Ask HN: Yet Another "how to split equity in new startup" - <AUTHOR>

Me and a co-founder are planning to launch a startup. We are having trouble splitting equity in a way that seems fair to both of us, so would welcome any suggestions. The gory details are:
Me: Technical contributor from coder to manager a team of devs. Will need to travel across the world (and ready to do so) to make this work. Full time with no pay (leaving 6 figure job for this).
Him: Main Visionary, came up with idea, documented scenarios, conducted some sort of user study. Will supply seed funding - 10-15k/month.
Part time until company can sustain both of us.
Can be the CEO, good at generating connections with non-tech world.
I looked at the equity calculator[1] and it gave me 55-45% split in his favor without considering his investment. Per Chris Dixon[2], initial seed investment should be treated as a loan converted into equity at time of external funding at the same rate. We don't ever want to take external investment given that he's rich enough, so he's not interested in this model even if I agree to some upside while converting loan to equity.
Having all said and done, he's ok with something in the range of (55-60%) for him, (20-25%) for me and 20% for key employees. I just _feel_ this is too low for me given the kind of sacrifice I am putting in - several folks we are trying to hire to help from a tech perspective are hard to get, as always, and I have a track record of understanding other people's visions and running with them (not too good with coming up with ideas myself)
References:
[1] http://foundrs.com/calculator/index.php
[2] http://cdixon.org/2009/08/23/dividing-equity-between-founders/
Edited for formatting <comment><USER2> Frankly, I think you're looking at this the wrong way.

From your description, your wealthy friend:

1\. Came up with an idea that he would like to pursue. 2\. Has the money to finance the venture. 3\. Is willing to contribute his time on part-time basis until the venture bears fruit.

You are the technical person he is going to rely on to build the product or service, and will be responsible for much of the early heavy lifting. You are leaving a job with a $100,000+ annual salary.

What's wrong with this picture?

1\. Your friend came up with an idea that he ostensibly can't execute on without the skills you bring to the table. At the same time, he apparently isn't entertaining the possibility of _paying_ you for those skills in anything but equity. There is certainly a reason for this, and it's not likely a good one.

2\. Your friend "can be the CEO", but CEO isn't a part-time job. The fact that he's only willing to work part time on this until the company can sustain itself says a lot about his true confidence in the venture.

3\. Your friend has committed to $10,000 to $15,000/month in seed funding. How long is he willing to continue with this arrangement? Is there a limit to the total amount he'll invest? What if you need more than $15,000/month? What assurance do you have that your friend won't seek to renegotiate equity if the business requires more investment than he originally anticipated? Given what you've written, I suspect you have no satisfactory answers to these questions.

Bottom line: you should not be worrying about equity - you should be worrying about the _entire_ deal structure.

You are effectively being asked to relinquish a six-figure job for an unpaid position that provides a minority equity stake in a company being "co-founded" by a person who a) won't be dedicating all of his time to the venture until he thinks it's worthwhile and b) who has only committed to injecting cash into the venture in small, monthly chunks. This is a wonderful arrangement for your friend as he receives almost all of the protections. You, on the other hand, risk the most and get virtually none.

Caveat emptor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Things aren't as bad as they seem. 1\. He is actually helping my wife get a job so that we can sustain ourselves. I don't want to take a salary to maximize my stake, he won't say no if I ask. 2\. He will be working in another job to fund this. I agree I don't have a good answer from him on him being part time 3\. Yup, we are discussing this and will be coming to a specific number and putting it into legalese.

Essentially, it is the amount of risk I am taking compared to the reward that's raising the alarm bells for me. Let me know if you have any other concerns after I incorporate staunch's comment to this thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2700484>

<comment><USER2> 1\. Involving your friend in your wife's employment is a huge no-no. It only makes you more dependent on him, and he certainly knows this. If he places your wife in a job, don't be surprised to see him leveraging this in the worst way possible if things don't work out as expected.

2\. You are maximizing a stake that isn't yet worth anything, and may never be worth anything. 20% of $0 is $0, just as 25% of $0 is $0. Perhaps a better way to look at this: figure out how much this venture would need to be making before the total value of your compensation package (equity and any eventual salary) would exceed what you're already making now at your six-figure job. The number is probably much larger than you think it is.

3\. If your compensation is stock granted outright for services, you should be aware that this may create undesirable tax consequences for you. You should speak with an experienced accountant about this.

4\. The fact that your friend needs to continue working to fund the venture is a huge red flag. What if he loses his job? What if he has a medical emergency? What if his wife divorces him? If you're going to get in bed with an "investor", he should be putting in most if not all of the cash up front. Which begs the question: if your friend says he's prepared to invest $15,000/month for 10 months, is he capable of transferring $150,000 to the new company tomorrow? It doesn't sound like it.

Again, the risk you're concerned about is a result of the fact that you are pursuing a deal structure that makes no sense. I would highly recommend retaining competent legal counsel before you go any further.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for all the advice. We discussed this further and have been able to resolve the concerns above. Please let me know if there is a way to send you a token of appreciation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> IANAL.

I don't think that's unreasonable: 55%/25%/%20. A little more either way would be fair too.

You drawing a very basic salary ($2k/mo or something) to cover basic expenses would be reasonable too.

What is _absolutely_ essential is that he doesn't get his equity just for promising to put in money. You should start out as 50%/50% and make it work out so you end up with 55/25/20 after the option pool and investment.

He only gets his additional equity by actually _purchasing_ stock. That means if he agrees to put in $300k in exchange for 20% (or whatever) he only gets that stock if he _actually puts in the $300k_.

You probably want a "Subscription Agreement" whereby he buys a pro rata portion of his shares at fixed intervals (monthly/quarterly).

Setup the 20% option pool right away too. Putting it off will just make it harder and more likely to cause a problem.

You absolutely have to have a good startup lawyer do this for you.

</comment><comment><USER4> Like what TheSkeptic said. You need to de-risk this deal. From what I read, you don't know too much whether this business will work out or not.</comment>


Zarf's Interactive Fiction (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.eblong.com/zarf/if.html <comment><USER2> I haven't played a lot of IF since I was a kid, but I recently tried Counterfeit Monkey ([https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=aearuuxv83plclpl](https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=aearuuxv83plclpl)) and was blown away by the cleverness and depth of the system.

It's many hours worth of adventure, and has a brilliant mechanic where you are in a world where real objects can be transformed by modifying their spelling (and, later, other linguistic tricks).

So you might have a Can, but you need to drive far away, so you turn your Can into a Car with your Letter-changing Device. Or maybe you use your Homonym Machine to turn the wooden Bat in your hand to a Bat that flies around. The possibilities are endless, and the game has considered an amazing number of them.

It's all set in a deep and realistic European island, with laws regarding linguistic manipulation, etc.

<comment><USER3> I don't know this game but I would be willing to bet huge amounts of money that it was written by Emily Short.

<comment><USER4> <3 Emily Short <3 I should replay Savoir Faire.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi! Thanks for the thread. :)

I'll accumulate a bunch of replies here, if that's okay...

First, I apologize for having a web page that implies that I haven't done any IF since 2017. Cragne Manor actually came out in late 2018, and I added it to my IF page, but I forgot to update the "last updated" date. (Fixed now.)

I'm still messing around with IF ideas. I'm working on a prototype for a non- parser-based IF system. It's a work in progress and I don't have anything to show off yet; we'll see how far it gets over the summer.

I suspect that dozens, nay, scores of people are trying to make IF work on Alexa. It's not an area that I'm working on myself, but I know some of the folks at Earplay (mentioned above). My understanding is that getting Alexa to respond to commands is pretty easy; the hard part is designing a game that plays well in narrated form.

Yes, I can sometimes be spotted wandering around the Somerville/Cambridge area. We have a monthly IF meetup at MIT: [http://pr-if.org/](http://pr- if.org/) Anyone is welcome to drop in.

And also! If I may spend a moment promoting a current project... we are organizing an IF conference called NarraScope this summer. It will be held at MIT, June 14-16.

[http://narrascope.org/](http://narrascope.org/)

It will be cool. People should come.

</comment><comment><USER6> Even as a long-time IF fan, Hadean Lands blew my mind. It remembers exactly how you solved every puzzle, so if for instance you find a door locked again after you figured out how to unlock it, all you have to do is say you want to open the door and the game replays the whole process of unlocking it (to make up an example so as to avoid spoiling anything). Some of the puzzles get quite involved, so the depth of the system's memory is quite impressive.

Also the symbolic way it handles alchemy, such that objects are understood to be aligned with various planets or aromas, allowing you to get creative with alchemical recipes, is probably the closest I've seen to "real" alchemy.

<comment><USER7> I bought this for iOS just before I switched to Android so never got a chance to play it.

Just checked again and still no android port, guess I should buy it again for desktop as everything I've heard about it does sound amazing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Zarf is also responsible for reskinning the social game Mafia as Werewolves. I find it fascinating that we know who invented both Mafia and Werewolves. It's like knowing who invented Red Rover.

See Other Works: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Plotkin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Plotkin)

</comment><comment><USER9> It's always nice to see IF featured on HN frontpage. Especially of such quality as Zarf's. It's been a while since I last played "Spider and Web," and there's a lot of new stuff for me to discover, too.

Even if you don't play, do yourself a favour and read "Lighan ses Lion". Brilliant idea.

