Twitter's Surprising Solution to the Patent Problem: Let Employees Control Them - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/02/twitters-ingenious-solution-to-the-patent-problem-let-inventors-control-the-patents/

<comment><USER2> I've had a number of jobs over the years, both at public universities and private companies. Each time there was this nasty sounding piece of legal paper presented to me about patents and copyrights "You agree that every good idea you ever have is property of..." I've never signed one. Sometimes they'd counter with a much more reasonable agreement, and in a couple of cases they didn't seem to have any idea what to do so they just blew it off, after having a few attempts at pestering me to sign it. A couple times the HR people involved seemed quite annoyed that anyone would be different and told me that nobody else ever had any issue with their agreement and why won't I just sign it so we can move forward? If that's really true, then I wish more people would read things before they sign them.

</comment><comment><USER3> This thing again? Every patent expert I've talked to has told me this is just a bait to lure developers to Twitter: the language is so broad that Twitter's IPA is no different than others. If you look at GitHub you can see that the relevant commits and issues raised have been ignored or dismissed with "it's your opinion against mine". No wonder the repo has been silent for months. I really like the idea but, at patent law teaches us, ideas are worth nothing without execution.

</comment><comment><USER4> What stops the employee and the inventors from just agreeing to use the patent offensively? And if they can do that then what stops the company from just compelling the employee to agree?

I know the IPA says they have to obtain the permission "without additional consideration or threat," but I don't get how that's practical when companies can fire employees for any damn reason they like in practice.

<comment><USER5> It creates barriers to use patents offensively. I'd guess that relatively few offensive patent litigations are initiated by the company that created them. Of those, very few of the inventors would agree to offensive usage. The only way that I can see to convince inventors to use patents offensively would be if they got a significant cut from the litigation proceeds. This cuts down on the appeal of an offensive litigation.

So no, it's not perfect. It uses incentives to control abuses. Even though it's not perfect, I still like it's simplicity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great to see companies looking for solutions to the patent systems mess. It gets really frustrating when the system that protects IP causes more trouble than good.

I still cant believe amazon were able to patent the one click sales process they offer on their website. Maybe one of the car makers will patent their air conditioning button? =(

<comment><USER7> I am almost certain aircon buttons are patented.

For instance: "Control device for motor vehicle air conditioning, with driver preferences settings"

[http://www.google.com/patents/EP0908338A1?cl=en&dq=car+d...](http://www.google.com/patents/EP0908338A1?cl=en&dq=car+dashboard+air+conditioning+button&hl=en&sa=X&ei=OD0mUfvXBIXbtAaVloDADQ&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAQ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> More skeptical take from Marco Arment:

> The Innovator's Patent Agreement is a nice sentiment, but the loophole > potential is simply too great, and it doesn't (and can't) address the > fundamental problems and dysfunction in the patent system. A patented > "invention", even when patented under these terms, is still patented. It's > not free for anyone to use, and willfully infringing upon it is still > dangerous and unwise ... The Innovator's Patent Agreement is a well- > intentioned gesture. But that's all it is.

<http://www.marco.org/2012/04/18/twitter-patent-agreement>

</comment><comment><USER9> What happens if an employee becomes disgruntled and leaves the company? If they take their patents, wouldn't the company have to stop using the patents the employee owns?

<comment><USER5> No, the company still owns the patent. However, the company now has responsibilities back to the inventor. So while the inventor still doesn't own the patent, they do have some control over it's ability to be used for evil.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How is this different than Twitter just choosing not to use their patents aggressively? Why all the complexity? And why do they assume that the employee hates patents?

</comment><comment><USER11> This is how it should be with both patents and copyrights anyway. Corporations should not get to own them, ever - only to manage them for fixed periods of time decided in contracts with the owners. And if say the owner of a patent actually wants to sue someone, then they should be able to get a company to fight on their behalf (and share the gains). I think this would at least prevent most of the abuses for both patents and copyrights.

<comment><USER12> People today might not be aware but Robert Fripp (of King Crimson) championed this back in the 90s and set up his record label (Discipline) to enforce it.

The notice that he put on the CDs was eloquent:

 _The phonographic copyright in these performances is operated by Discipline Records on behalf of the artists, with whom it resides. Discipline accepts no reason for artists to give away such copyright interests in their work by virtue of a "common practice" which is out of tune with the time, was always questionable and is now indefensible._

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's interesting that it would appear surprising to let the people who invent things control what they invented.

<comment><USER14> What's surprising to me is your absurd notion that people can control or own intangible ideas and thoughts.

<comment><USER13> I have many absurd notions, but you're mistaken about what they might be. As far as I'm concerned, ideas are cosmic birds.</comment></comment></comment>


The Elite Fixation with Russiagate - <AUTHOR> https://www.thenation.com/article/elite-fixation-russiagate/ <comment><USER2> What-about-ism is not a defense.</comment>


Show HN : My weekend(s) project - Strapfolio - <AUTHOR> http://www.strapfolio.com/

<comment><USER2> Don't get me wrong, it isn't a bad design but I think your price point may be a bit high for what other competitors sell their high quality WordPress themes for. $30 can buy you a much more robust (custom -- _not Bootstrap_ ) theme on sites like <http://themeforest.net>, <http://www.mojo-themes.com>, <http://www.woothemes.com>, etc. You may want to look at bringing your price down slightly to compete with those bigger markets.

<comment><AUTHOR> How much you think is a good price for this?

<comment><USER2> Honestly, since a lot of it is built on top of Bootstrap, which probably sped up your development time and would also speed up someone trying to replicate it themselves. I would say closer to the $15-$20 range would make it much more enticing to people who know about those other sites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some analytics for last 4 hours(time since posting it to HN) :

4898 total unique visitors.

1567 clicked demo button.

87 clicked buy button (but not completed transaction)

72 checked documentation

28 clicked on screenshot

4 completed sale.

<comment><USER3> Senior UX guy here... free advice:

1) Your demo button is killing your sales.

The drop between step 2 and 3 of your stats is the proof, although I immediately noticed the problem: People don't go "back" to make a sale, they go forward. When they click your demo button, they no longer have a call to action button to lead them to the sale. Recommendation: add a top bar that stays with them as they check out the demo. Regardless of how you solve this, it's worth losing sleep over it.

2) Changing the demo content (text) to be about the theme itself.

At least in the intro paragraph. I found it very disorienting after clicking the demo button.

3) Pick 3 selling points, not 9.

The first one should almost convince me by itself. Make them bigger and more visual. The rest are just extras. Make them look like extras.

4) Remember that you're selling design to designers.

There are beautiful Wordpress themes that are free. Yours looks ok, but not $30 ok. ;) TELL ME WHY I LOVE THIS, and tell me in the first sentence.

5) Screenshots suck. Use the image to show me or teach me something I need to understand about this product. Better yet, get a really nice background image and fill that baby blue area with it. Add some emotion, man!

6) By pitching it based on Underscores and Bootstrap you're immediately selling to a technical audience. In my experience, visual creatives are not particularly technical. Why is bootstrap good? What is Underscores? etc.

7) A/B test versions with and without the price in the buy button. You include the price when it makes the product more appealing. Yours is high. the A/B test will give you a very rough idea of how much effect that has on conversion.

8) Include the demo / buy links in the header of your documentation. Beside the logo, not in the top-right corner.

<comment><AUTHOR> These are some very good advice. Thanks. In coming weekends, I will make improvements suggested by you and everybody else to improve both the offering and landing page.

<comment><USER3> Also, good luck and good work! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You know Gmail ignores dots in usernames?

> anuj (dot) kk (at) gmail (dot) com

This is a bit hard on the eyes so try it as anujkk (at) gmail (dot) com. Also, Gmail has good spam filters :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't aware about that. Updated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks really good. In fact I'm kind of envious, the base theme already looks better than what I was able to create using the same stack.

A couple of very minor things:

The buy now button has an alert attached to it.

The documentation is great, but it suggests that you have to create / install the plug-ins by yourself? If that's true it would put me off buying.

Hope that helps.

p.s It might be worth enabling the responsive features of bootstrap on the main site. It works well on the demo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot. I fixed that alert message. I forgot to remove it before uploading my files to server. You don't need to create any plugin. Also, you don't need to install any plugin by yourself except contact form 7 plugin (a 3rd party plugin). All you need to do is to copy/paste some static HTML in wordpress pages. I'm looking to provide a content import file for this in next version.

I was struggling with adjusting the screenshot image size when I used bootstrap responsive features on main site. It was looking ugly and I wasn't having much free time. So, I used the default 960px fixed layout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks good. One thing to mention: the demo page at <http://demo.strapfolio.com/> does not render the stylesheets correctly in IE8.

<comment><AUTHOR> Mind telling what's the issue? I find it working fine on IE8, except the fact that round corners aren't working. Twitter Bootstrap doesn't support round corners because IE8 doesn't provide support for the CSS3 property and pseudo- class border-radius and :nth-child.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a good start, I would definitely find a designer friend to help out on the frontend.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry. I didn't get you. Are you suggesting me to get some designer or you are talking about yourself?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> looking great, consider bundling 5 clean, professional looking themes/designs with it and you'll probably touch even closer to home

<comment><AUTHOR> by themes/designs you mean skins? That's the plan. I will provide as many different skins as possible and I'm also looking to integrate it completely with twitter/github/flickr/youtube/etc. Besides that I may also provide a visiting card psd matching the look & feel of theme as a freebie.

Right now, I was itching to launch it so I did it with very basic version.

Please provide suggestions on how else to improve it?

