The Sound of Silence - <AUTHOR> http://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/the-sound-of-silence <comment><USER3> An alternative is to say things and let your friends pass them on anonymously.

Things very wise and/or experienced VCs/founders have told me which I'm sure they wouldn't publish, which I have valued _very_ much:

* If you don't look like a stereotypical founder, you won't follow the stereotypical path; that's not a problem, it's just a difference. Pursue your dream from first principles.

* The difference between flirting and friendly is perception, not purpose - don't worry about seeming aloof and don't take it the wrong way when pursued (to a point).

* Never come out until/unless absolutely necessary. Especially not to gay men.

* Absolutely don't talk about your young children with investors, especially if the investor has children of their own.

* The other side of not being perceived as a highly technical co-founder (which I am) because of my gender/appearance is that I'm more easily seen as a people person or product owner (which I'm very much not). It's ok to take advantage of that.

* I don't look enough like a founder to get angel/seed; I should make my money as a co-founder then self-fund through series-A, which tends to work out better regardless.

* Never, ever speak at a conference/on a panel about diversity. Your online identity defines your future opportunities, and the diversity racket is awfully small.

(Many more too specific or nuanced to include here.)

<comment><USER4> if the diversity racket is so small why does it seem so many have built their careers on it?

<comment><USER5> > if the diversity racket is so small why does it seem so many have built > their careers on it?

Perhaps because the diversity racket is in some way related to the group of people causing Jessica to avoid sharing thoughts online? If you can silence all the people not in your group, your group's size will appear a lot larger than it really is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I had a philosophy professor once who was very upset after she'd graded our papers on Plato's Republic.

She gripped the lectern and looked at the floor for a few seconds sadly.

She looked up.

"What happened here, guys? You're all so smart. This was a real let-down. No, the Republic is not a sacred text. No, we're not here to worship it. But there's also such a thing as employing the critical spirit in the wrong way. We're here to understand this book, to engage with its ideas seriously, not to tear it apart without thought to feel superior."

"Again, this is not an object of worship. But this book has been preserved for 2500 years by human beings, most of whom had to copy each page by hand. A long chain of brilliant people from across generations worked to put this paperback in your hand. They did this in part because they thought it was _worth_ the effort of preserving it for you. If, after a minute or two of thought, we find a glaring flaw that makes Plato looks like a blithering idiot, it would be wise to examine our critique in a spirit of humility. Without humility and charity, it's impossible to learn anything."

"After we've understood, then we can critique."

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

This idea is equally valuable outside the context of interpreting philosophical texts.

Everything she said is unfashionable, not only in academia but in public life. Political entertainers earn their keep by deliberately distorting their opponents' arguments with easy mockery. A lot of social media reward mindless criticism.

But the most productive, insightful online communities have some element of exclusion and some punishments (karma, banning, etc.) for repeated violations of the principle of charity.

<comment><USER7> One of my philosophy professors called that "doing it MIT-style." In essence, argue against the best possible form of an idea rather than the imperfect form in front of you.

<comment><USER8> I've also heard this referred to as "steel-manning," as opposed to "straw- manning."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> People are starting to realize (en masse now), this is the downside of permitting group identity-based "discussions" to flourish. Whatever you say, people are going to try interpreting it against the group you are perceived to belong to, eagerly pouncing on things that are in "conflict" with their own group identity. I put conflict in quotes here because this ultimately empty conflict is what actually drives both sides. Facts and open discussion are utterly irrelevant in this process, instead your words just get parsed for trigger phrases.

There is an argument to be made that internet discussions have always been at risk, and I think it's indeed a known pathology. However, subjectively, it seems to me this has escalated in a massive way within the last two years - <USER2> the point that important issues have effectively been taken off the discussion table because the participant pool is entirely made up of people fighting content-free meme wars.

In my opinion, the only way to combat this is to violate the rules of these meme wars and start talking about content again. But I wouldn't recommend it for high profile personalities whose job entails getting along with as many people as possible, because the fears of backlash are absolutely justified even if you _might_ garner more respect this way in the long term. Worse yet, once a discussion has been taken over by mindless reactions like this, it becomes very difficult to form your own opinion rationally because it involves separating what the memes want of you from whatever the facts and your internal thoughts say.

As a rule of thumb: if both parties are angry at you, you're on the right track.

Personally I think the current state of things is either unsustainable, meaning the group identity thing is going to burn itself out over time, or it's a new low-energy state as far as human thought process goes which means it's going to be permanent. Either way, at least some influential people need to fight this, even if it means you'll be perceived as having rough edges.

<comment><USER10> > As a rule of thumb: if both parties are angry at you, you're on the right > track.

No; this is an excuse to pat yourself on the back for being contrary. Don't validate your beliefs by how much they make others angry, any more than you validate them by how much they make others happy.

> the group identity thing

Group identity and culture wars are not new (and are certainly not going away). It's plausible to me that the internet is making this worse - a premise of your post - but I'm not yet convinced. It's possible they're merely coincident. What concrete reasons are there to believe the internet is a primary _cause_ of today's increasingly vitriolic culture wars, rather than merely a new venue in which they are being pursued?

<comment><USER11> Given that the 20th century is the century of genocide, it seems less than certain that the long term trend is "increasingly vitriolic".

<comment><USER12> The 20th century isn't the century of genocide; it's the century of media covered genocide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> We live in the "call out culture" and, ironically, it's how Donald Trump gained so much momentum. People have reacted to this by staying silent instead of explicitly stating their views publicly and creating conversations, opportunities for learning, and ideation.

In this Brown Political review article [0], the author states

> Furthermore, calling-out non-influential figures and handing them the > spotlight in the process gives other individuals incentive to make > controversial statements of their own. In other words, if someone is > desperate enough for attention, even if it's negative, they might see that > saying or doing something blatantly hateful can garner the publicity they > crave. It's the same concept the has boosted Trump and Carson campaigns (to > different levels of effectiveness) this election cycle; that is, using > controversy and outrage to get their names out there and increase their > visibility in the media and public eye.

There is a good study of a case of a (now) popular misogynistic and homophobic YouTube user that actually tripled his viewership as a result of protests on social media about him holding a meeting in their town.

I personally do not "fear" callout culture, but I also realize that the things I put out there on the internet have consequences that I would rather avoid. And like the article states, I am in no position of power.

[0]: [http://www.brownpoliticalreview.org/2016/05/26760/](http://www.brownpoliticalreview.org/2016/05/26760/)

<comment><USER14> _" We live in the "call out culture" and, ironically, it's how Donald Trump gained so much momentum. People have reacted to this by staying silent instead of explicitly stating their views publicly and creating conversations, opportunities for learning, and ideation."_

Of course, let's also not forget that there is a culture that has made a point of shouting down contrarian or critical viewpoints when a discussion could be initiated.

Worried that perhaps some vaccinations are unnecessary? You're a stupid _anti- vaxxer_.

Critical of environmental science methodology? You're a climate change _denier_ (and probably in the pocket of Big Oil).

Not a fan of how Black Lives Matter conducts some of their protests, or perhaps you think that using ID to combat potential voter fraud is a valid idea? You're a _racist_.

Not a supporter of a specific presidential candidate? Well, it's probably because you're a _misogynist_...and there's a good chance you're rather deplorable as well.

That's a good part of why people _have_ stayed silent: they're demonized before a conversation can begin. It's not necessarily because they didn't _want_ to have a conversation.

<comment><USER15> There's a difference between " shouting down contrarian or critical viewpoints when a discussion could be initiated" and "shouting down people who are rehashing tired old arguments that looks exactly the same as the arguments put forth by people who are already known to be operating in bad faith"

<comment><USER14> I would counter that a) perhaps some parties don't know that they're using "tired old arguments" (if it is _new to them_ ) and b) the "bad faith" may be _assumed_ , rather than known.

If you're being shouted down, regardless of why one party thinks you _should_ be shouted down, your worldview and opinion of the opposite party will be strongly affected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As a temporary fix, (and I emphasize, this is _not_ a solution) the answer might be to have a 'pen name' or 'pen personality' . mini-msft is the classical example in our industry.

If _Jessica_ were to venture a 'twistable' opinion, sure there will be a huge uproar, because of her association with YC. If this is published under a fake persona,Jess McFake, someone who can be identified only by a body of writing, then it is hard to bring these prejudices, and even if it is "twisted" who cares?

I do this to some extent by having multiple online personas, none of which have my real name associated with this, one for each 'community' I participate in,(not true for HN, fwiw) and I find this very useful and liberating, and I'm nobody. I'd be surprised if 'celebrities' don't do something like this already.

Of course if you are as rich as (and so untouchable) as, say, Peter Thiel, you can just go ahead and express what you want wherever you want and don't give a damn if you are misinterpreted and/or out of synch with particular orthodoxies, but for the rest of us, this might work as a temporary fix.

<comment><USER17> This seems like a reasonable idea, but I don't think it can last indefinitely. You will almost certainly reveal something that will allow someone to unmask you eventually, regardless of how careful you are.

Startup L. Jackson is a great example: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-17/unmasking...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-17/unmasking- startup-l-jackson-silicon-valley-s-favorite-twitter-persona)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The problem she talks about is nuanced.

One the one hand, any opinionated information will upset some portion of the public, the internet just makes it more visible to you. From that perspective, maybe the solution is to exert better self-control and stay off twitter, not google yourself, and care less about imaginary internet karma points.

