The End of Twitter? - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-end-of-twitter <comment><USER2> > The End of Twitter

Pretty black and white. And then the next sentence after clicking through is...

> Twitter might rebound in the wake of Jack Dorsey's reappointment as C.E.O., > but the service is still in trouble.

And the article ends with...

> That doesn't mean that all hope is lost. There are hundreds of millions of > dedicated users (I count myself among them) who still see tremendous utility > in the service. ... The company just needs to find the right way to show the > power of those connections to a bigger audience, and the value of that > audience to advertisers and partners. Not a simple task, but for Twitter an > unavoidable one.

Pretty egregiously click-bait. I propose changing the title to something that better captures the article—like "The Current Problems at Twitter".

Other than that, not really much here other than speculation, and the already- known worry about lack of growth. Curious to see how Twitter does, I think there's still chance as long as they quick focusing on revenue above all else, and focus on the experience first. Unfortunately that's not easy to do as a public company.

<comment><USER3> thanks you saved me the trouble of reading a whole pointless article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of the more poorly written pieces I've read in the New Yorker. The author is all over the place: predicting doom, saying he doesn't see the point of Twitter, proclaiming himself a dedicated user.

Also, this line of ego-drivel:

> This is especially notable to all of us in the world of media, the people > who fill these services with highly valuable and hotly traded "content," > such as the piece you're currently reading.

One we should put to rest: the "Facebook can just build this" argument. Facebook built Paper to take over news. It failed. Facebook built Slingshot to copy SnapChat. It failed.

Technology companies are not just successful because of their technology. _Especially_ in social media.

<comment><USER5> besides facebook website and its mobile app, everything that FB created has failed - facebook mobile os, chat heads etc.

<comment><USER6> I'm in that horrible demographic (white uppermiddle class New Yorker who lives in a cool neighborhood) that's probably the most valuable in the US, and literally _all_ of my friends use Facebook Messenger as their primary means of communication. Name another service that:

1\. Doesn't require me to ask you for your screenname

2\. Syncs seamlessly between all of my devices

3\. Works well with video/pictures/video phone calls

4\. Isn't swamped with spam

There isn't one. Don't let selection bias blur your view.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Twitter is such an unlikely success. It's a product that few understand, and even when you do, it's hard to explain it. The functionality is dead-simple. But, at scale, its effect is magical.

I think closing down the service to developers was its pivotal mistake. The possibilities were endless, and could have solidified Twitter as the "utility" Topolosky speaks of...but they got greedy.

<comment><USER8> >> But, at scale, its effect is magical.

Yes, much like handing out megaphones at a music festival. I see very little value in the incoherent rambling that is twitter, but of course I'm not a market researcher or intelligence analyst.

<comment><USER7> Sounds to me like...you're using it wrong!

But really. Personally, I actually do find it to be magical. It's taken 5+ years of trying, retrying, adjusting, and readjusting to get it right, but my Twitter feed is superb.

<comment><USER8> Like facebook, there is no using it correctly or not. Once you are in you are socially obligated to follow everyone you know with a feed. Call me old, but I still use bookmarks. Every morning I check my news from my favorite outlets and blogs using old html. The things worth my time don't fit with twitter's approach to information.

<comment><USER7> Yeah I was being cheeky. I was a die-hard Google Reader fan until I started using Twitter, but that approach lacked social commentary. It was something I had to experience to understand. What do the people I respect recommend? What are they thinking?

That might be valuable to you, as it is to me, or it might not be. Beyond that, Twitter really is just a list of links.

<comment><USER8> I guess that's where twitter and me differ. The people I care to listen to do not broadcast their thoughts on public platforms, at least not the though worth listening to. They talk via closed communities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Twitter's cash puts it in a league of its own / [http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/28/twitters-cash-puts-it-in-a- le...](http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/28/twitters-cash-puts-it-in-a-league-of- its-own.html)

Also revenue has continued to grow year over year on par to be over $2B in 2015.

Sure, user growth has slowed but so, the important people are there for me anyway. ;-)

Also, don't forget periscope which is growing like crazy and has yet to be monetized.

There is no platform like Twitter. With a lot of cash in the bank and a slow burn Twitter will be around for a very long time.

</comment><comment><USER10> Interesting that they claim, "the growing wave of harassment and abuse users of the service were dealing with—a quagmire epitomized by the roving flocks of hateful, misogynistic, and well-organized "Gamergate" communities who flooded people's feeds with hate speech and threats." (archive of article: [https://archive.is/IpLBu#selection-529.21-533.70](https://archive.is/IpLBu#selection-529.21-533.70))

Looking at the live feed ([https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=gamer...](https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=gamergate&src=typd)), I don't see anything that matches this description. Is this old media scaremongering against new media like video games and Twitter? Or just terrible reporting?

</comment><comment><USER11> Kind of off topic but:

At what point can a companies growth slow down without it being a concern? For example, google says as of March 2015 Facebook had 1.44 billion monthly active users. With an estimated 3 billion people in the world having internet access that's 50%. Can you really expect to see significant growth at that point?

One other thing I've never quite understood is the concern with users vs. revenue. I get that for a start up, you want to grow and grow fast. For an established company like Twitter, as long as your user base isn't actively shrinking, wouldn't it make more sense to concern yourself with making money off those users instead of trying to gain more? What would be a better sign, 1% user growth but 15% revenue growth, or 1% revenue and 15% user?

<comment><USER8> >> At what point can a companies growth slow down without it being a concern?

That depends on how reliant the company is on perpetual growth. Many tech companies are not profitable. If growth slows for them, and the rate of slowdown points to a bad place, they may never make a profit and so backers will flee. But others with established businesses don't need growth. They can go on steadily with a mildly increasing market value or pay slow dividends to shareholders. Unless they are over-valued and have leveraged whatever stock they have retained. Such companies may be doomed even if profitable. So there is no definitive answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Twitter users are some of the most engaged - compulsive, even - users out there. Is charging money to have an account really out of the question?

<comment><USER7> Yeah that's something I don't understand about companies in the social space (in general). I'd pay for Twitter. But they won't take my money.

As I mentioned in another comment, however, I think there's more money and a better sell to developers. Open up the API & charge for high-volume access to it.

I really don't understand what they're doing. Cash, users, attention, etc. are all there but they're not doing anything with any of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The title is provocative "click bait". Just don't fall for it. Read the content via discussions here.

</comment><comment><USER14> [http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/02/why...](http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/02/why- internet-headline-writers-hate-themselves/385248/)

Or tl, dr: [http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/mt/2015/02/Scree...](http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/mt/2015/02/Screen_Shot_2015_02_06_at_11.15.06_AM/lead_large.png?1430146783)

</comment><comment><USER15> The media will simply parrot whatever the stock price has done. The stock price was simply too high for what it was worth or maybe worth for several yrs. the media interprets this as indicating a dead company.

Twitter has 300 million users and growing, 60% rev price growth to over 2B, new features like moments, periscope, and a treasure of real time news and data. Twitter is really an fantastic success and every quarter grows revenue by an amazing amount.

If the stock was going up (as I suspect it will from here), the media will parrot the great turnaround... When nothing will have changed fundamentally.

</comment><comment><USER16> At some point in my social circle, Twitter transitioned from "a live feed of what your friends are doing", to a tool people used to read the news and keep tabs on celebrities.

In my experience, SnapChat's My Story feature has completley supplanted the "live social feed of your friends" aspect.

IMO, SnapChat's effect on Twitter's is comparable to EverQuest's effect on text-based MMO's. One platform mercilessly dominated the other because of visual stimulation, and all the fun micro-features that go with that.

</comment><comment><USER17> > When bombs went off during the Boston Marathon, in April of 2013, users sat > glued to the feed, suddenly privy to something visceral and real, something > happening. ... It was raw, but it was streamlined.

But what real value is in that raw stream beyond voyeurism ?

After nearly 50 years on this earth I've come to feel that the nowness of things is not that important. "Quick turn on the news" became "meh, I shall wait a few days and see how it pans out before spending time digesting it".

I know that's a personal thing.

<comment><USER18> <But what real value is in that raw stream beyond voyeurism?>

For one thing, it helped feed the Reddit witch hunt that tracked down and popularized images of... the wrong people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Perfect! Click bait article that describes the current problems at twitter, the de facto standard vehicle for click bait articles!

</comment><comment><USER20> You've never really made it big until somebody says you're over.

Twitter isn't going anywhere, the very fact that they have survived terrible corporate management, high level turnover, and failed advertising initiatives proves the significant value of their content.

<comment><USER21> I agree. I am fairly confident that Twitter will survive as long as they don't do drastic redesigns like Myspace did. The Twitter stock price, on the other hand, will possibly plummet a lot more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Super-side-note: look at how they're styling <a>, not just a simple `text- decoration: underline;`</comment>


Online Python class for beginners? Karma points :) - <AUTHOR>

Looking for an online python class FOR CREDIT by a Community College/Uni. My company with pay for the class/time off if it is accredited. It is surprisingly hard to find.<p>I plan to use Udacity and Udemy for extra assistance. <comment><USER2> Have you looked into courses at your local community college?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I have looked all over. I see tons of free courses and some fairly expensive courses ($2,000 range). I know there are some good online community college class for $500- $1,000. It's not my money, but I want to treat it like it is.

Thanks!

<comment><USER3> Can you share specifics of what you have found?

