Employee at early-stage SF startup. Should I stay or should I go? - <AUTHOR>

I've been working here for 8 months, leading design & product. We're a 15 person team, VC-funded (raised an A round a few months ago for $2 mil). We aren't anywhere near profitable (hardly any revenue) - to the point that performance / greater responsibility isn't being compensated with cash because "we can't afford it right now".
To be fair, I've been told that no-one is getting cash increases. I was given extra equity, but that means nothing to me.
I like my job but feel like I could be making more elsewhere. Am I being a spoiled brat? At what point is it time to jump ship? <comment><USER2> No one should work at an early stage startup with the expectation to make a high market salary or get regular raises in the early years. Not that a startup should pay like crap (or they won't exist long), but usually you work at a startup because you believe in the idea, team and feel you can help make it real. The payoff for you is in the equity turning into real money after some years of work, but that money can really be life changing if you are in early enough with enough equity.

There is nothing wrong with admitting that it isn't for you and you'd rather work at a more mature company. It is whatever works for you, but just recognize this is what a startup or really any young business is generally like. If you don't think equity is a good reward though, I think your answer is clear, move on.

BTW -- I don't think you are a spoiled brat, but you are figuring out that this just may not be for you. And if you figured this out now, its your cue to move on likely. Or accept that equity is the reward and jump on the bandwagon to make it super successful so you and the team can get the satisfaction of making something cool and hopefully the monetary rewards.

</comment><comment><USER3> _I was given extra equity, but that means nothing to me._

If you don't believe in the equity, then the answer is immediately: Yes.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. The reason to be at such a place if because you believe in the product, you are excited by the growth and by the ability to have real influence on the product. You believe it's going somewhere. If this is just like any other job to you, then yes, move on, you are in the wrong place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It sounds like it is still pretty early in the game ($2 million A round, 15 people), so lack of profit shouldn't be an issue (did you mean revenue?). If you don't feel like the business will be on the path to success (equity means nothing) or you are not willing to take the risk, then you should quit today and just go work somewhere that pays more and is stable (BigCo). If you feel like the potential upside from equity say 5 years out is worth the tradeoff in salary now, then you should stay.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we're generating about $1,000 per month revenue.

Given the funding in particular, I expected there to be room to move in terms of my salary & I'm disappointed that there isn't right now. Is 'we can't afford it' an appropriate response at this stage of the company?

<comment><USER6> Just do the simple math. Your company received $2mm months ago and has 15 employees. This is ~$134,000 per employee for a year. We'll imagine they will push towards a Series B round within 12 months. They are receiving $1,000 per month in revenue. I'll assume you mean gross revenue here, net would be a different calculation entirely.

With that math in mind, imagine the salaries, benefits, employer paid taxes, equipment cost, and office (per employee). Assuming that is 100% of their costs (we didn't even talk about infrastructure costs, marketing, accounting, legal and the meriad of other costs associated with running a startup), does this add up to more than ~$134,000 per year per employee? I would imagine the answer is yes. So, yes, they can't afford to give you more. Frankly, they can hardly afford the employees they have now. In my view, that's a really tight budget.

What should you do? Well that is a really personal question. If I were you, I would decide if you would like to stay or not, but don't blame them for being good at figuring out the math of the situation. They are on a shoestring budget, I have zero doubt of that. I would most certainly tell you that "we can't afford it" right now, if I were them.

Now, if they are making $1,000 per month net revenue, then they are profitable. That would be a different situation entirely and they could actually give you more.

<comment><USER7> Net revenue isn't operating income - it does not include engineering or administrative expenses, where as net income does. So even with net revenue, they would not likely be profitable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A 2 million round for 15 people seems very sparse. That's either an incredibly short runway or you're all working for peanuts.

Keep in mind that your equity is 90% likely to be worth nothing, so you should value it at 10% of its face value, if that. If they're expected valuation is <20m and your equity is less than 1%, you're basically being scammed.

</comment><comment><USER9> Start looking around. It doesn't hurt to look.

Also, it sounds like the startup will be deadpool in a year. Better to look now while you can patiently shop around, than wait til the end.

If the startup fails, the equity is worth $0. If you start looking, you'll get an idea how much salary you're giving up.

</comment><comment><USER10> "I like my job but feel like I could be making more elsewhere."

Most likely you can be making more elsewhere. You're not a spoiled brat, you just need to figure out what's important for you right now and get in an environment that can give it to you. There's day to day and the big picture to consider. Money is definitely a part of what's important for most people, but it varies, same with autonomy, chemistry with your team, liking the product- every big thing about a job.

Definitely look around, someone with design and product experience can find another job right now in the Bay Area. You might find a better fit.

</comment><comment><USER11> A few other things to consider:

Are you learning new skills or honing your current skill set? If so is that worth the time to stay?

Are you increasing your network by being with this company?

I would value those two points more than a pay increase, but I'm also rather new to this industry. It's hard to quantify these things and weigh the opportunity costs but it's something that I consider when I look at my job.</comment>


Why Don't the Poor Rise Up? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/opinion/why-dont-the-poor-rise-up.html <comment><USER2> I think focusing on income disparity or income growth over time is missing the point. I personally would rather be making 100k today than 100k in the 1950s. Hell, I think you'd be better off making 50k today than 100k in 1950s.

Many people in the lower or lower-middle class don't feel that they are really that bad off, despite what charlatans go on about. Sure, everyone complains that they don't make enough money or they work too hard, but that's not unique to any particular socio-economic class.

As Andy Warhol said:

"What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it. "

<comment><USER3> Andy Warhol's quote is misleading by using only a single example.

How about luxury cars? Multi-million dollar homes? Lobster and steak at a 5-star restaurant? $200,000 _dresses_? $14,000 jewelry? Affording a personal makeup artist?

Is the average consumer drinking some Henri Jayer or Domaine? No. They aren't drinking $5,000-$15,000 wine.

On another note - I had no idea there was a bottle of wine worth more than my _car_. That's a little depressing.

<comment><USER4> I've had the opportunity to taste from a $500 bottle of wine. It it not substantially better than a $30 bottle. Same with a $150 steak vs. a $50 steak at a good restaurant.

<comment><USER5> Hosted some guests the other night and made steak. They were amazed by how well it tasted. I took that as a compliment, because they regularly eat luxurious and expensive food (they work high up in the Cruise Line Industry.) Was asked what I put in the steak to make it taste so good.

"Salt."

<comment><USER6> I've had the same thing (although not with people so experienced with the stuff as you). It's kind of funny how badly people want to season their steaks when it just doesn't need it.

"How do you make that?" "Salt, cook one side, cook the other side, serve."

<comment><USER5> Yeah. Dry-brined the meat for 1 hour with kosher salt and then washed the steaks right before grilling. Seared both sides for a minute a piece, then cooked rest over low temperature. It was surprisingly good, even to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "According to the Census Bureau, 64 million Americans currently live in the bottom quintile."

Given that there are 320 million Americans and 320/5 is 64, yeah, that statement is mathematically true...

<comment><USER8> Perhaps this should be understood as "You already know, or have been/will be convinced by the rest of this article, that in the current world, life for the bottom quintile of Americans is not great. To give some sense of perspective on just how many people suffer from the problems currently afflicting the bottom quintile, that's a full 64 million people whose lives are not great."?

<comment><USER9> I agree. As posted here, out of context, it sounds silly. But in context:

"For those in the bottom quintile, household income in inflation-adjusted dollars has dropped sharply, from $13,787 in 2000 to $11,651 in 2013. According to the Census Bureau, 64 million Americans currently live in the bottom quintile."

Seems like a perfectly reasonable statement.

<comment><USER10> You're right, but still funny that the author feels the need to invoke the Census Bureau to back up that piece of arithmetic.

<comment><USER6> It's strange wording. It would be a lot smoother stated like, "According to the Census Bureau, there are currently 320 million Americans, which means that 64 million live in the bottom quintile." They ultimately mean the same, but one version takes a lot more effort to decode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Let's rephrase this question: Why do people remain on the roadways during traffic jams? Why don't people drive off the road and use the shoulder to get around stopped traffic?

Why don't people with off-road equipped vehicles just drive thru others' yards to get around traffic blockages?

Why don't we treat automobile traffic and congested roadways as damage and route around it?

</comment><comment><USER12> I've gotten a lot of hell for saying this but the poor don't rise up because the floor in the United States is typically not starvation. Social services are not to help the poor, they are there to make sure the floor in the US is high enough that the poor don't rise up against everyone else.

<comment><USER13> I think the poor don't rise up because they don't have time. When they aren't working/taking care of children they are probably relaxing. Ironically, poor people value their leisure time much more than rich people I would argue.

source: hanging out with broke artists for years

<comment><USER14> >>Ironically, poor people value their leisure time much more than rich people I would argue.

That's because people tend to value things that are scarce and hard to get. Leisure time is something rich people have in abundance, since the vast majority of their wealth comes from land, properties and stocks, and they don't really have to work to maintain any of it (other people do it for them).

