Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money - <AUTHOR> http://www.articulateventures.com/thoughts-on-being-an-employer/salary-negotatiations-whats-possible-when-there-is-no-more-mone/ <comment><USER3> When I was negotiating my salary with my previous employer the only thing I asked for was more vacation time. They refused and instead offered me an extra $3000 so I could take unpaid time off.

They ended up working me to the bone for 6 months then laid me off once the product shipped.

Little things like this can really give you insight into how a company works. If a company is only willing to negotiate on money then maybe money is the only thing they are interested in.

<comment><USER4> I'll play devil's advocate here: making special deals on benefits other than salary is a land mine. Everyone is used to the fact that people are paid differently, but people are used to uniform benefits (all you out there: please don't call out your exception to the rule... it really is generally a rule). It's likely to have a negative effect or morale, whereas giving you more salary won't. (Yes, people find out these things.)

<comment><USER5> This is the main reason I am a contractor -- I take a LOT of time off. For my clients, it is normal for contractors to have gaps in availability. For my on- site colleagues, they know that the vacation is unpaid.

<comment><USER6> Increasingly it feels that contracting is the most straight forward way to work for an organisation. They pay X, they get Y. No messing about with broken promises and vague commitments.

<comment><USER7> I've also been able to comfortably do contracts for companies that have worked friends (who are full time employees) to the bone. If they want a 60 hour week from me, they have to pay me 50% more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is in line with what one of my previous bosses taught me about negotiations: negotiation is about truly understanding the interests of the other side. In this case even those they are not aware of.

He also used to put crap clauses into contract drafts (if he knew they'd be passed through lawyers), so that the lawyers can demonstrate being useful without messing with the actual matter of the contract. A true example of serving the true interest of the other side :)

<comment><USER9> >..so that the lawyers can demonstrate being useful without messing with the actual matter of the contract

There's actually a programming version of this referenced on an old StackOverflow question - a "Duck", i.e. a feature submitted so management will take issue with it and not something else more important.

[http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/07/new-programming- jar...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/07/new-programming-jargon.html) \- see entry #5

<comment><USER10> Interestingly, map-makers put in fake geographical features, known as "bunnies", so that they can catch people copying them:

[http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Mapmakers-sleight-of- hand...](http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Mapmakers-sleight-of-hand- Cartographers-put-2889584.php)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think many successful people and organizations take a similar approach all around.

Is your baseball team underfunded compared to others? Use the lowered expectations to test theories and find market innefficiencies.

Are customers are worried that our company is too small? We'll give you the email address of the CEO if you have a problem.

Don't have any money for raises? Offer employees special deals that no larger employer would even consider (like the wave height deal in the story).

Take the weakest part of you and beat the bastards with it.

<comment><USER12> It's more than just finding your weak points, it's about creative solution finding that resonates with both parties. If Brenda had offered the author unlimited mountain biking time, the author might have left the station.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This story made me happy.

I took a negotiation class a few years ago running through some examples where each side had to negotiate X and got crib sheets talking about what were the different aspects of the negotiation and how much each aspect meant to each person.

We did the exercises and learned lessons but one thing I noticed was that if we threw out conventional negotiation tactics and instead just showed the other person what our value assignment to each aspect was we both ended up maximizing our utility from the negotiation event. So you would think that it would be great to just be an open book when entering a negotiation right?

The problem is that as soon as one person hides any information then the trust factor that makes this work is broken. And for whatever reason (pride or lack of authority) this happens all the time in real life.

That's why I liked this story. Apparently both parties came to the table open and honest about what they wanted and the outcome I thought was favorable to both parties.

<comment><USER14> I believe this is the basis of the Prisoner's Dilemma

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Great article.

It bothers me that people think like this:

> I was already getting paid almost as much as people who had been on staff > for many more years than me.

Salary should be based on performance and expertise, not how many years you've been sitting in a seat.

<comment><USER16> Are you're saying that companies shouldn't give yearly raises except for inflationary increases? Wouldn't that be an implication of not considering time with the company?

Rewarding loyalty to the business is not a meaningless gesture, nor should it be an affront to new people.

The difficult thing from the employer's perspective is balancing the reward for many different aspects of each employee that makes that employee important to the company: leadership, loyalty, consistency, trustworthiness, performance, expertise, efficiency, etc.

<comment><USER17> Companies shouldn't reward loyalty, especially when that means punishing performance. Loyalty is only meaningful in the sense that your company- specific knowledge makes you more valuable to the company.

All other things being equal, a 25-year-old who just joined the company and automated 5 people's worth of work is worth several multiples of the 35-year- old analyst who'd been at the company for 10 years and was doing one of the (now automated) jobs. Yet most companies will pay the 25-year-old significantly less. This is just plain dumb and irrational, and encourages top performers to go elsewhere.

<comment><USER16> _Loyalty is only meaningful in the sense that your company-specific knowledge makes you more valuable to the company._

I couldn't disagree more. Loyalty is its own benefit that's worth compensating people for. I value people who come into a group and do more than just contribute a bunch of code. I value people who contribute to the culture and the framework of the ongoing enterprise.

Furthermore, I want newcomers to see how I treat the current employees with respect and reward for being contributing parts of the team not just this past week, but for years.

I'm not at all saying that just occupying a seat in the office should get you rewards. It shouldn't. But occupying the seat AND being productive while you're there is a benefit to me as a company founder.

Give me a competent employee whom I can rely upon year after year vs some hotshot code slinger who is here today and gone tomorrow.

I call it the "Mike Krzyzewski" team building strategy.

<comment><USER17> It sounds like we actually agree in practice and I've just heard the word "loyalty" used differently from the way you've heard it used. Apologies if I used the wrong definition, and let me try to clarify my point:

I completely agree that contributing to culture and the business is valuable. What annoys me is how much a lot of companies value seniority over anything else. The attitude of "Well, X is older and has been here longer than Y, so they should get paid more" is incredibly prevalent even in the USA. Especially in tech-heavy jobs, I've seen plenty of cases where someone might contribute 5x or 10x as much value as the average person in their position...and receive a 10% higher raise as a result.

<comment><USER18> People are lazy. Calculating seniority is easy and "objective", not controversial; in fact, it's so linear you could even write a program to automate it (I bet somebody did just that). Evaluating performance or actual returns to the business, that's hard; the metrics are often very subjective, and people will start arguing. Rule #6582 of the Safe Manager: Don't Give People Excuses To Argue. So seniority it is.

This was unfortunately exacerbated by Trade Unions, which needed something "objective" to force owners to pay up and keep members happy, so they built their demands on this sort of easy metrics: seniority, hours of work, etc.

I'm sure if you could find a generic way to calculate productivity in an uncontroversial way, managers and unions would jump on it, but in most cases there ain't, so seniority it is.

<comment><USER19> Employee evaluation forms is not a good metric to evaluate performance?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is it just me, or is it weird that this brand new blog (really just an advert for a writing company) has had 3 blog posts, all 3 have been submitted to HN (2 by the same person), and all 3 have gotten pretty high scores?

The other 2 stories being:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5304317> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5292431>

They must be good writers!

<comment><USER21> EwanToo I am the writer- those two guys just showed me the site. I used to blog on my company website (for like a month) but I quit because it never went anywhere- but when it gets posted here people talk about it- comment etc. made me want to write more.

<comment><USER20> I'm glad to hear you're a real person then :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Weakness is strength. Strength is weakness."

Being a small flexible company means they can't compete on money, but they can compete on flexibility and increasing quality of life.

I think that's all any employee wants from a job -- a good quality of life. Money is probably the worst way of quantifying if they employee is already middle class.

It's amazing even how "here's a week to fix that low priority problem that bugs the shit out of you" would go to improve morale.

<comment><USER23> What if "that low priority problem that bugs the shit out of you" is your crappy job?

<comment><USER24> Then there are bigger issues at hand and no amount of money or 'alternative' raises will make a difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I found this article awesome, but not only for showcasing the creative tools a leader can might under tight resource constraints:

Beyond her creativity, Belinda shows great empathy for the author, and at the same time draws on the author's own empathy. This is both powerful and gratifying; at the end of the negotiation, each side feels that the other has his best interest in mind and truly cares about them. This arrangement is not a one-time compromise or an appeasement deal, and it certainly doesn't feel that way. It's a relationship that continues to grow.

</comment><comment><USER26> One point the author, perhaps prevented by modesty, does not make is that he/she too is a good negotiator. He/She wanted to make it work - <USER2> recognized the efforts of their boss as genuine and feels grateful for what they learnt from the experience.

I have seen too many engineers go into negotiations with the attitude that there is only one right deal - the one they have crafted and proposed on their own. Yes, management does offer a lot of bull, but its important to re- evaluate every new offer that is different from your own starting position.

</comment><comment><USER27> I find this article slightly odd. It sounds to me like the author got a raw deal. I've been in this situation before early my career. The old "we want to promote you but can't give you much more money, here's a bunch of vacation days instead". Guess what you do with vacation days when you have no money. Sit at home and be bitter about the fact that you can't afford to go any where. And you look for another job.

> She told me that she wanted to pay me more, but the $2,000 increase, I was > already getting paid almost as much as people who had been on staff for many > more years than me.

That's an awful reason not to give someone a raise! Politics like this is why so many companies lose good employees. If the author was worth more than the more senior staff, she should have gotten paid more. People talk and there's no real way to keep salaries secret, but who is easier to replace in this situation?

> She more than gave me a fair deal. I stayed with the organization until I > was accepted into graduate school. I did not financially benefit from that > job in the short term, but in the long term- she put my career in a catapult > and shot it forward.