<comment><USER10> If you like _Lighan ses Lion_, you should consider playing _The Gostak_: [https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=w5s3sv43s3p98v45](https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=w5s3sv43s3p98v45) (not by Zarf, but excellent even so).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's not on this page, but Zarf's System's Twilight is a fantastic puzzle game, one of my favorites. It was the first shareware game I paid for, way way back in the day (early 90s). ([https://www.eblong.com/zarf/twilight/index.html](https://www.eblong.com/zarf/twilight/index.html))

<comment><USER12> If you're never played System's Twilight before you can get a taste for it via in-browser emulation on the Internet Archive[1]. Note that the emulator doesn't support color or sound and the animations don't run at full speed, so if you enjoy what you see there you should install a better-featured emulator like Basilisk II to experience the game as it was intended.

If you have previously played System's Twilight and want a new game along the same lines, check out System Syzygy[2] which is directly inspired by System's Twilight (and similar games from the same era like 3 in Three and The Fool's Errand). It's also written in Rust(!) and fully open source(!!)[3] in case you want to get a peak under the hood (or cheat a bit).

[1] [https://archive.org/details/SystemsTwilight](https://archive.org/details/SystemsTwilight)

[2] [https://mdsteele.games/syzygy/](https://mdsteele.games/syzygy/)

[3] [https://github.com/mdsteele/syzygy](https://github.com/mdsteele/syzygy)

<comment><USER11> > If you have previously played System's Twilight and want a new game along > the same lines, check out System Syzygy[2] which is directly inspired by > System's Twilight

Oh, cool—I've never even heard of that. Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Zarf has a comprehensive list of references to the IF world, except for this one book, a critical study of IF as both literature and game:

Twisty Little Passages - An Approach to Interactive Fiction By Nick Montfort

[https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/twisty-little- passages](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/twisty-little-passages)

</comment><comment><USER14> Every couple of years I drop in to see if there's a simple way to publish IF games on the web yet. There isn't. It's a shame.

No one's going to pay for text-based IF games and no one wants to install software to play them. The web is the ideal delivery channel for the medium, but no one seems interested in making good publishing tools for it.

(To be clear, I'm not saying it isn't possible, just that the tools for doing so are fiddly and ugly.)

<comment><USER15> I wonder why speech-based IF games are essentially nonexistent, given the popularity of podcasts and existence of speech-only computers (e.g. Alexa).

<comment><USER16> I'm the founder of Volley (YC W18). We're working on games like this as well for Alexa, check out [https://www.amazon.com/Volley-Inc- Infected/dp/B07JBKRRNP](https://www.amazon.com/Volley-Inc- Infected/dp/B07JBKRRNP) and [https://www.amazon.com/Volley-Inc-Angel-of- DOOM/dp/B07Q35LY8...](https://www.amazon.com/Volley-Inc-Angel-of- DOOM/dp/B07Q35LY8K)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Zarf also invented the game Capture the Flag With Stuff, played twice a year by hundreds of people at Carnegie Mellon University.

Current rules (2017 edition): [http://www.cmukgb.org/ctfws/](http://www.cmukgb.org/ctfws/)

Zarf's original rules (1995): [https://eblong.com/zarf/capture-flag- rules.html](https://eblong.com/zarf/capture-flag-rules.html)

Harvard's spinoff: [http://www.hrsfa.org/photos/lotze/ctfws/harvard- rules2.html](http://www.hrsfa.org/photos/lotze/ctfws/harvard-rules2.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> Shout out to my favorite recent evolution of IF: 80 days. I found this a blast to play ... and replay several times. Not shareware but at $4.99 on Android, a heck of a deal per hour played.

[https://www.inklestudios.com/80days/](https://www.inklestudios.com/80days/)

</comment><comment><USER19> I see Zarf around Cambridge from time to time. Either on the red line or at PorchFest. He's a recognizable dude. I feel like I'm one of the few people to fanboy at him in the real world. He's really nice!

<comment><USER20> What does he do at Cambridge? Student? Professor?

<comment><USER21> They mean the city of Cambridge, next to Boston, MA, USA.

<comment><USER20> Thank you. As someone who doesn't live in that part of the US, I frequently forget about Cambridge the US city.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's amazing that the community is still going strong. It's probably never going to be more than a small subculture, but I smile everytime I see these small but incredibly deep cultures staying strong, thanks to the internet.

</comment><comment><USER23> Can you play any IF through phone? Siri/Alexa/Google? It would be awesome to be able to play while driving / walking / whatever, and could attract more people to voice interfaces... IF seems very well suited to voice.

<comment><USER24> Someone needs to use sound and voice.

You enter a dank, dimly lit room, water trickling off to the side, reflecting the fire from your torch. You become aware of a disturbing, low grinding sound, low growl... off to the north, and a cool breeze following you in the exit to the east.

Two things:

Displaying text, with a soundscape would be amazing and, I'll bet, immersive.

The second order might be a mix of spoken word and soundscape that has directionality. You hear most of it, details are spoken, say on move.

North.

Quickly spoken room details: exits to north, east, water trickle.

Soundscape is looping.

On next command, look, turn, move, repeat.

Voice and or text for user input.

I want to pop in earbuds and either speak or type, and let my minds eye fill in the rest.

No time right now, so I just put it here.

Go!

<comment><USER25> Twenty years ago, I wrote StoryHarp in 1998 in Delphi to do this, using Microsoft Agent for speech and sound output and limited speech input (from a small set of choices appropriate to the context). I recently ported StoryHarp to JavaScript/TypeScript (using Mithril and Tachyons) to run in the browser -- but without speech input as yet.

Demo: [https://storyharp.com/](https://storyharp.com/)

Source: [https://github.com/pdfernhout/storyharp- js](https://github.com/pdfernhout/storyharp-js)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've found that when picking up a new IF game, it's harder to start getting into it than it is with most other games, but that once you get over that hump, the immersion I feel is greater than I feel with other games. The last one I played was Anchorhead and I had a great time.

</comment><comment><USER27> I always wanted voice assistant/chat bots to feel like a work of IF. You can kind of navigate a space textually, and perform spells/commands. Only difference is that there is a connection between the text and some representation of reality.

</comment><comment><USER28> I missed this scene by a few years but Netflix's recent interactive experiment Bandersnatch gave a good flavor of it :)

</comment><comment><USER29> Sorry for the tangent, but what is it with these odd new names for things that have been around since forever?

 _Every_ video game is "interactive fiction." These are "text adventures" and have been known as such since more or less the beginning.

Same for "MOBA" and the like. eugh. /peeve

<comment><USER30> I have seen the term "interactive fiction" used in Infocom's documents. Although, like you, I also prefer "text adventure".

Quoting from the XZIP documentation: "ZIP is the lowest level of Infocom's multi-tier interactive fiction creation and execution system."

<comment><USER29> Interactive fiction may have been used as an explanation for muggles, like "a movie you can control", but I cannot recall seeing it as a category in any of my gaming magazines from the 1980s.

<comment><USER5> Infocom used "interactive fiction" as the marketing tag for their games. You can easily see this on their box covers. I believe they started using the label with the "grey box" packages in 1984.

I don't know how much competing IF companies, like Level 9, tried to use the term. Infocom may have treated it as a trademark; I haven't checked.

Post-golden-age, hobbyists were congregating on the rec.arts.int-fiction newsgroup starting in 1992 or 1993. The newsgroup wasn't actually started by Infocom fans -- it was more serious literary-hypertext people who tried to co- opt the term! But that didn't stick, and it was all parser/text games and Z-code software by 1994. So "IF" was solidly held by that community through the 2000s, when IFComp and the IF Archive started to clue in to Twine and the larger space of text-based games.

As for the words "interactive fiction" \-- of course their literal meaning is wildly off from how the genre is understood. Genre labels are always silly when read literally. (Contemplate "science fiction" and "fantasy", which do not mean "stories about scientists" and "made-up stories".)

(I have a soft spot for the term "adventure game", which -- for a few years -- literally meant "a game like Adventure, aka Colossal Cave." But it's changed since then, and I mean since 1982.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook Pushes Outside Law Firms to Become More Diverse - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/02/business/dealbook/facebook-pushes-outside-law-firms-to-become-more-diverse.html?module=WatchingPortal&region=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard&contentPlacement=6&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&contentId=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2017%2F04%2F02%2Fbusiness%2Fdealbook%2Ffacebook-pushes-outside-law-firms-to-become-more-diverse.html&eventName=Watching-article-click&_r=0 <comment><USER2> "For Facebook, the move on outside lawyers is happening even as the company's efforts at improving diversity in its own work force have so far shown little progress.

According to statistics released last year, blacks and Hispanics last July accounted for only 3 percent each of senior leadership, and women made up an additional 27 percent. Hiring for the 12 months beginning with July 2015 showed something of an improvement: Of those newly recruited to senior leadership posts, 9 percent were black, 5 percent were Hispanic and 29 percent were women."

I guess Asian- and Jewish-Americans aren't diverse enough to be mentioned. The latter aren't even diverse enough to be included in the reported statistics, despite Zuckerberg himself being Jewish. And of course the fact that whites are under-represented at Facebook goes unmentioned - they are only over- represented in senior leadership, with 71% vs the general US population of 63%.</comment>


Gene editing crunches an organism's genome into single, giant DNA molecule - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/08/gene-editing-crunches-an-organisms-genome-into-single-giant-dna-molecule/ <comment><AUTHOR> A good discussion by one of the scientists on why it was challenging to create "mega-chromasomes". It's interesting, because both groups attempting it were unable to delete one of the centromeres (#15) for unknown reasons.

