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A Deeply Provincial View of Free Speech - iron0013
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/07/harpers-letter-free-speech/614080/
======
rbecker
> That the signatories of a letter denouncing a perceived constriction of
> public speech are among their industries’ highest-paid and most widely
> published figures is a large and obvious irony.
Yes, how ironic that they are not blind to experiences other than their own.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Netbooks and the Death of x86 Computing - qhoxie
http://gigaom.com/2009/01/06/netbooks-and-the-death-of-x86-computing/
======
pmjordan
The end of the x86 architecture has been announced a couple of times now, even
by intel itself. (keyword: IA-64) I'd be surprised to see non-x86 chips
succeed in the netbook arena. There's a MIPS netbook you can already buy, I
don't even know of anyone who has one. (Richard Stallman is rumoured to use a
MIPS laptop of some kind though)
To be honest, I suspect a lot of the netbooks sold with Linux today actually
end up running Windows. I think current Linux Netbooks are actually _damaging_
the reputation of Linux, because the manufacturers install shitty niche
distros. Why they can't just band together and pay Canonical some money to
optimise Ubuntu to small resolutions I will never know. (or do that for any
other mainstream desktop distro)
If there's no way to install Windows, then I suspect they're going to be a
tough sale. Also, no flash player and therefore no YouTube. Fail. (don't talk
to me about the YouTube apps on the various Apple devices. Apple "get it" a
lot more than ASUS, MSI, etc ever will)
~~~
DLWormwood
> The end of the x86 architecture has been announced a couple of times now,
> even by intel itself. (keyword: IA-64) I'd be surprised to see non-x86 chips
> succeed in the netbook arena. There's a MIPS netbook you can already buy, I
> don't even know of anyone who has one.
Seeing an article about this now really surprises me, because for the longest
time, Macs were the hold-outs against the x86 architecture on personal
computers. The first ones used 68k chips, and the late PowerPC systems was
introduced with much of the same design characteristics regarding low power
consumption, small die size, and potential scalable architecture that MIPS and
ARM processors are now attributed to having. It was just that PPC lost the R&D
war to Intel... /-:
------
ojbyrne
The article lacks focus in a big way.
Freescale introduces new low-power cpu for netbooks ... signals the death of
x86 architecture... ... love my full size keyboard... personalized hardware
(for my dad)... _gestures_... so in fact freescale cpu may not succeed for
netbook but might for (reaching for hat to pull rabbit out of) _tablet for
inventory management_...
By the end, I'm left feeling that x86 computing is looking pretty damn
healthy.
------
rbanffy
Actually, Linux distros can be the key to a successful non-x86 workstation.
RISC workstations more or less failed when Windows did not properly support
them - most people didn't care how fast their Alphas or PPCs are if they can't
run Office.
Now, if you have an ARM netbook that runs OpenOffice, Evolution and Firefox as
well as a x86 in a laptop that costs you $200 for a 8-hour battery life, I say
you have a major market changer. You are only bound to the x86 as long as you
are bound to Microsoft software.
I work under Linux most of the time (actually, I use Windows for 9-5 work and
Linux for the 5-9 stuff). As long as Emacs, PostgreSQL, Python, Plone and
Django are available, I really don't care about what architecture I am using.
Performance being adequate, it could be an ARM-based chip, an Intel 432 or a
zSeries mainframe and I would not notice the difference until I did a "uname
-a".
I would probably find the zSeries somewhat bulky...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The unending quest to explain consciousness - hoffmannesque
https://www.bookforum.com/print/2604/the-unending-quest-to-explain-consciousness-23772
======
mellosouls
My personal preference is for _panexperientialism_ (essentially a bare bones
panpsychism), with the idea that the phenomenon is somehow connected with
change, and belongs to anything capable of change in some way and is probably
a fundamental property of nature, as fundamental as space or time.
It's important to divorce consciousness from all ideas of "thought", "will"
etc. to consider it's essence which is more connected with "awareness of
being", though even that is too complex I think.
Obviously this is complete conjecture, but it has growing philosophical
support - at least as an idea worth discussing - I think.
[http://www.eoht.info/page/Panexperientialism](http://www.eoht.info/page/Panexperientialism)
~~~
incompatible
Probably because consciousness requires some kind of underlying mental
processes, which take time to achieve. I can only guess that it's similar to
an instance of a computer program such as a web browser, i.e., it isn't a
"thing" itself but is built out of a multitude of underlying calculations on a
physical computer.
This also implies to me that consciousness, not being a physical thing itself,
comes and goes within the brain, with the sleep cycle or just through lack of
attention. The only interaction between one instance of consciousness and the
following one would then be via memories.
~~~
yohsii
consciousness does not require a brain. consciousness is fundamental to the
universe
~~~
CuriouslyC
Indeed. To go even farther, I suspect that there is nothing other than
consciousness. There are no particles and forces, only awareness and will. The
stuff of physics is emergent from statistical properties of consciousness over
a large scale.
~~~
CharlesColeman
> Indeed. To go even farther, I suspect that there is nothing other than
> consciousness. There are no particles and forces, only awareness and will.
I believe the word for that is idealism.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism)
[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/)
------
pygy_
Manzotti’s account (as described in the article) ignores dreams, or the fact
that directly zapping the brain elicits experience (e.g. magnetic stimulation
of the visual cortex triggers colorful flashes known as phosphenes).
Graziani’s approach is more interesting, as a theory of attention, but falls
short on qualia, and focuses on peculiarities of the human brain, assuming
that a cerebral cortex is necessary for generating a conscious experience.
My pet theory is that consciousness can be modeled as a mathematical dual of
the physical world. Think Voronoi diagrams vs. Delaunay triangulation. They
are distinct, imbued with their own properties, but inextricably linked in
that you can generate one from the other.
~~~
youareostriches
What makes you believe that your conscious perceptions have any specific (let
alone regularizeable) kind of relationship to reality at all? In all
likelihood, conscious perceptions are guided entirely by evolution,
emphasizing those aspects of reality needed to keep us alive and filtering out
those we can safely ignore.
[https://www.nature.com/articles/544296a?WT.mc_id=FBK_NA_1704...](https://www.nature.com/articles/544296a?WT.mc_id=FBK_NA_1704_FHBOOKSARTSPERCEPTION_PORTFOLIO&foxtrotcallback=true)
~~~
acqq
> conscious perceptions are guided entirely by evolution, emphasizing those
> aspects of reality needed to keep us alive and filtering out those we can
> safely ignore.
It's also known that it's often enough evolutionary advantageous having the
model of the surroundings which is _more accurate_ than that of your
competition (There's some paper I've read about that, I just don't have the
time to find it now. Maybe somebody has some more ready).
Therefore the successful products of evolution correctly reflect "outside
world" in their models, and even have the "safety mechanisms" and "error
correction" facilities (based on the feedback, of course). There are even
experiments with people: if you'd get the glasses that invert the picture you
see, you'd for a while see the world top down, but if you wear them long
enough, the internal adjustment of the model would happen and you'd see again
up as up, even if the "signal" is provably reversed compared to what you
received for your whole life.
On the opposite side (that the "accurate enough" is not "always correct") we
also already know the examples where the "accuracy" breaks in humans: that's
the cause of people ascribing to the agency of gods the phenomena with purely
natural causes. There wasn't evolutionary need for an intrinsic development of
more accurate model of these phenomena (e.g. what makes the Sun move across
the sky or what the stars are). The scientific method, luckily, allowed humans
as a group to overcome these limitations, e.g. Aristarchus, some 2200 years
ago, that is, at least 200 years BCE:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Sizes_and_Distances_(Ar...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Sizes_and_Distances_\(Aristarchus\))
(note, at that time the term "science" still didn't exist).
~~~
pygy_
Re. Flipping images I actually experienced it first hand. I live in
continental Europe where cars are driven on the right side of the road.
A few years ago, I spent a week in southwest England, with my car. Upon
arrival, driving on the left and passing on the right felt weird, but after a
few minutes of practice on the highway, I was starting to get good driving
sensations... then the weirdest thing happened: for a brief moment, I
experienced the text on road signs and license plates as mirrored. My brain
had gone overboard and flipped the whole scene :-). Then It quickly subsided
and I went on to discover the fair weather of Cornwall.
------
corporate_shi11
The closest we will ever come to describing consciousness is simply describing
the correlates of consciousness. The "ultimate cause" of it will forever be a
mystery, behind the veil.
Consciousness appears to exist outside of the physical world, in that we can
describe a physical process entirely without invoking consciousness. Because
of this, consciousness is beyond the scientific method and our fundamental
understanding _in principle_ , not just in practice.
This is why it is called the "hard problem" of consciousness. In principle,
there is no framework of deduction or reasoning by which we can explain the
emergence of qualia.
It is beyond us.
~~~
Tenoke
>Consciousness appears to exist outside of the physical world, in that we can
describe a physical process entirely without invoking consciousness.
Only in the same ways that e.g. emotions exist 'outside of the physical world'
and we are doing some work with those (e.g. we know more about the effects of
hormones on them now).
I completely disagree that this is unstudiable or 'behind the veil'. We can
create beings with consciousness (babies) using a purely physical process, of
course there is some way to learn more.
Personally, I assume the main problem is (as it so often happens) that
'consciousness' is too loosely defined and explaining it will be easier with
more strict definitions and a deeper understanding of the brain and body.
~~~
corporate_shi11
So what is qualia, or the experience of conscious beings?
~~~
protonfish
Qualia is not a scientific concept and really needs to be dismissed. (By
definition it cannot be measured or observed.) I doubt you agree, but any
study of consciousness that has a chance of succeeding will need to be
extremely rigorous. I believe that an explanation of consciousness - much like
the theory of evolution - will be both very simple and very unpopular.
~~~
corporate_shi11
>"Qualia is not a scientific concept"
That is true.
>"And really needs to be dismissed"
I would agree with you if it weren't for these darn images and sounds and
thoughts that flood my mind every time I wake up from the un-consciousness of
sleep.
It seems to me that you're recognizing the impossibility of scientific study
of qualia itself (rather than correlates of it) but you are then taking the
radical step of dismissing it simply because it cannot be studied
scientifically. That's where we differ.
~~~
cr0sh
> every time I wake up from the un-consciousness of sleep.
Do you not dream when you sleep (I mean, when you enter REM state)?
I know there are people who don't - but most of us I believe do dream (and
some of us can become "conscious" of being in the dream state, while
continuing to dream - aka, so-called "lucid dreaming").
I'm not a researcher or anything in regards to consciousness - but I wonder if
there is anything that study of people who dream vs those who don't can tell
us about it?
------
acqq
"It's very hard to change people's minds about something like consciousness,
and I finally figured out the reason for that. _The reason for that is that
everybody 's an expert on consciousness._ (...) With regard to consciousness,
_people seem to think_ , each of us seems to think, " _I am an expert. Simply
by being conscious, I know all about this._ " And so, you tell them your
theory and they say, "No, no, that's not the way consciousness is! No, you've
got it all wrong." And they say this with an amazing confidence."
"A lot of people are just left _completely dissatisfied and incredulous_ when
I attempt to explain consciousness. So this is the problem. So I have to do a
little bit of the sort of work that a lot of you won't like, for the same
reason that you don't like to see a magic trick explained to you. How many of
you here, _if somebody -- some smart aleck -- starts telling you how a
particular magic trick is done, you sort of want to block your ears_ and say,
"No, no, I don't want to know! Don't take the thrill of it away. I'd rather be
mystified. _Don 't tell me the answer._" A lot of people feel that way about
consciousness."
[https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_the_illusion_of_consci...](https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_the_illusion_of_consciousness)
"in fact, _you 're not the authority_ on your own consciousness that you think
you are."
The paper: "Explaining the "magic" of consciousness", Daniel Dennett, 2003:
[https://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/dennett/papers/explainingmagic...](https://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/dennett/papers/explainingmagic.pdf)
~~~
mannykannot
On reading what was then the top comment on this article, I saw that it
asserted as undeniably true a highly debatable proposition. I was about to
reply, when I saw that the second did the same. The third was more of an
aphorism that looked profound until you thought about it... There do seem to
be a lot of people who want our consciousness to remain a mystery. I guess
that it is vitalism's last stand.
FWIW, I think there _is_ a 'hard problem' (more than one, in fact), but not
the one Chalmers identifies; perhaps the hardest is 'how come we (think we)
have free will?'
~~~
acqq
> how come we (think we) have free will?'
That’s easier than you think: what those who use that term for discussions
understand that term to mean is mostly based on work made by religious
apologists through the centuries. So the answer to “how come” is “to somehow
excuse the concept of having all-mighty all-knowing god while people still do
whatever.” Thus so constructed “free will” is the limit over which that all
mighty can’t cross. That’s why it’s so emotionally defended.
------
bblpeter
If the Human Brain Were So Simple That We Could Understand It, We Would Be So
Simple That We Couldn’t
~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
I personally don't think so. A computer could simulate / emulate itself, for
example.
~~~
bblpeter
Sure but then a computer doesn’t understand its own simulation so it’s apples
and oranges
------
JamOnItMahn
This is one of the many reasons why I love science fiction. Many of my
favorite novels center around consciousness and the related technology to
assist/enable/enhance it. Reading these in my younger years, many of these
novels have shaped my life, especially my career.
I may be confusing my authors, but some of the more recent novels I've read
(from about 10 years or so ago, it's been a while), I think from Alastair
Reynolds, have a wide range of ideas. Some center around the same kind of
thing that Elon Musk talks about with Neuralink. Others take a wildly
different path... putting an extant brain in a box or cabinet on wheels.
On this topic I used to be a huge fan of the concept of _uploading_. But then
I formed the opinion that, if all we're doing is _copying_ state, then the new
instance is not the old
ins[http://www.rudyrucker.com/wares/tance](http://www.rudyrucker.com/wares/tance).
It's just another instance with its own state from that point forward. I think
it's also a Reynolds book where a person creates a copy of their consciousness
and puts it into a very physically small spacecraft in order to travel a
maximum speed to a very distance place (I forget the intended task). But upon
return the two instances and ended up becoming antagonists due to their
different experiences in the meantime.
Likewise, I want to say it was a Rucker book, a person is copied, and the copy
_is not them_ , just a new instance.
That kind of soured me on uploading. However, at the same time, it seems to me
that can be akin to giving birth to the next generation. A gift of sorts.
Maybe we ourselves can not directly enjoy the benefits, but possibly we can
gift that possibility to our descendants.
I am particularly fond of old cyberpunk takes on this topic. Gibson and his
wild cyberspace characters... the Oracle and Papa Legba, the self-aware
_pimpmobile_ , and the end of the one book where entities jumped out of all
the fax machines around the world... good times.
Also Asimov and his robot-focused series.
_I digress_
~~~
cr0sh
Regarding copying - try this thought experiment:
What if it were possible to probe a single neuron and copy its exact
functioning - that is, the actual neuron and the artificial copy both act the
same to the same inputs, and produce the same outputs. Not only that, but this
artificial neuron, once fully copied and functioning, could then be inserted
in parallel with the original. Then - kill the original.
So there's now this artificial neuron (it doesn't have to be inside the actual
brain, either!) working exactly like the original. In fact, let's say this
artificial neuron does exist outside the natural brain (and let's ignore any
propagation delays or whatnot, though in reality, anything we did with
electronics would be vastly faster than actual neuronal signal speeds).
So - we have "copied" (or "uploaded" if simulated with software) a neuron from
the brain to a new place outside of that brain.
From the brain's perspective - everything is the same.
Do it over and over and over again - until all the neurons are copied from
brain to outside of it.
Again - from the brain's perspective, everything is the same - but now it is
completely artificial - and may even be running as a simulation in some
fashion.
Now - we did this "one neuron at a time" \- but how is that fundamentally
different than if we could (somehow) make a copy "all at once in parallel"
(something similar to the transporter of Star Trek) - then killed the
original?
Of course - if that copy and the original existed and were aware at the same
time - their experiences would diverge - but what if the copy was instead
"wired" to the same inputs and such (that is, in parallel) to the original
brain. In short, kinda like the original way we were copying and killing
neurons, but this time, instead of killing the neurons (again, wired in
parallel), we let them live, then killed them all at once at the end.
Since both sets are receiving the same inputs and producing the same outputs -
where is the "being" or the "consciousness" at? Is it only in the natural
brain - or in the artificial? Both at the same time? If we killed one, but not
the other - where is the being now? Does it matter which we kill?
We could do the opposite - kill off one of the artificial neurons - and the
being should still be ok, right? But what if we randomly selected which we
killed - artificial one time, natural another - but since they are all wired
together in the same manner and were operating in the same manner in parallel
- now where is the "being"?
So - does it matter if we kill off the natural neurons in serial vs parallel?
Furthermore, assuming everything is wired together in parallel - would copying
everything, then killing off the natural side matter? At what point and "how"
does the "being" transfer from one side to the other? Furthermore, how fast
must the natural side be killed or shut off - and if there is a disconnect
between the two sides - does that matter? Like - if the natural side is
disconnected from the copy then a nanosecond later is killed - is the being
now still in the artificial copy? What does the being experience in all of
this?
The funny thing is - something like this already happens - naturally - to our
bodies every day and over time. But we retain the concept of "self" and
"being". But it happens slowly, and it doesn't happen "all at once" \- a copy
isn't made and then the original killed off, but rather cells die and are
replaced (maybe not perfectly - leading to aging, disease, and possibly death)
over the course of time - but by the above thought experiments - does that
really matter, especially if it were done quick enough?
Like - imagine a single brain - but connected to two separate but identical
bodies. When one blinks, the other blinks as well. Sever the connection with
one of the bodies - the being in the brain should "go" with the body still
connected, right? So if there are two brains, connected to the same body - and
they are both operating in identical fashion - where is the being? Which
brain? Both?
Again - this is all a thought experiment - which has been explored in depth by
many people for quite a long while. It has been explored by science fiction
several times. In both thought arenas, different conclusions have been made
over what really happens - or might happen. But really, no one can say to know
the answer.
------
ghjyui
There is also an unending quest to explain foobar. Hard to explain something
that's not defined. We can still talk about what meaning we put into this
term. My favorite analogy is the flow of electrons in a processor chip is its
consciousness and the algorithm it's performing is its cognition. Using this
analogy, consciousness is the process that updates our world, i.e. the process
that makes a photon move forward, while cognition is the logical
interpretation of these updates.
------
BlueTemplar
Author claims to "have been reading around in the field of consciousness
studies for over two decades" \+ doesn't mention neither Giulio Tononi nor
Karl Friston => comes of as kind of clueless ?
------
Pimpus
It is indeed unending, no end in sight. This should signal that there is
something fundamentally wrong with Western thinking that leaves it incapable
to even begin to grapple with the question.
Some "reputable" philosophers even deny that consciousness exists.
Anyway, here is the answer. 3 minutes and you can move on and think about more
productive things.
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9n6NvDpcwLM](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9n6NvDpcwLM)
------
bencollier49
"Unending" is right. We'll not solve this because the problem is beyond
reason.
~~~
pygy_
The existence of the world, and of myself as a subjective being, are beyond
reason. Understanding how either work provided they exist isn’t _a priori_
unsolvable.
~~~
shrimpx
A core challenge is to grasp your own subjectivity/qualia/mind. If you can
grasp it then you can write it down in some form. But the tough part is that
"grasping" is a thought production. So how can a specific thought production
represent the whole functioning of thought? And if it's not a thought
production how can it be 'understanding'? This is where the mystics come in,
who present us with a different definition of "understanding" which doesn't
involve thought productions, as in an intuitive "getting it". That may well
be, but it's useless for science and engineering.
So I think we're limited to speculation, which may well be fine.
------
paraschopra
Something that blows my mind: we can use our understanding of physics and math
to predict the trajectory of a rocket to the moon without actually going
there..
But we can’t predict what new color we’d get by mixing two colors. We just
have to mix them to find out.
~~~
AlexAltea
> But we can’t predict what new color we’d get by mixing two colors.
Can you elaborate more on this point? Links as to why this is impossible would
be appreciated. If paint absorbs certain wavelengths while reflecting others
(which are the perceived color), wouldn't the mixture of two colors absorb two
subsets of the spectrum, and reflect everything else? And if so, why can't it
be simulated?
~~~
jhrmnn
I guess OP refers to the fact that even full knowledge of the visible spectrum
cannot tell you how you will _perceive_ the color through your three-
dimensional perception system and the brain processor.
~~~
AlexAltea
That makes sense. But thinking about OP's analogy, the information of a
simulated trajectory of a rocket to the moon would also need to be delivered
through a 2D monitor with finite resolution/framerate.
Simulations will always be as good as our computing power gets, and the
results will be "understood" as good as our perception gets. So, in some
sense, both scenarios are the same.
------
mikelyons
I'm surprised that none of the comments already mention this particular
explanation:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw44V15xgPo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw44V15xgPo)
There have been individuals who understood consciousness for thousands of
years, one pops up every so often like in "The Matrix" but to have this person
try to explain it to the masses is casting pearls before swine.
You're talking about the very design of reality, of course the explanation is
going to be a little more radical than you're prepared for in your everyday
ego-driven state of mind.
------
adrianN
The really hard problem of consciousness is giving a definition that allows me
to tell whether a rock is more or less conscious than a person.
~~~
cygx
I find it reasonable to assume that for thought processes to occur, there must
be some processing, so rocks are out.
A more interesting example would be, say, trees, which do communicate with
each other to some degree. Is that accompanied by some form of awareness?
What's the lower bound of complexity at which consciousness kicks in? What
about supraorganisms such as insect hives? Human cities? An ecosystem as a
whole?
~~~
gear54rus
Information could be encoded in molecule oscillations and therefore 2 rocks of
different temperatures would communicate it when touching (heat transfer would
occur). Can this be considered processing?
~~~
cygx
It's doubtful you'll be able to make such a scheme work: Information
processing tends to involve storage and retrieval of data. That's not really
possible in the thermodynamic regime. You'd have to do all your processing
before the information gets lost to thermalization.
~~~
ghjyui
Image recognition needs no storage or retrieval of data: it's a single pass
thru a series of matrix multiplications. Yet, image recognition is the very
definition of data processing.
~~~
cygx
How do you propose to perform calculations without data storage (think
registers)?
~~~
adrianN
Like this for example [https://hackaday.com/2019/07/16/neural-network-in-
glass-requ...](https://hackaday.com/2019/07/16/neural-network-in-glass-
requires-no-power-recognizes-numbers/) though I'm not sure that you can really
count this as calculation. But I guess that's the point of this discussion.
------
riskneutral
The last sentence sums it up: “if you simply rule in advance that the mind
must be physical and assume that an understanding of consciousness must be a
materialist understanding, because scientific materialism is obviously
correct, you end up looking for your keys under the streetlamp because that’s
where the light is.“
~~~
Tenoke
We have good reasons to believe that _everything_ is under the streetlamp, and
little reason to think that there is something immaterial or irreducible.
This is a totally different debate though - 'Is
materialism/phyiscalism/reductionism etc. correct?'.
~~~
ghjyui
Irreducibility may be a thing, e.g. turbulence. For example, we can easily
make an ML model that recognizes an image or speech and we can explain every
little detail about how it works, but we can't explain the high level emergent
dynamics of this model and thus can't really explain how it works. I believe
we'll build a real AI soon, it'll exceed all expectations, and we still be
puzzled by the complexity of it's turbulent emergent dynamics. In other words,
if we could ask an oracle how cognition works, he would write a bunch of diff
equations followed by a million volumes of hard math theorems and the
complexity will be so irreducible that by the time we start reading volume 2,
we'd forget volume 1. Yet another way to look at it. We can imagine a square
because it's a simple object. However we can't imagine a 10 dimensional calabi
yau manifold no matter how hard we try: it has more complexity that fits into
our brains. If the theory behind cognition is as irreducible as that manifold,
well never "get" it, even though we'll be able to describe all its local
properties.
------
tim333
An interesting thing to me is the unending quest may somewhat end during our
lifetimes through us being able to build conscious AI and see how it works.
~~~
rebuilder
I doubt it. We can't prove _other humans_ are conscious, I don't see how AI
will help clarify anything there.
~~~
tim333
I'm thinking along the lines of Feynman's "What I cannot create, I do not
understand." If we can build machines with dreams, feelings and the like
similar to human ones I imagine we'll have a better understanding of how the
thing works. Bit like the difference between philosophers of old pondering how
birds fly and how to define the word flying vs aircraft designers who build
working aircraft and have degrees in aeronautical engineering.
~~~
mellosouls
Unfortunately I think this greatly underestimates the qualitative difference
of the fundamental nature of the phenomenon of consciousness to anything we
have modeled or built before.
Sure, we can and will build conscious machines (I believe), but we will do
that modelling _cognition_ \- and yes, we will develop a better understanding
of that.
But consciousness is very different and will come with the territory unbidden,
and unexplained.
------
micahjc
Tea and no tea...
------
kaffeemitsahne
The fact that crackpottish nonsense such as Manzotti's gets any mainstream
attention at all shows that we're not even remotely there yet.
------
philip142au
I suspect it doesn't exist, we wish it exists, otherwise we are machines.
~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
I'm not sure why you've been downvoted for this. The fact that our
consciousness is nothing more than the emergent behaviour of various ongoing
chemical and electrical processes doesn't sit well with some people, I guess.
Personally I derive a lot of comfort from the fact that we aren't "special".
~~~
monktastic1
I use my consciousness to infer a physical reality, which I then use to
further infer that consciousness doesn't actually exist. That doesn't strike
me as great reasoning. Certainly far from "fact."
------
carapace
The locus of sensory perception is not in the brain, out-of-body experiences
indicate that.
Thoughts are a kind of stuff different from the stuff that bodies are made of.
They kind of hover around your head, and with practice, you can learn to see
the thoughts around the heads of other people.
Emotion is again a third kind of stuff. Gurdjieff identified emotion with the
"blood" of a kind of emotional "body" that was co-extensive with but not the
same as the physical body.
This is basic, run=of-the-mill, kiddie-level metaphysics. The so-called "hard
problem" of consciousness _begins_ with the exclusion of all the relevant
information.
( If you really want to know what consciousness is, there is a wide, short
road: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramana_Maharshi#Self-
enquiry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramana_Maharshi#Self-enquiry) )
~~~
adrianN
Out-of-body experiences have failed to provide the person experiencing them
with information that they couldn't have obtained while being in their body.
That indicates that they're not in fact extrasensory experiences, but
something that happens inside the brain.
~~~
carapace
It really depends on who you ask. There are people who routinely leave their
bodies and go about and "obtain information", as you put it. Heck, there were
Learning Annex classes on it. YMMV.
~~~
adrianN
I'm pretty sure that proof of extrasensory experience would yield you a nobel
prize, but so far all studies of the subject that I'm aware of were either
negative or had their methods heavily critized.
~~~
carapace
And yet...
I use "ESP" all the time, for trivial things: leaving the house so as to
arrive at the bus stop just before my bus does.
AFAIK, the PEAR lab came closest to formally establishing "psi" (or whatever
it is) but never in such a way as to be absolutely incontrovertible.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princeton_Engineering_Anomalie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princeton_Engineering_Anomalies_Research_Lab)
It's almost as if the phenomenon is _coy_.
It's a cultural "blockage": overcome the cultural conditioning against it and
suddenly "woo-woo" is easy, even trivial. Conversely, you can float like a
cloud over the Nobel Prize committee and they _won 't look up_.
~~~
adrianN
James Randy has a million dollars waiting for you if you can convince him that
you have ESP.
~~~
carapace
If I needed a million dollars I would ESP some lottery numbers.
It's Randi, not Randy. And he's retired now and the "paranormal challenge was
officially terminated by the JREF in 2015."
Anyway, I have a lot of respect for him, he does (well, did) good and
important work.
But the inability of a guy to encounter "genuine psi" who has made it his
life's-work to show "it" to be non-existent _does not contradict_ what I've
said in this thread.
------
bloak
I expect people will give up eventually, just as they gave up trying to
explain how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
~~~
normalnorm
An important difference is that angles are imaginary entities, while I doubt
people with give up on explaining the most direct thing they can experience,
which is their own consciousness.
~~~
ablation
> angles are imaginary entities
Tell that to Pythagoras.
~~~
normalnorm
Hehe :)
------
verytrivial
My pet theory is there is nothing to explain. It is emergent. Over the next
couple of decades, hardware performance improvements and specializations plus
algorithmic breakthroughs will make AI start to crawl up the chain from useful
pattern matching from messy data to useful dullard able to reason. And we
_still_ won't know why because the "insight" is buried in the network state
and our little human brains cannot deal with that level of detail.
~~~
normalnorm
Consider all emergent phenomena that you know of. Let's say: stock market
prices, ant hills, biological organisms, ecosystems, etc, etc. What all these
have in common, is that they are too complex to explain in terms of individual
interactions, but _you can point at the individual interaction_. We know that
financial markets are made of transactions, of that biological organisms are
made of molecular interactions, but they are too complex for us to reason in
such terms.
With consciousness, the emergentists are not capable of pointing at the first
principle, or building block. For me, the only coherent way to be an
emergentist on consciousness is to also be a panpsychist: everything is
conscious to a degree, it's just a brute fact of nature (such as, let's say,
the fundamental forces).
Maybe this is the case, but I would not bet on that.
Consciousness is a phonomenon unlike any other, in the sense that scientist
who study it are studying it _from the inside_. Science is something that
happens 100% within human consciousness. This is why I suspect that it is a
phenomenon that is beyond the reach of science. It could even be impossible to
explain. There is no reason to assume that we can solve all mysteries.
~~~
hoseja
Why can't they point to "interactions of neurons"?
~~~
normalnorm
You can point to a protein being expressed by DNA, and then understand how
many protein molecules amount to cells, then tissues, then organs. There is a
first principle guiding you all the way, even though the complexity is
staggering.
There is no such first principle with interactions of neurons, in the sense
that we know of no quality or property of a neuron that could amount to the
phenomena "consciousness", in the same way that individual transactions amount
to a stock market.
Without this first principle, it's just magical thinking disguised in
scientific language.
~~~
stromgo
Consciousness is a computation, and neurons are certainly capable of
elementary computation.
So the building block has been pointed at (neurons), and its property given
(computation). Is the problem that you don't believe that consciousness can
emerge from elementary computation, or you believe that it is possible but we
have no proof of it?
~~~
normalnorm
I have no problem with agreeing that computation can emerge from neurons. For
example, one can show how different neural configurations correspond to logic
gates, persistent memory (this requires recurrence) and so on. This is
precisely what I mean by valid emergentist models. No magic steps, just
complexity.
The problem is that you start by stating that "consciousness is a
computation", but I don't know if this is true, and neither do you.
> Is the problem that you don't believe that consciousness can emerge from
> elementary computation, or you believe that it is possible but we have no
> proof of it?
My problem is that your hypothesis that "consciousness is a computation" is
not testable, and so it does not count as a scientific theory (according to
the standard Popperian falsifiability criterion).
Unless/until we have a scientific instrument that measures consciousness, we
are just assuming things. I assume that other humans are conscious (by
analogy), but I don't know it to be true in a scientific sense.
So it's not a matter of what I believe or not, it's a matter of what science
can investigate or not. So far, it looks like the phenomenon of consciousness
is beyond its grasp.
~~~
stromgo
When you said
> With consciousness, the emergentists are not capable of pointing at the
> first principle, or building block.
...it sounded like there were no plausible candidates. If computation is a
candidate, then it's certainly something they can point at (with the caveat
that it's only a candidate and not currently testable). I think if instead you
had written something along those lines and avoided the words "not capable
of", then hoseja and I wouldn't have reacted.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Design like it’s 1999 - oftenwrong
https://exclusive-design.vasilis.nl/design-like-its-1999/
======
notahacker
In 99, the screenreader would have serenaded him with visitor counters "This
website has had over [graphic without alt text] visitors since July 1997" and
"This site works best in Microsoft Internet Explorer 4" which isn't very
comforting when he's using a screen reader, and the whole website would be
laid out in a table, sometimes with menus that were sliced graphics instead of
text, or entirely javascript. Meanwhile the accessibility wing of the web
standardistas got so angry at people using font tags _instead_ of the
designated header markups that the font tag got deprecated when css browser
coverage was half decent. And let's not even start on Flash.
~~~
henriquez
Not to mention the prevalence of "Mystery Meat" navigation, where you couldn't
know what a graphical link did until you hovered or clicked on it.
[http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/mysterymeatnavigation.html](http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/mysterymeatnavigation.html)
(For whatever it's worth I still agree with the sentiment of the author here,
just worth pointing out that the 1990's weren't a panacea and that usable web
design has existed throughout history.)
------
blowski
In my experience, many websites are an extension of their CEO's ego. They
don't have the money to build a website that is both unique and usable, but
there's no way they want to look everyone else - so they drop the requirement
to be usable.
They're the same people that drive impractical cars, because they look flashy.
~~~
sli
Yep.
CEO of our company didn't like the progress on one of our frontends, so he
took a weekend to write a whole new one himself, claiming it was "almost
done." It was, as you may predict, nowhere near done, but still shoved into
Git and became the new frontend.
In reality he seemed offended that he didn't know much about how we (the
frontend team) built it and he didn't like that, so he built the way he thinks
he knows, which turned out to just be a hodge podge of code from various
tutorials and no singular vision for how the application functions. There are
no less than three different paradigms in use in this codebase, and none of
them really play well together.
The end result is that it took us nearly as long as it took us to develop the
first version to bring the second version up to feature parity, but now we
have a giant mess of a codebase that was very strictly written to do exactly
the things the CEO wrote it to do. Predictably, development slowed to a crawl
pretty quickly because we're essentially forced to rewrite every single
individual piece that needs touching.
I told them this was a bad idea and would only make things take far, far
longer than finishing the one we had. The whole reason this was done? The CEO
and CTO found some bugs but didn't want to file them on the issue tracker.
They decided it was better that the CEO write his own, despite the CEO having
exactly zero experience with frontend development. This is just one of a long
line of bizarre decisions that I have accurately predicted would only cost us
more time and money than is worth it.
We're currently looking for new jobs.
------
JensRex
>Where did we go wrong?!
I think JavaScript is what started the downward spiral that ruined the web.
It's what enabled the shoehorning of the web browser into an application
framework. Now Google, Facebook and Amazon and a few others control it, and
are actively hostile against anyone who doesn't align with their interests.
~~~
pjc50
No, the real problem is a tension between standardised, accessible, boring
documents and the desire for flashiness. Being nonstandard helps a website
"stand out", and helps the designer sell it to the commissioner of the design.
Even if this doesn't help the actual users of the website.
Many customers have a sort of "print design" mentality where they want the
website to look a particular way on their device, preferably a pixel-perfect
match to something done in Illustrator. This was true in the Flash era, and
it's still true today - that's why you get restaurants whose menu is only
available as a PDF, a deeply mobile-hostile format, when _just putting it on
the front page_ would actually be easier and work better for the user.
~~~
userbinator
_that 's why you get restaurants whose menu is only available as a PDF, a
deeply mobile-hostile format, when just putting it on the front page would
actually be easier and work better for the user._
IMHO that's still better than making it an SPA, because the former at least
can be easily downloaded and viewed locally. Another example I've seen is a
recent redesign of a public transit site, where a simple HTML form and
directory of PDFs (literally --- it was just the webserver's directory
listing) for finding bus schedules was turned into an SPA that took a
disturbingly long time to load and was filled with, as the sibling comment
puts it, "flashy, user-hostile crap". The old design was unchanged since at
least 1999, if not slightly before.
~~~
buckminster
A local restaurant had their menu redone in React! Not just React, but React
done badly. Click on "Lunch Menu", say, and literally nothing changes for 30
seconds. Then the new page appears. I took a while to realise it wasn't
completely broken. God knows how much they paid for it. It's awful.
Edit: I should add, this reactivity serves no purpose. It's a sit down
restaurant. You can't order electronically.
------
MonaroVXR
>This is a nice example of how easy it is to make something usable for someone
like Simon. But it doesn’t really go beyond the usable. There is no
personality in it, and we didn’t really explore other possible solutions. In
the next chapter I will tell about the invisible animations I made together
with Hannes Wallrafen. In this project we went beyond the functional by
working with both identity and nonsensical ideas.
I don't agree, the site did it's job and it did it well. This isn't from a
company, so the personality isn't that important. The accessibility is more
important in this case.
~~~
AstralStorm
Think of it this way: for a screen reader, every bit of "identity" is a
screaming popup.
Even a simple image saying "welcome to x" gets old really quick. It is already
in the page title.
Narrative, linear, well delimited paginated interfaces like web search work
much better, magic autoloading infinite or overly long lists do not.
Short version: if it looks fine when styles, images are disabled, it's
probably ok, as long as it does not try to mess with input.
~~~
teddyh
Remember CSS Naked Day? It’s coming up now, on April 9th.
------
userbinator
Using a website that seems to be focused on video content as a demonstration
of (in)accessibility for the blind seems a little unusual... perhaps something
like a news site --- which has lots of textual content --- would make a better
example.
~~~
juanuys
A blind person browsing a video site does not necessarily mean they want to
watch the videos. They might want to listen to the audio, or share the video
links they find.
------
nate
Reminded me of a quote from Paul Arden: "All creative people need something to
rebel against."
It's why things were simple and easy to understand in 1999. But then we all
rebelled making it more sophisticated and complicated on purpose. And then now
we all want to rebel against what we've done. The pendulum swings and swings.
I do prefer the 1999 version myself :)
------
michaelbuckbee
Here is a two-fold win: use the Vimium extension for navigating the web.
It lets you navigate web pages via keyboard shortcuts much faster than a
mouse.
Also, it readily exposes issues of non compliant links and navigation elements
that would also be missed by a screen reader.
~~~
nessunodoro
Shout out to one of my favorite projects, Luakit [^], the only chromeless
browser that lets me resize the window to a single pixel.
Best part is the vim interface,
:open hacker news
[ddg results]
/Hack
Enter
:tabopen github top lua questions
[Github search results]
:bookmark
^ [https://github.com/luakit/luakit](https://github.com/luakit/luakit)
------
Causality1
The same layout is not going to work best for both sighted and impaired
people. Attention spans are short and sight has an order of magnitude more
information bandwidth than hearing.
------
GrumpyNl
He did pick one of the worst sites. The whole site is a design disaster with
lots of times not working vids.
------
pliuchkin
"Toggle Accessibility" button forwarding to a clean page.
------
username3
Sitemaps or screenreaders.txt
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Techtalk: Financial Markets as Computer Networks - babyshake
http://youtube.com/?v=GtPNsDbv1V8
======
playxx
I can not find the video. Do you know where it is ???
Thanks.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Like it or not: Millennials are here to stay - athroop
http://blog.rypple.com/2010/10/millennials-are-here-to-stay/
======
gaius
_Millennials grew up with constant communication through MSN, IM, BBM, Skype,
etc. And then things moved to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn everything and
everyone is at our fingertips._
You can't take any credit for that - it was all built by the Gen X types
you're so contemptuous of.
~~~
athroop
Thanks for your comment gaius, I was not saying that we can or should take
credit for those applications. I was simply trying to point out that we were
the first generation to grow up with the internet around us and with these
applications that connected everyone!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How can a mechanical engineer contribute to tech or any startup? - hotshot
======
denismars
I studied Mech Eng. and Physics but now spend most of my time building
software related technologies. I think the big take away from my Mech Eng.
degree is that I've learnt how to solve technical and non-technical problems.
Solving problems is one of the most important parts of any startup and you
should look at your Mech Eng. background not as a destination but as a
continuous journey of learning to solve more and more problems (technical or
not) as you encounter them in whatever challenges you confront. Apart from
using your Mech Eng. skills directly in a mech related startup, those skills
should not limit you to that specialization alone if you continue on the
learning process of picking up more tools/knowledge to add to your chest of
problem solving experience in a startup.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Stopify – An experimental, web-based code editor - sjrd
http://www.stopify.org/
======
nomel
The VB6 IDE, in the 90's, had a great feature where you could arbitrarily drag
the execution point around. It was incredibly useful for basically zero
iteration time for development. Add a breakpoint, step over your code, and if
something went wrong, drag the execution point back a few lines, fix it, and
try again.
This seems like a holy grail for IDEs. Why was this feature lost in time, or
have I been using the wrong IDEs?
~~~
nly
This is called 'reversible debugging'. It's not lost. GDB can do this[0] and
there are commercial products on the market that can do it better[1]
[0]
[https://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/news/reversible.html](https://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/news/reversible.html)
[1] [https://undo.io/products/undodb/](https://undo.io/products/undodb/)
~~~
ahartmetz
There is also a free product that can do it better [http://rr-
project.org/](http://rr-project.org/)
------
jpolitz
It's worth noting that Stopify itself isn't an editor or IDE as the title
suggests.
Stopify is a JavaScript -> JavaScript compiler, implemented as a Babel
transform, that enables pausing and restarting control operators for
JavaScript programs.
A lot of the comments note the rich history of systems for debugging and
execution control. Stopify's goal is to enable those kinds of systems,
efficiently, _while constrained by the browser 's execution model_.
~~~
throwaway2016a
WOW. I was not interested at all in this the way that the title implied but
now that you describe what it actually does, this does indeed look useful.
The first line of the description should probably be scrapped. The interesting
bit about this is not at all the fact there is an editor. Maybe it should be
mentioned as a footnote but not as the lead-in.
~~~
skrishnamurthi
Yep. We're fixing that now.
~~~
enum
Fixed and added a little FAQ. :)
------
johnhenry
Very cool project, though I fear that the awesomeness of the project may
become lost due to people confusing the title with "Spotify" or "Shopify".
~~~
skrishnamurthi
Sure, but the name is half the fun. (-:
~~~
johnhenry
But like 4 times the confusion ;).
------
yeukhon
I read Spotify.
I am not sure if this is a good thing at all, sorry, just don't think it's a
good thing.
~~~
justboxing
I read Shopify.
> it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny
> iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae...
> it doesn't matter in what order the letters in a word are, the only
> important thing is that the first and last letter be at the right place
Source: [https://www.mrc-
cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/](https://www.mrc-
cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/)
~~~
corobo
Yeah I did too. I thought it was going to be a paypalsucks about Shopify
------
djsumdog
It makes me a little happy inside that Scala is the language it demos first.
------
saagarjha
The C++ example overflows int on most platforms. You may want to change your
example!
~~~
sbaxter
Thanks for pointing that out! (I'm one of the developers)
I've logged an issue.
------
goldenkey
So it just splits the code up into setImmediate/setTimeout calls?
~~~
skrishnamurthi
Just? What do you think the callbacks are that you supply to those calls?
~~~
goldenkey
evalNextLine which would call the interpreter.
~~~
enum
Stopify is a JS-to-JS compiler. It performs a lot better than a JS-in-JS
interpreter could.
------
juancampa
This is very interesting. How much slow is the execution compared to regular
javascript?
~~~
enum
It depends on the source language. We have done extensive benchmarking. For
example, on Python the median slowdown is 1.4x. PyJS doesn't use all of
JavaScript's features and we can exploit that to improve performance. Our
worst slowdown is when the source language is JavaScript itself because we
can't make simplifying assumptions. (Median slowdown is 20x.)
These are slowdowns on a cheap ChromeBook. We also have results from the four
major browsers on a desktop machine.
~~~
skrishnamurthi
But note that the Stopify portion is completely optional and composes onto the
end of an existing JavaScript compiler. So you can offer a faster-but-no-
stopification mode versus a slower-but-with-stopification mode. While modes
can be annoying, the point is that you don't have to be forced to pay this
price due to the Stopify infrastructure. In contrast, a language like Pyret
has the stopification built into its back-end, so you always pay the price
(for now), whether you want it or not.
------
lwansbrough
I believe this is called "time travel debugging" in the Microsoft world. I use
it all the time with C#/TS in VS.
Since the name sucks, maybe a renaming based off the concept of time travel is
a better choice?
~~~
skrishnamurthi
It's not time-travel debugging.
------
simooooo
Too close to Spotify
------
true_religion
I am confused. It says this is a "JavaScript-to-JavaScript" compiler, but none
of the selectable languages are Javascript?
~~~
enum
All the selectable languages compile to JavaScript. Stopify takes that
JavaScript output and makes programs stoppable, steppable, etc. Therefore,
each demo is a composition of two compilers: (1) a third-party X-to-JS
compiler and (2) Stopify, which compiles JS to stoppable JS.
------
gf263
It was hack day at shopify today, was thinking this was a project from that
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
AI May Have Finally Decoded the Bizarre, Mysterious 'Voynich Manuscript' - jkestelyn
https://www.sciencealert.com/ai-may-have-finally-decoded-the-bizarre-mysterious-voynich-manuscript
======
qubex
Interesting.
Of course proposed Voynich Manuscript decipherments are a dime a dozen, and
even here on Hacker News accounts of various ‘successes’ crop up about
biannually.
That said, I particularly like how diligent they are in acknowledging the risk
of false positives.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Cruise Ships Are My Favorite Remote Work Location (2013) - syncopatience
http://tynan.com/cruisework
======
okket
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6697416](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6697416)
(~3 yrs ago, 311 comments)
------
legohead
Recently took a vacation on a cruise ship. I heard mixed reviews from everyone
I talked to. Some loved it, some hated it.
I loved it and can't wait to do another one. We got a balcony, and I loved
just sitting out on the balcony and watching the ocean. I kept thinking how I
wish I had my laptop and could do work this way.
The free food, balcony, and exploring the ports were my favorite parts. I
don't drink, or party, so that wasn't part of the fun for me -- but it seemed
like most of the other people on the ship were there for that reason.
The only thing that I didn't like were the people on the ship, and I felt bad
at how lowly paid the crew were.
~~~
Grishnakh
>I don't drink, or party, so that wasn't part of the fun for me -- but it
seemed like most of the other people on the ship were there for that reason.
>The only thing that I didn't like were the people on the ship,
You were on the wrong ship. Let me guess, Carnival?
Different cruise lines cater to different crowds. To get the best cruise
experience, it's important to realize this and select a cruise line that lines
up well with your expectations and that you'll fit into well.
Carnival caters to the drunks and partiers. There's a reason that every time
you hear about some drunk cruise-goer falling overboard, it's a Carnival ship.
You never hear about this with, for instance, Disney Cruises, or Norwegian or
Royal Caribbean.
I've only been on one cruise, Norwegian, about 9 years ago. It was pretty fun
overall, though I'm not wild about doing it again for various reasons. But I
did not see much drinking or partying, even in the casino. The crowd was
pretty tame, so I can't say I disliked the people on the ship at all. A lot of
them seemed to be Germans actually. The ports of call were fun (it was a
Caribbean cruise) for the most part, and there was an interesting event on the
ship one day where some artwork was being shown (maybe sold, I forget now),
and they showed a video of a short film that was a collaboration between
Disney and Salvador Dali which was really interesting to watch. At the time,
it was supposedly only recently released IIRC.
The dining experience varies a lot between cruise lines too. Now remember a
lot of my information is almost a decade old, but at the time, Norwegian had
very open dining rules: basically you could go to the buffets whenever they
were open (which were pretty generous hours) and grab free food, and sit
anywhere you like. The dining rooms cost more and needed a reservation, but
you could do the whole cruise at the buffets for nothing. By contrast, I was
told that on Royal Caribbean, there was assigned seating and assigned eating
times, so unless you were part of a group, you usually ended up stuck eating
with strangers you didn't know. On Norwegian, alcohol was pretty expensive, so
I didn't see people drinking much. I was told that on Carnival, alcohol was
free or cheap, so that would explain drunkenness on those ships.
Anyway, do your research on cruise lines and their policies and pricing before
you go, and look at what kind of crowds they cater to, and also what kind of
on-board events they'll have. You're likely to have a much more pleasant
experience if you pick carefully.
------
dTal
Blimey, how rich are all of you? If I scraped together enough money for a
cruise I sure wouldn't want to waste the experience working.
~~~
danielvf
You can cruise on good ships for less than $100 per day, if you shop carefully
and wait for the right opportunity.
The advantage is the combination of extremely plesant, varied work
environments, with no distrations from clients, coworkers, or the internet.
The ability to sustain concentration lets do something hard in a week that
might take you three months at home.
------
iamben
Serious question - is the mobile signal terrible if you're cruising on the
Med? My data plan is £2 a day for about 500mb (or something like that) when
out of the UK. That would probably suffice, assuming there was enough signal
to bother tethering...
~~~
narag
Related question: does someone know how expensive is a satellite phone plan?
I've seen the terminals are about $1000 a piece and they're hellishly slow but
considering this kind of use in a ship or maybe in a distant place, it could
be an option if the plan is not terribly expensive.
~~~
Cerium
Depends on location and provider, but I worked on a remote off grid monitoring
station. We uploaded about 30 gigs a month over a satellite dish. The price
was comparable to cell phone, but the ping was bad. 300 ms or so, occasionally
much worse.
~~~
narag
Wow! I don't think my ADSL land line would be much better than that. The A is
for asymetric, downloading is not too bad. I'm surprised it's not specially
expensive. Thank you for the info!
------
samfisher83
The internet on cruise ships are super slow and very expensive. So I don't
know how to programming on the cruise ship would work if you are connecting to
a server.
~~~
mixmastamyk
He writes about downloading all necessary docs beforehand. Also, it isn't hard
to run servers in virtualbox or containers if you need them. That leaves slow
internet for occasional searches of stack overflow, which is doable.
~~~
mrob
If you don't mind slightly outdated data, you can download and browse all the
Stack Exchange sites offline:
[http://stackapps.com/questions/3610/stackdump-an-offline-
bro...](http://stackapps.com/questions/3610/stackdump-an-offline-browser-for-
stackexchange-sites)
[https://archive.org/details/stackexchange](https://archive.org/details/stackexchange)
------
zeristor
I keep thinking about that article, working on a cruise ship. Here's a search
of his blog about cruises, it looks like he stopped two years ago[༆]
[༆] - [http://tynan.com/?search=cruise](http://tynan.com/?search=cruise)
~~~
alanfalcon
He had a Syndey -> Seattle cruise in the works as of his post two months ago,
so I'd wager he's still at it.
------
kinkdr
Why not an all inclusive hotel/resort? Same benefits + reasonable Internet.
~~~
andrewfromx
Way cheaper on a crusie to get all meals included. Try and find a same price
per day for a benefit by benefit equal land cruise. They don't exist. You are
getting free meals because most people on ships make up for it with buying
alcohol and other high margin vacation purchases.
~~~
kinkdr
I see. I have always associated cruises with expensive, but it looks like this
is not the case anymore.
~~~
nameless912
Yeah, cruises can be dirt-cheap these days.
Especially if you live near a big cruise ship port, you can get last minute
deals on 7 day cruises for a couple hundred bucks. You have to be flexible,
but it can be ridiculously inexpensive.
And note, that's food included.
------
jkot
This was discussed in DN community a lot. Cruise ships are useless for slow
internet.
~~~
toomuchtodo
Cruise ships are slowly being outfitted with high speed spot beam internet
access. A friend working on RCCL's Quantum Of The Seas can pull 50-60Mbps off
hours.
~~~
jkot
Shared among hundreds of people... Not really reliable connection.
~~~
Tiksi
In my experience, these kinds of connections are QoS'd on a per-port/protocol
level, so every client gets an equal amount of bandwidth on that port. If you
can get a tunnel or vpn connection going on a less used port you'll generally
get far more bandwidth. Being on a non-standard port also helps since the
systems are often under provisioned for the size of the NAT table they have to
hold.
That's all assuming you can get an open port between a remote server and you,
but usually there's at least some way to get a connection on not 80/443.
That said my experience is pretty out of date so it could be different these
days. Thinking back, since I figured out that I could tether my motorola v710
for free 10 or so years go, mobile internet has gotten faster and far more
reliable, (though a lot more expensive once smart phones made data plans more
than an underutilized $5/mo gimmick on feature phones,) I've rarely used
public wifi.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Jia Jiang's 100 Days of Rejection - francinemathews
http://act.mtv.com/posts/jia-jiang-100-days-of-rejection-interview/
======
joelrunyon
First time I've seen an MTV link on Hacker News :)
------
daliusd
That reminded me this. 100 rejections:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxyySRgrYsU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxyySRgrYsU)
------
contextual
The game Jia based his 100 Days of Rejection Therapy on is here:
[http://rejectiontherapy.com](http://rejectiontherapy.com)
------
nutela
Hehe that's just in time, got rejected by YC today so... Still I think it is a
major idea, you guys got any input as to get approved next time? I'm asking
because I think I might have not stressed how big it is. Basically the idea
was inspired by Clear, the todo app, because I was fed up how the GUI works on
the iPhone. So I found a way how to create more time by pinching ala Clear. I
later found out this gesture is like a Lego building block, it's universal.
I've always went with a pro approach to GUIs, I think people are much smarter
then we think and to me gestures are the way to go. Like gestures should be
like the axioms. Pinching should not just zoom in but zoom in in different
ways depending on the context. Sort of like operator overloading, using the
same principles to do new stuff which makes sense. Any feedback appreciated
and let me know why you got rejected too, make we can start like a help group
:-) I'm serious!
~~~
zavulon
I've read this entire paragraph, a couple of times, and still have no clue
what your idea is.
------
aaronsnoswell
This reminded me of the biblical story of Job [1]!
[1]
[http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job+1&version=NI...](http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job+1&version=NIV)
~~~
joelrunyon
How so? That story is about Job being "tested" by having his life practically
destroyed not being rejected.
Getting someone to say no to your donut requested is quite different than
losing your entire fortune, business, family and kids.
------
Cenk
His website: [http://www.entresting.com/blog/100-days-of-rejection-
therapy...](http://www.entresting.com/blog/100-days-of-rejection-therapy/)
------
stygiansonic
I guess the key point here is that by desensitizing yourself to rejection, you
prevent a single rejecting from impeding your progress. ("Making a mountain
out of a molehill")
Of course it's important to learn why rejection or failure was encountered;
some aspects are outside of our control, but those that are, we can work to
change.
Where it becomes a problem is when the rejection/failure is generalized into a
systematic problem that demotivates you from continuing on.
------
rouma7
if you want a more meaningful understanding of rejection, read toni morrison's
the bluest eye
------
pfisch
I wonder what the psychological effects of doing something like this are.
~~~
goblin89
I'd suppose reduced rejection sensitivity.
------
mathattack
For anyone in Sales, to be any good you have to go through something like this
to depersonalize the rejection.
------
sirkneeland
I get more than enough rejection from OKcupid as it is.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dozens of companies found open to SAP bug patched years ago - based2
http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/05/dozens-of-companies-breached-through-sap-bug-patched-years-ago/
======
based2
[http://www.cvedetails.com/vendor/797/SAP.html](http://www.cvedetails.com/vendor/797/SAP.html)
[http://www.cvedetails.com/vendor/5029/Sap-
db.html](http://www.cvedetails.com/vendor/5029/Sap-db.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Researchers wrestle with a privacy problem - cryoshon
http://www.nature.com/news/researchers-wrestle-with-a-privacy-problem-1.18396
======
ClintEhrlich
This is an interesting dilemma, but it's only one minute example of the very
real toll that "privacy" inflicts on society. Reasonable people can disagree
about whether the benefits outweigh the costs, but we should talk more openly
about the downsides instead of reflexively treating privacy as sacrosanct.
The value that we know as "privacy" is far more arbitrary and historically
contingent than most of us realize. In societies where resource scarcity
forces people to share bedrooms, the acceptable spheres of privacy are
radically different from the ones that modern American life inculcates.
Are other social boundaries equally flexible? And if so, should we test them?
Perhaps so. There is an intrinsic tension between the pursuit of privacy and
the hacker ethos that information wants to be free. By definition, privacy is
an act of sacrifice: a denial of information to other nodes in the network
that forms civilization. Our laws already recognize narrow circumstances in
which the costs of that sacrifice outweigh the benefits, such as when there is
probable cause to believe that an individual is abusing his or her right to
privacy in order to undertake criminal activity.
Yet there is a social taboo attached to radical opposition to privacy. For
example, an integrated network of ubiquitous surveillance could offer
incredible benefits to humanity. Violent crime could be virtually eradicated.
People could be held accountable for anti-social behaviors, like littering or
cutting off other drivers. Our entire society could operate more efficiently
in innumerable ways. But open advocacy of a surveillance state is only a few
degrees away from fascism according to our modern political mores.
In the example from the story, it's clear that our collective welfare could be
increased by analyzing reams of restricted data. Are we willing to
intentionally tolerate greater human suffering in order to preserve the
amorphous right to privacy?
I contend that it's more useful to look at the discrete harms that flow from
disclosure of specific information. How could people be harmed? What kinds of
safeguards could be put in place to prevent that concrete harm?
Those are useful questions, which allow us to make informed choices instead of
switching off our brains and discussing "privacy" in the abstract.
~~~
jacobolus
In practice, mass surveillance is a great tool for corruption and control
(e.g. blackmail, market manipulation, following ex-lovers, trumping up
charges, crafting threats of violence), because the people placed in positions
of power have insufficient checks to prevent them from abusing their access
for personal benefit or for cementing corporate / government institutional
authority. Ubiquitous electronic surveillance makes many types of
authoritarian abuse much cheaper, and thus changes the possible scope of
control.
The same folks who are in favor of unlimited surveillance of the public tend
to be opposed to public access to their own back-room decisionmaking process,
and in favor of censoring embarrassing information in the name of “security”
interests.
The “hacker ethos that information wants to be free” is going to run up hard
against majoritarian attempts to scapegoat, shame, change, or destroy the
different or weird. The life in a small village full of nosy neighbors which
you mention was normal in the past was also a life of social conformity and
harsh punishment of nonconformists. There’s no a priori reason to believe it
would be different in a higher-tech society.
“Violent crime could be virtually eradicated”, except in the case of police
corruption, which is in many places endemic, and which ubiquitous surveillance
makes only more alluring.
~~~
ClintEhrlich
That's a fair description of the existing political coalitions, but that
doesn't mean we have exhausted the range of approaches to these competing
interests. From a systems engineering perspective, radical transparency can
simultaneously increase government power and accountability. Government
privacy (e.g., via state-secrets laws) is just a special case of the problems
that occur when we restrict access to data.
Right now, we seem trapped in the worst of all worlds. The government engages
in mass surveillance, so a rogue actor within the state could exploit the
accumulated data for the unlawful purposes that you mentioned. And private
corporations have access to almost as much information, with equal
opportunities to abuse it but fewer democratic checks on their power. At the
same time, we forgo virtually all of the potential societal benefits of data
aggregation.
If surveillance is justified to prevent terrorism (and I realize that most
here would dispute that), why is it not appropriate to use the same data to
protect people from risks that claim thousands more lives every year?
I don't think that ubiquitous surveillance necessarily makes police corruption
more alluring. One of the most recent policy responses to police misconduct
has been the nationwide push for body cameras on individual officers, which is
itself a form of surveillance. But it's one that obviously increases
accountability, so it doesn't have all of the usual stigmas.
When placed within a proper governing structure, I see no intrinsic reason
that other forms of surveillance could not be enlisted for the same purpose.
Wouldn't it be better if we had actual surveillance video of what happened in
the Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown cases? Do you believe that constantly
being monitored in that fashion would increase police abuses of power?
In a broader sense, most of the responses to my comment illustrate the very
phenomenon that I'm describing: i.e., an instinctive defense of "privacy" in
the abstract instead of a detailed analysis of the costs and benefits of
increasing transparency in specific circumstances.
I'm not faulting the authors. After all, I have raised this issue in a very
broad sense, and so it's only natural that they would reply in the same
fashion. But the way that we seem to be talking past one another illustrates
how difficult it is to have meaningful discussions about "privacy."
If I could make three major points, they would be:
1\. _The need to acknowledge the futility of restricting access to certain
forms of data_
Most privacy advocates cite benefits that do not correspond with the facts.
For example, the government already has the power to tail individuals in
public without a warrant and to watch everywhere that they go. Thus, a rogue
operative committed to malfeasance has the ability to compromise the privacy
of his target. We will never eliminate that power.
The question is, given its existence, would there be benefits to a more
comprehensive surveillance system? More specifically, would the marginal
benefits of broadening the system outweigh the attendant costs? In my opinion,
there is a real debate to be had.
That is especially true in modern America, where we have essentially delegated
unlimited surveillance powers to the government, subject only to legal
restrictions on the purposes for which the collected information can be
employed. Any actor willing to flout the law in order to pursue coercive goals
will be able to summarily defeat the obstacles intended to deny access to the
current fruits of state surveillance.
If anything, providing the NSA and other members of the intelligence community
a monopoly on access to this information seems to increase the risks of
misuse, by making it easier for a modern day J. Edgar Hoover to seize power by
exploiting the asymmetry between his access to information and that of his
foes within the government. I would be more comfortable in a society in which
the state transparently employed the data it collects for worthwhile ends
instead of pretending that it only uses it for narrow purposes like counter-
terrorism.
2\. _Not all data is created equal_ When we talk about privacy, people
naturally begin framing the debate in Orwellian terms. Isn't it possible for
us to approach this topic with more nuance?
For example, if we allowed the government to know which books we are reading
(something the NSA already knows...), then political activism could be
directly compromised, and the benefits would be limited. The same is not true
of expanding public surveillance on city streets or highways, to give one
example.
The problem with "privacy" in the abstract is that it simultaneously
encompasses legitimate concerns and ones that cannot withstand scrutiny. Why
is access to our medical information so privileged? Do we want to subsidize
the livelihood of people with medical problems by artificially eliminating the
ability of employers or insurance companies to take into account all of the
available information?
The answer might well be yes! I certainly benefit from that policy judgment.
But I'm not sure that it's the correct one, and I wish that we could enjoy an
open debate about whether the gains in aggregate economic efficiency would
outweigh the costs to individuals. At minimum, shouldn't we explore
alternatives like increasing social welfare payments for medically
disadvantaged individuals while simultaneously allowing information about
their medical histories to improve the accuracy of public and private
decision-making? Maybe that approach wouldn't work, but I have not even heard
it discussed.
3\. _Are we utilitarians or deontologists?_ One of the major dividing lines in
these discussions is an implicit disagreement over the appropriate moral
calculus.
I default to consequentialism, so in my mind the foreseeable harms from
criminality are equivalent to the potential for police abuse. Yet most people
process the two in very different ways emotionally.
My well-being is threatened much more directly by criminal gangs than it is by
an oppressive state. Only a few months ago, I nearly lost my life when I was
attacked in an alley by two thugs.
Should I be forced to be a martyr for privacy when increased surveillance
could have deterred their actions?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
World Map Of Social Networks Shows Facebook's Global Dominance - iProject
http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/06/10/facebook-is-eating-the-world-except-for-china-and-russia-world-map-of-social-networks/
======
jgroome
I wonder why "Google+ stats are not displayed by Google Trends for Websites"?
------
loceng
Well it's true they're domineering.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Trip Down the Graphics Pipeline - ironchief
http://doc-ok.org/?p=1057
======
chollida1
Rats, I thought this meant that this book:
[http://www.amazon.ca/Jim-Blinns-Corner-Graphics-
Pipeline/dp/...](http://www.amazon.ca/Jim-Blinns-Corner-Graphics-
Pipeline/dp/1558603875)
was being freely released:(
Great book, for those who did graphics programming in the 90s, Jim Blinn and
Michael Abrash had some of the best graphics related writing to consume.
Since I've already derailed this thread, I might as well mention another Jim
Blinn book as being a good read.
[http://www.amazon.ca/Jim-Blinns-Corner-Dixty-
Pixels/dp/15586...](http://www.amazon.ca/Jim-Blinns-Corner-Dixty-
Pixels/dp/1558604553/)
Not very relevant today, but a good read all the same!
~~~
ginko
There's also this one:
[http://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/a-trip-through-
the-g...](http://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/a-trip-through-the-graphics-
pipeline-2011-index/)
It seems to be a quite common phrase by now.
------
sherr
Good article. Its when he mentions GLX_SGI_video_sync that I recall how far
ahead of the crowd SGI used to be when it came to graphics and video
engineering, including proper SDI video work.
------
taktikz
Wonder why this is so far off the front page with so many points in under an
hour.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Core API – Hypermedia Driven Web APIs - St-Clock
http://www.coreapi.org/
======
St-Clock
I found this today and I really like (1) how the document layer is decoupled
from the encoding layer, and how it specifies discoverability (HATEOAS?).
Here is an example of a server application using Django REST Framework and the
coreapi Python lib: [https://github.com/core-api/heroku-
game](https://github.com/core-api/heroku-game)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Review my idea - iwearyourtshirt.com - hellweaver666
Hi guys,<p>I'm off travelling later this year with my wife, it's something we've been dreaming of doing for many years and are now finally after five years of hard work clearing debt in a position to make it a reality. I really want to make this an amazing experience, so I was hoping to try and raise some extra cash by auctioning off the advertising rights to my chest for a whole year.<p>I see it as a win win situation - I get some extra cash for my travels and the winner gets some serious exposure to potentially millions of people over the course of a year (both online and offline).<p>What do you think? Is it something you would be interested in using to promote your startups?<p>Thanks!<p>http://www.iwearyourtshirt.com
======
hellweaver666
For easy clicking: <http://www.iwearyourtshirt.com>
------
bearwithclaws
What's the difference with <http://iwearyourshirt.com/>?
~~~
hellweaver666
He wears a different shirt every day for a year, I wear the same shirt every
day for a year.
So on <http://www.iwearyourtshirt.com> the winning brand would get massively
increased exposure.
~~~
growt
It took me some minutes to figure out the difference in those 2 urls. I think
it might be better in terms of usability and fairness if you chose a different
domain. one that differs more from the existing project.
------
onreact-com
Wearing the same t-shirt all year? Have you considered the smell? It might
backfire for the company advertising on it ;-)
~~~
hellweaver666
I thought of that... check out the FAQ's ;)
------
BearOfNH
Unless I personally know the guy, most of the time my eyes are on the lady.
But no mention of her wearing the logo...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Progressively loading CSS – changes coming to Chrome - jaffathecake
https://jakearchibald.com/2016/link-in-body/
======
blairanderson
> At Chrome, we like the IE/Edge behaviour, so we're going to align with it.
> This allows the progressive rendering pattern of CSS described above.
Kudos for chrome giving a nod to MS edge, and to the edge team for making
things cool.
------
jjoe
With progressive jpegs, I end up missing out on the content of images because
they're still blurry by the time I'm done skimming text.
But now I'm going to miss out on text because I'm done skimming and it hasn't
appeared yet.
------
userbinator
_Content shifting around is right up there with pop-up ads in terms of user
frustration._
I disagree, especially with the almost complete absence of any progress bars
or loading indicators that the UI designers seem to love so much and have
forced newer browsers to have. "Something happening" on the page is nice way
to know that it is still loading. A white screen is worse.
(Then again, I'm used to pre-Webkit Opera, which has a very prominent progress
bar and applies CSS as it loads.)
------
achairapart
Avoid specifity in CSS by adding bits of complexity in your HTML markup. Your
style sheet foot print will be so small you'll never need any of these tricky
patterns.
------
vortico
I appreciate these efforts to optimize load times, but the problem we see
today slowing down the web is caused by designers making 2MB+ webpages for
simple articles you could deliver in 20KB. Why can't we stop it from the
source and just decrease webpage garbage? In that case, CSS is negligible adds
only milliseconds to the total load time.
~~~
wanda
Garbage attracts the masses. Advertising pays the bills. The unnecessary crap
that we developers would blow away are, unfortunately, the only thing that the
laity come online for and therefore the only reason why we have
jobs/customers.
Better we explore techniques to optimise, no matter how incremental, so that
we can shave as many milliseconds as possible without compromising on the
nectar of content and thus challenge native app experiences on mobile devices.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Requests-HTML: HTML Parsing for Humans - ingve
https://github.com/kennethreitz/requests-html
======
kmike84
+1 to make nicer APIs! It is always good to have more high-quality API designs
to look at.
That said, it looks more like an API experiment, not a practical solution for
a day job, at least in its current state:
* response body encoding detection is wrong, as it doesn't take meta tags or BOM into account;
* base url detection is wrong, as it doesn't take <base> tag in account;
* URL parsing (joining, etc.) is implemented using string operations instead of stdlib, so a careful inspection is required to make sure it works in edge cases. For example, I can see right away that .absolute_links is wrong for protocol-related urls (e.g. "//ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jquery/jquery-1.3.2.min.js")
* html2text used for .markdown is GPL - I know people have different opinion on this, but in my book if you import from a GPL package, your package becomes GPL as well;
* each .xpath call parses a chnk of HTML again, even if a tree is already present
* shortcuts are opinionated and with no clear behavior, e.g. .links deduplicates URLs by default, it deduplicates them using string matches (so e.g. different order of GET arguments => URLs are considering unique); it checks for '.startswith('#")' which looks arbitrary (what if these links are used in a headless browser? what if someone wants to fetch them using _escaped_fragment which many sites still support? why filter out such URLs if they are relative, but not if they are absolute?)
~~~
EmilStenstrom
Would you mind posting these as issues?
~~~
kmike84
TBH I don't see myself using this package: in its current stage it is very
little code, and almost every method has an issue either with edge cases or
with API; also, it is tied to requests library, unnecessarily IMHO, and in my
opinion it is GPL even if setup.py says it is MIT.
Because there is nothing usable code-wise in requests-html from my point of
view (it is no better than existing alternatives), I don't feel like raising
these issues, advocating for fixing them, discussing alternative solutions
with a goal of improving requests-html. Of course, everyone is free to raise
these issues in a repo.
I appreciate the work put into requests-html API design, the design is very
nice overall. This might be a way to go: create a nice API design, attract
people, fix implementation over time, but this battle is not mine, sorry :(
~~~
kenneth_reitz
GPL dependency removed.
All of these improvements I'd like to be made to the software. It's all about
getting a nice API in place first, then making it perfect second.
~~~
kenneth_reitz
I addressed most of your issues, like not using urlparse in the latest
release.
With libraries like these, it's all about getting the API right first, them
optimizing for perfection second. :)
~~~
kmike84
:thumbs up:
A second iteration of review:
* encoding detection from <meta> tags doesn't normalize encodings - Python doesn't use the same names as HTML;
* I'm still not sure encoding detection is correct, as it is unclear what are priorities in the current implementation. It should be 1) Content-Type header; 2) BOM marks; 3) encoding in meta tags (or xml declared encoding if you support it); 4) content-based guessing - chardet, etc., or just a default value. I.e. encoding in meta should have less priority than Content-Type header, but more priority than chardet, and if I understand it properly, response.text is decoded both using Content-Type header and chardet.
* lxml's fromstring handles XML (XHTML) encoding declarations, and it may fail in case of unicode data ([http://lxml.de/parsing.html#python-unicode-strings](http://lxml.de/parsing.html#python-unicode-strings)), so passing response.text to fromstring is not good. At the same time, relying on lxml to detect encoding is not enough, as http headers should have a higher priority. In parsel we're re-encoding text to utf8, and forcing utf8 parser for lxml to solve it: [https://github.com/scrapy/parsel/blob/f6103c8808170546ecf046...](https://github.com/scrapy/parsel/blob/f6103c8808170546ecf046b9f4ea6dead94de189/parsel/selector.py#L38).
* when extracting links, it is not enough to use raw @href attribute values, as they are allowed to have leading and trailing whitespaces (see [https://github.com/scrapy/w3lib/blob/c1a030582ec30423c40215f...](https://github.com/scrapy/w3lib/blob/c1a030582ec30423c40215fcd159bc951c851ed7/w3lib/html.py#L325))
* absolute_links doesn't look correct for base urls which contain path. It also may have issues with urls like tel:1122333, or mailto:.
For encoding detection we're using
[https://github.com/scrapy/w3lib/blob/c1a030582ec30423c40215f...](https://github.com/scrapy/w3lib/blob/c1a030582ec30423c40215fcd159bc951c851ed7/w3lib/encoding.py#L187)
in Scrapy. It works well overall; its weakness is that it doesn't require a
HTML tree, and doesn't parse it, extracting meta information only from first
4Kb using a regex (4Kb limit is not good). Other than that, it does all the
right things AFAIK.
~~~
kenneth_reitz
Thanks for the feedback, integrated w3lib!
