Show HN: CurlSend.it - An API for sending letters from your app or website - <AUTHOR> http://www.curlsend.it

<comment><USER2> It seems akin to PixelLetter ⌘ [https://www.pixelletter.de/en/](https://www.pixelletter.de/en/) except CurlSend will only send to UK addresses.

</comment><comment><USER3> If they offered cardboard postcard print, like moo.com but simpler, and a backing legal entity, I'd be coding against it today.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is there something similar to this in the USA?</comment>


Apple's WWDC15 will charge you $1,599 IF you're selected to attend - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/14/apple-worldwide-developers-conference-is-june-8-12/?ncid=rss

<comment><USER2> I like this change to the lottery. Last year there were a ton of people that registered for the lottery, were selected, then didn't purchase a ticket. Which resulted in a second wave of acceptances for the unclaimed tickets.</comment>


HN: Andy Thompson's original analytic-rumination hypothesis of depression - <AUTHOR> http://andersonthomson.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Andrews_Thomson_PsychReview_2009.pdf It's a serious read, 34 pages, but very interesting, remarkable readable.
You upvoted two other articles about this to the front page, so I thought you might find the original interesting as well
The other two you've linked to are:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/magazine/28depression-t.html?pagewanted=print
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=depressions-evolutionary <comment><AUTHOR> It's 34 pages, but very interesting, remarkable readable.

You upvoted two other articles about this to the front page, so I thought you might find the original interesting as well

The other two you've linked to are:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/magazine/28depression-t.ht...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/magazine/28depression-t.html?pagewanted=print)

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=depressions...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=depressions- evolutionary)

BTW, there's something going on where
 tags are leaking into introductory comments</comment>


The innovation and production pipeline in Shenzhen. - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@tks/prototype-for-production-ecosystem-at-shenzhen-fe207807dde7#.q9ikyg8ph <comment><USER2> If you found this interesting you might also like Andrew "bunnie" Huang's book on the subject: "The Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen"

[https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/the-essential- gui...](https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/the-essential-guide-to- electronics-in-shenzhen)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, That book quite interesting. And I told some presentation. [http://www.slideshare.net/takasu/maker-movement-in-asia- shen...](http://www.slideshare.net/takasu/maker-movement-in-asia-shenzhen- singapore-chengdu)</comment></comment>


NSA Improperly Collected U.S. Phone Records a Second Time - <AUTHOR> https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/06/26/nsa-improperly-obtained-phone-call-data-after-saying-issues-were-fixed/1568914001/ <comment><USER2> ROFL. Actually click through and read this document: [https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/nsa-foia-documents- quart...](https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/nsa-foia-documents-quarterly- reports-intelligence-oversight-board-nsa-activities). The title is super misleading. It has the NSA being the subject of the sentence, the entity doing the verb. If you read the document, it's clear that the NSA followed the law in how they sent requests over to the phone companies, and a couple companies made errors in what they sent back. When NSA discovered this, they reported it through the proper channels. This is like, the opposite of nefarious action, guys. A better title would have the phone companies as the subject of the sentence. "Phone companies improperly sent data to the NSA for a second time, documents reveal." Of course, being honest in the title wouldn't misinform and scare people...

<comment><USER3> Maybe HN should hide the "comment" button until you've clicked on the link.

<comment><USER4> HN was pretty good at self-policing until dang introduced a rule against accusing other users of not reading the article.

<comment><USER3> You're still allowed to reply to their post quotes from the article that make it clear that they didn't read the article. I've also just done the "I know it's against the rules but did you read the article?" thing in the past. Haven't gotten banned yet.

I do wonder what the point of that rule is.

<comment><USER5> "Did you even read the article" is a cheap shot that commenters routinely take at each other. It has nothing to do with the topic at hand, so it adds noise, not signal. Since it's a putdown, it provokes others and degrades discussion. If you take out the cheap shot and preserve the correcting information, the comment becomes better in every way.

You can think of it as a special case of this rule: _When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."_ But it's a special case worth singling out, because it's so common, and it's bad for HN in two ways: mean and predictable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A "second time" makes it sound like it's some kind of limited process that happens extremely rarely and was stopped after the "first time" became public.

When in reality we are talking about surveillance [0] and surveillance doesn't work with "probes", it's based on constant monitoring and thus requires massive infrastructure [1].

So when was this supposedly stopped, to make it a "second time"?

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance)

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

<comment><USER7> Great point. I guess a better way of saying is that the NSA _got caught_ a second time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> NSA's job is to eavesdrop on hostile foreign actors' communications, while not infringing on the privacy of US citizens.

AFGSC (formerly Strategic Air Command)'s job is to provide a credible nuclear deterrent while not losing nukes or irradiating Americans.

Let's imagine if the NSA were in charge of the nukes:

\- "Whoops, someone stole a bunch of our nukes. But those were old nukes—we have better nukes now."

\- "Whoops, turns out we _were_ nuking American cities. But Congressional oversight committees knew about it."

Seriously, I can't even facepalm hard enough. I guess security is hard—everyone's annoyed with you until there's an attack and then everyone's blaming you for not annoying them more to prevent it.

>These documents provide further evidence that the NSA has consistently been unable to operate the call detail record program within the bounds of the law. -ACLU

>NSA identified additional data integrity and compliance concerns… The issues have been addressed and reported to congressional oversight committees. -NSA spokesperson

<comment><USER9> This is a super disingenuous comparison.

<comment><USER10> I also think that comparison is a bit of a stretch, although those US nuclear facepalm moments do exist[0].

[0]: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/20/usaf-atomic- bo...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/20/usaf-atomic-bomb-north- carolina-1961)

<comment><USER11> Also, a list of the nuclear weapons which got lost

[https://interestingengineering.com/broken-arrows-the- worlds-...](https://interestingengineering.com/broken-arrows-the-worlds-lost- nuclear-weapons)

There is a drove of stories around nuclear weapons, I also enjoyed

"Missile doors left open while Air Force nuclear officer slept" with the explanation, that they left it open for the food delivery guy.

[https://edition.cnn.com/2013/10/23/us/air-force-nuclear- silo...](https://edition.cnn.com/2013/10/23/us/air-force-nuclear-silo-doors- opened/index.html)

John Olivers episode on it is also amazing.

[https://youtu.be/1Y1ya-yF35g](https://youtu.be/1Y1ya-yF35g)

For a weird one meet one of the masterminds responsible for them:

[https://youtu.be/1Y1ya-yF35g?t=439](https://youtu.be/1Y1ya-yF35g?t=439)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As someone pointed out the NSA is following the law - but the 90s are over. Wiretaps are now obsolete through layer 7 data collection..

</comment><comment><USER13> But the NSA was never collecting data.... <James Clapper/John Brennan>

</comment><comment><USER14> We all know that the NSA will never be regulated. They have the most dirt on everybody.

</comment><comment><USER15> I did NOT see this coming.

</comment><comment><USER16> "Second." I'm pretty sure the words "at least" and "confirmed" are missing from this headline.

Or just go with a straight up accurate headline. "The NSA Have Again Been Caught Lying Again and Have Zero Credibility"

Accurate, unbiased and factual. You don't do middle ground between good and evil and call it balance. Facts are facts whatever you think of them.

An opinion would be the NSA needs to be shut down, disbanded and a new department setup with clear guidelines for anything the NSA was doing that is deemed to be still worthwhile. Agreeing or not with that opinion doesn't alter the facts.

<comment><USER17> Well said. Unfortunately I can't help but feel the Snowden revelations have had such a profound chilling effect on free speech and the press, that we are now afraid to go on record - even with pseudonyms - to denigrate the NSA, CIA and other government agencies. The thought that any idea, written or perhaps even not, is cataloged for eternity and scrutinized under unknown pretenses certainly gives me pause before I write or reply online now. Truly, I am afraid saying the "wrong" thing today may in a few short years turn out quite badly.

<comment><USER16> That reads like you're threatening me, fwiw.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What did you expect? Real Journalism? Its the Wall Street Journal, not real news. They need click bait titles in order to get more exposure and sell more ads. What ever it takes to get a few more clicks...Their motivation like most news companies today is making money, not informing the public. They are for profit corporations after all.

<comment><USER5> Would you please not take HN threads on generic flamewar tangents? They are predictable and therefore uninteresting. They also quickly get nasty.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20302240](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20302240) and marked it off-topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wow, shocker!</comment>


New: YC Jobs Page - <AUTHOR> http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html#11jun07 <comment><USER2> Why aren't there comments on the job postings?

<comment><AUTHOR> I could enable it easily enough. But I thought that if people had questions they could just ask the posters, and they could if they wanted modify the post.

<comment><USER3> Please do add comments... I don't really like being snarky, but in lieu of comments I've added a post about one of the loopt jobs - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27310>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> PG said hiring is obsolete, so what is the need for a jobs page on ycombinator :D

<comment><AUTHOR> Joining a newly founded startup is different. It may legally be hiring, but in practice it can be more like being a cofounder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It would be helpful to see what city these jobs are in from the listing page...

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, I added locations to the titles; presumably new submissions will follow suit.

<comment><USER5> thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why is there no link in the top menu?

<comment><AUTHOR> Coming soon. (The link was initially only visible to YC founders; I'll turn it on for everyone in the next release in a couple hours.)

Edit: It will be more than a couple of hours. The good news is, the next release will have some big improvements.