[https://bioengineeringcommunity.nature.com/users/170546-jing...](https://bioengineeringcommunity.nature.com/users/170546-jingchuan- luo/posts/37262-engineering-yeast-megachromosomes)

Also see the original Nature paper:

[https://go.nature.com/2n43y6c](https://go.nature.com/2n43y6c)</comment>


Neurons Gone Wild - <AUTHOR> http://www.meltingasphalt.com/neurons-gone-wild/ <comment><USER2> It's an interesting theory, but I'm not sure it really explains anything. E.g. that parts of the brain grow with use is certainly a surprising and interesting result. But it's not different than muscles growing with use, I don't think it requires agency to explain.

Split personality is interesting, but also incredibly rare and may not really exist at all. Schizophrenia appears to be the result of physical damage to brain tissue, not merely healthy brains developing independent agents. Addiction is easily explainable with reinforcement learning gone wrong.

There are theories of neural learning algorithms that are agency. Like the bucket brigade algorithm. But as far as I know that never worked very well. It's difficult or impossible to determine the "reward" for neurons, and having them be agenty doesn't really help anything.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool idea, though I'd sooner suspect most "supernatural" phenomena are more easily explained-- with fewer assumptions and suppositions-- by simple psychology, misinterpretation, fallacy, drugs, sleep paralysis, fear, rationalization, or attention-seeking, without any need to appeal to multiple consciousnesses or neurons with agency.

</comment><comment><USER4> I described a similar theory of neuronal agency in 2005: [http://thinkinghard.com/blog/HowDoesANeuronKnowWhatToDo.html](http://thinkinghard.com/blog/HowDoesANeuronKnowWhatToDo.html).

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting theory. I could see the main idea, individuality of brain segments, to be extended to cover other dimensions than just the spatial. Especially with schizophrenia, time perception and illusions are quite common, so a temporal schism of brain as a process could be an alternative approach. The combinatorial or additive emergence of agency is not as given as the article implies it is, though.</comment>


Jobs vs. Gates: Who's the Real Star? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/commentary/cultofmac/2006/01/70072

<comment><USER2> I haven't read the article, but I'll always hold Bill Gates to be a "star" for his ability to forge a company that was consistently able to produce software that basically worked (as in didn't seg/protection fault). I've long said that was a secret of their success, e.g. part of how they beat all of their Office competitors but WordPerfect during the transition to Windows.

It makes a difference when your CEO is a serious programmer (how many of us could rewrite an 8080 assembly BASIC interpreter on a long plane ride without the benefit of a computer?). Far too many companies in the '80s and beyond (the period I started following) came out with one working product and then basically lost their ability to write software, often by burning out or otherwise not retaining their key programmers (Lotus is a classic example).

I'll bet a lot of you young whippersnappers who are using safe languages (e.g. not C/C++) and one or a very few small teams don't know from harsh experience how fragile a software based enterprise can be. Fast CPUs that can easily afford the overhead required for safety and the tremendous leverage of today's Internet enhanced development environment (that e.g. allows the building of huge libraries like CPAN) have given you fantastic advantages, which you are making the most of.

</comment><comment><USER2> OK, having read the article it's not even vaguely fair since their paths with and roles in their respective companies are not at all alike. Jobs is still rebuilding Apple after his return and his role in the company is a lot more central than Gates, who it sounds like after a certain point made sure the key people design people had a clue (<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html>) but then left a lot more details to them.

Plus as the author acknowledges Jobs may be making anonymous donations, which I'll note are by definition less well tracked than the prominently named ones and that have also been the style of many in the past. E.g. the bulk of the money necessary to relocate MIT to its "new" campus before and during WWI was anonymously donated by George Eastman (Kodak). We _might_ be surprised someday to learn that Jobs has been making significant donations, or perhaps he'll move into that mode later ... or perhaps he's sufficiently concerned about his health that he's focusing everything on Apple and his family and if he passes away he will leave it to his wife to do the philanthropic phase.</comment>


Google+'s Real Goal is Not to Kill Facebook, but to Force it to Open - <AUTHOR> http://marshallk.com/google-pluss-real-goal-is-not-to-kill-facebook-but-to-force-it-to-open <comment><USER2> And the reason they want social Open is to commoditize it. (Same strategy as Android.) Everything a commodity except for search is the perfect world for Google.

<comment><USER3> True. But to go a level deeper, Facebook is dangerous to Google, because: 1) The competitive advantage of AdSense ($10 billion in annualized revenue) is all about having better user profiles that can translate into better syndicated ads. Facebook will undoubtedly launch a competitor given the hires they have made. 2) The competitive advantage of AdWords ($20 billion in annualized revenue) is mostly about having better search results. Again driven by better user understanding.

Facebook has excellent information on users interests. As opposed to MySpace and Twitter, most of the data on Facebook is not crawlable. It's private data, which means that Google is completely locked out. Even if it was crawlable, the data is not as valuable since Google would have to try to interpret it, while Facebook knows what it really means.

Summary: Facebook is an existential threat to Google's two major lines of business AdSense and AdWords. This is going to be a huge drawn out battle. Sit back and enjoy the show.

<comment><USER3> And my assessment is that the article is wrong. Google+'s goal is absolutely to kill Facebook. With something this important to Google, they want to control it themselves. If not, there is always the chance that Facebook will screw them over at the next opportunity and the battle restarts.

<comment><USER4> I think you're both right. I'm sure they'd prefer to beat Facebook, but they probably consider that a stretch goal. However, forcing Facebook to open up would also be considered a victory, IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think Google+ biggest bet right now is to spot, or introduce, the way people will live the web tomorrow. Changing it from Search to Discover.

And no, it can't relay completely on our friend's interests (à la Facebook) cause they're their interests not ours.

We'll probably stick much and much more to our beloved communities (topics, not friends) and start every web-related activity from there. That's something Google can't let Facebook win on.

</comment><comment><USER6> Everybody wanna be a Google+ expert

<comment><USER7> How is this different from say, every third Hacker News article?

<comment><USER8> It's not, but that's another problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How is Google+ open now? Can I be 'social across networks' with Google+ now?

<comment><USER10> Google accounts > data liberation

You can export all of your google+ et al data and import it elsewhere (including your social graph).

<comment><USER9> What other social networking service can I import it into? (I'm pretty sure I can't import it to Facebook)

<comment><USER10> None yet, but that's hardly the point, it hasn't been possible before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Google Plus's UI is still way behind Facebook.

It would be a lot easier for Facebook to fix their holes with privacy(essentially copying Plus's Circles) than for Google to become more like Facebook.

We needed someone to put pressure on facebook to give more granular privacy control. To the extent that Plus pushes Facebook in that direction, I'm happy!

Plus' other features like Hangouts are nice but nothing really that I missed enough to drop Facebook. Privacy _is_ one thing that I can see myself moving away from facebook for.

<comment><USER12> > It would be a lot easier for Facebook to fix their holes with > privacy(essentially copying Plus's Circles) than for Google to become more > like Facebook.

Circles are friend lists, a feature Facebook has had for three years. Facebook's friend lists actually do a few things that circles currently don't: for instance, you can post to the union of a set of friend lists with specific people excluded.

They're de-emphasized in the UI because, despite many iterations on it, and a prompt to this day to add new friends to a list, the overwhelming majority of users have never created or used one. The functionality has been there for years, so it is surprising to me that Google is pushing an essentially failed Facebook feature as their big differentiator.

<comment><USER13> Facebook doesn't have circles. All Facebook relationships are built on a friend request, which Google+ doesn't have. You can't add strangers to a Facebook list; they are not the same thing.

<comment><USER14> I hate the fact that the relationships aren't 2 way on G+. Today my wife was going through people to add on G+, and she kept asking me, "Who is this person, it says they are friends with you." And I had no idea who they were. They were people that had added me to a circle, but I never added back.

Yet Google tells other people that we know each other. They make no differentiation between a 2 way relationship and a one way.

This looks like spam heaven to me.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I guess it is google's attempt to make a go at twitter AND facebook. Unfortunately they are very likely to fail at both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In this is truly Google's intention, then they are probably already working on an interoperability platform and even if Facebook wouldn't join them, new social networks would find it an incredibly compelling platform to join. Just think of all the marketing opportunities.

<comment><USER16> Well, Google certainly had a big hand in OpenSocial, and I'm guessing that will be a big part of their strategy going forward, in terms of letting people plug "apps" into G+.

As for sharing data, and interop, I'd be curious to know if any Googlers are part of the Federated Social Web working group: <http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/federatedsocialweb/>

I follow their mailing list, and I can't remember seeing a lot of posts from people who identified as being with Google.. but that doesn't mean they're not there. Or maybe Google just have their own plan and are going to do an end-run around the W3C initiative(s)?

<comment><USER17> I don't know about FSW, but there are some Googlers working with OStatus. And Google created PubSubHubbub, which is one of the core parts of the specification.

Btw, omg, I just checked and Google+ is already sorta-compatible with OStatus in the same way Buzz was, at least for my account... Atom, ActivityStreams, WebFinger and PubSubHubbub are already there. Salmon is missing but it's a complicated protocol (took weeks for me to implement it in Ruby), so it's understandable.

It means you can probably follow a Google+ user with StatusNET or Identi.ca! You can't mention or share data yet, but I hope it's coming...

For me, federation _IS_ the future. Let's hope Facebook joins the party!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My argument is that facebook, twitter, myspace, g+ etc are web applications in search of a set of protocols. So that social network thingies become interoperable like IMAP and the like are.

I'm hoping that g+ is a step along this way, so I broadly want to agree with the article.

