Do Not Advertise On Facebook Until You Read This - <AUTHOR> http://wahanegi.com/do-not-advertise-on-facebook-until-you-read-this/

<comment><USER2> I wrote this blog posting. I am not claiming that these are bots or that Facebook is defrauding us in the strict legal sense. After a bunch of research, I believe they are real people, as Facebook asserted to me and to the BBC among others. However, I believe Facebook is misleading advertisers and behaving unethically by not disclosing this fairly widespread, unusual and costly user behavior, one that hits the campaigns of less sophisticated small advertisers particularly hard.

The problem has two main parts:

1) The click behavior of these users is _extremely_ unusual and unexpected according to the beliefs of the advertisers and advertising experts I have shared these finding with. Most people think that 'no one clicks on FB ads.' So when they learn there are profiles of real people that click 5-6 likes in a minute, dozens of times a day adding up to thousands of times a year, they immediately exclaim 'no one does that, they must be bots, you must be wrong.' But they are real people. And unless you are extraordinarily careful (see here: <http://wp.me/p2dKfK-7x>), Facebook naturally charges the same for their clicks as for everyone else, even though their clicks are nearly meaningless from an advertiser perspective.

2) These real people were taught this behavior by the new Facebook timeline interface, which a) makes the number of 'Likes' extremely prominent, b) encourages rapid liking of ads by refreshing the ads immediately as they are clicked and c) uses these likes to change the content that appears in the stream of stories.

Perhaps a better one of my postings to read is this one, where I estimate how widespread the problem may be from an advertiser perspective <http://wahanegi.com/10-percent-of-fb-revenue/>. To save you time, here is the main bit, a quote from one of these users after I asked them why they like ads in batches of 5-6 throughout the day:

"Yes, I do remember why I liked things in batches. Facebook suggests things for you to like in the right column on some pages. As soon as you click to like one of them, it replaces it with another suggestion. I'm quite happy to like thousands of things on Facebook as it improves the kind of stories and ads that come up in my news feed and again in the right column. I would rather see things I am interested in than things I'm not."

Makes sense for him. But not so much for a small advertiser who just paid Facebook a few hundred or a few thousand bucks so that Facebook could use the ads like click-bait for: people aiming to hone their Edge Rank content preferences, people who are bored and enjoy choosing which ads they like best in the list, or people who want to get their Likes 'score' higher because it gives them a sense of accomplishment.

Trust me, once an small advertiser learns that there are two types of people on Facebook, and they get charged the same amount for clicks from each, they are not happy. Especially after Facebook customer service gives them the Heisman.

;)

<comment><USER3> I don't know if things are as clear-cut as you posit, but I definitely appreciate the research and attention you've put into this.

Whether it's ethical or not, everyone is coming to the realization that Facebook ads suck. There have been many explanations, mostly of the hand-wavy variety surrounding the intent of users on a social network vs a search engine, but this is the first theory I've heard about how the mechanics of Facebook itself are creating specifically low-value classes of users.

Now obviously you're never going to get an honest response from a customer service rep as their hands are tied. However, if Facebook are smart, their top ad guys are deep at work investigating your claims. Being able to increase the real value of clicks is absolutely essential for the future growth of Facebook's ad platform. If they jealously guard the information gap, then it will hurt them badly as everyone comes to their own conclusion that Facebook ads are worthless. They need to make sure that doesn't become the conventional wisdom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a new spin on an old phenomenon. For banner advertising, a _tiny_ percentage of the population (< 10%) contributes a _massive_ percentage of all display ad clicks (> 80%). She's disproportionately a lower-middle to lower- income older American female in the Midwest who plays the lottery and subscribes to Reader's Digest. _Totally_ not joking. A word often used to describe this segment is "compulsive clicker."

Online publishers are well aware of this and, well, do not go out of their way to highlight this fact on their rate cards. Instead they'll provide their audience information and often do not mention that they know their typical click is not representative of their audience. Given that they're the "whales" of the CPC business model, they're frequently _not_ quality-priced down to zero, unless they so dominate an advertiser's campaign that the advertiser complains.

There are related issues with almost all online advertising. One should be very attentive to the default settings at one's major advertising network of choice, because the default settings almost always group the prime rib cut of the attention market with the pink slime and sell it at prime rib prices. (Examples: there are strong differences in pricing with regards to user location. Many advertising platforms, ahem, make it very straightforward for American advertisers to advertise their wares to users in developing markets. All you have to do is not opt out.)

<comment><USER5> What is the reasoning behind this type of behavior? Is it that she is very susceptible to the techniques used in banner ads (animated dancing mortgage people, "one weird trick", etc.)? Or does she have some OCD behavior of clicking all the links on a page?

In the OP's case, I can see the motive of the Like-collecting mindset, but with the compulsive clickers, I'm imagining someone who clicks on ads for no reason other than a compulsion to "complete the page".

<comment><USER6> My wife grew up in Oklahoma, and there are several women in her extended family who fit the profile. I've been watching how her family interacts with technology for over a decade now. The behavior cited in the article makes a lot of sense to me.

First, a warning: it would be a big mistake to think these women are technologically backwards. They _love_ computers and the internet. They were installing wifi routers years before my own East Coast elite-educated family. My wife's sister has 5 iphones for 4 family members, half of them are jailbroken.

Part of what they love about the net is that it makes them feel _modern_ and _included_. They're no fools. They see the money, the power, the TV all emerging from NYC and LA. They know that the most their town has produced is a country singer with a chip on his should (Toby Keith).

Going online, by contrast, feels cosmopolitan, sophisticated, like they're "in it," in the modern world. (There's a similar phenomenon with chain restaurants: Oklahomans _love_ chain restaurants, because it's the same meal you could get anywhere.)

So having heard all the buzz about the net, they go online and ... well, here the paths diverge. The younger and/or savvier become sort of power-consumers. Like my sister in law with the jailbroken iPhones. She can quote you all the specs and all the industry-celebrity gossip, and there are at least a dozen USB devices hanging off her computer.

But the older and/or less savvy, they equate the net with buzz, so when they go online, they go to its buzziest parts: banner ads, scams, get-rich-quick schemes, "empowerment" classes, etc.

They click the banner ads because they think that's what you're "supposed to do" on the net, and doing so makes them feel a part of the modern world. They're not stuck in a fly-over state, they're right in front of the busy modern world, right there on their computer screen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I haven't advertised on Facebook myself, but this is is an interesting concept. If it's broadly true and that Facebook essentially has two "classes" of users, then it's up to them to price them segment and price them effectively for advertisers.

This reminds me of Paul Graham's essays about Viaweb's acquisition by Yahoo[0][1], and how Yahoo seemed mostly uninterested in PG's algorithms for Revenue Loop. To quote: "In 1998, advertisers were overpaying enormously for ads on web sites. In 1998, if advertisers paid the maximum that traffic was worth to them, Yahoo's revenues would have _decreased._ "

I remember when AdSense ads used to be images and Google replaced them with text links, essentially reducing the clickable surface area of the ads. This essentially slashed revenue in the short term with the theoretical long-term benefit of reducing accidental clicks and increasing the value of the clicks they did send to advertisers, who should then be willing to pay more. As a now public company, it will be interesting to see which path Facebook follows.

[0] <http://paulgraham.com/6631327.html> [1] <http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html>

</comment><comment><USER8> I seem to be greatly misunderstanding the issue here, and thus I apologize in advance if this seems like a massive, and possibly dismissive oversimplification but the complaint here is that there are overeager users who are clicking on ads, not knowing what they're clicking, and because of this the author/campaign manager is owed a refund?

Unless Facebook, using the logs they've requested can conclusively _prove_ that these are bot profiles aimed at disrupting the Ad Platform (which is something I would assume Facebook would already be keenly aware of and taking excruciating steps to stamp out, as Ads play a big role in their bottom line), why exactly does the author feel he's entitled to a refund just because people click the ad who might not be interested in the product?

Again, unless Facebook can show these were malicious bots or that their targeting algorithm has malfunctioned and displayed ads to profiles that do not meet the demographic criteria setup by the campaign manager and thus, ads are being displayed to users they shouldn't be and resulting in erroneous clicks, what's gone wrong?

<comment><USER9> Because the clicks by these "clickants" are worthless, and shouldn't be sold. Somebody blindly clicking on ads has no value, and you shouldn't be selling their clicks. It's akin to selling advertising on TVs that happened to be fast forwarded/skipped on Tivo. If the advertisers are aware from DVR logs that fewer people saw the logs, they need to reflect that in reduced costs to the advertisers by reducing bill-rates over time.

<comment><USER8> The Tivo analogy makes sense. Thanks for clearing that up, I figured initially that I was misunderstanding the point of the post and your analogy fixed it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I suspect at least some of these "booklicant" users are people attempting to build up fake profiles that look real.

They do this by liking a lot of advertisers, which makes their profile look more populated.

<comment><USER11> Thank you, I couldn't think of a scenario where individuals would want to automate ad clicking on Facebook, but this makes complete sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you post an email chain, please, post the messages in timestamp order.

