World Cup 2014 coding competition - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.footballradar.com/competitions/world-cup-2014.html

<comment><USER2> Just to recap:

      - guessing all the results doesn't guarantee you a win, but they decide the winner at their discretion.
      - you have to give them all the source code etc, under generous MIT licence.
      - they reserve the right to modify or withdraw the competition at any time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey lazyant, I'm one of the engineers at Football Radar.

Thanks for the comment - we're happy to listen to community feedback, especially if it looks like we're doing something dubious - and I promise, we're not trying to!

I'll try to address your concerns:

* Maybe we could have explained it better, but the competition is about writing the best predictive model, not correctly guessing the results of the tournament. Football results are not deterministic - the best anyone can do is write a thorough probabilistic model that is correct more often than not. We can only judge this competition based on the source code, because the methodology is more important than the outcome.

* We have modified our terms to try and address some of your other points. We ask for submissions to be under the MIT licence so that we can promote the winning entry and share some of the best ideas with the community. We're not interested in using solutions in our own products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Suggestion: grab the betting odds from Betfair and use those to derive the percentage chances. You'll be piggybacking off of the work done by people and companies who do this for a living and are good at what they do!

Alternatively, if you think that you can do better, then there's no need to enter the competition, as your insights would make you more money through gambling :)

<comment><USER4> Talking of Betfair and percentages, this may be of interest:

[http://www.gambletron2000.com/about](http://www.gambletron2000.com/about)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So they're asking for the best algorithm (and the source implementation also) to guess football and other results, which is worth millions, and all you get in return is a crummy laptop? Not much incentive to participate

<comment><USER6> * The algorithms must be MIT Open Sourced, so you are also welcome to take the results and make millions with them

* There is no guarantee the algorithms will beat the betting line, so saying they are worth millions is not generally true

* If the authors of such an algorithm find that they are more accurate than the bookies, they can always keep it to themselves and make millions

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The contest is for the best predictive model for ... an undefined objective function! Unless I missed it, I didn't see a formula of how the models will be scored. For example, you can have an objective function where predicting the winner gives you a lot more points than predicting which team will not make it out of the group stage. Or you can have one where all the different stages are equally important.

Depending on the scoring method, it might be advantageous to generate solutions that are not mathematically correct, that is, solutions where each row sums to 1, but the columns don't sum to 16, 8, 4, 2, 1, and 1, respectively.

You really need to define what the objective function is here.

</comment><comment><USER8> Any soccer/football fans will tell you that it's a tough sport to predict for a variety of reasons: low scoring games, lots of potential for human error in officiating, high levels of competence of even weak teams, team dynamic vs individual skill, etc.

I'd guess that it's one of the harder sports to build a prediction model for. Good luck!

<comment><USER9> Yes, this is something every soccer fan knows. Also, the world cup is every 4 years and it's difficult, if not impossible, to predict how a renewed team will work. You can make a cluster of few teams that will win in 99% of the cases but not optimize much more from that.

If someone wants to know why it's so difficult, look at how a single player can change the whole game: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY40__rBvSk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY40__rBvSk)

<comment><USER10> In the case of the "hand of god" goal, it is not just the player, but the (unseeing) referee that allowed that goal.

A complete predictive model would not only have data about players, coaches, weather conditions, etc but also referees.

<comment><USER9> The point is: you can't predict such outliers. Maradona passed 6 players before the goal.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


SIRC Guide to Flirting: what social science tells you about flirting  - <AUTHOR> http://www.sirc.org/publik/flirt.pdf Really informative and interesting 26 page PDF. <comment><USER3> This all may be eye-rolling advice but some of it is still worth jogging the subconscious about:

> _When asked about flirting, most people – particularly men – focus on the > verbal element: the 'chatting-up', the problems of knowing what to say, > finding the right words, etc. In fact, the non- verbal element – body- > language, tone of voice, etc. – is much more important, particularly in the > initial stages of a flirtation. When you first meet new people, their > initial impression of you will be based 55% on your appearance and body- > language, 38% on your style of speaking and only 7% on what you actually > say._

I can't be the only hacker in here who has wondered why a slickly produced shallow essay got more interest than the substantive essay printed on a static HTMl file set to 12 pt. Times New Roman/100% width. How Apple managed to succeed despite the respect of many an intelligent hardware enthusiast is a classic example.

This is partially related to attractiveness, yes, but all things being even, the presentation that is more thoughtfully welcome, accommodating, and empathetic...regardless of content...will have a surprisingly higher reach than we might expect

<comment><USER4> > their initial impression of you will be based 55% on your appearance and > body-language

My female friends tell me that if a guy comes up to talk to them - your body language gives away that you're interested whether you know it or not. You don't have to _say_ it. In fact, it can be awkward if you do say it right away without justifying it (e.g. 'you are hot' v. 'i like your aloofness').

Even the nerdiest person has thousands of years of built-in intuition that trumps all conscious analysis.

The hardest step, for me, is just putting yourself out there.

<comment><USER5> The problem is that "putting yourself out there" goes against your intuition, and by priming your mind this way, you also turn off the useful parts of your intuition.

If you try to start a conversation in fight-or-flight mode, your body language will betray you, and it will either end quickly or carry on awkwardly.

<comment><USER6> That is why the number one lesson in being good with women is being comfortable in their presence. I don't really think that by "putting yourself out there" you are "priming your mind " to "turn off the useful parts of your intuition". Its just an irrational fear that you try to get rid of

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "When you first approach an attractive stranger, having established at least an indication of mutual interest through eye contact, try to make eye contact again at about 4ft away, before moving any closer. At 4 ft (about two small steps away), you are on the borderline between what are known as the 'social zone' (4 to 12 ft) and the 'personal zone' (18in to 4ft).

If you receive a positive response at 4ft, move in to 'arm's length' (about 2ft 6in)."

Reminds me of the "How To" Goofy cartoons -> [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxeL9bdSu-A&t=102](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxeL9bdSu-A&t=102)

<comment><USER8> That's genius. It's such a better read when you add the tone and gusto of that narrator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > _The most striking exception to this rule is horseracing, where all the > 'action' takes place in just a few minutes, the half-hour interval between > races is dedicated to sociability, and friendly interaction between > strangers is actively encouraged by racecourse etiquette. In fact, our own > recent research on the behaviour of racegoers indicates that the 'social > micro-climate' of the racecourse makes it one of the best flirting > environments in Britain._

This is one of the most impressive conclusions the text comes to, because though the social climate absolutely leads itself to be a great place to flirt, I can only imagine the kind of people who would hit on me at the racetrack (or someones reaction when I tell them where I met my love).

</comment><comment><USER10> I just read a couple of pages, and this is a great read.

"If you are mainly looking for flirting opportunities, . . . . seek out clubs full of happy, sociable under-achievers."

It's pure comedy gold, Jerry!

Having said that: I hate to stereotype, but I find us geeks (men) to be pretty bad at flirting. I don't know if a 26-page tome will solve that problem or not....

<comment><USER11> Basic social science articles always read like they're written by Captain Obvious.

 _"1. Do initiate flirtation with people of roughly the same level of attractiveness as yourself.

2\. Don't flirt with people who are unlikely to return your interest."_

But on the other hand, there's really no easy way out (writing about it, I mean). I've yet to find a more "practical" approach that doesn't read like either semi-useless and somewhat obvious statistics ("try to position yourself between 3 and 4 feet away from your flirting partner"), or just oozes sleaze ("pickup artists", ESR etc.). Getting technical about human beings and our social interaction works quite well in a clinical, observing manner, but once it's meant as actual practical advise, it's very easy to cross boundaries.

<comment><USER12> _or just oozes sleaze ("pickup artists", ESR etc.)_

They may be sleazy, but they're basically right.

<comment><USER11> Even if their statistical shenanigans would be scientifically "accurate" (which I still doubt), by no means would I, morally and ethically, consider them "right".

I'm the stereotypical reclusive, clinically shy geek, but I've gotten past puberty, and stopped considering penetration to be the "end game". Note that those douchebags seem to be exclusively care about that, there's no "relationship artist" trade that I'm aware of.

<comment><USER13> Believe it or not, sometimes women _are_ looking for "penetration" as the "end game". Not every encounter is expected to end in a life-long marriage.

