Glassdoor and its effect on workplace culture - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/22/improving-workplace-culture-one-review-at-a-time <comment><USER3> My experience with Glassdoor has been terrible. A couple of months ago I found an email notification in my inbox that someone had left us a review. I was surprised because we're an early stage three-person startup. We never hired any employees or contractors. The review was bad, and the reviewer who was anonymous claimed that he/she had done an internship with us. As the "owner" of our company's profile on Glassdoor, I had no access to any information about the reviewer, nothing. I flagged the review hoping that Glassdoor would take care of it. A day later I received an email saying, we're sorry, there's nothing we can do, the review stays. They told me that my only option was to reply to the review and hope they'd see that its not for us and remove it. Needless to say, I was not happy. I took a closer look at the review, and found out that the reviewer had mentioned "our office" in Singapore. I did some digging and found another company with the same name in Singapore. I reached out to Glassdoor again with all this info, screenshots, website links, etc and there response was basically the same. Something about their community policy. I was forced to reply to the reviewer who eventually realized we were not the same company and ended up removing the review. The whole process was a huge waste of time and energy. Never again will I trust Glassdoor or anything on it. By the way, there's no way to remove your company's profile. Think long and hard before you create a profile there.

<comment><USER4> This all seems quite reasonable though. You want people to be able to signal terrible employers to the rest of the market. It really sucks that you got stuck in that situation, but if Glassdoor starts agreeing to take down bad reviews then they just turn into a shakedown racket like Yelp.

<comment><USER5> The review was for _the wrong company_ though!

 _I took a closer look at the review, and found out that the reviewer had mentioned "our office" in Singapore. I did some digging and found another company with the same name in Singapore. I reached out to Glassdoor again with all this info, screenshots, website links, etc and there response was basically the same._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As an employee, I had a bad experience with Glassdoor.

I got shafted by my employer who promised to start the green card process immediately on joining, managed (knowingly or not) to delay the start, and by the time it started, they prepared the petition so weak, that it was too late to complete the process before my 6yrs of h1b expired(because they had to redo the petition a few times).

Now I explained this very clearly in my review and just mentioned that if you are an high skilled immigrant who has precarious requirements, then don't join this company. In fact I added all the good things about the company, but always made a point to glorify the fact that they screwed me and left me jobless (because my authorization ended).

What happened to that review?

It never showed up in Glassdoor reviews for that company. And my account was suspended. I thought there was some "pay to remove negative review" option for employers.

Now, that employer has more than 4.5 stars average reviews, and its glowing overall. If this is how Glassdoor works, I don't think it is meant to help the past, current, prospective employees.

<comment><USER7> I've seen something similar with my company. I actually regularly check it, and will notice negative reviews almost always disappear within a couple days (positive reviews never disappear though). I emailed Glassdoor asking about their community guidelines and how to ensure I could leave a review that wouldn't be removed, and they responded with nothing of substance.

As far as I'm concerned, Glassdoor makes their money by pandering to the companies who have a vested interest in hiding negative reviews and is an unreliable source of information.

<comment><USER8> Same here, the company I used to work for had a lot of strongly negative reviews by disgruntled employees (in fact the turnover was pretty high). Magically most of them disappeared, while glowing positive ones have filled up the void (all written in the same upbeat language that is the trademark of HR- written job descriptions: "we work hard and play hard", etc.).

Glassdoor claimed some of the reviews were removed because they violated this or that community standard. However, this wouldn't justify removing the numerical score, would it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Despite what the article says, Glassdoor still hasn't solved the fake review problem. The pay data is also woefully inaccurate. It works best only with a combination of other sources.

The biggest impact to my career has been the semi-anonymous mobile app Blind. I realized I was getting underpaid and I quickly fixed it. I thought I negotiated hard in previous jobs but maybr it was all a ruse to make me feel like I was getting the best salary. Glassdoor and Paysa had lower total compensation numbers for my position.

<comment><USER10> Best source of pay data I've seen is H1B pay info: h1bdata.info

<comment><USER9> I used to think so but I think that is incorrect for the following two reasons: \- Stock compensation is not included. This is significant now. \- I believe the salary numbers are purposely underreported. The numbers are given to show they are paying a professional wage. I heard (not confirmed) that someone getting paid $200k/year in base salary can be reported as $150k/year, since 150k clears the threshold. I saw salaries in my company that did not reflect what I understand to be the market rate.

<comment><USER11> I thought the conventional wisdom these days was to treat stock compensation as nonexistent unless the company already IPOd because in so many cases you end up paying to exercise and pay taxes on options that end up worthless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love this analogy: "Glassdoor upended workplace power dynamics in the same way that Ratemyprofessors.com altered the power dynamics of college lecture halls, where, suddenly, professors had to worry about whether their students found them to be "inspirational" or "hot.""

As a former professor I have always found that site unbelievably odious. Did higher education improve when students (as paying "customers" of the university) got the upper hand in areas like grading practices and curriculum- setting? Does anyone think college education is in a better place today than 20 years ago, except the bizdev and admin staff? Surely Glassdoor could work the same wonders for workplaces...

<comment><USER13> I agree with the concerns about professor rating. Students are in a weird position where they are a "customer" in a sense but their incentives are not aligned with the university for grading. They may ensure up paying $20k to have a professor give them a (justified) failing grade.

For employees, it's a bit better. It is reasonable to look for a good work environment, and employers won't always be upfront in an interview setting. Having the inside scoop helps the potential employee.

<comment><USER14> Separating teaching and grading might fix this.

<comment><USER15> Is this realistic?

<comment><USER16> Sure, my understanding is that's how Oxford works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I find the Glassdoor website unbearably slow and a terrible experience all around.

The negative reviews for the engineering department at the company I work for are mostly accurate. The positive reviews are almost all too generic or over the top to be useful. Some of them are clearly written by HR in a PR campaign.

I'm actually surprised it has much of an impact, given how slow and horrible the UX is and how easily gamed the review system is.

</comment><comment><USER18> I personally saw the reaction within Zillow Group when Spencer Rascoff got a bad rating on Glassdoor. The reviewer was located, the review was quickly deleted, and Spencer's rating continues to be a source of pride for him.

Don't get me wrong. He's extremely capable and will probably continue to run ZG very well for years to come. But his Glassdoor rating should be lower and it irks me every time I hear it touted.

</comment><comment><USER19> Glassdoor has a big problem with fake or bad data. The salary data is often very inaccurate (at my last company we had people posting data for offices in cities where we didn't have offices and with salaries that were just not true).

Fake reviews is also a problem—both positive and negotive reviews.

Glassdoor does little to help employers correct obviously bad information although they are happy to sell you "premium" services where you can bury things you don't like further down the display of data. Their sales people call this "featuring" content. Sigh.

<comment><USER20> I love how you put the whole business case into a single comment.

Officially they track an objective interpretation of the company. Only few companies would really get positive review though. So they also offer a way for the companies to improve their reviews for cash. And that is the main income probably.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Consider a company that only has 1-Star and 5-Star reviews:

[https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/PrivCo- Reviews-E659519.htm](https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/PrivCo- Reviews-E659519.htm)

What should you think about a company that has no 2 or 3 or 4 star reviews? It only has the extremes, nothing in the middle.

Someone writes:

" _Take a look at the distribution of reviews - either 5 star or 1 star. Seems a bit fishy to me. Nonetheless, I would still rate my experience a 1._ "

Perhaps there are many companies like this?

<comment><USER22> I think it's just selection bias: the people most likely to take the time to write a review are those who either had an amazing experience or an abysmal one. People with feelings in the middle usually aren't as motivated.

<comment><USER23> I would say it is selection bias, but the people who had a miserable experience wrote their reviews, and then management/ownership flooded the site with 5 star reviews to offset the bad reviews (instead of fixing the company of course).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Have been having a touch time fighting Glassdoor to remove fake reviews. I have no clue whatsoever how Glassdoor verifies their reviews, and their support is probably the worst I've ever experienced with any American company. Not sure how much this is going to change or affect them. But still, thought I should tell this out.

</comment><comment><USER25> The question is if there is any signal in all the noise. In aggregate I assume yes, but for individual companies with small numbers of reviews I have my doubts.

</comment><comment><USER26> It's interesting to me they are using human moderators and Americans at that (for what seems to be American/British companies) - I don't know much about machine learning but it seems like this is the only way to do this somewhat accurately given the expressiveness of written English. The current attempts by the (admittedly much larger) Facebook and Google to use English literate in foreign countries to moderate content is almost self parody at this point from the examples given in that documentary that made the front page of hacker news last month.

</comment><comment><USER27> A few months ago I've been interviewing with small startups (say companies with 20 employees) and Glassdoor wasn't useful at all. These companies either have no review at all (everyone is working so hard and don't have time to write a review; or just is afraid writing something and later identified), or have lots of 5-star review (which probably indicates management team asked employees to write good reviews for hiring).

</comment><comment><USER28> It's a shame that people don't see glassdoor for what it probably is - <USER2> another shakedown racket (like yelp, tripadvisor, BBB etc).

</comment><comment><USER29> Anything that strikes fear in the hearts of employers is good.

