RIP Kuro5hin - <AUTHOR> http://www.kuro5hin.org/ <comment><USER2> Hey so this is Rusty -- What happened was basically that Internap shut down the data center we were in and had to move the servers, and I conspicuously failed to Deal With Things around that. The content is probably not gone forever, but it may be a little while before it reappears. There's a very good chance that it will reappear in the form of an archive of static html pages though, not a live community. So if you'd like to, this is probably a good time to mourn what it was, although in that sense K5 has clearly been over for years.

<comment><USER3> Consider donating it to the Internet Archive. This is precisely the kind of thing they really do a good job with, and it's worth saving.

<comment><USER2> Yeah I don't really mind continuing to host it -- in archived form it wouldn't be any burden. But I'll talk to people.

<comment><USER4> [http://dontsuemebro.com](http://dontsuemebro.com)

Del Griffin seems to be working on Scoop improving it on his Scoop site. He can run your Kuro5hin and maybe even fix the cancel button and other things. He's currently adding HTML tags and trying to fix the https links without the a href tag in autoformat.

<comment><USER5> I'll run it better. Turn it over to me. There's gold in the database that got censored on the site. I'll assume all legal liability.

<comment><USER4> Yeah Lulzara can't sue any more because he had a Vespa accident and died. So Crawford's diary on him could come back an be undeleted.

It tells the truth on technology companies and how they cheat software consulants out of money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> First there was Slashdot, but CmdrTaco insisted on picking the stories for us. He called it an "omelet".

Kuro5hin came along to fix this, but discouraged posts that were just links to pages elsewhere on the web. IIRC, this was called "link farming". How many users had the talent and time to create original content, and then survive the ridiculous Kuro5shin editing process? Not many.

Digg then encouraged links, but shot itself in the foot with a stupid redesign.

Nowadays, reddit is king because it avoided the obvious mistakes of its predecessors.

<comment><USER7> Except that Reddit is gradually turning into 4chan. Every time I see /r/all, it's a little more mean-spirited, a little younger, a little more toxic.

Outsourcing moderation and libertarian ideals all sound nice, but when the rubber hits the road it gradually chases normal people away. Reddit just did it it slower because the strengths of their platform and content overwhelmed it... but it's getting there eventually.

<comment><USER8> I can't even go on Reddit anymore, in fact I just avoid it all together at this point. I'm sick of the memes, I'm sick of the left wing, hive mind, down vote brigades, and I'm especially sick of everyone just being an asshole to everyone else.

<comment><USER9> Left wing? I don't bother with Reddit because they strike me as a herd of authoritarian neo-liberal drones. Left-wing definitely not.

<comment><USER8> Reddit is absolutely a liberal dominated forum.

<comment><USER10> > they strike me as a herd of authoritarian neo-liberal drones.

> Reddit is absolutely a liberal dominated forum.

Sounds like you two agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Wikipedia page mentions that it was running on Scoop, but doesn't include that Scoop was written by Rusty as the framework for k5. Scoop went on to be used in a few other places, among them HuSi (where a bunch of core k5 folks moved to, though it's now pretty defunct as well).

The most well-known site I'm aware of that used Scoop was DailyKos, which I believe started on WordPress, then moved to Scoop (highly customized and eventually almost entirely rewritten I think), then finally onto its own custom-build CMS. There may have also been one more stage in there.

Source: 3-digit UID on DK, and was a regular way way back when on both k5 and HuSi.

<comment><USER12> I found a citeable reference[1] to back up your statement about Rusty being the original author of Scoop, and have updated the Wikipedia article accordingly.

[1] Wikipedia is quite strict with how cites are referenced, and unfortunately, I couldn't take your word for it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > "Kuro5hin — pronounced corrosion"

Ah, all these years I thought it was a Japanese name..

<comment><USER14> It was a joke on multiple levels. The founder was Rusty. Rusty -> rust -> corrosion -> kuro5shin. The second level was that it was a reference to Neal Stephenson's Sno Crash character Da5id character. The pseudo-Japanese and l33t-speak spelling was did give it a a cyberpunk flair.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=ybSFU9aDzsoC&pg=PA154&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=ybSFU9aDzsoC&pg=PA154&lpg=PA154&dq=kuro5hin+faq+name&source=bl&ots=94uMWwKTVR&sig=kU3aiEolGgfkGBu6SNRkcQJ2D6o&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQ4eWe_rrMAhUU1mMKHUnXBVAQ6AEIIzAC#v=onepage&q=kuro5hin%20faq%20name&f=false)

<comment><USER15> To be honest, there was something very awesome about the site layout. When the story submission queue was full and the trolling was only very much in the background, then it was a really good and amazing site.

The trolls turned incredibly mean though. They didn't ever come out of the woodwork, and they were completely anonymous. They were the harbinger of what was to come about half a decade later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Kuro5hin ran a block-all in their robots.txt[0] so this is more historic internet content that will dissapear into the abyss.

Anyone know of a mirror or an effort to mirror and host the site?

[0] [http://www.kuro5hin.org/robots.txt](http://www.kuro5hin.org/robots.txt)

<comment><USER17> I wrote a k5 screen scraper, and have 95% of k5 diaries, unfortunately I don't have any stories. Date range for my archive is: 2001-1-4 to 2015-7-22 For a total of 161,942 diaries: [http://k5.semantic-db.org/diary-slurp/161942-- archive-diarie...](http://k5.semantic-db.org/diary-slurp/161942--archive- diaries--html-diaries--nested-format.zip)

Here is a summary of what I have in my archive: [http://kr5ddit.com/post/759](http://kr5ddit.com/post/759)

Here are some tables showing which kuron had the highest number of posts over the lifetime of k5: [http://kr5ddit.com/post/759](http://kr5ddit.com/post/759)

<comment><USER17> BTW, rusty was certainly aware of my screen scraping project, and did not tell me to stop. And it would have been very obvious in the log files.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> k5 was the first place where I realised that trolling was a hobby for some people, that I encountered the knuckle-dragging form of misogynism that has now come to the fore on Twitter and social media generally, and where I realised that long-form writing in a forum-structure could have a home.

I loved k5 when it was good. But when it was bad… man, it was really bad.

I will remember it with a sense of fondness, but given I only checked in on it twice in the last 4-5 years shows how little I'll miss it.

</comment><comment><USER19> You can still read legendary Kuro5hin contributor localroger's writing here: [http://localroger.com/](http://localroger.com/)

<comment><USER20> My story, 'Electronic Taxi Dispatch, v1.0' was the last to post. I saved my diaries and stories about my adventures in the taxi, I guess I should buy a domain of my own.

<comment><USER21> Please do that. I enjoyed your stories, particularly 'Who Are Your Lifelines?'

<comment><USER20> Glad you liked that, thanks for commenting here. One of the pieces I've drafted but not yet posted is on the subject of "ordinary rendition", and is thematically related to the Lifelines piece.

Rusty appeared above and told what happened (datacenter moved), and said k5 might come back some day. I rarely use twitter, but I'll put a link to my site here: [https://twitter.com/taxicabjesus](https://twitter.com/taxicabjesus)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Google's cache has approximate 480 story pages still in its cache. The Wayback Machine won't show any results for the site because of its current robots.txt. It'd be great if someone could scrape these pages and provide them as an archive. I am not sure how to do that without running afoul of Google's terms- of-service.

