Inefficient, but Smart - <AUTHOR> https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/6/5/inefficient-but-smart <comment><USER3> I think that the differences between the two models can be attributed to the difference between the cost of human labor in the two countries.

Everything mentioned in the Ecuador example is labor intensive: private sector busses driving around plentifully, moving laborers just parked next to the furniture market standing around waiting, many small proprietorships in close proximity haggling over prices, etc.

The big box model is better in the US where labor is very expensive. The "bazaar" model is better in Ecuador where labor is much cheaper.

<comment><USER4> I read something once that indicated that the industrial revolution started in Europe and didn't really hit places like China as early because China had a huge amount of cheap human labor and Europe had less.

It was proposed that the lack of cheap labor is what drove people to find efficiencies.

Granted I'm not a historian so I can't verify this claim, but it was an interesting dynamic.

<comment><USER5> The causation of the Industrial Revolution is one of those historian's favorites because there isn't a definite "yes" to it, and you can point to origins going as far back as the end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Great Migration. Europe lost its old identity as it went into the medieval period - with one large invasion after the next, it was difficult to keep track of anything - and the new nations that formed from the ashes gradually lost their taste for subjugating and extracting tribute from each other, preferring trade competition instead, which is an innovation! If you look at most earlier empires, there's trade, but it isn't in a systemically central position because the ruling class would stomp out competition. That there were multiple of these nations is critical to the process: it allowed someone who angered a so-and-so to flee elsewhere and keep working. Fleeing is a common recurring theme in biographies of notable early modern people. This allowed Europe to keep holding on to ideas and discoveries over time, putting it in a good position to absorb the world's knowledge.

Why Britain specifically is a subset of the question. One of the precipitating factors often cited is the enclosure movement, which was part of a push for stronger, more logical systems of property rights(a big philosophical movement originating in the late 1600's and gaining steam in the 1700's - "life, liberty, property", utilitarianism, and related ideas all come from this period, and in Britain these ideas were especially popular). Enclosure had the effect of kicking peasants off the farm, leading them into wage labor, and Britain had a colonial system already in place, giving it many export markets and therefore demand for manufacturing. Add to that the local availability of coal and the gradual ceding of governing power to Parliament(another centuries-old process) and you have something resembling a thesis for preconditions of industrial capitalism - a stable country ruled by its merchants, with a strong export market, availability of labor and energy sources, and sufficient knowledge to usefully organize the labor.

<comment><USER4> Thank you

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The idea here of how you furnish a place in the US doesn't match my personal experience. He does mention Craigslist in passing, but simultaneously dismisses it, but I think that's a bit trite. We bought a ton of fixtures, furniture, and even construction materials from Craigslist, St. Vinnies, and our local Habitat for Humanities and saved a pile of cash. We didn't deal with the whole big-box experience. Furniture is similarly dealt with.

Even before Craigslist, there were old fashioned classified adverts and garage sales which weren't as convenient as a single giant market, but gave us options.

From the sounds of it, our luck with Craigslist/ second hand sources was just about as good as his was in Ecuador with one out of our many purchases being a bit of a disappointment.

Also, this paragraph bothered me:

> Here, the process always involves a drive to a big-box store (few of these > are convenient via transit, especially if you need to make multiple stops), > a credit check, some paperwork to commit to a multi-month payment plan, a > scheduled delivery a week or two out, and often some hassle with the > delivery company requiring a phone call in which I sit on hold.

I don't pay for anything other than my car/ house on monthly payments and nobody should. This article is more a criticism of the US _culture_ of debt rather than looking at what options we genuinely have. We've always had the option to pay in cash and not deal with the financing, it's just a bit less convenient. Likewise, if you are willing to deal with second hand goods, we have the option to get second hand goods, you just have to search a bit harder to find them.

Really, the big difference between experiences is the expectation in the US that you will have your own transportation, and that is the real story here in my eyes. In Ecuador public Transportation and casual truck rental works. In the US, it's quite a bit tougher to exist without a reliable car or truck.

I also don't understand why he dismisses CL, yard sales, and recycling stores out of hand because they are right up his "Inefficient, but Smart" alley.

<comment><USER7> > _I don 't pay for anything other than my car/ house on monthly payments and > nobody should_

You should if there's no additional cost for doing so, because that's a free loan. The same quantity of money a few months down the road will be worth a little less than it is today, so you should give it to them then instead of now when you can do slightly more with it. If you can get either 1X and 2Y now or 1X now and 1Y later, you'd be foolish to do the latter.

And if you're thinking "but prices go down, not up", you're both wrong on average and also probably thinking about the exact category of goods (tech gear) that tends to offer interest-free financing.

<comment><USER8> I mean it's "smart" and "efficient" but it's also fragile. The simplest way to manage your finances is to avoid debt wherever possible (especially consumer debt). Very hard to go into bankruptcy when you don't owe anyone anything!

The "smartest" way to manage your finances is to use credit cards that give you points and pay you back via a few hundred dollars worth of free flights a year. But there's a bunch of opportunity costs associated with pursuing that route, and a level of diligence that frankly most people do not have.

The best thing about debt is that it lets you move really really quickly - <USER2> you don't have $2k for that furniture set, you can just finance things and pay it off over 2 years. But that's the worst thing about debt as well - you now have a monthly obligation that's going to be a line item expense for the next 24 months. If you'd spent 12 months saving up for that furniture set and paid cash, the day you buy the goods is the day your financial obligations start and end.

I am not opposed to debt entirely, and think it can be a great strategic lever (I used a credit card to finance my initial move to America which has done wonders for my income and my career, far exceeding the interest costs that I paid). However I think for most consumer purposes it's less of a help and more of a hindrance. Take the new 84 month car loans. That's 7 years! That's a long time to assume that your life will have no material changes, or that nothing will go wrong.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, this is smart.

The most dangerous thing about debt is the tacit assumption you can keep making money as a functional adult. Full stop.

If you pay attention to the life stories of everybody who lives around you, that's actually a very dangerous assumption - it's about as dangerous and unreliable as a farmer assuming he'll never, ever, have crop failure. Some really informal guesstimation for me actually gives kinda comparable rates - 1/10 or 1/5 chances of it blowing up, every year. Just this very year, in fact, I've watched it blow up on half of my coworkers as they got laid off in the pandemic. They may have to default on their mortgages - loans that assumed the "working adult" party would just go on uninterrupted.

Yikes.

Debt can be useful, but man, people really need to only "sail out of sight of land" with a damn good reason. Don't just do it casually to pay for routine things like houses and cars.

<comment><USER8> Yeah that's 100% the truth. You also have to assume that multiple things happen at the same time - what happens if you buy a house two weeks before you get laid off at work and that's swiftly followed by your wife finding out that she's pregnant. Suddenly having 6 months worth of cash in the bank gives you a TON of breathing room.

The more we specialize, the more life becomes fragile, and the smaller the gains become. A Formula One car is incredibly fast, but the amount of attention and money each car requires is orders of magnitude higher than say a Ferrari road car, which is comparatively simple to manage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel like this is the sort of story you hear from a diplomat about how great it is that in some other country they can hire a gardener, nannies, and etc for very cheap. Then they move home to a different country and they bemoan their lack of cheap help.

Is this a great thing? I'm not sure for the folks getting paid very little it is ...

Granted every system somehow relies on cheap labor somewhere so there is more to it than that.

<comment><USER10> Cheapness of labor is not necessary for the system the author is describing to work (although it's probably a factor in how that system is able to be the present equilibrium). The system in Quito may be less efficient (i.e. there may be waste, like extra guys with trucks waiting for customers), but it's also less efficient at concentrating capital. Whether wages are "low" depends on the ratio of those inefficiencies. I can imagine a world where the latter "inefficiency" is maintained as the waste is reduced and wages rise. It would require "gig economy" coordination tools to match capacity to demand efficiently, but the market tech would need to lack power over the workers, whether because of competition or regulation.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure the gig economy really is a good example of positive things as far as wadges / benefits and etc goes.

<comment><USER10> For the "gig economy" to become a good example of positive things as far as wadges / benefits and etc goes, the market tech would need to lack power over the workers, whether because of competition or regulation. That's why I'm not saying "look at Uber, Uber is wonderful." I'm saying I can _imagine_ a system with the best of both worlds. The American political/economic climate hasn't got us there.

<comment><USER4> I'm really skeptical of the idea that you could have everyday people hire other humans for cheap... and at the same time somehow they would make a good income / benefits / etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> With so few data points in the anecdote, there are many narratives you can apply to it that all fit, each with it's own little facet of truth.

One that resonates with what I'm going through in my life right now is that it seems that US culture optimizes for _preventing unexpected bad experiences_ with the consequence that unexpected good experiences are lost too. There is very little serendipity to life in the US today. When you get a couch from Ikea, you know exactly how it's going to go. Every meal at McDonald's is like every meal there you've ever had.

There are, of course, pockets of delight you can find. But, overall, it seems that our culture has trended towards risk-aversion, safety, familiarity. There's a sort of constant infantilization going on where we're trained to believe we _can 't_ handle surprises and thus we should avoid them. Millions of adults read nothing but "Young Adult" fiction. All of our biggest box office movies are comic book adaptations. Millions are on anti-anxiety medication.