Whereas if you're poor and are working three different jobs to make ends meet, then you are going to appreciate those 2 hours on Sunday that you get to spend with your family.

<comment><USER13> Agreed. I would also add to your analysis by talking more about what I have witnessed firsthand hanging out places like development projects with subsidized rent.

I have found that if you are a low income worker, you likely don't have the time/energy to build skills necessary for getting a "real" job.

Furthermore, many low income jobs are during evening hours/don't let you interact with people that you could leverage to get a real job. As a result of this everybody you know and are friends with work low income jobs, leaving little hope for personal networking into a higher-paying "real" job.

Considering all of this, I have witnessed many situations in which people are dishwashers working just enough hours to qualify for subsidized housing/foodstamps/other gov cash. These people oftentimes smoke pot/hang out all the time and their life is actually pretty nice, save fancy vacations and other frivolous luxuries.

I am not saying this is good or bad, but I just wanted to shed light on the fact that there are many poor people with plenty of highly-valued leisure time. These people have no intention of getting a higher paying job because it is much easier having 15k of w2 income washing dishes 30 hours a week with some cash-labor work on the side + gov benefits.

MANY of these "poor" people bring in 1-2k/month selling pot and other things on the side as well. It is EXTREMELY common.

Kind of rambling but I find "poor" people economics very interesting.

<comment><USER15> given that the bottom quintile is by definition the bottom quintile, what kind of lifestyle would these people lead in your ideal world?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Way to overlook the glaring, obvious, collective action problem.

All political power, even that of a dictator with an army of henchmen is held as the result of a game theoretical equilibrium.

<comment><USER17> Genuine question. Can you give me an ELI5 version of your statement? I don't quite follow the point you're making.

<comment><USER6> The short version is:

If you stand up and rebel individually, all you accomplish is getting thrown in jail.

If a million people stand up and rebel one after another, all _they_ accomplish is getting thrown in jail.

If a million people stand up and rebel _together_ , only then do you accomplish anything.

Getting a million people to rebel together is really hard, because each one is fearful of running into one of the first two situations instead.

<comment><USER17> Ah yes. That completely makes sense. I have been thinking this separately already. Thank you for explaining it though. I appreciate it. More to the point I agree with you.

<comment><USER16> Regarding the second part of the statement...

Take Kim Jong Un. He holds considerable power, yet he is probably not particularly physically strong. Of course, he could use a firearm, but even then, he would be fairly easy to stop. However, he has body guard. Besides loyalty, a good reason for these body guards to obey his orders is that otherwise they will be arrested and executed. The people carrying out the arrest will also act on the same incentives.

In the end, there is nothing intrinsically powerful about Kim, there just happens to be a complex meta-stable equilibrium of incentives which gives him considerable power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think the more pertinent question is: Why don't the poor vote? Voting rates in the US are highly correlated with income levels. Apart from blocking obvious attempts to disenfranchise the poor (such as unnecessary voter ID requirements), one solution might be to make the election day a national holiday.

<comment><USER19> But many of the places the poor work (retail, restaurants, etc) are open all year round. It's mostly office workers who get a three day weekend to celebrate George Washington's birth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Because those who fret over the poor never likely were that poor themselves. You would be surprised at the contentment you can have when you make very little as long as the basics are there, a roof, water, food, and TV. Been there done that.

Seen it too in my professional life when I was doing work for a rent a cop place. I remember the amazement at the low pay that we paid a good many guards; being responsible for payroll programming it was a never ending struggle to make sure you had it all correct. Still the majority of them I met in my working career there were just fine, some thought it funny they could get paid to sit in a booth all day let alone be given a uniform.

The media needs truly mad people, politicians need them, and regardless of how well both segments try to create them they cannot even make people mad or storming the walls even with calls of racism.

Some of this has to do with the fact that people want to fix things and not burn it all down to do so. We have matured past that point, namely because even the poor have a lot to lose now. Old days if you were poor you might not have much more than what you were wearing so where was the value in that, today you might have a home, a nice phone, even a ratty car, but they are yours!

As for OWS, the reason it died out so fast DESPITE the "intense" media interest was because it was fake, unlike the Tea Party which in many areas is still as active as day one, OWS was manufactured, made for media, and not some ground swell of people who truly wanted to change things and put effort towards that.

</comment><comment><USER21> "This is a world in which the neoliberal ethic of intense possessive individualism and financial opportunism has become the template for human personality socialisation. This is a world that has become increasingly characterised by a hedonistic culture of consumerist excess. It has destroyed the myth (though not the ideology) that the nuclear family is the solid sociological foundation for capitalism and embraces, however tardily and incompletely, multiculturalism, women's rights and equality of sexual preference. The impact is increasing individualistic isolation, anxiety, short-termism and neurosis in the midst of one of the greatest material urban achievements ever constructed in human history." \--David Harvey

</comment><comment><USER22> Ah the poor, yes, I forgot about that monolithic entity. Individualism you say? All these poors want to be individuals? Well that doesn't make them very individual now does it?

The ivory tower is a strange place.

</comment><comment><USER23> Because the poor never lead the charge; the middle class do, once their status is sufficiently threatened.

</comment><comment><USER24> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainwashing:_The_Science_of_T...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainwashing:_The_Science_of_Thought_Control)

an epic science book which attempts to grapple with some of these questions.

from the Wikipedia page:

"Taylor asserts that the techniques used by cults to influence others are similar to those used by other social groups, and compares similar totalitarian aspects of cults and communist societies. These techniques include isolating the individual and controlling their access to information, challenging their belief structure and creating doubt, and repeating messages in a pressurized environment."

It's my view that ^ is generally what is at play with regard to the lower and middle classes in the United States.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is what discussions like this remind me of:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmZRLxnXamM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmZRLxnXamM)

</comment><comment><USER26> Why don't the rich rise up? It's not like they can't notice injustice too. Unless they are all evil. Is that the tl;dr? Man that's really stupid, because its really poor thinking, poor thinking that encourages more poverty.

Edit: For example Paul Fussell, a rich kid with anglophilia, rose up and fought in WWII.

<comment><USER27> It's almost as if the rich have other means at their disposal of effecting change in their interests, whether those interests be in the pursuit of justice or otherwise.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which major software companies are unknown to most people? - <AUTHOR> With Zoom having exploded into the public consciousness recently, I'm curious to learn about major software companies that are relatively unknown even within the software industry. <comment><USER2> I feel Palantir is not widely known.</comment>


Realm is a mobile database: a replacement for SQLite and Core Data - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/realm/realm-java

<comment><USER2> I tried adding this to an Android project, but it just caused the app to crash hard. Adds over 3 megs to my APK as well.

<comment><USER3> Quick update, we actually spent some time optimizing the APK size, and we got it down from 3MB to 800KB, trying to get this down even further. You should see the improvement starting with realm-java 0.79

<comment><USER3> … And we just blogged about how we achieved this: [http://realm.io/news/reducing-apk-size-native- libraries/](http://realm.io/news/reducing-apk-size-native-libraries/)</comment></comment></comment>


Rational use of face masks in the Covid-19 pandemic - <AUTHOR> https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S2213-2600%2820%2930134-X <comment><USER2> This was published in The Lancet, which is a well-known and respected medical publication.

IMO, this fact should be reflected in the title. In a time of crisis, it is vitally important to get good information out, and to know exactly where information is coming from.</comment>


How fast can you code this? - <AUTHOR> http://www.mahdiyusuf.com/post/2155460484/math-question-of-the-week This is pretty cool problem, and interesting idea, which programming language can code this the fastest(read easiest) as well as run fastest. As of now python is in the lead over ruby. :) <comment><USER2> His example doesnt even find the sum of all the multiples, it just counts them.

s/sum += 1/sum += i/</comment>


Born to Spend (or Save): It's All in Your Genes - <AUTHOR> http://moneyland.time.com/2011/10/06/born-to-spend-or-save-its-all-in-your-genes/

<comment><USER2> I have trouble agreeing with this for a few reasons. First of all, I've gone through times in my life where I've saved and saved spending very little.

I've also gone through stages where I've spent more than I had.

If it's all in the genes, wouldn't it have to be one or the other?

Why would our genes have a code to buy or spend, which is so far removed from a natural process?</comment>


The number one reason my startup failed - <AUTHOR> http://www.teabuzzed.com/2009/08/the-number-one-reason-my-startup-failed/

<comment><USER2> It's really nice hearing from failures from time to time. These kinds of stories don't often get out, but they're very educational on so many levels.

Especially now when all too many people become so easily enthralled by success stories the likes of Google, Facebook, Youtube, Digg, Twitter, …

It can happen so fast, losing oneself in wishful thinking, losing all reason in the process. I'm speaking from experience, this story really relates to me (although my project isn't as far down the line as yours yet).

