Never ever do business with Samsung India Software Operations - <AUTHOR> http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2012/03/never_ever_do_b.html <comment><USER2> I fully understand this guy, and if you haven't been to a third world country, you won't. Just an example that pop my mind: The people injured (because of security forces violence) during the Tunisian revolution are still not treated and compensated. The fucking reason? "I'm still making a list of these people, ehh, it should be ready hopefully by the next month... ehh, hey look there are around 900 of them. I'm doing a really great job. Once the list is ready, we'll see what to do". It's more than a year and just a fucking list of people names who have been injured is not ready.

NEVER, EVER do a business in a third-world country where the law isn't imposed properly. NEVER, EVER do business with a third-world company before taking up- front payment. Know this: It's _impossible_ for them to transfer money. There are few cases when they can, and it'll take it to their central bank authorization before the money makes your hands.

<comment><USER3> I have a friend who has a Tunisian contractor. The guy went AWOL for a while and fell into major depression. He's back on track, but for a while, he was in dire financial straits, but couldn't figure out how to motivate himself out of his depression. He got injured in that revolution too. I had a long conversation with this guy. He was offered the money, but rejected it on the grounds that he couldn't accept money for service for his country. So he signed some papers saying that he refused the money, waiving his right to get it later. Later, he needed that money and couldn't even pay ISP or phone bills, which is why it was so hard for him to get in touch.

Basically, I think his story indicates to me that there were people who were given money? Or maybe they were promised, but never received it, don't know.

<comment><USER2> I didn't say the gov. didn't want to pay. They actually did massive, direct and no conditional pays in many times in the last year. The issue is with 9 person team that are complaining to work until 10 P.M. to get the list done. It's not about the will to pay or something, it's because "screw you", you know what "fuck you", who does even care?

Point is: Be careful making a business in 3rd world country.

Edit: Do you have his phone number or somehow to contact him? Maybe I could help him or something.

<comment><USER3> I have every way to contact him, but he's still doing contract work for my friend right now. He seems to be back on his feet and fairly happy. So don't think I'll do anything to bring up poor memories unnecessarily. :D

<comment><USER2> Pretty good. What the field he is contracting in? If it's Web/Mobile development, I'm interested to get in touch just for networking as the tech scene is small.

<comment><USER3> Gave him your contact info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think this post conveys a little bit of the frustration that normal (sane) Indians feel everytime they to deal with public or private bureaucracy. After 4-5 such mind numbingly stupid episodes, your spirit is crushed and unless you are made up of a special kind of Iron in your soul, you begin to despair for India.

Unfortunately for the author, he (assumption) got caught in the double f*kup - an incompetent HR dealing with an bureaucratic Govt. ruleset regarding foreign currency, tax and payments.

This is NOT the exception. He did NOT get unlucky. This is the norm for Indian systems. If they work seamlessly first time around, it is a miracle. Let this be a warning to those with Great dreams of coming to India and making it big. The level of dysfunction, inefficiency, bureaucracy and corruption in India is just staggering.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> PPK is usually such a polite lad, so it's all the more effective when he really goes off. This is how bad customers should be outed, in public. Bravo!

</comment><comment><USER5> From my own experience, private Indian businesses tend to pay promptly and are very reliable, yet become hopelessly entangled in endless bureaucracy once payments become international (this is probably the Government's fault, not their own).

My solution (which isn't too practical, perhaps not even legal, yet works)- travel to India once a year and collect your fee in cash, you'll also enjoy a great trip (Bangalore Butter Dosas and mysore pauks with south Indian filter coffee, culinary heaven) ;)

<comment><USER2> Sorry, if you know that you can't pay (because of gov. restrictions) or you'll have problems doing it; why engage with an international entity?

<comment><USER6> Because you like international travel, don't mind fighting through the insane Indian Visa process and love a good curry?

<comment><USER7> Save on the visa hassle altogether and come to London :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This rings true, but the OP's decision to burn his bridges is unfortunate. This is just how Indian bureaucracy is. It's a combination of 19th-century British Civil Service, crossed with 20th-century village socialism, implemented by 21st-century people who are just as confused as you are by the system they've inherited.

I've done and still do a lot of work in/for India -- mostly for the government and various quasi-governmental agencies. A couple of rules for having a successful outcome:

1.) Cash in advance: 10% to 25% the project fee, depending on my familiarity with the client. Expect to negotiate for 3-6 months before this is agreed to.

2.) Additional milestone-based payments, with a contract stipulating that no milestone will be delivered until the prior milestone payment has been received. Make sure that ALL project expenses are covered by these intermediate milestones.

3.) A final payment of 10%-25%, which is basically all margin. Expect to receive this 6-12 months late, and adjust your project costs accordingly.

This might sound unbelievably aggravating, but if you go in with these expectations then it's really not so bad. The bureaucracy just kind of washes over you eventually. (Oh, and tip #4: if you can at all afford to, pay somebody else to deal with the bureaucracy....). In truth, most Indians are tremendously honest people -- despite the impression that their bureaucracy gives -- and although I've endured screw-ups and delays that have been _significantly_ worse that what the article describes, I've never not been paid. And in the end, India is a fantastic country with fantastic opportunities (and fantastic people and fantastic food), and it would be a shame to miss out on all that.

So I hope that this article (and others like it) doesn't scare anybody off India. Just calibrate your negotiations accordingly, and enjoy it!

<comment><USER9> > Just calibrate your negotiations accordingly, and enjoy it!

Or just go do business with people living in countries where the insanity is more toned down, and enjoy it more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> FWIW a PAN card is a photo id document that has a tax payer identification number. You can use it to open bank accounts too.

Cash deposits into a bank above a certain amount need a PAN number.

It is widely used as an id document in India (where a passport or voter id document was once used).

I didn't know people without Indian citizenship could get PAN cards.

PS. One way of handling Indian bureaucracy is by hiring a middleman (say a tax consultant) who handles the necessary formalities, including bribes and leg work.

India is what India is.

<comment><USER11> But we need to simplify things. As an Indian business serving Indian customers I can tell you that the whole thing is pretty fucked up. I cannot put it more politely than this. Most of the enterprise clients of mine have 30 to 60 day payment cycles which involve a lot of paper, rubber stamps and signatures. That is just retarded. To add insult to injury the government expects you to pay service tax (due on the date of invoice) for the money that you have not collected yet. I regret setting up a business in India. There are too many unsavoury things to deal with.

<comment><USER12> 30 to 60 day payment cycles are in every country, nothing special about India. One main contractor I worked for in the UK (manages the building of buildings) used to have a dashboard showing how late payments to them were in 30, 60, 90, 90+ slots.

There are plenty of guides and advice on what you should be doing to avoid this as an SME or sole contractor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Any western programmer should be grateful: if not for this sort of thing, the world's applications would be written in Bangalore just as the world's electronic goods are produced in Shenzen. Politicians take note: fuzzy things like "fairness" really does have an influence on a nation's fortunes.

</comment><comment><USER14> Never work with anyone in India, especially the big names, without taking atleast a 50% advance, and holding the source (or some other leverage) before the other 50%. You will be surprised how fast things move when they want them to.

</comment><comment><USER15> _<https://www.google.co.in/webhp?q=ganesh+patel+siso> _

Pro-tip: Don't toy with people. Most times you will get away with it but sometimes you will get fucked.

</comment><comment><USER16> "Never ever do ______ with ______" Hope you see why this is utterly wrong.

Generalizations about country/etymology shouldn't qualify to be up-voted in HN, please.

I don't mind when people use bad words or flu as long as I can emphatically or technically understand why and the location allows it. In this sense I can feel and understand why Mr. Koch got upset.

I think he should've put the generalizations into Pandora's Box, because the internet is a public space that never forgets.

The victim's explanations are usually generalizations and overreactions, in rare cases I've seen people reacting accordingly. It's part of being gentle to react accordingly, we know it's hard to apply. You can be harsh when the situation requires it. That said, I'm sure there are better ways to "fight" for your right and the money. I agree that this looks like it's not worth the effort, but you will not know this for sure unless you try it. As long as all you loose is time, you can tell that you're enriched by another experience that will guide you in your next project into a better management.

(I'm not an Indian and my opinions aren't set in stone.)

One last word: Trust what your feeling tells you. If your customer replies after months you know you've a bad customer, even before the project starts.

<comment><USER9> > Generalizations about country/etymology shouldn't qualify to be up-voted in > HN, please.

What country? (and what does etymology have to do with the whole mess?) He said not to do business with a private company, ranted at lengths on the subject and clearly explained that the issue was solely HR/business and that his relations with the engineering side had been nothing but good?

