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Kill the settings, build opinionated software | Some people argue software should be agnostic. They say
it's arrogant for developers to limit features or ignore
feature requests. They say software should always be as
flexible as possible.
We think that's bullshit. The best software has a vision.
The best software takes sides. When someone uses
software, they're not just looking for features, they're
looking for an approach. They're looking for a vision.
Decide what your vision is and run with it.
Well, I, in turn, think that's bullshit. IMO, the best software conforms to the way the user works, rather than trying to force the user to work in a way that's unnatural to them.The arguments against a confusing preferences pane and the arguments for sensible defaults in no way contradict the notion of making software than is flexible enough for power users. Poor UI design (3 different places to set prefs?) is orthogonal to the issue of whether or not something should be configurable.Power Users don't matter? Maybe for certain classes of consumer applications that don't face a steep barrier to adoption in the first place. But for some apps, it's the power users who are the early adopters, who first begin using and evangelizing for the software and without whom it would never catch on in the first place. Do you really want to piss those folks off?Make the damn "advanced preferences" pane more or less hidden (ala, about:config) but document the shit out of it and make sure it's at least there for the people who do care. | Here's a little anecdote: Years and years ago, in a moment of free time, I added a bunch of silly settings to my software (EasyBCD, now with 7-10MM+ users). It had almost no users then, and I just added these options to "fill up" the empty preferences dialog. A year or two later, I removed a couple, and the complaints could be heard around the world.The features, you ask? They really are ridiculous: Save the window size on exit. Set the default size of the UI text. Set the default font of the UI text. Open in "advanced mode" by default. Open to a particular page.None of these features really saves a user more than a click. Some of them are purely aesthetic. But their popularity - which I greatly underestimated - was incredible. Till now, people file bugs when their favorite "silly preference" ends up resulting in odd behavior. And they always catch on immediately when I change something there.Sure, it's hard work (read: boring, time-consuming, donkey work) to maintain these options. But I think they're part of the reason EasyBCD has succeeded.(Note: EasyBCD is a software most people install once and never use again. It's definitely not something you would use on a daily basis. But people LOVE power and control, even if it's just an illusion.) |
Kill the settings, build opinionated software | Here's a little anecdote: Years and years ago, in a moment of free time, I added a bunch of silly settings to my software (EasyBCD, now with 7-10MM+ users). It had almost no users then, and I just added these options to "fill up" the empty preferences dialog. A year or two later, I removed a couple, and the complaints could be heard around the world.The features, you ask? They really are ridiculous: Save the window size on exit. Set the default size of the UI text. Set the default font of the UI text. Open in "advanced mode" by default. Open to a particular page.None of these features really saves a user more than a click. Some of them are purely aesthetic. But their popularity - which I greatly underestimated - was incredible. Till now, people file bugs when their favorite "silly preference" ends up resulting in odd behavior. And they always catch on immediately when I change something there.Sure, it's hard work (read: boring, time-consuming, donkey work) to maintain these options. But I think they're part of the reason EasyBCD has succeeded.(Note: EasyBCD is a software most people install once and never use again. It's definitely not something you would use on a daily basis. But people LOVE power and control, even if it's just an illusion.) | This article is little more than a generic rehash of popular memes. Let's break it down:- 37Signals is great, they do simple!
- anecdote
- Apple is great, they do simple!I hope whatever software this guy does has less opinion and more substance. |
Kill the settings, build opinionated software | This article is little more than a generic rehash of popular memes. Let's break it down:- 37Signals is great, they do simple!
- anecdote
- Apple is great, they do simple!I hope whatever software this guy does has less opinion and more substance. | I don't think it's black and white; you can have an opinionated, simplified front end, and a back end that is wide open. The back-end makes some things easier, such as testing, and helping admins deploy to 100+ users.A flexible back-end can even be used to create an opinionated front-end. Consider a "factory defaults" file; preset any behavior, whether or not it has a checkbox. Try every combination, and convince yourself that one is better. Even with these decisions made up front, the interface is there to let other people disagree with you.Mac OS X has a nice balance, because the built-in "defaults" command line program can tweak any setting that would also be available in the application's code. Just because a program is a GUI, doesn't mean that it should rely exclusively on GUI elements for configuration. |
Kill the settings, build opinionated software | I don't think it's black and white; you can have an opinionated, simplified front end, and a back end that is wide open. The back-end makes some things easier, such as testing, and helping admins deploy to 100+ users.A flexible back-end can even be used to create an opinionated front-end. Consider a "factory defaults" file; preset any behavior, whether or not it has a checkbox. Try every combination, and convince yourself that one is better. Even with these decisions made up front, the interface is there to let other people disagree with you.Mac OS X has a nice balance, because the built-in "defaults" command line program can tweak any setting that would also be available in the application's code. Just because a program is a GUI, doesn't mean that it should rely exclusively on GUI elements for configuration. | At the farthest reaches of powerful software, you will always end up with a programming language and libraries.At the other extreme, you have one thing that does exactly one task and as such can have a nearly "invisible" interface.My suspicion is that it's actually kind of rare to need the areas in between - that apps like spreadsheets and photo editing are unusual, and if you _suspect_ that you have an app that could be developed in such a broad, deep, configurable way, your best bet is to start building in a library form and construct prototype one-shots - possibly even making them your MVP - attacking various different problems to see if you're right, before you try to make a unified monster UI for the perceived need. |
Copyright Holders Punish Themselves With Crazy DMCA Takedowns | There really needs to be an immediate financial cost associated with incorrect DMCA takedowns.For instance, the entity the requests are made of (in this case Google) should be able to claim money for every false take down request. | So basically, this is a way for movie/music studios to remove bad reviews from the public eye? |
Copyright Holders Punish Themselves With Crazy DMCA Takedowns | So basically, this is a way for movie/music studios to remove bad reviews from the public eye? | I hope Google did take down the official content, just like their owner asked! That might push the industry to take a harder look at their DMCA takedown automation. |
Copyright Holders Punish Themselves With Crazy DMCA Takedowns | I hope Google did take down the official content, just like their owner asked! That might push the industry to take a harder look at their DMCA takedown automation. | Aren't DMCA takedowns notices made under penalty of perjury? Why are they being sent out in what seems to be an automated fashion without any proper review? |
Copyright Holders Punish Themselves With Crazy DMCA Takedowns | Aren't DMCA takedowns notices made under penalty of perjury? Why are they being sent out in what seems to be an automated fashion without any proper review? | This is another instance of those 'clbuttic' mistakes someone can make when they learn regular expressions and think they can easily censor things they don't like. |
Ask HN: .net vs .com | First register the .net name while you are thinking. It's only $7 or so..com is better than .net because .net is below the radar for most people. Have you thought of .org It doesnt mean nonprofit. It was set up for everyone else not in the military/industrial complex. Most people are aware of .org.The going price for parked or low volume domains is around $15K Maybe an offer in that range will get his attention.Someone in another thread made the point that most people will come to your site via search and your real name is not important. I dont really subscribe to that argument because people tell their friends without giving a proper link, say on the phone.I thing you will regret the conflict if you go the .net route. Find another catchy name or add another word to the name you are already considering. TheCatchyName vs CatchyName. Remember catchy names are rarely as good as you think they are.Final piece of advice. Do a trademark search for your name. (tm) is weak but (R) is very strong and you should avoid the conflict. | Am I going to regret pushing forward with the .net address, or should I try to think of some different names that end in .com?Yes. Since 1996 it has always seemed that all the good names were taken, and yet it has always been possible to find ones that weren't. All your name has to be is acceptable. Google.com is not a great name; the reason it seems good now is the associations we have with it. |
Ask HN: .net vs .com | Am I going to regret pushing forward with the .net address, or should I try to think of some different names that end in .com?Yes. Since 1996 it has always seemed that all the good names were taken, and yet it has always been possible to find ones that weren't. All your name has to be is acceptable. Google.com is not a great name; the reason it seems good now is the associations we have with it. | Choose a different name. There are still tons available. Let the domain whores hold on to their "Premium four letter .com!!" names.Just look harder and you'll find the gem.(I spent about a day and found mibbit.(com|net|org) and I'm still pleased enough with the name). |
Ask HN: .net vs .com | Choose a different name. There are still tons available. Let the domain whores hold on to their "Premium four letter .com!!" names.Just look harder and you'll find the gem.(I spent about a day and found mibbit.(com|net|org) and I'm still pleased enough with the name). | There are some good sources out there to try and find a domain name. http://www.domainpigeon.com/ is a good if you're looking for a random name.To answer you're question, you should absolutely get a .com. In my experience, the .net name eventually becomes a pain in the butt for branding and user acquisition, especially with the .com having only a blank directory (a user will just think your site is dead).It's also one of the first questions you'll get when pitching to investors. Why couldn't you get the .com? You're answer so far has been that you couldn't negotiate it. That sends the wrong message.Cut your losses and just find a .com. |
Ask HN: .net vs .com | There are some good sources out there to try and find a domain name. http://www.domainpigeon.com/ is a good if you're looking for a random name.To answer you're question, you should absolutely get a .com. In my experience, the .net name eventually becomes a pain in the butt for branding and user acquisition, especially with the .com having only a blank directory (a user will just think your site is dead).It's also one of the first questions you'll get when pitching to investors. Why couldn't you get the .com? You're answer so far has been that you couldn't negotiate it. That sends the wrong message.Cut your losses and just find a .com. | Regarding the guy holding the .com - Just because there's no website there doesn't mean it isn't being used. Think email. |
Ask HN: How to think on the spot and persuade? | I have no idea what I'm talking about, but if you get lost, you can frame your argument in an analogy and build your way up from there. As long as your argument is rational, you can find parallel examples in almost any topic (especially topics you're deeply familiar with!). This kind of arguing doesn't rely on fact, but broad general concepts, which should give you a lot of leeway for where you want to take your discussion. | Practice should help; there are debate clubs for that. Or try debating politics - it's mostly useless, but you'll never lack willing opponents. Knowing your subject very well helps, too. Staying calm is always useful; I have no recommendation on how to achieve that, though (I never really had to work for that.) |
Ask HN: How to think on the spot and persuade? | Practice should help; there are debate clubs for that. Or try debating politics - it's mostly useless, but you'll never lack willing opponents. Knowing your subject very well helps, too. Staying calm is always useful; I have no recommendation on how to achieve that, though (I never really had to work for that.) | I have seen many people have this issue. Being very smart and not being able to construct and argument on the feet.
