I was emailed after abandoning a registration form. I did not click Submit - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/heshiebee/i-was-emailed-after-abandoning-a-registration-form-i-did-not-click-submit-this-is-not-ok-a63 <comment><USER2> It seems a lot of people are missing the true concern here because they only read the first half of the article.

Going to paraphrase the article a bit here but yes, the website is capturing the filled-in data even if the user hasn't hit the submit button. However, they're also running a tracking script from an advertisement network in the background that attempts to capture your e-mail. If you visit Site A as a result of one of the ads from that network, but leave without putting down your e-mail address, and then go to Site B and do leave your e-mail address, the ad network will send your e-mail address to Site A in an attempt to "re- capture" that lost impression for Site A even if you never even hit submit on Site B. They're marketing it as a way of reducing ad-spend because you don't have to keep trying to target potential customers who've already shown interest through more ads.

I'm not a lawyer so I'm very curious to know how this doesn't easily violate COPPA for Site A, Site B, and the ad network, among other privacy laws. The wording from the ad network shown in the article is a bit vague around enabling a "triggered email sequence", so I'm wondering if they get around some legal issues by sending emails for Site A on their behalf rather than sharing the email address itself.

* Edited for minor typos I noticed after hitting submit.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the text from the email footer, they call themselves safeOpt, it's part of addshoppers.com:

THIS IS A THIRD PARTY ADVERTISEMENT This email was sent to firstname.lastname@example.com on 2020-05-16 23:06:22.669518 (UTC). If you no longer wish to receive Aeroflow Breastpumps communications via SafeOptⓇ, please unsubscribe here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I argued against this pattern and left shortly after the owner of a company I worked at made me implement this pattern. As the head of the department I actually refused, but he went to one of the engineers on my team and had the push the change.

I can never figure out why people don't realize that even if it's legal, it comes across as creepy.

</comment><comment><USER4> If he thinks that is nefarious wait until he learns that websites were using visually hidden fields to surreptitiously capture browser auto-complete details. That is, if you auto complete "name" they might have an "email", "phone number", "address", etc. field hidden from your view that also get auto filled.

I sure hope that browser makers have patched that somehow but I still avoid auto-complete whenever possible.

<comment><USER5> For this I absolutely hate firefox master password feature. Every once in a while you get prompted to insert your password without any kind of indication of why, which tabs prompted it, what domain is asking, or even whether it is just firefox periodic syncing.

<comment><USER6> Agreed, the worst is after you restart Firefox and have dozens of tabs from the same site open (like reddit or HN) and each one of them requests your master password over and over until you reject each tab's plea for you to authenticate or finally give into the software you're supposed to be in control of.

If anyone at Mozilla is reading this, please fix this, it's incredibly obnoxious. I'd also appreciate it if you styled your master password prompt better than a javascript alert dialog so I know I'm typing in my most valuable password in the world into the browser and not some site pretending to be you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One thing I don't think people realize is in the age of async JS, even not doing anything is an action to be observed. Information is not sent when you say "okay" \-- it's always being sent.

<comment><USER8> Indeed one time I put something in my cart (I think it was VMWare Player) and then visited the checkout page and got distracted. When I revisited the tab, there was a dialogue open offering a discount.

The page thought I was hemming and hawing on whether to buy it and then offered a discount to help push me over the edge.

<comment><USER9> It was likely when your mouse left the window boundary - we use that mechanism on our exit popups. It's super effective, I fucking hate those, but the conversion rate increase is noticeable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This happens everywhere. Since ebay has started charging tax for all items (regardless of whether or not they are used or new) in my state, I've been using more and more small online shops for product purchases.

In many cases you have to fill out your address and email info before you can get to a shipping page to see shipping charges. In so many cases, even though I did not place an order or create an account, I am still sent an email saying that I have contents in my "shopping cart" and they are looking forward to "making me a satisfied customer".

<comment><USER11> What does new or used have to do with anything? Don't blame eBay, they are just following the law.

<comment><USER10> Beats the heck out of me. But sales tax, at least in the beginning, was a way to generate state revenue for the sale of _new_ items. It had no baring for private sales between two persons for a _used_ item which already had its tax paid when it was originally bought.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This has happened to me several times since the quarantine started and I began shopping online more.

Nothing makes me want to shop with your company less than blatantly violating my trust before I'm even a customer.

</comment><comment><USER13> I knew a guy that started to fill out a shop form (card entry), and didn't submit.

They charged the card anyway (and did not send any product).

They got an earful from him.

I suspect their form was a piece of junk, but that doesn't sound particularly PCI-compliant, to me.

This ad-targeting, email-harvesting thing is really bad, though. It may not be illegal in most of the US (but I'll bet it is in some states), but I will lay odds that this company had better make sure they don't have any EU data mixed into their little bouillabaisse.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's really crazy. It's theft and should be prosecuted as such.

<comment><USER13> Yup. He said that they probably weren't malicious about it, but hired a really shitty Web designer. They got all cooperative when he said his next call would be the local FBI office.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So in the screenshot you're giving an email and they're just storing it without telling you before you click submit, but that AddShoppers system sounds ridiculous. I'm guessing they just provide the data and you send the emails through your own account and take the inevitable reputation hit of endless spam reports yourself after you email people who've never given you their email?

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If I abandon a cart there's a reason! Nagging me about it isn't going to make me purchase anything. You may __think __it did because I come back--but if that happened it 's because I was after some other information first.

<comment><USER16> > Nagging me about it isn't going to make me purchase anything.

I wonder about this. I feel the same, but wonder if it's true for everyone? I kinda assume it must work some of the time, otherwise they wouldn't do it.

<comment><USER17> often times they will nag w/ an incentive. I recently got one from MealSquares offering 10% off my abandoned cart

This maybe the next level wikibuy/honey ... Intentionally abandon carts to get more % off to undermine companies that do stupid things to get customers.

<comment><USER18> This is absolutely a thing. I've had it happen to me more than once, to the point where I now tend to abandon carts just to see if I can get a sweeter deal a few days later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There are analytics tools that are in _pretty common use_ that record entire user sessions on your site. Mouse movements, stuff typed in but not submitted, everything.

Javascript with more than about 1% its current capabilities, in a hyper-text document navigator and e-commerce platform, _is a security hole_. It can't be fixed because its features _are security holes_.

<comment><USER20> With enough effort, this can be fixed. We're working on a general solution to this problem at Transcend¹.

1\. [https://transcend.io/consent-manager/](https://transcend.io/consent- manager/)

<comment><USER21> As per GDPR, shouldn't it be opt-in instead of opt-out?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I visited Jabra's website the other day, browsed a couple product pages and then left. Sure enough about 24 hours late I get an email with a subject like "Come check out some of these products you missed."

How the hell is that legal?

<comment><USER23> Once I had a call with company called ZoomInfo. This is exactly what they pitched to me - obtaining emails of our website _visitors_. Creepy AF, but I can easily see why many companies would trade some creepiness in exchange for a revenue hike.

We all definitely underestimate how far marketing surveillance has gone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I run this on my forms. I include a hard to follow disclaimer that says your entries are saved in real time "for your convenience"

It freaks people out when we reach out on the partial fill, but since I sell lead generation, it's a nice trick that they appreciate.

It's definitely problematic.

Luckily, our time is costly so only one single follow up occurs ..no list selling, mailing lists or repeat calls occur, but would be easy to do.

Its actually just an available feature on existing form software

<comment><USER25> > I include a hard to follow disclaimer

Casual scum is casual.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I implemented something like this for the uni I worked for a few years ago, basically we wanted to collect 'partials' as we called them. We were paying for web campaigns and we wanted to increase lead intake by collecting information as fields were filled out. We attached this to a cookie that we assigned on user landing and as they typed in the input it was progressively building a profile. If you never clicked submit it was not considered a full lead and ended up in a partials database that got mined by the analytics group.

Modern CMS's, specifically SiteCore have this kind of progressive profiling built in. It was one of the selling points for why we adopted it in our last rewrite.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'll be upfront about this. I was doing this back in 2003. My rationale? People would forget to complete signups, or they get interrupted. My goal was to make it as trouble-free as possible to get back to where they had left off. And it worked really well. Granted, all this was back long before I really had any concept of spam and privacy. It was just an honest "Oh, this could help those users!" Obviously times are different and expectations have changed. I wouldn't think of doing it now.

<comment><USER28> I don't think this would be shady if a site kept an incomplete form in browser localStorage. It's only shady when the incomplete form is sent to a server and then acted on.

<comment><USER29> In 2003 there was no localStorage, it would either be cookies or HTTP requests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I got a SMS the other day of an incomplete form in a Shopify shop. The service is called SMSBump. I do not even recall giving them my number but maybe my password manager did autofill it.

</comment><comment><USER31> This happens to me with shopping carts that I never register for but started to enter email.

You get a "left something in your cart" discount code.

So I've started to do that on purpose when I can't find a discount for a site, works about 50% of the time. Start to checkout, enter email, get to payment and just close tab. Wait an hour or two.

</comment><comment><USER32> How is this any different than sites that track what people are highlighting in the text? If anything, tracking what you highlight is a worse violation because it can reveal your inner thoughts and values, which is more valuable and harder to get than your email address.

