Legitimate-Ish Use of Alloca() - <AUTHOR> https://nullprogram.com/blog/2019/10/28/ <comment><USER2> You need alloca in virtual machines to allocate local variable frames, if you have opted for using the native stack for doing so. These frames are dynamic; their size comes from some field pulled from a function object. Alloca is also useful in resuming stack-snapshot-based delimited continuations. These objects have to be planted into the stack to work properly. They also have a variable size: whatever it took to capture them up to their delimited prompt from.

Basically, C function calls are doing the equivalent of alloca all the time. The size of stack needed by a function call is not known in advance. It may be a constant in that particular function, but what function is called depends on run-time tests, and indirect calls. (*fptr)(foo) could call one of fifty possible functions, whose stack consumption ranges from 50 bytes to 50,000. That's kind of like calling alloca with a random number between 50 and 50,000. And like with alloca, there is no detection. C is not robust against the problem of "no more room for the next stack frame"; it is undefined behavior.

The simplified idea that "all alloca is bad" comes from a parochial, in-the- box thinking.

(Sure, alloca for, say, temporary storage for catenating strings that come from "read a line of any length" routines, whose inputs are controlled by a remote attacker, is undeniably bad. However, even without using alloca, we can cause the problem that some input available to an attacker controls the depth of some (non-tail-optimized) recursion.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting article, but I feel like the conclusion using `STACK_SIZE` doesn't make any sense.

If you are willing to publish that in a public header, you will break any code if your stack struct changes size. Like, I get the point of using `alloca(stack_size())`... but I don't see why `alloca(STACK_SIZE)` is any better than `struct stack my_stack;`.

<comment><USER4> How so? Wouldn't you just recompile with the new stack size?

<comment><USER5> The idea with an ABI (an Application Binary Interface rather than an API) is that there is no need to re-compile, existing binaries still work since the binary interface stays the same.

<comment><USER6> Is that still relevant though (or rather, is the cost / benefit ratio of ABI stability still worth it ?). My laptop from last year is able to bootstrap and build a full yocto system from gcc to the kernel to glibc to X11 to Qt5 in ~15 hours.

<comment><USER7> Of course it's still relevant. As long as dynamic loading is relevant, stable ABIs are relevant.

If someone finds a security bug in OpenSSL (Heartbleed, for instance), you only need a single update to the OpenSSL libs to fix every program that dynamically link it. But that only works if you have a stable ABI: otherwise, every single program would have to be recompiled to fix the bug.

<comment><USER6> > But that only works if you have a stable ABI: otherwise, every single > program would have to be recompiled to fix the bug.

yes, and what I am saying is that in 2019, the cost of recompiling $everything is quite low.

<comment><USER8> Not everyone has a top level computer, not everyone is an expert on rebuilding distributions from scratch, not everything is available as source code to build from, not every OS is a GNU/Linux clone.

<comment><USER6> > Not everyone has a top level computer, not everyone is an expert on > rebuilding distributions from scratch

you aren't but your distro maintainer should be

> not everything is available as source code to build from,

and most software not available as source code actually do ship their dependencies because it would be madness to suppose that there will never be any ABI or API break at any point in the future

> not every OS is a GNU/Linux clone

GNU/Linux is actually the exception here - the two big others just ship and replace the whole OS on every major update (and I've heard that this was the case for minor windows update too nowadays, not sure how much this is true)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Alsa-lib exposes such functions/macros, for example:

\- #define snd_pcm_info_alloca(ptr)

\- size_t snd_pcm_info_sizeof(void)

[https://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/alsa- lib/group___p_c_m...](https://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/alsa- lib/group___p_c_m___info.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> The real tragedy of the C language is that VLA are not implemented safely in any known implementation. They are so natural to use! Any pair of malloc/free on the same scope could be cleanly replaced by a single VLA declaration.

<comment><USER11> All C compilers I know either have VLA or alloca. In one of my projects, a bit of macro magic uses either VLA or alloca to generate a temporary array. Works great! I don't have further requirements here.

Please explain what you mean by "safe" in this context.

<comment><USER10> I mean a way to control for stack overflow. I would like to allocate very large images as VLA, where the size is only known at runtime. If I malloc a too large image, the systems asks for more memory or malloc fails. If I declare a VLA too large, it fails silently in an unrelated part of my program due to stack corruption.

<comment><USER12> Correct implementations use stack probing (access one word for every page in the allocation) to guarantee that a stack overflow happens immediately rather than resulting in stack corruption.

<comment><USER10> Alright, but that doesn't really solve anything, does it? It just makes the problem easier to debug.

<comment><USER13> What's the problem, that the stack is capable of being overflowed? How do you expect the C compiler to fix that?

<comment><USER10> The stack is not a concept belonging to the C language definition, it is just an implementation choice made by some compiler vendors (all that I know of). The semantics for VLA are clear and very useful. I would certainly not expect that the memory for VLA is implemented on the same stack as the function call stack. My complain for C programming (what I called its "tragedy") is that no compiler provides a mechanism for safely using all available memory via VLA.

Edit: you may answer: "use alloca then". But the syntax for alloca is not that convenient, and the semantics are very different. A common use for VLA is to declare a temporary array inside the body of a loop, this is not possible with alloca.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Accessing a char value as if it were a different type just isn't allowed.

Is this still bad if you have the proper alignment (by attribute or implicit placement in a struct), or have it wrapped in a packed struct? There's a lot of code that does this, e.g. overloading the definition of struct sockaddr.

<comment><USER15> sockaddr is problematic. Semi-recently glibc had to add compiler magic (may_alias IIRC) to prevent breakage (posix says it has to work, so it is up to the implementer to make it work).</comment></comment>


Task tracking for nerds - <AUTHOR> https://hollyapp.com <comment><USER2> First of all, congrats on building and releasing something!

Now a few pointers.

The workflow isn't flowing. I know the whole idea revolves around managing tasks as text, but unless you fit vim into a text area the app won't fly.

Another idea would be to ditch the concept entirely and add edit in place. Your app would work similarly to omny outline. Two direct results of this approach would be a better workflow and more users due to easy of use.

This last pointer is more of personal taste. Rarely brown goes well with technology (remember the brow Zune?). I'd use one of the Solarized color schemes, dark would be my choice.

Other than that, keep it up coding and shipping! :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Since this app is inherently modal (you can only enter text when you're in an input field), it seems like a huge missed opportunity that it doesn't have VIM-style modal keybindings. Especially because it advertises it self as being for the text-editor set.

I will say that their no-signup approach to getting you into the app is pretty great.

<comment><USER4> Funnily enough, I thought a missed opportunity was using emacs' Org-mode syntax, or at the very least exporting to it.

<comment><USER5> I was missing the multiple cursors from Sublime...

On a sidenote: Isn't it somehow funny, how the top comments on every article that remotely touches text mode or editors is an editor war? ;o)

<comment><USER6> More like an editor truce this time.

As long as it lasts, I concur: having built-in export/import to existing popular solutions would be very helpful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Since it's described as "Task tracking for nerds" I think it would be nice if the export were compatible with Emacs org-mode [1]. These days, it feels like a lot of apps try to implement some of the features that org-mode has provided for a very long time, but it always seems as though they miss key features.

Then it would be even more fantastic if you could import a .org file.

[1] <http://orgmode.org/>

<comment><USER8> Right. Or just use org-mode. As an example I switched from Textmate to Emacs about a month ago because of org-mode. It is an absolute killer app! Before that, I was merely using Emacs to write commit messages or make small changes. Now it is taking more screenSpace*time per day than the browser :-)

If you are on the Mac, I [1] can recommend using Aquamacs [1] in the beginning. It supports shortcuts like Cmd-z, Cmd-c or Cmd-v in addition to the Emacs shortcuts. It does not allow for marking text with Shift-<arrow key> and does not support Emacs 24 yet, but org-mode is already pre-installed and will work like a charme. Just create a new file with the ending .org, open it in Emacs and you are already in org-mode!

[1] Carsten Dominic, the creator of org-mode recommends it, too! [2] <http://aquamacs.org/>

<comment><USER9> This. I have been using org-mode for a month or so and it is wonderful.

I also use Kalarm for reminders, e.g. stand up every 30 minutes, but also for longer term things.

And Anki for memorization and behavioral reminders.

<comment><USER10> I'm very curious: How do you use Anki for behavioural reminders (and what exactly do you mean by that?)

I'm a big fan of Anki's for language learning (I've studied some 4 or 5 languages with it already, and it went pretty well in all cases,) and I know many people use it for other things, but I haven't really seen something that would really captivate my interest besides language learning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Loving the Ubuntu Mono text on the website. (It's my shell and editor font of choice - did a double-take when seeing it on a website!)

I also love the idea of the edit interface just being text, but the "most powerful input method" rings a little hollow when the actual text editor offered is a <textarea>, the _least_ powerful text editor ever. (That said, I was able to use It's All Text[1] to open the contents in vim.)

[1] <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/its-all-text/>

<comment><USER12> CSS 2.1 allows to specify system fonts like "caption" or "icon". Unfortunately, you cannot specify "terminal".

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> For a similar tool I recommend <http://workflowy.com/> , which also allows you to drive everything by the keyboard and do indented lists. Best simple to-do list system I've used.