I always advise them to join Toastmasters. I'm a member and it has greatly improved my persuasive abilities. |
Ask HN: How to think on the spot and persuade? | I have seen many people have this issue. Being very smart and not being able to construct and argument on the feet.
I always advise them to join Toastmasters. I'm a member and it has greatly improved my persuasive abilities. | The trick to speaking well is practice. Talk through your arguments in a safe calm environment, speak freeform without stopping, record and watch your practice sessions. If that sounds like too much work, try Toastmasters. |
Ask HN: How to think on the spot and persuade? | The trick to speaking well is practice. Talk through your arguments in a safe calm environment, speak freeform without stopping, record and watch your practice sessions. If that sounds like too much work, try Toastmasters. | Expect to be challenged when conversing. When speaking, prepare your next point. Appear calmer and more confident than the other person. Relax. |
Komanda: IRC Client For Developers | Is this an IRC client or an IRC server?Looking at the code, it appears to be a client, but in that case why does the site talk about it providing support for "Channels, Users, Permission, Private, Public and much more", why does it claim it makes my channel contents more secure (under "Secure Your Logs"), and why does it talk about setting up an IRCd (" With a ZNC bounce, a simple ircd server and 5 minutes you can avoid paying for communication and keep your company chat logs secure and on your own infrastructure.").If it's a server, why is how to set it up not described?Not sure if OP is actually part of the dev team, or just somebody who found the site, but a word to the devs: your website should clarify which of the above you are providing. If it's a client, the site shouldn't talk about the benefits I'd get running my own IRCd (security of communication, IRCd features like channel modes and permissions, or lower cost). If you are intending for folks to run their own IRCd, the site needs to have information on where that software lives and how to set it up, and why I'd want to do that instead of just making a channel on OFTC or Freenode or similar. | It's beyond me why anyone would write a desktop application in JS, CSS, and HTML, and require node as a dependency. These technologies are already bastard children of the 'just make it work' mentality. Using them for an environment they were never designed for, when there is decades of existing infrastructure purpose-built (and far easier to use), makes no sense. The only reason that I can come up with for why someone would build a desktop app with these technologies is that they cbf to learn to use the correct tools for the job.As for "the best client for developers" -- I'll stick with irssi, thanks. |
Komanda: IRC Client For Developers | It's beyond me why anyone would write a desktop application in JS, CSS, and HTML, and require node as a dependency. These technologies are already bastard children of the 'just make it work' mentality. Using them for an environment they were never designed for, when there is decades of existing infrastructure purpose-built (and far easier to use), makes no sense. The only reason that I can come up with for why someone would build a desktop app with these technologies is that they cbf to learn to use the correct tools for the job.As for "the best client for developers" -- I'll stick with irssi, thanks. | > With a ZNC bounce, a simple ircd server and 5 minutes you can avoid paying for communication and keep your company chat logs secure and on your own infrastructure.Having watched a coworker spend a solid week getting our company's ircd setup (and this was our VP of Engineering, mind you), I've gotta call BS here. Also, until I started using irccloud[1] a few months ago, I was using ZNC, and that's no walk in the park either.[1] https://www.irccloud.com/ |
Komanda: IRC Client For Developers | > With a ZNC bounce, a simple ircd server and 5 minutes you can avoid paying for communication and keep your company chat logs secure and on your own infrastructure.Having watched a coworker spend a solid week getting our company's ircd setup (and this was our VP of Engineering, mind you), I've gotta call BS here. Also, until I started using irccloud[1] a few months ago, I was using ZNC, and that's no walk in the park either.[1] https://www.irccloud.com/ | The reason irccloud is popular is that it is simple to set up and there is a really great mobile client. No one really needs another web based client, even if it is free; there are plenty of alternatives for that such as ircanywhere[1] or Convos[2].
I'm really not sure who this is for.[1] http://ircanywhere.com/[2] https://github.com/Nordaaker/convos |
Komanda: IRC Client For Developers | The reason irccloud is popular is that it is simple to set up and there is a really great mobile client. No one really needs another web based client, even if it is free; there are plenty of alternatives for that such as ircanywhere[1] or Convos[2].
I'm really not sure who this is for.[1] http://ircanywhere.com/[2] https://github.com/Nordaaker/convos | I keep an IRC client (Colloquy for OSX) open everyday when I get home from work. However, it crashes a few times a day and I think it's about time to switch. Is this a suitable replacement for Colloquy? Any recommendations on a better IRC client to use, web-based or OSX, are much appreciated. Thanks! |
Ask HN: Founders: Interested in earning extra cash? | I'd be super interested in this. Been working on a startup full-time but might have to look for contract work soon. I think the value add of something like this is having you curate the job listings for entrepreneurs and you being able to convince companies the value of our unique skill set. Might be best done manually at first but I'd pay for a service like that. | What I really want is an agent. I'd be willing to give up a small percentage if my hourly every month to an agent who brought me contracts I was really, really interested in. I've thought many times about how to pull this off, and I just don't know if the dynamic is right in the industry. |
Ask HN: Founders: Interested in earning extra cash? | What I really want is an agent. I'd be willing to give up a small percentage if my hourly every month to an agent who brought me contracts I was really, really interested in. I've thought many times about how to pull this off, and I just don't know if the dynamic is right in the industry. | FWIW, I know of at least one member of the billion-plus exit club who was a core founder & did sidework during the early days.... |
Ask HN: Founders: Interested in earning extra cash? | FWIW, I know of at least one member of the billion-plus exit club who was a core founder & did sidework during the early days.... | You have my attention. Now, what's the pitch? |
Ask HN: Founders: Interested in earning extra cash? | You have my attention. Now, what's the pitch? | Is this of interest?Oh yeah, definitely.Thoughts?Want. Now.Seriously, I could see this being really useful if it works. I'd be very interested in giving it a try. |
UI responsiveness: OSX vs. Windows, iOS vs. Android | Speaking of anecdotes, I have always found Windows more responsive than OS X to the point where I have completely switched to Win 7 - mouse handling and screen drawing is definitely superior on Windows.However it is easier on Windows to mess up the experience - install some crappy antivirus or other messy program and it is a piece of cake to make Windows feel laggy. | I don't really have an opinion on Windows vs. OS X, but I have been extremely impressed with iOS's graphical performance.It's not just that they have good framerate - even Android can get good average framerate. The amazing thing about iOS that it gets amazing maximum frame delay, i.e. the space between frames is almost never more than 33ms (~30fps). On Android you frequently run into tiny little hiccups in frame delay that might not impact its measured FPS, but are certainly noticeable to the human eye. The result is that it just doesn't feel as smooth.I don't know how Apple achieved this. It's certainly not perfect - you can occasionally get an iDevice to freeze for a few hundred milliseconds, but those are very rare occurrences. It's as if they have a real-time guarantee built into the system, but I don't think they actually have one. Which is a pretty amazing accomplishment. |
UI responsiveness: OSX vs. Windows, iOS vs. Android | I don't really have an opinion on Windows vs. OS X, but I have been extremely impressed with iOS's graphical performance.It's not just that they have good framerate - even Android can get good average framerate. The amazing thing about iOS that it gets amazing maximum frame delay, i.e. the space between frames is almost never more than 33ms (~30fps). On Android you frequently run into tiny little hiccups in frame delay that might not impact its measured FPS, but are certainly noticeable to the human eye. The result is that it just doesn't feel as smooth.I don't know how Apple achieved this. It's certainly not perfect - you can occasionally get an iDevice to freeze for a few hundred milliseconds, but those are very rare occurrences. It's as if they have a real-time guarantee built into the system, but I don't think they actually have one. Which is a pretty amazing accomplishment. | I love OSX, but objectively speaking, "The lag of a Mac OS X cursor is at least twice bigger than Windows’ cursor and yes, a human eye can surely notice that." http://d43.me/blog/1205/the-cause-for-all-your-mac-os-x-mous... |
UI responsiveness: OSX vs. Windows, iOS vs. Android | I love OSX, but objectively speaking, "The lag of a Mac OS X cursor is at least twice bigger than Windows’ cursor and yes, a human eye can surely notice that." http://d43.me/blog/1205/the-cause-for-all-your-mac-os-x-mous... | There's many reasons to prefer OSX over Windows (and vice-versa)But OSX UI certainly never has been reacting faster than Windows UI. Things like opening dirs, menu navigation, window resizing, etc is much faster in Window and its been that way since OSX started (OS9 and prior had a fast UI). |
UI responsiveness: OSX vs. Windows, iOS vs. Android | There's many reasons to prefer OSX over Windows (and vice-versa)But OSX UI certainly never has been reacting faster than Windows UI. Things like opening dirs, menu navigation, window resizing, etc is much faster in Window and its been that way since OSX started (OS9 and prior had a fast UI). | Unless people can back this up with hard facts they simply shouldn't post these kinds of stuff. |
Kickstarter: Shorter project durations lead to higher funding rates | Also interesting in the graph, 30, 45, 60, and 90 day durations are quite popular and significantly poorer at getting funded than other durations.Is the kind of person that picks a number like that less able to write a convincing story? Is there something about seeing those unthoughtful numbers that turns off donors? | I've had a lot of friends try Kickstarter for various projects, most have chosen to start longer campaigns under the assumption that more time will increase the chance of funding the project.Personally, I agree with Kickstarter's assessment that longer campaigns create less urgency. This seems to make sense. Often times, If I see a friend has a longer running campaign, I'll procrastinate and put off donating until later in the game. I'm sure other people do this too, and not all of them remember.In the campaigns my friends have run, it's usually that first push out to their social network that gets the biggest response, after that the donations start slowing down. A few more people will kick in some extra dough at the end (like me), but by that time most people have moved on. |
Kickstarter: Shorter project durations lead to higher funding rates | I've had a lot of friends try Kickstarter for various projects, most have chosen to start longer campaigns under the assumption that more time will increase the chance of funding the project.Personally, I agree with Kickstarter's assessment that longer campaigns create less urgency. This seems to make sense. Often times, If I see a friend has a longer running campaign, I'll procrastinate and put off donating until later in the game. I'm sure other people do this too, and not all of them remember.In the campaigns my friends have run, it's usually that first push out to their social network that gets the biggest response, after that the donations start slowing down. A few more people will kick in some extra dough at the end (like me), but by that time most people have moved on. | I disagree with limiting to 60 days instead. Educate your users, but some may very well have a good reason to choose 90... Like they expect a TV appearance in 75 days.That person would have to wait 30 days to list the project in order to bank on the buzz from the tv appearance.That example is just off the top of my head, but the point is that some of the world doesn't work at the pace of the web. |
