How Etsy Grew their Number of Female Engineers by Almost 500% in One Year - <AUTHOR> http://firstround.com/article/How-Etsy-Grew-their-Number-of-Female-Engineers-by-500-in-One-Year <comment><USER3> I'm disappointed that "Key Reality" #2 and #4 in an article about addressing a gender related issue are both unsupported gender stereotypes. Those points could just as easily say 'people' instead of 'women', and as near as I can tell be just as true. I'm quite willing to believe that "People" tend to be conservative about switching jobs, especially if they've had a negative experience in the past. And I can see tech interviews set up "people" for failure; but I don't see anything specific to women in that, unless you want to start from some really negative stereotypes. Working on those issues will probably help your offer acceptance rate, regardless of gender - but you need to be sure you can still distinguish good candidates from bad candidates, so you can't just toss them entirely.

So that leads us to the contrast between point #3, don't lower hiring standards, and the conclusion - a method of trying to get better results from reduced experience requirements when hiring. Getting good results from less experience is definitely something important and useful, but less experience -is- a lower standard, so I think the most interesting topic is there. Is watching people in hacker school really enough of an equalizer compared to years of experience? How does it compare to running an intern or co-op program? Is there any problem with the sponsored hackers getting trained on Etsy's dime but working for a competitor? How is hacker school different/better than working with a local university?

<comment><USER4> "Unsupported gender stereotypes." Stated also as "opinions based on experience."

Possibly also "opinions based on experience that contradict one's equality indoctrination in kindergarten and therefore deserve loud public indignation."

<comment><USER5> The fundamental problem with most stereotypes is that there is generally much more information available by asking the individual.

eg. Instead of assuming women are more conservative, just ask the _candidate_ , ask questions surrounding their risk profile.

There are great tools one can use from the finance industry to assess an individuals risk profile and tailor an employment package that meets their profile. Some candidates like myself (a guy) want more time off because we'd rather spend time with family than coding.

If you can create a tailored work environment you'll have no problem attracting talent that's diverse, instead of just a bunch of people who like to work 80 hours a week.

If you offer one size fits all employment you will hire people only for who that size fits. If you offer bespoke employment you'll hire bespoke individuals.

<comment><USER4> In a world of perfect information, that would work. In a Bayesian world (ours), it doesn't work.

Say that you have two types of widgets, widget A and widget B. Both have tolerances that fall along the same normal distribution but with different means. The mean for widget A is off by 0.1mm, and the mean for widget B is off by 0.2 mm.

Now, say that you measure each widget before accepting it, using a perfect measuring function. In this case, it doesn't matter whether you use widget A or widget B.

However, in the real world, you have an imperfect measuring function. Say that it gives you an answer along a normal distribution with some standard deviation.

Does this make the case for widget A or widget B different? Yes, you'll have more widgets fall within tolerances if you only use widget A.

To further improve the model, you would want to know the rejection cost of using an incorrectly sized widget and the supply-demand costs involved in only using widgets of type A. The results of the optimization problem would tell you how much of widget A versus widget B to use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yes, diversity is important.

However, if you are too focused on hiring female engineers, you can bring the overall quality of the team down. Now I do not mean female engineers are any less competent compared to male engineers, but I will give an example from personal experience.

The manager at my current day job has (in a team meeting) expressed that "females are better". The reasoning was that females are more creative and in general, more social. This idea of "females > males" was expressed multiple times over my time here, and it has really begun to take off. In our last round of hiring a co-op, our team lead said "the new co-op has to be a girl". In the screening phase, the team lead decided we would not interview a few of the male applicants, for no specific reason. We then picked 2 people (1 male, 1 female) for interviews. The female candidate was interviewed by myself, a co-worker, and the team lead. This candidate was not exceptional in any way and was not more skilled than the other candidate. She was hired the second the interview ended.

A year prior, we had a female co-op student who was on a 8 month term. 3 months into the term, she was given an offer by the manager for a full-time position. This offer was in secret, and other teams were not to hear about it until her last month. As she was still in school, she expressed that she wanted the job but wanted to finish her last year and graduate. And so the position (and budget), was saved for her for the year, regardless of whether or not she was able to graduate.

I have no problem against hiring female engineers. However, hiring female candidates over male candidates simply because of gender is discrimination, and that's not something I agree with. This kind of discrimination can also be detrimental to the success of the team/company.

Simple example: Let's assume 10 of 30 (about 33%) applicants are female. The team decides to select 10 people for interviews (yes there are places that do not interview based on fit alone but fit + headcount). Since there are only 10 females, if we only select females, there are a few problems. 1) We lose out on any male candidates that may be a better fit (which also comes from a pool of 20/30). 2) We're forced to spend money and resources on candidates that essentially have a 0% chance of being hired because they would not have passed the screening if sexism were not in play.

<comment><USER7> Yes tell us more about how the system is incredibly biased against men.

<comment><USER8> BUT WHAT ABOUT TEH MENZ!!!

(Often in feminist spaces, when people talk about removing systematic disadvantages against women, someone'll suggest how it's really men that are disadvantaged now. This has morphed into a meme-like joke of "WHAT ABOUT TEH MENZ!")

<comment><USER9> My son's elementary school appears to be hugely discriminatory towards men. Less than 10% of the teachers are male, all of the leadership at the school is female. Yet I don't see any gender equality organizations complaining about this very widespread reality.

Gloria Steinem always argued that gender equality would only be achieved when society believed women could do what men could do, and men could do what women could. The latter half of that statement offers zero political advantages for the women's studies faculty members which make up the cornerstone of the gender equality movement of this country, and therefore Gloria's full vision is ignored.

Girls have lower scores on math than boys. Explanation: There is something wrong wtih the way math is being taught.

Boys have lower scores on writing than girls. Explanation: Boys are naturally biologically inferior when it comes to processing language.

Boys have lower grades overall than girls. Explanation: Boys aren't as well behaved or attentive as girls.

If the situation were reversed, there would be conversations about how to redesign the school day to erase the overall grade gap between female and male students. But because the group in question isn't a classically oppressed category, the cause of failure is immediately considered to be an internal factor.

See my point? Within some of the social sciences, there is a very potent politically motivated push to search for only external, rather than internal, causes for issues within any group which is considered socially disadvantaged. Nobody has any doubt that Saudi Arabia's Wahabi influenced culture has major internal influences on undermining their economy, but if the same analysis is conducted on any disadvantaged cultural groups within a Western nation, the group conducting said analysis is shamed as being bigoted.

<comment><USER8> Except, well, often times equality / anti-sex-discrimination law _does_ benefit men. It's now illegal for driving insurance companies to charge men more than women (even though they are statistically worse drivers) (in EU).

Additionally there _are_ attempted to get more men into professions where they were traditionally underrepreseted.

Here's the UK Department of Education: "Record numbers of men teaching in primary schools - but more still needed" [http://www.education.gov.uk/inthenews/inthenews/a00211812/re...](http://www.education.gov.uk/inthenews/inthenews/a00211812/record- numbers-of-men-teaching-in-primary-schools)

So yes, equality and governmental agencies _are_ complaining about the lack of men in some professions and trying to increase it. The photo on the NHS's "Nursing" career page ( <http://www.nhscareers.nhs.uk/explore-by- career/nursing/> ) is a man. (The NHS is the UK's public sector health system and is one of the largest employers in the world.)

You do not appear to have done any research and are claiming that "no-one tackling the lack of men in some cases", when in fact, they are.

With your specific examples, you don't give any citations, so I wonder if you're cherry picking? Humanity is big and people will have lots of opinions. You're telling me that the most common response to lower grades for boys as opposed to boys is an appeal to biology? Got any citations?

<comment><USER10> But when people ask for gender neutral language in Violence Against Women Act and family law, countless feminists scream "wut about the menz?!"

<comment><USER8> I don't know about this VAW Act (seems to be US thing), the US isn't so great on the equality law anyway (since there is no legal maternity leave, marital status or sexuality isn't a protected ground etc.) If I were to talk about how China does voting, would that be a fair cop against democracy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A cynic might imagine that a percentage increase is easy if you don't have many female employees to start with.

