The Car That Changed Rally Racing Forever - <AUTHOR> http://gearpatrol.com/2015/03/30/icon-audi-sport-quattro/ <comment><USER2> It was amazing what the drivers did with these Group B monsters in the mid 80s, considering how different of a sport rallying was back then. The cars were at best several hundreds of horsepowers more powerful than current wrc cars, with much inferior handling. Most cars, if any, didn't even have power steering back then.

Also the races were much longer taking place over about 5 days compared to the 3 day events nowadays. One event had about 40-50 special stages back then when now there are about 15-25 and most of those are just the same stages repeated. In addition they used to drive both day and night while while getting only a few hours of sleep per night. I'm sure current rally races are still pretty grueling events, but those drivers in the 80s must have been superhuman.

I'm still glad that things have changed. If they hadn't cancelled Group B the fatality count would have just increased. The cars were getting totally out of hand. Some rumors say that some prototype cars already built for the 87 season had close to 1000 horsepowers.

<comment><USER3> These cars were crazy difficult to drive, they had a "locked" four wheel drive system that is similar to an agricultural tractor so you _have to_ slide the car around slow corners or the engine stalls (spectacular and noisy, but not really fast).

They had an unsynchronized H-shifter gearbox that requires double declutching on downshifts and careful power application given the huge turbo boost. The driver has to be able to use the left _and_ right foot for braking and be able to press all three pedals at once momentarily when downshifting under braking (left foot on the clutch, right foot toe on the brake and blipping the throttle with the outside of the foot, misleadingly called "heel'n'toe").

Here's a really good clip of Walter Röhrl putting an Audi Quattro through its paces: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyVHj3sHVHQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyVHj3sHVHQ)

<comment><USER4> _These cars were crazy difficult to drive, they had a "locked" four wheel drive system that is similar to an agricultural tractor so you have to slide the car around slow corners or the engine stalls (spectacular and noisy, but not really fast)._

That makes it sound like there are tractors that can do powerslides.

<comment><USER5> _Really slow_ powerslides. When operating in mud, turning the front wheels won't turn the tractor, so many tractors have separate brakes for the left and right rear wheels. It's kind of amazing how quickly the tractor turns when you stomp just one of those brakes. The resulting effect is like a powerslide in that the front of the tractor "falls behind" the rear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It also nearly killed the sport. Other manufacturers responded with Group B racing monsters of their own, like the Lancia Delta S4, which were high tech prototypes only thinly disguised as road cars.

The result was exploding costs, exploding popularity (hundreds thousands of people lining the stages without the protection of normal circuit racing) and a series of deadly accidents, eventually leading to the end of the Group B category and a long decline in the sport's popularity.

<comment><USER7> You make a good point (though including "exploding popularity" in the explanation of how the sport was killed is a bit odd...). But then again, the point of racing is supposedly to improve the breed. I am pretty sure that the technologies from rally cars find their way into production cars more readily than those from say Formula 1. And the Audi Quattro sure kicked off the technology race.

By the way, a colleague of mine owned an Audi Quattro Sport back in the late 90's. It was a very complex car, many components were unique to this model and hand-built. Maintenance was difficult, very expensive and very frequent. He bought a Subaru Impreza WRX "for those 8 months of the year that the Audi spends in the workshop".

<comment><USER3> > though including "exploding popularity" in the explanation of how the sport > was killed is a bit odd...

The issue with rallying is that it used to take place in remote locations with little or no crowds. There are no safety barriers to protect the audience. Additionally, the rally audiences got crazed by deadly dangerous activities like standing in front of the cars until the last second or trying to touch the cars when they zoomed past (there's a story that a mechanic once found a severed finger in the side mirrors of a car).

It became impossible for the race organizers to control the crowds and make the race events somewhat safe. That's why "exploding popularity" was an issue.

Group B was terminated after an accident in 1986 Rally Portugal (?) when a Ford RS-20 car flew off the track and into the audience with dozens of fatalities and serious injuries. This was only a few weeks after the fatalities of driver Henri Toivonen and co-driver Sergio Cresto in the Rally of Corsica. Toivonen's last interview concluded with: "these cars are too fast for the human mind, if you lose concentration, you're dead" [paraphrased from Finnish], then he closed the car door, drove off and was never seen again.

This is how crazy it was: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYIH7ApCxoM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYIH7ApCxoM)

<comment><USER8> Thanks for this one, and the "heel and toe" explanation in the other comment.

I spent a couple minutes on the Wiki page and this little picture sort of sums up rally racing - they soberly resisted writing "flying" in the label that says "Toivonen driving the Manta 400".

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Toivonen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Toivonen) , [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/61/Henri_Toivonen...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/61/Henri_Toivonen_- _Opel_Manta_400.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thank goodness it did. The things drivers can do with rally cars is amazing. By far my favorite sport to watch. I'm sad that it didn't really catch on in the USA. The format is unlike anything that would sell commercially here.

<comment><USER10> Actually, after the ban of the cars, the manufacturers looked for other races where they could use their monsters. They took them to Dakar, and to the famous Pikes Peak hillclimb race in the USA. Peugeot made a very good movie about it (although it is in a 405T16, which technically never raced group B, the car is basically a 205 T16 with another body shell) - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEuZG37gFdM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEuZG37gFdM)

<comment><USER11> I like the part at 3:30 where the driver has to drive with one hand to see anything..

Actually: Comparing that run to this one here [1] from the 'recent' past I'm even more impressed. Seems like the original video was awfully fast - and on a dirt road at that time?

1: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y20CLumT2Sg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y20CLumT2Sg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just by the title I knew it was Quattro ... such an amazing piece of engineering of the greatest VW generation ever ... that and Golf I&II gt redefined fun in cars.

</comment><comment><USER13> Some of the success of the Quadro should be attributed to the driver Walter Röhrl (and of course his copilot). Before he changed to the Audi Team, he did win lots of rallyes with an Opel Ascona 400, which was not exactly overpowered compared to the other rallye cars of this time.

</comment><comment><USER14> The article makes me really sad, but describes the best time in Rally sports. Group B cars made the rallye an event which had as much popularity as the formula 1. It was a time when Racing was 50% raw power and 50% talent, and it is no that it's major racing series, say Group B rally, Group C touring cars or the formula one gave birth to legends like Rohrl, Bellof or Senna. This is an attractivity that is completely lost in modern racing, really, with its small, fuel saving, ecologically correct "cars". Hell, it's racing, not a children's playground. Thank God there's LMP...

<comment><USER15> > This is an attractivity that is completely lost in modern racing, really, > with its small, fuel saving, ecologically correct "cars". Thank God there's > LMP...

LMP? You mean the formula where the major constraint is the fuel characteristics of the engine?

<comment><USER16> Are you referring to the Equivalence of Energy and Equivalence of Technology regulations?

If so that is a much more sane than regulating performance on the amount of oxygen the engine can consume. It's also much more relevant to production cars as well.

To me Balance of Performance is a dirty word, but I am ok with having each technology balanced so each car has roughly the same amount of energy available to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I know it is going on a tangential, but it surprised me to learn who the Stig ([http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_stig](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_stig)) may be named after: [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stig_Blomqvist](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stig_Blomqvist)

</comment><comment><USER18> While the Quattro has gone up in value, so has every other classic car worth buying, especially rare homologation specials. So it's not necessarily the market rediscovering the Quattro (which has never been 'lost') but QE money chasing hard collectibles.

</comment><comment><USER19> An original Audi Quattro is very hard to find in th US and IMO very collectible.

</comment><comment><USER20> Am I the first to mention how much I loved the Lancia Delta Integrale? Car of my dreams.

My brother bought a Delta Integrale 1993 EVO in 1997 and kept it for a few years. I had the pleasure to drive it several times. What a beast.

<comment><USER21> You are Italian, you can't not love Lancia Delta Integrale :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Chris Harris on the Sport Quattro [https://youtu.be/LDCE4FjVHOU?t=8m1s](https://youtu.be/LDCE4FjVHOU?t=8m1s)

<comment><USER22> 1985 Pikes Peak Audi Quattro S1 Michèle Mouton [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKKfzR7dX-c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKKfzR7dX-c)</comment></comment>


The body's microbial community may influence the brain and behavior - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/health/microbiome-brain-behavior-dementia.html <comment><USER2> I grew up in India. I remember elder folks in my family talking about how the "water" of a place made people different. And that if you moved to that place, slowly you'd become like them too. They attributed certain characteristics (aggressiveness, smartness, etc.) to the "water" of a place.

Now, of course, this had no scientific basis. But it would be interesting if what they thought was the "water", was actually the microbial composition of the traditional water sources there.

<comment><USER3> "of course this has no scientific basis"

You probably mean- I haven't seen any research that tries to associate water impurities as parameters to human behavior as parameters.

Why do Indians always sound so defensive about their practices? As someone whose parents spent a decade in india- they attributes their happiness to the lifestyle they learnt in india. None of which had a clear basis in modern science.

<comment><USER2> > You probably mean- I haven't seen any research that tries to associate water > impurities as parameters to human behavior as parameters.

That's what I mean, but I put it more succinctly.

> Why do Indians always sound so defensive about their practices?

Um... because I'm a scientist, and I haven't seen any peer-reviewed scientific articles on this subject?

Why do (some) Indians always have a chip on their shoulders? See, both of us can play silly question games.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For people who where wondering how this would even work on a technical level, the article contains a few pleasantly concrete examples:

> _When the researchers investigated the microbiomes of [mice who avoid social > contact], they found the animals lacked a common species called > Lactobacillus reuteri. When they added a strain of that bacteria to the > diet, the animals became social again.