If there is something like a Startup Failure Anonymous group, I would like to join it :)

<comment><USER3> The last weeks have actually seen a number of those:

TipJoy:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=776978>

snaptalent:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=768725>

you vs me:

<http://ryanleland.com/2009/08/post-mortem-you-vs-me-com/>

and one more:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=723834>

<comment><USER4> And one of mine from a year back:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=227400>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "So the number one reason my startup failed was: I was distracted by a cool and shiny feature that didn't solve anyone's problem. "

<comment><USER6> IMHO It's not the real reason behind the fail, the real reason is not using the limited resources for gaining a ramen profitable state. If you do not have "unlimited" or more than 6 or so months of funds to run the company you can not play with luxury items. For this particular case playing with a "luxury input style" not any means necessary for the problem or the application. This luxury input style feature is a monster funds eater. May be the application could run on any vps for years for a fraction of the funds the company burned for this monster servers. Some engineering and planning in time could help and prevent this failure.

<comment><AUTHOR> In essence we are in agreement. Better goal planning sure would have helped. It certainly may have kept me focused on my initial goal. The unfortunate reality was that I went wrong very early on in my thought process.

The "cool" feature I wanted to add and implement for the main app should have been filtered out immediately since it did not really add to the core need I was addressing.

That's what I failed to realize. The feature I wanted to add became the main goal and the main solution took a backseat. From that point forward all my thought processes were biased relative to implementing this feature. This of course is what I believe was the single biggest reason that led to its failure.

Who knows if I would have been successful otherwise. Maybe.. maybe not... It might not have been the next digg or even close to that but I'm sure I could have gotten to ramen profitable state. I will make a second attempt soon, minus the shiny features this time...!

p.s. Purchasing the servers was besides the point. I should have never even gone that far. I never would have purchased them had it not been for that feature.

<comment><USER6> I'm sorry for your failure. But it's a win situation for you, a costly one perhaps. For your next try you will be wiser. Any sane man reading this will be. Thank you for sharing this event. I think it must be hard to admit failures.

Better luck for the next run.

Also would you like to share more about your situation after the failure? Your economics, how you handled failure in psychological sense? Your relatives reactions etc?

If it's rude to ask i'm really sorry.

<comment><AUTHOR> No problem at all fsniper..

I'm an eternal optimist so I don't suffer from having failed. It makes one feel alive actually.

Economically I'm wounded but still alive and healing. Without being too specific I am 10s of thousands in debt because of my failed startup but not all is lost. There is a lot of reusable code and designs for the second time around =)

My family and friends understood when I told them what had happened. I have pointed them to this article actually.

My situation now is revving up for round 2..! ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> His first point _"iPhone app development is not trivial._ " can be shortened to _"development is not trivial."_

A lot of people, including me, have made the mistake of thinking that creating the product is simple but fail to realise how much work debugging, polishing, designing etc. is. The devil is in the details.

<comment><USER8> That is so definitely true. You dont know how many people i am working with at the consulting company i work for that would say ...

"why is this vendor charging X millions for this crappy software, i could have done this as a uni student" the software may be _crappy_ but they dont realize the amount of work that goes into getting the application polished, having correct messages for all actions and making it generally user friendly. Also the fact that it does the job that someone needs done is why someone is willing to pay X millions for it.

The devil is definitely in the detail ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> We went through a very similar phase for our startup which is also about developing iPhone/desktop/web apps. We have a lot of shiny features in our apps like syncing across platforms, real time percentile scores, meetup features, turning the iPhone screen into a scratch paper etc., most of which are useful but given the fact that we were bootstrapping, got us into a deeper and deeper hole. If we wouldn't have found an awesome developer we would have to end our startup too.

Good luck for your future endeavors. You have learnt a lot from this. Don't be disappointed and keep trying.

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate that. I am already in the process of trying again.

I think I also found an awesome developer to help out but I just directed him the wrong way.

The problem was I didn't find a co-founder, a person that could share the business and funding responsibilities with me.

Why..? I don't know. There were one or two people that came close but I knew I wouldn't work well with them. It's very important to work well with whoever you partner with of course.

Ironically the people I felt I could work well with didn't really fit the bill in terms of programming ability or skill sets...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Awesome read!

We're dodging this problem by shelfing most so-called shiny features till we are making money. Thing is shiny features can be really useful--but once they take off, you are too busy maintaining them than figuring out how to make dollars that will fund the shiny features.

In some cases the shiny features and the $ makers are not mutually exclusive and there is definitely a lot of gray.

</comment><comment><USER11> My impression is that the main reason of your startup failure is that it ran out of money. It seems you have a valuable product in your hands and a potential for a successful startup, since you had significant user interest when the application was free.

If you manage to provide the service and run your startup at the cost of a reasonable fraction of your salary, you would never meet this "end of money" wall and your startup could run forever.

So first, check out to cut the costs to a minimum, eventually offering a more modest service, especially if it's free. User will understand this, as they will understand that an extended service would require sharing the costs of hosting. You should then make sure the benefit compensates largely its cost, from the user perspective of course.

You wrote that there was no need for such service. How do you know ? The users could come up with a usage, and thus a need, you didn't thought out before. This is what you can gain from offering the service for free. Collect feedback and suggestions, you might find gold gems and perls in it.

The freemium model would make sense, if you can keep the cost of free service to a minimum. It is preferable, if you can manage it, to provide the service without depending on fixed amount of investment money that will be running out soon or later. You can achieve this by reducing the cost to a reasonable fraction of your salary.

That's the plan for my startup. I will start by hosting the service at home and thus without hosting cost. If there is income, and its progression ensures break even may be reached, then I'll invest in the next step, and so on.

The trick is to make an investment only if a positive money flow balance is restored shortly after it, progressing by steps, minimizing the risks of "end of money" failure. With this policy, your startup can only fail because of bad luck, like being hit by lightning for instance.

</comment><comment><USER12> There's a lot to be said for having users pay real money right from the start, no matter how minimal your service, as a way to avoid getting seduced by cool but unmarketable features.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I can't stress that point enough. Just get enough core features in your software, get some half decent design for it, and start selling..!

You can always improve incrementally but even just signing up a handful of payers in the beginning at a discount is huge. It proves that your idea is something people are willing to pay for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It just appeared to me that perhaps you should have tried delegating the speech recognition to the iphone app. That way you would just be dealing with transcribed text which would have been much less of a load on your servers.

Anyway, it was nice to be reminded that features are always secondary. Hope you do better on your next startup.

<comment><USER14> On-device speech recognition is harder, works less well, is more expensive, and is generally not the usual approach. If you need network connectivity for your app, it's usually simpler and better to send off the audio.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I can testify to that.

We tried on-device speech rec. The unfortunate barrier to entry for this technology is something called Acoustic Models which are basically normals data collected from voice sampling. The bigger and better your AM, the more accurate your speech rec. A good sized AM could be gigabytes worth of data and we're just talking about US English.

Not only that but the actual recognition itself is pretty intensive CPU/memory wise. Sure you can have local speech rec as Apple does on the 3GS but that speech rec is pretty constrained: only having to recognize several hundred contact names or song titles and even then has a hard time. Try loading up thousands of contacts or songs on your device and see how well or consistent it is.

At any rate, AMs are like gold and pretty much all of them are proprietary. Ever think why Google offers a free 411 service..?? They want to build out their proprietary AMs.

So you either have to make your own AM - very hard to do - or roll with an existing solution, most of which are server based. I used Lumenvox (lumenvox.com) since they seemed to be the most developer friendly and were a pleasure to work with. The Dragon guys would sooner compete with you then sell you a product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> nice to hear such a story, indeed they don't come out often... i recognise the focusing on feature thing. I and some friends/colleagues built a few years ago a website were musicians could record online video jams, someone recorded a video, another one another and in total 4 streams were recorded and played at once split screen. It worked great and some great tunes were recorded. But it also didn't provide a solution to a problem and the project is dead now, dead pool oww yeah. We didn't invest any money in it, only lots of time, so nothing to worry about. When I have a little new project in mind, I now know I have to think if it fulfils a need, most of the time it doesn't and then it's very difficult to let that idea go. About my project: hey I learnt a very important skill and he will also! Failure makes smart!</comment>


Local Discovery is Broken - <AUTHOR> http://blog.urbantag.com/post/5433065365/urbantag-three-reasons-local-discovery-is-broken How three design flaws with current LBS platforms are hindering the development of a great tool for local discovery. <comment><USER2> Not sure I'd like to work at a company that requires their interface designers to be lickable. I'm sporting a playoff beard at the moment and don't even find myself lickable, never mind going to work every day worried that someone feels the same way.

Also, why hypothesize problems without providing an inkling of the solution? Is urbantag to be a socially graceful, incentivized LBS where users can control their data? I'll hold back until they clear that up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the thoughts - We'll share more about our solutions as we approach our launch.

Also, Playoff Beards rock; perhaps the word lickable is a bit over the top...