From the article:

"At the time of the talk, Etsy's had twenty women on its 110-person engineering team, which is a roughly eighteen percent (or a four and half times) increase from the previous year. It's not quite hockey stick growth, but it's a huge step forward."

Still, clearly it's a huge problem in the industry, so props to Etsy for trying to tackle it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Put it this way:

* hiring any software developer right now is seemingly an uphill task, driving up salaries.

* If women are discriminated against in IT (and lets face it ...) then there is a huge pool of under-tapped engineers out there - whilst many are not in software right now, there is an equal number of talented, driven, intelligent women who could enter the profession.

* If only we could learn from the experiences of people like etsy we could double the pool of software talent.

* If we can double the pool of available talent, hiring will become easier and salaries will plummet.

* ...

* Stuff that - lets keep being sexist, and bash etsy for trying.

<comment><USER13> > lets keep being sexist, and bash etsy for trying

No, lets stop circle jerking about how progressive we are at the expense of reason.

> If women are discriminated against in IT (and lets face it ...) then there > is a huge pool of under-tapped engineers out there

If this was actually true, then people would try and keep it secret, because it could be so profitable. A true "huge pool of under-tapped" resources would sell itself, not have to be pushed so mindlessly.

No one is bashing Etsy; it's just this concept is kind of silly, I could go on Monster.com, search for software engineers and only make offers to the female ones, that would get me an engineering team of 100% women! I am not sure that would prove anything, though.

<comment><USER12> Put a job on monster and see if you get any women applying - in my experience I have never had more than a handful of women applying. Build a complete team? Unlikely.

Anyone from these follow-a-cv-through-HR-to-hire apps got actual stats on application ratios by gender?

I have to admit I never stopped to look at why (the headlong rush perhaps) - most women I knew in IT had come up through the ranks in that company.

And now I think I should look at what happened - I want to know how to get 50/50 applications let alone actual hires.

But sorry. I reject the idea you could easily build a (qualified or even strong junior) team from women only by putting out an ad on a bog standard job site

It seems to take a lot more than that and it may be a mystery why

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Very encouraging article but this bit is super depressing, and speaks to deeper problems with discrimination in our industry: "Etsy's seen the most success when there's either zero or two women engineers on a team...because if there's only one, she's a woman engineer as opposed to just an engineer."

</comment><comment><USER15> I wonder how Etsy defines "most success" in the teams of zero or two women.

I'm a female dev and I don't feel weird on all male teams. Just another team member. But I did feel singled out when the other female developer and I were mostly assigned to work together.

Not that I don't love working with other ladies, but making it any kind of policy makes me feel more segregated than included.

<comment><USER16> > I'm a female dev and I don't feel weird on all male teams. Just another team > member. But I did feel singled out when the other female developer and I > were mostly assigned to work together.

Could it have been to make her feel more comfortable? With certain jobs I've had, my male co-workers would communicate differently with the other males than they would with me. Sometimes they'd talk to me like I was removing my training wheels, other times more formally, and other times less seriously. This changes with time (well, okay, not sometimes), but that was the initial approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The title of this article is misleading. From the article:

        At the time of the talk, Etsy's had twenty women on its 110-person engineering
        team, which is a roughly eighteen percent (or a four and half times) increase
        from the previous year.

The year over year difference in growth rate is ~500%, the actual growth rate is 18%.

<comment><USER18> I read this as: 18% of 110 is 20. If they started with 4 and hired 18, that would be a "four and half times" increase (perhaps modulo replacement or non- FTE hires).

In any case, good for Etsy for investing in training rather than just spending placement fees.

<comment><USER19> Seems like a grammatical error in the article. They have 20 now, which is about 18% of their eng team, and I guess they had 4 to start with. This is ~+450% growth but it's off such a negligible base (~5% assuming they also hired some men that year) that the whole "500% growth" claim is only interesting as a marketing statement, so it kind of undercuts the rest of the article's value.

It's like a school with one minority student out 100 letting in two more and then bragging about "200% growth in minority students."

I'm not taking away from what they did - just how they're positioning it based on a growth figure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why I don't see lots of other industries that are male dominated bothered by the fact that they don't have a "diversity" ?

And I know that there are competent women out there, but I find very hard to believe that a sharp increase of women in your company will make your team better.

Even them end admitting that the women they are hiring are junior engineers, and that they could not find senior engineers (probably because the few that exist are already happy where they are and won't switch jobs).

<comment><USER21> Probably because you don't regularly read news websites for those industries.

Here's a quick example: [http://www.asrn.org/journal-nursing- today/105-hospital-leads...](http://www.asrn.org/journal-nursing- today/105-hospital-leads-in-hiring-male-nurses.html)

FTA: "Pitt County Memorial Hospital...boasts one of the best records nationally at hiring men as nurses.

About 10.5 percent of the hospital's registered nurses are male -- a stellar showing considering that men make up only about 5.7 percent of registered nurses nationally.

Attracting more men to nursing is seen as one way to extend the supply of registered nurses, who perform much of the hands-on patient care in hospitals."

<comment><USER20> First, nursing is female dominated (and I said I don't see other male dominated industries complaining of lack of diversity).

And second, they talk there about expanding supply of workers, not having more diversity.

<comment><USER22> First, name a male dominated industry and I bet I can find you a group working to make it more diverse. For instance, finance: [http://www.pwc.co.uk/careers/student/workexperience/follow-a...](http://www.pwc.co.uk/careers/student/workexperience/follow- a-female-leader.jhtml)

Second, people here talk about that too. In an article that you should have read just recently: "hiring for diversity will set up better recruiting opportunities. Consider Harvard's graduating computer science class: forty-one percent of the students are women, and an inability to hire talented females will start to significantly impact your ability to recruit altogether."

<comment><USER20> I don't said that they did not talked about more pool of people.

I said that what was mentioned was specifically talking about that, not wanting more diversity.

<comment><USER22> You said that nursing is only talking about increased male participation in terms of benefits for the industry, not the men - implying (perhaps unintentionally) that this is different to CS, because CS is focused on benefits for women. I pointed out CS talk on diversity also talks about benefits to the industry (/company), specifically in terms of increasing the pool of available workers.

If I misread your implication, then I'm sorry, but I don't know what your point was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The article fails to mention how they are going to attract other minority groups such as African-Americans and Hispanics.

Yes, I am playing the Devil's Advocate. You cannot give yourself a pat on the back for only tackling one segment of the diversity problem and ignoring the rest.

<comment><USER24>
        A trucker is speeding down the highway along with a few other trucks.
        He sees blue lights in his rear view mirror and pulls over.
        "Officer, how can you pull me over?! There were at least 1/2 dozen other trucks going the same speed!"
        Officer: Do you ever go fishing?
        Trucker: Well, yes.
        Officer: Tell me, did you ever catch ALL the fish?

Volunteering at an animal shelter does not mean you don't car about people. Attempting to improve conditions for women does not mean you don't care about people of color. Working to improve conditions for impoverished US citizens does not mean you don't care about people in the third world. Is my point coming thru?

It's irritating to always see some person chiming in about how if you are working for women you're ignoring Hispanics or some such BS. Both efforts are valid!! I can't believe Etsy is trying to at least make baby steps to helping women get into a male dominated _very well paying_ field, and all you have is criticism. phooey.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I find it interesting that having significantly more male than female engineers is regarded as problem that needs to be proactively 'fixed'. There are a vast number of occupations where the gender ratio is skewed one way or the other. The tech industry seems to be obsessively fixated on an issue that doesn't seem to bother most other professions where such a disparity exists.

<comment><USER26> I imagine that, being steeped in the tech industry, you pay much more to our conversations than those of other industries. I would be hard-pressed to believe that other male-dominated or gender-skewed don't also think about these sorts of issues. Perhaps they just have other forums (like, say, Forbes magazine [1] or academic/industry journals [2]) to discuss them.