<comment><AUTHOR> Honestly, I didn't write all down. I kept a list of the top two contenders, because I was looking for something different.

I wanted something that would help me learn ( active teacher vs online tutorial) and be easily transferable.

Two that might fit your list (but not mine) were the extension courses at UCLA and Berkeley. Both were about $750, but consisted of "do it yourself" material according to my friends review. Hope that helps.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How we threat model - <AUTHOR> https://github.blog/2020-09-02-how-we-threat-model/ <comment><USER2> Thanks for the article! Some comments:

\- this methodology lacks what I think is a good threat model: a list of attacks your system wants to defend against, attacks that are not in scope, and the attacker model (attacker has access to the network at all time, can tamper with traffic, etc.)

\- likelihood of each attack vector helps prioritization of work

\- STRIDE sucks in my opinion, but it's a good start for people who have no clue about threat modeling. Are there any other models like that to follow?

\- frequency: this overlooks how hard it is to get devs to go through that work, taking into accounts that people are always busy. How do you streamline this process and how do you argue for the value of repeating this exercise frequently?

\- different types of threat models: what about deployment? What about updates? What about ci/cd? All of these have threat models as well.

\- different layers of threat models: I like the idea of a global threat model managed by the security team with sub threat models managed by teams owning different components, as these can help guide design decisions For new features and refactors

<comment><USER3> You are being far too kind. The things you mention are the essence of a threat model. The fact that the article mentions none of those things and instead proposes something that can not, by any reasonable definition, be considered threat modeling and the fact that they think what they propose is threat modeling demonstrates gross systemic incompetence in their security organization.

In no universe can this: "A threat model is a collaborative security exercise where we evaluate and validate the design and task planning for a new or existing service." be considered the definition of a threat model. It mentions nothing of "threats" or modeling them and at no point in the article do they describe actual threat modeling, so this is not a disconnect between definition and action. They also mention: "Then, holistically evaluate the entire surface area and develop the most likely points of compromise. This is the key deliverable." which again completely misses the point of threat modeling as that is identifying where they are weak, not where they will be attacked (though they are likely to be related). This is conflating "know your self" and "know your enemy" which is ridiculous. What they appear to actually be describing in the article is the most rudimentary security process of actually evaluating their own systems which is a prerequisite for a functional security process since you can not shore up weaknesses without understanding where they are. So, my best possible interpretation is that their security organization seems to think "threat modeling" is a catch-all term for any security process which is a baffling degree of institutional incompetence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Off-topic: I found it hard to parse "How we threat model"; the sentence is grammatically incorrect. It should either be "How we model threats" or "How we threat-model".

"Model" by itself can be used in the verb sense, but I'm having a hard time accepting the model in "threat model" as a (qualified?) verb.

</comment><comment><USER5> The automatic anti-clickbait algorithm screwed the title again. Please re-add the word "How".

</comment><comment><USER6> The way I threat model is I use a tool I developed and a conversation with PMs and devs/architects to determine each thing we're protecting, the current state of what we plan to use to protect it, who we're actually protecting it from, and the tech stack it depends on.

It creates a bunch of visualizations that everyone up and down the chain can understand quickly, which update dynamically as we add new security features, and which reflect complete tracability of the technical reality from an engineering perspective, along with a gap analysis that product, security, engineering, compliance, and security can reason about. The side effect is a visual security architecture, and an objective attack surface for your post- controls like VAs and pen-tests.

Then the tool automatically generates epics and stories that import into Jira so we can build security controls as features and manage them in iteration planning and standups.

Just this week I put a 50 page architecture doc through it in about an hour and provided an agency director with a concrete security posture that demonstrated how it had lots of controls for prevention, but none to detect or respond to the threats we actually cared about, and that this should be the substance of their conversation with the vendor.

If you want to know why you should threat model, I'm also using it to support the sales org at a new security product company by modelling the security of target customers' products and showing how their authN product fills gaps it illustrates in the customer's products, and I use it personally for fast modelling attack surfaces on gigs. One client called it the "Deloitte killer," because it does in a couple hours what big-5 consultancies take weeks and $50k to do. That's generous, as people hire those companies for compliance and not to build better products. My tool is not a product because it alienates other security and compliance people, and product/project people mostly care about having them onside. My personality probably doesn't help either. :)

IMO, STRIDE is bike shedding. Real threats are counter-cases to your product's business model.

<comment><USER2> Still interested in the tool

<comment><USER6> Thanks! This is a bit ugly and it's been cleaned up since, but for public consumption, it's described here: [https://www.qtra.io/simpletm](https://www.qtra.io/simpletm) .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> tl:dr; Microsoft's Thread Modeling tool OWASP's Threat Dragon.</comment>


The Lean Startup - <AUTHOR> http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/09/lean-startup.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Just a theory I've been kicking around. I'm very interested in feedback if anyone wants to discuss.</comment>


Centaur Galileo, Sports Betting Hedge Fund Inspired By Mark Cuban, Collapses - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/30/centaur-galileo-sports-betting-hedge-fund_n_1242794.html

<comment><USER2> The original article has far more information:

[http://www.journallive.co.uk/north-east-news/todays- news/201...](http://www.journallive.co.uk/north-east-news/todays- news/2012/01/30/investors-facing-1-6m-loss-after-centaur- collapses-61634-30224828/)</comment>


Google Chrome Leapfrogs Internet Explorer as the Web's Top Browser - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/05/21/google-chrome-overtakes-internet-explorer-as-the-webs-most-used-browser/?awesm=tnw.to_1EUZJ&utm_campaign=social%20media&utm_medium=Spreadus&utm_source=Twitter&utm_content=Google%20Chrome%20overtakes%20Internet%20Explorer%20as%20the%20Webs%20most%20used%20browser <comment><USER2> I have recently added thenextweb.com to my blacklist domain to make sure that I accidentally don't send them any page views. I'm indifferent about any downvotes that i'll receive as a result of this comment, but for those of you who have realised how "deserving" Zee thinks he is to plagiarise articles, here is an alternate you can read.

[http://memeburn.com/2012/05/its-official-chrome-is-the- webs-...](http://memeburn.com/2012/05/its-official-chrome-is-the-webs-most- popular-browser/)

(I'm referring to <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3972651> incase you missed out on how TNW's Zee just totally _does not get it_ ).

(Edit: I'm sure this article here isn't plagiarised. That's not why I provided a link. It's hardly an imaginative story so I'm sure TNW pulled it together themselves. However, when you try and pass yourself off as a legitamate _hard working_ publication, and fail to give credit to someone who essentially wrote and researched your article, there is something intrinsically wrong with your ethics. As a person, I'm not even particularly opinionated, lots can pass me by without me caring: but Zee's attitude disgusted me).

<comment><USER3> So what we have to do is always find the original sources of thenextweb articles and post those instead.

There is certainly no loss in skipping over thenextweb.

This is just my opinion.

But in my experience they have proven themselves to be all but worthless time and again. It's not just plagiarism. They do not research their stories. They appear to lack any measurable insight into the subject matter. As such, they make a lousy source of news.

<comment><USER4> > _So what we have to do is always find the original sources_

That's what the guidelines recommend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hope Firefox gains more momentum. I don't trust Google, I don't want them to control everything. FF 13 is fast and modern browser. Installing Ghostery, AdBlock and Firebug makes it perfect.

<comment><USER6> Firefox used to be my browser of choice, but now it's the worst of all for me.

There are two main problems:

1\. Sometimes I start FF and it tells me that its process is still running. It happens too often that I close FF and it fails to properly terminate its process. The result is that I can't open FF until I kill it in the task manager.

2\. Firefox is the only browser in which Flash crashes. Almost every day I had to search for the "Plugin container for Firefox" in the task manager and manually kill it.

Today the browsers that "just work" are IE9 and Chrome. I can't use Chrome all the time because it doesn't open images in Twitter, probably because images use http and Twitter uses https. Every browser has its own little problems. Those of Firefox are too much for me.

<comment><USER7> Sounds like a corrupt profile. If you're interested in trying to fix it then you could delete your profile and start again (or if you're running a beta or newer Firefox go to about:support and click on 'Reset Firefox').

<comment><USER8> I don't know about that. I get the same issues even with Aurora (as do many of my colleagues).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Being a web dev, I tend to keep a collection of browsers open all the time - Chrome for email, twitter, calendar, bug tracker etc. Firefox for development (Firebug FTW). Midori for state-less browsing (it empties caches and data when restarted, so I use that when I need a clean session). And Opera for social, personal, fun, feeds and reading etc.

They all have their strengths, but I'm still amazed Opera doesn't have a higher share.

<comment><USER10> Opera has been ahead of the curve for features virtually forever (currently: tab stacking, right click anywhere to add search, and 'g searchterm' syntax). It is also _much_ more memory-efficient than chrome/FF with many tabs.

I think it has just never been seen as 'sexy' by the tech geeks, and therefore never evangelised.

Surprisingly Opera's strong showing in mobile/wii didn't impact the desktop. Does HN think it might do better if it was open-sourced?

<comment><USER11> Yes I agree that Opera has had lots of great ideas, many which have later been introduced into the 'mainstream' browsers and yet they (Opera) fail to generate any marketshare.

Perhaps it is because it's closed sourced, I don't know.

Personally I went with Firefox rather than Opera back in the day mainly due to Firefox extensions (nowadays Opera supports extensions aswell) and have stuck with it since I know it so well and it works fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In other news, the hemorrhage of Firefox users has been stabilized in January 2012, and it has been picking up market share for the last weeks (from 24.67% to 26.42%).

