lukestevens

The particularly gross thing about the AMP project is Google's abuse of the concept of open source to recruit volunteer technical labor to implement their anti-FB corporate strategy.

It's just corporate astroturfing.

AMP is obviously conceived, funded, and implemented by Google and its employees. If you squinted your eyes and tilted your head just right you could see a "good for the web" angle with faster mobile pages.

But AMP for email & AMP Stories have nothing to do with making the web faster, it's just another part of Google's attempt to essentially fork the web & control the platform so they can compete with Facebook by shoehorning FB/IG/Messenger features on to the web (Instant Articles, Stories, Carousels, "interactive" email etc).

That's bad in and of itself, and for Google to present its corporate strategy as an "open source" project so it can enlist the help of volunteers and those passionate about the web is disingenuous in the extreme.

There are far more worthy projects that could use volunteer help than a $750 billion company's corporate strategy.

Further thoughts here: https://twitter.com/lukestevens/status/963905898895699968

Optimizely presumably has no incentive to compete with Google Optimize for free users: https://www.google.com/analytics/optimize/ .

Motorola too!

SEEKING WORK - Remote (based in Sydney, Australia).

Need copywriting help? I’d love to chat. I’m interested in helping developers tell their product story, be it through a landing page, drip campaign, or other marketing material. I love getting a deep understanding of technical products so I can explain them clearly and concisely. A coherent product story told in a compelling manner doesn’t just mean better conversion rates, it means clear communication through your entire customer lifecycle. That’s what I’m here to help with.

I have a broad background in design, front-end development, writing (I’m a published author), and analytics, so I can write, design, build, measure, and test. I’ve been freelancing for a decade and happily provide references. I’m easy to work with, reliable, and laser-focused on results.

You can read a bit more about what I offer here: http://thatsanicepage.com/consulting

Email: luke@thatsanicepage.com

I’m a friendly guy, so don’t be afraid to say hello :)

Hi HN. I wrote this teardown, in a slides-with-commentary format I've been working on. Feedback appreciated.

If the title is too clickbait-y, dang or the mods might like to change it to just: Amazon Kindle Oasis Product Page Teardown [slides].

To make this right just make an additional YCF spot for Maciej, call it the "People's Choice" award, and be done with it. You can't hold a popularity contest and deny the popular candidate. Curate from the rest, sure, but people are always going to feel ripped off if the popular winner gets arbitrarily disqualified. That's why 'people's choice' awards exist. Plus if this is an experiment, why not run with the unexpected?

Hey HN,

I made That’s A Nice Page because I’ve often seen products announced here followed by comments like “I visited your landing page and have no idea what your product is/does.”

I figure that’s something I can help with :)

By posting teardowns of interesting/popular tech products from big and (eventually) not-so-big companies I hope we can all learn a few tips on what makes for a compelling product page, and what might make for interesting A/B tests. Check it out and let me know what you think.

I also have SINISTER ULTERIOR MOTIVES behind the site — I hope to find consulting clients specifically here on HN who need help with their product pages, either on the copy or conversion/analytics/testing side. Is that you? I’d love to chat: luke@thatsanicepage.com or http://thatsanicepage.com/consulting. (You can also read about my testing philosophy here: http://thatsanicepage.com/faq#testing.)

But back to the site. I’d love to get your feedback. What do you think of the scroll-the-page-with-my-commentary approach (on desktop)? Like it? Hate it? Is it something that you find enjoyable to scroll through, or would you rather the teardown presented as a normal article? Would you prefer something that’s more like brief highlights, or meaty, in-depth analysis? Why?

And most importantly: What page should I teardown next? :)

Thanks for checking it out! <3

There's a similar, more flexible, open source app you can sideload via Xcode here: https://github.com/anthonya1999/GoodNight . I use it on my non-jailbroken iPhone and iPad. Does the trick for me (all orange, all the time).

Incredible. You're the unsung, bootstrap SaaS success story of HN imo :)

That is a very succinct way of putting it, thank you.

Fast Company posted an excellent, in-depth piece on Line a month ago, and that's what immediately came to mind in light of this announcement: "How Japan's Line App Became A Culture-Changing, Revenue-Generating Phenomenon" http://www.fastcompany.com/3041578/most-innovative-companies...

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9074132

You are victim blaming, and you did it again below with this comment:

>A lot of CFS patients bring up the subject of stomach ulcers. It's almost as if they want to prove that psychosomatic illness doesn't exist.

And we're the ones with the negative attitude?

Anyway, I'm sorry you suffered from a psychosomatic illness.

I see that you've written a book (http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Body-Health-Stress-Tolerance-Jame...) and have articles covering your views on CFS & recovery here: http://www.mind-body-health.net/cfs.shtml. You say:

>However, recovery is possible in all cases, even for the most severely disabled patients, and in many cases this can be achieved by a relatively simple change in lifestyle

You appear to have reached that conclusion by extrapolating from positive, lifestyle magazine style reports of CFS recovery based on a range of dubious treatments (which you put down to the placebo effect) -- along with your own experience.

