

Hilary Mason: How to Replace Yourself with a Very Small Shell Script - cwan
http://smarterware.org/6172/hilary-mason-how-to-replace-yourself-with-a-small-shell-script

======
RiderOfGiraffes
Two months ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1192790>

Three months ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1102238>

This is a really cool presentation. The idea and technique have their flaws,
as are pointed out here by several participants, but what bothers me most is
that the last two times this was submitted it sank with no up-votes and no
comments. Yet here it as (as I write this) 74 up-votes and 17 comments.

How many more brilliant things deserving of our attention do we miss on HN? Is
this really a problem? Can it be fixed? Should it be fixed?

Hackers Unite! Don't let the good stuff escape you! Find a way to rid yourself
of the dross and find the good stuff!

~~~
dpritchett
This link was more likely to be clicked because it appeared more relevant to
the interests of HNers:

\- The previous two links were Youtube links. I can't click those during
business hours so I rarely notice them. I am guessing that many HNers skip
Youtube for similar reasons.

\- This submission had a better-targeted title: it led with a feminine name.
This is good headline craft, especially if your target audience skews male.

\- Smarterware.org sounds like either a typo for HN-regular asmartbear.com or
a noncommercial lifehacks site. Again, better targeted than Youtube and more
likely (from a "should I click this?" heuristic perspective) to have a writeup
and the possibility to research the author.

Edit: Just clicked through and noticed that smarterware.org is Gina Trapani's
new shindig. This gives added cachet for lifehack enthusiasts.

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mberning
This might be cool if you are a quasi web-celebrity, but in a business setting
it would be downright dangerous. I can't imagine how terrible I would feel if
something completely fell through the cracks OR did not receive an adequate
response from me. I also can't imagine auto-nagging my boss about ANYTHING.

I guess the biggest problem I would have using this at work is that it is
fundamentally based on the idea that people are contacting me about stupid
stuff (generally not true) and that I'm way too busy/important to respond
directly to somebody (also generally not true).

~~~
hmason
I put all of the auto-generated e-mails in my drafts folder, so I can edit,
modify, or delete before I send on a case by case basis.

There's also a whitelist.

I'll release the code as soon as I disentangle my personal data from it.
Patches welcome. :-)

~~~
mberning
That's cool. I got the impression that it was communicating with people on the
fly with little/no oversight.

~~~
hmason
Initially it did, but that went wrong a few too many times. :-)

------
smurthasmith
I think the statistical importance is by far the most interesting feature. Our
inboxes are really priority queues, but we are currently spending a great deal
of time and energy doing the prioritization ourselves. The idea of seeing my
inbox sorted by importance is game changing.

Hilary, what are the aspects of the email that influence importance? Is it
mostly the text content of the email, or are there things like sender, number
of emails in the chain, number of recipients, etc?

~~~
hmason
I agree. For example, why do we look at email ranked chronologically? I'd much
rather rank it by relevance or importance (or my likelihood to actually answer
it).

The feature set includes sender, recipients, whether I'm the only recipient,
time of day, words in the subject, words in the body, and whether I've
exchanged messages with the sender recently.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
There are still another few days left to apply to YC...

------
chime
I've always joked around my work that I can replace a certain manager with a
shell script, kind of like this: [http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-
apparel/unisex/frustrations...](http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-
apparel/unisex/frustrations/374d/)

I kid of course but I've actually given it some thought and I think it could
work very well in case of inefficient managers. A good manager does a lot
beyond forwarding emails appropriately. However, I've seen many a bad manager
simply forward and reply emails as the bulk of their job duties. Hilary's
script could indeed work as an automated 'smart' bot if some politeness
feature is added in. No need to save anything in drafts folder. Just send it
out and have links (or bcc the smart bot) to flag incorrectly sent emails.
This could train the filter better.

~~~
billswift
Bad managers are often such a drag that you could get rid of them _without_
replacing them with _anything_ and it would be a win.

------
elrodeo
A few years ago I wanted to write a similar chat bot, which would answer
questions of my mom in a IM conversation. It wouldn't be difficult at all,
since she was asking always the same: did you eat something today? Do you feel
good? How was your day? Etc.

But then I couldn't reconcile such solution with my conscience.

~~~
igravious
When you're a parent yourself you'll understand why your Mom asks you the
_same_ _boring_ questions everyday. Count yourself lucky that she cares and
that's she's savvy enough to use IM :)

~~~
vdm
Count yourself lucky that she's here. If life goes according to plan, one day
she won't.

------
BoppreH
Site's down, but here's the original video:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoQ4tka1zNk>

~~~
aw3c2
It's also blogspam, thanks for the actual link.

<http://www.hilarymason.com/blog/ignitenyc-the-video/>

------
j_baker
I think I just found some ideas for projects to work on when I get bored. :-)

------
wendroid
When I worked for a "we'll all work from home" company we used to use IRC as
our office. Saying hello to everyone every morning got a bit repetitive so I
scripted some good mornings and when people arrived it got triggered to say
hello for me.

Eventually though, our sales guy twigged that he was being fooled (as he saw
it) and got annoyed about it. The tech side thought it was a cool script but
to appease the guy I turned it off.

The irony is that he fucked the company by finding cheaper subcontractors to
make more money for himself, a phenomena I've encountered quite a few times
now.

~~~
jacquesm
> The irony is that he fucked the company by finding cheaper subcontractors to
> make more money for himself

I can see how that would annoy you but it didn't actually fuck the company,
the company could have found those subcontractors itself as well.

~~~
wendroid
It all got a bit messy by that point, low cashflow, mortgages to be paid etc.
The risk takers were using their house as collateral and decided to go safe.
It was an amicable parting.

------
torpor
Everyone can be replaced with a shell script. If you can describe what they do
in language, then its just .. a few .. steps from that language to a shell
script.