It's a little annoying when you need to scroll all the way down to identify the beginning of the discussion, and then have to read from bottom to top to see the exchange as it unfolds.

<comment><USER2> Sorry about that. At the time I posted this, I just wanted to get it out in the world and move on. I felt (and feel) that Facebook had already wasted enough of my time. If I knew that ten thousand people were going to read it in a single day, I assure you that I would have spent more time editing it to give you a better experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I read though this missive - and the first thing that came to my mind was the definition that "more than six clicks a minute is considered invalid" - and I tried to recall if there was a time in the past year that I clicked on six display ads in a day.

I then realized that, when I'm searching to purchase something on Google, I may click on half a dozen ads in a minute - but realistically, each of those has a chance at getting $20-$40 worth of revenue (and the potential, as in the case of monoprice, of hundreds, if not thousands of dollars of revenue after I discover the site)

I'm wondering if anybody has done a definitive study on the conversion value of a "click" on google versus Facebook, both in terms of brand recognition, immediate conversion (purchase), and long term conversion (delayed purchase) - that study, if definitive, would probably adjust GOOG/FB by 10s of billions of dollars - clearly a leading indicator of future revenue.

<comment><USER13> > "when I'm searching to purchase something on Google, I may click on half a > dozen ads in a minute"

People really do that? Not search for some specialized site and ask/search there but actually click on ADs to buy useful things?

<comment><USER14> Absolutely -a company that actively wants to pay for me to see their existence when I'm searching for somthing is a company that actively wants me to buy it there; that's often a valuable indicator that they're worth considering as a supplier.

I'd say when I search for something I'm intending to buy on google, somewhere between a quarter and a third of the time I buy it via an adsense link rather than an organic search link. Anecdata worth every penny you paid for it, as always, but I've said this conversationally to a fair few people and the majority have said something more like "yeah, me too" than "people really do that?"

<comment><USER15> Just as another anecdata point, I'm in the 'people really do that.' group.

When I'm researching something to buy, I will usually do searches on google for broad scope brands/products, then move to Amazon as my first option for purchase, provided the item is available there and within a few % of the lowest online price I've seen elsewhere.

My research may include reading blogs/forums, and possible asking questions there. If its not something too esoteric, I might ask my FB friends for an opinion or suggestion.

At no point in my normal buying processes does FB ads, or 'Likes' play any role.

My wife follows roughly the same pattern, but may be partially influenced by my approach, though I will say her methods differ slightly enough that they are her own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have a feeling if this thing does not stop spreading, then expect Facebook stock to drop by 50% on their next earning report...

Advertisers will cut their budget and that will kill Facebook revenue. Well, maybe start a short position?

</comment><comment><USER17> This is how you do it:

(a) Estabish what you spend on ads per visitor.

(b) Establish what you earn per visitor coming from ads.

(c) Only if (a) minus (b) is positive, continue running the ads.

However, Facebook should have a look at this issue. It is the reasong why Google's AdWords is so successful, and most other self-service ad programs fail. AdWords is very good in filtering everything that does not represent a value for the costumer (the advertising web site).

</comment><comment><USER18> Can anyone here tell me if this bot problem is common on other ad networks, or is the 80% bot click rate much higher on Facebook? Because maybe it's just a common hard problem to solve for ad networks. Or maybe it's Facebook who specifically have a problem. If it's the former, then advertising somewhere else wouldn't solve the problem for advertisers. But I cannot know for sure without knowing if this 80% bot rate is common in others networks too or not.

I do know that many people reported lower conversion rates on FB, but they usually attribute that to lower purchasing intent from real FB users, not from higher bot rate. Or are they simply mistaken?

<comment><USER19> It's not common on other networks _or on Facebook_. This is likely an isolated incident. I've been advertising on Facebook for months and >80% of the clicks show up in my own stats, not <20%. If advertisers were regularly being billed for 5x the ad clicks they actually received, this wouldn't just be coming out now.

<comment><USER10> I've done some minor advertising on Facebook too, and I've never seen anything like this either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> That first email is 2,500 words. I'd be really impressed if anyone from Facebook actually read through the entire thing. It's appropriate for a blog post, but not for an email.

<comment><USER21> When it comes to the advertising giants, it's not a bad strategy to write a blog post but send it as an email first. Realistically, no matter how long or short your email is, you're unlikely to get a helpful response from either google or facebook to your problem, especially if that problem is on the scale of "You need to change your entire ad algorithm (and also give my money back) - unless you somehow manage to turn the issue into a PR problem for them, by, for example, getting it on the front page of hacker news.

You're more likely to get on the front page of hacker news if you can show that FB is aware of the problem but doesn't care to make any changes, which you can do by posting the email exchange. And you're also more likely to get the HN readers interested in an email that's basically a meaty blog post than in a short exchange that goes "Your algorithm sucks and I want my money back. :("

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't know how FB currently charges, but if it's a flat rate per click, I'd think a reasonable solution would be make it proportional instead: this user spent 100% of their clicks during time period X on you, whereas that one spent only %10.

Then you would price based on the share of the user's attention you got, not on individual clicks.

Seems a lot simpler than retroactively invalidating clicks from users who pass some arbitrary threshold.

</comment><comment><USER23> I doubt many businesses have real direct measured ROI from their Facebook ads. Right now people are still happy to experiment with brand/ community building. Eventually though without that direct ROI and the social hype everyone is going to give up.

There are a lot of businesses in the world to churn through but eventually, as a company like groupon for example are probably seeing, this drys up.</comment>


"In a typical year the OpenSSL project receives about US $2000 in donations" - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/m/?authuser=0#!topic/mailing.openssl.users/-P4T62ml_1I <comment><USER3> Note the almost painfully predictable response to the thread. Instead of focusing how OpenSSL can pull in, let me pick a number, $800k in revenue in the next year, they immediately zero in on $70 of Paypal fees as the organization's leading financial problem.

<comment><USER4> You make it sound so easy. Any suggestions you've got regarding $800K in revenue in the next year? :)

<comment><USER5> Anyone who wants to stay in the "hears-about-this-kind-of-thing-early" club should need to pay $10k/month (though of course membership in this club is still offered at OpenSSL's sole discretion, and they would be allowed to waive this fee).

Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Akamai (off the top of my head) will each pay that without batting an eye; that's $480k/yr. right there. I imagine they could probably get some banks in that club as well.

<comment><USER6> _Anyone who wants to stay in the "hears-about-this-kind-of-thing-early" club should need to pay $10k/month_

If I find a vulnerability in code from a project which is pulling this sort of stunt, I will make sure I share details with distributors only under the strict condition that they are not allowed to tell the project about it.

Responsible disclosure usually means "start by telling the authors", because usually the authors know who needs to be contacted and will do that responsibly. If they're just going to sell off exploits to the highest bidders, they should have no role in the disclosure process.

<comment><USER7> I'm not even sure where this comment came from, and how it applies. This isn't about delaying details to anybody (or, worse, hiding details from anybody), it's about providing details earlier to a group of people who have a strong enough vested interest that they are willing to pay for it and have been vetted as trustworthy enough to allow it.

Given how important OpenSSL is to the web's infrastructure (and the many companies who utilize it), I think there would be value in ensuring it has appropriate resources to fulfill that duty. This idea may not be a perfect solution, but calling it a "stunt" is hyperbole, IMO.

<comment><USER8> >This isn't about delaying details to anybody

Yes it is. If you disclose early to a select group, you are by definition delaying details to everyone else.

The paid early disclosure stuff used to exist all over the place, and it was a joke in terms of it being immediately leaked to those in the know.

<comment><USER7> Except you can't give security vulnerability details to everybody until you have a patch ready (and I certainly wouldn't argue that you should allow paying for earlier access to the patch). On the other hand, when you have a business relationship with somebody, with non-disclosure agreements in place, you can tell them more details much earlier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What other people have said in comments is completely right: OpenSSL, or maybe just this Steve Marquess guy, is missing the forest for the trees. Or in this case, the six figure donations for the pennies. OpenSSL could raise more money in a few months of pan handling in a major city than they raise in a year[1].

A student group that I will soon be President of at the University of Northern Iowa[2] received more in donations and financial support. Our student group is not the best managed, but we care a lot about large sponsors, keeping good relations with them, and making asks that matter.

If someone told me that panhandlers and Midwest student organizations are out- fundraising OpenSSL, I would scoff and laugh. OpenSSL? That's mission-critical software running on nearly every PC and post-PC device _in the world_. You know what OpenSSL reminds me of in this respect? SQLite.

SQLite charges $75,000 for consortium members[3] to have 24/7 access to phone support direct to developers, guaranteed time spent on issues that matter to them, and so on.

