Blizzard employees strongly support punishing HK advocate, censorship – survey - <AUTHOR> https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2019/10/blizzard-hong-kong-protest-hearthstone-blind-app.html <comment><USER2> This has to be one of the less plausible ways of getting a representative sample that I can think of. Even among the Blizzard employees who happen to be on Blind, most did not answer. So, even if we assume that Blind has a representative sample of Blizzard employees (which seems implausible), the real approval rate could be anywhere from (430+45)/500=95%, or as low as (45/500)=9%. We don't know if those Blizzard employees in favor of the punishment would be more or less likely to respond than others, but it seems unlikely that it would be unrelated.

Better claim would be, "Blizzard employees' support for punishment of HK advocate between 9% and 95%". Except, given that Blind's 500 Blizzard employees are probably NOT representative, it might be broader than that.

<comment><USER3> I think your math is off - with a 99% confidence interval, on a population of 4,700 employees of Blizzard a sampling of 60 people with a 64.27% approval rate gives us a confidence interval of +-16%~. At 95% confidence, the interval shrinks to 12%~

<comment><USER4> You can't construct that confidence interval unless you know the sample was selected randomly among all Blizzard employees. If the sample is self selected then you don't have anything at all, really the data is useless.

In general, there is a lot of pressure for employees to conform to company decisions, regardless of their actual opinion, because their job is on the line. It does not matter that this "Blind" service purports to be anonymous. People will still demonstrate a bias because they have no guarantee that their communications are not being monitored and ultimately they have nothing to gain by giving their honest opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Only 70 employees took this survey! From the article:

> About 500 Blizzard employees are members of Blind's community for the > company, Blind co-founder Kyum Kim tells me. Of that 500, fifty to seventy > Blizzard employees took the two question survey, along with hundreds of > staffers from many other tech companies -- raw data on the right.

This is less than 1% of Blizzard's workforce. Also from the article:

> To be sure, this survey attracted only 50-70 Blizzard employee respondents, > a small sample from a total staff count of about 4,700 people.

Even if all 500 Blizzard employees on Blind responded in the same proportions it would _still_ be less than a quarter of the company.

<comment><USER6> 1% is not that low, a typical poll has much less than that. E.g. a Gallup poll generally interviews about 1000 individuals to represent the whole of the US.

Selection bias is a much larger problem here.

<comment><USER7> Because it wouldn't be economical to hire hundreds of thousands of call takers to reach everyone in the US in a single week.

There's no reason a company could not send out a one-question survey link to all of it's employees with one click if they wanted to get reliable data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Asked, "Should Blizzard reverse its banning of the Hearthstone player?", > only 36% of Blizzard employees surveyed responded Yes. However, a solid > majority of 64% opposed the reversal.

I think this question misses the point a bit. Few people think there should be literally no punishment for disrupting a tournament stream with a political message. There is a rule against that, it's in the rulebook, you should probably get a warning and then a disqualification/ban.

People object because the punishments were extremely severe (clawing back already-won prize money, firing commentators who ostensibly had no idea this was about to happen to them), to the point of seeming like they were dictated to Blizzard by China.

<comment><USER9> > There is a rule against that

There is a vague and generic rule designed to let Blizzard slap people who make them look bad with penalties. Nothing like "no politics".

<comment><USER8> Fair enough, we could restate it, then: it would be generally unobjectionable to create and enforce a rule against disrupting tournament coverage with political speech.

<comment><USER10> All speech is related to politics though. There is no such thing as "apolitical speech".

As for the survey, it shows also something else: company loyalty.

Also, they called it Activision Blizzard; not Blizzard. So they included Activision employees in the survey?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > "Blind allows employees at companies to share their opinion anonymously, > which means they can share their honest opinions without fear of judgment," > as Kyum Kim puts it. Furthermore, Blind users can only join its Blizzard > community if they create an account through their company e-mail.

Those two statements are at odds. Any large company (especially in a technical industry) is going to monitor internet usage and retain e-mail/internet logs, or at least have the capability to do so. Anyone with a technical background is going to understand that using their employer's infrastructure to verify is going to directly link their real/work identity with their Blind account. Even if you were to trust that Blind would not provide their information to 3rd parties you would still have to assume that the company could still easily find out _who_ had answered questions (but maybe not how they answered). Depending on how the publicly reported results were skewed, and how many people responded, that could still very easily lead to someone being directly identified or at least flagged by their employer.

<comment><USER12> > Even if you were to trust that Blind would not provide their information to > 3rd parties

This is literally 100% of Blind's value prop. It's a fairly reasonable assumption, especially when balanced against behavior your employer may not like but wouldn't be super upset about (eg sharing constructive criticism vs hinting at confidential information).

I've used Blind, mostly read-only, since Google spoiled me by getting me used to an incredibly robust internal culture of open discussion (this was several years ago; I can't speak to the Google of today), and I don't really have any concerns at all about being tied to my real identity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> In my experience Blind has always been a perfect example of the "Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory" ([https://www.penny- arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19](https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19)).

Given total anonymity I see a lot more toxic culture and behavior on Blind than I do in the workplace. I also know people tend to troll a lot there too.

</comment><comment><USER14> Blind has a reputation for being skewed towards counter-culture (e.g. angry, anti-pc, anti company creeds). Is this actually supported by data? E.g. the same anonymous survey on Blind and elsewhere?

</comment><comment><USER15> "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

<comment><USER16> What I don't understand is how those who choose profits over people, or do other such provably horrible things, can then stand up and say they are not doing said thing everyone can see and record them doing. I don't understand what they expect the lies to accomplish over just saying nothing. Your actions prove your character, not words. Do they think people don't notice? Do they really think denial makes the lie a truth or makes it ok? I'd be eaten up inside with anxiety and stress if I did something like that as my conscience chewed at me. Do they not have these feelings?

* I wish people who downvoted would have to put their name with the downvote and explain why. The hit and run "wrong" unaccountable nature of them in any forum bothers me. It's made it too easy for people to just jab at you without consequence and treats people like they aren't other people but rather enemies to bury in grey.

<comment><USER17> >I'd be eaten up inside with anxiety and stress if I did something like that as my conscience chewed at me. Do they not have these feelings?

Those feelings are easy to get over; just be a hard determinist who hates authoritarian regimes and is a "good person" but lives interdependently with others in a system designed to serve Moloch AND WHICH ON _AVERAGE_ is pretty ok or getting better and beyond your control in the meantime anyway. :)

>I wish people who downvoted would have to put their name with the downvote and explain why. The hit and run "wrong" unaccountable nature of them in any forum bothers me. It's made it too easy for people to just jab at you without consequence and treats people like they aren't other people but rather enemies to bury in grey.

Comment voting and its consequences have been a disaster for online discourse. uwu

It treats people's _ideas_ like they're a thing you can counter with a click and don't have to engage with. Without it, the mob must at least spam half- thought-out, rash rebuttals, and these can hilariously backfire.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "To be sure, this survey attracted only 50-70 Blizzard employee respondents, a small sample from a total staff count of about 4,700 people." oh ok...

</comment><comment><USER19> > And because of how Blind works, the survey likely reflects true staff > sentiment.

What? This is a bunch of nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER20> To think that someone would quote a Blind survey is actually hilarious. I've never run across a more toxic online environment than Blind, it's just troll vs troll on there and anyone that is there for honest discussion is turned off by the toxicity pretty quickly.

