Twitter launches its 'Hide Replies' feature in the US and Japan - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/19/twitter-launches-its-controversial-hide-replies-feature-in-the-u-s-and-japan/ <comment><USER2> This is to me seems like a very counterintuitive "feature" — at least on paper. Hiding tweets seems akin to telling the whole world, "here are tweets from my critics I dislike so much I'm going out of my way to suppress them". At least when you report, block, or mute someone, no one else knows that you were bothered (or, as trolls like to say, "triggered").

It's not the same like being downvoted on HN or reddit, where the vote to suppress is a community/crowd decision. If Taylor Swift hides a tweet, you are inherently curious to know what rando's tweet managed to hurt or anger Swift (or her social media minder).

That said, while Twitter seems to be incredibly slow at introducing new features, the trade off is that what they _do_ push out often ends up being a good thing. The survey evidence cited in the article seems flimsy, but I give Twitter some benefit of the doubt that they wouldn't push an obviously destructive feature.

<comment><USER3> > That said, while Twitter seems to be incredibly slow at introducing new > features, the trade off is that what they _do_ push out often ends up being > a good thing.

I find most new Twitter features to be worse than useless:

• "Like" was turned into "algorithmic retweet". Now I can't like a tweet without some percentage of my followers seeing it. This is also a problem when I follow others. I can disable seeing their retweets but I can't disable seeing their likes. I've had several people tell me that they unfollowed me because of tweets I liked. I've done the same to others.

• My timeline now shows tweets from people I don't follow. Above the tweet is something like, "Tim Urban and 8 others follow...", and then there will be a tweet by someone who I really don't want to follow (such as Ben Shapiro). There seems to be no way to disable this feature.

• Quote retweet is a great way to encourage flamewars. Long ago, people could not retweet with a message. That meant that people were less likely to retweet something they found inflammatory because their followers might think they agreed with it. Quote retweet means they can preface it with, "Look at what this terrible person said." That's a great way to encourage the Toxoplasma of Rage[1].

Overall, the effect of these features has been to reduce my Twitter usage. Now I mostly go there for a couple of group DMs.

1\. [https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of- rage...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/)

<comment><USER4> > "Like" was turned into "algorithmic retweet". Now I can't like a tweet > without some percentage of my followers seeing it. This is also a problem > when I follow others. I can disable seeing their retweets but I can't > disable seeing their likes. I've had several people tell me that they > unfollowed me because of tweets I liked. I've done the same to others.

G+ had this too, and I also got threats of being unfollowed if I didn't stop liking things. (I could turn it off in my settings, though, but I liked to use reshares to add comments and +1 to reshare without comment.)

Ultimately what the social networks never delivered on were the true concept of areas of interest. You should be able to follow someone's interest in a certain subject, and then like things in that context. That way if someone is following you for your programming content, they don't have to read the anime reviews that you like, or whatever.

It never happened. I think social media is a dead thing now. You can use it to snipe at political figures and promote products for money. That's about it.

<comment><USER5> I was going to mention the G+ usage.

I really disliked this for numerous reasons:

\- It was an overloading of the +1 button. Now a "like" was also a "here's my plus-one, repost me, maybe?".

\- The behaviour wasn't obvious to the upvoting (and re-posting) user.

\- People will and do upvote stuff they'd never re-post.

\- It was seriously annoying.

I would suggest people disable the feature, if I noted it, or I'd unfollow them. There was no way to restrict such reposts from my _own_ stream, other than (as I eventually discovered) avoiding the home stream entirely and viewing entirely by Circles. I had a set of higher and lower-priority Circles I'd follow, which actually helped cull most of the crud.

I strongly suspect the design decision was based on the fact that very few people actually post _or_ repost material. They read on a consume-only mode, if at all. Google Plus's active user base was a small fraction of 1% of all profiles, and even within _that_ set there was a phenomenal range of activity. The effect being that most of the platform was dead air.

My read is that while the extent of this may have been more so at G+ than with other leading social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc.), the general principles aren't. Power laws and Zipf functions are extraordinarily prevasive, and show up virtually everywhere. The problem is that there's a very narrow band of presence between "shut the heck up already" and "I thought you were dead". In the real world, distance and/or proximity mediate this. Online, where everyone is (very nearly) as digitally close to everyone, we need other means of damping the overexuberant and enticing the timid.

The "areas of interest" concept finally, sort of, got fleshed out at G+ by way of Collections, though even that was pretty butchered. Topic/channel discussions (as with Reddit / Usenet) still seem hard to beat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems like a good move. Better than deleting.

First thing I do when I see "more replies" is click on it, knowing this is where the juicy stuff or counter argument is.

Like in HN, when it says [dead], I have to read it, to see whether I agree with it being [dead] or not ;-)

So there is certainly psychology there, at least to me, that makes me dig further. By hiding stuff behind a click you actually make me want to read it more!

<comment><USER7> > First thing I do when I see "more replies" is click on it, knowing this is > where the juicy stuff or counter argument is.

Exactly, which is why I don't understand this feature. If you can't _really_ hide replies, only instead call attention to the replies you've "hidden", what is the point of it?

<comment><USER8> Already seeing people screenshot hidden replies and tweeting with "gee I wonder why this person hid this reply lol" type messages.

I'm skeptical this will have the civilizing effect they hoped for.

<comment><USER9> Same thing happens with blocks!

But the way the feature works is to fork the conversation. Now, both ideologies can continue their threads of discussion without necessarily disrupting the other one.

I always think of kuro5hin when these types of containment features are brought up. It's kind of like "your freedom to swing your fist stops right before my nose" type of protection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This might go down the wrong way in India. We see a lot of misinformation, propaganda and often messages inciting mob violence floating as tweets. Reporting these tweets does not do anything immediately, if ever it does anything at all.

We used to post a reply linking an article with correct facts and some context. See [https://www.altnews.in/](https://www.altnews.in/)

This feature would make this fight a lot harder.

<comment><USER11> What about when the misinformation/propaganda/etc. is in a reply instead of in an original tweet? Two-sided sword, as they say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The first time I saw this in the wild, the author had hidden a single tweet mentioning that they had received 50k retweets on a stolen video.

</comment><comment><USER13> Russian state propagandists are going to love this feature. Right know they're constantly fact checked and called out on their hypocrisy in the replies but soon they'll be able to peddle their "death to Navalny/Ukraine/Europe/America/homosexuals" rhetoric unchecked.

<comment><USER14> ALL propaganda agencies are going to love this. State or industry. Pepsi or Joe Biden.

<comment><USER15> I don't see a single person in the top comments speak about this. This feature is going to allow people to hide legitimate non-trash responses that criticize the tweet, and it will be very convenient going into the 2020 elections. Dissenting voices WILL be silenced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Won't this just make Twitter even more of an echo chamber?

</comment><comment><USER9> I can't imagine why anybody would consider this controversial in the least. Id we are living in an attention economy where anybody is allowed to make a small debit from your account at will. Giving people more tools to manage those debits should be lauded.

<comment><USER17> Kinda like a website that is limited to 160 characters. Never fell in love with Twitter and looking at the top trends I often feel like wasting time on that platform.

But I agree that Twitter is basically an attention distributor. I get the impression that Twitter focuses its ambition to pander to self-expression and many topics that could have been interesting degrade to something that feels even worse than cheap PR.

Sadly, however that happened, Twitter became a platform to advertise political positions. That is probably why so many people see such features with mixed feelings.

I disagree that people make debits by replying, even if it is done in bad faith. If you put something out there, you are likely doing that yourself and nobody takes anything away. By hiding something you take something away from readers.

#iAmAgainstEverythingThatHappensOnTwitter

<comment><USER9> What would you think of spam? Isn't that clearly an attention debit? I would say that all replies, wanted and unwanted, take at least a small amount of attention. And if the fraction of useful to not useful replies decreases, that's the SNR going to crap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Oh dear, where will I look now to see the same seven reaction gifs forced into bad jokes every single day on every single post?