<comment><USER7> Aha! I always suspected there was a secret area for YC founders. ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually there isn't a secret _area_ , at least not yet. I just turn on links to new stuff for them first, so they can find the bugs for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Could you prevent the job items from intermingling with the regular news page items?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's intentional. The companies used to submit links when they were hiring, and I've tried to reproduce that. They'll slide off the frontpage like any story. The site just looks odd at the moment because there was accumulated demand.

<comment><USER8> Well, if they must be together, could they be tagged consistently as "jobs" (e.g.) so they can be filtered out of the feed?

Alternatively, could you consider grouping all the job items under a separate page tab, next to "new | best | leaders | submit" or just use another subdomain for them, e.g. jobs.ycombinator.com?

Not everyone who reads news.yc is looking for a job, after all.

<comment><USER9> I don't think it will be that flooded with job postings, given that only YC companies post there.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Jezter- The World's First Digital Babysitter - <AUTHOR> http://www.jezterapp.com <comment><AUTHOR> How much would you pay for this?

</comment><comment><USER2> Wow, this is really cool!

</comment><comment><USER3> Shit's dope AF</comment>


Dictionary database with future API and bot integrations - <AUTHOR> https://opencollective.com/selfdefined <comment><USER2> Link to the code/readme/documentation [https://github.com/tatianamac/SelfDefined](https://github.com/tatianamac/SelfDefined)</comment>


JetBlue Founder's New Airline Won't Have Customer Service Phones - <AUTHOR> https://thepointsguy.com/news/moxy-customer-service/ <comment><USER3> > "The app will take care of a lot of those pre-flight interactions"

It's easy to automate the happy path interactions. But it's impossible to enumerate and prepare for all the problems and particular situations the customers are in. (Anna Karenina Principle)

I guess their strategy is hope these problems doesn't happen that often and the consequence is not that severe.

<comment><USER4> The article states "There will be humans available, but the idea is that they'll get in touch only in case of absolute necessity.".

I would imagine there is a way to open a direct chat with customer service in these cases.

<comment><USER5> As the guy who uses live chat first and foremost everywhere it's available, I'm well aware that I'm getting a much lower level of service than I would on the phone just to avoid being on the phone with someone. The simple fact is that a person can only be on the phone with one other person at a time, but live chat reps can (and do) service many customers at the same time. Don't kid yourself about his motivations for eliminating phone support.

<comment><USER6> Exactly.

Always remember that youre reading marketing fluff first. Be able to unpack the motivations behind the fluff and you find that money is the reason.

<comment><USER7> I actually don't think this is the case for JetBlue - they've always been focused on providing good customer service. Customer service reps can address the 80% simple support cases more efficiently over chat than on the phone. You _could_ say that yes, efficiency is about the money, but really it's a better experience for everyone involved (customer and service rep) to spend less time getting support.

<comment><USER6> Still, thats a rosey goal - I just have a cynical-pessimistic view on the actual outcome...

<comment><USER7> This is already a thing at JetBlue - they rolled out a chat widget on their website recently and it has reduced the number of incoming phone support requests. Their customer service reps working chat love it because they can help more customers in the same period of time. Even better is that if the rep still needs to talk with the customer over the phone to address an issue.. they can! The agent can just call the customer to address that 5-10% use case.

I don't foresee them getting rid of phone altogether.. _that_ seems rosey. But I certainly see a 95% chat / SMS future with voice only as strictly needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > "We all use Uber. We all use Amazon, right? How many of you have ever spoken > to a human at Uber?"

Uber support via the app is absolutely horrendous. I do hope that's not being used as a model.

<comment><USER9> > > "We all use Uber. We all use Amazon, right? How many of you have ever > spoken to a human at Uber?"

> Uber support via the app is absolutely horrendous. I do hope that's not > being used as a model.

The problem is not with the business model. My company resells AppRiver products like spam filtering, secure email, and email continuity. I suppose they have phones you can call, but I wouldnt know. Their chat-based tech support is simply hands-down the best tech support I've ever seen, phone or no-phone.

The quality of tech support is not causally related to the medium, although I would guess it's correlated due to cheap/worse companies with worse tech support picking cheap/worse chat-based tech support

<comment><USER10> > My company resells AppRiver products like spam filtering, secure email, and > email continuity. I suppose they have phones you can call, but I wouldnt > know. Their chat-based tech support is simply hands-down the best tech > support I've ever seen, phone or no-phone.

I have to ask who the heck you're dealing with over at AppRiver because as someone who's been using AppRiver through $Reseller for years now, it's been damn near impossible to get anything done.

It took them nearly two months to finally acknowledge that we weren't incompetent idiots who didn't know how to use their portal, and that mail really was randomly going missing for weeks at a time and then showing up out of the blue.

Even when they did acknowledge it was a screwup on their end (some kind of crashed service on a couple of servers), their responses indicated they had no intention of adding any monitoring or ability for us to see that all the mailservers that handled our mail were actually online and working.

This is entirely aside from how atrocious their product is to use.

We're finally migrating to a competitor and while the experience hasn't been perfect, we already have a lot more confidence that things are working.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I find airlines make it extremely easy to upgrade your flight, or anything that involves giving them your money. No need to talk to anyone - just press a button.

The minute you want to cancel something and get money back though, the more hoops you have to go through.

<comment><USER12> I've seen this dark pattern with everything from credit cards to newspaper subscriptions.

They intentionally make canceling a hassle when the technology is there to make it easy.

Is there a name for this?

<comment> the-dude Dark patterns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The next level disruption. Taking an industry that is known for absolutely horrible almost non-existing cupstormer service (for everyone not paying tons of extra money), and just remove the customer service entirely.

I'm sure he's heard tons of stories from other airlines spending a lot of money on difficult edge case support issues and just thought: "So basically people with large problems are calling our support staff by phone to resolve those issues..... I thing the phone line is the problem!"

I will say it's nice of them to be up front about it. That makes it easy to just add them next to Reyanair and Delta in the list of airlines I don't want to go into my search for tickets.

</comment><comment><USER14> This sounds like a nightmare, people hate tech companies' customer service, it makes it nearly impossible for them to respond to unplanned for situations.

</comment><comment><USER15> >To explain how much of a driving principle that is for him, he recalled an anecdote from the early days of JetBlue, when an experienced pilot with an enormous amount of flight time under his belt showed up for an interview. "He had 15,000 hours," Neeleman said, "but when we asked him to tell us about one instance where he'd gone above and beyond, he couldn't name it. So we didn't hire him. Why? Because he was a jerk."

I will never fly this airline, and will strongly reconsider flying JetBlue again, now that I've read this seriously damning admission (in the form of a brag).

<comment><USER16> I don't follow why it was bad that they didn't hire this pilot? All pilots, regardless of experience, are held to the same standard when it comes to doing the job of flying the plane. Now, given a pilot with 5,000 hours and a great customer friendly attitude and a pilot with 15,000 hours but a horrible attitude towards the customers, ya know those pesky people who pay the bills and salaries, which would you choose?

<comment><USER17> But why does being unable to tell an anecdote on the spot equate to having a "horrible attitude toward customers"? Maybe just a poor interviewer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The Google-ification of everything...

Sometimes people in customer service need to hear a human voice to fully understand the frustration of trying to do things "right" in an often poorly- designed UI.

<comment><USER19> Ironically a friend who just bought a small business is struggling to contact Facebook because the small business page of the business he bought is inaccessible and Facebook has made it near-impossible to speak to a human about anything, even business-related.

So yeah, companies that want to make money without actually speaking to the people they serve -- stay miles away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The cockpit of the Airbus A220 they bought is very interesting, 5 large touch screens:

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/AirBalti...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/AirBaltic_Bombardier_CS300_mainenance_%2833221388195%29.jpg)

<comment><USER21> For those who may not recognize A220, it's tbe Bombardier C series that Airbus has a joint venture stake in. The one that Boeing tried to block from selling in the US

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A220](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A220)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This might work okay if it's coupled with policies that are very favorable to customers. Trying to make this work with things like bag fees or change/cancel fees seems hard. They do hint that irregular operations (regional snowstorms, etc) might require actual customer service.

</comment><comment><USER23> > David Neeleman told attendees at a meeting in New York on Friday that Moxy's > mantra is "we're just a technology company that happens to fly airplanes" — > and that its customer experience will be "very high-tech, very high-touch."

You can't make this stuff up.

<comment><USER24> People _love_ working with _technology_.

"I love this company's technology and as a plus I get some flights!"

"Amazon is such a great technology company. And I just found out they sell things online! Crazy!"

<comment><USER25> Well, the second one isn't too crazy if someone was introduced to Amazon via AWS and not amazon.com

<comment><USER26> Who is hiring cavemen living under rocks as AWS developers?

<comment><USER27> Anyone who doesn't live in one of the 15 countries that Amazon retail operates? AWS is available almost everywhere.

<comment><USER28> Amazon ships to "over 100 countries and regions"

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201910800)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Nice PR pitch to mask the real reason: it's cheaper to not have to pay real people to do the work when you can have a machine do it.

</comment><comment><USER30> I always wondered why there are not airlines that offer no in-flight service of any kind.

I would love to fly to Australia without any hostesses or meals if it gets me a cheaper ticket.

<comment><USER31> Flight attendants are required for safety. They're put to work serving passengers just because they don't have anything better to do most of the time.