1: [http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0316/072_terminated_women....](http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0316/072_terminated_women.html) 2: [http://folk.uio.no/olegmo/Men%20in%20Nursing/Evans%20J%20199...](http://folk.uio.no/olegmo/Men%20in%20Nursing/Evans%20J%201997.pdf)

<comment><USER25> I didn't say there were none. I said most. Call me up when the trade organizations for construction, road work, plumbing, etc. have this as a topic of discussion on an almost weekly basis. Doesn't happen. Not to the extent it does with the tech industry.

My own personal theory, which is completely unsupported by anything other than my own experience and bias, is that it is a particular manifestation of the 'white knight' behavior that is so common among my peers.

Again, I am not saying that it is not a real issue, or that it is not worth discussing. I'm just pointing out that the tech industry has an unusual level of fixation on this issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The key to hiring females: Have a product that appeals to females. It doesn't seem like rocket science in this case.

I don't want to down play hiring female engineers or hiring for diversity. I think both of those are important.

I graduated from college over 10 years ago but the reality then was that females made up a very minor percentage of my computer science/engineering class. It must've been somewhere around 5% (definitely below 10%).

Of the ones I knew that started their careers in software engineering, many (if not most) left programming for other tangential careers. That is, they went to business school and then came back to the industry as product/program managers.

Is that bad or is that good? Should we encourage one over the other?

I imagine that, over time, the percentage of women who stay in engineering dwindles significantly. Considering that the initial percentages you are working with out of school is already small, think of how much you're limiting your application pool if you're looking for an experienced female software engineer. Most of the good ones are probably already working at the large tech companies since they do a good job of grabbing these women right out of school.

While we're talking about diversity, what about other forms of it? How many african-american/latino/native-american engineers do you see in Silicon Valley? Why don't we talk about this more? Isn't there value in diversity across ethnicities? Latinos are the fastest growing segment in America.

<comment><USER28> >> The key to hiring females: Have a product that appeals to females.

If that was the key then Etsy would have already had many female engineers, their product hasn't changed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> "Historically we've kept all of this content locked away and only accessible to our companies - mainly to create a sense of confidentially and openness."

? To keep it confidential (closed) and open?

<comment><USER30> I might feel that I can be _open_ with you about my alcoholism and drug abuse if I know that this will be kept _confidential_. It's a confusingly-written sentence but it's not an invalid concept.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Here is a question: I am an early employee at a small startup (5 people.) We don't have much space, nor do we have lots of cash. Which means we couldn't possibly set aside a few rooms to host hacker school - we just have a small office in Brooklyn. Nor do we have the cashflow to offer scholarships like Etsy has. We probably only have the budget to hire another engineer this year, and we rely a lot on contractors.

Not having the means to sponsor broad programs like this, What can I do - either as an individual, or as a company - to contribute to diversity?

<comment><USER16> There are lots of various localized groups for women in tech in most cities, many depending on their specialties. Some of them are mailing lists, some of them are Meetup groups, some of them are IRC channels. Tap into those communities with job listings and - if you're so inclined - encourage the likelihood that one of them will apply if you state that you're explicitly looking for women to fill the role. Good luck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32>
        "Most technical interviews suck - <USER2>
        interviewers ask the question, "Quick, prove
        to me how smart you are!"

I think this is an important point.

</comment><comment><USER33> I just read the headline, but whenever someone quotes an astounding growth figure, you should ask about the base [1].

If you start a startup with one female engineer (maybe your total staff is 3-5 plus the founder(s)), and then you get funded and suddenly have the money to hire a couple dozen people, it's easy to see the possibility of having 500% growth.

[1] <http://xkcd.com/1102/>

</comment><comment><USER34> Hasn't it been shown the more sexually egalitarian a society is, the more likely you are to find these gender imbalances in the work place? Less egalitarian societies have been found to have less of a gender imbalance in stereotypically gender imbalanced professions. Engineering is usually male dominated, and nursing is usually female dominated.

</comment><comment><USER35> Anyone else expect the article to be one sentence long: "by hiring 5 female engineers!"

</comment><comment><USER36> Here is @kellan's full presentation on youtube: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4LExVkv4Pw>

</comment><comment><USER37> A company I worked for in the past increased their female engineer base by 500% in a year. They had 1 and hired 5 more.

</comment><comment><USER20> How eighteen percent is four and a half time?

four a half is 450%... ???

Can someone clarify to me?

<comment><USER38> Different denominator.

If they went from 1 to 6 girls it would be 500% increase

If they hired 1 girl last year and 6 girls this year, regardless of the total number of boys and girls at the company, it would be a 500% increase.

Basically, semantic games

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Did they start with one female engineer or twenty?

I have increased my revenue by 50000000% this month, by the way....

<comment><USER40> "At the time of the talk, Etsy's had twenty women on its 110-person engineering team, which is a roughly eighteen percent (or a four and half times) increase from the previous year. It's not quite hockey stick growth, but it's a huge step forward."

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Step 1: be Etsy.

</comment><comment><USER42> Oh look, more sexism disguised as anti-sexism. As a man, I'm glad I don't work for etsy.</comment>


Stamps for UX and Product designers - <AUTHOR> http://uxstamps.com/ <comment><USER3> Or you could simple print out a bunch of outlines on sheets of paper and grab them when you want to draw on them. I don't see how that is any worse than stamping a sheet of paper and then draw. And for this you might very well have the tool already on hand (a printer).

<comment><USER4> Who still nowadays has a printer? Even most offices don't.

<comment><USER5> I dare you to find a single office without a printer.

<comment><USER4> I guess we're too electronic here in Estonia, with all the e-signatures and all. I always struggle to find a friend to print something, need that once in a few months. Same with many other companies here.

What exactly would we need a printer for? What should we print out? Just curious.

<comment><USER6> How about app design templates?

<comment><USER4> Pencil prototypes in notebook, or mockups/hi-fi on screen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Doesn't mean the product is bad or anything but thrown off by this: "We make ..." "... drop us an email ..." yet when you click through to the parent website (shapes.io): "Portfolio of Chi Wai Li" "My Recent Work"

</comment><comment><USER8> This is a brilliant idea for those of us who like to keep all our brainstorms in a single notebook! Currently, I print things out and tape them into my notebook...

I would prefer my stamps to be a little different though, so I'll probably buy a custom stamp from a site somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER9> Probably not long before something similiar will appear here: [https://www.thingiverse.com/search?q=stamp](https://www.thingiverse.com/search?q=stamp)

</comment><comment><USER10> See also: [https://www.uistencils.com/products/iphone-stencil- kit](https://www.uistencils.com/products/iphone-stencil-kit)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is actually pretty cool. I work with a designer that often starts his process on paper, and I imagine he would be quite intrigued by something like this!

</comment><comment><USER12> Did calling Apple Watch "iWatch" trigger anyone else?

</comment><comment><USER13> So simple but so clever. I don't wire-frame enough to justify buying this but I wish you the best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER14> If your Product Designer can't draw rectangles then I don't think these stamps are gonna help them.

</comment><comment><USER15> So dumb...

</comment><comment><USER16> Edit: At the time I posted this comment, the title of the thread was a "Show HN", now it is no longer a "Show HN". The comments below were made specifically in response to a "Show HN" as helpful advice for the creator.

There's a payment box at the bottom left of the page that says "Test - <USER2> Grid" \-- maybe this wasn't supposed to be there?

The wording next to the first two options "(Not to scale)" concerns me. Is there a reason you can't draw it to scale?

Or are you just trying to say that it is a scaled down representation?

Usually "not to scale" indicates that a drawing or other representation is a different size than the real object AND individual portions of the representation are not shown with correct proportions. In the case of a design tool, it seems very important that the stamp have proper proportions.

If it is just scaled down but has correct proportions, you would say "to scale" and/or indicate the scale as a fraction of the original size. If it is the exact same size as the actual object, you could indicate that as well.

If it is actually not to scale, what is the point? Any drawing you make in it won't fit in the actual product the same way.

<comment><USER17> Not the OP and unsure of exact market - but I'm going to hazard a guess that "not to scale" is because of the needs of the design industry.

I suspect that this is the sort of thing that they print and put on walls so that the designers and developers can go wild with their designs and redesigns of wireframes for the product.