<comment><USER19> When people started using emoji to express themselves, I thought it couldn't get any worse... then came the reaction gif.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Seems like a reasonable response to the criticisms, but also, I dislike how Twitter just gradually gets closer to Facebook every year. I don't like much social media in general, but I kind of liked the old, very limited Twitter. It had a zen-like property to it, in some sense.

</comment><comment><USER21> I believe Jack Dorsey when he says he wants to improve the quality of discourse on the platform, but I'm not sure this step will help anything. If people are being harassed, Twitter should deal with harassment. Adding the ability to hide replies simply allows people to handwave away discussion or criticism that they don't like, which seems detrimental to rational and reasoned discourse.

</comment><comment><USER22> I read this as hide reptiles and got very excited. I would love to have a way to not see photographs of reptiles, especially snakes on the internet

<comment><USER23> As a lizard, I find that offensive! ;-)

<comment><USER22> At least you're not a snake!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> twiiter is going into history as the utmost failure of human communication. How such a crippled way of communication (limited characters and structure) combined with such childish disregard to discourse (blocking and shadow banning) could form a platform for "discussions" of important topics like social change and politics, I'll never know.

<comment><USER25> The reason Twitter became big was coincidental more than anything else. It became the defacto tool used in the Iranian protests against Ahmedinejad in summer 2009 (and again in 2011 during the ME-wide uprisings) as the regime had blocked Facebook to keep a lid on international awareness. The use of Twitter gathered a ton of foreign media attention as there was no other source of primary information.

And almost overnight, Twitter went from an obscure "microblog" (nobody's used that term in years) to "the pulse of what's happening now".

The cable news media (and digital media startups a few years later) were a willing partner in its rise. Embedding people's tweets in their stories gave them the ability to generate "news" to fill their 24-hour programming at a fraction of the cost of doing investigative journalism. The latter is by its nature lengthy, wrapped in secrecy and doesn't always result in a scoop. Basically all the things that a ratings and ad-driven industry couldn't care less about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I dunno. Just dont use twitter? I never had an account and never saw the need. No instagram or snapchat. only thing is a mostly dead facebook page that rots. I'm doing just fine.

I just don't get any of these social media is ruining my/our life when you are the one who opts in. It's like a person who complains the fire they stuck their hand into burns and then continue to keep said hand in the fire.

Want to be social? Go find actual groups of humans who have similar interests. Shocking concept, I know.

<comment><USER27> I've never been into twitter either. There's a lot of content there though, I'll visit the site from time to time if another site links to it, but that's pretty much it.

Politics on twitter is just a shouting match. Most tech related things are just kind of link-sharing (sometimes people post lengthy bits of tech info, I can't understand why). Twitter does seem to be a decent venue for breaking sports news, but that news usually finds its way elsewhere quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Hmmm. One of the reasons I have a Twitter account is to call out shitty companies (such as my phone company) when they basically ignore my complaints via email or phone call. A bit of public shaming seems to work wonders in these cases.

Now I am going to have this option taken away?

<comment><USER15> If you comment on their tweets, yes. If you just tweet something out, Comcast can't hide it (yet).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Reading the name I thought it be a way you could directly reply to a tweet without it being such a public matter, and also gunking up my timelinem but it seems to be a way to self-moderate your own posts which is... interesting.

</comment><comment><USER30> It seems like using an upvote/downvote system akin to Reddit and Hacker News would make more sense for this goal. Allow _all_ viewers to determine the quality of a comment, not just the person who posted the original tweet.

Everything we've observed the last few years shows that we should be democratizing discourse on social media, not further funneling the power of the conversation into fewer hands. Do you really want extremist twitter accounts to be able to hide all dissenting replies?

</comment><comment><USER31> What on Earth is wrong with techcrunch? I clicked the link of the story, read it, decided to go back to HN. I had to click the back button 4(!) times.

<comment><USER32> The url changes a few times while scrolling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'd like a comprise feature that automatically paired back the annoying bots, such as only allow my followers and my follower's followers reply. That way you get enough of a network effect to get interesting replies without the garbage.

</comment><comment><USER34> Yasssss. This is the future, no replies. Don't @ me.

EDIT: After reading more about this, it looks like people can still reply? Would be nice if they just added a straight up "Don't @ Me" feature where you can disable comments completely.

<comment><USER11> Would be semi-impossible given that half the comments shown on a Twitter "thread" aren't really comment-objects, but rather just their own tweets sitting on someone else's timeline that have @ed you in them and twitter figured out which thread to attach them to by heuristic. Sure, in theory, you could turn off the _heuristic_ —but you'd still see them just fine if you did a global search for your @handle.

Or are you suggesting disallowing what is essentially "allowing people to refer to you on their own blogs"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> >in the US and Japan

Why only these countries? I also see this with Facebook Dating; it's only available in a few countries right now. Why is this? It's _software_ , can't you deploy the feature everywhere at once?

<comment><USER36> Trial-marketing. Twitter users generally tend to form relationship (follow/see/RT)-graphs stick within language boundaries (and to a lesser- extent, national identity boundaries) - by using language or region as a proxy for a "clean" subset of users you can get some experimental results that you won't get by using random user selection, for example. Also, users unaffected by this change will still be able to see other users' replies and could then share screenshots of said replies which would defeat the point of this exercise - by using language boundaries means it's less likely that such a thing would happen (e.g. if this was Sweden and Norway instead of US+Japan, would you really bother to go through Swedish tweets to find replies for other users?)

In short: it sounds like they're uncertain about pushing this change through on everyone, and want to trial it first.

Twitter has gone-back on ideas they've thrown around before - like when they said they would hide other users' tweets' Like +RT counts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Actually makes it easier to see outside the echo chamber of a thread

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm sure this feature isn't going to be abused

<comment><USER15> It will be used to hide legitimate criticisms of political tweets mainly. This is a win for capital protection, nothing more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> wonder if they'll add a feature to autoblock someone who has hidden a reply of yours

<comment><USER37> Bot time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This feature in many ways reminds me of shadowvoting on HN

</comment><comment><USER41> Will politicians be able to use this feature?

<comment><USER42> I would imagine so. As long as you don't block people (so they can't see your stuff when logged in, or reply under that handle), I don't think there are any potential legal issues. They can say anything they want, and anyone else can see anything anyone said (if they click through to see it). So it's a minor inconvenience, but I don't think this presents the same issue as blocking others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Much needed to detoxicate Twitter itself.

</comment><comment><USER44> So will a court have to rule that Trump cannot use this?

</comment><comment><USER45> I usually make it a point to retweet my trolls, a technique due to Andrew Breitbart.

Another great technique is to ask simple, intelligent questions.

My trolls seem to lack stamina.

ADDED:

The other extreme thing I like to do on social media when people are trying to troll me is offer sincere forgiveness.</comment>


Today is a 3 years anniversary of passing of Aaron Swartz - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz <comment><USER2> For those out of the loop you can get a glimpse of this guys life through the movie "The Internets Own Boy"

Paid Streaming services: [http://www.takepart.com/internets-own- boy#watch](http://www.takepart.com/internets-own-boy#watch)

Youtube: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXr-2hwTk58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXr-2hwTk58)</comment>


Facebook changes Open Graph guidelines to stop applications auto-posting - <AUTHOR> https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2012/10/10/growing-quality-apps-with-open-graph/

<comment><USER2> Great change. I'm glad Facebook is experimenting with features -- and I'm also glad that when the features turn out to be user-hostile, they have the power to remove them.

I have always found the authenticated referrals, in particular, extremely sketchy. It seems my persistence in clicking "Mark As Spam" on these types of stories has paid off. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it is overall a good move by Facebook, but this change will negatively impact those apps that are using actually useful actions in a responsible way like "Want", "Review" etc. It's sad to see those apps being lumped in with the offenders.