Dr. Costa-Mattioli found evidence that L. reuteri releases compounds that send a signal to nerve endings in the intestines. The vagus nerve sends these signals from the gut to the brain, where they alter production of a hormone called oxytocin that promotes social bonds.

Other microbial species also send signals along the vagus nerve, it turns out. Still others communicate with the brain via the bloodstream._

<comment><USER5> One of the many chemicals that your gut bacteria produce is butyrate, a short chain fatty acid. Butyrate has many uses in your body, including feeding other gut bacteria, feeding the epithelial cells in your intestines, has anti inflammatory properties, used as a neurotransmitter, and encourages the production of growth hormones. Your gut bacteria also produce a number of other chemicals, including many vitamins.

There are at least 400 different species living in a healthy person's gut (it's difficult to define a species, since they transfer dna between themselves.) Many of these we haven't been able to successfully grow in a lab. Their primary food is resistant starch, which is starch that your small intestines can't split apart and absorb. There are a number of different types of resistant starch, which basically comes down to how the chains of glucose and fructose molecules are arranged. Different bacteria prefer different types of resistant starch, and thus you can majorly influence your biome just by changing your diet. There's a special diet called FODMAP which supposedly helps with IBS and related diseases. I also think that a number of fad diets main benefit is influencing your gut bacteria.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This really isn't that surprising is it? The human body relies on so many microbes that do not share what we consider to be "our" genes to function, wouldn't it be odd if those microbes didn't have a communication channel with the brain? I guess people are still subconsciously uncomfortable with the idea that what they consider to be their self is a communal organism?

<comment><USER7> I studied bioengineering and bioinformatics and have often brought up this idea in conversations. Honestly, I think it's more that people simply don't realize / have ever thought of it because most are quite receptive to it.

But sure, I have also gotten quite the negative reactions but it tends to be the same monkeys who dismiss anthropogenic climate change in the face of decades of evidence.

<comment><USER8> > But sure, I have also gotten quite the negative reactions but it tends to be > the same monkeys who dismiss anthropogenic climate change in the face of > decades of evidence.

Not denying anthropogenic climate change but until recently fat was dangerous and sugar was less dangerous. This goes back to the thirties, so definitely decades.

Worse, when some of the loudest voices in the climate camp not only fly across the globe to climate conferences but in private jets, then you can understand why people are sceptical. (1400 private jets this year?)

Same with the EAT campaign: travelling around the world in luxury, telling other people they can basically forget their current lifestyle.

I'm not saying it isn't right.

Personally I travel with public transit (bus, train, bus or walk) for a good hour to work and the same back home. I try to do reuse, repair and recycle in my household. We coordinate with 4-5 other families to get kids to soccer / other activities 3 times a week with as few cars as possible. It actually makes a lot of sense too.

But it is not like we get any support from the thought leaders who fly around in a luxury we have a hard time imagining even. I can very well understand why people don't believe.

So can we stop calling other people monkeys? If your are going to make a change you have to learn to make those people care. And you don't do that by calling them names.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> They're saying, "for the love of God, feed us some fiber, which is only found in whole plant foods!"

> Less than 3% of Americans get even the recommended minimum adequate intake > of fiber. On average, we get only about 15 grams a day. The minimum daily > requirement is 31.5, so we get less than half the minimum. Men are > particularly deficient. If we break down intake by age and gender, after > studying the diets of 12,761 Americans, the percent of men between ages 14 > and 50 getting the minimum adequate intake is zero.

[https://nutritionfacts.org/2015/09/29/where-do-you-get- your-...](https://nutritionfacts.org/2015/09/29/where-do-you-get-your-fiber/)

<comment><USER10> Keep in mind that recommended daily requirements are not indisputable science, the phrase "made-up nonsense" comes to mind. The fact that only 3% of the population meets the guidelines but do just fine is proof of this.

I think we'd get fiber cravings if we were truly deficient.

<comment><USER11> Agree that dietary requirements are unscientific, though not sure cravings actually work that way, it would've saved a lot of lives if sailors with scurvy got citrus cravings or something.

<comment><USER12> Undoubtably, sailors on long ocean voyages really did crave the fresh foods (fruit, vegetables, meat) which would have contained enough Vitamin C to prevent (and reverse) scurvy.

The problem was these were often not actually available on their voyages.

<comment><USER13> Were they actually _craving_ those foods, I think the solution to scurvy would have been discovered almost immediately.

Alas, the human body rarely if ever communicates useful solutions in this way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Following a string of similar experiments, he now suspects that just a few > species in the gut — perhaps even one — influence the course of Alzheimer's > disease, perhaps by releasing chemical that alters how immune cells work in > the brain.

> He hasn't found those microbes, let alone that chemical. But "there's > something's in there," he said. "And we have to figure out what it is."

This entire article has many facets that are quite interesting, and we just can't wait for substantial research in this area to reach well supported conclusions and remedies for people with different conditions.

<comment><USER15> This[0] article was posted somewhere here a while back I believe, and is a potentially related approach to Alzheimers.

[0]: [https://www.statnews.com/2018/10/29/alzheimers-research- outs...](https://www.statnews.com/2018/10/29/alzheimers-research-outsider- bucked-prevailing-theory/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Dr. Rhonda Patrick was on Joe Rogan's podcast and she went into the chief importance of the gut microbiome ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOodMDndr4Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOodMDndr4Q)). Like I knew eating healthy/exercise/etc. was all good, but she went in-depth on how crucially important eating the right foods was to so many other systems in your body, and I just had no idea of all of it.

</comment><comment><USER17> > a common species called Lactobacillus reuteri. When they added a strain of > that bacteria to the diet, the animals became social again.

How do I summon Gwern to do some self-experiments?

</comment><comment><USER18> NHK has a great documentary series, "The Body". This episode focuses on the microbial activity in the gut: [https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/documentary/20181021/4...](https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/documentary/20181021/4001308/)</comment>


Please fix your Python decorators - <AUTHOR> https://hynek.me/articles/decorators/ <comment><USER2> Problem: Inspection on wrapped functions is broken.

Solution: Use a slow, third party library.

I'll (personally) stick with the inspection "problem". Changing program behavior at runtime using inspection against function signatures, unless done ridiculously well, is a recipe for creating an unmaintainable disaster.

Granted, I've seen some pretty cool things done with it (for example, injecting a database connection into a handler function if it has a "db" keyword in its signature), but I've also seen the edge cases where it blows up painfully; explicit vs implicit and all that.

The missing intellisense can be a pain, but the docstring is more reliable in most cases (such as the plethora of stdlib functions with "keyword" arguments which aren't actually keyword arguments since they're implemented in C).

<comment><USER3> "Slow" is not what I read from the benchmarks tho. :) I prefer to avoid edge cases by default and optimize hotspots if necessary. Especially for stuff I publish on PyPI. Likewise I don't care what people do in internal projects. :) It's just frustrating if you install a lib and stuff blows up. :|

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it just me, or isn't it obvious now that decorators are, at best, an anti- pattern, or worse, a misguided attempt at code obfuscation?

<comment><USER5> It's not obvious to me. Example use case:

The last time I wrote a bunch of decorators, I was writing python bindings to a set of C++ classes that each had an internal error state that had to be checked after each time a method was called to see if the method failed. If the error state was set, then subsequent method calls for the same object would fail silently, so it was crucial that the error state be checked. There were dozens of methods per class.

I ended up writing a class decorator that would decorate each method with the appropriate method decorator. The method decorator would call the GetErrorCode method, check if nonzero, reset the error state of the object, and then raise an appropriate python exception if necessary.

Major surgery to change the error handling in the called C++ code was not an option.

Can you suggest a better approach?

<comment><USER6> Define a function to do the same and call that at the end of every method? These don't seem that different to me:

        def doStuff():
            # do stuff
            return checkError(value)

        @checkError
        def doStuff():
            # do stuff
            return value

EDIT: In fact, I think the above succinctly hits on lotsoflumens' point. The latter clearly obfuscates the fact that an error check is performed behind the decorator. The former makes it very clear that something is happening to the return value before it leaves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had this problem a couple of days ago. I wanted to use Django' last_modified decorator like this:

        from django.utils.decorators import method_decorator
        from django.views.decorators.http import last_modified
        from rest_framework import viewsets

        class SomeClassBasedView(viewsets.ViewSet):
            def last_modified_time(self, request):
                return cache.get_or_set('key', some_date)

            @method_decorator(last_modified(last_modified_time))
            def get_some_object(self):
                # expensive DB operation

Of course it blew up, even when I decorated the last_modified_time with @staticmethod or @classmethod so I had two choices

1\. The misleading simple function definition inside the class body, like:

        class SomeClassBasedView(viewsets.ViewSet):
            def last_modified_time(request):
                return cache.get_or_set('key', some_date)

            @method_decorator(last_modified(last_modified_time))
            def get_some_object(self):
                # expensive DB operation

The biggest problem with this that it can be confusing for our junior developers (might be even strange for seasoned Pythonistas). Also an IDE (e.g. PyCharm) marks the request argument with a different color making it even more confusing.