</comment><comment><USER30> glassdoor pay data is stupidly innacurate.

Take a company that is headquartered in bay area. If they have an office in location X where X != bay area, the est salary for that company in the context of location X is always going to be much higher due to the bay area HQ. I suspect they may not even filter out bay area salary estimates for location X estimates.

There is no way company will pay for bay area salaries for sat location in Omaha.

<comment><USER31> I believe you can filter salaries by location.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> former Glassdoor employee here.

I see lot of people complaining about their reviews being removed from Glassdoor (GD) site and the occasional allegation that GD take money to remove negative reviews.

AFAIK glassdoor doesn't take money from any company to remove negative reviews. I left GD a year ago so things could've changed since then but I doubt it. People complain because their reviews were removed but have you read it objectively ? Do you single out a particular person because that's against GD rules.

I know a former coworker of mine (@GD) who left a 1 star review. His review was promptly removed from GD page because he was bashing his manager. For a small company like GD it's easy to figure out who that manager is based on the employer title. After removing his review, he was given an opportunity to edit it but he refused to edit it. I wrote an OK review for GD after I left and it's still up there on GD site.

As for fake reviews it's hard to remove them automatically. A good number of people uses those temporary email addresses to leave a review (10min emails) so you can't really compare the email addresses. I guess they could compare the IP addresses and remove duplicate submissions from the same IP ? But sometimes multiple users share same IP (correct me if I'm wrong) so that would result in more confusion and allegations.

When I joined GD any engineer could access the reviews table on production/admin page but they have tightened it up since then. only selected engineers have access to production table and they started implementing granular controls on the admin page. I remember seeing fake reviews on my previous employer's page but I chose not to flag them. My former employer's CEO himself left more than three 5 star reviews to bump up his ratings.

Nowadays I use GD for job search, reviews, interviews and benefits research. Salary data is very unreliable especially for engineers in the Bay Area. I know they keep talking about archiving old salary data or making adjustments but I don't know if they ever implemented it.

The thing about reviews is that you have to read it between the lines. If it's a 5 star review and the only con says something like the commute sucks there's a good chance that it's a fake review.

About Salary: they did release a Know Your Worth tool sometime in 2016 which is pretty accurate in my case (Bay Area + Sr. Software Engineer). Ironically I know a few people who left GD because of this tool :)

</comment><comment><USER32> The pay data on glass door is almost always lower than the market.

<comment><USER33> How can I tell?

<comment><USER32> Use other sites to compare, like Paysa.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Glassdoor routinely removes negative comments on companies.

<comment><USER35> I'd be interested in seeing any evidences of that, do you have any?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Glassdoor's effect in this space is undoubtedly huge and typically the first stop for most people seriously considering an offer from a company. There are several new players though that I think importantly complement Glassdoor in different areas:

Salaries - www.Paysa.com

General Discussion - us.teamblind.com - Important because this is for current occupation rather than Glassdoor's focus on future occupation

Leveling / Titles - www.levels.fyi - Disclosure: I work on this

</comment><comment><USER37> I found glassdoor insanely accurate. It just really reflects the reality most of the time. I observed at least 3 workplaces and it was exactly like the reviews mentioned. Obviously it is harder to know if it applies to the whole company or just your team but if you can do your research it is fairly accurate

<comment><USER38> I think the main problem with Glassdoor's rating system is, it can attract high number of negative reviews when a company is going through rough patches, such as mergers and acquisitions, lay offs and integrations. Then it's going to be a steep uphill battle to climb out of that hole and improve the average scores. If I were job hunting, I'd only look at reviews written in the past 18 months because things can and do improve quickly.

<comment><USER39> > If I were job hunting, I'd only look at reviews written in the past 18 > months because things can and do improve quickly.

I can offer one counterexample. I worked at a fairly awful place two and a half years ago and the Glassdoor reviews reflected that awfulness. At some point in the last year, management got wise and started planting hilariously, obviously fake positive reviews to go alongside the negative reviews. HR also started leaving comments on every single review, which had a chilling effect.

The average rating would certainly be higher over the past 18 months, but it's not because anything has improved at the company. They're just better at exploiting Glassdoor.

<comment><USER38> Yes, I've witnessed that myself. On the flip side, those fake reviews:

1\. Are usually hilariously easy to spot. 2\. Beget more angry reviews with 1 star rating in attempt to neutralize their effect.

Hence, I'd read them pretty carefully to look for patterns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I worked at a place that started featuring Glassdoor reviews on pages about companies (stock ticker pages). Shortly thereafter, they became one of Glassdoor's top places to work! Wow! Probably a coincidence.

</comment><comment><USER34> Glassdoor routinely removes negative reviews.

</comment><comment><USER41> _The very idea of a website that encourages people to anonymously critique employers is ludicrous and irresponsible. I think its use is widespread because it makes money. That fact impresses HR executives and the public, leading them all to base business decisions on admittedly untrustworthy information.

Just think about it: Any disgruntled employee or job applicant can trash a company publicly. An HR department can spam Glassdoor, singing its own praises. (It seems this happened with the company you quit.) Honest comments will get lost. Meanwhile, Glassdoor has no incentive to keep it all clean by making participants accountable. (The argument for anonymity is that people wouldn't post honest comments if employers knew who they were. Duh. That justifies graffiti?) They make money with every posting. That's how Glassdoor is like the job boards.

In fact, Glassdoor is a job board. Like LinkedIn, the site uses the honeypot of "community" to lure you into an ulterior revenue model._

[https://www.asktheheadhunter.com/7453/can-i-trust- glassdoor-...](https://www.asktheheadhunter.com/7453/can-i-trust-glassdoor- reviews)

<comment><USER42> I'm not exactly surprised that as head hunter would dislike a service that makes his job harder by reducing information asymmetry.

<comment><USER43> How do you tell if it's increasing Information corruption or reducing Information asymmetry? Nobody has an objectitive view. Glassdoor isn't going to come out and say they are producing negative population scale effects, just like Facebook didn't.

Once upon a time when Wikileaks/Arab Spring was unfolding everyone thought reducing information asymmetry would be net positive. But here we are with a 24*7 fake news culture in the "information age", and Snowden sitting in Russia of all places.

<comment><USER42> I don't think "fake news" is actually a uniquely modern issue.

<comment><USER23> It's not. It's the norm. It was once called "Yellow Journalism."

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

Reading the opening paragraph, to me it describes just about any news source today:

 _Yellow journalism, or the yellow press, is a US term for a type of journalism that presents little or no legitimate well-researched news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers.[1] Techniques may include exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering or sensationalism._</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft names Visual Studio 2010 dates - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/19/visual_studio_2010_second_beta_packaging/ <comment><USER2> I am excited by this. The article doesn't mention it, but VS 2010 is a game- changer. ML goes mainstream. Let rock_mode=on in...

<comment><USER3> In what ways is it a "game changer"? Maybe I'm missing something - it has a few new things but I don't see anything game changing.

<comment><USER4> I think the implication is that any languages built into Visual Studio get an automatic stamp of approval from corporate management, which is why we get millions of lines of code written in C# and VB.net and not, say, Boo or IronPython. Thus, F# will have something previous ML dialects do not: mainstream credibility.

Of course, one could make the same argument for J# -- which shipped in Visual Studio but is now being discontinued for lack of popularity.

<comment><USER2> Exactly. Credibility + access to all the .NET libraries. The question now is, why _not_ use it? Esp. if you're already using LINQ.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What happened to the Standard Edition?

<comment><USER2> I believe it's effectively been replaced by the free Community Edition.

<comment><USER5> Do you have any more data about this? I mean, the Standard edition included an optimizing compiler, libraries like ATL and MFC, etc.

Are you sure they will be free?

I knew about the free Express editions but Community... never heard of it.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I think I meant Express - got confused with Community Technical Preview.

The compiler is the same I believe - it's the tools you get with it that varies between editions.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What to do with many old pata hard disks? - rw-

I own 10+ (old) pata hard disks. All are between 100 and 400 GiB. What can i do with them? For a file server I would need a microATX/ITX board with many pata slots. <comment><AUTHOR> Personally, I do not miss the ribbon cables that PATA drive use. It was a pain in the ass to route them, particularly in some MicroATX cases.

Couldn't you use an PCI card to add support for more PATA slots? Certainly someone like Promise probably makes something like that.

</comment><comment><USER2> Disassemble them and hang the platters from fishing line to keep the bird from shitting on your boat.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's a total of 1-4Tb. New cost for 4Tb is $220 using two of these [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148413&cm_re=2Tb-_-22-148-413-_-Product)

10 drives will need a hefty controller, and some mounting system, and they will be hot, noisy and power hungry.

Instead of finding 10 disks and asking how you can cram them into your life, ask what you want in your life and go and get the things that needs. If the disks aren't in there, get rid of them.</comment>


I/O Content – An API Centric SaaS CMS - <AUTHOR> http://www.iocontent.com <comment><AUTHOR> I/O Content is an API centric Content Management System (CMS) designed for use with any platform or device type. I/O Content makes managing and retrieving content and media simple, featuring custom content types, API queryable content fields, CDN and on the fly image manipulation.

