Case study: tinnitus with distortion - <AUTHOR> http://www.windytan.com/2015/07/case-study-tinnitus-with-distortion.html

<comment><USER3> I had/have a similar low frequency tinnitus that began in 2009 during a period of stress. It was so loud that it made it coloured every day sound including speech and music, and made sleeping a nightmare.

I eventually worked out a correlation to muscle tension in the muscles in my shoulder on the same side as the effected ear.

I worked a programme for muscle improvement through strengthening, stretching, and relaxation techniques, which alleviated noise almost completely, although occasionally I still get it a little, at a very low level.

<comment><USER4> Any more detail? I have had quite variable tinnitus for three years now on one side and am beginning to suspect it's related to muscle tension in that shoulder.

<comment><USER3> As child comment mentions, do get this checked by an ENT who will check for a few things, including tumours. I went to two, neither of whom were able to help much, but it is important to check.

Personally, there was mystery for a long time, but rather than trying to solve the mystery fully, I tried to be pragmatic and do what helped.

I found that my range of motion turning my head one way was less than the other, having become restricted physically and psychologically, in a feedback loop.

I eventually went to a dentist who specialises in fascial pain who put me on muscle relaxants. These helped a little, but did not solve my issues. However they were a clue that some of my symptoms related to muscle tension. I was also experiencing increasing amounts of physical pain in my neck and face during this time.

Look into muscle shortening. It can be cumulative, as the pain caused by shortening causes the muscle to react more to strain, by shortening further.

I tried to compare my range of motion and both sides, and gradually try to match them through gentle stretching.

You could look into these things, and also trigger points. I can't say that my exact set of issues will be the same as yours, but feel free to contact me on Twitter if you want to chat. @paulbyrne

<comment><USER5> My sister had progressive severe hearing loss, severe vertigo, and tinnitus. She resisted any treatment until she was completely incapacitated. Friends dragged her to an ER where she was scanned for tumors. Follow-up visits to ENTs (ear, nose, throat) confirmed substantial hear loss, but could not identify a cause. Despite skepticism, she went to a chiropractor and has started recovering her hearing (measured by ENT as 30 decibel improvement) and balance. About a week ago, she was adjusted and within 2 minutes noticed her hearing improve. She still has a long way to go though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting; that's indeed an uncommon form of tinnitus. If you are curious, here are some simulated samples[1].

Make sure though you set the volume at a comfortable level first, and listen all of them to get a representative idea (the first half are noisy/low- frequency; the second half are of the high-pitched variety, like my own).

[1] [http://www.hearing.nihr.ac.uk/public/auditory-examples- sound...](http://www.hearing.nihr.ac.uk/public/auditory-examples-sounds-of- tinnitus)

<comment><USER7> Oh my, that's horrifying. I have #9, but that is apparently very lucky. My thoughts go out to those who suffer from any of the first few.

<comment><USER8> I have a mix of 75% no. "6" and 25% no. "9". It is loud enough that I can hear it while talking to people or walking on the street, but if I don't mind it or forget about it, I can go for days or months without hearing it. When I focus on it, it comes back shining.

Recently, I am trying to be mindful of my inner sound in a similar way to breath mindfulness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> FWIW, [http://www.microtransponder.com/?page_id=118](http://www.microtransponder.com/?page_id=118)

<comment><USER10> Is it not possible to stimulate the vagus nerve at will, for example by coughing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> >My next plan was to use a small in-ear microphone setup to try and find out if there was an objective sound present.

As someone with some tinnitus myself I've been tempted to try that. The usual explanation you see of tinnitus is that the sound sensors break and then the nervous system makes up sounds to compensate but that's never really made sense to me. Usually if you don't get input to the nervous system because say a limb goes numb or you lose sight you don't get that kind of effect.

The ear seems to have a built in amplifier using positive feedback - <USER2> "cochlear amplifier is the outer hair cell which increases the amplitude and frequency selectivity of sound vibrations using electromechanical feedback."(Wikipedia). I wouldn't be surprised if that mechanism goes out of wack and makes a noise in the way that you can get a squealing feedback from a public address system when the gain is set too high. I'm not sure that's been experimentally tested in a way that makes if clear if that's a thing or not.

<comment><USER12> The sound is back so I did the experiment now, updates are there.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for posting. Googling elsewhere it seems only about 5% of tinnitus is objective as in being audible in a stethoscope or similar. Though it's remarkable how sensitive the ear is. Apparently at the threshold of human hearing the vibrations at the basilar membrane are of the order of 1/1000 of the width of an atom so I guess there could be stuff going on that you can't pick up with a microphone/stethoscope, perhaps.

[http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/19...](http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1961/bekesy- lecture.pdf)

<comment><USER12> Yes, it is indeed very rare and exceptional.

<comment><USER11> I did some more reading on how the ear works and I think my comment on there being positive feedback is wrong. Looking at how the bits are laid out and wired up it looks more like it uses amplified negative feedback in the manner of an op amp. The diagram I looked at is in Purves et al, Neuroscience 5th edition. I'm now thinking the tinnitus may be from the input maxing out when the negative feedback breaks. From a practical point I've found carrying wax earplugs helps my ears recover.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The author of this, Oona Räisänen, is one of my standard examples of someone who is genuinely a hacker in the proper (by which I mean, the Stephen Levy "Hackers" definition; if you want to use the prior MIT prankster meaning, I won't stop you) sense.

This post of Oona's - [http://www.windytan.com/2014/02/mystery-signal-from- helicopt...](http://www.windytan.com/2014/02/mystery-signal-from- helicopter.html) \- in which she extracts, from the audio of footage from a news helicopter, the location of that helicopter, is an excellent example.

Given that someone here recently defined "hacker" to me as "person who can write code", the word is in serious danger of being so devalued as to be useless.

</comment><comment><USER14> Its the first blog i have bookmarked in years. I just couldnt stop reading all the previous posts. Every post is full of interesting content not just empty useless rants. This is quite the change from the typical wannabe philosopher blogs "durr web is broken." or "10 Things To Know When Making Web App in <yyyymmdd>"

...ok back to reading the rest of the posts!</comment>


Is Phoenix The Next Silicon Valley? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyclay/2012/07/30/is-phoenix-the-next-silicon-valley/

<comment><USER2> Is Pyongyang?</comment>


Operant Conditioning by Software Bugs (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.regehr.org/archives/861 <comment><USER2> I often tell people about this post by Dan Luu from 2014: [https://danluu.com/everything-is-broken/](https://danluu.com/everything-is- broken/) It's about how, very, many, bugs there are in lots of software and how most of us developers have gotten used to unseeing them. Since reading it, I've always found it harder to unsee the bugs myself.

This post is a great writeup of another angle on the same phenomenon -- how even as we unsee the bugs we adapt our behavior to avoid them.

(Dan's post also has a proposed solution, but I've never found that one as convincing as the picture he paints of the problem.)

<comment><USER3> As a programming language developer, this is a persistent difficulty I've slowly been training myself out of. I know how to use a language I've written because, well, I wrote it—but if I sit down with a new user for an hour, they discover all the bugs I knew about and a few I didn't! (This applies to all kinds of software, of course, it's just particularly noticeable with developer tools.)

But an hour of someone's time is hard to get, and once they've used the software a bit, they're spent—you can't make them naïve again. So fuzzing and randomised property testing have begun to take their place for me, as well as an adversarial dialogue in my own mind of "What happens if I try this stupid thing?" versus "The software should patiently and correctly do _something_ reasonable, with no casualties, no matter what stupid thing the user does", each constantly trying to one-up the other. It's pretty fun, actually—I've thought of getting a "devil duck" and an "angel duck" to personify them, in addition to the standard-issue debugging duck. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In the early days of the Macintosh, applications were expected to survive 24 hours on the Monkey, a program which randomly pressed keys and moved and clicked the mouse.

Who's doing that today?

<comment><USER5> Netflix; they even call it a monkey as well: [https://github.com/Netflix/chaosmonkey](https://github.com/Netflix/chaosmonkey)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The newest pattern I'm trying to learn ... on macOS whenever I copy text then switch to Chrome and click on a field ... I need to wait 3 seconds before pasting otherwise Chrome freezes 15% of the time.

Since it doesn't happen all the time it's hard to instill.

And another I just noticed ... the HN 'add comment' button disappears behind the text box on Android... fixed by switch to landscape the back to portrait.

<comment><USER7> Never had that HN bug personally, even though I check HN reasonably regularly on my Android phone. Possibly your Android version is outdated?