<comment><USER2> Keep us posted. I'm always interested to see what people are doing in LBS besides selling out.</comment></comment></comment>


1000Memories (YC S10): The Internet Adds New Dimension to Grieving Process - <AUTHOR> http://www.siliconvalley.com/ci_16278589?IADID=Search-www.siliconvalley.com-www.siliconvalley.com&nclick_check=1

<comment><USER2> I don't like the emphasis these companies place on "forever". To me, the tragic part about death on the internet is how confusing and muddled the _event_ of death is. We leave behind aliases and loose ends in several different communities. We die in the middle of a rapidly accelerating digital life process.

Facebook et al. will have to develop serious policies of death eventually. Someday a third of their users will be dead-- someday the _majority_ of Facebook users may be dead. I think there's space for a web service that lets you compose your last words on these platforms, to be delivered programmatically through APIs and other means in the event of your death. Last emails, submissions, status updates, etc. A "Goodbye World" script, so to speak. To depart deliberately, gracefully (or maybe, explosively!) from our many virtual lives.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's an interesting thought how mourners may want to continually visit the webspace (Facebook page etc) of the deceased, while blocking it from the broader public. Perhaps people will start consciously creating 'dead-space' online to leave behind when they die. I imagine things like 2nd Life already encountered this (I recall a moving story about a terminally ill mother who left behind Harvest Moon presents for her kids, who didn't realize till later cause they'd stopped playing the game), but it could go even further. It could become a custom to create a sort of online world and fill it with things that are quintessentially _you_ , and then after you die loved ones can access it (and maybe interact) as a memorial.

<comment><USER4> Here's a link to the moving story you're thinking of: [http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2007/11/animalc...](http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2007/11/animalcrossing.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's a nice piece by the Merc -- glad they discovered you guys! Congrats Brett. It's just too bad so many journalists start by default with the "how this new thing is NOT Facebook" angle. I'm guilty of it myself, of course.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, wade!</comment></comment>


Robert Stone's Bad Trips - <AUTHOR> https://newrepublic.com/article/157573/robert-stone-madison-smartt-bell-biography-book-review <comment><USER2> Thanks for this. Never read any Robert stone but will now.</comment>


Is PHP Dead or Alive? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@PurpleGreenLemon/is-php-dead-or-alive-611ae8e7e6e3 <comment><USER2> Yes.</comment>


Massive List of Programming (and other freelance) Specialties - <AUTHOR> http://freelancecollege.com/massive-list-of-freelance-niches/ <comment><AUTHOR> If you have questions about how to pick a freelance specialty please let me know. Hopefully, this list will give you some ideas if you are stuck.</comment>


An IDE as a packaged Chrome app - <AUTHOR> http://samrat.me/blog/2012/08/an-ide-as-a-packaged-chrome-app

<comment><USER2> I started working on something like that, a text editor based on Ace (the text editing component from Cloud 9) but with Dropbox sync (actual sync, so it works offline) a few weeks ago (mostly for my Chromebook, and Cloud 9 sort of requires you to install Node which poses some difficulties on a chromebook). <https://github.com/antimatter15/cloudfall>

</comment><comment><USER3> So... Cloud 9? <https://c9.io>

<comment><USER4> Is this ide very popular? I have never heard from anyone who's really used it enough. I have some experience with just the Ace editor, and found it to be great. But c9 itself felt slow and uncomfortable.

<comment><USER3> It's been trough a huge rewrite, and tere are a large number of plugins now. The hosted version of it comes with a VM, so you can run any server side thing you normally would.

If you haven't tried it lately, how it a go. If you have, and it is still slow, open up a bug ticket and help make it better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Light Table won't ultimately be in the "browser" - it will be in a wrapped webview. The experience on mac right now is that you have a standalone app just like you would with sublime et. al. Once we get some time, the same will be true for linux and windows :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Along a similar line, I'd love it if I could run an IPython Notebook instance in a packaged app for either Firefox or Chrome. There's a lot of little annoyances to using the notebook interface in my main browser, like having my notebook tabs mixed in with my general browsing tabs, not having a separate entry in my Alt-Tab list, etc. Using something like Prism and its modern descendants would help make IPython that much better, IMHO.</comment>


Oracle employees walk out over Ellison's Trump fundraiser - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/report-300-oracle-employees-walk-out-over-ceos-trump-fundraiser/ <comment><USER2> I don't think many people with strong moral-tech compasses join oracle, so the small walk out sounds about right.

When I worked at Oracle no one I interacted with even knew about the shady stuff oracle has and is currently doing. (Except for casually joking about Larry's eccentric billionaire faults).

</comment><comment><USER3> "Oracle now says this was an accident. According to a spokesperson, the site was temporarily flagged by anti-virus software but was whitelisted once the issue was noticed."

stuff like this makes my blood boil. it's obvious that this is just a legal defense, but it feels so insulting to the reader/listener.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have a hard time reconciling working for Oracle/Ellison and being that sensitive to ethical issues.</comment>


'DeepSqueak' helps researchers decode rodent chatter - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190107142221.htm <comment><USER2> I think this is pretty impressive on all accounts. I'm also wondering is DeepSqueak is a play on DeepSpeech. I'm kind of hoping it is - the thirst for knowledge is reminiscent of a mindflayer. Anyways, thanks for sharing!</comment>


Ask HN: Is an AI CS degree worth getting for an SWE with 10+ years experience? - <AUTHOR> (Note: I asked this yesterday and it got deleted for some reason, so I am trying again).
I have been an SWE for about 10 years, in my early 30s now. I make good money in this profession (in Europe). I have a bachelor's degree in Computer Science.
I am wondering if now is a good time to get a master's degree in CS (focusing on AI). I have taken lots of AI courses on Coursera and can build neural nets to accomplish non-trivial problems, but my AI foundation is not great.
The reason I am conflicted about a degree is because I am not sure if my work post-degree would actually change or if it would truly open more doors for me. I even work at an AI-focused company, but the AI "thinking" work is always outsourced to researchers/Ph.Ds in the field.
My job as a software engineer is to be an executor/implementer of the models they come up with. If I had a solid grasp of AI, but remained a programmer, would my job prospects change? To be clear, I do not want to become a researcher -- I prefer the software side of things.
But I don't know what an SWE with a solid AI foundation even works on. How is the work different from that of an SWE without the AI foundation? <comment><USER2> Just keep working. Masters programs suck anyway --- the only things that really make a difference are a) time, b) conversations with peers, c) conversations with an advisor. When you're 22 a PhD is a reasonable deal to spend 4 years to get this. When you're 32 it's a significantly crappier bargain.

If you get good at designing the models, your results will speak for themselves, and it won't matter whether you have a certificate saying you can design models. Likewise if you're actually bad at something you're supposedly certified to do, I think that's actually worse than not having the qualification at all!

The simplest thing to do is just pick a problem with a decent dataset and work on it. Either build the model from scratch, or if you prefer to use a library, make sure you're compiling the library from source. You want to make sure you can change arbitrary things --- don't just use an API.

If you're interested in NLP, I can suggest a number of things you might work on for spaCy :). For instance, I'd like to have a sequence-to-sequence lemmatisation model. This will take some experimentation, but the basic idea should definitely work.

If you need any more convincing not to do a masters...Really think about what that will involve. You'll go to lectures. You'll get _homework_. You can do better than that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your response. I tend to what you are saying by my actions (not getting a degree), but I wanted to make sure I wasn't just convincing myself it would be a drag to go back to school.

I agree with most everything you said, but somewhat confused by "When you're 22 a PhD is a reasonable deal [...] When you're 32 it's a significantly crappier bargain," because I'm just rearranging years of my life, right? I mean, a 22 year old who had the possibly to enter the workforce also had an opportunity cost, albeit lower than mine now. Is that the intent?

<comment><USER2> Education is always more efficient when you're younger. Imagine the limit: if you have five years until retirement, spending them on training won't maximise your earnings!

There are roughly 45 years in a career. If you do a PhD at 32 you only have about 30 years to exploit the degree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There are roles called Machine Learning Engineers/Research engineers. The work does require enough background in ML; as in it is non trivial to implement an algorithm, consider approximations while scaling without knowing how the math works.

Although, you might be able to get away with not knowing recent ML work by having a solid education in linear algebra, probability and statistics.</comment>


Computer programmer: one of the largest gender wage gaps among all professions - <AUTHOR> http://www.siliconbeat.com/2016/03/23/gender-wage-gap-tech-professions/ <comment><USER2> As usual in these pay gap discussions, I see nothing about aptitude or capability. Until all factors are addressed, it's a non issue with me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Many IT titles are fluid. I've been a: Computer programmer, software engineer, software developer.

Right at the bottom it states:

"Software Engineer: $0.94"</comment>


Ask HN: What is your suggested bash shell aliases for Linux? - <AUTHOR>

I was looking around for some useful bash shell aliases for Linux and thought that best place to ask this kind of question is HN.<p>Thank You. <comment><USER2> It really depends on what you're looking for (more towards development or sys admin stuff?)

I started out with [http://dotfiles.github.io/](http://dotfiles.github.io/) and then populated a Git repo from there.

