Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy - <AUTHOR> http://www.paperplanes.de/2014/12/10/from-open-to-minimum-vacation-policy.html <comment><USER2> I've said it before and I'll say it again, unlimited days off (or "open") and zero days off are identical.

If you have unlimited vacation people are inclined to take less and people respect the vacation you take less ("as you can always take more!").

Here's a study[0] (PDF) called "Overwhelmed America: Why Don't We Use Our Earned Leave?" It is biased (travel association) but interesting nonetheless.

According to this study[1] you need at least ten __consecutive __days of leave to "de-stress" from work. Short vacations aren't as effective as long ones. In "europe" a two week vacation (10 work days) is common/standard. As opposed to American's "long weekends."

A lot of these "unlimited" places have a "as long as your work gets done" policy, meaning you can take tons of short days off or afternoons off, but almost no extended holidays (e.g. travel abroad, out of state, etc).

[0] [http://traveleffect.com/sites/traveleffect.com/files/Overwhe...](http://traveleffect.com/sites/traveleffect.com/files/OverwhelmedAmerica_FullReport_FINAL_0.pdf)

<comment><USER3> > According to this study[1] you need at least ten consecutive days of leave > to "de-stress" from work. Short vacations aren't as effective as long ones.

That can't be true across the board. I haven't taken a vacation in 3 or 4 years by that definition. And frankly, I feel fine. I work with awesome people solving cool problems and love what I do. I've had friends tell me I should take a vacation, and my response is, "why?" I enjoy my time at the office and I enjoy my leisure activities away from the office. I typically work more than 40 hours, but it doesn't matter. Sometimes I'll put in 12-hour days for awhile, but I always make sure to get some recharging time. The longest "vacation" I've taken in the last 4 years was something like a long Thursday - Monday weekend. Those leave me feeling plenty recharged and ready to get back. I can even get that from a lazy Sunday where I just stay home and relax.

If a billion dollars dropped into my lap tomorrow, I probably wouldn't do much differently. I might think about taking some time off, but I'm working on things I actually want to accomplish. Even if I did just take off on an extended vacation, I'm pretty sure I'd want to get back to my current job before too long. Part of me might want to work fewer hours since I wouldn't need the money, but that would probably slow down my rate of progress on the things that I want to accomplish.

<comment><USER4> The fact that you're an outlier doesn't mean that the findings of the study are invalid. There are lots of people who are genuinely good at their jobs, but who would do something completely different with their lives if a billion dollars dropped into their laps. Those people stand to gain much more from a long vacation than you do.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I realize that...hence my first sentence "That can't be true across the board." But people tend to cite these things like they're a fundamental truth about humans. I think the generalization is less useful than it might seem.

<comment><USER5> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Of course the other reason for 'unlimited vacation' is so when an employee leaves, the company doesn't have to pay them for unused vacation days. Huge red flag when a company has 'unlimited vacation'

<comment><USER7> IIRC, the company doesn't have to pay you for unused vacation days even if you don't use them. It's pretty much at the discretion of the company.

<comment><USER8> It depends upon the state. Some states, CA and IL for example, treat vacation as earned and owed, yet unpaid compensation. Because of this, it represents a liability, so it's got to be shown as such on the books. Which is also another reason why you see CA companies adopting "open vacation" policies, it takes that vacation liability off the balance sheet.

Other states view vacation as just an agreement between you and your employer. You basically agree that there are so many days you don't have to show up to work and they'll still pay you. That's it.

In the past I worked remote for an Atlanta-based company, and their employee handbook stated that they will pay out vacation up to a maximum of 40 hours. Anything in excess of 40 hours you had in the bank, you forfeited. I lived in a St Louis suburb in Illinois at the time, and as an Illinois-based employee they paid me my full vacation bucket when I quit.

Similarly, a friend of mine worked remote for the same company, but lived just across the river in Missouri. When she left, she got her vacation capped. MO and GA are among the states that do not view vacation as earned compensation.

<comment><USER9> Not only is vacation time treated as earned and owed in Illinois, the offers of the company can be held personally liable for the funds in the event the company goes out of business and does not pay this out. _This applies even if the company is in federal receivership_. I know this from first hand experience having worked with the Illinois Labor Board to resolve a matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like this idea of minimum vacation. Most companies I've worked in use vacation days as some sort of reward for sticking with the company for X number of years (i.e., "When you hit your 5 year anniversary, you get an extra 1.5 days of paid vacation. Won't that be nice!"). And when I say paid vacation, I really mean PTO with no separate 'sick leave' days. Which means people show up to work sick.

Funny enough, the company I work for was recently bought, and in the interests of making things 'uniform', we were forced to adopt the purchasing company's vacation policy, which meant an across the board cut in everyone's PTO hours (to include folks that negotiated additional vacation days when they were hired -- those agreements were declared null and void). Apparently the execs thought the hit to morale/retention was worth the 'cost savings'.

On the other hand, I once interviewed at a company with an 'open' vacation policy and was immediately suspicious of it. My first thought was "I'm guessing people don't take much vacation?" That didn't go over so well with the interviewer.

It's nice to see an employer that treats vacation as a means to increase employee productivity and retention (burnout prevention, etc.), rather than as a pure cost to be minimized as much as possible.

<comment><USER11> Hmm is that not a breach of contract could in a tech company lead to an exodus of staff.

<comment><USER12> You shouldn't be surprised at the number of execs who don't really care. at. all. about attrition, and who are clueless about what motivates engineers.

<comment><USER11> I wouldn't :-) but that just means you competitors just got a free shot at your best and brightest.

The really clever ones volunteer for redundancy and the pay off and then go and work for a competitor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I really like the tone of this post. It makes me think that this person is trustworthy and I'd be glad to work for him.

I wish my company had such an open communication!

</comment><comment><USER14> > A company has to learn how to function when people are on vacation and > unavailable, however important their role is.

Yes, this is essential for having a viable company. If the company grinds to a halt without person _X_ , the solution is not to get rid of person _X_ 's vacation.

Also, in finance, required vacations are often a compliance aid. If someone is running a scam, it tends to need near-daily tending, and it will explode when they are out for two weeks (unless they find a co-conspirator).

<comment><USER15> Wow, remind me never to work in finance, too much paranoia for me (though I do know it's justified a lot of the time- I taught some IT folks at a bank once and they told me about a branch manager who went on holiday and forgot to turn off his automated money siphoning software. That was the only reason he got caught)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I last moved from a shop with unlimited PTO (where in practice people settled around 4-5 weeks per year) to one with 15 days per year. Quality of life is noticeably worse with the limited PTO, and people tend to hoard their days because they're scarce. Travis's tracked minimum vacation sounds better than either of those policies.

<comment><USER17> I'm at a company where you start with 14 days of PTO per year, including sick time. It was a huge shock coming from college, and it's the main complaint I have about my job. It jumps up to 19 after two years.

I honestly think 20 days PTO is the bare minimum for a decent work-life balance, and even that isn't all that great. If I were changing jobs, I'd actually be willing to exchange salary for extra PTO, if the default PTO were less than 20 days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> As a graduate student, I feel that (at least within my research group) there is this "unlimited time off" policy, but in the end it's not really taken advantage of very much and it certainly doesn't take any stress away from work. Even this holiday season, I'll be taking a week off from work, and I always phrase it as "I promised my mother I'd be home for at least a week".

The minimum vacation policy sounds like an interesting alternative, but I'm not sure it could fit within the academic community. Any professor has the power to instate such a policy, but at any given moment there's an "important" project that rests on one or two people working hard to get results. Often, in academia, you have those people that are precisely the kind that will work hard and get shit done, and honestly I can't imagine there being an understanding of "minimum time off". It's more convenient to the professor and the ambitious PhD student/post-doc to have the "take time off when you want" policy, and let the unwritten rules and undertones dictate when you should take time off (e.g., when you just finish a project).

I know the article wasn't trying to apply things to academia, I just thought I would consider it in that light.

<comment><USER15> I would think that in academia a minimum time off policy would be great: depending on where you are in the project, sometimes stepping away from a problem can lead you to the solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I see a lot of people saying that they would "never work for a company with unlimited vacation." I also understand their reasoning and have seen similar examples.

At DataRank we balance this with a small amendment. It's unlimited vacation but you MUST take a minimum of two weeks off. We are also very flexible about remote work. If you feel the itch to travel to Japan for a 2 week vacation + 2 weeks working remote, go for it. If you just feel burned out and want to watch Netflix at home all day. Go for it, just let someone know.

</comment><comment><USER20> You can also view it likes this.

In the end of your life when looking back at it. You can think of asking two questions of yourself.

Did you wish you worked more hard days for your company? or Did you wish you spent more time with family and gaining new experiences?

Obviously you will need to find a work / life balance but if you only work/play hard you might regret it later and you cannot get lost time back.