Sounds to me more like she held you back. What could you and the company had achieved had you been properly rewarded? Had to been giving the motivation to take the next step within the company? Keeping you poor sends a clear message that you should focus your efforts elsewhere.

<comment><USER28> Its not wrong for you to approach everything so skeptically, but I think you have to see it from the authors perspective:

1\. He clearly has an altruistic bent (he'd just returned from the Peace Corp. in Kenya)

2\. He liked his position for its flexibility and variety as noted throughout the article.

I think the point of the article is that many people approach salary negotiations as an optimization of just salary. But his real desire was to be happy and money was only one component of that. The boss found ways to make him happy without meeting his salary demands.

The story isn't a story of a 'clear win' for him, its an analysis of how to approach negotiations. Salary negotiations aren't always about maximizing your salary, you can make them more flexible by maximizing for your happiness. It presents more flexibility to both participants.

<comment><USER27> I don't disagree with that. The author flipped a bad situation and found a way to get out. That's exactly what you should do in that situation, rather than standing your ground to make a point.

Perhaps where I disagree with you (and others who have responded to me) is in how important it is to keep good employees. If the author really is worth more than the more senior staff, the company has failed itself tremendously by losing him. If he is worth more than the others today, what will he be worth in the future (what is his growth potential). Putting up roadblocks for growth in your employees has to be one of the worst things HR can do.

<comment><USER29> You may be reading a lot of a extra meaning into a generic negotiating tactic / ego stroke comment from a boss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "Bargaining for Advantage" is my goto book. It's really solid and highly recommended for anyone that does any negotiation of any sort.

It has a test to see what bargaining type you are and doesn't just focus on the "get the max tricks" like a couple of other books.

Pretty ethical in general.

</comment><comment><USER31> This made me sad :-( I was dissapointed with my recent pay rise (+3%, 18months after the last rise). Maybe I didn't negotiate well but I was open and honest. I don't care if I'm paid more than my peers, or that there's no more money in the pot, it's still a shitty deal with no sweeteners. I guess that is what you get for being someone else's employee.

<comment><USER32> I don't know where you are but it helps to document your accomplishments ahead of time and socialize that. I'm not talking about being an obnoxious self- promoter but making sure people acknowledge your (actual) contributions.

I find that many wait for their managers to automatically do the right thing and then get disappointed. I've always advocated being more proactive about this.

Let's say I want a raise and a promotion this year. I outline it in my goals, and as the year progresses have meetings with my manager to make sure I'm doing everything possible to reach that goal as well as documenting things along the way. When it comes time for review, one of two things will happen: either you have communicated clearly what you want and you get most of it, or you get screwed either by your manager or his/her manager. If that's the case, you then need to decide if something went wrong, or if it was not in good faith. If so, it's time to leave.

Also, protip: find out when budgets are being set, that's the time to push/remind for more money/whatever. Usually by the time reviews come around, things are pretty much set in stone.

Don't be sad. Keep kicking ass and follow what I've written. I'm willing to say that you will likely have a more positive experience next go-around.

PS. This only works if you do actually work hard and get shit done. If you like goofing off and just want more $$, it will NOT work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is a great post. A concern is that this only works when the base salary covers your needs. If it doesn't, you can't pay your rent with surf time.

</comment><comment><USER34> Don't negotiate salaries. Negotiate responsibilities. The salary comes after that.

</comment><comment><USER35> Article assumes a situation where company can not pay market rate because there is "no money". No money means either they are not profitable and not funded enough to succeed, or they are lying to the candidate. Whichever one it is doesn't matter because in either scenario accepting position is a poor move for a talented and capable candidate in an environment when there are many positions available for competent people. These insights terrifically simplify negotiations in this scenario to: "No thanks."

<comment><USER10> That's true only if you value money and nothing else.

I know plenty of people who work at below-market wages for nonprofits because they support the mission. This fellow had some of that, but he also valued surfing time more than extra cash. People also value recognition, good colleagues, solid benefits, low stress, and a bunch of other things.

Just because people value different things than you doesn't make them wrong. De gustibus non est disputandum.

<comment><USER35> Those claims are fallacious.

It has nothing to do with the supposed greed that you absurdly assign to the engineer. It has to do with critical evaluation of the company's financial condition. A company that can not pay market rate because they don't have enough money can't afford to be in business and will not continue to do so for much longer.

There are lots of jobs out there, just like there are plenty of potential romantic partners. Sure, someone could date a homeless crack addict. Perhaps those who don't do so are shallow according to the same sort of argument being used here.

<comment><USER10> Well, let's test your theory. The article describes a real place that was being run on a shoestring. Looking at resumes, this was 2006-2008, so it's circa 5 years later. Are they out of business?

<http://www.kzyx.org/>

Looks like they are still going. Just like every shoestring nonprofit I know.

And the reason is exactly that _people get paid in things other than money_. They could also have run the radio station with market-rate salaries. They would have had a drastically smaller staff. But because they wisely recognized that money isn't the only thing that matters, they looked for people who could take substantially lower salaries but valued other things they could offer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> A better job elsewhere :)

</comment><comment><USER37> this woman is my new hero. i only hope that i am in a position to do that for someone some day.

</comment><comment><USER32> My go to books for negotiating:

* Getting Past No

* Getting To Yes</comment>


US senators call for investigation of Ford Focus, Fiesta transmission decisions - <AUTHOR> https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2019/07/16/ford-fiesta-focus-transmission-markey-blumenthal/1741390001/ <comment><AUTHOR> My wife bought a used 2012 Fiesta a couple years ago that had these transmission problems about a month ago.

I have an OBD II device to pull the error codes and it took me days to narrow down the problem and a few more to nail down if her car qualified for a repair under warranty.

It was a job worthy of Sherlock Holmes to track it all down but when I did call the dealer I had my ducks in a row and they did step up and make the repair at no cost to us. But the truth is the repair doesn't really fix the problem and Ford only has to repair it once.

The story about how Ford has tried to hide and dodge fixing the problem for years is just outrageous. They pissed off a lot of new car buyers something awful. People that will probably never buy another new Ford again now.</comment>


Hacking Final Fantasy 1 on the NES - <AUTHOR> http://www.walknsqualk.com/post/hacking-final-fantasy-1-on-nes/ <comment><USER2> I designed and coded the FCEUXD hex editor shown here. I did this back in 2004 when I was a teenager -- built it in C in pure win32 API. It's great to see it still show up when people are hacking NES games.

I remember on my 1.33Ghz AMD machine at the time, it could not draw all of the RAM values in real time without causing considerable slowdown. I rewrote the code so that it only redraws ram values that changed, keeping a buffer of old values and checking for changes.

I also worked on other parts of FCEUXD including creating code/data logger. Parasyte coded the debugger.

<comment><USER3> hey bbitmaster :)

i remember when you were creating that debugger, long time no see. (what's it been, a decade?) Fceuxd was always the best romhacking emulator, gotta love those conditional break points!

this takes me back to the old days of beta testing, and hanging in #rom- hacking on irc hope you're well :)

<comment><USER2> Hey Gavin. Of course I remember you, it's been ages but great to hear from you. I would take this to PM but Hacker News doesn't seem to offer such a feature. I currently work in the bay area, in Machine Learning (I only mention it in case you happen to reside in the bay area). Anyway, feel free to e-mail me at my username at gmail.

Good times :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The NES Final Fantasy 1 had _gobs_ of bugs. Some of them are very game- changing:

Major ones to know for playing the game well:

* the index in the weapons table is used rather than the value in the table, making later weapons much more powerful and making Axes (lower %hit, higher critical%) useless.

* No secondary effects of weapons work at all

* Intelligence has no effect on spell effectiveness (yet another reason why red-mages are more powerful than they ought to be)

* All enemies are immune to poison.

Interestingly enough, people have created patches for most of the known bugs!

[https://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/522595-final- fantasy/4557505...](https://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/522595-final- fantasy/45575058)

<comment><USER5> Those older JRPGs really could use some unit testing.

Another one of my favorites is from the Gameboy (original) Final Fantasy Legend. There's a weapon, Saw, which performs an instant kill if it hits. It was supposed to work if your Strength is higher than the opponent's Defense, meaning it could take out random mobs in a single hit, i.e., the usual sort of useless instant kill technique that only instantly kills things that were already not a threat to you. However, the comparison sense is reversed, so it only instantly kills opponents whose defense is _higher_ than your strength.

In particular, you can one-hit the final boss with this: [https://youtu.be/bCyToT8jiJ4?t=1m26s](https://youtu.be/bCyToT8jiJ4?t=1m26s) As this predates the era of "post-game content" this is supposed to be the hardest fight in the game.

[http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Saw_bug](http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Saw_bug)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _" It does make me feel a bit less inclined to play old RPGs now, knowing > that I'm grinding just to increase a few bytse of memory."_

Superficially, most games can probably be judged the same way, even physical games like golf etc.

"You mean the main purpose of this game is to get a ball in a hole with as few hits as possible, why would I want to do that"?

or Idle/incremental games: On the surface the whole point is to play the game, just to play the games faster.

Of course we all know that there is far more going on here than meets the eye!

<comment><USER7> It's true, games are arbitrary.

Musing a bit though, we tend to convince ourselves there is value in our gold coins, exp, etc.

When you get right down to it though they only exist as arbitrary values stored on a computer. If you go in and change them, they can say whatever you want.

I think this is what he means about grinding.

Maybe subsequently the value of a good game isn't the end resulting Pokemon team or character build, but the journey to get there.

<comment><USER8> That is exactly what I meant.

I love RPGs when they present a new challenge or the story progresses a bit while you're leveling up.

It's just that some of the old RPGs, in particular, would leave you in a spot where you needed to gain a few levels fighting the same monsters, hitting attack over and over, without any real danger to your party, just so you could proceed to the next quest. That part is harder for me to stomach sitting through nowadays.