List of URLs: [https://dpaste.de/YbEq/raw](https://dpaste.de/YbEq/raw)

<comment><USER23> You can use [http://archive.is/](http://archive.is/)

<comment><USER24> Archive.is supports batch archiving too:

[http://blog.archive.is/post/45031162768/can-you-recommend- th...](http://blog.archive.is/post/45031162768/can-you-recommend-the-best- methodscript-so-i-may)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Kuro5hin was great in the very early days. A good, maybe somewhat more technical companion to Slashdot. At one point it started devolving into a collaborative blog with bad op-eds on politics, and fanfiction.

<comment><USER26> The last part is painfully true. I came back a few years ago to check if K5 is still alive and what does it look like and could hardly figure out exactly what the article was about. Reality and fiction strangely mashed together in a very chaotic op-ed.

<comment><USER15> And ridiculous troll comments about people who left the site a long time ago. I saw one comment recently about the user kitten, who died suddenly of a brain aneurism in 2010. They were still mocking him 5 years later...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Kuro5hin is really what I cut my teeth on before I discovered Wikipedia. I wrote an article on Buddhism, it wasn't that great but I learned a lot!

I sure hope that the articles were kept somewhere - there were some pretty amazing stories. Including the time that one of the contributors made a joke about killing the president and the Secret Service came to his workplace...

<comment><USER27> I remember that story.

I never posted anything on k5 though (seemed too hard/complicated to bother with), but I read it a lot and commented occasionally.

Even the trolls were quite clever and good natured there for a while before they got outnumbered by run of the mill stupid trolls spilling over from slashdot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Bye-bye K5.

It was awesome knowing you in the beginning, then hell as it turned to a troll-fest, then fun for a few more years as it turned into a weirdly tight- knit community that abused each other for fun.

I have two IRL friends from there now...

But I won't miss it.

</comment><comment><USER29> I used to post there when I was a lot younger. I'll miss it, but only its early days. It had decayed so much that it should have been shutdown a long time ago.

I used to see some kuro5hin usernames I recognized on Metafilter, but for the most part I think they've left that site (or been purged, you can never really tell).

</comment><comment><USER30> Sad. Kuro5hin was a great community in the day. When did this happen?

Oh how I loved the ASCII art reenactment players...

<comment><USER31> I became good online friends with kitten through kuro5hin. I was very sad when he passed as well.

<comment><USER32> Kitten passed?

<comment><USER29> So did trhurler:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20080113234818/http://www.swtime...](https://web.archive.org/web/20080113234818/http://www.swtimes.com/articles/2007/11/06/week_in_review/news/tuesday/news05.txt)

<comment><USER33> I forgot about that :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://github.com/BlastarIndia/scoop](https://github.com/BlastarIndia/scoop)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8026116](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8026116)

I saved a copy of Scoop and documentation by Del Griffin on how to install it on modern systems.

I also posted to Hacker News if Scoop can be saved a while ago.

</comment><comment><USER34> Wow. That's one of those moments I really feel old ... ;-p

</comment><comment><USER35>
      Updated Date: 2016-04-28T16:31:29Z
      Creation Date: 1999-12-12T21:20:28Z
      Registry Expiry Date: 2016-12-12T21:20:28Z

So the registration was transferred to gandi, it wasn't expired and then picked up?

<comment><USER11> Well, it still has Rusty's name in the non-obscured fields in the Whois data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I thought I remember it was already announced years ago by Rusty Foster that updates were stopped. Still it's one of those classic internet sites I frequented - just like the orange black freshmeat.net

</comment><comment><USER4> Here are two replacement sites:

[https://dontsuemebro.com/](https://dontsuemebro.com/)

[http://kr5ddit.com/](http://kr5ddit.com/)

Kr5ddit is trying to be like K5 and Reddit, but it is still in alpha tests. Instead of Karma you get Kr5ddits for people upvoting your comments, posts, etc. Kr5ddits you can sell for bitcoins or buy for bitcoins. Kr5ddits you can use to upvote your own posts to the front page. But Kr5ddit has Server 500 errors it needs help in fixing so they can handle more users.

</comment><comment><USER37> Good times. I remember stumbling on K5 as an alternative to Slashdot, trying out a different moderation method, and building its own CMS (Scoop, as several people have mentioned). I miss the sane discussion collapsing mechanism -- flat then threaded, then nested, then collapsed. It's a dynamic sites a decade-and-a-half later could use painfully <coff>HN</coff> <coff>Reddit</coff>.

I had the pleasure of meeting Rusty back in the day. Good guy. I hope Maine's treating him well.

</comment><comment><USER38> Well, at least some of my more embarrassing submissions are now gone forever.

</comment><comment><USER39> Probably just weathering another DDOS attack.

</comment><comment><USER23> Permanent or temporary outage?

</comment><comment><USER40> Why does it need to go offline? A read only state would cost peanuts.

</comment><comment><USER41> Another one I miss. Recently also was thinking about plastic.com

</comment><comment><USER42> RIP K5. Truly an American Icon.

-Q

<comment><USER15> May that meme die with K5.

<comment><USER42> As it should

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> But we still have memepool, right?

</comment><comment><USER44> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuro5hin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuro5hin)

<comment><USER45> I'd not heard of this community before. Before my time, I guess.

The idea of publishing something or not is rather interesting. It presumably encouraged much higher quality content.

<comment><USER46> > It presumably encouraged much higher quality content.

Haha, oh boy. You're talking about k5, man. We practically prided ourselves on terrible and meta content. But yes, some of the longer-form stuff was truly interesting. You had to submit to some pretty grueling dissection of your work by a broad group of people, though, and I only front paged a couple articles because I didn't truly understand what was going on.

I actually landed on k5 a couple months ago and read stuff I wrote in 2001, _long_ before I realized the permanency of the Web. It was an interesting time travel experience to a long, long time ago. I'm half glad it's dead so that portion of my life slowly fades into history/archive, because I honestly have no idea what I was talking about half the time.

+1 FP, dammit rusty

<comment><USER15> After 2005 to 2006 the site became ridiculous. That's because Rusty had the guts ripped out of him when some arsehole photoshopped his wife's image on a pornographic image.

The trolls laughed at it, but it destroyed the site and I really feel that Rusty never had the same attitude toward K5 ever again.

This is why trolling needs to be banned. It's OK to have some fun, but when you start pissing in your own backyard, or let terrible people to take over, then they bully even the founders and everything goes to shit.

Twitter should take note.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I yearn for a return to USENET, when things really were distributed and uncontrollable .. these days we have so much content being generated around a nexus that is too easily controlled .. I wonder why we haven't re-invented USENET yet.

</comment><comment><USER48> What's an SJW?

<comment><USER49> Social Justice Warrior, an attempted dogwhistle[1] used by GamerGaters / men's rights activists / anyone of scared of a more equal society, in a derogatory way against people who promote equality and not being a dick on the Internet.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog- whistle_politics](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics)

<comment><USER50> > _a derogatory way against people who promote equality and not being a dick > on the Internet_

By being the biggest dicks on the Internet, not afraid of lying, blackmailing and destroying careers and lives by unleashing Internet lynch mobs.

I'm sorry, but SJW movement is a cancer on the society, and it's _way_ beyond issues of "equality" now. They're going out of their way in deploying underhanded tactics to destroy anyone who doesn't agree with their vision of "equality".

People who actually promote "equality and not being dick on the Internet" are usually known as "reasonable people", and their group is known as "civilization".

<comment><USER51> This seems contrary to my experience, could you provide some examples?

Obviously each of us only sees a portion of the internet, but from what I've seen it seems like most of the stuff you are describing has been aimed at people described as SJWs, not perpetrated by them.

