Mill: Better Scala Builds - <AUTHOR> http://www.lihaoyi.com/post/MillBetterScalaBuilds.html <comment><AUTHOR> Note that while Mill's first target is Scala builds (as an alternative to SBT) there isn't much reason why Mill shouldn't be usable for other JVM/non-JVM languages too.

Mill's core is basically a dependency-graph-based caching task-runner, similar to Bazel, which happens to be written in Scala (rather than Skylark). Scala+Java support is just a bunch of helper methods built on top of that.

It should be pretty trivial to make it work for Java-only projects ([https://github.com/lihaoyi/mill/issues/145](https://github.com/lihaoyi/mill/issues/145)) or write the necessary helper methods to make it work for other languages or platforms.

</comment><comment><USER2> I tried to migrate an pretty complex sbt build to mill this week and I can say I'm not disappointed.

The developer experience is so delightful compared to the other build system in the JVM land. And the task model seems just right.

<comment><USER3> I was just looking at this thinking 'this is what sbt should have looked like'...

<comment><USER4> I recommend reading the developers post [http://www.lihaoyi.com/post/SowhatswrongwithSBT.html](http://www.lihaoyi.com/post/SowhatswrongwithSBT.html) which is a balanced overview of sbt shortcomings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks really good - excited to try it!

Generally before adopting a language for a new project, (for me) it would need to have things like:

\- good build tool including dependency management \- reasonably fast compiler \- decent standard library \- pretty good IDE support \- clear policy about backwards compatibility \- good REPL \- good documentation (including contribution policy and license)

But there are surprisingly few language ecosystems that have all these fundamental features, even after many years (decades) of development! And many others seem to not appreciate how important they are, leading to years of tepid adoption or only niche usage at best.

</comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone have any code examples / GitHub repos of Spark projects that are setup with Mill? I've been fighting with build.sbt files for a couple of years and am ready to try out some alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER7> This looks great.

One of the barriers to switching to this, for my project, is the sbt-native- packager plugin and the way we use it to build debian packages. This plugin is one of the best things about sbt.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've developed a grudging respect for SBT. It's a petty remarkable project and I don't want to disrespect the people who work in it in any way.

That said, I've been writing Scala for years now and still struggle to modify my builds. And for my team, SBT is a major barrier to entry for people new to Scala.

Once I feel like I can port my build over, I'm going to give Mill a try.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have some SBT-specific stuff on some projects that is going to slow me down in trying this (namely multiple sbt-web plugins and Play plugin). However, I might have some runway to contribute some ports of these things.

</comment><comment><USER10> Looks awesome and I am an SBT guy

</comment><comment><USER11> We don't need better builds for scala. We already have a better scala: Kotlin.

<comment><USER12> Kotlin is a better Java, or simpler Scala. Simpler can be better for plenty of teams, especially for those coming from Java. But I'll not be switching any time soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> SBT - Sucks Big Time | AcronymFinder ([https://www.acronymfinder.com/Sucks- Big-Time-(SBT).html](https://www.acronymfinder.com/Sucks-Big- Time-\(SBT\).html))

</comment><comment><USER14> After 10years of Scala development, SBT is still the largest pain. Compile speed, picking up changes takes many seconds, arcane syntax, magic error messages, fragile configuration files.

Will try mill, I wonder why no other build tools for scala showed up, with SBT being such a pain for many people.

<comment><USER15> We use pants internally. ([https://pantsbuild.org](https://pantsbuild.org)) Comes from Twitter, and - if I understand correctly - based on many of the ideas from Bazel. It's actively maintained and updated.

<comment><USER14> Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you handle copyediting? - <AUTHOR> I'm somewhat interested in getting into the copyediting space, relying on the tenet that coworkers who generally do proofreading and copyediting (besides, of course, in-house editors) are wasting time that could be better spent elsewhere.<p>I recognize that my experience (mainly marketing firms and Big Tech) is tiny and anecdotal.  How do you handle this kind of stuff? <comment><USER2> You can do a lot of copy editing yourself. I recommend you print things out on paper and proofread a couple of times. It is not so hard.

Another trick I use is to get the computer to read the text to me (using mac os's built-in text-to-speech function). It works really great --- you won't be able to find the mistake if you reread, but you will definitely //hear// the mistake.

As for more serious copy editing (my book), I found a freelancer who is going to proofread the entire thing carefully.

You can also try these simple shell scripts which are good for scientific texts: <https://github.com/ivanistheone/writing_scripts>

_________

As for getting into that space, I hear that $20-30/hr is the going rate for copy editing, which is not too exciting. My advice would be to combine your copy-editing-as-a-service offering with another service. Quality control, click counting (is the app/website well organized?) or general feedback for startups.

Copy editing is VERY valuable, but unfortunately most people don't recognize the value so you will have to work hard to convince them that they need you.

Good luck!

<comment><USER3> I also do my own copy editing and printing to paper is my way as well. I find that the physical paper + a highlighter + a pen helps me best. I'm 42 years old and I'd be interested to hear if others who are in their 20s feel the same about paper.

<comment><USER4> I spent the best part of a decade as a journalist, editor and copywriter and I never found a more effective way to edit and proof copy than paper + pen.

And whenever I had freelancers in who insisted that on-screen only was better/faster than on paper for them, I'd let them do it how they wanted, but they invariably spotted fewer mistakes, so not much faster in the long run. Anecdotal, sure, but paper works better in my view.

Edit: I'm 37

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was a copy editor before I was a techie. I found that it did not pay well. This may have partly been because it was in the association publishing world around Washington, DC. I also reached the point where it was boring me, which definitely was because it was in the association publishing world.

It appears to me that the company I knew as Editorial Experts Inc. long ago is now EEI Communications, <http://wwww.eeicom.com>. No doubt other metropolitan areas have such organizations; you might check in with one of them to see what sort of work is out there.

I agree with the other posters on paper and pen. Yet Word with track changes isn't bad.</comment>


Startup Quote: Steve Jobs, Co-founder, Apple - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/9057337917/your-work-is-going-to-fill-a-large-part-of-your

<comment><AUTHOR> Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.

\- Steve Jobs

<http://startupquote.com/post/9057337917/></comment>


Buying shampoo: A cautionary tale about the failure of marketing - <AUTHOR> http://www.andyrutledge.com/buying-shampoo.php

<comment><USER2> I think it's funny that the marketing is the product now and not even the material inside?

Ever look at the back of a generic equivalent of a shampoo now? You see something like this (and read carefully):

 _This product is not manufactured or distributed by BigCorp, distributors of BigBrand Shampoo"_

Okay, so I'm guessing BigCorp doesn't even make their own shampoo anymore either. It's all made in the same plant and everyone just brands it what they want.

</comment><comment><USER3> A consumer who is proud that he can run on autopilot through a store, guided by brand association rather than rational thought? And proud of it? We have truly entered the next phase of consumerism.

<comment><USER4> I don't think it's about autopilot so much as (shampoo) brands missing a market. As a student, I'm an extremely scrupulous grocery shopper. I compare every item by price per unit, and ignore the pretty pictures on the label because I know they are faked anyway.

When I'm shopping for shampoo, I feel just like the guy in the article. My heuristic now is to buy the largest, plainest looking bottle. But I still have to wade through dozens of bottles of specialty shampoos before I can find one that I want. ("Dry Hair" -- do I have dry hair? I don't know. It doesn't _feel_ wet. "Natural Shine"? Is shiny hair _natural_?)

<comment><USER5> Hair is naturally shiny if it is not dry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you just don't care - and it seems to me that when the OP makes purchasing decisions, he just doesn't care about a range of things - then all the marketing in the world won't help. I mean, if you don't take notice of the bottle from whence you apply stuff directly to your head several times a week, are you really going to take more notice to the same bottle on television or in a magazine?

</comment><comment><USER7> The shampoo aisle looks different if you have long hair.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm surprised he knew what brands of running shoes or tomato sauce he wanted. Confronted with a selection of functionally identical boxes at the supermarket or shoe store, I frequently stand stymied for several minutes.

Eventually I realize that there is no efficient choice possible on the basis of packaging, and resort to making selections by unit price--or choosing a randomly distributed sample in hopes of remembering the results.

<comment><USER9> For tomato sauce, I use the ingredients list to differentiate.

<comment><USER3> Which is also something you might want to consider when buying Shampoo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think we're interpreting this wrongly - this sounds like a piece of satire about consumerism and how marketing companies see their job and consumers. "Marketing trumps product quality, consumers operate solely on impulse, are insecure and clueless and don't care about price. It's Marketing's job to tell consumers what they need, without us they are lost!"

</comment><comment><USER11> I look at ads to know what products are available (i.e. not at all), and then always buy the store's own brand. I can never tell the difference from usage, and its way cheaper

</comment><comment><USER12> When I shop for shampoo I look for two things: unscented, cheap as possible.

What cares what brand it is?

<comment><USER13> caring what brand it is helps when you have a hundred different kinds of shampoo to pick from. So me. I care what brand.

That said, all I want from the brand is to know they make decent shampoo that does the job without poisoning me, and offer unscented cheap shampoo. Their brand is simply a way for me to identify an easily locatable subset of shampoo that I can trust will posses a bottle meeting my desires.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder if he's ever tried to buy orange juice.