<comment><USER9> That's why I like games such as Chrono Trigger: basically no random encounters, you can see and avoid most enemies my running around etc. Most of the value of such games comes from the story. You're interested in how it's going to advance / end. And fights are just a nice addition to see heroes struggle to the end instead of just being passive spectators.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's an old program, FFHackster[0] that is made just for editing this game. I remember poking around through it and being really impressed at how tightly everything was packed together. Its worth taking a look at because it has a lot of things like level progression, spell strength, etc, completely unwound.

As mentioned elsewhere, there are a lot of bugs and things that weren't quite right, but the overall quality and effort to fit all that on a tiny cartridge is astounding.

[0] [http://slickproductions.org/ffhackster.php](http://slickproductions.org/ffhackster.php)

</comment><comment><USER11> Reminded me of Game Genie back in the day. It was always amazing to me, at five years old, that such a device existed.

</comment><comment><USER12> This kind of stuff is so interesting. Makes sense when it's all laid out in a system.</comment>


Guess the Correlation - <AUTHOR> http://guessthecorrelation.com/ <comment><USER2> Very interesting, are you the author? If so, any chance of publishing the raw data afterwards?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, but his twitter handle is : Take a look at Omar Wagih (@omarwagih): [https://twitter.com/omarwagih?s=09](https://twitter.com/omarwagih?s=09)</comment></comment>


I accidentally became a self-taught web developer - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/nikola_wr/the-story-of-how-i-accidentally-became-a-self-taught-web-developer-4gc4 <comment><USER2> The message that "Every business is a software business" - spoken ~20 years ago - might be sinking in.</comment>


Google has lost its fight with locals to build a campus in Berlin - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1435550/google-abandons-plan-to-build-a-new-kreuzberg-campus-in-berlin/ <comment><USER2> Crazy that this still happens[1]!

[1]: [https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/may/09/fuck-off- goog...](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/may/09/fuck-off-google-the- berlin-neighbourhood-fighting-off-a-tech-giant-kreuzberg)

<comment><AUTHOR> No big surprise given the past riots against multinational companies in the district [1]. Apparently those responsible knew about that as much as they care about people & culture here. From a local's perspective, these reactions were obvious and even reasonable. Never been in Krzbrg on a 1. of May?

[1] [https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/neueroeffnung-mit- steinen...](https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/neueroeffnung-mit-steinen- gegen-erste-mcdonalds-filiale-in-kreuzberg/1040886.html)</comment></comment>


GitHub has sold us out. This is the GitHub Refugee Camp - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/upend/IF_MS_BUYS_GITHUB_IMMA_OUT/blob/master/README.md <comment><USER2> God this is overblown.</comment>


Study: Google "Favors" Itself Only 19% Of The Time - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/survey-google-favors-itself-only-19-of-the-time-61675 <comment><USER2> _That search engine is still Google's most important and profitable product, to my knowledge._

While I agree that its search engine is its most _popular_ product it is not profitable in its own right. Google claims that _"advertising revenues made up 97% of our revenues"_ in its Q3/2010 filings and that means advertising placed through AdSense/AdWords on other sites too:

 _We derive most of our additional revenues from offering display advertising management services to advertisers, ad agencies, and publishers, as well as licensing our enterprise products, search solutions, and web search technology._

\-- [http://investor.google.com/documents/20100930_google_10Q.htm...](http://investor.google.com/documents/20100930_google_10Q.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I can't imagine they deliberately mess with the results anyway.

This does remind me of an issue I had with Bing last week though. I had a clean windows install, with Bing as the default search engine, and I was looking for Microsoft Security Essentials. I searched for 'microsoft antivirus' (not remembering the exact name), and the download link isn't on the first page of results! It's the first result on Google.

Maybe Microsoft could do with favouring itself a little?

</comment><comment><USER4> I have an opposite opinion: I don't think it's even logically possible NOT to mess with the results.

Let's say there here's a table index and there's some query asking for things the index doesn't contain. How do you calculate "relevancy" out of no-answers?

Or let's put it another way: people are asking, the machines are answering. Do you really think a machine is able to answer any type of questions a human person can ask? What would a machine answer to "Who's the most beautiful of them all?" "Snow White" or "the evil Queen"?!

Although it doesn't seem, people don't usually want to know existing answers that are already indexed somewhere; they want to know "How will the weather be tomorrow?". Google will answer to that question by looking up words, ranks, links and so on and it'll provide you the most "relevant answer". For Google, not for you. You are left with taking this answer for granted, although it comes out of Google's bellies exclusively. More than that, the answer tends to become "correct" although it cannot bear this value.

A search engine that's not already containing the answer (truth-bearer) will only offer opinions (non-truth-bearer); these "opinions" are never true or false, so they cannot be part of any reliable judgement. Google says these answers are to be trusted because they're relevant, not because they're true. But this relevance is not dependent on me, the one asking the question, but on Google's bellies! And you have any doubt that a search engine is designed to be 100% human intervention free?? (here is a more detailed article on this issue: <http://utestme.com/post/2745142659/the-search-of-doom> )

</comment><comment> john-n Really interesting article. Looking into the guy who did the original research is quite amusing, the one-sidedness of his articles is appallingly apparent.</comment>


Mapquest – a story of disruptive competition and corporate complacency - <AUTHOR> https://searchengineland.com/a-eulogy-for-mapquest-322945 <comment><AUTHOR> It's incredible how far online mapping has come. When I moved from central London to the suburbs, we moved out of aerial photo coverage into an area only covered by 'true' satellite imagery, at pretty low resolution. You couldn't make out individual houses. Now our house and garden are rendered in Google Maps from detailed 3D LIDAR models.</comment>


"Clojure has nothing to make web programming better enough to switch" - <AUTHOR> https://clojureverse.org/t/from-twitter-maybe-we-have-to-face-it-clojure-has-nothing-to-offer-web-programming-that-is-better-enough-to-make-people-switch-to-clojure/1300/28 <comment><USER2> This comments seem only designed to provoke people without providing context for a reasonable discussion.

It's a shame, because the Clojure community takes these comments seriously. See Rich's Hickey's (creator of Clojure) response to the recent blog post "On whose authority" [1].

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/73yznc/on_whose_au...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/73yznc/on_whose_authority/)</comment>


Show HN: SEC – Startup Equity Calculator - <AUTHOR> http://startupequitycalculator.herokuapp.com <comment><USER2> why do i have to log in? i cant see from outside what benefites it adds me over [http://foundrs.com/](http://foundrs.com/)</comment>


Candy Crush creator King files for IPO - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/02/18/candy-crush-creator-king-files-ipo/ <comment> mkr-hn For anyone who missed the CandySwipe post (or wants a refresher): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7225945](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7225945)

</comment><comment><USER2> Is it wrong that I hope they have a poor IPO due to their attempt to trademark the word 'Candy'?

<comment><USER3> No. But I'm astonished they're doing this so shortly after making everyone hate them.

<comment><USER4> Everyone doesn't hate them. The HN and reddit crowds are relatively small. The "general population" still loves to play Candy Crush every chance they get.

<comment><USER5> This is true. And the uninformed public actually thinks that their victims are companies that have copied _from them_. Oh, the sad irony.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like 3rd party Candy Crush revenue estimates, which have consistently hovered around $700K/day, were _way_ off. The filing says Candy Crush is responsible for 78% of revenue - that's $1.48 billion in 2013. That's more like $4 million/day.

Makes me wonder how far off third party estimates for other apps are.

Here's an example estimate:

[http://thinkgaming.com/app-sales-data/2/candy-crush- saga/](http://thinkgaming.com/app-sales-data/2/candy-crush-saga/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't think this IPO will progress until after King release their Q1'14 results. Check out this image: [http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1580732/0001193125140...](http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1580732/000119312514056089/g564433g25d61.jpg)

It shows that the monthly unique payers (MUPs), revenue and profits were all lower in Q4'13 than they were in Q3'13\. Investors will want to know whether Q3'13 was the peak (and it's all downhill from here) or whether Q4'13 was a blip and Q1'14 resumes the upward trend.

Smart investors are wary of one-hit wonders. I heard that Rovio's March 2011 investment round was based on a valuation of 1x revenues. Mind Candy is working on three new franchises that it hopes will replace Moshi Monsters, which has seen traffic from the UK and US drop by ~50% over the past year.

Even the dumb investors will have learned from Zynga. Zynga's revenues peaked at $332.5m in Q2'12 and they've been in decline ever since. Last quarter, they were $176.36m. See [http://www.statista.com/statistics/276483/zyngas- quarterly-r...](http://www.statista.com/statistics/276483/zyngas-quarterly- revenue/)

Zynga's share price was priced at $10 when it IPO'd in December 2011. It peaked at $14.69 in March 2012 and is trading at less than $5 today.

If King's Q1'14 numbers are lower than Q4'13, I would not expect the IPO to go ahead. Companies in this space need to demonstrate the ability to repeat the success of hits like FarmVille, Angry Birds, Candy Crush and Moshi Monsters.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't think I'm ready to touch social gaming stock with a 10 foot pole. It'll probably have a nice bump right after the stock goes public, but I sense a large crash in its future. The social gaming market is just so fickle.

</comment><comment><USER9> Ah, another round of crash-and-burn, Zynga style. This will be fun to watch.

<comment><USER10> I'm not so sure. The puzzle matching games are easier to grasp than Zynga's ville-type games. I'm trying to say that games from King have a lower common denominator.