<comment><USER11> I think "sometimes" is the key word here. I like cookies but eating them all the time might be a bit unhealthy. And preaching the "all cookie lifestyle" would seem a bit odd. From what I've seen of the "pickup scene", that seems to be the rule. I like the PDF here. It's a nice, social science view of flirting, and although it's always odd to view interaction in a statistical way, it's not written as how to best exploit and game things ("flirting" vs. "pickup"). I think this style is way better than your usual "how to get any girl in bed" type of book (or your average Cosmo type of article for the distaff side).

<comment><USER14> I just don't think this is true. I think the majority of people that end up looking into the pickup stuff are normal guys, who are bad at talking to girls, and who want a relationship. Most people don't want to spend the time and money necessary to have some kind of clubbing 3-nights a week lifestyle.

The reason those books recommend going out multiple times a week, isn't to have that lifestyle per say, it's because that's the only way to accumulate enough hours at practicing these social interactions to internalize it. Once most people reach that point, they stop going to clubs and spending all that money. Then they use the skills they learned through trial-and-error on strangers to date people in their social circles.

<comment><USER11> I'm not condemning the readers. But are we really assuming a dichotomy between "Forever Alone" and following in the foot steps of "pickup artists"? Especially in a thread where the original article shows that you can convey the essential information without machismo self-help lingo?

If it's from sleazoid to sleazoid, okay, let them simmer in their own subcultural juices. But as you say, a part of the reader demographics is oriented towards the socially insecure, and there this approach can be damaging (and seems inherently exploitative to me). There _are_ other books about this, from targetign the shyness angle to basic social interaction ("shmoozing") to flirting – or to bedroom performance, if you're concerned about that. You don't really have to reach for the "seduction community" shenanigans.

Apart from the moral/ethical angle, there's also little actual value in that part of the bookshelf, from what I have seen. It's bad self-help, coupled with _huge_ amounts of self-promotion (to establish the required credibility of the author). I'm not saying that it doesn't _work_ , mind you. Not necessarily because of the clever tricks and lingo, but because of the basic confidence boost. "You can do it!" is probably all a lot of people need. Just like lots of diets or GTD type of books work just by the customer deciding to watch what he's eating or trying to organize his life.

Still don't think you should hand your money to that sector of virtual wing men… Maybe all joking aside, we _would_ benefit from a "advanced social skills" Hacker News (There's probably a subreddit for it already).

<comment><USER14> I agree, that is a false dichotomy. Here's an alternative: read a lot of things, including one or two books by the "pickup" people. Glean from their stuff some things that are useful, and toss out the rest. If you're so averse to paying $10 for a paperback copy of The Game (which as a first-person account is also a story with some pretty high entertainment value btw), then borrow it from a library.

No one is advocating buying into their whole philosophy. But as I said in a parallel thread to this one, unfortunately those guys have developed the most accurate and detailed model for modern day social interactions that I've seen. After I knew what to look for in terms of body language, group dynamics, etc. the difference was night and day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The PDF's metadata and the Internet Archive Wayback Machine say that this item (available via <http://www.sirc.org/publik/flirt.html>) originated thirteen years ago. Surely we readers of Hacker News don't fit the "awkward geek" stereotype that well?!

There is a newer "advanced" guide: <http://www.sirc.org/publik/advanced_flirting.shtml>

<comment><USER16> > There is a newer "advanced" guide: > <http://www.sirc.org/publik/advanced_flirting.shtml>

Note that the "advanced" guide almost doesn't have any of the HOWTO advice from the OP link, however I've read and would recommend to read both: the "advanced" guide helps put things in perspective.

Also, I think the following quote from the "advanced" version is brilliant:

The human species is addicted to rule-making. Every human activity, without exception, including natural biological functions such as eating and sex, is hedged about with complex sets of rules and regulations, dictating where, when, with whom and what manner the activity may be performed. Animals just do these things; humans make an almighty song and dance about it: this is known as 'culture' or 'civilization'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I had a young business co-founder who was into this stuff. Turned out to be a disaster. A top company was interested in incubating us, but didn't read a link she sent them soon enough, so she killed it and forced them to ask for it again. Another person wanted to connect us with some interested investors, and she agreed to meet, then canceled, then re-offered, etc.. It was just constant promise-withdraw routines and other flirting stuff to make her seem busy and valuable and desirable and someone to chase, but everyone else, myself included, were just old and tired and just wanted to get down to business and it was a major turn off.

</comment><comment><USER18> Well, at least this brings me from "I don't understand anything about flirting" to "Here's a list of everything I don't understand about flirting."

<comment><USER19> All learning is by immersion. The best way to start learning flirting is to observe couples on dates, and note their body language. You don't need to be close enough to hear their voices, since body language will be your important leader. If you can hear them speak, even better. You can also make it into a social outing by bringing along a friend and making running commentary on the date (this will help you exchange notes and speed the learning process, and it will also make learning fun and thus increase retention). Note that these things (esp #2) are both fairly socially unacceptable, so be aware of that and try to be somewhat discreet.

Once you do that, go out and use the body language you've learned to indicate flirting and assess other's reactions. Test, adjust, repeat. The hardest part is that you'll need to find a group of people whose opinion you don't care about until you're vaguely OK at it. I suggest parties, not bars or clubs, because they are the most conducive to the wide range of flirting you'll tend to want to master.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This topic is hard to compute. Why can't there just be an open source standard

<comment><USER21> see @ajays comment above

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Disclaimer: I have great respect for women. If you are a woman, please don't take offense from this post. Because none is intended. As your archetypical computer nerd, I had a very hard time dating. These are things that helped me. I want to share this info with other guys like me. Sort of like ... I wish I knew this when I was young.

\----

I had a very hard time with the ladies. Somethings that helped:

\- Move to a place with a better male-female ratio.

\- Move to a place where you seem like a good catch.

\- Seek out women in different professions than tech (I am convinced there are too few geek girls to go around. I never realized how bad the odds were.)

That's it. Seriously. For me, it was about location-location-location. I firmly believe there are certain cities full of women who just tease - <USER2> string you along as friends but no more. If you have had no dating success in 1-2 years, you might be in a dating dead-zone.

Some things that helped (but I sucked at doing these):

\- Gym

\- Good clothes (not by my definition but by a young woman's definition - these did not match at all. We're talking bright colors, shopping at Express ... this nearly brought a tear to my eye.)

\- Good haircut (again, I thought I looked like an idiot ... the ladies really like it. Spiky hair=catnip?)

\- Read "The Game" - it is not about pick ups. It is about confidence. Frankly, I think the same ideas described in this book for picking up women are used by so-called hustlers and suits in making business deals.

Heh ... maybe I should do a more detailed post on this one day. I clearly spent way too much thinking about this subject when I was single :p

Some important things:

a) DO NOT GET DEPRESSED! There are lots of losers out there. Getting with a loser is easy. One reason you are single is you want something better.

b) DON'T LOSE YOUR IDENTITY!! A lot of women described me as geeky when I was young. So what? I do what I love. That said, I'm okay compromising on clothes. However, when I dated women who wanted to change me completely, it was me who broke it off. That said, I do try to reduce my overall level of geekiness in front of strangers. Don't overwhelm them ;-)

c) DON'T GET DEPRESSED! When you are young, single and geeky, it might seems like the one thing you need to make life work is a mate. That's not true. Trust me. There are benefits to being single - like time to play video games, board games, travel on your own, hack around, read books, attend tech events, whatever you want. Never lose respect for yourself!

Best of luck to all my single, geeky HNers. I hope some of this will help.

</comment><comment><USER23> WhyaretherenospacesinChrome'sbuilt-inPDFviewer?

tl;dr; Chrome's built-in PDF viewer has trouble with this file.

<comment><USER24> No problems for me on 19.0.1084.56 on OS X

<comment><USER23> Hmm, maybe it's something to do with the font rendering. It's fine on my desktop, but not my laptop.

<comment><USER25> I've run into this multiple times on Ubuntu---have you installed the "msttcorefonts" package?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Ah, SIRC is great.

Their British Pub culture guide (<http://www.sirc.org/publik/ptpintro.html>) is the best and I think the only available research on the subject. It really helped me when I moved to the UK...