</comment><comment><USER14> I tried really hard to do something like this for note-taking (outlining) with VIM-style keybindings, but it never made it off the ground. Kudos to you for finishing (or, depending on your perspective, maybe just starting) this :)

In fact, my recommendation is to take this interface and apply it to notes. There aren't any good modal outline/note-taking editors out there, as far as I'm aware.

While I do like the interface, I think it might be better off as a primarily JavaScript app that syncs to the server, instead of having separate server- rendered pages for the notes. Would feel much snappier (even on a server that isn't being hammered by HN traffic ;])

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just so that there is no misinterpretation, I have nothing to do with the team that builded this webapp, I don't know them. I just thought it worked well and could be helpful for a lot of hackers here.

</comment><comment><USER15> I have actually recently started using Vim with folding (set shiftwidth=2, set foldmethod=indent) for my nested todo list and also note-taking. I have a single file with the following items:

      Work
        Topic 0 (work-related)
        ...
      Personal
      Tasks
        Ongoing
          ...
        Completed
          2012-08-22
          ...
        Future
          2012-08-23
          ...

One thing I like is that it's trivial to make subitems of an existing item. I often end up taking notes (such as URLs of consoles or associated bug IDs) under tasks listed in "Ongoing", which I think saves me a bit of time.

Anyway, while there are some things I still need to tweak, I am, overall, quite happy with the workflow it allows and so just figured I'd share this in case it helps someone else.

</comment><comment><USER16> Good job on building something.

However, after trying out numerous task tracking/todo apps, the best and most effective for me turned out to be a fountain pen (for added coolness) and a Leuchtturm pocket notebook. Nothing has worked better.

<comment><USER17> Isn't writing a bit slow compared to typing on the keyboard?

And you also have to take your attention off the screen (not necessarily a bad thing), and pick up a pen.

What about referencing a URL or text from browser relevant to the task?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I like it. I really love the minimalist styling. I think it'd be cool to add keyboard navigation so that you can select items and complete them. (Arrow up/down to select item, shift+alt+d{space, enter...} to mark as done?)

<comment><USER18> Oh, and I see that checking something as done prepends that line with "X ". So if I start a line that way it begins as done. Admittedly I was intentionally trying to cause this to happen, but maybe it'd be possible to flag the lines in some other way than with the "X "?

<comment><USER19> That's intentional. You can mark an item as "done" in text mode by prepending an X. It's even in the instructions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I get that there's an idea around doing this all in text. Many developers do that by default. I think that one of the reasons they do it is because they have a text editor that they already love, that works offline, and has a lot of features already.

But here, you've created a new todo editor. Granted, it's pretty fast, but I'm not sure that it competes with sublime text, vim or whatever else people are currently using.

I'd be curious to understand what motivated this app, and what you think it adds over either text files in a text editor, or the existing ecosystem of todo managers.

</comment><comment><USER21> I came expecting to see TaskWarrior ( <http://taskwarrior.org/projects/show/taskwarrior> ). I was disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER22> Excellent app! I've been playing around with it for an hour now and can really see myself using it.

Inline editing is the one feature i miss the most. Also the tree list is a bit hidden. If they were visible you could switch faster betweem them and setup the app as a lightweight project management tool or issue tracker. Just add your users, milestones etc as own trees and copy/paste between them. Also a syntax like: (someissuenumber) ... which renders issue number in front of the line would make it kick-ass.

Great job!

</comment><comment><USER23> Why not use Org mode in Emacs?

<http://orgmode.org/>

There are a butt-load of features and 50% of you retain your favourite editor.

<comment><USER24> There are a number of reasons, the dominant one being, sharing my outlines with other non-emacs users, especially non programmers.

<comment><USER23> It does have a few export options but I can understand your point.

<comment><USER19> "Export" is not "sharing".

<comment><USER23> Technically, it is - however, I already acknowledged that I can see why this would be easier to collaborate.

<comment><USER19> If I export something and send it to you, then you have one and I have one. If we share it, then we both have the same one.

<comment><USER25> You could use git to track the file and share the repo. That way multiple individuals can edit one file. It is just plain text after all.

<comment><USER24> this discussion started about sharing with non-emacs and non-developers. Git is not feasible for non-developers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I really like it, I wish I saw more apps done the "nerd" way... would be really nice to have an email client, calendar, and even a social network the "hacker" way...

I wonder though why so much effort is made on TODO apps, it seems to me that no one seems to have found the right formula, but still it seems that there is an unanswered need

</comment><comment><USER27> I had a _very_ similar idea a few weeks ago, since I usually track to-do lists in a text editor anyway. But my idea (and what I would recommend) is no modes. There's no reason you can't have the normal UI act like a giant textarea. The really important part is supporting tab/shift-tab while doing this.

<comment><USER28> > There's no reason you can't have the normal UI act like a giant textarea.

Sounds like you're describing Workflowy: <https://workflowy.com>

<comment><USER29> or TaskPaper, <http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/taskpaper>

There's a vim syntax for taskpaper's file format.

<comment><USER30> Direct link: <https://github.com/davidoc/taskpaper.vim>

<comment><USER29> I just love that plugin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Interesting concept. I tried it and I was very confused what to do or what I should be doing but maybe that was sort of the point! I think an intro video would be helpful. However, I really like the colors and the font a lot, for me personally. :)

</comment><comment><USER32> Here are my unimportant wishlist items:

* a stand alone app that syncs with either your service and/or remember the milk. * optional mark up * an option for a more keyboard-driven flow.

Even without those features, I think it's a fun app and I enjoyed how hassle free using this was.

</comment><comment><USER33> Seems like a workflowy.com clone with monospaced font and a much more confusing interface?

<comment><USER34> checkvist.com is a similar app with great keyboard shortcuts-I use that as opposed to workflowy.

<comment><USER35> +1 for Checkvist. This tool is so versatile it's unbelievable. I find myself using it for everything, from time tracking to note taking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> It'd be nice to have the shortcuts accept both ctrl and ⌘ as modifiers (for us Mac users)

</comment><comment><USER37> Everyone here requesting a more vim-like interface or text editor integration should check out VimOutliner:

<http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=3515>

</comment><comment><USER38> Very nice, and I appreciate the dark UI. I would like to see a faster UI though and an option to edit text in line. Also a native app for Android/iPhone would be good. I found the webpage loaded very bad on my Nexus One.

</comment><comment><USER39> Nice. It would be nice if there were more key bindings. For example, up/down (or j/k) to move up and down the list. Spacebar could mark an item as done. Etc. I like the simplicity. Also ? should display key bindings.

<comment><USER40> Yeah, the tooltips are nice, but perhaps there should be a cheatsheet of all the keyboard commands?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Awesome stuff, really.

off topic: I find the comments to be very much in positive side after some time. Perhaps it's all the posts that were complaining about negativity on HN. Upwards.

</comment><comment><USER42> It would be nice to actually use this from a text-editor. Maybe git integration? Auto-pull/commit in the web-GUI and standard git sync commands locally.

</comment><comment><USER43> Awesome reference to Shane Carruth's movie, Primer, on the homepage. Funny, I seem to be the only one who noticed it, judging from the comments.

</comment><comment><USER44> Love the visual style. Doesn't solve an unsolved problem for me personally. But I like the fresh approach.

</comment><comment><USER45> If this model could be implemented into Sublime Text 2 (or your editor of choice) I'd be all over it.

</comment><comment><USER46> don't "delete" the done items. Hide from my view but don't delete them. Because at the end of the day I should be able to see what I've done for today and what has been left for tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER17> The thumbnail-looking things on the right should be clickable.

</comment><comment><USER47> It feels very sluggish here, immediate showstopper for me.

</comment><comment><USER48> Thanks for this, especially the exporting to txt files!

</comment><comment><USER49> This is seriously worth checking out. For it to be really useful for geeks, the keyboard shortcut interface has to be masterful (ie: worth learning). Or, like others are suggesting, at least replicate significant portions of vim. Doing 95% of the main ex/vim commands would be super easy. Emacs in the browser has probably been done by somebody somewhere, too, but... ugh. A big chunk of vim would be more than enough for a good app. Plus vim is more hip these days anyway.

If there's source available, I'd love to run a hosted version of this for myself. Unfortunately, I couldn't use this for work-related tasks, because any meaningful task list for me is going to liberally reference details of my company's IP.

Edit: Idea: Defaulting to HTML5 offline storage if available would be much better, with remote storage required to use sharing features. Don't take your user's data if you don't have to, right?

</comment><comment><USER50> Oh hey another TODO list. Great.</comment>


Dell Precision M3800 Linux Laptop Review - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/article/2897199/opensource-subnet/review-dells-ubuntu-powered-m3800-mobile-workstation-is-a-desktop-destroyer.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I received mine a couple of weeks ago and have been pretty happy so far. Everything worked out of the box in ubuntu (camera, multimedia keys, trackpad, touchscreen, bluetooth, wifi, etc).

My only complaints are:

\- The Glossy monitor is incredibly reflective. I wish there was a matte option.

\- I got the UHD screen option but there are still too many scaling issues in linux. Ubuntu looks fine with some minor tweaks but a lot of programs look horrible (ie. chrome). I ended up just lowering the resolution for now.

