jilebedev

For an explanation of buffer bloat in layman's terms: http://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/bloat/wiki/Introduction

> I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement.

There's a dangerous consequence to saying this. Here's how: 1. Voting is easy.

2. Voting is valueable: it literally changes HN for everyone else.

3. Agreement/disagreement is easy: we're taught how to do it as children.

4. Agreement/disagreement is value-less. Saying that you agree with pg on 'Hackers and Painters' is valueless. Saying "prior to reading H&P, I was in mindset A-B-C supported by points of view D-E-F, and here's how they were modified, and here's the new mindset H-I-J" conveys the same agreement, but it provides value.

We shouldn't incite people to use up/down votes to express something value-less. Agreement and lack thereof (alone) is valueless.

Picking great leaders? That's a tough one. An easier question is to ask "What prompts a Lead 'Hat' stick with an idea though it doesn't seem to be the 'best' idea?"

Developers/designers using OP's two-way criticism style are really removing their own egos and emotions from the discussion and letting ideas honestly fight for themselves. I suspect that the Lead "Hat" is a conduit between developers/designers and executives and it's naturally difficult to convey, let alone objectively discuss corporate objectives in a development/design meeting.

The takeaway for Lead Hat lurkers on HN would be to (unfortunately) expose developers/designers to a wider scope of the project when the ideas are fighting, so they can understand where you're coming from.

Corroborates a piece posted a few days ago on HN: http://al3x.net/2012/02/29/how-not-to-sell-software-in-2012....

Point #2 on the list: "Don’t make it hard for me to try your software. If I can’t play with a trial version or sandbox immediately, I’m moving on."

Another piece of constructive criticism: promotional codes. I can't find the article now, but it argued lucidly that promotional codes are an obstacle to user sign-up: they prompt people away from the page to search for a discount/benefit instead of engaging a user immediately in the service. If the Shoplocket author is lurking about - might be worth setting up A/B testing to figure out whether the Beta Promo code is worth placing so prominently on the front page.

Other than that, looks great. Embedding seems like a smarter way to get connected with your audience than a stand-alone store. Best of luck!

Rather than a post showing that it makes sense to delegate verifiable & menial tasks, I wish the author would have written "How to know you're big enough that your time should be spent on XYZ instead ABC." That's an art and not a science, but tips from people who make $100k/day would make a more useful article.

I agree. In merely linking, bcantrill's post above is more insightful and contains more content than the entire OP. Frankly, this article isn't HN material.

>I came into the discussion looking to prove something, not learn something.

I'm just future-fantasizing here but ... Wouldn't it be a ripe topic of neurochemical study to find out what happens in a brain that decides that ego stroking is more important than learning through constructive conversation? I suspect that "deciding to learn" requires a significantly higher activation energy than simply choosing to prove "I'm right".

Thinking about the price/speed tradeoffs, carrier brand images, and whether I'll be at home when this package arrives doesn't make my gut feel good. I still feel good that I've bought something, but shipping is a bit of a bad aftertaste. Prime dissolves that aftertaste and leaves a wonderful "I get to play with it in TWO days!"

It's just a focus on user experience. Companies solve genuine problems, and while people pay for solutions, they happily pay more for great shrink wrapping.

> Don't get me wrong, I'm still very enamored by Teslas, and I don't think that this is any different than the owner of a gas-powered car letting it run out of oil and seizing the engine

Unfortunately, that's exactly the issue: many uninformed people are getting people like you wrong simply because they lack perspective on the Tesla "bricking" issue. Electrical cars are a new technology and people don't have the perspective to shrug off serious but very unlikely problems.

This is why Tesla's post isn't simply "PR bullshit" -- it provides context for the discussion and perspective. As others have pointed out, perspective exists with ICE vehicles today: we know that there are potential bricking issues, but we keep perspective and shrug them off because we understand how unlikely they are.

It's fair to over-focus on the Tesla bricking issue, but it's more fair to place this discussion in a context: how likely is this problem to occur, and what can be done to prevent it, to spot it before it occurs.