Can I suggest that's not a great source of evidence?

If I understand you correctly, you believe HPA-axis dysfunction causes the symptoms of CFS, which is prolonged by "factors such as mental attitude and negative feedback". Change your mental attitude and you stop the negative feedback loop, allowing recovery to occur.

This theory appears to me to be:

- Based on many unproven assumptions and leaps of logic around HPA-axis involvement.

- Based on inherently biased recovery reports that could be due to spontaneous recovery (which you mention) as much as anything.

- Results in an unfalsifiable theory that blames patients for their continued suffering (people can recover if they change their attitude/lifestyle; if they don't, they mustn't have changed their attitude/lifestyle).

This is not scientific. Theories around HPA-axis involvement are a dime a dozen. Theories around changing your lifestyle/attitude resulting in a "cure" are simplistic and patronising to the many, many sufferers who have done just that, and not seen the cure you say is possible for all patients.

CFS patients get sick of this sort of thing because it seems to be the proponents of psycho-social approaches with faulty beliefs and poor logic -- not the patients -- that leads to unfalsifiable, unscientific theories being promoted to very sick, very vulnerable people, who you say could be cured, if only they stopped with their gosh darn negative attitudes and poor lifestyle choices!

You need better evidence than anecdotes from mass media and a hand-wavvy physiological/psychological explanation to make such grandiose claims.

Please consider re-evaluating your own beliefs in light of the much broader evidence. For example, a positive attitude and lifestyle change are the driving forces for many CFS patients that leads them on decade+ journeys attempting to right the ship, only to find improvement fleeting at best.

While some people may spontaneously recover along the way, confusing correlation for causation, and painting a minority of psychological cases as reflective of the whole is unhelpful and, honestly, could do with a large serving of humility and more research about those that haven't recovered before you make grand claims about "recovery in all cases" based on mental attitudes and lifestyle changes.

Again, what patients need is real research from the scientific and medical establishments, not hand-savvy, victim-blaming theories from armchair internet experts.

I think the situation is more akin to stomach ulcers, which everyone _knew_ were caused by stress, until of course a physiological cause was found.

You're making sweeping generalisations about a broad patient population that ends in victim-blaming, which isn't helpful.

If there is a subset of chronic fatigue patients that are helped by your method, great. But you don't seem to accept that some CFS/ME patients have tried and have not responded to those sorts of techniques. They did believe it. It didn't work. They need proper medical treatment, in the same way (say) MS patients do, not blame for "simply not wanting to believe it".

Please try and accept that there's more nuance to the situation, rather than painting everyone with the same brush.

> No, it's the refusal to consider such theories and include them in proper research that does the disservice to sufferers. For as long as this continues to be the case, a genuinely effective treatment for CFS will not be found.

But they have been considered. And studied. And found wanting. It is not, anecdotes notwithstanding, possible to "improve your health by improving your emotions using this technique for which there is a solid track record of success". There _isn't_ a "solid track record of success. That's the whole point. If there was, we wouldn't be having this conversation, because everyone with CFS would be cured several times over by now.

That's why there is a need for real (read: effective) treatment. If I, or any other of the many sufferers out there, could heal ourselves through some emotional technique then we would be _over the moon_. But we (and many others) have read the books; tried the techniques; and are right where we started: wanting real funding for real research for a real disease.

Physiological treatment will work alone, just like they have for stomach ulcers, and countless other illnesses that were previously attributed to vague, non-scientific explanations. We just need to do the research.

I found the reference. I assume you're referring to the primary end-point of their initial study which was "effect on self-reported CFS symptoms three months after intervention"? As has been widely discussed, the effects showed up 6-10+ months after initial intervention (which was a very intriguing finding), and were often not sustained. They've since modified their protocol to include maintenance doses, so the results of their phase three trial will be very interesting, when it's finally complete.

Well, "real" insofar as it's shorthand for "not emotion-based". I.e. it can be observed, studied, and treated in an appropriate scientific manner, and not by means of self-help emotional woo.

Do you have a source for your comment about the end-point being negative? The last interview I read with the researchers suggested they were still getting results in 2/3rds of patients, they were optimising their dosing schedule, and were fairly upbeat about their prospects for their phase three trial. I'd be interested to read more discussion on their work though.

Well said. It's also worth noting that psycho-social treatments have been studied extensively (e.g. PACE trial) with poor results.

While I'm happy for people here who have resolved whatever underlying psychological and/or emotional issues that were causing them problematic fatigue, the experience of many CFS/ME patients suffering post-exertional malaise is generally much more specific in the type of fatigue suffered, and much broader in the range of symptoms experienced.

