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DaveWalk

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival on Saturday November 16, 2019 @10:17AM (#21553024)
Interesting phenomenon. It's eerily similar to r/Boston.
Re:Cormac McCarthy on how to write a science paper on Friday September 27, 2019 @11:37AM (#21093101)
We could have been twins, when I was in graduate school :)

At times I had (still have?) a cynical look at scientific publishing, that it was a symptom of a larger problem: the Peter Principle writ large. Professors and researchers are selected for one thing (their scientific ability), but their major job duties are for something else (here, writing; but also teaching and leadership). Select for one trait, but the job description is for another, and the output is dismal.

To further extend my cynicism: why would a PI follow Cormac McCarthy's advice? Do we have evidence that better-written papers are more "successful," with more citations and shares? My argument (based only on my experiences) is for the opposite: the language is secondary. "Skip to the figures," as I have heard.

Re:Thunderbird 68.0 on Wednesday August 28, 2019 @04:29PM (#20823685)
I thought this was the source? https://github.com/Foundry376/Mailspring

Or are you referring to the cloud aspects of Mailspring, like read receipts etc?

Re:Thunderbird 68.0 on Wednesday August 28, 2019 @02:22PM (#20822505)
As usual, I came here to look for recommendations :) I have been enjoying Mailspring[0], an OSS fork of Nylas Mail (RIP). I came across it while looking for the closest thing to Google Inbox (RIP also). Mailspring is cross-platform.

[0]:https://getmailspring.com/

Re:Why does all life use the same 20 amino acids? on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @03:06PM (#20760464)
No offense to the good discussions here, but this article is no more than a press release. It doesn't even directly address the question in the title!

Again no disrespect to the talk here, but this is a Stack Exchange kind of question, and lo there is an SE answer: https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/653/why-20-amino...

Re:Why ElementaryOS Left Medium on Tuesday August 20, 2019 @12:48PM (#20749071)
Yes -- good on them changing, and bravo to them for calling it out and saying why. In my opinion they put a lot of effort into making this post, and it shows.
Re:Why ElementaryOS Left Medium on Tuesday August 20, 2019 @12:44PM (#20749022)
Upvoted for being pithy and beautiful. Where's our manifesto? Can I suggest you write it?
Re:Hey advertisers, track this on Wednesday June 26, 2019 @01:25PM (#20287090)
Amen to this: once you get your feelings in a better place, be part of the solution.
Re:What's Salesforce? on Wednesday June 26, 2019 @11:41AM (#20286046)
As mentioned there are dozens, and Wikipedia will show you[0]. Since CRMs can be bolted onto just about every business, use cases vary extremely. If I'm being honest, every sales manager starts with an internet search to find the latest rundown [1].

My recommendation is to set aside time to play with a lightweight (pipedrive) + heavyweight (Salesforce) options to see how you might use them one day. I would treat CRMs like a regular piece of software. Many offer totally free trials for 1-3 users. So I would bet they agree with this approach :)

[0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_CRM_systems [1]:https://www.pcmag.com/roundup/253275/the-best-crm-software

Re:What's Salesforce? on Tuesday June 25, 2019 @06:51PM (#20279941)
From a business side of things, the advantage of Salesforce is that it can very easily be managed by non-devs. It has straightforward sales functions baked in: reporting, forecasting contact management. For sure, Airtable can be used as a lightweight CRM. Depending on your business, it might be all you need -- it might even be preferred if you're bootstrapping and constantly iterating early on! But Airtable falls down when your sales/marketing needs grow -- those hires probably won't have the patience to develop tools that tie into Airtable. To reference the old Jim Barksdale line, Salesforce is the "bundle" option, and Airtable is the "unbundle" one.
Re:What's Salesforce? on Tuesday June 25, 2019 @06:44PM (#20279876)
+1 to developers on HN: if your dream is to have a company with a sales team, it's great practice to get to know CRM softwares early and in-depth. Every seasoned salesperson will need a functioning CRM to do good work...and the best salespeople will get held back by a malfunctioning/nonexistent CRM.
Re:What's Salesforce? on Tuesday June 25, 2019 @06:40PM (#20279841)
This is nearly a universal law in the sales world: products/services pitched to salespeople always 1) are expensive and 2) come with their own sales team who are slick and/or aggressive. I've seen it from sales training, to software and everything in-between.
Thank you for this point (and book recommendation). It has clarified my thinking on dark patterns, something I've long suspected. We need to (re)educate designers about the mistakes they're making, in service of what I assume are data- hungry marketing employees.