<comment><USER9> They definitely do, yet since Zynga was on top of Facebook, seeing friends play the game and shoving shit in their face made people play as well. I actually forgot that we're talking about mobile applications here. Not sure if Candy Crush and stuff is directly on Facebook...maybe they will be more successful than Zynga.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> King booked $1.9B in 2013 revenue in 2013, with $568M in profit and 665 employees. Supercell (which sold 51% to Softbank for $1.5B in 2013) booked $892M, with $464M EBITDA and 138 employees. Zynga booked $873M in revenue with 2,000 employees, with a $37M loss.

A lot of negativity here, but I think it could be interesting an interesting business. I wouldn't begrudge anyone who has a massive hit like Candy Crush and seeing how far the ride can go.

[http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/02/18/king-digital-in- ipo-f...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/02/18/king-digital-in-ipo-filing- crushes-it-on-revenue-profit/)

<comment><USER12> In my opinion (not investing advice!), they're (investors) exiting now via IPO because their brightest days are behind them. If they're raking in money without millions of shareholders, why would they IPO? They'll paint a rosy picture based on recent performance to pull in several billion dollars, cash out, and move on to the next project. Very, very few game companies make money in the long run ("long" being 5+ years).

<comment><USER13> Well they've positioned themselves well for the IPO by doing the trademark grab recently. If courts continue to allow them to assert their dominance I think they'll continue to make decent money for a while. I would agree that they're not a long game investment but I think they'll make it over 5 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I smell a good short. Let's see what level the price is set at and the level of hype in the market. If investors jump on this like it's going to be the next Facebook, there could be a great opportunity here.

<comment><USER15> I don't think it's a good short because you have no idea if you will have to hold the position for months or a few years before KING drops. And if it rises too much in the time before your predicted drop then the margin calls will bankrupt you.

<comment><USER16> As Keynes well said: Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why would anyone buy into this? Didn't Zynga basically ruin social gaming IPO's?

Will it be different this time, no huge expansion and growth that kills the company, will they have a couple more hits in store?

</comment><comment><USER18> As of Q4, the average paying user gave them $17.32 per month in Gross Bookings. And they had $632m of Gross Bookings in the quarter, meaning they had 12.2m paying users by my count, giving them an average of $17.32/mo each.

12.2m paying users out of 408m MAUs, or about 3% of the total.

</comment><comment><USER19> I know BI content is usually frowned upon, but this isn't a good trend-line for candy crush search-interest:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/this-chart-is-not-good-for- ca...](http://www.businessinsider.com/this-chart-is-not-good-for-candy-crush- investors-2013-11)

</comment><comment><USER20> If I'm willing to contribute $100 to destroying King during or after their IPO, is there some creative way that I can do it?

I understand the basics of stocks, but beyond "don't buy it," I don't know if there's anything I can do to hurt them.

<comment><USER5> Any interest in crowdfunding this endeavour so we can _really_ make a difference?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Ah, timing.

<comment><USER22> I was thinking the same. Flappy Bird with Steroids.

<comment><USER5> Except that Flappy Bird doesn't try to scam you for money, and is actually a game of skill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> How does King make its games? Is there a single creative Genius that comes up with everything, like a Sid Meijer or Peter Molyneux kinda person? I would love to know how they operate.

<comment><USER24> Their games tend to mostly be iterations (or clones if you're cynical) of tries and true successful games that came before and were already proven in the market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> They should have submit for trademark the whole name "Candy Crush", not just the candy word.</comment>


Failing the Startup Game at Unbabel – Take 2 - <AUTHOR> http://esoteric-code.blogspot.com/2014/09/failing-startup-game-at-unbabel-take-2.html

<comment><USER2> This post was killed by user flags.

<comment><USER3> Forgive my ignorance, but what are user flags, and how are they used to kill a post? I did notice that this post dropped off the front page quite quickly.

<comment><USER2> After your account has a small amount of karma, a link that says "flag" will appear beside each story. When you see a story that you think is off-topic or otherwise harmful for Hacker News, you can flag it.

Flags cause a story's rank to fall and, if there are enough of them, kill the story altogether. When flags kill a story, we sometimes unkill it so the existing discussion can continue. I did that here.

I'd guess that the flags on the current post are because the it is just a reprise of a story from earlier this week, so more or less a duplicate.

A caveat. Please don't flag stories merely because they are on some unusual topic. If a post is intellectually substantive, and not flamewar prone, but somehow obscure or out-of-the-way, it is welcome here. Here's an example: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5979384](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5979384). We definitely want such diversity on Hacker News. (I mention this in case anyone still has the misconception that HN is for technology and startups only.)

<comment><USER3> Thanks dang. I don't think the story should have been killed, since it added very relevant information that was not included in the previous post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Vasco Pedro, CEO and Co-founder of Unbabel.

I feel that while it is very important to have honest discussions regarding employee expectations, in this particular case Andreas is being particularly disingenuous and stating facts that are plainly false. As the CEO of Unbabel, I find it hard to let wrong factual information be posted about Unbabel. There is a great deal of subjectivity in these matters and we are sensitive to the fact that being fired is not an easy thing, which is why I will try to stick to the facts. Despite the unwarranted distraction all this caused, we wish to put this matter behind us and wish Andreas well in his future endeavors.

The offer letter he received, which was in English, stated clearly the "at will" nature of the contract. The relevant clause is below.

\- "While we hope that your employment with the Company will be mutually satisfactory, employment with the Company is for no specific period of time. As a result, either you or the Company is free to terminate your employment relationship at any time for any reason, with or without cause. This is the full and complete agreement between us on this term. Although your job duties, title, compensation and benefits, as well as the Company's personnel policies and procedures, may change from time-to-time, the "at-will" nature of your employment may not be changed except by an express writing signed and dated by both you and the President of the Company."

This was also explained thoroughly upon signing of the actual contract, which was a standard contract of full time employment within the Portuguese law, which includes 3 months trial period, by default. At the time we did not have our contract translated to English, which is why we took great pains to make sure everything was clear, but shortly after all the contracts were translated to English.

Furthermore, as I stated before, when he was let go we gave him more severance than was required, we paid him one extra month of salary and added another $1000 on top of it to compensate for unforeseen expenses. We have tried to the best of our ability to not make sure that Andreas had enough to get back to Sweden, if that was what he wished.

As Andreas admits, the company loaned him money to pay rent, helped him find a house, and treated him with respect, courtesy and welcomed him to the team. Andreas worked with 4 different co-workers and got negative feedback from all of them. There was a fundamental problem of communication with Andreas and there appeared to be a systematic misunderstanding of goals, as well as constant exacerbation of minor problems.

Communication is two-way channel, so obviously this was not necessarily the fault of the individual, and a high growth startup is certainly an environment that is suitable for misunderstandings, since we rely on a lot of assumptions, which is why over communication is extremely important. In any case it felt to us that there wasn't a good fit between Andreas and the team. We hired 8 employees around the same period, and 7 of them continue to be productive, happy and valuable members of the team. Of the 8 employees, 5 are not Portuguese, creating a very diverse group.

Andreas himself was very happy until the day he was fired, which shows that he was unaware of the consequences of his behaviour, or even of the issues that existed already, which is both potentially a core reason for the problems of communication and why the decision was unexpected.

This particular situation will certainly make us improve our hiring and screening processes in order to improve the fit and I thank the HN community for pointing out ideas we can try, like remote working and better defined trial periods. It is also important that we improve employee communication and give more concise feedback to employees.

Unbabel is committed to being an international company, with employees from many countries. We pay well above Portuguese average and our goal is to hire the best individuals from anywhere in the world to be part of something meaningful.

We are working hard to solve a hard problem in human communication and take very seriously the fact that we need exceptional people in our team in order to to achieve our vision. We are fortunate to have an amazing team and will continue to strive for maintaining high standards and good culture fit.

Andreas acquired an unfortunate view of Portugal while he was here. We tried hard to make his experience a wonderful one and Portugal is without a doubt an amazing place to live. We have a great climate, it is very safe, most people speak English, it is a modern place and it is very easy to get 100MB internet speed in your home. It is close to the US and Portugal has always had a hacker mentally, since the days of the discoveries and Vasco da Gama, much due to the need to find solutions to being surrounded by Spain, which at the time was a problem. These and many other things is why Algarve (south of Portugal) was rated the best place in the world to retire by Huffington Post ([http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathleen-peddicord/best- places...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathleen-peddicord/best-places-to- retire-overseas_b_5716909.html)).

If you are curious about Unbabel's hiring practices and what is like to work at Unbabel, I would be happy to answer personally.

<comment><USER5> Let's look at the facts:

1.) Unbabel is a YC company that recently raised 1.5M

2.) Andreas is a contractor that was given a 3-month at-will contract, for a job that required him to move to Portugal from Sweden.

3.) He worked for 1 month and then was let go and given pay for 1.5 months.

4.) He managed to lose all his money that he made while working for Unbabel, due to a 4 month rental agreement that Unbabel helped him secure a week before Unbabel fired him.

I am not sure if the founders are psychopaths, but there are clearly psychopathic behaviors here. Here's an employee that put his trust into the company to move and sign a contract he couldn't understand, and the company did the following things:

1.) Could not even pay out 1.5 month of contract left (after raising 1.5M)

2.) Could not handle the rental situation

3.) Could not help this guy land on his feet

4.) Could not apologize to Andreas after the article has posted, or manage to help compensate

5.) Continues to answer with posts that try to emphasize how great it is to work for the company or work in Portugal

If this wasn't a YC company we would be alot harder on the company.

<comment><USER6> I agree with all of your analysis here, save one nitpick: I don't think the founders are psychopaths. I think they're in a bubble. I think they genuinely believe they did the right thing, because (like I said elsewhere in this thread), they're simply not thinking about Andreas and they're resolutely refusing to see things from his perspective.