Her ask for compassion is coming from a sincere place. I think however the real long term answer is to examine how rules of the forum incentivize certain types discussion (twitter=outrage, youtube=insults, facebook=food pictures & generic upbeat life-observations, reddit=jokes, news.yc=thougtful comments, buzzfeed/tech-crunch/whatever=unreadable linkbait).

Another way to look at this, is that these famous people get something from public validation. In a sense, it's a trade of inside information for public validation. If she really just wanted to get the word out there, she could do what the rest of us do, post on a throwaway account, losing the karma points, losing the automatic boost by posting as a famous person, and see if her ideas are packaged well enough to rise to the top.

The thing that's slightly offputting to me is that I get a sense that a lot of these public figures _actually_ are not as right as they seem to think. For example, I'd bet 5 grand that if I could talk to PG for a day about the things he's blogged about, I could change his mind on at least one of them. Yet at the same time I think he was quite troubled when he posted his 1%-money piece and people were outraged.

There's really a lot to this discussion.

</comment><comment><USER19> This touches on the topic of projection. You are never who you actually are, to another person. You are just a blank, upon which they'll project all their own questions, fears, priorities and pet issues. If you're insecure about money you'll say "Damn that richypants Jessica and her sanctimonious blablabla." If you're preoccupied with race you'll say "Typical that a privileged white lady says so and so." If gender is your thing you'll either say "It's so empowering to see a woman blablabla" or "The nerve of this evil harpy blablabla," depending. Do any of these various horseshit interpretations represent the real Jessica?

So no, a lot of people decide it's not worth it, to be everybody's projection target. And contrary to one of her points, I don't think it's any great tragedy. It's only the stupid internet, remember! What unites people in real friendship is long-term shared tangible interest, of a type that is all but gone from public life in America except maybe in the smallest, supposedly most "backward" farming towns.

<comment><USER20> This touches on the topic of reductivism.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> > How do we solve this problem? I don't know, but I hope there is a solution.

Two solutions I can think of:

(a) private, close-knit communities, i.e. not HN.

(b) new norms developing to judge people's action in a specific domain based on actions in that specific domain, i.e. Jessica Livingston _qua_ startup investor, not qua x-ist or proponent of y-ology or whatever. Of course, this goes against the very idea of identity politics, where the whole point seems to be to couple every person with their (supposed) political views, i.e. humans _qua_ politicians.

One thing you realize with that second frame is that most people, Y.T. included in this thread, are not acting in capacity of anything. One might call us "qua randoms", spouting opinion without skin in the game (assuming it isn't qua friend, etc).

<comment><USER21> Just searched for the meaning of "qua" and it seems you are using it as "as" (so "humans as politicians"). Just wanted to add it here in case others also don't have a clue what "qua" means.

<comment><AUTHOR> Should've added that, thanks. It means more than just "as", it also means "in the capacity of", for which there's in my opinion no good english substitute. It comes from Aristotle ([https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle- mathematics/#7....](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle- mathematics/#7.4)), but there are also somewhat similar strains of thought in confucianism, usually in a more prescriptive manner (how to be an X to a Y).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow, this is a great post. It feels like it is getting harder to have a rational argument/discussion online and social media. The default mode is silence for most rational people - and we need to fix this.

I wonder if there's a tech solution to this.

<comment><USER23> I don't think it's a tech problem so much as it is a design/culture problem.

If you look at the most popular forms of social media and what is considered popular, you see that low effort content is what draws the most views and reactions. Low effort content being images, 140 character quips, so on and so forth. The most popular social media sites are either geared specifically around these forms of communication (instagram, twitter, imgur, etc), or are dominated by such forms of content (reddit). The reasons why these forms of content are so popular are well understood so I won't waste time on it.

The issue that arises when these forms of low effort content dominate is that they start changing the way people think and act. The mind will adapt to the space that it lives in. In other words, if you talk in 140 characters frequently, you are going to start thinking in 140 characters. That being said, this is not to say social media has somehow created a problem that didn't exist before. People are rationalizing animals not rational animals. I'm saying that social media is making the problem worse and creating a dominant meta where low effort content succeeds and reinforces its own success by creating patterns of thought through the designs they are built around. The fact that Twitter has become a dominant form of political discourse should speak volumes about the mess things are right now.

My feeling on this is that the current landscape is akin to us discovering alcohol for the first time: we haven't adapted the right cultural norms to deal with this sort of technology yet. The current situation can be thought of as us trying to figure out the rules of the road. I think the best path forward is to not speak out against groups, but against behaviors that are muddying the water in all groups right now.

<comment><USER24> I think part of the problem is that many online discussion places (e.g. twitter, facebook, reddit, HN) implicitly reward people who 'react quickly' and who 'lead' (make 'root comments') over those that 'participate' (make a 'third-level comment', just for a random example).

On reacting quickly: in my experience, if you're among the first few to either make a 'root comment' to some post (on a medium like reddit or HN) you're much more likely to receive a large number of votes, positive or negative. And if you have even a slight preference for social validation, you'll play to the crowd by posting an agreeable meme or some variation. And the same goes for those who can quickly post the popular counter-meme as a second-level comment if all the first-level slots are taken. And bam, same old meme-based conversation plays out for the millionth time.

On participating: If you nest any further down than second-level comments, you tend to receive no reaction. No votes and often no replies, so it feels like you're talking to no-one (and you've just wasted a bunch of effort). And it's not that you care about chasing imaginary internet points; you care about receiving feedback that your comment has at least been read by a large audience. I suspect people who don't care about the latter are more likely to write in their diary. Consequently, the discussion can often lack depth.

So: rewards for 'quick reactors' \+ no incentive to add depth == shallow, pandering to the crowd comments.

I think it's something to do with the time-sensitive nature of these forms of discussion. Perhaps one solution would be to somehow mess with the interval between hitting the 'reply' button and when that reply actually appears.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit."

It's also amazing what you can _say_ if you don't care who's attributed. Anonymity or pseudonymity can be of great value here.

For someone of Livingston's stature, writing under a pseudonym may not seem as attractive an option. When sharing anything _really_ valuable, via a pseudonym, there's no opportunity to leverage existing audiences, or build reputational equity for your 'true name'. And for the already-prominent, if a pseudonym is later pierced the blowback can be larger. So why not spend your time and words elsewhere, either on safe topics, or only sharing 'dangerous' thoughts privately?

Thus Livingston mentions, in her footnotes, increased sharing in controlled environments with trusted associates – as on Facebook. But most people may find pseudonymity the best strategy for collecting the benefits of freer, more honest speech.

I even suspect that a "right to create uncorrelated secondary identities" may be a crucial 21st-century freedom, worthy of encoding in law and custom.

</comment><comment><USER26> There are online communities where this happens. Generally, there is some barrier to entry that is merit based and the communities promote cultures of acceptance rather than "correctedness." This usually means that size is somewhat small and that moderation is swift, effective but fair. Some examples of communities like this are everything2 and tagpro.

Essentially, HN is particularly bad at this because a lot of comments on here sound like that programmer who thinks that they're right and so naive that they believe anything they disagree with to be lies. There is no proof that the people commenting have any merit and their reputation is not on the line with their comment.

I'm not really sure that a large, easily accessible community with minimal moderation could ever have quality discussion. Those conditions produce commenters with little reason to be responsible with their words.

<comment><USER27> MetaFilter is one example, where users pay a small upfront join fee, $5 I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I totally agree with the article and I think that the great short-circuit here is that the same people that will mis-interpret this and say "it is terrible to see her silenced" (which is not what she says) are for the most part the people that over-react when certain topics are taken, that is ultimately why Jessica does not feel like to share certain things.

<comment><USER29> > which is not what she says

It's not? Are you using some overly-strict definition of 'silenced' here?

<comment><USER28> She is clearly saying she is not speaking because it's not worth it, not because she could not or is afraid of speaking.

<comment><USER29> "Silence" is _in the title_ , and she is put into that state because of how other people react. There's nothing wrong with using the verb form of the word. Doing so does not imply fear.

I don't understand why you made that post after, in another thread, saying jmduke _shouldn 't_ have interpreted "silenced" that way.

<comment><USER30> > "Silence" is in the title

Silence as a noun and silence as a verb are very different things. I'm sitting silent right now, but it's not because I've been bound and gagged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm reading this and thinking yes.. YES.. I recognise the phenomenon she's describing, I see a lot of downside in online discussion.. and then:

> One reason I have hope for a solution is that I do find I can speak more > openly on Facebook than elsewhere, so maybe that's a clue about what > direction social media 2.0 might take.

:(

<comment><USER28> Well that makes sense because if (big IF) you are wise enough to select your Facebook friends from people you actually know and you actually like, this will mimic much closely having a offline discussion, just using a media that can reach more people. For instance most of my Facebook friends are people which I interact with in the real world.

<comment><USER32> Maybe a friend limit ? That would make people think more about who they have. I wonder what sort of effect that would have.

<comment><USER33> This has been explored in many places, like path. It has yet to stick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> To know that Jessica Livingston has experienced this and feels this way is extra disheartening.

<comment><USER35> To me, it's extra empowering.

Who better to share, "You are not alone."