<comment><USER8> I get it sometimes, using Chrome on Android 7.0 on a Lenovo Moto G5.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is the very definition of "super user" at some of the financial institutions I've worked at: someone who knows the traps, pitfalls and quirks of a highly complicated and fragile system that _mostly_ works.

And they get paid commensurate to this scarce but very useful "skill".

</comment><comment><USER10> > For example, I never let my wife's Windows 7 machine go for more than about > two weeks without restarting it, whereas I reboot my Linux box only every > few months. One time I had a job doing software development on Windows 3.1 > and my computer generally had to be rebooted at least twice a day if it was > to continue working. Of the half-dozen Windows laptops that I've owned, none > of them could reliably suspend/resume ten times without being rebooted.

I realized to my astonishment last week that despite using my Macbook for 12+ hours of coding nearly every day, I had not rebooted it in nearly four months! This only became clear when I did an OS update that needed a reboot.

<comment><USER11> I have to reboot my work macbook routinely, otherwise the WiFi gets flakey, to the point that the wifi will drop every ten minutes and need to have its DHCP lease renewed to function again. It also gets entirely taken over by apps that decide to use up 100% of the CPU and MacOSX has no problem letting them, to the point that javascript in Firefox begins to struggle to get any cycles of its own, and electron apps also see this degradation. Occasionally when I try to wake it from sleep, the computer wakes up and begins processing keyboard and mouse events, but the screensaver stays on top of the whole screen, ignoring any attempt to dismiss it.

I once installed an ubuntu VM. I then installed Java and Eclipse to work on a C project I downloaded, and was greeted by all fonts on system windows magically tripling in size and not being able to find a settings window to fix it anywhere. I had to reinstall. The whole process from initial install to un- usability was less than two hours

Meanwhile, my windows 7 desktop and windows 2012r2 server run 24/7, reboot once a month on patch tuesday, and are rock-freaking-solid. Despite the fact that they both see more diverse and stranger work than the macbook. Despite using spinning rust Hard Drives in both, they are more responsive and reliable under load than my macbook, and show no signs of misbehavior even when a bug in a video editor I use cause the graphics driver to lock up and hard crash (IN KERNEL SPACE) repeatedly, recovering with just a slight warning.

I'll never understand the "mac is reliable" ideology.

<comment><USER10> Strange luck you've had there. Odd.

I've owned three Macs over many years, and at least in my own experience, they have been the most reliable machines I've owned in the twenty years I've been developing. I still have a 2011 13-inch MBP that despite a hard drive replacement is still whirring along fine. My main dev machine is a 15-inch 2016 model that is the most dependable I've personally experienced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is an interesting perspective. I think this sort of behavior is ubiquitous.

A recent example for me is some webpages seem to crash on iOS safari if I scroll to fast. It happens more on older devices. So I'm constantly trying to feel out the rate at which I'm scrolling. Carefully trying to balance the desire to scroll quickly with the desire to not crash the page!

One issue here is that many people I've observed using software don't perceive the difference between "workarounds" for bugs and the using of the program in its intended way.

It just becomes this generic blob of behaviors required to "make the program work."</comment>


Garmin Connect team asked to relocate - this is how they declined - <AUTHOR> http://thegcteam.com <comment><USER2> On one hand, Garmin probably got what they wanted. Moving a whole office from San Francisco to Kansas seems like a passive aggresive way of downsizing.

On the other hand, they probably weren't exactly expecting this reaction. And I have a feeling they aren't gonna like this. Well played ex-Garmin team, well played.

<comment><USER3> My hometown is Olathe, Kansas, Garmin's world headquarters. It is a really, really great town. These people are missing out on a very good opportunity. :)

<comment><USER4> I think it's entirely possible for one person to love Olathe, another to love S.F., and for both people to be right. Arguing about which town is better when the two are so dramatically different is about as productive as trying to decide whether Billie Holiday or Eric Clapton is the better musician.

So go Olathe! And go S.F. And hey... If you aren't in Toronto, Canada you're missing a third great opportunity ;-)

<comment><USER5> SF: too expensive, too trendy/hipster.

Olathe: where is the nearest mountain? Sorry, too flat.

Toronto: too cold, too flat.

<comment><USER4> For your reading pleasure:

"Considered Harmful" Essays Considered Harmful: <http://meyerweb.com/eric/comment/chech.html>

Three blog posts I'd love to read (and one that I wouldn't): [http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/10/three-blog-posts-id- love...](http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/10/three-blog-posts-id-love-to-read- and.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Garmin has been consistently clueless about how software should be developed and deployed. They are the Verizon of GIS. No surprise that they jettisoned one of their more promising projects.

<comment><USER7> Google Maps on mobile devices will eventually displace them.

<comment><USER8> Problem with Google Maps is that there never is any reception when you need it. Although you are right - eventually there might be (10 years? 20 years?).

<comment><USER9> Except you could build pre-loading of map data into the app. On Symbian phones with Ovi Maps the app will download map data on-the-fly, or you can choose to pre-load it (for example the full maps for Europe or whatnot). I see no reason Google couldn't do something similar.

<comment><USER10> Google Navigation already does this, apparently. I was checking out one of the state parks in the Santa Cruz mountains a month or so ago. Naturally, I lost my cell reception once I got into the foothills. But Navigation continued to direct me, turn by turn with map, until I arrived at my destination.

I lucked out on GPS though - in some cases, the GPS signal has died just when I need it most. Darn Nexus Ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This seemed pretty interesting in that I could not recall another example of an entire development team leaving at once. Not to mention their way of putting themselves back on the market is interesting and humorous to say the least.

Does anyone else have any examples of entire development teams leaving at once and offering themselves for hire? Seems like a great way for the competition to snap up talent.

<comment><USER11> They're in California too so they didn't have non-competes. I bet if they went to Kansas they would have had to sign them.

<comment><USER12> I'll let you in on a secret. You don't need to be in California to not worry about "non-competes". An employer rarely ever holds an employee to it; it is rarely ever upheld in court; they are just a deterrent. You cannot lawfully stop someone from gainful employment. The only time you will ever see a non- compete become an issue is if it is an executive, and even then it is rare.

You can stop someone from disclosing trade secrets, that is why most companies do a "non-compete / non-disclosure agreement". But, again, the non-compete part is about as enforced as the "do no remove label" on your mattress ;)

<comment><USER3> A company I used to work for is suing one of its ex-executives for starting a similar company after he was fired. I am interested to see how it turns out. The old bosses are of course telling everyone that they're going to win, but as you've noted, that goes against traditional wisdom and is probably just for psychological effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jim-greer They seem like a strong team, but the list of client technologies feels more like a skills list you would put on a resume than a reasonable design choice. Is there a javascript framework they _didn't_ use?

JavaScript, XHTML, CSS

Prototype

JQuery

Ext

Scriptaculous

YUI

Seam

JSF & Facelets

RichFaces

Google Web Toolkit

Adobe Flex

Adobe Flash

Google Maps API

<comment><USER13> kitchensink.js

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I haven't gone through the whole website, and I have no idea to what degree Garmin developers are limited by their management, But I own a Garmin XXX who knows, I bought it about 2.5 years ago, for about $750, it was very close to top of the line (text to voice, etc). I used it a bit, it worked pretty good, but as a software developer, I couldn't stop thinking about the UI failures. Failure after failure. You might think some would be caused by hardware limitations, and I always appreciated this, but even considering that, it was just unsatisfying.

So, Garmin has been working on this for years, they are up to version who knows what....and then google comes out with their navigation program on Andriod....it is night and day, despite this being like version 6 (I'm guessing) for Garmin vs Version 0.5 for Google. Yes, Google has some architectural advantages that Garmin doesn't, so they can offer some amazing advanced features, but for me it's the small things that make the difference...like, does using your software make any sense?

I wish these guys the best of luck, assuming they're been unhappy with how things have been for years, but if they they their work of 2 years ago was "good", I'm sorry, you guys should really be in a different profession.

<comment><USER15> These are Garmin _Connect_ guys. They are not responsible for the actual devices, but rather for some sort of a social web overlay on top of the devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The team fails to mention that the deployment of Garmin Connect was over a year late and the migration from motionbased.com (which Garmin bought) was a total disaster.

It looks like the motionbased.com blog and forums have been taken down. That makes it hard for those who didn't go through that hell, like I and many others did, to appreciate just what a total cluster fsck the transition was. The new site, while much prettier with all its shiny web 2.0-ness, is functionally on par with the site it replaced.

Here is a cached forum link talking about how the December 2008 launch is slipping.

