In Europe, Fake Jobs Can Have Real Benefits - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/business/international/in-europe-fake-jobs-can-have-real-benefits.html <comment><USER2> How they had it wrong. Instead of robotics liberating mankind from bullshit jobs, we create imaginary bullshit jobs for those who aren't suffering from one. Amazing. Pretty soon people will pay for these oppportunities.

<comment><USER3> Your perception is that a job is somewhere you go to be productive, work, and get things done. For a lot of people, a job is - in Starbucks' marketing phrasing, a "second space" \- a different physical space to occupy, and different people to interact with. A way to occupy their day.

I've said it before: a large part of the reason I'm in IT, and not automotive mechanics or environmental conservationism, is because I can spend my days in temperature-controlled office buildings, instead of on the cold and muddy ground or cold and damp forests.

Some people grudgingly leave their warm beds to stay in an office building in exchange for currency they can use for food and shelter. I feel as though this is a type of modern autarky, and it gets shamed by those of us whose dreams and ambitions involve building useful or cool things with available technology.

<comment><USER2> My perception is that a good job is one that doesn't feel like a job. I remember a French vineyard owner say : "I want to teach my children how to run this place, because then they never have to work again".

<comment><USER3> Yes, what denotes a good job lay in the eye of the beholder!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The reminds me of the dryly satiric, darkly comic Magnus Mills novel "The Scheme for Full Employment"[1]. It concerns "UniVan" drivers delivering loads to different UniVan depots around the country. It eventually becomes apparent that the only thing they are delivering are UniVan parts and the only work being done at the depots is maintenance and repair of the UniVans themselves. The entire enterprise had been established to provide busy work.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scheme_for_Full_Employment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scheme_for_Full_Employment)

<comment><USER5> Self-Driving cars will obsolete Univan Drivers

<comment><USER6> The HN self-driving car fetish has apparently metastasized out of its usual Uber and Google threads and has started infecting and spawning here in totally unrelated topics apparently.

<comment><USER7> Dude, it's on-topic. The conversation is about people losing jobs because of automation. The comment was that even the fake jobs will probably get automated away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is horrible and scary. I could imagine it would be possible to establish such a business without telling the people that it's fake...

Why not simply give the people the money and use the space to help them creating new ideas? Or hell....get another child and raise it properly. Or...I don't know there is a whole universe of better solutions then this. This is the nightmare version of the 60s/70s dream of less work through robots.

<comment><USER9> > I could imagine it would be possible to establish such a business without > telling the people that it's fake...

I think they might notice that they weren't being paid... Bear in mind, this is not actually a fake job, despite the title; it's a rather contrived training scheme (and a reasonably successful one; as noted in the article most people who do this do get a proper job after).

<comment><USER10> The frightening part really is that no _actual_ profitable business wants their labor for _free_. So they must provide their labor for _free_ to a _fake_ business.

That's insane. That means in all probability, their labor is a negative for any employer even if it comes at no cost.

My guess is that this is a result of idiotic labor laws and tax practices.

<comment><USER9> > The frightening part really is that no actual profitable business wants > their labor for free.

Accepting labour for free is illegal basically everywhere in the developed world, and for good reason.

<comment><USER11> How do you account for unpaid interns?

<comment><USER12> Unpaid interns are often illegal if they are doing productive work for the benefit of a for-profit firm. For instance, in the US, according to the Department of Labor [0], for an "internship" not to be an employment relationship subject to the FLSA, including minimum wage provisions, one of the criteria that must be met is: "The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern; and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded"

[0] [http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm](http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Would it be legal for these people to start a real business in that office? Even if it's something like knitting a jersey and then spending the next week trying to sell it for 10 bucks, at least they'd be 10 bucks richer than spending all that effort doing nothing.

It's not like they don't have time or resources to run a business - they're running a fake one.

<comment><USER14> I'm ashamed I'm french... How can one think "let's start a fake company" instead of asking real companies to train these people for real? and for free...

How is it OK to work for a fake company, but it's bad to work for free for a real company and gain some real experience... How come?

<comment><USER15> > _How is it OK to work for a fake company, but it 's bad to work for free for > a real company and gain some real experience... How come?_

These people are unemployed, right?

What if you let a company hire them for free? Let's see...

      1. company has one paid secretary
      2. company hires free secretary
      3. company lays off paid secretary because the free one is cheaper
      4. previously paid secretary is now unemployed
      5. previously paid secretary gets hired for free by company 2

You _KNOW_ this is what would happen. Don't even start about how companies autoregulate themselves and how the market will punish bad behaviour and how employees can simply choose to work for a better one or whatever. These things are wishful thinking.

<comment><USER3> This is what happens with unpaid internships?

<comment><USER15> In a limited way, yes, that's why unpaid internships are now limited to two months as far as I know.

Even then low paid, longer, internships still do displace legitimate jobs to some extent.

As I said, _good manners_ and _sound business practice_ are wishful thinking at best.

<comment><USER14> Limiting this kind of program to startups could help. Limiting to certain jobs and job levels too (I guess the fake companies don't "employ" PhDs in compsci either).

It's not my job to make it work or make it right. But tossing the idea altogether is rather radical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Every time a come across the topic of unemployment I wonder what the fundamental thing is that is broken in an economy with a high unemployment rate. I mean unemployed people mean unused workforce and it seems that there should be a strong desire to make use of unused workforce. So what is it?

Are the unemployed not needed? Because we reached a level of efficiency and automation so that we no longer need all the available workforce to satisfy all the demand, i.e. is it a work distribution problem? This seems not to be the case because there are not enough teachers, the infrastructure is in bad shape, there are heavily overworked people and so on.

Do they have the wrong profession, one where no additional workforce is required? Is it a latency effect, i.e. available workforce in one sector lacks behind needed workforce while it is the opposite in another sector? Are they obsoleted by cheaper labor abroad?

Is it some kind of local extremum or vicious cycle in which the economy got stuck, e.g. unemployed would consume stuff if they were employed and earned money but because they are not and they do not there is less demand and in consequence the jobs to employ them are not created? This seems easily solved with loans breaking the cycle by creating the demand first.

<comment><USER17> Healthy economies will always displace workers through creative destruction. For example, the internal combustion engine decreased demand for horse whip makers but increased demand for oil workers. While few horse whip makers could make the transition to oil workers a healthy economy can usually adjust.

Structural problems in economies can also create sub-optimal use of labor. For example, in a debt based economy debt and savings are just call options on future labor (production). In a healthy economy the concept of debt and savings is used as a way for people to buy and sell call options on their labor. For example a student may choose to sell a call option on his labor by taking on debt for an education with the expectation that his labor will be more valuable in the future. Somebody in middle age may chose to buy a call option on the students labor with the expectation that the value of his labor will decline in his old age.

However in a pathological economy structural problems can create sub-optimal use of labor. For example, if deflation becomes entrenched then all rational actors may chose to defer consumption into the future where labor will be cheaper. This can create structural unemployment like it did in the 1930's. Other examples where the available call option on future labor is smaller than the demand. For example the demand from Baby Boomers looking at retirement, demand from the 1% to maintain their relative wealth, corporate coffers that can't be repatriated due to tax minimization strategies and sovereign wealth funds may exceed the productive capacity of the future labor pool.