</comment><comment><USER33> I remember reading a marketing tips page that recommended gathering the email as the first step of a multi-step signup process. I never followed the advice as I was just more interested in the technical details of connecting UI to my backend schema in a rational fashion.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is so against the basics of GDPR, all these webshops that participate risk fines for non compliance from the moment a EU citizen is being tracked. Even if these are US companies they need to comply

<comment><USER35> > Even if these are US companies they need to comply

Only if you have an office in the EU.

Not any more than US companies need to comply with arbitrary Chinese laws, or Japanese companies need to comply with arbitrary Saudi Arabian laws. Why does the EU have special status in being able to impose laws on the US?

The EU can feel free to block the website if they don't like it. (But we know their citizens would throw a riot if they started censoring the internet, sshhh...)

However, independently of GDPR, I agree that it's wrong and that you shouldn't be saving contact information by deception. You'd lose me as a customer if you did that.

<comment><USER36> I think it goes further than office location, if you do business in the EU at all you want to watch out.

Of course the main problem with the GDPR is that it's so far not really been enforced, so people feel free to contravene it at will.

<comment><USER35> I suppose you could also decide to either

\- (a) not do business in the EU, but leave your website accessible throughout the world. It's upto the EU to block it if they hate it

\- (b) invite people from the EU to do business with you on US soil, where they would be subject to US laws instead of EU laws

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is the opposite of fighting for the users. It's outright hostile.

</comment><comment><USER38> Formstack.com forms are able to do this and they are distributed all over the web.

</comment><comment><USER39> So I suppose the advice of disabling Javascript is not that bad after all.

</comment><comment><USER40> What a great explanation of GDPR and why its necessary.</comment>


Web Domain White Elephant Exchange - <AUTHOR> http://webdomainwhiteelephantexchange.com

<comment><USER2> Okay, I'll bite. I threw in a pronounceable six letter dot com that I have no idea what to do with. I just hope I don't get something like dsf325kmsf.info

I guess I could always refuse to take the transfer, and I guess it's on the honor system to give the authorization code.

Feedback on the form: A Twitter username is required? I don't use Twitter, so I wrote in my HN username instead. Also, I'm curious why the domain name has to be formatted as a URL including "http".</comment>


Why it's still a good time to start a company  - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2008/11/03/gilman-louie-on-the-great-lies-of-venture-capitalists-and-why-its-still-a-good-time-to-start-a-company/ <comment><USER2> My contract with Polar Rose was just ended because the company is running out of money and time. They let go of five people to buy a little more time.

For me this was a clear signal: it is time to do my own thing. "Don't be afraid. This is the time to choose your dreams." is exactly how I feel at the moment.</comment>


Google Patents 'Google Doodles' - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/222941/google_patents_google_doodles.html

<comment><USER2> Something tells me this is a very elaborate (10 years in the making) dig at the whole patent-ridiculousness

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Utterly ridiculous abomination of the patent system.

<comment><USER3> It may be ridiculous abomination of the patent system but I enjoy the absurdity of it all.

Wonder if Google would actually try to enforce this patent or if it was more of an experiment.</comment></comment>


Founders Of Secret Pocketed $6M in Latest Round - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/secret-founders-pocket-6-million-in-25-million-fundraise-2014-7

<comment><USER2> Doesn't that make the valuation seem like a scam? If they thought it was worth as much or more they wouldn't be in such a rush to cash in.</comment>


Pushed By Celebrities, Twitter Is Poised To Double Its Monthly Traffic Once Again - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/20/twitter-is-poised-to-double-its-monthly-traffic-once-again/ <comment><USER2> The article says outright that the user IDs are not a reliable scheme for measuring growth, so I'm failing to see the relevance.

<speculation>

It appears that they are doing a partitioned autoincrement for their user IDs. For example, if you have 10 servers, you give every server a unique seed between 0 and 9 and have them increment the IDs by 10. So server 1 would produce IDs 0,10,20, etc. Server 2 would give you 1,11,21, etc. This allows you to easily use autoincrements in a sharded environment and to find the shard by looking at the modulo of the ID.

The trick is that you'd usually assign seeds for all servers in the cluster and at least half of them would usually be read slaves (which can become masters if needed). So the real number of users is at least 1/2 of the max user ID. You would also use more partitions than the number of servers you have right now, so that you don't have to readjust existing servers as your cluster grows.

This, of course, is pure speculation.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've seen a lot of my "normal/non tech industry" friends get on recently. They have a completely different usage pattern:

Under 100 followers is more than enough (followers and following)

A whole lot less updates.

Probably half protect their updates.

I think a lot of people will stick around, especially if they can follow celebrities and the like. The suggested followers that get added to your account are great for retention.

Good luck bros.

</comment><comment><USER4> The Twitter hype has really gotten ridiculous since Friday's Oprah. The bottom line is this: I don't know how big Twitter will eventually get but the initial rush of people checking it out doesn't prove anything. Statistics show most people will look once and then leave.

Put another way, Oprah has an average of 8 million viewers yet 3 days after the broadcast her Twitter follower total is a little under 400k. What's that tell you?

<comment><USER5> That after just three days nearly one in twenty of her viewers are following her on Twitter? That's a pretty astonishing number.

<comment><USER4> By what standard is that astonishing? Or here's another question: If that's such an astonishing number why did the Techcrunch article feel the need to exaggerate it?

For God sakes it's a free service. 1 in 20 takers when there is 0 barriers to entry isn't astonishing. Maybe, MAYBE if 1 in 20 became active users that would be impressive but I doubt even that will happen.

<comment><USER5> There's a huge barrier to entry. First, you need to be paying attention during that particular part of the show. Second, you need a computer and an internet connection. Third, you need to have it nearby when you're watching Oprah - you're not going to remember to do it otherwise. Then you need to figure out what to do. Then you need to go through the signup process. Finally, having signed up you need to find Oprah again (not so easy if you don't understand URLs very well, like most people who use the internet) and click "follow".

1/20 is astonishing.

<comment><USER4> By your calculation it's amazing anyone gets anything done. I mean, somehow Oprah's books sell millions of copies on Amazon. Is amazon easier to use than Twitter? I don't think so.

Let me ask you this. What proof do you have that any of her followers weren't the people who were already on Twitter? Shaq has 700k+, Ashton has a million. Isn't it possible Oprah's 400k came out of those people?

It's possible Twitter didn't gain any users over the weekend (unlikely but possible)

<comment><USER5> No proof at all. I was just trying to point out that your initial suggestion that picking up 400,000 followers in three days didn't deserve "hype" was unfounded.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Windows Kernel Architecture Internals (2010) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/events/wincore2010/Dave_Probert_1.pdf <comment><USER2> Anyone know if there's work being done on a 7th edition of Windows Internals? I read Inside Windows 2000, which was totally awesome, but not super much changed on the architectural level between 2000 and Windows 7 (which is covered in the 6th edition), at least not to my untrained eye. Windows 8 and 10 might have some radically new stuff, just judging from the range of devices they target, and their efforts on speeding it up on slower hardware (reversing the trend of the bloating Windows versions up to Vista).

Now I've not really used Windows much in the past 10 years. I switched to OSX and then to Ubuntu (when the desktop experience became more bearable, and the license issues with OSX more important to me). But reading about the NT kernel feels like reading about how a kernel _should_ be designed. It really is that much cleaner in my opinion than anything I ever read on OSX or Linux. If they ever did open source it, I'd certainly join a subculture of before-it-got-hip Windows kernel lovers with XMonad as a window manager ;)

<comment><USER3> Windows Internals 7th Edition Book 1 is available already[0], and there will be 2 more books[1]. Russinovich and Solomon have stepped down a while ago, according to that forum thread, but the new book lists them as authors because Catlin and Hanrahan worked over the already existing stuff.

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/Windows-Internals-Book-User- Edition/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Windows-Internals-Book-User- Edition/dp/0735684189)

[1] [http://forum.sysinternals.com/when-is-the-7th-edition- book-f...](http://forum.sysinternals.com/when-is-the-7th-edition-book-for- win-8-coming-out_topic29288_post142573.html#142573)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have always heard that the windows kernel is actually pretty well designed. In particular the way it handles concurrency and asynchronous I/O. Unfortunately I have not found (euphemism for: I have been lazy) an easily consumable description of its differences from the Unix, Linux APIs supporting concurrency and asynchrony features, in what ways are they better, with some code examples thrown in that illustrate the differences

If anyone would be so kind to humor me with such a comparison or pointer...

<comment><USER5> Windows Internals is the canonical resource.

(I bet you would enjoy the concurrency and I/O sections from The Be Book and The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System too.)

<comment><USER6> Is The Be Book available in PDF or ebook format anywhere?

<comment><USER7> I believe you can find something about BeOS here:

[https://www.haiku-os.org/legacy-docs/bebook/index.html](https://www.haiku- os.org/legacy-docs/bebook/index.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you're into NT kernel internals, I recommend an excellent book "What Makes It Page?". It describes the VMM in way too much detail (in a good way).