<http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-weekly-200827-201221>

</comment><comment><USER13> Who to trust? There is a 20% difference with StatCounter and NetApplications. And according to NetApplicaitons IE is gaining O_o. I wish Google can tell its own statistics. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers>

<comment><USER14> Here are my numbers

Chrome - 63.1%

Firefox - 21.1%

IE - 7.1%

These are heavily biased towards young (13-25) Windows users who play games.

I've noticed the massive dominance of Chrome for some time, but the numbers are not clear enough to show a rise or fall in its use over time.

<comment><USER15> Chrome certainly used to feel snappier with JS, which probably attracts the gamers.

<comment><USER15> Not sure why I got a down vote for this. Probably as it's anecdotal? What I should have said: from my experience Chrome feels snappier with Javascript performance at least while playing typeracer. And I read into that, that JS games perform better under Chrome.

<comment><USER14> I wouldn't worry about random downvotes, no karma system works. 'snappiness' is a potential driving factor for Chrome use. I'll try and do some research on users at some point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Which-is-beter aside, this seems like a very healthy mix for competition & inovation:

75% split roughly even between 3 players. The big three are all very different (Community led Open Source, Bundled with the OS & Mega Company led Open Source). Developers can still feasibly test for major browsers. Everyone will be aware they have a choice. There is room in the remaining 25% for new players to emerge.

Seems ideal.

<comment><USER17> Really, it's always struck me as odd that Microsoft hasn't thought about open sourcing IE. Presumably there's a tangled mess of proprietary code that they would have to sort out first, but it's already the case that the majority of users are browsing the web using open source browsers. There's no longer any hope of financial incentive for being closed source. In fact, it's more of a liability than anything these days...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't think there's any question Chrome is going to win the Second Broswer War. The question is only when we all agree it's over.

The monopoly issue seems even more troublesome this time, as compared with when Microsoft was trying to tie the browser to the desktop PC OS, because the web and search is actually Google's core business.

If I were working on Chrome I would find myself wondering, "So what happens after we become the browser that 99% of the web uses and develops for? What if ChromeOS follows a similar path? Is that going to be good for the web in the long term? What if Google's business starts to slow down? We have created a virtual strangehold over the web. We might have to use it more aggressively."

Or maybe not. All that free food. The big bonuses. The great things we achieved. In the near term, we have seriously made things better for everyone. Life's just too good to think business could ever falter. Maybe I might never have such thoughts. I'm just an engineer. I'm just doing my job. I can't worry about these things.

The amount of control one company is developing over something so essential as the web is just obscene.

<comment><USER18> Google has been the defacto gatekeeper of the web for some time now.

The nice thing is that their business model doesn't seem to revolve around locking people into any particular system. In fact they want the opposite, as far as they are concerned everyone should be equal in terms of clicking on ads.

<comment><USER19> Google's business model does in fact involve around locking people into Google's services. To the extent that lockin into a particular system makes that easier, they are quite happy with such lockin.

<comment><USER20> Google offers a stable of compelling free services. If that's lock-in, then throw away the key.

<comment><USER19> Google's goal is to make sure you see their ads. To the extent that having compelling free services helps, they're doing compelling free services.

But the goal is user eyeballs, not having compelling free services. So Google is perfectly happy to do other things that help ensure users will use said services.

Nothing wrong with that, by the way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I hate these type of articles. Out of all the sites I run and help with I have yet to see Chrome be the number 1 browser used.

IE still accounts for the majority of all traffic. It has always been in my experience IE, Firefox then Chrome. With IE holding roughly 40-50% of the share.

<comment><USER22> Agreed. I monitor about 100 domains, mostly small business websites here in the US and none (I repeat NONE) have Chrome anywhere even close to Firefox, let alone IE which commands the first spot on almost every site.

I don't know where or who these Chrome users are, but they certainly aren't visiting your bread and butter small biz websites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> That red line at the bottom always saddens me. Why doesn't opera get the recognition it deserves?

<comment><USER24> At first you had to pay for it, then it was annoying adware. Sure, it was a snappy browser and I even used it for a while, mouse gestures etc. But there were always good enough free browsers available.

When they removed the ads in 2005 it was far too late, Firefox had changed the game.

<comment><USER25> And Opera is still not open source. Which makes at least a difference for some people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Oh well, Statcounter (and only Statcounter) again. Compared to other sources, Statcounter has a track record of valuing Chrome's market share higher.

Also, the curve in the article is pretty steady/linear. Where comes "leapfrogging"?

</comment><comment><USER27> Meanwhile, I saw a TV commercial for IE today. Amazing how things have changed from the days of 90+% market share dominance by IE.

<comment><USER22> It's a good song too. Sadly I don't think anyone has ever chose a browser based on a TV commercial.

<comment><USER28> Google's running TV ads for Chrome as well; so at least 2 major browser vendors disagree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Having just switched from Firefox to Chrome myself, this makes me happy. Chrome is definitely one of the best browsers I have ever used/developed and debugged websites in. Best of all, no memory leaks either.

<comment><USER30> I'm mostly happy about people switching from IE (particularly its older incarnations) to anywhere, than from Firefox to Chrome ;-)

<comment><USER31> Concur that a switch to either Chrome or Firefox is a win. Both have been competing with each other after Chrome raised the bar. In either case winner is the user.

Personally, I have been using Chrome and Firefox both. Firefox being the primary browser for browsing the _wild_ web and Chrome for development and for using Google's services.

<comment><USER32> I'm a diehard Firefox user, but I'm very glad that Chrome is there to offer some real competition.

Back in the Firefox 3.6 days, Mozilla was beginning to get a little lazy, somewhat like Microsoft in the IE6 days. Then Chrome came along and Mozilla realized that they had to compete. It took them a couple of years to catch up, but now Firefox is a worthy competitor to Chrome and vice versa.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Many Windows users are still on XP, which is viewed as good-enough and not worth the upgrade troubles:

[http://www.neowin.net/news/windows-xp-market-share-goes- down...](http://www.neowin.net/news/windows-xp-market-share-goes-down-in- february-2012)

If Microsoft would have written IE versions beyond 8 to work with XP, IE might have been able to hang in at #1 longer since the later versions of IE aren't as bad.

I know I'll be happy when I see IE 8 usage drop sufficiently low in my logs to allow me to stop attending to its limitations while developing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Everyone commenting about open source in this thread, who is not a Chromium developer, has built Chromium from source?

It's really easy, right? And it works just the same as Chrome, right?

Mozilla is open source but the complexity and volume of the code means very few people can work with it.

How many of you, who are not Mozilla developers, have modified the Firefox source and compiled a working version?

</comment><comment><USER34> I use Chrome, but I really want(ed) FireFox to win this. I don't like helping Google gain another market, but FireFox ruined its browser with bad performance / memory leaks. FireFox left me no choice and I assume most web developers and technology peeps made a decision similar to mine.

<comment><USER35> When did you last test it? Firefox performance surpasses Chrome in memory management and optimizations IMO.

<comment><USER34> Yeah it got better, but I kinda made the switch already.

<comment><USER35> Give a try to both and compare. Since you were resolute enough to make a switch out of performance concerns, you can as well switch again ;) Personally I never found Firefox to be performing bad enough to switch, even though Chrome could be better some time ago.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Got one job offer, took it, then got another.  Etiquette? - <AUTHOR>

So three months ago I was recommended by my instructor for a pentester position.  He said that once the class was over (a week from then) he could officially vouch for me, since it's not showing favoritism if I'm not his student.  I apply for the position and wait patiently.  I email them back about 10 days later as per my instructor's advice asking if they have reviewed my resume, and got no response.  I figured they had either ignored, forgotten, or lost my app.
Fast-forward to a few weeks ago when I apply for a sysadmin position at a local ISP.  Less than three weeks from applying, I am hired before the background check even clears.  I started last Wednesday.
Today, I get an email from the first company saying they want to set up a phone interview.
I really don't know how to handle this.  Do I play hardball and tell them I was already hired?  Do I ask if they can beat the pay and benefits of my current position?  Do I say I am still interested but have been employed elsewhere?  Do I tell my current boss that I might be considering a better position at another company? <comment><USER2> My advice is to be honest. Tell the new offer "I never heard back from you guys, so I accepted another offer. I wouldn't feel right leaving them in the lurch, so it'd a have to be a significantly more interesting offer and I'd need some time to sort things out here without disrupting plans they've made based on hiring me.". There's probably no need to tell your current boss anything until _after_ (if) the "significantly more interesting offer" eventuates.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the closest to what I intend to do. I wanna display interest without making it obvious that I am gonna push for the best offer from both parties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _Do I play hardball and tell them I was already hired? Do I ask if they can beat the pay and benefits of my current position? Do I say I am still interested but have been employed elsewhere?_

If pentesting is what you'd rather be doing, be up front with them about the situation. If you'd be willing to leave for a similar/better/wildly better offer, say so.

 _Do I tell my current boss that I might be considering a better position at another company?_

No. Do not tell your current boss that you might be considering a better position at another company. If the company that you're not working for right now makes you an offer that you'd like to take, make 100% certain that you have a position there, and then notify your current employer that you're leaving. Under no circumstances should you indicate to them that you're thinking about leaving.