So if its on a wall, you really want it to be much much larger than actual size so you can see it from 5 or 10 feet away.

This is my guess anyway based on how I've seen product design teams work. Would be good for the OP to clarify as well.

<comment><USER16> It can be much larger or smaller than actual size and still be "to scale" \-- the term indicates that all proportions within the image are correct, not that it is the same size as the original.

At a glance, it looks like the product actually _is_ to scale so saying "not to scale" is a disadvantage and will scare away potential customers.

If it really is not to scale, it's almost worthless.

<comment><USER17> Ah, so interesting! I actually looked this up; have a look at this on English Stackexchange (not the greatest reference, I know): [https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/159821/what- do-p...](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/159821/what-do-people- mean-or-think-they-mean-by-not-to-scale)

It looks like some people interpret it as "not exact size" as well. For some reason, that's the context I got from this phrase. I can't remember where I first heard it though.

Having said that, if I step back and have a look, "not to scale" does seem to imply not exact proportion, which isn't right either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It is neat, but I don't think I would use this as a web developer. Photoshop or wacom is far more superior to any paper design.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is incredibly dumb. Why is this on the front page?</comment>


Free Data Science Books - <AUTHOR> http://www.p-value.info/2012/11/free-datascience-books.html <comment><USER2> "Elements of Statistical Learning" should definitely be on the list. It is one of (if not THE) leading intro graduate textbooks in machine learning.

<http://www-stat.stanford.edu/~tibs/ElemStatLearn/> or straight to the PDF at [http://www.stanford.edu/~hastie/local.ftp/Springer/ESLII_pri...](http://www.stanford.edu/~hastie/local.ftp/Springer/ESLII_print5.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Also:

<http://www-nlp.stanford.edu/IR-book/>

[https://www.ics.uci.edu/~welling/teaching/273ASpring10/Intro...](https://www.ics.uci.edu/~welling/teaching/273ASpring10/IntroMLBook.pdf)

____________

more info on Barber book mentioned in OP: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4672930>

[http://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/i06a0/book_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/i06a0/book_draft_introduction_to_machine_learning_by/)

<comment><USER4> Thanks! Do you happen to have the solutions manual for the IR book?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> for some reason the "bayesian reasoning and machine learning" (which to my eye is the most readable - perhaps because it is assumes the least from the reader) link is directly to the pdf. the site is at [http://web4.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/D.Barber/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=...](http://web4.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/D.Barber/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Brml.HomePage) and includes a discount for the dead tree.

</comment><comment><USER6> For the Mining of Massive Dataset book. Is the exercise solutions available somewhere?

</comment><comment><USER7> wow, great resource. thanks.</comment>


From CIA: Timeless Tips for 'Simple Sabotage' - <AUTHOR> https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2012-featured-story-archive/simple-sabotage.html

<comment><USER2> Tips for the Timeless Startup:

\- Don't ask permission for anything. Just do it and apologize if you get caught.

\- Don't hash your user passwords. Ensure that you have a "database leak" at least once once you hit over 100k users. (Make sure you drop TechCrunch a tip to make sure that you cover your security breach). Also make sure you use SHA1/MD5.

\- Make sure anyone signing up for an account has to pick a password at least over 8 characters and must contain at least one symbol, one upper case letter, and a number. Additionally, no two identical characters can be next to each other (both on your keyboard on in the password string).

\- Hire female models to do all of your publicity material. Ensure you film it. Don't take any BS if people criticize you for this.

\- Make sure all your users have to verify their email before they can access their account. (Wait an hour before sending out any activiation emails).

\- Send out newsletters and marketting material filled with BS martketing speel at least once a day.

\- If you provide an "unsubcribe" on your email, make sure that it's behind a login wall, that requires users to log in before they can unsubscribe from emails.

\- If your users want to cancel their account, require that they provide you with a reason. Once they have provided you with a reason, tell them you are sorry to see them go, but incase they change their mind, you will keep their account open for 14 more days. (Keep sending them emails telling them you miss them)

\- Run regular "competitions" for your users, but make sure that you always pick an employee as the winner so that you don't have to give out any awards.

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh my gosh! there must have been highly trained agents pretending to be managers at my old Fortune 100 job! (I always knew it was impossible they where that incompetent!) jk jk :)

</comment><comment><USER4> Should have been called "How to loose customers and annoy employees". I swear I've worked at places where this was the standard operating procedure!</comment>


How a small company with a big dream beat out Google & Amazon for domain .Music - <AUTHOR> https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/digital-and-mobile/8506876/dotmusic-limited-website-domain-extension <comment><USER2> Don't beat them...build your own business.. like them</comment>


Brexit: Vote on second referendum, now possible - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2019/may/21/brexit-latest-news-developments-cabinet-to-discuss-latest-brexit-offer-to-mps-as-ministers-feud-in-public-over-no-deal-live-news <comment><USER2> The voting will be repeated until the public returns the desired result.</comment>


How to be really bad programmer - <AUTHOR> http://www.codelathe.com/blog/index.php/2009/02/17/10-ways-to-be-really-bad-programmer/

<comment><USER2> A very loose set of criteria that ignores the fact that programmers can exist at different levels of expertise, and can be adept at non-programming activities too.

For example, I don't see how being able to navigate office politics is a sign of a bad programmer. Nor are confidence, strong will and "inner peace" anything to do with being a good or bad programmer.

Verdict: not worth reading.

<comment><AUTHOR> The criteria is not meant to be a bill of rights. Just quasi funny.

<comment><USER2> Well, I have to say that the comic aspect did not get through to me. If you read your intro:

 _I recently read this post at readwriteweb called Top 10 Traits of a Rockstar Software Engineer. It got me thinking, those were important traits to be a good programmer, but here some were surefire traits of a bad programmer._

That doesn't read like an intro to a humorous article.

Then, when you go into the points themselves, they're not all that funny. For example, point number 7:

 _7) Can navigate office politics easily_

 _Unlike their tongue tied good programmer colleagues, many of the bad programmers have skills in various areas not directly related to programming. It is an important skill to cultivate as it helps them keep their job in the first place._

That could have been written in a humorous style, by exaggerating things and making it obvious that you're not making a serious argument. Instead, it feels like you're seriously arguing that having decent social skills is a trait of bad programmers. If you made outrageous claims like "no self-respecting programmer will look in the eyes of, let alone talk to, a colleague," then it would be obvious that you're exaggerating... to me it read like a serious argument, not like a joke.

So from a practical point of view, I didn't find the article useful, and the humour didn't get through to me (and, apparently, to others, since they didn't vote it up). Hopefully this comment helps you with the next one :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Meh. Every point below 4 is a trait phrased as a positive, then twisted to be a negative in the text.</comment>


How to rig your Kia Soul EV to be fully drive by wire capable for $500 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/opencaret/a-complete-drive-by-wire-implementation-using-oscc-on-the-kia-soul-ev-55664e9e10fc <comment><USER2> Does this kind of car mods render the vehicle illegal to drive on public roads?

<comment><AUTHOR> IANAL but dont think so - otherwise all self driving car companies would be illegal :) I would imagine this doesn't make it anymore illegal than modifying your tires/suspension/ECU does. It most likely voids your manufacturer warranty while this thing is hooked up.

<comment><USER2> Obviously IANAL either. But it appears to me that self driving car companies acquires permits/exempts for their highly modified production vehicles from the state DMVs to be able to drive on the public roads. And most of them have to submit year-end reports [1][2] Geohot's comma.ai (mostly himself) had tried to pull this off in 2016 but no avail.[3]

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/13/17235788/waymo-permit- ful...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/13/17235788/waymo-permit-fully- driverless-car-california)

[2] [https://qz.com/863718/uber-received-a-stern-letter-from- the-...](https://qz.com/863718/uber-received-a-stern-letter-from-the- california-dmv-telling-it-to-cease-operating-its-self-driving-cars/)

[3] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-selfdriving-safety- idUSKC...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-selfdriving-safety- idUSKCN12S1ON)</comment></comment></comment>


Obama DOJ's New Abuse of State-Secrets Privilege Revealed - <AUTHOR> https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/14/ongoing-abuse-state-secrets-privilege/

<comment><USER2> Holder claims that exposing the reason for denial of entry to the US

> "could reasonably be expected to cause significant harm to national > security."