------
amenod
Oooo... I just finished writing a script with BeautifulSoup. While it wasn't
all that bad (it works ;) ), I'm sure the "Kenneth Reitz experience" would be
much better. I won't be rewriting the script now, I can't wait to find an
excuse to try this. :)
EDIT: first commit 22 hours ago - goes to show that when you have thought
about the idea and know what you're doing it doesn't take long to produce the
first version. :)
~~~
halflings
Would not recommend BeautifulSoup for this type of thing.
lxml.html is much better in my experience. If you want to use CSS selectors,
there's pyquery.
~~~
Vindicis
I remember years ago I needed to parse some html(which was about 2-3 million
characters) and after a fair bit of time, I had it up and running with
beautifulsoup. Now, my use case was likely quite atypical to most html
parsing, but my god was it ever slow! I forget the exact numbers, but I think
it was taking about 150 seconds to complete. So, then I wrote it using lxml,
which was an improvement, but that was still taking around 100 seconds.
Now, I very rarely have any need to scrape and parse html data, and I was
scratching my head at how it was taking these parsers so long to parse a 3.5
mib html page. I mean, it should be able to go through that and get what I
want in under a second right?
So, I said screw it and wrote some regexes. 10-15 seconds was how long it was
now taking to parse that html. It actually took 1.5 or so seconds to parse the
html; the rest was waiting for it to download the webpage.
Ironically, implementing the regexes was actually quicker than figuring out
how to use those html parsers and write the code. Of course, that's assuming
you know how to craft regexes. Since it was set-up to run every 5 minutes, I
wanted something that could do it without spending 1/2 the time parsing the
data(amongst other tasks the processors were needed for).
YMMV
~~~
jcadam
You're using regex to parse html? Have you not read:
[https://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/1090568](https://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/1090568)
?
~~~
wodenokoto
If you have an HTML document you want to extract information from, regexes are
fast and easy.
It's when you don't have guarantees about the structure of the html you are
working with, that regex will come up short.
------
sixhobbits
Really looking forward to using this. BeautifulSoup is great, but it's
counterintuitive (I always need to refer to documentation even for very basic
aspects that I've used dozens of times before) and it's often slow and has
some really weird xml bugs)
Also check out newspaper3k if you haven't seen it. It is high level, but
really useful for a bunch of simple scraping related use cases
~~~
Momquist
> _BeautifulSoup is great, but it 's counterintuitive (I always need to refer
> to documentation even for very basic aspects that I've used dozens of times
> before) and it's often slow and has some really weird xml bugs)_
I won't argue the slowness and the occasional bugs, but unlike you I find b4
to be very intuitive. And this is mainly why I use it, despite its faults.
Maybe our use case are different, but with a basic knowledge of html, I only
rarely find myself reading the documentation. Care to give some examples of
what you find counter-intuitive?
------
realhamster
A similar library is
[https://github.com/tryolabs/requestium](https://github.com/tryolabs/requestium)
Though it adds parsel as a parser (which has a really nice api) to requests.
It also integrates with selenium.
------
friendlydude12
> Render an Element as Markdown:
I prefer my dependencies to be orthogonal and lightweight i.e. do one thing
well. Maybe this is better for interactive use in the REPL.
~~~
kenneth_reitz
I consider it a nice-to-have, but we can definitely remove it if deemed
unnecessary. Want to open an issue about it?
~~~
friendlydude12
That’s just my preference. Keep the features that are best for your specific
use cases. It’s your project after all. I think that’s better than design by
committee. Linus didn’t write Linux for other people.
~~~
nojvek
If you’re doing markdown conversion well, keep it. Apis are not about doing
the smallest thing, it’s about designing a clean abstraction of a problem
you’re trying to solve.
~~~
friendlydude12
Sure, if APIs existed within a vacuum. In the real world we have to worry
about ease of packaging, ease of maintenance, and various other practical
costs.
------
ivan_ah
Nice. It would be pretty cool to have an "run javascript and wait for network
idle" optional for scraping js-requiring websites. Can selenium do this?
Headless chrome?
I personally use bs4 for web scraping and it works pretty well, but if there
was an option to also do js with a sane API, I'd switch in a heartbeat.
~~~
nojvek
We use puppeteer for our smoke tests. Ensure all network requests load, no
JavaScript errors, take screenshot of page and simple validations so we know
our deploys aren’t borked.
I really love puppeteer over selenium. Much deeper control.
------
javajosh
The output of _r.html.absolute_links_ on the home page looks like it contains
errors. For example,
'https://www.python.org//docs.python.org/3/tutorial/'
'https://www.python.org//docs.python.org/3/tutorial/controlflow.html#defining-functions'
I think it's important to remember for every single new library that comes
out, that you are trading apparent usability for unknown issues that haven't
surfaced yet because the library is so new.
~~~
kenneth_reitz
That bug has been fixed, but the docs hadn't been. Fixed now :)
~~~
kenneth_reitz
Looks like there's still some room for improvement though!
~~~
javajosh
There is always room for improvement. I think it's easy to underestimate the
time required to _dwell_ in a thing before we really understand it. This is
true for runtimes, libraries, even entire programming paradigms. We want to
take shortcuts using abstract reasoning, and that works well usually, but
sometimes you just gotta use something for _years_. (Alas, one lifetime may be
too short to dwell in all the various paradigms the way they each require. But
I digress...)
------
ameliaquining
Interesting! How does this compare with MechanicalSoup (which seems to be the
current best-in-class solution for scraping in Python)?
~~~
kenneth_reitz
Very different use cases, imo. MechanicalSoup emulates a web browser
experience. This is more for scraping.
------
nbrempel
I love Kenneth’s work.
He’s absolutely focused on user experience – in this case the developer
experience – and it absolutely shows.
I’m sure I’ll end up using this utility at some point in the future.
------
Const-me
Same functionality for .NET: [http://html-agility-pack.net/](http://html-
agility-pack.net/)
~~~
zerkten
There is overlap, but this isn't the same as Requests-HTML. It is nice that
this library has been developed further over the years.
------
nishs
> Select an element with a jQuery selector.
What is a 'jQuery' selector? Is it the same as CSS selectors, or does jQuery
support non-standard syntax?
~~~
madeofpalk
For what it's worth, yes, JQuery does support non-standard syntax/selectors
------
ecthiender
Kenneth Reitz comes out with yet another good UI (in terms of library) to
accomplish daily mundane tasks, with joy.
------
jacquesm
That's a neat little library. The problem is that the web is rapidly moving
away from having HTML as the main information carrier to HTML merely being an
envelope to deliver a bunch of JavaScript (and if you're even more unlucky:
WebAsm).
Scraping the web will become a lot harder in the future.
~~~
madeofpalk
In saying that, Javascript is just as parsable, and these 'javascript sites'
are probably loading structured data via a JSON API which will probably be
easier to scrape than a bunch of layout HTML.
------
darpa_escapee
Looks like this is built on top of lxml and parse. I built an adapter over the
bs4 interface in lxml, which was much faster than using bs4 with an lxml
backend.
This is great news, as this space was dominated by bs4 in the Python
ecosystem.
Can't wait to use this in the future :)
------
coolgoose
Also in PHP with Symfony Dom Crawler:
[https://symfony.com/doc/current/components/dom_crawler.html](https://symfony.com/doc/current/components/dom_crawler.html)
or Goutte for an easy to use web scraper
[https://github.com/FriendsOfPHP/Goutte](https://github.com/FriendsOfPHP/Goutte)
that uses Dom Crawler
------
brilee
This is a nice wrapper around requests, pyquery
[https://github.com/gawel/pyquery/](https://github.com/gawel/pyquery/) and
parse
[https://github.com/r1chardj0n3s/parse](https://github.com/r1chardj0n3s/parse)
of which only requests is Kenneth Reitz. Let's give credit where it's due.
~~~
ak217
To give even more credit where it's due, requests is a nice wrapper around
urllib3, which is the work of Andrey Petrov, Cory Benfield and contributors.
While requests provides good user-friendly defaults and API semantics, urllib3
does a lot of the heavy lifting.
~~~
tty7
Which is written in python, so better give credit for that.
Wow and now python is in C so line up your credit books, we are in for a long
night tonight.
Thoughts & prays for all contributors
~~~
d33
...I know you're trolling, but I seriously wonder where it would stop if we
were to go down all that way.
~~~
patneedham
Gotta give credit to whichever cavemen/cavewomen discovered fire, and all the
civilizations that invented the wheel, Ben Franklin for harnessing the power
of electricity, and then maybe Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie for inventing
Unix.
------
vinceguidry
Is there a shell interface, or do I have to call it through python? It would
be nice to be able to use it in a Ruby project.
------
ospider
I don't get the point, it's just a nicer alternative to beautifulsoup. Html
pages are always changing, instead of writing the parsing logic in code, I
think we should put xpath or css expressions in some config files.
~~~
closed
I'm sure some pages could be represented as css expressions in config files,
but in general it seems like scraping is about working around unanticipated
idiosyncrasies(e.g. X% of the pages have a different structure for mysterious
reasons).
I haven't used xpath much though (and it seems pretty beefy!).
------
vapemaster
So stoked this popped up. Literally woke up this morning debating about moving
away from bs4 and wrapping the functionality I needed in lxml. I was just
thinking I wish there was a requests equivalent for parsing...
~~~
halflings
Is there any useful feature in bs4 that is not available in lxml.html?
------
Lxr
This looks awesome, can’t wait to try it. Last time I used pyquery though it
was considerably more limited than CSS and jQuery syntax, and I reverted to
XPath. Has it improved recently?
------
fao_
HTML requests are: plain text, self-explanatory ("Content-length", "charset",
etc.). What exactly is unhuman about that?
~~~
dullgiulio
That's HTTP, not HTML.
~~~
fao_
Yikes, major misread on my part. Whoops.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tracing Business Acumen to Dyslexia - gscott
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/business/06dyslexia.html?ex=1354597200&en=bb1d155da82e2bb1&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
======
Alex3917
"She attributed the greater share in the United States to earlier and more
effective intervention by American schools to help dyslexic students deal with
their learning problems."
Couldn't the reason dyslexic people become entrepreneurs rather than
"corporate managers" just as easily be because they don't do well in school,
and thus don't have the same risk/reward profile due to fewer opportunities
being available to them? Same thing with immigrants, they don't have the
credentials to get the jobs they're qualified for so they end up starting
businesses in hugely disproportionate numbers. I think something like a third
of all new jobs are created by immigrants.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Samsung Had the Product a Year Ago - sanket04
http://rightrelevance.com/?q=tab_type%3D2%26value%3Dstartups%26searchType%3Dfeeds%26start%3D0%26rows%3D30%26location%3D%26isPerson%3D
======
anigbrowl
HN Guidelines: Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on
something they found on another site, submit the latter.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Facebook Chat supports syntax highlighting - OisinMoran
https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/5xq3jj/facebook_chat_supports_syntax_highlighting/
======
OisinMoran
Note: This does not work on mobile or messenger.com
Does anyone here know of any documentation of this or other hidden gems in FB
chat?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Backdoor – Security CTF Platform - abhikandoi2000
https://backdoor.sdslabs.co/
======
abhikandoi2000
Hi. Admin here. Visit chat.sdslabs.co/ for queries.
~~~
jakobdabo
CloudFlare is automatically blocking visitors from the Tor network. This being
a security CTF I suggest you enable Tor users from the CloudFlare settings.
~~~
abhikandoi2000
Not everyone is blocked, as far as I know. CloudFlare blocks only those exit
nodes which exhibit suspicious behavior. Please correct me, if I am wrong.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Do you use a Video CDN? - Raed667
I'm looking into integrating short-video upload/streaming to a project built on top of Google Cloud.<p>I was wondering if anyone went through this path, and when did you start seeing benefits form using a CDN compared to serving files from GCS ?<p>If you used a CDN, I'm curious which one did you pick and what made you choose it ?
======
ColinWright
I've literally just started using PeerTube to host the actual videos, but my
web site has the web pages on which the videos are embedded. I needed
somewhere to host the actual videos because my server package doesn't give me
enough space, I chose PeerTube because I hate Google with an irrational
loathing, vimeo has limits that I'm likely to exceed, and the process with
PeerTube was clear and simple. More, here was actually a person at the other
end of the contact form when I had a question.
I'm not convinced I like the PeerTube recommendation systems, _etc.,_ but I'm
just pointing people at my web pages, so it doesn't seem like that will
matter.
I'll be interested to see other people's answers.
For reference, I am keeping copies of all the material on my own machines,
just in case the PeerTube instance disappears. After all, "The Cloud" is just
another name for other people's machines over which you have neither control
nor authority.
------
arkj
Few things to consider
1) are users spread out geographically? 2) are you expecting high traffic? 3)
are you ok to spend more for performance?
If your answer is “no” to any of the above, then probably, there is no need of
a CDN.
I have tested azure blob and s3, found both to be acceptable for small
projects.
~~~
Raed667
\- Are users spread out geographically: for 90% of users: no
\- Are you expecting high traffic: Depends on "high" but: yes
\- Are you ok to spend more for performance: Depends on "more" but: yes
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Major Rights Org: Blizzard Doesn't Respect the Human Rights of Its Customers - rahuldottech
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3a5xx/blizzard-doesnt-respect-the-human-rights-of-its-customers-major-rights-organization-says
======
jrockway
I am not sure how much HN cares about this story (it was mentioned twice, from
what I saw, but I've been following it on Reddit where it's been a fixture of
/r/all all week), but it's worth reading Blizzard's official statement:
[https://news.blizzard.com/en-
us/blizzard/23185888/regarding-...](https://news.blizzard.com/en-
us/blizzard/23185888/regarding-last-weekend-s-hearthstone-grandmasters-
tournament)
Honestly, my takeaway from this entire situation is that we can't really win
against Chinese influence. They use techniques that we find unimaginable and
are unprepared to take on. They have state media that tells 1.4 billion people
what to think, and if people have their own thoughts, they disappear never to
be seen again. There is no way we can fight that at the scale of "buyers of
computer games". Blizzard is a publicly-traded corporation, and therefore
their main goal is to make as much money as possible; throwing a "we got you
bro" over to China means that they have 1.4 billion more potential customers.
Nobody who can be held legally accountable for "breach of fiduciary duty" is
going to do anything to prevent themselves access to that market. If the
casualty is some player of some children's card game, or a Dali Lama quote
being deleted from Instagram, so be it. You can't go to prison for being a
spineless bastard, but if you tank a Fortune 500 company's stock by standing
up for human rights, you can. So it's not surprising what actions these
companies are taking. We can't compete with China's system, and we can't
resist a market that's 5x the size of the United States.
Where do we go from here? Two options:
1) Start your own game company. The inefficiency of large corporations is
impressive at times. It took Blizzard 3 days to write 1 page of meaningless PR
speak when their customers were about ready to burn down their headquarters.
Can you do better than that? Then there is money to be made.
2) Ask for our government to push back against foreign interference. China has
picked a good time to get aggressive with their agenda, because every country
has their own problems that seem more pressing. The UK can't say "hey, you're
violating our agreement about handing Hong Kong back to you" because they're
distracted by Brexit. The US can't say, "hey, micro-managing political tweets
is not OK", because our President is under investigation for seeking foreign
interference in elections. The organizations with resources to fight the
influence are busy with other things, leaving the future of our culture in the
hands of the PR managers of "brands".
I don't blame Blizzard for getting swept along in this current. They are doing
no worse or no better than anyone else. They just have a long history of doing
the right thing, and a splashy page of benevolent-sounding corporate mottos.
That's why we're mad at Blizzard, but we should probably be pretty
disappointed with everyone. Nobody is leading by example here; everyone is
willing to look the other way for human rights if it enriches their
shareholders.
Anyway, end of rant. Sorry.
~~~
perl4ever
"You can't go to prison for being a spineless bastard, but if you tank a
Fortune 500 company's stock by standing up for human rights, you can"
Oh come _on_. It might be true that there are various structural reasons no
CEO will do the right thing, or the right thing might not be to exclude China,
but saying people will go to prison for not maximizing shareholder value in
some specific manner is absurd.
When CEOs do things that tank the stock, which is almost every day, they don't
go to prison, they (and by they I mean the company) get sued. It's not
generally a big deal assuming they haven't done anything specifically
nefarious.
------
A2017U1
> the Blizzard controversy indicates just how badly the company has screwed up
> here, and the level of pressure that the community and anti-censorship
> activists are going to apply against it.
Got a good chuckle at "anti-censorship" activists. Last I looked that was the
alt-right. Free speech is a dirty word associated with Nazis for many people
today (especially outside the US). Find it terrifying how many of my
_enlightened_ friends consider blanket censorship and deplatforming a
legitimate way to deal with unpleasant types.
Guessing the author is aware of that modern anti-censorship fervour is almost
entirely isolated to a group of people not exactly popular with the audience.
Fixing negative connotations with a vague rebranding is the pinnacle of
marketing and the antithesis of journalism.
~~~
perl4ever
"blanket censorship and deplatforming"
Maybe the people complaining about this aren't in favor of free speech, they
just hate private property.
~~~
A2017U1
Just to clarify because it's a tad vague, you support Blizzard's right to both
remove a winners players prizemoney and future ability to compete because of
one sentence on a livestream?
Or perhaps less inflammatory and antagonistic, would you support private
property even if it were levelled against oneself?
~~~
perl4ever
I don't subscribe to the idea that property rights are primary and inviolable
as the basis of my thinking about what is right and what is wrong.
It's obvious to me that most people do not support private property when it is
"levelled against" them.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Yarn 1.0: Workspaces, auto-merging lockfiles, selective versions resolutions - cpojer
https://code.facebook.com/posts/274518539716230
======
orta
A big congrats are in order. Yarn came out just as I started working in the
node ecosystem, and it fixed nearly all my dependency manager problems.
Since then it's evolved and it's really helped provide a counter to npm
offering different design choices but working together where it counts. It's
the 4th most popular brew dependency and ~25% of npm downloads. People love
it.
Congrats Yarn team - you've been doing a great job.
* [https://stats.yarnpkg.com](https://stats.yarnpkg.com) * [https://brew.sh/analytics/install-on-request/](https://brew.sh/analytics/install-on-request/)
~~~
brad0
I jumped on node around the same time and I've come to an opposite conclusion.
The things I liked was the offline cache and the yarn integrity.
However there was just too many issues regarding its dependency on npm and not
playing nice with other tools such as brew.
I dove into the code to try and fix these issues but both the quality of the
code base and the politics going on in the issue tracker turned me off very
quickly. [1]
If yarn had been approached with more senior developers I think it could have
replaced npm entirely.
[1]
[https://github.com/yarnpkg/yarn/issues/2064](https://github.com/yarnpkg/yarn/issues/2064)
~~~
petetnt
> If yarn had been approached with more senior developers I think it could
> have replaced npm entirely.
The biggest reason by far why Yarn got so popular so quickly was because it
didn't come and try to split the existing ecosystem but chose build on top of
npm's foundation with ways that npm didn't (at that point) offer instead.
~~~
brad0
Yes I agree! I didn't really make myself clear.
I feel that if yarn kept its strategy but had more senior developers writing
the core software I think it could have been able to outpace npm in terms of
features and speed.
If this had have been the case then it wouldn't make sense to use npm at all.
Yarn would be faster and have more features.
From my experience I feel that yarn isn't offering much value now and the
codebase quality means that future features will take too long to build.
~~~
slavik81
Perhaps I'm wrong, but from your posts here I don't get the sense that you
were close enough to the project to really know their team composition or how
to improve it. Your prescription comes off as armchair quarterbacking.
------
nwlieb
This is fantastic! The biggest standout feature in my opinion is workspaces.
I've been using workspaces on a client project with many sub-projects and it
has been a pleasure.
Shared modularized code without creating private npm packages or doing some
"linking" magic has been wonderful for productivity. It's as simple as
creating another local package and symatically everything else has remained
the same as a regular npm package, plus the benefits of having immediately
updating code. For anyone with a large modular codebase wanting to forray into
a monorepo approach I highly recommend checking it out. They also released a
blog post here detailing the feature:
[https://yarnpkg.com/blog/2017/08/02/introducing-
workspaces/](https://yarnpkg.com/blog/2017/08/02/introducing-workspaces/)
~~~
Rapzid
How are people handling CI/CD servers/services with the mono repo?
The barrier to mono repo seems to have always been the need to create massive
amounts of bespoke tooling to handle the build pipelines(how do I build just
this proj?, how do I run tests on just this proj?, how do I build just this
proj and its deps?, etc). These are totally solvable with dedicated dev
resources, but these are typically the problems you try to avoid rather than
spend time on at a lot of companies; say < 1k engineers(snark).
Workspaces and Lerna seem to be a small piece of the puzzle even if critical.
Are there tools to help out with rest? For instance if I'm using Bitbucket
pipelines, what should I be looking for to help building from a mono repo?
~~~
hinkley
Subversion used to let you check out a subdirectory of a repo, which generally
helped with this problem. The chapter on SVN in Beautiful Code does a great
job of explaining how this works and why it helps with concurrent access to
the repo.
This is a giant blind spot in Git, and none of the proposed workarounds come
anywhere close to the tiny cognitive load of svn's answer to this problem.
But nobody on the git design committee seems to give a shit about cognitive
load, so I'm probably just shouting into the tempest.
------
adamgiacomelli
I have had a failed heroku deployment because of yarn 1.0 yesterday - quite
interesting. Made me define the yarn version in package.json. I have also had
some problems with the yarn repo being unavailable a couple of months ago.
That being said - I have migrated to it completely on all projects and never
looked back - so yay for yarn!
~~~
BYK
We have patched that issue and already tagged 1.0.1 ;)
~~~
BYK
See
[https://github.com/yarnpkg/yarn/issues/4320](https://github.com/yarnpkg/yarn/issues/4320)
~~~
tarr11
Looks like its still having problems on Heroku
[https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-
nodejs/issues/468](https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-
nodejs/issues/468)
------
nailer
I've been holding off on yarn since npm v5 has some big performance increases,
but there's (as of npm 5.3) still an issue where npm v5 deletes all `private:
true` packages - we've had to revert to 4.6 - and I'm a little worried a data-
loss issue isn't being treated as severe.
~~~
allover
Deletes them in what situation? Can you provide a link?
~~~
nailer
There's a couple of similar deletion issues, they're all linked from
[https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/17929](https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/17929),
the deleting private one happens in all situations, eg just an npm install,
see
[https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/17927](https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/17927)
~~~
allover
RE the 2nd issue: Are you sure you even need `private: true`? Scoped modules
are private by default right? I thought `private: true` was supposed to
prevent publishing to npm altogether.
It's odd they haven't at least triaged the issue (but you know humans/time).
That said the fact it's a niche workflow (it's unclear why the user is using
--no-save) and the steps to reproduce won't be doable by the team ... probably
doesn't help the issue get attention.
~~~
nailer
The packages aren't published on npm but deployed by other means (before npm
is used to install additional public packages), hence 'private' is deliberate.
------
msoad
Maybe Node should bundle Yarn instead of NPM? NPM is so buggy I can't stand it
for a minute!
~~~
scarlac
Not quite the same but ironically the standard "node" Docker image contains
yarn: [https://github.com/nodejs/docker-
node/blob/b502aa016335c81a5...](https://github.com/nodejs/docker-
node/blob/b502aa016335c81a586b430328d8fee4897ee440/8.4/Dockerfile)
~~~
onestone
I was the one who added Yarn to the official docker-node image[1][2]. This was
the most popular docker-node feature request at the time. We managed to
achieve it with a minimal size increase (with the help of the awesome Yarn
team) and without affecting anything else. There was already a history of us
providing some bonus features which the upstream Node project doesn't, such as
a musl-libc build (for Alpine Linux).
[1] [https://github.com/nodejs/docker-
node/pull/337](https://github.com/nodejs/docker-node/pull/337) [2]
[https://github.com/nodejs/docker-
node/pull/403](https://github.com/nodejs/docker-node/pull/403)
------
marricks
What was the compelling reason to make Yarn instead of contributing to npm,
perhaps ownership?
Seems like they could given everyone a lot of improvements and instead they
fractured the market a bit.
~~~
brentvatne
I can't speak to the original intentions of the authors, but I suspect it
might be related to difficulty of making significant changes to the project
due to some strongly held beliefs.
An example: react-native depends on alpha/beta versions of react, and
libraries in the react-native ecosystem tend to include a peer dependency on
react (eg: react >= 15). React 16.0.0-alpha.12 will not satisfy this range,
but 16.0.0 will. It's unclear to me in what way it is useful to exclude pre-
release versions, and this causes a lot of confusion for users. I posted about
it here:
[https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/8854](https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/8854)
and it was shutdown for ideological reasons, rather than practical
considerations. On the other hand, someone submitted a patch to yarn to
improve this behaviour and it was quickly accepted:
[https://github.com/yarnpkg/yarn/pull/3361](https://github.com/yarnpkg/yarn/pull/3361).
~~~
Klathmon
And it wasn't all just "strongly held beliefs" there were very real problems
with upgrading parts of npm.
npm for a long time was built to do what npm did. There was no spec, no
"rules" it did what it did, and changing that behavior was a breaking change.
Everyone could agree that feature X needed to be fixed or redone, but doing so
would break a significant number of packages/projects so it wasn't done.
Yarn was the solution, they could start from scratch, not worry about those
older/undocumented/arcane edge-cases. They didn't have to care about backwards
compatibility, or even reimplement the same API.
Every time this question is asked, I also like to point out that many of the
Yarn devs were npm devs, and the project as a whole not only had the
"approval" of npm, but also was in-part encouraged by them.
Competition is good, and it's "the javascript way" to have multiple competing
tools that each prioritise different things. Yarn is pretty much a perfect
example of that.
------
MikeTaylor
Just in case anyone else runs into this and doesn't know what's going on: we
had a problem with Yarn 1.0, because it doesn't recognise repositories that
don't end in a trailing slash -- for example,
"@folio:registry=[https://repository.folio.org/repository/npm-
folio"](https://repository.folio.org/repository/npm-folio") is no good any
more, but "@folio:registry=[https://repository.folio.org/repository/npm-
folio/"](https://repository.folio.org/repository/npm-folio/") is. See
[https://github.com/folio-org/stripes-demo-
platform/commit/f8...](https://github.com/folio-org/stripes-demo-
platform/commit/f8fed68d17c72b021a6c92ebe74fc173a7ea0433)
Meanwhile ... I do regret that this doesn't introduce alternative
dependencies, like Debian packages have, where your package foo can have
dependency on "either bar or baz". Oh well.
~~~
BYK
Apologies for the issue. There's an issue file on GitHub for this and we are
working on a fix:
[https://github.com/yarnpkg/yarn/issues/4339](https://github.com/yarnpkg/yarn/issues/4339)
------
noir_lord
Yarn has been a collosal improvement to my workflow, it's faster, compatible
with non and completely deterministic (those weird this install works that one
didn't errors with npm got really old).
------
williamle8300
Do they use the same BSD+Patents license that's used for ReactJS?
~~~
talkingtab
The license on github does not have the patents clause.
------
firloop
Will Yarn ever be merged into npm's CLI? Why does the node community back two
package managers?
~~~
Klathmon
The same reason most people back multiple browser rendering engines, or
multiple car manufacturers, or multiple CPU manufacturers.
Competition is good, and having 2 implementations of the same basic idea that
each prioritise different things means that more people can have their cake
and eat it too.
Having one tool that has hundreds of flags to enable different use-cases is an
anti-pattern in my opinion, and a fantastic alternative is to create multiple
competing tools that each handle those different use-cases. It's the unix
philosophy taken to the extreme, each "program" should do one thing, and do it
well.
~~~
firloop
This is a good answer that changed my perspective, thanks.
------
WM6v
How soon will it be available via brew update?
~~~
kshvmdn
Looks like 1.0.1 is available now - [https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-
core/pull/17780](https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/pull/17780).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: I built this app to compare health insurance plans - sbashyal
http://pick-a-plan.appspot.com/
======
azsromej
thanks, looks nice. I need to compare some plans in a couple weeks so I'll try
this.
~~~
sbashyal
Thanks for trying it out. I'd love to receive your feedback once you use it.
Since the open enrollment is coming up, I am hoping it will get some traction.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An NBA Fun Fact About the Shot Clock Software - luccastera
http://www.blogmaverick.com/2008/04/21/an-nba-fun-fact/
======
ssharp
While it was indeed a "fact" I have to call into question the "fun".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Org charts and job titles - aesthetics1
I work for an organization that is currently trying to update job titles and rework the org chart to split off technical versus managerial roles. Is there any information out there to help with this process? We have struggled to find a hierarchical structure that fits our needs, and are unsure how to implement a technical role that scales in pay with a managerial role. Any advice or helpful resources?
======
zoenolan
The Microsoft one was one of the tihng I thought they got right.
[https://www.quora.com/What-are-all-the-job-levels-in-
Microso...](https://www.quora.com/What-are-all-the-job-levels-in-Microsofts-
technical-career-track)
------
CyberFonic
How about looking at the value produced by each staff member? Then pay
according to that value. In my experience managers are over-valued and
technical staff under-valued. If managers (of all levels) are more than 5% of
the head count, then you have a bigger problem than coming up with a new org
chart.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Reverse Kickstarter - badkangaroo
https://plus.google.com/105956130649067247289/posts/4NVu6361GHV
Can someone make a reverse kickstarter web site? For instance, all of the fans of Fire fly pool together money and either ask for someone to do it, or someone offers to do it at specific price points. Then a group is elected to do it when the time limit is up.<p>I offer this web site idea to the internet, please just someone do it, i am owed nothing.
======
badkangaroo
Just thinking this would be a fun website project for someone to build.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Aldous Huxley: The Ultimate Revolution (1962) - hownottowrite
http://pulsemedia.org/2009/02/02/aldous-huxley-the-ultimate-revolution/
======
Ar-Curunir
Here's a link to the actual interview itself. It's one and a half hours long,
so pretty long.
[http://youtu.be/RpwOmwysqJ8](http://youtu.be/RpwOmwysqJ8)
------
dominotw
I love Huxley's forward to Jiddu Kirshnamurthi's (who was major influence on
Huxley) book. [http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-
tex...](http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-
text.php?tid=30&chid=385)
------
marmaduke
Perhaps nowadays it is the iphone or android we use to self administer, no
expensive drugs required.
~~~
readerrrr
Interesting idea. Perhaps we are already living in a version of BNW, with
media and constant advertisements serving the role of sleep-learning.
~~~
Ar-Curunir
Yes, that is one premise of BNW, constant engagement and thus constant and
immediate satisfaction is one purpose of the media, but media as a form of
propaganda is an age-old tactic.
The widespread reach of modern media just makes it easier to spread any given
point of view, with the chance going to the highest/most powerful bidder.
------
WiggleYourIndex
Taking apart this programming:
[http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message2318856/pg1](http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message2318856/pg1)
------
blumkvist
>And the same way with various technological advances now, I mean we need to
think about the problems with automation and more profoundly the problems,
which may arise with these new techniques, which may contribute to this
ultimate revolution. Our business is to be aware of what is happening, and
then to use our imagination to see what might happen, how this might be
abused, and then if possible to see that the enormous powers which we now
possess thanks to these scientific and technological advances to be used for
the benefit of human beings and not for their degradation.
Thank You
NO! Thank YOU, mr. Huxley.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Grand Rapids has become a midwestern economic star generating industrial jobs - prostoalex
https://www.city-journal.org/html/manufacturing-comeback-15833.html
======
karmicthreat
I currently work in GR as a software developer so if you want the inside scoop
contact me.
I will say Grand Rapids currently has some issues around software developers
that are associated with our growing pains. Because of the rust belt
depression of wages, we still haven't caught up. Wages for software developers
here lag by about 20 percent. Most employers are used to paying a much lower
wage than I would expect elsewhere. Senior developers might make 80-90K and
juniors can expect to be making 40-50K. If you are an ineffective negotiator
you might be lower. Many of my contemporaries have chosen to get remote jobs
with the usual suspects. Zapier, Bitbucket, Sourceforge, Slack and others all
have local people.
That said, this is a wonderful town that is changing all the time. The cost of
living is low, though our real estate market is out of control and has been
for a couple years. The developers here tend to have a strong sense of
community and we generally support one another rather than tear each other
down. We have some great local developers.
If you would like the low down on our growing town or are interest in moving,
setting up a remote shop or building a company in our town let me know. I'd be
happy to help you or get you in contact with those that can. (see profile)
~~~
rossdavidh
Not looking to move, but just out of curiousity, how would you say developer
salary / cost of living compares, to, say San Francisco? No surprise that both
will be a lot lower in Grand Rapids, but I'm wondering how the ratio looks.
~~~
citrablue
Numbeo is a great site for cost of living comparison. Here's SF versus Grand
Rapids[0]. To sum, if your takehome is $7800 in SF, you can live a similar
lifestyle on $3700 in Grand Rapids.
So, about half the cost of living.
[0] [https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=United+States&city1=San+Francisco%2C+CA&city2=Grand+Rapids%2C+MI&tracking=getDispatchComparison)
~~~
bpicolo
That of course depends on what you're going for. The 'lifestyle' comparison
only takes into account basic goods. It doesn't take into everything else that
actually affects your personal quality of life (cities vs more rural life each
have vastly different benefits).
~~~
seanmcdirmid
Not only that, but many things have a constant price: international air
tickets, cars, and computers don’t vary in cost much between GR and SF (some
are even more expensive in the lower cost place).
~~~
bpicolo
> international air tickets
Air tickets are significantly cheaper in NY than ruralish areas in my
experience
~~~
seanmcdirmid
Yes, I’m sure tickets to SFO to Asia are often cheaper than from Grand Rapids
or even Detroit.
~~~
bpicolo
Arbitrary example: GRR -> Copenhagen roundtrip is ~$1,100 USD. From NYC or SF
I can do that for ~$400-$500. Pretty much anywhere else I could pick has a
similar differential.
That's a massive cost difference, especially when you're looking at 2-4 person
vacations. That's a problem in pretty much every rural area (flying out of
Ithaca was expensive as heck). I'm able to travel way more as a result.
------
wenc
I lived in a rust belt city in for many years, and in recent years have been
witnessing a slew of "rust-belt renaissance" articles pop up every now and
then about how things are turning around in deindustrialized cities
(Pittsburgh is often cited as a shining example of a city that has seen a
turnaround).
These articles typically state something along the lines of the low COL (cost-
of-living) luring young people back from coastal cities. Some even overstate
their case quite a bit by projecting they'll be the next Silicon Valley or
startup hub. I wonder how folks here feel about such articles?
I can't help but notice there's some element of boosterism that misses a
something fundamental. To be sure, it makes people who live in rust belt
cities feel better about themselves (I was one of those people), but it
doesn't seem to really move the needle in attracting the very ambitious to
these places. In my observation, the truly ambitious are insensitive to cost-
of-living arguments.
Paul Graham wrote an article entitled "Cities and Ambition" [1] which speaks
to this. It tracks with my observation that people at the top of their games
tend to cluster, and are willing to suffer discomfort to live among their
peers.
\---
Some quotes:
"How much does it matter what message a city sends? Empirically, the answer
seems to be: a lot. You might think that if you had enough strength of mind to
do great things, you'd be able to transcend your environment. Where you live
should make at most a couple percent difference. But if you look at the
historical evidence, it seems to matter more than that. Most people who did
great things were clumped together in a few places where that sort of thing
was done at the time."
"No matter how determined you are, it's hard not to be influenced by the
people around you. It's not so much that you do whatever a city expects of
you, but that you get discouraged when no one around you cares about the same
things you do."
[1]
[http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html)
~~~
thesagan
I think these articles speak with the ambition of these cities themselves
despite the loss of their industrial base; to my mind this ambitiousness _is_
correlated with boosterism. And it does makes people feel good, and it might
work, too, at supporting ambition. Just like how folks in NYC and SF often
speak highly (as well as ill) of their homes. It feels good!
I'm not sure of how some cities are more expensive correlates with overall
ambition so much as it does class. People from all classes can be very
ambitious even if they're unequal in wealth.
~~~
wenc
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I think you're right -- positivity does
create virtuous cycles.
On a related note, I suspect cities primarily relying on cost-of-living
arguments to attract people may actually be subtly signalling the reverse of
what ambitious people are drawn to. A city's primary signal should be the
vibrancy of the place, not the low cost of living.
In my old rust belt city, many were proud of the fact that folks who left for
New York City were coming back because we offered a low cost of living. But
the people returning were also those who had "given up" on their ambitions...
whose dreams were broken by NYC. I realize this is a bit of an unfair
generalization, because it's not universally true (some ambitious chefs who
returned -- and they are very good -- were those who trained in NYC but simply
found NY's restaurant economics too oppressive). But supposing we were subtly
attracting folks who had "given up"... in large enough numbers, they are
likely to set a certain cultural tone for the city. Great cities are not built
on low cost-of-living is all I'm saying.
Side: as a historical example, consider Canada vs U.S. -- Canadians are
generally a more risk-averse people than Americans, and it's partly because
the United Empire Loyalists were American loyalists who chose the safer route
of siding with the British, whereas U.S. Americans forged their own path. The
Loyalists set the tone for much of the country.
As to your second point, cities with ambition tend to be expensive because
people want to live in them, often in spite of the expense. However, the
reverse is not true -- just because a city is expensive doesn't mean it
attracts ambition. Nantucket's pretty expensive but it's not brimming with
ambition. Not sure about expensive cities correlating with class... New York
is very expensive, but still manages to attract ambitious working class people
who are trying to make it there.
~~~
kd0amg
_On a related note, I suspect cities primarily relying on cost-of-living
arguments to attract people may actually be subtly signalling the reverse of
what ambitious people are drawn to. A city 's primary signal should be the
vibrancy of the place, not the low cost of living._
Yes. What makes me unlikely to return to Michigan long-term, as much as I
liked where I lived, is the limited career options I would have there. I am
apparently willing to put up with a rather high cost of living to work on what
I find interesting.
------
LarryDarrell
After 5 years, I had to leave there. Too much religion. Too much smug
mediocrity. Too much fawning over the DeVos's & Meijers.
~~~
StudentStuff
Meijers is really the HEB of that area. I couldn't imagine living out there
long term as a non-religious, non-straight person.
~~~
anonymous_i
I don't know if that can be generalised. I lived in GR and went to Grand
Valley. I saw few churches with rainbow flag raised on them. Grand Valley is
also very big on protecting LGBTQ. Had gay friends knew gay bars. For an
immigrant like me, GR has been nothing but warm and nice. Sorry to hear about
your experience.
~~~
LarryDarrell
After you get asked for the umpteenth time what church you go to, it's easy to
get outed as the Company Heathen.
After not going to the company picnic over the course of few years (BBQ) it's
easy to get outed as the Company Vegetarian.
And then, because it is Grand Rapids, and the corporate world is very
different from the local public university, you pretty much get shunned. They
won't make your life completely miserable, but you will feel the affects of
being an permanent outsider.
YMMV, but I was batting 2 for 2 and have stories from others. I'm sure there
are some good employers around.
~~~
maxsilver
> After you get asked for the umpteenth time what church you go to, it's easy
> to get outed as the Company Heathen.
Generally, I tell people to just say "I go to Fountain Street Church". Even if
you don't know what that is, even if you've never set foot in the place, just
say those words anyway. It's essentially a community shared codephrase that
means "you aren't going to harass anyone about their religious beliefs".
It lets the strict Christians sleep at night (because you 'go to church'), but
it usually prevents any follow-up questions (because it's somewhat well known
as the 'overly-accepting' church, and they usually won't want to get into
orthodoxy specifics).
Meanwhile, that same phrase lets most of the non-religious locals know that,
regardless of whatever your actual beliefs are/aren't, you are a polite person
who doesn't want to face religious discrimination and is claiming not to do so
to others.
I'm not saying this is a good thing, it's not right to make people jump
through these silly hoops. But that's sort of how the game is played in Grand
Rapids.
~~~
StudentStuff
Considering its been years since I've talked to anyone about church, let alone
heard this kind of question asked, this would be a major culture shock. I
don't think I'm the only person out on the West Coast who hasn't heard
questions of that genre in years though.
------
mark_l_watson
I keep waiting for the Silicon Valley/New York/Boston/Seattle/etc. tech
hotspot bubble to pop, and companies look to areas of the country with low
cost of living, short commutes to work, etc.
I will probably have a long wait! The problem as I see it is that companies
need to be run with a ‘remote first’ culture, where people in outlying offices
are not second class citizens.
I recently was in NYC working for a few days, and while the environment is a
lot of fun, many people who work there have very long commutes. When I worked
as a contractor at Google in Mountain View, I came into the office at 6am to
beat the traffic. The cost of living in tech centers is awful compared to non-
east/west coast areas.
It seems like there is not much middle ground: either have everyone in one or
a few urban areas or have a distributed culture. Currently the business model
of concentrating workers in high cost areas is winning over distributed teams.
------
knuththetruth
It’s very odd that this article goes out of its way to paint the Amway
billionaires as “good” and not “extractive.” Everyone I know from the area has
horror stories about friends or family members that got sucked into Amway’s
cultish pyramid scheme and had their lives destroyed.
They’re a big employer in the region, so locals do tend to “look the other
way.” But this is far too generous a portrayal of the families/company that
have created decades of devastation in the wake of its scam.
~~~
cozzyd
City Journal is run by the Manhattan Institute.
~~~
knuththetruth
Well, that explains it! Bought and paid for...
------
CamTin
Kalamazoo isn't doing bad these days, either. As someone who grew up in
Michigan (Saginaw), I would love to move to either, but IT jobs I'm qualified
for seem to be rather thin on the ground.
~~~
oneguynick
Saginaw is having issues, but there are a few consulting firms around the
area. Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor, Detroit, and Lansing though are having strong
comebacks. As someone from Standish, I look forward to the day that the MBS
area is more than just Dow.
~~~
timdellinger
One of the interesting things about MBS is that there's a huge amount of
under-employed or under-utilized talent that's basically (1) the "trailing
spouse" problem (one half of a couple has a Dow job, the other doesn't) plus
(2) Dow employees that have been lost in the shuffle and aren't in roles that
are a good match. I never quite came up with the right idea to take advantage
of the local talent pool... a startup incubator is a maybe. If Dow were the
smart and forward-looking, they would encourage a local startup community, but
that's not the pattern of decision-making that happens at Dow.
------
rmason
When I was younger Grand Rapids was seen as a dull place. Downtown closed at 5
pm and there wasn't much fun to be had for a young adult.
While the area is still pretty conservative that has changed mightily in the
last forty years. The city now has a lively downtown and all those breweries
have made the place a magnet for young people from the surrounding areas.
The 'lake effect' does mean they get a lot more snow than the eastern part of
the state.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake-
effect_snow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake-effect_snow)
~~~
mac01021
Aside from dining out, what fun is there to be had for young adults anywhere?
I mean, anywhere with a plentiful supply of other young adults gives you
approximately equal opportunity to socialize, right?
~~~
wenc
> Aside from dining out, what fun is there to be had for young adults
> anywhere?
As someone who used to live in the rust belt, I found my social life to be
vastly improved after moving to Chicago.
It's true you can be lonely in a big city, but the same is true in a small
town. The difference is that in a big city, significantly more options exist
if you are willing to step out.
After moving to a big city, I was able to connect with more people of like-
mind. The diversity of people I meet now is an order of magnitude greater. The
Meetup groups are significantly better (I can go to a technical meetup and
talk shop with people at my level). If I wanted to hang out with friends, the
scope of activities possible are also much wider. If I wanted to learn a
skill, take language classes, take evening classes at a world-renowned
university, etc., I can and have -- and have met interesting people through
these activities. If I wanted to go on a trip with friends, flights are much
cheaper out of a hub city. Job opportunities are also much more abundant -- if
I decided to change jobs tomorrow, I could do that without moving away.
The intellectual and cultural climate in a dynamic, thriving city is vastly
different from that of a single-industry town.
It's not just dining out.
------
tjr225
I'm from there. Nice enough city...don't know if I would move back.
~~~
seanmcdirmid
I used to live in Toledo as a kid and we went up to Grand Rapids one time for
a trip. I remember the forests surrounding the city were really nice, and of
course there was a lake nearby with waves big enough to body surf on. I can't
really say anything about the city, but that part of the Michigan has a lot to
offer.
~~~
qudat
Currently living in Ann Arbor. As a software engineer it's vibrant and full of
startups to join. Our javascript meetup usually has somewhere around 50-100
people every event.
Not to mention it's a small town with a lot of bigger city amenities, close
proximity to Detroit, and with it being a college town the average IQ is
pretty high.
~~~
seanmcdirmid
The only thing I remember about Ann Arbor is my mom visiting a hospital there
for some reason. It seemed like a small quaint town, definitely not as bad as
Monroe.
~~~
quadrangle
calling Ann Arbor a small quaint town comparing it favorably to Monroe is just
a misunderstanding.
Monroe has like a sixth the population in the city limits and still less than
half the size comparing the two metro regions. Ann Arbor is in a different
class than Monroe. Monroe is a small town. Ann Arbor is a medium-small city
(over 100,000 in city, over 300,000 in metro area).
Ann Arbor is centered around the University of Michigan, consistently ranked
the #2 public school in the country, just behind UC Berkley. It has around
45,000 students. And yet Ann Arbor is big enough that students are still a
minority of the population.
The UofM hospital is generally ranked one of the top 10 in the country, so
it's not surprising for someone to go their for some special visit.
But sure, it's small and quaint compared to any real big city.
~~~
brett40324
Expanding on your comment, I think its worth mentioning Barracuda, Nokia, Ford
Labs, and Expedia are in Ann Arbor. Google has an office there, too.
~~~
quadrangle
Ann Arbor has a real tech scene for sure, and Google's office there is
significant. But whatever presence they have, Nokia and Expedia are not based
in Ann Arbor (as someone might infer from your post)
~~~
seanmcdirmid
I live in downtown Bellevue and I’m pretty sure the Expedia building down the
street is its headquarters.
------
jquast
Michigan winters may force you to stay indoors during winter storms. Lots of
great code is written in winter for this reason.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The “Shitcoin” Moment in Congress - ibz
https://twitter.com/Xentagz/status/1151587356425760774
======
Fjolsvith
The speaker in the video is making the argument that the term "Shitcoin" is
used to denote a centralized cryptocurrency (as opposed to decentralized, such
as Bitcoin).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New SSD-Backed Elastic Block Storage - jeffbarr
http://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-ssd-backed-elastic-block-storage/
======
jcr
Great submission, but previous discussion is here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7903097](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7903097)
------
jacobscott
Will General Purpose (SSD) be an option for RDS?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ahead-Of-time (AOT) Compiler Designed for Ruby - ksec
https://github.com/pmq20/ruby-compiler
======
bjpbakker
This is /not/ AOT compilation of ruby code.
It simply compiles a ruby interpreter and adds your code to the executable (as
memfs).
The output is an executable that /interprets/ ruby code.
~~~
pmq20
Currently it is just packaging, but when combined with work of @ko1 we could
achieve real compiling in order to boost start-up speed and also protect
intellectual properties.
I talked to @ko1 last year after his presentation about AOT compiling for Ruby
at RailsConf, and it seems like we were missing a piece of the puzzle at that
time, which is to preserve the file system structure after compiling, in order
to accommodate `__FILE__` and `require` calls. I achieved it now with the help
of
libsquash([https://github.com/pmq20/libsquash](https://github.com/pmq20/libsquash)).
So now in runtime every path that begins with `/__enclose_io_memfs__/` got
redirected to the memory, and so are your project files.
~~~
chrisseaton
Maybe you know something I don't, but I understand that Koichi's AOT is still
just translating the Ruby source code to bytecode which is then interpreted.
It isn't AOT to native code.
~~~
bjpbakker
You are correct. AOT compilation for ruby would translate the internal AST
into machine code.
While serializing Ruby files in byte code might be a good idea (I don't know
enought of the internals of MRI so I can't judge that), it's still not AOT
compilation
------
dankmemes420
[http://i.imgur.com/MVOSH81.png](http://i.imgur.com/MVOSH81.png)
I can't be the only one
~~~
hursortue
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22that+just+works%22](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22that+just+works%22)
<Product name>. <What it does>, that just works. Made by <name> in <city> with
love.
------
ksec
A lot of people have complained about the lack / difficulties of Ruby Programs
distribution. I remember the Authors of Vagrant said one of the reason why he
switched to Go was that.
And this solves that problem.
------
funkaster
As suggested by other comments, this is not really AOT, more like a bundler
(not _that_ bundler) or packer. It prepacks a Ruby interpreter with your
files/libs/deps. Useful and interesting, but not an AOT.
------
kej
While still useful, this appears to be more of a bundler than a compiler, per
se.
------
mkarklins
How easy would it be to retrieve the ruby source code from the distributed
binary?
~~~
bjpbakker
Fairly easy. It's inside a memfs in data section in the binary.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: The most beautiful places on earth - thlt
http://mostbeautifulplaces.org/
======
steve8918
Nice, but you should change the rectangular boxes to rounded corners, the
corners look harsh and ugly.
Also, there's a distance underneath the link, but I have no idea what it means
nor how to change it.
~~~
nyellin
Namely:
.overlay-label {
border-radius: 5px;
}
~~~
thlt
lol you guys seriously hate hard corners, i don't think there is anything
wrong with it.
------
morsch
Hmm. You are only supposed to add pictures for new places. What happens when
the first picture added along with a new place is beautiful, but much more
beautiful photos exist? Worse yet, what if more representative photos exist?
E.g. arguably Mont Saint-Michel is a good candidate (in a similar vein as
Mdina/Malta). I've got a nice, prototypical photo of Mont Saint-Michel, but
I'm sure much, much better photos would be added -- the light was only okay,
there are people in the photo, my camera back then wasn't the greatest. I've
also got an image from within/on top of Mont Saint-Michel, which is also nice,
but arguably the photo chosen to represent Mont Saint-Michel should be the
classic "long shot" of the entire mountain/city/church.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Saint-Michel>
In the spirit of the site itself, maybe a community process could manage
existing places. E.g. a regular contest/vote for a better photo or simply a
wiki. And of course these are issues that only crop up when and if the site
takes off, so they don't need to be solved for the first iteration. Although
it does pose a problem even now, since I feel apprehensive about adding any of
my images since I don't want to prevent anybody else from adding theirs!
~~~
morsch
Heh, good thing I didn't add my Mont Saint-Michel photo, since it doesn't
remotely compare to the one someone added in the intervening 8 hours:
<http://mostbeautifulplaces.org/item/5291532>
Too bad the images aren't available in a higher res, btw.
------
ThomPete
I wonder why we don't see more map apps like this.
Just of the top of my head:
Around the world route maps (people submit the trips they did)
Greatest explorers route maps (although I guess there might be some problems
with historical accuracy)
Geek Spots Around the world
Known Military Bases around the world (and perhaps a strategy game on top)
The use of large scale maps are IMHO still a very underutilized area because
most go for the location based stuff.
~~~
Ogre
I was sure I'd seen the Geek Spots one on HN before, so here, I found it:
<http://nerdydaytrips.com/>
Also though in tracking that down, I found this enormous (2300+!) catalog of
Google Maps mashups:
<http://www.programmableweb.com/api/google-maps/mashups>
~~~
nosignal
Thanks for that mashup link, I'm always on the lookout for web map references
so that's pretty useful. Cheers.
------
japhyr
I just found a place I'd like to visit. I saw "Valley of the Ten Peaks" in
Canada. I visited Lake Louise on a road trip, but did not make it up to
Moraine Lake. This makes me want to go back.
How will you keep the map from getting too crowded?
~~~
thlt
We cluster them as how <http://cravify.com> works.
~~~
jawr
both are awesome sites. good work!
------
PidGin128
The social media bar is interfering somehow on chrome 21.0.1157.0 (Developer
Build 139621 Windows) (with plugins set to click enable) and 1024*768 screen
on xp.
Mainly, all the page under the bar is blank. this affects where the overview
map thinks the center is, when you double click to zoom in. also, made the
individual site pages uselessly narrow.
edit: deleting this node "<div id="share_btns" class="panel">" makes it
usable.
------
mwilcox
Similar: <http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/worldwonders/>
~~~
thlt
it is different in many terms like mostbeautifulplaces.org focuses on the true
beauty of that place, that's it. Also it is crowd-sourced, meaning that any
one from all over the world can help discover great places on earth.
------
rickard
How come Christ Church Meadow, Oxford, is also in Venice? See
<http://mostbeautifulplaces.org/item/5291686> vs
<http://mostbeautifulplaces.org/item/5291685> ... Hackish indeed... ;-)
~~~
thlt
ooop how come there was such a mistake hmnnn. The Venice one is replaced by
the correct one now.
------
afterburner
Looks really cluttered, despite not having a lot up yet. Maybe have the boxes
expand when the cursor is near?
~~~
whichdan
I agree. I think a transparent box with just the name would be great, and then
when you mouseover/click, it would open a tooltip similar to PadMapper. Right
now the distance and thumbnail don't really add much to the initial tooltip.
It would be great if each location had several pictures, and info on how to
travel there & other nearby attractions. For instance, maybe it could open a
link to HipMunk with the nearest airport already filled in, or it could just
tell you airline prices directly. Do that, add a few hundred more locations,
and this would actually be a really really cool site.
~~~
thlt
hi, thanks for the great ideas.
------
conanite
Using safari (5.1.5) on mac, I can't click on any of the place links (works ok
in chrome)
~~~
thlt
hi thanks for the report, I'll investigate the issue soon.
------
yureka
Good stuff!
I just added two new places (Niagara Falls and Yosemite Falls). I'm hoping for
this to catch on, that way It can help me plan my US-West_Coast trip in a few
months :D
~~~
thlt
thanks, they are awesome places ;)
------
DIVx0
You have badlands national park located near Minneapolis MN. I don't know if
this was meant to be a joke or not but you're off by several hundred miles.
------
reubensutton
This is a really cool idea, it would be nice if you worked out a way for the
boxes to not overlap though.
Where did you get your initial dataset from?
~~~
thlt
Hi thanks, we have collected data from different sources for bootstrapping.
------
albertzeyer
Reminds me a bit of <http://www.where-is-this.com/>. Also a collection of very
nice places.
------
antihero
You should make sure that the photos pass some sort of test for quality and
resolution. I want to see photos that make stuff look truly beautiful.
~~~
thlt
yeah we manually review them all.
------
aw3c2
Using content from Wikipedia without kind of attribution is not cool and not
legal. All the descriptions seem to be verbatim copies. Boo!
~~~
thlt
Yeah all the content is from Wikipedia. Some very first places were not
attributed properly, the newest ones are. We'll fix them soon. Thanks for the
feedback.
------
pthreads
So needed. Thanks.
------
newobj
Brutal on mobile.
~~~
timrobinson
I'm on an iPad and I can't make any of the links work.
------
Swizec
I want to share this on twitter and attribute it properly, but you don't share
your twitter handle anywhere on the site, or in your HN profile ...
Why don't people mention who they are when they make something awesome?
~~~
simonbrown
Speaking generally, surely having a link to the site is attribution?
~~~
Swizec
It's not the same. Attaching a person to the link is a much "warmer"
referral/introduction/what-you-want-to-call-it than just linking to a site.
------
rokhayakebe
What makes a place beautiful? Is it the location or the scenery? If it is the
former than your website design should is spot on. If the latter than you
should get rid of the map as the helm and show users a beautiful grid of
images with location info at the bottom.
~~~
thlt
I bet both location and scenery are important as you'll consider where to
visit first. Wouldn't it great to know somewhere is very beautiful and just
close to you ? It is also very helpful when you travel as you don't want to
miss any beautiful places near your destinations.
------
adrianwaj
It would indeed be a tragedy if Fukushima reactor 4 collapses.
[http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2012/06/01/fukushima-
nuclea...](http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2012/06/01/fukushima-nuclear-
reactor-4-lost-wall-sea-side-139651)
It already is a tragedy.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ranger - tosh
https://github.com/ranger/ranger/
======
bradknowles
From the link:
ranger is a console file manager with VI key bindings. It provides a
minimalistic and nice curses interface with a view on the directory hierarchy.
It ships with rifle, a file launcher that is good at automatically finding out
which program to use for what file type.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Gmail blacklisted by Spamhaus - fseek
http://blog.sucuri.net/2010/08/gmail-blacklisted-by-spamhaus.html
======
jmathai
I work at Yahoo! and we've been blacklisted as well by Spamhaus. I wouldn't
say it's entirely inappropriate because of the sheer volume of email that can
pass through our (or in this case Gmail's) system.
Personally, I've tried to reach out to Google regarding security issues on
blogspot which were affecting our property. There was an XSS vulnerability and
we were getting thousands of posts on our blog linking to blogspot which would
in turn redirect the user to some pharma site.
It's been months and they haven't really made any progress other than put me
in contact with various people who don't respond to email.
If that's how they deal with an open XSS I can only imagine how fast they move
to deal with spam like this.
Disclaimer: This isn't a post bashing Google and praising Yahoo - just the
only experiences I've had to contribute to this post :).
~~~
tptacek
If you blacklist the mechanism by which tens of percentage points worth of
Internet users send mail, you are not part of the solution to spam.
~~~
dingdingding
I know the google fanboys will hate this, but the problem is letting _just
anyone_ or just any _machine_ create an account and use your service. It's
google's responsibility to can the spam coming from their domain. Google
doesn't care though. If they make it harder to get a gmail account, then they
make it harder to spam their "legitimate" users with advertisements and why
would they want to do that?
If you are a company that provides spamming capabilities to anyone and
everyone, then it is _exactly_ valid to add them to a spam list.
You could say, "Plenty of legitimate users use gmail." Fine, maybe so, but if
you are someone who uses gmail, you are surrounded by a cadre of spammers and
should understand your credibility is instantly devalued.
Birds of a feather flock together. The solution is to stop using gmail.com.
A VERY VERY high percentage of spam in my inbox comes from gmail accounts. If
tens of percentages points of spam is sent from a domain, then it's valid to
add them to the list of spamming domains.
~~~
bmm6o
> Fine, maybe so, but if you are someone who uses gmail, you are surrounded by
> a cadre of spammers and should understand your credibility is instantly
> devalued.
"My credibility"? When I send my mom an email, I expect her to get it. When
she sends me one, I expect to get it.
>Birds of a feather flock together.
Yes, because I am a spammer.</sarcasm>
If gmail has a lot of spammers using their service, they should address this.
But the suggestion that those caught in the crossfire should know better is
one of the more frustrating things about black-listers.
------
furyg3
Spamhaus is the most rabid group of extreme anti-spammer teenagers out there
(or at least they act like teenagers).
I've had various SMTP servers (for various companies) blocked by them, usually
for very questionable reasons. You used to have to argue with them on their
forum (and take a beating from all of the kids on that site) before they'd
remove you.
The result is that SMTP admins get it from both sides: Spammers make your life
hard, rabid blackhole lists combatting spammers make your life even harder.
~~~
auxbuss
Google are no better.
I can't send email to gmail addresses -- well sometimes I can and sometimes I
can't -- because Google (sometimes) says of my server:
Our system has detected an unusual rate of
550-5.7.1 unsolicited mail originating from your IP address. To protect our
550-5.7.1 users from spam, mail sent from your IP address has been blocked.
This is complete bullshit. We have SPFs in DNS. We don't relay, and have had
this independently tested.
We send tiny amounts (3 or 4 a week) of mainly personal email to gmail
addresses.
Who do I contact to sort this? Who knows? Google has no point of contact.
So I'm happy for Google to have a taste of their own medicine. And my opinion
of them is a rabid group of extreme anti-spammer teenagers.
~~~
jlees
Did you contact using the delivery form at
[http://mail.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=m...](http://mail.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=msgdelivery)
and still get no response?
------
tptacek
... but wholesale DNS-based blacklisting could never blow up in our faces.
Noooooo sir.
~~~
ryanjmo
What do you mean by 'wholesale DNS-based blacklisting'?
~~~
tptacek
Paul Vixie has proposed an extension to the DNS that would have relay cache
servers (the servers you ask for generic name lookups) store blacklists of
evil domains. Anything blacklisted would, in effect, disappear from the
Internet (for normal users).
~~~
koenigdavidmj
Out of curiosity, what would a `smart person' have to do to get all the
domains back if this ever took root?
~~~
someone_here
An clean version of the DNS lookup table, of some sort.
An IP will do.
------
Kadin
Seems like it might be biting off a bit more than they can chew.
Given the choice between the service Spamhaus' list provides, and being able
to receive mail from what's undoubtedly one of the largest webmail providers
in the world ( _the_ biggest?), a lot of people are going to can Spamhaus.
I'd hope that Google will react by doing something about the spam, but they
could much more easily do nothing, put out some recommendation that people
stop using Spamhaus, and a lot of people will be forced to do just that (or
Spamhaus will blink and un-blacklist Google). They're the 800-pound gorilla in
this particular match; Spamhaus isn't a lightweight but I wouldn't put any
money on them in that fight.
~~~
thenduks
Google isn't even close to the biggest email provider (by some sources both
Yahoo and Microsoft are more than twice their size)... but your point stands
:)
------
mustpax
Oh Spamhaus, everybody who's ever had the joy of operating an SMTP agent loves
them.
~~~
jacquesm
Just a little anecdote about how good spamhaus really is. I used to co-locate
in Toronto, right next door to a bunch of heavy duty spammers. It so happened
that there was a class C split in to three subsections, two of them belonged
to the spammer and a tiny 16 host range in the middle that belonged to us.
Spamhaus figured this all out by themselves and took great care not to cause
any collateral damage while going after the spammers. Pretty impressive,
especially since that would have been very hard to figure out from the
outside.
------
metachris
The report website at Spamhaus:
<http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/sbl.lasso?query=SBL95011>
Some more (older): <http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/listings.lasso?isp=google.com>
------
akadruid
Does anyone know if this affects Postini?
We've switched once already this month - our new office was assigned an IP by
C&W business that is in the same block as thousands of Virgin home cable-
modems, so we got blacklisted by Spamhaus and others. Management got quite
twitchy so I moved all the outgoing email to go via our Postini account which
was previously only filtering incoming. Don't fancy having to find a third
option now.
~~~
mike-cardwell
Sounds like you got listed on the PBL. SpamHaus lets anyone delist their IP
from the PBL...
------
jrockway
Yeah, this is why I don't use Spamhaus blacklists.
~~~
mike-cardwell
Because of the existence of false positives? Please let me know of a spam
filtering system which doesn't have them. Really. I'd like to add it to my
filtering setup...
~~~
jrockway
My Bayesian filters have much less of an agenda than Spamhaus.
~~~
mike-cardwell
That doesn't really answer my question. Bayes causes false positives too...
Yet is more difficult to maintain...
------
mike-cardwell
SpamHaus has listed various gmail servers loads of times for short periods of
time.
It's a good idea to maintain a local whitelist, or use DNSWL.org or
<http://wiki.junkemailfilter.com/index.php/Spam_DNS_Lists>
------
svag
Such solutions as this is like you have a headache, and in order to cure the
pain you cut your head...
------
quellhorst
If I'm using Google Apps for my domain, does this mean I'll have worse
deliverability on my email?
~~~
fanf2
No.
------
fanf2
Spamhaus have listed the web servers for docs.google.com NOT gmail's outbound
SMTP servers. Mail from gmail is not affected.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cogs bad - willvarfar
http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/18065079081/cogs-bad
======
delinka
Maybe people succumb to the hype. Maybe they want the latest shiny running
their own shiny new thing. I'm sure these things contribute greatly.
But I see another aspect to this whole "We Use Shiny Cogs" movement: high-
level vs. low-level. As we make tools that abstract us away from the metal, we
are able to spend less time thinking about the electrons flowing across
silicon and more time thinking about building something John Q. Public will
pay for.
We architect higher and higher abstractions for exactly this reason. And it
comes with a price: at some point you stop running things as efficiently as
possible and there's waste. If we were all studied CS students and could write
kernels and compilers from scratch, we might spend five years building a very
tight, efficient stack for Twitter that could run on a single box (maybe with
a hot failover). But we're not. We're a collection of humans with differing
levels of understanding and will power, many of whom just want to Get Shit
Done and stop thinking about kernel task queues.
So lets turn his "rich man's problem" around a bit: you build your idea on top
of a stack that you understand and keeps you happy, and when you bring in the
capital (through revenue or investment - whatever) you put money into deeper,
lower-level engineering. Until then, build your idea the way you know how.
~~~
mhd
_"As we make tools that abstract us away from the metal, we are able to spend
less time thinking about the electrons flowing across silicon and more time
thinking about building something John Q. Public will pay for."_
That makes it sound like there's a complete dichotomy here. It's not like the
mailinator guys are doing assembly whereas the rest of the startup crowd is
doing Prolog AI. Never mind that I doubt that most backend programmers
employed are using the time saved on improving the sheer monetization output
of the company (mileage obviously varies for single-person shops).
I do think you hit the nail on your head with your final paragraph. Quite
often it's not that the people programming this _choose_ to pick the cogs,
quite often they don't _know_ any other way. In which case this isn't really a
decision. But it's a sad trend in my opinion. Remember the old saying "Nobody
ever got fired for choosing IBM"? I think the level where this kind of
thinking is applied has dropped from non-technical upper management to some
actual builders. Smart business decision - maybe. But I do think that a lot of
us here aren't just in it for the money.
~~~
Detrus
The new people are not in it to perfect their engineering craftsmanship.
Overall product craftsmanship maybe, but then half their attention is taken up
by visual/UX design, they have less time for beautiful plumbing.
But at the same time engineer craftsmen can specialize in making better cogs.
That would be the ideal, better cogs like Stripe, Heroku, Redis, DynamoDB,
whatever. Someday most will stop thinking about those problems just as we
stopped thinking about design patterns of making procedure calls in
assemblers.
~~~
route66
In your story "better cogs" sound like "more cowbell". It's still a
fundamental decision which will not go away: do you solve a problem in process
or do you communicate with anything external: Redis vs. HasMap. It's not
comparable to levels in programming languages.
~~~
Detrus
What about a programming language that integrates fancy cogs so they're
conceptually in process? Do I want to know the difference between sorting in
the native data-structure and Redis? Hopefully not, the language/compiler
could make that call.
Programmer could specify how much data he's sorting, how fast he needs it
sorted, how much data he'll get after each sort and the language will decide
which cog to use for best performance. You don't need to know what Redis,
Riak, or native data-structures are.
~~~
route66
Hmmm ... aren't _these_ cogs called libraries?
But the question was: can I afford to go through a tcp socket (and that's a
long way, possibly even to another machine) or not. A language cannot cover
this up.
~~~
Detrus
Yes they're probably libraries, but in the language of the future that covers
everything up you wouldn't know such distinctions.
Why can't a lib/lang cover it up? You tell it how much data will be stored and
transferred. It will benchmark various approaches, having separate DB nodes or
not, determine how many users each setup can support. The developer would need
to be aware that 5000 users can fit into a $10 per month box. When he wants
more users, he gets more boxes. If he wants more users per box he must cut
expensive features.
Amazon DynamoDB does something along those lines by asking the dev to specify
how much data to store and how many transfers to expect. The details of
setting up nodes, how many nodes, how they're sharded, hashed, are hidden.
------
dgreensp
This article, and the Hickey talk to a greater extent, present a coherent but
one-sided argument about elevating simplicity and understanding above human
concerns in software engineering.
It's true that, as a programmer, you should strive for simple, "correct by
inspection" code when possible. And the better a programmer you are, the more
you will see and take opportunities to write a bit of code instead of roping
in a third-party library, to use a small library instead of a big library, or
use a library instead of another process, thus avoiding large swaths of
complexity, the bane of software development. On the flip side, poor engineers
may make large errors of judgment in this area.
However, a bias against powerful, off-the-shelf tools or a disdain for the
"familiar" over the "objectively simpler" is no better. The line between a
one-man (or few-man) project and a bigger project is where this really starts
to matter. News flash: You can't get that "my code feels correct" feeling (the
one that's supposed to substitute for a formal proof your entire system works)
when other people are writing it. When putting together a team, using
technologies that are "familiar" doesn't seem so intellectually lazy -- and
many popular technologies are actually very understandable and well-
engineered. Finally, I'm taken by end-to-end testing and Eric Ries's "immune
system" metaphor as a way to ensure correctness of a complicated system in
practice.
If you're making something big, you might have to put down the microscope. If
you're making a tapestry, you need to have multiple threads entwined and stay
cool.
~~~
willvarfar
Nicely put.
Do you think `new ConcurrentHashSplayTree<String,int>()` is slower and less
space efficient than roping in a Redis server as the LRU?
Didn't think so. That was more my rant, though.
------
abhaga
I have experienced this dilemma in a different domain: machine learning. You
can either go the Hadoop way and commit to simpler algorithms that can be run
in distributed manner or you can keep pushing the single machine more and more
by use of ever more clever algorithms. Unfortunately, it is hardly ever
possible to follow the route of push-single-machine-to-max -> thorw-more-
machines-in. The distributed way and shared memory way of doing things often
differ in fundamental ways.
Going with big data tool chains from the start is often a overkill for small
experiments. But once you outgrow one machine, the pain of undoing all the
nice (algorithmic) tricks is also quite severe.
Perhaps it is time to accept that we now produce data at a rate that
distributed is going to be the way to process it. But this also means that
some of the techniques available for scaling to larger data sets may need to
be given up.
~~~
mjw
I'm hoping the <http://graphlab.org/> approach may help bridge the gap a bit
here...
------
jconley
Developers (myself included) worry too much about future unlikely pain and
suffering, especially the degree of said suffering. Maybe you spend a few
weeks here and there rewriting things. Big Deal.
Scalability and performance is complicated. Unless you KNOW your product will
have a big splash, premature optimization will kill your productivity. And you
will get it wrong. You will get the implementation wrong. You will optimize
the wrong things and not really understand your bottlenecks. Especially if
you've never scaled anything before and haven't been bitten twice by all the
compromises you have to make.
Distributed systems are hard. Multi-threading is hard. Sharding is hard. CAP
is a bitch. If you can scale vertically, do it. Avoid the demons of
distributed work until you require them.
Most of the services/apps we build today would do just fine with setups like
Mailinator or _gasp_ ACID-compliant data stores.
------
VikingCoder
"The first enemy of performance is multiple machines. The fewer machines that
need to talk to perform a transaction, the quicker it is."
That is not strictly accurate. He's taking one aspect of performance -
communication latency - and expanding that to be a universal truth of
performance.
Pixar's render farms are good. Google data centers are good.
When you're CPU bound, more CPUs can make you faster. Note the specific use of
the word "can," as in "sometimes."
~~~
willvarfar
(blog author) conceded
Listing all the exceptions that prove the rule wasn't quite the kind of
programmer that I was ranting against
~~~
jacques_chester
You might find that Gunther's "Universal Law of Computational Scalability" to
be enlightening.
------
luigi
For most startups, embracing a cloud architecture just makes sense. You're
building an MVP and want to get it out in front of users. Deploying on
something like Heroku and using the add-ons is one of the best ways to focus
on your product and not on your server. Then when you have a success, step
back and evaluate your tech stack.
To me, the primary advantage of all this new-fangled web server technology is
the improved developer experience, not the performance implications.
~~~
jcromartie
If you can put together an app on Heroku, you can configure a web app server.
I don't really see how Herkou saves much work over AWS and Linode. It might
take a few minutes or a few hours, but if you know how to SSH in and run
"rails server" you've got a platform for your MVP.
You can then easily evolve your app server in whatever direction you need to.
~~~
jasim
Heroku gives you a load balancer and auto-scaling. Time not spent in having to
configure and maintain that piece of infrastructure is time spent in working
on the MVP.
Another benefit of writing code targeting platforms like Heroku is that when
your app gains traction you can easily scale since the app would've been
(forced to be) written keeping horizontal scaling in mind.
~~~
jcromartie
What are the odds that your MVP needs load balancing and auto-scaling? It's
far more likely that your app could run in a single process on a single box
for a very long time.
~~~
groby_b
As always, it's a matter of thinking about that up-front.
At what point is this a project that can be considered self-sustaining? (i.e.
pays for its own development). Can you reach that point with a single box?