It's a great combination of theory and practice - it describes concepts and then shows them on the live kernel. For example, the author introduces the concept of cache coloring and then he shows in WinDbg the actual variable on the process data structure where the color is stored.

[http://www.amazon.com/What-Makes-It-Page- Windows/dp/14791142...](http://www.amazon.com/What-Makes-It-Page- Windows/dp/1479114294)

<comment><USER9> Phenomenal book, highly recommended.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> For more about this, have a look at "Windows Internals" (6th edition is the latest, I believe) by Mark Russinovich, David Solomon and Alex Ionescu. It's an awesome book.</comment>


Twitter Suspends Chinese Scientist Dr. Li-Meng Yan Account - <AUTHOR> https://techstartups.com/2020/09/15/twitter-suspends-account-of-chinese-virologist-dr-li-meng-yan-after-she-published-a-paper-with-evidence-that-covid-19-was-created-in-wuhan-lab/ <comment><USER2> Same story, different outlet: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24506844](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24506844)</comment>


Paul Tudor Jones Says U.S. Stocks Should 'Terrify' Janet Yellen - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-20/paul-tudor-jones-says-u-s-stocks-should-terrify-janet-yellen <comment><USER2> Usually everyone is talking about how valuations are too high before it really tanks. Probably have a little while before it drops like a rock.</comment>


Do you react to bugs with fear, or courage? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mattwynne.net/2013/05/09/two-ways-to-react/

<comment><USER2> easy to repro -> courage hard to repro/intermittent -> fear

</comment><comment><USER3> Acceptance and compassion.</comment>


Show HN: 5M Concurrent WebSockets - <AUTHOR> https://oatpp.io/benchmark/websocket/5-million/ <comment><USER2> IMO this really shouldn't be a "show hn". I don't see a demo linked, just a page explaining what is occurring.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a section "steps-to-reproduce" [https://oatpp.io/benchmark/websocket/5-million/#steps-to- rep...](https://oatpp.io/benchmark/websocket/5-million/#steps-to-reproduce).

Basically I am showing my project, and an achieved performance

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a second "million" websockets benchmark of oatpp. Here we increase computing power, and load. In order to see how it scales.

</comment><comment><USER3> What did you use to generate the documentation ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, Thanks for the question!

I use VuePress to generate website pages from markdown. And for ApiReference I wrote my own generator, to generate markdowns from API Docs in the code.

The generator for API docs is not in the public repo currently but I plan to open it later.

Regards</comment></comment>


How America's 1% came to dominate equity ownership - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/2501e154-4789-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441 <comment><USER2> the headline implies that the article will answer the question, but it doesn't</comment>


Linux on the Nintendo Switch (failoverflow) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/embed/KBCkpEdvqDo <comment><AUTHOR> And the article that goes with it: [https://fail0verflow.com/blog/2018/shofel2/](https://fail0verflow.com/blog/2018/shofel2/)</comment>


Workaholics fixate on inconsequential details - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1017-workaholics-fixate-on-inconsequential-details <comment><USER2> 37signals advice seems like it comes from a really really narrow set of experiences. Best to take with a large pinch of salt I'd say.

<comment><USER3> Sure, but _anyone's_ advice comes from a narrow set of experiences that they try to make more applicable. Take _anyone's_ advice with a pinch of salt.

In Paul Buchheit's words: Advice = limited life experience + overgeneralization

<comment><USER4> I think what he's saying is that they haven't paid sufficient attention to how well they generalize. That's the other half of essay writing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You don't need to cite research to establish this: it's a tautology. The word "workaholic" has several senses. The one they mean is someone who works long hours but gets little done. The only way you can do that is to work on inconsequential things.

<comment><USER5> _The word "workaholic" has several senses. The one they mean is someone who works long hours but gets little done._

Can you cite a definition of "workaholic" that has this sense? I can't find one (in a few minutes of googling). The definition that seems to come up everywhere is "compulsion or addiction to work". If they're arguing from that then it's not tautological.

The closest thing I found to the sense you mention is in the second-last paragraph of the (rather good) Wikipedia article: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workaholic>. Which makes me imagine the following thread: "Ask YC: Are you a "bulimic" or "relentless" workaholic?" :)

<comment><USER4> I'm a native English speaker, and since the word is a colloquial one of comparatively recent origin, I've probably been using it for longer than it's been listed in most reference works. I know from my own experience that one of the senses (in fact, the main sense) is someone who works a lot but gets little done.

In any case, that's implied by definitions like the one you cite. Someone with a compulsion to work works a lot; otherwise you wouldn't call it a compulsion. And it's clear from the article that they're not talking about the kind of people who work a lot and achieve great things, since otherwise the message would be "Be Mediocre." So the only remaining possibility is that they're talking about people who work a lot and don't achieve much.

<comment><USER6> I usually take "workaholic" in the Japanese sense--someone whose boss assigns them 12 hours of work to do in an 8 hour day, is culturally expected to complete it all, and has this view internalized to the point where they feel bad when they can't.

<comment><USER7> That's a bad definition of workaholic. I think the similarity with alcoholic is there to indicate an addiction to work. Having a boss that makes ridiculous demands (which you must complete or get fired) doesn't make one addicted to work, it just makes it a shitty job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the article's author confuses a perfectionist with a workaholic. A perfectionist isn't by definition a workaholic and vice-versa yet the article seems to infer that your perfectionists are killing your productivity.

Look - I'm guilty as anyone of spending three hours on a 120x120 .gif to get the right font in exactly the right place but that doesn't mean that the company is worse off as a result. I do that about 1-2x a month (waste too much time on a stupid task in order to perfect it) and I chide myself on it each time but that doesn't mean I'm a perfectionist or a workaholic; it means I'm just prone to getting caught up in my work and not realizing how much time I've spent on something b/c I'm enjoying it. When I look at the clock of course I think, "That's good enough. I can't justify spending three hours to choose the font!" and I feel bad but it's a necessary process AFAIC.

</comment><comment><USER9> I was a workaholic in my first job for about a year, bragging how late I had to stay the previous night etc until I heard a manager I respect tell another "Some slog, not knowing how to plan work".

The person I was trying to impress was thinking all along that losers stay late.

<comment><USER10> pwnt

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Maybe this article and the sources it cites are correct, but how do you distinguish this from passion for the work? Some people work long hours _and_ are extremely productive, because they feel passionate about the work.

It would be extremely dangerous to dismiss all hard workers as workaholics, especially for a small startup. Perhaps it's just me, but I get a distinct feeling that this article's author thinks long hours are a sign of wasted time.

<comment><USER12> To misquote Ambrose Bierce, a workaholic is someone you don't like who works as hard as you do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> As a former workaholic, it can be cured. Workaholism can be fueled by an intense drive to show others how hard you can work (the classic I'll show them attitude). Which is good because you can divert it to other interests (e.g. not your job). For example, I diverted my workaholism to Toastmasters and it simultaneously saved my job (was going to quit, feeling underappreciated) and I stumbled into a great group of people (many, still friends).

</comment><comment><USER14> "The person may look like a hero, coming in to solve crisis after crisis, when in fact the crises could have been avoided. Sometimes, the workaholic may have unwittingly created the problems to provide the endless thrill of more work."

I've had a few jobs with big organizations where they expected long hours, and it would be a stretch to say that I created the problems.

I think whether or not your organization hits "crisis mode", and how often, is something that company leadership and management needs to control. They can't cry wolf all the time - it is not good for your people's morale (and sanity) to push them that hard all the time.

<comment><USER15> Most of the time in my experience, the "crisis mode" resulted from poor planning. The leadership tried to fix the situation by convincing the employees to work longer hours, which invariably made things far worse in the long run.

The reality is that very rarely did the longer hours help to get things done more quickly, instead the sweatshop mentality resulted in more bug-hunting and less progress.

I have not yet in over ten years encountered a situation where the long hours approach actually worked, though the management thought that it was working because people were working long hours churning out lots of code.

<comment><USER10> when i was in high school and college i wanted to get into game development. but stories about multi-month 'crunch times' eventually turned me away. in fact the games industry was renown for them. it was likely through a combination of poor planning and wishful hoping. it's quite sad, because not having me is about the biggest loss the videogame industry ever suffered

<http://www.igda.org/qol/whitepaper.php> (download requires account, but page has few stats)

<comment><USER15> That's the main reason that I also stayed out of the games industry, even though playing games is what lead me into programming during high school.

One thing that always makes me wonder about the perpetual crisis mode folks is that the vast majority of them despise Microsoft for producing such low- quality products, but follow exactly the same microserf development model that lead Microsoft to doing that.

A lot of the developers working there left as soon as their options vested, and for years MS has been paying the price in terms of maintenance overhead and a plethora of security holes and bugs in released software, which has lead to a reputation for having software that's full of security holes on top of everything else.

Joel Spolsky has also commented on the value of encouraging developers to work sane hours rather than sweatshop hours, though I don't know which of his articles it was in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _Sometimes, the workaholic may have unwittingly created the problems to provide the endless thrill of more work._

This one rather sounds like a pathology. Many if not all great things were created by workaholics.

Psychologically, every workaholic has reasons for being it that are very personal, oftentimes latent, and from what I can tell unrelated to the actual performance.