</comment><comment><USER19> What about Google+ effect on Diaspora, or is the project already dead?

</comment><comment><USER20> Just like Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER21> Is Google+ itself open?

<comment><USER22> Vic Gundotra said that the APIs are coming but they are still deciding on features while in closed beta

<comment><USER23> The answer to this should be easy. What are the APIs exposed to Google developers.

In the MS antitrust case one of the important things that came out of it was that internal MS developers had access to the same set of APIs to Windows as 3rd party developers. That is, the CLR or Excel or Sharepoint, for example, don't have access to special APIs that no one else has access to.

Google should do the same. Anything that GMail, Search, Docs, have acess to, so should Facebook, Bing, and Twitter.

<comment><USER24> Microsoft only follows this rule for (NT) Windows, because it was judged to have a monopoly market share. Windows Phone 7.0 and 7.5 have lots of capability accessible only to built-in apps such as Bing, for example. I guess the analogy might make sense for Google search but not the nascent Google+.

(Restricting APIs isn't necessarily just about lock-in. It's a lot easier to change an API when it affects a few teams in the same company than when it affects untold numbers of external developers. Keeping it internal for a while gives them a chance to validate, and maybe iterate on, its design. Hence some internal APIs of WP7.0 were exposed in 7.5, etc.)

<comment><USER23> The reason it makes sense for G+ isn't because of antitrust concerns, but because it would be consistent with their "do no evil" mantra.

Regarding the second point, I have no problem with Google saying these are "beta" APIs, subject to change. Their services carry this same label. As a developer I'd much rather see their full API stack, with some marked as beta, rather than a much neutered API.

With that said, I'd like to see the same for WP too, but with Google they have set a public position of doing what is right even if it is against their corporate interests -- I want them to uphold it -- not just when it is a PR win.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Google+'s goal is to index user data for advertisers, the same as the goal of every other Google product, from the search engine to Gmail.

<comment><USER26> And same as facebook. Right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I predict Google+ will die out in 1.5 years. It's inevitable. Too many tech people are saying it's the next big thing.. that's scary... I don't think a lotta tech geeks predicted Facebook would succeed.. Tech ppl don't know social.

<comment><USER28> Overheard in the park today, "google plus is like facebook but looks better". The same thing was said by non-tech people about facebook vs myspace.

<comment><USER25> What you overheard in the park today is hardly evidence of some kind of trend. Google+ isn't even open to signups yet and is on an invite-only basis, used mostly by celebrity bloggers and other tech personalities who think every new social networking site is the greatest thing ever. Even the name "Google+" and the use of "+1" is too techie and mathematical for a lot of people.

<comment><USER29> The name Google+ is about as scary to non-mathmeticians as Facebook is to non- biologists.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Make affiliate toy (reddl.it) into a real site? - <AUTHOR> I made reddl.it, a sort of stream-of-consciousness of books posted on literature-related subreddits - as a toy to play with EC2, Lambda, Dynamo DB, and just the general suite of AWS tooling. It was a lot of fun and I'm currently writing a series of tutorials about it - a sort of MVP for connecting those parts of the Amazon ecosystem together.
After seeing another reddit-related product advertising site, I was curious what it would take to make this more functional? Affiliate advertising is a bear, but I thought it would be fun as an opportunity for a little over-engineering.
So my questions are:
- What sort of information would you want to see for each book? - How do you see the layout? - Any ideas for better product(book) extraction? <comment><AUTHOR> Also, you'll notice my book extraction whiffs a decent amount. Looking to improve that.</comment>


Ask HN: How can I win more chargebacks? - <AUTHOR> In running my online subscription business over the past 7 years, I have about a 33% success rate at winning chargebacks. This is pathetic, given my business is legit, we have solid terms of service, an easy refund policy, and respond to every customer email.
Every time I get a notification from Stripe that a customer has performed a chargeback, I immediately follow up with them via email, offering to work out the issue before responding to the chargeback. When I respond to chargebacks, I always describe the product, the service to which the customer is subscribed, and provide communication outlining my case.
Unfortunately, it seems as if there is no benefit to a card company to reject a chargeback, as they make money off of fees when a chargeback is initially performed, and would only lose money by closing the chargeback in a merchant's favor.
To those running large-scale, online businesses, can you provide any tips on winning more chargebacks?
Note: Though my chargeback win rate is low, I believe my business is well below the industry average of chargebacks at <.001%. Still, these things add up. <comment><USER2> You can do everything right and almost always lose. Sorry, just consider it cost of accepting credit cards. :-( Perhaps do an analytics on those that initiated a chargeback to see if you can detect a pattern and then watch out for that pattern and offer to have folks cancel their accounts.

Let's say people sign up, never use your service then file for a chargeback. You can contact everyone that signed up and don't use the service and tell them to cancel since they are not using it. You have to do the math. Will you be losing more money by doing that or by CB fees?

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you use Stripe's risk evaluation API? In my experience, a lot of chargebacks come from people who have had their credit card info stolen, then file a chargeback when they see the unknown transactions in their statement.

You could also try using the two step auth and capture method to allow more time for the victim to realize their info was stolen and do an additional fraud check with potentially more up-to-date models right before performing the capture.

</comment><comment><USER4> I did a study on leveraging machine learning to predict chargebacks and will be speaking on it here: [https://conf.splunk.com/](https://conf.splunk.com/)

If you have enough data (clean transactions and transactions marked as chargebacks) - and willing to do private study - I'd be happy to help (no cost).

</comment><comment><USER5> Add an area on your cancelation page that offers for them to email you directly with any problems or if they need assistance cancelling their account.

Below that something add something like:

Unhappy with your subscription? Contact us and we'll make things right. We will assist you with cancelling your subscription and refunding your two previous payments.

</comment><comment><USER6> Can you adjust something in your service so people can't jump in, use it, then never need it again? I don't mean to assume this is what is going on, but I imagine some people may try to get their $ back if they just needed a web tool for a one-off task.

</comment><comment><USER7> Make it possible to cancel online and retroactively give refunds on your website. You'll never see a chargeback again.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do both. =]

It seems many times people use chargebacks as a form of cancelling their account. Instead of logging in to cancel, they seem to think a chargeback will have the same effect.

I'm wondering if this is the same for other subscription merchants? Any tips to combat?

<comment><USER8> Yes there are a large number of people in the world who don't realise that they can just write to the business to cancel their subscription.

There really is not much you can do about this problem other than be thankful that you are not one of these people - imagine how hard the world is for them every day.</comment></comment></comment>


Outcome Over Output: Also Impact and Effort - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@kentbeck_7670/outcome-over-output-also-impact-and-effort-8f9eb0ce0dbb <comment><USER2> A good way to measure outcome is to watch how many people are using a new feature (or a new version of an existing feature) successfully and how often they use it. The key word here is "successfully". Don't just measure how many people tried to use a feature. Define and measure success with a feature.</comment>


Burnout is real – how to avoid it - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlassian.com/blog/productivity/work-burnout-symptoms-and-prevention <comment><USER2> Good compilation of the advice you often read about on the internet. However, a big factor in all of the solutions is having the support of the entire org/company. If your company doesn't believe that burnout is an issue and ignores your "no"s, gives you zero control over what is on your plate, and pressures you culturally, then to take back control, you are stuck fighting another battle on top of burnout.

I've found that doing all the non-work bits of advice helps, but it doesn't reverse the trend. It only slows down your burn rate which can be dangerous. You begin to think it is under control when in reality, you're like a frog in a pot slowly being boiled alive.

To really combat burnout, large influential companies need to target these types of articles at companies themselves, not individuals. We are beyond the point of calling out individuals. Notice how all of the language in this article (until #8) is centered around _you_. _You_ are supposed to take full responsibility for burnout. It is _your_ choice. _Your_ lack of self- management is causing _your_ burnout. But sometimes, it's really not _you_. It's _them_.

I hope the community begins to realize that responsibility goes both ways and shifts the focus of these conversations onto companies. Don't put the entire onus of burnout on the employee. That is avoiding responsibility and too much of it can make it appear to be victim blaming. Start talking about how companies can change culture around this, train management to recognize it, and what it takes to make this a top-down effort instead of a bottom-up one.

A good start to this conversation can be: What does Atlassian (or your company) do to prevent burnout throughout their company?

<comment><USER3> >all of the language in this article (until #8) is centered around you. You are supposed to take full responsibility for burnout. It is your choice. Your lack of self-management is causing your burnout.

Yes, this! My company seems to be halfway there: acknowledging that burnout is a problem, but then turning that into helpful advice (eat healthy, take breaks, go work out, etc) that is focused on the individual, ignoring cultural factors and the total amount of work that gets taken on and needs to be done by X people in Y time.

<comment><USER4> Yeah. It's like overloading people constantly and then offering mediation classes so people can cope.

<comment><USER5> Wait .. this is exactly what my workplace is doing. I didn't attend the meditation because they clashed with my therapeutic daily walk..

<comment><USER4> My meditation teacher told me that the result of meditation shouldn't be to tolerate BS but instead realizing that it is BS and changing things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What is funny about this is that Atlasssian's Jira product is designed for two week "sprints", a term referring to the idea of running quickly at a rate above a sustainable pace with no intent to keep running after the end.

But these sprints normally are done repeatedly with no actual stop or sight of a finish line.

Employees just churn through tickets with no designed breathing room or planned downtime. Jira is probably one of the biggest helpers at causing burnout with all of those burn down charts and story point comparisons, driving companies and employees to not support taking reasonable time off or spending time at lower pressure to encourage employee wellbeing.