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm of two minds here. I certainly sympathize with the fear that people out there on the Internet will misinterpret what you've said and bash you for it in ways that are inappropriate. There are really two separate dynamics, though: one is that people may twist your words. The other, that gets less attention, is that perhaps we should build a discourse that is more tolerant of mistakes.

For example: racism is bad. A good person should try not to be racist (to say the least). But maybe, as a part of recognizing our own human limitations and pervasive reach of racist thinking, we should accept that even otherwise admirable people sometimes fall prey to it, and temper our reactions accordingly. Perhaps we've uncritically allowed our hard work towards greater _awareness_ of these sorts of moral mistakes to result in a constant ratcheting-up of the opprobrium that they invite.

Here, the problem with complaining, in the abstract, about the fear of having your words twisted, is that it assumes that you, the twistee, are right, and the "twisters" have it all wrong. But if this happens to you frequently enough that you feel compelled to write this sort of blog post, I can't help but suspect that things may be the other way around.

Reframing this sort of concern about the growing social costs of routine moral failings helps with this because it recognizes the possibility that the author is not _really_ a smarter person, with greater moral insight, than those that criticize her.

</comment><comment><USER37> I often find myself frustrated when an important decision is made with little explanation in politics or business by someone who I assume is intelligent. It may strike me as a bad decision, but I try to be charitable and assume they have a good reason. I've thought that they often don't offer good explanations because they feel too busy to take the time to communicate, they're just not good at communicating or they don't recognize its importance.

This post suggests they could also have a better perception of the possible risks that even effective communication could entail than I do.

</comment><comment><USER38> The potentially extreme consequences of voicing one's opinions today (with every utterance permanent and Earth-visible) is also what creates the extreme nastiness seen in anonymous speech forums like Reddit or voting booths. If people could speak their minds freely, they wouldn't become that different under the cloak of anonymity. Since they can't, people's inherently nasty tendencies build up pressure and explode in anonymous venues rather than safely venting.

</comment><comment><USER39> I agree with Jessica's perspective. For me, though, there's an open question with how best to balance it with the "luck surface area" concept, especially when starting out. [1]

[1] [http://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck- surf...](http://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck-surface-area)

</comment><comment><USER40> I feel like the world needs to have a deep discounting of either controversy or controversy arising on/within the internet. Merely changing database records does not change reality. The "thing" itself is not the online representation of the thing - unless the "thing" is a purely online object (say, a webpage). If my family member sends me a photo of what looks like my car totaled at an intersection my car may well still be sitting and safe in its parking spot outside my apartment.

The internet is well beyond "peak controversy." On the internet you will find the thesis and antithesis of every statement. People need to laugh it off. So what if an email gets leaked that says something inflammatory? Every person has at least one view that would severely offend at least one other person. Penalizing people for things arising online quickly leads to things like 'thought police'.

</comment><comment><USER41> Maybe add some discounting statements? The whole article is sort of a discounting statement about what is about to be said, if she does say it. Something like, "I know you might think X, but X is not the case because Y". Head the objection off at the pass.

Please share the truth, it's good medicine.

Maybe you benefitted from this discussion ;)

</comment><comment><USER42> YC Research project idea: Figuring out how to throw a wrench in the cogs of internet mob mentality and hypersensitivity.

There's a few ways to go about this, and some are beautiful.

One idea would be to create an entire network of fake professional personas, build social media presences for them, and eventually have them say something carefully crafted to both be perfectly defensible yet enough to draw the ire of the internet outrage machine. Then, have them be fake-fired much to the angry mob's satisfaction.

After this goes on for a while, conduct some data analysis, permanently naming and shaming everyone stupid enough to righteously attack and ruin the life of a fictitious persona.

The chilling effect is then reversed: engaging in vicious mob mentality against complete strangers might just earn them a higher ranking on the dumbass list.

<comment><USER43> The 2.0 version will then be employed by governments to silence dissent by bleeding the energy of movements before they happen.

It's a tool that cuts all ways. There's nothing in a 'positive' social movement - however defined - that makes it less vulnerable to this sort of baiting than a 'negative' one, because it's an exploit on a close-to-universal personality flaw.

<comment><USER42> > _The 2.0 version will then be employed by governments to silence dissent by > bleeding the energy of movements before they happen._

Governments are already adept at sabotaging movements if they so desire.

I agree with you though, it's probably not the best idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This is a symptom of Marshall McLuhan's networked world as "global village": "...the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket." -McLuhan

In a village, there are no secrets. Same online, basically. Anything digital can quickly spread everywhere, far beyond its intended context.

Pre-networking, information dissipated via voice and to an extent via print and the "telephone game" demonstrated how loss formed a natural barrier. Encryption is a temporary obstacle. It contains the secrets until a breach forms which instantly exposes them to the world. And not only is information flowing outward, but reactions are flowing back, see SWATing, doxxing, "leaks", and fake news.

I was initialized impressed, personally at the internet's ability to share information about human intimate relationships at a large scale. This helped mainstream-ize sexual practices, and I personally believe, catalyzed 4th-wave feminism. Lately I'm, personally, impressed at the internet's ability to forcibly interface people of different ages and classes. It sounds good on paper, like "diversity," right? And I think it will turn out well. But in the meantime, we've failed to respect the order created when human interactions and relationships were based in meatspace and incidently more uniform in their ages. Now we have 60-year-olds and 20-year-olds exchanging advice on how to live when they have totally different needs. There are some gains to be had, but also, much confusion to organize. Like Jessica Livingstone, I could say way more about this IRL, but can't share online. In a nutshell, the sudden explosion in age-differences and relationship information is also breaking down certain illusions of power, which were, strictly speaking, false, yet they held society together in a more stable way. Let's hope we have the gift of clarity and the strength to execute it so we don't re-experience feudalism.

</comment><comment><USER45> One solution: post anonymously, and have a close friends with some powerful social media klout to share it to an audience.

I know it doesn't solve the main problem, but at least you can share your thought without too much negative consequence.

</comment><comment><USER46> [https://medium.com/@thesoundofnonsilence](https://medium.com/@thesoundofnonsilence)

</comment><comment><USER47> > The problem with this is, the most successful people in an industry tend to > have some of the most valuable insights about it. So you lose a lot when > they are silenced. And also, if they keep those insights to themselves, it > makes the powerful more powerful.

This is obviously a genuine loss for hard-working people trying to gain insights from their role models in order to make a positive impact in their lives.

But at the same time, one can't help but feel a bit of a twisted sense of _justice_ , towards those causing the problems in the first place. From what I've observed, these people typically place themselves in some sort of "victim" class, and actively look for new ways to get offended and twist words that wouldn't have caused anyone any bother, say, 25 years ago. These people are going to miss out big, not just because they are stifling insights from those who could guide them, but because of their limiting mindsets.

This is not to say that there aren't fights worth picking, because sometimes there are. Cases of blatant discrimination do exist in fields that should not have it. And it can be really important to expose these negative patterns. But this is often best done with a tool that we're starting to lose, namely investigative journalism.

But oh boy has the pendulum swung far from that. I've seen interviews with Jessica before, she seems like one of the kindest, most insightful people in the startup community. I've bought and read her book, _Founders at Work_ (highly recommended). If someone like her is worried about sharing insights, at the potential downside of appearing malicious or offensive or what have you... then we are not in a good place.

> I'm horrified at the prospect of the most insightful people in their fields > thinking, "That's something I should comment on. Nah, what's the point? Too > much downside."

> That's what happens now, and we don't even know how much, because how do you > measure the sound of silence?

You can start measuring it on college. There's small things like legendary comedians not willing to perform on campus anymore. And bigger things like professors self-censoring and watering down their curriculums, lest they upset some small-but-vocal group of students. Heck, do we really need Shakespeare anymore? Maybe we can do away with that (e.g. see U of Pennsylvania).

Maybe we'll have a less motivated, more self-centered workforce that are both harder to hire from, and harder to retain. Maybe we'll have less inspiration for the next generation of entrepreneurs, as Jessica points out. At least the internet has documented plenty of good stuff so far.

This is a cultural critique, and you're welcome to disagree. I can't prove that slowed GDP growth over the last decade is related to narcissism, excessive self-esteem, victimhood mentalities, higher divorce, you name it [insert modern social ailment here]. But I do know that societies and cultures that are growing economically typically have less of these social afflictions (maybe they're just too busy).

But if I run with some of the correlations I see, I do see a certain irony: the aggressive progressivism espoused by Silicon Valley may be coming back to bite it. People are getting scared of sharing what they think, because they never push back and maintain standards on what is or isn't a legitimate criticism. I think it's completely analogous to being a shitty parent who doesn't set boundaries on their children - except this is more of a generational thing.

One last thought: seeing the above unfold over the last few years, coupled with the slowing economy (don't let the left's phony numbers fool you) is exactly how I predicted that Trump would have a great shot at becoming the President back in 2015. Seeing his Twitter actually solidified that prediction for me because culturally he "fights back" at the children. The children that so many of us know are ruining things for the rest of us. He may be a big child himself, but that's besides the point.

And now we have this Brave New World to look forward to :)

</comment><comment><USER48> I'm trying to take this article in good faith, and I find it difficult, for two reasons:

1\. The author equivocates online critique and criticism with being 'silenced'.

2\. The author thinks it's too risky to share "insights about Silicon Valley" online, but does not think it's too risky to advocate for immunity from critique for the already powerful.