Which on the face of it is true, because:

> The bogus national security claims invoked were even more outrageous because > they were used to continue the persecution of someone the government knew to > be innocent.

Exposing the truth makes us look bad. Making us look bad puts our bullshit, freedom harming programs at risk. We serve those programs, those programs are the most important thing (and not looking bad).

</comment><comment><USER3> A by-product of all the big government so many people seem enamored with lately: big bureaucracy. Expect more nameless and blameless officials "checking the wrong box" in the future.

<comment><USER4> Have you _ever_ dealt with a large private health insurance, telecom, airline, banking, or other company?

They don't care about you either unless you're large enough that losing your business would actually matter. They don't care about you _at all_ if it's impossible to lose your business (i.e. employer-provided health insurance, cable companies).

This is a ridiculous claim.

<comment><USER5> The US gov't is much bigger than all these corps combined. And they have multiple police forces. Oh, whats that? You don't like our service? Too bad, because there's no other game in town. And no, you're not allowed to disrupt the government.

<comment><USER6> > And no, you're not allowed to disrupt the government.

What do you call voting?

<comment><USER5> Like owning a single share in a very large monopoly. Except you're both the shareholder and the customer. The share loses value everyday and the service could be better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> He is an accomplished liar. Catch him if you can.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why is this on Hacker News?</comment>


World Religions Phylomemetic Tree - <AUTHOR> http://funki.com.ua/ru/portfolio/lab/world-religions-tree/

<comment><USER2> Nice chart but there are mistakes with the origin of Islam. There is influence from the pre-Islamic religions in Arabia which has not been displayed in the chart. For example, one of the gods housed in the Kaaba was the pre-Islamic god Hubal.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is a lot wrong with this graph, specifically only single origins for religions are acknowledged. This is false. For example Islam comes from multiple origins, not simply Ancient Israelite religion.</comment>


Ask HN: JavaScript bundlers overflow (webpack, browserify, gulp, rollup js?) - <AUTHOR> This may be more of a rant. I thought that webpack is the new thing for bundlers and while I was learning it, I found out something called rollup js. So webpack is not the latest anymore ? Anyone worked with rollup js ? <comment><USER2> Webpack and Rollup are similar, but are best for slightly different use cases. Rollup, as far as I know, is best when you're trying to bundle just ES6 modules. Webpack supports a much wider variety of input formats, both built-in (CJS/AMD/ES6 modules) and through loaders.

At the moment, Webpack appears to be the most-used bundling tool for modern web apps. Rollup does produce smaller output, and seems to possibly be a better choice if you're developing a library rather than an application.

There are discussions going on about trying to leverage some of Rollup's capabilities in Webpack to get the best of both worlds.</comment>


Ask HN: Sublime Text vs. Notepad++ which do you prefer? Why the hype for Sublime? - <AUTHOR> I switched to Sublime text recently but found its licence pop-up and download update pop in Mac very annoying. I had no such problems when I used Notepad++ why is there so much hype for Sublime as a text editor (there is even a Udacity course for sublime)? What am I missing? <comment><USER2> Well for starters, Notepad++ is only for Windows while Sublime is for Windows, Linux and MacOs X.

I guess the fact that you can customize it with Python (it has an embedded Python console) and write plugins in python makes it easier for many developers to write their own plugins, while for Notepad++ you would have to write plugins in C/C++ and use DLLs which is more cumbersome.

In any case, in my opinion nothing beats Vim (well, emacs might be close, but I prefer Vim). When I need to use an IDE like IntelliJ Idea or Eclipse I install a Vim plugin. Some time ago I was using Sublime with Vintage mode, but then I improved my Vim knowledget past basic Vim and I now I prefer Vim to any other text editor.

</comment><comment><USER3> I used to be a notepad++ user.

Sublime is way faster to use and better all around and saves me tons of time(money) over using notepad++.

As far as the nag screen, I endured it for a while but I make money using sublime and enjoy using it want it to stay around so I purchased a license.

If the cost seems high, add the cost in to your next fixed cost project, typically clients aren't going to decline a proposal +/\- $100. (don't list as a line item btw, just increase your quote by $100 to cover it).

You could also think about raising your rates. So you have more revenue for equipment/software.

Sublime has great time savers you might not have discovered yet.

This article is a little dated but covers some of the best things about sublime.

[https://scotch.io/bar-talk/best-of-sublime- text-3-features-p...](https://scotch.io/bar-talk/best-of-sublime- text-3-features-plugins-and-settings)

This is a great series that shows off what Sublime can do: [https://laracasts.com/series/sublime-text- mastery](https://laracasts.com/series/sublime-text-mastery)

Speaking of raising rates. A great way to get better higher paying projects is to learn Rails or Laravel.

<comment><USER4> > _A great way to get better higher paying projects is to learn Rails..._

Any pointers for someone looking for a remote gig ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The daily reminder to pay for the software you're using for free is annoying?

<comment><USER6> it pops up every n saves, so if you make small edits and save often it becomes annoying quickly. "just pay for it" would be my advice

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's very fast and never crashed! I don't know for how long I use it for, but probably since release. The minimap was the first feature I noticed, the default theme and the package manager.

I decided to use it based on my own experience, not sure if it'll help you opt for it if you need other people to tell you so. Experience it first!

If you feel annoyed about the popup, pay for the license, it's cheap and you probably make 1000000x more from it in terms of profit over the investment you put.

</comment><comment><USER8> Sublime is beautiful. I'm sure you can make Notepad++ look the same with tweaking, but Sublime is beautiful by default (and extra color schemes are one click away on Package Control). Also, it's cross-platform which is important given that I'm on a Mac.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been using vscode for the past year at least.

Can someone describe the benefits of sublime over vscode or even atom(I find atom to be a lot slower than vscode)?

So many people swear by sublime so I assume there must be something I'm missing. At the same time I love the simplicity of adding plugins in vscode, and sharing settings through a git gist is great as well.

<comment><USER10> Native (Sublime) vs Electron (Atom, VS Code)

Sublime is just so much more responsive than it's Electron counterparts. They all have tradeoffs so if the increased resource usage for Code and Atom isn't issue for you then you may not see the need for Sublime. Additionally if you prefer the the ease of use of the plugins in Atom/Code, configuring them with the GUI, compared to the editing of JSON files to configure Sublime plugins might seem a bit annoying.

I used Atom for a while because it "just worked" but I switched to Sublime on a cheaper, low powered laptop and the difference in resource consumption is very apparent. Almost everything ran smoother while Sublime was open compared to Atom. The plugins were a bit more involved to get working but for that use case it was worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Speed, the package manager and the multi cursor made me fall in love with it.

And if you're annoyed by the popup, then just pay for it. It's not /that/ expensive if you use it daily. That being said I have not paid for it and the popup is just one click to dismiss. My CMD+S is essentially CMD+S+SPACE (to remove the popup should it appear).

</comment><comment><USER12> I really love the multicursor feature is Sublime.

In fact I use it a lot to monkey patch CSV files after searching for a regexp.

</comment><comment><USER13> I can open 1-2GB files with Sublime. I can't with Notepad++

But most of the time I use Notepad++ for quick notes, dumping clipboard contents, parse logs, ... Pretty much everything except coding (I only do small scripts and the odd tiny utility).

</comment><comment><USER14> Ive used notepad++ but recently I found Visual Code and it replaced np++</comment>


Zoom monitors activity on your computer - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/Ouren/status/1241398181205889024 <comment><USER3> When someone sends you a zoom invite, cancel the download, then click the having problems link to download again. Cancel it again. It will show you a link to join by browser.

A few other meeting apps have dark patterns like this. One of my favorite things about Hangouts Meet is it's web first.

<comment><USER4> What I find irritating is this proliferation of meeting apps like these, all using their own proprietary variations of protocols and consuming huge amounts of system resources, when there has been a standard protocol for it that's been around since the late 90s, with a variety of different clients available: SIP. One could be sent a SIP URI for a meeting and it would work in any client.