Basecamp's team wrote a guide to their take on this process and why they rejected it called "Shape Up" which seems pretty pie in the sky but makes some incredibly good points on maintaining team happiness, culture and quality of work.

<comment><USER7> In JIRA your performance is constantly measured comparing the actual work against the estimates, which are usually not under the developer control.

There are reports produced that developers don't get to see that the manager does to compare developers this way.

Of course, this can be easilly gamed. The most cunning developers will go out of their way to get the tasks that are clearly defined in scope and that they are familiar with, while others always end up getting the short end of the stick.

Guess who is going to look better under that report. Developers are overloaded, and will actually avoid to raise new issues or suggest improvements and new tasks, with fear that they will get more work on top of the workload that they can't already handle.

JIRA is really used by middle management to treat developers as essentially replaceable assembly line workers in a factory context.

<comment><USER8> I'm a big critic of Jira for this reason.

I think the more fundamental issue is that most businesses that existed before and after digitization don't really understand or appreciate that they are alive because of that transformation.

Most tech enabled companies do not understand that competent IT execution is important to their ability to have freedom of movement and the ability to respond to change in their markets.

Also Developers think developing is important, but also business thinks business is more important and they got by with paper and phones for a long time before computers turned up.

Both are fair points.

I would say that quality of life at work (in tech) is a function of how much the business thinks that the work you do is important. Is IT a cost center or a capability factory where you work?

In start ups and tech focused companies the core work is technology so it's easy to understand the investment. But places where IT isn't core work, developers are just cogs. They get treated like crap and are made to sprint because who cares, the 'actual' business is important.

Lastly, IT workers talk a big game about Unions but I'd really like to see the day where a strike by IT workers starts with them walking off the job after turning off the network.

I think Atlassian is the Uber of the software development process and devs are the drivers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Burnout is an inevitable consequence of the modern workplace for a lot of people. A lot of those who don't have any problem with burnout are the ones burning out other people.

In the modern workplace, workers are often given a task without being given the good conditions to take it through, or a good overview of the context that the task is part of.

A good percentage of the tasks but not all are hot potatoes, and it can get very political (in some places this is worst than others, but its always there).

You get to the office in the morning and have new 10 trouble tickets assigned to you, with estimations of 2 or 3h of execution time over which you have no control, estimated by a clueless middle manager who has never coded the simplest of programs in his/her life.

If you make too many waves or comments about the length of the tasks, you are not going to last long and you know it, so what do you do?

Stay late, take shorter breaks, connect one hour in the evening to get a couple more things done or do some preparation work like analysis, reading documentation, answer emails, etc.

If you don't do that, you know that it's a fast track to performance improvement program which is essentially a death sentence.

I think the problem is the system and not people, the current employer/employee social contract is needing a huge rehaul because society is coming to a breaking point which all these jobs disappearing due to automation and informatisation in general.

<comment><USER9> > a clueless middle manager who has never coded the simplest of programs in > his/her life.

I've never had manager who hasn't coded ever in his life. WhatI had most of the time was a manager who hasn't coded in a longtime.

<comment><USER7> I've had both, and I don't know what is worst to tell you the truth. The ones who have coded a long time ago think that their experience in another language/ecosystem still allows them to estimate tasks in a completely different environment, when in fact it doesn't.

The non-technical manager will focus more on the business side and will be easier to manage in many situations, but the problem is that that type fo manager will neglect tasks that are purely linked to technical debt, refactoring etc that don't add new functionality to the system but are still really important.

<comment><USER10> I had a manager with a PhD who insisted on never writing multi-threaded applications because when he tried he failed and considered them dangerous. I routinely wrote apps using 10,000+ threads before. Now he is a head of development of some company. Real life is a comedy.

<comment><USER11> Just create child processes with a shared memory region. That's not multi- threading.

<comment><USER12> Hah, I've used the forking server approach very successfully before.

Plus, threads and processes are essentially the same on unix land – kernel flags will control behavior like shared memory. Which you can still setup manually. Or just use whatever IPC fancies you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >Quick...tells his students he's always available – except between 10pm and 6am. It's important to put limits on when you're reachable, he says.

Really...this is their example of healthy boundary setting? A professor who says he's available the entire time he's awake, but won't answer emails when he's supposed to be sleeping.

<comment><USER14> I thought the exact same thing reading this.

Average healthy sleep time is 8 hour a day. Even if it's less for some, this professor can be disturbed when he eats ? When he is in his shower ?

Seems strange to me.

<comment><USER15> Depends on the discipline.

Math professors aren't known for showering :)

<comment><USER16> Given how many math problems are solved in the shower I would think it would be the other way around

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > * You've become cynical or critical at work

> * You drag yourself to work and have trouble getting started

> * You're irritable or impatient with co-workers, customers or clients

> * You lack the energy to be consistently productive

> * You find it hard to concentrate

> * You lack satisfaction from your achievements > * You feel disillusioned > about your job

> * You use food, drugs or alcohol to feel better or to simply not feel

> * Your sleep habits have changed

> * You're troubled by unexplained headaches, stomach or bowel problems, or > other physical complaints

You say "burnout symptoms", Corporate says "reasons to fire you". Potato, potahto.

</comment><comment><USER18> None of this advice really addresses the core issue: people don't want to be on other people's schedule nearly all the time for 30+ years of their adult life. It's relentless and soul crushing. I get 4 weeks off a year, and even if I take them all in a row, the only thing I can think of once my vacation starts is "the clock is ticking till I have to be back in the office." And that's always in the back of my mind no matter what and will be till I retire or somehow figure out a way to get fuck you money. No amount of meditation, saying no, time management etc., can fix that. I basically have no control of my life until then. Is there any fix to this? Can there be any fix really?

My plan now is just to save aggressively until 40 or so, then either lean FIRE or switch to a 6 month on 6 month off contracting schedule.

The only other option I can think of is take a job I might enjoy. But all those kinds of jobs pay poorly (relative to a software engineer's salary), so I'd be locking myself into the working world for an extra decade or longer.

Edit: I should note that I realize I am extremely fortunate to be in the situation I am. I don't mean to sound like I'm ungrateful for a lot of the things in my life.

<comment><USER19> > _My plan now is just to save aggressively until 40 or so, then either lean > FIRE..._

This is the real answer to preventing burnout: focusing on getting to financial independence starting from the very first day you start your career. There is nothing more liberating and comforting than knowing you don't have to stay at your job one moment longer than you feel like it.

Granted, it's not an option for everyone because of their life circumstances, but it is for most people in the software industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Where and how specifically does Jira build in stress and burnout metrics and avoidance mechanisms into its tools and techniques?

And when is it going to mandate a change of langauge in Scrum from "sprint" to some word vastly more reasonable in designating a staged, sustainable, work effort?

The English language is in dire need of an idiom connoting the fox advising the henhouse. This post lacks all credibility.

<comment><USER21> "Sprint" isn't supposed to be sustainable. It acknowledges that for brief periods we set aside distractions/maintenance/cleanup and make progress and THEN back off to a state that lets us recuperate the whole environment. Or it should, anyway.

<comment><USER20> If an activity is not meant to be sustainable, then stop using a word literally meaning "A burst of speed or activity" for prolonged, iterated, no- reprieve workfactor increments.

(See above Humpty Dumpty "glory" quote.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> [https://web.archive.org/web/20190731183556/https://www.atlas...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190731183556/https://www.atlassian.com/blog/productivity/work- burnout-symptoms-and-prevention)

in case the original stalls

</comment><comment><USER23> Step 1: TAKE YOUR VACATION!! - every minute allowed, every year. If they won't give you a chance to recharge your batteries, look elsewhere.

<comment><USER24> And do what with it? For many of us burnout is tied to depression is tied to lack of a mate, hobby, social circle, life purpose. What outside of work is even worth doing? Seems like all I can think about outside of work is how badly I just want this all to be finished.

<comment><USER25> Might be stepping out but I think you've already identified quite a few things that can be worked on in order to help yourself out.

hobby - honestly just try a bunch of different things for a while and you might be surprised what you like. Take up gardening, hobby games (build/paint miniatures and play 40k, battletech, etc.), hiking, really anything that requires some focus and a bit of work. In a lot of cases its more about having something to do other than work and being tired/lazy/depressed at home vegging out and/or getting into a worse headspace.

mate/social circle - honestly this can be hard (especially if you're really introverted) but getting into a hobby can open new doors. Also think about getting a pet or two. Animal companionship can really be more than a substitute for other people and fill you with all sorts of joys.

life purpose - this is really hard but honestly you and in complete control over this if you push yourself hard enough. Literally just choose something. It can even be to just live as long as possible despite any shitty circumstances (doesn't have to be some grand unachievable goal).

I really hope I'm not stepping out of line but your message seemed like a call for help. I've had my own long spells of depression and some of the above have helped me a lot. Please also consider getting in contact with professional help if it's really getting bad. Forget about shame, nervousness, or whatever had headspace your currently in, your life is 100% worth more than any of that.

<comment><USER24> The first time I heard all of this advice was 20 years ago, and people just repeat it every week for years on end ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Disclosure: I used to work at Atlassian. I've been reading HN for years without an account but this one triggered me to comment.

I suffered burnout there. I had the misfortune of working as an "SRE" at Atlassian. The reality was you spent your days, nights, and weekends dealing with major incidents.

I do not know if it was a conscious strategy, but it would seem the approach taken to reduce organizational wide pager fatigue and burnout from out of hours work was to _concentrate it on a few_.