I'd challenge vasco_ to take a look at what this situation is like from Andreas' perspective, and then explain why an apology or greater assistance to him was unnecessary or impossible.

<comment><USER7> "I agree with all of your analysis here, save one nitpick: I don't think the founders are psychopaths. I think they're in a bubble. I think they genuinely believe they did the right thing, because (like I said elsewhere in this thread), they're simply not thinking about Andreas and they're resolutely refusing to see things from his perspective."

To quote Wikipedia ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy)) - emphasis be me:

"Psychopathy (/saɪˈkɒpəθi/) (or sociopathy /ˈsoʊsiəˌpæθi/) is traditionally defined as a personality disorder characterized by enduring antisocial behavior, _diminished empathy and remorse_ , and disinhibited or bold behavior. It may also be defined as a continuous aspect of personality, representing scores on different personality dimensions found throughout the population in varying combinations."

<comment><USER6> I think assuming someone is a psychopath is assuming the absolute worst about them in this context. I don't think it's really fair to anyone. There are plenty of other situations that result in diminished empathy and remorse, not all of them pathological in nature, and whether or not vasco_ is a psychopath doesn't affect the rightness or wrongness of his behavior from an objective standpoint.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems like a lot of people feel an urge to take sides and say "how could Unbabel do this, it's their fault" or "how could you not read the contract, it's your fault," and I don't see any comments really discussing the underlying issues in this situation. I'm seeing a lot of fault on both sides, and lessons both sides need to learn.

Andreas, some people here have called you naive, and I have to say that on the surface I can very much see why. A decent financial incentive was enough to get you to wholly uproot your (relatively unstable) life for a group of people you had never met living in a place where you didn't speak the language and didn't know the laws. It does read, in your posts, as if you never considered the possibility that you could get screwed by these people.

I feel like part of the reason you are so upset now might be because you didn't consider possible negative outcomes. Nobody likes to be surprised. It's also reasonable to say that being defensive when people ask about your financial situation and the circumstances of this event (as you have been in comments, and in the tone this post takes), and you tell them it's none of their business, that's not fair: You made it their business when you posted it publicly online and invited comments on HN.

However, let's look at Unbabel's conduct as well: They knew who Andreas was. He's indicated they knew his situation (and I believe, from his statements and theirs, that he is telling the truth, if colored by his feelings). They knew he didn't speak Portguese, they obviously had to be aware he was willing to take the (in my opinion, fairly significant) step of moving across the continent to their country anyway, and given how quickly they fired him it seems like they knew pretty quickly after he joined that he wasn't working out. It seems like Unbabel understood that Andreas was taking large risks, and didn't try to point that out to him. Apparently, they didn't consider how it would affect his working with them until after he'd been hired.

No, they didn't HAVE to, but if they cared at all about his well-being, I think they should have considered his issues and perspective in both the hiring and the firing. He didn't enter this situation angry, and he didn't have to leave it that way. If they had given him a little more time and consideration, he wouldn't have been kicked out of his apartment and these blog posts wouldn't exist. Now, maybe Andreas didn't express to them that he would have liked that until after it was too late (but it seems like they're also refusing to speak to him at all, which just doesn't make sense to me). But it's not his responsibility to ask: Unbabel played on his naivete (whether they knew it or not) to hire him, and they were the ones who decided the relationship hadn't worked out. Their conduct was legal, but it wasn't right, and it wasn't smart.

This has gotten quite long, so I'll try to sum up: Your employers/employees are people. They don't know everything that's going on and you don't fully understand their situation no matter how much you think you know. What they present is not always what they are. If you are an employee (and your financial/skillset situation allows it), you owe it to yourself to get protection from this by understanding and negotiating your contract and by maintaining open lines of communication with your superiors, monitoring for issues (which Andreas may have done, I don't know). If you are an employer, you need to take your employees' situation into account even when you're about to fire them, and you need to be as clear and kind as you can be. Yeah, there might be more costs - they should be considered part of the cost of hiring. A disgruntled fired employee is way worse than a fired employee who cost you a month of his rent.

So, TL;DR: Be human even if you're representing a faceless corporation, or at least try to pretend you are. This situation happened because nobody was communicating and nobody was thinking about what the other guy was thinking about. It could easily have been avoided with a little more world-wariness and a little more generosity.

</comment><comment><USER8> > The contract was presented to me on paper and in Portuguese, 7 pages in > total. The only thing I understood was the caption, 'Contrato de Trabalho'. > At the time no one said anything about being able to break the contract > without reasonable cause before 3 months had passed.

This is pretty appalling. I don't think the burden is on the offerer to explain the contract in full to you. I feel bad for you, but you kind of shot yourself in the foot on that one.

<comment><USER9> Providing an unreadable (to the person signing) contract violates the principals of natural justice for one.

<comment><USER10> It's not unreasonable when it's written in the official language of the country in which your office resides.

<comment><USER9> So it all right to rip of foreigners then or people not versed in employment law.

Foolish or badly advised people still have rights you know

<comment><USER10> A foolish person would sign a contract in a language that they can't read. No reasonable employer would be offended if you refused to sign an agreement you couldn't possibly understand.

If they were offended, that would be even more of a reason not to work there or sign it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Don't take the criticism and questioning too hard. The comments on this forum is from people you barely know and vice versa.

By the way,

> The contract was presented to me on paper and in Portuguese

... given what the company does, I might have taken it as a joke.

</comment><comment><USER12> Vasco states that "Andreas himself was very happy until the day he was fired, which shows that he was unaware of the consequences of his behavior, or even of the issues that existed already, which is both potentially a core reason for the problems of communication and why the decision was unexpected." Now, how do you just fire a person who has no way to figure out he wasn't meeting the "culture" expectations? No feedback at all? Is this Unbabel's culture?

</comment><comment><USER13> > The contract was presented to me on paper and in Portuguese, 7 pages in > total.

Given that Unbabel is a translation company, it is ironic that they didn't bother to translate the contract for you, knowing that you don't understand the language

</comment><comment><USER14> Besides driving a lot of talent away, I think it's an insidious expectation that an employee makes a 'culture fit' where you have to regularly enjoy surfing and drinking with everyone.

Being friendly with coworkers is great, but when you push it further like it appears Unbabel does, you're in reality just asking employees to invest even more of their life, mind, and personal freedom laboring for your company.

Another possibly is it's important for the founders to use their startup to live out a lifestyle, i.e. have fun and party along the way. Those are not the type of founders I want to work for either.

</comment><comment><USER15> Employee contracts in Portugal have one of two forms: "fixed term" and "long term". Long term is when there is no deadline for the contract to expire (also, it's the most common type) and it says you're entitled 1mo (perhaps now it's less) of compensation for each year working for the company.

Fixed term, however, has a different set of compensation rules, one of them being that if the employer breaks the contract 1 month into it, the employer still needs to pay for the extra 2 months. This appears to be your case/contract. However, from Vasco's previous comment, it does seem like that has been sorted, so your case does not appear to have grounds I'm afraid.

Personally, I'd recommend moving on, it may be the top thing on your mind right now, but in a year it won't matter one bit.

</comment><comment><USER16> You need to find out what is in the contract you signed and get legal aid. Continuing to post on it in public is likely to be counterproductive.

</comment><comment><USER17> Let me get this straight: You have been programming Java for years but you haven't saved any money. Being in a situation without any savings, you take the adventure and go to Portugal to sign a contract that you don't understand. The company you work for figures out you are not the person they are looking for, and fires you during your trial period (in which both parties can end the contract within a week, therefore it's called a trial period).

I don't know you, so I can't really judge, but can you answer this question: Before blaming other people, have you looked into the mirror first and questioned how you ended up in this situation?

<comment><USER18> You completely missed the point of the article. Yes, he acted naively, and assumed that the company that he was working for would act in good faith. Thats not the point.

The point is that this is a terrible company that acted in bad faith, and took advantage of an admittedly naive person, and nobody in the developer community should ever trust Unbabel again because fuck them.

<comment><USER19> > The point is that this is a terrible company that acted in bad faith, and > took advantage of an admittedly naive person, and nobody in the developer > community should ever trust Unbabel again because fuck them.

Wow, just wow. Is the world really so black and white to you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> IANAL, but if you didn't understand the contract, chances are its not valid.

If labor law is like in France, this could mean that your employment is assumed to be of the indefinite variety (since no valid contract dictates otherwise), and your firing could be illegal. In France this means they could owe you 6 months of wages.

This is Portugal, so some EU directives might cover a similar concept, and you could be entitled to a little settlement on the issue (granted French labor law is pretty intense, so your results may vary).

Anyways, a lawyer would be good. If you have any portuguese friends with good google-fu (or knowledge of employment law) they might be able to at least smell test this path.

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately some of the EU states are happy to take the CAP budget but when it comes to reforming and implementing EU directives only implement the letter and not the sprit of the law.

And Some country's blatantly stack the decks against outsiders non Italian university lecturers in Italy have been trying for decades to get parity with their Italian colleagues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Lawyer up if you feel mislead.

It's always hard to see who is right and who ia wrong, specialy in employment case. Morever, european laws should be a lot more protrective even if you are the one in fault.

ps: On a side note, never forget that's every publicity is good publicity. I am working on integrating automated translation in our web app and now I am considering unbabel. :/

</comment><comment><USER22> You signed a contract you didn't read and then blamed someone else for it. Sorry, but all of this falls squarely on you. Especially for major decisions, understand what you're doing.

Not reading the contract and understanding it shows naivete and a lack of common sense. This also makes me question how much of your opinion of unbabel should be attributed to your naive worldview.