And if you can, do you have some leeway for growth after that point so you can
actually develop a more scalable solution?
For some projects, that results in being OK with a single proc/single box
approach. For other projects, you realize that unless you acquire
${LARGE_USER_COUNT} users quickly, you might as well give up on it - so you
have to build in some scalability.
There's also expected growth rate - if for whatever reason you think your
project might easily grow from single box to "needs more than one" in a short
amount of time, you better plan for that.
It's that whole "horses for courses" thing ;)
------
DanI-S
This article starts by saying that there is something badly wrong with modern
programmers.
It then details and critiques the way a typical one-man, one-site 'startup' is
using discrete 'cogs' to build his system, presumably whilst learning how to
market, build customer relationships and develop a beautiful and compelling
product that makes enough money to keep him afloat.
I think the author may be missing the point. An elegant and sustainable back-
end does not directly correlate with an elegant and sustainable business.
~~~
mst
I don't think so.
Is installing and configuring Redis, installing and configuring a client
library, and integrating the usage of that client library with your system
really a better use of a one-man startup developer's time than writing
new HashMap
and going back and fixing it later if it matters?
I had a three hour argument the other night with a developer trying to
implement some sort of complex logic involving caching for a fairly small
blacklist file. I eventually had to make him go away and benchmark it ... at
which point he realised what my original point was - loading that file off
disk and parsing it on every request it was needed was actually faster than
talking to a cache to get a pre-parsed version.
Overengineering is still overengineering, even when most of the components you
use to do it are provided by somebody else.
~~~
gizzlon
I see your point, and if all you need is a HashMap then use a HashMap.
But if that data in the HashMap must be available to another process, or you
need more "features", Redis suddenly looks like a very easy solution.
~~~
jshen
The point is that you don't need multiple processes and Redis most of the
time. Your site can easily be served from one box and one process.
~~~
jasim
Even multiple threads - any sort of concurrent access/modification on the same
dataset becomes problematic if you just use a HashMap.
Sites that have any kind of download/upload component, even though does not
have too much traffic, will need to serve multiple requests using
threads/processes.
That is where we normally use relational database. However Redis presents a
way to be faster than conventional databases by storing everything in memory.
This is as close to a concurrency-safe HashMap that you can get with the least
amount of effort.
~~~
willvarfar
But Java comes with several currency-safe hash-maps and trees and such - where
have you been?
If you think that blocking TCP calls to a redis server that serialises
everything is going to be faster than a `new HashSplayTree<String>()` you're
absolutely bonkers.
------
hythloday
I think this analysis is not quite as cut-and-dried as the author thinks it
is.
1\. Latency. Yes, going out-of-process, even to localhost, is very expensive,
and the person the author was responding to should realize that. On the other
hand, synchronization is _also_ very expensive. How do they compare? I have no
idea[0], and I'm not about to guess. The author shouldn't either.
2\. Concurrency. Paul Tyma specifically talks about a "synchronized
LinkedHashMap" as the implementation of a cache, so I'm going to take him at
his word, understanding it might be a simplification. A synchronized Map is a
poor implementation for a cache, because reads will block writes when they
don't need to. A better implementation would be a ReentrantReadWriteLock
protecting an _unsynchronized_ LinkedHashMap. Redis gives you this behaviour
for free (even if you don't know of the existence of ReadWriteLock).
3\. Memory usage. Let's be honest--Java is a _pig_ for memory[2] compared to
C++, and this is nowhere more apparent than indexing and caching the
guaranteed 8-bit strings you'd find in an email. If your whole purpose is to
fit more lines into your cache it's genuinely worth considering breaking out
of the JVM to exploit the smaller memory footprint of C++ strings (and this
really only holds for caches).
Was using a LinkedHashMap a good idea for Mailinator? Probably, I definitely
don't have any evidence or suspicion to the contrary. Is it sensible to say
"COGS BAD! IN-PROCESS GOOD" for every use-case? Not really.
[0] If I had to guess I would imagine that going out-of-process is 1-2 orders
of magnitude slower than contended synchronization. Anyone got any figures?
[1]
[http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/concurren...](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/concurrent/locks/ReentrantReadWriteLock.html)
[2] I would be very surprised if Redis was not more than twice as memory-
efficient _for this task_ as a LinkedHashMap. I'm pretty sure that one could
implement a C++ solution that would be 3-4x as efficient. This is really only
of paramount concern in a caching context, but in that context, it's
paramount, because the cost of missing the cache is so phenomenal.
~~~
eridius
Isn't a read-write lock only really useful if you have more readers than
writers? I would not be surprised if the amount of incoming spam means
mailinator has far more writing to do than reading.
~~~
hythloday
Maybe! My point isn't that Mailinator made the wrong choice (in fact I said
they probably made the right one)--it's that the decision for a situation we
know nothing about is more complex than "Cogs bad".
------
Argorak
I think performance is far too often used as a reason to add cogs, others are
far better. If you often replace parts, more cogs are great. We have a really
low-yield setup at one of our clients that is nevertheless splitted: ane
process imports media data from a huge number of content providers and is
split into 3 parts - an importer that normalizes all data, a queue as a
binding and a reencoding process. The reason why we did this is easy: the
queue is running for two years straight now, the encoding process was deployed
once last year (we changed our logging strategy) and the importer process is
deployed around 4-5 times each week. Not having to bring the whole machine to
a grinding halt on each of those occurences is a major benefit.
------
strictfp
It's about daring to KISS. Only a select few dare to stand up against the
hype.
------
mistercow
> If you can use a local in-process data-store (sqllite, levelDB, BDB etc)
> you’ll be winning massively.
Hold on just a sec. SQLite? Isn't that essentially equivalent to saying "If
you never have to concern yourself with database locking, you'll be winning
massively?" How can we be talking about scalability and SQLite in the same
article?
~~~
willvarfar
If an rdbms suits you, absolutely start with sqlite.
Code cost of migrating to something external when thats worth it? About a
connect string...
~~~
mistercow
Well no arguments there. So is your point that small sites should focus on
small site performance and not try to optimize prematurely for scalability?
~~~
willvarfar
Yes, and furthermore its the complete ignorance of how technology works that
could lead to someone imagining that Redis could be a faster LRU than a `new
ConcurrentHashSplayTree<String>()` in a single-process Java server (or equiv).
Apart from all the subtlety of not throwing away evicted lines until the last
mail that uses them is discarded and such.
How can people think that mailnator is slow because its not using web 2.0
sauce?
------
Simucal
Maybe I'm being the kind of developer that the blogger was talking about, but
would it be such a bad idea for a Mailinator like site to use Redis to store
the email messages but hosted on the same box as the web server?
At least that way, if you started to hit memory limits it would be relatively
simple to scale out to more machines by moving Redis to its own box. It would
be a configuration change rather than having to re-architect your custom LRU
cache.
Another benefit would be that you could get disk persistence for free while
still staying fast. If Mailinator needs to reboot all the emails are lost.
That wouldn't necessarily have to happen if he was using Redis.
~~~
cmarshall
Running Redis on the same server still adds overhead to the system, to store
an object in a map that's on the Java heap doesn't require any inter-process
communication or serialization. Plus it's another point of failure, what if
the Redis process stops but the Java process is still running? If Redis is
remote, what happens if the network goes down? Keeping everything within the
JVM avoids having to think about those failure scenarios.
I don't know how Mailinator is coded, but I'd guess he hasn't written anything
too custom for storing key/value pairs in memory, there are plenty of Java
caching implementations, the key thing he has done is work out a way of
reducing the duplication, which Redis won't provide out of the box.
Mailinator is a great example of having the minimal set of features required
and no more. There's no logins, no setup steps and no guarantees. This allows
Mailinator to run on such minimal hardware, adding disk persistence would add
complication without making the product better, by definition the kind of
emails you send to Mailinator aren't important, so if they're lost during the
occasional restart it doesn't detract from the service.
------
chaostheory
As for the cogs argument, this is all I have to say: silicon is still cheap,
and carbon is still more expensive.
------
davidw
I think it makes a lot more sense to focus on 1) what differentiates you,
which may well involve lots of custom code, and 2) finding a market that works
out for you.
For mailinator, they were already popular, so it makes sense to do some one-
off coding to make things faster/more efficient. Perhaps, were mailinator
starting up today though, using Redis as a good first step would have beaten
whatever they had before, and would have been 'good enough' for longer.
Once you've got to the point where you're getting popular, then worry about
making stuff scale up.
------
buckeyeCoder
Scalablity is nice, but what about redundancy? Not every website can go down
for 6 hours while a tech repairs a host in a data center.
There are also challenges with putting all components on a single host. It's
simple, but the components are not all going to scale the same way. And
depending on how the datastore is partitioned, you'll still make remote calls
anyway.
~~~
mst
I've seen at least as many outages caused by problems in the additional
complexity implemented to avoid having a single point of failure as I've seen
outages caused by having one.
Plus given something like drbd having a cold spare that's trivial to spin up
isn't that hard to do (and has the nice advantage of being relatively data
storage technology agnostic).
~~~
spudlyo
The not-so-nice disadvantage that your cold spare can't actually do any work
(like serve read traffic) and that if your application itself corrupts data
DRBD will dutifully mirror that corruption. Hopefully the spare can still
perform well with cold caches, but I guess a slow site is considerably better
than a dead one.
~~~
mst
If your secondary is doing work, then you'll get a performance degradation
from losing the primary anyway.
The difference here is that once the slave's warmed up you're back to full
speed, whereas with a hot-spare-being-read-from the performance degradation
lasts until you bring the other box back.
Any such corruption is effectively a buggy update - normal replication will
propagate a buggy write just as happily, and even if it crashed the node
entirely there's a good chance your application's retry logic will re-run the
write against the slave in a moment.
------
srdev
By the same token, I've inherited projects where the developer did not take
scalability into account and avoided "cogs" for quick development turn-around.
Putting the "cogs" in afterwards was incredibly painful, and a lot of
development effort could have been saved if some thought was put into the
architecture.
Quips about premature optimization often make the assumption that any
optimization is premature. If data or usage growth (or uptime guarantees, for
that matter) is an inevitability, then its often worthwhile to have at least
some plan to grow your system beyond a single machine.
------
swah
This reminded me of <http://teddziuba.com/2010/10/taco-bell-programming.html>
------
malachismith
the trouble is that the Cogs Model (as it is put here) allows you to get shit
done with lower skill levels. sure, it won't be perfect. and yes, if you had
better programmers you could do it better. but these are pragmatic timse for
most of us.
so he's right (in the abstract).
but for the reality most of us operate in he's wrong because Done is Better
than Perfect.
that said... the "New is Good" thing needs to die. We're not freaking magpies
people.
------
Drbble
Is mailinator a profitable business, or a volunteer project accountable to no
bottom line? Both are fine, but the difference may inform design choices.
How expensively does the developer value his time? Has he already made in
investment in learning certain technology?
~~~
willvarfar
You can get these answers by reading the mailinator blog as the article
encourages you to ;)
------
nirvana
I love posts like this because, love it or hate it, it gives me a checkmark of
thoughts to compare my choices to.
I see three possible approaches, all with their advantages and disadvantages.
(Of course people may fit between them with a mixture of attributes.)
1\. Monolithic - Build it all yourself, purpose built and high performance.
This is why mailinator and plenty-of-fish are able to produce high thruput on
a surprisingly small number of machines.
2\. Confederated - Completely distributed. Each machine is its own monolithic
platform with everything from DNS to database, including web server on that
node, but a cluster of nodes gives you scalability, and workload is
distributed across the cluster. (I'm not aware of any examples of this, which
is why I'm building Nirvana.)
3\. COGS: You build your cluster of machines by architecting a system whereby
you minimize (but not eliminate) single points of failure. You have N web
server machines and X database machines and you seek out really high
performance open source cogs to keep the number of machines low (e.g.: Redis,
MongoDB, etc.)
The COGS approach is often taken with the idea that we need something really
fast. MongoDB being fast (and "SQL") are the reasons its often chosen. Redis
being fast is given as a key advantage (which is relevant for an in memory
database, sure.) Node.js is often chosen for similar reasons.
But the ends result of the COGS approach is a brittle architecture. You may
have multiple redundant web servers but the thing that distributes loads is a
SPF. More specifically the architecture is complicated- each machine has a
different configuration, etc.
With Monolithic, you get performance, and save hosting costs, and you can
probably scale pretty well because you know your system really well, and
you've squeezed out a lot of the inefficiencies that come from being generic
(in the cogs approach) such that you can interoperate.
What I think we should see more of is confederated- no machine is a unique
snowflake. Every machine is identical to every other machine. This way
configuration becomes dead simple-- just replicate your model node, bring it
up and data and load starts going to it.
This can be done with cogs- but they have to be fully distributed cogs. An
example is Riak (Which hit 1.1 yesterday) which is open source and written in
erlang and probably loses to nodeDB in every single single node benchmark you
can come up with (not that the Basho people have designed it to be slow, quite
the contrary.) But where's the fully distributed web platform for such an
architecture? (If you have an answer, please make this question non-
rhetorical. I'm putting a lot of time into building one because I couldn't
find one.)
An interesting thing about the confederated approach is, because each machine
is identical, it could be built in a monolithic fashion. Thus super optimized
for its purpose. I'm using a sorta cogs approach because there are many good
erlang cogs to use in my project.
But I think the big mistake is to focus on single node performance these days.
Servers are relatively cheap, and you need more than one anyway for
redundancy, so might as well have a cluster and no single points of failure.
~~~
nirvana
For the life of me, I can't edit the above post. 5 attempts, all eaten by the
HN monster.
When talking about benchmarks, I meant to say: "and probably loses to nodeDB
in every single one-machine benchmark you can come up with (not that the Basho
people have designed it to be slow, quite the contrary.)"
Finally the conclusion of the post:
Further, the only inter-machine communication should be at the database layer.
(very little needed elsewhere) so as a result:
1\. Confederation of nodes that talk to each other to keep the databases
consistent. With RIAK this means that one update only affects three nodes
(with n=3).
2\. The whole layer cake, DNS to Database, including web server, application
services, queues, etc, is present on every machine. No single point of failure
(if you use DNS round robin to spread load, otherwise your load balancer is
the SPF).
3\. Further, this layer cake, while composed of erlang cogs is mostly
monolithic, as far as the programmer is concerned. You write your code in
javascript or coffeescript and push it into the database. Each node is like a
google App Engine, and you write handlers, and those handlers are run
concurrently across the system.
4\. Want more performance? Add servers, or upgrade some of your servers. Node
went down in the middle of the night? Go back to sleep. (Or write a simple
client test you can run from your iPhone to make sure there wasn't some sort
of cascading failure and the service is still up.)
5\. Almost zero operations, zero cluster architecture engineering work. No
worrying about EBS being terribly slow (go dedicated machines for these nodes,
btw) or any of that hassles. The engineer just writes javascript handlers and
worries about CSS and javascript for the browser, etc.
For me, that idea is nirvana. Nirvana may not be right for you... but
confederation has to be the future.
~~~
NyxWulf
The systems I work on are pretty sizable in scale, right now we are doing
about 120 million calls a day on one of core clusters. I don't claim to be the
end all authority on scaling, but I do have some observations based on what
I've dealt with.
First off, that type of architecture is brittle to logic changes. If you have
a completely static architecture that you don't need to change it may be fine,
but deploying those changes to every machine in the cluster is problematic.
Second, not all components have the same underlying machine requirements. For
instance, our nginx servers don't need much ram, but the HAProxy load
balancers with nginx that terminate SSL need a lot of Ram and a good chunk of
CPU. Hadoop works better with JBOD (Just a bunch of disks), whereas cassandra
seems to work better with a raid 0 configuration. Certain layers like the
Nginx through certain paths have real time requirements which means ultra low
latency. Other things need to operate against massive data sets and compute
answers in a few hours.
So, not every machine in your architecture can have all of the services
required by every other part of your architecture. A lot of it depends on
workload types and what the underlying requirements are for your system. There
are many more reasons, but I'll leave it at those for now. Ultimately the post
is right that a single machine can work very well, but it's also misguided in
just dismissing the HN commenter. There are many other cases where distributed
architectures are required. Guaranteeing robustness and performance in the
face of service and machine failures is very difficult, and is essentially
impossible on a single machine.
Which approach you apply depends, it depends on the unique situation and the
unique constraints you have. Using a single model to solve all problems seems
to be worse than using no model. Learn multiple models, learn how and when to
apply each (yes - for those of you in the class, I'm taking the model thinking
class :) ).
~~~
willvarfar
The kind of programmer I was ranting against is the kind who thinks redis LRU
is faster than `new HashSplayTree<String>()`
Apart from missing the subtle bit about overriding eviction...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Progressive loading of high DPI photos - billowycoat
https://www.willmcgugan.com/blog/tech/post/progressive-loading-of-high-dpi-photos/
======
hinkley
It's too bad none of the lossy image formats ever implemented a progressive
display mode. PNG has one but the overhead of lossless just isn't manageable
most of the time.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Who Owns Kafka? (2011) - djoldman
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n05/judith-butler/who-owns-kafka
======
gwern
> What no one could have predicted, however, is that a trial would eventually
> take place after Esther’s death in which her daughters, Eva and Ruth, would
> claim that no one needs to inventory the materials and that the value of the
> manuscripts should be determined by their weight – quite literally, by what
> they weigh. As one of the attorneys representing Hoffe’s estate explained:
> ‘If we get an agreement, the material will be offered for sale as a single
> entity, in one package. It will be sold by weight … They’ll say: “There’s a
> kilogram of papers here, the highest bidder will be able to approach and see
> what’s there.” The National Library [of Israel] can get in line and make an
> offer, too.’
That's a very strange auction strategy. You would think that a proper
cataloguing would increase the amount you would earn, and it could be done by
a hired gun for cheap (since Kafka experts would clamor for access). From a
game theory perspective, refusal to disclose contents should, by the
'unraveling' argument, drastically lower the value of the papers to rational
bidders since it is a strong indication that the contents are worth a lot less
than prospective bidders previously estimated before the refusal (since if the
contents were as valuable or _more_ valuable, the owners would have incentive
to reveal to ensure the price or raise it; absence of evidence is evidence of
absence).
One possibility is that they are counting on bidders being irrational and
desperate, in which case refusing to disclose keeps valuations irrationally
high and exploits the winner's curse; possibly the strategy here is to make
the Israeli National Library overpay because it is committed by
ethnonationalism to pay whatever price necessary, and revealing the contents
risks either public criticism of the National Library overpaying or scaring
away other bidders as they learn the papers are boring & losing leverage over
the National Library.
------
xamuel
>In 1988 she sold the manuscript of The Trial for $2 million, at which point
it became clear that one could turn quite a profit from Kafka
To some, $2 million would be a bargain for, say, a new Kafka novel.
The conspiracy theorist side of me has often wondered whether maybe Kafka did
it intentionally. Intentionally left his novels unfinished, intentionally
started a legend that he requested them to be destroyed unpublished, etc. It
would certainly resonate with the tones and themes that permeate his works.
Perhaps he himself realized that no ending could possibly suit a novel like
"The Castle" better than the unfinished lack-of-ending he gave it, which makes
our hearts yearn so strongly for an ending, and which is such a great parallel
with the futility of the novel itself.
~~~
myWindoonn
You have it exactly backwards; Kafka was one of those artists who can only
perceive the flaws, not the qualities, of their artwork. He was ashamed and
wanted to be forgotten by history.
------
ekimekim
For the curious, this trial was eventually resolved in favour of Israel's
national library, on the grounds that this was Max Brod's instructions in his
will:
"But Judge Kopelman Pardo rejected Ms. Hoffe’s claim that the papers were a
gift from Mr. Brod to her mother, instead viewing them as a trust she was to
administer. The judge noted that Mr. Brod’s 1948 will instructed that his
archive go to a “public Jewish library or archive in Palestine,” and that he
later specified Hebrew University, where Israel’s national library is housed."
[https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/world/middleeast/woman-
mu...](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/world/middleeast/woman-must-
relinquish-kafka-papers-judge-says.html)
------
gnulinux
Not very related to the article, but I'd like to get some opinions from HN
community (if I may). I've read quite a few books and short stories of Kafka
(I think all(?) his novels and some short stories like _The Metamorphisis_ ,
_A Report to an Academy_ ) but most of them were really struggling readings
for me and some incomplete (I never got to the very end of _The Trial_ ). His
short stories, I read cover to cover in one sitting, and they were very
enjoyable readings. I also read _Amerika_ (his first novel) cover to cover
pretty fast and it was very enjoyable too. His other works, I find very
challenging for reasons unknown to me. Kafka has a certain literary style that
feels very enjoyable, reading it gives me so much joy, so it's definitely not
that I didn't like them. It's also definitely not boredom, some Kafkaesque
"exaggeratedly long" scenes were pretty interesting and reminds me of
Tarantino (not that there is any direct artistic resemblance, it just gives me
similar type of enjoyment). Deeper ideas argued in novels are also
interesting, and I like reading other authors trying to express similar ideas.
But overall, reading Kafka is for some reason really hard for me. It takes too
long relative other books I read, I lose focus very easily and it eternally
feels like I'm missing some pieces of both the plot and the artistic structure
etc... I also read authors that have been major inspiration to Kafka like
Dostoevsky and never had the same problem. Did anyone else have this problem?
I'd like to hear some tips from literary folks here to help me read Kafka
better.
EDIT: As absurd as it sounds, I had similar feelings when reading his letters
to Milena. I read that book twice, it's one of those books I really like but I
had similar problems mentioned above.
~~~
xamuel
He only did three novels, so you've already finished 1/3 of them.
The Castle: The only difficulty here is some conversations take forever
(probably because they were never revised). I'd suggest just plowing through
them the first time, your eyes might glaze over and you'll miss stuff in them
but it's ok, you can pick more stuff up on later readings. I've read The
Castle many times and I still pick up new stuff from it.
The Trial: There's really only one chapter that's difficult, the penultimate
chapter set in the cathedral. You could literally just skip it, if you're
having trouble with it. You'll miss some self-contained goodies like "Before
The Law", but you can always come back later. It has been said that except for
the first and last chapters, most chapters in The Trial can be rearranged and
read in whatever order you like. I seem to recall someone even created some
sort of physical version of the book where you could literally swap chapters
around.
~~~
gnulinux
The Castle, I really liked, much more than The Trial, but I couldn't finish
that either. I don't exactly recall where was I stuck but I remember literally
struggling to read as if studying Algorithms or Machine Learning. I read it
both in English and German with similar difficulty.
The Trial was the only thing I read from Kafka that I found kinda meh and
boring-ish, again made it a bit more than half way. I tried reading The Trial
at least 3 times, maybe more, with same faith every time. (I eventually
learned its ending in a literature class, but given other works of Kafka, it
was very predictable). I'll give it a shot again and maybe skip chapters where
I lose focus and come back later.
------
tutfbhuf
Also interesting but unrelated:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Kafka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Kafka)
------
dgllghr
At first glance I thought the answer was going to be LinkedIn...
~~~
th3iedkid
Quoting from Apache Kafka's wiki page
> According to a Quora post from 2014, Kreps chose to name the software after
> the author Franz Kafka because it is "a system optimized for writing", and
> he liked Kafka's work Source:
> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Kafka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Kafka)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Samsung Blu-ray players are rebooting in a loop and nobody knows why - pessimizer
https://www.zdnet.com/article/samsung-blu-ray-players-are-rebooting-in-a-loop-and-nobody-knows-why/
======
mrlonglong
Got one myself but I've not used it for years. Maybe I'll dust it off and see
if it boot loops like a fruit loop!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why you should NOT get a free domain name from your web host - elorant
https://purely.space/do-not-get-free-domain-name-from-web-hosting-company/
======
why-oh-why
This makes no sense. The domain is not free, there’s a reason why these plans
are yearly: you’re paying for the yearly domain registration as part of the
domain+hosting.
The domain is still yours and you can move it later just like any other
domain.
There’s virtually no disadvantage in this deal unless the provider prevents
you from changing DNS records.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Do you keep a work journal/diary? How? - gt384u
I've observed over the years that people who I respected as "good at what they do" disproportionately often use a journal to keep track of their work.<p>I'm starting a job soon and want to try doing this for myself as I'd like to be able to reflect on what it is that I do. One obvious solution to this is a bound paper notebook and pen, which have nice properties of taking both text and images easily with pen or pencil, but suffer from not being searchable and are yet another thing to carry. Also, as a software engineer I find I can type much faster than I can write.<p>Another option I'm investigating is using emacs and org-mode, but I haven't found a way to nicely embed images into emacs besides ASCII art with artist-mode, which I find to be relatively crude for the sort of sketching I typically do.<p>How do you guys go about journaling for work? If you include images along with your text, how do you do it? Bonus points for lightweight or portable solutions.
======
paulsutter
My email from 1982 was a pretty good journal of my high school life and work
(I was a programmer).
Today my text messages are a good journal of my personal life, email a good
journal of my work, and my Facebook timeline a good journal of my interests (I
post news I find really interesting).
Those are all "implicit" journals but they work pretty well. I can "relive"
the financial crisis by reading my facebook timeline.
If you want a pure, deliberate journal, today that would take the form of a
blog. I wonder how many people still keep a private, deliberate journal along
the lines of an old school diary. Interesting survey maybe.
------
dtromero
I use a dedicated gmail address. Here's why: (1) It's portable. I can send
myself an email from my phone, laptop, ipad, etc. (2) It's searchable. I can
go back and search for specific keywords or topics I wrote about. (3) It's
easy to organize. I can label my posts as personal/work/etc and setup filters
to apply these labels based on the subject line. (4) Short learning curve. I
use my personal gmail account everyday. & (5) It's relatively secure.
Edit: (6) It's free.
~~~
U_U
You should check out <http://evernote.com/>.
------
rasengan0
i currently use deft + org-mode 6.33 in cygwin emacs -nw trying to ween off 7
years of tiddlywiki (tw). currently i'm finding friction with search having
been spoiled on the excellent YourSearch UI <http://tiddlywiki.abego-
software.de/> tw will support imgs inline but with org-mode i just use links
and view from the host OS. After years of trying everything the only bit of
wisdom that has worked consistently is ISO date stamp everything in any system
(client or cloud) so you can extract a log later for archiving and analysis.
no xml, json just one log record prefixed with iso date for sorting
([0-9]{4}(\\.|\\-)?[0-9]{2}(\\.|\\-)?[0-9]{2}(\s|T)?[0-9]{2}\:.+) KISS
actually is slick
------
fourmii
I've been using Evernote. And recently, I started using Trello as a PM tool to
help me organize my tasks. They're both free and have decent iphone apps,
which I often use when I'm at events and meetups and don't want to use my
laptop. Another huge plus: both are free.
------
j45
I've recently (and finally) turned to Evernote. They've got it figured out
quite well.
------
jordhy
I use Day One as a professional journal and Path for personal stuff.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Notebook.js – render IPython notebooks client-side - jsvine
https://github.com/jsvine/notebookjs
======
jsvine
Demo here:
[https://jsvine.github.io/notebookjs/demo/](https://jsvine.github.io/notebookjs/demo/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
3D Touch: Beyond Peek and Pop - dzlobin
https://medium.com/produkt-blog/3d-force-touch-beyond-peek-pop-c448edc2b1f5#.cb7le2r1w
======
cheepin
One interesting thing he brought up is that as a developer, you can't develop
as if everyone is using a 3D Touch device, because they aren't so you just add
some enhancements to your product for the 6S(+) users.
This means among other things, it will be easier for Apple to abandon the idea
if it ends up not being worth it, since it is such a small part of the UX of
the devices, or even replace it with some other mode of interaction.
~~~
btmiller
I still get the occasional app update adding support for Touch ID. So I think
with hardware features like these, the full potential won't be completely
realized until these devices are a few years old and it's near impossible to
come across someone that doesn't have that feature on their model of iPhone.
------
interpol_p
The first video really impressed me. It genuinely looks like he is depressing
a 3D button into the screen. I was pretty skeptical of the name "3D Touch" at
first, but that video sells the idea better than Apple did.
------
JoBrad
It would be neat to adjust how fast a video is scrubbed using 3D Touch (I have
a 6, so have no idea if the Photos app does this already).
------
personjerry
That last video could make for an interesting small game.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What we get wrong about time - quickfox
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191203-what-we-get-wrong-about-time
======
netfl0
> The more memories you can create for yourself in everyday life, the longer
> your life will feel when you look back.
The article is about our perception of time passing, not really about time
itself. I noticed her book also has the term perception in the title which
clarifies the topic.
~~~
k__
That's reasonable.
If we are born, we don't know anything, so many of the new things we learn are
valuable memories. The older we get, the more we know. What we see today can
be the same known stuff we already saw yesterday. That's just a logical
conclusion.
But there is also a thing we can affect, and that is to do something we didn't
do before, there are probably more than enough acitivities on earth we can
choose from.
If we do the same thing for years, our past gets blurry, but if we do new
things once in a while we got something to hold on to.
Problem is, the older we get, the more we want to do the stuff we already
know, so by being conservative in our choices you rob us of our past.
------
mark-r
To see this in action, watch the movie "Click".
------
madmaniak
Obviously time doesn't exist. Too much confusion about it in popular science
articles makes people hard to understand it. Like here
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19170233](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19170233).
~~~
close04
You “supported” your statement with another instance of you making the same
statement somewhere else.
This bit of the article should clear any misunderstanding on whether the
existence of time is relevant for this discussion. Regardless of the actual
existence of time, our perception of it is certainly real.
> Of course, although some physicists propose that time does not exist, time
> perception – our sense of time – does.
~~~
madmaniak
I just link to another related discussion I know about - you're right, that it
is thanks to my participation.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Edward Snowden speaks at Sam Adams award presentation in Moscow - vrepsys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48zQ7q7VxYI
======
Intimatik
I Wish I was there to shake his hand.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Three Dead Protocols - englishm
http://blog.annharter.com/2015/07/15/three-dead-protocols.html
======
userbinator
I think trivial protocols like this are a good thing to start with for
educational purposes, because implementing one correctly does require quite a
bit of effort for someone who has had no experience with networking or RFCs.
Even for something as simple as QOTD the implementer has to consider things
like message lengths and interpret terms like "should" (a recommendation, not
an obligatory condition for compliance.) Observe that the standard also
doesn't mandate that the message must change only once per day, so the
implementation presented is compliant. :-)
For TCP Echo, because TCP is a stream-oriented protocol and AFAIK since you
can't actually send and receive _simultaneously_ in code - it's always read or
write - the question of how much to echo back, and after how long, is also
something to consider. Theoretically, an echo server could wait to send until
several GB of data were received or the connection is closed, buffering the
data limitlessly, and still be compliant. This also shows the importance of
being clear and precise when writing standards or protocol specifications in
general, should you ever need to do so.
~~~
icebraining
_AFAIK since you can 't actually send and receive simultaneously in code -
it's always read or write_
Sure you can, there's no problem having a thread writing while another reads
in parallel.
~~~
userbinator
I did consider that scenario, but I suppose what really happens is dependent
upon the duplex of the medium, how the network stack handles it (there's
certainly a nontrivial amount of synchronisation required...), and if the CPU
is multicore. WiFi for sure is half-duplex so I think the two threads will
just alternately run.
------
linuxlizard
Late 90's I did firmware for print servers. The echo server was pretty
important to us for testing our hand-rolled TCP/IP stack.
Print server management was done through a Telnet interface. We also supported
LPD which was one of the stupider protocols ever to see the light of day.
I added a QOTD service to the firmware as an easter egg.
I'm going to go soak my teeth now.
------
Animats
As I mentioned when someone brought up the history of UDP, the original idea
was that datagram protocols would be implemented at the IP level, as seen
here. UDP offers the same functionality, but one level higher. In BSD, it was
easier to do things from user space at the UDP level rather than at the IP
level, and adding new protocols directly above IP fell out of favor.
Try to get an IP packet that's not TCP, UDP, or ICMP through a consumer level
Internet provider.
~~~
ghshephard
I've never had much difficulty with ESP (protocol 50), 6in4 (Protocol 41), or
GRE (protocol 47). By and large, if it's IP, your packet will get to the
destination without too much filtering in North America with most of the major
ISPs (Comcast, AT&T, etc...)
I can't speak for other countries.
~~~
batou
GRE tends to bugger off down a hole in a lot of ISPs in the UK from
experience. Very annoying.
~~~
ghshephard
Is that a routing issue, or a fragmentation problem? Reducing your MTU on a
GRE link _greatly_ improves performance.
I'd be interested in hearing if there were any ISPs that didn't just forward
GRE packets using normal IP routing conventions.
~~~
batou
Absolutely no idea. AFAIK they just disappear into a void.
Used to be like this on Demon, Virgin Media and Easynet. The latter fixed
their stuff circa 2007 however.
------
achillean
These protocols may be deprecated, they may be unused and they may be out of
sight but they aren't completely dead yet:
[https://www.shodan.io/report/9xshqrdb](https://www.shodan.io/report/9xshqrdb)
Many of these old protocols don't die easily and tend to linger around
forever. Maybe there's a nostalgic element to keeping them alive for sysadmins
:)
~~~
billyhoffman
Take Shodan results with a grain of salt. When you look at the entire IP4
space, you will find a little of anything.
In a decade of doing pen tests in a mix of professionally capacity and
informally for friends, I have never seen echo or daytime, and saw QOTD once
on a test box on the CS department of a university.
Of course, working with organizations who sought out someone to do a pentest
probably self-selects out networks which would have this kind of nonsense.
Reducing attack surface by turning off services or blocking them at various
firewalls has been standard operating procedure for IT for at least 2 decades.
~~~
achillean
Yeah, out of 4 billion addresses there are ~20,000 QOTD servers so I'm not
arguing that they're pervasive :) Just saying that they're not completely dead
yet.
------
kijin
Pretty much every port below 1024 is reserved for one protocol or another, but
many of them have been obsolete for years. It seems that whoever was in charge
of assigning well-known ports back then just handed them out like candy.
Well, who am I kidding? This is the same IANA that used to hand out humongous
blocks of IPv4 addresses to anyone who asked.
Should we try to deprecate dead protocols so that low ports can be put into
better use? Or have we come to expect that all new technologies will simply
reuse ports 80 & 443, so we have no need to set aside new well-known ports
anymore?
~~~
byuu
Not everything has to be RFC approved. If I had the need for a new protocol,
I'd just use one of the dead protocol ports anyway.
I suspect firewalls blocking everything but ports 80 and 443 has a lot more to
do with why so many services these days are being stacked on top of them. I
used to run a SOCKSv5 SSH tunnel home when I worked for a more restrictive
employer, and of course I stuck it on port 443.
~~~
merb
DNS is even more open then Port 80 and 443. Lots of small WLAN appliances
which are in the most internet cafe`s today could be easily blown by putting a
vpn at the dns port
------
placeybordeaux
Given the definition[1] of the echo protocol works on UDP you could
potentially spoof the address to be coming from another echo server and have
packets going back and forth indefiniately, correct?
[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc862](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc862)
~~~
codezero
This is the premise of an old bit of code called Pepsi.c. I recall having
juvenile fun with it. Many Cisco routers at the time had these ports open.
[http://www.hoobie.net/security/exploits/hacking/pepsi.c](http://www.hoobie.net/security/exploits/hacking/pepsi.c)
~~~
coldpie
Source code written by teenagers is always such a joy.
~~~
codezero
Especially the greetz and rage. I knew quite a few on both sides 😂
------
kijin
> May 1983 [footnote] _Fwiw, RFC 2616, for HTTP, was published the same month,
> so at least some people were doing actual work in those days._
RFC 2616 was published in June 1999.
I don't know what Sir Tim was doing in May 1983, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't
writing an RFC for a protocol that he wouldn't invent for six more years.
[https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt](https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt)
~~~
joergsauer
The first actual RFC on HTTP was RFC 1945[1] from 1996. However, HTTP had been
in use on the Web for a couple of years already when it was published.
[1] [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1945](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1945)
------
emmab
I think your implementation of "RFC 862, the Echo Protocol" wouldn't work if
the input doesn't end in a newline.
~~~
akama
Also, if you send a large amount of data to the echo server, the server
crashes. This is due to how data is read off the wire into a buffer. A
suggestion is to use a fixed size buffer. I did test this earlier and I'm
sorry that I crashed it.
~~~
tyho
Oops, I should have read the comments, I too crashed it testing this theory.
------
TheLoneWolfling
This actually brings up an annoyance with FF (well, Pale Moon, but same
difference). If you try to open, say, pchs.co:17 with FF, it'll pop up a
prompt saying "this address is restricted" \- with no way of overriding it.
You have to go into the config and add a key (!) to actually be able to access
it. And worse, there's no way I've seen to actually just straight disable the
"feature". You have to add an individual port, or a range of ports, or a
comma-separated list of ports or ranges.
(For those wondering, it's "network.security.ports.banned.override", with a
value of a port, or range, or comma-separated list of ports or ranges. For
example: "7,13,17".)
Once you do, it works fine.
~~~
jerf
There are various security-related jiggery-pokeries you can perform with
access to some of those old protocols as they interact with browser security.
It's safer just to disable them. And, well, let's be frank, the inconvenience
of not being able to hit "echo" servers through your browser is pretty
minimal.
~~~
cgtyoder
Pure applesauce.
~~~
jerf
I, uh, don't even know what you're trying to say there. Is that some form of
agreement or a claim that it's nonsense? If it's the latter, well, it's not.
Security attacks against some of these old protocols were demonstrated. The
blacklist, as I understand it, may be a bit larger than it needs to be because
conservatively a few more things were blocked than were demonstrated, but
there _were_ demonstrations.
------
zx2c4
I've been running a QOTD service on my server for the last few years:
$ nc zx2c4.com 17
Source here: [http://git.zx2c4.com/mulder-listen-
daemon/tree/mulderd.c](http://git.zx2c4.com/mulder-listen-
daemon/tree/mulderd.c)
I also run a toy telnet server:
$ telnet zx2c4.com
:P
~~~
StavrosK
A toy telnet server that requires me to send my Google credentials to a random
server, unencrypted over the internet? Nice!
~~~
taftster
Well, at least you have a choice to send that information. Much unlike the
majority of web browsing experience, where you send quite a bit of information
without having any choice at all. The author claims it is a "toy" which
basically means use at your own peril. c.f. happy fun ball
------
rumcajz
Don't frget about TCPMUX listening on port 1. (RFC 1078) That's a serious
stuff that could see many applications even in today's world.
~~~
userbinator
Interesting, it's like a layer-4 NAT. I'm not so optimistic about its
practicality though, as we don't seem to have any sort of port shortage at the
moment and a lot of new applications just get put on top of HTTP/HTTPS anyway.
------
johnwfinigan
I have actually used daytime for a "real" use: as a quick and dirty way of
eliminating the possibility of guest clock drift when running benchmark
scripts inside of emulated guests with unreliable timekeeping. Obviously a bad
idea for benchmarks measured on the order of seconds, but probably fine for
benchmarks running for hours. ntpdate -q would probably work just as well
though.
------
skrebbel
Wait, did she just start an infinite number of threads in a loop, or is ruby
awesome in ways I didn't know?
~~~
almost
Server.accept will block (wait) until a new connection happens. Once the
callback (in the form of a Ruby block) completes the thread will end. So it
starts a potentially infinite number of threads but only one per connection
and each one is terminated pretty quickly. This is a pretty common way to
write a server that can handle multiple simultaneous connections.
~~~
skrebbel
Soo the parameter to Thread.new is a function that blocks on the _parent_
thread, before a new thread is even created?
~~~
ajanuary
Ruby (and most languages) evaluates the arguments before passing them through
to the function. So it first evaluates server.accept, which blocks until a new
connection, then passes the return value through to Thread.new which spawns
the new thread.
The parameters to Thread.new are just passed straight through to the block.
~~~
skrebbel
Ahhh! I thought it was passing the accept function and not its result. Been
too long, ruby! Thanks guys :)
------
batou
I spoke to someone a few years ago who has an asymmetrical transit cost
agreement between two companies. He joked that it may have been lucrative to
just pipe /dev/random to their echo port 24/7.
I suspect that is one of the many reasons that is a dead protocol.
~~~
StavrosK
That's like a byte a second, what's that going to do?
------
foliveira
Nice little exercise. Just implemented the three servers in Node.js over lunch
time.
[1] [https://github.com/foliveira/echo-is-not-
dead](https://github.com/foliveira/echo-is-not-dead)
[2] [https://github.com/foliveira/qotd-is-not-
dead](https://github.com/foliveira/qotd-is-not-dead)
[3] [https://github.com/foliveira/daytime-is-not-
dead](https://github.com/foliveira/daytime-is-not-dead)
------
chrismorgan
RFC 2616 has been superseded by RFC 7230 et al.
------
imauld
_This isn’t about the protocol, but you should know my code for this is really
sloppy because it was my first time attempting to use vim and_ _literally
everything was hard_ _._
Ahh, Vim. It makes me happy to know that more seasoned developers than myself
have issues with it as well.
------
anotherevan
Hmmm, I run Q4TD[1] and now I’m thinking I should implement my own QOTD
service…
I wonder if I could do that with Google App Engine talking to the blog and
just picking random posts.
[1] [http://q4td.blogspot.com/](http://q4td.blogspot.com/)
[http://www.twitter.com/q4td](http://www.twitter.com/q4td)
[https://plus.google.com/u/0/110672212432591877153/posts](https://plus.google.com/u/0/110672212432591877153/posts)
[http://www.facebook.com/quote4theday](http://www.facebook.com/quote4theday)
------
dec0dedab0de
Every time I look down the well known port numbers I imagine setting up a box
with every protocol running.
A bit of an aside, how many people still use plain netcat? I switched to ncat
years ago, and haven't looked back.
------
ajslater
No mention of finger, port 79.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_protocol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_protocol)
------
vhost-
I suspect a few more implementations of these are going to spin up. I just did
the qotd in Go:
[https://github.com/kyleterry/qotd](https://github.com/kyleterry/qotd)
~~~
Sami_Lehtinen
0.0.0.0 where's the IPv6 support?
------
dilap
The QOTD seems to just hang sometimes. Anyone have any guesses as to why?
~~~
molecule
For zero-based arrays, which Ruby has, it looks like the random_index passed
to the CSV array can exceed the array's bounds due to the '+1':
random_index = rand(quotes_array.length + 1)
@quote_body = quotes_array[random_index]["Quote"]
@quote_author = quotes_array[random_index]["Author"]
[https://github.com/theaisforannie/qotd/blob/master/qotd.rb#L...](https://github.com/theaisforannie/qotd/blob/master/qotd.rb#L34-L36)
~~~
dilap
Ah, and then it just silently throws an exc and never closes the connection.
Nice.
Gracias Señor@!
------
mml
someone should tell her about the fortune file :(
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Virtual Linux dev workstation: how to recover from crashes? - dredmorbius
https://plus.google.com/+TreyHarris/posts/8oysaczh9J2
======
dredmorbius
More generally: Trey makes an excellent argument for the importance of _user
state_ , in a workstation context. This is a matter I've become increasingly
despondant on myself, across numerous platforms: Linux desktop, Android, Mac,
Windows.
The biggest sin I witness of _any_ user-oriented software (as opposed to
server or controls systems) is of failure to maintain state. The atomisation
of tasks among different applications, with increasing fragmented and kludgy
means for data interchange plays into this. The increasingly widespread use of
computers is itself a tremendous part of the problem.
A recent OECD survey of computer skills among the general population found
that fully _half_ the general population has _no_ or at best only the very
most rudimentary computer skills. "Advanced" skills -- defined as the ability,
say, to use a Search or Search and Replace functionality within a word
processing app, was roughly 5% of the population.
If you're a HN / YC coder, administrator, or designer, you're some small
fraction of the 1%.
The flipside is that _general-purpose systems are not being built or designed
with you in mind._ This was a view I first saw _voiced_ (explicitly stated)
from the GNOME development leadership in the early 2000s, and more recently
from both the Mozilla and Chrome browser development team leads. It's a cause
Jonathan Zittrain has campaigned for, "generative computing", along with Cory
Doctorow, for years. It's a battle we're losing.
And generally, tools for establishing and maintaining a complex system of
state between numerous tools and applications ... is poor.
Trey's approach is to try to use VM snapshotting, at regular intervals, to
create recovery points. That's an option, but it strikes me that it's
operating at too low a level, and may well be preserving the state leading to
whatever instabilities are crashing his system(s). Recovering to the point
just prior to failure seems rather like _Groundhog 's Day_.
A generalised support for history within applications, allowing for recovery
and rollback to _that application 's prior state_ strikes me as far more
useful. I'm increasingly thinking that Emacs, and its various terminal-support
modes, may actually be that generalised model for many instances.
And, as I write this comment, I see that Firefox/Android has once again wiped
out the 100+ tabs I'd been trying to organise and sort through, something of a
task-list organisational mode I've found I use on browsers, or rather, try to,
though its a usage mode they support exceedingly poortly.
_I am not the target userbase._
Oh well.
~~~
dredmorbius
In a further irony: Firefox crashed, again, as I was attempting to restore my
prior browsing state, from history, one-at-a-time, as there is no mechanism
for multi-recovering, or snapshot-recovering, previous state.
I was in the midst of attempting to file a crash report to Mozilla, and needed
to reference a URL (Trey's initial article), but switching away from the
crash-report screen itself, on Android, lost it.
It is 2017. Do you know where your user state is?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Leaked audios: US embassy and opposition organised coup in Bolivia (Spanish) - sudoaza
https://www.jornada.com.mx/ultimas/politica/2019/11/12/revelan-audios-que-ligan-a-la-oposicion-y-a-eu-en-la-asonada-6709.html
======
rasabatino
Evo Morales tried to run for a 4th term against the law (Bolivia has a 2 term
limit, but Evo claimed the first one didn't count). He called a referendum to
change the term limits and got shot down. He ran for the elections anyway and
"won". The day after the electoral body of Bolivia confirmed that election was
rigged. The military then asked him to step down.
I can't understand why Evo is viewed so favorably in the USA.
------
padraic7a
I don't know anything about the quality of the source publication* but for
anyone who is interested here is a Google translation to English:
[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jornada.com.mx%2Fultimas%2Fpolitica%2F2019%2F11%2F12%2Frevelan-
audios-que-ligan-a-la-oposicion-y-a-eu-en-la-asonada-6709.html)
* Chomsky described it as "maybe the only real independent newspaper in the hemisphere" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Jornada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Jornada)
------
sudoaza
The article cites this leak which is in English
[https://bbackdoors.wordpress.com/2019/10/08/us-hands-
against...](https://bbackdoors.wordpress.com/2019/10/08/us-hands-against-
bolivia-part-i/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The "other mobile data" - danw
http://www.pikesoft.com/blog/index.php?itemid=170
======
sanj
The problem I tend to have with cross platform "data driven" architectures is
that the interfaces (both UI and API) end up at the lowest common denominator.
Now, to be fair, this is more an issue of cross platform than of data driven,
but the two are so intertwingled in the real world that they can't be pulled
apart.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to read Hacker News – what mistake I made for 2 years - nickfos
I am reading Hacker News for the last 2 years. It's been a really good source of information relevant to tech and startups, which I am interested. Recently I became a member to ask a question.
Not much feedback came back except from some kind advice from PG.<p>My next submission involved an analysis about the future of YC, which got only one feedback.<p>>> Who are you?<p>Quite a way to handle an opinion expressed.<p>Now I noticed one thing. I was doing something wrong for the past 2 years. I would only read the pages that are listed in the “Hacker News” tabs. Quite a mistake I think. Over time I would check the pages again and see the same posts, because they were “rated” high. I don't know who and how rates the articles (of course I read that if you want to make it to the top you call your buddies clicking your article), but it clearly does not provide a real good sense of the articles submitted.<p>Now I believe a lot of people provide really valuable input and I have to browse through to see what's interesting. From now on I am going to check the “New” tab just beside the bold “Hacker News”. I counted roughly 300 posts published in a day, which I can skim through in 10 min and select the postings I found relevant.
======
Skywing
The listing of new articles is what I always read. It's what I check the most.
I'll skim over the top articles once a day, or so.
~~~
cmontgomeryb
I'm doing this more and more too. It's easier than on a lot of larger sites
such as Reddit as the signal to noise ratio is much more in our favour, and I
do find interesting stories that never make it near the front page.
------
Mz
I've said something similar (ie that I think it's a mistake to spend too much
time on the "home" page, basically) a couple of times or so, like here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2047397>
~~~
nickfos
Maybe it would be a good thing for Hacker News to explain this little detail
to new readers of the list. I had to post an article first, to really check
how post ranking works.
I am not saying that some articles do not deserve to have a better chance of
reading, relevant to popularity. Instead I believe it would be valuable to
Hacker News to have more informed readers. Otherwise there is a big chance
that the "popularity" ranking can be mishandled for a number reasons, from
people trying to have a "top" posting.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is Facebook making an airplane? - sargun
https://www.facebook.com/careers/department?dept=infrastructure&req=a0IA000000CzHxYMAV
======
sargun
There is also this position:
[https://www.facebook.com/careers/department?dept=infrastruct...](https://www.facebook.com/careers/department?dept=infrastructure&req=a0IA000000CzHxYMAV)
"Facebook is looking for someone to assist in the Airframe assembly efforts
development phases of their high-altitude solar powered aircraft. A successful
candidate will be able to assist with airframe assembly and integration."
High altitude solar aircraft? Sounds similar to the Solar Impulse 2, but what
does Facebook want with that?
------
paulofilip3
Told ya!! [http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2014/03/facebo...](http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2014/03/facebook-to-provide-internet-connectivity-from-solar-
powered-planes/)
------
valarauca1
The job is primarily centered around maintenance.
The interesting part is the solar cells, maybe a solar powered drone for very
long flight times?
------
paulofilip3
ohh, maybe it's something similar to Google Loon project but to put Facebook
in the hands of all...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Android development has its own Swift - hasseg
http://blog.futurice.com/android-development-has-its-own-swift
======
jo_
I feel like this overlooks one of the more fundamental problems to Android
development. It's not an issue with Java, it's an issue of Android being a
cathedral of complexity. There are four dozen ways to accomplish the same
tasks, each of which utilizes a different (but ultimately incompatible) piece
of the API. You can build your Activity and embed your Fragment in it which
houses a ListView to display your--- wait no maybe I should override ListView.
No, people say that's a bad idea. Okay I'll override this object which
ListView displays. Okay that kinda' works well enough. I'll figure out how to
style that later. Okay now I need this thing to go to this other activity when
cli-- maybe I should just replace the Fragment, since we're kinda' using the
same data. No wait. I'll change the activity. Okay it looks like there's no
function to do that. I'll go back to changing the Fragment to something else.
Okay, that's giving me an exception. Lemme find where I can change the
Activity... Oh, I have to do it elsewhere. Well I can hack my way around that.
It doesn't end.
"Button is actually a special type of view with extra properties." Great, so
everything is a... You know what, I don't care. I feel like I did in the mid
2000's with game development: there are a thousand libraries which each are so
complex that it's impossible to get good work out of them. Instead, I always
ended up falling back to the simplest home-rolled solution. Except in the case
of Android, there's really nothing more fundamental. I can (and do) use
PhoneGap because it makes my life _significantly_ easier in many respects, but
I think Android really needs to be restructured on a more fundamental level.
~~~
kllrnohj
No, if you're reaching for PhoneGap it's because you already know HTML/CSS/JS
and just don't want to learn Android's UI. Android's building blocks are
simpler and more predictable than HTML/CSS is, so clearly complexity is very
much not the issue you are having. It's just lack of knowledge and a lack of
motivation to learn it. Which is fine, just not at all what you are claiming.
Android's pieces do force you in to a significant amount of upfront complexity
which makes rapid prototyping hard, but that complexity pays off a hundred
times over when you start fleshing out the application into a real project.
It's very critical infrastructure as the app complexity increases.
~~~
jo_
You're probably right. I'm not convinced you're right, but I'll operate on the
assumption you are and offer a feeble defense with anecdotal (and
experiential) evidence to explain why I would rather use Android UI but
consistently turn to PhoneGap.
I knew Java first, then picked up HTML/CSS/JS on my own. I'm cozy enough with
Swing and I'm getting there with JavaFX.
I would rather develop in Java with Swing or even JavaFX. I reach for PhoneGap
because I can develop my application 'live'. Make code changes, switch
windows, changes are live. I can pull up the UI panel and make adjustments to
styles to see what looks good. I can test the entire application and debug it
before I push it to my device. If something fails to load, I can see why
without waiting for an emulator to spin up and without pushing to the device.
Plus, if the application crashes in my browser, I can pull up the debug
console and step through it. I'm sure all these things are possible with ADB,
too. There are lots of little things which irritate me with native Android
development. I'm still releasing apps and every so often I try to do a native
one. Whenever I do, though, I always find myself stuck on something that seems
infuriatingly simple or clear -- something that 'Just Shouldn't Happen," and I
look over at PhoneGap and I know that, despite JS being kinda' shitty, and
despite the lack of consistency in HTML5/CSS, it still beckons for silly
reasons like, "Small annoyances are more soluble! You don't have to rebuild
and reupload to fix a null-pointer error! You can use the REPL to play with
objects in memory!" and so on.
Maybe I am reluctant to learn the nuance of Android UI on a subconscious
level. Maybe I'm reinforcing my own beliefs when I sit down with an Android UI
book or go through the UI tutorials online. I've just never felt the workflow
was very intuitive, and the small (though frequent) irritations are enough to
drive me back to something which is worse architecturally and more time
consuming in the long run, but doesn't have the little things that make it
unpleasant to work.
CAR ANALOGY! I have two routes to work: one of them is short, but goes
directly through the city and has a crazy merge that I need to do to get
there. Some days I take this route because "it would be totally great if I'd
just get familiar with it," and I start out fine. Except for the insane merge
which is backed up for a few blocks. I'm driving fine, and I feel like now
that it's over I'm home free. Oh. This street has construction. Sudden stops.
My head is starting to hurt. Nearly half way there. Okay, I don't see a way
around this route. I have to backtrack because I made a wrong turn early on.
More construction. Traffic lights that aren't working right (or are, but I'm
mixing them up with the ones facing perpendicular traffic). Finally at work.
I'm irritable and still have a whole day ahead of me.
The other route is really long. I get on the onramp and it's slow but I'm
always moving. Quick scuttle and I'm free to drive. The roads are unfinished
and there's an omnipresent farty smell, but I'm moving at a comfortable pace
and I'm pretty relaxed. Oh, the bridge my route takes is out. Well, I'll
travel down the way a bit. No problem, though it's going to take longer. Swoop
around and I arrive at my destination. On the way there I also picked up a
Strawman at a barn to use in my analogy.
~~~
kllrnohj
Well, a lot of that gets back to "Android is hard to do rapid prototyping in".
I would looove something faster to iterate with personally, but I can also
understand how it could be detrimental in the long run. It's too easy to take
prototype code and ship it, instead of fixing up the underlying architecture
to play nice with all the various lifecycle and different device configuration
stuffs. Fragments are a pain to deal with in the early stages, but they force
you to modularize your app in such a way that makes long term maintainince and
UI changes easier.
You can now see changes "live" in Android studio with the preview pane, which
is getting pretty good these days. If you haven't played with that I'd suggest
giving it a shot.
The emulator is a disaster, I only ever develop on real devices. Pushing isn't
that slow, but it's definitely not as nice as just hitting refresh in a
browser.
------
eddieroger
Article is down for me. Here's a mirror (minus graphics and CSS):
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://blog.futurice.com/android-
development-has-its-own-swift)
The article felt like it was trying to rationalize something, like Android
needs a Swift. I'm not sure that's the case. The main point of the argument by
my reading was "less lines of code are possible," but that's not what Swift is
trying to bring the to the table (although no header files are nice). Swift's
biggest advantage is that since Apple has redefined the rules of the language
and don't need to stay C compliant, they can change the optimizer and enforce
rules differently. Less lines of code are a side effect.
~~~
DCKing
> The article felt like it was trying to rationalize something, like Android
> needs a Swift.
Android probably doesn't need a Swift as much as iOSX did, but there's still a
lot to be gained from having a less verbose programming language (and
corresponding platform API). Objective C, despite its older features and
unfamiliar syntax, was more expressive already than Java was. With Swift, they
removed the legacy and made the syntax familiar.
But I don't think this is the answer. If you debug Scala on Android at least
you don't have to make a mental mapping of what the corresponding Java
translation of your function would look like. A true new language with good
features and 'light' syntax would be great. Google already has such a
language: Dart.
But Google has already said that at IO 2014 that Java is the language for
Android and it will stay that way.
~~~
lobo42
> But I don't think this is the answer. If you debug Scala on Android at least
> you don't have to make a mental mapping of what > the corresponding Java
> translation of your function would look like.
Again, this is also not the case with Xtend. See this screencast :
[https://vimeo.com/38425995](https://vimeo.com/38425995)
~~~
DCKing
Ah, my apologies. The CoffeeScript metaphor is not completely valid.
------
izacus
The question about those code-generating languages in connection with Android
is always:
How HARD is it to debug?
Because most of them fail badly as soon as you need to do any complicated
breakpoint debugging (non-matching line numbers, broken local variable
inspection, useless and misleading stack traces) and that loses more time than
the language change will ever gain. After all, most of the time we're
developing for Android, we're dealing with Android API's and another language
does not address warts connected with those. Also powerful utilities like
IDEA/AS provide alot of assistance with writing / folding / managing Java 6
issues without debugging issues.
The other important questions: how big of a space hit is the standard library?
E.g. Scala on Android will generate/include alot of methods which means you
hit the 64k method limit of DEX format pretty quickly. That means you have to
use Proguard for each build (even development) and Proguard pass can easily
run for several minutes even on a 16G SSD equipped machine - killing
development speed.
~~~
frowaway001
> That means you have to use Proguard for each build (even development) and
> Proguard pass can easily run for several minutes even on a 16G SSD equipped
> machine - killing development speed.
No, not really. You can just install the standard library on your Android
device for development, and only use ProGuard on the final release.
~~~
izacus
Not when you reach 64k methods together with libraries for a debug build. Of
course, unless you want to go through the joy that is loading another .dex
file :)
~~~
oehme
The library you would use for Android (xbase.lib.slim), has about 2.5k
methods.
------
newgame
Another, imho, more appealing Swift on Android is Kotlin
[http://kotlinlang.org/](http://kotlinlang.org/)
It shares many features with Xtend but offers more. It has the opposite
"problem" wrt IDE support though: Great IDEA support but no Eclipse support.
~~~
staltz
Does it compile to Java source code?
~~~
theGimp
According to the FAQ page, it compiles to Java bytecode.
_Is it Java Compatible?
Yes. The compiler emits Java byte-code._
[http://kotlin-web-site.jetbrains.org/docs/reference/faq.html](http://kotlin-
web-site.jetbrains.org/docs/reference/faq.html)
~~~
higherpurpose
Does that violate the new ruling in favor of Oracle lately? If not, what if
Oracle pursues that in the future, too? If I were Google I'd be like on
needles about continuing to support Java on Android, and I'd start looking for
a complete replacement (which will take years to come to fruition anyway, so
all the more reason to start now).
------
rdtsc
There is the scripting layer so you can use kivy and Python.
But I am really hoping Dart would get there, it is just a really nice
language.
------
curtis17
Imo Android needs a Swift because: 1\. Java is too verbose/tedious. Developers
are looking for something richer/more expressive. 2\. Oracle. Java is non-
open.
Ultimately, the language that will become the Swift on Android is the language
that makes it a core goal. This alt-Java could even be blessed by Google.
Google could eventually cut Java out of the picture: Swift4Java -> Dalvik/ART.
Xtend, Kotlin and Scala are possibilities.
Kotlin has the Jetbrains Android Studio relationship going for it. Also
compiles down to JS so could target Chrome/ChromeOS as well. Not as heavy as
Scala - less of a learning curve. Xtend is good, and compiling to Java source
could be an advantage. But Google do seem to be leaning towards Jetbrains
rather than Eclipse.
------
programminggeek
If I were to pick any language to do Android dev that wasn't Java, it would be
Kotlin. It's a great language with a great IDE. I haven't done Android
projects with it, but if I were hell bent on not using Java, that'd be my
choice.
------
hrjet
The nice thing about Xtend is that it has a light run-time library. I wish
Scala had a core-library that could be used in Android and such other
constrained projects. Perhaps a library without specialisation and/or without
collections could be made.
About Xtend, I think it is not production ready yet. Having tried it in some
POCs I hit several snags, such as incomplete support for inner classes and
anonymous classes. (Some support has been added recently, though not sure if
it handles all cases fine).
~~~
frowaway001
Scala modularized its standard library recently, so it should be smaller by
default already.
Remember that deploying on Android involves a ProGuard step, so the size of
the standard library doesn't matter that much anyway.
~~~
hrjet
The modularization reduced the API surface, but in terms of size of binary,
didn't have much effect (about 20% size reduction).
ProGuard is useful during deployment but cumbersome during development cycle.
~~~
frowaway001
As already mentioned, it's not necessary to use ProGuard during the
development cycle.
------
donniezazen
As someone new to both programming and Android development, I think the
biggest help is not some easy language but the questions and problems that
have been asked on sites like StackOverflow. You can replace the language but
how do you replace that whole stack of help articles written for Java for
Android.
------
lobo42
The second part of this InfoQ article features a getting started on Xtend and
Android: [http://www.infoq.com/articles/unusual-ways-to-create-a-
mobil...](http://www.infoq.com/articles/unusual-ways-to-create-a-mobile-app)
------
ethagnawl
I've always been intrigued by the possibility of using Clojure or JRuby to
build Android applications. There are toolkits (Lein Droid, Ruboto, etc.) and
tutorials for both, but the edges are still _very_ rough.
------
mncolinlee
My question is why Xtrend instead of Kotlin or Scala? Both languages have good
reasons to recommend them and both already support Android today.
~~~
rsynnott
Mentioned in the article; many JVM languages have substantial performance
issues under Dalvik. Scala certainly does; not sure about Kotlin.
~~~
eeperson
Is this actually true for Scala? I was under the impression that statically
typed languages run basically the same as Java on Android. Granted it has some
other issues (such as running in to limits on the number of classes).
------
k__
> It is best understood as “CoffeeScript for Java”, or as “Java 10″.
I wish it would look like CoffeeScript
------
artribou
Annnnddd... we killed it.
------
cferreyra
Seems like the link is broken
------
ytch
How about golang?
~~~
izacus
What's with this Go obsession in connection with Android? Go's design and the
way it works is terribly suited for Android development and currently isn't
even capable of plugging into JNI bridging architecture of Dalvik/ART.
Not to mention that Go is a language built for static binaries running on a
distributed server and the code running with alot of callbacks, external
exceptions and user-input looks horrible.
~~~
jamieomatthews
This is a proposal that's starting to get some serious traction.
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y9hStonl9wpj-5VM-
xWrSTuE...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y9hStonl9wpj-5VM-
xWrSTuEJFUAxGOXOhxvAs7GZHE/mobilebasic?pli=1)
In theory, Go could absolutely be used for android development
~~~
izacus
In theory, anything can be used for Android development.
In reality, the cost of JNI bridging, reboxing objects and the fact that
Android APIs heavily use Java objects as parameters makes usage of any non-JVM
compatible languages horribly ugly, clunky and rather pointless performance
and code-quality wise.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Welcome To The Mytro - tcohen
http://launch.it/launch/mytro
======
jdbiggs
Wow, thanks guys. I didn't expect to see this this morning.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Good resources on the Business / Legal side of a UK Startup - JohnLBevan
Having read a number of articles on how start ups come about I've decided to knock up some code and get something on line soon. I have a few big ideas, but reading these articles has suggested to me it's best to start with something simple and quick, learn a few lessons from that, and then pursue my real ambitions. However, I'm anxious about one thing - once I start making money from a site, do I become a business / do I have to contact someone to request a self assessment tax form (even if I only make a couple of pounds from the venture) / what are my legal responsibilities?<p>I'm guessing there are lots of people in my situation all over the world, and each country will have its own rules and regulations around this sort of thing. I'm based in the UK, so am particularly interested in the rules there, but if you know of good resources for other countries, please post those also, as there's bound to be a few others in my position dotted around the globe who can benefit.<p>Thanks in advance,<p>JB
======
WorldMover
The HMRC is a decent starting place <http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/startingup/>, you
may also find <http://www.businesslink.gov.uk> useful. In addition you should
check with an accountant (perhaps someone you know).
~~~
JohnLBevan
Those are great links - thanks for the info :) I'm thinking of looking into
accountants after I start to make money; up 'til then I'll just keep records,
since I'm assuming that I won't be making enough to cover the costs of
accountants for a long time during my experimental phase. Thanks again, JB
------
mmahemoff
Another good thing to know would be any UK bank recommendations, e.g. with a
normal website and statements that aren't PDFs and go back to day one.
(Amazing in this day that bank websites won't provide a full history to the
account holder!)
There's no BankSimple in the UK, but some decent options would be welcome.
Heard good things about FirstDirect, but I don't think they do business
accounts.
~~~
JohnLBevan
Hmm, looks like a gap in the market. . . though I guess banks wouldn't be too
willing to provide an API to third parties who'd offer this service, so it
would require a bank to fill this gap, rather than an independent.
~~~
mmahemoff
Big gap if you ask me, because a clean UI would be a desirable and obvious
differentiator in what mostly looks like a commodity market.
Yeah, an API would be huge but I think we're a long way from that. Retail
banking in 2011==Mobile telephony in 2005.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Venture Capitalists – Do your frigging job – Double Down - orenbarzilai
https://medium.com/group-11/ventures-capitalist-do-your-frigging-job-double-down-132b2b6f65b3
======
verdverm
TL;DR crazy rant
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Evolution of Character Codes 1874-1968 (2012) [pdf] - gumby
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.96.678&rep=rep1&type=pdf
======
kryptiskt
"By January 15, 1915, the Western Union Telegraph Company had begun using a
printing telegraph system that combined aspects of the Murray and Morkrum
codes. It used Murray’s codes for the letters and controls, but generally
followed the Morkrum conventions for which figures should be paired with which
letters. Like the Morkrum code and the later English Murray code, the Western
Union code used separate line feed and carriage return characters instead of a
single line character."
Damn you, Western Union!
~~~
sverige
"Even before X3.4-1967 was published, there was already interest in two more
minor revisions. First, the ISO code had since its first draft allowed the use
of character 0/10 for new line as well as for line feed, but ASCII had not. On
July 5, 1967, John B. Booth proposed that ASCII also include this dual
meaning."
I fear it will never be resolved at this point.
~~~
Latteland
Oh, it's resolved. It's just we don't agree on the answer.
------
lokedhs
When was this paper published? There is no date on the paper itself, and
different sites gives different dates.
I'm wondering because it incorrectly states that Unicode is a 16-bit code,
which used to be a common misconception in the 90's.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Judge blocks top Uber engineer from working on self-driving vehicles - chrshawkes
https://www.hipstercode.com/blog/127/
======
sushid
This is a poor "article." The commentary at the end is especially off-putting.
This [http://www.businessinsider.com/a-judge-just-banned-ubers-
for...](http://www.businessinsider.com/a-judge-just-banned-ubers-former-head-
of-self-driving-cars-from-lidar-related-work-2017-5) better summarizes the
case (i.e. mentions that Levandowski was already preemptively demoted removed
from working with LIDAR).
------
Fricken
Judge Alsup blocked Levandowski from working on LIDAR, which is just one
component, he's free to work on the rest. I'm sure this isn't the ruling Waymo
was hoping for, it's little more than a speed bump for Uber, there's other
LIDAR suppliers out there.
I got the smackdown pretty hard here on HN for suggesting Waymo's case wasn't
as strong as it looked when they first presented their evidence, but it isn't
over yet, the Feds may do a criminal investigation and they may yet find
something worth prosecuting over.
------
greenyoda
Extensively discussed yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14341972](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14341972)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Rejected By Apple? Sell Your iPhone App Yourself, Profit - brm
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/9/rejected-by-apple-sell-your-iphone-app-yourself-profit-aapl-
======
zain
The Ad-hoc model requires considerable effort for the purchaser and especially
the developer. The dev has to enter in the device UID for every single person
who wants to use the app. This doesn't scale to _anywhere near_ the millions
of users Tap Tap has.
~~~
tlrobinson
Surely you could automate the process. Have the user pay, enter their UID in a
web form, and automatically build the app and send it to them?
Hell, you could probably build your own AppStore that 3rd party devs could
sell their own apps through, though I'm sure Apple would squash that very
quickly...
~~~
zain
It isn't about building the app; its about logging into their portal and
entering their UID in. After 100 UIDs are entered, you have to create a new
identifier and rebuild the app to get around the 100-device limit.
If you really want to run unauthorized apps, you can just jailbreak.
------
zandorg
How about a legitimate iPhone App with a secret (hidden from Apple) backdoor
which allows running of other apps?
~~~
hellfishburnsy
that app will be banned too then. Maybe if someone can hack Safari...
~~~
tesseract
If you're going to that extreme, just jailbreak your iPhone already.
------
trezor
For as long as it works, this is actually a rather nice _hack_ of the Apple
ad-hoc developers distribution model.
I guess we'll see soon enough if that Apple remote kill feature is real or
not.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Is Google Hiring? (and other big tech companies) - kernoble
Does anyone know what Google's current hiring outlook is? I know they slowed hiring a few months ago. So are they still reducing headcount growth? Are they only considering really exceptional or specialized candidates?<p>I know several people who have applied with internal referrals (included myself) and been denied with semi-automated emails. This is surprising considering some of these people have been fast -tracked in the Google interview or have gotten offers from other competitive tech companies (FB, Amazon, etc.)<p>This seems odd, so I was hoping someone on HN could shed some light.
======
shoo
Speculation from June:
> Current projections from Pivotal Research suggest Alphabet’s ad income will
> dip on an annual basis for the first time in the second quarter of 2020,
> then again in the third, before a recovery in the final three months of the
> year.
[https://www.warc.com/newsandopinion/opinion/the-real-
scale-o...](https://www.warc.com/newsandopinion/opinion/the-real-scale-of-
the-2020-downturn/3649)
~~~
kernoble
Useful insight. Thanks! Yeah, it seems tied to the economic "cycle". Thanks!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tesla’s Earnings Indicate Some Customer Cancellations - neuralnetwork
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/teslas-earnings-indicate-some-customer-cancellations/
======
calopetreep
A more cynical person might suggest the tone of this article was related to
recent events elsewhere in the NYT. The real meat of the article is buried
halfway down:
"(Update: The Tesla spokeswoman Shanna Hendriks later said the company had
1,500 cancellations in the fourth quarter). Many customers were in line but
pulled out when it became time to make a substantial down payment in cash."
I'd imagine this is fairly standard for reservations of any product that don't
require purchase, it only remains to ask whether this is more than one might
expect, and if so, whether it's related to the "cold weather" debacle. That
certainly seems to be the implication here.
------
ricardobeat
For the first time ever, I saw the "nytimes.com" URL and had a bad feeling.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Should I quit now or wait for an hypothetical acquisition? - throwaway_gp
American company, New York. The company is sinking. Founders want to sell.
The company has mainly been funded by "SAFE" investments, with no ensuing VC round (series or seed). I think they raised around $2-3M total like that. The founders insist the value of the company is between $5 and $8M ; but after 2 - 3 months since they started the process they have had only one offer at a much lower price (i don't know which price).<p>They want me to stay to be able to sell the company, for which I won't want to work for anyway. I have a really nice opportunity elsewhere to which I already answered yes, verbally.<p>They offer me 2.5% common stock (options) and a raise to stay.<p>Are the 2.5% they are offering me really potentially worth $100k as they say ? I've seen a lot of stories where stocks don't pay out for many different reasons in the end. Won't the investors get their money first, which means it's very likely employees won't get anything (To me, the probability they manage to sell at the desired value is very low) ? Should I give them 6 months ?
======
gus_massa
For simplicity, let's assume the 2.5% of common stock is worth nothing (this
may be a good approximation).
Are they paying you now in hard green real cash now? (Not a promise of cash,
not IOU, ...)
~~~
throwaway_gp
Yes (for now), but not more than my other offer!