<comment><USER15> Tropicana branding disaster: [http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/pepsi_ta...](http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/pepsi_takes_the_tropic_out_of.php) and [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/business/media/23adcol.htm...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/business/media/23adcol.html)</comment></comment>


One-Line jQuery Trump-Blocker - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/thisisbrians/da5d4c6e5291b9b47b4d <comment><AUTHOR> Threw this together as a hack after I was joking about it with a coworker.

To anyone with browser plugin dev experience: I'd love to know how easy it would be to package this and make it usable.</comment>


Equifax Lobbied to Kill Rule Protecting Victims of Data Breaches - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/equifax-lobbied-kill-rule-protecting-victims-data-breaches-2587929 <comment><USER2> Wow if anything this is quite worse than the article says.

You can read Equifax's original letter in all of its Orwellian double-speak: [https://www.regulations.gov/contentStreamer?documentId=CFPB-...](https://www.regulations.gov/contentStreamer?documentId=CFPB-2016-0020-3961&attachmentNumber=1&contentType=pdf)

It's absolutely shocking to me how many times they use the words "serve the public interest".

The sell-out that wrote that letter btw is this guy: [https://www.cov.com/en/professionals/s/david- stein](https://www.cov.com/en/professionals/s/david-stein)

<comment><USER3> _The sell-out that wrote that letter btw is this guy:_

I don't think it's a good idea to post someone's personal information in such a flippant way. He's not a public official and the whole point here is to witch hunt him. It comes up with his name, phone number and email address.

<comment><USER4> He's a lobbyist. Every interaction he has with the government is a matter of public record. If he felt he didn't want that information public then he shouldn't be a lobbyist.

<comment><USER3> Posting the document is fine. Posting a link to his contact page while calling him a sellout is probably overstepping. The sole reason for posting the second link is to say "Look at this person. Isn't he horrible? Here's his name, phone number and email address."

HN is almost a top-500 website by traffic. A lot of people come here. How likely is it that people here will start harassing him just because it's easy? His info is right there.

<comment><USER5> If posting the document is fine - which you didn't read - then posting a link to his corporate bio is fine. It is in the effing document. It is already public record.

<comment><USER3> I'm well aware. There's a major distinction between someone's info being in a document vs linking to his info with "This guy is a sellout:"

This post is currently #1 on HN. The comment is the top comment. That means all of HN's traffic that reads comments is going to that person's contact info.

If you don't agree, just downvote and move on. Personal swipes are unnecessary.

<comment><USER6> I have to admit, this is some top-level concern trolling.

Judging by his public record, the guy _is_ a sellout, and it is 100% OK to call him out as such. If he didn't want his contact info to be public, he should not have put it online. Since he did, it is, again, 100% OK for people to link to it. That's the entire friggin purpose of a contact page!

<comment><USER3> I like how I was immediately called a concern troll after saying personal swipes are unnecessary.

<comment><USER7> The parent didn't call you a concern troll, though. They said "this is some top-level concern trolling". Criticizing behaviour is not the same thing as name calling or personal swipes.

<comment><USER3> "Concern troll: a person who disingenuously expresses concern about an issue with the intention of undermining or derailing genuine discussion."

Yep, that's name calling. It's also poisonous to the discussion. It's not "criticizing behavior" when I wasn't doing it.

More importantly, it makes for boring reading. You can see how unproductive the conversation became.

But whatever. Just have thick skin, right? We can't simply expect people to be civil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Perhaps the world would be a better place if Equifax went out of business. The other two members of the oligarchy could easily shoulder the load.

<comment><USER9> There's more than just 3 credit agencies, it's just that those three are the most reliable of them for credit reports. Given all the complications people have with even those three, it really doesn't say much for the rest of the industry.

The odd thing is, I never had to worry about this stuff in the UK. There's no notion of a credit score or centralised credit agencies that I needed to worry about. Most loan etc interactions take place with your existing financial institutions who already have your information on record.

<comment><USER10> There definitely are credit ratings in the UK! Try taking out a new credit card or loan or even getting a phone on contract -- they will almost always run a credit report check.

Just Google "UK free credit report" \-- there are websites like Noddle that will show you your report for free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Question. Can't we just let this company die? Do we really need a new law created by congress (EG HIPAA 2.0). Wont this just destroy the ability to create startups quickly? I understand it will help lawyers get fat and happy, but enforcing 'privacy' laws would be a trolling circus.

<comment><USER12> Do I really want a startup doing this stuff? Iterate fast and break things? I would rather just have a heavily regulated industry with a lot of checks and balances handle very important data like this. Why could you even access the core databases from the front end? Why isn't the data on completely separate server where all queries are completely scrubbed and verified?

<comment><USER11> Heavily regulated like: airlines, healthcare, public schools, prisons and drugs?

<comment><USER12> Air travel is pretty safe.

<comment><USER13> That and if an airline has a major crash, there is a high probability they'll be out of business relatively soon, or forced to acquire a new brand.

* Pan Am had two 747 crashes in 11 years. Flight 103 & Flight 1736 (Tenerife) although the airline was not directly to blame for either crash.

* TWA 800 (along with 9/11) led to the collapse of airline.

* Valuejet 592 crashed in Florida in 1996, grounded for several months, and then merged with Airtran Airlines in 1997.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Well, I think if you compromise the identities and credit files of 150m+ Americans, "full disgorgement of revenue" is a fair punishment.

</comment><comment><USER15> I wonder if this act can be used in court to demonstrate intent to remain negligent? The idea being that they lobbied for this because they had decided to not invest in better security.

</comment><comment><USER16> This type of behaviour shouldn't be surprising at all. Corporations are, on the average, amoral -- a result of human group behaviour. As with wild animals, one doesn't get mad at them for following their instincts -- yet, one shouldn't hesitate to carry a gun lest they themselves become lunch.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for the grounding simile.

Everyone gives something to take part in and benefit by society. Corporations form, and seem to refund to their members all that they gave and occasionally more. We do not measure the externalities well, only the benefits. An externality estimator would be a great economic tool, does anyone know of one?

<comment><USER16> Some might say that this is a function of government -- that is, the collective will of society forcing corporations and/or individuals to take into account otherwise hidden externalities. Though this is a somewhat contentious view, it makes sense to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I will like to know what's the ethical standards of the people that are trying to push for this legislations. Do they realize that they can be victims themselves of this kind of abuse? I guess that it's the tragedy of the commons. They can suffer the consequences, but they are ripping all the benefits.

When I say the Ferengi* in Star Trek, I found it hilariously unrealistic. Nowadays the possibility of corporations with rights but without responsibility is a scary possible future. Reality can surpass fiction.

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

</comment><comment><USER19> so i have been sort of monitoring this equifax thing. yesterday or the day before i was thinking "let's see what the aftermath brings to light"...

let's reflect for a moment: biggest leak of personal data of us citizens - right after the opm debacle. the same company funds strategies detriment to its customers.

i bet everybody feels like it can't get any worse.

i'm not very old, limited experience but i will predict, brace yourselves, this will go on and on. _nothing_ will change because people don't fucking care and the minority who does care does not have the electorial power it needs to change this system.

i'm waiting for the same thing to happen in germany. it's even worse here because virtually only one company has the monopoly over private credit ratings. everybody is annoyed and _nobody_ cares. we have major elections this month and all those sheep will vote safe.

this is going to be fun. good luck over there, friends.

</comment><comment><USER20> that place is evil.

Mister Burns style evil.

evil should be punished not rewarded.

(i am already familiar with the phrases: all corporations are like that. everyone is doing it.)

</comment><comment><USER21> I had my identity stolen 10 years ago. 6 months ago I finally had the last of it wrapped up. I hope. It was a miserable experience that costs a ridiculous amount of time, money, and effort to clean up. And it seemed completely random.

This breach is likely worse than anyone can predict. It could lead to a near unlimited amount of identities for organized crime groups.

To illustrate, my wait times on the phone to the IRS was usually between 1-3 hours(during off-peak seasons too).

At this point it might be worth scrapping the social security system and switching to private keys.

</comment><comment><USER22> Boy, the IBTimes has always been a terrible place to read articles, especially with its autoplaying videos, but now when you scroll down (after having stopped the video of course) it inexplicably jumps to the lower right corner of the screen and then PULLS the article to the top of the screen where the video used to be. So while you're reading and scrolling, the article just jumps away from you and you lose your place.

Incredible. How anyone thought this is good web design is beyond me. Then again, IBTimes has always been a really shitty place for journalism overall.

</comment><comment><USER23> I selfishly prefer that we limit the damages that can be sought from businessss by victims of cyber crime. I don't have the resources and capability to fight against state sponsored hackers, neither does the NSA, any major corporation or anyone on HN. It would be nice to know that I won't be risking jail or bankrupting my company by bringing my services to market. The call to arms to punish these companies can have far reaching ramifications on the cost of services and ones willingness on the margin to build them.

</comment><comment><USER24> Well you can't say lobbying doesn't have great ROI.</comment>


Show HN: Thread – Ad-free social networking and iMessage alternative - <AUTHOR> https://get.thread-app.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN,

I'm Daniel, founder of Thread.