[http://22.214.171.124/search?q=cache:YnEfNC3lDnwJ:forums.moti...](http://184.108.40.206/search?q=cache:YnEfNC3lDnwJ:forums.motionbased.com/smf/index.php%3Ftopic%3D10744.0+connect+motionbased+migration&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah they definitely lagged from what I can see, but if they are accurate in their statements of 45,000 logged activities a day, that's a TON. To put it in perspective, a single XML log file from my Garmin GPS bike computer is around 200-300kb for a 30-40 mile ride. Imagine that infrastructure buildout!

Not defending a slow release schedule, but it's not "trivial" after working in this industry for the last couple years.

That, and any corporate structure slows a development team down considerably. Nice dig for the cache, thanks for the info :)

<comment><USER17> This is coming from the confused part of my brain. 45k transactions a day isn't that much and processing 300kb xml files should be trivial. What am I missing? Was it tongue in cheek?

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess my response was a bit intense. but I will stand by with saying processing 45k 300kb files a day is a non-trivial task. Making the site handle that amount of traffic (serving the pages) is easy. Processing the data however, isn't. Consider it's being done through their proprietary firefox extension that works on two browsers and operating systems in order to pull info off your devices. Then it has to go to some cluster of background job processors. If you think growing your database/storage scheme by 2-5 gigs a day is 'trivial' then I commend you. From my experience, it's an easy recipe for setbacks. For example, our dataset is only 5 gigs, however at 5 gigs we are to the point of multi-hour schema changes in our data storage format. So, say you want to support handling laps from an uploaded logfile. A data migration of how many terabytes spanning how many hours?

<comment><USER18> It's ok, it seems as if you have real experience doing this, in contrast to the armchair "scaling experts" flooding HN that balk at problems like this.

<comment><USER17> Noticing this a few days late, but feel the need to defend myself. I've worked for two data mining and data aggregation companies. Currently working for a real time vertical search company. We do 45k in the blink of an eye. real time search over millions of documents is HARD. Granted we have lots of hardware and bandwidth. I'd put 45k at entry level scaling problems and see no reason to brag or get excited over it, which is why I asked for clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The icing on the cake is the Amazon affiliate links to Garmin products (see right side-bar below twitter feed: <http://thegcteam.com/about>)

<comment><USER4> I agree. They seem to be proud of their work and would love you to buy more Garmin stuff. If I were Garmin I'd be throwing chairs right about now, I would have de-hired a dev team and a sales force at the same time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've been thinking about this a bit, and I just came to the realization that Garmin basically did the precise _opposite_ of what Atlassian did. Atlassian, solidly located (and successful) in Sidney, Australia, went out its way to open up a branch in San Francisco (and an awesome branch it is) - thereby not only injecting the technology, culture, and people that you find in the valley, but also exposing themselves to tons of valley customers (It helps to be able to have half the company's executives show up to the user group meetings)

You have to wonder what is going through Garmin's mind when they almost went out of their way to _shut down_ their valley subsidiary...

</comment><comment><USER21> I like this idea on the whole, but isn't it using a _bit_ too much of the branding/trademarks/etc. of the company they left? You can make factual statements about your former work, like "I used to be part of the Garmin Connect team", but this is verging on taking the name with it, with a no- longer-Garmin-affiliated organization still calling themselves the "Garmin Connect team", using Garmin Connect material (logos, demo videos, etc.) extensively on their site, etc. As a now ex-Garmin set of engineers, they can't really advertise their services using Garmin's name, though it can be listed as relevant experience.

<comment><USER22> It seems fair enough for them to emphasize the work they did for Garmin, but that site might go a little too deeply into exactly how it was done. I can see Garmin getting upset about the implementation details.

<comment><USER23> Unless they're under NDA I don't really think Garmin has much of a say about that. A J2EE app server stack with AJAXy client side doesn't exactly seem like it would qualify for trade-secret protection.

Making use of Garmin's trademarks (even indirectly, e.g. "gcteam") or other intellectual property, or giving out example logins to the production website ... those things seem much more problematic if the relationship with Garmin goes south.

I've never heard of anyone getting slammed for discussing implementation details absent an NDA, unless there was source code or other obviously- proprietary IP involved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This sucks. I just uploaded my most recent run to Garmin Connect, because it's so incredibly better than Nike+ or any of that cheese. Your data is open, the frontend is super-flexible, the browser plugin is great. Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER25> Well this is certainly disheartening as I'll be moving to Kansas City in a few months with my girlfriend as she attends medical school... My job hunt begins soon and all I'm hearing is negativity about KC.

<comment><USER26> My take on it:

If you want to work for ten different companies in three years (with at least eight going out of business while you're there) and never know whether you'll have a paycheck next quarter, then the Bay is the place. If you want a steady job that you'll get to keep for a while, you can do a lot worse than KC.

There's a _lot_ of tech stuff going on in the area (Garmin's one company headquartered here; Sprint's a stone's throw away in Overland Park, Linux Pro magazine has its North American offices in Lawrence, etc.) and a lot of geeks, but not so much youth (as in "I graduated college last month" youth). Most of the techies you'll meet are in their late 20s or early/mid-30s, and have been in the industry for a while; quite a few of them have written unglamorous but indispensable tech books. Most have settled here to raise families. There's a lot less emphasis on doing things that make great blog posts or conference talks, and a lot more emphasis on doing things that solve problems in useful ways.

That's not to say there's no innovation, of course; Django came from Lawrence (close enough that a lot of people live there and commute to KC), there are some interesting startups doing stuff like e-gov and transparency, one of the best GIS groups anywhere (with a yearly conference at the University of Kansas), a lot of new-media consulting... but nearly all of it happens without fanfare and chest-thumping.

Anyway. The important thing is not to have an attitude of "oh crap, it's Kansas", because you'll never meet most of the interesting people that way.

<comment><USER25> Thanks (to everyone) for the advice! You've definitely taken some of the stress out of it and I'm looking forward to the new experiences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "I've worn many hats, and enjoyed everyone."

<http://thegcteam.com/team>

yeah, that's not gonna fly in Olathe, Kansas.

</comment><comment><USER17> Anyone else feel like that is a really big team for the product? Maybe I've just been on really stretched teams but 15 people with 4 product manager types, wow. Though I've never use it, the product looks great as far as I can tell. But comparing the products I've worked on I'd say we would have had half the head count.

</comment><comment><USER28> I can't imagine there are that many companies out there who are making products like this. Nike+, Runkeeper, Garmin.. Who else? Having only ever used one application like this, Runkeeper, I find it interesting how similar it looks to Runkeeper's UI and feature set.

If you've got a ready-made team that can make a product like this but is unwilling to leave the bay area, it would seem there aren't a lot of companies around that can absorb a whole team like this overnight. I wonder where they'll turn up.

<comment><USER29> The original poster (cullen) and I are behind <http://ridewithgps.com>, so this news is particularly interesting to us

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> If I can get some VC funding, then this group would be a treasure trove of hires for my company.

</comment><comment><USER31> They seem to be very management-heavy. I looked at the page at <http://thegcteam.com/team> . Look at how many people they have listed as managers or coordinators. Unless all the development is being outsourced, I don't see how a 1.5:1 ratio of developers to managers is efficient. Perhaps this has something to do with why the team was missing its migration dates in the first place?

</comment><comment><USER32> WTF, Garmin... The real issue for me as a long time sports user of their products is, if this causes problems with garmin connect (like I expect), I will finally be fed up with their products.

I've had nothing but disappointment with Garmin's commitment to their products until Connect came out. I hope this isn't the last stupid move of a failed company.

<comment><AUTHOR> Garmin makes fairly solid devices (they have their flaws, but in general work well), however I feel you on their software. It's a nightmare, as any person who has used Garmin Training Center or Mapsource can tell you.

If you are really fedup with connect, try out our service at <http://ridewithgps.com>. We offer much of the same stuff they do and more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I was clicking through some of the team's profile and Anothony Pelosi ticked "Willing To Relocate: Yes" on his resume on dice.com. Obviously, this shouldn't be taken at face value. The truth is, no employeee is willing to relocate unless it's obviously beneficial to them, which is not always the case.

<comment><USER34> There's a huge difference between "Willing to Relocate" and "Willing to Relocate anywhere". I currently live in Pittsburgh, and I'd be willing to relocate anywhere on the East Coast between Charlotte, N.C. and Boston. Most of my family and friends are out east, so I'm not willing to relocate to the midwest or the west coast or abroad.

So being willing to relocate but having restrictions doesn't make Mr. Pelosi a hypocrite

<comment><USER33> I don't think I ever implied he was a hypocrite. I was just pointing out that, although people are willing to relocate, it can't be taken at face value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Feels very unprofessional to me, really the sort of people you want to hire? Nothing wrong with not wanting to relocate but Garmin clearly didn't want to relocate just to annoy them, there were obviously organisational, cost or other business reasons to.