------
chrisbennet
I would not gamble on any "magic beans" (future earning from stock). If they
have the cash, let them _double_ your salary to stay. If they don't have the
cash (and they probably don't), take the other position.
You were going to get screwed in the end even with a "successful" startup.
While the founders will share the profits you realize that you weren't going
to? Like you alluded to, the VC's an maybe founders will have preferences that
mean you get nothing. There will some reason but the end you will end up
working for less than you are worth in order to enrich others. As I like to
think of it "I can't afford to subsidize your business any more."
You have to view this as business - a value for value relationship.
------
simplecto
The only truly limited resource is time.
What if, in 6 months, nothing came of things and it simply shut down? How
would you feel about that time spent in the existing, and probably
increasingly stressful, situation versus the new thing (which seems like a
sure-deal)?
I left a much more stable situation in which I had equity because my time and
happiness was simply too valuable.
Think about your time...
~~~
throwaway_gp
True words
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Any advice or resources for socially responsible investing? - khyur
======
brudgers
It depends on what one considers socially responsible and the forms of
spending one considers investment. I mean, endowing a medical research chair
at a university is a form of investment, but it doesn't offer cash on cash
returns to the endower.
------
patio11
Given that one has a desire to purchase investment returns and purchase the
feeling of doing socially responsible things, it is highly recommended to
purchase these separately. Most products available for "socially responsible
investing" are mutual funds who use social responsibility just as a marketing
angle; they often charge 100 basis points or more higher than vanilla
offerings from Vanguard or similar. (Performance prior to fees is similar; no
definition of socially responsible investing or socially irresponsible
investing creates alpha over the market.)
I can appreciate that one might capture utility from knowing that one does not
support institutions that one thinks are odious, even in the _extremely
attenuated_ nature that beneficially owning a few shares of their stock counts
as support. That said, weigh the options here: 100 basis points drag on your
return over your investing life costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. If
your choices are a) sleep the sleep of the righteous while doing nothing of
positive value for causes you care about or b) give causes you care about
hundreds of thousands of dollars at the cost of occasionally owning ~5 shares
of a company whose operations you dislike, which sounds like a better option
to you?
Edit to add:
People might feel like I'm not being concrete enough here, so let me use an
example which (playing the percentages) is specifically chosen to gore my ox
rather than yours. Ave Maria Mutual Funds has a variety of actively-managed
and index fund products which are targeted specifically at Catholics. Specific
example: AVEMX. Their investment criteria is, basically, "US equities at any
sizes in any industries at our discretion; we promise not to invest in anyone
who supplies abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, or pornography."
People have entrusted this fund with $200 million. I will elide their
investment results, as you should assume that any fund will probabalistically
get market results going forward, and focus strictly on their expense ratio:
1.19% per year.
If you take out the Catholic angle, this firm is selling exposure to the US
stock market. A competing way to buy this exposure is through the Vanguard
Total Market fund (INT), or its ETF (VTI). Vanguard charges, for the mutual
fund, 0.16% per year (103 BPS less) or 0.05% per year (114 BPS less) if you
get their admiral shares (minimum investment: $10k).
You should reasonably expect approximately 8% average returns over the long-
run in US equities. Maybe less. If you invest $10k in the Vanguard option and
hold for 30 years, you will have $96k. (I used the more expensive of the two
options for giggles.)
If you invest in Ave Maria and hold, and Ave Maria gets market returns, you
will have $60k.
$36k could do a lot of things a Catholic might care about, which is why I am
not invested in Ave Maria, am invested in various Vanguard funds, and have an
exposure denominated in tens of dollars to e.g. IHG, a hotel chain which earns
basis points of its revenue from selling pornographic movies.
~~~
OrwellianChild
I'm going to piggyback on this to suggest that, as Patrick says, invest your
money responsibly to make more from it... If you want to then plow some of it
back into socially responsible causes, use the same scrutiny. As a reference,
I recommend Will MacAskill's Doing Good Better.[1]
[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Doing-Good-Better-Effective-
Difference...](http://www.amazon.com/Doing-Good-Better-Effective-
Difference/dp/1592409105/)
------
malyk
Vanguard has a social responsibility fund.
------
lorenzomark4
Which area you are interested in?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
BBC Radio 2 drops Michael Jackson songs from the airwaves - onetimemanytime
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6765963/BBC-Radio-2-drops-Michael-Jackson-songs-airwaves-child-sex-abuse-claims.html
======
onetimemanytime
Interesting...on one hand it _appears_ that he likely molested children. On
the other hand he was very talented. Can we apply the same standard to Edison,
Bell, DaVinci, Socrates, Steve Jobs, Einstein etc. Granted molesting kids
these days (maybe 2000 years ago wasn't seen as such) is on its own class, but
maybe how they treated their wives, slaves, kids etc? Is MJ's music less
amazing now...?
------
HelloFellowDevs
This is really only the start, after the Doc comes out there will definitely
be a lot of people wanting to distance themselves. It's hard to separate the
art from the artist sometimes.
~~~
toomuchtodo
As long as these works aren’t locked away. Feel free to not promote them
publicly, but denying access to the works of immoral creatives is akin to
burning books. Let the art stand on its own, especially if the creative is no
longer alive.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Leaving The New York Times - uptown
https://medium.com/@harrisj/leaving-the-new-york-times-bb3e73adc61f
======
danso
Jake is one of the most forward-thinkingc and creative of the technologists in
the entire news industry...his essays on the potential and limitations of data
and digital applications are must-reads for anyone; one of his best: Distrust
Your Data [https://source.opennews.org/en-US/learning/distrust-your-
dat...](https://source.opennews.org/en-US/learning/distrust-your-data/)
This would be a huge loss for the future of journalism, if it wasn't equally
balanced by a huge gain in forward-thinkingness that Jake will bring to the
future of government transparency.
------
onassar
Would love to read more about the inside of paper like this, from the
perspective of the technologists. What is the interaction like between product
developers and journalists/editors? How does the back-and-forth go? Does the
editorial process for interactive components match (in rigour) that of the
written-side?
~~~
rich_harris
Have a look at [https://source.opennews.org](https://source.opennews.org) \-
it's basically the watercooler for 'news nerds' (general term for newsroom
developers/javascript journalists/dataviz people and so on). Not updated that
frequently but often worth a read
------
PhantomGremlin
I'd quit if I had to carry around an ugly ID like that one.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Is there a browser extension that re-flows heavily paginated articles? - brownbat
Readability and similar extensions reflow pages, but I haven't found one that pulls clickbait all onto one page yet, despite widespread hate for unnecessary pagination.[0] Am I missing one, or is it too challenging to have an extension understand so many unique templates?<p>[0] Discussion of pagination blues here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4605904
======
kawera
I use PageOne, works well on many sites: [http://globalmoxie.com/blog/page-
one-safari-chrome-extension...](http://globalmoxie.com/blog/page-one-safari-
chrome-extension.shtml)
------
coreyp_1
I despise clickbait.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What's the worst piece of software you use everyday? - guu
Subversion was created because the authors were frustrated with problems in CVS[0].<p>What's a piece of software you find essential that you wish you could replace or rewrite?<p>[0]: <a href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.7/svn.intro.whatis.html#svn.intro.history" rel="nofollow">http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.7/svn.intro.whatis.html#svn...</a>
======
busyant
Sorry, but everything listed here is rank amateur stuff when compared to
Blackboard Learn
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard_Learn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard_Learn)).
First, the user interface is designed as if the programmers were incentivized
to maximize the number of clicks required to get anywhere.
Second, it has the responsiveness of continental drift.
Third, editing and formatting text is an exercise in torture. When I want to
delete text that I am writing, half of the time, the delete key won't work
(I'm exaggerating, but not joking). Formatting of text is quasi-random. Want
red-colored text? That works about 90% of the time for me. The other 10% will
give me gray text (This time, not exaggerating). If you are brave, you can
edit your text as raw HTML, but, my God, you'd better bring the anti-
hypertension pills, because the HTML will blast you with a tsunami of <span>
elements. Sometimes the <span> elements (unnecessarily) surround individual
characters, sometimes they surround _parts_ of words.
Third, it is nigh impossible to set useful defaults. Why can't the due dates
for assignments be defaulted to the end of the day instead of the current hour
and minute? Do you honestly think that I would ever want my assignment to be
due at 4:33 PM?
Fourth, it tries to do too many things. I already have email. I don't need
Blackboard's email functionality getting in the way.
I could go on (for a while), but it's time for those blood pressure meds.
~~~
paulgb
There was an enlightening tweetstorm last year from a Princeton prof about the
institutional reasons why Blackboard is so widely used despite being so bad:
[https://twitter.com/random_walker/status/1182637292869115904](https://twitter.com/random_walker/status/1182637292869115904)
~~~
closeparen
IIRC Blackboard is also pretty aggressive about acquiring and/or enforcing
patents against competitors.
~~~
blackrock
What patents do they have?
A patent for a black chalkboard?
~~~
closeparen
[http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,988,138.PN.&OS=PN/6,988,138&RS=PN/6,988,138)
Successfully enforced against Desire2Learn.
~~~
blackrock
Oh my god. WTF has the US Patent Office done to itself?
They must have been asleep at the wheel, and granted them this patent. They
must have gotten starry eyed with all the wizardry of a web browser back in
2000, that they thought, this was a new and compelling technology.
The description of this patent, is just for a web site application, that will
distribute assignments to students. The idea behind it is really not any more
different than the GUI programs that were written on Windows 95 like the AOL
program. They just splashed some fancy new words like "Uniform Resource
Locator" and "World Wide Web".
This is another valid reason why software patents should be abolished. This is
pure insanity. This is government and bureaucratic corruption of the highest
order.
~~~
imtringued
I think the patent office has absolved itself from all responsibility and
shifted it to the courts. This mostly hurts small businesses that want to
avoid court as much as possible.
------
lloydatkinson
Anything Atlasssian. Jira, Bitbucket, confluence. Just frustrating to use,
poor UX, and slow. Business types love them however.
AWS. It’s UI is honestly baffling, it feels and looks like someone made it in
a rush with jQuery and Bootstrap years ago. It’s login and identity and
resource management is confusing, and apparently you need a chrome extension
which adds a bunch of complicated options I don’t really understand just to be
able to change roles. It is literally years behind Azure.
Git. It’s purposely archaic commands and syntax leads to too many accidents
far too often. I recently started using Gitkraken which allows you to pull
changes WITHOUT needing to commit locally first because it uses stashes. It
basically does the same option. Why can’t git be smart like that?
Linux. It’s great, but it’s so easy to run into configuration problems or poor
documentation.
Docker. Again it’s great but for whatever reason it just works poorly on ARM
and the whole ecosystem is geared to x86 and it just goes and pulls the x86
images and then fails to run them. Come on.
~~~
dasil003
Disagree strongly on git. On the surface the syntax is ugly, but the data
model is brilliant.
Once you wrap your mind around what commits, heads and remotes are and learn
to rebase you get an incredibly simple and fine-grained control. I never use
stash because it's trivial to create a WIP commit and rebase later into the
chunks I want to ship to permanent history.
Git is like a chef's knife: extremely powerful tool that's dangerous in
untrained hands.
~~~
millimeterman
I think the best argument against git is to use mercurial for a few months. It
has exactly the same functionality but a nicer and more streamlined interface,
especially when it comes to branch management.
~~~
dreamcompiler
I love mercurial but since I've gotten used to git I miss the lack of the
staging area and stash in mercurial. I have to grudgingly admit they're very
useful.
~~~
ptx
In some cases (all my usecases, but perhaps yours are different) the staging
area can be replaced by some combination of "hg commit --amend" and "hg commit
--interactive" \- or in older versions "hg rollback" and "hg record".
------
Someone1234
Microsoft Teams.
I am forced to use it (work) and it is missing really basic features that
messenger software had in the 1990s like Push-To-Talk, real multi-window (even
with the recent "pop-out" functionality), and its UI is all the worst modern
trends. You cannot extend it or fix these issues (e.g. plugins, custom CSS
styles, etc).
Plus it is buggy, I keep not getting calls/messages/etc, and every time my
computer sleeps/wakes it sits in offline until you open the main window from
the system tray. Those are year+ old bugs.
While it is often updated[0], the Team's priorities leave a lot to be desired.
Adding new gimmicks and tie-ins while ignoring the dilapidated state of the
core software itself for two+ years now.
[0] [https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/what-s-new-in-
mic...](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/what-s-new-in-microsoft-
teams-d7092a6d-c896-424c-b362-a472d5f105de)
~~~
robin_reala
The worst thing about Teams is that for no reason they’ve decided to roll
their own notifications framework on macOS that doesn’t respect Do Not Disturb
settings. That’s the absolute minimum a notifications system should do: stop
appearing when told to.
~~~
kingnight
There isn't anything that gets me so flustered throughout the day than this.
I would turn these banners off, but as far as I can tell, there is no way to
get badges to show up on the icon (only other cue to remind me people want to
talk to me) without these banners.
I really wish there was a 3rd party client that was all native that I could
use. Teams is definitely the worst part of my software stack.
~~~
vladvasiliu
On MacOS there is. I've remove teams from my mac so can't verify the exact
setup, but in the notification settings (in teams) you can disable the banners
but not the notifications altogether. I think the badge in the dock icon will
be the number of new items in the activity panel.
But yeah, notification management is basically a pain in Teams. Not sure if
it's still the case, but even on Windows 10 it would use its own notification
window instead of the system one...
------
etaioinshrdlu
Docker.
I use it and love it every day in both dev and prod, but I also really kind of
hate it.
I'll keep my complaints short.
There should not be a system-wide daemon. (Or any daemon).
It should not require root at all (no setuid either).
From outside the container, the container and its processes should be a single
process (with threads). (Like glueing a bunch of processes together.)
The containers should be nest-able to arbitrary depth without performance loss
(at least to say, hundreds of nestings deep.)
Docker-compose should not exist, instead it should be replaced by nesting of
containers.
Basically, I think it needs to follow the UNIX philosophy better by providing
simple abstractions that can be combined easily. The containers would visually
look a bit more like an old virtual machine (single process) than our current
containers.
These changes probably require a bunch of kernel hacking, but I think it would
be worth it long-term for a cleaner architecture.
It appears there are some movements into this direction thanks to podman, but
it's really not there yet, especially with nesting.
Also, it wouldn't really be a product at all but just a built-in tool on Linux
systems.
~~~
btilly
If you want more complaints, and well informed ones at that, read
[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/containers-future-ian-
eyberg/](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/containers-future-ian-eyberg/).
I particularly love the quote, _The kernel developers view of the docker
community is that in the rare case they can actually formulate the question
correctly they usually don 't understand the answer._
There is only so much that you can say to clarify things to someone who is
thinking about everything wrong and doesn't realize it. :-(
~~~
aloer
That article seems overly critical about young developers _that don 't know it
any better_ because they grew up on containers.
I guess I am one of those so I got to ask, is the proposed solution of
unikernels something we had before but lost in favor of containers, or is it
something completely new anyways?
It does look like it might be the latter so why blame developers for using
containers due to lack of choice? If unikernels are better and just as easy to
use then I am sure people will convert.
He blames a lot on marketing and marketing lies but his company
([https://nanovms.com/](https://nanovms.com/)) seems to make it just as hard
to figure out what's going on with the apparently only option being a
_schedule a demo_ button.
Come on, I remember Docker being that fancy new thing that people at
university taught themselves and to each other around ~2014/2015\. That hype
was well deserved and if you want to compete with that you can't just decide
to brush it off as wrong and misguided.
At the risk of pointing out that I also might be one of those that the quote
above is referring to, I gotta ask:
Is there a technical reason why I shouldn't be able to eventually just replace
Docker with a micro or unikernel? Same or similar style of image definition,
completely different runtime technology?
Isn't it up to the kernel and platform developers to build the tools to make
that happen comfortably for all of us naive container users?
~~~
kubanczyk
> Is there a technical reason why I shouldn't be able to eventually just
> replace Docker with a micro or unikernel?
Many legacy pre-docker apps were able to run inside docker without any dev
work.
Very few apps would run on unikernel without dev work (porting). It's a
different kernel after all.
------
ordu
Android. Truly horrible platform where I cannot even find a clock app that
just works. I mean there is one shipped with a phone, but it has inconvenient
timer and I do not like how time selection is done -- a lots of movements to
scroll numbers to find one I need, -- but I cannot configure it to my
convenience and I cannot find another clock app that works.
And all this "Google phone wants to have an access to calendar" after each
call. I do not know why it needs an access to calendar, I'm not going to give
it one, so just stop pecking me. But it will never stop, it seems.
And a lots of useless stuff I cannot delete. I stopped it from popping up with
stupid messages, but I cannot delete them. It seems that I will be forced to
replace Android with PostmarketOS.
~~~
aasasd
> _how time selection is done -- a lots of movements to scroll numbers to find
> one I need_
That's the worst way to pick a time that I've seen and used. It requires a lot
of swiping, combined with looking for the precise moment to stop the scrolling
and not overshoot.
Thankfully in some Android variants it's replaced with much better
alternatives. Google Pixel's stock apps in Android 9 and 10 use a round watch
face for time points—where you pick first the hour, then the minute with one
tap each. However, this still requires rather precise finger work (and has
animation in the middle). The best interface IMO is what Pixel and Philips'
phones use in the timer: you just type the minute and the second (or the hour
and the minute) in four digits, with a huge number pad on the screen. Philips
did better here because its pad occupied most of the screen so the tap targets
are larger. The benefit of this interface is that you easily develop muscle
memory for it, practically no aiming is required.
‘Simple Mobile Tools’ make pretty good apps which are open-source and are
present in F-Droid
([https://www.simplemobiletools.com](https://www.simplemobiletools.com)). Alas
their ‘Simple Clock’ uses scroll spinners in the timer, but perhaps you could
ask them to reconsider. I can help with screens from the better interfaces.
~~~
bennettfeely
Microwaves have a perfectly usable and quick timer input method. Is there
anyone who thinks swiping and scrolling up and down to pick a time makes
things easier? I have no idea why they think a smartphone timer should be any
different.
~~~
smichel17
Tangentially, most microwaves are missing a key feature: a combined `start`
and `minute plus` (or +30s, whatever) button.
It's the kind of thing that seems trivial, but once you've used it, is so
blindingly obvious that it's the Right Way To Do Things that you'll wonder why
every microwave doesn't do it.
I'll never buy a microwave without it again.
------
zxcvbn4038
Microsoft Outlook - decade after decade the icons change but the suckage does
not, its 1987 every day when you use Outlook.
Microsoft Teams - drains my battery 1% every two minutes
Slack - the original “let’s forget everything we’ve learned about
communications and try to discover it again”. From the threads feature nobody
wants to the inability to silence bots or plugins, Slack never fails to
disappoint. They pitch it as a knowledge archiving tool but unless you know
exactly where, when, and who said something good luck finding it.
G-Suite has been awesome for almost five years now, though it can be
problematic when you need to communicate with people outside your org that
don’t use g-suite for work. Hangouts drains my battery fairly aggressively
also but not as much as Teams, so I’ve switched to Zoom for video - plus it
works seamlessly reguardless of which email program people use.
~~~
pavel_lishin
For what it's worth, I love threads. Prior to threads, channels would be pure
noise, often intertwining multiple conversations at once.
~~~
Trasmatta
Threads are good, the Slack implementation is still lacking though. They
really need the ability to subscribe to a thread without commenting in it.
~~~
woobar
They have "Follow Thread" (You'll be notified about new replies)
~~~
Trasmatta
Ahh I never noticed that. Not sure if it's new or if I've just been blind.
------
d_burfoot
The Apache big data suite (Hadoop/Spark/Yarn/Hive/HDFS/etc).
In several years of big data engineering work, I've believe I've seen only one
application that couldn't be refactored into a simple multi-instance
framework-free program. People use the big data frameworks as glorified
distributed-job management tools, and the resulting systems are more fragile,
more complex, more vulnerable to weird version compatibility errors, and less
efficient.
~~~
theptip
> People use the big data frameworks as glorified distributed-job management
> tools
Do you have any tools you like for job management without all the distributed-
systems baggage?
I've heard folks advocate for Make for this kind of thing, perhaps that or
some other orchestration tool that deals with job dependency graphs would be
the unix way? (Having a nice way to visualize failed step would of course be a
plus; a common use-case is "re-run the intermediate pipeline, and everything
downstream".)
~~~
lixtra
Have a look at airflow.
However, so far I didn’t switch from rundeck & make.
~~~
ForHackernews
Airflow is really limiting in some non-obvious ways: [https://medium.com/the-
prefect-blog/why-not-airflow-4cfa4232...](https://medium.com/the-prefect-
blog/why-not-airflow-4cfa423299c4)
------
doomrobo
I hate to say it, but Signal.
Signal has consistently been a pain to use for my moderately sized (<15)
friend group chat and for 1-on-1 threads too.
Messages sometimes don't arrive or arrive out of ordered and appear in the
wrong order, scrolling up has random jumping behavior, opening the chat in iOS
causes my audio to stop playing, there is explicitly no way to back up any of
the chat, copying multiple messages is broken on desktop, search is super slow
and search result previews have been corrupted for as long as I can remember,
sharing links through the iOS share menu causes the app to behave super weird
or just crash (my mom can't share links with me through Signal), you can't
mute conversations on desktop (IIRC there have been two PRs implementing this
feature in the last 2 years; both not pulled), mutual verification is so
frustrating that I literally got yelled at when trying to explain it to my
parents, I sometimes can't take pictures from within the app, when I can take
pictures the viewfinder is half the resolution of the actual camera and
everything looks blurry, the most recent app update causes a several second
lag whenever I open the group chat, and I am throughly convinced that every
issue I've mentioned is so low priority for the people running the show that
they won't get fixed for a very long time. At least we have stickers now.
Seriously though I believe in what Signal is doing and will probably continue
to use and suggest the app. But it will hurt every time I do it.
~~~
nikisweeting
Yes, I've given up trying to report these issues as it's been years since my
initial reports and I've never seen the things I reported fixed.
Signal desktop has been broken for almost a year for me "Error handling
incoming message" is shown instead of each message. Theres no easy way to
transfer messages between devices out-of-band when migrating to a new device
(e.g. via encrypted binary backup blob). Messages constantly fail to arrive
when they're sent, I often get them days after the person sent them. etc. I
could go on...
~~~
jcrawfordor
Signal desktop "works" for me in the sense that I _usually_ receive messages,
but probably about once a day one of my conversations suddenly displays
somewhere from 20 to 70 lines of "Error handling incoming message." In talking
to people this doesn't seem to be in response to any actual activity by the
person on the other end.
I feel like I've seen Signal problems appear and get fixed, like for a couple
months the desktop client just wouldn't get half or so of the messages I
received, and then one day it seemed fine again. But the long deluges of
"Error handling incoming message" have been present, as far as I can tell, for
the entire time that I have used Signal Desktop, perhaps 3 years. I guess I
consider it a feature now. :/
------
ufmace
Scrolling through the top few dozen posts here, I see a bunch of commonly used
development software. IMO, all of those do have some issues, but none are
remotely comparable to the horror show that is internal software at medium-
large corporations. I've used a bunch of these, actually worked on improving a
few, witnessed the development process for others. There's no point in naming
them, because people outside the company will never use them.
These types of programs are uniquely terrible for reasons described in other
posts - the people doing the development, and setting the priorities for
development, have no connection to the people who need to use it day to day.
Different offices, rare personnel crossover, systems specifically designed to
discourage direct communication. They're usually big and complex enough that a
ground-up redesign is either impossible, or will inevitably gather enough poor
management decisions to be about as bad as before by the time it becomes
remotely practical to use.
I recall one place where a critical application required to record data and
deliver it to clients in a realtime application was based on an X-Windows
application running in Windows XP using the one X-Windows manager that sort of
worked there. Yes, really. I know it's a super weird combo, but it's what we
had. I ended up moving into a related software department, and got some behind
the scenes info. Turned out that there was just one guy left who was still
actively coding for it, already past retirement age, but kept on anyways out
of desperation, because nobody else was willing to touch that codebase. There
was a project to build a more modern replacement application, with all of the
usual corporate bloat and ever-slipping deadlines. It wasn't great, but at
least it ran natively on Windows 7 and had a better UI. I think they moved
over to it entirely after a while, but I left that place before that move was
finished.
~~~
Rapzid
This is spot on. One of the worst internal tools I had to use was actually
created for the company by Thoughtworks..
------
superasn
Anything which requires me to use a Google captcha or hcaptcha. I generally
don't get annoyed very easily but spotting fire hydrants and traffic lights
just to login into a site to which you are a paying customer is plain
nonsense.
I've actually decided to move my entire infrastructure from Digital ocean to
AWS because of this captcha before login nonsense (thankfully DO reverted it
just in time)
~~~
ColanR
I've started intentionally making my answers subtly wrong. E.g., if something
might look like a fire hydrant, but isn't, I mark it positive. I usually have
to do it a few times anyway, and it makes me feel better to think Google's AI
datasets are inaccurate.
~~~
mastazi
In my experience, when I do it slightly wrong it actually takes less steps to
get through. I guess in the age of Yolo v4 and such, doing it “too well”
actually makes you look like a robot?
~~~
robotnikman
I've noticed this too. If you do the captchas too quickly you get more of them
as well. If I 'dumb' myself down a little I usually only just get one of them
------
pachico
Jira is my daily nightmare. I guess the "no CTO was ever fired for choosing
SAP" applies to Jira too. It just does the opposite of that it tries to do,
which is making development tracking easy (not to mention those silly ideas
coming from agile coaches to use Jira to measure wrong things, which makes of
it a horrible combo).
~~~
ivalm
So what is like Jira but good?
I use jira at work and I like it.
But our use case is maybe more limited/liberal. For us it is:
1) list tasks to do and how tasks are linked
2) archive discussion about issues and integrates with butbucket (so in commit
it will link to ticket to read about why something was done; similarly from
issue discussion I can see the relevant commits; this also goes well with
history either by looking to linked issues or blaming in git and getting
issues that resulted in the commits)
3) enables pointing other devs to something (I did some partial task, need
help, I assign or cc someone else, they contribute to the issue as appropriate
and then hand it back). Helps ensure all relevant discussion is centralized
and persisted.
What we don’t do is use it as an explicit performance/formal sprint tool...
there is no middle manager questioning me about something I wrote/didn’t write
in jira. is this where people start to hate it?
~~~
jrockway
My experience with bug trackers is that people hate them no matter which one
you choose. The infinite list of stuff you know is broken or sub-optimal
crushes the spirit. (Jira is particularly bad, because it is slow and
complicated, but switching to simpler tools doesn't make that underlying
problem go away.)
When people complain about bug trackers, they probably need a new outlook on
work. They need to aggressively prioritize tasks. They need to be in a mental
state where they're happy working on the highest priority thing, not the most
interesting thing. You can't get there by buying a new tool for $9.99 per user
per month. You probably need a vacation.
At my last job, we switched from Jira to Github Issues to Asana. Each tool had
the same problems -- bugs were filed faster than they were fixed. I am
personally okay with that -- I know that most of these things will never be
done, but it's nice to park the idea somewhere. But to others, it's crushing,
and although people will complain that they don't like Jira's UI, what they
really hate is that realization that they will never "finish".
~~~
Bnshsysjab
Spoken like a true manager.
~~~
mienski
Ah yes the engineering nirvana where no-one is a manager and targets don't
exist..
~~~
nikanj
Aka a well-funded startup with no traction
------
creativeembassy
Dropbox. I've used it for a decade, but now it's slow, bloated, and takes over
CPU and memory like there isn't a single other program I need to run... and I
was paying $20 for the privilege.
But a few weeks ago I switched to Syncthing[0], and it's the best software
transition I've ever made. Opposite of everything Dropbox is now: fast,
simple, and I don't even notice it running in the background. Seamless setup,
and FREE. (So good, you're gonna want to donate anyway.)
[0]: [https://syncthing.net/](https://syncthing.net/)
~~~
ajb
I've been looking into a few of these (need to replace keybasefs before zoom
kills it)
\- syncthing does one thing well. However you need to be your own server
admin. Which is great if you are or your company will do it for you, but I
don't want to do it for my personal stuff.
\- syncany is exactly what I want, but it didn't get out of alpha, the team
apparently didn't make money and have stopped maintaining it, and it still has
some scary bugs, although probably my needs are somple enough that they
woulnd't be triggered.
\- cryptomator looks good itself, but you need something else to do the cloud
storage part, which ideally supports webdav. Unfortunately the davfs2 crashes
my linux box and the other alternatives don't seem to be much better.
\- nextcloud and owncloud again want you to be your own server admin
\- the guys benind tahoe-lahfs have a reputation for solid crypto and
reliability, but it is complex to run. privatestorage.io were going to do a
managed version, but it doesn't seem to have materialised yet.
\- There are solutions like internxt and ipfs where everyone stores everyone
else's files. I'm not sure I trust that not to go down without warning.
\- proton are supposed to be coming out with a protondrive, which hopefully
will have an open source client, although locked into them.
\- There are proprietary ones like tresorit and spideroak, which have closed
clients. I may have to grit my teeth and use one of them.
\- A bunch of others I didn't evaluate yet.
What I want is for someone else to do the server admin part (availability and
backups), but without my trusting them with my keys, which I only use with
open-source client code. I don't mind paying a reasonable amount, but
apparently this is hard.
~~~
calt
Syncing doesn't even need a server if the devices you're using are online at
the same time.
I just switched to it from Dropbox.
~~~
ajb
Yeah, I get your point - I'd like someone else to do the backups, though.
------
ceronman
Workplace from Facebook.
The company I work for uses this for internal communication. Workplace is
basically the same Facebook and Messenger, but tweaked for a private group of
people.
The problem is that, because this is basically the same Facebook, it is
designed to keep you "engaged". It uses all kinds of patterns to keep you
addicted to your timeline and search for attention. Rather keeping you
informed with the important topics, it distracts you with a lot of irrelevant
stuff. The algorithm will always show you something that keeps you scrolling.
Huge time waste.
The motto of this software is "Bring your company together". And it works
exactly as Facebook's motto, "Bring the world closer together", in the sense
that it does exactly the opposite. The software has all sorts of mechanisms to
generate controversy. Because controversy is what ultimately drives more
engagement. Reactions, memes, notifications. It makes you fight with your
colleagues about silly things, and it makes it really easy to derail any sort
of constructive conversation.
Imagine having to try a technical conversation in this platform and then
people are allowed to "react" with an angry face or a silly animated GIF. No
argumentation required. And those reactions will bring more reactions. And in
those rare cases when some meaningful discussion actually happens, then the
thread is quickly buried by the constant stream of new things.
If your company is considering this, avoid it like the plague.
~~~
sawyerjhood
+1 to this. I worked at FB for a few years and Workplace is just Facebook re-
skinned. My big gripe with Workplace is similar to what ceronman says, it is
essentially engineered to create meta-work. People end up using it to self-
promote every little thing that they do to get visibility and this leads to it
being incredibly noisy and really filled with information that isn't relevant
and important things get buried under all of the filler. The only real upside
to workplace is that I think it is better for Q/A groups than something like
Slack is, at least for larger companies.
------
1ris
Windows. Not windows applications, but windows itself. Completly incoherent
user interface. Impossible to find anything. The wifi dialog in the systray,
the new windows 10 wifi control and the old style network interfaces dialog
often show conflicting information. Neither of them works. Have trouble with
bluetooth (of course you have, it never works)? Windows is kind enough to hide
anything bluetooth related so you have not chance to do anything about it. The
Start menu. Not only full of ads, but also completely insane. Type word X. add
a character. Press backspace. Get a completely different result. Entering
notepad.exe works. entering notpad does not. Enter "visual", find no results.
Enter "visual studio" et voilat. Ads in the explorer. And the list goes on and
on. It's full of nuisances and inconsistencies.
~~~
marticode
Came here for this. It's a visual mismatch of varying Windows versions, from
modern 10 all the way to some pieces still having a Windows 95 icons and
layout. Why such a wealthy company can't afford to get every part of its OS
updated in 25 years is beyond me.
The file Explorer is sometimes super slow (especially when dealing with media
files, which it insists on analyzing first before displaying their folder),
hangs on some FLAC files and frequently crashes.
It somehow can't handle pretty standard media files (again some standard FLAC
that work everywhere else, variants of H264 or H265, etc.)
The networking works when it wants to - I still struggle to swap files between
two Windows 10 systems on my home networks (one always can't see the other
machine, and when I move files it's slow as molasses despite having blazing
fast Wifi).
------
OliverJones
Atlassian's Jira and Confluence. Why?
Their search capability is just bad. To find something requires a lot of tries
and tricks. I don't want to waste cognition because they re-invented the flat
tire.
Their inbrowser text editors are also just bad. On the level of WordPress
three years ago. Markdown? no. Cut and paste from other apps? OK, if you
remember to "Paste as Plain Text.
~~~
jbay808
Confluence... I was floored when I realized it can't support duplicate page
names in separate page heirarchies.
eg. You can't have a page called Engineering > Electrical > Test Procedure and
another page called Engineering > Mechanical > Test Procedure, because the two
"Test Procedure" pages are considered as occupying the same namespace.
~~~
philipwhiuk
Yeah... this pissed me off. - I end up using prefixes (so "Mech - Test
Procedure"
:@
------
lvass
WhatsApp. The desktop version has very few features, requires constant
connection to a mobile phone and gets out of sync very often. It's practically
irremediable if you're in a crowded wi-fi area and ethernet is the only way to
get a good connection. It's also designed so no conversation is ever private
despite advertising it's E2E encryption. Everyone you talk to has automatic
backups enabled and they're stored unencrypted in Google Drive. And the "two
step verification" password is the one of the dumbest things I've ever seen.
It must be a 6-digit number that requires you to type it constantly in order
to remember it. It basically assumes people are too incompetent to use
password managers or simply writing a password down. Passwords you can
remember are never safe.
~~~
bluedevil2k
The most annoying thing is that you can’t just message a new phone number. You
have to create a contact and then add their phone number to that contact,
close the contact app to go back to WhatsApp, press “+” again, search for the
contact you just made, select it, then start typing. God forbid the phone
number is entered wrong and you have to go back into the contact app. Meeting
someone in a bar/club (outside the US), it’s a 3-4 minute process with a high
error rate. WhatsApp, let me type a phone number in directly into a new
message!
~~~
arp242
You can get around that using a special
"[https://web.whatsapp.com/send?phone=](https://web.whatsapp.com/send?phone=)[..]"
and/or
"[https://api.whatsapp.com/send?phone=](https://api.whatsapp.com/send?phone=)[..]"
URL. I think the web. URL only works with WhatsApp web and the api. works on
phones, but I'm not 100% sure (I typically use WhatsApp Web myself).
I have a simple form on my website to make that a bit easier:
[https://www.arp242.net/wa.html](https://www.arp242.net/wa.html).
------
djinnandtonic
Google Drive.
I have no idea how a company with a search background produced software where
it is impossible to find something.
~~~
tootie
Everyone one of these cloud storage services (Dropbox, Box, Drive, iCloud, S3,
OneDrive) has adopted the same mental model of file storage that computer
systems from the 80s devised to mimic filing cabinets. Namely: folders. I
think a folder hierarchy has some value but they should really all be using a
tagging system instead. Orgs tend to have multiple hierarchies based or org
charts, projects, disciplines, timelines. Being able to tag documents across
all or multiple would make browsing to the right document less of a maze. And
make search more accurate.
~~~
thombles
> iCloud
Don't forget that Finder has customisable tags which sync perfectly across
iCloud. They are a top-level browsing option on the iOS Files app. Probably
you were thinking of something more tag-first but it does exist. :)
Personally I really like the file/folder model because I can sync the whole
caboodle to my hard drive, copy it to a USB backup, possibly transfer it to
another operating system, knowing that I've captured the whole story.
~~~
nikisweeting
Except iCloud Drive file sync engine itself is not reliable, I lost so many
edits and files in iCloud drive that I had to stop using it entirely and go
back to rsync.
------
puranjay
One of the worst apps I use regularly has to be Google Play Music. The UI is
horrible enough, but it also randomly deletes tracks from my library -
including my _own_ tracks that I recorded under my own name. And sometimes the
tracks will show up again randomly. The worst is when tracks don't show up in
my Songs list, but if I put it on shuffle, these tracks will start playing.
I don't know what's the status now, but Spotify India had too small a library
when it was first launched. Otherwise I would have made the switch
~~~
raffraffraff
YouTube music makes GPM look amazing
~~~
hobofan
What? I very quickly switched to Youtube Music over GPM because its Android
app was much more responsive. In the beginning the UX was also the most
intuitive for me, but it seems that in recent updates they randomly add/remove
some of my most used navigation options like "Go to Artist", which is
annoying.
------
westoque
JIRA.
The most complex simple system I used. Simple in theory (Project Management)
but complex in implementation.
~~~
tootie
JIRA is heavyweight, but I've never been remotely satisfied with any of the
competitors. If your team is more than 5 people or you have multiple teams,
you're absolute going to need all that sophistication from JIRA. If you ask me
what's the worst piece of software I use every day today, it's Asana.
~~~
raun1
ClickUp
~~~
seehafer
Slower than Jira in my experience.
------
thinkingkong
There's this software that one of my customers use called SAP Fieldglass.
Fieldglass was a separate company and sold for $1B and it might be - and I'm
not exaggerating - the worst software I've ever used, pretty much ever. But
the reason is interesting. It's designed as enterprise compliance software and
nobody enjoys using it. The enterprise managers hate it. The vendors hate it.
The contractors hate it. The finance team hates it. I can't imagine anyone
enjoyed _writing_ it. The UI is unintuitive and self-discovery is practically
impossible. It's so bad that companies have resorted to making Youtube videos
on HOW to take repetitive actions inside the tool. The system is so anti-
success that part of me wonders if this is done on purpose; to delay any kind
of payments to vendors / etc.
The best part is it doesn't _do_ anything itself. It's just a workflow system
for dispatching operations to different systems and teams. It will create an
invoice in an existing finance tool. It will issue a ticket to create a
physical badge, etc.
Anyway I think that's a massive opportunity, if that's what you're looking
for.
~~~
gimboland
Oh god yeah — fuck Fieldglass.
------
XCSme
Android on my TV: (keeps crashing, internet sometimes not working, sound
volume usually is wrong, etc.)
Nvidia GeForce Experience: I don't actually use it daily, because it doesn't
work. I have not been able to start it for the last 6 months without getting a
startup error. I contacted Nvidia support, reinstalled, downgraded, updated,
problem is still there. The tray icon always shows when there's a new update,
but I have to manually download it.
Google Chrome: Whenever I ALT+TAB back to Chrome it freezes for 1 second. It
could be one of the extensions I use, but never found the cause. Google's own
note-taking app, Google Keep, was crashing the browser on Google Chrome:
[https://support.google.com/docs/thread/9482426?hl=en](https://support.google.com/docs/thread/9482426?hl=en)
~~~
millimeterman
I disagree about Chrome. It's absolutely not perfect, but considering its
sheer complexity - browsers are probably comparable to an operating system at
this point - bugs are fairly rare and performance is quite good.
~~~
frank2
Considering its sheer complexity its is indeed well-executed. I just wish I
didn't need something that complex to read a document on the internet.
~~~
minerjoe
You don't! I switched to using links on the linux framebuffer and it rocks.
Yea, there are a few sites that I have to pop over to X and Firefox, but for
the vast majority of web sites that I visit, including this one, it works like
a charm.
And it's lighting fast. Trully stunning. 10-20ms to render on a circa 2008
thinkpad.
And it's pretty good straight C, and very hackable, and only around 70,000
LOC. First thing I did was join it with guile and write a bit of glue code and
I'm now adding features to it faster than you could git clone firefox, let
alone begin to read its code.
~~~
frank2
A large fraction of HN stories are articles on nytimes.com. How readable is a
typical page on nytimes.com in links?
~~~
minerjoe
It's great. Loads in less than a second. Text and images. Never have to worry
about popups.
------
elviejo
\- GitHub \+ why do we centralize issues, documents for a _distributed_
version control? \+ why do we use a a closed source, walled garden to develop
free software?
\- Git \+ it's a leaky abstraction. \+ why do we need to know about the stash?
\+ why is it that changing to a different branch doesn't give any visual clue,
even worst it keeps the files I'm working on that are not part of the
repository yet.
for an academic treatment of the defects in Git read: What's Wrong with Git? A
Conceptual Design Analysis S. Perez De Rosso and D. Jackson. In Proceedings of
the 2013 ACM International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and
Reflections on Programming & Software (Onward! 2013)
~~~
recursive
99% of git usage seems to involve one or fewer remotes. Maybe multiple remotes
is just not that useful.
~~~
zenhack
Fwiw, my usual work flow involves 2 remotes, one for the project's mainline
repo and one for my fork.
~~~
ufmace
I frequently have 3+. Github/Bitbucket if it's shared there, maybe a original
repo if it's a fork I'm submitting PRs too. My server if it's something I'm
running an instance of - I like to deploy my personal services via Git pushes.
Sometimes a copy of the same codebase on another personal computer or two - if
I don't feel like pushing it to Github, sometimes I'll push and pull between
computers directly.
------
frank2
Google Chrome. (I use Chrome because all of the other browsers are even more
annoying to me.)
Technically speaking most of the code that seriously annoys me runs _inside_
my browser, but IMO it was never realistic to hope that the myriad creators of
individual web pages or web sites would collectively create a good experience
for me: my only hope was for the makers of browsers to make choices different
from the choices they actually made.
Clarification: the web browser makes a pretty good framework for creating user
interfaces, IMO, but it is a bad way for an end user with preferences
sufficiently similar to mine to access writing on the internet. Sadly it is
the _only_ way to access most of the writings on the internet.
Written documents can be extremely simple: just a sequence of characters in
some well-known encoding, but most of the actual documents of interest to me
on the internet are essentially programs that require execution in what is
essentially a "virtual machine" as complex as any general-purpose operating
system.
~~~
adventurer
Google Chrome is constantly creating temp. files that eventually take 40GB+ of
one of my drives until it is completely full. Every few months I needed to
manually remove a ton of files. It drove me back to Edge, which I thought
would never happen.
~~~
bloody-crow
I do not believe I'm typing this, but I've recently made a switch from Firefox
to Microsoft Edge as my primary browser on Mac OS X.
Edge is very similar to Chrome in performance and features while seemingly
being slightly better on memory. It also doesn't have the Google's creepiness,
as Microsoft appears to be the modern day underdog.
It also supports chromecast, a feature I missed the most in Firefox.
Overall it's a surprisingly competent browser.
------
daviddaviddavid
ServiceNow.
Perfect storm of abysmal design/UX used to represent a bloated and confusing
underlying information architecture. It's possible that I'm using an poorly
configured version/instance of the product, but good lord, I'll do anything I
can to avoid using it at work.
~~~
b00palicious
Hi! Designer at ServiceNow. Would love to know a bit more about what you’re
going through. Specifically what products you’re having a hard time with and
maybe a perspective on what we could do to improve. I’d be more than happy to
take it back to the team(s).
~~~
Macha
Background: I work at a company where engineers use JIRA and support uses
service now.
I find basic tasks challenging in your app. A support agent escalates to
developers (i.e. me). "Hey, can you look at INC123456". The ticket is not yet
assigned to me. How do I find and open this ticket? The support agent can send
me a direct link, but there's no apparent relation between any of the query
params and the ticket number, and also no obvious UI element in which I can
put a ticket number and navigate there. When I navigate to the ticket,
comments are mixed in with audit entries. The frame based navigation also
means I get questions from junior devs on tickets and they copy links into
slack messages that just send me to the homepage.
~~~
mynegation
You can put INC123456 into the search field at top right and it should take
you directly to the incident page.
But yeah ServiceNow is insane. Not sure how much of this is product itself or
gajillion of customizations.
~~~
Macha
Top right is a settings gear and help icon for me, no search box. The only
search box on the homepage is "filter navigator" which filters the left nav.
------
mister_hn
Maven, since the dependency hell and that __every__ single project requires
the same ugly boilerplate and yak shaving tasks, worsened if the infamous
release plugin is used.
Jira, because it's too slow and bloated from features you never use anyway.
IntelliJ, because it freezes on every 6-7 autosuggestions, on projects of
50-80K LOCs.
~~~
caffeine
Surprised to hear this about IntelliJ, have used it for many years without
issue on substantially larger projects. Can't say for sure, but your freezes
might be a solvable artifact of your setup.
~~~
necubi
A common reason for IntelliJ to freeze is not giving it enough memory, which
causes frequent GC stalls. You can try increasing the max heap by following
the instructions here: [https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/increasing-memory-
heap.h...](https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/increasing-memory-heap.html).
~~~
mister_hn
I gave IntelliJ over 8GB Ram (on a 32GB laptop) but keeps freezing because
they say it's a Linux kernel problem in the 5.4 (shipped with Ubuntu
20.04/Mint 20)
------
jimnotgym
OSX/MacOS
This should be popular
It seems so aimed at the consumer market, with everything set up to help with
integrating with Apple services.
But what about the enterprise features? It is very common for companies to be
running Active Directory networks, why do macs work so hard not to fit in? Why
not have some kind of AD support for mapping print queues, network drives that
kind of thing? Maybe respecting password policies? Authentication via Azure AD
would be really helpful too. But the real killer is forwards/ backwards
compatibility. Enterprises have long software life cycles which are respected
by Windows. You can run VB6 applications from 1999 on Windows 10.
I get so many service desk issues for macs that are resolved by a reboot, and
why don't they reboot?.. because they worry that the updates will take 20
minutes.
I hate MacOS. It causes me so much more aggravation than my main Windows user
base. I'm currently having to work on printer deployments and MDM's (solved
problems on Windows) just so marketing people can look cool in meetings.
I just gave one of them a Windows laptop to try and they noted how nice the PC
Office apps are, and how fast their computer was (processor being 2 gen ahead
of the current macbook pro)
We have one coder who still uses mac (he supports some old desktop apps that
incidentally are all broken by Catalina), and since he mainly targets Linux
nowadays he is currently looking at moving to Windows and WSL.
Great home computers, great for individuals, terrible for enterprise use.
~~~
philipwhiuk
> It is very common for companies to be running Active Directory networks, why
> do macs work so hard not to fit in?
Active Directory is licensed and patented.
You're literally complaining that someone isn't signing up to vendor lock in.
~~~
jimnotgym
You can write your own app today that authorises via Azure AD for free.
The code replying to you is proprietary, yes, but you are just talking to it
over a network not recompiling it!
Since you can choose not to use AD authentication you are not locked in at
all. I'm afraid your comment has rather lost me.
------
nprateem
Finder on Macs. I've used a Mac for over 5 years and it still amazes me how
unintuitive it is for basic tasks like copying and pasting files, creating new
directories, etc.
~~~
oneplane
I've been using it for 25 years but don't seem to have the same problem.
Across macOS Finder, Windows Explorer and the likes of KDE and Gnome's file
managers most of those tasks are identical.
Copying and pasting are universally hotkey+c and hotkey+v as an example.
Creating a directory is context->new in all cases.
Some changes were weird for a small period of a few days, like when moving
from Classic Finder to Mac OS X Finder where the priority of hotkeys for new
windows vs. new directories changed. Or when in Windows the address bar got a
lower priority than filesystem abstraction of user directories (at which point
the purpose got mixed). Same with Gnome2 to Gnome3.
I'm curious to see if it's "hard" as-is, or "hard" when you come from one
single environment with a lot of experience that is hard to adapt to something
that is not visually identical.
~~~
cryptoz
Is it possible to cut and paste files/ folders in Finder?
I feel like I try every few years and am unable to do it.
~~~
g_airborne
Instead of using Cmd+V to paste, use Cmd+Option+V to cut from the original
location and paste. I like it because it lets me postpone the decision to copy
or cut until the very end :)
~~~
nprateem
It should be possible from the right click menu like in every other OS, but
for some reason it's not. Same for creating directories.
~~~
antipaul
To create new folder, right click in the window (not on a file nor a folder).
Copy paste also works with right click. To move (a la cut), hold option key.
Also hold option key to see "move" menu option under Edit - Paste (Move)
------
SirensOfTitan
Slack: their web UI is ridiculously slow, and I hate how it creates this
expectation that I’m online 24/7.
GitHub: we mainly use phabricator now at my day job (which I love love love),
but I don’t really derive any joy from using this product anymore. I think
great tools are also fun to use, perhaps controversially. I can’t quite put my
finger on it, but I find GitHub sort of a drag for some reason.
NodeJS: I absolutely hate dealing with node_modules. My node-based docker
images are huge, and that’s after a lot of hand-held optimizations.
Additionally, we definitely avoid a lot of defects from using TypeScript, but
its compile time is awful for large projects. I also don’t particularly like
the edges: often I’ll hit odd typing inconsistencies from undocumented
limitations of TS.
After years of working in the JS ecosystem I sort of hate the complexity in
general.
~~~
cure
> Slack: their web UI is ridiculously slow, and I hate how it creates this
> expectation that I’m online 24/7.
Or 'little' annoyances like it being impossible to mute notifications on one
device (say, your phone) and not another (say, your web browser).
~~~
literallycancer
Or having to go into every single room and its settings to mute @everyone.
~~~
hedora
Or how the mute @everyone dialog box disables itself it if you’ve disabled
browser notifications.
------
axegon_
* Jira - over-engineered, unnecessarily complex and utterly slow.
* Zoom - worst video conference product __EVER__. Can't say a single good word about it.
* AWS admin console - same as jira, at least it's not slow.
* VPNs in general annoy me beyond reason too. At this point I use a raspberry pi to connect to the vpn and I use it as an SSH access server (and tunnel respectively).
~~~
Retardo_88
What do you not like about Zoom, and which video conference product would you
recommend instead?
~~~
arrayjumper
My experience with zoom has been on linux.
I hate the fact that it requires you to install the client for it to work.
The client randomly spikes in cpu usage while running in the background.
Multiple times I've also had this issue where I'll try to right click the zoom
icon in the system tray and quit zoom, causing it to hang and reach 100% cpu
usage on one core.
I also don't like that on clicking on a zoom video call link sometimes the
browser to client redirect works but sometimes it doesn't and you need to then
go back and click the link again.
For me, Google meet works much better.
~~~
errnoh
I was planning on mentioning Zoom as well. The Linux client especially is
insanely bad, iirc it also drew itself on top of everything.
My suggestion on Linux at least is to use the web client. Just get the url, do
a 's#/j/#/wc/join/#' to it and open it in browser of your choice. You'll need
to copy the password manually, sometimes it might require captcha etc, but at
least it's somewhat usable.
~~~
mr_toad
This works on MacOS as well (in Firefox or Chrome). No way in hell I’m
installing Zoom on a Mac.
------
sershe
I thankfully don't use it everyday, but Mac and literally everything on Mac
(even the terminal started crashing on resize towards the end of the time I
used it every day). Over time, I started keeping a note where I put every bug,
missing feature, malicious feature, performance issue, driver issue I had with
my 2 different MacBooks day to day, and it's loooong. I'll probably never
organize it unless I'm forced to use Mac again.
~~~
jasonv
Something else was probably going on with your Mac. The one example (terminal)
doesn’t happen on any of my Macs. And I have a few.
~~~
sershe
There was a specific thread on Mac whatever, or a bug filed I don't recall,
with dozens or more of comments. Introduced in a specific version, and never
fixed (well, as of 2-3 years ago), terminal would sometimes crash on reflow.
Not sure why it would hit specific machines
------
etaioinshrdlu
CUDA.
The GPU is the new Floating Point Coprocessor. (I think they are likely to be
integrated on CPUs even for high performance use-cases, eventually. Although
this is only happening very slowly...) It should be be programmed with vendor-
neutral CPU instructions and if need be, trapped by the kernel and emulated or
delegated appropriately. But all of this should be totally transparent to the
user application.
~~~
fxtentacle
+1
And when you need to profile something, get ready to set up custom drivers,
custom kernel flags, and recompile 30 GB of libraries and source code for that
custom cupti.so.
------
SamWhited
I agree with the person that says "everything Atlassian", overall it's
probably not the worst, but the Confluence WYSIWYG editor has to be one of the
most irritating pieces of junk I've ever used. Literally nothing it does is
predictable.
Similarly, whomever said Signal has a good point… it never manages to download
MMSs for me (which isn't its fault, signal is bad in my house), but it alerts
me anyways so I get a stupid "this couldn't be downloaded message" that I have
to be distracted by instead of only notifying me when I move into a place
where I have good enough signal to download it. It also then says "tap here to
retry" but does nothing when I do so (not even an indication that it's working
or that I tapped it). Aside from the annoying notifications about messages I
can't even read, it tries to make you spread it to your friends and you have
to manually close the stupid "Tell this person about signal" thing for _every_
_single_ _person_ you open a chat with. I had to just go back to another SMS
app and lose the ability to use their protocol.
The worst though for me is probably pulseaudio (still, after all these years,
even though it's gotten a ton better). People knowledgeable about it love to
tell me that it's obviously a configuration problem on my part, but every time
I start my computer something else is wrong. Every time I plug in my midi
controller and start up a synth I have no idea if it will work or not, but it
also fails in a different way almost every time. If I turn on a bluetooth
device, the device itself mostly connects fine, but then how the audio is
routed just seems random. That one works most of the time, but not always, and
if I turn the device off my audio settings sometimes go back to whatever they
were before, but sometimes I randomly find I no longer have a microphone, etc.
everything about it just feels bad.
~~~
daveyjonezz
Creating a bulleted list in Confluence is like playing Russian roulette.
------
rainforest
Gradle. I appreciate that it is a fast build system, and a lot of it does just
work. When it doesn't just work it's a nightmare. The config language is
completely opaque and undiscoverable (Kotlin might fix this, but I ran out of
patience to understand how Gradle works a while ago) though.
In many respects I think the fact there's a commercial version of it is a sign
that it's lacking in the UX area.
~~~
cdaringe
Preach! Yes yes and yes.
------
maliker
Microsoft office. Unavoidable in a business context. Slow. Hangs. Crashes.
Menu options hard to find in the constantly shape-shifting ribbon.
I actually have fond memories of office circa 1995 when it was a single
platform app. Now it’s some cross-platform monstrosity with horrible
performance.
So many features have been piled on top of each other that I suspect it’s
impossible to debug now. Image inserted in a shape in a table and commented
on? Good luck figuring out why that pauses scrolling for 5 seconds when it’s
encountered. Or explaining to someone non-technical why they shouldn’t do it.
------
overgard
I don't use it anymore luckily, but from a couple years ago: Xcode!! Unstable,
baffling interface decisions, very poor on features and the features that are
there are unreliable. By far the worst IDE I've ever used.
~~~
diego_moita
Agree. On 2020 that thing doesn't even have tabs for the open files.
Xcode is one of the most obvious evidences of Apple's despise and contempt for
programmers (others being crappy documentation, frequently deprecated APIs,
appstore with authoritarian rules, etc).
------
rvz
Desktop GNU/Linux.
Too much of a cost to test for and to set up CIs for the distros I'm
targeting. There is little to no paying users there because of the
fragmentation. But again, "paid support" will have lots of choices, versions,
combinations and edge cases to cover. So I listed it as "unsupported: use at
your own risk."
Windows and macOS have a much sainer desktop for GUI apps to test against.
~~~
sebbyy
> lots of choices, versions, combinations and edge cases to cover
I think Snap[0], Flatpak[1], and AppImage[2] tries to solve this problem.
[0] [https://snapcraft.io/build](https://snapcraft.io/build)
[1] [https://flatpak.org/](https://flatpak.org/)
[2] [https://appimage.org/](https://appimage.org/)
~~~
lorisdev
The irony of course is that you're listing three different systems to solve
the same problem :)
------
jjav
gmail, by so many orders of magnitude.. Email interface designed by people who
seemingly have never tried to read email.
Threading is completely broken, filtering is broken, compose screen is
unusable.
At previous companies I've had to use gmail but was able to use a sane email
client via IMAP so it was almost ok (although still somewhat broken as gmail
doesn't handle IMAP correctly). At current work they disable all access except
via the unusable gmail web interface. So definitely gmail is the worst I have
to put up with everyday.
jira would be a distant second, but no comparison.
~~~
creativeembassy
Gmail was so groundbreaking when it first came out in 2004. AJAX was barely a
thing, and Gmail used it in spades everywhere. I remember it being mindblowing
when you didn't have to wait for full page refreshes for simple actions.
My problem is that it's remained frozen in time for years. Yeah, they tweak
the visual design every few years. But so many other email clients have far
surpassed it, and they've done nothing. Other than create Google Inbox. Which
was amazing. And then Google shut it down. ️
~~~
_1tan
Can you recommend a client that surpassed it?
~~~
azemetre
hey.com
I've only been using it for a few weeks but I like the aspect of the feed and
the hand holding it does when categorizing emails.
It is paid, but it's by the same team that did Basecamp. It's very polished
IMO.
------
FVIIIvWF
I feel the other comments are really first-world problems. As a doctor from a
developed country, the worst piece of software would be my hospital's clinical
portal. Not only it is painful to use, I believe the inefficiency it causes
actually is detrimental to patient's care and the health economy in general.
I happen to know some web development, so here's a few observations from top
of my head:
\- Slow speed. Simple page changes takes at least 1 seconds, others such as
viewing lab results or clinical letter takes around 3-5 seconds, but often
needing repeated clicks to actually work.
\- No form autosave & inconsistent saving behaviour. I have had to re-write
discharge summaries several times because of save failure. This taught me to
write on notepad/Word first and then transfer onto the portal.
\- Many buttons are deeply nested in a navbar. Sometimes the nested buttons
fail to show up at all on very small or large monitors. We have to resize the
window size to find the dropdown button.
\- Front-end CSS framework is based on YUI (discontinued since 2014). It
supports IE quite well, but breaks on current Edge, Firefox and Chrome.
\- The app tries to stop clinicians from opening more than one instance of it,
but this often results in us unable to open any instance of the web app at
all. Fixed with incognito mode.
\- From the occasional server crashes, I can tell from the debug callbacks the
backend is written in Java. The point here is that the debug trails are shown
rather than a 500 error, which is unsettling for a sensitive data platform.
\- Fragmented ecosystem, every part of the portal is an iframe from a
different provider. Lots of inconsistencies and crashes. Even the sidebar is
an iframe.
\- Printing is a nightmare. Whatever sent to the printer often doesn't show
up, but that's a story for another day.
I'm sure there are bigger ones I've missed. Unfortunately, the system we have
is not the worst in comparison (in one rural hospital I worked at shut the web
server for 3 days for a database upgrade). This makes using Outlook, Teams and
other stuff a breeze in comparison - they are actually snappy and stable.
Do we have anyone in the community that can enlighten me on the root case?
~~~
_-___________-_
> Do we have anyone in the community that can enlighten me on the root case?
The technical root causes are pretty boring really. The root cause is the way
that software purchasing happens in sectors like healthcare, education,
government.
Your portal software undoubtedly cost an eye-watering amount of money, almost
all of which went to middlemen while the actual software was built by an
outsourcing company probably in a market with very cheap low-skill programming
labour, who have probably developed a specialty in taking advantage of unclear
requirements to get paid even while delivering a turd.
The middlemen have great LinkedIn profiles and many contacts in the healthcare
industry, and the software works (the only people complaining about it are the
people who actually have to use it, but thankfully none of the people
responsible for buying this software actually have to use it!) so the work
keeps rolling in.
~~~
alecthomas
This is an astoundingly accurate comment.
------
a_zaydak
Windows 10 Home: Ignoring all of the typical complaints about windows like
bloat wear and Cortana... I would be happy is just basic things worked. For
example, I often have to switch between wireless networks for my job and the
wifi icon in the bottom tray just randomly disappears about 80% of the time so
I have to go through the full settings menu to get to it. Also, searching for
applications or documents from the search bar will also search the internet??
I could go on forever.
~~~
was8309
I'll second Windows 10 home. Focus changes from the app I'm working on to
Windows itself - but the screen still shows that the app I was working on. I
hit Alt+F4 to close the app (that I'm seeing and so think still has focus) and
get the Windows Shutdown prompt.
------
akshaydeshraj
Slack. Hands down.
No issues with the actual product per se, which is quite nice. But the
experience while using Slack goes bad exponentially as the team scales if
certain usage guidelines are not put in place.
~~~
omosubi
What usage guidelines need to be put into place for it to be successful?
~~~
sakisv
Not a guideline, but a feature I'd like to have:
Allow me to disable any kind of indication that someone is talking, not just
to me (red dot) but anywhere (blue dot). Not everything needs my attention and
having the tray icon change its state is distracting.
You can mute the channels, sure but why not make that as an option in the
notifications settings?
~~~
glerk
You can disable the notification badge: [https://slack.com/intl/en-
ca/help/articles/201355156-Guide-t...](https://slack.com/intl/en-
ca/help/articles/201355156-Guide-to-desktop-notifications#mac-1)
------
nknealk
Surprised not to see this here, but doing data engineering against any Adobe
product in creative cloud.
Specifically: AEM, AAM, Omniture, among others. My favorite is AAM’s “only
Adobe could come up with such a stupid data integration” file format:
[https://docs.adobe.com/content/help/en/audience-
manager/user...](https://docs.adobe.com/content/help/en/audience-manager/user-
guide/implementation-integration-guides/sending-audience-data/batch-data-
transfer-process/inbound-file-contents.html)
The omniture S3 feed comes as a 1004 column TSV. And for fields that capture
user inputs, they don’t escape backslashes. But the escape backslashes
everywhere else. I filed a ticket on this over a year ago but still no fix.
~~~
rmccue
We’re building a competitor to AEM (and in the process, parts of Omniture);
would love to hear more about your gripes with that. (Email’s on my profile.)
One of the things we’ve seen is similar to some of the sentiments expressed
about Blackboard: the decision makers often aren’t the users, so feature lists
and meta issues tend to win out. Adobe seems to target that market pretty well
with their whole experience suite.
------
gradschool
The Intel Management Engine (IME).
The most oppressive piece of software ever written makes suckers out of all of
us. No amount of campaigning to Intel cuts any ice. Nobody is big enough or
powerful enough to get rid of it.
~~~
fsflover
Exactly. Everyone is using it without realizing. More info:
[https://libreboot.org/faq.html#intel](https://libreboot.org/faq.html#intel)
------
keb_
Skype for Business. Everyone I've spoken to in my company has had connection,
audio, or screen-sharing issues. Personally, I consistantly have issues with
what I've listed plus instances where Skype just flat out refuses to launch,
or it crashes, or messages are randomly dropped or fail to send, or file/image
transfers that just __do not work __. It is truly baffling.
I noticed another comment thread about Microsoft Teams, but for me, Teams is a
godsend compared to Skype for Business.
~~~
jesterson
And Skype in general.
Does anyone have skype working on ios? No, it does launch and even works, but
messages are delayed, calls are delayed.
------
arnath
The answer is certainly Microsoft Teams but since there's already a large
section on that, I'll say Visual Studio.
VS is largely a wonderful piece of software but sometimes just stops working
in inexplicable ways. Sometimes I have to build 5 times without changing
anything to get it to succeed. Sometimes my build fails but the only error in
the error list is about projects that couldn't be loaded (because they failed
to compile for some mystery reason). Sometimes it just randomly freezes doing
basic tasks. My recent favorite is this endless string of banner errors at the
top of the screen saying that there's an error with my projects that I can't
dismiss or hide. VS is great, but also sometimes the worst.
------
anonymoushn
At a previous company, I used Google Hangouts Chat daily. This is a business-
focussed chat app that takes seconds to load any change to the UI (e.g.
changing the channel you are viewing). If you are atmentioned in a channel,
there's no way to find out what message thread you were atmentioned in except
by scrolling up until you see the highlighted text. Every message sent to a
channel other than a reply to a thread creates a new thread, and threads are
displayed sorted by most recently bumped, except that your messages do not
bump threads on your UI. If you wanted to avoid all these things, you could
use the API to make your own client, except that you can't, because there's no
API. (Technically there is an API, but because it is designed only for making
bots it is not allowed to do things like read messages from a channel you are
in that do not atmention you)
If I recall correctly, one of the company's public incident reports explicitly
mentioned Google Hangouts Chat as a reason that the incident was not fixed
much more quickly. I could not find this incident report when searching just
now though.
Edit: This product is apparently now called "Google Chat"
------
GlenTheMachine
Unless your answer is “ERP”, you haven’t actually seen how bad software UX can
be.
~~~
jhot
I work in "document capture" (OCR, data extraction, and process automation)
and every ERP I've had to integrate with has been a terrible experience. I was
on a screen share with a consultant for one trying to get my service about the
correct permissions and he was scrolling through a list of, what seemed like,
two hundred possible roles. Let's not even talk about the atrocity that is
their rest API, but at least they have an API as many don't and require RPA
(ewww) or similar to input data.
------
tnsittpsif
* BMC Remedy (Oh my god. Utterly disgusting experience.)
* Atlassian JIRA (never really got the hang of it. Overcomplicated.)
* Workday (the web app is sloooooow.)
* MRemoteNG (The best SSH client on Windows. Also the worst. Alt + Tab navigation annoys me to hell!)
* iTunes on Windows (Why is it like the way it is even in 2020!?)
~~~
non-entity
> Why is it like the way it is even in 2020!?
Isnt apple trying to kill iTunes in general?
------
sershe
Microsoft Teams, hands down. It is utterly atrocious.
I've never seen an app that uses 40-80% CPU on a modern laptop non-stop to do
not much more than ICQ/AIM/mIRC used to do in 1999 on a thing that's probably
less powerful that my alarm clock.
------
balls187
I guess the beauty of being old is that I have experienced how software has
gotten so much better.
It's interesting seeing negative comments about things like AWS, Git, JIRA,
etc, and compare to what my career was like BEFORE those were mainstays.
It's cool that so many people aren't satisfied with the status quo, and will
continue to push the to make things better.
To throw in my answer, G-Suite (as an IT Administrator).
------
gravypod
From worst to slightly less worst: Helm, Istio, and everything Atlassian (Jira
& confluence).
Helm: go templates aren't a robust, or even remotely sensible, way to define
the configuration changes someone will need on a day to day basis for
deploying applications to multiple environments. Some metaconfig language as
used in kubecfg and tanka is the way to go but every single time I work with a
team on kube they say something like "Helm is fine. Everyone uses helm." It's
at times like this that I remember there was a period in human history where
bloodletting was an established medical practice and that's the point the
software engineering industry is currently at.
Istio: someone had a great idea, implemented it poorly, and just kept hacking
at it. Obvious features are missing (setting QPS & bandwidth limits per
service-to-service). Configuration is disgusting. Documentation is somehow
worse than k8s' docs but, unlike k8s, the code is a mess. There's absolutely
no reason why it has to be implemented as a side car, it's just a hack that
baloons the resource usage of the entire system and reduces effectiveness of
things like edge redis caching. There's so many obvious ways to implement
similar functionality to istio except do so in a transparent way. Maesh is one
example but it'd also be far simpler to implement it as a combination CNI and
DNS system.
Atlassian: nothing further needs to be said. The problem space is so simple
and somehow it was implemented so poorly but juuuuuuuuuust enough management
features look pretty and it fools people into buying the software.
If I ever get the opportunity to retire I would love to take a crack at fixing
all of these.
~~~
jpgvm
If you don't need to use externally supplied Helm charts consider Jsonnet
instead. You can roll your own tooling around it and end up a much nicer place
customised for your environment and problems.
~~~
dqpb
Cuelang is far better than jsonnet.
~~~
gravypod
Cuelang is not simple or well documented. It's the "right solution" but it's
not polished currently. There needs to be a lot more examples to pull from.
There's a dramatic difference between:
[https://cuelang.org/](https://cuelang.org/) and
[https://jsonnet.org/](https://jsonnet.org/)
I have a feeling that cuelang is still in the R&D phase. Once it's finished
that I'll probably move everything I write to it. It'll probably focus more on
UX and tooling and simplicity after it moves out of the R&D phase.
------
_____s
Mail.app on macOS. Some macOS apps are really great (Notes or Safari for
example), but the average quality is poor. Mail, for example, is slow, search
almost never works, etc.
~~~
DenseComet
I'm also using Mail.app right now and I've been having similar issues with
search and stuff. Does anyone have any recommendations for good desktop email
apps on macOS?
~~~
dnh44
Interesting I’ve always thought mail.app has had amazingly good search. I
recently moved away from it though because I wanted a more flexible workflow
and tried a quite a few other clients. The “pretty” macOS mail apps had not
very good search functionality so they were unusable for me.
In the end I went with Mailmate and I’m extremely happy with it.
------
andrei_says_
Windows file explorer
OSX file explorer
Both are unavoidable and horrible.
Where did I save that file? What was it named? Where did that piece of
software save its file without asking me? Do I have to click 10 levels deep to
find a file?
Yes, it is a human problem, too, but maybe make things a bit easier for
humans? I know johnny.decimal exists but good luck getting people to use it.
Pretty much any email client And email as a primary mode of business
communication. Who said what in which message, then changed their mind as an
aside in an unrelated email thread and where’s my source of truth about
anything? People use their email like a chat sorted by most recent.
My mom uses zoom on android tablet and every time I call her I spend 25 min on
the phone trying to guide you through to initiating or receiving a meeting
I paid $300 for capture one but can’t use it because I can’t figure out where
it puts my images and why.
------
eddiegroves
Atlassian's Confluence (Cloud). A showcase for the decline in web based
software forced by the move to make everything a SPA. A terrible new editor
experience. Slow JavaScript heavy page loads. No persisted markup editing.
------
axaxs
Anything by Atlassian, but specifically Jira and Confluence.
------
SurgeonCoder
Trakcare [0] electronic medical record system.
As far as I can tell this is a demo EMS from Intersystems, they provide Cache
[1] to companies developing _real_ EMS with modern user interfaces. They don't
sell this product in the USA (so not to upset their customers), but have
dumped it on the rest of the English speaking world.
I suspect here is some sort of NDA with those unfortunate Hospitals taking
this pile of stinking £%^£" as I have never found a user group or trustworthy
review.
I get to use it at ground level (talk about poor UI), at management level (no
coherent db integrity, very poor reporting) and have seen a complete inability
to reconfigure the system to cope with COVID.
When ever we see demos for new clinical system I always ask "Would those
coding this system accept this level of quality/usability in their daily
software tools?". The marketing guys look at me like I'm from another planet.
I know "you get what you pay for", but for something hundreds of thousands of
Hospital staff will be using for patient care (we don't bill in the UK), there
should be a floor below which no company should offer half-baked dangerous
products. Trakcare is in the sub-basement.
[0]:
[https://www.intersystems.com/au/products/trakcare/](https://www.intersystems.com/au/products/trakcare/)
[1]:
[https://www.intersystems.com/products/cache/](https://www.intersystems.com/products/cache/)
~~~
MapleWalnut
Intersystems purchased Trakcare, which was developed by an Australian company.
They'd love to sell it in the US, but Epic is Intersystems largest customer
and they have an agreement to not compete in the US.
Cache is the most archaic and least usable programming environment I've ever
experienced. Unit tests are not a thing. MUMPS, which underlies the whole
system, is stringly typed. The entire stack is junk, so it's no surprise that
Trackcare is either.
------
pagade
Google Chat (enterprise G Suite offering):
\- No way to set status (essential in current remote work situation)
\- No way to reorder the rooms
\- No nested comments.
\- Cannot mark conversation unread or have some way to remember to come back
to the conversation later.
\- If you lose your notification you are lost. Cannot figure out which room
you were tagged in.
\- Cannot message to self. This is not a big problem but a good to have.
~~~
peteri
I agree soooo much with this. Like a lot of google products it feels half
finished.
------
gitowiec
Confluence by Atlassian. It is very slow, it gets stuck with bigger documents,
or has no useful editor tools (eg marker) and it constantly had issues and
bugs. Sincerely Jira is another piece of crap.
------
tex0
GnuPG
I'm surprised that it hasn't come up, yet. But it's CLI interface as well as
it's data model are truly archaic. It's near impossible to properly invoke
from other programs or scripts and most users don't even understand half of
it's "web of trust" concepts.
This is especially bad since small mistakes can easily break your security
model.