I started Thread two months ago because I believe current social media and social networks are built in a way that harms our ability to meaningfully connect with one another. They're highly addictive, superficial, and socially isolating. They also run a reputation of violating user privacy and selling it to third parties.

I strongly believe in ad-free, private social networking as an alternative. It's all about building and maintaining relationships with the people closest to you. If this sounds interesting, please try out the app! It's still very early, beta software.

On pricing: I think advertising is out of the question. It's a strong misalignment of incentives in trying to deliver long term value for end users. I have some ideas here, but the most obvious thing that comes to mind is a subscription based service (say ~$10/year).

I would love to hear your feedback (questions, comments, suggestions) on what I'm building.

Reach out to me personally at firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><USER2> [https://get.thread-app.com/privacy-policy/](https://get.thread- app.com/privacy-policy/)

We may disclose personal information to: ... third parties, including agents or sub-contractors, who assist us in providing information, products, services or direct marketing to you.

There's no marketing in iMessage, certainly not based on the things I type into iMessage.

Also, to be clear, "marketing" is advertising. You say "ad-free" but then you give yourself the right to advertise.

There's also nothing I can find about end-to-end encryption, which is one of the best features of iMessage. I almost exclusively use iMessage because I know Apple isn't spying on me. When friends message me on Instagram, I reply in iMessage.

<comment><AUTHOR> Founder here.

This is great feedback. My interpretation of the clause is that we can use services like Mailchimp to send you marketing materials for when we release new products and features. These would be strictly opt-in.

I'm not a legal expert, but I will try to come up with a policy that more clearly expresses that you will NOT receive marketing about third-party services and our only usage of these services would be to update you all on our new product offerings.

We're considering offering E2E encryption, but we believe that we can deliver a ton of value by allowing users to search through their messages and for us to efficiently organize and categorize your content. I think there is a middle ground where we can encrypt non-pertinent data, but still preserve metadata so we can provide some intelligence on top of the content you choose to share on the platform.

<comment><USER3> > I'm not a legal expert, but I will try to come up with a policy that more > clearly expresses that you will NOT receive marketing about third-party > services and our only usage of these services would be to update you all on > our new product offerings.

You do not need to be a legal expert to state this in your policy in plain language.

Examples:

"We will collect your contact information for the purpose of updating you about this product."

"We will not collect analytic data."

"If this policy changes, you will be notified 60 days before data collection begins."

You do not need to predicate openness and honesty on legal expertise.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed.

It now reads: "We may disclose personal information to: third parties, including agents or sub-contractors, who assist us in sending direct marketing about our new products and features"

What I meant about legal expertise is that we don't want to be in violation of our privacy policy if we decide to use tools to understand our users better, or if we decide to email users about new products and features. Which is why I left some room in the privacy policy to enable such features.

<comment><USER4> > _We may disclose personal information_

This alone will be enough of a deal breaker for privacy nuts, such as myself. If I'm going to use your service, you just champion privacy. This means no marketing gimmicks.

Sorry. For me this comes no way close to being an iMessage alternative. Even if you become a privacy champion, you still need to expect us to trust your servers, which is a tricky thing without end to end encryption.

Maybe an alternate model is to get funding from big corporate sponsorship and have a distributed network that could be hosted on our own droplets (using open source, of course). You can then have a paid hosted saas for those not technically ready to self host. Until there's a solution out there that does just that, I'm very unlikely to bite.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah - I don't see Thread as the right product for privacy nuts, as you refer to yourself. There are better services for that, like Signal.

I imagine Thread as a company that focuses more on delivering products that allow people to build more meaningful relationships and connections in a way that benefits their long term mental/social health. I believe we can do that in a way that delivers an 80/20 on privacy too, by not using targeted advertising, and having 0 incentives to sell your data.

If you're not willing to trust our servers, I don't think the product is right for you. Hopefully we build trust as a company that does right by our users in the long run, unlike what I'm seeing from companies today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some blunt questions for you:

iMessage doesn't have ads (and honestly i cannot see it ever changing), but it does have one hell of an ecosystem. Why is yours better?

How do you propose to enter a very crowded space and get enough users to pay you keep the lights on when every alternative is free?

If you're actually a WhatsApp alternative instead of an iMessage alternative, why are you better than Signal? It's free, and they're a nonprofit with a warchest and really, truly no incentive to keep any metadata about you at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. We're not restricted to the Apple ecosystem. A majority of the world's users are on Android. There's a lot of evidence that the exclusivity of iMessage is causing anxiety and stress in certain social circles: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20715188](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20715188)

2\. We plan to offer a very different kind of product than "simple secure messaging" (WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram). We want to truly capture meaningful, social interactions beyond just quick messages. I want to build a service that better ties in event planning, payment splitting, and location sharing into your groups. An experience like Google photos where you can build shared albums in your groups. One where sharing music and videos feels natural and you can have "shared" experiences. We plan to integrate with a ton of third parties to offer intelligence on top of your messages (restaurant ratings, flight tracking, etc).

3\. We want to build a better platform on top of messaging. Plugins and bots are pretty useless right now. We think we can offer apps and services that live in your conversations in really meaningful ways. It will be strictly opt- in, so users are choosing which services they want to integrate with.

We're starting with messaging because that's the starting point for meaningful group interactions, but I don't see anyone else in the space filling the gap for the things I mentioned.

<comment><USER6> > We plan to integrate with a ton of third parties to offer intelligence on > top of your messages

You need to be _real_ careful about how you do this, and be mindful of this not becoming a privacy leaking side channel

<comment><USER7> I agree, everyone loves giphy, and talking to bots... or using custom Slack / Discord commands, but those are opt-in and predictable. Anything beyond that would be dangerous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like the effort, but honestly there's tons of apps that are cross-platform, free, and can do everything imessages can, but better. Telegram is just one example.

I see adoption as a biggest problem. I personally tried to migrate to Telegram and failed to convince even my own wife to give it a try, since imessages work for her and all her friends are there and why bother.

<comment><USER9> Definitely the biggest problem is adoption.

My friends/coworkers aren't just going to jump onto another app just for a cooler feature. We use Messenger and everything is just fine. If we need to we can use Venmo/Calendar invite and that's it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks interesting. I see there's web for desktop use, but have you considered bringing the iOS app to Mac with Catalyst?

<comment><AUTHOR> We'd probably go more cross platform with something like Electron. It makes sense given our heavy React stack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Thread works seamlessly on iOS, Android, and web browsers. We're not a > walled garden.

There isn't an API, data export, or a way to spin up my own Thread server. Thread is a walled garden.

Additionally, I can't find a way to delete my account.

<comment><AUTHOR> Shoot me an email at email@example.com with your account details and we'll get your account deleted.

I don't believe average users gain much from federated, distributed, decentralized services (after you factor in the cost and limitations of such systems), but we'll consider it if there's a lot of demand.

There's a long road ahead of building trust with users, but I think if we're intentional about being the most open, transparent social networking company, we can build that trust with our actions and track record.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I appreciate the effort but as a person who has quit all social media, these more intimate, private spaces are served by messengers. For me, specifically, it's Telegram and it does an absolutely bang up job of it.

You're going to be outstripped in sheer features here to say nothing of stickers, round videos, the upcoming transaction layer in the TON, bots for pretty much everything, so on and so forth.

Social media is just a name for "broadcast widely", which has never been my interest. Messengers are that smaller scale.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your input. I've never been really satisfied with the level of interaction of messengers. They usually end up as a firehose of short messages, where everything meaningful and important is lost in the noise. It's good for quick notifications, for sure.

What I'm imagining, for the types of things that I like to do with friends and family, is more oriented around long term social interactions. This means being able to plan and view events, view and split payments, and build a persistent group album -- to start. When I'm sharing videos, music, or recommendations, I don't want it to get lost as soon as it reaches the top of the screen.

This is where messaging falls short and I believe it can be supplemented by a lot of the features of traditional social networks.

<comment><USER13> Did you ever use the short lived social network site from Microsoft (I think)? It was designed as a room that people shared and you could post messages and photos and play music that everybody would hear.

I don't remember the name, but I think it had a number in it.

<comment><USER14> Was it Google Wave?

[https://support.google.com/answer/1083134?hl=en](https://support.google.com/answer/1083134?hl=en)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What's the reasoning for tying my account to a phone number? Personally it's a huge turn-off for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. If you need to reset your pw at any point, we need either your email or phone number. We don't ask for your email. A phone number is most likely tied to a real person.

2\. It's a unique identifier that allows you to add your existing contacts more easily. It's much more convenient than trying to figure out the usernames of all your friends and family.

3\. It's harder to automate creation of users by requiring a valid phone number, versus usernames (and potentially even email).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> On the surface, it looks similar to Telegram groups. What are the differences?

</comment><comment><USER17> Isn't Facebook starting a communication product called Thread?

</comment><comment><USER18> Do you have stickers?

Furries aren't going to touch your service without stickers and they seem to be running the internet these days.</comment>


Core competencies of great hackers - <AUTHOR> http://giraffesoft.ca/blog/2009/03/10/4-core-competencies-of-great-hackers.html <comment><USER4> Typing speed? Not sure how much code people here write per hour, but I doubt typing speed is a real issue (the ratio of my staring at the screen thinking versus coding is probably 10:1).