 _I wanna display interest without making it obvious that I am gonna push for the best offer from both parties._

Do not push for the best offer from both parties. The only communication you should have with your current employer about this situation is to notify them that you're leaving once you have employment elsewhere secured.

My advice might be different if you'd been working at your current place of employment for longer, and had reason to believe that they'd be willing to negotiate to keep you around. For an entry-level position (I'm assuming, based on the given context) that you've only been at for a few months, I wouldn't think that would be the case.

</comment><comment><USER4> Well what do you want to do with your life ? - do you want to be a pentester or a sysadmin ?

If being a pentester is what you want to do then take the interview, and if you decide to take the job then just quit from your current employer and tell them that the role wasn't what you were looking for.

Seriously, a decision that will potentially effect your career for the rest of your life shouldn't be done on the basis of etiquette, it should be done on the basis of what you want to do with your life.

<comment><USER5> I spent too long typing and you got there before me. Great point though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> First of all, from what I've heard declining a job offer after accepting is a looked upon as a huge indicator you are not suitable to work for any company. If you do that and word spreads, it could directly affect your career. Maybe if you absolutely have a dream job lined up with double the salary you should take that risk, but still think very very hard about it.

Second a phone interview IS NOT a job offer. I am a 4.0 GPA double major undergrad and 3.9 GPA masters student with great recommendations and tons of individual side projects and part time school-related job experience, but no full time job experience. So far I've been accepted one place, I turned it down due to a condition that would mean I could not work until half a year passed. I have had over a dozen interviews and half a dozen phone interviews. Most places go resume -> phone interview -> company interview -> final steps, so that indicates you have passed 1/3 or 1/4 of the hurdles. Due to my skills nearly every resume turned in becomes a phone interview, the phone interviews pretty much always result in an interview, but most interviews dead-end because they find "another candidate with more experience." If your situation is anywhere near similar to mine, then you would have 50% chance at best of getting the pentester job, possibly closer to 10%.

My advice would be to take the sysadmin position and leave the soonest you feel comfortable (from what I've heard you should be there a year, at least half a year, any less than that looks really bad). If you look for a job and have even a single year of job experience, that should work in your favor. You have already accepted it AND you do not have another offer.

Do not try to game the system, simply tell them you accepted another offer already but would like to consider them the next time you are looking for a job. If you say, "Well I was just hired by someone else so you better make me a really good offer to make me turn traitor to my current company and leave them," that reflects horribly on your character and they will run. If you tell your current boss, "Hey I know you hired me last Wednesday, but I'm thinking of leaving" that will also reflect horribly on your character and could damage future opportunities (You do know the next company you apply for could ask your current boss what he thinks of you right?).

My advice is just to forget about the other offer and pretend it never happened, stay with your job at least half a year, and at that point if you hate your job, maybe start looking around again and ask that company if you could interview with them.

</comment><comment><USER5> Something that has not been brought up is what direction are you wanting to pursue. If you are dead set on getting into pen testing then that would add more weight into your decision. If they are both just options for work and you are still trying to sort out where you really want to focus then maybe staying in your current job would be wise.

I would say that it would not hurt to take the phone interview. This doesn't mean you are going to leave your current position. The company could end the process at that point and solve the issue for you. If this is the case, at the very least you gain some more exposure to interviews. If you do get past the phone interview stage and progress to an offer you will have to make the hard decision then. If you did proceed with the phone interview I would take Bigiain's advice and be honest with them. As others have suggested, playing the two companies off each other would not be a good plan since you have already taken the job.

</comment><comment><USER7> At this point I would just be looking at everything as a learning experience. The sysadmin job is probably a good learning experience, but probably not for long. The other job offer didn't come back to you for three months, so maybe they aren't in much of a hurry. Perhaps you could stick around the sys admin job for a few months to learn as much as you can from that job and then make the jump. In any case, I probably wouldn't be interested in sticking with the ISP for long.

</comment><comment><USER8> A phone interview is not a job offer- you probably need to also complete an in-person interview before being considered for an offer.

</comment><comment><USER9> I would take the fact that they gave you no response at all for 3 months as a huge red flag.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what I was thinking, but it just occurred to me that perhaps the position hadn't been created yet. I mean yea, they still could have said something, but if I had been given advanced notice about a job that didn't exist, it would sorta make sense...

No, you're right. They could have at least acknowledged my existence =\

<comment><USER6> By the way, I recently had a company do that. I interviewed on campus, they loved me, and I didn't hear from them again. They called me 3 months later, I aced a phone interview. They bring me in for the real interview and 1) they didn't have a contract yet for the job, they were in-between contracts and "would probably have it before you get accepted" and 2) didn't accept me anyways as they found a "candidate with more experience"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Alway be honest!!! Tell them the other company responded quickly, but that you would be willing to explore still

</comment><comment><USER11> yeah, they are too late but do ask if they can beat the pay and benefits of your current position and dont tell your boss anything. Companies dont tell you when they downsize and give ya the pink slip do they?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking that, but a small part of me feels like that would come across poorly. I mean I know I am supposed to be looking for the best that is available to me, but I don't wanna turn them off by asking so bluntly.

<comment><USER11> Hey, you didnt sign on the dotted line or anything while being employed with current employer. You were in touch with them BEFORE you joined Com#2 and are they contacted you now so are just exploring options. Its not wrong. When you look at it this way you wont feel like a heel for leaving if the first company makes a good offer :P</comment></comment></comment>


From web dev to VR: learning VR development - <AUTHOR> http://levels.io/learning-vr <comment> dino-neil I followed the same path pretty much, except less about getting a pretty place, and more about learning interaction.

As for VRTK, they have are MIT licensed and are welcoming of contributors, they even have a slack channel where I chill out.

But the biggest stumbling block for me is motivation. Having to relearn every single interaction, alongside learning how to make games is pretty challenging. Multiplayer especially is one of the main strengths of VR with the presence leading you to believe you are in the same room as a complete stranger.

But learning how to code with multiplayer in mind is so challenging. In essence you have to learn to derive your current game state from as few variables as possible.

But add onto that object ownership, physics, hit-box latency issues and there is so much new stuff to learn that it makes javascript fatigue look like a joke in comparison.

BTW. Is there any demand for VR devs/front-end devs/back-end devs/designers/unicorns?</comment>


Wavelet: Headphone-Specific EQ for Android - <AUTHOR> https://www.xda-developers.com/make-your-headphones-sound-better-automatic-eq-wavelet/ <comment><USER2> A great alternative to this is the app Neutralizer which plays white noise and sine waves while you adjust the eq until the sine wave is barely audible.</comment>


ReactOS Project opens paid vacancies for C\C++ programmers - <AUTHOR> https://reactos.org/archives/public/ros-dev/2017-January/018070.html <comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.reactos.org/node/785](https://www.reactos.org/node/785) \- additional info</comment>


If Your Laptop Is Open, You're Not Listening - <AUTHOR> http://benbobsworld.blogspot.com/2016/05/if-your-laptop-is-open-youre-not.html <comment><USER3> If I feel your meeting is relevant to me, I'm listening and you don't have to worry about banning laptops. If you don't think i'm capable of deciding whether a meeting is relevant to me, fire me because I'm bloody incompetent.

If your meeting is not relevant to me, I'll try to get out my laptop and get some actual work done while my time is being wasted or if we meander into areas that are not of relevance.

If you ban laptops, and for some bizarre reason I still have to attend and your meeting is not interesting to me, i'll code on bloody pen and paper and enter some of that code into the computer once I get back to my desk, or i'll try to do SOMETHING productive. Trust me, you don't magically have my cognitive attention...

I had a consultant/workmate try to ban laptops in her meetings. No prizes for guessing whether I think it was the laptops or the meetings (or the consultant) that were the far bigger waste of time/attention/money...

Hire competent people and let them decide what the best use of their time is...or at least admit that you think its justified treating other's in the workplace like children...

<comment><USER4> It's not black/white situation. Sometimes only part of the meeting will be relevant to you. By using laptop or any device you show no respect to the person that organised the meeting but as well you might losse a lot. I agree that people tend to organise to many meetings but doing anything else on that meeting is not a solution. Sadly (as I am developer too) I realised that developers often thing that they are to smart to do anything else to code and this is the only good way of spendign their time.

<comment><USER5> Easier solution: quit demanding "respect" by asking people to pay attention through irrelevant stuff to appease your ego. Some meetings will have things relevant to different groups of people over time, and you don't need everyone's full attention for the whole meeting.

<comment><USER6> Why bother turning up in the first place if it is so irrelevant?

<comment><USER7> It's not always a choice. Even when it is not overtly made mandatory, it often have "political" consequences if you are seen as detaching from what happens in the team. Being physically present has significant signalling effects.

<comment><USER8> "You guys can probably handle this without me. Do you need for me anything else?"

Or, if that is not acceptable due to workplace hierarchy, talk to your manager and explain the problem. If being present is a political necessity, chances are so is not secluding yourself behind a screen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It is pretty simple. If I am forced to attend unnecessary meetings I either bring my laptop and it is a valid assumption that I am not 100% following the meeting or I bring something else if laptops are banned (printouts, etc.). Worst case I will just space out. If meetings are relevant, well planned, interesting I will listen and contribute. I still might bring and use the laptop for notes.

<comment><USER10> I cannot agree more.

The amount of lunacy and idiocy going on during these "quick" meetings has been driving me nuts. Imagine a room full of VPs, each making no less than $200K a year, discussing the need to spend $1K on hardware.