Lots of airlines don't offer free meals. It's uncommon (or nonexistant) on longer flights because it's not reasonable to make people go without food for that long.

<comment><USER30> Thanks for the info.

> _It's uncommon (or nonexistant) on longer flights because it's not > reasonable to make people go without food for that long._

Like I said, I'd be happy to pay less to go without food for that long.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> JetBlue Founder's New Airline won't have me as a customer

</comment><comment><USER33> Complete clickbait title — the airline will offer customer service through it's app, just not over the phone.

<comment><USER34> If you read beyond the first paragraphs of the article, you will see that the intent is to try to eliminate interaction with a thinking entity - <USER2> example:

 _And what if things go wrong, as for example happens during storms? "If there's a disruption, we'll send your new flight, and you can accept it." There will be humans available, but the idea is that they'll get in touch only in case of absolute necessity._

Note, in particular, "they'll get in touch only in case of absolute necessity", not "you will be able to get in touch..." If you have a situation that they have not anticipated, or that they simply don't want to deal with, you're shit out of luck.

Only yesterday, I was faced with a schedule change due to weather, but the airline's messages about my options were ambiguous and incomplete, requiring me to speak to customer service - an option that I greatly appreciated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> For god's sake, thepointsguy is horrible.</comment>


The Brexit hangover has left UK startups drained – Are the brains next? - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/09/the-brexit-hangover-has-left-uk-startups-drained-are-the-brains-next/ <comment><USER4> I work in London. Since the referendum, all my European, non British colleagues -including myself - have started to discuss places we could potentially move to, "just in case". Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin are the most popular ones - and I've found myself thinking much more seriously that it might be time to prepare. Perhaps some of my colleagues are on the same page.

Yes, there are 2 or 2.5 years when nothing will change theoretically. But do I really want to commit to a country, with uncertainty as to what will happen after this 2.5 years?

I suggest everyone affected do their research on the options available. Luckily, there are plenty. Just in case.

<comment><USER5> I fail to see what the panic is about. Britain will not want to lose access to the single market, so it is inevitable that nothing will materially change regarding immigration. Look at Switzerland whose citizens voted to control EU immigration and are now being told it is impossible. Even implementing a policy which says Switzerland can limit immigration to job sectors where the unemployment level is high is meeting resistance. And why is immigration such a worry anyhow. It is not like Britain would never have immigration. Last time I looked the USA startup scene does not seem to struggle even though they do not have an open borders policy with nearby countries.

<comment><USER6> AFAIK all the treaties Switzerland has with the European Union include a guillotine clause that cancels all treaties when one is broken. This is due to the difficulty getting the required number of member countries into agreement on treaties. This mean that if Switzerland instituted policies infringing on the free movement treaties, it'd need to renegotiate every single other treaty, potentially with less favorable terms, and long negotiation periods, during which Switzerland is effectively cut off from the rest of the EU. It's not impossible, but doesn't seem worth the cost for something that size.

<comment><USER7> I have written an analysis of what might happen next year in Switzerland and elsewhere:

[https://medium.com/@octskyward/ok-what- now-e3f64d38f7#.q4vch...](https://medium.com/@octskyward/ok-what- now-e3f64d38f7#.q4vchepw1)

It is almost without question that the Swiss will hold another referendum in the coming months, as their deadline for implementing the previous referendum's legislation (which they are legally bound to do) will expire in February. However due to the latency on getting new laws through Parliament they really have to start now.

There is no way to renegotiate with the EU because the EU sees any geographically European population that chooses to defy the EU as some kind of terrorist, with whom negotiation is unthinkable. They refused to negotiate with the Swiss and are now demanding the Swiss join the EU proper or else there won't be any further negotiations (ever). The Swiss do not want to join the EU. So the stage is set for a showdown.

The _best_ case outcome for the EU is a new vote in which the Swiss choose to continue the status quo for a little while longer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> EUs trade with each other represents only 16% of all trade in the world and this number is declining. The EU has no fintech/startups center beside the UK and thats not going to change (Berlin doesn't have the money)

EU is killing, not fostering startups. If anything startups thrive where there is complexity because it means there are problems to solve.

The EU is politically trying to solve a lot of problems but they have nothing but technocratic reasons to do so. I.e. they aren't actually very good at allocating resources to the right problems for europeans because they have no feedback mechanism allowing for a better insight into what are the EU citizens problems.

Instead they are solving problems with the very bureacracy they helped create themselves to begin with.

If anything the EU should stop trying to solve politically what can be solved through technology and via startups.

The UK's fintech sector is going to be just fine and most probably boosted because it's not the problems of the EU that makes UK's fintech successful it's the world.

Technology does and can make up for any legislative complexity and it's going to foster a whole new slew of startups.

So the UK is going to benefit greatly for this and can now make trade deals that benefit the UK while continuing to do fintech without any problems what so ever.

EU isn't some economic powerhouse which one should only be so lucky to be part of. It's primarily catered towards supporting old industries and trade barriers. More countries should reverse back to the common market.

The fact is no one knows whats going to happen. But if history is any indication the UK is going to come out stronger not weaker from this.

<comment><USER9> >they aren't actually very good at allocating resources to the right problems for europeans because they have no feedback mechanism //

Do you have something in mind here, some examples. One of the big things at the moment is how well EU money was targeted to poor areas in need of social support. All these poor areas seem to have voted to remove vital EU subsidies; there no way the Tories are going to reinstate any of it (nor spend any saved capitation on the NHS, IMO, not without first privatising it).

Doesn't a collapse pound make it much harder for businesses that import or use overseas factories at all. It may be a small effect but if it's as easy to startup something in the EU, then surely even a little advantage is good?

<comment><USER8> Giving money to poor areas isn't actually proof of anything besides money is taken from some other regions and given to others. Who gets what in the EU is purely based on the various countries and organizations ability to make the most out of it.

Denmark had an area which spend billions subsidizing various efforts with EU money without any success.

So while that might be great for the local community getting money from the EU isn't a sign of anything besides the EU gives out money based on your ability to get money of out the EU. It's not based on some system of fairness or priority.

The pound is not going to collapse just as little as the Danish krone did when we decided not to be part of the Euro. Back then the amount of scaremongering about what would happen to Danish economy was insane, yet Denmark is one of the countries who fared best after 2008 and still have tripple a rating.

The EUs funds are largely there for the taking. If you can make a case based on some vague notions you can get money from the EU. That can easily be solved by the individual countries instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Having just had one developer decide not to join our UK based company due to this, then yes I feel brains will be next.

I'm certainly thinking about my continued residency in the UK. Berlin looks pretty interesting for me, however the tech seem definitely doesn't seem as vibrant as that of London at a quick glance.

<comment><USER11> One swallow does not make a summer.

There's going to be a period of uncertainty where there may be an effect, but if they hurry up and get on with it then some stability should return. If the 15% rate of corporation tax comes in or other measures it could well encourage investment.

In the meantime, I suspect Brexit will be a convenient excuse for anyone wishing to decline a job offer regardless of whether that's really their reason.

<comment><USER12> Hiring in the UK tech sector has largely stopped. There are no positions, unless you are a devop - in which case, there are tons of positions. If people are so interested in saving the UK tech scene, why not hire people already living in the UK? Those people will not be able to survive until consumer and investor confidence returns and they will be the first to head out to other EU countries.

<comment><USER13> > "Hiring in the UK tech sector has largely stopped."

You're basing this on what exactly? I got a new job this week and there was plenty of people hiring tech talent (I had interviews lined up with 5 different companies within 2 weeks of starting to look).

<comment><USER12> Lucky you. I've been out of work for a while and there is also the matter of 700,000 less job ads from before the referendum.

<comment><USER13> What sort of work are you looking for?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "European staff suddenly have no idea how long they will be able to work in Britain."

Well, after 5 years they can stay indefinitely.

[https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-a-uk-residence- card/permanent-r...](https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-a-uk-residence- card/permanent-residence-card)

You can apply for a permanent residence card after you've lived in the UK for 5 years. This will prove your right to live in the UK permanently.

<comment><USER15> Those rules might change, one of the Conservative candidates announced that she'll kick out all EU immigrants that enter the UK after she becomes the prime minister.

Edit: source: [https://twitter.com/samcoatestimes/status/751682424405430272](https://twitter.com/samcoatestimes/status/751682424405430272)

<comment><USER16> To put it bluntly, Im confident the UK doesnt want ti self destruct. The immigration issue that spurred this delema was syrian, middle east abd north african immigrants. Saying "those rules may change" seems to be more fear mongering to the point of hoping for a worst possible outcome.

<comment><USER17> > The immigration issue that spurred this delema was syrian, middle east abd > north african immigrants.

Not entirely, the common argument is also about cheap workers from Eastern Europe. Ironically, recent accession of countries like Poland, Romania and Bulgaria was specifically and emphatically supported by the UK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> American software engineer who is leaving the US in 35 hours to work for a startup in the UK here. I feel like even for non-EU immigrants, the brexit makes Britain in general less attractive. Part of the reason I'm joining the company is getting to work alongside folks from across the EU and, while I strongly suspect they'll ultimately be alright, I wouldn't be surprised if they were more anxious. Another reason is that my wife loves to travel, we are going to use London as a base, and this does hurt the value of my salary for traveling in the EU.