</comment><comment><USER21> If I worked somewhere that had an unlimited vacation policy, I think I'd probably stop working on Fridays all together. An unlimited vacation policy could be an open invitation for a 4-day work-week (or 3 day or 2 day...)

<comment><USER22> It's expected that you don't abuse the policy. While what constitutes abuse may be a line that needs elaboration, making your standard work week 2-3 days under this policy is not a gray area.

<comment><USER23> Which is exactly why these policies suck. It's "unlimited" but it's implied that you don't take too many days. It's like the comcast of vacation policies.

<comment><USER22> That's what the minimum days you must take is for. If the company culture is right, it's a liberating policy. At my new job now it feels like I'm spending a precious commodity instead of booking vacation feeling like reprieve due in the wake of hard work or payoff.

<comment><USER23> Oh I agree. I like the idea that the article was talking about. I'll be interested in seeing how it works out. It reverses the stigma to almost be where you'd look bad for not taking enough time vs taking too much time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Mandatory vacation is not only a good idea, it is a security feature.

When one employee takes over another's "world" within the company, it is very likely that they will notice if the employee on vacation has been embezzling, defrauding customers, etc. In the financial industry, this is not only good practice, it is a regulatory requirement. People who do not want to take vacation are seen by auditors as highly suspicious because that behavior often indicates a desire to cover up fraud.

<comment><USER25> I think pairing with frequent rotations is going to be more effective, but most shops don't practice pairing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is a great post. At Sourcegraph, we had a similar realization, based on our own experiences.

We wrote a blog post about it and it got picked up by the BBC:

[https://sourcegraph.com/blog/mandatory- vacation](https://sourcegraph.com/blog/mandatory-vacation) [http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20140903-relax-or- else](http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20140903-relax-or-else)

</comment><comment><USER27> What I found to be even more relaxing is if all the employees of a company are forced to take the same time off ( 2 days to a week) and other flexible time off where the employee can choose his own time.

Then, there are no email or updates to come back to...

<comment><USER28> From my point of view, that's the way it should be. At my company we make you take vacations. If by the end of the year you have plenty of days left you tend to take a long christmas/new year's break... and in some exceptions move a couple of vacations days to the next calendar year.

The unlimited vacations days, in my eyes, creates considerable pressure/anxiety on workers. If you are in the US and want to treat employees, just go for a fair number of paid vacations days like in most European countries... Germany, France, Austria, Spain, Italy, etc, all have approx. 28 days...

<comment><USER29> Sounds like a mature way to run a business. Where do I sign up?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Why do companies even try out these weird policies? They've gone from having unlimited days (then admitted it was a mistake for 2 whole years) and are now blindly trying out another unusual strategy. I don't see why they don't just offer a standard solution which seems to work for most companies, instead of trying to be extremely controlling of people.

<comment><USER31> Uh, having 20-25 (almost mandatory) days of per year is implemented by law here in most countries of EU. How is that a "wierd" policy?

(By "almost mandatory" I mean that at least here, you must use up your vacation days until end of next year.)

<comment><USER23> In the US that's weird because the mandatory days off per year are 0. A good amount for most people in the US is 10 days per year (or two weeks). I get 4 weeks which is pretty great but many of the people I work with end up not taking all of those days or taking days and also working on them due to culture. It's ridiculous.

<comment><USER32> > In the US that's weird because the mandatory days off per year are 0.

Only if you assume that a nation-wide law is the only condition under which non-zero vacation days will emerge.

<comment><USER23> Most people get some time off but a significant amount of people still get no time off and work on holidays.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> We have an unlimited vacation policy at Adzerk and I try to lead by example by taking at least 2-3 weeks off a year (especially in the summer). We also try to encourage everyone to take at least one solid week off a year and it seems to work pretty well.

I think that's the real issue with unlimited policy - if the leaders don't take vacation no one else thinks they can.

<comment><USER34> Is 2-3 weeks off a normal amount of time in the US? I get 28 days off per year in the UK, which is around the standard amount.

<comment><USER35> Outside tech (which is dripping with privilege) it's common to have 0-2 weeks of vacation in the US. There is no legal minimum, and I've had jobs offering 0, 1, and 2 weeks of vacation. In some cases you can take time off and simply not be paid for it.

<comment><USER36> Not only that, but many employers aren't required to offer maternity leave (let alone paternity leave). My wife has had to combine accrued vacation time, sick days, and unpaid leave just to get to six weeks of maternity leave.

<comment><USER37> That's pretty crazy. Do many companies actually tend to provide maternity leave as a benefit?

It makes a bit of a joke of gender equality in the workplace, IMHO.

<comment><USER38> Many companies do provide maternity leave, many (but fewer) also provide paternity leave, but companies below a certain size are not federally required to provide either (though I believe there are some arrangements where you can take unpaid maternity leave but legally can't be fired during your maternity leave).

<comment><USER39> It sounds like you're thinking of the Family Medical Leave Act, which doesn't apply to everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Another upside is forcing the company to learn to run without its founders or other key employees for a meaningful period of time.

This forces good processes to be put in place, and is an excellent fire drill in general.

<comment><USER15> Talking fun, I think it would be fun for a company to run a bus factor fire drill from time to time -:just point to one employee and say "Bam! You're hit by a bus, leave the office now here's $2K, come back next Thursday. No email, no remote working and no phone contact with anyone from here."

I wonder how many companies (let alone startups) could deal effectively with this situation.

<comment><USER41> A chaos monkey that takes out personnel instead of servers. I like it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I jokingly refer to Unlimited Vacation Policy as Guilt Driven Vacation Policy. IMHO, it is a sham so companies don't have to take liability for accrued vacation time on their books. While I commend Travis for coming up with a workable solution wouldn't it be easier to just say: "Everyone has 4 weeks vacation, use them!".

<comment><USER43> Isn't that exactly what they did? Everyone has to take 5 weeks minimum, and on top of that you may take more if you want/need.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> "We tried something that didn't fit our culture, and it didn't work."

Taking less vacation time is not necessarily a bad thing. For myself, not having to meet a minimum quota means I enjoy the vacations I do take more, since I take them when I need and want instead of mandatory ones. It means, as long as I'm feeling good, I can keep the momentum up.

The bigger problems is that employees didn't respect others' vacation time. Or their own, for that matter. That is a cultural problem, and a change in vacation policy won't help (much). If you want the people in your company to be happier with their time off, work on respecting it.

      "The guilt of taking time off takes over, and you "just check in" or promise to be available if anything comes up."

That is, to me, a sign of an unhealthy culture. Fix that before trying yet another vacation experiment.

<comment><USER36> What you're proposing is unlikely to work in many environments. Even in the best of environments, where trust and respect course through every coworker interaction, people will still be looking to their coworkers (especially their superiors) to get a feel for how much vacation time is acceptable. In fact, companies with exceptionally strong cultures may be worse, as people really won't want to be a burden on their coworkers by taking more vacation days than average.

This is especially true for anyone with any sort of leadership role—whether it's an official senior position, a mentor, or just someone who is known for being a model employee. Your own behavior serves as a model for others, and no company policy is going to tell people any different.

I work for a small nonprofit organization with an extremely dedicated president. She's been very gracious with the freedom she allows her employees (though the official policies could be better), but I'm always wondering if she thinks that I'm actually working hard enough—not because of anything she's said, but because she puts in a ton of hours. I know many of my coworkers feel the same pressure.

If you're forced to take vacation time even when you don't need it, then try to find other pursuits—personal projects, reading, volunteering—that are still "work", but of the unpaid variety. Take the time to catch up with friends and family (especially if you have kids). Vacation doesn't just have to be about traveling and/or resting; it can also be an opportunity to catch up on other priorities.

<comment><USER44> I definitely agree that people in any form of leadership role serve as an example. They do on many more things than just vacation time. In general, that's one of the ways to influence culture, by being the best example of it. Conversely, if you don't act as an exponent of your own culture, it breeds a "do as I say, not as I do" atmosphere, which is just as negative as not trying to fix your culture.

I also agree that people will look at their colleagues to know what is 'acceptable'. I don't now if that is inevitable. If it is, that makes the example roles all the more important to guide that. If your president would take more vacation time and worked the same hours as everybody else, the pressure on you would be lifted. I realize that might be difficult for her to do, but that is the effect it has.

My problem with forced vacation time isn't the lack of work, it's that I don't need it. I already pay close enough attention to my work/life balance, so when I do take vacation time it's on my own terms. Being forced to meet a quota just means it feels like I'm wasting days that I could be productive doing the things I'm actually being paid for.

Incidentally, since I've become a freelancer my vacation time that I actually want to take has gone up a bit. The situation is far simpler (either I'm working and I get paid, or neither), and not having to go through any official process or multitude of forms, means it's much easier to take the occasional day when I want it.

<comment><USER45> "Being forced to meet a quota just means it feels like I'm wasting days that I could be productive doing the things I'm actually being paid for."

But surely if you want to get your work/life balance right, you would naturally end up taking ~25 days off a year without feeling like you're forced to? I guess it varies from person to person.