One example of cutting edge CFS/ME treatment research focuses on the use of rituximab, which has been pioneered by Norwegian oncologists who discovered its effectiveness accidentally, and are now pursuing a phase three trial after successful smaller trials. There are a variety of other approaches being explored too (e.g. Pridgen & anti-virals with anti-inflammatories, Montoya at Stanford, and so on).

The work on rituximab, and other research (e.g. this POTS research on autoimmunity: http://www.dysautonomiainternational.org/blog/wordpress/new-...) suggests autoimmunity, but much more research needs to be done.

A serious disease needs serious research, and serious research requires serious funding. Psycho-social theories do a disservice to those suffering from a very real, very debilitating illness, and the sooner these distractions can be dispensed with, the better.

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I'm bootstrapping an analytics Rails app and need someone to knock over the last ~100 hours or so. Budget is tight so open to anyone, anywhere :) You'll be implementing dashboards, widgets, billing etc.

It's a Rails 4/MongoDB app with jQuery on the frontend, so I'm after someone more backend focused (& with some devops skills ideally). I've done all the HTML/CSS & have plenty of docs to help you get up to speed quickly. If you're reliable, available, and affordable, please get in touch :D Email ldstevens at gmail dot com. Thanks!

That's a strange comment. When did I say that? I'm suggesting that curing muscular pain with psychotherapy and emotional journaling is (beyond some simple relaxation response) nonsense; and suggesting it's appropriate for desperately severe CRPS patients is deeply misguided.

I'd be interested in your studies and book - can you share a link?

I follow the research. Psychosocial factors have been studied to death and certainly aren't important for recovery, particularly given recovery is not a particularly common outcome (for CFS/FM at least). (If only they were, it would make recovery a lot easier.) They are, however, peddled by people giving false hope to the vulnerable and desperate.

IMO your certainty about what is or isn't the cause of all those conditions is certainly not justified. For example, how can you be so sure Sarno is "right on the money" when you admit you haven't looked into it very deeply? And Sarno's theory is very much about emotional release, that's the whole point. Gotta get that repressed rage out.

I've been looking into these issues for over a decade. Sarno's theory is psychobabble: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tension_myositis_syndrome.

"The treatment protocol for TMS includes education, writing about emotional issues, resumption of a normal lifestyle and, for some patients, support meetings and/or psychotherapy"

For general back pain, I wouldn't be surprised if this "treatment" involves some very simple stress relief mechanism that relaxes muscles and reduces muscular pain for some people, some of the time.

The theory, however, is nonsense, and you could just as easily substitute "demons" and "exorcism" for "emotions" and psychotherapy" and get the same results. "TMS" is a made up term with no science behind it, just wilful speculation from a professional who should know better.

To suggest it has anything to do with the unremitting pain described in the OP is deeply irresponsible. It's like suggesting homeopathy for cancer. In fact it's probably worse, as it amounts to victim-blaming because the patient isn't dealing with their "repressed" rage/emotions. Awful.

I'm in the same boat (though I've been in said boat for a while), and while it certainly could be worse (as per the OP), it's not much fun either! Glad you've found a couple of things that are at least mildly helpful.

Your suggestion is uninformed; and John Sarno's advice is pure quackery. Please don't speculate like this on severe medical conditions.

Tracking interaction with events is a great idea. Using campaign parameters internally however doesn't seem like a good idea, fwiw: http://www.annielytics.com/blog/analytics/how-to-trash-your-...

Thanks for the response guys - I've found someone to take this on :)

SEEKING FREELANCER - Remote (Anywhere)

I'm a designer looking for a Django or Rails developer to build v1.0 of an Analytics-based web app I've designed, documented, and built HTML templates for that are ready to go.

Budget for the whole project is low five figures, i.e. small, so I'm open to anyone, anywhere, with good availability over the next few months.

There's a smaller, more challenging component of the app that I'd also like help with, especially if you have experience with the Google Analytics API. If this is you, I would LOVE to talk to you :)

I have plenty of info explaining the app, so if you're interested just ask and I'll elaborate further :) Drop me (Luke) a line at ldstevens@gmail.com. Thanks!

Chartbeat is attempting to help with 1 & 2 with "Engaged Time": https://chartbeat.com/publishing/for-editorial/ . (I've no connection).

I'm building an analytics interface for GA though and would love to chat about what else publishers need in an analytics interface - luke at itsninja if you'd like to chat.

Related: the @RealTimeWWII project (https://twitter.com/#!/RealTimeWWII/) is an ambitious, and very compelling re-telling of the war. You really feel the tension, especially with the Dunkirk evacuation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkirk_evacuation) just starting.

Personally, I don't think I could handle multiple daily updates for the next six years, but it's fun to check in with now and again.

Web Monkey calling this "CSS 4" seems a bit misleading -- it's a spec for Selectors Level 4; I don't think there is a monolithic "CSS 4" in the same way there isn't a monolithic "CSS 3". I assume the wide variety of CSS3 modules will be mostly unaffected.