2\. Define the function outside of the class body (where it doesn't belong...):

        def last_modified_time(request):
            return cache.get_or_set('key', some_date)

        class SomeClassBasedView(viewsets.ViewSet):

            @method_decorator(last_modified(last_modified_time))
            def get_some_object(self):
                # expensive DB operation

</comment><comment><USER8> For what it's worth, the classmethod issue that concerns the author is mostly a non-issue if you apply your decorator before you wrap your function in a classmethod:

      In [1]: def my_decorator(f):
         ...:     def wrapped(*args, **kwargs):
         ...:         print("wrapping %s" % f.__name__)
         ...:         return f(*args, **kwargs)
         ...:     return wrapped
         ...:

      In [2]: class Foo:
         ...:     @classmethod
         ...:     @my_decorator
         ...:     def meth(cls, x, y):
         ...:         return x + y
         ...:

      In [3]: Foo.meth(1, 2)
      wrapping meth
      Out[3]: 3

This works because the user-defined decorator gets applied to the underlying function before it gets wrapped in a classmethod object (which doesn't supply the desired __name__ attribute).

The signature introspection issue is real, and dealing with it in full generality requires a fair amount of work, especially if you want to be compatible with python 2 and python 3.

<comment><USER8> In general, classmethod and staticmethod and property should almost always be the last decorator applied if you decorate a method multiple times in Python. This is because, unlike most decorators, classmethod/staticmethod/property don't return functions; they return objects that implement Python's descriptor protocol ([https://docs.python.org/3/howto/descriptor.html](https://docs.python.org/3/howto/descriptor.html)) slightly differently than how it's implemented by functions. (The core of how methods work in Python is based on the fact that functions are just descriptors ([https://docs.python.org/3/howto/descriptor.html#functions- an...](https://docs.python.org/3/howto/descriptor.html#functions-and- methods\))).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > unintentionally changes the signatures of my callables

Why it must not change signatures? Everyone says that it shouldn't, but why? Maybe because named the same as Java/.Net decorator pattern? Decorators in Python is almost just a function composition and it can change signature.</comment>


Indian Supreme Court strikes down anti free speech law - <AUTHOR> http://www.medianama.com/2015/03/223-section-66a-unconstritutional/

<comment><USER2> This is massive because this law (section 66A) has been used extensively in the past to enforce internet censorship due to it's vague wording on 'objectionable' material. At different times, pastebin, github, youtube, facebook ..etc links have been blocked due to silly application of this law. Worse still people have been charged and jailed for just sharing or liking articles on FB or twitter. Good riddance for something that shouldn't have existed in the first place. There still is some hope for my country.</comment>


Microsoft Research blending Art and Science + talking to plants too - <AUTHOR> http://innovation.microsoft.com/the-intersection-of-art-and-science/ <comment><AUTHOR> I saw this at the Microsoft Ignite conference last week, and it was a _super_ cool talk. What piqued my interest was using ML/NLP to communicate with plants (a holy smokes moment for me) and using sound to hear pollution.

Anyone know of other projects out there like this?

</comment><comment><USER2> i'd be interested to see what model has been used for having the NLP plant part! Cool!!</comment>


Microsoft Hit with $2M Judgment in Sexual Harassment Case - <AUTHOR> http://www.schwartzandperry.com/Blog/2014/October/Microsoft-Hit-with-2-Million-Judgment-in-Sexual-.aspx <comment><AUTHOR> Happened in Oct 2014 but the title was too long.

Here is a link for the amended petition.

[http://www.thenationaltriallawyers.org/2014/05/amended- petit...](http://www.thenationaltriallawyers.org/2014/05/amended-petition-in- mercieca-v-microsoft/)</comment>


Reform capitalism or face revolution - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-milken-conference-ray-dalio-20190502-story.html <comment><USER2> The problem with the idea of "revolution" is that it assumes that some group, however small or large, has the panacea for fixing things up or maybe worse, the willingness to destroy things and find out what to build in place as time goes.

But no one can guarantee a revolution will improve things in any measurable capacity. The risk therefore, is enourmous. And in the process, people suffer, die and things can become permanently worse.

I believe than in the face of a problem, a slower pace of experimentations and careful, but meaningful changes are a safer and probably more effective approach.

<comment><USER3> Rich and powerful people will never accept even the most of the "slower pace of experimentations". Nothing of value was obtained without blood, unfortunately

<comment><USER2> "Nothing of value was obtained without blood, unfortunately"

That's a pretty big statement and completely false. Every single day things of great value are obtained without blood.

One thing people could do to change things politically is not to comply collectively, pressure the government via social media, protest peacefully and firmly etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are cooler heads like Warren Buffett that have been telling this for what, decades?

<comment><USER5> ... Like Warren Buffet? He has the choice of doing the right thing. And what does he do?

This.

[https://publicintegrity.org/business/warren-buffetts- mobile-...](https://publicintegrity.org/business/warren-buffetts-mobile-home- empire-preys-on-the-poor/)

[https://thehustle.co/mobile-homes-real-eastate- scam/](https://thehustle.co/mobile-homes-real-eastate-scam/)

[https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times- watchdog/buf...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times- watchdog/buffetts-mobile-home-empire-makes-record-profits-while-foreclosing- on-8444-homes/)

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

<comment><USER6> He's definitely part of the problem, and not part the solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is there any indication that people actually understand (and can mathematically demonstrate) how to fix this, or are all suggestions going to be based on economic or political ideologies?

I'm not an expert, and I've heard many times the thought that macroeconomics is simply too complex for anybody to understand, so you constantly retreat back to "my political tribe vs your political tribe" instead of treating this as an well understood equation that has many perfectly valid solutions that can be explored.

<comment><USER8> It's less of a "tribe" thing and more of an analysis of material conditions. People don't break out the guillotines if their lives are stable and their material needs are adequately taken care of; if they don't think there is something better on the other end of the blood bath.

The same way people don't join unions if they think they will make less money because of their union dues. They do these things as a means to improving their material conditions.

The problem is that one "tribe"'s material conditions are at the expense of the others. You can't increase wages without decreasing profit. So the profiting "tribe" is at odds with the wage "tribe".

I'm scare-quoting "tribe" because the traditional word is class which we've had ironed out of us over the last 40 years. This is class struggle and has existed for a long time.

<comment><USER7> Is it safe to say that, if the conditions of the lower and middle class are perfectly favorable, people are living healthy, productive, happy lives and there is upwards mobility for those who are willing to do whatever it takes to dedicate their lives to it, then wealth inequality in and of itself isn't the thing we need to optimize for?

Wealth inequality seems like a proxy metric for "the lower classes are struggling". Is the correlation (or causation?) between the two well established?

<comment><USER9> In general, people will put up with a lot of governmental issues so long as their own personal lives are fine. There are still issues with wealth inequality leading to some groups having an outsized influence in government which is a concern.

<comment><USER7> That's totally fair. Is there a way to separate wealth inequality from power inequality? e.g. Let's say I'm ok with Steve Jobs hoarding billions of he creates something game-changing for society over decades of starting/running a business, as long as that doesn't mean his vote is more important than that of an entire state.

Does this boil down to the fact that, in the current political system, wealth can be traded for political power, and if that exchange didn't exist, then wealth wouldn't be an issue in the first place?

<comment><USER10> >> Is there a way to separate wealth inequality from power inequality?

Why does money buy power? As state control expands and authoritarian thinking is embraced by both parties in the United States, there is more centralized power TO purchase.

It is in everyone's best interest at the top (politicians and billionaires alike) that government continues to expand the size and scope of their aims, while keeping taxes low. Not so much for the average and poor people, but this seems obvious.

<comment><USER11> By saying that "both parties" are embracing authoritarianism, all you are doing is being useful to the clearly, unabashedly authoritarian party currently busy consolidating its power.

It's just empirically untrue propaganda.

<comment><USER10> Knocking down strawmen left and right, I'm impressed. Or just the strawmen on your right in this case, I guess.

Both turn to authoritarianism to solve their problems. One party just happens to be more moral in doing so. That makes them preferable, somewhat. But friendly to libertarianism, neither party is, and calling it for what it is doesn't make me an ally of anyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Contrary to the belief of progressive billionaires, I think the reform of capitalism will come in form of local "soft socialism". Localism just makes sense and can be accepted by both left and right-wing people.

</comment><comment><USER13> People who write this stuff don't have a clue how revolutions work actually work.

</comment><comment><USER14> Must have been an awkward position to be in, when you tell the billionaires who pay you to research history for them, that things don't often work out well for them.

On a serious note though:

• 2017: "Huge Human Inequality Study Hints Revolution is in Store for U.S." [https://www.inverse.com/article/38457-inequality-study- natur...](https://www.inverse.com/article/38457-inequality-study-nature- revolution)

• 2015: "PAUL TUDOR JONES: Income inequality will end in revolution, taxes, or war" [https://www.businessinsider.com/paul-tudor-jones-on- inequali...](https://www.businessinsider.com/paul-tudor-jones-on- inequality-2015-3)

• 2013: "History tells us where the wealth gap leads" [https://aeon.co/essays/history-tells-us-where-the-wealth- gap...](https://aeon.co/essays/history-tells-us-where-the-wealth-gap-leads)

<comment><USER15> All those studies base there idea on revolutions long long time ago. Now we have high tech war machines and high tech spying software and machines.

Where you needed ten loyal people to keep 100 to not revolt, you now just need 1 to keep 10.000 silent.

I think the time for revolution is over.

<comment><USER16> _> high tech ... I think the time for revolution is over._

Ironically, not even 10 years ago we were having exactly the opposite conversation [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring)

<comment><USER10> Not in the country that is relevant to this post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> +1 for revolution. We cannot fix capitalism or we will not fix capitalism.