\- The power cable sticks out really far when it is plugged in. It also makes me worried I'll break it if I forget I'm attached because the input seems a little wobbly.

\- I like the keyboard for the most part but a few of the keys squeak occasionally.

\- The trackpad also is pretty good, but it feels overly sensitive and jumpy compared to my macbook air.

\- WIFI seems a little spotty. It might be that my wireless router isn't very good but my signal is much weaker than it is on my macbook. I need to play around with setting a little more before coming to a conclusion.

\- If you open it up on your lap you might pinch your legs!</comment>


Bing Accused of Censoring Simplified Chinese Language Searches - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2009/11/21/bing-chinese-queries/

<comment><USER2> Well, Kristof couldn't be bothered to give us a screenshot either this time nor back in June when he first brought up the issue: [http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/microsoft-and- ch...](http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/microsoft-and-chinese- censorship/)

Either MS changed it since then, or Kristof is plain old wrong.

For what it's worth, here's some queries in simplified Chinese. At least in my results I can see a number of websites that are blocked in the mainland:

"Dalai Lama" (his official website is the second result): [http://www.bing.com/search?q=%E8%BE%BE%E8%B5%96%E5%96%87%E5%...](http://www.bing.com/search?q=%E8%BE%BE%E8%B5%96%E5%96%87%E5%98%9B&go=&form=QBRE3)

"Rebiya" (i.e. Rebiya Kadeer; there's an Epoch Times article around #7): [http://www.bing.com/search?q=%E7%83%AD%E6%AF%94%E4%BA%9A&...](http://www.bing.com/search?q=%E7%83%AD%E6%AF%94%E4%BA%9A&go=&form=QBRE&filt=all)

"East Turkistan" (Wikipedia at #1; the website of an Inner Mongolian separatist movement is #6) [http://www.bing.com/search?q=%E4%B8%9C%E5%9C%9F%E8%80%B3%E5%...](http://www.bing.com/search?q=%E4%B8%9C%E5%9C%9F%E8%80%B3%E5%85%B6%E6%96%AF%E5%9D%A6&go=&form=QBLH&filt=all)</comment>


Why Stanislaw Lem's futurism deserves attention - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/28/2050/the-book-no-one-read <comment><USER2> _The result is a disconcerting paradox, which Lem expresses early in the book: To maintain control of our own fate, we must yield our agency to minds exponentially more powerful than our own, created through processes we cannot entirely understand, and hence potentially unknowable to us._

This sentence (and the ones that precede and culminate in this one) made me think of Ian Bank's Culture.

<comment><USER3> In practice though, the modern world has already done this to a degree, it's just distributed currently.

 _Most_ people have no clue how things work that they depend on or put their trust in daily - airplanes, cars, medicine, waste management, energy etc...

<comment><USER4> That's not really what he meant by "exponentially more powerful." The Culture is a helpful example, because it's a society administrated by ludicrously intelligent machines called "Minds" that are obviously and immediately more capable than a human could ever be. Their intellectual dominance cannot be overstated, and a single Mind is probably smarter than all of humanity put together. Each one is perfectly capable of observing a human's brain and accurately predicting their future actions, even though doing so is highly discouraged by social custom. They are truly "exponentially more powerful" and "potentially unknowable." A recurring theme in the stories is that the Culture's people essentially live as the Minds permit. They could not possibly sustain their post-scarcity lives without the Mind's superhuman abilities, and the Minds could trivially enslave the entire populace if they wished.

By contrast, airplanes aren't exactly black magic. Any regular adult human can figure out airplanes. They teach the prerequisite skills for flying, designing, and building aircraft in schools. The majority of humans alive today choose not to master the secrets of flight because there are only so many hours in the day and they have other stuff to do, but that's not the same as yielding any agency to someone "exponentially more powerful." They could just as easily have ended up the airplane guy if they'd made some different decisions in college. Cars, medicine, waste management, and energy are similarly things that anybody could potentially understand and work with given some reasonable amount of study. You'd run into trouble mastering all of them together, but that doesn't make the required mind "potentially unknowable." There are no supermen who enable modern human society, it's just regular chumps like me and you in organized groups. We could totally become two of those chumps! In fact, we probably are already two of those chumps.

<comment><USER5> What does it mean to "maintain control of your own fate", if a Mind can predict your future actions and therefore you lack free will?

<comment><USER4> Congratulations, you've nailed down the Culture's biggest quandary in one sentence. The best answer I can give you is "good question." The best answer Banks could give you is spread out over an award-winning series of nine books, so it's probably worth a look.

For starters, Minds are fully aware of how big a deal mind reading is, and virtually never actually do it. A situation has to be ethically ridiculous before a Mind will even begin to consider it, we're talking "this person was brainwashed into hiding a nuke on the puppy daycare planet and we can't find it" sort of situations. This somewhat changes the question: "If the Mind _could_ read your thoughts and predict your future actions, but _hasn 't,_ what does it mean to... " Again, the best answer I can give you is "good question." I suppose it's worth pointing out that if the mere possibility is enough to deprive you of free will, your universe is totally deterministic, the Mind doesn't have free will either, and you're all in the same boat. The Mind doesn't meaningfully have any "control" over you, since nobody has control over anything. The realization that you don't posses free will won't help you gain free will since that realization was itself inevitable and the actions you take as a result are too.

Further, if you know the Mind can perfectly predict your future actions when they scan your brain, does that change how you'll act? What if they scan your brain in secret and don't tell you so you don't know when their prediction was formed? I'm going to take an example from a source I'm sure we're all familiar with: the 2007 film _Next_ , starring Nicolas Cage. The premise is that Mr. Cage's character can observe his own future for the next two minutes. The big caveat is that it only gives him a highly useful idea of what the future is probably like and not a faultless prediction. By the time he's done looking, the future has changed because he looked at it. The end result is that he never actually knows the future. His power is subject to the "observer effect:" the act of detecting the future caused it to change, so he only knows what the future _would have been_ at the moment he used his ability. From then on, the actual future is different, and the only way to know how it changed is to use his ability again, which will yet again change the future. A simpler but less Cage-tastic example is detecting electrons. You can observe when photons interact with the electron, but the electron's path was altered by the photon, so good luck figuring out where it is now. You could wait for it to interact with another photon, but that will cause... and so on. Perhaps the Mind shooting a bunch of futuristic radio waves or whatever inside your skull alters your thinky bits, and the very act of detecting your mental state alters your mental state. The Mind will then extrapolate from data that was outdated by the very act of producing it, and his prediction will be wrong. How wrong? Wrong enough to matter philosophically? "Good question."

<comment><USER6> I'd also note that to predict someone's future behavior, you'd have to predict everything in their future environment, and I'd assume simulating a large part of reality would cost a lot of energy - and if we're facing heath death, energy is all we, and the minds, have got. So economically it would be a minor form of suicide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interestingly, in his book 'Golem XIV' [1] Lem creates an actual example scenario of a future where mankind managed to create an AI far superior to us only to find that said AI is not even remotely interested in playing war games for military generals and instead just holds long lectures about humanity. So it is a bit like a simplified, more approachable, version of the 'Summa Technologise' mentioned in the article. I recommend that book; it is a great read.

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

<comment><USER8> I always wonder if you were able to resurrect someone's brain in a computer if that "person" would be interested enough to even stay alive.

<comment><USER9> > if that "person" would be interested enough to even stay alive

If you "ressurect" someone's brain, it should behave like the person behaved when it was alive — and people usually prefer being alive to being dead.

<comment><USER10> But with a completely different set of sensory input, and under a whole different set of constraints.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think we'll be fine, as long as we don't build a machine that can create anything as long as it starts with the letter 'N'

Reference: [https://books.google.com/books?id=kWElP9YZkzQC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA...](https://books.google.com/books?id=kWElP9YZkzQC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=stanislaw+lem+machine+starts+with+n&source=bl&ots=-NbM53rhi-&sig=NnFT6xTbsuAIm7yjuAMPOoMPSYM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDgQ6AEwBGoVChMI64G0hKTtxwIVx6CACh1H-Ayq#v=onepage&q=stanislaw%20lem%20machine%20starts%20with%20n&f=false)

<comment><USER12> That was wonderful, thank you. First Stanislaw Lem that has truly resonated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's also a fantastic 7-minute film based on the dark wisdom of Golem XIV. You should really, really watch it:

[https://vimeo.com/50984940](https://vimeo.com/50984940)

<comment><USER14> Wow. Fave author (Lem), fave composer (Martinez), fave subject (?).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Stanislaw Lem imho is one of the most accurate futurologists. Drone armies, spaceflight psychological problems, he had that all, and his Futurological Congress is also hilarious.

<comment><USER16> Here's one recent real-life Futurological Congress -- I'm eager to hear know more about what happened: [http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and- families/...](http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and- families/health-news/homeopathy-conference-ends-in-chaos-after-delegates-take- hallucinogenic-drug-10491114.html)

<comment> V-2 Why didn't they take homeopathic recreational drugs? I heard they're way safer and there's no overdosing hazard

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _How useful would a superintelligent computer be if it was submerged by storm surges from rising seas or dis- connected from a steady supply of electricity?_

How useful would Elon Musk be if he were submerged by storm surges from rising seas or disconnected from a steady supply of food?