In that case the economic system may be 'signaling' to the rising generation to defer their labor but in a way that exceeds their actual capacity to defer the labor creating sub-optimal use of labor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm pretty sure I used to do something like this as a kid. And after the fake job, let's all meet up for a tea party in the back room. If you aren't into tea, then feel free to grab yourself a fake cold one from the fake fridge.

If you are going to fake something like this, at least you could be a fake lawyer (you can't handle the truth,) doctor (whoo, that might be scandalous!) or astronaut.

Personally, I could come up with a really long list of things to spend my time on that would be helpful to society and potentially land me a job (or make me money.) Just allowing people access to the basics of putting something together (internet connected terminals) might be more worthwhile. Too bad these places can't teach people how to think outside the system in creating roles in society.

</comment><comment><USER19> Wow it's like a whole another world. I really like the idea - much more effective form of training than traditional types. Everyone knows about the scarring effects of long term unemployment (if not [http://bit.ly/1Qf8ue3](http://bit.ly/1Qf8ue3)). This is a good way to combat that scarring.

<comment><USER20> Seconded, there's a discouraging element to being unemployed. Besides the training angle, this helps people to stay confident and even improve their skills.

I'm wondering how this could be translated to software development. Setting up an IT department in these virtual companies would be a very good idea. Going further, you could even sell the software and kickstart real software businesses in the B2B space, this could be a tremendous opportunity to help software developers to learn about marketing, sales, accounting, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Sounds like an interesting simulation. I would suggest they throw in some politically backstabbing co-workers, 20 hours a week of useless meetings and a psychopathic self serving boss to make it more lifelike.

</comment><comment><USER22> It seems like it would be a much more productive use of human capital to actually do the work below cost so something is actually being accomplished.

<comment><USER9> At that point, the state (who is ultimately paying for most of this) would be competing unfairly with private companies (in particular, it would not be paying minimum wage). This is probably not a good idea.

In Ireland we have a scheme where an unemployed person can get an extra 50 euro a week on their unemployment benefit, in return for which they do an internship for a private company, which must at least in principle be training-oriented. In practice, this can cause a problem where these 'internships' displace the need to create real jobs.

<comment><USER23> The UK has a nastier version of this: you can be compelled to do unpaid work or lose your unemployment benefit. Some of this is displacing real jobs in the low-paid retail sector. Some of it results in people standing around in hi-viz jackets doing nothing for 35 hours a week. [https://welfaretales.wordpress.com/2015/05/15/workfare- force...](https://welfaretales.wordpress.com/2015/05/15/workfare-forced- labour-and-the-new-business-and-community-wardens/)

The (rather idealised sounding, by the NYT's description) European version is about keeping people engaged with society by giving them things that feel like work so they have colleagues, a familiarity with working practices, and a feeling of usefulness.

The British version seems to regard sitting at home while unemployed as an outrageous privilege; drudgery must be imposed on those people otherwise they're better off than the 'hardworking' people who must suffer commuting and not seeing their family. A previous version was declared illegal, so the government enacted "emergency" legislation to retroactively legalise it. [http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2013/03/19/ids-emergency- jobs...](http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2013/03/19/ids-emergency-jobseeker- law-sparks-civil-liberties-outrage)

<comment><USER24> It's a free lunch for all is it? Someone pays (if not the descendants yet to be conceived who will be making interest payments on current debts) so it's certainly drudgery on the folk who have to pay for those sitting at home.

<comment><USER23> I suppose that's how you keep the chain of economic coercion through threat of starvation going.

"We are giving you this free lunch, because we're uncomfortable with people starving to death in a first world country, but in order to maintain the strict ranking that citizens are only allowed happiness in proportion to their income, we're going to inflict useless activity on you. Don't have a nice day or it'll come out of your benefits."

(Current debt is being issued at 0.5% interest rates, a historic low)

<comment><USER25> Though you are correct that interest rates are very low, I believe it is disingenuous to quote the rate of a gilt with a maturity under 10 years. (You have mentioned the 2-year gilt.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think this is a bit extreme on the fake side, but I have found somewhere between that and a real job that works quite well, while not being fake. There are agencies that will make you come in like a 9-5 job, help you write your CV, help you communicate with recruitment agencies and give you interview training, will effectively teach you about the recruitment industry and the sales industry since you will be selling yourself. You will do this with other people in an office who are either looking for work like you are, or who are between temporary or contract jobs, so it also offers an opportunity to network.

<comment><USER27> > There are agencies that will make you come in like a 9-5 job, help you write > your CV, help you communicate with recruitment agencies and give you > interview training, will effectively teach you about the recruitment > industry and the sales industry since you will be selling yourself.

This is an extension - teaches you what to do once you actually get the job. As far as training for skills required in modern office goes, it sounds pretty good actually. We don't need superheroes to answer email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> There might be a solution to do real work and not disrupt other people jobs (or lower the salaries) and this might be to do Volunteering. I'm thinking everybody wins in this case: the worker who is actually doing work and contributing to something, the NGO/non-profit who always needs more labor and (maybe) the society in general.

</comment><comment><USER29> "The success rate of the training centers is high. About 60 to 70 percent of those who go through France's practice firms find jobs, often administrative positions, Mr. Troton said. But in a reflection of the shifting nature of the European workplace, most are low-paying and last for short stints, sometimes just three to six months."

Doesn't seem that high a success to me. I'm sure it helps, but we don't know how much it cost, and it doesn't seem really scalable. It would be interesting to know how it compares to other training methods.

<comment><USER30> It might not be the most effective way but it also gives people a reason to get up in the morning and some structure and social interaction in their lives. I think that's a very important benefit that's often overlooked.

This is as much about making unemployment bearable than it is about training people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This article makes me feel like Yossarian

</comment><comment><USER32> [https://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_howard_the_wonderful_and_te...](https://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_howard_the_wonderful_and_terrifying_implications_of_computers_that_can_learn)

Jobocalypse

</comment><comment><USER33> I wonder if rate of governments barricading SMBs is a good metric for tyranny.

</comment><comment><USER34> As developers obsessed, sometimes unhealthily so, with optimization, this strikes us as an inadmissible waste.

However, we need to remember that a lot of what we perceive as "legitimate" jobs are also bullshit jobs. Even if they're not exactly zero-sum games, many jobs are more about diverting money from company A to company B than creating net wealth. Take marketing and advertising departments operating on inelastic markets: every dollar taken to Adidas by a Nike marketing guy is cancelled by a dollar taken to Nike by an Adidas marketing guy. And even if they can convince you to buy more shoes, every additional dollar spent on shoes is one less dollar for your video game budget.

We treat salaried work as an intrinsically good thing rather than a necessary evil: that's the fundamental fallacy that makes the mock companies in this article morally justifiable in many people's eyes. To sustain that "work ethics", we pretend that people wouldn't do anything socially useful if they didn't get a salary in exchange, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary (stay-at-home parents, most retired people in sound health and financial situations, philanthropists... People only work for salary, because they're in a vital need for a salary. And as every decent manager knows, extrinsic motivation kills intrinsic motivation)

Central planning won't solve the problem of inefficient exploitation of human workforce, as demonstrated by communist countries. But the situation is very comparable to an arms race, and there already are many multilateral agreements to limit this arms race, some legal (can't hire a hitman to dispatch your competitors' executives), some informal (no-employee-poaching agreements), and some illegal and secret (cartels). If we were to admit that wealth creation, not salaried occupation, is what we should thrive for, multilateral agreements to limit unproductive work could be set up. The net result would be orders of magnitude bigger that thwarting the couple of ridiculous initiatives, such as illustrated here, to conceal unemployment and unemployability.

