Americans Have Shifted Dramatically on What Values Matter Most - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/americans-have-shifted-dramatically-on-what-values-matter-most-11566738001?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> 33 here - Never cared much for religion..they look, act, feel like cults but there's an approved list of these cults apparently. Having a kid changed my life for the better but I was probably in the "not so important" boat before that happened.

The big one for me is patriotism. When I was younger I was quite conservative, very pro-USA, refused to believe that any country could possibly do anything better than the way we were doing it. Then I started traveling and actually experiencing the rest of the world, and all of those things just faded away. I'm still an American - I love the 4th of July and believe in our country's future. I just don't subscribe to the notion that the USA is best and that I should be proud of it no matter what, or that American's are somehow special relative to anyone else.

<comment><USER3> Patriotism is not believing your county is best. Patriotism is believing it's worthwhile to strive to make your country better.

<comment><USER4> This is really well put, so much so that I searched to see if it was actually a quote. Didn't find it, but did find an interesting one from Bernard Shaw [0]: "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it."

I am not well read on him so don't know the context or his intention, but after a quick scan of his wikipedia page I saw that he admired Hitler and Stalin, professed a belief in dictatorship and criticized the Nuremburg trials [1]. Would love to hear more from someone knowledgable on him.

In any case, I want to print your comment on stickers or tshirts or something. Spot on!

[0]: [https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/george_bernard_shaw_38692...](https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/george_bernard_shaw_386924)

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw#1930s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw#1930s)

<comment><USER3> Go for it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In the circles I watch and hang around, we've moved from a cynical nihilism about government (nothing matters, elites always win) to a reckoning that we have to invest time and energy in our governance to get it to work for us.

That age band is the 30-40 year olds, with a smattering of older and younger. I would say we have gotten more idealistic, but also more pragmatic. We like the ideals, we recognize that the country coasted when we were younger, now it's time to take up the burden that the older generations didn't. Things aren't going to just happen with a march here or a slogan there. We need to invest ourselves, and this seems to be broadly understood.

Regarding religion - no observer is going to be surprised that religion is collapsing in the US. No one should be surprised. I think we have some curious turns ahead there, but I'll defer those to a theological/religious studies audience.

And, of course, kids relates to the economic environment and the state of the parents' mental health. If you're worried about providing for yourself and you're a responsible human being, you are not going to have kids, because you know you nee to provide for them too.

<comment><USER6> I flip flop back and forth.... I'm encouraged by the Blue Wave and AOC, and the rise of Bernie/Warren, but at the same time I see corporations and Super PAC's becoming more and more powerful in this country. I do like what RiseUp is doing with anti-corruption campaigns across America. Ending the revolving door of money in politics I think is the surest way towards a more fair government.

I'd much rather have a farmer or astronaut or scientist as President who was given 10 million for advertising and not allowed to fundraise as was all his opponents than a system where the person with the most money wins. Even though Sanders is very good at fundraising and grassroots fundraising on the left has skyrocketed, we can't always count on that being the case.

As I said I flop back and forth, I'm encouraged, but at the same time I feel like things are desparate in America. I freelance and I have gone through periods of poverty when I have trouble finding clients.

I'm in one right now, sadly -- it also coincides with my periods of depression, I'm pretty sure the depression is stress caused, and I've done extensive therapy to learn coping mechanisms but I still feel the pain coming on a few times a day lately.

I think I'll totally drop cynicism about politics when we get a real progressive in the Oval office, or if Biden doesn't win and Warren or Bernie does. Just the fact of the progressives beating the establishment would totally lift my spirits and resolve. I'm hopeful that we do see more and more progressives, and intellectuals run in 2020 and win. Guess we'll need to wait and see how things pan out.

<comment><USER5> > I think I'll totally drop cynicism about politics when we get a real > progressive in the Oval office, or if Biden doesn't win and Warren or Bernie > does. Just the fact of the progressives beating the establishment would > totally lift my spirits and resolve. I'm hopeful that we do see more and > more progressives, and intellectuals run in 2020 and win. Guess we'll need > to wait and see how things pan out.

There's realism and there's cynicism. Realistically, your goals will not be easily achieved. Realistically, many people are flat desperate. Cynicism says, "why bother trying, it'll always be that way".

But I can tell you this: the current world didn't fall out of no where, it is not static. Many activists in worked to build it this way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It is interesting that support for nationalism is still popular with the older generations alongside their support for diversity, even after nationalism has been co-opted by groups hostile to diversity.

The younger generations see "I support the USA" as "I support the policies of the current administration", simply because that's how said supporters often identify themselves.

I think if you asked the younger generations if they still believed in the principles of freedom and democracy that the US represents that they would be largely in favor of that stance, but feel that the current government is not upholding those ideals in a way that they approve of.

<comment><USER8> With all due respect, I did not vote for the president but now find myself more aligned with the Republicans than any 2020 Democrat. Its a smear that they are anti-Diversity. A lot of the young men I know feel disenfranchised in a system that does not value them even though they are not in any positions of power. All are sympathetic to historical injustices and see the President doing things like First Step Act and Opportunity Zones as legislation that disproportionately benefits minority groups, but does not detract from other groups. I think he's brash and unpolite, but a lot of people I know see this as fighting back against an onslaught that is one-sided and doesn't get called out.

<comment><USER9> If you think that the way the president primarily is affecting minority groups is via First Step Act and Opportunity Zones, then you are either confused or willfully ignorant. His "me first" M.O. is based on stoking racial grievances and animosity in his base. His actual economic policies align exactly with the "swamp": funnel money to the wealthy. It sounds to me, frankly, that you are simply seeing what you want to see.

<comment><USER8> I'd love to engage in any debate because ultimately I think that having diverse viewpoints ultimately leads to the most ideal solution. And not just Diversity of background, but diversity of bias is also important. I think the single most important thing being accomplished at the moment is the rebuilding of the middle class through bringing manufacturing back. It hasn't happened on a large scale yet, but I'm optimistic that the next year will see a big uptick. Building the middle class will be the best way to close the racial wealth gap. I also live in an urban area in a gentrifying neighborhood and it looks like some millenials are opting to settle. I think this is great for integration as well as minorities moving to the suburbs. I also saw research recently that has shown that gentrification has led to incomes in the area increasing at rates that beat the national average which is also promising.

EDIT: Why was this comment downvoted without a reply? I want to spark a discussion.

<comment><USER9> > bringing manufacturing back

heh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is refreshing actually. I used to be mormon and am now 95% agnostic (I don't believe in deity being required for an afterlife, but I believe there's a 5-10% chance of something else post-death).

I actually had given up on the idea of children as we had fertility issues, and I figured I was okay enough without them, but my wife was adamant so we spent everything we had to get our two little boys. Literally I'm 40 with no retirement, but I have two boys 2 and 8 months old.

Before I was kind of iffy on children, but I would not trade being a dad for anything... It's an amazing experience and has opened my heart, treated a lot of depression issues, and helped me become a better person overall. There is love and beauty and inspiration without deity and religion. I'm in awe of the universe and science and all we know about it but all we still don't.

It just makes me appreciate the fact more that someday I'll die, makes me want to appreciate every moment because as far as we know we're the only intelligent species, and I'm lucky enough to be born here in this day with the technology we have, have a family I adore.

As for patriotism, I used to be patriotic back around 2001 when everyone was 'coming together' because 9/11\. But I lost that after I got more and more in politics and see only those with big business interests at heart every get anywhere. Issues that affect the masses don't matter to anyone on top. America's done some horrible things like nuking and poisoning their own citizens and covering it all up.

My wife's lost two grandparents to downwinder's which is basically cancer caused by being too close to nuclear fallout. Back in the 50's they just were asked to come out and bring their families and have a picnic and watch the bombs fall.

The idea of America a democratic nation with we the people for the people as it's motto would be amazing, but that hasn't happened yet, and I don't see it happening for a very long time.

</comment><comment><USER10> A person interviewed in the article touches on it, but it's not surprising that the sort of patriotism espoused by older generations, much of which is performative, superficial, and one might even say "virtue signaling", has fallen out of favor with those under-40.

</comment><comment><USER11> Religion, at least the dominant Evangelical Christian kind, has gotten increasingly politicized, to the point where religious == conservative (note I'm using JS-style "truthy" here, I know that this isn't a blanket case).

So it's not surprising that young Americans, who are generally liberal, don't consider themselves religious.

And as for having kids? Not only is it more expensive and stressful than ever before, but we're slowly moving away from the mindset that a woman's primary purpose is to raise children.

That, and I think a lot of folks have started to reflect on how having kids didn't seem to make their unhappy parents any more fulfilled.