The fact that this doesn't exist for OpenSSL is an embarrassment to project management. I made an offer in that email thread to try to raise $200,000 for OpenSSL by the end of 2014, and I'm repeating it here for visibility:

If you are an employee of a corporation that wants to donate to directly support OpenSSL development by funding staff time, send me an email right now: email@example.com

If you are in the OpenSSL foundation, send me an email right now and I will try to solve your problem by finding a phone number at every major OpenSSL using corporation and making an ask. Want me to do that? Send me an email right now: firstname.lastname@example.com

[1] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC121964/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC121964/)

[2] [http://www.unifreethought.com](http://www.unifreethought.com)

[3] [http://www.hwaci.com/sw/sqlite/prosupport.html](http://www.hwaci.com/sw/sqlite/prosupport.html)

[4] [https://sqlite.org/consortium.html](https://sqlite.org/consortium.html)

<comment><USER10> fwiw, they actually try to do contracting/consulting and they do have sponsor programs (just fyi):

[http://www.openssl.org/support/donations.html](http://www.openssl.org/support/donations.html)

[http://www.openssl.org/support/funding/contract.html](http://www.openssl.org/support/funding/contract.html)

[http://www.openssl.org/support/consulting.html](http://www.openssl.org/support/consulting.html)

[http://www.openssl.org/support/acknowledgments.html](http://www.openssl.org/support/acknowledgments.html)

<comment><USER9> > > [http://www.openssl.org/support/acknowledgments.html](http://www.openssl.org/support/acknowledgments.html)

And they're not selling Qualys on future contributions. They got their logo there, and it seems like it'll stay there forever. They are a "Past Contributor", and they get what could be prime corporate advertising space to security engineers for free every year they don't contribute. I can't tell if they're a current contributor, or how much it would cost to put $MY_COMPANY logo there. And I don't know why I would care, because it appears OpenSSL doesn't seem to care about who is paying year-to-year.

It says "Past or Current". That should just say "Current". Anyone who isn't a current contributor should get their name taken off. Also, where is Google? Apple? Microsoft? IBM? Oracle? Juniper? None of those names have logos up there. That should be fixed. Has anyone ever cold-called those companies and asked to talk to their sponsorship and corporate contributions groups?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The donations are one aspect. I'm on the dev mailing list, been lurking for a few years, I've used openssl for various things for years and I have had an interest in when some newer TLS standards were going to be supported. It's a pure bazaar as best I can tell. It's nearly magical how releases happen. I don't know if there is a secret mailing list for the core developers or some IRC channel or something, people post patches to the list, there are some occasional questions and answers, it's insanely low volume for a project as popular as it is. Every now and again some big patches with a lot of new stuff drop. Every now and again someone ponys up some big money and FIPS certification happens. It just sort of keeps meandering a long without a a benevolent dictator.

</comment><comment><USER12> A sponsored bug bounty might be just as useful as more money directly to the project (especially if Google is porting Chromium to it). The nice thing about sponsoring a bug bounty is that anybody can do it; it doesn't require coordination with the project.

<comment><USER13> The Internet Bug Bounty that Facebook and Microsoft are sponsoring applies to OpenSSL: [https://hackerone.com/ibb](https://hackerone.com/ibb)

<comment><USER14> The prize pool could use to be a damned sight larger though. Heartbleed only qualified for a $15,000 payout: a figure ten times larger would still look a bit stingy for such a serious bug.

<comment><USER15> I'm certain that certain agencies would value exclusive knowledge of this bug at millions, rather than thousands.

<comment><USER14> Certain ... private enterprises, as well. It's very unlikely that bug bounty prizes can be made to match the kind of money you might be able to get elsewhere for a big bug; but they don't really have to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow, I'm surprised that someone that's so crucial to the well being of so much of our internet security is funded on $2000/year in donations. I think I'm going to start donating more to stuff like this.

<comment><USER17> [https://supporters.eff.org/donate](https://supporters.eff.org/donate)

They make it easy to setup recurring donations. I'm sure even a small amount every month makes a difference.

<comment><USER18> Does the EFF donate to OpenSSL?

<comment><USER19> If they did, OpenSSL wouldn't have $2000/year in donations. Most of the EFF's donations go towards fighting cases in court, if I'm not mistaken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So, first: I agree with patio11. But past that, this thread also bugs me because it is so ill-informed: the very first question that has to be asked is "what is the distribution of donation amounts", as the way to minimize processing fees of "we got one donor who gives almost $2k, and then a handful of people we choose not to turn away who give a few dollars each" is very different than how you handle "we have $2k donors, they all give a dollar". PayPal's micropayment fees are $0.05+5%, which is a massive difference from the default $0.30+2.9% quoted.

And if you have only one really large donors, you get them to give you a check. And then you put their name somewhere. And you send them some thank you letters. And you ask for their advice on how to talk to their friends, as maybe they might also want to donate. Because patio11 is just dead-on right: it is more useful to increase the incoming money here, not avoid losing some fees :/. But again: even if we choose to nitpick fees... this conversation is still going nowhere if the distribution of donations and the process of receiving them (if you have mostly random donations, having them do bank transfers is going to massively increase the loss rate ;P) is not where the discussion started.

<comment><USER21> Lets agree that guys behind this project are not business-wise. Thus - <USER2> are not really in place to raise money, nor manage funds properly. With such an important "service" they provide, they could easily go in to ~$1 Million a year without sweating. They should look for manager/director to manage finances and growth strategy. I bet many marketing people would LOVE to manage such a project business wise including me!

<comment><USER22> >I bet many marketing people would LOVE to manage such a project business wise including me!

I highly doubt the engineers want to be 'managed' by a marketer looking to raise money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Soo, throwing a little bit of economics out there: BSD-licensed open source software is pretty much a Public Good ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good)). There are basically two ways we've figured out how to create public goods: taxation and assurance contracts (like Kickstarter).

Thoughts on the pros and cons of either approach with respect to improving information security infrastructure?

<comment><USER24> Since the NSA (and probably other government agencies) are already researching vulnerabilities, it would be nice to have them made public. We're already paying for the research, so we wouldn't really have to raise taxes.

<comment><USER25> They are not just researching, they are weakening security for everyone, especially domestically considering Americans dominate tech businesses. So not only are Americans paying for research that returns no economic benefit (unless NSA is sharing info with American special interests and are not just security?), they are making it nearly impossible to have full trust in the information systems the business community invests heavily in protecting.

I imagine if the NSA was focused on defending businesses and not reading emails of people, they wouldn't be getting the same amount of financing. They are financed for their power to exploit people the government feels threatened by, not their ability to defend citizens from harm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Shameful that so many billion dollar corporations rely on it in such a vital way, and only so little is being donated to it.

I think we need a score card for donating to open source projects, in the same way we have score cards for using green materials in devices, or using renewable energy for data centers. We should see periodic reports of how much money these companies donated to open source projects.

<comment><USER27> Indeed, and maybe we'll see some of the big companies hire and assign people to work on it now. I hope so. It'd be good to see the code audited too, though I'm not sure how you'd go about that with a project like OpenSSL. I suspect it'd have to involved funding a PhD or two...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone mention the "tragedy of the commons" economic theory yet. Though in this case it seems to be happening in reverse, rather than depleting the common resource, we are all neglecting to invest in it.

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

</comment><comment><USER29> The OpenSSL debacle exposes a real problem with Open source sw. There is massive financial incentive to break it, none to make it safe. Funding its dev does little. Fund guys to break it who will tell you how they did it.

</comment><comment><USER30> i think, generally, the tendency to think openssl needs help right after seeing openssl need help is..ignoring the problem that there might be other projects similiar to openssl, who need help. its like donating to 1 disaster victim because she appeared in a news story. this thing should be left alone and looked into after a few months(i dont know how long it takes for people to forget,actually) of no stories in the press about openssl.

otoh, if there were a foundation that collected money and funded many projects..it'd look like apache perhaps..

personally, i wouldn't mind an option to donate to apache or openssl in a humblebundle, nor do i mind an option to stick a donate button/widget on my website.. or even better, have the widget rotate recipients..

</comment><comment><USER31> Why not rewrite the whole thing ?

<comment><USER32> Yeah, why not. [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html)

<comment><USER33> Worked for Mozilla.

<comment><USER34> I am utterly baffled by the fact that people are _still_ posting that link as if it proved anything other than the fact that Joel Spolsky has absolutely no idea what he's talking about.

Or has this now become a running joke? Was the posting of that link ironic?

<comment><USER35> Was this comment ironic? Can you back up your claim, "Joel Spolsky has absolutely no idea what he's talking about," with some evidence?

<comment><USER36> Rewriting from scratch can be beneficial, take the V8 engine in Chrome for example.

<comment><USER32> Let's. Because this is confusing. What Javascript engine was the V8 rewrite of or did it experience a rewrite of itself at some point in time?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> That's unfortunately still too much. Raising any more money will only delay the death of a project that has suppressed the use of better written projects by dominating that niche in the ecosystem due to first-mover advantage.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm very surprised how low the donation is. This proves that OpenSSL was maintained more from contribution / volunteer rather than professionally. No wonder why they were not the first one to find the heartbleed bug...

</comment><comment><USER39> My usual suggestion would be "that's part of the infrastructure, so governments should get together and foot the bill", but this approach doesn't work for this particular use case.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm interested in how the payments by third-party companies to OpenSSL foundation for white labeled FIPS-mode OpenSSL are accounted for. Maybe it's a seperate entity?