Here are some examples of wealth-creation-promoting reforms, which don't require central planning: punitive taxes on advertizing; mandatory long warranties on product to tackle obsolescence; limiting lottery-like legal actions by banning "no gain=no fee" lawyer hiring, and by making it standard for the loser to pay the winner's fees (that would probably kill patent trolls).

A key reason why we focus on preserving jobs rather than maximizing job efficiency is that we use salary both as a way to create wealth through work, and to distribute it through wages. It becomes a poorer and poorer way to generate wealth on average, but as long as we don't set up better complementary ways to distribute wealth, we're doomed to create more and more bullshit, pointless jobs. Capitalism reaches its limits later than communism, but when it does, it also becomes a wildly inefficient converter of human work.

Another reason is that the jobs which give power are often those which control and displace wealth flow, rather than those creating net wealth. What's the lawyer/engineer ratio in Senate and Congress? You can't expect those in power to destroy their power tools, if they can help it.

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't understand why they don't simply do real work. Are all possible useful services in France already provided? Why not simply have these unemployed people work for the government, instead of hiring overpriced union workers?

<comment><USER36> Because there is no real work? If there was a pet webshop like the one described in the article, these people could go there and work there. There isn't though, else they'd be working. Simple economics, really. As for working for the government, that depends on whether the government has any jobs that suit these people.

If you're suggesting they could work for their unemployment benefits... that's a legal problem, because then they'd technically not be unemployed anymore and would cost the government / tax payer more money. Although they'd be tax payers themselves again via income tax. It gets very confusing really.

TL;DR: One does not simply create jobs.

<comment><USER37> _Because there is no real work?_

Really? I suspect that our eyes are merely blinded to positive things that can be done but that currently nobody is willing to pay for.

In ageing societies, think about services for the elderly. The elderly benefit, and if the job is designed humanely (i.e. _not_ with the aim of extracting as much profit as possible at any cost), it could also benefit the one who does it.

What about making the cities we live in more beautiful by creating new municipal gardens and tending to them?

These are just two examples. Once you look outside the usual economic spheres you can certainly find more. Somehow, I have the feeling that it would be more valuable to society if the people working fake jobs as described in the article actually did something useful instead. That could still provide training as a side effect.

<comment><USER38> Money is exactly the measure of "value to society". If nobody pays these people to do this, then it literally means that it's not worth a living wage to do it. You may like municipal gardens, but how many dollars per month do you like them? Run a Kickstarter or Patreon to start a charity, go out and advertise that garden project, or contact your elected representatives to pay for that garden in exchange for a modest tax increase.

The capitalist system is set up to measure value in a common unit called "money". If you value something, paying for it is exactly how you express this. So put your money where your mouth is. Cash is the unit of caring.

<comment><USER37> Your argument is not really an argument, but merely the statement of the assumption that value (in general) and monetary value are the same thing.

It is hard to define value in general (and I cannot do it) simply because unlike money, there is no clear way of numerical measurement. It may be tempting for technical folks to believe otherwise, but things can matter very much even when they are not easily measured numerically.

So why is your assumption incorrect? The fact that different market institutions lead to different outcomes given the same underlying preferences of individuals is really enough to show this. If you can keep the same set of people with the same set of beliefs and preferences, but obtain different prices merely by changing the market institutions, then this means that the prices do not accurately reflect the underlying value (in the general sense).

Yes, money is an _extremely_ useful proxy for "value to society", but it is only a _proxy_.

Consider this thought experiment. Suppose that tomorrow, your city council decides to put more money into work making the city more beautiful. More people will be paid to tend to municipal gardens, among other things.

Does this mean that suddenly, society values a beautiful city more? Did preferences change over night? I would argue that it is the other way around: Society has always valued a beautiful city more, but the existing market institutions did not translate this valuation into monetary terms. People noticed the discrepancy and effected political change to bring the money in line with underlying valuations.

The belief that "the market" is this objective institution is very widely spread today. This is unfortunate, because "the market" is not a fixed thing. Market institutions can be changed via politics, and those in power use that fact for their own benefit. I would be so happy if more people recognized that the assumption you stated is really part of an ideology and should be treated as such: potentially useful at times, but not a universal truth.

<comment><USER39> _Consider this thought experiment. Suppose that tomorrow, your city council decides to put more money into work making the city more beautiful. More people will be paid to tend to municipal gardens, among other things. Does this mean that suddenly, society values a beautiful city more? Did preferences change over night? (...) People noticed the discrepancy and effected political change to bring the money in line with underlying valuations._

My city council has existed for decades, as have the gardens. Why did people chose this particular moment to effect political change? I think that clearly indicates that preferences did change.

That said, I do agree that monetary value is just one possible measure of value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Wasn't this the plot of the matrix or something?

</comment><comment><USER41> as a french, this cracked me up.

I've been unemployed for a long time, and I'd love to try this.

</comment><comment><USER42> Europe is broken.

</comment><comment><USER43> Workfarce

</comment><comment><USER44> Fake jobs might be necessary but there is a danger of making them half fake jobs that get things done slowly and end up as a cost to society and the people supporting the workers.

An example of that I've observed are construction workers maintaining railway infrastructure. There are probably a few times as many people working there as needed. When walking by you'll see them standing around talking, or maybe one of them is sitting in an excavator and four are staring at him. Meanwhile people have to take the replacement buses for two months. Most of the work only gets done in the first and last week, largely using machines, while everyone relying on the train connection is at risk of delays or has to spend extra time on the journey.

<comment><USER45> This is so incredibly ignorant and judgemental I don't know where to start.

[http://www.quora.com/Why-does-it-always-look-like- constructi...](http://www.quora.com/Why-does-it-always-look-like-construction- workers-are-standing-around-doing-nothing)

<comment><USER46> Yes and no. While there is legitimate "standing around" as your link makes clear, and safety _should_ be paramount, most building projects from where I am - Philadelphia - take twice as long as the Empire State Building at 1/4 the size. We have labor unions that contribute to the problem, but you can't imagine how slowly work goes around here.

I'm aware that OSHA rules are different, and we have a higher standard of safety now than we did, but so too have materials and tools and building methods improved.

<comment><USER47> The Empire State Building was completed in one year and 45 days ... with 7 million man-hours of labor. Given 2000 man-hours in a work-year, that is 3100 people employed full time building the Empire State Building.

I would be surprised if the buildings you're thinking of in Philadelphia are employing even a tenth of that full time, continuously.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Marissa Mayer's Payday - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2016/07/26/marissa-mayers-verizon-yahoo-pay/ <comment><USER2> This is not something to be upset about.

Shareholders want near zero executive risk, and so they are willing to pay top dollar for proven executives...

That way, if things do fail, they can be confident that scrimping to save a few million in comp wasn't the reason they lost billions.

We overpay for quality in many areas of the economy. Neurosurgeons are one example. Roughly 0.5 people from each of the the graduating classes of the top 10 medical schools becomes a neurosurgeon. Supply is very, very small because the bar is so so high. Why? Because when someone is doing surgery on our brains we are completely fine with having a 10x overqualified doc doing the surgery.

This is similar to how the price of achieving each additional "9" of reliability is exponentially greater than the last one.

Yet systems with 99.99999% reliability still fail, some neurological procedures fail, and some highly paid CEOs do not lead their companies to glory.

