Ask HN: What is your strongest argument against remote work? - <AUTHOR> please, I need to know! <comment><USER2> I absolutely think you lose something from lack of face-to-face contact. Some of the most productive leadership and decison-making sessions I've had came from sitting around a table or sharing a meal or a drink with a team, and going back and forth about something.

Additionally, casual contact helps too. I put a couch in my office, and people would come just sit down and talk. The setting set the vibe. I had some great conversations with people just kicking back that I would have never otherwise had.

I absolutely realize people will disagree, but this is my experience.

<comment><USER3> as someone who's been remote for 10+ years: both (the value of casual conversation and higher face-to-face productivity) ring true to me.

If you want to have a remote team I advice having a space for casual conversation and non-work video calls, it improves things a bit for the first.

For the latter, IRL gatherings/meetups are valuable but obviously not something you can do all the time.

<comment><USER4> Absolutely - we have a dedicated "water cooler" channel, and as a lead I try to ensure people feel comfortable going "off topic" during small group meetings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It fails with respect to growing junior team members. It's impossible for junior team members to observe the day-to-day patterns, habits and general implicit knowledge of senior team members that they would pick up (mostly not consciously) in an office simply through observation.

<comment><USER4> Like most things related to remote work, you just have to be more formal in the the approach. Our team has successfully developed several cohorts of college hires remotely. You have to give them consistent (daily, for hours) access to mentoring/senior resources via scheduled time, keep design or other higher level meetings public and make sure the juniors know they are invited to attend, and make clear to the junior devs that they are a priority so they can feel free to ping anyone on the team whenever they need help, plus make clear to the rest of the team that helping the junior devs is a priority.

Keeping an eye in the jrs work item completion rate and eliciting if there is a problem when it slows down also helps

<comment><USER6> Where do you work and are you hiring?

<comment><USER4> Microsoft, in consulting services, yes.

[https://careers.microsoft.com/students/us/en/microsoft- aspir...](https://careers.microsoft.com/students/us/en/microsoft-aspire- experience)

[https://careers.microsoft.com/students/us/en/job/795772/Full...](https://careers.microsoft.com/students/us/en/job/795772/Full- Time-Opportunities-for-Students-or-Recent-Graduates-Technical-Consulting- Client-Success-2021-Start-Dates)

Unfortunately it looks like we are back to requiring college hires to colocate for a year, even if their day to day teams are remote/distribute. Industry hires can live anywhere. Travel can be up to 100% depending on the project (although not right now.)

Microsoft is a huge company and not all (or even most) teams are as good at remote work as my team is, but the company as a whole is serious about the inclusive behaviors the underly my teams culture

<comment><USER6> What about jobs for non students who are self taught and working in another industry but have experience with JavaScript?

<comment><USER4> There are large number of self taught people in my area of the company (services). Experience in another industry is plus- we are the people who directly help customers build on top of Microsoft's products.

The biggest thing we (my division) look for in industry hires is an ability to interact with customers and master new skills quickly. On the technical angle, we do want to see knowledge beyond just on area of development (full-stack to cloud, o365 integration, sys admin experience, analytics work, etc...). Direct knowledge of the MS stack helps, but we hire plenty of people who know AWS and them teach them Azure (for example).

In terms of setting yourself up to get hired, I recommend trying to start a product/business. I've done three side companies/projects over the years, all done on nights and weekends, all of which never really did anything. I wasn't very committed to them, they didn't take up THAT much time, never really cost money (never had payroll, biggest expenses was a small factory order of light up dog collars at one), and I expected them to fail, but I learned a ton of new stuff to make the MVP and business systems happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In my experience with very early stage teams, a lot of creativity and innovation occurs as a byproduct of spending a large amount of time together in close quarters discussing a range of topics (work related and not.) I've managed remote teams as well and while there are ways to replicate certain aspects of this dynamic, overall it's much more difficult.

<comment><USER8> Remote is so much easier to make work well with an established team and an ongoing project. When either of them is new, it makes things harder and slower.

<comment><USER9> This. IMO it's very difficult to establish trust in new relationships especially when remote.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, so many people here want to date their coworkers. There are other places to meet women than the office. In fact it is probably better that you meet someone not in your office.

Managers are going to be PRO office work because without a venue for all manner of office politics, their effectiveness is diminished, particularly in age-identity politics. They will say something like "we are unable to foster a community of communal idea sharing and mentorship of younger employees." What they want is to use their new hires who are going to be college age to ostracize and push out more experienced workers they want to replace. The whole kumbaya campfire thing does not work if no one can see what the other looks like or if they are in their peer group or not.

</comment><comment><USER11> Assuming the work _can_ be done remotely:

\- Connections with people are easier in person.

\- Getting unblocked by talking to someone is easier in person.

\- Collaborating with materials is easier in person (shared whiteboard, post it notes, no delay in comms)

\- Meetings are easier in person as video conferences can have audio delays, people talking over each other, etc. No worries about people leaving their mic on while blending a smoothy or other tech issues.

\- In a meeting, it is easier to keep distractions low when on site (everyone close your laptops and leave your phones in your pocket is easier at a location).

\- Work socializing is waaaay harder when working remotely.

I say all these as a full time remote person before this whole COVID thing. That said, each of the arguments above are able to be mitigated and can we can learn cope with them.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've been full time remote for several years. What I've found is that it can _ever so slightly_ erode some people's ability to communicate clearly with each other, or be sure that they have. This leads to meetings that go on longer as people feel a need to restate and reconfirm, code reviews that go on a bit longer, some duplicated effort as people look over each others' shoulder to make sure they "got the message", and so on. Nothing major, but it kind of builds up. A little small talk can go a long way toward rebuilding that confidence, and it's harder to do when latency and VC annoyances are in the way. I've seen this play out many times even on long-term fully-remote teams BTW. Getting together at conferences or "summits" is often the glue holding them together.

I know that's still not a strong argument against remote work. It's pretty weak, but it's the best I can do. Overall, I think remote work is at least as good as in-person work for many people.

<comment><USER13> I've experienced very similar things. Thanks for stating this so well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The most annoying thing I've run into while working remote is that whenever I have an unproductive day due to random interruptions or little things that aren't tracked in JIRA, to my boss it just looks like I haven't been working all day.

But when I was at the office, sitting in my chair, he could see that I was working hard even if the stories weren't getting completed.

I haven't figured out how to solve this, other than by spending a lot more time and effort documenting the numerous little things that cause distractions and exposing that in my daily status updates. I can tell that it's still not as convincing to him though.

So I often end up finding myself working late in the evenings just to finish the actual work that was scheduled to be done that day, even though I've already spent 8 hours dealing with random issues and helping other team mates with things.

I need to find a solution soon before I completely burn out.

<comment> Fire-Dragon-DoL I write a worklog. Every day has an entry with what i've done on the day, including learning/decisions.

What is not captured on a ticket it's still going to appear in there.

Could this be helpful?

<comment><USER14> That's essentially what I've been doing, and I've been posting it in our daily status slack channel. I need to do a better job of adding more details, but it's a balancing act between spending time on logging work vs doing work, plus if I'm the only person on the team doing it, it looks weird.

<comment> Fire-Dragon-DoL I have a public (within the company) github repo called "worklog" where everyone can put theirs (it's by name), one file per year.

I usually have 4-5 lines per day, where some days have 15 (rare, but there are those big days).

I don't give the report in slack, since github has track of when stuff was committed (I commit at the end of the day), if people need it, it's on github.

It's great for standups, because I usually forget what I did yesterday. It's also great for some company tax reductions, so it's appreciated!

Last but not least, I capture breakthrougs and decisions in there, as well as learning, so I can refer to it various months later and tell people exactly what I was doing a certain date.

At some point people asked "why this wasn't already done, what were you doing in August last year"... And I was able to clearly explain what I was doing in August and why things were not prioritized.

Overall, great win!

Just to clarify, I didn't come up with this idea myself, it was suggested to me on the Eventide Slack [https://eventide-project.org/#community- section](https://eventide-project.org/#community-section) Apparently it's a common practice in engineering (should be in software engineering too!), I currently follow this log structure: [https://github.com/eventide- project/project-status/blob/mast...](https://github.com/eventide- project/project-status/blob/master/work-log/README.md)

<comment><USER15> > It's also great for some company tax reductions, so it's appreciated!

Can you explain what you mean by company tax reductions? I'm confused how that relates with keeping a worklog.

<comment> Fire-Dragon-DoL Specific to Canada, there is a tax reduction thing for the company of this size (the one I work at), that has some specific requirements related to experimenting and tracking time spent on various activities. It can be summarized per day though, this means that I just have to turn in my work-log for this purpose, with no additional effort

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The strongest argument against remote work (generally speaking, not specific to the current coronavirus) is that a company is not disciplined enough to communicate well, especially across teams. This may be the case if a significant number of business decisions are done in side conversations. You probably need some tooling such as a chat app, video conferencing software etc and a process where important business decisions are written down and communicated.

There's also a case where some jobs need to be done in-person. A good example is a restocker for a grocery store. You can't move boxes remotely. Similarly a surgeon can't do a surgery remotely.

<comment><AUTHOR> > a company is not disciplined enough to communicate well, especially across > teams. This may be the case if a significant number of business decisions > are done in side conversations

this is a very very good point! but I don't think that being remote or not make this communication problem worse or not.