<comment><USER8> yes, that's what i meant.

great v 1.0 man! keep iterating on it, and start collecting emails and talk to users/customers to get a feel of what they need

you're doing great!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Have you tried this in mobile browsers? Looks a bit broken on my iPhone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes and I know it will not work well in mobile devices. As of now, this theme supports only desktop and tablets. I will try to add some responsiveness if possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Have you made any sales yet?

<comment><AUTHOR> Only 4 but I would still consider it a mini success that in 2-3 hours it got 8K+ visits, 45% trying demo and 8% clicking buy button. What I don't understand is when they are clicking buy button why aren't they actually completing the transaction? Is gumroad turning them off or the HN crowd is just testing if buy button actually works. :)

<comment><USER10> Nice, congrats! And yeah, I clicked it just to see what payment processor you're using.. :)

<comment><USER11> ditto wanted to see where it went. a stripe button would be better than gumroad

<comment><AUTHOR> I am unable to use stripe as I'm not from US and I don't have a bank account there. Gumroad itself uses stripe and pays the 2.9% + 30 cents a transaction. It keeps the rest - 2.1%

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks great!</comment>


Windows 8 and why it's a desktop disaster  - <AUTHOR> http://www.itproportal.com/2012/10/29/windows-8-and-why-its-a-desktop-disaster/

<comment><USER2> Pretty much every problem you describe here is a result of; A: you not being enough of a power user to know Win+R commands like control, ncpa.cpl, devmgmt.msc etc.. and B: you refusing to learn a new way to do things. While I also had similar frustration the first 2 days I used the operating system by the third day I realized that the things that were frustrating me most were tasks that required a round about shortcut to get to in Win7 but have been supplanted by a far easier method in Win8. Coupled with Office 2013, the improvements in usability and speed far outweigh any subjective issues stemming from which corner you need to move your mouse to in order to accomplish things, which btw for shutting down and entering the control panel is the bottom right.(Yes, even in desktop mode)</comment>


What the hell happened to Mozilla and Firefox? - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/what-the-hell-happened-to-mozilla-and-firefox-1791336285 <comment><USER2> No matter what you do you won't please everyone, people really hate change.</comment>


Boxcryptor – Encryption for cloud storage without container files - <AUTHOR> http://boxcryptor.com/en

<comment><USER2> So this is a key check out service that hooks into google drive and drop box?

<comment><AUTHOR> You _can_ create an account to sync your key across devices but you don't need to (I didn't).

How it works: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jLpX...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jLpXETg9wWM)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are there good resources on data engineering and infra (not science)? - <AUTHOR> Most of Coursera/DataCamp/DataQuest/Udacity have to do with the science aspects; i.e., running things on your computer. However, I've not yet found equivalent resources for putting data/ML systems into production.
The aspects that I'm looking for are not how to set up MySQL or something like that. It has more to do with what all types of systems usually work together well, and how do you set up things like monitoring progress of training a model, deploying the model, versioning the model, etc.
I'm looking for courses/books/anything else (paid is fine) that will help me venture into this.
If you have a "learning path", that'd be great to have too! <comment> sahil-kang _Designing Data Intensive Applications_ is a good read, especially if you're interested in the "programming in the large" aspect of data engineering [1]. It does have a slightly theoretical taste to it, but I think you'll find that helpful since some of the problems you listed don't really have a good solution at the moment (versioning a model, for example).

[1] [http://dataintensive.net](http://dataintensive.net)</comment>


Ask HN: ways to obtain critical mass? - <AUTHOR>

I started this for-fun-project: a highly viral site, called http://www.tjetter.com - it enables you to randomly chat with others, with the added twist of being able to eavesdrop on (and replay) other conversations that take place.
The dutch version is doing OK, because I was able to use my established network to get some initial visitors. However, I have barely any international contacts, so getting some exposure in other countries is rather difficult.
I'm looking for suggestions as to how to proceed in trying to obtain critical mass for this kind concept. Ideas? <comment><USER2> I noticed your post yesterday in the thread about company names and I tried out a few conversations with Tjetter. I saved a couple of the URIs:

<http://tjetter.com/#3JcS>

<http://tjetter.com/#3Jdz>

It's an interesting concept but I wasn't sure what to do at first. What do you say to a person without any context? In each of the conversations the other person inevitably asked if I was male or female. I think it would be easier for people to get involved if there was some starting point, like a question. Get people talking about a topic, even if just to disagree. _Something_ to get them going.

As a more general answer to your question, Chris Wanstrath's talk at RailsConf today/this week is a good read: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=596172>

<comment><USER3> Heya delano! you plum-cheeked, rosy-bummed, fun-pack of a man!

Oh, you're shocked I just said that? well, that was a response to your question:

>What do you say to a person without any context?

With the proper identity, the site can be tuned to encourage odd-ball, fun and goofy monologue-type conversations. It should foster an standup-comedy type atmosphere.

The site owner can encourage a conversation by offering them a "prop"; a graphic image of an object or a person that appears on the screen as a conversation starter. Perhaps a theme/stage/setting where people are encouraged to act out a persona, etc.

Now that thing I said about your bum and your cheeks? err, "nohomo"[1].

\--

[1]<http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=nohomo>

<comment><USER2> Haha, those are great ideas. I would absolutely return regularly to act out different personas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ok, gave it a few tries, every conversation is terminated as soon as you reply "male" to the inevitable question! So option one is probably get 5000 girls on there!

</comment><comment><USER5> How is it "highly viral"? If it was highly viral, surely, it would acquire critical mass by itself (that's kind of the definition of a viral application)

<comment><AUTHOR> I probably should have toned that down a bit, yeah. What I meant was that when kickstarted, the concept will pretty easily attract new visitors, because it's a weird experience; and there's hardly a barrier to engage with the site (just click a button and off you go).

The problem is in the kickstarting: no people chatting, means no eavesdropping and barely anything of interest there when you visit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think you misunderstand viral. It may be virally shared, but it's not viral by its nature. A viral app is an app like skype or paypal, as they only get useful when the other person uses it. An app like facebook, you interact with the other person over the site, as the person who invites you is 'there'.

Your app is just a 'share this amusing link if you like' type site. It's not inherently viral app. Change it in a way that people want to invite people, and also to stay there. Then it will grow on its own.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, I might have used the term viral a little to easily.

With regard to the inviting: an attempt to this end is made in enabling users to tweet their conversations. This would allow their followers to eavesdrop on their particular conversation in realtime. Why would you want a lot of eavesdroppers? Hmm, good question ;)

So something else for people to invite others..

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Make "high-speed replay" more speedy. Having to watch for 30 lines for 3 minutes is a bit boring... (or at least add on option to speed it up)

This is not going get you "critical mass", but it might help a bit.

</comment><comment><USER8> Look at the conversations and see what the value proposition of the site is. What is it that people are looking for. And then highlight that value.

<comment><AUTHOR> People are looking for a way to kill some time. I think this is highlighted by allowing visitors to share conversation-links with others..

Still, the problem remains the fact that it's difficult to get an initial userbase that makes sure there's always something interesting to read about on there :)

<comment><USER9> > People are looking for a way to kill some time.

You think so, eh? Look at the apps coming out that track your time, that let you restrict yourself from killing time, etc.

On what basis do you make such a proposition? (I'm not busting your balls here, I'm genuinely curious.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Try to make something funny...maybe a video...or something..fun is always viral.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think the concept needs to be more viral. And I wouldn't know what to make a video about in order to promote Tjetter; are you suggesting something along the lines of a webcast of recorded conversations?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are your failed hires usually due to bad skills or cultural fit? - <AUTHOR> And if cultural, what have they been? <comment><USER2> Teamwork.

Screen for this by asking people for examples when they have been wrong / how they handled it, what is the best idea that a coworker came up with, or a specific example when they helped someone else succeed at work.

The most painful hiring mistakes I have made were brilliant people who lived in dire fear of being wrong, sought to hide facts that could disprove their positions, and made embarassingly destructive efforts to undermine others. If you ever do hire such a person, no matter how critical they may seem, you will be amazed at the productivity and mood improvement when they depart.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> At my company I feel like we have a pretty good system set in place for screening technical skills. The issue is that after 3-5 phone screens, and a day long in person plus a happy hour afterwards, there's still a significant cultural risk factor. This risk factors increases dramatically the more atypical of a company you are. So the biggest pain point for our company is the cultural unknown. We invest so much in the hiring process, and for a tiny company the risk of hiring the wrong personality is huge that makes us even more picky. There's room for something better.</comment>


Decentralizing the web with Beaker - <AUTHOR> https://changelog.com/jsparty/42 <comment><USER2> A few developments worth sharing:

\- This week we managed to get a performance bump by moving the dat stack into its own process: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1lVBr5BchE&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1lVBr5BchE&feature=youtu.be)

\- We're working on identity and user-filesystem tooling, discussed here: [https://twitter.com/pfrazee/status/1058830217798660096](https://twitter.com/pfrazee/status/1058830217798660096)

\- We're replacing our discovery network with a new DHT that handles hole- punching, and that's going to be exposed in a user-to-user messaging called PeerSockets [https://github.com/beakerbrowser/beaker- core/pull/6](https://github.com/beakerbrowser/beaker-core/pull/6) This is one of Maf's top two priorities right now. His other priority is a new version of the dat data-structure that will improve performance and lay the groundwork for multiple writers in a dat.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for founding this project. I've been playing around with DAT, and using it with this the browser seems very promising. Keep up the great work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone knows a good comparison of Day, ZeroNet, and IPFS? Why did Beaker chose Dat rather than the other two?