I understand that the message of this post is to have the listener consider how online discourse tends to coalesce into witch hunts, which is totally valid.

The thing is, when I share ideas or controversial takes with my few "trusted friends", I don't expect them to engage me on the surface level without critique or criticism. I expect them to call me out on my shit (and presumably Paul and Jessica have the same expectation). The people I trust the most are the people who can critique me most fairly and most accurately, _in good faith_.

By reducing all critique of online 'powerful individuals' as attempts to target and silence them, the author I think misses the bigger issue: it's not the act of critiquing that's the problem with online discourse, it's the shape and manner in which it's conducted.

<comment><USER28> I think your interpretation of the blog post is not what the author had in mind. The problem is that for politically correct matters and other "pre formed" ideas people tend to attack certain ideas solely on the basis that they are against, even if supported by facts, from what the society or the "good thinking" society thinks it is appropriate, auspicable, and so forth. So basically there are arguments for which it is not possible to get a real discussion on the table (or on the internet) but only insults because for certain topics the % of people overreacting is going to be over the signal/noise acceptable ratio. So I can't see any request for immunity here nor she is claiming to be silenced. She is just saying: it is not possible to share useful things because there is a percentage of people not ready to have discussions only using arguments and facts. I totally agree with her.

<comment><USER49> I think the phrase "politically correct" has lost all meaning. It used to be used as a synonym for "polite" and now, in the US, it seems to be used as a synonym for "ignorant and obstinate".

<comment><USER50> It's never meant "polite", and the modern use stems from its use in the mid-20th Century as a pejorative for obstinate and ignorant adherence to dogma by American Socialists referring to American Communists who were seen as slavishly following Stalinist orthodoxy.

<comment><USER49> Strange, I remember people using the phrase in sentences where one would otherwise say "polite", like "that's not the polite term" or "that's not the politically correct term". For example, "Oriental is not the politically correct term, say Asian."

<comment><USER50> That use does exist, but it's a (popular in the mid-90s, still occasionally encountered) ironic use that derives from the older (and particularly common by the American Right against the Left in the late 1980s and early 1990s, its peak before the current resurgence among the same political faction) use as a pejorative. So, the modern popularity of the older and original pejorative use isn't "losing meaning" from that use...

<comment><USER49> In those cases, perhaps its use was objectively ironic, but it was not ironic from the speaker's perspective.

<comment><USER50> While a minority of users may not have ironic intent, usually its use in the context referenced is deliberately ironic; the pejorative use has always been far more common, and it's very unusual for someone using the phrase in any sense not to be aware of that and, if not using it in the pejorative sense, be making a deliberate, usually ironic, reference to that well-known sense when using it in any other way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Without knowing anything about the author, i would guess she is young.

My reaction after reading:Duh.

Perhaps it's living for decades but stating my opinion I do less and less, especially in person. I think its a product of listening better, getting wiser and not needing to be validated or heard. Only a small handful (one hand) of people I care hear things I have to say. I am totally different than when I was 20's & 30's

It's not that "true things arent being said" it's that I am smarter to simply not say them.

<comment><AUTHOR> You don't seem to realize the immense amount of knowledge Jessica Livingston has about startups that _no one_ else knows about. That information is obviously hugely valuable for other people, and she'd probably like to share it if she felt it was worth it.

<comment><USER51> In my day I would ask for an "informational interview" side by side.

Worse thing is she would say "no"

But I would not leave her office and tell anyone about what she said. That would be breaking her trust. If she wanted to tell others she would.

Thanks for the "who is the author" explains its "front pageness"

<comment><USER52> The point is that she can't post it to the Internet, where anyone could read it without using up her time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> This post contains 3 quotes, two in the article itself and one in a footnote. The first quote is of the author herself, and the other two are from her colleague, cofounder and husband.

This is not the sound of silence; this is echo.

</comment><comment><USER54> But does it really need to be said? Most utterances are not unique; ideas and insights can be found with a simple Google search. For example, there was a recent screening of "Hidden Figures": [http://www.forbes.com/sites/katieelizabeth1/2017/01/10/silic...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/katieelizabeth1/2017/01/10/silicon- valley-female-vcs-and-hidden-figures-insights-from-last-friday-night/). Maybe it's what this post refers to, maybe not. But reading similar articles for a year would produce a set of insights about Silicon Valley, just as being at Y Combinator would, and it's not clear that the one set of insights would be any less valuable than the other. YC insights might even be counterproductive, because they're designed for a different situation: [http://twocents.lifehacker.com/chasing-habits-of-rich- people...](http://twocents.lifehacker.com/chasing-habits-of-rich-people-won-t- teach-you-about-suc-1774780444) [http://nathanbarry.com/ignore/](http://nathanbarry.com/ignore/)

<comment><USER5> Your comment is hypocritical. This is to say I'm sure you point is made elsewhere, somewhere. And yet I'm glad you posted it so it can be discussed. Which is to say it's still wrong even when applied to itself (a wrong point).

The point of discussion isn't to create some sort of internet that might one day be studied and determined to contain useful information, the point of discussion is that those who participate can learn and improve. Sometimes this necessitates saying things that have already been said. That's not a problem.

As for the notion that sometimes discussing things with people in significantly different circumstances to yourself might not be the highest value discussion you could have, I agree. However it's still fun, interesting, etc. Better use of time than Netflix, that's for sure.

<comment><USER54> Well, I was responding to these lines: > the most successful people in an industry tend to have some of the most valuable insights about it. So you lose a lot when they are silenced.

It feels like a weak point. Maybe the best insights are written by professional writers, for example. In such a case there's no loss from industrial self-censorship.

On the other hand, it is true that successful startup founders usually leveraged some deep insight to grow fast and profit. But those insights have been "tapped out", so to speak, therefore are not really useful anymore. They were valuable for the founders but the value is non-transferable.

In my case, I'm writing mostly to become a better writer/communicator, so it doesn't particularly matter if I convey useful/valuable information or if it gets discussed; the aim is to do it clearly in a short amount of time. It's a different calculation for a person with children and a demanding job.</comment></comment></comment>


Texas Poised to Ban All Red Light Cameras - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/2019/05/20/texas-poised-to-ban-all-red-light-cameras/ <comment><USER2> The red light cameras in Texas are operated by private companies with no enforcement capacity. I got a few of those tickets in Austin, and it was common knowledge that you could safely ignore them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Lets do this with math (I'm a reformed red-light runner). Say Houston has 100 traffic accidents with red-light cameras (daily), but 130 red-light running accidents without. Say each accident causes $10,000 of property and personal damage (daily). Then you have $300,000 daily carnage prevented by the red- light cameras (in my case I paid $75 at a particular red-light & right-turn likely to cause accidents about 0.1% of the time, when performed by professional a stunt man like myself & 0.100001% of the time by everyone else).

OK, $300,000 daily saved in 'ouchies'. It takes 4,000 red-light citations (paid daily) to be the equal. The particular red-light I ran, by my layman's guesstimate, could ring up 500-700 tickets a day, for those unfamiliar with its wily ways. So it nets $50,000 daily.

OK, so I've never been ticketed as a full-speed-crossing-4-lanes-of active- traffic red-light camera (maybe they have elevated fines?). But a single signal getting $50,000/day seems a bit steep for the supposed harm to be prevented. Here's what the true stats are for Houston accident rates: [https://www.pstriallaw.com/car-accidents/facts-and- statistic...](https://www.pstriallaw.com/car-accidents/facts-and-statistics/)

<comment><USER4> I have no opinions on red light cameras, but you're omitting the cost where you hit and kill my kid. And the part where you're being obedience trained to drive safer elsewhere too.

<comment><USER3> Well, I'm sensitive to that too, since 5 months ago, an at-fault driver illegally entered an intersection that I had the full green on, and I hit, and rolled her minivan. Total damages was about $45,000, and thank God everyone, including my passenger, walked away with minor bruises (45 MPH relative speeds at impact). So, swap out my initial $10,000, for the $45,000. Everyone's wreck has their own costs... long story short, we throw massive weights around with immense kinetic energies when we push down on that accelerator.

<comment><USER3> I've added the costs, many of which are the headaches of repair logistics, and the immeasurable pains that occur when someone dies or is injured, and say, I like the Texas red-light cameras.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> what's the argument for allowing people to run red lights?

<comment><USER6> That'd be the common straw man.

Cameras can't stop people from running red lights.

In most jurisdictions that use them, they don't even count as moving violations for insurance or licensing purposes. The idea is to discourage the crime. There are other ways to discourage the crime, but the cameras seem to have the intended effect.

But pretending that removing them is tantamount to santioning the crime is a little ridiculous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Predictable results, more carnage: [https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/07/25/as- cities-turn-off-re...](https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/07/25/as-cities-turn- off-red-light-cameras-red-light-runners-claim-more-lives/)

<comment> better-solution Here's an idea: Only use the cameras to compound fault to unthinkable scales in the event of an accident. Triple fines and threaten felony jail time for accidents that can be shown to involve running red lights.

I think, had the premise of traffic cameras been introduced under the pretext of evidence application in cases of true harm and fault, they might have been embraced.

Instead, they've been opportunisticlly exploited to rip people off, and steal money, leading to a proliferation of more cameras stealing more money. And the money pretty much goes where local government payola dictates.

Had traffic cameras only been applied to accidents after the fact, especially when fatalities were involved, they might have been praised for revealing truth.