Kickstarter: Shorter project durations lead to higher funding rates | I disagree with limiting to 60 days instead. Educate your users, but some may very well have a good reason to choose 90... Like they expect a TV appearance in 75 days.That person would have to wait 30 days to list the project in order to bank on the buzz from the tv appearance.That example is just off the top of my head, but the point is that some of the world doesn't work at the pace of the web. | > With those things in mind, today we’re lowering the maximum amount of time a creator can choose for their project from 90 days to 60 days.Wet sidewalks cause rain. Film at 11.In other news, banning anonymous article creation on Wikipedia has increased the acceptance rate of anonymous articles to 100%, a stunning increase in average quality. |
Kickstarter: Shorter project durations lead to higher funding rates | > With those things in mind, today we’re lowering the maximum amount of time a creator can choose for their project from 90 days to 60 days.Wet sidewalks cause rain. Film at 11.In other news, banning anonymous article creation on Wikipedia has increased the acceptance rate of anonymous articles to 100%, a stunning increase in average quality. | What if they picked longer durations because they already knew their goal would be hard to reach? |
Ant colony simulator | A more piecemeal simulation released by Maxis back in 1991. Possibly some inspirations (red ants vs black ants, food represented in green circles/spheres):http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimAnt | "- Magnifier:zoom in and zoom out."Aw, I was hoping the magnifier did something else. |
Ant colony simulator | "- Magnifier:zoom in and zoom out."Aw, I was hoping the magnifier did something else. | This reminds me of Rich Hickey's Clojure Concurrency talk[1], where he uses a simulation of an ant colony to explain Clojure's concurrency features. Hickey's version[2] is a lot simpler, but remains an interesting starting point if you want to hack on something similar.[1] http://blip.tv/file/812787[2] http://clojure.googlegroups.com/web/ants.clj?gda=T0C_CjoAAAD... |
Ant colony simulator | This reminds me of Rich Hickey's Clojure Concurrency talk[1], where he uses a simulation of an ant colony to explain Clojure's concurrency features. Hickey's version[2] is a lot simpler, but remains an interesting starting point if you want to hack on something similar.[1] http://blip.tv/file/812787[2] http://clojure.googlegroups.com/web/ants.clj?gda=T0C_CjoAAAD... | We've created a basic ant simulation as a Python library for NodeBox. NodeBox runs on Mac but the library is cross-platform.http://nodebox.net/code/index.php/Ants |
Ant colony simulator | We've created a basic ant simulation as a Python library for NodeBox. NodeBox runs on Mac but the library is cross-platform.http://nodebox.net/code/index.php/Ants | Anyone want to write a HTML5 version? Where the ants are each Erlang processes? |
Apple didn't revolutionize power supplies; new transistors did | It's a pleasant surprise to see my old power supply article on the front page of HN today. I'd never given much thought to power supplies before researching that article and there's a lot more to their history than I expected. In particular, Robert Boschert seems like he should be a HN hero for running a startup from his kitchen table that had a huge (disruptive?) impact on the power supply industry.There are a bunch of comments below about wall chargers. I investigated wall chargers too - see http://righto.com/charger - and there's a lot more inside them than you'd expect.Let me know if you have any questions. | Devil's advocate:Jobs: "Instead of a conventional linear power supply, Holt built one _like_those_used_in_oscilloscopes_."TFA: "It turns out that Apple's power supply was not revolutionary"Indeed. If we believe Jobs, it was used in oscilloscopes before.Jobs probably exaggerated/boasted/lied when he spoke of "ripping off", but this article isn't 100% honest with the facts, either. |
Apple didn't revolutionize power supplies; new transistors did | Devil's advocate:Jobs: "Instead of a conventional linear power supply, Holt built one _like_those_used_in_oscilloscopes_."TFA: "It turns out that Apple's power supply was not revolutionary"Indeed. If we believe Jobs, it was used in oscilloscopes before.Jobs probably exaggerated/boasted/lied when he spoke of "ripping off", but this article isn't 100% honest with the facts, either. | Funny how the first comment of that article links to an older HN submission:http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3636047 |
Apple didn't revolutionize power supplies; new transistors did | Funny how the first comment of that article links to an older HN submission:http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3636047 | I have never had the impression that Apple had revolutionized power supplies. Honestly, I am happy if I am not forced to use a three-pin plug and the power supply works reliably. |
Apple didn't revolutionize power supplies; new transistors did | I have never had the impression that Apple had revolutionized power supplies. Honestly, I am happy if I am not forced to use a three-pin plug and the power supply works reliably. | This is what I called a well researched article. |
Aldous Huxley was right, not George Orwell | This is a false dichotomy. It's quite possible - and indeed, probably much more likely - that aspects of both are becoming bigger parts of our lives at the same time.
These two aspects of human culture - authoritarianism and dissipation have always been with us, this isn't new; 'dictatorship' & 'bread and circuses' would both be familiar concepts to citizens of ancient Rome. | People seem to assume it's a choice between Huxley, Orwell, or the combination of the two. They miss a very big option, which is that humanity is in fact better off than it used to be. Marx was dead wrong about the future(remember, he thought that global communist revolution was inevitable) but he was dead right about the time that he lived in. Up until the 1950s or 60s or so, a good half of the population wasn't able to hold any but a rare few jobs. During the early days of the Industrial Revolution up until about the decade of the 1900s, you would be considered lucky if you were paid in money rather than company scrip that would be useless outside of the company town you lived in, meaning that if you wanted to change jobs you pretty much lost all your money. In the Middle Ages, ...if I have to explain to you why the Middle Ages sucked compared to today, you're already a lost cause. I could go on.Want a real dystopia? Read a history book. |
Aldous Huxley was right, not George Orwell | People seem to assume it's a choice between Huxley, Orwell, or the combination of the two. They miss a very big option, which is that humanity is in fact better off than it used to be. Marx was dead wrong about the future(remember, he thought that global communist revolution was inevitable) but he was dead right about the time that he lived in. Up until the 1950s or 60s or so, a good half of the population wasn't able to hold any but a rare few jobs. During the early days of the Industrial Revolution up until about the decade of the 1900s, you would be considered lucky if you were paid in money rather than company scrip that would be useless outside of the company town you lived in, meaning that if you wanted to change jobs you pretty much lost all your money. In the Middle Ages, ...if I have to explain to you why the Middle Ages sucked compared to today, you're already a lost cause. I could go on.Want a real dystopia? Read a history book. | Orwell was specifically warning about the dangers of a communist totalitarian state. He was one of the few left-leaning writers that spoke out against Stalinism. North Korea has become, in every sense, a '1984' state. China and the former Soviet Union seem to be in transition from '1984' to 'Brave New World'. |
Aldous Huxley was right, not George Orwell | Orwell was specifically warning about the dangers of a communist totalitarian state. He was one of the few left-leaning writers that spoke out against Stalinism. North Korea has become, in every sense, a '1984' state. China and the former Soviet Union seem to be in transition from '1984' to 'Brave New World'. | Blog spam, the original is here: http://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing-Ourse...And the original discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=627476Edit: (article link was changed by moderator) |
Aldous Huxley was right, not George Orwell | Blog spam, the original is here: http://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing-Ourse...And the original discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=627476Edit: (article link was changed by moderator) | Yap, Brave New World is much more interesting to those who want to understand what might be our future than 1984. I believe that's common sense to those who read both novels.Also interesting is Brave New World Revisited, a book written 30 years after he's other book where he compares it with 1984 by Orwell. He also makes some guesses about the future[1].I love dystopias and Brave New World is the best.spoiler[1] The most important one being about soma and how it's so similar to lsd. |
Bitmessage - a P2P communications protocol to send encrypted messages | Why does nobody use URIs? At least bittorrent magnet links got this right.We have standards for a reason, guys.Furthermore, any system in which all nodes receive all messages will not scale. Additionally, without proof-of-work, it is trivial to disable the network through flooding. | And we're back to Waste again. ;)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASTE for those who don't know) |
Bitmessage - a P2P communications protocol to send encrypted messages | And we're back to Waste again. ;)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASTE for those who don't know) | I feel like bitcoin is the leading edge of a wave of peer to peer encrypted technologies. Namecoin is also interesting.http://www.reddit.com/r/bitmessagehttp://www.reddit.com/r/namecoin |
Bitmessage - a P2P communications protocol to send encrypted messages | I feel like bitcoin is the leading edge of a wave of peer to peer encrypted technologies. Namecoin is also interesting.http://www.reddit.com/r/bitmessagehttp://www.reddit.com/r/namecoin | >Bitmessage is in need of an independent audit to verify its security.Just saying. |
Bitmessage - a P2P communications protocol to send encrypted messages | >Bitmessage is in need of an independent audit to verify its security.Just saying. | Someone has set up an image board: BM-BbbuVnYuaSY6yjyhfQm5KVrJLqjiyetB
Subscribe to (and share) base64-encoded[1] images. Just send the base64 encoded image to the above Bitmessage address and it will be auto-relayed to subscribers. Don't forget putting the file name and extensions as the subject!BEWARE! Medium/big images (>1Mb) may take hours to be work-proven before being sent.[1] Convenient online encoding/decoding (even from/to binaries) http://www.motobit.com/util/base64-decoder-encoder.asp |
The man behind FAKEGRIMLOCK | Can someone explain the downvoting of FAKEGRIMLOCK's comments? I find them insightful, substantive, and hilarious, but is some HN norm being stepped on? | I really appreciated the candidness on getting out of the midwest. I love home. Born and raised near Kansas City, Missouri and went to school at Missouri and Iowa.But the resources and mindset aren't there yet to build a consumer-web startup. Zaarly is the best example and yet a large chunk of its team is on the coasts. Hard to tell the truth when you're a "nobody" as FAKEGRIMLOCK mentioned. But at the mythical FAKEGRIMLOCK is become easier to say what's on your mind. |
The man behind FAKEGRIMLOCK | I really appreciated the candidness on getting out of the midwest. I love home. Born and raised near Kansas City, Missouri and went to school at Missouri and Iowa.But the resources and mindset aren't there yet to build a consumer-web startup. Zaarly is the best example and yet a large chunk of its team is on the coasts. Hard to tell the truth when you're a "nobody" as FAKEGRIMLOCK mentioned. But at the mythical FAKEGRIMLOCK is become easier to say what's on your mind. | FAKEGRIMLOCK seems very relevant to this site as he created a brand out of nothing and I find most of his short comments insightful. So the interview is a nice read on his tactics even if it's a bit shallow.