[EDIT] - It looks like apps that use actions like "Want" etc. are actually going to be ok :) <https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/guidelines/>

<comment><USER4> The guidelines specifically note that actions such as "want" which correlate to an actual activity are acceptable, provided the user is taking an action to trigger the story. The new policy is against passive custom actions triggered by reading content, etc.

<comment><USER3> This line may hold what you are referring to: "custom actions that automatically publish back to Facebook as a person consumes content"

What isn't clear to me is what it means to "automatically publish" to Facebook.

<comment><USER5> Furthermore, how can Facebook even tell or is this a TOS sort of thing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does this block apps like Spotify from displaying songs you are listening too? I'm curious as to how strict they will be about this.

<comment><USER7> That seems to be specifically allowed. _Apps that help people automatically share stories about content as they consume it, such as the music you are listening to, can be good experiences when apps create clear expectations for the user of what is being shared and when._

<comment><USER6> Oh, okay! I must have missed that part. Thanks! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hold the phone. This policy change is only so apps can't auto-publish to your friends' timelines. It doesn't say anything about auto-publishing to _your_ timeline, which I imagine is still allowed.

An incremental improvement at best.. but still an improvement.

<comment><USER9> It is my understanding that apps can no longer publish automatically at all ;

"In order to provide users with experiences that meet their expectations, we will no longer approve custom actions that publish stories as people consume content. These apps must use the appropriate built-in actions or create a different sharing experience."

<comment><USER10> > It is my understanding that apps can no longer publish automatically at all

You are misreading what they are specifically saying. First, we are talking about custom actions. Built in actions that FB provides are still allowed to be auto-published.

Secondly, the restriction is merely on consuming content. You can debate what that means, but performing specific actions can still be auto-shared. However, simply consuming content, using custom actions, will not be permitted.

So, listening to music can still be reported as you listen to music (this is a built in action), but viewing a picture won't fly.

<comment><USER11> That's true. Here is the list of built-in actions:

[https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/objects/built...](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/objects/builtin/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's nice to see Facebook has no qualms about shutting down some of these near-abusive practices.

<comment><USER13> While it is nice to see Facebook has no qualms about shutting down features, it is also problematic for people who build their businesses on a platform that is constantly shifting it's policies and features.

<comment><USER14> Those who live by the platform die by the platform. You get a lot of distribution using the platform, but you have to switch channels occasionally and monitor how well the channel is doing independently. In the meantime, keep growing that email list..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is definitely good for Facebook. I wonder what will happen to autoposting apps like IFTTT</comment>


Revenge Porn Website Operater Convicted in San Diego - <AUTHOR> http://bigstory.ap.org/article/baab03c0882f43518fe185080bb1887f/revenge-porn-website-operator-convicted-san-diego

<comment><USER2> Here's another bad end for such an operator; Ken White of Popehat explains why, while it's not a criminal sentence, it's nonetheless very bad: [https://www.popehat.com/2015/01/29/the-feds-reach-a- settleme...](https://www.popehat.com/2015/01/29/the-feds-reach-a-settlement- with-craig-brittain-revenge-pornster-and-extortionist-behind-is-anyone-down/)

<comment><USER3> Do you mean severe? Bad has ambiguous connotations (edit to clarify: I mean that in a straightforward way, not critically).

FTC sanctions aren't necessarily an end, I remember watching Matt Lauer glad hand Kevin Trudeau ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Trudeau](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Trudeau) ) on the Today show several years after he had been banned from selling products through infomercials (thus forcing him to sell free speech, books). It was one of those things where you realize that the people on TV aren't embarrassed about anything, because Lauer should have been mortified.

<comment><USER2> White makes a convincing case that the guy will now be unemployable, which for me goes the extra distance from severe to bad.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A St Patrick's Day Promo:  Soylent Green Is Keto - <AUTHOR> http://www.ketosoy.com/products/soylent-green/

<comment><AUTHOR> As a maker of a food product that falls into the new food category of "soylents" we constantly get questions about the relationship between the name and the movie. We thought we'd have some fun with it and sell a limited- edition version that was actually green.

We decided to make two versions, one that plays up the dystopian nature of the film and another that plays up the Irish. Aside from a slightly different label on the bag, they're the same product.</comment>


So you want to be a consultant? - <AUTHOR> http://www.unixwiz.net/techtips/be-consultant.html <comment><USER2> I wish I could upvote this a hundred times. It's been a couple of years since I've consulted, but almost every piece of advice in this article is good.

I take some issue with his finance section, but it looks like he's a set up as a Sole Proprietorship (it's a bad idea if you're consulting by the way; set up an LLC or a Corporation, and spend a few bucks on a CPA). It's risky to run all your personal accounts in line with your business accounts; I think most people here understand why (in case you don't, this is where "piercing the corporate veil" occurs).

Otherwise, there are tons of great pointers in here, including more than a few that I wished I had thought about when I was consulting.

If you're thinking about consulting I would seriously print this out and read it multiple times; I know it would have saved me some heartache when I was getting things figured out.

<comment><USER3> Overall a great article, but I had a few issues too:

1\. I worry about giving away some things for free. If you give away research time for free, or you chase a dead end and decide not to bill it, do you set a precedent that those things will be free in the future?

2\. You're absolutely right on the financial front. Mingling your business and personal expenses, and not operating as an LLC or corporation, means all sorts of unnecessary risk.

3\. He suggests that a consultant who only works regular hours is _less_ valuable than a consultant who is willing to work 24/7, and so justifies lower rates. I think this is backwards: if I'm going to pay someone $100/hour, I want to know that they're thinking clearly and have slept.

Otherwise, this is great advice. I wish I'd had it 5 years ago, when I started my first dev shop. The Warm Fuzzy Feeling (tm) concept right on; customers want a good relationship, and responsive communication, as much as they want technical skills.

<comment><USER4> "If you give away research time for free, or you chase a dead end and decide not to bill it, do you set a precedent that those things will be free in the future?"

I don't think so. You set a precedent that you will be fair to the customer. If you don't chisel them out of every minute, they'll trust you when you do bill them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If someone reads only one part of that page, it should be:

 _Why work 8 hours/day for someone else when you can work 16 hours/day for yourself?_

If you think it's a dumb question because the answer is obvious, you've got the right mindset. If you think it's a serious question, stick to your day job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent point. I'd rather work all day for myself... actually, I do that now - and I wouldn't change it(unless I had no choice) for some 9-5'er. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great article. It's good to note that "The warm fuzzy feeling" is not unique to consulting. It is important in any area of business. This includes dealing with customers, investors, and even co-workers, employees, or supervisors.

</comment><comment><USER7> I printed this article out a couple of years ago when I started consulting and it has been an inspiration to me. It's always worthy of a re-read!

</comment><comment><USER8> Great article. I have been consulting and though I stand by all of these, it had been real hard to manage some of those. I can't say it in words how much this article helps.

</comment><comment><USER9> excellent article, especially in the current economic situation where everyone could use a consulting gig to supplement their income

</comment><comment><USER10> There's no date on this article and I remember bookmarking it long ago. When was it written?

</comment><comment><USER11> What this document basically means is - You Don't Want To Be A Consulant.

<comment><USER12> Because?

<comment><USER11> Because it's very stressful.

<comment><USER2> This is true... if you make it true.

My time as a consultant included the most challenging stuff I've probably worked on; but it was also some of the most rewarding work I've done. Consulting is a pretty vast world; you can be a glorified contractor or you can go help companies actually solve some of their deep problems. If you have a good customer-base, you can be up to your ears in interesting work and get paid incredibly well for it.

The downside is that you're a bit of a ronin, and you have to be ruthless with the customers you keep as well as the new customers you bring on.

I don't think I have the energy to do it full time any more, because it is incredibly time consuming; but I am definitely glad I did it for as long as I did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The author is completely wrong about "client v. customer". Your "customers" should be "clients", because it instills confidence. The difference is the country doctor versus the highly payed surgeon. A country doctor pokes around and asks "where does it hurt". The highly payed surgeon goes in to the situation and says, OK, this is your problem, I have performed this procedure 100 times, this is what we need to do. So if your client's pain is not having a good website, you go in there and say, OK, this is what we need to do, wether that be the look and feel, optimizing it for search, adding video, whatever. Don't say "what do you want me to do", say, "this is my recommendation based on my knowledge of the problem you are having and my experience in that problem's solution".