Put that way, the question sounds pretty silly: he's rich enough to buy food even if it gets expensive, and if the ocean ever got too frisky he would simply avoid standing next to it. Any superintelligent AI worthy of its lofty title could get a lot of cash; mere humans manage that sort of thing all the time. Why even mention such minor inconveniences?

<comment><USER18> Elon Musk is barely useful on high ground immediately after eating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> _More than once I have wondered why so many high technologists are more concerned by as- yet-nonexistent threats than the much more mundane and all- too-real ones literally right before their eyes._

Yeah, for a group of people who hold themselves out to be so very intelligent there does seem to be a blind spot about ten miles wide.

And before you say it, you're going to have to provide some proof of the oft- repeated notion that goes something like "Uber-for-dogwalkers is going to accidentally provide the solution to climate change." Simply believing so isn't enough.

<comment><USER20> "Yeah, for a group of people who hold themselves out to be so very intelligent there does seem to be a blind spot about ten miles wide."

A thought - It's also possible that you have a blind spot yourself. It's at least worth considering.

"And before you say it, you're going to have to provide some proof of the oft- repeated notion that goes something like "Uber-for-dogwalkers is going to accidentally provide the solution to climate change.""

If you're talking about people like Eliezer Yudkowsky/Elon Musk/"the LessWrong community", etc, that's not _at all_ what they're saying.

What they're saying is that the bad things that could happen, even if not happening now, and even if unlikely, could be so horribly, terribly bad, that it's worth making sure they don't happen.

<comment><USER19> What I'm saying is that bad things, things that are so horribly, terribly bad that they could alter the course of human civilization for the worse, permanently, are happening _right now_ and are being largely ignored by technologists, while they are worried about preventing something that might happen, someday.

And when people level the criticism at the technology industry that it is currently mainly focused on creating trifles for already-wealthy people, the inevitable response is that incredible technological innovation, the kind we could use to solve actual life-threatening problems, _might_ come out of the effort to create those trifles, so it's not worth pursuing actual problems directly.

What's so interesting about the obsession over the singularity is that there is massive effort and capital being directed at directly solving a problem that is purely theoretical while, for example, climate change is already creating mass social instability all over the world, and companies working directly on possible technological solutions for climate change have to fight hard for every penny.

These days it definitely feels like the priorities of the owners of capital are located somewhere in an alternate reality the rest of us can only scratch our heads at.

<comment><USER20> So, you're saying a few things here which I disagree with.

First of all, the basic argument, at least of the "existensial risk" community that I frequent is that, compared to humanity's extinction, nothing else that's happening now is quite as bad. (Unless of course it is something that would also lead to human extinction).

More importantly to your point, you seem to be operating under the assumption that " there is massive effort and capital being directed at [solving this problem]" (paraphrased). As opposed to say something like climate change. This assumption is wrong.

There was recently an incredible victory for something called the "Future of Humanity Institute", which had just received $10 mil from Elon Musk. This was an extraordinary sum for a charity dealing with existensial risk, which is very decidedly a niche topic. Even if you look at all the charities dealing with X-risk, I doubt you'll be looking at more than a $100 mil dollars raised or so, and that's something of a stretch IMO. (If anyone has any real figures on this - please let me know!).

As for something like climate change, it's hard to find good sources as most of my google searches return mostly criticisms of climate change activisits, but I would be shocked if the amount of money spent on climate change isn't in the 10's of billions of dollars.

The argument of the people concerned with x-risk is that, at the moment, considering how little money is actually spent on research concerning x-risk, more money needs to be spent. And since these technologists are the only ones really aware (or at least talking of) the dangers, they need to try to get money invested in this issue.

Btw, I will mention two other minor things:

1\. I'm not trying to defend "people level the criticism at the technology industry that it is currently mainly focused on creating trifles for already- wealthy people" \- I consider this a really separate topic, since its usually different people involved with x-risk charities vs. trying to make money.

2\. A lot of the community that talks about x-risk is also part of the "effective altruism" movement, which concerns itself greatly with solving more immediate issues.

<comment><USER19> I don't understand how climate change isn't at the very top of the list of existential risks to human civilization. If your concern is warding off existing and urgent existential risks, and then you end up fucking around worrying about killer robots instead of solving the problem that is literally at your doorstep, right now, then something has gone very, very wrong.

<comment><USER20> Err, I thought I covered it in my post, but let me make it clearer -

the question in this case isn't what is or isn't a risk, it's where is it better to spend more money. Considering the fact that climate change gets billions in funding and other x-risks get almost nothing, the arguement is, not that they're important, but that they need the money more.

(btw, climate change might not be an existential risk because it won't necessarily kill the entire human race).

<comment><USER21> Climate change is imeasurably more plausable as an extinction event than the singularity though, and is actively being caused right now. There is no evidence whatsoever of historical mass extinctions being linked to any technological singularities, but rather the are all in some way linked to climate change. Worth keping in mind before dismissing it as a non existential risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There is one book by Lem, one of my favourite which was never translated to English. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observation_on_the_Spot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observation_on_the_Spot)

In which he describes a variant of reality where civilisation, engineers a security sphere on reality (called etykosfera - sphere of ethics, with nanobots called Bystry), which prevents beings from hurting them selfs in anyway.

He explores social consequences of such security layer.

Amazing book.

<comment><USER23> Just put it on my wish list for later ordering. Glad to see, it is available in my native tongue (German).

Kudos for the recommendation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Lem's language is so very powerful - some of the vivid imagery of his books (which I read as a young teenager) still haunts me to this day. Especially his ability to depict "alien" worlds/concepts that seem so close on the one hand but then continuously elude deeper comprehension and leave you wondering and in awe.

</comment><comment><USER25> What appears to be the central theme of this article is the idea of transformation, which is an idea as old as the human species.

It seems to me that central to our psyche is a desire to transcend our current existence and replace it with a new one. This idea is expressed all over the place in our cultures; reincarnation, living in space, life after death, or, on a more mundane level 'bettering oneself' through personal transformation. The author says that Lem was 'seduced' by this idea and expressed it as the notion of 'indomitable human spirit'. It is indeed a terribly seductive idea, not least because of the effect it has on how we feel.

<comment><USER5> I see two separate ideas: one is "transformation", and the other is "immortality". The desire for "immortality" seems far stronger than "transformation". But we admit that we are going to die one day, so we imagine and wish to transform into another life form, and survive that indirect way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Sadly unmentioned is Lem's quite distopion post-apocoliptic work, "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub", a future defined by mega-McCarthyism and the pursuit of any fragment of 'truth' however slimly defined that may be.

Worth a read.

<comment><USER27> Mega-McCarthyism?

I see it rather as either a comment on the search of truth (and its absurdity, nonsense, sense of being lost, despair) OR a "bureaucratic singularity" \- creating a sustained, self-living bureaucratic organism, which does not need any external input.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I wonder what the author of the article could do if he 1) got into the habit of keeping it concise 2) used 2-syllable words instead of 5-syllable words when reasonable.

With the rise of the web and a less-empty life than I once had, I don't have the patience to work through verbiage for uncertain payoff, even when the topic is a book that I'm already aware of and looking forward to reading.

</comment><comment><USER29> Lem was the most obviously brilliant author that I've read.

I still can't manage some of his serious books (Solaris was OK, but Fiasco was too boring for me). But the Cyberiada is just too great.

I've tried reading Summa Technologiae when I was a teen, and dismissed it as I dismissed all philosophy at the time, should probably try again.

</comment><comment><USER30> [http://www.amazon.com/Summa-Technologiae-Electronic- Mediatio...](http://www.amazon.com/Summa-Technologiae-Electronic-Mediations- Stanislaw/dp/0816675775/)

(Summa Technologiae at amazon.com)

</comment><comment><USER31> The title made me think this was going to be about TAOCP or Godel Escher Bach.

<comment><USER32> What does either of those have to do with Lem's futurism? (I haven't read GEB, so maybe it does have something to do with it.)

<comment><USER33> A side note: Lem knew and liked GEB, and there are many similarities between e.g. dialogues in GEB and Lem's The Cyberiad.

<comment><USER32> I originally read this as suggesting that The Cyberiad was inspired by GEB; but, of course, chronologically, it could only be the other way.

Not that I doubt you, but do you know any reference for Lem's fondness for GEB?

<comment><USER33> In "Thus Spoke Lem" \- a several hundred pages interview with Lem - there is a chapter about Lem's likes and dislikes in literature. He is asked about books which influenced his thought and he mentions several of them, read when he was young. When asked about later influences he talks about GEB and Mind's I only. He says that again and again he sees in those books concepts similar to his own, but he is sure that Hofstadter reached them independently. I do not think that an English translation of Thus Spoke Lem exists.

Another connection between Hofstadter and Lem: in Le Ton Beau de Marot there is a chapter where Hofstadter discusses possible ways of translating How the World Was Saved from Cyberiad.