<comment><USER18> We won't fix capitalism, because capitalism doesn't need to be fixed.

<comment><USER19> lolwut

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I keep seeing this drummed up, but at the same time global stats show that we are living collectively and individually in the most prosperous time in human history, with record low rates of poverty. The divide between rich, poor and middle class are largely led by one thing...stock holdings, among other volatile assets (though this is not what the media reports, I mean most of them are public companies.) I feel like Joseph Schumpeter warned about this.

In the end, I think unlike most of the more radical ideas that are anti-market out there...people mostly just want better social safety nets. That's not a "reform" of capitalism, that's a reform of government.

<comment><USER21> Mean != 10%ile.

Mean != 50%ile.

Sufficience for the poorest (or at least the bottom half generally) is necessary.

<comment><USER20> Global poverty is at an all time low, hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty in the past decade alone.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/19/world-bank-global-poverty- ra...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/19/world-bank-global-poverty-rate-drops- to-record-low.html)

<comment><USER21> That's talking mostly cross-purposes.

Inequality is most socially acute within a given society, culture, or country. And inequality, poverty, and social precariousness have been escallating in the US and other generally more advanced countries.

Most global poverty alleviation has occurred in one country and one country only: China. The _level_ of poverty alleviation is also based on an extreme measure -- dollars per day ($27/day is $10k/yr). Which, yes, makes a tremendous difference, but it's not as if we're talking about middle-class lifestyles.

There's a whole host of other issues with the "the world is a better place" story -- yes, there is some truth to it, but if that's the beginning and ending of your argument, you've left out one hell of a lot of salient points. Many of which are causing very real pain for people across the advanced world, as their reality falls far short of their expectations. That is the sort of thing which can become exceptionally destabilising socially and politically.

And has.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What happened to the front page mobile CSS? - <AUTHOR> On my iPhone the front page of HN seems to lost its mobile CSS. <comment><USER2> This post title has caused it:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20341855](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20341855)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, I see now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Shameless plug: you know what doesn't rely on faulty style sheets? Native apps! Give Octal for iOS a shot.

[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/octal/id1308885491](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/octal/id1308885491)

</comment><comment><USER4> I noticed it also, small text. (iPhone)

<comment><USER4> Seems fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Also in Firefox, on Android.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes, on my iPhone as well!</comment>


Ask HN: HN Badges for sale? - <AUTHOR>

I've been on HN for quite sometime, it is probably my most frequented aggregator. What keeps me hooked is the quality of comments and the content.<p>So it crossed my mind, what if I am in a public space(small town bar, airport etc) and I can know if some person around is from HN community then may be we can have a chat about some relevant topic.
So a badge worn on bag etc will be helpful? or How about an app to wear virtual badges, and people can see around what kind of folks are in their vicinity. Then have an online chat and if interested meetup too. <comment><USER2> I think this would be really cool. I've found that anyone who i've met IRL and is a HN reader we're at least a little bit interesting</comment>


Reddit Presents: Upvoted - <AUTHOR> http://upvoted.com <comment><USER2> I sold upvoted.com to Alexis Ohanian earlier this year. I'm glad it's not just a redirect anymore!

I wanted to do something cool with it but never did. Then one day I got an email from an assistant of Alexis Ohanian's asking to sell it cheap for his little school project :P

I knew he was just trying to avoid being gouged, so I offered to sell it to Alexis for his initial asking price, if he'd give me a meeting and some feedback on my startup. He agreed and we had a good meeting. He gave my co- founder and I some genuinely usable advice, and technically funded our bootstrapped startup ([https://portal.cloud](https://portal.cloud)) for a few weeks there.

<comment><USER3> Thanks again! Let's have another date. Email me!

edit: Update: It's happening!!!!!! Thanks, HN.

<comment><USER4> @alexis Why on a wordpress VIP?

[http://ajean.net/reddits-news-website-upvoted-com/](http://ajean.net/reddits- news-website-upvoted-com/)

<comment><USER5> Wordpress is an extremely new framework, so it will be new to a lot of developers, but it provides an extremely performant developer friendly product. One drawback is that it is highly specialized, so it only had a few applications but luckily upvoted fits into this niche. Hosting is really still a problem as their is a lack of providers and a steep complexity curve. No one has really provided a flexible way to host a platform like wordpress and coupled with the lack of maturity and bleeding edge nature it makes sense that they went with a managed hosting service. Even as new as the organization is, they have a great array of security products and plugins which will certainly shield it from the less scrupulous users. This is going to likely be the first major company using wordpress, but I bet it could be a platform that will underpin a large percentage of websites.

<comment><USER6> > Wordpress is an extremely new framework

Unless we're thinking of two very different blogging platforms, Wordpress is pretty much exactly the opposite of "extremely new". Can you please elaborate on why you consider it to be extremely new and unfamiliar to a lot of developers?

> steep complexity curve

Brought on by the basic insecurity of the Wordpress blogging platform. Executable PHP in the Database, as a single example...

> No one has really provided a flexible way to host a platform like wordpress

Sorry? Wordpress hosts have been around for years, again, I'm really not understanding what you're trying to convey here.

> This is going to likely be the first major company using wordpress

You mean, aside from just about everybody; Wired coming to mind as a recent, big example.

I feel like I'm really missing some context here.

EDIT: Satire. Got it. Of course, then there's the question of whether the +1 response by heathwblack is also satire, or... :D

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I am sorry. I hardly ever make comments like this and it is doubly dubious because I lost my account recently, but this was meant to be satire. When the PM responded, I couldn't help myself but double down.

My account is new so it does look like a straight troll account but I was just having a bit of fun. TBH, as I stated in another comment ITT, wordpress provides a really easy way to test out this concept. I expanded my thoughts on the concept in that comment, but as to wordpress:

I bet reddit is just getting crushed with improvements and the engineering team is overworked. It is really easy and inexpensive to test this concept out without losing developer bandwith. wordpress provides a pretty good CMS (obviously bloated, [standard other wordpress criticsims], etc.) but they can get a tight feedback cycle on this idea and it could successful, but if not, will not be resource intensive.

I generally wish them the best of luck, they need something to work at a monetization level, and I hope this helps as it likely is not the long term solution.

I had a rough first experience with wordpress for a client recently and I just had to vent.

<comment><USER6> OK. I appreciate the response; I've had my own issues and thus jumped to a totally WTF response. Looking upon it as satire makes much more sense. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There was a recent allegation that the Reddit administration had encouraged vote brigading with Tom Hanks' comments: [http://i.imgur.com/Obafhpc.png](http://i.imgur.com/Obafhpc.png)

From the looks of the Upvoted front page, looks like they're doing it as a content marketing strategy, which doesn't bode well. Also, it seems like a BuzzFeed clone, which Redditors _despise_.

(Disclosure: although I have done a LOT of work analyzing Reddit [[http://minimaxir.com/2015/10/reddit- bigquery/](http://minimaxir.com/2015/10/reddit-bigquery/)], I have not been approached to write anything for Upvoted)

<comment><USER8> > Also, it seems like a BuzzFeed clone, which Redditors despise.

Primarily because Buzzfeed just copy-pastes content from Reddit with minimal credit. Upvoted at least looks to be providing genuinely improved-upon content with strong attribution linkage. To me, it gets rid of a lot of the scuzzy- ness associated with Buzzfeed, so I'm all for it.

<comment><USER9> It tastes pretty bland and artificial to me. For example, this [1] post is fluffy in the most aesthetically offensive, buzzfeedy way:

* It doesn't link back to Reddit

* There's no context

* It's glib, impersonal and bland

* It has an unnecessary illustration

* It adds nothing to the original content

Contrast this with what I presume is a comment from Tom Hanks about what his perfect sandwich is. _That 's_ meaningful.

[1] [http://upvoted.com/2015/10/03/perfect-sandwich-tom-hanks- red...](http://upvoted.com/2015/10/03/perfect-sandwich-tom-hanks-reddit/)

<comment><USER10> Agreed. This is an 8-word tumblr post stretched out to be an entire "article" of content.

I honestly see no value added with any of the articles I looked at. Every single one could be replaced with links to reddit comments, maybe with some quotes of the reddit comments, and the images down at the bottom.

It's a little less sensationalist than Buzzfeed, and I'd rather look at this than Buzzfeed, but I really don't want to use either of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have been pretty critical of reddit lately, but there was a time when I really enjoyed using it and it does provide a ton of value to many people. It is a great website in a very difficult situation due to the community culture ( _very_ anti-corporate/advertising mentality), diversity of users and content ownership issues. On a real level, the site is pretty awesome. I want to see them succeed because sub-communities and even the organization have stood for an opened internet and positive things.

I think upvoted looks really sleek and I hope it is successful, but they really need a way to monetize and it is a really hard problem to solve. Obviously, using a widely supported mature CMS like wordpress makes it easy to produce content with minimal effort and cost but that has been reddit users largest gripe. Upvoted is a curator/aggregator built on top of a curator/aggregator, which is weird. Reddit's success and problems stem from providing the long tail of content, allowing diverse topics and communities to be covered while allowing globally popular things to float to the top. This means that there is rarely community consensus, so while upvoted has little risk as it is cheap to make, I can't see it providing much financial support for the company.

