AskHN Digest

1. Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

Top comment by sixo

It is pretty offensive that they say "reddit works better on the app" when the only reason for that is that they broke everything on mobile (on purpose?) in a series of badly-implemented redesigns.

I'm never going to install it, and I have all but stopped reading it because these prompts are so obnoxious. That's probably +$ for Reddit though.

I don't understand why companies constantly do stuff that serves only _themselves_, and then expect users to engage with it because it exists. Users are able to identify when something is valuable to them. If you make it valuable they will use it. Consider the difference on an ecommerce site between a comment section vs a few company-picked "testimonials" above the fold. _Everyone_ knows the testimonials are garbage. Maybe your conversion goes up a tick the first time you put them on the site, but when a repeat viewer sees the same ones again they're going to roll their eyes and register you as untrustworthy. Whereas a (reasonably-managed, honest) comment section provides loads of information that's actually valuable to the consumer.

2. Ask HN: How do you switch off from work, particularly when working from home?

Top comment by rcconf

I watched a YouTube video and this person explained a really neat concept.

Your life is like a game. In this game, you have different stats and you must increase each stat. For example, in a typical game you may have:

- Health - Attack Level - Money - Magic Level

In games, you try to increase each of these stats to create the best and strongest character. Life is very similar, but the stats are:

- Work - Social Life - Money - Fun - Relationship - Family - Sleep - Exercise - Relaxation

If all you do is spent all your time on Work, all the other stats will be lacking and ultimately you will have a weak character. Your work may be at 99/100, but your Sleep may be 20/100, or your relationship/family may be 40/100. So, the way I switch off work is that at 1:00PM I take 1 hour off of work (no matter what.) and I do not feel bad about it because it is ultimately increasing my Relaxation/Fun stat. At 5:30PM, I stop work entirely to focus on everything else in life such as Fun, Relationships, Family, Exercise, Social Life.

I find it very strange how well this model works for me. I literally separate work entirely at 5:30PM because I know life is more than just about the Work stat, it's about all the stats combined and you must work on each one to beat the game or be a strong character at the game of life.

3. Ask HN: Parents, what are you doing for school this fall?

Top comment by joe_hills

Single dad here in a small apartment with a 7yo whose school went fully remote.

I switched to a reduced-hours contractor status at my day job and went "full-time" on my side project so I can make my own schedule.

I do the bulk of my focused work either after my kid goes to bed or before she starts school for the day.

During the day when she's in class, it seems like every class period, there's at least one or two tech issues she needs help with. To keep that time productive for me, I do household chores, meal prep, and any easily-interruptable work-related tasks (like writing correspondence).

It's not ideal, but I feel like I can make it work for us indefinitely.

4. Ask HN: How do you overcome decision fatigue in software development?

Top comment by rdoherty

A few mantras I try to use for this type of problem:

* There are no solutions, just tradeoffs. Don't think there's a perfect tech stack.

* Done is better than perfect. Velocity matters. This generally means pick something you know if delivery is important.

* Boring tech tends to be reliable. Things like PHP, Rails, Django, etc. These tools have been around a long time and ironed out the kinks. Lots of documentation and tooling to make your life easier. Odds are very low your new fancy idea has any requirements that boring tech can't deliver on. This counts for every layer of the stack (frontend, DB, OS, etc).

I think the most important thing to keep in mind is you'll never have a perfect solution and that's ok! Don't get fooled by all the hype from new technologies that try to make you feel inferior for using other tech.

5. Ask HN: What is a science fact that blew your mind when you learned it?

Top comment by Stratoscope

Electrons in a copper wire do not travel at the speed of electricity. Not even close.

Electricity travels at nearly the speed of light.

Electrons themselves travel like molasses:

"In the case of a 12 gauge copper wire carrying 10 amperes of current (typical of home wiring), the individual electrons only move about 0.02 cm per sec or 1.2 inches per minute (in science this is called the drift velocity of the electrons.). If this is the situation in nature, why do the lights come on so quickly [when you flip the switch]? At this speed it would take the electrons hours to get to the lights."

This completely caught me by surprise, but it makes sense once it's pointed out. Imagine a pipe filled with solid balls that just fit in it, with little friction. If you push a ball in one end, a ball pops out the other almost immediately. But not the same ball! Even if you keep pushing balls in, that first one you pushed will take a while to get the other end.