The principle underlying this, is you want your revenue curve to be linear as you add more customers, but you want your cost curve to be logarithmic, that is, you want to do LESS work for the next customer than you did for your last customer, and still get the same payment. What I mean by less work, is basically provide the same solution for the same problem, but since you have done it before, it is easier the next time. Have a basic approach for the problems your clients have, so, for example, if they need their website optimized for search, have a basic strategy for doing this, and apply that for each new customer with this same problem.

Kissing the customer's behind and re-inventing the wheel for each new customer doesn't do anybody any good. It reduces the consultant's profit by requiring more time, and it reduces the efficiency with which the customer gets their solution, because the consultant is being a short-order cook with them and re- inventing solutions for every new problem, which takes a lot longer.

So if you want to slave away re-doing the same thing over and over again for each new customer, by all means, treat the client as a "customer", but if you want to provide timely solutions for the client, and not have to re-invent the wheel all of the time, then take the "surgeon" based approach and not the "country doctor" based approach.

The client pays you to know the solution to their problem. So don't ask them what solution would they like, rather, tell them the recommended solution that you know works. Kind of like you don't want your doctor asking you which treatment for your brain tumor you most prefer. Rather, you want your doctor telling you which treatment for your brain tumor is going to the most effective, based on how that treatment has worked for others. Sure be nice and respectful to the client, but inspire confidence in having a good grasp on what will work for them and what will not.

<comment><USER12> 5 paragraphs about country doctors notwithstanding, it costs more to constantly acquire new clients than it does to continue servicing a steady client. It also makes your pipeline more predictable, and it generates word- of-mouth business. Companies continue to do business with people they like doing business with. Customer service is a win.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> good article, it's been bookmarked for future reference.</comment>


Move Mars to the habitable zone and turn it into another Earth? Sure.[video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/ScienceNaturePage/videos/1058492144283043/ <comment><USER2> Instead of terra-forming another planet, how about using that planet's conditions to gain experience with adapting to another world? When humans went out of Africa, they adapted, like getting more serious clothing and learning how to cope with new environments. It's time now to do it again, like learning to step outside our cradle - accepting a new way of life, as creatures dependent of life-keeping tech. That's the way of limitless expansion in universe, not trying to stretch each new place to fit our fantasy. (Well, we may do a little bit of both, but spinning planets out of their orbit is a bit extreme.)

</comment><comment> Black-Plaid If Mars' gravity isn't strong enough to keep it's atmosphere from being ripped away in it's current orbit, why would moving it closer to the sun be any better?

</comment><comment><USER3> The problem with this idea is that moving Mars to another orbit require a lot of energy, a LOT of energy!

A somewhat similar example is in "Stop Jupiter" [https://what- if.xkcd.com/146/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/146/) . OK, Jupiter is much bigger, and the plan is not to stop Mars but to reduce the energy a little to put it in another orbit, but the amount of energy is astronomical.

<comment><USER4>
      ...the amount of energy is astronomical.

Well, one would hope so. We're literally talking about moving celestial bodies.

<comment><USER5> _Cymbal crash from one the size of Saturn 's rings_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Non-facebook mirror

[https://youtu.be/LSKFRuWuRKo](https://youtu.be/LSKFRuWuRKo)

</comment><comment><USER7> Where is the kickstarter for this?

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure if this is a joke against kickstarter, but if you're looking to throw your money out the window, I'll gladly give you my paypal address.

Moving planets around is a bad idea on so many levels I don't even know where to begin.

Sticking only to the basics, the author of this video just assumes that terraforming the planet will be easier if it's closer to us, but attempts to provide no explanation of why the planet needs to be closer, or what advantage that really gives.

The core of Mars is dead / inactive, which is by far the biggest hurdle in order to make mars habitable in any comparable sense to Earth.

I honestly don't even know how videos like this get made without people understanding or attempting to explain anything regarding what they are talking about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's probably much easier to place mini-suns around the orbit of Mars.</comment>


3D Theory - Collision Detection - <AUTHOR> http://www.euclideanspace.com/threed/animation/collisiondetect/index.htm <comment><USER2> > For example if we have 'n' objects then the first object could collide with > n-1 objects (since we don't check if an object has collided with itself) the > second object could collide with (n-2) additional objects not counting the > possible collisions we have already counted. If we keep going like this we > get the number of possible collisions is: (n-1) * (n-2) * (n-3) ... 1 This > is equivalent to n! / 2! * (n-2)!

Seems to me like it should be more like the handshake problem, which comes out to n * (n-1)/2. n^2 is still bad, but not nearly as bad as n!.

<comment><USER3> Actually, n! / (2! * (n-2)!) comes out exactly at n * (n-1)/2. It's just one form of the general formula for combinations.

However, multiplying the possible situations is, of course, wrong. A case of a wrong explanation of the final result I'd imagine (permutations instead of combinations),

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hrmm. For some reason whenever graphics/game programming related articles get posted on HN, the quality seems to be ridiculously low. For example, no discussion of discrete vs. continuous, temporal coherence, sweep and prune, separating axis, etc. I think even if you assume this article was written in 1998 it still strikes me as a bit behind the times. The fact that this article has 15 points at the moment is disturbing...

<comment><USER5> Why don't you post a better article?

<comment><USER4> Because I haven't been involved in game development professionally since 2002. Even though my knowledge is now 9 years out of date, I know that this article is low quality.</comment></comment></comment>


Open-Sourcing Google Earth Enterprise - <AUTHOR> https://maps-apis.googleblog.com/2017/01/open-sourcing-google-earth-enterprise.html <comment><USER2> Does this mean that Google has lost interest in developing the product?

<comment><USER3> The March 2015 announcement that they were deprecating it and ending sales was perhaps a better indication.</comment></comment>


A coronavirus outbreak in jails or prisons could turn into a nightmare - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/3/17/21181515/coronavirus-covid-19-jails-prisons-mass-incarceration <comment><AUTHOR> One of the best ways to prepare for this is to reduce overcrowding in prisons by releasing most non-violent offenders and petty criminals.

Even then, it won't be enough, but it should make a significant difference by reducing the number of people in close contact in a natural breeding ground for disease.

Of course, in the current political climate it'll never happen.</comment>


You Will Cry When You See What A Queer Teacher Delighted The Internet With - <AUTHOR> http://www.upworthygenerator.com/

<comment><USER2> I love this. Upworthy posts are so obnoxious. My favorite title so far is "Try Not To Groan When You Hear This Battlecry."

edit: They should also have added pop-ups like "I think water is wet" [agree] [disagree]

<comment><USER3> "Try Not To Do A Double Take When You Hear This One Verb."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Worth a chuckle.

Make sure you hit reload a couple of times.

</comment><comment><USER5> So, how does the HN title policy work with a generated title?

<comment><USER6> Article aside, I think you're making a great point. Upworthy has been incredibly successful using A/B testing with their headlines to get traction on basically any article, to the point that other larger media companies are taking notice and are even worried.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can I add good search to my website? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I'd like to add good search functionality to an e-commerce website running with PostgreSQL as its database.
I've heard of ElasticSearch, Solr, and PostgreSQL full text search but never dug much farther into the subject.
Which tool would you guys recommend (I'm looking mostly for ease of use and maintainability)? What are the best resources/tutorials to learn how to use these tools? Where/how do you host these search engines (the cheaper the better)?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I've used Postgres FTS successfully on many different projects. You need to do a bit of planning before implementing, but it's pretty easy and straight forward.

Feel free to reach out to me: email@example.com if you'd like to chat about it!

</comment><comment><USER3> For my private websites, which require membership and would not be accessible via search engines, I just use general SQL search queries with a combination of PHP (stristr) and the results return quickly and accurately. Just make sure you are searching case-insensitive. Just be sure to add content or tags to your e-commerce pages so you have something to pick up.