<comment><USER27> That pub guide is good. It should be noted that all the stuff about every pub legally having to close at eleven doesn't apply any more. The "last orders" ritual still exists, but it will occur at a later closing time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> On Chrome/Fedora that PDF has no spaces between letters at all.

</comment><comment><USER29> Hacker News: where we discuss advanced programming and elementary social skills.

I wonder if there's somewhere out there where it's the reverse.

<comment><USER30> Isn't the main reason we are bad at these things because we don't really care for them. I'm not suggesting we are asexual but that we don't hold flirting etc. in very high regard.

<comment><USER31> I doubt it. I think it's safe to say that most people pine for social skills if they perceive they lack them. Perhaps controversial, but I'd wager that most of the time resentment towards a social concept like flirting is really just a consequence of defeatism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Its rather mroe introductory but it's still an interesting and informative read. Defintiely something to print out and read when bored or give to a younger brother or any young person entering high school or college. Wish I had this when I was beggining my college days.

<comment><USER32> Have to admit that some of the "results" are quite entertaining e.g. _the 'social micro-climate' of the racecourse makes it one of the best flirting environments in Britain._</comment></comment>


How we got back the @emo2 handle - thanks to Twitter, you could too - <AUTHOR> http://emo2.posterous.com/how-we-got-back-the-emo2-handle-thanks-to-twi

<comment><USER2> So let me get this straight, you created a twitter account with a wrong name at first, and after a while, you wanted to move to one that better matched your company/brand.

Unfortunately for you, by this time someone else had already taken the username you wanted. Realising this, you figured you had a right to commandeer it from whoever had it, simply because it was 'yours' in real life.

Can you detail if the emo2 account was in use before you requested to steal it from its owner? How old was it? How active? And most importantly, was it actually impersonating you at the time?</comment>


How do you know you're writing good code? - <AUTHOR> http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/61655/27757/

<comment><USER2> If you look back on what you've written and are embarrassed by all of the things you did because you just didn't know better back then, you are on the path grasshopper.

If you've never had that experience, well, sorry, but your code almost certainy stinks.

</comment><comment><USER3> I knew when the senior developer started asking me (the English major) to review his code.</comment>


Jury orders Monsanto to pay $290M in Roundup trial - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jury-orders-monsanto-pay-290m-roundup-trial-n899811 <comment><USER2> Wow this is surprising. With all due respect to the plaintiff and the suffering that he and his family are going through, my (limited) understanding is that there just isn't enough evidence to show that his cancer was caused by exposure to Roundup. If there is anyone more well-versed on the subject who would like to make a case to the contrary I would be interested in learning more.

This ruling, and the recent $4.7 billion ruling against Johnson & Johnson that baby powder causes cancer must have chemical and pharmaceutical companies terrified.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was summoned for jury duty on this trial but not selected. It would have been very hard for me as a juror to be without bias against Monsanto (as I assume many SF residents would agree with).

This is a huge verdict. I'll be interested to see how this is resolved as I'm sure Monsanto isn't giving up. This could open the flood hates for hundreds of similar trials.</comment>


Is All That Sitting Really Killing Us? - <AUTHOR> http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/is-all-that-sitting-really-killing-us/

<comment><AUTHOR> If this interests you, check out the recent HN thread about standing desks (which was sparked by another NYT piece):

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1285775></comment>


A slow clap for Congress - <AUTHOR> http://techpresident.com/short-post/internet-getting-together-slowclapforcongress

<comment><AUTHOR> If only this could be played on a big screen in the House or Senate. Just make everyone watch the 30 seconds...</comment>


Apple Turns Its Back on Customers and Nvidia with MacOS Mojave - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/marcochiappetta/2018/12/11/apple-turns-its-back-on-customers-and-nvidia-with-macos-mojave/#73429a5137e9 <comment><USER2> I'm confused as to why they are breaking something/have broken something that not only worked in the previous version, but also seems to be a big push from them on a technology front.

<comment><USER3> Apple has broken the DisplayLink drivers for me at least twice between OS upgrades. This forced me to tear down my whole dock / desk, and wait months for a new driver. I don't know what is so special about OSX and their graphics drivers that they require such drastic driver changes.

<comment><USER4> Don't upgrade immediately? Older macOS releases receive security updates for three years, so you have time!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there some special access nvidia needs for a graphics driver? because i've definitely seen mojave compatible kexts working.

<comment><USER6> Apple is gating the process.

[https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/1042520/driver/-whe...](https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/1042520/driver/-when- will-the-nvidia-web-drivers-be-released-for-macos- mojave-10-14-/post/5293903/#5293903)

<comment><USER4> This is a somewhat cryptic statement that I'm not inclined to take at face value.

I find it very unlikely that decided "After signing nVidia's drivers for years—and signing tons of other weird, niche hardware drivers for years—we have arbitrarily decided to not sign any Mojave-compatible nVidia drivers."

(Also, if this did happen, I don't think it would be out of the question for nVidia to just release unsigned drivers. They're pretty easy to install in macOS, at least compared to Windows, and the type of user who is installing third party graphics cards likely knows how to partially disable SIP.)

The lack of drivers is almost certainly related to Mojave's use of Metal 2 for UI rendering.

Keep in mind, nVidia did not add Pascal support to these drivers until _six months_ after the GTX 1080 launched. Maxwell support was similarly slow. I imagine Apple is not being particularly _helpful_ , but it's also clear that Mac support is a very, very low priority for nVidia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have a Mid 2014 MBP with a GeForce GT 750M currently running Sierra, and I'm so glad I saw this before I "upgraded" to Mojave! Despite my system claiming that it supports Metal, there are numerous reports of people with systems just like mine whose computers have effectively been ruined (slowed to an inoperable crawl) by Mojave.

<comment><USER4> Honestly, Mojave has been nothing but trouble for me, which is a shame because for some reason, it had the feeling of a release that would be particularly strong, and I was initially excited to upgrade.

Aside from performance issues (admittedly minor in my case), the tcc dialogues "X wants access to control Y" are _such a freaking pain_ that I'm _almost_ happy that the lack of nVidia drivers forced me to downgrade back to High Sierra.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why not a fan of either company Apple or Nvidia. AMD has cards that work. I am sure they like this which is good. Nvidia does not need more help.

While yes it's pretty anti-user what Apple is doing just more reason why I don't like Apple. It's also to be expected from Apple.

</comment><comment><USER9> Huh, and just when I was thinking about going back to OSX on my 2013 15" macbook pro. Maybe living with the cruddy linux support for the nvidia GPU is the way to go?

<comment><USER10> > Maybe living with the cruddy linux support for the nvidia GPU is the way to > go?

What is cruddy linux support in your opinion?

I only know of a couple of things in regards to NVidia Drivers for Linux that I would classify as "cruddy":

1\. Proprietary (this is probably the biggest one for most)

2\. Not always up-to-date for latest released cards

There may be a third one of performance being a bit lacking compared to the Windows version of the drivers, but I am not really sure if that's really the case, or only the case in instances of games, or what.

There may be other issues I am unaware of, but I've never had any real problem with NVidia drivers under Linux. They work, and they seem to work well for me. Installation is pretty painless (provided you don't much around with your system much - I had to recently re-image my system because my long-in-the- tooth-and-overly-hacked Ubuntu 14.04 LTS system was so modded outside the repo; the worst was a very hacked upgrade to C++ 11 that I did without any documenting in order to be able to complete the exercises for Udacity's Self- Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree...

In that edge case, no upgrade was possible, because things just wouldn't compile properly. I ended up trying to upgrade the NVidia driver, and things got really b0rked - so bad that re-imaging was the only option. But that was completely my fault (and thankfully, I had built my system to put /home on a different partition on a separate drive - so migration was fairly painless).

The upside to NVidia drivers, though, is CUDA - so if you're into ML/AI stuff (especially like Tensorflow and similar) - it's almost required...

<comment><USER3> Not that this is a huge concern for a lot of people, but if you like Secure Boot, you can't use NVIDIA proprietary drivers in Linux.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I assume that Nvidia and Apple are fighting about something behind the scenes.

</comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone have a list of limitations of unsigned code on macOS?

\- can not be driver mode

anything else?

