Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | gregparadee's commentslogin

Some of the comments in this thread are the exact opposite thing I would expect from this community and it is shameful. It's unfortunate that the top comment is one of these which could steer some people away from reading further.

As many others in this thread have pointed out, Cerebro is a pretty cool app that borrows from some core OS functionality and improves on it. Is its design 100% perfect? Maybe not. However, instead of commenting the application isn't exactly the way YOU would have done it and complaining try offering some constructive criticism.

If the app is memory hogging, not following best coding practices, or you have a cool idea of how something could be done instead share that feedback and offer better ways to do things. Not only does this benefit the developers working on this app but it helps others who may be working on becoming better developers themselves.

I myself am a naive developer. However I enjoy developing in my free time to keep myself thinking and I enjoy learning new things. I frequently visit this community to see what others are working on and looking at all the cool applications that people develop is a great way to pass time. If I had worked on something really hard, posted it, and then received some of these comments I would be extremely discouraged.

That said, if a Cerebro developer is reading, this looks like a really cool improvement on Spotlight (I use OSX). Keep up the good work and don't let the negative comments in here discourage you or your team!


I truly wish that most communities of practice were more like what you describe. But, it's also naive to expect that experts won't criticize, sometimes even harshly.

For instance, I am currently learning data science from the ground up (i.e. reading the fundamental mathematical literature) and doing it outside of a university program. It is disheartening to post a question, to say Cross Validated, and have a few critical commenters almost laugh the motivation out of me. So, I can emphasize.

However, on the other hand, as a software practitioner, I am often on the other side of the fence. In this field in particular it seems like there are often amateurs who decide to jump in with an arrogant disrespect for the existing community knowledge and practices. I think it's because software is very cool now (like statistics, etc.). And, in software it's easy to find some code and libraries and 'wire them together' in crude ways.

Note, I am not implying that this is the case here! I haven't even looked at the software nor read most of the comments. But, since I often see this happening, I know that such comments are expected. I'm only commenting on your perspective.

I am not against autodidacts. In fact, I am one myself. And, I encourage it. But, all autodidacts should expect and embrace criticism from the community. It sucks to take it, because often commenters are often overly harsh and blunt. But, in defense of them, every community will be like this, to some degree. And, it's expected. Many of these practitioners have spent their life doing it, and they have some right to be critical, don't they?


> If the app is memory hogging, not following best coding practices, or you have a cool idea of how something could be done instead share that feedback and offer better ways to do things.

In spirit i agree with you.

In practice the problem here is, to use a really crude analogy:

The Cerebro developers rented an empty mall for super cheap, then opened a single restaurant in it. Some people won't mind driving all the way there and walking through the entire thing to get to the restaurant, other people will.

The advice then in that situation is to one of these:

1. Demolish the parts of the mall that aren't used, piece by piece, while trying to not knock over the restaurant situated on the third floor, so other people can build their houses on the now free space, closer to the restaurant.

2. Abandon it and build a new restaurant in the middle of the city.

Everyone recognizes that both of these are very expensive solutions and unlikely to ever be implemented, so you end up with two kind of people.

1. Those who shrug and walk away saying nothing.

2. Those who go, with various amounts of emphasis: "Aw, i wish you hadn't done that."

There is no happy middle ground possible here, sadly.


While it's cool if the dev does it as a side project I think that the main reason people are negative is because it doesn't bring anything new as many similar tools exist: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13737052

And the only difference it has is being much heavier because it's electron.


I actually find comments like yours far more obnoxious than level-headed criticism. This communities purpose is not to be a marketing team for whoever wants to post here. Criticism is much more edifying than blind support.


The problem I see in this community is that much of the time, many aren't providing criticism. If it were only criticism, I'd even agree. The truth is that the so called "criticism" is really armchair quarterbacking most of the time.


I wish you and some other Hn'ers would stop hating on armchairs.


Not necessarily a big bank but Visa also has a developer site with several APIs that include Payments, Data and Analytics, and Fraud. Their website can be found at https://developer.visa.com/


Just happened to me on Businessinsider.


Happened to me on a tech news website earlier today (forget which one exactly)


Operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, a staff of 17 officers in the National Domestic Extremism Unit (NDEU) has been scanning the public's tweets, YouTube videos, Facebook profiles, and anything else UK citizens post in the public online sphere.

The HUGE difference here is the last three words of that paragraph, "public online sphere." They are doing no more then analyzing publicly accessible data just like any other company, specifically advertising and marketing companies, do on a daily basis.


TLDR: This is nothing like Prism. Prism (illegally) accesses private data, NDEU legally accesses data made public.


Not quite, PRISM provides access to data legally acquired through mechanisms (like FISA requests) that should ideally not be legal.


I have one of these from Coca-cola


Wait, so there is a problem with MS helping out our government protect its secrets? I agree, PRISIM was bad an invasion of privacy but people need to realize that government agencies have more secrets and do more then spy on us. I wouldn't want China, Russia or some other foreign country getting its hands on the locations of weapons, R&D, or our defense plans because of a exploit in a MS program.

Hackers will always be faster to take advantage of loopholes then companies or the government are at patching them. Do people really see the problem with MS doing this?


This sounds like something straight out of Wayne Enterprises. I wish more companies could do things like this and see what can be created and achieved. An area that I could see being able to do something like this without having to face Shareholders, management, etc. that most companies have to do is Universities. University students should be able to take advantage of the resources that universities have and universities should encourage this. They could essentially have a new flock of minds every year to help innovate projects. I believe Georgia Tech started something like this a few years ago.


This is the most impressive "experiment" I have seen come out of Google in a long time. Hopefully others will start to take advantage of these new technologies and we will start seeing more things like this. +1 to Google. Pun intended.


On top of the simplicity, design, and overall awesome feel of the website, the greatest thing is the privacy feature. Having everything in the WHOIS set to private is awesome and I applaud you for that. Godaddy charges an absurd price to make the WHOIS record private. Thank you!


You're welcome! Having privacy enabled by default was one of the easier product decisions for us simply because having it any other way didn't make sense. Any other feedback?


Not true. That would defeat the purpose of the new emerging companies that are trying to get potential employees to do webcam recorded answers to pre defined questions instead of the phone interview. You would see their faces and know their ethnic background easily.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: