The Namibia desert is decorated by thousands of mysterious circles - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20140916-mystery-fairy-circles-defy-explanation

<comment><USER2> Not sure if it's just my browser that was missing them, but the article could've really used some images.

You can see the fairy circles in this Wikipedia page: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_circle_(Africa)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_circle_\(Africa\))

Or this Google Images link: [https://www.google.com.au/search?q=namibia+fairy+circle&safe...](https://www.google.com.au/search?q=namibia+fairy+circle&safe=active&es_sm=91&source=lnms&tbm=isch)

<comment><USER3> Maybe their mobile site doesn't have any images? The article is full of pictures.

1\. [http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/624_351/images/live/p0/26...](http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/624_351/images/live/p0/26/2x/p0262x31.jpg)

2\. [http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/624_351/images/live/p0/26...](http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/624_351/images/live/p0/26/30/p02630k3.jpg)

3\. [http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/624_351/images/live/p0/26...](http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/624_351/images/live/p0/26/30/p02630y6.jpg)

4\. [http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/624_351/images/live/p0/26...](http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/624_351/images/live/p0/26/33/p02633pj.jpg)

5\. [http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/624_351/images/live/p0/26...](http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/624_351/images/live/p0/26/35/p02635f0.jpg)

<comment><USER2> Couldn't see any of those. It was Ghostery blocking them Brightcove widgets.

<comment><USER4> _> It was Ghostery blocking them Brightcove widgets._

In the Web 17.0, using plain <img> tags for images just doesn't scale no more. Better rely on a framework for that arcane picture stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sure looks like Turing patterns that you get with Reaction-Diffusion simulations.

See [http://pmneila.github.io/jsexp/grayscott/](http://pmneila.github.io/jsexp/grayscott/) and select "holes"

<comment><USER6> Little circles in an apparently random pattern? Obviously, it's an anti- counterfeiting measure.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> To the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail:

"Some theories are still holding strong though, and Cowan jokes that each scientist sees the solution in terms of their own particular area of expertise: the insect biologists think the circles are created by ants or termites, the plant physiologists think it's grasses, and the chemists think it's gases. Cowan, a microbial ecologist, proves no exception."

</comment><comment><USER8> Namibian here. Can confirm, this got more international press attention than national press.

</comment><comment><USER9> It doesn't say anything about watching these over time. Do the rings move? Do they fill in after a year and new ones form? It's not like all the grass is in rings.

</comment><comment><USER10> "There is a tremendous sense of excitement that there is something really interesting going on and we want to know what that is," says Professor Don Cowan, director of the Centre for Microbial Ecology and Genomics at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. "It is a desire to understand the system. What is going there? What is happening?"

Can't think of a better summary of science!

<comment><USER11> How about this: "Science is the discipline of publicly testing ideas using systematic observation, controlled experiment, and Bayesian inference" :-)

The notion that these circles are the result of large-scale self-organization on the part of the grasses (and maybe other creatures) is an intriguing one. I have a very speculative novel that plays around with the idea of evolution operating on all scales: [http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Theorem-TJ-Radcliffe- ebook/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Theorem-TJ-Radcliffe- ebook/dp/B00KBH5O8K/ref=la_B00KHWIROC_1_1_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411070529&sr=1-1)

While Newtonian physics was the go-to explanatory metaphor for several centuries, it's plausible that in the 21st century we'll start to see metaphorical evolutionary explanations become more common. If we can encourage that habit in ourselves and others it may help us see more creative, non- linear solutions to our problems, rather than the simple Newtonian action/reaction, force/motion model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you're lazy, click here to see it on Google Maps: [https://www.google.com/maps/place/Namibia/@-24.9646371,15.93...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Namibia/@-24.9646371,15.9377251,382m)

You'll have to switch to satellite-view yourself.

<comment><USER13> Direct link to sat view:

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Namibia/@-24.9646371,15.93...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Namibia/@-24.9646371,15.9377251,580m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x1bf53c7e6ed37521:0xd3b9e5a5a8ecb261)

<comment><USER14> There is a trail or "circles" from a spot in the top left corner going east and a little north.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The termite theory makes a lot of sense.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_circle_%28Africa%29#Forma...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_circle_%28Africa%29#Formation_and_controversy)

<comment><USER16> The microbial theory too.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> When I read the article few minutes ago the there were several interesting images of the "fairy circles".

Their origin is still a mystery. In a way that's comforting, that nature often doesn't yield secrets so easily and we can be astounded and fascinated by the beauty of the things we discover.

The recent idea that the circles are the result of grass growth limitations due to water and nutrient availability, it still doesn't account for the circular voids. Similar conditions exist in S. Arizona where I grew up. Plants were sparse in the desert, there were native grasses too, but no fairy circles.

Maybe there's something about the root system of the grass that makes them chained together, but such regular circles at regular intervals wouldn't be explained by this mechanism. I wonder if the circles _move_ , that might tell something. Maybe the circles are too small to track by satellite, or too remote to warrant keeping track from space.

Well many have speculated about the phenomenon, tests have been done and theories discarded, and all we have to show for it is more speculation. The mystery will be revealed some day...

</comment><comment><USER18> Reminds me of the tiny dots/circles that form on the surface after my rice finishes cooking. Can't find a photo of what I mean online though.

<comment><USER19> Could it be the base of thermal columns?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Someone should analyse the distribution for how close it is to a Poisson Disc / blue noise. Looks pretty good from the satellite images.

</comment><comment><USER21> Really don't see any patterns in this image, there's also overlapping and merging going on: [http://lh6.ggpht.com/-4Dqlhnj1wkM/UV1et2rxyTI/AAAAAAAAm5Q/P-...](http://lh6.ggpht.com/-4Dqlhnj1wkM/UV1et2rxyTI/AAAAAAAAm5Q/P-qZdrXEs_w/fairy- circles-1%25255B6%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800)

</comment><comment><USER22> These remind me of the "Devils Stomping Ground" circle in NC. [http://www.hauntspot.com/haunt/usa/north-carolina/devils- sto...](http://www.hauntspot.com/haunt/usa/north-carolina/devils-stomping- ground.shtml)

<comment><USER23> Came here to post this, but I've only heard it called _Devil 's Tramping Ground_. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil's_Tramping_Ground](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil's_Tramping_Ground)

I'd like to go visit this for a few reasons, not the least of which is that one of my favorite NC beers is named after it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Maybe it's the Magarathean equivalent of the EURion constellation: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation)

<comment><USER25> I'm imagining a less-professional version, where underneath the polar ice is emblazoned: "This planet is original content and property of Yahweh, DO NOT STEAL"

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The circles remind me of antibiotic restistance tests: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacterial_lawn#mediaviewer/File...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacterial_lawn#mediaviewer/File:Bacterial_lawn_01.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER27> Have they had some grad student just go and camp in an area like this for a full year? I would think that would help you get some insights and plausible hypothesis.

It seems the rocks-sliding-across-the-desert mystery could have been solved the same way many years ago.

</comment><comment><USER28> BBC themselves previously reported termites being responsible for this:

[http://www.bbc.com/news/science- environment-21970408](http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-21970408)

<comment><USER29> The new article says:

Tschinkel dug for termites in one or two circles and returned in 2007 to investigate, and hopefully prove, his hypothesis. "It took us about three days to establish, without a doubt, that termites were absolutely nothing to do with this," Tschinkel says.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Reminds me of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mima_mounds](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mima_mounds)

</comment><comment><USER31> They are clearly giant ejection pin marks from when the Earth was popped out of its mould.

</comment><comment><USER32> Tell me about it. Those Namibian desert fairies play havoc with your herbaceous borders.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is caused by fungus. Have any scientists established this as the cause? That is my best guess.

<comment><USER34> If it's a guess you should probably not state it as fact.</comment></comment>


Quiet Hacker News (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://speak.sh/posts/quiet-hacker-news <comment><USER2> I personally have gotten more value from comments on HN rather than the links themselves, but I guess it depends on the topics one is interested in. Comments are also helpful to avoid reading articles that are not so relevant or just plain wrong, which happens once in a while.

My solution has been to just keep the links I want to open, but keep them for later (ideally, have less than 5 such links per day). A day after or so, if I still think it's relevant (beyond the title which is no longer new to me), I do open both the comment section and the link. This is especially effective when I find myself reading too much about certain topics that I know are toxic.