<comment><USER16> It typically does. Most people are used to communicating in-person, often by chatting in casual interactions. Once you go remote, especially on a distributed team, individuals who are used to chatting in-person often don't have the discipline to send messages out to every member of a team. They typically also don't do multiple notifications (for example my company cross- posts announcements in both Slack and via email).

<comment><USER17> I solve this by keeping a running log of the important things I worked on that day and any questions I'm researching and sending it to my whole team.

A lot of people like it, learn from it, and also provide me with advice when they happen to know something I do not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hiring is more difficult. It's not that you can't find applicants, but the people capable of performing without direct supervision is (mostly) a subset of those capable of performing in an office. It can be difficult to identify those who will actually perform well in that environment. It takes some degree of maturity and responsibility to provide value as a remote worker because there's always that temptation to do something else.

That said, I wouldn't trade this lifestyle for anything. The only complaint I've ever had is that coworkers not capable of performing in a remote environment sometimes last too long at the company.

<comment><USER19> The other side of this is that managers need to be more mature too. There's a fairly significant difference between communicating asynchronously. If you can figure it out, it'll actually increase the company's overall productivity because it'll reduce interruptions.

A great way to approach this is to build trust incrementally. Small projects where responsibility is given to individuals to own work end to end with reviews and feedback. After a few iterations, everyone will get used to it.

<comment><AUTHOR> > A great way to approach this is to build trust incrementally. Small projects > where responsibility is given to individuals to own work end to end with > reviews and feedback. After a few iterations, everyone will get used to it.

Thank you very much for providing a useful practical advice!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Rural Broadband.

I will be taking part in a county task force meeting on Tuesday where we'll be looking at applying for grant money as well as looking at doing more problem solving. This still holds us back in 2020 and really shouldn't.

</comment><comment><USER21> Remote work could be perfect for individual contributors, but it's still full of challenges for people who work on teams.

There's been a lot of buzz lately about remote work. I have been working remotely since 2012; the challenges of remote work are not new to me. I work with 30+ people, and our clients are in different timezones. Our team includes full-stack developers, designers, product leads, and other support staff.

First Challenge: Schedule of work hours or team availability. Back in 2012, each member of our team started working from our respective homes. We started with seven team members; it's a small team. Initially, people are productive while we work as individual contributors. However, efficiency and productivity dropped very low when we started to work on the same project because everyone has the flexibility to choose when they want to work as long as they complete the required hours per week. We partially solved this by setting standard work hours that everyone in the team will follow.

Second Challenge: Quality of work is affected by many factors. Working alone remotely is initially fun, but eventually, employees feel lonely. Keeping focus at work is also hard due to distractions, like games, social media, house-related errands, etc. Monitoring employees' honesty on work hours and work done is also a challenge. Since our team mostly live in the same town, we decided to work in the same place. We converted my whole dorm into an office, removed the walls, joint the rooms, and made it look like a real office. Centralizing our distributed team to work in the same place doubled or tripled our team's efficiency and productivity. You can imagine how it made it easier to do daily standups, do design planning, pair programming, code reviews, etc. Employees became happier, and the bond between got stronger; we also eat meals together, we go on retreats, we play games together, our employee retention rate is 90% since we started. Over the years of working remotely, we have also built a tool that we use internally to manage and monitor employees and projects.

Now with the Corona Virus, our team is back temporarily in working from home, and most of us can't wait to start working together in the office again.

<comment><USER22> I did not expect this post to end with ditching remote work.

<comment><USER21> As we work with our clients from the US, we also work closely with their employees - that part still gives the feeling of remote work for us. Most of our team members or employees live 10 to 40 minutes' drive away from each other, so it makes sense to make the change and work in the same place. We have three people who live far away, so they still work remotely with us, but we mostly put them on projects that do not require much team collaboration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've been working remote for better part of a year. It works well as long as your team has good systems in place. However, you do miss out on deeper relationships with your coworkers if you start remote. People try to counter this with on-sites, but still, it's not quite the same. Water cooler conversations don't happen as often and though you would think that doesn't matter, it does. There's less serendipity. I have less random interactions with people who are not on my precise team.

All that being said, I think remote is here to stay.

</comment><comment><USER24> Just like a traditional office setting, remote work isn't for everyone. At our company I've seen that it is particularly difficult for:

\- extroverts

\- some of our more junior engineers

\- workers with families

I think having a good mix of traditional, partially-remote, and fully-remote businesses is the place to be.

</comment><comment><USER25> I suspect loneliness/isolation is the biggest issue for most.

At the moment it's great because I'm at home with three housemates/friends. But I think I'd get lonely pretty quickly if it was just me. Co-working spaces might solve this a bit (never worked in one so don't know how much people socialise).

<comment><USER26> That is what I thought a the beginning, I am very social and I will talk/listen to anyone on the street, but yet it works very well for me and I don't really feel lonely. Sometimes I even have to close slack because it is too distracting :) Also we are all a better version of ourselves when we do email, that is because we can put more brain time in what we are going to say. Working remotely gets two big thumbs up for me!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> After years of working remotely, my only argument against remote work is that it requires that your direct team members also be working in the same manner to be most effective. It's all or nothing if you want it to work long-term.

Whenever you have a case where some team members work in an office together, and others work remotely - it creates undue stress on personal relationships. Even if your team makes a great effort to be inclusive, there will always be times (lunches especially) where important conversations will happen in- person, and the remote person will be left out. In the worst case scenario, it can lead to being intentionally left out of even important technical conversations (Example: I had a remote coworker on a sibling team who scheduled a meeting about a technical architecture issue he wanted to have input on. The in-person team didn't show up to the call, but then had the meeting in person without him and told him the outcome of the decision.) The remote workers will end up feeling hobbled from a relationship building standpoint - and their growth opportunities will feel limited.

Those issues can be easily avoided by keeping teams either all-remote, or all- in-person. When you are in an all-remote team, everyone is on the same level communication-wise. So you'll see real effort go into using slack and other tools to build up comaraderie. With a mixed setup, that effort is usually asymmetric - causing the remote workers to bond and develop trust with other remote workers, but not with the in-person teams.

</comment><comment> j-rom Pros

\- Depending on at-home situation, you may be able to focus on work more

\- Time flexibility. You have the luxury of doing errands / tasks at home

Cons

\- Difficult to build deeper connections with co-workers. Unless there are other processes in place, I've noticed that communication becomes increasingly work-related and less about just catching up

\- Accessibility to distractions. It's easier to get distracted when you have access to TV, books, video games, etc...

\- Separation of work and leisure time. Physically leaving the office used to be a forcing function to stop working. Now, it can be easy to just keep working.

\- Collaboration becomes more difficult. Your coworker may have stepped away from their desk and you're kind of left hanging until they get back.

</comment><comment><USER28> I work from home and am a big advocate of doing so.

One thing I find difficult in remote teams is the ability to ask a coworker a question quickly. There can be a fair amount of lag time over messenger and this occasionally blocks the completion of work.

<comment><AUTHOR> > One thing I find difficult in remote teams is the ability to ask a coworker > a question quickly.

Why is it so important that your colleague HAVE to respond quickly? Have you ever considered that your colleague may need some time alone to finish her own task before she can answer your super important question? (sorry for the mood of my answer but it is so bad on purpose :) )

<comment><USER29> If I am stuck on something, and that something is in your realm, either for understanding or providing, then I might be stuck and unproductive until you answer.

e.g. I send you a message - I am trying to use 'xyzzy' which you provide. When I send it 'plover' I do not get back the response I need. Am I doing something wrong? <crickets for 3 days> WTF why can he not respond in a reasonable time frame? 1) on vacation, 2) sick in bed 3) over worked 4) a jerk 5) missed my email. In an office I can walk over and say WTF? Where I will easily find the new person who took his place, since he moved on to another job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> This article is entitled "There's No Such Thing as Quality Time."

It's oriented towards families, but it makes the case that there's no levels of time, just...time, we spend together. Things happen in the cracks between scheduled events that matter.

[https://ryanholiday.net/quality-time/](https://ryanholiday.net/quality-time/)

When you work remote, everything is scheduled, almost by definition. No conversations happen that are not task-directed. You lose something there.

<comment><USER30> > When you work remote, everything is scheduled, almost by definition

This assumption is not true in my experience. When shifting our company to full time remote we did have an uptick in scheduled events but we still have plenty of things that are unscheduled, unless you consider "hey can I call you right now?" A scheduled event

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I know it can potentially be controversial but a lot of outside of work relationships start at the office. Some can be romantic and may even lead to marriage. Others can be friendships that last job changes. It can even be as simple as having a great group of people to chill at a bar with. While I love my wife and kids, I think most others are like me and want to periodically get out and meet new people. Work is often the best place for that.

<comment><AUTHOR> "The office" can be the building where you may have your desk, does it mean that the desk must be owned by the company you work for? or that everyone in the room must work for the same company to build a relation ship? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> There was a really interesting freaknomics podcast discussing remote work. There was some study on a large sales company in China that experimented with half of employees working remotely and half not. At the end they found that remote workers were more productive in terms of sales numbers (less time on commute, office socializing) but they got promoted at lower rates (less facetime with superiors, not on peoples' radars)

<comment><USER9> A bit of the out of sight out of mind at play? Curious too as to how much visibility into efforts of remote employees (wins) were shared, celebrated and known across the company vs. folks in person that have a better platform to promote themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> It seems to me that there is a use case, or model, for remote work, and is situational in nature. It mostly comes down to a pro/con list, and for me it really boils down to some 'risk assessment' and 'mitigation strategy' in dealing with various levels of Aptitude, Communication, Organization Culture, etc.