<comment><USER5> Typing speed is important for the reason the article mentions -- micro- interruptions. Most of the time, you just have to type a few words, and the editor will complete the rest for you. Fine. But a lot of the time, you are typing a symbol for the first time, and autocompletion doesn't really help. It breaks your flow if you can't type this symbol quickly and correctly the first time. (It is also worth pointing out that I can type most words faster than it would take to cycle through potential expansion candidates, so I only use it for moderately-long identifiers. Abbreviation expansion becomes less of a time saver when you learn to type more quickly.)

Anyway, a few months ago, I decided I would learn to properly touch-type (and increase my typing speed). It was very difficult at first -- I couldn't type at all, and even simple programming made me really mad. A few months later, I can type significantly faster, and I make many fewer errors. (As an aside, I don't think touch-typing was really designed for programmers. All the important symbols end up under your pinkys, which is not very comfortable. So I compromise and type some symbols like ()- with my ring-finger. This probably reduces speed, but it doesn't hurt my hand.)

The common response to typing is "programming is not about typing, it's about thinking". Sure, that's mostly true. Nobody expects you to sustain 120 wpm typing for eight hours a day. But, it's very helpful to type quickly in bursts, to get your ideas in to code form as quickly as possible. Sketching out that idea in 2 minutes instead of 3 means that your brain has more time to think about the problem, and has to waste less of its time babysitting your fingers. I know I get mad when my typing speed is delaying me from trying an idea as quickly as possible. That's why I decided to do something about it.

I'm glad I spent the time to practice typing. It has made programming and writing more enjoyable, and didn't take much time or effort at all. The dismissive attitude of "programming doesn't require typing skills" is extremely naive.

<comment><USER4> _The dismissive attitude of "programming doesn't require typing skills" is extremely naive._

Shrug... Well I say that because that's my experience. I've never really been concerned with micro-interruptions. I guess I'm surprised this bothers people so much (It's the macro interruptions that hurt me more). I've been in situations where I've been unable to type (or type quickly). I learnt and grew as a coder more in those times that any other - so a different experience really.

So, yeah, typing is great. It's a very handy skill to have. It probably helps a coder a lot, and it's a good thing to know. However, I don't think it makes you a better coder.

<comment><USER6> You're wrong. Learn to type well and then come back and tell us it didn't make you a better programmer.

If you don't know how to type, then you're wasting brain cycles looking for keys when you have to type, cycles that would otherwise be spent thinking up good identifiers and nice function names. Not knowing how to type also means you'll choose terse identifiers rather than clear ones because it's too much work typing longer names.

Typing well is a critical skill for a programmer and the only programmers who don't think so are the ones who can't type.

<comment><USER7> Do you really spend that much time typing? I spend most time thinking :/

Obviously there's a lower bound, if you have to look at the keyboard then you probably need to improve, but the importance of being able to touch type perfectly is overplayed.

Do all authors _need_ to learn short-hand?

<comment><USER8> More like "do all authors need to learn longhand? Printed lettering is fast enough".

<comment><USER7> I don't think even printed lettering would necessarily make you a bad author would it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> These things aren't really enough. They're more of "things you need to know be a computer hobbyist". I did put together a quick list once -- for an HN post asking what should someone learn as undergrad if they wish to be a web developer -- of things I'd prefer a back-end developer that I would hire to know:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=499880>

Of course, knowing these things (or really, knowing _anything_ ) doesn't make you a hacker quite yet, it's a title one earns within a community by contributing to it. As cliche as it is, "how to become a hacker" covers this part:

<http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#status>

<comment><USER10> Thanks, I was hoping people would add to that list - and certainly wasn't claiming that covering those 4 skills would make you a hacker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Visual Studio is a very powerful editor. Everything that you can do in Visual Studio through menus you can do through the keyboard. In fact you can setup visual studio to use emacs shortcuts ( <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ms165509(VS.80).aspx> ) and I'm sure it exists for Vim and etc.

People who believe the tools make the hacker are naive at best and would probably think the person with the best shoes wins the race. Not true when it comes down to it, the person driving those tools, whether they can type 60 wpm or use Emacs, is the one who is responsible for the creativity and output.

I think the author needs to step back and see if his priorities are in the right spot.

<comment><USER12> The article was pointing out correlations, nothing more.

<comment><USER13> "We haven't met a single great hacker that relied on an IDE, although we hear they exist."

The implication here is completely in the negative.

Further, it's like saying "If you want to be a hacker, use English measuring units because we've never any met any great hackers who use the metric system."

Just because a bunch of rails hackers don't use an IDE doesn't imply the contrapositive.

<comment><USER10> I hear they exist, I've just never met them. That could be my sampling bias. None of the people around me relying on IDEs are great hackers.

Instead of arguing about what might have been implied in what I wrote, I'd rather you introduced me to people you consider great hackers that use an IDE. Know any?

<comment><USER13> The people who I work with whom I regard as great hackers work almost exclusively in the real time embedded space (industrial automation systems) and don't have web notoriety.

Slightly more prominent individuals could include Ted Neward (<http://blogs.tedneward.com>), Joe Duffy (<http://www.bluebytesoftware.com/blog/default.aspx>), James Devlin([http://www.codingthewheel.com/archives/how-i-built-a- working...](http://www.codingthewheel.com/archives/how-i-built-a-working- poker-bot)), and Dustin Campbell (<http://diditwith.net>)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> One of my early mentors taught me that "it's not how fast you type but what you type" that matters.

I think his lengthy career as a journalist, designer, photographer, M$ engineer, Apple engineer and Google Engineer have proven him correct.

The analogy with understanding/familiarity with your tools is weak. The only important tool for an engineer is his brain.

(PS I abhor the term hacker)

<comment><USER15> > The analogy with understanding/familiarity with your tools is weak. The only > important tool for an engineer is his brain.

But, an engineer with a great brain and no tools, is weaker. One must communicate thoughts and ideas in order to be great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well. I type 100-120 wpm, use Emacs, use primarily FAR or cmd.exe (bash in *nix), and prefer not to debug. I suck though.

Apparently, these four things are not enough to be a great hacker. What I seem to lack is the mental capacity to clearly see problem out of the box as my friends (great hackers) do so I have to use all the tools I can to keep up.

it's the kind of sober, relaxed look at a problem that I think separates great from mediocre. The relaxedness and calmness with which hackers attack problems -- most people I know and myself would be anxious and pissed off about a problem. Hackers on the other hand are comfortable and relaxed with problems, seeing them as something, that is fun to solve. They are like cats who play with the mice before they catch the prey; they are confident in their ability to solve the problem, and completely free of tension or stress.

I have that some of the time but very very rarely and I can say, no editor can even come to the performance-enhancive qualities of Zen-like centering.

</comment><comment><USER13> \- Type fast - Use Linux - Use TextMate/VI/emacs - Don't read documentation

Sounds like "Core competencies of ruby on rails hackers"

<comment><USER17> Well, it's more "Core competencies of hackers in the C/C++/UNIX/Scripting/Web tradition."

Most of the great Windows hackers I know use Visual Studio. Most of the great Java hackers use IntelliJ. Of course, people in the UNIX/web tradition would probably not admit that great hackers exist in those cultures, but they've put out some pretty impressive software...

Also - I suspect that great UNIX/web hackers don't use IDEs because the IDEs for those languages _suck_. I work on a C++ web team. If you glance around our monitors, everyone has the same setup: 4-6 terminals, 3-5 emacs/vim windows open, and Firefox. The funny thing is, many of us are ex-Java programmers, and we all used either IntelliJ or Eclipse in our Java programming days. And would love to use something like IntelliJ for C++, but we took one look at the C++ support in Eclipse and ran back to vim.

<comment><USER18> As a data point, I have Firefox building under Eclipse/C++ reasaonably well. I had to hack the Eclipse project files to tell it where all the headers were (arguably more a fault of the Mozilla build system), but since then it's worked surprisingly well. I'm under the impression that Eclipse's C++ support had improved substantially in the last year, although I can't say for sure, since this was the first time I'd used it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "We haven't met a single great hacker that relied on an IDE, although we hear they exist. " -- fcuk you. Really. Just an over generalization/stereotyping at its worst.

I am a good hacker, and yes I use an IDE (eclipse to be exact). I have to code java for living (mobile), and I think I am one of the earliest developers in java, and i used to use Textpad, and Vim at my early days. I guess, in your eyes that makes me a "better developer", but the truth is that some IDEs really make your life easier. Much easier.

In mobile you have to re-invent the wheel over and over again. From UI, to basic things as a string tokenizer, and it is impossible to memorize everything (some of your team memebers implement different functionalities). IDE's auto completions are very very useful. Also the refactoring facilities and debuging tools are really useful.

I do use Vim for programming in LUA (does it make me cool?), and I really miss a lot of these tools. Simple things like variable highlighting, jump to definition are missing, and it makes the code a pain to read (especially if it s not yours). If you decide to change a variable name, good luck, you have to do string search/replace, and the potential for errors is huge.

While a good programmer HAS to be comfortable and good in command line, just because they use an IDE doesn't make them less of a people.

And the best programmers I have had the chance to work with used IDEs. These guys implemented a LUA VM in J2ME from scratch, in a couple of months.

I have noticed that this really shallow and douchebag-y attitude comes from people that use mostly Ruby. It seems that in their eyes, if you don't use Ruby and textmate, you suck.