<comment><USER12> Religion was always political it's just a modern slight of hand to label the prevailing ideology secular and dis-empower the clergy. Does not seem to have worked very long though. I think we'll see more political moves by religion and those who choose to embrace it moving forward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I can only write from my own anecdotal personal experiences.

The USA is still more so religious than Canada from my interactions with young people in both countries. Although, the perception that religion is comparable to a cult is rising among the shared expressed views of religion compared to ten years ago. I don't necessarily think religion is bad for society if we educate people to be closer to understanding reality by conclusive science than the whims of faith-based thoughts.

In any case I definitely witness patriotism decreasing because the young generation has been having a difficult time in society financially speaking and compared to their parents. I would think most young people feel betrayed that quality of life is somewhat being stolen from them. This brings me to another assumption that desires to have kids is being grossly influenced by lack of finances and subconsciously. Everyone I know is opting in for a dog or a cat and so they can try to afford a mortgage for a home. Build more homes to offset the cost!

</comment><comment><USER14> I can tell you why "patriotism, religion and having children" have never been values for me (32 yr old)... Specifically, two are very closely related:

Religion - I don't buy it. I never have, even from a young age. The idea of a mystical all powerful being floating in the sky watching us has always seemed absurd. And frankly, science has really done a number on my ability to believe in traditional religions. Do I believe some higher-being may exist? Sure. Do I believe in an afterlife? No, I don't think anything points to that existing. Maybe it does, but likely it doesn't. But trust me I understand how this lack of a philosophy for life has sucked a lot of community, and to some extent, love for life itself, right out of it.

Children - If there is no afterlife, then what IS the point of this life? Seriously? Why form bonds, and relationships, and become close with people... if only to die and for it all to vanish? Of course since I'm alive, I take every chance to form relationships and bonds. But I don't believe in continuing this depressing cycle. I don't believe in this "system" of pulling someone into the world, only for them to have to say goodbye to everything they've built and everyone they love. I disagree with it at the core of my being, and I've never had a "religion" to help me think otherwise.

So yea... having kids, settling down, religion... that's all gone for me.

<comment><USER6> Maybe learn about stoicism. I have two children, and watching them experience life for the first time is the most fulfilling thing I've ever seen. I was 38 when my youngest was born, I'll be 40 in November.

Stoicism teaches that we all will die, and true death is when we're forgotten, but more than that we need to only worry about the things we can change, or the things we have 'some' control over, but stop worrying about stuff we have zero control over. Another teaching is that if you focus on the fact that you're just worm food, for a few minutes every day you can learn to appreciate the small time you have hear.

Given, when I was in the grips of depression I shared your nihilism about forming bonds, and I'm still an introvert, and I used to be religious (Mormon), now I'm agnostic, though I think there's a 5-10% chance of an afterlife (our mind is just energy right?), I do not think a supreme being exists --especially a narcissist who demands fealty and worship.

Trust me if you ever do settle down and have children, it'll change you. Also -- you learn that even without an afterlife there is still so much beauty and inspiration in this world to appreciate. Think about it, you've been given a gift. As far as we know we're the only intelligence in the entire universe. If that is true then only you and those of us born human on this rock will ever know what intelligence is like. We're the only ones ever to understand science, and build technological achievements. Only we can appreciate the beauty of a space, or a sunset, or the love of family.

Without those experiences then yeah there's nothing holding us here, and why wait till you die of natural causes? I thought about that a lot when I was depressed, and losing my religion, then I had my children and wanted to get better for them so I got help and learned to enjoy the beauty of life regardless of what happens after.

<comment><USER14> I appreciate your response and I can certainly understand and respect the gravity and life changing nature of having children.

That said, despite many a biological (and even cognitive) drives toward procreating, I continue to refuse to do it. Until I can look around and see a world that I agree with, one where bad things don't happen to good people, where children don't get leukemia, where random car accidents don't leave you crippled for life, then and maybe only then would I even consider it.

Take my unwillingness to procreate as a big middle finger to life itself; As big of a fuck you (short of killing myself - which i have no interest in) as I can possibly give. Feedback to the creator if you will... that I just don't like what they've done. Yea life is beautiful in many way, but on a whole it desperately needs a revision.

I may adopt one day. It's the least I could do with this mindset. Help an innocent child that neither asked, nor possibly even wants, to be alive. If I could improve their life then that's worth something. That'd be a hell of a lot more "life changing" than pumping out a mini me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting to see how they mention Old Democrats are closer in value to Young Republicans. I highly suspected this, but its nice to have data.

<comment><USER15> It's largely why candidates like Biden are so popular; he's pulling a large number of votes from republican defectors that weren't on the evangelical train. The centrist wing of the Democratic Party has become much, much more conservative since W. took office.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> America is becoming more socialist.

</comment><comment><USER17> "WSJ/NBC News telephone poll conducted of 1,000 adults from Aug. 10–14; margin of error +/\- 3.1 percentage points"

This is all I need to know that this study doesn't have any worth.

The required sample size for statistical significance is at least 8 times larger than this.

<comment><USER18> > This is all I need to know

Perhaps you should update your understanding of how polls work and are to be interpreted... if you think you understand statistics better than the WSJ, consider that you might be mistaken.

<comment><USER17> The WSJ is grossly incompetent when it comes to polling.

[https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OG- AI628_100616_G...](https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OG- AI628_100616_G_20161106085936.jpg)

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/hillary-clinton-leads-donald- tr...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/hillary-clinton-leads-donald-trump- by-4-points-in-latest-poll-1478440818)

Not only the sample size is wrong but also the method. Telephone polling is totally inadequate today. Most people ignore phone calls.

<comment><USER18> Most people don't understand Bayesian reasoning either, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't. If the polls have no value to you, then you lack the framework to interpret them.

<comment><USER17> The polls are worthless because not representative why is it so hard to understand?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple, Google to pay $324 million to settle conspiracy lawsuit - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/25/us-apple-google-lawsuit-exclusive-idUSBREA3N28Z20140425 <comment><USER2> Settlement seems low. Looks like every company involved ended up saving quite a bit of money, after all is said and done, with this little salary racket they had going.

<comment><USER3> "Settlement seems low."

> Apple, Google, Adobe and Intel in 2010 settled a U.S. Department of Justice > probe by agreeing not to enter into such no-hire deals in the future. The > four companies had since been fighting the civil antitrust class action.

This I think is actually the worst part, and all but guaranteed this settlement. "You guys were caught robbing banks. Don't do that again, 'K? Now get outta here."

Too bad a similar DOJ settlement wasn't available to Aaron Swartz. "Never make those documents publicly available again, K?"

<comment><USER4> _Too bad a similar DOJ settlement wasn 't available to Aaron Swartz._

Unfortunately, it is all too familiar that large corporations get off with a hand slap and individuals are punished or threatened with the full extent of the law. Seems backwards to me, because the harm that a large corporation can do is almost unbounded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm really getting tired of the slaps on the wrist these giant corporations are getting for their bad behavior. A few years ago Verizon was fined something like $23 million for bilking their customers out of money. That is literally pocket change for a company that size. It didn't punish them one bit.

This is just continuing proof that there is no difference between corporations and the government. One writes the laws and the other passes them. Meanwhile We The People are getting fucked with our pants on.

<comment><USER6> You do realize that you could start a corporation if you wanted to?

<comment><USER5> Ok, lets say I do start a corporation. And I do all the right things and in 5-10 years its doing several hundred billion dollars in revenue. Not unheard of - Apple, Google, Facebook.

And lets further say that with all that cash I decide I need to get my own representation in government because its just not efficient to donate the max to my representatives in Congress. So I hire a lobbying firm and/or set up a PAC or two to pressure other representatives who otherwise wouldn't give me the time of day because I'm not a constituent.

Now I'm basically (and, in fact, outright) saying to them, "I gave you $x,xxx,xxx.xx in contributions[1] so I want you to pass these laws. I've written them for you so you don't really even need to spend time reading them. Aren't I a nice guy?" And so the representatives pass the laws because I gave them a lot of money and all they really want is the power anyway.

Then, because I'm so big, I inevitably do something stupid (at best) or criminal. So I call up the aforementioned paid-for representatives and tell them to get me out of the hot water. They put some pressure on the right people and, Bob's your uncle, I'm paying the equivalent to three or four hours revenue in "fines".

THIS. IS. WRONG!

If that's not clear enough lets look at it from my standpoint as a citizen (or, you know; and ACTUAL person):

I make an average of $45,000 a year and can only contribute $2600 per candidate[2]. In reality I'm only able to contribute a fraction of that and probably don't even do that much. But lets say I do something stupid and/or criminal. What happens to me then? I go to jail AND I pay an ACTUAL fine that is a significantly higher percentage of the income I just lost by going to jail.