<comment><USER44> It does vary from person to person, and from job to job. For me, it's less than 25 days, on average. Others might need much more. I won't judge anyone for taking more vacation time, and I'll respect it as best I can. I just like having the option of not taking time if I don't want it :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> "unlimited" days off are nonsense. Can I take off 365 days a year? If the answer is no it's not unlimited. There's a limit, you're just not specifying it.

<comment><USER47> I have a feeling this only works in places where you can be fired for performance reasons.

<comment><USER46> Sure, but my point is if you can be fired for taking too many days off, it's not unlimited. It's limited by the amount of work you're expected to reasonably do, and that's decided by your boss and colleagues. Except now instead of having a hard number where you know you are safe, it's completely subjective how many days off you can take.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> If anyone wants to read more about unlimited vacation policies, here are some of the previous HN threads on the topic: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5125973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5125973) , [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4874743](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4874743) , and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7613526](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7613526) . The last contains comments about the Jacob Kaplan-Moss essay that was mentioned in this thread's link.

</comment><comment><USER49> I'm glad to see someone trying this out. It's something I've been wondering about [1], and it seems pretty uncommon. I'll be looking forward to seeing how this works out for them, and any other companies that are so inspired to try to improve the status-quo.

Frankly the American culture of working continuously seems like a negative to employee and employer both--and even if it were only a negative to one, it would be something worthy of change.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8053580](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8053580)

</comment><comment><USER50> My job went from 20 days paid off per year where we accrued hours per pay period, to an open vacation policy. The company did this because of the cost of having to keep money saved up to pay out to employees who have saved up their vacation hours.

Like the article describes, most people including myself took off less time. I know for myself I felt guilty and didn't want to be seen as taking advantage of the new open policy.

I'm going to talk to my new job's management and ask them to setup a minimum vacation day policy.

</comment><comment><USER51> It's like all these high-powered technology executives never opened an economics textbook.

</comment><comment><USER52> The company I work for has open vacation and it works out fine. People take a few days, a week here and there and it winds up being 4-5 weeks a year. This is in the US. I'm sure there's no big payout for unused vacation when people leave, but no big deal. When you're sick, you stay home, when you need time off, you take it. The CTO and upper managers are all coders and have worked hard at maintaining a good work culture.

</comment><comment><USER53> very good. Except "now has a required minimum of 25 (paid) vacation days per year, no matter what country they live in." Well no. If they live in the UK for example they have a mandatory limit of 28 days not 25 because it's the law.

<comment><USER54> But is that an enforced minimum? Is an employee _required_ to take that many days off work? Because that's the distinction being drawn here.

<comment><USER55> Yes, it is. And, just, seriously, what sort of a society doesn't mandate holidays?

<comment><USER56> A society that's not into proclaiming mandates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> ".... and you "just check in" or promise to be available if anything comes up. You respond to just one email or just one GitHub issue."

When people need to be "available" while on vacation it usually means that there is way too much dependency on that person or insufficient knowledge- sharing. It shows the glaring holes on what's being hacked together and where systems can strengthen.

</comment><comment><USER58> I definitely saw the "being totally unplugged" problem both previously when I worked at Microsoft and now when working at Mozilla. It's arguably even worse at Mozilla with the shift of many people (myself included) to IRCCloud, which is a wonderful service but turns what was supposed to be an asynchronous, loose availability chat system into a realtime, all-hours interruption mechanism.

</comment><comment><USER59> Genuine question: how do companies/teams that run services deal with peak vacation periods? E.g. Christmas holidays. Even if everyone wants to take the last two weeks of the year off, you have to have someone keeping the lights on. Also, what happens if a high priority problem comes in? Are the team leads/managers careful not to schedule work around the holidays?

<comment><USER60> I am on vacation next week but am still the primary on-call.

I will take pages if I'm available or pass/escalate to the next guy if I'm not.

Since I'm on vacation it's understood to be a best effort.

Normally I would switch with someone but it's a busy vacation week so we just figure it out.

I took a two hour call the morning of thanksgiving, for reference.

<comment><USER61> > I am on vacation next week but am still the _primary_ on-call.

Whatever that is, it isn't vacation.

<comment><USER62> It's like the difference between vacation and prison. In both case you are away from home.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Interesting take on paid time off that I've never seen before. Will be looking forward to the update on how this works out.

</comment><comment><USER64> I would go even further and postulate that lack of rules about who is in power kills societies. Many equate "lack of rules" with "freedom", but it's a problem. People without conscience will freely abuse the lack of rules or start to fight with each other, while the good people will get screwed. Eventually, the good people, who usually just want to do the work, will get unhappy and leave.

This applies not only to vacation, but to governance as well. So called "consensual democracy", where there is no hard and fast rule about who has how much power, has the same kind of problem. The most important thing about democracy is that it is very specific - everybody has the same amount of power. That discourages political fights, because you cannot (without explicitly changing the rule) accrue more power. In my opinion, many institutions (for example Wikipedia) suffer from this problem.

<comment><USER65> This is a bunch of leftist FUD to be honest.

Read up on libertarianism. You've even managed to get the definition of "freedom" wrong. Lack of rules? Are we using arguments from decades ago? It's lack of rulers. There's never a lack of rules because we all understand natural law.

<comment><USER66> >There's never a lack of rules because we all understand natural law.

No we don't.

More to the point, I can guarantee that not everyone agrees with _your_ understanding of whatever 'natural law' is, or with your inalienable right to exercise that view in their presence. Not even Libertarians agree on that.

<comment><USER65> It's not something for which there is "my understanding" and "your understanding".

It's obvious stuff. If you punch someone in the face you can expect retaliation. If you trade with others you can expect peace for the duration of that contract. And so on.

I'm not saying there's a list of the natural laws that I imagine people know of. There's no list. There's only the obvious stuff. Obviously I'd have to retaliate if I thought my life were in danger, and obviously I'd do my best to keep alliances that benefit me. Others will do the same. It all ends up working itself out. No need for a Hammurabi.

<comment><USER66> Even the most barbarian, uncivilized tribes have had a shaman or chieftain and a set of principles to follow and taboos to avoid. Arguably (since I Am Not An Archaologist), Hammurabi's insight wasn't having laws, but writing them down, and abstracting the force of law away from the immediate will of the god-king.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> So here's a slightly different view from someone I know -- they are slotted X number of vacation days, but actually need more.

He is divorced, and his kid is across the US, so he ends up using all his vacation to see his kid. Now he is left with nothing to take a real vacation with his current spouse, and they both really want to.

<comment><USER68> He should perhaps look for a better job?

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> There are a few people here commenting about how their employer's unlimited vacation policy allows them to take two weeks vacation and then work remotely for a week or two extra. That's great, and it's good to see companies allowing it but remote work is still work, and it certainly isn't a vacation.

Many people are working remote by default* and already have to fight certain perceptions that they are just sitting in their pants, watching tv, and eating chips all day, and it certainly doesn't help when others liken working remotely to being a holiday.

It's definitely a good thing that more companies are opening up to remote work and trusting their people to get things done without being watched over, let's not perpetuate this idea of it just being a bunch of slackers that do it.

* including me, obviously, and hence this response.

</comment><comment><USER70> As a counterpoint, most investment banks enfore a mandatory 10 working day break where all remote access capabilities are disabled (including blackberries).

This is less out of altruism, and more so that any untoward activities can be uncovered whilst the person is out of the office.

<comment><USER71> _This is less out of altruism, and more so that any untoward activities can be uncovered whilst the person is out of the office._

I'd love to hear more about that.

<comment><USER14> Here's an example:

[http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/easy- street/credi...](http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/easy- street/credit-suisse-makes-life-little-harder-aspiring-rogue-traders)

Everyone has at least a two-week period every year when they are completely cut off from the job. If you have been doing something off-the-books, that's enough time for it to explode. Or, if the auditing department suspects you of something -- or even if they don't -- this is the natural time to bring in forensics to dig through your books and figure out exactly you've been doing.

It's not as important in non-finance, but it can still have some use. I know of at least two cases where a sysadmin was on vacation and then outsiders were brought in to find all the backdoors he had installed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> I don't think I see a single negative comment here about long vacations, so allow me to play devil's advocate. (These questions don't necessarily reflect my own opinions.)

1\. If this is such a free lunch (employees are both happier and more productive overall), then why isn't lots of vacation offered everywhere (in the US)? Can it really be the case that the vast majority of US companies are too short-sighted to make a policy change that would be in their own best interest?

2\. If, alternatively, more vacation is really good for employees, but slightly bad for employers, why doesn't the labor market adjust? In this case, you would expect employees to offer to work for a lower salary in exchange for more vacation time.

<comment><USER73> > Can it really be the case that the vast majority of US companies are too > short-sighted to make a policy change that would be in their own best > interest?