In all honesty though, I wish them the best of luck and hope to see them do cool and intersting things in the future. Obviously, improving the search would be a great start because Google is an awesome search engine, but for content discovery and curation, Reddit is doing a great job. Best of luck guys and sorry about the sarcastic comments about Wordpress and PHP, it really is a good way to quickly test out something like upvoted without significant dev reources and is a good content management system, edit: [if used correctly]

<comment><USER11> I think the Reddit execs see other aggregators just ripping off things that were popular on Reddit[0] and thinking that they are missing out on a potential revenue source.

Their user base seems to really dislike this move[1], but it seems to be more of an expansion to get users that don't normally use Reddit. I imagine users of Upvoted will be people that would normally use Buzzfeed or 9gag, probably largely disjoint from the actual Reddit community.

[0] [https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditSimMeta/comments/3fnkni/9g...](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditSimMeta/comments/3fnkni/9gag_is_automatically_copying_some_of_the_most/)

[1] 45% upvoted at time of posting: [https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/3npxm4/introducing_up...](https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/3npxm4/introducing_upvoted_a_redditorial_publication/)

<comment><USER12> If it's going to get snagged and distributed through blog and news networks they might as well try to be the first to do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think this is a brilliant move.

To all those saying whether or not current redditors will use it: that's not the point. This is Reddit attempting to use the content users generate on the platform for the 99% of people who don't use Reddit. Call it buzzfeed if you want, an absurd amount of people use buzzfeed.

So long as Reddit and Upvoted are separate, I think it makes a ton of sense.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. Yep, they're separate, but based on the success of the Upvoted podcast and newsletter over this year, we definitely see the potential of upvoted.com to be a gateway to get new users into Reddit. One reason why, for instance, we have a link to a comment section on r/upvoted at the bottom of every article (each Upvoted.com gets automatically submitted to r/upvoted upon posting).

<comment><USER14> Yo Alexis - was the main logic behind starting this the fact that so many other sites are using Reddit UGC to drive their content machines (and thus revenues)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> [http://www.redditblog.com/2015/10/introducing-upvoted- reddit...](http://www.redditblog.com/2015/10/introducing-upvoted- redditorial.html) actually explains what it is and might be a more informative link.

<comment><USER3> Thanks and here is my welcome note: [http://upvoted.com/2015/10/06/a-redditorial- publication/](http://upvoted.com/2015/10/06/a-redditorial-publication/)

<comment><USER15> Oops, I did see that first but my initial uncaffeinated impression was that it was the intro for advertisers rather than users, what with the open rates and the click throughs and the numbers.

One the more entertaining/interesting things about original subreddit content is that it often gets fleshed out, corrected (occasionally to a full 180˚) and otherwise improved by further contributions. I'm curious how upvoted deals with that. Perhaps your editor could do an AMA sometime after things settle down post-launch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Looks like Buzzfeed and every other online clickbait publication.

<comment><USER17> That's the idea behind it. Though Buzzfeed actually have a news branch with actual journalists behind it based in west-coast & east-coast. I was interviewed by a couple of them and it was a pleasant experience. I don't know if upvoted is planning on hiring journalists on staff. May be Alexis can tell us more here.

<comment><USER3> We have an awesome Editor, Vickie Chang, who manages a small team of staff writers and freelancers: [http://upvoted.com/contributors/](http://upvoted.com/contributors/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is this Reddit trying to take itself more seriously? It's almost like a mask layer to obfuscate the hive mind. I'm curious how the content is created, how something is featured, etc.

<comment><USER3> It's a way to follow up on stories that bubble up on Reddit's frontpages and give them more depth. 202M+ people can do a great job surfacing and discussing content in real-time, but our awesome editor, Vickie, and her team can do a much more effective job following up on those stories, interviewing, and adding more substance.

E.g.,

This photo of an unemployed man handing out resumes went to the top of r/pics: [https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3kc1sh/this_man_lost_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3kc1sh/this_man_lost_his_job_and_is_struggling_to/)

We interviewed the guy pictured + wrote about it: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Upvoted/comments/3kxp7q/bottom_of_t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Upvoted/comments/3kxp7q/bottom_of_the_ninth_why_this_unemployed_father/)

Then a week later a photo of the guy (now with a job) topped on r/pics again and a random redditor linked to our story to provide context for everyone on the thread:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3lv1b3/way_to_go_redd...](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3lv1b3/way_to_go_reddit_you_helped_the_guy_passing_out/cv9lojy)

This was back when we just posted as selfposts to r/upvoted, so I suspect that same article in a beautiful blog layout: [http://upvoted.com/2015/10/03/donnie-grooms-unemployed- busch...](http://upvoted.com/2015/10/03/donnie-grooms-unemployed-busch- stadium-resume/)

Would do even better and reach even more people!

<comment><USER19> Internet now is only about the moment. The momentum sometimes last less than a second.Transform those seconds, in a story, could be useful and remarkable. I hope you succeed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> For anyone confused about why this exists: [http://upvoted.com/advertise/](http://upvoted.com/advertise/)

<comment><USER21> A safe place to generate ad revenue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> So this feels like a way of obfuscating comments and some of the less appealing aspects of the reddit community, while turning it into a buzzfeed style community. It feels like a prettier version of [http://thisisthe.link/](http://thisisthe.link/)

<comment><USER3> Every article posted to upvoted.com gets submitted to [http://reddit.com/r/upvoted](http://reddit.com/r/upvoted) with a link at the bottom of said article.

We were not going to put facebook comments an DEFINITELY not going to take devs away from all the work they've been doing on mod/community tools ([http://reddit.com/r/modnews](http://reddit.com/r/modnews)), alien blue, and infrastructure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Looks nice, functions nicely, I can see what they are doing but it's just not for me. Content appears pretty shallow at a brief browse through it all, buzzfeed esque.

<comment><USER24> Agreed. But from what I see through my social media, a large majority love the shallow content. Instagram is filled with highly-followed users that just repost curated reddit content (fuckjerry, thefatjewish, etc), it's obviously filling a large niche.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I feel that normal Reddit users are going to hate this for the most part because it does a lot of the same things that BuzzFeed does in that it takes content from Reddit presents it in a somewhat dumbed-down, clickbait way. However, I don't think this is a problem. Upvoted is not supposed to be for Redditors, it's supposed to be for a different audience who isn't yet ready for Reddit. It's going to capture at least some of the traffic that usually lands on other clickbait sites which take content from Reddit, and it's going to allow them to monetize.

<comment><USER26> yes. and nobody cares.

they already have the normal reddit user.

they want the rest now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Publications like BuzzFeed have been making money off of Reddit's content, or at least content discovered on Reddit, for years. Makes sense Reddit would want to capture some of that value.

<comment><USER28> Maybe I'm mistaken, but it seems to me that Reddit would be much better off as a dontation-based non-profit. It seems ethical that nobody should make money off of user-generated content except the users are compensated for their time (which is unpractical); at least not beyond what's necessary to keep the system up and running and occasionally add handy features to it. I bet the amount of time it takes to develop and run Reddit fades in face of the collective amount of time there is spent on creating and curating content by millions of people. I'm actually surprised that none of the comments here are touching on this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Another Buzzfeed-y content site? Meh.

What I would actually like to see:

Have journalists contact Redditors who post interesting stories for interviews to write up more fully fleshed stories.

A lot of Redditors post really interesting stories about their experiences, businesses etc. It'd be super cool to read more about it.

<comment><USER30> That sounds like what they might be doing: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10341384](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10341384)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Nice. The thing I don't like about Reddit itself is that it's hard to find what each article is actually about, and most of the time it's some in- jokey/meme-y stuff I wouldn't have bothered with if I'd been able to see even one image or quote. Finding _quality_ content there is hard; if I wanted to spend that much time separating wheat from chaff I might as well try Google+. Upvoted looks like a much more accessible way to get some light reading/entertainment done. Good idea, and AFAICT so far a good implementation.

</comment><comment><USER32> Here's a question I have; reddit is full of liars. What efforts are the Upvoted staff making to verify stuff that appears on reddit before bringing it over to Upvoted?

<comment><USER26> they will do nothing, because they are not journalists.

"The newsletter has hundreds of thousands of subscribers that wake up each Sunday to enjoy a curated digest in their inbox. Last month, we started posting original content directly to r/upvoted, including an interview with the guy handing out his resume at Busch Stadium. The subreddit amassed its highest traffic with over 700,000 unique visitors. With Upvoted, editorial, original video, podcasts, and graphic art have a place to thrive and tell Reddit's tales in the most creative ways possible." \-- [http://www.redditblog.com/2015/10/introducing-upvoted- reddit...](http://www.redditblog.com/2015/10/introducing-upvoted- redditorial.html)

it is nothing more than a pretty RSS feed with a little curation and images, linking to all the lies that are business as usual on reddit.

<comment><USER33> I said this in another comment, but based on what Alexis said here, it seems like there might actually be staffers (reporters) doing additional research into the stories as they appear on upvoted.com.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm not sure what this site is supposed to be for: Is it (a) to generate more ad revenue for reddit to be finally self-sustaining or (b) an attempt to come up to the expectations of Reddit's VC shareholders (i.e. a separate startup to generate more revenue than necessary for self-sustenance).

</comment><comment><USER34> Can't really like this, but at least it has the virtue of containing the kind of stuff that happened to digg.

Whatever happens, I'm really with reddit in light of all the controversies that surrounded it. I really have a high esteem of community driven websites who can be user-oriented and still grow and attract more users. It's not an easy task. I'm sure there must be some kind of game theory around it if you want to keep it going. Making balanced rules for such a website might be no easy thing.