<comment><USER52> How about this?

[http://imgur.com/a/wbK77](http://imgur.com/a/wbK77)

I may not like the people in that Donald Trump subreddit, but trying to blackmail the staff with doxing threats is extremely unethical, and as blatant as it gets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I am going to predict that Reddit will soon collapse because it is overrun with conservative minded people. It's starting to become a really hateful community.

<comment><USER54> Reddit? Conservative? Are you joking?

<comment> Trill-I-Am Conservative is the wrong word but a lot of people on Reddit hate everyone that's not a white socialist atheist anti-Zionist middle class man

<comment><USER55> That's called a liberal by American terms

<comment><USER56> As an actual liberal, I prefer the term "authoritarian liberal" to distinguish anti-free speech and 'edgy' sexist/racist left folk from liberals. And I've never understood conservatives as much as I do now.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Service/API for Payouts in Europe - <AUTHOR> Hello HN,
I am looking for a service that provides an API for payouts (to bank accounts or cards) in UK/Europe.
I have been looking around a bit. There are tons of payments services, but it's difficult to find payouts services (especially simple and affordable ones).
Stripe seems to have that with their Connect product but it looks a little cumbersome (I don't want my customers to have to agree to third parties' T&Cs or to know which vendor I use) and expensive.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I think you might want to look at the PSD2 (payment services directive) standard, which tries to regulate this in the EU.

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

Most banks seem to offer environments for integrating with them (they are obliged to do so), in my understanding it's not a very enjoyable process though.

You will also need to register as a service provider to use this, I don't know how complicated that is. Some companies like Figo/Finleap provide higher-level APIs that you can use as a fintech/developer, maybe that might be a better strategy for you if your resources are limited.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that.

I've seen that Revolut offers an API to issue transfers from your business account (no registration as service provider needed). They have a bit of a reputation, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Check Payaut ([https://www.payaut.com/](https://www.payaut.com/)). Website is a little bit outdated since our focus now is to improve the product).

We're a new, DNB-licensed Dutch startup already processing payouts for some companies in Europe. We provide a full range of services like KYC, payment/refund splits, virtual accounting system, payouts to IBAN/BBAN accounts, Paypal, etc., and reconciliation. Wanna schedule your payouts? No worries, we handle it. In this way, you can stay totally out of the money flow. Let us worry about it.

Also, we're psp-agnostic, meaning you can use multiple PSPs to process your payments.

Last but not least, you can fully integrate with our API. Our product is API- based.

</comment><comment><USER4> Looking for same thing

</comment><comment><USER5> mollie.com seems to target the EU market.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Do they do payouts (out)? Their website focuses on payments (in).</comment></comment>


Responsive Design Won't Fix Your Content Problem - <AUTHOR> http://alistapart.com/column/responsive-design-wont-fix-your-content-problem <comment><USER2> It's astonishing how much "responsive design" gets thrown around as a buzzword...however, unlike a lot of buzzwords, "responsive design" actually means something and implementing it has implications systemwide...Across legacy sites, I've almost never seen it implemented in a way that didn't hide critical information, often because the designers and the people in charge of the legacy CMS probably don't coordinate enough. Things like, "Make everything that isn't in a p or image tag go to the bottom of the page" can hugely affect the context of certain elements.

For example, I worked on a site that hand hand-coded captions for photos and so those captions ended up having tags that were displayed:none when the device had a low-enough width. That's not great for photos that require the context of the captions.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. The thing that annoys me about responsive design is when I browse on my phone and can't find what I'm looking for so I "Request Desktop Site" and it's the same! Grrr. Even worse when they STILL serve me all those images, but they are just hidden, eating up my limited bandwidth. Double Grrrr.

<comment><USER4> Usually "Request desktop site" means booting you back to the homepage of the desktop site.

<comment><USER3> No, that's not correct, at least in my experience. "Request desktop site" usually means "reload the same page, but send a User Agent string so the server thinks I'm calling from a full desktop browser". This works for websites where the server does some UA string sniffing and sends different html+assets for different types of devices.

The same works in reverse. In Chrome Dev Tools I can set the UA to iPhone/iPad/Android ([http://imgur.com/mJY6lP6](http://imgur.com/mJY6lP6)) and I _should_ expect to see a mobile version of the site. Of course, with Responsive this does not work since responsive looks at screen size, not UA string.

For example, try changing your UA string in Chrome to iOS 6 and visit [http://www.bbc.co.uk/](http://www.bbc.co.uk/)

<comment><USER4> I mean literally if there's a button on the page that says "I want to see the desktop site". Those inevitably stink.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Lessons I've learned the hard way that appear late in the article:

* Design your editorial workflow first

* You won't have time to edit everything

* Plan for long-term governance

<comment><USER6> Both the OP and your reply emphasize the _what /why_... are there any resources available explaining _how_? If not, it sounds like this is a great opportunity for some blog posts!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Content shouldn't just be defecated into pretty grids, with a responsive label slapped on it and boardroom demo.

<comment><USER8> Depends. If you want to get a budget and work to do in a big corporation, that's _exactly_ how you should do it.

You simply need to drop your petty concerns about the quality of your work at start looking at building your own personal fiefdom within the empire. Learn the critical formula, _success = ass_kissing + buzzword_compliance_ , and you're off on your magical race to the middle! Within 20 years, you'll be staring at the layoff pink slip in your hand, looking back on a life of mediocrity and forward to being unhireable anywhere else, wondering what went wrong.

<comment><USER9> Woah, I bet you're great fun at parties.

<comment><USER10> I bet this tired cliche of a phrase doesn't make you very popular at parties either.

Couldn't you stick to replying to what he said?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google vs. Apple – The Smartphone Race Is Over, and a New One Begins… - <AUTHOR> http://www.ymedialabs.com/google-vs-apple-smartphone-future/ <comment><USER2> > But Apple has always missed the cue on one critical piece: access to > customer data. And that is what Google has always been successful at.

> When you buy an Android phone you sign in to your Google account. Behind the > scenes, Google starts recording a huge amount of data about you as a user, > your preferences, your routine.

Some would say not accessing customer data is a feature. I am very careful who I share my data with and appreciate Apple's approach.

</comment><comment><USER3> For me, the problems with Google's latest move to capture more of my data are 1. The value prop to me is minimal compared to the amount of data they are gathering, 2. There is no way to opt out.

1\. All of the hardware offerings Google made are subpar copies of other products. They did the minimum viable thing to get your data. Google's Assistant, with all the data and cloud processing power in the world, is equivalent to Siri. Assistant is not a leap forward, just a rebranded OK Google.

I'd had the same feeling in the past about Google's Social efforts. It's more blatant that Google's mining my data when their product offering is just a copy.

Contrast that with Search, Maps and GMail. When those came out, it mattered less that Google was scanning my data because the products were leaps and bounds above the competition.

2\. Google has taken over enough of your daily lives with Android, GMail, Search and Maps that it's really hard to opt out.

We've vilified Apple for its closed ecosystem but we ended up with an alternative much worse in Android, one where all of the data you've generated is available for everyone to harvest.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Apple has always missed the cue on one critical piece: access to customer data. And that is what Google has always been successful at."

This is where it ends with Google and I, enough is enough.

I have to be honest the direction Google is heading in lately feels like dangerous territory, either people are going to like the invasive approach or be scared off by it, time will tell. I get the feeling people care less about search these days, Facebook etc is the Internet for a lot of people and Adblockers have to be doing some damage.