But really, fcuk you.

<comment><USER20> I think you missed the rely upon part.

Also, I think the main point of what you quoted is that the additional level of abstraction does more harm that it does good when it comes to hacking, not everyday 9-5 in the office type programming.

As I mentioned a bit earlier in this thread, people are confusing programmer and hacker. The two terms are not synonymous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This should just be titled "Tools used by people with great hacker egos but may or may not actually be great hackers", because these are _not_ predictors of great hackers.

<comment><USER22> > While I won't claim that learning these 4 skills will make you a great > hacker, it seems unlikely you can become one without them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I confess I just didn't read this - 'core competencies' came up on my watch list as almost surely spam.

And if typing speed is more relevant than thinking depth then I probably made the right decision in that Gladwell blink moment.

In another recent HN post, several people had a similar reaction to "shop" as in 'work for a great ruby shop'...

Heres a partial list of non-sequiturs - six sigma isoN000{0} skillset core competencies coder java [ contentious, I know, C++ is borderline ] loc - <USER2> of code metrics / kpis candidate coordinate role leadership deliverables

Competency is particularly insidious - being merely competent rules out any kind of real craftsmanship, or "Xen and the art of Motorcycle maintenance" connection to the thing your doing. If your competent, you've checked a box, and thats the wrong reason to do anything.

Am I overreacting?

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't want to start a war but I'd say that this list is about the differences between a Windows VS Linux developer. The thing behind what is said is "get your eyes off of the nice UI. Look and type code".

<comment><USER25> Every "hacker" I've met either:

Doesn't use windows.

Uses the tools listed in the article on windows. (well, windows equivalents anyhow)

I think the message was more of "Know your tools, know them well. Know them, and what they are capable of so that you may wield them to their fullest potential". For software, this involves reading the source when it's available.

<comment><USER17> Could that be because you exclude Windows hackers from your definition of "hacker"?

I know some folks on the Google Toolbar team. I don't use Toolbar, and neither do any of my friends. It's desktop software, and desktop software for Windows, so I mostly ignore it.

But their installed base is _huge_. I'd wager that if you added up the combined user base of every Web2.0 startup _mentioned_ on this site, you still wouldn't equal the number of Google Toolbar users worldwide. Are they still hackers?

FWIW, they use Visual Studio.

<comment><USER26> Exactly, and look at IE6... combine the amount of every web 1.0 startup's VC funding and you wouldn't have the number of users that used IE6.

AND they used Visual Studio.

Userbase != great hackers

<comment><USER27> IE6 was good.

It was a genuinely better browser than the competition. The problem isn't that IE6 wasn't a good browser - it's that IE6 was a great browser in 2001. But in 2009 - it's not really up to scratch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> In fact you could condense all of these into "know your tools extremely well", and you can take it further to "optimize yourself/your environment relentlessly".

I've known great hackers who used Eclipse, sam, acme, Brief, UltraEdit and everything under the sun.

Working with someone who doesn't know their chosen tools (people who use menus to work their editor, hand edit things instead of using sed/awk/perl, etc) is extremely painful, and seeing someone profess to use a tool but not operate it well is a huge warning sign to me. Same with slow typists: pair programming with such sucks.

</comment><comment><USER29> Great hackers create great works from within, not from their tools or their environment. Their core competencies are things like relentless self- improvement, not the use of a particular editor or a particular OS.

The author's list of core competencies (fast typing, command line, vim, Linux) sounds more like a list of cultural traits.

</comment><comment><USER30> The point about text editors is absurd. One because comparing TextMate to vim or emacs is almost apples and oranges. And secondly because writing something Java without completions is going to be horrendously slow just because of all the arcane function and property names.

<comment><USER31> To me it's kind of a weird arbitrary divide to make. All the text editors mentioned offer IDE like functionality at various levels. They help you with various kinds of auto-complete, context sensitive help, etc. etc. Where is the line that when crossed makes it an IDE an not an editor?

To be fair to the author though, the phrase was "rely on an IDE", not "use an IDE" which is a little different.

I think a more valid way to look at it is that great hackers tend to use highly advanced editors and they totally own them from top to bottom - <USER3> they are in an IDE or not. That might just mean that they have a completely customized eclipse setup and know every hotkey extension innately or (like myself) use powerful editor plugins like viPlugin to ratchet up the productivity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I feel that this article is the sort I would not like to see on HN, because it can't teach anything to hackers. As seen by the discussion it elicited, it's just starting a write-only conversation with many elements of a flame war.

</comment><comment><USER33> There are no great Smalltalk hackers?

Great hackers don't use IDEs: they write them.

<comment><USER6> Glad someone else noticed that glaring oversight. If you haven't met a great hacker who doesn't use emacs/vim/textmate, then you need to get out more, you're a sheltered child.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> "Let's not pick editor fights: the only 3 editors we know to be used by great hackers are TextMate, vim and emacs. The most productive hackers will often customize their editor heavily."

I think this is rather ignorant... eclipse >> vim or emacs. What's a hacker anyway? Presumably, they are talking about someone who writes code and IDEs make writing code easier.

</comment><comment><USER35> I completely disagree with all four points. A hacker can only use TextMate, vim, or emacs? You kidding me? And who writes code at more than 60 wpm -- writing code is a thinking sport, not a race to the finish.

Diving into a large codebase can be important for certain hackers, but honestly this sounds like a skill moreso needed for corporate programmers ...

</comment><comment><USER36> So if I learn these things, will I miraculously be transformed into a great hacker? Or will I have wasted my time, while others spent the same time launching several profitable web sites with Ruby on Rails?

</comment><comment><USER37> I'd take problem solving ability and creativity over typing speed any day, but one area where typing speed seems to help is for live coding or instructing others...

</comment><comment><USER38> well coding is not part of being a 'great hacker' according to this list... but the text editor you are using is part of it... Im not convinced to say the least, the word 'poser' comes to my mind, not sure why

</comment><comment><USER39> John Carmack has always used the VC++ IDE. I rest my case.

</comment><comment><USER40> grow up

</comment><comment><USER20> Think the article should have been titled

"Core Competencies of Coders"

I expected something that would include, at the very least, Algorithms and Data Structures.

Software Construction is not the sole realm of the Hacker.

coder!=hacker

Coding is not the sole realm of Software Construction.

It is too bad that so many people totally mix concepts up like that, playing fast and loose with synonyms in that manner is like wearing a sign saying "I am an ignorant two bit tech person in a hurry"

Say, what about Cray, when he toggled an entire OS (that he designed) into a machine (that he designed) through the front panel switches, in Octal? AND IT WORKED.

Crappy programmer, can't type x number of wpm.

ROFLMAO

EDIT (now that I paused for breath)

Worse programmer even, for not USING A KEYBOARD

ROFLMAO</comment>


Two Google employees say management is punishing them for organizing walkout - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/23/18512413/google-employees-walkout-organizers-retaliation-punishment <comment><USER2> Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19720753](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19720753)

Alternate source: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19725623](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19725623)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I didn't see the other thread.

Hey mods, please go ahead and kill mine. Turns out it wasn't needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The ethics council was ended so ... it would seem to follow that there would be less work on AI ethics in some way wouldn't it?

It's hard to know what is going on in detail.

<comment><USER4> Is there also less work for YouTube Marketing?

<comment><USER5> If the marketing being done was using AI to help focus it, maybe. It's hard to say without more detail.

<comment><USER4> What makes you think that job of the second person in TFA has anything to do with AI?

<comment><USER5> I got my stories mixed up. This is about the harassment walkout at the end of last year. For some reason I thought this was all about the ethics board and it's dismantlement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "The decision to abandon the council was made as employees criticized the inclusion of the president of the conservative Heritage Foundation. "

Note that TheVerge does not name Kay Cole James. Ms. James served as Virginia Secretary of Health and Human Resources under then-Governor George Allen and was the dean of Regent University's government school. She is currently a member of the NASA Advisory Council. She is the president and founder of the Gloucester Institute, a leadership training center for young African Americans.

In other words, she is eminently qualified. Yet Meredith Whittaker organized people against her because she disagrees with her politics.

Ms. James has not one incident on record where she caused harm to anyone. She is merely the head of a conservative think-tank.

Diversity of thought is very important. I feel little sympathy for the trouble-causers.

</comment><comment><USER7> I can't say I'm surprised. People tend to forget that corporations are run by humans and give them free reign to act like monsters.

Hopefully these two can push through and create the change they want.

</comment><comment><USER8> As a manager, would you want an activist person that rails against bad company practices/policy, or a more docile person who only focusses on day-to-day work?</comment>


Tableau stock down almost 50% - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ADATA <comment><USER3> Tableau is a good product. I use it daily. There simply is no better alternative for quick ad-hoc, enterprise-level, intuitive graph and dashboard making.

I've been at large orgs where we evaluated all the cloud services like Mixpanel and the ilk, but they are very different use cases.

Tableau + Redshift (or Vertica but Redshift is way less expensive) is the typical BI tech stack. When I go a client or a new job and ask them what they use for analysis and if they say "Good Data" or "MicroStrategy", I know my job will be a pain in the ass to get done. Its as if you're interviewing for an engineering job and they say "oh we all use NotePad here". Its night and day in terms of productivity.