</comment><comment><USER21> Important to note that its a relatively low sample size, and there's definite selection bias to what kinds of people go on Blind. I wouldn't be _that_ surprised though, if this ended up being true. Everyone's the hero of their own story I guess.

</comment><comment><USER22> This seems plausible, it's my understanding that a huge number of original and long term employees left the company in the past year or two. The prospects of a censored gravy train in China make ones personal financial prospects look good.

</comment><comment><USER23> Would have been better if they had included a qualitative response to understand why they chose 'yes' or 'no'. I want to believe most people are just not well-informed on the whole issue.

<comment><USER24> I when I put myself in a Blizzard employees shoes I think people answering yes are going to end up in the spreadsheet of people to let go during the next round of layoffs.

<comment><USER25> Blind is anonymous.

<comment><USER26> Don't they have your company email address?

<comment><USER19> > Don't they have your company email address?

They do. And we have to trust them that they have only used this information during initial verification and everything is anonymized. And that they haven't and won't ever be compelled by any entity to reveal any identifying information that they may have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It would help (but only a little) to know whether these users of Blind were signed up in the past couple weeks following recent events, or somewhat before that.

</comment><comment><USER28> 1% isn't that small a sample here, this is rather significant statistically.

<comment><USER29> Except Blind self-selects only the most disgruntled of employees.

<comment><USER28> Wouldn't employees against this be equally disgruntled?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> AstroTurf much?

</comment><comment><USER31> I don't understand what the Hong Kong fuss is about. The first time I read about it, my initial understanding was that HK didn't want to give China the power to extradite suspected criminals from HK back to the mainland.

I kind of understand China's position on this because Hong Kong has probably become somewhat of a haven for white-collar criminals who fled from China to escape Chinese prosecution.

I don't understand why so many people are protesting against this bill specifically. The protests seem to mostly serve a small number of elite white- collar fugitives. Maybe the bill needs to be refined further so that the intent is more clear?

<comment><USER32> People in HK are afraid that the extradition powers will be used by China to remove political dissidents from HK and "disappear" them. I think it's a reasonable fear.</comment></comment>


Photos, videos, GIFs, polls, quotes no longer count toward your 140 characters - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/twitter/status/777915304261193728 <comment><USER2> [https://this-is-my-really-long-tweet-that-gets-around-the- on...](https://this-is-my-really-long-tweet-that-gets-around-the-one-hundred- forty-character-limit-by-making-the-whole-message-a-url-now-that-urls-no- longer-count-toward-your-140-characters.com)

<comment><USER3> Surely it has some hard cap, otherwise I can see this being abused (base64 dumps)

<comment><USER4> Not sure what the appeal of inline base64 would be, though, over linking to a hosted file. Twitter is about sharing text, and arbitrarily long URLs mean mom and pop can achieve longer tweets by just adding [http://](http://) and using dashes.

<comment><USER5> not really, considering it'll get truncated

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how many systems, within Twitter and third-party API users, were broken by this change. I'm sure the 140 character limit is hardcoded, explicitly or implicitly, for things like buffer sizes or database schemas in tons of software.

<comment><USER7> They do have a library that helps limit these types of issues: [https://github.com/twitter/twitter-text](https://github.com/twitter/twitter- text). However, it doesn't appear to be updated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> They must have worked years on this "improvement".

<comment><USER9> This is similar to the improvement Facebook made when they added a few emotion buttons beside the like button. It's technically a pretty small change, but it affects what is seen as one of the core features of the website.

What's Facebook? Oh yeah, that thing with the like button. What's Twitter? Right, it's that thing with the 140 characters.

They must have spent a long time deciding whether it would be worth disrupting what made them popular in the first place to add a new feature. And in Twitter's case they probably also waited until single SMS messages were no longer really necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can respect the cachet that twitter has had throughout the world, and the wonderful, positive things its platform has enabled...But honestly, this kind of improvement is so late in coming. Long ago, they should have raised the character limit...Now, I know some might reply with, "but historically SMS/texting limits to X characters only...". My response to this, is that twitter could have adjusted their platform to gracefully degrade. That is, if users can only tweet messages limited to 140 characters because of limits on their device or limits of their infrastructure of submission, then that should not stop other users - who do not have such limits - from tweeting longer messages. Some might feel my comment has the benefit of hindsight, but actually many, many users have said as much during Twitters early years. So I'm not disclosing anything revolutionary or new.

</comment><comment><USER11> For me the 140 character limit is a bit too little. Trying to squeeze my thoughts requires too much effort.

Even a small increase to for example 200 characters would make a big difference.

<comment><USER12> Write your tweets in a CJK language instead of one using a Latin character set: it's like getting 3 bytes for the price of one. Twitter is a much nicer platform in Japanese, as it gives the user plenty of space to state a complete thought.

<comment><USER13> Twitter is that important to you that learning to write Japanese is just a little thing to use the platform?

<comment><USER14> Maybe Japanese is their native tongue?

<comment><USER12>
        $ perl6
        > "日本人じゃないよ、でも日本語を勉強するは楽しいね?".chars
        25
        > "I'm not a Japanese person, but studying Japanese is fun, you know?".chars
        66

(sorry if the Japanese grammar is horrible)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> At least they actually added this into the API this time [https://www.hitchhq.com/twitter/activities/upcoming- changes-...](https://www.hitchhq.com/twitter/activities/upcoming-changes-to- tweets-57dfb6557ab5cb2d63b136c4)

</comment><comment><USER16> Must be part of the Grand Vision.

Or just someone tinkering with the controls hoping to avoid a crash.

</comment><comment><USER17> Could have saved the Internet from a lot of useless traffic.

<comment><USER18> They should have 64c or less days. Just to motivate people to rethink their writing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The title is misleading. Actual text:

"Rolling out now: photos, videos, GIFs, polls, and Quote Tweets no longer count toward your 140 characters."

Otherwise you could post a tweet with 141 URLs separated by 140 spaces, and only the spaces count.

<comment><USER20> Thanks, we updated the title from "URLs no longer count toward your 140 characters". Unfortunately since the whole tweet doesn't fit in the title, we'll assume the features are sorted by importance.

<comment><USER21> The updated title is incorrect. Those features have been part of twitter before this, they just don't count towards the character limit anymore.

<comment><USER20> Thank you! Updated again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My personal opinion is that Twitter still sticking to 140 characters is stupid. If there is still an argument to be made for emergency services using SMS, I'd like to counter that they could implement an "emergency mode twitter" that reverts back to 140 characters in case there is an emergency and only in regions concerned by and adjacent to the occurence of said emergency.

It's time they bump the character limit up to at least 512 characters.

<comment><USER23> That's my intuition too. I don't think even the makers of twitter expected it to be successful.

But in hindsight, since most usage is consumption, the 140-character limit may actually be a killer feature, even though it irritates content producers. People like sound bites.

<comment><USER10> I politely disagree. The vast majority of tweets are awful in communicating succinctly - even as sound bites. Most tweeters, when challenged with the 140-character wall, lack enough details.

<comment><USER24> Not details made twitter. The dark side of people was abused, the need of saying something short and senseless, making comments that have no meaning, that is precious to them by itself. Someone sung a song? Million tweets. Someone mistreated him? Two millions. Cat in the white house? Denial of service. Someone asks complicated questions about our life? Silence. They all want to go buy a thing, take it on and _feel important_. That's the main reason why twitter, instagram and other bitch-oriented services exist. Main auditory is happy with 140, that's why it is SO popular. Sorry, if I'm somewhat harsh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The Internet was going to be an instrument for elevating discourse.