And the punch line - we just spent more salary $ during this meeting, than it would take to rent these for a year from OVH or AWS.

<comment><USER11> I worked with a guy that used to say: "I need approval for a $500 hardware buy, but I can call a meeting that would cost thousands of Dollars in salaries any time I want"

I wish companies had a "meetings budget" and had to justify the ROI of each meeting... One can only dream :)

<comment><USER7> One practice I've found useful, that is more general, was to issue weekly reports breaking down the cost of each activity. That is, I'd solicit a ~5-10 line breakdown from everyone in my team of how they spent their time that week, and I'd apply average costs for their function and tally it up.

So we might see posts like $2k for a planning meeting show up on the report, and suddenly people started paying attention to what time was spent on - <USER2> for meetings and otherwise.

And making arguments like the one in your example. It also meant being able to make actual estimates over whether pursuing a certain optimization would be worth it vs. buying more hardware.

Amazingly each place I've done this at, they were initially confused why I wanted to do this, as apparently it was weird and unusual to have engineering issue such breakdowns

<comment><USER12> Wonder how much "weekly report compilation" would cost :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm really tired of the trope that "Multitasking is not scientifically possible, and anyone that claims they are more productive doing it is lying to themselves."

It's paternalistic and condescending and always written by those that don't like to multitask already to make themselves feel better about the multitaskers around them.

And it completely ignores those of us with various forms of Attention Deficit (I would venture a much larger component of millennials and software engineers have this compared to previous generations) who know what works for us and what doesn't.

If you give me 3 1-hour-long tasks and tell me I have to work on them sequentially with no switching, I will get bored in the middle of each one, get distracted by something shiny, or stare into space if you try to keep me from doing anything else. I'll need to take a break between each one because my brain is so strained from having to focus on one thing.

In all, I expect each one to take me 1.5-2 hours plus another 30 mins for breaks between, so maybe 5 hours total at a minimum.

On the other hand, if I can alternate and context switch between all 3 as soon as my brain gets bored, I'll be able to keep engaged and work continuously. Sure each one may take me 1.25 hours, but I won't need a break. And the whole thing will get done in 3.75 hours, not 5.

(Numbers completely fabricated, obviously)

The same applies to meetings. I'm not defending coding or working on a challenging problem while listening to a presentation. That will certainly occupy my mind and I won't hear the presenter. But checking some non- complicated emails? Organizing some files or documents? ANYTHING menial is perfect because it allows my brain to stay engaged while also paying attention to the presenter. Without this minor distraction, if I am forced to listen to a boring presentation with my full focus, I will unquestionably lose the focus and find myself drifting off and wondering how much I've missed.

<comment><USER14> The argument you're making is the same reason why we switched from batch processing to multitask processing.

Waiting on IO and refocusing is such a slow task that time scheduling other CPU-heavy jobs during that time can optimize performance a lot.

<comment><USER15> The problem with this argument is that computers take very little time to context switch - a couple of milliseconds at most. Most humans take closer to 30 minutes or an hour to do the same type of context switch.

As a fellow ADHD'er, I realized some time ago that while multi-tasking, I was just doing multiple things poorly. I'd lose the stack, forget tasks, lose conversations - basically be a waste of space, except for the very rare times where I could write brilliant code due to hyperfocus.

When not on medication, I will be forced multitask, but I do so with "tasks" which require differing amounts of concentration - so I can leave one part of my mind stewing on a problem while looking at cat pictures.

<comment><USER14> Same here. The discovery that I should only do one CPU-heavy task at a time was very useful.

Also, bosses + coworkers prefer if you always seem busy – so, while planning code, take a block of paper, and draw flowcharts, class diagrams, etc – it helps visualize the thoughts (so you keep them even if interrupted), and it makes you seem more effective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The best meeting policy I saw was this one:

1) All meetings are capped to be maximum 15 minutes long. No exceptions. (This means everyone have to be prepared, and there are pre-designed meeting plans to follow).

2) There are two slots each day that can be used anytime: one "briefing" in the morning, and one "debriefing" in the evening. If something urgent happens, there is also one possible slot mid-day for emergency meetings, to be used sparingly.

<comment><USER17> Did they ever _not_ schedule the first and last meeting? How often were those meeting pointless? How often did they run out of time and have to abandon the meeting? What did they do when that happened?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am the original author of this article. I just found out that a friend had posted it on HN and found these comments. Most seem to fall into a few categories:

"If I'm not paying attention, it's because your meeting is boring or irrelevant."

I am not talking about people who open their laptops in a few (or even most) meetings where the content is boring. I'm talking about people (including myself until recently) who open their laptop or pick up their phone in every single meeting they attend. If you are not that person, no reason to be offended. If you are, then please explain to me how every single meeting can be irrelevant.

"I have ADHD, I can multitask. In fact, I work better when I multitask."

Somewhere between 5% and 11% of all children in America are believed to have ADHD. Even if quadruple that number for people in the computer industry, that still leaves the majority of the population as non-ADHD sufferers. Those are the people I'm talking about. The majority. Also note that I'm not just talking about people in the computer industry, but all information workers. The incidence of ADHD in the general population is not nearly large enough to explain the epidemic I'm describing.

"But I use my laptop to take notes."

The second sentence in the article clearly states that it is fine to do so "for the purposes of the meeting - to take notes..." I guess you must have been multitasking and missed that sentence. :)

"Maybe you should make your meetings more interesting if you want me to pay attention."

I will just quote from the article again: "As the meeting organizer, I should, of course, strive to make the meeting relevant and the decisions concrete. Otherwise, I deserve to be ignored for the latest tweet or alert."

</comment><comment><USER19> I disagree with this strongly, mostly because I hate conversations or meeting where people debate something which has a factual answer which someone with a laptop/internet/shell/calculator/IM client/Google can answer definitively in 10 seconds. Instead, people waste minutes (or, worse, say something will be tabled until later, perhaps calling an entirely different meeting!) to deal with it.

If you look at the most productive meetings at places like Google, people have data and processing capability to hand, and end up referring to it. If that is "IM the guy in another state who isn't needed for the meeting but has the a answer to this specific question", easy choice.

<comment><USER20> But you don't need 10 laptops for that. I agree with the article strongly. At Google, the team with the best meeting culture I've been in had a no laptop culture (not rule, but new team member would adjust pretty quickly when everyone else had no laptop except for the presenter / note taker). Our meetings were shorter than in my other teams, and more productive.

But I also agree, if a meeting is not productive for you, there is no need to attend them (and meeting notes should be sufficient to catch up).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> People aren't interested in my meetings hence we must remove the distractions.

Another more constructive approach might be to make your meetings more useful/engaging.

<comment><USER22> And to plan them better, with the right people, at the right time.

Have an established topic, stick to it, only bring in people for whom it is relevant, make it short and to the point, choose a timing that don't interrupt people activities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I certainly agree that if your laptop is open, you're not really listening. (If you're looking up something for the meeting, then the fact that you're not listening may well be a contribution, of course.)

What I think is not so clear is whether or not it's okay to have people at a meeting who are mostly-not-present, but just background-listening. They might know that the meeting is mostly not for/about them, but that it might touch on their stuff, and they want to stay loosely informed. Of course, if someone takes good notes and sends them around, those might be just as good, but maybe no such notes exist.

<comment><USER24> I'm sometimes called to attend meetings to act as a "tech advisor" – in case any technical questions arise they know I'm physically there so they can grill me all they like.

Most of the time, I don't say a word during the whole meeting other than "Hello, my name is so-and-so and I'm a software developer at the company" and then "It was a pleasure meeting you, looking forward to next time!". I just quietly work away in a corner, pretending to take notes. The project managers feel more confident when they know I'm there, so I can be there just as well as anywhere else.

As long as you're not expected to be actively participating, there's no harm in not being actively participating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> So many comments segwaying into, meetings waste my time, and I'm a coward who won't address this issue instead, so I have a right to use my laptop cause I'm smart.

<comment><USER26> I haven't seen any "I'm a coward who won't address this issue instead" responses, rather "I'm not in a management or directorial position to address this issue so I'm stuck with it".

Individual employees who try to change corporate behavior tend to be unsuccessful, especially against such ingrained concepts as "We should just call a meeting!".

<comment><USER6> Hardly anyone in the comments has mentioned the work power hierarchy, so it seems reasonable to assume many of them are too coward to address it properly.

<comment><USER26> In this example, the work-power hierarchy means that employees get paid to waste time in meetings. If they pull out a laptop to do other work, then they are accused of "not paying attention". They aren't cowardly to let this particular sleeping dog lie, they're accepting that, despite their initial attempt to be more productive in otherwise wasted time, the company will pay them anyway.

If the _owners_ (or stakeholders) of the company failed to address this, then they _still_ can't be described as cowardly, just incompetent.

The employees, if they're being paid anyway, aren't going to rock the boat improving the productivity output of the employer, especially after they've been shot down once for attempting to actually be more productive. They'll just shake their heads in disbelief at the fact that the company is willing to pay them to be unproductive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Most meetings (by far) could be done in minutes. Instead (and I have 1000s of anecdotes literally) people like to pleasantly do things, make jokes, laugh a lot etc. Do painfully long introductions (while everyone was in the mail and already checked Linkedin etc). But worse: ill prepare or not at all and just improvise. Worse yet: see it as a break or even (half) day out. There is place for this, but that's not something that should be the norm. It's teambuilding, sales etc and it's important. For normal meetings, when prepared, meetings can be done in minutes; send an agenda upfront, let people do a few rounds of discourse about those points in the agenda via mail/slack and give them a chance to do some research. Then discuss and decide efficiently.

