Hilary Mason: How to Replace Yourself with a Very Small Shell Script | Hacker News Reader

Hilary Mason: How to Replace Yourself with a Very Small Shell Script

smarterware.org

122 pointscwan28 comments

Two months ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1192790

Three months ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1102238

This is a really cool presentation. The idea and technique have their flaws, as are pointed out here by several participants, but what bothers me most is that the last two times this was submitted it sank with no up-votes and no comments. Yet here it as (as I write this) 74 up-votes and 17 comments.

How many more brilliant things deserving of our attention do we miss on HN? Is this really a problem? Can it be fixed? Should it be fixed?

Hackers Unite! Don't let the good stuff escape you! Find a way to rid yourself of the dross and find the good stuff!

This link was more likely to be clicked because it appeared more relevant to the interests of HNers:

- The previous two links were Youtube links. I can't click those during business hours so I rarely notice them. I am guessing that many HNers skip Youtube for similar reasons.

- This submission had a better-targeted title: it led with a feminine name. This is good headline craft, especially if your target audience skews male.

- Smarterware.org sounds like either a typo for HN-regular asmartbear.com or a noncommercial lifehacks site. Again, better targeted than Youtube and more likely (from a "should I click this?" heuristic perspective) to have a writeup and the possibility to research the author.

Edit: Just clicked through and noticed that smarterware.org is Gina Trapani's new shindig. This gives added cachet for lifehack enthusiasts.

I think this will always be a "problem" because once an item drops off the new page not many people are going to see it, so it all depends on the quality of the other items currently on the front & new pages, along with the number of other new submissions. I know I've either posted or upvoted a story thinking that it would be popular (i.e. hacker news worthly) and it ends up with maybe two points and is gone.

I put problem in quotes though, b/c I really don't see it as something that should be solved. There is just too much to consume each day, and in the end if it really is worthly it probably will get to you some other way or in this case become popular later on.

This might be cool if you are a quasi web-celebrity, but in a business setting it would be downright dangerous. I can't imagine how terrible I would feel if something completely fell through the cracks OR did not receive an adequate response from me. I also can't imagine auto-nagging my boss about ANYTHING.

I guess the biggest problem I would have using this at work is that it is fundamentally based on the idea that people are contacting me about stupid stuff (generally not true) and that I'm way too busy/important to respond directly to somebody (also generally not true).

I put all of the auto-generated e-mails in my drafts folder, so I can edit, modify, or delete before I send on a case by case basis.

There's also a whitelist.

I'll release the code as soon as I disentangle my personal data from it. Patches welcome. :-)

That's cool. I got the impression that it was communicating with people on the fly with little/no oversight.

Initially it did, but that went wrong a few too many times. :-)

I put all of the auto-generated e-mails in my drafts folder, so I can edit, modify, or delete before I send on a case by case basis.

That is a great way to actually use the drafts folder, looking forward to the code so I can put that to use.

Your way is much simpler. I was building an AI to handle all my emails but it turned out to be a lot harder than I had originally envisioned.

Thanks!

I'm trying to use the model of the unix command line -- each script is useful and simple on its own, but in combination they become incredibly powerful.

I think the statistical importance is by far the most interesting feature. Our inboxes are really priority queues, but we are currently spending a great deal of time and energy doing the prioritization ourselves. The idea of seeing my inbox sorted by importance is game changing.

Hilary, what are the aspects of the email that influence importance? Is it mostly the text content of the email, or are there things like sender, number of emails in the chain, number of recipients, etc?

I agree. For example, why do we look at email ranked chronologically? I'd much rather rank it by relevance or importance (or my likelihood to actually answer it).

The feature set includes sender, recipients, whether I'm the only recipient, time of day, words in the subject, words in the body, and whether I've exchanged messages with the sender recently.

There are still another few days left to apply to YC...

Do the scripts have the ability to change the weight of features on the fly? For example, sender becomes the most important feature when the sender is, for example, my boss or particular end users. Otherwise, other features may be more dominant.

I wouldn't be surprised if GMail gets a feature like this at some point. Google Reader already has an option to rank RSS feeds by what it thinks you're most likely to read, so similar technology already exists at that company. The main (massive) issue would be teaching the filter.

I've always joked around my work that I can replace a certain manager with a shell script, kind of like this: http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/unisex/frustrations...

I kid of course but I've actually given it some thought and I think it could work very well in case of inefficient managers. A good manager does a lot beyond forwarding emails appropriately. However, I've seen many a bad manager simply forward and reply emails as the bulk of their job duties. Hilary's script could indeed work as an automated 'smart' bot if some politeness feature is added in. No need to save anything in drafts folder. Just send it out and have links (or bcc the smart bot) to flag incorrectly sent emails. This could train the filter better.

Bad managers are often such a drag that you could get rid of them without replacing them with anything and it would be a win.

A few years ago I wanted to write a similar chat bot, which would answer questions of my mom in a IM conversation. It wouldn't be difficult at all, since she was asking always the same: did you eat something today? Do you feel good? How was your day? Etc.

But then I couldn't reconcile such solution with my conscience.

When you're a parent yourself you'll understand why your Mom asks you the _same_ _boring_ questions everyday. Count yourself lucky that she cares and that's she's savvy enough to use IM :)

Yes, of course you're right and I fully understand her worries :-)

Count yourself lucky that she's here. If life goes according to plan, one day she won't.

Site's down, but here's the original video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoQ4tka1zNk

It's also blogspam, thanks for the actual link.

http://www.hilarymason.com/blog/ignitenyc-the-video/

I think I just found some ideas for projects to work on when I get bored. :-)

When I worked for a "we'll all work from home" company we used to use IRC as our office. Saying hello to everyone every morning got a bit repetitive so I scripted some good mornings and when people arrived it got triggered to say hello for me.

Eventually though, our sales guy twigged that he was being fooled (as he saw it) and got annoyed about it. The tech side thought it was a cool script but to appease the guy I turned it off.

The irony is that he fucked the company by finding cheaper subcontractors to make more money for himself, a phenomena I've encountered quite a few times now.

> The irony is that he fucked the company by finding cheaper subcontractors to make more money for himself

I can see how that would annoy you but it didn't actually fuck the company, the company could have found those subcontractors itself as well.

It all got a bit messy by that point, low cashflow, mortgages to be paid etc. The risk takers were using their house as collateral and decided to go safe. It was an amicable parting.

Everyone can be replaced with a shell script. If you can describe what they do in language, then its just .. a few .. steps from that language to a shell script.

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