I just hope we don't have tons of clones of his persona. It works only once or twice. |
The man behind FAKEGRIMLOCK | FAKEGRIMLOCK seems very relevant to this site as he created a brand out of nothing and I find most of his short comments insightful. So the interview is a nice read on his tactics even if it's a bit shallow.
I just hope we don't have tons of clones of his persona. It works only once or twice. | It's really a shame that FG's comments were downvoted here... Can anyone shed some light on what happened? |
The man behind FAKEGRIMLOCK | It's really a shame that FG's comments were downvoted here... Can anyone shed some light on what happened? | @fakegrimlock is as genuine as can be. His advice is golden and right on. Just accept him and his persona as they are. |
ORNL invention unravels mystery of protein folding | URL of their paper in PLoS ONE: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna... | Short URL to the patent at USPTO: http://1.usa.gov/plfTg3I am not a specialist in protein folding, so take it with a grain of salt, but from the figures it does not look like method predicts actual configurations decoded from experiments. Patent itself acknowledges that (5.50): "the lack of computational prediction [...] can be attributed to problems arising form calculating molecular mechanics potentials (force-fields)".Could anybody knowledgeable make an assessment how important this invention is? |
ORNL invention unravels mystery of protein folding | Short URL to the patent at USPTO: http://1.usa.gov/plfTg3I am not a specialist in protein folding, so take it with a grain of salt, but from the figures it does not look like method predicts actual configurations decoded from experiments. Patent itself acknowledges that (5.50): "the lack of computational prediction [...] can be attributed to problems arising form calculating molecular mechanics potentials (force-fields)".Could anybody knowledgeable make an assessment how important this invention is? | Pretty low on detail, such as how dies this differ from the old method and what makes it so much more efficient exactly. |
ORNL invention unravels mystery of protein folding | Pretty low on detail, such as how dies this differ from the old method and what makes it so much more efficient exactly. | Why is there a patent on an algorithm that was developed using tax-payer money? Or maybe more importantly, why is it "available for licensing". Technically, I already own a small portion of the technique! |
ORNL invention unravels mystery of protein folding | Why is there a patent on an algorithm that was developed using tax-payer money? Or maybe more importantly, why is it "available for licensing". Technically, I already own a small portion of the technique! | talk about deceptive titles.
i know this much: protein folding is to many the holy grail of biotech. because most(?) of the most successful biologics have been large proteins. because protein folding is so obscure, manufacturing large, complex proteins is non-trivial, difficult to scale up and to troubleshoot. (using computer buzzwords since this is hn.) there are a limited number of facilities in the world that can do it right. a delicate process to say the least.a more accurate headline might be: patent granted to ornl for work on protein folding. |
America Loses Its Dominant Economic Role | "Also on display is the end of arrogance. The Americans are now paying the price for their pride."Pure schadenfreude, most of it. Kind of sad, really, given that Der Spiegel has a reputation for serious content. Most of the criticism of US policy is valid, as far as it goes. And, yes, those policies have produced a ton of bad blood among trading partners.But this article just drips with glee at the plight of the poor, dumb 'mericans. That's just beneath them. Terrible journalism. | America is still a dominant economic force right now, but the writing is on the wall. Unless careful action is taken, I think all the signs point towards a decline in America's ability to project its power. As an American in my 20's, I grew up listening to hearing about how we were such a good country with a good government, ruled by the people. Everyone preached how we were so free, how our freedom defined us.America's decline won't just be caused by the current financial crisis. You cannot separate this phenomenon from our decreased standing in the world's eyes as a shining beacon on a hill. We were supposed to be a model democracy.The events in Iraq and Afghanistan, the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition, and Guantanamo Bay have lead to world to look away from us when it comes to morality. We no longer occupy the moral high ground. We no longer serve as a guideline for how to run a democracy. Now, with the financial crisis in full swing, we no longer serve as a guideline for how to manage an economy either.Granted, we are still a large nation with many wealthy consumers. It will probably take a generation for the full effects of our fall from grace to come to fruition. But, when it comes down to it, we simply cannot maintain our place in the world when the confidence in our country has been shaken so much, both in terms of our government and our economic systems. |
America Loses Its Dominant Economic Role | America is still a dominant economic force right now, but the writing is on the wall. Unless careful action is taken, I think all the signs point towards a decline in America's ability to project its power. As an American in my 20's, I grew up listening to hearing about how we were such a good country with a good government, ruled by the people. Everyone preached how we were so free, how our freedom defined us.America's decline won't just be caused by the current financial crisis. You cannot separate this phenomenon from our decreased standing in the world's eyes as a shining beacon on a hill. We were supposed to be a model democracy.The events in Iraq and Afghanistan, the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition, and Guantanamo Bay have lead to world to look away from us when it comes to morality. We no longer occupy the moral high ground. We no longer serve as a guideline for how to run a democracy. Now, with the financial crisis in full swing, we no longer serve as a guideline for how to manage an economy either.Granted, we are still a large nation with many wealthy consumers. It will probably take a generation for the full effects of our fall from grace to come to fruition. But, when it comes down to it, we simply cannot maintain our place in the world when the confidence in our country has been shaken so much, both in terms of our government and our economic systems. | America contains 5% of the world's population yet remains a leader with 20& of the world's economic output. Watch the markets. The American markets dictate what overseas markets due on a daily basis, not the other way around. Sure, things aren't rosy, but to suggest that the American economy is anything less than a clear cut economic leader is silly. |
America Loses Its Dominant Economic Role | America contains 5% of the world's population yet remains a leader with 20& of the world's economic output. Watch the markets. The American markets dictate what overseas markets due on a daily basis, not the other way around. Sure, things aren't rosy, but to suggest that the American economy is anything less than a clear cut economic leader is silly. | Perhaps America should check behind its Couch. These sorts of articles are reddit-bait. |
America Loses Its Dominant Economic Role | Perhaps America should check behind its Couch. These sorts of articles are reddit-bait. | 2007 GPD in millions of USD:
(1) United States 13,843,825
(2) Japan 4,383,762
(3) Germany 3,322,147
(4) China (PRC) 3,250,827
(5) United Kingdom 2,772,570
(6) France 2,560,255
(7) Italy 2,104,666Hey Spiegel, why don't you come back when Germany's GDP hits double-digit trillions. |
Not Sharing Is Caring | I'm going to drag out another cstross quote (from Accelerando[1]):"[...] his suitcase is on its way to Mombasa, where it will probably be pithed and resurrected in the service of some African cyber-Fagin. That's okay by Manfred — it only contains a statistically normal mixture of second hand clothes and toiletries, and he only carries it to convince the airline passenger-profiling expert systems that he isn't some sort of deviant or terrorist"At what point is it going to be statistically abnormal to not be sharing the minutiae of your life in this way, and what are the consequences to anyone who wants to retain some level of privacy? Will they be required to maintain some sort of statistically-average social network profile, occasionally updating it with something plausible?[1] http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelera... | The author is completely missing the point. Implicit sharing allows for everything to go into the graph in a structured way. This is the most important aspect of implicit sharing and the new Open Graph.This doesn't mean that you're going to get inundated with meaningless shares. That would be a horrible user experience. In fact, Facebook put a lot of time and effort into making sure that is exactly what didn't happen. It's the very reason why timeline was built. It's why ticker was built. They did this because they want a place for the increased sharing to go, without degrading user experience.But here's the really exciting part. Once all this data is in the graph, timeline and ticker will pale in comparison to what developers can do with all of this new, structured data. That is the really important thing here.Implicit sharing is not so that you can get a notification every time someone listens to a song. It's so that a talented young developer can come along and create a beautiful application that visualizes all of your song listens, how it makes you similar or different from your friends.Don't worry Farhad. Explicit sharing and taste isn't going away. I will still pay more attention to the link you posted of that song you love than the song that blips by in my ticker. I wouldn't criticize the new graph until its matured and we've seen the next generation of amazing apps that are going to be enabled. |
Not Sharing Is Caring | The author is completely missing the point. Implicit sharing allows for everything to go into the graph in a structured way. This is the most important aspect of implicit sharing and the new Open Graph.This doesn't mean that you're going to get inundated with meaningless shares. That would be a horrible user experience. In fact, Facebook put a lot of time and effort into making sure that is exactly what didn't happen. It's the very reason why timeline was built. It's why ticker was built. They did this because they want a place for the increased sharing to go, without degrading user experience.But here's the really exciting part. Once all this data is in the graph, timeline and ticker will pale in comparison to what developers can do with all of this new, structured data. That is the really important thing here.Implicit sharing is not so that you can get a notification every time someone listens to a song. It's so that a talented young developer can come along and create a beautiful application that visualizes all of your song listens, how it makes you similar or different from your friends.Don't worry Farhad. Explicit sharing and taste isn't going away. I will still pay more attention to the link you posted of that song you love than the song that blips by in my ticker. I wouldn't criticize the new graph until its matured and we've seen the next generation of amazing apps that are going to be enabled. | I agree with a lot of what this article is saying. Sharing everything by default is pointless and misses the point of sharing.I want to share something with my friends because I think it might inspire them or make them happy. Or, in the case of news, let them know about important stuff that's happening in the world. They do the same thing when they share with me.So to blindly share everything just creates a lot of noise. If everything is shared by default, you'll need to start sifting out the signal from the noise. Which is annoying because I trust my friends to only share stuff that's relevant.We all love lolcats but know how to find them on our own. |
Not Sharing Is Caring | I agree with a lot of what this article is saying. Sharing everything by default is pointless and misses the point of sharing.I want to share something with my friends because I think it might inspire them or make them happy. Or, in the case of news, let them know about important stuff that's happening in the world. They do the same thing when they share with me.So to blindly share everything just creates a lot of noise. If everything is shared by default, you'll need to start sifting out the signal from the noise. Which is annoying because I trust my friends to only share stuff that's relevant.We all love lolcats but know how to find them on our own. | I don't agree with everything the author says but I think I agree with the sentiment. I think frictionless sharing is a departure from how people express themselves in real life. During real world interactions we present our carefully tailored selves to the rest of the world. We don't tell everyone everything we are doing for a reason.One positive with reducing friction is that it might be easier to find common ground with someone. But overall im not sure I like it- social grooming is a good thing |