<comment><USER3> > I personally have gotten more value from comments on HN rather than the > links themselves

I agree. Many years ago, I found a lot of great articles here, but nowadays I'm mainly just here for the comments. I mean, I'll read articles if I want to reply to a comment, to make sure what I'm saying is accurate, but mostly I just read comments. Besides, too many articles are hosted by companies who are very hostile towards my privacy, so its just not worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The author is right that sometimes a thread will descend in to the usual tired old arguments[1], but the value I get from reading people's comments _far_ outweighs how annoying I find the tedious stuff. I've learned a ton of stuff from the comments here over the years.

[1] Which I'm guilty of posting every time there's a front end dev topic. :)

<comment><USER5> I've always thought of some way to minimise replies (probably a browser extension, ughh). 1st or 2nd order should be done by default in many places. Certain types thrive on this stuff, others just simply get worked up at the first thing they see. I'm very much guilty of this. (First comment for me!)

There's actually some really good content in incredibly popular threads but it's nearly always overwhelmed by nonsense replies to the first comment.

I guess some people that, but I challenge anyone to close every top level reply in a very popular article and see exactly how many are at the top. Basically the same everytime. It's like a virus.

Am a regular in r/space and most things aren't that popular but some things randomly blow up. There was one thread with well over 1000 comments and right down the bottom, Only 4 hours after the original post was a JPL employee, who was working on object in the story, it was highly detailed, incredibly informative, well-written, and with all the nitty-gritty downsides and shortcomings of engineering work. I'm guessing very few saw what that person wrote compared to 400 puns at the top. It's shameful.

<comment><USER4> _It 's shameful._

No it isn't. There's nothing about the content of the comments on anything on the internet that _automatically_ means one comment warrants more attention than any other. The reason why we have voting systems is so the community can push things to the top. That's tempered by the fact Reddit moves _fast_ so people who comment later are much less likely to get to the top of a thread, but really it just shows that people who vote in r/space value puns a lot. That's the community you're a part of.

It's like the opposite of HN. Every time I post a joke here it's like setting fire to some karma.

<comment><USER6> > _It 's like the opposite of HN. Every time I post a joke here it's like > setting fire to some karma._

I like it. You _can_ make a joke, but if it's bad, you end up _paying for it_.

I think the problem OP alludes to still exists on HN. While the replies are sorted (partially) based on their score, they're displayed fully expanded. That means a mid-quality comment with 200 points that has so much upvotes because it wasn't bad and was _first_ , will have all of its hundred child comments displayed above the second-best top-level comment. If the discussions under the first comment explode for some reason, there's a good chance a lot of people won't see the second top-level one.

Possible improvement, at a cost of increased JavaScriptitis - auto-collapse child comments under top-level ones, but in a more prominent way than it's done now, so that people _would_ usually be inclined to browse them. And for the love of people in need of CTRL+F-ing for something specific, provide an "expand all" button at the top.

<comment> blaser-waffle > I like it. You can make a joke, but if it's bad, you end up paying for it.

To quote John Scalzi "the failure state of clever is asshole"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find the value of the comments varies a lot by topic. Comments are good in areas where there are at least a few domain experts who frequently visit. This is HN at its best.

Outside of that it's much more of crapshoot. The trouble is that if nobody has any particularly deep knowledge of the subject then it's a case of the blind leading the blind. People will make arguments that sound reasonable and those will gather the most upvotes. Even if they're wrong or nonsensical in the context. It can be worse if people think they know about a subject purely because it's adjacent to (or looks similar to) something they do know about. Then you get strong but uninformed opinions.

In this environment a domain expert can be at best ignored or even downvoted if their comments seem to go against the grain. So they are in the position of either having to do the "do you know who I am?" dance (which some people don't like) or hope someone does it for them.

<comment><USER8> > The trouble is that if nobody has any particularly deep knowledge of the > subject then it's a case of the blind leading the blind

I'm in bio/medtech and anytime there is an article about health, food, neuroscience, or any other 'bio-y' thing, the comments are just as you describe. Sometimes other 'bio-y' people will chime in and set the expectations correctly, but usually there are a lot of comments that are just nonsense (or at least it feels this way to me).

I also feel this way when any article about black holes comes up, however, I am not an expert in astro/particle physics. Still, you tend to see a lot of child-comments from physicists that try to set the parent-comments straight, though the wrong outweighs the correct most of the time.

<comment><USER9> The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect[0] should be considered a phenomenon everywhere on the internet where discussion occurs, not just in media, because most people claim far more expertise on subjects than they have. I just assume, now, that anyone on HN discussing any subject other than programming is probably wrong unless they specifically mention that they have direct knowledge in the matter. Otherwise, they're as credible as an anon on 4chan.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell- Mann_amnesia_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I write HN comments somewhat regularly (like once a week), but my approach to it is more or less a "note to self". I use the comments to mostly describe my observations and thoughts. It's pretty much a monologue. When I'm technically replying someone, that's because my thought was based or inspired by that comment, and I don't actually expect that person to read my reply. I usually ignore most of the responses to my comment too. But I try (and enjoy) to make my comment helpful or useful to someone, in a "my two cents" manner.

That's my two cents.

<comment><USER11> I do the same. Writing things out is a good way to play around with a thought; reshape it, morph it, look at it from different angles. A thought in my mind is too abstract, fleeting and formless. A comment on paper is forced to take a shape.

Words are not the best medium for every thought, or sometimes it turns out the thought is not worth spending the necessary writing time to complete, such as this one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Every article I read, for better or worse, has been filtered. The following describes my filteres when I am simply enjoying articles posted on HN (My filter's are different if I am researchinig a topic):

The first filter is whether the article makes it to the front page of HN. This is followed by a quickly formed opinion about whether the title captivates my interest. If the first two filters pass, then I will take a couple of minutes to skim the comments section and decide if I want to read the article. In this way I leverage the minds of others as a final filter. If the article passes every filter, then that means that I have remained motivated to invest my time in reading the article myself. I open each article that passes all of the filters in a new tab and move on to the next title of interest. Once I reach the bottom of the page, I have the set of articles that I will read throughout the day. It is true, that I let other peoples' opinions influence what I read, but I justify this by reasoning that it would be impracticable for me to read every article that makes the front page of HN. This will cause me to have a biased perspective on things, but for me the strategy is one of practicality. I did read this author's article by the way. I think that the project is creative and interesting. Thank you for posting!

<comment><USER13> I often find posts on the "new" page more interesting than the one on the front page, you should give it a try.

<comment><USER12> You know, I am going to try this out. Up until now, I have not been voting on pre front page posts; therefore I have not been contributing to the front page filter effect that I take advantage of on a daily basis. I probably won't do this every day, but for this week I will. Thanks for the nudge!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For anybody wanting to achieve the same effect while using the official HN site, you can use the following as a custom user style:

      tr.athing + tr {display: none;}

This will just turn the home page in to a list of links, without any of the links for comments, upvote counts, etc. on each item.

Screenshot: [https://i.imgur.com/MSsblMm.png](https://i.imgur.com/MSsblMm.png)

<comment><USER15> You can also use your adblocker (e.g. ublock origin) and specify a custom rule to remove the comments.

That's what I do to remove the YouTube front page.

<comment><USER16> I did the same to remove youtube comments, they are incredibly rarely interesting and I hate the bile catching my eye even accidently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I worry that the plasticity of my brain is decreasing as I age. I've begun to notice that my attention is increasingly difficult to manage. I haven't blamed HN (yet) but I certainly emphasize with the author.

Tangentally, as a young adult I had severe ADHD/ADD. I stopped taking meds for it after is ceased causing a negative impact on my life towards the end of puberty. Sometimes I wonder what would happen to my personality and creativity if I started meds again. Would I be the same, gain an unfair advantage or excel at things I've given up on?

<comment><USER18> I don't think HN can necessarily be to blame. It might just be one of those "you're getting older, so think things were different when you were young" things, but I certainly feel I have a shorter attention span and have to try really hard to pay attention for extended periods. I don't know what to blame, but suspect that the attention economy is part of it. It could also be that I'm both a programmer and a gamer, so my brain now expects to be stimulated a lot of the time.

Also, just in case it's one of those words that you've been mixing up (rather than a typo), I thought you might appreciate knowing that it's "empathize with", rather than "emphasize with". I had that for the longest time with not knowing that the spoken and written versions of "awry" are the same word...