Twitter turned it into the opposite with the 140 character limitation.

<comment><USER26> Twitter is not the Internet.

<comment><USER27> In fact, we're on the internet now, on a website that serves as an instrument for elevating discourse with its community standards!

<comment><USER25> A web site whose influence is over a much smaller portion of the public.

<comment><USER27> [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/) has impeccable standards and more than half a million subscribers, just as one other example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What is the meaning of the 140 limit if this and that doesn't count toward it?

A 139 character message plus a 50 character uncounted URL won't pass through SMS. The 140 limit is from SMS. If you're going through SMS, meet the limit. If not, then chuck the limit, or pick another one. There is no way to rationalize any half assing like counting only these kinds of tokens or substrings in the message against a 140 limit but not others.

<comment><USER29> They allow 140 unicode characters, so you are a few years late with that SMS argument.

The limit is there because that is what makes it micro blogging. It might have been invented for a different purpose, but it is a long time ago it was there for that.

<comment><USER28> So it wouldn't be micro-blogging if it were .. a 192 character limit?

<comment><USER30> Sure, but 140 has become a defining attribute of the service. Now it's 140 with an asterisk, which is less of a change than a straight up length increase.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Create Dynamic Android Layouts with JSON2View - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Avocarrot/json2view <comment><USER2> I sense a disturbance in the force. Looks like quite a few projects are catching onto this. Here are some people doing it for iOS

[https://github.com/Jasonette/JASONETTE- iOS](https://github.com/Jasonette/JASONETTE-iOS)</comment>


Show HN: Weekend (class) project - Keepon Expressions - <AUTHOR> http://keepon.rymnd.com

<comment><AUTHOR> One of my research interests is leveraging the benefits of crowdsourcing to answer some problems/challenges that are best addressed by human intuition and cognitive ability. For this class project, we were interested to see how a robot without the ability to change facial expressions can still express different emotions. The robot, Keepon, is a (relatively) well-known robot used in social interaction studies with autistic children. If any of you have some extra time to play around with this mini webapp, I'd appreciate it. I'd also love to hear from any of you regarding your opinions on how these sort of crowdsourcing approaches might best be implemented in the future.</comment>


Heroku DX: The New Heroku Developer Experience - <AUTHOR> https://blog.heroku.com/archives/2014/9/23/introducing-heroku-dx <comment><USER2> I like the new Ember.js based UI! Nice.

I have periodically used Heroku a lot, but I do have one gripe about them:

I tend to run a lot of low traffic web apps, apps that run well on Heroku's free tier (and not minding the occasionally loading request delay). However, I just don't feel comfortable using a service a lot that is free: being a freeloader. (Compare to Google: they make money off of me because I click on interesting looking ads.)

If Heroku had a cheap $10/month 1 dyno tier (that might have a perk, like staying resident, not swapped out) that was restricted to a lower number of requests per day, then they would get a lot of my business running my experimental projects.

I have considered paying for a second dyno that I don't really need, but $30/month each for a lot of experimental web apps does add up. Not too off topic: I just wrote about how I create a personal Heroku-like experience on a VPS: [http://blog.markwatson.com/2014/09/setting-up-heroku-like- gi...](http://blog.markwatson.com/2014/09/setting-up-heroku-like-git-push- deploys.html)

In any case, I think Heroku provides a great developer experience.

<comment><USER3> I've sent Heroku tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars in business by referring clients over the years. The fact that they've spent 78¢ in AWS fees for my hobby apps causes me to lose approximately 0 seconds of sleep at night.

<comment><USER4> What's with the entitlement? How about being thankful that they have a free plan you can use, that's useful, and continues to be available?

A referral is - unless an arrangement has been made - a service to the person you're referring, in that you're making a recommendation built on trust and aren't misleading someone.

<comment><USER5> I don't think nthj was being ungrateful. Referral fees are a service to both parties, and companies often pay referral fees as a thank-you. nthj was merely pointing out that he takes his referral fee in the form of free hosting for tiny projects, so he doesn't need to feel any guilt.

You are probably being downvoted for being unnecessarily caustic. Your point wasn't a bad one, even if I think you're wrong; consider rephrasing with an edit?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Though I used Heroku in the past and enjoyed the seamless(mostly) experience, I am in the process of moving my infrastructure to docker containers.

I dislike the proprietary nature of Heroku platform and I am betting on Docker + Flynn/Deis as a future golden standard of PaaS. My confidence is based on the momentum of Docker and Docker hosting services (orchardup, tutum, stackdock) as evidenced by their funding/acquisitions and tech news hype. Also digitalocean, linode and other VPS provders have easy to install docker images.

I am enjoying (probably false) confidence that investing now in the docker expertise, I will have my development and deployment strategies mostly set for next 3-5 years. Rvm, virtualenv, haskell platform, etc - everyting becomes easier with docker to develop AND to deploy. Heroku doesn't solve that. New services and products would be adopted by decentralized docker ecosystem faster than by Heroku.

This feels really nice.

Am I wrong to bet on docker? Should I return back to the the poisoned fruits of Heroku walled garden or venture forth in the great ocean with Docker? Is there a consensus in HN community?

<comment><USER7> > _My confidence is based on the momentum of Docker and Docker hosting > services (orchardup, tutum, stackdock)_

Orchardup was acquihired because of an open source tool they hacked and they are discontinuing their hosting service.

Tutum has no SLA at all and explicitly recommends only using their service for toy products. Basically, they're not a real hosting provider right now, just a very expensive toy.

Stackdock has been "currently upgrading our platform and sign-up has been temporarily disabled" for months now. I'm wondering what's going on, but I wouldn't be surprised if blocking new signups for such a long time means they're about to pull the plug, for whatever weird reason. So long without new customers (while I'm sure some are leaving) can't be healthy. I really want to give them money but I can't.

Finally, the people who made Docker itself once ran a PaaS service, dotCloud. It has been sold off and does not seem to be getting much new investment - definitely not any support for directly hosting Docker containers.

In short, there are currently 0 real Docker container hosting providers (and by 'real' I mean that they will exist past October and have at least _some_ uptime guarantees).

I really want you to be right, but currently the evidence looks very bleak IMO.

We made this same bet last January and we're currently spending way too much effort DIY'ing it all on a VPS.

<comment><USER6> Yes, your arguments are convincing.

However, Orchardup was acquihired by Docker itself and I am sure they are planning to provide container hosting.

Tutum has just raised about $2M and are in the process of going gold with their service.

Yeah, stackdock is MIA.

However, the main point is that Docker is quite young and already has a developed ecosystem. Also all of these are specialized docker container providers, while I have no problems deploying a container on most VPS providers, IaaS platforms or even bare metal.

The Docker ecosystem is just starting to develop, Docker PaaS platforms are still in beta and while there is a lot of uncertainty, the vitals of the ecosystem look good. I may be wrong, but I am taking the plunge and my efforts will contribute a small part to the Docker ecosystem.

<comment><USER8> We have no interest in providing container hosting. We acquired Orchard for the great people doing amazing things in the ecosystem so they could continue their work on Fig in the context of Docker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I _love_ the developer experience with Heroku, just please give some of the gains of Moore's law back to your customers. While AWS and Google drop prices and increase their offering, the 1x dyno stays exactly where it's always been. I am completely fine with paying a premium over other services for your awesome toolset, but please just give us some of the improvements other cloud services are seeing instead of taking that as profits.

</comment><comment><USER10> I love the developer experience that Heroku provides, however I wish the would lower their prices a little bit and/or introduce additional pricing tiers.