What generalization are you talking about?

> The victim's explanations are usually generalizations and overreactions, in > rare cases I've seen people reacting accordingly.

Considering PPK's history of not being a sanguine lad, the mere fact that they got him to react to such length, on a former business partner, is a huge red flag with warning sirens.

> You can be harsh when the situation requires it.

I'm guessing he thought the situation did require it.

> As long as all you loose is time, you can tell that you're enriched by > another experience that will guide you in your next project into a better > management.

You're joking right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sounds like ppk just needed to vent, I've done this before on the internet and regretted it. Totally agree that more transparency in the client-vendor relationship would always be helpful, but airing grievances should be saved for Festivus.

</comment><comment><USER18> As an Indian, who lived in the US for a while and now back in India, this isn't surprising at all. For a foreigner who deals with working systems mostly, I can see how this is hair-tearingly painful, and it was for me when I returned for the first six months or so, but then, one makes peace with it - what choice does one have? :-|

While we are ranting, here's one of mine - it does not involve international payments or any such "usual suspects" of bureaucratic morass.

Warning: very long rant TL;DR - my chances at working for (what was then) my dream employer foiled by incompetent HR exec and the companies unwillingness to be accessible on phone.

A few years back (I was already back in India), a friend of mine, working for Google Mountain View, submitted my resume to their internal HR system as a hiring lead. Initially Mountain View handled the process directly from the US, and I had 5 rounds of telephonic interviews. The interviews were intense, and amazingly fun. Each lasted between 1.5 to 2 hours - during one, my interviewer challenged me repeatedly into rearchitechtecting the entire Youtube stack. Another interviewer told me at the end, "I hope I get to have you as a collegue soon". A third one, when I thanked him at the end for taking the time out to thank me, told me - "No, the pleasure was entirely mine. Its rare for me to have enjoyed an interview so much". Needless to say, I thought I'd done really well.

After this, I guess my file was transferred to Google India (Bangalore). Instantly the entire "feel" of the process changed. While earlier all phone calls, emails etc were polite, well written, clear and quick, now things flipped. This google HR exec - responsible for my file, initiates her first contact with me not with a phone call, or email, but as a "email@example.com wants to be able to chat with you" request on gtalk. No introduction, no idea who she is. I generally refuse requests that I am not expecting, but here I guessed that the person was a google employee and thus this could possibly be related to the interviewing process and accepted the request. I also sent her an email asking her about this and to let her know that the place where I was working at that time blocked gtalk (for good reason) but I had a personal blackberry so it would be better to communicate over a phone call or email rather than over gtalk IM. This mail went unanswered.

A few days later, I return from work to see a message from the HR exec saying "are you there?" on my gtalk window from earlier in the day. I see she is no longer online. I again drop her an email restating preference for email/phone. No answer yet again. She has never given me a phone number I can call so there is nothing else I can do. Google-ing also does not give me a phone number I can call either.

About 10 days go by, suddenly I receive an email from her, this time simply stating, with no preamble:

"I am arranging for you to travel to Google Bangalore for face to face interview on $date. I am booking flights for you to travel...."

This is accompanied by departure times of flights from my place of residence to Bangalore and back on the same day. The trouble is, the flight time each was is 2 hours, and she is arranging a flight that departs at 4:30AM, reaching 6:30AM to Bangalore, me arriving at Goog Bangalore office @ 9AM (yes, Bangalore traffic is THAT bad) and then return flight at 8pm. TO catch the 4:30AM departure, means I'd need to be at the airport latest by 3:00-3:15AM, which means I'd need to leave home by 2AM. That implied not sleeping at all the entire night. Having done interviews before while not having slept the previous night, I did not want to do this and told her that I'd rather fly in the previous evening, spend the night at a hotel in Bangalore, and then attend the interviews the next day. I even find an itinerary from the same online travel site she had used that would suit me perfectly, and was quite a bit cheaper, easily covering the cost of an overnight stay in a cheap hotel. No replies for a whole week. She does leave me messages "r u thr?" on gtalk a couple times which of course I am unable to respond to.

Then she gets back saying to me saying they didn't provide hotel stays at all (I know for a fact this wasn't true then, and it isn't true now). I immidiately reply again insisting that I'd not do interviews without having slept the previous night. I expressed surprise that google did not arrange for a stay in such circumstances, but then proposed to arrange for my overnight stay at my own cost if she'd just take care of the flight bookings as per my previous recommendations. Yet again I fail to hear from her for a week, except for one "r u there?" message during the week on gtalk. Each such message I respond with "I can't access gtalk during the day, could you please call or email instead" - these continue to be ignored.

Then she sends in an email, no content, just a flight itinerary and a hotel stay voucher attached as pdfs in the email. She has, in her infinite wisdom, booked me on that same 4:30AM flight that I did not want to take, but the gem is this: instead of having me fly back the same day, after the interviews on the 8:00pm flight, she had booked me on a 10AM flight the next day, and she has booked me a hotel room for me to spend the night in, AFTER having done the interviews. Both of these are already paid for.

At this stage I am having serious second thoughts about working for Google India, and am tired of the whole thing. I just decide to go with it. So I tell her simply that her itinerary was alright with me - certainly a mistake now that I look back upon the whole thing, but at that time she had had me totally worn down with her failure to communicate. So she replies, tells me she will have a taxicab waiting to pick me up from the airport on my arrival and to bring me to google. she finally gives me "her" cell number. I reply back asking for the address I am supposed to arrive at and the contact number of the cab company cause pickups at the bangalore airport were really chaotic. She doesn't reply. I try calling her, she doesn't pick. I text her, she doesn't respond.

D-day arrives. I try to sleep on the plane as much as I can. I arrive at the airport, find the cabby and we swing out of the airport. The cabby asks me - "so where am I supposed to take you?". I told him I was interviewing and lacking any other information, to take me to the google "office". He says there were six "google offices" in Bangalore. I try calling the HR exec, phone goes unpicked. After about a dozen tries, I simply tell the driver to take me to the "biggest" one guessing that largest office would probably be the engineering location, while others being possibly sales or corporate. He takes me to this large building which possible holds 800-1000 employees, entirely occupied by google. I goto the reception, and tell them I was there to interview, tell them the name of the HR exec who I was in touch with. At her name, the two people at the reception share a "look". It takes them about 45 minutes to find out that I am supposed to be at another location, they again call me a taxi, and off I goto another location. Repeat. Now I am at the third location, its past noon. I finally get to meet this HR exec and I am so mentally tired and angry that I just barely manage to maintain my civility. She takes me to a meeting room and the wait for the first interviewer begins. He comes in, 45 minutes later, looks rushed, tells me he had been given the wrong floor and meeting room number and that "there was a whole mess". We start the interview, by the end of which even he notices that my eyes are swollen and red - he asks me and I give him a brief recap. He doesn't say anything in response. I can tell I haven't done well at the interview, and at that stage I am beyond caring. In any case, I can't imagine working for a company (and here I mean Google Bangalore, not Google as a whole) that has its head stuck so far up its a __. The interviewer leaves, I have another interviewer come in, I do a bit better here, but I am basically only half awake by now. There is no talk of lunch.

to be continued...

<comment><USER18> continued:

After this, the HR exec comes in, hands me a google t-shirt, tells me there is a taxi waiting to take me to my hotel. I go out, find the taxi, ask him if he could take me to the airport instead, he says he can't as he is only allowed to take me to the hotel. I tell him to not bother, flag down an auto, rush to the airport, negotiate with the airline to let me fly the 8:00pm instead of the 10:00AM the next day, pay the are difference, and just return home.

I am thinking finally that the ordeal is over, but theres a twist. I summarize the whole thing for my friend @ Google MV, who says he will try and find out what happened, but turns out theres not much in file in their referral system.

Two weeks after this, the same HR lady send me a mail, yet again no preamble, nothing. "We want you to come in for a second day, I am booking tickets" and then the exact same content from her first email - same day return, 4:30AM flights etc, follow. I reply to her, telling her that I'd prefer to make my own bookings and inquiring if google would reimburse me for them (and any policy about such reimbursements, limits, etc). She doesn't reply. Ten days later, when she has still not responded, I request my friend @ Mountain VIew to see if he can find me another contact (and berating myself that I did not do this a lot earlier). He says he doesn't have another contact for me, but that he has conveyed my concerns to "some people". A day after his email telling me this, I get an email from the same HR person - this time responding to my last email about booking my own flight tickets, tersely telling me - "that email was for someone else. sorry. thanks for applying to google".

/end_rant.