Yahoo's shareholders decided to hire Marissa instead of many other, cheaper options. Nobody was duped, fooled, or scammed. Kobe misses the winning three pointer to lose a game now and then. Mayer is the closest thing the valley had to a sure bet for a company in need of product execution, so it's hard to fault Yahoo for wanting to recruit her.

It's too bad it didn't turn out, but let's hope she does something risky with all the money :)

<comment><USER3> >Yahoo's shareholders decided to hire Marissa

It was the Board of Directors who hired her, the shareholders are asked to approve (essentially a rubberstamp)

She was far, far from a zero-risk hire. She had only worked for one company, had zero executive experience at the level required at Yahoo.

Enough with the celebrity cult we shower on CEOs - leave it to reality TV starlets.

<comment><USER2> She'd been responsible for one of Google's most successful products, and had been praised by the founders as a key early hire.

She'd also helped create and shape Google's culture and arguably brought with her to Yahoo several billion dollars worth of Google's trade secrets and operational strategies, not to mention her knowledge of key players inside google who Yahoo might be able to poach to accomplish specific initiatives.

Yahoo had already tried a media exec and its own founder, neither of whom could figure out a recipe for success.

<comment><USER3> 1\. Being a good Product Manager does not a CEO make.

2\. Her poaching Google stars? She hired and, 15 months later fired, Henrique De Castro, whose "severance package, estimated to be more than $60 million, was one of the largest golden parachutes ever given to a terminated executive" [1]

3\. >neither of whom could figure out a recipe for success

Steve Jobs turned around Apple after a couple of disastrous CEO before him (Sculley, Amelio, etc)

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

<comment><USER2> Perhaps Jobs could have turned around Yahoo, perhaps not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are two ways to look at Mayer's payday:

1\. She is getting rewarded even though her performance as CEO of Yahoo! was way less than expectations. Expectations being the salvation of Yahoo! as an independent company.

2\. She is being rewarded for selling Yahoo!

People are focusing on #1, but that is really past performance and past stock grants. She has plenty of previously granted stock based on previous performance, but she did not achieve everything she could have: _This past year, Mayer had to forfeit just over 400,000 of those performance shares._

Once the "for sale" sign went up, her incentive became " _sell_ Yahoo!", not "save Yahoo!" because that is what her incentive (severance package) aligned with the moment the "for sale" sign went up.

I expect that the Board understood this very well when they created her severance package.

</comment><comment><USER5> So she does know how to negotiate, it just has to be for her personal gain.

> Yahoo is also paying to help Mayer land a new job. During her period of > transition, Mayer will presumably need office space, and someone needs to > pay for it. The company will put up $15,000 for 24 months of outplacement > services for Mayer.

> Mayer is entitled to receive her base salary, which in 2015 was $1 million, > for two years after she leaves the company.

Clearly she set the same "you get your salary for 2 years after leaving" \+ office space package up for all the developers in the company...

<comment><USER6> When you get hired to save a dying company, you shouldn't be slammed for the stock doubling.

<comment><USER7> When you fuck over your employees to do so, yes, yes you should be slammed.

<comment><USER8> The reactions in this thread are bizarre to me. Is it a new revelation that CEOs are compensated to deliver the best return for _shareholders_ , and not the employees? Why is Mayer being singled out when this is what pretty much every CEO in the history of capitalism has been hired to do?

<comment><USER9> Why is it in the best interests of shareholders for a company to pay the CEO for two years after they have left? When she's gone she can't possibly be delivering value to the shareholders.

<comment><USER10> Because that's what required to get the CEO you want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The level of attention that these stories about Mayer attract is kind of sad, and really not fair. The big jump in the "payday" that the article teases is the possibility that Mayer will sell already-granted stock. i.e. Not new comp at all. Yawn.

</comment><comment><USER12> Sigh. There was a story just yesterday or maybe slightly older in WSJ about "short list of well paying jobs" and the only thing I remember was that every second word was "manager".

</comment><comment><USER13> I have to say my favorite part is how they have to pay her health insurance premiums ($2k/month) for 2 years.

I need to up my negotiation game. :)

Plus, 2k a month? I can't even imagine what amazing Super Platinum plan she must have.

<comment><USER14> a mid-range plan for a family of 5 here in NC can easily be $1500/month - assuming CA is higher, and she's got a family plan, I can't imagine it's "super platinum" but average.

somewhat OT, but ... is there any value in billionaire's having 'health insurance'? When you are worth more than some smaller insurance companies... what value is there in buying insurance? Aren't you already self-insured? There may be procedures that the insurance company wouldn't fund anyway, but you can just pay for it yourself?

EDIT: Just looked up family of 3 - higher end "blue cross" in CA may be $1200/month. Other companies are cheaper (wow, must be nice to have so many options! in NC, I have 2 options, and only 1 the year before, that's it).

Throw in a dental plan, and that might bring you to ~$1300/month. Add in expected increases over the next 2 years and.. $2k/month is probably still on the high side, but perhaps not by too much? [http://www.coveredca.com/news/PDFs/CoveredCA-2017-rate- bookl...](http://www.coveredca.com/news/PDFs/CoveredCA-2017-rate-booklet.pdf) shows that there's an expected 13% average increase in 2017.

<comment><USER15> Because of the way insurance prices are structured post-ACA, if you are old you are getting a big underwriting subsidy. If you are a typical billionaire, it is cheaper to purchase insurance than it is to self-insure, because part of your costs are being borne by younger premium holders. If you are a billionaire in your 20s you should probably self-insure for the same reason.

Under the ACA the maximum ratio between insurance rates for old and young is 3:1, but the Society of Actuaries estimates that healthcare costs for the elderly are roughly 4.8 times as expensive[1].

1: Referenced here on page 22: [https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th- congress-2015-...](https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th- congress-2015-2016/reports/51130-Health_Insurance_Premiums.pdf)

<comment><USER14> Perhaps removing the 'lifetime caps' on most services changes this?

I'd have thought, for example, if there's a lifetime cap of $10m on services from my insurance company, and I have, say, $50m in an account just for my medical needs, I'm more than self-insured compared to what I'm protecting myself from with insurance. It seems 'lifetime caps' are largely gone for most services now.

EDIT - thanks for your reply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Right, CEOs in corporate America make stupid amounts of money. That's how it is.

I would question the motives of anyone describing this as unusual or especially egregious. Are you upset about how business is structured now, or do you have a specific vendetta against Mayer?

</comment><comment><USER17> I think I'm going to be sick. Compensation for executives should be directly tied to company performance. You want to be at the top, then you should take the risk.

<comment><USER6> Company performance has improved since she got there, check out the stock.

<comment><USER18> If you read the complete article, it is explained why that is the case and why Meyer presumably is not the one who should get the credit.

<comment><USER19> Yes, but the comment he was replying to said it should be _directly_ tied to company performance. Normally that means stock price, which the compensation was tied to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder which lucky company will hook her up now....

</comment><comment><USER21> Relevant recent story:

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/highest- pai...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/highest-paid-ceos- worst-performing-companies-research-a7156486.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> Good for her. The only thing wrong is that I haven't managed to secure that sort of package for myself!

</comment><comment><USER23> Human nature whether it be man or woman.