Because we avoid taking risks, we never learn to handle them. We never witness ourselves being resilient and gain the self-respect that that garners. So the feedback loop keeps us nestled tighter and tighter in our bubbles.

<comment><USER12> There might be some truth in this, but it's also true that we're really bad at avoiding risks.

The pandemic is a good example of that. Nearly everyone in the US, nearly every business in the US, was almost completely unprepared for it.

A better way to look at it might be that we optimize for being comfortable. It's not so much risk aversion, but since risks make us uncomfortable, we avoid them.

<comment><USER13> Speaking about pandemic, I was very surprised at the cultural differences about face masks. And I don't mean whether people want to use them or not, because you find both kinds of people everywhere. The surprising difference was at behavior of people who thought that using a face mask was a good thing... what was their following step?

My American friends typically did some research, found which types of face masks offer the highest protection, and refused to settle for anything less. Then they complained on social networks about the good masks being sold out.

My Eastern European friends typically found some DYI videos, and then either started making their own face masks at home and selling them on social networks, or just bought them if someone else was faster. In a week or two, everyone had as many masks as they wanted to have. Lower quality, sure, but way better than nothing.

Of course, I am generalizing here, but this was the pattern I noticed, and it quite surprised me, because I honestly expected the opposite thing to happen. I expected Eastern Europeans to beg their governments to do something about the situation, and Americans to handle the situation using their entrepreneurial spirit. But somehow I saw Americans complaining about why Trump didn't do this or that, and Eastern Europeans taking initiative in their own hands; and even the statistics show how the latter approach saved thousands of lives.

Seems like living in a country where you know that everything is unreliable, especially the system (whether you use this word to mean goverment, market, or whatever other power greater than you and your neighbors), provides some valuable survival skills. Now I guess the question is how to develop or maintain those skills when your environment improves. Because, obviously, most people would like to see their situation improve and the environment become more reliable.

<comment><USER11> I'm sure there's some perceptual bias here because you notice the Americans complaining but have no easy way of noticing the Americans who did just silently figure out a way to make do and get on with their lives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > You don't find many small proprietors selling furniture and appliances in > the U.S.; it works in cities like Quito because of the physical model of an > open-air marketplace with many small retail spaces in close walking > proximity to one another.

I'm very skeptical of this claim, it seems like the author has the cause and effect backwards. The physical marketplaces don't exist because there just isn't as big of a market for small furniture makers since labor is much more expensive in the US. (Plus as other commenters point out, few metro areas in the US are as large and dense as a city like Quito, so whatever selection there is will also be scaled down proportionally in most areas).

My now-wife and I still talk about the time years ago when we first moved in together. We needed a couch and walked into a small boutique furniture store in Brooklyn. They had this oversized, soft leather couch that I still to this day remember as the most comfortable couch I've ever sat on. The salesperson came over and started explaining how these are hand-made by one guy in North Carolina, we can choose the exact leather in the color/style we want and the craftsman will sit down at his bench and begin building the couch specifically for us. It was quite a compelling pitch but the couch was almost $6000 which we couldn't afford, so we thanked her and went over to Macy's where we bought a still very nice leather couch for under $800 to be delivered 3 days later.

You can absolutely get a boutique, small-batch, hand-made version of almost anything in the US. But we're so used to the prices that mass-production make possible that the vast majority of people are unwilling to pay for it.

One interesting thing though, is with the internet and direct to consumer brands, and improvements in manufacturing (or at least in easier access to cheap manufacturing), it seems like there are more affordably priced alternatives to big box stores now than there have been for the past few decades. It's a little weird to write an article about furniture buying habits in 2020 that ignores the massive rise of companies like Casper, for instance. The last time I bought a couch I bought it on Wayfair, which was incredibly simple and it arrived just as I expected. It sounds like the author had quite a memorable adventure in Ecuador, but it definitely also sounded like a stressful day of running around, and at least to me ordering online is a much more pleasant alternative.

<comment><AUTHOR> My impression of Brooklyn is that there are a lot of small (but high-end) "makers" based there, or at least selling their goods there. It is not so different from what the author is describing, but on a higher tier of affluence. You can start a small operation in whatever small space you can find, and have many potential customers within walking distance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This reminds me of an essay on Ribbonfarm about legibility[1] and the construction of cities based on a false sense of order. See [2] for a discussion on this.

[1]: [https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea- call...](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-called- legibility/)

[2]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21996377](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21996377)

</comment><comment><USER16> This is pretty much completely anecdotal, and not very useful, to be honest.

The informal stuff doesn't work well. I'm guessing they went to buy their furniture off the informal buses during off peak hours. So they didn't have to deal with the crowds the majority of people have to deal with during regular rush hours, where you will find people hanging off the buses, and others struggling to get in. Sure, the bus may come every 5 minutes, but you may have to wait a few buses to get in.

Further, these are private buses. In the US you can get a cab exactly where you want that takes you exactly where you want. You could also "rideshare". The reason you dont have buses to do that in the US is because people can afford single occupancy cabs. What the person is really complaining about is the fact that the US is richer and things are more expensive.

A cab is a proper analogy to the private transport that is being compared to. And the real complaint is that earning dollars and then paying in dollars in the US is more expensive than earning dollars and then paying in local currency in the 3rd world.

<comment><USER17> > The reason you dont have buses to do that in the US is because people can > afford single occupancy cabs.

It's much more complicated than that, though.

Public transport is looked down upon in the US—not just in the same classist way it is looked down upon in many places, "that's for the plebes", but like many public institutions, it is viewed by many to be inherently worse than private solutions, both ideologically and practically.

To a large extent, it is a victim of the deliberate practice of the American right wing, over the course of at least the last several decades, of reducing funding for public services (because Big Government Bad), then decrying their ineffectiveness (well, duh, they're not doing great because you took away half their budget), and pushing for them to be privatized.

<comment><AUTHOR> Most roads in the US are public, and funded with taxation. Granted, it requires a private car to benefit from them. Still, this suggests that anti- government sentiments can only partially explain this aspect of US transportation.

<comment><USER18> When Huey Long was governor of Louisiana, he wanted to build roads. His opposition did not want to pay for roads. But he managed to wrangle enough budget for 60 miles of road. Then he paved one mile of road in each parish. After having experienced the difference between the single paved mile and their existing mud ruts, the populace voted for a much more substantial road- building program.

(another unusual Louisiana political stunt: [https://www.athensnews.com/news/local/louisiana-gov-huey- lon...](https://www.athensnews.com/news/local/louisiana-gov-huey-long-wanted- the-vote-of-african-americans-so- he/article_976d274f-3593-5df0-a217-7f62987909a1.html) )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Something seems wrong about this analogy.

 _Scarcely any U.S. city can compete with Quito—a place I was told would be poor and dysfunctional—in the ease of getting around on public transit. The network of these informal bus lines has not been coordinated from above._

These aren't "public transit". They are private bus lines. The right comparison is how easy it is to get around the US using private transit like Uber.

In the US, it's also quite possible to furnish your house over the internet, by getting furniture and other items delivered. Far more efficient than traveling about, either on public or private transit.

<comment><USER6> > These aren't "public transit". They are private bus lines. The right > comparison is how easy it is to get around the US using private transit like > Uber.

I agree they aren't public transit in the classic/ US sense, but comparing them to Uber/ Lyft isn't right either since the cost difference is an order of magnitude different. Uber and Lyft very wasteful compared to a busy bus line. Bus transportation in Quibi is $0.25-0.50 by comparison, an affordable amount even where incomes are much lower. If Uber was $1-2, then it would be more comparable.

For lower income workers, the $5.80/ trip minimum Uber fair is simply not an option for daily transportation.

<comment><USER19> Income is also an order of magnitude different between the US and Ecuador. So the cost is pretty similar between the two options in terms of peoples' ability to pay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's a photo essay that is somewhat focused on the same subject:

[https://granolashotgun.com/2019/07/22/the-show-horse-and- the...](https://granolashotgun.com/2019/07/22/the-show-horse-and-the-work- horse/)

It was also discussed on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20497711](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20497711)

</comment><comment><USER20> This is an article about someone who was forced to shop in a way they found surprising and sub-optimal before trying it, and found out that there are upsides to it as well.

Then they proceed to say that they could have done a lot of this via Craigslist, etc, but there are hefty downsides to that.

Yeah, there are hefty (possible) downsides to thgis experience, too.

I'd bet that if there were no big box stores and no small market like this article has, they'd use Craigslist and write an article about how wonderful that experience was after all.

I don't consider myself a big risk-taker, but it seems to me that I'm more of one than the person in the article. I often buy things dirt-cheap and take a chance that they might not be quite right for my needs. I'm _often_ happen with them, regardless of cost. Sometimes I have to take the price into consideration, too, before I'm happy. And rarely I'm just out some money for something that didn't work right.

As for the transportation, I'm betting if the price was higher they'd be unhappy with it. We actually have at-will transportation in all our cities: Taxis. And now that we have Uber/Lyft/etc, there are actually alternatives that are cheaper and arguably better. We even have for-rent bikes and scooters that will often be better than any automobile ride in the city.

