first" in quotes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What I think we're starting to need is a separation between CSS for visual styling (font-size, border-radius, background-color, etc.) and CSS for layout (float, margin-left, etc.).

The first can only be done by CSS in the browser. But the second can be accomplished via CSS, _or_ by JavaScript.

As the web evolves, CSS for layout is increasingly not keeping pace. But it's not unreasonable to think that we could do away with it altogether.

Is there anything preventing someone from creating totally new layout models, based on new formats, that are parsed in JavaScript, and essentially turn everything into div's with position:absolute? And get recalculated upon window resize etc.?

This would completely free us from existing layout limitations of CSS, to do the exact kind of things like element queries, or whatever else we might think of.

I'm just not really sure what the performance implications would be like.

<comment> ux-app I agree with you 100% about the need to separate styling from layout. CSS for layout just plain sucks. Layouts that _should_ be simple turn out to require hack upon hack to achieve.

In regard to your layout in JS question. There is an excellent port of the Cassowary constraint solver in JS [1]. It allows you to specify complex relationships between containers along with weights, which allow you to specify layouts in a sane manner. Performance is very good, especially since it takes advantage of web workers where available.

What I hate most about layout in CSS is that it takes something that should be brain-dead simple and turns it into something that requires memorization of edge cases and browser hacks with some added voodoo magic. It's such a waste of brain cycles.

To top it all off constraint based solvers have been around for over 20 years... and yet in 2013 we're still dealing with this mess.

[1] <https://github.com/slightlyoff/cassowary-js-refactor>

<comment><AUTHOR> Very cool repo and articles that he links to. Lots of the layout constraints (not type-size, colors, etc.) should be solved when Flexbox support lands in the other major browsers. For example a 20% wide container, that gets no wider than 800px and no skinnier than 200px can be solved with Flexbox pretty easily.

Not having adequate Flexbox support after it being discussed for soooo long is my other big problem with CSS.

<comment> ux-app flexbox is great, but it only solves a narrow set of layout issues. There's so much more that a constraint based system brings to the table. A layout system should make it _extremely_ simple to anchor edges between arbitrary containers regardless of their position in the DOM.

While we're at it lets scrap the DOM too. It's really painful to see how much it is being contorted to suit the application paradigm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow. In retrospect, when we needed general conditionals in CSS, we got just one, very specialized one, and the rest was swept under the rug.

How did I miss that until now?

</comment><comment><USER18> So, until we have a full blown prolog interpreter for CSS layout calculation, someone will always complain CSS is not sufficient. What a surprise...

Maybe we should update CSS to include object oriented features too. Then we can have abstract factory methods for our reusable components. Throw in an optional type checker for good measure while we are at it.

Please people, CSS and HTML only ever have had a single layout algorithm. Maybe it is not terribly flexible but it is good for limited width and unlimited unknown height presentation of a single stream of content. If your content genuinely calls for a different layout, please consider using something else other than CSS and HTML.

While I appreciate the endless efforts to workaround and improve the layout capabilities of CSS, may I suggest embracing the limited nature of this stack and design accordingly?

Maybe, if we admit the "content" arrive, is rendered and consumed sequentially, we would relieve ourselves the burden of beating CSS into submission whenever we want to diverge; with the added benefit of making life easier for those who can't see.

You wouldn't shy away from a little bit of challenge of learning something more suitable for you purposes, right?

</comment><comment><USER19> TFAA apparently decided on an eye-grabbing headline rather than one which matched his article. It probably works, but it's sad: his actual thesis is that media queries are insufficient or the wrong tool.

As acabal notes, the core issue is that CSS was originally for styling documents, and media-queries work in that framework: they're about laying out or formatting a document, not a component within the document.

Which is of course the wrong approach if you're creating distributable/reusable components and blocks. Media queries are not a hack and are probably necessary: the final author will use them to lay out his site/page responsively.

But they're not _sufficient_ , because the inner layout of a sub-element is impacted more by the element's size than the viewport's (the sub-element's positioning and size on the other hand are affected by the viewport).

All in all, the article is a good note of a real problem. But its headline stinks for the usual reasons.

</comment><comment><USER20> Your not using media queries correctly if your having these issues. If you want widgets to be responsive to a parent element then make them fluid. The fluid technique has been around since the beginning and doesn't require media queries. I keep seeing people talking about crazy new units and grid systems, etc, etc. Just learn how to use media queries correctly... Sounds like you are using too many breakpoints. General breakpoints with percentage widths can do anything.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can't hide an inner element, or completely change the way it acts just by making something "fluid". Making things fluid and using that to make bulletproof modules is a good first step, but it doesn't do everything we need it to do.

<comment><USER20> You can with LESS. I use LESS on all responsive projects and have done this many times. Obviously it is not vanilla CSS you write in but it is compiled into standard CSS. I really recommend trying it out before you reinvent the wheel.

<comment><USER21> Do you have an example that would resolve the authors situation?

<comment><USER22> you still have to base it off either the parent (.signup-page .testimonial) or a conditional that's only used on a particular page (.testimonial.compact). The media queries are sub-optimal but it's contained within .testimonial. Here's how it can look:

      .testimonial {
        media screen and (max-width: 900px) {
          font-size: 0.8em;
        }
        &.compact {
          media screen and (max-width: 1200px) {
            font-size: 0.8em;
          }
        }
      }

<comment><USER23> So... no.

What if this thing shows up in 18 places, some of those change sizes on mobile, some of them in turn being reused in several places and then somebody changes something that affects the size (and therefore desired styles) of some but not other of those contexts, and adds 6 more contexts in which the size matters?