So, workaholism is a necessary but not sufficient condition for being able of creating great things, but otherwise it means nothing.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is obvious, but it doesn't really contradict good startup advice...to me, it seems as if many independent observers assume that doing a startup is synonymous with doing nothing except sleeping and working.

There are times in a startup's life when this is necessary, but even then it isn't sufficient: everyone needs to work all the time _on the details that matter_ because there is too much work to be done and not enough time to do it.

I guess 37signals's stories are popular because the apparently pose a counterpoint to the standard Silicon Valley startup culture, but in fact they are only pointing out obvious things that most successful startup founders already live by: you can't work non-stop for two years without a _lot_ of positive feedback on the way (and for five years maybe not at all), breaks with no work are necessary, perfectionists can get derailed if not careful, etc.

An undertone in other 37signals stories is that you can create wealth slower but with more certainty than most startups are trying to do, and that people shouldn't try so hard to create a successful startup..but I can't see that these views are mutually exclusive. To each his own. Both these kinds of companies are important to technological development.

</comment><comment><USER5> 37Signals tend to pontificate, so I think a little extra skepticism is justified. In this piece, all they're really doing is quoting an interview with someone a newspaper called an expert. Also, they subtly change the subject halfway through.

Still, if you define workaholism as addiction to work, I think it's foolish to defend it on the grounds that startups require hard work and long hours. In my observation, the "work" in "workaholic" does not mean "getting things done". It's closer to just "being _at_ work". It's more often a zombie-like state than an efficient one.

If you are sensitive enough to your inner process to work long and hard when you're productive and step back from work when you're not, you're not a workaholic, you're a Zen master.

<comment><USER10> there actually are people who need work in a psychological sense. but abstraction and creativity aren't their fortes (they are detail-oriented are rule-ish) so most of them stay away from technology development

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> every company should have a blog, yeh? And most use it for advertising, but is anyone else tired with the incessant preaching (and linking to news.yc) of 37signals?

I have great respect for their business, their founders and employees, and their theories about work.

But seriously, is that article going to change the way people work or think about work? Let each man and woman decide how they'd like to apply their own resources (namely: time and money) and let 37signals worry about building products.

Great marketing, but news.yc readers are more than aware of 37signals and most have probably already made up their mind of whether or not they agree with the company's methodology.

<comment><USER19> Nah, I'm not tired of it. It's obvious 37signals want to "change the world" in some way, and if you appreciate that, subscribe. If not, don't.

What /does/ tire me is that they set up a special "product blog" separate to SvN, but then continue to crosspost almost everything to SvN on a weekly basis anyway.. why bother?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Or they're biting off more than they can chew ;)

I'm trying to manage my main software business right now, plus starting a new startup which now has a fairly firm deadline of delivering our beta release by the week of May 20th (some promotional opportunities arose that we wanted to take advantage of, now we're booked for those so it's do or die!).

I know I have workaholic tendencies, and I agree they ought to be curbed (balance produces so much more and so much faster in my experience), but right now I don't have much choice. I imagine many startups, esp. those funded by day jobs, find themselves in similar situations.

So maybe temporary or binge workoholism is worth it, as long as it's not habit forming :)

</comment><comment><USER21> edw519's thoughts about workaholism (with apologies to the original author(s)):

To every thing there is a reason, and a time to every purpose under your project

A time to study and a time to write

A time to code and a time to pluck up that which is coded

A time to kill ideas and a time to heal that patch

A time to break down algorithms and a time to build up frameworks

A time to weep about bugs and a time to laugh about clean compiles

A time to mourn that dead end and a time to dance when it works

A time to cast away duplicates and a time to gather common functions together

A time to embrace someone else's code and a time to refrain from embracing it

A time to seek advice and a time to lose illogical prejudices

A time to keep and a time to refactor

A time to clean up variable names and a time to rewrite

A time to accept and a time to keep testing

A time to love your idea and a time to give it up

A time for plowing onward and a time to rest.

<comment><USER18> just in case some don't get it, it's a play on a Bible passage in Ecclesiastes Chapter 3.

<comment><USER21> Also in popular culture, here:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNopQq5lWqQ>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm at the airport now! Going to europe!</comment>


DOJ files motion to compel Apple to comply with FBI order - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/19/doj-files-motion-to-compel-apple-to-comply-with-fbi-order.html <comment><USER2> This is from 19 Feb 2016, by the way. It's not breaking news like it sounds like.</comment>


Ask HN: Why Not Spam Identity Thieves? - <AUTHOR>

How about pre-loading user databases on commercial websites with lots of fake data? There are plenty of username generators out there, also password generators, and I even found a valid credit card number generator (without the security data, of course). Identity thieves would suddenly have to deal with a major noise/signal problem.<p>I don't have the energy/time/skills to make this work, but I'm sure someone out there does. <comment><USER2> This would only work against _very_ low level / amature phishing operations.

Most of these systems not only validate user login information (often in real time) but also place live authorizations on cards to make sure they are valid.

For example, the "credit card generator" you found probably just uses MOD10/Luhn to generate 'random' numbers, starting with 3/4/5 depending on the card type you select.

If you're looking to simply add friction to low level identitiy thieves, it'd probably work, but the real question is what is your motiviation?

Your time would be better spent contributing to existing phishing prevention projects, or attempting to coordinate with network providers to get these sites taken down more quickly, the majority of victimization occurs from large scale data theft or professional phishing / malware operations like IceIX/Citadel, not Joe Blow's Wells Fargo phishing page.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting idea, but if you pre-loaded a database with a bunch of fake profiles, then the hackers would simply use all profiles after id N. So you'd have to continually be generating new "fake" profiles during production, which would cause extra load for the servers. That translates into higher cost.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe the application could generate a randomized number of _empty_ fakes whenever a new user signs up, and then fill them up overnight or during another low-load period. But this would obviously not help as much if the system was already compromised.

Also, to make things really convincing, there would also need to be fake transactions which the application could somehow recognize as such. The solution to that might be with fake products, these being in fake product categories that are in a fake category root. Complicated, yes.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a hackable Network Switch? - <AUTHOR> What is the closest hardware and software to realize this and generally play/hack the switch using custom software ? <comment><USER2> Barefoot networks([https://barefootnetworks.com/](https://barefootnetworks.com/)) has programmable switches using their custom designed chips and run using their programming language p4 ([http://onrc.stanford.edu/p4.html](http://onrc.stanford.edu/p4.html)). Its pretty powerful stuff and the chips are about $2000 a pop last I checked

</comment><comment><USER3> An easy way to hack an ethernet switch (or router) is a computer with a number of network cards. A cheap one is for instance the Banana Pi R1 ([http://www.banana-pi.org/r1.html](http://www.banana-pi.org/r1.html)) which exposes five ethernet cards to the operating system.

<comment><USER4> Where do you find one? I'm looking, and it appears that it's sold out.

I found [http://www.banana-pi.org/r2.html](http://www.banana-pi.org/r2.html)

But I'm still having issues finding where to buy?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's a lot of different stuff out there depending on what you want to hack. Mellanox Spectrum with switchdev or Facebook Wedge with FBOSS will let you hack the control plane. Barefoot Tofino with P4 or NetFPGA will let you hack the data plane.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks , great info !</comment></comment>


Unemployment is not a disease - <AUTHOR> http://www.deepleafproductions.com/wilsonlibrary/texts/raw-RICH.html

<comment><USER2> Slight tangent. Greater automation and the necessities of life driving toward a zero cost -- vs -- the ever bigger dreams of humanity, employing greater labor / more minds. I wonder if anyone has tried to quantify the two fantasies against one another.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think they're interrelated. Look at how the European colonization of the Americas coincided with the Renaissance. They only happened because of a few key technologies reaching a certain point of evolutionary maturity. You needed the square rig, pintle-and-gudgeon rudder, compass, star charts, oil paint, double entry accounting... (See <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hukkfbevWM>)

We still have more problems to resolve (such as the finite nature of terrestrial resources) before all undesirable but necessary tasks are automated, and we can spend our lives entirely on art/science.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The gains in productivity that you get from automation should be pumped into fields where pain points still exist, such as medical research.

With the infrastructure that's been built, we have wonderful tools that we can use to learn how to extend human life. Just as we once moved from agriculture to manufacturing we should move again now to massive efforts to advance and practice medicine. In addition to being immoral, socialism (the article proposes several guaranteed-income programs) is not a practical system for getting the results needed to meet the challenges we face.

As I learn about cancer biology, I often wish that even more people would jump in and try to figure things out. The field is full of incredibly tough problems, and they are of paramount importance to virtually everyone: you're going to get cancer if you live long enough.

You might think it's fantastic that millions of average folks should go and get educations in the sciences, and perhaps it is. But socialism simply would pull people in the exact opposite direction. (See some statistics on Saudi Arabia if you want to see what free money does to a people.)

</comment><comment><USER4> Is starvation a disease?

</comment><comment> onreact-com "unemployment is not a disease, but the natural, healthy functioning of an advanced technological society."