Not Sharing Is Caring | I don't agree with everything the author says but I think I agree with the sentiment. I think frictionless sharing is a departure from how people express themselves in real life. During real world interactions we present our carefully tailored selves to the rest of the world. We don't tell everyone everything we are doing for a reason.One positive with reducing friction is that it might be easier to find common ground with someone. But overall im not sure I like it- social grooming is a good thing | Google wants to keep real names (just like Facebook) and they get scolded for it, because some people say they really care about their privacy, and they want to be able to use a different name than their real one.Now Facebook wants to automatically share everything about you, essentially killing whatever privacy you had left on Facebook, and people applaud it.Maybe not related (yet), but it does remind me of this quote:"Freedom is lost to the sound of thunderous applause."This is a great opportunity for Google put a spin on what Facebook is doing with all this, and say they are going the opposite direction, and instead of auto-sharing everything about you like Facebook does, Google+ allows you to choose exactly what you share and to who.Facebook's features may seem cool today, but they have the potential to turn into the biggest PR disaster for Facebook, bigger than their "privacy settings" issue from last year. |
South African province spends $15.4M (140M ZAR) on WordPress site | The causes behind this are truly more systemic than mere corruption, and actually pull at the very root of problems in Africa and many developing economies in the current tech environment.In USA/Europe/increasing in China and India, basic tech and internet projects are fairly well understood by the general public. The idea of wordpress, blogs, and even a basic understanding of the internet and modern technology are fairly prevalent. Even with corruption in a small Texan town, something like pushing through a Wordpress site for $15m would be impossible - there is an understanding of how a website is created and what constitutes a million dollar vs a thousand dollar technology project.I live in South Africa, so I see this every day: there is zero understanding by the majority of the population into any internet related projects. Our major new tech companies tend to boost up the Johannesburg Stock Exchange into incredible valuations before suddenly realizing that their business models are terrible. Most entrepreneurship in the country is focused on targeting townships - people who can barely afford to eat, let alone think about technology, and unsurprisingly, these companies turn to government grants or dissolve.These are all systemic problems from countries simply not being able to keep up with the rapidly accelerating technological developments - and I think it's going to be a massive problem in the future for any country not focusing on getting into the 'internet rush'. It should be clear to most of us on HN just how important these kind of tech innovations are going to be on the future of humanity. | It does seem totally ridiculous, but I think in many cases governments bring these things on themselves with highly complicated tender processes and red-tape (many time in the name of due-process, fairness and transparency)Imagine putting a bid for this work. Do you think most of the effort is in building the website itself, or dealing with so many bureaucrats, forms, approvals and so on? Making sure your developers have X certification and your office is compliant with Y regulation, and that all your processes are ISO certified and so on... This stuff costs money, and quite a lot.So any sane company who wishes to enter into business with any government organization usually take these substantial extra costs into account, which ends up inflating the price. The sad thing of course is that it's the citizens who end up footing the bill.EDIT to clarify: I am not trying to say that the price makes sense in this particular case. I'm talking more about the general problem with govt-related contracts. |
South African province spends $15.4M (140M ZAR) on WordPress site | It does seem totally ridiculous, but I think in many cases governments bring these things on themselves with highly complicated tender processes and red-tape (many time in the name of due-process, fairness and transparency)Imagine putting a bid for this work. Do you think most of the effort is in building the website itself, or dealing with so many bureaucrats, forms, approvals and so on? Making sure your developers have X certification and your office is compliant with Y regulation, and that all your processes are ISO certified and so on... This stuff costs money, and quite a lot.So any sane company who wishes to enter into business with any government organization usually take these substantial extra costs into account, which ends up inflating the price. The sad thing of course is that it's the citizens who end up footing the bill.EDIT to clarify: I am not trying to say that the price makes sense in this particular case. I'm talking more about the general problem with govt-related contracts. | I'm from South Africa and this simply demonstrates the extent of corruption within our government departments. It is not uncommon for government departments to inflate tender budgets so as to benefit from kickbacks. I'm appalled by such such acts, firstly as a South African citizen and secondly as a hard working web developer. |
South African province spends $15.4M (140M ZAR) on WordPress site | I'm from South Africa and this simply demonstrates the extent of corruption within our government departments. It is not uncommon for government departments to inflate tender budgets so as to benefit from kickbacks. I'm appalled by such such acts, firstly as a South African citizen and secondly as a hard working web developer. | "Ntsele told the newspaper opposition parties had an agenda against black businessmen and that the website’s cost was fair."Yeah, right... |
South African province spends $15.4M (140M ZAR) on WordPress site | "Ntsele told the newspaper opposition parties had an agenda against black businessmen and that the website’s cost was fair."Yeah, right... | This is exactly the kind of corruption which goes on in my country (Hungary). I hereby want to ask every HNer if he wants to team up with me and create a nonprofit startup which lets people document corruption in their country/city etc, things which are too small for wikileaks, or publicity like this. |
Don't Blame Jim Cramer | I think this writer is missing the point just like Cramer did on Stewart.The New York Times doesn't have subpoena power, but there are still a non-zero number of people in power who limit their shenanigans because they're terrified of ending up on the front page.The government has a regulatory and investigative role, but it can't go out on a hunch or a rumor, a good journalist can (Which is not to say we need witch hunts).One good journalistic organization can help keep a whole industry honest just by the threat of really investigating things that don't add up. WSJ is good at reporting, but I can't recall the last time they cracked a scandal in the financial world. Feel free to correct me.Would a diligent, news-y CNBC have prevented the financial crisis? I doubt it. But perhaps they could've prevented or exposed some of the most ridiculous excess. It seems every person 'in the know' I've read has said that in hindsight they thought that Madoff was on the take, they just assumed he was an insider trader.Would this stuff sell in comparison to Jim Cramer throwing pies? I don't know. But I have a hunch that a financial dateline style report exposing Madoff as a scam would've garnered a few viewers... | The web interview where Cramer admitted to manipulating stock values with his hedge fund seems pretty damning to me. It betrays a mindset focused on manipulation, rather than providing any kind of real economic value. While Cramer might be only one small cracked cog in the broken machine of banking, he had the opportunity to investigate and expose the inherent instability in the financial system but instead rode the wave like everyone else.What happened to real journalism? With Uncle Rupert's claws sunk into the Wall Street Journal the future of quality investigative reporting seems dim. |
Don't Blame Jim Cramer | The web interview where Cramer admitted to manipulating stock values with his hedge fund seems pretty damning to me. It betrays a mindset focused on manipulation, rather than providing any kind of real economic value. While Cramer might be only one small cracked cog in the broken machine of banking, he had the opportunity to investigate and expose the inherent instability in the financial system but instead rode the wave like everyone else.What happened to real journalism? With Uncle Rupert's claws sunk into the Wall Street Journal the future of quality investigative reporting seems dim. | The Washington Post is right. We shouldn't blame Jim Cramer or other financial pundits (most people will try get away with whatever they can if they are allowed to). Instead we should blame the Washington Post itself and other news organizations for not publicizing how bad the corruption actually is in the financial sector. We (the people) are also to blame, but that's a whole different discussion. |
Don't Blame Jim Cramer | The Washington Post is right. We shouldn't blame Jim Cramer or other financial pundits (most people will try get away with whatever they can if they are allowed to). Instead we should blame the Washington Post itself and other news organizations for not publicizing how bad the corruption actually is in the financial sector. We (the people) are also to blame, but that's a whole different discussion. | The author is saying that no one at a high level knew the risks that were being taken off the books. Fair enough, that's something we need to fix. Apparently Sarbanes-Oxley didn't work.But then the author tries to give Cramer a pass ("just an entertainer") by skipping Stewart's point: CNBC touts its talent as experts in financial news. Even the author goes back to calling Cramer a "financial journalist" a paragraph later. You don't get to quick-change between the suit of expertise and the fig-leaf of opinion.If the CEO doesn't know when his own company is in trouble... that's news, right? |
Don't Blame Jim Cramer | The author is saying that no one at a high level knew the risks that were being taken off the books. Fair enough, that's something we need to fix. Apparently Sarbanes-Oxley didn't work.But then the author tries to give Cramer a pass ("just an entertainer") by skipping Stewart's point: CNBC touts its talent as experts in financial news. Even the author goes back to calling Cramer a "financial journalist" a paragraph later. You don't get to quick-change between the suit of expertise and the fig-leaf of opinion.If the CEO doesn't know when his own company is in trouble... that's news, right? | The logic here is nonsensical. "(a) Dick Fuld lost 9 figures on LEH. (b) If he knew about LEH's exposure to toxic MBS's, he would have avoided losing that money. (c) Therefore, he must not have known. (d) And if Dick Fuld didn't know, how could Jim Cramer?"Not one of these points follows from any of the previous points. |
April Fools Day jQuery plugin | Note: hiddenVideos has a number of mildly nsfw videos. Turn off your speakers before clicking!The first one I got just kept repeating "surprise mother f*er".The full list of YouTube ids for the curious: videos = ['Prhzzqc0aFQ', 'UwB9m4FslO4', 'LH5ay10RTGY', 'DkQ83yLqpJE', 'T6j4f8cHBIM', 'kffacxfA7G4', 'RFzyYYZsxGc', 'v20jRHL492Y', 'Z8bpeeuHDOA', 'KHy7DGLTt8g', '_6-KspZegsE', 'l12Csc_lW0Q'] | I don't enjoy April Fools. At one point people would come up with well-thought out and entertaining tricks. Now it's 99% annoying stuff that's not funny and not creative.Sorry to be a kill-joy but this plugin looks like it would be used by the 99%. An example of a good "fool" would be unixkcd. |
April Fools Day jQuery plugin | I don't enjoy April Fools. At one point people would come up with well-thought out and entertaining tricks. Now it's 99% annoying stuff that's not funny and not creative.Sorry to be a kill-joy but this plugin looks like it would be used by the 99%. An example of a good "fool" would be unixkcd. | Well, that was highly inappropriate and I should have known better that to follow through on this link. I'm in a family-friendly cafe with my speakers wide open. Never have I received such glares from parents with young children. April fools on me, indeed. Well done. |