I want to say "When displaying a user profile, If there's more than X units of horizontal space, use the large profile image. If there's more than Y units of vertical space show their bio, trimmed to length but avoiding widow sentences and followed by ellipsis. If there's very little room at all, just show their user name."

I know what I want and I can describe it simply and in a way that a machine could implement, but using today's tools it will take significant developer (human) effort (which typically isn't within my client's priorities and ultimately gets neglected).

<comment><USER22> By all means, I would love to have element queries. They would definitely help in many cases. You would have to limit their use to just those areas of markup where container widths are explicit.

If it shows up in 18 places I bet you there will be two different contexts with the same container size, but different looks, and element queries won't help you at this point. You'll still need to tailor your CSS classes for different contexts.

<comment><USER23> Obviously if I want styles to vary by context of their container, I'll need to create those rules. The desire for and utility of being able to do that is not at all in question. I don't see how having such rules is in any way mutually exclusive with element queries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is such an excellent point. Media Queries have been bugging the hell out of me lately for a reason I couldn't put my finger on, and I think you just nailed it

<comment><USER25> I didn't see it that way. Media queries do what their intended quite well, for the most part. What is described in the article should not be addressed by media queries at all. That's why I thought the idea was being described as element queries, which makes more sense in that context then calling them media queries.

Don't think of it as an improvement or replacement, but as an addition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've encountered one scenario where element queries would be incredibly useful: web app designs that include sidebar navigation that toggles open and collapses. This design pattern makes responsive design a little bit more difficult. The main challenge is that the width of the main content pane changes depending on the state of the sidebar. Your media query to scale down an element or rearrange a layout, often has to default to happening at a greater window width than otherwise necessary (if the sidebar is collapsed), because of the potential for the sidebar being open. There are some gross ways to work around this with JS, but I don't think it's worth it. An element query would make it easy to watch the width of the main content pane, independent of the sidebar pane's state.

If you create an account at Stipple.com and log in, you'll see an example of what I'm talking about (disclosure: I'm an engineer at Stipple).

</comment><comment><USER27> I wonder if a javascript/jquery helper could be used as a fill for now?

You could set up size points for an Element like this (mobile first approach) :

$(".testimonials").when-min-width(400px, "medium").when-min-width(800px, "large");

Then you're CSS could look like this :

.testimonials{ // do basic stuff, and small display stuff }

.testimonials.medium{ // do medium display stuff }

.testimonials.large{ // do large display stuff }

Hmm. Maybe I'll build it.

<comment><USER28> Of course you could, but in addition to mobile devices, the point of media queries is to handle anything that might make a standard HTTP request. This includes televisions, older phones, gaming consoles, you name it. Javascript is relatively unreliable on many of those devices; what's worse, you don't want to force a jquery call _just_ to do something that's actively supported by CSS3.

<comment><USER27> All good points. But I did think if them before posting.

 _"Javascript is relatively unreliable on many of those devices"_

AFAIK it's reasonable to argue that just as Javscript can be unreliable, even non-existent, on many devices, so can CSS media queries. I think it's fair to say that media queries are still a "modern" browser feature. <http://caniuse.com/css-mediaqueries>

_"what's worse, you don't want to force a jquery call just to do..."_

Agreed - jquery is too large just for this. That's why I said "javascript/jquery". The jquery like syntax used was for simplicity. But in truth any simple selector engine would do the job. Sizzle for example, or even a home-grown one.

 _"...something that's actively supported by CSS3"_

But that's the point OP was making isn't it? AFAIK, CSS3 @media queries _do not_ support element level querying.

<comment><USER25> Plus if the desired result is supported in CSS3 then you can use javascript to just trigger the change via CSS instead of performing the task through the script.

An obvious example of this is transitions. If you have CSS3 transitions you can trigger them with a class name change instead of using jquery's animation code. When you can do that you don't need jquery or other library at all. Unless you have simply awful HTML that requires an advanced selector engine, such as Sizzle as you state.

But as you point out, if the devices listed have unreliable support of javascript then chances are it has unreliable support of CSS3.

I don't understand the argument against building a shim as a proof of concept though. What's wrong with building the example to see if it becomes popular in traditional uses of CSS before pushing it as a standard? Don't bother since it might not work on TVs because of lack of proper javascript support?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Media queries are still necessary to lay out the page you've described. The primary containers of your pages all need to move around based on the size of the top-level container.

If you could only rely on your parent, that would also be problematic - <USER2> size of a component would be dependent on its chain of parents. If you were reusing the same component within further containers, say 3 different pages, you might want two to look the same despite a size difference, and element queries don't help you anymore. You just need a .testimonial.compact class, have slitghtly different media targeting, and now you have two types of testimonials that you can use on further pages.

Element queries could also easily create strange loops that cause the threshold to be crossed recursively, if the parent bases its width on the child. This is the case with inline-block elements and the property-which- must-not-be-named.

</comment><comment><USER29> This all makes more sense in the context of TJ Holowaychuck's new Component package management tool (first link in the article). Component gives a sane structure to building small, modular js+css+html+assets components. <https://github.com/component/component>

</comment><comment><USER30> IE used to have dynamic CSS properties [0], which were most often used in the wild to achieve max-width in IE [1] (at huge cost — in the linked article the author warns against using the very performance-expensive technique).

But the way that technique is implemented is actually very similar to what you're describing: the CSS causes the selected element to examine some of its DOM properties and conditionally apply styles on a per-property basis.

Maybe this is another great old IE quirk that needs some W3 loving?

[0] [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ms537634(v=vs.85).as...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ms537634\(v=vs.85\).aspx) [1] [http://www.svendtofte.com/stylesheets/reflections-on-max- wid...](http://www.svendtofte.com/stylesheets/reflections-on-max-width/)

</comment><comment><USER31> While we're complaining about the faults of media queries, allow me to add my largest perturbation with them: As a user, I sometimes want the "full" site when I'm on my phone/tablet.