<comment><USER24> Yep, the saddest thing about this whole thread is that yours is the only comment to even hint at what's unique about this particular golden parachute. CEOs have been reaping outsize rewards for failure since forever. Some have destroyed bigger companies than Yahoo, and reaped bigger rewards than Mayer. Yes, even some in tech. Even in search. Before Yahoo there was Excite. There's plenty of reason to be outraged, but put a slight pink edge on that golden parachute and suddenly the sleepers awake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is unacceptable. She sold off a big chunk of Yahoo (that she could not resurrect) to Verizon where most of the staff is eventually going to get axed and she walks off with $122 Million. There has to be checks and balances somewhere. Tech industry is turning into dirty Wall Street.

<comment><USER6> Have you seen the stock? Wallstreet should be grateful.

<comment><USER26> [http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-value-almost- entirely-t...](http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-value-almost-entirely- tied-to-alibaba-stake-2016-5)

???</comment></comment></comment>


Why we should learn German - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/jul/02/why-we-should-learn-german-john-le-carre <comment><USER2> Germany is the 10th most weird language in the world: [https://corplinguistics.wordpress.com/2013/06/21/the- weirdes...](https://corplinguistics.wordpress.com/2013/06/21/the-weirdest- languages/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Why you should not learn German: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Awful_German_Language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Awful_German_Language)</comment>


Superconducting circuits, simplified - <AUTHOR> http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/cheaper-superconducting-computer-chips-1017

<comment><USER2> Here is the original paper if anyone is interested: arxiv.org/pdf/1403.6423.pdf

<comment><USER3> Acch, why not let people look at the abstract before downloading the PDF? [http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.6423](http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.6423)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So this is basically a transition edge transistor?</comment>


Malcolm Gladwell on Bruce Ratner and the Barclays Center - <AUTHOR> http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7021031/the-nets-nba-economics <comment><USER2> Great Article!</comment>


This year, Mac apps are no longer eligible for the Apple Design awards - <AUTHOR> http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/ada/

<comment><USER6> I am really not liking the whole emphasize-iphoneOS-over everything-else direction of apple recently. I like OSX a lot. I really hope they return to giving it the attention it deserves soon.

<comment><USER7> _I am really not liking the whole emphasize-iphoneOS-over everything-else direction of apple recently._

When they renamed the company from "Apple Computer" to "Apple", it should've been obvious which way the wind was blowing.

They are not going to be selling Macs in ten years.

<comment><USER8> What are they going to do with their development platform then? I can see how it makes sense for Apple to drop 'computers' and focus on 'devices,' but they are currently restricting their development platform to Macs. Do you feel that they will be able to create a competent development platform for Windows or Linux? Or do you think that we will all be coding on iPhones/iPads in 10 years?

<comment><USER7> I can't see using a tablet as a coding platform, but who knows what kind of wacky stuff will happen by the time they get around to retiring the Mac platform.

As mentioned above, though, Windows-hosted development is the rule and not the exception in other industries like game development, which are just as technically demanding (if not far more so) than iPhone OS app development.

<comment><USER8> The problem is that Apple has never shown any sort of competency in developing stable and/or usable Windows applications. They need their developer tools to stay friendly during such a transition, too. They can't just expect i{Phone,Pad} developers to walk barefoot over broken glass just for the privilege of creating an application for the platform.

{edit} Either that or they are banking on being so entrenched by the time they drop the Mac platform that developers will have no choice but to 'walk barefoot over broken glass' to develop for their mobile platform.

<comment><USER9> _They can't just expect i{Phone,Pad} developers to walk barefoot over broken glass just for the privilege of creating an application for the platform._

Based on their recent policy changes that is exactly what they expect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They simply want Apple Design awards to be given to apps that they have _also_ approved.

I tell you, if Jobs could get away with running OSX as an App Store orientated platform that can only run pre-approved apps, he would. :(

<comment><USER11> Didn't he already say there would be no App Store for desktop apps? Some developer emailed him about that and the reply was "nope".

<comment><USER12> Good for him. In other news, Steve Jobs is often full of shit.

      There are some customers which we chose not to serve.
      We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a
       piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that.
       - <USER2>

      We didn't think we'd do well in the cellphone business...
      We chose to do the iPod instead of a PDA. - <USER5>

      There are no plans to make a tablet...It turns out people
      want keyboards. - <USER5>

      I'm not convinced people want to watch movies on a tiny
      little screen. - <USER5>

<comment><USER13> Well, first of all, in 2008 there _was_ no way to make a $500 computer that wasn't a piece of junk. Not with currently available technology. I'm sure if they could build iPad 5 years earlier at the same price, they would have; the technology wasn't there. Second of all, even Jobs is allowed to change his mind. Calling someone full of shit because 7 years has passed, with technology evolving correspondingly (do you remember the resolution of tiny screens in 2003? I do; cell phone screens were mostly something like 240x360 at most; he was right, at that resolution, the market wanting to see movies in that quality is worthless) is a bit harsh, no?

<comment><USER12> I've thought about this for the last hour or so, and after thinking about it, I think arguing about the hardware is a red herring.

Suppose the hardware wasn't there in 2008 (which I don't think is strictly true, but OK). Are you really saying that Steve Jobs, with all his secret meetings with Samsung and random manufacturers, isn't aware that it will be available soon?

To put it another way, if the hardware is hard, wouldn't it have taken Apple quite some time to build the stuff? Wouldn't they be working on the iPad, say, two years out, when Jobs was making those statements about $500 tablets?

But I think even _that argument_ in a sense is a red herring. The real issue is "can Jobs change his mind?" Of course he can. But he's notoriously cryptic about what Apple's working on. It's not like he's out talking to industry analysts and is making off-the-cuff comments about Apple's strategy. His statements are calculated and controlled. In fact, I would argue that he is more often "wrong" or "misleading" about new products than he is "accurate", because lots (by percentage) of his forward-looking statements turn out to be inaccurate, at least according to the plain meaning of them. To say that he is changing his mind is to imply that he's really inept his job: figuring out what to build.

But I think even _that's_ not the central issue. Let's say Jobs is just a really whimsical guy, who doesn't know he's working on an iPad until it slaps him in the face on launch day. So all of the quoted statements are just him running his mouth and he really has no product vision years out.

Wouldn't that imply, then, that today Jobs has no idea whether he'll be making a Mac app store or not? So his statement has no real information content?

tl;dr It doesn't matter whether the hardware is hard or what his intent is--to mislead or if he simply doesn't know he's going to make a product. His track record shows that claiming he's not going to do something is a good indicator that he'll do it a few years later.

<comment><USER14> The real issue is that your thesis is flimsy and hinges on selective quoting and ignorance of context. Here is but one example:

 _when Jobs was making those statements about $500 tablets?_

He wasn't. Here is the original transcript from which your first quote was pulled. It is not about tablets, and only by implication is it even about the idea of an "Apple netbook", the prevalent rumor of the day.

 _Toni Sacconaghi - Sanford Bernstein

And then you had also mentioned the price umbrella statement and you said look, certainly to be successful on iPhone, we don't want to create a price umbrella. I think in response to another question, you also talked about extraordinary feature functionality in terms of your Mac products. Do you have the same philosophy around Mac as you do with iPhone, that you have to be careful not to create an umbrella in each? So I guess the simple question is should we continue to see more affordable price points across the Mac product family and across iPhone going forward?

Steven P. Jobs

Well, I think what we want to do is deliver a lot, an increasing level of value to these customers. There are some customers which we choose not to serve. We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that. But we can continue to deliver greater and greater value to those customers that we choose to serve and there's a lot of them. And we've seen great success by focusing on certain segments of the market and not trying to be everything to everybody. So I think you can expect us to stick with that winning strategy and continuing to try to add more and more value to those products in those customer bases we choose to serve. Does that make sense to you?