## The dynos are quite expensive by current standards

AWS has been continually dropping their prices, however those savings haven't been carried over to Heroku? Either:

1) lower pricing, or

2) improve the resource allocation for the current dynos at the same price point, e.g. 1x dyno - x1CPU + 1GB, and 2x dyno - x2CPU + 2GB.

## There is a big gap between 2x and Performance dynos

Java apps are recommended to run with 1GB RAM, so practically my only option is to continue to scale horizontally [1]. Maybe there is an opportunity for a x2 CPU and 2GB dyno at $100/mo?

Notes: [1] - I would have loved to have a bit more memory at my disposal. 1.5 / 2GB would be ideal, but upgrading from 2x to Performance is too big of a jump ($70/mo to $570/mo).

</comment><comment><USER11> I like Heroku's PostgreSQL. So far only AWS RDS can compete. Or there is any recommendation of PostgreSQL as a Service?

Heroku Standard 0 (1GB RAM): $50.00 per month RDS On Demand (1GB RAM): $12.96 per month RDS REserved 1 Year (1GB RAM): $9.29 per month

<comment><USER12> In terms of what do you want the recommendation? Pricing? Performance? Scalability? Availability? Tech support?

I would go with Heroku or AWS RDS. Both truly deliver and make devs / devops sleep better.

<comment><USER11> Price/Performance. Most my apps low traffic so scalability and availability not that critical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So far I love the new DX, I've been using the beta for a while now. It's a significantly improved UX overall.

On an unrelated note, I think it's time to retire the 1X tier, or just make that the free tier and bring the price of 2X in line with 1X. You just can't do all that much with 512MB of ram and given the progression of technology this doesn't seem like a huge ask.

Also in the interest of security I can't think of any reason why encryption- at-rest should be available on the standard database tier.

But then maybe I'm just cheap.

<comment><USER14> My start up has been running just the free tier for almost two years. Simple Rails app, running Unicorn and 4-5 workers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> How does the new Dashboard + Metrics compare to using the New Relic plugin?

<comment><USER16> I would say depending on what you're looking at they're complimentary. NR can give you some really in-depth timing information such as how much time is spent in the DB versus garbage collection on a certain request. The metrics here are very high level, response time, memory usage, CPU load, etc. New Relic doesn't have the ability to be as precise with its system resource measurements inside of the Dyno so they're both very useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> No RAM for Postgres until you reach $50/m? Talk about profit margins!

<comment><USER18> Yeah, its a bit of a jump between the $9 and $50 tiers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19>
      Application Metrics are currently only available for apps with two or more running dynos of any size

Of course, I can't be a freeloader and complain about this I guess.

</comment><comment><USER20> I always hated the all dark design of their dashboard. I'm glad they are using some lighter colors now!!

</comment><comment><USER21> A bit of an unfortunate choice of name if you consider the name a smiley DX

<comment><USER22> You could imagine it as either an angry face, or a large grin + bow tie, I suppose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I love that Heroku has redesigned the UI, but jeeze. Ever hear the expression, "too much of a good thing"? Their trademark purple is neat, in small doses.

For instance, I REALLY REALLY love the ocean. I love SCUBA diving, and I love the color blue. However, you won't find me living in this house [http://cl.ly/3I3R2z0q1A2S](http://cl.ly/3I3R2z0q1A2S). However, [http://cl.ly/0R3H3k2s3Z3x](http://cl.ly/0R3H3k2s3Z3x) looks very appealing to me. Catch my drift?

It's as if Heroku fired all of their designers and put developers in charge of the entire UI design process. I've seen that happen, so I don't say that to be a troll. I'm seriously disgusted by the monotonous nature of the new UI.

That said, it appears to have very many useful new features, which surely outweighs most of my aesthetic concerns.

<comment><USER24> Well, I like it. It's pretty and it's not just black text on white background.</comment></comment>


With the New Gmail, People Will Know When You Open That Message - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/business/2013/12/gmail-spying-explained <comment><USER2> This is literally the exact opposite of what is happening. Google is downloading the images when they receive the message and then proxying the images.

<comment><USER3> Yeah. The author of this article apparently didn't read the GMail announcement carefully enough. Email marketers can no longer track when email is opened on GMail accounts because every single image is opened whether the user reads the email or not.

Edit: Some other discussions about this on HN suggest it only fetches the email if the user opens the email so I guess the jury is still out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's a lot of confusion around what they're really doing. Either:

1) they're caching the images when they're sent. This seems to be what Google and Ars are saying, and it's what makes sense.

2) they're loading the image when the email is opened. This would be a privacy disaster, and is what Wired is saying, and from various comments people claim to have confirmed this by testing with their own servers.

</comment><comment><USER5> They already did. Now they know less about who opened the email.</comment>


Nova Hunters (2006) - <AUTHOR> https://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/celestial-objects-to-watch/nova-hunters/ <comment><USER2> Well! As it happens, around the time of this article I was working as a summer research student in Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, carrying out a search for supernovae as part of Saul Perlmutter's Supernova Cosmology group.

When astrophysicists work on this activity, they use (no surprise) computer vision. The lab's software automated the process these nova hunters ran manually: we subtracted two images of every segment of the night sky taken on different dates to see if any new bright objects appeared in the difference. If so, it's possibly a supernovae!

Because there are so many stars out there you can use this method to predictably discover large numbers of supernovae when you need to study them. They called the project the Nearby Supernova Factory ( [https://snfactory.lbl.gov/](https://snfactory.lbl.gov/) ); as far as I know this is still the preferred method.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very cool.

I once attended a session at the Dayton Hamvention (TAPR group) that did a presentation on amateur nova finders. This must have been 20 years ago--I can't find any reference to it. But in any case, this group discovered some large number of novas.

But this sounds like a serious improvement in the methods.

Incidentally, your link doesn't come up right--it should be [https://snfactory.lbl.gov/](https://snfactory.lbl.gov/)</comment></comment>


Flight radar - air space above Europe live - <AUTHOR> http://www.flightradar24.com/

<comment><USER2> Cool. I wonder what's happening with KLM 7021: <http://i.imgur.com/ulwdC.png> \-- it seems to have taken off Amsterdam, then flew to the coast of Norway where it flew in circles.. then decreased the height while flying to Billund, Denmark, then finally returning to Amsterdam.

<comment><USER3> As a-priori pointed out in another reply:

 _My guess is that someone forgot to change the flight number on the transponder, so what you're looking at is the path of one plane over a couple flights._

<comment><USER4> How does that explain the circling?

<comment><USER5> I'm tempted to suggest that the aircraft was put into a holding pattern, likely due to foul weather at the destination, and eventually forced to reroute.

<comment><USER6> Indeed that is how holding pattern looks like.

Very low ceiling at Billund right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> <http://www.radarvirtuel.com/> is a similar concept but they seem to have more ADS-B receivers in play, so there's better coverage of Europe (and also some of the rest of the world).

</comment><comment><USER8> Can anyone explain what's going on with this flight? <http://imgur.com/by0C0.jpg>

<comment> a-priori My guess is that someone forgot to change the flight number on the transponder, so what you're looking at is the path of one plane over a couple flights.

<comment><USER7> ADS-B data isn't linked to the transponder code - each plane has a serial number assigned by the ICAO. So this is the simply one plane flying several different routes.

