The Only Way To Get Girls into STEM (Boys Too) - <AUTHOR> http://www.spydergrrl.com/2014/06/the-only-way-to-get-girls-into-stem.html <comment><USER2> You need to make it part of play. Make it fun.

Computers were fun to me because I played games and was motivated to maximize the meager capabilities of my IBM XT, and wanted to cheat in games. So I learned all sorts of things there.

In computer class, there was no exploration, no fun. Oregon Trail was cool, but didn't capture the imagination.

I hated Math in school for many years, but my grandfather tutored me. Then I discovered puzzles and how to apply math to problems that had some relevance to me.

<comment><USER3> This is exactly why Google' "Made with Code" campaign is so good: [https://www.madewithcode.com/](https://www.madewithcode.com/)

Look at the message, it is about how computers are fun and empowering. Even with this general message, they still market to girls by simply showing how women and girls are involved with coding. The target of the campaign is girls, but the message is universal that girls don't feel like outsiders and even boys can tag along.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think that's it. The differences in percentages between men and women in STEM are just too big to attribute them to "early conditioning" anymore, esp. after so many years of campaining [1]. Either men are masochists and choose jobs that are "not fun", or men find STEM more fun than women. I believe, at least in Europe, there is no lack of exposure to STEM subjects.

The idea of interwoving them sounds a little bit silly: a sci-fi text will bore a student who is literature-oriented in the same way that a mathematical model of romance will sound cheesy to a math nerd.

1\. [http://techpageone.dell.com/business/study-women-stem- career...](http://techpageone.dell.com/business/study-women-stem- careers/#.U6m4Nfna58E)

<comment><USER5> Years of campaigning means nothing if society hasn't notably changed as a result. It really is our entertainment, half of all television shows for children show men (boys) being innately superior in intelligence [1]. Even worse, there are no children's shows with primary female genius characters (they are all male), and when they do show up as non-primary characters their intelligence is often overshadowed by their feminine attributes.

It's even worse in teen TV, where the smart female characters are more often portrayed as being love interests for male characters over being smart.

And lets not even get into the rampant sexism in most mainstream video games (and their communities), even more important for software engineering and computer science since modding/making/playing video games seems to be a common factor for many male entrants, and relatively uncommon among female entrants to the field (at least in my recent but anecdotal experience).

This all leads to a situation where computers, engineering, science, and math are more often seen as male disciplines. We may have cleaned up a lot of blatant sexism, especially in modern workplaces, but our media is still teaching our children gender bias, often with a detrimental effect for both genders (for example decreasing college rates for males, how many male teen characters care about getting into college, have their shit together, etc).

[1] [http://www.truechild.org/PageDisplay.asp?p1=6656](http://www.truechild.org/PageDisplay.asp?p1=6656)

<comment><USER4> > Years of campaigning means nothing if society hasn't notably changed as a > result

It may mean that what the campaign thinks is right is not what people want. It doesn't help that social sciences research on the subject is kind of taboo.

<comment><USER5> Fair enough. But towards the original point, dismissing a solution to a problem because of the relevant campaigning, and not the relevant changes seems like a pretty poor argument. Additionally, you could also take my statement as meaning, "if the campaigning isn't succeeding, perhaps trying to change the message will help". Which, encouraging STEM for all children, would be a new message that would also likely increase the number of women in STEM (eventually). This is actually a pretty common shift in the "women in STEM" movements as of late.

As a counter argument: There has been lots of campaigning on fixing the problem of limited numbers of women in STEM, but relatively few changes to the media portrayal of women in STEM or education of children to fix the problem. Perhaps more importantly, a vast number of STEM fields are in high demand, and our education system seems to be poorly equipped at encouraging students (in general) to enter (any) STEM field. So perhaps we can hit two birds with one stone and change how we teach STEM to be a more integral part of school, like the original post suggested with a relatively provocative title.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have a controversial view of this. That is, why are so many men forced or pressured to go into a STEM career? This is the exact same question, just framed from the perspective that there are plenty of other jobs that pay well enough and are easier.

Computer science for instance is sitting behind a desk all day every day more or less constantly using your brain and concentrating. This is kind of a bad choice of occupation even though it appeals to some and has some upsides.

We know from the "pay gap" that women's lower pay is balanced by fewer hours, shorter commute, better environment, and other benefits of that kind; there's essentially no actual discrimination for the same work. This makes me wonder whether women are choosing this result, or whether men are steered away from working easier, less well-paying jobs.

It could be that women aren't going into STEM in equal numbers simply because they have subjectively better choices available. If that's the case, then programs to equalize the numbers will doubly discriminate against men by being forced into it in the first place and then getting less compensation in the second.

</comment><comment><USER7> It really all starts with Lego IMO. Give all children male/female a box of Lego on their first birthday. Either they'll take to it or they won't. Problem solved!

<comment><USER8> You're going to have a lot of kids choking on legos...

<comment><USER7> An important life lesson, surely?

Actually, I remember now, before Lego I had some large wooden bricks. Building towers and bridges was pretty neat. Playing physics based puzzle games is still great fun!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't think Lego can be blamed for Lego Friends. They made gender-neutral lego toys for years and years, and never made the kind of spectacular traction they got with girls through Lego Friends.

<comment><USER10> A LEGO block is sex-neutral, but the decades of marketing and LEGO character pieces certainly were not. LEGO can't take all the blame, given that many parents probably didn't buy LEGOs for their daughters given their own internalized stereotypes, but it could have recognized that this was a phenomenon and aggressively worked to include girls in their "neutral" toys.

As usual, the actual problem is deeper than symtomatic entities like LEGO. We will see the end of this issue when we see the end of the world's obsession with sex and sex stereotypes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Our society markets cultural gender references to the extent that we instill into girls a dislike of "traditionally male" interests from early on._

So could one say that we _do_ need to focus on girls, to the extent that we recognize the socialization they receive in a society where gender roles are a thing? I agree with the article in general -- though I don't see anything wrong with programs for girls who have already found themselves teenaged and without the resources to get the necessary programming/STEM experience, and/or being uncomfortable around teenage boys in a field that the boys have been taught is their turf.

The media should promote some more female STEM role models. It would make up for the years of degredation and exclusion of women in STEM on TV, in the movies, etc -- especially in kid's media, where girls and women are usually token side-characters when they aren't princesses (see reelgirl.com for thorough documentation). It'll never happen, of course, despite that it would hurt no one, because the necessary critical thinking, along with the knowledge of women's history, to keep ourselves from shouting "gender bias!!!" at anything helping women succeed, is absent.

<comment><USER11> I wonder if anyone has done a longitudinal study of children raised in environments where they were strongly incentivized (to put it mildly) to favor activities that we typically see taken up by members of the opposite sex. No IRB would approve this nowadays, but maybe someone started one back in the day?

Even without such a study it should be intuitive that steering neurotypical (in the broad sense) boys toward typically female preferences and activities, and vice versa, will end up being cruel along some margin.

(Just as it's certainly cruel for an atypical girl to be forced into typically female behaviors and preferences, which is what you're describing.)

The question is, where's the margin?

<comment><USER10> NYU sociologist Emily Kane's book The Gender Trap documents the closest we'll probably get to a study that explores that notion, in this century. I highly recommend it [http://nyupress.org/books/book- details.aspx?bookId=11234](http://nyupress.org/books/book- details.aspx?bookId=11234)

The synopses of the book that are on the internet don't inform of the degree to which it's an actual _study_ by a sociologist; it's not a pop-parenting book.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the tip! I'll check it out.

Given our ignorance, though, and the likelihood that along some margin or another this becomes a zero-sum game between the atypical and the typical, I'd rather see a little less swashbuckling from the more aggressive advocates of undoing gender expectations. Much of this looks like surgery by sledgehammer to me.

<comment><USER10> "Gender expectations" (in other words, gender) are killing and hurting women and always have. Gender needs to go, ASAP. Instead of getting all theory-of- oppression on you, here's some real examples I think about when I think about why.

[http://phonaesthetica.com/2014/02/21/heres-how-it- ends/](http://phonaesthetica.com/2014/02/21/heres-how-it-ends/)

[http://sodisarmingdarling.tumblr.com/post/34106027759/what-i...](http://sodisarmingdarling.tumblr.com/post/34106027759/what- its-like-being-a-teen-girl)

[http://www.metafilter.com/121190/teenage-girls-they- havent-b...](http://www.metafilter.com/121190/teenage-girls-they-havent-been- living-theyve-been-performing)

[http://www.bbc.com/news/education-25138455](http://www.bbc.com/news/education-25138455)

[http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens- blog/2014/jan...](http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens- blog/2014/jan/10/little-girls-deserve-better-toys-sexism)

[http://www.salon.com/2014/04/14/report_many_girls_view_sexua...](http://www.salon.com/2014/04/14/report_many_girls_view_sexual_assault_as_normal_behavior/)

<comment><USER11> You're thinking in partial equilibrium. I've no doubt that many women suffer under the yoke of gender expectations that are at odds with their biology. So do men. And even now, somewhere, there are women who suffer because of gender expectations you'd no doubt be in favor seeing made the norm.

But a world in which your vision ("Gender needs to go" == " _your_ conception of gender norms needs to go") is realized is one where many more suffer similarly oppressive expectations. And anywhere in between we're making tradeoffs that are costly to someone on some margin.

Somewhat relatedly: "Theor[ies] of oppression" would be all the more compelling if the humanists and sociologists who peddle them for a living bothered (or had the training) to think in terms of general equilibria.

<comment><USER10> I have never heard of "training [] to think in terms of general equilibria". Where does one acquire such training? Is there a YouTube channel for that?