With media queries, it's essentially impossible to let users choose their format experience.

<comment><USER32> I only ever want a full site when the mobile layout is lacking something I know should be there. Which is then a fault of the mobile layout, not the method it's delivered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> We has a similar issue to solve. One part of our app is comparable to the inbox of an email client (list of messages). We launched a new dashboard view, where people could add all sorts of charts and also lists of messages. We used the same code / css for that, but here as well we wanted to hide / unhide certain things in the message depending on the width of the widget. We finally added some very simple (and highly restrictive) js code to make it happen in some way. Check this gist to see what we did: <https://gist.github.com/folke/5314876>

</comment><comment><USER34> From what I've read the way to approach media queries is to shrink your page width to a point where the page breaks and then add in some code to fix it.

Element queries would be nice, but aren't we essentially doing that if we take the idea of the previous approach and apply to more high level elements?

If we create media queries on a per element basis we are essentially achieving the same thing. In that sense media queries are a superset of your proposed solution. It would make for a nice short hand though.

</comment><comment><USER35> I had that same idea more than once, to propose a local per-element media query.

In fact the concept itself of querying the whole window to understand the dimension a portion of it will occupy... well it's strange.

At the same time, have you considered the implications of such a structure? A local media query could change the queried properties. Dangerously recursive.

In fact you COULD reach what you want using seamless iframes. I tinkered my head with such an option sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER36> Exactly! This is part of a more fundamental problem with the whole concept of responsive web design... It can't be just about media queries. I blogged about this some time ago, and plan to amend with links to this article. Well done. Here's my post -- [http://barkgolgafrincham.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/responsive...](http://barkgolgafrincham.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/responsive- web-design-revisited/)

</comment><comment><USER37> The ability to compile Java to Javascript is only one of GWT's benefits ... the ability to package the associated HTML and CSS into "modules" and later import the modules you need makes web pages the collection of components the author desires.

I can create similar self contained components in JSF and several other languages (frameworks), so I'm wondering if the problem is the author's development technique.

<comment><USER22> GWT is definitely not going to help the problem the author is talking about. GWT's "packaged" components still end up as the same markup and CSS. In most backend frameworks I'm talking about the Helpers, in GWT this would be some "View", or whatever isn't the presenter.

You would still need to use different CSS in the two cases mentioned, so it would be two different packaged components in GWT, two different Views. Maybe interiting from one another, but certainly far FAR more lines of code than a conditional / "modifier" CSS class. .testimonial.compact vs just a normal .testimonial, for instance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> There are some good points made in the article. The responsive or one-for-all approach is still in its infancy. There will be issues, but I see an evolution in this that will ultimately lead to very succinct reusable widgets as described by the OP.

This is definitely one to grow on.

</comment><comment><USER39> The web should take a cue from QML when it comes to creating self-contained and reusable components: [http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-5.0/qtqml/qtqml- documents-defin...](http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-5.0/qtqml/qtqml-documents- definetypes.html)

</comment><comment><USER40> Is there any SEO benefit of using media queries over pointing to a subdomain with a separate stylesheet. I.E. m.domain.com ?

Personally, for reviewing Google Analytics I just prefer making my web apps & sites responsive. Though responsive can take quite of bit of time.

<comment><USER41> There's no direct SEO benefit per se, just the mitigation of duplicate content that can be introduced when an m.dot sub-domain (for the same content) is incorrectly implemented (i.e. not using rel=canonical/rel=alternate and other indexation directives). There's also the 'crawl once, show everywhere' benefit if you have a single front-end representation of the code. Introducing an m.dot version of your site requires Google et.al. to consider whether to use their separate mobile crawlers to crawl the content that has been created for the mobile experience.

<comment><USER42> In most cases you wouldn't want your mobile domain indexed by Google et al. so simply block all crawlers in robots.txt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Something i've been working on. It's pretty basic yet >.< <https://github.com/gabriel-felipe/MagicHTML>

</comment><comment><USER44> I think this is currently the main issue still holding RWD back right now.

I blogged about the same issue not long ago: <http://pxlz.me/44>

</comment><comment><USER45> <https://github.com/wemakeweb/element-queries>

</comment><comment><USER46> Shadow DOM and web components probably give you the document root context you need for that example to work.</comment>


Robot assistant social etiquette - <AUTHOR> The new wave of excellent scheduling assistants seems to have given birth to a new online etiquette question. Do we use my robot or your robot, Andrew or Doodle? Should we trade every time? Is it related to whether you are I are "more important" or have "less time." Somewhat akin to the Manhattan or Brooklyn, my neighborhood or your neighborhood dilemma...And then the occasional earthling protests - I don't want to schedule with your robot anymore! <comment><USER2> I'll have my robot call your robot and hash out the details.

If they can't figure out scheduling amongst themselves, then we should both be using something better.</comment>


Anxiety, Depression, Technology, and Me - <AUTHOR> http://anxious-tec.blogspot.com/2007/04/anxiety-depression-technology-and-me.html <comment><USER2> The one thing I've found that has helped me the most is exercise. I wouldn't have believed it myself and most of the evidence I have is just my own subjective experience, but there is one incident that stands out where one day my boss mentioned that my attitude had completely changed for the better at some point. I didn't think it had, but apparently there was enough of a change for him to mention the observation. Of course, I can't say for sure it was the result of exercise, but I couldn't place it on anything else I had been doing at that point. It was enough to convince me that exercise is something I just need to do regularly.