<comment><USER6> the flight number is what was left unchanged between several flights, thus they appear as one.

leaving transponder code unchanged after request by ATC is a serious violation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> See also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1030038>

<comment><USER6> yeah, it reappears all the time

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This seems to be a little flakey. I tracked one flight due to end up at aberdeen, and decided to open the page on a different machine so I could watch it out of the corner of my eye. That flight was simply not there. Then, refreshing the screen, it disappeared as well.

</comment><comment><USER11> That looks like only a small portion of the commercial airline traffic.

<comment><USER12> _"Aircrafts equipped with an ADS-B transponder are visible on the map."_

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillanc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillance- broadcast)

Guess most planes don't have it yet.

<comment><USER6> All jets should have it by now, most turboprops and GAs don't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Out of curiosity does anyone know if Flightcaster use this type of data in it's analytics ?</comment>


The Days That Remain - <AUTHOR> https://jkingsman.github.io/thedaysthatremain/index <comment><USER2> Doesn't handle floating point input.</comment>


A CEO Who Pays Employees to De-Locate from the Bay - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ycombinator.com/the-ceo-who-pays-employees-to-de-locate-from-the-bay/ <comment><USER2> As someone who works remotely and who posts remote-friendly openings for his team in the Who's Hiring HN thread, it's kind of amazing to me that more people aren't actively looking to get out.

I live and work in a small midwestern town because my wife's military job has us here. If I was single, however, I would make the most of my remoteness and try working from a variety of towns. Here's some places that I would try if I was a young remote worker:

\- A small Colorado/Utah/Montana ski town. Some place like Telluride, where I could ski/hike/bike in the mornings

\- A fun desert town with great recreation like Moab, UT...Prescott, AZ...Bend, OR...

\- A beach town in S. Florida during the winter

\- Costa Rica, Panama, Bay Islands of Honduras in the wintertime

\- Thailand

\- South coast of Texas in the Winter, Texas Hill Country in the fall

It could be so much fun...

<comment><USER3> I lived in Denver for 2 years, and now Portland. Bend, SLC/Sandy, Jackson, Durango, Steamboat, the list goes on.

edit: I'm CEO at Aptible, where we recruit for remote. Personal freedom is a nice perk.

<comment><USER4> That's awesome. What are the challenges you've faced as a remote employer?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5>
        "was if you're in the Bay Area and you take a job with
        Zapier we'll pay $10,000 to help you relocate to
        anywhere, or as we call it, de-locate."

..so this is just a one time re-location "bonus"? I think many large companies "pay you" something close to this amount to re-locate _to_ the bay area. This really doesn't help that much. What would be better is to pay bay area salaries/rates in another part of the country that doesn't have stupid expensive housing rates + 10k/yearly for _not_ working in the bay area.

<comment><USER6> $10k is usually the signing bonus I get for just changing companies. Is this in addition to the signing bonus?

<comment><USER7> Yes it is separate. At Amazon the signing bonus you owe if you leave within one year but the relocation bonus you owe if you leave within two; both are prorated

<comment><USER8> > At Amazon the signing bonus you owe if you leave within one year but the > relocation bonus you owe if you leave within two; both are prorated

Um, wow. Yet another reason not to work at Amazon.

How does Amazon still get employees when they just seem to pile these kinds of irritating, anti-employee behaviors up one after another?

<comment><USER9> Are these bonus terms not standard? These prorated periods are the same for Microsoft.

How else do you stop someone walking out on day 1 with 50k cash?

<comment><USER10> The alternative would be to have a "guaranteed" bonus after a certain amount of time, but people overwhelmingly prefer having something now, even if it means they might lose it later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ok, so I "delocate". Do I then have to take a pay cut because I'm now somewhere else?

Spreading the tech sector out around the country even more is great, and things like this can be a step in the right direction. But a big part of why the Bay Area is what it is has to do with funding. Most VCs are there, and don't seem to be willing to move away. Hell, YC requires you to be there, at least during your time with them. And the concentration of tech talent means that it's always easy to find a new job, or even to start your own company.

<comment><USER12> > And the concentration of tech talent means that it's always easy to find a > new job, or even to start your own company.

I've never been there, but I see this echoed a lot. Is it actually true? I'm interested in both, but I'm wary of the exaggeration that may be "it's easy".

<comment><USER13> >but I'm wary of the exaggeration that may be "it's easy".

It really is. It's why I cant bring myself to leave this place even with all it's warts. Knowing that you can just screw off and do whatever you want for a year then have a dozen interviews lined up for six figure jobs with nothing more than a few emails is really empowering, actually. I can't imagine the anxiety of living somewhere else and being dependent on a single good job no matter what the relocation bonus is.

<comment><USER14> > Knowing that you can just screw off and do whatever you want for a year then > have a dozen interviews lined up for six figure jobs with nothing more than > a few emails is really empowering, actually.

Unless you're a front end engineer. Then you'd be behind about 4 frameworks, 2 build systems, and 3 transpiled languages. Might as well be a fortran programmer at that point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> He (and Sam Altman for all YC companies) should have the startup(s) all de- locate to the same town that's within driving distance of the Silicon Valley.

I bet you could convince a lot of tech people to move to Santa Cruz or Monterey. You could also recruit from UC Santa Cruz and Cal Poly. Both downtown Santa Cruz and downtown Monterey feel pretty small town urban-y.

Plus the Silicon Valley VC's can play golf at Pebble Beach or Half Moon Bay Ritz Carlton and make a weekend getaway out of it AND get a business trip tax write-off for mileage and hotel says.

And maybe before descending on the town you can get the city council and a developer to agree to build high density housing in the downtown core.

This Palo Alto planning commissioner/Palantir spokesperson for high density housing in Palo Alto ended up moving to Santa Cruz: [http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/08/10/palo-alto-planning- com...](http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/08/10/palo-alto-planning-commissioner- quits-over-high-housing-cost/)

<comment><USER16> I lived in Menlo Park for 8 years with my family. When I moved there the startup I went to work for was a 5 minute walk from my house. My current startup is also in Menlo. A year ago my wife and wanted a larger place. We looked in Menlo and PA. $3M for a teardown / needs tons of work. After thinking about it we started to look outside of the area. School district was a key factor of course. We ending up going as far up the mountain from Los Gatos as we could and still be in the school district. $1.3M+500K remodel. Half of my companies employees are remote. We use G-apps with Meeting and Slack. It works well. I drive into the office 2 days a week timing the drive to be outside of traffic hows. 50KM drive outside of traffic is 30 minutes, with traffic is 1.5 hours. I have friends that moved to Morgan Hill, Gilroy and take the CalTrain in. We other developers relocate out of state because of the cost of living. The cost of housing in the main areas is stupid, even if you can afford it. Menlo and PA are doing NOTHING to support the high density housing required to make things better.

I agree there is something unique about being able to have everyone around you in the same line of business (tech) and it is great for making contacts, etc. However the cost are really starting to outweigh the benefits.

The bay area needs to look to places like Tokyo as an example of how to build out from the trains to the housing.

<comment><USER15> Been meaning to checkout Morgan Hill. I hear downtown Morgan Hill is pretty happening these days.

I also noticed that there is a self-driving car company down there: [http://velodynelidar.com](http://velodynelidar.com) Are there any other interesting tech companies down there?

Nice thing is that if you live near downtown you could take the Caltrain up to downtown MTV or PA.

<comment><USER17> Morgan Hill / Gilroy area is fantastic - small town feel, slower pace of life, diverse population, significant rural element, growing dining/entertainment options.

Housing is certainly less expensive than the peninsula but by no means cheap compared to the rest of the state/country. I would still plan on spending $1 million plus but you will get a big new single family home instead of a 50 year old 1200 sf beater.

