SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-spacex-layoffs-20190111-story.html <comment><USER2> It all makes sense when you look at basic facts.

Rocket reuse became a normal occurance, probably earlier than the majority of the industry anticipated. Their competitive pricing took the market by storm, changing the equation of sending anything to space. There are less new payloads to launch in 2019, because it takes much longer to contract and build a satellite than to send it to space, and the market hasn't yet adapted to this new mechanic.

Their need for manufacturing new boosters scaled down greatly because of reusability. You cannot reasign all engineers to other projects, some must go.

On top of that SpaceX is moving to new risky projects like the Starship, and they need to cut any fat that poses risk to their long term plans.

Lastly, as few pointed out, it's a great opportunity to get rid of underperforming employees and restructure the company.

<comment><USER3> The launch market is very small and it's always taken longer to build a satellite than to provision the launch vehicle.

These layoffs are a direct result of SpaceX's recent failures to raise money.

<comment><USER4> Can you link to the failure to raise money? I thought they just secured 500 million.

<comment><USER5> $500M was the size of the offering; as of 3 January, they had only managed to raise $273M

[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000118141219...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000118141219000001/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml)

<comment><USER6> They should open it to the public with a reg d/s. I would love to be able to invest into SpaceX.

<comment><USER7> That would endanger the long term plan of Martian colonization, which is not the most financially responsible thing to do. Elon is keeping SpaceX private so as to have some control over who invests, to make sure they're onboard.

<comment><USER6> Reg d or s is still private. But there are limits to number of investors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The SoCal aerospace job market is hot right now. The driver is multiple large program starts at multiple contractors who are competing for people. This should make it possible for everyone to land on their feet. (I've reached out to my former colleagues who left to join Space X)

What's odd is why SpaceX is cutting staff with the new development underway on the larger rockets and the satellite business. I'm curious about how they're going to increase development while cutting staff. The big aero firms have room for improvement on productivity. But SpaceX has been lean from the start. I wonder how they'll get more out of an already highly productive team. That'd be something to learn from.

<comment><USER9> > What's odd is why SpaceX is cutting staff with the new development underway > on the larger rockets and the satellite business. I'm curious about how > they're going to increase development while cutting staff.

The oddness diminishes when you look at their open jobs listing [1], as it looks that they have >300 open positions.

[1] [https://www.spacex.com/careers/list](https://www.spacex.com/careers/list)

<comment><USER10> At <5% of the employee count, those hires might barely cover churn.

<comment><USER9> That's a really good point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's not unsual to layoff 10% of your workforce in hardware companies but it is unusual for a "growing" company. To put in perspective Pratt and Whitney laid off about 10-15% a couple years ago when they were in between the phasing out of the old engine and ramping up the new engine. Sometimes companies are unlucky because there is a drought where the demand for the new stuff is lower than the demand of old stuff but you have to phase it out to maintain product lifecycles for sustainable growth.

<comment><USER12> It is normal to layoff about 5% per year, you trim the one in the 20 that is the weakest and it has positive, not negative effects. Going to 10% is a bit stretch, but still workable. In the last companies I worked, if up to 20% of the people left one day it would have an immediate positive impact on the performance, less complexity to deal with and more focus to work on real stuff.

<comment><USER13> 5% is insane, I would never work for a company that regularly laid off that many people. Firing under performers is one thing, but to systematically clear house is toxic. How are you supposed to build a career if one of your coworkers/friends is canned every year, so everyone is wondering what year is theirs? So people overwork themselves to make sure it doesn't happen to them. You need to show your employees safety, so one bad project doesn't ruin their lives.

<comment><USER14> I think it's less about building a career and more about accomplishing the goals of the CEO and the company.

<comment><USER15> Having a workforce that is unhappy and worried about their career and life is not a recipe to achieve goals sustainably, maybe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> 10% is a big fraction. How often do large, stable companies execute a layoff like that? Sometimes layoffs can be not so bad, for example when that's the company's way of clearing off the managers' firing wishlist without incurring legal trouble. However at 10% of the workforce, this may be a change of direction away from R&D and towards sitting on the falcon 9 and launching to LEO.

<comment><USER17> Maybe, maybe not. Consider it in terms of your own workplace: if you worked on a team of 10, and one person got laid off, would that seem so huge? I think the question is whether this round of layoffs is in response to an acute cash flow issue or just part of long-term financial prudency. They fact that they waited until after Christmas and are providing 8 weeks of pay and benefits makes me hopeful that it's the latter.

Also, given that Falcon 9 is now essentially "done", I expect there probably is a fair bit of internal capacity that's accumulated during its development which can be cut. For example, SpaceX is famous for building a lot of components in house, but perhaps they'll move more to using subcontractors for Falcon 9 parts. That might free up money to spend on R&D. The challenge will be to become leaner and save money in the core launch business without compromising standards. It'll only take a couple of accidents to trash their reputation.

<comment><USER18> 10% is huge by any measure.

<comment><USER19> I work for GM (for now). 15% layoffs were announced before Christmas... No one knows when the ax will drop. Rumor is Monday or Tuesday.

Moral is low and the office has been pretty damn quiet. Meanwhile we just raises earnings forecast today...

<comment><USER20> Which is kinda just how capitalism "works".

In certain circumstances, once the means of production are created [most of] the workers are no longer needed, but the means being privately held (by a narrow group of owners) means they alone can benefit going forward.

You can make a feast together and share it; or you can make a feast together, kick out most of the helpers and gorge yourself.

Capitalism says the second option is better because you get to have more.

<comment><USER21> Strictly speaking, Capitalism says that the Capitalists get to choose which option they go with.

In a system with healthy incentives, we might expect Option 1 to be the sensible capitalist equilibrium, because capital needs to be maintained and the builders/maintainers become the same people.

Don't forget that, in theory, the workers can become capitalists themselves if they aren't getting a good share of the benefits. In my view usually when they don't it is because of government interference (eg, the pre-Uber situation in taxis, or how regulation tends to entrench existing players).

<comment><USER22> You don't "become" capitalist, a capitalist has capital, and if you don't have any capital, you're not a capitalist.

<comment><USER23> I disagree.

As an example, someone who switches from working as a landscaper to running a landscaping business has switched from a worker role to a capitalist role — even though they likely spent less money doing so than a software engineer worker owns. Being a "capitalist" is defined by capitalizing ventures, not the mere volume of capital.

I would argue that the reason society has become so disequitable is that we've made it difficult to transition between worker and small capitalist — that is to say, that we've undermined small and lifestyle businesses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This isn't the first time SpaceX has done a 10% layoff round [1]. It seems like they do this at key inflection points where they're relatively sure they can make the next tech leap, and need to retool their workforce.

[1] [https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35254.0](https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35254.0)

<comment> mellow-lake-day Tesla also had one last year: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17295725](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17295725)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Not sure if this is still the case but didn't SpaceX make a point to stick to trade secrets instead of patents[1] for fear of Chinese rocket agencies copying them anyways?

If they lay off 10% of their workforce, how do they ensure that their trade secrets are kept safe? Lay off only low-risk employees? NDAs? It was my understanding that the degree to which those can be enforced in California is limited.

[1] [https://www.nasdaq.com/article/is-elon-musks-spacex- protecte...](https://www.nasdaq.com/article/is-elon-musks-spacex-protected- without-patents-cm231445)

<comment><USER26> If those employees go to China with trade secrets, they might be violating ITAR. ITAR is enforced with big fines and prison time.

<comment><USER27> Not easy to catch though.