<comment><USER4> Literally zero limitations _as long as_ System Integrity Protection turned off! :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Within wall gardens you are the sharecropper.</comment>


Teenager and His Mom Tried to Warn Apple of FaceTime Bug - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/teenager-and-his-mom-tried-to-warn-apple-of-facetime-bug-11548783393 <comment> move-on-by I find when reporting bugs, you have to do all the work. Supply videos, screenshots, gifs. Step-by-step reply. The people who's job it is to filter out the junk from the actual bugs have such little technical know-how and are overwhelmed with so many dumb users that you basically have to do their jobs for them by supplying an entire write up on the issue. It's the only way I've found to consistently get through to someone that knows what's going on.

</comment><comment><USER2> Without exception, whenever I've tried to report bugs to technology related companies, I always get some kind of arrogant, snotty backlash from the person on the other end. It seems like only half of the time, they actually bother to listen to or carefully read what I'm saying. I get the distinct feeling that I'm being quickly pigeonholed (and blamed) and facts don't matter.

<comment><USER3> Because the majority of people that report bugs are most likely customers who don't know how to do something with their device.

Whilst that doesn't excuse people from providing positive customer service, it certainly contributes.

<comment><USER2> _Because the majority of people that report bugs are most likely customers who don 't know how to do something with their device._

If they just implement that heuristic, don't they insulate themselves from any chance of receiving valuable information? Isn't this a form of bigotry substituting for actually processing information?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another article on The Verge with more details: [https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/29/18202398/apple- facetime-b...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/29/18202398/apple-facetime-bug- warned-eavesdropping)

</comment><comment><USER4> Good for them to try to attempt to do responsible disclosure instead of just posting on reddit.

I wonder if they could have called Apple support and have gotten the rep to try to repro the bug.</comment>


Google Culture War Escalates as Era of Transparency Wanes - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-13/google-culture-war-escalates-as-era-of-transparency-wanes <comment><USER2> Only a subset of Google docs were ever shared like this. The lawyers never shared. The internal security people had private files. HR had its files. The people doing the financial reporting were/are bound by all manner of rules. Google's famed internal openness was only ever for a subset of docs meant for developers, not anything like a free/open data policy.

<comment><USER3> Yeah this article really seems to confuse the monorepo and files.

The monorepo was always accessible to all. First day on the job, you can literally see all the source code. Which is crazy cool. (With a few exceptions I'm sure, but not many.) I'm assuming that's not changing?

But any time someone creates a Google Doc it defaults to private. People will then share it with other editors and then their team as necessary.

It happens _all the time_ that you follow a link to a deck to try to understand what a team is working on, and you get a "no permission" and have to e-mail them to explain why you want to see it... and you usually get permission within a few hours but sometimes you needed to look something up quick before a meeting and missed the chance.

Most of the time it's not out of any great secrecy, just that teams don't want other teams to misunderstand info out of context, like whether a team is actually pivoting or just exploring it or just brainstorming internally.

<comment><USER4> While monorepo is still a thing, they created a feature called "silos" to allow secret projects, to prevent fiascos like Dragonfly (censored search in China) and Maven (DOD drone image recognition) which both were discovered from monorepo.

Ironically, Allo cancelation was discovered by Allo team from a comment in a check in which was made by mistake days/weeks before the announcement.

<comment><USER5> The feature is actually called silos? I thought the hip thing to do was tear down all the silos in a company?

<comment><USER6> Other companies tries to be like Google, while Google tries to be like other companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm always surprised by the level of employee activism at Google. I mean, it's a job. You don't like it, or the company, then the default thing people do is leave. But based on my experience Google is different because they brainwash you into thinking that Google is the second coming of Christ and you don't want to lose your front seat by just leaving. So instead of moving on, lots of frustrated employees burn out trying to change the company from within.

<comment><USER8> "So instead of moving on, lots of frustrated employees burn out trying to change the company from within."

I think the mindset of changing of something from within is actually a good one. "Moving on" is probably easier and pragmatic but as a society it's better to change things instead of just tossing them aside and going to the next thing. I hope the same people will also be active in politics and try to change things.

<comment><USER9> Leaving while making it clear to your higher ups and coworkers that it's due to the dying work culture is not leaving without anything.

Individual employees shouldn't have to make personal sacrifices, especially for a megacorp, beyond what they contribute each day as an employee. Unless they are an executive or management and get paid (and mandated) sufficiently to do culture stuff.

There are people at Google who have this responsibility and are either failing, or possibly it's not really that bad and the news is overhyping a bunch of highly vocal individuals/small groups, while most Googlers are apolitical and happy with the group of people they work with. It's always hard to tell but most companies aren't getting multiple articles a year written about their culture.

<comment><USER10> > Leaving while making it clear to your higher ups and coworkers that it's due > to the dying work culture is not leaving without anything.

The company does not care about you. Your boss does not care about you. Managers learn to stop being emotionally invested in their employees because everyone is replaceable and everyone leaves. The company is fine with the dying work culture as long as the money keeps rolling in. Things will not get better from the efforts of employees below the Senior Vice President level. And probably not even then without that person spending all their political capital.

I struggled with this at a job where I was systematically marginalized but tried to "change things from within". After I realized that nobody was going to help me and it was what was burning me out, I lawyered up and negotiated an exit. The only way to change the culture is to make having a shitty work culture expensive.

<comment><USER9> I wouldn't take it that far nor so cynically.

This extreme view of business is popular in dystopian fiction and with the pure customer service level interaction with some of the worst mega corps like telecoms companies but I don't think it reflects reality of most people's office workplaces.

<comment><USER10> I would also say it's not a good idea to burn bridges; which is what inevitably happens when you run around telling people the reason you're leaving is because the company sucks. They can't do anything about it anyway (see my original comment), and you risk coming off as toxic to people you might want to give you a recommendation later in your career.

<comment><USER8> I think giving honest feedback at exit is a good thing and I view it as showing respect. I would probably avoid the word "sucks" though.

<comment><USER10> Right, but the place for the honest feedback is the exit interview. Spare your co-workers your grievances; they probably already know why anyway.

<comment><USER9> This just boils down to social skills really. Some people are just killjoy grievance machines though so it's worth noting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Kent Walker voiced his opinion about not sharing all information because folks did not agree

"programmers created a tool that allowed employees to choose to alert Walker with an automated email every time they opened any document at all"

I can't help but feel maybe their culture is a little toxic?

<comment><USER12> I think the chief legal officer sending out a memo to the whole company is a little bit more than "voicing an opinion". Nevermind when you add in the context of the actual actions taken against employees who were breaking the rules (firing).

As for the toxic thing, it's 100,000 person company, I personally wouldn't read into a couple bad apples spamming someone.

That being said, I think it's hilarious so maybe I'm biased (and toxic).

<comment><USER5> > That being said, I think it's hilarious

I think there are many things that would be hilarious and also should get people fired.

<comment><USER12> 100%. Finding humor in things and lacking the judgement/empathy to see how harmful they play out in the real world should be a very clear boundary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Other employees say they are now afraid to click on certain documents from other teams or departments because they are worried they could later be disciplined for doing so, a fear the company says is unfounded."

"Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

</comment><comment><USER14> It will be interesting to see how companies will engage with culture wars in the upcoming years. I expect it to get back to firing of employees to create cultural hegemony, something that will be frowned upon in some societies.

<comment><USER15> We're 12 years into the longest economic expansion in U.S. history.

Moreover, the 2008 crash didn't really affect the tech workforce as harshly as the 2001 dot-com crash.

Altogether, this means an ENTIRE GENERATION of tech workers has NEVER really experienced a true labor market bloodbath in their career. Doesn't even fully comprehend what one looks or feels like. Believes that protesting your own employer, or management tolerating a fragmented internal culture, is _normal and natural_ rather a temporary aberration.

As a 40-something who was around for the dot-com crash, I feel a blend of resentment and pity for the younger crowd. The next time the pendulum swings, and management has more leverage than labor once again, I wonder how they will react to the reality of that landscape.

<comment><USER16> > The next time the pendulum swings, and management has more leverage than > labor once again, I wonder how they will react to the reality of that > landscape.

Google employees probably have so much money laying around after years of working there that they don't care anymore.