For my public websites, I use DuckDuckGo ( [https://duckduckgo.com/search_box](https://duckduckgo.com/search_box) ) which has done a great job in regards to indexing. I used to use Google search but a few times, my website was penalized, and Google kills your website in ALL searches. While I've since gotten those penalties removed, I hated that IF a penalty occurred, I had to worry about that, so in order to not deal with that anymore, I made the switch. DDG is very rarely going to ever penalize your website. I was in luck as well because Google announced they were disabling their search anyway, so I had already made the switch and had no worries.</comment>


Hong Kong's pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong has been detained in Thailand - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/800804/hong-kongs-pro-democracy-activist-joshua-wong-has-been-detained-in-thailand/ <comment><USER2> I was in Bangkok a few months ago and it's clear that Thailand has very dark times ahead. There is no return to democracy in sight and the military junta has decided to distance themselves from Thailand's traditional international alliances.</comment>


Microsoft Lays Off Employees from Azure Team - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-is-doing-its-usual-fiscal-year-end-layoffs-but-fewer-than-usual/ <comment><USER2> Title: "Microsoft is doing its usual fiscal year-end layoffs, but fewer than usual"

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, I had no idea that Microsoft bought npm. What's the endgame there?

<comment><USER4> LinkedIn and GitHub are completely operated as seperate entities within Microsoft. Npm is acquired bt GitHub, so Npm is part of Microsoft.</comment></comment>


Show HN - Improve conversions by integrating a cause into your offering - <AUTHOR> http://go.kickseed.com/

<comment><USER2> This is somehow backwards. Every time I see someone supporting a cause, I know they do it just to increase their profits.

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean by backwards? Our product is based upon the belief that integrating with a cause will increase conversion and yes, profits. Profits aren't bad, we're trying to make it win-win.

<comment><USER2> Well, I didn't mean to be harsh and didn't really intend to direct that to you specifically. I meant more that I don't personally prefer options which support causes, because it always brings to mind that it's just a marketing trick and not something based on goodwill. Nothing wrong with your product; it's a very sound idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Shouldn't some % of your procedes be going to some cause? If not even you use your product, why should I?</comment>


Ask HN: What sucks in the project management software you use? - <AUTHOR> I'm thinking about building a simple project management tool, since Basecamp did't really work for us.<p>Is there something you hate in your project management tool? <comment><USER2> There are no organizational queues. There are only our dreams.

So, acknowledge that. Wouldn't it be cool if our project management tools actual admitted each user has their own priorities, and just helped us communicate it clearly? Every user gets their own queue. Only that user can modify it. If the user's queue of "up next" tasks is out of sync with what a PM wants, the PM can see that... and they have to _go talk to the person_.

There's a core mismatch in current tools between purpose and practical use: _we let people use the planning tool as a cudgel in place of real communication_.

We need to have a shot at fixing that underlying issue. It's this hidden cudgel nature of issue trackers that spawns the more literal problems already mentioned in this thread (e.g. some people _always_ want to add another field to Jira, etc -- which, sidenote, yes, oh my god). Worshipping the false idol of minimalism by stripping the ability to have custom fields won't help. Instead, redirect energy so there's simply no desire to add bureaucratic layers in the first place. If adding more custom fields won't give someone with a micromanagement complex any more power (either illusory or real) to poke your task queue around without communicating, then... why would they make custom fields? Incentives for bad behavior disappear, and so does the bad behavior.

One of the coincidental UX wins of per-user task queues is there's an obvious visual place to highlight when one person has too much on their plate, and we can use patterns in the UI to try to help. Similarly, it gives a FOSS developer a very clear way to say "yes, I care; at the same time, here's absolute transparency on the short list of issues I'm currently moving on." On the other hand, one of the commiserate challenges would be ensuring everyone can navigate to the same places in the same way; breaking that symmetry between how different people navigate the tool makes it much more complex for group use.

I've never seen a tool try this. Might be a bum idea. Definitely a little radical. The UX would be full of new challenges. I'd love to see it though, and would definitely be excited to try a system that thinks out of the box.

<comment><USER3> Tracker has this some of this. You can filter to just items that you are working on.

I haven't seen it used much, because of the way we work at Pivotal Labs. The standard work method is to pick the next story, bug or chore off the top of the backlog and start it. Not much need for "what's mine?" filtering in that case.

As for talking, I agree. That's why we colocate. I ask my PM by turning around.

<comment><USER2> Well, I must admit I meant s/talking/any kind of direct communication/, but if colocating works for you... :) Just to offer the view from the other side, I'm currently working with a group that's very embracing of remote work and fluid schedules, and still easily ranks as one of the most highly communicative and well-organized places I've had the fortune of experiencing.

It's hard to look straight at a good situation and say "why" the magic is there with any certainty. That said, from this group I've noticed our PMs are very focused on asking developers questions to help keep the issue tracking to reflect their work, and very rarely make any changes until discussing them out-of-band. Doesn't matter if it's in person or over Slack or video Hangouts; it's the pattern of involvement that seems to cause the spark. It's a habit I definitely intend to try to take with me.

I'm not sure user-oriented queues could be completely emulated with view filters. Maybe it's possible, but optional views seem to have limited impact on the overall flow of work unless _everyone_ in the team agrees to use them.

As an aside, the abundance of optional views and filters is one of my biggest beefs with the likes of JIRA. The first thing I do if contracting within a new group that uses JIRA is ask _exactly_ which views and filters the PM uses to navigate the backlog, because otherwise I'm hopelessly lost as far as getting on their wavelength... and this makes customizable view features quite the irony to me! Tracker mostly seems to dodge this bullet since everyone lands looking at the same lanes in the same order by default, which is cool -- that kind of informational inertia in layout and navigation is huge. (That concept of inertia also jives well with per-user queues: someone can freely organize their own tasks in a personally meaningful way without wrecking the inertia another user's view.) The trick is keeping that inertia feature intact when huge amounts of info gets dumped into the system. And I'm _totally_ on board with the countpoint "you just shouldn't have that many tasks, because you're fibbing yourself anyway", but at the same time, I really can't recommend a big enterprise starts just haemorrhaging security tickets from the record entirely if they can't keep their todo list short enough.

Perhaps length-limited per-user queues combined with different mechanisms for "not on anyone's radar today" backlog grooming can find a new sweet spot?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't build your own before you try Phabricator [http://phabricator.org](http://phabricator.org)

It's one of the most comprehensive tools I've ever used and its also not an unwieldy beast like other tools with a similar breadth of features. I'm probably never going to try and administer Jira for a small team ever again after the grief it brought me but I'm still quite happy with my own personal Phabricator installation, it just works.

<comment><USER5> While I agree that Jira is a nightmare, having used Phabricator in production for almost 2 years I loathe that software.

Each of its applications was 70% as good as what else is out there (especially UX-wise) and the integrations compared with Github were pitiful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The thing that I hate about Basecamp is the same thing that I hate about every other piece of project management software.

Stakeholders and lack of/ignorance of responsibility.

It really doesn't matter what piece of software you use as long as everyone uses it the same way. Often, in my experience, the best way of doing this is having a single person in control of (meaning write access to) the project. (okay, maybe everyone can comment).

A lot of businesses use this software instead of bringing on or training actual project managers. Then you have tickets being passed around between teams and stuff gets lost. People don't speak up when there's problems or bury their heads in the sand and try to deflect blame to others. Those same people will use the software, whatever piece of software, to their advantage.

There really always needs to be a captain at the wheel making sure everyone is 100% clear on what their responsibility is and where the blame will fall if things slip. Software can't do this for you, I don't care what its features are. This is 99% of the time the reason why people aren't happy with their project management software.

</comment><comment><USER7> No, I'm using Trello and GitHub Issues in my own company and I haven't any major gripes with those.