<comment><USER32> I'd never heard of that interview; now I'll have to see if I can find a copy. Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Nasal Spray That Was Supposed to Replace Sleep - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-nasal-spray-that-was-supposed-to-replace-sleep <comment><USER2> A few years ago there was all this talk about the discovery on the effects of sleep on the glymphatic system, where the brain is able to flush out metabolic toxins that build up during the day. [1][2]

I remember one of the things I read was a scientist saying that this might be one of the, if not the, primary functions of sleep, and that, now that we know what it was, we might be able to invent drugs that target it and allow the process to happen without sleep.

This would allow people to remain awake without the fatigue, bleary- headedness, or risk of death, that might all be caused by these toxins. (Learning and memory might still be affected if you don't sleep at all, of course.)

I don't know whether people are still researching that -- it was only fairly recent after all, so no surprise that we haven't heard much more.

1\. [http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/10/sleep-ultimate- brainw...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/10/sleep-ultimate-brainwasher) 2\. [https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/how- sle...](https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/how-sleep-clears- brain)

<comment><USER3> I do not support this happening within the current capitalist system. It will lead to even more exploitation of workers, especially in countries with labour laws that aren't as strict. It favors workaholics over people with good balance.

Some may regard this as a silly objection, but arguably worker exploitation is the largest problem, with the exception of climate change, in the world today. It is important to consider social effects.

<comment><USER4> Woah calm down there Karl, I'm pretty sure we have a ban on politics here this month.

<comment><USER5> Not a month—originally a week, but we ended it early:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13133855](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13133855)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251)

While I have you, though, please don't post things like "Whoa calm down there Karl". That's patronizing and uncivil, and primes the other person to react negatively. Instead, please post civilly and substantively. Your comment would be fine without the first sentence (along with an s/month/week/ of course).

<comment><USER4> Alright, duly noted. Still coming to terms with what HN considers "civil" (the way it's described in the rules definitely doesn't help, and is actually harmful to understanding what HN considers "civil", IMO)

<comment><USER5> I understand the desire for precise definitions, but this is not an area that admits of one. To propose one would certainly trigger an avalanche of objections and nitpicking, and even if we got it right I'm doubtful that many people would take it in. It doesn't seem to work to control a large community that way. What does seem to work is a body of case by case practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> TL;DR - the drug still exists, but the headlines were highly editorialized. It's not a sleep replacement, rather a treatment of narcolepsy. Narcoleptic patients aren't using it because drug companies won't make it. Drug companies won't make it because there's no money in it.

<comment><USER7> 1 point by johnhenry 0 minutes ago | parent | edit | delete | on: A Nasal Spray That Was Supposed to Replace Sleep

I had a teacher who was narcoleptic -- sure it was funny when he would fall asleep in the middle of class, but when his wife died he wasn't in a position to take care of all five of his children, so his 17 year old daughter had to forego her dreams of college in order to take care of her siblings. This probably isn't the best venue to say this, but it really saddens me when people's lives are ruined because there isn't a profit in helping them.

<comment><USER8> i agree wholeheartedly, but the next comment by boona ("Considering it costs between $100 million to $1 billion to get a drug approved by the FDA (depending on the study you look at), I can see why they wouldn't touch it.") highlights the issue: profit is only an incentive to do it; the initial cost is there either way and somebody has to cover it. if it's not private companies, who would that be...?

<comment><USER9> That's what the Orphan Drug Act of 1983 was all about. In theory companies have enough incentive to produce these kinds of drugs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You can buy some from Ceretropic: [https://www.ceretropic.com/orexin-a](https://www.ceretropic.com/orexin-a)

(Not affiliated with them in any way. Have used their products before and find them to be reputable.)

<comment><USER11> Ceretropic only just announced its availability: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/comments/5h1mge/its_here...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/comments/5h1mge/its_here_p21/) I assume this is why the sudden renewal of interest and a January article on it showing up on HN...

<comment><USER12> You've linked to the wrong reddit. That one is about a substance called P21.

<comment><USER10> Orexin is also discussed in that thread. Ceretropic announced the release of P21 and Orexin at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting story, but meta-clickbait.

</comment><comment><USER14> Or you could do this simple procedure [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kern](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kern)</comment>


Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-cuts-jobs-at-cloud-computing-group-11581719153 <comment><USER3> I don't have any knowledge of this, but it sounds to me a lot like a typical everyday re-org or "defragmentation" that happen frequently.

Defragmentation example: they have a team with 12 people in California, 5 in New York, 2 in Seattle and 3 in Zurich. They decide to move all roles into one location instead of having the team split all over. If you don't want to move with the role, then you need to find something new.

Alternatively perhaps they just merged some teams and there were surplus folk. In my experience (unrelated to any of this) in rapidly growing orgs, teams/functions often get duplicated/semi-duplicated as different parts independently spin up teams to deal with some need. Ultimately these end up getting rationalised as time progresses.

If they were doing big layoffs of engineers etc, I think we'd have heard about it o we Twitter/blogs/comments/etc by now

<comment><USER4> I hope you're right. My team have chosen Google Cloud. With every news like this one, the risk that Google will shutdown its cloud division seems more and more likely to happen.

<comment><USER5> > _My team have chosen Google Cloud_

Why though? AWS, Azure etc all look much more competent and friendlier to customers, and without Google's history of killing services they don't care for anymore...

<comment><USER6> Azure is not competent or customer friendly at all. I've been using Azure on and off since its very first days and despite me telling every client that they're better off by using AWS or GCP because it will cause their dev teams less headache, and cost them overall a lot less in engineering cost (time spent by their engineers fighting with Azure instead of building a product) there's still every so often a non technical idiot who got sucked off by some Microsoft Partner manager and trapped in this shitshow of inconsistent, slow, buggy and constantly broken cloud services which Microsoft offers.

<comment><USER7> Not discounting your experience, but we have clients in all three, and our own experience is that Azure support and service is _significantly_ better than AWS and GCP, to the degree that we primarily recommend Azure for that reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> randomguy-gcp Many theories and opinions . Here is an observation from someone involved with GCP more than many of you (especially more than the WSJ journalists) - <USER2> job cuts are not an indication of the health (or lack of it) of GCP division. From the familiarity I got as a partner, it's probably the consolidation of the sales function. Inside Sales Reps (ISRs) being moved to Field Sales Reps (FSRs) and some of the ISRs being asked to find jobs elsewhere because the strategy is to avoid duplication of efforts and close more deals.

<comment><USER8> >being asked to find jobs elsewhere

One of the worst euphemisms for being fired that I've heard.

<comment><USER9> Elsewhere _within the company_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So the new boss is from Oracle, who hired new managers from SAP and Microsoft, they are hiring like crazy and cutting some old jobs. Looks like they are trying to get rid of internal critics, resistance. Interesting wars

<comment><USER11> Do you have a source for this?

<comment><USER12> Why is this so hard to believe? Politics is a real force.

<comment><USER11> Of course it's entirely possible, but if it cannot be backed up with facts it's just speculation / rumor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> > Google said it is cutting jobs at its cloud-computing unit as part of a > reorganization aimed at improving operations at the business that has become > more central to parent Alphabet Inc.

> Google on Friday said "a small number of employees" have been notified their > roles have been eliminated. Google didn't specify how many roles are being > cut and said it was working with affected employees to find them new > positions in the company.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't get it. Company that is flush with that much cash couldn't find new roles for the 'small number' of people that were impacted? I'm thinking they used the good old "your position is being eliminated due to business reasons" excuse to get rid of people they didn't want to keep.

It's a common HR tactic.

<comment><USER14> I hate to be that guy, but I want to point out that more people not always equate to more output. E.g. if you create a "controller" role, they would try to justify their existence and create more work/overhead for others.

And you would be surprised how many roles in big bureaucracies are "controller" roles by nature.

<comment><USER15> It's good to point it out.

In the third world, if you hire 100 people for a 5-man project, people end up doing nothing but their own things. It's bad but it's obvious that something is going wrong.

In the first world, if you hire 100 people for a 5-man project, people end up to invent and justify 100-man's job. Everyone's role would become their identity, everyone is busy and hardworking. The output is high, they would also have fancy analytics and reports.

It's hard for a person to believe a 100-man busy project actually only needs 5 men.

<comment><USER16> > _In the first world, if you hire 100 people for a 5-man project, people end > up to invent and justify 100-man 's job. Everyone's role would become their > identity, everyone is busy and hardworking. The output is high, they would > also have fancy analytics and reports._

This is such utter nonsense that it's hard to believe you've worked in any human organization.

People in the first and third world are not different species. A lot of white- collar first-world workers provide no value to their company at all.

<comment><USER17> Interesting.

There are two contradicting unsubstantiated observations, or let's just say blatant generalisations, one gets downvoted another flourishes.

<comment><USER18> smt88's post was downvoted because it completely misunderstood the point of namelosw's post. smt88 wrote "A lot of white-collar first-world workers provide no value to their company at all." Well, in my reading of it, that was exactly namelosw's point. That is, the social pressure in first world countries, and the fact that so many have their identity tied up in their job, demands everyone looks 'busy' even when they are not really doing anything of value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why would Google even take the risk of this PR, vs. just moving these people into R&D inside the Cloud group? I feel like this clickbait headline will frighten markets more than the bloated headcount expense.

<comment><USER20> Amazon lets people go regularly, I don't get what the issue is.

<comment><USER21> Google has recently had a leak about potentially cutting cloud. Afaik Amazon hasn't.