<comment><USER5> The majority of the users don't care about that, so I don't think it will make any difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A couple nitpicks:

\- Virtual Reality - still hasn't demonstrated mainstream appeal. I'm pretty bearish on it being the next 3d TV's

\- Resolution - Does anything north of 300dpi really matter at this point? Maybe for VR, but see above

\- Privacy - as data breaches become the norm, where/how do you want your data stored?

<comment><USER7> I agree, personally I think VR has interesting applications in gaming and other areas that we haven't seen yet. But you're never going to get my mom to spend money on VR.

<comment><USER8> Yep. But the same can be said for a lot of tech that eventually trickles down to the mainstream. Video teleconferencing was once the domain of enterprise and higher education but now your mom does video calls on Facebook or Hangouts or Skype when she wants to see the grandkids (maybe not _your_ mom but lots of moms)

I actually think VR telepresence is a lot more intriguing to me than just playing cooler looking video games. I mean...the game stuff is the easiest thing to do first because you've already got established frameworks in place for the creation and rendering of complex 3d environments. But when you start getting into depth cams or light field cams combines with more advanced and ergonomic display hardware and high speed networks, you're moving toward having the pieces in place to allow people to virtually _be_ someplace else and communicate with others in a way a webcam can't replicate.

Definitely interested to see how that field looks in 10-15 years.

<comment><USER9> There is an episode of The X-Files where Mulder teleconferences with the lone gunman and they make a whole huge deal about the amazing high-tech capabilities they are using to project their voice/image in to the specially set up conference room.

The way the writers even notice the technology compared to it's transparency/ubiquity today is quaint.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Apple won the smartphone wars a long time ago.

This is a bold statement. On what measure? Last that I've seen is that almost 87% of the smartphone market is dominated by Android.

It might be true for app monetization, but definitely not as a whole.

Good read though.

<comment><USER11> > Last that I've seen is that almost 87% of the smartphone market is dominated > by Android.

How much money does the iPhone versus the Android phones make?

<comment><USER12> How much more money can Google make with the data they get from that 87% of market share than Apple can make from the iPhones themselves?

<comment><USER11> You have a legitimate point but that is tangential to the parent comment which says that Anroid (an operating system) wins over iPhone (a hardware) because Android has more market share. I was merely asking if market share translated to money. If so, what was the difference and how did Android win?

<comment><USER12> Ah, I see now. I took your question as saying that Apple "won" the smartphone wars because their sales are (iirc) more profitable. My mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this article underestimates the power of brand loyalty. Tons of customers have almost a decade of iOS under their belt, and convincing them to learn something new is often impossible because they _don 't care_. Their iPhone is working for them. Tech people think they can list off android-only features and convince people, but it usually doesn't work that way. Only when/if their iPhone really lets them down will they look elsewhere. I say this as someone in that situation. I'm not super interested in my phone, and the iPhone works for me, so here I am.

<comment><USER13> That works the same for both sides. Many people I know would never use an iPhone. Most people in the world don't use iPhones.

<comment><USER14> This is my _personal_ experience. So it is not going to match anyone else's experience. From my personal experience this is not true at all. I am student and I do see a lot of people. Everybody , I mean _Everybody_ (other than 1 people I know personally) would prefer iPhone over Android without question, the only problem for them was high price of iPhone, there is no competition, they chose android just because of price of it. That was the only reason they were using android phones or service. If they have money to buy it (most of them were student , and short on money) they would change to iPhone in heartbeat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Apple won the smartphone wars a long time ago"

So no data to back that up? Did this become a topic of opinion rather than fact? YoY sales and market dominance would suggest the opposite is true ([http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/1/11836816/iphone-vs- android-...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/1/11836816/iphone-vs-android- history-charts))

Also (and I know this is anecdotal evidence), in the past 3-4 years anyone I know who jumped ship went from iPhone to Android and never went back. Not a single person switched away from Android.

In my opinion (which is mostly backed by fact, but I'll keep it as an opinion) iPhone is quickly becoming a niche product, and there's nothing Apple can do to change that.

</comment><comment><USER16> By the logic of this article, Apple won the PC space because Microsoft decided to make a laptop.

And just look at those ridiculous comparison "info graphics"...

<comment><USER17> Agreed.

I do not understand how anyone reads this article and comes away with the impression it is even remotely correct.

I could barely finish it, it was so poorly written, full of questionable ideas deliberately glossed over, and ideas that just do not add up to the conclusion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Google is, has always been, and likely always will be, a search company

Nope. Google is and always has been an advertising company.

It affects how they implement search, Android, and everything they do.

All knowing AI, however clever, from an advertising company may start to move some more onto Apple. That Apple isn't putting personalised data into everything is becoming a marketing feature that they should be shouting about.

Edit: Not sure what's controversial to cause lots of up and down votes, I guess some don't believe Google are an advertising company. I wonder where they get their revenue from.

</comment><comment><USER19> I was looking for a new phone recently as mine is 5 years old. It still works but I was just comparing around mostly for fun.

Besides a bit faster hardware, some more DPI and "assistants" it is mostly the same. My gen 1 Moto G which I got for $170 a while back is still mostly ok. The hardware still looks the same. Anyone remember the jump from flip phones to smart phones? That was a huge difference. Something completely new. The upgrade felt like I was buying something completely different.

I guess I was expecting something more by now. Modular hardware, can plug more memory or more hardware into it. A different shape. A ridiculous battery life.

The only exciting thing I saw is made by a Chinese company I never heard of: Xiaomi (don't even know how to pronounce it). It is this phone: [https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/25/xiaomi-mi- mix/](https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/25/xiaomi-mi-mix/) it doesn't have a bazel, looks square and slick, 256GB memory. I can see buying that. I don't see shelling $700 for a Pixel or for an iPhone.

Then I noticed Project Fi by Google. That would save me money every month. However given Google Fiber winding down, I am worried as soon as I jump on Project Fi, it will be shut down as Google does with many of its products. So the initial excitement there has kind of waned.

</comment><comment><USER20> Does only one company need to win? I don't think so. 91% of smartphone profits go to Apple! I had no idea it was that high. [http://fortune.com/2016/02/14/apple-mobile- profit-2015/](http://fortune.com/2016/02/14/apple-mobile-profit-2015/) Of course that doesn't account for profits from web activity, which is dominated by Google.

Apple will continue to make incredible profits on hardware, while google will do the same with advertising on the mobile platform.

</comment><comment> norea-armozel It's getting to a point that I hate any device prefixed with the word smart. I don't want my device to suggest, hint, or predict anything with regard to my behavior. I don't need an advertisement disguised as a smart phone. I just want a smart phone that lets me search the web, make calls, stream music from shoutcast servers, and take pictures. I really just wished Google and Apple would just stop trying to wall off content they can't monetize.

</comment><comment><USER21> A long time ago (20-30 years ago) there was a somewhat analogous situation with Microsoft (Apple) and IBM (Google).

IBM was the "diversified" company particularly after it acquired Lotus which was suppose to make IBM compete with Microsoft directly on the office front.

I'm not saying the same thing will happen but I bet Apple will have another revolution in the next 20 years much like Microsoft did.

</comment><comment><USER22> > Apple won the smartphone wars a long time ago.

This claim is made, but it's not very specific. In what way did Apple win the smartphone wars ?

<comment><USER23> I was highly surprised by that assertion too. If you take market share as a determiner, Google has basically crushed Apple: [https://www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-os-market- share.jsp](https://www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-os-market-share.jsp)

<comment><USER24> > If you take market share as a determiner, Google has basically crushed Apple

I believe you mean that _Android_ has dominated iOS in terms of market share. But when one company gives their OS away for free to everyone and the other restricts their OS only to their own devices, that's the only result you could ever reasonably expect.