Yes, I agree that people should open their eyes and welcome surprises more often... But I don't think the author has really taken that to heart themselves.

</comment><comment><USER21> There are only 10 cities in the USA with populations equal to or greater than the size of Quito's.

I suspect, living downtown in any of those, your furniture-buying experience would likely be quite similar to the Quito experience in terms of the size of the vendors visited and the modes of transportation used for people and furniture. You probably wouldn't legally be able to ride in the pickup bed next to your fridge, though.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, I was going to say you could absolutely recreate most of this experience in a large US city. They will all have furniture districts, with custom made furniture you can look at and buy.

Now, most people don't go to them, because IKEA is cheaper and easier

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It seems like a bit of a contrived example. If I wanted to outfit a house, I could easily go down to the local appliance store (a small one, maybe a couple thousand square feet of retail space), and have something delivered in a couple hours. There are a number of random furniture stores in town that carry a variety of items nothing like the big box stores. And if I did want to go to a big box store, like Home Depot, I could just rent their truck for the afternoon. If I needed to hire some help, that's pretty trivial too.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm absolutely fascinated by the bus system in Guatemala and other central american countries. It's incredible and blows away any system in the US, in terms of price and convenience, if not in safety and comfort.

Even the most remote places have regular bus service, and there's a whole economy around bus stations and vendors selling things on buses. You can get from one end of the country to another for a couple of dollars and for not very much more, there are pullman bus routes between major cities that are a better traveling experience than amtrak.

<comment><USER25> The buses are often just American school buses which have been bought second or third hand, painted garishly, and reused.

<comment><USER13> That just underlines the point. Second-hand American school buses can be put to great use... in a different country... but something prevents using the same solution in USA.

<comment><USER24> Well I think a big part of it is that Americans are a _lot_ taller than Guatemalans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The biggest difference is bureaucracy and control/power it exerts. They have less of it, we have more of it.

They may seem chaotic, but they are more agile because there is no (or little) bureaucracy. In the US things are standardized and predictable but at the cost of inefficient bureaucracy. Over there they have inefficiency of variability.

Neither is good or bad, they just work differently and some people like one over the other.

<comment><USER27> > Neither is good or bad, they just work differently and some people like one > over the other.

They like one over the other when both work out the same. If some accident happens and the bus explodes, killing the passengers, nearly everybody wants more regulation.

People want the standardization and predictability, but they don't want the associated cost and lack of flexibility. That's understandable, but it's also naive.

<comment><USER26> It really depends on people's tolerance for the negative results vs positive impact.

Drug manufacturing, food product, yes you want more regulation because of impact. Where someone sells furniture and whether or not they have a valid business license much less so. Light regulation means more people are self employed.

As economies develop and mature they also develop more regulation. When economies are less i institutional then they have less regulation. We can even see that within the CHOP.

If you overregulate an emerging economy you risk suffocating it.

<comment><USER27> > If you overregulate an emerging economy you risk suffocating it.

Oh, absolutely, I agree. I believe the comparison with more developed economies is often in a "why can't we have this flexibility here"-tone, and the answer is that we could and had, but we've discovered that it's better not to.

It feels a bit like thinking "hey, if I leave my tent at home, I'll travel much lighter and hiking will be more fun", which is true, but sleeping won't if the weather isn't in your favor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I have to laugh at the author's delight in the informal bus system. At home I'm sure he'd love to shout about the evils of "illegal ride sharing" but in Quito:

"if there is demand for a trip (in the form of overcrowding on buses between points A and B), someone is going to figure it out and capitalize on it."

Imagine that!

The words "regulation" or "law" do not appear anywhere in the article. Why are there no open air appliance markets in the US selling maybe-working gas stoves? Surely not safety or consumer protection laws. No, the obvious explanation is that the owners of capital are wish it to be so.

</comment><comment><USER29> Life definitely is easier when there is a large underclass of disenfranchised poor people willing to do anything. Why has no-one considered this before?

(On a serious note, this is basically a meme at this point. Someone sees a thing, blames it on corporate greed. You may be a worker in a big-box store but you will make more money, you take less risk, and you get the opportunity to retire with some dignity rather than work yourself into a coffin. Poverty tourism is great fun but it is quite tragic when you see other people suffering and think there is nobility in that.)

<comment><AUTHOR> That strikes me as an uncharitable reading of this article. The guys transporting appliances in a pickup truck are, in some sense, forced to do that to survive. However, the author's point concerns the opportunity they are capitalising on. In this environment, one can start an appliance transport business with a truck and some strong men. The environment of the USA has many more barriers to entry, and that influences the types of enterprises that exist there.

<comment><USER30> They're inextricably linked, though. It's always much easier to start a small business in a relatively-unregulated environment, but that's because nearly zero thought or protection is being given to the drivers' or loaders' living wages, healthcare, eventual retirement, actual health (as in long-term occupational stress on the body), or even ability to be compensated for severe workplace injuries. All of the things we privileged Americans complain about in cases like Amazon's treatment of their warehouse and shipping workers are orders of magnitude worse, in practice, for most of these opportunistic workers in Ecuador.

<comment><USER31> I lived in Ecuador, all these people will have retirement and healthcare thru the IES([https://www.iess.gob.ec/](https://www.iess.gob.ec/)), equivalent to the US Social Security. It's not a perfect system but neither is US retirement if you don't have 401k or some kind of private retirement plan, the healthcare could be slow sometimes and you spend 30 mins to an hour to see the doctor but it works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This reminds me of "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast,_Cheap_%26_Out_of_Control](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast,_Cheap_%26_Out_of_Control)

Spoiler alert: the FC&OOC approach to robotics did not succeed. It has been superseded by more expensive, more sophisticated, more reliable systems that have gradually come down in price through economies of scale.

<comment><USER13> Very roughly speaking, fast and cheap things can be great end products, but bad ingredients.

If you want to buy a cabinet for normal use, fast and cheap is probably better, as long as it doesn't fall apart. But imagine that you would want to buy hundred cabinets and build a huge block out of them, or something like that. At that moment the weaknesses of individual pieces add up, and the whole structure is likely to collapse. To make the structure not collapse, you need to build it from reliable and thus more expensive pieces. (And, as you said, economies of scale can sometimes do something about the high price.)

I think the frustration many programmers feel at their jobs also has a similar origin. We use dozens of "fast and cheap" tools, and each of them individually is better than nothing, but using them all together means you spend a lot of time angry about this or that problem. (And when finally most of the annoying problems get fixed, a new programming language appears, and everything needs to be rebuilt again.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The American suburban model of separating structures out by usage type is not efficient in the least. It is orderly, but that is about it.

</comment><comment><USER33> Many buildings in NYC require people delivering furniture to have certificate of insurance, and to schedule deliveries 48 hours in advance. This creates a lot of overhead, and makes it hard for 2 guys with a truck to compete, as they often lack the administrative skills necessary to operate in this environment

</comment><comment><USER34> It's funny that the United States prides itself on being the heart of capitalism, where anybody can allegedly strike out on their own and make their own way thanks to The Market.

But in reality, Ecuador sounds much more capitalistic (in the positive sense) than the United States. Today's United States is just as elite-ruled and hostile to the little guy as the next developed nation - possibly more so - it's just that in our case, many of the elites are overly-powerful capitalists instead of government officials or (nominally) oligarchs. But the end result is the same.

I think the basic fallacy that so many voters have in their heads is that that big businesses and small are on the same side politically. But the reality couldn't be further from the truth.

</comment><comment><USER35> > There are of course now online options for small vendors—Craigslist, > Facebook Marketplace, etc.—but that model has its own substantial downsides > for something you really want to be able to touch and test out before > purchase.

While in general I am a fan of the "small l" _hyper-local libertarianism_ of Strong Towns (I'm a contributor), at least when it comes to things like housing zoning and small scale commerce, I think this demonstrates that the writer has a fundamental unfamiliarity with how Craigslist works for used goods purchases today.

Here's my recent anecdote to support this: I just sold a clothes dryer and furniture set on Craigslist. Both transactions involved meeting potential buyers on site and demonstrating to them that the goods were functional, and even helping them load the goods into their vehicles. One of the items was loaded into a beat-up pickup truck either borrowed or rented by the purchaser from another individual.

The biggest issue with the Craigslist process was that as a seller I received multiple scam requests, and as a buyer at other times, I've found that the item I inquired about was a scam.

But it's very much an in-person commercial experience.

Where I do think Latin America is leaps ahead is in creativity in using items in design that our US-based market-segmented big-box consumer mentalities don't get a chance to ponder. Examples are the Acapulco chair - made of simple plastic PVC thread and a metal frame [1], which was turned into high design (vs the terrible PVC lawn chairs designs of the 70s and 80s in the US), and the many examples of use of upcycled materials to build homes in Mexico [2]

1\. [https://www.patioproductions.com/blog/patio- furniture/iconic...](https://www.patioproductions.com/blog/patio- furniture/iconic-history-of-the-acapulco-chair/)

2\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52TLLZz6lq8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52TLLZz6lq8)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hl6iDHm3yk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hl6iDHm3yk)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVqM6ZTaXbE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVqM6ZTaXbE)

</comment><comment><USER36> This is not a compelling article. It doesn't even rise to the level of anecdata.