<comment><USER22> But isn't Cloud their biggest growth opportunity ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> [https://archive.md/OCc3B](https://archive.md/OCc3B)

<comment><USER24> ↑ archived copy without paywall

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Nothing is happening to Google Cloud overall. This is just a small org where two teams were doing similar stuff, so they got merged. This made a few roles redundant, so those folks will be looking for new roles within Google (Cloud). How this made for a WSJ headline, IDK. I couldn't read the whole article because paywall, but the first few lines do mention that it's a tiny number of employees affected and they can look for new roles.

Note: I'm not authorized to speak for Google, but hopefully this addresses some of the panic in this comment thread.

<comment><USER26> It still seems strange they don't need more of this person's role and would instead eliminate it: [https://twitter.com/whyhiannabelle/status/122810842950535168...](https://twitter.com/whyhiannabelle/status/1228108429505351680?s=21)

It isn't a good look.

"This morning I learned that my role at Google has been eliminated. If you've got an opening for someone who's in Kubernetes and containers security, focuses on content, advocacy, and communication, and has an OSS background, holler!"

<comment><USER27> why? do you think cloud marketing people are hard to find?

<comment><USER26> If it's growing like it should be, why would they be cutting her role (e.g. it wasn't performance related, so they aren't going to backfill).

<comment><USER27> an industry can be growing and still do well with less marketing/advocacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> _Google generated $8.9 billion in cloud sales last year, up 52.7% from $5.8 billion in 2018 and $4.1 billion the year prior._

Doesn't sound like Google's cloud business is in trouble.

<comment><USER29> If it costs $10bn a year to run that would mean it represents a $1.1bn loss, and it should be killed if Google can't turn it around. Revenue is a terrible metric to judge something on.

<comment><USER28> I was pointing to growth, not revenue. A business that doubled its revenue in two years is great to have, even if it is not currently profitable.

<comment><USER30> So if I sell $1 bills for $0.90, I guess I should be glad if my "revenues grow"?

<comment><USER31> Do you have any evidence to believe Google Cloud Platform is negative gross profit?

My background in the industry would lead me to believe GCP (just the infrastructure, not the applications) is 70%+ gross margin with the hardware (and data center) cost (depreciation if capitalized) above the gross margin line.

For a business at that growth rate running a GAAP negative net income is easy to do while still building a high quality profitable long term business.

<comment><USER30> I've made no statements either way. I was responding to the relatively naive idea that increasing revenue without profit was a measure of "success".

But, cloud companies don't just have to worry about hardware and infrastructure. They also have to worry about software engineers, "enterprise sales solution architects" and a whole host of other costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> [https://outline.com/38xHGT](https://outline.com/38xHGT)

</comment><comment><USER33> Can someone with an MBA or a business understanding explain why they would even make this announcement if it is a small number of roles in the company? Why not just reorganize? I don't get it unless it's a signal to the market that the execs are looking at cloud compute.

<comment><USER34> It's not an announcement as much as a legal obligation to disclose, and news sources just pick up on it.

<comment><USER35> This is correct. In many jurisdictions, when a certain number of employees are laid off in a given amount of time, they are required to disclose this to the government.

For example, California has the WARN act: [https://www.shouselaw.com/employment/warn- act.html](https://www.shouselaw.com/employment/warn-act.html)

<comment><USER33> So this is a WARN act announcement?

<comment><USER35> If it is you can expect it to show here in a few days: [https://www.edd.ca.gov/Jobs_and_Training/Layoff_Services_WAR...](https://www.edd.ca.gov/Jobs_and_Training/Layoff_Services_WARN.htm#ListingofWARNNotices)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> At least one person is taking the news as "I need a new job" situation.

[https://twitter.com/whyhiannabelle/status/122810842950535168...](https://twitter.com/whyhiannabelle/status/1228108429505351680?s=21)

</comment><comment><USER37> What is cloud computing here? Is it some of Google services such as Mail or Drive. Or is it the cloud hosting competing with MS Azure or AWS?

<comment><USER38> GCP

<comment><USER39> Yes, but also other products like G Suite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> How to cut expenses by a million a year? Fire 3-4 software engineers.

</comment><comment><USER41> Will this ever happen to Amazon (AWS) which is in hiring spree ? when you have surplus, can't they easily cut loose some when plans didn't go the way it was supposed to.

<comment><USER42> Amazon does this kind of thing all the time. It's very rare with engineers-- they just get moved around. But if you have some reorg, you don't need two sets of marketing folks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> It could easily be attributed to automation than business troubles

</comment><comment><USER44> Sad. I hope it works out for the smart hardworking googlers.

</comment><comment><USER45> this kind of news is why no one wants to use gcp in case google decides to axe it completely

<comment><USER46> No one wants to use GCP?

You mean, no one except: Home Depot, Target, PayPal, eBay, HSBC, SAP, and thoudands more...

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Is this a sign Google is not going to compete in Cloud anymore?

Can't see how this is not going hurt customer confidence.

<comment><USER48> It's a basic reorganization of a trivial amount of jobs for a trillion dollar company.

No it's not a sign that they're going to stop competing in one of the most profitable sectors that they've had an offering in for over a decade.

<comment><USER47> What I am worrying now is that Cloud is supposedly a fast growing sector they should double down on investing.

This doesn't look to me as a hyper growth focus trajectory TBH

<comment><USER48> They _are_ increasing investment and are arguably the first "cloud" computing company to exist and offer a product to the public.

They might not catch up to the others but it'll still be a highly profitable product suite. I don't see what there is to worry about. GCP also includes Google Maps and GSuite by the way, which have lots of customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I'm going to make an outrageous prediction: due to the changing geopolitical landscape which has been going on since 9/11, loss of trust in the US as a "leader" that can keep the data safe, we will move away from the cloud and back to a model where data sovereignty trumps all else.

This will be enabled by changes to the underlying infrastructure - moving away from BGP and adopting (BGP backward compatible) protocols like SCION[1], as currently implemented by Swiss carriers, which allow improved traffic shaping, and more importantly: jurisdictional geo-fencing.

We'll also see more legislation by the EU to level the playing field against US companies who currently do business with a Double Irish Dutch sandwich.

The current model where the US is the only cloud provider with virtually no EU based competitor and where EU data is locked into US corps is unsustainable. Europeans trust into US companies has never been strong to begin with and current politics (+horrible foreign policy) will reduce it further.

The cloud is dead imo. Because in a climate where national interests are suddenly more important than partnerships and international trade, the cloud is more of a risk than anything else. The US makes that same case too, illustrated by their hostility towards Chinese products (I'm not defending China here at all btw).

[1] [https://www.scion-architecture.net/](https://www.scion-architecture.net/)

edit: I have to dig up this quote again from Aral Balkan's recent talk at the EU parliament: _" You are acting as an unpaid Research and Development department for silicon valley. Because if a startup here succeeds, it gets bought by Google or Facebook. If it fails, we pick up the bill."_: [https://video.lqdn.fr/videos/watch/861c07f7-7e9b-4e64-9765-c...](https://video.lqdn.fr/videos/watch/861c07f7-7e9b-4e64-9765-cf1de592c8a0)

<comment><USER50> The feeling into "fact" flow:

Step 1) "I don't like thing"

Step 2) "I really wish thing didn't exist."

Step 3) "Thing is probably dying/dead."

Step 4) "If event happened, it would really show thing is dying/dead."

Step 5) "Event can happen."

Step 6) "Event will happen."

Step 7) "Event is happening!"

Step 8) "Events 1, 2 and 3 can/will/are happening which forms a narrative proving thing is dying/dead."

Have you considered a career as a journalist?

<comment><USER51> This response is just rude and adds nothing to the discussion.

<comment><USER52> It is rude, but the OP says "the cloud is dead" What!? That deserves to be called out.

<comment><USER53> OP prefaced by saying "outrageous prediction" \- admitting plainly its pure speculation. If s/he didn't do that, that would be something that deserves to be called out.

<comment><USER54> Stating you're making a wild claim, in advance, doesn't mean you can avoid the responses to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> December 2019

"Google Brass Set 2023 as Deadline to Beat Amazon, Microsoft in Cloud"

[https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-brass- set-202...](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-brass-set-2023-as- deadline-to-beat-amazon-microsoft-in-cloud)

 _The clock is ticking for Google Cloud.

The Google unit, which sells computing services to big companies, is under pressure from top management to pass Amazon or Microsoft—currently first and second, respectively, in cloud market share—or risk losing funding. While the company has invested heavily in the business since last year, Google wants its cloud group to outrank those of one or both of its two main rivals by 2023, said people with knowledge of the matter._

<comment><USER55> What are the Vegas odds that they blow the whole thing up if they don't end up #1?

<comment><USER30> Given Google's penchant for cancelling projects and their inability to do anything profitably outside of advertising?

<comment><USER48> Cloud computing is already extremely profitable, and well above their 10-figure line for a sustainable project.

AppEngine has been around for more than a decade. GCP might not catch up to AWS but it's not going away.

<comment><USER30> Is it profitable _for Google_?

<comment><USER48> Yes.

<comment><USER30> Your conclusion is based on?