The downside is, of course, the commute. There are some alternate transportation options, e.g. Caltrain, some companies like Apple run buses down to Morgan Hill, but this will limit the geographic area that you can reasonably commute to. IMHO San Jose, Santa Clara, & Cupertino are doable, Sunnyvale & Mountain View are pushing it, and Palo Alto is too far. There are a few companies in South Santa Clara county (and hopefully this will dramatically increase over time) but you'd still probably be commuting north.

<comment><USER15> Downtown San Jose's re-development would be pretty big for Morgan Hill.

[http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/08/14/real-estate-a- develope...](http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/08/14/real-estate-a-developer- describes-the-epic-impact-of-googles-plans-for-downtown-san-jose/)

[http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Googles-Property- Buying...](http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Googles-Property-Buying-Spree- in-Downtown-San-Jose-Continues-439684563.html)

Looks to be about 35 minutes to downtown San Jose via Caltrain. That's do- able. The younger employees could live downtown in San Jose and the employees with kids could live in Morgan Hill.

If YCombinator (and Zapier) were to move from Mountain View to Downtown San Jose that'd be a huge symbolic move for San Jose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So by giving them a $10k carrot they can basically lock them in to the company because it would be much more difficult to interview for competitors or even start startups. That's pretty genius.

<comment><USER19> The reason is probably super inflated salaries in bay area due to high cost of living.

Lock in has probably less to do with this than pure money aspect.

<comment><USER20> I think there's a collective realization happening in the Bay Area that the landlords are the real winners and everyone else is just playing their game. Employees hate seeing 3k/month fly out the door in rent just as much as CEOs hate paying it, just as much as investors hate seeing their capital ultimately end up with landlords.

Big companies in general are conservative. They've made it and don't want to take unnecessary risks. Trying to introduce remote culture into a company that isn't used to it/tooled for it is a HUGE risk.

The innovation in hiring is going to come from small companies who need to hire but can't afford Bay Area salaries. Mid-career folks here, not even particularly good ones, are routinely looking at 200k or more out the door from their employers. 400k seed rounds, hell even 800k seed rounds, don't go very far on that kind of money. So what has to happen is that (a) founders have to get comfortable giving up a lot more equity for more capital, (b) investors have to be comfortable paying much higher valuations for early-stage companies, (c) employees have to be willing to take more stock in lieu of cash, or (d) companies have to do more remote hiring. I see a mix of all four happening depending on the particular circumstances of each company (e.g. famous founders will be able to raise more at higher valuation)

It's all pretty simple. The landlords win and everyone else loses. The situation will only get better once remote work is more widely accepted, but I'm starting to think it might come to that, with how expensive things are here. A nothing-special sandwich in Oakland, CA where I live is almost $15, at some point you say enough is enough and go somewhere where such an obscene price level is a joke, not day-to-day reality.

<comment><USER21> I never realized it until you wrote it down explicitly, but you're right. Landlords laugh all the way to the bank, while the rest of the economy pays their tax. Amazing.

<comment><USER22> Silicon Valley can be thought of as a gigantic wealth transfer machine from rich investors to rich landlords.

<comment><USER23> I wonder what the overlap is between the groups?

<comment><USER24> Ah, very good point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Pros/Cons of living in the Bay Area for most tech workers:

Pros

\- Proudly displaying "San Francisco" in your Twitter bio.

\- An abundance of career opportunities.

Cons

\- Making six figures, but still living with roommates.

\- Commuting to work in awful public transportation.

\- Becoming desensitized to poverty and fecal matter on the streets.

\- Feeling unwelcome by locals.

\- Not being able to afford to live in a cool part of town.

\- For straight men: Unfavorable male/female ratios at bars & nightlife.

\- Monoculture.

<comment><USER26> You forgot at least two pros:

\- Large salaries lead to higher savings rates

\- Opportunities are just not comparable almost anywhere less expensive: there are tens of thousands of jobs from hundreds of employers here in the Bay Area for technology that pays well, compared with hundreds or maybe a few thousand jobs for maybe a dozen or few tens of employers

Also the "monoculture" dig applies to tech specifically: in terms of actual cultural diversity very few places are as interesting.

<comment> aaron-lebo We had a dev working for the summer who got a job at an SF startup this past week. He's making $2k a week, but his rent for his apartment costs $3k and he's got roommates. As someone who has lived off of $40k and rented a $1.4k a month loft that was absolutely palatial, in the middle of the city with great views, this sounds like insanity. My coworker who is from the Boston area was similarly aghast at the differences in cost of living.

Have fun at your nice job, but I'm not coming home to roommates for $3k a month. The numbers don't really seem to work out, a lot of people are basically selling great living conditions for the chance to go work at companies that probably won't be there in a few years and really aren't doing anything interesting.

 _Also the "monoculture" dig applies to tech specifically: in terms of actual cultural diversity very few places are as interesting._

I feel like people who say this about any city haven't gotten out much in other cities.

<comment><USER27> FYI, you don't need to pay $3k - I lived in the Mission / Potrero Hill area (with roommates, mind you) for a few years, and my rent had always been between $1000-1850/mo.

Centrally located, safe(-ish), and beautiful. You can run through Bernal Heights Park, get ice cream at Humphrey Slocombe, and bike to the 24 Hour Fitness on 16th and Potrero. If you're in tech, you can definitely live well in SF :)

<comment><USER28> Or commute a little. If you're paying multiples the cost to live 30 minutes away and commute, that's because you've attributed a high value on that locality, so complaining that it's too expensive doesn't make much sense.

<comment><USER27> yes - when people complain about their own revealed preferences, just smile and nod!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This seems pretty genius. There is a surplus of highly skilled engineers in the Bay Area who are getting mediocre pay (when cost of living is taken into consideration). This allows Zapier to attract more of these highly skilled workers and not pay a premium to those in the bay area.

<comment><USER26> When compared to cost of living, sure. But factor in savings rate and opportunities and the cost of living cut is well worth it.

For example, I pay 2.5x in rent for a smaller place compared to what I was paying for a mortgage before I moved here. But my salary is 2x and a bit, and I'm saving more than 2x as a result.

<comment><USER30> If you don't mind me asking, what did the 25% increase in housing/income ratio come out of if your savings rate stayed the same?

<comment><USER26> The only expense that went up appreciably was housing. Basic expenses for everything else averages out to be about the same. Internet and commute costs are about the same, food is slightly more expensive, and utilities (power, water) slightly less than where we were.

I kept my 401k rate the same and effectively doubled the amount of money I'm saving. It's not my only savings, but it is the bulk of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash $10,000 is a strong relocation package but the fine print is pretty clear that it's for reimbursement - not as a signing bonus.

You'd have to pay me pretty well to even consider moving to the Bay Area with today's housing prices. But if I'm already there with the salary I want, it may take even more to get me to leave. Certainly more than $10k in moving reimbursement.

<comment><USER31> Agreed, the fact that I can drive to virtually any of the worlds largest tech companies and many of its promising startups from my current work is worth a lot more than 10k. Once that pressure is removed, I assume employers will pay market rate at wherever you relocated to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Move to Washington State. Don't pay California income tax. Instant 8% boost to your take-home pay.

<comment><USER33> And if you're one of those people that really hate taxes, live in Vancouver, WA and buy everything in Portland.

<comment><USER34> Or just point roberts.

<comment><USER35> He meant Vancouver, WA. It's across the Columbia river from Portland

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> "...this remote thing helps me get away from San Francisco because I'm either _disenfranchised_ with, you know housing costs here..."