<comment><USER36> Absolutely right. People like this are just not going to be team players. Garmin is getting eaten alive by GPS pressure through the Iphone, they are not laying people off or asking people to relocate for fun. In short, this is a PR disaster for Garmin brought on by disgruntled former employees who just don't care.

Do you want employees that don't care about causing you a PR disaster?

<comment><USER37> _People like this are just not going to be team players._

Is this the context where "team player" means "someone who will bend over backwards for a company that likely wouldn't do the same for him"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Olathe, Kansas. Grew up there. Had cows on mainstreet 1/4 century ago, damn that makes me sound old. Close enough to drive to Lawrence (KU) for punk rock shows and into Kansas City for industrial dance clubs. Not a bad place, really.

</comment><comment><USER39> Shouldn't a team like this start their own business instead of thinking of being hired?

</comment><comment><USER5> Incidentally, isn't it kind of odd that a GPS device company is somewhere with so little... well, "geography", in the sense of mountains and other features. I would see them out west somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER40> I think that they should use to as an opportunity to launch a consulting company focused on webapps.

I've not used Garmin connect but some of the features look promising enough that other websites would benefit.

</comment><comment><USER41> Good for them. I wonder what Garmin thinks in terms of competitors now easily finding a large group of ex-employees.

</comment><comment><USER42> Where is the story about how they actually declined? All I am seeing is their team resume.

</comment><comment><USER43> It doesn't render well on Chrome. Firefox works fine.

</comment><comment><USER44> really hope these guys get hired.

</comment><comment><USER45> I see that Garmin still does not treat its engineers well.

For a number of years my father was the business manager for a group of microwave engineers in Olathe, Kansas, strangely enough (only a few hours north from SW Missouri). After that team failed to win a contract for some sort of JDAM precursor (I think, my father is not a techie) they broke up and their top dog was one of the first hired by the founders.

Let's just say that the founders weren't terribly generous with employee stock allocation....

<comment><USER46> You lost me. The founders of Garmin had a killer idea, well ahead of its time, and they're terrible people for not lavishing the resulting riches on some lucky schmo who happened to be a talented electrical engineer living in Kansas at the time? You fail to appreciate that, while many people could have done the same job as your father's friend, it took a singular amount of vision and balls to build a company around a satellite network which wouldn't even be functional for another 4 years. If GPS failed, got axed by the gov, whatever, those guys would have been ruined while said friend would have walked away scot-free. People always seem to forget these points when bemoaning how undercompensated engineers--who after all, do all the "real" work--are.

<comment><USER47> You forget that their "singular vision and balls" would be useless if no engineers every actually _implemented_ it. The point of stock allocation is to get people to do the work that needs to be done, and it's risky because at the time of hire the engineer doesn't know if the idea will be successful. Generous stock allocation, in my mind, is a token of good-will to the engineer and a recognition of the importance of the engineering phase of the project.

<comment><USER48> If the engineer felt it was a bad deal, I'm sure he wouldn't have taken it.

<comment><USER37> Assuming, of course, there were good deals being offered.

<comment><USER49> So in this case, it's the law of supply and demand...

<comment><USER50> Which is among the reasons an engineer might balk at moving from San Francisco to Olathe, KS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Wow. The back-end and business performance details they publish go pretty far into trade secret territory. Garmin probably won't sue to avoid giving off bad recruiting vibes, but I would think twice about hiring these folks.

</comment><comment><USER52> Yeah, because I want to hire someone who will use my resources to get themselves hired elsewhere. It's like a girlfriend using my money to put up a profile on a dating site.

<comment><USER52> Downvotes. I guess the talent is feeling particularly precious today. Kids: when you start hiring people, maybe you'll change your mind.

edit: And checkout <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1197891> \- this is your uber talent who deserves special treatment during a recession?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Who would want to hire the kind of employee that doesn't care about causing a PR disaster?

AVOID, these cats are selfish prima donnas who are not team players. Garmin isn't asking them to relocate for fun, they're doing it because they face an existential threat on the consumer side of things from the Iphone.

<comment><USER53> And Garmin is a team player for conducting what is essentially a mass layoff? Employers can have no expectation of loyalty unless they are willing to demonstrate it in return.

<comment><USER52> The team is worrying about itself. The management have to worry about themselves, the team, the rest of the staff, the stockholders, the continued existence of the company. They are being responsible and making what is likely an incredibly hard decision. The team? Looking out for themselves, while harming further the company that put up the resources and took the risks (and maybe came up with the ideas) for creating Garmin Connect.

<comment><USER53> How is Garmin's resources being used, and how is the company coming to harm from all of this? That's a very specious claim unless you have information the rest of us don't.

All the team is doing is saying "hey, we built this for Garmin, but now we're on our own. If you think we do good work, come talk to us!" - how are they unfairly profiting from Garmin's product? I suppose you also refuse to talk about past work at previous employers on your resume/during interviews? Otherwise you'd be guilty of the same level of unfair profit.

Furthermore, Garmin's resources _aren't_ being used. Garmin isn't paying for the server that this page is on, in fact, Garmin's not paying for any of this attempt at advertising. What's your stance on this? Should all former employees of a company disavow their previous employment and _not_ use any showing off of previous work (publicly accessible work, mind you!) to seek more employment?

As for your first claim: the company is worrying about itself, and the team is worrying about itself. Everyone is a selfish, but rational actor in this situation. Nobody is evil - and I find it disingenuous to paint the team as profiteers when you fail to do so to Garmin also.

<comment><USER52> Since I'm getting (anonymously) downvoted anyway:

Did the team buy all software they used to create the site themselves? Did they discuss it during work hours? Did they mail each other ideas or designs at work? Using email addresses of the company? What is the quality of their work focus between now and the time they stop working, which IIRC is in May sometime? They're still being paid, but I'm pretty sure they are quite focused on ramping up their own marketing during this period.

Note that the blogosphere is really enjoying this interaction and the company is coming off as stupid, out-of-touch etc. Do you think it's helping Garmin or hurting them, on balance?

It comes down to do-unto-others. I'd prefer not to burn the bridges, myself. I loathe corporate game-playing as much as the next person, which is why I write and sell my own software. But I fully understand that some decisions are just very hard to make, and beating up on Garmin seems a bit simplistic.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Has_many considered harmful - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/chicagogrooves/d0a02c0d30ea6dc9d658

<comment><USER2> I hate nothing more than "X considered harmful" titles on Hacker News. Something about them really infuriates me.</comment>


Island in the Sun - <AUTHOR> http://blog.solarcity.com/island-in-the-sun/ <comment><USER2> 109,500 gallons of diesel/year is ~$265,100/year[1].

1.4 Megawatts (5328 solar panels) is from ~$4.3M to ~$7M[2].

60 Tesla Powerpacks (6 Megawatts/hour) is ~$8.7M[3]

So it's at worst a 50 year bet (if gallon's price doesn't increase) which is pretty good for a reliable continuous source of power.

[1]: [https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+much+is+109,500+ga...](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+much+is+109,500+gallons+of+diesel)

[2]: [http://www.freecleansolar.com/What-is-the-price-cost-for- a-S...](http://www.freecleansolar.com/What-is-the-price-cost-for-a-SolarCity- PV-system-s/4620.htm)

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

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it would be interesting to read about the decision process that decided on the 1.4MW of power generation to 6MWh of storage ratio. This is around 1:4.2h. Is this ratio very specific to Ta'u island, with their usage patterns, or can this ratio be used as a guide for future installations? I'm guessing that Ta'u has not as much technology that stays on overnight, and a more realistic ratio would be 1:6h or more.

Anyway, this is a great proof of tech.</comment>


Lion as a sign of post-Jobs Apple - <AUTHOR> http://notes.kateva.org/2011/08/lion-as-sign-of-post-jobs-apple.html <comment><USER2> The author claims that without Steve Jobs, Apple will become more like Google. If anything, Apple will become more like Microsoft. Google is a web company born and bred. Data, open-source and commoditization are key to their strategies. Google's approaches are quite different philosophically from Apple. Apple is a hardware and only coincidentally software company. Because of these origins, Apple is more similar to Microsoft.

<comment><USER3> I think he was thinking more of the attitude than actual products.</comment></comment>


How Many Web 2.0 Services Have Gone Mainstream? - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/startups-that-go-mainstream

<comment><USER2> 1) Facebook 2) Myspace 3) Youtube 4) Wikipedia

I'd say that's about it...those are the only ones where everyone knows what they are because they are constantly talked about in the mainstream media

<comment><USER3> HotOrNot, Slide, Flickr, Digg, Reddit, Last.fm, WordPress etc.