</comment><comment><USER23> This screams out "there's two sides to every story". :(</comment>


Quicksort in 3 lines of shell - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/wyc/snippets/blob/master/sh/qsort/qsort.sh

<comment><USER2> Let me fix that for you.

        qsort(){
            local L="";
            local G="";
            [ $# -eq 1 ] && echo $1 && return;
            P=$1;
            shift;
            for i in $@; do
                [ $i -lt $P ] && L="$L $i" || G="$G $i";
            done
            [ -z "$L" ] || L=`qsort $L`;
            [ -z "$G" ] || G=`qsort $G`;
            echo "$L $P $G"
        }
        qsort $@

Looks more like 14 lines to me.

<comment><USER3> Also: what? No median-of-three pivot selection?

      # these lines replace "P=$1" line:

      local first=$1
      eval local last=\${$#}
      eval local mid=\${$((($#+1)/2))}

      if [ $first -le $mid ] ; then
        if [ $mid -le $last ] ; then
          P=$mid
        elif [ $first -le $last ] ; then
          P=$last
        else
          P=$first
        fi
      else
        if [ $first -le $last ] ; then
          P=$first
        elif [ $mid -le $last ] ; then
          P=$last
        else
          P=$mid
        fi
      fi

That little enhancement blows up the LOC quite a bit. :)

<comment><USER3> Also, suppose we abstract the operators a little bit:

      if [ $x $LT $y ] ; ...

If we set LT to "-lt" we get numeric comparison.

Change it to "-ot" and we can order paths by modification timestamp.

Set LT to "<" and obtain lexicographic sorting on strings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me [http://bash.org/?464385](http://bash.org/?464385)

<comment><USER5> Well do be fair none of the commands in this quicksort require user input at least :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > _L=`qsort $L`_

POSIX has standardized $(qsort $L) syntax since 1990. It's okay to use it now.

</comment><comment><USER6> The time complexity looks very bad (assuming I can read shell, which I am not sure about).

First it appears it has the classic bug of passing items equal to the partition to sub-sorts (G in this case). This guarantees N recurses (and at least c N^2 operations) when trying to sort an array that is all duplicates of a single value. Also the list concatenations ( L="$L $i" and G="$G $i") which often make mere list assembly take c N^2 time (pretty much forced by the string representations). So this could be a c N^3 worst-case sorting algorithm (possibly worse than bubble sort).

One of my articles on the pain of quicksort: [http://www.win- vector.com/blog/2008/04/sorting-in-anger/](http://www.win- vector.com/blog/2008/04/sorting-in-anger/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, there are few places where this submission would result in such a decent analysis. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A couple of characters less in C ( I didn't count whitespace in both ):

void qs( int* a , int z )

{

if(z > 1){ ; int p = a[z/2], s = 0, e = z-1, t; while(s <= e) {

for(;a[s] < p; s++); for(;a[e] > p; e--); if(s <= e) { t = a[s];

a[s++] = a[e]; a[e--] = t; } } qs( a , e+1 ); qs( a+s , z-s ); }

}

</comment><comment><USER8> Maybe we should all learn to always prepend "Pseudo" to these "quicksorts"?

<comment><USER9> Is it not really a quicksort?

<comment><USER8> I meant that the canonical quicksort algorithm which Hoare came up uses in- place partitioning. Probably you can still call "quicksort" to these nice snippets (be it in Prolog, Erlang or Haskell), but mentioning the fact about the deviation from the canonical implementation could be useful for readers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [https://gist.github.com/pdkl95/e97749edc3ba58825a16#file- bas...](https://gist.github.com/pdkl95/e97749edc3ba58825a16#file- bash_only_mergesort-bash)

I what must be a lapse of sanity, I wrote mergesort. It is quite a bit more than 3 - err, 14 - lines, but it does include an option to see view the array nesting.

It uses slightly better array management... and then throws out any gains by rebuilding a new array every time an element is shift off the front.

// for when you _really_ don't want to use sort(1)

</comment><comment><USER11> It's not 3 commands so I'm sure you can get it down to 1 line.

</comment><comment><USER12> Hey, check out this 1-liner HTTP server!

:%s/\n/ /g</comment>


Job Seekers Want Honesty, A Case for Public Diversity Numbers - <AUTHOR> http://employerblog.internmatch.com/is-silicon-valley-losing-its-transparency-why-companies-should-share-their-diversity-numbers-on-their-career-page/

<comment><USER2> As a person of diversity (read: black woman) I like the nod towards transparency. Adding a scoreboard, however may not change the systemic problem underlying this issue. I've worked hard so my resume speaks louder than my hair texture. Though I admit when I walk into a swanky dotcom office my eye does a quick sweep to see if I've just raised the diversity by 50% by walking in the door.</comment>


Cadillac Tops Tesla in Consumer Reports' First Ranking of Automated Driving - <AUTHOR> https://www.consumerreports.org/autonomous-driving/cadillac-tops-tesla-in-automated-systems-ranking/ <comment><USER2> Only works in some roads, and requires you full attention the whole time. Somehow that makes it better. By this logic a car with manual only mode is even better.

<comment><USER3> I can't understand why limiting it to certain areas is a good thing (geofencing). One limitation of the google waymo system is I believe it still requires pre-measuring of the roads, ie someone had to drive by there ahead of time. Tesla afaik does have the possibility of improvement but in general works without any precomputed scenery.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Curate - discover and create content via collections of links - <AUTHOR> http://curate.im

<comment><AUTHOR> Sign up with the beta code HN001 for instant access. Let me know what you think :)</comment>


Archivebox 0.4 Released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pirate/ArchiveBox/releases/tag/v0.4.9 <comment><USER2> Thanks for posting it!

We're super proud of this release, it was largely made possible by the hard work of my colleagues Cristian @cdvv7788, Karim @apkallum, and Angel @afreydev at Monadical.

We dedicated some official company time and they did a fantastic job of learning it quickly, adding tests, making it more stable, accessible, and backwards-compatible.

        mkdir data && cd data
        pip install archivebox
        archvivebox init
        archivebox add 'https://example..com' --depth=[0],1 ...
        archivebox server

Then open [https://127.0.0.1:8000](https://127.0.0.1:8000) to use the web UI.

Screenshots:

[https://github.com/pirate/ArchiveBox/releases/tag/v0.4.9#Scr...](https://github.com/pirate/ArchiveBox/releases/tag/v0.4.9#Screenshots)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for creating it! I have nearly 100gb of archives today and you have the simplest app to do it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very cool!</comment>


Transitioning to a sustainable economy is fiscally conservative. Why can't we? - <AUTHOR> https://sacredheadwaters.substack.com/p/sacred-headwaters-6-new-climate-economy <comment><USER2> > "If the projected costs of climate change are real and if the projected > economic benefits of investing in a sustainable future are genuine, why > hasn't the global economy begun a more rapid shift? Why aren't businesses > and governments working harder to support this transition when it's the > fiscally conservative move?"

For a while I've wondered this, and I can't help but think that we're lacking actual trustworthy valuations of climate risk. The work of orgs like Jupiter Intelligence ([https://jupiterintel.com/](https://jupiterintel.com/)) is extra relevant in this case.

</comment><comment><USER3> > when you start considering the revenue saved by mitigating the projected > costs of climate change

According to Nat Geo, it costs us billions per year. However those "billions" include damage from storms, and suggesting that damage from storms is because of human caused climate change is very disingenuous— that's suggesting that "stopping" climate change will also stop expensive storms, which is completely denying that destructive storms existed for as long as there has been an earth. So which storms are CO2 caused, and which aren't? Which highly destructive storms would have occurred anyway but their dollar costs are high because of where people choose to live as opposed to the actual intensity of the storm.

My point is that attributing storm costs to human-caused climate change is simplistic and misleading because we would need some baseline to determine which storms would not have existed if it weren't for human CO2. That delta is what the real savings would be, not just the raw number. But getting that number is almost impossible because we would have to accept the argument that the climate has always changed so when would we start measuring to get our "pre-CO2" storm destruction baseline.

The article is assuming facts not entered into evidence.

The problem with climate activism is that it has become economic activism of a certain political stripe rather than actual environmentalism. Otherwise why try to move the mountain of capitalism and instead focus on attainable and politically non-controversial (mostly) goals such as keeping benzene out of the water, preventing of overfishing, or ending toxic waste dumping. When climate activists suggest solutions and nuclear power isn't one of them, then I stop listening — because it becomes clear it isn't about the climate anymore. When climate activists suggesting taxing Americans and Europeans more but never mention tariffs against China or India or other highly polluting countries, then it's clear they aren't after fixing the problem of climate, but fixing what they perceive to be a problem with capitalism. They'll tax some car driver in California, but ignore the container ships of goods at the Port of Long Beach filled with Chinese goods made under some of the most polluting conditions on earth.

Want to reduce CO2? Start creating policies that favor domestic businesses and reduce reliance on places like China or India for consumer goods.

But let's not try to argue fiscal conservatism using "savings" based on misleading economic costs that aren't legitimately quantified. They are either "projected" or just completely made up.

<comment><USER4> > Want to reduce CO2? Start creating policies that favor domestic businesses > and reduce reliance on places like China or India for consumer goods.

Ding ding ding!

There's like 15 ships that produce more emissions than every car out there per year.

The counterargument is that these are very efficient by volume. This is true. But... do we still need that? In my neck of the woods (middle of USA) You're still going to need to transport the car over land... If it was built more locally we wouldn't need nearly as much shipping in the equation.

An interesting question I've had: What about the supply chain itself? As an absurdist example are we shipping raw iron from the US to China by boat for them to refine, only for them to then build it into a car and ship it right back to us? That one probably is not true, but...

I wonder what cases we have where raw materials are being shipped to countries where labor is cheaper, lengthening the distance from raw to product, thus increasing emissions.