<comment><USER17> Thanks - I had no idea they were separate words!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Great that he found out what was making his experience on HN bad and was able to change that and contribute to others that feel the same.

I personally enjoy browsing HN's comments section to read opinions conflicting to my own's, and evaluate their arguments. It's a habit acquired to preventing falling for confirmation bias. I rarely post something in response.

<comment><USER20> I came here to say something similar. I'm noticing that I'm drawn to the argumentative comments, and I think the reason is not that I'm looking for for a juicy fight, but rather that I'm trying to expand my thinking. Watching the discussion play out helps me consider views that I wouldn't think of on my own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> >If I still had social media accounts, I would absolutely be making quiet(instagram/twitter/facebook).com to remove the notifications, gamification, noise and what have you, I think they're all brilliant tools whose utility has been downtrodden by companies obsession with having our attention.

I would support a project in that line with as much contributions as I could. This seems really important. What I did on youtube was that I blocked the recommendation-bar on the right side with UBlock and had a plugin that redirected [https://www.youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com) to [https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions](https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions). This made my relationship with youtube healthier.

</comment><comment><USER22> Please add (2017) to the title.

I prefer reading the comments because there's no ads and it loads quickly. I could use an RSS reader, but then I wouldn't see social media notifications (new messages from my girlfriend) happening in other tabs in the background, so I prefer to use a browser. Flame wars are something I try to avoid in comments sections. Writing tl;dr summaries for new articles is something I enjoy, and earns me quite a few upvotes.

</comment><comment><USER23> Lets see, how shall I disagree with the author and make it sufficiency unreasonable...

For me the similar train of thought triggered when I was part of a [highly informal] network of bloggers. Everyone went out of his way writing articles to the best of their ability. Some had similar topics like social media today but rather than a picture of a cake with "I've made a cake!" under it the blog post would describe the recipe, its evolution and tried to get at the very essence of cake and the baking thereof. The difference with forums and comment sections (where the same authors would post) is that the later have guaranteed readership. If your blog sucks people will drop your feed in favor of something else.

Anyway, the article reads like someone who badly needs to get over his preconceived ideas about RSS, like so many people around here. Hacker news, Facebook, Twitter, etc are cakes made in a factory, they are not your personal cake recipe that you've carefully calibrated over decades.

Hating on RSS is like telling your grandma who spend the whole day in the kitchen that all that cooking is really a waste of time and you prefer a happy meal or a whopper. Then you pull out your phone and say, don't worry! ill just order a pizza!

</comment><comment><USER24> I've been here since 2015 and one thing I've noticed in the past couple of years is that simply browsing HN gives me a kind of dopamine fix. When I'm in a 'browse HN zone', I voraciously consume any and all content, often times just lightly skimming everything. This can sometimes go on for hours at a time and I'll often go over feeling extremely fatigued and having remembered little of it. This is somewhat similar to the author, because I've noticed the same arguments over and over again, enough that I get a kick out of watching oftentimes the same people bickering over the same viewpoints. As I'm so accustomed to all the bickering, I simply just consume them without thought anymore.

Weirdly, I get more pleasure out of using reddit nowadays because I can focus on subs related to my hobbies, discussions around how to get more enjoyment out of a particular activity rather than just jamming large amounts of general knowledge into my brain.

</comment><comment><USER25> >There's an obvious trend as to which comments section I am mostly drawn to: ones with inflamed arguments

I have been lurking /r/programming and HN for over 4 years (still not that long compared to many) and this is a trend I definitely see. Which is a shame because this goes at the cost of much more interesting discussions.

<comment><USER26> I've been trying to quit Reddit over the poorly disguised political advertisements that flood it, and so I came to HN hoping to fill some of that discussion void. It surprises me that HN users think comment sections are inflamed here, to me things seem pretty tame.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's not necessarily a bad thing to prefer the comment section. But yes it's addictive and a _quiet-mode_ would probably allow people to form their own opinions from the source, before viewing the debate.

To me anything that - reduces the _hive mind_ effect and promotes diversity - is a good thing...

<comment><USER28> Doesn't this increase monoculture by preventing those who think there's a problem with comments.. from commenting?

<comment><USER29> > Doesn't this increase monoculture by preventing those who think there's a > problem with comments.. from commenting?

This is probably true, unfortunately. In the last few years I've given up on most of the forums and mailing lists I used to frequent, due to my low tolerance of trolls, zealots, and adolescent behaviour. HN is one of the few places left with a high enough signal-to-noise ratio to keep me reading it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Those are the exact same reason why I have stopped reading any threads that aren't technical. And of course politics. Almost any thread that has even a hint of politics will always turn into an echo chamber. Where anyone who doesn't agree with the echo chamber will be down voted.

<comment><USER31> > _Almost any thread that has even a hint of politics will always turn into an > echo chamber. Where anyone who doesn 't agree with the echo chamber will be > down voted._

Which also leads me to question subjects where I'm less informed or don't have an opinion. I have to assume that the echo chamber is in full-effect there too, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The thing about somebody out there always disagreeing with any position or opinion you post and nitpicking details is certainly true, and can be disheartening, but framed another way it's awesome training for improving your written communication.

Being able to post anything you like and never having anyone nitpick it would be a little bit like playing tennis with a friend who is much better than you but goes very easy on you and still lets you win. It might feel good, thinking that you're always hitting winners, but you're really not. And you're not improving.

Look at the best comments and commentors here and on places like twitter. What makes them good? It's that they make their points extremely tersely and unambiguously. You can disagree with the point, but you can rarely nitpick or 'well actually' the way in which it's made.

It's frustrating sometimes when people do this, you often feel like saying 'you _know_ what I mean by that' \- but the truth is people don't - you've been ambiguous and communicated the point not as well as you could have. It's frustrating, but it's actually pretty good training to learn from these nitpicks, because clear, terse written communication is a really important skill that's useful in a lot of places in life outside of discussions on forums like HN.

</comment><comment><USER33> I understand what the author is getting at. I myself have read links about new tools and frameworks and might think afterward, "that's pretty cool". Then I'll read the comments section where often I might fall into the trap of hoping others share the same opinion and maybe feel a little hurt and offended when those hopes are dashed. That is simply the nature of any social media platform. And it's probably healthier to let the comments section act as an additional resource on the topic, and one that might challenge our own way of thinking. In this way, comments are not agents of decline in our critical thinking. They are instead, part of its growth process, providing us with differing perspectives that should themselves be evaluated on their own merits and incorporated into our own thinking about the original topic.

I myself can't imagine this site without the comments, especially for additional links that are often provided relevant to the post. They are a great place to deepen one's own investigation of an interesting topic. And I've often been led to other parts unknown to me when reading them.

</comment><comment><USER34> "...test an underlying contributing factor that I believe led to all this: a reduced trust in journalism and Internet content on the whole. The comments sometimes were more fulfilling, informative and truthful than the link itself - not to mention advert/tracking free."

This was a fascinating thought, that I didn't expect to read most of the way through the blog post. I think it is a very good sign that the author was able to consider two quite different perspectives on the same topic: that the comments were a cyclic predictable pattern capturing his attention for the wrong reasons, and that at the same time the comments were potentially valuable as a source of truth and trustworthy information.

Fascinating, and I see some parallels to my own usage of HN. I will sometimes 'vet' an article I'm not sure of, by reading the quality of the commentary to assess the potential quality of the article. I certainly recognise the pattern of ctrl+clicking numerous links to read later when time permits.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm very new to Hacker News. I joined earlier this year when someone told me my blog post made page 1 of Hacker News (I've never heard of it prior). However, I find that I enjoy reading the discussion in the comments more than the actual posts. Of course, I focus on the engaging discussion posts and skip over any that don't contribute any value....

</comment><comment><USER36> I sometimes find myself reading comments without reading the article. When I do this I usually find half the arguments conflicting with one another, this usually causes me to go read the article. After that, it is usually very obvious that most people did not read the article and are commenting based on the title. They asked questions that are clearly answered in the article, make a completely unrelated comment because the thought the article was about something else, or they will make a statement that is disproven in the article. This type of stuff is hard to police, and I find myself guilty of it. I would say HN is streets ahead of anywhere else in this regard(Facebook, Twitter, Reddit... ), but it still happens quite a bit and it definitely detracts from the interesting discussions that sometimes happen. These interesting discussions are often better than the articles themselves, so I will continue to wade through the mindless dribble to find these bright spots.