<comment><USER18> Aside from the impact on myself, I'd strongly suspect that non-white immigrants feel less welcome due to the uptick in racist incidents (or at least the media reports thereof) which has accompanied this.

hmmm.... It just occurs to me that I've been assuming I'm still white in the UK. I think that is a safe assumption, but race is weird so I suppose there is a slight possibility that my skin is dark enough that I'm not. huh.

<comment><USER19> Please put away the tar brush. 52% of voters is not the majority of the UK population. I doubt even a majority of the 52% have deep-rooted hatred of foreigners. Extrapolating public feeling based on reporting of recent, horrid, despicable events is not fair nor scientific.

Even if on a shallow level someone is anti-foreigner, I believe their discontent comes from somewhere else (if they had a well-paying, secure job, a house with a low mortgage payment, excellent prospects for their children etc... they'd forget about foreigners).

<comment><USER18> I'm stating a suspicion about the perceptions held by non-UK citizens. I'm not making a claim about the mindset of UK citizens. In fact, I'm not making any claims at all about the racial angle because:

1) I don't live in the UK yet

2) Race is weird

<comment><USER19> I was born here, lived here 97% of my life. Perhaps it would be prudent to listen to those that live here to confirm/deny suspicions? Your choice obviously.

<comment><USER18> Right, but I'm not saying anything about the people who've lived here. In my first sentence, I'm suspecting things about the perceptions of people outside the UK (or possibly recent arrivals).

In my second, I'm speculating wildly about how race works in the UK but stating that I really don't know.

By the way, as an actual concrete statement: Your border force is absolutely grand and made me feel so welcomed. I should be going to sleep to stave off jet lag, but I am just really excited to finally be here after many years of planning and working toward this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For all those reading this article and agreeing with it, I'd like to point out that it follows the classic scaremongering approach... suggests the worst case scenario based on an uncertain future, and explores no possible solutions. The only people it holds value for are those that seek to gain from dividing us.

From what I can see, the central claim the article makes is that hiring tech talent is going to be harder post-Brexit. There are a number of issues with this claim. For one, the perceived issue with immigration was pretty much never with those who were filling a skills shortage. I've never heard anyone complaining about doctors and nurses being brought over to work in the NHS, for example. The perceived issue was with low-skilled workers and/or people who were resistant to integration with Western values. I personally don't have an issue with immigration (and believe the problems are hugely exaggerated by the media), but to be fair to those that do have concerns about immigration, it should be pointed out that their misgivings weren't really directed at high-tech workers.

Secondly, there's the issue that talented individuals from EU countries may be less interested in coming to the UK. There is likely to be some people who perceive the situation this way, but there's plenty of tech talent all across the world, and the UK will remain a destination that people from less economically developed countries are interested in coming to, especially as the English language is widespread across the world.

I hope that the new Conservative leader will lay out a plan that makes it clear the people who are currently living in the UK can continue to do so, regardless of the state of our EU membership. I think it'd be a great help in putting immigration speculation to bed.

</comment><comment><USER20> There are lots of reasonable arguments to investing in the UK first. They now have the opportunity to innovate without having to work on with committees with thousands of people on them (cookie laws, wtf). As an investor I have more trust in the UK than the rest of Europe. The employment argument is reasonable except, there is still plenty of Eastern European talent that was never in the EU.

<comment><USER21> \- The UK will end up still following EU regulations because anything else would risk their access to the common market

\- Even now, EU regulations affect non-EU companies. No way to avoid the "cookie law" if you want to serve EU customers.

\- The list of regulations that affect startups, especially in the web/software space is rather small. The impact of regulation on the startup scene in Europe is almost zero.

<comment> UVB-76 _> The list of regulations that affect startups, especially in the web/software space is rather small. The impact of regulation on the startup scene in Europe is almost zero._

Complete and utter nonsense.

If you're planning on establishing a start-up in the UK/Europe, and you believe this to be the case, you need a lawyer to give you a reality check sharpish.

<comment><USER21> I've been running a successful startup in Germany for 5 years and I feel the impact of bureaucracy is negligible in the scheme of things.

One exception may be employment law, but that's not made by the EU and generally, once you figure it out for your first employee, it becomes much easier for any 1+n.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm afraid no one in my EU high-skilled network is going to stay in New Little England long term after Brexit: there is simply too much resurfacing from under the elitist carpet of multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism, nothing of our strict business really.

</comment><comment><USER23> "Given that the UK had been part of a single market which allowed for enormous freedom of movement, its access to all that talent in Europe is now in jeopardy."

I don't think UK Govt will jeopardise access to talent with unprogressive immigration reform. UK tech startups need not worry on this front. And just look at USA as an example. Despite VISA issues for foreigners, Silicon Valley still thrives and still has reasonable access to a global pool of talent.

<comment><USER24> Silicon Valley has acces to US talent pool, which is significantly higher than the UK one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > European staff suddenly have no idea how long they will be able to work in > Britain.

I've heard a number of politicians say that those who are here will be able to remain. It would be such a mistake to suddenly tell people to leave. It's not going to happen.

Also a number of points about he article.

> Although Europe's 500 million citizens dwarfs the 323 million in the US

So what. They all speak different languages, not one. So there are some hurdles there to selling to them.

In addition. Only about 4? countries in the EU are rich enough to be trading with. The rest aren't really worth a mention.

I'd easily take the 323 in the US, as I have only 1 language to deal with and immediate results in setting up a business for the US.

> "Long term I think I will have to relocate my business to the USA as the > market in the UK is just too small to justify staying here," she told me. > What's that? A market of 65 million too small? Well, yes, when just a > fortnight ago it was 500 million.

This is laughable. I have a business in both the UK and the US. Even if I was just operating in the UK. I'd still have access to the US. How this article is sounding like the UK cannot trade with the EU is again laughable.

This article smacks of scare-mongering.

Finally one thing, follow the money.

> Look for talented British entrepreneurs suddenly turning up in Berlin, > Stockholm, Lisbon and Barcelona.

Wasn't there an article on HN saying that Barcelona couldnt find enough tech workers? The evidence pointed to compensation.

I doubt there will be much of a brain drain, when British tech workers balk at how much they'd be losing in salary working anywhere apart from the UK or US.

<comment><USER26> > Wasn't there an article on HN saying that Barcelona couldnt find enough tech > workers? The evidence pointed to compensation

Because there's no shortage at all. That's the yearly "we need to keep wages low, so push people to study It by promising jobs" article sponsored by the big companies.

There's a shortage of entrepreneurs, VC money and in general management talent that learned to manage a company after the 80s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> [http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/politics-is-too- com...](http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/politics-is-too-complex-to- be-understood-as-just-either-left-or-right/)

Above link might help understanding of the politics behind our vote. I had a bad feeling when I saw how very close the opinion polls were. Once Farage did the immigration poster it was game over. Our first political assassination this century seemed to polarise the situation as well.

Using the orthogonal scales explained in the link above, you guys are neo- liberal economically and have a cosmopolitan outlook. Many - not a majority, just _enough_ \- people in England have a communitarian outlook and are left wing economically.

What you have going for you is that the government is also right wing economically. The leadership may move slightly to the communitarian end - <USER2> only has to move _enough_ to make it work.

The new leader and her government will need to dance like anything - they will have to conduct a complex set of negotiations (remember UK has not negotiated a trade deal for 40 years) that will involve the usual performance you do when making deals - but at the same time they will have to keep public opinion reassured (or at least bored - i.e. avoid upsetting it). Not an easy trick. One candidate seems to be on a bit of a learning curve from this morning's news.

Remember that those of us who ticked the 'remain' box basically all wanted the same thing - status quo. What did those who ticked the 'leave' box want? Quite a few incompatible things from my conversations over the last few weeks. The new Prime Minister will be making _more than half the people_ unhappy - <USER3> last idea comes from an Irish Times columnist whose name escapes me right now.

You need to hedge for uncertainty in any way you can.

PS: If you think London has problems, think about how things look from Belfast.

<comment><USER28> This has a picture of the poster for those interested: [http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/16/nigel- farage...](http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/16/nigel-farage- defends-ukip-breaking-point-poster-queue-of-migrants)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think there is a much stronger point that is being ignored. No one is currently hiring in London. There are 700,000 less jobs ads then before the referendum. If EU hubs actively pick up those who are unemployed in London, it would be enough of a 'brain-drain' for London start-ups to notice.

</comment><comment><USER29> It is definitely going to be a problem. And people are already pushing see: Truck Drives Around London Urging Move To Berlin: [http://www.lbc.co.uk/truck- drives-around-london-urging-move-...](http://www.lbc.co.uk/truck-drives- around-london-urging-move-to-berlin-133339)

<comment><USER29> I don't understand the downvotes here.

I work in a London startup where about 90% or our engineers are not British. They tell me that they are already seeing adverts saying 'move to berlin/dublin' on their facebook feed. There is a real danger that as well as not being able to recruit people, the people that are already here will simply leave.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Too much speculation and scare mongering.</comment>


Show HN: Stock Prices in Your Terminal - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nmiodice/bloom-term <comment><AUTHOR> bloom-term is a tool that displays market prices in your terminal. Not quite as nice but a Bloomberg terminal, but at least its free!

Looking for feedback or contributions to make it even better.

</comment><comment><USER2> Nice work. Who's the data provider?