As with all jobs, it tends to come down to the individual, are they the correct fit for remote work. Do they have 'non-in-person' communication skills? Do they have the aptitude for self direction? Can they work independently, from their remote environment? Can they contribute/collaborate with a team, from their remote environment? Does the organizations culture accept, and work with remote workflow?

The strongest argument against remote work is: Are you trying to fit a square peg in a round hole?

</comment><comment><USER34> Inability to form genuine social bonds with colleagues, thus artificially limiting trust.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can assure you that it is possible to not trust people you see every day, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Hey there, I worked remotely for 4 of ~7.5 years at a medium-to-large tech company (I left in February). I'm very thankful I had the opportunity, since 99% of the engineering team was either onsite or in satellite offices.

In my experience, it was far easier for me to get burned out when working remotely versus in an office with other people. And when I did get burned out, I found it harder to get back on the other side of the hill when I didn't have a community around me.

Also, if I look at the ~7.5 year tenure at the company — my most productive and happiest times were when I was located onsite at their HQ.

Just my $0.02; happy to talk more in detail over email (in profile).

</comment><comment><USER36> Lack of engagement is the strongest argument I can think of.

Immersion in problems is a really cheap way for product managers, engineering leads, and data scientists to engage with problems. When you're in office it's easier to get that engagement, thereby getting business-relevant exposure and feedback on your work.

Remote work can also confound lack of skill for communication difficulties (another form of lack of engagement). One of the weakest leads I've ever worked with was remote. He was ineffectual and effectively invisible to execs, except when they wondered why his team wasn't delivering more value.

</comment><comment><USER37> Fully remote work does not permit the community that research requires to progress. So fully remote isn't an option for me. Flexible time, of course, is.

 _Now Alan Chynoweth mentioned that I used to eat at the physics table. I had been eating with the mathematicians and I found out that I already knew a fair amount of mathematics; in fact, I wasn 't learning much. The physics table was, as he said, an exciting place, but I think he exaggerated on how much I contributed. It was very interesting to listen to Shockley, Brattain, Bardeen, J. B. Johnson, Ken McKay and other people, and I was learning a lot. But unfortunately a Nobel Prize came, and a promotion came, and what was left was the dregs. Nobody wanted what was left. Well, there was no use eating with them!

Over on the other side of the dining hall was a chemistry table. I had worked with one of the fellows, Dave McCall; furthermore he was courting our secretary at the time. I went over and said, "Do you mind if I join you?" They can't say no, so I started eating with them for a while. And I started asking, "What are the important problems of your field?" And after a week or so, "What important problems are you working on?" And after some more time I came in one day and said, "If what you are doing is not important, and if you don't think it is going to lead to something important, why are you at Bell Labs working on it?" I wasn't welcomed after that; I had to find somebody else to eat with! That was in the spring.

In the fall, Dave McCall stopped me in the hall and said, "Hamming, that remark of yours got underneath my skin. I thought about it all summer, i.e. what were the important problems in my field. I haven't changed my research," he says, "but I think it was well worthwhile." And I said, "Thank you Dave," and went on. I noticed a couple of months later he was made the head of the department. I noticed the other day he was a Member of the National Academy of Engineering. I noticed he has succeeded. I have never heard the names of any of the other fellows at that table mentioned in science and scientific circles. They were unable to ask themselves, "What are the important problems in my field?"_

Hamming, "You and your Research"

</comment><comment><USER38> I need human contact. I'm fuelled off of the energy of others. What I love about my current job is my bosses drive, vision and enthusiasm. Don't get me wrong the hours are terrible. The work is closer to IT grunt work than the programming I love. But I get to solve real problems and be a key part of driving a business forward under a highly motivated boss. It's great. I don't know if that would be possible with only remote interaction.

</comment><comment><USER39> Some people are just as productive at home as in the office. I'm a remote worker and I'd put myself in this camp. But some people self-report a decrease in productivity and I'm inclined to take them seriously. There are workers who aren't shy about saying, "I get less done at home" (e.g. [0]).

I recommend believing them.

[0] [https://twitter.com/MarketUrbanism/status/125374860767884492...](https://twitter.com/MarketUrbanism/status/1253748607678844928)

</comment><comment><USER40> Isolation both physically and mentally.

As a serial entrepayneur in Saas and a degreed software architect I find little disruption and absolute silence a great benefit to be able to create in the confines and silence of my home. I have been working remote partially since dialup and full remote in the last 10 years. One must self motivate and while I can say that easily since my efforts result in my own success working for someone else is likely more difficult if you need constant feedback and oversight.

Stay Healthy!

</comment><comment><USER41> Alignment and coordination suffer, in my experience; on the other hand, the productivity at large is increased. It could be that remote work is more suited to some stages of the product / service life, notably the early stage (brainstorming, early design, early tests) and the sales / post-sales stage (business development, due diligence, customer care)?

</comment><comment><USER42> Hiring - People who are great remote workers are a small percentage of the available talent, so you often end up either with talented people who don't do well remotely, or less talented people who are great at working remote. There certainly are people out there with both traits, but it takes a ton of effort to find them and build a team of them.

</comment><comment><USER43> So. Hear me out. I had my eyes opened a little bit last weekend. I was going through leadership substitutes theories and spatial distance from leader ( or manager ) is listed as one of the neutralizers. Naturally, it is not an argument management would openly make, but all of a sudden I understood why they were so unwilling to make remote happen. It undermines them.

edit: added openly

</comment><comment><USER44> Online meetings seriously suck still. It's harder to form real relationships with coworkers (some would see this as a plus, but I think it depends on the company/team culture). But the biggest change is forming trust. How do we come to trust in each other and in the mission if we never interact physically? It certainly takes a different kind of leadership.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can say by experience that being in the same building does not imply that you are building a relationship. Meetings are meetings, you still have to prepare, you still have to communicate well, you will have your turn to speak, if it does not work it is not because you are behind a webcam

<comment><USER44> I agree with you. I just think there are more reasons why a meeting would not be productive over zoom, especially if you're working with older, non-tech people!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Audio/video chat is atrocious for relationship building.

\- There's the speed of sound/light delay. \- You lose all the physiological feedback: Body language, tone, facial expression. \- The barrier to start a conversation is way higher too. Some would argue that is good. \- You cannot go for a walk with a peer.

</comment><comment><USER46> I think for established companies it's that there is a big risk and time commitment to realign company process and organisation to support remote work.

Definitely less of an argument for starting something new but if you've not done it before then it also carries some risk you might not be willing to shoulder.

</comment><comment><USER47> I'm stuck at home with a dog/puppy and no way to escape without having to tend to it every 2 hours. Personally I don't mind it, because I enjoy spending time with my dog, but the business might.

It breaks concentration and deep work.

By my own estimates, I'm about 40-50% as productive as I was in the office.

</comment><comment><USER48> You generally miss the out of band communication, i.e. the conversations between other colleagues that you overhear, as well as the 'waterfountain' chat. Sure, these spaces can be created online, but in my experience the threshold is too high for such spontaneous things to happen.

<comment><USER49> > i.e. the conversations between other colleagues that you overhear, as well > as the 'waterfountain' chat.

Never underestimate the value of these conversations. Often, this simple ability to "overhear" others is EXACTLY how you avoid being left out of the loop and have some clue as to what's going on.

<comment><AUTHOR> this is a real issue even with in office presence; not everyone is in the loop and the solution, in my opinion, is not to keep everyone in the same room but to spread information in the company

<comment><USER49> But the people in charge are often oblivious to this situation, because it feels to them like everyone is in the loop. Mostly because "the loop" has been happening for a long time as a side-effect of people overhearing conversations.

Of course this problem also manifests when a company grows to the point where no one sits within earshot anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Number one is: You need to be cut out for it. You need to be self sufficient and be OK with working alone. Not many people can handle that and will want to go back to the office.

I love remote work and get really stressed in an office (especially open and cubes) but I feel people like me are a minority.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your points!

> You need to be cut out for it. You need to be self sufficient

Instead of saying "People are not cut to it" why cannot we say "People have not enough experience with it"?

Even working in a classic office space requires some experience, trial and error.

> and be OK with working alone.

well, there are co-working spaces, working hubs etc

<comment><USER51> > Instead of saying "People are not cut to it" why cannot we say "People have > not enough experience with it"?

I've been working exclusively remotely for around five years now.

Certainly there are skills that can be acquired and improved that will help you succeed, but I believe that there is also a significant element of "natural aptitude". Some people need the personal interaction of an office environment more than others to feel fulfilled. If they need that and don't get it, no amount of training or experience is going to change that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I used to be strongly against it. I felt like I would never be able to be productive or efficient from home with a pile of books sitting on one side, a tv on the other and so on. Boy, was I wrong... As a matter of fact things have never been easier. While on-site you constantly have people around you, and countless distractions and annoyances, this is not the case at home.

This isn't the case for everyone of course - if you have kids, families, pets and whatnot, I'm sure that changes.