It's fascinating to see which words tech CEOs don't know the meaning of.

<comment><USER37> It's almost ironic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> So you're getting paid to relocate to somewhere farther away from the bay. Maybe your salary will go farther, but you're giving up the whole reason people move to the bay area in the first place: It's where the jobs are.

The bay area is what it is because there's a feedback loop. People setup here because there are jobs. There are jobs here because there are people to fill them. By relocating away you're giving up your mobility to other bay area jobs. That might be great while you keep that job, but then you're at a disadvantage (again) when you decide to move again.

</comment><comment><USER6> Anyone who owns a home in the bay area is going to pay 5-6% in fees to sell their home. $10k isn't going to cover that loss.

The ultimate perk (which is often provided by big corporations in a relocation) is to cover the real estate fees.

<comment><USER39> What percentage of developers own a home in the bay area? Its probably low enough to not matter in this case.

<comment><USER6> Senior Engineers? Developers over the age of 30? People with kids? Plenty own property.

This comes across as another form of Zuckerberg-esque ageism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Once you leave the Bay Area, it becomes exponentially more difficult to come back, so the what-if scenario of this employment expiring becomes a real threat to financial viability.

<comment><USER41> Not if you keep your house (assuming you own) and rent it. Many lucky folks can rent for significantly more than cost/PITI, adding another passive income stream.

So the pitch is: 1) De-locate to a more reasonable real-estate market where you can actually buy the house you want/need. 2) Rent-out your existing SFBay property if you own, and get additional income (even minus property management cut) 3) Get a bonus 4) Maybe move closer to family outside of SFBay.

What's not said: 1) Career mobility is limited to whatever market you move to and within Zapier. 2) Salary probably likely won't make same leaps as if you stayed 3) You might have family in the SFBay - could be a downside to move away

If you're career-stable and open to move it can be a good deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I really enjoyed the podcast! It was probably the most impressive CEO I've heard, love the idea that he tslks to CEO a year or two away from where he is and picks their brains!

</comment><comment><USER43> I guess "start up pays delocation bonus that is less than 1/3 of a signing bonus at the big valley companies" is not as complelling.

</comment><comment><USER44> That is a horrible format. I don't want to listen. I want to scroll and read at my speed. The most that I can use is what, 15% of my screen? And partway through reading it, it decided to start playing anyways and jump back to the beginning.

If someone (eg me) wants a transcript, make it easy to get the transcript!

</comment><comment><USER45> I'm guessing this offer is going to be extremely popular. The second you leave the bay area, it's like getting a million dollar signing bonus for a place to live.

I'm a little surprised more workers aren't leaving SF and the bay area peninsula. Even if you take 50% pay cut, your still getting paid a lot more, relative to you cost of living. I'm guessing the reason is: us engineers have a hard time understanding and thinking about compensation in terms of living costs, hence only the absolute $ value of a salary is taken into account.

Also, I think a lot of people don't want to move away from friends and family.

</comment><comment><USER46> Interesting podcast. I didn't know about Zapier so I checked out their website.

It took me like 5-10 minutes to understand what they do. It was only after seeing the Gmail(attachment) > DropBox > Slack I understood what they really do. Which is very cool.

I have one need. I want a quick way of converting a list of stuff on slack into todo list with ability to check off the task as they're completed. OR if I can have a keyword --TODO-- --END-- in gmail and turn it into a todo list. Will Zapier allow something like this?

<comment><USER47> Zapier Support here. The most common way I see people do this is by starring Slack messages they want to add as Todos. Here's a template that uses Todoist, although there's no shortage of alternatives on that side of things: [https://zapier.com/app/editor/template/1580](https://zapier.com/app/editor/template/1580)

Outside of that, you can build a zap that triggers on any message and use a Filter step to make sure only messages that meet your criteria(e.g. your keyword) move on to the action: [https://zapier.com/help/how-get-started- filters-zapier/](https://zapier.com/help/how-get-started-filters-zapier/)

If your ultimate goal is to manage the todo list from inside Slack, there's not a great way to do that with Zapier. Personally, I manually add/delete items in my 'You' channel to get to that type of functionality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> If you want to attract talent outside the Bay Area, pay better. Even with the insane cost of living, I still end up ahead financially when I've compared to other places.

</comment><comment><USER49> Leave! The word you're looking for is "leave"!</comment>


Guido van Rossum: Adding Optional Static Typing to Python (2004) - <AUTHOR> http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=85551

<comment><USER2> Interesting. Too bad this didn't got anywhere. At least, sometimes I miss static typing in Python. Tools like dictshield work fine, but when I'm validating a structure, I have a feeling that I'm using a wrong language (but don't get me wrong, I love Python!)

Type classes (like those in Haskell) should've been able to solve the problems Guido mentioned. I.e. something like `def min(Ord T => a: T, b: T) -> T` and `def min(Ord T => a: [T]) -> T`.</comment>


How to quit your programming job and go freelance - <AUTHOR>

I've started writing a short ebook on the topic. Would you find this topic interesting?<p>And are there specific things you'd want to read on the topic? <comment><USER2> I would find it interesting.

I've been trying myself to get into freelancing and consulting on a part-time basis. One aspect that I can't really find great information about is all the legalize that you should take care of as a business owner.

Most posts/articles focus on workflow and day to day practices, but ignore the details about what kind of business should you form, what's a good freelancing contract, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great, thanks for these. The legal/financial aspects were challenging for me too, I'll definitely make note of that.</comment></comment>


How people live on minimum wage. - j-reynolds http://inplainsight.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/05/17195815-by-the-grace-of-god-how-workers-survive-on-725-per-hour?lite

<comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr: They don't.</comment>


Hayabusa2 Now - <AUTHOR> http://haya2now.jp/en.html <comment><USER2> _Communication with Hayabusa2 is via radio waves that are transmitted and received by large antenna at ground stations on Earth. Our website "Haya2NOW" shows these communications in real time._

[http://www.hayabusa2.jaxa.jp/topics/20180515_e/](http://www.hayabusa2.jaxa.jp/topics/20180515_e/)

</comment><comment><USER3> In case anyone wants to create a realtime 3d simulator: [http://haya2now.jp/data/data.json](http://haya2now.jp/data/data.json)

<comment><USER4> Pass javascript unixtime as url Parameter and you get data over time as well

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What am I looking at?

<comment><USER6> I'm assuming live telemetry from a satellite. The part I was curious about is, in the message emulator, sending the message seems to take a really long time for a round trip. So it looks like it must be pretty far away from Earth.

Little search shows that that it's a probe sent to an asteroid to collect samples and bring them back to Earth. It was sent in 2014, arrived this year, and will fly back in 2019 and arrive in 2020.

EDIT: Looks like it just landed on the asteroid, hence this being posted [0]

[0] [https://www.space.com/41912-japanese-hopping-rovers-land- on-...](https://www.space.com/41912-japanese-hopping-rovers-land-on- asteroid.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Some of those earth based stations shown are Deep Space Network stations. You can see status of Deep Space Network at DSN now[0], too.

[0]: [https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/](https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/)

</comment><comment><USER8> This is awesome. One change I would make is click once on something to launch its description, click anywhere to close. Then the screen is free to select the next description on another item.

Otherwise super cool!

Anyone know how long the signal delay is?