Some call it "plebeian" but I think it's still a very good website if you don't focus too much on the default subreddits. I will never be able to wrap my head around the 4chan UI, even if it has an attractive community.

</comment><comment><USER35> It's interesting to me that between this and Apple's news app that we're steering to a less-social-engagement centric model for news presentation. One new way to save myself from looking at the comments.

</comment><comment><USER36> I can't quite put my finger on it but this feels like one of them websites someone will share on Facebook and I'll tell Facebook never to show me anything from that domain again. I'm sure those sites are making lots of money though and are getting shared because people like them, so they'll probably do way better with it than I expect.

</comment><comment><USER37> The most bizarre thing about this is that it's all over HN and voat, but I can't find any mention of it on reddit.

<comment><USER38> It's there, it's just been downvoted to 0 because they don't like it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Unidan lives!!

[http://upvoted.com/2015/10/03/bizarre-beasts-with-unidan- the...](http://upvoted.com/2015/10/03/bizarre-beasts-with-unidan-the-numbat/)

</comment><comment><USER40> Sad that The Redditor didn't work out: [http://www.theredditor.com/](http://www.theredditor.com/)

<comment><USER23> Never sure what the point of having it as a PDF is apart from being able to print it nicely which has got to be a minority, especially considering it's thick and colourful.

<comment><USER41> There's previously been a PDF-based collection of HN stories/comments too.

<comment><USER42> [http://hackermonthly.com/](http://hackermonthly.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Looks like it's a Wordpress blog: [http://upvoted.com/wp- admin](http://upvoted.com/wp-admin)

<comment><USER7> For this use case, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a WordPress blog.

<comment><USER44> There may be. WordPress is not ironclad and Reddit is a big target.

At the very least, there's value in whitelisting IP access to the wp-admin login.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Looks like a "portal site", which were popular in the 90s.

</comment><comment><USER46> Upvoted! -- The Fisher Price (R) of Reddit!!

</comment><comment><USER47> Is that ordinary Wordpress site?

<comment><USER48> wordpress.com it appears /wp-admin redirect to [https://redditupvoted.wordpress.com](https://redditupvoted.wordpress.com)

the footer: Powered by WordPress.com VIP

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> This looks awesome but I am scared to keep it open for too long as it looks like an even bigger time sink than Reddit.

</comment><comment><USER50> why no https? Even reddit itself is on https.

</comment><comment><USER51> how did you get a .cloud domain?</comment>


The spaceship reinvented for new frontiers - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/08/tech/innovation/spaceship-reinvented/index.html?hpt=hp_c3 <comment><USER2> "Progress has been steady, with day-to-day work on readying SABRE for test flights that Bond says could take place as early as 2018. [...] The ESA has also praised the economic model, claiming the Skylon could meet its launch cost target of €70 million ($94 million)"

SpaceX is _already_ making launches for cheaper than that[0] (even though their manifest is already full until sometime in 2016) and hopes to be able to lower their costs by up to 90% with their reusable launch system program over the next few years.

Skylon may be a great idea, and if they were 5 years ahead of where they are now then I'd be really excited for them. But if they're still 4 years away from flight tests after 30 years of development, and will be behind where the competition are _now_ when they get there, I for one am not as impressed as the ESA is with their economic model.

[0] [http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities](http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities)</comment>


Remind HN: Last Chance for Copyright Consultation Canada - <AUTHOR>

Today is the last chance to send in your opinion on Canadian Copyright law reform. Email to firstname.lastname@example.com . More info: http://faircopy.ca/participate/ <comment><AUTHOR> My letter can be found here: [http://christopherolah.wordpress.com/2009/09/12/my-letter- to...](http://christopherolah.wordpress.com/2009/09/12/my-letter-to-the- canadien-copyright-consultation/) Feedback is appreciated. It hasn't been sent yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sent now.</comment></comment>


Riot Hack Night #1 - bieber.ly - <AUTHOR> http://bieber.ly/

<comment><USER2> Try some beiber with bacon!

<http://bieber.ly/2bcf>

<comment><USER3> I believe you confused this site with Reddit.

Nothing against Reddit. I like it quite much. It's just another site with a different culture.

EDIT: I concede my up-tightness and leave the comment here for historical reference. Good night to all involved.

<comment><USER2> My apologies gnufs! I shall never again desecrate the hacker culture by injecting bacon into a justin beiber thread again. My Bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> is this simply a url shortener, or should i be expecting more bieber to pop out somewhere?

<comment><USER5> haha, indeed: <http://bieber.ly/67ec>

<comment><USER4> Oh, alright. I tried it before making my original post, but didn't see the bieber. I do now, though. lol</comment></comment></comment>


The Death of Ruby? Developers Should Learn These Languages Instead - <AUTHOR> https://cacm.acm.org/news/219981-the-death-of-ruby-developers-should-learn-these-languages-instead/fulltext <comment><USER2> Direct link to article: [http://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-death-of- ruby-develo...](http://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-death-of-ruby- developers-should-learn-these-languages-instead/)

</comment><comment><USER3> A professor is not a good expert for this.

</comment><comment><USER4> How come it says the popularity of Ruby has plummeted?

<comment><USER5> According to the article they're basing it on job postings and stack overflow questions. Doesn't seem like a great methodology but I can't think of a better one.

<comment><USER6> StackOverflow already covers a great part of the possible (most common) Ruby related questions. I'm not surprised there aren't so much new ones in the last 1-3 years. About job postings, I don't know, I still get an average of 3-5 ruby job opportunities per week from recruiters. The same goes for several ruby devs I know. On the other hand, I see a lot of people switching to other new languages/stacks for several reasons (some of which are mentioned in the article). I'm one of them, but I still use ruby when it might fit the job (or is a requirement).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> People have been saying this for 5 years.</comment>


Perils of Credentialism - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.adventnet.com/svembu/2007/04/26/perils-of-credentialism-mit-example/

<comment><USER2> > _To maintain intellectual honesty and consistency, MIT should announce that > it would henceforth stop requiring formal credentials in evaluating > candidates for this and other similar jobs. In other words, future > candidates like her, who feel confident in their ability to perform the job, > shouldn't feel the need to invent degrees on their resumes. Come on, you may > say, how are they supposed to find out who is a good candidate and who is > bad. Well, they hired her based on an invented degree, didn't they? Didn't > she work out OK for 28 years? Then why pretend that the degree was actually > needed in order for her to perform her job?_

Exactly. I do have an answer for that, however: If they didn't require degrees for the job, they would undermine their own degree-selling business.

A majority of college students are in college because a degree is supposed to help them get some unspecified job, sometime later, out of a job pool which purports to pay better on average than the jobs that let you in based on mere ability.

In effect, colleges have taken on some of the characteristics of shady employment and modelling agencies, the ones that tell candidates to pay a fee and they'll help them get placed. We always hear how the legitimate ones don't charge fees in advance.

If college was only about teaching people what they desired to learn, enrollment might drop by an order of magnitude or more. Like any business, it wants to grow, and so they find ways to market themselves ("you need a degree to get a good job!") and arrange guaranteed contracts for themselves (encouraging you to take on debt) to further their own interests, not yours. Hence they tack on mandatory fees for all sorts of things you may not want and they establish mandatory requirements in _quantity_ of "units" (as if 3 "units" of English or Computer Science makes any sense). Required classes are essentially a jobs program for professors of the less-popular subjects, guaranteeing enough sign-ups to keep the money rolling in for people who would otherwise be unemployable in that capacity.

You can learn _most_ academic subjects out of the book. Having someone read the book at you and write a few phrases from the book on a chalkboard doesn't add information. All it takes is a tiny bit of initiative on your part to learn it on your own without someone else telling you to do it.

If you don't have that initiative, it's probably because you spent K through 12 always waiting to be told what to do by someone else. The usual classroom method is generally inefficient and it purposely stops you from developing self-direction. Why? Because a good employee needs to do what s/he's told and take direction from a "superior". They don't want you to be self-directed -- how's a megacorp going to exist if there're a million little start-ups running around?

<comment><USER3> >If they didn't require degrees for the job, they would undermine their own degree-selling business.

Ding Ding Ding!

When we all realize that in a large way, higher education is a sham, we'll all be better off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another telling anecdote: I was watching graduation a couple months back, and before they hand each person the degree the dean says, "I confer upon you this degree with all the rights and privileges associated with it." Last time I checked, in America a degree conferred no special rights or privileges. I love though how they look you in the eyes and lie to you while they're handing you the degree. Classy.

<comment><USER5> Actually, the dean didn't lie. He never said that the number of those rights and privileges is more than zero.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can take the argument that credentials don't tell the whole story. In fact, I think Marilee Jones pretty much changed the face of college admissions (in a good way). Also, she let me in, which means I owe her a pretty large debt...

However, it's really tough to argue for Marilee Jones' job in this situation. She had decades to tell someone that she had falsified her resume and chose not to. Instead, she was found out by some 3rd party and everyone acted in order to save face. MIT fired her, but let her resign. She admitted to lying, but blamed it on a youthful mistake when it was really a continual withholding of information she knew to be pertinent. I suspect had she admitted this wrong doing a long time ago, and without the threat of a PR nightmare from an outsider's expose, she might still have a job now.