I don't want to rewrite GnuPG, I want a fresh start without all the cruft.
~~~
Rapzid
Love their baffling new client/daemon model making it super hard to run in a
serverless pipeline..
------
skytreader
Jenkins.
Has a UI that was cool when the Internet was first switched on. They made
Jenkins Blue, to be fair, but for all that it eats an ungodly amount of memory
(at least when I was using it, dunno if that's changed).
Needing to configure Jenkins to work with other services means I won't be
productive for a while; this yak has a hell lot of fur. I have to write
extremely detailed notes for myself on what and where to click just so I can
do something again (i.e., if something breaks and I need to
reconfigure/migrate/etc.).
There was this scene in HBO's Silicon Valley S1, in that episode where they
hired this leet hacker kid who turned out to be no more than a skiddie. The
kid broke their work and Richard Hendricks had to fix everything and the scene
where everything got fixed featured Richard watching his Jenkins build go
green. I find it very amusing that to achieve verisimilitude, they had to
eschew years of Hollywood "hacker" portrayal, and have Richard stare at the
iconically ugly UI of Jenkins. Real life can be cooler than Jenkins but other
tools just won't feel legitimate, no?
------
haolez
OneDrive for Business. You can't move folders with more than 5000 files in it
(including subfolders). This is by design. The Windows 10 app is atrocious. It
fails more often that not. It's built on top of SharePoint, which brings a lot
of confusing features and configurations that makes no sense to someone just
looking for a way to store the company's files.
------
nateabele
Workday. There's not even a close second.
~~~
politelemon
I don't know how true this is, but I once complained about how unintuitive and
difficult to use workday is. I was told, as bad as it is, it's considered best
in its class.
I'm not knowledgeable enough, but are there alternatives to workday and are
they actually worse?
~~~
nateabele
Yeah, great question. Netflix, as you might already know, are sort of famous
for being progressive in lots of ways, including & especially HR.
I asked a couple friends who work there what they use, and sure enough, the
answer was Workday.
While there are definitely better alternatives at smaller scale (i.e.
Zenefits), at that scale, the only ones I know of are Oracle, SAP, and TriNet,
which all sound even worse.
~~~
user5994461
Workday was fine in my opinion the couple times I had to use. The localization
was actually really great!
Was able to fill addresses and contact information in the UK and Western
Europe and it accepted the local formats and documents. I wouldn't be
surprised if most competing tools are plain broken, for example requiring an
address with a state which is nonsense outside of the US.
------
MCRayRay
Jira. Its WYSIWYG editor is goddamn awful. Runner-up goes to its sibling
product, Confluence, for the same reason.
~~~
Nextgrid
Anything that includes WYSIWYG with no opt-out is shit. Slack also tried to
pull off this crap but thankfully backtracked after the complaints.
~~~
tootie
JIRA can do markdown.
~~~
andrekandre
its their own strsnge version of markdown though, which just adds to the flame
of hatred imo
if you were ever so unfortunate to have perfectly marked up content and
previewed in the visual mode, only to save it and loose a ton of formatting
(seems in visual mode the actual data source isnt the same as markup) upon
save...
------
vegetablepotpie
Cmsynergy
The worst version control software known to man.
It is a bloated IBM tool from the 90s, takes 10 minutes copy a repo that would
take git 5 seconds. It has a lock modify unlock paradigm, so if your coworker
forgets about a file they were working on and they get promoted, you can
forget about working on your project ever again.
The paradigms are backwards. The project doesn’t branch, the files do. You
make your commits before you do any work.
It’s slowly being phased out at my company, but it can’t seem to die fast
enough. A lot of people have built their careers on this tool so it’s hard to
kill.
~~~
welcome_dragon
Thanks for reminding me of this piece of garbage. Wasn't it called Continuus
at some point? If not, that that was even worse than CM Synergy
------
johnwalkr
MS Office and it’s UI inconsistencies (where’s the button I need?). While Word
and PowerPoint technically have good tools for managing styles, the interfaces
steer users to use manual tweaking to the point where I don’t think I’ve ever
seen a clean document. And after a few copies and pastes between documents,
you now have 100 styles that will never be managed again.
Shared folders are a nightmare for version control, share point is
inconvenient and slow. One Drive works OK and finally allows collaboration.
Azure is good for some other use case (probably, never used it). So for a
typical company, MS should guide companies to transition to use OneDrive and
keep things in one system? No, single sign on, IT gets sold on how easy it is
to manage all tools, everyone gets every tool. And for good measure everyone
gets teams, surprise you’re using share point even if you don’t know it and
now all your confusing v2_final files are spread out in 5 places.
~~~
pintxo
I fear the problems with Word and PowerPoint are mainly on the users, most
simply have never heard about paragraph styles!
My personal hate object is the Windows10 client for OneDrive/Sharepoint. I
have had it on multiple occasions remove locally created files from my laptop
so that I could not access a file created a couple hours earlier on the same
computer. Had to sync it back from the cloud, how is this a feature?
------
Razengan
If websites count: YouTube.
It's appalling how such a powerful company can keep so many things so bad for
so long.
~~~
PostPlummer
Straight from the heart! Only yesterday I rented my first ever item on YT. An
English movie, found with an English search query.
"Based on my location" they gave me a French dubbed version of it. No
alternative sound track, heck not even subtitles.
I live in Switzerland, we have 4 official languages. I speak one of them:
German. Not a word French. The proposed solution: go to apple and ask for your
money back. Very poor experience.
Do not even get me going on the "want to use Premium for a month"? I've
declined that offer at least 48 times. Did not want it then, do not want it
today. Really a pity since there is a lot of cool (not sponsored or monitized)
content.
~~~
tootie
I assume you mean to ask Google for your money back?
It's funny because I have a client right now asking for some advice on how to
design a localizable website that can guess default language and I'm realizing
that no one has really solved this very well.
~~~
Razengan
> _localizable website that can guess default language and I 'm realizing that
> no one has really solved this very well._
The first and most important step is to offer a very very big option up front
and center for reverting to English.
This is an extremely annoying thing when traveling.
~~~
tootie
I've been trying to not assume an Anglo-centric audience, but it seems like
this is a popular choice. Almost every major international site, just has
English or region-specific English as the fallback.
~~~
kortilla
Some little British or US flag in the corner works well in my euro experience.
I learned to look for that pretty quickly spending time in Austria/Germany.
------
majkinetor
cmd.exe on Windows - trully horrible shell.
bash on *nix - less horrible then cmd.exe but still trurlly horrible anyway.
I want to kill myself any time I enter any of those. PowerShell cross platform
made all my cells rejoice.
~~~
sandyarmstrong
The new terminal with PowerShell is quite lovely. I recently had to move my
work from macOS to Windows and am pretty happy after setting it up like this:
[https://www.hanselman.com/blog/HowToMakeAPrettyPromptInWindo...](https://www.hanselman.com/blog/HowToMakeAPrettyPromptInWindowsTerminalWithPowerlineNerdFontsCascadiaCodeWSLAndOhmyposh.aspx)
~~~
majkinetor
Yeah, lovely. Still, ConEmu is atm far better. If I have to install manually
stuff, I will always chose ConEmu until Windows Terminal comes OTB.
You can get similar stuff only in powershell - this is what I use:
[https://github.com/majkinetor/powershell_profile.d/blob/mast...](https://github.com/majkinetor/powershell_profile.d/blob/master/10_prompt.ps1)
It isn't that artistic but functinality is the same without any dependency.
------
dvfjsdhgfv
Basically most web apps. They are a clunky, laggy imitation of native apps.
For a couple of historical reasons we are all using them, but still there is
an enormous abyss between web apps and real native apps.
~~~
teleforce
This.
Not sure how the harmless and cute "Gizmo" web Netscape Navigator becomes the
Gremlin monsters of today's web applications.
Perhaps the innocent desire of the developers to make their applications
usable in different platforms but because of the laziness or budget
constraints make them feed the cute Gremlins after midnight.
Hopefully the likes of cross platform native applications, e.g. Flutter will
flourish in the near future and vanish the Gremlin monsters forever.
------
mectors
Windows, usability is worse than MacOS, installing software is more complex
than Android and iOS, code is worse than any flavor of Linux but still somehow
it is default for most people with a 9x5 job.
------
whiskeymikey
Skype. Ever since Microsoft made it that it no longer saves your chats
locally, search has become so unusable it's really quite amazing how awful it
is. Whenever I need to search text in a thread it does so in the cloud??? And
it never finds anything. There are times when I literally have had to manually
scroll back several months back in a thread to find what I was looking for. I
absolutely hate it.
------
codegeek
Not anymore but until 2012, it was Lotus Notes at my work. Hands down the
worst piece of garbage I have worked with.
~~~
topkai22
I consult to a company that uses Notes to this day. It pains me every time in
see it opened up.
~~~
codegeek
My jaw dropped. Unbelievable.
------
rhn_mk1
Bash/POSIX shell. It's necessary because it's the standard, and you can't
expect computers to have a better shell by default. It's good enough for
simple things that scripts for it grow complex enough to warrant something
better. It's only bearable because it's familiar after years of experience.
It's terrible because it does everything to make it hard to write scripts.
Three syntaxes for using variables, and only one will not cause breakage.
Stringly typed. Killer spaces when looping. Arcane syntax for conditionals,
where despite 10 years of coding I can't write a simple if/else without
looking at references.
And it's widespread enough that it won't die.
~~~
nsl73
Not only is sh so widespread that it won’t die, but my own backlog of sh
scripts, code snippets, config, and muscle memory is so deep that I refuse to
use anything that doesn’t have good compatibility with sh.
I also hate it. It’s not the worst piece of software I use everyday, but every
time I need to do something more complex than completely routine I find myself
fiddling much more than I should have to.
------
mancerayder
Outlook for Mac.
The menu options are a mix of redundant 'possibilities' from where you find
things, 'icons' that don't seem to be obvious in what they represent, the GAL
is broken (w/ Office 360 cloud), the Outlook connectivity becomes disabled
when I disconnect from VPN and I have to click on "Send/Receive" under I think
"Tools" once to re-enable it, the list goes on.
Over 15 years ago a senior dev I worked with walked up to our (Sys Admin)
communal bookshelf, and noticed a book called Outlook Annoyances. He remarked,
"Hm. That looks like it's way too short of a book", something I've found
hilarious to think about ever since.
------
rainyMammoth
Slack. It has become the ultimate annoying piece of software that I feel I
always need to check and keep an eye on. There is an untold expectation to
always be online. It's using the same mechanism as Facebook to keep you hooked
with dopamine.
------
CM30
Either Adobe Target or VWO. Both have their upsides sure, but both are also an
absolute quagmire of terrible design decisions that aren't consistent in the
slightest, and that are prone to break an A/B test if you even look at them
wrong.
In Target's case, this means stuff like 'install a browser extension when our
software doesn't work, so it can load the code that browser security settings
will often block', and 'log in via an Incognito window if the editor doesn't
work properly, since some setting is now incompatible with your current API
version and the interface to disable said setting breaks along with the entire
editor'.
------
mint2
Sas hands down. And it isn’t just that The software is bad. It’s terrible, and
seems to train users into bad programming habits. But what makes it the worst
is the ecosystem around it.
For example the help and forum posts are just agonizing. They are verbose to
the extreme, Often including paragraphs on what the author was thinking the
first time they encounter the problem, and manage to sound patronizing and
naive at the same time.
The official docs and forums being naive and patronizing makes it annoying to
find the right syntax, as it’s not my primary language. But Every simple thing
requiring a 13 page white paper full of irrelevant digressions makes sas
agonizing to use.
~~~
antipaul
Totally! And often, they're PDFs!
------
heatm
Epic EMR (electronic charting/medical software)... -Ubiquitous defiance of UI
conventions. -Inconsistent behavior of buttons, forms, etc -Irrationally
composed deeply nested menus. -Very slow log in via Citrix, and you have to
log in many times per day. -Terrible distraction from providing care. -Was
really painful during COVID.
------
runjake
Whatever the OS I am using is, be it macOS, Windows, or Linux.
It always feels like I'm working against the OS now that the OS philosophy has
shifted to being all things to all people.
If it's Windows or macOS, it wants to advertise to me, or prevent me from
launching certain apps or features.
If it's Linux, it's trying to shift me into some ill-thought out use pattern.
This is fixable, but at a significant time cost customizing things. Actually,
I'm being unfair to Linux, environments like XFCE pretty much stay out of your
way. But I don't like where the mainstream DEs are going.
~~~
jkartchner
This is why I don’t use DEs anymore. If you go to the trouble of automating a
base install with a preferred wm, you don’t have much to configure but you
have a stable and usable system straight away. Still doesn’t change the fact
that Unix computing is changing a ton and can’t be fixed, but you can still
get some consistency with it
------
billysielu
Android because 2-3 years of updates is far shorter than the lifespan of the
hardware.
------
stakkur
Microsoft Windows. Followed closely by Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Teams,
and...god help me...SharePoint.
------
cocoa19
There's a lot of essential software that I would improve, but I wouldn't
replace or rewrite:
\- Nautilus. Serious usability/UX problems.
\- Audio in linux. Ubuntu often selects the wrong audio devices (microphone,
headphones, speakers)
\- Linux sleep/hibernation. System hangs are common.
\- GRUB. The interface is dated, why is it so ugly?
~~~
m01
Re: GRUB: Have you looked at rEFInd, assuming you can use UEFI?
[http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind](http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind) has a
screenshot and docs, although you may also wish to refer to your distro's docs
(e.g.
[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/REFInd](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/REFInd))
------
odiroot
That would be German mobile banking apps (websites are just slightly better).
My current bank just wrapped a mobile website in Android app. Logging-in with
a fingerprint, though supported, takes 3 or 4 attempts.
The app is also very slow and fails miserably on slow mobile connection (very
common in Germany).
Finally the app doesn't do the 2FA feature, it's offered by another, even
worse app from the same bank. They're too cheap to offer SMS option.
The 2FA app can only be registered using snail mail confirmation.
~~~
literallycancer
SMS leaks info to anyone who cares to listen.
------
mroll
Emacs.
I'm responding to the prompt in the OP, not the title.
> What's a piece of software you find essential that you wish you could
> replace or rewrite?
Emacs is the most essential piece of software in my workflow. It's probably
not the worst, but it's the one where I see the most room for improvement. I
lean heavily on org-mode for tracking what I'm working on, it's like my
command center. I keep two emacs frames open at all times, one dedicated to
org-mode.
Supported by an assortment of magical packages like helm, projectile and
magit, I write code and anything else more efficiently than any other editor
I've used. I was a vim user for ~5 years, and now use evil mode for modal
editing in emacs.
So yeah, my opinion is that emacs is the best editor out there. But honestly
it takes too much time to configure and maintain. I spend that time, because I
don't feel like taking the productivity hit that I would by switching to
another editor, but I wish I didn't have to.
I have a vision for a SaaS app that hosts my emacs config and provides me a
nice graphical, discoverable interface for managing my configuration. It would
have simple, intuitive flows for setting up the essential packages. Like maybe
I could scroll through a list of the most popular packages (helm, projectile,
hydra, magit, etc), and click to install.
The current state of the art in managing emacs config is googling the name of
the package you are trying to configure, and trying to find someone's blog or
github from which to copy/paste code from. There has to be a better way.
~~~
edye
Any thoughts on [https://www.spacemacs.org/](https://www.spacemacs.org/) ?
It improves discoverability of hotkeys and packages for me.
~~~
bananaface
I use Spacemacs. It's horrible. It's:
\- Bloated
\- Slow
\- Encourages you to lock your personal configuration into the Spacemacs
ecosystem, rather than writing it in generic Elisp so you can easily extract
it (why I still use it).
\- Introduces ridiculous abstractions that aren't necessary, just so they can
put "spacemacs" in front of the variable name.
\- Hasn't released to the master branch in 2 or 3 years (!)
\- Consequenty breaks regularly when you use the rolling release (which you
pretty much have to do)
\- Has an unresponsive owner who doesn't want to hand the project off to
someone else (or hasn't found someone)
\- Sets up weird default behaviour that's very difficult to disable
\- Has awful defaults for most languages anyway. Their Python layer is
terrible, the features are extremely limited and it often doesn't work.
Doom is a much better starter pack.
------
caffeine
Bank apps (eg. HSBC's consumer app). For the most part they are buggy, crashy,
slow, lacking in features, and fail to do useful things (like support copy
paste, export transactions to CSV, email transaction, etc)
~~~
mightyscouse
HSBC app _shudder_ , I rage quit the bank because of it, transferred
everything over to Monzo. Truly infuriating and I think it's the only bad app
review I've ever left.
------
di4na
Git. The UX and design is broken af, nothing work, noone get it.
AWS. I don't know where to begin. Nothing make sense. Nothing works.
Docker. This thing is basically backward at every step. We should have never
packaged different things on linux as a single "container". It does not work
that way and that has created more pain than solve anything.
K8s: same Go: same
Venv. Goddamnit this never worked well and same as git, noone gets it.
~~~
NateEag
As an ardent git user who has converted multiple teams to using it, I could
not agree more.
Git has an absolutely atrocious interface, at every level.
The power it gives you once you've mastered it is probably worth it, but I'm
not sure of that, and I think a much better UI that still retains a lot of the
power (and adds more horsepower, even) is very possible.
~~~
di4na
I never said that it was not useful or that it was not better than any of the
competitor solutions.
Just that it was bad. It can be quite bad in itself and totally better than
every other solution.
~~~
NateEag
Uh, I was agreeing with you.
"Quite bad and totally better than every other solution" sounds about right to
me.
With the caveat that it's apparently a worse option than Perforce and
Mercurial for huge monorepos a la Facebook and Google.
------
Havoc
Twitter iphone app.
The home screen stream is this weird mix of people you follow, suggested
streams, things your followed people liked and ads.
Each swipe down involves "OK I'm looking at something here it's a
surprise...what is it..an ad? someone I follow? Some other gibberish?".
I can totally understand why people just delete the app. It's worse than FB
imo - which is setting the bar really high already
~~~
treebornfrog
Try using fenix, it's a fantastic mobile twitter client.
------
Spooky23
Peoplesoft Financials.
I travel once a quarter on average for work. I probably spend about 6 hours on
vouchers afterward, between account resets, etc. My employers rules are pretty
brutal, but the system is impossible.
------
XCSme
Probably no one will say Stadia. And it's not because it's good.
~~~
tclancy
I’m definitely disappointed as well. I want to love it, but too often it
undercuts it’s own value proposition by being pixilated, jaggy and slow. And
we have a gigabit connection plus Google WiFi, so there’s not much excuse.
------
rapind
The privacy invasive, security nightmare, resource hog, commonly referred to
as the web browser.
~~~
randompwd
JavaScript has way too much access to everything. It's absolutely insane.
------
quelsolaar
IOS Podcast App. Its absolutely terrible. Stops playing in the middle of
episodes, forgets what episode it is playing, episodes disappear, and it
throws up a spinning wheel again and again...
~~~
topkai22
I moved to Spotify in order to get my feeds synced across devices. It’s mostly
been a better experience, but for some insane reason you can’t add a proper
feed to Spotify.
------
randcraw
Mac Finder
\- It hangs at least every other day -- the pinwheel of death.
\- It sorts files in some sort of weird non-alphanumeric order.
\- There's no way to cut and paste a set of files. You have to copy them
TWICE, once to an intermediate destination, then again to your endpoint.
\- Right mousing on a file takes WAY too long to pop up a list of appropriate
apps. This lookup should take a second at most. Adding a new app or removing
an old one should update of the hash for affected files IMMEDIATELY when added
and never again. This idiot check should NEVER occur on user time every time
you right mouse.
\- Finder should be rejiggered to publish a simple API so anyone can readily
access all its constituent services. That way it'd be trivial for any power
user to easily clone, reorganize, revise, and extend any/all of this obsolete
malfunction-riddled 35 year old app, bringing the integration and performance
of those services into the current century.
Finder has long overstayed its welcome.
~~~
villgax
You can hold command & drag to move files, not cut-paste but still better than
having delete source destination files manually.
------
Mekantis
Probably Linux. I don't understand how people put up with things like
PulseAudio. If I use Windows, the audio sinks behave like I expect them to.
They use the device I expect them to. They don't mysteriously set the volume
to some bizarre level that has nothing to do with anything when I start a new
program, or change the video I'm watching on YouTube, or open a new video in
VLC. Whenever I use any audio-capable application, it's like I'm rolling dice
as to which device it'll choose to use and what volume it thinks I want it to
be at, and none of it has anything to do with previous usage or what I want it
to do. What is this crap? Also, if you want to configure _anything_ , have fun
trying to figure out what magical command-line incantations will do what you
want it to do. Because the GUI tools are all utter crap and don't do anything
useful.
~~~
_-___________-_
Heavy PulseAudio user here, and occasional developer on the project. Pulse is
very unlikely to be doing what you describe itself, it is probably something
further up the stack in your desktop environment or whatever that is helpfully
trying to manage Pulse for you, or alternatively some plugin that your distro
added. This sort of demonstrates one problem with Linux - the fragmentation.
OTOH, my Windows 10 computer displays almost exactly the behaviour you
describe - when plugging headphones in, some applications will inexplicably
continue using the speakers. Volume levels change without any obvious reason
between different connections of the same device. Sometimes I have to select
the speaker output and then the headphone output and it will magically start
working. All of that would be fine, except for the real problem: there is
basically no way for me to properly debug and solve this problem, whereas
solving your problem on Linux would be relatively trivial for anyone with a
bit of experience, even if it is in fact a bug in Pulse.
~~~
Mekantis
> there is basically no way for me to properly debug and solve this problem,
> whereas solving your problem on Linux would be relatively trivial for anyone
> with a bit of experience, even if it is in fact a bug in Pulse.
I've never been able to debug any of this. I think "a bit of experience" is
putting it lightly. I have no idea how to fix any of this and none of the
documentation helps. Imo, between "being configurable but being impossible to
configure" and "not configurable except for the most important bits, but at
least you get a GUI that makes sense and does what you want and expect", I
prefer the latter. I don't want to become a PA developer before I'm able to
make it do what I want.
Also, if you dive into the Windows 10 sound settings, you can set the default
device and the volume for every application and it'll never deviate from that
unless you explicitly change it again. This is how it should be, and I don't
understand why PA isn't capable of this as far as I can see.
And if a program deviates from that setting for any reason, the _only other
reason_ why it could deviate is because the program itself has changed it, and
you just need to check that program's settings. There's two places to check.
On Linux? No idea. Infinite possibilities.
~~~
_-___________-_
> Also, if you dive into the Windows 10 sound settings, you can set the
> default device and the volume for every application and it'll never deviate
> from that unless you explicitly change it again.
Yes, I've dug deep in the Windows 10 sound settings many times. I promise you,
it regularly deviates from it, in ways that don't seem at all deterministic.
Your solid belief in Windows 10's sound system not containing any bugs doesn't
jibe with my experience of it :)
As mentioned in my previous comment, I suspect there's something other than
PulseAudio causing your issues, like some external tool (possibly bundled as
part of a desktop environment) trying to manage the sources/sinks/volume.
Because of that hunch I'd probably suggest your distribution's bug tracker as
the appropriate place to report the issue, as it's likely an issue of
integration.
------
tzury
Most frustrating first:
01) Atlassian entirely.
nearly broekn, far from elegant and far too many times broken.
02) Slack. using it since communication is a must.
Yet, noisy, using search too many times (left menu poor performace)
03) npm. oh lord. miss the old plain vanilla Javascript days.
------
simantel
Concur, ADP, and Workday are all really bad.
~~~
tomashertus
ADP is unbelievably bad. That’s 2k software. I’m genuinely scared about their
security and hate it that my most personal information are in a system like
that.
~~~
pnutjam
I haven't supported ADP in at least a decade, but I figured it wasn't any
better. I was astounded by how many SOP assumptions I had to throw out the
window when setting it up.
No, ADP does it this (incredibly stupid) way.
------
jimbob45
Snipping Tool. I will _never_ want to replace a file with an identical name.
Just add a “(1)” please.
------
KyleBerezin
Waves MaxAudio Pro, a thousand times over. It comes preinstalled on Dell XPS
laptops. It is used to control the combo audio jack, and it is used to control
the speakers. Without it the speakers on windows are quiet and sounds like tin
cans.
When you plug in a headset, after a 4 second pause, it pops up a dialog asking
what type of device you connected. After the dialog you have another 4 seconds
pause while it mounts the device. An 8 second wait while an incoming call is
waiting is an eternity.
And god forbid you accidentally unplug your audio device in a call, it goes to
the internal mic, and after restoring the device, MaxXAudio wont pop up the
dialog until you leave the call.
It is so bad, my next laptop will not be another XPS, even though nearly
everything else is great about it.
------
artembugara
Have you ever worked with SAP?
~~~
darcys22
Agreed, accounting software in general is pretty disappointing.
Thats why i started building my own open source system.
[https://godbledger.com/](https://godbledger.com/)
~~~
gamblor956
Your software isn't any better. In many ways, it's far worse than SAP or
Oracle/Netsuite, since it doesn't even provide a UI (and the issues most
people have with SAP and Oracle is _how_ their custom UI was configured. It
can be as painful or as painless as your Integrations team makes it.)
------
billysielu
Windows because of Windows Updates.
------
ju-st
Kodi on Raspberry Pi: slow loading menu, random hangs & crashes, getting
bluetooth LE working was a adventure, BLE remote key presses are only
recognized after pressing them several times when waking up, SMB file access
not reliable (mounting a smb drive and then accessing it works much better),
plugins are flaky at best (youtube needs api keys, youtube cast with extra
plugin works mostly (when it does not crash), amazon video stutters on SD
video, satellite TV is much less reliable than VLC on Windows)
I'm still using it because the alternatives come with their own drawbacks
(usually high price but still having enough quirks).
~~~
Bnshsysjab
I moved from Kodi to Plex and haven’t looked back. Granted I don’t use Pi
devices (my tv supports plex natively) it works much better than I ever found
Kodi to
------
wlj
I feel like I should post here as a sort of public service announcement.
If anyone reading this is considering trying or moving to HubSpot, I urge you
to take our experience as a warning and seriously reconsider.
We moved to their sales CRM 2 years ago and have been filled with remorse ever
since.
It’s hands down the most poorly thought out software package I’ve ever had the
misfortune of using.
Aside from our sales performance taking a nosedive, it’s painful to use in a
multitude of ways, and everywhere you turn is frustration, inefficiencies and
dead ends.
Such was the frequency of our frustration with nearly all aspects of HubSpot,
the phrase “fucking HubSpot” even became a meme in our office.
Run. Don’t look back.
------
michele_f
CISCO WebEx: the worst.
------
ashconnor
1Password.
Core of the product hasn't seen any noticeable features in a while.
1PasswordX was launched without the feature set of the desktop version. Dumb
stuff that hasn't been fixed in forever like not being able to delete a single
item from the trash, password formulae are rigid - words with no digits or
symbols or random mess of all characters, no TouchID/FaceID, Apple Watch
unlock support, can't selectively sync a single vault to say my work laptop.
There should be some open standard data-attribute on password fields so the
app can read in the required formula to create the perfect password without me
fiddling the settings.
~~~
stblack
1Password supports FaceId and, before that, I used FaceId on my iPhone. But
I'm using an old version. Has this changed?
~~~
ashconnor
Desktop sorry. It does support Face/TouchID on iOS.
------
TheOtherHobbes
Office 365.
Word processors and spreadsheets shouldn't be rocket science, but the updater
seems to have been designed by Satan's "I wrote some Python in school once"
nephew [1], and many versions [2] seem to have rather obvious UI bugs.
Word still doesn't do some very basic things it should, and it probably never
will now.
[1] Updated recently. Still bad, but not quite as bad. The really hilarious
part is that I also have updaters for various music packages from Arturia, NI,
and so on, and _all_ of them are far more streamlined and professional.
[2] The number does seem to be decreasing. But it's still higher than it
should be.
------
phreack
Whatsapp, absolutely. Every single night it does a forced backup of everything
that I do not want and hangs for about 10 minutes.
And if it fails for reasons such as storage getting full, it gets corrupted
and then it's half an hour until it restores an old backup, losing the day's
messages. And it also stores a week of backups, so that's 7x of the size which
on many phones is untenable.
And this can't be turned off! I hate it with a passion but literally everyone
I know is on it. There's even no way to hide a conversation from view without
blocking it forever.
Awful.
------
jsrcout
Anything with the word "Enterprise" in its name or description. Any
"Enterprise" search system will be useless or unusable [0]. Any "Enterprise"
file/document management system will be a nightmare in any possible way.
[0] I once had a page-long note file on literally _how to search for a
document by title_ in $HUGECO's search application. Because it took me 3 hours
to figure it out the first time. Not exaggerating. It would probably be easier
to operate a DNA editing machine than this thing.
------
paganel
I've still havent't figure it out how to open an email in a new tab with just
a single click when inside GMail. It. used to be possible, of course, like all
HTML links (by clicking the middle button on my mouse, for example), but since
3 or 4 years (at least) that feature disappeared. I'm still upset about it and
that is why I consider GMail "the worst" piece of software I use everyday
(it's also because I don't use that much "different" pieces of software).
~~~
Recursing
What about ctrl+click ?
I use that often, my only complaint is that it you close the main window, for
some mystical reason it decides to also close all the other tabs opened that
way
~~~
paganel
Thanks for that, sincerely. Still looks a little bit awkward because it only
opens the email message in sort of its own thing (no menus like in the "main"
tab) but it works.
------
js2
Slack. I've got two or three people DM'ing me, threads going in more than one
channel, and four other channel's @here'ing me. So I mute all the channels
except for when I'm directly @'d, but why isn't that the damn default. I can't
view more than one conversation at a time because the stupid client is a
single window that doesn't even have tabs.
When I paste a link, I don't want it to attach what's at the link because that
takes up like half the window.
Lately the client has tried to auto-format things. Bulleted lists. Code. When
I type ''' to start a code block, sometimes Slack automatically terminates the
code block for me and sends my message before I'm done and sometimes not. I
think you continue bulleted lists with the return key but code blocks with
ctrl-return, I can't remember, it seems inconsistent though.
Somehow the Slack client doesn't register for links to my company's slack
domain so links to channels end up opening in my default browser then bouncing
back to the client.
God I hate Slack so fucking much.
I want my IRC client back.
Jira's not great either but I've never used a bug tracker that didn't suck in
one way or another and it doesn't suck any better or worse than others. At
least I can open issues in more than one browser window/tab.
~~~
texasbigdata
Why can't I parallel multiple workspaces on one of many cheap monitors.
------
aasasd
Toggl the time tracker somehow went to complete shit in terms of performance.
Its workflow is great, the Mac app worked splendidly until the redesign of a
couple years ago. The redesign changed nothing drastically, pretty much only
polished things, but somehow everything became much slower and gets slower
still. Doing _any single change_ requires you to wait. It feels like they do
synchronous network requests on every action (which they quite possibly do,
judging by the interaction with the mobile client). Sometimes CPU usage spins
up too, for good measure. Even completion in text-dropdowns is hella laggy.
Just switching to the app is often ‘app is not responding’ territory.
It's productivity software that I need to touch every half-hour or so.
Productivity software has to be _snappy_. Toggl is the opposite of snappy now.
On top of that, the app forcibly updates itself and has no option to disable
that—while I'm using Homebrew for all other updates. The Android app is also
half-baked compared to the Mac one, which is no surprise by this point.
Toggl's workflow fit me almost like a glove: no automagic guesswork, just
manual entry and tracking of me being AFK. No alternative app has that same
model, from what I've seen, and/or the interfaces are meh.
Somewhat ironically, Toggl's client apps are open-source and I've cloned the
desktop one right after seeing the redesign. But fiddling with them would
likely require coming up with my own storage method. I might as well redo the
app in Lua with Qt or whatnot, as Lua is hella fast—but the state of GUI libs
for non-native languages fills me with endless dread.
------
javajosh
`git`. I mean, its so popular that _you get used to it eventually_ but the
commands never make sense or map well to the mental model of what you're
doing. And "getting used to it" is a seriously low bar for software IMHO.
~~~
yewenjie
People who champion git, how do you counter this?
~~~
x0x0
I assume that people who find git extremely difficult are unwilling or
incapable of learning the internal data model. I think if you want to have
distributed source control, there is a minimal complexity that exists. I also
previously used cvs, svn, and perforce, so maybe that affects my opinions; I
strongly believe git is a huge improvement over all of the aforementioned.
Note I think git could definitely be easier to use, and the reuse of eg
checkout to switch branches and revert a dirty file to either staging or the
most recent commit is a bit strange. But calling it uniquely bad is silly, imo
obviously.
For working software engineers, I both think -- and recommend to juniors --
they must invest the effort to learn an editor, git, and at least one language
+ toolkit deeply.
~~~
pedasmith
I think that the most important goal of our profession is to find and
implement high-level concepts so that our users don't need to worry about tiny
details.
As an example: when I buy a back-up hard drive from a typical brick store like
Costco, the "back up hard drive" is abstracted away: I don't need to study the
USB timing diagrams, or worry about the details of how the magnetic domains
are imprinted on the spinning disks, or really any of the chemical details of
the surface coating.
This abstracting away of details is AWESOME. I can buy a $150 disk drive after
spending less than a minute considering the purchase.
Git, on the other hand...
Let me give a real-life example of where real-life git and real-life published
work flows don't work: you can go into GitHub.com, and make a project. And you
can write code in Visual Studio, and save it up to your new git project.
Unless, of course, when GitHub.com recommended that you add a license. The
instant you add a license, the project isn't "empty", and once the project
isn't "empty", you can't trivially push your new Visual Studio project up.
The fix for this is to delete your GitHub.com repo.
I bet you'll reply and say, "that's just real-world problem! I only want to
hear about theoretical problems!" \-- which, IMHO, is one of the problems my
profession faces. Real-world problems are ignored in favor of theoretical
ones.
~~~
x0x0
> _I bet you 'll reply and say_
Maybe don't imagineer what I would say based on poor evidence.
Because (1) github doing that is kind of dumb (though (1a) how often do we
make new projects?), and (2) we're discussing _git_ as used for source
control, particularly the commands. That's distinct from using github as a
remote.
------
kfogel
(Question for OP)
Just curious:
Were you inspired to ask this question by the recent CoRecursive Podcast
interview with Jim Blandy ([https://corecursive.com/054-software-that-doesnt-
suck/](https://corecursive.com/054-software-that-doesnt-suck/)) in which he
talks about how the motivation to design a CVS replacement come from the
question "What's the worst software that you use every day?"
~~~
guu
I was! Thanks for being a part of creating Subversion.
------
theriddlr
Webflow. The menus go 10 levels deep to interact with an element. As a dev,
even I can't understand it. Raw HTML is better than their menu-driven WYSIWYG
------
jeanlucneptune
Literally any electronic medical record system ever built.
HUNDREDS of different systems on the market. Some with maybe a handful of
doctor's offices using a particular system.
Worst UIs you could ever imagine. Limited interoperability.
In even well-established systems with large numbers of installs you'll see
multiple bugs in production code that don't get fixed.
Switching costs are essentially infinity so doctors get locked into a system
no matter how bad it is.
------
AlchemistCamp
iTunes because it adds indirection I don't want and yet somehow is required
for a variety of tasks I'd rather do from my file system or browser.
------
DerekRobot
I accidentally bought a gaming laptop that can't run Linux, so I'm stuck with
Windows 10 exclusively. Although it really isn't that bad now.
My workplace uses SmartCAM, an ancient CAM package for manufacturing. It's
probably not that bad, but I couldn't wrap my head around it compared to other
CAM software. It turns solid geometry into low-poly mesh, and nothing is
intuitive like Autodesk HSM.
------
asddubs
for me it's phpmyadmin. I guess I should just find another tool that does the
same, but I don't use it that much, just for quickly changing things around
when building prototypes or just looking at things. I've been using it for
over a decade and 10 years ago, I loved it. now I hate it. it's inexplicably
slow when doing nothing at all, it uses frames for the sidebar so your list of
tables goes out of sync constantly (presumably so it doesn't have to reload
all dbs/tables on every request, but then why is it still so slow? it takes
like 10 seconds to load sometimes when I'm not even doing anything with any
data involved). every change they make to the interface makes it worse and
more cumbersome to use. the default settings paginate your sidebar after like
40 tables or something ridiculously low. so you have to wait for the slow-ass
frame based sidebar to load 3 times before the table you wanted to look at is
even in your list. you can change it by modifying some php file somewhere, but
it didn't use to have this problem.
------
RedRoverRunner
I worked at a company that made financial planning software called Xplan. What
a user could see on screen for their client was a combination of _over 1k user
capability controls_ users group membership, which was hierarchical so you
used your parent group settings of your primary group unless they were
overridden (primary group.. yes you could be in any and all groups, all with
their own settings throughout) _clients group membership_ page settings, with
every page AND field showing controlled by conditional rules that could be
based on any of the thousands of fields of the current user or client _country
set for user_ module allowed product lists that could be applied at user,
group or global level, and group hierarchy applied
Client portal could display information using the above rules, and more rules
Thousands of site settings were in an admin area which was grouped by major
module, or just placed on which page the developer picked at the time (some
pages dedicated to a couple of settings, other general ones full of unrelated
random settings)
------
indit
Calibre eBook reader. Wonder why no competition from other in ebook reader
apps.
------
dive
Apple Xcode. Not because it is bad-bad or worst. Just because all other
software I use is better. Firefox, Things, Emacs, etc. Perhaps, this is what
is happen when there are no alternatives. I know about AppCode from JetBrains,
but in many cases (like, build system, dependency management, etc.) it behaves
just like a wrapper on top of the Xcode or requires to launch Xcode itself.
------
Xelbair
Firebird, and by extension the industry specific application which utilizes
it.
This applications is absolutely usability nightmare, created in 90s, and it
hadn't undergone any change since then. It's database design is also
absolutely horrible.. yet it is faster, and more comfortable to just use plain
SQL to work with it than bother with UI.
Then there is that piece of shit known as firebird. It has all downsides of
file based databases, while also having all downsides of service based
databases.
It also has its own way of doing things, and it doesn't even have
services/systemctl service by default. Prior to version 2.5 you couldn't drop
connections, and guess what - that PoS application set it to a week.
File itself wont update if there is any live connection.
That piece of shit app uses legacy client dll for firebird, so you can either
connect to firebird 3, or to firebird 1/2\. but not both.
And then there is firebird documentation, which is horrible, and fragmented.
I could rewrite that piece of shit, and design a better database but we won't
ever compete with that company for political reasons.
------
econcon
1\. Gimp (not natural to use it, so UX/UI sucks)
2\. Freecad (difficult, weird UI)
3\. WordPress+WooCommerce (they charge you for as basic as simple shipment
tracking plugin)
------
zachrose
Google? It captures me with its convenience and illusion of transparency but
is probably also selling a window into my deepest curiosities.
------
jabroni_salad
Managed Workplace. It is an RMM tool so it does monitoring, automation, and
facilitates remote access to client environments.
\- Loading up the client list takes forever ~15 seconds
\- Loading up the asset list for a given client takes even longer.
\- Remote access is hidden behind a 2 layer context menu
\- All URLs are dynamic so you cannot bookmark your favorite assets / jump
boxes. I use a selenium script to automate the page navigation because it can
take ~5 minutes to get to an asset by name due to a combination of needing too
many page loads and not being able to just start from the search page.
\- Terminal experience is way worse than putty. Output formatting is always
jacked up and a command takes ~5 seconds to return output.
\- RDP all goes through a relay and your connections will just die
occasionally.
\- 90% of my work interacts with it in some way.
BUT it makes pretty reports for management so we are stuck with it. I demo'd
some alternatives like apache guacamole or remote desktop services but the
consensus was that we didn't want to take on the risk + we are already paying
for a product that "works".
------
signaru
MS Excel.
It can give you nice plot results, but to get there you need to struggle with
the UI. The UI for adding data series is a pain as while there is a editable
text indicator indicating cell ranges for the data, typing on that indicator
activates cell selection on the background that also modifies the text as you
type.
It is a nightmare if you have many Y-data sharing the same X-axis. The methods
for bringing out dialogs also rely on being able to click parts of the chart,
which is largely hit or miss, especially if you have dense superposed data.
Scroll position changes when I select data (using several methods) so new
charts are often created at the bottom of the long spreadsheet and I have to
manually bring it to a more sensible higher position.
Well, I might be wrong for using Excel in the first place. But I use it for
the same reason I use MS Paint instead of Gimp. Sometimes you just need
something quick and familiar. And for plotting, the alternatives seem to
require some learning.
I'm recently lookeing at SciDavis and hope this solves my nightmares.
------
antipaul
The new google chat
No new user, and rarely an experienced one, starts a new thread. Every reply
just builds on the original.
All this even when the new thread button is _right in front of you_. But the
design is so terrible I don’t blame people for missing it.
(On a separate note, I see no Apple products in main threads. I see a few
google ones, Microsoft, Amazon (AWS) and Facebook (workplace))
------
huseyinkeles
Home Assistant.
Don’t get me wrong, I still love it and it makes my life easier but it just
breaks all the time, especially when I update it.
~~~
jhot
Home Assistant is amazing but you really have to read the release notes for
every release to make sure something you're using isn't going to break. I
appreciate the improvements it has seen over the years but it's definitely not
something you can just update and assume all is well.
~~~
huseyinkeles
I think it’s also lack of manual and automated testing. Few weeks ago one of
the updates just broke the iOS companion app. (For everyone).
I had to rollback to my latest daily snapshot and didn’t update until they
fixed it, which took around a week.
------
hnu0847
Are there any other CPU/GPU designers here? I feel like EDA software in
general is pretty frustrating to work with.
------
NextHendrix
Modelsim
I would hate to rewrite it but I wish someone would. It has the worst and
buggiest UI of anything I've ever used. Everything looks incredibly dated, and
while the backend (the useful bit) does what it's supposed to (though very
slowly unless you're paying for the big boy license) it's just a horrific
place to be.
Coming home from work and working on my own stuff with the tools I like rather
than have to use is like a breath of fresh air.
Vivado is also notoriously a bit of a bloated and buggy pig. For hardware
simulation, Active HDL is probably the least worst thing that I've used that
has all the features. But for just doing simple simulations without all the
bells and whistles, GHDL is by far and away the best experience, and it's the
free one.
[https://github.com/ghdl/ghdl](https://github.com/ghdl/ghdl)
------
EmmEff
I really haven’t had a positive experience with Microsoft Teams
------
dmd
... and why is it Lotus Notes?
[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3ilzey/were_a_bunch_o...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3ilzey/were_a_bunch_of_developers_from_ibm_ask_us/cuhp4ej/)
------
hendrick_neues
KMail. It hangs so frequently that I have a shortcut-key combination to kill
-9 akonadi (ctrl+alt+k), which then respawns and fetches mail again.
At the end of every startup it used to present a dialog 'Mail has encountered
a fatal error and will now close'. If you clicked 'OK' the programme would
terminate.
Fortunately the dialog wasn't modal, so you could carefully tuck it into an
unused corner of the screen and continue as normal. Eventually I did some
googling and deleted ~/.local/share/local-mail/templates which got rid of it
(but I lost the templates)
That said, I still find the UI much less fiddly than gmail, which is why I use
both.
In fact I'm writing this comment while I wait for Kmail to re-load it's
mailbox, so I can reply to an email.
------
harrisonjackson
All of my "worst" softwares that I use daily have alternatives that are
equally as bad if not worse IMO or will be a huge pain to switch to, so I
still "love" them by comparison.
Lastpass + Authy - main frustration is helping wife use them - her usage is
less frequent so she needs help each time. Also they don't sync reliably so
adding new accounts can be painful.
Anything that starts automatically on boot by default, slow to launch, or has
a separate "installer/updater" that is constantly annoying me (looking at you
Adobe everything)
Alexa - only listens to me; doesn't cutoff quickly enough when someone tries
to issue a new/improved command or dismiss a response
So many posts on here about X not working on Y system where Y is not a money
maker for X. Yes, you are an afterthought.
------
nabogh
I work as a control systems engineer and ClearSCADA is my biggest pain point.
Crashes all the time on both the front and back end. Bloated mess of user
displays that you have to drag and drop elements on by hand. Oh and let's not
forget that I'm usually interacting over a slow RDP connection.
------
pmontra
The software I run every day on my laptop is ok (Firefox, thunderbird, emacs,
terminal, Ubuntu in general) so it must be something on my phone. Probably the
OS because the phone is as good as my previous laptop but Google limits what
it can do, more and more with each release. And yet any alternative I can
think about is worse. Example: iOS is even more locked up and a Linux phone
won't run some apps I must have so I'll end up with two phones.
Aha! I was about to submit the comment and it came to me that my laptop's
nvidia proprietary device + linux kernel combo is (let's be kind) under
optimal (still better than the open source driver.) The main point: 40 Hz
refresh rate with Ubuntu 18.04 and 20.04. It was 60 Hz with 16.04 and earlier.
------
mcswell
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Adobe Acrobat here; maybe techies view/edit
their pdfs in ed.
I have to admit that I don't use it every day--I have PDF-XChange Editor on my
home computer (and a couple other PDF viewers), but when I do have to use it,
I hate it. The UI has gone through lots of changes in the past few years, and
each time it's worse. Most everything is icon-based--tsort of like Microsoft's
Ribbon, except these icons are randomly displayed above, or to one side of,
the doc you're working with, leaving little room for that doc to be displayed.
You can get a menu, but its primary use seems to be to bring up rows or
columns of icons. And the icons are both large and ugly (and often
indecipherable).
------
markpapadakis
Pocket ( [https://getpocket.com/](https://getpocket.com/) ). It’s really bad.
Been using it for years and it’s always been broken. Crashes often, narration
sometimes works most of the time it doesn’t, other times it works if you force
stop the app and restart it. It’s very slow too. I depend on for my long daily
commutes and I only stick to it because InstaPaper is also very broken and
there is no reasonable way to move the stories from pocket to instapaper. I am
convinced the people who build it never really use it for those issues are
otherwise trivial to encounter and I would think trivia to fix as well. I hope
someone will build a better such app and make them irrelevant.
------
pwdisswordfish2
Web browser. It is hands down the most insidious. Complexity by default, no
alternative. No debate.
What is that website "browse happy" or some such? All due respect, I simply
cannot agree. I am not happy with those recommendations. Web should be
friendly to all user agents.
------
yeah986
Windows 10
~~~
aklemm
What do you dislike about it? I enjoyed Linux desktop for many years, and then
spent almost 10 years on OSX enjoying that, and now I've been on Windows 10
for a couple years and find it just fine. It's completely out of my way,
doesn't crash, and so far updates haven't eaten my data.
~~~
eps
It's not better than Windows 8.1 in any dramatic way, but it's chokeful of
junk than no user wants - ads, telemetry, forced updates, the whole OS-as-a-
service angle, etc. You don't feel like you _own_ the machine anymore. It's
like you bought it just to let Microsoft to do as they please with it.
Then, there's also the UI that is just... awful. Touch-oriented white-on-white
macro bullshit for people with poor vision. It's a smaller gripe and easier to
fix, but still.
Windows 10 really feels like something that Microsoft decided to stuff down
everyone's throat just because they were in position to do so. It clearly
shows that MS treats users as a cattle, basically. You can moo all you want,
but that won't change a thing. If you don't think it's true, look at LTSB (or
what it's called now) - that Windows 10 edition for people who are _really_
paying. Can't piss them off, so - no ads, no Windows Store, no Cortana or any
other crap just gushing out mainstream Windows releases. So it is perfectly
possible for MS to release reasonable OS editions _and_ they readily recognize
their bundled junk for what it is, it just they don't give a fuck of what
unwashed grey masses want.
So, yeah, Windows 10 _is_ the worst piece of software. Not because it's
lacking in the tech department, but because of a fundamentally rotten and
disrespectful attitude towards their users on Microsoft's part.
~~~
fxtentacle
What stops you from just buying LTSB? I believe we pay $130 per employe per
month for Windows enterprise and the entire office suite. In my opinion, it's
a pretty good deal.
~~~
listenallyall
>> What stops you from just buying LTSB?
Microsoft -- it doesn't sell those versions to individuals (or even small
companies without Volume Licenses).
------
c-smile
Apple's XCode. In particular its configuration (project and environment)
features. Yet, making distributions and the whole signature magic is, ummm,
something. Seems like it is in principle impossible to generate and build
native UI project outside of XCode...
------
milkers
Evernote, Spotify, Netflix
I am gradually migrating to Notion instead of Evernote but I am stuck with the
other two.
~~~
ScottFree
I switched from Evernote to Notion 6 months ago. Their block-based editing
system drives me up the wall. But, they really nailed their media integration
in a way nobody else has, so I continue to use it.
------
asjo
On every workday: Microsoft Teams. When trying to make a link, it overwrites
the clipboard. When formatting text in the text box, it sometimes randomly
moves the cursor into the previous block.
Unfortunately the company has decided to use it and my colleages have as well.
------
_bxg1
It used to be Jira. Thankfully my current company doesn't use it. Now it's
probably DBeaver, which is hard to complain about because it's free and full-
featured, but it has one of the worst user experiences I've ever encountered.
------
4midori
Dragon Pro, voice recognition software. Awful UI, known bugs that never get
fixed, incompatible with critical applications like web browsers. Why? It's my
understanding that they have no real competition. If you need to "drive" your
computer with your voice, Dragon is all there is. In fact, it is pretty
limited without the addition of Voice Computer, which allows you to command
Windows to do certain things, like switch programs, etc.
Dragon is so important to my workflow, while so shitty a program, that I would
pay three or four times its cost for a competing product that actually worked
well.
------
AdrianB1
Outlook for the search and threads. The search is attrocious, the well known
Ctrl-F means "forward" (why, but why?) and the search does not highlight the
result in the mail, good luck finding it in a 1000 lines email thread.
Email threads are not there; "Find related" works, but it does not help
organize emails, while long emails with embedded history of other 20-30
messages and no capability to identify, expand/colapse messages are a
nightmare.
And the calendar is useful, but a black box. My calendar has about 0.5 GB and
I have no idea what is taking up all that space and how to reduce it.
------
atq2119
The GitHub web UI. It's. So. Damn. Slow.
~~~
nikisweeting
Strange, I find it to be significantly faster & lighter than most other
webapps I interact with daily. I think historically they've had a huge culture
of using as little Javascript as possible, which I really appreciate.
~~~
atq2119
Other web apps probably aren't any better. It's just that other than some Wiki
stuff, where network interactions aren't in the fast path, GitHub is the only
web UI I'm forced to use with any frequency.
------
pagade
Any poor sole here using Google Jamboard? Half cooked product released out
ever!
------
timpark
This was back around 2005, so I imagine the software has improved since then,
but... Sonic Scenarist for DVD authoring.
The thing we hated most about it apart from the slowness (computers were
slower back then too, but anyway) was that it auto-saved after every action
and had _no undo_. If there was an option to turn this off, we couldn't find
it.
It was all too easy to select a bunch of items and accidentally drag them to
the wrong place, and so we ended up just making a backup copy of the project
file from time to time, and before attempting any type of operation that might
mess up.
------
allarm
Cisco Contact Center Express. This is a pure disaster, this damn thing is full
of hilarious bugs that exist there for many years through many major versions.
One of examples: if you click 2 (or more) links in its web interface and open
the links in new tabs, the content of these tabs will be a mix of content from
the links you just clicked. It’s not very obvious and it’s very easy to change
something in the tab A, thinking that you’re changing the call center
configuration for application A, but in fact you’re changing a random piece
from site B or C.
Cisco doesn’t care much about it.
------
ivan_gammel
All calendar and todo list applications, on desktop, on mobile and in cloud.
------
rhizome
All of Google's Android apps, by far.
------
P4wl0w
The new MacOS. When WiFi is active it needs seconds (!) until apps like VLC
open. Normally this just takes miliseconds.
It slowly (haha) steels time from me every day and I was never so frustrated
using a computer.
------
kahlonel
Slack
~~~
coffeefirst
This one burns. Slack is excellent in so many ways, but it really wants to
become a noise machine that drowns you in alerts and simultaneous demands for
your attention.
~~~
xellisx
You can snooze channels.
------
wj
Between Confluence, Salesforce, Azure portal, and Addepar, I am starting to
wonder if I am the one that is insane in expecting web pages to load in under
seven to ten seconds.
Typing in Asana is painful as well.
------
landtuna
tmux. I mean, I know it's better than screen, but I'm a user of emacs for 25
years, and I still can't get used to the tmux keymapping. I'm reluctant to
customize them because I want my fingers to do the right thing on an
unfamiliar system. And so many of the defaults are just bad, like constantly
renaming windows when you run commands (without making a config file change).
Even the command line arguments are different for the same parameter depending
on which sub-command you're using.
~~~
tome
> I'm reluctant to customize them because I want my fingers to do the right
> thing on an unfamiliar system
How often will be be on a system which _does_ have tmux but doesn't allow you
to download your own tmux.conf from GitHub (or wherever)?
~~~
kubanczyk
If you work together with a client on their system using a shared session -
all the time, I guess?
~~~
landtuna
Yeah, I do a lot of sensors work, and we throw tmux on computers hosting the
hardware and share a user account.
------
infinityplus1
MySQL workbench. It's slow, buggy and hangs again and again. I have to force
close it multiple times everyday because it freezes so often. Same experience
on MacOS and Ubuntu.
------
stefan69
Not many marketers perhaps in this thread, so here's mine.
Dynamics 365: millions of unwanted features that bloats the system. Very
complex where it shouldn't be, poor search features... Could go on and on. On
par with Salesforce in my opinion.
Marketo: entreprise software that was probably good 10 years ago. Nothing has
changed since then. UX/UI is shameful. Landing page builder is just a joke.
Not being able to write custom objects from a form defeats the purpose of
using an advanced tool like this.
Also... Concur?
------
vishaltelangre
Messages app on iOS is the most frustrating app I have to use often and Apple
doesn't allow any alternative as well. There is no way to star/pin certain
messages in it. It doesn't allow copy-pasting partial text in a message.
Results of searched query are often not what I am looking for. Finding
historical messages in some date range takes minutes.
Many other Apple-built apps and products (especially those that cannot have
any 3rd-party alternatives) are horrible to use.
------
starky
This really applies to every CAD software I've used, but Solidworks is an
overly heavy, unstable piece of crap that drives me absolutely nuts every day
I have to use it.
------
charlieegan3
I’m not sure it’s the worst but I continually find myself frustrated by how
sluggish slack feels.
Even with the new UI it still seems strange that the site is so slow vs others
I have to use.
------
hinkley
I recall reading the Subversion architectural chapter in Beautiful Code. In
fact it's probably the only chapter that stuck with me (there's another IIRC
but I can't recall which. My brain didn't make an association to the book).
One of my design mental exercises is to try to figure out if you could tweak
the svn architecture into a DVCS, preserving the superior subtree support. I
think it could have been, it's just that theory and execution diverged.
------
ypcx
ConsoleZ on Windows that I use with Cygwin, being on one hand the best
terminal app for Windows, on the other there were things that were driving me
insane. The main project seems to be sort of abandoned, so I eventually fixed
them myself[1].
[1]
[https://github.com/youurayy/console/releases/tag/1.19.0-pers...](https://github.com/youurayy/console/releases/tag/1.19.0-personal)
~~~
mellow2020
Do you know ConEmu? It has pretty extensive configuration and is under active
development. Though I am not that much of a console user so I wouldn't know
the pitfalls, if any, I just love it because it's so configurable, and it's
been very good to me.
[https://conemu.github.io/](https://conemu.github.io/)
~~~
ElMono
Another option worth trying is Microsoft's Windows Terminal.
[https://github.com/microsoft/terminal](https://github.com/microsoft/terminal)
------
bobbean
I'd say basically half the software I use on a fairly regular basis is usually
pretty much garbage. Corsair Link is a clunky, laggy mess. It takes like 10
seconds to open it, every single time, even if it's running in the background.
I have yet to use good software for "peripherals". Google home devices are
cool when they work, but I've gotten frustrated with them too many times that
I barely use them. I could go on.
~~~
daniel-levin
Corsair Link is horrible. If you use Linux you should check out ckb-next which
is really nice.
------
overcast
Sysaid, Jira, the entire oracle software sphere of influence.
------
ratherbefuddled
Jira. How can so simple a concept be implemented with so many unnecessary
lines of code and run so slowly? Despite (because of?) several major
redesigns, that is.
------
gspr
Outlook's webapp email client. Mandatory(1) at work. No IMAP access.
I truly can't think of a single positive aspect of this absolute garbage piece
of software. It's so mindnumbingly bad that most of us just avoid email
whenever possible, even if it means going to physically seek out a person who
may not even be available.
(1) The actual Outlook client is an option if you're willing to forego root on
your computer. To me that's far worse.
------
idkwhoiam
There are no words to describe how much I hate JIRA. Terrible UX & slow as
hell. The mere thought of browsing for my next ticket in JIRA gives me
seizure.
------
brentis
In summary:
Docker: crash o plenty Service now (bloated forms system on .net or slower)
Teams - UI, no sizing of window, spyware (look it up) One Drive/ SharePoint
(ugh - group of us said we would take pay cut to not use) Finder - anything
but. (How is a file in past 30 days and not recent that I made 5 seconds ago?)
Photoshop? Nobody mentioned here. Adobe anything... OSX Mail - particularly
Big Sure flavor Itunes Connect SAP Concur
------
darksaints
Airflow. Hard coupling to their own ecosystem, buggy as hell, and fully tied
into Python's terrible dependency management, ensuring you will fail but only
after you build an entire ecosystem onto it and will face a massive challenge
moving away from it.
Running it in a kubernetes cluster is basically like holding a marathon in a
minefield. You know someone's gonna die, you just don't know when.
~~~
welcome_dragon
Not to mention how "missed SLAs" don't function like you expect them to
------
AtomicOrbital
AWS console set of web pages ... granted any big shop most certainly automates
all their commands so rarely if ever needs to use that site ... evidently AWS
console is a victim of its own success in continuing to have a 1990's look and
feel ... yet being such a cash cow AWS should launch an entire re-write ...
the underlying SDK and cli are great and they deserve a better UI
------
max0563
Apple CarPlay is an absolute piece of garbage. It always hangs on the
“connecting to iPhone” screen. I just want to see my nav. Infuriating.
~~~
michaelwm
In case this helps, my Android Auto went through an infuriating phase where it
refused to connect, and my cars screen would continue to say exactly what
yours said. For about two weeks I was incredibly frustrated, until I
discovered that I just had to clean out my phones charging port with a
toothpick and it immediately began working again. The dust and debris from
repeated connection and disconnection had piled up and prevented certain data
pins from connecting, but once removed, it worked like brand new. I now clean
out my phone’s charging port every month and haven’t run into the issue again.
I was relieved that the issue was this simple to fix, and hope yours is too.
~~~
max0563
This was an issue for me recently, I had a massive hair ball in my charging
port. I was having charging issues and what not. The not connecting issue was
a problem long before and after the hair in my charging port though. It’s
definitely a cause in some cases though.
------
imranq
Bad software usually gets out of my workflow quickly as a software engineer.
Postman's workflow is really confusing to me however.
Also why bad software exists:
[https://twitter.com/jaukia/status/1114044716616753152/photo/...](https://twitter.com/jaukia/status/1114044716616753152/photo/1)
------
heelix
I can't say I've ever seen a time card system that was not hot trash. The more
full of enterprise they get, the worst they are.
------
imtringued
I like FreeCAD but it keeps crashing, slow operations freeze the UI and by
slow I mean for up to a minute, it's a bit ugly, failing operations usually
just give you a cryptic error message when you apply an operation. If you can
get used to the quirks it's a pretty nice tool. I've used worse software but I
don't use truly bad software every day.
------
cs702
The software that powers almost every appliance or device on the "Internet of
Things" that I've ever used.
The manufacturers of those appliances and devices really do NOT know how to
develop usable, secure software.
See
[https://twitter.com/internetofshit?lang=en](https://twitter.com/internetofshit?lang=en)
for egregious examples.
------
tarasmatsyk
Hard to pick between Skype and buggy apple mail client that splits my screen
every few minutes just to fetch new emails (super annoying)
------
hprotagonist
Jira. Slow, clunky, stupid syntax, no integration with source control, idiotic
menus everywhere, and a laggy UI that makes zero sense.
------
klausjensen
Slack - for being unstable (crashes frequently). We have very little noise, so
it is only an interruption when somebody actively needs to interrupt me.
Skype - an absolute trainwreck of instability and messages not syncing between
devices. Always needs to update - and never improves. I only use it because it
is still the de-factor standard for a lot of poeple.
------
TrackerFF
Do websites count? Ebay can be pretty bad at times.
But the winner must be agresso, or whatever it's called now. Just awful in
every sense.
------
cdnsteve
Kijiji. Ebay owned Canadian classifieds site that is absolutely horrid
experience with hundreds of http request and a bazillion ads loading on 1995
web servers. Its still one of the most popular classifieds in Canada. I'm
annoyed to the point of rewriting their UI and entire app and thinking of open
sourcing it.
------
that_girl
Workday. Intentionally misleading design, discouraging anything any user wants
to do in the portal. Absolutely unintuitive.
------
whizzwr
PTC (formerly MKS) Integrity
It's a "product lifecycle management" that is basically version control plus
issues list tracker. It has horrendous 80-90s-era interface and require
clicking for every possible steps. Formatting always involves MS Word style
rich-text button with sans-serif font.
Worst: it has to stay Online just to do version control.
------
classics2
Products “based on Eclipse”. All 15 of them.
------
api
Jira: slow, confusing, ugly, but then again most of its competitors suck too.
All ticketing and PM systems suck.
Xcode: don't use it every day but damn it is unnecessarily weird and
unintuitive. It's clearly something designed for the people who know it and
nobody else.
Mac Mail, but unfortunately the alternatives suck too and I hate web mail.
------
rustybolt
Jira. I freaking hate everything about it. Its task is so simple and yet it
sucks so monumentally at it. If I'm done with a task, it's freaking hard to
find it. I can never get to the overview of tasks for a project, and it's
cumbersome to log my hours for a task I haven't worked on before.
------
rabbitsfoot8
What's more interesting about a lot of these products is that they are widely
used and still highly embedded in workflows. Even though they're shite. Re-
enforces the point that your product can't just be the "best user experience".
You have to have a strategy to dominate as well.
------
d3nigma
Operating systems and browsers in general
------
bluedino
Skype (Windows)
~~~
tpurves
I agree with you, but raise you with Skype for mac.
~~~
Nextgrid
Skype is now shit everywhere because it's the same Electron-based garbage.
Back in the day Skype used to have a beautiful, native Mac client.
------
siliconunit
Confluence/Jira... slow, chaotic, broken search engine... Basic stuff hidden
or not fully functional... I never understood the raison d'etre of confluence
expecially, it's a broken wiki basically... I'd rather pay an intern for an
in-house solution.
------
dynamite-ready
Azure. From blob storage to DevOps. Almost every interface attached to it, UI
or API, is an overcomplicated wedge of grief.
I can navigate it, sure. But I'd also use an elevator caked in dried urine, to
get to the top of a 14 story building, like most people would. So go figure.
------
tonymet
I’ll say web browsers . They’ve taken 30 years to provide desktop GUI
functionality and APIs from The 90s . And they require gbs of ram.
We really should have live reloadable Cocoa apps and the desktop experience
would be 1000 x better , with 10x battery life and better responsiveness
------
hpen
Hey I'm working on an alternative to Jira. If anyone would be willing to try
my website I would appreciate it. I'm looking for product market fit and I
would love to hear feature requests. Check it out at kanception.io. Or just
down vote me if you want :)
------
uselessextras
I have to use it once a week, but since it requires filling daily slots, I
think it qualifies too: NetSuite time tracking. It's just database internal
structures exposed to end user with no business logic layer whatsoever.
ADP is even worse, but I don't use it daily.
------
baryphonic
Microsoft Teams. I can't decide which feature is the worst: lack of native
widgets, including pop-ups (macOS); random crashes it induces (including
kernel panics); or using my machine's CPU and GPU cycles to heat up enough to
cook an omelette.
------
hvass
I do not use it every day, but I’ve found the most difficult to be hands down
DocuSign.
------
jariel
Tuya. They make Wifi chips for everything in the world, and their interface
systems are 1/2 Chinese 1/2 English so that basically nobody can understand.
It's like Monty Python software, I can hardly believe it works.
------
kvgr
Android Auto on my Passat b8... I made it work 2 times. Any other tries it
just restarts again and again... I tried to reset csctory settings on a car.
Uninstalled android auto app... I will be forced to use sygic with mirror
link.
~~~
welcome_dragon
Any chance you're listening to the 99% invisible podcast when it restarts?
~~~
kvgr
Nope :)
------
dk8996
Eclipse Scala IDE. Using Vscode but still the support for Scala isn't good.
------
aritraghosh007
Amazon Alexa and the FireTV. Been around for some time now, several iterations
except that the UX hasn’t changed, quality isn’t any better than couple years
ago and painful/buggy 3rd party app integrations.
~~~
ScottFree
Have you tried any other TV OS? FireTV is the best of a bad bunch.
~~~
aritraghosh007
Passively used a few others, didn’t find them compelling either to switch. Why
is FireTV OS the lesser evil?
------
rustybolt
I really dislike git. After years of using it almost daily, it still trips me
up when I'm doing something that I don't do every day. Want to do X? Here,
remember this random command with some flags!
------
txbuck
Fiserv's Signature UI (their Desktop Teller is also trash but not near as
bad). I don't even know where to start with how bad it is, but I'd need a BAC
of at least .1 to get through it all.
------
smcleod
JIRA - easily the most clunky, slow, confusing app I have to use every day for
work (with my current client), coming from GitLab issues it’s a nightmare
along with just about all other Atlassian software.
------
tonyedgecombe
I remember this question being asked in the Fog Creek forums about a decade
ago and the winner by far was Adobe Acrobat. It's interesting that it doesn't
appear anywhere in todays responses.
------
tylerwince
The Google Productivity Suite (Docs, Sheets, Slides, Mail) apps for iPadOS.
------
Sohcahtoa82
SharePoint.
The site is trying to do absolutely everything and the performance shows.
I already have Outlook and Teams open. There's no need for SharePoint to be
running extra code to notify me of an e-mail or Teams message.
------
larrydag
SAS. I do data analysis everyday and it is just so antiquated to modern data
needs. The organization I'm with is on a path to sunset and move to Python.
Can't happen soon enough for me.
------
nikanj
Outlook. How can a flagship product be so useless, after decades of work?
------
sdussin
Without a doubt: Websphere.
~~~
jt2190
I worked with WebSphere (version 5 maybe?) many, many years ago. The admin
console was seemed like it was designed to increase confusion. Eventually a
consultant I was working with tipped me off that there was a scripting
interface, which came bundled with Python (Jython). This made administration
so much easier once I got the hang of the APIs, since I could just
automate/script things.
I have no idea if this is still possible with modern WS.
------
CawCawCaw
Confluence, SAP, Skype for Business, Discord, Slack, Chrome, Windows 10.
------
baoyu
Spotify on Mac.
It’s Chromium-based, so, of course, it’s slow. Specifically, search is
excruciatingly slow, removing an album from your library redraws the whole
page, and—most frustratingly— as soon as you lose internet connection, your
perfectly nice and readable page get replaced with “Artist pages are not
available offline”. It’s a list of tracks and albums which is updated (at
most, on average) several times a year, why require connection to continue
showing it?
Not Mac-specific, but extremely weird: sometimes Release Radar playlist has
tracks by wrong artists with the same name. I don’t think a recommendation
model would use names instead of IDs, so it probably means that track was
first ascribed to a wrong artist, and that’s... even worse?
~~~
crazygringo
I think you have a problem with your Spotify installation. Maybe try removing
it and re-installing it?
I use Spotify all the time on my 2016 normal-powered Macbook Pro and I don't
experience any of your performance problems. Everything's lightning fast
including search, and I've got 10,000's of tracks saved in 100's of playlists.
------
carc1n0gen
Previous employer transitioned time tracking (and all other hr things) to this
giant all in one SAP thing. It took so many clicks to do anything. Took 3
clicks to just save your hours.
------
znpy
Thank God I don't use lastpass anymore.
It was ugly, confusing and slow as hell.
~~~
samirillian
what do you use instead?
------
jasonhansel
Mac OS X. Apple keeps going out of its way to make life harder for power
users, even though the non-power-users are increasingly moving to
iOS/Android/ChromeOS anyway.
------
ncmncm
Jira is bad, but Google Doc and Google Drive are so, so much worse.
Knowing it is not Jira is what makes Pivot tolerable. Knowing both are coded
in server-side Java, though, is oddly satisfying.
------
jbhouse
at my old company Cherwell sure took the cake my god it was awful
~~~
vermooten
yes! awful p.o.s. I've seen Service Now mentioned but it was wonderful
compared to Cherwell.
------
devn0ll
Checkpoint VPN. It does not run on Linux so I need to run a Windows VM just
for this piece of cr4p software. And it's slow.
Besides that: Jira. (A distant second to Checkpoint though)
------
daneel_w
The platform I'm partly responsible for developing at work.
------
tcbasche
QGIS but sadly I don't think I could come close to creating something that
huge and still free. Doesn't make it less frustrating that it's buggy as shit
------
tqwhite
Oh yeh!! Also, Trac.
There is literally nothing good about that issue management program except
that it is free. It is impossible to understand what you are looking at. It is
just awful.
------
caditinpiscinam
Google Maps on android. It has such a hostile UI: zoom out too far and the
thing you're looking for disappears. Zoom _in_ too far and it disappears
again.
------
tapan_pandita
The AWS management console (Not the AWS services themselves which are great).
Just navigating the console and getting things done is a major source of
frustration.
------
arbuge
I use a free desktop edition of Quickbooks from 2007 or so to keep my
businesses' books. It's clunky but it works and there's no subscription fee.
------
musicale
> What's the worst piece of software you use everyday?
Every (space) day? Definitely the spelling/grammar check and autocorrect
software on my phone. ;-)
------
EsotericAlgo
The Oracle eBusiness Suite. Specifically, iProcurement.
------
burnte
Outlook. Hands down, it's utter trash. I quit for the web version at my
company. I'd LOVE to get rid of it, and I'm the damn CIO.
------
evo_9
Google Chat for our teams internal slack replacement.
------
pythonwizz
Wickr (Encrypted chatting).
Bloaded, Slow, Buggy, Unreliable. Unfortunately some customers are too stupid
and/or lazy to use a Jabber/OTR client.
------
etxm
I’m the only one on the planet, but I hate Notion.
It’s a mediocre spreadsheet, half assed database, and infuriating WYSIWYG ...
but all-in-one!!1
And it’s search sucks.
------
ajeshks
I have been using this for last 6 months. Apart from all these issues, search
for a chat in a conversation is not possible.
------
eu
Lawson, but thankfully only a few times a month.
------
Nextgrid
LinkedIn.
~~~
mindhash
Totally agree. LinkedIn is dumbest ux sitting on a gold mine of data
------
wetpaws
Used to be both Windows and Maven, hands down. Now Mac OS has switch the
windows place as the #1 most badly designed software.
------
diNgUrAndI
Can't believe no one mentions Salesforce
------
perceptronas
Any modern OS: MacOS, Windows or Linux. All have major problems. _Works out of
the box_ vs _is actually fast_ vs _is good UX_ and so on.
All of them lack some kind of functionality: mail calendar apps are buggy (win
and mac), GPU suspend problems (linux for me), can't replace hardware
parts(macos), weird finder problems, weird "explorer.exe" problems, weird
nautilus problems.
Why can't OS'es just work? Why is UX getting worse? Frustrating to say the
least.
~~~
lupinglade
All the security/passwords/confirmation prompts is tiring as well. And from
the developer side its even worse, at least on macOS. Security Scoped
Bookmarks are a nightmare to work with for anything but the simplest case.
------
tqwhite
Twitter on the web. The worst program I have ever used. Jumping, twitching,
changing so I can't read. It is torture.
------
coronadisaster
Android. Very bad for the consumer, from a privacy standpoint. Hopefully a
plain Linux phone will be my next phone.
