The iOS app is long-unmaintained and has bugs. It needs a new maintainer, but they need some kind of Apple developer account to actually get it in the app store.
I'm the original author of this content. I wrote it on the internal wiki at Google in 2007. Someone copied it and posted it at nohello.(something) after I left Google. It's made the front page of HN multiple times.
The discussions always split between the people who just want to get on with the conversation and the people who can't bring themselves to do that because they consider it unforgivably rude. The second group never seem to take the hint that the first interruption is an imposition in itself.
There’s more than two groups. Some people are just being friendly, behavior which is hard to exhibit when you primarily (or only) interact with someone over chat. Yes, some people are just being nervous around potentially breaching etiquette in an ironic way that happens to be a different breach of etiquette (for some, at least) but I just respond with “hi” strictly because I am interested in getting on with the conversation.
It would be rude to simply link this site (not blaming you) in response to a “hello” coming from a remote co-worker, or even a co-worker across the office who just didn’t want to walk over. They are just being friendly!
I am one who would prefer to just get on with the conversation but I also realize that’s not how everyone is and that’s okay; I should play nice with others if I want others to play nice with me and a simple “hey” in response is such an easy way to play nice.
The context I usually saw this used in is that people would put the link on their online status or profile bio, as a signal and to inform anyone looking to contact them that it's ok and encouraged to just go straight to asking their business. I've never heard of someone sending it to explicitly "chide" someone for violating that etiquette.
Sometimes you do it because if you just ask the question you get ignored but if you say hello and get a response ppl are less likely to ignore the second question. Thats the bigger reason than any rudeness reason i would think.
The opposite is true as well. If someone pings me hello, I might not answer immediately because I don't know if what follows will be a big or small thing, but after having replied I feel obligated to continue answering. So my decision is to not answer until I'm less busy.
If they however ask a question no hello style, I can quickly gauge if I can answer it immediately, or I should wait until a better time for me.
So the no hello might get an immediate response, the hello will wait until I can handle whatever.
And if they ask the question and I determine I don't have the bandwidth to switch or immediately answer I can kindly reply such information. They're more likely to get a reply faster by skipping the hanging and dangling hello. "If it's important, they'll leave a message."
This. The selfish point (there are other points too) of "hi" is to confirm you have their attention and to remove plausible deniability of "oops I missed your message."
> The selfish point (there are other points too) of "hi" is to confirm you have their attention
No one is unsure of the selfish/self-serving motivation behind the lone "hello". The singleminded self-centeredness at the expense of others is the _entire_ basis of the criticism.
This response is like encountering in a thread about lunch theft in the workplace, "Some people take food that isn't theirs because they didn't bring anything for lunch, and they see food that someone else brought sitting there in the fridge." The power of this response to be able to explain something not already understood is nil—and so is its exculpatory power.
> to remove plausible deniability of "oops I missed your message."
I'll dispute this. The overwhelming purpose is so the sender can confirm they have the receiver's attention so the sender knows whether to bother themselves with typing out the rest of their inquiry. They're happy to trade the negative consequences on others for a minor convenience to themselves.
This is such a ridiculously cynical interpretation. I'm sure there at least a few people out there who behave as you describe but that is not normal. Greeting people before launching into a topic is a social norm. Even if you make a reasonable case that it is outdated in the context of instant messaging that doesn't change the reality of it.
Someone doing something that you consider outdated or inefficient does not imply that he is malicious.
You specifically attributed malice and I'm responding to that.
As to these supposed harmful effects. If you find the most basic of social pleasantries to be such an unmanageable burden then I'm likely better off not associating with you. Do you get angry at people who greet you as you walk by on the street? Navigating that interaction similarly demands some small part of your attention after all, however brief it might be.
I would be okay with this if the conversation actually demanded a realtime response. But I can't know that until I see the actual first message, and they usually don't.
I've always been fascinated to learn more about cultural differences around this topic.
I've seen arguments in the past that different nationalities may have different norms around this kind of thing, in particular over whether it's polite to launch straight into a request for help without confirming the other person is available and receptive first.
There may be a power dynamics thing here too - if somebody is seen as being more "senior" there may be additional perceived constraints on how a conversation should be conducted.
Since you've been involved in conversations about this for more than 15 years now have you seen any credible evidence of cultural
differences that come into play here?
I think it is more of a if you are not there right now, and won't be able to respond, I am not going to write it all to wait for an answer later. I think most people want to make sure someone is there to respond before committing to a conversation.
But I find THAT attitude to be quite rude. You are prioritizing your preferences when it's me that you're reaching out to for help. Nobody's saying you have to write a complete and detailed problem description in your first message, but give me something to know what i'm getting into.
BAD: Hey, you there?
GOOD: Hey, you there? I'm trying to do X but I'm running into some issues and I wanted to get your advice.
Once I've responded and you know you have my attention, then you commit to filling me in on the gory details.
That "GOOD" is only marginally better than just "hi". It still doesn't include the actual point, so after me replying "yes I'm here" you are not much wiser and I'm not still on the hook of having to wait for you to type the actual thing.
Surely it’s more efficient (for both parties) to type and be able to read the whole thing and then respond meaningfully?
E.g. If you’ve just say “hi”, two hours later I get to my DMs and say “hey what’s up?” and you end up not following up with the “actual” message straight away, let’s say another hour later, this all took way longer than necessary.