In addition, since I am a really die-hard linux user and I know my way around a system and networks, it's safe to say I do most of the work locally on my computer. rsync, mounting small partitions over sshfs with just the files I need, tunneling and so on, I honestly can't tell the difference after spending two hours writing a few shell scripts for common stuff. Generally I am a command line guy, I rarely bother with fancy IDE's and vim is often my first weapon of choice. With a couple of macros I've been able to simplify just about all common tasks to a few keystrokes. And being really familiar with the code that already exists, I rarely need reference. As long as I have SSH and the most basic of tools like vim, grep, git, find and whatnot, I feel right at home, no pun intended.

But for people who are used to more modern, fancy stuff(coming from a 30 year old...), this might sound like a nightmare. Also if your work involves a lot of graphics, it's probably a nightmare. Looking at people using rdp... Them poor poor souls...

The only drawback I initially saw was the absence of physical movement for me. This worried me a lot because until several years ago I was a bit overweight to put it mildly(185cm, 110+ kg). Before the lockdown I used to walk to and back from work, exercise and all of a sudden all of that went away. But there was another strange side effect of the lockdown - I started exercising on daily basis(having weights, pull up bar, yoga mats and whatnot and 5 minutes every couple of hours). To my greatest surprise, in the last month and a half I've gotten in a better shape then ever. In terms of body fat I'm certainly in the single digits without loosing muscle mass.

So in the case of people who have the chance to work in solitude, have a good working ethic, can handle their work efficiently over the internet, don't require social interactions and can take care of their physical and mental health(highly specific demographic, I know), at this point I have 0 arguments against remote work. If anything, I absolutely love it.

</comment><comment><USER53> Is this about remote or all-remote?

Does anyone else do this thing when they work 90% of the time remotely and sometimes travel for a day meeting? This addresses some of the issues discussed.

This can also work for informal communication, to a degree.

</comment><comment><USER54> My strongest argument _for_ remote work is that I find typical offices almost completely useless for getting work done, because of interruptions, distractions, noise, required in-person activities, shared physical space, and general lack of privacy, so I end up doing most work at home anyway.

Many physical offices seem to be designed largely to enforce social pecking orders (sustaining and visibly rewarding high status while punishing low status) and/or to cram more people into fewer square feet, rather than to facilitate sustainable productivity along with physical and mental health.

Private, walled offices with closed doors can help somewhat, but most workplaces I'm familiar with seem to have switched to productivity-destroying open plan offices to save on facilities costs.

</comment><comment><USER55> A lot of things have been said, how communication is easier in person. I would simply add I miss socialization, chatting to colleagues during coffee break, extremely productive brainstorming during lunch and so on

</comment><comment><USER56> People managers are the gatekeepers. As a developer its much easier to account the time. But its hard for people managers to account for time. That is only reason, nothing else ?

</comment><comment><USER57> Personal growth, learning group dynamics, interactions, etc. Same reason I would rather my kids to go to regular school and college instead of remote ones.

</comment><comment><USER54> Remote work doesn't work well for certain jobs that require dealing with physical objects.

This may change with advances in robotics and remote control.

</comment><comment><USER58> On average, people are bad at it. Even if you are convinced that _you_ are much more productive when WFH than in the office, most people aren't.

<comment><AUTHOR> On average, people are bad at office work too

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Solitude in the long term will make you miserable

</comment><comment><USER60> It's impossible to have a company potluck.

<comment><USER61> Typically remote work companies still have occasional (say quarterly) in person, all-hands gatherings.

<comment><USER60> Yep. But I'm not lugging a crock pot on a plane. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> It's hard to train people remotely. At least it is in my experience anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> it will require a bit more effort for sure, but teaching (not training, we are not puppies) is hard anyway, even if you are an awesome teacher

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> I don't like my private sphere getting invaded by a public sphere.

<comment><AUTHOR> so you are saying that you need someone else to decide what is private or not in your life?

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> The crushing loneliness

<comment><AUTHOR> remote work does not mean you have to stay alone, there are co-working spaces all over the world

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> it doesnt foster competition between each other ?

</comment><comment><USER66> Gossip and social interaction.

It can seem pointless but when you find out that the random co worker shares an interest/friendship with a senior figure in the company, as you witness a brief exchange. A major mistake many make is not realising who "knows of" others in the workplace, they may normally never even greet one another.

The mail/parcel facilities guy mentions he is helping set up that new set of desks or has to come in early for a major delivery. Small things but can be very insightful.

On nodding terms with the help desk person who then happier to help you when you need urgent help.

Making polite small talk waiting for a meeting or con call to start. About some minor incident, feature or event in the office you both use. Even just waffling on about the carparking situation or the local supermarket or sandwich shop you all end up at when visiting the Office.

When you send that email to the team and whoever else. But you get that brief bit of feedback (it might just be a glance and a grin) across the desk that you just won't get via remote messaging services.

Overhearing or partaking in random conversations in the office which a snippet of become useful sometimes months or years later.

Having impromptu training sessions as either as teacher or pupil because well we are all there and now is as good a time as ever.

Opportunities as the person speaking to the person who is first asked.

I got offered an internal extra role which involves little but ensures I get an additional payment monthly on top of my wages and useful on the CV. All because stood by my then managers desk . I have changed my main role several times in the 9 years or so since but still have this little extra role and the payment.

Hosting and receiving guests on behalf of others or the department as in the Office. Over the years I have made a lot of contacts this way and got involved in a number of projects and ongoing operations simply from being the stand in host or dragged along by a manager/director as their person who understands technology or simply for a second opinion..

Plenty of times sat in the office and become the resolver (even if asking those working remotely) in the eyes of those that need help. Even though credit given to others the person helped remembers your face and name.

Getting offered the extra tickets for a event the company sponsor as others pull out and well your there.

As I look back over decades of work it's nearly always meeting people in person even in passing where things happen. A quick interaction which I have forgotten may be remembered by someone who comes back into your working life decades later. Much less likely your recall those you once called or emailed in passing years later.

I work at home regularly but would be extremely concerned if unable to regularly visit my employers offices.

Never be in the office to often but been there regularly enough.

</comment><comment><USER67> There isn't one, for our industry. You are right now _remotely_ asking for help with how to manage a business. We can do everything remotely, and many businesses in our industry have done so. The fact is that, if you don't have co-located capital (a data center), then you don't need co-located labor (employees to maintain the data center).</comment>


Cloudflare sales dept spreading fear to upsell paid plans - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1224996010629328897 <comment><USER2> The title of your submission is neither factual nor justified.

<comment><AUTHOR> I admit it's rather clickbaity, however, fully factual. Imagine receiving an email from an official Cloudflare account with following subject: "Malicious Bot traffic has been detected in your website XXX" with following content:

"Currently, we run a bot test and we detected a volume of traffic that seems to be non-human traffic on your website: XXX

To be more specific, approximately 78% of your current traffic has more than 50 score/100 (threat score based on our machine learning and our behavior analysis system)

May I know how is everything from your end? Please let me know if you want to have an account review section with me, I will be very happy to assist you."

It's your production domain for a PAID Cloudflare plan. What do you? I guess you immediately declare an emergency in the company, reply to the person and submit a support request and try to solve it. Everyone checking all the possible monitor dashboards, checking with other providers...

Then the support tells you - "We do not have access to the report.. Please Contact the Customer Development team". The CDT does not respond...

Isn't that fishy strategy? Isn't that spreading a fear?

<comment><USER2> I think the email was badly worded and poorly orchestrated, but I'm not convinced that the intent was to spread fear, or even necessarily to upsell.

If you were Cloudflare and detected a sudden increase in traffic classified as malicious/non-human to a site you look after, would you notify your customer? If so, how, and would you try and offer a way of remediating?

@levelsio shares another screenshot here: [https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1225155622607323139/phot...](https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1225155622607323139/photo/1). "From my experience, if your business is not in following category: ecommerce, website with booking engine, online news, fintech, this bot traffic will not likely to affect your business" does not come across to me as an attempt to upsell.

Again, as for CDT not responding and support not having access the the report... this is clearly sloppy and should be addressed by Cloudflare, as it's not a good customer experience. But if it was a proper attempt by Cloudflare to spread fear to upsell services, wouldn't you expect it to be a little more... organised?</comment></comment></comment>


Which professions have the most psychopaths? The fewest? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2012/11/professions-most-fewest-psychopaths/

<comment><USER2> why politicians are not ranked first is a big mystery to me.. Most of them are psychopaths, with an unsane lust for power. Often with defiant sexual preferences too, like paedophylism and SM.</comment>


Why We Get Fat: Interview With Gary Taubes - <AUTHOR> http://www.fathead-movie.com/index.php/2011/01/13/why-we-get-fat-interview-with-gary-taubes/

<comment><USER2> This is a great interview - touches on a lot of interesting points with the mechanics of the insulin response. The rest of the site doesn't inspire one to think this is better than the rest of the nutrition pseudoscience that is out there, but I guess he is trying to be entertaining and funny.</comment>


In memory of Ed Yourdon - <AUTHOR> http://thedulinreport.com/2016/01/23/in-memory-of-ed-yourdon/ <comment><USER2> I'd say that his book Death March is also important and worth a read. A death march project doesn't have to be a corporate or government one that's too big, disorganized, compressed or underfunded to succeed. A death march can also be a startup that has a year of runway and 9 months of development needed even if everything goes right - because releasing your product the day you miss payroll still leaves you dead.

<comment><USER3> True. Been there, seen that. More startups should realize this, instead of carrying on with all their hype and self-glorification.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I read a lot of computer books after college, many of which Ed wrote, edited, or wrote the foreword for. As a fan of _Code Complete_ and its book recommendations, I suggested that Ed add it to his own list of "cool books." He replied promptly and agreed.