</comment><comment><USER37> The "Bureaucracy vs Markets" or "Top-Down vs Bottom-Up" debates are stale.

These ideas had purchase a generation ago, when these ideas were proxies for Soviet vs American ideological sparring. That ended 30 years ago.

Meanwhile, it seems trite to have these conversations in the abstract... comparing Ecuador to the US. It's not like these ideas haven't penetrated the political realm. They've been paramount in politics, policy and political thought for decades. Local, National & International.

This is positively naive:

 _" a swing back toward a messy city and a messy marketplace full of small proprietors—what I've heard called "capitalism with more capitalists"_"

We need to either find new ideas, and importantly, new terms. At the least, we could mine some new old ideas. How about Khaldun instead of Smith for a change... he was the original anyway.

<comment> Ar-Curunir Both the Soviet economy and capitalism as we know it are centralized economies; neither are bottom-up planned. Sure, maybe capitalism has some competition between large companies, but that's the extent of it.</comment></comment>


Metasploit on iOS - <AUTHOR> https://community.rapid7.com/community/metasploit/blog/2012/08/21/metasploit-portable-ios

<comment><USER2> Phones are computers. We really should be past the point where someone is impressed that a phone can run $PROGRAM.

Well, after our Lords and Masters the Glorious Carriers have been bypassed and the phone is rooted, anyhow. I really loathe how successful they have been at closing the computers-we-call-cell-phones off. Did I mention that we shouldn't be living in a world where running $PROGRAM on a phone is something that impresses people?

</comment><comment><USER3> Metasploit runs on other phones too. The Nokia N900 for example. The PwnPhone (<http://pwnieexpress.com/products/pwnphone>) is a commercial supported version of packaged tools for the N900 but the tools can be installed separately.</comment>


Login.gov - <AUTHOR> https://login.gov/ <comment><USER2> I'm a little confused. First, they say:

> _login.gov implements the latest National Institute of Standards and > Technology (NIST) standards for secure authentication and verification._

Then:

> _Two factor authentication requires that you login with your password and a > code that we send to your phone._

I assume they're referring to SMS (I see references to Twilio)... but didn't NIST just recently say that SMS wasn't acceptable for 2FA?

Quite pleased to read this, though:

> _We welcome external review of our privacy-protection measures. All of our > code is available for public inspection in an open-source repository._

\-- [https://login.gov/security/](https://login.gov/security/)

<comment><USER3> SMS isn't great for security, but it's better than nothing and it scales well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Woah! Cool idea. Never thought we'd get something so 2010 from the U.S. government so early.

<comment><USER5> To be fair, 2010 technology in use by the U.S. government in 2017 is actually pretty impressive. The expectation is usually 2000 technology in use by 2017 (and that's, like, bleeding-edge).

<comment><USER4> > To be fair, 2010 technology in use by the U.S. government in 2017 is > actually pretty impressive.

That was the joke. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's the blog post announcing the effort if you want to see behind the scenes: [https://18f.gsa.gov/2017/08/22/government-launches-login- gov...](https://18f.gsa.gov/2017/08/22/government-launches-login-gov/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I like it. Very happy to see the US Government's digitization efforts continue. At least we can can see SOME aspects of our government improving.

</comment><comment><USER7> Australia has MyGov and I have to say it works really well [https://my.gov.au](https://my.gov.au).

Linking accounts is fairly painless and I assume it also functions as a pseudo MDM (Master Data Management) tool in that Government departments have a unique key to link people across different services.

</comment><comment><USER8> It sounds like a much simpler idea than GOV.UK Verify although the integration (SAML) seems quite similar.

Shame a lot of the SAML integration libraries don't seem that great

</comment><comment><USER9> I'd like to bid on the United Nations login system.

<comment><USER10> I don't believe there is any one unified system for end users (obviously they have no citizens, only employees/agents/representatives), just AD for each council/mission/etc.

But I do believe you're joking and I'm a pedant.</comment></comment>


Spaghetti-breaking problem stumped Feynman. Two MIT students have now solved it - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/08/16/this-spaghetti-breaking-problem-stumped-physicist-richard-feynman-two-mit-students-have-now-solved-it/ <comment><USER2> Previous Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17758151](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17758151)

Posted nearly a dozen time in the past 7 days: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Spaghetti&sort=byDate&dateRang...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Spaghetti&sort=byDate&dateRange=pastWeek&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)</comment>


Detecting Russian Bots on Reddit - <AUTHOR> https://www.briannorlander.com/projects/reddit-bot-classifier/ <comment><USER2> I found the frequency and intensity of crypto currency involvement, across many communities, very interesting and enlightening in this post. Beyond just creating political turmoil, there's a case to investigate further just how much the Russians were involved in building and collapse a massive economy.

</comment><comment><USER3> Incredible analysis. I wish there was more! In my experience over the last few months on r/politics, the bots are extremely easy to detect just by reading the new feeds (especially in megathreads, they are _everywhere_ ).

For example, the most common elements are:

\- repeated copy+paste comments (every 5 minutes or so) that follow the pattern: "I'm literally shaking and crying, I'm a democrat and so lost! Everything is over! Trump is innocent and I'm literally crying". Various accounts will comment various interpretations of this every few minutes.

\- "lololol trump is innocent, where is your apology stupid libs" Intentional lowercase, no care for grammar, and direct insults to "the left". Again, these will repeat from the same accounts and others every few minutes

\- "now that the report shows exoneration and the president will be indicted you libs lose!" No understanding of the words' meanings. Using 'indicted' to mean the opposite of what it means without knowing, etc.

\- Most of the comments will be deleted after being called out, or will be deleted within 30 minutes regardless

\- "the report says no more charges will be filed, maga!" Again this is just a lie, total fabrication with no basis in reality.

\- The bots will all align around a few "talking points" where they all use the same words and phrasing. These can last just a few days or sometimes you'll see the same ones for months. The "talking points" often have nothing to do with the news of the day and seem to be meant as distraction or other disinformation

\- The common theme among all of them is that they _spread lies, use coordinated disinformation campaigns, and aim to confuse and distract from reality_.

The reality, of course, is the Russia is attacking the United States, our elections in 2016 were compromised and broken completely, and that we now have an illegitimate government that enables the attacks from Russia to continue.

Democracy is under attack. The Russian bots on reddit are _easy to spot_ and hilarious to deal with, until you realize how much damage they are actively causing. From my eye, it seems like the attacks have dramatically ramped up recently - but I don't have the hard data to show it. Just my experience calling out Russian bots on reddit in the r/politics megathreads.

<comment><USER4> > The common theme among all of them is that they spread lies, use coordinated > disinformation campaigns, and aim to confuse and distract from reality.

Judging from the examples you gave, I disagree with this conclusion. It looks more like they're trying to make liberals and conservatives look bad to each other, by playing up stereotypes. The primary aim seems to be to _divide_.

<comment><USER3> Okay, but my summaries don't do it justice. Unfortunately for those not there for the events, it is difficult to communicate what it is like. Imagine the human time wasted when dozens of people reply "oh honey don't get so upset, it's okay, that's not what the report says, here's a link" etc. The number of human-hours wasted with good-intentioned people trying to make the bots feel better is a sad sad sad thought ....so much time wasted.

They also talk to each other, creating super confusion about who is real and who is not. Maybe those responses are written by bots too, to make us think some are real?

The sheer quantity of lies, especially lies that have nothing to do with the topic at all, leads me to believe the aim is a lot more than "to divide". The aim is also to disinform and to waste time of good people, who could be doing more important things but now feel they have to stop the spread of lies.

I apologize for my sample being incomplete and the summaries not sufficient. You really have to be there in the trenches seeing it happen. Check the next big news megathreads and you'll see it.

100s of comments per minute, many of them fraudulent and full of lies. You can go there and pick apart the details yourself to come to your own conclusions about it.

But you have to go there live - they delete their comments so rapidly that future study of the events is very difficult.</comment></comment></comment>


Developing with subdomains just got a lot easier: *.lacolhost.com - <AUTHOR> http://blog.reenhanced.com/post/29566591244/developing-with-subdomains-just-got-a-lot-easier

<comment><USER2> ANY developer that uses this should be fired on the spot.

Moreover, if you're a developer that doesn't know how to do this on your local box, go flip burgers NOW.</comment>


Whole Foods Workers Push to Unionize - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/whole-foods-workers-push-to-unionize-1536235201 <comment><USER2> This sounds like something Amazon would do its best to crush out of hand.</comment>


Sending back my iPhone 4S. Siri is useless outside the US. - <AUTHOR> http://scotchandcode.com/2011/10/17/sending-back-my-iphone-4s/

<comment><USER2> With many previous Apple product launches, the product wouldn't even be available outside of the US for several months.

They're adding international and non-English support for Siri's features over the next year. I'd rather have the phone already than wait for that.

 _Where was that warning on the iPhone information page?_

They seem to be fixing this: Siri isn't even listed on the Canadian iPhone site anymore, though it was at launch. It is still on the Australian site, however.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ok, keeping mine because it works very well in the US. Hopefully, we're now at the center of an outward-expanding wave that will eventually result in everyone speaking to their phones instead of poking at them.