Take a look at [https://www.iocontent.com](https://www.iocontent.com) for more information.</comment>


SOPA = No more color. Sincerely, COLOURlovers.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.colourlovers.com

<comment><USER2> I don't understand the nature of the protest; what does the site normally look like?

<comment><USER3> There's a link in the top right after the message about SOPA... clicking it will turn off the black.

tl;dr... it's really colorful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Should I go register 000000lovers.com?

<comment><USER4> No</comment></comment>


Lawyer Clock - How much money you're spending on lawyers - <AUTHOR> http://www.lawyerclock.com/

<comment><USER2> A cost-per-minute clock for meetings is a very striking reminder of the cost of dragging things on. While using it for meetings with lawyers is of course very fun (everybody dislikes lawyers), I find it to be even more needed for internal interminable meetings. When talking with lawyers, everybody already knows that it will cost a lot, but for an internal meeting certain kinds of people tend to forget that a company has an internal cost for everybody attending the meeting.

</comment><comment><USER3> My girlfriend is an appellate court attorney, and one thing I've learned from her is that the people who get royally screwed in the courts are often those that try to do it on the cheap, either through self-counsel or more often, by hiring cheap lawyers or simply by being unwilling/unable to spend enough to see a case through. So, while this is sort of amusing, I think it misleadingly implies that money spent on lawyers is inherently wasted. I believe the reality is usually the opposite.</comment>


Robinhood Raises $13M to Democratize Stock Market with Zero-Commission Trading - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/23/robinhood-stock-app/ <comment><USER2> This democratizes the stock market like online casinos democratize gambling. Fees are the least of the layperson's problems in the stock market or a casino.

<comment><USER3> Are you suggesting that it is a bad idea for laypeople to participate equity markets?

<comment><USER4> It's bad because the majority of people who invest their own money invest without enough information about the company. Finance is almost deliberately obfuscated to keep retail investors out, and unless you have the time and the knowledge, it's going to be difficult to make decent returns unless you're investing in mutual funds, ETF's, etc.

Disclaimer - founder of [http://capp.io](http://capp.io) and this is basically what we found in our market research.

<comment><USER5> > Finance is almost deliberately obfuscated to keep retail investors out

Is it retail investors they are worried about, or is it expecting that the market won't undo any trickery?

<comment><USER4> No idea. I think investing is advanced enough that you typically need somewhat complex jargon and data to actually make money - over time it's basically become an old boys club and no-one's really trying to make it accessible to regular investor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So if I understand this correctly, they assume they are going to make profit purely based on rebates? I don't think this kind of business model has been tested yet so this is quite interesting.

<comment><USER2> They are going to sell their uninformed customer's order flow to market makers (edit: I assume) and internalize trades. That's a circuitous way to mark up the prices their customers are paying for securities.

It is structurally different from but conceptually similar to the mark up you pay when you exchange currency.

No free lunches, as they say.

edit: See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_for_order_flow](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_for_order_flow) and [http://www.sec.gov/answers/payordf.htm](http://www.sec.gov/answers/payordf.htm)

<comment><USER7> I read the introduction of the wiki article, but I'm still at a lost.. the third party pays back the broker because it "wants to influence how the broker routes client orders" what? so if I were the broker I would deny or allow my customers transactions based on a third party?

I'm sure is not like this and the broker won't deny any transaction if I were the broker I would just get a commission on some transactions by third parties but I don't see what I could change in order to get a greater commission.

could you elaborate please, I'm at a lost.

<comment><USER8> The third party doesn't pay back the broker, they flat out pay them a fee to send transactions through their systems. The broker doesn't allow or deny any transactions, just in the absence of contradictory routing instructions they send their default orders through the third party.

The customer is usually none the wiser as they are being charged the same fee from their broker typically regardless of the routing. The only way a customer would know is if the broker discloses it to them. In the US equities markets that disclosure is a legal requirement.

<comment><USER7> ohh I get it! Basically there's a market of third party companies and the broker has the liberty to choose to who give all its "traffic"/transactions, but the broker is choosing the company based on the fee it gets instead of other factors (which I'm sure there are many) in this case the choice might not be the best for the customers just to the broker.

Definitely nothing is free!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For anyone wanting to go to town with this, don't forget the IRS. All your trades need to be tracked and reported on your income tax forms so the IRS gets their cut.

If you're doing lots of small trades under $100, what you wind up paying your tax preparer to add up the nickels and dimes will overwhelm the value of the trades.

Of course, part of this app must be automation of preparing the tax paperwork and liability.

The more pragmatic (and ultimately more successful) way to trade is to buy and hold - and hold, and hold, and hold. Statistically, dead people are more successful investors because they don't actively trade.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/forgetful-investors- performed...](http://www.businessinsider.com/forgetful-investors-performed- best-2014-9)

<comment><USER10> That's not 100% accurate - rather how you make it sound like it works isn't quite right.

Yes, all your trades are tracked and you will pay taxes on short term gains and can offset tax liabilities with losses.

But that isn't something you - or your accountant does - your brokerage firm (any of them) will issue you a tax document (I can't think of the name at the moment) which summarizes everything for you - it gets inputed on your tax return, and you are done.

However your last point - tends to be very true - unless you really know what you're doing, buying and holding is the way to go.

<comment><USER11> > unless you really know what you're doing, buying and holding is the way to > go.

The Wall Street Journal dartboard contest, which ran for several years, shows that, statistically speaking, even if you do think you know what you're doing, a buy & hold index fund is still a better choice than an active portfolio.

[http://www.investorhome.com/darts.htm](http://www.investorhome.com/darts.htm)

Quote: "The pros barely edged the DJIA by a margin of 51 to 49 contests. In other words, simply investing passively in the Dow, an investor would have beaten the picks of the pros in roughly half the contests (that is, without even considering transactions costs or taxes for taxable investors)."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I seem to recall their original model being around paid developer access to the platform. That is fairly intriguing as the ability to create value-added tools/techs and partner with any other discount brokerage is very difficult. Seems like a large enough user base would enable an app-marketplace where many of the quant/social-stream/chatter-arbitrage tools that currently [try to] sell direct to investors could have a chance at more distribution. Couple this with something like Quantopian ... profit!

<comment><USER8> Except in the mean time they are eating all the exchange fees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> While I applaud them for reducing fees, I don't think key problem facing retail investors in America is $7-$10 trading commissions from brokerages. If you think that a $7-$10 trade commission is significant barrier to investing, you are not thinking about investing correctly.

The key problem I see with the investing world is that 1) most Americans lack a basic understanding of how financial instruments works 2) the media & investing culture encourages a speculative investing mindset that makes most people act like gamblers rather than rational thinkers 3) the incentives are misaligned - financial institutions are not incentivized or built to encourage people to invest smartly.

None of these problems are solved from zero trading commission structure. To be honest, this seems like a feature that day & algorithmic traders would care about rather than a normal investor. You could even argue that zero commission trades will exacerbate the issue by pushing the investing mindset to be even more short term focused; this mindset is what causes most investors to lose performance.

This seems more like a clever PR angle for Robinhood ("we are helping real Americans") rather than something impactful. I doubt their aim & monetization strategy is geared towards the everyday investor.

</comment><comment><USER14> Making investment decisions from your iPhone is pretty silly. Building an app exactly for this purpose is damn dangerous.

They also say +80% of their early adopters are under 30. I wonder how many are underage?

<comment><USER15> How about this scenario: you're sitting at lunch when you hear on the news that Apple is issuing a recall because the iPhone 6 sometimes catches on fire.

At that moment you'd be saying "damn, I wish I an app where I could short apple ASAP".

<comment><USER16> I would think the professional/algorithmic traders would have done that the millisecond the news came out. By the time you're hearing about it at lunch, it would be too late.

<comment><USER15> Too late to save all your money, but unless its at the bottom you still have something to save.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is one company where all they need to do is add Bitcoin support and I'll put up with any problems trusting a startup with money.

(Next on their roadmap I'd hope would be handling retirement accounts; I generally trade within my Roth IRA because it's tax-immune)

</comment><comment><USER18> Beats TD Waterhouse that used to charge me £17.50 per trade!

<comment><USER19> before you can assert that you have to calculate how much worse your fill rate will be due to the selling of your order flow

smart traders know that fills are what counts. great brokers can get consistently better fill rates while terrible brokers will not only charge you a commission and get you bad fills or in this case, not even try to get that for you because their business model is based on it

<comment><USER20> Your fill rate cannot be worse. The mechanics:

1) Place a trade. 2) Trade goes to internal dark pool. Maybe someone who paid for order flow fills it, maybe not. 3) In the absence of a fill on the internal dark pool, the trade is routed to the markets at large.

The only difference is who your anonymized counterparty is.

<comment><USER8> "Your fill rate cannot be worse"

I don't think that is true, conceptually. Lets say that by going to the dark pool and being processed through to the exchange you lose priority on your order. Then your fill rate could be worse.

Not that I think this is a reason to chose to use robinhood or not.

<comment><USER20> Oh, you mean because of the added latency on the dark pool check? As I understand the mechanics of these, it's as follows:

1) Place an order. 2) Broker checks the darkpool - if a match is found, trade internally. 3) Route to the public market.