I've played with IPFS and ZeroNet (my web page is available on those networks too), but never with Dat.

<comment><USER5> My understanding is that Beaker initially supported both Dat and IPFS, but dropped IPFS in favor of Dat for a variety of reasons, some of which were discussed in this other HN post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16434057](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16434057)

From a user perspective, Dat (and ZeroNet) maps to folders and filesystems much more coherently than IPFS does. I evaluated a few systems for a single use case in this Twitter thread: [https://twitter.com/vitor_io/status/1019271473771569153](https://twitter.com/vitor_io/status/1019271473771569153)

<comment><USER4> > From a user perspective, Dat (and ZeroNet) maps to folders and filesystems > much more coherently than IPFS does.

How so? Once you have the hash of a folder in IPFS you can access its files and subfolders using the classic slash notation.

Take for example my web page at /ipns/pablo.rauzy.name, the structure under that folder is exactly the same as it is on the classical web version of my web page, and is accessed in the same way.

<comment><USER5> Access it, yes, but you can't update it. Dat and ZeroNet both let you maintain a single hash with dynamic contents.

Your web page points to different hashes over time through IPNS, which is additional work for a user, and relies on IPNS instead of being part of IPFS directly.

<comment><USER4> Right. It's not possible to have both content based addresses (like IPFS) and identify based addresses (like ZeroNet, apparently Dat, but also Tor, I2P, and IPNS).

To me as a user, IPNS additional work isn't much more than sitePublish and then siteSign in ZeroNet. The first is equivalent to ipfs add, the second to ipfs name publish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Beaker is a nice project for self hosting, local authoring, etc. I have it installed on a laptop. Off topic, but I saw that they use NativeScript for portable web/iOS/Android apps - very cool, not seen that before and it goes on my long list of things to try.

<comment><USER2> Are we using NativeScript? Not sure what you're referring to here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> When the internet is being mostly used (and increasingly more so) from mobile phones, why does Beaker focus on desktop? And further, do you think the web (both old web in conventional browsers and new web in Beaker) is desktop- first?

(I've been wanting to ask this in person, but so far we haven't met, and I suppose other readers might think of this question too)

<comment><USER2> Beaker is fundamentally a builder's tool. Right now, building means programming, and programming means typing- and typing means the desktop!

I see mobile as primarily a communication platform, while desktop is for productivity. So, I think we should approach them differently. It's true that mobile growth is up, but I don't think that means that desktop is dying. Desktop still has a strong user base. At this point, I almost feel like desktop is the most neglected. We'll get to mobile when the time is right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Beaker is a web browser, where the user can make & serve their own website from within Beaker.

</comment><comment><USER9> I like the idea of beaker but I want to store user data at a non-local user- specified endpoint. A gallery app is a perfect example. You want access to lots of data but you can't store it all locally in all locations that you want access to. Ideally the user would be able to specify their datastore rather than the app supporting specific ones. Blockstack does this but their solution is DOA for decentralization.

<comment><USER4> In ZeroNet you can specify optional files that will be downloaded only if needed and not by default when loading the website. Maybe Dat allows this too?

<comment><USER9> Last I checked, ZeroNet didn't allow user-upload to somewhere else in a way that supports gigabytes. Text-snippits and gifs...sure.

<comment><USER10> You haven't checked for quite a while then :)

ZeroNet has supported movie-sized files and up with it's BigFiles plugin since early this year. It's effectively done torrent style, downloading chunks from multiple peers, but working over TCP, with optional Tor support built in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Paul Frazee [00:11:59.05]:

> Yeah, so Mathias was working on that, while I was in the Secure Scuttlebut > community… And then at one point I decided – well, Electron got to the point > where I was like, you know what, _I think it's actually possible to make a > browser off of Electron_.

What a day we live in, making a browser with browser-code. Who knew?</comment>


I'm a Latino in Tech, and I Think the 'Diversity' Discussion Is Utterly Broken - <AUTHOR> http://observer.com/2016/10/lets-be-honest-we-have-no-idea-what-diversity-means/ <comment><USER2> Having grew up in an environment that was very troubled (to put it lightly) and also be a CIS white straight male; I find diversity discussions quite difficult. Lots of assumptions about myself due to the colour of my skin and my gender and lots of guilty by association "history is full of white males in X industry" to justify positive discrimination etc. I don't have a particular point to this post through in part being chastised in the past for having an opinion on the subject but I roughly follow the authors train of thought. When people talk of diversity their range seems to be quite shallow and skin deep.

<comment><USER3> I learned to stop having such conversations long ago. You either agree completely with the zeitgeist and get domesticated as an "ally", which is like being a little mindless pet. Or you disagree with a point or two and get savaged, and marginalized.

When I just avoid the topic, everything stays OK and everyone remains friendly.

<comment><USER4> >You either agree completely with the zeitgeist and get domesticated as an "ally", which is like being a little mindless pet.

Talk about coded language.

zeitgeist: Focusing on diversity is just a temporary fad, I'm thinking ahead by sitting this one out

domesticated: Changing my opinion is akin to renouncing my freedom and autonomy

"ally": People like me don't really _agree_ with those crazy diversity people, we just need reasonable cover

mindless pet: Those who don't agree with me have freed themselves from the perils of rational, enlightened thought. Like dogs! Or pigs, being fattened for the slaughter

I _do_ agree with your premise (talking about diversity as a cis-straight- white-male can be a minefield), but there has to be some recognition that one's race (among other factors, even!) can color your experience on the job or in an interview. You may argue that social class or cultural upbringing have more of an impact, but those variables have an undeniable connection to race/ethnicity as well.

<comment><USER3> "Ally" isn't my word. We actually get called that. It's a pat on the head that doesn't buy you anything. You get asked to not have an opinion about certain things, to not enter certain spaces ala "White media to the back, black media to the front"

<comment><USER4> Waiting for your turn to speak isn't the same as being silenced. Being asked to listen to the opinions of others isn't the same as being asked not to have an opinion. 'Entitlement' is the relevant buzzword here.

<comment><USER5> Just googling "a good ally" I get things on the front page like [http://everydayfeminism.com/2013/11/things-allies-need-to- kn...](http://everydayfeminism.com/2013/11/things-allies-need-to-know/)

Even a quick skim shows several references to shutting up as well as how it's not an ally's place to discuss racism. I frequently see similar idea whenever a discussion of what being an ally is, comes up. I'd say that being an ally is being asked/told to be silent

<comment><USER6> Wow. They're getting more blunt about it than they used to be. There's basically no consideration for the ally party in that piece. They're just tools. They can get punished for bad behavior & rewarded for good behavior but don't decide on their own. The comparison to pets is fair with Pavlov-like conditioning for participating parties.

Note: I was just saying on another forum that the liberals would often reject that whites in minority-dominated areas deserved any help for structural racism they face but then demand with straight face that same whites needed to fight racism minorities face every day. The feedback indicated people didn't buy that or care to respond. See last paragraphs of No 4 on this list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hispanic engineer here (Salvadoran native/semitic/spanish mix, for what that matters), and I agree with the article's author in regards to socioeconomic class being a much bigger factor than race when it comes to the topic of diversity.

>a philosopher from Peru resembles a philosopher from Scotland more than a janitor from Peru

>students think that their environment is diverse if one comes from Missouri and another from Pakistan—never mind that all of their parents are doctors or bankers

Spot on.

I consider any sort of initiative to disenfranchise or disempower people based on their racial/ethnic background as detrimental to society as a whole, because it (understandably) causes resentment and division.

Imposter syndrome is a bad enough problem for engineers without having to take the possibility of preferential treatment that was conferred on the basis of minority status into account.

<comment><USER8> > Imposter syndrome is a bad enough problem for engineers without having to > take the possibility of preferential treatment that was conferred on the > basis of minority status into account.

This seems completely topsy-turvy to me. I would think white men would be more liable to impostor syndrome due to the general favoritism towards white men. If there were some preferential treatment in the policy that got you hired as a non-white-man that recognized you as the top of your demographic, and your demographic is still vastly underrepresented in your profession; then to feel like an impostor based on that is to internally accept that your demographic is somehow inherently inferior to the overrepresented group.

The entire purpose of affirmative action to me is to dislodge the incompetent advantaged people bobbling around at the bottom of their profession, and replace them with people who are more likely not to have had a chance to reach their full potential yet.

<comment><USER9> > I would think white men would be more liable to impostor syndrome due to the > general favoritism towards white men.

favouritism towards white men is pervasive but invisible; affirmative action is rarer but highly visible, so it gets focused on more.

<comment><USER8> Is it really that visible? It seems to be rare in the wild. Tokenism is far more common: noticing that there are no women, so hiring a woman, or noticing that there are no non-whites, so hiring one.

What definitely has been more visible is complaints about affirmative action, because the advantaged majority were the ones complaining. As whites lose their majority in numbers (in the US), and women make professional gains, that has changed, though, which is an understandable trigger for white male rage and terror. The vast majority of the bosses are still white men, though; it's the advantage of the incumbent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Diversity and discrimination are kind of two different topics, no? Discrimination clearly leads to lack of diversity, but lack of diversity does not imply discrimination. I hope everyone thinks discrimination is bad, that doesn't seem like a controversial subject.

Lack of diversity in STEM also has other causes, though, like self-selection away from subjects due to lack of role models, or struggling in college because your background has not prepared you for the academic culture. Some of these are likely more race/ethnicity/gender related, like the role model issue. When it comes to being prepared for the academic culture, though, that firmly seems to be in the socio-economic territory.