Maybe it's like IRC vs all the other IM "solutions", except with an even larger difference in userbase.

Edit: looks like Zoom _does_ use SIP too, but it's not that obvious how to use your own client: [https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201207626-Video- La...](https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201207626-Video-Layout- for-H-323-SIP)

<comment><USER5> Excuse my ignorance but is there a good implementation out there that uses this protocol? Jitsi perhaps?

<comment><USER6> I have used Jitsi. Last week I did a few pairing sessions where the both of us were sharing our screens and still had our webcams on in the corner and it was awesome.

We tried to do a standup with (I think) 8 people and it was terrible - <USER2> would randomly not get any audio for stretches of time, video would get choppy or lost completely, it was not pleasant.

I will keep using it for pairing since I haven't found another tool that gives me that kind of flexibility and it was in fact very good. I believe the whole experience is limited by the connection quality of the worst participant.

<comment><USER7> I've been using Jitsi Meet a lot as well.

It has terrible Firefox support but works decent if _all_ participants are using Chromium / Chrome[0]. Asking other people to install Chromium makes me feel dirty but I don't know any other login-free cross-platform open source easy-to-use video conferencing apps than Jitsi Meet.

[0]: [https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi- meet/issues/4](https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet/issues/4)

<comment><USER6> That could have been the issue, I haven't asked to be honest.

It does tell you that Firefox is not supported when you log in though, so I'd have expected people to say something but hey ho...

<comment><USER8> Hopefully WebRTC becomes more thoroughly implemented cross-browser Chromium has waaaay better support since WebRTC is primarily maintained by a team at Google.

<comment><USER9> The question is, why doesn't Zoom use WebRTC in favor of the plug-in. WebRTC uses the SRTP Cryptosuite which is pretty secure and can be made very secure [https://wiki.freepbx.org/display/DIMG/SRTP+Cryptosuite](https://wiki.freepbx.org/display/DIMG/SRTP+Cryptosuite)

Zoom is unencrypted by default? So you have to physically turn encryption on. Also, it is very unclear if your data is encrypted at rest. "End to end encryption" does not necessarily mean "end-to-end encryption" as has been shown many times before

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> via Zoom Support Reply: [https://twitter.com/zoom_us/status/1241768006327336963](https://twitter.com/zoom_us/status/1241768006327336963)

"Hi, attention tracking feature is off by default - once enabled, hosts can tell if participants have the App open and active when the screen-sharing feature is in use. It does not track any aspects of your audio/video or other applications on your window."

Points to this article: [https://support.zoom.us/hc/en- us/articles/115000538083-Atten...](https://support.zoom.us/hc/en- us/articles/115000538083-Attendee-attention-tracking)

<comment><USER11> The twitter thread in the OP says " _collects data on the programs running_ " without backing anything up. Seems like FUD from the face of it. Yes, the privacy may not be perfect (according to EFF admins can see time spent by others in the organization on meetings etc.), and zoom can notify the meeting organizer about participants not having the window in focus. But that's it?

Not exactly the gravity touted in the linked twitter thread, saying " _If you manage the calls, you can monitor what programs users on the call are running as well_ ". No proof of that...

Kinda scared by how much a single tweet can make something blow up, without a shred of evidence backing the claims up.

<comment><USER12> The more interesting aspect to me from the EFF article was that admins can also see your geolocation, who you are meeting with and when, etc. Basically, if Zoom is your platform for communicating, your Zoom admin knows a LOT of metadata about your people that they might not be aware is knowable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> EFF seems to be the source: [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/what-you- should-know-a...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/what-you-should-know- about-online-tools-during-covid-19-crisis)

> If attendees of a meeting do not have the Zoom video window in focus during > a call where the host is screen-sharing, after 30 seconds the host can see > indicators next to each participant's name indicating that the Zoom window > is not active.

It doesn't seem too invasive, although of course it'd still be annoying if you have two monitors etc.

<comment><USER14> This feature is primarily used in educational-type settings so instructors can tell that students aren't paying attention to something else.

As far as I've been able to determine, there is no collection of "apps" or other data, just "not paying attention" time.

<comment><USER15> So what if the student has their notes app pulled up? That's a legitimate reason to trigger the alert. The student could also just be playing xbox or something unbeknownst to the professor and still appear alert on the webcam.

It seems like it trades a lot of privacy for something students will evade with no effort at all.

<comment><USER12> Exactly. At least the student whose window is not in focus is _at their computer_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That's why we have been building [https://qbix.com/platform](https://qbix.com/platform)

To have an open source alternative. Want videoconferencing on your own site? You can! See here for instance.

[https://yang2020.app/meeting](https://yang2020.app/meeting)

We have a harder challenge of making all the SDP offers work cross browser, but Chrome should def work.

Code: [https://github.com/Qbix](https://github.com/Qbix) (If you like it, star it lol ⭐)

Contact me if you want to learn how to use the Qbix platform. I will be teaching classes and put it online. We are following the wordpress model. My email is in [https://qbix.com/about](https://qbix.com/about)

 _Quick question for the networking experts here... with everyone connecting from home, what percentage are behind a LAN firewall that you need to use TURN servers? What if you avoided those servers and made peer to peer infra entirely, how many people would we lose?_

 _(Is a complete graph of everyone sending to everyone worse than an SFU once you get too many users? Isn't it exactly the same number of streams, just in a star topology? Can't we just nominate a few of the browsers to do what the SFU does, namely forwarding video to the others? Is the issue only with resolution?)_

<comment><USER17> _with everyone connecting from home, what percentage are behind a LAN firewall_

From home? Essentially 100%.

 _that you need to use TURN servers?_

That's less clear. I'm not sure how many home firewalls are impenetrable by STUN as well. I worked on Twilio's WebRTC-based audio product back in 2012-2014. In the beginning we only supported STUN. We did get _some_ customer support requests about initial connection failures (which I mostly attributed to STUN failures), but never kept track of stats on what the success/fail ratio was. We eventually added TURN support (after I left that product team), but based on how long it took us to do that, my guess would be STUN was effective for most setups. Also consider that many (most?) of our users were probably behind restrictive corporate firewalls, and I'd expect home firewalls to be more lenient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> this isn't the first time zoom got caught red-handed[1]. Last year they were called out for installing a local web server in order to disable security controls to get around the deprecated NPAPI[2] ... this is literally what malware does.

About the same time this story broke I interviewed for a Paris based AppSec company and their CTO asked me to install Zoom. It was really awkward because I had to ask: "Is this a trick question??"

Seriously I wouldn't touch Zoom with a 20 foot stick!

[1] [https://medium.com/bugbountywriteup/zoom-zero- day-4-million-...](https://medium.com/bugbountywriteup/zoom-zero- day-4-million-webcams-maybe-an-rce-just-get-them-to-visit-your-website- ac75c83f4ef5)

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

</comment><comment><USER19> From [https://zoom.us/privacy](https://zoom.us/privacy):

> Whether you have Zoom account or not, we may collect Personal Data from or > about you when you use or otherwise interact with our Products. We may > gather the following categories of Personal Data about you:

> \- Information commonly used to identify you, such as your name, user name, > physical address, email address, phone numbers, and other similar > identifiers

> \- Information about your job, such as your title and employer

> \- Credit/debit card or other payment information

> \- Facebook profile information (when you use Facebook to log-in to our > Products or to create an account for our Products)

> \- General information about your product and service preferences

> \- Information about your device, network, and internet connection, such as > your IP address(es), MAC address, other device ID (UDID), device type, > operating system type and version, and client version

> \- Information about your usage of or other interaction with our Products > ("Usage Information")

> \- Other information you upload, provide, or create while using the service > ("Customer Content"), as further detailed in the "Customer Content" section > below

<comment><USER20> This is standard language to cover everything in normal use. Billing details is obvious. Profile info is provided when you signup and use the service. The system info is used to run and optimize the calls.

Zoom isn't actively scraping your info, and there's 0 evidence of anything in the Tweet.