This is almost true. Everybody who wants to work should be able to do so, have the right to do so. It's not needed for society as a whole that everybody has to work (to survive) like today.</comment>


Immersive/interactive documentary on homelessness in NZ - <AUTHOR> http://unsettled.thespinoff.co.nz/ <comment><AUTHOR> If you don't know Auckland, try pretending you are in Point Chevalier which used to be a pretty classic kiwi 1/4 acre suburb several km's from the city centre.</comment>


Ethiopia is now Africa's fastest growing economy - <AUTHOR> http://www.phillytrib.com/news/ethiopia-is-now-africa-s-fastest-growing-economy/article_7c72f20d-3d2b-5901-9d02-9aba91e68e04.html <comment><USER3> I spend a lot of time in Ethiopia for my company. In many parts of Addis Ababa, the entire skyline is under construction - you can't look up anywhere without seeing a new building in progress. The sound of hammers is ubiquitous. You can tell the place is booming.

Most of the large construction projects are run by Chinese companies, especially the Chinese State Construction Corp. New airport terminal, ministries, hotels, convention center, light rail, and so on. This has caused some discussion around Chinese taking construction jobs etc. You'll see these state-funded Chinese construction projects in pretty much every African country.

Although Addis is booming, the population still primarily lives in the countryside, and their quality of life is a lot lower. It's misleading to look at average income across the entire population because the city's economy is so far ahead of the rest of the country. This has probably contributed to some of the unrest.

<comment><USER4> This reminds me of the DW documentary I watched on their (Chinese) "aid" work in Africa. The Chinese gov lends money to they country and makes them use Chinese companies to do all the work and thus effectively brings much of the money back while dropping the legal obligation on the citizens of that nation.

<comment><USER5> There was an interesting article about other such deals with the Chinese. The Chinese would make a deal with an African nation and dump products on the market that they couldn't sell in nations who had an actual choice or quality standards that were enforced. The market would be flooded by cheap garbage tools, electronics, and etc. Quality products would disappear quickly as they were many times more expensive.... and then everyone realizes everything is garbage.

Interesting enough the construction sites contain none of these tools (the Chinese workers don't use them), and the locals now can't afford to bring them on a special order because they're either locked out of the market or many more times expensive than before due to the trade deal. Crappy state run industries just keep on trucking at the expense of the locals in Africa.

<comment><USER6> >The Chinese would make a deal with an African nation and dump products on the market that they couldn't sell in nations who had an actual choice or quality standards that were enforced. The market would be flooded by cheap garbage tools, electronics, and etc. Quality products would disappear quickly as they were many times more expensive.... and then everyone realizes everything is garbage.

You've described free trade in a nutshell. More industrialized nations love these kinds of trade policies.

<comment><USER7> > You've described free trade in a nutshell.

Canada and the US have very healthy activity in cross border free trade, but I'm unable to tell which of those two countries is the aggressor and which the victim.

<comment><USER8> There's an $800 billion trade deficit with Canada since 2000. They typically import about $250b-$280b per year in US goods.

If Canada is the victim, then woe is poor China and Germany. Must suck to have the world's largest economy devouring your exports.

<comment><USER9> What's the source of these numbers?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There was an interesting Danish documentary on foreign investments in Ethiopia titled "Dead donkeys fear no hyena's" [1]. It came down that economic investments (including from the World Bank) are used to drive indigenous people from their lands, that land is sold (outside of the public eye) to anonymous foreign agricultural corporations to start industrialized agriculture. However, those corporations will just export everything abroad, leaving the local people with little return, and, most importantly, without food. Promises of compensation, relocation and education are, of course, neglected, and people who dare to protest are met with arms.

1\. [http://www.deaddonkeysfearnohyenas.com/](http://www.deaddonkeysfearnohyenas.com/)

<comment><USER11> > "Dead Donkeys Fear No Hyenas was triggered by a seemingly trivial scene at > the airport in Addis Ababa, six years back. Waiting for my flight late at > night, I happened to see some tired workers at the tarmac who were loading > food products on an airplane destined for Europe. At the same time, another > team was busy unloading sacks with food aid from a second plane. It took > some time to realize the real meaning of it – that this famine struck > country, where millions are dependent on food aid, is actually exporting > food to us."

This is straight out of the Potato Famine. :(

<comment><USER12> >food products on an airplane destined for Europe. At the same time, another team was busy unloading sacks with food aid from a second plane.

while everyone should acknowledge the degree of poverty that is still rampant in countries like Ethiopia, that image is not particularly well suited to make a point.

It can be true that at the same time that Ethiopian farmers sell produce to Europe, while people from somewhere else try to alleviate poverty in the country.

It would not make sense for farmers in Ethiopia to stop trading food with the world at large just because people in the country are hungry. In fact, depending on whatever economic transaction is going on, the food coming in might be significantly cheaper than the food going out. Trade and reducing poverty or hunger are not at odds.

The goal should be to generate better incomes and social services for poor Ethiopians, not stopping businesses from trading with Ethiopia globally.

<comment><USER13> On the contrary, the image itself is uncomfortably well suited to make a point. This comment is a classic example of defending an obvious absurdity of capitalism by appealing to the overall system.

It's true that individuals are all acting rationally, and that imposing limits on exports would not be a panacea. However, at the most basic level, it is monstrous that food exports are happening in the context of local starvation. The rationality of the outcome within capitalism shouldn't blind us to the absurdity of the outcome itself.

<comment><USER12> There's really nothing absurd about this. A country like Ethiopia consists of independent actors. Someone might sell food abroad to Europe, someone in Europe might decide to send food to Ethiopia.

There's really no way to stop this other than to outlaw all exports of food while starting to centrally distribute food in Ethiopia. This is neither productive nor would it reduce the amount of starving people in Ethiopia. In fact, it would increase the amount of poverty.

There are certainly poor people who have trouble affording basic goods in California. Still the solution is not to stop all exports of goods from California to Washington and vice versa. This would just make everybody worse off.

<comment><USER14> Any country that pretend to develop and keep some independence need to prioritize a minimum of food production. That's a strategic need. Europe is a good example of that, where food production is strongly protected. I bet is the same in the States.

The point of the original post is that those "independent actors" are not "independents", not from Ethiopia.

<comment><USER15> > _Any country that pretend to develop and keep some independence need to > prioritize a minimum of food production. That 's a strategic need._

To turn this back to software, I am strongly reminded of Joel Spolsky's discussion of when and what to outsource:

[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/10/14/in-defense-of- not-...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/10/14/in-defense-of-not-invented- here-syndrome/)

" _If it's a core business function — do it yourself, no matter what._ "

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is good, but there are some potential problems.

1\. Ethiopia's GDP per capita is ~$700 USD, so this growth is from a very low base.

2\. Total fertility rate is 4.28. Compare this to China at 1.57 and USA at 1.84. This means that some of the growth just goes to supporting a larger population.

3\. I have read elsewhere that you need government connections and a lot of money to do business in Ethiopia. So the benefits of this growth might not be as broad as they otherwise could be.

<comment><USER17> Interesting points you raise, I thought about calculating this by-hand, but then I realized that actual numbers are published by actual economists.

Here are some old figures:

[https://tradingeconomics.com/ethiopia/gdp-per-capita- growth-...](https://tradingeconomics.com/ethiopia/gdp-per-capita-growth- annual-percent-wb-data.html)

In that year, GDP growth was 7.5%, but per-capita GDP growth was 4.9%. I could have some gaps in my knowledge of the meanings in these figures, but I think the difference roughly equates to what you speculate - that population growth eats some of the economic growth when viewed from the perspective of the individual.

Also important to note, I think that these are nominal, not real figures. So right now, I think we would reasonably expect sub-5% real per-capita growth. Even correcting for that I'm sure it's an astounding pace of improvement. It's hard to wrap your head around multi-year improvements in quality of life of that scale.

But there's a depressing side, that maybe some nations are actually contracting in per-capita real GDP.

<comment><USER18>
        But there's a depressing side, that maybe
        some nations are actually contracting in
        per-capita real GDP.

I'm sure some countries are contracting, but not due to Ethiopia growing - <USER2> world economy is not zero-sum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ethiopia seemingly has an incredibly good relationship with China. The lion's share of FDI in Ethiopia is from China, and much of it goes towards large infrastructure projects. Flying through the airport in Addis recently I was surprised to see multiple Chinese restaurants, a special lounge for Chinese travelers, and signs everywhere in Chinese.

It's great to see economic cooperation working out so well on so many levels!

<comment><USER20> This might not be as good as you think: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15272413](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15272413)

China will cause the country to become indebted to it and when they can't make the repayments offer to helpfully take full control of it.

<comment><USER21> _coughcough_ IMF _cough_

More broadly, taking on debt to build the infrastructure needed to level up industrial capabilities isn't exploitation. Building better energy grids, transportation, and communication infrastructure is expensive. It's fundamentally no different than software startups taking on fundraising rounds to enable growth. As long as the leadership isn't irresponsible about it, there's nothing wrong with it and it should easily pay for itself.

The important thing for debt-for-infrastructure planning is to keep corruption manageable, so you don't wind up borrowing to build boondoggles that are for the personal enrichment of the the well-connected rather than the good of the country.

At any rate, China is no more predatory in this regard than the IMF, the World Bank, or other western financial institutions. They have a surplus of capital and need to invest it somewhere. The goal is not imperialist, but rather capitalist.