</comment><comment><USER37> > _Reading the comment section of HN for so long has taught me a valuable > lesson that I will take away with me: no matter what you do, say, think or > feel, there is someone out there that does, or merely wants to, have the > opposing action, speech, thought or feeling. And that's absolutely fine, and > how the world should be - home to a diverse set of views and opinions, but > not to the detriment of your desire to build, share, create and form your > own opinions._

I used to welcome opposing views for the simple reason that I whatever beliefs or values I hold, I am probably somewhat biased towards them, and critical input is therefore something extremely valuable to me.

However, more and more, the opposing views are of the type described by the author above. People are less interested in actually broadening their horizon, in finding synthesis between thesis and antithesis. More and more, it's just about finding a position, digging in, and attacking the other with full force.

<comment><USER31> > _People are less interested in actually broadening their horizon, in finding > synthesis between thesis and antithesis. More and more, it 's just about > finding a position, digging in, and attacking the other with full force._

Do you notice this about yourself, or just other people? If the latter, that's part of the problem. Everyone thinks they themselves have an open mind and well formed arguments.

<comment><USER37> With the exception of certain values that I treat somewhat axiomatic (none of which are controversial), I'm happy to change my mind in light of a better argument.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The author has a point, but one of the defining characteristics of HN (in my opinion) is that sometimes comments are more valuable than the actual link.

Some HN comments are incredibly insightful and well informed, and some threads have real historical value (i.e. the original Dropbox and Redis posts).

Does someone keep an archive of legendary HN comments that you could share?

<comment><USER39> [https://danluu.com/hn-comments/](https://danluu.com/hn-comments/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> There are good—I would even say "great"—comment threads, that are just as worth reading as standalone articles are. Threads where _all_ of the comments are good, and nobody dares ruin the "mood" of productive conversation by butting in with the usual argumentativeness†.

• threads where the authors of the post do a "post-article interview" to add extra information in response to questions;

• threads on posts that are stories _about_ something historical, where in the comments, a person involved _in_ the history itself (not the author) shows up and tells more such stories;

• threads on posts about some cool thing the author made, where commenters point out _other_ cool things the author has made; or point out other cool things that are _complements_ to the original cool thing (rather than getting into a debate about _replacements_ for the cool thing.) Threads about new works by prolific hackers (e.g. DJB), or prolific academics (e.g. Scott Aaronson), are good for this.

• threads on posts about choosing tool/technology X and the anecdata of its advantages/disadvantages for the author's use-case; where the comments are from other people who either made the same choice, or a choice of comparable technologies Y or Z instead; and, rather than just being a partisan argument for their technology, they give a compare-and-contrast of the products in the product-space X occupies, giving a clinical evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of X, Y, and Z _for the original author's use-case_ , as if they were asynchronously collaborating with the author on a greater work.

As it turns out, all three of these, in one way or another, are "encores" to the post. Things that add value _of the same kind_ that the post itself has.

...and then there are bad comment threads. Which is, IMHO, everything else. (Including this thread! I shouldn't be in here!)

† I think it's kind of like street art. Paint a beautiful mural on a wall, and nobody's gonna deface it with boring old graffiti. Every graffito thinks themselves an artist, and so respects good art. Every HN debater thinks themselves a scholar, and so respects productive scholarship.

——

Honestly, I wish there was a meta-HN, with a lag-time of ~48hrs behind HN, that just linked to the ensuing discussions that turned out to have been worth people's time to read, when judged by the same criteria that we use to upvote links ("gratifies intellectual curiosity", etc.)

In combination with a "just the links" feed (as in this one, or just as in consuming HN via RSS), you'd both 1. get a really enjoyable experience, and 2. probably feel much less of a need to participate yourself. (I need this, honestly.)

</comment><comment><USER41> My current cure to news binge is to use RSS inside emacs with elfeed[1]. Emacs has the great advantage to be quiet by nature. I use spacemacs[2] more precisely. So in the morning I simply type `SPC a f` then `g r`. That's it.

And very important I use HN feed filtered by number of points (thanks to hnrss.org): [https://hnrss.org/newest?points=500](https://hnrss.org/newest?points=500)

[1]: [https://github.com/skeeto/elfeed](https://github.com/skeeto/elfeed) [2]: [http://spacemacs.org](http://spacemacs.org)

<comment><USER42> HN itself can filter by the points, afaik. Search for "Undocumented Hacker News", it's mentioned there among other features. However, that's on the site—dunno about the feed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I don't read many of the links on HN these days, but that's because such a high percentage are behind a paywall. I understand HN's policy, but a big chunk of what hits the front page is the NYT, and I have no way to read those articles. Greatly reduces the value of HN.

The reason I haven't completely left HN is because occasionally a personal blog article like this hits the front page, in which case I do read it, and only sometimes check the comments.

To relate my comment to the linked article: I'm saying links to paywalled articles have turned HN into a discussion forum rather than a place to discuss articles.

<comment><USER44> >I don't read many of the links on HN these days, but that's because such a high percentage are behind a paywall. I understand HN's policy, but a big chunk of what hits the front page is the NYT, and I have no way to read those articles. Greatly reduces the value of HN.

Right now (8:39am ET) there is 1 NYT article on the front page.

<comment><USER43> According to this[1], 4% of all front page links (4/day) in 2019 have been to NYT articles. That was only one example, and it doesn't account for time on the front page, which is almost certainly much longer for NYT links.

[1] [https://toddwschneider.com/dashboards/hacker-news- trends/?q=...](https://toddwschneider.com/dashboards/hacker-news- trends/?q=wsj.com&f=domain&s=text&m=frac_items&t=year)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Imho, the ability to filter useful from useless information is very valuable and should be cultivated. What better place to do this than the HN comments section, since it contains both kinds of information? :)

</comment><comment><USER46> Pretty much I fell into a similar rut.

I think HN should not allow voting until you open the link. However being able to flag should be kept regardless if you open a link or not. My favorite feature has been the favorite tag. Both as a reminder but also for sites flagged by work.

The flagging without opening the link is to make it easier to suppress the indirect but sometimes direct political tripe that filters in during election cycles. I don't think comments/stories are PAC managed here but it could happen one day.

<comment><USER9> >I think HN should not allow voting until you open the link.

People would just complain about HN tracking them, and would default to just opening the link for voting privileges, or just skimming the article. There's no technical solution to the problem of getting people to actually RTFA first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I got towards the end of the post and found myself thinking thinking "I wonder how the comments feel about this"? He makes a fair point, but my rebuttal is that I do learn interesting things from the comments here, but it is important that you read the article and know that someone may feel different about it than you. It's important to stand by your convictions and not give into groupthink.

I think the "quiet" brand would be very useful on a service like Reddit.

</comment><comment><USER48> Every now and then I open the active[1] section looking for interesting discussions, run a scriptlet to remove greyed-out comments[2], and add to a TTS software on my phone to listen to.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/active](https://news.ycombinator.com/active)

[2]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20006310](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20006310)

<comment> blaser-waffle Why delete the grayed out comments? Not trolling, am curious.

I feel like by skipping those you're just bowing to the will of the hive mind without knowing what the alternatives could be.

<comment><USER48> I'm aware that I do lose some gems and though provoking discussions, but IMHO the majority is uninformed/offtopic/poor-quality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Not really using it, I sort the frontpage by (votes/comments) to filter 'Comment sections that will devolve into discussions (see: condescending, pedantic arguments)' and their links: [http://xash.in/hn/](http://xash.in/hn/)

<comment><USER15> What are all the columns?

<comment><USER49> \- Original position on the HN frontpage

\- Score

\- Link

\- Upvotes

\- Comments

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> > I simply open the comments and am able to deduce the gist of the link > through the unfolding arguments.

Hold on, the HN comment section is sometimes a tire fire of people who don't know what they're talking about giving their uninformed opinions.

You need to read the articles to see whether the comment section is addressing points made in the article.

(This is why I disagree with mods about posting links to paywalled content. Some of those paywalls are now hard to bypass so the comment threads are full of people who haven't read the article.)

<comment><USER51> Did you read the _whole_ article?