Yet another question for Moser/Dweck: does the almost-immediate negative response to making mistakes diminish if the subject is in a state of flow? From personal experience, a state of flow while performing an intellectually engaging activity diminishes any and all negative feelings I may have. Positive and calm feelings remain, but when I encounter an obstacle or an error, I simply adapt to it like water flowing down a mountain.

I suspect that Moser/Dweck would find that programmers in a state of flow encountering a compile/runtime exception would exhibit significantly lower amplitude signal associated with immediate negative response.

Solution in search of a problem.

Steve Blank speaks about the technology lifecycle adoption curve [1], and I think this entire "health + mobile" market is (optimistically) on the far left end of the curve.

The problem isn't the problem - it's how people feel about the problem. I know I can have a completely digital banking solution, with even phone support 24/7 if I need it, but I don't want that. Banking and my money is important to me, and when I need advice or have problems, I want to walk into a branch and speak with a real person. I'm not a dinosaur or a luddite - I'm 24, and I'm well versed in emerging technology.

I feel even more strongly about my health: I don't care that I can take a picture of my ear drum and send it to a doctor and have an antibiotic prescription that I can forward to my pharmacy and pick up in 30 minutes: there is something wrong with my body, I am concerned, this is important to me, and I want to speak to someone who is trained, credible, and can offer medical advice. The trouble with digital services that attempt to melt themselves into the physical world is that important things need to be dealt with by people. A doctor offers credibility and that is what I want. A 99c iPhone app offers no credibility, and for important things, credibility is important. If a doctor waves off my ear problem as "sleep on it for a few days, here's a note", I trust his advice and I'm more than willing to go through with it. If an iPhone app told me the same, I'd be probably reaching for the uninstall button around the time I'm dialing a doctor to make an appointment.

1. [PDF] page 23/45 http://www.stanford.edu/group/e145/cgi-bin/winter/drupal/upl...

Article: > unless we experience the unpleasant symptoms of being wrong — that surge of Pe activity a few hundred milliseconds after the error, directing our attention to the very thing we’d like to ignore — the mind will never revise its models

tpatke: > it just doesn't apply (and I am a huge fan on Dweck's work). This article is one for the masses - not people who are trying to create the next Google

aristus: > defining characteristic of highly creative people is their ability to change their mind at will. ... A factor in that is developing a strong associative memory ... seeking out many many kinds of knowledge and experiences and constantly trying to connect them together

Being wrong, persisting, and trying to learn from the mistake takes effort. It's difficult, and I suspect as difficult as (if not directly linked to) exerting self-control. Connecting thought is here: http://psr.sagepub.com/content/11/4/303.short

A good question for Moser/Dweck would be: is the physiological response of a child to a mistake a function of their blood glucose levels? I suspect that it is: anecdotally, people are a lot more optimistic and willing to explore an issue instead of yielding to to surface obstacles if they're on a sugar high.

When I write, the majority of my time is spent in diligent focus, refining what I call the "firehose of emotions" that was my first draft.

Thus -- a connecting thought from communication theory: "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I've written a long one instead." - attributed to Blaise Pascal, Mark Twain.

Good communication is clear and simple: in conveying the message, it connects both the hearts and the brains of the author and the reader. This idea of simplicity isn't unique to hardware design, or software code, or written communication, or math ... but I don't believe that's the key takeaway. The point is that it's so difficult to understand and appreciate how much time and effort it takes, spent by talented and focused people, before the solution becomes simple and clean.

Another perspective: people wear hats. We cater the hat to the audience we're addressing. This isn't just a web phenomenon - we've crafted our identities in the real world for thousands of years in order to manipulate the target audience in some fashion or another. For that reason, it's not a smart idea to link a single human to a unified web presence.

Facebook login makes sense in its convenience, but in reality, it grates against something that's pretty important to a lot of people: how they present themselves in front of an audience.

Hmm, this is an interesting business opportunity. I feel the same, but let me prod it further. I suspect the core problem isn't that you're emailing me - it's that you're doing so out of a focus on you, not me.