There are enough exceptions but that's not most meetings. Most meetings are not about a critical company policy or about a critical technical dilemma where core infrastructure has to be changed. Etc.

</comment><comment><USER28> [https://twitter.com/philltopia/status/727190980726689792](https://twitter.com/philltopia/status/727190980726689792)

"New side project: price tags on Google Calendar events based on the inferred hourly rates of participants."

</comment><comment><USER29> Let me preface this by saying I don't bring my laptop to meetings, but all the meetings we have are interesting.

I'd argue if you're having trouble getting your employees to pay attention either they don't need to be there, or the meeting isn't being run properly.

</comment><comment><USER30> I've seen no comments about the legitimate use of a laptop in a meeting. I take my laptop to meetings all the time, and am paying attention. I use my laptop to take notes, using a different piece of software for different kinds of notes: Notes for textual bullets, CMapTools for a concept map of the meeting,and a Trello clone (albeit not as good as Trello) for tasks. Usually most of the time is spent in concept mapping, as that is my preferred method of notetaking.

The idea that we all still have to take notes using pen and paper astounds me, and seems horribly inefficient.

</comment><comment><USER31> It depends what you're doing with it.

I find that if I sit doing nothing in a somewhat boring meeting, my mind will wander and I'll often zone out completely.

Whereas if I use my phone to play simple visual games which don't require any language processing (e.g. freecell), I'm much more able to concentrate on what the speaker is saying.

It's not quite as good as listening properly, but overall I think listening to everything with half an ear (or more) is better than missing parts of the meeting entirely. And if anything directly relevant comes up I can stop and focus.

</comment><comment><USER32> Is having your laptop open so different from doodling[0]? Even if there's no comparison, one can work, or puzzle out other issues during those parts of the meeting which they already understand. Banning laptops entirely is a good way to reduce productivity.

[0] [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/education/2014/07/keep- ca...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/education/2014/07/keep-calm-and- doodle-on/)

</comment><comment><USER33> That prompts me to say the same thing when people complain about their kids are always in their phones: have you tried being interesting than a phone or a laptop?

If you will actually give people information that is important to their job, they will put a laptop or phone aside and listen to you very closely. But if they're always distracted by something else, could you be wasting their time with this meeting?

<comment><USER34> Now I partly agree with this, but there is a bit of activation energy to conquer.

If the audience starts by looking at the phone/laptop, you have to basically buzzfeed people into paying attention ("Oh, here's a cat picture haha, now back to our MRR discussion") for enough time to get the 30 seconds of attention to get them. Because if not, people's attention is already captured by the device

If the policy is like "don't use your laptops for the first couple of minutes", then at least you timebox the important stuff and give the talker a chance.

<comment><USER35> > buzzfeed people

That's a great idea and reminded me of an SAP SME we used to have who would insert meme photos at arbitrary points of a slide-deck. Worked well for breaking the zombie-trance of attendees.

Another rule I saw was to allow people to bring laptops but leave them on a table at the back of the room. Still available for reference and emergencies but the attendees had to make a conscious and obvious to go to the laptop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I strongly disagree with this. I have the inattentive kind of ADHD and the coping mechanism that works for me is to multitask.

Few people are wired to comprehend "tl;dr" versions of stuff -- if the meeting is going for eternity, please don't blame me for not listening.

</comment><comment><USER37> Which is why I try to insist on stand up meetings. Not the "agile/scrum" morning status micromanagement stand up meeting, but normal meetings Ie quick architecture design, general discussions, generally around a white board of some type. Standing up will ensure people cant be on their laptop/ipad and will also keep it short.

For eyes forward meetings bring your laptop, they are mostly waste of time anyway.

</comment><comment> nikki-9696 If your meeting is not interesting or relevant, I don't need to have my laptop open to ignore you.

I rarely, if ever, attend a meeting where every single person is expected to pay attention for the duration. On the rare occasion this happens, people DO pay attention. Maybe it's the meetings and environment that need changed.

</comment><comment><USER38> "Multitasking is impossible" is seriously overgeneralizing from personal experience. It's just not true that it's impossible. It's certainly impossible for _me_ \- if _my_ laptop is open, I'm not listening. But that's not true for everyone!

<comment><USER9> I was always under the impression that human multitasking means failing at multiple things at once. It seems to be just that different people feel different about success.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> If people are bringing laptops and cell phones and are on them in your meeting, you are not really having a meeting with them. They are there, but they are not there.

</comment><comment><USER40> If my laptop is open your meeting is not my only priority. Sorry.</comment>


Ubuntu on Samsung Series 7 Ultrabook 730U - <AUTHOR> http://igor.kupczynski.info/2013/07/22/ubuntu-on-samsung-series-7.html

<comment><USER2> What about the battery life ? I have also a discrete GPU in addition of the Intel HD 3000 on my HP laptop and when I disable it (with acpi_call) I have 35-40% more autonomy.</comment>


The Fall of Travis Kalanick - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-01-18/the-fall-of-travis-kalanick-was-a-lot-weirder-and-darker-than-you-thought <comment><USER2> > After Uber's lawyers insisted the company wouldn't pay Kamel to clean up > Kalanick's personal scandal, Kalanick agreed to pay Kamel $200,000 out of > his own pocket, according to a person familiar with the matter. "The meeting > ended on a positive note, and Travis appreciated Mr. Kamel's openness and > forgiveness," a spokesperson for Kalanick said in a statement.

For $200k for being lectured for a minute, I'd have a lot of openness (of my wallet) and forgiveness too.

</comment><comment><USER3> > "Until 2017, you could go into Uber on any given day and half the T-shirts > were Uber T-shirts," says one executive. "They disappeared overnight. People > didn't want to wear Uber stuff."

<comment><USER4> Speaking for myself, I worked at Uber in 2015/2016 and did not wear Uber swag in public because I was afraid of awkward encounters with Uber drivers, which happened on several occasions sitting in the car when it somehow became known I was an Uber employee.

<comment><USER5> Don't companies usually hand out t-shirt swag with their company names on it?

Most of the time that I see someone with a company logo on their shirt I do not readily assume they work at that company.

<comment><USER6> I would never assume someone walking around with a North Face t-shirt works for North Face but tech companies are obscure, especially outside of the big tech cities. If I see someone wearing a t-shirt for a tech company in my city, they more likely than not work for that company. If I saw someone with an Uber shirt I would assume they work for them, and probably as corporate. I can't say I've ever seen a driver wearing Uber swag.

Personally, most company swag I've worn once or twice and then throw in the Goodwill bag. So it's possible there's some random folks wearing a $NoNameCo shirt, but I'd wager they're just as likely recycled into something else.

<comment><USER7> As a receiver of a lot of SWAG, all of those company shirts become pajamas until the day they go into the H&M donation bag. I can't imagine any situation outside of working for that company where I would want to walk around advertising for them on an uninspired shirt with their logo plastered on it.

I've gotten one single shirt from a hackathon I considered wearing based on their well designed logo, but the entire back is covered in sponsors rendering the entire thing garbage.

<comment><USER8> I can imagine one - I would gladly wear SpaceX swag everywhere I go. Hell, I'd wear a SpaceX-themed tie.

Beyond that, I prefer to order t-shirts with my own design; $random-company swag frequently ends up as home/nightwear for either me or my SO.

<comment><USER9> SpaceX ran a promotion for employees where everything was 50% off. A few of my friends worked there and I was broke so for 2.50 for cofee mugs, hats and shirts was pretty attractive. I was a spacex brand whore for 6 months due to poverty. Love tge company though, if you can ever tour that facility I cant recommend it enough

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I never understood the outrage against video secrely taken by taxi driver Fawzi Kamel. One can clearly see Kalanic was actually pretty humble, well behaved and trying to answer his questions. But Fawzi kept making accusations after another, cutting him off, not letting him answer, being very rude and just not listening. Kalanik's argument that he was running a business was a legit. I just think people would have blamed Kalanik no matter what he did or said.

Taking sabbatical was his definitely big mistake. But with his parents situation he was also at the weakest point which VCs took full advantage of.

Overall, I am firmly in Kalanik's side. Stupid VCs always want to get rid of founder who is in to long term and replace him with someone who would get exist fast. Kalanik was media's punch bag for things he didn't intended or even didn't do. But world needed him, industry needed him. Without him politicians and unions would have eaten away any such companies before it became bigger. Lyft is now ripping fruits seeded by Uber. Without his audacity, Uber wasn't possible.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you've followed the Kalanick story till now, there's nothing new in this article. However, it's interesting to see it all put together.

Anyone know what it's like inside Uber today?

<comment><USER12> For all the uber employees on here reading and defending their stake in the company, the company culture is absolute garbage, it's truly crap. I was interviewed in 2017 and treated like shit, and by that I mean the worst professional experience in my life. I work at a reputable tech company with very reputable people, and I have never experienced the kind of devious, malicious behavior EVER. I can't wait to out the names of the two uber atg employees responsible. Time's up, dickheads.