Although I didn't read it from cover to cover, the chapters I read from a borrowed copy of _Structured Design_ on coupling and cohesion had a big impact on me.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow, I didn't even realize I was following the same Ed Yourdon on flickr.

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/)

RIP, sorry to hear of the loss.

<comment><USER6> His photos are indeed worth look...amazing multi-talented man...possibly one of the very first polymaths I ever met in person...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Worked at DeVry briefly on a gig way back when and Ed was on-board...brilliant R&D mind...Bell & Howell most definitely got their money's worth...

Had lunch with a few of us coders one day--he paid--and kept us all mesmerized by laying out paths we could take to keep our talents in play on a business level...turned out to be sound advice...

Considered him amazing...one of the most pleasant and "giving" men I've ever met

RIP, Ed...

<comment><USER7> Could you elaborate on what Ed said to you ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Death March by Ed Yourdon literally changed my life--I quit my job not long after reading it, moving on to much better things. Rest in peace, Ed.

</comment><comment><USER9> Ed Yourdon's early books with Peter Coad on object oriented analysis and design together with his book "Death March", had great influence on me and on my career. I'm saddened to hear of his death, but celebrate his life and his contribution to our field. My thoughts and best wishes to his family and those fortunate to have known him.

</comment><comment><USER10> Ed was instrumental in helping my company look into potential Y2K vulnerabilities. It was Ed's book (Time Bomb 2000) that made me want to investigate Y2K in the first place, so I hired Ed as a consultant. Turned out there were no significant looming disasters, but there could have been some problems if we hadn't investigated and made corrections. Ed's advice was very useful, and he was a joy to work with. He will be missed.

</comment><comment><USER11> Still have to finish reading his Just Enough System's Analysis book. Hope it's still relevant enough. His methods are still in use in some places. Tenix's EAL7 Data Diode used Yourdon Method in development.

</comment><comment><USER12> STTL. Some of his books were so ubiquitous at Microsoft in the early 2000s I thought they were published by MS Press.

</comment><comment><USER13> I met Ed while at digg.com. Good man, enjoyed his books, and followed his photography on flickr. Makes me sad.

</comment><comment><USER14> At university I had to study one of his books, but I personally didn't like it at all - it did't click with me. The book was mainly about an iterative development system IIRC.

Still, RIP, apparantly a lot of people here liked his books.

</comment><comment><USER3> He had a lot of influence on software in India too, from the early years.

RIP Ed.

</comment><comment><USER15> Sad news. RIP Ed and thanks for all the books.

</comment><comment><USER16> Surely he deserves a black bar?

<comment><USER17> I think knowledge of his work is for the most part split by generations.

Other influential people in computer science and software engineering have recently passed away, without any black bar. I think even a Turing Award is not enough to qualify. Some of their fundamental contributions to CS and SE reach back to the 60s and even the 50s.

For people who weren't writing software in the 70s, 80s or 90s -- how would they have known Ed and his work?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Yourdon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Yourdon)

<comment><USER18> Some of us who were there at the time didn't appreciate his contributions, to be honest. Was there anything he was correct about in the long term?

(I'm not asking rhetorically, I'm genuinely curious. I read "Decline of the American Programmer" at the time it came out, thought it was total rubbish, and didn't bother to read anything else he wrote. Did I miss out?)

<comment><USER19> That was the first Yourdon book I read (still have the hard-cover around somewhere), and because of that it was the last. I had the same impression as you: "sky is falling" garbage, and time has vindicated those of us who thought so. I know _of_ Yourdon and can understand the general appreciation of the man, but because the first impression was last, I just never pursued the rest of his writing. Petty of me, I know, but there's always been a stack of other CS-related books that needed reading.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Thieves Stole $1million From Bitcoin Bank - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/thieves-stole-1million-from-bitcoin-bank-2013-11 <comment><USER2> just because people don't know what bitcoin is, doesn't mean they need to mislabel a payment processing center as a bank... are we going to start calling authorize.net a bank now too? no!</comment>


Nasa Study: Mass Gains of Antarctic Ice Sheet Greater Than Losses (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of-antarctic-ice-sheet-greater-than-losses/ <comment><USER2> A few notes before the denial camp arrives:

\- They point out that the Antarctic ice sheet is gaining in mass due to the melting/compaction of snow from the past 10,000 years, not because of anything having to do with global temperatures.

\- Ice losses to calving (ice breaking off and falling/drifting into the ocean and ultimately melting) are still massive, increasing, and "will catch up with the long-term gain in East Antarctica in 20 or 30 years -- I don't think there will be enough snowfall increase to offset these losses."

\- Also, this article is from 2015. Here's a more recent analysis from 2018: [https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/ramp-up-in-antarctic- ice-...](https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/ramp-up-in-antarctic-ice-loss- speeds-sea-level-rise/). You can even see the East Antarctica trend that the 2015 article talks about in this plot from the 2018 article: [https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/su...](https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/supplemental_image_1-imbie2018-graph.jpg)

<comment><USER3> Can you please elaborate for a non-scientist?

>ice sheet is gaining in mass due to the melting/compaction of snow

How does melting/compaction affect the mass?

<comment><USER4> I assume it means snow melts, turns into water, then freezes again turning into ice thereby increasing the mass of the ice sheet.

<comment><USER5> the density increases not the mass. the concentration of mass is increased density. it is further evidence of melting.

<comment><USER6> It reads to me like there's a distinction between ice and snow. Like the snow isn't considered part of the ice or isn't able to be measured as part of the ice until some compaction has happened, and the "snow" layer might be hundreds of years worth of snow. That's the only way I can resolve the definitions with the statements, and I'm hoping someone can more authoritatively describe the paradox because I'm feeling unsatisfied.

<comment><USER5> there is also a distincion between the coastal ice sheets and the continental interior ice and snow cap. the apparent paradox is caused by misrepresentative interpretation of a report, by the author of the article.

the coastal ice shelf and continental interior are two distinct physical systems.

isostatic rebound is a confound to the measurement of snow/ice accumulation when change of altitude is corelated to snow deposition.

[http://rses.anu.edu.au/geodynamics/tregoning/7.pdf](http://rses.anu.edu.au/geodynamics/tregoning/7.pdf) [PDF]

[https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-is-post-glacial- reb...](https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-is-post-glacial-rebound.html)

BTW Re: " and I'm hoping someone can more authoritatively describe the paradox because I'm feeling unsatisfied."

you wont get anymore of an authoritative take on it than discussing it with a scientist, as you are currently doing right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a several-years old study that has been controversial. Other results using independent observations from mass-observing missions have come to very different conclusions [1] [2].

One thing people should understand is that the method used in the linked article is altimetry from radar, so you get a very accurate surface height, but _the height is not a direct indicator of ice mass_ because of compression of snow/ice, and rebound of the underlying continent.

It's really important to have some appreciation of the limitations of measurement techniques, before jumping to conclusions from a single study.

[1] [https://grace.jpl.nasa.gov/resources/31/antarctic-ice- loss-2...](https://grace.jpl.nasa.gov/resources/31/antarctic-ice- loss-2002-2016/)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19683895](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19683895)

</comment><comment><USER8> Some clarification on Antarctica:

There are roughly three regions in Antarctica. The Transantarctic Mountains divide Antarctica into a really big East Antarctica and a smaller West Antarctica. The two large ice sheets in Antarctica (Ross and Ronne) are in West Antarctica. The tip edge of West Antarctica is the Antarctic Peninsula.

Everyone agrees that West Antarctica is losing ice. This is especially true of the Antarctic Peninsula, which is basically under going complete collapse (e.g., the Larsen Ice Shelf). It's unclear if the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is merely declining or undergoing a more catastrophic collapse. The complete collapse of this ice sheet is something that is included in the worst-case scenarios for sea level rise.

East Antarctica is more difficult. The East Antarctic Ice Sheet contains far more mass than West Antarctica--about 90% of the Antarctic Ice Sheet in total is here. This ice sheet is roughly in balance, although the succession of studies I've seen have ping-ponged between growing, stable, or declining, which means you can find a study to support your viewpoint, whatever it may be. Due to the sheer size of the ice sheet compared to everything else, small uncertainties in the mass balance here basically dictates whether or not you think Antarctica as a whole is gaining or losing ice mass.

</comment><comment><USER9> I thought this was well understood, and even expected by the models, since a warming planet brings more precipitation in the air which then falls as snow on the poles.

So the Antarctic is actually gaining mass on the higher ground, and the Arctic during the winter months also.

The contrast is that during the warmer summer months, the Arctic is losing a lot more than it gains over the year, so the global balance is negative - which adds to sea level rises.

The other odd thing I never considered, but was (I think here?) mentioned, is that as the mass of the Arctic decreases, it also presses down less on the mantle, and so lifts higher out of the ocean, also displacing more sea.

I'm pretty sure there's a good explanation of this by Potholer54 on Youtube.

<comment><USER10> Loss of ice in the Arctic doesn't contribute to sea level rise because the ice in the Arctic floats, and melting an ice cube floating in water does not change the water level.

(Ice on Greenland is a different matter, but Greenland is a lot smaller than Antarctica.)

