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How I Ruined Office Productivity with a Face-Replacing Slack Bot

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11–20 of 77 posts

Re: How I Ruined Office Productivity with a Face-Replacing Slack Bot

#11

Cool idea. Anyway, I am glad that "Scientists have detected a major change to the Earth’s oceans" is higher on the front page, at least right now.

I don't understand this sentiment. And, I am surprised to see it on HN this often too. It's saying - I care about X, till problems with X are all solved, any effort on anything else is snarked upon with judgement of wasting effort.

It used to be only on threads discussing an accomplishment of a space agency of a poorer country, and a popular sentiment was if a fraction of their GDP should be spent on science and technology till poverty is eradicated. Same thing here, why one person should spend time on a personal project until we resolve climate change. I understand prioritizing bigger problems with more time, effort and money. But, ridiculing others for spending time and effort on making/discussing something you think is not the most important is something else.

Re: How I Ruined Office Productivity with a Face-Replacing Slack Bot

#13

Cool idea. Anyway, I am glad that "Scientists have detected a major change to the Earth’s oceans" is higher on the front page, at least right now.

Well, it's #1 right now and the ocean one is #18!

Basic formula is that "controversial" posts get a nudge downward in placement. Climate change posts attract trolls that get downvoted and flagged more frequently that normal stories, and AGW deniers downvote the story and downvote/flag many comments. Has the net effect of pushing those stories off the front page quickly.

That said, credit where credit isdue: this is a nice hack from the submitter. Facefinder looks fun.

Re: How I Ruined Office Productivity with a Face-Replacing Slack Bot

#14

Cool idea. Anyway, I am glad that "Scientists have detected a major change to the Earth’s oceans" is higher on the front page, at least right now.

I don't understand this sentiment. And, I am surprised to see it on HN this often too. It's saying - I care about X, till problems with X are all solved, any effort on anything else is snarked upon with judgement of wasting effort. It used to be only on threads discussing an accomplishment of a space agency of a poorer country, and a popular sentiment was if a fraction of their GDP should be spent on science and tech…

I don't see where I ridicule anyone with my comment.

Re: How I Ruined Office Productivity with a Face-Replacing Slack Bot

#15

I have to use Slack at work, and it is fun. But when I'm trying to focus on programming, it is like being in an all day long meeting without an agenda.

Same situation for me. I disable notifications for everything but direct messages.

Sometimes I'll exit it entirely for an hour or two, but I don't want to look like I'm unavailable to help teammates.

Re: How I Ruined Office Productivity with a Face-Replacing Slack Bot

#16

I have to use Slack at work, and it is fun. But when I'm trying to focus on programming, it is like being in an all day long meeting without an agenda.

It can be very distracting. My analogy is that Slack removes all meetings and emails. You instead have 1000 micro meetings and 1000 micro emails that you have to context switch in and out of all day.

Re: How I Ruined Office Productivity with a Face-Replacing Slack Bot

#17
All you ruined was the fun of photoshopping his face into things.

Let me draw a parallel with a story of my grandfather, whom I never knew: Apparently a great hobby of his used to be to collect sayings from people. Whenever he'd meet anyone, let it be new or already known, he'd ask them if they knew any new sayings. He wrote all of them down in his little book of sayings. My father started picking up the hobby and they'd get excited when they had learned a saying the other didn't know yet. They'd do this at diner, around the fire place, you name it.

Then came my grandfather's birthday and one of the 'gifts' he received was an encyclopedia of sayings, within it were almost all the sayings in existence.

Suffice to say the fun of collecting new sayings was gone, the interest in sayings was gone and a great hobby got ruined.

So all I can see is that you took something that was a culture thing in your team and you took a nice fat automated dump on it.

The tech is very cool nonetheless :)

Re: How I Ruined Office Productivity with a Face-Replacing Slack Bot

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this sentiment. And, I am surprised to see it on HN this often too. It's saying - I care about X, till problems with X are all solved, any effort on anything else is snarked upon with judgement of wasting effort. It used to be only on threads discussing an accomplishment of a space agency of a poorer country, and a popular sentiment was if a fraction of their GDP should be spent on science and tech…

I don't see where I ridicule anyone with my comment.

It's a backhanded compliment that implies that silly hacks aren't worthwhile.

Re: How I Ruined Office Productivity with a Face-Replacing Slack Bot

#20
post #18

Side point, but what is going on with the scrolling on that page? Anybody else find it caused performance issues? That aside, great article!

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed the article.

Sorry about the scroll problems, I really hate scrolljacking so I don't have any JS for that on there, but I imagine that fixed background image could be causing some problems. Would you mind sharing your OS/browser info so I can investigate?

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