Toni Sacconaghi - Sanford Bernstein

Yes, it does. I mean, I guess, if I could follow-up, you did in this case add more value in terms of feature functionality with your notebook by actually lowering the price, so you retained the features but lowered the price. Certainly in terms of the new notebooks, you retained the price and added more features.

Steven P. Jobs

Correct.

Toni Sacconaghi - Sanford Bernstein

Can we expect you to continue to attract more customers by doing both, both adding more features at the same price and lowering price and retaining the same features?

Steven P. Jobs

Well, we like to attract new customers but you will just have to wait and see._

[http://seekingalpha.com/article/100980-apple-f4q08-qtr- end-9...](http://seekingalpha.com/article/100980-apple-f4q08-qtr- end-9-27-08-earnings-call-transcript?page=-1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I can't help wondering if all the regular app reviewers have been pulled to help with iPhone and iPad app reviews. The Apple Downloads section hasn't been updated in weeks, and now this.

As a Mac developer, this feels like a major blow. Sure, I understand that the iPhone OS stuff is the new shiny and the spotlight is going to be on it, but lately it feels like Apple is just coasting on the Mac side. It makes me seriously question if I'm writing apps for the right platform.

If it's time to reevaluate platforms, then it's time to take a look at all the possibilities again, not just the ones made by Apple. The iPad looks great, but then again, so does the web.

<comment><USER16> Given that you're a Cocoa developer, you may find Cappuccino interesting if you decide to start targetting the web.

<http://cappuccino.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> As a two time ADA winner, and having a new app almost ready for this years wwdc we're pretty bummed out about this. As one developer put it, it feels like the end of an era. We love the Mac desktop, but Apples current attitude towards it is very bad for developer morale and will make us definitely think twice on what platform we'll build our next project.

</comment><comment><USER18> Seriously not cool. But it IS true, there haven't been a ton of groundbreaking apps on the Mac this year, and I say that as a Mac developer. Still, they could have given an award to best Mac companion app for an iPhone app, and/or best developer tool (Accessorizer FTW).

Looks like the scientific computing poster session has been dropped this year too.

</comment><comment><USER19> The second coming of jumping the shark.

I really don't like the deemphasis of OSX in favor of iPhone OS. The iPhone is great for mobility because it strips computing down to the core, but it has a LOOONNGG way to go before it can toe up with OSX or Windows when it comes to productivity, IMO.

ps. I'm a mac fanboy at heart, but i try to remain objective about consumer technology for the "masses". Outside of the tech ecosphere, the world is a very different place.

[http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/01/windows-7-grow...](http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/01/windows-7-growing- faster-than-vista-overtakes-mac-os.ars)

</comment><comment><USER20> sounds like the design awards are just becoming a beauty contest.

how many iPhone apps actually feel delightful to use and don't just look pretty?

</comment><comment><USER21> The folks at panic must be pretty bummed about this, transmit 4 was a major contender.

<comment><USER22> Transmit 4 is awesome, but you can tell a platform is stagnating when one of the coolest applications is an FTP client.

<comment><USER23> Actually, you can tell it's awesome when your business is sustained by people buying a $34 wrapper over a few perl scripts.

<comment><USER24> Actually it's a wrapper around a library they licensed for like $500. 15 licenses later and they've made their money back!

<comment><USER23> Very interesting. I had no idea there was a market for libraries.

<comment><USER25> Last company I worked at did nothing but that. I think it's more common in the MS/.NET world.

<http://accusoft.com/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Perhaps they'd like to avoid awarding something to an OS X app that isn't written using Objective C / Cocoa.

<comment><USER27> Somehow, I don't think an Adobe AIR app is going to beat something using fancy Core Animation stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't say it's impossible: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1295052>

But yes, highly improbable.

<comment><USER28> Which may mean it is more deserving of an award.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Perhaps they are thinking of dumping their line of computers and going completely portable electronics?

<comment><USER30> And have people develop applications on windows computers? I don't think so.

<comment><USER7> If you think anyone at Apple gives a rat's behind what hardware platforms are used to develop iPhone OS apps, I... respectfully disagree.

<comment><USER31> Well, they give a rat's ass about the kind of language developers use to develop iPhone apps.

<comment><USER7> That is for a very different reason than anything being discussed here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Since there's no app store for OSX, why award people who are striving to further the platform? Such broken logic.

<comment><USER33> Only if that's actually the logic they're following. I don't see any indication that it it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm actually wondering if this indicates the possibility of a small Mac- focused developers conference in Apple's future. There was quite a bit of grumbling last year at WWDC from Mac developers because of the heavy focus on iPhone technologies.

I can understand a lessened focus given how popular iPhone and iPad are right now, but the shunning of Mac apps completely from the ADAs makes me think we'll see a Mac-only conference soon.

</comment><comment><USER35> Makes sense to me. There's just not much exciting innovative stuff happening on the desktop these days. Good apps get marginally better all the time but is that worthy of an award?

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm hoping to see desktop apps with the same simplicity that is (forced) on touch apps. Less everything.

</comment><comment><USER37> So which iFart app will win?</comment>


Show HN: Gamification.org - Open Source Game Mechanics - <AUTHOR> http://gamification.org

<comment><USER2> A mix of humor and thoughts on the site layout:

I harbored a tiny hope that this website would give me a progress bar for reading through it and that I could earn achievements for becoming knowledgeable in different areas of gamification. In addition, when I read about the collaboration, I thought it would be neat to earn collaboration points as an encouragement to share ideas and maybe get some badges that represent my gamification expertise.

I came away slightly disappointed and not surprised; gamification requires a bit of thinking about what behaviors you want to encourage from your audience. Because I do not see how this site can benefit me, I do not feel encouraged to play, er, contribute.

It would be great if the site about gamification used gamification, stood forth as an alluring example. Nice start, though. Humor aside, I genuinely am interested in looking through some of the material and seeing what I can learn.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm a game designer. I can tell you that seeing the "gamification" movement makes my stomach churn. These are just a bunch of f __*ing reward schemes. Web developers don't have a clue what game design or game mechanics are, and with sites like these, they never will. I think we need a new term, perhaps "reward structures" is enough. Sadly it isn't as "trendy" as gamification sounds. Equating game design with reward structures blatantly disregards the "toy" aspect of games. Games are meant to be fun. Reward structure is part of that, but not nearly the entire thing.

<comment><USER4> Fellow game developer here. I can't wait for "gamification" to die. It represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what games are and can be. To make it more annoying, in practice, it often seems to be accompanied by a disrespect for the users.

I'm not saying artificial rewards systems are without any merit (e.g. check out the way people react to karma scores in places like HN), but I've seen no indication that this new buzzword has provoked any sort of actual intellectual interest in this stuff -- more just a race to add badges to everything.

Edit: And there's the downvote for raining on the parade! Shocking.

<comment><USER5> I agree. I think the adoption of the term "gamification" has caused a rift because really, this isn't about making things in to games or creating fun - it's about creating motivation. I think a big part of the backlash against "gamification" is this misdirection implied in the term. The feedback and reward mechanisms used are things that were honed in games - the idea is to take the ideas behind motivational and reward systems from games and move them into things that specifically aren't games - not to make these non-games into games.