<comment><USER21> Lawyerspeak: "It's just boilerplate."

Translation: "Yeah, that's one of the parts where we really screw you, but you don't have a choice, lol."

<comment><USER20> You have a choice to not use Zoom.

<comment><USER21> Sure! Except it was mandated by your boss. Or you have a choice between a bunch of offerings with the exact same screwball terms. This might not actually be true for videoconferencing now that it's getting somewhat democratized and competitive.

Point is: "just boilerplate" is just rationalization. An honest person would never present it as comforting and a knowledgeable person would never find it comforting. Of course, the world is full of dishonest people, so it gets used all the time. Hence "lawyerspeak."

<comment><USER22> True, though you could dial in from a phone (even a landline), unless you were being asked to not only attend but also share your screen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Downside of what may be a societal long term shift to work from home is even LESS privacy. I find that ironic, but not surprising.

<comment><USER18> If Zoom would be a Chinese company they'd immediately be branded threat-actor! A company that bypasses security controls on the host[1] has no place in a corporate network, covid19 crisis or not.

[1] see news from ca July 2019

<comment> kube-system Yes, governance is of material importance to privacy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> That's messed up. Our zoom usage at the company has skyrocketed these past few weeks. I was marveling at how smooth and seamless the process was. Though I was a bit peeved zoom always steers you to the installed app instead of keeping it in the browser. Now I know why...

</comment><comment><USER25> Super timely. Even on my linux box I noticed yesterday that zoom, even though I had "closed" the application, was still running `ps -ef | grep zoom` so I killed it.

After reading this, I've deleted it too. Super weird.

<comment><USER26> True, I used zoom about a month ago and it's still running a process in the background.

<comment><USER27> Um, why haven't you killed it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does [https://jitsi.org/](https://jitsi.org/) solve these problems?

</comment><comment><USER28> Is anyone surprised?

[https://www.zdnet.com/article/zoom-defends-use-of-local- web-...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/zoom-defends-use-of-local-web-server- on-macs-after-security-report/)

<comment><USER29> Didn't Apple shut that down?

<comment><USER28> Yes. And people on HN complained that it is yet another example of Apple "locking down" the Mac for killing an app that secretly installed a backdoor and let an app reinstall itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/03/25/zoom...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/03/25/zooms- a-lifeline-during-covid-19-this-is-why-its-also-a-privacy-risk/#195e68d328ba)

Still seeing loads of red flags in mainstream media. This is not a Secure business tool

</comment><comment><USER30> Truly, I was passing an online interview on programming position, and almost in the end of the process I had remembered that I could be asked on the design patterns, I opened browser, came to the site with patterns' descriptions and... the interviewer's last questions was: "I think that's all... But I have yet one question on the design patterns."

</comment><comment><USER31> I made a simple sandboxed WebView wrapper for Windows, that should address the privacy issue and remove the annoying need to deal with constant "download the app" nagging: [https://losttech.software/Downloads/FuZoom/](https://losttech.software/Downloads/FuZoom/)

</comment><comment><USER32> Now is probably the worst possible time to reveal this news.

Because right now, people have much more pressing matters and need to communicate.

<comment><USER33> Now is the time to be on our guard, much more than in times of peace and quiet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Thanks for the heads up, just uninstalled.

</comment><comment><USER35> Working on a webbased foss sip/WebRTC/p2p conferencing solution(WIP): [https://github.com/garage11/ca11](https://github.com/garage11/ca11)

</comment><comment><USER36> Is it related to screen sharing? They allow sharing a specific window. Without knowing about other processes you may not share the window. You have to specifically allow it in System Preference on Mac though.

</comment><comment><USER37> I don't use Zoom. But I'll assume it's the same as Google Meet and so now I'll complain about Google Meet.

1\. When the call quality is less than 100%, it is difficult to attribute this blame to the other person, my equipment, my connection, or the service provider. A heartbeat signal could fix this.

2\. When somebody else is presenting, I can't point on THEIR screen. I have fumble through "higher, higher, too high, it's on the bar, do you see the bar?, yes, click on that one, you're right it doesn't really look like a pencil does it?"

</comment><comment><USER38> Pretty low move by Zoom. Again. There is nothing in their interface letting users know they've been monitored. Nothing.

</comment><comment><USER39> Does anybody have a good alternative to zoom that does not do this?

<comment><USER40> An open source alternative might be Jitsi Meet [https://jitsi.org/jitsi- meet/](https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/). I haven't tried it though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Yeah, hello, delete it.

</comment><comment><USER42> Hello all I am taking cless via zoom meeting someone come and type fuck you how can find who is he can you help me in this how can find id and ip address

</comment><comment><USER43> Goes without saying that there is massive "pattern of life" info emitted by what you attend and with whom.

No wonder it's such a great little product.</comment>


Startup gets funding to build a 'Stripe' for visual recognition AI - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/gaze-gets-seed-money <comment><AUTHOR> Gaze, an AI startup operating in Singapore and Bangladesh, announced today that it has raised US$830,000 in a seed round from US-based venture capital firm Anchorless Bangladesh and an existing angel investor.</comment>


Ask HN: Which tool for lean Kanban? - <AUTHOR> Which tool or Trello add-on do you use to manage a Kanban board?<p>We currently use plain Trello with a Kanban-ish process. Trello is great for card creation and update, but sorely lacking in reporting (e.g. how long does it take for a card to traverse the board) and advanced options (e.g. limit the number of cards per column or total WIP, create a fast-track slot in each column, etc.). Which tool or Trello add-on would you recommend that combines Trello's ease of use and advanced Kanban features? <comment><USER2> Jira now has a "simplified" workflow with no restrictions that's automatically applied to new kanban projects. And their kanban boards are excellent, with swim lanes and soft column limits. Plus you can search the issue database like a real database, which IMO is their killer feature.</comment>


Think Twice Before Starting A Company - <AUTHOR> http://robgo.org/2012/05/14/think-twice-before-starting-a-company/

<comment><USER2> A lot of advice VCs give entrepreneurs seems to me versions of "make my job easier," like how to write a great business plan, how to pitch, etc. In this case, I see him asking entrepreneurs to improve the signal-to-noise ratio so he can have an easier time funding companies. Nothing wrong with trying to make your life easier, but he makes the article look like he's helping the entrepreneur, when he's writing it to help himself, discouraging some would-be entrepreneurs who might love starting a company even if it didn't make a VC money. For an entrepreneur who makes their business their life, leading the company may be its own reward, making his advice meaningless, since he'll call it a success only if it generates a return on investment.

At the very least, I'd appreciate the article more if he specified "Think twice before starting a company _that might seek venture capital funding_." Most entrepreneurs I know never approach VCs. Did he forget few companies involve technology at all? His advice doesn't apply to them. Well, except that thinking twice is obviously good advice to anyone, but his reasons for it.

Entrepreneurship is far greater than starting tech companies looking for VC. I'd be wary of an investor who didn't realize he put himself in such a bubble. With all that name-dropping, you can see how social bubbles can contribute to investment bubbles.

If you love starting companies and you have an idea whose time is now, you'll find a way to start your company. If you don't need venture capital, hopefully you won't hear his advice in the first place, or will realize it doesn't apply to you. Even if you do want VC, if your firm eventually dies but you loved doing it and it helps you do better on your next one, it seems to me you've succeeded.

EDIT: I fleshed out a few more ideas to this post afterward if anyone wants to read past what I wrote here -- [http://joshuaspodek.com/entrepreneurs-advice- venture-capital...](http://joshuaspodek.com/entrepreneurs-advice-venture- capitalists)

<comment><USER3> I agree with that VCs give "thin-value" advice that don't actually propel you to success.

But this post was different. He gave a couple of good points: there's a lot of competition: competition for users, competition for press, competition for attention. And it's emotionally draining as well.

<comment><USER4> there is always a lot of competition if you in an established market. Either your product/service is obviously better than the competition or you should be in a new market without a lot of competition...

This doesn't change with what stage we are in of the boom/bust VC flow...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Note his core concerns:

* It's harder to "stand out" amidst the crowd of startups that easy capital has created.