What I have come to accept is, dealing with engineers is fine (as long as language doesn't become an issue), but others, in government, or even in most private organizations in India, are just not up to doing their jobs 99% of the time. Its not merely an issue of corruption, its just the culture does not provide for shaming people who are bad at their jobs, firing incompetents is considered evil, and its not even a solution as incompetence is everywhere. One recent report suggested that a full 80% of Indian graduates with a 4-year degree were so bad they were not employable at all in their chosen fields - not even with additional training.

<comment><USER19> "One recent report suggested that a full 80% of Indian graduates with a 4-year degree were so bad they were not employable at all in their chosen fields - not even with additional training."

That helps shed some light on why the developers from India who are good are so good, and the rest leave you wondering.

<comment><USER20> Citation required.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Sounds like you had the experience and nightmares an average Indian has in India dealing with bureaucracy, from what I've heard.

</comment><comment><USER21> most large companies IT companies operating out of India, are tough to work with especially in contracting and sub-contracting relationships. They treat vendors and consultants badly as they know they would easily can get a replacement. Too much bureaucracy and lethargy for releasing payments.

</comment><comment><USER22> Bureaucracy is hurting India extremely bad. At most offices In India, government and private, you 'll see experience is given preference over performance.

<comment><USER23> That's even worse if "experience" happens to be measured in time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am an Indian dreaming of silicon valley day and night. All shit happens here and this place is never going to improve.

</comment><comment><USER24> Sounds like PPK didn't do the legwork. If you're going to get paid for a cross-border contract, make sure you know what you're doing or pay someone who does. Saying "fucking" doesn't solve anything.

<comment><USER25> Exactly what I was thinking. I can imagine that he has to deal with a few _ssholes. I see how a foreigner would feel like he is hitting a wall when he is dealing with the bureaucracy in many Indian organisations (blanket statement), but at the same time, you have to understand that the only way you can get anything done in this scene is to have a little patience and have a cool head about the way stuff happens here.

I am not saying that being patient is a the right way to _fix_ the bureaucracy, but being patient looks to me like the right way to navigate your way around.

BTW I am not judging the way the OP responded to his particular scenario.

<comment><USER26> > I am not saying that being patient is a the right way to fix the > bureaucracy, but being patient looks to me like the right way to navigate > your way around.

Or just avoid situations involving bureaucracies instead of bending over for them.

<comment><USER27> Don't do any business, ever?

I've had my fun with W8BEN forms, EID numbers, and US customers. I still don't understand why technicalities of the US tax system were suddenly my problem instead of the customers, but realistically you either deal with this or you don't do business.

<comment><USER28> Indeed, US tax forms are no fun; I've made that mistake before. It was a few hundred dollars' worth of work - I decided that trying to chase down the paperwork was not worth it in the end, as I made more money just spending that time doing contract work for my EU customers instead.

Unfortunately, the US seems to get away with tax colonialism, whereby you automatically owe them money until proven innocent even though you never set foot there; and US citizens get taxed by the US even if they don't reside or work there. Sounds like India is even worse in that you can't get around their tax even after filling in the forms.

If I do business with non-EU customers in the future, it's going to have to pay at least mid 5-digits, and a sufficient premium above my EU rates to just pay for an expert to handle the bureaucracy and hassle for me. I'd recommend a similar policy to anyone. The anti-EU moaners have no idea how beneficial it is to small businesses doing something easily importable or exportable - it's actually slightly _less_ hassle for me to do business with customers in the rest of the EU than in my own country because I never see the VAT (which isn't too bad to begin with).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Well done!

</comment><comment><USER30> Indian programmer here. Typical Indian assholes! Thanks for the tip.</comment>


A 12-Foot Raised Floor? - <AUTHOR> http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/06/03/a-12-foot-raised-floor/

<comment><USER3> I thought heat rises ?! ; I would've thought of below ground level before - <USER2> thought of putting them over head and cooling the room below them ..

<comment> patrickg-zill The air under the floor is pressurized, so convection won't play much part in how the air moves.</comment></comment>


Today's Resource: Designing for Social Traction - <AUTHOR> http://vospe.com/2010/09/07/todays-resource-designing-for-social-traction/ <comment><USER2> I was daunted by the 120 slides at first, but they were absolutely worth it.

To sum up a few points: Use lazy registration (delayed to as late as possible), first-time user help, gradual profile filling. Remove features that encourage mindless hoarding (of points, ratings, reviews, whatever) and design for the flow, ie help the user improve/learn new things but don't make the experience too challenging.

</comment><comment><USER3> Quality information and easily digestible. More stuff like this would be greatly appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting article, keep it up!

</comment><comment><USER5> First, I recommend viewing the slides on slideshare proper ([http://www.slideshare.net/bokardo/designing-for-social- tract...](http://www.slideshare.net/bokardo/designing-for-social-traction)). Some of the slides were hard to read for me on the smaller embed.

Secondly, wow. This is a seriously worthwhile click. I'm only about halfway through it, so there's still time for it to go downhill I suppose, but while some of the tips are more commonplace (delay registration as long as you can), others were downright insightful (Instead of asking "Can people fill out our sign-up form?" Ask "Are people motivated to care?").

It's long, so save it for later if you're in a hurry, but I recommend against skipping it altogether.

</comment><comment><USER6> good.</comment>


Interview With Facebook's Joe Hewitt, iPhone God - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/23/interview-with-facebooks-joe-hewitt-iphone-god/

<comment><USER2> The iphone version of facebook is not exactly complete. Most annoying is the fact that it regularly opens up the full facebook.com in a new window and asks you to log in again!! To easily replicate this behaviour, click on a group while in iphone.facebook.com.</comment>


Tim Cook on merging macOS and iOS: "I don't think that's what users want" - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/04/tim-cook-on-merging-macos-and-ios-i-dont-think-thats-what-users-want/ <comment><USER3> This is great - if it hold out.

> But that's not what it's about. You know it's about giving people things > that they can then use to help them change the world or express their > passion or express their creativity.

Tim says this... and this is also what users have come to expect of apple; but their products as of late very much reflect a different set of priorities. The notion of iOS and MacOS merging didn't come out of nowhere - thats the direction apple was/is heading.

As a lifelong Mac user, it's obvious we're second class citizens to apple, whos focus is primariy on iOS. IIRC, They don't even have a dedicated MacOS team anymore - everyone is doing IOS dev. And, it shows in the quality of the system.

I honestly think apple has already peaked and has started to decline - and i think they need to, to get hungry again. But with all the money they have, I don't think they'll be hungry for quite a while.

<comment><USER4> Does MacOS need to be #1 priority at Apple?

We've gone from OS-as-a-Platform to Browser-as-a-Platform (albeit on an OS). Operating systems have matured and have become relatively stable.

I feel MacOS has an edge in the market given the excellent trackpad (i.e. the #1 way to interact with a mac or any computer), iCloud, and honestly it just works.

Outside of Chrome, I use VS Code, VLC, FaceTime, iCloud, Dropbox, Zoom, and the Terminal.

<comment><USER5> > Operating systems have matured and have become relatively stable.

The bugs in High Sierra (passwordless root [1], APFS data loss [2], the App Store preferences vulnerability [3]) seem to suggest otherwise. I have a MBP at work which is still on Sierra, maybe next summer I will be confident enough to upgrade...

[1]: [https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/28/16711782/apple-macos- hig...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/28/16711782/apple-macos-high-sierra- critical-password-security-flaw) [2]: [https://www.macrumors.com/2018/02/19/apfs-bug-macos-data- los...](https://www.macrumors.com/2018/02/19/apfs-bug-macos-data-loss-disk- images/) [3]: [https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/11/16877992/high-sierra- bug-...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/11/16877992/high-sierra-bug-apple- app-store-settings-password-preferences)

<comment><USER4> Yes these are serious bugs and it's important for Apple to prioritize security. Apple could be doing a better job here.

My point was that many users have gone from running apps on OS's to browsers. The focus has shifted from producing the best-in-class OS to creating an OS which can run a best-in-class browser.

With this in mind, does MacOS need to be #1 priority at Apple? Security still needs to be a priority across all product lines

<comment><USER5> It doesn't "need" to be a priority. However, some Apple products (the MBP in particular) were big among professional users who now feel a little left behind.

Also, This is not limited to the software level. See the new MBP: there is no option for a laptop with top specs and no Touch Bar.

<comment><USER4> Yeah agreed that Apple could be doing more with their Mac product line. I would like a better MacBook Air (with retina and less bezel around the screen....more like the Dell XPS 13) and a more powerful reasonably priced Mac Mini.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's definitely not what this user wants. This user wants a real ESC key back too

<comment><USER7> BTW they need to bring back the previous generation keyboard with a descent key travel.