<comment><USER9> Time-of-flight to Ryugu right now is just under 16 minutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was looking at the rise and set times for each ground station, looking to see which one would take over once the spacecraft dropped out of view of Goldstone. I noticed that each one shows local time, not GMT. Without looking it up, I have no idea which zone these various places are in so I find that display quite confusing. I hope the spacecraft controller's display isn't like that.

<comment><USER11> > ... so I find that display quite confusing. I hope the spacecraft > controller's display isn't like that.

Why? You're assuming you have a similar amount of training/experience as the controller?

<comment><USER12> Even if the controller has more training, if he has to do mental calculations instead of reading directly from the screen there will be more chance for errors to occur and it will put a higher cognitive load on the controller.

<comment><USER13> Does he really have to do a lot of mental calculations, or does he just have to remember that "the satellite as it is currently positioned comes into view of my friend Bob's observatory in Canberra an hour and 15 before he goes home for the day, at 3:45PM local time... and with the way we are moving in relation to each other, it has been coming into view approximately 36 seconds earlier each day that passes."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In the bottom it says "Deep Space Center". What would be the definition of deep space, considering we are no where close to doing anything with deep space for my definition besides observing it.

<comment><USER9> In this context, deep space is anything not in earth orbit. JPL, for instance, runs the Deep Space Network, which is used to communicate with the Mars rovers, spacecraft orbiting Jupiter, etc. as opposed to the NASA TDRS network which is used to communicate with earth-orbiting satellites.

There are various, competing technical definitions of "deep space" — the ITU defines it as more than 2 million kilometers from earth — but the Deep Space Network, and similar networks operated by other countries, are typically used to communicate with interplanetary spacecraft, and are effective basically anywhere higher than geosynchronous orbit (26,000 miles/42,000 km).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am definitely reusing this css for something cool in the future.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is amazing. What's the risk that the probe would be thrown out into space when jumping over a bump due to extremely feeble gravity of Ryugu.

<comment><USER17> The "jumps" are intended to be gentle enough that they won't leave Ryugu's gravity well. For that, you just need to know Ryugu's mass; they had a good guess of that before the mission started, and a much better idea of it now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> funny that they have power down to the milli-watt and it's so stable. Anyone know what the update rate is? Is it with every second?

Cool looking web site

</comment><comment><USER19> When I posted it 15 days ago nobody cared: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17936567](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17936567)

<comment><USER20> It can be pretty random what gets traction on HN. That's why we explicitly allow a few reposts (see [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)) and why we do things like the second-chance pool ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380)). Eventually we want to add some kind of karma sharing so earlier submitters don't get left out when a later submission takes off. In the meantime, though, it evens out in the long run, so please keep posting good stories!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Monochromatic interfaces can be so beautiful.

I'd love to use a modern GUI that adopted this aesthetic. Even though the content of documents would be in color, having the UI itself restrained to a simple monochrome palette would be very enjoyable to use.

<comment><USER22> macOS: Preferences-> Accessibility -> Display -> Use grayscale

<comment><USER10> I didn't know that could be done. I've never even opened up the Accessibility panel. Actually, grayscale is not too bad. Everything is sharp and the contrast is high. However, I think I'll keep things in color anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The typeface is pretty neat. For the curious, it's Nova Mono

[https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Nova+Mono](https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Nova+Mono)

<comment><USER24> It looks cool, but those curly lowercase i's and l's really confuse my brain. I find myself parsing them both as uppercase L's...

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Am I the only one who thought about motorcycle?

<comment><USER26> I feel like I'm massively missing out here. What reference is this to?

<comment><USER27> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzuki_Hayabusa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzuki_Hayabusa)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Am I the only one that clicked expecting to see a motorbike?

<comment><USER29> I expected a train

<comment><USER30> I expected an elite FTP server

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> These kinds of GUIs bother me so much. While they're bedazzling to look at, say in a sci-fi movie, they are horrendously designed in terms of functionality, user experience and ability to convey clearly/concisely with the least amount of ambiguity.

It bothers me that people are drawn to it like flies and you see this type of thing everywhere in "Futuristic" projections of our life.

They're _objectively_ worse, yet they look cool and the general public values "Coolness" over GUI's ability to meet its core purpose - that is to leverage human vision's bandwidth to convey information rapidly, concisely and without ambiguity. That is the whole point of a GUI.

<comment><USER32> Kind of agree - however, if the interface elements never move around and stay the same, it's very similar a UX to the instrument panels of old.

I.e. not that bad, if precaution is taken against information overload in some kind if crisis.

<comment><USER31> I could write a long essay criticizing the obvious drawbacks of this type of implementation. For example, contrast is non-existent. There is just so much stuff that's wrong, I am overwhelmed as I respond.

<comment><USER33> You're completely correct, but the only way people will understand how bad the UI is if they were forced to use it in their daily.

<comment><USER32> Exactly the opposite might be true - if you used it daily you would be accustomed to where the critical data is and what it looks like.

(Ignoring things which are unknown to us - for instance would the operator benefit from trends in data? This does not seem to be present in the UX.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I thought it was a new gen bike

</comment><comment><USER35> > _Bus power consumption: 600w_

Sad to think my hacker news machine (PC) is using more power than an an intergalactic satellite.

<comment><USER9> Spacecraft processors are many, many generations behind the desktop. A state of the art Maxwell flight rated processor runs at 800 MHz, single core, no vector acceleration, and will cost you $500,000 to $1,000,000.

<comment><USER26> Are there any functional or operational differences besides "it's going in a satellite so we get to charge you this much"?

Radiation testing, maybe?

<comment><USER9> There is virtually no functional difference between a flight qualified processor and a ground development board. The cost difference is due to the overall reliability requirement for flight parts, for one. If you lose your spacecraft processor you lose your spacecraft, which probably cost you a couple of hundred million dollars. So the yield rate for spacecraft CPUs is quite low, like single percentage low. The chips that fail the qual inspection become ground development units.

In addition the manufacture, storage, and movement of each chip is very carefully managed and documented, which adds a surprising amount to the cost. This allows you to determine root causes in case of a failure, which then lets you understand whether other spacecraft using similar parts are in danger.

Radiation tolerance is an important part of this, both in terms of lifetime exposure tolerance and in terms of single event upset susceptibility.

<comment><USER26> Wow, thanks for the TIL.

Suddenly I understand the fuss about the early processors (eg, the Forth ones) that went into spacecraft in the 70s and 80s. It wasn't just the architecture that was good, it was the electrical/physical design that was noteworthy (which, to excuse the terrible pun, the CPUs are still writing home about :D).

Heh, I wonder how much the ground development boards cost? Probably way too much to find one affordably on eBay, say...

Also - how _do_ you figure out if a processor is going to last for ages? How do you test it?!

Hmm, I get the impression some spacecraft probably have full failover capability as well.

And now I wonder what systems use CPUs in lockstep _and_ have full independent failover...

<comment><USER9> A ground development board would be on the order of $50,000, give or take. You'll also need a chassis and power supply of course.

"Also - how do you figure out if a processor is going to last for ages?"

Really big semiconductor junctions help. Low heat production also helps. And then there's this thing called "heritage". If it worked on the last fifteen missions, odds are decent it'll work on the sixteenth.

Many spacecraft have fully redundant processors boards. Whether that helps you depends on whether you think chip failures are statistically uncorrelated. Which they are, sometimes. But not if there is a design flaw or manufacturing defect.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


90°, an iBook by Andrew Kim - <AUTHOR> http://www.minimallyminimal.com/blog/90degrees

<comment><USER2> =( too bad this is iBook exclusive. Andrew Kim's work is always top notch.</comment>