Google as a company has had little to no involvement in the creation of specific phones. And when they have had involvement, they've outsourced much of the work. That's actually partially why this article exists -- the Pixel phone represents their first foray into making their own phone, software and hardware together, like Apple does.

So to me the statement that Google has crushed Apple makes little to no sense because until now Google hasn't even attempted to compete with Apple directly, and Apple has intentionally limited the scope of iOS's distribution.

If we're going to compare Google-created phones to Apple-created phones, how many Pixel phones do you see daily vs. iPhones?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> There was one word missing from that article

       Motorola

Didn't Google, years ago, already fully control its own phone, both hardware and software?

In addition, doesn't Google's track record of dalliances make the Pixel something to be discarded and forgotten at the inscrutable whims of higher- ups?

</comment><comment><USER26> The only race in place here is the one to the $2000 mark. My money's on Apple.

</comment><comment><USER27> One thing stands out. Google doesn't have multiple streams of income. They have search and a lot of money losing ventures.

</comment><comment><USER28> The article mentions why Apple is the best: unbeatable hardware. It's that simple really...

<comment><USER29> If it's just a hardware competition then Apple doesn't "crush" anyone in this regard. Apple's (formidable) strength is the intergration of their software with the hardware. Android can't compete with that aspect (yet).

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> If you look at the numbers right now, Google isn't close.

In Q4 of 2015, Apple generated about 63% of it's revenues from iPhone sales [1]. That's almost 2/3rds of revenues for a $605B company. Google is nearly as large in terms of market cap (~$550B) but revenues from Android don't even come close (never-mind hardware sales, which are negligible). It's estimated that Android has brought in around $31B _total_ revenue [2] since it was launched in 2008. The numbers by year aren't publicly available, but even if we're being very generous, it's unlikely that Android accounts for more than 10% of Google's revenues in any given year.

So yeah, in terms of smartphones, one company (Apple) is basically a smartphone manufacturer with a few things it does on the side (laptops, etc.) and the other is a search engine with smartphones as a side business.

Personally, I prefer Android. I've been an Android user for years and I can't bring myself to switch. I broke my Nexus 5x phone recently and I've been using my wife's old iPhone for a few weeks now and I can't wait to go back. But I roll my eyes every time I read an article about how Google is on the verge of taking over the market from Apple. Sure, if you look worldwide, the number of Android phones out there exceeds the number of iPhones, but if you look at the high end of the market--which seems to be where all the money is made--iPhone are still quite dominant. When I start to see Google's numbers get into the same _ballpark_ as Apple's for Pixel sales vs. iPhone sales, then I'll be intrigued.

[1] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/253649/iphone-revenue- as...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/253649/iphone-revenue-as-share-of- apples-total-revenue/) [2] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-21/google-s-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-21/google- s-android-generates-31-billion-revenue-oracle-says-ijor8hvt)

<comment><USER31> I don't think Google has to personally get to the level of Apple to have "won". When comparing the two it's better to look at the whole market instead of just Google vs Apple because there's so many manufacturers for Android and only one for iPhones.

<comment><USER30> I totally agree. You can be much smaller than Apple and still win. My point is that Apple's iPhone is a behemoth, and until now, Google's Nexus phones have been a niche product. Now, they're starting to compete more directly with the Pixel, which is a truly high-end phone. But until they get meaningful sales numbers, it's still very much a niche product. I agree with the article that Google has made a phone with the _specs_ to compete. But I've heard this before and yet the iPhone still dominates the high end phone market.</comment></comment></comment>


Twitter is censoring President Trump - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1275500569940176897 <comment><USER2> A more accurate title would have been: "Twitter finally enforces site regulations on Trump that every other user was already expected to follow".</comment>


Petition: File charges against the 47 Senators in violation of the Logan Act - <AUTHOR> https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/file-charges-against-47-us-senators-violation-logan-act-attempting-undermine-nuclear-agreement/NKQnpJS9 <comment><USER2> It's either treason or it's a felony under the Logan Act. Not both.

<comment><USER3> Unauthorized negotiation with a foreign government is a violation of the Logan Act.

Overt acts (including unauthorized negotiations) which provide aid and comfort to enemies of the United States are treason.

The two categories are basically orthogonal; they aren't mutually exclusive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How is notifying the Iranian government that Obama doesn't have the power to make any deal without their approval a violation of the Logan act?</comment>


What Does Functional Programming Mean? - <AUTHOR> http://projects.tmorris.net/public/what-does-fp-mean/artifacts/0.3/chunk-html/index.html <comment><USER2> These slides are pretty skimpy - I'm guessing the actual talk had a lot more meat to it.</comment>


MongoDB queries don't always return all matching documents - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.meteor.com/mongodb-queries-dont-always-return-all-matching-documents-654b6594a827 <comment><USER2> Dupe of:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11857674](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11857674)</comment>


After 15 years, Eve Online is having it's first $1M battle tomorrow - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/7sa25p/after_15_years_eve_online_is_having_its_first/ <comment><USER2> The tldr; The author makes a prediction this mega battle will never happen due to both sides cowering out at the last moment like has happened a dozen times before. He blames EVE stifled game mechanics for this.

<comment><USER2> And apparently it played out exactly as predicted by the author: [https://br.inyour.space/?s=4059&b=7922675&e=345&t=eaqqvvuaeu...](https://br.inyour.space/?s=4059&b=7922675&e=345&t=eaqqvvuaeuvvvvvvvvvvfvvvvvvvvvvvfvvvvvvvvuvvvvvb)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are open vacation policies a scam? - <AUTHOR> I'm working at a company with lots of dot-commie perks including an open vacation policy. It seemed great on paper when I joined, I actually took a 40% salary cut for the promise of more vacation and freedom to live abroad and work from everywhere.
At my company, however, it's feeling like just another typical silicon valley sweat shop. Nobody who isn't an executive seems to take any vacation days. For the most part "unlimited vacation" means being able to work from home because you have errands to run or you broke your ankle.
Every attempt I've made to take vacation days has been met with the resistance of, "You have taken more vacation than anybody else in the team".
I've taken 4 days off for vacation, and 2.5 days off to ease the jetlag when I flew home to Turkey from San  Francisco.
Recently I tried to take off 1/2 a day for my birthday, and I again was given this same argument. I politely reminded my boss that I make $50k/year less than anybody else in our engineering team, and that we have an open vacation policy.
After that conversation I began looking for a new position.
I'm curious, what are your experiences with companies who have open vacation policies? Are you "allowed" to take vacation days, or does it just feel like a scam to prevent you from actually taking time off? <comment><USER2> Unlimited vacation isn't necessarily a scam, but I've rarely seen it work well. The one is exception is one of my current clients. In the four years I've been working with them, I've seen people come in late, leave early, and disappear for a week or two at a time, and I've never heard _anyone_ ever complain about it. It works for them.

But, in Massachusetts at least, when you leave your job, any vacation time that you've accrued is owed to you in dollars. With unlimited vacation, that means that you get nothing (since unlimited isn't something you accrue, it just exists).

In my experience with a couple of web jobs, even with non-unlimited vacation I've always been met with resistance trying to take time off. It was worse in companies where we "weren't a company, we were a family" type places. Guilt trips about saddling others with works, etc., when really it was poor scheduling and planning for 100% efficiency.