You can ask that about anything. Are the U.S. banks really so short-sighted to offer absolutely crap person-to-person transfers and get undercut by any number of hacky startups? Were the U.S. car manufacturers really so stupid? Are California taxpayers really too short-sighted to realize how Prop 13 hurts the state? The entire federal administration in lead-up to the Iraq invasion? Etc, etc

<comment><USER72> I don't disagree that bad decisions are made all of the time, but the questions is how the same bad decision can be made everywhere in a competitive marketplace. You've given a couple of good examples where the answer is government: banking is highly regulated, so breaking into the industry is tough, and the big U.S. auto companies actually would have gone out of business and been replaced without a bailout.

But if increasing vacation time makes your employees happier and you also get more productive work out of them, why don't the companies that switch then get all of the best employees and eat the lunch of everyone else? I can't think of any regulations that make it more significantly more expensive to offer lots of vacation, so I don't think government is the answer in this case.

I think the biggest clue is given in the original post: people (Americans) won't take vacation even when you offer it to them! In that case, offering more vacation is doubly bad for the company: you still pay your employees for the vacation time, but they don't actually take it, and lose the productivity benefits. Either this is because Americans actually rationally prefer higher salaries to more vacation, and the system is working, or they systematically underestimate how much good a vacation would do them, in which case we need things like mandatory minimum vacation policies or laws.

<comment><USER73> > But if increasing vacation time makes your employees happier and you also > get more productive work out of them, why don't the companies that switch > then get all of the best employees and eat the lunch of everyone else?

Because marketplaces aren't as competitive as you think they are. An advantage in one factor isn't sufficient to decisively kill off a competitor.

To give an example: Do you think one could find ten people who could each do a better job than your local muffler shop? Do you think one could find ten people who could each create a company that would eventually do a better job than IBM? Than Yahoo? Than Facebook? Then why does IBM still exist?

How come, in a competitive marketplace, corporations still make decisions based on where the CEO lives and who the executives play golf with?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Just be a freelancer, every day will be a holiday and christmas is just just another hackaton. ;p

</comment><comment><USER75> Glad to see a new approach on the open vacation policy. I think this policy would work better if vacation days are only tracked until the minimum is met, otherwise I have a feeling it will be perceived as exactly 25 days, not more.

</comment><comment><USER76> "Minimum" vacation gives employee the authority to take vacation without feeling guilt. Else some companies use open vacation policy to reduce the number of vacations that employee take.

</comment><comment><USER77> The only thing surprising to me about this is to hear that this founder apparently had noble intentions at the start. I just assumed that every company that does this is cynically inducing more (short-term) work out of their employees while clearing some liabilities from the books, all at the cost of long-term success and morale. I would never work for a company with one of these "unlimited" vacation policies.

</comment><comment><USER78> Twitter also had this policy when I worked there (two years ago) and I thought it was really poorly thought out. Apart from all of the (relatively obvious) issues mentioned in the post, any vacation at Twitter was at the discretion of your immediate manager. So if you happened to have a hard-arse manager, or one who hated you, tough luck. Really a bad idea.

</comment><comment><USER79> Nice post... I especially liked the touch of posting a link to their hiring page right after describing their mandatory 25 paid vacation day policy.

</comment><comment><USER80> I bet the people with families abused the hell out of this and went to Disney World every month. While all the bachelors never took a day off.

</comment><comment><USER81> I can see the merit for enforcing more vacation; but is more vacation the solution to burnout, or is working less overall?

</comment><comment><USER76> I like the idea 'minimum' vacation that allow people able to take more than 'minimum' vacation.

</comment><comment><USER82> In all fairness "open vacation" policy is a yet another iteration on the age- old idea of Panopticon ;)

</comment><comment><USER83> i said it first :) [https://twitter.com/jimmyislive/status/495440322197876736](https://twitter.com/jimmyislive/status/495440322197876736)

</comment><comment><USER84> Society needs more free time in general. [http://t.co/68fyM3950D](http://t.co/68fyM3950D)

</comment><comment><USER85> This is phenomenal.

</comment><comment><USER86> I'd like to see the inclusion of data related to the structure and dynamics of the family unit. In the US the family desintegrates as kids are encouraged to leave home as soon as they finish high scool, say, 18 years of age.

This, in a huge number of cultures and countries around the world is an unthinkable attrocity. It isn't uncommon to have children live with their parents until they are ready to form their own families, say, 25 to 30 years of age. Under the stereotypical US culture this is looked down upon to the point of making fun of those still living with their parents.

Having millions of socially unprepared kids go off to try to make it on their own created, in my opinion, a society filled with various levels of dysfunctionalities. People tend to grow up, to some degree, in a "wild" setting where selfishness can become a necessity. In this context it is easy to see how work time can take the place of the social context lost due to having left the nest.

Having grown up and lived in three cultures it is easy for me to remove myself from my US culture and watch it from afar as a visitor from another planet might. Americans are said to seem socially inept and dry from the perspective of other cultures, and this is true. All you have to do is spend six months in Italy or Argentina to undrerstand this. Americans men develop a weird homophobic form of "macho" that is down-right funny from the perspective of other cultures. Hugging, or worst, kissing, another man is frowned upon. Human contact, in general, is just not considered to be "normal". I have lived in cultures where it was quite normal to greet your kids parents with hugs and kisses on the cheeks. In fact, it would be rude to come to a party or gathering and not go around the room kissing everyone, man, woman, kids. Yes, you kiss your friend's wives. School friends do this in high school when they greet each other. Again, unthinkable in the US. In fact, a teacher can get in trouble with the law for greeting a student with a hug and a kiss. Showing affection is alien. Weird.

In general terms, as much as TV shows and commercial try to stereotype this warm southern cowboy culture at the ranch with grandma this is, for the mist part, not the norm. The US family scatters and the kids are left to navigate a very important phase of their lives on their own.

Sorry to harp on this but i do think this is a very important part of the equation and one that explains so much about US society, their behaviors, beliefs, relationships, work and family life. Once you realize that some of these people become politicians that shape US policies and laws it is easy to see where some of our problems might come from.

There are subtle examples of this. For example, let's say you are working with a US friend on a project in their garage. He will use phrases like "give me my hammer" or "it's in my toolbox". In other cultures this becomes "give me the hammer" and "it's in the toolbox". I am convinced this egocentric view of the world is connected to leaving the nest early.

Another example that is particularly bothersome to me are cases where parents pay their children for things that in what I am going to call more socially adjusted societies is simply unthinkable. One of my friends pays his 18 year old kid to go pick him up at the airport. Another pays his kids to help paint the house. My neighbor across the street pays his kid to mow the lawn. Viewed from far more family-centric cultures these woukd be examples of seriously dysfunctional family units. As a teenager I helped my parents in their business. Money was never a part of it. This is simply how a family behaves in other cultures.

Of course I am painting with a wide brush. There are lots of cases of families that behave very differently from this. And, of course, the US has lots of multicultural families, such as mine. Yet I still think that a huge portion of the attitude towards work has to do with a bunch of single people existing "in the wild" and a setting where work can easily become a substitute for the family unit they effectively lost.</comment>


Former feds charged with stealing Silk Road Bitcoins - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/03/30/federal-agents-charged-with-stealing-bitcoin-from-silk-road-case/70672058/

<comment><USER2> Don't worry folks, it was just a few "bad apples", who happened to be vetted, highly trusted, undercover law enforcement officials. Just goes to show you how only criminals use Bitcoin.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here is the the criminal complaint:

[http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press- release...](http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press- releases/attachments/2015/03/30/criminal_complaint_force.pdf)</comment>


Jay Z to Relaunch His New Tidal Music Service Today - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/30/jay-z-to-relaunch-his-new-tidal-music-service-today-with-madonna-kanye-beyonce-exclusives-in-tow/ <comment><USER2> From another comment thread on Tidal:

It's a bit challenging to find more details on Tidal's site. Their homepage is a livestream of an event, and there is no context on the page as to what the event is. Possibly their launch event?

Watching the product video on the 'Explore Tidal' page makes me think of Spotify. They look to have complete feature parity with the only additional selling point being a higher quality audio stream. My initial reaction is, well...that is great if I had nice speakers, but my apple headphones certainly can't tell the difference.

It's good to see other people competing with Spotify and I'm hopeful that Tidal can have better content curation than Spotify.</comment>


New version of Google App Engine supports all programming languages - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/09/new-version-of-google-app-engine-supports-all-programming-languages/ <comment><USER2> There's a big drawbacks of Flex App Engine, comparing to Standard App Engine:

1\. Deployment of a new version can take up to 30 minutes. It seems to do the following:

      * Spins up two new GCE instances, that will build your code to a Docker image (and you pay for them).

      * Uploads all of your code to those instances (even the files that weren't changed, contrary to Standard GAE).

      * Then you just wait until it builds the code and deploys it to Flex environment.

In Standard env, only changed files were uploaded, and no extra building step occurred, so the whole process was less than a minute.