<comment><USER8> I love the new keyboard, as well as the ultra-low profile of the new macs.

<comment><USER9> New keyboard is great. Trackpad is too big and sensitive (has it gotten better with high sierra)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Devs and other creators want workstation grade productivity within a mobile form factor, solving the problem when switching between both worlds for mobility. Some devs who value mobility and change their location often, don't even want to get used to working on a big screen.

Current phones, while providing enough horsepower for development, are handicapped by they screen real estate, something AR could fundamentally change. Who'd buy a laptop if you're more productive with simple AR glasses connected to phone?

That's the future Apple is facing. While not a merger of both OS, macOS could just be an AR app on your phone that you'd use with your AR glasses.

<comment> yoz-y I'd like to see some AR screens, but for me they would have to have an insane resolution (way beyond 8k, so that the virtual screen is "retina") and be able to create completely opaque surfaces.

There are lot of transparent screens in science fiction but those seem useless. Companies have not invested a ton of time and money into anti-glare screen for nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was surprised when this story was published in my local newspaper and picked up internationally as Apple have been firm in their product segregation that they have no public plans to

(a) release an iPhone desktop dock (c.f. Samsung DeX) (b) merge iOS and macOS into one toolkit (UWP/KDE Plasma) (c) merge Macbook and iPad (Chrome OS tablet)

(Disclaimer: not being a current Apple customer, I'm sure Cook doesn't particularly care what _I_ want. However I am comforted that others do think different.)

<comment> yoz-y I think that the a) and c) are kind of at odds. If one has everything in the cloud then they do not really need docking. Docking also seems to be quite niche as people prefer laptops when they need to move a lot. As a heavy mac, iPhone and iPad user I really hope they will not merge the UI toolkits though. It would be nice if they merged parts of their APIs and modernized the mac API but for me mouse+keyboard and touch are too different to use similar kinds of controls.

<comment><USER11> (a) i'm thinking home usage. An 8 core machine with 6GB RAM is plenty - <USER2> in a keyboard, mouse and screen, who needs a mac mini? OTG and/or a hard disk attached to my wifi router is all the local storage I'd need, let alone the cloud.

(c) _If_ Google pulls off seamless integration of Android apps on a Chrome OS tablet then the rumoured ARM Macbook may have users wondering why they can't run their favourite iOS apps too.

But that's just me, I guess, and _my_ wants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I dont want it at all, It doesn't have any sense. You don't need to do it to have a Superior software in iPad than in a Mac os, each device is for what it is.

</comment><comment><USER13> What we want is a laptop with a working keyboard - not this buttterfly keyboard that sticks for every mac user I talk to.

</comment><comment><USER14> Not sure Apple has the software engineering talent-time for that. Even Microsoft still struggles with unification.

</comment><comment><USER15> Merging appstores tho...

</comment><comment><USER16> Since when has apple done stuff that "users want"? Which user wanted the headphone jack to be removed? Which user wanted NFC to be disabled?</comment>


Which Universities Produce the Most Successful Startup Founders? - <AUTHOR> http://minimaxir.com/2013/07/alma-mater-data/ <comment><USER2> Am I the only one who doesn't find this terribly interesting, due to thinking that "funding != success"? Raising money is a _step_ on the path to success (and potentially an optional one at that), so a chart of "which universities graduates raised the most money" doesn't strike me as terribly valuable.

Of course, I imagine it would be a lot harder (and maybe more subjective) to come up with a different metric for success, since not all startups wind up publicly traded (and therefore required to report their financials) and some are acquired in deals where the terms aren't reported, etc.

Anyway, even if we use funding as the metric of success, what are we supposed to do with the data from this analysis? Is it supposed to suggest where one should choose to go to school, or to suggest that other schools should try to mirror aspects of the schools listed, or what?

<comment> wh-uws Exactly I rarely resort to the global replace comment but:

s/successful/venture funded/g

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Correlation does not imply causation.

While this article may portray the trend as "universities that produce successful startup founders", it's very possible that it may actually be something like "prestigious universities attract people that come from well connected families who have an easier time creating a successful startup".

I have very little faith in higher educational institutions' ability to actually educate and prepare people like potential startup founders for the real world. This trend of successful startup founders coming out of prestigious universities makes a lot more sense when you consider that high- end unis tend to attract people from affluent, well connected backgrounds.

This isn't to say that rich kids have an easier time creating startups. Rather, I think that affluent families typically become affluent through the ability to form business connections with people, and the ability to form a vast contact network. Through parental influence, these attributes are passed to the children who go on to attend prestigious universities, and eventually create a business for themselves.

</endarmchairpettheory>

<comment><USER4> _" Correlation does not imply causation."_

Stop saying that.

To quote Edward Tufte: _" Correlation is not causation, but it sure is a hint."_

In this case, I don't know if fundraising should be considered "success", but I'm reasonably sure that graduating from Stanford does a lot to grease the funding skids in Silicon Valley. In other words, it might well be a causative factor for success. The appearance of a whole bunch of smoke strongly suggests a fire, not a big smoke machine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This basically tells us that the people investors fund are most likely to get funded. It tells us nothing about their success.

Cargo cult success metrics are bad for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER6> Since when does the amount of venture capital raised equal the success of a startup? A much more interesting statistic would have been which founders are still running their business after let's say three years.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately that's a little harder to determine from the data given. The amount of deadpooled businesses in the data set is not high. :\

Using funding as a leading indicator is not perfect, which is one of the reasons I have provided the raw data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> People who go to Ivy League schools typically have wealthier parents and/or families who can fund their education. Subsequently this can likely carry over to their receiving support while they start a new company, not to mention the connections gained from attending such prestigious schools.

Granted that this does not apply to every case and there are true bootstrapping stories out there, but the fact of the matter is that wealth generates wealth and capitalism is the trademark of the startup industry. It has very little to do with the actual education in the end.

</comment><comment><USER8> Mods, please change title to "Which Universities Produce the Most Funded Startup Founders", as the current title is misleading as to the content of the article.

</comment><comment><USER9>
        It's worth noting that Tel Aviv University, an Israeli university,
        ties Duke University at 21 and unfortunately just missed making the chart.

Why not leave Duke out or put TAU in? It did not 'unfortunately miss making the chart', you decided to leave it out of the chart.

And today I learned that Stanford ant MIT were not part of the Ivy League ;)

edit: typo

<comment><AUTHOR> Because I created the charts programmically, and there may have been a sorting issue since the numbers are equal.

I'll see if I can fit in a 16th university, or manually replace Duke.

EDIT: Done. Sorry about the confusion (I'm still learning!)

<comment><USER10> It's still not showing on the page for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Try a CTRL+R refresh. That should work. (Cloudflare can be very annoying sometimes, even after clearing the cache manually)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Figures should be normalized based on size of graduating class.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's the # of Graduating Founders graph as a proportion of # of Undergraduates at the University: [http://i.imgur.com/tawHy2e.png](http://i.imgur.com/tawHy2e.png)

The order is not much different (Stanford is still way at the top), although a few of the Ivy League schools are higher.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _Carnegie Mellon and Princeton, which had a relatively low number of funded founders and a relatively low number of total capital raised, instead have a significantly higher amount of average first funding. UCLA also placed. Perhaps the students from these three universities tend to have more ambitious startup ideas?_

The field of endeavor may have more to do with it than ambition. Pittsburgh startups are disproportionately in biotech, for example, which tends to be capital-intensive.

</comment><comment><USER13> I feel like the statistics are misleading with respect to the total pool that you're drawing out of. Of course, if you have a school like UC Berkeley that has 25k undergrads, you're going to have more funding than a school like Princeton with 5k undergrads. Per-capita stats would be nice to see.

Also, maybe schools with MBA programs might need to be compared separately. Princeton doesn't have one, and seems to lack somewhat in terms of on campus non-technical founders.

</comment><comment><USER14> There are 32 from Indian Institutes of Technology. (But the data is under various names.) IITs (acronym) are unique because its a really small system - graduating 2500 students across all 5 IITs in 1996 for example. Would be one of the few foreign university systems to bubble up.

How: Look for the words or substring "Indian Institute" and "IIT".

</comment><comment><USER15> Errr.. out of curiosity I did a simple/quick query of my alma mater (UIUC) and got a count of 35.

Perhaps it was missed because Unversity of Illinois refers to University of Illinois : Urbana-Champaign if it lacks a city qualifier. (Also a few founders misspelled Champaign so I just included Urbana.)