So: not a scam in a binary sense, in the way that the lottery actually will make you rich if you're lucky. I wouldn't count on it though.

</comment><comment><USER3> They are not a scam, they are an accounting feature.

Your problem is not that you have unlimited vacation, it's that you are working for a company that is taking advantage of you. They could (& probably would) do the same thing with limited vacation policies.

Leave as fast as you can and let your peers know why you did it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I definitely agree with you here. I worked for Nokia a few years ago, and traded $20k in salary in exchange for 3.5 weeks of guaranteed vacation. When I went to take my 11th day of vacation, they refused to honor my offer letter, so I said goodbye to my coworkers in that afternoon's stand-up, and found a better job.

<comment><USER4> If we all acted like that then maybe companies wouldn't try to pull those stunts. Bravo to you.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately there's always more starry eyed college grads who will happily let themselves get steamrolled. Heck Silicon Valley is virtually built on that kind of abuse relationship.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yes they are scams.

Next time they offer you "unlimited" vacation say that's very generous of them but you don't need unlimited vacation days you know exactly how many vacation days you need and that's 28 days.

If they don't reject it straight up they might try to haggle over that which proves the point.

<comment><USER7> While 28 days is at the high end, almost all developed countries (UK, AU, FR, etc.) require employers to provide 4+ weeks per year paid holiday leave.

Bigger companies will even force you to take it once you've accrued a number of hours, as it can be a liability on the books (as unused holidays roll over indefinitely).

The US is an outlier in this regard.

<comment><USER8> Compared to "unlimited" 28 days is not much at all.

<comment><USER9> Except it is not unlimited, but instead undisclosed limit, discretionary. In other words, the contract is lying or you haven't read it.

Being fired over taking too much vacation time given the mentioned policy is potentially lawyer fodder.

<comment><USER10> They'd probably just fire you for 'not being a culture fit' or similar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You may want to read "The limits of "unlimited" vacation" by Jacob Kaplan-Moss at [https://jacobian.org/writing/unlimited- vacation/](https://jacobian.org/writing/unlimited-vacation/) as well as previous HN comments about that essay at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7613526](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7613526) .

There have been other related HN discussions on the topic, at [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=unlimited%20vacation&sort=byPo...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=unlimited%20vacation&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story) . For example, the top comment at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5125973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5125973) is:

> "Unlimited vacation" translates to "no vacation" ... Unlimited vacation > sounds nice, but in practice it doesn't work.

</comment><comment><USER12> I work in Automattic. I had taken approx. 21 days of vacation so far this year. I intend to take another ~20 this year.

I actually feel lazy because of this, so when I do work, I try to really focus. The result is, in one day I can accomplish what took me a week in previous job. Mostly, because nobody is interrupting me ( we don't have an office )

We are hiring, here is my experience: [https://piszek.com/2016/04/05/automattic/](https://piszek.com/2016/04/05/automattic/)

<comment><USER13> So let me get this straight: they ignored your resume, ignored your real life ping for feedback on your resume and only got the ball rolling after you scored very high on a coding competition you weren't supposed to take?

I understand they probably get a ton of applicants, especially with all the praise for work/life balance, but what chance does someone have at applying and actually being seen without any special circumstances?

I hope this doesn't come off the wrong way, it's just that as someone currently looking for remote work, it's a bit depressing.

<comment><USER12> Nicely rummarized! :D

I actually see people get hired much faster than I was. I may have been a crappy candidate. Also, I was applying in a moment when people were seriously overloaded, so thats why I needed to wait.

But it sure is a lenghtier process then in traditional company!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I recently wrote a blog post about annual leave (vacation) entitlements around the world. [1]

I cannot believe that the US does not have a federal legislation on annual holidays, but instead leaves it up to the employers to negotiate that with their employees.

My wife once applied for a remote working position with a quote famous US company that actually wrote a book on remote working. They offered her a 'generous' 10 days vacation a year. Here in Australia, full time worker are by law to get 20 days annual leave and 10 days fully paid public holiday leave per year as a minimum.

My feeling is that if there is no minimum quota set, then it is open to pressure from above to ignore and abuse it.

My tip? Move to Iran or Cambodia ;) [1]

[1] - [http://blog.hrpartner.io/holiday-leave-around-the- world/](http://blog.hrpartner.io/holiday-leave-around-the-world/)

<comment><USER15> > I cannot believe that the US does not have a federal legislation on annual > holidays, but instead leaves it up to the employers to negotiate that with > their employees.

It's odd considering US federal employees have leave policies that most closely resemble what you see in the rest of the developed world. It's the private sector that seems to be in a race to the bottom in the last few decades.

<comment><USER16> Federal employees accrue 4 hours of paid annual leave per pay period (two weeks) for their first six years of federal service. That comes out to thirteen days a year.

After six years, it becomes six hours a pay period. After I think fifteen or seventeen years, it becomes 8 hours.

So while federal leave maxes out close to what the rest of the world has, it takes a long time to get there.

<comment><USER15> True, but I think a key thing for us is that annual leave (which has a carry- over cap) is accrued separately from sick leave (which has no cap). That is, our annual leave is actual bonafide vacation time. In many workplaces in the U.S., employees have no paid sick leave at all.

<comment><USER17> That's also by law in Australia. Ten days sick leave. Twenty annual leave.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The place you are working at is just bad. I've worked for a lot of great unlimited vacation companies. As long as you get your work done no one cared.

On a side note, I've always hated unlimited vacation. I almost think companies put it in place so they don't have to pay out unused vacation time when you leave.

<comment><USER19> That's probably 99.9% of the reason, but it doesn't matter if the employee sees a benefit from the offering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Like so many things, it comes down to culture. If you're offered a job somewhere with an unlimited vacation policy, before accepting ALWAYS ask at least two different people how much vacation most people take.

I've worked at unlimited vacation companies where nobody took more than a week per year and others where most people took at least four weeks (generally non- consecutive).

I've also worked twice at places with finite vacation policies where as long as you were responsible and productive they'd let it slide (or wouldn't even count) if you took a few extra days here and there.

I've also had friends who worked for large companies and got four weeks of vacation tell me they couldn't take more than a couple sick days per year anyway because their boss had to approve vacation dates. Any date they proposed was denied because the "timing" was "bad" for their projects.

Pick your employer for its culture, not its official vacation policy.

<comment><USER21> Sounds like this could be screened for by asking multiple people about average vacation time taken and then asking the boss if they've ever denied a vacation request?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> My company has quite a good policy:

\- 29 days a year (fairly standard in the uk, legally required to have at least 28) \- No formal approval needed. (Check with your team etc) \- Can buy up to 12 days extra a year IIRC for the cost of a days salary.

The no formal approval is especially nice, I take a long weekend short notice a couple of times a year during busy periods (busy in my life not work that is) and it's fine 95% of the time, and when it's not it always for good reason.

Being able to buy extra holiday is good too. There's salary sacrifice to do so so it's considered fair to everyone.

<comment><USER23> Framing unpaid days off as "buying an extra holiday for the cost of a days salary," feels depressing to me. I would personally have a hard time working for an employer that used this kind of language around their time off policies. I already own my time. If I don't work for a day I'm not buying time back from my employer, I'm just not selling it for a day.

<comment><USER22> That was my own wording of the policy, I'm not sure what the actual policy is. Unpaid leave isn't a legal right, atleast not in the uk, so offering up to 12 days as you like seems like a good deal to me.