<comment><USER28> Define easy anyone who works on such technologies is on some FBI database somewhere and likely more than just one.

SpaceX doesn't hire non-US citizens due to how hard it is to get the security clearance needed for them if they try to go to China they will likely get caught maybe not everyone, but enough to prevent any real knowledge transfer and more importantly the first one that will get caught is going to be made an example for the rest.

<comment><USER29> They can and do hire approved permanent residents too.

It's harder but they can work on ITAR information too.

However the point stands that those people are vetted and tracked. How effective that is once they are in China or Russia etc I don't know.

<comment><USER28> They can but I don't think they do that Elon was asked several why don't they hire non citizens.

I'm sure some special cases do happen but the bulk of their workforce is US citizens.

And again you assume that they won't get caught going to Russia or China to begin with or that they won't be tasked with assets in country once they arrive.

We're talking about 500-600 people here out of them it's not clear how many would be really critical for technology transfer prevention but say it's 25% so what we have is about 150 people or so that need to be tracked say 10% out of those will be contacted by a foreign entity that's what 15 people?

It's really not hard to track them at that point.

In fact I would guarantee you that this likely will be covered by their exit interview, they might even get a "scary" federal agent explaining them the do's and don'ts and likely many of them already know them.

And again this isn't a new thing, NASA and the defense industry have fired people before it's jot like it's the first time that 500 people with security clearances lose jobs.

<comment><USER30> They don't care if you're a citizen or not, they care about whether you're legally allowed to work on rockets. From an ITAR perspective, a green card holder is the same as a US citizen, and from a recruiting perspective there is no difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My gut says this is an aggressive Muskian decimation.

1) Maybe brought on themselves: 'hey, design/build the thing, then fire those who designed it' type thing, which definitely happens. It happens to companies in a crunch, or those who just put the outcome ahead of everything else.

2) A decimation: let's use this as an opportunity to drop anyone we feel is not cutting it - and teams that we created/hired we realize we don't want/need.

3) General organizational shakeup.

4) A true and real opex cutback ahead of anticipated future needs.

The thing is - outside of human terms - it's a big cut but it might be highly rational.

'Pruning' I think is a essential aspect of any healthy organization, forcing entities to rethink, to shake them out of their settled positions, getting rid of organizational cruft.

Of course, there are humans behind every decision which makes it quite fundamentally something else.

But if you could imagine they were 'robots', as if to remove any issues of compassion and concern for externalized outcomes, and this were simply a simple dispassionate re-org ... then you can see where the economics might be pointing.

We also don't know the terms of the layoff: maybe some of them are voluntary. Maybe the payouts are huge. Sometimes these things work out well for a lot of those involved, obviously it doesn't for others.

<comment><USER31> > imagine they were 'robots'

No. Don't.

Edit to add: I understand you were using this as a thought experiment. Sorry for knee-jerking.

If you're employing people to do something robots can't, you need to understand that the way to treat them is also different. This goes double if your mission is to improve the world instead of outright capitalism.

<comment><USER32> "If you're employing people to do something robots can't, you need to understand that the way to treat them is also different"

And if you're employing people to do what robots can do, you can treat them as robots?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> For comparison, DoD is reducing its medical workforce for 13%, 17,000 jobs. Makes total sense to me. I only work 12 hours a day, 6-7 days a week, so really, less than half-time.

[https://www.military.com/daily- news/2019/01/10/more-17000-un...](https://www.military.com/daily- news/2019/01/10/more-17000-uniformed-medical-jobs-eyed-elimination.html)

<comment><USER34> That's because the DoD is probably the most cash-strapped ministry of all ministries of all nations /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> According to some comments from employees, the company had an all-hands meeting where everyone was sent home and told to check their email over the weekend to find out if they're being laid off or not: [https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/af1n7f/spacex_will_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/af1n7f/spacex_will_reduce_its_workforce_by_10_percent/edute2h/?context=2)

<comment><USER36> Whatever the reasons for the workforce reduction, this way of doing it is just unnecessarily cruel.

<comment><USER37> What's less cruel? Face to face meetings? Layoffs suck, how is this particularly egregious?

<comment><USER38> Seriously, if you cannot see that "fire by email" is far more impersonal and disconnecting than compassionately meeting with the employee 1 on 1 and giving them a definitive exit path along with the financial support to do so, then please do not ever work in HR or be responsible for employing people in the future.

To subject ALL your employees to the 50/50 prospect that they will have a job come next working day is tantamount to playing Russian Roulette with them using a gun with a 2 bullet chamber - one loaded. The psychological toll even on the 'survivors' will be brutal.

<comment><USER39> "Fire by email" isn't a bad option for layoffs in the double digit percentage as long as the delay between notification and sending the emails is low. Meeting 1 on 1 only works in non targeted low scale layoffs, anywhere else and it just creates hysteria.

Also fire by email doesn't mean there isn't a definitive exit path or no financial support. The article itself states the email claimed a minimum of 8 weeks of pay for those laid off.

Also it's 90/10 not 50/50\. If you were firing 50% of your workforce there is no avoiding a "brutal" psychological toll for the remaining.

<comment><USER40> Elon Musk is sticking to the Roman definition of decimation

<comment><USER41> The roman definition involved beating 1 in 10 to death by the "coworkers", so no, I don't think 8 weeks of severance and helping them write resumes plus get new jobs elsewhere is a very good definition of decimation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Some think you should do this annually. "Back when he was running GE, Jack Welch famously argued that leaders should fire the bottom 10 percent of their workforce each year, as part of an orderly continuous improvement process." [https://www.inc.com/paul-b-brown/should-you-fire-10-of- your-...](https://www.inc.com/paul-b-brown/should-you-fire-10-of-your- employees-every-year.html)

<comment><USER43> Yep, the warped logic of stack ranking still infects HR thought to this day, in some quarters anyway. It's one of those notions that sounds brilliant at first, but then when you think it all the way through, it reveals itself as patently bizarre and misguided.

As noted, it creates a _really_ unhealthy intra-team sabotage mindset as everybody competes to avoid being at the bottom of the stack. It puts managers in a horrible spot, having to rank 'n' purge when maybe their team was humming along wonderfully all year. It creates an atmosphere of awful fear and dread that distracts from the work.

As one of my buddies said back when MS was still using this accursed system -- "If they'd used stack-ranking at Los Alamos, hell, Oppenheimer would probably have had to fire Feynman!" {obviously not reflective of the historical reality, but I think pithy nonetheless}

<comment><USER44> Sounds like all of the issues could be solved by just not being committed to 10%, moving to 5% or 2.5% as your workforce gets stronger. And spread the responsibility of choosing who to fire beyond single individuals, so a team of people is responsible for figuring out who is not contributing.

<comment><USER45> That would help, but even so, stack ranking is social and cultural poison. You can do it one random year, but do it every year and watch cooperation within and between teams die out because it's a dog eat dog world you've built.

At what point will business schools please start teaching that stack ranking is a bad idea?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> They've proven that they can make reusable rocket. In the early days they had around 6 launches per year requiring six separate rockets. Now they're hitting 20-25 launches per year and can carry an even larger payload on each launch. But they claim to be able to fly each rocket ten times before needing to make a new one. So you're going from 6 new rockets per year to 2 new rockets per year. Also rockets are not like your software programs that get rewritten every time a manager feels like it. You stick with what works. I think this is entirely expected.