The people you vote for in this next election _need your vote_. But they won't be representing you. Because you don't have enough money. Google does though. And so does Apple. And so does Hollywood, Big-Pharma, Oil & Gas... The list goes on of organizations who are more important to your government than you.

1: Bribes

2: [http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/contriblimits.shtml](http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/contriblimits.shtml)

<comment><USER6> The invisible hand of Adam works by having a multitude of entities looking out for their own selfish interests.

<comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure he mean't private entities looking out for their own selfish interests without collusion from the government.

As it is we have an imperial fuck-ton of entities looking out for their own selfish interest, both private and government. Doesn't really seem to me like things are improving for the people that pay the corporations and whom the government purports to serve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the repercussions of this are wildly underestimated by Apple's and Google's management, and they are not doing nearly enough to prevent upcoming mass resignations of their engineers.

I'm just extrapolating from my own emotions on the issue. I'd previously thought very positively about going to work for Apple. Not so anymore. To me, the fact that Tim Cook's voice isn't clearly heard, completely rejecting this sort of practice, issuing a public apology on behalf of Apple, and ensuring to compensate employees by more than a few thousand dollars each - Is just too big of a de-motivator.

We need the CEOs to clearly voice their accountability, and their plans to prevent this from happening again, the sooner the better.

<comment><USER8> "Upcoming mass resignations"? This story has been in the news for nearly four years now. Anyone who sees it as a compelling reason to not work for Google or Apple is long gone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The settlement will give 3-5K per employee. Hardly anything. I wonder why they settled, instead of going ahead with the trial. I'm totally unsympathetic with these companies, and now they are just getting away literally free.

<comment><USER10> You can go on for years. The paper bill you own doesn't hold up its value. You can keep $1 in your pocket but five years from now it hardly actually worth $1. Furthermore, how much is fair? 300K per person? Some of them could have gotten a 50K bump by switching to a new employer. If anything, large sum large number of plaintiffs is usually one of the longest trials you will ever experience if neither side let it go. You can withdraw from the case and start your own lawsuit for more, I guess that can work in legal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So what is that, like $2k per employee per year of the conspiracy? Sounds like they've learned their lesson, and the lesson is "go ahead and do it again, nobody will stop you."

<comment><USER12> Yes this is more like a fee or small tax on the bad behavior.

"Bob make sure to budget in 300m for the anti-poaching agreements and get those out to the teams and companies. Run it by the senators + lobbyists so we can get that paid and proceed. We don't want anyone that helped us helping themselves or anyone else in the future." \-- said the feudal kings stopping engineers and innovation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why in the world would those 64k employees take this offer? It was clear that they were going to pay for this and that a jury would be sympathetic. Was there really any chance that the amount gained could have be lower for the plaintiffs had this case gone to a jury trial? If not, then why didn't they go to trial?

<comment><AUTHOR> It actually addresses this. The report explains that there's a chance the whole thing would have been invalidated by an appellate judge.

Still, personally as a class member I would've pressed for more, and I bet it's because the firm has different incentives. They probably stand to get something on the order of $100M of that settlement. They're thinking, $100M in the hand is worth $1B in the bush. Especially since going to trial explodes their costs.

But at the ~$3K level most class members stand to gain (on average), I bet most would bet that for a chance at $30K. I would. Sucks that the class members don't have a say.

<comment><USER14> First, the lawyers don't get to decide whether to settle, the lead plaintiffs do. Second, class members can opt-out of the settlement. As 'danielweber points out, nobody will do so because litigating against employers would be a huge black mark on their resume. That's the real kicker here.

As a general principle, I have serious concerns about the agency problems that exist in the class action system as currently structured. I think it's way too common for lead plaintiffs to settle for too little. However, in this case I think they and their lawyers did everyone a favor. Nobody would've pursued these cases individually, not even if they stood to get $30k. Every dollar the class plaintiffs recover above $0 is gravy.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a feeling the law firm is in the driver's seat here. I'd assume they organized/selected the lead plaintiffs, so that gives them some selection control.

Opting out individually is in no way, shape or form a substitute for negotiating a larger class action settlement. The whole point of class action is that there's strength in numbers. Even if you didn't care about "black marks", most individuals would not be able to bear the cost and risk of taking these guys to court.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> 324M for 64000 employees in the class action lawsuit. That appears to be 5k per employee before legal fee which could be as high as 30% of the settlement. Hardly 2-3k for each employee, I think.

Very cheap for the companies. But at least a good precedent to discourage such practices in the future.

<comment><USER16> > Very cheap for the companies. But at least a good precedent to discourage > such practices in the future.

These two sentences don't mix well with each other. Either it's cheap for companies and worth the expense _or_ it's a good precedent that discourages these practices in the future.

Cheap doesn't discourage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The moral of this story is that conspiracy is very profitable. Save ~$3bn in costs for a $300MM settlement. Sad.

</comment><comment><USER18> They got off lightly. What they really didn't want is for the truth about their repugnant behavior to come out. They broke the law so obviously, and have already essentially admitted it to the Justice Dept. I don't know why the lawyers didn't push for more.

</comment><comment><USER19> This will leave a bad taste in the mouth around these companies. Apple really sound like a disgusting corporation when you look behind their well orchestrated PR image.

<comment><USER20> Just out of curiosity, why did you choose to call out Apple particularly?

<comment><USER19> They are the antithesis of what I believe a technology company should be. Everything is closed source, locked down and designed to make maximum profit at the expense of the customer/developer/artist.

<comment><USER21> A company is likely not the appropriate structure if you want to create free software.

<comment><USER22> > A _publicly-traded_ company is likely not the appropriate structure if you > want to create free software.

Fixed. Non-public companies can sometimes be an appropriate structure. E.g. the Mozilla Corporation: as a for-profit entity it can do a lot of things that the non-profit Mozilla Foundation can't, but it's 100% owned and completely controlled by the Foundation, and reinvests all profits back into the Mozilla project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In response to the lawsuit Apple and Google have joined forces in an effort to reduce payments to tech workers. How did I not see that coming?

</comment><comment><USER24> The CEOs should have gone to jail for this. They literally conspired against honest workers.

<comment><USER25> Well, at least one of the CEOs is dead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is way too little. Disgusting.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm very curious about this, and surprised that none of the media articles mention it: Does anybody know where these numbers (both the $324M settlement and the $9B asking price) come from in the first place? Presumably, the plaintiff has hired some experts who've come up with a model that estimates the wages stolen?

$324M ÷ 64,000 employees ÷ 3 comes out to $1,687.50 per employee, which seems very low. (The factor of 3 is to account for the treble damages alluded to in the Reuters article.)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Now the question is, how much do people receive after the lawyers take their cut and it's divided up among 64K employees?

<comment><USER28> Typically lawyers get on the order of 30%, so about $3400 per employee.

<comment><USER29> Plus more from other companies?

<comment><USER30> The article text says "Four major tech companies including Apple and Google have agreed to pay a total of $324 million". Google and Apple are just the ones that get the bad press in headlines.

<comment><USER31> Or good press, from an investor's perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Maybe the only bright side I see to this is, a red line has been drawn, a multi-million settlement is drawn out, and everyone knows if there is a next time the penalty would be _even worse_.

<comment><USER33> I would think the opposite. If this settlement goes through I would say that the cost of doing this type of business has been decided.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> So does this mean that the problems will be addressed? Or is settling a way of avoiding this?

</comment><comment><USER35> There's something Apple and Google and their ilk are much more afraid of than this lawsuit and, based on these shenanigans, it may be time.

I found out last March why my manager at Google was adverse to me. I knew someone was pulling strings on him and I had thought that he was taking orders related to my criticism of the G+ direction (in fact, the G+ executives were, as far as I know, innocent) but it was actually because an executive (who's since been disciplined) flagged me as a union risk. I said something to the effect of "decisions would be better if made on the floor" and that was taken to mean _far_ more than I actually meant. (I was talking about G+ Games, not unionizing the Valley. Small difference.)

However, that ordeal and the career problems I've faced since then have convinced me that we need to unionize software development and the Valley ecosystem.

The Valley is fucking _terrified_ of unions. So terrified that if you even seem like you _might_ be leaning that way, executive-level people in major companies will go out of their way to fuck up your career. A lot of the back- channel reference checking that goes on in the Valley is to avoid taking on a potential unionist. No one cares if you were a mediocre performer 3 jobs ago. That stuff is there to black-list potential unionizers.

Now, do I think we want or need a factory-style union where promotions and pay are based on seniority? Hell no. That's a terrible idea. Engineers who work their asses off to become the best they can be, and to advance their respective fields, should be rewarded. I think that the top engineers would make _more_ with a properly-designed union structure than they do now (since, currently, they top out at 1.5 times the pay of mediocre ones). I think our model needs to be more like the Hollywood unions (writers' and actors' guilds). Those do not curtail the financial upside for their members (there are still actors making millions per year) nor do they produce mediocrity. (Say what you want about Hollywood's product, but it's immensely commercially successful and the envy of the pop-culture world.)