Hear me out: when I go through the email-signup hullabaloo on a website, it's usually because I really want something from there. It's probably a one time thing, and I'll likely forget about your site and brand momentarily after I receive the object of my attention. When you email me two weeks down the road with some "exciting features" or "website overhaul" or "biweekly coleslaw update of random things on your website" -- I still don't care about you or your website, and now you've annoyed me like a dinner party guest that blabs on about themselves after everyone's body language has made it clear they're not listening or caring.

What I do still slightly care about is the problem you've helped me solve two weeks ago. I imagine a neat way to engage me would be: "Hey, you downloaded these Visio stencils from our website, but check it out - we've just updated our stencils library with these slightly older pieces of equipment. If you've got something old kicking around, it's worth to have a look, instead of drawing it yourself: link. Oh, and by the way, if you want a template and some advice on modelling a building, check out this(link) post on our forums. UsernameXYZ has worked in several large corporations and has modelled enterprise-scale networks. 801 of our users thought it was good advice - it's probably worth a read!"

There is a reason people sign up for service to use it once, and that ought to be cleverly exploited to increase their engagement. The clever bit needn't be unscalable either - the majority of one-time users likely fit into several common scenarios (log in to download something, log in to post something, etc) and it wouldn't be hard to come up with a set of custom messages, each tailored for the particular scenario. That wouldn't cover every one-time use, but I imagine it'd be a fair stab at it.

Do you think this would be a good way to engage you, or would it still fall into the "annoying -> immediately delete from inbox" category?

>It was "I want to develop my own style, here's what I've done to that end. I've had some success, but here's how I struggled with taking it to the next level. What do you suggest, as someone who's accomplished this?"

Connecting thought from this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywu7Vu8Hko0

Quote, not verbatim: "Roadblocks are there to stop people who don't want it badly enough."

Questions like...

> "Oh Teller! I want to be a great magician just like you!"

> "What are 10 things an aspiring magician should do?"

> "Dear Teller, would you mind sending me information you find relevant or letting me pick your brain over coffee?"

... are indications of people who don't want it badly enough. They are infatuated with the fabulous end product, but not infatuated enough to really dive into it. The advice to "prod and demonstrate the failure/successes of your prodding before asking for advice" is not a heuristic against laziness - rather, it's meant to find out the depth of passion in the inquirer. Putting effort into an infatuation elevates it from a passing delightful thought into a serious, long-term passion. People who have chased life-long passions like to help those who aim to do the same.

> Make your long-term decisions when your head is at its clearest, then don’t question those until you’ve had time to track results.

Great tip - I've come across it myself when learning emotional maturity. A part of self-awareness is the mental equivalent of trying and failing to sudo - understanding that who I am at the moment isn't who should be making long-term decisions... and being at peace with that. This doesn't dissolve my discontent, but simply adds a sensible maximum to the damage my emotionally-charged moods can have.

Visual nitpick - the tags are very distracting. When I scroll through a page, I want it to be static so my eyes can follow what I'm doing. Things popping in and out of existence really jars me. The tags' color doesn't seem to mesh well with the rest of the site either.

Other than that - great idea. Best of luck!

Thanks for the recommendation. I've began reading the first 33 pages by the Stanford link above, and it's very difficult to put down.

The issue of customer discovery and validation has always felt like a "large amorphous blob of negative feelings and gut unease" that I would simply ignore. This book faces it squarely and rigorously. I find that exhilarating, and I feel already more confident in tackling this issue while creating things for other people.

An ex-HNer commented a while back, while leaving the community, that the primary deterrent was the culture change to where discussion was not valued. He stated that the primary draw to "Old HN" were not the articles themselves, but rather the long-tailed intellectual discourses that happened in the comments.

I often see comment threads die out on HN far too quickly, and the parties lose interest often. Any change that would promote more critical insight and stimulating conversations gets a profound thumbs up from me.

There are two competing methods, as far as I see: use the bacteria themselves to digest plastic, or use extract the enzyme responsible for plastic dissolution and manufacture it the enzyme responsible for plastic dissolution.