The trouble is that ethnicity also works as a _semi-good_ proxy for socio- economic background, so it seems like people think that by fixing the "I don't see anyone like me here" problem, they can also do a good enough job of fixing problems due socio-economic background, even though that leaves out a significant chunk of people.

<comment><USER11> >lack of diversity does not imply discrimination

If everyone is a blank slate and there is no genetic basis to intelligence, than yes, it does.

Their logic is correct, but it's based on a false premise. And if you call it into question, I sure hope you aren't dependent on having a job.

<comment><USER10> Newborns may be blank slates, but college- and working-age people clearly are not. By the time we are ready to join the working world, we are already imprinted by what our culture tells us are "male" and "female" jobs, for example. I don't think of that as discrimination. It's discrimination if a female applies for a construction job and is passed over for being female, not if she never applies because she thinks construction isn't for her because that's something men do. But both lead to a lack of diversity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sometimes I'm happy about being a Mexican American. Number one: I grew up eating Mexican food. Two: when the social justice set starts making noise my way I can point out that my dad grew up chopping cotton and the only reason I didn't is because he happened to get drafted and went to college on the GI bill. Then I'm part of the party, they leave me alone and I can go back to being a right wing redneck Mexican geek-farmer.

<comment><USER13> I mean, this goes for a lot of white Americans as well. The majority of us in GenX/Y (I'm early 30s, whatever I am) are second to third generation and our families came over in the 1910-1950s with zero prospects. I'm third generation, father and grandfather both US military (raised on a Tobacco farm), father drafted for Vietnam, not sure if my grandfather was drafted but he was a pilot at one point. Both sides of my family are from the Italian and German slums of NY (respectively). In fact, they lived in the Love Canal which was absolutely abysmal and thyroid cancer is rampant through the women in my family because of the toxic waste dumped there.

The absolute disdain between my German and Italian family is immeasurable. It's kind of hilarious being an outsider to what they went through.

I honestly can't think of one white person I know whose family has been in the USA for more than 2-3 generations. I know a LOT of Mexicans who have been here in TX for hundreds of years which I think is incredibly interesting. I'm so used to my friends having barely any history beyond the 1920s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I also don't like how the discussion is framed because it tries to put a label on everyone (typically based on either gender, race or disability)... But that is a very narrow-minded way of thinking about diversity.

I think it's important to give extra attention to those who are disadvantaged but we should handle it on a case-by-case basis - Because not everyone who is different and disadvantaged will fit under a specific race/gender/disability label - We shouldn't leave those 'unlabelled' people out of the equation (I think that most disadvantaged people cannot be labelled - They are invisible minorities).

For example, studies have shown that attractive people get paid more on average than unattractive ones... So maybe we should also give extra consideration to ugly people... Or introverts, or people who have English as a second language... Or who come from a different country... Or had a bad childhood, etc... There are so many different categories; you cannot look at individuals in terms of their superficial qualities only; you have to consider the individual as a whole.

For example, you cannot give special treatment to someone just because they're a woman (without also considering other factors) - What if that woman has a $10 million dollar trust fund and tons of social connections? Maybe she doesn't actually need any special treatment at all - It changes the whole story.

I think that gender, race and disability should be considered, but you shouldn't look at them in isolation from everything else; I think that doing so is in itself is a form of discrimination against all unlabelled disadvantaged individuals.

At the root of this discussion lies the problem that companies are not good at considering people as individuals.

</comment><comment><USER15> Heh, spot on.

I'm also hispanic, the lack of diversity in SV and really any other place where you want to point it out (except for maybe the coaching staff of some football program in rural TX, things like that) is due to socioeconomic difference.

I'd take it one step further though and say it's just a difference in culture.

Go to an Indian friend's house and move a book on the floor out of the way with your foot- you will get a nasty glare. Why? Education is incredibly important in their culture and for that reason kicking a book is almost blasphemous to them.

All I'm saying is that cultures that value education that way succeed because increasingly to be competitive in the job market you need to have hard skills - not ethnic studies degrees with minors in russian dance.

Our culture (hispanic culture) and black culture from what I observed during the time I shared neighborhoods with poor urban blacks that were similar in socioeconomic status to us, just doesn't value education the same way. And pointing that out nowadays is considered racist, sadly.

The only reason I made it out the hood is because of my dad - he would always tell me that the only difference (true or not) between him and the uberly rich guys he works for in LA is education. Fast forward 25 years and now at 31 I'm doing just fine. Most of the "racism" I perceive day to day is in my head and I suspect it has to do with this non stop conversation.

<comment><USER16> > you will get a nasty glare.

Indian here, my dad used to hit me if I moved a book with my foot. That is just not acceptable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Diversity in many places seems to be largely focused on the shallowest parts of diversity, could that be because this is one of the easiest things to measure & tell about a person?

I certainly wouldn't be ready to fill out a survey about my political beliefs or my how my childhood was when interviewing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Skin color does not tell you anything about who a person is. Your just reconfirming your own biases when you assign characteristics to race.

Diversity often ends up being a political and ideological filter just as much as a racial filter. The organisation looking to hire a 'Diverse' person already has a set of ideological filters in place to rationalize why they prioritize 'Diversity' and what it means. There not just looking for any divers person but the 'right' kind of diverse person that agrees with there filters.

So there is process that leads to ideological and political monoculture as it is now. One of the points that to author is making is that focusing more on other forms of diversity rather the race can increase the intellectual and cultural diversity of your organisation far more the just hiring a group of different skin tones who all have the same believes and politics.

<comment><USER10> _Skin color does not tell you anything about who a person is._

The problem is that this is not true. If it was, it would be much simpler.

Race and ethnicity have a _nonzero_ correlation with other factors like culture and socioeconomic status, which means they are, on average, likely to tell you _something_ about the person. When applied to a given individual they're obviously very flawed predictors, but if they didn't _sort of_ work as a proxy for other characteristics, I don't think it would be talked about as much as it is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Companies who want to succeed with new ideas need a diversity of ideas. Free thinkers with broad experience to draw from. And people who are not afraid to disrupt institutional norms.

One of the criticism is that the racial diversity PC crowd really have little interest in diversity of ideas, free thinking, or disruption. And most of them come from a very narrow band of upper middle class cultural experience. Its a feeble monoculture with a strict social hierarchy. For all intent and purpose its the opposite of what a innovative diverse group is.

If you goal is simply to hire a group of people who meet some subjective 'racial balance' who all think a certain way then your probably building a very weak team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I never see ethnicity after the first 5 seconds. If you can talk shop, you're cool, period (in my subjective brain). This is why _I_ have issues with diversity discussions; it's like forcing me to acknowledge the elephant in the room that doesn't actually exist in mine. The best programmer I know is female (and I have told her as much), the second-best is half-black, the third-best is a white Jewish Stanford grad, and somewhere way down the list is curious old me. Who is still giving a shit about this stuff? (Disclaimer: I'm likely as white as can be, the Aryan ideal, dirty-blonde blue-eyed German firstborn American).

But for what it's worth, my latin-american brother-in-law introduced me to ceviche (he makes it himself), and that shit is the bomb-diggity

<comment><USER19> There was a segment on NPR this morning where a woman who wrote "The History of White People" explained that white people are uncomfortable talking about race because it has never been a problem for them.

Her argument was that now that being white is a "bad" thing, white people want to ignore race.

It was very enlightening, but not for the reasons she intended.

<comment><USER18> That's... a good point, unfortunately. :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It seems to me that the only diversity in tech that actually matters is diversity of thought: How does this person approach problem solving differently? What heretofore unknown problems do they spot before it's too late? Etc.

Skin reflectivity, ancestry/parentage, anything related to genitalia (be it shape, usage, TypeMismatchExceptions from the brain, etc), net-worth, or history of any of those strike as poor proxies for the diversity that does mater.

Can you solve the technical problem to hand? Great!

Am I missing something that it needs to be any more complicated than that?

<comment><USER21> It is very very easy to create bias interview questions for programming. I've seen too often people ask a college homework assignment they worked on. Is using your path to the job a good proxy for finding diversity of thinkers?

Then the question is, how do you set it up to find people that solve problems differently?

The interview is just the start of the phase. How do you keep people who are talented but approach the problem differently? What keeps them from feeling like an outsider?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I am a tad bit confused at the premise of the article. It is primarily complaining that race (or gender) is just one dimension of diversity. To the extent of my anecdotal experiences, most diversity advocates whole-heartedly agree.

The example he uses, Project Include, specifically cites, "gender, race, class, age, religion, disability, education, sexual orientation, and others" and calls it a multi-dimensional problem [1].

Example: cis white men from poor or troubled families are most definitely included in this definition of under-represented minorities. It maybe difficult to explicitly measure, but they are definitely included.

There maybe specific organizations that work with a single dimension but I would like to see data on this supposed proliferation of solely race/gender based diversity organizations. Lots of good organizations work with other dimensions of minority representation. Stride[2], focussed on socio-economic conditions, in the bay area comes to mind.

[1] [http://projectinclude.org/about/](http://projectinclude.org/about/)

[2] [http://www.stridecenter.org/](http://www.stridecenter.org/)

<comment><USER23> > Example: cis white men from poor or troubled families are most definitely > included in this definition of under-represented minorities. It maybe > difficult to explicitly measure, but they are definitely included.

The fact that poor white men are technically included in certain definitions of "disadvantaged" by obscure organizations no one has ever heard of, is of little import in the real world: where programs to, say, get more poor coal miners' sons from Appalachia into tech are thin on the ground, and anyone talking about those people's problems gets torrents of abuse and remarks about "white tears."