The lesson: only punish those that inflict harm, and only _after_ the harm is inflicted.

If the harm is too frequent, reconfigure the timing of the lights, or redesign the intersection, so that humans aren't tempted to cause dangerous or conflicting situations.</comment></comment>


Twitter:"You want this troublemaker gone?" NBC:"Sure" - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/nbc-claims-twitter-is-responsible-for-complaint-against-suspended-journalist-7993753.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Thoughts:

1\. (I'm not saying the censorship isn't a story) If you think NBC doesn't deserve the rights to broadcast the games, you should tell the IOC to use somebody else next time.

2\. Apple buys a chunk of Twitter. Will my twitter be suspended when I complain that a Mac model doesn't have USB3? Probably not. But now it's not certain. Chillin.</comment>


Bitcoin block reward is halving in less than 2 hours - <AUTHOR> http://www.bitcoinblockhalf.com <comment><AUTHOR> The halving (second) is now complete. The first block with half the reward (12.5) has been mined. You can see it here: [https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000002cce816c0ab2c...](https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000002cce816c0ab2c5c269cb081896b7dcb34b8422d6b74ffa1)

</comment><comment><USER2> The site says that 75% of all bitcoins have already been mined. I understand that it will become more and more difficult ensuring that the amount of money will continue to increase. However, I remember that I once read that bitcoins can only be split into so many "pieces" which wouldn't be enough to provide a sufficient amount of money for the economy to function. Does anyone know more?

Edit: found the answer: The protocol allows to create new, smaller units. [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/122/will-we- ever-...](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/122/will-we-ever-need- smaller-amounts-of-bitcoin-than-a-satoshi)

<comment><USER3> A single bitcoin can be split infinitely -- it's just a matter of adjusting the number of decimal points. Currently, a satoshi amounts to a millionth of a Bitcoin. If a Satoshi becomes more valuable, there may be more decimal points added.

<comment><USER4> Is this statement correct? What's the point of a limited number of coins, if they can be split infinitely? That's no different than the government printing money.

<comment><USER5> Is that so? It sound more analogous to adding a 1/2th penny

<comment><USER6> By a similar argument, the world's supply of gold is almost infinitely subdivideable, but still finite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does this mean that the incentive to mine has now decreased? Or perhaps that transaction fees will increase to preserve the existing incentive?</comment>


COLOURlovers (YC W10) Wants To Unleash Your Creative Streak With An iPhone App - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/07/chromaom-wants-to-unleash-your-creative-streak-with-an-iphone-app/

<comment><USER2> If it's one thing that constantly surprises me with technology startups, it's how 'niche' targeted startups can be and still be profitable. I would never have thought that 'pick five colours' was a model that would be sustainable/profitable enough to warrant starting a business around.

I suspect the Net played a bit part in enabling this to happen and the continued rise of smartphones and apps is furthering this capability.

<comment><USER3> Had you asked me 6 years ago I wouldn't have thought there was a business in palettes either. But I built COLOURlovers to solve simple problems for creative folks? What color should I use for this? Does this color look good with that one? ...It was just a small idea for some creative folks I knew to play with... and it organically grew into the site it is today.

Had we raised money out of the gate on the premise that there was a business in palettes... we probably would have executed differently and killed what we were growing.

Instead it grew naturally and we took guidance from our users, creating new products and services for them. We're profitable because we're lean and don't need a lot of the large expenses some other founders have to deal with. This has been our greatest asset as we built COLOURlovers.

Now, we have a thriving community of people, a solid amount of traffic and a business model that doesn't take anything away from the experience our users love and use.

And another point about niche... when the whole world is your audience, even the most obscure interests can find a sizable market.

<comment><USER4> "Had we raised money out of the gate on the premise that there was a business in palettes... we probably would have executed differently and killed what we were growing."

What was your reasoning for joining YC after you already had momentum?

<comment><AUTHOR> Darius actually wrote a blog post about our reasoning: [http://whoabubs.com/should-we-do-ycombinator-were-further- al...](http://whoabubs.com/should-we-do-ycombinator-were-further-along-t)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think COLOURlovers is the only YC company that I can say I had heard of / often visited before they were part of YC.

Are there any other companies that were reasonably successful before starting in YC?

<comment><USER6> Why did any of them take YC money? Seems silly.

<comment><USER3> This is why: [http://whoabubs.com/should-we-do-ycombinator-were-further- al...](http://whoabubs.com/should-we-do-ycombinator-were-further-along-t)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I didn't know ColorSchemer was their product. I love that app.

Great job, fellas.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Daniel, much appreciated.

We (COLOURlovers & ColorSchemer) actually merged up in summer '09 before doing YC last winter.

<comment><USER8> How do you reconcile the different spellings? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a battle every day :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I had no idea colourlovers is a YC startup.

I love the site and show it to designer friends all the time for colour inspiration.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wow great job Guys, in business since 2004 wow that is quite some time. Let me guess without the YC seal there would have been a NO from Techcrunch, good move Colourlovers!

<comment><USER3> We've been covered on TC before we did YC... but what is one of the most valuable things about the YC experience is the connections you make and the network you leave with. We actually met Jason at StartupSchool this year and told him about what we were working on... It was that meeting and that set this article up.

YC is just an experience, it's up to the founders to make it a great one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I recently released a similar Android app called Color Scheme Magic. Its mainly a suggestion tool for colour schemes and there's no social element. Admittedly its features are somewhat lacking in comparison, but then there are few, if any, Android alternatives (and mobile apps are more of a hobby for me than a revenue stream).

Its interesting to know that with more resources at hand, a simple idea like this can scale well.

</comment><comment><USER12> While I understand that ChromaOm can be profitable and even make its founders a tidy sum, I wonder why YC invested. In what way does this company have the potential to become huge? Colour schemes are always going to be a very narrow niche, and I can't quite see how this would turn into even a $10m company, let alone a $100m one...

Then again if YC invested, pg and the rest of the panel must see something I'm not seeing...

</comment><comment><USER13> Hah I just used this for colors on a graph. Excellent little app.</comment>


What Successful People Do With The First Hour Of Their Work Day - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3000619/what-successful-people-do-first-hour-their-work-day?goback=.gde_37888_member_154739793 <comment><USER2> > Robbins suggests setting up an "Hour of Power," "30 Minutes to Thrive," or > at least "Fifteen Minutes to Fulfillment."

If I don't have time for that, can I try "5 minutes of self help drivel"?

<comment><USER3> No. It's neither an alliteration nor a rhyme. 5 minutes of jive might have worked a couple of decades ago. Five minutes of fail? not bad, just doesn't sing though.

I think my fave is a half kilosecond of life cheapened.

<comment><USER2> If I were Robbins I'd start my day looking in a mirror and laughing myself silly for 10 minutes about how much money I'd made spouting this nonsense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > [I ask myself] "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do > what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too > many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Really? If today were the last day of my life I'd do things very, very differently - I can't imagine that answer _ever_ being "yes".

<comment><USER5> I have two tattoos that I got in response to an extremely close friend getting shot and killed by his father-in-law after being threatened by him for quite some time. It was a child custody dispute (long backstory), but the threats were if he didn't drop the lawsuit (? not sure what the word is for the trial to get custody from someone) he would kill my friend and my friend's wife (the murderer's daughter). My friend refused to on the principle that he could never let someone like that have custody of a kid. My friend was killed two days after the judgement giving him and his wife custody.

The tattoos are on my forearms and say "love life" and "embrace death". It's the inevitability of death and living your life in a manner that at the moment of your death, you can look back and be proud of the decisions you made. It doesn't mean live today as if it were your last, it means live it such that if it turned into your last, you have no regrets. And if you have any regrets in your past, fix them.

It quickly became second nature to consider all decisions on this axis, and if the result of a decision made you regret it, fix it quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "If something urgently needs my attention, someone will call or text me."

this probably works when you're the CEO/founder. when you're not, you probably don't want a reputation as "the guy who never checks his email" ...

<comment><USER7> I really think it would be hard for anyone to notice you and glorify you with a reputation as the "guy who never checks email before 9am". That old quote .. 'no one thinks about you as much as you do' comes to mind. He just said give it an hour, not forever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's reasonable as advice, but as an empirical answer to what successful people do with the first hour of their work day, I'd be interested in some less-anecdotal data. Are these five really representative of what successful people do with the first hour of their work day? I suspect that they aren't, and that if you did a proper survey you would find more boring results, e.g. a lot of successful people spending their first hour at work checking and responding to email, in meetings, etc.

</comment><comment><USER9> Interestingly there seems to be a recent trend of not being a slave to your email, twitter, FB, etc. I suppose people are starting to realize that urgent things don't necessarily come from these mediums and as much as we have come to rely on them, they provide us with more noise than useful data.

I've been trying to check email twice daily at scheduled times and respond to emails in "batch" instead of as they come in. It's definitely increased the number of "concentrated" hours I put into a task.

<comment><USER10> It's a wild guess but I am pretty sure that this "trend" always makes a come- back at the end of holidays or vacations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can't help but wonder what happened to "Shit, Shower, and Shave".

<comment><USER12> There's an app for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think the real key here is _focus_ ... Meandering on Twitter for your first hour isn't going to get you anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER14> What SOME successful people happen to do with the first hour of their day. Correlation != Causation.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've been trying hard to apply the "don't check e-mail/FB/Twitter/HN/etc until 11am" rule.