<comment><USER5> What you describe is a system that values the generation of wealth, and uses seemingly-logistically-foolhardly supply chains to exploit cost-of-labor imbalances to maximize profit.

And likely as long as it is profitable to do this, we will, at massive non- financial costs.

<comment><USER6> > And likely as long as it is profitable to do this, we will, at massive non- > financial costs.

Note that there is a simple solution to this. You just need to price in the generated externality. That's what a carbon tax does.

The fact that basicaly no country has one tells you a lot about what governments really think of the climate crisis.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Getting a network trace from a single application - <AUTHOR> http://jonasdn.blogspot.com/2016/07/getting-network-trace-from-single.html <comment><USER2> Looks very nice!

One thing: the "Handle exceptions of setuid() and setgid()" commit message caught my eye, so I took a look:

      if (setuid(uid) < 0) {
              fprintf(stderr, "Unable to set process user ID");
      }

You probably want to add an exit() here, as well as to the preceeding setgid() call. Also, the earlier initgroups() can fail, too, so its result should also be checked.

<comment><USER3> While we are doing this...

        #define APP_TIMEOUT (2000000L) /* 2 seconds */
        ...
        usleep(APP_TIMEOUT);

usleep limits its argument's range to values from 0 to 1000000 and is considered obsolete. Please use nanosleep instead.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, applied :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool! Namespace are a powerful but not very well known feature of Linux.

<comment><USER5> Well, unless you count docker, rkt, and the whole linux containers thing.

<comment><USER6> There are a number of consumers of namespaces, particularly of late, but they've been around (depending on which type) for years at this point, and many users (or even admins) have little knowledge of their existence or usage unless it comes time to deploy $CONTAINER and their platform does not have them enabled.</comment></comment></comment>


Neo4j 1.2 Final - Prêt-à-Porter - <AUTHOR> http://blog.neo4j.org/2010/12/neo4j-12-final-pret-porter.html <comment><USER2> I was starting to get excited about neo4j until I saw the pricing list for closed src apps & that you have to register with them to use just one instance of the free commercial server

<comment><USER3> That is a major bummer! Although the Neo4j team didn't exactly make this information easy to find.

Neo4j is released on AGPL. Their subscriptions allow you to pay to legally (IANAL so anyone want to step in here?) circumvent the AGPL and buy support

Price list: <http://neotechnology.com/price-list>

<comment><USER4> How can we improve? We certainly don't want to hide our choice of licensing. Currently it's at the top of the <http://neo4j.org> page, immediately after the introductory description of a what a graph database is:

"Neo4j is released under a dual free software/commercial license model (which basically means that it's open source under the AGPLv3 but if you're interested in using it with closed source software, then you must buy a commercial license)." (<http://neo4j.org>)

Also, we have an AGPLv3 logo on our web page, there's a LICENSE.txt in our release tarballs, we mention it at the end of every presentation we give, and Neo4j is tagged with AGPL on sites like Freshmeat (<http://freshmeat.net/projects/neo4j>).

Please let me know how we can make it easier to find!

-EE

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Been looking to try out a graph database. Basically, the data types are edges, nodes and the connections between them?

</comment><comment><USER6> Any other decent competitors for neo4j?</comment>


Forget Gen Y: Gen X is Making Real Change - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2009/09/forget-gen-y-gen-x-is-making-r.php <comment><USER2> Speaking as a gen X member, gen Y is now what, just getting out of college at best? While we're in our 30s to 40s. This comparison is silly.

<comment><USER3> Welcome to web 2.0: where half-assed blog posts count as journalism and people actually pay attention to idiots!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Us 13ers are firmly in control now! Watch out boomers and boomer babies! [http://www.amazon.com/Generations-History-Americas- Future-15...](http://www.amazon.com/Generations-History-Americas- Future-1584/dp/0688119123/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252719408&sr=8-1)

"Far more than other generations, 13ers feel that the real world is gearing up to punish them down the road… Elders find it hard to suppress feelings of disappointment over how they are turning out—dismissing them as a 'lost', 'ruined', even 'wasted' generation…"

"Thirteeners find these criticisms overblown. They look upon themselves as pragmatic, quick, sharp-eyed, able to step outside themselves to understand the game of life as it really get played. And whatever they are, 13ers insist, they _have_ to be.…"

"Thirteeners, not Boomers, were America's true 'children of the 1960s,' and especially, the 1970s. An awakening era that seemed euphoric to young adults was, to them, a nightmare of self-immersed parents, disintegrating homes, schools with conflicting missions, confused leaders, a culture shifting from G to R ratings, new public-health dangers, and a 'Me Decade' economy that tipped toward the organized old and away from the voiceless young."

What a fun book!

</comment><comment><USER5> NEWSFLASH: As people get older, they start turning into the old people!</comment>


Software That Turns Confusing Math Equations into Simple Images - <AUTHOR> https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/math/a32743509/cmu-penrose-math-equations-into-pictures/ <comment><USER2> Is this better than GeoGebra [https://www.geogebra.org/3d](https://www.geogebra.org/3d) ?</comment>


India Will Be the Second Country in the World to Use a Novel Nuclear Technology - <AUTHOR> https://futurism.com/india-will-be-the-second-country-in-the-world-to-use-a-novel-nuclear-technology <comment><USER2> Nuclear proponents have promised "limitless energy" since WWII. What they've delivered, however, is quite different: Three Mile Island, Fukushima, unfixable waste all over our country, the Santa Susana facility in CA on fire, and billions of dollars in decommissioning costs when plants are shut down. Nuclear isn't the answer to our energy problems.</comment>


What was Alan Turing really like? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27701207 <comment><USER2> One of my lecturers for my first degree was Gordon Preston. He worked with Turing at Bletchley, and apparently used to play Go with him quite regularly. He will have known Turing quite well, both professionally and, insofar as was possible at the time, socially.

I knew Preston quite well - he mentored me in the scholar program - but I never knew of his connection with Turing. When I did find out I started to make enquiries about re-establishing contact, but Preston now has advanced dementia and doesn't recognize even close family.

Such a lost opportunity, primarily because I was young, self-absorbed, ignorant, but believing I was clever and knowledgeable. And now the chance is gone forever. This is why I now try to take every opportunity to connect with people who have stories to tell, and encourage them to talk.

<comment><USER3> _> young, self-absorbed, ignorant, but believing I was clever and knowledgeable._

Well, don't beat yourself up too much. It is existentially wrenching to think about the missed opportunity but such is the folly of youth. Equally Preston could have shared more. Like tears in rain and all that.

Though I look at that statue of Turing and I really want to shake his hand and thank him. Sometimes life is terribly unfair.

<comment><USER2>
      > Equally Preston could have shared more.

Now that I am actively seeking out people and deliberately spending time with them, the one thing I consistently find is that they are very reluctant to initiate conversations about these things. I've now spent time with Charlie Duke, Alan Bean, and TK Mattingly, and without exception it takes time to get them to open up and talk about these things.

I used to wonder why, but I had an in-depth conversation with someone a while ago who was similarly reluctant. She said:

        People ask, but usually they don't really care.
        And if they do care, they usually won't make
            the effort to understand.
        And if they do make the effort to understand,
            they usually don't have the background or
            experience to understand.
        And if they do understand, I don't need to have
            explained.

Taking the time, making the effort, explicitly acknowledging that you'll never fully understand and yet being willing to make the effort to appreciate their experience, then you can get people to tell their stories.

Otherwise they won't, and you'll miss out.

<comment><USER3> I understand why, and I know how most of us are. But it does make me sad that these harrowing experiences get smothered by polite conversation. FWIW my grandparents escaped the Soviet gulags and were likewise reluctant to discuss it. So the stories and lessons are lost.

<comment><USER2> I remember sitting chatting for a day with Ivan Moscovich. his story[0] is compelling and horrifying in equal measure. I am privileged to count him as a friend, and to have had him open up and talk quietly about some of his experiences.

[0] [http://yoz.com/wired/2.09/features/moscovich.html](http://yoz.com/wired/2.09/features/moscovich.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> At least in mathematics, I've heard he was something of a machine.

Here's another article with some biographical information but more about his work (for those that don't know the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy it's a good, free, online resource for philosophy related subjects).

[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing/](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Love the letter on solving solitaire. Encouragement to talk to kids about maths.

Are there any good scientific books for kids/toddlers anyway? For things to answer to the "why" questions if you are an atheist. I'd like to explain evolution for example.

<comment><USER6> I started my kids on this:

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Space-Childs-Mother- Goose/dp/19309...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Space-Childs-Mother- Goose/dp/1930900465)

It makes them ask questions to which you can explain the answers.

Few excerpts:

[http://www.phy.duke.edu/~hsg/134/poems/space-childs- mother-g...](http://www.phy.duke.edu/~hsg/134/poems/space-childs-mother- goose.txt)

<comment><USER7> Those look like they are entertaining for adults, not children.

I too have kids, 6 and almost 3, and recommendations for good science oriented kids books are always welcome.

<comment><USER5> I already have "The Magic Of Reality" by Richard Dawkins: [http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/1451675046/fractality-...](http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/1451675046/fractality-20) .

I think the content would be what I am looking for, but unfortunately the artwork and layout is too overblown, making it hard to read. My kid is 3 - obviously the text would be too complicated anyway, but it would be nice to at least have some nice, clear pictures to talk about.

It has some good ideas, though - for example it shows a stack of photographs of our ancestors, one photograph for every ancestor, and talks about the height of that stack. Nice idea, but horrible graphics imo (artistically good graphics, but not so well suited as illustration).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So can we see the whole letter on solitaire please?

</comment><comment><USER9> From the article:

      Turing even went with the Greenbaum family on
      a day trip to the seaside resort of St Annes.
      But Barbara recalls it ended badly.