<comment><USER24> Oh yes. Even though buying extra is effectively unpaid leave in most cases, it has so many advantages AFAIK. It's far less hassle with HR/managers. It's really useful if you're getting married or have a big trip planned. Both of these kind of boil down to that it looks way more professional to declare how much holiday you plan on taking at the start of the year.

Finally, depending on the way it's taxed, declaring it at the start of the year means it gets factored in to the monthly tax, and you don't need to get a rebate later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Pretty much yes. Wake me up when some company announces you have 25 mandatory days off a year + unlimited extra days. Then we start to talk.

Also please post your experience on Glassdoor.

<comment><USER26> Mandatory vacation is an emerging trend in tech, you just won't see it at startups.

<comment><USER27> ...in the US.

As others have noted, almost everywhere else in the first world not only expects but legally requires far more vacation time than many US firms offer their employees.

<comment><USER26> Good qualifier.

I spent some time earlier this year scoping out the tech scene in Wellington, New Zealand and Melbourne, Australia because both have so much more emphasis on living a good life. I wasn't able to find much startup activity in those two cities. I'm not sure if it doesn't exist or if I was looking in the wrong neighborhoods.

<comment><USER24> Was looking in Melbourne also, but there doesn't seem to be that many online postings for such a big city. Did you look in Sydney and if so, was there more?

<comment><USER26> I didn't look in Sydney, but only because I haven't been there yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Open vacation policies don't work because it becomes difficult for a person to actually take a specific number of days without worrying about what others will think. If I could come up with a vacation policy, here is what I will do:

\- Fix a "Minimum" number of vacation days that everyone can take. Encourage everyone to take those days split over the year. This can be 20, 30, 40 whatever depending on what you come up with for your company. But anything less than 20 business days for me is crap.

\- Unlimited sick days. Yes, I will know if you try to abuse it. But if you are genuinely sick, stay home.

\- Add another 5 personal days. Use this for running errands, voting, kids days off whatever.

\- Flexible work routine. I am not completely into 100% remote as I do think there is a value in collaborating in person or show your face once in a while. So I will say flexible 2 days WFH allowed depending on team, project and other relevant situations.

I would take these over a BS "unlimited" vacation.

<comment><USER29> Why separate vacation days/sick days/personal days? Why not just one bucket? I would much rather have X number of PTO days. If you are sick and have PTO days you have to use those first, but not dock your pay for sick days after that or a personal half day personal errand. This would work well for most salaried professionals.

In the U.S. if you are salaried, your pay cannot be docked for any week you worked anyway -- except for very specific reasons -- and I've never heard of company that would dock a salaried person's pay if they actually did call in sick or have an emergency and they used all of their sick time.

[https://www.tracksmart.com/Advice-Center/Pages/payroll- benef...](https://www.tracksmart.com/Advice-Center/Pages/payroll- benefits/docking-employee-pay.aspx)

<comment><USER20> Because if taking a sick day cuts into vacation time, it incentivizes people to come into work when they've got the flu and get everyone else sick too. Which is worse for the company than just granting a few sick days without affecting vacation time.

<comment><USER29> That's a valid point. I'm thinking inside my own bubble where there is a distinction between "being contagious but still feeling well enough work" and "being too sick to work". In the former case, I would work from home and in the latter I would have to take a PTO. I guess the one big bucket works better for people in professions where they don't have to be in the office.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell I get 25 plus bank holidays here in the UK. I got 30 plus bank holidays at a previous job. Everyone takes all of the available days and nobody questions it. I've started to see adverts for unlimited leave here too now. Would be interested how that plays out. I'd want to be taking at least 40 days plus bank holidays if I were to accept such a job. The lack of time off you get in the US is insane. It is the only absolute stopper for me to even consider moving there to work.

</comment><comment><USER30> You are scammed and being used.

Taking 6.5 days off and 1/2 day off on your birthday sounds completely reasonable for every company with no "unlimited vacation". Do you have "unlimited vacation" written in your contract?

</comment><comment><USER31> Your company does not have unlimited vacation based on how you have described the situation. It's unclear to us how much time you've been with the company. Let's say you've been there just 1 month and didn't mention upfront you'd be taking those 6.5 days off, then that feels like minor abuse of the policy on your end. Let's say you've been there a "significant" period of time of > 3-4 months, then they are shafting you.

In my experience unlimited vacation is only as unlimited as the person asking for it. Many people are too timid to actually ask for the days off. It seems like you've already done the asking, and this is more of a company culture problem and you are right to consider leaving or having a frank talk with your supervisor about what unlimited means. Perhaps you can change it to be 5 weeks a year with them and they'll feel better with a bounded number for you and you'll feel better being able to take off when you want.

Recently interviewed someone and was mentioning the work/life balance and unlimited vacation and their response was "Come on...unlimited vacation is a scam" I then explained that I had already taken off about 3 weeks this year with another 3 planned, and that it's "unlimited" if you ask for it. Maybe my situation is unique, or maybe people are too timid, I'm not sure. I'm glad I'm working at a place where taking vacation is part of the culture for long term success.

I'd also encourage anyone interviewing with a company that has unlimited vacation to talk to a non C-Level or founder employee about what vacation they've taken so far this year and their opinion of how well the unlimited policy works at their company - hopefully you can get a straight answer as this is just as important as monetary compensation.

</comment><comment><USER32> Peoples answers here are good. Just to add you also want to watched out for pooled sick vacation leave. It incentives people to come in when you're sick and spread colds, norovirus, flus.

<comment><USER9> Worst kind of policy. It does not even work in the short term if you count the productivity lost in the whole team later. Long term, it can make people chronically ill.

</comment></comment><comment> nappy-doo If it's unlimited, show up the first day, and then go on vacation. When you no longer get a pay check, you know how "unlimited" it was.

<comment><USER26> It's almost always unlimited "with approval from your manager".

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> As has been noted elsewhere, 'unlimited vacation' is usually at best an aspiration, at worst a scam.

Has anybody tried asking up front what the average number of days actually taken is? And if you asked and then took the job - were they telling the truth?

<comment><USER21> Yes and yes.

The theme in the comments here seem to show that this policy, like other tools, can be easily abused.

At the right company it is freeing. For example, my productivity doesn't fit nicely within the box of the standard work week. So if I'm not feeling like I can get anything worthwhile done, I might take a day to recharge the batteries. Need to stay home for a contractor? No problem. Need time off to travel? Awesome.

The challenge is there is this nagging feeling of taking advantage of things that was instilled in me from working at shitty companies in a service industry notorious for bad hours (ad agencies) most of my career. That said, I've heard that mandatory time off is now on the table to help alleviate some of this "guilt" myself and others feel.

I fully recognize my experience is not the norm. It is also very hard to screen for companies that actually stand behind their policy. I had a hard time convincing a candidate I was trying to hire that it was in fact as good as it sounded and we were not lying. Hard to do when so many people are scarred from shitty experiences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Sorry you've had such a bad experience. My experience varies as others have mentioned in the thread.

I've worked at companies where we had accrued days off and it was a nightmare. Any time we took vacation was met with scrutiny.

I've also worked with unlimited vacations companies as well. A past employer made you feel quite crappy about taking vacation days.

That said, I've worked for two companies (including my current) who have unlimited vacation and stay true to it. My current company gives me quite a bit of freedom. Being a manager, I personally make sure that my colleagues take time off. I currently have an engineer who is on a 10 day vacation in which we highly encouraged him to not check email, jira, or anything else.

I think it really depends on the company, the stage they're at (small, medium, etc.), and the growth they're experiencing. The two companies I worked at where it was not a problem were both stable companies growing at a modest rate and were larger in size. IMO, this helps spread around the workload better when employees take vacation. At smaller companies, since most are wearing multiple hats, it makes it harder to lose someone for a few days.