      After all this I noticed a reduction in critical
      thought, my ability to form my own opinion on topics,
      as I had a) stopped reading the damn links, b) would
      skim what I needed off of the most upvoted comment,
      c) would then take that comment as gospel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > There's an obvious trend as to which comments section I am mostly drawn to: > ones with inflamed arguments.

I come here because of the value of some comments but this, above, as soon I can feel a flame wars starts, is the reason I stop immediately reading comments on a topic.

</comment><comment><USER52> > _After all this I noticed a reduction in critical thought, my ability to > form my own opinion on topics_

Having felt similar, I've committed myself to only check out the comment section after I've gone through the damn article itself.

</comment><comment><USER53> Why, most of the times I read the first few comments then decide if I'll click the link. Unless I can tell the content is what I want from the title and the domain.

People on HN are quite good at calling out bullshits from articles.

<comment><USER54> Comments on HN call bullshit too readily, because it's easy to be a cynic. You can operate an entire career as a cynic and be rewarded for it, much in the same way cool kids can safely hate on everything and keep their cool status.

It's easy to criticize, and 10x harder to create.

<comment><USER2> > Comments on HN call bullshit too readily

Too readily for what purpose? You don't seem to disagree with OP: the fact that somebody wrote an article that you would not have been able to write yourself does not entail that it is worth reading, especially if it spreads some misconceptions.

There is already a lot of good content about many topics on the Internet and in offline sources, so why not be more demanding?

<comment><USER54> It's not "more demanding" it's "overcritical".

The benefit comes from exactly the thing you're superficially asking for; it _seems_ "higher quality" to be cynical towards things, as if you're "discerning". From it you can get respect from people who aren't very credible.

The problem is you miss out on good ideas and the more credible people don't generally take you seriously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I like reading comments, for the chunks of the poster's life they reveal.

</comment><comment><USER56> I found this small script quite useful [https://github.com/lrusnac/hn- notifier](https://github.com/lrusnac/hn-notifier)

</comment><comment><USER57> This is weird. I usually find something in the comments more insightful than the articles. I've gotten pretty good at skimming over the dross, though, I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER58> If one could also upvote the articles from there, it would be perfect. A weird thing is that if that page is very successful, not many comments will show up here. :-)

</comment><comment><USER59> Yes, this is a good idea: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS)

<comment><USER60> From the article:

>Why not just use the RSS feed?

>I do not use RSS.

<comment><USER61> That's not really a _why_ answer - not a good one anyway. If someone built a customized cutting tool for a specific task, "I do not use scissors" wouldn't be a good answer to "why not just use scissors?" if they were indeed suitable to the task.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Could we have a dark mode please like the post itself?

</comment><comment><USER63> Yet here we are, browsing the comments. :)

</comment><comment><USER64> This is awesome. If HN could provide a toggle/option that turned off comments, that'd be great.

<comment><USER65> Try this: [https://rickyromero.com/shutup/](https://rickyromero.com/shutup/)

Available for iOS, Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> >The front page is more than enough to keep you entertained for the day.

Glad I have this guy telling me how to live

</comment><comment><USER67> My experience on here basically mirrors OPs perfectly. I'm definitely going to try this out.

</comment><comment><USER68> I usually skip past posts that have more than a couple dozen comments. That helps a lot.

</comment><comment><USER69> Why build a server when a browser extension with three lines of CSS will do?

<comment><USER70> No extensions on mobile.

<comment><USER71> Unless you use Firefox.

<comment><USER52> or the Chromium-based Kiwi.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> lets post comments he won't read :d... like ,thanks :D

</comment><comment><USER73> That has to be one of the best advertisements of all time!

</comment><comment><USER74> I find the n-gate summaries to be much more informative.

</comment><comment><USER75> HN has biased mods and since it's only 1 board, we only get to see what mods want us to see.

Curated content is okay, but I got a feeling theres lots of fake news.</comment>


Ask HN: What job offers most free time? - <AUTHOR> I believe many of us don't have enough time for personal projects/startups because of the daytime jobs. Could we find us a job which would allow us to code during work hours? Some of the examples I was thinking of are a librarian, security guard or clerk at a shop that people rarely visit. Would you consider something like that yourself? <comment><USER2> > Some of the examples I was thinking of are a librarian, security guard or > clerk at a shop that people rarely visit.

If you're a halfway decent programmer, you can easily get consulting gigs that will earn you multiples of what you will ever make at these jobs per unit of time.

You could do something like consult for a week and take the next three weeks to work on your project, or you could consult for a month and take the next few months off to work on your project. Your financial situation will be similar or better when compared to the low-paid jobs.

The low-paid grinder jobs you mention are definitely not worth doing in terms of money or time.

<comment><USER3> Where do I go get a consulting gig like this? I am indeed a halfway decent programmer, proficient in a variety of languages, frameworks & technologies. Get me some work like this and I'll pay you commission.

<comment><USER4> If you're in a decent tech hotbed, start by interacting with the local community. Talk to other developers, agency owners, startup founders and see if you can offer them help. It's a different dynamic than trying to find a consulting gig online and anecdotally I find it far easier to coney the value I bring to people than through a Skype call, thus being able to increase my rate.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the nice reply. I will definitely check out some meetups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My wife is a school librarian, and she has less free time than I do. If you're just a reference librarian, then possibly. But then you need to have your MLA in order to be called a librarian.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sorry if I'm not quite answering the question. But you can also try consulting, continue what you're doing now, and rebalance the three things that factor into this: time, income and expenses. So if you want to increase your discretionary time, you'll need to charge clients more and/or reduce your expenses.

Unless you were seeking the novelty factor of trying out a new field, and assuming you're a hacker, it seems you'd hit the ground running faster if you'd just switch how you earned your income or spend your money.

</comment><comment><USER6> In my experience working for your average corporation or government entity involves normal (and often flexible) hours, and can be as demanding or undemanding as you like. Throw in benefits and it's not the worst way to go.

It does entail taxing the same muscles you'd like to use for your own projects, but at a multiple of what you'd expect to be paid in the other fields mentioned. (And as has been said before, you could always "pay yourself first" by doing your own work before clocking in.)

</comment><comment><USER7> To echo lots of comments here: it comes down to your value per unit of time, which is largely dictated by a combination of your own talent or outside market forces/good fortune.

I'm very fortunate to have reached a productivity/income level requiring me to work only 4-6 hours/week. I enjoy working more, but also love the free time to pursue outside hobbies, business ideas, pro-bono, etc. Once you reach a point where you set the price/terms, the sky's the limit!

</comment><comment><USER8> The higher status or more rich you are, the less utility your job must provide, these low societal utility vocations afford more time precisely due to this fact; this is why programming is a relatively low status field.

* also, the value generated by high status jobs only need to occur in short bursts, only the value-per-time-unit is much higher; the skill required here will also be much harder to acquire and scarcer to find... one needs time and experience to get to this level.

<comment><USER9> and why so few women want to work in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> In college I worked as an overnight security guard. The only demand that job made was that I was in a certain building for 8 hours and stayed awake. Seriously, the turnover from guards fired for sleeping was a real issue, so just being awake was a big plus. Beyond that, I could read, study, whatever. Ideal for school. Coding during that time was possible, but you might not have internet access.

</comment><comment><USER11> Hotel Night Auditor... gives about 5-6 hours free time per 8 hour shift... at night when then internet is slow and many programmers like to work...

</comment><comment><USER12> Looks like you want something for nothing. No job is going to _EVER_ give enough free time for you to pursue your interests to the fullest. I'm afraid you'll have to go about this in another way: Live below your means and work towards financial independence. Only then can you really pick and choose what you want to work on.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'd absolutely love to work for a software development agency that only expected 20-30 hours per week on average. It seems like there has to be jobs like that as an alternative to security guard, hotel auditor, or food service.

</comment><comment><USER14> Software developer for a US university or local government agency.

</comment><comment><USER15> basement dweller

</comment><comment><USER16> underwear model

</comment><comment><USER17> nighttime security guard

</comment><comment><USER18> Leftorium Employeee

</comment><comment><USER19> Find a job that only has 8 hours a day work expectation. It is rare nowadays, but possible.</comment>


Running a Business With Staff Scattered Around the World - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/business/smallbusiness/running-a-business-with-employees-around-the-world.html?src=dayp&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> I work for a global start-up. Currently 350 people all over the world, incl. NZ and LT.

We have a mix, we do have offices in major markets but people scattered all over the place.