</comment><comment><USER16> Normally I would have expected Danielle Morrill here, but good job anyway ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Honestly, the reason I'm looking more into startup statistics is because I'm very skeptical of dmor's analyses that are posted to HN. So I took a look at CrunchBase's data to see how robust it truly is. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Another interesting question: what degrees do startup founders hold?</comment>


Ask HN: What's happened to Swivel? - <AUTHOR>

Swivel.com were smart startup positioned themselves as YouTube for embeddable charts. They reported 1mln. charts in the system a few years ago, but last few months traffic to their web-site declined significantly and last 2 weeks the site is down at all. Anybody knows - what's happened to Swivel? My startup is somewhat similar to Swivel so I wonder whether the initial idea was bad or they faced some technical or organizational problems. Thanks. <comment><USER2> Years ago (pre swivel, post quantrix/tableau) I made a competitor as well. We quickly decided once we went out and talked to potential customers that it was a no go.

1) Very few customers wanted to upload their data to the web. Even less were allowed by law. 2) Most had integration problems - i.e. they couldn't actually access their data because it was in disparate systems. 3) Most people didn't actually use the information for anything, it was simply to provide them with "evidence" that they were right before looking at the charts. As a statistician this makes me sad, but it was the way things were at least when we investigated it.

Over time we gradually realised why BI was priced so high; it needs system integration alongside it. Now it turns out that we may have been wrong (gooddata.com are doing a good job as far as I can tell) but I still think it's the tip of the iceberg in terms of potential market.

My advice: target a niche with a huge problem where the customer is unable to get at their data at the moment. Choose the niche which has 1-2 big vendors of data collection systems with 80+% combined market share and provide the solution to the problem. And charge.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for detailed reply. I would appreciate it if we could discuss the theme a bit more. May I ask you about your contacts? My contacts are in my profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> They're gone. I interviewed the founders recently, the story was published on my website today: <http://eagereyes.org/criticism/the-rise-and-fall-of-swivel>

I'll also be following up with another story soon about the when and why the final decision was made (the story above mostly talks about how they got started and mistakes that were made, not the specific reasons they shut down).</comment>


Ask HN: Any US banks who are friendly to international founders? - <AUTHOR> Are there any startup-friendly banks that non-US founders can use for the initial stages of the company before their revenue starts to grow rapidly?<p>Ideally, I'd like to find someone who does not require us to visit the US at all. <comment><USER2> U.S. banks will never, ever do this. It's a violation of KYC anti-money laundering rules. They simply won't get involved. You should be able to use the attorney trust accounts of the law firm that set up your company, but you won't have control.

</comment><comment><USER3> You may want to look into [https://stripe.com/atlas](https://stripe.com/atlas)

<comment><USER4> I second this. Via Atlas, SVB does provide accounts for international founders for Delaware C-Corp (incorporated via Atlas only).</comment></comment>


Ad Boycott of Facebook Keeps Growing - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/business/media/facebook-ad-boycott.html <comment><USER5> Am I the only person who has a problem with this headline, "Ad Boycott of Facebook Keeps Growing" am I overreacting here or others feel the same?

For me at the face of it's not incorrect, but it feels to me a certain deliberate wordsmithing is used to create a sense of growing momentum.

What we don't know if these advertisers represent 1%, more or less than x% of Facebook's ad revenue. I do understand FB will not provide that info, but some real journalism and follow up from said companies could have gathered us the amount this boycott means. After all this suppose to be NYT.

They do touch on this number, "smaller businesses that make up the bulk of its eight million advertisers have been considering their options"

However, again they are carefully crafting their words in a way that it's not inaccurate but showing a larger problem.

Instead of saying "one agency that manages 20 clients", or "we have heard from some advertisers" using "one agency", or "some advertisers" they are saying "advertisers" which to some readers will read as a lot of advertisers or a universal movement among advertisers.

<comment><USER6> What's more, the NY Times has a strong business interest in convincing advertisers not to advertise on Facebook. I'm a bit skeptical of anything they publish these days about Facebook, Google, and other companies that could potentially threaten their access to clicks, just given their financial incentives to weaken these companies as much as possible.

<comment><USER7> My thoughts exactly, they have a clear conflict of interest when covering this story. Although, to be honest, all of mainstream journalism seems way more biased and blatantly slanted than I recall from 20-30 years ago. Perhaps I am just better at noticing it now?

<comment><USER8> You are not just better at noticing it. It really is more slanted.

Journalism 20-30 years ago was mostly funded on a subscription model. In this model they work hard to maintain their reputation, so that people will trust them as an accurate source of news.

Journalism today is mostly funded per click. Which means that the most important thing is a headline that grabs people's attention and causes them to click. The incentive is for the most outrageous and attention grabbing headline possible. With no incentive for being accurate - by the time you realize that the article is junk they've been paid and are looking for another sucker.

If you're interested in a book length exposition of how this change in dynamics has changed the news landscape, I recommend [https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions- Manipulato...](https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions- Manipulator/dp/1591846285). The trends that it discusses have played out for another decade since it was written, but played out along the direction that it described.

<comment><USER9> The NYT operates on an online subscription model, no?

<comment><USER10> How much of a percentage of revenue is that subscription model vs ads, and how does that hold up to the historical split?

<comment><USER11> i heard somewhere it was 60% subscription 40% ad, though I'm not sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I find it so funny that Facebook hides behind "freedom of speech" when in fact what they do is the exact opposite.

When everything you saw was cronological, you could make that argument. I write a message on my wall and everyone who follows me can see it if they scroll down far enough. Most importantly, the only criteria used was the time it was submitted which I think everyone can agree is fair.

By prioritizing certain posts based on what the algorithm thinks will make you stay on the site longer, they are prioritizing, thus interfering with free speech. When I post something, my message will have a lower chance of reaching some of my followers. How can facebook justify tipping the scales for one type of message over another and call it free?

<comment><USER13> The (legitimate) argument is that freedom of speech extends to facebook getting to decide what, and in what order, information is displayed on facebook.com.

To dictate a chronological order, or to demand that they publish every single thing that is submitted to them, is a restriction of their freedom of editorial expression _on their own website_.

<comment><USER14> The (also legitimate) argument is that freedom of speech should extend to privately-owned de facto commons, and is a concept beyond the enumeration in the American Bill of Rights.

<comment><USER15> I agree there is a problem with private corporations that control publishing platforms with such a large reach. Twitter and Facebook are really the only ones at the moment with that power (in the "anglosphere" at least).

However, for laws to be created that force them to publish posts that fall under "free speech" their algorithms must be fully open and auditable. Otherwise they still hold the power to sensor, or their algorithms could be covertly gamed by those in the know.

Otherwise your speech might not be the same, or as free as mine, but who would know?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> tech-historian Serious questions: Are the people that work at Facebook proud to work there? What is morale like inside that place? When someone asks you what you do, and you say "I work for Facebook," what is their typical reaction?

Not trying to be snarky. I'm genuinely curious how these perceptions/feelings might have changed over the past few years.

<comment><USER16> I too am curious about the internal motivations of people who work for Facebook. Something I've noticed about myself is that I would be okay with working for a US defense contractor, ie a company which makes machines that literally kill people, yet I could not picture myself working at Facebook. I struggle to square this morally, because I also believe that defense contractors have a greater net negative impact on society than Facebook does, but there is something "icky" to me about Facebook.

I used to commute with a group of folks from Facebook, Oracle, and Amazon, and none of them seemed to have any moral qualms about their employers. My buddy from Oracle invited me to apply to work on his team, and in explaining why I couldn't consider working at Oracle, I mentioned some recent terrible thing Oracle had done in the open source community. His response was that Amazon contributed even less open source (which I believe is true). So I think in the end, the internal justification is "Yeah, maybe I'm contributing to something immoral, but it's less immoral than X & Y".

<comment><USER17> > I would be okay with working for a US defense contractor, ie a company which > makes machines that literally kill people

The thought of working for a company like this makes me feel physically ill. Soldiers can at least feel like they are working to defend a country they believe in. Weapons companies will sell killing machines to anyone with money. Few things in the world make me feel the visceral disgust that these companies engender.

By contrast Facebook is icky ... In the sense that there's one naive greedy idiot pulling the strings and he refuses to accept the damage he's causing. Weapons companies and the people who work for them know that their killing tools are sold indiscriminately and will end up in the hands of tyrants and terrorists across the world.

<comment><USER18> What damage is Zuck causing again?

<comment><USER19> Damage to society by denying the role - via inaction, if nothing else - <USER2> company he leads plays in coordinated campaigns of deceit and disinformation aimed not just to undermine public discourse but also the functioning of democractic government itself (via targeted political advertising and misinformation).