<comment><USER3> if you view the python file, you'll see API_ENDPOINT = 'query1.finance.yahoo.com' API_PATH = '/v7/finance/quot</comment></comment>


Streamium: Stream Live Video and Get Paid in Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://streamium.io

<comment><USER2> Awesome product, awesome team. Very excited to see how fast adoption happens and where they take this.

Getting content producers paid by viewers rather than advertisers is crucial for the future of humanity.</comment>


Twitter will now label political ads - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/24/twitter-will-label-political-ads-including-who-bought-and-spend.html <comment><USER2> Original title: _Twitter will now label political ads, including who bought them and how much they are spending_

Techmeme summary: _Michelle Castillo / CNBC: Twitter will now label political ads with sponsors, including spending and targeting disclosures, and establish a Transparency Center database with all ads_</comment>


Putting Google to the Test in Translation - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/03/09/technology/20100309-translate.html?ref=technology <comment><USER2> The Systran system is quite old, check out how Hofstadter thrashed it some years ago in his "Le Ton beau de Marot"(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Ton_beau_de_Marot>) (awesome book on machine translation and literature in general, BTW). Looking at these I thought that (i) Google totally blows the competition out of the water in French, Spanish, and German (I even found the German translation slightly more readable than the human one - "uneasy dreams" sounds better than the human's "anxious dreams"); but (ii) the Russian and Arabic translations are not very readable. Too bad they didn't provide a comparison in Chinese.

Many old school linguists often scorn the no-model, statistical approach to machine translation that Google adopts (my advisor was one of these), opting for more semantically-based models instead. I have yet to see results comparable to Google's (i.e. in unconstrained domains) from this school.

<comment><USER3> How can we know about the linguistic models that Google uses? Are these from some papers published by Googlers?

<comment><USER2> For a simple introduction to their approach you can read Peter Norvig's explanation of how Google performs spell checking (<http://norvig.com/spell- correct.html>) or his video lecture ([http://www.catonmat.net/blog/theorizing- from-data-by-peter-n...](http://www.catonmat.net/blog/theorizing-from-data-by- peter-norvig-video-lecture/)). You can get links to their results for NIST 2005 evaluation from here: [http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/04/statistical- machi...](http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/04/statistical-machine- translation-live.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is something strange, in the Arabic article both the human and the Google translation say "[..] soccer great Diego Maradona" where as the original arabic there is no mention of anything resembling "great". Was the human translator influenced by the Google result ? or is Diego Maradona always referred to as "soccer great Diego Maradona" in English press and google is picking up on that?

Edit:I suppose it is the latter since the Human translator was not trying to have a correct reference translation for testing the engines. He totally skipped translating the words " in South Africa ". Imho, this makes the results much less interesting.

Also in the french translation it is interesting that "Le premier soir" translates as "The first evening" if you type it in google without the rest of the sentence, but becomes "The first night" after you put it in context.

<comment><USER3> > I suppose it is the latter since the Human translator was not trying to have > a correct reference translation for testing the engines. He totally skipped > translating the words " in South Africa ".

Each human translation also has the source below it, which ranges from old classics to relatively recent publications. So, yes, the human translators were not trying to have a correct reference translation, which imho makes it only more interesting.

> becomes "The first night" after you put it in context.

which makes me suspect this one happened to one of the inputs used to train the translator also.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The comparisons with Yahoo and with Bing are quite interesting.

</comment><comment><USER6> The Russian version confuses two engines because of hyphenation (perhaps due to line-wrapping in the original article)</comment>


How the internet's engineers are fighting mass surveillance - <AUTHOR> https://gigaom.com/2014/12/30/how-the-internets-engineers-are-fighting-mass-surveillance/

<comment><USER2> Not that this should close the argument, but having worked at one of the large data analytics startups that works very closely with government, it's laughable what the government is capable of doing with your data.

I'm not worried one bit, as we had the best technology available. And with the amount of data being generated, it's basically impossible for them to arbitrarily find something unless they're specifically looking for it. Privacy by bad technology and hard problems.

<comment><USER3> When someone stores your data forever, they're not limited by the search and indexing technology available _today_.</comment></comment>


Show HN: 1-click orders for open source electronics - <AUTHOR> https://kitspace.org <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, I created Kitspace in an effort to help open source electronics be a bit more like open source software. The aim is to make it as easy as possible to replicate designs without the creator having to bag components to make kits.

I have been working on this for a number of years already (started with the browser extension) and have a few things in the pipeline such as integrating a GitLab back-end for easier file-uploads and adding a bill of materials editor.

The source code is available at [https://github.com/monostable/kitspace](https://github.com/monostable/kitspace) (give it a star if you like it - it really helps a lot with grant applications). There is an alpha version of a BOM builder tool at: [https://bom-builder.kitspace.org](https://bom-builder.kitspace.org). Feel free to ask for more details of course :)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing Kitspace on HN, your site looks promising. At first I thought it may be hard to gain traction over the established players (such as Tindie), but after looking into how the site works it looks like it has the potential to lower the cost for acquiring the hardware, as well as reduce the customer support burden for open hardware creators. Nice work!

Any short term plans to expand the site further?

I had thought that selling solder stencils perhaps might be a good optional extra for larger boards, but I guess they could prove a little expensive. Cheapest I've found with a quick search was this site:

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Cheers! I don't think it's in competition with Tindie either. I want the site to serve a niche of creators that can't be bothered with the rest (i.e. packing and selling). I think this opens up a world of designs that don't have commercial viability. My special areas of interest are music gear and scientific instrumentation (but of course that doesn't dictate what types of designs people decide to put up).

The cost for a one-off order is always more than something that is made multiple times so I it's not a question of competing on price. Kitspace currently optimizes for one-off orders (batching orders of a single design for multiple people would be interesting too though).

I am curious, how do you think it lowers the support burden? Do you mean they can just say: "you soldered it, I don't know, works for me" or is it something more? :D

I think the stencils are best left to the batching services and Aisler and PCBway, which are linked from Kitspace, offer them too (and they should pick out the relevant solder-paste Gerber files).

EDIT: Oh, and regarding planned features check: [https://github.com/monostable/kitspace#planned](https://github.com/monostable/kitspace#planned) and the work-in-progess (WIP) pull-requests: [https://github.com/monostable/kitspace/pulls](https://github.com/monostable/kitspace/pulls)

<comment><USER2> > "I am curious, how do you think it lowers the support burden? Do you mean > they can just say: "you soldered it, I don't know, works for me" or is it > something more? :D"

Yeah, pretty much the former. Selling a product directly, even in kit form, implies that you're stating that the parts you supply will be fit for purpose, whereas with a site like Kitspace I'd suggest it's up to the person assembling the boards to get things working (though that won't stop some people asking for help). What Kitspace seems to do is to reduce the friction between seeing a board an individual is interested in and the ordering of the suggested parts, which is a step forward for the user experience of open source hardware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Without having placed an order, this looks really cool and I hope it takes off. One I thought of off the top of my head that I did not see there is the ErgoDox keyboard. [https://github.com/bishboria/ErgoDox](https://github.com/bishboria/ErgoDox)

A good resource for more projects to put up might be Tindie. You might find some more HW folks there that would like to contribute.

What did you use to build the site? It looks great and is responsive. I have been wanting to build a "thingiverse for x" for a specific x for a while, but have not had the time for a nice implementation like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tips. I actually have a GitHub org [1] which serves as a todo list for projects to try and get into a state to be put up.

Source code for Kitspace is on GitHub as well: [https://github.com/monostable/kitspace](https://github.com/monostable/kitspace)

Tindie is a really cool platform for selling kits and assembled projects and I need to figure out how to best reach people there. Kitspace is kind of trying to serve the niche of creators that don't want to put in the effort to put together and sell assembled projects or kits. There is probably still some overlap though and some people do have projects on both sites already I believe.

Kitspace is built with React and Semantic-UI (and pcb-stackup! [2]) and is compiled into a static site hosted on Netlify. I chose to implement my own build system using Ninja because I didn't get on with the frontend build tools at the time and it needs to process a lot of assets (and I do embedded systems programming by day, so I actually like Make and Make-like build tools). This was before Webpack and I had a go at understanding Webpack a few times in the mean time but never got my head around the config language.

I am currently working on moving away from a static site and using an instance of GitLab as a back-end. I am eyeing up Parcel and Next.js as possible routes for building the new front-end.

[1]: [https://github.com/kitspace-forks](https://github.com/kitspace-forks) [2]: [https://github.com/tracespace/pcb- stackup/](https://github.com/tracespace/pcb-stackup/)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the reply, I had not heard of pcb-stackup before, but it looks awesome. I hope to integrate that into a site some day.

The ergodox sounds like a good fit as per your description, I tried to put together an order to make my own but got overwhelmed between out of stocks and alternative chips, etc. Ultimately I will probably buy a kit from someone else rather than buy individual parts from mouser and digikey.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, yeah, I just fixed up the tomu [1] BOM because of out of stocks and started dreaming up a self-healing BOM solution (pick the in-stock parts), I need to implement quite a bit of stuff before that though.

I forked the ergodox project and will have a go at helping the creator put it up when I get a chance.

[1]: [https://kitspace.org/boards/github.com/im-tomu/tomu- hardware...](https://kitspace.org/boards/github.com/im-tomu/tomu-hardware/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems like a great idea. Congratulations on launching.

I'm not sure I'm willing to install a Chrome extension to be able to use this, though. I try to keep my extensions down to a minimum.