(My guess is that it was conscious, as that best explains why my cries for help whilst falling on seemingly sympathetic ears, yielded no changes.)

</comment><comment><USER27> All of this advice would be great if following it didn't mean you would be next to get fired.

They forgot "unionize".

Remember, every time you attend a meeting while on your vacation, or answer an email at 10 PM, you're normalizing that behaviour. You're telling your boss it's OK to demand it of everyone.

</comment><comment><USER28> > Job burnout is an epidemic, and tech workers are especially at risk. Here's > how you can avoid feeling fried – and what employers can do to de-stress > their workforce.

Insane work hours and constantly availability is the epidemic here. Workers can de-stress their workforce by refusing to be available for more than 40 hours a week, and not worrying about doing outside projects if they don't feel like it. Employers can de-stress their workforce by not asking for more than 40 hours a week.

> Quick, who is also a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, > tells his students he's always available – except between 10pm and 6am

This is the solution to burnout? Telling people you are not available to answer emails and send over quick spreadsheets when you're literally asleep?

</comment><comment><USER29> I experienced burnout the first time I went to college. This was after years of school though having changed majors and transferring/lost lots of credits. And I mean a LONG time was spent I really should have taken a year or two off. Busting my rear end while having to be broke and slumming it for years on end with no rewards took its toll. At the end I was just pulling myself out of bed and going through the motions and not really caring about grades anymore. Burnout never crossed my mind since it's always something you associate with high stress jobs. Turned out it was a very expensive misunderstanding.

</comment><comment><USER30> > " _So serious in fact that in May, the World Health Organization (WHO) > announced that the next version of its handbook of diseases, the > International Classification of Diseases (ICD11), will recognize [burnout] > as an official "occupational phenomenon" that could drive people to seek > medical care._ "

Eh, what? I thought ICD-10 already had a code for occupational burnout: Z73.0. ([https://icd.codes/icd10cm/Z730](https://icd.codes/icd10cm/Z730))

<comment><USER31> Z73 appears to be "Problems related to life management difficulty". I presume they meant something more explicit like coding under Z56, "Problems related to employment and unemployment".

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've battled severe burnout after my first startup :( Almost 8 years down the road and numerous other startup fails now I believe teams can do a better job with burnout symptoms within colleagues [1]. Please be mindful for your buddies. They may not have the energy to pull out themselves \/

[1] [https://medium.com/camplight/what-can-we-do-to-prevent- teams...](https://medium.com/camplight/what-can-we-do-to-prevent-teams-from- burning-out-ac68e7649e8c)

</comment><comment><USER33> Makes sense but most of these aren't really actionable unless you're at the top. Other than quitting to find a better culture of course. For example, 3. Manage your digital distractions, mentions Tim Cook. I'm sure he can decide to cut down on his notifications, but if you're working at a place where Slack is used, there's 100 channels and you're expected to respond quickly by the management, your only choice is to leave.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is just really generic advice that most people would come up with themselves by thinking about it for a while. I feel like this a constant problem with these advice blogs. I've learned so much from books like How to win friends and influence people, feeling good, meditations, etc. Yet I rarely ever see that advice repeated anywhere, they just go for really low hanging fruit and not a lot of thought is put into it.

<comment><USER24> Original thought is too expensive for blogs that have to churn out topical content to make ad revenue, so they become consolidations of common sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Number one cause of burnout is organizations adopting Atlassian products and treating the process like some sort of finite state automaton

</comment><comment><USER36> Burnout is real indeed!

[https://burnout.so](https://burnout.so)

<comment><USER37> > "Be the first to experience Burnout before everyone joins in"

I mean...

<comment> 52-6F-62 It gets better!

> _Track vacations and plan burnouts._

That just doesn't sound healthy.

<comment><USER38> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZW- AZ2mNeA&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZW- AZ2mNeA&feature=youtu.be)

<comment> 52-6F-62 Canadian curse. I'm barred (read: geofenced) from watching official SNL channels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> As someone who hasn't taken a vacation in almost 4 years... yeah this sounds familiar.

Thankfully I'm ending my current job in a couple of weeks and will take a couple of free months before starting my next adventure.

</comment><comment><USER40> >> Job burnout is an epidemic

Start of sub-title.

def: a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease in a community at a particular time

So a wide-spread, non-infectious phenomena that has been occurring... forever?, doesn't really meet the definition.

I'm not debating this is a real thing nor that it may be more prevalent, but a bunch of generic tips that put the entire responsibility on avoiding burnout onto _me_ seems likely to increase the risks rather than address them...

<comment><USER41> Most of western propaganda is aimed at preventing class consciousness and solidarity from forming between workers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'm glad Atlassian is calling attention to this, but I'd love to see them incorporate tools and features into their products that could help identify and measure these recommendations. Most of the data is there, but we just need to expose views of worker metrics and not solely focus on projects. A teams burnout indicator would be just as important as velocity report.

</comment><comment><USER43> Fitter, healthier and more productive.

A pig In a cage On antibiotics

</comment><comment><USER44> poor leadership always leads to burnout

</comment><comment><USER45> I have everything on their list and I'll be talking to my director next week about making some changes. Thanks for posting.

</comment><comment><USER46> I've felt like I've had serious burnout for almost four years now. We've lost about 70% of our development team with no plans on filling the positions they've left open. We've not had a manager for over two years now. Haven't had a project manager for over two years. Our workload constantly increases. I recently got done with a stint of 45 days straight. Down to only 6 days a week now, but will be back to 7 before the end of the year to meet deadlines. I work for a healthcare company that is top 5 in size in the country. Our CEO had record compensation last year. I'm very excited by that. I love technology! What an interesting and exciting job.

</comment><comment><USER47> Everything should be done in balance.</comment>


Announcing Angular Kendo UI - <AUTHOR>

http://www.kendoui.com/blogs/teamblog/posts/13-06-24/announcing-angular-kendo-ui.aspx <comment><USER2> Should have been pasted in the URL text field.

[http://www.kendoui.com/blogs/teamblog/posts/13-06-24/announc...](http://www.kendoui.com/blogs/teamblog/posts/13-06-24/announcing- angular-kendo-ui.aspx)</comment>


Ask HN: How has this community benefitted from open-source culture? - <AUTHOR>

One benefit might be that an open culture encourages the "early release/frequent iteration" model. Another would be that it fosters education, since people who want to learn programming have more real resources to learn from.<p>I'm very interested to hear more - especially if you feel that an open culture has impacted you on a personal level somehow. <comment><USER2> Here's one on the personal level. This might sound a little silly, but simply being _allowed_ to submit a bug report and see the progress being made on that bug has got to be one of the most cathartic experiences in my entire relationship with machines and software.</comment>


Why Facebook should Police their API - <AUTHOR> http://www.bandwidthblog.com/2011/05/05/why-facebook-should-police-their-api/ For years we have been warned to be careful of what we installed or even what we clicked on Facebook, but as malware on the social network runs rampant don't you think that it's time we demand Facebook to pay attention? The malware issue on Facebook is a much bigger problem than they lead us to believe because it strikes at the very foundations of their established ecosystem. <comment><USER2> They do. The fact that they took that app down is proof of it.

What you want is for them to moderate everything that is posted, and that's just not possible. Even the heuristics for detecting rogue apps is tough and probably beyond their abilities, considering the manpower it would take to create and hardware to execute.

<comment><AUTHOR> Took them days even after being published all over the news. Apps should be checked before they go public. Having said that the Bin Laden malware didn't use the API although many other apps do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My profile wall is littered with Osama photo/video posts, why doesn't Facebook have tech in place that stop apps when their post frequency to walls gets out of hand?

<comment><USER4> They can use design solution, folding messages from one app to single message

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If Facebook were to police their API like Jobs they would have to do another billion dollar VC round.

<comment><USER5> unless of course they start charging, which I doubt they'll ever do.</comment></comment>


How to create a meeting agenda, by MeetingMix (YC S08) - <AUTHOR> http://meetingmix.com/resources/how-to-create-a-meeting-agenda

<comment><USER2> Wow, I didn't know MeetingMix was a YC company. We use it at work and it's great. Simple interface, does everything you need and nothing you don't.

Now I feel even better knowing we use it and it's a YC company.

</comment><comment><USER3> Should that say "There are no documents to send around" instead of "There's no documents to send around"? Not trying to be pedantic, trying to be helpful.

</comment><comment><USER4> Seems like this is more of feature or a wizard/plugin for a wiki or project workspace than a stand-alone application. But it's a very good idea and a great start on an interesting implementation. The copyright should be 2010 and there should be something on the about page about the founders and why solving this problem is important to them.

</comment><comment><USER5> It looks good. I couldn't find though any link to printing either the agenda or the minutes. Trial period of 14 days is too short to hook anyone.

We do lots of meetings in my line of work and most minutes will have an action by and deadline.

<comment><AUTHOR> On the top right of your meeting page are Print and PDF links. When you click the Print link you can customize the output, so you can choose to print the agenda or the minutes, or both. Also, on the bottom of the page is a link to add action items.

I'm happy to follow up more if you have any questions. Just shoot us an email at firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><USER5> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Often times when (3) ("Estimate the time needed for each agenda topic") fails is because not enough time is budgeted for discussion afterwards. Don't budget 30 minutes for an item if you expect the presentation itself to take 20-25.