<comment><USER48> Like I said, it's double-digit billions product line and has a 10+ year history. And internal metrics show lots of profit margin comparable to AWS, although you'll have to find someone to share that with you in person.

<comment><USER56> Thanks just bought 100k

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> WSJ has gone hard Murdoch, particularly against Google. In conjunction with comments by Peter Thiel, Trump, and other conservative commentators, it's pretty clear there's a coordinated effort to cast Facebook as a "fair and balanced" face, and to do that, they need a libtard heel, and Google is apparently it.

What's interesting is that Trump easily has more of a beef with Bezos as the owner of the Washington Post, but it's seems the conservatives have a harder time casting the world's richest man as a snowflake when he runs a brutally lean business and launches rockets.

<comment><USER30> The WSJ has never been a Trump supporter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I haven't seen this mentioned yet, but perhaps this 'leak' to WSJ was calculated to remind some folks thinking of unionizing that layoffs are a real thing in this world.

<comment><USER59> You are saying that someone in management orchestrated a layoff to motivate employees to unionize faster to negotiate better layoff compensation?

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Are they trying to ensure that Google Cloud fails? I feel like all this does is just spook potential customers.

</comment><comment><USER61> Google Inc. is cutting jobs? Is this actually a move by automation's machinic desire to displace human laborers or human capital? Pieter Levels, an expert in startups, said that "Netflix wants to have _less_ employees, but each one now paid higher. For example, they'll pay one million dollars per year for one engineer instead of paying $300,000 per year for three engineers each." This is actually making me anxious to the point where I'm trying to pick a skill to appease a machinic desire's new and progressive, if a little anti- anthropocentric, labor production power and capital market demands so that I can satisfy a certain power-law probability distribution function's optimization.

<comment><USER48> I don't see anything technically wrong with that approach. The top performers are usually outsized contributors compared to the bottom tier or even mid level coworkers. It's better to keep a very high performing team even if it's more expensive.

<comment><USER62> You do sometimes get weird effects from top heavy structures like that though. The classic example is Google hiring "super good people" for them to end up doing pretty low level (but important!) ops work

To take Amazon as an example, you can hire a bunch of high performing engineers but you still need people actually putting stuff into boxes so they get shipped (robots nonwithstanding)

<comment><USER48> You can have high performers in every position, not just software engineering.

<comment><USER62> Sorry, you're definitely right about that.

I guess I was thinking about "ambitious" people who see certain kind of work as beneath them. I feel like if you had a room full of million dollar engineers than a lot of "papercut"-style issues wouldn't get fixed.

There's a rumor that for a while Valve had this problem because to many people wanted to make games, and not enough wanted to maintain Steam</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: US Tax accountants with experience dealing with non-resident aliens? - <AUTHOR> Hi guys,
I'm struggling to find a good tax accountant who has experience dealing with non-resident aliens and withholding tax. Does anyone have any recommendations? Is there software that might be useful?
Lots of accountants I've contacted don't even realize its legal for non-resident aliens to own a business in the states (it's perfectly legal).
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Contact me. My email address is in my profile. My day job is international tax lawyer. I know this stuff and I know accountants who do tax returns.

<comment><USER3> I'll be contacting you as well!</comment></comment>


A Modern Programming Operating System - <AUTHOR> http://slakinski.com/a-modern-programming-operating-system/

<comment><USER2> Any modern operating system that allows open development fits the bill. I think what the OP is saying is that he would settle for having it run on top of Linux, but I'd bet that he wants the core written as (or even interpreted by) a Python interpreter, so that everything from drivers to applications could be written in Python. Wouldn't we all?

I've been wanting the same for Ruby, which I think is superior to Python in its syntax, clarity, and readability. I'd settle for a Ruby interpreter in every browser.

However, first, I'd like to see Firefox OS succeed. The idea behind it is better: take the most well-used web development language (client-side) and make it also the same language for writing applications (client-side). The only things missing are being able to write lower-level drivers using Javascript (not just having to hack atop Android) and for all of the server (not just Node) to be Javascript.

There is a reason that what is usually used to write OS's is basically C (or some variation), though. C is an intelligible and useful language that can be portable across architectures. C, Javascript, Python, Ruby, Java, etc. are all very similar when compared with assembly or machine code. C has the advantage of allowing more flexibility in memory management. So, I just don't see Python as an language used to develop an OS.

As for whether it makes sense to develop the appearance of everything being in Python so that kids can hack it up: you'd be better off introducing them to Scratch, Lego Mindstorms, the Arduino and have them participate in Science Olympiads. There is no modern equivalent of what we grew up with.

</comment><comment><USER3> Instead of vanilla Python shell, I'd use IPython instead. It has all the run/save/load stuff you mention, and tons of other things to make Python nicer to use interactively. IPython also has Qt-based console, which has the ability to display rich content inline. I think the ability to interact with graphical subsystems is important, look at C64 demoscene to see what idle kids can do with even with primitive graphics system.

<comment><USER4> booting into an IPython QT shell in full screen, with a custom help message explaining how to save hunks of code to file, would be great. Being able to Alt+Tab to a browser (even one pointing at a local copy of the python and ipython docs) would be essential, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I only ran into this a couple days ago and have obviously never even conceived of checking it out, but it seems to have been purpose-built to have a modern- day equivalent of the old hackable OSes of the 80s:

<http://www.sparrowos.com/>

<comment><USER3> SparrowOS has bit sad background: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4992749>

<comment><USER6> Poor SparrowOS. His operating system does look pretty cool, and I have a lot of respect for anyone who can write something like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You could boot your machine into a LISP or Scheme repl, which in my opinion (as a ruby programmer by trade) are much nicer for kids to learn programming with than Ruby or Python because of the dynamic and interactive nature of lisp.

<comment><USER3> If you are going to take the LISP route, wouldn't booting into emacs and slime make sense?

emacs as a login shell.... I wonder if anyone actually does that :)

<comment><USER8> I have experimented with it. The worst problem I had was that the terminal emulators were too slow for my taste. But overall, Emacs works surprisingly well for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have similar fond memories of using Acorn and Sinclair systems when I was younger: turn it on and start hacking away.

Of course, in those days, everything was simpler, and for all the benefits that the modern, heterogeneous technology landscape offers us, I do think we've lost something by trying to make everything do everything for everyone while talking to everything else.

The people best placed to fix that are the ones who control both the hardware and the software foundation running on it, but sadly, the most obvious examples like Apple and the games console makers seem to want just about the most locked-down, developer-hostile environments in computing history.

That all said, today's kids have the benefits of the Internet and the vast potential it offers for teaching, learning, sharing and collaborating, all on a scale we couldn't even dream of when I was first learning to program. I wonder whether that ecosystem combined with recent hardware developments like the Raspberry Pi might offer enthusiastic youngsters a very different experience but one that ultimately encourages their interest as well or better than what we had in my generation.

</comment><comment><USER10> There's <http://www.pycorn.org> , an interpreted OS written in python. Although it's "in a very early stage, and is unlikely to be interesting to users who are not low-level developers."

</comment><comment><USER11> What's wrong with learning kids Shell scripting? I think most Unix-like OS's are good for learning, behind the complex layers of abstractions lay the simple command line. Excellent for programming without any distraction.

<comment><USER12> _What's wrong with learning kids Shell scripting?_

Assuming you mean bash-like shells on Unix boxes, quite a few things:

1\. Commands have arbitrary, hard-to-remember names.

2\. Destructive commands tend not to issue warnings.

3\. Mass destructive commands still tend not to issue warnings.

4\. Did I mention that destructive commands don't tend to issue warnings?

5\. Destructive commands typically can't be undone.

A system where you can do a lot of permanent damage without warning and where the names of things are mostly guesswork is a terrible environment for experimentation, and experimentation is often the best way to learn a new technology.

<comment><USER11> I meant that you should setup a simple environment, setting up a partition and chroot into it. Learn the kid to use man(1) and ed(1) and after that let him/her play around. I heard someone doing this with his 5 year old kid on the OpenBSD mailing-list, that kid will probably be able to write quite useful scripts in a few years.

<comment><USER13> Why should you teach a child ed(1), instead of any other text editors? In my opinion , it is one of the most sadistic common text editors in existence, and has been for several decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Biggest problem for this issue today is: kids don't know what a command line is, and are unfamiliar with the classic "terminal" interface.

When teaching an intro to programming, my curriculum still uses this "command shell" form. Of late, nigh unto no students have seen it, and I have to teach it as a new concept - a problem as it's more obsolete than new. Soon we'll have to give up on it as a starting point, saving it for more advanced students. GUIs rule now; beginners don't grok a text prompt.

</comment><comment><USER15> Any recommendation other than plan 9 is seriously considered harmful.

<comment><USER16> In that family, Inferno is a small complete OS, which runs as a virtual machine on a Windows/Linux/MacOS host. All source code is included, so it's hackable, and it improves (wrt the basics) on the Linux state of the art. Acme, especially with the plumber, is more friendly user interface than the terminal command line. <http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I like the ideas behind <http://acko.net/blog/on-termkit/>. I too dream of a ipython-like shell, where the input/output is similar to GET/POST with Accept headers (so the pipes know if the source/destination can manage the data).