Step 2 can add latency, reducing your fill rate. So can playing music on youtube while doing step 1 probably adds more latency. And the latency in both cases is vastly lower than the latency you get from _trading over 3g_ (robinhood is a mobile app, which to me seems moronic).

<comment><USER8> Well latency is the easiest scenario to conjure (and I agree with you about it not being an issue).

Another way you could see worse fill rates would be a customer places a limit order that puts them somewhere back in the book. This limit order happens to trigger some threshold for the order flow trading algorithm that causes it to back off of it's own orders (lets say it cancels some orders on the back of the other side of the book). This in turn causes a price shift that moves away from the customers limit order making it fill later.

Clearly we are in the realm of pure speculation and probably not something that is important to the customers of robinhood. I was just pointing out that conceptually, by selling their order flow, robinhood could impact fill rates.

My guess is that this is more than offset by the lack of fees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> okay, so who pays for the exchange access?? Because NYSE haven't been known to let people connect and get their data for free, ya know?

</comment><comment><USER22> Nice... but where's my invite? :)</comment>


GitHub's CodeConf 2015 call for proposals is now open - <AUTHOR> http://codeconf.com/cfp.html

<comment><USER2> Hm... should I propose my Evolve talk? I wasn't able to get it acknowledged for Pycon:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OlDm3akbqg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OlDm3akbqg)

Evolve is a great idea, but it's not git. I'd be happy if spreading the Evolve idea got it implemented it in git. Just imagine: completely safe, undoable, effortless `git push --force`. No more I-told-you-so's.

I can't tell what CodeConf is about exactly, but it seems broad enough for me to try to get my talk heard.

</comment><comment><USER3> GitLab CEO here, would it be bad taste to submit a talk about collaboration and community around our open source project? :)

</comment><comment><USER4> I've applied to a few CFP's but never gotten in, here's to hoping this is my lucky charm!</comment>


Why Are We Still Waiting for ARM Servers? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theplatform.net/2015/10/06/why-are-we-still-waiting-for-arm-servers/ <comment><USER2> I'm not. I have one, albeit for a personal blog. Got it here:

[http://scaleway.com](http://scaleway.com)

I'd say they need to get a bit bigger and faster to challenge x86, but it's on the horizon. ARM64 will help.</comment>


New Proof Settles How to Approximate Numbers Like Pi - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-proof-settles-how-to-approximate-numbers-like-pi-20190814/?href= <comment><USER2> Are there any theorems from polynomial approximation of functions that can be applied to fraction approximation of irrational numbers?</comment>


MIT's Building 20: "The Magical Incubator" (1998) - <AUTHOR> https://infinitehistory.mit.edu/video/mits-building-20-magical-incubator <comment><USER2> Note the transcript PDF:

(It's very nicely formatted for readability.)

[https://static.3playmedia.com/files/2O_NhKHa13A/transcript.p...](https://static.3playmedia.com/files/2O_NhKHa13A/transcript.pdf?apikey=ao5gTyMg4ZKNd8YWQ72wKS8YZyGhiXv1&dl=1&usevideoid=1)

(Let's hope it doesn't expire. If it does, get a fresh link from the actual web page.)</comment>


Ask HN: Use "flying trains" as a way to create "direct flights" via midair hubs? - <AUTHOR> The idea is to have direct flights using "flying trains" formed by having several airliners departing from different cities connect nose to tail in midair to form a transient midair hub and allowing passengers to change planes to the one that will be landing at their desired city.<p>Is this feasible? Can it replace airline hubs and produce many more direct flights? <comment><USER2> It's not flight, but a Chinese designer, Chen Jianjun, came up with this for trains:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oh5W_- _WFvc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oh5W_-_WFvc)</comment>


I almost died in a mass shooting - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-allworth/the-us-has-lost-its-damn-mind_b_9308482.html <comment><USER2> Er...this is a strange title. The closest the author comes to saying that he almost died in a mass shooting is this:

> _Do you know how a properly functioning society would react to an event like > San Bernardino? I do — because I've had the misfortune of living through > such an event. On the 28th of April, 1996, a gunman equipped with an AR-15 > assault rifle — the same kind that the San Bernardino shooters used — opened > fire in Port Arthur, in Australia. 35 people were killed and 23 were > wounded. It remains one of the world's deadliest shootings by a single > person._

Uh, maybe he was actually present during the shooting? But "I've had the misfortune of living through such an event" is a pretty vague and passively- constructed statement. It could mean that he was in Australia during the time of the shooting and subsequent change to gun rights. Which, OK, is fine -- a constructive, convincing argument need not be rooted in emotional authority...but my particular problem is that this piece is mostly invective and ad hominem...while the author's recounting of the mass shooting is brief and antiseptic.

I mean, technically, I can say I "lived through 9/11" even though it happened while I was halfway across the country...

<comment><USER3> Really, is that all you take away from the article?

<comment><USER2> What else should I take away from it? The Port Arthur tragedy is something that is cited many times in this debate -- if I had never heard of it before, sure, I'd find it enlightening.

But not in the way this essay simplifies things. I haven't read much deep background into Port Arthur, but I'm going to guess that it was a lot more complicated than just "Australia collectively got its shit together" in the way that the civil rights movement, or even just the successful Montgomery bus boycott was a lot more complicated and drawn-out than just, "Rosa Parks got arrested and people got mad."

When meaningful change happens, it's because people get mad _and_ focused collective action and political strategy work together to break the status quo. The author's weak rhetorical logic undermines this concept. It doesn't even make any sense when you get past the bare surface: gun rights and privacy -- as they manifest themselves in this incident -- are orthogonal issues. By going for this angle, the author's argument for data privacy is completely undermined in a case where the attackers use a bomb to perform mass murder. Whereas I would argue: data privacy is important whether or not a massacre is committed by guns or bombs.

Of course the biggest flaw in the author's argument is that the FBI and Justice Department are currently under the oversight of President Obama -- I know Trump has gotten a lot of coverage lately, but he is not the president yet. President Obama has made no secret of his personal sentiment against personal firearm ownership and it was something that was a big issue in his 2008 election.

Emotions are important. But if you truly want to effect change, you have to accept that things are complicated and thus, require more intellectual and personal commitment than the self-righteous sentiment "WHY ISN'T EVERYONE ELSE SEEING HOW CRAZY THIS IS?"

That said, I'd be fine with the submission if it contained what the submitted title implies, "I almost died in a mass shooting". Not because I think that one survivor's experience should dominate all others based on that one personal experience (recently, an actual survivor of Columbine made news for advocating that guns should be allowed in school) but because I'm interested in hearing experiences that I have never personally experienced, and how they've led the person to think what they think

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> To me, the statistic that 316,545 people have been shot to death in the US in the last decade is staggering. I'm sure that includes things like police shootings as well, but that's still an _enormous_ number. In the UK, the figure for the same period appears to be about 3600 (going by a few parliament reports over that decade - haven't added them all up but it averages 300 a year or so and I'm being pessimistic).

64M in the UK, 320M in the US, 316,545/5 = 63,309. 63,309/3600 = 17.6. So - you're 17.6 times more likely to be shot in the US than in the UK, where firearms are banned for most purposes, and gun deaths actually seem to have risen proportionally over the last few years - perhaps as police are more frequently armed in supposed response to the supposed ongoing terror threat, criminals more frequently feel the need to be armed in response...

I haven't considered things like knife crime etc., but the US approach to gun ownership is anachronistic at the very best, and is out of step with what is viewed as civilised elsewhere in the world. I suppose there's a sort of duality of mind in the US, where people wish it were still frontier times, a brave young nation, the wild west, where you need to personally defend your self and property, but also want to live in a modern civilised society where the function of gun ownership and law enforcement is carried out by, well, law enforcement, and can't quite resolve their dichotomy. Would US law enforcement be as hostile and trigger happy as it is if they weren't so worried about getting shot, as seems to be their principle justification for "shoot first" tactics?

Sorry, this has ended up a bit of a ramble, but I can't understand how it can be viewed as sane to allow gun ownership as it stands to go on. It's a pandemic.

<comment><USER5> For the sake of dealing with better numbers, about a third of that figure is suicide. And very, very, very few gun deaths are by rifle. Last year ~9k people were shot in the US - ~8450 by handgun, ~300 by shotgun, and many of those killed by rifles were shot by police.

I know this doesn't change the calculus for most people. Just trying to get more realistic figures into the conversation.

<comment><USER4> The suicide rate in the US is twice that of the UK - take from that what you will, but brits are as a whole a pretty depressed bunch, and I dare say gun availability is a factor in suicide prevalence - the professions with the highest rates of suicide tend to be those that easily provide the tools to definitely painlessly kill yourself - doctors, dentists, veterinarians, farmers.

I'm hypothesising, but I honestly think reducing availability of firearms would cause more people to not be able to kill themselves with facility, and therefore more likely to have the time to reconsider or seek help.

<comment><USER6> Thankfully, it isn't someone else's choice when, how or where a person makes the decision. People will find a way.

I was in EMS for 15 years. There are worse ways to go... Bleach for example... really, any other way is worse if you think about it. everything else drags out the pain and suffering.