Men benefit directly from how women suffer under gender. Did you read any of the articles? The only reason any of that occurs is for the benefit of the men in the society. The demand is for girls/women to "make themselves sexy," sexy being defined as appealing to straight men's sexuality. The idea of "oppression" has always implied an _oppressor class_ \-- attempting to revise the idea as to not include you and I in the class is only expected, though. "Sociologists"? Try Marx.

I don't "favor" any gender expectations. I don't know what you're referring to. The worldwide conception of gender, facets of which is illustrated by the articles, needs to go -- you can read what this would be like in the short essay "Imagining a World without Gender" by Judith Lorber [1].

[1] [http://paste.pound- python.org/show/QGJwDfVVulEjLTdEmdmU/](http://paste.pound- python.org/show/QGJwDfVVulEjLTdEmdmU/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really don't see the need to get more women in tech. Its obvious from school age that it just doesn't interest them as much. You never hear of the need to get more male nurses, or primary teachers and that is generally not viewed as a problem.

Edit: I stand corrected, apparently there are big movements to get males into the professions I mentioned. Just that I never heard about these movements.

<comment><USER13> Personally, I don't see any reason to get _anyone_ into _anyone_. Ideally, people should choose what they want to do, whatever interests them. I chose computers because I couldn't get away from them when I was young, and they interested me more than most other things (sports, history, friends, ...). I see no reason why people should be _asked_ to get into STEM. Should they have the opportunity? Of course! Fortunately, social perceptions about geeks are changing, thanks to shows like Big Bang Theory and because of fortunes made with technology (Facebook, Google, ...). But someone who is not passionate about being a programmer/scientist and is only in it for the money, will in average be less successful in it that someone who's passionate about it.

<comment><USER14> I agree with the gist of your comment, especially the clause that someone who's not passionate about a field shouldn't be forced into that field. However, I'd like to address some other points.

>I chose computers because [...] they interested me more than most other things (sports, history, friends, ...)

This sounds very sad to me. How do you mean that computers interested you more than friends? I don't see how anyone could come to say this.

>social perceptions about geeks are changing, thanks to shows like Big Bang Theory

I think TBBT is doing more harm than good to the "geek culture", whatever you want to call the "geek culture". What it's doing is enforce and rehash the stupid "nerd stereotypes" of the old, but somehow present it as "being cool". The world doesn't need that. All cultures need less poseurs, not more.

I didn't think I'd ever cite Maddox on HN, but I agree with him spot on. Take a look: [http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=youre_not_a_nerd](http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=youre_not_a_nerd)

<comment><USER15> >This sounds very sad to me. How do you mean that computers interested you more than friends? I don't see how anyone could come to say this.

"Your values are different from mine, and that is sad, because my values are better than your values."

<comment><USER14> I said that it "sounds sad to me". You escalated it pretty quickly into "my values are better than your values". Did you even read that one-line comment you just cited?

And I'm not talking about casual acquaintances, nor superficial "friendships". I'm talking about real, deep friendships with other human beings. The human race is a social species. This means that it is in our very nature to spend time with other humans and develop bonds with them. Being without friends i.e. lonely can even be detrimental to your physical health [1][2]. Kids at various ages react largely positively to close interaction with other kids [3]. Lack of friendship was also shown correlated with other life problems and behaviors [4].

This is not an issue of being introvert or extrovert. Saying that "computers interest you more than friends" just sounds very cruel and uncaring of others. It is in our nature to empathize with other humans: extreme lack of empathy is often understood as one of the primary symptoms and grounds fro diagnosis of psychopathy [5]. Of course, not to say anything close of the parent comment, but if you really do care about computers more than you do about your friends (and, I assume, implicitly about other human beings), it is maybe wise to think about why is that the case.

[1]: [http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/conditions/07/27/moh.heal...](http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/conditions/07/27/moh.healthmag.lonely.heart/index.html?_s=PM:HEALTH)

[2]: [http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/study- dont...](http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/study-dont-be- lonely-its-bad-for-you/267375/)

[3]: [http://www.aboutourkids.org/articles/do_kids_need_friends](http://www.aboutourkids.org/articles/do_kids_need_friends)

[4]: [http://psychcentral.com/lib/the-importance-of- friendship/000...](http://psychcentral.com/lib/the-importance-of- friendship/0001381)

[5]: [http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/j...](http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/journals/pspi/psychopathy.html)

<comment><USER15> > I said that it "sounds sad to me". You escalated it pretty quickly into "my > values are better than your values". Did you even read that one-line comment > you just cited?

Yes.

Did you read the rest of your comment? you go on to cite a bunch of sources supporting your assertion that you should value friends above all else; then you go on to imply that people who have different values may be psychopaths.

<comment><USER14> I didn't imply that people who have different values are better or worse than each other. I said that, according to a source which is cited on the Wikipedia page for the topic of psychopathy, lack of empathy is often associated with the diagnosis of psychopathy. Lack of empathy doesn't translate directly into lack of dear friends, but my bet is that it's very deeply intertwined.

I still never implied that my values are better. Psychopaths, for example, often believe that their values and views of life are fine, and that the rest of the world is wrong. I can never say whether it's the psychopaths or the non-psychopaths who get it right. (Without rigorous testing, I can actually not reliably claim I am not a psychopath. For one, my empathy scores are moderately lower than male average.) If most of the world agrees that psychopathy should be treated, and the psychopaths say that it shouldn't, then it still doesn't mean that it ultimately has to be treated. I know this sounds like a ridiculous point, but no values can ever be said to be "better" than other values, because "good" is simply so ill-defined in that context. I'm not saying that the OP of the comment is a psychopath, far from it. What I am saying is that our nature instructs us to be empathic and care for our friends and family, and it's not clear to me what I would have to believe and feel to conclude that I care about computers more than I do about my friends.

<comment><USER15> >I still never implied that my values are better.

Only if you seriously think you can use the psychopath diagnosis without judgment. I suppose that is possible? but it's pretty unlikely.

Even if you are using it in a value-neutral way (and I don't believe you are) you are making a huge jump. For example, some people try to de-prioritize friendships because they have been badly hurt by friends in the past; this is far more likely to happen to a deeply empathetic person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There are two problems that too often seem to be conflated as a single issue: (1) we need more STEM students/workers, because they will build the future, and (2) there is persistent discrimination (notably sexism) in some of the sub-specialties that can't be tolerated.

Is there a reason to suspect that tackling both of these at the same time (e.g., demographic specific initiatives) yields significant benefit over alternatives?

<comment><USER17> _Is there a reason to suspect that tackling both of these at the same time (e.g., demographic specific initiatives) yields significant benefit over alternatives?_

If you treat a field as gendered in your recruiting of kids, the sum of your efforts may ultimately balance the scales more than they're self-defeating. But don't think for a moment kids are stupid enough to hear a gender-specific, or gender-targeted introduction/recruitment to some field and not walk away with some notion that a field is "for" a specific gender, or that one is "better" at it than another.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think focusing on children is the right way to tackle this issue. Per the author's point she works in an environment with an equal mix of male/female. Teaching kids from an early age that their gender doesn't limit the career they pursue will make this more the norm than not.

<comment><USER19> > Teaching kids from an early age that their gender doesn't limit the career > they pursue will make this more the norm than not.

I believe this is one of the main issues. We tell kids they can "be whatever you want to be", and then look at a girl funny when she wants to be an engineer or make fun of a boy for wanting to be a nurse. Society has ingrained certain ideas into what a person in a given career looks like that people are deterred (consciously or subconsciously) from that career if they don't fit the norm.

For example, what is the first image that pop's into your head when you think of a nurse? This seems to be one of the fields that has been pushed so hard into a female career in our societal consciousness, that an entire genre of porn exists around this single occupation (I want my male naughty nurse Halloween costume, damn it!).

It's at a point where societal norms would need to be broken down from the ground up, with regards to gender roles and careers, starting with kids.</comment></comment>


When Competition Stifles Innovation - <AUTHOR> http://www.jonathanfields.com/blog/when-competition-stifles-innovation/

<comment><USER2> Nice linkbait title. (That's getting really old around here lately.)

To correct it: "When Loss of Competition Stifles Innovation"

Your incentive to motivate would have been the same without competition as it is after your last competitor gives up. It's no different.

<comment><USER3> Actually the post isn't about the effect of "lost" competition. It's about the difference between internally vs externally placed competition and how if you're driven largely by external competition, that will very likely eventually cap your creative potential.

That was the point of the post and the reason for the title.

<comment><USER2> Like I just said, it isn't the competition that's the problem. If they never lost it, the problem wouldn't have appeared. It's only after the loss of competition that there's a problem.

The very same internal pressures exist whether or not competition exists or not. This isn't about them at all.</comment></comment></comment>


Canary Watch, One Year Later - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/05/canary-watch-one-year-later <comment><USER2> I speculate that the real reason they are canning the canary program is that it was headed for extinction all by itself anyway.

Reddit's canary is gone, and they made it as clear as they legally can that it was due to a National Security Letter.

Effectively the canary program lost one of its best assets and few people gave a damn.

The flaw at the heart of the canary program is that it relied on public uproar when a canary disappeared. In the absence of that, they will disappear one by one - death by a thousand cuts - and then the program itself is dead.

EFF have seen the writing on the wall and pulled the plug before the program was seen to be doomed anyway.

<comment><USER3> How hard is it to run a "canary watch" though? The overhead has to be pretty low. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to pull the plug.

<comment><USER4> I think the missing part is the public uproar. I remember the public reaction to reddit's lost canary as, "ehh?"

<comment><USER5> What was to be expected?