Which isn't to say that moderation at Facebook's scale is an easy problem - it's not. And balancing freedom of speech with some degree of accountability and acknowledging empirically verifiable truths is difficult.

But, buy the ticket, take the ride. He's a billionaire. FB makes oodles and oodles of money. They just don't want to do it because it would cost them money.

Eventually laws will catch up, in one way or another, and the same way other media outlets are (imperfectly) regulated, new-media outlets such as FB, Google, etc, will be as well, IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Maybe I'm cynical, but I would think this has more to do with the cost of ads going up so much. If you were already thinking of reducing spend on FB, why not get a little PR out of it?

Also, since the cost of FB ads has been going up over the last several years, that means there is no shortage of demand for ads on FB.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, pretty much all the big DTC brands (Allbirds, Away, Warby, OV, etc.) all have retail store fronts and "showrooms" now across the US. I always just assumed if they were spending $1mm+/month on FB ads, it wasn't a very difficult decision to move $20k/month to a store in a big city and see what kind of lead gen and brand awareness that yields.

<comment><USER22> Personal anecdote - stores resulted in a much better conversion but not a huge uptick in acquisition.

<comment><USER23> Can you explain this a bit further, long tail which was better ROI

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Nice. I like that companies are putting their money where their mouth is, and not just doing cheap virtue signalling, like posting a black square on Instagram.

I think, and hope, however, that Facebook will come out victorious; (1) freedom of speech is important, (2) it's not up to Facebook to be the arbitrer of what's allowed or not (it's up to the law), (3) advertisers need Facebook more than Facebook needs them, and (4) sooner or later companies will learn that SJW-ing is at worst negative (each company could easily come under attack itself) and at best irrelevant (did Pepsi suffer any long-term consequences for the backlash against it a year or 2 ago? Did Gillete gain a lot for publishing its anti-toxic masculinity ad? I doubt it.)

<comment><USER25> Having the law as the sole arbiter of what is allowed or not would be terrible for free speech.

The problem is that we have an overwhelming amount of information being produced, so that people have a hard time evaluating all they are exposed to. Furthermore, we have a lot of people who are just too trusting, or too naive, or too gullible, or perhaps just even stupid. Finally, on top of that we have many information producers who are _trying_ to cause harm ranging from people just doing it for fun to countries trying to undermine each other's stability.

A society _must_ find some way to prevent or at least limit those who are intentionally trying to harm people from taking advantage of the overly trusting, naive, gullible, and stupid.

The law is a monopoly. Using it to try to address that problem will tend toward overly broad restrictions on speech, with little or no recourse for those whose speech should not have been included.

It's far better for it to be handled by Facebook, Twitter, and the rest. If Facebook won't let me talk about some particular topic I do have alternatives. They might not reach as far so I might have to go to some serious effort to contact like minded people and get them to agree to discuss my topic on some other platform--but I _can_.

<comment><USER24> You're conflating a few issues. Facebook is being boycotted ostensibly for failing to combat _hate_ speech, whereas your comment is mostly written as a argument to censor _fake_ news. Classical mote-and-bailey fallacy.

Twitter deleting bots claiming that Obama was born in Africa? Fine. Twitter tagging Trump's warning that any squatters in Washington DC will be treated according to law as "promoting violence against specific groups" or "abusive"? That's quite transparent political bias.

Sure, you probably wrote your comment because you oppose Trump on political views and you support Twitter acting against promoting those views, but at least be transparent about it; don't claim that tech giants are just trying to protect the "naive, gullible, stupid" is gas-lighting.

Last but not least, do you have any evidence for this? IMO it's mostly just used for journalists to discredit people they disagree with (e.g. Trump or Brexit voters).

 _> we have a lot of people who are just too trusting, or too naive, or too gullible, or perhaps just even stupid._

<comment><USER26> > Trump's warning that any squatters in Washington DC will be treated > according to law

What is this law against peaceful protest that you cite?

And under what statute is the use of violence against those protesters sanctioned by the law?

<comment><USER27> Squatting + Vandalism != peaceful protest

If a group of people peacefully protest on my lawn, they are not Constitutionally protected to do so, no matter how "peaceful" their assembly. If I call the cops to forcefully remove them from my property, I would be acting within the bounds of the law.

If a group of people spray-paints my business, and I call on the police to reprimand them, that is again within the confines of the law.

The President tweeting about doing the same is a simple extension of this. You may disagree with the law in question (as is your right), but it's a bit silly to suggest that tweeting about enforcement of the law (no matter how unjust you think it is), should be considered beyond the pale on a global platform.

<comment><USER26> > Squatting + Vandalism != peaceful protest

Agreed that vandalism is not peaceful protest.

> If a group of people peacefully protest on my lawn, they are not > Constitutionally protected to do

But occupying a public space (not a private lawn) in protest - what you refer to as squatting - is absolutely peaceful protest. Lafayette Square is not POTUS' private lawn.

<comment><USER27> > Lafayette Square is not POTUS' private lawn

But St Johns church is not a public space, and vandalizing it is not legal. Even in public commons, vandalizing/toppling public statues is currently not legal.

Trump's tweets/posts are strictly about reprimanding this behavior. Again, there is a growing orthodoxy that holds that this behavior _should not_ be reprimanded, but tweeting about enforcing those existing laws is well within the realm of reasonable discourse, especially for a political leader.

<comment><USER26> > But St Johns church is not a public space

Lafayette Square is a public place, and that is where POTUS cleared peaceful protectors with force, so that he could walk across it for his photo op at the church. If it were an issue of protecting St John's Church property, they could have cleared just that property, and brought the president in with a helicopter. But the whole point was to demonstrate the show of force against the protesters.

You appear to be focusing on St John's Church's private property with the goal of distracting attention from the public place where the actual use of force against peaceful protesters took place: Lafayette Square.

One doesn't need to be a liberal to call out the shamefulness of that incident. In fact the hardly liberal James Mattis did exactly that, as did the other general who was caught in the photo op.

<comment><USER27> I think you have that backwards. The "photo op" incident occurred weeks ago, and James Mattis rightfully condemned it.

The current spate of boycotts appear to be in response to Facebook's refusal to remove a post by Trump _directly_ referring to the "Black House Autonomous Zone". That's why the focus is on St. John's church and statues — it's what is _currently happening right now_. I will include the text of Trump's post:

"There will never be an "Autonomous Zone" in Washington, D.C., as long as I'm your President. If they try they will be met with serious force!"

This has nothing to do with the photo op incident, and the willingness to focus on it distracts attention from the private place where actual vandalism and squatting is currently taking place. It's a valid (if crass) expression of a willingness to enforce the law, no matter how much people may disagree with it.

<comment><USER26> Yes, it sounds like we were talking about different incidents.

I personally support Facebook's ability to make the decision to either allow or disallow president's posts - within the parameters of the law - <USER3> of whether I would agree with their decision.

The question is whether the parameters of law allow for a public official to issue credible threats of violence again citizens over mass media channels, and under what conditions.

The actual use of force by this president in his shameful photo op incident in front of the church has clearly demonstrated without a shadow of doubt that his threat of _disproportional_ violence against protesters - even for trivial purposes - is credible.

The legality of all this is not a settled issue, and is something the courts may have to decide.

<comment><USER27> The courts have already decided. The Brandenburg v Ohio precedent establishes the "imminent lawless action" test.

Issuing threats of (legal) force against citizens that they perceive to be breaking the law fails the "imminent lawless action" test, and is currently within the parameters of the law.

<comment><USER26> From the Brandenburg v Ohio wiki page:

> The U.S. Supreme Court reversed Brandenburg's conviction, holding that > government cannot constitutionally punish abstract advocacy of force or law > violation

Brandenburg was an individual private citizen advocating "abstractly" for violence against black and Jews as a representative of his private organization (the KKK). His speech rights were protected then by the case.

However, we will almost certainly have court cases in the near future that will test the protections of hate speech, which is what we would more readily call Brandenburg's speech today.

POTUS is a public official and in this incident was speaking in his role as a public official with the power to use force, and issuing a concrete threat against a specific target. He is speaking as the government itself because he is invoking the government's powers.

It's not at all clear that Brandenburg v Ohio protects this sort of speech. There is plenty for the courts to still consider.

<comment><USER27> > POTUS is a public official and in this incident was speaking in his role as > a public official with the power to use force, and a concrete threat against > a concrete target.

Yes, but that use of force is not lawless. Police use of force against vandalism is currently legal. Calling for that is also legal, because it fails the "lawless" portion of the "imminent lawless action" test.