Personally, I have things that make it easy to apply patches, create diffs, change to frequently used dirs and the likes.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have a bunch of operating system and distro-sensitive aliases for installing, removing and upgrading software using whatever package manager the system has: [https://github.com/eudoxia0/dotfiles/blob/master/home/.shell...](https://github.com/eudoxia0/dotfiles/blob/master/home/.shell/sys.sh)

</comment><comment><USER4> Personally, I use `.` as an alias for a very flagged `ls`, and `..` as an alias for `cd .. && .`. It clobbers the existing `.` but it saves me a good bit of time navigating directories.

</comment><comment><USER5> alias please='sudo $(history -p !!)'

<comment><USER6> you can use: sudo !!

<comment><USER5> Well yes, that's just expanded in the alias. I just find please more polite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> rm as an alias for rm -i ;)

</comment><comment><USER8> v for vim

l for ls -ltr</comment>


Starting A One-Man Software Company - <AUTHOR> http://littleisv.com

<comment><USER2> I love your candidness in your post. I think many hackers will immediately relate to the things you're feeling, myself included.

A note on co-founders, partners and others: I think a lot of times a second pair of eyes can really help, someone you can bounce ideas off of, etc. Sometimes all it takes is a fresh perspective on your problem to really get past the hump, and that's where a co-founder can really shine. Keep that in mind as you charge on, best of luck.</comment>


Ask HN :: Android + GAE + "C-Block" -- Has Google already won the "mobile phone wars"? - <AUTHOR>

(please refrain from any Star Wars "Clone Wars" references with what follows...)
No doubt we are familiar with the "OS/Desktop Wars" that prevailed during the 80s.  And of course there was the "Browser Wars" of the 90s.  The 00s saw the "Search Wars" and it's clear who won here.
I'm betting that Google has already set the stage for the "Mobile Wars", and it's arguable that it might have already been preemptively won.  If you combine Android, GAE, and the recent spectrum bidding Google has been involved with, it seems to me that Google has brilliantly staged the ultimate coup - well ahead of any battle taking place.  Now anybody can combine the ease of use of creating an application on Android, along with the ability to (theoretically) scale gracefully through GAE , and then have the application widely accessible through the C-Block.
Any thoughts?
EDIT: changed the terse geeky headline to something more digestible... <comment><USER2> The C block is Verizon's, so it will have no effect on AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile customers.

It's not a given IMO that Android will take off quickly. The market for smart phones (iPhone/BlackBerry) is small, and Android may not work well on cheap phones. But maybe the cheap phones won't participate in the "mobile war" (whatever that is) because those customers only use voice, SMS, and ringtones anyway.

Let's say Verizon has 30% market share and 20% of their customers have smart phones and (magically) all those phones run Android; that's 6% of the total wireless maket (by volume).</comment>


Top Concerns When Choosing a Tech Stack for Your Personal Website - <AUTHOR> https://formcake.com/blog/top-concerns-when-choosing-a-tech-stack-for-your-personal-website <comment><USER2> Despite being a full stack developer, I am extremely tempted to use a website builder and a template for my personal site rewrite next month. I have so much work to do on my side hussle (a game) that it's just not worth it to polish everything up with fully custom everything. Honestly, my main worry is that future clients will judge me for this</comment>


People increased Facebook usage after Cambridge Analytica scandal - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/people-increased-facebook-usage-after-cambridge-analytica-scandal-2018-5 <comment><USER2> This is an example of deceptive journalism where the author fits the facts to suit the narrative. That Comscore chart tells me that Facebook has actually fallen from its peak in 2015 and is only slowly making its way back to its former glory. The Deutsche Bank chart is even more suspicious and looks like it was drawn up by my toddler. And look at that photo of a smiling Zuckerberg. This is an article paid for by sell-side analysts.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder why this happened.</comment>


A Comprehensive Overview of AMD's Current GPU Pipeline - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mf5xbaU3FdE <comment><USER2> NerdTechGasm has always been my go to for hardware info and news. Nice to see a new video being released after a 5 month hiatus.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think he's definitely one of the best channels right now for well researched information within the hardware industry. If you haven't yet, I also recommend checking out AdoredTV for similarly well researched content. I recently came across the channel, and have to say that the quality is definitely on par.

<comment><USER2> I've been watching Adored for a while now actually. Yes, both channels have been outputting consistently good videos since the beginning. If you liked NerdTech, you 100% will enjoy Adored's style of content.</comment></comment></comment>


Sublime Text 3 From Scratch - <AUTHOR> http://pluralsight.com/training/Courses/TableOfContents/sublime-text-3-from-scratch <comment><USER2> "You are currently not signed in. Please sign in to access subscriber-only content."

How do you watch these videos without a signup?</comment>


High-cat diet: urban coyotes feast on pets, study finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/12/protect-your-pets-cats-make-up-one-fifth-of-coyotes-diet-in-los-angeles <comment><USER2> It's funny how many people don't seem to understand that coyotes, owls, hawks, and other predators live in cities. I had a cat taken by a coyote last year, and I live in the middle of Houston. I've had multiple cats taken by owls over the years, as well.

<comment><USER3> My college buddy had kittens taken by racoons in a partially built out suburban subdivision yet persisted in letting his cats out. I'm sorry for your losses.</comment></comment>


Dick's Sporting Goods to immediately stop selling assault rifles in its stores - <AUTHOR> http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-dicks-sporting-goods-assault-rifles-20180228-story.html <comment><USER2> I believe they did the same thing after Sandyhook. Then quietly 9-12 months later they started stocking them again.

<comment><USER3> You raise an interesting point. Their press release claims that they had removed assault-style rifles from all DICK'S stores after the Sandy Hook massacre and that they are now removing them at all 35 Field & Stream stores.

[http://pressroom.dicks.com/press-information/media- statement...](http://pressroom.dicks.com/press-information/media- statements.aspx)

But if they just renamed the store and started going back on their promises, that is bad.</comment></comment>


Postbox email client - <AUTHOR> https://www.postbox-inc.com/ <comment><USER2> I used to love Postbox until the latest 6th version.

It may be a bit faster but extension support was completely removed and there are also no ways to add (or hack in) a calendar (which could previously be done by adding a permanent browser tab pointing to Google Calendar). They also seem to have done something to the 5th version that prevents me from adding my calendar back, which I found out after downgrading from 6.

On top of that, the new design has terrible legibility as most dividing lines that gave structure were removed, contrast was reduced across the board and every single icon seems to have been given an exceptionally bright and completely random colour.

I would be so happy if anyone knows of a way to add a calendar back into Postbox 5 (be it tab with Google Calendar or Lightning).

I've since moved to Mailbird but that client doesn't even allow for emails to be moved between accounts. There are no alternatives to Postbox 5 that come even close imo.

<comment><USER3> I was surprised not to see a calendar when there's basically every other feature.

It seems like they don't want postbox to take any parts from Thunderbird, but it's clearly based on it.

So maybe it will be intruded in V7 as an upgrade.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is a $40 one-time fee sustainable? Newton Mail had a $50 annual subscription fee, and it recently had to shut down. Does anyone know if Postbox monetizes your email data (like Edison mail)? I'm seeing the following in their privacy policy:

"As part of this use of information, we may provide aggregate or anonymous information to our partners about how our customers, collectively, use our Services. We share this type of data so that our partners also understand how often people use the Services, so that they, too, may provide you with an optimal online experience. Again, Company never discloses aggregate or anonymous information to a partner in a manner that would identify you personally."

<comment><USER3> Maybe if they can get people to upgrade yearly to a new version or if this is a single person project.

I wonder if it would still work if blocked in little snitch.

The features are impressive though.

<comment><USER4> The $40 includes all future upgrades.

<comment><USER3> Wow, yeah then i don't see how it could work out

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am currently using Spark (macOS) it works pretty well, except for lacking filters (if subject {x} then move to {y}). Does Postbox support filtering?

Also in my opinion, the overview video is cringeworthy to watch. The customer "testimonials" didn't help me understand benefits and felt over produced and ungenuine.

<comment><USER6> I like Spark but I had some concerns about work email since they store your credentials and process messages on their servers.

I'm also somewhat leery of things being provided free, seems like I'm missing the catch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I haven't seen a XUL-based app [1] in a long time.

It reminds me of Thunderbird. I'll test it out.

[1] [https://pastebin.com/raw/fXyjA6SL](https://pastebin.com/raw/fXyjA6SL)

<comment><USER3> Does Thunderbird even use XUL anymore?

<comment><USER7> Yes it does.

I just installed version 60.2.1 on macOS.

You can see the XUL runner in the application [1].

[1] [https://pastebin.com/raw/vVEyewkj](https://pastebin.com/raw/vVEyewkj)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What is with all these email clients supporting folders but not labels for Gmail. I get that __labels __are not a supported abstraction in IMAP, but they are supported through the Gmail API.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is there a reason why we don't see many hosted webmail clients? Something like gmail but for anything else?