It makes reddit unusable for a lot of things (free & open communication being one of them). If you have something important to say then you don't say it on Reddit.

If you have cat pictures or want to talk about train sets then reddit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm wondering if anyone's written a warrant canary best practices? I was hoping the EFF post would have or link to such when it started mentioning that "almost every canary is unique" and that makes it harder to track them.

<comment><USER7> EFF folks at canary watch have told me that they consider the rsync.net warrant canary to be a best practice:

[https://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt](https://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt)

Plain text, easily parseable, cryptographically signed and dated, and date- verifiable with news headlines.

Related: The rsync.net warrant canary is 10 years old in 2016.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm proposing we write a simple canary spec, for canaries that are both human and machine readable. A format could be, for instance:

* canary.txt in the root of the site.

* Optional text introduction, describing the canary's purpose, the way rsync.com does.

* PGP signed message with expiration date; content optional.

* Replaced by either a 404 or a 451, the 451 for those who want to be more explicit and like to live dangerously.

You probably shouldn't state you're compliant with the spec if you implement it.

.

I'm personally very willing to run a replacement canary watch, I'll see what I can set up over the weekend. I'm thinking of writing it in PHP, so it's easy to copy for others.

I'm thinking it'd be nice to couple it with a spider that automatically indexes these canaries, and to also have captcha'd "add your own" option.

Could anyone point me to a guide to setting up a HN-proof PHP server?

<comment><USER9> Replying to bookmark. Good idea I like it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Reminds me of:

"She drove my computer, pulling the information she had into various spreadsheets. She translated my muttered, vague ideas into charts.

"This is called data mining." She said the last words in English.

"Which of us is the canary?" I said."

\-- the city and the city, China Mieville

As _hammock2_ mentions, it's hard to believe this requires much effort to keep running -- if the lack of standardization is the issue, couldn't they rather transition to supporting rsync-style (as mentioned by _rsync_ ) canaries only? (Yes, that would reset a lot of canaries)

Third party monitoring does seem to add value to to canaries. One could perhaps argue that it's a job for archive.org -- but seeing as this is all set up, it seems like a shame to shuttle it.

</comment><comment><USER11> To me, it's still not clear if there is any legal basis for canaries via laws, case laws, etc.

Anyone able to provide info on this?

<comment><USER12> I'd love to see the same. I'm having a hard time understanding why signaling that a gag order exists with the removal of a canary wouldn't violate the gag order.

<comment><USER13> Well, you could signal that by failing to _renew_ the canary on schedule. Once there's a gag order, no signaling takes place. There's no "removal".

<comment><USER11> Right, another name for a canary is a heartbeat, which are used in systems to know if a system is still up:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbeat_(computing)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbeat_\(computing\))

<comment><USER13> Right, exactly. A heartbeat. And further, the signing key could be deleted securely, so coercion or spoofing would be impossible. That, however, would be an argumentally illegal action taken after the gag order. One could have an anonymous third party responsible for that. But then they have much power. And the signal to them would also be an argumentally illegal action taken after the gag order.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What I found interesting is that Pinterest likeley got one (or more) NSLs. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought pinterest was a place where people posted pictures of their food and house, not terror plans and execution videos. I wonder if it was (mis)used for a different type of investigation or if it was a matter of national security, assuming they got an NSL in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER15> does this standard exist? if not perhaps it could:

[http://foo.com/canary.txt](http://foo.com/canary.txt)

if becomes empty or 404, etc., then the viewer can assume canary is withdrawn</comment>


Ask HN: What do you personally host on your servers? - <AUTHOR> I'd wager the majority of us have at least some services running on a server somewhere. What does your personal infrastructure look like?<p>e.g. I run postfix for email, nginx and Let's Encrypt for a personal website, and a Minecraft server for my wife and I. <comment><USER2> I've one freenas server, one freebsd server and a fedora server, all at the house as well as small, cheap VPS for some front facing stuff.

The two bsd based servers run quite a few of services, so much so that I actually pay for an additional IP address. I run a Mastodon server, an ejabberd server for messaging, Nextcloud, Plex and Emby(primarily Plex though), DaviCal(for both contacts and calendar), a genealogy server and a basic website all for my relatives and some close friends of family.

On the back end, I'm running services such as PostgreSQL, httpd, postfix and dovecot which pull mail from the front facing VPS.

My fedora server is pretty much a workstation. I also have a laptop, but it's pretty much a thin client. The server runs several different VM's, including Win10 and bleeding edge fedora, it's also where I do tasks such as run that inefficient garbage heap known as android studio, developing on Codeblocks, as well as maintain my sysadmin with things like packettracer.

But really, when I've traveled outside the U.S. recently, using the laptop as a thin client has been great going through customs coming back, It's unfortunately garbage if you're in country where the network speeds are limited though.

Honestly if I had to set it all up again, I'd only do DaviCal, ejabberd, nextcloud and email because they are totally worth it, the others apps are great time permitting. Not being forced to give everything to Google is totally worth the time and effort to me.</comment>


The First Webcam Was Invented to Check Coffee Levels Without Getting Up - <AUTHOR> https://petapixel.com/2013/04/03/the-first-webcam-was-invented-to-check-coffee-levels-without-getting-up/ <comment><USER2> This sounds false at first, because I am thinking "wait, this had to be much earlier, I mean that's like yesteryear"... Then, I try to remember freenet email, fixing fidonet, then configuring uucp, building my 300 baud, then ... and then I get sad. I am old. :/</comment>


2GB RAM + Ivy Bridge E5-2680 v2 + 48GB SSD + IPv6  $0.03/hr – takes Bitcoins - <AUTHOR> https://bitnodes.io/dashboard/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a new provisioning from Linode ([https://blog.linode.com/2014/04/17/linode-cloud-ssds- double-...](https://blog.linode.com/2014/04/17/linode-cloud-ssds-double-ram- much-more/)). Create an account and launch an instance for free to give it a try. It's the fastest virtual server there is currently in the cloud market.</comment>


⌘+⇧+L and other useful OS X hidden features  - <AUTHOR> http://howgoodisthat.wordpress.com/2008/12/20/and-other-useful-os-x-hidden-features/ <comment><USER2> My favorites are the emacs-style shortcuts that work in all native textfields is OSX:

ctrl+f - move one character forward

ctrl+v - move one character backwards

ctrl+n - next line

ctrl+p - previous line

ctrl+k - delete to the end of the line

ctrl+d - delete the next character

ctrl+h - delete the previous character (backspace)

ctrl+o - insert a newline below the current

Using the ctrl key takes some getting used to if you've used a Mac for a long time (I mapped mine to caps lock in the system preferences) but once you learn these keys they are incredibly useful.

<comment><USER3> ^T - change letters: colo| -> cool|

^L - center selected line (edit: center current line in window)

^E - move cursor to line end

^A - move cursor to the beginning of the line

^Y - yank (paste previously deleted text with ^K)

Corrections:

^B - move one character backwards

(^V is page down)

<comment><USER4> As an emacs user, two problems with these key combos that are constantly burning me:

When I hit ^A in a text field of my webmail app (Fastmail) it reloads the page I'm typing in, losing all the text I've entered so far. You have no idea how hard it is for an emacs user to stop doing this. So be very careful on web pages.

I keep using kill-and-yank subconsciously because I'm trained in it. But the kill ring (is it even a ring?) gets preserved... idiosyncratically in Mac OS X, particularly when you move from app to app, and of course it is completely separate from the clipboard where copies and pastes go. I quite commonly kill something and then can't get it to yank, or kill something and then try to paste it and fail.

<comment><USER5> Actually, I find C-w more annoying in web browsers. In emacs, I have it bound to backward-kill-word, and use it almost as much as backspace.

In firefox, the results are not too good. The tab dies, taking the entire textbox with it. Annoying.

The moral of the story is to not use software other than emacs. I use Gnus for mail and w3m for light web browsing, eliminating any problem with keybinding emulation. It _is_ emacs, so it acts like emacs.

For heavier web browsing, I use conkeror. It is almost like emacs, but not quite. Better than anything else, though.

<comment><USER6> You might consider using Conkeror (<http://conkeror.org/>), which provides very, very full Emacs support, while using Firefox for the rendering engine.

<comment><USER5> This is indeed what I use :)

I still have bad memories floating around in my head from when I used Firefox, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like CMD + CTRL + D while hover your cursor over any word in a Cocoa app. This brings up the dictionary entry for that word. You can also access the Thesaurus this way and click "More..." to get the full Dictionary app to load.

Very useful when reading long academic papers outside of my field.

<comment><USER8> If you hold Cmd+Ctl after that, you can mouse over other words and the panel will follow.

Also, for those that like the panel but can't always remember the shortcut, in the Dictionary app's preferences you can set the "Look Up in Dictionary" context menu item to open as a panel instead of opening the app.

Having a system-wide Dictionary is something I would not have thought anywhere as valuable as it has turned out to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thanks everyone! I wrote the original article. Not only have I learned a bunch of new ones (the floating dictionary is sweet) but I've discovered ycombinator too! Thank goodness for pingback, eh?

</comment><comment><USER10> My personal favorite is ⌘+⇧+4 in conjunction with GrabUp.

<http://www.grabup.com>

<comment><USER3> And don't forget that spacebar after ⌘⇧4 toggles between grabbing window and area.

<comment><USER10> learn something new everyday, nice!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Don't press ctrl + opt + cmd + . more than 20 times ;)

(Undo: ctrl + opt + cmd + , )

</comment><comment><USER11> Help! My screen is inverted now, but he didn't include an undo command. What do I do!? I already tried cmd-z. Do I have to restart?