I don't know what this means in terms of the stock, but all I can say is that I vouch for the product and think it has a lot of room to grow (from a BI perspective).

<comment><USER4> Tableau is a great product but with a high price stigma. I really like it, when clients asking for recommendation my first answer is Tableau. They like the product and the features but the reaction is always the same: nice, but it's too expensive for us, we'll go with PowerBI. Competing with Microsoft is a tough game.

<comment><USER5> It's not PowerBI they are competing with. It's Qlikview. Their biggest issue is that Qlikview is viral: you can use the evaluation version ("personal edition") for as long as you want, but it has restrictions. With Tableau, you get a 15 day trial. Consequently, it gets used in businesses for small data projects, gets seen to be really effective, then the business realises it's effective and buys licenses.

Tableau isn't SAP, it just isn't. If they want to really get into businesses, then they need to be sensible and give people the opportunity to use it and then get it into the businesses they work in.

For instance, I used Tableau to learn it for the 15 days they gave me, and I learned quite a lot as they have great documentation, but then after the 15 days I got no more opportunities to go through their tutorials. Partially I got busy on other things and wanted to revisit it after a few days, but I also setup SQL Server SSAS which took me a bit of time. I got a maximum of about 5 days usage, after that there's no point having it on my workstation as it's far too expensive for me to justify buying a copy.

If I could have had more time with the product, I guess I'd know how good it is so I can recommend it to the business I work at. Unfortunately, I can't without cracking their trial limit code, which I'm just not prepared to do. For now, I guess I'll be recommending Qlikview which is a known quantity and very good also, though nowhere near as intuitive.

<comment><USER3> This is definitely an issue. It's difficult to really sell a tool like this to your managers unless you can prove over time it saves you. With orgs I've been at the decision process was like

      - order 1 license to test it out
      - analyst gets order of magnitude work done more than co-workers
      - team manager buys 10 licenses and a tableau server

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Though the outcome is a bit worse than I think most predicted, this has been telegraphed since about November of last year. Tableau has had a very high short interest ratio for sometime, everyone was expecting poor results.

What really exacerbated their issue was that they didn't get out in front of this and let people know how bad they were going to miss. So when they released earnings everything went to shit on them.

I can't really find any excuse for this that passes Occam's razor except to assume this is a very rookie CFO /CEO combo in charge.

I made a comment about 3 months ago saying that 2010-2014 were very kind to new tech IPO's and 2016 would be the year that companies would have to either make money or face the consequences.

I'm following this over the next 2 weeks to see what the stock does. Its now a pretty good Pre-Merger Arbitrage(take over candidate) candidate.

\- Market cap under 5 Billion, check

\- Institutional owner ship > 50%, check

\- Insiders hold less than 5% of the company, check,in fact its at 1.09%, wow, management doesn't even want to own the company!

\- below its IPO price, not yet, that was $31 but its still falling.

<comment><USER7> It would make a nice acquisition for Microsoft...

<comment><USER8> Not after all the investment in powerbi, sadly.

<comment><USER9> About the time Power BI was hitting general availability, Microsoft was announcing the acquisition of Datazen, an alternative mobile dashboarding solution. Both technologies are components of SSRS in SQL Server 2016.

Acquisitions aren't out of the question where MS BI is concerned, even with apparent conflicts in product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't know what Tableau Software is and I found it pretty amazing that when I Google it I could still not figure it out because all the results were about the stock price. I think people might be focusing too much on stock price is Googling a company's name doesn't result in seeing the company's website on the first page of results.....

<comment><USER11> Tableau is a surprisingly good desktop application for business intelligence and analytics that, IMO, grew too big for its own good. You plug it into data (spreadsheets, databases, you name it) and it makes it very simple (drag-and- drop simple) to crunch some numbers and produce interesting graphs, visualizations and analysis.

Some clever stuff they had was (early-RoR-style) guessing of data semantics based on heuristics (Column labeled "date"? probably worth grouping by months. Number pairs like -0.3242,0.12345 ? probably worth plotting on a map).

I have used trial and educational versions in the past and was always pretty impressed with the ease of use and the results. The product itself was > $1k so I never actually purchased a license.

Even though I didn't follow the strategy very closely, from what I've run into it seems lke their offerings were all over the place. I saw a local newspaper using a hosted Tableau product to display data visualizations on their pages (the kind of visualizations made by a company whose DNA is desktop apps, so kind of underwhelming). Their website is all about Gartner and enterprisey lingo.

The product itself is, well, some advanced version of Excel. This means you either sell a lot of it very cheap, or very little of it for a lot of money. Website design suggests the latter. Too bad it seems to not be working.

I'm honestly sad to see them do badly as I think the product was really innovative and it really changed my way of thinking about report building and analytics tools.

<comment><USER12> It's a pretty good product but everybody and his brother sells analytics and visualization tools, most of the companies that have been around a while sell a few different tools since they've grown by acquisition.

Tableau is more differentiated than it looks, but it doesn't look very differentiated. If Microsoft ever gets around to making many of the "smart" features in Excel actually work (i.e. csv import and automatically choosing what kind of graph to make) they will have nothing to stand on.

I'm just waiting for the street to realize that Hortonworks and their competitors also have zero moat, and if anything, a GUI interface for a Hadoop cluster is value subtraction in the age of devops.

<comment><USER11> Honestly I have never used anything similar to Tableau in the balance of "straight-forwardness" and quality of results.

My use case is: here's some data, let's take a look at it and make some decent graphs including any sort of comparative analysis.

Excel is... well, Excel. The kitchen sink bundled in it contains pivot tables. Graphs are hideous out of the box, and very limited.

Apple Numbers makes cute looking graphs, but is extremely basic.

Viz toolkits in JS make you code for stuff that should be straightforward, at different levels of abstraction (Highcharts -> D3). And I have to put stuff in SQL and do the plumbing if I need any meaningful preprocessing.

Self-proclaimed "business intelligence" tools don't really target this use case. They solve enterprise problems like connecting to MDX sources that are not there for me.

Do you know any other tools for this?

<comment><USER13> I think if you are a smaller operation and you have specific requirements that you've thought out and aren't covered well by basic tools, then getting comfortable with JS and SQL (or R or matplotlib or Jupyter or whatever) is going to be the best way.

I've spent too much time watching people spend months and tens of thousands trying to bend 12 different third party tools together when a developer could do the whole thing in a week and it would actually do what you want it to do.

Nailing down the actual requirements is the hard part of building your own dashboard, it sounds like you've done that. If your needs are stable-ish or you have consistent developer resources it's going to be hard to find a better fit than that.

<comment><USER14> This. Freelancing is the future. Hiring in-house developers, or better still, freelance programmers will ensure that you will have custom-built your maximum BI tools and with a reasonable price. Of course, finding and hiring good freelancers who are not only dedicated in their craft, but also reasonably priced is a bit involved task, but certainly doable.

<comment><USER15> >custom-built your maximum BI tools and with a reasonable price Have you ever really seen that happen? Not me.

<comment><USER13> That's why I was repeating the importance of him having some well thought out requirements. In situations where this is true (and it really happens sometimes), I've regularly seen good developers come in under budget and mediocre ones at least come close.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Linkedin is down 38%. Tesla is down quite a bit. My guess is that some VCs were leveraged and had to liquidate positions. Free money from leverage does not look as good when equities go down... I think we are heading for a most violent year on the markets. Pharma and biothechs will most likely be the only bright spots, especially anti-anxiety drugs... :-)

Keep plugging at building great software that actually helps make this a better place. Charge for it so you can survive this downturn. It's a cycle, this will weed out the nonsense.

<comment><USER17> > Linkedin is down 38%. Tesla is down quite a bit. My guess is that some VCs > were leveraged and had to liquidate positions.

You're not a VC if your money is in publicly-traded firms.

<comment><USER16> Did you think that as soon as a company goes public, VCs get to sell all their stocks?

<comment><USER7> Tesla and LinkedIn had their IPOs 5-6 years ago, they aren't being held by VC funds. Tableau's major holders also don't include any VC funds:

[http://investors.morningstar.com/ownership/shareholders- majo...](http://investors.morningstar.com/ownership/shareholders- major.html?t=DATA)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Tableau Software tumbled 36% after management warned it was unlikely to realize benefits of certain tax assets. The news sent shares spiralling despite the software company's better-than-expected quarter. The company earned 33 cents a share, more than double estimates."

Also their growth is down.

<comment><USER19> What is a tax asset?

<comment><USER20> Suppose hypothetically that you have an agreement from a firm to pay you money in the future. That agreement is carried on your business' books as an asset.

Your friendly neighborhood tax agency is a special case of firm, which can commit to paying you money in the future. One way they can do this is, when you lose money in year N, they can let you carry that loss forward for up to X years, so that when you're taxed on your income in year N+3 you might be able to offset some of that income with the loss you made years earlier, reducing the amount of tax you incur.

The guesstimated value of that offset in taxes is your tax asset. If your marginal rate is 30%, and you can offset $1 million in revenue, the implied value is +/\- $300k. Importantly, if you guesstimate poorly or your friendly local tax agency decides to change rules on you in the interim, you have to adjust the value on your balance sheet. This can be problematic if the tax asset is a material portion of your notional value.