These are ones we know because we are in a western society. There many other big hits in other countries that we have not heard of as they are not reported by western media e.g. until recently I never heard of shaadi.com and thats a big Indian player with a western bias which only gets reported as it is in English language and also doing well in English speaking countries

There are many more big players in China, Russia etc., all depends on what your assessment criteria is as they did not mention that in the article.

<comment><USER2> no these are the ones you know because you are an internet junkie. Your average person in the real world never heard of any of those. The ones I listed everyone knows because they either use them every day, or hear about them during the day.

<comment><USER3> What about the examples they used in the article?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It really depends on what you call "mainstream" and the media you consume, watch, or listen to.</comment>


Monsanto 'bullied scientists' and hid weedkiller cancer risk, lawyer tells court - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jul/09/monsanto-trial-roundup-weedkiller-cancer-dewayne-johnson <comment><USER2> I find this reporting biased. It would be one thing if the court found Monsanto bullied scientists. It is another when the plaintiffs attorney says it.

<comment><USER3> You won't think it's biased when you get cancer for eating all that processed shit filled with steroids, antiobiotics and hormones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Soon all this bad press will be absorbed by German Bayer.</comment>


Git for other purposes - <AUTHOR> http://ben.straubnet.net/post/735737032/git-for-other-purposes

<comment><USER2> I use git for most of my writing (blog posts, content for my company's website, notes from meetings, journal entries about my kids, etc.) as well as for source code. Sort of a light-weight dropbox, with version control.

I've sometimes wondered (and perhaps this already exists, I've just never googled it) whether it would be useful to have a type of legal document that uses a markup suitable for revision tracking and version control. I find it's hard to be completely sure before signing a long legal document whether the version I've just received is precisely the same as the one my lawyer has reviewed.

<comment><USER3> It does not fulfill your needs exactly, but it may be a start: <http://www.gnu.org/software/wdiff/>

I seem to remember a tutorial on setting that up with git, but Google is failing me right now; does anyone know where that might be?

<comment><USER4> Um, git diff --color-words?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I used git for keeping track of changes to my thesis. Since LaTeX is really just code, keeping track of the changes was pretty easy.

The slightly more novel thing was using it to keep my research articles synced. Lesson learned: downloading 30 or 40 journal articles in pdf form through git on a wireless connection can be _very_ slow.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually keep my homework on github. :) And yes, depending on your pipe, downloading all the binaries can be slow. But the ability to have history and synchronization between machines (I probably use 4 or 5 computers on a regular basis) is super nice.</comment></comment>


A Man on the Edge - <AUTHOR> http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/a_man_on_the_edge/

<comment><USER2> ahh, eccentric explorers. who are they in our time?

</comment><comment><USER3> Good read...</comment>


Things I want Apple to adopt rather sooner than later - <AUTHOR> https://thejollyteapot.com/2020/04/11/things-i-want-apple-to-adopt-rather-sooner-than-later <comment><USER2> Agree about the Safari Reader shortcut.

I think Apple's approach to keyboard shortcuts is weak in general. One of the things I noticed running a Linux laptop with Gnome at the same time as my MBP was how easy it is to move windows around using the keyboard in Gnome.

No need for third party addons To do something that should be built into the OS.</comment>


A high school student created a fake 2020 candidate, and Twitter verified it - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/28/tech/fake-twitter-candidate-2020/ <comment><USER2> Making the blue verified check exclusive is the main problem here.

Twitter internal system/process of verifying accounts is fundamentally broken...why don't they open this to everyone and people can apply with their official ID?!

They can add/create another Check mark for celebrities..but verified real accounts of people should be for everyone.

Twitter is a public sphere and They should be able to identify real accounts easily.

I don't want to waste my time talking to accounts under pseudonyms..

<comment><USER3> I'm sure many of the conversations you've had on HN and elsewhere has been with people under pseudonyms. Just because they are using a pseudonym doesn't mean it's not a conversation not worth having. The value should be based on the actual conversation, not under what circumstance it's being held.

<comment><USER4> If you look at the leader board of HN, most of the top fifteen or so can be readily identified by their real name even if they aren't using it in their handle in some way. (I don't know about the rest of the board, having not looked in depth at every single name on it.) Most of the top fifteen-ish do seem to be using some portion of their real name in their handle.

Real names aren't required here. You can call yourself whatever you want.

In actual practice, the community does appear to care whether or not it knows who the hell you actually are. It does appear to correlate to some degree to ranking on the leader board.

<comment><USER5> I think it goes the other way. People who write good content often like to use their real name because it builds their personal brand, and don't want to harm it with shitposts. Fewer people put the effort in anonymously for no benefit. The voting audience isn't craving names.

<comment><USER4> The reason I'm aware that the top fifteen-ish names can generally be readily identified in most cases is because I post as openly female and I've gotten a lot of flak for that over years. One of the more common lousy things that has been said to me is "So don't tell people your gender. _On the internet, no one knows you 're a dog if you don't tell them._"

So I wrote a ranty personal blog post about that at some point and went through the top names on the leader board. My point was: How do I hide my identity to hide my gender and also establish a professional reputation? This doesn't work. If you know my name, you can readily infer my gender.

I posted for years under a two letter handle that can be mistaken for a feminist handle though it wasn't intended to be any such thing and I had it six weeks before it occurred to me anyone might see it that way. It was supposed to be initials from some handle I had elsewhere and I typoed it.

I had blog posts on a personal blog explaining my handle and that it wasn't a feminist handle. After I finally hit the leader board, I became extremely uncomfortable with continuing to use that handle.

I felt there were too many eyes on me and if I needed to explain it, it wasn't a good handle under which to have that kind of visibility. So I changed to my actual first and middle name.

The first week or two, I got accused of trying to pull a fast one and trick people and ridiculous stuff like that. After that settled down, HN treated me dramatically better than it ever had under my previous handle.

Obviously, there are many confounding factors and you can't definitively prove that it's any one thing. But I think if you are establishing a relationship with a community, there is no clear distinction between "I choose to behave X way because of how I expect that to impact me." and "Other people behave X way towards me." Those things create a feedback loop and you can't completely tease out how much people find them credible because they know their name and reputation, so they upvote it and how much people make an effort to say good things.

I don't think I behave differently since changing my handle, but I certainly have a much more positive experience of the forum since changing it. So that influences my feeling that other people do care about such things.

<comment><USER6> If someone cares about your gender on HN or gives you a hard time over it or your choice to use it they're probably not worth communicating with anyway. I get your point about people maybe feeling a bit better about someone if they openly put up their real identity or link their pseudonym to a real public ID like a blog , twitter, or other account. I think that's probably just human nature but I don't think gender would come into that except maybe sexist persons who you are superior to anyway because of their choice to be an irrational person.

<comment><USER4> That's a little like telling someone of color to just ignore systemic racism.

I've been here more than ten years. I literally spent years doing all the stuff people say to do here to network, get taken seriously, etc.

It wasn't working because I got treated differently by essentially everyone due to my gender.

I was literally homeless for nearly six years and frequently going hungry while being blown off and told sexism wasn't a real problem.

You no doubt mean well. As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Given that I appear to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the leader board, it doesn't appear to be me mishandling things. All the evidence suggests that I'm the most successful openly female member here in terms of getting accepted by the community, etc. And it has seriously sucked in a "The rampant sexism is going to help kill me" kind of way and this has been true for a great many years.

It's only in recent months that I'm beginning to get anything resembling what I wanted all along out if it. I'm quite clear this is largely due to my gender.

It's not really anything I care to discuss further. It gets me a great deal of flak to talk about all that. I've really gone to substantial pains under enormously difficult circumstance to minimize the focus on my gender and the BS I had to deal with because of it while being accused of making a big deal out of nothing, etc ad nauseum.

<comment><USER7> > It's only in recent months that I'm beginning to get anything resembling > what I wanted all along out if it.

What did you want out of it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > The student, who CNN Business spoke to with the permission of his parents > and has agreed not to name as he is a minor

(half a page down)

[Picture of the student in his school]

<comment><USER9> In journalism (at least in one of the classes I took) there is an ongoing debate of anonymity while still being informative. The theoretical example we were given was of a deceased soldier. Do we share the name? The face? Both? The professor told us that professionally an editor will choose face or name, but not both in order to protect (to some extent) the identity of the subject, the subject's family, etc.

I've not put a lot of thought into how this editorial decision needs to be changed in the face of newer tech (reverse image search, facial recognition, etc).