<comment><USER16> > _So you 're going from 6 new rockets per year to 2 new rockets per year. > Also rockets are not like your software programs that get rewritten every > time a manager feels like it. You stick with what works._

Last year, SpaceX had big plans for new rocket designs, a satellite constellation, and more. Unlike a ravioli canning plant, SpaceX has an option other than cutting down to maintnence staff once cash flow positive. If the worst possible interpretation of this news turns out to be true, they will end up managed like a ravioli canning plant and the hockey stick growth projections will go out the window.

<comment><USER46> Unless they're cutting the satellite constellation I think this fits in with what people expected for SpaceX's growth. The problem is even as costs for rocket launches go down we aren't seeking hockey stick growth in the demand for rocket launches. The number of rocket launches per year has remained steady since 2015. SpaceX is getting an increasing number of those launches but even if they got all of them they would only have 40 launches. I'm not sure what else they've publicly advertised which would assume hockey stick growth.

<comment><USER47> There have been plenty of satellite price flexibility studies that show there is a marked lag between supply and demand.

This is because high launch costs demand extraordinary levels of design and Q&A: there may never be a second chance. Unfortunately, these supply chains have flexibility baked out for some time, perhaps predating the Apollo era.

Lowered launch costs and increased launch opportunities offer increasing failure tolerance to an increasing number of projects which can now afford second chances and backup plans. However, these corporate cultures take time to adapt, they've been built around single-shot opportunities for decades.

TLDR: satellite markets are anything but nimble at this point, due to historical reasons. This will change, given time.

<comment><USER48> I don't think it has anything to do with launch costs. Satellites take a very long time to develop, and they're hundreds of millions of dollars. You have one shot to get it right, and lowering launch costs doesn't really make a big dent in that.

<comment><USER49> Satellites are that expensive in large part because if you're spending hundreds of millions on a launch anyway, you can't afford to launch ten cheaper satellites.

To be a bit hyperbolic: if launches were cheap enough you'd have amateurs launching stuff hacked together in the garage, knowing if they fail it doesn't matter - they can just try again.

<comment><USER48> I would agree with this if the launch cost was a substantial portion of the satellite. There are a lot more things that play though, especially for Geo satellites. Things like orbital slots are finite, so you really want to make as large of a satellite as possible, which also translates to more expensive. Even if SpaceX gets the launch costs cut in half, that's still not a large portion of the total costs. I believe after all is said and done, the launch cost is still between 5 to 10% of the total costs.

<comment><USER47> Do you have any substantiated data to go with your pricing assumptions?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> If you are affected by the layoffs in Los Angeles, working in software engineering (esp. on ERP and internal tools), UI/UX, or supply chain — my company, Lumi is hiring [https://www.lumi.com/jobs](https://www.lumi.com/jobs)

<comment><USER51> Checking in. Spent 6 years at X and this sounds interesting.

<comment><USER50> If you are curious you can read more about us here:

[https://medium.com/fuzzy-sharp/custom-manufacturing- should-b...](https://medium.com/fuzzy-sharp/custom-manufacturing-should-be-as- scalable-as-the-web-964aaa6f5a37)

If you don't find something that fits in our job listings you can also name your own job:

[https://www.lumi.com/jobs/name-your-job](https://www.lumi.com/jobs/name-your- job)

<comment><USER52> Oh my gosh. You solved one of the two most painful parts of selling a physical product. I'm frustrated right now just thinking about how frustrating packaging was for me as CMO of a fast growing CPG startup.

Now do this for contracat manufacturing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I don't understand how anyone in the world accept such social contract of being laid off anytime for arbitrary reasons.

If you create a company, you take care of it and all of its members. If you have to cut expenses because the company needs to be "leaner" then you cut the salaries starting from the top executives. Eventually you fire management, because the state of the company is in part the result of their decisions in the long-run.

Will the 10% of the employees be the ones who are already in the less comfortable financial and social situation in their private life ?

<comment><USER54> What would be the rationale behind that? This clearly places limitations on a company's ability to optimize for achieving its goals, and ultimately stifles innovation. At the very least the long term impact of those downsides needs to be incorporated into any sort of social calculus. Would you prefer to live in a world without Teslas or SpaceXs, as long as employees are "taken care" of by their companies? This isn't necessarily even a false dilemma - it's entirely conceivable that certain ventures would require some kind of a layoffs strategy in order to be successful. Nor is it indicative of anything being wrong with "the state of the company" as you claim, unless you define it as such.

I find it entirely unconvincing that optimizing for "employee care" is overall more beneficial to humanity, including for the long term well being of the exact same employees and their families, than the alternative.

<comment><USER55> SpaceX could quickly shrink by 10% via attrition and not highering new people. They can get rid of dead weight by firing people.

This kind of small scale lay-off is mostly a stunt, or just sign of incompetence.

<comment><USER56> Downsizing via attrition means your losses are focused on those with both desire and ability to work elsewhere, and so you keep those who can't or don't want to.

"Don't want to leave" is good, "can't get hired anywhere else" is bad, and the presence of the latter makes it more desirable to leave even places which used to be fun.

<comment><USER55> That's another way of saying incompetence.

If you want to roll the dice on a new employee then fire the old one. This kind of 10% cut results in losing your best who don't wait around and just start looking on day one. Worse, they often leave after your round of cuts as getting an offer is outside of your timeframe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> SpaceX is not a tech company. Aerospace/defense contractor companies have frequent layoffs. Usually this occurs when one of these companies don't win a contract or new regulations cut back on defense/space programs.

</comment><comment><USER36> > We had an all hands meeting and were told to go home and wait for an email > that basically says we stay or go. (from reddit post)

I'm surprised about that idea. At that size I expected them to follow "your account is locked immediately before you're told" policy. Guaranteeing people have access to company emails over the weekend and are told they're fired, sounds like a bad idea for IT to deal with.

<comment><USER58> Maybe it's doing double duty to sniff out exfiltrators.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Sounds like 90% of their employees will be working an extra 10% more hours per week

<comment><USER60> i've done a lot of contract work for spacex. imo i think part of the reason they work so much is because they have no formal methods group. everyone seems to solve similar problems in slightly different ways instead of having a vetted and documented 'right' way to approach certain things. i've literally been paid to write code that does the same thing for different groups in slightly different ways. having done a lot of aerospace contracting, this is atypical from what i've seen elsewhere. my point is that if they formed a methods group to formalize and standardize across the entire org they might be fine with a 10% cut if they're not duplicating efforts all over the place.

<comment><USER61> Can you comment on this from the perspective of how the method works, as in the results it produces and why, as opposed to whether it's standard/common or not? To me, SpaceX is remarkable because they've done what the rest of the world failed to do for 20 years. That's of course a combination of factors - vision, drive, start-up mentality - but are their actual processes/development methods also in any way better than in traditional space companies?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> IMHO, If I could guess announcing it all employees tells that you all are expendable. If you are doing that is not important for the company. You could be sent home forever. Gives a sense to everyone to pull up their shocks. Two days to think about your short commings

</comment><comment><USER63> It is a good thing SpaceX has kept private. This is a category that does not seem like the company would be better off public.

</comment><comment><USER64> Is this a bad sign for SpaceX? Is 'getting leaner' why they're really doing this?

<comment><USER65> They recently switched from composite hull to metal hill for BFR/Starship, so it might be a case of terminating those employees whose primary focus was designing the composite hull and whose skills were not transferable. There will likely be talent pools that get thinned out too, welders who won't be so necessary now that Block 5 is in production and Falcon Heavy is "operational" (meaning fewer expendable launches, less demand for welders to build new rockets).

It doesn't help that there's been little warning (though I guessing a lot of these employees had some warning that they are going ormtheir teams are getting thinned).