For larger projects, especially in software development, I usually recommend JIRA. It might seem a bit intimidating and process-heavy but it's very flexible and works well with agile processes, too.

My general recommendation would be keeping it simple for as long as you can (i.e. Trello, GitHub or the like). If your organization has grown beyond those simple means both Basecamp and JIRA are good options (the former being more on the opinionated side, the latter offering a lot more flexibility).

That said, given the myriad of project management options I can't think of any reason to build yet another project management tool. You say Basecamp doesn't exactly work for you. What's so wrong with it that makes you want to develop another tool (Which is no small endeavour by the way. It took 37signals literally a decade to get Basecamp to where it's right now.)?

</comment><comment><USER8> Jira is so awesome and bad at the same time that almost everyone who uses it hates it but can't find anything better.

I tried to leave Jira once and after a 6 month experiment realized how much better Jira was than everything else out there.

<comment><USER9> If you're a big organization and have some expertise, it really works best. Gives so much rope to hang yourself, but if find a good setup that works for your kind of projects, it's a thing of beauty. I'm at a huge organization right now that has a mandated JIRA setup for every project and it's awful and we're stuck with it.

<comment><USER10> for a lot of projects, I don't see much difference between jira and other stuff, but when it's paired with confluence, and people can do project planning pages, then create and link issues, it's quite an org boon. Even for small projects with just a few people, the 'biz' folks can stay safely in english document/wiki land, and not have to try to wade in to jira/tickets all the time.

But, yeah, at the same time, it's sort of 'too flexible' up front, and requires a lot of decision making (which feels like you can make the 'wrong' decision). I think they've done some better guided setup stuff in smaller chunks in the past couple years, but need to go further.

Choose from:

"I'm a small team with 3 people"

"We're a dev shop with 12 people over 2 teams"

"We're 75 folks with 5 teams and 8 projects"

And have the system autoconfigure a recommended setup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I hate when multiple items get tagged as TOP-PRIORITY. Visual work flow prevents this but others let dozens of items sit with the same top weight. How can you tell what top needs are when everything is a top need.

I wish more tools actually forced managers to put one thing in front of another - like in the real world

</comment><comment><USER12> I've yet to see a project management tool that allowed for uncertainty (say, a normal distribution) in estimating task efforts. And I've yet to see a technical team know their own capabilities for a task of > 1 week within 50%, mostly because every task is unique, and (nearly) every project team has inexperienced members.

A project management tool should have the ability to Monte Carlo estimations.

<comment><USER13> FogBugz, from Fog Creek Software, uses Monte Carlo simulation in its evidence- based scheduling tool:

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html)

<comment><USER12> Nice! I'm all in favor of evidence-based estimations if the underlying data is available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Jira: The people using it.

The "solution" to every "problem"* seems to be more fields to some people. Or perhaps you want another report? Madness.

* "Problem" being something with people's wetware, so just add baby-sitting.

</comment><comment><USER15> I use JIRA. JIRA, ahem, "sucks": [https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=jira+su...](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=jira+sucks&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8)

<comment><USER16> What are your top three complaints?

<comment><USER17> I wish that GitHub offered some sort of project management as part of their Enterprise product. We use JIRA and GH Enterprise and the experience feels disconnected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Asset management (for example graphic files).

I'm frontend dev and I often work on images/designs/psd's made by designers and I find it cumbersome to manually find image each time I need and to download manually to my project folder via "Save as" browser option and then copy from Downloads folder to project's folder. I think It should be automatic. Click on image and it lands in my project's asset folder (BTW this could be hard in pure web based apps. Such app would need to be desktop based to have access to hard drive).

And it should display path image was saved, to allow me to copy and paste this path to my code.

And it should display me notifications where designers put a new version of image.

I'm also disappointed when a tool doesn't offer to make comments on graphic assets or drawing arrows.

<comment><USER19> Could do it with a Browser extension though, I use one for FF that allows you double click one and sent it where I want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> My firm uses a combination of tools: Basecamp (2), Trello, and Slack (internally only). We use Trello to track user stories and sprint planning, and Basecamp for outside-of-meeting communication, QA assignments to clients, client todo items, and file management (with Google Drive).

We get annoyed at these limitations of Trello: cant assign checklist items, can't have discussion on checklist items.

We get annoyed at these limitations of Basecamp: projects quickly turn into checklist hell, cannot connect ANYTHING to it's user story, poor calendaring.

We've looked at JIRA, but it's just not client friendly, and we really don't want another tool in the mix.

</comment><comment><USER21> Is what people hate in existing software is the right place to start for new software? By which I mean, not using any software at all removes the things I hate, and the reason I use software that has features I hate is because of the features I don't.

Things I hate seems like a good starting point for automating an existing manual task, but interestingly, a lot of contemporary project management is moving toward manual/physical processes or hybrids where manual process play a significant role: e.g. physical Kanban boards.

One thing that sucks about a lot of software is that it takes up screen space.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER22> We've built an awesome alternative to JIRA. Tons of JIRA users have been switching to our platform.

[https://jixee.me/](https://jixee.me/)

<comment><USER23> Look great. I know it may sound ridiculous, and it is, but your website is not a .com and that quickly sounds like a pet project you might abandon in 2 weeks (or whatever one can associate with a pet project). While your soft looks like a great and complete one. That's my feedback, you can discard it at will. Also, it seems to me your pricing is weird. You should polarize it: free for whoever needs it for free or charge - but when you do, don't charge $19, but $99, cause companies are buying your software, not students...

<comment><USER22> Totally agree with you on the .com. We're working on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I can sympathize with folks unhappy with their project management tools. My team and I went one step further and tried to build the tool we weren't able to find out there, htt://taiga.io.

We think our free, agile, open source tool has satisfied people. We're 1 year into it, gotten 100,000 registered users, and have been highlighted as one of the top 10 open source tools of 2014 and won the 2015 most valuable agile tool from the agile awards.

Hope it can help some of you.

</comment><comment><USER25> We didn't like any of the options out there, so we rolled our own to get the features we wanted: Slack integration, designed home page with our logo and core purpose on it, integration with our shared Google Drive files.

The thing that sucks about it is that it was a home-built thing. It's really rough around the edges and in order for it to get any better, someone on the team would have to stop working on product, so it rarely improves. I'd love to switch to something out there, so that I'm paying for a team whose sole focus, full time, is to constantly make it better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, alexobenauer.

For us, the pain was that the project changed too quickly for todo lists, so most of the tasks wouldn't get completed and the whole thing represented what we needed a week before, rather than today. Done lists vs. todo lists would solve this (not sure if you're familiar with done lists, but they're awesome).

I guess everyone needs their own features, even on a per-project basic.

I guess it would be cool if you had plugins (like Slack/Google Drive integration, etc.) and one could compose their own project management environment by mixing these plugins together..?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> In our company we are using now a mix of JIRA and Slack (sic!) with his 'Star Message' option. In Slack, there is a 'Starred Items' list which works nice for quick tasks lookup.

We've loved this way of sharing tasks to others so much that, we have even did write about this way of creating todo-list here: [http://www.insalgo.com/blog/2016/01/03/management-use- cases-...](http://www.insalgo.com/blog/2016/01/03/management-use-cases- keeping-in-touch)

</comment><comment><USER27> DEFINITELY do not stop your search for a third party at Basecamp. Basecamp has re-organized their company to make Basecamp better so it is worth keeping an eye on them (and worth giving them the benefit of the doubt) but Basecamp is absolutely horrible. I don't know how that was allowed to happen, but it is bottom of the barrel. Try Asana or Trello before giving up on a third party.

<comment><USER28> The new Basecamp 3 has a very fragmented UI. Everything is siloed. And let's face it, the purple pop-up navigation is darnright outlandish.

Basecamp 2 is excellent though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Good migrations between old teams and projects. JIRA fails when new teams need to be created and non-trivial numbers of old tickets need to be duplicated/migrated. It's messy, and context is always difficult to manage.

Also, accommodation for 'casual' users. It really is painful to onboard a marketer that needs to watch a few tickets.