<comment><USER12> Is this a joke?

<comment><USER11> yes</comment></comment></comment>


Jubal.io - <AUTHOR> http://www.jubal.io/

<comment><USER2> So am I right in thinking this is like a site that randomly scrapes music videos hosted on YouTube?

<comment><USER3> Seems that way to me. Navigating to [http://www.csc.io](http://www.csc.io) gives the same page but slightly better looking.

OT: the creator misspelled Courier when specifying the font.</comment></comment>


You have $100k to spend on teaching about better passwords. What do you do? - <AUTHOR>

Hi. Longtime lurker, first time poster.
I've been given a 100k budget from a tech company to create an educational marketing campaign that teaches people to use better passwords, and improve their password habits. This is not my first time doing this (third actually, on this topic), but the first time I've reached out to people knowledgable on the subject. I do my best to stay up to date on infosec. I read industry news and analysis, read whitepapers, and keep abreast of what others in the arena are doing — but I studied literature in school, and have worked mostly as a copywriter/advertiser, and inevitably our advice draws a mixture of praise, heavy criticism, or ire from the security community (usually more ire than anything.) My team, likewise, are not infosec experts or professionals, but rather designers, front end devs, and marketers.
We all have bad practices. Especially end users. I guess my question is, what do you think would be the most pertinent topic for end users, and what kind of change do you think people are most likely to carry out?
- Should we focus on getting people to use password managers
- Changing their passwords regularly?
- Using long, unique passwords?
- Using 2FA?
What would you do? What would resonate with people more? What do you focus on with friends and family?
What approach is more effective, fear-based messaging? Humor? Dry facts?
In the past we've found that contests have the highest engagement, but there's just something sleazy about "tweet2win."
I don't want you to do my work for me, but rather than craft some retweetable graphics, get some big numbers, and call it a day, I'd actually like to create something of real value for people. How can we create something that actually causes real change in people? <comment><USER2> I'd say getting in the habit of using password managers is by far the most important point.

Once you are doing that, using long and unique passwords comes automatically.

Using 2FA is good but I'd say it's not 'low-hanging fruit'

Changing passwords regularly is also not low-hanging fruit. For many things it's not even necessary, for very important stuff you'd want to change password every 4-6 months, so for example someone wont have access to your email for 3 years straight. It will put a ceiling on the maximum continuous time someone could have had access to your account. 2FA helps with this as well.

I'd focus on making people understand how easy these password managers are. Depending on the audience, you could focus on it being much better and easier, not necessarily "more secure", they probably care more about it being easy.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just a couple dry facts seem to work the best, pick the top three, or maybe show a live example. I've used jacktheripper against NTLM hash in front of an audience and cracked the password "Pass!" in seconds before their eyes, this received good response.

Whenever someone wants a reminder about password strength, I send them to xkcd

[http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/password_strength.png](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/password_strength.png)

</comment><comment><USER4> I have written my master thesis about this topic. Let's chat? (iwang attt fastmail.net)</comment>


Public Opinion Mining Tool – Looking for Feedback - <AUTHOR> https://www.happygrumpy.com <comment><USER2> (Twitter-specific)

</comment><comment><USER3> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good "Show HN".

Guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)</comment>


The majority of the advice given to us works. We don't - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/the-majority-of-the-advice-and-methods-given-to-us-work-5bdbfee91aa4 <comment><USER2> _Sophiaellis.co. Remote working (currently Barcelona, Spain), jumping between three continents. Two-time Amazon best-selling coauthor. 22._

TLDR:

"I'm 22 and wildly successful. I have zero appreciation for the fact that 98% of my success can probably be attributed to my parents being awesome. I am here to piss on you and tell you what a loser you are for not brilliantly choosing to be born to awesome parents too. Because beneath the thin veneer of material success, I have zero respect or compassion for anyone."

Also, originally posted here (and says so at the bottom of the piece): [https://www.sophiaellis.co/blog/2017/10/11/the-majority- of-t...](https://www.sophiaellis.co/blog/2017/10/11/the-majority-of-the- advice-and-methods-given-to-us-work)

HN guidelines ask for the original source.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hahaha someone's mad :) Glad you liked it!

By the way, I give a percentage of what I make away to women's charities because I know I'm lucky and I can use what I have to help people who have been through the same sexual abuse crimes I have.

My parents had me too young and struggled and failed for years trying to build their own dreams. I've worked and studied full time since I was 15 and couldn't even legally drive my ass to work.

I just don't tell everyone that. Just you.

Do you feel complete? Adequate? Satisfied? A sense of justice?

Ok, fantastic.

<comment><USER2> _Hahaha someone 's mad :) Glad you liked it!_

Nope. I didn't like it at all and I don't appreciate this kind of self serving BS wherein you twist my words to promote yourself as some clever life hack because you think you are so much smarter than the rest of the entire planet.

<comment><AUTHOR> I "fixed" my comment for you.

Hope this is more satisfying.

<comment><USER2> Nope. It is still contemptuous towards me personally and self serving. It is all about trying to make you look good at my expense.

All you are doing is digging your grave deeper in my eyes.

<comment><AUTHOR> ...How was your first comment not contemptuous and self serving?

As long as it satisfied you :)

<comment><USER2> If you only want everyone to agree with you and squee at you about how awesome you are, don't self post to a forum aimed at critical thinking.

I am done here.

Also, FYI to other people here, a quick check of her posting history suggests she has probably only ever posted her own writing. She has three websites and reposts her own writing across all three, then posts multiple copies here. Beyond that, she does not appear to participate at all.

Conclusion: She is just here as a shill for her own work. That's it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> While this article has perfectly reasonable things to say, I'm enormously skeptical taking life advice from a 22-year old. At 22, life is simple. Your choices have no real consequences for anyone other than yourself. Your life is your own, and you are entirely free.

Tell me more about how you grapple with your mean inner voice when you have a family to take care of and real obligations to attend to.

Advice: putting your tender age in your Medium signature doesn't make you look like a Wunderkind prodigy; it makes you look naive.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think I'm a self-help junkie. I've read enough self help blogs and articles and books to become a 'guru' myself. Anywhere from personal finance to minimalist living. The weird thing is I still read those articles even though I'm already financially independent and own less than many self-proclaimed minimalists. Maybe it's me patting myself on the back and procrastinating.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm the same way! I still love reading about others perspectives on doing things, motivating themselves, and getting what they want. I think it's helpful to hear different versions!</comment></comment>


Bike Share Oversupply in China: Huge Piles of Abandoned and Broken Bicycles - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversupply-in-china-huge-piles-of-abandoned-and-broken-bicycles/556268/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Those pictures are amazing. The United States has been having similar problems, just without the scale. See this article recently about the Dallas bikeshare program: [http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/05/technology/dallas- bikeshare-...](http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/05/technology/dallas-bikeshare- limebike-ofo/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Capitalism's inherent problem in one series of images. I wonder how much carbon is sitting in that pile.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's awesome just for the photography.

</comment><comment><USER5> They should send them to poorer countries

</comment><comment><USER6> One of the worst paywalls I've ever seen.

Seattle fortunately isn't having any issues with Bike Share overcrowing except for the few jokes. Someone put a bike on a wooden pole in Puget Sound, and put a few on top of the Convention Center during PAX.</comment>


Robotic Milkers and an Automated Greenhouse: Inside a High-Tech Small Farm - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/13/technology/farm-technology-milkers-robots.html <comment><USER2> Excellent! Exciting times ahead. This is similar to what I envision with Jellicles small acreage farm bots without the animals(I have no experience with that).

My design is for 5 acres, serving 100-150 people and one working person and a suite of small light weight bots and one heavy duty farm bot. Can be fully automated. Combination of hydroponics and field grown.

So far, everything is technically "possible" except harvesting and soft fruits(like berries). I can automate(theoretically) everything from greenhouse operations to field prep to planting to fertilizing to limited harvesting and packing.

We can do so far: greens, fruits(nightshade), foot crops, brassicas, squashes, pumpkins and orchard operations. Even some kinds of grains like millets and barley. With floriculture..so far I have only figured out sunflowers..

Now..Gots to figure out prototyping...

</comment><comment><USER3> The math for the milking machines seems wacky. Average milking session is supposedly 6 minutes, which means each robot has a capacity of 10 cows/hour (not taking into account changeover time which is likely not trivial). There are 3 robots and a herd of 150 who are milked 4x/day on average. That's 600 total sessions, or 60 machine-hours, so this implies that each machine is operating at perfect efficiency 20 hours/day.</comment>


How a silly landing brought us more traffic - <AUTHOR> https://quaderno.io/blog/how-a-silly-landing-brought-us-more-traffic/

<comment><USER2> Pretty - I want to point out I did tweet the guy to ask why he was not using you.

Also I use Quaderno for my invoicing so: "hi" \- great product you have there.

<comment><USER3> Thank you! It's good to have customers like you ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That was both funny and pretty damn good.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Yes, it was a funny experience and let us know more about our potential customers.</comment></comment>


How to encourage younger brother to teach himself CS. - <AUTHOR>

I have a younger brother who is just starting out in high school. He's just started to think about long-term career/college interests and he's interested in computer science. I know that in my freshman year "Intro to Programming" course in college a few years ago, most of the real CS majors already knew how to program. I also know from perusing this site that you can get started early and be very successful.<p>My questions is: How do I encourage him to teach himself programming now, and hopefully by extension give him the tools to succeed in life (and probably do better than me)? I gave him my old Java textbook which is introductory and starts out with parts of the computer and all that jazz. I know there are a lot of web resources, but I think a few great books would do the trick. (Christmas is coming up.) <comment><USER2> You have to drive it off of what interests him. If he is into video games grab a copy of Panda3d or unity or the UDK and help him write a video game. If he is into facebook help him write a facebook app. Maybe a copy of MAKE: Electronics: Learning Through Discovery and some tools.