</comment><comment><USER41> it's time for the community (and possible all major opensource projects) to have code review parties.

1 week before, a module is declared the subject. at the time of the party, the major owners are on the hook for function by function questions, and line by line when it merits.

reddit? or even a special github community service.

</comment><comment><USER42> this might not necessarily be a good thing. see: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation_crowding_theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation_crowding_theory)

</comment><comment><USER43> Is it so vaguely undervalued or does it just work so well that it does not need too much improvement?

<comment><USER44> "It works even if I don't pay for it."

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> OpenSSL is like a guardian angel who's invisible to a person. The guardian angel has been helping the person all the time even though he/she doesn't know it. Then the time came that the guardian angel made a little unintentional mistake that led to large consequences. The person then starts blaming the guardian angel, forgetting all the good things the angel has done for him/her.

<comment><USER46> No, because people are paying for it. Not directly, but through their internet contracts, banks, etc. Those people expect that their stuff is secured, they do not need to know how.

My grandma probably does not even know that ESP exists in cars. However, if the ESP stops working, then she could rightfully blame the car manufacturer.

Persons are not blaming OpenSSL as some imaginary entity, they blame people who are involved in making, reviewing, accepting and using OpenSSL.

<comment><USER47> I don't think the analogy works. None of the money, and all of the blame ended up with people who make and review OpenSSL as volunteers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Underfunding is not an excuse for a code that gives headaches to people, lack of testing and blind acceptance of "new features" just for the sake of it.

<comment><USER49> The code is openly sourced, developed, and tested. It, like privately sourced, developed and tested code contains bugs. Since you are casting the stones, am i to assume code you have been around is free of these eventualities?

<comment><USER48> What I'm saying is that we should be looking at (open) alternatives to OpenSSL, like GnuTLS for example.

It's not about open vs closed or "all code has bugs", it's about the OpenSSL project needing to rethink their security strategy and general guidance.

<comment><USER50> GnuTLS does not use an acceptable license. Apache/BSD/MIT please. It's the only way you'll find it replacing OpenSSL everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Dumb question perhaps, but what do they need money for? What would they use it for? It says they pay it out to team members, but if people are doing this work for the money, doesn't that defeat the point?

<comment><USER52> _if people are doing this work for the money, doesn 't that defeat the point?_

What exactly do you think "the point" is. To not be compensated at all in any way for your work?

I see a BSDish license as an indication someone wants their work to be available to anyone. Not a statement that the product itself must be kept purely a labor of love.

<comment><USER51> Yes, if people want to be compensated in cash for their work they sell it or become employed by others. I've always seen open source more as a kharma type of thing and never expected any compensation for my contributions

<comment><USER53> So go work on OpenSSL. Oh wait.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How an hour of trolling helped me get over 2,000 users - <AUTHOR> http://wesleyzhao.com/how-an-hour-of-trolling-helped-me-build-one-o

<comment><USER2> Not bad at all. I've been through this a couple of times.

Generally, you are a lot more likely to be successful with something fun or entertaining than with tools and utilities. Now you can use the success of your chrome extension to promote other apps you've built!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Definitely :). My goal is to create lots of super fun apps and on dooms day I will troll ALL of them and point them to the app of my choice. Jk :)...

But you're right, cool things can be used as a great platform to promote useful things.</comment></comment>


Slim's Prototyping Station - <AUTHOR> http://www.neufeld.newton.ks.us/electronics/?p=172

<comment><USER2> First it is always hard to loose a good friend and father, so my condolences go out to Slim's family and his friends.

I'm not a hardware hacker, but are there any commercial digital systems that support this kind of breadboarding?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, there are boards like these:

[http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Global- Specialties/PB-50...](http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Global- Specialties/PB-505/?qs=sGAEpiMZZMsZWBNk6eoNFXodvjnc%252b0oh)

<http://www.erst.ch/english/virtex2/virtex2.html>

[http://www.mcustore.com/acatalog/AVR- Ready_Prototyping_Board...](http://www.mcustore.com/acatalog/AVR- Ready_Prototyping_Board.html)

Google "prototyping board" for more.

<comment><USER2> Thanks</comment></comment></comment>


Maxima Computer Algebra System - <AUTHOR> http://maxima.sourceforge.net/ <comment><USER2> Maxima is really cool but, because its so powerful, its sometimes difficult to work out how to do things. If your needs are more modest, I highly recommend Mathomatic:

<http://www.mathomatic.org/math/></comment>


Anti-pattern theater: how to get women to quit - <AUTHOR> http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2011/12/04/meeting/ <comment><USER4> I'd argue that her monotone, 20 questions-style responses were counterproductive. You can see her boss having to fish for information, when all she had to do was:

B: So I was looking at the pages from this weekend and it looks like we had something bad on Saturday. What happened?

W: There were too many queries failing in the Netherlands. I got a bunch of pages in the middle of the night and finally tracked the problem down to a bug in the new authentication daemon.

B: So is it working now?

W: It's working under a kludge. I wrote a restart script for it, but we need to get a patch to fix it for real.

B: When did this start?

W: Sometime before my shift.

B: Who was on call then?

W: S. He rebooted the machines and the problem went away, but it came back again during my shift so I put in the auto restart as a stopgap measure until we could get a real fix.

Her treatment of S is harsh because she doesn't couch what she says at all to protect him, like you normally do in order to promote office harmony.

It's obvious that she's frustrated from her previous dealings with certain people, and their alleged sexism (which, unfortunately, is not demonstrated in her recounting). Unfortunately, her response is to attack a hornet with a sledgehammer (with corresponding collateral damage) and then blame the result on sexism.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you have a chip on your shoulder in re sexism, you will perceive every negative interaction through that lens.

Alternatively:

> How do you piss off a technical woman so she will leave your team? It's > easy. Just go and lob a few complaints about her behavior that would never > apply to a guy. The easiest one of these is to say "you're being too > emotional". Who's going to argue against that?

Making claims like that, in effect, is simply a unilateral claim of immunity against the accusation of being too emotional: it gives one the license to be as emotional as one likes, with any criticism conveniently pre-framed as sexism.

<comment><USER6> Generalizing, this applies to any "-ism", e.g. racism, sexism, antisemitism, etc. While I would never claim these no longer exist, in modern western society they are not the primary or even a significant factor in how a person is judged or treated at work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interestingly, she assumes and reinforces the stereotypes herself:

      Just go and lob a few complaints about her behavior that
      would never apply to a guy. The easiest one of these is to
      say "you're being too emotional".

This is plain false. Guys also catch flack for being too emotionally invested in something all the time. Someone proposes a solution, you criticise it and they get overly defensive? Someone reports on an issue and is really harsh about the person that caused it? Someone's performance goes subpar, but when confronted, they are afraid to tell you what's wrong? That's all emotion and they will all be called out for it by a decent manager.

      Here's what you do. After the meeting, you get her on chat
      and you say "wow, you were really hard on S".

Here she again assumes guys never get this line from their manager, which is again plain false. Good managers will call guys out on internal rivalries, lack of empathy or whatever other emotional reason there was for 'being really hard on X'.

These kinds of statements reinforce the stereotypes, because they reiterate the perceived status quo, where guys are non-emotional and thus never criticised for it. That whole line of reasoning is just wrong for anyone that wants to push for more equality. More equality does not mean showing women are more like the stereotypical men: it just as often means showing that men are more like stereotypical women.

</comment><comment><USER8> Something similar happened to my wife.

The President of their company would breeze by the lab. In an effort to keep employee salaries down he would casually mention how everyone in the lab was easily replaceable. I have no idea how one would casually mention this but he somehow managed to work it into the conversation. Needless to say everyone there in the lab got the impression that they weren't wanted. I think in the span of twelve months everyone woman there quit and moved on to better jobs. When my wife moved on she found a job with double the salary and a company that really appreciates her.

<comment><USER9> What does "you are all easily replaceable" have to do with gender? It sounds like the president is just a bean counting jerk, no gender involved.

<comment><USER10> Such stories give the impression that you can say the exact same thing to both men and women, but women will by and large interpret it (or at least act on it) in a way quite different from men. I find that hard to believe.

For myself (a guy), if I worked someplace where I was often reminded how replaceable I was I;d be looking for a new job all the time. Likewise, if I was often told I was being "too emotional" I'd wonder if a) it was possibly true, and b) consider that perhaps I need to work someplace where my personality is a better fit.

In general, if you want to make _anyone_ quit, keep telling them they are easily replaceable, or frequently lob baseless subjective criticisms at them.

<comment><USER11> Why is that hard to beleive?

Society in general treats boys and girls differently from the day they are born. Why should it be expected that this divergence in nurture ought to produce similar results?

I think that in contemporary society, men and women are different---not due to simple biology but due to upbringing---and while this difference isn't what's reflected in so-called 'common sense' psychology, it is a valid difference worth exploring through science.

<comment><USER10> _I think that in contemporary society, men and women are different---not due to simple biology but due to upbringing---and while this difference isn't what's reflected in so-called 'common sense' psychology, it is a valid difference worth exploring through science._

This raises a problem. Should employers speak to both men and women the same way, or should they take sex into account when speaking to people and phrase things differently?