1. Bacteria:

  - Can they adapt to the climate and the ecology of their target environment? 
  - Can they adapt, in particular, to oceanic salt water to dissolve dumped plastic waste? 
  - Overpopulation: what are the consequences? Do natural predators of this bacteria exist? 
  - Underpopulation: can the bacteria be genetically modified to survive in landfills or oceans? Must they be isolated in a controlled environment with plastic?

2. Manufacturing

  - If the enzyme/manufacturing process is controlled by a profit-seeking corporation, would this mean unequal pollution capabilities between the developed and developing worlds? I suspect more plastic waste is improperly disposed by developing countries - thus further exacerbating the problem. 
  - Must the bacteria manufacture the enzyme necessary, or can an enzyme be chemically manufactured? 
  - Does the enzyme have an optimal/useful operating temperature? The Amazon rainforest is not only a freshwater environment, but also a relatively warm climate. Our waste may be captured by cold ocean currents or be present in countries simply far too distant from the equator for this to be a feasible option.

3. Process consequences

  -What are the products of plastic dissolution by this bacteria? 
  -If the process is performed inefficiently/incompletely due to some environmental factors (water salinity, pH, temperature), are there any harmful byproducts? 
  -If the process produces simple chemicals - do these harm other organisms in the environment surrounding the bacteria? 
  -Would the accumulation of the products (CO2 gas for example) further global warming or pollution?

This article leaves me yearning for more details.

I think it's fascinating in and of itself that large telecommunication companies are inconvenienced in any fashion for the purpose of market diversity and fair competition. I would enjoy reading more about such laws.

Objectively filtering code as accepted or discarded according to a high standard of quality is fairly easy when judging others' code. It's a lot more complicated when judging our own code :)

I'd argue we're naturally biased to hold our own creations on a higher pedestal, and hence more likely to keep them instead of discarding or rewriting them.

A great community is built by a focus on positive actions, on growing in a positive direction. To that end - let me take a stab at the definition of a 'value-added comment'.

I would define a value-added comment as lucidly conveyed viewpoint based on a simple set of logically-consistent principles ... that flies in the face of commonly-held understandings of the subject matter at hand. It's not enough to offer an opinion, or an adversarial opinion - it must be clearly stated and supported, so that the emotional weight of its disagreement prompts a healthy discussion where some measure of truth is found, where some insight is gained where there was none before.

This rests on the premises of intellectual honesty, trust, and emotional maturity within all involved, but I nevertheless think that kind of discourse is what would grow HN, and what we ought to focus on. Calling out non-value-added comments does nothing to create a culture of value-added comments.

Education not only teaches facts, but efficiently exposes a person to unknown unknowns. I'd argue that a student-teacher conversation is more efficient at exposing a student to an unknown unknown, than Wikipedia would be.

As a person who finds immeasurable delight in programming, I am immediately wary of this idea. My impression is that this HS's curriculum would be narrower than usual, to accommodate a deep focus on SEG.

If that is the case, I feel this is a disservice to young humans: we ought to be exposing them to as broad a range of human thought as possible, and not narrowly focusing on a passion. The idea (as I understand it) seems to be a recipe for producing narrow humans.

> what was the effect of the code they wrote?

More importantly, the context surrounding the code. I could read someone's code, and find it absolutely abhorrent for any number of reasons: aesthetics, functionality, efficiency, and so on. But if what's written is what the customer wanted, needed, or what was appropriate for the problem, the environment, the cost, or any other constraint that fits into "code context", then by all means it's justified, and I'm unfit to judge the person simply by what's on paper.

In fact, I think a lot of insight about the potential new-hire can be gleaned from their answer to: "Can you describe a situation where you decided that the best course of action was to write 'ugly' code? What do you consider 'ugly'? What was more important than having 'clean' code?"

I doubt I'm the only one to suppose that people who do not understand SOPA also have an outdated or narrow definition of "hacker". Both of those are unfortunate, but if we're being constructive about one (through our combined voices), we may as well take a moment to be constructive about the other - perhaps calling HN "Y Combinator News Aggregator, popularly referred to as 'Hacker News'".

Off-topic: I could not click back in Firefox - I was redirected to the current page. While I felt the points in the article were well stated and poignant, the 'forcible no BACK' feature left a sour taste in my mouth. I won't be returning.