</comment><comment><USER3> Tell him to build a website. This was the catalyst that finally got me going. If you can afford it, buy him his own VPS and let him go crazy.

It's cool because new things can happen _really_ quickly, and he is going to need to learn a lot of other things along the way (databasing, some sys admin, etc.)</comment>


Viral Customer Referral API - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kickofflabs.com/viral-customer-referral-api

<comment><USER2> Does this differ from launcheffectapp.com which provides the viral referral free?

<comment><AUTHOR> To start with, it is not just a wordpress theme.

If all you want is a theme for Wordpress, this is a great one: <http://maxfoundry.com/themes/liftoff/>

KickoffLabs is a complete platform for launching a viral landing page and requires no hosting/setup for end users.

The API we release today is an attempt to add more flexibility and options for our customers.

Thanks, Scott</comment></comment>


Crises Are Bad for Morale, but Good for Toilet Paper Sales - <AUTHOR> https://blog.paribus.co/2016/01/07/crises-are-bad-for-morale-but-good-for-toilet-paper-sales/ <comment><USER2> This article seems interesting, but would be better with some visual support such as graphs showing the changes in trends. It would be even better if there were links to supporting data.</comment>


Mining the tar sands of big data - <AUTHOR> http://www.dataspora.com/blog/mining-the-tar-sands-of-big-data/

<comment><USER2> For others having trouble getting a timely response: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Z6x04wg...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Z6x04wgR4HYJ:www.dataspora.com/blog/mining- the-tar-sands-of-big-data/+http://www.dataspora.com/blog/mining-the-tar-sands- of-big-data/&hl=en&gl=au&strip=1)

</comment><comment><USER3> This article seems very timely, considering how Color just came out and is seemingly doing exactly what this article describes--taking the data hidden in phones and other devices and processing/analyzing it. Nice timing.

I guess this article is the argument countering all of the 'How did Color ever raise that much money?' articles.</comment>


Apple and Valve: Could frenemies really team up? - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57414912-37/apple-and-valve-could-frenemies-really-team-up/

<comment><USER2> I think iOS is (again) the game changer here.

The iPad is making serious inroads as a gaming platform, and not just for casual games. The recent release of Max Payne for iPad shows how fast this platform is evolving.

Valve is not present on iOS, and under current app store rules cannot expand their portfolio easily there. Now, talks between Apple and Valve might just solve this conundrum.

Where does a potential Apple console come into play? Why do you need one at all?

Take Apple TV and Airplay. Extend the iPad game to the TV. Already possible. Only thing that sucks is controllers - if you could use a classic controller (via Bluetooth) with that iPad/aTV setup you suddenly have a pretty powerful console, and a portable one too.

<comment><USER3> Airplay as-is isn't really suitable for gaming. It's impressive, but even under best network conditions you still have to deal with a mild amount of lag. The ideal solution would be to run games on the Apple TV itself (relatively simple, given that the aTV is effectively a headless iPad 2); using the iPad as a glorified controller.

<comment><USER4> Yep completely agree, I've never been able to get airplay working well over wifi. The round trip time means you've about ~0.8 seconds of latency between what you see and what is on the native display.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hope not, Valve is doing just fine without Apple.

<comment><USER3> Now yes, but Apple's put them in a tricky position for the future. Thanks to the influence of iOS, Steam will be in a rather tight spot once Windows 8 rolls out (as the WinStore will be the primary source for games by default; exclusive on ARM); the presence of the App Store on OSX isn't doing them any favors either.

On the flip side, if Apple wants to take the consoles head-on (a fairly safe assumption), they're going to need strong console-level games. Partnering with Valve puts them on mostly equal footing with Microsoft and Sony in terms of publisher relationships, as well as a few headliner exclusives.

<comment><USER5> you are right, the position is tricky, but I think partnering with Apple is the easy way out for Valve (and they'll probably loose their identity in the long run - probably not a bad thing, but still).

They have a nice user base and if they'll adapt to WinStore coming out with proper counter-measures and marketing approaches (and maybe some new ideas), I think there's nothing they should be afraid of.

<comment><USER3> How doe you expect Steam to "adapt" to being near-totally shut out of their primary market? Steamworks is a moot point when Win8/MountainLion comes with Xbox Live/Game Center integration as a selling point. Like it or not, Steam's days as-is are numbered and Valve needs a new platform. Could be Apple, could be their own but they have to do something if they want a chance of surviving.

<comment><USER5> Let me answer that with a question:

How was Dropbox able to "survive" when Apple has their cloud (and I'm sure Windows will feature something similar as well)? If I remember correctly, Apple wanted to buy them and they said no.

The bottom line, it can be done. Others have proven it.

<comment><USER3> iCloud (and SkyDrive, Microsoft's equivalent) is capable of co-existing on your system with Dropbox. Dropbox even has features that iCloud lacks (files aren't limited to a single app, proper cross-platform support, photo archival, etc.)

Windows Store, by design, removes the ability for Steam to function. It's technically possible to run Steam on Win8-x86, but constrained to the "legacy" desktop and denied integration of any kind with Metro. They'll be shut out completely with ARM. Their momentum will carry them for a while, but provided Metro isn't a massive failure Steam's current business model will be unviable within 5 years of Win8's launch. If they are to survive, Valve /must/ get off the PC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Until the growth and success of games on the iOS platform, Apple and gaming > were just two words that did not go together

This glosses over a major turning point in gaming history. Bungie debuted Halo at MACWORLD in January 2000: [http://www.macobserver.com/news/00/january/000104/bungiemov....](http://www.macobserver.com/news/00/january/000104/bungiemov.shtml)

Six months later, Bungie was purchased by Microsoft. The most relevant consequence of that deal was that Halo, a major turning point in gaming evolution, was on Microsoft's new console: Xbox.

Edit: forgot to make the obvious point. Mac was on the verge of becoming very relevant to gaming over a decade ago, and Microsoft stole that thunder for their entrance to the console races.

<comment><USER7> My memory of that is that Apple had their shot and passed. Apple chose the wrong direction in that turning point.

The amount of Halo's importance to gaming history is a debate for another time.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps there is going to be an Apple gaming console with Valve or perhaps they are expanding Apple TV to include it?

</comment><comment><USER8> I think Apple should buy Valve. Valve may not be for sale. But Valve's creativity is off the charts- they make great games. Apple, on the other hand, knows how to deliver quality software, something valve has not mastered.

Steam is "great" in the sense that it was the first and its so far the most reasonable game store, but it is terrible in terms of bugs and performance[1]. Valves games are often unstable[2]. Game developers just seem to have a much higher tolerance for bugs (or an environment where the publisher makes them ship and then the teams disband so there's nobody there to fix the bugs.)

At this point, I'd much rather buy a game thru the Mac App Store than thru steam.

I don't think that Valve is for sale, but they'd make a great independant division within Apple.

You want a wearable computer? Well, here's the best hardware company in the world.

[1] Just so people know what I'm talking about. Often when launching Team Fortress Steam will throw up a dialog "Preparing to launch Team Fortress 2", that stays there from 60seconds to 7 minutes. This occurs without regard to the quality of the internet connection (have seen it both on 5megabits with high latency and 40 megabits with low latency) During this period the TF2 executable has not yet been launched, and steam is apparently doing nothing at all. Then of course TF2 takes quiet awhile to get to the point where its ready to play.

[2] Not so much with games like Portal 2 which are done and not constantly revisited, but TF2 crashes regularly, sometimes there are releases that are completely unplayable on macs, and you just have to wait til the next patch. Steam itself crashes, is interminably slow (When really its mostly web pages, couldn't they have at least used webkit?) regularly wedges itself, and can't seem to download and install games to reliably. (usually it works but the rate of failure is way too high.)

<comment><USER9> I think Apple buying Valve would make me cry into my beer.

Both are great creative companies sure but I think they work best independently. Apple makes hardware/software , Valve makes games.

Having HL3 as a Mac Only title and being primarily sold in order to make people buy new Mac hardware? No Thanks. Also Valve have a history of supporting modding etc and providing tools, not so sure if Apple would continue this. Some of the best things about Valve games have been 3rd party mods (think Counterstrike).

I do agree however that in many areas the Steam software leaves a lot to be desired.

<comment><USER10> I think the odds of it are close to 0, so don't worry.</comment></comment></comment>


A Bunch of Rocks - <AUTHOR> https://xkcd.com/505/ <comment><AUTHOR> One of my most beloved xkcd that involves an individual with unlimited space and time building a complete simulation of the universe.

Do you believe that given these contrived circumstances, that an individual with human level intelligence could accomplish such a feat?</comment>


Drawing Lines - <AUTHOR> http://blog.plover.com/2008/03/13/

<comment><USER2> Hey hhm thanks for posting this code. It's just the inspiration I've been looking for.. in Perl as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're welcome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why not use html tables and 1 pixel images of various heights/widths?

</comment><comment><USER4> Pretty slick, but I wonder if there's a way to do it without jpegs. I would think that using fonts, vector markup, or css would be lighter and quicker. Any thoughts?

<comment><USER5> It's true that you could do it without jpegs, but using jpegs produce the most compatibility, as it'll work within the older IE and Netscape Browsers. Using fonts is an iffy affair, as across systems/browsers there'll be differences in formatting and available fonts to choose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This sort of knack for "clever, yet simple" pervades his code.