I hope for the best, the people leaving SpaceX have certainly got great resumes to recommend them to new employers!

<comment><USER48> Falcon heavy is anything but operational. It has yet to prove itself and launch real payloads.

<comment><USER65> It has flown actual hardware and launched a functional payload, making it operational.

Just because you don't consider a 2t payload launched to a Mars-crossing orbit to be "real" doesn't mean the payload wasn't launched.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> When you lay people off en-mass, that's a Management Error. I'm surprised nobody here has yet mentioned this fact yet.

Laying off (firing) individuals; or, if a change in strategic direction, laying off entire groups -- that's business.

But 'doing a Jack Welsh' \-- that's Poor Management. I can only imagine that Bezos and Branson and ULA will be able to pick up some great employees.

And as for 'cutting the low performers' \-- in my many years in industry, I've only seen this happen once. Every other person was 'let go' due to 'political' reasons.

My major point: This move signifies a colossal management fail. I'm looking at you, Elon.

</comment><comment><USER67> Had no idea they had 6000 employees..

<comment><USER68> The article cites "at least 7,000" actually.

<comment><USER69> You sure?

<comment><USER68> Literally from the article:

> The company employed at least 7,000 people in late 2017 when COO Gwynne > Shotwell last gave a number — which means around 700 will lose their jobs.

<comment><USER70> I don't know what article you are reading, but that line isn't in it. This one is though:

> SpaceX, citing a need to get "leaner," said Friday it will lay off more than > 10% of its roughly 6,000 employees.

<comment><USER68> My mistake.

I somehow had another article on the same topic open, from TechCrunch.

[https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/11/spacex-will-lay-off- hundre...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/11/spacex-will-lay-off-hundreds-to- become-a-leaner-company/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Sorry for the people that are affected. Space X has achieved some incredible things. Redundancy can give you the freedom to try something new.

</comment><comment><USER72> To get around paywall: [https://outline.com/Ewv9xM](https://outline.com/Ewv9xM)

<comment><USER73> Should be top comment!!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Reminiscent of Goldman's annual 'culling' [https://www.google.com/search?q=Goldman+Sachs+staf+culling](https://www.google.com/search?q=Goldman+Sachs+staf+culling)

</comment><comment><USER75> To me the main question is, can they maintain a high level of quality while laying off people?

I've seen this first hand in my own company since they started laying off people on a regular basis. People try hard to keep things working, but quality inevitably degrades over time. In most areas, it's not necessarily obvious. In rocket engineering, on the other hand...

</comment><comment><USER76> Alternative source for those without access to the LA Times. [https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/11/tech/spacex- layoffs/index.htm...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/11/tech/spacex- layoffs/index.html)

I'm still skeptical of Starlink but I hope this all works out.

</comment><comment><USER77> If you're affected by this and would love to work on a dedicated team developing spacecraft orbit simulation software, my company is hiring. Please send me an e-mail at email@example.com.

</comment><comment><USER78> Since there seems to be various personal preferences on the best way to fire people i wonder if any companies ask « if we should fire you, how would you like it to be done ? » at hiring time.

</comment><comment><USER79> If what SpaceX is doing aligns with my values very well, but I live in Europe as a software engineer, how could I help the goals of this private company? Is it even possible?

</comment><comment> w-m Oh, the LA Times seem to finally have taken down their GDPR wall. This is the first article on their domain that I'm able to read since last May, from Europe.

<comment><USER80> They probably realized that they'll still get GDPR requests from EU citizens living abroad, so the block was fairly pointless.

<comment><USER5> This is a false reading of GDPR - it applies only when either the person or the business involved is _physically in_ the EU, not on the citizenship of the person involved.

See Article 3: Territorial Scope ([https://gdpr- info.eu/art-3-gdpr/](https://gdpr-info.eu/art-3-gdpr/)). Useful terms: "data subject" is a natural person to whom the data relates, "processor" refers to an entity that works with the data, "controller" to an entity that "owns" the data. e.g. you would be a data subject, the LA Times would be the controller, and Google Analytics would be a data processor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>====

1\. This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data in the context of the activities of an establishment of a controller or a processor in the Union, regardless of whether the processing takes place in the Union or not.

2\. This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data of data subjects who are in the Union by a controller or processor not established in the Union, where the processing activities are related to: a) the offering of goods or services, irrespective of whether a payment of the data subject is required, to such data subjects in the Union; or b) the monitoring of their behaviour as far as their behaviour takes place within the Union.

3\. This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data by a controller not established in the Union, but in a place where Member State law applies by virtue of public international law.

<comment><USER80> Ah, thanks, I must have gotten that in the early days of the GDPR, when there was a lot of misinformation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> This is what any good big company does every two or three years. Rank order. Dismiss bottom decile. Thank you, Jack Welch.

</comment><comment><USER82> Tesla did roughly the same thing in June 2018. Then went on to have a blockbuster quarter in Q4.

[https://electrek.co/2018/06/12/tesla-layoffs-workforce- restr...](https://electrek.co/2018/06/12/tesla-layoffs-workforce-restructure/)

</comment><comment><USER83> Downsizing is a norm. All the 10% will find 100% better jobs. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER51> Checking in. I'll be back with a refreshed resume in the morning.

</comment><comment><USER84> Seems to me they have plenty of vacancies[1]. It seems to me that these announcements can just be smoke and mirrors.

[1] [https://www.spacex.com/careers/list](https://www.spacex.com/careers/list)

</comment><comment><USER85> How many more 10% layoffs until they're down to just 1 employee?

<comment><USER86> Mathematically, never. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> This should be great for the share price. No joke -- cut the fat.

</comment><comment><USER88> maybe this has something to do with abandoning carbon fibre / heat resistant tiles with stainless steel?

</comment><comment><USER89> I'm just glad they did this before all those people were on mars.

</comment><comment><USER90> Unpopular opinion but I'm a fan of this. In the Tesla case they mostly cut deadweight from the Solarcity acquisition and the resultant company has performed better for it.

If you don't have a firing heavy culture sometimes this is the only reasonable way to lean teams up again and ensure your best team members are not dragged down by mediocrity.</comment>


Let Them Eat Khan Academy - <AUTHOR> http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/05/17/039227/Let-Them-Eat-Khan-Academy?utm_source=slashdot&utm_medium=facebook

<comment><USER2> This is pretty interesting. It's an attempt by the elite to create a differentiated online learning market, where a differentiated market simply isn't necessary. I'm so looking forward to this being made to look foolish.

</comment><comment><USER3> I thought Obama's father was a deadbeat and his mother was a poor teacher.

How did he afford to become alum to a place similar to the LakeSide School?</comment>


Android File System Hierarchy - <AUTHOR> http://anantshri.info/andro/file_system.html A simple page of Android File System Hierarchy view. <comment><USER2> This is a very good idea. However, the interface isn't very convenient (especially having to mouse over items to get the description).

<comment><AUTHOR> I gave a thought of providing a description directly but then it was getting too messy, If you can suggest an alternate approach i am ready to try it out.

<comment><USER3> The tree controls just get in the way. There is not so much content here that it justifies needing to click 5 or 10 times just to see it all. When I first visited the page with NoScript, the tree was actually easier to see because it defaulted to fully open.

I'd also consider just inlining the "details" too with a simple "dirname - details" scheme; maybe color them a little differently (I wouldn't even go nuts, just a dark grey vs. black will be fine, not bright red or anything). Unfortunately, you've gone through a lot of work to make the content on this page quite difficult to use :(

<comment><USER4> I don't think an upvote is enough to show that I agree with you. Especially the last sentence. The info is very interesting, but I gave up after I opened the first tree.