In my expericence, the later you open that gigantic can of worms, the better off you are. By far.

</comment><comment><USER16> I love the juxtaposition of this post with the one that currently follows it on the front page (at least for me): <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4453030>

</comment><comment><USER17> This is very, very debatable. Solid product ideas come from cross-pollination of existing ones. How do you get existing ideas in your thought stream if you do not getyour inputs right? (in this case, email/twitter/facebook)

<comment><AUTHOR> The article doesn't say that we should never check our email/twitter/Facebook. It is about structuring and scheduling your day right from the start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> You could also add 'reading HN' to e-mail / twitter / facebook. HN can be dubble as addictive due to the good comments. You now want to read the articles and the comments.

</comment><comment><USER19> Not checking email first thing is really hard to do! I manage to do it (just) but it requires an immense amount of discipline and easy to slip back into bad habits.

<comment><USER20> Its not a bad habit. A whole army of blog posts have spawned around this fallacy which annoys the hell out of me.

It works for some but a lot of people rely on email as a primary communication medium. You just look like an asshole to your customers and colleagues.</comment></comment>


Morris Worm Decompiled (1988) - <AUTHOR> http://www.foo.be/docs-free/morris-worm/worm/

<comment><USER2> Excerpt from the Wikipeida article about the worm's author:

 _Morris is an American professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He co-founded the online store Viaweb, one of the first web-based applications, with Paul Graham._

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tappan_Morris>

<comment><USER3> He also wrote a good chunk of the code you used to post this comment.

<comment><USER4> <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rtm>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks like it's not the original source code and was just reconstructed by hand from a disassembly/"decompile" of the worm.

<comment><USER6> Just out of curiosity, what makes you think that?

<comment><USER7> The comments, mostly. For example:

        object objects[69];				/* Don't know how many... */

        /* This report a sucessful breakin by sending a single byte to "184.108.40.206"
         * (whoever that is). */

        /* This appears to be a structure unique to this program.  It doesn't seem that
         * the blank slots are really an array of characters for the hostname, but
         * maybe they are.
         */

        /* There are pieces of "stub" code, presumably from something like this to
           get rid of error messages */

<comment><USER8> >>(whoever that is)

Berkeley, apparently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If anybody's curious: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Worm>

<comment><USER10> More hilarious, though, is the local news coverage of the event: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2i_6j55bS0>

<comment><USER8> I love the taglines (somebody make this movie!):

"The students were safe. Their computers weren't."

"The suspect, somewhere, a dark genius."

"I suspect it's an 'A' student. A good 'A' student."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Don't forget his father Robert T. Morris Sr., who wrote the passwd program for Unix and worked at the NSA when the worm got loose.

</comment><comment><USER12> This isn't the actual source code. As far as I know, only a small piece of the real worm's code ever got published, and that was in the Cornell Report, Cornell University's post mortem. This isn't the code in the Cornell Report.

Someone in 1989 or 1990 ran an ad in the back of "2600" magazine, selling the source code on paper. I bought a copy back then, I can remember the date because of the apartment I was in when I read the code. I think the "2600" version is the same as this one, but with someone different header comments.

I have a copy of this code from a tar archive with date of 1991-06-05 on it, so it's been floating around the Internet for almost 20 years at this point.

</comment><comment><USER13> @gnosis and sparky,

text offsets are also put in comments next to the function declarations. For example: "h_clean() /* 0x31f0 */"

<comment><USER14> @tylernol: you know this is a threaded conversation forum, right? Click "reply" (right under the comment you want to discuss) next time, and your comment will be nested properly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder how he devised (or found) the list of potential passwords (cracksome.c.txt)

</comment><comment><USER16> according to legend, this was supposed to be merely a proof of concept, but a bug in the code caused it to replicate uncontrollably. does anybody know what that bug was?

<comment><USER17> > _The worm could have determined whether to invade a new computer by asking > if there was already a copy running. But just doing this would have made it > trivially easy to kill; everyone could just run a process that would answer > "yes" when asked if there was already a copy, and the worm would stay away. > The defense against this was inspired by Michael Rabin's mantra, > "Randomization." To compensate for this possibility, Morris directed the > worm to copy itself even if the response is "yes", 1 out of 7 times.[2] This > level of replication proved excessive and the worm spread rapidly, infecting > some computers multiple times. Morris remarked, when he heard of the > mistake, that he "should have tried it on a simulator first."_

-<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm>

<comment> m-photonic "One in seven?! rtm, you jerk! Why seven?"

Excerpted from the book _Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier_ (published 1991). The quoted speaker is Paul Graham.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> tar ball <http://www.foo.be/docs-free/morris-worm/worm-src.tar.gz></comment>


Does anyone know where I can find these posters? - tangent-man https://duckduckgo.com/?q=HTML+Javascript+poster&t=ffnt&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fc1.staticflickr.com%2F1%2F227%2F493356088_8fff2959a0_b.jpg <comment> tangent-man Hi, I wonder if anyone might know where I can purchase these posters. I think they might be perfect for me at the moment!

(Apologies if this isn't the correct place to post this question) ..

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Every trace leads to [http://www.mitchj.info](http://www.mitchj.info) but from there the trail goes cold...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [http://onlineresize.club/pictures- club.html](http://onlineresize.club/pictures-club.html)</comment>


Serverless Development with Serverless Framework - <AUTHOR> https://thecloud.christmas/2019/9 <comment><USER2> _" With just a small yaml file, two functions and some shell commands, you suddenly have an API which autoscales automatically and you only pay when the API is in use. I think that's pretty cool!"_

I am always puzzled about this "autoscale" thing on a cloud.

If your task can be represented as something like calculate sum of some ginormous array then sure. Split array in parts and launch thousand instances each working on it's own slice and then combine.

In way more common situation you have a service hitting database and doing something with it. Sure you can spin a thousand instances of said service. But they will all be hitting the same database. So in reality I think the only really scalable part here is the database. And scalability in databases has no universal solution and the ones that exists come with the load of caveats.

I think unless you operate on FB/etc scale the simplest and cheapest solution would be to buy/rent nice piece of hardware yourself and place database on said hardware. That should give you a nice run for your money and free you from bazillion layers of abstractions, dependencies, etc. that often tend to fall apart.

<comment><USER3> Autoscaling is a very particular solution to a very particular problem. Being a startup is like trying to make a hit record: everyone wants to become an overnight success. Nobody wants to be an overnight success and then have to turn customers away, or give out a bad impression because their site can't cope.

So a lot of effort goes into producing a site that _could_ be "Facebook scale" if it became necessary. Although since this is difficult (and expensive!) to test, it's likely that some panicked manual intervention will be required if it does take off.

It's really worth asking "what is the cost of scaling" next to "what is the cost of NOT scaling, and what are the chances of it happening?". Is your _organisation_ even able to benefit from rapid scaling - would it be profitable? Or are you going to end up like that luggage company screaming at its customer service reps to work dozens of hours a day?

If your cloud hosting cost goes from free-tier to $100,000/month in one month, and it's real traffic, is your business actually going to be able to pay that invoice?

Is the static overhead of scalability better for your use case than what a normal PC is capable of, which these days can be quite a lot: [https://adamdrake.com/command-line-tools-can- be-235x-faster-...](https://adamdrake.com/command-line-tools-can- be-235x-faster-than-your-hadoop-cluster.html)

(Been thinking about this since I mentioned the SRCF earlier, which was a single-server host for years: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21741789](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21741789) )

<comment><USER4> Cost is a very important factor... But you focused on the high cost end..

The cost of running a production server is something small startup businesses need to budget for... And you don't want to run your production website on a 5-10/month shared server. If you design for the cloud/serverless, you can get your costs down to near-$0 for light usage... But yes, using things like lambda mean a possible bill shock if your traffic grows faster than your income can recover it.. but if you have an advertisement on the page, it probably will cover the execution cost if it's lean enough.

In another example, I inherited a CICD pipeline that cost $300/month and could run 2 of our larger test suites simultaneously.

I converted this to AWS Spot instances and now support thousands in parallel and I pay under $170/month ( [https://ldoughty.com/2018/01/gitlab-multi- runner-w/docker-ma...](https://ldoughty.com/2018/01/gitlab-multi- runner-w/docker-machine-and-spot-instances-for-much-cheaper-ci/cd/) )... But to your point about "what if" costs of this, yes, there's a limit on place for this setup so it can't go over 20 or so... And it is important to consider the impact of auto scaling with regards to the bill... For a small business, AWS effectively doesn't have a way for you to really stop "Bill attacks" or legitimate high traffic on API Gateway/Lambda short of you taking down your site.

My recommendation is: ideally, don't expose something that costs you much too run unless you can recoup the cost from that action (paying customer, advertising).. your homepage should be static or cached in a CDN until you're ready for that large bill.

<comment><USER5> Please research opportunity cost. The total time you spent to optimize the service was probably in tens of hours.

Multiply that by the amount of money you cost your employer per hour and you'll realize that your "optimization" actually resulted in a net loss.