<comment><USER3> It's certainly possible to create something more feature-full than basic webmail, check out [https://context.io/](https://context.io/) it provide email as JSON with advanced Search and filters. Not sure about privacy though..

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> No Linux version? :(

</comment><comment><USER11> apple mail is better</comment>


Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bays-peter-sunde-released-prison-141011/ <comment><USER2> It's pretty rich that almost this entire thread is arguing about the prison not respecting Sunde's vegan wishes and his personal wealth and ideals. There are more than ninety comments here and all of them hang off nearly-dead comments.

The entire point of prison is to suck, otherwise it wouldn't serve its role, which is to deter crime. Louis CK has a bit about this in one of his recent specials:

        ...but we really need the law against murder, for
        one simple reason: the law against murder is the number
        one thing preventing murder. We'd like to think it's
        because "oh, I would never do that," no, it's because
        it really sucks getting caught murdering. A lot. [1]

Debating the prison's respect for Sunde's vegan wishes misses the forest for the trees. Honestly, if that's your biggest concern from reading this article, you have really messed up priorities. How about the fact that he went to maximum _at all?_

Anyway, just an oddly off-topic thread here, thought I'd point it out. It's even more fun because I've been detained, so reading some of the arguments makes it clear that I'm one of the only people with that experience here. Prison's not something you can just try, to see what it's like, so unless you've been there it's usually wise to assume the worst things are true rather than being optimistic about rights and common sense. If one thing is true about detention, it's that rights and common sense don't matter at all when the door's closed and nobody's looking.

Also, welcome back, Peter.

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQUr2RkjykU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQUr2RkjykU)

<comment><USER3> > The entire point of prison is to suck, otherwise it wouldn't serve its role, > which is to deter crime.

Prison serves many purposes other than punishment - one of which is rehabilitation. Making someone's life miserable for several years, purely to punish them, does nothing in the long-run - hence why re-offending rates can be so high.

<comment><USER2> Two orthogonal factors undermine your observation: (1) the prison system is drifting toward private, for-profit prisons, and rehabilitating offenders incarcerated therein would be damaging to the long-term profits of the institution, and (2) believe it or not, a significant number of inmates in the American system do not _want_ to be rehabilitated, which is directly linked to various external factors.

It's easy for those outside America to put the United States Criminal Justice System in a vacuum -- it's happening _all over_ this thread and it's honestly ridiculous -- and try to explain to Americans that strategy A doesn't work because recidivism B, and country C actually tries strategy D so America should implement strategy E, but the fact is that the American justice system reflects a lot of _other_ problems in the United States that need to be addressed. Key among those is a significantly substandard education compared to other parts of the world, especially the oft-cited Scandinavian countries for the purposes of this discussion.

It is my personal experience that rehabilitation in an incarceration setting only works in the majority if the criminal has some kind of education and desire for a better life. Those citing Norway's prisons, have you ever considered that education is better in Norway and most folks don't break bad by default? Norway has the 7th best education in the world. The United States is much further down the list.

Even in minimum, the majority of the people I was in with did not especially mind being there nor look at it as a serious event. "Oh, I got arrested for check fraud again, can't wait to get out and go back to selling meth, much less risky income." To most people I talked to, it was an inconvenience and mild disruption from their life of crime. The hardest of the hard criminals _want_ to be in prison because they can actually have power in several systems run from prison, including an entire infrastructure of gangs.

To be quite honest, I think pointing at American prisons and saying "your job is to rehabilitate" is a nice, ivory tower sort of feel-good explainer for sending people to prison, but the fact is going to prison in the United States is a complete life-ender for "doing good" in almost every case. My felony just fell off my record and even in _this_ industry, I was nearly unemployable -- my conviction wasn't even computer-related, but most people pull a report and see "felony" and discard the entire candidate. Prison is only a portion of the consequences for committing a crime.

Regardless of how you might feel criminal justice should happen, right now in the United States the policy is one of deterrence. Your life is pretty great until you pick up a felony, then you'll spend the rest of your life trying to undo the damage. And, to be honest, I can understand the logic there: your government has an implicit contract with you that the liberties offered and protected by the United States are yours as long as you don't do any of these hundreds of crimes, and once you do, the contract is void. I can understand the thinking that brought us there. I also don't think the failure thereof is necessarily the fault of the system, as criminal rehabilitation absolutely cannot exist in a vacuum of policy. Life isn't SimCity. You can't tweak a "prison life quality" slider and magically fix recidivism. There are other external inputs into that equation and any discussion thereof must include the whole picture.

<comment><USER4> OK, I'll be that guy.

Your tone, knowledge of the subject, and general skill at writing imply you're quite intelligent, so what did you do to get a felony conviction?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Welcome back Peter.

</comment><comment><USER6> >There was no concern for his vegan diet

I can't be the only one that thinks it's ridiculous for a prison to accommodate voluntary diets like this.

<comment><USER7> My vegetarian friends say that they literally can't eat meat any more, in the sense that their stomach physiology (acids? bacteria? not sure) isn't capable of digesting it. Yes, it was voluntary at some point, but it's not clear that you can still apply that label.

As someone with food allergies, I could understand (and be unhappy) if a captor decided to feed me allergens as intentional punishment, but I'd be pretty upset and feel pretty dehumanized if a captor just did so because it was the cheapest way to prepare a meal.

<comment><USER8> "in the sense that their stomach physiology isn't capable of digesting it"

Its a very popular strightdope urban legend discussion topic. You'd die pretty quickly if you couldn't adsorb complete proteins. Astrologically speaking, iron ions from spinach are dramatically different than iron ions from a steak, but your biochemistry won't know the difference.

You can get three interesting effects:

1) Any time you mess with your diet you mess with your gut flora and ... residue. Not to mention the "feel" in your stomach before its all broken down to constituent molecules indistinguishable from plant sources (other than less fiber) So minor tummy ache is theoretically possible. Less fiber intake = less... output the next day, etc.

2) From my M-i-Ls adventures in gallbladder problems, its theoretically possible for vegan types to chug olive oil especially in the form of salad dressing, but to really consume huge quantities of oil/fat all at once you need a greasy triple cheeseburger with bacon. So you can have some bile / gallbladder related fun (whoa I just ate three days worth of oils/greases in one meal, totally freaking out my gallbladder type of reaction). You'll be fine.

3) Psychologically you can get really messed up. Try eating some dog sometime in a foreign country and then focusing on your stomach (assuming you're standard American) is going to be all messed up. Still meat is meat and if they told you it was pork you wouldn't have blinked, but here you are feeling like you're gonna hurl. Its really not as much fun as my description sounds. Think of that soy stuff instead of cows/chicken/fish/pigs/dogs and you'll be just fine as long as you can avoid getting all anxious. Being anxious is never fun, no matter if due to diet or relationships or tiny enclosed spaces or public speaking or whatever.

<comment><USER9> It's actually for the same reason people get sick when the visit countries with poor water quality and drink the water. They aren't used to the pathogens.

Check page 2 of this Consumer Reports article[1] for an example.

 _> Enterococcus was the most common bacterium we found, occurring in 79.8 percent of our samples. Next was E. coli, in 65.2 percent of them; campylobacter, 43 percent; klebsiella pneumoniae, 13.6 percent; salmonella, 10.8 percent, and staphylococcus aureus, 9.2 percent._

It's part of the reason that only some people experience the problems as a lot of it depends on how long you have not eaten meat, at what age you stopped eating meat, the overall strength of you immune system and just if you were unlucky the first time you resumed eating meat and ate something with higher percentage of pathogens present. Also, if you regularly cooked and ate from a kitchen that was mixed use or non meat.

[1] [http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2014/02/the- high...](http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2014/02/the-high-cost-of- cheap-chicken/index.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone know which state prisons have a gluten free option? I need to figure out where to commit my next offense.

<comment><USER11> Sure. If you have celiac disease, try California. Your doctor can write you a note so that you don't have to eat food that could be debilitating or life- threatening.

Simple health issues aside, it's a weird fact I have trouble wrapping my head around that there's an uncrossable chasm between people who think prisoners should be given some measure of dignity and people who find the very idea laughable.

I would just wish for you (and for us all) a moment of vivid imagination and empathy. Imagine that the meat on the menu is dog or cat or human. Not just something you find distasteful, but something that provokes genuine sadness, and whose consumption you don't want a part of. By being convicted of a crime, should you lose the ability to say no to something you find morally unconscionable?

<comment><USER12> The focus on "prison as punishment" for some people seems to also mean "complete removal of any dignity". Prison can suck without forcing people to eat and live against their moral values. Do we really thing rehabilitation works better when we show no respect?

I am a meat eater, but this whole discussion is laughable in many ways. I think veganism is a healthy conviction. Stepping on that is likely to just make people more angry and feel more alienated by the system.