<comment><USER22> Again, not sure what you are talking about. This particular situation (Appalachia in tech) was loudly celebrated in all circles[1]. This seems to be an enemy that's been made up (or defined by a thin fringe).

[https://backchannel.com/canary-in-the-code- mine-903884eca853...](https://backchannel.com/canary-in-the-code- mine-903884eca853#.oym3f187q)

<comment><USER23> I said "thin on the ground," not "nonexistent." There are a few people who genuinely want real inclusion and work for it, and they're heroes. But they aren't calling the shots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> From The Diversity Myth:

"...a woman might 'realize' that she had been 'raped' the next day or even many days later. Under these circumstances, it is unclear who should be held responsible. _If the alcohol made both of them do it, then why should the woman's consent be obviated any more than the man's? Why is all blame placed on the man?_ "

I'm curious what people think about this.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is what I'm confused about. The "diversity in tech" campaign is obviously being executed all wrong, and I see article after article written by the people it's supposedly trying to help, who confirm what common sense already should know. But yet it still marches on with full strength, as if there's no problem. What gives?

<comment><USER26> It's an industry of it's own... Diversity consultants double down on falsehoods to continue to get paid

<comment><USER15> Exactly, there is a cottage industry that's cropped up around the subject - it's got a life of its own at this point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Article argues that diversity of ideas is what's important, rather than diversity of ethnicity/gender, describes trying to solve racial/gender diversity for its own sake as "utterly broken".

There's plenty of evidence that women and people from under-represented groups are discriminated against because of their identity. Here are a few on gender alone: [0][1][2][3][4]

Perhaps there are cases of people being discriminated against for having "diverse" opinions, but it seems like a distinctly smaller problem, as witholding a controversial opinion is an option and witholding your existence is not.

[0] Female students seen as less competent than identical male students with identical application materials, offered lower starting salaries (Moss-Racusin et al, 2012)

[1] People in gender-incongruent roles penalised more heavily for mistakes (Brescoll, Dawson, & Uhlmann, 2010).

[2] Voluble women perceived as less competent and less suitable leaders, inverse true for men (Brescoll, 2011).

[3] Women who succeed in male-dominated fields percieved as not likeable (Heilman et al, 2004).

[4] Students question the competence of female teachers who evaluate them negatively, less so than male teachers (Sinclair & Kunda 2000).

<comment><USER28> > There's plenty of evidence that women and people from under-represented > groups are discriminated against because of their identity. Here are a few > on gender alone: [0][1][2][3][4]

Every single one of your examples has to do with gender, not ethnic diversity like the original article was talking about. Could you submit some evidence about under-represented groups?

<comment><USER27> > Every single one of your examples has to do with gender, not ethnic > diversity like the original article was talking about.

It's interesting that you interpreted it that way.

The author states that "diversity discussion is utterly broken", and I agree he focuses on race, but at no point did he constrain his criticism that to a particular sub-set of diversity.

In addition:

i) The article even opens with a lengthy movie reference (complete with a huge lead image) about the arrival of a woman at a previously all-male news team.

ii) From the article: "We're turning race _or gender_ into a crutch being used as an excuse for real or perceived failures."

iii) From the article: "Their goal is to help startups take proper steps to hire more _women_ and minorities."

I don't think there's much wiggle room on the intent of the author, stated or implied.

I can only assume that either you didn't read the article completely or that you're attempting to move the goalposts; either consciously or due to confirmation bias.

> Could you submit some evidence about under-represented groups?

We could get into evidence for ethnic/racial bias if you really want to; but first I'd rather address the issue of why you feel like you need to move the discussion away from gender.

Until we get past that problem, citing further evidence would likely just polarise the discussion and lead nowhere.

<comment><USER28> > The author states that "diversity discussion is utterly broken", and I agree > he focuses on race...

My point was that the response's studies focus exclusively on gender, not on race at all, making it not as applicable to the article had he spoken to race at all in his reponse. Instead, he says "people discriminate against both gender and race" and only backs up the "discriminate against gender" argument.

<comment><USER27> > Instead, he says "people discriminate against both gender and race" and only > backs up the "discriminate against gender" argument.

First you (incorrectly) complain that the article is only about racial diversity. Now you're complaining because I haven't provided evidence to back up every part of my original comment.

I'll say again; I'm happy to get into racial diversity, but until we can clarify exactly why you want to dismiss the evidence I've shared on gender diversity I don't think it would be a productive use of my time.

Engage in a conversation. Share an opinion. If you just want to sit back and snipe, saying "you didn't back up that bit, show me studies" you can do it with someone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "A society that aims for equality before liberty will end up with neither equality nor liberty." We are seeing the effects of society aiming for equality over liberty.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKxCWheH5Vk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKxCWheH5Vk)

</comment><comment><USER30> Funny how when programmer's see a bug in some code, it doesn't matter so much _why_ the code is like that, what matters more is the result of that code being incorrect. The impact of the code is what matters, not the intent.

Yet, when it comes to diversity in tech, you can show all the data you want, and we still assume that affluent white men are the ones who are really under attack, that white men are predisposed to succeed in this field moreso than other groups, or any number of other theories that are really just anecdotally-based gut reactions. 2016 isn't that different from the 50s in that way.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've written these same things. The real value of diversity is different approaches to problem solving in various domains like leadership, product development, performance assessment, technical aptitude, crisis/dispute management, and more. It was obvious that getting races by themselves wouldn't solve the problem when most startups and big companies alike were already filtering candidates to be more like them ("culture fit"). That's killing diversity at the start.

The alternative is meritocracy. Things like blind auditions or at least leveraging existing diversity in assessments. There should be extra attention paid to whether the person has skills that complement the team's or took unusual but effective approaches to certain problems. I see that kind of stuff all the time in my line of work although management sees a lot less. It's because _I 'm looking harder_. I don't care what the race or other traits of the person was as those who impress me vary considerably. I enjoy seeing the differences as I learn from them so long as the differences are _mental_.

</comment><comment><USER31> In an off the cuff thought, I'd say issues related to to diversity in this age generally come from stereotypes or generalizations rather than ignorant or malicious thinking.

IE: In the work place, a hiring manager might think "This person comes from that place which doesn't 'usually' produce top talent... On the other hand, I have this other individual from a place that generally produces top talent." Don't forget that a hiring manager's job is pretty much to entirely mitigate risk - thereby perpetuating, intentionally or otherwise, lack of diversity.

That's no excuse, but I think lack of diversity should be a viewed as a symptom, not a disease. In the above example, I describe a symptom of a risk- management mindset - and if companies could find a way to give more trust to hiring managers, perhaps it would give them the freedom to hire more diverse candidates.

\---

TL;DR Ask yourself: Do you think Lack of Diversity is a symptom of greater social/economic issues or is it a disease in that it is consciously/intentionally perpetrated?

</comment><comment><USER32> Diversity is code for "race" and "sex". It's not a very diverse set of axes to measure.

I won't argue they aren't important axes. They may even be the two single most important. But either way it's disappointing that they're the only two axes we're actively measuring and scoring.

</comment><comment><USER33> I wonder how folks respond to the following attitude

"The key word among advocates of multiculturalism became 'diversity'. Sweeping claims for the benefits of demographic and cultural diversity... have prevailed without a speck of evidence being asked for or given." [https://youtu.be/H6ImP-gJvas?t=941](https://youtu.be/H6ImP-gJvas?t=941)

I've recently been exposed to the above sort of thoughts that criticize the whole notion of diversity. I have to admit I'm still taken aback and caught off guard by it. Apparently this Sowell guy is all over on YouTube sneering at the idea of diversity in one way or another. He's a very unusual and startling figure to listen to, challenging a ton of beliefs and things I've been exposed to growing up.

</comment><comment><USER34> I agree with the author, there is definitely a "type" of diversity that we don't talk about or even have a name for. I'm gonna call it "cultural diversity". I think people focus on racial diversity and gender balance because they are good proxies for cultural diversity, which is otherwise quite hard to quantify.

For example, if your team's demographics match the demographics of the Stanford CS department, odds are your failing at "cultural diversity" even if you hired a black MIT grad. On the other hand if your team's demographics match the country as a whole, you're probably doing pretty well at cultural diversity.

</comment><comment><USER35> _When most people are trying to promote inclusiveness, they do just that: Try to include or reach out to certain specifically excluded groups. This has all kinds of inherent problems and does not work well.

In contrast, I do things that are less implicitly exclusionary. I do not try to target anyone for inclusion. I just do things that do not implicitly exclude them in the way I frame things._

[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/less- exclusi...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/less- exclusive.html)

</comment><comment><USER36> As someone from SE Asia, I find it mind-boggling that just about all of the comments here lump "Asians" and "whites" into the same category.

<comment><USER37> Welcome to the weird politics of the diversity discussion

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I so agree with this article!!

Always had the same feeling about the "diversity" but never understood the why.

</comment><comment><USER39> It's weird that this article is being downvoted. The comments sections are usually split 60-40 in the anti-diversity/pro-diversity debates.

However only the pro diversity articles ever get upvoted.

</comment><comment><USER40> Many of the people on HN are in their twenties, some of us are slightly older.

In 1963, the Ku Klux Klan bombed a black church in Birmingham and killed four little girls, because the church supported the rights of blacks to vote. Blacks were still banned from attending University of Alabama in that year, the governor himself stood in the school's door to block the first student trying to attend, blocked by federal marshals. In 1964 three civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi, with the help of local police. In 1961, groups riding on integrated buses in the south were attacked in several places, with the help of police, beaten to a pulp and the buses burned.