<comment><USER4> I'm fully aware of opportunity costs, the investment was made because an investment needed to be made regardless to stand up 2-3 more servers. Doing so would have raised costs to perhaps $400/month if we simply copied existing setups (plus 2-3 days of work, probably, since we had not revisited CICD in over a year)

So by that, I've saved $5,000 in pure server costs. It probably cost me 10 extra man hours to do this way... But I also resolved a bug that was not terribly worth fixing before but took up 30 minutes of time every few months.. and improved the security by taking the servers off the public web.. however you want to quantify security improvements.

I always look at opportunity costs and the automation cost/benefit! The article was researched and written on my own time for my own enjoyment (so this was actually "free" from a business perspective, but my responses factored it in as if I did it as paid work. Just clarifying in case someone wants to claim I'm publishing "work"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If anyone wants to hear about how the Serverless Framework is being used to power a RESTful API for a project, I just put out a podcast episode today where I talked with someone running it in production on AWS.

We went into the details on how a bunch of different Serverless tools and services come together on AWS to serve a RESTful API. The episode covers the development process, the deployment process, pros and cons of Serverless, prices and many other topics around running a Serverless stack with Golang.

That's at: [https://runninginproduction.com/podcast/6-qvault-is-an- open-...](https://runninginproduction.com/podcast/6-qvault-is-an-open-source- tool-to-manage-passwords-and-crypto-keys)

There's also descriptive clickable time stamps every 30-60 seconds out of the 55 minute show so if you want to skim around, go for it!

<comment><USER7> I really like your podcast features, especially the summary notes with bookmarks to the specific timelines.. saves tons of time to get an idea of the podcast in advance and see if it's interesting to me. Please add a sign-up page, or at least a newsletter sign-up so that I can be alerted to the new podcasts.

<comment><USER6> Thanks. Those show notes take a long time to make (I do them manually).

As of right now there's no newsletter but if you have an RSS reader there's a feed at: [https://runninginproduction.com/podcast/feed.xml](https://runninginproduction.com/podcast/feed.xml)

That RSS button is up top next to all of the podcast buttons.

I will add a newsletter at some point. The podcast is very new still, so I wanted to gauge interest a bit before setting up the infrastructure for supporting an email list. It completely tanked when I posted a Show HN about it the other week, so I don't have a ton of guests lined up but it's something I for sure want to pursue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice proof that serverless might be great for projects with a couple of endpoints.

In real life projects, you get a ton of YAML spaggetti boilerplate code and when you hit the endpoint limit on your deployment you will need to start splitting your code over multiple deployments. Compare this with other frameworks where you can actually program your URL router (Django, Rails & co) and it's definitely a step backward.

When you've past the PoC stage, DynamoDB is the first thing you want to replace with PostgreSQL because you need data integrity and migrations. But that's not your only problem ....

When endpoints depend on each other, then it becomes pretty tricky to deploy, cause you'll need to wait until your first endpoint is deployed before you can deploy your second endpoint. So, you're out of the nice "immutable image deployment" paradigm, which means that your frontend code will have to support both old and new versions of each endpoint, just like your backend code will have to support both old and new data structure versions in DynamoDB, as the deployment of a chain of endpoint will take a while and will not be done atomically. This will slow down development velocity for sure.

If you intend to make a real life project live over many fast iterations, then isolating yourself in a proprietary framework like serverless is the last thing you want to do in my experience.

So yeah, for a two-endpoints "Hello World" project where autoscaling is valued over iteration speed, then serverless and dynamodb might be a solution to consider, as long as you're willing to isolate yourself in proprietary frameworks.

That said, you can have autoscaling with iteration speed using open source frameworks anyway (ie. with GKE) so why bother with serverless at all ? Anything you can do with serverless can be done better with k8s and any actually powerful framework such as Django, Rails, Dancer, perhaps even Laravel, CakePHP or Symfony if PHP is your thing.

But let's face it, 99.999% of projects don't need more than 99.9% of uptime which is extremely easy to achieve with a single dedicated server, which gives you a lot of hardware for cheap (unlike AWS). Once you've outscaled a RAM128GB dedicated server then it's time to consider extracting parts of your app into something like serverless.

<comment><USER9> Regarding programmatic endpoint handlers, these solve completely different problems. Different to the point that there's no reason that you can't employ one on top of the other.

When you start hitting endpoint limits there's a very strong sign that you've had responsibility creep for a microservice, or even worse you're treating your serverless deployment as a monolith.

Your insistence on integrity issues with DynamoDB is also strange. Religious adherence to ACID is not going to be your silver bullet for application design. Learning how to reason about distributed systems and their eventual consistency is necessary to begin with in most cloud setups.

Anything you can do with serverless can be done better with k8s? Cool, have it provision my underlying infrastructure

<comment><USER8> The thing is that a lot of times serverless is mentioned as "the future", most people I've seen understand "silver bullet": [https://aws.amazon.com/fr/blogs/apn/serverless-containers- ar...](https://aws.amazon.com/fr/blogs/apn/serverless-containers-are-the- future-of-container-infrastructure/)

As for provisioning, I mentioned GKE already, but I can throw in some more:

[https://www.scaleway.com/en/docs/get-started-with- scaleway-k...](https://www.scaleway.com/en/docs/get-started-with-scaleway- kubernetes-kapsule/) [https://www.ovh.com/world/public- cloud/kubernetes/](https://www.ovh.com/world/public-cloud/kubernetes/) [https://github.com/bbelky/hkube](https://github.com/bbelky/hkube) [https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/kubespray](https://github.com/kubernetes- sigs/kubespray)

<comment><USER10> "Religious adherence to ACID is not going to be your silver bullet for application design. Learning how to reason about distributed systems and their eventual consistency is necessary to begin with in most cloud setups." So you just X10 the development costs for no good reason. Also as a user of many FANG services that are using eventually consistent stores color me unimpressed by the user experience. Considering that a startup or even a F500 company has a pretty low chance of hiring people of the same caliber as those systems were designed by this is nog a good solution for 99% of the projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Since I got to know CDK[0], I prefer it over serverless. It's supported by AWS, too. It can deploy your lambda, or it an just generate a Cloudformation template - these 2 covers the most important features of serverless that our team uses.

[0][https://github.com/aws/aws- cdk/tree/v1.18.0/packages/%40aws-...](https://github.com/aws/aws- cdk/tree/v1.18.0/packages/%40aws-cdk/aws-lambda)

<comment><USER12> I like Architect serverless - [https://arc.codes](https://arc.codes). A .arc file is way less boilerplate than a serverless.yaml and it outputs full CloudFormation. Also has awesome async middleware (heads up I wrote the awesome async middleware).

<comment><USER13> I've used Up [1] before but this looks even better. Thank you for the recommendation!

[1] [https://apex.sh/up](https://apex.sh/up)

<comment><USER11> Cool fact: this was created by the creator of Express and Koa! [https://github.com/tj](https://github.com/tj)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've used Serverless framework a bunch. I'd never deploy to Lambda without it. It's far better than eg. Zappa which only supports Python. Would highly recommend it to anyone writing for serverless services :)

<comment><USER15> Serveless is the reason why I learnt js. It's that good.

<comment><USER16> That's pretty positive to serverless, as most of them time people learn js because they are into web development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Nice to see somebody's finally trying to add a layer of abstraction on top of the many proprietary serverless function SDKs <3

<comment><USER18> It's not a layer of abstraction any more than Terraform. You can't just take your functions and port them without changes.

Besides, you can easily do all of your configuration in the web console and export a SAM CloudFormation template for your CI/CD pipeline.

As someone else mentioned, there is also the CDK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Here is my take on serverless in general:

Ups: Low cost of development. / Only billed for function executions. / Minimal DevOps. / Automatic scaling. / Private functions.

Downs: Vendor lock-in. / No persistent connections. / Expensive. / Limited programming language availability. / No local state. / Shared runtime. / Local debugging is harder. / Cold starts.

I still recommend Heroku if you can live with the costs, but I like where Firebase Functions is going.

If you are interested, here is the full writeup:

* [https://github.com/soygul/QuanticDev/blob/master/articles/se...](https://github.com/soygul/QuanticDev/blob/master/articles/serverless.md)

* Video narrative & examples: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kqk013ioclA&t=12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kqk013ioclA&t=12)

<comment><USER20> Lists like this make me feel like I have a fundamental disconnect with serverless. I've yet to experience this low cost of development. Granted, I have a fair bit of sysadmin experience. But, with serverless it feels like I'm trading general system knowledge for arcane provider knowledge.

I tried for weeks on nights and weekends to get anything beyond a simple todo app running with AWS Amplify. I kept running into issues with DynamoDB or AppSync or Cognito. Every time I tried to do something even remotely off the beaten path (e.g., sorting todos by creation date rather than by DynamoDB's non-deterministic sort), I had to tear the whole thing down and start over.

I tried to use the serverless tool, but couldn't even really tell how to get started. They usher you along a sign-up flow before you can even try anything. And a lot of the documentation is just a weird mix of sample projects in various languages.

I eventually gave up and just went back to using Heroku for now and will probably land on a DigitalOcean droplet. I really wanted to like serverless, but it wasn't saving me any time and scaling isn't a concern for a side project :-/

<comment><USER19> Having used both AWS Lamda + DynamoDB and Firebase Functions + Firestore, I would say Firebase is much much simpler than AWS anything and documentation is just excellent. However Firestore has major restrictions and is ridiculously expensive.