<comment><USER17> If that money is mostly captured in coastal overexpensive housing, the same property that would be hardest hit if something largely negatively impacts tech companies/workforce, then they have much less money than one might expect :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > A group of Google programmers created a tool that allowed employees to > choose to alert Walker with an automated email every time they opened any > document at all, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The > deluge of notifications was meant as a protest to what they saw as Walker's > insistence on controlling the minutiae of their professional lives.

Wow. Just wow. The level of highschool-level unprofessionalism displayed here is shocking to me. Are these the people we have trusted all of our personal secrets with?

<comment><USER18> Seriously though: Is this something the ~2 billion people holding Google accounts need to think about?

Previously we sort of all trusted Google employees to be competent, smart and _professional_.

Should we still do that with these internal divisions becoming public?

Over the past few years I've taken to a habit to do the more personal searches about things about personal medical issues etc from a separate browser installation (with no Google cookies) using duckduckgo.com or bing.com. I just don't trust Google with _new_ personal secrets any more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I know it's kind of a tangent, but I want to point out that Google is serviced by an army of workers that wear special uniforms, are not included in the major perks, are trained not to fraternize with the rest of Google's employees, and are of a markedly different racial and cultural makeup than the rest of Google's employees.

Also, remember that time that Google, Apple, and "dozens" of other companies colluded to prevent each other from hiring talent from each other, in large part to defraud their own employees of opportunities (to the tune of an estimated $8,000,000,000)?

So it seems like there's a small group at the top that does whatever the hell they think they can get away with, then a large group in the middle that is more-or-less exploited by the top group, and another large group on the bottom that are more-or-less totally fungible and who are almost completely ignored _by design_ by the other two groups.

Most of the people in the "middle" group are either clueless about their exploitation, or complacent, and what we're seeing in TFA is a fraction of the former becoming the latter. I suppose a tiny fraction of people might actually quit Google over this.

(I worked at the Google-plex for a couple of years as a TVA, a kind of half- life role in between a normal Googler and a service staff. It was a very weird experience, and afterward it felt like I had been kidnapped by aliens and returned to Earth.)

<comment><USER20> > is serviced by an army of workers that wear special uniforms, are not > included in the major perks

Isn't this about government (IRS et al.) categorization of contractors vs. employees and not about GOOG specifically? IIRC there is a specific reason contractors cannot receive employee perks or even participate in team morale events.

<comment><USER21> Do you not think it says something, nobody much talks about google having worker-ants in uniforms? The IRS issue is why they have to wear a yellow star, yes. But the question is not that they wear the star its _what the fuck is the culture which normalizes this_

<comment><USER22> > Do you not think it says something, nobody much talks about google having > worker-ants in uniforms?

No, not really. It says that people realize that low skill work isn't valued the same as high skill work. That's exactly what anyone with a basic understanding of economics would expect. It's not a human rights issue that people that are easier to recruit and replace aren't offered the same perks.

> wear a yellow star

This is so hyperbolic as to be offensive. Comparing people in a voluntary employment role to the victims of the holocaust is incredibly tone deaf and hysterical.

<comment><USER21> If a company insists a class of workers wear uniforms and a huge primary cohort do not, then the hyperbole is grounded in a fundamental problem. The uniform exists to mark them out. The function of the uniform is not to their benefit, it's to their detriment. The origin of the yellow star was functionally identical: mark the tainted that the righteous shall know them.

<comment><USER23> It's so people know who the staff are when they need help in the cafe.

<comment><USER21> And who the cleaners and gardeners and menials are. The ones not allowed in the nice places except to clean them and get out.

Overall Google employs roughly equal number of staff and contractors, the latter are in significantly different terms of employment. The functional maintenance and service staff were an outsource, they many be an in-house now, but you would have to be in denial to pretend they are not an underclass. My visit to mountain view was an eye opener.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Google's mistake was to brand themselves as a moral cause. When you do that, you send out a beacon to some of the most righteous smart people on earth and they become employees. Righteousness and smarts is a toxic self-undoing mix.

<comment><USER25> If you add making a bunch of money on top of that you have the ultimate combination of toxicity. Arrogance, ignorance, hubris, echo chambers, thinking you're an expert on matters outside of your field, random and inappropriate activism... Google brought all of it on themselves.

Google is now a blight on our industry (in terms of invasive technology and cargo cult copying of their culture and policies). It's so huge and entrenched that it will take a Microsoft amount of time for its relevance to die but thankfully it's going in that direction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> If Google wants to kill their special culture that's up to them, but I hope they know that without the "Google magic", a lot of their failings as a company become a lot less forgivable. For example, you can't be as fucking god-awful at customer service as Google without something to make up for it.

<comment><USER27> > you can't be as fucking god-awful at customer service as Google without > something to make up for it

Like near-total dominance in multiple market spaces?

They don't need great customer service or continued innovation to remain absolutely ubiquitous for decades to come.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> If you make big changes, just do it. Don't explain it at length. If you explain it, you give people room to argue and hem and haw and ends up being counterproductive. It's an invitation to bikeshedding.

<comment><USER10> I think Google has finally embraced the fact that they're an advertising company and they're not going to change the world for the better. This means they need to drive off the idealistic hackers that built the company and replace them with corporate drones who aren't focused so much on building an empire as much as protecting it.

This has been happening at both Google and Facebook over the last 5 years. I think the fact that they're driving off their most talented (and expensive!) employees is part of the plan for transitioning from explosive growth to maintenance. The growth mindset has become a liability for them.

<comment><USER29> Tangentially related I hope developers will realize that the current stack inherited from them is basically enterprise software made for large teams of interchangeable developers, just with better marketing than J2EE 15 years ago.

For reference: [https://martin.kleppmann.com/2008/05/11/ruby-on-rails-vs- jav...](https://martin.kleppmann.com/2008/05/11/ruby-on-rails-vs-java- enterprise.html)

> I believe that if there was a full standard distribution for Java EE (e.g. > Icefaces+JSF+Seam+EJB3+JPA+Hibernate+Glassfish, to name just one possible > API stack out of thousands of different combinations), people would write a > lot more good documentation for that particular stack, and it would become a > lot easier for more developers to start using it effectively. With the right > tools and good documentation, productivity could potentially be about the > same for Rails and Java, but at the moment Java is shooting itself in the > foot in this regard.

<comment><USER30> Spring has basically accomplished the "as productive as Rails" part, as has ASP.NET Core, which would be my personal preference.

<comment><USER31> You must be joking. A good Rails dev will run absolute rings around any java or .NET effort no matter what tools they're using. I don't even think I'm being subjective here; I work with java (well, kotlin/scala) devs and even they wouldn't say anything like that.

Rails has disadvantages yes, concurrency and its lack of ability to support long-running tasks foremost amongst them, IMO. But dev speed, for standard "startup web app" features? There is no contest and I'm baffled as to why you would claim otherwise.

<comment><USER30> You work with Java devs? Have you actually tried using the Java or .NET web frameworks? They've come a long way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The "radical transparency" is probably just propaganda (on management's part) and self-delusion (on some employee's part).

It says:

> When google was founded... Nearly all of its internal documents were widely > available for workers to review. A programmer working on Google search could > ... dip into the software scaffolding of Google Maps

Oh, how transparent! You get look at more source code. Such a deep dark company secret! Or you could track someone's calendar. Amazing! ... not.

"Nearly all internal documents" likely means "...except the import stuff": Finances, investor relations, interactions with the US government, senior management internal discussions. Did employees have access to any of that? I doubt it.

</comment><comment><USER33> I wonder why these types of gossipy internal company strife articles are never written about big news orgs. For example, I'd love to know how 2k+ reporters who work at Bloomberg feel about their recent editorial decisions re: Mike Bloomberg's campaign. Is it that these orgs are so ideologically homogenous that everyone mostly agrees?

<comment><USER34> More likely it's that they don't cover themselves, or each other, with nearly the same scrutiny.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I may get downvoted for this but IMO these days everything is a collapse. Of course the same policies can't apply when you are 100,000 large vs when you were smaller. Look at this complaint by one employee on transparent policy

"In an internal email describing the firings, Google accused one employee of tracking a colleague's calendar without permission, gathering information about both personal and professional appointments in a way that made the targeted employee feel uncomfortable"

I mean its ok to change with time, if you get stuck in the past then you are not seeing the real problem that google is too big to be 100% open for internal employees. This is when you see out of context protests and mob attacks.