<http://search.cpan.org/~mjd/>

<comment><USER7> Indeed -- if I hadn't seen 'plover.com' in the URL I would not have bothered to read it. But MJD is one of those people who is pretty much always worth reading.</comment></comment>


Pure is a modern-style functional programming language based on term rewriting. - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/pure-lang/ <comment><AUTHOR> See also: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_%28programming_language%29></comment>


The snow words myth: progress at last (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004003.html <comment><USER2> This article was only mildly interesting to me. I think there is a better story tangential to it.

The article is only mildly interesting because it gets at the truth behind the idea that Eskimos have 40 different words for snow. If I didn't know that, it would have been very interesting. But, of course, that common wisdom is wrong. I would be surprised if there's anybody who doesn't at least suspect that's the case. The truth is never as clean and perfect as the stories we tell, which makes it more boring. But, the truth is much more powerful. That power is exciting. I'll always chose to take the boring but powerful truth, even if it ruins the fun story for me. I do, however, have a passing interest in linguistics, so it was nice to learn something about the Eskimo language family.

However, there's an obvious tangent to this article that I think is more interesting and more powerful: I figured this article would be about snowclones, or at least mention them. It's not and it didn't.

"Snowclone" is a really interesting word that was coined only a decade ago. You could say that it names an idea that was recently discovered: that many phrases are specific instances of some clichéd template. The phrase isn't the cliché and may even be unique. Rather, it's the template that's familiar.

For example, "If Eskimos have 40 words for 'snow', politicians surely have dozens of words for 'lie'." More generally, "If Eskimos have N words for snow, X surely have Y words for Z." Also, "X is the new black", or even "X is the new Y". It's a name for a phrase that's a clone of that one about Eskimo words for snow. Hence, snowclone.

[http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000350.h...](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000350.html)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowclone](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowclone)

Of course, this idea was known to people long before "snowclone" was coined. When I say the idea was recently "discovered", I mean that in somewhat the same sense that, after the Age of Discovery opened the globe to them, Western naturalists "discovered" and named many animals and plants that were well known to indigenous peoples and had even been seen by previous western explorers. Still, the West didn't come to know those animals until somebody recognized them as new and gave them a good name. Ok, maybe this analogy is stretched. Still...

To simply encounter something doesn't mean we recognize it for what it is, or that we can distinguish it from other similar things. We need names for that.

I think good names are more important than we generally give them credit for. A good name is like a handle on an axe-head. Hand axes have a long history and are among the first tools that humans made. Attaching a handle to one gives much more leverage, which makes chopping easier and more efficient. A handle even enables the use of a heavier, more powerful axe head. Good names similarly make ideas both more powerful and at the same time easier to work with than they were before they were named.</comment>


Capitalism the Apple Way vs. Capitalism the Google Way (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/07/apple-google-capitalism/532995/ <comment><USER2> Fairly interesting read. It's about their accumulated piles of cash, what investors think about it and founder-investor dynamics.

The main comparison point and conclusion is interestingly straightforward: Google gets to keep their pile o' cash because founders still control voting rights. The economic analysis is traditional (principal-agent issues) but I think it undersells the differences from theory.

Eg, investors are still happily buying "founder controlled" shares like Google and Tesla even though the principal-agent problem is huge on paper. Reminds me of musk said: spaceX can't have public investors because going to mars doesn't give you the best risk adjusted returns. Investors will want to launch satellites for cash, not risk everything to go to mars where there are no customers.

The hitch is that these investors will still buy the shares even if the mission is "mars." They'll campaign for a more lucrative mission and eventually win.

Perhaps these "founder control" arrangements are a way of creating kinds of "investment doctrines." Either way, their existence (beyond founders that simply own lots of shares) suggests that public shares _create_ governance problems that aren't explainable via principal-agent or some other traditional economic explanation.

<comment><USER3> _Either way, their existence (beyond founders that simply own lots of shares) suggests that public shares create governance problems that aren 't explainable via principal-agent or some other traditional economic explanation._

I'm not sure I'd phrase it this way. Suppose option A earns you 5% and option B earns you 6%. But you, as a founder, really prefer option A to option B. Then you better not take your company public, because your personal preference doesn't match the market preference.

In your example, going to Mars earns less money than selling the satellites, and Musk really wants to go to Mars. I don't see this as a governance problem -- Musk's pleasure in going to Mars plus the returns from doing that exceed the public's pleasure from the returns only. So since this is a bit of a vanity project, it can't be publicly controlled and remain a Musk vanity project. That's not a governance problem, it's how governance is supposed to work.

But then you say that investors are happily buying these shares? Well, it's an expected income stream, so the shares are being priced. Happiness has nothing to do with it. A 5% return is still worth something, even if the share price would go up should the strategy change. In no model would the price of the suboptimal income stream be _zero_.

The _real_ question here is what happens to the visionary iconoclast who _knows_ that going to Mars will result in a higher return. For them, it's not a vanity project but some kind of private belief that is more accurate than the market belief. In that case, non-voting shares will outperform in the long run. We can say that Steve Jobs was such a visionary and maybe Musk is, too. But how much do you want to bet on that? And is that really an argument for one type of structure over another? That your average company is run by some visionary genius that is smarter than the market? Is that a governance problem? No, not at all.

<comment><USER2> I'd say the tension between your first paragraph and your last gives us the grey area that I was talking about.

Ultimately, the big difference between whiteboard and reality in the "A or B" scenarios is that the rates of return are not known. You can represent the scenario such that an investor has some working risk-weighted estimate but... Idk. I think a rocket company just doesn't lend to that type analysis, in practice.

The long term comes down to belief in one way or another.

Personally, I suspect that the reason for these arrangements in the face of traditional economic rationale is kinda meta.

We already have a lot of large companies under traditional, often institutional shareholder control. This tends to yield a uniformity and leaves certain opportunities on the table, whichever strategies get reliably vetoed by a generic, institutional shareholder elected board.

<comment><USER3> But my point is that public ownership generally calls for public beliefs about returns to drive the show. The gap of the visionaries can usually be handled by private ownership. Let the visionary obtain funding elsewhere if they cannot convince the public their plans are better. I don't see this as a governance problem but as kinda the definition of public versus private ownership.

<comment><USER2> _if they cannot convince the public their plans are better_

I don't think we're very far apart. I just think that statement leaves some room that is (possibly) being filled by these "founder controlled" agreements. For one thing, they _can_ convince investors. They do. Elon et al are great at getting people to invest. There's just no "enterprise grade" way of actually making that deal with the public.

In any case, why can you sell shares that don't vote but not shares where you still go to mars, never pay dividends or whatever. If investors buy them, who loses?

I wonder what would happen to Google's share price if founder control was suddenly ceded. Theoretically, it should go up, no? But, I suspect it mightn't. Market rationality is a relative term.

<comment><USER3> In theory, I don't see a problem with this type of share structure and don't believe an investor would lose anything by buying this stock at an appropriate price. Shares with fewer rights will sell at a discount to shares with more rights.

In practice however, there are good reasons why the exchanges and others want to discourage these types of corporate structures. It is difficult to price the risk of a CEO going off the reservation, so to speak, and investors will be unable to pressure the CEO or replace the board in case the CEO ends up not being a good steward of investor funds. There are always principle agent problems, and having the CEO on a longer leash means that pricing the stock becomes a lot harder, and you will end up with a lot of mispriced assets, certainly ex-post and probably ex-ante. This is true even if the average of all such assets is properly priced. That is a welfare destroying thing. E.g if the universe contains two stocks that should each be priced at $1, and one is priced at $2 and the other at 50 cents, then this is welfare destroying. So anything that adds opacity to long run returns is bad for the market -- you can't just say that investors will properly discount the opacity. This is why we have disclosure regulations rather than letting firms not disclose financial information and letting the market price that.

IMP it would be much better for Musk or someone else to create a charity with the goal of going to Mars and endow it with ownership of stock of for profit firms like SpaceX. This is cleaner than having a for profit firm adopt a pseudo charitable role.

You also have to think of what will happen to these super voting shares after the CEO/founders are gone. Will their kids share the same vision and foresight? Having these types of structures creates a lot of practical problems even though in a simple theoretical model there is nothing wrong with doing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article discusses which group of stakeholders should have the most control over the company: upper management, or investors.

But companies have not just two, but at least 4 groups of stakeholders. Investors and management, but also employees, who also depend on the long-term health of the company, and customers, who want the company to be a reliable partner that's healthy enough to continue to support their products.

I'd like to see a control structure that balances all these stakeholders, rather than choosing one that has all the power.

All power in one place is certainly easier, but also more open to abuse, whether it's hedge funds looting the company, or Enron-style upper management looting the company. A company is not doing a good job unless all 4 groups of stakeholders are happy. (I suppose you could consider society a 5th stakeholder that doesn't want the company to pollute or create other harmful side effects.)

<comment><USER5> Someone once told me that "exit is more powerful than voice". I think they meant that the market is a better democracy than voting.

Capitalism traditionally gives power to customers through their ability to choose not to buy the company's products. Works better for Apple than for Google, though we pass laws to mitigate some externalities (privacy).

Workers get a say in a similar way. If a company isn't worth working for, they won't work there. This is truer for companies like Google and Apple than most (even though they are enormous) because the labour market is so tight. Again, though, we pass laws like allowing labour unions (which are a price-fixing mechanism) to address imbalances of power.

Funnily enough, this is kind of on-topic for the article. Ownership in a company usually gives you "voice" _and_ "exit", and these fancy share classes effectively take away voice and just leave the average shareholder with exit -- "If you don't like how we run the company, invest in someone else."