Another problem jerf's design fixes is that you have no way of telling which line has a tooltip and which doesn't, and coupled with the fact the tooltips take a fraction of a second to appear waste my time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone know the reason for Android not following the LSB standard? Is this out of necessity or just to be different?

<comment><USER6> let's spin it the other way: what advantages would following the LSB have? there is little need for standard linux utilities to be easily ported to android, the standard utils are not included, and package management is dealt with in an android-specific way

<comment><USER2> > there is little need for standard linux utilities to be easily ported to > android

There _is_ need for that. I've been trying to ssh to my Android and use it like I would use a regular computer, and it's a nightmare to set up.

<comment><USER7> I had no trouble setting this up with QuickSSHd (not affiliated): [https://market.android.com/details?id=com.teslacoilsw.quicks...](https://market.android.com/details?id=com.teslacoilsw.quicksshd)

<comment><USER2> The problem isn't getting ssh access (Cyanogen ships with the dropbear ssh server), but getting decent userland tools and possibly some form of package management. This is hard precisely because Android doesn't obey the LSB and assumes that mostly everything will be done in Java.

It would be very nice to have an OS designed for phones which would be a standard Linux with additional stuff on top. Sadly, Android is more of a Linux kernel without standard tools but with a bulky alien Java-based stuff to do everything.

<comment><USER8> _It would be very nice to have an OS designed for phones which would be a standard Linux with additional stuff on top. Sadly, Android is more of a Linux kernel without standard tools but with a bulky alien Java-based stuff to do everything._

Maemo/Meego is/was exactly that: Debian Linux complete with apt, with a tablet and phone UI.

<comment><USER9> Has anyone tried creating a Debian/Android distribution (like Debian/kFreeBSD)? Mozilla's B2G (Boot To Gecko) OS uses the Android kernel without the Dalvik VM or frameworks. I don't know what B2G's userland looks like.

A Debian/kAndroid distro could be what Maemo/Meego wanted to be, but benefit from Debian's popular userland and Android device support provided by Google and device manufacturers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cool, but why can't I see this hierarchy when I plug my HTC Droid into my Mac? I certainly don't see a /data/data directory, even with ls -a. Do I have to root the thing?

<comment><USER11> You are likely seeing the SD card or 'external storage' contents. The filesystem isn't exposed without extra work. Rooting of course, gives you access to write (and read some areas)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think it would be nicer if the folders were grouped together (at the top).</comment>


Social media blamed for rising divorce rates - <AUTHOR> http://socialbrandwatch.com/social-media-being-blamed-for-divorce-rates/

<comment><USER2> "In cases he has handed, extramarital affairs often are caused by social networks 50% of these times."

Way to avoid responsibility, China. The only way to prevent cheating is to not cheat.

</comment><comment><USER3> Would it be too much to ask for them to put the social media adoption rate in the chart as well?</comment>


LIL (Little Interpreted Language) - <AUTHOR> http://runtimeterror.com/tech/lil/ <comment><USER2> Can't view slides in either Chrome or Firefox. Would be nice to have slides broken out and on the main page so they can be viewed.

<comment><USER3> Slides work on Firefox for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sort of a name conflict with little-lang.org, not sure if anyone cares though.

</comment><comment><USER5> What does LIL offer over LUA?

<comment><AUTHOR> Lil is around 3500 loc. That is much smaller then Lua. Still reading the docs but the syntax looks a little nicer.</comment></comment>


1968 ASCII Animation from Russia - <AUTHOR> http://technologizer.com/2010/03/21/1968-ascii-animation-from-russia/

<comment><USER2> A great story behind this animated film is that it was calculated using differential equations which describe the movement of the cat's body parts. One of the programmers (N. Konstantinov) described how it was done in a recent online publication. There is some discussion on youtube (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O4mm3hXNgA>) but the most interesting parts I could find online are in Russian. For instance, here (<http://www.etudes.ru/ru/mov/kittie/>) is a Russian abstract of the paper describing it in Problemy Kibernetiki (Problems of Cybernetics), back from 1974, with a link to the full Russian paper. I was thinking about translating portions of it, but then decided it would not do it a favor; perhaps someone will come up with a full translation?

Incidentally, N. Konstantinov is more widely known (in Moscow, anyway) as the leading force behind the system of mathematical schools, loosely similar to magnet schools in the US (I am sure most developed countries have something similar as well). If you meet a mathematician, physicist, or computer scientist who graduated from a high school in Moscow, chances are it was one of these.

<comment><USER3> What schools are these? I mean their numbers. Just curious.

<comment><USER2> 57, 91, 179, etc. I am talking about mathematical classes, some of these schools have been offering more (biological, journalistic, etc).

<comment><USER3> OK, I assumed 57 was on the list, that's why I asked. Just never knew who its "founder" was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Any bets on when technologizer.com will be joining HN's domain blacklist?</comment>


Absurd Samsung claim - <AUTHOR>

" Samsung also made an absurd argument that a sales ban of the Galaxy Nexus would harm "certain "techie" consumers who value the pure Android operating system … and who will be unable to find any close substitute within the same price point." The court summarily dismissed the claim, citing Samsung's own frequent assertion that it sells more than one smartphone." http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/07/03/court_denies_samsungs_motion_to_stay_galaxy_nexus_injunction.html <comment><USER2> <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

"Don't abuse the text field in the submission form to add commentary to links. The text field is for starting discussions. _If you're submitting a link, put it in the url field._ If you want to add initial commentary on the link, write a blog post about it and submit that instead."

Please?</comment>


Ask HN: Anybody supported themselves through blog earnings? - <AUTHOR>

I was wondering if mythical live-on-blog-earning thing really exists except for really famous bloggers... anybody here earned enough from blogs at any point in time to support themselves financially? <comment><USER2> Yep. For two years or so, my /personal/ blog was bringing in 2-5k a month on Adsense, with one month even almost hitting 10k. Now? A couple hundred bucks at best. Entirely luck.

Now, my programming blog makes enough through advertising and job listings to support me and my family, though I do have other revenue streams.

</comment><comment><USER3> In two years of AdSense on my blog I have accumulated $5.04. At this rate, some time in 2030 or so Google will cut me a $50 check.

I suspect I am near the median.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not I. But then, those famous bloggers are famous for managing to do so, in part, right?

I think part of the idea is that you also earn money off of products that result from the blog, as well as the blog itself. If your articles roll nicely into books that can sell, for example. Or sell t-shirts. Or if you have a webcomic with characters you can sell as plushies. All the little things add up to a living when you use the blog properly.

If that's what you want to do, those really famous bloggers are worth looking into, at least the ones who earned their fame as bloggers, but the ones who earned fame then became bloggers will have to do the right things, too, to make blogging pay off enough to keep doing that, as opposed to earning money off their fame in some other way.</comment>


"Learning Go" Book - <AUTHOR> http://www.miek.nl/projects/learninggo/

<comment><USER2> Could you please put this up on Leanpub (<http://www.leanpub.com>)? It will take care of the compiling for you, and I'd like to pay a bit for it.

Also, leanpub is awesome (I'm not affiliated with them, but I'm a very happy user).

</comment><comment><USER3> If anyone is interested in Go (Golang) we're hiring Go developers at Torbit. <http://torbit.com/jobs>

</comment><comment><USER4> The latest version should be at the bottom of this list: <http://www.miek.nl/files/go/>

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm tempted to learn Go just because it's a new language and I think it would be awesome to be part of a budding community.