...but guns are louwd and scawy..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Every time someone writes an article about gun control, you can rewrite it to be an attack on encryption. If you're going to be holding "amoral objects" responsible, why not encryption?

> Do you know how a properly functioning society would react to an event like > <The Silk Road / misc darkweb crime>? [...] Within months, the country's > governing party led a bipartisan effort to prevent such a tragedy from ever > happening again (by banning TOR).

> The <technology> used in <misc crime ring> that resulted in all those > <abused children> were legally <downloaded>

> The logic is outrageous: "<Children> got <abused>. So we need a backdoor > into your phone."

And you could go on and on. The First and Second Amendments are related, now more than ever.

One last point. The author cites gun control as the solution to mass shootings, but there's a bit of a hole in his logic. France's gun control laws did nothing to prevent the Bataclan shooting from happening. All it did was make a room full of people that couldn't defend themselves.

<comment><USER8> Don't think encryption has ever killed someone.

<comment><USER7> The FBI would like to disagree with you on that. Why do you think they're trying to hack the iPhone? (Or at least, their claimed motive.)

<comment><USER8> To get more information about what caused the shooters to kill people using guns.

Edit: I mean, nobody walks into a bank and says "Everybody get down! I've got encryption!"

<comment><USER7> Understandably, but does it matter how directly encryption is involved? You could come up with contrived examples if you want.

Jigsaw the serial killer (of Saw infamy) has been captured by the police. However, he's got his final victim in a booby trapped room where he'll drown in an hour. The location and instructions to disable the traps are encrypted on a thumb drive, which he'll decrypt if the police set him free.

Edit: What should be evident is that no matter what means are used, the person behind it is responsible. Focusing on tools that are used by good people to protect themselves doesn't follow.

<comment><USER9> Oh, I know this one. You use some fancy suspending gear and enter Jigsaw's dreams to retrieve the clue![1]

[1][http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209958/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209958/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder why the fact that 61-64% of all 'gun-related' deaths are suicides, was not mentioned... Most people here (from what I've seen) support 'death with dignity' (suicide), but just not with a gun...

<comment><USER10> ain't nothin' dignified about leaving a mess behind for someone else to clean up

<comment><USER6> so that's effectively saying 'suicide is fine, but only if "you" approve of the method'.

<comment><USER10> i'm saying find a way that doesn't leave so much mess behind for someone else to clean up

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The author needs to get his head out of his ass, or at least move it a little in that direction.

As others have said, if reducing overall violence is the goal then rifles shouldn't be a major focus, reducing handgun ownership among people who engage in crime as a large part or all of their income should be a focus.

Extremists and lunatics with rifles have nothing on organized crime in terms of overall body count (which is allegedly what everyone wants to reduce).

</comment><comment><USER12> The original Medium article[0] appeared on HN earlier. Can't find the link tho.

[0]: [https://medium.com/@jamesallworth/the-u-s-has-gone-f-ing- mad...](https://medium.com/@jamesallworth/the-u-s-has-gone-f-ing- mad-52e525f76447#.1yrda2qra)

</comment><comment><USER13> >Which of the following would you attribute responsibility for what happened

Neither of these appears to be the person who committed the crime. How can an inanimate object bear responsibility for anything? The mind boggles.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah, Australia does not have the almighty sacred 'right to bear arms' dogma which the NRA (and it's supporters/lobbyists) says is it's 'god given right' (or something to that effect) . Never mind that the government has access to my whole life and can track me and direct my life, and has me misinformed through propaganda. At least I have a gun.

<comment><USER14> While the government can actively access and track most of your life, the one thing they can't track is whether or not you own a gun. Attempts to create a national gun registry are routinely attacked by the same politicians who want access to your phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Main points are:

\- People shot dead by terrorists are way less than by some gangs or psychopaths

\- Privacy protects us from foreign surveillance

\- To reduce number of people shot dead by gun (not by polices, not suicides), it is more reasonable to restrict gun access than to create backdoors for mass surveillance

Agree/Disagree?

</comment><comment><USER16> In America, it's important that everyone have a gun in case the government starts doing things that the people disagree with. This way, the people can rise up and dismantle the tyranny.

Just like those fellows in Oregon, fighting the important fight of not wanting to pay to use government land for ranching.

Or all the people rising up against the rapidly growing police state the US government is building. I'm sure they'll rise any day now.

I'll be honest, there is a touch of sarcasm in this comment.

<comment><USER9> Those unfortunate victims of police shootings last year would have been perfectly fine if they'd had an AK-47 in their hands when the cops arrived instead of being unarmed.</comment></comment>


Apple May Be Using Congo Cobalt Mined by Children, Amnesty Says - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-19/apple-may-be-using-congo-cobalt-mined-by-children-amnesty-says <comment><USER3> People already know that their phones are made using materials excavated in awful conditions, then built in awful conditions by minors in Asia and then sold at ludicrous prices around the world. The consensus seems to be (based on my observation) that no one really cares. We can keep on sharing those links to articles that stimulate the outrage for about 10 minutes, might keep social networks fuzzy for a few days, but in the end, it doesn't change anything.

Sweatshops still exist, kids are still being exploited.

Either people stop buying those goods (and that is NOT happening ever) or start buying green/human-friendly alternatives at 3 times the price for 1/10th of the quality or it will keep on keeping on. It's sad, but it is a reality, as grim as it is.

<comment><USER4> I don't believe consumer choice is the only agency we have. Can you imagine any others?

<comment><USER5> Faced with 0.1% possiblity to make cash: "Disrupt markets!!1 Work myself to the bone!"

Faced with child-slavery they benefit from: "<shrug> Jeez, I just don't know, guess it's inevitable <shrug>, I'm sure they're better off as slaves... <shrug>"

<comment><USER6> I don't know, are we going to pay the children directly to not work in cobalt mines, or are we going to prevent them from accessing the 100% opportunity to make cash? It sounds like they have the same attitude as the people you are chastising. Reading this comment, it appears I'm one of them. What's an action you would suggest to improve things?

<comment><USER7> Stop viewing people that use child laborers as a benevolent force that are keeping children from dying in the streets.

These people buy, sell and take children by force employing tactics such as threats, violence and (gang) rape. They then traumatize, abuse, kill and use force to secure their profit.

Understand that children and families are not weighing the option as "send my kid to a factory or starve". It is "I just got murdered / will be murdered if these people don't take my kid" or "I simply want to sell my child for cash".

<comment><USER8> Stop making the same-but-different sweeping generalizations! You cannot discredit one hypothesis by changing the Boolean and calling it a proof.

While _this_ child labor could be performed by abducted children, it's also possible that it's performed willingly by children to pay for their school uniforms or supplies, rather than drop out of school. [0].pdf discusses this sort of thing.

[0]: [http://www.oeko.de/oekodoc/1294/2011-419-en.pdf](http://www.oeko.de/oekodoc/1294/2011-419-en.pdf) (PDF link)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why is the title here only "Apple", when the article's title is "Tech Giants" and it mentions Apple, Samsung and Microsoft?

<comment><USER10> Maybe because Apple is the one named company that refused to comment.

"(Samsung) SDI, told Amnesty it doesn't do direct business with the major Chinese suppliers mentioned in the report and that they aren't in its supply chain."

<comment><USER11> We've seen this before. Apple's silence in the past is because 1) they are doing their due diligence in fact gathering and 2) if change is necessary, coming up with a plan to do so.

Meaning you'll hear nothing from them until they have planned, prepared and can respond in detail.

(Supporting Reference: [http://www.macworld.com/article/1159548/apple_crisis_managem...](http://www.macworld.com/article/1159548/apple_crisis_management.html))

<comment><USER10>
      they are doing their due diligence

They are _claiming_ that they _try_ to do their due diligence -- not the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> From the article: "mobile-phone and laptop makers such as Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co."

I'll up vote stories like this when they have the right title. Not one designed for clickbait. Apple goes further than most companies to inspect its supply chain and improve working conditions. So it grates to see Apple singled out for criticism here.

<comment><USER13> Apple deserves to be singled out, because they specifically promote themselves as being friendly to humanity, so actions like this are hypocritical, in addition to being immoral. Also, as the largest company, they are able to lead by example.

<comment><USER14> Samsung is larger than Apple, Microsoft, and Google combined.

<comment><USER15> define "larger". it's certainly not by market cap.

<comment><USER16> If Samsung sell more phones, we could assume they use more cobalt, so have more influence on its production.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Our electronics are composed of so many modular elements that no single company can produce them all entirely. Not even Samsung. It must be very difficult to track down all suppliers on the chain and control and monitor them. All while still making a profit (even for Apple).

So I expect the usual behavior here from Apple: Remain silent, listen to accusations first, prepare a good reply and take necessary actions. Quite exemplary in my opinion.

<comment> k-mcgrady There's already been a statement from them, although it doesn't say much more than if they remained silent:

> "Underage labour is never tolerated in our supply chain and we are proud to > have led the industry in pioneering new safeguards. We are currently > evaluating dozens of different materials, including cobalt, in order to > identify labour and environmental risks as well as opportunities for Apple > to bring about effective, scalable and sustainable change."