A bit unrelated: Back in the days when I had no money at all I lived on rice, pasta, beans, broccoli, cabbage and an occasional glass of milk for 3 months (meat is expensive, at least when your budget is about 1 euro a day) without getting any notable deficiencies (went to see a doctor when I got money). If you provide means for someone to get B12 and calcium (while serving legumes daily) there wouldn't be much trouble catering to vegan needs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> TIL: Once people have decided that someone is a hero, facts cannot change their outlook. I thought HN was populated by smarter people than that, but I was wrong.

</comment><comment><USER13> Going back to enjoying the off-the records millions made by putting shady ads on thepiratebay.se for 10+ years.

I seriously have a very hard time time to understand the widespread sympathy for this gang. If they would have gone without ads, sure.

<comment><USER14> Running servers costs money. And IIRC they were actually losing money even with the ads.

<comment><USER15> > Although Sunde did not provide Ars with specific financial details regarding > The Pirate Bay's operational expenses, he did argue that the site's high > bandwidth, power, and hardware costs eliminate the potential for profit. The > Pirate Bay, he says, may ultimately be operating at a loss.

Source: [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2008/02/pirate-bay-big- re...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2008/02/pirate-bay-big-revenue- claims-fabricated-by-prosecutors/)

<comment><USER16> Not making money doing something illegal doesn't make it any more legal.

<comment><USER17> Not making money makes it legal in Spain and Hungary for example. US law doesn't rule the world.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Liquid particles in HTML5 - <AUTHOR> http://spielzeugz.de/html5/liquid-particles.html

<comment><USER2> This is a good illustration of how much slower JS/canvas is than AS3 at the moment, unfortunately.

For comparison: [http://blog.inspirit.ru/wp- content/uploads/fluidsolver/Main....](http://blog.inspirit.ru/wp- content/uploads/fluidsolver/Main.swf) \- a much more complicated algorithm running with more particles and additional visual effects, and it runs more smoothly (although admittedly this does use 10-15% more CPU on my machine, still I don't believe the same thing implemented with canvas would run nearly so well).

<comment><USER3> I suspect this is less of an issue with the language (implementation) and more an issue with the fact that canvas is just that: a pixel buffer, whereas Flash allows higher-level geometric constructs which may be rendered more efficiently (batching, only redrawing dirty areas, etc.).

I also wonder if the occasional jerkiness is caused by the fact that setInterval() makes no hard guarantees for call frequency. To compete on animations, HTML canvas will realistically need to provide a guaranteed redraw callback that runs at the same rate as the system VSync.

<comment><USER4> Even Flash doesn't offer hard guarantees of smooth, artifact-free animation. It has a fairly sophisticated timing model, and you can improve your chances with the "direct" wmode (vs. the default "normal"), which makes Flash draw "on top of" the browser instead of "inside" it, but it eventually comes down to the specific platform and drivers, I think.

<comment><USER3> I realise that at that level of abstraction a "guarantee" as such is pretty much impossible, but we don't really want to be writing interrupt handlers in user space. Flash presumably goes to more effort of keeping a consistent framerate, whereas JS's setInterval()'s "not guaranteed" is basically a get- out-of-jail-free card for the browser.

A "I'm done with this frame, please call this function when I can start drawing the next one" function would be a great first step. (As would dealing sanely with off-screen canvases)

<comment><USER5> Well, you can do a setTimeout with just 1ms delay or use window.postMessage when it's available. I must admit though that it is kinda counter intuitive how "swapbuffer()" is called only implicitly when your top level function finishes. But it doesn't work too bad.

I found that the GC is usually not a problem in any browser when you want to animate something smoothly in <canvas>. Plugins in FF (like Firebug or the Echofon Twitter Client), or things like an AJAX request however can result in stuttering animations.

Can you elaborate your statement about "(...) dealing sanely with off-screen canvases"? Do you mean things like double/tripple buffering?

Edit: For the record: the particle animation runs extremely smooth in Safari on my 2 year old Macbook Air. As far as I can tell, Safari on OSX currently has the most "direct" and efficient way to draw Canvas elements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hi guys, I did that demo mentioned above. It's true that Flash is significantly faster. While ActionScript and JavaScript are almost on par in recent browser versions the main difference is the rendering performance. Here's a very good explanation (see the last paragraphs)

<http://www.craftymind.com/guimark2>

It's about retained vs. immediate mode rendering: Flash is frame-based, on each frame code is executed first, display changes are collected, then rendered. With JavaScript each change is rendered immediately which is less efficient, especially with multi-core CPUs.

As for the iPad, this demo here runs slowly cause the iPad is slow. ;-) Native apps run smoothly cause they're hardware-accelerated, but in the browser you notice the difference.

Fyi, did some comparisons a while ago, <http://spielzeugz.de/html5/compare>

Cheers, Dan

</comment><comment><USER7> Am I missing something or is this just Liquid particles in HTML + JS. The HTML5 tag seems to be getting knocked about quite a bit really... someone said HTML5 is the new AJAX and I am starting to agree

<comment><USER8> It's using Canvas, so yes it's HTML5. And even though it's using Javascript, I've always considered that to be the tool you use to communicate with the HTML API. The same goes for CSS to some extent, too.

Anyway, the average joe needs a buzzword to sum up all the new browser advancements. "HTML5" isn't that bad, at least it makes sense.

Unless you prefer 'Web 3.0'? :)

<comment><USER9> It's not just a buzzword. Many of the new features of HTML5 assumes scriptability, so it's perfectly reasonable to refer to HTML5 without mentioning JS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What really impresses me is that even when the pointer is outside the frame, the particles still cluster as close to it as the border allows.

<comment><USER11> That only works while your cursor is inside the browser window though. Outside the browser, it stops following you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a great example of how much better the JS engine is in Chrome or Safari than Firefox. FF just seemed to chug for me when the particles really started moving.

<comment><USER13> It's chunky for me too in Firefox, especially the 'letter' version. Pretty cool, but it's definitely still got a ways to go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> this interface would make for a challenging game, "guide the mass of particles through a machine, loosing as few to wall collisions as possible".</comment>


Mozilla to remove Firefox version numbers - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/internet/92792-mozilla-takes-firefox-version-number-removal-a-step-further

<comment><USER2> I can _somewhat_ see the logic in this. Though I've never understood why the "about" window is the location for updates in the first place (is it because the version number is typically there?).

But removing them means royally screwing bug-hunting. You can't ask them what channel they're on - what if they disabled automatic updates? What if their employer did? You can't ask them what version they are on in two steps (Firefox/Help => About), you'll have to send them... where? Some deep internal about:something page that looks like merely _viewing_ it will destroy your computer, and requires you to type something abnormal? And just _try_ getting people to type something correctly, or explain to them what an "address bar" is. Menus are known and relatively easy to traverse - they're just reading text.

Not only that, but it'll make looking for information about bugs harder too, because people will refer to channels more often, which rapidly becomes out- of-date information with no way to know which version it applied to.

You want to remove version numbers from the notifications about updates? Great! Big numbers aren't awesome for encouraging people to do things. But don't _hide_ the version.

<comment><USER3> The version number is in about:troubleshooting which is in the help menu. And Help|Troubleshooting seems like a much more logical place to go when bug- hunting than Help|About.

<comment><USER4> I think you meant about:support which takes you to the Troubleshooting Information page.

<comment><USER5> Pretty ironic that confusion is brewing even among the technically savvy crowd here. This probably proves the OP's point.

<comment><USER6> No? This is exactly the sort of "pedantry" the average user won't care about -- they just click on a menu item to get there.

<comment><USER5> Isn't TFA about removing the menu item or am I missing something here?

<comment><USER6> The menu item I'm talking about is "Help->Troubleshooting". The change being considered in the bug is regarding the "About" item.

<comment><USER4> They should definitely get rid of about:support then. It's just not consistent from a UI perspective. And yes, like the person above mentioned, if we can get confused about it, an average user will just be really frustrated.

<comment><USER6> "Troubleshooting" takes you to _about:support_ , while "About" is the standard about menu item that pops up version info, credits, and the like.

So clearly! your point about it being too confusing is wrong... =P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why not switch to Ubuntu-style version numbers? If they have to ship multiple version in a month, either include the day in the version number or call it Update X.

Using the date for the version number gets rid of any connotations associated with versioning (a .1 release being smaller than a whole number release, or that Firefox 7 is less advanced than Chrome 15 because its version number is half of Chrome's) while still allowing users to identify what version they're running.

<comment><USER8> How do you use date-based version numbers for planning purposes? Do you have another versioning system just to list what will be included in each release?

<comment><USER7> With a rigid release schedule, it's easy to figure out the release date for a given version. Luckily, Mozilla has already standardized on development cycles of 18 weeks ([http://blog.mozilla.com/futurereleases/2011/07/19/every- six-...](http://blog.mozilla.com/futurereleases/2011/07/19/every-six-weeks/)) staggered to result in releases every 6 weeks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The title (of the blog post, and the submission mirrors that) is misleading.

There's a bug report (OK, so the report was submitted by Asa Dotzler (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asa_Dotzler)>) but that doesn't make it a planned feature quite yet - does it? It appears that it's still under discussion.