<comment><USER11> I can't say definitively, but here's my two cents about the practice of social interaction....

Changing the way you speak to someone based on a single coarse criteria is a poor way to go about social interaction.

You have an entire person in front of you and can guage how to say something based on your past knowledge of their personality, context, the way they're dressed, their current body language, anything else you've gleaned about them.

If all you know about them is that they are male or female, then you'd best just adopt a neutral posture until more information streams in.

Right now the only thing you can guess at with any real degree of accuracy knowing someones gender is which gender they prefer romantically.

<comment><USER12> And how far their genital nerve-cluster protrudes! ;-) (Though that's still overlapping bell curves, of course, and totally irrelevant to any work conversation that does not involve participating in pornography...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I read her blog because it has some interesting ideas. However it reminds me of PZ Myers' blog in some ways. There is the same repetitive theme of how stupid all these people are compared to moi.

"Within six months, they had an actual user-affecting outage directly attributed to things on that team. We hadn't had any of them during my tenure running that service."

"As I've said before, enjoy your pages, guys. "

Maybe this is just typical sysadmin arrogance / all users are ID10Ts.

I also see signs of a paranoid attitude:

"I knew it was going to be a disaster and they'd use it against me".

Playing games of passive-aggressives:

"I was going to be cold and dry and only answer exactly what was asked of me."

Really if you drop of load on a co-worker in a team meeting you are going to get some blowback.

Her blog is also full of complaints of women not being treated fairly eg:

<http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2011/11/23/hiring/>

(has to walk across the road to get to her car)

Unleash the white knights!

<comment><USER14> Your last comment about origAuthor desiring a secure environment to work in and extending that desire to the carpark is a bit rubbish.

If your employees have to be at work after dark then you should definitely organise safe conditions for them to get home. Women are more sensitive to this because they get attacked/raped by strangers a lot more often than men. It's the real world. You have to deal with it.

HNers should be able to deal with it when they realise they are wrong and need to change their thoughts and behaviour.

<comment><USER15> > _Women are more sensitive to this because they get attacked/raped by > strangers a lot more often than men._

Men are much more likely to be the victim of violence from strangers than women.

The vast majority of violence (including sexual violence and rape) against women is from people they know; "friends", husbands, colleagues.

This is a minor point though; I do agree that employers need to provide a safe environment for employees, and that women feel more at risk in dark car parks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> At my previous job, people would get mad at me for 'throwing someone under the bus' because I would simply tell the facts about a situation, and it ended up being that someone else screwed up. Apparently I was supposed to keep quiet and take all the wrath on myself instead.

That's what's happening here. I'm male, she's female, and it happened exactly the same way. She's taken a common (and bull __ __) occurrence and decided it's sexist, when it's not. It's just a bad situation, possibly with a bad company.

What they're really telling her is that she should have taken one for the team, and they would have expected any other team member to do the same. She actually succeeded in her 'show no emotion' gambit, but had no idea she had done so.

I actually agree with her that women are accused of being emotional more than men are, and it's due to stereotypes.

And I agree with comments here that say men are just as emotional about their work. I certainly am.

But the problem isn't that women are told they are too emotional. It's that mean are -not- told that. And they need to be.

</comment><comment><USER17> After consuming this article, the update, and the comments here, this is the take on the situation I'm walking away with:

1\. The manager was unjustified in saying that W was "too hard on S".

2\. Based on the story in the article, it's not fair to say that the manager's unjustified statement was based on sexism. There isn't enough evidence to conclude that.

3\. Rachel very well might have experienced sexism in the situation she wrote about and various other ones, and Rachel simply didn't explain it well enough in her article, or could only remember this ambiguous example where it's not entirely clear that there was sexism.

</comment><comment><USER18> This discussion is quite amazing. Someone with a high-quality technical blog writes a post about sexism.

Magically a huge stream of comments arrive:

"the author reached an entirely fallacious and baseless conclusion"

"without any evidence, concludes that the manager said this because she is a woman"

"Whether or not this incident was motivated by sexism, there's absolutely no indication, based on the facts presented, that it was."

"then she is overreacting. Not because she's a woman, mind you. Because she really is too touchy about this"

"she's raging over and reading so much into a statement that is, by normal standards, extremely neutral, leads me to believe that even if she has been directly accused of being too emotional in the past, then maybe there's something to the accusations"

"Playing the sexism card every time you run into a bad manager with a dysfunctional team seems like wasted effort to me."

"to look for gender based explanations just seems overly paranoid"

"It can only be used on women who give a crap about being viewed as emotional."

"I can claim that my business partners are space aliens who read my thoughts and are plotting to colonize the planet all day long, but as long as there's no shred of evidence of this, the fact that nobody appreciates the lengths I go to wear tinfoil hats and research anti-alien combat techniques is meaningless"

"it's related to "W" being a bit of a jerk than it is "W" being female"

"If you have a chip on your shoulder in re sexism, you will perceive every negative interaction through that lens"

"that, in effect, is simply a unilateral claim of immunity against the accusation of being too emotional: it gives one the license to be as emotional as one likes"

"It's obvious that she's frustrated from her previous dealings with certain people, and their alleged sexism (which, unfortunately, is not demonstrated in her recounting). Unfortunately, her response is to attack a hornet with a sledgehammer (with corresponding collateral damage) and then blame the result on sexism."

"this blog post brings to mind a different female stereotype: too much drama"

"that author's emotions are out of control in both cases - during the described incident and when she writes the post. She fails by refusing to recognize that"

"It seems overly emotional to me to write this article. (Maybe it is perfectly sensible, but to me, it seems overly emotional)."

The actual article begins with the paragraph:

"How do you piss off a technical woman so she will leave your team? It's easy. Just go and lob a few complaints about her behavior that would never apply to a guy. The easiest one of these is to say "you're being too emotional"

This entire discussion is unbelievable - Rachel By The Bay ought to be a respected member of this community based on her blog - instead she is being attacked in a bizarre way.

<comment><USER19> It's sexism. Sexists don't like being called "sexists" because in today's ethical climate, that label is disapproved. Actually being a sexist, however, is not. So they use lightly-coded language like drama, emotional, touchy, frustrated, paranoid and the sexism card. Thus, other sexists can applaud them without admitting to sexism. And on places like Hacker News, sexists can band together to defend themselves against accusations of sexism, using the downvote button to make opponents give up in disgust, leaving them to be sexists together and in mutual acknowledgement that they're not really sexist at all.

<comment><USER5> It's communism. Communists don't like being called "communists" because in today's political climate, that label is disapproved. Actually being a communist, however, is not. So they use lightly-coded language like 99%, special interests, police brutality, and equality. Thus, other communists can applaud them without admitting to communism. And on places like Reddit, communists can band together to defend themselves against accusations of communism, using the downvote button to make opponents give up in disgust, leaving them to be communists together and in mutual acknowledgement that they're not really communists at all.

It's witchcraft. Witches don't like being called "witches" because in today's political climate, that label is disapproved. Actually being a witch, however, is not. So they use lightly-coded language like religious tolerance, atheism, rationalism, skepticism. Thus, other witches can applaud them without admitting to witchcraft.

It's pedophilia. Pedophiles don't like being called "pedophiles" because in today's political climate, that label is disapproved. Actually being a pedophile, however, is not. So they use lightly-coded language like equal rights, LGBT, gay marriage. Thus, other pedophiles can applaud them without admitting to pedophilia.

<comment><USER19> Communism as the only opposite to corrupt, massively unequal crony capitalism? Sounds like you're a communist, comrade.

Except of course, that your whole response amounts to "waaah, Julian called me a sexist". Yes, I did. You are a sexist.

<comment><USER5> I was identifying an unfair rhetorical tactic on your part. Not every criticism of abusive corporate and government practice amounts to communism, not every criticism of religious intolerance amounts to witchcraft, not every criticism of homophobia amounts to pedophilia, and not every criticism of a vague, venting blog post vaguely complaining about sexist treatment without really illustrating it amounts to sexism.

I really don't give a shit whether you think I'm a sexist or not: frankly, the fact that you jump to that rather than actually engaging any of my points says more about you than about me. What I do give a shit about is people like you outright sabotaging reasonable discourse through nothing more than personal attacks.

<comment><USER19> Every word of what I wrote was meant literally and intended to describe the very real phenomenon of sexists who want to avoid the label "sexist" while being sexist, and who use their majority power in vote driven web sites, or their shout-down power in comment threads, to drive away anyone who attempts to apply the label "sexist" to them. And actually the same applies to the various other disapproved labels, such as "racist" and "homophobic" - in all these cases, liberal gains in the last 100 years or thereabouts have made owning the label in public uncomfortable. But so long as you can weasel around the label, the deed itself carries little opprobrium. And so we get this conspiracy of mutual non recognition.

It's pretty clear, given that, that your picks for "scary label" are nonsense and evidence failed comprehension, or refused comprehension. Witches are _not_ on the upside of a power gap, seeking to continue their witchy abuses while avoiding the label "witch". Sexists are.