2\. Static files -- now you have to manage them yourself: either serving them from server (bad), or, as they recommend -- upload it to GCS or any other CDN, and serve from there (good). With Standard environment you just didn't care -- statics were served from some internal CDN (not touching your server), and were always in sync with your currently active code version. We're not ready for going that hassle now.

<comment><USER3> Deployments should not be taking that long at all if the app code is coming up healthy when it gets started on the VM (for crashes at code startup we also fail the deployments early). If the app comes up but isn't healthy (like serving 500 or not listening on the right port), we try multiple times to get the app started.

Can you share more information about your app and deployments so we can investigate further?

PS: It's worth mentioning we have active development to bring down deployments times and improve the deployment experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've used GAE quite extensively at my last place of work and really liked it overall. I experienced some large pain points when I was unable to use libraries that used C extensions, which I guess should be solvable now. The GAE runtime was (is?) also only available for Python 2.7.

I wonder if there is a future possible migration path from the standard environment (Classical GAE) to the new flexible environment.

For our product we also decided to use the Google NoSQL database Datastore. Since this is/was tightly integrated in the GAE Python runtime, with its own data model layer, it was an easy choice to implement. But, of course, made migration away from the Google Cloud really cumbersome.

I guess you still are limited to use some of the Google Cloud Databases, but if you chose Cloud SQL maybe the migration is more feasible?

<comment><USER3> We do have migration guides to the Flexible environment available per language. This is the link to the Python version: [https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/flexible/python/migr...](https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/flexible/python/migrating)

I hope that helps. A key tenet in the Flexible environment is portability. In the Datastore case, in particular, if you move to Cloud Datastore, that gives you portability across the Cloud Platform offerings or even if you want to run on premises or in a different Cloud provider.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If it uses Docker, how it's different from Google Container Engine?

Is it possible to make it start container lazily on HTTP request and stop after inactivity, like regular App Engine?

<comment><USER3> App Engine Flexible is a PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) with the mission that you bring the code and we do the rest for you. As an example, although we run the app as a Docker container, one doesn't need to understand Docker at all to get started. :-) It's a great place to get started without needing to understand how the infrastructure works. However, if you'd like to go beyond and provide your own Docker container, that works too. That is one of the exciting things we're making available with this new version.

In addition to App Engine Flexible, you can deploy Docker container to both Container Engine and regular GCE VMs in Google Cloud Platform. Each different offering will come with different set of features and different investment level on the user's side. A GCE VM will probably be the one with the ultimate flexibility on what one can do, but will typically require more time investment.

Regarding starting the container lazily and suspending it while inactive, that is not currently supported.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This seems to be the most interesting thing:

> Finally, the company will let developers bring a programming package > (binary) to App Engine as a Docker image.

This sounds like someone could package up any piece of software (assuming that it's compatible with the underlying OS, of course) into a Docker image and deploy it on Google App Engine. This isn't limited to just programming languages.

<comment><USER3> You're totally right. Some some examples of crazy stuff you can run on App Engine: [https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/appengine-custom- runt...](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/appengine-custom-runtimes- samples)</comment></comment>


Particletree - The Top 10 Questions Investors Asked Us - <AUTHOR> http://particletree.com/notebook/the-top-10-questions-investors-asked-us/ <comment><USER2> _"Error establishing a database connection ... internal- db.s2462.gridserver.com."_

I highly recommend avoiding Media Temple's "Grid Server" which is a conceptually horrible idea and has been predictably plagued with issues.

Google was kind enough to provide a cached copy: <http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:particletree.com/notebook/the- top-10-questions-investors-asked-us/></comment>


The Art of Finding Anyone's Email Addresses - <AUTHOR> http://www.lifeaftercubes.com/2013/05/22/the-art-of-finding-anyones-email-addresses/

<comment> UVB-76 Alternatively, pick up the phone, call the company they work for, and ask for their email.

"Hi, I'm <x>, I'm trying to send an important email to <y> but it keeps bouncing. Can you confirm I've got their email address correct?"

</comment><comment><USER2> I wanted to contact people from some companies but their email was not in their profiles, I found this script in github <https://github.com/laramies/theHarvester> which looks for emails given a domain.

Is super useful, even though It wouldn't give me the email I was looking for, it would show me the "structure" used for emails inside the company:

       firstname.lastname@example.com
       firstname.lastname@example.com

Based on that I would just guest the email of the person and it used to work perfectly.

This is perfect for doing customer development, also if you are doing cold reach outs remember to follow the CAN-SPAM act.

<comment><USER3> If I ever get into a situation where I can't figure out the address, I just pick one of my guesses and bcc all the rest.

Sure, they might think it's a little weird if they notice they're in the bcc field, but it sure is a lot easier than sending off a single email and spending the next few days wondering if it actually went through.

<comment><USER4> hmm. I thought the whole point of BCC was "blind carbon-copy". Meaning the person would be unaware as to who else was sent the email?

<comment><USER5> They would know they were in the BCC field if the "To" address was not their correct address.

<comment><USER4> The trick I've seen is to put your own email in the to field, and all destinations in the bcc

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hadn't heard of MailTester before; I have used the telnet/25 and RCPT TO: technique manually several times.

</comment><comment><USER7> There is a catch-all address at my company that goes to our CEO. He forwards me headhunter emails all the time that are addressed to variations of my first and last name. :-/

I'm assuming they used similar tactics to try to find my address

<comment><USER8> > He forwards me headhunter emails all the time that are addressed to > variations of my first and last name.

Sure he's not trying to tell you something? :-|

<comment><USER9> Apart from "the right thing", one might see this particular behaviour as "quite polite".

It is also better for the relationship. It signifies trust. And every time you hold something back (or lie) you risk damaging a relationship. In this instance, a recruiter might reach out to the employee some other way. The recruiter and employee would then figure out that the business owner may have withheld the mail, even though it was clearly addressed to the employee.

<comment><USER10> Yes. Do the right thing, you might get credit for it. Do the wrong thing, and sometime, sooner or later, it'll pop up and kick you in the arse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a Hail Mary, but I've found some important email address by running a WHOIS on that person's known web properties. While he may have hidden his registration info for his personal site, he may have slipped up on his project sites

<comment><USER12> You can also use tools like DomainTools.com to look at historical registration data, their data may be private now but could have been exposed previously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Google cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.lifeaftercubes.com/2013/05/22/the- art-of-finding-anyones-email-addresses/)

</comment><comment><USER14> To verify if you have guessed someone's correct gmail address you can always do this - [http://mindprince.blogspot.com/2012/12/google-plus- profile-g...](http://mindprince.blogspot.com/2012/12/google-plus-profile- google-contacts-privacy.html) Works for all those who have upgraded to Google+.

</comment><comment><USER15> Or, if you have a small budget, you can just use this: <http://www.insideview.com/>

</comment><comment><USER16> Norman? This is Mr. Eddie Vedder, from Accounting. I just had a power surge here at home that wiped out a file I was working on.

<comment> micro-ram My BLT drive just went AWOL!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Rapportive asks for single sign-on access to Gmail. Isn't that somehow risky?

</comment><comment><USER18> Man, what a horrible design this site has.</comment>


LLMNR, Multicast DNS and Names on Your LAN - <AUTHOR> http://eiman.tv/blog/posts/lannames/ <comment><USER2> The real winner here is the link to this IETF mailing list post: [https://www.ietf.org/mail- archive/web/ietf/current/msg37103....](https://www.ietf.org/mail- archive/web/ietf/current/msg37103.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Windows 10 implements mDNS and DNS-SD.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, nice! I guess I won't have to clean up and finish my proxy script then :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Bit disappointing that it mentions a script that produces a bridge, then never names it or links it.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's because the script is barely a proof of concept that would need a bunch of work to be useful in the real world.

But if you're feeling adventurous (sp?), have a look here: [https://bitbucket.org/m_eiman/mdns_llmnr_proxy/overview](https://bitbucket.org/m_eiman/mdns_llmnr_proxy/overview)</comment></comment>


Linear Algebra and Applications: An Inquiry-Based Approach - <AUTHOR> https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1021&context=books <comment><USER2> Pedagogically, the challenge to teaching linear algebra is that you start with "here's systems of linear equations, we can put them into matrices and now here's row operations to solve them," and you end up with "now matrices are actually representations of linear operators on vector spaces, let's analyze the properties of this specific operator." Usually, this is also coupled with a reluctance to actually discuss vector spaces, since the meat of it involves abstract algebra, which usually comes after linear algebra.

Failing to tackle this challenge appropriately can leave students confused about properties that seem apparently random (trace and determinant are big offenders here), or textbooks bringing something up only to never mention it again (null space is often an example here). On top of this, there is also the multiple notation problem (admittedly, not as bad as calculus, where there are too many notations for derivative) and the minor issue that many of the algorithms taught in the book aren't used in practice because of numerical stability issues.