I guess great open-source starter kits still didn't catch up to serverless stuff so it makes jumping in a bit harder. And yes, the restrictions all need workarounds for now. But every year I check serverless stuff, it gets better. I guess it is just not there yet at the moment.

<comment><USER21> Did you try FaunaDB by any chance? I'm interested in how people who have worked with DynamoDB and Firestore would perceive FaunaDB once they get started. Imho it's is the most serverless database on the market at this point due to features such as: pay as you go, distributed, strongly consistent, security model and their API. When I started using it a while back it didn't feel limited to me at all. (Disclaimer, I have started to work there in the mean time)

<comment><USER19> I didn't. I briefly checked it out while researching new scalable databases but Fauna looked so young so I didn't dig deeper so I cannot make a comparison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I thought serverless was great until i wanted more than a handful of lambdas and an API.

Terraform or cloudformation are not difficult to learn. I sunk way more hours trying to bend my architecture to serverless, while with CF i still use the 8 templates i wrote 2 years ago with minimal changes

</comment><comment><USER23> Just write your own node project and deploy it on heroku if you want autoscaling

One routes file is infinitely easier than dealing with an _abstraction_ over API gateway across multiple environments

Scripted "cloud formation" for your MVP? Just skip it

<comment><USER24> As someone migrating from Heroku to AWS right now, I LOVE Heroku, but the cost is killing me.

<comment><USER25> I know Heroku is built on top of EC2 instances so there's a limit to how low their prices can go, but as EC2 prices go down, it doesn't seem like Heroku has changed their prices at all.

Heroku's lowest priced professional tier (Standard) is $25/mo for a $3.50/mo EC2 instance. I know they do a lot of value-add which is worth paying for but yeah, it's still crazy expensive. Elastic Beanstalk gives a comparable function for just the price of the EC2 instance itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> .christmas ? What's that?

<comment><USER27> I was curious about that too--apparently there's a '.christmas' TLD, and a company named "Bekk" is making programming-blog-advent-calendars for Christmas.

From the bottom of [https://thecloud.christmas](https://thecloud.christmas) :

> Bekk is all about craftmanship and the people crafting it. This year, we're > creating 12 calendars, each with daily content, articles and podcasts.

It made me think that we were being hit with a bunch of blogspam, but the content appears to be original and decent quality.

<comment><USER28> We are genuinely not trying to spam anyone, just in the mood of sharing knowledge through small daily blog posts in 12 different areas throughout December :) You can see the 12 advent calendars at [https://bekk.christmas](https://bekk.christmas) and a blog post introducing the concept here [https://blogg.bekk.no/introducing-bekk-christmas- ad01660ccad...](https://blogg.bekk.no/introducing-bekk-christmas-ad01660ccadf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> PSA: Unless you're working with peer-to-peer networking technology, please don't use the term "serverless". There's still a server there and you know it, and the term is just misleading and confusing.

<comment><USER30> You're about 3 years too late, that train has left the station.</comment></comment>


What Socrates really said about knowledge - <AUTHOR> http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-06-25.html#feature <comment><USER2> <<Εν οιδα οτι ουδεν οιδα>>

if you read it in the original Greek, you don't fall in the trap the author fells. And although there is a wise contradiction showing Socrates wisdom, what you can also intrepret is that if you don't know nothing then you know everything.

</comment><comment><USER3> Upvoted more for the site then for the article. Loved the climate change issue I found in the archives.</comment>


Cat's eye (road safety device) - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%27s_eye_(road) <comment><AUTHOR> This may be of interest given the discussions of self-driving cars and road safety in general.

It's also interesting in purely engineering terms as a fantastically elegant design. Not only does it withstand being driven over, being driven over actually triggers the self-cleaning mechanism!</comment>


The Lost City of Heracleion - <AUTHOR> https://daily.jstor.org/the-lost-city-of-heracleion/ <comment><USER2> This article is light on content and even lighter on photos. I poked around for some better articles, and there are some out there, but I didn't find anything worth linking. I'd love to see an extensive article from National Geographic.

<comment><USER3> The British museum had an exhibition called "Sunken Cities: Egypt's Lost Worlds" which included Heracleion. There is a book about the exhibition available and the BBC made a documentary which is available on iPlayer (for those with a TV license in the UK)

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04lss20](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04lss20)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I saw artifacts from this city in an exhibit, "Egypt's Sunken Cities". It's pretty awesome. They go through the rituals and celebrations each day for a festival for Osiris that was celebrated in the city, and later show the cultural exchange and syncreticism between the ancient Greeks and Egyptians.

<comment><USER5> it's a very good point that is lost or buried in 'the west' (e.g. anglophone world) that greek-egyptian connections have been present and fairly strong for centuries and millennia and continue to this day

<comment><USER6> > the west' (e.g. anglophone world)

hmm... just for clarity for a non westerner, is Germany and France not part of the default West, as they are not anglophones?

<comment><USER7> Has Germany ever been truly part of the West?

[https://www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/reb-23043](https://www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/reb-23043)

<comment><USER5> I'd say yes: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire)

also, this was misphrased on my part. I started to mean 'the west', but realized I could only speak to my experience of perceptions of greek-egyption relations in 'the anglophone west' and mis-parenthesized the west as anglophone only.

the above article is good at pointing out that central / continental perspective of the last several hundred years is or has been different from that in the low countries + uk (and it's offshoots).. but seems to ignore the historical background of this w/r/t the protestant reformation (see HRH link ^); prior to this, 'the west' was western christendom, and the general alliance of the same countries generally continues today in modern post- enlightement/secular form (EU/Nato).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google senior execs getting 30 percent raises - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-20022729-265.html

<comment><USER2> It's totally normal for a CFO to get $20 million in stock, but shocking news when an engineer gets $3.5 million. How much longer will that last?

<comment><USER3> It will last as long as the CFO is in the room when that decision is made and the engineer is not. (Psst: there is a fairly straightforward way to make sure you are always in the room when compensation decisions are made.)

<comment><USER4> By owning the company or getting elected to the board?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Increasing employee pay is a bandaid on the real problem. Googlers think there are more interesting places to work. Not even a pay-raise, or a free massage can change that.

<comment><USER5> People leaving for potential higher pay (IPO) says more about those people than Google not being an interesting place to work at. Nothing that facebook has recently done that suggest to me that facebook might be more interesting place to work at.

Facebook and twitter might have the "momentum", but they are on a niche (social) thats unstable at best. Google on the other hand is not only on several stable niche, but they are trying new things all the time.

People who are leaving for facebook/twitter are riding the horse while its still fat. Nothing more, nothing less.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree, they are chasing/riding the "momentum" wave. But as you said, Google has stability. That includes structure, process, bureaucracy. A big piece to these departures is - "Employees are tired of that bureaucracy."

<comment><USER6> Facebook is getting pretty big not to though, they are either going to run into the same bureaucracy or start seeing more issues with bugs being introduced. I have to say I much more frequently see bugs/ half deployed features popping up on Facebook than any of Google's core offerings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The real question - how many Googlers leave each week? What is the employee turnover?

We know about the high-profile exits, but I'd be interested to see how many middle and lower level employees are leaving.

<comment><USER7> From the last quarter's numbers the overall headcount is up, they added the talent from the metaweb, on2, slide (Levchin and co.) and ITA when that passes through, and the other 36 talent acquisition they did this year. If some long time employee wants to try something new or join a pre-IPO startup that is normal, but since the Lars departure everyone got ultra-hyperbolic about the whole thing, casting every bounce or raise as some sort of desperation rather than an award after a decent financial year.

My point being that departures are normal, but as Google is a high-profile company, and a great link bait, people start reading too much into these stories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't think I've seen the same degree of this with Microsoft before. Is the difference that FB and Google are both in Silicon Valley and so there's very low friction moving from one to the other?

<comment><USER9> Excellent point. Back during the 1990s and the dot com boom Microsoft couldn't compete at all with startups, but moving to the Valley was a big barrier to a lot of people.

More recently a lot of Microsoft people have gone to Amazon or Google (which has done a lot of hiring in Seattle and for a while was aggressively recruiting MS folks) ... it'd be interesting to see how the numbers compare with FB/Google crossover.

<comment><USER10> I'm sorry, but the notion that Microsoft "couldn't compete at all with startups" back during the 1990s is ludicrous. For everyone who doesn't remember the bad old days, they _were_ huge competition.

<comment><USER9> i'm sorry, badly phrased by me ... i meant "couldn't compete on compensation".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sorry about the meta-comment, but this is seriously the top story on HN? What is this, Valleywag?

</comment><comment><USER12> It all seems like chump change when compared to the holdings of the CEO and founders (according to the article they hold over half the stock). Google is in amazing entity when you think about that. The smartest people in the world work their asses off, and over half of that value goes to 3 people. The ultimate pyramid scheme ;)

<comment><USER13> A cynical individual would describe most companies this way. On multiple levels: Founders work hard, and 30% of the value goes to VCs. First employees work hard, and founders get 60% of the value. Interns work hard, and first hires get 10% of the value.

It's the way of the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ahhhh.. so now we know more about why the rank and file got 10% raises across the board last week.

</comment><comment><USER15> On the one hand, this isn't so crazy since employee pay makes up a much larger portion of expenditures than executive pay, so there's a lot more headroom for raises to the latter. On the other hand, executives make a lot more money to start with so the same percentage of raise translates to a much larger increase in pay so this is hardly "fair".</comment>