I think the reasonableness of it is a question of effectiveness rather than morality or logic, to be honest, but I do like the idea that Zuckerberg's board proposed to him when considering an additional share class+split that would have entrenched his power: "Your shares will become regular stock when you stop personally being CEO." They wanted him to run the company how he wanted to run it, but didn't want him to hand-pick a successor.

Still, a bit perverse that negotiation. Technically Zuck had the votes, so I guess (?) the legal mechanism of that action was "We won't sue you for not representing our interests if we do it this way." (Voting stock or no, shareholders always have some _legal_ voice.)

<comment><USER4> Voting with your dollars doesn't work in all cases. Possibly not even in most cases. Markets aren't that transparent, and more importantly, you buy based on the company's past behaviour, whereas if your product requires support, it's their future behaviour that matters to you. You buy based on past product quality, but current product quality is what matters.

You may buy a product from a great company with excellent support, and then a hedge fund comes along and fucks up that company for some quick profit, and you're screwed.

On top of that: vendor lock-in. Switching to a different platform can be hard and expensive, no matter how much you want to.

Of course most smart companies with long-term vision listen to their customers, but plenty of companies don't. Many great companies have been ruined for short-term profit for either their executives or their investors.

And the same is true for employees: a lot of people can't afford to leave their job. They've got mouths to feed. And besides, in their next job, they might be just as powerless.

Ultimately, the skewed division of power is not always good for companies, and it enables the people holding that power to enrich themselves at the cost of other stakeholders.

<comment><USER5> I totally agree that market solutions aren't perfect. I alluded to some legal fixes in place, but there are of course many others, some of which address concerns you raised -- fitness for purpose, abuse of market power, varying levels of employee protection and representation depending on jurisdiction.

These things are clearly patches, though. The logic of the system is that companies operate on the behalf of their owners, with some sharp edges filed off to handle perverse incentives. I guess this organisation wasn't chosen for its competitive advantage (probably rather just a legal&historical accident) but it seems to be doing better than anything else we've tried -- worker co- ops, non-profits etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From taking a look at the author's title on the site, the person who wrote this, Mihir Desai, is an economics professor at Harvard University.

I wonder if he has any updated thoughts on this subject matter. Does anyone know of any more recent links to articles or writings he's made?

<comment><USER7> He did write "Why Apple Is the Future of Capitalism" in August 2018, which seems pretty relevant: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/06/opinion/apple- trillion-ma...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/06/opinion/apple-trillion- market-cap.html)

Here's his list of publications: [http://www.mihirdesai.org/publications-and- media/](http://www.mihirdesai.org/publications-and-media/)

<comment><USER8> That Times article seems a lot less convincing in the light of Apple's recent stock crash.

<comment><USER9> The future of capitalism includes tons of stock crashes anyway...

And I don't think his argument was "Apple is infallible", but "Apple's model will prevail (or is good) for the future of capitalism". Not that Apple or any company following the model is guaranteed to always have increased stock value forever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's always interesting to take a look back on articles like these and see how the opinions / predictions of the author pan out. There has always seemed to be what is in my opinion a largely narrow minded short term oriented negativity directed towards the Google method of moonshots / bets. In hindsight now in 2019, it's clear with signs of growing stagnation on Apple's side and continued successful innovation and growth of Alphabet companies within vastly diverse industries (Verily, Waymo, Malta, etc.) which of the two methodologies was the better choice.

I wonder what the future will hold? Culture seems like the strongest indicator for whether changes can be made. Without the sort of long term vision Jobs had to guide the company from the top down, successful pivoting depends on if internal company culture can support a bottom up revitalization I think.

<comment><USER10> You have got to be joking. Looking at the revenue numbers, it's clear that Apple is more diversified than Google. The declining iPhone sales are a short term problem. People are just keeping the devices for longer, not abandoning the ecosystem. Their services and wearables are seeing an impressive growth. I think the watch will grow even faster once Apple makes it a completely independent device.

The difference between these two companies is that one publicizes the stuff it's working on and rushes it to market, while the other keeps it all secret until it's ready.

Also, Apple is working on AR glasses(rumored to be announced next year), self- driving car and are making a big push into digital health.

Apple is far from doomed, they still have a lot of room for growth.

<comment><USER6> Alphabet is doing all of these things and more though no? With much more success too from what I can garner.

Waymo is the defacto number one leader in self-driving, whereas Apple's self driving unit is having huge issues internally. Similarly, didn't Verily just receive a $1 billion dollar investment a few days ago with Silver Lake as the primary backer for it's various life science hardware/digital technologies it's working on like LiftWare [1], Project Baseline [2], etc?

[1] Liftware - [https://youtu.be/cFHwoOkSj7w](https://youtu.be/cFHwoOkSj7w)

[2] Baseline Study - [https://projectbaseline.com](https://projectbaseline.com)

<comment><USER10> > Alphabet is doing all of these things and more though no? With more much > success too from what I can garner.

Apple has more diversified revenue than Alphabet. Why would you say Alphabet is more successful?. All this tells me is that Apple thinks long and hard before publicizing what it's working on, they won't show us prototypes.

> Waymo is the defacto number one leader in self-driving, whereas Apple's self > driving unit is having huge issues internally with getting anything done.

ALL of Apple's reported problems had to do with the MAKING of a car, not autonomous systems. People just don't get this distinction. We will know how far their system is at the end of this month when the DMV releases their disengagement report. By the way, recent developments indicate that Apple is back to building an electric self-driving car instead of a self-driving platform.

<comment><USER6> So far I've listed Waymo and Verily.

What about,

Loon - [https://loon.co/](https://loon.co/)

Dandelion - [https://dandelionenergy.com/](https://dandelionenergy.com/)

Wing - [https://x.company/wing/](https://x.company/wing/)

Chronicle - [https://chronicle.security/](https://chronicle.security/)

Malta - [https://blog.x.company/introducing- malta-81bceb559061](https://blog.x.company/introducing-malta-81bceb559061)

Apple is almost 100% definitively not working on a molten salt energy storage solution I can promise you. And the reason is because it's just not in it's corporate structure or culture. Far too constrained / trapped in it's niche to expand outwards into such a vastly different market.

<comment><USER11> And none of these are profitable.

A "successful" product for a profit making company is one that makes money.....

Google hasn't shown an ability to ptofitably sell anything but ads.

According to numbers that came out during the Oracle lawsuit, even Android has only made Google $31 Billion since its inception.

<comment><USER12> > _Google hasn't shown an ability to ptofitably sell anything but ads._

The $31B revenue would be _huge_ for almost any company. The magnitude of Google's largest cash cow, a glowing golden cow towering over the farm house, makes their normal-sized livestock look small. Because everything is so insignificant compared to advertisements, Google has killed projects that could be the entire product of a sustainable smaller company.

<comment><USER11> $31 billion revenue of 8 years? To put that in context, that's about the same amount of revenue from Apple's non iPhone business in one quarter.

[https://sixcolors.com/post/2018/11/reminder-apple- financial-...](https://sixcolors.com/post/2018/11/reminder-apple-financial- results-released-today/)

And that's $31 billion in _revenue_ not _profit_.

The profit over 8 years is only $21 billion.

[https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/21/10810834/android- generate...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/21/10810834/android- generated-31-billion-revenue-google-oracle)

<comment><USER12> How many companies make 2.6B/year in profit? Rather, how many startups sell for over 1B? Comparing it to another gigantic business is missing the point in the same way that comparing it against ads is. Google has had many giant successes that only appear small when juxtaposed against unimaginably enormous successes.

<comment><USER11> So besides Android, what other profitable product have they had? Rumors are that YouTube is still break even.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> An interesting article. One thing I like is that there's no "trickle-down" economics BS here, for decades it has been preached that tax cuts will increase the profits which will be reinvested for the benefit of larger social groups. When in fact we've seen an increase in corruption and social inequality. Here we have two models that are being compared not by who makes more, but who is more competent to actually reinvest and sustain long-term goals. As utopistic as it may sound, I would add the workers into the circle, an educated workforce is the only solid unit that can remain active in a recession caused by bad managers or greedy investors.

</comment><comment><USER14> > Even as corporations have brought in enormous profits, there has been a > shortage of lucrative opportunities for investment and growth, creating > surpluses of cash. This imbalance has resulted in the pileup of $2 trillion > on corporate balance sheets. As companies continue to generate more profits > than they need to fund their own growth, the question becomes: Who will > decide what to do with all those profits—managers or investors?

And will they decide to pay their employees?

<comment><USER15> > there has been a shortage of lucrative opportunities for investment and > growth

History has proven this to be false. There is only a shortage of creativity. There was a Micorsoft talk Ballmer gave where he rightly pointed out that it is rare for even successful companies to have more than one cash cow idea. Using their existing cash to create two or more is the main challenge facing companies like Microsoft, Google and Apple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The analyses in the comments and in the article all assume shareholders are one large, homogeneous group with identical or very similar goals regarding investment strategies. This is far from the truth, and realizing there are differing investors with different risk and time adjusted financial goals changes this debate drastically, and (imho) makes it largely irrelevant.

<comment><USER17> From the article:

> Proponents of the managerial model embodied by Google worry about a > different principal-agent problem. Rather than being concerned about > managers ignoring investors, they are concerned that investors won't serve > the people who would benefit from the long-term success of the company. > Those professional investors are both the principals for the CEOs but also > the agents of many other shareholders. The hedge funds that pressured Apple > are the dreaded "short-term" investors who are interested only in quick wins > and don't serve their longer-term beneficiaries, such as pension funds, that > allocate capital to them in the first place. As investors, hedge funds are > impatient, and, the argument goes, ruining the economy by shortening time > horizons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Business. Business is the word they were looking for.