<comment><USER5> > It's pretty clear, given that, that your picks for "scary label" are > nonsense and evidence failed comprehension, or refused comprehension. > Witches are not on the upside of a power gap, seeking to continue their > witchy abuses while avoiding the label "witch". Sexists are.

"My witch-hunt is just, because in my case, the witches actually exist and really do secretly control society."

The real problem is that complicated issues like this turn into exercises of identity. It happens on both sides; your side is filled with self-identified feminists immediately siding with anyone who makes an accusation of sexism. Straightforward statements pointing out that no sexism has actually been demonstrated or that it's rhetorically unfair to shield oneself from criticism for being emotional are themselves taken as expressions of sexism, in much the same way that anyone calling for moderation or pacifism was, in the Cold War, accused of being in cahoots with the communists.

The result of this is that you alienate thoughtful people. On several occasions I've spoken out on HN against genuine sexism and in favor of genuine feminist interests. But I'm not interested in getting caught up in a tribalist ideological groupthink, and I have thoughtful criticism for dishonest rhetoric, and so you read me as "sexist", in the classic "you're either with us or against us" mindset (rephrased by contemporary leftists as "you're either part of the solution or part of the problem").

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ironically, this blog post brings to mind a different female stereotype: too much drama.

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if the women who complain about bad treatment in IT also read Dilbert. Just as a basic impression of what it is like to be male in the industry.

<comment><USER12> Because Scott "men are genetically programmed to rape so we shouldn't really blame them" Adams wouldn't possibly infuse his strip with sexist, martyr- complex, responsibility-avoiding, self-serving cultural portrayals. Nope, definitely not.

Not saying the tech industry is a bed of roses. But "this sucks for everyone" doesn't mean "so she shouldn't complain". It means "we should fix this for everyone."

Women have all the problems men have there, plus they are isolated, subject to sexist behavior and criticized heavily if they ever speak about their experiences. This is a case of "yes, and..." not "yes, but..."

If men don't like the way other men are treating them it is not women's responsibility or even possibly under their control. It definitely shouldn't be proposed as an excuse to dismiss or ignore women's feedback on how men treat them (which is both women's and men's problems, and is under men's control).

<comment><USER21> I am not even a Dilbert fan, it just came to mind as an easy way to get an impression. (Office Space, on the other hand...).

It just sometimes seems as if when women say "men", what they mean is actually only the top 5% of alpha males they actually recognize as men. The rest of the male population and their plight does not even register on the radar.

Yes, the problems should be fixed for everyone, and I also can imagine there are problems specific to women. Not sure they are always sexist, though. For example I also face problems as a father when I take care of my child alone at times. It occurred to me it might have parallels to the situation of women in IT. Namely, usually mothers meet other mothers (on the playground, at home, wherever). Now, if I want to meet other kids on my "daddy day", I feel a bit awkward. I haven't created the same networks that my wife did - hooking up with mothers starting from birth courses to frequent playground and mother group visits. I suppose I could call her "other mother" friends and visit them with my son, too. But it would feel a bit weird, at least at first (haven't actually tried it yet), because I am not directly their friend, I am only the friend of their friend. I wouldn't blame it on sexism, though, it is simply evolved historically, because they went to more kid related courses than I did. Even if I change the diapers once per day and my wife does it 6 times a day, it creates a distortion.

I am all for fixing the problem, but blaming the wrong reason is very counterproductive to that. Just saying "it must be sexism" prevents people from looking at other possible causes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Just go and lob a few complaints about her behavior that would never apply > to a guy. The easiest one of these is to say "you're being too emotional".

I'm nor sure this would never apply to a guy. Saying someone is illogical or "motivated by emotion, not reason", or is "overly sentimental" seems to be a common attack during geek flamewars.

It's also a fairly common attack during corporate shark feeding frenzies.

That it was once used to attack women in general (as opposed to individually) actually makes it more tenous to use it as an attack against a woman. The speaker in that case can be accused of being sexist, whilst if they called a man "emotional", it would force someone to address the accusation itself.

<comment><USER22> And as a bonus when used against a man you will at the same time question his manliness. So actually I think this low blow argument might be even better used against men, but works against women.

And for the specifics of the article. I see no explicit accusation of being emotional. "I was being hard on S" does not necessarily mean that the people being hard on another is emotional, since it could also mean almost the opposite: that you do not care about people's emotions. And this argument ("being too hard on") can be and is used on men.

I do not see how this article relates to sexism, rather it relates to various low blow tactics in corporate politics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> For further context, see <http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2011/06/04/fireandforget/> "Fire and Forget, or Sexism in Software Engineering".

<comment><USER13> Her complaint here, one of many many complaints of sexism, seems to be that her manager is unhappy that she loads him down with complaints and too much detail that he doesn't want to know.

She puts this down to sexism. It's not clear why this is sexist. She is wasting his time. If he is like most managers he is very pressed for time and he doesn't need his time wasted.

In this case, sexism is a redundant explanation because other, better, simpler explanations are available. in Bayesian theory this is technically called "explaining away" and it is a good thing. Fact A is not evidence for claim B if explanation C is better.

<http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~murphyk/Bayes/bnintro.html>

<comment><USER24> Note that you've gone from "It is not clear to me that it is sexist," to "She is wrong about the explanation."

That something isn't clear to you only means it isn't clear to you. She is in possession of an enormous volume of information about the situation. You aren't. The reasonable conclusion isn't "sexism is a redundant explanation"; it's "perhaps she has not revealed the information the led her to her conclusion".

Now ask yourself: why did you so quickly leap to the particular erroneous conclusion that sexism was not the problem? There are a lot of erroneous conclusions to come to. Or you could have come to none at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> My own strategy would probably be to slowly create talking points about empathising with the user and the good it does to products. This is fairly subtle and you're unlikely to be called out on it. Eventually your detractors will be playing in your frame when they next try to argue that you're 'too empathetic/emotional'.

That or just leave.

<comment><USER26> Bingo. If you can't find a way to tie any honest but possibly harsh comments back to either getting work done on time, customer satisfaction or (ultimately) the company's fortunes, you might be in the wrong.

As it appears that the blog author was in the right, framing is critical to put attitude in perspective.

I'm not a woman, I have been in situations similar to these and made similar responses and gotten different but functionally similar reactions (i.e., don't put blame where it belongs, you might make the incompetent person feel bad).

After trying to connect the success of that particular task to the project success and company welfare and getting nowhere, I eventually left.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Ah sexism. I love it when I sees it. This thread just oozes it! In fact, most of the posters here write with the exact sexist bent the writer warns about.

* Explain she overreacted; tell her she is wrong.

* Claim her feelings have no merit; tell her she is wrong.

* Tell her you know how she should feel; tell her she is wrong.

* Flatly deny she encountered sexism; tell her she is wrong

* Change the discussion to center on men; minimize her response by associating it with a trivial issue "everyone" has to deal with

<comment><USER28> What if she _is_ wrong?

The problem with this discussion, and the reason I'm not otherwise participating in it, is that because I have a penis I'll automatically be accused of sexism if I do not agree with the author's claims.

This isn't about getting at what happened, this is about everyone needing to tip-toe on eggshells because whenever this topic is raised, _everyone_ is automatically wrong. If you're a woman who brings up sexism, you're automatically too emotional or oversensitive. If you're a man who dares question a particular case of alleged sexism, you're sexist, but you're just too sexist to know that you're sexist.

I dislike your insinuation that someone who claims sexism can't be wrong. I also dislike the amount of psychoanalysis that's going on in this whole thread, including yours.

Everything in this thread eventually boils down to: you're a woman, you're emotional. You're a man, you're pig-headed. The whole thing is a gigantic exercise in absurd extremes that have little basis in reality.

<comment><USER27> >What if she is wrong?

And what if she is? Debating the correctness of her interpretation only distracts from her point that _If you act in the way described towards an engineer you could make her feel like the author._

>I dislike your insinuation that someone who claims sexism can't be wrong.

The comments here focus on the event itself rather than dealing with the actual topic of the blog post. People care more about inconsequential details than the social and professional implications the author describes.

<comment><USER29> Yes, this. It's a blog post; she's relating an anecdote, not compiling evidence for a court case.

It's perfectly plausible, if you take for granted the context that she mentions -- in total & over time, it was frustrating enough that she left the job.

But the topic is "sensitive", so suddenly everyone turns into lawyers and now it's very important to find out if _that particular experience_ is really sexism, because if not we don't have to have this excruciating conversation.

Who knew you could be sexist without, you know, groping someone or constantly making blonde jokes? This subtlety thing sucks; you have to actually think to avoid sexism, apparently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Replacing all forms of "woman" with the appropriate form of "employee" and neutering pronouns doesn't seem to change the story at all.

</comment><comment><USER31> I worked in helpdesks for just shy of a decade, from office junior in a dev shop, to level 1 in a dialup ISP, then through pretty much every available tech role up to microsoft tech lead at for a top 5 in the world hosting company and senior tech escalation for a top 5 in the world domain registrar. I've been working as an IT contractor in enterprise (government, large industrial, large corporate) environments for the last 5 years.