Specific union protections we need include:

        * readily available legal support when faced with non-paying clients or bad-faith
          employers.
        * recourse against clients and employers who use reputation threats to justify
          nonpayment or bad behavior (i.e. "if you don't accept our unfunded scope creep,
          we'll call other clients.")
        * (for employees) representation when in trouble with management. The right to
          have a representative *in the room* (mostly, because if you negotiate on your
          own behalf, you're at risk of getting emotional and saying something
          stupid) when dealing with management or HR.
        * defense against negative references and back-channel reference checks in
          general.
        * transparency in compensation.
        * protection against "no-poach" lists and blacklists. A union tip line
          can help with that.
        * protection against sharing of individual HR data (salaries,
          performance reviews) among companies, often used to keep pay down.
        * negotiation of terms that are embarrassing for an individual to
          formally address, such as severance, health accommodations
          and workplace privacy.

These are all things that we can have, and that we deserve, that bring none of the negative side effects associated with unions.

<comment><USER36> your history of compulsive megaposting across google's internal message boards, your university's message boards, autoadmit, hackernews and several other sites indicates low mental stability and a paranoid mindset. it's not hard to believe that you really are a low productivity troublesome employee, and that this explain your lack of career success.

<comment><USER37> Please post using your full name if you are going to make direct personal attacks at a named individual. It's very hard to take comments like this seriously.

<comment><USER36> posts about his autoadmit and carleton adventures: [http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=306628](http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=306628) [http://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2372636](http://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2372636)

wikipedia sockpuppets: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Isomorphic/Minions_of_the_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Isomorphic/Minions_of_the_Church)

blatant sockpuppetry on quora: [http://qr.ae/rPxvn](http://qr.ae/rPxvn) [http://qr.ae/rPxCq](http://qr.ae/rPxCq)

his obsessive anti-google and anti-startup posting on hackernews speaks for itself.

<comment><USER38> I don't know what autoadmit is all about, but it seems like a juvenile, abusive, bullying community. Why do you care enough to have these links on hand?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


An Open Source Stack for Managing and Deploying Models - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/an-open-source-stack-for-managing-and-deploying-models-c5d3b98160bc <comment><USER2> A technical question - how does your system work in the IRIS or other examples you have? It looks like it hides under the hood a few things compared to this implementation - type of the model (tensorflow) and the logic that fetches it from S3, right? Let's imagine we would want to make a DVC repo (just to store model versions to start) out of one of your examples instead of the DVC get started, how would we do that with the current implementation (through metadata + custom init)?

<comment><USER3> Hi, I'm one of the maintainers of Cortex

>> how does your system work in the IRIS or other examples you have? It looks like it hides under the hood a few things compared to this implementation - type of the model (tensorflow) and the logic that fetches it from S3, right?

That's exactly right. Cortex has three runtimes:

The Predictor runtime, which is used in this post, can run arbitrary Python. There is an optional key in `cortex.yaml` for Predictors called `model`, which is an S3 path to an exported model (or directory). If provided, Cortex will download the file/directory at that path and make it available as an argument in the `init(model_path, metadata)` function in your Predictor implementation (see here for the Predictor docs: [https://www.cortex.dev/deployments/predictor](https://www.cortex.dev/deployments/predictor))

The TensorFlow and ONNX runtimes behave a little differently (and similar to each other): `model` is a required field in the API config, and Cortex handles downloading the model and running inference against it. You may define a `request_handler`, which can contain pre- and post-request handling (here are the TensorFlow docs: [https://www.cortex.dev/deployments/tensorflow](https://www.cortex.dev/deployments/tensorflow), and here are the ONNX docs: [https://www.cortex.dev/deployments/onnx](https://www.cortex.dev/deployments/onnx))

>> Let's imagine we would want to make a DVC repo (just to store model versions to start) out of one of your examples instead of the DVC get started, how would we do that with the current implementation (through metadata + custom init)?

Yes, that is also exactly right - you'll have to use the Predictor runtime since that allows you to define how to download your model. You would specify metadata and leave out the `model` config field, similar to as done in this post. In `init(model_path, metadata)`, you would use the metadata to download and load the model

<comment><USER2> Thank you! It all makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really believe that "end-to-end AI platforms" of the future should be built on top of open-source tools like these two. I cannot wait to see when other parts of AI platforms will be integrated with the existing ones: model performance monitoring, data catalogs and etc..

Disclaimer: I'm one of the creators of DVC.

</comment><comment><USER2> Nice! Thanks for creating the integration. I'm one of the maintainers of the DVC project and would be happy to answer any questions.

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting integration. I'm wondering how Cortex is different from Seldon?

</comment><comment><USER6> Can Cortex deploy to other cloud providers besides AWS?

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently we only support AWS—though we're working on supporting GCP as soon as possible. What platform are you using now?

<comment><USER6> Thanks! We're using GCP.</comment></comment></comment>


Investor Shervin Pishevar Accused of Sexual Misconduct by Multiple Women - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-01/uber-investor-shervin-pishevar-accused-of-sexual-misconduct-by-multiple-women <comment><USER2> I'm glad people are coming forward about this. Predatory men contribute to the culture of toxicity and hostility towards women in tech, and we need to toss the bums out of our industry.

<comment><USER3> I'm glad too. Female friends have shared disturbing stories about advances by professors, supervisors, buyers, and others with influence over their lives. I mean, "sexretary" was a cliche, a few decades ago. For the most part, they were testing for potential victims.

I'm guessing that this could become a substantial purge.

<comment><USER4> The interesting thing is that this is also going to change the status quo, in perhaps unexpected ways. There's no doubt the vast majority of these claims are true, yet there's also no doubt that this is really ratcheting up the concern of many employers about the possibilities when being alone with female employees. And then social events, most of which involve alcohol, are going to ramp that concern up to 11.

It's possible that this is already happening to some degree. One of Ellen Pao's complaints against Kleiner Perkins is that females were not invited to some social outings with the other partners/execs. As this becomes a more serious issue, and like you - I am expecting an ongoing purge, the status quo is going to be shaken in ways other than taking out the trash.

<comment><USER3> I don't see why it should greatly affect group events. Because there are so many witnesses. But working lunches and dinners, yes. Not to mention those all-nighters in hotel rooms to tweak presentations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's insane that this article outs one of the alleged victims based on other's account of what happened even though she herself declined to comment.

Women should be given the freedom to disclose these things on their own terms and this has been taken away from her.

<comment><USER4> So this is to say that if a person involved in a crime refuses to comment on it, nobody should be allowed to? And as we are a society of innocent until proven guilty -- in cases where somebody is accused, should the media not be allowed to publish corroborating statements until the accused has had their say on their own terms?

I can certainly see an emotional argument for what you're saying, but logically I don't think this is very cogent.

<comment><USER5> Yes, I believe that journalists should not be basing their reporting on hearsay.

I think there's a logical argument to be made that if you have one victim who does not wish to speak publicly but multiple other women who will, you respect the privacy of that woman.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I feel that the quantity of these reports has been increasing since the whole Weinstein incident.

I wonder if it is because there's more comfort in finally sharing or because reporters are looking for scoops more.

Either way, it's good I think.

<comment><USER7> And inevitably it's being co-opted into the media wars. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/a-woman- approa...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/a-woman-approached- the-post-with-dramatic--and-false--tale-about-roy-moore-sje-appears-to-be- part-of-undercover-sting- operation/2017/11/27/0c2e335a-cfb6-11e7-9d3a-bcbe2af58c3a_story.html)

<comment><USER8> That's a very generous description of the dumbassery perpetrated by Project Veritas there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Jesus, what's wrong with these men?!

<comment><USER10> Society often encourages and rewards sexual aggression and dominance in successful men - such behavior is symbolic of their status and virility, and has been since the days when sultans collected women in harems. Society is just an abstraction of primate hierarchies built on violence and sex with a thin veneer of civility applied, not that that excuses anything. But the point is, this behavior isn't unusual.

It's valid to ask what's wrong with these men, but you should also ask what's wrong with cultures which reinforce predatory masculinity and allow it to propagate.

<comment><USER9> I mean, being rich and powerful already makes a whole lot easier for a man to conquest women (and vice-versa), I don't like it but that's the way it is - just riding a better car creates a lot of opportunities like I have myself experimented - so why bother forcing your way?

<comment><USER4> I would imagine the situation for many of these people is not as great as you're framing it.