<comment><USER5> Also hampered by Google's refusal to support Chrome extensions on Android and IOS. What's their motivation for this policy?

<comment><AUTHOR> That reminds me that I should make the extension work for mobile Firefox. I keep wondering though: do people order electronic components on their mobile?

<comment><USER5> I do, but I don't know if that means much. Certainly mobile is overtaking desktop in total overall traffic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > It could be described as a "Thingiverse for electronics".

I'm getting old. I would have described it as "on-demand Heathkits"!

It's a great idea. I'd love to see more types of designs. My parents still use their Heathkit receiver, while I make do with a pathetic store-bought one.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like it, I might add that to the description. But what sets a Heathkit apart from a regular kit? Sometimes I describe it as "a place for virtual kits". (Also, didn't Heathkit make a little bit of a comeback? [http://heathkit.com](http://heathkit.com))

It would indeed be great to have more types of designs. We've had an influx of animal shaped PCBs recently (partly my own fault [1]) so I am on the search for some rectangular green, serious ones to offset that. I feel like it's slowly getting to a point where it's worthwhile adding categories.

[1]: [https://blog.monostable.co.uk/posts/etching-oscillators- in-z...](https://blog.monostable.co.uk/posts/etching-oscillators-in-zurich)

<comment><USER6> > But what sets a Heathkit apart from a regular kit?

I guess I've never seen any other solder-it-yourself kits. Do they exist? I'd love to make some. Or give them as gifts.

> (Also, didn't Heathkit make a little bit of a comeback? > [http://heathkit.com](http://heathkit.com))

Great, if true. Right now I only see 2 kits on their website, and both are just newer versions of ones I built years ago (clock, AM radio).

> We've had an influx of animal shaped PCBs recently (partly my own fault)

Heh, I was wondering about those.

Do you take requests? Home audio is the DIY classic. Maybe power supplies or battery chargers -- I always seem to need more of those. And of course, anything related to home automation. Maybe you could start small (like an IR remote control), and move up. A fully open-source alternative to the IOT junk that's on the market today would be most welcome!

<comment><AUTHOR> I do take requests but mostly for documenting other people's projects and getting them in a state to be put up. I was going to have a go at HackRF [1] next but if you know any good projects you would like to see put up, let me know.

[https://github.com/mossmann/hackrf](https://github.com/mossmann/hackrf)

P.S. I should really have a go at this power supply too: [https://github.com/eez-open/psu-hw](https://github.com/eez-open/psu-hw)

<comment><USER6> I was thinking more along the lines of "the power brick for my old monitor died again", but that dual-channel programmable PSU looks amazing. I wish I had a use for it so I had an excuse to build it! Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oooh, nice site! I like it :)

Some ideas: 1\. You could add the objective O2 headphones amp (very nice build) 2\. I have a stash of common parts I bought in bulk (mostly SMD R/C), if those were automatically "supplied" via my personal inventory list (maybe even updating it), that might be really neat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tips. I checked out the O2 amp and it's extensively documented!

For 2. it might be worth integrating with some of the part managements systems. [https://github.com/monostable/awesome- electronics#inventory-...](https://github.com/monostable/awesome- electronics#inventory-management-and-purchasing)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cool project! This reminds me of an idea that you're awfully close to: optimized small-volume part kitting. I can order boards from OSHPark and stencils from OSHStencils, but figuring out which distributor has parts in stock for the lowest price and in the preferred packaging still takes an inordinate amount of time. The Octopart BOM tool is the closest thing I know of, but it will only let you fill a cart at a single distributor. Going in one step from BOM to ordered parts from multiple optimal distributors would save a lot of time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! I had this idea too (or maybe I stole it off you, who knows :). Though I changed my mind at some point and thought I would first do it according to preferred retailer (since I normally want to order at Farnell and then RS, if Farnell doesn't have it, because both will deliver next-day in the UK for free). Check 1.6 and 2.0 on the 1-click BOM roadmap [1]. Though it may be better to integrate this with Kitspace.org rather than build it into the extension.

[1]:[https://github.com/monostable/1clickBOM#roadmap](https://github.com/monostable/1clickBOM#roadmap)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks nice, but I hope the documentation for the individual projects improves (it seems to be at the bare minimum at this moment). For example, I'd like to know what to look for when a freshly soldered project doesn't work. Or when it breaks. Also, I'd like to have a minimum explanation of how a circuit works. The circuit schematics should always be included.

Further, it would be nice if the website immediately showed the price for the components (or a range, for different resellers).

<comment><AUTHOR> All great feature requests and will be implemented one day (if I don't get hit by a bus). Linking up the board preview with the parts list, to help soldering and debugging, has been on the roadmap for Kitspace for quite a while. Here is a badly collaged concept drawing of that idea: [https://github.com/monostable/kitspace/blob/bf017e245ed92066...](https://github.com/monostable/kitspace/blob/bf017e245ed920668571af32c43ded80f2dcb86b/presentations/fosdem2017/images/aide.png)

If you click on the "repo" link for most (not all) projects you will be able to download schematics (the majority are done in KiCad).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Do you have links for one-click assembly too like Macrofab and PCB.ng? Taking a day to place parts with tweezers and hot air is a major pain point.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not yet, one day I want to add links to these new type of assemblers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> honest question... how can we test that you actually implemented 1-click ordering without having to install an extension?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can try with Digikey, Newark or Farnell. Once I find time I'll do a shared-cart trick with Mouser as well so the extension will be needed less, though the extension can also be easier expanded to more retailers that don't offer cart-sharing links.</comment></comment>


Astrology for Mathematicians - <AUTHOR> https://mathstrology.com/ <comment><USER2> That was A great READ, if you're into astrology and 90s web design, [https://freewillastrology.com/](https://freewillastrology.com/) , it's totally whatever but the readings each Tuesday almost always come with a history lesson so it's fun educational nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER3> Fun website. We need more fun maths websites to play around with.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's something that's been nagging me about horoscopes and the like. The periods they define are fixed in respect to the Gregorian calendar, which is arbitrary and doesn't capture the actual cycles of planets and stars. Isn't the significance of those natural planetary cycles part of the premise of astrology. How do astrologues justify that?

<comment><USER5> From [1]:

Our calendar months do _not_ coincide precisely with the actual celestial month. We are out of sync by a little bit of time (hence, Leap Year). This means that the Sun moves into a new zodiac sign _approximately_ every month, anywhere between 19th and the 23rd of our month. That group of days is called a cusp, meaning the span of days in which the Sun may change sign. However, being born during those days does not automatically mean that you have two Sun signs. That is a common misconception. Birth charts are calculated using astronomical ephemerides that track the exact time of a Sun sign change for every year. If you were born between the 19th and 23rd of any month, you must check an ephemeris to see exactly where the Sun was at the time of your birth.

1: [https://astrolibrary.org/zodiac/#jl- sunsign](https://astrolibrary.org/zodiac/#jl-sunsign)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can someone explain to me how this got on the front page with 3 votes?

What are the rules of getting to the front page?

<comment><USER6> As much as I appreciate humorous replies to my question, I'm serious. What makes a new article appear on the front page?

I saw some hitting the front page with much fewer votes than others. What's the mechanics in play here?

<comment><USER7> If it gets votes fast enough after being submitted, it can appear on the front page with very few votes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Funny, but this is equivalent to "Mathematics for Astrologists":

2+2 => You are a pair number.

Astrology is much more detailed and permutation-dependant than this.

<comment><USER9> What do you mean by "permutation-dependent"? I'm curious, because I write an article about permutations and I'd be happy to introduce some astrology :)

<comment><USER8> What I mean is - there are 9 "planets", aka bodies. Each has a specific orbit. Astrology isn't "sun was in that sign on that day", that's like saying programming is C#.

Your sign depends on the each of the planet's position towards the earth sky and towards each other. So two people born on the same day in different years will have vastly different horoscopes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Three-torus here, which is very pleasing to me.

Unfortunately, the page for my sign shows a triple torus, which is not the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> TIL: Hyperbolic paraboloid is the saddle point.</comment>


Show HN: Water Pouring Problem Simulation - <AUTHOR> http://www.fyquah.me/projects/cups/simulate/ <comment><USER2> I wonder how many people tried the "5 and 3 gallon canister, target is 4 gallons" from Die Hard 3 … I know I did!

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Adding this video to the page, thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You can solve this problem faster using the extended Euclidean algorithm.

<comment><AUTHOR> Does the algorithm yield the exact path to the target volume?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It will be nice to have a list with all steps at the end

</comment><comment><USER5> Intuitively, to be possible I think the target amount has to be divisible by the gcf of the two jugs.

</comment><comment><USER6> Thought it is real water pouring simulation..</comment>


FBI could force us to turn on iPhone cameras and microphones, says Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/10/apple-fbi-could-force-us-to-turn-on-iphone-cameras-microphones <comment><USER2> Simple covers for laptop cameras are sold. I wonder, could similar simple and cheap product be made to baffle a microphone?

I'm thinking, without much knowledge or sound or microelectronics, a white- noise generator that would be situated next to the microphone, so that noise would be drowned out.

Or maybe even a simple sliding cover for it.</comment>


Cool Backgrounds - <AUTHOR> https://coolbackgrounds.io/ <comment><USER2> This is beautifully done. I noticed the affiliation with investmentcalculator.io - I love that you guys are working on stuff like this. Beautiful, simple products that do one thing with a focus on UX. Make more, please!