</comment><comment><USER35> There needs to be a website listing companies that have "unlimited vacation" with a place for people to submit average number of days taken.

<comment><USER26> This is a great idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I don't think all unlimited vacation policies are scams. At my office we get told we need to take more vacation if we don't take at least 3 weeks. And I have never once seen a vacation request denied.

It sounds like you've got a job where they are using unlimited vacation as a way to limit vacation even further instead of using it to promote a great work life balance.

<comment><AUTHOR> <3 Are you hiring for remote DevOps engineers? I'm cheap, and have 20+ years experience.

<comment><USER37> My two cents: don't say you are cheap (even if you are). It makes it sound like you are not worth a lot. The employers that are willing to hire you because you said you are cheap are mostly the kind that will scam you with stuff like open vacation policies.

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps, but I spent most of my career heavily negotiating for high salaries which set impossibly high expectations. I've been working in IT in one form or another since I was 12, and I just no longer have the will or the energy to perform at a super senior level. I just want to live my life in Europe, make enough money to support my daughter and have some adventures, and deliver at a level that doesn't require 60 hour weeks or soul-crushing stress.

<comment><USER37> Hey, be cheap, don't waste effort on negotiation if you are ok with less money! I think that's totally reasonable. Just don't broadcast it that way. It attracts the wrong kind of attention.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I do see what you mean. I guess I look at it as a white male statistically I'm far more likely to oversell myself, and I've certainly done that before. Now I might overcompensate for that. I would much rather set low/mid-level expectations, than sell myself as a "rockstar" (god I hate that term) and set myself up for burn-out.

Being cheap is funny. In San Francisco at my last job I was around $175k before the expected bonuses which never materialized, as they tend not to @ start-ups. To no avail I tried hard to sell myself on "$100k and I only work 9 months per year", but there's such a false notion that "bodies in the seat mean productivity". I ended up finding a gig around $110k, which provides me a _far_ better lifestyle in the cheaper part of the Balkans/Near-East than I could afford in any US city where I would want to live.

This is part of the problem: golden handcuffs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> "Unlimited vacation holidays" Just doesnt work well. Most people dont know how much they should get, and are looking at co-workers. In the end nobody takes holidays... I would just leave work and mention the 'unlimted holidays' in your contract (I hope it is in there). Greetings

</comment><comment><USER39> What a silly company. Quit.

One consultancy I worked for had a nice policy: 30 combined sick/holiday/vacation days off per year. If you never got sick, great. If you needed a personal day, take it. If you didn't mind coming in on Memorial Day, that's one more day to use later.

<comment><USER40> This is a really AWFUL policy. I recently started a new job that has this same policy and I am struggling whether to stay. Everything else is great. However, in 27 years of working, I've never had to worry about sick time.

Now, I am afraid to take ETO time as vacation because what happens if I get sick? I had a coworker come in with walking pneumonia because he was running short on ETO.

NOT having separated sick time is bad because you can't plan when to take vacation time because of the unknown, and you're going to show up to the office and spread your viruses because you can't take a day to rest and recover.

<comment><USER39> Maybe just do what we did: reserve ten days out of your 30 for sickness?

The point of the policy is that you're responsible for budgeting your own time. If you need less sick leave, take less sick leave. If you need more, take more.

If you're a sickly type, you might want to buy a disability policy of some sort that supports you for weeks or months.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Tell your boss he's a liar, name the company, and get out, is what I'd like to suggest.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll write about this after I've secured new work. Sadly they know I'm stuck there because it took me a year to find a DevOps position which would allow me to work from outside the United States.

<comment><USER42> You've got considerably more leverage whilst working. Pity you'll be taking vacation days to job-hunt. Build in some pre-start leave with your new employer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Your setup appears to be an hour focused culture, not a goal focused culture.

They may be a bit schizophrenic about this, and promise nice leave based on hours put in and when an often non-expressed goal in not met (indeed, not formalised internally) is not met get very managerial, imagining management, especially hours focused culture, is leadership.

If they're not letting you take leave on your birthday, hell I give that day off for anyone if they ask for it or not, then they're an hours focused culture faking a goal focused one.

You're right to get out.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's funny you should mention this. We just started tracking the time to completion of all zendesk tickets (everything we do is ticket-based) to deliver weekly reports to $uppermgmt.

Sigh, yeah, it's a sinking ship. Sadly. My team is the best team I've ever worked with, and my boss is the only boss I was ever excited to work for. I Don't blame him, though, his hands are just tied now that the penny pinchers run the show.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Any time something is sold to you as unlimited, you should do a s/unlimited/secretly limited/g. Data plans, storage, vacation days, tap water, etc. You can't hold them responsible when any of these are suddenly cut off because of excessive usage, but they can always invoke some form of fair usage policy and you don't have a contract to back it up.

</comment><comment><USER45> Open vacation means that you should definitely take vacation. Normally when you leave a company, they have to pay out your vacation time. This is great for companies or fields that turn employees quickly (like a lot of these tech companies).

If you don't take the time it takes to feel comfortable with not getting that closing payout, then you are compromising your value.

</comment><comment><USER46> I don't know whether they're typically introduced with malign intent, or with good intentions that inevitably go bad, but I don't really think it matters much -- open vacation policies are a terrible idea from the employee's point of view... and in the end probably a terrible idea from the employer's point of view too.

</comment><comment><USER15> I like having accrued annual leave and sick leave for the exact reason that they are tangible numbers that I can reasonably say I own. If it was "unlimited" as you say, it seems more like the company or team owns them, and your expected to conform to expectations on their limited use.

</comment><comment><USER47> I considered offering it at my company, but decided against and went for a fixed policy where we encourage our team to take all the days. Open policies are pretty much always a scam. What boss is actually going to be happy letting you take 60 days off a year?

</comment><comment><USER48> i wouldn't trade salary for it. i don't think it's a scam but i wouldn't be surprised to find some employers use it to take advantage of workers.

at my shop we are encouraged to take as much time as we need and managers even regularly encourage us to take more time off.

sometimes i feel like it's a trick and i don't take as much time off as most people do. they do track how many days you take off but you can come in late whenever you want and use 1/2 day pto if you don't want to stay late. or, if it's nice outside, take a personal day for the hell of it.

the only consideration is we have to be sure to have someone covering any ongoing work so we still meet deadlines.

</comment><comment><USER49> Yes a scam. We should have minimum vacation days not maximum or unlimited.

</comment><comment><USER50> Has anyone here applied for an unlimited holiday job and told them when accepting that you plan to take 40 days (or whatever) off? I'd be interested to know how they responded.

</comment><comment><USER51> Yes, there's always quite a difference between the showcase and the backoffice.

</comment><comment><USER52> Yes it's just a scam.

</comment><comment><USER17> Sorry sounds like you were scammed. I don't think that is too strong a word.

There is a conflict between what they like to offer to attract talent vs. what they offer culturally. I have not experience unlimited vacation, but at my limited vacation shop I just took 6 weeks off (on the last week now) albeit some was unpaid, but I am getting market rate so that has to be a better situation.

A good way to get a lot of vacation is to take breaks between jobs and make sure the jobs are paying you what you are worth.

</comment><comment><USER53> Take the job. Work for six months, then take vacation until you're let go.

</comment><comment><USER54> Are people at the company actually taking at least 3 weeks of vacation every year? No? It's a fucking scam. This test works every single time.</comment>