tomkin

I guess living in Canada gives me a different perspective. Generally speaking most telemarketers calling for charity are fairly respectful and are usually contacting you due to a transactional event that's happened fairly recently.

Is it just me, or did they pick pretty much the only telemarketer you wouldn't want to do this to (donations)?

All I'm saying, really, is that if it comes down to giving my people a raise, or paying for Creative Cloud, the raise wins every time. Especially when the alternatives are better.

Perhaps what he should have said was, that there is some apprehension to Adobe subscriptions. The price won't be "Price of Sketch"/"Date of next major version", that's for sure.

  There is always the worry that someone else is going to do
  something you are not able to. But at the same time I think 
  companies that are hell bent focused on growing can as a  
  result lose time in setting up that growth; including 
  setting up new staff, getting them moving in the right 
  direction, etc. I think with a small focused team you can 
  achieve plenty. I don’t think just having more people means 
  you move faster or better.

This. This all day and all night. Growth for growth sake is the blind spot of most entrepreneurs, as they see team size as some sort of pissing match. I see each person you hire as a very personal responsibility, and their lives and livelihood as essential as my own. The idea of hiring people based on hopes and dreams is really irresponsible, and yet many managers agree and willfully acknowledge they hire 20-30 people with no real commitment to them as individuals, with lives.

I am a Sketch fan, but I'll definitely be using it with some extra respect now.

It's funny you say that. I always remark at how god damned similar Facebook is to AOL. Keywords and all.

> Second was that the engineers had offices with doors that closed.

And sometimes that works well. Othertimes it's a hinderance. In this case, I'm arguing that it removes culture from the workplace. There's hardly anyway to deny that. There are also indicators that suggest lowering social interaction is linked with depression; which would have some effect on company culture.

> As a programmer,...

You mean, "you, as an individual person with individual needs", right?

> Finally, I'm rather taken aback that the director of a design agency would get onto a public forum and announce that he doesn't really care about productivity. Productivity relates to money spent; don't your customers care about how much it costs to engage you?

That's an oversimplification of my statement. Our clients pay for us to take our time, to welcome new ideas and research ways to innovate their message, goals or vision. They do care that we spend the extra time – in fact they knowingly pay for it.

See, for me that's the problem. This sense that productivity rules all. Why did you become a programmer, or a designer? Was it to be "maximumly productive"? I sure as heck didn't. Productivity is important, but I have to wonder where you decided it was the absolute most important thing. If you dig a bit, I bet that idea didn't come from you - I bet that idea comes from your industry and the social structure around it.

On paper, the development of Color was productive, but in actuality it was a poorly thought out blunder that costed millions of dollars.

Office culture is more important than the product or service you're developing. There, I said it. And I stand by it. The fact of the matter is, I got into this work so I had something to wake to everyday that isn't a complete anti-social "productivity" sinkhole. Every cubicle, or siloed worker represents attrition to company culture. When we were the happiest in our work, we had community tied to it. Think about the classic examples of first economies - what did they all have in common? It wasn't productivity. It was a desire to build, or bake, or design - and it is these markets where happiness was at its height. Don't fool yourselves. You're being productive towards someone else's idea of happiness - not your own.

I find this argument slanted towards the introverted programmer. Fact is, the introverted programmer is not the standard anymore. Our open office is a mix of different types of people.

I chose an open office because I worked at a company for 9 years. In the first 5 it was an open office. I'm sure some work was suffered, but we had a culture, which is one thing the author seemingly deliberately avoids talking about. The remaining 4 years were stuffed in a cubicle and the office culture died. It became much easier to blame other people for faults because you no longer had a relationship with your co-workers.

I wouldn't say the author is wrong, just that he presents a slanted viewpoint that caters to other programmer introvert types and what their preferences are - but definitely not a fair assessment of the open office.

It does, but the slant always seems to be towards selling it as a better option. I agree remote-management doesn't work. But even here on HN, very rare to see a pro-"keep it" stance on anything. Silicon Valley seems obsessed with "get rich" outcomes.

Has everyone forgotten about the "family owned business" or the business where you just keep it? I feel like I'm saying something foreign, where it shouldn't be foreign at all. Why does everything have to come down to selling the company

Here's my point: Everyone believes in growth. And everyone believes in small business, but people also believe capitalism is fine the way it is.

And we can believe all of those things at once, and wonder why we have poor people in our society, cheque cashing stores and inequality.

You can believe in those three ideas all you want, but they don't believe in each other.

I'm sure there's a few problems with this software, just like others. After reading some of these FWP, and the whining...I dunno, man. There are people throwing acid in the face of girls on the other side of the world, and you're all complaining about having to go into the registry and manually remove context menus.