I've personally seen

\- a boss with a policy to only hire ugly or fat girls, because pretty girls distract the geeks

\- a level 2 engineer passed over multiple times for promotions, because she wouldn't say fuck in the presence of three or more members of the senior engineers group

\- a systems engineer bumped to team lead, then project lead, then solutions architect, generally held to be the best boss anyone in her group had every worked for and one of the highest delivering tech leadership resources in the company, quit and start a business outside of IT when guys who were consistently performing below her metrics in other teams were getting better bonuses and better base salaries, and she was being told that there wasn't money to go around for her.

\- an enterprise architect come back from maternity leave (10 months) where she had been effectively part timing (10 to 30 hours a week) because the incompetent guy who'd taken over from her was hopeless and kept calling her for help, who was told that because she'd been out of the current technology scope for so long she'd have to go back to the help desk for 6 months to come up to speed and she'd then be eligible to apply for a promotion, if she did a good job. The incompetent guy who'd been badgering her for her time through her maternity leave was made permanent in her old job.

\- Company christmas parties organized behind the girl's backs - so that they could be held at a strip club, while the girls got stuck holding the fort while everyone else got paid to go to the pub.

The christmas party incident, the three girls who got stuck in the office were told to their face that it was a random selection and they just happened to come up. Three girls in a pool of 40 resources, and they happened to all come up? For a party that they hadn't been told about, at a strip club?

I worked with a girl once who probably wasn't as talented/knowledgable as most of the guys in the tech pool. But she was by far the hardest worker. Absolutely crushed our ticket system metrics consistently. But could never get a promotion. At first it was just air excuses 'oh, Dave just deserved it this time.' and things that were maybe plausible. Then they got thin - guys with less experience who weren't very good and way under performing compared to her getting promotions? They just did better in the interview. She started to get pissed about it - as she was passed over for about a dozen different promotions opportunities when the majority of her peers in the tech pool agreed that she should have had the promotion - she worked her ass off. Then she got a reputation for being hard to work with and a complainer - <USER2> she had the temerity to be pissed about the blatant discrimination. Any guy who had to put up with that crap would have been just as hard to work with.

My experience has certainly been that competent girls get fucked over in IT. And yeah, everyone in IT will be on the shitty end of a bad management decision if you hang around long enough. But almost every IT job I've had, and every competent girl I've worked with has had a laundry list of bullshit like that.

When your job is diagnostic investigation and repair - you learn to start looking for linking factors and commonalities. You get good at root analysis. It's not hard for anyone who isn't an asshole to see that the crap women go through in enterprise IT, almost certainly has something to do with their gender.

<comment><USER21> I don't doubt your stories, but they seem to be unrelated to the article presented here.

<comment><USER31> Really I was just trying to illustrate that the author is being cast as overly emotional when describing a very calm and restrained response to an irritating situation - when in her situation I'd probably be livid and far more emotional in my response. As would most guys.

Almost every guy in IT I've ever worked with gets emotional, angry, sarcastic, abrasive, abusive or annoyed when stupid and inconsiderate people (ie users, coworkers, bosses, jerks in general) waste their time or make them deal with unnecessary stupidity). I've never heard anyone suggest that those guys were menstral, or unsuited to working in IT because of it. Guys working on call after often short tempered, upset, frustrated and generally emotional from the lack of sleep after a lot of call outs - but when a girl goes through the same thing, guys in IT are often and consistently dicks about it, and act like they don't behave the exact same way.

Girls cop a huge amount of gender biased abuse in enterprise IT (in my experience and observation) and generally take it with at least as much grace as any guy takes user stupidity - and then has to put up with user stupidity as well.

I'd never have survived in IT with the shit the girls I know have had to put up with. I'd have found another career very early. When a woman with legit tech chops and a decent length career behind her in IT isn't a man hating bitch - I generally think she should get a lot of leeway for having a bit of a temper - not the kind of lynch mob response that showed up in a lot of the conversations about Rachel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> For those of you who believe that the incident described is not not one of sexism: the author's purpose is to describe an incident and explain to you that it is, in fact, sexism. Her goal is that you watch yourself more closely that you do not create an incident similar to the one she described.

Whether or not the incident described was, in fact, sexism, it _could_ have been and similar events should be avoided.

</comment><comment><USER33> At best, I'd say that there must be some context missing.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm pretty sure the author reached an entirely fallacious and baseless conclusion. My understanding of the events are thus:

1\. An authentication daemon crashes periodically due to a bug.

2\. "S" discovers that rebooting the daemon's host prevents this from happening for a while, and does so.

3\. The author is paged( 5 times ), discovers the problem, and writes a kludge script to keep the systems running until the bug can be fixed.

4\. During the post-mortem meeting, she identifies "S" for his role in the events.

5\. A thin-skinned manager suggests the author was too hard on "S".

6\. The author, without any evidence, concludes that the manager said this because she is a woman, and is hellbent on "pushing [her] out" of the team.

The reality is that thin-skinned managers and managers overly sensitive to maintaining office decorum exist everywhere, and they don't do this based on your sex. Citing anecdotal evidence, I can say that having a penis does not shield you from accusations of being "too hard", and that hearing this from managers, coworkers, or employees, likely has nothing at all to do with sexism or a desire to "push out" women.

<comment><USER35> > _The author, without any evidence, concludes that the manager said this > because she is a woman, and is hellbent on "pushing [her] out" of the team._

Well, without any evidence that she presented. She's been working with this particular group, and we haven't. It's not unbelievable that there have been numerous other minor instances of some form of preferential treatment or sexism. She did, after all, consult with friends, with some foresight of what was coming. While some amount of skepticism on our part might be prudent, there's also no reason to outright disbelieve her, either.

> _The reality is that thin-skinned managers and managers overly sensitive to > maintaining office decorum exist everywhere, and they don't do this based on > your sex._

Woah. That's a lot of certainty right there. How are you able to be so assertively positive that managers -- indeed, in this context, no managers anywhere -- do this based on gender? Even subconsciously? Even without meaning to maintain a tight-knit good ol' boys drinking group?

This is what never fails to amaze me, that enough people are so _certain_ that there's no such thing as sexism in the technology industry. Meanwhile, someone else on Reddit or elsewhere posts a picture of a co-worker and the majority of the comments are, "she's hot, you bang her yet?"

<comment><USER36> The claim was "How do you piss off a technical woman so she will leave your team? It's easy. Just go and lob a few complaints about her behavior that would never apply to a guy."

I'm a man and I've also been in the situation of overly sensitive office managers. Maybe this problem does happen to women more often than men, but to say that it never happens to men is completely untrue.

Playing the sexism card every time you run into a bad manager with a dysfunctional team seems like wasted effort to me. In the case above it's really hard for me to get past this developer's sour grapes to know if there was real sexism or just inability to recognize her (or anyone's) competence.

I'd rather see some thoughts on how a reasonably competent team loses a solid female developer.

<comment><USER37> The issue isn't sensitive managers, it is that sensitive managers call men jerks, lazy or assholes, but they'll say that women are "shrill" or "too emotional".

There's a difference there -- with the woman, the manager is attacking her as a person. With the guy, he is directing the commentary towards the man's behavior.

<comment><USER38> _... it is that managers call men jerks, lazy or assholes, but they'll say that women are shrill or "too emotional"_.

I don't really see a distinction. To me calling someone an asshole is equally a personal to calling someone shrill.

<comment><USER39> The distinction is that, in many peoples' eyes, "shrill" as a personal insult is almost always directed at women. There is a stereotype of a shrill woman.

<comment><USER23> And asshole as a personal insult is almost always directed at men.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> It seems overly emotional to me to write this article.

(Maybe it is perfectly sensible, but to me, it seems overly emotional).

<comment><USER41> I agree. I found the article very informative. I will have to try this new social pattern at my job to get rid of that bitchy UX designer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This is some awesome writing. Bookmarked.

<comment><USER43> I agree, why the f are your comment down voted?

<comment><USER44> I didn't downvote (can't actually), but some possible reasons are: * The writing style was not considered relevant to the conversation about sexism. * No one is interested in the GP's bookmark list.

<comment><USER42> Darn, this article got posted about the same time I submitted a link. I did post that, since I did get bogged down for an hour or so reading the other posts on the site.

The author appears to be a female sysadmin, in Ireland, with some time in Google, or a contractor for Google.

Really excellent stuff, and you know, sorry for my irrelevant comment, but something, any comment can serve to get a deserved link up onto the front page.

<comment><USER45> While R&D at Google may be a geek's heaven, the Operations at Google is a hell, an ITIL hell, 200% Dilbert [the ITIL's blueprint is the Britain's state healthcare IT by IBM in the 1980ies]. No wonder that she's snapped.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> it is clear that author's emotions are out of control in both cases - <USER3> the described incident and when she writes the post. She fails by refusing to recognize that.