It has been so long since I've taken linear algebra, and I've taken abstract algebra courses since then, that I can't really compare this book to the approach that I learned. Skimming the book, the thing that jumps out the most to me is that LU factorization and determinants are shoved surprisingly late in the book [1], and eigenvalues are "previewed" quite early. I'm not sure that's a good approach: LU factorization is important because backsolving the L and U matrices is more numerically stable (and sparser, when you're dealing with sparse matrices) than the inverse matrix, and it works even if your matrix isn't square. Furthermore, determinants tie in better to row operations, and their weird application with Cramer's rule is another way to solve a set of linear equations: you don't want to introduce Cramer's rule months after you finished treating matrices as stepping stones to solving linear equations.

The book does cover vector spaces, although in a bit of a dance around not covering abstract algebra. I'm not sure it's an effective introduction of vector spaces, although it could well suffice to ease the pedagogical trap mentioned earlier. On the other hand, if it's going to dive that far into vector spaces, it would probably be helpful to have some more sections on matrices over fields that aren't real numbers (i.e., complex numbers (make sure to mention conjugate transpose and Hermitian matrices!), rational numbers, and finite fields).

[1] Strassen's algorithm for matrix multiplication is described before LU factorization, to give you an idea of how weird the ordering ends up being.

<comment><USER3> I went through EE and CS. EE we started using matrices exactly how you describe it: here's a system of linear equations, here's how you write them in matrix form, here's how you invert them to solve the original system. Turn the crank, answer pops out. I had my trusty HP49G, and I could solve linear systems all day.

Then in CS I took a computer graphics course and it was rotation and translation matrices all day every day.

Then there was a digital communications course where we touched on orthogonal basis functions, and some matrix voodoo related to that and how to get orthogonal vectors out of the mess.

And then finally I took the required CS linear algebra course offered by the math department, where we started from scratch. Here's a vector (psh, I know vectors!), here's a vector space (hmmm this is new), and building the rest of it up from there. I _really_ wish that had come earlier on, but I was very very happy to finally have a bit of a theoretical understanding of how these tools I'd been using actually worked.

<comment><USER4> I feel like my university only taught calculation, not theory, when it came to linear algebra. It's like the equivalent of a "12 hacks to rotate a matrix" article. The theoretical books I find however give no explanation for the definitions etc, ie, WHY are the dot/cross products defined the way they are. It's as though they feel matrixes are natural phenomenon that you should just memorize the properties of, which is also nonsense.

The entire field is defined by such terrible books. I'd love to be wrong though if somebody has a recommendation

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Along these lines, my stats professor recommended a really nice book that offers a case studies based approach for grad level stats: [http://www.statisticalsleuth.com/](http://www.statisticalsleuth.com/)

I've been going through it by implementing the solutions in jupyter notebooks. They have the datasets and code in R so it's easy to work with and work out the solutions.

<comment><USER6> Thank you for the recommendation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The fact that it doesn't start with some unreadable mathematical notation that is just the author trying to show how smart they are give me hope.

Looks like a really good introductory source just skimming the first few chapters.

</comment><comment><USER8> I haven't gone through this yet but I really like the idea of each new concept being described in the context of a useful application. Thanks OP

</comment><comment><USER9> Cool. I want to try and work through this text, just to assess how useful it is.

The approach is an interesting one.

Looks like this will have to become a weekly goal. Maybe one chapter a week? Seems possible.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hopefully this topology book will be in the same style: [https://bookstore.ams.org/text-58](https://bookstore.ams.org/text-58)

</comment><comment><USER11> I have no clue how this is having 52 votes and no comments on it. How am I supposed to know this is a good book? I'll highlight the goals of this book as it explains more about the title.

> We place an emphasis on active learning and on developing students' > intuition through their investigation of examples. For us, active learning > involves students – they are DOING something instead of being passive > learners.

I found this goal the most interesting.

> To help students understand that mathematics is not done as it is often > presented. We expect students to experiment through examples, make > conjectures, and then refine their conjectures. We believe it is important > for students to learn that definitions and theorems don't pop up completely > formed in the minds of most mathematicians, but are the result of much > thought and work

<comment><USER12> The reason I upvoted was with intent to review later. I personally found that after two semesters of linear and a BS Mathematics I didn't know jack about linear algebra. I came to the conclusion that I should've studied physics or engineering if I'd wanted to actually learn how to use it!

<comment><USER13> for this use case, I use favorite rather than the upvote</comment></comment></comment>


Mike Bloomberg doesn't want Silicon Valley's money. He does want its employees - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/10/21132414/mike-bloomberg-silicon-valley-conference-call <comment><USER2> Maybe he could stop and frisk them, there's definitely a demographic to target ;]</comment>


New IoT dev kit runs Linux on dual-core, multithreading MIPS CPU - <AUTHOR> http://blog.imgtec.com/mips-processors/creator-ci40-dev-kit-puts-the-iot-in-a-box <comment><AUTHOR> You can check out the Kickstarter page for a full description of the hardware specs and the open source software stack [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/imgtec/creator- ci40-the...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/imgtec/creator-ci40-the- ultimate-iot-in-a-box-dev-kit)

<comment><USER2> >The Creator Ci40 IoT dev kit is available exclusively from Kickstarter

Yet "Kickstarter is not a store".

I also question why a company as big as Imagination needs Kickstarter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Three main reasons.

1) Going through resellers and distributors adds a signficant premium. By using Kickstarter, we can sell the kit at a reduced price.

2) Kickstarter enables us to communicate directly to indie developers, makers and other hackers and get their feedback on the product.

3) The funds will help us accelerate development for the open source software stack.

Other companies have used crowdfunding to launch products recently, including Canonical, Sony and - more recently - Pepsi.

<comment><USER3> How much risk are "customers" taking when they buy it through Kickstarter? If the product is never delivered, will they get their money back?

<comment><AUTHOR> If funding is not achieved, then backers get the money back. If funding is achieved, then it is up to the company to deliver the product as promised.

There have been some cases where the companies ran out of money before they could deliver on all or any of their promises.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This brings flash backs to PowerVR "open source" drivers from their GPUs on ARM application processors.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is no PowerVR GPU on this SoC. Besides, we are working on that too. [http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=power- vr-...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=power-vr-open- chatter)

<comment><USER5> Why must there be a PowerVR GPU on for the product to cause a flashback?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was not disagreeing with the statement, only quoting from the spec list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> MIPS? Why? I mean, that prevents use of all the ARM-targeted stuff that has been developed over years :(

<comment><USER2> Because the creator of the product has a financial interest in the success of MIPS

<comment><USER7> Bingo, these are the same toolbags that were crowing about letting students see their magic sauce Verilog, which was license encumbered and definitely not as good as other fully open architectures out there.

Don't fall for this crap, everyone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you please define "not as good"? I'm trying to understand if you're referring to the quality of the hardware or the software ecosystem - or both.

MIPSfpga is a product for universities and academic institutions. There are a number of advantages of MIPSfpga over OpenRISC and RISC-V including:

1\. The MIPS architecture is better supported by university text books. It is used as an example of a RISC architecture and an example of a CPU microarchitectural implementation in Patterson & Hennessy and in Harris & Harris

2\. MIPSfpga shares Verilog source code with MIPS microAptiv UP - a commercial core that has many licensees including Microchip Technology and Samsung. The university professors have an interest to teach students about a CPU widely used by the industry, not a subset of an architecture, an old implementation of the architecture or a CPU core created only for academic purposes and not deployed by semiconductor companies.

3\. The MIPS architecture is backed by a significant software ecosystem that includes a dozen of commercial RTOSes, official Linux support, compilers and debuggers, open source software, etc.

The point of MIPSfpga is not to deliver the solution optimized for a specific line of Xilinx FPGAs (like MicroBlaze) but to teach students general design practices, applicable to both FPGAs and ASICs. The code in MIPSfpga is not FPGA-specific. It uses Xilinx and Altera macros for memory in caches, but generally this is the same code used to make an ASIC.

The main idea of using MIPSfpga is that the students can play with the CPU core, create multicore systems, modify caches, etc. If they invent something useful, they can attract venture investment, buy a commercial license for MIPS microAptiv UP or MIPS M5150 and create their own ASIC design company.

Hope this helps.

<comment><USER7> What student capable of creating licensable IP would be swayed by the arguments listed for using a license encumbered architecture? None (or, precisely zero).

You can take those two books and apply the basics to Risc-V, develop the same IP, and pay zero - and it's already being used in ASICs as well. In fact it's better if you've never been polluted by seeing the license encumbered works, to prevent any claims about originality.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Build your portfolio  by working on interesting projects - <AUTHOR> https://zyring.com <comment><USER2> The landing page really needs to do a much better job of explaining what this does and who it's for, preferably with some visual examples of whatever it is that it does viewable without a requirement for signing up.

Right now, I basically have no idea what this is - is it something like Dribbble but for programming? Or is it more like oDesk? Who comes up with the applications? Who does the code reviews? Et cetera. Nearly every sentence of copy is ambiguous.