</comment><comment><USER7> Here are some related posts I made to that: [http://blogs.adventnet.com/svembu/2006/02/23/the-perils- of-c...](http://blogs.adventnet.com/svembu/2006/02/23/the-perils-of- credentialism/)

And this series may be particularly interesting to Y Combinator hackers. I wonder aloud whether college is really a placebo (note that placebo has _real_ medical value!) [http://blogs.adventnet.com/svembu/2005/11/03/college- educati...](http://blogs.adventnet.com/svembu/2005/11/03/college-education- and-the-placebo-effect/)

[http://blogs.adventnet.com/svembu/2005/11/17/college- educati...](http://blogs.adventnet.com/svembu/2005/11/17/college-education-as- placebo-part-2/)</comment>


The Sunk Cost Fallacy - <AUTHOR> http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/03/25/the-sunk-cost-fallacy/

<comment><USER2> Love it. Brilliantly done article.

Growing up, the sage advice I remember most from my dad was "the law of sunken treasure" and the sunk cost fallacy.

The emotions that invariably underpin...every...thing are incredible. For better or worse, they certainly taint our otherwise rationale (sense of) judgment.

And being able to most clearly draw a distinction between latent emotion and more conscious rationale gives someone an enormous edge.

Wins and losses, and the perception and power of them, respectively is so strong, that despite almost always erroneous, is accepted as a fata compli of illogic and error by even the most seasoned and expert of gamblers.</comment>


Show HN: Same Day Tech Support for Your Parents - <AUTHOR> Help Button is a marketplace that connects folks age 45+ who are having trouble using software with digital natives who can help them.
So when your Mom asks you how to create an Apple Photobook, you can send her to www.gethelpbutton.com, where she'll push a big blue "help button" and get a call the same day from a digital native who'll help her out over the phone, by screensharing, or by remotely controlling her desktop.
www.gethelpbutton.com <comment><USER2> Interesting idea. Am I signing up on behalf of someone else and creating some sort of account for them? It might be good to show what the experience will be like for the recipient with a video. If a technically challenged person expected to sign up for their own account I don't think it's intuitive enough; I wouldn't send someone to the homepage to navigate on their own.</comment>


Ask HN: Dev Bootcamp sounds great - but what about visa when finished? - <AUTHOR> I'm a software developer with almost 5 years of professional experience and both a Bachelor and a Master in Computer Science. In the past year and a half, I've been working as an iOS developer in London. I'm now considering moving to the Bay Area and I would love to apply for the dev bootcamp (http://devbootcamp.com/), where I would learn Ruby On Rails. I think this would be a great complement to my background, assuming I could get a spot, but I have a major problem: getting a visa when the bootcamp is finished! As an european citizen, I need a visa to live/work in the US. As far as I understand, in order to work in the US, I need a H1B visa, but these will probably be exhausted by July 2012. The next bootcamp will be finished in December, so I could only apply for a visa in April 2013, which means I would be unemployed until October 2013! In conclusion, my plan to join the dev bootcamp sounds unrealistic, unless I'm missing something. The only alternative I could see is getting hired now with a sponsored visa and start working in December/January, which is something I doubt a company would agree.
Does anyone have any thoughts/experience with this? Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> 1\. You probably won't get a visa to do devbootcamp (Since its educational it would require an F visa (devbootcamp can't help you). 2\. With a BSc and and MSc in CS devbootcamp is not going to be of any use for you, get a book and a mentor and learn Rails yourself. 3\. Companies can petition for your H1 for a future date no worries as long as the cap has not been exhausted, it is a regular occurrence. The problem will most certainly be how companies can accurately judge your abilities remotely. (People have cheated often on technical video conference interviews before)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comments. I agree that I can learn Rails myself, but I assume the dev bootcamp would be a good proof that I actually know it and I assume I could learn more in less time. Besides, if I learn it myself, I could come up with an idea and build a web app, but would that be enough for a company to consider me (specially when there are probably many developers already with professional experience trying to move to the Bay Area)?

About the H1 visa, the problem is that, according to what I read on the internet, it's estimated that it will be exhausted by July this year. In the meanwhile, I was also told that J1 visa is a possible alternative, but I haven't investigated that possibility yet.

If a company decides to hire me, but is afraid I might be cheating on a technical video conference, I wouldn't have any problems to go to the US for a face-to-face interview, even if I would have to pay the costs myself, simply because I don't cheat. If they are happy with me on a video conference, I'm sure they would be happy after a face-to-face interview.

<comment><USER3> I think if you learn Rails, build an app in it, and open-source it on GitHub or similar, that would be fairly strong evidence that you know what you're doing.

If I were in your position, I would go to the source ( <http://www.uscis.gov/> ) and examine the visa categories that are available to you. Immigration law is complicated, but not as complicated as, say, the tax code. If you've completed a Masters in CS, you can probably navigate it yourself. Protip: Do not lie or mislead USCIS or USCBP (i.e. customs) as you can be banned from the country easily.

Unfortunately it may be very difficult for you to get a visa to DevBootcamp as it's almost certainly not a SEVP-certified school, so ICE / USCIS won't grant visas to people to attend, and you can't just get a tourist visa if you're intending to study. I would instead learn Rails yourself, start / open source a project, and try to get a job offer here with a company that will help with your visa situation (once you have a job offer, immigration becomes much easier as long as the company is game). I guess my main question becomes, is DevBootcamp the _only_ reason you want to move to the US?

I'm an immigrant from Canada but I'm more familiar with family-based immigration as that's how I came across (fiance visa).

<comment><AUTHOR> Dev Bootcamp is not the only reason I want to move to the US and that's why I posted this question. My main goal is to have an interesting job in the US, but I was in doubt between applying for an iOS developer job from London or go for the dev bootcamp first and then look for a job where I could eventually use my knowledge on iOS and Rails, as I think it would be a good combination. I'm starting to be convinced that I should go for the first option and I'll continue learning Rails on my free time.

<comment><USER4> Yes unfortunately the option to learn on your own and apply for a job in the US is your best bet. Immigration law in the US is very strict and confusing. Focus on getting a good job offer and once you are inside the US, you can try and get your employer to file for your permanent residency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do you have a degree? What field is the degree in?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a BSc and MSc in Computer Science.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you have a Bachelor and Master in Comp. Sc. then you should first give it a shot by trying yourself before entering to Dev Bootcamp. There are several amazing ruby on rails guides and resources which I think you will have no problem to follow putting some time and effort into it. Heck I even can understand ROR up to some extent being from Biotech and Pharma background. First go to railstutorial.org. and try yourself. If you feel you are not motivated enough to pull it off yourself then consider applying for Dev Bootcamp.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice. I just thought there would always be other candidates in front of me with Rails professional experience, so I would always be at the end of the queue. The dev bootcamp would be my strategy for moving further in the queue, but I guess that's not the only way.</comment></comment>


VYou shutting down. - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/29/vyou-shut-down/

<comment><AUTHOR> what do you think they could have done better?</comment>


Ask HN: What a tool to discover indie games should have? - <AUTHOR> As my next side project, I want to build a website that helps people discover good indie games that match their gamer profile.<p>What features, info, UI this tool should have to be useful as an indie game discovery tool? <comment><USER2> Look at Steam's Discovery Queue. Make a better version of that and have it work on mobile. Throw in the features of CheapShark (multiple store price comparison and email alerts are the big ones).

Import my Steam profile data and use that to help seed.

Have it pull from more then one store front but nothing unheard of, stick to sites like Steam, Humble, Gog, itch.io, etc. Don't use G2A.

</comment><comment><USER3> I found this site to be quite good at recommending movies [https://www.taste.io/movies](https://www.taste.io/movies). The actual usage is quite fun as well.</comment>


CEO texts job candidates at odd hours on the weekends - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/ceo-of-barstool-sports-texting-employees-2017-7 <comment><USER2> _" "Here's something I do," she said. "If you're in the process of interviewing with us, I'll text you about something at 9 p.m. or 11 a.m. on a Sunday just to see how fast you'll respond."_

This is also a good way for the prospective employee to understand what kind of work environment they'd be getting into. If the CEO interrupts me on Sunday to tell me something that's not urgent (and what could possibly be urgent if I don't even work there yet?), my response will be, "Sorry, I'm not interested in this job anymore." There, I just escaped a workaholic CEO who thinks that my entire life should belong to her company.

</comment><comment><USER3> She gives some 'advice to college grads' in her interview; here's mine: When you first start out professionally after college, it might seem exciting to work for a boss or a company that demands 'everything' from you. Many company cultures are designed to get you to think of yourself as subordinate and, in some ways, as a child. This makes you more likely to stay on the hamster wheel for the company. But eventually you begin to develop more respect for yourself as a person and as a professional, and just a respect for your own time -- and you get savvy about avoiding these types of bosses/companies. Work smarter, not harder. And get real about the tradeoffs that your employer appears to be asking you to make; if you don't spend time reflecting on what kind of life you really want, you'll end up making those tradeoffs unconsciously without even realizing it.

</comment><comment><USER4> As a millennial, I've fallen into this work martyr trap. After the 2008 recession it was a badge of honor to have a non dead-end job and to always be hustling, to thrive despite the crash and not be a 'loser' who had to move back home. I still can't shake that mentality, and despite how well the market is doing or how good my finances are doing I always feel like being homeless and foreclosed on like my parents is just around the corner

</comment><comment><USER5> This is possibly the stupidest "CEO" ever. Who would want to work there? I work in an extremely high pace startup but our corporate culture dictates that people turn off on the weekend if they want.