I have always been deeply skeptical about voice-to-text. Dragon? Too many errors. No way. But in just a couple of days I got used to dictating text messages. It's like voicemail people actually listen to! Who knows how many other applications will be transformed.

If I'm driving down the road and want a pizza, I guess it would be swell to tell Siri and have her come back with 23 pizza joints in the vicinity (I listened to my son do this and more) but trying to find stuff just doesn't come up that often in my life. What I really need is an assistant to help me remember the things I already know, like what I want to do tomorrow and what I've got to do. This is the area I'm hoping not to be disappointed in. But that's tomorrow. Today, reveling in all the things I can do I couldn't before.

</comment><comment><USER4> So let me get this straight, this guy spent hundreds of dollars just for Siri's location-based recommendations? Don't get me wrong I'm a bit underwhelmed with the iPhone 4S, but it strikes me as extremely capricious to decide to spend hundreds of dollars and get one of the first ones to suddenly turn around because you can't get Yelp reviews with Siri.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not just that you can't get yelp reviews.

You can't search for business, locations or maps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Being the killer feature on the upgrade, I definitely agree they should've made it clearer that they don't support non-US addresses. I don't expect Yelp recommendations and other such things to work, but maps and routes is something that's pretty well developed in a huge part of the world and already works on the normal Maps app.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm confused. Is search for locations really the only useful feature Siri offers? Might it be that the guy is ever so slightly exaggerating?

What Apple has screwed up are the non-US english language webpages. They list features Siri doesn't support.

The German webpage really only lists what Siri supports: <http://www.apple.com/de/iphone/features/siri.html>

Still, it's minor issue.

</comment><comment><USER7> It does say "Siri may not be available in all languages or in all areas, and features may vary by area." at <http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/siri.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> That's misleading in itself. The language makes it sound like there's only a small or minor limitation. It's not that is "may not be available", it's that it "is NOT available for most features outside of the US".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just set Siri to use australian english rather than US english and it had no difficulty understanding me. (I'm an NZer living stateside so I can't really comment on any other issues)

</comment><comment><USER9> Don't troll that you're sending your iPhone back in the title and then hem and haw in the comments that you might keep it around. What's the Austrailian translation for drama queen?

</comment><comment><USER10> "beta"

<comment><USER11> This is something unexpected... Why can't a BETA product that can search in a map in a place not search in another place. Are you suggesting that making a Google maps search is different in USA and Australia and even if so, all jwilson511 is saying is please mention it somewhere before someone purchases the product.

Thanks for the advice</comment></comment>


The $75 eBook: A True Story - <AUTHOR> http://digitalbookworld.com/2010/the-75-ebook-a-true-story/

<comment><USER2> Contrary to the title, this talks about how Aaron Wall transitioned from eBooks to a resources/community site model with a recurring revenue component ($300 a month currently -- disclaimer, I moderate for his forums). This is a subject he is very, very passionate about because he spent way, way too much of his time and energy on pathological customers at the bottom of the SEO market, which is filled with scum and villainy.

"Charge more money, get better customers" is a repeatable effect I've seen in my business and in several other ones. My anecdotal sense is that every time Aaron ups the price, the quality of his forums go up. I'm not saying that to shill, its just that when folks got in for $50 we got a lot of "I have a website about Nintendos how do I make $1 on AdSense A DAY?!?" and now that it costs $300 a month it is mostly people with real businesses who have existing SEO strategies and want feedback on improving them. This makes me happy because it means I spend less time writing newbie advice and more time writing intellectually interesting ideas for e.g. how to execute linkbait better.

I think this is probably applicable to most of the SAAS businesses here. Every time I see stats published from a SAAS business -- every single time -- the most revenue comes from the most expensive plan. That and the pathological customer bit suggest that one could probably just ignore the $9 / month crowd and concentrate on more well-heeled customers. Some people will scream bloody murder: invite them to use your $9 / month competitors. Now they're somebody else's problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> About 8 years ago I helped a friend put together an SEO book he wrote (along similar lines as the old SEO Book) that he went on to sell at $37 a copy - title is "search engine optimization strategies" if you want to find it.. don't want to get accused of linking for profit :-) Revenues well into the six figures by now and residual sales continuing. There's money in them thar hills (though not for me, I got paid for my hours at the time only, oops!).

</comment><comment><USER4> Successful online poker players have managed to sell their e-books for nearly $1000 (see <http://www.balugapoker.com/books.html> or <http://dailyvariance.com/let-there-be-range.html>, for example). I really doubt they're doing the same volume this guy is; however, given the price difference, they only have sell 1/13 as many books to break even with him...

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting that he pointed out how Google suggests searches like "seobook torrent". I've often thought that if I were selling things likely to be pirated, I'd plant lots of broken copies my products out there. But you could also SEO those terms and try to steer people to a different landing page instead.</comment>


NASA: Indian satellite destruction creates space junk, threatens safety of ISS - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-space-junk-india-destroying-missile-threaten-international-space-station-terrible-thing-2019-4 <comment><USER2> Former DRDO scientist Ravi Gupta told TOI, "Such comments by the Nasa head are discriminatory and irresponsible. It's more of a propaganda. India's test was conducted at 300km altitude and the ISS is at much higher altitude. There is a remote possibility of debris moving upwards and even if some pieces are moving upwards, they will ultimately fall down as they will lose energy or momentum they gained during the missile-satellite collision. Second, the US is blaming us but it itself had conducted a lot of A-Sat tests in the past which generated thousands and thousands of big size space debris, which already pose danger to all space assets of every country, including ours. Likewise, a lot of space debris was created during the similar tests conducted by Russia and China. [https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/nasa-says-a-sat- te...](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/nasa-says-a-sat-test-debris- pose-danger-to-iss-indian-experts-rubbish-claim/articleshow/68689579.cms)

<comment><USER3> The tone of the NASA statement could have stated that "Debris from India's successful destruction of an obsolete satellite demonstrates why the nations of earth should be working to eliminate this kind of warfare."

Yes. I know. But I can dream can't I?

It's all just lovely isn't it? And people make fun of Trump establishing an independent space defense organization. Earth is going to be a mess after we all knock each other's satellites out of the sky. Oh well, let that be our last battlefield.</comment></comment>


Ask PG: San Francisco or Peninsula  - <AUTHOR>

What location (in general), is better for tech entrepreneurs? And has the bulk of the startup scene shifted from the Peninsula to San Francisco? <comment><USER2> When I moved out here two years ago, I figured 80% of the startups out here were in Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Cupertino. I was pleasantly surprised how many startup are in the city ("the city" is what locals call San Francisco).

You can't go wrong either or... it depends on your needs and there is no right answer. Both are good options.

A few tips: Try to be within reasonable walking distance of either a BART station or the Caltrain. This will give you an excellent public transportation option to easily bypass freeway gridlock when travelling between the Peninsula and SF.

Also, a good option may be a happy middle... such as San Mateo or Burlingame. There are startups here as well and you wouldn't be more than 30 mins on the train to Mountain View or SOMA, San Francisco.

EDIT to add disclaimer: I live in MV within walking distance of YC actually. It's very nice but also an hour to SF on the train.

</comment><comment><USER3> In my own personal experience, I've found that there seems to be a cultural difference between the two locations. The nexus of enterprise/SAAS seems to be firmly seated in the Peninsula, while consumer/apps is in SF. That's not a universal rule, but seems to be the predominating trend amongst the type of companies in each general area.

</comment><comment><USER4> Checkout Redwood city, easy access to the train and closer to Palo Alto.

One thing to realize is that the Peninsula is where us old farts with kids live, if I was single I would live in the city.</comment>


RIM hires J.P. Morgan For "Strategic Review" - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/29/rim-halts-trading-to-issue-business-update-hires-rbc-and-j-p-morgan-for-strategic-review/

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't be surprised if it was part of preparation to acquisition by Facebook.</comment>


Ask HN: Low-cost office options for independent contractors in New York City? - <AUTHOR> Someone asked a very similar question as this one, but it was years ago and the answers were mostly around coffee shops and libraries where you can concentrate.
I was wondering if anyone has any ideas or recommendations for WeWork-like desk space that doesn't have as high a monthly cost (we work is about $600 for just a desk).  Or is that just the going price?
It'd be great to have a place to work outside of the house during the week, and even the weekend, where I'd go to study since home isn't all that comfortable or quiet.  A buddy recommended some university libraries, which are an option.  But  a library is not a place I'd be able to work from very easily, just study. <comment><USER2> Why can't you work in a library? I've been looking for a place to go outside of my home office, and I was going to check out the library next week. They have wifi, it's quiet -- not sure what else I need that I could get outside of my house.

<comment><AUTHOR> The public library?

Someone sent me a sign-up for a 'Friends Of ..' University library here in the city, where you can pay a yearly subscription for access, even if you're not an alumni or student. It's an option, I guess! I will check it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Orbital is $400 without a dedicated desk. It's not possible to run a sustainable business in NYC below that price.