<comment><USER20> China is more imperial. They have a really long 100 year view. They don't mind losing money to gain a long term advantage.

Yes it's exactly/similar behaviour to the IMF. Doesn't make a difference though to the people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So after reading Factfulness by Hans Rosling and family I'm really interested in investing in African companies. Ideally it would be through index funds. I got as far as finding ABSA as my go to online broker, but couldn't find any indexes to research (just a bunch of broken links)

Would anybody have any resources or direction to point me to?

<comment><USER23> There are virtually no publicly traded African companies. There are companies like glencore that have operations here, but they're still European or Asian companies. If you're looking to invest in African companies you have to put time in on the ground to find private companies suitable for investment.

<comment><USER24> That's just not true. A more accurate statement would be there are very few African companies listed on American stock exchanges. They are still listed in their home country's exchanges

<comment><USER23> The daily trade volume on the Ugandan exchange is ~$18,000. Companies may be "listed", but good luck actually buying any stock

<comment><USER24> Look at the Nigerian stock exchange or the South African stock exchange or the Morrocan Stock exchange.

Obviously financial infrastructure varies a lot from country to country

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Get you an air popcorn popper and some green Ethiopian coffee beans [0] and enjoy some of their great economy right in your own home!

[0] [https://www.sweetmarias.com/green-coffee/africa- arabia/ethio...](https://www.sweetmarias.com/green-coffee/africa- arabia/ethiopia.html)

<comment><USER26> I have tried a lot of different coffees, and I personally think Ethiopian is just about the most pleasantly flavorful in the world, at least for my taste. The fresher the better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just a few years ago, Libya was the jewel of Africa and led in almost every social and economic metric. I wonder what happened there to throw them so horribly off course?

<comment><USER28> Kadafi gave up his nukes. We saw the same thing happen in Ukraine after they gave up their nukes.

Do you know what is happening in Iran these past few weeks? And I say this as an Israeli, whom Iran has already threatened to destroy. I understand their position. Moreso if you consider which two countries border Iran to the east and to the west, and what has happened in those two countries not long after the turn of the millennium.

Don't get me wrong, I realize that Europe, Israel, and the US are better off with a non-nuclear Iran. But having seen Libya and Ukraine, I completely understand the Iranian position.

<comment><USER29> Yeah I recall Mehdi Hasan's article about this some 7 years ago:

"Wouldn't it be rational for Iran – geographically encircled, politically isolated, feeling threatened – to want its own arsenal of nukes, for defensive and deterrent purposes?" Pointing out the difference between America, and its allies, going to "war with non-nuclear Iraq" and their "diplomacy with nuclear-armed North Korea", Hasan concluded: "The simple fact is there is no alternative to diplomacy, no matter how truculent or paranoid the leaders of Iran might seem to western eyes." [0]

As for the OP's question... it was a dictatorship for 40 years driven not by good governance but by oil money. You either have a dictatorship that builds very strong institutions for a post-dictator rule, or you don't. And particularly the oil-dependent states forgo building the right institutions, because an oil-rich country doesn't need them. Without institutions and civil society a dictatorship erupts into chaos after the dictator dies, particularly if it happens abruptly.

In terms of institutions and governance Libya was far from the jewel of Africa. It was never designed to last. It's more akin to someone living on creditcard debt for a few years before it all comes crashing down.

[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/nov/17/iran-w...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/nov/17/iran- want-nuclear-bomb)

<comment><USER30> North Korea has survived until now not because they recently got nukes, but because they are holding South Korea hostage. The moment foreign troops near Pyongyang, conventional NK artillery would have leveled Seoul completely. Millions of rich-country people in a nation allied to the US would die. Also China would have been pissed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Sing it along with me:

If you are told the percentage increase, check the absolute increase;

Aaaaand if you are told the absolute increase, check the percentage increase!

<comment><USER32> Yes, our newborn was our fastest growing child for a long time! In fact, his growth outpaced all other children we knew going all the way back until the previous child was born. Adjusted for "inflation" though, I'm told it was only average growth.

<comment><USER33> relevant, as always: [https://xkcd.com/1102/](https://xkcd.com/1102/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Ethiopia is an interesting place. You can smell the money in the air.

"Ethiopia hailed as 'African lion' with fastest creation of millionaires" [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/04/ethiopia- faste...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/04/ethiopia-faster-rate- millionaires-michael-buerk)

Ethiopia is not an easy place to travel. People are friendly but reserved. English it not very common there. They are not the African "buddy" type of people (ey man, lets have a beer!). If you are into adventure, go to the Bale mountains and take a three day horse ride expedition and try to see the Ethiopian fox. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_wolf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_wolf) Or take a two week expedition on horsed to see the Ethiopian lions (unfortunately longer that my ass can sustain on a horse). AFAIK the only lions that live in the jungle. It is a rough place. I like it. Possibly love it, but Ethiopia is not for everyone.

Addis has two major museums. If you want to see Lucy [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(Australopithecus)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_\(Australopithecus\)) make sure you go to the right one.

If anyone is interested in importing ore, please ask me. My Ethiopian friends are always nagging me for business contacts.

<comment><USER35> > They are not the African "buddy" type of people (ey man, lets have a beer!).

I think you're confusing Africans with Jamaicans or some other black stereotype.

<comment><USER34> I don't care about what you think about "black stereotypes".

But try to see the difference between welcoming Uganda (based on a statistic they are the most welcoming nation to foreigners) and Ethiopians. Yet, they are nearly neighbors.

I don't dislike that the Ethiopians are reserved. What did one of the rangers tell me? We are dirty. We don't have showers. We don't have washing machines. We are dirty. But we know that we are dirty. We are dirty but not stupid!

<comment><USER34> A 20 year expat (speak, before the Ethiopia hype( told me this joke:

How to shoot an Ethiopian? Aim 1 meter above his hear. You have to hit his ego!

Yes, they are a special kind of people and they take proud in it. If they ever throw me out of my current home, Ethiopia may be, besides Colombia, my second destination. It is happening there!

<comment><USER36> As a regular traveler, you really got my attention. Mind sharing some of your thoughts about Columbia too?

<comment><USER34> Colombia caught my attention when I lived in the states. But before I come to Colombia, lets talk about Brazil.

I fell in love with Brazil many years ago. Many people did, some may still do. It was an amazing place. People were super friendly, the women were curious about foreigners... Today Brazil is much less welcoming for foreigners, even slightly xenophobic. They still have an economic crisis and I wonder what will happen if the world economy cools down. It also has become dangerous again. People change, countries change, I may have changed.

So this brings us to Colombia. It is very cheap to fly there from the states. I had many adventures there, got certified in scuba diving, slept on a tiny house on an island when scuba diving, learned horse riding in Saint Augustin, got lost in the mountains when hiking near Armenia (visit Salento!). Partied super hard at night in Medellin, Cali and Bogota. People were super friendly, approaching me and other travelers and telling us how happy they are the things have changed in Colombia and foreigners are now visiting. The climate is super interesting since you are near the equator but also have the Andean mountains. You basically can get every temperature you want. From hot Caribbean (and overrated) Cartagena, to the city of eternal spring, Medellin, to cold Bogota. I love the Candelaria district in Bogota (as I once loved Santa Teresa in Rio). It is a magic place and brings me happiness.

People change, countries change, and I may change again. What worries me about Colombia is that more and more foreigners are coming (voted as number ?. tourist destination last year). This is seldom a good thing. Sooner or later the place will change and people will get fed up with tourists. SO if you want to visit, better visit now and not in 10 years.

Literature, there is not only 100 years of solitude, try to appreciate Nicolás Gómez Dávila.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Disengaged to Work Remotely? Try 'Virtual Offices' for Remote Team- Work Happier - <AUTHOR> https://riotlysocialmedia.com/remo/?ref=hackernews <comment><AUTHOR> Curious to know how would you use it! Comment below.</comment>


Solar geoengineering could cause unwanted changes in climate, modelling suggests - <AUTHOR> https://physicsworld.com/a/solar-geoengineering-could-cause-unwanted-changes-in-climate-new-modelling-suggests/ <comment><USER2> Now that there's a "healthy" dialogue about the topic of spraying the skies in mainstream science, will we continue to insist that the plumes of persistent white-stuff expelled from the backs of airplanes are just "condensation"? And that suggesting otherwise is disordered thinking?</comment>


Ask HN: A good domain registrar/ssl cert - <AUTHOR>

I currently use GoDaddy to manage our domains/dns and to get ssl certs.  I recently found out that GoDaddy actively supports SOPA. I have decided to take my business elsewhere.
The one thing about GoDaddy I like is their DNS manager.  It makes it easy to just add A/CNAME records.
Any suggestions on a new DNS host? <comment><USER2> <http://internetbs.net>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I ended up going with NameCheap.</comment>


U.S. Missiles Strike Libyan Air-Defense Targets - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/world/africa/20libya.html

<comment><USER2> Seen on twitter:

"U.S. fires 110 tomahawk missiles, each costs $569,000. That's more than 5 years of NPR federal funding in less than an hour."