</comment><comment><USER36> So let me get this straight these busybodies wrote some code to spam companies lawyer with notifications.. and they did not get all fired on the spot?

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm always surprised about workers attitudes on "transparency". Google created a monster, not only internally, but among troves of idealists in corporate America/SV who distrust structure and strategy in the business world, in lieu of free-for-all style of management. To the googlers who whined about Walker's memo: you are a total disgrace to the business of engineering.

<comment><USER38> Do you season the boot before you lick it?

<comment><USER37> Ha! Get back in your bubble you sellout

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Archive: [http://archive.is/iO1ls](http://archive.is/iO1ls)

</comment><comment><USER40> So long as people are leaking Google's "Internal Culture" like a sieve, can someone upload the xtranormal "Borgmon Readability" video somewhere? Even though I'm a huge fan/proponent of Prometheus... I feel like that video is a necessary warning to those going in.

<comment><USER41> you should try offering three peer bonuses

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Not surprising. Corporate entities will tolerate employee 'activism' so long as it doesn't interfere with day-to-day business. Once that line is crossed, the business is going to start providing guidelines that focus attention where it needs to be.

This is how it should be. Activism is fine and belongs in personal lives and organizations dedicated to the cause. It does not belong in companies with a diverse workforce.

</comment><comment><USER43> Perhaps Google is less transparent than it once was, but once again it seems like people are lamenting the passing of a Google culture that never really existed. Parts of Google's monorepo were restricted to specific owning teams over a decade ago, and sending email to an executive would get you a talking- to from your manager if they didn't like the tone of it.

</comment><comment><USER44> Wow, 5 posts attacking Google in the HN top right before Christmas. That can't be a coincidence. Someone with money clearly has personal issues with Google, but I don't see what this is to do with Christmas. P.S. I'm not defending Google as it's indeed done some questionable things, but 5 posts at the same time is really rare event.

</comment><comment><USER45> > _The specifics of Google's business operations traditionally haven't > required this level of secrecy, but that is changing. Google's cloud > business in particular requires it to convince business clients it can > handle sensitive data and work on discrete projects. This has brought it > more in line with its secrecy-minded competitors._

The article fails to mention a certain Anthony Levandowski [0] and biases towards anti-innovation and anti-activism narratives, in particular. Sensitive documents can't be just kept lying around esp when industrial espionage [1] and intellectual property theft is a thing [2].

> _Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. demand that workers operate in rigid silos > to keep the details of sensitive projects from leaking to competitors. > Engineers building a phone's camera may have no idea what the people > building its operating system are doing, and vice versa._

I remember back in 2010-14 when the entire Fire Phone / Tablets / TV / Echo orgs were kept under wraps. It was such a drastic change from the otherwise quite transparent culture at Amazon that it almost felt un-Amazon-esque. To me, those teams, back in the day, felt as if had a culture of their own separate from the rest of the company. The silos were rigid, and that was by design. These days you'd find, by default, certain teams keep their docs under wraps forever (even post-launch). Some teams continue to commit to transparent documentation.

I missed the open culture which was curtailed (a necessity, though took a bit too far by some orgs) but I see why Amazon needed to do that. You could not possibly trust all 600K employees going through the system with high churn. The learnings / information weren't _pull_ anymore, you had to get it _pushed_ to you, on a case by case basis, and the principal engineers became the common thread through which Amazon's culture and engineering fabric was woven. Not sure if that was a bad thing or a good thing, but seemed necessary for the scale at which the company was operating.

Things did not get better and there were down-sides: Even a mention of things on internal pages you didn't even know were supposed to be _secret_ , got you nice escalation emails from all corners, which meant your year-end reviews had a special mention of how you needed to improve _earn trust_ and tone down _learn and be curious_ [3], just because...

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13718586](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13718586)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20283828](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20283828)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9011628](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9011628)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15910526](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15910526)

</comment><comment><USER46> > "It was that way since the early days of Google, and it's that way now," > [Walker] wrote.

Then the article ends with

> "Maybe Alphabet is just a different company than it used to be," [Humu] > wrote in an email to Bloomberg News. "But not everyone's gotten the memo."

</comment><comment><USER47> Who's in place to be the next Google? Amazon has built all the foundational pieces for scalable cloud services. Could we see Amazon Mail? Amazon Calendar? Etc....

</comment><comment><USER48> This is just another tail function department wanting to enhance its role, very common for HR, Building services etc.

</comment><comment><USER34> [https://outline.com/etcKaN](https://outline.com/etcKaN)

</comment><comment><USER49> Regarding the data policy, is the reason that the risk of someone leaking information is now being perceived as higher than in the past?

If so, why? Have there been leaks? Is there a plan to hire a bunch of new less vetted employees?

Or maybe it's a manipulative attempt to make those with undesirable cultural traits (including a desire for internal openness) leave the company without saying so explicitly?

<comment><USER50> Check out this piece [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/25/technology/google- fires-w...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/25/technology/google-fires- workers.html)

The excuse is that those for abusing that freedom to gather information outside the scope of their jobs (no details given though).

Plus I think they recently cancelled the Friday meetings because information was being leaked to the media. Inevitable at a large corporation but when a few people act this way, if ruins it for everyone

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> The thing about Google's culture is that it was always dishonest from the start. And it was dishonest because they were deeply ashamed of how they made money. So from the very beginning the culture was built around being "Googley". It put the engineer on the pedestal. 20% time. Moonshots. Infantilizing the workplace (are there still ball pits and slides?). "Don't be evil".

All of that was to paper over the fact that fundamentally this was an ad-tech company and it's hard to get people to go work for one if that's what your brand is (Yahoo is a good example). They did 20 years of recruitment on this lie, and it's finally coming home to roost. The idealists that got brainwashed by this are understandably chafing at the changes happening as Google transitions into a typical big company with a McKinsey alum CEO.

<comment><USER52> Do you have any basis in fact for what you're saying? Because this might be the most wrong top comment I've ever seen on HN. I worked at google for most of the 2000s, and no one was ashamed of the company or how it made money. We didn't even regard ads as a necessary evil, because back then, most of the ads were very clearly non-evil. You can argue that we should have been ashamed if you want, but that's a different matter.

And no, it was not hard to convince people to work for google. Everyone wanted to work at google, and everyone understood exactly how google made money. But, everyone also understood why google was exciting. There was no deception necessary.

<comment><USER53> Yep. Still this way today for the most part. You wouldn't guess it by reading the comments on this site, but there are no shortage of folks who would love to come work for Google. And if people internally have objections to the work, ads never enter into it. Perhaps that's because the comment has fundamentally misunderstood what google is.

See, calling it an ad tech company is overly reductionist. Even though it is technically true, it obscures the overall picture, rather than clarifying. It is rhetoric. It would be as if you called it a bit shifting company because the most proximal event to it making money is the shifting of some bits. The statement is actually even more misleading, because a bunch of folks are by default opposed to advertising, so the point of the rhetoric is to minimize all the other stuff and maximize the unpleasant part by obscuring it with this reduction.

Yes, ads are the proximal cause of Google's wealth. But Google is a consumer services company that makes money via the inclusion of ads on some of those services. Most Googlers do not work on nor are concerned with ads. They work on the services I mentioned. The work is to make the services better so they will attract more users. It is by delivering great services that Google attracts users. Incidentally, these users also enable Google's money making machine by clicking on or viewing ads sometimes.

(To be clear, I am not claiming that the services are universally great, only that that is the aspiration and the end upon which most Googlers' work is focused.)

<comment><USER54> It's like reducing broadcast TV/radio as "advertising companies". They make their money selling ad time and develop/buy programming to attract viewers and justify the cost of that ad time.

But to everyone else, they're a source of information and entertainment that's available to anyone with an antenna, a tuner, and a speaker/display.

And again, it's not as if broadcast media are universally great, but there's value in them outside of the advertising business.

<comment><USER55> >It's like reducing broadcast TV/radio as "advertising companies". They make their money selling ad time and develop/buy programming to attract viewers and justify the cost of that ad time.

Yes. I would call broadcast TV advertisers. Have you given mass media a critical analysis lately? It's chalk full of subtle product placement and other brainwash, on top of in-your-face advertisements every few minutes. The Simpsons made fun of this a decade ago, and it seems to have only gotten worse. I limit television exposure just the same as Google exposure.