<comment><USER3> I'll third this. However, I've always had a challenge of mixing work (which i do a lot of), and finding time for things like going to a gym, etc. I'm also not one looking to bulk up w/ weights, and when I'm away from work I like meditative things. Using the computer 12+ hours a day is an intense amount of information / brain processing. I think thats why tech people get depressed — they're often mentally exhausted and therefore vulnerable.

Yoga <3 combined with an exercise app I made for the iPhone is working great for me. I'm making this app for myself, and trying to productize it for hackers, life hackers, travelers, etc. It's available on the store now but we've got another few major iterations before it's where we'd like it to be.

<comment><USER4> _I'm also not one looking to bulk up w/ weights, and when I'm away from work I like meditative things_

I find it a bit funny you say that because I used to be "bulked up with weights" (now I mostly walk/run with a little weightlifting added) and I found it to be a very meditative experience. The euphoria of pushing a barbell off your chest, the total physical drain at the end of a set of heavy squats led me to a place where I was completely focused inward and totally at peace.

In fact I think it was that mental relaxation that kept me doing it for all those years.

<comment><USER5> I was the same way for several years, but nowadays I find lifting quite boring and not relaxing, so I had to find other activities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can definitely empathize with this. I don't know exactly when I stopped feeling the way the author describes, but it happened somehow.

I think living in California has been good for me - there's definitely an emphasis on living well here. I find it easier to take pleasure in the simple things now - hiking especially. Also I often get this "wow, I'm living in the future" feeling these days, which always makes me very happy.

<comment><USER7> I find this interesting. Like many I can relate to the article too. I live in the midwest and some of my problem is seasonal. My doctor specifically told me that I should consider moving to a more sunny climate. I have toyed with the idea of moving somewhere more sunny like CA for years. I always wondered if it would actually make a real difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think most tech nerds can understand and appreciate the place this person is in. I know I do. If you're an INTP, I can almost guarantee that you have this problem.

Although I haven't conquered my own demons here, life becomes much easier when you know know that this is actually very common amongst intelligent people. In other words, this is only natural.

Accepting that the anxiety and depression are natural side effects of being a rabid thinker has actually helped me deal with it better. The anxiety and depression is still there, and I have my moments, but knowing that it is a natural phenomenon gives me a peace I would not have had otherwise.

It's not surprising to me that many programmers and deep thinkers end up practicing some form of Buddhism; getting away from the _now_ is what our egos are trying to do constantly. Feeding your head with information is the geek's way of hiding from the present moment.

It seems as if I am always _there_ ; never _here_. And that is the origin of my depression/anxiety problems.

<comment><USER9> I agree that some kind of anxiety is often (don't want to say "always") near to those who are said to be "rabid thinker". But is depression what I should think of a "natural side effect" of being such a man? If so, my would-be future (yeah, I want to be "rabid thinker"!) is going to be full of depressions :/

What I beleive is that any depression has a cause which can be (and should be) eliminated if you are going to be happy. If you _really_ know what the problem is, you probably know what to do with this (it's harder when there are so many problems that it becomes impossible to find out the one-and-only root of all evil).

It may seem as if I'm trying to say that depressions are unusual. Not really, I think that is a stage which should be overstepped (but what if there are some such stages?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I tend to be anxious and depressed like the author, but I've improved over the years. Things that have helped me:

There are 3 kinds of books I read: business, programming and spirituality. (I don't read fiction.)

It's a challenge to keep up to speed on all three, but when I start pouring myself into the latter (spirituality), I find myself feeling much lighter, living more in the moment and enjoying whatever momentary mess I'm currently into.

(Spirituality isn't about religion. It's about figuring out how to go deeper inside of yourself to make life-altering discoveries. "Whoa, that's why I react like that when she ...")

I've also found that consciousness-expanding drugs have helped me too. I can get outside my own reality and see things a bit more clearly. (I lived in Amsterdam for a time.)

<comment><USER11> How do you tell the great spirituality books from the bullshit ones? Are there spirituality books that an hardcore atheist such as myself can read? Lack of religious terminology would be a start.

<comment><USER12> I'll second that - I find the subject interesting, but must admit that almost all of the books I have picked up on spirituality start blabbering about force-fields and qantum mechanics without having a clue what they're talking about.

I have yet to find a good book on the subject - if someone from this forum can recommend anything it would definitely be appreciated.

<comment><USER13> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A feral kitten came to a friend of mine after asking the universe to help her get rid of the voles in her garden. She name the kitten Quito, befriended him, showed him how to get in and out of the house through the doggy doors. Introduced him to the other animals in the house. This took about 2 months. Quito vole hunts during the day, and comes inside to sleep on a tower pole of carpet at night. He watches with a proud smile on his face, full of himself after doing a marvelous job vole hunting in the garden. The other day I visited my friend. I watched Quito hunt and amuse himself during the day, and at night I would walk by him and whisper to him stories. The night before i was leaving, Quito was laying in the chair I usually sat in. I sat beside him, he turned belly up, like a U, tail between his legs, paws wrapped around his tail.. GAWD.. soo cute. I told him the story of his beautiful successful day with this one particular special moment, about a hole in the tree. Quito was up in the tree eating the bark, and noticed a hole. The hole said, "Quito eat me". Quito replied, "I cannot eat you, you are a hole, you are empty...it will not fill me up." The hole replied.. but, I am infinitely filled-up inside... eat me." I made sounds of popping the hole into my mouth, and Quito took his paw and quickly tapped my lips, awww Quito tried to eat the hole, but he could not. The story distracted and satisfied Quito, he jumped down back to his tower and slept, most likely dreaming of the hole that is infinitely filled- up.