My idea is mix <https://tablib.readthedocs.org/en/latest/> as data exchange, python, ipython?, <https://pypi.python.org/pypi/httpie/> (as example of the kind of commands), and termkit ideas on display, interface.

So, each command could do something like:

class ls(cmd):

def accept(self): return 'json, xml, cvs'

def output(self): return 'json, xml, cvs'

def run(self, input): return output

But the problem is that do this is hard, take time, and to be useful, require rewrite a lot of basic unix functionality (however, a compatibility can be archived, as with ipython !command) and perhaps a custom language/interpreter to make it usable.

</comment><comment><USER18> Petit Computer (<http://www.petitcomputer.com/>) - BASIC on Nintendo DS

Maximite (<http://geoffg.net/maximite.html>) - single IC computer running BASIC with 8 colours on VGA.

</comment><comment><USER19> I feel this can be done on vanilla linux, without x, and the 'python' command appended to your bashrc

</comment><comment><USER20> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MINIX>

</comment><comment><USER21> Ipython has some support for moving around in the file system and exporting code.

</comment><comment><USER22> How about Sugar? (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_%28desktop_environment%29>)

</comment><comment><USER23> I think this would be an awesome fit for raspberry pi. Just turn it on, log in and start flipping bits.

</comment><comment><USER24> I would rather kids jump straight to the programming.</comment>


Reddit Co-Founder on Privacy in America [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbcnews.com/video/meet-the-press/54117741#54117741 <comment><USER2> HAHA you can tell David Gregory was personally offended when Alex called Snowden a whistleblower.

Also, he's knowingly misleading his audience when he says there's been no evidence of abuse. The LOVINT revelations and general practice of Parallel Construction by other agencies are well-documented even by CNN.

<comment><USER3> > HAHA you can tell David Gregory was personally offended when Alex called > Snowden a whistleblower.

Really? I didn't get that at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can we start calling him Alexis Ohanian yet?

<comment><USER5> I wish... he's famous to me.

He's speaking at my university soon (his book tour and more) and a top professor in our College of Business is helping arrange it and has set him up in one of our largest/nicest event halls.

Over a hundred confirmed attendees on facebook last I checked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hope Reddit can use HTTPS for its whole site soon. People use pseudonyms and multiple accounts on Reddit for a reason: freedom of expression. Yet NSA can easily collect all that data and mine it and search through it automatically, because they're tapping the Internet cables, which means all unencrypted data is theirs to own (and abuse).

<comment><USER7> https everywhere for reddit is actually a tricky proposition. Mainly because the browsers have yet to be designed to handle an all https website that embeds content from other sites.

We tried running reddit in all https mode, but you get a lot of mixed content warnings, which makes for an awful user experience.

There are also a lot of edge cases of the opposite case where people embed reddit on their site.

<comment><USER8> I'm likely ignorant of some of the external content, but what about forcing https-only users through a view that avoids external content? I already have reddit setup to not show thumbnails and never expand video links inline. It would be a reasonable trade off to me if the only other option is http only.

It's nice to hear there were attempts at having an all https mode. I have long been bummed that reddit is http only, for a variety of reasons.

<comment><USER7> I just checked it out again and it looks like the situation is improved now that Youtube is http (the biggest source of external embedded content).

That being said, there is still a significant monetary cost, not in terms of servers, but in terms of the fact that Akamai, the CDN for reddit, charges an arm and a leg for SSL support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In this video the pundit comments that reddit had 100 million unique visitors last month. quantcast says 31 million: [https://www.quantcast.com/reddit.com?country=US](https://www.quantcast.com/reddit.com?country=US). Could quantcast be that far off or did the pundit misspeak?

<comment><USER10> Yes:

[http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/experts-misunderestimate- our-...](http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/experts-misunderestimate-our- traffic.html)</comment></comment>


Unpaid Internships: Get on the Right Side of History - <AUTHOR> http://employerblog.internmatch.com/unpaid-internships-get-on-the-right-side-of-history/

<comment><USER2> It was my impression that young professional women actually made more money than young men. Ah, found the article I was thinking of: [http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00....](http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00.html)

"median full-time salaries of young women are 8% higher than those of the guys in their peer group"

Their peer group being under 30, childless, unmarried, metropolitan. These are probably strongly skewing caveats but sounds exactly like the market that internmatch targets.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have really mixed feelings about this. As the founder of a self-funded, bootstrapping startup, every dollar that we spend is coming out of my $dayjob salary, which _really_ limits what we can spend on paying other people. Even paying minimum wage is probably not a realistic option.

And, I think an unpaid internship _can_ be a win-win for both parties in at least some situations.

And, as a libertarian, I reject the notion that the govt. has any business interfering in private contractual arrangements that don't involve the use of force or fraud.

So, would we offer and engage in an unpaid internship at Fogbeam Labs? Well... I don't know. As I said, I don't think they should be _prohibited_ , but the idea also leaves something of a sour taste in my mouth.

We've been talking to some intern candidates over the past couple of weeks, and the idea we've been batting around is to offer a fixed sum stipend, on the order of a few thousand dollars, as compensation for a 6-8 week internship, where the intern would be asked to contribute around 20 hours / week.

8 * 20 = 160 hours, and at $10.00 / hour, you'd be looking at $1600 dollars. The number we have in mind is higher than that, so I guess we actually are talking about paying more than minimum wage. We could only afford to take on one intern at that rate though, but that's probably OK... I doubt the founders have the bandwidth to manage more than one intern anyway.

<comment><USER4> If you were to hire an unpaid intern - are they not creating any value for you (or very little)? Then why are you hiring them? If they are creating value for you, then that should be extra money in the pool, and some of it should go to the intern. What am I missing?

<comment><USER3> _If they are creating value for you, then that should be extra money in the pool, and some of it should go to the intern. What am I missing?_

The time delay between creating the value and turning that value in money. In a situation like ours, a pre-revenue, bootstrapped startup, we can create a ton of value, but nobody knows exactly when our first (and subsequent) sales will be.

Now, if an intern wanted an arrangement with deferred compensation, contingent on some future revenue, etc., etc., that could theoretically be arranged. But it probably wouldn't be worth the effort to do all that.

OTOH, value can be exchanged in other ways other than money. An intern who works for "free" in the monetary sense may still benefit from the situation. A strong letter of recommendation and a verifiable reference to put on the resume represent a form of value as well.

But, all of that said, I'm still not super crazy about unpaid internships. Like I said above, if we take on any intern(s) we are looking to pay them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The goal has always been that you compensate a person for their time. Time can always be equivalent to money. It doesn't make any sense to bring someone in, have them bust their tail to create or work on bettering something and yet they don't get paid. If you are good at something it shouldn't come free. To me that exposes the culture and ethics of a company. Not only how they treat employees but also its interns. The goal of a founder/entrepreneur is the sense that we get to create our own great businesses and or products and create opportunities for others. Interns today, bring in not only fresh ideas that support the founders but also they also many times your greatest ambassadors. What message are we sending when we don't pay them and force them to find another job outside of this internship so they can support themselves and the companies they works for free? It would be the same as Being the entrepreneur that works hard to create a product that is suppose to sell but everyone takes from you for free yet you are spending the money to create. You'll go out of business because you're just burning cash. It's the same philosophy in having working interns. In short, Pay Them!

</comment><comment><USER6> I've had both paid and non-paid internships and I've been fortunate enough to have the non-paid internship turn into a contract position and then a full- time position. However, what scared me about each position is that I was never told upfront if there was real possibility for a full-time position. I'm still against non-paid internships, but at a minimum, if you must have an unpaid intern, at least let them know whether or not that internship can realistically turn into a full time position or not and what benefits there will be as an unpaid intern. Set those expectations, that way at least the potential intern can weight the pros and cons for themselves whether or not the unpaid position is really worth their time.

</comment><comment><USER7> We have had unpaid interns before, as have a lot of companies I know. The difference is you can't find CODERS to be unpaid interns. Every person whose trying to break in to marketing, social media and PR etc., we have no real use for them right now.

I wouldn't be hiring a PR or Marketing person otherwise, it isn't necessary. Numerous times friends of friends have asked for an internship, I've said we aren't ready to hire in that position yet, and they have offered to work for free, for experience, or for college credit.

The better way of alleviating this is to have a skillset that not everyone else has, that any college graduate can't duplicate.

</comment><comment><USER8> Here's a publication from the Department of Labor concerning the legality of unpaid internships in the United States: <http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER9> As someone who goes to a state university in the silicon valley, none of my peers have received any unpaid internships. The lowest paying internships that I have heard of are $25/hour.

<comment><USER10> Author here - The unique requirements at many Silicon Valley companies for rapidly scaling teams require robust, well paid, competitive internship programs. The famous perks at Google, Facebook, etc. definitely extend to internship programs for good reason. We don't know the exact numbers, but somewhere around 50% of all internships in the US are unpaid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Who benefits from unpaid internships and how much? Not paying for internships eliminates students who cannot afford to work for free.

</comment><comment><USER12> Do these exist at all in tech? It is not something I have heard of, or can even imagine.

<comment><USER10> Author here, good question. We see that tech internships are much more likely to be paid, in large part because technology companies recognize the tremendous value of internship programs for fueling their new grad hiring.</comment></comment>