</comment><comment><USER30> I wish it was all inside of Git and had an Emacs mode. The trackpad on my Linux computer is so terrible and if I can use the keyboard I'm way likelier to manage projects properly in the thing. Please don't make me aim for little X icons to delete stuff!

</comment><comment><USER31> I've always wanted to have a quick look at where I am now, where I am wanting to go and priority of how to get from now to future state. I am not sure how to get that done, but I haven't found anything that really gives me a quick view of that.

</comment><comment><USER32> Anyone tried TeamWave? [http://www.teamwave.com/](http://www.teamwave.com/)

</comment><comment><USER33> anyone have experience with asana? pivotal tracker was great for the agile workflows, pretty simple. my company standardizes on rally, probably more bloated than basecamp, jira, and asana combined.

<comment><USER9> Pivotal was too simple. Can't create assignable sub-tasks and attach bugs to a story.

<comment><USER3> Tracker's workflow is simple by design. I didn't like it, then I started working at Pivotal Labs, and now I get it.

And you can create tasks per story.

Incidentally, "Pivotal" is the company. "Tracker" is the hosted product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Jira: Complexity.

Basecamp: Not enough complexity.

Both: Pricing that isn't sensitive to smaller orgs.

</comment><comment><USER35> Visual Studio Online - Can't Sort Tasks, Can't Filter ....

</comment><comment><USER33> nobody has any experience with asana?

<comment><USER36> Not a positive one.</comment></comment>


Preventing Suicide by Higher Education - <AUTHOR> https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/preventing-suicide-by-higher-education <comment><AUTHOR> I discovered this gem on Twitter. I find the thought that the president aims to have power over what is taught in universities sickening. This "suicide prevention" aims to stop it by coming close to killing universities or least it claims this as its intention.</comment>


Shoplocket is shutting down - <AUTHOR> https://www.shoplocket.com <comment><USER2> Announced May 13: [https://twitter.com/shoplocket/status/598624569654513664](https://twitter.com/shoplocket/status/598624569654513664)

</comment><comment><USER3> Another incredible journey: [http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com](http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com)

</comment><comment><USER4> Is anyone else getting tired of the "build something unsustainable but popular so we can gather enough rep to sell to a megacorp, take a big payday, and shitcan the product and our customers" model for startups?

<comment><USER5> Many of the startups selling to megacorps where the product dies would have been dead in short order anyway, and I wouldn't assume everyone is getting a big payday.

It doesn't seem totally unreasonable to me for failing startups to sell to a larger company and (hopefully) extract some of the value left in it for shareholders and employees - I just wish that with that the acquiring companies would do more to support the customers of the startup with reasonable shutdown notices etc. Unfortunately nobody involved has a very strong incentive to do so.

<comment><USER4> It would be easier to stomach if the announcements read more like what you said and less like "we are so excited to share the wonderful news that we got bought out and don't have to serve you anymore."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I mean... Was this as a byproduct of a cease and desist? Why so fast?

<comment><USER7> Read other comments - they announced it back on May 13

<comment><USER5> Still, a month and a half is a very short transition time for a ecommerce product. It's disappointing when companies throw their customers under the bus, it risks making things harder for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What is a 'shoplocket'?

</comment><comment><USER9> sorry to hear this, fellow canadians

</comment><comment><USER10> They gave their customers a whole day to replace their products ... This should be a reminder to everyone to abstract their service interfaces.

<comment><USER11>
        They gave their customers a whole day to replace their products

[https://twitter.com/shoplocket/status/598624569654513664](https://twitter.com/shoplocket/status/598624569654513664)

        We're announcing today that we'll be shutting down the ShopLocket ecommerce
        plugin as of June 30, 2015. Read more: https://www.shoplocket.com/

        4:03 PM - 13 May 2015</comment></comment>


How To Run Google Chrome OS From A USB Drive [Windows] - <AUTHOR> http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/download-google-chrome-os-and-run-on-a-real-computer/

<comment><AUTHOR> >>One thing that I found rather amusing is that when you click on the Hotmail icon, it takes you to Gmail. However, the Yahoo! Mail icon does indeed bring you to the Yahoo! Mail login page. I suppose Google likes Yahoo! better than they do Microsoft.<<

So much for not being evil.</comment>


Energize.js: A tiny JavaScript snippet to make links snappy on touch devices - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/davidcalhoun/energize.js

<comment><USER2> can i find demo somewhere?</comment>


Public Health Responses to COVID-19 Outbreaks on Cruise Ships - <AUTHOR> https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e3.htm <comment><USER2> _Say it with me: viral RNA doesn 't necessarily mean live virus was present. Now you're going to see "coronavirus can live on surfaces for 17 days!" over and over, but we don't know that based on this study and for those using live virus, it's much shorter._

[https://twitter.com/aetiology/status/1242254105155973122](https://twitter.com/aetiology/status/1242254105155973122)

<comment><USER3> Yeah... Yeah! ...Yeah!

Take this (take that!) from someone interested in etiology... who then goes on to "proclaim":

"...they _may_ no longer be able to grow inside cells, _even if_..."

...maybe if...

As useless as maybe hands-down almost literally everything ev-aar-ruh said like literally possibly maybe before since and may be after even if (say it with me!) "they may".

<comment><USER4> I have no idea what you're trying to say

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The actual quote is:

> SARS-CoV-2 RNA was identified on a variety of surfaces in cabins of both > symptomatic and asymptomatic infected passengers up to 17 days after cabins > were vacated on the Diamond Princess but before disinfection procedures had > been conducted

But can anyone confirm if that means the actual virus was found, or would something inactive like random skin cells also get identified this way?

Edit: I asked the question, because the original title implied the actual virus was found.

<comment><USER6> This is of huge significance. So far I've been acting in the 3 days life on surfaces.

I quarantined purchases for 5 days before bringing them in the apartment.

If it's 17 days or more it's all been in vain.

It also means it's much harder to stop.

Virtually no one I know in Italy is taking precautions on the stuff they bring home from the supermarket.

My personal nightmare: a nation in lockdown getting infected by the stuff they buy.

<comment><USER7> Finding RNA is no different than finding a dead body and declaring it still alive because the body is still there. The virus particles don't just vaporize.

<comment><USER6> Yes. I meant if it's active after 17 days, which at the moment seems not to be the case. I'm sticking with the 5 days rule.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> SARS-CoV-2 RNA was discovered on surfaces inside cabins in the ship after 17 days of quarantine measures according to an NIID[0] staff member.

It is not yet confirmed that this has been a vector for further transmission.

During the vessel's quarantine in Japan, all _passengers_ were quarantined on land, but some _crew_ were quarantined on the ship.

This quote appears roughly halfway down the page:

"SARS-CoV-2 RNA was identified on a variety of surfaces in cabins of both symptomatic and asymptomatic infected passengers up to 17 days after cabins were vacated on the Diamond Princess but before disinfection procedures had been conducted (Takuya Yamagishi, National Institute of Infectious Diseases, personal communication, 2020). Although these data cannot be used to determine whether transmission occurred from contaminated surfaces, further study of fomite transmission of SARS-CoV-2 aboard cruise ships is warranted."

And this quote earlier in the page refers to the quarantine in Japan:

"After disembarkation of all passengers, crew members either completed a 14-day ship-based quarantine, were repatriated to and managed in their home country, or completed a 14-day land-based quarantine in Japan."

[0] - [https://www.niid.go.jp/niid/en/](https://www.niid.go.jp/niid/en/)

</comment><comment><USER9> > Although these data cannot be used to determine whether transmission > occurred from contaminated surfaces, further study of fomite transmission of > SARS-CoV-2 aboard cruise ships is warranted.

</comment><comment><USER10> Nevermind.