April Fools Day jQuery plugin | Well, that was highly inappropriate and I should have known better that to follow through on this link. I'm in a family-friendly cafe with my speakers wide open. Never have I received such glares from parents with young children. April fools on me, indeed. Well done. | I don't see ponies. April 1 on the internet just isn't complete without them now.Some funny stuff there though. |
April Fools Day jQuery plugin | I don't see ponies. April 1 on the internet just isn't complete without them now.Some funny stuff there though. | I tried running $.fool('rick') on fooljs.com and got an error:> TypeError: Object #<Object> has no method 'append'The other ones I tried worked, though! I really like this project. |
US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook | Sigh, don't panic, the system will work, just legislative time is not internet time. As far as I can tell by reading the order [1] the order is temporary, and as its from a district judge [2] really only holds for Nevada at the moment. If it gets to the appeals process and the circuit court upholds it, it will apply more broadly, up to the supreme court where it will apply to the US as a whole. However what that means with regard to Chanel I'm not sure as it really only means that from within the US are these things outlawed.But having such cases is useful because it gives the system something on which to chew, and then publish opinions (not all cases get published opinions) which set case law. So the good news might be that it gets to the circuit court which then has a chance to publish an opinion that our courts can't make these kinds of claims, and that gets upheld in the Supreme court and life is better because all the judges have to follow along.The system is cranky, and obtuse at times, but its remarkably resilient in the face of unexpected challenges.That being said, for the folks who are complaining about the institutions in the US being subverted, I point out that nearly all the elections in this country are won or lost by at most a 10% difference in votes. Further, in general more than 20% of the registered voters don't even bother to vote. So one could argue that if 20% of the 99% really cared about stuff they could actully vote in whomever they chose to vote in and no amount of money, croniesim, or stupidity on the part of the voters who are being lead around by their noses could stop them. The math says it is impossible (short of fraud) but fraud on that scale is really really hard to cover up.[1] http://servingnotice.com/sdv/038%20-%20Order%20Granting%20Se...[2] Federal courts have 89 districts, feeding into 13 circut courts, feeding into the supreme court. http://www.uscourts.gov/Common/FAQS.aspx | It's very unlikely that this article is correct. Here is the legal ruling:http://servingnotice.com/sdv/038%20-%20Order%20Granting%20Se...This is a temporary restraining order. Chanel is posting a bond for any damages to the defendants, should the trial prove them innocent.Regarding de-indexing, there is only one paragraph (10) which says the domains "shall immediately be de-indexed and/or removed", without specifying who will do this action. This is vague, but I don't think it can be interpreted as an order to Google / FB because:- the list of search engines / social sites is open ended- the previous paragraphs require actions by the plaintiff or by the defendants (e.g. preserve computer files). Among others, paragraph (8) states that the plaintiff can use Google Webmaster Tools on these domains.- the (temporary) transfer of DNS records is specified in small technical details (including multiple technical solutions for the redirection involved) in multiple paragraphs, while this arguably much more complex requirement receives minimum treatment.While the language is indeed a bit vague in paragraph (10), I think consideration of all these factors seems to indicate it is the plaintiff and the defendants who are to take action to see the sites de-indexed (using, e.g., Google Webmaster Tools) and not the indexing companies. |
US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook | It's very unlikely that this article is correct. Here is the legal ruling:http://servingnotice.com/sdv/038%20-%20Order%20Granting%20Se...This is a temporary restraining order. Chanel is posting a bond for any damages to the defendants, should the trial prove them innocent.Regarding de-indexing, there is only one paragraph (10) which says the domains "shall immediately be de-indexed and/or removed", without specifying who will do this action. This is vague, but I don't think it can be interpreted as an order to Google / FB because:- the list of search engines / social sites is open ended- the previous paragraphs require actions by the plaintiff or by the defendants (e.g. preserve computer files). Among others, paragraph (8) states that the plaintiff can use Google Webmaster Tools on these domains.- the (temporary) transfer of DNS records is specified in small technical details (including multiple technical solutions for the redirection involved) in multiple paragraphs, while this arguably much more complex requirement receives minimum treatment.While the language is indeed a bit vague in paragraph (10), I think consideration of all these factors seems to indicate it is the plaintiff and the defendants who are to take action to see the sites de-indexed (using, e.g., Google Webmaster Tools) and not the indexing companies. | It's counterintuitive, but things like this are actually good. We need more of them to happen, and for it to affect more people more often.Right now the core of the internet is broken from a security perspective. DNS[1], BGP[2], and SSL[3], despite being key to daily internet function, are all completely inadequate for the important role the internet now plays in the world and society. The thing is: right now they all work, almost all of the time. Any change will be really painful. Even incremental changes like DNSSEC see scant adoption[4] and obviously needed changes like IPv6 are put off until the last possible second[5].We need things to break before we'll see real change. And by break I mean really break. When enough money is lost because of meddlesome, malicious, or ignorant government and other intervention, we'll finally see real change. But not one second before. After all, if it works, don't fix it[6].If you really want to see change, exploit these laws to take down legitimate and government websites. Post infringing links, ideas, etc, in the most visible places you can. Try to get major news and other sites that allow user generated content taken down. In the process you'll hopefully break things for enough people that we see change, or you'll at least demonstrate how blatantly inequitable most of these laws are. Both are good steps toward real change.[1] http://www.dnssec.net/dns-threats[2] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4272.txt[3] http://www.darkreading.com/taxonomy/index/printarticle/id/23...[4] http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110330006919/en/IID-...[5] http://ripe59.ripe.net/presentations/botterman-v6-survey.pdf[6] Yes, I know it doesn't technically work in all cases right now, but did you notice when any of these sites went offline? I didn't. I see an increasing frequency of these types of reports, but have yet to be personally affected. |
US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook | It's counterintuitive, but things like this are actually good. We need more of them to happen, and for it to affect more people more often.Right now the core of the internet is broken from a security perspective. DNS[1], BGP[2], and SSL[3], despite being key to daily internet function, are all completely inadequate for the important role the internet now plays in the world and society. The thing is: right now they all work, almost all of the time. Any change will be really painful. Even incremental changes like DNSSEC see scant adoption[4] and obviously needed changes like IPv6 are put off until the last possible second[5].We need things to break before we'll see real change. And by break I mean really break. When enough money is lost because of meddlesome, malicious, or ignorant government and other intervention, we'll finally see real change. But not one second before. After all, if it works, don't fix it[6].If you really want to see change, exploit these laws to take down legitimate and government websites. Post infringing links, ideas, etc, in the most visible places you can. Try to get major news and other sites that allow user generated content taken down. In the process you'll hopefully break things for enough people that we see change, or you'll at least demonstrate how blatantly inequitable most of these laws are. Both are good steps toward real change.[1] http://www.dnssec.net/dns-threats[2] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4272.txt[3] http://www.darkreading.com/taxonomy/index/printarticle/id/23...[4] http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110330006919/en/IID-...[5] http://ripe59.ripe.net/presentations/botterman-v6-survey.pdf[6] Yes, I know it doesn't technically work in all cases right now, but did you notice when any of these sites went offline? I didn't. I see an increasing frequency of these types of reports, but have yet to be personally affected. | Reading this order: http://www.scribd.com/doc/73773870/Chanel-Inc-v-Does-11-Cv-0... I wonder who is responsible for de-indexing and/or removing the domain names?Other points begin with "Plaintiffs shall...", "Defendants shall...", but in this point there's no party stated that must do the action:"The Group II Subject Domain Names shall immediately be de-indexed and/or removed from any search results pages of all Internet search engines including, but not limited to, Google, Bing, and Yahoo, and all social media websites including, but not limited to, Facebook, Google+, and Twitter until otherwise instructed by this Court or Plaintiff that any such domain name is authorized to be reinstated, at which time it shall be reinstated to its former status within each search engine index from which it was removed." |
US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook | Reading this order: http://www.scribd.com/doc/73773870/Chanel-Inc-v-Does-11-Cv-0... I wonder who is responsible for de-indexing and/or removing the domain names?Other points begin with "Plaintiffs shall...", "Defendants shall...", but in this point there's no party stated that must do the action:"The Group II Subject Domain Names shall immediately be de-indexed and/or removed from any search results pages of all Internet search engines including, but not limited to, Google, Bing, and Yahoo, and all social media websites including, but not limited to, Facebook, Google+, and Twitter until otherwise instructed by this Court or Plaintiff that any such domain name is authorized to be reinstated, at which time it shall be reinstated to its former status within each search engine index from which it was removed." | Sigh. This is pretty much a classic case of "THE INTERNET IS NEW AND SCARY".Assuming that Charnel's claims are accurate(that counterfeit goods were being sold), then the standard procedure 20 years ago would have been to work with law enforcement and the courts. If the defendants were found guilty, the counterfeit goods would be seized and profits off of them would be awarded to Charnel. With the invention of the Internet, the exact same thing should have happened. Charnel should have worked with law enforcement and the courts, and if the defendants were found guilty, the goods should have been seized, and the story should have ended. In either case, it would take a while(especially if the shops were in countries that had very lax copyright laws), but there should not have been really any difference between now and 20 years ago.Only in this case, the judge, in his infinite wisdom, went the "OMG INTERNET IS NEW AND SCARY" route, and decided to just remove the sites from indexes. Aside from the fact that this doesn't actually fix the problem(hello, eBay), this is a pretty new(and dumb) "solution" to a pretty settled problem. |
Apple's CPU lead Jim Keller heads back to AMD | A few points of interest here which Venture Beat have skipped:1. Keller's company, PA, was bought by Apple mainly for its engineering talent. Getting Keller was a huge deal for Apple.2. Keller has been hired away by Mark Papermaster, who was a disaster at Apple (all of Bob Mansfield's reservations about him from the internal email discussed in IBM v. Papermaster came true: cultural, pace of development, etc.).I would anticipate an outside hire from Apple to fill his shoes in the next 6-9 months. | The early days of the K8 were awesome, the FX would kill whatever Intel threw at AMD, it was brutal. Even cheap Athlons were better than highend Pentiums, and prescott? a disaster, plain and simple.Is ironic that AMD hired Keller since Intel too found it's way out of the Netburst fiasco by going back to Tualatin, which at the same time had more in common with the good old Pentium Pro than it did with coppermine and katmai. |