<comment><USER5> this is correct however its not all sea ice. permafrost is melting and running off into the sea. the permafrost remnants, mostly silt subside but the lithostrat[bedrock] rebounds like a slow trampoline. this causes rate of permafrost melt and effluence to increase.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Mass is not density.

"They point out that the Antarctic ice sheet is gaining in mass due to the melting/compaction of snow from the past 10,000 years"

      - i just copy pasta this from other posters comment for dialectic,
     this statement ^ indicates there is a change in density not mass.

If you watch a snow bank melt you will see an increased density, as individual snow flakes [crystals] melt and lose air pockets making contiguous ice mass.

that means density increases.

Its still melting, Everybody!

<comment><USER11> I interpreted that as meaning that the ice sheet is only defined as that water which is in an icy state, not the snow that sits on top of it. If snow is melting, refreezing, and becoming part of the ice sheet (not sitting above), then the mass of the ice sheet is increasing.

<comment><USER5> yes the mass of ice sheet is increasing, on the continental interior.

this should not however be interpreted as a change in mass of coastal icesheet. these are two different systems. separated by a mountain range.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Dunno what this means overall, just another reminder that this stuff is complicated.

If climate change in Antarctica causes more snow/percipitation, ice will accumulate there, even if average temperatures increase.

If I understand correctly, this isn't something new. It isn't clear if the trend is accelerating or reversing. Ice always accumulates in Antarctica, because whatever snow falls in the interior just sits there.

<comment><USER13> > Ice always accumulates in Antarctica, because whatever snow falls in the > interior just sits there.

Not exactly. In most cases, the ice accumulates into glaciers and slowly flows towards the sea.

As you can see from this relief map: [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Topographic_maps...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Topographic_maps_of_Antarctica#/media/File:Ant_hypso.png) , Antarctica's interior is very mountinous and consistently a higher elevation than it's edges. Gravity forces the compacted ice downhill. As the ice on the mountains moves, so does all of the ice in it's way.

<comment><USER12> Does most of the continent "drain?" My understanding was that most/much of the ice is not glacial.. which I understood as not moving.

<comment><USER13> > My understanding was that most/much of the ice is not glacial.. which I > understood as not moving.

I haven't heard that. Could you link where you found that information?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Newer 2018 article: [https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/ramp-up-in-antarctic- ice-...](https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/ramp-up-in-antarctic-ice-loss- speeds-sea-level-rise)

<comment><USER7> Thank you for this link. The accompanying _Nature_ article is [1].

As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the study linked in the OP has been in conflict with other measurements. The article you reference is one attempt to synthesize the three measurements available (altimetry from SAR, surface flow rate from imagery, and mass change from gravimetric observations) into a complete picture.

[1] [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0179-y.epdf?autho...](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0179-y.epdf?author_access_token=G6bM- sEvNrsr_d3FPj8qjtRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PBEKqWHTwARrIrR4OxoHFdEh63arkDNi_bORoXuP_CQqP5K8MYc- mJnNFT_QmTd-WnNN5Mp3ZqXQU1Cq6c0OT0JzMpvEGDRBCqqg_mMZ20Fg%3D%3D)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5>
      Im looking at the terms and the grammer being used,

we have to put our bullshit detector hats on for this. its a controversial and political subject, thus vulnerable to spin.

the considerations required for a realistic view are not impossible, sophisticated, yes, but humanly understandable.

there are phrases and terms [ie ICE accumulation] that mask the real description of the situation, and an appropriate model is not expounded upon.

ICE != snow , mass != density

ice accumulation != snow accumulation vice.versa.

</comment><comment><USER15> The previous HN discussion on this article:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10487680](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10487680)</comment>


"User Imagery" and Apple-lovers - <AUTHOR> http://www.spectator.co.uk/columnists/all/6050763/the-wiki-man.thtml

<comment><USER2> This is a very strange take on an anti-apple campaign.

Though I think the authors thesis is flawed.

I am uncomfortable with the app store environment/closed platform, and I've always disliked Apple. They've always told me how great they are, and then I have tried their products and am always disappointed (with the exception of the iPod 1st gen to 3rd gen).

I was doing some market research a few months ago and asking iPhone owners what apps they used most. There was no killer app, nothing that they went to daily or couldn't live without.

The killer app on the iPhone is the browser, which thankfully is built around very open standards.

Once again, I think most of the app store bravado is Apple marketing, telling you how great it is that they have 200K+ apps for you to download, but then try to find something that you actually want.

I'll put games in a separate category, but for the most part, the most compelling pieces of their Jesus devices aren't the apps which they focus on so much, but rather that they currently have great portable browser devices. Andriod and others are only a few steps behind (if they are behind at all).</comment>


Bootstrapping Ikarus Scheme - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/ikarus-users/mMOxn8qO_Iw <comment><USER2> It's worth noting that the author of Ikarus has written a tutorial so you can write your own compiler in Scheme.

This has been covered on Lambda the Ultimate: [http://lambda-the- ultimate.org/node/1752](http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1752)

Ghuloum's Compiler tutorial in Scheme is quite good [http://t.co/oOzo8sP6In](http://t.co/oOzo8sP6In) and coding guide [https://github.com/namin/inc/blob/master/docs/tutorial.pdf?r...](https://github.com/namin/inc/blob/master/docs/tutorial.pdf?raw=true)

In addition Nada Amin (of Strangeloop keynote fame) has completed the Compiler tutorial here: [https://github.com/namin/inc](https://github.com/namin/inc)

</comment><comment><USER3> URL changed from [http://www.wisdomandwonder.com/link/3409/a-history-of- bootst...](http://www.wisdomandwonder.com/link/3409/a-history-of- bootstrapping-ikarus-scheme), which points to this.</comment>


So Much Streaming Music, Just Not in One Place - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/03/16/business/media/so-much-music-streaming-just-not-one-place.html?hpw&rref=technology&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0 <comment><USER2> The glory days of media companies are over. Record labels aren't needed to distribute music. Cable companies aren't needed to distribute shows.

I have Spotify and Netflix subscriptions and that's about it.

It's certainly annoying that some artists aren't on Spotify but I feel like that's not a winning strategy for them in the long term.

I'm not going to have replaced cable and CDs and bootleg mp3s with juggling subscriptions to 10 different services.

I'm going to be content with the content that is available.

I'm totally fine not hearing the new Kanye album. I can listen to his old albums or one of the infinitely other great rap or hip hop albums on Spotify.

And if I'm not listening to the new album, I'm not DJing from it, falling in love with it, and buying tickets to the world tour. I doubt he'll have any trouble selling tickets though.

Netflix has it tougher with video. They don't have nearly the breadth of content to keep everyone happy in the first place, and re-watching the classics isn't as satisfying for video.

So their strategy of producing originals is brilliant.

I expect and hope Spotify does the same. They already have killer live Spotify sessions. And they are doing more and more to promote new artists through discovery tools. A Spotify record label could be rad.

If artists don't want to play, they don't have to.

<comment><USER3> Spotify is hiring aggressively from record labels. Not sure if they are going after the A&R folks, though.

And then there is the longstanding rumor that Jimmy Iovine creates an Apple record label. I wouldn't be surprised if this is going on right now.

(No idea how Apple, Inc. deals with the Beatles' Apple Corps. in the music trademark world, though...Those two have legally tangled in the past.)

<comment><USER4> Buy them and shut them down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > ... it can be frustrating for consumers that no single outlet has > everything.

I'm not sure there's a better example of first world problems. I know this frustration as well, but for me it's a perfect reminder that maybe the ability to stream any song at any time isn't that big of a deal in the broader picture. One could say that the issue here is really corporate control of creative properties, but I'd wager that most people would be perfectly happy with someone like Apple controlling everything if it meant they could listen to any artist at any time.

<comment><USER6> _I 'm not sure there's a better example of first world problems._

You forgot to remind us how if we're not paying, we're the product and not the customer, and something something Betteridge. Now that we've gotten the obvious out of the way, let's move on.

 _but I 'd wager that most people would be perfectly happy with someone like Apple controlling everything if it meant they could listen to any artist at any time._

I don't know if I'd be _happy_ with it, as a single controlling entity can't end well, but my streaming habits work as if that were true: Apple Music is my sole paid streaming provider (though I listen to a few sources that are donation-only). I'm not "frustrated", but I'm not going to juggle more than that.

Hence, it's probably worse on the artists than the listeners. Me, if it's not on Apple Music then I probably won't ever notice the difference. The artist, however, has to make sure they have all of the services covered.

<comment><USER7> > The artist, however, has to make sure they have all of the services covered.

There are "middlemen" services that do exactly this for artists, but can still be cost-prohibitive for the really small-time acts.

I'm in a minority who actually seek out these artists, and yes, it is incredibly frustrating that I pay for Apple Music, but for some of the bands I __really __care about, I need to open up the Bandcamp app, or the Soundcloud app. I always make sure to bug them on their Facebook pages to let them know their presence is missed on Apple Music.

Although, I'm obviously more likely to pay for an album if I have to go through the Bandcamp gateway. Makes me feel good about myself, and gets actual money to the artists, so there are benefits compared to the streaming services' model of paying artists fractions of a cent per play.

<comment><USER8> I think we are the opposite, I have found nothing nothing but frustration in the apple music. Shitty interface, short samples, bloated as a three day dead whale AND proprietary.