<comment><USER13> My only experience with the company was a mutual strong no after the rudest phone screen of my life. I was trying to describe how a toy function like the prompt I had just written would be perfect for property checking (a la quickcheck) and the phone screener stopped me partway and berated me for not "getting" unit tests.

<comment><USER14> yep, somewhat similar experience

my interviewer was 15 minutes late to the call, didn't even know what position i was applying for, didn't ask me at all about the assignment they made me do, then ended my call early because they had to be somewhere. already knew i didn't get the job but didn't even get back to me until a month later.

person still works at uber. pretty high up now. i guess i'm glad i didn't get farther given all that came out afterwards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Shamelessly promoting Deepak Chopra on her wellness web site was inexcusable. But proxying Kalanick while promoting "meditation wristbands" for drivers??!

>"Even in top-level conversations where Kalanick appeared to be absent, other executives and board members suspected that Huffington was serving as his proxy. The founder of the Huffington Post was a constant presence at Uber's offices, making suggestions that seemed to promote her new wellness company, Thrive Global Holdings LLC. For example, she wanted to put "nap pods" at driver hubs and give drivers meditation wristbands. Huffington's company received $50,000 in consulting fees from Uber. The perceived self-dealing didn't go over well internally, and she had the money returned, according to a person familiar with the matter. A spokesperson for Huffington says that Thrive provided services at cost, and that Huffington refunded the fees when events required her to take on a more active role at Uber."

</comment><comment><USER16> What's it like to show up to work at Uber? Do people just sit there miserably while they constantly remind themselves that a "big payday" is on the way like some kind of perverse mantra?

What if the pay day never comes? How will it look when your resume says you stayed at Uber well after everything has been revealed?

<comment><USER17> Anyone who is miserable has already left in 2017. Many long time employees are waiting for SoftBank deal to close before leaving which makes sense. They deserve to be enriched for their hard work. But they are only a couple of hundred employees at most. We have 15,000+ employees and 3,000 engineers.

I'm extremely proud of the work I've done at Uber. I have no worries about finding my next job. I have a laundry list of companies who have contacted me since Jan 1, 2018, including FANG.

If the company doesn't want to hire me because of where I work, I'm happy to not work for anyone who makes snap judgements based on resume line items. That's basically like excluding people because of the city they grew up in, the school they went to, or the football teams that they support. I'm happy never working for or alongside people like that.

<comment><USER18> You think bias against someone living in a particular city is comparable to bias against someone voluntarily working for a company with an unprecedented reputation for unethical behavior top to bottom stretching back years and years?

My cohort of friends, many of whom are hiring managers, won't even _patronize_ Uber, much less hire someone who voluntarily worked there without demonstrably showing signs of serious soul searching about the ethics of the company.

<comment><USER19> Seriously? That sounds like quite an exaggeration. Do you believe, in earnest, that all 15,000 people that work at Uber are not worth hiring?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > And in New York, a small union called the New York Taxi Workers Alliance > declared that there would be no taxi pickups from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on > Saturday night at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

> For Uber, that would create extra demand at the airport, which meant it > could charge more—but this would probably cause a backlash. That had > happened before when the company let its "surge pricing" algorithms do their > thing. So the New York managers decided to be good citizens and suspend > surge pricing for the night.

> If the company wasn't price gouging this time, maybe _it was trying to break > up the JFK strike_.

That's actually the opposite of what disabling surge pricing does. It makes sure that drivers aren't paid enough to bother picking up passengers there, so it protects the strike.

People are idiots. Uber should start a campaign featuring polar bears cruising around or something (or maybe make fun of trump on their twitter account if they have to save money) instead of trying to fulfill the publics demands.

<comment><USER21> People prefer unavailability of something to it being available at a high price.

If you walk into a gas station and they say "sorry, we're out of gas" \- no worries, try the next place.

Whereas if they said "we're low on gas, so you have to pay $100 per gallon", there would be public outcry. People would fill up then refuse to pay. People would be forming a mob outside the station.

Rational? No. But it's the way people think, and companies need to adapt to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> _The SoftBank deal will make Kalanick a billionaire._

I wouldn't exactly call that a "fall". A lot of bad behavior but it seems like that behavior is being rewarded handsomely.

</comment><comment><USER23> This story is not over yet.

</comment><comment><USER24> "Silicon Valley innovation now is directly aimed at oppressing the underclass, and everybody knows it and can see it. They hate Uber. People hate Uber. It means the death of the era of good feelings that came with this constant Moore's Law style innovation.

And that was an unforced error, by Silicon Valley. It was in their DNA. They didn't _have_ to give Travis Kalanick, a guy they despised and never trusted, for good reason—They didn't _have_ to give him all that venture capital.

But they saw him as an expendable probe, so they cynically gave him money, to see how much law-breaking he could get away with in the name of their disruption activities.

That was hubris—and nemesis is well on the way."

\- NEXT17 | Bruce Sterling | Live from 2027

<comment><USER25> Uber massively empowered the underclass by destroying the taxi cartels. Lyft exists because of Uber. Even if one argues that Uber deserves to be punished for its various sins, the revolution they helped spark will improve transportation over time. Just demolishing the medallion racket alone is a vast improvement for the underclass, of which pretty much all taxi drivers belonged. Pre-Uber, Taxi drivers were more like indentured workers, with between little and zero hope of ever owning or controlling anything. Medallion prices in New York City reached $1+ million before Uber tanked the scheme.

<comment><USER26> Stop repeating this, it is wrong. Uber copied Lyft, Uber was initially another high end black car/limo service, the whole history was documented on TechCrunch articles, here is one to start: [https://techcrunch.com/2012/05/22/zimrides-lyft-is-going- to-...](https://techcrunch.com/2012/05/22/zimrides-lyft-is-going-to-give-uber- some-lower-priced-competition/)

<comment><USER27> App based rideshare brokering would have happened one way or another. If it hadn't been Uber or Lyft it would have been someone else, or possibly many others. Nobody in particular deserves special credit for coming up with the idea. Although Uber was quite exceptional in their aggressive growth and willingness to challenge the law. I think without Uber and specifically Kalanik, it wouldn't have happened as fast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm curious on his take on cryptocurrency. TK has spent his entire career in the P2P space (file sharing before Uber). I wouldn't be surprised if that is his next move...</comment>


Why the U.S. Treasury Killed a Latvian Bank - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/francescoppola/2018/02/28/why-the-u-s-treasury-killed-a-latvian-bank/ <comment><USER2> "At their scale, that's a small fine. Barely 10% of annual net profit."

HSBC was the bank of money laundering of the mexican drug cartels. They also helped fund terrorist organisations like ISIS. They made it possible to at scale deal drugs in the US.

When they were caught doing this - they shrugged and said they'd try better. Then they got caught doing it again. And they said sorry.

Eventually the government was aiming to indict the bank. There would be criminal charges. People would go to jail.

It is a small fine compared with their conduct. They got 'let off' at the last minute arguably because of 'systemic risk'. Too big to fail. Again.

You can find all about it on Dirty Money on Netflix.

<comment><USER3> > "At their scale, that's a small fine. Barely 10% of annual net profit."

That quote does not appear in the linked article. Where does it come from, and who is "their"?

<comment><USER2> Sorry - that was from a comment below, and wasn't really what I was responding to. 'Their' means HSBC.

Assuming the documentary is accurate - that HSBC was the go to bank for money laundering. That was a big part of their business. That they went out of their way to hide transactions from the government (like transactions to ISIS and cartels). When caught they repeatedly got away with a shrug. That 100k people have been murdered related to mexican cartels - and the claim is that mexican cartels couldn't have operated at that scale without HSBC.

I was responding to the comment below that seemed to be saying the fine was 'big enough'. Which the documentary didn't agree with. The people that brought the charges and investigated HSBC didn't think so. Neither did the journalists who were there when the government tried to pass off the deal as a big success. The management didn't lose jobs. The worst that happened to them was that part of their bonuses were kept back.

Oh and the government dropped all charges in 2017. That part of the deal was the charges remained - ie they did commit crime but suspended sentencing.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hsbc-usa/hsbc-draws- line-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hsbc-usa/hsbc-draws-line-under- mexican-cartel-case-after-five-years-on-probation-idUSKBN1E50YA)

[https://inhomelandsecurity.com/hsbc-cartel-money- laundering/](https://inhomelandsecurity.com/hsbc-cartel-money-laundering/)

[https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/outrageous- hsbc-s...](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/outrageous-hsbc- settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-20121213)

(edit: grammar/spelling fixes)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Tl;DR: They thought they were laundering money.

<comment><USER5> I guess if you are big enough you only get a small fine. e.g. HSBC

<comment><USER6> > _small fine, e.g. HSBC_

HSBC was fined nearly $2 billion [1]. (Still a shame none of the complicit went to jail.)

[https://www.marketwatch.com/story/netflix-documentary-re- exa...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/netflix-documentary-re-examines- hsbcs-881-million-money-laundering-scandal-2018-02-21)

<comment><USER7> At their scale, that's a small fine. Barely 10% of annual _net profit_.

<comment><USER6> Better metric is relative to Mexican, or North American, profits. Those are the markets in which they did their shenanigans. Relative to those, it's a substantial absolute and relative sum.

<comment><USER8> You have to make the entire organism pay a price or else it gets laughed off as a temporary setback.

Jail these folks, and the folks they reported to. You start throwing some bankers in jail and you'll see some magic "self-regulation" kick in.