</comment><comment><USER6> The article says the CEO is always thinking about work and so should staff.

So ummm how much is the CEO paid vs those workers? Give me 7 figures and I will gladly "always think a lot about work" for a year or two.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'll save you all a click

> CEO thinks about her job constantly and wants young people who do the same. > She will message potential candidates at odd hours and they have 3 hours to > respond.

I personally don't think that she will get far and I'm guessing that most of us on here agree.

</comment><comment><USER8> _" It's really great to feel uncomfortable," she said._

No. No it's not. Perhaps yes if you're a masochist, but for the majority of us it's a no.

No job is worth this.

<comment><USER9> Her job-hopping resume probably shows she enjoys being uncomfortable. Interviewing is like a fun game to play.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good for her

I rarely respond to _any_ message on my phone outside "normal" hours .. with a couple exceptions (one being my wife)

And messages from unknown numbers? They get filed to possibly __never __be responded to (possibly blocked)

<comment><USER11> I feel like this is actually a great idea -

As a night owl,I've noticed people who get up in the morning have life worked out way better than me.

If the ceo text people at 3am, excluded anyone awake to respond, and upmarked anyone who responded before 8, it would be a good cultural fit test for some places!

(I can think of one place that I wish had detected me as ' not likely to attend unofficially mandatory 8am scrums and saved some stress)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sounds like a CEO and company I'd rather avoid.

</comment><comment><USER13> In theory, one might think this just makes you hardcore and productive. In practice, it always seems to be people who are (merely) equally or a little less productive than people who don't work all the time. But the optics is so convicing before you join and early on. As time goes on, you see the truth. I think everyone has this experience at least once.

</comment><comment><USER14> Sounds like a terrible way of doing work. If you are expected to react to everything sent your way you never get to do any deep and meaningful work. Furthermore, running around and firefighting all the time does not give you the time and space require to learn, reflect, and improve. More people need to think about the long term impact of their work habits.

</comment><comment><USER15> Why would you ever want to work there?

</comment><comment><USER16> _" If you're in the process of interviewing with us, I'll text you about something at 9 p.m. or 11 a.m. on a Sunday just to see how fast you'll respond."_

Response: "Please consider my application withdrawn."

</comment><comment><USER17> This is weird. I just don't know, what does it achieve?

If your call someone who is not a founder, during off hours, it is better to be super urgent and means that something went terribly wrong in the management layer.

If you flip the scrk

</comment><comment> siddharth-shah Bleh, whatever. This kind of things doesn't really prove anything.

</comment><comment><USER18> Workaholism without aligned interests (ie, real, founder-class stock for employees, eg a co-op) isn't rational except for people whom sell their whole existence to a company, but that's also a recipe for burnout.

As the basecamp folks said, "Fire the workaholics."</comment>


Hardware, Chairs, and Food: How to make the optimal work environment - <AUTHOR> http://drhod.es/hardware-chairs-food

<comment><USER2> I wonder if Amazon could compete for talent in the Bay Area while having worse perks (and being proud of it), and worse cash compensation (and really expensive equity, so probably worse equity, too).

Working on AWS seems like it could be attractive enough on its own to attract some people, but for anything else, going to an equally low risk big tech company (Facebook, Google) seems like it would be a much better choice. To say nothing of earlier stage high growth companies, or startups.

If so, then being away from the "tech cluster" makes a lot of sense. Even if 90% of tech people would rather be in SFBA than Seattle, winning all of those 10% vs. some small part of the 90% might be a better deal for them. I assume that is part of the reason Microsoft did Redmond.

</comment><comment><USER3> great stimulating A league people. I'd pick that over pizza toppings,a window, chairs or a slow computer. Scratch that last part about the computer, I wont work on anything but a Mac, with as much ram as physically possible. and a SSD.</comment>


Ask HN: Primary contractor wants me to stay on a contract I cannot complete - <AUTHOR> Hi guys, I'm a subcontractor for a very large company (let's call them a client), via a primary contractor which is basically an IT staffing agency (in the Midwest). I worked with the client for over  2 years, however, due to budget cuts, I was assigned to a completely different project. The project seemed like an "ok" fit based on my resume. however, I have since realized I'm way out of my depth and will fail to provide the best service I can provide. The product we're working on has a release date in May, which means deadlines are super tight, and losing a team member will result in a bit of a chaos. The primary contractor told me to stick it out. How do I proceed, I'd rather leave on my own terms than being let go because of my subpar performance, but there is the pressure that I stay since it'll make the primary contractor look bad if I leave. Any advice, what to do? <comment><USER2> _"...but there is the pressure that I stay since it'll make the primary contractor look bad if I leave"_

You need to ask yourself: _why is that my problem_?

Do you want to work with this large company again? Do you want to work with the staffing agency again? If the answer to both of these is either "no", or "not really", or anything less than 100% "yes", then you have permission from this random hackernews to burn the bridges and just _quit_. (If you do want to stay, stop reading here).

Your question doesn't mention any kind of employment contract and you are in the midwest which is pretty much full of at-will states, so...you can quit. You don't even need to give two weeks' notice if you expect the reaction to be hostile. Offer it as a professional courtesy but if they get nasty, pack your stuff and walk out the door.

Don't say anything to anyone in either company, but start brushing up your resume and get out on the street and start looking. You know deep down that the May deadline will go screaming by like an F-16 on fire, so ignore that. Make a goal to get out of the job as soon as possible.

Maybe look at it from a slightly different angle: after the project is done, will they ask you to stick around? You might be on the street anyway.

Use the time while you are employed to find the next job. That's always the best position to be in.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'll let you into a secret: _a lot of us are out of our depth at least some of the time_. In many cases, that's how we learn and grow our skills. In other cases, that's how we get burnt out and/or really mess up by pretending we know what we're doing until we fail anyway.

Do you really want to provide the best service you can provide? Then stick around, admit your limitations, tell the team you're struggling but ask them what you _can_ do to help the team get closer to its goal. Maybe there's some small part of the technical challenge that you can get your head around in isolation and still make a contribution. Maybe you need to be the guy who helps out with QA, keeps the bug tracker in a prioritized order, sorts out deployment issues, reformats the documents for the higher-ups, or just brings pizza and caffeine to the others at appropriate moments. But if "losing a team member will result in a bit of chaos" then walking out on them isn't going to be providing the best service you can provide.

I've managed teams where someone is in a similar situation, and they can react one of three ways:

1\. Pretend everything's okay, and churn out shitty code that just about hangs together but causes serious problems now or later;

2\. Throw in the towel and leave the team;

3\. Be honest about where they are struggling, ask for help getting up to speed and/or ask where they can be of most help with the skills they _do_ have.

I would prefer the third option a thousand times over the other two. Assuming your resume is honest about your skills and experience, only the first option would have you marked down for "subpar performance". No good manager would expect everyone to be a rockstar ninja know-all genius at all times. If they do, then yeah, that would be the time to give the appropriate notice period and _still do your honest best_ while you're waiting to leave.

</comment><comment><USER4> Some thoughts:

The project is in trouble with you or without you. One question is, is the project in _more_ trouble with you, or without you? The contractor _could_ want you there because, even though it's not a good fit, it's still better than nothing, and they need all the resources they can put on it. That happens sometimes in this business - you get thrown into the fire, not because you're great at fighting that kind of fire, but because it's "all hands on deck".

If you're miserable, well, it's just until May... unless the project runs past the deadline. If this turns into a running-two-years-past-deadline-with- everybody-under-pressure-forever nightmare, you probably want out unless the money's good and the environment doesn't get to you. When it starts to get to you, it's time to go.

elmerfud mentioned you getting blamed for the project failing. Is that a realistic possibility? If so, you need to protect yourself. But if you leave now, they'll blame you leaving for them missing their deadline, so it may not be possible to win on the blame front.

You mentioned being let go due to subpar performance. Are you seriously worried about that? If so, you need to have a serious talk with the primary contractor. If they say "Look, we know you're in over your head in this area. But we've got to do the project with the team we have, not with the team we wish we had, and we're hoping you can contribute enough to help", then you're probably OK (unless they're lying backstabbers). If they say "Oh, any trained monkey can do this, a good programmer can program anything", you need to think about protecting yourself.

I realize that I've given "things to think about" rather than actual advice. But I'm not sure what to say as far as concrete advice...

</comment><comment><USER5> He just needs a warm body to bill out so he can take his cut. Ask for more money and eat into those margins. In the mean time, look for something else.

</comment><comment><USER6> 1\. make sure you've voiced your concerns about the project in writing(email)

2\. make a copy.

3\. you need to make sure your concerns are raised to the PM at the company via the primary contractor. Project risks can be only be mitigated, absorbed etc if they are raised.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for all the answers guys. I decided to look for something else (different contract), already reached out to my network. I'll talk to the scrum master first since he'll be affected most immediately, then I'll talk to the primary contractor--I've been meaning to break this relationship for a while, may as well just do it now.

Again, thank you all for the time you spent answering my question.

</comment><comment><USER7> Evaluate the whole situation and do what's best for you.

You already know that the primary contractor wants you to stay because that's best for themselves, so they are not an unbiased opinion. If you've conveyed to them that the likelihood of meeting the deadlines is small, keeping you around gives them someone to shift the blame to when it's missed.

If you've raised your concerns about the work, and they can't bring in additional help to meet the deadline or are unwilling to adjust the deadline, then there's no more for you to do. Chaos from you leaving, budget cuts, or just poor project management are not your concern.</comment>