I don't know anything about Atom, but I'm willing to bet there's really nothing this software is doing that prevents you from sleeping at night.

I said a similar thing a few days ago, but was ridiculed for it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9625769

When it comes to a new article being behind a paywall, I would rather not know the news than have to make an account to view it. Can we ban wsj.com from HN?

I'm happy I wasn't the only one who noticed this. Hopefully Google pays attention, because the marketshare they enjoy may soon see a decline.

Chrome's performance has taken a major hit on iOS and OS X. It regularly freezes up and seems to be getting worse with each new update. Now Chrome to Mobile is being axed soon, to be "replaced" with Google Sync - which isn't even the same thing.

Someone will mention Scratch, but then forget to tell you that it's a piece of garbage.

I can't love this. It seems there is a flood of new products that allow you to track or remember them. This can't be sustainable in the long run, as each product uses it's own proprietary technology, that requires you to use a specific app. Fast-forward 5-10 years. Do I want 30 apps on my phone that track the various things I may or may not bring with me? Nope. That would be very annoying, indeed.

I wonder if most of the people behind these startups are still working under the "work hard, huge payout" mantra, given the evidence against that highly unlikely outcome.

I'm only okay with someone posted a useless (thanks, cool story bro...) option if it's actually encouraging a better community. I suspect this sort of reasoning is why communities often tank - assholes. Assholes who are tempted by the idea of casting judgement. In that sense, it's a disservice because it encourages an emotional behaviour over a rational one.

I just assumed the article didn't address that properly. Simply because that number would be astronomical and not practical. It should only apply to those who require it, under a certain threshold.

I don't think 20k is too high. We're burning more money than that per person just to maintain programs to deal with poverty, homelessness, etc.

> The feature I love about it is the ability to invite someone to a room.

Wow. Groundbreaking stuff here. There were chatroom perl scripts in 1998 that did this.

Is HipChat really a good thing? Constant distractions all day means I get nothing done, so I'm pretty much against any kind of constant stream of communication when you're trying to think. Call me crazy.

On to the service itself:

I can't join in on my client's conversation without creating a whole new account with a different email address. Annoying and incredibly short-sighted. I know that the people over at HipChat never work with anyone outside of their office, but unfortunately this is not the case for most people.

Honestly, I can get an IRC server up and running in the time it takes to get a HipChat account activated. It's annoying that so many people are hyping HipChat, as if it were some groundbreaking thing.

Gotta say, not sure why some are shitting on MS on this one. Whether you like the keyboard or not, it shows that MS isn't all business and fuckups. Sometimes it's a smart idea, or one leading to an innovation.

In my observation the blue states are less racist, so I agree with you. I guess shitting on SF is the trendy thing to do, so I expect that from a few. OP must have met a girl in Calgary that wouldn't go all the way with him.

Downvoted for your blanket statements about an entire populace. Calgary might be more racist? Based on?

Most major Canadian cities are close to the US border, for three very important reasons: geography, temperature & economy. Geography: because a good part of the country is covered in Canadian Shield, making it very expensive to excavate land. Temperature: because the nicest temperatures are near the border. Economy: Transit to exporting is cheaper if you're near the border.

Why would Vancouver be around for Seattle? Wouldn't that be the other way around based on population? Also, if we're going to use US exceptionalism as the standard, then you should help explain Detroit vs. Windsor. Because Windsor isn't getting torn down neighbourhood by neighbourhood.

This tech bubble is different.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_17/b42250609...

One crazy person with a great idea really has a chance to make it in today's world. This entire video and app could be made by 1 person to demonstrate the power of their ideas.

I love that we live in a generation where we have the tools to display our ideas - without the concerns for cost one would have endured trying to build a prototype.

Someone might have an idea for a car dashboard – which, until recently, would have had to include many other people - suppliers, plastic molds, etc. Today we have 3D printers that can facilitate this process.

I think in hast, my wording wasn't as specific as it should have been. My point is: I don't value the opinion that it is not important. Not when you see what happens without it. It's pure fallacy to suggest that web fonts are the problem - when the pressure should be on finding a creative way to resolve the issue (i.e. just display the next available in the font-family list until downloading is complete, or read-ahead meta data that includes kerning, width, height and size, so the layout can modulate well).

You know what's annoying? Having to wait for JavaScript to download before I can click on a menu.

You know what's annoying? Having to wait.

Waiting is annoying. But at the end of the day, a web without typography freedom is not a web I want, or would value. Especially since I remember what people did when they couldn't have web typography: save it as a one-time use only image.

Sorry, you were saying something about speed?