Similarly, if POTUS calls for war against a specific nation (or group), it is within his rights to do that, no matter how violent or deadly war may be. War isn't a lawless action (for better or for worse). As such, the Commander in Chief declaring the intent to call on the legislature to approve a war is also protected, for the same reason.

<comment><USER26> > Similarly, if POTUS calls for war against a specific nation (or group), it > is within his rights to do that, no matter how violent or deadly war may be.

Calling for war against a foreign adversary, yes. But for violence against domestic protesters - not clear that Brandenburg v Ohio protects that, regardless of whether the violence is lawful, and to what degree it is lawful. The use of violence by public officials is not a blanket right, and courts will likely consider the types of situation where particular levels of violence are legal or not.

Also, there are specific legal prohibitions against using the military against domestic targets, which is one of the things Mattis was so incensed about in the photo op incident. The administration would like to claim they have the option of the Insurrection Act, which will again have to be tested in courts. Calling protests insurrection, even those that commit vandalism, is false on its face.

<comment><USER27> > The administration would like to claim they have the option of the > Insurrection Act, which will again have to be tested in courts. Calling > protests insurrection, even those that commit vandalism, is false on its > face.

We're not talking about classifying anything as "insurrection" here.

Given the context of the tweet in question, we are strictly talking about vandalism and trespassing, and we're talking about classifying it as "obstruction of the law", which is explicitly carved out in the text of the Insurrection Act. I'm not sure if you can make a strong case that vandalism and trespassing are NOT an obstruction of the law. If a mid-20th century Arkansas school refusing to desegregate can be considered an obstruction of the law, so too can vandalism/trespassing.

The POTUS declaring the intent to call on the legislature to approve the Insurrection Act against those that are objectively obstructing the law is protected by the Constitution, and you'd have to really stretch yourself to suggest that this fails the imminent lawless action test.

And this is also all assuming that POTUS is talking about using the military. He could also be talking about just calling on the police force to just enforce the existing laws. The statement is vague enough that it's legal on its face, but even in the non-charitable interpretation pretty clearly fails the Brandenburg test.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It seems the pandemic and unemployment is finally causing voodoo economics (trickle down economics) to reverse course and perhaps cause trickle up economics, where the multi-billion dollar corporations and rich alike will begin to feel the pinch of poverty on a massive scale trickle up.

Unfortunately while taxpayers got their $1,200 Checks they were robbed blind of over $4T to the FED which went directly to stabilize the publicly traded companies. If it weren't for that, we would have already seen bankruptcies on a massive scale from publicly traded companies...instead the markets are back where the were pre-covid. But at some point they will have to admit there can't be a recovery when there are no consumers left.

<comment><USER29> I'm frankly flabbergasted by what's going on with the markets. If anyone thought stocks were still somehow a projection of reality and an indicator of expectations on the future of a company's performance, well, that's clearly not the case anymore. I am really scared that a real devastating collapse is still looming, but I frankly have no clue of when that could happen and what could actually trigger it.

<comment><USER30> It is baffling, and I've been expecting a crash for a decade... which is the problem. The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

Right now it's kind of persistently slightly irrational. A quick-and-dirty measure of its sanity is the P/E ratio: how much money are the publicly listed companies actually making? Right now, the number is around 22[1], meaning a dollar invested in the market takes 22 years to pay itself back purely in terms of corporate profits.

That's a return of about 3%. Numbers over 20 are generally considered a sign that the market is overheated. They peaked at around 45 and 65 right before the 90s and 2000s crashes. So there is revenue there, and not entirely out of line with stock prices, but not entirely line with them either.

None of that takes coronavirus into account; that's current price with last quarter's earnings. But if you assume that coronavirus is only temporary (it may not be, but let's be optimistic for a second) it means that long term the numbers are calling for a crash... eventually. One of these days. Longer than you can remain solvent while shorting it.

Probably.

In other words, I've got no idea what's going on. The markets have been weirdly stable (in price-to-earnings terms) for the past decade, at a number that's too optimistic, before coronavirus. Surely the inevitable at-least- short-term loss of earnings should have corrected that, but it hasn't. So either people are thinking very long term, or they're just nuts.

[1] [https://www.multpl.com/s-p-500-pe- ratio](https://www.multpl.com/s-p-500-pe-ratio)

<comment><USER31> I've started ignoring P/E because , among other reasons, it doesn't account for cash reserves. If you have two similar companies, but one is sitting on more cash, it should be worth more, but its P/E makes it look overpriced relative to the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I wonder how much of the elephant in the room, which is "ad-tech kind of doesn't work so great", people are going to be willing to say out loud.

<comment><USER33> Based on some personal experience from perhaps 7 or 8 years ago, it can work for driving sales.

However it required quite a lot of effort.

It wasn't just throw some money into the ads and wait for the returns - <USER4> needed to basically spend a full-time job pulling levers and prodding buttons to find out where the "sweet spot" was and then make sure you keep up with the moving target over the following days weeks and months. If you were lucky and your business was selling the "right" things (i.e. large margin items) you could do quite well. E.g. it might cost you $15-20 in ads to make one sale - that is net-positive if the margin on your items is large. So some fashion, furniture, holidays etc a $20+ Cost-per-acquisition is a bargain as you just paid $20 to make a $150 profit. If you are competing for common ad space/keywords and you have a low-margin business then you're probably not going to do so well since you might be paying $20 to sell something that costs $9.99 or whatever.

Of course, there is then the question of would you have made that $150 profit without spending the $20? Or did you actually make more than one sale from those $20 worth of ads (e.g. in-store sales etc in addition to purchases made online). I am not involved in online advertising now, but at the time that was the trillion dollar question that everyone was trying to answer... no idea if it is solved now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Given what they are trying to do to Scott Alexander, it's hard to take NYT's reporting angle seriously.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is a poor article. It mixes up several different issues and lumps them together as if they were one thing. Strongly ideological companies aren't going to behave like the bulk of their customers.

I read this as yet another shot from the NYT against tech in general. It's propaganda.

</comment><comment><USER36> After the SSC debacle, NYT is likely to learn itself a thing or two about boycotts.

<comment><USER37> If we punish respected organizations (of any kind) for every gaffe, we would not have any left.

In an era where the journalists are more under attack than ever, we might want to remember it is easier to tear things down than build them up.

<comment><USER38> What about gaffes like the 1619 Project, the shortcomings and errors of which the NYT steadfastly refused to correct in the face of criticisms from historians. At a certain point, when the gaffes all line up in one direction, one might reasonably suspect an underlying motive.

<comment><USER39> What were some of the issues with the 1619 Project?

<comment><USER40> The main thesis of the 1619 project was that the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery. This is categorically false according to actual historians, and so the NYT had to issue a correction (some 7 months later). None of the leading scholars of the whole period from the Revolution to the Civil War were consulted on the project, yet now it is being taught in some public schools

<comment><USER38> > yet now it is being taught in some public schools

That's the real problem. Newspapers get things wrong all the time. There's a conversation, people put forth their views pro and anti, and everyone makes up their own mind. But making a newspaper story that has come under fire from a huge number of respectable scholars part of the school curriculum for children is nakedly ideological.

<comment><USER41> I think/hope everybody recognizes that mistakes happen. In this particular case I think it goes beyond a mere mistake. Some points to consider: The 1619 Project refers not merely to "a newspaper story". Originally it was 100 page magazine with ten essays, a variety of poems and stories, etc. It has since become an ongoing multimedia project. Secondly, as mentioned above, the NYTs has not been particularly responsive to criticism from actual historians.

<comment><USER42> > In this particular case I think it goes beyond a mere mistake.

I think that supports another point made above:

>At a certain point, when the gaffes all line up in one direction, one might reasonably suspect an underlying motive.

The NYT seems to be beyond "gaffes" at this point, and be entirely focused on promoting their ideology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I wonder how much of it is Facebook being unwilling to be editorial and how much of it is then being unable to moderate a couple of billion users.

Either way, they might not get a choice. The EU is going to regulate them more and more. My own country is passing a law to force platforms to remove child pornography within 24 hours of it being reported as an example of where it starts. Won't be long before we make enabling nazi groups planning hate crimes illegal either.

<comment><USER44> No one has a problem with anyone making nazi groups planning hate crimes illegal. My biggest concern is Facebook deciding who is a "nazi" and what constitutes a hate crime. My belief (backed by scientific fact) that biological sex is real and immutable is enough to have me branded as a "nazi". The statement "males are not females" is enough to be considered hate speech. Saying, "males are not females" could be a hate crime.

<comment><USER13> As usual, context is everything in communication.