<comment><AUTHOR> They look very interesting. Like a more intimate, lower-cost WeWork. Wooden chairs and conference tables don't look like the most comfortable IT workspaces in the world, but I may check this out. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Founder of ZOHO Gives Bootstrapping Tips on Mixergy - <AUTHOR> http://mixergy.com/sridhar-vembu/ <comment><USER2> As I said in the interview, I am a regular on Hacker News, and would be happy to answer any follow up questions (well, at least the ones I can answer ;-))

<comment><USER3> What's your presence in India? Do you develop locally?, sell locally?

Is it still an exciting place to be for a software person?

<comment><USER2> Our office is in Chennai, where we have over 1000 employees. All our software development is in Chennai.

Is India an exciting place to be for a software person? Yes, absolutely!

<comment><USER4> Great work SridharVembu and zoho team. I'm interested to know the technical composition of the Zoho project teams? How does it work?

Without engineering graduates and constantly evolving programming languages, frameworks, paradigms, and tools, how do you keep to speed and scale ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fascinating comment thread on the first TC write up of Zoho:

[http://techcrunch.com/2005/10/02/zoho-writers-ajax-word- proc...](http://techcrunch.com/2005/10/02/zoho-writers-ajax-word-processor/)

The first comment (from Jason Fried): That's a total rip of Backpack. I'd think twice about covering such blatant rips like this — it hurts your credibility to support these sorts of businesses and ventures.

Zoho is yet another example of why competition is not something to avoid!

</comment><comment><USER6> How do you hire engineers? I have heard that you hire kids from schools in Chennai/Madras itself and teach them programming and basically equip them to create practical solutions.

Also, how come we hardly get to hear about some Zoho engineers leaving the company to create their own startup. What's the secret that engineers are so happy working with you?

<comment><USER7> // Sridhar, allow me to answer the 2nd part.

I guess you don't imply that Zoho engineers who leave the company to create their own startups were not happy working there.

I was happy.

That was the reason that I ended up working for over 8 years instead of _just 2 years in some software company to gain experience and then start out on my own_ , which was my goal when I joined there from college.

Regarding the secret, I believe it boils down to the work culture. He encourages and respects feedback from every employee.

Anyone can provide feedback/opinion - including about CEO's actions, directly on a company wide forum and have the CEO respond to it. He agrees if he may be wrong and does not mock at you if you were silly. That attitude encourages open culture. So you do not have "Yes Sir, OK Sir" coding-monkeys, but much better engineers who are satisfied with their work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hey sridhar, question for you: I have heard the reasoning behind zoho hiring out of schools rather than colleges, but considering that most of the most pleasant as well as least pleasant experiences of my life occurred inside college, don't you think you're depriving people of an experience that they can get nowhere else?

I know that it's upto the kids to decide whether they want to take the job or not, but if I had been given a study for 4 more years or start earning now offer, before I entered college, I would have taken the job. I would hardly do the same now that I know more about life in college.

<comment><USER9> Most of the 'engineering' colleges in chennai are geared towards churning out Outsourcing/BPO fodder. Technically minded folks would have a hard time there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> interesting interview. I never would have guessed Zoho was doing 40M in revenues, 12M+ in profits. They have a lot of great tools for small businesses. I have yet to find a better (and free!) CRM alternative than what they offer.Never again will Benioff or Ellison get a penny from me!

</comment><comment><USER11> $40 mil revenue is largely from their products and services on the network management and element management side (called AdventNet). They are not exactly a typical startup.

<comment><USER12> Not sure what you mean. Which successful (non-acquired) startup do you consider typical?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I got a good feel for the origins of Zoho from the interview but I am a bit disappointed with the drop outs. It's normally not an issue but this time it sounded like Andrew let a few points slide without clarification or followup.

EDIT: Andrew - have you thought about having another band available for running your audio through when Skype's playing up?

<comment><USER14> I have to give Andrew and his guests credit for continuing through the skype issues. It must be tough after the nth disruption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is there anyway to download that video from mixergy? I would like to save a local copy.

(Heard mixergy is a paid services for older articles)

<comment><USER16> I may be downvoted for this, but...

      -If you're on a Mac, navigate to the page using Safari.
      -Start playing the video
      -Open the Activity window (shortcut: command + option + a)
      -You should see a large file being downloaded into your cache.
       (In this case, it'll be from Wistia CDN).
      -Hold the option key down and double click on the file.
      -The file will now download to your downloads folder
        as a .flv which can be opened by VLC.

This will work for most video sites on the web: Youtube, etc.</comment></comment>


Show HN: JobPatrol – Monitor if a website you are visiting has jobs open - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/duiker101/JobsPatrol <comment><AUTHOR> I recently started looking for jobs again and I often like to see if the websites I visit have any open positions but I get annoying having to find the link to the career pages. So I made an extremely simple browser extension to make the process faster. That's all.

<comment><USER2> Career pages are the worst.

I was applying for a job at one site... you had to watch several minutes of videos, and answer a questions about the videos before you could submit your application. It was like they put their high level "welcome to the company" videos in front of people applying. Brutal.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow that's the polar opposite of the experience I had. The last 2 jobs I had I applied via those pages and I always felt like it was a more direct way to get in touch with the team rather than going through a recruiter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> I'm trying to add the chrome extension but when I choose add I get the error:

"Could not decode image: 'icon.png'"

Not sure if this is more me or the extension.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll check it as soon as possible, thanks for letting me know

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hey! Looks very interesting. Unfortunately, the link on the Readme.MD appears to be broken for Firefox.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed, [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- GB/firefox/addon/jobpatrol/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- GB/firefox/addon/jobpatrol/)</comment></comment>


.NET Reflector Pro is awesome - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rthand.com/post/2009/10/07/net-reflector-pro-is-awesome.aspx

<comment><USER2> If I understand this, Reflector Pro is just Reflector integrated with VS's debugger, so you can step through decompiled .NET code. Because other than that, the free version of Reflector (which you should definitely get) has done this stuff for years.

<comment><USER3> Well, I think you're underplaying the awesomeness of being able to step through library code you're using, _even when you don't have the source_. That's crucial for understanding overridden method and event dispatching scenarios, where your code gets called from the bowels of third-party code.

To put it another way, I think you're missing the forest for the trees, i.e. the benefits for the features, in a way that so many engineers do. The crucial feature isn't new. The benefit of this application is huge, and improves the usefulness of plain decompilation (+ analysis etc.) by about 3x IMO.

<comment><USER2> I guess I agree. I have had to debug .NET code through plugins like the Deblector before, and it's not fun. Thankfully, I don't have a job that often requires me to single-step .NET.

All I want to point out is, the capability of turning bytecode into high-level source code isn't new. It's something the free version of Reflector has done beautifully for years. If you work in higher-level languages (like Java, C#, PHP or Python), you should probably be aware that your source code is out there, even if you publish only bytecode.

<comment><USER4> I'm never going to forget the shock on the faces of my co-workers when I told them that by using reflection and looking at the bytecode/MSIL you can get pretty much anything that's in the executable. "But why does .NET allow you to access private fields? Isn't that a security hole in .NET?" They apparently based the security of their application on the assumption that an attacker cannot read private fields of their objects. Man, do I need to find another job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What I want is Find Usages/References in code I don't have the source for without having to use FileDisassembler (and crank out the entire thing into .csprojs and .slns).</comment>


Time to Tell America's Dogs This Arrangement Won't Last Forever - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-13/working-from-home-getting-your-dog-ready-for-your-office-return <comment><USER2> [http://archive.is/ZX7o7](http://archive.is/ZX7o7)</comment>


Show HN: Just 6 days to go – save your business from obamacare penalties now - <AUTHOR> http://aca-obamacare.com/home

<comment><USER2> This is a website run out of India (check the whois records). Seems like a tricky way to collect information on employees at businesses. This shouldn't be on the front page of HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is not a hoax – I'm the creater and I have no interest to collect and run away with your business information :-)

Read the government requirement here: [http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/newsroom/tr13-02.html](http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/newsroom/tr13-02.html)

Also this article to get more info: [http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-09-03/what- small-b...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-09-03/what-small- businesses-need-to-do-for-obamacare-before-oct-dot-1)

However, your comment has costed the website to suddenly jump off the home page.

<comment><USER2> Stuff like this should only be on a .gov website and nobody in their right mind should enter in employee information into a random third party website run out of India by a single dude with a hotmail email address for a whois record. Nice try.

<comment><AUTHOR> I couldn't disagree more. With your line of argument, start ups shouldn't exist because "a dude from his garage cannot be trusted with business info." Anyway The information being asked can very well be bought/scraped if somebody needs to.

<comment><USER2> Your site isn't a startup.

<comment><AUTHOR> Keep on imposing your line of argument, and of course downvoting. But the truth is I was trying to solve a pain for small businesses most of which have not yet complied by sending the notification. It seems you never tried the website and started with your baseless arguments. Again with this website I have just made electronic delivery of the notification simpler as the same requires that "delivery is tracked". I just take employees email and name (optional) and basic business information necessary to prepare the model notice obtained from DOL website.

Solving somebody pain is a path to a startup, if you have some other definition please feel free to live by that.