<comment><USER10> That's a weird example to use. Did the servicemember die on duty? I can't think of any situation in which a U.S. media outlet _wouldn 't_ publish both the name and photo (if the latter is available). There's generally no widely- held ethical (nor legal) issue from publishing info about a deceased person, military or not.

<comment><USER11> You can't see how there are legal and ethical issues with publish the name and photo of, say, a murder victim?

Likely the details will become public information as a matter of course as the investigation and possible court case evolve, but "no issue" seems a stretch.

<comment><USER10> No, I don't see those issue, at least in the U.S. Are you under the impression that the media is barred or discouraged from reporting when a murder happens, or who the victim is? * What would be the legal basis for that? As a recent example, 5 people were murdered in Milwaukee in a mass shooting on Wednesday. On Thursday, the identities of all 5 victims were released and publicized:

[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/02/28/milwau...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/02/28/milwaukee- shooting-co-workers-killed-molson-coors-identified/4901227002/)

edit: *added "or who the victim is"

<comment><USER11> Ok, not from the US, thanks for clarify.

<comment><USER10> No problem, I'm glad I remembered to not assume everyone here is U.S.-based

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Such farcical comedy. They verify a fake candidate but refuse to verify well known but "problematic" public figures...

<comment><USER13> Why would Twitter want to verify someone who is problematic? Sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Their definition of verification includes public interest, and if the public is not interested in someone problematic, why would Twitter verify them in the first place?

<comment><USER14> > ... judges decided that the US constitution's First Amendment did not apply > to YouTube, a private company.

The legal system sides with you. Platforms are not forced to accept members that go against the platform core values or economic interests. Tweeter brand is tied to the people that uses the service.

* [https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51658341](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51658341)

<comment><USER15> YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc. editorialize their content selectively. Ergo, they are publishers, not neutral platforms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Meanwhile, candidates like Joshua Collins[1] can't get verified, even after they changed the policy.

An article about some others: [https://thehill.com/policy/technology/484453-twitter- falling...](https://thehill.com/policy/technology/484453-twitter-falling- short-on-pledge-to-verify-primary-candidates)

[1]: [https://twitter.com/Joshua4Congress](https://twitter.com/Joshua4Congress)

<comment><USER17> AFAIK nobody can get verified. This has been the case for the past two years according to Twitter: [https://twitter.com/verified](https://twitter.com/verified)

<comment><USER18> So who actually decides when to put blue checks on whom?

<comment><USER19> Twitter employees determine it based on unknown criteria and political agendas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Ballotpedia

I love this. He did the equivalent of creating your own wikipedia entry, that you then cite.

<comment><USER21> Citogenesis

[https://xkcd.com/978/](https://xkcd.com/978/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Twitter's verification "process" is opaque and ad-hoc.

I would recommend looking at alternatives because it's truly mindless to put your verification eggs into Twitter Inc's proverbial basket.

</comment><comment><USER23> _A Twitter spokesperson recently told one publication, "Our worst-case scenario is that we verify someone who isn't actually the candidate."_

The choice of article is telling: that's worse for them than verifying some who isn't actually _a_ candidate. Maybe Keybase could help them with this problem?

<comment><USER24> I think their position is perfectly reasonable, though. Verifying a fake candidate is embarrassing for them, but that's about it. Verifying someone who claims to be Bernie Sanders but isn't can cause real harm outside of Twitter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I am not surprised they give blue tickets to the biggest kissers. You just have to be a certain type. regular people? naw. Well in their defense if it was not exclusive and "hard" to get then what would be the value?

</comment><comment><USER26> But... isn't he really the person behind the fake 2020 candidate? Seems like the process basically worked. At worst, twitter made a slightly embarrassing decision about who warrants verification.

</comment><comment><USER27> In an age where world wars could potentially start via Twitter and getting verified is the stamp of approval of being a political/celebrity/public figure, this is pretty wild.

<comment><USER22> the verification process is broken and I would argue it is unable to be fixed, otherwise the company would have fixed it already.

Verification badges are bestowed upon you from above, they are not something people can actively ask for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Leaving aside the comments on twitter. That kid would probably do a great job in information security, if he was so inclined; he clearly has the instincts for it.

</comment><comment><USER29> Isn't Twitter verify account program on hold for few years now? I went to their page and message is still there? [https://help.twitter.com/en/managing- your-account/about-twit...](https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your- account/about-twitter-verified-accounts)

</comment><comment><USER30> If you're a reporter in the space who wants to know more about this, happy to share more.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

</comment><comment><USER31> Maybe Twitter did this for the free publicity.

</comment><comment><USER32> They were the legitimate owner of the fake candidates website and identity. I don't see the problem in the verification process.

It would be broken if I could create an account for a real politician and it would be verified.

</comment><comment><USER33> As if news outlets don't regularly get things wrong or push biased views?

I don't see why Twitter should all of a sudden be saddled with the responsibility of getting everything right. The mainstream media shirked that responsibility a long time ago, and so did the government.

Voting is a core function of democracy, so its the governments job to publish a true, up-to-date, and accessible list of who the current 2020 candidates are. And voters responsibility to know and spread the word about that list.

Time has shown that outsourcing crucial functions of democracy to corporations with misaligned incentives does not work well.

<comment><USER34> > I don't see why Twitter should all of a sudden be saddled with the > responsibility...

The problem is that Twitter made a big deal about verifying candidates and partnered with a third-party organization to do so. Because of that, people believe that if a candidate is verified by Twitter, they are the genuine article. There is no need for them to be suspicious because the Twitter account has been professionally vetted already.

No one forced Twitter to take on that role. The problem is Twitter claiming to verify candidates, but doing a shitty job of it. The better alternatives are (i) Twitter not claiming to verify anyone or (ii) Twitter doing a good job of verifying the identity of candidates. What they are doing is the worst possible course of action.</comment></comment>


Why isn't there a super awesome mobile first Node.js shopping cart platform? - <AUTHOR> The world of innovative ecommerce platform is pretty much standing still. The latest born was pretty much Magento and now they are heavy as heck. It is slow and hard to maintain. The Admin UI is cumbersome. I am not counting the SaaS type like Shopify or Wanalo.<p>Why isn't there any kick ass node.js shopping cart that is easy to use like Etsy interface? Or should I take the task of building it?? <comment><USER2> Hmm. I think most of the people who use these readymade platforms aren't technical people, so PHP works as it is easier to understand, deploy and manage.

Even for technical people, if I was looking for a readymade solution, I wouldn't really care if its build on PHP or node. But if I was building something specialized which needed to scale to huge amounts of traffic, I'd start from scratch with something like Node.js.

Also, look at Opencart. It isn't too bad.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe it's not the problem with PHP but most shopping cart built on PHP was dated back 4-5 years. They are too lazy to simplify it. When Magento came out, I thought that was it. But it's getting bloated like anything else. If someone wanted to have a simple responsive design site and image zoom capability, it's multiple steps (install, get add-on, fix templates... ). Anything out of the box these days are just not needed or lack of latest features. I think with node.js/sails/mongodb as backend and Bootstrap/AngularJS as frontend, things could be simplified 100x. I had heck of a time just to find which Magento file to modify the template for left menu...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I know right? I've been working on one for the past year or so, have a few customers on my lil platform.. But I've had to stuff it in between projects, so progress has been slow.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you have a website or github page, please share. What were the main feedback?</comment></comment>


A simple RSS filter (to replace parts of Yahoo Pipes) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/duukkis/rss-alterer

<comment><AUTHOR> A friend whipped this up. Combined with Feed43.com it's managed to replace 99% of my (admittedly simple) Y! Pipes kluges.</comment>


Acquisitions: Lessons from All Sides [video] - <AUTHOR> http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=3574 <comment><USER2> Really good.</comment>


Nine years to the Singularity - <AUTHOR> http://agrumer.livejournal.com/414194.html

<comment><USER2> I am not entirely sure that this belongs on HN, but it definitely made me laugh. It was very appropriate with the most recent XKCD.

God I hate Gillette.

<comment><AUTHOR> It has some math in it, is about the singularity and cites the Economist. ;)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What kind of games are fun to make? - <AUTHOR>

It seems like gamers have very strongly held opinions on what is and isn't fun to play, but what about approaching the topic from the other end?
I personally enjoy playing RPGs, but designing and programming a good RPG is time consuming and difficult, it can be rewarding, but you have to do a lot before that becomes true. On the other hand, I've enjoyed making simple dice games, but I don't really see myself enjoying them or having fun.
So to any game developers, amateur, hobbyist or otherwise: what kind of games do you enjoy making? <comment><USER2> Think about what kind of games you like to play, choose one of them and try to simplify it down to the bare minimum, no fluff. Then start making the most basic feature and continue from there.</comment>


Google Wave is not Email - its so much more. - <AUTHOR> http://therubyway.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/google-wave-is-not-email-its-so-much-more/

<comment><USER2> The "see you typing" thing disappeared to a large extent from IM clients because it was _horrible_. Users don't like other people seeing their "thoughts" and it creates a much stronger pressure to formulate/complete an immediate answer.