<comment><USER5> > that the virus lives so long on surfaces

There is no confirmation the virus itself lives on surfaces for long periods. Just RNA</comment></comment>


Microsoft Now Uses Windows 10's Start Menu to Display Ads - <AUTHOR> http://betanews.com/2015/10/15/microsoft-now-uses-windows-10s-start-menu-to-display-ads/ <comment><USER2> Now is a good time to switch to (Antergos or Manjaro) linux.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great, so now I need Adblock for windows ?

<comment><AUTHOR> What's impressive is that we've come full circle. The earliest pieces of spyware that I remember were malicious apps that added toolbars.</comment></comment>


Discounts for developers who happen to be students - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/najela/discount-for-student-dev

<comment><USER2> Unfortunate the GitHub student pack takes at least half a year to verify, if not longer :(

Not sure why they take so long to verify when every other student discount is instantaneous or takes up to two days (e.g. Apple, BitBucket, CodeSchool)

<comment><USER3> Certainly not "at least". Maybe if they don't know the institution yet? But that really sounds annoying.

<comment><USER2> Slight exaggeration on my part.

I've been waiting for 2 months now. It seems their backlog is growing at an increasing rate, and with it, their response time.

Might also have to do with non-.edu emails

<comment><USER4> My .edu email account was approved same day.

<comment><USER2> Seems to be the case, I see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Great list</comment>


Discontinuing the tab groups feature in Firefox - <AUTHOR> https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tab-groups-removal <comment><USER2> Sad to hear they are just "discontinuing" it rather than porting it as an addon. Or is it killed because it's the kind of addon impossible to implement with the new WebExtensions API?

</comment><comment><USER3> The rationale of "declining usage" could be a bit misleading. Two thought processes:

1) Tab groups are disabled by default on clean profiles (you have to move it out of the 'customise' menu), so tab groups are used by more advanced users, and more advanced users are more likely to be disabling telemetry. Combined, any usage statistics are pretty meaningless.

2) Hiding functionality by default will mean it gets used less. Showing functionality by default (Hello, Pocket) will mean it gets used more.

</comment><comment><USER4> The tab groups feature was pretty much the only reason why I used Firefox as my primary work browser, as it managed the separation of projects / topics..

Does anyone know any alternatives (for Firefox or other browser) which can help with the visual clutter of managing 30+ tabs in an efficient way, and can handle groups as well?

<comment><USER3> Palemoon has the Tab Groups feature as a separate addon: [http://www.palemoon.org/tabgroups.shtml](http://www.palemoon.org/tabgroups.shtml)

Source code is here: [https://github.com/wolfbeast/palemoon- tabgroups](https://github.com/wolfbeast/palemoon-tabgroups)

"This is the repository for the Tabgroups add-on source code for Pale Moon, based on Tim Taubert's work as part of the proposal to remove Tab groups from Firefox and moving the removed code to an extension."

Installs fine in Firefox 45a too, but it's not signed (obviously).

<comment><USER4> Exactly what I needed, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Possibly of interest will be the BugZilla item: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=836758](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=836758)

Dates back to 2013, unsurprisingly has some more recent activity. :)</comment>


Lockheed D-21 – American supersonic reconnaissance drone made 1969 - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_D-21 <comment><USER2> In modern times we have the X37 hanging out in space for a couple years at a time doing God knows what.

My completely unsubstainted guess is that it can change orbital parameters by skipping off the atmosphere like a rock. It seems to move around a lot more than you would expect for something that needs to make it back to a specific runway</comment>


Mark, save & share your articles reading progress with youRhere - <AUTHOR> http://yourhere.gandtblog.com "youRhere" is a great Chrome extension which give you a chance to mark your article reading-progress by just clicking it.
youRhere uses the new HTML5 Local Storage feature for saving your reading data. It also have a full  "RTL" and "LTR" support.
After marking a line in an article, you can share this specific line with your friends from Facebook & Twitter!
Check it out! :)
http://yourhere.gandtblog.com
Daniel. <comment><AUTHOR> Give it a shot! :)</comment>


In Small Trial, EH301 Appears to Halt Progression of ALS - <AUTHOR> https://www.alzforum.org/news/research-news/small-trial-eh301-appears-halt-progression-als <comment><USER2> That is good news for people suffering from ALS. Perhaps I read the article too fast, but what exactly is "EH301"? Is that the combination of the supplements NR+Resveratol or is that a separate compound all together?

It looks like NR has a greater effect on NAD+, but also has some dosage risks based on some body building forums I just stumbled across. Apparently there are other things you can take with it to reduce the risks?</comment>


Casey Gerald: Doubt More and Be Vulnerable - <AUTHOR> http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/272389 <comment><AUTHOR> also: [https://www.ted.com/talks/casey_gerald_the_gospel_of_doubt](https://www.ted.com/talks/casey_gerald_the_gospel_of_doubt)</comment>


Ask HN: How you you handle the passage of time? - <AUTHOR> I just realised that my last 5 years just flew without notice. How do you get the most out of your days? How do you manage to slow time down? <comment><USER2> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation)</comment>


TmTask. Track your time automatically - <AUTHOR> http://tmtask.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> TmTask is a solution to smartly track your daily activities, manage personal as well as professional projects, and provide tools to exceed your outcomes in a seamless way. With TmTracker app and proximity sensors, no need for manual intervention. Automatically track time spent at micro-locations or indoor workplace, home or other location of interest.

<comment><USER2> While the software seems interesting, a lot of the site itself has poor font weight choices, and poor typeface-background contrast making it a total pain to make my way through as someone with colorblindness.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

Thank you for checking our website. Appreciate for your comments. We are in the process of changing our homepage layout and do check it again in next 2-3 days. Also, we are revamping our product screens and I bet you would like it. Will keep you posted!</comment></comment></comment>


State and National Poll Aggregation - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/features/pkremp_forecast/report.html <comment><USER2> There was a discussion[0] on the article[1] talking about this yesterday.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12853281](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12853281)

[1] [http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2016/1...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2016/11/the_polls_of_the_future_will_be_reproducible_and_open_source.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm stuck on the first graph. What does it mean? Its X-axis is labelled "Electoral votes for clinton", yet its bars represents either "Clinton" or "Trump" and there is no explanation of the y axis.

<comment><USER4> 270 electoral college votes are required to win the election, which is why the graphs changes color. If no candidate wins at least 270, Congress chooses, I believe. 538 is currently giving the chances of no candidate hitting 270 at 1.4%[1].

The y-axis is the probability of that particular outcome (or range of outcomes?) occurring.

[1] [http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election- forecast/?...](http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election- forecast/?ex_cid=rrpromo#scenarios)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem with Bayesian is that it's often over confident in the model. Error bars don't take this into account and people over rely on error bars - especially with complex domains.

Then there are the intentional and unintentional sampling biases in the polls that have to be taken into account. Then there are known human effects that add additional biases. E.g. the shy voter effect (e.g. Torres and Brexit), silent majorities (Nixon), momentum, dam breaking (Reagan), enthusiasm gap (Obama), the giant f __k you to the establishment vote, pending indictments etc. In my view with the election being so emotional this year these effects are big enough to swing it to Trump making a poll based model wildly inaccurate.

I've taken an actual position in the election. $4k on Trump to win at 15% odds made just after the tapes. At the time I felt Trump had at least 50% chance so the bet was positive expected return for me. I figured the public would get over it. My Bayesian friends had his odds at 2%. Today I consider Trump to be at least 70% with the whole FBI inditement saga picking up steam.

In addition, the betting market behavior mirrors Brexit. A few very big bets on the status quo and many small bets against. It appears as if once again deep pocket punters are intentionality trying to manipulate the odds on the illiquid market in order to send a message that effects the vastly larger financial markets. So I think the odds are that there is some free money there.</comment>


Grafana v7.0 released: New plugin API, transformations, trace support, and more - <AUTHOR> https://grafana.com/blog/2020/05/18/grafana-v7.0-released-new-plugin-architecture-visualizations-transformations-native-trace-support-and-more?source=hn <comment><AUTHOR> Tom from Grafana Labs here! Super proud of this release, especially the tracing support. Let me know if you have any questions?</comment>