I speak for myself only of course, but jumping to defend Google with broadcast tv made me laugh.

<comment><USER54> Didn't intend to "defend" any company or industry really. Just wanted to point out that there are multiple transactions taking place.

Advertiser/ad platform is one of them, but it's not the only one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Interesting. The first thought that popped into my head as I read the article was ..this is the corporate version of the evolution of the rise and fall of communism.

Prediction: Google will be in 20 years what Soviet Russia became at around 2000s.

They will go from utopia to totalitarian to insignificant player in a few decades.

Why this happens puzzles me..I grew up when Soviet Russia/USSR was still alive and then watched it go away. And see where it is at now. I don't understand it. It's like a mystery. But the pattern to dissolution is inevitable.

</comment><comment><USER57> Would you say the same if the Boeing employees that don't like the new unsafe culture should shut up and leave?

I think is better when the employees have some power to keep the company true to the ideals and not close their eyes. I understand that is bad PR to criticize unsafe or imoral shit but if this would have happened at Uber or Boeing then a lot of people might have been alive now.

<comment><USER58> > Would you say the same if the Boeing employees that don't like the new > unsafe culture should shut up and leave?

Yes. Best way to incentivize the company to change is to have enough talent leave to force their hand. Anything else is mostly just noise.

<comment><USER59> I think the point OP was making is that dozens of people died because executives as Boeing "shut down" concerns that some long time engineers had. I'm not sure lives at risk with Google's products but I think the point is hoping that a half a trillion dollar monopoly will change its ways because lots of employees leave is wishful thinking and might only happen if it results in a catastrophe. Google can replace them easily and regardless a majority of their profit comes from search which only requires a small fraction of their employees to keep operating at profit.

<comment><USER57> >I'm not sure lives at risk with Google's products

Google is experimenting with self driving cars and they are always interested in working for the military or the police. I want the employees to talk if they feel something is not right rather then do the Uber thing and disable the safety because the code was garbage and had too many false positives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I'd like to think they're just engaging in internal sabotage as a form of activism, like the OSS field manual for disrupting organizations suggests:

[https://corporate-rebels.com/cia-field-manual/](https://corporate- rebels.com/cia-field-manual/)

Seems to have this effect anyway, and I support the google workers trying to destroy this evil company.

</comment><comment><USER61> I did not know they had this transparency policy. Did it (hopefully) exclude documents containing personal information? Google has a lot of info ona lot of people, surely every employee can't access all of it?

<comment><USER62> When they talk about documents it's more about Google docs (sheets, ...) created internally by employees.

Getting access to personal information within Google is very, very difficult - it's not like you can query the user's sql table and get all the PII. Everything PII related is highly protected.

Internal documents though are created on a "public to all" basis - e.g. let's say you create a document with some ideas or issues with the next Pixel phone. This doc would be accessible by anyone in the company by default (you can obv change that).

It's an awesome philosophy if everybody plays by the rules and doesn't leak stuff to the outside world. Sometimes people create "Ideas Docs", "Best practice docs", "Design Docs", "Algo Docs" etc, and then receive feedback from random Googlers which accidentally stumbled upon them. It's also a fantastic way of knowledge transfer as anyone can look up the design doc for problem X of product Y and read about it.

<comment><USER63> > Internal documents though are created on a "public to all" basis - e.g. > let's say you create a document with some ideas or issues with the next > Pixel phone. This doc would be accessible by anyone in the company by > default (you can obv change that).

False; Google docs have always[1] been private by default, and must be explicitly shared, either with individuals, groups, or made world-readable.

[1] I mean, I wasn't around for the earliest releases of Google docs, but even before Larry was CEO the sharing was off by default. That's just a sane default, because if you forget to share your document the first person you send it to will let you know, but if you forget to unshare you only find out the hard way.

<comment><USER64> I've been at Google for 10 years and I don't think that's true. I distinctly recall the public by default era.

<comment><USER63> You've got years on me, and my memory from before 5-6-7 years ago is fuzzy, but it's definitely not _new_.

<comment><USER65> I started 11 years ago and left 5.5 years ago and new Docs were public by default the whole time I was there. When I left there were murmurs about making Docs private by default but it hadn't happened yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Sometimes you have to stand-up to your employees. Having a small group of activists driving your business decisions is unsustainable. Google is a multinational behemoth, and as much as it likes to think of itself as a small nimble progressive startup, those days are long gone.

>Google's open systems also proved valuable for activists within the company, who have examined its systems for evidence of controversial product developments and then circulated their findings among colleagues. Such investigations have been integral to campaigns against the projects for the Pentagon and China.

Google had the benefit of obscene profits from their ad business that let the rest of the company do whatever, which also enabled internal activists to exert pressure for them to not do business with the American government.

<comment><USER67> Google had obscene profits _because_ of the rest of the company. Mano of us were working on weekends because we thought that it's a different company. And it was.

<comment><USER66> >we thought that it's a different company. And it was.

What do you mean a 'different company'. You mean different in that it wouldn't do business with the American government? Different in that it would bow to a small pool of activists to drive business decisions?

<comment><USER67> All engineers were driving business decisions in the past actually. The headcounts were centrally set, but the whole team usually had one or two main focuses that it could execute on.

When Larry became the CEO, the whole thing changed. He took an engineer driven organization and changed it into a PM driven organization, just what Microsoft had under Steve Ballmer. And if there are too many PMs, engineers become Go pieces that PMs try to steal from eachother all the time.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Interactive ML Analytics with Google's Facets Dive and Scikit-Learn - <AUTHOR> https://rare-technologies.com/interactive-confusion-matrix-python/ <comment><USER2> This is (2017), specifically 2017-10-28. Also, it's Part 1 of 2. Part 2 of 2 is here: [https://rare-technologies.com/sharing-facets-dive- visualizat...](https://rare-technologies.com/sharing-facets-dive- visualizations/) and is also (2017), specifically 2017-11-11.

<comment><USER3> It's a fascinating world where an explanation of barely two months old is in need of a date hint.</comment></comment>


Geneva Freeport - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Freeport <comment><USER3> There was a good Wendover Productions video on this subject on YouTube. Check it out, and his other videos if it seems interesting to you.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsA_L1t4vXY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsA_L1t4vXY)

</comment><comment><USER4> While the world has art stores in warehouses that nobody gets to see, every major city has housing that people don't live in, but keep around just in case to the harm of everyone else.

<comment><USER5> It's nice to see democracies fighting back against housing as a store of wealth. Vancouver charges 1% per year to keep a property empty. Since enacting the change, vacancies have very gradually started to increase as the wealthy sell off or rent out their properties. In some areas of town - <USER2> wealthier suburbs - you can rent an incredible house for very little relative to the property value.

Example:

For CAD $7,500 per month [1], you could rent a waterfront home worth CAD $5.5M [2].

[1] [https://vancouver.craigslist.org/nvn/apa/d/west-vancouver- or...](https://vancouver.craigslist.org/nvn/apa/d/west-vancouver- orcaref6277tunique/6963493552.html)

[2] [https://www.rew.ca/properties/R2397894/6277-taylor-drive- wes...](https://www.rew.ca/properties/R2397894/6277-taylor-drive-west- vancouver-bc)

<comment><USER6> > vacancies have very gradually started to increase

You mean 'decrease'?

<comment><USER7> Vacancy would imply it's on the market. Before they would just be kept empty and off the market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I live nearby. I wonder how many works of art will lie there unclaimed for decades.

<comment><USER9> Same here. Lived in the same area as the freeport, and all questioned myself while biking around, how many stolen or confiscated arts pieces are in there. Most of the focus has been on Tax fraud, and terrorist funding from arts stolen in Syria, but I would like the Swiss Customs to evaluate arts from 3rd world countries, especially Africa and south america.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > As a result of this and other cases, art collectors began to pull their > collections from the facility.

So as soon as the Freeport no longer provided a safe haven for art crime "collectors" started pulling out. Wonder if they ended up on a watch list since it's highly unlikely that any collector owning 100% legitimate art would care about illegal art being confiscated.

</comment><comment><USER10> Singapore and Zurich freeports allow their works to be exhibited in city museums without paying tax. Not sure about Geneva.