Apple and Google don't engage in capitalism, they engage in business. Capitalism is a socio economical political system that they are actors in and have no say over(besides attempts to lobby which are real but not the focus here).

This may sound like semantics but I think this subtle and intentional shift in language is dangerous. You constantly slip the strawman into everyday language until the average person has heard it enough times to have a deeply negative view of capitalism because they equate capitalism to companies they don't like(we are already past this point)

These days, being deeply anti capitalist is a main stream viewpoint but if you ask people what they mean by it, many of them aren't usually looking for economic system reform, they are looking for Companies that they feel are doing business unethically to be constrained or policed. They end up fighting the wrong thing based on a faulty definition which is highly unlikely to produce the results they want.

</comment><comment><USER19> Well in one sense "managers capitalism" isn't capitalism at all. It's the principal-agent problem in the extreme. The basic point of capitalism is to distribute power and decision making as much as possible. That's called a market. Those who argue that Google has the better strategy don't really understand the ethics of business and its role in society. Sure, if you're trying to "win the game" be more like Google. If you're trying to make capitalism proud, be Apple. Probably a socialist anyway!

</comment><comment><USER20> > The paths taken by Apple and Google manifest alternative answers to one of > the main questions facing capitalism today: What should public companies do > with all of the money that they're making? Even as corporations have brought > in enormous profits, there has been a shortage of lucrative opportunities > for investment and growth, creating surpluses of cash. This imbalance has > resulted in the pileup of $2 trillion on corporate balance sheets.

Pay your employees.

<comment><USER21> Lobby for a sane tax system that encourages re-investment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't see them as two ways but rather the same way at different times. Founders of Apple lost majority many decades ago. If Steve Jobs was alive and had a majority in Apple's stocks would have behaved like Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is not an existential issue vis-a-vis Apple, Google, or even about capitalism.

It's really a CFO's problem, financial engineering.

Companies that sit on massive cash all have this problem.

The difference is not one of culture, it's the fact that Google is still controlled by powerful founders who _can_ act in different way, i.e. 'maintain hard power' through share voting 10x's ... or even via 'soft power' just by being founders.

Apple has more of a regular CEO.

There are a variety of interesting things about this, but it's mostly on the financial side, and won't make a spec of difference in the rest of the company.

Neither Apple nor G will be operationally hindered, M&A and other activities will be just the same.

As founders move away from Alphabet, I bet they take a few fewer moonshots though ...

<comment><USER24> > This is not an existential issue vis-a-vis Apple, Google, or even about > capitalism.

> It's really a CFO's problem, financial engineering.

I'm not sure how you distinguish this from capitalism.

<comment><USER23> To pay or not pay dividends is economically a net neutral exercise. This is a matter of investor relations, and an issue mostly for the CFO of the company and has little material relationship to the nature of the company.

It's not really a fundamental issue of control, it's just one of the many issues that pops up in the day to day of organizations that are cash flush relative to their income.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> How to spend profits was interesting, was surprised they didn't talk about Apple's Anti-Consumer and Anti-Developer model that forces one time users into their ecosystem.

Wanted to see how google was doing similar.

</comment><comment><USER26> It should be the laborers that decide what to with the profit. Not those who sit on their assess looking at Fibonacci traces.

<comment><USER27> The reason that fails is that in practice the labourers generally decide to spend the money now, rather than invest it in growth, so businesses run that way tend to fail.

There are very, very few counter-examples in narrow low-growth specialised markets, but the general rule has been shown to occur countless times across economies as small as communes to as big as a superpower.

The reason capitalism works is that capital generally flows to people with a track record of making efficient, effective, growth (and therefore jobs) generating investments. Which is what you want. There is some wastage of course, but far less than in planned economies (at least all of them so far) and capitalism tends to be very efficient at recycling that wasted capital back into productive enterprises.

<comment><USER28> > The reason that fails is that in practice the labourers generally decide to > spend the money now, rather than invest it in growth, so businesses run that > way tend to fail.

AFAIK, there is no evidence that labor coops fail at a greater rate than conventionally structured businesses. If you have such evidence, I'd love to see it.

<comment><USER27> There's huge swathes of evidence. Read any decent economic history of the Soviet Union, or Maoist China. Or the analysis of the effect of handing power to workers councils in Yugoslavia, which I provided in answer to another such request. It was so common I even have family that watched it happen. My wife is Chinese, from Hohhot. Her father worked at a boiler factory and her mother at a textiles mill, both of which were run by worker councils and were badly mismanaged. They suffered appallingly under Maoism. This is one of the reasons this issue triggers me a bit.

<comment><USER28> > There's huge swathes of evidence.

I'm still waiting to see any on point.

> Read any decent economic history of the Soviet Union, or Maoist China.

Which would be relevant if I was asking for evidence that Leninist vanguardism and it's derivatives were adequate systems to overcome the disadvantages poorly developed economies engaging in large scale geopolitical conflicts with advanced industrial powers face. Or if I was asking about evidence about the utility of top-down state central planning.

But labor cooperatives don't require a state featuring Leninist vanguardism or top-down central planning, and in fact are a well-known practice in modern Western mixed economies like those in North America and Western Europe, and there are a lot of well-established observed differences between labor coops and classical capital-rents-labor firms within such systems, but I can't see any evidence that a higher failure rate for coops is one of them.

<comment><USER27> Read my comment above again, referencing the example I cited across thread of the effects on the Yugoslav economy. I'll make it easier this time[0]. Yugoslavia is a perfect example actually because it wasn't subject to Leninist Vanguardism, didn't have the same competitive issues with the West, furthermore the worker councils weren't subject to anywhere near as restrictive central planning constraints seen in most Marxist states, so it pretty much ticks all your boxes.

Put it the way. What are the conditions in western democracies that are hostile to the success of workers cooperatives? We enjoy pretty egalitarian, fair legal and regulatory environments that aren't obviously hostile to them. Even if they were, many European countries have frequently had explicitly socialist governments and have had plenty of time to establish legal frameworks compatible with voluntary collectivism. Why hasn't it worked?

[0] [https://capx.co/do-workers-need-capitalists-new-lessons- from...](https://capx.co/do-workers-need-capitalists-new-lessons-from- yugoslavias-socialist-experiment/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I want neither</comment>


Pixitar: Pixelated Live Avatars - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Pixitar stands for Pixelated Live Avatar. It's a webapp that shares a pixelated picture of yourself every so often in order to foster closeness amongst distributed teams. Think "peripheral vision" over your webcam. pixitar.com

Checkout our video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8PSeiNRBxo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8PSeiNRBxo)

Pretty simple: Would you use this? Would you pay for it? How much? And what suggestions do you have about the experience?

Thank you!

<comment><USER2> I think the you've identified a valid need, but your video fails to communicate (in my opinion) that your solution is fulfilling the need properly.

Let's just start with the video. The awkward video stills take up too much of the video, and the music is horrible.

With the negatives out of the way, on to the positives. The real-time avatars for increased closeness pitch really clicks for me. I'm just not sure if pixelation is the way to go. Maybe a more artistic filter (cartoonify, sketch, water-color, brush-stroke) would do the trick.

I wouldn't use or pay for it since I don't manage distributed teams so I'm not your targeted customer, but I'm wondering if Pixitar by itself would be enough for someone to adopt it. Maybe if it were a plugin or somehow worked with collaboration tools like Lync, Skype, Convo, Yammer etc. it would be a much better proposal.

Best of luck and points for thinking different :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your feedback!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would not use something like this. Basically it reminds of trying to video chat on dial-up or something.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not even for its retro appeal? :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: what's the best place to find devs in NYC?  - <AUTHOR>

We're hiring frontend and backend engineers for Minus.com and are having some trouble finding the right candidates in the NYC area that can commit fulltime and have the experience we're looking for.<p>Does anyone have suggestions? Cheers ! <comment><USER2> You should find Meetup groups (based in NYC) for whatever technology stack you work with and ask around there. It'd be even better if you attended some of the meetings, but you could get away with posting a job offer to the mailing list. BE WARNED though, some groups have "official" rules that must be followed to post job offers, otherwise they'll just be deleted (because they get a lot of spam from headhunters).

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, appreciate it !

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Offer something they can't get elsewhere if another job comes along. Great leadership, great tools, lots of acknowledgement. 2\. Don't skimp on pay. I 2nd Rdouble's thesis. 3\. Go on foot looking at IxDA, BarCamp, APLN-NYC, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> Money talks in NYC. It's hard to hire because well capitalized startups pay as well as finance.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's true

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> recent grads from the midwest..? I suppose that depends on what you're looking for with regards to experience.

You could always use a headhunter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you be more specific ? Thanks !

<comment><USER5> The midwest is home to several excellent computer science programs. Many of the students in those programs desire to move towards the coast (east or west) upon graduation.

You may not realize this, but to recent grads (outside of new york) your location could be considered one of the primary reasons to take a job, given a livable salary.</comment></comment></comment>


Virtual Reality Journalism - <AUTHOR> http://www.cjr.org/innovations/virtual_reality_journalism.php <comment><USER2> > "I remain devoted to the idea of longform documentary linear film as well, > so I see this as an important experiment and expansion, but not replacing > documentary film as we know it,"

I fear that this will be lost on most journalists and that we'll be spammed with "immersive", "emotion evoking" pseudo-journalism that has all but background research and reporting. We already have this trend where even respected publications publish 50 page reports that consist of 50 full screen background pictures with a single phrase of actual reporting per page. Now, please wipe left for next slide after viewing our short 60 second ad.</comment>