<comment><USER18> That mostly sounds like your typical marketing statement to me though, which is of course the best available move in their situation.

Sourcing every component for a manufacturing company's supply chain in a responsible way is hard. Especially because tracking these components is made hard by shady providers who know or - for those higher in the chain - <USER2> that the components they provide are produced/extracted by children and/or exploited workers. But it's basically a "don't ask don't tell" situation where investigating what happens further down the chain can only cost you money or stir up shit, so as long as consumers don't complain there's no business incentive to do that.

Obviously Apple is not the only company involved in this, but contrarily to their claim they don't lead the industry at all on this matter. If we had to elect a leader I'd argue it would rather be Intel, see this entry from a week ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10874850](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10874850)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What I don't inderstand about this outrage is, will the Apple declining go buy from this supplier actually change these children lives for the better or not?

This child labour happens not because of particular supplier, but because of economic situation in the whole country. If Apple switches from Congo mines to cobalt from more developed places, won't it just make Congo even more pure? Right now, these children work in mines because they need to survive; but if the mines close, doesn't it mean that these children will just loose the means to survive an end up being hungry instead?

(Please notice: I'm not making statements, I only ask questions. I don't know enough about this to assume anything.)

<comment><USER20> You're looking at things only in terms of purely economic transactions. The reality is that plenty of kids "working" in dangerous mines are not there because they made some rational choice to accept the risk in exchange for enough money to buy food[1] but because of threats of physical violence. To put it another way they are slaves.

[1] why would we even expect children to have the capability to make those kinds of decisions rationally anyway?

<comment><USER19> Being a slave is awful. But dying of hunger seems worse.

So, what do you think will happen to child slaves when their owner suddenly finds that he no longer has any use for them and they no longer earn their food and lodging?

What will they eat? Where will they live?

<comment><USER20> It's really not that simple at all. Please read this report: [https://www.globalwitness.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/repor...](https://www.globalwitness.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/report_en_final_0.pdf)

Buying minerals from the wrong people in the DRC doesn't mean you buy from people who benevolently employ children to save them from starvation. It means you buy from the people that set up roadblocks and extort minerals from civilians in exchange for nothing (other than not shooting them). It means buying minerals from organisations that are gang raping women and kidnapping children. Buying from those people further funds their operations, making the situation for civilians _worse_.

The report makes recommendations, including a section "to companies and traders purchasing, handling or trading in minerals originating from eastern drc or neighbouring countries":

>Exercise stringent due diligence regarding their mineral supplies: find out exactly where the minerals were produced (not only the broad geographical area, but the precise location and mine), by whom they were produced and under what conditions (including use of forced labour, child labour, health and safety and other labour conditions).

>Refuse to buy minerals if the above information is not available or if there are indications that the minerals have passed through the hands of any of the warring parties, benefited them in other ways, or otherwise involved human rights abuses.

>Be able to demonstrate, with credible written evidence, the exact origin of their mineral supplies, the routes they have taken and the identity of those involved in the chain of custody, including intermediaries or third parties who have handled them.

>Do not accept oral or vague assurances from suppliers as to the origin of minerals and the identity of their own suppliers. Carry out spot checks to verify the sources and the accuracy of suppliers' assurances. Require these measures in all circumstances, including in cases where minerals originate from areas which may be remote or difficult to access.

>Commission and publish regular independent third-party audits of their supply chain.

>Federations and associations of comptoirs and other trade bodies: adopt an explicit policy not to buy or handle minerals which benefit any of the warring parties in eastern DRC. Require their members to carry out the above due diligence steps systematically and to demonstrate precisely where all their supplies come from. Set up mechanisms for independently monitoring and checking whether their members are complying with these requirements.

<comment><USER19> This explains a lot and makes a lot of sense, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> In case it's not widely known, take this as an opportunity to look at the FairPhone [http://www.fairphone.com/](http://www.fairphone.com/) that seeks to address exactly this problem.

<comment><USER22> For those who want to know a bit more about FairPhone and specifically how they address cobalt mining. They have a pretty good video and a blogpost about the sourcing of cobalt. Blogpost: [https://www.fairphone.com/2013/03/14/a-fair-price-for- cobalt...](https://www.fairphone.com/2013/03/14/a-fair-price-for-cobalt/) Video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWVFXesVScA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWVFXesVScA)

Full disclosure: I once worked on a part of FairPhone's webshop.

<comment><USER23> I like this answer, because it starts proposing a solution (and executing on it). Though I'm not entirely clear what the Fairphone solution is, as the blog post & video seem to be at the fact finding stage. I assume it was through deploying extra on-site inspectors, setting up a union & paying more for the cobalt?

The other issue is that Fairphone has produced 60,000 phones, but Apple has made 700 Million. Can the Fairphone solution scale 10,000x? How does the co- ordination of inspections & unions change if you increase it by 10,000?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Reading the comments here, I'm surprised at how broadly the terrible situation in the Congo is being generalized. This is not one immorally-sourced component among many, it's a massive outlier: A rare element with its richest mineral source in one of the poorest, most chaotic and war-torn nations on the planet.

It's correspondingly an incredibly hard problem to solve. At an extreme, Apple probably has the cash to buy its own mines for cobalt but how can they ensure that their suppliers use it exclusively? It's a fungible commodity, after all.

If anyone has any ideas that don't revolve around armed 'humanitarian' intervention in the DRC, I'd love to hear them.

Also, I'd be interested to hear what problem #2 is if this one could be eliminated. My suspicion is that its degree of horribleness would be a significant drop-off.

</comment><comment> T-zex Apple, Samsung, etc. are incredibly wealthy companies, making massive purchase orders. They are capable of impacting entire industries. They must ensure they have clean and ethical supply chains with no excuses. They could also force their competitors to do the same shifting focus away from the patent crap.

</comment><comment><USER25> Instead of vilifying the corporate interest involved this needs to be resolved by trade restrictions at the national level.

Why is it that we only seek to shame the companies who buy goods produced in these countries but never our politicians who don't do anything to get the country involved to improve? Trade sanctions, freezing assets, and more, can get a country's leadership to act appropriately.

<comment><USER26> My pet theory is that we all implicitly know politicians won't do it. I'm yet to see a sanction that was _actually_ about human rights, and not about some political or economical goal. The world leaders seem to care about human rights violations even less than the evil megacorps.

</comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands The most ironic thing here is that the current CEO of Apple is the guy who was so focused on the bottom line at Apple while Jobs was the running company, he forced many of the suppliers to guarantee certain production goals at insanely low labor rates to maximize profits.

If you want someone to demonize, you don't have to look very far.

</comment><comment><USER27> Misleading title. Actual title is "Tech Giants Accused by Amnesty of Using Cobalt Dug by Children", and companies named are Apple, Samsung, Microsoft and SDI, because they buy from one dodgy Chinese cobalt company.

</comment><comment><USER28> Apple, as other companies of such _huge_ size with extremely complex supply chain, don't go too deep to inspect what their contractors do. They turn a blind eye, because it's all down to the matter if you can come up with an excuse and remain clean: "we don't know and physically can't check what all our sub-sub-contractors do, but we will no longer deal with them until they fix it" etc. Unless we have laws that hold _all_ involved parties accountable, such practice will prevail.

<comment><USER29> In my opinion Apple seems to be going to reasonable lengths to keep its supply chain clean. I think you underestimate the challenge of making sure that suppliers 2, 3 or 4 levels apart from you play by the rules. I work at a small company that uses, among other things, fabrics in their supply chain and even at the second level it's very hard to confirm simple specifications that are much less interesting or scandalous than the topic at hand. I wouldn't want to imagine how difficult it is to do the same thing when it comes to scandals and issues that the supplier of your supplier 3 levels deep actually really, really wants to hide.

<comment><USER28> I agree that it's a very hard problem and the change of the whole industry is required to fix it. But I believe, with enough resources and _will_ it would be possible. The problem is, that nobody actually cares -- it's all about PR now only. For example, let's take food industry where regulations are enforced on all levels and restaurant, after poisoning their clients, can't simply say: "Sorry, we didn't mean that, we had no idea these mushrooms came from Chernobyl, but rest assured we won't deal with this supplier again".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> There's an interesting 2010 documentary "Blood in the Mobile" about the issue of conflict minerals from Congo in mobile phone.

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

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1763194/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1763194/)

</comment><comment><USER31> do we really need new devices every year/month?

<comment><USER32> I keep dropping my phone, so for me, yes.

<comment><USER33> Just buy a damn 3310!

<comment><USER34> Oh man, my Nokia 8910 (the one with the titanium casing) was damn near indestructible. I'd dropped it more times than I can count (once off a 2nd story in a nightclub into a dance floor where it was promptly trampled), backed over it accidentally because it fell out of my pocket as I got into the car and left it in my pocket and washed it 3 times (it stayed on the whole time). The 4th washing was the one that finally killed it.

<comment><USER35> We played football in the classroom with my Sony Ericsson K700i when I was in high school. I still have holes in my wall because I kept throwing it every time some game annoyed me.