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry that your ~14 day old website didn't make you millions on all the name and email addresses that you could have harvested and sold to the highest bidder. Good luck with your future ventures.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see where you are coming from. It seems that you are already into selling emails business therefore you see others doing a legitimate thing as "harvesting emails to sell for millions." or maybe you are living in your own bubble and has never gone out to try to build something that non-technical can relate to solving their problem. Good luck and next time try to conduct yourself with little humility and that would go a long way in helping you achieve something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Could you provide more information about the fine you mention? On the FAQ ([http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/faqs/faq- noticeofcoverageoptions.htm...](http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/faqs/faq- noticeofcoverageoptions.html)) it says there is no fine or penalty for failing to provide a notice.

<comment><USER4> This feels like some skeevy attempt at grabbing business information. As another poster has pointed out, the server is sitting in India.

<comment><AUTHOR> The server is in fact in USA, if you could have cared to check. I think it would have been better had it been into India to safe it from NSA snooping. isn't it?</comment></comment></comment>


Which CSS framework is most promising to use display 'grid' instead of 'flex' - <AUTHOR> Firefox 52 was released and there were tons of comments that they bring display: grid into the game.
So I wonder if there is any information which of the frameworks out there will allow me to do an easy migration without completely changing the markup but by just switching/adding/removing classes.
I am setting up new project and I want to use Grid layout today and not to regret when the time comes :)
Thanks for the info! <comment><AUTHOR> Some of the frameworks I consider currently are: [http://getskeleton.com/](http://getskeleton.com/) [https://picturepan2.github.io/spectre/](https://picturepan2.github.io/spectre/) [http://milligram.github.io/](http://milligram.github.io/) [http://semantic- ui.com/introduction/getting-started.html](http://semantic- ui.com/introduction/getting-started.html) [http://materializecss.com/](http://materializecss.com/) [http://bulma.io/](http://bulma.io/)</comment>


To Catch a Failure: The Record-and-Replay Approach to Debugging - <AUTHOR> https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3391621&doi=10.1145%2F3387945.3391621 <comment><USER2> Pernosco is beauty, in the dark.</comment>


Search: .widht - Github - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/search?type=Code&language=JavaScript&q=widht&repo=&langOverride=&x=0&y=0&start_value=1

<comment><USER2> I hope these Github searches for misspelled words don't become a thing.

<comment><USER3> Amen.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, me too. I just couldn't help myself.

[https://github.com/search?type=Code&language=JavaScript&...](https://github.com/search?type=Code&language=JavaScript&q=kitteh&repo=&langOverride=&x=0&y=0&start_value=1)

[https://github.com/search?type=Code&language=JavaScript&...](https://github.com/search?type=Code&language=JavaScript&q=teh&repo=&langOverride=&x=13&y=18&start_value=1)

OK, I'm done now.

</comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps someone could make a tool to do this and notify the repo owners.

<comment><USER5> Like @StealthMountain does on Twitter for people whe say "sneak peak" instead of "sneak peek"?</comment></comment>


Show HN: My take on iOS Nav Bar + Buttons in CSS - <AUTHOR> http://jsfiddle.net/886XH/1/

<comment><AUTHOR> Arrow-ize the buttons by adding "arrow" to the class list thus: "navigationButton left arrow", "navigationButton right arrow".

Make button "on" by adding "on" to the class list thus: "nagivationButton left on" etc</comment>


Why Ant Foraging is like TCP - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.stanford.edu/news/stanford-biologist-computer-scientist-discover-anternet?v=1

<comment><USER2> Earlier discussion on the same topic: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4433142>

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops. Be it known that I was not the one who added the ?v=1 to the end of the link to avoid the dupe detector. (I did, however, steal this link straight from /r/technology though.)

<comment><USER3> FWIW, this is a much more accurate title.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Prior-art :) - Just kiddin, as TCP is not patented as far as I know... but if it happened to be - would've that come as prior-art... coming from the ants?

(But then one have to prove that ants did that from long time ago, and did not actually learned by reverse engineering our backbones).

</comment><comment><USER5> Also similar, the protocol used in Jason Rohrer's MUTE peer-to-peer network: <http://mute-net.sourceforge.net/howAnts.shtml>

</comment><comment><USER6> similar work - AntNet - [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/jair/pub/volume9/dicaro...](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/jair/pub/volume9/dicaro98a.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER7> This is not news. There were talks on swarm intelligence when I was in college over a decade ago, and it wasn't new then, either.

<comment><USER8> yep. Ant-protocols have been studied to death. Not sure what is new here.</comment></comment>


The Geomagnetic Blitz of September 1941 - <AUTHOR> https://eos.org/features/the-geomagnetic-blitz-of-september-1941 <comment><USER2> Carrington Event [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859)

"Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases giving telegraph operators electric shocks.[13] Telegraph pylons threw sparks.[14] Some telegraph operators could continue to send and receive messages despite having disconnected their power supplies" \- wiki article

</comment><comment><USER3> Mason City :)</comment>


US Homeland Security Will Start Collecting Social Media Info on All Immigrants - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/us-homeland-security-will-start-collecting-social-media-1818777094 <comment><USER2> Discussed previously:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15337961](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15337961)

</comment><comment><USER3> Direct FederalRegister link:

[https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/09/18/2017-19...](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/09/18/2017-19365/privacy- act-of-1974-system-of-records)

It looks like it covers naturalized US citizens. What if I don't have a Facebook or Twitter account. Will that be flagged and I'll be put on a black list. "Looks like you don't have enough of superficial social relationships online and don't trade short 140 character sarcastic remarks with anyone that we can see. That is highly unusual, can you explain yourself, sir".

My instinct would be to say "Oh but I have a prolific Dark Web relationship network. That's where all my hacker friends are hanging out", but I should know better never to make jokes like that.

<comment><USER4> Wait, so as a naturalized American I could be denied entry to my own country for refusing to turn over my social media passwords?

<comment><USER5> (I'm not a lawyer, this is not legal advice. God help you if you're a naturalized citizen in America today.)

AIUI, no, CBP cannot deny American citizens entry. They _can_ confiscate your phone (and probably never have to return it) or arrest you, but either way they also need to let you in.

(Though if you're brown, and in certain areas, that arrest can pretty quickly turn into a summary deportation hearing where you have to prove your citizenship without access to lawyer or paperwork. In theory everyone involved would be in deep shit for an incident like that, but in practice they get presidential pardons.)

Also, this article isn't about CBP policy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does this mean that I can be asked, at the border, for my social media information? What happens if I refuse to provide or lie about having it?

</comment><comment><USER7> I am far more worried that they are targeting immigrants than I am that they are collecting social media info.

</comment><comment><USER8> Isn't this the same discussion from recently?

<comment><USER5> You might be thinking of the debate over whether CBP can search your cloud data (vs. only the data present on your phone) at a border crossing.

This is in the same vein thematically but substantially different both legally and technically. It applies to immigrants whether or not they are crossing borders, and it builds a permanent database of what they've found. Whether this is illegal or not depends on the nature of "what they've found" \- it sounds like they're "just" going to be buying up the same data sources advertisers use, which is probably legal. (But terrifying.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> 1984 is officially here.

<comment><USER10> Great. Does that mean we can dispense with the tedious pseudointellectual references to it now?

And Brave New World?

And "First they came for the Socialists..."</comment></comment>


Vinod Khosla with Sam Altman on How to Build the Future [video] - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ycombinator.com/vinod-khosla-on-how-to-build-the-future/ <comment><USER2> I'm surprised he's still considered relevant given how spectacularly his cellulosic ethanol companies failed, taking probably hundred of $M's in investor and government money with them. [http://fortune.com/kior-vinod- khosla-clean-tech](http://fortune.com/kior-vinod-khosla-clean-tech)

edit: fixed the link

<comment><USER3> 80% of VC investments are essentially failures, it doesn't mean they were bad bets, or even wasted time.

More to the point, everything Vinod said was fairly reasonable, some of it even contrarian (i.e. 'most VC's don't add value) which is useful given that most VC's wouldn't even dare say such a thing ... it allows for a conversation wherein one would not normally be possible.

Sam, for all of his influence and insight, doesn't yet have the clout/standing/safety to make such public statements about his own industry without severely risking his neck (and YC reputation as well). _Very_ few people do, in any industry. I always like to hear someone taking 'their own' to task.

<comment><USER2> > everything Vinod said was fairly reasonable

He was promising he could beat gasoline at $1.80/gallon by misstating the yield of ethanol per ton of wood chips.

From the Fortune article I posted:

> The Securities and Exchange Commission has been examining whether the > company made false statements, including on a critical point: the yield of > its biofuel (the amount that can be made per ton of wood chips). Two KiOR > executives and Khosla himself are also facing a class action suit alleging > that company executives misled investors about production volumes and yield.

...

> During investor calls in 2012, CEO Cannon said KiOR expected to achieve 72 > gallons at a larger commercial production facility in the future and would > aim to reach 92.

> The problem was that the company wasn't regularly producing anything close > to 67, much less 92. In the summer of 2011, after the company's IPO, its new > chief operating officer, Bill Coates, told management that it appeared that > the company had grossly overstated its yields, according to a KiOR > consultant who spoke with him and was quoted in the state's court papers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The signal to noise ratio in this video is extremely high.

<comment><USER5> That goes for a lot of videos, TBH. Lots of introductions, jokes, uhms, ahs and other junk, and you can't even search them to look for, say, a thing you're interested in.

