5 ms·

That animated background header is making me very motion sick. Ugh.

benaiah 13y ago
Can we stop with the nitpicking meta bullshit on every freaking article, please? I don't care about the things you dislike about a random webpage. It wasn't submitted because of a header. In order to read the article that we're actually discussing, you have to scroll down to where you can't see it anymore. It's a 10-second-at-most mild irritation. I would understand if it was an epilepsy warning o something, but it's not. The fact that these comments get made wouldn't be a problem, except that people, since they agree with the complaint (as I happen to do in this case) keep upvoting the damn things. At this point, there's a good 20% chance that any given comment thread is gonna start with the same boring arguments we've had four hundred thousand times on this site already that I have to scroll down past to talk about actual article we're discussing. These kind of comments are cheap, effortless, and do nothing but degrade the quality of discussion and make participation a PITA for people who want to actually talk about the relevant article instead of random web design complaints.
- mikeash 13y ago
  Seriously. You have trouble reading the text? Select All, Copy, open your favorite text editor, Paste, read. This place is called Hacker News, where "Hacker" is supposed to mean that it's a community of people who build interesting things, yet people can't even be bothered to take five seconds to take matters into their own hands when it comes to reading some text. We're power users. Act like it.
- Mister_Snuggles 13y ago
  This kind of "nitpicking meta bullshit" is valuable feedback to someone, like a startup, who might be marketing a product and hoping to not turn away customers. Sure, this particular thing isn't selling a product, but how many people would be turned away if it was?
  - benaiah 13y ago
    Like you said: "this particular thing" isn't selling a product. "This particular thing" didn't ask for this feedback, doesn't need it, and may very well never see it. The fact that there are a few rare exceptions where this kind of discussion is helpful doesn't change the fact that, 90% of the time, it's a low-quality, useless waste of time.
personZ 13y ago
Similarly, on this meta side conversation, the 3D model of a simple box falls in the "because we can, not because we should" category. I scroll with the mouse wheel, and it was captured by that model viewer the moment it scrolled by. Enjoyable article, though. Sounds like their solution and its optimistic locking may be susceptible to a race condition, however.
- Mister_Snuggles 13y ago
  Everything beyond the red/green light falls into the "because we can, not because we should" category. Does anybody really need a menu bar icon to show them the toilet status? Does this company or its employees benefit in any way from toilet occupancy statistics?
  - NathanKP 13y ago
    The hacker mindset is to do things just because they are possible. Efficiency and benefit are rarely as important as the pure joy of creating or doing things just because you can. Ruthless efficiency comes into play once you are the owner of a company, but for the engineer the real joy comes from just making stuff.
    - Mister_Snuggles 13y ago
      Very true, and I have to admit that I have many side projects (with huge amounts of 'scope creep') that I've done just because I can. I have a very hard time justifying that kind of behaviour on my employer's time though.
Mister_Snuggles 13y ago
Yes. Do we really need a 4MB animated GIF for this? The fact that they had to host it on Dropbox instead of their own site should have been a hint that it might be overkill.
- freehunter 13y ago
  I'm just wondering where Instagram comes into play. When I try to go back, it tries to go back to Instagram, which instantly puts me back at the site. Why?
  - Mister_Snuggles 13y ago
    That was used to host the picture of the Lego model, which is odd because other, larger, images were hosted on their S3 storage.

Can we stop with the nitpicking meta bullshit on every freaking article, please? I don't care about the things you dislike about a random webpage. It wasn't submitted because of a header. In order to read the article that we're actually discussing, you have to scroll down to where you can't see it anymore. It's a 10-second-at-most mild irritation. I would understand if it was an epilepsy warning o something, but it's not. The fact that these comments get made wouldn't be a problem, except that people, since they agree with the complaint (as I happen to do in this case) keep upvoting the damn things. At this point, there's a good 20% chance that any given comment thread is gonna start with the same boring arguments we've had four hundred thousand times on this site already that I have to scroll down past to talk about actual article we're discussing. These kind of comments are cheap, effortless, and do nothing but degrade the quality of discussion and make participation a PITA for people who want to actually talk about the relevant article instead of random web design complaints.

mikeash 13y ago
Seriously. You have trouble reading the text? Select All, Copy, open your favorite text editor, Paste, read. This place is called Hacker News, where "Hacker" is supposed to mean that it's a community of people who build interesting things, yet people can't even be bothered to take five seconds to take matters into their own hands when it comes to reading some text. We're power users. Act like it.
Mister_Snuggles 13y ago
This kind of "nitpicking meta bullshit" is valuable feedback to someone, like a startup, who might be marketing a product and hoping to not turn away customers. Sure, this particular thing isn't selling a product, but how many people would be turned away if it was?
- benaiah 13y ago
  Like you said: "this particular thing" isn't selling a product. "This particular thing" didn't ask for this feedback, doesn't need it, and may very well never see it. The fact that there are a few rare exceptions where this kind of discussion is helpful doesn't change the fact that, 90% of the time, it's a low-quality, useless waste of time.

personZ 13y ago

Similarly, on this meta side conversation, the 3D model of a simple box falls in the "because we can, not because we should" category. I scroll with the mouse wheel, and it was captured by that model viewer the moment it scrolled by. Enjoyable article, though. Sounds like their solution and its optimistic locking may be susceptible to a race condition, however.

Mister_Snuggles 13y ago
Everything beyond the red/green light falls into the "because we can, not because we should" category. Does anybody really need a menu bar icon to show them the toilet status? Does this company or its employees benefit in any way from toilet occupancy statistics?
- NathanKP 13y ago
  The hacker mindset is to do things just because they are possible. Efficiency and benefit are rarely as important as the pure joy of creating or doing things just because you can. Ruthless efficiency comes into play once you are the owner of a company, but for the engineer the real joy comes from just making stuff.
  - Mister_Snuggles 13y ago
    Very true, and I have to admit that I have many side projects (with huge amounts of 'scope creep') that I've done just because I can. I have a very hard time justifying that kind of behaviour on my employer's time though.

Mister_Snuggles 13y ago

Yes. Do we really need a 4MB animated GIF for this? The fact that they had to host it on Dropbox instead of their own site should have been a hint that it might be overkill.

freehunter 13y ago
I'm just wondering where Instagram comes into play. When I try to go back, it tries to go back to Instagram, which instantly puts me back at the site. Why?
- Mister_Snuggles 13y ago
  That was used to host the picture of the Lego model, which is odd because other, larger, images were hosted on their S3 storage.