------
billysielu
Amazon Music on Android because every time I open it it shows a full screen ad
for their music subscription service.
------
conductr
Probably not what you’re looking for but, the internet. General internet usage
has become tedious for many reasons.
------
Finnucane
[https://www.virtusales.com/](https://www.virtusales.com/)
------
eatmygodetia
Emacs.
It's such a mess, but nothing else comes close.
------
rogerthat_au
LinkedIn Jobs (as an employer) - lots of bugs, constant work-arounds and
clunky to share it with anyone else.
------
vandal_at_your
Chrome or firefox. Egregious wastes of my time, 90% inaccessible, untrusted
interpreters of untrusted code.
------
symlinkk
macOS has an extremely weird UI to me.
* Why does the maximize button fullscreen by default?
* Why can’t I simply drag windows to the side to split half and half? No, I don’t want to switch to fullscreen mode to do this.
* What is the point of the minimize button and why do things minimize to a special area on the right side of the dock?
------
buzzlight1234
TI Code Composer. Because transparent Cmake and GCC and my choice of editor
would make life too pleasant.
------
godelmachine
Xero Workflowmax to submit timesheet
It’s not at all intuitive and takes weeks getting used to.
I used Salesforce earlier and it was smooth.
------
misiti3780
Hands down, it is JIRA. But close seconds include zoom, ring central, and
slack video/voice calls.
------
hkt
WSL2's clipboard integration, or maybe terminal emulator. The agony of line
endings is enormous.
------
hinkley
npm will be the official reason I stop writing Node code at some point. It
does not know what it wants to be and it disagrees violently with concepts
from the tools it pretends to emulate. This whole lock file debacle makes me
angry and I'm not close to the only one.
------
s_T_e_v_o
Hands down, Windows 10. Don't even have list the 100 reasons why, because we
all know them.
------
riledhel
Cisco webex teams. Slow, feature lacking, horrible formating. Reminds me of
Salesforce Quip.
------
ajkjk
Bash and its derivatives, I think.
------
gru
Android OS on my Philips smart TV.
------
ssss11
Its been a few years but still recent, using Oracle eBusiness (EBS) was like
pulling teeth.
------
timtas
Microsoft Teams. Thoroughly shabby. Free to my company, and worth every penny.
------
aliswe
Hacker News.
------
stepstop
Probably SAP apps at my employer
------
swasheck
Teams.
I step away for 3 hours and that process that is consuming 4GB RAM is none
other than Teams.
------
leafario2
Eclipse. Killer feature being a live expressions viewer for my embedded
target.
------
netik
webcam control panel. it’s meant to adjust and control logitech cameras but it
resets the camera back to defaults (no gain, no exposure) every time a piece
of software restarts the driver.
it’s wretched and ruins every zoom call.
------
Waterluvian
Atlassian is a garbage fire.
------
c6401
Sorry jira but it's you
------
afpx
The entire AWS web console.
------
surajs
Chrome
~~~
yewenjie
What's stopping you from using another browser?
~~~
frank2
It is possible for Chrome to be better than all of the other browsers and
still be the worst piece of software GP uses every day.
If you like the web, then maybe this does not compute for you.
------
balladeer
iCloud sync. It's broken and it has been broken since a long time. Considering
it's run by a company as wealthy as Apple (on their closed ecosystem) it's an
utter disgrace.
------
Jemm
Any web browser.
Just the simple act of going back a page makes that page reload; why?
------
spotman
Slack. Frustratingly slow and bloated. Company is addicted to it.
------
iceman2654
Sage 300. 32-bit software still exists. Macros are written in VB6.
------
fishywang
homebrew. I can probably replace it with nix, but in two months I'll just hit
my hardware refresh cycle and ask for a Linux laptop from my employer and be
done with Mac for good.
------
lvturner
Gsuite admin interface. (thankfully I don't use it every day)
------
jokethrowaway
Netsuite trumps everything, I have fond memories of JIRA as well
------
taauji
music.youtube.com
slowest interface ever. songs are impossible to find when playing from a
playlist. focus never switched to the music player. no native cast plenty
other problems
------
vermooten
Teams & SharePoint.
------
gadders
All enterprise technology - SAP, PeopleSoft, ServiceNow etc
------
buro9
Every city parking app and every local authority website
------
Shorel
Android. And things that run on Android like WhatsApp.
------
tasubotadas
Windows Command Line
------
zanmat0
Ryver, an unheard of, abominable clone of Slack.
~~~
236dev
I haven't ever used it. Why don't you like it? Is it buggy or lacking features
------
mike50
Java browser based document management system.
------
sdiw
Google Chrome. It takes so much of a memory.
------
billfor
Quicken (well it was an open-ended question).
------
las_balas_tres
MySql Workbench. What an utter piece of crap.
------
SkyPuncher
Not me, but my wife - an EMR.
God they're fucking terrible. The actual EMR's are often fine. Then some
hospital administrator gets involved and completely destroys usability.
------
dkersten
I actually very strongly dislike using slack.
~~~
randompwd
I would remove Slack from workplaces solely so that my co-workers can no
longer waste the day on social slacks that are not even tangentially related
to our work.
------
martindbp
Every tool I use and hold dear, apparently!
------
srathi
Proofpoint spam filter! Drives me nuts!
------
dilatedmind
Also building docker images with bazel
------
VaedaStrike
LinkedIn web app and firefox mobile.
------
findso
Google Doc Search
Google Doc search is totally useless
------
p2detar
IBM/HCL’s Lotus Notes Domino.
------
trav4225
Every web browser that exists. :)
------
michele_f
CheckPoint VPN client: pure evil.
------
simonCGN
Anything from Microsoft really
------
KSteffensen
Without a doubt IBM Clearcase.
------
bribri
Service Now
------
nuker
Windows servers in the cloud.
------
majkinetor
Anything from Oracle really!
------
baggy_trough
Apple Music. Trying to make it play something on a HomePod from iOS takes a
computer science degree.
------
okasaki
Firefox
------
RyJones
Expensify
------
stunt
Jira & Microsoft Teams
------
eqtn
Atlassian Jira. Its Slow.
------
AsyncAwait
macOS Finder and how every sane alternative costs serious money.
------
dylan604
The internet. I mean, I love the concept of what the internet could have been,
but it's currently the most hostile thing I have to deal with on a daily
basis. Bad actors are too prevalent, and the amount of BS stuff we've tried to
come with GDPR/Cookie banners, Do Not Track, AdBlockers, etc.
~~~
asddubs
i think the problem is capitalism incentivizes bad actors, rather than the
internet itself.
------
iElectric2
IRC / Matrix+Riot
------
agustif
Mac OS Big S __ _
------
dogmatism
Cerner
Literally kills people every day
------
ChicagoDave
Confluence and Jira.
------
justanothersys
Dropbox’ desktop App
------
charlieflowers
My “smart” tv’s ui.
------
TekMol
Android
I have a computer in my pocket but I am not allowed to do even the most basic
stuff I would like to do with it. Like using a shell to work on my files, use
git for version control and to sync to other machines, use vim to edit text
... the list goes on forever. Heck, I cannot even easily backup all of my
data. Like the contacts for example. No way to read the files in which they
are stored.
~~~
conradev
Do you actually want to do those things on the go without a full size
keyboard?
~~~
ScottFree
Sysadmins do.
------
pavelevst
Java, FortiClient
------
hos4m
Google Chrome.
------
geogra4
Oracle openair
------
jheriko
Every period. Web period. Browser period. Ever.
------
jpkeisala
Skype
------
Goose90053
Quicken
------
snwfog
Slack
------
ipunchghosts
Latex
------
nixass
Quip
------
rock_hard
Gitlab
------
gergely
IBM Notes
------
druvisc
Instagram
------
koolhead17
LinkedIn
------
lytedev
I love this question.
JIRA.
------
agdtdudhegsjhs
Jira
------
black_13
Jira
------
User23
JIRA
------
itpragmatik
SAP
------
pragmatic
Jira
------
dkdk8283
Slack
------
hit8run
Citrix
------
dilatedmind
Gerrit
------
Uhhrrr
Printing.
------
sam_lowry_
Helm
------
dave_sid
Apple News
------
techslave
1 git
2 jira
------
twblalock
Webex.
------
billysielu
Twitch for not moderating chat.
------
pagade
iTunes, Google Sites.
------
thibautg
TrustArc cookie / GDPR / tracking popup. It is filled with all the possible
dark patterns.
------
enitihas
macOS Finder. It is hard to fathom how bad a file explorer could be if you
have used only windows and linux file explorers. Finder is astonishingly bad.
Default search is global, it means searching while you are in a folder will
search across all documents. This can be changed, but search is even then far
worse compared to windows or linux.
Sometimes Finder simply won't show certain files, and you need to do a mv from
terminal to another folder, where you can see them in finder.
~~~
tornato7
This is a very good answer, even getting to your user root directory is a pain
in finder, I have usually go to terminal and run 'open .' to get anywhere.
~~~
baggy_trough
Drag your home folder to the finder sidebar.
~~~
Someone
Or into the toolbar ([https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/customize-
finder-to...](https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/customize-finder-
toolbar-sidebar-mac-mchlp3011/mac))
------
wecloudpro
Any apple product.
------
p0nce
gmail
------
neillyons
webpack
------
fortran77
iTunes
------
technotarek
iOS
------
pankajdoharey
iTunes
------
billconan
gimp
~~~
mch82
It’s come a long way and slowly keeps getting better. Hopefully it’ll exit
this list someday :-)
I wish I knew how to get design feedback to the GIMP team in a way that would
be appreciated & that people might take action on. I also wish they’d rename
it something like “Image Lab” so it would be easier to promote at work.
------
2OEH8eoCRo0
IBM Clearcase
------
black_13
Jira.
------
yewenjie
Android.
~~~
enitihas
What is so bad about "Android", as in stock Android?
~~~
yewenjie
Mobile devices have insane potential, but we are essentially stuck with
Google's design choice monopolies, rendering the OS consumer-friendly but a
terrible experience for power users.
What's worse, there is no viable alternative to it, though some tries have
been made.
The default Android phone comes with loads of bloated and useless apps that
spy on you. Unlocking bootloader, installing a custom ROM, installing all your
favorite apps is a long and painful process (some vendors take weeks to
approve your unlock request).
All of these, in the name of a platform which is'open-source'.
------
disposekinetics
Jira
~~~
nikivi
Don't get how people still use Jira. Linear is great
[https://linear.app](https://linear.app)
~~~
lordofgibbons
That's an easy one to answer. They don't support Linux or Windows yet.
~~~
nikivi
It works inside web browser
------
ikaria91
Office365
------
benjaminsuch
macOS
I have a very bad UX. It's small annoying issues, like minimizing a window. If
you don't explicitly minimize the window and open another program, the other
window is hidden. Where is it? How can I open it? Yes by minimizing every
window until I have found mine. For applications, this is not that bad, since
you have the dock and just click on the icon to reopen your window, but what
happens if you have several windows open of that app? It's a nightmare.
I could write a whole list of toxic UX in macOS.
~~~
Razengan
I find macOS to be much more pleasant than Windows.
> _If you don 't explicitly minimize the window and open another program, the
> other window is hidden. Where is it? How can I open it? Yes by minimizing
> every window until I have found mine._
I don't understand exactly what you mean.
> _what happens if you have several windows open of that app?_
One of these:
• Right-click/Control-click on the Dock icon
• Check the Windows menu of the app. Minimized windows will have a Diamond
• Press F3 to open Mission Control.
• Press Control+F3 to see all windows of the currently focused app.
• Press Alt+F3 to open Mission Control settings and configure them to your
liking, along with setting Hot Corners for showing application windows etc.
• If you "Group windows by application" and have a mouse with a scroll wheel,
you can use scroll the wheel when hovering over an app's window, to "spread"
that windows stack.
• Press Option+Command+H to hide (not minimize) all windows except the active
app.
~~~
hacker_newz
When you minimize an app and switch to another, it disappears. Even if you
alt-tab back to the app it remains hidden. It's ridiculous.
~~~
Razengan
> _When you minimize an app and switch to another, it disappears. Even if you
> alt-tab back to the app it remains hidden. It 's ridiculous._
When you minimize a window, it disappears, period.
It becomes an icon on the right side of the Dock unless you set the "Minimize
windows into application icon" option.
There's a very explicit animation of where it goes, that macOS is/was famous
for (the "genie" effect).
And all windows of an app can be accessed by right-clicking on its Dock icon,
or its windows menu, or Control+F3.
------
PopePompus
iOS:
I almost never use it myself, but I get called upon to deal with it for some
of my relatives. The fact that you can't just mount the file system on a non-
crippled computer and transfer files to and from the device just drives me
mad. Getting someone's music into the right place if they don't have access to
a machine with iTunes is miserable. When the "files" app appeared a few years
ago, I thought "finally, they'll let you manipulate files directly", but no -
it's just another silo too restricted to be of any use.
~~~
Razengan
> _The fact that you can 't just mount the file system on a non-crippled
> computer_
What do you mean, non-crippled computer?
I think one of the reasons iOS doesn't expose the device as a Plain Old Disk
is so that it can continue to enforce content restrictions etc., i.e. such as
those set by parents.
------
inetknght
\- Google products.
\- - Gmail intentionally doesn't filter spam or phishing emails.
\- - Google Voice used to be useful but today is being blocked by more and
more services.
\- - Google Contacts is pervasive and uselessly so.
\- - Google Calendar also supports tons of spam and phishing.
\- - I stopped using Chrome because it stopped being a _user agent_.
\- Atlassian products. Slow bloated pieces of privacy violating garbage.
\- - JIRA is more and more confusing every day. Frequently changing UI incurs
cognitive costs. Its workflows are confusing af.
\- - Confluence is functionally inferior to Media Wiki. That's not even the
worst part; the worst part is that it doesn't use markup like the rest of the
world.
\- Microsoft products.
\- - Skype. Once upon a day Skype was nice and usable. Today Skype is
functionally, measurable, objectively less useful and less stable than it was
just half a decade ago.
\- - Github. It was great until a few weeks ago. That new UI is still worse.
~~~
PaulDavisThe1st
> Gmail intentionally doesn't filter spam or phishing emails.
my spam folder is fully of spam and phishing emails. no idea why that doesn't
work for you. i see essentially zero spam in my inbox (and i have several
extremely public email addresses)
------
podgib
G-Suite
Google Slides makes me want to cry every time I have to use it. Google Docs
isn't much better. They're poor web versions of office software from the 90s.
Google drive is a disaster of product. Uploading and finding files are both
incredibly painful.
Google sheets is fine for simple stuff, and I get why people use it, but
there's far better alternatives. For anything moderately complex it's a dog.
I can't stand the gmail interface, but I can at least see why some people
prefer it. It's the one part of the suite that isn't far inferior to its
competitors.
~~~
techslave
you are mistakenly judging g suite on the individual product requirements. eg
how a spreadsheet should function. that’s not what g suite is.
all features are MVP and the main selling point is being collaborative.
~~~
podgib
Fair. I also find the collaboration tools clunky and annoying to use.
When judging it as a whole, I find it worse than judging individual
components. For example, sheets on its own is a decent tool; sheets as part of
the suite is dragged dow by the rest.
~~~
techslave
clunky and annoying compared to what? they are the best i’ve seen and quite
good. if there’s something better please share. i would love to know about it.
comments in spreadsheets stink but everything else is pretty great. ok one
more flaw. you can’t unassigned a task from yourself. you can only reassign to
someone else or mark it done (which clears the comment thread).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Young Greek entrepreneurs: 'We are unfazed' - YeGoblynQueenne
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/10/vc-money-pours-into-greek-start-ups.html
======
thr34280998
I had some exposure to Greek startup scene and know most companies mentioned
here. Business is doable if your company is registered outside Greece, and
Greek branch is just a shell to pay salaries.
There is talent shortage here. For unqualified office assistant you get
hundred job applicants. But it is very hard to find senior developers. I did a
few job interviews (senior java developer) and offers were comparable to
Budapest. But cost of living is higher.
Business wise it is a nightmare. Tax/business system is changing every a few
months. New rules must be implemented within weeks... There are often strikes
(its just like a weather forecast). Greek employers want endless paperwork of
degrees and certificates... Dont underestimate this side of things, post
soviet countries have real motivations to change, but Greece is just adding
more paperwork.
Bankruptcy is the only way Greece can be saved at this point. Troika wants to
raise taxes indefinitely to the point of revolution, and Greek state has so
much pension/social obligations it is unsustainable.
~~~
kbody
Up until the last line I was with you. But those are separate things.
Just like any organization it's all about the team/people. The government is
clueless without a proper strategy and most of the political scene isn't bold
or capable enough to do major state reforms.
I envy Estonia and Cyprus, they both in a critical time, took bold decisions
that both required great effort and persistence to accomplish their goals.
Greece on the other hand keeps on choosing the short-term seemingly easy way
that ends up -of course- being an illusion.
I believe we had an opportunity to show that we want change, but we the Greek
people keep on failing. I keep losing faith not at the politicians but on the
will and maybe intelligence of the people and after so many years in misery,
it's beyond tiring to see almost no progress and in some cases steps back. The
populism and having a majority of weak politicians is killing this country.
~~~
ZenoArrow
> "I envy Estonia and Cyprus, they both in a critical time, took bold
> decisions that both required great effort and persistence to accomplish
> their goals."
I don't know about Estonia, but if I remember correctly Cyprus' solution was a
'bail in' (i.e. using the private savings of its citizens to bail out the
banks). Couldn't they have found a better solution than that, like, for
instance, guaranteeing the savings of their citizens with an asset freeze and
letting the failing companies fail?
~~~
pjc50
_private savings of its citizens_
Quite a lot of the people who had savings in Cyprus over the €100,000
uninsured threshold were _not_ citizens, but foreigners parking their money in
Cyprus as a tax haven. It's still a tax haven: [http://qz.com/178114/what-
russian-money-sloshing-back-to-cyp...](http://qz.com/178114/what-russian-
money-sloshing-back-to-cyprus-teaches-us-about-tax-havens/)
(Not all of them though, some of it was business working capital!)
Asset freeze would not have helped; the whole problem is that a bank with e.g.
€1bn in deposits (liabilities) whose loan business collapses ends up with
_less than_ €1bn in assets. There is no way to 'pay all the depositors and let
the company fail' other than injecting money from outside. In the case of
Cyprus having domestic taxpayers pay for non-domestic non-taxpayers to be made
whole would be .. unpopular.
------
pjmlp
If I am allowed to do some PR, Nessos with their MBrace project is a very cool
Greek company.
[http://www.nessos.gr/](http://www.nessos.gr/)
[http://mbrace.io/](http://mbrace.io/)
A good example of F# in production.
~~~
Aeolos
Colour me surprised! I did an interview with those guys and it was a breath of
fresh air.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What's going to be the next big thing? - livus
We have seen the emergence and potential disruption of VR, Autonomous cars and extensive research being done in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Mining et al in the past few years.<p>What according to you would be the next disruptive technology which is currently not popular?<p>Better programming languages? Quantum computing?
======
code777777
There are a lot of really interesting things happening in BI. First, many
accounting and some business grads are now coming with database knowledge.
They're able to gain insights from data that the older generations in this
space didn't have the skills to do.
Way more interesting to me are advances like Amazon's QuickSight [1] which is
geared towards business data. You can just upload stuff (CSVs, ERP databases,
etc.) and, perhaps, gain some insights. As they build intelligence around
similar business data sets it should improve over time.
Next big thing, perhaps not. But definitely something to keep an eye on, at
least in my space.
[1] [https://aws.amazon.com/quicksight/](https://aws.amazon.com/quicksight/)
~~~
edwinnathaniel
Pardon for plug in another product...
SAP Cloud for Analytics [0] (tutorials/how the software works is available for
free @ YouTube[1]).
What sets SAP C4A apart from the competitor is a product/vertical app built
on-top of SAP C4A platform: Digital Boardroom [2] (pics behind the guy is from
production software) where the execs can see the company performance
(Financials, Perf, or other metrics) Actual and Forecast in real-time. Better
predictive capabilities are in development (Predictive Analytics).
Have to agree with parent, BI is beginning to heat up (again). I'm noticing a
sense of new excitement from the customers or potential customers that we
approached...
[0] [http://discover.sap.com/cloudforanalytics/en-
us/index.html](http://discover.sap.com/cloudforanalytics/en-us/index.html)
[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RoDMhydu4U&list=PLs5htBIwER...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RoDMhydu4U&list=PLs5htBIwERYWSixKSqQHzndop33aBCz1U)
[2] [http://technology.inquirer.net/46423/sap-to-release-the-
sap-...](http://technology.inquirer.net/46423/sap-to-release-the-sap-digital-
boardroom)
------
jotux
Embedded processors are reaching < 30uA/MHz operation and useful sleep modes
in the hundreds of nanoamps. Super capacitor/battery density, and energy
harvesting continues to improve.
I think we're incredibly close to battery-less consumer electronics.
------
growthcommunity
IoT technologies will disrupt most major industries. It's like 1995 right now
for IoT and businesses are wondering if they ought to have a website.
As more operations and products come online, data platforms will become
standardized. The skills gap will be bridged, through AI / Machine Learning
and more data-literacy educational training.
I actually expect mobile device sales to slow down as the number of connected
devices per person grows. We won't need to always carry fragile expensive lil'
phones anymore -- we will be able to communicate, connect, work with
information, and engage with applications in new unexpected ways.
"Experience Design" and "Data Management" training will be necessary...
~~~
miguelrochefort
Who will standardize it?
Nobody seems to have a clue how to standardize.
~~~
milkytron
Alphabet/Google is making an attempt with Nest. There is an entire "Nest works
with" page that shows a variety of different IoT devices that use Nest as sort
of a base station I believe. I would link the page but I'm on mobile. Not
saying this will be the standard, but it seems like Nest is taking a shot at
it.
------
joeclark77
3D printing, when it becomes possible to make things a little more
sophisticated than a few plastic shapes. For example, imagine if you could set
up a robotic wood shop in your garage, using ordinary tools, and you could
download a piece of furniture. I think there'd be some very interesting
business models that would come out of something like that. Perhaps you're
buying the furniture, or perhaps you're selling it to your neighbors as a
franchiser for some kind of virtual IKEA in the cloud. Metal shops and other
kinds of fabrication, similarly, would be great.
------
thenomad
Look for something which is an unexpected interaction of recently-developed or
recently-reduced-in-price technologies.
My go-to example would be the intersection of brushless motors and cheap IMUs
from phones making the drone revolution possible.
------
phkahler
Spoken language interfaces. My 10 year old uses the voice input on her Android
phone all the time. "What's the weather today?" "What's the weather tomorrow
in Lexington?" "Set an alarm for 6:00am." Some of those just bring up a web
page, but talking back would be great.
I've seen the notion of electronic assistant as an obvious next thing for some
time. "Bring up that pdf file I was reading yesterday."
I wish the Sync interface on my car was more conversational than it is - it's
much like a verbal menu today.
------
max_
CRISPR/CAS9
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR)
is something that will revolutionise everything including computing. I thing
Genes & DNA will be used for computing instead of traditional processing
hardware
------
yolesaber
Teledildonics
------
miguelrochefort
I think we'll see a new interface for AI.
There is no way we will keep communicating with AI through text or speech.
A new communication paradigm will be the next big thing.
------
debacle
Realtime bioinformatics from mobile dongles that are actually useful to the
general population.
------
daveloyall
Machine learning/AI isn't done getting popular yet.
------
Mz
AI that raises our intelligence. AKA better video games.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Instagram Now Teens Most Used Social Platform - atlasunshrugged
https://piper2.bluematrix.com/sellside/EmailDocViewer?encrypt=3aac149e-6526-47aa-af46-f75b785e29cf&mime=pdf&co=Piper&[email protected]
======
atlasunshrugged
"Our 36th semi-annual Taking Stock With Teens survey included results from
8,600 teens across 48 states with an average age of 16. Video games & food
remain multi-year share gainers within teen wallets. Beauty, while not as high
as Spring, generally continues its uptrend. The most notable brand gainers
have been Vans, adidas, lululemon and surprisingly Crocs. We are seeing a
broad resurgence of preference for "brands" over "fashion." The 1990s &
Streetwear theme we called out 6 months ago has not slowed with Tommy
Hilfiger, Supreme, CK, Champion and even luxury brands including OffWhite,
Balenciaga & Gucci on the rise. Elsewhere, iPhone intent, digital video game
downloads, Netflix consumption, Amazon Prime adoption all gained solid share.
Instagram is now the No. 1 most-used social platform by teens (inching above
Snapchat); Facebook engagement falls. Teens' favorite restaurant is Chick-
Fil-A followed by SBUX. CMG gained share sequentially."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: have you ever marketed the same product under two different names? - Timothee
I remember that, a few years ago, two French smog check companies had ad campaigns explicitely comparing each other, even though they were actually owned by the same group and were providing the same service, just under two different brands.<p>The goal was to raise awareness of both brands at the same time and make each other look like a leader in the market: if company A is comparing itself to company B, it <i>must</i> be because company B is a leader. (didn't Fedex do something like that by presenting itself as #2?)<p>I can find plenty of reasons why it would be a terrible idea: brand dilution, distraction from actually building the product, extra work…<p>But I can also think of reasons why it <i>might</i> work: you're effectively A/B testing your whole branding; if you create a market, having two "players" makes it look more important; in some cases, people want to be able to compare, even if the products end up being the same thing, etc.<p>What do you think? Have you done it? Do you have examples of successes or failures with that?
======
jdietrich
Yes - it works _spectacularly_ well for a lot of software. Spolsky said that
most customers only use 10% of any program's features, just not the same 10%.
This presents you with a real marketing problem. Selling the same product
under different names allows you to tailor the marketing messages to
particular verticals or use-cases.
I did some work recently for a company doing SaaS for small businesses. Their
product was quite easy to use but difficult to sell, with a huge number of
pre-sales enquiries about whether the product would suit a particular
business. A lot of work went into improving the website to answer that kind of
question, but nobody really bothered reading any of it.
Eventually, they bought a couple of hundred domain names and wrote unique copy
for each, emphasising benefits and savings specific to a particular business.
The product itself was identical across all the branded sites. Sales
skyrocketed, covering the cost of that work within a matter of hours. Every
part of the funnel improved substantially - more search traffic, better ad
click-through, cheaper clicks, lower bounce rate, better conversion.
Curiously, there was also a marked improvement in retention.
------
russell
This is done in consumerland. I remember 30 years ago when my first child was
born, I looked into diaper services. There were dozens, but when I dug deeper
they were all fronts for one or two firms. If you look at laundry detergent,
they all come from a small number of firms.
It might even work on the consumer side of the internet, e.g. generic dating
site, dating site for jews, christians, academics, CS (good for girls looking
for intelligent hard working husbands, not so good for guys ;-).
However it wouldnt work so well for technical/business products. Can you
imagine doing a technical evaluation for several products only to find the
only difference among them was the logos.
~~~
Timothee
Good point about laundry detergent. I remember in particular Procter&Gamble
who was marketing Ariel and Vizir at the same time (in France). Similar
packaging, same base product, similar pricing.
One thing I remember now is that they had (in the 80s-90s) introduced a little
ball in which to pour your liquid detergent to put in the middle of your
laundry. Both brands had it obviously, so I imagine that made the _other_
brands look like they were lacking something.
Instead of having brand A with new unknown feature X, competing with brand B
without X feature, you have two brands A1 and A2 with that feature and B
without. I'd expect consumer to start thinking "well these two brands have it,
so that must be good". Instead of comparing A and B, they're now comparing A1
and A2 instead.
Clever.
I'm not sure either how well two brands could work for tech/business products,
but I wouldn't be surprised if the above example with the specific feature
could work a bit: if you're trying a different approach to a problem but bring
it through two brands, in a way it validates the approach. (if you don't know
better)
------
cpeterso
> _I can find plenty of reasons why it would be a terrible idea: brand
> dilution_
If you are trying to pitch the same product to two different markets, creating
a second branch would _prevent_ brand dilution.
I highly recommend Ries and Trout's book _Positioning: The Battle for Your
Mind_ (and _Marketing Warfare_ ). They argue strongly against "brand
extension" (e.g. Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero).
~~~
shaggyfrog
> They argue strongly against "brand extension" (e.g. Coke, Diet Coke, Coke
> Zero).
What a strange example to use in that case, namely because it's successful.
Diet Coke was marketed to the calorie-conscious, and later when they
discovered that "Diet" didn't sell well to men, they came up with Coke Zero.
Sure, there's some cannibalization, but also more market share. All of that
doesn't look like it's hurt the Coke brand in the least.
~~~
andyking
Brand extension has worked well in starting to transition the UK across to
digital radio, too, as argued (by someone other than me) in this blog post:
<http://james.cridland.net/blog/its-all-in-the-brand/>
Rather than filling the dial with unknown names, like "The Groove", "BBC 7"
and "Liquid" as they tried (and failed) in the early 2000s, broadcasters have
transitioned to using extensions of familiar names.
If you already know and enjoy Absolute Radio, or BBC Radio 4, on your FM
radio, you're more likely to try out Absolute Classic Rock, or Radio 4 Extra
on your shiny new digital set. Good, well-targeted extensions can only help
widen the reach of any particular brand rather than dilute it.
------
cvdamme
We've never tried it before, but we've thought about it. We've decided not to
do this, because it would be too expensive, and take too much time. This means
you'll spend 2X money and time on marketing for the same product with
different names. It already takes quite some time and money to build product
awareness for one product with one product name.
In my opinion, this is something you should do in case you're a big company
and have a lot of money.
I think if you want to do A/B testing you just have to create different
landings pages that discuss a different problem. On each landing page you
explain how your product solves a specific problem.
Is there a specific reason why you want to do this?
~~~
Timothee
I'm currently trying to decide between two names and tried a little AdWords
campaign to see if there was a significant difference in click-through rate
just based on the name. (result so far: there's a little one but not huge)
I started to wonder what effects launching both names could have. But I'm by
myself for now, so this is pretty much out of the question.
I also realize that a name doesn't make or break a product/company. But since
I need to pick a name, I started to think about that.
~~~
alexchamberlain
Of course, it has the significant advantage that the code has to be designed
to accommodate 2 names.
------
Mizza
It's pretty easy to reskin an app.. I'll usually at least add an extra feature
or something though.
(Kind of related/fun fact: Most sunglasses are made by the same company:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica> )
------
mjs00
For something you are marketing/selling directly, it is not effective to hedge
with two names to the same market/consumer. Even if each name pulls slightly
better in different ways, you are losing a potentially larger market that
needs to be hit with an exposure threshold to your brand before they buy
(lookup 'advertising rule of seven'). Also _very_ confusing when customers who
reference each other as part of purchase process are using different named
versions.
In almost all cases, better to have a single brand, then test different
marketing or solution approaches to placing that brand.
------
raquo
Related: brand proliferation, when one company creates many (somewhat
different) products in one niche and invests heavily in advertising. (example:
Cereals). This increases the barrier for entry for new players onto this
market by effectively saturating the market with a wide variety of products.
Economies of scale also help – e.g. if you're one big company it's easier to
negotiate with retailers. Usually done by FMCG companies.
------
jaddison
I've known companies to do this to get around Google slap issues with
products, yes. Typically, in the affiliate world.
In that space, once you've found a winning product (ie. tons of sales), it
makes sense to replicate under a different brand/imagery - not to compete, but
to actually advertise on Adsense (for example) without 'duplicate content'
penalties.
I don't have to like it, but it is a winning strategy in that space.
------
gujk
My ex's father ran a catering company in a small city with 3 different names.
One was kosher, and the other two were just different brands.
------
ThomPete
No, but I am about to.
I recently launched my already a niche product and found a possible niche of
that. It caters to a completely different market (one being designers, the
other being disabled people)
you can read about my first month here <http://www.000fff.org/incomereport>
~~~
glimcat
Your graphs need work.
What you've got is a series of linear ranges at different orders of magnitude.
The peak in the middle of the x range is probably smaller than the Forrst
peak, while the area under the HN peak is probably larger than everything else
together. The graph does not communicate any of this clearly.
If you want to do pseudolog, use 1-2-5-10. But if you're using Excel, you can
just right click on the axis, choose format axis, and tick "logarithmic
scale."
~~~
ThomPete
thnx!
------
bond
I remember a story about a business man who imported one quality of socks from
China. He then branded one product as a high quality(expensive) and the other
as a low quality(cheap) product. Then he would sell both batches to
supermarket chains across the country, making millions....
------
davidhansen
Yes, we do this right now. Three of our web properties sell effectively the
same collection of products, but with different branding, somewhat different
pricing, and different target demographics. Most of our efforts target just a
few main properties, so the marginal resources allocated to the "lesser"
properties don't negatively impact our focus to a notable degree.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Agrees to Censor Encyclopedia Dramatica Entry in Australia - stakent
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2010-01-17-n25.html
======
jonny_noog
I just don't know what to say anymore. As an Australian, I am ashamed and
baffled at the way my government has been handling Internet policy lately.
Their treatment of the issues betrays a astounding naivety that I find of
increasing concern. On the face of it, it's always for a good cause... won't
somebody think of the children! We need to censor all the bad sites on the
Internet! Some guy feels slighted by a racial slur on some website that no one
takes seriously! We must ban it from Google! We can't be seen to be endorsing
racism!
The sentiment is always admirable but the reaction betrays an complete
misunderstanding of both the online culture and the technological
infrastructure that supports it.
The sad thing is I know first hand that there are people in the Australian
Government who can and do give better advice that should ostensibly lead to
better government decisions in the online space. It just seems like their
voices are being disregarded. I suspect the main reasons for this are:
a) Certain politicians refusal to accept that the reality of the Internet does
not fit their limited understanding of it.
b) Politician's desire to use the Internet as a political football.
Perhaps it really is time to move to Estonia.
~~~
illumen
hello,
I do agree with you mostly, and in general I think that censorship is hardly
ever good. In this particular case censorship was a force for good.
As an aside, Google was running 'used aborigines' adverts from ebay for quite
a while. Do you think these adverts should also be allowed to run?
Australian society mostly takes a very dim view of racism, and especially
racism towards the aborigines. Our elected representatives and the people of
australia put in place laws such that this type of thing does not happen.
However the government and politicians did not make this particular case of
censorship happen - the courts of law made it happen. I think most of society
agree that it is a shit thing that google was doing in this instance.
Google has in place limits to stop things like pornography showing up, with
it's safe search feature. This is already a form of censorship based on the
values of countries like the USA.
Where do we draw the line? Obviously sociopaths shouldn't be able to say
whatever they like to millions of people if their words will cause harm. How
about spammers bent on selling their products? Google already blocks some of
the spammers. As do they block malware serving sites, and sites that don't
play by googles rules of what constitutes a good web page. Make a website more
google friendly, and google will reward you with higher rankings. Put more
google messages (adverts) on your pages, and get more people to see them, and
google will pay you more money. How about companies abusing trademarks or
abusing copyright? Are those censorship too?
Do we take the values of a multi national corporations(ie google)? Isn't that
a form of cultural imperialism? What is to stop the courts abusing their
power? There are many processes in place to try and let all sides of society
have their input into what the courts do. What is to stop google from abusing
their power and imposing their views on people who do not want them? ...
glibly, I guess the answer to that is adblock.
I don't think you can have a 'censorship is always wrong' approach, or a
'totally abusing censorship in terrible ways' approach either. Reasoned
arguments by courts of law are an answer - to find out where censorship is
appropriate and where it is not.
The people who made that site should get a dog up em.
~~~
jonny_noog
Well dude, if it were up to me, I would have a "censorship is always wrong"
approach. No exceptions. I realise this will never come to pass, but that's
none the less how it would be if it were up to me. Censorship is never a force
for good in my opinion.
_As an aside, Google was running 'used aborigines' adverts from ebay for
quite a while. Do you think these adverts should also be allowed to run?_
I had not heard about this, but honestly I could not care less. If people just
ignored this shit rather than pandering to the trolls, maybe there'd be no
incentive for them to keep doing it.
_Google has in place limits to stop things like pornography showing up, with
it's safe search feature. This is already a form of censorship based on the
values of countries like the USA._
And this censorship would be gone too, if it were - once again - up to me.
I think you must see where I draw the line now, i.e. I don't draw it. I can
imagine that many people may think my view extreme, what about the children
and all that? Well, that's what parents are for.
Whether a sociopath is able to say whatever they like on the Internet or not
doesn't bother me in the slightest. Because I am an independent person who
thinks for myself and feels quite comfortable judging for myself whether I
wish to read the writings of a sociopath.
But more than anything else, I was actually commenting on the technological
naivety of the people involved in this particular situation. Were I inclined
to get a bee in my bonnet about satirical racism on the Internet, would I
think having the offending material removed from Google is really any kind of
satisfactory outcome? Can people still get to the offending content?
Certainly. Do more people know about it now than could have ever possibly
known about it previously? Yes.
My point is that no matter how tightly the Conroys of this world try to clamp
down, there will always be cracks that are exploited. No matter how "clean"
the feed, there's always going to something on the Internet that offends
someone. Instead of worrying about where the line is drawn, we could start
worrying about taking personal responsibility for ourselves and our children
and leave everyone else free to do the same.
~~~
camccann
_I had not heard about this, but honestly I could not care less. If people
just ignored this shit rather than pandering to the trolls, maybe there'd be
no incentive for them to keep doing it._
eBay has (or had?) a habit of spamming ads in Google searches that said things
like "Looking for ${WHAT_YOU_SEARCHED_FOR}? Buy it new or used on eBay!", no
matter what you'd searched for.
So of course people would search for all kinds of
imaginary/dangerous/illegal/offensive/etc. things just to see if it would
spawn any "hilarious" auto-generated eBay ads.
~~~
jonny_noog
Well there you go, didn't know that either. if this is the mechanism that the
story is based on, it's even less to be kicking up a fuss about IMO.
------
camccann
I find it deeply worrying that something can be censored based on the
complaints of someone who would take Encyclopaedia Dramatica seriously.
~~~
ratsbane
I agree. And by censoring part of ED the Australian government will give the
impression of having implicitly approved of all of the parts they haven't
censored.
~~~
beamso
ED is on the ACMA blacklist apparently.
------
mhansen
_Mr Hodder-Watt then undertook legal action, that resulted in Google
acknowledging its legal responsibility to remove the offensive site._
How does Google have a legal responsibility to remove a site from search
results?
~~~
randomwalker
Because laws are different from country to country. Of course, I share the
view that it is a retarded law in this case, but it is a law nonetheless, and
one that Google must obey if they want to play in Australia. I believe the
legal term is 'intermediary liability.'
This issue has been popping up in different countries all over the world in
the last few months. Most notably in China, of course, but also in India,
France and Italy, where Google executives are in fact facing the possibility
of jail time. See
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/jan/13/google-
china-western-internet-freedom) and
[http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h-40ArK-e...](http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h-40ArK-
eMbvpRDJJSojvopz60Vw).
The role of Internet middlemen in enforcing copyright was a key legal issue in
the last decade. It appears that censorship will be the analogous issue for
the next decade. We seem to have reached a relatively happy middle ground with
copyright—middlemen have some responsibility, but a strong form of copyright
protection has proved unenforceable, forcing many industries to innovate or
die. We can hope that a similar thing will happen with censorship, with
oppressive governments either collapsing or being forced to allow free speech.
------
barredo
I wonder when will Australian Gov Hackers try to hack some australians gmail
account and Google threatens to leave Australia.
~~~
pmorici
Since the censoring in question is the result of legal action by an individual
and not a government the appropriate thing to do would be to just block all
Google access from the complainer.
~~~
apower
And where do you think the LEGAL basis coming from? Thin air? It's backed by
and enforced by the Aus government.
~~~
artichokeheart
The legal basis, though, are racial vilification laws. Welcome to the
censorship/freedom of speech grey area.
~~~
pwmanagerdied
There is no gray area. If you support laws against hate crime or hate speech,
you're against freedom of speech.
~~~
EricBurnett
I'm sorry, but no issue is black and white like that. There is a gray area
because two human rights are in conflict on issues such as these: freedom of
speech and freedom from discrimination. In most countries, including
Australia, limitations are put on freedom of speech specifically to address
this issue.
You can support laws such as these without being 'against freedom of speech'.
After all, the very first article in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
says "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are
endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a
spirit of brotherhood." Both this and article 19 (freedom of opinion and
expression) must be supported, and when they are in conflict, a balance must
be found.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights)
~~~
pwmanagerdied
We all know that the UN is retarded. By increasing the penalties for crimes
motivated by discrimination against selected groups, you imply that crimes
motivated by discrimination against groups that haven't been so selected are
less severe. If someone went around and started killing geeks because they
hated us collectively, they'd be less heavily punished than if they were
targeting a protected group, such as Christians. Is that fair?
~~~
gjm11
The point of hate speech / hate crime laws isn't that crimes motivated by
discrimination are worse. It's that they affect the whole group. If I kill you
because I want your money, then you and your friends and family suffer the
consequences. If I kill you because you're gay, Christian, black, Jewish,
female, or whatever, then _in addition to the effects on you and your friends
and family_ everyone else who's part of the same group feels just that bit
more afraid and that bit less able to be themselves; and everyone else who
hates that same group gets just that bit more inspiration to go out and do
likewise.
Unless you give this _zero_ weight and think every reasonable person should do
otherwise, then I do not think you have any excuse for saying that approving
of hate-crime laws means being "against freedom of speech".
(Unless by "you are against freedom of speech" you mean "you think that there
might be other considerations that sometimes justify limiting freedom of
speech". In which case every reasonable person is "against" just about
everything.)
There is no hate-crime legislation making it extra-bad to kill geeks because
there aren't a bunch of malefactors out there killing geeks. It's arguable
that hate-crime laws should be written in a more general way, instead of
calling out particular discriminated-against groups, but if you'd accept
_that_ then congratulations, you're "against freedom of speech" in your own
terms.
------
Evgeny
Great. I have never heard about this Encyclopedia Dramatica before but now
I'll definitely have a read.
~~~
EricBurnett
I'm not sure I even want to mention it, but I highly recommend you stay away
from the article called 'offended' if you find it linked anywhere, unless you
are the kind of person who likes visiting shock sites. Consider yourself
warned.
~~~
RevRal
Please heed this advice. And don't allow yourself to get tricked into clicking
an innocent link that leads to the ED offended page.
For every link on ED, roll over it and take a look at its URL at the bottom of
your browser. This'll keep you from being trolled into the offended page.
Also, the contrast between URL and hyperlink text is one of ED's sources of
irony.
For example, hyperlink text that says "actual news" might lead to ED's
"serious business" page.
------
daniel-cussen
link to offensive article: <http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Aboriginal>
Warning: extremely racist.
~~~
pwmanagerdied
Who gives a damn if it's racist, the entire site is a joke!
~~~
artichokeheart
Well, for one, me. Racism even on a joke site is still racist. As far as I'm
concerned, and I know I'm not alone, racism is not acceptable in any form.
~~~
pwmanagerdied
Well, I'm afraid I have to be the one to inform you that you are both pathetic
and an idiot.
~~~
jon_dahl
Calm down, man. The previous poster expressed a reasonable opinion. Disagree
if you want, but don't resort to ad hominem.
------
beamso
I couldn't find the chillingeffects mention through google.com.au, nor the
article through google.com. Looks like it was buried by the news stories.
~~~
whatusername
<http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=17460>
If you search for Aboriginal Encyclopedia on google.com.au it shows up down
the bottom.
------
philk
From the article:
_"It portrays indigenous Australians in the most unsavoury light possible,
and you wouldn't want a child stumbling across it," he told ABC Radio._
I'm getting really sick of people playing the "won't somebody think of the
children" card.
~~~
vaksel
children were probably the ones who created that content in the first place
~~~
philk
Never let reality get in the way of a good moral panic.
------
nfnaaron
1\. Wouldn't it be better/safer/something if it were easy to find such sites,
so that nicer people can know just what they're up against? If I wanted to do
something about cockroaches in my house, I'd like to be able to find the
cockroaches.
2\. karzeem, in another comment, says that the site is within the bounds of
free speech. Sincere question from a non-Australian: does Australia have
constitutional or otherwise legally protected free speech? In other words, is
free speech a strong legal argument in Australia?
~~~
zmimon
> does Australia have constitutional or otherwise legally protected free
> speech
No. Australians have no direct freedoms at all. What rights they have are
"implied" indirectly from other things such as that the federal government
shall not restrict trade between the states (it's hard to trade if you can't
talk ...). People talk from time to time about strengthening individual
rights, but most Aussies couldn't care less and due to mandatory voting those
that don't care will vote down just about any constitutional amendment making
it extremely difficult for such reform to ever happen.
~~~
EricBurnett
Not entirely correct. Australia ratified the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights and is part of the United Nations.
From Wikipedia: "While not a treaty itself, the Declaration was explicitly
adopted for the purpose of defining the meaning of the words "fundamental
freedoms" and "human rights" appearing in the United Nations Charter, which is
binding on all member states. For this reason, the Universal Declaration is a
fundamental constitutive document of the United Nations."
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights)
------
blhack
_When searching Google Australia for [Aboriginal and Encyclopedia], there will
be a disclaimer at the bottom reading “In response to a legal request
submitted to Google, we have removed 1 result(s)..._
If you go here:
[http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=aboriginal+encyc...](http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=aboriginal+encyclopedia&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=)
You will see no such warning. (At least I didn't)
~~~
EricBurnett
Try
[http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=aboriginal+encyc...](http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=aboriginal+encyclopedia+dramatica)
, which will be more likely to get the link(s) in question. At the bottom I
see that 4 links were removed.
Predicting what links will show up for who is hard, especially now that
personalized results are used.
~~~
knorby
I suppose this is a question for an Australian, but what stops someone from
just using google.com instead of the .com.au address? Seems like if I see that
warning in the US, the filtering isn't done by origin of the request, at least
on this level.
~~~
TeHCrAzY
Nothing at all. Attempting to understand what our politicians and courts are
doing at the moment is difficult indeed. I expect people like that to be
intelligent and informed. They seem to be lacking in both with re. to the
internet.
------
tokenadult
So a source with no reference value whatsoever no longer appears DIRECTLY as a
Google result for certain kinds of searches that might be expected to turn up
reliable information. I thought that was a big part of what Page Rank was all
about in the first place. Would that the same thing would happen to the many
crank pages that turn up in searches on medical topics.
~~~
karzeem
It's not really a question of how relevant ED is. The issue is that a
government had Google censor something which is well within the bounds of free
(albeit offensive) speech.
~~~
tokenadult
Governments (courts) also enforce judgments for defamation, but we don't call
that censorship either. One way I like to exercise my free speech is to be
careful in my use of legal language, and to remind readers here that not every
action that keeps something from being Web-indexed or posted, even if it is an
action taken by a government, is properly called "censorship." What happened
here appears to be Google responding to a citizen complaint under an
Australian law that I might indeed disagree with, but which does not
constitute a prior restrain on what is published on the Web, and indeed has
not stopped the website in question from continuing to be posted.
After edit: Google also removes on its own initiative spam links from its
search results. No one seems to complain about this except the spammers. I
think that is great customer service, except that Google recently needs to do
more of that. That too is not censorship. It is simply Google deciding what
its business model is for delivering search results. You have the right to
operate a website. Google also has the right to operate a website. Google
decides whether or not to comply with applicable local law if there is some
legal issue raised by its serving up search results in a particular place. If
Google really doesn't like local law, it can use its bully pulpit to advocate
a different law, or hire lawyers or lobbyists to change the law.
------
cousin_it
Sometimes I hope all bleeding-heart activists will eventually see how
governments use their actions as a pretext to expand censorship more and
more... but then hope goes away and reality sets in.
------
vaksel
here is a question, do people actually have to go to google.co.au, or does
Google redirect them there when they go to google.com?
~~~
mahmud
Google redirects you.
~~~
tokenadult
_Google redirects you._
Are you writing that from Australia? To the contrary, I find that I can search
with any country's version of Google, including non-English versions, from
here in the United States.
Could Australian participants confirm or deny the quoted statement? I thought
other comments posted to this thread earlier already stated that Australians
can search Google from any of Google's national sites.
~~~
mahmud
I am in Australia. If I type google.com I end up in google.com.au.
~~~
repsilat
Searches to google.com aren't redirected, just requests for the front page. If
you specifically want google.com (and not google.com.au) you can go to
google.com/ncr instead.
------
BrentRitterbeck
Hmmm... Google must be the market leader and making a profit in Australia.
~~~
ubernostrum
Or they're just doing the same thing they've always done in all non-China
countries: removing search results when the country's legal process tells them
to (they remove results in the US over DMCA requests, for example) and linking
to Chilling Effects to show a copy of the complaint.
~~~
BrentRitterbeck
So please explain how China's censorship is fundamentally different. Does not
a sovereign nation have the right to control things that may be fundamentally
destabilizing to the country as a whole? I know I'm playing devil's advocate
here, but it is an interesting question.
EDIT: Note, I am 100% against censorship.
~~~
ubernostrum
Well, take the case of the DMCA. Yes, it's a terrible law and should be
repealed, but the approach to handling it is fundamentally different from
China's censorship. If this were Chinese style, any site which argued that the
DMCA is flawed or should be repealed/reformed would get a blanket disappearing
imposed by the government.
But since it's not Chinese-style you can talk about the DMCA all you want --
the only things that disappear from search results are specific URLs which are
claimed to violate the law itself, removed not after a wide-ranging government
demand but after a narrowly-targeted civil-law complaint (and there's a
counter-filing system which allows maintainers of those URLs to respond and
have due process -- I doubt very much that China allows such challenges to its
censorship).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: The Best April Fools’ Day jokes - bartkappenburg
======
scrollaway
AF has gotten annoying as hell. The only time it's actually cool is when it
ends up into cool tech but that is rare enough - Google's pokemon game is neat
I guess.
Like many people in tech, I dread Aprl 1st. I have to stay away from my news
and social sources because they turn to utter crap.
I'm glad HN is quiet regarding AF this year. Let's hope this tradition dies
down as more and more people find it lame every year.
~~~
zimpenfish
Define "quiet" \- there's about 20 stories I've seen today which are blatant
AFs.
------
fedor91
I let my co-founder call a person called Mr. de Leeuw (very common name in The
Netherlands, translated Mr Lion)and gave him the number of the zoo. Was very
funny, because he didn't noticed the date and really asked for Mr. de Leeuw.
(Mr. Lion). I'll expect some payback from him now. Old Joke.. but still very
funny!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Eating out increases levels of phthalates in the body, study finds - pmoriarty
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/mar/29/eating-out-increases-levels-of-phthalates-in-the-body-study-finds
======
pluma
Sounds like this is mostly about fast food chains, not restaurants in general.
It also seems like this story should really be about calling out specific
restaurants/chains for contaminated food, not presenting it as a general fact
about restaurants.
~~~
forgotmypw
There is little difference between "fast food chains" and "restaurants in
general".
Fast food chains make their food from prepared components that they buy in
bulk through some sort of homogenized supply chain. So do most restaurants.
Fast food chains involve a lot of plastic in their food preparation, even hot
food and even while cooking. So do most restaurants.
Fast food chains use food components that are optimized for shelf life, using
whatever chemicals that the FDA said are "generally recognized as safe" in
1958. So do most restaurants.
And so on.
Places where the chef goes out to the farmer's market every morning, hand-
selecting the ingredients, and then painstakingly crafts your meal using only
metal and ceramic are the exception rather than the norm.
Even one-off family restaurants where you get "good" food are doing most of
this stuff, just because it is the norm, and they don't see anything wrong
with it.
If you don't believe me, just go in the kitchen of your favorite restaurant
and observe what the chef does and read the ingredients on the big containers
of "raw" ingredients.
~~~
coldtea
> _Fast food chains make their food from prepared components that they buy in
> bulk through some sort of homogenized supply chain. So do most restaurants.
Fast food chains involve a lot of plastic in their food preparation, even hot
food and even while cooking. So do most restaurants.
Fast food chains use food components that are optimized for shelf life, using
whatever chemicals that the FDA said are "generally recognized as safe" in
1958. So do most restaurants._
Depends if in "non fast-food restaurants" you include a TGIF or a Chipotle.
~~~
forgotmypw
I'm including both corporate chains like TGIF and Chipotle, in addition to:
* that sushi restaurant in the strip mall, that serves you rice cooked with fluoride water and soy sauce with sodium beonzoate
* that "gourmet" deli that serves you sodium nitrate-laden on top of pesticide- and preservative-laden bread with a yellow #5 pickle.
* that coffee shop that pours a hot beverage at 140F/60C into a plastic-lined, plastic-lidded cup.
* that cafeteria in that corporate office that heats up frozen soup in a plastic bag before pouring it into the serving pot.
* and so on
Our food system resembles a Brave New World-esque intelligence test that most
of us are failing.
~~~
vorpalhex
> fluoride water
So... tap water? Most countries add flouride to their tap water because it
improves dental health. Unless you're a redneck screaming about alien mind
control, that isn't some crazy scary chemical compound.
> soy sauce with sodium beonzoate
*Sodium Benzoate
Again, perfectly boring salt that reduces pH. Not some scary mind control
substance, just a salt you can produce at home.
> sodium nitrate-laden
Every preserved meat in the world. Also found naturally in Chile.
> pesticide- and preservative-laden bread
Pretty much been the case since humans found out about vinegar. I wouldn't
call < 1% in total to be "laden" though, unless you're eating an awful lot of
bread.
> yellow #5
You realize that was a myth that it would reduce your sperm count right? There
is a segment of the population that has a sensitivity to it, but it's pretty
small.
> heats up frozen soup in a plastic bag
Again, most plastics are rated for this. Also helps cut down on glass shards
in your food, or badly sanitized cookware giving you the runs.
I'm sorry, but your points here aren't some ultimate "gotcha", they're just
anti-scientific scaremongering. I'd tell you to stock up on tinfoil for those
hats, but I heard that causes alzheimer's.
~~~
pmoriarty
_> > sodium nitrate-laden_
_> Every preserved meat in the world. Also found naturally in Chile._
Just because it's common or "natural" doesn't mean it's not bad for you. There
are legitimate health concerns about nitrate use in foods.[1][2]
_> > heats up frozen soup in a plastic bag_
_> Again, most plastics are rated for this. Also helps cut down on glass
shards in your food, or badly sanitized cookware giving you the runs._
How do you know which plastics are being used by the restaurants you eat at?
And what does "being rated" for heating actually mean? Does it mean that no
plastic or other chemicals from the bag actually gets in to the food? As a
consumer I have no way of knowing.
_> I'd tell you to stock up on tinfoil for those hats, but I heard that
causes alzheimer's._
This sort of snark is really not welcome on HN. Please try to be civil.
[1] - [https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/01/bacon-cancer-
pr...](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/01/bacon-cancer-processed-
meats-nitrates-nitrites-sausages)
[2] -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16510960](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16510960)
~~~
conkerspoon
Ignoring conspiracy theory gibberish (in this case the fluoridated water
rubbish) is MUCH worse than calling it out. You want HN to eventually be
populated solely by ‘science proves immunization causes autism’ fruit-cakes?
Then keep doing what you’re doing, which is ignoring their lunatic
conspiracies and attacking anyone who calls them out with petty sanctimonious
appeals to the rules.
~~~
forgotmypw
Instead of calling you out, I'll just leave these here...
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3433161/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3433161/)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3144112/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3144112/)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11275672](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11275672)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17097768](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17097768)
------
Steve44
This only seems to be a correlation between people reporting having eaten out
and the test levels. I can't see why restaurant food would be that much
different to home cooked food unless there was something very wrong with the
supply chain or kitchen practices.
The newspaper article does not mention if they have looked at following the
source of these phthalates back up the chain to see where they actually come
from.
~~~
sametmax
My theory is that most affordables restaurant don't make food anymore, they
assemble it. So it comes from multiple packages. Add the fact there is a lot
of take away / doggy bags, which means repackaging the finished product, and
stronger hygiene regulation, which mean detergent used in contact with the
food, and you have more opportunities for phthalates to come by.
While at home, you may very well cook it from more raw ingredients, with less
packaging, put it on a plate, and just quickly wipe the table and plate when
you're done.
You will also cook a big meal for the entire house, while a lot of restaurant
are just fast food, preparing one meal per person.
Remember, for most families, they won't go to a michelin restaurant. They will
got to Scramblz', Chipotle or the local "italian".
~~~
nicoburns
I think this may be US-specific. In the UK, there are certainly chains that
'assemble' food, but there are also a whole bunch of similarly priced chains
amd independent resturants that cook fresh food. It's not michelin star
quality, but it's fresh. In general I think resturaunts tend to add more
seasoning (such as salt, sugar, etc) than most people cooking at home would.
~~~
curun1r
I wouldn't be too sure it's just the US...there was a somewhat-recent
controversy in France: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/french-
restauran...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/french-restaurants-
acknowledge-serving-factory-frozen-
food/2013/07/09/9857b69a-dda2-11e2-b797-cbd4cb13f9c6_story.html)
------
pipio21
This should be "Eating out in industrialized fast food American food chains
increases levels of phthalates in the body".
A restaurant is a different thing. In places like Spain, France or Italy when
you say "restaurant" you never refer to "MacDonnals", "BurgerKing" or
"FostersHollywood".
~~~
prepend
What are you talking about? BurgerKing is certainly classified as a restaurant
in Spain, France, and Italy. What do they call these places? I’m not sure how
you validate such an absolute statement. My own travels had many examples of
people in these countries using restaurant to refer to both fast food and sit
down restaurants.
There are thousands of web pages like this s one using restaurant to describe
McDonalds in Spain - [https://www.quora.com/What-is-mcdonalds-in-Spain-
like](https://www.quora.com/What-is-mcdonalds-in-Spain-like)
~~~
arthurbrown
You're referencing a quora post by an American about some time spent in Spain.
How is this an authoritative source? The following answer specifically rails
against fast food and contrasts it against "restaurants and tapas bars",
implying a difference.
Sure you can use restaurant as a term to refer to a "place where food can be
ordered" \-- but if someone speaks the word, fast food is not what comes to
mind.
~~~
mynameishere
Well, the word will come to mind for those of us who use words correctly,
rather than twisting them because we feel superior to the people at one
establishment or another.
_a business establishment where meals or refreshments may be purchased_
[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/restaurant](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/restaurant)
My impression of the food service industry is that you have big companies like
MCD that control their own supply chains, really expensive places where the
chef goes to market every morning, and 95 percent of everything else where
they serve whatever arrives on the Sysco truck. There's no need to get uptight
--it's all just calories with a 1000 percent markup.
~~~
Luc
> My impression of the food service industry is ...
Once more: this is a very American view.
------
wgj
In addition to the issue of relying entirely on correlation, this report only
states relative percentage increase without stating absolute levels or
comparison to any known risk thresholds. Maybe 35% higher exposure isn't a
significantly greater risk.
If it is a significant risk, I don't think I can rest easier only getting two
thirds the exposure staying at home. That's still a lot of plastic if I'm
actually that close to a toxicity threshold.
Edit: Also, as I noted in another comment, both CDC and Wikipedia are much
more conservative about the health impact, making the question about toxicity
threshold even more relevant.
[https://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/Phthalates_FactSheet.html](https://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/Phthalates_FactSheet.html)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phthalate#Health_effects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phthalate#Health_effects)
------
spodek
I can't tell if we treat our environment or our bodies worse, but the same
mental process seems to drive how we treat each.
The result is the same: to save a percent here and there we trash both.
~~~
gnulinux
I'm really sorry but I don't get the anaology. Eating home is significantly
cheaper than eating out. How are those two things similar?
------
subpixel
In my office, I see seemingly reasonable white-collar employees regularly
microwave their lunch in all sorts of flimsy plastic containers. I’m not even
shocked anymore.
~~~
stronglikedan
I think the people who know not to microwave plastic, and don't, are a _very_
small minority. The people who have never heard it are in a slightly larger
minority. The people who have heard it's bad, but choose not to heed the
warnings for convenience sake, are seemingly the majority.
Most times I've mentioned it to someone who is about to microwave plastic,
they say something along the lines of "oh yeah, I've heard that before", as
they continue to put their plastic in the microwave and start it up. I've
given up on trying to educate people about it.
------
liberte82
Are phthalates bad?
~~~
jmhyer123
> Researchers investigating levels of phthalates in the human body, which have
> been linked to asthma, breast cancer, type 2 diabetes and fertility issues
> in the past few years...
~~~
wgj
Neither CDC nor Wikipedia show very clear support for this assertion,
especially given that the actual levels in the study weren't reported. Just
relative percentages.
[https://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/Phthalates_FactSheet.html](https://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/Phthalates_FactSheet.html)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phthalate#Health_effects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phthalate#Health_effects)
------
xutopia
Everybody here has an idea of why this occurs and they all mention packaging.
Did you see inside a McDonalds kitchen? They use plastic trays to cook and
hold foods instead of stainless steel we would see in high end restaurants.
I am certain that food grade plastics leak into food at high heat when oils
and other food compounds are present.
------
thefounder
The headline is misleading
~~~
vixen99
Misleading in some measure, as is almost every headline - given that
appropriate qualifiers necessarily disqualify the text as a headline. But most
of us assume that's the case and judge accordingly on the content.
------
djyaz1200
It's the receipts, they are printed on paper that has these chemicals and
handed to people right before they eat. As a test try not to touch the recipe
when they attempt to hand it to you and get ready to be just about assaulted
by the clerks as they try to force you to take it.
[https://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i35/Touching-thermal-
paper-r...](https://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i35/Touching-thermal-paper-
receipts-extend.html)
------
alphanumeric0
I'd be interested to see more at-home test kits for these sorts of biomarkers.
------
vorotato
I thought this title was referring to the euphemism.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
In search of a European Google - SandB0x
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/06/europe-google-silicon-valley-digital-industry
======
CM30
Personally (as someone from Europe), I'd say the general reasons we don't have
an equivalent tp Google or Silicon Valley or any of that sort of thing are
more that:
1\. European laws are too restrictive. It's especially notable with stuff like
the hilariously stupid online tax laws the area has (having to apply different
tax rates based on the location of the user rather than the business makes it
hugely more complex than it has to be) or the right to be forgotten, but it
just feels we're too restrictive here in general.
2\. Culture. People in the US seem more ambitious and more willing to risk
everyone for the small chance of becoming a millionaire/billionaire at the end
of it. People in European countries on the other hand seem to be encouraged to
avoid risk and avoid anything that might lead to less job security in the
short term. Probably because failure in the US is seen as a minor bump in the
road, whereas failure in Europe is seen as the worst possible thing
imaginable.
3\. Money. Not just in the form of venture capital (though that's a huge
reason), but also because US startups tend to pay their employees more,
whereas their European equivalents stick to the average local wages. Hence the
best programmers, designers and other such people usually either find
employment in a more stable company (read, one where there's a work/life
balance) or move to the US to work in Silicon Valley.
If we want a 'European Google' or European startups in general, we need to
become less risk averse, more willing to reward the types of people needed to
work in those companies and less obsessed about regulations.
Oh, and fix the issues certain areas have with internet connection speeds. The
fact that a lot of areas in large cities like London can't get fibre internet
and the likes is not helping our tech businesses compete with their US
counterparts.
~~~
ilurk
I agree with all of the above but I think you missed another important aspect
about money.
Engineers in SV are paid bucket loads of money.
They can afford to take one year of to travel the world or just work on their
own projects.
For me that is key.
How many people do you know in Europe that can do that?
Another thing is in Europe the biggest tech hub is in London. And if you're in
London you have to wonder
_Why am I dealing with this crappy weather when I can move to somewhere where
I 'm paid 2-3x more and it's summer all year?_
I know someone who falls along these exact lines and has moved to SV. Although
he was already working remotely to a US company.
~~~
raverbashing
> They can afford to take one year of to travel the world or just work on
> their own projects.
Can they?
> Why am I dealing with this crappy weather when I can move to somewhere where
> I'm paid 2-3x more and it's summer all year?
Because you don't risk bankruptcy by having a health issue, if you're single
it's not a sausage fest, more laid back work (in SF it seems you're bound to
stay longer times at the office), greater tourism choices (a short trip away)
and probably still cheaper than rent in SF even if we're talking London
~~~
jryle80
> Because you don't risk bankruptcy by having a health issue, if you're single
> it's not a sausage fest, more laid back work (in SF it seems you're bound to
> stay longer times at the office), greater tourism choices (a short trip
> away) and probably still cheaper than rent in SF even if we're talking
> London
We have another reason right in this very answer: People in SV are willing to
take more risk and sacrifice. Sure there are chances one may be bankrupted
because of a health issue. Sure there are fewer entertainment choices. Living
in SV may not be an ideal lifestyle for many but it has attracted a lot of
adventurous mind from all over the world, who together conjure up trailblazing
ventures.
~~~
gozo
Not only do I not think that is true, I think there's real danger that people
conclude that more risk is better. SV is in many ways risk averse. The days
when any kid could get a million dollars are over. Almost every success story
seems to happen on a background of brand name colleges, companies, incubators
or investors. What I think people mean when they talk about risk is really
"hype". People move to SV to work in the tech industry because that is THE
place to be. You don't have that in London, Berlin or even New York. The pure
momentum of the industry simply overshadows any health care, housing, dating
problems in the bay area.
~~~
jryle80
> Not only do I not think that is true, I think there's real danger that
> people conclude that more risk is better
I don't think people in general consider more risk being better. Rather,
higher reward often comes with higher risk. People aim for higher reward
obviously have to accept the risk associated with it. It just so happens that,
as you said, SV is the place to be for the tech industry.
> SV is in many ways risk averse. The days when any kid could get a million
> dollars are over. Almost every success story seems to happen on a background
> of brand name colleges, companies, incubators or investors.
I don't argue for or against the risk averse nature of SV. And of course,
knowing the right people helps get your foot in the door everywhere.
Undeniably though, for variety of reasons, there exists an ecosystem in SV
that breeds the creation of hi tech businesses. If you want to make a name for
yourself, being in SV makes a lot of sense. It isn't easy to replicate that
elsewhere.
Just look at the list of car companies that set up shop in SV in the last few
years:
[https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2015...](https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2015/01/22/research-
and-innovation-center-palo-alto.html)
[http://www.technologytell.com/in-car-tech/1848/volvo-
geely-g...](http://www.technologytell.com/in-car-tech/1848/volvo-geely-get-in-
on-research-center-game-as-well/)
[http://www.technologytell.com/in-car-tech/1798/renault-
nissa...](http://www.technologytell.com/in-car-tech/1798/renault-nissan-
alliance-opens-new-research-center-in-silicon-valley/)
[http://www.industryweek.com/expansion-
management/expansion-m...](http://www.industryweek.com/expansion-
management/expansion-management-why-auto-industry-driving-silicon-valley)
VW has been there essentially forever, apparently:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VW_Electronics_Research_Labora...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VW_Electronics_Research_Laboratory)
Those are big names in a very established industry, yet they can't afford not
to have a presence in SV.
------
vlehto
"de facto platform, it’s hard to control and even harder to dislodge"
There is a Finnish service called irc-galleria.net. It's a service that was
created to let irc users to share pictures of themselves to other irc users.
It got really big in Finland. They even had big screen in center of Helsinki
to show new pictures uploaded to the service. They had this paid feature which
let you keep a list of friends in there. Everybody talked about irc-galleria
stalking.
Then Facebook came. The major difference was that facebook let you make
friends for free. Year later nobody remembers irc-galleria.
Dislodging a platform is easier than ever. It's enough to make better or
cheaper product, then just get lucky. Previously you had to also take
distribution and marketing into account and then get lucky.
~~~
7952
I don't think these big platforms will ever be dislodged exactly, just made
irrelevant. Photo sharing used to be difficult enough that it could act as the
basis for an entire product category. Now it has been commoditized
sufficiently that it can be just added to any product with relative ease.
Maybe one day it will be possible to add Google style search technology to any
product with ease. At that point the opportunity is to have specialist search
as an add-on to other products.
~~~
vlehto
I'm trying to imagine here what it would take to beat Google in it's own game.
The most frustrating searches I've had with google are always about some thing
I have seen before, but can't find again.
It would be relatively easy to optimize for this if you can have some kind of
bookmark app and search history available. So that search would prioritize
stuff I have bookmarked or found previously. It would be probably be valuable
for the search engine to know what products I have bookmarked. The catch here
is that I'm not going to trust google with that data.
So essentially delicious with very powerful search as by product.
------
knz42
“The combined value of the top three internet companies in the Americas – so,
basically, in America – is around $0.75tn (£0.5tn). In Asia, it’s around
$0.5tn. In Africa, it’s $50bn. And in Europe, it’s just $25bn.”
In Europe, we have wealth redistribution. A few companies with so much
concentrated financial power is not healthy.
~~~
adventured
Europe has far more stagnant wealth than America does in fact.
Europe's dynasties do not tend to give away their wealth, instead they pass it
down through families for generations. Most of Europe's largest companies and
fortunes are controlled through family dynasties. American billionaires always
dominate the list of most philanthropic.[1] It's also why Europe sees such a
low rate of turn-over among their billionaires, and why such a high proportion
of their billionaires are derived inherited wealth. [2]
[1]
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2013/11/18/the-50-ph...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2013/11/18/the-50-philanthropists-
who-have-given-away-the-most-money/)
[2] [http://i.imgur.com/cvTR3q1.png](http://i.imgur.com/cvTR3q1.png)
~~~
maxerickson
Is an operating business well described as stagnant wealth?
~~~
adventured
I think so, if vast wealth passes down through generations and occupies such a
large portion of the ultra rich. Stagnant in this regard refers to wealth that
is inherited.
How about if Europe's entrenched old money prevents new money from arising,
and is part of the problem? Money comes with obvious vast influence on
politics. What if that old money acts to protect itself at the expense of
economic dynamism and new wealth creation? I think it's a reasonable
conclusion that that does in fact occur. Is bunched up old money inherently
more conservative? I'd argue yes.
The parent comment implies that wealth is more redistributed in Europe. That
is plainly not true, given the extreme inheritance levels of their
billionaires and lower rates of philanthropy.
The wealth is also not inherently bound to the operations. You can give away
your billions without sinking a business. Berkshire Hathaway isn't going to
collapse when Buffett dies or gives his remaining wealth away (Burlington
Northern railroad isn't going to tip over when he gives away his last shares,
just as BMW wouldn't if the Quandt family ended their dynasty, ditto Walmart
with the second generation of Walton heirs). Just as Microsoft isn't
collapsing as Gates exits his formerly huge percentage share of ownership (he
has gone from ~60% ownership to now ~3% since the IPO, obviously it has not
seriously harmed Microsoft). There is a large, important question at the
center of this that can be best illustrated by a rhetorical: is Howard Buffett
(Warren's oldest son) the best qualified to run Berkshire Hathaway? What are
the odds the Quandt family is best suited to steer BMW for the next hundred
years? Or that Inditex should be run by the Ortega family forever, or that the
Slim family should control such a large swath of telecom in Mexico for the
next century? I think that kind of economic dominance by families is more
often detrimental (loss of dynamism, too much wealth acquired without earning
it) than beneficial, much as a cartel or monopoly ends up being.
~~~
maxerickson
_The wealth is also not inherently bound to the operations._
Yes, obviously not. But that characteristic detracts from the suitability of
"stagnant" as a descriptor.
~~~
adventured
Not if inherited wealth is in fact more stagnate in terms of the results it
produces in an economy, because that wealth is acquired without earning it
(with the heir very likely lacking the early formative experience, knowledge,
talent, or drive required to create it), including if it acts as a large drag
on new wealth and business formation.
The stagnation is derived from people inheriting the wealth who do not possess
the creation ability or skill level of the originator/s. Put in starker terms:
incompetent, low ambition, low skill, low accomplishment heirs that rest on
the wealth. I'd argue that's far more often the outcome than not, and I
believe we have the proof of that in the history of who starts companies, who
creates the most successful companies, and who creates the next tiers of
innovative breakthrough companies - and who does not.
Scrappy entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs do, not the Nth generation
of extreme dynastic wealth like the Quandt or Walton families.
------
x5n1
Europe needs an investment culture similar to the Capitalist American culture.