Update: as rrobukef notes in a reply, this would be the case for direct current (DC). With the usual household alternating current (AC), the electrons barely move at all!

https://www.uu.edu/dept/physics/scienceguys/2001Nov.cfm

https://wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2014/02/19/what-is-the-speed-of...

6. Ask HN: How to Become a Music Buff?

Top comment by wheels

Knowing what music you like would be helpful in a discussion like this. (Context: I've spent a lot of my career working in music or music software.)

It's difficult to expand your musical horizons just by shooting in the dark at things you should like. But often you can build bridges to new things by exploring their musical ancestors and descendants. Like classic rock? Start listening to some blues, then go from there to jazz. Like hip hop? Move backwards through disco, funk, soul, and, well, there we're back to jazz.

Classical music is a somewhat harder nut to crack if you don't gravitate towards it. What I've found, however is that some people think they don't like classical because they don't like Mozart, but then you play something a bit more modern (say, Stravinsky or so) and that grabs their attention.

If you like electronic stuff, one great book that I read years back, and have since passed on to several people is this:

https://www.amazon.com/Electronic-Experimental-Music-Technol...

It does a very good job of drawing a line from musique concrète and impressionism all the way through modern stuff like DJ Spooky. There are older editions of the book that are cheaper used and should be just fine.

If you list some of the things you do like, then it'd be easier for riff off of that to give you some suggestions for what might expand your horizon. There's no shame in having unsophisticated tastes at first. I remember having a student who started off wanting to learn Limp Bizket, and we worked from there to Rage Against the Machine, then from there to things like King Crimson and eventually a couple years later he was into pretty sophisticated fusion stuff.

(Edit: fixed the link)

7. Ask HN: What non-obvious tech/market may take off in the next few years?

Top comment by searchableguy

No code/low code. People here underestimate the work it requires to craft a production CRUD app and keep it working.

The problem these tools solve are more related to infrastructure rather than one's ability to code. Learning to code might be the easiest part but deploying it, maintaining it, scaling it, securing it and integrating it with thousands of other services remains a huge task even for experienced folks. It's wasted time and effort for something that is cookie cutter in functionality and limited in scope (vast majority of web).

Some of them provide collaboration tools, development environment and experts on call which is neat.

Add ease of outsourcing, too. The employer doesn't have to worry about maintenance once the product is finished. Many good platforms will allow you an easy migration path and better security controls. That comes at a vendor lock in. That's the price but given the life expectancy of smaller companies and startups, it may as well be worth it.

8. Ask HN: Does Google have a way to report scam advertisements?

Top comment by rasz

Meanwhile there are whole legitimate industries banned from adwords, like repair and data recovery _if_ you arent a huge corporation. "We need to discuss Google's anti-repair advertising discrimination." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUBJ2LD-Dao

Btw Youtube has no problem runing those scam bitcoin ads https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/i877ci/those_fake_... /

or pr0n blowjob banners for that matter https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/i87jfj/vpn_cumshot...

9. Ask HN: Finding the Australian Aboriginal flag in all artworks

Top comment by thomasfromcdnjs

Just to add more juice to the story.

The company he gave the exclusive rights to was co-founded by his friend. Who got fined 2.4 million dollars the year prior for selling "authentic" Aboriginal art that was actually made in Indonesia.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/11/compa...

10. Ask HN: Is a SaaS provider expected to have a trademark in every country?

Top comment by lmarshshalltm

Hi- I am a trademark lawyer and work with many SaaS companies. I will tell you, it is virtually impossible for even the biggest companies to have a trademark in every country. It is a time intensive and very costly process to expand your trademark "globally." We can rely on the Madrid Protocol to extend a US trademark to many other countries but every country is a separate cost and the trademark is reviewed according to the laws of each individual country. Our clients expand on an as needed basis. We look at the countries where a client has the most business and apply in those countries. Then little by little we may expand out to other countries. Be careful working with large law firms- they sometimes will scare a client into more protection then the need. But of course there is always a risk/benefit consideration. Yes, it could happen that another entity comes along with a similar mark for a similar business in a different country. But most companies do not have a billion dollar budget for trademarks. Feel free to email me with other questions. laurie@tmthespot.com tmthespot.com