</comment><comment><USER7> The homepage layout looks very similar to Etherpad's.</comment>


Apple Says Samsung "Chose To Copy" iPhone and iPad, Sues Them - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/18/apple-says-samsung-%E2%80%9Cchose-to-copy%E2%80%9D-iphone-and-ipad-sues-them/ <comment><AUTHOR> WSJ article behind account wall <http://online.wsj.com/article/BT- CO-20110418-711262.html></comment>


List of spacecraft in the Culture series - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spacecraft_in_the_Culture_series <comment><USER2> I also quite like [https://twitter.com/cultureshipname](https://twitter.com/cultureshipname), which tries to find texts that could be ship names in real life.

<comment><USER3> First tweet on the page: "I don't need a tie for gravitas".

Followed.

<comment><USER4> At least Elon has enough names for his satellite constellation now.

<comment><USER5> _Ravished By The Sheer Implausibility Of That Last Statement_

<comment><USER6> I'm entirely sure the Culture would name a whole line of ships after the Chuck Tingle books.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I gather I'm pretty unusual among sf fans in not enjoying the Culture novels, which I find maybe a little sere in their prose and a little too far gone in their post-Singularity space opera to really resonate. I do like the ship names, though.

I also suspect that series plays a heavy role in inspiring Howard Tayler's webcomic _Schlock Mercenary_ , whose very humble beginnings I've had the distinct pleasure of watching it far outgrow over the years. Definitely worth a look for any sf fan, mil-sf fans especially.

<comment><USER8> Not crazy about them either. For me, the issue is that they're basically gods (level 8 civilisation) and everything just feels like one big deus ex machina.

Excession stood out as better than the rest.

<comment><USER9> Good call on Excession. I love the Culture books but can see why folks wouldn't, but Excession is the best in my opinion because it reveals the Culture's flaws and limitations. The rest of the time it's just invincible good guys.

I feel Banks tried to write a novel about the Culture dealing with peer civilizati0ns, but they a;ways ended up being significantly inferior and we're back to Consider Phlebas (which is The Culture vs a clearly weaker civilization).

<comment><USER10> I'd put Look to Windward in the "best of" category. It addresses with the issue by introducing a character who has been personally, very poignantly affected by the Culture's meddling, and seeks revenge for it, a bit like a reverse Use of Weapons. It's also the only book to directly reference the events of Consider Phlebas.

I also liked how Matter described a very-low-on-the-civilizational-ladder (literally: It's a located on the lower level of a "shell world", an artificial planetoid constructed of concentric layers of habitation, each home to a different civilization) society whose players discover the Culture and ultimately seek to improve on themselves, while the book concurrently illustrates the other civilizations' underhanded attempts at playing the Culture.

Minor nitpick regarding Consider Phlebas: The Idiran Empire are militarily vastly superior to the Culture at the outset of the war.

<comment><USER11> Fun fact: "Consider phlebas" and "Look to windward" are both phrases appearing in T S Eliot's poem "The Wasteland".

They're the only two titles drawn from the poem, so I find it particularly interesting that you mentioned the way that they're more directly referential than other works. Makes me think I should try a closer reading of both.

<comment><USER10> Yes, it's a "sequel" of sorts — in the weakest possible sense — to Consider Phlebas, so it's not an accident that he used another line from the same poem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have not yet come to terms with the fact that Ian is gone, and there will no more spacecraft names for the rest of my life.

<comment> david-given ...did you know that in English, the names 'Ian' and 'Iain' are, in fact, unrelated? It's a little-known fact that the word 'Ian' is actually an abbreviation for the word 'Cyclopian' \--- which, as everyone knows, means to have only one I.

(Stolen from Mr. Banks himself, when he came to my university to do a talk. Still miss him.)

<comment><USER12> I blame my phone... Thanks for pointing it out. Of course it's Iain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A frank exchange of views is my favourite. Whenever I hear key terms in the media I think they'd make good ship names. One example is how the BBC says "so called Islamic state" \- if I ever own a boat (or a sentient AI) I might call it that.

For those who miss Iain Banks, Ken McLeod is a good read. The Cassini Division is a great post-singularity novel with interesting tech ideas and ideological musings. Iain and Ken also wrote a book of poetry together which is worth a read.

<comment><USER13> I read Newton's Wake by Macleod last year and didn't like it much. Put me off reading anything else by him.

I would recommend Charlie Stross to fill the void.

<comment> david-given Newton's Wake is kind of variable. Some bits I like, some bits are meh.

If you feel like giving Macleod another try, I think his best books are _The Cassini Division_ and _The Stone Canal_ ; they're part of a quartet, but these two books are the best and are very much a thematic pair, and if you read one you should read them both. (In part they show us the same setting from drastically opposed viewpoints, both done sympathetically.)

Giant spaceships, explosions, god-like beings, wormholes through space and time, sentient robots, non-sentient robots, maybe-sentient robots, full on ultralibertarian capitalism, full on ultraliberal socialism, nanotechnology, pre-, post- and intra-singularity technology, and some very big guns.

<comment><USER14> The pre/intra/post singularity + econ systems is also filled masterfully by Stross's Accelerando. It's available online on his website - [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/fiction/accelera...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html)

<comment><USER13> And Singularity Sky

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Oh come on now HN, it's a short week for many of us, lets come up with some ourselves! I'll start:

 _Not Enough Whimsy_

 _Independence Without Declarations_

 _Farmer 's Walk_

 _Wine and Cheese Night Ended Well_

Any others?

<comment><USER16> I keep a list of mine...

Agorophile

Illusory Lie

Lapse of Sanity

GSV Presence of the Void

Just Like a Simile

As Seen On TV

Indivisible Composite

Ad Nauseum

Cannon To The Left Of Them

Cannon To The Right Of Them

Volley'd And Thundered

Echo of a Dissipating Dream

Life's Dust Empire

Multifoliate Rose of Death's Dream Kingdom

Melancholia, Inspiration, Efficiency

Bigger Stick

Indifferent Caretaker

Still Life With Supernova

Guernica

Enthalpy's Shadow

Thevenin's Theorem

Kirchhoff's Laws

Stress-Energy Tensor

This Is Not A Name

This Is Not A Sentence

Majority Report

SSK(S(K(SS(S(SSK))))K)

(λx. λy. x y x) (λy. λx. y (x y x))

CAT GRP TOP SET FUN

Life's Dust Empire

Multifoliate Rose Of Life's Twilight Kingdom

Rat's Feet

Paralyzed Force

Gesture Without Motion

Falls The Shadow

Handful Of Dust

Vials of Ivory

The Change of Philomel

Turn The Wheel

Look To Windward

Consider Phlebas

HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME

King of Kings

Look On My Ship, Ye Mighty, And Despair

Abandon Hope

Land of Thebes

Red Sails Wide

Plucked Hence From Poetry

Then Spoke The Thunder

Levity Sucks

If You Can Read This, You Are Literate

Purely Coincidental

<comment><USER15> _This Is Not A Sentence_ , very good, paradoxes as names are fantastic

<comment><USER17> -Guesswork Education

-Leaving the stove on

-Repent Datamining Chaingang

-Now you see me

-In war and fair

-moral Faultliness Seismograph

-Whatever it stakes

-1234 A.D. - dead hamsters Vengeance

-Value of Life Inflation

-No, not that ship

-Definitely dated You

-Will I am Tell Time

-Poach Reacekeeper

-Relative Directions

-Rocks thrown at sea

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Quite sad to see that this level of inclusionism is only tolerated in some niches of wikipedia at large.

Just have a look at @deletedWiki for the chances missed: [https://twitter.com/search?q=list%20from%3Adeletedwiki](https://twitter.com/search?q=list%20from%3Adeletedwiki)

</comment><comment><USER19> I use these as hostnames. Easy to remember and there are enough so I won't run out any time soon.

<comment><USER20> Doesn't it take a long time to type? Or are you using the initials?

<comment><USER19> I try to pick short ones, but tab completion is a life saver.

Worth it to SSH into the Only Slightly Bent

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A small piece of Arcana - SpaceX uses some of these ship names for its landing platforms. I've always appreciated that.</comment>


Why I like Vim so much [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6omymj1JZI&feature=youtu.be <comment><USER3> While I don't want to start a debate over VIM versus Emacs (I think they can both be used very effectively once learned), I can't help but share a video [1] on Emacs that made me go "wow!" (The video is somewhat similar, but uses multiple-cursors to do editing all at once, while also recording a macro to repeat it.) I think the real point for Vim or Emacs is that a powerful text editor, combined with the ability to extend it, is an extremely powerful tool.

[1] [http://emacsrocks.com/e13.html](http://emacsrocks.com/e13.html)

<comment><USER4> That video is great. The multiple cursors GUI is a brilliant way to visualize a repetitive operation (i.e., one that often would be recorded and executed by macro). I was going to ask if anyone else implements it, but I thought I'd search first. Does anyone know more about it? Its origins? More functionality?

* Vim

[https://github.com/terryma/vim-multiple- cursors](https://github.com/terryma/vim-multiple-cursors)

* Atom (I'm not sure if it's the same functionality)

[https://atom.io/packages/multi-cursor](https://atom.io/packages/multi-cursor)

[https://www.lynda.com/Web-Development- tutorials/Selections-m...](https://www.lynda.com/Web-Development- tutorials/Selections-multiple-cursors/468147/486974-4.html)

* Sublime

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14963775/multiple- cursor...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14963775/multiple-cursors-in- sublime-text-2-windows)

EDIT: Well it seems like Sublime has had this feature since at least 2012. I suppose I should have considered text editors besides Vim, and I might have known sooner. I'll leave this post in case there are others as narrow-minded as I am ...