<comment><USER10> Asa is the product manager of that feature, so I think it's not a "bug report" so much as a "assign this to a developer" request. Sounded like she just wanted to make sure the translation team didn't have a problem with it.

<comment><USER11> I'm a "he".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't have a strong opinion one way or another about this. On one hand, I am comfortable being able to get my software version number for pretty much any app in a convenient place. On the other hand, the thought that web apps (and perhaps apps in general) could transcend beyond the point where you even have to think "which version are you running?" is really intriguing to me.

Software versions seem like one of the most visible technical aspects of the software these days, and they matter very little to the average user. I think versions become largely irrelevant to _most_ people once their software reaches a point where they are constantly running the latest version.

That all said, what is the harm in having that version number appear in the about window as well as the notification about the latest update. It seems like an odd change for Mozilla to ruffle feathers with.

</comment><comment><USER13> They are removing them because to be at Version 21 next December and still work mostly like Firefox 6 is going to feel silly.

What ever happened to using MINOR version numbers?

Shouldn't Firefox 5 actually be 4.5 and Firefox 6 actually 4.6 ?

What are the huge major changes?

<comment><USER14> What does this gain you? It doesn't matter what the version number is, so why not make it a simple integer? Version numbers aren't a way to communicate feature changes, you do that in release notes.

Your attitude towards version numbers is exactly what this change seeks to eliminate.

<comment><USER15> I actually agree with c2k as major and minor releases do tend to give more information than the integer releases.

I read a post the other week about a corporate user that was giving grief that they had only just finished testing firefox 4 for corporate roll out and firefox 5 had been released.

To corporate users, this situation is a nightmare. There is no clear definition of a major update

I prefer the old release schedule of major.minor releases. I like the rapid development it now has but I just don't like this rapid release version numbering.

On a side note, since Firefox changed the way they were doing everything, I switched to Chrome and so did everyone in my office. None us swayed each others decisions, we all felt the same about Firefox. They have lost scope of what is important, releasing stable versions of software. Firefox 4 was dreadful, 5 was a little better. I feel like there is no effort in making the release stable, it's just "let's sort it in the next one". I feel like they are always going to be chasing their tales.

Before anyone comments, I know Chrome has the same release schedule but I feel they are doing it a lot slicker than Mozilla is right now. Firefox changed the world for me back in 2004 and now they have lost the edge.

<comment><USER16> Before anyone comments, I know Chrome has the same release schedule but I feel they are doing it a lot slicker than Mozilla is right now.

\</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

No, you're right ... the problem with Firefox is that they changed the way the were doing it mid way (which is odd) while Chrome has been doing it like that from te jump

</comment><comment><USER17> From marketing point of view it's not a wise move. Consider how much press announcing 'Firefox X is here' they lose. And each of these announcements can potentially attract new users.

I think Chrome's fast growth can in part be attributed to by the constant stream of news like 'Chrome 1,2,3,... released' which helped Google to build recognition.

<comment><USER18> Firefox isn't going to gain any valuable publicity that they don't already have by announcing "Firefox X is here". Unlike Chrome, they're not in a position to be making rapid gains - a large portion of what's left of the market is companies using older versions of IE for compatibility reasons, which aren't going to switch over on a whim.

Chrome had an advantage - it took a bite out of the large firefox market, which was already prepped for 'trying new browsers'. While the constant 'Chrome Y released!' helped, Chrome would probably have risen nearly as fast without it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Software distribution is moving to the web; Chrome is blazing the trail and showing what is possible. Mozilla blazed a trail themselves with Firefox, without which Chrome may not exist, and are now acting rationally to avoid being left behind.

The next step is to automate the update installation and process restart after the update is downloaded. The next step after that may be to automate the page refresh to view an updated render.

</comment><comment><USER20> This seems a bit excessive and weird. Why does Mozilla assume that the About Firefox window is where users go to see if an update is available? Even if that's true, why hide the version number? Chrome doesn't, and it's hardly confused people there.

<comment><USER21> _This seems a bit excessive and weird._

One of the primary reasons I declared Chrome my browser of choice (this was among other reasons, mind you) was that just around Firefox 3 there came a time when I had to update it seemed almost daily. To keep my foot out of my mouth, I checked to see if maybe there were settings on my system that were coming undone upon shutdown and boot, negative. I grew quite annoyed that every time I launched I had to go through an update process _again_.

This is a change I personally am in favor of, and can only assume is the case for other non-power users of the browser. Thankfully though they're making that information available still through the about:support page for people who find that information relevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think it's the right move. Today I was shocked that FF 6 was already out and I went searching to see if anything new had been added. Less-important version numbers will train people to expect gradual improvements rather than drastic changes so they won't be disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER23> I get what they're doing here -- it's a response to the huge backlash in their new rapid-versioning process. But maybe they're being a bit overzealous.

I think the version numbering needs to stay in the About window, but it should be less emphasized. Today, their whole roadmap is about "Firefox 6! Firefox 7!" and so on. They wave each major version number around like some sort of banner when lately very few (if any) major features/improvements are observed between major versions.

I think they need to just swallow their pride and bogart the Chrome model: version number is in "about" if you need it -- other than that, it stays out of the way while the browser autoupdates itself.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've always liked displaying a name followed by a 'build number.' It's simple, straightforward and easy-to-understand.

</comment><comment><USER25> Just out of curiosity, how will the user-agent string read?

<comment><USER18> It won't change - it's not user-visible, it's just for other developers, who do, in fact, have an interest in the version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Complete removal seems a bit much. Why not the last revision number from their scm? Not sure why they keep insisting on going down this path. Version numbers and release schedules can be separate. They may be taking a page out of Chrome's playbook but their updates happen much more frequently and I think they push minor revisions in binary form instead of a wholesale update. All the latest updates to FF have been great and 7 will be really nice if it is as memory efficient as they say but seeing them having an identity crisis after waking up to strong competition doesn't impress.

</comment><comment><USER27> If I see a new feature in Firefox is going to appear in Firefox 8, to me, version numbers are just out of control. In that case, reducing the relevancy of the version number makes sense. But I feel that, and I'm sure many developers feel the same way, if a software is not rewritten from scratch but instead is incrementally updated, that the major version number shouldn't change. I prefer Firefox 4.123 over Firefox 11.

<comment><USER28> That's just not the way a LOT of software works these days. For example, what version is facebook on? Do you know? Does it matter? What version is gmail on?

Chrome users only know what version they're on if they go and look at "about" but features are added all the time. You can't even find the chrome version number on their website--at least, I couldn't.

Linux changed to version 3.0 for no discernible reason. Emacs jumped from version 1 to version 13; versions 2 through 12 just didn't exist at all. Did it matter? No. It's just a number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It will help supporting Firefox because there will just be two versions that matter: the up to date version, and the old version (which is any older version).

This simplifies any solution and troubleshooting, it either works in the current version, or Firefox will update - if it's connected to the internet. Which means eventually, Firefox is always up to date and there will no old versions and therefore no issues.

</comment><comment><USER30> There has been some schizophrenic behavior around version numbers at Mozilla lately. Version 5.0 should have been more like version 4.1 and now they're just getting rid of them? I can't help but see it as a case of Chrome envy. It's kind of silly.

I think the two browsers are pretty closely matched. There is no need to have a "version" measuring contest.

</comment><comment><USER31> Great news! Mozilla is finally accepting Chrome's good innovations. Now for a unified search bar...

<comment><USER32> This won't happen upstream because to get suggestions from a unified search bar, everything you type, including full addresses, must be sent to your search engine for suggestions. With a separate search bar, it is at least clear that you expect what you are typing to be sent to the search provider, and Firefox assumes you don't mind autocomplete features in that case. It is a different story, however, when records subpoenaed from Google include "<http://p\>, "<http://p-o\>, "<http://p-o-r\>, "<http://p-o-r-n\>. There may be a reason you're typing a string in the address bar instead of the search bar, after all...

Additionally, separation allows Awesome Bar to work better since it doesn't have to clutter the results with search suggestions.

However, if you like that functionality, there are multiple extensions that provide it. I've used Omnibar in the past.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is this a good idea? Maybe. Is it such a good idea that it is worth yet another fight with the userbase? No way. Will the Firefox team members dig in, get defensive, and make the change anyways now? Almost surely.

</comment><comment><USER33> Further discussion at [http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.usability/browse_...](http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.usability/browse_thread/thread/fe75ec92c02be934#)

</comment><comment><USER34> as with web apps, version numbers don't matter at the front -- features do. The Build numbers and versions should stay in there where people who need to can find them though, ala Chrome...

</comment><comment><USER35> The very long thread on Bugzilla regarding this - <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=678775>

</comment><comment><USER36> Oh no! No more cake!</comment>


Bill Gates: Covid-19 is awful. Climate change could be worse - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/covid-19-awful-climate-change-could-worse-bill-gates/ <comment><USER2> _could_ be worse? Shell we already say it _will_ be worse. It's time to stop being polite when talking about climate change. It's time to panic.</comment>