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the love Blair!! icalc is a project by two of my good buddies, and I promise we got plenty more coming down the pipeline.

Here's a few more live ones for your perusal:

[https://loremipsum.io/](https://loremipsum.io/)

[https://gpacalculator.io/](https://gpacalculator.io/)

[https://chinesenewyear2018.com/](https://chinesenewyear2018.com/)

<comment><USER4> Wow - these sites are awesome!

May I ask how you generate links/publicity for these projects? [https://chinesenewyear2018.com/](https://chinesenewyear2018.com/) in particular exploded in visibility on google.

PS: Are you OK with me contacting you via mail with additional questions?

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Feel free to reach out, email in bio.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This website is really nicely designed. I can't quite place it, but I feel very good just looking at it. I can tell it was designed with care.

<comment><USER3> Appreciate it! Lots of care and time went into seemingly "useless" details but I think the sum is a bit nicer than the parts.

<comment><USER6> Is there some name to this style? I'm seeing it more often these days, but just can't nail it down to a framework or so...

<comment><USER7> I see a mix of flat and material design, but I'm not sure it has a name like Brutalist does. One should probably come up soon given how nice it is. I really like the Rubik font here.

<comment><USER8> Replacing borders with drop shadows seems to work out great - plus light background with some really delicious colors. Reminds me of Stripe design.

<comment><USER7> I agree. I'm using a similar design in a current pet project ([http://www.niche.fm](http://www.niche.fm)), it's fun. I still need to update the old lightpink + #181818 modules, though. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice, while we're on the subject, I saw trello used photos from [https://unsplash.com/](https://unsplash.com/), which looks like a great resource.

<comment> 52-6F-62 I second unsplash

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Gradient Topography emits SVG, so you're clearly not allergic to vector formats; yet Trianglify and Particles emit PNG because they've been drawn on a canvas rather than with SVG in the first place.

Being able to emit both PNG and SVG would be best, instructing to use SVG where possible because it's better than PNG.

</comment><comment><USER11> Custom resolutions would be great... need 5120x2880 for use as my background.

<comment><USER3> Working on this. Tough at the moment since the particles background gets GPU intensive. Need to pause, resize canvas while maintaining frame, download image then resize back down and start animating again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks nice. I recognise at least one background from the library that comes with MacOS. Is that OK to use?

<comment><USER13> Just checked. If it's the one called Silva it definitely looks like it's the same location/photographer, but they are slightly different. It looks like it uses photos from unsplash.com which is a collection of free photos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Some of the saved backgrounds in PNG format have noises and lines in them, see for example:

[https://imgur.com/a/HDroZP1](https://imgur.com/a/HDroZP1)

Otherwise, it's a very nice and neat website, kudos!

<comment><USER15> same here, a lot more if you choose brighter colors: [https://imgur.com/a/H5OIH4j](https://imgur.com/a/H5OIH4j)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is it just me, or are these unattractively low res?

<comment><USER3> No that's definitely not just you. I meant to update those, and will push that change up soon.

Probably default to 2560 x 1440 until it is customizable. Thoughts?

<comment><USER17> Absolutely. The current 1192x580 is far too low, especially for the backgrounds with thin lines like "Particles".

By the way, the Particles backgrounds get slower and slower every time I choose a different color scheme. It seems to be calling updateEdges / drawEdge N times per frame, where N is the number of color schemes you've viewed.

Looks beautiful, though. I'll definitely be checking back for high res versions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Great patterns! If you want to build on Android I've got this open source background service [https://github.com/jdrbc/SimpleBackgrounds](https://github.com/jdrbc/SimpleBackgrounds)

</comment><comment><USER19> Nice images, I like the content. Would just be nice if you could add anonymizeIp to GA (if it's needed at all) and maybe host the fonts yourself. Not only for GDPR, but just for privacy.

</comment><comment><USER20> give the author some love ! [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17133699](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17133699)

</comment><comment><USER21> I couldn't download anything except for the last image (Safari, iOS 11.3) — it appears as "unknown" when I click the download button.

</comment><comment><USER22> Bug report: Cannot change color scheme after clicking "Gradient Topography" twice :)

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm curious as to the business model behind these type of sites?

<comment><USER24> Somebody wanted to build something, so they did.

Not everything published online is for immediate financial reward. Sometimes it's to build a digital portfolio. Sometimes it's to learn some new technologies. And sometimes it's just for the fun of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> What are you using to make the menus pop and slide?

<comment><USER3> It's all CSS animations timed with transition-delay (but triggered with js adding a "is-active" class).

<comment><USER26> FYI, there is a strange rendering glitch in current Nightly occurring while scrolling the page with menu opened: [https://github.com/webcompat/web- bugs/issues/17016](https://github.com/webcompat/web-bugs/issues/17016)

If you plan to make some radical alterations that could potentially "fix" that bug in near future, could you please freeze current state somewhere until diagnosis finishes?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So beautiful! I love the design.

</comment><comment><USER28> plain black

<comment><USER29> this is actually the best, uncluttered, background

i work on a black terminal, without window borders, on a black background without icons, and people pass by my desk and are all "whoa, what kind of super-fancy interface is that?"... it gets me every time

<comment><USER30> Screenshot?

<comment><USER29> when I do ^L, only black pixels except for the shell prompt

<comment><USER30> haha I was interested in seeing how I could set it up myself - any hints before I start researching a similar setup?

<comment><USER29> you can configure gnome easily to look that way (with a hidden panel and no icons, and a bit of tweking of your compoositor)

or you just write a tiny ~/.xinitrc that calls evilwm or cwm

        xsetroot -solid black
        evilwm &
        exec xterm

<comment><USER30> thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> License?

<comment><USER3> Going to be CC0 once I can figure out how the dynamic images work for copyright issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Doesn't work on Chrome mobile for me.</comment>


Ask HN: Does the Intercom chat bubble drive you crazy? - <AUTHOR> I'm so sick of visiting webpages and being pestered by the in-your-face Intercom live chat bubble. Does anyone else feel the same way?<p>Does anyone have a way to remove them? I might write a browser extension to automatically remove/hide them if it doesn't already exist (I looked and couldn't' find anything). <comment><USER2> 3/4 of the time it's not even a live chat and not much better than email. Sometimes they have a chat bot that doesn't understand what you're asking them and it becomes more frustrating.

</comment><comment><USER3> What gets me worse is dynamically changing the page title to catch your eye. Ex. something like:

      let documentTitle = document.title;
      let documentTitleWithNotification = "(1) " + documentTitle;
      let timeDelay = 1000;
      function makePlainTitle() {
        document.title = documentTitle;
        setTimeout(makeNotificationTitle, timeDelay);
      }
      function makeNotificationTitle() {
        document.title = documentTitleWithNotification;
        setTimeout(makePlainTitle, timeDelay);
      }
      makeNotificationTitle();

My peripheral vision is a sucker for motion.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the fast replies. I was able to kill it by blocking the widget.intercom.io domain with Privacy Badger. I wonder why it wasn't already blocked by default...

</comment><comment><USER4> I have differing opinions on this, depending on what side of the interaction I'm on and a few other factors.

In my personal browsing: do I like them? It depends. If I'm interested in the product/service, I may have questions or need support, so in that sense, yes. If I'm just browsing and have little or no interest in converting, no -- I find them annoying.

For my business: leads seem to love em, time wasters hate em. It's a great way to start the conversation with quality leads while weeding out the visitors who will waste your time.

Even if you personally find them annoying, when my business is talking to a potential lead via Intercom, that conversation often results in a conversion. So, in my opinion, I think it's worth annoying visitors (various levels of annoyance depending on visitor) who aren't really interested anyways. It's a win-win.

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://hellogoodbye.app/](https://hellogoodbye.app/) Didn't tried it yet but it will remove the annoying chat bubbles.

</comment><comment><USER6> [https://www.no-thanks-extension.com/](https://www.no-thanks-extension.com/)

It's not free, but works very well

</comment><comment><USER7> I hate them yes. But businesses must find that people want to use them right? (And it makes sense why they would.) Yet on my own sites all I get from them is troll messages ...

</comment><comment><USER8> Jup, so much visual clutter on some landing pages. Cookies, subscribe for my newsletter, chat popup. Perhaps You can use privacy badger to block everything from that domain.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you tweak uBlock origin's setting I'm fairly sure you can remove stuff like banners/intercom bubbles popping up.

</comment><comment><USER10> Just use uBlock or another script/adblocker and block it using that, if your defaults don't kill it already.

</comment><comment><USER11> Yes, that chat bubble even the notification noise it makes drives me crazy.

</comment><comment><USER12> uBlock or PrivacyBadger seems to eliminate them. I forgot how horrible the internet can be without these extensions until I used a new Mac a few weeks ago.

</comment><comment><USER13> Yes.</comment>


An Introduction to SVG - <AUTHOR> http://www.codeconquest.com/an-introduction-to-svg/

<comment><USER2> SVGs tend to be smaller because it is a vector format. It has nothing to do with XML; it seems highly likely a binary encoding for SVG would be massively more efficient than xml.</comment>


How iTunes Genius Really Works - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/25267/ <comment><USER2> Is the engineer that discussed this still an employee I wonder....