My charger died, so I disassembled it and put the wires directly on the battery. Finally, I accidentally crossed the wires and the phone died after burning for like 2-3 minutes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> There isn't a complex consumer good that does not have at least one part of it that somehow was produced in circumstances that are abhorrent. This is something that is a societal - and even a global - issue, not one limited to specific brands, though there are brands that are more directly involved in these horrors.

</comment><comment><USER37> And we all consist of sizeable chunk of carbon released from industrial age pollution, when slavery was an ordinary thing. So - how should I pay Amnesty International, or Greenpeace for acknowledging that my internal chemistry uses immoral carbon atoms?

</comment><comment><USER38> How far removed from the purchasing chain is someone/organization deemed "morally clean"?

</comment><comment><USER39> worldwide enforced minimal labor and environmental standards is the only way to go. And like with war crimes and crimes against humanity such standards should be enforceable by any nation anywhere in the world.

</comment><comment><USER40> Sigh. Why are people even surprised? This won't change and can't change until we stop yelling "think of the children!" and only demanding for the suppliers to do a better job.

Yes some suppliers might be able to do a better job but many cases they also simply can't it's just the nature of doing business with under-developed countries.

Similar processes like the Kimberly process that was supposed to stop the trade in conflict diamonds have utterly failed and this is an industry that is built around artificial scarcity which just was dying for an excuse to further limit the production of diamonds to jack up the price.

There is very little any supplier can do to actually address this problem, this isn't some large scale mining operation that uses children this is for the most part unofficial mining. Unofficial mining (AKA the official past time of small scale African warlords) is pretty much a bunch of people taking over abandoned mining sites, dump sites for mining waste, sites that were deemed to be uneconomical to develop or just being down stream from the actual mine.

While it's true that these sites are often taken over by some gang of former child soldiers and their master (we all liked Beasts of No Nation) more often than not these days unofficial mining is conducted by communities, villages, and individuals who do not hold any one at gun point.

These unofficial mining operations do not produce any substantial amount of note (individually, however there could be 1000's of small scale mining operations vs only a handful of large scale official ones which means that anywhere between 10-50% of a given product might be mined unofficially) but they do produce enough to say feed a village (or to buy the wanna be warlord a BMW from the 80's even diamonds are sold for not even cents on the dollar, every 1$ in uncut stones that ends up in the hands of the miner is inflated to 1000 to 10000 by the time it ends up at tiffany's).

Those unofficial mining operations are getting mixed with what the big actual mining operation produce and end up in the supply chain, this can happen at so many points that there is no way to enforce any process which will guarantee that the supply is clean of conflict, child labor or any other social decree.

Even if you take out the child labor part which while horrid is by far not the worse part that can happen to a child in Africa, the conditions in the official mining operations for registered adult miners are also appalling and so far beyond what most of us could even imagine human beings being able to withstand on a daily basis.

So instead of yelling that we should vote with our wallets until those supply chains will be clean we need to realize that they will never be clean as long as you are dealing with a region such as the Congo. Instead of making another pointless process which will just going to be circumvented at all levels while jacking up the price for the end consumer (which every one in the supply chain, especially as it gets closer to the source will just pocket the difference). Companies should put the money that consumers would end up paying into programs that might actually work and not into the endless pit of bribes that any certification process would turn out to be when facing the unmovable object which is reality.

Apple can switch a supplier and it will, but it won't find a clean one as no such supplier exists even if they'll find the most expensive one with the best intentions. Because the local population which runs these operations will always have the upper hand and as long as the conditions exist that make it more likely for children to end up digging up rare earths for your smartphone or diamonds for your tennis bracelet this won't change.

I hope the day would come where a company like Apple could be brave enough to come out and say look we can't buy Cobalt which wasn't mined by kids, but we made a calculation that if we could it would be 17% more expensive so we are jacking our own prices by 17% and transferring the difference to X Y and Z in hopes that in 20 years we could buy Cobalt which was not only not mined by children but also mined by miners with life expectancy which is longer than our yearly product cycle.

But as long as people would keep on yelling boycott this and boycott that it will never happen and the only thing Apple can do is to continue to play the pass the hot potato game with it's suppliers (which will continue to restructure and change names to be put back into that list) and maybe have Tim Cook do an apologetic we are the world cover...

</comment><comment><USER41> Nope. It's me and you who actually give money for gadgets manufactured on far- east, exploiting the hell out of ppl.

</comment><comment><USER42> Devils advocate:

Schooling is expensive and not every country can afford it. Before schooling, children used to work year round as soon as they were able. In fact big families were primarily for the labor. Isn't this better than families being poor and dying from starvation? This is part of the growing pains of being a developing country.

</comment><comment><USER43> Apple is evil to the core (pun pun pun)

</comment><comment><USER44> Phones must be a 100% recyclable so that we can reuse their materials or earth will become a giant wastedump.

</comment><comment><USER45> Think different?

No, exploit the same.

<comment><USER46> You really don't think this is a sin of omission? The abuse is happening multiple suppliers away from the companies in question. And Apple, Microsoft, and Samsung are reportedly implicated. I'm not pessimistic enough to think they are conspiring to keep Congolese children abused.

None of this excuses it, and now that is brought to light I expect at the very least that these particular vendors are dropped. But comments like yours seem either intentionally inflammatory or very naive.

<comment><USER47> It's just that Apple (unlike Microsoft and Samsung) brands itself as a company with human values so obviously people are paying more attention to this aspect for Apple. But yes, I agree indeed.

<comment><USER48> _brands itself as a company with human values_

How so? (never got that impression, but I'm also a fervent ad/commercial skipper)

Anyway I really doubt any of the electronic devices any of us have is completely clean (wrt this topic). Not sure if such a thing even exist. At least with clothing or so you can get alternatives if you want.

<comment><USER49> Apple do go to (what seems to me, your mileage may vary) reasonable lengths to produce supplier chain responsibility reports and manage such accordingly. Which I guess is the "branding" mentioned above but I'd also guess the intended (snarky) meaning was "empty branding" rather than "branding by doing" which seems to be the case.

[edit: minor tweak for clarification]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> It's the same in all industries.

Look at airlines. People aren't willing to spend $x to have actual legroom. Everyone only every buys the lowest cost.

Or clothing.

And modern supply chains are so complex thats its impossible to ensure that 100% of the time policies are complied with.

And are the people in these places better off with that job, then without? (i honestly don't know, but surely this is a factor)

<comment><USER51> You're the second person I've seen post this about airlines in the past two days (I believe the first was on Reddit). I have thought about it and don't actually believe it's 100% true. People buy what's cheap _at the time they need the ticket_. The problem is price variability/gaming by the airlines. You can very easily see >100% variability in the price of the same ticket from one day to the next, and it has nothing to do with objective variables. It's pure price manipulation, just like everything else airlines do (baggage, food, boarding order, upgrades, elite lounges, free drinks, point bonuses).

<comment><USER50> I'm not sure what airlines are like in America, but in general (where I am) people only look at price and then complain about it.

See [http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/12/chea...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/12/cheap_airlines_why_americans_will_suffer_worse_service_on_flights_in_order.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Evil Lair: On the Architecture of the Enemy in Videogame Worlds - <AUTHOR> http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/evil-lair-on-architecture-of-enemy-in.html <comment><USER2> Here's the final sequence (and boss) of Ultima III. I don't care what you say, it's the scariest ending ever:

<http://unclegropey.com/exodus.gif>

...and yes, you had to be 8 years old in the 1980s to understand.

<comment><USER3> You're right, I don't get it: did he just put the sun on top of a treasure chest? (The slowness of the animation might have hindered my understanding. Is there a larger section of play as a video somewhere?)</comment></comment>


The software ecosystem is wet - <AUTHOR> https://blog.alexrohde.com/archives/555 <comment><USER2>
        even kafka (basically just log part of mysql without columns). For example, a kafka topic could be seen as a table with the columns: offset, value.

In much the same way that a block of carbon with a couple gas cylinders (H2, N2, O2) on top is "basically just" a person...

<comment><AUTHOR> No, not at all. Sql is a superset of Kafka, anything Kafka can do a Sql server can do.

Kafka is very basic tool in comparison, that drops 90% of functionality for a speed gain in one use case.

There's no reason you couldn't write a custom storage engine that behaved exactly like kafka with Postgres.</comment></comment>


Small but significant usability sins that websites should never commit - <AUTHOR> http://www.elezea.com/2012/09/usability-sins/

<comment><USER2> If I'm entering a credit card number, let me type the fucking spaces. Use JS to trim them before they hit the server if you have to. I once used a site that had JS specifically to prevent me from typing a space, and it was _infuriating_ , because exactly the same amount of engineering effort could have gone into just letting me type it the way I wanted to.

<comment><USER3> Is it really important to type the delimiter? Or just to have it appear onscreen while typing?

<comment><USER4> Cards usually have the numbers in a groups of 4 digits. When typing into a field let me type in same groups of 4 digits. It is easier to see that there are 4 groups of 4 digits each, as opposed to counting a blur of 16 digits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Don't open links in new browser tabs. Tabbed browsing is for advanced users. > If you open a page in a new tab, most users will get lost. . .

And many of the advanced ones will still get irritated. I can manage my own tabs, TYVM, and don't appreciate it when web designers presumptuously attempt to decide for me when I do and do not want a page to open in a new one.