Anyone else think Ike was right about that military industrial complex?

<comment><USER3> Someone brought this same thing up on Reddit. I'll just recycle my comment from there (but with more genteel language):

I'm curious. How big of a budget increase for NPR would it take to stop Gaddafi from crushing the rebellion and massacring the rebels and many many uninvolved civilians?

I suppose if Gaddafi were a contestant on "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me" and won Carl's voice on his home answering machine, he might feel so happy he just could not bring himself to order the next round of killings. Or maybe if "This American Life" were on more, he'd get caught up in some of those great stories and forget about the revolt? Maybe Gaddafi is crazy because there's a weird noise in his car, and if only "Car Talk" were on 7 days a week instead of 1, a solution to his problem might be revealed, and then he'd stop being crazy?

In other words, what the heck does NPR's budget have to do with the situation in Libya?

<comment><USER4> And your knowledge of Gaddafi's cruelty is based on what?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On September 11, 2001, the Libyan government condemned the attacks against the United States. In 2004, the US ended economic sanctions against Libya; only crypto/munitions-related sanctions remained. In 2006, the US restored full diplomatic relations with Libya. In 2007, Libya was elected to serve on the United Nations Security Council for two years.

Today we're at war... How times change.

<comment><USER6> On December 21, 1988, the Libyan government murdered 189 Americans and almost a hundred other nationals.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103>

What is shameful is that it took this long to remove that parasite.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The same piece of news on the Telegraph: "Libya: British forces fire missiles at Gaddafi"

Source: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianoce...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8393128/Libya- British-forces-fire-missiles-at-Gaddafi.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> And so, we're now involved in three wars.

<comment><USER8> And once democracy hits $120/barrel Iran as well

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can't help but be reminded of the Team America film.

Like most South Park material it seemed crude and ridiculous on the surface, but underneath the surface its sadly accurate.

<comment><USER3> I don't recall Team America being about carefully following international law and getting approval from the UN after the majority or regional governments ask for help. I guess I need to re-watch that movie.</comment></comment>


Show HN:  Cinecandy, a Movie Studio As A Service (MSAAS) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cinecandy.com Cinecandy turns moviemaking into an easy and social experience by letting you create group videos with your friends, without ever touching a camera or a video editor. <comment><USER2> Looks cool, I could see using this for a wedding video compilation.

Some feedback - it's a little hard to decipher what the service is all about upon landing upon the homepage. I would suggest making the page longer to explain how it works. groupme.com is a good example to look at.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! What sort of wording do you think is better than "creating group videos?"

<comment><USER2> Perhaps "Creating videos as a group."

I agree there is a tradeoff between too many words and too few. I'd suggest that you can improve it by just making the landing page longer, ie - put more information in the scrollable area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks great!

A nitpick - when I log in via Facebook, my photo gets resized to a square, which looks weird (proportions get distorted). I'm pretty sure other websites tended to maintain proper aspect ratio and just crop a scaled down image to fit into a square.

<comment><USER4> FYI - if you can make do with smaller images (50x50 or lower), you can use the param 'type=square' to pull Facebook's standard square photos. For example, graph.facebook.com/ID/picture?type=square

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _Now matter how hard it is to shop for someone_

I'm unsure of what it means to "shop for someone" but I'm pretty sure you meant "No matter" instead of "Now matter"...?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops good catch - thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would suggest having an example group video on the homepage, maybe to start the screencast you already have?</comment>


SpaceX Prepares For April 30 Launch To Space Station - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/03/spacex-prepares-for-april-30-launch-to-space-station/

<comment><USER2> As a former engineer on the Atlas V launch vehicle program, I'm so excited to see the commercialization of spaceflight come to fruition. The latest projections I've seen have the Dragon and Falcon 9 coming in at 20% of the price of an equivalent Atlas V / Delta IV (EELV) launch. Comparative Non- Recurring Engineering (NRE) costs are even lower than that. (I'd love if any SpaceX employees can comment further on any of this with more detail.)

As I've seen firsthand, the waste in typical defense contractor programs is obscene – it's so great to see someone doing something about it. Hopefully with much lower cost to orbit, we'll see a revitalization of the commercial launch market as well.

<comment><USER3> It's also worth mentioning that SpaceX is possibly even significantly cheaper than their commercial competitors. If you look up the other company mentioned in the article, Orbital Science Corporation it says they have a contract with NASA for 8 launches for 1.9 Billion to do the same thing. SpaceX has a contract for 1.6 Billion for 12 launches. That's 50% more flights for 15% less cost.

<comment><USER4> Do you have the Mass to LEO numbers for each of those?

<comment><USER3> I don't know what that means, but Wikipedia says that Space Science Corporation's vehicle can cary a "2,000kg / 2700kg" "delivered payload" and SpaceX's Dragon a 6,000kg "launch payload" so they win there too by more than double.

<comment><USER5> Wikipedia has 9900kg to LEO for the Falcon 9 block 1 and 10450kg to LEO for Falcon 9 block 2 (both from Canaveral).

To GTO those numbers are 2400kg and 4680kg.

The "Launch Payload" of the Dragon spacecraft (6000kg) appears to be approximately the Mass to LEO of the block 2 (10450kg) minus the mass of an empty Dragon spacecraft (4200kg).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Been waiting for this. I did some embedded C programming for the docking of the Dragon to the ISS two years ago as an intern. I wish them the best of luck. Check out for updates on this: <http://www.spacex.com/updates.php>

<comment><USER7> They let interns program the docking to the ISS? Or is this supposed to be a joke?

<comment><USER8> Why wouldn't they? Seriously. When you get down to the nuts and bolts of it, it's really rather boring, uninteresting, low-level stuff. At the same time, it's major cool points on their resume that kids in their senior year of college crave. Why shouldn't an intern do that?

<comment><USER9> About 25 years ago I had a co-op job with a defense contractor, working on a radar system for military aircraft. Part of the obstacle to having interns or people like me do "real" work is the security bureaucracy. It's just not worth the expense of going through the security checks for somebody who won't be working there very long.

I remember working on a simulation of one aspect of the system. I wasn't allowed to know the real operational parameters of the system, which makes testing difficult. So when testing my code I could only guess, plugging in numbers that seemed reasonable to me. Then I'd give my code to my team lead, saying "I think it works now. Want to try it?".

<comment><USER6> One thing about SpaceX is that there is no bureaucracy. If Elon Musk wasn't busy talking to someone, I could have just walked into his office and chatted with him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _SpaceX has a $1.6 billion contract for 12 cargo flights to the ISS._

And I thought shipping in the UK was expensive...

<comment><USER11> It would be, if standard procedure involved blowing up the delivery truck in your driveway.</comment></comment>


How to Boost Clearwire's or any 4G WiMax Signal - <AUTHOR> http://theoryreport.com/technology/how-to-boost-clearwires-4g-wimax-signal.html

<comment><USER2> "You should start receiving better signals right away."

Seems like this fails to mention that you probably need to point it in the right direction..

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing this out.</comment></comment>


Open-Source OpenRISC CPU architecture pulled into Linux 3.1 - <AUTHOR> https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/7/23/25

<comment><USER2> Not to be confused (as I was) with OpenSPARC.

<http://www.opensparc.net>

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't this just someone _requesting_ Linus that this get's pulled?

<comment><USER4> It does appear to have been merged now: [http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git...](http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git;a=commit;h=ff0c4ad2c3a75ccfe6adca916e50804eb45bb2d9)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's info about the "OR1200 OpenRISC" processor. It's been spec'd in Verilog and runs on a simulator, FPGA, and ASIC.

<http://opencores.org/or1k/OR1200_OpenRISC_Processor></comment>


Why has deep learning become so famous? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/Why-has-deep-learning-become-so-famous-In-my-experience-it-s-not-applicable-to-the-majority-of-real-world-problems/answer/Zi-Wang-21?share=1 <comment><USER2> "Famous" is not the word you are looking for; "popular" or "trendy" maybe. Or even: "Why is deep learning so hot right now?"</comment>


UK Beats the US to a Tech-Friendly Startup Visa - <AUTHOR> http://eu.techcrunch.com/2011/03/17/uk-beats-the-us-to-a-tech-friendly-startup-visa/

<comment><USER2> Oh great. Because we really need more (brown) people here (Britain).

...will be the reaction of the vast majority, however much richer it makes the country. The majority are worried about space, not race. The majority, luckily for big business, don't have a say. FPTP.

I say brown, because Europeans can already come. So I expect a lot of these startups will run by Indians.

Nativism is really growing. It's not just in Arizona. I personally don't care if Britain isn't majority white in 2100. But it does undermine support for a welfare state, as it becomes obvious to more and more white funders of it, that the recipients are brown and multi (differently, liberalism and rationalism hostile) -cultured.

Social democracy and harmony XOR diversity with increasing minarchism. Choose one.</comment>


Making complex integrations easy – my first "proper" demo of Titanoboa - <AUTHOR> https://www.titanoboa.io/demo.html <comment><AUTHOR> I have just put together my first "proper" demo of Titanoboa. Feel free to share any constructive criticism - after all, it is my first demo :)</comment>


GitLab's CEO reflects on GitHub's move to offer free private repos - <AUTHOR> https://about.gitlab.com/2019/01/07/github-offering-free-private-repos-for-up-to-three-collaborators/ <comment><USER2> I'm starting to believe that Gitlab actually has marketing team dedicated to HN. Everytime there is a Gitlab HN post you would find random unrelated comments on why they prefer Gitlab over Github.