Without that there is no hope for anyone. There need to be investors and
technical people in one hub that feed off each other, network with each other,
and empower each other.
How many American startups are a result of a pissed off employee working at a
successful company going off and creating the same thing his or her employer
did but better? And this cycle feeding on itself.
Or university students with an idea getting all the financial, technical, and
managerial support necessary to create the next big thing.
You have to understand the process and then try to replicate the process. And
each component of the process is as important as the other. You need the whole
pie. Not a piece for it to succeed.
You can seed this with massive capital expenditure, tens of billions basically
poured into private coffers of Caplists, but the process has to be very
similar for it to actually work.
~~~
kwhitefoot
> How many American startups are a result of a pissed off employee working at
> a successful company going off and creating the same thing his or her
> employer did but better?
Some numbers might make your point more convincing.
~~~
raverbashing
Easily googable and not news
Intel started like this.
See the companies founded by ex-Googlers
------
nabla9
Biggest Internet companies are in advertising or catalog merchant business
that started in late 90's or early 2000's. American Internet startups in these
areas had immediate access to markets of 300 million people.
Homegrown American, Chinese or Japanese Internet company can have hundreds of
millions in revenue before it even starts to think about localization and
adjusting to other countries, cultures, languages, payment system and
advertising biz.
Network effect rules in the Internet business and US based business had huge
upper leg in this regard in early 2000s.
~~~
hengheng
Germany has 80 million people, the German-speaking market is 100 million
people. The smaller countries are mostly used to everything being in English
(Slovenia, Finland), so they don't care. France is 50 million people as well.
If your business idea doesn't bootstrap with that market size, it won't work
with a factor 6 more either.
Also recently, international payment can be considered a solved problem with
iban/bic, PayPal and credit cards.
Which means you can get by just as well with English, French or German only,
and some point down the line you add i18n for one or two other languages
first, and then whatever there might be a demand for.
On the other side of the coin, next-day national shipping for 3,50€ to 5€ is
the norm around here. Go try that in NA.
~~~
briandear
Regarding the shipping price differential.. That shipping might be cheap, but
the 20% VAT and the higher cost of taxes and social charges quickly destroy
that competitive advantage. So that 5€ shipping really costs much much more
than NA when the much higher costs of doing business are factored in.
------
jacquesm
Well, a European Google would still have to abide by the patent minefield that
search has become so it has very little chance of getting off the ground
without a breakthrough in search engine technology outside of Google or
Microsoft. Good luck with that, the head start is tremendous. And the likely
outcome of such a thing happening would be an acquisition by... Google or
Microsoft.
~~~
frik
Wrong, "Software patents" aren't recognized in most parts of Europe.
~~~
rwmj
.. unless they also wanted to do business in the US.
------
randomsearch
I think it's a fairly straightforward cultural difference. Americans take more
risks and are more ambitious. This is true of both entrepreneurs and VC,
although I'd say VC is the heart of the problem. Money goes into safer
investments in Europe.
------
dmoo
Just a question, how many people actually benefit from a Google being in their
particular country?
~~~
IkmoIkmo
I tried to cover this line of reasoning a bit in an other post in this thread.
No deep analysis from me, but very briefly looking at ROI of Google's
shareholders one can see it flows to investors worldwide, not the US in
particular.
Taxes then... very minimal, and are mostly redirected through a Dutch-Irish
tax scheme anyway, EU probably profits more than the US.
Employment, 50k or so, that's significant for sure. But 40% is outside the US,
and compare it say to Walmart which employs literally a couple million, and
you'll find tech companies in general don't make large dents in employment
figures.
As for actual services, there's barely any difference. A European benefits
virtually the same from Google's products and services, albeit sometimes say
the launch of the latest Nexus happens two weeks later in small European
countries like the Netherlands.
Mostly I'd say the benefits are related to generating and disseminating your
own culture, more political/legal influence in worldwide companies, drawing
talent to your country etc. These benefits are significant, but I don't think
Europe has anything to be alarmed about. Tech here is great, lots of solid
companies with billion dollar valuations, solid infrastructure, but fewer
unicorns. And that's no surprise with the EU being, deep down, a fragmented
market where the biggest first-language market is German which stands at 18%
of the EU population. It's not easy to roll out companies that grow to
hundreds of millions of people in Europe, if the biggest language that people
speak as a first language is only spoken by 18% of the union. European talent
with great ideas that aim very large tend to go English first, and then move
to the US at the earliest signs of solid traction. Everyone else stays, and
that's how you get lots of solid companies like Supercell with a few billion
dollars valuation that are relatively small compared to a Facebook. That's not
a bad thing.
~~~
icebraining
I think the language issues are overplayed; translating the software is not
expensive, and it's usually not very difficult to hire someone who can read
and write in English, German and/or French.
We are a <10 person startup, and yet we have customers that speak Portuguese,
Spanish, French and English.
~~~
Scarblac
It's mostly cultural. In the Netherlands, the majority of online payments are
done during a system called "iDeal". A few hours' drive away, and that system
is never heard of.
Different laws. Of course the EU exists to combat exactly that problem, but
they haven't succeeded yet.
The problem your company tries to solve may not even be relevant in half the
markets.
------
CM30
Also, I'd say the university system may have something to do with it. US unis
work more like UK Sixth Form Colleges, where students study a variety of
subjects and encounter people with different interests (whereas a UK
university education is about one subject with a much smaller group of peers).
As a result, the US system is arguably a lot better suited to networking and
meeting people with an interest in starting a business.
How many tech company founders met at university? Now, how many studied the
exact same things? I'd say a lot less of them.
~~~
icebraining
_How many tech company founders met at university? Now, how many studied the
exact same things?_
Well, a short search returns:
Google: two PhDs studying the same thing.
Apple: Jobs and Woz met when the former was in High School; they never
attended the same college.
Yahoo: two EE graduate students.
Microsoft: childhood friends, didn't attend the same college.
Oracle: didn't attend the same college, met when working for the same company.
Red Hat: didn't attend the same college.
Salesforce: met while working at Oracle.
At least for the software behemoths, it seems it's not that important to have
mixed colleges.
------
ThePhysicist
Why are people looking for a second Google in Europe?
They should instead look in China, where there already is not only a second
Google but also a second Facebook, Amazon, WhatsApp, Stripe, ...
So, why did the Chinese succeed where Europe failed? Here are my thoughts:
* Regulation: With its strict censorship and great firewall, the Chinese government effectively shut out most American IT companies from their market, giving local companies enough time to grow.
* Culture: Chinese culture is much more different from American than European culture is, hence it is also much more difficult to adapt an American IT service to the Chinese market than to the European.
* Market size: With 1.3 billion people, 900 million of which speak Mandarin the market size for any IT service is enormous, even taking into account that many people still do not have reliable Internet access or a lot of money to buy services / products online. Likewise, the market growth is much higher than in the US or Europe.
Personally I believe that the main competition for American IT companies will
not come from Europe but from China. Right now, most Chinese IT startups only
follow in the roots of their successful American idols, but with so many well-
educated young entrepreneurs this should change soon, and I predict that we
will see more and more disruptive Internet startups "made in China" very soon.
~~~
pille
> Why are people looking for a second Google in Europe?
Because they are in Europe, not China. It's a British article.
~~~
ThePhysicist
I just think that by looking at China you can better understand the reasons
why there is no European Google.
------
Scarblac
Does booking.com count? Founded in Europe in 1996, still entirely located in
Europe, over $1 billion _yearly profit_, but acquired by an American company
in 2005.
------
jokoon
Europe is less capitalistic, is less versed into risk, and is clearly not
entrusting so much money to an IT company like google.
It's hard explaining to people what exactly google does for so much money.
Europe is more "feet on the ground" when it comes to business in general. What
does google sells by the way ? Ads, android (which is mostly open), internet
services... it's hard to really tell. In europe, technologies and research
will often rather belong to the public sector than the private sector.
The silicon valley is a typically american thing because US business laws and
the culture allow it. In europe it just won't. The only way you can really
thrive as a programmer in europe, is by doing open source, and Torvalds is a
good example of that, so by a loose definition it's only accessible to people
who spent a lot of time in universities. There are no other way you are going
to do business and getting money typing code in europe. It just won't happen.
~~~
kiiski
I don't think you have to be academic to be successful in open source. One
example of non-university developed financially successful open source would
be MySQL. I'm sure there are others from other parts of Europe that I'm not
familiar with.
~~~
jokoon
Well you need a way to bring food on the table.
I too could make the most amazing software if I could by open sourcing it.
Without resources nor the organization, nothing will happen.
------
frik
"Quaero was announced by Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder during the
French-German ministerial conference in April 2005. [...] Quaero was often
described as a European competitor to Google [...]
The main source of disagreement was the format of the search engine, with
German engineers favoring a text-based search engine and the French engineers
favoring a multimedia search engine. Many German engineers also balked at what
they thought was becoming too much of an anti-Google project, rather than a
project driven by its own ideals."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero)
[https://www.exalead.com/search/](https://www.exalead.com/search/)
The project failed to deliver. Though the Exalead web search engine survived
and got bought by Dassault Systems (CATIA 3D CAD). Next time they should open
source the public funded projects...
------
lumberjack
Not sure how they are related but Qwant is the new Google rival. It's also
partly funded by the French government:
[https://www.qwant.com/](https://www.qwant.com/)
~~~
adventured
France has been trying for nearly a decade to build a search engine that
matters:
[http://www.dw.com/en/eu-allows-france-to-bankroll-google-
riv...](http://www.dw.com/en/eu-allows-france-to-bankroll-google-
rival/a-3186854)
------
jkaljundi
One of the big issues in Europe is almost non-existent local M&A (and to
lesser extent single pan-European shared IPO) market. As long as that is
purely focused on US e.g. the exits at all stages (from tiny few million
acquihires to hundreds of millions acquisitions) are mostly based in America,
a healthy tech market will not emerge in Europe.
------
IkmoIkmo
One can wonder how valuable these companies really are. Yes, they're valuable
to investors, but the investors of Facebook are not American, they're
completely international. The return on investment on capital investment flows
to investors worldwide, not just US investors because it's a US company.
So what else then... Taxes, here tech companies are notorious. Stories of FB
paying a few thousand in total taxes in the UK, Apple leaving its cash abroad
to avoid taxation, Google channeling its revenues through a royalty-scheme
between Ireland and the Netherlands that goes virtually untaxed (Dutch
Sandwich) etc... tax wise these companies contribute little to the place of
their main business (e.g. the US for the above three companies).
Then, employment? Here too, tech companies are known for providing relatively
little employment compared to the size of the business, versus other
industries. To take an extreme example, walmart (a company which pulls the
vast majority of its revenues from the US alone) has up til recently had more
store locations, than FB has employees. FB doesn't even have 12k employees,
Walmart has literally a couple million. The article mentions Whatsapp as an
example, it just had 55 employees when it was sold for almost $20b Compare
that with say Vente Privee, a French online retailer that has 2500 employees
and close to $2b in revenue and a slightly higher valuation, that nobody talks
about. Which would you rather have in your country, creating jobs? You may
still (likely) say Whatsapp, but it wouldn't be an obvious answer. Instagram
is similar, 18 employees, who cares whether they're in the US or not? It's a
meaningless figure for employment alone. And again, ownership wise the billion
dollar valued company is in the hands of international investors, and tax wise
it's likely little to nothing.
So what's the contribution of these US companies to the US then? What is
Europe really missing? It profits from all the international innovations (I
happily use Google's services), while it taxes the above companies for doing
business in the EU.
If tech was shitty in Europe, sure, all of this would be alarming. But we have
great research (e.g. hadron collider), IT/ICT infrastructure is very solid, if
I look at my own country we have digitised and modernised everything from
insurance to banking to tax filings, at the supermarket I pay via NFC, as I do
in a bus, metro, train or tram. I don't live in some outdated world without
technology.
There are very obvious counterarguments to make... in particular political and
cultural control and influence that large companies like Google have and the
power that wields, that Europe thereby doesn't have, can be or become an
issue. Reinventing our own industries the next few decades without inspiring
tech companies, is trickier. Seeing talent trained at great European
universities with great startup ideas fly to the US for various reasons, is an
issue. I appreciate all of that, and yet I feel the importance of companies
like FB's contributions to the US as opposed to the rest of the world, is
overstated, and that we're not missing out all that much by not having a
European FB, for example.
At the end of the day there are 3 superlarge markets, the US, Europe and
China. Then a number of very large ones like India or Japan. But of those
first three, the EU is merely a partial economic, political and legal union,
with a wide range of languages, laws, cultures and systems. While the US and
China certainly have internal diversity, it's nothing like the EU. It's why we
have tons of companies with a few billion dollar valuations, that capture a
substantial portion of the EU but far from all of it. The biggest first
language market in the EU is German, and it stands at 18% of the EU as a first
language, see what I mean? In the US or China, you can pretty much roll out
tech products nationally in many cases, not without any friction, but in a way
that's much more natural than in the EU. That doesn't mean tech sucks here,
that we have little value, no jobs or shitty digital/online services, it's
just fine here (find me digital/online services that the US has that we simply
don't have access to, that's missing in EU markets completely), but we have
fewer ultralarge unicorns like Google or Facebook, and I'm not all that
convinced that this is as big a problem as it's made out to be.
------
mark_l_watson
I like the point made about the hypocracy of Google saying that European
companies don't have the right to affect what people in other countries can
see in search results, but, at the same time, filter results based on the
special interests of US copyright laws.
------
danmaz74
I think one thing the EU could really do to help startups here would be to
offer almost free services and/or grants to localize their websites/apps into
all the EU languages much more quickly and less expensively.
~~~
dogma1138
That's not the issue, the overall mentality, strict employment laws, and
stricter access to funding is what slowing EU startups down.
Startups do not need free services that ridiculous, they need an environment
which will allow them to take risks and not to have to cut trough a mile of
red tape to hire and employees.
~~~
danmaz74
It's not "the" issue. It is AN issue, and one where they could actually do
something.
~~~
dogma1138
Startups already get plenty of free stuff, that's not whats holding them back
so it won't do anything.
------
sqldba
LOL. How about Australia? The lucky country indeed...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Can you beat a quantum computer? - efangs
https://mindi.io
======
iliazin
Pretty cool, this took me awhile to solve.
~~~
akosenko
took me 10 seconds, lol
------
mskoenz
I can :D but larger instances might be tricky...
------
winklerg
more levels please
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dear Apple: Please use these ideas to modernize the Mac - jseliger
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/06/back-to-the-mac-modernizing-apples-aging-computer-lineup/
======
PhantomGremlin
The main problem is the way Apple is organized. It's what people have called a
“unitary organizational form”.[1]
Which means there isn't a group whose full time job it is to concern
themselves with the Mac Pro, or concern themselves with the Macbook Pro, etc.
When it's not _someone 's_ job to worry about a product, then it becomes
_everybody 's_ job, which in reality means it's _nobody 's_ job. Unless and
until top management deigns to allow people to work on that specific product.
This seems totally fucked up to me, but Apple has achieved $227 billion in
yearly revenue, so it's "working" for them. To the aggravation of many outside
observers.
[1] [https://stratechery.com/2016/apples-organizational-
crossroad...](https://stratechery.com/2016/apples-organizational-crossroads/)
------
m_mueller
Mac Pros are hopeless I think. GPUs need to be switchable in a device geared
for this market, and it absolutely needs to support Nvidia hardware.
------
kristianp
MacBook Air
LAST REFRESH:March 2015
LAST REDESIGN:October 2010
I have been wondering about the Air, the 13 inch feels so clunky compared to
many newer 13-inch ultrabooks that were inspired by it. Is Apple going to
abandon the 13 inch entry level unit? Surely not.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
For Workers, Less Flexible Companies - 001sky
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/20/business/for-workers-less-flexible-companies.html?hp
======
patio11
Anecdotally: while the NYT suggests that two employees who are
indistinguishable from one another make it easier to grant them flexible
hours, I think that tactically, you're much, much more likely to get flexible
hours (along with "anything else you want") if _nobody_ substitutes for what
you do.
This is also likely underlying the observation "a lot of firms quietly offer
better-than-standard flexibility to a small section of their employees." Of
course they do, for exactly the same reason that they quietly offer better-
than-standard salaries. Somebody with something they wanted said "The price of
us working together is X, Y, Z, and I work from home 2 days a week." and the
firm said "Cool, we can live with that."
~~~
yummyfajitas
If you like academic papers, there is a great one by Claudia Goldin. Her topic
of interest is gender pay gaps (boring), but it goes into detail on pay
nonlinearities which is quite interesting. Basically, she goes into a lot of
literature and does some work herself showing that for many jobs, work output
is a nonlinear (e.g. y=x^2) function of hours worked.
A nonlinear pay function is generally related directly to nonlinear work
output. Her working example is pharmacists - you can easily swap two half-time
pharmacists for 1 full time one or vice versa.
On the other hand, consider your top trader - his job is keeping the entire
strategy in his head (roughly a 30 hour/week job) and being around when the
market is open (another 35 hours/week). You can't replace him with 2 30
hour/week traders, each of whom keeps half the strategy in their head and are
available half the time.
[http://www.aeaweb.org/aea/2014conference/program/retrieve.ph...](http://www.aeaweb.org/aea/2014conference/program/retrieve.php?pdfid=1103)
Flexible hours will, of course, be more prevalent in jobs and industries where
Output(hours) is a linear function.
(Gender pay gaps are not intrinsically boring, but the inherent "turn of your
mind because politics" makes it far less interesting.)
~~~
protonfish
I would assume "nonlinear" output means that their productivity increases the
more hours they spend. Any job requires ramp-up time, some more than others,
but it does not mean the output in non-linear. All your example illustrates is
some jobs (like software development) can't be brute-forced by hiring more
people irrespective of skill - two mediocre programmers are not a replacement
for one good one.
~~~
elemeno
It means that the person's output is not simply a multiple of the number of
hours that they work, but that for each unit of time they work their output
increases compared to the previous unit.
For example:
Linear
output = time * k
Non-Linear
output = time ^ k
In practice it means that for jobs that are linear, it doesn't matter how many
hours any individual works as long as the total hours worked remains the same
- assuming that they're all of the same skill level. Doctors, for example, are
mostly shift workers so the output of one doctor working for 12hrs is pretty
much the same as two doctors working six hours each.
For a job that has non-linear output, two people of the same skill who each
work six hours, will be less productive than one person of the that skill
working twelve hours. Easy enough to see:
12 ^ 1.5 = 41.6
2 * 6 ^ 1.5 = 29.4
In that case, splitting the job between two people results in an output that's
70% of the output of that job being done by one person.
Basically, it's saying that many workers are not fungible assets, no matter
that they share the same level of skill.
~~~
pixelcort
Another thing to consider (for software engineers at least) is hours per day,
vs days per week.
It can take a few hours to ramp up productivity and get in the zone. On the
other hand, in a well organized team if a few people take a day or two off,
not much would be lost.
------
themodelplumber
It's painful to see how inflexible some of my clients are with their
employees. Those that do claim to offer flexible work are clearly holding back
in other areas, such as fair pay (for women especially, but everybody in
general) and benefits. The turnover rates at these places are just as bad as
you'd imagine--they have an amazingly hard time retaining talent. What's left
is a core group of cowering individuals who seem to become love-it-or-leave-it
evangelists.
Having worked for a similar business before leaving to start on my own, it
still hurts to think about all the people there who were medicating their work
issues, and the speech disorder I started to develop from the unnecessarily
punitive environment. A doctor friend told me he was really proud that I quit
that job from a health POV. The speech disorder went away almost immediately
after I gave notice.
This was a company of 35 employees that was making profits of around 40
million a year, IIRC.
~~~
brandon272
What kind of speech disorder was it, if you don't mind my asking?
~~~
toomuchtodo
My guess would be a stutter; I have seen this in high-pressure work
environments.
------
yaddayadda
My current company allowed me to set my own hours and location when I was
contracting for them. When I went full time, there was a verbal understanding
that I would be onsite _more_ and work _more_ regular hours, but that I would
still have significant flexibility. In reality, if I come into the office at
9:01 the program manager throws a fit. And if there's a big winter storm and I
could either (a) spend 3 hours commuting each way for 2-3 hours at the actual
office or (b) doing 8-9 hours of actual work from home, he still insists I
come into the office. So yep, the company says it's flexible, but not so much
in reality.
~~~
noonespecial
The "program manager" my not understand quite how your deal was worked out and
just be an old fashioned butts-in-the-seats manager who still believes that
his job is simply to make people come in.
His superiors might be very upset if he ends up prompting you to leave. They
may have no clue this is going on. Talk to the original people and tell them
it's not working out.
~~~
yaddayadda
Ahh, if only it were so simple.
The program manager wasn't initially aware of the arrangement. When I
mentioned it to him, he basically threw a professional fit along the lines of
"To get work done I need you here when everyone else is here." He'll even
readily admit that I got plenty of work done while contracting and setting my
own hours and location - enough that he and the company wanted me salaried -
"but it's not the same now". The execs that I negotiated with don't have much
backbone and won't stand up to him or our owner. They are well aware of the
situation, and when I go through them and leave the PM out of scheduling,
they're always okay with whatever I say I'm going to do (I don't even bother
asking, I just tell them); after the fact, he'll huff and puff for a while,
but he never actually says anything explicitly. Unfortunately, he and I work
very closely together, so I don't often have the opportunity to go through the
execs.
The night before a particularly harsh snowstorm, I even had a conversation
with him about working from home the next day. We talked about what I could do
from home, I literally showed him the printouts of the background material
(and had digital copies on our office server and on my laptop), and he said he
was okay with it. When I wasn't at the office shortly after 9:00am the next
morning he started calling me. Even though I had already been working for
close to an hour and sent him updated files showing what I had already
completed, he wanted me to drive in.
To add to the frustration, we frequently have to travel for work. Of course,
no one, including the PM has a problem with work done remotely in those
situations.
~~~
noonespecial
I don't know your situation, but the good thing about spineless uppers is that
they are often as unwilling to work _against_ you as they are _for_ you. This
PM is not actually this irrational. He behaves this way because hes become
accustom to getting away with it. I don't know how much you "need" the job,
but I'd try just telling him how its going to be and then sticking with it.
Unless he has direct firing authority (that he actually has the political
capital to use), he'll likely complain to upper management and get the same
disinterested shrug you received. "He seems like a good employee, I'm sure you
can work it out".
Caveat emptor of course. I have a sample size of 2 in my personal life and its
worked for me once (but wonderfully so). The other time, it got me out of a
bad situation that I should have been working harder to leave anyway (with
good references even).
~~~
yaddayadda
I've debated doing just that, but in the end the environment and expectations
have become completely toxic, so it's more important for me to find another
job. Unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of constraints, so
I'm putting my energy into my own start-up.
------
VLM
My flex time experience going from 5 8s to 4 10s:
No rush hour means daily time away from home went from 8 + 1 lunch + 2 times
(1) commute = 11 hours to 10 + 1 lunch + 2 times (.33) commute = 11 hours 40
minutes. So I'm trading 40 minutes per working day away from home, for a 3 day
weekend every week...
Also I'm sure you won't be surprised that only driving to work 4 times instead
of 5, saves me nearly 20% of my commute expense, which does add up over time.
That's 40 miles a week, which is about 1.3 gallons of gas or the IRS thinks
its worth $22.40 per week or well over a thousand bucks a year posttax lets
call it "two grand per year" pretax.
I work at home on occasion due to winter weather or illness or whatever
reason, and that's pretty nice. I would work at home much more other than
local interdepartmental jealousy type issues that prevent it. Organizationally
I already work with people all over the country and once you're 500 miles from
your "closest" coworker (by some metric of closeness, I guess) then no one
cares what office you're in or if you're at home. Obviously this doesn't work
at one site open plan startups, but its OK for a megacorp size employer.
------
hndl
I'm going to begin working remotely soon (I joined early and have worked with
the CEO and other core folks before, so it wasn't that hard). Do HNers have
any advice (financial, work-life balance etc)? I'm going to be earning in the
US while I live in Antwerp, Belgium.
~~~
patio11
I'd make a conscious effort to overcommunicate. Our weird little monkey brains
don't handle the case "There exists another monkey in another time zone. He's
part of the tribe! I would sure like to pick his nits!" all that well. You're
going to miss out on a lot of the spontaneous happenings around the office
which both create/solidify social bonds and _also_ lubricate the important,
consequential decisions for your work.
It helps to have companies which are used to working with remote people, since
they evolve e.g. email / Hipchat work cultures rather than "I think I'll just
walk down to Bob's desk and ask him about that" cultures. If you're not in one
of those, push for the cultural changes you'll need, while recognizing that
that will be tough.
I also had the time zone issue working against me, like you will. I'd sign
into Hipchat (or whatever it was) when I started my "work day", say "Here's
the plan for today", work my day, and then verbally sign off in the evening.
This meant that every morning when folks got to work they'd see "Oh yeah,
that's right, Patrick is indeed working with us, even though I'm not seeing
the artifacts of that work in front of me."
A company I worked at had an institution of telling everyone in the company
every Friday "Here was the plan for the week . Here's what I actually did.
Here's what I'm doing next week." That's a great institution for all knowledge
work, but it's particularly important if you're essentially a black box. I
tended to overcommunicate in those -- e.g. not "I prototyped the tour." but
rather "The focus of this week was implementing the tour. I spent most of
Monday and Tuesday looking at Javascript frameworks. See this page on the Wiki
for my thoughts. I eventually decided on $CLIENT_SENSITIVE_INFO_ELIDED_HERE
and started whiteboarding the actual tour on Wednesday. Thursday I had a
meeting with Bob about actually deploying it. Current status: prototype is
working in the testing environment, working on tightening up edge cases,
anticipate shipping to production next Friday as planned."
Minor note about working from home: I seem to be much more productive when I
successfully sustain something approaching a normal schedule. I generally do
my best work when I can chunk the day up. Pre-breakfast is family time, dish
hitting sink through lunch is email time, context change to a cafe, cafe time
is for writing, context change back to home, home time before dinner is
programming time, "Honey dinner's ready" means the day is over unless there is
something on my calendar for the midnight shift.
~~~
VLM
"I tended to overcommunicate in those"
I found a clipboard, pen, and paper to be the simplest, easiest to use, and
highest productivity system for this. Split the paper up by day and make sure
to fill the fraction of a page each day, that's about right. Work on it
through the day and its no big deal.
There is some politics involved, you don't want to explain later, perhaps at
review time, why "contemplated use of XYZ technology" was not implemented.
Never write down anything except what you actually completed. Your examples
are good. If you don't want to use AngularJS never refer to it by name unless
you can't avoid it.
~~~
dennisgorelik
"Never write down anything except what you actually completed."
I disagree.
Documenting and sharing failures is important too. It's useful to look back
and analyze sources of mistakes, misjudgments and inefficiencies.
It's also important to know for the manager to know that implementing
{successfulTask} was actually fast, so it would be low cost to implement it
next time.
~~~
VLM
May be a language impedance mismatch rather than actual disagreement.
Everyone on both sides of review time knows that "considered the use of
AngularJS" only minimally requires 10 seconds or so. So writing that down
doesn't mean much. However, a completion like "implemented a helloworld class
AngularJS demonstration, and determined for X,Y,Z reasons it would be
inappropriate for project Q" would be totally valid.
There are also corporate culture issues, nobody here gets a bonus for stuff
that doesn't work, so it might be useful to separately document that data,
but...
Another corporate culture issue relates to coddling, some employers are like
the mother duck with the ducklings following her and others are like the
building trades. Some places promote useful career advice and training so
discussing failures might lead to training, experiments, etc. On the other
hand some places just don't care, much as I really don't care if my plumber
doesn't like a certain brand of pipe wrench.
~~~
dennisgorelik
When stated that way -- I agree:
1) State your "unsuccessful" tasks as completed accomplishments ("learned
XYZ").
2) Do not include "learned that we should not use XYZ" into your "give me my
bonus" pitch.
------
sitkack
I think successful companies will start to differentiate themselves to workers
via flexibility first working arrangements. Productivity measured by
visibility will fade into the background as we use systems that retain more of
our behavior data. We will in the next five years have a holistic view of how
organizations function via transparent ambient metrics, like measuring stress
level from vocal markers in a voice chat. That is one thing about pervasive
data collection and automatic processing, it won't be subjective and it can't
be gamed.
I know I have been on unproductive teams and had wonderful, enriching
experiences on others. It would be nice if the digital ai manager could
automatically determine who works best together and build those schedules.
Team management will I think, fade into the software.
Knowledge organizations that do not embrace a future of lower hours and more
flexibility will be relegated to sections of the industry that turn out clones
of clones (Zynga, PSDtoWeb, turn key CRUD web apps, etc).
Ernest and Young seems to get it.
------
eshvk
I have worked at two companies where people working remote is not an
exception. Both companies started off with a strong tradition of distributed
teams where it makes sense to build a culture that is centered around the fact
that some co-workers will be in different time zones and also in a different
physical location. Everywhere else, remote/WFH sort of works. But mostly
doesn't.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
CPU.fail - razer6
https://cpu.fail/
======
dang
Submissions of lists, like this home page, lead to lowest-common-denominator
discussions. People focus on what the list items have in common and its
gravity prevents specific items from gaining liftoff. Specific discussions
tend to go deeper than generic ones, so we're going to unmerge these threads
and have a separate one for each major disclosure:
Zombieload:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19911341](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19911341)
MDS:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19911277](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19911277)
This will take several minutes, so if you see weird incongruities or
disappearances, hold your fire.
Edit: Ok, I've done as much of this as I'm going to do. If you notice anything
wrong, can you let us know at [email protected] so we can fix it?
------
JdeBP
This is the overview page. It comes alongside:
* [https://zombieloadattack.com/](https://zombieloadattack.com/) , on Hacker News as [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19911341](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19911341) (The technical paper is hidden inside a collapsed part of the page and is at [https://www.cyberus-technology.de/posts/2019-05-14-zombieloa...](https://www.cyberus-technology.de/posts/2019-05-14-zombieload.html) .)
* [https://mdsattacks.com/](https://mdsattacks.com/) , on Hacker News at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19911277](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19911277)
* Google's announcement about ChromeOS at [https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/chromium-os/mds-...](https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/chromium-os/mds-on-chromeos) , on Hacker News at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19911406](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19911406)
( Several Hacker News discussions have since been merged here. And were then
re-split. )
------
pfortuny
I thught Theo deRaadt was exaggerating when he said that Intel does not know
how to build a CPU.
~~~
lawnchair_larry
He was, obviously.
~~~
willtim
Intel certainly does not know how to build a _secure_ CPU.
------
dsp1234
The blog post is buried a bit deep, but has the actual technical information
on the topic
[https://www.cyberus-
technology.de/posts/2019-05-14-zombieloa...](https://www.cyberus-
technology.de/posts/2019-05-14-zombieload.html)
~~~
JdeBP
The overview page, [https://cpu.fail/](https://cpu.fail/) , is on Hacker News
as
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19911715](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19911715)
.
( This comment was merged from a duplicate discussion. )
------
josh2600
The worst thing about heartbleed is that it introduced marketing into
vulnerability disclosures :(.
~~~
josu
How is that a bad thing?
~~~
icelancer
It isn't. Some people just think "marketing" is the root of all evil, when
done right, it's actually just effective communication.
------
asaph
I never knew about the .fail TLD.
------
woliveirajr
> Computer makers Apple and Microsoft and browser makers Google and Mozilla
> are releasing patches today.
Computer makers? Wouldn't that be OS makers? They are patching their OS to
prevent leaking...
~~~
philsnow
apple makes macs / macbooks etc, microsoft makes surfaces / surface pros...
~~~
woliveirajr
Yes, but I couldn't find anywhere if Apple and Microsoft are patching this as
a "hardware" fix for specific products.
Almost like saying that the "software maker" John Deere will fix their latest-
model Haverster.
------
sirmc
Also see [https://mdsattacks.com](https://mdsattacks.com) for the RIDL and
Fallout landing page
------
craftoman
Well designed, minimal and useful. There should be an email alert subscription
for every upcoming exploits.
------
pkulak
Is it time to just write an X86 API on top of GPUs and get rid of CPUs? Seems
like the shortcuts we've been taking to get sequential speed are all blowing
up in our faces, and fixes aren't possible without huge performance
regressions.
~~~
jerf
"Is it time to just write an X86 API on top of GPUs and get rid of CPUs?"
How many days are you willing to wait for your computer to boot?
GPUs aren't "better" that CPUs, they're _different_. Between the two, CPUs
probably make better GPUs than GPUs make CPUs, but it's a tough call; neither
of them are very good at the other!
~~~
silversconfused
We've been building personal computers around GPUs for a long time now. The
CPU based computer was kind of an oddball IBM "thing". Old MOS (nintendo,
commodore) and ARM for example seem to have the CPU serve the GPU in most
configurations I've seen.
~~~
jerf
I didn't say it would be impossible in some abstract sense. Goodness knows
even a single execution unit of a modern GPU is more powerful than my first
IBM computer, if you just hook it to the right things. I asked how many days
you'd be willing for your computer to boot, by which I mean something like
your current workstation.
Huge, huge swathes of your normal boot process would be trying to run on a
single GPU execution unit, since there would be no parallellization available,
and your GPU is _terrible_ at out-of-order dispatch (i.e., basically can't do
it last I knew), so all the optimization we've spent the last 50 years putting
into our CPUs won't be firing. You'd basically be trying to run your computer
on something that would be in the range of 100MHz down to for all I know
single-digit MHz-equivalent of your current Intel or AMD CPU (after all the
penalties around not using any prediction, not having the proper caches,
thrashing like hell in your GPU's memory caches, and all the other effects...
I'm not even sure I'm willing to promise you'll never hit code with KHz-
equivalent performance; you might just get that NES performance(!)).
Your modern GPU-based computer trying to boot Windows or Linux is gonna
_craaaaaaawwwwwwllllll_. Can it do? With the right work, yeah, probably, but
you're not going to enjoy it, or be willing to use it. CPUs are terrible GPUs,
but GPUs are _terrible_ CPUs.
How well a computer could run if it was optimized for the GPU is an open
question, but I guarantee you that if in some bizarre parallel universe
everything was running on GPU-like hardware, but in 2010 suddenly people
figured out CPUs and next year the Core Duos were available, people would be
flipping out over how awesomely they perform and would be rushing to rewrite
huge swathes of code in these new-fangled "in-order execution units".
~~~
silversconfused
Last year I got a video of my 75MHz pentium booting windows faster than a web
app could load on my macbook pro (1tb ssd, 16GB ram, i7). General performance
in 2019 is already horrible. Rethinking everything from the ground up would be
quite pleasant imho.
~~~
jonhendry18
Which Windows?
~~~
silversconfused
98se.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Now for Chrome - jaseemabid
http://www.google.com/landing/now/#
======
jtokoph
I've had to disable Google Now in Chrome on my machines.
I check the Chicago weather where my parents live, once. Now I get constant
notifications about the current weather in Chicago.
I looked up a sporting event score for a friend and now Google thinks I need
to know the status of every game for a team I don't follow.
I couldn't find any way to tell Now that I didn't want those specific
notifications and the only way to disable it was to turn it off completely via
chrome://flags
~~~
raldi
There's supposed to be a little menu you can bring up on any card where you
can tweak the settings. You didn't get one?
(Note: I'm not trying to blame the user here -- if the menu isn't
discoverable, that's Google's problem to fix.)
~~~
psbp
It's the standard hamburger style menu found across android. Maybe it would be
difficult if it wasn't in every Google android app.
------
jonemo
Is Google Now a useful utility for others? I recently activated it when I
purchased a new phone and am having a hard time understanding how to use it.
It's showing estimates for how long it will take me to get home or to work but
they are always based on locations where I was a while ago and often outright
ridiculous, e.g. 2 hours 30 mins to go from Alcatraz to my home, by bicycle?
The other "cards" seem to show up randomly, like the stock quotes that are
always up top when I want to see the weather and hidden when I want to see
stock quotes. How do others make use of Google Now?
edit for clarification: I have set it up to prefer cycling, but Alcatraz is an
island.
~~~
Andrex
Google Now isn't perfect and does require a bit of tweaking. Assuming you're
on Android, I'd try tapping on the three dot icon on cards to make sure
they're set right (for instance, changing it so that Google knows you prefer
driving to bicycling.) Also be sure to try the "wand" icon at the bottom for
overall settings.
To make sure Google Now is up to date you can pull to refresh. For me it's
never more than 20-30 minutes out of date.
~~~
jonemo
Thanks for the hints. Seems like my Google Now works as expected then, but my
lifestyle isn't (yet) supported...
The fact that it recommends I bicycle from Alcatraz is after informing it
(through the icon with the three dots) I usually cycle, so that works right,
sort of. My commute is bicycle+train, which unfortunately is not a combination
of travel modes supported by Google Maps.
------
fved
I always found the whole concept of Google gathering so much data about my
movements, browsing, email etc. creepy.
~~~
chestnut-tree
I'm also uncomfortable with the way Google collects so much user data. I
wouldn't go so far as saying it's creepy though - they don't do anything
sinister or nefarious with your data, but they do have an insatiable appetite
to track and record as much of your online activity as they can.
They can track you across mobile, desktop and tablet devices. They have a
desktop OS (ChromeOS) that potentially tracks _everything_ you do online -
whether you're running apps or browsing the web. You have to sign in to do
anything - even to print to your desktop printer; all print jobs are routed
through their cloud print service. Over the course of a few months or a year,
Google will potentially know more about your online behaviour than you do.
Google's fingerprints reach into every corner of the web - you can't avoid
them even if you're not signed in to a Google account. Google Analytics is
everywhere as are the many Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). In fairness to
Google, they do have an opt-out tool for Google Analytics. And many sites
benefit from using Google's CDNs, although Google obviously benefits too).
What worries me is how easily Google avoids scrutiny on issues of user privacy
and data collection, particuarly from the tech community who give them an easy
ride on such matters.
~~~
danieldk
I am at the point where I am pretty much convinced that it is beneficial for
me to move off Google's services. Evenmore, because the speed of pushing
unwanted products seems to increase rapidly. E.g. even if I have a paid Google
Apps account, I cannot use Hangouts to its fullest without also using Google+,
e.g., I cannot send pictures from my Android phone without Plus (which
apparently creates a conversation-specific Plus album).
Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to find good paid replacements without
sacrificing too much functionality (which is a testament to how good their
products are). For instance:
\- Fastmail: it's fast, has great webmail, but no ActiveSync for mobile
devices. The calendar is still beta and there is no CardDAV syncing yet.
Offers XMPP, but since nobody does federation anymore these days, it's not
that useful anymore. No replacement for Google Docs.
\- Exchange Online/Office 365: provides ActiveSync and EWS works well with
Mail.app. Lync with Skype federation looks like it could be a replacement for
Hangouts. Offers an online version of Office. However, my Android phone does
not seem to work well with their servers, duplicating calendars, etc. Also,
they miss features like sub-addressing, identities where you can relay mails
via another SMTP server. And although they don't do ads, I am not sure how
much they can be trusted.
I am most inclined towards using Fastmail.
Any other ideas/experiences of getting out of the Google infrastructure?
~~~
mitochondrion
Yahoo and Hotmail could be substitutes for Gmail...I guess. Good luck.
Google Search has no reasonable alternatives.
Google Chrome can be replaced with Firefox. Do note that 90% of Mozilla's
revenue comes from Google.
YouTube has no viable alternatives. DailyMotion, Vimeo? Good luck finding what
you searched for.
Google Maps' primary alternative is OpenStreetMap, but only as a repository
for the maps themselves. Implementation like integration into smartphones is
effectively nonexistent.
For Google Reader there's...oh wait.
Google Drive has alternatives, but not price-wise since the recent price drop.
They're now shelling out 1TB of cloud storage for $10/month. Compare to
Dropbox's 100GB.
Android has WinPhone and iOS as alternatives, but WinPhone isn't well-
supported by third-party developers and iOS has almost zero flexibility.
G+ has Facebook as an alternative, but the crown for Most Evil is up for
grabs.
Google Keep has Evernote or Simplenote.
Hangouts has Whatsapp, Skype, or any other chat app. Have fun trying to get
your friends on the same one as you.
Google Docs has Microsoft Office Online, but I haven't used it and I wouldn't
doubt that Microsoft is doing as much data-mining as possible on this
platform.
For Google Wallet, you have Square Wallet, Apple's thing, and I couple of
other services I've never heard of.
Google Voice has no alternatives, and it's about to be integrated into
Hangouts somehow - you've been warned.
And Google Reader has...uh....
Google Calendar...good god. Good luck moving to another service with that one.
Google Translate's competitors aren't even in the same league.
There isn't even another service similar to Google Cloud Print.
And then there are Google Analytics, DoubleClick, AdWords, and whatever other
kinds of super-secret proprietary data-mining magic that they use. Good luck
avoiding those.
------
enscr
With the recent push (shove) of Google+ down everyone's throat, I find myself
avoiding the use of Google services that collect & store too much personal
data about me. I've tried Google Now but couldn't convince myself to stick to
it. The negatives outweigh the benefits. Plus I love a tighter control on how
my phone battery is drained. Google Now doesn't let me do that. I see an
additional 20-30% drop per day with Stock Android & Google Now enabled. So
long.
~~~
cloudwalking
Curious what the negatives to Google Now are (aside from battery life, which
seems to be a theme with Android)?
~~~
enscr
Privacy concerns. They accumulate a lot of personal data for customizing your
experience & providing more contextual information. This problem has been
compounded by Google using subtle trickery to get more out of you.
P.S. Android phones do not have a problem with battery life
------
leke
I might have been into this, but google's new aggressive policy about making
people's lives become 'open' has made me steer clear of such things.
------
santoriv
Kind of reminds me of.....
"I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions.
They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next." -Eric Schmidt
~~~
PavlovsCat
As deluded as it is, even honestly wishing for that betrays a smallness of
character I find astonishing.
You know how in ancient times people who figured out how to predict an eclipse
went on to play big boy with their oh so advanced, magic knowledge, and had
that go to their head? We still live in those times.
------
bgentry
If these things are annoying you to death as they were for me, you can disable
them in Chrome's flags screen:
[http://cl.ly/image/0P393S1m1l17](http://cl.ly/image/0P393S1m1l17)
I had already disabled Chrome's Rich Notifications feature, which hides the
menu bar icon I might have otherwise used to disable Google Now.
------
vxNsr
"Before you start using Google Now on your computer, you’ll need to set it up
on iOS or Android first."
Well that's kinda dumb, what if I don't have either one of those?
~~~
k-mcgrady
It's not all that useful if you don't have iOS or Android. They need a way to
track your location + I think they scan your mail locally on the device
instead of on the server (and they can't do this on desktop).
~~~
vxNsr
Yeah, I'm mostly just complaining about their holy war against WP, I was kinda
looking forward to trying out Google Now for myself, so it was something of a
let down to learn Google still had a personal vendetta against me :P
------
Terretta
If you're going to make Chrome a dependency for an always on technology to
stay in touch with your users, maybe invest some time stopping Chrome from
costing half their battery life.
~~~
cloudwalking
How does chrome battery use compare to other browsers?
~~~
evilduck
Disasterous on a Mac. Compared to using Safari, you can expect to lose one to
two hours of battery life.
------
micro_cam
I was an early fan of now on android but I think i'll be disabling this as it
provides only useless notifications based on items tangentially related to
things i've had a passing interest in and no longer provides up to date
package tracking etc. Lately it has been giving me basketball scores because I
read a machine learning article on predicting sports results despite having no
interest in organized sports.
Additionally since it first came out I've started working from home in a rural
area with decent but low density cell coverage that slows cellular assisted
gps. This seems to convince it that I work at a cell tower giving totally
meaningless travel time results to random hill tops.
I think this is an example of a tool that was only tested by and is really
only useful for people in the young, urban, travel a lot demographic that most
google employees are in. I know that google considers their culture sacred but
they really need to diversify at least their least their test users it if they
want to make products that the population as a whole benefits from.
------
CWIZO
Google Now is broken. I get to work, and there is a "time to home" card, and
vice-versa. It also thinks that I would like to go to work in the middle of
the night on a weekend. It keeps showing me directions to places I've never
been to or never searched for. Or, I arrive somewhere and it immediately shows
me a card for "time to home". Even though I have a calendar entry that has a
location (so it knows I'm where I'm supposed to be) and it knows how long I'm
supposed to be there.
There's also all sort of other idiocies. For instance I only got google now
recently and then I traveled back to my home country for a couple of days. And
what google now did was bombard me (hundreds literally) with cards for
directions to every bloody address I've ever searched for in that country
(months or even years ago). Wtf?
I really appreciate the complexity of a system like now, but as it is it would
be better if they turned it off. It is broken.
~~~
psbp
I've been using it for years and I've either never had these problems or they
haven't been so bad that I would consider it broken. Isn't a time to home card
usually valuable?
~~~
CWIZO
It usually is. But in my case it's not as it shows up when I arrive somewhere.
I mean, if they know I'm at work why would they show me that card immediately
after I get there. It's not like they don't know when I usually go home.
------
pron
I disabled Google Now on my Android phone; it was creeping me out. Government
surveillance is bad, but for some reason Google collecting every bit of
information about my life _and constantly analyzing and using it_ (against
me?) scares me much more than some bits collecting dust in an NSA data
warehouse.
------
ScottWhigham
Another "I had to disable it on my phone" here. I love to watch soccer and,
once Google Now learns your favorite teams, it pushes those scores to you on
your notifications tab by default. "Well, damn - I recorded that game so that
I could watch it this afternoon. Thanks, Google, for ruining that for me."
Yes, I know _now_ that you can disable notifications like that but I didn't
realize it until after the 2nd or 3rd weekend this happened.
------
watson
As far as I know, I've only had Google Now in my Dev Channel Chrome for some
months. Has it really already arrived in the Stable Channel? And in that case,
wouldn't that have required the version numbers of all the channels to be
bumped up (the Dev channel have been v35 since late February)? As far as I
know features don't make it down the channels (Dev -> Beta -> Stable)
individually (e.g. by being "cherry-picked") - they instead stay within the
version where they where first added.
~~~
tijs
I got a notification that they were now offering Now in my Chrome browser
about two weeks ago. I run the stable channel version.
~~~
watson
Apparently they must be rolling this feature out differently than other
features which trickle down the channels. Maybe Google Now have been in the
channels for a while without anybody knowing, just disabled unless some flag
was enabled by either the client or a server. This way they can enable it for
only certain users, circumventing the normal Channel release cycle.
I found this interesting quote in a 2014/02/03 blog post[1] on the Google
Chrome blog:
"Update 3/24/2014: Starting today and rolling out over the next few weeks,
Google Now users in all languages will be able to get these notifications in
all channels of Chrome. To enable this feature, simply sign in to Chrome with
the same Google Account you’re using for Google Now on Android or iOS."
This also suggest that they are using a different release approach than just
relying on the release-channels.
[1] [http://chrome.blogspot.com/2014/02/get-notifications-from-
go...](http://chrome.blogspot.com/2014/02/get-notifications-from-google-now-
in.html)
------
verandaguy
This is a rather poorly-capitalized title. I thought OP meant that Google is,
at present, available for the Chrome browser.
~~~
EpicEng
I thought I was being given a command.
------
taternuts
This thing just started randomly popping up for me the last couple days
without me asking. I've tried to disable it 2-3 times, but like a virus it
just keeps coming back
([http://i.imgur.com/24QTgaU.png](http://i.imgur.com/24QTgaU.png)). Incredibly
annoying
------
mkr-hn
"Before you start using Google Now on your computer, you’ll need to set it up
on iOS or Android first."
So you still need a Google Play or iOS device to get it. I can't set it up on
my Kindle Fire, which does a fine job of running Android applications when
they're made available outside Google Play.
------
NPC82
I do many of these functions with just the usual Google voice commands. It's
not as fancy, but making it into a separate app instead of making the features
more accessible seems silly.
------
Jamie452
For me, I can't get Google now to do anything..
It doesn't seem to have any useful options and no way to show me anything
other than the weather.
How can I make it show me something else?
------
Yuioup
Not working for me. Probably because I'm in Europe.
------
abimaelmartell
"Google now" available for Chrome.
~~~
wingerlang
The "Now" is capitalised though, so it makes sense that it is a part of the
product name.
~~~
gkoberger
The title was changed since it was posted.
~~~
wingerlang
Oh, okay.
------
lsiebert
So is this windows/OSX only then?
------
ananth99
Does it come for Linux Distros too?
~~~
tyleregeto
I had to enable it from chrome://flags for it to work. I'm using Chrome
unstable, it doesn't appear to be in the stable branch on Linux yet.
~~~
ananth99
Ohh,I had too many problems with the unstable distribution. I guess I'll wait
then for the stable build then. Thanks!
------
alexvr
The button should just say "Get now"
------
jds375
Does anyone else just love the page design?
------
jaredmcateer
Ouch sorry was just trying to be helpful
------
sferoze
They did a good job with the website.
------
finalight
i installed google now for android but the desktop still don't have the bell
icon...
~~~
jaredmcateer
Do you have google sync enabled?
------
teemo_cute
Dear Google,
Please don't tell (or at least influence me) on how to live my life. When I
want information I'll ask you, not the other way around.
Regards, Human Being
~~~
lclarkmichalek
You know Google Now is opt in? Because your comment comes across as "Stop
liking things I don't like"
~~~
jkdnupp
Just like the way Google+ was optional when using YouTube?
~~~
ewoodrich
No. It's a one-time prompt when you first configure Android.
------
zobzu
surprise! forces you to download Chrome. Of course, that could have been done
as a webpage, but psst!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Oregon Just Voted to Legalize Duplexes on Almost Every City Lot - jseliger
https://www.sightline.org/2019/06/30/oregon-just-voted-to-legalize-duplexes-on-almost-every-city-lot
======
davidw
This was super stressful to follow along the whole path in the legislature. We
turned out some YIMBY's to meet our state rep here in Bend to support it back
in... January I think it was. It kept going in fits and starts, and really
came down to the wire today, with a failing vote before it went up again and
passed, before the legislative session expired.
I'm happy to have played a very small part... our Republican state senator was
one who voted in favor; maybe our calls and emails had a positive effect.
Hats off to the people in the legislature and some of the advocacy groups
around Oregon like "1000 friends of Oregon" who worked _really_ hard to get
this through.
~~~
Aloha
This is often the path that a lot of legislation takes thru the legislature.
~~~
davidw
The bit where the first vote failed because one of the senators who ended up
voting in favor didn't feel comfortable being in the same room as one of the
Republicans who had been hiding in Idaho to deny the senate a quorum, and who
had threatened to kill Oregon State Police if they were sent to find him was
kind of over the top though.
~~~
pacoWebConsult
Really? Sounds like they don't have the spine to represent their constituents
properly if they're willing to let legislation fail because a colleague is
making empty threats. Kinda sad that they were too uncomfortable to do their
job because someone else was too insane to do their job...
~~~
davidw
She showed back up. I don't have a lot of details so we'll wait and see what
shakes out. The important thing is the bill passed. There will be disciplinary
hearings of some kind for the R who made the threats. Because of the walkout,
everything got compressed into two final days, so I don't think they had time
for that beforehand, which was unfortunate, as he certainly wasn't doing his
constituents a favor with that kind of talk.
Anyway, it was pretty crazy and a real nail-biter.
~~~
lonelappde
Disciplinary hearings? Imagine the hearing you'd get if you publicly
threatened to assassinate members of government with a specific intent of
preventing the government from functioning.
~~~
DuskStar
In some minds, the threat that senator made is roughly equivalent to someone
saying "if you come to arrest me for being gay, I will resist violently".
------
burlesona
Thankfully this is beginning to look like a trend. Minneapolis adopted a
similar deal (redefining all single family to be residential up to three
units) late last year, and more of these kind of upzonings are in the works
across the country. Ref:
[https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/12/12/three-
cheers-...](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/12/12/three-cheers-for-
minneapolis-the-3-is-for-triplex)
~~~
H8crilA
Wonder how long will it take for prices to take notice, doesn't seem to be
happening yet:
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MNXRSA](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MNXRSA)
~~~
bluGill
In Oregon? 60 years if ever. You can't get a building permit to build anything
without your lawyers ($$$) spending years getting you through the process. Or
so I've heard.
In Minneapolis I expect it will start to make a difference in 5 years. In
Minneapolis a building permits for something allowed in code takes an hour
from the time you park your car to the time you drive away, and no lawyer
needed.
Note that we will never really know that a difference was made: there are any
other factors involved in housing prices with no way to control for any of
them. Thus no matter what happens you will be able to reasonably argue from
data whichever side you want.
~~~
Frondo
People exaggerate. Portland's already been transformed by row houses, lots of
apartment and condo structures, and dense building. Unsurprisingly, a lot of
old-timers hate it, and their complaints all boil down to "it's different from
when I was a child/raising a family here".
The dense building is already taking place, in every neighborhood in the city.
Getting a permit is no problem; my little brother, an engineer with no
background in building, got a permit to build a four-unit building on one of
the sites where they were already allowed (before this law was passed) in 8
weeks; the normal time for any permit approval for construction, he says, and
in his engineering work he did a lot of work with permitting for customer
projects, too, so I'd guess he knows.
Portland's already been changing and it's made the city so much more pleasant
to walk through. Neighborhood after neighborhood of single-family detached
housing is boring, tiresome to drive or bike through, and an environmental
disaster (as the ODOT study recently confirmed).
If the rest of Oregon can now follow suit, this is only a good thing.
The funny thing is, driving through old towns in Oregon or anywhere, where
most of the building was done before these zoning laws made everything into
the same boring city planning style, architecture and construction used to be
a lot more interesting and visually pleasing. It's neat to drive through
places with variety of structure. These laws are one of the most pointless
things, that's done a great deal of damage, the US has done.
~~~
DougN7
This might be a good thing for the environment, but fixing “boring” is very
questionable in my opinion. Now you’ll simply have driveways that are 2-4x
wider than before (which also means more rain run-off) and less lawn. That
sounds boring and ugly IMHO.
~~~
Frondo
The rain runoff can flow into the bioswales the city is already building all
over; it won't just run into the city sewers.
As for needing to build wider driveways, and that making it boring, I realize
there's a certain kind of subjectivity here but I don't think that what we're
going to end up with is literally "duplexes with double-wide driveways
replacing single-family dwellings on the same-sized lots."
The front-runner for the 2020 mayoral race has an architectural background and
has been talking about ideas like introducing an LA-style design review board
to Portland, to ensure that new development has to pass aesthetic review in
addition to environmental review. I guarantee you that six months after
something like that were enacted, every architect in the city would know
exactly what they needed to do to keep the city interesting as well as weird.
~~~
clairity
i heartily support raising density limits, but i’d caution against adding a
design review board like we have here in LA. imho, it doesn’t add any more
harmony or interestingness, while adding cost and delay to projects. we have
whole classes of buildings that can no longer be built here because they’re
not in style any longer.
~~~
Frondo
That's fair, I've never lived in LA so I don't know what problems it caused;
only that the architect I know who's running for mayor liked it and felt it
improved the city.
He said that one of the problems he sees with development in Portland now is
that the developers are under no constraint to make their buildings visually
interesting at all;
as an example he's cited, lots of the new apartment/condo buildings go up with
a nearly uniform front structure for the entire length of a city block, when
varying materials or architectural features would add little cost but make the
structures more pleasant to walk by, drive by, etc., a facet of city living
that is hard to pin down quantitatively but makes a subjective difference.
I haven't lived in Portland in a while so I can't speak first-hand to this
alleged blandness of new construction but I do remember the last time I was
there seeing a lot of new stuff that was essentially undecorated, and of
course it's cheaper that way but compared to lots of the development that _is_
designed with more variety, I know which I'd choose.
Maybe there's a middle ground, I don't know, I just know this is a situation
where the market will converge on construction that probably isn't ideal for
very-long-term city construction, but there isn't really an adequate feedback
mechanism to force people to make prettier buildings. The city's under such
housing pressure that people would live in unpainted cement blocks if someone
built those. (Okay, I love brutalist architecture, especially some of the
Soviet monstrosities, and I'd live in one in a heartbeat, but that's
definitely me and even those had some style.) Seems like a place where a
regulatory authority could do well, but maybe not a cookie-cutter of what LA
has. It's just, these buildings are going to be around for a long time; now's
the time to make them look good.
~~~
clairity
> "Maybe there's a middle ground, I don't know, [...] The city's under such
> housing pressure that people would live in unpainted cement blocks if
> someone built those."
you point to one answer already: if the housing market were truly competitive,
developers would have to compete on housing features beyond the basic box.
that's why i'd generally advocate for a lighter touch on the regulatory side,
because housing seems to be already overburdened to the point of making it
unaffordable for most urbanites.
yes, let's make sure a house meets basic safety requirements, and that
builders and engineers document how they meet them, but beyond that, allow
people a little creative freedom and you'll get interestingness.
and i'm no fan of brutalism, but having some brutalist structures around
serves to remind me how much i like other styles better. =)
~~~
Frondo
I think the thing my architect friend was getting at is, these structures are
here for a long, long time, and they take up a finite (and _heavily_
constrained resource), so it's not like there's an opportunity for people to
realistically decide in 5 or 10 years that fifteen new buildings that have
been built should be replaced or adjudicated.
I think the problem is that this already falls so far out of the realm of "let
the market address it" because of the constraints on building and housing,
especially in such a tightly-housed city as Portland; if builders build it
wrong (and will make money regardless because of the constraints on this
market that mean people can't reasonably take their dollar elsewhere), the
city suffers in non-dollar-measurable ways for decades.
Again, this is mostly coming from my friend who likes the design review board,
and sees that a lot of the new development in Portland is boring from an
architectural point of view (and will remain so for at least the remainder of
his life) but there's absolutely nothing in a market sense that would compel
anyone to build more interesting buildings.
And, the more we talk about this, the more I like the idea of the design
review board; I'm all in favor of sensible regulation, and your original
complaint, that some styles are no longer permitted in LA, seems like even
less of an issue if it means that new construction does remain aesthetically
interesting.
An extremely small price to pay for putting pressure on architects to build
interesting new things as these buildings go up all over down.
But, of course, it's all just talk and speculation, since neither of us is
mayor (and at least one of us doesn't live there.)
------
raldi
If you're afraid (or overjoyed) that this might change the city overnight, you
might want to read this story about an area of Portland that repealed its
apartment ban 39 years ago.
Even without exclusionary zoning, neighborhoods change _very_ slowly.
[https://www.sightline.org/2019/06/21/this-is-what-a-
street-l...](https://www.sightline.org/2019/06/21/this-is-what-a-street-looks-
like-39-years-after-legalizing-fourplexes/)
~~~
dsfyu404ed
Anyone who is worried about the neighborhood "changing overnight" should be
worried about immigration and not the international kind. It's wealthy people
from the next city or state over who change things when they move in because
they have the money (which is convertible to political power although the
conversion is not 100% efficient) to change things how they want.
------
huevosabio
This is a fantastic step towards affordable housing. We need more state-level
interventions like these to remove the hurdles that impede building new
housing. I hope that government officials in California follow a similar path.
The only sustainable way to affordable housing is to make market rates
affordable.
~~~
scarface74
Housing is affordable in large swaths of the country. It’s only a relatively
few cities where it isn’t.
~~~
dredmorbius
Actually, not. The housing crisis in the US, particularly expressed as
evictions, is not merely a tech-hub/coastal problem.
On the Media's "Scarlet E" series is an excellent exploration of this:
[https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/scarlet-e-
unmasking...](https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/scarlet-e-unmasking-
americas-eviction-crisis)
~~~
scarface74
Look at where most of the red is when calculating the housing affordability
index....
[https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=1419fe7...](https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=1419fe7ee70c4267a7258eb59a9a824c)
~~~
dsfyu404ed
The reddest areas are CA, NY, Boston and the places people who have made a
bunch of money in those places buy vacation homes and/or cash out and retire
to. It's literally just a problem in a few places but the people of those
places are exporting their housing cost problems as they move out (i.e by
using their wall street money to out-compete the locals for a scenic square of
swamp).
If you just took a bunch of Wall Street bankers, a bunch of CA VCs and then
mapped their cell phone location data over the next several days (July 4
weekend) you'd get basically the same map.
------
aaronbrethorst
Washington next please. I’ll settle for just Seattle for now, and I plan to
vote and have been donating accordingly in this year’s city council races.
Relatedly, fellow Seattleites: the primary for city council races is in
August, and ballots go out in just under three weeks. Make sure your voter
registration information is up to date!
[https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/](https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/)
~~~
seattle_spring
Seattle is very close to approving backyard cottages on all SFH-zoned
properties [1].
They're also very close to approving a pretty major city-wide upzone [2],
though it largely just makes mutli-family zoning denser and doesn't affect SFH
zones much.
[1] [https://seattle.curbed.com/2019/5/13/18619101/adu-dadu-
backy...](https://seattle.curbed.com/2019/5/13/18619101/adu-dadu-backyard-
cottage-law)
[2] [https://seattle.curbed.com/2019/2/26/18240535/mha-hala-
zonin...](https://seattle.curbed.com/2019/2/26/18240535/mha-hala-zoning-
citywide-upzones)
(* No affiliation with Curbed, they were just the first articles to pop up on
my search that weren't paywalled).
~~~
aaronbrethorst
ADUs are great and MHA is fine, but both of these packages literally took
years to pass. The city council needs to move faster.
~~~
closetohome
Quite a few of this year's candidates are proposing eliminating single-family
zoning entirely. It could be on the agenda during the next couple of years.
~~~
aaronbrethorst
It's great to see this! But they need to make it through the primaries and
then win in the general, and this is not an insignificant lift.
------
cheriot
This is great in another way that isn't talked about much. As housing prices
and commute times go up so does the price of everything that involves human
labor. Bus drivers, plumbers, wait staff, etc all have to be paid enough to
live in the city or suffer a long commute. So anyone struggling to make ends
meet has it even harder.
~~~
oceanghost
“Every increase in the real wealth of the society, every increase in the
quantity of useful labour employed within it, tends indirectly to raise the
real rent of land.”
-Adam Smith, “The Wealth Of Nations”
~~~
cheriot
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the quote, but home prices aren't going up because
of an "increase in the quantity of useful labour employed within it".
These are just dumb city planning decisions: Hey, I'm going to permit an
increasing number of offices in this downtown and not allow denser housing.
Drive until you qualify, millennials.
~~~
momokoko
Can you then explain why many cities where the population is declining in the
US are seeing housing prices go up? For example Buffalo, Pittsburgh and
Cleveland?
~~~
dsfyu404ed
Are they going up substantially more than inflation over the same time period?
Housing stock tends to shrink with population since in a renters market
there's less incentive for landlords to keep properties in rent-able
condition. For example, an apartment remodel that might have been sub'd out
for $10k and done in a month instead takes $5k and is done over the course of
a year. When some % of all landlords start doing this to some % of properties
it takes a chunk out of available supply and rents stay the same-ish.
~~~
momokoko
_> Are they going up substantially more than inflation over the same time
period? _
Yes, considerably more.
------
chrisco255
Ship it. Restrictive zoning laws are choking the poor and middle class and
causing cities to stagnate. Hopefully CA follows suit.
~~~
nerdponx
Also duplexes really don't do much harm to the "suburban" feeling of a
neighborhood. A nice, big duplex feels as much like a home as any other.
If anything, I feel like it helps make neighborhoods more dynamic by
increasing the population density without increasing the physical density of
buildings and roads.
That said, parking will be important (need enough room for garages or lots of
on-street parking) since I assume these areas won't have great mass transit.
~~~
mywittyname
I personally think multiplex homes look way better than the rows of snout
houses you find in 99% of modern suburban development.
------
Tiktaalik
It’s a sensible move. Vancouver BC is studying moving to allowing fourplexes
on most detached residential lots too, and I hope that city takes steps toward
implementing that.
A great outcome from this is that now that cities are finally implementing
these policies, we can study their impacts.
At this point in YIMBY urbanist circles policies like this have taken on
somewhat of a mythical panacea quality, so it’d be good to finally be able to
ground the affordable housing discussion with hard data.
~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
I really don't understand why we can't also allow bodega-type stores at least
on the ends of residential streets.
Nobody is going to drive ten miles to go to your local bodega. It's not going
to increase traffic. You're not going to need more parking. You can even make
it illegal to sell cigarettes and alcohol entirely there.
~~~
bluGill
Making cigarettes and alcohol illegal makes them illegal. There is a reason
you find tiny stores that sell just alcohol and cigarettes all over in poor
neighborhoods: they are the only thing high enough margin to work out. If such
stores can sell the high margin products they then have enough money to stock
lower margin things as well.
Besides, with the problems of drinking and driving, you should want alcohol
stores nearby to drinkers can get their fix without having to drive to the
store.
------
DoreenMichele
There are some comments about infrastructure deficiencies here. Reality:
Sprawl is more of a burden on municipal jurisdictions because infrastructure,
including roads, has to be extended to it and it's not dense enough to
adequately cover the cost involved.
If you play SimCity, you can kind of model this by creating a new city from
scratch and creating an urban core. Place a fire department and police
department at the center and build out to roughly the perimeter of their
coverage.
Keep improving development within that footprint until you have an
economically viable city, then add a satellite suburb following a similar
pattern.
Not everything needs to be in that footprint. You can have farms outside of
it, for example, and you can have some industry with only fire coverage, no
police.
But if you build a sprawling low-density city, you will find it is impossible
to provide adequate services. You can't afford to pay for them. You wind up
with high rates of poverty and crime.
Missing Middle housing also helps get an area to residential densities that
help make public transit make sense. It also helps improve walkability.
A lot of the problems we have currently are because America sprawls. These
problems likely won't be made worse by gently increasing densities. Increasing
density in a good way should start to remedy a lot of these issues.
~~~
CalRobert
Sim City lies, too. Real American "cities" (to use the term generously) are
basically a parking lot with a mayor.
[https://humantransit.org/2013/05/how-sim-city-greenwashes-
pa...](https://humantransit.org/2013/05/how-sim-city-greenwashes-parking.html)
~~~
scarejunba
What a weird tone for that article! Acts like the game developers were out to
cheat people out of understanding reality.
~~~
CalRobert
Well, I wouldn't say it's evil or anything (it's just a game) but it is a bit
frustrating in a game calling itself a simulation.
Also, it's humantransit, which specifically promotes walking, cycling, etc. so
they're going to be understandably annoyed when the cited inspiration for
plenty of city planners understates the negative impact of car dependence.
~~~
Nasrudith
Personally I wouldn't call it understating car dependence so much as
underestimating the alternatives. Which reminds me of Cities Skylines and how
they did the opposite for what was probably an amusing oversight.
Foot paths are very good for traffic without congestion which makes perfect
sense. What doesn't make sense is the complete lack of time or distance limit
meaning the population will happily walk a massive pedestrian walkway the
length of an entire sector.
A somewhat more realistic way is to use subways to link your high density
residences with no highway access to places like work and retail while leaving
the roads for mostly delivery trucks and emergency services. Apparently
Japanese developments were practically planned this way - adding to where a
new subway loop and putting housing on top for synergy.
~~~
nicoburns
> What doesn't make sense is the complete lack of time or distance limit
> meaning the population will happily walk a massive pedestrian walkway the
> length of an entire sector.
How far is sector? What would you consider reasonable walking distances?
Something like 30mins regularly, 60-90mins occasionally?
~~~
DoreenMichele
Real world transit-oriented design in the US routinely uses either 1/4 mile or
1/2 mile for the radius from transit that most people can/will walk. I believe
they estimate that it takes 15 minutes to walk a quarter mile and 30 minutes
to walk half a mile.
Single data point: I'm a pedestrian. I haven't owned a car in over a decade.
I'm willing to walk up to 30 minutes regularly and farther occasionally. I
also use public transit sometimes.
~~~
asark
30 minutes for a half-mile? Is that the round-trip time or something?
~~~
DoreenMichele
No, that's little old ladies in street clothes hobbling as fast as they can.
People walking as a mode of transit aren't competing with joggers for who gets
there first. These times are for planning purposes.
Of course, it's okay if you walk faster than that. But planning departments
need to look at "Who will actually walk this?" And the answer is "Ordinary
people will walk it if it isn't over 30 minutes, but 15 minutes is better. And
that works at these distances."
You see the most traffic from establishments within a quarter mile, and some
additional traffic within the half mile radius but outside the quarter mile.
It drops off steeply outside of the half mile radius.
~~~
asark
Ah, makes sense. 30 minutes is a _very_ slowly walked city mile for me (25min
at a casual, unhurried pace, shaving a couple minutes off that for a 22-23min
time with a bit more bounce in the step but still not jogging or even speed-
walking) so I figured it was either round-trip or the slowest speed anyone
_capable of walking anywhere at all_ would attain—seems it's the latter.
------
sparkling
When i moved to the US i had no idea about the amount of zonening laws,
construction regulations and building codes. Coming from europe i naively
thought that since the US is the "land of the free" people could basically
build whatever they want on the piece of dirt they owned. Reality is, the
amoung of regulation is far more than i have encountered in my hometown in
Poland.
~~~
masonic
people could basically build whatever they want on the piece of dirt they owned.
Europe lacks fire and earthquake codes?
~~~
sparkling
Obviously anything safety-related is regulated. But nobody is going to tell
you what type or color of roof shingles you need to buy.
~~~
markkanof
Depends on where you live. If you are in a historical protected neighborhood
of a city someone definitely will tell you what color and type of roof
shingles you need to buy.
------
eecc
Another article linked from within the same one posted here [1] is so batshit
insanely heartbreaking and infuriating.
Much of today’s nonsense becomes so much clearer when you learn what was par
for the course merely a century ago.
[1] [https://www.sightline.org/2018/05/25/a-century-of-
exclusion-...](https://www.sightline.org/2018/05/25/a-century-of-exclusion-
portlands-1924-rezone-is-still-coded-on-its-streets/)
~~~
0815test
The article itself is of course fine; what's "batshit insane" and
heartbreaking is the blatant unfairness it describes. Newsflash - exclusionary
zoning leads to exclusion, which often has its hardest impact on vulnerable
minorities. Who would have guessed? There is a common stereotype that
segregation and exclusion can only result from fuzzy "structural" forces or
from private action by opportunistic and unethical individuals - but in fact,
these things can endure because they're often enforced by a morass of laws and
regulations, though sometimes in remarkably devious and opaque ways.
~~~
eecc
It’s an adverb and it refers to the heartbreak, not the article itself. I’m
afraid you misread my comment ;)
------
rvp-x
As a non-north american I was initially confused at the replies because surely
duplexes are low density construction for a city.
~~~
Al-Khwarizmi
Yeah, my reaction was... are things _that_ bad there that this is significant
good news?
~~~
noobermin
American history, specifically of racism and hatred of the poor, runs deep and
probably stumps most outsiders.
------
noobermin
I really wish the rest of the US would take note, both conditions as well as
climate change really need reduction of sprawl but it really won't matter if
OR legalizes this while FL puts up five times more exhurbs.
~~~
dsfyu404ed
Except for some coastal areas and larger cities housing density is way down
the list of priorities because it's simply not a problem.
~~~
drngdds
It might not be seen as a problem, but it _is_ a problem. It makes forms of
transportation other than cars non-viable, which is awful for the environment.
Cheap electric cars will happen eventually, but we don't exactly have time to
waste.
~~~
sempron64
I'm all for raising density, but cheap electric cars will happen a LOT faster
than rebuilding all of America with higher density housing and infrastructure,
besides the carbon emission that that refactoring entails. Cement and steel
emit way more co2 than individual transport.
~~~
0815test
"Cheap electric cars" will have range problems for a long time. Electric
transport (not just "cars", either) works very well with increased density,
and not so well with the low-density status quo.
~~~
bluGill
Range doesn't matter. People tend to have a half hour commute range. Electric
cars have long been able to replace gas for commute for nearly everybody
already. (range anxiety has been about the exceptions - once a month I do X
and the electric car can't do that...)
------
reallydontask
In the UK, semi-detached houses are probably the most common middle class type
of dwelling, so it's interesting to see that there is some sort of debate
about this.
Loads of differences between US/UK but still
~~~
arethuza
Aren't most council houses semi-detached - I wouldn't describe it as a middle
class thing?