I however love bandcamp and soundcloud. They have changed the way I discover music. Not so much listen to music, that's still a download it and play it myself sort of thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The only reasonable way to go is buy/download music DRM-free and store high- quality files on your own HDD. I've been burnt too many times. Youtube taking down files. Grooveshark disappearing. Newgrounds outages. Never again. I like a song, I hunt it down and download it, whatever tools it takes to do so. In general I download everything I like from the internet because it's gonna disappear. When I look at my old bookmarks, like 50% are defunct now.

<comment><USER10> If you were enjoying groovesharks services, you're unlikely to be the target audience for paying for stuff.

<comment><USER9> You are mistaken. I spend a lot of money on music. If I think a composition is deserving of compensation, I will most likely buy the album even if I find a free download link. I didn't use grooveshark much but there were some songs that were extremely hard to find in other places.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What should (but will never) happen, is an agreed upon streaming API that arbitrary clients can connect to. Pay for a subscription and you can use (Amazon, iTunes, Spotify) from a single application. The only trick will be the application will no doubt need to placate rights holders that no saving of streaming-only content is going on, which will mean some kind of DRM.

<comment><USER12> I stream my own music from Ampache, and their are many clients, but I don't know of any commercial offerings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Am I the only one that sees this as a good thing? The only real holdouts are some of the top selling artists, the ones who, in my opinion, already get way too much attention. If a few people end up trying something new because they can't immediately stream the latest Kanye or Taylor Swift, I think the world will be a better place for it.

<comment><USER14> You aren't, just understand the medium through which NYTimes expresses its viewpoint favors a "Centralized" model of everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Disclaimer: my own blog - [https://blog.thekyel.com/?anchor=piracy](https://blog.thekyel.com/?anchor=piracy)

This is really, IMO, an economic problem. I'd love us to have a system where these artists can just release their music, in the format they want, and the consumers can grab it. Unfortunately, we're still stuck in the old business mindset of selling physical CD's. And, as our economic model is based on selling a physical product, we don't really have a solid way of making sure the artist gets paid, so we jump through logic-hoops to make it happen.

</comment><comment><USER16> If you like Classical, Baroque, Jazz, or a couple of others

try [http://stream.psychomed.gr/](http://stream.psychomed.gr/)

44khz 320kbit no ads, no talking

I am just a happy listener

<comment><USER17> This is great and it comes just as several Dutch AVRO stations discontinue streaming, so I am actively looking for replacements. AVRO streams were 256kbit, and no talking ever - perfect!

You can find a decent list of streaming classical stations here, but many have occasional announcements and some do news breaks with extended talking. [http://www.listenlive.eu/classical.html](http://www.listenlive.eu/classical.html)

For the simplest and lightest-weight streaming on Linux try Radio Tray ([https://bitbucket.org/carlmig/radio- tray](https://bitbucket.org/carlmig/radio-tray)) which might be in your repos already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> How is this different than cable vs satellite television programming? I could say "So much on television, just not in one place."

<comment><USER19> There's no such thing as a "DirecTV original program." Satellite and cable are just two ways to deliver the same bundle of programming channels.

<comment><USER20> Actually, Directv does have the Audience network for original programming.

<comment><USER21> ...and when was the last time it aired something culturally significant?

<comment><USER18> Now there's a pretentious remark if I've seen one. What you consider not culturally significant, someone else might consider entertaining. And entertainment value is somewhat important in the television and music industries, FYI.

<comment><USER21> Huh? Why are you suggesting that entertainment and cultural significance are two separate things? Entertaining things are culturally significant. Breaking Bad and Big Bang Theory are both culturally significant.

My point was "when was the last time they made something that would impact on someone's overall choice of TV provider?". The lack of either Big Bang Theory or Breaking Bad might make that choice for a person.

<comment><USER18> >"when was the last time they made something that would impact on someone's overall choice of TV provider?"

Again, what _you_ consider entertaining or significant is your business. But to claim the entire network has no value to anyone else on Planet Earth, well...

<comment><USER22> >But to claim the entire network has no value to anyone else on Planet Earth, well...

I cannot see this claim being made by anyone. Care to link to that claim?

<comment><USER18> I was responding to the comment that the network had nothing culturally significant.

>...and when was the last time it aired something culturally significant?

<comment><USER23> And yet you haven't been able to name something culturally significant on the network.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If a consumer is paying fees to multiple companies, then the rights holders can collect more in royalties and licensing agreements than if they were dealing with one entity.

</comment><comment><USER25> I have a Spotify subscription, a Spotify account in the UK I access through my VPN, and my wife has Apple Music that we share on family plan. US Spotify has most of what I listen to, UK Spotify has some guilty pleasure girl groups (Girls Aloud, The Saturdays) and Apple Music as the best selection of K-pop in the US.

<comment><USER26> Think of how many albums you could add to your permanent music collection for that $300 a year! Before you know it, you would own everything you want to listen to, and wouldn't have to keep paying a monthly fee to rent access to it.

<comment><USER5> This only works if the albums you enjoy are a static set. New releases and discovering existing but unknown albums means you are already paying a recurring cost if you buy all of your content. The main advantage of owning over renting is that you can keep your existing collection if you stop paying.

<comment><USER26> >The main advantage of owning over renting is that you can keep your existing collection if you stop paying.

Clearly. It's not your collection if you're only renting access to it.

Do you think you discover 30 albums per year worth buying and adding to your collection? I listen to a lot of music, and I certainly don't.

<comment><USER5> > Clearly. It's not your collection if you're only renting access to it.

I never said it was.

> Do you think you discover 30 albums per year worth buying and adding to your > collection? I listen to a lot of music, and I certainly don't.

I certainly don't spend that much on music. Most of what I listen to is simply through Amazon Prime, which I would pay for even without the music portion. Even if you prorate is based on the services I use, which is subjective as to specific costs per service, it's not much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Most audio streaming apps have terrible UI across platforms. Spotify and Saavn are the only ones that are satisfactory and useful and I end up sticking with those.

I am ready to not listen to artists I like if they're going to make me jump through hoops and cause frustration just to listen to them.

</comment><comment><USER28> I went through a maddening period recently of trying to find something, anything that met the following criteria:

1\. Lossless playback. I am willing to / currently pay for it. I don't care if it's a placebo--I _think_ I can hear the difference when I'm listening through good headphones and a reasonable quality DAC. Plus, some musicians like Neil Young have made this a not-odious condition for being on a service.

2\. Best effort on catalog. A huge catalog isn't actually super important for reasons stated below. Amazon's catalog is a little on the sparse side, but the others' are fine.

3\. Allow personal user-uploaded tracks, and stream them back to the uploader account losslessly. This allows me to backfill the crazy and not so crazy stuff I've purchased over the years that is not on any of the streaming services.

4\. Support a reasonable number of devices such that I don't have to choose between Prime Video and your streaming music service on my TV (to which my hifi equipment connects digitally). Right now I'm running Tidal (best compromise for me) sideloaded on a FireTV.

Or distilled to first principles: "Allow me to enjoy the convenience of streaming music, while allowing me to access any content I wish (even if I must pay for it), at the same quality I experienced when I was 16 shopping at the local record store."

Nobody does this.

Google Play Music: Not lossless; doesn't support FireTV because arbitrary corporate bickering reasons. Props for self-uploaded tracks.

Amazon Prime Music: Not lossless (worst encoding). Props for self-uploaded tracks.

Apple Music: Not lossless; limited device support. Props for self-uploaded tracks, however the interface to self-uploaded tracks and streaming music not really well integrated on AppleTV.

Spotify: Not lossless; no self-uploaded tracks.

Tidal: No self-uploaded tracks.

Deezer Elite: Only available in lossless on Sonos. Props for amazing catalog and self-uploaded tracks.

In terms of fixing things...

Amazon Prime Music could be my choice overnight by going CD quality (not like they don't have the infrastructure to do it). Their device support is surprisingly good. Their catalog isn't great, but I'm willing to buy / upload CDs that are missing--provided Amazon doesn't start shitting-up their content availability to drive CD sales.

Google Play Music also not too far off mark. Fix the lossless thing, and I might be convinced to live with their Amazon bickering.

I suspect Apple will launch lossless soon, but also think it will be a cold day in hell before I can use Apple Music on something like FireTV. Also, the integration of self-tracks and streamed-tracks is bad and should feel bad.

Deezer Elite: OMG, don't make me buy a Sonos. I want you.

Tidal: I like jazz, and your partial Pat Metheny albums and anemic Dave Holland selection kill me. But if you allowed me to upload my own, I could buy my way around your content negotiation failings.

<comment><USER29> Re:1 You don't care whether it's a placebo?!? We should get in touch, I have some expensive sugar pills to sell you that will do wonders for your ailment of choice.

<comment><USER30> I seldom care whether something that works _for me personally_ is a placebo or not. If I can harness the power of my brain with a sugar pill, excellent. The placebo effect is powerful, and was the basis of a lot of medicine before the 20th century.

Where it does matter, obviously, is science, which is the only tool we have to come up with solutions that are better than placebo. But "better than placebo" is a fairly high standard[1].

[1] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19246102](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19246102): "The placebo effect accounted for 68% of the effect in the drug groups. Whereas clinical trials need to control the placebo effect, clinical practice should attempt to use its full power."</comment></comment></comment>


New Bill Asks Homeland Security to Investigate Whether Terrorists Use Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/new-bill-asks-homeland-security-to-investigate-whether-terrorists-use-bitcoin <comment><USER2> inb4 of course they do. They also use US Dollars, Euros, and I expect most other currencies out there.