<comment><USER3> More likely just fan-boys that like competitions David vs Goliath. However, GitLab is the only project here that constantly receives such noticeable treatment. It is a good marketing team indeed!

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't call us fanboys. I would call us devotees. Like firefox followers. We are not many, but we are devoted, and we will tell you about it, and the reasons we believe them to be superior to other products. :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > At the time, I was very disappointed to learn that BitBucket.org already > offered the same. GitLab took off despite that and GitLab.com recently > surpassed 10 million projects.

Is it just me, or does this sentence not make sense? I don't know why this is disappointing to him, or why he would just be learning this now.

<comment><USER6> It's crazy that they began building GitLab without knowing of Bitbucket. Talk about doing some product research before building...

<comment><USER7> My memory is pretty hazy, but I believe GitLab began as a simple Git hosting program for people to be able to run on their own servers, and it started without serious intent to build a money-making product. BitBucket Server didn't exist yet (and even today, it's just Atlassian Stash renamed, IIRC.)

When they went to launch GitLab.com, they probably did more product research at that point, and that's probably where the disappointment came in.

I think GitLab's approach is pretty cool, and software toward developers really ought to be developed in this manner: start with the problem, then work on the product. No point in trying to build a product for a problem you can't solve. GitLab today is certainly a better product for being heavily oriented around solving developer's problems; for example, having GitLab CI built-in and even usable for free even on private repositories on GitLab.com is incredible, and it's one of those things that are going to continue to be enticing as GitHub increases the competition.

<comment><USER8> I can't imagine it will be long before Azure DevOps is integrated in some way to GitHub. They don't even have to introduce it as such...just a thinly veiled mask for job running. Or even Azure Functions doing the work. MS has the advantages with having Azure behind the scenes so it will be interesting to see what they "give" it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like how GitHub has search on their front page while GitLab has some marketing page instead. Is it possible to search Gitlab without logging in? I used to host Gitlab for more private repos for many years but lately I have switched to Gogs because it is much simpler to maintain it and it has less bloat (and features).

<comment><USER10> +1 for Gogs. It's a perfect fit for small private repos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> He's right that their value-add is the fully integrated devops cycle. That's what's been appealing to us with Gitlab (even though it is sometimes not as polished as other offerings). Having one SaaS subscription for most of your dev process needs as a startup is nice.

<comment><USER12> I can't help but wonder if they have checked out MS devops they have a really robust set of tools from end to end of a project, it's free fo up to 5 users, free private repos, etc.

And considering they purchased github, I'm starting to wonder if they did it just to get a name that have more acceptance and will be migrating git hub to this same model and infrastructure but with a different face.

<comment><USER13> GitHub already has quite robust integrations with Azure DevOps and things will likely get even more aligned in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Atlassian Bitbucket [1] offer private repos too:

> Free for small teams under 5 and priced to scale with Standard ($2/user/mo) > or Premium ($5/user/mo) plans.

[1] [https://bitbucket.org/product](https://bitbucket.org/product)

<comment><USER15> As it says in TFA...

<comment><USER14> The pertinent point is 5 users. That is not mentioned in "The Fine Article"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This feels like a race to the bottom. Gitlab was so bold to launch unlimited free private repos. Feels like github made a weak move in response to market loss. It will be interesting to see what happens when Google or Amazon start promoting their git products.

<comment><USER17> I wouldn't be surprised Gitlab being bought by one of these.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Man, the GitLab astroturfing in HackerNews is getting annoying.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, let's get some subversion astroturfing going on in here to balance it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> GitLab is awesome. There are a lot of features I use like the built in time tracking. Also, I'm not very interested in using GitHub since it was acquired by Microsoft since they have a littered history of abuse and vendor lock-in. I'm not sure how they will try to retrofit EEE onto Git, but I won't be surprised when they somehow do.

<comment><USER7> I think it's time to finally give up this mindset. Past misgivings be damned, Microsoft of today really doesn't look much like Microsoft of the 90s.

As far as I know, Microsoft has been supporting the development of Git for Windows. They are also apparently going to support their VFS for Git protocol on GitHub, but VFS for Git is open source and supports Windows and Mac (and apparently, will support Linux.) And they claim Git is now the source control for Windows, which is impressive if true. By all accounts, Microsoft has been supporting Git in some form for several years and appears to have only increased their stake.

I still think GitLab is awesome, though. There's a whole ton of things GitLab does that GitHub does not. I will probably continue to use both, myself.

<comment><USER20> > I think it's time to finally give up this mindset. Past misgivings be > damned, Microsoft of today really doesn't look much like Microsoft of the > 90s.

I disagree. Their tactics are alive and well. Have you used Office to export a CSV file in the last few years? They have done everything they can to make it inoperable out of the box. (BOM, not escaping data, etc.)

> As far as I know, Microsoft has been supporting the development of Git for > Windows

That's the first and second E's in EEE. Wait for the extinguish portion of their plan.

I'm happy you're willing to double-down on Microsoft software, but I'm not getting anywhere near that time-bomb again.

<comment><USER7> >I disagree. Their tactics are alive and well. Have you used Office to export a CSV file in the last few years? They have done everything they can to make it inoperable out of the box. (BOM, not escaping data, etc.)

I do not know what their justification is for those defaults. They could, for all I know, have good reasoning, like legacy support. It's possible, though less likely, that they simply didn't put much thought into it.

I do know that the xlsx format is standardized. I've not used it myself, but I've heard it's not unreasonable (whereas docx is apparently a bit less reasonable.) And I mean, from my experience I've not had trouble opening Excel spreadsheets in LibreOffice or Google Sheets. If they broke in any way, I failed to notice.

In any case it sounds like minor greivances and a pretty darn far cry from 90s Microsoft.

>I'm happy you're willing to double-down on Microsoft software, but I'm not getting anywhere near that time-bomb again.

Well this is incorrect. I use GitHub but I'm not doubling down. I don't use Windows except in VMs, I find it to be downright vexatious and even the new Windows 10 for Workstations is still incredibly annoying (yep, still getting Cortana SPAM by default.) I also find it suspicious when Edge is magically the default browser or my file associations to IrfanView keep getting reset to Windows Photo Viewer due to "corrupt file associations," yet those same file associations work fine if I uninstall Windows Photo Viewer.

Those things are really super annoying. However, even some of the more egregious behaviors hit me as unlikely to be intentional. I am frustrated at an upsettingly similar rate by open source software and it only recently occurred to me that I would almost never attribute this to underhanded tactics.

I still prefer my open source software, but I do think Microsoft is different. Time will tell.

<comment><USER21> Open a csv file in Excel, edit it and save (the latter is locale dependent). The result is horrible. I maintain a tool which offers csv import and export of data and we have regularly bug reports from users when they use excel to use it (Excel opens csv files by default on Windows). I did not find a way to tell Excel to not alter the meta-structure (such as replacing commas with semicolons), not to start about escaping.

There's an RFC for csv data ([https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4180](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4180)), there's no way to tell Excel to honour it.

<comment><USER7> >There's an RFC for csv data ([https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4180](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4180)), there's no way to tell Excel to honour it.

That RFC is from 2005. Excel appeared in 1987.

Excel outputs CSVs in Excel dialect rather than RFC 4180. Unfortunate as it is, it's probably only sane to do that. A lot of stuff has probably relied on it for decades. Python 3, for example, defaults to excel dialect in it's CSV library. Apache Commons CSV supports Excel dialect. I imagine there's all kinds of crap relying on this by now.

The fact that it doesn't have an option to output in RFC 4180 is unideal, but I can certainly see why. For almost their entire userbase, it would be the wrong option. I don't think they really want more code paths to maintain either. Seems logical enough.

Of course it's relatively easy to support XLS/XLSX and it should be relatively easy to automatically detect what dialect of CSV you're taking in. So if your goal is happier customers, then you have options. It is what it is.

I don't think this is a JScript type situation here. The world mostly standardized on Excel style CSV and a different standard was blessed by IETF. But much like HTML5 vs XHTML, sometimes standards should be descriptive rather than prescriptive. RFC 4180 would've been more useful had it followed Excel dialect. Instead I think it leaves Microsoft in a tough place and their decision has been to not change it in line with how they normally treat backwards compatibility.

Far from a staunch fan of Microsoft myself, but I do think it's important to stay rational and have some reasonable skepticism.

<comment><USER21> I understand legacy. The only wish I have is to tell Excel to honour the RFC (it's not that Excel isn't developed any longer). Just a checkbox (or whatever).

I am using the Apache CSV library to parse csv. Content coming from Excel is still ... difficult. And Apache is fine with handling RFC 4180 compliant content.

If the "new" Microsoft is really opening up to Open Source, it'd be nice if they honoured existing standards at least with products which are still under development. All I am asking for is one more entry in the "Save As..." dialogs drop down box. It can't be that hard...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>