The no-hello approach just makes sense when dealing with asynchronous messaging platforms such as Slack. IMO, not following the no-hello approach is bad etiquette and there’s a ton of people out there who still don’t really get that.
Hi. I have a question but if you're not immediately available to discuss it then I won't go into it and move on for now. Are you available and interruptible for a few minutes?
That's because we're communicating synchronously in person. If you say something when I'm not listening to you, I will probably start listening midway through your statement, and miss potentially vital info. In a slack message, I can just read it again.
IDK about you but I get chats from 30+ different people and I usually miss at least one person's message a day as it falls off the "front page" so to speak
I don't see how "hello?" helps with that. If anything, it makes things worse if everybody does that, because now half of those chats from 30+ different people are that, drowning out the useful messages.
In the described scenario (chats falling off the front page) it doesn't help either party.
In the case where you want an immediate discussion, don't trust the status indicator, and there are multiple different people you could contact, a quick confirmation that the selected party is online and available is not unreasonable.
By the way, I also hate the "hello"-only message. I am, however, guilty of writing "Hey. Do you have a second to chat" - typically in cases where either through chat or video conference I want to go through something that is more involved, and I also want some confirmation of understanding and acknowledgement.
If the notification bubble just says "hello" it's on the bottom of the stack of my priorities. If it's "hey, this alert came up..." then it's actually going to flag my attention.
If you want my attention give me a reason to give it.
Thanks! I haven't touched J in about ten years -- and I never used dissect -- and I never did anything serious in it, just about thirty project euler problems for fun.
This story is entirely based on the idea that "computer programmer" is different from "software developer", which the Bureau of Labor Statistics considers different occupations. It's as though "lawyer" and "attorney" were considered separate professions.
If you want to see how moronic this is, look up the definitions and see where the definition says people with these occupations work.
Where do software developers work? "In companies that develop software"
Where do computer programmers work? "Indoors, in offices."
IPv6 clients (or in theory any kind of IPv4 successor) can reach IPv4 servers via some kind of translation layer (for example NAT64) - so IPv6 is backwards-compatible with IPv4 in that direction.
The inverse direction (IPv4 client to IPv6 server) is however not possible, since IPv4 is not forward-compatible with any possible successor, because it is not possible to encode more information into 32-bit than 32-bit.
Yes, v6 is backwards compatible with v4 now, via dual stack, Teredo, 6to4, 6rd, 6over4, ISATAP, 6in4/4in6, NAT64/DNS64, 464xlat, DS-lite, MAP-T/E, 4rd, LW4over6 and probably other methods I'm forgetting. In fact many of these were in there from the start, so it was always backwards compatible.
You could make a reasonable argument that it has too many ways of being backwards compatible, even.
They aren’t compatible. There is a device in the middle doing a translation for you.
That’s like saying HTTP can talk to FTP servers as long as there is an HTTP to FTP proxy.
The only thing that makes them seem compatible is there is a well formed address space in v6 that clients send v4 requests to. But it’s still v6 and a 64 proxy needs to have an actual IPv4 address to translate the source to before sending it via v4 to the actual destination.
> They aren’t compatible. There is a device in the middle doing a translation for you.
Which was true of all the IPng candidates, and not just the one that ended up being chosen for "IPv6".
There is no way to expand the addresses space (as found in IPv4) to something greater that 32-bits in a compatible: new API calls, data structures, DNS records, etc, were always going to be needed.
To list "not compatible" as a con of IPng/IPv4 is non-sensical.
I'm aware there's a middle box. My point is that the middle box is a compatibility layer which, by definition, has the effect of enabling compatibility (at least in one direction).
The usual "they should have designed it to be compatible" nonsense usually comes from the crowd with zero suggestions of how to have a 32-bit addressed device send to packets to something with an address outside its universe.
Point is that djb was as wrong then as they are now.
Well, finding out the author works at my alma mater the weirdest way possible: recognizing our Class B in the opening paragraph. I still catch myself typing 131.193 when I go to type in IP addresses on the numpad, just a force of habit.
Of course, my home network's IPv4 space uses the same 10 block as the subnets I worked with most of my time there.
DJB point about the magic moment makes sense to me. What is the point of a separate network that has 33% adoption? It has virtually no impact to alleviate IP address exhaustion, and therefore there is no incentive.
The vast majority of that ~%40 of internet traffic is in direct disagreement with said prophecy though. Mobile carriers like T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T, Telstra, Deutsch Telekom, Orange, (...you get the idea) all used pure IPv6 backbones with NAT64 edges to role out mobile telecommunications without needing double/CG-NAT or boatloads of public IPv4. Each connection made via IPv6 is transparently 1 less NAT session out a public v4 address and the IPv6 design greatly optimized the way the mobile network cores were built out. This is what has driven the growth of IPv6 on the internet (as more users switch to mobile) rather than an explosion of wireline and business users making the switch.
Where pressure is still lacking is in "small" enterprise type case (like most businesses, regional health systems, local government facilities, and so on) where the difference isn't really that much vs networks with 100 million or more clients riding). Only when corps get to the size of e.g. Microsoft do they really start seeing similar value at the moment. Everyone else can scrape by just getting that small bit of IPv4 and forgetting about it for now.