I say this as a founder of a "gamification" or "game mechanics" 3rd party service provider. Unfortunately, the term is now lodged in our vernacular, I'm afraid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The site covers an interesting idea; but I found it intensely off putting because a lot of the language sounds like "ad-speak".

It's also not clear to the un-initiated what on earth it's all about... the first page just launches into text with no explanation. It took me a second to get my bearings.

</comment><comment><USER7> Wow. I feel like Jane McGonigal would hate this. Especially her video being used to promote it. Jane has said publicly that she wants to design games that change the world, not just "pointify" current products. I highly recommend watching Jesse Schell's talk on the Gamepocalypse (a vivid vision of the dystopic result of gamification). In fact, I believe Jane and Jesse are debating it at a conference later this year. Would be interesting to hear their thoughts on this.

<comment><USER2> To be fair, it looks like this page suggests a lot more than just adding points to things. I am reading it as a primer on human psychology.

The real question in my mind is this: What causes X behavior in my audience? The good guy in me wants to make things fun for people, to arouse excitement and enjoyment. What arouses these emotions in them?

Thus is gamification more of an art. You cannot just add some points and badges to a product and expect it to take off. You must appeal to the pleasure centers in ways that make sense.

It is interesting to see listed on this site what kinds of things have been proven to cause these favorable reactions in people. Maybe there are some fundamental concepts we can derive from the long lists. Maybe we can boil them down to some core principles vaguely reminiscent of Skinner. With this study, we are going to learn more about ourselves, our base, instinctual needs.

This is cool stuff. Why should anyone hate it? Perhaps there should be a disclaimer: "Don't read this as a list of TODOs. Read it as a guide towards proven motivators, and adapt what makes sense for your needs." This whole thing is entertainment. And as in all entertainment, various motivators will come in and out of fashion, be great today and boring tomorrow. This is a moving target.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just a small note: Game mechanics _can't_ be protected per [FL-108](<http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html>)

> Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or title, or the > method or methods for playing it. Nor does copyright protect any idea, > system, method, device, or trademark material involved in developing, > merchandising, or playing a game. _Once a game has been made public, nothing > in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on > similar principles._ Copyright protects only the particular manner of an > author's expression in literary, artistic, or musical form.

So calling it "Open Source" is misleading, I think.

<comment><USER9> That's just copyright law. Patents are the real issue/problem, I think.

<comment><USER8> While you can patent a _game_ , or _game materials_ , you can't patent a _game mechanic_.

<comment><USER10> You have that backwards. You can't patent a game or game materials (these can be copyrighted or trademarked or both), but you could patent game mechanics b/c they were "processes" which were patentable under the Federal Circuit's non-existent standard for patentability. In fact, several game mechanics have been patented.

Whether those patents remain valid is another question entirely. In 2007, the Supreme Court struck down the ridiculously low bar for patenting business methods and software processes, which includes most game-related patents.

<comment><USER8> > You can't patent a game or game materials

All the web material and notes I looked for said otherwise. The actual patent website is _abysmally unhelpful_. I'll have to take your word for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Our wiki is still primitive, but open for feedback and contributions. Akin to the SCVNGR's Secret Game Mechanics Playdeck, we include a repository of classic game mechanics at <http://gamification.org/wiki/Game_Mechanics>. The difference is we want to make it open for collaboration and discussions through game mechanic definitions, implementation exemples, best practices, metrics, strategies, etc.

<comment><USER8> I think you should move away from Wikimedia as a CMS platform. It's crusty, looks terrible, and is a trademarked for "half-assed projects" as far as I'm concerned. To be brutally honest right now it looks like someone shuffled through the Wikimedia plugin bin and slapped it together without any thought to aesthetic.

A simple static website with the What, Why, and How as a portal to a better, light weight, CMS would be far more attractive.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're evaluating with different CMS platforms. The good thing with MediaWiki is that the content is easily migratable :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Though I like this idea, there are now several projects dedicated to cataloguing game mechanics. Is it possible to have some sort of consolidation of effort?

Two others:

* I believe the first one was the Game Ontology Project at <http://gameontology.org/>, which takes an approach somewhat tilted to the formal-analysis side.

* The biggest one with the most contributors is probably the videogame subsection of tvtropes: <http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VideogameTropes>

</comment><comment><USER12> Story goes that a co-worker's wife heard him talking taking a call about game mechanics. When he was done with the call she was puzzled and ask, "Why are you guys so interested in gay mechanics?"

It's all I hear now.

</comment><comment><USER13> This sounds wonderful.

However the "What is Gamification?" is a much better first page than the home page is, with respect to explaining things.

</comment><comment><USER14> "Lets take anything to do with behavioural conditioning and fundamental incentive structures and call them game mechanics, just so we have an excuse to make up something new and forget that everything we're doing has been going under constant research and development since the dawn of the industrial revolution..."

</comment><comment><USER15> I think this is a great resource. If integrated correctly (game layer) then I believe websites with decent traffic + communities built around them will be able retain users longer (sticky) and increase loyalty will equal more $$$ in the long term.

</comment><comment><USER16> From the title I thought this would link to code: some sort of OSS library/abstraction-layer for providing common game mechanics. Is there anything like that yet, in any language?

</comment><comment><USER17> DNS error for me, I am unable to load the site.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you WFH with schools closed? - <AUTHOR> With the COVID-19, most companies in the valley have asked employees to work from home. It works out until now the schools/daycares are also closed. How do people with kids manage to work from home? <comment><USER2> there was another thread here recently where the user was discussing if it made sense to show if one was infected on social media - I guess there are several states available in actuality:

1\. don't know if you have had or not - had some symptoms now gone. 2\. no symptoms ever. 3\. have it now for sure. have been tested 5\. might have it now. 6\. have recovered for sure no longer dangerous. have been tested. 7\. think you have recovered.

there are also some other things to check, like have it and have it bad.

If you and other families know you have it and someone is bad off in some family could take care of the bad off kids.

If you have had it and are not a problem anymore you could go back to work (or continue to work home) you could also take other people's kids who are bad off.

Of course this does not handle your problem right now of needing to watch kids and work, but in the future there may be ad hoc systems for taking care of these necessary things. If you have connections to others through your community you should maybe take the time now to figure out strategies. And find out what will happen to kids if and when you get sick and are too sick to take care of them?

</comment><comment><USER2> Luckily my wife does not have a job, we are a 1 wage household, obviously this situation shows one of the downsides of the two wage family that is now prevalent in Western Society. If you have kids old enough they could watch the younger kids at least part of the time, but really without an extended family the social requirement of two adults working and kids home does not function with the requirements of raising kids.</comment>


The Magic in Lean Startup Is Hypothesis Testing - <AUTHOR> http://timkastelle.org/blog/2016/06/the-magic-in-lean-startup-is-hypothesis-testing/ <comment><USER2> Title should be "The Science in Lean Startup is Hypothesis Testing."</comment>


The Art of Space Art - <AUTHOR> https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/09/14/the-art-of-space-art/ <comment><USER2> Forget the stars, I'm partial to space _colony_ art of The High Frontier '70s variety.

[https://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/70sArtHiRes/70sArt/art.html](https://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/70sArtHiRes/70sArt/art.html)

<comment><USER3> Very neat, thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > "Their work, painting places that were really out there—it started > convincing people that these places are real..."

Definitely Bonestell. As a kid when I first saw (space) art depicting a landscape as though on the surface of another moon, I was startled.