<comment><USER5> Sublime Text was actually the text editor that innovated this functionality. If you look at the github for the vim plugin, they clearly say "True Sublime Text style multiple selections for Vim".

Although I've stopped using sublime text since, sublime text really drove forward the gui text editor market.

<comment><USER6> No. JEdit had that feature long before Sublime Text.

<comment><USER5> You seem to be right. I always though Sublime Text introduced it (lots of people seem to believe this: [https://medium.com/@schtoeffel/you-don-t-need- more-than-one-...](https://medium.com/@schtoeffel/you-don-t-need-more-than- one-cursor-in-vim-2c44117d51db)), but sublime text introduced multiple cursors with its release date in 2008, while JEdit appears to have had multiple cursors at least since 2003?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> After years of using vim, I switched to visual studio code because it feels like a plain text editor but has all the features of IDEs that matter to me: intellisence.

<comment><USER8> In my years of pretty much working only in Visual Studio/C#, I've occasionally poked around in vim for a few things and always immediately turned back. It was just _weird_. I didn't see the benefit of giving up all of the features and familiarity.

Recently, I've found occasion to work in other languages, and after dabbling in vim for a little while, I switched to VS Code. After gaining a little bit of enlightenment about what a comfortable developer workflow looks and feels like outside of the C# ecosystem, I've had three key insights:

\- I actually appreciate the transparency and flexibility of delegating so many tasks to command line tools that can be run via scripts and task runners. Thing still aren't quite as discoverable as they are in VS, but I have enough general dev experience that I know what to Google for.

\- I still don't care for vim. Maybe someday, when I want to invest time in becoming a keyboard Jedi.

\- Most importantly: it turns out the only feature I really, _really_ missed leaving Visual Studio was IntelliSense. Not just semi-intelligent word completion, but real IntelliSense, with inline documentation, snippets and parameter info. I don't know why anyone who has ever taken advantage of it would go without it if given the option - it is a bicycle for the programmer's mind at every skill level, from early discovery of a language's syntax and standard libraries to extreme proficiency.

<comment><USER9> When you brought up the bicycle metaphor, the first thing that came to mind was training wheels. Training wheels aren't bad when you start, but training wheels quickly get in the way of really mastering riding a bike.

<comment><USER8> I've heard this before, and I've also seen IntelliSense labelled as a crutch. I don't understand this - how does IntelliSense prevent mastery of a language? Does it make a difference if someone's mastery of a language involves them using IntelliSense?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It'd be great if he actually explained any of that. One of the problems I've had with vim and emacs is the average user is so far into it they forget all of the base stuff that new users have issues with, so most guides skip all of that. It's gotten better with both of them with the package managers. However because they're so flexible I find that most users customize the key bindings in one way or another. And so when they show off how to do things it doesn't translate as all of the keys are different and I not only have to map the new feature of the new editor I have to also go through a key translation map. It is a very high barrier to entry. Same thing goes with all of the plugins people install. Emacs and vim are so far from stock on most people's machines it's impossible for me to learn by following.

I took a emacs class at a very good tech conference and I was 1 minute late and missed the key bindings changes the instructor had made as the first step. I was unable to follow anything for the next 30 minutes and walked out and got my money back. (This is much more an issue with the instructor than the editor).

I do like both of them and try and learn them every few years but I also try and be flexible across as many editors as I can be so I can help as many of my junior engineers out as possible. But jumping on someone's vim or emacs is like switching to dvorak. It's also pretty toxic for pairing unless everyone has agreed on setup.

</comment><comment><USER11> And if you learn Emacs instead, you can skip the VIM stage completely.

<comment><USER12> It's better to learn both, to have more tools in your toolbox and use the right tool for the job. Both emacs and vim have their strengths and weaknesses, and it's great to have the option to use either when you need it.

<comment><USER3> Or you can use things like evil [1] to have your vi-style modal editing and eat your Emacs cake too.

[1] [https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil](https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil)

<comment><USER12> That's mostly what I use, but there are still times that I use vim because even emacs with evil doesn't do what I need (or do it easily, or as well).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I used vi/vim for 15 years, and still do when changing configuration locally and remotely, before learning emacs for university work. At work I use Visual Studio, and for personal scribbling I use Sublime Text. I never understood the editor wars.

<comment><USER14> editor wars are like snowball fights. it only hurts if you take the wrong things too serious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Considering I go between Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, and Android Studio, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be using VIM or Emacs. Just a Windows centric person.

<comment><USER16> Funny, I use Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code a lot. The first extensions I install are VsVim for Visual Studio and Vim in Code.

After being productive in Vim, I can't go back to using the arrow keys and the mouse. It feels like I lost a hand.

<comment><USER17> Admittedly im not a hardcore vim/ _nix user, but I am pretty proficient in_ nix and CLIs in general. Are you saying you dont use the arrow keys? :D

<comment><USER16> Ha! Sometimes. But getting around in the editor is so easy with the Vim keys that the arrow keys seem archaic.

But I still push the arrow keys from time to time, you know, to make sure they still work.

<comment><USER17> Lol, it was half joke im sure you gathered. There isnt really much of a possible shortcut to doing "move the cursor 1 character to the left".

<comment><USER18> The optimization isn't in "move the cursor 1 character to the left", it's in "move the cursor 1 character to the left _without moving your arm_ ".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> One of my favorite features of Vim is the built-in history of copy/pastes with history registers. You can learn about them here: [https://github.com/steveshogren/10-minute-vim- exercises/blob...](https://github.com/steveshogren/10-minute-vim- exercises/blob/master/book_sample_history_registers.md)

</comment><comment><USER20> I would say that an important number never go back from the keybindings/modal editing. I use them everywhere I can, from Chromium to Emacs.

</comment><comment><USER21> I use IDEs when it makes sense but do often times find myself wishing their text editor behaved like VIM.

<comment><USER22> There are plugins for many to add a vim mode. At least for Intelij based ones(Pycharm, IntelliJ, Clion) and Visual Studio

<comment><USER23> [https://github.com/lunixbochs/ActualVim](https://github.com/lunixbochs/ActualVim) gives you neovim inside Sublime Text, altho I haven't tried it.

I couldn't stand IdeaVim, the one for the Jetbrains IntelliJ platform - <USER2> very buggy. Such as when you open a modal and it remains in Normal mode so you can't enter text.

Currently using [https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim](https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim) when using VSCode which is better but still got some rough edges.

Despite a fair bit of use and study - mostly using neovim - I feel that I haven't got as much from vim as I'd expected or hoped. Switching from Normal to Insert mode - even when you get good at the one-time Normal mode commands - doesn't always elegant.

There's all sorts of configurations and plugins that try to plug the gaps, but it's such a huge effort to assemble them all. For example, just installed [https://github.com/terryma/vim-multiple- cursors](https://github.com/terryma/vim-multiple-cursors) today to attempt get the elegant multiple selection of modern text editors.

<comment><USER5> I've been contributing to VSCodeVim quite a bit recently, so I'd love to hear if you have any suggestions for us to improve on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I agree with the video: it feels amazing. That's what it is about. I can only speak as an ex-Emacs user, never used VIM, but I guess with vi-style editors the feeling is even more intense.

I think this is a real valueable thing, this feeling. I wouldn't have to justify using one of those editors with any of the usual reasonings that get pulled by the adherents of these editors. The feeling and it's side effects are awesome enough.

Only reason I use another editor which doesn't suck instead is that I value "macness" even more.

</comment><comment><USER24> I used vi for years when I needed to edit things or write code on remote machines. And every time I was able to work locally, I'd use an IDE and breathe a sigh of relief.

It all depends on your style of development, and mine most definitely is NOT conducive to vi (or emacs).

</comment><comment><USER25> Not a power user, but I've used vim for a few years in linux and really like it. It blows my mind how inefficient it is to just open a file in windows, edit it, and save it just using CMD without downloading gvim.

<comment><USER26>
      notepad [filename]
      type stuff
      ctrl+s

Yeah, notepad isn't good, but it fits your specifications.

<comment><USER25> The word of what I said technically, but not the spirit. Yes, I've done that before, but it stinks. Notepad is just far too limited for anything outside the absolute basics. Heck, I'd be happy if Windows even had Nano included. I know Win10 has some kind of native bash support, but most of my company still runs Win7 locally and will for some time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> My biggest complaint about Vim is that I can't use the same navigational keybindings in every other program I deal with.

I'll be surfing the web, type _gg_ , then pause for a second after that doesn't work.

<comment><USER28> [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogba...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogbaibhgnhhndojpepiihcmeb?hl=en)

What I use.

<comment><USER29> There's also cVim. I don't know if either one is better, but mostly I can't believe I've been able to browse without vim keybindings for so long!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> What about the learning curve, though?

<comment><USER31> I would say don't install plugins when you start using vim. Only install them if you cannot find something in the docs to do it easily. I found that it makes for a good learning experience after I uninstalled all the random plugins I had.

As far as learning curve, do vimtutor but use the arrow keys. They don't use arrow keys because the computer didn't have one then. It doesn't make sense not to use it now.</comment></comment>


Unsupervised Image-To-Image Translation Networks - <AUTHOR> http://research.nvidia.com/publication/2017-12_Unsupervised-Image-to-Image-Translation <comment><USER2> this looks so awesome!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://twitter.com/olifranklin/status/937660128974852096](https://twitter.com/olifranklin/status/937660128974852096)

This wired uk writer just made a point that just stupefied me.

"The biggest casualty to AI won't be jobs, but the final and complete eradication of trust in anything you see or hear. "</comment>