<comment><USER14> It is unfortunate re the negative point. My story shared was to expose a distraction from focusing on being depressed.. find a another point-of-view. I intended to share the possibility of how one can focus on the negative or the positive aspects of one's day in every moment. Reflect and find balance during your day. Start by noticing and articulating the positive moments in your day, what did fill you up? Start with simple things. Did that toast for breakfast taste wonderful. Did you look out the window and see the sky.. beautiful or amazing. Learn a new language. Re-program your thought patterns. Re-compile how you see your day. It is not always about the BIG goals and changes. Aiming for BIG all the time will deplete you and leave you emptied. Take the time to find balance in seeing life, life has tiny moments too. Like writing code one character at a time... just might add up to a more fulling life.

<comment><USER15> I think because of the rambling style and punctuation, and lack of paragraphs, it looks like some sort of spam comment.

Try using paragraphs more, and your posts will be more likely to be upvoted.

<comment><USER14> I appreciate the paragraph, and punctuation suggestions. ;-D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Article is from 04/07. Is there any followup? It's not clear from all the commentary whether the author learned something from the anonymous solicitation of advice or if it served primarily as catharsis.

For anyone else living like this individual, I particularly agree with the commenters who mention taking up photography to get you out into the world creating art without abandoning a detail/tech-centric tendency.

<comment><USER17> I have found that any art does the trick for me. Over my life I've played Viola, crafted pottery, attempted to paint, and done photography. Of those two were wildly expensive (photography, oil painting), and the others were cheaper. I think the main draw of modern photography for programmers is that a great deal of our technical skill transfers into every part of photography except taking a good picture -- so we don't feel baffled when we first start.

That said, if you want to take up music or some other art, it's never too late. Music lessons are fairly cheap and honestly indispensable (I held my viola wrong for six months of practice before I started lessons). Painting is a much freer art and you can produce decent works on your own without instruction. If you do painting, I personally found oil painting an amazing medium because it allowed me to constantly improve my paintings no matter how bad they started =p.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Great article.

I suffer from PTSD, GAD and mild depression. Having been involved in a fairly violent street gang in high school, I had seen a lot of violence and just plain f*cked up stuff. People getting shot in front of me, a lot of situations that forced me to confront my own mortality, etc.

It really didn't hit me until about 10 years ago. I was getting off the F train at 23rd street and had an overwhelming feeling I was going to pass out, which I then interpreted as my imminent death. It was frightening because it was so out of the blue and so intense. Who wants to pass out on a subway platform? Or worse, die on a subway platform?

For the next two years I tried to find a medical reason behind that first massive panic attack, but never found one despite spending several tens of thousands of dollars on medical bills. I finally had to accept that I had these certain mental conditions.

I used to reign it in through a variety of meds; anti-depressants, klonopin, ativan, xanax. I went to a cognitive behavioral therapist to figure out how to change my thinking and learn to control it.

These days I don't take any meds and though I still have massive panic attacks now and again, they mostly don't phase me as they're so common place now and you sort of grow to accept that these things aren't going away and it's your lot in life.

The most damning aspects of anxiety disorder aren't the panic attacks, by the way. It's all the passive shit that comes with it. Hyper-vigilance and derealization have to be the worst. Hyper-vigilance means that you are so focused on your physical well being that the slightest pain, discomfort, etc. gets misinterpreted as a major medical calamity. A cough becomes lung cancer, a mild pain in your armpit becomes non-hodgkin's lymphoma, etc. With derealization, you'll have entire spans of time where nothing seems real to you at all, familiar things become unfamiliar, etc. If you've read anything by Camus, you'll have some understanding what derealization is all about. It's pretty scary shit.

But despite all of that, I have what I consider a fairly successful career. I believe that is partially due to the CBT therapy, and part to my stubbornness to not be a victim.

I do think depression and anxiety are endemic to this current generation of technologists (late 20's and up). This new generation, seems more balanced though, so maybe it's a generational thing? Not sure.

One controversial thing that has helped me, as well as hurt me, is marijuana. Most times it helps me to get out of my head, specifically on days when the anxiety is thickest. On the flip side, sometimes imbuing too much brings the anxiety like nothing else. But most times, it's been more helpful than harmful.

<comment><USER19> I developed most of the symptoms of GAD last summer after having a panic attack where I ended up in the hospital. It was weird because I'm in my early 30s and have never had any anxiety symptoms before. I guess I was probably mildly depressed, but no prior history of panic attacks or other GAD symptoms. I believe the panic attack was brought on because I got food poisoning during a time period with a lot of uncertain work-related stress.

I find the hyper vigilance the most obnoxious thing about this. The other things I can't stand are various weird chest tensions and growling stomach issues, which are related to the hyper-vigilance thing. I'd probably not even notice them usually, but now they freak me out.

I've not tried any drugs but have used the "Linden Method" which was suggested by a friend. It was relatively useful but there's not much too it. Mostly: get an engrossing hobby like photography and learn some deep breathing exercises.

Other things that have helped:

\- exercise, specifically outdoor exercise like running or surfing

\- more social time with friends

\- avoiding caffeine... this is a bummer since I really like coffee.

\- one glass of wine seems to help, but drinking to excess makes it worse the next day

\- regular sleep schedule seems to help

\- spending less time using computer-mediated communication helps

\- avoiding certain foods seems to help. I think indigestion triggers the hyper-vigilance response.

Out of all of these things, exercise seems to be helping the most. Thanks YC for the previous suggestions. I kind of knew that exercise would be the most beneficial, but it took some external prompting to actually get started running again.

I am interested in CBT. How do you go about getting into it? Just ask my primary care physician?