<comment><USER9> The last thing federal prosecutors want to do is make rich and powerful white people worry. They know which side their bread is buttered on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't see a lot of due process in this execution. Upholding the values of the constitution is only a week-end hobby?

<comment><USER11> Our government feels that the "all men" in "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights" really just means US citizens.

The courts have held over and over that our constitution does not protect the rights of non-citizens. That's why we can legally execute a 'terrorist' in another country with a missile fired from a drone without even so much as them being charged with a crime. With all the false convictions of US Citizens that make it through our "due process," I wonder how many of those extrajudicial executions were based on incorrect information?

Rarely do they even want to respect the constitution for actual US citizens. The protections and rights granted are slowly being chipped away by the executive and legislative branches, and now even the judicial branch is becoming politicized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Since the U.S. dollar dominates international transactions, banning U.S. correspondent banking relationships with ABLV amounts to shutting it out of the global financial network"

How does this figure? Anyone can buy/sell USD on the global FX market, and so pay/accept USD, no?

<comment><USER13> No because to _really_ hold USD, your bank would need its own account on FedWire [1] (USD's Real Time Gross Settlement) in which money is legally guranteed. Alternatively your bank can have an account with a bank (called Correspondent Bank) that have account on FedWire.

Any more indirections would be too risky. If your bank has neither, then no other bank would talk to your bank over SWIFT/CHIPS/RIPPLE/etc, making your bank basically banned from USD banking.

Usually and and in this case, even accusations or investigation of money- laundering/etc would make a CB to derisk [2][3] and proactively cancel account of accused bank or CB would risk access to FedWire. This is how USG was able to force FATCA over the world.

[1] [https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/fedfunds_about...](https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/fedfunds_about.htm)

[2] [https://google.com/search?q=correspondent+bank+de+risking](https://google.com/search?q=correspondent+bank+de+risking)

[3] [https://www.americanexpress.com/us/content/foreign- exchange/...](https://www.americanexpress.com/us/content/foreign- exchange/articles/fedwire-us-dollar-in-international-payments/)

<comment><USER14> > Any more indirections would be too risky.

I'm not sure this is quite true. There is a thriving and legitimate market in "eurodollars", deposits denominated in US dollars but held outside the US, and specifically beyond the reach of US authorities.

The question is whether you would be able to make much use of such deposits without US cooperation. It would definitely be difficult, but it might be possible. I am by no means an expert on this, but i came across an interesting case from the '80s - Libyan Arab Foreign Bank v Bankers Trust Co. Section 3.4 of this book describes it:

[https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Freezing_Assets.html?...](https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Freezing_Assets.html?id=34WwCwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y)

And there's a wider discussion here:

[http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...](http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1622&context=auilr)

The upshot is that a UK judge decided that it was possible to pay out a dollar balance held in London without involving the US. It seems there were several plausible ways to do it. Whether that's still true, i have no idea. Interesting stuff, anyway.

<comment><USER13> I am just reading off internet too. So I may be wrong.

In large indirections (or nesting), there is risk for both depositer and CB. Depositer would have to trust more banks in the chain. For CB nesting means harder to be KYC/KYCC/AML complient [1]. Due to the recent and growing derisking phenomena, nesting is not going to survive.

Eurodollar reads like just another name for correspondent banking, which was also used to escape USA regulations. But no longer works. In 2016, BofA dropped Belize Bank (largest bank by assets) after 35-yrs of relationship with no explaination other than regulatory pressure [2]. And thats how USG get a bank whereever it might be.

Regarding "a dollar balance held in London", unless you mean hard cash, the amount is just a ledger entry in FedWire. So US is very much involved [3].

[1] [https://bizfluent.com/info-10002124-correspondent-payable- th...](https://bizfluent.com/info-10002124-correspondent-payable-through- nested-account.html)

[2] [https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa- bank...](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-banking- caribbean/)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Worldwide_Interban...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Worldwide_Interbank_Financial_Telecommunication#U.S._control_over_transactions_within_the_EU)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Computer Scientists Find Mass Extinctions Can Accelerate Evolution - <AUTHOR> http://news.utexas.edu/2015/08/12/mass-extinctions-can-accelerate-evolution <comment><USER2> This has been know for a long time. The rate of evolution depends heavily on the number of open niches (one might argue that it depends _entirely_ on the number of open niches). Mass extinctions lead to the opening and reconfiguration of a vast number of niches into which existing species will rapidly radiate since a huge number of body plans that were not previously viable now have no competition.

<comment><USER3> Am I misguided to see war as a twisted cross-pollinisation / evolutionary push ?

<comment><USER2> I would argue that war and conflict/territoriality of all kinds (including predator/prey relationships) requires more agency than adaptive radiation. Adaptive radiation takes place over thousands of generations whereas war/conflict take place over a single generation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Given humans are currently causing the 'Sixth' of these major mass extinctions this is relevant. My own view is that there's about to be a massive increase in biodiversity driven by synthetic biology and that this is going to lead to an acceleration in evolution - specifically our newly developed ability to enable horizontal gene transfer between species means improvements nature finds in one evolutionary branch can rapidly be applied to all evolutionary branches.

<comment><USER5> We can imagine a future in which everyone view this genetic craziness as normal, and people feel sorry for us poor benighted fools who live just before the end of the Age of Heredity. Of course, we can also imagine a future in which the world is populated entirely by a ten-meter carpet of rapidly- adjusting and constantly-warring bacteria.

<comment><USER6> Reference Peter Watt's "Echopraxia" \- [http://www.rifters.com/](http://www.rifters.com/)

<comment><USER5> Now I've read it. Great stuff! It will take some time before I work out how it compares against _Blindsight_ , but [SPOILER!?] I was glad to find out that it doesn't all end in bacteria.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Death in general speeds up evolution. Generally the shorter the lifespan, the higher the reproduction rate, and the faster the evolution. Evolution takes place almost exclusively through reproduction and death (anyone not dead can reproduce, anyone dead who hasn't reproduced is a genetic failure, reproducing passes on their genes/characteristics/instincts to the next group). With an extinction where many species die, organisms that were already highly reproductive have a greater chance of one of their offspring living. So the characteristics of a strong desire to reproduce are passed on to survivors. Survivors who haven't died likely have lower lifespans due to difficult times, which psycologically encourages organisms to procreate. This is observed in humans in almost every country. As lifespans go up, fertility goes down. There's no need to reproduce if you're not dying soon.

</comment><comment><USER8> Prior to an extinction event you may be in some kind of equilibrium state where no agents are expressing phenotype a of sufficient novelty to provide a major selective advantage. Once you remove species this creates a vacuum for new phenotypes.

This also makes me think about how new technologies may disrupt the status quo leading to rapid technological evolution as we are seeing now, and in the dot- com

An interesting idea here is that government regulations have the ability to shift the selective landscape away from it's current equilibrium state and drive more technological evolution.

<comment><USER9> Creating new government regulations or the removal of old government regulations?

I would posit that progress in an industry gets 'stuck' due to large companies using their resources/influence to encourage regulation that hinder competition. It then takes very significant advancements in technology to create businesses that are so different that they can compete with incumbents in ways that have not been preemptively regulated.

In fact I would suggest that regulation is the opposite of an 'extinction event'. Regulation is not a random shock and it inherently targets smaller industries/organizations. For instance, "too big to fail" is an example of regulation _preventing_ a mass extinction event. Without "too big to fail", many of the least innovative companies (large banks, GM, etc.) would have gone bankrupt and there would be drastically more progress in these industries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Computer scientists rediscover punctuated equilibrium?

</comment><comment><USER11> An interesting thought-experiment to accompany this. Suppose that you are writing a program to create the best creature through evolution. One potential way of writing the program is to simply let evolution do its work and have the creatures evolve overtime. The other way is to write the program to simulate mass extinction every few thousand/million generations.

This article would suggest that purposely programming in mass extinctions would help speed up the evolution process. This seems counterintuitive given the amount of genetic diversity that a mass extinction would cause.

Perhaps the researchers should try doing this and see if the results fall in line with their own.

<comment><USER12> This is exactly what they did?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> link to the article: [http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0132886)

</comment><comment><USER14> So global warming is a GOOD thing, let the next sentient species figure out how to live durably on the planet :-). It is an interesting challenge to propagate the sum of our knowledge through a global extinction event, something durable enough to survive, and yet with a means of each level unlocking the next level.

</comment><comment><USER15> The speed of evolution is proportional the population size. What extinction can do is open up new niches (environments) that new species can move into and undergo rapid adaption to the new niche. Evolution chugs away unseen and it is only when a new niche opens up does the adaption process become visible.

</comment><comment><USER16> This could have some suprising outcomes - who would have thought that plastic could learn to rot ?

That green plants could haverst power from cables by induction?

If evolution speeds up, the fox rampaging through your garbage, might plant some ambrosia in your backyard to do so undisturbed.

</comment><comment><USER17> If you believe in a platonic ideal of evolution, then maybe this means something to you. Otherwise this would be better titled "Computer Scientists Find Simulated Mass Extinctions Can Accelerate Simulated Evolution".

<comment><USER18> Agreed, the title should be changed. I clicked thinking there was actual factual data here, not a computer program.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yeah, major refactoring of the world sounds good, unless you end up in the obsolete part.

</comment><comment><USER20> Of course: Can get that headline from a simple Markov process argument.

</comment><comment><USER21> Glad to see there are GNOME3 user doing real science job out there</comment>