Even in the north - in 1965 Martin Luther King went on a march in Chicago against de facto segregated housing, which was met by what seemed to be a forming mob, he was hit by a brick and the white and black marchers were met with projectiles and feared a riot might ensue.

If you look at the Fox News viewer demographics, much of their audience were in their 20s and 30s when this was all happening. They grew up with it that way.

This isn't ancient history to some of us, and is American history. You go back farther and it is jim crow, lynching, and not all too far back, about 30 years before my grandfather was born, slavery.

Considering this, seeing blacks relegated to Oakland (which is itself being gentrified) and lacking in the makeup of startups in San Francisco is not surprising. Things have in some ways gotten better, but black men are still killed for little or no reason. Look at the case of Amadou Diallo, who was shot 41 times for opening his door - the police brass have been editing his entry on Wikipedia with exposed IPs, which has led to a little kerfuffle. So they're being paid by working taxpayers to rewrite history any how...

</comment><comment><USER41> I don't like reading articles like this one. I hate discrimination and I am amazed that in 2016 we still have it. I am creating a website that lists companies that are hiring Latinos. Post your tech job here [https://goo.gl/forms/CVIMrhigDXicaSUM2](https://goo.gl/forms/CVIMrhigDXicaSUM2) if you are excited working with Latinos.

<comment><USER42> Shouldn't companies be hiring anyone who is qualified, latino or not?

<comment><USER43> In a perfect unbiased world, sure. Reality is quite a bit different sadly.</comment></comment></comment>


New Apple Patent Application Describes Flexible iWatch - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2013/02/21/apple-patent-flexible-iwatch/

<comment><USER2> So this idea was hatched under Jobs then. We can continue to speculate how much influence he had on the product pipeline for the next few years.

</comment><comment><USER3> already discussed this... <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5257270></comment>


Samsung warns customers not to discuss personal info in front of TVs (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://theweek.com/speedreads/538379/samsung-warns-customers-not-discuss-personal-information-front-smart-tvs <comment><USER2> Behind Winston's back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

<comment><USER3> Of course, neither darkness nor limited thought police manpower can save you in today's reality...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Article is from 2015, and Siri does the same thing:

[http://www.infowars.com/apple-admits-siri-voice-data-is- bein...](http://www.infowars.com/apple-admits-siri-voice-data-is-being-sent- to-third-parties/)</comment>


IRC turns thirty - <AUTHOR> http://www.oulu.fi/university/node/54247 <comment><USER2> Met my fiancée over IRC many years ago and we're both using it as our main social communication with others online.

It's an enclave untouched by much of the current toxicity of social media. It requires you to make friends with others based on your words and not content filtering algorithms. You are exposed to other people with other ideas since it isn't filtered. All with a reasonably high lowest level since the lack of bells and whistles turn a lot of people away from it.

<comment><USER3> > current toxicity of social media

The only response I can conjure up for this is "wat"

IRC in my experience is the most toxic and mean-spirited place on earth. 4chan is easier to take because I can justify their meanness to lulz. People on IRC seem to be out to kill people's spirit.

There are some exceptions like python on free node which is heavily moderated, but by and large (in my nearly 15 years of heavy IRCing) it is not for the faint hearted.

<comment><USER4> Sounds like you might be blaming a protocol for some poor channel choices.

There are still plenty of educational/social IRC communities that welcome curious people of all skill levels.

I can vouch for [https://hashbang.sh](https://hashbang.sh) (irc.hashbang.sh/6697) which has piles of industry leaders as regulars that prefer investing in open federated standards for internet communication over the endless array of hip walled garden flavor of the week chat systems.

We give out free bouncers/shells to anyone too :)

<comment><USER5> I concur. I've learned a lot listening and participating in chat rooms, but not all of them are the same. Some are definitely toxic, some are uplifting -- intellectually or otherwise. My personal recipe is once I have a topic in mind, I browse through the channel list, filtering by popularity. In my experience, "toxicity", for the lack of a better term, is proportional to popularity (crowdedness) and mainstreamness. In practical terms, if a channel has a lot of members (150+) that's not a good sign. If it's also a mainstream topic, that's a definite red flag. In my case, I would consider joining that channel a waste of time and energy. If I'm interested in a mainstream topic, sorting the channels by user count will quickly reveal where people go to escape the madness; as channels get big and sickly the interesting and helpful people tend to go to one of the sattelite channels that don't have those problems. As an example, the best channel on Python I found for my purposes had ~5-15 active users per day. I'm especially happy with IRC, because I am intrinsically drawn to more obscure technologies and their channels don't have these problems.

That said, IRC is made by the communities using it. The only, but a significant technological advantage it has over other chat mediums is its minimalism. Barebones chat is much more conducive to technical discussions, than the bloated alternatives, and I think the same applies for other kinds of discussions as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you've never poked the IRC protocol directly, Google how to connect to IRC with Telnet.

You can pretty reasonably use IRC just by writing to a socket - by hand. It's all human readable and understandable. It's incredible. It's what an open protocol should be.

Writing a simple IRC client is a breeze!

<comment><USER7> I tried it before and it's not as easy as it sounds. There is no one spec, it's a handful of RFCs and other ad hoc extensions that are barely documented anywhere. I think there's at least a dozen different documents you have to refer to.

<comment><USER8> For most of the client protocol, it's just RFC 1459 and RFC 2812. Then there's CTCP, DCC, server-to-server protocols and the 005 numeric.

I'm not sure you need any of these for communicating via telnet or writing a small bot that will answer back.

<comment><USER9> I tried to implement an IRC client in about 2004 and no popular server was implementing RFC 2812, which was released in 2000. I realise that's a long time ago but things move slowly in the IRC world, so I would be surprised if things had changed a lot since then.

<comment><USER10> RFC2812 was codifying one particular network's protocol choices and was never accepted by the wider community of IRC server and client developers.

There _have_ been widely implemented improvements (eg RPL_ISUPPORT / 005) which succeeded by discussion and consensus rather than trying to lay down a new standard by fiat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am invariably going to see in the world of Slack, "IRC, why don't you die already".

No, IRC is not going to die. FreeNode is alive and well. And while you busy slamming and wishing death of IRC, just check the memory usage of your Slack client.

<comment><USER12> Is there a reason IRC couldn't look like slack to the user?

kiwiirc is an opensource webUI IRC client (demo at [https://kiwiirc.com/](https://kiwiirc.com/)). To my untrained eye it _looks_ slack-ish, but not being a slack-native I'm not really sure what Slack's draw is and whether its something webUI clients for IRC can't do.

<comment><USER13> The UI is the easiest thing to fix and as you have shown already has been for some time. What separates IRC and the rest is all the features you would expect by default in a messenger of the 21st century:

\- history

\- with search

\- logins

\- simple bots

\- automatic content fetching (wiki/youtube Links, pics and gifs)

\- file transfers that just work

\- image pasting

\- message editing

And probably others. Yes, those features exist in one way or another in IRC. The point is not whether you can or not; the point is how much time and energy do I want to spend to install _and maintain_ those. I may have had the patience to do it a few years back, but I value other things now.

<comment><USER10> As a sidebar, from what I can tell the term "bot" for an automated agent accessible through chat originated on IRC.

<comment><USER13> For sure, credit where it's due. However IRC doesn't beat the ease of installation that Slack providers for bots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It is refreshing to still use a technology which mainly has not been tainted with current crap (share, like, subscribe). You have to deal with some mods on power-trips, but it is rare. Happy thirty!

</comment><comment><USER15> The communities around torrent tracker was and is always very active on IRC as having your own IRC network is pretty standard for a tracker. I probably spent the majority of my time during my studies on IRC, and because of timezones it was mostly during the night. I have very fond memories of this time and I'm a bit sad that I don't use it that much any more.

I really can't wrap my head around how communities, especially for programming languages use Slack where all the information gets fed into some silo and is not publicly available. Especially if they don't pay for it, which most open source projects don't do for money reasons and the history gets wiped after a while. If I were to decide what to use in a company I'd probably go for [https://www.irccloud.com/](https://www.irccloud.com/) \- it's an open protocol but still has the convenience of not having to set up a bouncer and run your own IRC server.

</comment><comment><USER16> And the IRC network I help run must have turned 15 by now.

It's not filled to the brim with thousands and thousands of users. It's not monetizable.

But instead we have a nice, small community where we can hang out, be ourselves and do whatever we like without having to adhere some other company's "community standards".

It's how I like the internet to be, and I don't care one bit if it's old- fashioned.

</comment><comment><USER17> I hate Slack and I particularly despise Gitter. All the communities I had to go on at one point were totally out of service or totally uninterested in helping newbies. I am glad some organizations still use IRC as their main online network.

<comment><USER18> You're conflating technology and community.

<comment><USER19> Design brought forth, intentionally or not, creates everything but the content of the experience. It's the "view" that people see that creates most of the UX.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> very cool. I started with IRC circa 92, on a VAX VMS system after discovering it using Gopher :)

Was great, though very addictive. The internet wasn't very well known, and not many people were online, and it was very common to make friends all around the world. I travelled and met a lot of people all over the world through IRC. I remember quite a number of people starting relationships and having babies ( many of which would be late 20s now... crazy).

I remember in 93 when tanks were rolling into moscow getting live updates from people who were there. Was a glimpse of the future yet to come around major world events.