      "Alan turned up at our house in a very strange
       outfit, which looked like his school cricket
       whites. White trousers which came half-way up
       his ankles and a white shirt which was very
       creased and crumpled. But it was a lovely sunny
       day and Alan was in a cheerful mood and off
       we went.

      "Then he thought it would be a good idea to go
       to the Pleasure Beach at Blackpool. We found a
       fortune-teller's tent and Alan said he'd like
       to go in so we waited around for him to come
       back.

      "And this sunny, cheerful visage had shrunk into
       a pale, shaking, horror-stricken face.
       Something had happened. We don't know what the
       fortune-teller said but he obviously was deeply
       unhappy. I think that was probably the last time
       we saw him before we heard of his suicide."

Gee, _that 's_ strange...

      The inquest decided that Turing had killed himself
      using cyanide. A partially eaten apple was by his
      side in bed but as it was never tested it's
      impossible to say if it was laced with poison as
      has been suggested.

Oh really?

      An alternative interpretation is that he inhaled
      or ingested cyanide by accident during a chemistry
      experiment.

So your telling me... That someone with an analytical mind like Turing's... just _decided_ to go waste some money on a fortune teller (because it's not like they're bullshit artists or anything)... while on a sudden, random trip to the sea shore...

And then, he emerges with his mood so visibly shattered, that a young girl never forgets the drastic, unexpected shift in personality, not even decades later does she forget this transient event. A short time later, he's dead. And it's a suspicious suicide.

Someone involved in developing machines to attack german Nazi military ciphers, with years of experience conducting efforts under secrecy with high- level government security clearance, while cities across the channel are being annihilated with firebombing, and futuristic ballistic missiles are falling from the sky.

This man tells a little girl he's going to indulge in a superstitious visit with a " _fortune teller_ ", and the liason blanches him white with fear.

That was no fortune teller. He was meeting with some shadowy figure involved in who-knows-what, and was either directly threatened by that person (because of some old-fashioned indignant opinions about his personal life and the respectable nature of his choices, and how they reflect upon his peers) and told that he had crossed an unforgivable line with his indiscretions...

...or he was told some truly disturbing news, maybe along the lines that a leak or a mole was discovered, and that his identity and level of participation in the war effort was now known by dangerous enemies, and his personal safety was very seriously compromised.

In my opinion, the involvement of cyanide seems to favor a professional murder, not a suicide, not mental illness, not bipolar mood swings induced by horomones, not a hobbyist's science experiment gone awry.

I feel that it's entirely possible, given the realm of secrecy and paranoia that Turing operated within earlier in life, that everyone relaxed just a little too much after the war ended, and some bitter post-war animosity had not fully evaporated, and someone knew him or found out about him, blamed him for their wartime misfortunes, and went after him.

<comment><USER10> > _So your telling me... That someone with an analytical mind like Turing > 's... just decided to go waste some money on a fortune teller (because it's > not like they're bullshit artists or anything)... while on a sudden, random > trip to the sea shore..._

While your explanation might also be plausible, you'd be surprised.

If you know people well, you'll find out that a perfect "analytical mind" is not at all incombatible with believing a fortune teller or even more bizarre things.

People can open and shut such "analytical" capacities at will and sort of compartmentalize their lives.

Heck, I know several of extremely analytical people, in hard sciences even, that in their personal lives border on hysteria or take note of such things as omens (sometimes laughingly, but you can see it still disturbs them).

And to get to the other side, people like Randi or Sagan are not totally sceptic because of their analytical minds. It's rather because of their life- long tendency to be sceptic, a tendency that's based on a subconscious decision (e.g it's not really a "rational" choice itself). That's why they are not just sceptic, but passionate about it.

<comment><USER9> I'm not ruling out that, as a sociable human being, he might like to have a little fun, and try out a carnival side show, and be open to patronizing superstition, while out and about on a sunny weekend afternoon.

I _do_ take issue with the idea that such a triviality could so easily take a visibly obvious, and lasting emotional toll on him, and ruin his day.</comment></comment></comment>


Hawaii Workaway for New Founders - <AUTHOR> http://wefunder.com/workaway <comment><AUTHOR> We're inviting 12 new founders to Hawaii for a week to hang out and learn from five experienced founders from Caviar, Move Loot, Atrium and more!

You'll be paired with a mentor to have one-on-one's with them each day and we'll have dinner together every night.

We'll cover snack foods, dinner every night and lodging. You just have to figure out how to get yourself to Oahu, Hawaii.</comment>


Jakob Nielsen: Mega Drop-Down Navigation Menus Work Well - <AUTHOR> http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mega-dropdown-menus.html

<comment><USER2> Um, I realize that the audience here is mostly university students, but do we really need frat house language in our submission titles now?

I'm not really offended, but would you say that you "had a chubby" for a new feature around the boardroom table, with women present? It would be nice if we could keep this site a little more esteemed than the sad excuse for language found on most of the internet.

EDIT (Obviously, the editors have changed the title.)

<comment><USER3> What the heck has slang got to do with gender in this case? I'd use slang like that around women or men, but probably not in the board room, no. Women aren't all delicate flowers you have to tip-toe around, y'know.

<comment><USER2> I think most men know that there are phrases that can be said in a locker room that wouldn't endear you to the average women, but that doesn't really reflect on women at all.

There are certainly always exceptions, but unless you're a fairly tame guy or friends with fairly non-typical women, locker-room talk usually won't go over well.

My comment wasn't in anyway meant to be demeaning to women.

<comment><USER3> In the US, perhaps. Maybe the ladies are just courser here in Europe but get a few of them together and they're usually coming out with language that'd make _me_ blush.

<comment><USER2> Mind the generation gap as well... as both men and women get older, language tends to civilize.

<comment><USER3> In the upper middle classes and above, perhaps. In the working class, my personal experience is the old are just as foul mouthed as the young (although they tend to use it in the correct company, rather than everyplace). This might sound classist, but I'm working class and it's what I've experienced in any case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _"Also as always, the more faddish features such as tag clouds exhibit major usability problems. "_

This is worth taking note of. Particularly if your users aren't very web- savvy.

<comment><USER5> Who decided a tag cloud was a good idea? Who used tag clouds enough to decide to put it on their web site? A tag cloud is one of those Internet Things where seeing it on a web site makes me lose some respect for the site maker.

<comment><USER6> I think tag clouds are a fantastic idea. They just happen to be terrible for navigation. I don't know why anybody thinks that's their primary purpose.

If I go to a page, one glance at the tag cloud shows me what the author writes about most. I can't think of a smaller/simpler/quicker way.

The fact that they're clickable is basically irrelevant.

<comment><USER5> "I write about Macs and typography."

"I love David Foster Wallace and interface design."

You can say more in a sentence than you can in a cloud, and it's more personal that way, and it's not ugly.

<comment><USER7> _You can say more in a sentence than you can in a cloud_

Yes, I agree. But the tag cloud will be more accurate. I can think of a number of blogs that have pretty ambiguous or off-target taglines.

 _and it's not ugly_

Yeah there are some hideous tag clouds out there. Ugh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Really really bad choice of terms: it took me until the middle of the article to realize Nielson is comparing these new "mega dropdowns" to navigation with the <select> element – not one dimensional dropdowns!

</comment><comment><USER9> Best Buy has been using these for years:

<http://www.bestbuy.ca/home.asp>

Mouse over the nav bar to see it in action. Oddly, only the Canadian version of the site seems to use them.

<comment><USER10> It fails for me (Firefox on Ubuntu 8.04). The menu appears _under_ the flash embed.

<comment><USER11> Linux Firefox in general has problems with always wanting to put flash on the top of the z ordering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anyone know a jquery plugin that implements these type of drop downs?

<comment><USER5> You could probably implement this entirely in CSS. It's a one-layer menu, so using display:none combined with a hover element could hide and show the stuff.

The problem is figuring out just what you're going to put into that menu. Nielsen's point is that these _aren't_ single-list menus: they're complex and serve multiple purposes at once. So figure out what your menu's going to do before you do anything.

<comment><USER13> Could you add the 0.5 sec. delay and cover the diagonal issue with just CSS?

<comment><USER14> I went to Nielsen's first example (<http://foodnetwork.com>) with NoScript enabled (meaning it degraded to CSS-only solution) and it worked quite well.

It was actually quite hard to get diagonal issue to be the problem, you must follow rather unnatural path to get out of the active zone.

And 0.5s delay was detrimental, site felt snappier without it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> i appreciate the reserved nature of his endorsement for this nav feature, def lets me know its not the tip of the week style recommendation, but more like, "hey this really works"

<comment><USER5> I used to really dislike Nielsen, but after a few years of reading him I've come to realize just how much of a consummate professional he is. I disagree with him on occasion in regards to aesthetic design, but when it comes to usability he is very rarely biased and most everything he writes is helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why are they all activated on mouseover? That doesn't make any sense to me. IMO I think that mouseovers are only good for displaying tooltips or something along those lines.

What's wrong with a click?

<comment><USER17> If I click on something like that, I'm expecting a page reload, not a menu.

<comment><USER10> However, is there harm in getting dynamic behavior when you're expecting a full page load?

Moreover, it would be better for consistency between the javascript-enabled and disabled versions to use a click, which could be a minor win if one sometimes uses the site with javascript and without depending on what computer they're accessing from.

<comment><USER18> I'd be hesitant to click on a link expecting a reload if I thought that it would take me away from the main page of the site, while the hover-activated nav is no commitment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Sorry to stray from the topic of the article, but what exactly, is a "chubby" supposed to be? I guess I'm getting older and not as down with the kidspeak as I used to be..

<comment><USER20> <http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=chubby></comment></comment>