------
ajxs
Disclosure: I don't live in Portland. I live in Sydney, which has a much
higher population and much higher real estate prices. The population density
is hard to compare, since Sydney has a very large and sprawling metropolitan
area of 4,775.2 square miles. The first thing I think of when I read this is
that while this kind of development may superficially look to benefit those
looking to purchase property, urban consolidation will benefit property
developers much more so than consumers. Sydney is undergoing considerable
urban consolidation and we're hardly seeing any reduction in property value at
all. We've seen all manner of predatory practices on behalf of property
developers occurring in this city to ensure that the price is kept
artificially high. One practice that is all too common is developers buying up
property and only releasing it onto the market slowly to maximise commercial
gain, as ridiculous as it sounds, anecdotally this is quite common. I wouldn't
celebrate just yet.
~~~
cycrutchfield
Who cares? Once equilibrium is reached, prices will be lower (or at least,
rise more slowly). That’s simple supply and demand.
Those property developers are taking on a considerable amount of inventory
risk. One hiccup in the housing market and they go bankrupt. If that’s the
game they are willing to play, then so be it.
~~~
nitrogen
There's not a whole lot of risk in being first in line to buy up all of the
XBoxes and scalping them to desperate parents.
Or to buying up enough aluminum that you can hoard it.
Or owning enough land that you choose the price.
When you control the supply of an essential resource, you can name your price.
Great way to make money, terrible way to make a society.
~~~
epistasis
What Oregon did here, massively increase the supply of buildable land in one
fell swoop, is pretty much the antithesis of those shortages you talk about
there though.
The trend for cities in the past 75 years has been to down some continuously
until there's not enough spare land that's zoned to account for the necessary
population growth. Then, in that highly supply constrained environment, use
political processes to upzone only a tiny amount of land. Typically this is
the "blight," the few places that minorities where allowed to live when racist
deed restrictions were allowed, the areas where city services were less, and
that stayed that way.
Societies would take the most undervalued land, force the huge backed up
pressure into these vulnerable neighborhoods, and let the few lucky developers
that were politically savvy enough to navigate the process make away with the
profits.
Now that it's everywhere, there will be more competition between developers
and there will be far less exploitation of an artificially restricted
resource. Land is already restricted enough, zoning for density just makes it
all the more scarce and exploitable by the powerful.
~~~
podunkPDX
Living here in Portland, though, my fear is that it won’t be developers taking
a flyer to build these homes, it will be the investor class bankrolling the
developers to build permanent rental properties.
Hoping I’m wrong, but the last few decades’ antics with investors tells me I’m
not.
~~~
cycrutchfield
What’s with all the handwringing over investors and developers? Yes, some
people will benefit from this decision, just as some people would have
benefited from the opposite decision. Who cares? The only thing that will
reduce housing prices is more housing being created.
~~~
nitrogen
People want more than just housing from housing. Some people want a system of
wealth distribution to allow new entrants to the market (the young and/or
disadvantaged) to build capital. Some want a place that they can call their
own and customize as they see fit. Some want to be invested in a community.
Some don't want to have to listen to and smell their neighbors through cheaply
built shared walls.
If the existing capital holders build a bunch of rentals, then many of those
goals are not possible.
~~~
0815test
People have all sorts of delusions. Cheaper housing, by and large, makes it
_easier_ for new entrants to build wealth, whilst having a place that they can
call their own.
------
loser777
To what extent does the number of families in a building change with the law
vs. just evolving as the environment evolves? I'm currently staying
temporarily in the bay area, and it seems that many homes here have been
"converted" from single family homes to full-time airbnb's with extra bedrooms
and bathrooms tacked on in any way that they can manage. Functionally it's
probably common for a suburban neighborhood to be a bunch of "4, 5, 6-plexes"
when appearing to be a typical suburb of single family homes on the outside.
~~~
masonic
full-time airbnb's with extra bedrooms and bathrooms tacked on in any way that they can
... which is exactly a risk of killing "zoning" (capacity limits)
restrictions. It's now far riskier for a property owner to rent to traditional
tenants (especially with the threat of Section 8 acceptance becoming
mandatory) than to cash out into the AirBnB market.
------
baybal2
America should follow the example of progressive countries.
Point 1. Residential highrises should become the main housing option
Point 2. Stop subsidising suburban lifestyle for the rich
Point 3. Massive public investments into infrastructure
Point 4. Replace zoning regulations with something less extremely specific or
go for sanitary code type regulation
Point 5. Stop requiring people without cars to buy unneeded parking space on
their own plot
~~~
scarface74
_Point 2. Stop subsidising suburban lifestyle for the rich_
The average price of a house is $226500. ([https://www.zillow.com/home-
values/](https://www.zillow.com/home-values/)).
Almost anyone can get an FHA mortgage with 3.5% down. The thought that only
rich people can afford a home is not true for most of the country.
~~~
sampleinajar
True, but "rich" is fairly subjective. I also don't think that point was
implying that only rich people could afford homes, but that the suburban
"lifestyle" and the associated costs of infrastructure were being
"subsidized". For the most part, cities subsidize less urban areas.
~~~
scarface74
Subsidized by who? Suburban areas are often separate municipalities with
separate budgets and I would think that most infrastructure would be paid by
property taxes and local sales taxes.
In fact here in Atlanta there is a trend toward upper class neighborhoods
separating from Atlanta and creating separate cities - no this isn’t a good
thing.
~~~
sampleinajar
It's not exactly true that all services in a local municipality are funded
solely by local funds. For example, in your state of Georgia the state pays a
share of public education. Most states' largest sources of revenue come from
sales taxes which it should be clear comes disproportionately from cities as
cities are disproportionately populated. Any state funded and especially state
run service is going to be largely funded by city dollars. It's admittedly
complex and varies state by state in degree, but overall it stands true that
cities pay more taxes to their state in dollar amount by virtue of there being
more people; therefore it seems fair to say that any state funds used for any
area outside the cities is subsidized by the cities. I'm not saying this is a
bad thing, just a valid observation.
------
Lazare
Excellent. Fingers crossed it works well and provides a blueprint for other
cities and states.
------
OliverJones
About time. Over the last generation almost all US cities have failed to add
enough new housing to handle the growing population.
Want to reduce homelessness? Build homes.
Want to reduce ridiculously overpriced homes? Build homes.
------
jbb123
So what is a duplex? Nowhere does it say and it's not a term I've ever heard
used in the UK? I guess "semi-detached" would be closest but not sure?
~~~
icebraining
I think a semi-detached is a duplex, but the latter term is more broad,
covering also two-story apartment buildings and such:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplex_(building)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplex_\(building\))
~~~
vidarh
'Semi-detached' can be used about the end unit of a long chain of terraced
houses, so while a semi-detached can be part of a duplex, it might also not
be.
------
TomMckenny
Fantastic. I hope with all my heart that rezoning at least slows down price
increases. It should certainly be done as widely as possible.
But in the end I think we need to keep in mind that there will need to
additional aggressive legislation to even keep prices flat relative to wages
let alone reduce them.
~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
On that note, does anyone know of any economist(s), or _thinkers_ , who a have
a comprehensive plan to change the way the housing market works?
~~~
ajmurmann
Alain Bertaud might have the opposite of what you might want to call a
"comprehensive plan". He makes great suggestions on how to give control back
to the market and achieve better outcomes than the quasi, soviet-style,
planned economy that our housing market is in the US (my words not his). Great
interview with him on econtalk about his new book:
[http://www.econtalk.org/alain-bertaud-on-cities-planning-
and...](http://www.econtalk.org/alain-bertaud-on-cities-planning-and-order-
without-design/)
Edit: typo in author name.
------
tunesmith
We're in a single-family home HOA in Portland that prohibits duplexes and
DADUs, and everyone's confused about whether this supersedes the HOA rules. I
think it doesn't; HOAs can still prevent something the law allows, but I'm not
certain on that.
~~~
logfromblammo
It depends on the wording of the law, I think. Many HOA agreements have
severability clauses and also large antenna bans. But federal law explicitly
allows antennas, so that antenna-ban clause is silently severed. It remains in
the agreement text, so a naive homeowner might believe it remains in effect,
and the HOA might attempt to enforce it using the same forms as all the
clauses they can lawfully enforce, but they will always lose if the dispute
goes to court.
The federal 1996 Telecommunications Act, and OTARD rule in the implementing
regulations, explicitly prohibits rules preventing over-the-air reception
antennas "by homeowner, townhome, condominium or cooperative association
rules, including deed restrictions, covenants, by-laws and similar
restrictions".
So the law proposed by HB 2001 _could_ sever the clause preventing duplexes or
render the entire HOA agreement invalid (if no severability clause), and
therefore make duplexes allowed in HOA neighborhoods.
But... it does not. It only reaches down to the "local government" level,
which is the municipal or county zoning restrictions. The NIMBYest of the
NIMBYs will already have HOA agreements that match or make more restrictive
the zoning requirements of their municipalities. The effect will probably be
to increase the prevalence of HOAs to impede progress, in lieu of zoning.
I am not a lawyer or legislator, but the bill should have been amended to burn
out anti-density covenants, deed restrictions, and association by-laws.
------
podunkPDX
I’m not certain that this will create any affordable housing in any of the
metro areas (Portland, Eugene, Bend).
I suspect that this will end up opening the doors for the investor class to
fund massive amounts of development in anything resembling an urban core,
turning the resulting housing into permanent rentals, tranching those rentals
into the next investment instrument to be sold &c.
I’m from Portland, and I wish that this would increase the availability of
affordable housing, but I feel that this is a lot of feel good, and it’s just
going to make my home town that much worse.
Here’s to hoping I’m wrong.
~~~
sfifs
Even if there's a massive investor driven housing development, ultimately the
units have to be rented out which will put pressure on rentals down and make
housing more affordable.
If rentals are lower, yield for ownership will also go lower leading to lower
prices.
------
rwmj
I find it odd that this is something that the government can regulate. Surely
it's nobody's business if a single building is split between two families?
------
edoo
This will have a few predictable results: The developers that pushed this
through will make a fortune. The government taxes will increase immensely as
they can now squeeze in more people. The city will generate much more
pollution than it did. At what point do you say enough is enough. Exponential
growth is unsustainable. The best communities I've ever seen were zoned for
minimum size 1 acre single family lots.
~~~
firethief
> The best communities I've ever seen were zoned for minimum size 1 acre
> single family lots.
That isn't scalable enough without a major population correction. There are
about 3.5 billion acres of arable land on the planet[1]. If we devoted all of
that to rearing human families, we'd have to eat them.
(1)
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arable_land#Arable_land_area](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arable_land#Arable_land_area)
~~~
edoo
What they are doing isn't scalable without a major population correction. You
hit the exact same issue someday no matter what. By encouraging exponential
growth it just ensures when we do hit a true limit the losses are orders of
magnitude worse. Also an increase in density is a decrease in quality of life.
Why not live sustainable lives with a comfortable amount of resources instead
of exponentially reproducing until everyone has nothing. If the plan doesn't
scale 50k years into the future it is an abject fraud designed for short term
profit at the expense of others. Math always wins.
------
xivzgrev
Fucking finally. I can’t wait for California to get their shit together on
this. Now supporters there will have an analogy over the next 5-10 years
------
georgeburdell
Seems reasonable, but being a Portland resident I'm already annoyed at how
hard it is to find parking. Portland's mass transit is a joke (I can bike
downtown end-to-end faster than MAX can crawl through it) and so people have
no choice but to drive. What's the point of putting duplexes in neighborhoods
without good transit and roads at capacity? California had a much more
reasonable solution in SB827 and now SB50 [1] in that density increases would
have only happened near transit.
I don't think the law will have the intended effects. Home prices tend to be
sticky, and I'm not aware of any North American city that successfully built
its way out of a housing affordability crisis. Wealth inequality is such that
current property owners, and real estate speculators, will make out
handesomely.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Senate_Bill_827](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Senate_Bill_827)
~~~
mmarvick
> Portland's mass transit is a joke (I can bike downtown end-to-end faster
> than MAX can crawl through it)
TriMet is currently looking into moving MAX into a tunnel downtown, and with
fewer stops [1]. Part of the reason it's _so slow_ right now through downtown
is all the stops, and because it has to stop at lights.
[1] [https://www.oregonmetro.gov/public-projects/max-tunnel-
study](https://www.oregonmetro.gov/public-projects/max-tunnel-study)
~~~
joelhoffman
That is amazing news, thank you for posting it. It was a tragedy they didn't
do a cut and cover tunnel for the green line when it went in. They had to shut
down all the streets and move the sewer etc. anyway!
------
jquery
As an SF homeowner I look forward to Cali passing the equivalent so my home
(near BART) shoots up in value. Win/win.
~~~
oberservant
That's great
------
mgleason_3
Seems like a pretty immediate solution for housing and rental shortages. I was
just talking to a A developer who mentioned that it costs so much to build in
LA&OC California that it only makes sense to target the high end/luxury
segment with new construction - at least for single-family homes.
IDK what the economics for new-construction of apartments is like, but I have
to image its similar.
Certainly more constructive than Governor Newsom suing Huntington. ref:
[https://abc7.com/society/gov-newsom-suing-huntington-
beach-o...](https://abc7.com/society/gov-newsom-suing-huntington-beach-over-
lack-of-low-income-housing/5107431/)
------
fortran77
This is a great idea! I hope California follows. Wherever a single family
detached house stands, a two-family home should be allowed in its place.
------
psadri
Is this primarily aimed at building duplexes on bare land? Or to convert
existing single family homes to duplexes? For the latter, how are the
economics? It is not cheap to prematurely tear down a house to build a duplex
instead.
~~~
jandrese
It may not be a common case, but there should be places where oversized homes
can be divided into two units for a modest cost. Have to plumb in a second
kitchen, redo some of the electrical, etc... but maybe cheaper than building a
whole new house from scratch, especially if permitting on new construction is
an obstacle. It needs a lot of custom engineering for every house though,
which is expensive.
In the end you'd probably have to set it up as the world's smallest condo for
tax and maintenance purposes.
------
rhacker
Is this going to make a LOT of people rich on cottage rents? Pull in a
trailer, hook it up, make $1000 / mo? I'm guessing the contractors in
Portland, Bend, Eugene are getting calls now.
~~~
pcwalton
That's not how ADU legislation has worked out here in California. There are
significant restrictions on the ADU that prohibit just "pulling in a trailer",
and I imagine the Oregon legislation looks similar.
Here's an article explaining some of the restrictions in San Francisco, with
some photos of garage conversions:
[https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/New-use-for-
San-...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/New-use-for-San-
Francisco-garages-upscale-13778164.php#photo-17238670)
------
refurb
They kind of do this in SF with ADUs, accessory dwelling units. Want to
convert your garage to a separate unit? City will help you with all the
permitting.
~~~
luckydata
But you agree that's not even close? You have one good house and a subpar
living arrangement that can be only temporary or last resort, while in the
other scenario you get two units that can both host a family without loss of
dignity or comfort. It's night and day.
~~~
refurb
I’ve seen some beautiful ADUs in SF which basically removed the garage and
converted the ground floor to a 2nd unit of the same size as the upper floor -
AKA turned it into a duplex!
------
sharadov
The Bay area needs this badly. But the NIMBYs will not let this pass.
------
sunshinelackof
As long as they don't touch the UGB.
------
NN88
this is the step towards the USA matching the infrastructure development in
the rest of the world.
------
luckydata
Well done neighbors, I hope some of your good sense infects us.
------
pacoWebConsult
Is anyone else concerned that this will lead to conditions like the beginning
of the 20th century where 2 or 3 large families would live in a single
residence, often times with 10+ people living and sleeping in the same room?
Rezoning a residence to house twice the people without any adjustment in
required square footage is a slippery slope towards turning low income housing
into slums.
~~~
i_am_nomad
This isn’t about re-zoning the use of existing houses, it’s about what can be
built in the future.
------
zerotolerance
Like most things they do in Oregon, this will certainly not have the desired
effect. Infrastructure in Portland is stressed enough without doubling
density. Turning 1 $600K home into two $500k homes isn't going to help anyone
but the speculating developers.
~~~
geezerjay
Your hypothetical example assumes that this measure leads available housing to
double while prices fall about by about 15%, and even so your conclusion is
that this doesn't help anyone?
~~~
epistasis
This is a very common view in certain areas that otherwise have progressive
views. In these terms, the profit of developers is an evil that exceeds the
benefit of any person having housing. In particular, new people are often
considered nuisances or a burden or something that is bad for the
neighborhoods, even.
------
CoconutPilot
The problem people don't want to address is these neighborhoods were not
designed to handle this many people. They don't have the power, water, natural
gas, sewerage, parking, etc to handle these many people. As a result
everyone's quality of life is degraded.
The city loves the taxes though.
~~~
ng12
That's such a cop out. Do you imagine Manhattan and Tokyo went from being
uninhabited wilderness to concrete jungles in one go? No, it was constant
iteration over decades.
These are all solved problems. We know how to build denser cities, we just
need the political will to do so.
~~~
masonic
uninhabited wilderness to concrete jungles
Many of us don't _want_ to live in concrete jungles.
~~~
icebraining
So you should move to Oregon, since all this does is allow low density
construction mixed with the existing very-low density construction.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How do you use rm safely or which trash utility are you using? - xstartup
I accidentally rmed files which I had not committed to a repo. I tested several other utilities which should send the files.<p>a) trash-cli python - didn't work, I got some error<p>b) nodejs one - worked but the files sent to trash have uuid as its name and it's not recognizable.<p>Which trash utility do you use?
======
latexr
You haven’t specified your OS, but on macOS I use `trash`[1] (`brew install
trash`). Files are deleted by default using the Finder API, which means you
still hear the trashing sound and can use the “Put Back” feature, as well as
⌘Z to get them back.
[1]: [http://hasseg.org/trash/](http://hasseg.org/trash/)
------
pwg
Another alternative is to not use 'rm' day-to-day to delete files. Alias "del"
to "rm -i" and force the habit of using "del" to delete. You will then be
prompted per file (allowing you to avoid deleting those you don't want to
delete). Then reserve use of raw 'rm' for only those times when you _really_
mean to delete a file without prompting (and therefore, have hopefully thought
about if you _really_ want to delete these files for good).
------
onion2k
Delete things using `git rm <file>`. If it's not been committed then you won't
be able to delete it. If you want to actually remove the file before you
commit it use the -f option.
~~~
xstartup
Perfect! Thank you.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Getty Images sues Microsoft over new online photo tool - wfjackson
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/04/getty-images-microsoft-lawsuit-idUSL1N0R52DI20140904
======
leepowers
_The widget, he said, goes well beyond a search tool by helping websites embed
copyrighted images for commercial use. Getty 's own embedding tool, by
contrast, is only available for non-commercial websites and includes
photographer attribution, he said.
"Now you have someone else's picture in full, beautiful display on your
website, having never paid for it and with no attribution to the photographer
at all," he said._
Microsoft's at fault here. Using another person's work without attribution is
pretty scummy.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
If the Media Covers You, You’d Better Bring an Audience - WadeF
http://observer.com/2012/11/out-of-reach-if-the-media-covers-you-youd-better-bring-an-audience/
======
dmor
This is exactly why simply hiring a PR firm when you want to build awareness
is never enough for a startup. I don't think what the Observer is pointing out
is new, it is just more easy to see and measure on the Internet. Building your
own audience is very difficult to buy in a single event, its an incremental
thing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Checkout by Amazon now works without leaving your site - timf
https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/business/cba
======
vanessa
This comes without the bogus $30/mo Pro membership fee PayPal charges for
checkout on your site. I have limited experience with both, but sounds like a
score for Amazon to me.
~~~
nhebb
Maybe I've misunderstood PayPal Pro, but ultimately don't customers leave your
site for the final checkout with PayPal?
------
jedc
Interesting development. The fees look to be identical to PayPal and Checkout,
but calculated on a three month average. There seems to still be room for
another competitor here, given the problems with both PayPal and Checkout.
------
klous
It would be nice if they accepted credit cards without having an Amazon
account. Like Paypal Website Payments Pro.
~~~
nhebb
Agree. For software vendors, I think this limits usage as an alternate payment
option for B2C products.
------
achille
Is this flash based or is it an iframe? How are they mitigating the risk of
malicious sites that steal a users credentials as they are entered into an
observable DOM hierarchy?
Edit: Looks like authentication is entered into a pop-up window, but still I'm
not convinced that it's secure.
~~~
jokull
I imagine it's something similar to the Facebook Graph API. Popup for login,
website receives a token to retrieve data. Can anyone verify this?
------
abraham
I like the Windows XP themed popup at second 16:
<https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/business/cba/CBAvideo>
~~~
nhebb
It shows a Firefox browser with an IE popup. I'm guessing they stitched
together screen parts for their video.
------
zackattack
somebody's gonna get SUPER RICH implementing a "copy and paste" javascript
snippet that allows you to accept payment from paypal, amazon, moneybookers,
credit cards, SMS, and whatever else is fashionable in the local region.
~~~
dangrossman
Say someone made a site that produced these snippets. How would they become
super rich off it?
~~~
zackattack
it solves a problem for pretty much everyone who sells things online. maybe
you could charge 1% of transactions or something.
~~~
dangrossman
You wouldn't know what transactions occurred, and 1% of a company's revenue is
not a reasonable payment for doing nothing but saving time copying-and-pasting
implementation scripts from the individual payment sites.
If you meant that this site should somehow provide a payment button for all
those providers without even opening an account with them, that's not a
problem you can solve with technology. Know-your-customer banking laws and
factoring clauses in merchant agreements mean you can never create that
service.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Writing udev rules for development boards (2016) - luu
https://lab.whitequark.org/notes/2016-11-20/writing-udev-rules-for-development-boards/
======
jhallenworld
Well one thing missing is ENV{ID_MM_DEVICE_IGNORE}="1" for /dev/ttyACM
devices. This should really be the default, IMHO. Otherwise Linux tries to
send AT commands to what it thinks is a modem device, but which is probably a
serial port.
There is more: a nice property of FTDI devices is that they have unique serial
numbers. So if you want specific cables to match to specific device names you
can do it with ATTRS{serial}=="A106YEUY", SYMLINK+="my_special_device"
On the other hand, FTDI is ruined by its own success. Lattice Diamond (an FPGA
tool) takes over all FTDI devices. So it's a good idea to keep a CP2102 or
Prolific USB to serial adapter just in case you want a serial port and an FPGA
programmer on the same system.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple’s Lower Prices Are All Part of The Plan - px
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/technology/apples-lower-prices-are-all-part-of-the-plan.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all
======
tatsuke95
Price is the reason why no manufacturer has been able to compete with the
iPad. It's not only a tremendous product as far as tablets go, it's relatively
cheap. Look at the latest high-end tablet offerings; all subjectively "worse",
most more expensive than the Apple product.
The market-share argument against Apple will disappear as they strengthen
their supply chain and become more efficient. They will become great AND cheap
products. As someone who recently purchased his first Mac (decked out 13" MBA)
and loves it, this is good news for everyone.
------
greggman
I call BS. A macbook air might be "cheap" if you decide to limit your
comparisons to "thin" notebooks but Best Buy has 40 models of notebooks for
$200-$299 and another 40 models for $300-$399. The $300-$399 aren't bad
either. 3-4gig, I3, AMD 6910, DVD player, etc. etc. You can get 3 of them for
the price of 1 macbook air. Got 3 kids, how about 3 notebooks instead of 1?
iPad? The competition hasn't really even started yet. It's only a matter of
time before the $200-$300 tablets that don't suck start appearing. Will Apple
lower the price of the iPad to match? I doubt it.
Phones are a different market. Because almost all phones are bought with
contracts there's been very little incentive to make the phones cheaper.
Unlike notebooks which you just buy outright.
I'm not saying in any way Apple's products aren't worth it. I have an iPad, 2
Macbook pros, A Mac Mini and an 8 core Mac Pro. But I'm not under any delusion
that they are cheap compared to the alternatives. I'll still buy them because
I like them but claiming a macbookair is a cheap notebook is like claiming a
BWM is cheap car. It's only cheap if you massively restrict the options you
are comparing them to.
~~~
gnaffle
The article does mention that you can find cheaper alternatives. The point is
that other manufacturers have problems competing with Apple in the premium
market.
Will Apple lower the price on the iPad? They will, if they can without
compromising on quality. They did so with the iPod and the iPhone. They did it
with the MacBook Air. Right now, they don't need to it with the iPad because
it doesn't have any real competition.
If Audi and Mercedes had problems matching BMW on price while making more
crappy cars, you'd say that a BMW was cheap compared to the competition, even
though it's an expensive car.
~~~
usaar333
As an aside, it is often possible to buy laptops from competing manufacturers
vastly lower than MSRP (40+% off), especially on craigslist. Apple laptops
seem to not exhibit this effect.
Used ones are extremely cheap. My 2 year old (and extremely usable) Dell E4300
model can be had for ~$320 on ebay, while weaker macbook airs go for double
that.
~~~
pbreit
Apple product resale values make it a no-brainier to buy Apple.
~~~
usaar333
Well if you must buy a new product at retail pricing, then yes. :)
------
pedalpete
The challenge for Apple here is to maintain both the 'premium' cache while
remaining competitively priced.
As this article states, they've done very well in marketing the Air. Everybody
seems to be comparing Apple's $999 11" Air with competitors 13" products. The
13" starts at $1300, so the competitors are often priced $300+ less, with the
exclusion of the Samsung Series 9.
~~~
Samuel_Michon
I think Apple has proven it can maintain the premium _cachet_ [1], making
healthy profits as well as offering competitive pricing. It has sold more than
300 million iPods, and yet, they look and feel like luxury products.
Also, it is only through Intel's $300 million stimulus fund [2] that computer
manufacturers other than Apple have finally started making slim notebooks that
can compete with MacBook Air on price. Whether they can actually compete on
quality remains to be seen, the 'ultrabooks' haven't exactly gotten favorable
reviews. Read for instance Engadget's review of the Acer Aspire S3, their
conclusion is "If you absolutely must buy a laptop of this ilk right now,
you'll get better performance and longer battery life from the MacBook Air"
[3].
[1] <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cachet>
[2]
[http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2011...](http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2011/08/10/intel-
capital-creates-300-million-ultrabook-fund)
[3] [http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/14/acer-
aspire-s3-ultrabook-...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/14/acer-
aspire-s3-ultrabook-review/)
~~~
pedalpete
Sorry about the spelling on cachet, I was wondering about that.
I'm not sure if you intentionally left out the review of the UX31, or just
were unaware of Engadgets positive review yesterday.
<http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/21/asus-zenbook-ux31-review/>
My biggest disappointment with all of these 'ultrabooks' is that they are
MacBook Air clones. I don't think PC makers are going to go very far competing
with Apple by copying their designs. PC makers need to start innovating
themselves.
Ultrabook is starting to be a synonym for MacBook copy, but there is a great
opportunity to create products like the Lenovo U260 (which I'm typing this on
now) which are as light as the Air, with warmer materials and don't have the
wedge shape.
~~~
Samuel_Michon
I hadn't read Engadget's review of the Asus Zenbook. I have now, and I also
read the review at Anandtech [1]. Both sites really try hard to like the
device, but they agree on several points:
\- incoherent case design (did you see that blue USB port?)
\- uncomfortable keyboard with barely any travel
\- trackpad is laggy and inaccurate
\- display is TN, not IPS, and has high black levels.
Anandtech's conclusion: "if you don't care about OS X and just want a good,
ultra-thin Windows machine the Zenbook is a viable alternative. If ASUS can
fix the trackpad issues then it's worth considering, however the display in
the MBA alone is reason to opt for it over the Zenbook, even for Windows use"
[1] [http://www.anandtech.com/show/4985/asus-zenbook-
ux21-review/...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/4985/asus-zenbook-
ux21-review/1)
~~~
robin_reala
To be fair, blue USB port = USB3 port in PC parlance. No excuse for the
trackpad though.
------
iaskwhy
I'm definitely in the minority here but sometimes it's good to have some
counterpoints about the new MacBook Air. I recently bought one with 13"
thinking it would be my best computer ever. Well, hardware/power-wise it is
incredibly fast! But I found out some things that make it almost unbearable.
There are only three ways to interact with a laptop and I believe it fails
deeply in two of them.
The trackpad is very much ok, probably the best one I ever tried. But the
keyboard... While the design looks amazing, keys are really thin and feel
cheap. As soon as I turned the laptop on and needed to enter my Apple ID, the
first time I pressed the Alt key it just came out! This hasn't happened yet to
any other key on this laptop but I used to have an iMac with a similar
keyboard and three keys stopped working. You can feel the fragility of the
keys by putting one finger on the top of the key and another on the bottom,
and then press them alternatively: the key bounces like a boat. While I can't
say it's the worst keyboard I ever had (because I owned an iMac), I never had
such problem with any other laptop or external keyboard. I could also talk
about the really small size of the arrow keys. I miss them all the time. And
the return key is also much smaller than every other keyboard I have tried
before.
The other way to interact with the laptop (more like it interacting with me)
is the screen. I was crazy about having a really good definition screen and it
is. But operating systems are not made for resolutions like that so it all
ends up with really really small text everywhere and zooming all the time
because you will mostly never get into a text properly sized for a screen like
this. If you use Windows you can set the DPI to whatever you want but webpages
text will still be incredibly small.
So I have a hard time typing and reading on it. I can't recommend it to
anyone.
~~~
DuncanIdaho
Regarding your complaint of rocking keyboards.
I went and checked my ol' T60 and by god, do T60's keys rock like a drunk
sailor.
But it's universally regarded as one of the best laptop keyboards available.
~~~
iaskwhy
I'm replying to you again but with a different view. Is the T60 keyboard the
same as the X200? Because it's what I am using now and it's an amazing
keyboard. This is important because if you say these keys move a lot then we
are definitely not talking about the same feeling, probably because I can't
explain myself much better. My only problem with the X200 keyboard it the
documents keys near the arrow keys, even after almost one year working on a
X200 everyday I still hit them. It used to be so good when the arrow keys were
a little bit apart from the main layout of the keyboard. I do love my Sony
Vaio for that.
~~~
DuncanIdaho
Oh, I didn't mean to imply that its not good keyboard.
I love Thinkpad keyboards I even profess my love publicly
(<http://www.janezstupar.com/the-best-keyboard-for-programmers>).
There are two major beefs with Thinkpad keyboards. First the positioning of
_fn_ key and lack of option to remap it is inexcusable. Second the page keys
you mentioned.
~~~
iaskwhy
Yes! The fn key is so annoying there. I didn't mention it because it seems
like that's the standard now, so wrong...
------
jayfuerstenberg
What were the well-regarded elements to creating a successful product again?
Be the first. Be the best. Be the cheapest.
The iPad has all of these elements in the tablet space at the moment.
------
macavity23
I'm surprised nobody (including the article author) has mentioned Tim Cook,
particularly as this new shift to lower pricing that he talks about coincides
with TC taking the helm. This is what Mr. Cook does - squeezes every last bit
of optimization and efficiency out of every step in the supply line, reducing
costs, hence giving them leeway to reduce their prices while keeping their
enviable margins.
~~~
pja
Not only that, but IIRC Apple uses their size to bankroll plant manufacture in
the far east in exchange for exclusive access to the first product run for a
period followed by guaranteed sweetheart pricing deals thereafter (or at least
so an article I read somewhere like TechCrunch claimed: I don't have a link
handy unfortunately). Unsurprisingly, this gives Apple a huge commercial
advantage: they are able to maintain profit margins whilst undercutting their
competitors thanks to the clever use of their strong cash position. Apple's
competitors seem to be completely incapable of taking the longer term view of
product development that leads to these kind of dividends down the road.
(Whether doing these deals was down to Tim Cook, Jobs or some other Apple exec
I've no idea, but I'm guessing Cook.)
------
AndrewDucker
Doing a little digging, it seems that it's $199 on Verizon with a contract.
But you need a data package on top. It's $60 for 450 minutes.
Go for the Droid Bionic and it's $300 with a 2 year contract. So that _looks_
more expensive, but it's not, because it's $40/month for 450 minutes.
So over the two years that's an extra $480 dollars you spend on the Apple, to
save $100 up-front.
I don't see how that's cheaper.
~~~
usaar333
I'm surprised you don't need a data package for a Droid Bionic.
On Sprint, an iPhone 4S and highest end Android phone offered (Galaxy S 2) are
the same price ($200) - contract details seem the same. My best guess is that
highest end Android phones cost about the same as an iPhone 4S.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The person(s) behind the mirror - CarolineW
https://www.josephkirwin.com/2015/09/16/person_behind_the_mirror/
======
chinathrow
"When we published some simple byte matching detection, it appeared that an
“automated system” on that attacker's side would modify the previous version
by doing some simple code manipulation that didn't change the functionality of
the malware, but broke our detection signature."
The major flaw of some AV in one sentence.
~~~
mistaken
That's an inherent problem in all AVs. Signatures based systems can be
bypassed easily. If you're not using signatures, then the AV is
running/analyzing the code which leads to the halting problem.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Our Space Policy Chickens Have Come Home To Roost - cbell44
http://www.openmarket.org/2011/08/24/our-space-policy-chickens-have-come-home-to-roost/
======
michaelpinto
We really got into this mess more than ten years ago -- there hasn't been any
serious investment in NASA since the 70s and yet we expect miracles from that
agency which is spread so thin. I see some progress on the private industry
front, but it's slow progress to say the least. Sadly I think America won't
get serious about NASA funding until China lands a human on the moon again.
------
cbell44
Failure of the last two Roscosmos launches leaves the US (and the other ISS
partner nations) with no good short-term options for human space flight.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
If you're drinking tap water, you're consuming plastic pollutants - oftenwrong
https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-09-05/if-youre-drinking-tap-water-youre-consuming-plastic-pollutants
======
iamNumber4
Also watch out for the dihydrogen monoxide, No matter how good your city's
water treatment plant is they can't get all of the chemicals out.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What do you ask a potential employer - a_developer
What questions do you ask a potential employer during a developer interview? In particular, I'm interested in what you ask to see if you're walking into a poorly-run organization or a bad codebase. I'm also interested in what you ask in terms of perks and benefits.<p>Some questions I ask:<p>What are the best, worst, and most surprising things about working here?<p>What IDEs are used here? (Preferred answer: Something from JetBrains, Reasonable people can disagree answer: vim/emacs/eclipse, Warning sign answer: Notepad)<p>Would I be allowed to work on outside projects?<p>How is off-hours support handled?<p>This seems like the sort of thing that would have been discussed many times here, but I couldn't find it using hnsearch or google. If you have the search-fu, teach me your ways.
======
kohanz
This is really tough because, as someone who has sat on both sides of the
table, the good organizations will be honest and the bad ones will either omit
or massage their answers to remain attractive-looking.
That's not to say that your questions will not help you attain more
information, but in some cases it is impossible. In the same way that
companies with good intentions can make bad hires, candidates can accept
offers from employers that are a bad fit for them, even though they asked the
right questions.
My recommendation, in addition to the good ones here, is that if you have a
good read on personalities, try to identify the person (assuming you have
multiple interviewers) that feels the most open, honest, and genuine to you
and direct your most probing questions to them. If someone feels too slick,
marketing-like, or just seems to drink a little too much of their own Kool-
aid, their answers are less valuable. Put more weight on the answers of those
who don't paint a 100% rosy picture.
------
Peroni
I wrote a blogpost on this exact topic last year:
[http://hackerjobs.co.uk/blog/2012/5/16/assessing-a-
company-q...](http://hackerjobs.co.uk/blog/2012/5/16/assessing-a-company-
questions-you-need-to-ask-in-an-interview)
If you want me to elaborate on anything, just say the word.
~~~
a_developer
I really like your question about the impact if they can't fill the position.
It seems like a tough one to get away with, though. It could come off as too
cocky, or as too much of a salary negotiation setup. Does this one go over ok?
What kinds of responses have you gotten?
Also, on feedback: have you ever gotten useful feedback from an interview that
didn't result in an offer? I've tried, but rarely gotten anything, and even
then it was so vague as to not really be useful.
~~~
Peroni
Personally, I think the 'impact' question is completely valid and not even
remotely cocky. It's important to avoid structuring the question in a way that
sounds like "what's the impact of not hiring _me_ " and make it clear you're
interested in hearing about what's important for the business. It shows
commercial awareness which is usually quite lacking in technical interviews.
As for feedback, unfortunately most companies fail to offer useful feedback if
you aren't successful in getting the job as you're no longer considered to be
of any importance to the business. Some companies have policies that prevent
them from giving you too much detail and some simply refuse in order to avoid
opening up a legal can of worms. One seemingly harmless question that you
could ask _after_ you get rejected is "What one thing should I work on to
improve my chances of working for your company in future?". Take the advice
and address it in your next interview with the next company.
------
chrisbennet
In addition to the usual "What's you work flow?" type questions I like to ask
the following:
I tell them that I always like to be learning new things. "Given my resume,
what new things I could expect to learn at your company?" This has the
unexpected side effect of having them "sell you" on working for their company
- flipping the usual job seeker dynamic (you trying to "sell" yourself to
them).
I like ask them what problems they are working on to see how I can bring my
talents to bear - I don't want to work someplace where I can't deliver real
value.
------
thebenedict
+1 for the "worst/most challenging thing about working here". I saw it
suggested on HN a few months ago and tried it once in an interview and once in
casual conversation. At first I was concerned about offending the interviewer,
but both times the person was honest and forthcoming, and seemed to appreciate
the question.
In the post I saw the author suggested that good people/companies will open up
and tell you what's not working, and bad ones will lie and say everything's
great.
------
ragatskynet
I always like to ask about how a "normal" workday goes. When to arrive, can I
have a coffee in the morning, how large are the offices, how much do I need to
use my phone or anything.
The other question I like to always ask - how do you treat professionalism? Of
course every employer says that you need to be professional and your work has
to be professional. But there are many places where quality is not really
matters (lets say it this way). So why do they need professionalism then? (I
hope I was clear.)
Also asking about possible challanges is a good thing in my opinion. Some
employers might mean high workload and high stress under the term challange.
(Dynamic, young team is also a term which makes me afraid sometimes.)
------
vojant
Working on side projects policy, it's my main question. Career path is also
important.
------
brd
What percent of time should I expect to be doing support work vs. new
development?
-Gives you a sense of how messy the code base is and/or the role they expect you to play in the company
What big projects do you have on the 6 month, 1 year, and 3 year horizon?
-Gives you a sense of direction and ambition of the organization
What sort of work are you expecting to see me produce over the first year?
-Provides a bar for you to measure yourself against. Important for better appreciating the seniority and importance of the role and helps with negotiating a raise if you're exceeding expectations.
------
esw
If you're considering a long-term gig, ask about the career path.
~~~
pjungwir
I've interviewed maybe 5 times in the last 2 years, and even at seemingly
well-run companies I've yet to get an answer to this question. "We're a flat
organization," "We don't have anything formal," "Well, we're growing, so
something will open up," etc. This is one of the major reasons I'm still
freelancing. No only am I earning more, but there is way more potential.
------
a_developer
Thanks for all the responses. I thought of one other thing I'd like feedback
on: When it comes to salary negotiations, do people ask for signing bonuses
these days?
------
PetoU
Where do you see this company in 1 / 3 / 5 years ?
------
daliusd
I ask how their typical day looks like (especially if I speak with
developers).
------
ratsimihah
"Can I bring my dog to work?"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I'm fundraising for another billboard, this time for FCC. Save Net Neutrality - kn0thing
https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/save-net-neutrality-billboard-in-fccs-backyard
======
vonklaus
While I think this is a great cause I think it is analogous to things like
security by trust v. security by design and the teach a man to fish principle.
Let me explain.
It is pretty obvious that eventually companies like planetLabs are going to
drive down the cost of Satellites to the point where they are deployed at such
capacity that internet is ubiquitous. The "too cheap to meter" of Eisenhower
IS coming to internet, however, in the interim we will have a battle.
I think the smartest way to outflank the ISPs is to focus on paying hardware
hackers and developers to create a hardware solution so that we can create
city wide subnets. Then these can either buy bandwith from Cogent-esqu
companies or ISPs. This will greatly increase our collective bargaining power.
I see this functioning like roman city states or like the judicial,
legislative and executive branches of government. Distributing power across a
broad enough playingfeild to allow things to get done (not really true in
American Gov't anymore) while limiting any individuals power.
IDK just a concept I have been working on.
~~~
HistoryInAction
Spot on.
As far as a quick layman's glance has shown, the problem is specific to the
'last mile' bit of data connection, which is run by Comcast, Verizon, etc...
The backbone pipelines are run by companies like Level3 and Cogent, which are
not of concern for this debate.
'Last mile' wires tend to be one company per city, so we're stuck trying to
prevent relatively small-scale monopolies from extracting rents via
regulation. The better solution is competition.
Enter Google Fiber, spurring competition:
[http://www.kansascity.com/2014/04/21/4973046/att-may-
bring-g...](http://www.kansascity.com/2014/04/21/4973046/att-may-bring-google-
fiber-like.html)
I've heard a little chatter about the subnet idea, but it'd be tricky to do
'underground' with regards to city regulation and trickier to get approval
for.
~~~
vonklaus
Basically it would be analgous to everyone opening their router and daisy
chaining them all together. That would be "last mile". It would be like
connect to Linksys.LosAngeles and then backbones connect you up to San Fran.
That way either content providers could locate in cities and push locally, or
ISPs would have to come to the table.
~~~
HistoryInAction
Cool, any recommendations for further reading? I seem to recall Nick Merrill
of Calyx being interested in this sort of thing for SF.
------
esbranson
Comment on the proposed regulations:
[http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/proceeding/view?name=14-28](http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/proceeding/view?name=14-28)
~~~
HistoryInAction
Is this the correct one? I've been pointing people to the FCC page:
[http://www.fcc.gov/page/fcc-establishes-new-inbox-open-
inter...](http://www.fcc.gov/page/fcc-establishes-new-inbox-open-internet-
comments)
~~~
esbranson
They might be posting comments received by <[email protected]> on ECFS. The
posted comments look like emails. This website allows you to _read_ comments,
not just post them.
The Electronic Comment Filing System, or ECFS, "serves as the repository for
official records in the FCC's docketed proceedings and rulemakings". The ECFS
docket for this (14-28, "Protecting and Promoting the Open Internet") has
about 500 filings in the last 30 days, and about 15,000 since the FCC
announced it on February 19th:
[https://www.fcc.gov/document/new-docket-established-
address-...](https://www.fcc.gov/document/new-docket-established-address-open-
internet-remand)
------
puppetmaster3
Why not collect for a donation to key congress figures instead.
~~~
HistoryInAction
Because this isn't a legislative issue, but rather a regulatory one.
Bureaucrats aren't the most responsive to public pressure, in contrast with
elected officials.
That said, right now, we're in an awareness building phase, so I can support
this crowdtilt (rhetorically, I am a starving founder after all!). Think pre-
American Censorship Day on SOPA, not the run-up to the blackout.
But I recommend everyone write strong, well-reasoned comments here:
[http://www.fcc.gov/page/fcc-establishes-new-inbox-open-
inter...](http://www.fcc.gov/page/fcc-establishes-new-inbox-open-internet-
comments)
I'm (PolitiHacks) coordinating with Engine and Free Press to serve as a focal
point for converting founder anger here into effective political metrics.
Would there be interest in calling in or G+ Hangout for 15-30 minutes early
next week with one of the activists to lay out the political strategy for the
leading up to May 15?
~~~
bratsche
It can absolutely be solved with legislation though. FCC has authority to re-
classify the internet as Title II, but they get that authority because
Congress has delegated it to them.
Congress is elected by you and me, and in sufficient numbers we can affect
what they do. The FCC is not elected by us, and they really have no
responsibility to us. I think they are already aware that this would be bad
for consumers, but they clearly don't care unless some other power pressures
them otherwise.
~~~
HistoryInAction
You're completely right. Reclassification can be done through the legislative
process (see: Markey bill,
[http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2014/02/03/senator-
ed...](http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2014/02/03/senator-edward-
markey-introduces-net-neutrality-bill-prevent-internet-service-providers-from-
granting-priority-access-big-firms/aYQIHbEkC04tRmqc8EIQ4M/story.html)). That's
a positive fix.
That said, at this point the first step is to prevent the negative regulation
from coming into effect. One way to do that is to ask your Representatives and
Senators to submit a letter of opposition to the FCC.
That's what we did here with Crowdfunding:
[http://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-06-13/s70613-370.pdf](http://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-06-13/s70613-370.pdf)
------
lvs
Will you setup and publish BTC/DOGE donation addresses?
~~~
kn0thing
Yes! The awesome DogecoinFoundation Shibes hooked this up!
[http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/24cqlo/lets_fund_a...](http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/24cqlo/lets_fund_alexis_ohanians_billboard_to_support/)
If you'd like to donate using Dogecoin, you can do so here:
D5gFxHPMRz4W6xYs8moWhgPMPoUycCABBa (over 10,020 DOGE raised so far!)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mobirise Best Website Maker v2.9.7 is out - Mobirise
https://mobirise.com
======
Mobirise
Mobirise Best Site Builder v2.9.7 is out!
What's new:
_Menu:
Now you can change hamburger button color in parameters
_Slider:
Added 'Show Bullets' parameter
Added slide overlay
Added content alignment
_Fixed Code Editor PHP code insertion
_ Minor fixes in "PurityM" theme
[https://mobirise.com](https://mobirise.com)
------
brudgers
This might make a good "Show HN". From the landing page:
"Mobirise is free for both personal and commercial use. You can download and
use Mobirise for your own or client's websites without restrictions."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Don't We Document Our Software? Part 1: False Excuses - jeffspost
http://lookatsoftware.blogspot.com/2009/08/why-dont-we-document-our-software-part.html
======
ScottWhigham
Save yourself the time - he sums up at the end of this fluff by saying, "In my
next post I'll examine the real reasons we don't document our software
systems."
------
icefox
Often when I find a bug in docs I don't bother reporting it, but...
If there was a website that showed the documentation for libraries and allowed
you to edit the docs for functions / classes /etc wiki style, would you use
it?
------
rawr
>> "When programmers develop 'for fun' we write documentation."
That's because they get something out of it. Namely, people won't use
undocumented software and the authors want their software to be used.
In a corporate situation we don't document our software if we don't have to
because we don't care (usually) whether or not people use it. If the company
cares, it will force engineers to write documentation and we will do it
because we don't want to get fired.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How are you monitoring source code for secrets? - dvdhnt
I've been researching Static Code Analysis and available implementations. One feature that'd be nice is flagging of secrets, API keys, and passwords. Amazon Macie mentions this as a use case but appears only to work with data in an S3 bucket [1].<p>After browsing available AWS products, nothing sticks out to me as an obvious solution. I saw Sonar but their TypeScript support appears to be less effective - which is expected to some degree since it's originally a Java tool [2].<p>Is there an AWS solution to this? Or do you have a recommendation?<p>Thanks.<p>PS - this would of course be in addition to our existing code review process.<p>1. https://aws.amazon.com/macie/?nc2=h_m1<p>2. https://www.sonarsource.com/products/sonarqube/
======
t3h2mas
I wrote something* that checks the entropy of strings found in incoming
webhook commit payloads. It catches a good amount of secrets, but even more
false flags. I have to work on honing it in.
I'm not sure about hosted solutions but there are some great open source tools
that scan entire repos as well as their history. I have used, and like, Gitrob
and Trufflehog.
* [https://github.com/michenriksen/gitrob](https://github.com/michenriksen/gitrob)
* [https://github.com/dxa4481/truffleHog](https://github.com/dxa4481/truffleHog)
* * not currently OSS unfortunately
------
ezekg
In the past I've used a little command line utility I wrote that matches
against a set of known regexp patterns: [https://github.com/ezekg/git-
hound](https://github.com/ezekg/git-hound). But I agree, it would be cool to
see something like that directly from AWS that is 100% automated a la their
secret key "alerting."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Doctors Shouldn’t Be Punished for Giving Prostate Tests - DanBC
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/opinion/why-doctors-shouldnt-be-punished-for-giving-prostate-tests.html?emc=edit_ty_20160107&nl=opinion&nlid=17873594&_r=3
======
DanBC
> these are nonlethal cancers that aren’t going anywhere. Screening is really
> good at finding these cancers, and the prostate gland is full of them. Over
> half of men age 60 and older have small, indolent, nonlethal prostate
> cancers — many more than those who have harmful ones. That’s why men are
> much more likely to die with prostate cancer than from it.
> Because doctors can’t reliably identify which cancers will become lethal,
> PSA screening has led a lot of men — our 2009 estimate was over one million
> since the test was introduced in 1987 — to be treated for a cancer destined
> to never bother them. And treatment frequently leads to impotence and can
> cause incontinence and bowel problems.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What is the emerging state of the art in fuzzing techniques? - hwhatwhatwhat
I'm fairly familiar with the popular tools such as afl and Codenomicon Defensics. But I find the academic literature very opaque and don't really know where to start.<p>If I want to understand the cutting edge of fuzzing techniques, and what will be the emerging state of the art in the next few years - where should I look? Any good papers or books (with at least some for novices to understand), or research projects that are leading towards a new excellence?
======
wepple
in general, have a poke around
[https://fuzzing.info/papers/](https://fuzzing.info/papers/)
First, I think the next big step in fuzzing will actually be a _complement_ to
fuzzing - solving.
AFL and friends can bitbang their way to massive code coverage, but can still
fail on fairly simple testcases. Some recent research[1] by the authors of
Angr[2] show that by pairing the brute-force coverage and exception discovery
of a tool like AFL with constraint solving tools can really dig deep into a
program, by actually solving the path to a given block of code. Microsoft's
infamous SAGE fuzzer does this IIRC.
Second, I think there are still massive oportunities for fuzzing closed-source
programs, as well as programs with tricky state, such as browsers or network
daemons.
[1] [https://www.internetsociety.org/sites/default/files/blogs-
me...](https://www.internetsociety.org/sites/default/files/blogs-
media/driller-augmenting-fuzzing-through-selective-symbolic-execution.pdf)
[2] [http://angr.io](http://angr.io)
~~~
joosters
Has anyone tried combining fuzzing with 'all-pairs'/'pairwise' test case
generation?
The idea of pairwise testing is that individual features in a program are
commonly tested, but _combinations_ of them are often poorly tested. However,
trying to test all features with each other soon becomes a combinatorial
nightmare. To deal with this, you use an algorithm (e.g. see the code for
'allpairs' at
[http://www.satisfice.com/tools.shtml](http://www.satisfice.com/tools.shtml) )
to pick a minimal set of test cases that cover all possible pairs of
configuration settings.
These test cases could then be used as starting points for fuzzing, to provide
a greater code coverage faster.
~~~
wyldfire
NIST has done some research on combinatorial software testing and has a pretty
good package [1] I've used before for generating test cases given N
dimensions.
The idea behind their software is to maximize the effectiveness of test time
because testing those N dimensions exhaustively is infeasible.
[1]
[http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/acts/index.html](http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/acts/index.html)
------
scriptdevil
I am very interested in learning about this too! I started out with AFL for
fuzzing but soon had to move to LLVM's LibFuzzer because I didn't want non-
ASCII inputs (by design, we know we wouldn't get that) and also
SantizerCoverage seemed to be more robust than the 64kB shared memory array
that AFL uses for large programs.
However, libFuzzer being an in-process fuzzer has again created a lot of
headache - especially in places where we malloc stuff and expect free to
implicitly happen at exit - in libFuzzer's case, the exit is caught and the
entrypoint function is restarted causing memory leaks and OOM crashes. This
made me have to include #ifdef FUZZ ... #endif lines in the codebase - adding
different behavior in fuzzed and unfuzzed cases which felt wrong.
I have considered implementing an out-of-process fuzzer from scratch (or base
it off AFL), but have been holding off till I get time to read about more
prior work given that this is not of the highest priority at work.
That said, SAGE from Microsoft seems really interesting[1]. It generates
inputs intelligently by constraint-solving on inputs to conditional
statements. It isn't exactly new though.
[1] [http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/people/pg/public_psfi...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/people/pg/public_psfiles/sage-in-one-slide.pdf)
~~~
jerf
Bear in mind that while AFL may feed you a binary string, you can "decode"
that into whatever you want. It may take a bit of creativity or bit-shifting,
but it can be done. You're free to grab 8 bits off the front and start setting
global run-time flags or something, for instance. It's just data.
Also due to the way that AFL works, if you have a branch at the beginning of
your program that immediately exits if it sees non-ASCII input, you don't lose
all that much time, because AFL sees that as the same branch being exercised
over and over again and hammers only on the input that allowed it to progress
past that. In fact I think I almost _always_ use AFL on text-based protocols,
and it works fine. It's a common use case for AFL.
~~~
scriptdevil
While I didn't internally decode the bitstring, you are right. AFL did
generate tonnes of useful tests and I did uncover a couple of bugs using it.
That said, given that I didn't spend too much time actually trying to
understand AFL, could you clarify if I was right in my understanding that AFL
doesn't have true coverage but rather a heuristic using a table as documented
in
[http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/technical_details.txt](http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/technical_details.txt)
. Given that the program I was fuzzing was HUGE, wouldn't it falsely alias
branches?
Thank you for your input!
~~~
jerf
It could probably go either way, depending on the nature of your program. It
depends on the correlation between "separate paths of execution" and "separate
test cases". Certainly that's strong for a lot of programs, but if I sat down
to construct pathological cases I probably could, and in the world of Turing
chaos that programs inhabit, if pathological cases _can_ exist, you can count
on hitting them sometimes, no matter what low probability of that outcome you
think you can justify.
AFL is definitely heuristic, and thus can conceivably be fooled in places
where a true symbolic execution wouldn't be. On the other hand, it's very fast
and easy to set up and use. Can't ever have it all. :)
------
robto
I've started using clojure.spec[0] in my regular day programming with an eye
on using generative testing, which I understand is a form of fuzzing. I'm very
new to this, but it feels incredibly practical in terms of bang for buck -
like the 'cutting edge' of practical use. I'm not sure what it's academic
background is, but I'd highly recommend reading and listening to what Rich
Hickey has to say about it. He's a smart guy.
[0][http://clojure.org/about/spec](http://clojure.org/about/spec)
[1][http://blog.cognitect.com/cognicast/103](http://blog.cognitect.com/cognicast/103)
~~~
freshhawk
I'll definitely second this one, I'm still getting comfortable with Clojure
Spec and the hooks into test.check (it's brand new, and I'm unfortunately no
longer doing Clojure for my day job) but it's already great and I'm only at
the beginner/intermediate stage.
------
qntty
For people as confused about this post as I was:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzz_testing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzz_testing)
------
ikisusi
There is a 30 seconds video based on 90 minutes of a collaborative experiment
by 22 fuzzing practitioners. Aim was to write down couple of points about
fuzzing state of the art.
Video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrhRUKgeDQI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrhRUKgeDQI)
Text: [https://github.com/ouspg/ouspg-
open/blob/master/presentation...](https://github.com/ouspg/ouspg-
open/blob/master/presentations/fuzzing-sota.md)
Updates e.g. as pull requests most welcome. :)
------
hguant
DARPA's Cyber Grand Challenge is pushing the state of the art when it comes to
RE, exploitation, and the like. Very presentable talk by Mike Walker, who's
heading up the project with a bunch of ex-Raytheon guys.
There are links to some repos of in the talk: it's not exactly what you're
looking for, but if you're interested, it's a good resource.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejPghbtAG58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejPghbtAG58)
------
Harvester57
Here you have some interesting work from Fabien Duchene, ENSIMAG/CEA
researcher, about black-box genetic fuzzing (I know it sounds like a lot of
buzzwords, and in fact it was a little bit mocked during SSTIC 2016, but it's
some really good stuff !)
[http://hal.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/hal-00978844/](http://hal.univ-grenoble-
alpes.fr/hal-00978844/) [https://dl.acm.org.sci-
hub.cc/citation.cfm?id=2557550&dl=ACM...](https://dl.acm.org.sci-
hub.cc/citation.cfm?id=2557550&dl=ACM&coll=DL&CFID=812652285&CFTOKEN=99735597)
~~~
scriptdevil
I don't know if adding a sci-hub link is a good idea.
~~~
endergen
Why not?
~~~
zokier
Would you accompany a movie recommendation with a piratebay link on HN?
~~~
linschn
Except this research was (most probably, I did not check) funded with french
or european taxpayers' money, and therefore people should not have to pay for
it twice.
The moral standpoint is very different than with movie or music pirating.
~~~
nickpsecurity
We should try to extend the First Sale Doctrine to digital publications. If it
hasnt been tried already.
------
jorangreef
This is not exactly what you asked for, but if the code you want to fuzz is
written by yourself, you could learn fuzzing by doing the fuzzing yourself. It
might also be easier to do this at first, since you're closer to your code,
and would need less adapters for existing fuzz solutions.
1\. Write a simple test function which will generate a very wide range of
allowed inputs to the function you want to test. Try to generate average
inputs most of the time, and outliers some of the time. Use a seeded Mersenne
Twister as your random number generator. For example, if the function you are
testing accepts an array of buffers, then for a single test of the function,
you could choose at random how many buffers to generate, and then at random
the length of each buffer, and then at random the contents of each buffer. You
could then call the function many times, each time with a different array of
inputs. Or if you were testing a document editor or CRDT, you might want to
randomly generate different combinations of user edits, e.g. a delete 10% of
the time, an insert 50% of the time, etc.
2\. Write the simplest possible independent implementation of the function you
want to test. For example, if you are testing a custom hash map, you could use
the hash map from your standard library as the basis for the independent
implementation. Or if you were testing a key/value storage engine, you could
consider using an in-memory hash as the basis for the independent
implementation.
3\. Run your random fuzz inputs from step 1 through both your implementations
and assert that the outputs of both are always the same at each step. Both
implementations could be called a few thousand times depending on the run
time.
------
SEJeff
Checkout TriforceAFL as well, which allows using AFL (American Fuzzy Lop)
inside a qemu virtual machine.
This is a pretty interesting writeup on it:
[https://www.nccgroup.trust/us/about-us/newsroom-and-
events/b...](https://www.nccgroup.trust/us/about-us/newsroom-and-
events/blog/2016/june/project-triforce-run-afl-on-everything/)
------
mytummyhertz
shameless self plug: [https://www.nccgroup.trust/us/about-us/newsroom-and-
events/b...](https://www.nccgroup.trust/us/about-us/newsroom-and-
events/blog/2016/june/project-triforce-run-afl-on-everything/)
allows you to run AFL on arbitrary VMs. so far we've used it to find some
Linux vulnerabilities, and are starting to find stuff in other operating
systems too. and we're just getting started :)
~~~
wyldfire
I read this recently via HN. Congrats, this is impressive.
------
anonymousDan
You could take a look at the proceedings of conferences like ICSE
(International Conference on Software Engineering). For example there's been a
lot of work over the last decade or so on making dynamic symbolic execution
techniques more practical (as exemplified by e.g. KLEE or SAGE).
------
humbleMouse
My friend is working on some next gen fuzzing stuff here:
[https://github.com/2trill2spill/nextgen](https://github.com/2trill2spill/nextgen)
~~~
2trill2spill
Thanks for the shout out, But I'm the nextgen author If anyone has any
questions, comments, bugs, whatever. The project was started because of
frustrations with AFL and trinity. The "novel" feature at this point is using
dtrace for instrumentation instead of a compiler plugin like AFL. This allows
for instrumenting closed sourced applications without using qemu and non C/C++
applications. I have more planned for the future but I'm trying finish the
core of nextgen, mainly the logging, interprocess communication, and
concurrency model.
------
pag
I worked on the cyber reasoning system (CRS) at Trail of Bits for our entry
into the Cyber Grand Challenge [1]. Some slides describing the system are here
[2].
Specifically, I implemented our fuzzer. I created a dynamic binary translator
[3] that emulated the DECREE [4] operating system and x86 arhcitecture. It had
the Radamsa [5] mutator built-in, along with a number of other simpler
mutators.
I think our fuzzer out-performed our competitors, though I am biased ;-) The
fuzzer was single-threaded, but could perform more than a million fuzz/mutate-
execute (with coverage) iterations every two hours. Before I optimized it, it
beat the pants off PIN [6]. We ran many such fuzzer processes concurrently.
They would saturate the CPUs, and actually performed no I/O because I emulated
all I/O in memory ;-) This was key to us achieving such high-throughput.
Our fuzzer wasn't super smart (though Radamsa is), but it benefited a lot from
a feedback loop with our symbolic executors [7]. The symbolic executors would
produce inputs that would then get fuzzed. These inputs could feed back into
the symbolic executors, etc. That added more brains to our system.
All in all, we ran the CRS across something like 300 large EC2 nodes (across
three availability zones). Per node, 8 or so fuzzers processes were running
constantly for 24 hours. I'd ballpark that as 28.8 billion mutate+execute
cycles.
In conclusion, the key for us was to make a production-quality, high-
throughput fuzzer that did only one thing really well and really fast, then
complement it with other more sophisticated tools like symbolic executors.
[1] [https://blog.trailofbits.com/2015/07/15/how-we-fared-in-
the-...](https://blog.trailofbits.com/2015/07/15/how-we-fared-in-the-cyber-
grand-challenge/) [2]
[http://infiltratecon.com/archives/Slides_Artem_Dinaburg.pdf](http://infiltratecon.com/archives/Slides_Artem_Dinaburg.pdf)
[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_translation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_translation)
[4]
[https://github.com/CyberGrandChallenge/libcgc](https://github.com/CyberGrandChallenge/libcgc)
[5] [https://github.com/aoh/radamsa](https://github.com/aoh/radamsa) [6]
[https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/pin-a-dynamic-
bina...](https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/pin-a-dynamic-binary-
instrumentation-tool) [7]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_execution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_execution)
~~~
Zardus
It's impressive how many resources you threw at problem! We (Shellphish) had
very similar results by using AFL [4] for fuzzing and angr [5] for symbolic
execution (we published our approach at NDSS in February [1]) on around 300
cores. Of course, we procrastinated pretty heavily, ended up hacking our CRS
together in three weeks, and it was absurdly rough around the edges and didn't
get anywhere near your crash numbers during the qualifying event itself. As we
discuss in the paper, our experiments with the impressive numbers were carried
out afterwards, in less chaotic conditions.
It's interesting that the approaches taken by us [1], you [2], and
ForAllSecure [3] for the CQE (at least on the exploitation side) were so
similar. I've talked with two other teams that had an analogous setup (as well
as two other teams, who did quite well, that took a very different route). I
guess some great minds think alike!
As a side note, in the ToB blog post, you talk about wanting to join up with
another team to be able to play in the final event. Did you guys end up
finding a partner? It'd be interesting to face your CRS again next month :-)
[1] [https://www.internetsociety.org/sites/default/files/blogs-
me...](https://www.internetsociety.org/sites/default/files/blogs-
media/driller-augmenting-fuzzing-through-selective-symbolic-execution.pdf) [2]
[https://blog.trailofbits.com/2015/07/15/how-we-fared-in-
the-...](https://blog.trailofbits.com/2015/07/15/how-we-fared-in-the-cyber-
grand-challenge/) [3] [https://blog.forallsecure.com/2016/02/09/unleashing-
mayhem/](https://blog.forallsecure.com/2016/02/09/unleashing-mayhem/) [4]
[http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/](http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/) [5]
[http://angr.io](http://angr.io)
~~~
pag
We ran three versions of our system, because in the last few weeks/days before
the quals we had a bunch of regressions. One of those regressions was caused
by a single line change in my fuzzer :-p On the twitter account we used to
track our progress, we used rapper names for each version. One version was two
weeks old, one was up-to-date with the fixed fuzzer, and one had an
experimental version of one of our symbolic executors that produced <var>
tags. That didn't work.
We also under-utilized those nodes :-( Each node had at at least 4 idle cores
wasting our money. Our resource allocation mechanism was naive.
I looked through some of the stuff released byt DARPA after the event and they
released some of our PoVs as official PoVs. If you hex-decode them, you'll see
something like "bad seed to Radamsa"!! That was a bug in how I would invoke
Radamsa -- sometimes I'd pass it a seed that was way too big.
We tried to team up with every team but ForAllSecure. No one wanted to have
our name on their ticket, or they were just fishing for details :-/ We've done
a bit of work on the system since, getting it to work on Linux programs via a
"port" of parts of libc to DECREE.
~~~
Zardus
You didn't approach us, either; bummer! I doubt we'd have been down to team up
outright, but maybe some of you guys could have done an internship in our lab
if you really wanted to work on the CGC? I guess it's ancient history now,
though.
Resource utilization is definitely tricky. But man, the amount of resources
you had is just mind-boggling! I just realized it's even more cores than DARPA
gave us for the final event! I'm impressed you guys managed to keep it all
running smoothly (at least, it seemed that way from our lab, where there was
complete chaos as our system fell over and crapped itself repeatedly for the
first few hours).
~~~
dguido
Hey Zardus, I'm sure the info reached you. What team are you? We approached
everyone either indirectly through broadcast emails or directly through me
calling/emailing.
I'm not sure an internship would have been what we were looking for. If I had
to guess, that's probably why we didn't pursue it further.
------
vulnan
You might not be as far from the cutting edge as you'd expect.
From what I've seen, fuzzing is divided into two major camps (I'm generalizing
to the extreme here):
1\. Mutational - These include tools like AFL, are gaining traction in the
open source community, and have a lot of applications, perhaps most notably in
library and application fuzzing.
2\. Generational - These include commercial tools Defensics and PeachFuzzer,
and open source tools like Peach, Spike, and Sulley. The state of the art is
held by commercial offerings in this camp, and it's what businesses are more
likely to be interested in.
My hypothesis as to the reason for this split: Open source hackers are
interested in finding bugs. Businesses are interested in assurance that their
software is safe ("safe"). Protocol-specific tools give the impression that
we've done the best we can at securing IP/TCP/TLS/HTTP/etc. Defensics is by
far the dominant offering (in terms of apparent popularity), and Peach is the
only active competitor I've ever found.
The open source generational branch is moving very slowly. The primetime
candidate was once Peach, now called Peach Community [1]. Unfortunately the
corporate backer switched to a closed solution, and left the open source tool
out to dry. The latest tool of note besides Peach is Sulley [2] [3].
Books: I haven't found any books that go below the surface. "Fuzzing: Brute
Force Vulnerability Discovery" has decent reviews on Amazon, but I found it
more breadth than depth.
Papers:
1\. IMO the seminal paper on fuzzing is Rauli Kaksonen's thesis, "A Functional
Method for Assessing Protocol Implementation Security." [6] This will take you
almost to the state of the practice. Kaksonen was a co-founder of Codenomicon.
Very interesting read.
Talks: If you want cutting edge research, conference talks and blog posts may
be as good as papers.
1\. 2007 Blackhat conference Sulley talk "Fuzzing Sucks! - Introducing Sulley
Fuzzing Framework" [2]
2\. Google Charlie Miller fuzzing. My favorite slide decks are [7] and [8].
High fives (and a beverage on me should time and space ever permit) to anyone
who can find audio or video from the actual talks.
Shameless plug(s):
1\. Due to lack of response on Sulley pull requests, I forked to a new project
called boofuzz [4], and I commit to at least address pull requests more
quickly.
2\. I'll be giving a fuzzing talk at Defcon 24's Packet Hacking Village which
will address, among other things, the state of open source fuzzing [5].
[1]:
[http://www.peachfuzzer.com/resources/peachcommunity/](http://www.peachfuzzer.com/resources/peachcommunity/)
[2]: [http://www.podcast.tv/video-episodes/pedram-amini-aaron-
port...](http://www.podcast.tv/video-episodes/pedram-amini-aaron-portnoy-
fuzzing-sucks-or-fuzz-it-like-you-mean-it-7581709.html)
[3]: [https://github.com/OpenRCE/sulley](https://github.com/OpenRCE/sulley)
[4]:
[https://github.com/jtpereyda/boofuzz](https://github.com/jtpereyda/boofuzz)
[5]:
[https://www.wallofsheep.com/pages/dc24](https://www.wallofsheep.com/pages/dc24)
[6]:
[http://www.vtt.fi/inf/pdf/publications/2001/P448.pdf](http://www.vtt.fi/inf/pdf/publications/2001/P448.pdf)
[7]:
[https://cansecwest.com/csw08/csw08-miller.pdf](https://cansecwest.com/csw08/csw08-miller.pdf)
[8]:
[http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~rist/642-fall-2012/toorcon.pdf](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~rist/642-fall-2012/toorcon.pdf)
------
thornjm
I would have a look at Project Zero.
P.S. I think many governments and corporations would keep their fuzzing
techniques quite secret. You don't want to do the same fuzzing as anyone else.
~~~
k__
Really?
I thought everyone dropped "security by obscurity" long time ago.
~~~
thornjm
I was actually thinking along the lines of fuzzing for exploit development.
You want a unique bug that will last a long time. In which case, your fuzzing
techniques are a trade secret. A lot of fuzzing advances take place behind
closed doors.
Project Zero has some people with interesting backgrounds doing bug hunting
for good.
~~~
roddux
I hold the belief that Google _must_ be getting something else out of Project
Zero other than just "we hire the best hackers" bragging rights.
I figure they're selling exploits (the ones they don't publicise) to
governments.
------
realkitkat
AFL for Windows:
[https://github.com/ivanfratric/winafl](https://github.com/ivanfratric/winafl)
------
platz
curious how people who have been doing fuzz testing feel about property-based
testing (at least the part about generating inputs, not asserting results)
------
majke
You should watch for upcoming presentations of Mateusz Jurczyk @j00ru . I'm
not entirely sure where he's going to present next though.
------
jdimov10
Try Google:
[https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?as_ylo=2015&q=fuzzing&h...](https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?as_ylo=2015&q=fuzzing&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
PeaCoq, a UI for Coq - geal
http://goto.ucsd.edu/~vrobert/coq-en-stock/blog/2015/06/03/introducing-peacoq/
======
rubiquity
I can't think of a more perfect name for a UI library for the Coq programming
language. I'll show myself out now.
~~~
Ptival
I've always wondered why people building vim support for Coq did not name it
Coq-au-vim...
------
chriswarbo
I see that it uses the 'traditional' stepping forwards/backwards like
ProofGeneral and CoqIDE.
Improvements have been made in Coq 1.5 which make this unnecessary: using the
PIDE system (originally from Isabelle) you can now throw the whole file at
Coq, then send it diffs as the user makes edits. No need to rewind, go-to,
etc.
I've used this in jEdit (
[http://coqpide.bitbucket.org/](http://coqpide.bitbucket.org/) ) but there's
also an Eclipse system built on it too (
[https://coqoon.github.io/cav2015/](https://coqoon.github.io/cav2015/) )
~~~
chriswarbo
Of course I meant 8.5, not 1.5!
~~~
Ptival
Thanks, this is very interesting and I'd love to switch to 8.5.
I might wait a little for my benchmarks to be 8.5 ready though!
------
mpu
For hardcore users I don't think this tactic suggestion thing is a good idea,
for example, how does it deal with custom ltac tactics (cf Chlipala's
bedrock)? To prove me wrong one could test the idea on, say, compcert's
development and compute how often the next tactic is among the suggested ones.
On the other hand, One common problem in large proofs is having too many
hypothesis in stock, one super nice extension would be to quantify the
relevance of each and color/display them accordingly, leaving the option to
move the 'tolerance' threshold for display. This relevance metric would have
to be aware if lemmas available (of A -> B is proved by a lemma, and B is the
goal, A is relevant).
My 2 cts.
~~~
Ptival
Indeed trying tactics in general can be unsatisfactory if you 1) don't let
users enrich the set of tactics tried 2) don't let users prevent some things
from being tried.
For your other issue, I am thinking about ways to hide hypotheses in the
editor, without having to clear them in the actual code. This way they are
still here if you need them, but they don't eat some of your precious brain
space while they are irrelevant (huh) to your current work.
Thanks for your 2 cts! Maybe I'll think about this threshold idea now!
------
microcolonel
I use proof general(which also supports Isabelle), but I'm aware that there
are in fact some people in the world who have not seen the light of St.
Ignucius, and for those I'm sure this is plenty cool.
Good job. :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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