<comment><USER11> It doesn't matter which Freeport it's stored in Switzerland as customs law is on a federal level in Switzerland.</comment></comment>


Douglas C. Engelbart, Inventor of the Computer Mouse, Dies at 88 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/technology/douglas-c-engelbart-inventor-of-the-computer-mouse-dies-at-88.html?ref=technology&_r=0&pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> "Albert Einstein, explainer of Brownian motion"...

<comment><USER3> I'd go with "computing pioneer". Then again, that headline could be less likely to encourage people to read on and find out what Engelbart actually did.

<comment><USER4> i'd say "brilliant visionary of the computer's potentials."

that still misses the fact that the world failed to develop those possibilities in any meaningful way, but that kind of myopia would be hard to address no matter what one said...

-bowerbird

<comment><USER5> >that still misses the fact that the world failed to develop those possibilities in any meaningful way

I don't know about that. I'm frequently engaged in realtime collaborative editing of rich, interactive datasets with people on the other side of the planet. The specific mechanisms Engelbart pioneered underlie most of that infrastructure.

In under 50 years, we've progressed from the relatively abstract methods he developed, to actually seeing systems developed on those principles in the wild, in frequent use by literally billions of people.

I think you do a disservice to all of those who have helped to bring this about by discarding their work as "myopic".

<comment><USER4> i'm sorry if you feel personally offended, but if you think that today's computers (which are thousands of times more powerful than the ones that engelbart was working with) are -- to use his phrase -- "augmenting human intellect", then i would certainly like to have you tell me how.

because i see society using these supercomputers to exchange pictures with their high-school chums on facebook, and instagram photos of their lunch.

and (let us not forget) to _track_ those people, so we know the best advertisements to serve up.

all of which might be acceptable trade-offs _if_ we were also augmenting human intellect as well.

but we're not.

so it certainly appears to me that the only things we are "augmenting" is our stupidity and our greed.

and if you bring this to the attention of anyone, they'll turn the blame on you for "being negative".

sheesh...

-bowerbird

<comment><USER5> > if you think that today's computers are ... "augmenting human intellect", > then i would certainly like to have you tell me how.

Isn't it obvious? I have immediate access, in almost every physical location, to a data store which, while not quite the sum total of human knowledge, is pretty close to it. It's meticulously organised, indexed, hyperlinked, and easy-to-use.

The fact that many people (including me) use this for social interaction too does not detract from that at all.

You are essentially writing off the entire Web as nothing more than Facebook, Instagram and Google Adsense.

<comment><USER4> i'm not "writing off" anything.

i'm saying we have failed to actualize a very huge potential.

and oh yeah, sure, we've taken some 49 steps on the journey. (and 27 of 'em actually moved society forward! imagine that!) and we could pat ourselves on the back for our "progress"...

but that ignores the fact that the journey is a thousand miles.

nor do we seem to realize that the journey has become a race, a race against time, because the greed and stupidity that i talked about above is turning our planet into a place that will all-too-soon become one on which humans can not survive. (shortly after all the other large mammals on it go extinct.)

so, like, dude, enjoy your "social interaction" while you can.

-bowerbird

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was just listening to one of Douglas Crockford's talks which discussed the contributions Engelbart made to computer science. What really stuck with me was the sheer number of new concepts he showed in his demo, which, though made in 1968, would showcase features not seen for decades, and some of which are still not effectively in use. If you haven't seen it, it's well worth the hour and forty minutes.

I think this is also a good moment to reflect on how incredible it is to be involved in a science which is still so much in its infancy that seminal figures in its development are still alive and well. Let us not forget their contributions, and most importantly, not overlook the concepts that, if employed today, can advance us far beyond where we are now.

Douglas Engelbart's Mother of All Demos: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv- zdhzMY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY)

</comment><comment><USER7> Engelbart was nearly 40 when he and his team invented the mouse. A rather dramatic testament against the more recent agism in technology.

</comment><comment><USER8> He was not just an inventor of the mouse, but of almost all things we use in development today: collaborative editors, video calls, hypertext, versioning.

A Great Man he was.

</comment><comment><USER9> Click in peace

<comment><USER10> Also at

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5986307](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5986307)

See jgrahamc's post :)

<comment><USER11> Moving. Thanks for pointing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> We will forever be indebted to Mr. Engelbart. Thank you sir!

</comment><comment><USER13> lol steve jobs maded the mous</comment>


I'm an American living in Sweden. Here's why I came to embrace the higher taxes - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2016/4/8/11380356/swedish-taxes-love <comment><USER2> Stage of life makes all the difference here. Higher-tax, higher-services economies are a really good deal for people at the beginning or end of their earnings curves (college/early 20s or 60s/70s.) As the author points out, you get a lot of government-funded services that make life better. Your tax burden is noticeable but not hellish.

For peak earners in their 30s/40s, especially those without children, HT-HS economies are frustrating. I can't fault people like our Vox poster who live in the U.S. during their peak earnings years ... and then head to a European country for their retirement years. As long as the border guards don't stop you, and you aren't consumed with guilt, give it a shot!

<comment><USER3> I am a US citizen who moved to Sweden. I am in my 40s and have no children.

I am not frustrated by the move. I find it easier to work on my business (I am self-employed) when I don't have to also worry about things like insurance. In the US, my rates kept going up, and I didn't really know what covered. It's a specialized topic I don't care to know, and rigged against self-employed people.

Now I don't have that worry.

The essay talks about transportation. I live in a small city. The nearest big city is about 50 miles away. I can get to the big city center on the (subsidized) train for $12, in 38 minutes. That's faster than driving. Which means I don't need a car, so don't need a garage, so can live in the center of town.

The essay talks about accessibility to nature. Last summer went hiking for several days. I didn't need to arrange travel to/from the end points because I knew there would be bus service. The summer before I went on a 10 day cycling trip. At every point, if there was a serious problem could take a train or bus to get back home on my own. Also, "no trespassing" doesn't really exist in Sweden, so I was free to pitch a tent anywhere. And the trails have some very nice lean-tos.

I can also underscore how easy it is to do Swedish taxes. The national, state, and city taxes are all filled in for me, in a simple form, vs. the many pages of my US federal taxes which I still have to file every year even though I make less than the overseas exemption so don't actually pay any taxes to the US.

Also, just because I've been healthy and making decent money doesn't mean that my friends are all healthy and making money. In the US some people don't have the money for medical treatments which here are part of the social system. Not only do I think it's wrong for basic health care to be based on income, but I don't like the popularity-based back-up solution of personal fund-raisers for treatment.

Were my parent Swedish, I wouldn't have to worry so much if my retired parents could support themselves, especially as they need to get more at-home help.

Sure, it's possible to game the system, and only move to Sweden for retirement. But should everyone do that, the system wouldn't work. I think Kant would have something to say about the morality of that proposal.</comment></comment>


Ubuntu 20.04 beta is out - <AUTHOR> http://releases.ubuntu.com/20.04/ <comment><USER2> If I install the beta, is the final non-beta version just an `apt get upgrade` away, or is a reinstall recommend?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, you can upgrade that way or by doing 'apt full-upgrade'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Surprising this is not linked to from the homepage. They should, to get more people trying it out. I have been waiting for Kernel 5.4 based LTS release.</comment>


Product Management in 1 Tweet - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1254064006412656640 <comment><USER2> We actually asked our community on Twitter to do the same and these where some of our favorite answers:

* "Iterate until awesome" @_productMonk * "It's in the backlog" @MiroHQ * "What problem you solving (from NYC, grammar is correct)" @jrochelle * "Yes, but not now" @roberthamilton * "User + Customer + Business Outcomes" @socialnerdia

My answer was: "Make users win"

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. Mine would be - "Problems before solutions, Customers before Products, Experiment before implement"

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The tweet:

Product Management—in 1 tweet.

Role: Define the product & coordinate actions across the org to enable its success

Success: User adoption Business impact

Skills: Common sense Immense empathy Influential communication

Traits: Low ego Deep care High agency

Simple, but not easy.</comment>


Show HN: My Weekend Project - UptimeFu - <AUTHOR> http://uptimefu.com

<comment><USER2> You did a great job of making it dead simple to sign up for something really useful!

After simply entering my domain name & email, I received a confirmation that my site was up, followed by a 2nd email with my account details.</comment>