"Males are not females" may be accurate when referring to biological sex, but in the context it is most commonly used (as harassment and as a neoconservative tribal signifier) it is referring to gender, and is roughly equivalent to saying "the gender you have now should match the gender you were assigned at birth, or your gender identity is illegitimate".

It's similar to saying "all lives matter". Of course they do, but the context in which its said indicates that it's an opposition to the explicit statement about black lives mattering, a de-focusing and dismissal. "All lives matter" or "males are not females" are not incorrect statements, but in the vast majority of the times they are used on the internet, they are used to express hatred of a group and the active dismissal of that group's efforts to achieve equal human rights. The context in which they are used makes them hateful. Hiding behind the "but it's scientific fact!" is simply a deflection from the fact that it is an expression of hate in the context in which it is used.

I shouldn't have to explain this, honestly. Please stop acting like a jerk to people online.

<comment><USER44> Since when does the truth need context? If I tweet "males are not females" on Twitter with no context, they will ban my account.

Also, if I want to say "the gender you have now should match the gender you were assigned at birth, or your gender identity is illegitimate", that's precisely what I'll say, but I tend to speak directly. Have you considered you might be projecting if you can read the literal words "males are not females" and conclude a person intends to say, "the gender you have now should match the gender you were assigned at birth, or your gender identity is illegitimate"? That seems like quite a leap.

<comment><USER45> I'd say the truth value of any possible statement is _entirely_ derived from context. Any possible statement could appear on a sign from nowhere in an infinite empty universe purely out of quantum fluctuations, but it would have no meaning without the context of a universe like ours. Every statement has a context in which it expresses the truth, and many others in which it is false. And people get into conflicts about the meta-issue of whose context is right.

Mach's principle is kind of an analogy I'm thinking of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> One thing to consider is that this is largely a self-correcting problem for Facebook due to the auction model for ads.

As money leaves the pool, price per conversion will tend to go down automatically for everyone else.

If you think other advertisers will leave money on the table to make a point then you haven't worked in business very long.

</comment><comment><USER47> I wrote about it here and I stand with it "Paid Ads are a Trap" [https://email@example.com/ads-are-a- trap-80df01d2...](https://email@example.com/ads-are-a- trap-80df01d2fbaf?source=friends_link&sk=ed2680c921a7bb5a0b147b44a9a14b1e) (Medium free to read link)

The ad system of Google and Facebook is obviously not created to benefit the businesses which book ads, but Fb and G. The business should be at best held at minimum but viable profit, highest cost for ads. At worst "burn through all your money with us". I by now came to eh conclusion that "paids (ads) growth" is scheme with only Fb and G as the profiteers.

</comment><comment><USER48> I hope government gets on-board.

I frequently see government of Ontario and Canada advertising on Facebook and its poorly targeted and it makes me mad

</comment><comment> globular-toast I have mixed feelings about Facebook. I was one of the first people in my friend group to boycott Facebook back when it _really_ wasn't cool to do so: back in 2008 or so. I did so for reasons of privacy. As someone who works with data for a living, I know full well the risks people are taking by using Facebook and I also see how little the general public understand about this. So I boycotted them.

But nobody talks about privacy any more.

The current backlash against Facebook seems to be due to them not wanting to censor the platform in quite the way that users want them to censor the platform. It seems everyone is happy with the censorship---because like anyone who has ever been happy with censorship they don't believe the readership is intelligent enough to read certain words---but they are unhappy that the censorship isn't being conducted in a way that benefits them.

Back in 2008 I thought it was simple: just don't use Facebook. Maybe it was that simple back then. But not now. This internet thing really seems to be turning into the great problem of our time and I fully expect it to cause several major crises before we figure it out.

</comment><comment><USER49> For better or worse money talks. Advertiser pullouts have been an effective change mechanism in many other cases. TV personalities doing controversial things were typically done in when the advertisers pulled their money. Until then nothing happened.

Facebook does a lot of cool things but it's only sustainable as a business if the advertising dollars keep flowing. Shut that off in any appreciable quantity and things will get ugly there real quick.

</comment><comment><USER50> While it might affect Facebook's bottom line for a short while, until users start moving away from FB nothing really will change. Advertisers will come back.

<comment><USER51> >"While it might affect Facebook's bottom line for a short while, until users start moving away from FB nothing really will change. Advertisers will come back."

Counterpoint: users already have moved away, and that's why advertisers are able to do this without hesitation now. FB is still growing in the third world, but I don't know a single person in the US under 30 that still uses it.

<comment><USER52> As a Uni student, I still see people use Facebook, but it's a select group of people. It's the same < 5% of the people I interact with regularly. Most people I know use Facebook just for events so you can invite someone to a fundraiser or party.

On the other side, I see Instagram doing fantastic among my friends, and it gets way less hate from them, despite being very openly owned by Facebook (it says it on the splash screen).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> So because Mark Zuckerberg won't censor people with different opinions he is complacent in spreading fake news and hate?

Wow, that kind of rhetoric is dangerous imo. For once I actually think Facebook have made the right call. Censoring people is wrong and Facebook should refrain from doing it.

Let me decide what is true and false, I don't need Facebook or other people to decide that for me.

Good job Facebook, thanks for standing up for free speech.

<comment><USER54> Facebook as a bastion of free speech? That's not something you hear often. I don't even even want to dig up the old examples of Zuckerberg bending over backwards for China, here's a recent example from Vietnam - [https://in.reuters.com/article/vietnam-facebook/exclusive- fa...](https://in.reuters.com/article/vietnam-facebook/exclusive-facebook- agreed-to-censor-posts-after-vietnam-slowed-traffic-sources-idINKCN2232KP)

<comment><USER55> They only censor when the government forces them to. In other words they do the minimum to comply with the local law. Isn't that what we were looking for?

<comment><USER54> If they were only complying with court orders / subpoenas that's what would be called doing the minimum to comply with the law. They have done way more than that in the past - giving out tools to governments to enable mass surveillance and takedown of posts/accounts. Whatever content any government agency has a problem with is taken down immediately.

Don't be mistaken. This is not Facebook standing up for your rights. It's them not wanting to stop fake news from spreading on their platform because that would hurt the bottomline.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> nyt will never waste an opportunity to paint their usurper as a failing company.. i am highly confident that this will all amount to nothing

<comment><USER57> It gives them political cover to ban content and act as if they are "responding to pressure" but still "striving to be neutral".

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> This is amazing, because it means less competition and my business will get better marketing ROI. I fully support other businesses reducing advertising.

</comment><comment><USER59> I for one am thankful that thanks to facebook there's not only google.

</comment><comment><USER60> I boycott Facebook as a platform for privacy reasons.

</comment><comment><USER61> The NYT is no longer credible

</comment><comment><USER18> Wishful thinking from the nyt

</comment><comment><USER62> Wow they're in trouble. Both the left and right are not happy with them. The left cause they won't censor enough and the right because they sensor too much and put in a likely bias review committee. The Project Veritas video was pretty exposing and will likely fuel a senate investigation.

</comment><comment><USER63> Maybe instead of trying to damage fb directly, nytimes could instead write about the countless social communities that facebook destroyed abd sidelined over the years. It s not long ago that nytimes was writing praises about facebook, we remember.

Unfortunately these days it doesn't seem that nytimes holds itself to a higher moral standard than fb

[https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/business/smallbusiness/12...](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/business/smallbusiness/12guide.html)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/technology/08class.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/technology/08class.html)</comment>


Gilad Bracha Interview - <AUTHOR> http://cdn3.libsyn.com/seradio/seradio-episode140-NewspeakGiladBraha.mp3?nvb=20090828183950&nva=20090829184950&t=014eba885f833016adfd8

<comment><AUTHOR> Notable quotes from the interview "A (static) type system is like Napoleonic law - it arrests you because you can't prove you are innocent" "(static) type systems are mainly good for documentation - the idea that they make your programs more reliable is a myth"</comment>


Show HN: Bored at Home" React Challenge - <AUTHOR> https://learnreact.design/challenges/bored-at-home-react/ <comment><AUTHOR> I hope you like the name of this challenge. :)

In all seriousness, I want to do my little part to help people feel better in the difficult times right now. That'll help me feel better too.

</comment><comment><USER2> Cool, a little excitement of Learning can help us all.</comment>


China Is Reopening Its Wet Markets. That's Good - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-04/coronavirus-closing-china-s-wet-markets-isn-t-a-solution <comment><USER3> Yes, then they will all resume business and be tracked to their lairs - <USER2> a period of time they will all be arrested. That is the only logical reason IMHO, so the government can get a handle on all of them and get rid of them?</comment>