<comment><USER2> Your primary care physician can probably refer you to someone. It would be a good place to start. "Feeling Good" (Burns) is a good source of CBT information and exercises. I would also recommend "Managing Your Mind" (Butler and Hope). Another approach called "Acceptance and Commitment Therapy" has showed some promise in research. The book "Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life" (Hayes) was written by the person who developed ACT. Another good workbook on the subject is "The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Anxiety" (Forsyth and Eifert).

<comment><USER9> It sounds like you have already read some of these books and find them useful to find possible "bugs" in your mind making you anxious. If so, maybe you'll find my comment a bit naive.

What I've decided is that the only way to find out all the "bugs" to annihilate is by ignoring all the easy to get suggestions made by other peoples (who are smart enough to do that without any assistance). It's important that you should find out where the roots of your problems actually are and how to get rid of them _by yourself_. I beleive that no one knows about you more than you do.

Why don't I consider such books as a good point to start from? In fact, I'm a bit afraid of such books... They look like ones about patterns: they don't always turn you into a good programmer, but there is a chance that after reading you won't be able to think in terms other than you have already read about (that is actually what I'm afraid of).

Anyways, I'm going to take a look at books you've mentioned (with care :). Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Exercise + Cognitive Restructuring Therapy helps a lot.

It's hard not to feel anxiety and depression in today's world and some events can't be controlled. But how we perceive those events can definitiely be controlled by analyzing and challenging them for correctness.

Vilayanur Ramachandran's talk at TED on phantom limb pain addresses this idea very well.

[http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> Kitesurfing or snowboarding. You need a physical outlet.

Exercise will give you peace. It worked for me.

</comment><comment> old-gregg This story (and discussion) is so American... When translated into other languages I doubt it can be taken seriously by anyone.

Here, around 15:40 this cartoon/video explains why you feel like shit, in plain english with pictures, enjoy:

<http://www.storyofstuff.com></comment>


Redesigning Mary Meeker's Internet Slideshow - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-30/redesigning-mary-meekers-ugly-internet-slideshow <comment><USER3> What a horrible, horrible headline. Mary's analysis is incredibly detailed, extrememly informative, and FREE. This link-bait headline chose to ignore all the content and focus exclusively on the fact that the plots are ugly. Strangely enough, I managed to get through the slideshow without falling asleep, and I even was able to read her (quite well laid out) graphs and understand her points.

The author even acknowledged this; the first paragraph does nothing but extoll the value of the analysis. The headline, though, is pure linkbait.

Even worse, replacing a bar chart, where height scales linearly with the metric and is easily comparable across bars, with a bubble plot, which is very hard to use to compare sizes (tiny changes in radius cause a huge change in volume, not so easy to see that), is simply bad design and obfuscates the point. Color me not impressed.

Shame on you, Bloomberg. You should be better than that.

<comment><USER4> IMO, the "redesigned" slides are more aesthetically pleasing but they lose a lot of information in the process.

The second slide already has lower contrast (less readable), and as you mention, the bubble plot has less information. I do like the 4th slide (55) redesign, and the one on education (25).

Removing pictures and logos also reduces information for me.

Overall, I overwhelmingly prefer the first set of slides over the second - <USER2> point should be information first, aesthetics second.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yet another poseur "designer" who clearly hasn't read Edward Tufte's books, and has made crucial mistakes such as making the graphs less accurate than they were before and adding additional extraneous clutter (such as those extra icons) on top of the original information. Real design is supposed to make information more legible, not less, and it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how slick or "pretty" the end result appears to be.

<comment><USER6> "Real" design?

No true scotsman.

<comment><USER7> Snail22 isn't complaining that the result's not perfect. It's that it's not even moving the right direction. The new "design" is strictly worse than the original.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't normally pick on the design of sites submitted, but people in glass houses...

As soon as I scroll down a little the header changes and the entire first paragraph disappears behind it. It's very jarring and it's actually making it difficult to read. I'm sure it seemed like a cool idea, but design has to play second fiddle to functionality: It doesn't matter how fancy the design is if the product cannot perform its function.

A similar poor choice between shiny visuals and functionality has torpedo'd their redesign of the slides. They aren't the prettiest but I can very easily read the original charts. The new design massively reduces the contrast between text and background and makes the axis labels much smaller and a lighter font weight to boot. The result is very difficult to read.

<comment><USER9> The scrolling bothered me too, but it's not technically their fault. I paused ad blocking, and sure enough there's supposed to be a banner before the headline. With ads displayed it works more or less seamlessly (though it still is a bit distracting).

<comment><USER8> Whoops - I feel bad for complaining now, as you say it works without Ad Blocker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cubbers slides are prettier. However i'm able to grasp content better from Meekers slides.

I guess the people (Meeker, NSA) who make these presentations just want to get the message across and care little about pretty slides.

<comment><USER11> It's interesting how superficial some of the presentation designers can get. You don't need beauty to present data clearly and make it actionable.

I'd be interested in seeing some cost/benefit analysis on spending money on improving these kinds of presentation. Do you actually get a return from beautification projects like this.

Of course, there is a difference between bad presentation and competent. But I don't think Meeker's presentation is bad. Businessweek is just trying to attract controversy by throwing out "a crime against good design."

I work in a scientific field and we frequently get pitches by design firms trying to win work by spending money rebuilding paper presentations, etc. I think there is room to fix broken presentations. But there is diminishing returns from trying to improve a perfectly competent presentation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So now we have to amateurish approaches to design.

One with the esthetic sensibility of a visually impaired 3 year old, and one that completely ignores the goals and requirements of both the publisher and their audience.

Both of them are equally unprofessional, but only the latter is unforgivably pointless and arrogant.