<comment><USER21> Thanks for the explanation! I would say that if your __PAST LOSSES __are a "material portion of your notional value" you have a pretty problematic company anyway.

<comment><USER20> This would not be uncommon for a high-growth VC-backed company. If you've raised a billion dollars and burned through $800 million you've probably lost a significant fraction of that $800 million. (Some is capitalized but much will be straight-up OPEX loss.)

If you've got, oh, $300 million in cash ($200 million in remaining investment plus we'll say $100 million in collected revenue) and another $25 million in accounts receivable then the tax asset is worth about, round numbers, $250 million, or 43% of the book value of the company.

Having to write down 43% of your book value would suck.

This is, again, _not outlandish_ for a company on that trajectory. If the revenue is growing rapidly and forecast to continue growing rapidly the company is in a wonderful spot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Tableau is a decent product, but a decent product doesn't make a great company. Main issues are:

A) Its sales team sells it as an end-to-end analytics suite, but in nearly all actual implementations I've seen companies just use it for management to view a dashboard... essentially just a slightly fancier version of the Excel doc some analyst used to mail out

B) It's crazy expensive for what it is

C) If the company has actual data scientists onboard then those individuals can do far better analysis just using free open source tools

For the above reasons and more I've seen a lot of large companies that are far less excited by Tableau than they were a year or two ago. They've either halted larger roll outs that were planned or just moved away from the platform entirely. That leads to softer sales and slams the brakes on growth rates... hence why the stock has tanked. There's also the issue of valuation multiples against their financials which are also still frothy, even after the latest downward movement in the stock.

<comment><USER23> Those are excellent points. As an exploratory tool Tableau is well worth the money, but if you are just using it to replace some basic C-level reporting than its really expensive for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Before this drop they were trading at 14x forward revenue; now they're at 7x. Splunk was at 12x, now at 9.7x. We'll have to revisit what the typical multiple range is for BI/enterprise saas companies.

Seems like quite the correction for an earnings beat and the removal of a ~50M deferred tax asset though, especially since people already had negative expectations before the earnings release.

</comment><comment><USER25> Tableau is definitely a useful tool. Tried getting folks with Tableau skills in previous whoishiring post. The other positions I posted got a lot of response but not the Tableau-oriented ones. Looks like plenty of enthusiasts in this thread through. Where were you all? Hey, in the off chance you are Iinterested in working in Tableau at a think tank (RAND) send me (Chris) a note at firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><USER5> There's a reason for this. Unless you work in an organization that has already implemented Tableau, or is willing to take a punt on using it, then there is just no easy way to get skilled up on it.

<comment><USER23> Tableau Public isn't sufficient?

<comment><USER5> Is it able to do everything the client software can do?

<comment><USER26> It's limited to flat files, so you have to plan ahead on what data you'll explore. In terms of the viz - feature parity, but not quite the same at all if you want to do exploration. Which is too bad, because Tableau's ease of exploration is what makes it so much more valuable than PowerBI or custom d3.

<comment><USER23> What is it lacking in terms of exploration? I thought most of the exploratory benefits were in the visualizations, unless you mean the ability to ad-hoc connect to random databases and begin exploration (because you have to plan ahead to extract flat files from those sources)

<comment><USER5> That _is_ a key part of the value proposition!

<comment><USER23> I mean in terms of learning to use the exploratory/dashboarding functionality - it's fairly easy to do that with Tableau Public and public data sources (or your own if you are fine with the saved dashboards being accessible to the public).

<comment><USER5> Except I want to learn how to connect to a cube, and learn how to use the software fully so I can implement it in a company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Honestly I don't care about stock rhetoric, it's an awesome product I use every week. I evaluated lot's of BI's options because it's a pricey product and I'm super happy with it, Tableau is actually fun (because its so easy yet powerful) and meaningful. The only other decent alternative was Qlik but it was more pricey for the options I needed.

</comment><comment><USER28> I wonder how that will affect this:

"Tableau confirms big Kirkland expansion, plans to hire 1,000"

[http://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/tableau- conf...](http://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/tableau-confirms-big- kirkland-expansion-plans-to-hire-1000/)

<comment><USER29> I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that they're going to keep going on that guy, possibly with a bit of delay. Running joke over here is that Fremont is basically TableauVille. Or they're to Fremont as Microsoft is to Redmond. Hell, rumor has it that new buildings are being built in Fremont just for their damn expansion right now (take a wild guess if you're in the neighborhood which ones--it's not hard, just look for glass). I doubt even a big dip in share price is gonna quash their thirst for real estate for very long.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I can hack d3js. Can crunch billions of records in a flash of the eye, can wrangle most any DB (NoSQL, et al) out there, why would I need Tableau?

Answer: We want someone stable! Not some crazy hacker. Plus if we don't spend the cash, we don't have it in our budget next year.

Oh, I get it now. :-)

<comment><USER31> No you don't get it. Tableau is for people who can't hack (or don't want to hack) d3js or crunch billions of records or whatever techie thing you seem to be so proud of. The mission is supposed to be self-service business intelligence, i.e, allowing a typical business analyst to drag drop and create good visualizations and analytics. Not dick around and waste time with databases and javascript.

<comment><USER32> Except that it only lets you do a set number of things. Most requests for information are not simple, and once you leave the comfort of simplicity, you have to become an expert in tableau, or in many cases, just accept that it can't do what you want it to do.

Unless your queries are very simple, you are better off finding a programmer and asking them to do your job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The analytics space is over-crowded.

Software eats the world and the education system. It's becoming increasingly easy to find developers. [https://gh-prod-ruby- images.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/image/f...](https://gh-prod-ruby- images.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/image/file/39/github_repositories-800x447.png)

To some extent, companies might be trying to use too much data? Who knows.

Life Time Value capture in the analytics space is sufficiently difficult. Let's say you're an analytics customer:

Early stage customer: Use any one of the 100 integrations analytics companies listed on segment.com's website. You DO NOT need to track hundreds of parameters. Conversations with customers have 100x the value of tracking the small things at this stage....usually.

Mid-Stage Customer: Maybe you choose one of the 100 companies that makes the most sense. You start paying for it.

Having these early and midstage companies as customers is tough. The vast majority of them fail.

Big Customer: SnowPlow Analytics? Splunk? Tableau?

That being said, I think there's businesses to be built, but only semblances of unicorns and minotaurs.

15,000 web and mobile apps are coming out tomorrow. What % of them are analytics related applications? (Hint: A larger one than you might think). Just have a gander at the applications that are listed on promotehour.com and startuplister.com's list of app launch sites. There's now 100+ launch sites.

To win big in VC money, you have to take risks, the analytics space seems well established with a slew of best practices that are extremely well known. Ie. not risky enough to warrant pouring VC-istan money into.

</comment><comment><USER34> Devops everywhere celebrate.

<comment><USER35> Why?

<comment><USER36> If you've ever run tableau server, you know why.

<comment><USER37> I would very much like to know what particular issues you are having as well? I work at Tableau and I would like to make sure that issues people are seeing are on our radar, if they aren't already.

<comment><USER38> Thanks for asking. I just installed 9.0.4, and here are a few examples:

\- Tableau Server runs only on Windows, so why can't it use a TLS certificate and key from the CryptoAPI certificate store, rather than requiring these to be converted to PEM format (with Unix line endings!) and saved in the file system?

In an enterprise with an internal CA using Active Directory Certificate Services, these extra steps have to be done not only at installation but also every time the certificate expires. Compare the experience with Microsoft IIS: the server automatically requests a renewal from AD CS, retrieves the new certificate, and begins using it.

\- Tableau Server should be able to run as a Group Managed Service Account, so we can give it access to remote data sources without having to assign (and regularly change) yet another service account password.

\- It would be helpful to have an scriptable installation process; as far as I can tell, there's no way to install Tableau Server without clicking through wizards.

<comment><USER37> Thanks for the input. I am going to forward these on to the server dev team and follow up with them in person. They may be aware of some of these already but it is important to us to keep track of what is causing our users the most headaches. I appreciate you taking the time and letting me know your suggestions and the issues you are having!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Atlassian is currently down 23%.

<comment><AUTHOR> Splunk is down about the same today as well: [http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ASPLK](http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ASPLK)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> New Relic also down by 25%, crazy day for Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER41> Which is pointless since they had a great earnings report, were cash flow positive for the quarter and raised their guidance. Additionally they mentioned in the call that no sector is more than 20% of their customers so they are diversified if a certain sector really tanks - like tech. They have 180 million in the bank so won't need credit markets any time soon and gradually approaching profitability.

Disclaimer: I have a position in NEWR and added today at the 21 level. This will certainly bounce back in the comings months or years. Will add if the irrationality continues.

<comment><USER42> Just looked at it. No profit and trading at 10x revenues.

You might be right who knows, but can't realy say the fear on this stock is irrational at the moment, imho

<comment><USER41> It's trading at about 6x revenue right now and even lower when looking at forward revenues.

Their growth is tremendous and are on a path to profitability. I get it - <USER2> the market are getting banged around like it is, there are few safe places. I just think the baby is being thrown out with the bath water in a lot cases. I'm using this to average down a bit and hold.