For the most part the accused have been unusually physically unattractive and to say their personalities don't make up for it would be quite the understatement. So they have a situation where if somebody is interested in them it's almost certainly because they're interested in their money. And if they hide their wealth from people - then nobody would be any more interested in them than your average aging unattractive individual.

So sure they can get laid by prostitutes and gold diggers, but that in many ways has to be incredibly emasculating. Imagine how awful it must be to know that if somebody shows interest in you, that they're probably lying to you and just after your money. The wife of Weinstein was a head and shoulders commercial girl. George Clooney's wife is a high profile lawyer whose clients include Julian Assange, the former PM of Ukraine, etc. Anecdotal, but there are plenty of very attractive and charismatic wealthy individuals. Yet, at least for now, it seems like they're not the ones engaged in this behavior. And _there_ I would imagine it's because your stereotyping holds much more true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is all well and good, high-profile folks getting repercussions for their abusive behavior. But how does this help the folks down behind the counter at KFC, or on the factory floor, or at the dry-cleaners? I hope some cultural change comes of all this, else its just more celebrity gossip.

<comment><USER2> If the top people at a company can be publicly named and shamed, then that hopefully conveys the idea that this behavior won't be tolerated on any level.

<comment><USER12> It could also backfire and show that the only people worth reporting on are those at the top, since that's all we hear about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wondering how long before we don't have enough douchebags left to run the place.

<comment><USER14> Well never run out, they'll just select for new cryptic colorations and evasive behaviors. Fools and assholes are humanity's greatest resources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sexuality has value. Our system will continue to be in a chaotic disequilibrium until we can find a way to manage the fact that sexuality has as much value as money and power, and that it is impossible to separate it from business.

But where we're at now, sexuality is just feared by timid people, and exploited by scumbags.

</comment><comment><USER16> Why omit "Uber" from the title on HN?

<comment><USER17> As much as I enjoy piling on Uber, this seems to have nothing to do with them, and is just there for clickbait.

<comment><USER16> HN policy has always been to leave the title intact.

And I, for one, find his affiliation with Uber to be of particular interest given Susan Fowler's story.

<comment><USER18> Not true. It is permitted to neutralize a clickbait title if the story is otherwise worthy.

<comment><USER16> Without looking at Crunchbase, please name one other investment of Shervin Pishevar that has the cultural reach of Uber. I suspect a randomly selected person would not be able to do so. And Uber has a well documented history of hostile or discriminatory behavior that hews close to the article's topic.

<comment><USER19> Keeping or removing Uber is a complex decision:

He's a little bit more than merely an Uber investor. Quoting: "He is a strategic advisor to Uber, and served as a board advisor to the company from 2011–2015." [1]

He also invested in many more companies than merely Uber. [1]

Therefore a case can be made for both keeping Uber as well as removing Uber from the title.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> All the men accused of sexual misconduct share the same trait: they are all rich!

<comment><USER21> The poor have less chance of being famous, and hence of being in the spotlight for such accusations.

<comment><USER22> In the spheres being reported on, yes. On the other hand, something I find interesting is that there are plenty of nontrivial YouTube creators with large followings, and more than one of them has been outed as a scumbag (which was low-key happening before #MeToo, in a way that actually-powerful people seemed immune).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why can't we put these people behind bars. What is going on, is this not really a crime in societies eyes.

<comment><USER24> Public accusation != conviction of crime

<comment><USER25> That's OK. The Internet Mob agrees and will "Execute" anyone they see fit via job loss, death threats, vandalism, and destitution. But, that's OK, at least according to the comments I received.

For some reason, "We're" happy with extralegal punishments, and then sweeping them away as some sort of 'rights of the employers'. More and more claims are being made by a single person, and used to fire and blackball them. It's Salem Witch Trials all over again, but with respect to "Sexual Harassment".

THIS is a problem:

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/internet-shaming-when-mob- justi...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/internet-shaming-when-mob-justice-goes- virtual/)

[https://www.newstatesman.com/voices/2014/01/dangers- public-s...](https://www.newstatesman.com/voices/2014/01/dangers-public- shaming-mob-justice-and-scolding-internet)

[https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/dec/20/social- media-t...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/dec/20/social-media- twitter-online-shame)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1d34nj/student_w...](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1d34nj/student_wrongly_tied_to_boston_bombing_found_dead/)

Edit: I see the -1's hit me again. I've made the case there is some real problems with the way Mob Justice is being handled. That includes up to the death of people indicated. Now I'm not calling for the protection of sexual predators. I AM calling for due process before we start throwing people under the bus.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> So, how much more "Accusations" will arise, that are acted upon with firings, and no criminal anything results?

I'm getting rather fed up with "Sexual * accusation leads to firing" again and again and again. How about proof/courtcase/dismissal if guilty? What about the rights of the accused, or are we going to stand for "Social Media Courtroom" slamming out guilty verdicts?

Edit: I'm trying to open up a dialog about the rights of accusers AND accused. The ramifications here are "Loss of income, loss of house, approaching poverty and destitution". The current trend is using "Virtual Mob Justice" \- whom here agrees with this approach? I sure don't. I've seen what Mobs will get you, and it ain't pretty.

<comment><USER2> Nearly all of the people tossed out of their jobs for these claims fessed up to being creeps.

A company doesn't need to win a court case to fire someone. You're not entitled to a job. This is America.

No one is locking these people up without a trial. However, being shunned by most of society does not require a court case.

<comment><USER18> > Nearly all of the people tossed out of their jobs for these claims fessed up > to being creeps.

I agree, as far as we know this is what has been happening. An exception being Roy Moore, as far as I know he has stridently denied the accusations made against him.

I do think GP has identified a slippery slope. Not everyone is honorable and some people will start to get the idea that they can take down a boss they don't like by simply leveling a sexual assault charge. If in today's climate there is a presumption of guilt rather than innocence, or even an attitude "easier to fire him than deal with an investigation" then pray you're never on the wrong side of that scenario.

<comment><USER26> I expect many powerful men to adopt Mike Pence's philosophy - never being alone with a woman unless it's his wife - to manage the risk of (potentially fake) accusations.

<comment><USER25> Well, yeah.

Hell, and there a ton of craziness that goes on in the dating scene. If I was still dating, I'd record with my phone, to prove "No, (s)he did consent. Here's the proof." The opposite of this, is fighting off a potential rape allegation. That scares the living fuck out of me, since a buddy had that happen.

But maybe there's a case for a device that records, in a sealed storage. Think of it as insurance on claims of wrongdoing.

I've also been sexually harassed by a manager (I'm a guy, manager was a woman). Worked at a subway. She grabbed my ass deep enough she fondled my testicles. Turns out the district manager came in the back door. Fired her on the spot. Makes me a weird exception, in that it was female doing to male subordinate, and it was solved.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN Admins: Please indicate charset (UTF-8) inside your HTML - <AUTHOR>

Dear HN Admins:
Would you please modify the web pages generated by Hacker News so that they indicate the content type internally, especially the encoding?  In other words, would you please add the following tag:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
to your web pages' HEAD section?
My personal interest in this is to improve the Hourly Hacker News Snapshot (http://hhn.domador.net).  For a long time, the archived pages frequently included a few gibberish characters when loaded from a web browser.  (Smart quotes were the kind of characters that were most often displayed improperly.)  I decided to finally get around to fixing this.  I've modified my web server so that it indicates the UTF-8 charset in the HTTP headers. (EDITED SECTION)
There are probably others who would benefit from this change as well.  What do you think?
-----
(EDIT: I removed the following text, when I found out that CloudFlare DOES pass along the Content-Type:
"Unfortunately, this solution is a bit limiting.  I can no longer use CloudFlare to cache my website (since I can't customize CloudFlare to specify the Content Type).  I could reprocess and hack the old pages to add the Content-Type section, but I'd prefer to modify the content I download as little as possible.") <comment><USER2> We correctly set the Content-Type header:

      Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8

Is that not sufficient? If you set it as well (and it appears you do), then everything should work just fine.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wait, CloudFlare doesn't pass through the content-type from your web server?

<comment><AUTHOR> OK, it looks like CloudFlare DOES pass along the content-type. (Sorry, CloudFlare. You're even better than I realized!)

I think it'd still be helpful to include the content-type in the HTML, nevertheless.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Review my first app: Objects - semantic search app for the Wikipedia - <AUTHOR>

I just launched my first app yesterday and it would be great if the HN community could review it and give some feedback.
Objects is a semantic search app for the Wikipedia. It allows users to choose from 240 types and add filters to query 1.5 million objects. The results can be browsed and the Wikipedia or Freebase page can be opened in Safari or Articles.
Example queries: countries founded before 1/1/1900 that contain "United" in their names, actors born after 1/1/1950, planets with a certain mean temperature, cities with a specific population, ...
Check: http://turbolent.com/ , http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/objects/id410949899 and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2096730
Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable links: <http://turbolent.com/> <http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/objects/id410949899> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2096730></comment>


Broadband bills will have to increase to pay for snooper's charter - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/11/broadband-bills-increase-snoopers-charter-investigatory-powers-bill-mps-warned <comment><AUTHOR> Great; now we have the privilege of paying for our government to abuse our privacy: win-win.</comment>


Google Chrome OS Demo - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANMrzw7JFzA <comment><USER2> About 9 minutes in, they demo opening excel files with Microsoft's Windows Live web application. "It turns out Microsoft launched a killer app for Chrome OS," the presenter says, "They've been working very, very hard to do this."