I also enjoyed and support the phrase from the article: "confirmshaming."

Re:Switch from Chrome to Firefox on Thursday May 30, 2019 @01:26PM (#20053665)
You raise very good points. The shortcuts thing has made me miserable for years. Surely the coders of Mozilla appreciate a good set of shortcuts, like in whatever IDE they write their code in!
Came here to also recommend LibraryThing. It's been around for 14 years, and the community has lots of similar situations to OP's. Probably a good place to look up anecdotal evidence for this kind of project, too.

LibraryThing also hooks into [TinyCat](https://www.librarycat.org/) which can make your database more like a library's.

Where is the list of offending apps? How hard would it be to name and shame them and keep track?

The NYT article cites the company MightySignal claiming 1,200 Android and 200 iOS offending apps.

EDIT: The NYT outlines their reporters' testing, and the apps they used: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/technology/location-track...

I came to say the same about Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People." His teachings are aimed at being a better salesperson and you should treat it as such. Taking it as self-help advice is going to lead to frustration. (As a guide to sales, it has mostly evergreen, if hokey, advice. It was first published in 1936, after all.)

I don't know if reading a book will fix everything in this situation, but if you really want one, get closer to the subject with "Secrets to Winning Office Politics" by Marie McIntyre.

Re:Fred Rogers wouldn't have wanted to appear in a Google ad on Sunday November 04, 2018 @02:23PM (#18377584)
To me, it's the end game for consumerism. The products themselves just get in the way -- the feeling is what you really want to have.

It's not new, I think. Just perhaps a little more blatant, and for more companies, than previously.

This was my take also. It's a purely business decision: how much is it worth to not have this person work for a competitor? Also dovetails with the statement that lower level employees are dismissed with a little to no severance. Less risk there.
Re:The End of the TV Writers’ Room? on Saturday August 11, 2018 @09:17PM (#17742438)
The writers have a union which should be able to help with this scenario, yes?

Does the VFX industry have a similar thing in Hollywood?

Re:Alternatives to Google Products on Monday June 11, 2018 @08:12AM (#17283581)
The best distillation I found was that this is all a version of the "Nothing to Hide" argument. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument

There are some points to counter with in the article. Bruce Schneier quotes Cardinal Richelieu: give me 6 lines written by the most honest man and I'll find something in there to hang him by. Has the benefit of historical perspective!

Possibly naive question: how does reddit make money, and how's it going for them? Ads, promoted content, reddit gold... Is that it?

I knew they were purchased by Conde Nast, then spun off at some point? Are they owned by VC now, or something?

I often use reddit as a search engine for answers with a "human touch" for lack of a better word. I once did this with del.icio.us back in the "social bookmarking" days. I'm curious if this is a big use case for Reddit users do this too?

Maybe not based on the low quality of their search engine...

Thank you for this: the most telling aspect for me is the history of it all. This is not a new problem. I should like to look at the follow ups / aftermaths of each of these sources. I wonder what excuse(s) academia decided on.
Does this remind others of other enterprises, like beginning video game programmers? When your are ready to leave from abuse, there is always another new person happy to take over.

The supply of new labor in the academic market seems endless. I have spoken to ~200 incoming grad students about careers, and never once did it sink in. My opinion is that it must be corrected earlier up the chain, in high school or early college.

Re:It's time to head back to RSS? on Saturday March 31, 2018 @08:21AM (#16722988)
Newsblur is also YC S12. And it has been worked on ever since with some cool features: you can forward your newsletters to it and turn them into RSS feeds(!) for example.
Re:The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble on Friday February 16, 2018 @05:37PM (#16397154)
I think this is a very important point; independent bookstores in general aren't "thriving" in the normal Wall St sense of the word. I wonder: is their whole resilience is due to more of a downshift in expectations? I.e., earn enough to make a living but not to expand? To give your employees a liveable wage but no healthcare?
Re:The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble on Friday February 16, 2018 @04:15PM (#16396375)
Super interesting. For the bibliophiles out there, I wonder how bad this is getting industry-wide? Does it happen at indie book sellers, Wal Mart, and Amazon too?

Certainly I have put down books that were made way too cheaply, and I have impulse-purchased books that are exceptionally well-designed.

Re:The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble on Friday February 16, 2018 @03:58PM (#16396165)
This sounds heartbreakingly true, especially the part about the CMO being sold a fantasy at a conference. I really like the way you've chained it together from the C-suite all the way down to the lowly cashier.

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