Although the article doesn't really reveal anything that any person with reasonable skill in the art of clustering, machine learning et al would not easily guess.</comment>


RWT Article: What's Next for Moore's Law? For Intel, III+V = 10nm QWFETs - <AUTHOR> http://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=149685

<comment><USER2> Link is to a forum blurb on RWT. Direct link to story: [http://www.realworldtech.com/intel-10nm- qwfet/](http://www.realworldtech.com/intel-10nm-qwfet/)</comment>


Ask HN: Does anyone use PostgreSQL and how do you use it? - <AUTHOR>

There has been a lot of discussion on HN after Posgres 9.0 came out, but I seem to have a hard time figuring out who uses Postgres and how. Does anyone know how high availability is usually ensured when using it? How does it compare to setting up a MySQL cluster? What is the best way to provide highly available persistent storage and speed at the same time?<p>Any feedback is greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> Most of your questions can be answered within a link or two from the postgresql.org home page.

Who uses it: <http://www.postgresql.org/about/users>

High Availability [http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/interactive/high- availabi...](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/interactive/high- availability.html)

It's a bit more complex than setting up a mysql cluster, but it's also less likely to be squirrely when things go sour. Also, having a good understanding of how the replication solution you are using works and why, means you can avoid some of the pitfalls it brings with.

PostgreSQL is a very powerful tool, to use it well requires understanding and skill and much depends on the workload of a given installation. Fortunately it's performant enough out of the box that you can get by with just putting it on a box and using the hell out of it at first. But at some point you will need to dedicate some attention to tuning it.</comment>


The Agile Disease - <AUTHOR> http://lukehalliwell.wordpress.com/2008/11/16/the-agile-disease/ <comment><USER2> Somebody needs to take a few anger management lessons.

As somebody who makes bucks off the word "agile", I feel like I should respond. I'm not going to take apart his piece, because I too am sick of the manifesto and believe that the top dogs are just in this as a marketing exercise.

Having said that, Agile was not put together by those guys. That's just what their books say. Agile techniques have been being used for decades. They just didn't have the cool marketing term. You don't have to drink the coolaid to be agile -- any high-performing team is going to be agile, whether they call themselves that or not.

Second, Agile is a philosophy, not a methodology. It doesn't tell you what to do, it tells you what to think about what you're doing. Agile/Lean IS just common sense, but nobody seems to have much common sense anymore. You can apply the agile philosophy to all sorts of methodologies.

Third, Agile is not for mushy-headed enterprise guys. It probably works better for small customer-facing shops. To say agile is a response to CMM or heavy- handed processes is again to buy into the story the book-writers want to tell you. Put down the crack pipe. Agile has always been around, and has been used inside of all kinds of other methodologies.

Finally, Scrum is NOT agile. Scrum is a project management framework that you can use for agile projects. You can use a lot of others, or you can roll your own. The Scum guys are the religious nuts in this circus, if you ask me, and they are the ones causing all of the backlash. The rest of the Agile movement is just about how to best iteratively and incrementally do your job. That's a good conversation to have.

Ironically, a key factor I'm finding in successful agile teams is the ability to be open-minded. If you are an agile disciple or evangelist, or if you are a anti-agilista, usually it gets in the way of team performance. It's the people who want to have an ongoing conversation about how to keep increasing team performance -- without getting hung up over what book it was in or not -- that grow killer teams.

</comment><comment><USER3> Let me sum up my impression of this article:

A. Agile methods are just common sense.

B. My company has no common sense, so it treats the agile methods as some sort of religion, and thereby remains completely dysfunctional.

C. I am in hell and need something to shout at. If I shout at my coworkers I will get fired. But there is a consultant within shouting distance.

D. My life sucks and it's all the fault of the Agile Methodologists!

If anyone ever wonders why management consultants charge all that money: This is it. Would _you_ want to walk into this guy's company and try to give advice? You'd have to be awfully well paid!

The author is on the path to enlightenment, but he is not yet there. He's figured out that the capital-M Methodology is primarily designed for broken companies. [1] He's well on his way to figuring out that he's working in a broken company himself, which is why there are so many people employing Methodology there. What he hasn't figured out is that you can't fix a broken company by walking up to people and telling them "you aren't writing documentation or using the bug tracker because you aren't a very talented coder and you have no common sense". I have _seen this management style tried_ , and it doesn't work: it just makes everyone unhappier, and it focuses their unhappiness on you.

If you want to tinker with a dysfunctional company instead of just running for the hills, you need to (a) recruit allies, (b) equip your allies with powerful Jedi mind tricks that they can use on their less-enlightened management, and (c) find ways to maneuver problematic people out of the way of your allies -- or, if necessary, destroy them. This is why there is always a Methodology lying around -- and why, when one dies, another is always there to take its place. A Methodology is a rhetorical weapon, designed for just these purposes.

(a) It's not an accident that Methodologies evolve cultlike features. So does every effort to recruit a bunch of people to a cause, whether it's a fraternity, a political movement, a school of software development, a message board for hackers, or, you know, an actual cult. "Join me and we will fix the company."

(b) The Methodology eventually evolves expensive consultants in suits, and industry-standard buzzwords and rituals whose magical powers are strong and unquestioned. This is important. If your buzzwords aren't magic, nobody will listen to you unless they have common sense, which is very unreliable. Remember when Java was on the uptake, and you couldn't sell anything to a corporation unless it somehow involved J2EE? "Don't worry, Higher Management. We are not merely employing our own native talent and common sense. We are using an Accepted Methodology as endorsed by Higher Powers. You don't need to see our identification; these aren't the droids you're looking for."

(c) I have never heard of a "Scrum Manager" before, and I agree that he or she has a very silly name, but I think I already know what this person is for. This person is there to provide a second manager that is empowered to talk back to the first one, who may well be clueless (at least part of the time). The original poster actually understands this. He just doesn't accept it. He has yet to accept that occasionally-clueless managers, let alone _permanently_ clueless managers, are a fact of life. He seems to think that you can somehow _avoid having_ clueless managers, or fix them by appealing to their _common sense_. [2] Give him time. Someday he will stop bemoaning the needless existence of powerful weapons and start learning how to use them. "Mister Manager, sir, if you don't stop insisting on screwing up our work I'm going to have our Scrum Manager report you to the Methodology Police."

Unfortunately, like Harry Potter's magic or the Force, Methodology is just a tool. The fact that people are using it all the time, brandishing its most powerful aspects in broad daylight, doesn't mean that things are going well or that the forces of good are necessarily going to win out. Quite the opposite, really. Someone whose projects are well-managed will appear to be living a comfortable, slightly boring life in his home in the swamp, and will rarely be heard employing a Methodology out loud.

\---

[1] As opposed to garden-variety methodology, which is fine and -- for the talented -- is just "common sense".

[2] Those of us without nominal managers -- startup co-founders and independent consultants -- shouldn't feel too smug here. Clueless customers and clueless clients can be every bit as problematic as clueless managers.

</comment><comment><USER4> As someone who works in a company producing agile project management software, I can confirm that the whole agile thing is surely a money-making machine and very lucrative market with plenty of competitors.

The funny thing is that while our company tries to follow agile practices internally, this does not prevent iterations from failing. The developers are not that bright, the growing code base is not that awesome, and this is our worst enemy.

</comment><comment><USER5> I agree with almost everything in the article.

However if you're stuck in large organization that has been doing waterfall, almost any change is good news.

And you bet A LOT of very respected software companies, not IT departments of other companies, but actual pure software companies are stuck in waterfall.

So then this pseudo religious movement comes along with Scrum and stand up meetings and story points and blah blah blah, but along with the blah also comes test driven development, and iterative development.

Yes daily standups are a lot easier to adopt then TDD, but that's why the pseudo religious thing is useful.

It helps you drink ALL the kool-aid.

But game design on the other hand I'm not so sure about, how long does a game technology like a 3D engine last? Is it long enough to justify 100% test coverage? As much as I love TDD, I am not so sure about it in game dev.

<comment><USER6> Does Scrum require TDD/BDD?

I think BDD is going to be limited where your biggest and hardest requirements are things like, "The game should be fun to play".

<comment><USER7> Scrum doesn't have any engineering practices attached, it's purely a management process. BDD/TTD, pairing, etc., all go nicely with Scrum, but are not required.

<comment><USER6> That's what I thought! Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _...seven pages later, they're saying 'I strongly recommend these practices be strictly adhered to until you understand why and how Scrum works.' Sound familiar?_

That doesn't mean that Scrum is just a "cookbook." A book that's "just a cookbook" would only have recipes. A book about learning how to cook a certain cuisine would have recipes included as examples and exercises, but would also go into generally applicable principles.

Of course there is a spectrum. Lots of cookbooks have some instructional material. There are even books that are 1/2 instructional, 1/2 straight recipes.

</comment><comment><USER9> Was the word SCRUM specifically created to sound dirty?

<comment><USER10> I am the Scrum Master!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Thank you for taking the time to write this. Srsly.

<comment><USER12> I'm sorry. I don't mean to be an ass. I don't mean to nitpick. I just find it hilarious that your comment thanking him for taking the time to write something does not take the time to write out "seriously".

Not a criticism in any way, just an appreciation of the delicious accidental irony of the every day.</comment></comment>


CSS3 Man - <AUTHOR> http://www.css3man.com/

<comment><USER2> Not really sure what this is for. One man has a skinny arm on the header row and it bothers me.</comment>