Slowly more and more people started turning up on IRC, new IRC networks appeared, people started to perfer networking with people in their local country or local state.... then later mostly people in their local city.

Then it started to die off with the rise of the web and alternative chat software.

<comment><USER21> > Then it started to die off with the rise of the web and alternative chat > software.

That's news to me and the ~eight IRC networks I'm on.

<comment><USER22> With how many members? Even the most niche discord channels will likely have more users than your 8 IRC channels.

<comment><USER23> networks, not channels

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> ahhh IRC

It brought me the joys of learning how to program while trying to write some tcl scripts for eggdrop bots and goofing around in a shell setting up said bot.

Every time I think of IRC I get this nostalgic feeling of the good old times when communities were vibrant. It was so much easier to just hop on gamesurge or quakenet and find people to game with, organize pugs, find random channels where you can discuss things that interest you, and of course your favorite local's city mingle spot.

I made some good friends from my local city's IRC channel in the early 2000s that I still talk to this day.

I feel as though communities aren't as strong as they used to be as IRC has been slowly losing its population. It just had this quick and fluid way of hopping channels and finding people with similar interests. Listing all of the channels with their user count, and seeing what's popular, or even creating your own channel and community was so empowering.

<comment><USER25> Irc was awesome, efnet was particularly fun as a teenager. Forcing network splits, installing eggdrop bots to take over a channel. Efnet was the wild west where basically anything was okay. Dalnet was more civilized. Undernet was definitely for warez.

I wonder if anyone ever paid for a mirc license in those days.

<comment><USER26> Back when I was much more active on Undernet and EFNet, there was talk of 1-2 people actually having paid for an mIRC license.

Personally, a couple years ago I found the latest nagging screen guilt-trippy enough that I paid for a license even though I rarely use it.

<comment><USER27> Same people bagged themselves a WinZip license too I'll bet!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It is worth noting that IRC is in the middle of overhaul and upgrade with IRCv3 [1] standard. Sadly not many clients and servers support it (almost none of them).

[1] [https://www.ircv3.net](https://www.ircv3.net)

<comment><USER29> It is worth nothing that IRCv3 is a coup d'etat made by a closed coven of developers:

Most IRC clients are slowly developed or almost dead these days; the modus operandi of the IRCv3 developers is that they write patches for those IRC clients to support IRCv3 features and then push hard for the maintainers of those clients to merge them ("this is what the future of irc looks like! it's what the other clients are implementing! do you wanna be the only one not implementing it???")

They argue the development of their "standards" is open, but the truth is that nobody cares about it (most people are OK with IRC as it is now) so very few people contribute; they pretend that nobody complaining is a tacit agreement that everybody is OK with their changes, when that's far from the truth.

<comment><USER30> To be fair the protocol was on in my opinion life support and IRCv3 really gives a few more years to the protocol and clients.

Actually, I still think most IRC clients stale as f __* even with IRCv3, for example embedding images and videos in chats should be trivial but I 've yet to see a Linux desktop client do it (without sacrificing other features). IRCv3 doesn't also fix client certificate updating, though neither does any client handle client certs nicely so it's a sweet dream of mine to see auto- updated client certs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I feel like we will end up with another program that abstracts Slack/Telegram/IRC into neat CLI interface and we will go full circle again. :)

Happy birth day IRC!

<comment><USER32> Until they recently shut it down (boooooo), it was possible to bridge a company Slack channel into IRC and vice versa.

[https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=sla...](https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=slack+irc+bridge&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)

<comment><USER33> My Discord <-> IRC <-> Slack <-> Matrix bridge with Matterbridge [0] still works as of today, I didn't notice anything being shut down.

[0]: [https://github.com/42wim/matterbridge](https://github.com/42wim/matterbridge)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> IRC brings back some memories. I haven't personally used IRC in a few years directly, but I can remember how when I started university, every freshman "had" to login to IRC through SSH and screen :-). That's where the course channels were sitting and you could get help, either if you didn't want to ask face to face, go to school or just needed to ask something. There were other channels too, some where you were invited and had small social groups you chatted with daily.

Nowadays, most of the communication has migrated to Telegram from IRC.

EDIT: If one was to start using IRC, I guess there isn't a channel or a server where most or some of the people using also Hacker News go?

<comment><USER35> Perhaps #hackernews and #startups on freenode?

<comment><USER36> Another good starting point is #xkcd. it is a _large_ channel with a lot of tech-ish and math-y people.

EDIT: Note that channel discovery on IRC is largely a word-of-mouth thing so don't be shy to ask people for channel recommendations on irc. Most programming language have a dedicated channel, e.g. #D or #python or whatnot.

<comment><USER37> Are you talking about freenode? I just joined #xkcd and it's 8 people and no topic set. 3 other users joined and immediately left, I guess those were from HN aswell.

(A big channel for everyone to join is ##programming, by the way.)

<comment><USER36> Ah I should have specified. sorry. It's at irc.foonetic.net

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Somebody unearthed an IRC server in the hinterlands of the intranet of the huge tech company I work for. There was nobody there.

The company is big on Jabber though...

<comment><USER39> When I worked for an international bank during the late 90s and early 2000s they had a global IRC network on their internal WAN.

It was heavily used by all staff, which was fairly unique compared to the other banks at the time.

Over time the bank developed their own dedicated client for it, and added extensions to the servers for audit logging and username/realname enforcement, and then eventually spun the department developing the tech off into it's own startup company that then sold the product to other banks and companies. That spin off company is still around selling online collaboration software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> If someone was going to install an irc server, which one is recommended? Also, any client reconditions for Windows and Mac?

<comment><USER41> For Windows I always use Hexchat, which seems to be the _only_ decent open source client for Windows. If anyone would like to jump in and point out others I don't know about, by all means.

(Heck, it's what I use on Linux too)

<comment><USER42> I really like Quassel. It's main model is client-server (you install the server component somewhere and it'll stay online, bouncer-like, and you can connect to it from multiple clients), but you can use it in a standalone mode too. The main client runs Linux/Windows/Mac, there's one for Android too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> IRC is simple and efficient. It's a real pleasure for me to use it daily to talk to my fellow programmers. Yeah we don't have images but we have links and a pastebin ([https://github.com/solusipse/fiche](https://github.com/solusipse/fiche)) to replace that.

I'm on #dailyprog at irc.rizon.net ([https://dailyprog.org/](https://dailyprog.org/)). It's an irc-based programming community. We also share a server with ssh access.

We do small programming projects together. At the moment the idea is to make an exhausive list of all existing IRC servers with massscan and nmap (the output of the running massscan instance: [https://dailyprog.org/~mabynogy/irc- servers.txt](https://dailyprog.org/~mabynogy/irc-servers.txt)).

</comment><comment><USER37> I always envy the guy who registered the nick "e" on freenode. He must be ancient, one of the first users since NickServ came into being, and I imagine him as this grey-bearded programmer wizard who speaks in x86 assembly. He hangs around in ##C and I've seen him speak occasionally I think.

</comment><comment><USER44> IRC was where I learned to program in the late 90's. Both through instruction on channels like #C, and also literally implementing the RFC's - building both bots and servers.

It was a rush building "bot/server" combos like Nickserv... felt like superpowers and you could do all kinds of things through spoofing names and whatnot.

(I mean it was pointless since the only servers I could pair with were other empty ones with one or two people... but still - it was fun!)

I guess at some point my trajectory just.. changed - moving from that world to less heady stuff like Flash and so on... but the nostalgia is strong and I feel very lucky to have gotten my start in tech that way.

</comment><comment><USER45> I used IRC (a lot) in the early 90s. I built the first online texas holdem poker game hosted as an IRC bot around 1994. There were a few hundred players, many of them asked to play for real money. People created graphical clients and another guy extended the code to add tournament rules.

Apparently poker pro chris ferguson first started playing poker on IRC.

I definitely missed a huge opportunity to monetize it.

IRC these days is a bit of a mess with custom authentication protocols that make it too hard to use. Slack is extremely easy to setup for an organization and just works.

</comment><comment><USER46> Here's to the next thirty years! There's no better way to chat online than IRC. You'll have to tear it from our cold, dead hands.

</comment><comment><USER47> Has anyone noticed that Slack communities are a lot less active these days?

And IRC communities are less active these days.

Where are the chatters going to now?

<comment><USER48> Not sure whether Slack communities are less or more active, but what I'm sure is that chatting hardly works as a means to convey knowledge. It's neither rewarding nor persistent. I mean, you spend your time for free answering some (usually) easy to google questions and soon your answer is lost in the countless logs and you have no way to refer to it later like it never happened.

All popular and large Slack communities (the same is true for IRC channels) I used to be a member of are very much alike – hundreds of people just sit there busy with their lives just in case somebody would post something interesting, and just occasionally there're small bursts of activity to educate another newbie who did @here in the channel. And even when (oh, miracle) there does occur some conversation you realise you have no time to follow it as it happens and later you're just to lazy to find it and try to make some sense out of it. So, first you turn off notification distractions. And second, after a while, you realise you haven't poked there for weeks and finally just remove it with no regret.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> A CLI for a workstation without irssi on it is no workstation at all.

</comment><comment><USER49> I was never a fan of IRC although I am still a part time user since 1995. I was always annoyed losing replies just because I went offline and of course all the weird self disconnects and occasional banning bots. Sending files was also a big pain. But was simple to use and with tons of communities so I never actively complained about it. I converted to Discord and never looked back. On the other hand I was never deep into social activity online.

</comment><comment><USER50> Smart filtering of join/part messages makes irc so much nicer to use, available in my preferred client Weechat as well as Hexchat and surely others.