<comment><USER6> I highly recommend Go. It is the most fun I've had learning a new language since Java.

(I don't enjoy Java programming nearly as much these days as I think the language has mostly languished and I'm not too fond of the FactoryOfFactoryFactories culture that has grown around it).

Even if you don't end up using Go a lot, it will make you question a lot of the complexity that is taken for granted in other languages you use and probably also make your code better in other languages (not in the sense that you will do things exactly the way you do them in Go, that would be foolish to attempt, but in the way you may begin to approach things with a fresh set of eyes in terms of how much flexibility you can maintain while also starting from a small set of simple concepts).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was expecting a book on learning Go, the game. I was disappointed.

I hate it when people name new things with a name that obviously conflicts with something else that's likely to be known and discussed in the same community.

<comment><USER8> I hate when people name things common names/words like "Go". "Dart" is also bad.

<comment><USER9> Then Java, Chrome, Ruby, Rails, Bash, Curl, Python, Apache, Lynx, Scheme, Unity and dozens of other project names must infuriate you :).

<comment><USER10> Mostly it's an annoyance at trying to find relevant web pages on the topic. In that regard the more prolific the software the more it can get away with a common word as a name.

"Go" is the worst of the bunch by far. "Dart" is pretty bad, "Java", "Chrome" and "Python" would be just as bad but they have swarmed the search results so much that it doesn't bug me.

<comment><USER11> I find that using the search terms "go language" (without the quotes) works a lot better--at least for any conflationary n-gram based search engine, like Google. Just think of it as a type annotation :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am reading this book now and will send a commit with typo fixes when finish.

Even after Effective Go and gotour I found a lot of useful information in this book. Thanks the author for his work! :)

<comment><USER13> _> I am reading this book now and will send a commit with typo fixes when finish._

Oh, the irony.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks good and up to date. Just the right amount of pages for a programming language book, IMO it shouldn't exceed 200 pages. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER15> What is the canonical way to convert this to ASCII? Can it be done with nroff? Tried l2a and hevea. No luck.

<comment><USER16> I think the best way can be to convert the source to html using LaTeX2HTML and then convert the html files to txt using

        cat foo.html | w3m -dump -T text/html > foo.txt

(w3m a text based web browser)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is a great resource, especially for being free and the source being available, but in case miek is reading... what is with the left margin on even numbered pages?

</comment><comment><USER18> On first glance this looks excellent, but I have to question producing a book on a language so steeped in unicode with a markup language that makes it so unwieldy.

eg. $\Phi{}$ = Φ

<comment><USER19> To be fair, $\Phi$ is actually not the same as Φ (U+03A6). Not to mention all the other advantages of LaTeX, which I am not going to rehash.

<comment><USER18> Don't we have successors such as XeTeX which are capable of handling unicode?

How do you type Φ in LaTeX?

<comment><USER19> Sure, if you manage to enter the character XeTeX will be happy to typeset it. It's not a LaTeX issue, it's an editor/desktop issue. I don't really know about maths, but I'm guessing keyboard input for many special symbols is hard. I use (Xe)LaTeX to input phonetic symbols, and I hung onto tipa (the LaTeX package that gives you IPA from ASCII) for a long time, until I discovered C-x RET C-\ ipa-x-sampa.

<comment><USER20> You can also use TeX mode so that typing \phi will give you φ :).

Also, the very first time you use an input mode, you can just type C-\ to choose it. After you choose one C-\ toggles between that and the standard one, which is why you need C-x RET C-\ to choose another one instead.

<comment><USER19> True, but φ is still not the same as $\phi$ :) (and it _still_ doesn't save on typing).

I know about C-\, but I set up my input modes via 'LaTeX-mode-hook anyway :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What's Better for Online Marketing: AdWords or SEO? - <AUTHOR> http://www.infront.com/blogs/the-infront-blog/2015/12/30/seo-and-adwords <comment><USER2> SEO is more important to generate unique, long lasting traffic in my opinion. AdWords is good for a quick little burst, but unless you plan on paying for the adverts for a long period of time most of the traffic drops off after the ad ends.</comment>


PG&E: The First Climate-Change Bankruptcy, Probably Not the Last - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-wildfires-and-the-first-climate-change-bankruptcy-11547820006 <comment><USER2> Climate change? My understanding is that all of the California fires were a combination of excess vegetation that had not been properly managed and a few cases of vandalized pg&e property. Talk radio stations discussed this at length each time.

<comment><USER3> Eh, the many years of unprecedented (in modern history) drought, higher temperatures, and higher winds most had an impact on how intense these fires burned and how far/fast they spread.

<comment><USER4> What percentage of that can be attributed to regular variance in weather versus anthropogenic effects?

<comment><USER5> If you consider that the 200 years of record keeping we can rely on as fact, and then understand that the 200 years we have coverage for, just happen to be a really extraordinary period, your question is needling at perhaps the least valuable detail.

In fact, that detail is very obviously chosen for selfish reasons.

What percentage of that detail (the proportion of humanty's fault and blame in evident destruction) would you say is selfish, versus merely rationally skeptical?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The bankruptcy is related to CA law. In most states they wouldn't have been liable for damages for the fires. Ergo, no bk.

WSJ has really declined lately. [/Old man rant]

<comment><USER7> Lately? They've been active climate change deniers for _several_ decades, and I don't know that they've improved from that reality denying stance recently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So pg&e will be bankrupted, on purpose, because of the law.

Watch carefully and see who (cynical me says they will be politically connected) ends up with the newly debt free pieces of infrastructure.

The power network and the rights of way are worth how many billions of dollars?

</comment><comment><USER9> Irrespective of the responsible agency, we, "the people" pay.

we pay because prices rise, to offset the impact of the fines and restitution costs on profits.

we pay because of unrecoverable losses.

(not a pg&e customer, not an affected party. live in another economy)</comment>


Elections from a different perspective: " yielded perfectly ordinary results" - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/if-the-midterms-were-a-referendum-trump-won/2018/11/09/a39cc5fe-e44f-11e8-ab2c-b31dcd53ca6b_story.html <comment><AUTHOR> >Given the extraordinary context leading into the 2018 midterms, it may seem inconceivable that they yielded perfectly ordinary results

Very interesting thought. Agree?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage personal data backups? - <AUTHOR> The disk on my computer suddenly failed this morning - my strategy has basically been to manually backup my data to an external drive. It's works I suppose - until I delay backing data up a few months. My last backup was in January.<p>What do you all do to backup all your data? Any recommendations for a better solution? <comment><USER2> I have a three external drives and I cycle them around my two machines. Each has a backup script that's run and forget, and takes about 20 minutes to run. I run them most mornings while I have breakfast.

The directory structure is:

      +-- Machine1 -- +-- date0a --+-- Data
      |               +-- date1a --+-- Data
      |               +-- date2a --+-- Data
      |               +-- ...
      |
      +-- Machine2 -- +-- date0b --+-- Data
                      +-- date1b --+-- Data
                      +-- date2b --+-- Data
                      +-- ...

So for each machine there is a directory containing the backups. The backups are named as the date/time when they were taken. This would seem slow and wasteful, but each backup has hardlinks - where possible -- to the previous backup. So the space taken by each new backup is only the files that have changed, but each backup can be copied as a whole, and doesn't need to be reconstructed in any way.

It has the benefits of differential backups, but without having to restore a complete checkpoint and then roll forward with the updates.

rsync has options to do most of this for you. I can provide scripts if you're interested, but I'm sure others will comment here will more slick and tidy solutions. I do this because I understand it completely, it meets my needs, and the backups are completely under my control.