* It's ridiculously hard to hire.

* Seed funding is slowing down.

* Something about the "innovation cycle".

These might be very good reasons to defer the dream of financing a startup with venture funding, but they're also advantages for bootstrapped companies, which:

* Lock in viable business models early out of necessity and can outlast most of the built-to-flip companies in the current VC cohort.

* Are founded by people who can actually execute on technology.

* Don't require outside financing at all, and can thus look at "increasing difficulty" of capital raises and grin.

I don't know what to say about the "innovation cycle" though. That might be a killer.

<comment><USER6> It reminds me of something Caterina Fake (Flickr) said some years ago. The problem is, both these things come off like "I got mine, but it's too late for you."

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think a budding entrepreneur should think a lot more than twice about starting a company, but at the end of the day this post sounds like trying to "time the market" which just isn't possible. If you want to be an entrepreneur, then you have to be willing to start almost any business that has a chance to be profitable.

<comment><USER8> I'm very scared that this is something I have to learn. I have been jumping around between ideas for the last 6 months now. I want to do something in health or education that moves forward mankind ... but its hard to find a problem that has these constraints.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's no more dangerous to "do a startup" now than it's ever been, it only seems like it's harder because everybody is doing the same stupid fashion/flash sale/monthly curated box of shit startup ideas.

A successful business finds a need or desire in the market place, solves the need or fulfills the desire, and people pay for its products or services. The principles haven't changed, nor has the percentage of the population capable of creating sustainable businesses. I think the author is confusing causality. He is speaking as if the number of startups coming online somehow affects the viability of other startups. That isn't really so. If you can create something people will pay for and are able to scale it sustainably, you will succeed.

What has changed is people's expectations. Whereas it used to be that people understood that building a successful business was a process of years of hard work without a reliance on investment money, nowadays it is assumed that if you aren't a millionaire after six months you've failed. I think Jeff Bezos said that just by taking a long-term approach to your business you instantly make the vast majority of the competition irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER10> We're doing the platform approach. I don't think this was part of any grand calculation of where the technology wave is, just that it is the idea we have and it meshes w/our skillset.

The field does seem awfully crowded with social/mobile lightweight apps.

People prosper all over different parts of economic/tech cycles. My father was a developer (real estate kind, a regular "A Man In Full") in Atlanta, he used to always make all his bank during recessions when all the other developers were going broke. Conversely, during the fat times, he never did very well.

We (including Dad) were all aware of this pattern, but never could really figure out why things worked out that way.

<comment><USER11> He's probably too honest, ethical and has a good understanding of risk.

I don't mean to say that everyone else is dishonest and unethical, or that they all have the risk ratio upside down.

But in times of boom, people can sail a lot closer to the wind which can have a big upside on the results. However, in down times people like to deal with those that they can trust.

<comment><USER12> When the tide goes out, we discover who wasn't wearing their bathing suit, the old saw goes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Timing and picking your battles will make you or break you.

Starting a company just because everyone else seems to be doing it and because it's the hot new trend are the worst reasons. Good reasons to do a startup though, what counts as being in the right place at the right time, I think are: (a) having a great product in a strong market, (b) meeting exceptionally talented co-founders with good chemistry, and (c) being in a good position to take risk in life (minimal debt, decent finances, good confidence in being able to rebound and get a job amidst this recession, just in case the venture completely fails)

</comment><comment><USER14> Industries often have sayings that turn out to be relevant only in the short- term. It used to be that you needed to tackle a "technically difficult problem"; but many startups have succeeded by building something that people want without creating new technology but "executing" well. He's suggesting we cycle between technology and applications of it.

Obviously we need both tech and apps, but is there evidence in the past of them occurring in cycles?

That said, it's true that everyone is complaining that there's nothing really new, that most apps are trivial. And of course, in the last few years bandwidth/browser/cloud has gotten good enough for web-apps to go mainstream and cause modernization across many industries, which requires domain knowledge and "execution".

I'd love opportunity to be in "enabling technologies and platforms" - but it seems innovators in software infrastructure (libraries, languages, middleware) today often get nothing. Exceptions from the past: databases, postscript. Please prove me wrong!

</comment><comment><USER15> Concur. I think this is a very volatile and potentially dangerous time to "do a startup" if you don't have a very focused and somewhat proven plan. I think it's time to ignore what the Cool Kids are doing (in 2-4 years, they won't be cool) and go _away_ from where they are so as to avoid following them into idiocy.

This sounds easier than it actually is. The advice of "focus on real work and ignore the idiotic social climbing" or "build something useful" seems obvious and easy to follow, but when complete jackasses are getting funded and acq- hired for millions, it's easy to be swayed, embittered, confused, or otherwise influenced by the distractions. It's really hard for a 2x-year-old first-time founder _not_ to find himself doing stupid stuff amid all the insanity.

Winter is coming. That doesn't mean that "the crash" is here. It might be 4 years out, or 4 weeks away. It might be a sudden drop or a slow deflation. I have no idea when or how it will come, and I don't think anyone does. Still, there are some conclusions to take away from it. First, those of us who aren't ready to be Founders properly (that means, having enough VC connections that VCs consider you a social equal and will take the time to mentor you if they don't fund you) should probably sit this bubble out. Sure, being a _founder_ provides a unique and immensely educational "startup experience", but taking a subordinate role as employee #37 at a VC darling is not much different and rarely any better than taking a regular job. Actually, I'd argue that it's often worse for subordinate employees, because VC-istan tends to have crappy health benefits, inexperienced and unstable management, and a lack of long- term focus on peoples' careers (because the company may not exist in 5 years). If your ambition is to be a Real Founder (again that's not some guy whittling at his trust fund, but someone who VCs are actively interested in, and who could get an EIR job with a phone call) and you're not there yet, there's probably not enough gas in this bubble left to get there before the end of it. People who are out of school now have a decent shot at being Real Founder material by the start of the _next_ startup boom, if they really crack the books and work hard starting now and right through the bust... during which the wantrepreneurs and social climbers will get discouraged and leave, making the field less congested and giving the real players a chance to shine.

Which means... it's time to take the focus away from what TechCrunch and Sequoia are doing, and back to the difficult and often obscure (if intrinsically rewarding, and often lucrative in the long term) campaign to improve one's technical skills through practice and hard work. This doesn't have to occur at a startup, although it can. But now is also a good time to go back to school, to work in a more established organization, to try out Real Technology instead of these silly social apps, and to start networking.

<comment><USER16> I don't think this is good advice. If you have the burning desire to start a company, you should start the company and not worry about timing the market to ride the bubble. People start startups because they have a solution to a major problem inside their head that's dying to get out, and because the alternative(getting a stable job) is out of the question, not because they think economic conditions are more favorable.

<comment><USER17> You can also build the initial version while still going to your regular job. So you don't have to give up on your safe salary.

If you can't do that because of a lack of focus, then maybe you are not ready to start a company. If a lack of time is what gets in the way, then maybe you need to be smarter about it and build less. If you can't do that, then maybe you don't have the discipline required to start a company.

IMHO, it's a bad investment to start a company without having real proof that the product is wanted by people. And ideally you must also have a couple of paying clients.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "three years ago, I was telling everyone I met to start companies."

"First, part of my perspective is just driven by my natural instincts to be counter-cultural. When there seems to be a lot of hype around an area or activity, I find myself pretty un-attracted to it. "

So... create/contribute to the culture of 'start a company' ("bias towards action") and then claim "counter culture" thinking against "hype" (which you helped foment).

Interesting angle...

</comment><comment><USER19> It's never a bad time to start a consulting webdev shop where you get paid to implement other people's products for a nice fee.</comment>


Dyatlov Pass incident - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyatlov_Pass_incident

<comment><USER2> Among other theories, an article in SP Times [the first reference in the wikipedia article, en: <http://www.sptimes.ru/story/25093>] suggests a possibility of avalanche. Combined with the guess that the radioactive contamination could have been caused by an overturned lantern, it sounds like a pretty good explanation.

(I will not judge how relevant it is to HN.)</comment>