Located in Central Europe, I run a team of 3 people, all in different countries, one even one hour away (timezone wise). I report to someone in the SF bay area.

How do we pull it off:

\- When going into a new region we establish ownership. One general manager who owns it, who most importantly from now on works in this timezone. No matter where he/she lives, it is the customers and team that matters

\- We run on the Google App Stack. Google Chat is my second home. GoToMeeting my third.

\- Scheduling things is important. Regular talks with your team, etc. If it is not in people´s calendar, you cannot assume to just "walk by to chat" for important topics.

\- English is the corporate language, we do not hire anybody who is not capable of holding a conversation in English. Be it Europe, China or Japan. Our internal documentation is in English. Our customers operate in the same way.

\- As a manager: very flexible work hours. a fine ear/eye for issues and conflicts. awareness of cultural differences on communication and perception.

</comment><comment><USER3> We're distributed across the US. Easier to solve, but still timezone problems. West coast, Midwest mostly. Sometimes folks in the field e.g. Japan, Hong Kong. 75 people in the company.

We're Sococo, and we eat our own dogfood. From the day audio streams came up for Alpha test, we abandoned other tools and have made ourselves live with Teamspace. From the coders to the CEO, we inhabit several virtual spaces by team.

It solves some of the issues brought up here. The presence information is tremendous, making it possible to see who's talking with whom, when a meeting or standup is starting, what they're doing. Yesterday we had an all-hands, the whole company. Half are in Mt View CA, the rest distributed. I didn't know where the meeting would be (which virtual room) so I looked at the map, saw folks congregating in a big meeting room and clicked in. Spookily similar to what happens when physically present - you follow the crowd.

Anyway we had everybody on video (in groups, so 7 or 8 thumbnails); switched our map between Mt View video, shared docs and shared screens as the presentations went on.

Q&A was very interesting. It was actually easier to follow questions from other virtual participants - they all have their own mic, so everybody could hear the questions. Folks physically present were just some mumbling from the back of the room in Mt View; the speaker would forget to repeat the question half the time.

I cannot emphasize enough how much immediate and present you feel in a virtual tool like this. I actually feel anxious when I have to participate in a conference call or talk to somebody on a phone - the experience is so crappy and disconnected. Instead I 'call out' from a virtual space. At least then I can collaborate with my team while interviewing somebody, or talking through a customer problem. I can add a virtual participant into the call with a click. I can leave the call for a moment, get an answer from an Engineer, get back to the customer transparently.

Sorry for the gushing. Its hard to explain how different it is to be virtual without sounding like an advertisement. Anyway, there are definitely many tools out there to help with the distributed-team problem. And now some are integrated complete solutions, which is a whole new ballgame.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been collaborating with a bunch of people all over the globe on my latest contract and so far the hardest thing has been coordinating dependencies. If my task depends on somebody else's task but he's in a different time zone it can take a couple of days of messages to get things going in the right direction.

I think the key here is to nail down the design and any related specs as much as possible upfront. The more you have to sculpt things as they go along the more time you lose in coordination.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's funny how most of this advice is about "controlling" employees and making them perform. I wonder what happened if Github was interviewed for the same article.

<comment><USER6> Github's got a huge advantage though: Massive product/employee fit. Every person who works there probably uses the product personally on a daily basis. That really helps smooth things over and has to be a semi-secret weapon for them.

<comment><USER7> Yes, a lot of the GitHub doctrine of letting people choose what to build is great and a refreshing change from a lot of other IT companies. But doesn't apply for an IT company serving the construction industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I work for a globally distributed company and we have similar issues. The only way I see it working is by allowing total freedom and getting people fully immersed to the point of ownership over their tasks.

We also make team collaboration software, so we utilize it and I highly suggest everyone else trying this model does the same. Use the software and do not deviate, then watch your company flourish.

</comment><comment><USER9> One thing I'm curious about recently is implications for tax regimes. For example, the Argentinian employees decide to work from Costa Rica.

One type of tax is like Goods & services taxes. They are very hard to avoid. Tax makers can set these to whatever rate they want and have to deal mostly with simple economic effects (lower demand at the higher price point). They don't have to worry about "dynamic effects" where people just choose to purchase outside of the tax regime.

Another type of tax is corporate taxes, investment taxes, capital gains taxes & similar taxes. These "have legs". Tax makers _do_ have to consider investment going elsewhere or corporate profit being accumulated elsewhere. Often lowering cooperate taxes can lead to higher totals because companies move in from higher tax regimes.

Income taxes are still much more like the first type but they are getting more like the second. They are tied to the job & the job is tied to a place. But.. as our culture, economy & the companies we work for get more globalized, differences between income tax regimes may become a bigger factor. If you pay $30k a year in income taxes and work from home this becomes paying $30k a year to live in a country.

I've spoken to several people lately that are considering taking such proposals to their employers. Let me work remotely so I can clear an extra $x0,000 per year. These are average income people, not millionaires.

Whatever the ideological disposition of a culture, many governments may be forced to survive on lower revenues. In Ireland for example, it seems that tax revenues reached a peek a few years ago. The current budget is milking lizards. There is no more tax revenue that can be raised without hitting a point of negative return. There is a sense that "recovery" will take a long time but I suspect the decline (at least as a % of GDP) may continue.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have a few helpers--writing blog posts, creating contests, etc.--for my website, Scribophile, and they're all over the world and I've never met them. So far they've all worked out really well. Maybe I've been lucky.

I basically set a goal and let them do whatever they want. After any initial emails to get them up and running it's not uncommon for me to not email them for weeks or months. If I do email, it's to make a small course correction. People who care about what they're doing don't need to be micro-managed, and like having the freedom to solve problems on their own terms. The trick is finding those people in the first place!

<comment><USER11> Where did you find people to write blog posts and create contests?

<comment><USER12> it must be the people who reply to blogs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been working with contractors from various parts, and I have to say Trello has been a huge help in keeping track of everything.

Though I agree, working around the clock becomes an issue. You can ask people to work on the same timezone as you, like the article says, but it's a lot harder for casual workers to do that, as they tend to do part-time contracts around their other work or studies.

</comment><comment><USER13> Nice article, we have ~85 people working from ~18 countries since the business runs 24/7. A bit easier than the business int he article maybe since about 50% of those people are doing customer service shifts, and the others dev / systems.

A lot of fun problems but I love it!

</comment><comment><USER14> Do you think it is possible to pull off a startup where the team (e.g. three people) is spread over different timezones? How would possible investors react to something like that?

</comment><comment><USER15> I seem to be losing my sense of wonder

Yesterday I worked with my collegue, me at my desk near London, him in the Pennsylvania sunshine, producing code for a Texan university. We chatted, shared code, pushed updates to servers on two continents.

We were using technology that is according to Arthur C Clarke, _magic_ in any previous human generation.

And I never even noticed.

Co-ordinating humans over vast distances is really no different to doing it in two adjacent rooms. Treat people as craftsmen doing a professional job, individuals capable of coming together for a shared vision, encouraged by peer accolade and pressure.

and don't forget to stop and smell the flowers once in a while. It's a wonderful life.</comment>


The Library of Congress Acquires Entire Twitter Archive - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/notes/the-library-of-congress/how-tweet-it-is-library-acquires-entire-twitter-archive/110775778955250 <comment><USER2> I wonder if the LoC keeps dumps from Wikipedia (in relation to the other frontpage story). I would think that the full 5.6TB Wikipedia dump would probably contain more useful information on average than 20TB of tweets.

[ref: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1265138>]

</comment><comment><USER3> This headline reads like one for an Onion news story

<comment><USER4> I thought for sure this was a late april fools post.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I thought the same thing... then the fear that my tweets to trending hashtags like #threewordsforyou or #worstlies are in the Library of Congress for perpetuity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hopefully they'll convert the short urls to long and make some arrangements to download pictures from twitphoto and their ilk.

<comment><USER7> If not, this would be a cool project for a third-party distributed project like SETI@home or folding@home.

<comment><USER8> I'm a member of ArchiveTeam (<http://www.archiveteam.org/>). One of our current projects is to archive all the URL shorteners we can find. We're going to make the full dataset available for public download.

<comment><USER9> Can we report shorteners? For example, I host a private-use one at <http://ajh.us> that's powered by my project <http://lessnmore.net>

<comment><USER10> While they may well have a way for you to submit archives, I think the greater question to ask is "why?"