I had a disk failure in February, regular backups saved me. I'm sorry you've had this experience, and wish you luck in recovering.

</comment><comment><USER3> Firstly, sorry to hear about your backup woes. There's nothing worse than losing data.

Three tricks that have worked for me:

1) Reduce the resistance in your brain to making backups

Easy wins can be made here without changing anything. Keep the external drive ready to go on your desk at any time, have it start backing up as soon as you plug it in, etc. Reduce the dissonance you feel in your brain to making backups regularly.

2) Automate it as much as possible

Take the resistance entirely out of the equation by automating it. For example, in your case you might want to try plugging the external drive into an always-on raspberry PI, and use Syncthing to constantly send your files there.

3) Have a process that keeps you accountable

You need something to make you feel guilty for not having backups, that overpowers the resistance in your brain with shame! Even a recurring calendar entry can work well.

I've taken it a step further by writing software to solve this very problem. I've seen and heard about way too many backup failures in my short career, and determined to help bring good backup practices to more people. Check out the idea at [https://backupshq.com](https://backupshq.com) \- we'll be launching privately soon and always interested in feedback on the idea.

<comment><USER4> "Keep _the_ external drive ready to go on your desk at any time"

Make that "Keep _an_ external drive"

If you only have one backup drive, and it's on your desk, it can easily be destroyed in a disaster that destroys the hard drive in the computer on your desk.

You need at least one off-site backup.

<comment><USER3> Agree 100%. 3 different copies of the data, on at least 2 different mediums, with 1 off-site.

Reducing the obstacles to making any backups at all is a good first step though!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My laptop has both an nvme drive and a 2.5 drive. I work off the nvme and rsync onto the 2.5. Periodically, I rsync the 2.5 to an external drive. Periodically, I backup the external drive to a second external drive. There's a tote with some filled drives in the closet.

This works for me because it balances effort with the degree to which I care about my data. It's not much work because I don't care that much. The reason I don't care that much is because data is a burden. Data implies potential work of the odious chore variety.

Losing data sucks for a little while. Managing archives sucks forever.

<comment><USER6> Make sure you cycle some of those drives in the tote to an off-site location. Your current strategy is not geo redundant!

<comment><USER5> Based on my experience with 5.25 inch floppies, 3.5 inch floppies, 100 meg zip disks. Qic 40 tapes, CD-R's, and DVR's I suspect the eventual offsite location will be the nearest landfill.

<comment><USER6> Uhm. Geo redundancy protects and makes your backup strategy robust for fire, burglars and water leaks, earthquakes?

Sure, then after a few cycles like that the landfill or some other recycling plant sounds like a good idea for the media :)

<comment><USER5> In case of fire, I care about my dogs. The tote is water proof. It's reasonably strong and though I live in earthquake country I live in a one story structure. Six sigma's to the burglar who burgles old hard drives from a closeted tote. I've long since accepted my more moral failings in regard to best backup practices. YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Backups are useful only when all of the following are true:

* Done regularly in an automated fashion (if it's manual, you _will_ forget); use what comes with your OS or buy a good paid backup application

* Keeps older versions with a particular scheme (if you only sync, then your backups will pick up bit rot, and unintended deletions which are manual or through malware)

* Have multiple backups on different media and different locations (external drives break, cloud services lose data, your friend's house may get burgled); you must have local copies (fast) and online copies (physically remote)

I have backups on external drives, a NAS and a cloud backup.

</comment><comment><USER8> I setup a Synology with an SSD. Baiscally it will copy anything on my Google Drive automatically (i also set it up to not delete anything deleted from the drive, just in case).

Now my laptop syncs my Documents directory to google drive and Synology picks it up from there. At any given point in time, I have 3 copies of my most critical files.

And the best part is after the setup, I don't have to think about it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Backblaze is what I'm using. It's pretty much set and forget so I don't have to worry or think about backups.

</comment><comment><USER10> I basically use cloud services. I think, it's more convenient.</comment>


The State of SourceForge Since Its Acquisition in January - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4n3e1s/the_state_of_sourceforge_since_its_acquisition_in/ <comment><USER2> They seem to be doing everything that was asked of them at the height of the sleazy days:

\- They removed all bundled adware

\- They scan the hosted packages for adware bundled by the developer and warn accordingly

\- They removed deceptive download buttons

This is really very good news, and I'm willing to give them another shot. To quote from later in the Reddit thread:

 _It brought in quite a lot of revenue, but obviously that strategy is not sustainable and SourceForge was /would have been a sinking ship. The previous owners were a publicly traded large corporation and SourceForge was not a core part of their business. We are a lean web company with talented developers that has the ability to do things more efficiently. The site is monetized via advertising, but we believe it can be profitable and sustainable without throwing users and developers under the bus. At over a million unique visitors per day, we don't think we need to trick people into clicking on ads in order to turn a sustainable profit._

That had me nodding my head in understanding at "publicly traded corporation." I get it. I work for one. They will throw their workers, their customers, and their business into a meat grinder without batting an eyelash if it means being able to add a couple more cents to their shareholders' dividends.

<comment><USER3> > publicly traded large corporation

These seem to be no end of trouble when it comes to abusing all trust in an attempt at increasing short term profits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a very good development, but it's difficult to see what SF could do better than Github/Gitlab/Bitbucket, they are bogged down by 15 years of technical debt and a ruined reputation.

Maybe they could retool as a Cloudflare/Akamai competitor? Their network of mirrors is probably the one thing still distinguishing them. Or they could go full-FOSS and somehow integrate with distributions, like a cross-distro Launchpad, but that's a very very _very_ niche market. Or they could find a mobile-oriented spin (I honestly don't know anything about mobile dev).

Or, and I say this very seriously, they could find a way of getting bought by Microsoft. A lot of SF projects are legacy win32 apps that people still find essential (FileZilla etc); MS could buy them and build an appstore that actually has the stuff people want, with real developer tools and workflow powering it all. MS backing would remove the malware stigma, at the very least.

<comment><USER5> What distinguishes SourceForge is that it has a lot of end-user features. Project owners can set up forums, a download area, a support area (distinct from the bug tracker) and more. That's probably the reason why a lot of end- user focused projects ("legacy win32 apps") keep sticking with SourceForge despite everything.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, GitHub is not a great user experience if you just want to download the installer for some program.

<comment><USER3> I still don't get why the presented url for downloading tarballs at github just use the version number, but then redirects to a more traditional filename once clicked. It gets alternative download tools like wget royally confused.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> SourceForge spent many years making decisions that sank its reputation. I don't think that's going to dramatically turn around overnight.

HOWEVER... it bums me out when a bad actor makes legitimate efforts to turn their act around, and get mostly shit and snark for it. Paraphrasing:

* " _I would never download something from them no matter who owns the company now, because the previous owners sucked and I 'm emotionally invested in disliking the brand._"

* " _This speed test service that they just made available for no ulterior motive at all doesn 't work outside the U.S. yet. Pffffft._"

* " _Why would anyone use them instead of GitHub?_ "

* Etc... far more nasty stuff over in Reddit discussion.

Look. Years ago I switched over to GitHub (and later GitLab)... because SF was slow to adopt Git, and the interface was pretty weak once they did. There are more steps and complexity involved in setting up a full SF project than creating a simple GitHub/GitLab repo. So even now, I wouldn't consider SF for hosting a personal project Git repo if I had no intention of distributing binaries.