And the audience laughs...

You get the feeling this was Google's plan all along. Launch some rough online office apps, wait for Microsoft to take the bait, then spring the trap. "Oops, your flagship web product is now a checkbox on our feature list."</comment>


Improved organization permissions - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/2020-improved-organization-permissions

<comment><USER2> The new collaborator feature makes it easier to include stakeholders in the communication loop.

The feature I really think github is lacking right now is the ability to give selective permission to some sections of the repo (issue|wiki|code|releases). Right now the only way to share issues but not the code is to create a separate repository, which is cumbersome to do and maintain for every project.

<comment><USER3> I can't overstate how useful it would be to at least restrict write access to certain branches. Bitbucket has had it for a while now [1], so I'm surprised GitHub haven't followed suit.

[1]: [https://blog.bitbucket.org/2013/09/16/take-control-with- bran...](https://blog.bitbucket.org/2013/09/16/take-control-with-branch- restrictions/)

<comment><USER2> I don't know if I would use branch restriction, it sounds like an anti pattern for the git philosophy (SVN file locks, anyone?). Why would I commit to someone else's branch, unintentionally? I think that a "gentlemen's agreement" as your link states, is more than enough. Can you provide a use case where this feature is useful? Do you use it often in your workflow?

<comment><USER4> I can see it being used for autodeployments on a "stable" branch and no deployments on other develop branches, and the stable branch being write- restricted.

<comment><USER5> Agree, seems like the most common use case, that is why we implemented them in GitLab, for more reasons see [https://about.gitlab.com/2014/11/26/keeping- your-code-protec...](https://about.gitlab.com/2014/11/26/keeping-your-code- protected/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm very, very excited about this. The poor level of control over permissions in orgs were a big issue when we (LXQt) moved our development to Github. Look forward to trying it out.

Edit: Here are in-depth docs on the new features: [https://help.github.com/articles/improved-organization- permi...](https://help.github.com/articles/improved-organization-permissions/)</comment>


Show HN: Get an SMS when your site is posted on HN (made for $50 on Bountify) - <AUTHOR> http://www.hntexter.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I commissioned this Rails app for $50 on Bountify.co. I'm also the founder of Bountify, and am trying to demonstrate some cool use cases. Please let me know if you have any feedback on either site!</comment>


HN Tokyo Meetup #21 – Thursday 11th of April, 2013 (50 people max) - <AUTHOR> http://www.makeleaps.jp/blog/en/2013/03/%E3%83%8F%E3%83%83%E3%82%AB%E3%83%BC%E3%83%8B%E3%83%A5%E3%83%BC%E3%82%B9tokyo-meetup-21%E5%9B%9E%E9%96%8B%E5%82%AC2013%E5%B9%B44%E6%9C%8811%E6%97%A5/

<comment><USER2> Hello Jason. As a freelancer, Im really curios about life in Japan. Is there any source of information, which could provide details about moving/living in Japan ? Im asking, because I saw that you have some people from other countries in your MakeLeaps team. Thanks.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> 15 spots left! This is going to be another good one, so book quickly if you want to come.</comment>


What Design at a Startup Actually Looks Like [video] - <AUTHOR> http://blog.yesgraph.com/remote-design-review/ <comment><USER2> More surprised to see someone using Sketch. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Just didn't expect it when I clicked the link.

Kind of curious what people are using these days for design.

I originally came from the Photoshop world, and would do all my mocks there initially, but over the last 3 years (mainly since CSS3) I've basically just built my designs in code and made them working prototypes first. I'm no engineer, but I can get a static site running / deployed through cactus / jekyll or whatever and add bits of jquery to get any inactivity done. I will admit it's been harder to keep up with frontends moving to ember / angular and needing more JS skills to fully build out my designs.

Again, not a criticism. Was cool to see a different approach, just curious what most designers are using these days. Thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER3> I am the designer in the video. I should say that I also used to work for Adobe. And that is not to say that I don't design in PS because I think it is crap. Quite the opposite, the PS team is an awe-inspiring team of PHD-level engineers. I would say that it is a huge tool that is still focused mainly on imaging and is decades old. They have to respond to a very large and diverse user base. I personally, don't like using big monolithic tools, like most web- oriented people I like the light-weight editors and focused tools.

I was a Fireworks user, but since Adobe decided to phase out support, I looked at what my workflow would be like. This transition came at the same time that I was moving away from detailed specs to a more lean design process, leaving the details to when I switch to code. Sketch, makes it very fast for me to create mocks and for the team to switch to code. Everything I design translates very well to web standards. I know that since Generator, Photoshop has a much better export flow to CSS but that is still not how I work.

Overall, my switch to Sketch has been very positive and I would recommend it to anyone that is doing any type of interactive design. Granted, Sketch is still pretty new and is missing a few things. Symbols or Smart Objects being the biggest thing for me.

Right now my workflow is: Omnigraffle for userflows, Sketch for wireframes and sketches, PS and AI for asset creation, Reflow for when I need to try some responsive layout, Edge Animate for motion prototypes, and I'll code with Brackets.

<comment><USER4> I used to do more wireframing than UI design, but that's changing, and I've been looking at the available tools.

PS is not good for multiple resolutions, and I find Illustrator too complex for the task.

The thing I like about wireframing in Omnigraffle is the wide array of stencil libraries available.

Have you found it easy to find and/or create design libraries for Sketch?

<comment><USER3> It is not as easy as Omnigraffle. My rudimentary way of doing this is to have a template file that I can copy/paste elements from. One function that I love from Sketch is that you can copy/paste styles, which makes the library use more flexible. You can copy CSS, but I wish that you could also past CSS into an object since we also have an ongoing UI library written in LESS

<comment><USER4> Perhaps I will build my own template files then.

I feel like there ought to be a vector design tool that makes it easy to just drop UI elements into a predefined display space—preferably even dynamic elements. (And while I'm dreaming, one that makes documentation easy.)

Either I'm missing it, or there just isn't an ideal tool for UI designers right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for the video, really nice. On one hand, I heard you guys talking about the difference between "subscribe", "pay" and "upgrade". Wouldn't it be more accurate to just fire an A/B Test for that button and see what converts better, instead of heresay?

A/B Testing on button title is pretty trivial and you can verify the result manually. No need for admin panel. Am I wrong?

<comment><AUTHOR> You're definitely right, and testing calls to action is a potentially easy win. Internally, I've stressed how we should avoid optimizations to help speed development.

The specific issue here was that the call to action to get the payment modal was "upgrade" making it a bit weird for the call to action on the modal to be "upgrade".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As an interaction designer I really liked watching this. I don't work for a startup but this is often how quick internal reviews go with a project team member at my company, as well; discovering unique scenarios you need to design for while talking through other issues.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

And you're totally right, this isn't limited to startups. I didn't want to title it generally "what design actually looks like" because while I'm pretty arrogant, I'm not that self aggrandizing :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Would be great to see more videos like this from other startups.

</comment><comment><USER8> These videos make some of the best learning tools. Thanks for sharing this.

</comment><comment><USER9> this was great. thanks for posting, and good work</comment>


Best Practices For Making Things Happen - <AUTHOR> http://www.jasonshen.com/2013/17-essential-best-practices-for-making-things-happen/ <comment><USER2> No substance. Just like any other blog that teaches you how to make incredible things happen, offering way too general advice. Just because you can start a blog and write doesn't mean you should.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. Thanks for reading my post and providing feedback.

This post wasn't meant to be a deep dive but more a list of activities ("ship before you feel totally done") and ways of thinking ("the best ideas are usually not universally embraced") that have served me. I have other posts that get very specific - like this one about making email introductions - [http://www.jasonshen.com/2011/the-anatomy-of-a-great- email-i...](http://www.jasonshen.com/2011/the-anatomy-of-a-great-email- introduction/)

You are entitled to your opinion about the value of my blog but as I mention in BP #5, people struggle to put themselves in the minds of others. Your logic appears to be "I don't find this valuable, therefore this person and _everyone like him_ should not blog." Based on the number of tweets, upvotes, and personal messages I've received about this post, it has provided tremendous value to lots of people who happen to be different from you.