<comment><USER6> Very true, this is especially a bugbear of mine when browsing on iPhone. All too often I have eight tabs open that I'm meaning to get back to. Then I click on a link (or accidentally click an ad) and my heart lurches as the link opens a new tab, so Safari very helpfully destroys my oldest tab and I lose whatever was there. I've noticed quite consistently that this behavior comes with sites that just want to keep you on there, so they open external links in a new tab, usability be damned.

<comment><USER7> I hate that too, and here's a way to get that tab back: wait for the new page to load, and then the back button works, taking to back to the not-exactly- overwritten page.

<comment><USER6> I think that works if you follow a link from another app, but not if it is a popup from safari? Or maybe they changed this in ios 5

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I strongly disagree with some of these from the user feedback I've always heard. Yes, I'm sure target audience matters on some of the points but come on, "Most users don't know what FAQ stands for". That's just ridiculous and you provide no evidence to support this claim. I feel like these "sins" are major shots in the dark with no real studies to back up such big claims.

<comment><USER9> His point about FAQs being out-of-context is completely valid. Every page on CenturyLink's site links to a help page that (IIRC) has a random mishmash of questions about billing, setup, technical support and whatnot. It would be much better to answer billing questions on the billing page and technical questions on the support page, and so forth.

<comment><USER8> I can agree in that context but the author specifically says "Most users don't know what FAQ stands for", which I disagree with. But to what you mean, yes, the way FAQ's should be presented may vary, depending on the site.

<comment><USER10> It definitely depends on your audience but the general non-tech audience probably doesn't know what "FAQ" stands for on average. In fact, most of the things you tech for granted among a tech-savvy audience disappear if you are targeting an audience that includes a non-trivial non-tech segment.

Source: Working at a startup with a wide audience. The email consisting only of the subject line "WHAT IS PASSWORD" was not the least-savvy email received.

<comment> think-large This sort of thing is very dependent on a person's age too.

I know a lot of my peers would know what FAQ means and what a password is. Even some of the "less" tech savvy people. But late adopters who are still using 10 year old PCs usually don't know.

Before I hear claims of ageism, it is just a fact that a higher percentage of the older generations don't know how to use computers. It isn't ALL of them but they didn't have the benefit of growing up with computers as a tool, to the point where they become second nature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article was written to express findings of one study ("two days running usability tests") with specific products ("websites that sell financial products like life cover, funeral policies, and annuities") for a specific target market ("lower-income users who access the Internet at least once a day on a desktop at home or work, or on their phones").

Take the information with a grain of salt. It's a positive thing to think about how a user outside of the early adopter cohort will use a product. Maybe not right at first, but at least later on when your company outgrows (hopefully) its first users.

</comment><comment><USER12> Always know your audience. Hacker News readers are not most users and you won't always be designing for them. You wouldn't believe what hangs up most users unless you saw it yourself. This is true for the web as well as all devices. Forgo testing with real users and prepare for a high bounce rate.

</comment><comment><USER13> Disagree with the "never" highlight rows in a table. If you have a number- heavy table with lots of rows and columns, it's the perfect way to help users read the data shown.

Of course, this sort of thing is more common on intranet sites, not exposed to the general public, so it's simply "Know Your Audience", as usual.

<comment><USER10> That sort of highlighting almost never should be relegated to a mouseover event. Besides the issue mentioned in the article, if the only way to reliably read a row of data is for it to be highlighted then highlight-on-mouseover makes it a bitch to read more than one row on a table.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> These are _far_ to presumptive to be general truths. You mean to tell me that the percentage of (even first-time) visitors to Hacker News that know what PDFs and FAQs are is less than 99%?

Also where is your data coming from in the first place? Are your claims based on any non-anecdotal evidence?

<comment><USER15> In the article, OP explains that they (there should be a gender neutral singular pronoun in english) are in middle of analyzing data from a certain income group who are used to getting around the web, who handle both desktops and phones. It's in the first or second paragraph!

<comment><USER10> _(there should be a gender neutral singular pronoun in english)_

There are a number of attempts at this but I've found Spivak pronouns (specifically the Elverson set) to be a particularly elegant solution. The easiest description is "the 'they'-form pronouns without the 'th'". Thus, your first sentence would become "In the article, OP explains that ey ([...]) are in middle of analyzing data from a certain income group who are used to getting around the web, who handle both desktops and phones."

Anecdotally, I've found most people seem to understand what I'm saying online and offline people either understand me or think I'm saying "they" and understand my point anyway. Plus, this pronoun set sounds more natural than other constructions and is easy to remember since it's keyed to a set you already know.

<comment><USER15> Thank you very much, I'll start using this! Very elegant solution, indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> While these sins are good things to be thinking about when building a site lists like this can be dangerous if they cause people to make a fundamental error; assuming you know what "most users" or the "average user" know or want without actually doing some basic usability/UX testing.

One of the most important things to consider when thinking about usability/UX is that if you built it then you're not a good authority on what it's like to use it.

</comment><comment><USER17> I would add not using the relevant cursor for things that are clickable. Its not perfect ( especially for mobile), but its a huge hint.

</comment><comment><USER18> > Don't open links in new browser tabs

I agree that this can be confusing, but it's helpful for external links. I'd rather have a user be confused for a minute than have them completely forget about my website. Not to mention, when you close the new tab you'll probably end up looking at the tab containing my site again. At the end of the day, it's a usability vs visibility tradeoff.

> Don't have an FAQ page

Do you really think most users don't know what a FAQ is? Unless your target audience is 12 year olds I really doubt this is true. I do agree though that having a separate page for your FAQ means your workflow is lacking the proper information users are looking for.

> Don't give table rows highlighting mouse-overs if the rows aren't clickable

Totally agree. I think this is the biggest thing Twitter bootstrap gets wrong. Sure it's easier for lining up a row, but if you use zebra striping that won't be an issue.

<comment><USER9> When you say "I'd rather have a user be confused for a minute than have them completely forget about my website" you're essentially saying that you'd rather the user have an unpleasant memory of you than no memory at all. That seems like a pretty shallow notion of branding. I'll never forget ExpertsExchange, it doesn't mean I ever wish I still had to visit it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Are there really only five? I think you could write a book ;)

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd like to add: Don't reprogram the command sequence for browser page search to a site specific search bar.

<comment><USER21> Even Google does that the search box is always in focus so when you try to search Opera's '.' it doesn't work. I hate reaching for ctrl...

</comment></comment><comment> think-large Another important thing to consider is your target audience. If you are designing a site like github that targets developers then you can probably assume they know what a FAQ page is.

I think that overall, this article isn't highlighting sins, but more pet- peeves. I get annoyed by some of these things as well and I think good website designs should incorporate better options. But unless you present me with a study that is broken down by generation on who doesn't know what a FAQ is I'm going to have to throw the BS flag here.

</comment><comment> adam-a > Don't open links in new browser tabs

> Tabbed browsing is for advanced users. If you open a page in a new tab, most > users will get lost

This is the default behaviour for Twitter and Facebook, two of the biggest sites on the net. It is arguably the biggest reason why FF originally won market share over IE. And Chrome centres it's whole UI around tabs.

Maybe for certain audiences this is still good advice but I don't think it is a truism anymore.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is an interesting post (the required-field point in particular), but I think I'll make the opposite of the usual HN page-usability complaint. Unlike a lot of blog posts I've looked at today, this design is clean, readable, and doesn't try to give me a headache with low-contrast text.

It's a pleasure _not_ to have to hit Readable for once.

</comment><comment><USER23> There's a lot of positing here. To assume the "average user" doesn't understand what browser tabs, PDFs, and FAQs are seems ... odd. Now these may or may not be fine tips, but they are not recommendations based on best practices or any research that I can tell. If they are, I'd be interested in seeing it.

<comment><AUTHOR> As mentioned in the post, these are findings based on usability testing - direct observational research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The one about highlighted table rows makes total sense.

</comment><comment><USER25> the asterisk. even after 10 years of this (or is it 15?) i still look for the footnote :(

... made worse by the fact that sometimes there is one!</comment>


Bitcoin.com Deal Announced - <AUTHOR> http://www.domaininvesting.com/blockchain-managing-bitcoin-com/

<comment><USER2> "Blockchain.info has struck a five year deal to exclusively manage the domain name Bitcoin.com." So what happens after the 5 years? Do we know?</comment>


WePay (YC S'09) CEO Bill Clerico discusses outlook for online payments - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/video/73106008/

<comment><USER2> Will be interesting to see where WePay goes. Group payments is a small category. Tickets and stores are pretty crowded. The bank relationship could be a helper or a hindrance.

Compare to Square which is flying with one brilliant idea.

<comment><USER3> I'd guess subscription management would be next.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From my phone conversation with Wepay's saleforce, they are moving away from "group pay" and focusing on the "business space" created by the "hate of Paypall".</comment>


Twitter Blog: Someone Call Security - <AUTHOR> http://blog.twitter.com/2009/07/someone-call-security.html#links <comment><AUTHOR> It sure doesn't sound like they gave anyone the "green light" to publish anything.</comment>