Apple's CPU lead Jim Keller heads back to AMD | The early days of the K8 were awesome, the FX would kill whatever Intel threw at AMD, it was brutal. Even cheap Athlons were better than highend Pentiums, and prescott? a disaster, plain and simple.Is ironic that AMD hired Keller since Intel too found it's way out of the Netburst fiasco by going back to Tualatin, which at the same time had more in common with the good old Pentium Pro than it did with coppermine and katmai. | In less than a week, we've had those 'genius' ads on TV that seem to insult consumers' intelligence [1], and now the person who led CPU design for iOS devices is leaving the company. These are not encouraging signs for Apple.[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2012/07/30/viewers-giv... |
Apple's CPU lead Jim Keller heads back to AMD | In less than a week, we've had those 'genius' ads on TV that seem to insult consumers' intelligence [1], and now the person who led CPU design for iOS devices is leaving the company. These are not encouraging signs for Apple.[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2012/07/30/viewers-giv... | I think this is good news, for both companies and for Jim Keller himself.- Apple's strength is not in its chips. It's in its software and tightly integrated stack- It seems, from the outside, AMD needs an inspiring leader to give its design teams a clearer goal.- I know first hand what it feels like when your work no longer lines up with where your company is going. I wish him the best of luck on his new challenges. |
Apple's CPU lead Jim Keller heads back to AMD | I think this is good news, for both companies and for Jim Keller himself.- Apple's strength is not in its chips. It's in its software and tightly integrated stack- It seems, from the outside, AMD needs an inspiring leader to give its design teams a clearer goal.- I know first hand what it feels like when your work no longer lines up with where your company is going. I wish him the best of luck on his new challenges. | With the anticipated "the downfall of Apple begins!" comments that will accompany this story, I'm trying to fathom what the comments will be when Jony Ive eventually leaves... |
Cappuccino (YC Winter 08) Brings Cocoa-Like Programming To The Web | So, in order to layout an interface you programmatically create it? And so a designer has to learn yet another language for layout?We made the mistake of adopting GWT a while back and it's been nothing but headaches.Now instead of the designers being able to directly design in HTML (which they all have a familiarity of), they're required to download our entire project, edit the layout classes, recompile, just to see their work.We've tried to have the developers take the designers mockups and translate them into working code, but the app seems to lose that designer "touch" in the process.Designers need to be able to work with a familiar canvas. | Honestly I need to dig more but I'm not sold on this route. Creating a new abstraction layer (Objective-J) on top of Javascript seems like some Architecture Astronautics to me. Why not just write this on top of JS (maybe with something like jquery?) Sites down right now or I'd try to make a more reasoned statement but sproutcore seems a better alternative.I also wouldn't rule out Google rolling out something similar as well as they unify the widgets and windowing type stuff they've got from docs and spreadsheets (and Zenter for that matter). |
Cappuccino (YC Winter 08) Brings Cocoa-Like Programming To The Web | Honestly I need to dig more but I'm not sold on this route. Creating a new abstraction layer (Objective-J) on top of Javascript seems like some Architecture Astronautics to me. Why not just write this on top of JS (maybe with something like jquery?) Sites down right now or I'd try to make a more reasoned statement but sproutcore seems a better alternative.I also wouldn't rule out Google rolling out something similar as well as they unify the widgets and windowing type stuff they've got from docs and spreadsheets (and Zenter for that matter). | I'm still amazed that they pulled it off. I loved Objective-C when I first learned it a few years ago and loved it even more when I wrote a few apps with it. I'm glad that its essence (in Objective-J) is gaining more traction.Random notice/question: Since V8 is increasing the efficiency of property references for JS objects via hidden class objects, does that mean that Cappuccino's message routing will gain a huge speed increase?Man, I just love the circular nature of this: ex-Smalltalk developers wrote the JavaScript implementation which in turn, will run Smalltalk-like message passing. |
Cappuccino (YC Winter 08) Brings Cocoa-Like Programming To The Web | I'm still amazed that they pulled it off. I loved Objective-C when I first learned it a few years ago and loved it even more when I wrote a few apps with it. I'm glad that its essence (in Objective-J) is gaining more traction.Random notice/question: Since V8 is increasing the efficiency of property references for JS objects via hidden class objects, does that mean that Cappuccino's message routing will gain a huge speed increase?Man, I just love the circular nature of this: ex-Smalltalk developers wrote the JavaScript implementation which in turn, will run Smalltalk-like message passing. | With Safari (especially with the offline features in Snow Leopard) and now Google Chrome, we have the browser technology to make rich, desktop-like webapps built with Cappuccino and Sproutcore shine.I think this marks an evolution of web interfaces. I'm exited to see what people build using Cappuccino. |
Cappuccino (YC Winter 08) Brings Cocoa-Like Programming To The Web | With Safari (especially with the offline features in Snow Leopard) and now Google Chrome, we have the browser technology to make rich, desktop-like webapps built with Cappuccino and Sproutcore shine.I think this marks an evolution of web interfaces. I'm exited to see what people build using Cappuccino. | I'm looking forward to spending my weekend with Cappuccino. My main desktop product is developed in Cocoa, but I'd like to expand it onto the web and the iPhone. Cappuccino looks like it might handle the web side of that quite well.I tried Sproutcore, and while I'm impressed with what's been done so far it takes me several days of working on it to shift into Javascript/HTML/CSS mode from Obj-C. Hopefully with Cappuccino it'll be more like porting the app than rewriting the app.[Edit to clarify] |
Surprises | "Now, when coding, I try to think: 'how can I write this such that if people saw my code, they’d be amazed at how little there is and how little it does'."golden. i've been trying to pound this concept into my head lately, and this is a very well-stated version of it. | The first point hit home big time. When you're doing a startup you feel like every day is precious and the tide of change is racing along impossibly fast. It's healthy to remember that the world doesn't reinvent itself every month. The problem you're working on now will probably still be relevant in 1-2 years. |
Surprises | The first point hit home big time. When you're doing a startup you feel like every day is precious and the tide of change is racing along impossibly fast. It's healthy to remember that the world doesn't reinvent itself every month. The problem you're working on now will probably still be relevant in 1-2 years. | How slowly things change.depends on the context. for huge macro level projects e.g. iPhone reshaping cell phone industry or FB having Google size revenue, ebay's network effects being broken, that all takes time.but in the same time period (past 2.5 years) a lot of things have completely changed. FB platform has gone from launch to supporting companies that could IPO (and made a whole load of single developers v rich). social gaming has gone from scrabulous to now posing a credible threat to the entire console gaming industry. the wii destroyed the xbox and ps3 within its first year of launch and now sells more than both of them combined.i'd argue that it's the faster moving trends that impact startups and startup opportunities more than the slower moving macro trends. |
Surprises | How slowly things change.depends on the context. for huge macro level projects e.g. iPhone reshaping cell phone industry or FB having Google size revenue, ebay's network effects being broken, that all takes time.but in the same time period (past 2.5 years) a lot of things have completely changed. FB platform has gone from launch to supporting companies that could IPO (and made a whole load of single developers v rich). social gaming has gone from scrabulous to now posing a credible threat to the entire console gaming industry. the wii destroyed the xbox and ps3 within its first year of launch and now sells more than both of them combined.i'd argue that it's the faster moving trends that impact startups and startup opportunities more than the slower moving macro trends. | +1 for paying attention to international customersFor our ecommerce startup, we did nothing as far as internationalization goes other then offering to ship our product outside of the US and Canada. We were amazed at the response we got and it was one of the factors that helped us get cash flow positive very quickly |
Surprises | +1 for paying attention to international customersFor our ecommerce startup, we did nothing as far as internationalization goes other then offering to ship our product outside of the US and Canada. We were amazed at the response we got and it was one of the factors that helped us get cash flow positive very quickly | I have a lot of concepts, I'm still narrowing down and going through in terms of what I'm working on next. Time and getting going is a big source of anxiety. This post helped calm that down a bit. Worth the read. |
Comparison of DVCS hosting - Github, Bitbucket, Assembla, Unfuddle, Kiln & more | I know that the author says this is a high level overview... but the extra features that DVCS hosting companies add on top of repository hosting is practically the entire value-add of using a repository hosting site vs. setting up your own server or just dropboxing your git projects.I know I'm biased, but for me I could care less about features like price per GB. Features like GitHub's Branch List page, Compare View, Commit Comments, and Web UI are the entire reason I push private repositories. | I've used RepositoryHosting.com for a bit over a year, and its one of the best deals I've ever gotten. We have a repo for each client project, so like the author we require unlimited repositories although our disk space needs are low.We don't need the project management offerings that are included with Unfuddle and others, so its a good fit for us. I've worked with Unfuddle as well, and its a great deal if you'd benefit from some Basecampish features. |
Comparison of DVCS hosting - Github, Bitbucket, Assembla, Unfuddle, Kiln & more | I've used RepositoryHosting.com for a bit over a year, and its one of the best deals I've ever gotten. We have a repo for each client project, so like the author we require unlimited repositories although our disk space needs are low.We don't need the project management offerings that are included with Unfuddle and others, so its a good fit for us. I've worked with Unfuddle as well, and its a great deal if you'd benefit from some Basecampish features. | I only knew of about half of those, so the list alone is valuable to me. I'll have to try a few myself, thanks!To those interested, I've been using Unfuddle for a while, and a super-basic review:Pretty quick, clean, and most importantly loads of very helpful (?) documentation popups for n00bs (myself included). Someone who's never used Git can jump on Unfuddle and be functional very quickly. I believe they use Trac for a ticketing system, but I'm not familiar enough with it to say for sure. |
Comparison of DVCS hosting - Github, Bitbucket, Assembla, Unfuddle, Kiln & more | I only knew of about half of those, so the list alone is valuable to me. I'll have to try a few myself, thanks!To those interested, I've been using Unfuddle for a while, and a super-basic review:Pretty quick, clean, and most importantly loads of very helpful (?) documentation popups for n00bs (myself included). Someone who's never used Git can jump on Unfuddle and be functional very quickly. I believe they use Trac for a ticketing system, but I'm not familiar enough with it to say for sure. | Nice post.