URL shorteners are bad enough on their own, but arguably a necessary evil -- encouraging everyone to set up their own is in no way a good thing.

I can't think of a _worse_ service for an average user (or anyone without a datacenter, or better yet multiple datacenters) to run. By all means run your own email server -- if it craps out, at least you'll just lose _your_ email. But if you run a URL shortening service and send out or post a lot of URLs using it, and then you go bankrupt, die, or just get bored and decide to stop running it ... now everyone who happens to have one of the links is S.O.L.

It strikes me as the kind of service that's relatively easy to run, but unless someone is prepared to run it _forever_ , they probably shouldn't.

<comment><USER9> I am using it primarily to shorten links back to <http://alanhogan.com>, and since I run both domains, I intend to keep both of them running as long as possible -- and when one goes down, the other becomes pretty much useless.

But yes, I agree that it is important to intend to run these services forever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I work for the LoC. I think I'd of heard of this.

Edit: It is my considered opinion that a lot of what the LoC does is excessively ambitious. The project I'm currently working in is called the Born Digital project, which is an attempt to allow major broadcasters like PBS and CNN to submit broadcast material to the Library in real-time. The tools to do this, do not currently exist.

<comment><USER12> > The tools to do this, do not currently exist.

Considering that all the major networks beam their broadcasts all over the world in real time I don't see what the challenge is other than storage space. Startups like Justin.tv have figured out how to not only capture but stream thousands of simultaneous live streams, so the tools certainly exist.

<comment><USER11> The primary difficulty is that the Library is attempting more than just live- capture of video streams. They are going for full archival quality. They're not simply saving streams to tape but but running extensive qc processes on everything and transcoding coding the material into multiple formats. Technically, the technology exists, but the Library does not have the hardware to run the software. (Unless someone knows of some efficient, off the shelf content-validation program that we don't know of...)

Other problems include, yes, storage. The projected aggregation rate will outstrip, not only the Libraries current physical facilities, but all planned new facilities, by 2013 (at which point we will be looking at 250PB of storage.) The rate of growth will continue to increase from there. Unless tape technology improves at an exponential rate, this seem unavoidable.

<comment><USER12> Are you storing everything or just their unique content? Commercials and what not make up a large percentage (30%) and then re-runs (unknown percentage, but huge). And why multiple formats? Unless you're distributing the content it seems more efficient to transcode it when you need it.

<comment><USER11> I really don't know. I don't make those decisions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is anyone concerned about copyright issues? I'd have to go back and consult the Twitter TOS...

edit:

"You agree that this license includes the right for Twitter to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals who partner with Twitter for the syndication, broadcast, distribution or publication of such Content on other media and services, subject to our terms and conditions for such Content use.

Such additional uses by Twitter, or other companies, organizations or individuals who partner with Twitter, may be made with no compensation paid to you with respect to the Content that you submit, post, transmit or otherwise make available through the Services.

We may modify or adapt your Content in order to transmit, display or distribute it over computer networks and in various media and/or make changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to any requirements or limitations of any networks, devices, services or media."

<comment><USER14> What copyright issues? The US Copyright Office is part of the Library of Congress. One of the LOC's responsibilities is to maintain a collection of all copyrighted works.

 _The Library serves as a legal repository for copyright protection and copyright registration, and as the base for the United States Copyright Office. Regardless of whether they register their copyright, all publishers are required to submit two complete copies of their published works to the Library if requested—this requirement is known as mandatory deposit._ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Congress>

<comment><USER15> Even for non-USA citizens?

<comment><USER14> IANAL, but I don't think your citizenship is an issue. What matters is where a work is published, and in Twitter's case that would appear to be the United States.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This has been confirmed on the Library of Congress blog: <http://www.loc.gov/tweet/how-tweet-it-is.html>

It is not a fake or a late April Fool joke, despite the fact that the original post is from facebook.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder how the content and quality of discourse on Twitter would have differed if its users had known all along that their posts would be archived for posterity by the LoC. This has been like an _Ender's Game_ for hyperbanality!

<comment><USER18> It's very likely that most people using twitter have no idea what the LoC is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It will be interesting if they extend their CQL (Contextual Query Language) implementation to support complex searches (e.g. who tweeted first about X)

<http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/index.html>

</comment><comment><USER20> Great, now future generations can see how obsessed we are with Justin Beiber.

</comment><comment><USER21> How interesting is it that they announced that on Facebook?

</comment><comment><USER22> One more government database...

<comment><USER23> First they want to track all of our _books_... now _this_? Next it'll be the newspapers. Just you wait.

<comment><USER22> Books were intended for wide distribution, but not all tweets are.

I don't care that this was done, and it's nice that this snapshot of 2008-2010 will be available for future researchers. But I think this sort of dataset is more useful for nefarious purposes (government investigations) than a bunch of books or newspapers, and it would be too expensive to build for just one investigation.

"Build it and they will come." It's built.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't see why this particularly matters. You could likely store the entire twitter archive on a couple of memory sticks, so it doesn't seem to warrant some big library to "house" it.

<comment><USER25> No. Its fair big data actually. Around 55M tweets per day currently, although it wasn't actually always that big. Maybe that doesn't sound that big, but its at least a few terabytes of data.

I think this is big for a few reasons. One, if its in the LoC then it is (probably) available to the public. Previously it wasn't. That's pretty big.

Also with the LoC having a public archive of it, we can keep better track of politicians who post things online- always a good thing since occasionally they shift their positions or outright lie.

As a data analyst, I'm really excited.

<comment><USER26> 55 million tweets/day * 140 characters/tweet ~= 14.5 GB/day, presuming a 16-bit character encoding.

That's only about 20 TB for four years worth of data, or about $1500 worth of storage, before compression.

That doesn't seem like it would be a significant challenge for the LOC. I'm more interested in understanding why they would want to use that amount of space to archive Twitter, as opposed to anything else.

<comment><USER27> Combination of low-hanging fruit plus inflated idea of twitter's usefulness (much like other people largely unfamiliar with today's technology culture)?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mailit: A Tiny Drop-In REST API to Send Emails - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dthree/mailit <comment><USER3> I really like this approach.

Let's say you want to build a first beta. You are going to use your own server for sending mail to reduce costs and also not introduce dependencies early on.

There are two ways to do it:

1\. Call the SMTP library like some here suggested.

2\. Create your own encapsulation of the SMTP functionality, and call these functions to send email.

It is obvious why you want to use 2. But, from experience, it makes your code base bigger and debugging more problematic.

By using a Docker container, you are separating matters: Now sending emails is a small service that can scale in the future, but doesn't consume lots of resources today.

With a docker/rest api, it also means that have you decided to switch to Mailchimp in the future; it'll be an easy task. You don't have to go through all your code and look which parts send emails and update them. You don't have to update your library encapsulation. You don't have to redeploy your whole instance to update the code.

All you do is create a new docker instance and then shutdown the old one. Tada!

<comment><USER4> For a first beta (MVP?) I would strongly advice against using your own mail server. It takes a while for a server to build up a reputation, hence mails from an "unknown" server are quicker marked as spam (especially by common services like gmail and outlook).

Instead configure a local sendmail (so you have all the benefits of local mail delivery, like queuing and availability so on) to relay through your provider's mail servers.

<comment><USER5> MailIt doesn't provide a SMTP server.

Instead it takes your existing SMTP settings, so you can take the advantage of your existing reputation, or your provider's one.

(assuming you already have an email account somewhere, and it can be gmail, outlook, [popularprovider]...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It migt be just me, but I honestly don't understand why people would use an HTTP API to send mail.

SMTP really is a very simple protocol, that's matured for decades now. Also it is fully specified by RFCs.

I can see why mail services that provide templating (eg Mandrill) have special APIs, they offer something different from sending regular emails.

This specific REST API seems more like a standin for sendmail, which IMO makes things only more complicated.

<comment><USER6> I've looked at setting up sendmail as a "LAMP guy" and I said nope nope nope, just use mailgun.

<comment><USER7> You still need to set up the SMTP server with this solution.

Creating the relay is the hard part of any mail service because even SMTP aside, you need to set DNS entries on your FROM domain to authorise your SMTP relay's IP (otherwise spam filters will just block your email). And if it's regular commercial mailshots then you'd need to register with one of the trusted services (which isn't free) and have all sorts of controls like rate limiting in place - again so you don't just get rejected as spam.