<comment><USER3> I think the main issue with your post is offering the perspective from an employee/freelancer viewpoint only. If you are the owner of your own company the issues with making things happen are totally different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've always been amused/bothered/interested/concerned by how these things always look and feel so intuitive, and it's always "easy" to talk about them, to make a list- the following through is always the hard bit.

I think rather than focusing on these principles (which are valid, and true), maybe we ought to get meta and focus on what helps us focus on these principles- modifying our environment, surrounding ourselves with peers and influences that reinforce such reflection, etc.

<comment><USER5> I like Scott Adams "Systems, not Goals" theory. What he calls "systems" is probably similar to your "principles" and I would rather call it "process". :)

[http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/goals_vs_systems/](http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/goals_vs_systems/)

<comment><USER4> yep, thinking the same thing with different names!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> another one i have been really getting mileage out of: "do it (whatever you are trying to get done / get better at) every day", aka the "seinfeld method"

<comment><USER7> This one is so much deeper.

Everyone thinks Seinfeld was just a funny guy, but he worked harder than any other human alive at being funny.

Worked out pretty well for him.

<comment><USER8> > _Everyone thinks Seinfeld was just a funny guy_

No, I merely think of him as an untalented unfunny hack.

<comment><USER7> If income is used as a measuring stick then Seinfeld is VERY funny.

<comment><USER8> So clearly it's a bad measuring stick. For Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are even funnier then.

And Lenny Bruce died quite poor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I only care about the best practices for making the RIGHT things happen. The cat can push the vase on the floor and make things happen, that doesn't mean it was the right thing.

<comment><USER8> Yes, but besides the title, that just says "things happen", the whole post talks focuses on making the right things happen.

Were you just ranting about the title? Seriously?

<comment><USER9> Seriously? You didn't pick up that NO, this is a worthless post. The cat understands action reaction. That is making a thing happen. The right things are about knowing when to stop and do nothing to let things work out. It is about not just having a list of "if then" statements to run your life.

This is a bunch of half-thought through "pearls of wisdom" in the form of "if then" statements none of which will make the right things happen. I might as well pick up a Self Help book written by the founder of an MLM.

<comment><USER8> > _Seriously? You didn 't pick up that NO, this is a worthless post._

It might be a "worthless post" but for totally different reason than not telling you what the "right things" are and how to "make them happen".

It (rightly) assumes you can figure something such encompassing as your targets by yourself -- and only concerns itself with some of the technical details.

Heck, it even gets down to making some "right things happen", like when advising: "Tell people when their behavior is undermining the success of a shared outcome".

You'd be surprised how many people DON'T do that. Or this:

"If it is 80% done, and getting it to perfect is going to take a lot more effort, ship it, and fix it later."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very good, agree with most of it, especially by leading by example ("modelling others behavior ") and all others.</comment>


Sarah Lacy's PandoDaily launches with $2.5 million in funding - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2012/01/16/sarah-lacys-pandodaily-launches-with-2-5-million-in-funding/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=gigaom

<comment><USER2> This will be interesting. Considering former TC writer O'Hear's new Startup getting coverage on TC, <http://www.beepl.com/>

I wonder if the Sarah Lacy will get a friendly mention on TC.

Ariana would have a fit.</comment>


Mumbling Is a Clever Data-Compression Trick - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/-mumbling-isnt-a-sign-of-lazinessits-a-clever-data_compression-trick <comment><USER2> Have you noticed how Nautilus regularly reaches the front page, more often than any other domain, but has disproportionately fewer comments than the articles around it?

<comment><USER3> I love nautilus articles for about the first 40-50%..then I get bored cause they provide too much info, lol. I end up moving on, plus they're more 'info' related than controversial so there's really less to discuss about them usually than say something about global warming.

I think the length and fullness of articles might make it so people are less prone to leave comments. I only checked on this one because I was curious what others thought of humans using natural compression techniques on language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Linguists continue to refute the grammarhounds. Oh there's a good reason for double negatives, split infinitives, ain't, and mumbling. I'm okay with most of that, though I feel a bit ill at ease with total licentiousness. Anyway, what if one day we find a neurological or sociological justification for being a grammarhound?</comment>


Your idea sucks Why don't we be more honest when networking at startup events?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.shoestring.com.au/2013/06/your-idea-sucks/ <comment><USER2> I have been proven wrong far too many times to believe that I am still in any way a decent judge of what may be a good idea or viable startup.

The best example I can give here is from a few years ago when I was chatting online with some startup folks. One of them was building a Twitter based app where you would enter your tweets and it would post them at an interval you specify. I believe my thoughts at the time were that it must be the lamest idea I ever came across. Fast forward a few years and that startup, now known to the world as Buffer, is making over a million dollars a year and growing at a crazy rate.

<comment><USER3> A million a year, just from that? How?

<comment><USER4> Subscriptions.

<comment><USER3> Are you sure? They don't seem to mention subscription pricing on [http://bufferapp.com/](http://bufferapp.com/)

I can't verify that myself since I don't want to link their app to my linkedin.

<comment><USER5> Scroll down and there is a link to plans: [http://bufferapp.com/awesome](http://bufferapp.com/awesome)

$19/month

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's very, very hard to judge whether an idea actually sucks from the elevator pitch, especially if the person giving it isn't experienced and confident about pitching. If we went around saying other people's _idea_ sucks we'd most likely be saying their _pitch_ sucks - they didn't communicate it well enough. That's a problem, but it probably isn't the end of the world.

I think the key thing to remember is that you very rarely "get" something that might be a groundbreaking innovation the first time you hear about it, so holding back on criticism and judgement until you've heard a bit more isn't a bad strategy.

</comment><comment><USER7> Why don't we tell people their ideas suck?

Well here you are, talking to somebody who's spent months thinking about something from every angle imaginable. And you've given it five minute's thought. Who are you to say their idea sucks? You know _nothing_ about it.

A much better approach is to ask questions. Don't say "your idea sucks", ask "Do you have any users?", don't say "your idea sucks", ask "What sort of growth have you found?" and so on. Eventually you will hit a question where the person doesn't know the answer. Congratulations, you've just helped somebody improve their idea.

<comment><USER8> If I know nothing about it, I'll say so. That said, if it's a consumer-facing idea, I likely _have_ thought about it, at some point, often before some of the people I'm talking to were even in high school. Many ideas keep coming around every few years, and people without any sense of history at all may be doomed to repeat it (instead of potentially avoiding the mistakes of previous efforts in the same area).

There's plenty of things I've missed, and I'm not at all any prescient genius at this, but I've been approached by people with 'great ideas' who 'just need someone to build it for them'.

One example from last fall - I liked the idea, but told them they were going to have lots of legal hurdles with the IP and content, and they assured me they wouldn't. Three months later, they told me they were having legal issues with the IP and content. They could have pressed on, but chose not to, because they wanted to finish up school instead. I think they also realized why this 'great idea' isn't being done - it's not because no one thought about it, or that it was some great insight, it's that it's hard to do because much of the content they want is tied up in legal issues.

But... wow - how about that? I looked at the problem for 5 minutes and saw issues they hadn't seen in 12 months of thinking about the problem. Why is that? Maybe because I've been working professionally for 20 years, and they were still in college? Certainly not claiming I'm smarter or more clever, but simply that _sometimes_ having more experience in some areas lets you see issues that the person hooked on the idea hasn't seen (or doesn't want to see).

Your point about questioning is fine, to a point (no pun). Asking too many leading questions can make you come across like a jerk too.

<comment><USER7> > can make you come across like a jerk too

Well, yes. Anything you do can make you look like a jerk if you do it in a jerky way.

And as you point out, sometimes you simply have more experience in an area than the founders do. Obviously there are cases where this will happen and you can immediately tell the idea stands on shaky ground.

But in general that's not the case in "Hey I have this cool idea" conversations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Its not up to _other people_ to validate your startup. That's your job.

If you cannot get that feedback because you are _waiting for them to break the rules of social behaviour_ , then all the other problems of running a startup are simply going to flatten you.

Here are some ideas I only half-heartedly do myself:

1\. Have a website with a mailchimp mailing list on it. Ask them to subscribe. Hell, enter their email in front of them right there and then - then wait. If they confirm, they liked your idea, if not they did not.

2\. Have a mock-up online and a description. Email people a link to it, with a unique tracking code. If someone clicks the link, they liked your idea.

3\. have a MVP and ask them to use it. email them a username and password. If they use it - they liked it.

Basically, waiting around for other people to give you feedback is like waiting around for them to give you money. Ask for the sale.

</comment><comment><USER10> At ilab in Brisbane last year, I was honest when I came across some people's ideas: if they'd been attempted (seriously, with actual execution) before and had no luck, I pointed that out. If the idea wasn't fully formed yet, I chatted to other founders about what it was missing, from what I could see.