<comment><USER3> Good point. Thanks for the feedback. You really don't need to sign up to experience what projects we offer but some stuff requires sign up as you said. We will make sure that we remove the ambiguities and work on our copywriting.

As for your questions :

1- Experts in the field working with us have come up with Applications. We are working with some companies so that they can put sponsored applications on our website that they would love to see on a candidates resume. In addition, if anyone has an idea for a project they can submit it on the project page and we will work with them to refine it and put it there.

2- The community does the code reviews. As you said this is unclear right now on the landing page. Basically, if there is a person who have done the project before you with a good score, they will review the code. Reviewing someone's code is also part of your portfolio so you get a score for doing it.

<comment><USER2> Thanks. There's probably a lesson here: if two paragraphs of text in a comment on HN does a better job of explaining what your web site does than its own landing page does, maybe your landing page needs a bit of a re-think.

<comment><USER3> lesson learned :)

<comment><USER4> If there is one thing I find absolutely abundant, it is programming projects that don't pay anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> At first I thought this is an article with tips to build a portfolio. Then I thought ah, they help me publish my stuff, like dribble or behance. Then I arrived at the node.js setup page and I closed it.

I recently started to update my GitHub profile for the same reason and created my username.github.io page with a simple landing that summarizes my interesting repos. My point is that the need is definitely there, but I think the message of the site is "if you have zero imagination how to show off that you can code, here are some projects for you".

<comment><USER3> Thats a harsh way to put it but somehow true. Its less about imagination and more about ability.

The people who need this site the most are people who are new to programming or don't have any university background (online courses, self taught). Unlike you these people DO struggle starting their own project and they DO need some help setting up their node.js environment.

The problem is that many of us who learned programming on our own have gone through these initial struggles (although we might have forgotten it). People who are learning online are led to believe that becoming a programmer is as easy as taking a code academy course and when they finish the course, they can't do much cause they have been gamified and handheld too much. Most of these people are giving up because there is this sharp fall from finishing an online course and becoming a 'developer'. We are trying to help these people.

Good developers are not in terrible need of a portfolio but the new ones or the ones who are changing their career path are in need of it to actually get a job.

<comment><USER5> It feels that you want to solve multiple problems at once, not impossible, but more complicated. There is a great leap between installing git and node.js and writing a working, publishable project. I wish it was that easy. The site also didn't explain the process of creating a project from start to finish. It would be nice to see the time requirement for completing one. Is it 1 day or 1 month?

I definitely agree that there is a great drop-out among wannabees, but for them codeacademy style portals are a better fit imho. I tried to teach my designer girlfriend using codeacademy and it didn't go very well, but it was probably a motivational issue. Then I showed her how to modify HTML and she is able to update her site now without my help. So finding the sweet spot it very hard and I feel you need to target more accurately. For example are you sure somebody just learned about functions, for loops and arrays are OK with command line tools and understand how GIT, Grunt, Gulp and node.js relate?

<comment><USER6> Thanks for your feedback! We will definitely make it our goal to provide a better explanation of how a project will be built start to finish, and how long it will take to build it, from the onset.

About the target audience. We actually built Zyring for people like me. I was a PM at Microsoft who wanted to transition to a developer role. I learned programming through self-learning (didn't follow traditional CS path) but always found myself building things that were either insignificant or I was handheld through the entire process so I couldn't recreate my work. As I talked to more people, I realized that there are a lot more people like me. I completely agree with you that we need to find that "sweet spot" where the user (like your gf) can build a project on her own but still get the right guidance so she doesn't get overwhelmed and lost.

I would really love to talk with you and/or your girlfriend to get your feedback on how we can help and improve Zyring. My email is firstname.lastname@example.com. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find the focus on building portfolios frustrating. Mostly what I've seen it accomplish is people writing dumb scripts that don't do anything particularly useful or basic web apps that would never be useful for anything beyond the toy case the author came up with. That's not to knock building small programs like these to develop skills or become familiar with a new library, but it's hardly an adequate way of showing your mastery of programming. I'd be much more impressed by one large, interesting project than by a bunch of small, pointless ones.

<comment><USER8> Have you written something like that? I think programmers should have a right to a personal life as well. My mother has never had to "build a portfolio" outside of her job ever. Whatever she had accomplished in her professional career shows how skilful she is. Yet you're probably lazy if you don't go home and start churning out code, am I right?

<comment><USER3> Co-founder here. I am completely agreeing with you and I am one of the people who hates the culture you mentioned.

We created this website for people who are new to programming or people changing careers. People who have not taken a university path (taken online courses, self taught) but find it difficult to get a job because they don't have anything on their resume. They find it intimidating to contribute to open source projects and don't really know how to start a project on their own.

Makes sense ?

<comment><USER9> I am one of those self-taught no degree developers currently building my own portfolio. It definitely is intimidating to contribute to open source projects not to mention learning the projects/technology to be able to contribute. But as for my own projects, it's increasingly discouraging to find out my ideas have been done inside and out. I think the only thing keeping people like me going is the passion of figuring out HOW to do it.

But then there are things like data structures and algorithms which are backboney but wholly unnecessary unless you want to work at Google. So, that's another thing. Because I can build a bunch of projects but what if I don't have the data structs/algo? Or what are the projects I can accomplish that implement those things?

<comment><USER3> I don't think anybody doing your project should discourage you. It's usually in the process of trying to do something that has been done before that you get an insight or think about a better way of doing it. Plus, doing things that have been done before is a very good way to learn. Thats how in the old days apprentices became masters.

As for the alg/ds. In my opinion, there are some fundamental things that you need to know about DS/alg that make you a better developer. What people usually get wrong is assuming that it is the applicability of the algorithms or datastructure that matters ( who cares if you know about a Red/Black Tree ! ) . I think its more about the patterns and the way they allow you to think.

Understanding how tree traversal is done may not be directly useful in your work but helps you understand recursive thinking which is super important. Knowing how QuickSort/MergeSort work doesn't have any application in real life but makes you think about problems with a divide/conquer approach in mind which is again super practical. You will never write a Hash/Dictionary but knowing what is the difference between one and an array has immense applicability on your work.

My advice to you: stay away from memorizing DS/Alg. Throw out your "cracking the coding interview" book if you have one and pick a algorithm and datastructure book and try to understand it. Then you can move on to solving problems yourself and you will realize that you are a better developer for it. Here is what I would suggest:

[http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and- comput...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer- science/6-006-introduction-to-algorithms-spring-2008/) [http://interactivepython.org/runestone/static/pythonds/index...](http://interactivepython.org/runestone/static/pythonds/index.html)

Of course, you don't need to know all of the stuff here :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As someone who is hiring right now for a front-end position I really really hope this takes off. Far too many people have no realistic or publicly available code. Even for the back-end positions we're hiring for it would be awesome to see a custom implementation of something like to-do app.

<comment><USER3> perfect. We would love to talk with you more to see what you will see as valuable on the resume of a candidate. I will be really happy if you could spare a few moments anytime you are free. My email is email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've noticed people will look at it if you really have their attention, say an employer who is inclined to give you a job.

Having a site talk about requirements is useful. A lot of the times I don't know about features or needs in a system until someone told me.

20-30 minutes talking with an engineer and whiteboarding a solution to a site helped me along immensely towards a solution that had more meat on it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Work for free and don't get paid, because, hey! You'll get tons of experience and build your portfolio. Now on a crowd-source scale! Sucker!

<comment><USER13> I'm guessing you are someone who does not enjoy programming? Did your parents pressure you to take it up to have a well paying job?

<comment><USER14> There is not one single other engineering profession I'm aware of that thinks a "portfolio" consisting of past employment is insufficient, or that has academic trivia questions figure as largely in their interview process.

To me a request for portfolio contents beyond the contents of a resume is an indicator that the would-be employer is interested in people who are easily exploited or cajoled into working lots of unpaid overtime, or else that they don't actually trust the candidate's resume; both of these are negative indicators. A heavy focus on DS/algorithms for _engineering_ positions is an indicator that the employer either doesn't understand the difference between academics/theory and engineering or, worse, thinks the latter is trivial, irrelevant, or otherwise beneath CS; both also negative indicators.

<comment><USER6> what you are saying is relatively true for developers with some experience, especially engineers. This is not true for people coming out of online learning programs who know the basics of coding but haven't built anything significant. For these people, the resume is empty so building a portfolio of significant projects is a way to become a developer. It is as much self- serving as it is serving the needs of employers.

<comment><USER14> That's true, and it is a case that seems to be unique to the software field as far as engineering is concerned. I'm also unaware of any other engineering profession in which such shallow education and experience would be considered acceptable in any case. Usually a four-year degree from an accredited engineering school is a minimum requirement for even entry-level work. In these cases references and some casual "technical" discussions (but nothing like the pedantic Algo/DS grilling in a software interview) in the interviews will determine suitability, and the individual will effectively be considered a trainee for a time. That is also absent in the software industry, generally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very similar to [https://code4startup.com/](https://code4startup.com/) but for a slightly different purpose.