<comment><USER5> I still remember an illustration of what Pluto was like from when I was a kid: icy forms under a dim sun and starry sky. But it turned out that in reality Pluto is far more interesting. Ice mountains, an atmosphere, and a large- appearing moon.

What's really out there is far more fantastic than our minds can conceive. But in the meantime, an art or two ain't bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you like this, you may be interested in Megan Prelinger's book _Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957–1962_ ([http://meganprelinger.com/book/another-science- fiction/](http://meganprelinger.com/book/another-science-fiction/)). If you're near SF, I highly recommend visiting the private research library she runs with her husband: [http://www.prelingerlibrary.org/home/](http://www.prelingerlibrary.org/home/) Has an interesting collection, including plenty of space art, since her research resources are there.

</comment><comment><USER7> I remember cycles of fire my dad brought me from cap caneveral. Ever after, i wanted to visit those places, no matter the distance and danger.</comment>


Improved audio rendering with an optimised version of memcpy (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.audioasylum.com/forums/pcaudio/messages/11/119979.html <comment><USER2> This is so ridiculous that I can't tell if it's a joke or these people are even more delusional than the Pear Audio/Denon AKDL-1 crowd.

[https://www.cnet.com/news/denons-500-ethernet- cable/](https://www.cnet.com/news/denons-500-ethernet-cable/)

<comment><USER3> A colleague of mine has two master's degrees from a prestigious university, one of them is physics, and he buys bass guitar cables for 120$ and more because he believes he hears a difference between those and those that cost, say, 30$.

<comment><USER4> Instrument cables actually sound a bit different; their capacitance influences the frequency response. The price doesn't really influence that much, though. Very cheap cables can be noisy (which means that they are microphonic, i.e. generate voltages in response to being moved / dragged about).

<comment><USER5> This a hundred times. A passive guitar or bass pickup is going to be dampened by the low pass filter which consists of the capacitance of the cable and the coil of the pickup and the input impendance of the preamp. Linesignals, or instruments with inbuilt active circuits are not affected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The issue becomes really serious when playing 96 audio files simultaneously. As in: game audio or multitracking DAW (where 24 or more would be recording at the same time, not merely playing back). Every cycle counts there, any cycle not moving audio is a wasted cycle. Indeed, turns out (surprised me when I moved into this field), audio of any paralellism is the hardest Hard Real Time process in a computer audio system, or a game console, or pro audio mixing desks and synth racks. The human ear is the most time critical of our senses; you can drop a video frame and harly anyone notices, but everyone bitches about a dropped audio frame.

ps: this stuff is also achieved in iOS devices. Mind-blowing as that may seem.

pps: just playing audio files is not, in general, latency sensitive, so larger buffers can mask more egregious cycle wasting in the setup and other overhead. Playing sound effect files (gunshots, squealing tires, etc) is however latency sensitive, and there can be many at the same time, so there we shoot for smaller buffers and pay more attention to overhead reduction. In both cases, however, we never start outputting from a buffer that is not filled. Cacheing issues mostly, and also scheduling. Usually that is shared memory, even core to core dual cache shared, with the audio handled in its own subsystem, so there are some very subtle issues at the extremes we work in.

(I'll leave the Monster cable manutroversy out of it here:)

</comment><comment><USER7> _Jaw drops_

Opportunities here. "Oh, you want the _audiophile quality_ version of the firmware? That's a separate download, from our degaussed and quantum-aligned servers, just a sec..."

<comment><USER8> I have long thought that I could make a fortune selling stuff to audiophiles, if only I had slightly fewer scruples.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The word you are looking for here is "audiohomeopathy"

<comment><USER10> "phoneopathy" sounds better :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The irony is that optimised memcpy() which is anything but REP MOVS will probably be _slower_ on modern x86 processors. Over the years, people have come up with (very large) code sequences for block copying which when benchmarked in isolation can be slightly faster than the native instruction, but the increased cache usage usually makes the advantage disappear or even become a disadvantage in a real application, as now there is less other critical-path code which remains in the cache.

<comment><USER12> Isn't the irony that the whole idea is BS in the first place, and memcpy has absolute no effect on the sound rendering quality?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Personally, I use 70s tube-effect memcpys() for that vintage sound.

Re cables etc - there was $1m dollars offered to anyone a few years back who could disprove the audiophile nonsense:

[http://gizmodo.com/305549/james-randi-offers-1-million-if- au...](http://gizmodo.com/305549/james-randi-offers-1-million-if-audiophiles- can-prove-7250-speaker-cables-are-better)

</comment><comment><USER4> Well that's just a curious case of audiofoolery.

<comment><USER14> audiopathic behavior

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> There is, actually, one single instance I can think of where a custom memcpy would be better for an audio player than the compiler-provided memcpy. Some time ago Intel engineers advised that you should memcpy _backwards_ on certain CPUs because it ended up being slightly faster. If you're copying a large enough buffer and running with tight enough latency (not sure how that would happen though), there's the very slight possibility that you might end up not copying the first new expected sample in time.

<comment><USER16> I think you're trying too hard to apply that interesting fact to the situation at hand. Audio bitrates are just not high enough to need it. And avoiding skipping generally means getting the first few bytes into the buffer fast enough, so starting at the other end would make it worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> To people making fun - this is not about creating audio files, but rather about techniques to reduce latency and jitter when _playing_ audio files. Similar to the crazy techniques that the VR folks like Carmack have proposed. Yes, indeed, audio files these days have WAY more information content them the human ear can distinguish, but if your playback has skips and assorted corruption that doesn't matter.

For example, one of the responses proposed pre-loading a large fully-rendered audio segment onto a DMA buffer to remove the CPU from the latency-sensitive pipeline entirely.

<comment><USER4> Audio codecs use memory-mapped ring buffers; as long as the driver's write pointer stays ahead of the codecs' read pointer there is no way to add jitter. Note that the codec doesn't care about the write pointer, if the driver forgets to update the buffer, the card will just play it over and over again. Sometimes that happens when a computer wakes up from stand-by. The result is quite characteristic.

<comment><USER18> The concepts you are mentioning (DMA and ring buffers) are heavily used but I don't think you have the layering right. In all APIs I have used, the codec library itself works with contiguous buffers typically on the heap, which end may up being copied into ring buffers or DMA buffers I will give you, but that is one abstraction above or below.

<comment><USER4> I meant the hardware with audio codec, though technically it would be the audio controller which has the buffers and control registers (which may/may not be the same chip, depending on the exact make, e.g. in HD Audio the controller is in the chipset, and the codec is a separate chip). Sorry for the confusion.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How GistScript works under the hood - <AUTHOR> http://essays.aboutalessio.com/how-gistscript-works-under-the-hood/?utm_source=hackernews <comment><USER2> GistScript might make a good "Show HN" post.

Guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Brudgers, thanks for pointing that out! I will post GistScript as Show HN as soon as it's a little bit more refined. For now I'm sharing my thoughts as simple blog posts.</comment></comment>


HN Premii App is now native for iOS and Android - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hacker-news-yc/id713733435 <comment><AUTHOR> For anyone wondering what's this about, this is the link to the site:

[http://hn.premii.com/](http://hn.premii.com/)

It has been a subject of several discussions here. Even though originally a web app, it provides a much better/smoother/better looking experience than most of the HN apps for both iOS and Android.

At least on iOS, the app allows you to continue reading where you left off. This wasn't possible if you just added the app to the home screen in iOS for example.

Also, Android app is here:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.premii.hn](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.premii.hn)</comment>