<comment><USER6> Think OP meant lots of signal, ie, not much fluff.

<comment><USER5> Ah, ok. Still, I'd vastly prefer a transcript.

<comment><USER7> 90% of the page at the bottom is the transcript. Right below the audio file is the time annotated transcript as well. Might have been added after you opened it: should recheck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting how all comments which voice reasonable criticism of Vinod get deleted...

<comment><USER9> YCombinator bans people left and right here on Hacker News for even the most tame calling out of VC Techbros for their criminal behavior.

Stay safe! The site operators of HN are off the chain, and hate discourse on this genre of topic. Probably has something to do with YCombinator also being a VC.

<comment><USER8> I'm sure it does. I thought it was an interesting talk nonetheless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There are several comments here about Khosla and his efforts to convert public right of way to private property on the California Coast. It's fair to ask, "why is this relevant to a video of his views on the future (tech)?"

It's relevant because the beach controversy shows that the future that Kohsla wants to create is inimicable to the future that I want to see. He sees a big-L libertarian future, where the strong eat the weak, wealth is the sole source of power, and the wealthy act with a large degree of impunity.

So at best, I would watch with that in mind and have to critique everything he says to pick apart when he is trying to advance that view, vs observations and ideas that are not tied to it. In this case, I haven't bothered. There are others I can listen to for insight.

<comment><USER11> I'm weary of getting into this, but I don't think that's the right conclusion from the beach issue. I'm not intimately familiar but if you care about it, I'd recommend reading what he wrote about it. [https://medium.com/@vkhosla/martins-beach-a-matter-of- princi...](https://medium.com/@vkhosla/martins-beach-a-matter-of-principle- property-rights-b32f4de1c97)

(I work at Khosla Ventures and have raised money from Khosla in the past)

<comment><USER12> Here's a more recent status update from the other side of this dispute: [https://www.surfrider.org/coastal-blog/entry/whats-next- for-...](https://www.surfrider.org/coastal-blog/entry/whats-next-for-martins- beach)

The Supreme Court refused to take up Khosla's most recent appeal, leaving in place the requirement that he leave the gate open to the access road to Martin's Beach.

It will be interesting to see what Khosla does now, given that he has exhausted his appeals in the court system.

<comment><USER13> He claims he'll litigate for the rest of his life. I suspect he'll keep finding new ways to refuse to comply, each time getting a type of citation that is different from the others based on the letter of the law (though not its spirit), and appeal each one as far as it'll go.

<comment><USER14> Disgusting. It's too bad he'll get away with it. Normal people would go to jail after a while.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> They talk in detail about how at many well known startups, the early employees went on to start their own companies, which indicates that they were good early hires because they were great entrepreneurial thinkers.

It seems highly likely to me that the reason so many of the first employees started their own companies later is because they got a great exit and didn't need a regular job after that. In addition the experience of being an early employee at a unicorn startup probably teaches you a lot about how to build something similar again.

</comment><comment><USER16> I am not sure how relevant the view of these billionaires when:

\- they did it exactly once

\- we know from studies that these people are nondeterministicly getting rich[1]

[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610395/if-youre-so- smart-...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610395/if-youre-so-smart-why- arent-you-rich-turns-out-its-just-chance/)

<comment><USER17> In regards to that article:

>If you're so smart, why aren't you rich? Turns out it's just chance.

Someone in the industry, someone with considerable influence, someone active on this very forum, once told me when asked what their secret was "I worry it's been more luck than skill".

At the time my immediate thought was "bullshit, you had to have busted your ass but your background also had to have had great influence but hey fine, don't tell me". But as time has passed, much reflection, looking at their peers I now fully believe it. It was largely luck. While the individual had an interesting idea which started their journey towards success, they've had fortunate event/connection after fortunate event/connection that have allowed them to get where they are today. That has allowed them to be doing what they want to do, pursuing what they want to be pursuing, working towards a goal that they want more than anything else.

I'd say 10% idea, 20% work ethic, 70% luck.

Wish I had some luck (and maybe the ability to pass some hindsight of my personal life back to a much younger me so I'd have gotten a degree, avoided my personal bankruptcy and thus been in a much better position to actually get opportunities but alas).

<comment><USER18> In a lot of cases I would say that working your ass off basically buys you the lottery ticket, but whether it pays off is largely luck. Innate talent and ability might skew the odds in your favor slightly, but I think it's more likely that they just lower the work-cost of the lottery ticket.

<comment><USER19> Exactly. You cannot make it without luck (you need to be in the right place at the right time), but you greatly improve your chances if you are at the right place most of the time.

<comment><USER20> Being at the right place requires a fair bit of luck, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> My comment [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18866778](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18866778) got downvoted and flagged because I called out Khosla's selfish and boorish behavior. Apparently calling a spade a spade doesn't sit well with some of the hive mind here.

<comment><USER22> I think it's a tired meme - just like the 'Stephen (Wolfram) The Braggadocio' meme. It starts getting quite annoying after a while. Especially in the latter case since Stephen blogs quite a bit and lot of his articles do trend on HN.

Repeatedly pointing out, hmm, their 'flaws', just detracts from the actual subject matter. And btw, I did enjoy this talk and likewise most of Stephen's blog posts/writings. [Only exception when such a comment would be warranted is when Stephen talks about humility ;)]

<comment><USER23> There's more to life--and business--than money. Do we want to take advice from a man who hates the public? Do we want to build that future?

Even if what he says sounds legitimate, should we not question whether there are motives and ethics unmentioned that we might not have noticed, given his past behavior?

Should we mention it to viewers who may not be aware of who the man is, so they can ask those same questions as they watch?

If a man runs for office, and it turns out he used to be a member of the Klan, should that not weigh on the rest of his speeches, since presumably you can determine who he is not from what he has said, but from what he has done?

<comment><USER24> Hates the public? Are you sure? He bought some property and dared to imagine he actually owned it. Foolish and untrue, but at some level reasonable enough. None of that changes the demonstrated value of his advice regarding business.

<comment><USER23> It may not change the value of his business advice... but then again, it may. It may be that he doesn't care about people. It may be that he would recommend you pollute a river to save money. I'm not saying his advice is without merit, I'm just saying there may be side effects of his advice that he's not mentioning, given who he seems to be as a person.

All that said, I haven't met him, I've just read the news, and maybe they have their own narrative and that isn't who he really is. I'm just saying we should consider both sides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> As much brilliant as Vinod Khosla is, i always think about him as the billionare who blocked public beaches

<comment><USER26> The society that lets you get away with it is also culpable.

<comment><USER27> Even if that were true (it ain't), society isn't "letting him get away with it." It's processing the issue through the legal system, which unfortunately takes time.

<comment><USER26> I would not say unfortunately, i would say that it has become that way to reflect power interests. I am a surfer so i feel for the affected...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is the public beach lawsuit guy right?

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm not going to give Vinod any thought or consideration until he stops his seizure of public lands.

</comment><comment><USER30> I find it hard to take Altman seriously as a well-reasoned thinker after his comments on political correctness which were intermeshed with him praising China's approach to the topic.

<comment><USER31> Context on his comments?

Edit: [http://blog.samaltman.com/e-pur-si- muove](http://blog.samaltman.com/e-pur-si-muove)

I don't see anything awful in here. There are absolutely people in the bay area who wish to silence other opinions. I'm a pretty liberal person and this place is ridiculous.

<comment><USER30> There are literally arms of the government in China that wish to silence other opinions.

If Altman feels comfortable in China it is only because _he_ is divorced from the context there.</comment></comment></comment>


Infrastructure advice - <AUTHOR>

Background: I'm a new build engineer tasked with a good bit of overhaul. Our build system is going moving to a collection of 8 local servers. I'm excited for the task, but a bit daunted. What I'm looking for is a little bit of advice. As a casual reader of HN, I have caught glimpses of some relevant tech, but piecing them together is tricky.
Constraints:
- All of the build servers must be running Windows.
- A master CI server will already be running, so all of these servers will simply be slaves.
- Able to wipe clean and start fresh regularly.
- They wont all be the same image, some builds require different versions of tools.
- May not need all 8 at any given time.
Thoughts:
- With the different and dynamic nature of the build machines, something like chef, puppet, or salt seems to be best for managing configurations.
-- Things that seemed immensely useful in Salt were the windows software repositories[1] and in puppet the packages system.[2] The system for Salt seems more simple, and I didn't see anything comparable for Windows with Chef.
- Virtualization also seems ideal, but my inexperience makes me wonder if it is worth the trouble.
-- If virtualization is a sane approach, what are the options here? OpenStack is the only thing that I know of that (I think) fits this case.
- Once the machines are up and running with Windows, I can manage. Getting it to that point is the biggest mystery to me. If I'm able to use virtualization would I be using something like Vagrant to get the images ready?
Thanks for any advice or links provided. I hope this was coherent enough, if not, feel free to ask me for any clarification.
[1] http://docs.saltstack.com/ref/windows-package-manager.html [2] http://docs.puppetlabs.com/windows/writing.html#packagepackage <comment><AUTHOR> Forgot to tag the title as an ask thread, sorry about that.</comment>