</comment><comment><USER13> For me I'm distracted by the design - which is nice enough - but the key information doesn't jump out at me like with the originals.

Also, the use of green on green (or is it Teal?) isn't agreeing with my ageing eyesight.

</comment><comment><USER14> Wow, so much hate here.

I like the re-design. Yes, he makes it readable by reducing some information. But it's a _lot_ easier to read. Sometimes that's a good trade-off.

<comment><USER11> I don't know. I find the originals easier to read. I don't think the new design understands the information and its meaning.

Take slide 15 for example, changing a histogram into a bubble chart. Aesthetically it looks nicer, but when you try to comprehend the data it's more difficult. For example, easily comparing side by side bars is easier than trying to determine the difference in bubble sizes. One of the main points of Meeker's slide is that there is $30B in opportunity in the difference between Internet and Mobile time spent vs. ad spend. This is completely gone visually in the redesign and now adds a sentence to describe in text "Underspending on Internet and Mobile"

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't understand how you can design something without even talking to any of the stakeholders. Does the new deck accomplish the goals better than the original? How would you know?

I'm not a fan of unsolicited redesigns. Design is easy when you have none of the constraints of a real project.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would love to discuss with Mary about it. But I'm pretty sure she has better things to do!

And I agree with you that I don't have all the constraints. But it looks that they just used some of the default Powerpoint charts and shapes, so I just thought I could give it a humble try.

You can see the full-size slides here: [http://fr.slideshare.net/EmilandDC/kpcb-internet- trends-2014...](http://fr.slideshare.net/EmilandDC/kpcb-internet- trends-2014-redesigned-slideshare-version)

<comment><USER16> Calling something "ugly" isn't humble.

Putting "humble" in bold is an ironic admission of obliviousness.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Ugly" is in the title of the article, not in my Slideshare presentation. I just posted the title of the article here.

And I think you are over-interpreting things by seeing irony everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > _The Paris-based designer kept the "serious look and feel" and stuck with > the shade of grayish green favored by Meeker, a partner at the Silicon > Valley venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. But De > Cubber introduced a dark background—white, he says, is harder to read on a > big conference-room screen—and reduced the number of different colors to > create visual consistency. Finally, he got rid of an unnecessary color block > at the top and the firm's logo at the bottom to eliminate clutter and create > some breathing space._

I'm sorry, but isn't the usual advice that you use _dark_ text on a _light_ background, because in a presentation room with ambient light, the dark background may wash out?

<comment><USER18> Who cares what it looks like on a big conference-room screen? 99% of viewers are looking at it on a desktop or laptop.

I've always wondered how you can apply the banal "story-telling" presentation advice to slide decks that share detailed information that requires discussion, analysis and thought. Now I know -- you can't.

Emiland has, in fairness, greatly improved the text. "77% less financing volume" is a far better annotation than "77% below". Meeker would be better advised to improve her writing skills. Her design skills are just fine.

<comment><USER11> "Who cares what it looks like on a big conference-room screen?"

It was written to be presented at the Code conference. I think it's rather silly to ignore the design constraints of its initial presentation mode just because it will later be viewed online.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The original slides were to the point and effective. The redesign makes them generically prettier at the expense of readability.

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't care if the slides are full of words as long as the presenter doesn't just read word from word. The art of public speaking is more important than slides. I pay attention to slides but I also pay attention to speakers.

Leonard Kleinrock, one of the important father of Internet, is not shame of his 1997 style powerpoints. They work. He is a very good public speaker. He can tell stories.

[http://www.lk.cs.ucla.edu/bibliography- presentations.html](http://www.lk.cs.ucla.edu/bibliography-presentations.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't know why there's so much hate here, but I actually find the redesign much easier to comprehend quickly, without constant head-turning to read axis labels. The rephrasing of charts labels to, eg "Number of companies financed", in readable fonts makes things so much easier.

@EmilandDC, I really hope you do a complete redesign of the admittedly long presentation. I gave up a few slides in when I came across the original, but I am more likely to make it all the way through if I can read it in your presentation style.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you Neil!

Unfortunately, making slides requires a good amount of time and redoing the 160 slides would take weeks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Not bad. I like the way he streamlined the text.

Dark background... yes, that would be better for a conference room projection. But I prefer the white for my laptop view.

</comment><comment><USER23> Compared to the NSA redesign you did before, I love that this time we get the whole process and not just a before/after result.

</comment><comment><USER24> The biggest improvements are to typography, color palette and using a single background across headline and body.

The changed plots, not so much.

</comment><comment><USER25> Is the full deck available somewhere?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can see a bigger version of the slides here: [http://fr.slideshare.net/EmilandDC/kpcb-internet- trends-2014...](http://fr.slideshare.net/EmilandDC/kpcb-internet- trends-2014-redesigned-slideshare-version)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> What tools does one use to make nice slide decks with charts?

</comment><comment><USER27> Props to whoever modded the headline.</comment>


Mapping, Beirut-style: how to navigate a city without using any street names - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jun/02/mapping-beirut-style-how-to-navigate-a-city-without-using-any-street-names

<comment><USER2> Beirut is a wonderful city and this is one of the reasons I love it: people intimately know their neighborhoods. Every night coming home from the bars we would pass the same aging Christian militia guy sitting in a lawnchair at 3 AM, watching his street in Gemmayzeh and reporting whatever he saw. It's one of the reasons I felt so safe in Beirut... your neighbors know just about anything that goes on almost immediately.

A Sunni friend told me about a French colleague who had his house robbed in broad daylight in France: the thieves backed a moving truck up to the house, loaded his possessions into the truck, and drove away. His neighbors assumed he was moving and simply hadn't told them. He joked that this would be impossible in Lebanon -- neighbors would descend on the truck asking who the movers were, where the family was moving, asking the movers who their cousins were, inviting them in for tea, etc.