And the "robot" thing is just inane - it's not like bots are hard to interface with e-mail or with the web; it's just that at the current level few bots are very interesting beyond the very basic (IRC type) bots that keep track of when people last were around etc.

Wave looks interesting, but because it provides distributed/federated group chat / document editing / collaboration more than it competes with e-mail.

I'd be much more inclined to see it as an alternative to (some) wiki's and project collaboration tools like Basecamp than to e-mail.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Seeing you type" is the same thing as talking - only introverts don't like other people seeing their thoughts, while extroverts prefer it. The thing is, extroverts comprise the majority of the population. Also, while seeing you type may not be preferred in conversation, it will be preferred in a document collaboration environment.

The robot thing is not inane because it is part of the distributed/federated document editing, and it has media elements attached to it rather than just text. In IRC, you only talk to people for the most part, so bots in IRC are centered around facilitating that purpose. With Wave, you talk, work, and plan with data that can take any form - a much broader scope that allows robots to do much more than just 'user logged in, user logged out'.

The reason why I think it is a strong alternative to project collaboration tools is because of 'see as you type' and its robot capabilities. Yes, it has a nice document model, but that isn't the key feature for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm getting tired of the whole "OMG this new thing is going to blow your mind away" quickly followed by "Sorry, it's not available yet" gig.

2009: the year of hypeware.

<comment><USER4> Only 2009? There's always hypeware. Remember Google's SocialStream?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I had a dollar for every "serious game changer on the web today..."

<comment><USER4> Then you'd probably have a good $8.

We're in a tech renaissance. Lots of cool stuff is coming out, and they're all doing things in really different ways. It makes perfect sense that the game is constantly changing. It's exciting!

<comment><USER6> The cool stuff is stuck on a limited and half-baked platform...

<comment><USER4> That's silly. There's cool stuff on pretty much every platform. Gaming, Unix apps, online apps, iPhone apps...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I hate online chat. Hate it hate it hate it. Sitting there waiting for someone to type back at you, it's totally stupid. I'll never use this Google Wave. Email is good enough for me. And nothing can replace a good old phone call.

<comment><USER8> you could watch the demo. it's not chat. you can go for a walk and come back and read everything. the power of it is that it can be integrated with _everything_ so you can also get replies for this comment on wave and also reply to it on wave. someone will implement phone in it too (ie skype). think of it as one place for all your communication ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is how it came to be:

Inside the Google Headquarters:

Marketing/Finance Guy: Hey we need "live" search, its hot right now!

Tech Guy: Go buy twitter!

MG: Are you crazy we're in a recession, we don't have the money.

TG: Ok I have this old new-way-of-doing-email sideproject, that was kind of "live".

MG: Great, can you make it even more "live"?

TG: (sarcastic)Well the users could see each other typing.

MG: (exited) Great! Make it so!

TG: (concerned) That would kill our server if we ever released it.

MG: Don't worry we wont release it, just prepare a demo.

TG: And if we eventually release it?

MG: We make it Open Source, so somebody else will run it and their servers will crash.</comment>


Show HN: A hub for news, video, top sites, and live social media - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoblizzard.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I spent the last two years researching, designing, and building a multimedia platform that has over 175 different topics. The purpose behind this was to create an environment that delivers the latest news, video, audio, top sites, and live social media into one central hub.</comment>


Miss Your Office? Some Companies Are Building Virtual Replicas - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/miss-your-office-some-companies-are-building-virtual-replicas-11590573600 <comment><USER2> So is it about bringing middle management to a corporate second life?</comment>


Ask HN: What type of remote work do you find optimal and why? - <AUTHOR> What situation has worked for you, or you have wished you could have?<p>Fully remote and geographically distributed? Co-located but flexible work from home days? Remote, but close enough for weekly in person? Remote work is the root of all evil? <comment><AUTHOR> OP here. I'm curious on this question for a few reasons. \-- I have worked primarily from home the last ~6 years and I'm curious of others' opinions. \-- I've been working on a new conferencing app (Locus, [https://inthelocus.com](https://inthelocus.com)) and am wondering both how to structure our team if we don't end up in the startup graveyard, and how others like to work and might use similar products.

My perceived optimal: A geographically close team, with flexibility to work remotely whenever beneficial.

Why?: Remote work has a lot of well known benefits that speak to me: no commute, potentially less distractions when you really need to just work, potentially more flexibility on hours when you need to work around appointments or childcare, etc. BUT, there is a certain energy level when a team is really together that seems very hard to replicate remotely. How much time together is enough to replicate this? Would even a weekly beer night be enough?

My experience: For 8.5 yrs I worked at a semiconductor lithography tool manufacturer. 3 years in person, 4 years remotely but a ~3 hr drive from the office for important meetings, etc, and 1.5 yrs a plane ride away. The fact we were building hardware likely makes this fairly different from a SW only business. Having worked in person before going remote seemed really critical for work relationships. Coming in every few weeks seemed like barely enough to keep up with the energy level and the relationships. And an unexpected benefit was that traveling to the office frequently ended up as an excuse for the team to go out for drinks, or for me to spend much more time with visitors from our international headquarters than I might have if I was going home. The later time being a plane ride away felt like too infrequent of interactions and I slowly drifted away from the energy.

Now I've been working on a pure software project with 1 co-founder. We primarily work from home, but live close enough to meet whenever it seems helpful. And we already have a long history with each other. This works out well for 2 of us, but I'm not sure it can scale.

</comment><comment><USER2> I've nothing to add to the thread. Just wanted to say nice idea, it might have revenue potential if allowed for branded themes for companies. Maybe a paid level for encryption and document sharing etc. Possibly a more action oriented name rather than Locus too, something that encapsulates the nature of the service.</comment>


Functional Programming in the Real World (2003) - <AUTHOR> http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/realworld/

<comment><USER2> Jet.com did their big launch this week. They use F# [http://fsharpshow.com/3-jet-revolutionizing-ecommerce- using-...](http://fsharpshow.com/3-jet-revolutionizing-ecommerce-using- fsharp/)

According to the podcast, they started out with two solutions. One in C# and the other in F#, and F# won out in the end.

Here's some info on the company: [http://recode.net/2015/07/21/jet-com-will- launch-with-amazon...](http://recode.net/2015/07/21/jet-com-will-launch-with- amazon-prices-front-and-center/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This page is substantially unchanged since 2004.[1] There are a lot of technologies missing from that list!

But that's the cool part -- when you think of how many modern languages and packages could be on that list, it really drives home how much FP is eating the world.

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20040604130605/http://homepages....](https://web.archive.org/web/20040604130605/http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/realworld/)

<comment><USER4> "Eating the world"? Methinks a little bit of exaggeration/echo chamber effect at play, here.

[http://langpop.com/](http://langpop.com/)

Coldfusion, of all things, ranks ahead of the first pure functional language on that list (Haskell). Scala, the next highest impure but strongly functional language, ranks behind Visual Basic and Delphi.

Or, from another (more recently updated) source:

[http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....](http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html)

Note, not a single functional language in the top 20. Haskell ranks in at #44. Scala, #30.

Don't let the Hacker News bubble fool you: FP is still extremely niche. At best, I'd claim we're seeing an increase traditional imperative languages that make it possible to utilize functional idioms, and mixed environments where you can combine functional and imperative code (think Java/Clojure or C#/F#) while taking advantage of existing software ecosystems. But in that case, it's more about sprinkling in functional approaches here and there, rather than completely drinking the kool-aid.

<comment><USER5> Tiobe is pretty horrible, checkout the redmonk rankings: [http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2015/07/01/language- rankings-6-15...](http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2015/07/01/language- rankings-6-15/)

<comment><USER4> Which places Haskell and Scala behind Perl, R, and Shell, at position 14 and 15, respectively.

And PHP at #3... _shudder_

That said, I don't see why I should believe RedMonk any more than any other ranking. Heck, any ranking that places C++ behind Python, or C behind Ruby, I don't believe for a damn second.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know it's likely a simple user error, but

"Quite a few libraries exist for various languages, many of which include some impressive real-world applications. Have a look at: "

Haskell libraries: [https://www.haskell.org/libraries](https://www.haskell.org/libraries)

"Not Found", the irony ;-)

<comment><USER7> It's an academic webpage so by definition at least a decade since last updated.