<comment><USER42> Yeah I see your point, but what I mean is that when so much of the current value of a company is based on future events, fear unfortunately is never irrational.

And for New Relic the expectations are really high, could still turn out to be a great business story (and I also think it will) but not necessarily a good investment because so much of this future success is already embedded in the price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I use Tableau almost daily. Initially I found it harder to work with and avoided it for a while. On 2nd attempt, for some reason, everything clicked into place and I now find it fairly intuitive. Some of my opinions/experiences about it:

\- Beyond simple queries, it becomes more easier to setup a view or two behind Tableau than to do it purely in Tableau. E.g. multiple level of latest times, more complex aggregations etc are more easily done in SQL than via Tableau.

\- For some things Tableau doesn't do what we typically expect. Couple of examples:

\- If you run a custom query joining two tables with some of the column names being same in both, Tableau cannot deal with it. Setting alias for columns using "as" works fine in SQL so I think it is not unreasonable to expect that to work.

\- I recently tried to chart lag in request/response in microseconds. The data is stored as TIMESTAMP in our Vertica database. However, I found that Tableau doesn't show time more granular than seconds. That is kind of odd in today's common low-latency high-performance technology environment

Having said that, I really like the features it offers viz. Calculated fields which don't go away just because I change the data source, drag-and-drop dashboard constructions, very nice visualizations etc.

<comment><USER42> What do you use it for?

If it's for analysis why not use python or R, way more powerful and full of tools & libraries that give you speed you need?

If it's for reporting, why not to use chartio, looker or anything that connects directly to your db?

My opinion: If you know some python or R, you might still need chartio, looker and similar but Tableau doesn't make sense anymore.

<comment><USER43> I wasn't part of the decision making effort but I believe Qikview was also considered but the analysts preferred Tableau. It is used by the analysts as well our for our internal monitoring/charting/analysis purposes.

<comment><USER42> I see. I've also found myself in a situation where the company was using it and I had them drop it.

For reporting the idea of transforming & moving the data around really doesn't make much sense when compared to solutions which directly leverage your db or at least create an unique consistent datasource instead of many so-called extracts scattered around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I was previously a Tableau expert at my then job. I was amazed at the missed opportunities by Tableau to make it indispensable to organizations. The core product was fine but it seemed like they could use a good PM to implement features around sharing, permissions, pricing etc. $1000 license for clients to view some basic report in a browser, the other option being a desktop installed reader.

</comment><comment><USER45> Could it also be affected by the Amazon QuickSight preview that is going live?

<comment><USER46> likely, considering Qlikview is down 14%

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> There are several factors at play. I believe one of them is MS Power BI catching up.

[https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/gartner- positions-m...](https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/gartner-positions- microsoft-as-a-leader-in-bi-and-analytics-platforms/)

</comment><comment><USER48> Looker is a much better product.

<comment><USER49> Agree, Looker customer here. Awesome product for ad-hoc BI reporting. Sits on top of Amazon Redshift perfectly and is quite fast for ad-hoc reporting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I'm sure Tableau has its own right place in the plateau of BI & Analytics for big companies. As for small businesses and custom-built analytics as well as for operational data UIs you'll probably have no alternative than hacking it yourself with d3js. Or using it Tadaboard-like alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER51> I was one of the first people to start using Tableau, I even bought a license for my own use so I can learn (Yep sick of the 14 day trial), but these days Excel / Power BI does most the work, Salesforce with Wave is competing with them plus so many open source software.

</comment><comment><USER52> About 5 minutes of searching shows me that Tableau has had a massive growth of revenue, but a slightly more massive growth in sales/administrative expenses. What that tells me is this: The market _loves_ Tableau, and keeps buying more of it. But the company has serious cost control problems in its sales and marketing departments, and has expanded there far too fast.

Anybody comparing typical open source or low cost BI solutions favorably to Tableau hasn't used it, or doesn't value their own time. Tableau is easy _and_ deep.

Tableau's board needs to attack their out-of-control cost of sales (the pay- me-everything egos), and hopefully ignore the internet idiot mob effect on their stock price.

I don't own Tableau stock. I just like the product.

<comment><USER53> The problem is that you make something cool in Tableau and then want to collaborate with someone... and even if you talk them into it, soon their trial runs out. Yes, it's powerful and featured, but today's scene is about collaboration and sharing... and the sticker shock is just too much for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I was an early adopter of Tableau and fairly enthusiastic. But then I had a truly terrible licencing experience with them and have, since, refused to have ANYTHING to do with them.

Nice enough software, but a sleazy organisation. Use one of the other good alternatives.

<comment><USER55> What happened with the licensing? I see a few other people complaining about this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> huge corrections under way, guarantee this is not the end, just the beginning.

unicorn slaughter.

upside: expect house prices in the SF bay area to become more affordable.

<comment><USER45> Doubtful - if global investors aren't putting their money into stocks, they'll just continue to buy up real estate.

<comment><USER56> Once you take the crazy money out of the equation, the SF Bay Area is not that appealing as a pure real estate play.

<comment><USER57> Russians and Chinese are a major contributor, and they're not so affected by SV cycles.

<comment><USER58> I don't know about SV, but foreign investment is pretty dam low in Victoria, BC, which could be used as a proxy for Vancouver. 97.8% were domestic buyers.[1]

It's not foreign buyers driving up the market in Vancouver, it's Canadians will to put themselves into serious debt in order to buy a house.

[1][http://www.greaterfool.ca/2016/01/31/of-debt- data/](http://www.greaterfool.ca/2016/01/31/of-debt-data/)

<comment><USER59> What? No, the Chinese are still heavily interested in the Vancouver market. Since when is small Victoria a proxy for big Vancouver?

<comment><USER60> Well, it's been reported that foreign buyers are invested in a lot of the more expensive properties (> $3 million) in certain regions, but a lot of Canadians are STILL buying Vancouver properties. There's been a lot of concern over Canadians getting in over their heads with mortgages. It also doesn't help that Vancouver has crappy wages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Reporting --> Chartio, Sisense, Looker etc. (anything web focused without a desktop version pretty much)

Analysis --> Ipython

No room for Tableau and similar.

<comment><USER23> Tableau makes most straightforward analyses much simpler than attempting to do it in Ipython/pandas, especially when connecting to standard corporate data warehouses (probably on the order of 10x faster). Of course you quickly hit a ceiling in terms of complexity, but most analysts never really get to that point.

<comment><USER42> Simple analysis usually answer recurrent questions, for this there is reporting and Tableau is not a good tool for reporting (too slow).

For ad hoc analysis instead, there is really nothing more powerful than R or python and it's plenty of tools & libraries that give you the speed you need.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Tableau is a great product, but it's very expensive, like Oracle expensive. I used Saiku to hack together some BI dashboards for free [http://www.meteorite.bi/](http://www.meteorite.bi/). It did the job with a little bit of work.

</comment><comment><USER62> Just curious whether anyone (else) here has experience with Bime? [https://www.bimeanalytics.com/](https://www.bimeanalytics.com/)

</comment><comment><USER63> Interesting that Microstrategy also is down quite a bit.

</comment><comment><USER64> To be fair the markets are really getting beat down today. e.g. LinkedIn is down 45% from $194.

</comment><comment><USER65> Apologies if the following is ignorant:

My exp with tableau was always that they obfuscate the final query...

Fuck that.

Looker doesn't && they even allow a meta Lang on top of them.

So for you to say "just do X" leaves many less sophisticated orgs left in the dark.

So my comment is both:

Fuck their position and yours.

I don't want to pay bullshit fees to tableau (with perf hits) && not be able to see the final query && not need an actually fairly highly competent DBA to know that x+x+x needs to be enabled in order for me to get to root.

If I pay service X give me the full fucking understanding as to how service results are generated.

(Yes yes I do understand how saas blah blah works and I'm just saying I personally find this process bullshit and immoral)

<comment><USER66> Downvoted. Your point may not be ignorant, but it certainly seems that way given the unnecessarily violent language.

<comment><USER67> His/her words are too naughty to be tolerated? They offend you to such a degree that you can't just ignore them? Come on now.

<comment><USER66> It's more that they imply the poster is really angry. If you saw two speakers in the street, one arguing reasonably and the other swearing his head off, I think most people would place less value on the ranter.

<comment><USER65> Uh... Maybe you dont talk to your friends too often...

You should see me with many many of my friends - dont imply anger where there is none, as we often get in "mock heated arguements" with smiles on our face.

I love you.

<comment><USER68> It makes sense to talk that way to your friends, because you're already friends and there are stronger bonds holding you together. That makes shredding each other fun, because everyone knows it's in jest.

A large semi-anonymous internet forum like HN is at the opposite extreme. We're almost all strangers and near-strangers. The community has low cohesion, so the same behavior, with the same good intention, does harm.

You know how rugby players are famous for beating the shit out of each other on the pitch, then going out drinking after the game? I always envied those guys that experience. It works because they have high cohesion. They also know not to walk up to a stranger, smack them onto the pavement, and expect to be bought a beer later. You need to adjust for context.

<comment><USER65> Apparently, sadly, I feel a much higher sense of cohesion with the HN community than others do.

<comment><USER68> That makes sense, and yeah that is kind of sad. But HN is what it is. It would be wonderful if the community could evolve to become more cohesive but that's a slow process.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>