Honestly, I would welcome a complete ground up re-implementation of email - SMTP, POP/IMAP and all. The " _very simple protocol, that 's matured for decades now_" is really just a mess of different protocols - <USER2> authentication models, different encryption methods, etc and all operating without a standard format for error handling. Plus all of the additional bloat bolted on to handle the swell of abuse that the email "network" has had to endure. There's nothing simple about email any more.

However going back to the topic: the unfortunate thing about this REST API is it seeks to solve the least complicated part of the whole SMTP stack.

<comment><USER8> Yes, good point about email being complex to implement - both the server and the clients that use it. Example: Some years back, I remember reading a book (I think from O'Reilly) about using programming email, by an author called David Wood [1].

Update: I just did this google search:

java and email book david wood

and looked at the results.

The first hit is that book - it's name was actually Programming Internet Email - and it was by O'Reilly Media:

[http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781565924796.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781565924796.do)

It has info on both the fundamental concepts and protocols of email, as well as examples in both Perl and Java.

Other results of that search show that there are multiple books about programming email (as can be expected), including a list of books about Internet email on an Oracle site:

Books on the JavaMail API and Internet Mail:

[http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javamail/index-139773...](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javamail/index-139773.html)

Not all of those are exclusively about email, and some probably have overlapping content, but still, it shows (as Wood's book did too) that it is a big topic:

JavaMail API, by Elliotte Rusty Harold.

Internet Email, by David Wood.

Programmer's Guide to Internet Mail, by John Rhoton.

Internet Email Protocols: A Developer's Guide, by Kevin Johnson.

Java Network Programming, 2nd Edition, by Elliotte Rusty Harold.

Essential Email Standards: RFCs and Protocols Made Practical, by Pete Loshin.

Internet Messaging: From the Desktop to the Enterprise, by Marshall T. Rose and David Strom.

Internet E-Mail: Protocols, Standards, & Implementation, by Lawrence Hughes.

Managing IMAP, by Dianna Mullet and Kevin Mullet.

Professional Java Server Programming J2EE Edition.

Java Cookbook: Solutions and Examples for Java Developers, by Ian F. Darwin.

JavaServer Pages (JSP) Fast & Easy Web Development, by Aneesha Bakharia.

[1] From what I read about David Wood, he seemed to have a lot of experience with email (and other stuff) and had for some time, a company providing products and/or services in that area.

[http://www.oreilly.com/pub/au/565](http://www.oreilly.com/pub/au/565)

And that Java Cookbook by Ian Darwin is pretty good too - I have it.

<comment><USER8> >it's name was

Sorry, "its name was" :)

Still forget that rule sometimes.

[http://data.grammarbook.com/blog/pronouns/1-grammar- error/](http://data.grammarbook.com/blog/pronouns/1-grammar-error/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The total opposite of this project would be way more useful :

A sendmail replacement that can call a REST / Webhook endpoint. You'll get free alerting directly from crontab/smartd/zfs to your monitoring / logging system

<comment><USER10> Kenneth Reitz's inbox.py does 99% of that for you. Just add a call to requests (also by reitz) and you are good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've worked with APIs like this. The email gets more complicated, and inevitably, the API starts breaking down. E.g., with this API, how do I send attachments?

To essentially every email endpoint in the world, I always end up wondering: why is there not just an endpoint:

       POST /email?from=<sender>&to=<recipient1>&to=<recipient2>
       Content-Type: message/rfc822

       … the actual email to send, encoded according to RFC 822. I.e., an email.

i.e., these endpoints conflate two tasks: building the email and transmitting the email. I'm fine with simple helper methods like those offered, but once things reach their inevitable complexity (because lets face it, I'm sending an email designed by marketing. It's got tons of inline images and shiny design stuff…, and maybe an attachment) I really just want a "transmit this email to these people" endpoint.

(Of course, this starts to very much resembled SMTP. I'm frankly okay with the above: I have tons of readily available tooling for HTTP, and I understand how TLS works and doesn't with it. But I do also understand why some might balk at this with a "that's just SMTP!")

(And just to note: I don't want to trivialize building an email. Email's format is _super_ complex. But I have in my standard library a module that handles that for me…)

</comment><comment><USER12> The example in the readme uses curl to send an email.

But curl can already send email through SMTP directly.

I'm sure the author has a good reason for creating this but it needs a better example.

<comment><USER13> Good catch. I suppose it's because curl seems to be the standard tool when showing an example for a REST API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is this authless? You just send mail as the account configured and anyone can send mail?

<comment><USER15> > This service defaults to no authentication.

<comment><USER16> That default really did not work out well for MongoDB[1]. Why are we perpetuating this mistake?

[1] [https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/mongodb- apoca...](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/mongodb-apocalypse- professional-ransomware-group-gets-involved-infections-reach-28k-servers/)

<comment><USER17> Perhaps, more importantly, that didn't work out very well for smtp either ; aka "open relay".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wouldn't add another HTTP layer for a functionality that is within my own app / network, unless I were to expose this as a service for outside the network as a service.

I would think that this is bad design - call a http service that wraps smtp, when pretty much every language has an SMTP client.

</comment><comment><USER19> I really like this library (from a conceptual level) id love to see more "drop in" API's, rather than proxying to a bunch of other services.

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell Could do with an end-point to do some basic validation of email addresses. I.e a syntax check, and also a DNS check to make sure that the domain has MX or A/AAAA records, and potentially a check to make sure that there is an SMTP server listening at the destination on port 25. Perhaps all 3 of those things configurable at request time.

<comment><USER20> The latter is a terrible idea: Mail servers as well as networks can and do fail temporarily, that should not prevent you from sending emails to addresses hosted on those servers, that is exactly what MTA queuing is there for.

<comment> mike-cardwell I'm not going to make assumptions about other peoples use cases. If your use case demands that an email be immediately accepted, then the idea is not necessarily terrible.

Regardless, that's why I said it should be configurable.

<comment><USER20> But it doesn't give you that guarantee. Just because you can connect now, does not mean you can actually send an email later, let alone that particular email. If you want that, then you should provide feedback whether the email that you want to send actually was accepted by the destination server. But even that is probably not a sensible idea: Just because the MX accepted the messages does not in any way guarantee that it will actually be delivered immediately.

<comment> mike-cardwell Nothing you've said is non-obvious. What if the thing you want to do is not "send an email", but is: "test if an address is likely to be able to receive an email". Could you conceive of a scenario where a message pops up to a user stating:

"It looks like you may have entered your email address incorrectly. Are you sure it is ok?"

I'm sure there are lots of use cases. Just because you can't think of one does not mean that none exist.

<comment><USER20> Except that I have seen way too many incompetent uses of APIs that support bad ideas, and so, in reality, everyone would use "the best setting!", aka, all validations switched on, and thus probably lead to all kinds of false positives with hard rejects. See also the common rejection of +-suffix addresses, for example.

For address validation, connection checks are a bad idea. For address validation, turning any temporary failure into something that could end up as a hard reject is a bad idea.

<comment> mike-cardwell I'm not a fan of leaving out useful features because bad developers don't RTFM. This is all hypothetical though. I don't personally need the feature, it was just an idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> We wrote a similar service in Erlang [1] which is used for bug reporting of client side software (since most corporate networks block outgoing SMTP).

[1] [https://gitHub.com/lindenbaum/http2smtp](https://gitHub.com/lindenbaum/http2smtp)

</comment><comment><USER22> There are no hypermedia controls. This isn't REST, merely HTTP (with tight and brittle coupling).

</comment><comment><USER23> Love the idea.. although we can call SMTP directly, having the SMTP APIs encapsulated with a HTTP interface is pretty neat. Plus its a readymade microservice that you just spin up and use.

I worked for 2 years on a monolith that used to call SMTP directly and it was a pain to debug.

</comment><comment><USER13> Built this for a hackathon the other day. The ability to send email attachments is a must.

</comment><comment><USER24> Is there some kind of a template out there to create the API documentation used by this project?

<comment><USER25> Looks like it is using [https://www.npmjs.com/package/swagpi](https://www.npmjs.com/package/swagpi)

<comment><USER24> Err.. Didn't bother to check dependencies. So this is just a UI generated on top of swagger. Thanks for pointing that out :)

<comment><AUTHOR> No, it's not. It's its own thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Like a reverse ssmtp?</comment>