I only see a join/part if it happens within x minutes of someone speaking, and there's a shortcut to switch to unfiltered view when I want it.

</comment><comment><USER51> Would anyone know of any active communities for sysadmins on IRC or otherwise? Or a directory to find such channels?

Never really been one for being involved in online communities but being a one man team at work has got me looking for people of similar interests.

<comment><USER50> You can search Freenode's channel list at [http://irc.netsplit.de/channels/?net=freenode](http://irc.netsplit.de/channels/?net=freenode)

I've noticed a #reddit-sysadmin , likely there's a ##sysadmin too and probably others. The double # indicates a topic [https://freenode.net/kb/answer/namespaces](https://freenode.net/kb/answer/namespaces)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> For anyone wondering where IRC users have migrated these days, the answer is Discord.

There are several programming-themed servers with thousands of concurrent users, and many more high population servers for other interest groups.

</comment><comment><USER53> You could take away the web 2.0 I may not bother. IRC on the other hand ...

</comment><comment><USER54> I remember back in 1992 (my freshmen year of college), my first exposure to this thing called the internet was via email AND irc. Ah, good ol' irc; what wonderful memories! Happy birthday irc!

</comment><comment><USER55> Love IRC. But what client should I use on my telephone?

<comment><USER56> It might seem weird, and probably will not please everyone, but in my experience, using an XMPP client (Conversations) along with biboumi (an XMPP <-> IRC bridge, [https://biboumi.louiz.org](https://biboumi.louiz.org) (note: I'm the author)) is the best way to use IRC on mobile:

\- You can idle in the channels without doing hundreds of part/join when your phone loses the connection

\- You get the full backlog of what was said while your phone was offline

And you can host just one biboumi instance for all your users. You can even configure it to connect to just one IRC server. The users just have to join channels like #firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER57> This is exactly what I do - I use Conversations and biboumi to idle in a bunch of channels for various projects I'm watching.

Thanks louiz! You do good work!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Barely 30 and all the cool kids have already moved on... I think there's a metaphore in there somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER59> My issue with irc is everyone can see your ip adress right?

Is there any chanel of hackernewsers with the same spirit as HN?

<comment><USER36> That depends somewhat. Freenode for example allows you to request a "cloak" to hide your IP as long as you're a) registered, b) not using the web client.

<comment><USER50> And to their credit they still allow Tor connections, albeit to an existing registered account and authenticating with key-based SASL.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I heavily used IRC in the early and mid 90s. Glad to see that it's alive and kicking. Happy 30th!

</comment><comment><USER61> It's interesting that it's actually older than the "World Wide Web".

</comment><comment><USER62> Superthread, [https://superthread.net/](https://superthread.net/) is a web based alternative to IRC. You might want to check it out.

</comment><comment><USER63> I've met some great people and fellow Devs on efnet back in the day, it used to be pretty much my only socialising back in the late 90s, some really disturbing toxic people too but a great experience all together.

Still pop in every now and then.

</comment><comment><USER64> Long live IRC!

</comment><comment><USER65> /me slow claps

</comment><comment><USER19> Interesting. Last IIRC, Stanford ITS used tinyfugue (tf) MUD which is sorta like IRC.

</comment><comment><USER66> For those that just want to use Slack through your IRC clients/bots/whatever, take a look at [https://github.com/nolanlum/tanya](https://github.com/nolanlum/tanya)</comment>


Getting ready for you YC interview? There's an app for that - <AUTHOR> http://www.glacierbird.net/apps/startupdeck/

<comment><USER2> Speaking of which, they're about to announce the results for YC S13. Good luck all!

</comment><comment><USER3> Good luck to those who applied. I guess it's a bit early to know if you're in yet. Do the emails again go out around the end of the working day Pacific time?

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting concept. Design could be improved a little bit. Great to see an app that works on all platforms. ;)

</comment><comment><USER5> Could be prettier as an app, but serves the purpose very well IMO. Reminded me to brush up on my pitch too.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm reading this as a signal that there are too many aps

</comment><comment><USER7> simple but nice, looks very useful and it's even free :)

</comment><comment><USER8> Very nice job man. Thank you.</comment>


Upcoming Changes to the Netflix API Program - <AUTHOR> http://developer.netflix.com/blog/read/Upcoming_Changes_to_the_Netflix_API_Program <comment><USER2> Not too much surprise there... but what is overall the most surprising is in fact that Netflix is still supporting an external API. The Netflix Developer forum API has been overall totally abandoned by Netflix development team. I can not recall any recent answers from Netflix there and most posts in the forums are SPAM.

So it's surprising to see Netflix still talking about public external API.</comment>


Microsoft pulls Windows 10 support from Intel's Galileo boards - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/article/3006396/microsoft-pulls-windows-10-support-from-intels-galileo-boards.html#tk.rss_news <comment><USER2> "Galileo Gen2 users will be able to install Linux on the board after Windows support ends."

I never got using the Galileo board Microsoft gave me because I couldn't easily run Node.js on it. I wanted to try the Microsoft IoT with some stuff I've been playing with, but the support wasn't there. I was hoping to upgrade to Windows 10, but I guess it will become a linux machine now.</comment>


When pitching investors how do u non-defensively anser Qs related to competition - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/When-pitching-investors-how-does-one-non-defensively-answer-questions-related-to-competition/answer/Marc-Andreessen

<comment><USER2> There are two types of markets. There are markets with demand and markets without demand. If you're entering in a market without demand with a stellar product or service, you need to educate the market to create that demand, and that can take years. When you enter a market with demand, all you have to do is build attention, improve your product, and make sales. Much much easier.

</comment><comment><USER3> That comment about "we have no competition" is spot on in my book, with one addendum: it either means the company saying it is in a bad market, _or_ that the person saying it hasn't done their research.

It's quite an easy psychological trap to fall into, as well. If you've come up with a neat technical trick, or had a bright spark of an idea, if you get too attached to it then you won't want to research it. There's this nagging fear at the back of your mind that if you do, you'll find that your glistening pearl of a retirement plan has been done to death by companies better positioned and funded than you can ever be, but you never heard about them because your bright idea wasn't on your home turf to begin with.

It's ironic, because finding that you have competition is one of the very best things that can happen to your idea: it forces it to morph and improve.

</comment><comment><USER4> Without reading the article, I'm going to guess.... Honestly.

Now I'll read the article.</comment>


Test Windows Phone 7 on iOs or Android - <AUTHOR> http://aka.ms/wpdemo

<comment><USER2> I returned my Windows Phone (Samsung Focus S) today and picked up an Android (Samsung Galaxy II)... and you know what, I miss WinPho.

By comparison, Android (and I came from a Nexus One before this, so I know it well) is such an un-unified mess. I find myself fighting the UI often. Windows Phone has what I genuinely think is the best mobile UI out there, bar none.

Once they improve the Maps app (it's awful), add more third party hooks (so I can get GChat etc. in the Messaging section) and people start supporting the browser more (the IE in Mango is fine, but people seem to use too many -webkit- prefixes) I'll happily switch back. In the mean time I'll be developing WP apps in an emulator...

</comment><comment><USER3> Im not well versed in whats possible on the browser. Had a poke but still not sure how the WP7 transformations happen. Anyone able to provide a link or something to allow myself to learn?

<comment><USER4> I presume you mean the tile effects? They are using -webkit-transform-origin-x and translate3d to create that

<comment><USER3> That's the one. Thanks. I shall look into it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Its too bad they didn't actually put in much real functionality. Its really just a glorified slideshow.

But a compelling slideshow at that.

</comment><comment><USER6> Huh weird. I don't have the Messenger in the Messaging settings on my WP7.5

</comment><comment><USER7> I find it ironic that this webpage doesn't work on an actual WP7 device (w/ mango). But, FWIW, I __love __my WP7.

</comment><comment><USER8> Imagine a world in which you could load WP onto the iPhone and Android on your Windows Phone.

The freedoms that we take granted on PCs(running Windows 7 on Macs) seem to be lost now.

<comment><USER9> I think this has more to do with the speed of hardware innovation than it does a lack of interest. Could you run a Mac OS on a Windows PC from 1996? Could you run Windows on Macs in '96? Personal Computer hardware was changing so rapidly that I think porting OSs around wasn't anybody's priority. Of course, the hardware changes slowed down and things are more stable now.

I think there's little stopping you from hacking around and getting each mobile OS to run on the other's hardware, but the effort to utility ratio is so low since your hardware will be severely outdated by the time you're done.

<comment><USER2> It has more to do with standardisation. Every handset manufacturer seems to use ever-so-slightly different hardware even within their own models. Throw in some closed drivers and you have absolutely no idea what's going on.</comment></comment></comment>


Is Atom's growth hurting Intel? - <AUTHOR> http://infotech.indiatimes.com/Enterprise-IT/Infrastucture/Is-Atoms-growth-hurting-Intel/articleshow/msid-4498882,curpg-1.cms <comment><USER2> No. If the market for a less expensive good is there, it will happen with or without a company. Intel's fortunate that they can make a product for the segment and dominate that segment, even if it means a smaller overall market for the rest of their products.

Compare and contrast Microsoft's position in the netbook market: their entries into this segment to date have fought the inevitable (such as a 1g cap on RAM). Other similar efforts they've made, such as Windows Starter Edition have an arbitrary fixed cap on concurrent running applications. There's presumably no elegant way for them to handle this wave, and I believe _they_ are in trouble (to the extent it matters) because of it.</comment>