<comment><USER6> Yes, all in good fun.

Wadler likely has better things to do than fixing stale links on his site; just found it amusing regardless.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Website 181 Took Way Longer Than a Day – YumHacker - <AUTHOR> http://yumhacker.com/

<comment><USER2> I think the greatest thing you learned on your 180 website trip was how to deliver. You've cultivated a habit of finishing projects and shipping them through the door. No matter how good a developer you are, that in itself is invaluable.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was actually a little overwhelming when I first started working on YumHacker. I conditioned myself to have a final product at the end of the day. In the first few days of working on YumHacker I had to keep telling myself that I was working on the order of finishing features not websites. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Need a one sentence description towards the top. Otherwise I have no idea what the site does.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. I probably need to think about a more optimized landing in the coming weeks.

<comment><USER4> Just pop in the title you're using for the page - Find Restaurants Endorsed by People You Trust. That's the powerful tag that's missing. It feels like Yelp on initial landing, but the "you trust" part gets me hooked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Context: "Hi! I'm Jennifer Dewalt and I am making 180 websites in 180 days. You can follow the project here and on the blog."

[http://jenniferdewalt.com/](http://jenniferdewalt.com/)

</comment><comment><USER6> She's back!

Nice job, Jennifer. The one place I think the 180 previous helped you build massive skill is in UI design. Simple and snappy.

What are you using for geo-coding and mapping? I've found a combination of "geocoder" and "gmaps-for-rails" gems work great.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I totally agree with you on the 180 websites project really helping with understanding UI design.

I'm using the Google Maps Javascript API for the maps and RGeo as a wrapper for PostGIS/Postgres.

<comment><USER6> Cool, nothing wrong with going to the bare metal for Gmaps in simple applications. If you find yourself doing any complex marker or polygon manipulation Gmaps-for-rails is really worth a look.

Keep up the good work, look forward to more from you in the future!

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! I will definitely check it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Awesome job! I agree with your opinion on Yelp being imperfect for specific tastes, since it's all aggregate. What's your plan for gaining users, and getting to that critical mass?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Learning how to grow a product is part of the next steps for me. Figuring out how to provide value before a user has a ton of friends on the site is important. One thought I've had is making featured lists from notable food critics for example.

<comment><USER8> Awesome job finishing the site! On a personal note I spend a lot of time eating out, especially at really great restaurants (5 star) all over Miami and Fort Lauderdale, FL. I would love to start adding restaurants, comments, etc. to this app but there is no real "push" for me to do that. Maybe some gamification? Points/rewards/mentions/etc. so that I feel like i'm gaining something by contributing? Just a thought. There may be other people who feel the same way

<comment><AUTHOR> That is an excellent point and something I've been thinking about as well. One thought I've had is adding some sort of rating system where people who are active on the site get promoted as 'Awesome people who have good taste' (working title). I'm also thinking about ways to make the site more useful on a personal level.

<comment><USER9> Hi Jennifer, I really like the site, but I'm wondering if there is any way to add more restaurants?

Santa Barbara has a lot of great places, but I'm only seeing a few to choose from :)

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a way to add restaurants! Under the main search field in the header is a link to Search for a Restaurant. Enter the name of a restaurant and the location and YumHacker will return a list of possible matches. Endorsing a restaurant and it will be added to the database.

<comment><USER9> ah perfect, I thought I had tried that, but I guess not :) Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Jennifer, since embarking on these website projects and publicising them, have you had much attention from recruiters for tech companies? (just curious. totally understand if you'd rather keep that info to yourself)

Good job on site 181. Great brand name - but I agree with the person who said a short description at the top would help.

</comment><comment><USER11> Great stuff, very clean and intuitive UI. Can you make the map scroll down the page as I scroll down?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! That's a great suggestion. Adding it to my to-do list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Like the crisp and quick ux. You might want to adjust the line-height for the business names because two line names seem to have too much spacing vertically; you'll need to adjust the line-height for the entire li first I think because of the way the css is set up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Good call on the line-heights. I hadn't noticed how weird those multiline business names look.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Awesome! Your journey is quite inspirational as well.

There's some weirdness remembering locations I search for before I sign up and across the boundary when it asks me for a signup but works great once I've logged in.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! It has been a really fun ride.

There's still a lot to be done with the sign up/sign in process that I haven't gotten to yet. Saving the last search is at the top of that to do list.

<comment><USER14> Have you considered open sourcing it to get the development flowing? I for one would love to hop in on this website in particular and get hacking

<comment><AUTHOR> The code is publicly available on GitHub ([https://github.com/jendewalt/yumhacker](https://github.com/jendewalt/yumhacker)) but I hadn't thought about opening up as an open source project. Definitely something I'll consider!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So how long did it take?

<comment><AUTHOR> About 80 days.

<comment><USER16> It's exciting to see how much your skills have improved over the course of the half year. I guess this proves a point that added complexity and learning new technology drastically adds to development time for those still learning to program. Also couple this with no extensive amount of development under their belt.

Not to hijack this thread and solely to prove a point, take for example my startup weekend project. Just this weekend (Saturday and Sunday 9AM-9PM) I built CarePrice which utilizes geolocation, a backend api, user management system and authentication, frontend, accompanying social networking, additional pages, and the full gamut. Albeit I did have a little help, I'd attribute 90% of the development work to myself on this one.

[http://www.careprice.co](http://www.careprice.co)

It's this ease of development you can look forward to with more experience under your belt! Keep on hacking and the days just start to shave off.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is awesome! Now that I've gone through the whole process I'm definitely much fast than I was when I started YumHacker. I spent a lot of time in the beginning just trying to wrap my head around what the heck I was doing, especially with Backbone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Website 181 of what?

<comment><USER18> "180 websites in 180 days" \- [http://jenniferdewalt.com/](http://jenniferdewalt.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Awesome. But if this will inspire freshmen to make website per day, we'll be flooded. But I am sort of happy if that will happen.

</comment><comment><USER20> I can see this being much better than Yelp. How are you doing the recommendations? Something along the lines of PageRank?

<comment><AUTHOR> So far the site is based on location and what the people you're following have endorsed. In the future, results could also be ordered by things like number of endorsers, photos or comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's not finding me by current location, it drops me in the map at what looks like Coords 0,0 in the Pacific Ocean.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that! Probably not too many restaurants there to endorse. Thanks for letting me know. I'll look into it.

<comment><USER22> Same here. Even when I put in my zipcode, it's not finding me and dropping me at 0,0. The name of my location shows up correctly in the search box, but it returns no results and drops me in the ocean. I can scroll around the map and zoom into my city, but it finds no results.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm, I think I understand the problem. Back to the code to see if I can track it down. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, figured it out! Should be all fixed now.

<comment><AUTHOR> There probably aren't any restaurants in the database near your location. When you search for a specific restaurant, YumHacker checks it's database as well as querying the Google Places API to look for matches. If you endorse a restaurant, it will get saved in the database and it will appear on the map when you search nearby.

This is a UX problem I'll have to think about going forward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The UI is pretty amazing. But why do the body tags appear empty when I see the view source?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! The front end uses Backbone.js so most of the content is rendered with Javascript. The backend uses Rails as an api which on page load sends along a barebones html doc for Backbone to latch on to and work its magic. You can check out the source code on GitHub - [https://github.com/jendewalt/yumhacker](https://github.com/jendewalt/yumhacker)

<comment><USER23> Thanks Jennifer. Btw, how did you manage to build 180 websites in 180 days. I mean what was your inspiration to conquer the streak?

<comment><AUTHOR> I wanted to learn to code but I'd never really done any coding before. I came up with the 180 websites idea as a way to start really small and stay motivated. It wasn't always easy but I had a blast and learned a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is awesome. Where do you pull data for something like this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! For the maps and location data I'm using the Google Maps Javascript API. For the restaurant data, I'm querying the Google Places API from Rails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> 181 shipped projects now. Damn, that's impressive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! It's been a crazy year. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Thanks for sharing Jennifer. Congrats on this and your past 180 app streak...I was wondering if, after being able to be away from the daily grind, you changed up how you built and structured your app? That is, what were the architectural lessons you learned after 180 days of getting-things-done-(even if not always best practices) that you could apply on your longer term projects?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I spent a lot more time thinking about what I was actually doing while making YumHacker. There is definitely a time for just hacking things together to get something that works but sometimes it's worth taking the time to carefully think through the mechanics and do it right. It took time for me to learn Backbone and set up a good system for using it but it saved me a ton of time (and headaches) in the long run.</comment></comment>