<comment><USER3> Not to mention computers, cell phones, grocery stores, roads, socks, pants,</comment></comment>


Is MySQL becoming less open source? Test cases go internal now - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mariadb.org/disappearing-test-cases/

<comment><USER2> So basically, the Java strategy. Killing the alternatives through creating compatibility uncertainty. Oh, man. This doesn't bode well.

I hope this drives developers towards using and improving Postgres, but, well, who knows. One can dream!

More likely is that it may drive people towards Percona, which I have on good word is a solid professional MySQL branch...or, like Java, people will just stick with the brand. :/

EDIT: adding links for the curious.

Percona: <http://www.percona.com/>

Background on the Java stuff: [http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2010/12/apache...](http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2010/12/apache-resigns-from-jcp-in-protest-of-oracle-governance- failures/) (the difference is that MySQL never did have open governance, so there was nobody to quit in a justified huff)

<comment><USER3> I would think one would need to look no further than the Oracle/Google lawsuit and its outcome with respect to Java to see how Oracle will move forward with MySQL.

<comment><USER4> Java has been greatly improved since Oracle took over the helm. Major improvements to the JVM, an exciting yet stable roadmap, better platform support (in particular on OSX) and a lot more confidence about its future.

Oracle has been nothing but a huge positive for the Java platform.

<comment><USER2> > Oracle has been nothing but a huge positive for the Java platform. For the > OpenJDK Java implementation, definitely. For free and open alternatives? No, > not at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> MySQL is as popular as it is because it has been free (as in beer), and relatively easy to set up and use.

The time for that has come and gone. MySQL's shortcomings limit its use in many corporate and professional settings, and the alternatives are now much easier to use.

If I were looking to become a DBA today, I would study PostgreSQL. Likewise, if I were developing a new web application, MySQL wouldn't even make my list.

<comment><USER4> MySQL is as popular as it is because EVERYONE is using it.

Which means that all of the really hard scalability and management problems have already been solved every which way. And all available for free by companies you know and trust e.g. Facebook, Twitter.

If I were looking to become a DBA today I wouldn't bother with PostgreSQL at all. I would learn all of the NoSQL databases because that is where all of the interest is right now. Due to the increase use of agile in software development databases need to be flexible with the schema controlled by developers not DBAs.

<comment><USER6> Or you could, you know, learn multiple things, because very few companies that need scalability are best served by doing everything in only one technology. Or, for that matter, hiring people who only know one technology.

There's a hell of a lot of useful stuff to learn (practical and theoretical) from relational databases. NoSQL has some useful ideas too. However, advocating that someone wanting to be considered a "database administrator" _only_ learn/focus on NoSQL - that's just poor advice.

<comment><USER4> Funny that you chose to reply to me instead of the parent. Learning just PostgreSQL is also poor advice.

Most DBAs will already know Oracle and MySQL and my point was that they would be much better advised learning a NoSQL database. Of course if you're a new DBA you should learn a relational database I just fail to see why on earth anybody would recommend PostgreSQL over Oracle/MySQL which are far, far, more popular.

<comment><USER7> Oracle might be popular, but few places can afford, or justify paying for it. MySQL is mostly popular because everyone was busy cargo culting based on what Facebook and YouTube were doing instead of evaluating the choices on their merits. Luckily most of those people have moved on to cargo culting NoSQL choices.

If you want a solid open-source database, especially one that has a future, learn Postgres.

<comment><USER4> I love armchair experts.

So I guess if all of those clueless engineers at the world's most trafficked websites would have just listened to you they would never have picked MySQL. Have you ever thought of letting them know that they should switch over to PostgreSQL ?

<comment><USER7> The engineers and Facebook might have selected MySQL on merits. Or they might be stuck with trying to do the best with legacy choices. I don't know what the best solution is for them today, and it might not be either Postgres or MySQL.

If however you need to make a choice today for what database to use on a new project, then you should evaluate the choices instead of basing your decision on what might have been best for Facebook 8 years ago.

I'm not going to get into the technical differences here, because even if MySQL and Postgres were technically equivalent (and they aren't but I'll let you do your own research), I simply don't trust Oracle with the future of MySQL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a MySQL discussion, but I think it's worth it to say what two things I think keep Postgres from becoming the viable worldwide use-by-default contender that MySQL became:

1\. Branding. First and foremost. MySQL had great documentation, an identifiable logo, and a wonderful name that every non-technical person could remember and identify. Postgresql is just, well, it's a horrible nightmare of a name. People would like to think this doesn't matter but: of course it does.

2\. A really slick installer for Windows. You could say this is branding and to some extent it is, but MySQL and its admin tools have a really friendly installer that lets intermediate developers without a lot of DB experience get it up and running with their development environments quickly. I admit it's been a while since I used Postgres's but the fit and polish wasn't there.

<comment><USER9> Let's keep this on topic: in what specific ways has postgresql been more open, and how does that lead to a better developer community and greater value for users?

I happen to think the postgres docs are great, and they are open and free unlike the MySQL docs. I have tried following one MySQL doc, only to see it change later and have no way to see the old version. Not a problem for postgres.

If you have some suggestions for the docs please submit them to the docs mailing list.

Postgres also has 15+ years of history in git, which is extremely helpful.

Honestly, I don't know where to start. Postgres is an open community project to the core and benefits from that in so many ways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> [http://www.engineyard.com/blog/2012/postgresql-is-our-new- de...](http://www.engineyard.com/blog/2012/postgresql-is-our-new-default/)

Despite the reasons they gave, did they see the writing on the wall that made this the time to make the leap?

</comment><comment><USER11> I haven't yet used one of the recent MySQL forks, but I have a feeling the next time I'm using an OSS solution that requires a MySQL variant, I wont be using MySQL.

<comment><USER12> I was recently looking at the alternatives available, and thought that Drizzle [<http://www.drizzle.org/>] looks really great.

<comment><USER13> Drizzle is not a drop-in replacement for MySQL. The only real option if you want to replace MySQL without having to change your application code is MariaDB. Drizzle is fine for new projects, but you'd have to massively alter an existing site to get it to work with Drizzle.

<comment><USER2> I don't think it's fair to say MariaDB is the _only_ real option. The CTO of the company I work at seems to be a pretty firm advocate for Percona.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think MariaDB should be a viable alternative, right?

<comment><USER13> Absolutely. It's been a viable alternative for some time now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So, time for LibreSQL?

<comment><USER16> MariaDB is the free (GPL) branch (actually more of a fork at this point) created by Monty, the primary original author of MySQL.

<comment><USER17> Is anyone actually using MariaDB in production at a reasonable scale? Our DBAs tried to convince us to switch from MySQL to Maria a few months ago. All of the devs on my team looked around and couldn't find any testimonials, use- cases or benchmarks that weren't done by someone on the Maria dev team. I realize Monty is behind it but I don't really feel like being an early adopter based on fear that some day Oracle might do something bad with MySQL.

<comment><USER18> I use MariaDB on all of my websites these days, the largest of which tops out at around 5K queries a second. The biggest draw for me was the XtraDB engine (which is also found in Percona Server) which is a replacement for InnoDB. XtraDB performs much better on SSDs and I was able to get over 50% performance gains on some queries with the default settings. This may or may not be applicable to your specific environment, but it is a drop-in replacement so it's very easy to just install it on a test box and stress test it with your current code.

<comment><USER19> To be clear, XtraDB is solely developed _by_ Percona. MariaDB has nicely included it, not the other way around.

<comment><USER18> I was just pointing out that Percona Server is another MySQL drop-in replacement since the commenter seems to be asking about an enterprise environment which Percona Server is targeted more towards than MariaDB. You're right I should have clarified that XtraDB is a product of Percona.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does someone know of a _really good_ (performance + corner cases) migration tool for MySql - > Postgres.

It looks like there are a ton of roll-your-own, but none as good as, say, "git svn clone"

<comment><USER21> I can't really speak to performance or corner cases outside of our (admittedly small) needs, but one of our developers had good luck with mysql2postgres -- <https://github.com/maxlapshin/mysql2postgres/></comment></comment>


Weird Funny Java - <AUTHOR> http://www.javacodegeeks.com/2011/10/weird-funny-java.html

<comment><USER2> A related quiz: If you are observing a random number generator which seems to just keep on spitting out ones, how long do you have to sample it before you can determine if it's random or not?

<comment><USER3> You cannot determine that. You can at most determine that the output so far matches a random distribution.

<comment><USER4> Sort of. You can test a hypothesis that this is being generated by some nonrandom process and determine with arbitrary confidence that that hypothesis is more likely to be true, which is effectively the same.

It's also possible that what we observe to be gravity is a 50/50 random process that has happened to always cause attraction when observed, but it would be so astronomically unlikely that it isn't worth considering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm wondering how did you find a seed for randomString function to produce "hello world" string. That's pretty strange. Could you explain the method for that, please?

<comment><USER6> The string is split in half. It only takes a couple of seconds to brute-force each part.

<comment><USER7> Try plugging in 22808277332 and 42028050 for "hacker news".</comment></comment></comment>


Solution Without a Problem? A Tax on High-Frequency Trading - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/upshot/solution-without-a-problem-a-tax-on-high-frequency-trading.html?ref=business&_r=0 <comment><USER2> "The most commonly cited statistics suggest that high-frequency traders are making, at most, a few billion dollars a year in the stock markets." ... source?</comment>