High-tech jobs are very stressful (after all, each of us is immensely smart and is surrounded by morons :) and managing and controlling the stress is a part of the job. Failure to do so is a professional failure, especially when it is support/operations type of the job. Instead of recognizing her problem and trying to deal with it, the author pulls the sexism card. Next time her boss and others may be not that fortunate, and it may cost them job, reputation and/or lawsuit.</comment>


Google Site Search is being shutdown - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2017/02/21/google-site-search-discontinued/ <comment><USER2> A friend of mine was asking about this today, but was saying it was the paid service being shutdown, so effectively they won't be able to stop ads being shown on their corporate website.

Not really sure what the alternatives are.

<comment><USER3> We have actually converted quite a few Google Site Search customers over (lack of customizations, lack of phone support etc.) - www.cludo.com

The weird thing is that lack of time you get to find an alternative, it doesn't put Google in a good light.</comment></comment>


Please review: new site for used things please feel free to post your too - <AUTHOR> http://2handthings.com

<comment><AUTHOR> please feel free to post your used things which u want to sell.its completely free to start an auction....</comment>


Microsoft is testing a new mosquito trap to fight Zika - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/21/technology/microsoft-mosquito-zika/index.html <comment><USER2> Just wondering, why microsoft is spending resources on this, rather than its flagship products. It feels like a pr move.</comment>


Pretty, fast client-side markdown is really easy - <AUTHOR> http://www.thepicard.org/realtime-markdown/ With great open-source libraries of course. <comment><USER2> Chrome not happy :(

Refused to execute script from '<https://github.com/chjj/marked/raw/master/lib/marked.js> because its MIME type ('text/plain') is not executable, and strict MIME type checking is enabled.

FF not happy either

ReferenceError: marked is not defined

<comment><AUTHOR> Chrome just gives me a warning. I verified this on Chrome 26 and Firefox 20, both work fine.

<https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=180007> describes the issue, specifically mentioning raw.github.com, which I am using. I would guess you are using newer-than-stable browsers?</comment></comment>


Improved conversions by 25%. Thanks Hacker News! - <AUTHOR> http://www.kartme.com/blog/impoved-conversions-25-thanks-hacker-news

<comment><USER3> Congatulations on the improvements. You're definitely headed down the right path, but I doubt the 25% conversion increase is significant with a $5 a day budget for testing unless you're getting large amounts of traffic and conversions from other sources.

Once you get Google Website Optimizer up you'll see that it not only tells you the difference in conversion rates, but also how statistically significant the results are.

<comment><AUTHOR> True. Uniques to that page were a little under 100 visits a week. In addition to adsense, we tried some Facebook ads, blog posts, commenting on other blogs, and emails to get traffic.

<comment><USER4> Try a little simple SEO. It was true when I started creating websites in 1995, and it is true today. The page Title is the most important part of your page to search engines. Your <title>KartMe</title> doesn't help you at all. Keywords in a coherent phrase will treat you well. The Title is your friend. Oh, and use the meta description tag as well, while forgetting the meta keyword tag which Google ignores.

<comment><USER5> Almost as important as SERPs positioning from title enhancement is that the title and description (if you keep within the character limits) are your eye- anchors in those same SERPS, you want something to immediately make you stand out and also identify your unique proposition (just standing out will get your lots of bounces).

Plus a bonus for me is I now have an idea that I can generalise for my "lists" domain ... ;0)>

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, i agree that meta description is very important. on pages we have of people's items, we're putting user comments in them. any other suggestions?

also, what lists domain name do you own? some people don't love the name KartMe...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The "Stop emailing yourself" headline looks funny to me. It had to look at it a second time because when I first loaded the page I thought it was an ad and subconsciously skipped it.

I don't know why that is. I think maybe it's the font, coupled with the fact that it's on a white background.

<comment><USER7> It got my attention. Maybe not for the right reason though... I saw it and the first thing that popped into my head was the "stop punching yourself" joke.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that's what i was going for :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I must be slow. You're headline says "Try it in 30 seconds!" How? Are you implying that it will only take me 30 seconds to register? I was expecting a link in that headline that would take me to a demo page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment. It's definitely not you.

I was trying to imply that you can sign up and try KartMe really, really quickly.

perhaps sub header should just focus on free.

"Just click a button to organize favorites in lists. Start KartMe to try for free!"

i need to start a/b testing asap!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The headline "All your favorites in lists" doesn't make any sense to me. I read a little of the blog post and then clicked through to your homepage to see what your site was about and I didn't digest it until I had gone through all your bullets and thought about it for a bit. You're making it too hard to understand something simple: "Organize your bookmarks" Use a verb in your headline - why do I want to stay on your site? What is it I can do? You can organize your bookmarks/favorites/whatever word you have for it[1]. Once I know what your site is offering me now I want to stick around and see what your novel approach is - I'm going to leave if I can't figure it out right away. The current headline doesn't hook me and in fact just confused me.

I almost didn't post this because your blog requires sign up to comment. Eliminate barriers!

After typing this whole comment I saw your subheading under your logo - <USER2> it out of there and make it your headline! That's what you do!

[1] - As a suggestion maybe show the word favorites for IE users and bookmarks for FF/Chrome users.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for explaining why starting the title with "all" is awkward!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great, let me know if you need more conversion optimization advice. I am into the business of churning out endless supply of conversion optimization tips :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> feedback definitely welcome on this forum :)

<comment><USER11> I'm also very slow... It's not immediately clear to me what a 'favorite' is.

<comment><USER5> It's the IE word for a bookmark, which may or may not happen to mark a favourite link.

Was it a conscious decision to limit the scope in marketing terms to groups of "favorite" items or do people in practise only add a very limited number of items to any group ("kart")?</comment></comment></comment>


Is GitOps the next big thing in automation? - <AUTHOR> https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/07/14/gitops-next-big-thing-automation/ <comment><USER2> Seems GitOps discussions often miss the security and compliance value. How much time do security and compliance teams invest in identifying current configuration state? Are those practices antiquated if configuration state is immutable and validated once, at the repo level?</comment>


The MATL programming language [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lmendo/MATL/blob/master/doc/MATL_spec.pdf <comment><USER2> Anybody know what _possible_ justification there could be for replacing 2 with H and so on in array literals (Table 1)? In general, a spec doc without an accompanying rationale doc seems emasculated.

<comment><USER3> My guess would be that the goal of the language designers was to make a language suitable for code golf - so short mnemonics that aren't confused with something else would be beneficial. Like if I see an H I know I'm looking at an array literal rather than the many things a 2 could be used for.

<comment><USER2> I just realized the example on the same page (page 6) hints at the answer:

 _" For example, [1H2J2j;YNG42A] gives [1 2 2 j 2j; inf NaN -j 42 5]."_

Looks like the codes are to avoid printing spaces by alternating with digits. Ugh, but ok. Code golf. Sigh.</comment></comment></comment>


The importance of brevity, and how it relates to decline of newspapers - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201001/short-writing <comment><USER2> Haha, thats a mighty fine article. Lots of words about how newspapers are overly verbose.

<comment><USER3> I initially thought your comment was perhaps a bit snarky. Two thirds of the way through the article, and having given up on it myself, I'm less critical of your comment.

One point I noticed before giving up. He criticizes a 'NYT article' for injecting what he perceives as the author's opinion. The 'article' actually appears under their "Dealbook" moniker. Which is, as the URL for the story tends to confirm, a _blog_. You know, where sometimes opinion is allowed.

        http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/windfall-seen-as-bank-bonuses-are-paid-in-stock/

I do agree with the overall sentiment: These days, I find many news stories painful to read, and frustrating when I find the actual facts I'm after in the 17th paragraph and/or scattered throughout in seemingly haphazard fashion -- introduced wherever the over-arching effort in creative writing leaves a bit of suitable room. Sometimes, something like USA Today is a relief simply because what stories they do run are briefer and written more in the traditional top down structure that tries to put a summary of the most relevant information at the top and then elaborates on it below.

Not that USA Today is a substitute for the newspapers of yore. But neither is some of the byline heavy tripe that's become so pervasive.

      -- Just Another GOM (Grumpy Old Man)</comment></comment>


Can You Really Be Addicted to Video Games? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/magazine/can-you-really-be-addicted-to-video-games.html <comment><USER2> From my experience, being addicted to sth usually means that one needs to escape certain part of life that he/she needs to deal with.</comment>


OiNK Admin Found Not Guilty, Walks Free - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/oink-admin-found-not-guilty-walks-free-100115/

<comment><USER2> Dupe: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1055076>

</comment><comment><USER3> Deep down in the comments Alan mentions that he will re-open oink.

<comment><USER4> I find it hard to believe that comment was posted by the real Alan Ellis.

<comment><USER3> There are several comments by 'Alan' in that thread and they all make perfect sense to me.</comment></comment></comment>


Experience the Firefox Difference (2006) - <AUTHOR> https://tools.google.com/firefox/fftb/ <comment><AUTHOR> I randomly came across this gem of a page while searching for something else. Although this page is copyrighted 2007, I found the page has been unchanged (aside from the copyright year), since 2006[1].

[1]: [http://web.archive.org/web/20061105001549/https://tools.goog...](http://web.archive.org/web/20061105001549/https://tools.google.com/firefox/fftb/)</comment>