Beirut is an amazing place and I was deeply touched by its beauty and the kindness of the Lebanese people. If any tech startups in Beirut are looking for web app consulting, get in touch -- I want to go back and stay longer!

<comment><USER3> I'm going to be visiting some friends in Beirut in August, and I'm so looking forward to tasting this amazing city, about which I've heard so much.

Any specific recommendations?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me of the success of Waze in Costa Rica.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2014/10/2...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2014/10/27/why- waze-is-so-incredibly-popular-in-costa-rica/)

</comment><comment><USER5> In Japan many streets don't have names, but every city location has an address. Every block is numbered, and buildings are assigned numbers within the block in the order or construction. My address is Akasaka 9-7-4, which means the 4th building constructed on block 7 of district 9 of Akasaka. Yes it was a pain to resolve addresses before Google maps.

<comment> s-phi-nl Prior discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=668197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=668197)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Knowledge of how to get around in Beirut, and much of the Arab world, is based on contextual knowledge and history. People have shared space, and this shared knowledge serves as the basis for spatial communication.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's a little disappointing to read an article about grassroots mapping efforts that doesn't mention OpenStreetMap even once.

</comment><comment><USER8> <insert joke about Pittsburghers providing directions based on landmarks, specifically businesses or buildings that are no longer present and haven't been for 15 years>

</comment><comment><USER9> It drives me crazy in India. People use landmarks; my favorite tea house lists its address as "Across from the HP petrol station, N M Joshi St, Mumbai...". JUST NUMBER YOUR ____ING BUILDINGS!!!</comment>


Ask HN: Tips for a budget smartphone? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I'm looking for a cheap allround smartphone. No specific requirements. I'd like to spend less than 60 dollars.
Any recommendations? <comment><USER3> There aren't really any _good_ choices in that price range, your options are basically rubbish or old. Out of the two, I'd probably pick old and recommend something like an iPhone 4s or a Nexus 4 (used - <USER2> [http://swappa.com](http://swappa.com))

If new is important, check out [http://tracfone.com](http://tracfone.com) \- they have Android's as cheap as $20 (and worth every penny!)</comment>


Show HN: Igriva an ephemeral message board with user limits - kris-s https://igriva.com <comment><AUTHOR> Well, it's a unique idea I'll say that much. Is it a mainstream one? Probably not, but if you had fun making it and you're not aiming to make a business out of it, that's all that matters.

<comment> kris-s Thanks! Yeah probably not mainstream smash hit.

</comment></comment><comment> kris-s I've been working on Igriva little by little for the past few weeks. The core idea is imposing limits on the user: you can only post or comment five times until Igriva resets. When Igriva resets all the posts are cleared (I don't save them) and all users get five more actions. Not sure if it's a good idea or not but it was fun to make!</comment>


How to manage your static websites with AWS S3, CloudFront, and a command line - <AUTHOR> https://medium.freecodecamp.com/how-to-manage-your-static-websites-with-aws-s3-cloudfront-and-a-command-line-4a1be228f8e8 <comment><USER2> Sweet. Gratifyingly bloat-free source. No LICENSE file, sadly</comment>


Show HN: Weaver, a fast and scalable store for dynamically changing graphs - <AUTHOR> http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/12/16/introducing-weaver/

<comment><USER2> This reminds me of the approaches used by garbage collectors on object graphs—reorganising the graph to improve locality, and ensuring consistent views despite a concurrently running mutator. I wonder if other GC algorithms would be applicable to graph stores.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting analogy! Specifically, which gc algorithms did you have in mind?

<comment><USER2> Dunno, just speculating. Generational GCs use the observation that most objects die young. A generational graph store can use the observation that most accesses are to new objects—generally true of social graphs. You can move objects that are frequently accessed together into the same region, which some moving GCs do in order to obtain better cache behaviour, or evict infrequently accessed objects to "cold nodes" which you treat as the worst-case slow path. You can prefetch objects that you intend to traverse during the evaluation of a node program. And so on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> For anyone interested in graphs and mesh-networks, there's another relevant article on HN today:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8762063](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8762063)

Hasn't popped to the front-page yet, but I found its contents interesting.</comment>


In pictures: US preparation for a nuclear Armageddo - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/gallery/2018/jun/22/nuclear-armageddon-us-preparations-doomsday-war-in-pictures <comment><USER2> If you're interested in this subject, track down a copy of Edward Zuckerman's 1984 book _The Day After World War III_ ([https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1415128.The_Day_After_Wo...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1415128.The_Day_After_World_War_III)). It's now sadly out of print, but it's a treasure trove of great contemporary reporting on the U.S. government's Cold War "continuity of government" plans. ("Continuity of government" being the delicate bureaucratic euphemism for how they intended to keep society from collapsing if the bombs should fall.)

It was a mention of a secret, apocalypse-only regulatory code in Zuckerman's book that got me on the trail of the Code of Emergency Federal Regulations (CEFR), which I worked with the National Archives to make available to the public back in 2016: [https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2016/10/presenting-a-bit-of- histo...](https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2016/10/presenting-a-bit-of-history-the- code-of-emergency-federal-regulations/)</comment>


Dear Apple, Get Your Act Together - <AUTHOR> http://matthiasnehlsen.com/blog/2015/01/21/apple-get-your-act-together/

<comment><USER2> Apple is really going down hill. I am not going to tell a long winded tale, but suffice it to say, I have had many of the same experiences as the author and come to many of the same conclusions. How big of an issue(or how many small subtle issues) can I live with before I give up my computer for a week.</comment>