A lot of Australian founders really didn't like that for the most part, but a couple (whom I'm now friends with!) took it really well, pivoted, or decided to do something else entirely, and they thanked me for the feedback (and the feedback of the mentors that said similar things!).

Mentors giving feedback like that was often met with incredulity and hurt. "You are NOT your idea" is really important, but I have a theory that Australia's (especially Brisbane!) startup scene is so small, and so fledgling, that we're still learning :)

For what it's worth, I was told my idea was good, but my numbers (which were realistic, based on exits from companies that were similar but not the same, about $6-9mil after 2-3 years) were said to be too small for venture capital to try.

VC's and investors in Australia are also learning, and are a lot less willing to give an idea money to try. But that's okay! Things will change, given time and effort.

<comment><USER11> This is harsh: I visited a company town once, and it struck me that Australia is like a giant company town. Our wealth comes from mining and farming, and the owners share enough to keep things humming. Result: a good life, risk not needed, non-conformity not appreciated.

In comparison, US is more entrepreneurial and SV more so - but to be fair, it's more entrepreneurial than _anywhere_ , and even it suffers from risk- aversion and echo-chamber conformity at times.

What do you think?

 _EDIT_ I don't think it's a question of tech or not (Australia is technically highly capable and advanced), but of entrepreneurial or not. Our idea of "entrepreneurial" is opening yet another mine, TV station or restaurant.

<comment><USER10> I agree entirely.

And it pisses me off. I live in Brisbane, and I love the people and the city, but I will eat my hat (and film it for YouTube) if the Council/State Gov will ever pump money into building up a proper tech sector here.

Melbourne is a little better, with their "hipster"-styled outlook; I guess that's why it has a bit of hype in the start-up scene here in Aus (they have anti-conformism, to a mild extent).

Sydney, well, there is innovation coming out of there. A number of startups, and they do quite well, but it's a 5:1 ratio of B2B vs B2C startups, so you don't get to _see_ the work being done, unless you are in a vertical they target.

Maybe one day Australia will take tech seriously... until then, I'm biding my time and saving up my personal runway to chase dreams elsewhere in the world, like a lot of people my age.

<comment><USER12> > if the Council/State Gov will ever pump money into building up a proper tech > sector here

Why is that the governments job?

<comment><USER10> Governments make investments in infrastructure and other things to encourage local business in particular sectors to come here. I'd like to see my city take the forefront in courting IT in Australia.

Because local industry in Queensland is focused on pulling finite resources out of the ground, which can only last so long before it must move somewhere else. They're not interested in conquering problems that the rest of society faces, and in my personal opinion, basing our state's long term future on the sector (even if it is GREAT temporarily; for ex. my dad is a Civil engineer working on the roads around the mines, makes over $1mil/yr revenue from his business), is going to bite us in the arse.

Because of that, if Queensland and Brisbane wants to stop playing third fiddle to Sydney and Melbourne on a local and world stage, then we need to start doing something in the future.

<comment><USER12> While I do believe that one of the functions of a government is to encourage a diverse economy, I do not believe that it is the role of government to create it. If there are people in (we'll use your example) Brisbane that are willing, able and capable to begin to build a tech industry, they should. After that has occurred, then the government is in a position to look at how it can best encourage continued growth.

However, it may end up that Sydney is where Australia's tech industry takes root and grows through natural activity and movement instead of Brisbane. This is normal and it will happen. Not every city is 'world class' at everything, it's really not possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Some of the worst, stupidest startups ideas I have ever seen, which obviously will never make money and seem pretty easy to recreate in a weekend:

-Waze

-Twitter

-Instagram

-Tumblr

This is why I don't tell people their ideas suck, I'm a terrible judge of it.

<comment><USER14> i dont really see how you can recreate waze or tumblr in a weekend - especially in their current shape. I guess being less arrogant will allow you to be a better judge of startups ;)

<comment><USER13> You couldn't recreate the traction, but imagine hearing the ideas in their infancy... "Wait you want to create another blogging service?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In my experience one mans "trash" is another mans "Twitter". Not liking things is highly subjective and such I don't think people should be flat out telling other people they think their ideas are rubbish because lets face it a pitch for a service like Twitter; It's like text messaging, but on the Internet instead — sounds lame when you put it like that, but look at Twitter nowadays, a service that keeps growing and innovating and keeping itself relevant. It was one of quite a few apps that were shot down but succeeded in the end regardless of what others thought.

If someone tells you they're working on an Instagram for cat pictures or an app that will play a random sound at an interval you specify, then yes, tell them it's a horrible idea. But just because an idea sounds simple or has been done before doesn't mean it will fail. It takes more than an idea to succeed.

</comment><comment><USER16> When twitter was first pitched, how many people would have said that the idea sucked? What about airbnb? Kickstarter? pinterest? The list goes on and on.

VCs make money by betting that only 1 in 100 of their investments will be a success. What makes you think that a random person at a start-up event will have any more success.

</comment><comment><USER17> There are two good reasons why

1\. It's very difficult to tell what's a good idea or not. 'Not Invented Here' syndrome is one reason why we think other people's ideas generally suck, but in the end it's almost all down to execution.

2\. Startups are hard. It's much more useful to start out gung-ho with a crummy idea, and then learn exactly why it's crummy and adapt than to be shot down before take-off because the idea isn't perfect.

and one slightly less good reason:

3\. We want people to like us. It's hard to break down an idea and not breed any resentment.

</comment><comment><USER18> All ideas suck until they are products.

Then they either suck or they are awesome, but at least they are real enough to be judged at that point.

</comment><comment><USER19> It is not good manners to tell people that their idea, in your opinion, "sucks". That's why.

I wouldn't tell them that, just as I wouldn't tell them that, in my opinion, their clothing, haircut, or other aspects of personal appearance "suck". Nor that any aspect of their personality "sucks".

</comment><comment><USER20> It's the same thing in the gaming space. 99% of people's game ideas suck (honestly, it's extremely difficult to have a non-shitty idea, especially if you are trying to be unique and invent new game mechanics).

Part of the problem is that everyone thinks they can be a "game designer". It's one of those skills that is not measurable; so if you suck at it, it's hard to tell.

I think that as people gain maturity and experience, their eyes open, and are more willing to give and receive criticism like this (hopefully). Another reason why age and experience are valuable.

</comment><comment><USER21> It goes both ways; the idea is of little significance. A great idea does not guarantee success and a shitty idea does not guarantee failure.

Execute, understand your market, and make fucking money.

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't tell people their ideas suck because the Internet has proven time and time again that success is often less about the idea and more about the execution.

</comment><comment><USER23> Mostly because it's not productive. Ideas, especially early ones, are malleable and changing. Saying it "Sucks" is like building a brick wall. Instead you want to ask something that illuminates the way so the idea improves.

That being said, first time entrepreneurs benefit most from this approach while people more experienced can cut to the chase.

It's all about trying to be helpful.

</comment><comment><USER24> Because it's in my interest not to tell them. What do I gain by telling them their idea sucks? I have an uncomfortable interaction and I potentially make an enemy, or at least someone who now finds it uncomfortable to be around me.

What do I lose by being "nice"? Nothing. How does it serve my interests to go out on a limb and tell it like it is?

</comment><comment><USER25>
      > If an idea has already been done, lacks market demand
      > or is plain crap should we not say something?

Let's invert this: Why are founders so likely to _believe_ that polite throwaway comments from random people validate their business idea?

</comment><comment><USER26> I was reminded of this post, which I think makes a good case for humility: [http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3124-give-it-five- minutes](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3124-give-it-five-minutes)

</comment><comment><USER14> because telling someone that something sucks is utterly useless. Try asking constructive questions that will either lead you to realize that it doesnt suck and that the 5 minutes of thought you put into it is orders of magnitude less than the time and effort she/he put into it. Or you will get them to stumble upon a perspective they haven´t yet considered and maybe find a solution to it - or if it truly does suck - realize the same and spend time figuring out what to do. Destructive criticism is utterly pointless in the startup world - or anywhere for that matter.

</comment><comment><USER27> Reminds me to "How to give negative feedback effectively"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4431289](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4431289)

</comment><comment><USER28> People aren't ready to hear what they aren't ready to hear.

And if they are, they probably know it already.

</comment><comment><USER29> So you are asking "Who will step up and be the Simon Cowell of startup events?"

</comment><comment><USER30> Slightly off-topic, but the site can do with a better contrast scheme.

</comment><comment><USER31> a) Honesty costs money. If somebody wants to tell you something for free, they also want to do something else with/to you.

b) Networking events are for networking.

</comment><comment><USER32> I don't know about your ideas, but your grammar, certainly.</comment>