<comment><USER6> Hi this is Zarya, one of the co-founder of Zyring. I have actually used Code4startup and we are much different. Code4Startup helps you clone websites for the purpose of literally getting a website up for your startup. At Zyring, our goal is to get people to build applications from scratch so they can add it to their portfolio and get a job. That's why we put so emphasis on code reviews and feedback.

If you have used code4startup, I would love to talk to you about your goals and if there is anyway we can help you. My email is email@example.com. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Quick Q, probably not something you were expecting.

But, how do you, at least internally, pronounce your name/URL?

ZeeRing? Like "He Ring"

ZaiRing? like "Hi Ring"

ZiRing? Like "Zirring".

<comment><USER3> It's Zirring. It means 'smart' in Kurdish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Saw Angular, closed tab.

<comment><USER6> hey I'm one of the cofounders of Zyring. Would love to know why you closed the tab when seeing Angular. Are there other technologies that you're interested in and think we should cover?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hmm... there doesn't seem to be anything there [http://i.imgur.com/2a9kUiu.png](http://i.imgur.com/2a9kUiu.png)

I like the idea and aim of the site but was it really necessary to make it completely unviewable without JavaScript? What ever happened to progressive enhancement?

<comment><USER19> Related: I signed up but saw all the web projects are dependent on Angular or React. I understand that these technologies are good to be familiar with for making a portfolio these days but they're not for me; not what I want to spend my time on.

I did join the waiting list for their yet-to-launch iOS projects though.

<comment><USER3> Perfect. We would love to talk to you about what you would find useful for you on the iOS projects. We have a bunch of projects for iOS but are in the process of refining them. I would be super happy if you emailed me at firstname.lastname@example.com

BTW, the person who is defining the iOS projects is one of the devs on Microsoft Office for iOS and Mac (which ironically is the most complex app for ios).</comment></comment></comment>


John Carmack's Tesla Review at End of Latest Armadillo Update - <AUTHOR> http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/News?news_id=364 <comment><USER2> It's a shame that all 11 of the HN comments up to this point are debating the merits of Carmack's throwaway environmentalism line at the end of his post. Are we not entrepreneurs? Are we not engineers? Are we not innovators? If so, then we have truly lost the plot here and slid into trivial political Redditism.

Here's a guy who skips college, teaches himself to program, and pioneers the modern video game industry. Though his id partner John Romero rests on his laurels once they become rich and famous, Carmack pushes forward obsessively, almost single-handedly advancing the boundaries of 3D technology with each new game engine release while competing against much larger engineering teams from much larger companies. Then he decides to teach himself rocket science. From this post we learn that he gave up his _discretionary spending_ and became _frugal and money conscious_ again to chase space dreams that _bled lots of money_ and _probably wouldn't amount to anything_. Now several years later he has a legitimate space company that's doing work for NASA and is poised for real scientific breakthroughs in 2009. Meanwhile, he's still working at id on the next breakthrough 3D game. All the while, never taking investment money, and always giving back his knowledge by sharing highly detailed technical posts like this one (and his old .plan updates) and by eventually open- sourcing all of his work.

This guy is the ultimate hacker. He epitomizes everything that this site is supposed to be about. And you guys are quibbling about the environment? FAIL!

<comment><USER3> Carmack is a hacking demigod, but to me the 'throwaway line' about environmentalism was the most interesting thing in the whole post. It struck me that someone I did idolize had a completely different value system. Obviously that which drives him forward is entirely different than what drives me. And being in touch with what drives us forward is I think something that many of us come here for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "I am fairly hostile to most of the environmental movement, finding it generally a modern tribal religion that justifies condemnation and control of others in the name of protecting the environment. I care nothing at all for the environment in isolation, only for how it positively impacts human life -- civilization is all about beating the environment into forms that suit us better. An "electric car" used to be a conspicuous sign of righteous sacrifice, but you won't get any self-flagellation points for driving a Tesla. Too much fun."

I suppose at its core, any value judgment treads into the religious. It's probably none too surprising that I disagree with this statement. But it's interesting seeing this judgment so completely distilled.

I'll ask HN. Do you care for the environment, only for the sentient beings (including animals) of which they are part, only the humans living inside it, or, largely, only for yourself?

<comment><USER4> Rumor has it that John Carmack is an Objectivist, which puts this statement into context.

<comment><USER5> His wife, Anna Kang, definitely is (started Fountainhead Entertainment). That practically guarantees that Carmack is, because it's highly unlikely an Objectivist would marry a non-Objectivist.

What baffles me is, how on earth do id and Fountainhead games exemplify Objectivist ideals?

<comment><USER6> Why can't an objectivist marry a non-objectivist? If Carmack were a socialist, it would be unlikely: to an objectivist, socialist views would suggest moral decay. That could hurt a marriage. But if Carmack's views are not too far off, she could simply view him as mistaken. Why not marry him under those circumstances?

(Note: I really don't know the social details of objectivism, e.g. how cultish it really is in practice. Just the basic philosophy.)

<comment><USER5> It's possible, but Objectivism's different from your average ideology in that who you take as your significant other must itself be determined by Objectivist ideals. (That's how Rand wrote it, at least.) In practice, there are probably Objectivists who don't take it that far, but I'm betting Anna Kang isn't one of them.

By the way, noticed you're at Courant. Do you know Adi, by any chance?

<comment><USER6> I realize that; Dagney's railroad skillz are what give Rand's fantasy men a boner, and vice versa for Galt. I totally understand that, and have similar tastes. John Galt is the ideal, but Carmack comes pretty close, I'd expect. Even if his reasoning isn't perfect, I suspect the rest of his resume would make up for that.

Don't know Adi.

<comment><USER5> Really? I don't know what he's done aside from id and Armadillo, and he's obviously a mathematical genius, but I can't quite see Doom, Quake, etc. and their underlying technology as "prime mover" material. And I actually think it's kind of hilarious that Fountainhead Entertainment would make "Doom RPG", or even be an entertainment company to begin with. Rand, I'm sure, is rolling in her grave.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had ever such a low opinion of electric cars in years gone by. At the weekend I was in a discussion about old cars - my parents had cars that couldn't do 60mph and had to stop on the way up hills to let the coolant stop boiling and the engine cool down. No big company will ever release a car that basic now or in the (non-dystopian) future - if someone designed one, it simply wouldn't be approved. Standards and expectations have gone up.

Recently I saw Top Gear review the Tesla, and I twigged what Carmack said about the drivetrain. The Tesla has one gear. No multi-gear-box, no (or less) gearbox oil, no shifter or paddle shift, no oily engine and spark plugs and cylinders and valves and fuel pumps and air intakes... it's a motor with one moving part.

Suddenly, I feel the same way about this - quieter, smoother, simpler, more maintainable - it will be the standard type of car one day.

</comment><comment><USER8> Most interesting to me:

"We are also trying a new fabrication technology for making chambers – rapid prototyping investment casting from <http://www.proivc.com/> . This is more expensive than the spun-pipe based chambers we have been using, but it frees us from the limits of standard pipe sizes, and makes changing nozzle dimensions easier. The surface finish is rougher than we had hoped, and there was some slight ovaling in the chamber, but it is still promising. We haven't fired them yet."</comment>


Alan Kay on teaching children to program (1993) - <AUTHOR> http://www.smalltalk.org/smalltalk/TheEarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk_IV.html#smalltalkAndChildren

<comment><AUTHOR> Excerpts I found interesting:

\- Tools provide a path, a context, and almost an excuse for developing enlightenment, but no tool ever contained it or can dispense it. [Cesare] Pavese observed: to know the world we must construct it. In other words, we make not just to have, but to know. but the having can happen without most of the knowing taking place.

\- They love to do, even when they are not sure exactly what they are doing.

\- What is difficult is to determine what ideas to put forth and how deeply they should penetrate at a given child's developmental level.

\- Even very young children can understand and use interactive transformational tools. The first ones are their hands!

\- They can answer any question whose answer requires the application of just one of these tools. But it is extremely difficult for them to answer any question that requires two or more transformations. Yet they have no problem applying [sequences] of transformations, exploring "forward."

\- It seems that what needs to be learned and taught is now to package up transformations in twos and threes in a manner similar to learning a strategic game like checkers.</comment>


Strategies for Headless Projects with Structured Content Management Systems - <AUTHOR> https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/11/structured-content-done-right/ <comment><USER2> I do NOT run "projects" with web(cr)app as much as I can, when possible org- mode and a dCVS repo are the best tools.

IMO web based stuff for "headless ..." literally means head-less, or brain- less (sorry for my English). Solution for people who do not know anything better. Even if they have at their fingertips.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's pretty dismissive? I know loads of smart people that run stuff with web apps, even headless, and do just fine.</comment></comment>