You forgot about codaset.com that has an interesting pricing model explained here: http://codaset.com/codaset/codaset/blog/official-launch-day-... |
Comparison of DVCS hosting - Github, Bitbucket, Assembla, Unfuddle, Kiln & more | Nice post.
You forgot about codaset.com that has an interesting pricing model explained here: http://codaset.com/codaset/codaset/blog/official-launch-day-... | I went through this exact process a few weeks ago, when I started using Mercurial as my main source control. This article would have helped a lot.I settled on Codebasehq, btw, and I'm extremely happy so far. |
An American doctor experiences an NHS emergency room | I actually have directly relevant experience to the question of "What happens if you get something in your eye in the US and need to see a doctor urgently?" Don't read the following if you're squeamish.About a year and a half ago, I dropped my iPad while on a flight from Japan to the US. The screen cracked in the top corner. I tentatively touched the screen, to see if the crack was dangerous. I did not cut my finger, but did succeed in transferring a very small piece of glass to my finger.People touch their eyes frequently, often unconsciously.Six hours later, after attempting self-irrigation on the plane and at the airport, I was at a hospital in Chicago seeing an eye doctor. Time from arrival at proper floor to being taken to room: three minutes ("glass in eye" cuts down on paperwork quite a bit). Time to arrival of doctor: approximately four minutes after that.They successfully treated me for, possible misquote, "non-traumatic introduction of a foreign body to the eye." (The attending physician's first words, after reading the chart, were "How in God's name does an iPad screen end up in your eye?")Treatment was approximately 15 minutes of a resident's time and 5 minutes of the attending physician's time plus one cotton swap and some iodine.Total cost: approximately $300, plus twenty minutes of dealing with the billing clerk (after approximately 30 minutes of waiting for the billing clerk to be ready).Most of the time with the billing clerk was a result of the clerk getting the run-around from a Japanese commercial travel insurance company. I customarily travel with private insurance which, among other things, covers me for medical emergencies while traveling. (Normally I'm covered by Japanese national insurance, which doesn't normally cover treatment of Americans in America for all the obvious reasons.) The insurance company denied reimbursement for elective medical treatment. Direct quote: You could have elected to leave it in your eye. | As a Canadian, this doesn't surprise too much: People complain about wait times all the time, but the only wait times I've ever seen are for relatively stable situations that do not put the person at increased risk, e.g., corrective surgeries for non-threatening conditions, etc. (We can - and should - debate whether surgeries to correct intense chronic pain should be delayed as much as they often are, but current medico-political thinking appears to be that pain ain't so bad, contrary to current psychological thinking).I've had a couple of exposures to emergency rooms and clinics over the last few years. The most telling was when I sliced open the back of my hand with an industrial fan. We cleaned and bandaged it, then applied ice, and I sat until the pain subsided and felt good enough to go the nearest clinic.By the time I arrived, the pain and nausea had returned, but no biggie. I presented my healthcard and described the situation, which caused the three people behind the counter to pause and eye me as one asked "But you didn't break the skin, right?"I did not get a chance to complete my reply, which started with "Yes, of course...". "Drop your card, come with me now".The waiting room was more than half full, but I was priority number 1 for the next 15 minutes. A nurse carefully, delicately removed the dressing, then used a thin metal instrument to ever so carefully widen the cut and examine the tissue underneath. When satisfied, she sent me back to the waiting room where I sat for an hour and half.I learned the full story when I returned for an x-ray the next day (I hurt myself on a Sunday, the basement x-ray lab was closed): Had I severed - or even cut - any of the tendons leading to my fingers, I would have rushed to the hospital to save my hand before the tendons shrank and dried into uselessness.I didn't mind the 1.5 hour wait on the Sunday, or the combined 1.5 hours on the Monday, because when it came to what really mattered, there was no wait at all.They only took my healthcard once the initial careful inspection was over. Billing and bean counting were irrelevant.Note: I expect that billing for treatment of visiting foreign nationals will vary widely by province (anyone in the know care to chime in?), but that the overall triage process will be similar. |
An American doctor experiences an NHS emergency room | As a Canadian, this doesn't surprise too much: People complain about wait times all the time, but the only wait times I've ever seen are for relatively stable situations that do not put the person at increased risk, e.g., corrective surgeries for non-threatening conditions, etc. (We can - and should - debate whether surgeries to correct intense chronic pain should be delayed as much as they often are, but current medico-political thinking appears to be that pain ain't so bad, contrary to current psychological thinking).I've had a couple of exposures to emergency rooms and clinics over the last few years. The most telling was when I sliced open the back of my hand with an industrial fan. We cleaned and bandaged it, then applied ice, and I sat until the pain subsided and felt good enough to go the nearest clinic.By the time I arrived, the pain and nausea had returned, but no biggie. I presented my healthcard and described the situation, which caused the three people behind the counter to pause and eye me as one asked "But you didn't break the skin, right?"I did not get a chance to complete my reply, which started with "Yes, of course...". "Drop your card, come with me now".The waiting room was more than half full, but I was priority number 1 for the next 15 minutes. A nurse carefully, delicately removed the dressing, then used a thin metal instrument to ever so carefully widen the cut and examine the tissue underneath. When satisfied, she sent me back to the waiting room where I sat for an hour and half.I learned the full story when I returned for an x-ray the next day (I hurt myself on a Sunday, the basement x-ray lab was closed): Had I severed - or even cut - any of the tendons leading to my fingers, I would have rushed to the hospital to save my hand before the tendons shrank and dried into uselessness.I didn't mind the 1.5 hour wait on the Sunday, or the combined 1.5 hours on the Monday, because when it came to what really mattered, there was no wait at all.They only took my healthcard once the initial careful inspection was over. Billing and bean counting were irrelevant.Note: I expect that billing for treatment of visiting foreign nationals will vary widely by province (anyone in the know care to chime in?), but that the overall triage process will be similar. | Well, he got into one of the better hospitals by the looks of it, I am sure there are many.
I'm surprised he was not billed, from what I read on wall posters in hospitals non-residents (or non-EU?) are charged for medical services.Unfortunately had my share of landings in E&A and I was less than impressed.
Generally bad/old looking buildings and rooms, not the most skilled staff - some of them were struggling to speak English, long waiting times (my record is 5h).On the other hand many of the people working in the NHS are literally life saving heroes, so they deserve our respect. Any country on this planet that does not have a similar system can't call itself civilised. Luckily most of Europe has this in some form or another.This is not to say that things can't be improved.NHS could probably run 2 times better on half the money it currently spends; I think efficiency is FAR from being their strong point. At this size it takes a special kind of management to do stuff without huge waste - perhaps Toyota can lend a hand here.[1] :-)[1] - http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-09-26/work-efficie... etc |
An American doctor experiences an NHS emergency room | Well, he got into one of the better hospitals by the looks of it, I am sure there are many.
I'm surprised he was not billed, from what I read on wall posters in hospitals non-residents (or non-EU?) are charged for medical services.Unfortunately had my share of landings in E&A and I was less than impressed.
Generally bad/old looking buildings and rooms, not the most skilled staff - some of them were struggling to speak English, long waiting times (my record is 5h).On the other hand many of the people working in the NHS are literally life saving heroes, so they deserve our respect. Any country on this planet that does not have a similar system can't call itself civilised. Luckily most of Europe has this in some form or another.This is not to say that things can't be improved.NHS could probably run 2 times better on half the money it currently spends; I think efficiency is FAR from being their strong point. At this size it takes a special kind of management to do stuff without huge waste - perhaps Toyota can lend a hand here.[1] :-)[1] - http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-09-26/work-efficie... etc | > It makes you wonder exactly what frightens Americans about the NHS?I'm less frightened of the NHS than of a hypothetical American version of the NHS, which would be run by the US government and have (mostly) Americans using it. |
An American doctor experiences an NHS emergency room | > It makes you wonder exactly what frightens Americans about the NHS?I'm less frightened of the NHS than of a hypothetical American version of the NHS, which would be run by the US government and have (mostly) Americans using it. | I've seen posters up in the local A&E that say something like "If you're a foreigner please be aware that we'll send you an invoice". And there's certainly been statements recently from politicians talking about doing this for the dreaded "immigrants".I suspect that the total income from this would be tiny though, and perhaps not even enough to justify the administration costs. And my impression from staff at NHS hospitals is that they're just interested in helping you and really don't care if you didn't pay. |
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