However, SF has _always_ been geared more toward hosting full project sites directed at end-users, rather than simply hosting a source code repo for developers. That's why they "lost" to GitHub, because it turns out that most developers just need the best source code host and don't care about distributing binaries to end-users.

But if you have a project that you _want_ to share with the world in binary form, rather than just a resume item to be seen by other developers, then SF has never had a serious challenger. GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket... none of those guys really care about competing in THAT space. So for the couple of projects that I've wanted to make end-user facing, I've continued to use SF even though my source code is over on GitLab. Bandwidth is expensive, and hosting a reliable end-user facing website is a pain in the ass, so I'm grateful that SF is there as a free option.

So if you just need Git hosting, maybe you don't care. But it's fantastic that someone has stepped in and tried to right the ship, so there will continue to be a viable option for end-user facing binary hosting. I'm grateful for these guys, and hope they succeed.

Seriously... we've largely started embracing _Microsoft_ of all companies after their recent about-face. There's no reason not to be positive about SF trying to become a good actor, even if their strengths don't happen to fit your own use case.

<comment><USER8> > it bums me out when a bad actor makes legitimate efforts to turn their act > around, and get mostly shit and snark for it.

If there are no punishments then a rational (ie amoral) actor will betray initially and cooperate (for a while) when caught. If there's no cost for a turnaround you incentivize bad behavior.

The financially correct way to handle this is to penalize SourceForge perpetually so that it's of less value. This ties behavior to valuation and actually provides a disincentive going forward.

> we've largely started embracing Microsoft of all companies after their > recent about-face.

Doesn't it seem unfair to all the honest companies out there for us to keep going back to MS? If we don't penalize their illegal past we're essentially burdening all the companies who complied with the law.

In that ecosystem when do new players get their first chance?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a win for the Web, whether they gain market share or not.

</comment><comment><USER10> sounds like the new owners understand the mistakes of their predecessors.

<comment><USER11> For me it is too late. SF used to be the place I looked first. Recently I wanted to download windirstat and could only find it hosted on SF so I opted instead to LiveCD and just use some gnu tool.

<comment><USER12> Sorry to hear that. We would love to have you back at some point. I know it takes time to rebuild trust but hopefully people will see we are serious about it with the steps we have taken.

<comment><USER13> I wanted to come up with a nice snarky counterpoint, but figured I should go have a look first. The new landing page looks nice, and it no longer looks like a download.com clone packed with adware. Good job.

Request: Stop making javascript only pages. I browse with noscript enabled and I noted most of the 'new' things use javascript loaders, so I can't see them. This will help regain the trust of privacy loving users.

<comment><USER14> > This will help regain the trust of privacy loving users.

Also, while Javascript is sometimes useful web pages (as opposed to web applications) IMO shouldn't depend on it.

<comment><USER13> Quite right. It's just like css. It may enhance a page, but pages should always fail back gracefully to basic content if a user cannot support it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Their new advertised speed test has servers only in US. Completely unusable for the rest of the world (unless you need to measure your interned speed against US servers).

<comment><USER12> Logan Abbott from SourceForge (and that reddit thread). We are aware of this. We were definitely not expecting this thread to become so big. We are adding international servers ASAP hopefully next week.</comment></comment>


Vizio Ultrabooks - <AUTHOR> http://www.vizio.com/thin-light/specs

<comment><USER2> Anyone have any indication as to how well they support Linux? Specifically Ubuntu or Mint?</comment>


The Power of One-State Turing Machines (2018) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nearly42.org/cstheory/the-power-of-one-state-turing-machines/ <comment><USER2> ## Computability

Turning Machines are a simple, purely hypothetical, machines that have allowed computer scientists/mathematicians to conclude _very profound_ properties of computation. Although they are mentioned with some frequency here, it's not a subject that most of us have any training in.

I had the good fortune to study computer science while in college many years ago. There was a lot less to learn back then and I was introduced to the theory of computation at the undergraduate level.

For those that haven't had the pleasure of problem sets covering Turing Machines but would like to learn something about them, I recommend the _Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy_ entry on Turing machines [1]. It goes into more depth than Wikipedia while being very easy to understand.

Turing machines are extraordinarily simple, much simpler than any real computer. The fact that Turing Machines deserve an entry in a Philosophy reference is because of their power in elucidating the very nature of computation.

About 80+ years ago, it was discovered that the set of problems that can be solved/computed by a Turing Machine is _exactly_ the same set that can be solved with the Church's Lambda Calculus, [2] and recursive functions as formalized by Gödel's [3]. This, to me surprising, result led to the _Church- Turing_ thesis: the hypothesis that any effectively computable (i.e. solvable through some mechanistic procedure) can be solved by a Turning Machine. From this we know, for example, that true algorithms don't exist for a whole host of problems. This isn't the same claim that some problems are hard and don't have tractable exact solutions (e.g. the knapsack problem or the traveling salesman problem [4]); there are algorithms for these problems--they simply take a very long time. Some interesting problems on the other hand have no algorithm at all. This can be shown by demonstrating that no Turing Machine could be constructed to solve the problem (e.g. the halting problem [5]).

What about quantum computers? They look like an approach so different and so powerful that maybe they will provide a stronger model of computation than that limited by the bounds of Church-Turing. Unfortunately, the qubit based approaches that we are now pursuing have been demonstrated to be "equivalent" to classical (Turing) machines, just with different performance time/space tradeoffs. So qubit based quantum computers may someday solve challenging, exponential time problems, but they won't solve every problem.

## Turing machines

Turing's insight was that any mechanical procedure for computation could be modeled by a simple machine, the Turing Machine. A Turing Machine has a "tape", think of it as an infinite strip of paper divided into cells, like an infinite array: tape[k]. Each cell can hold a symbol from some finite alphabet.

There is a single read/write head positioned at a location on the tape. The head can read a symbol from the location or erase/write a symbol the location, and then it can move one location left or right.

Turing machines also have a state from some finite range of states, say 1...N. One state is designated as the initial state.

Finally, there is a state transition table in the Turing Machine that determines its operation. For each combination of (1) current state and (2) current symbol under the read/write head, the transition table gives (a) the new internal state and (b) the symbol that should be written on the tape at the current location and (c) the direction the head should move--left or right.

When I first saw the definition of a Turing Machine, I thought that it looked unlike a computer. The state table seemed to encode the entire operation of the machine. It could potentially be a huge table of specific operations to solve some problem. Turing machines seemed to me to be special purpose constructions unlike the more flexible architectures of programmable computers. Indeed, we studied a number of different Turing Machines that would solve simple problems with inputs from the tape.

The big surprise for me was seeing a _Universal Turing Machine_. It turns out that there are Turing Machines, having a fixed reasonably small state transition table that can do anything that _any_ other Turing Machine can do. These "Universal" machines use a program on the tape that provides the instructions to process the remaining input data from the tape.

The idea of a Turing Machine doesn't rely on lots of states, a few is enough to construct a universal machine. Likewise, there are Universal machines that need a tape that extends in only one direction and tape vocabularies that have a very limited number of symbols.

[1] [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing- machine/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-machine/)

[2] [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lambda- calculus/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lambda-calculus/)

[3] [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/recursive- functions/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/recursive-functions/)

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

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

<comment><USER3> Another good resource, both for people whose CS education covered Turing machines well and for people who don't know much about them, is Charles Petzold's book "The Annotated Turing" [1].

It takes the paper where Turing originally introduced and analyzed Turing machines, and explains it line by line, provides examples and corrections, and historical and biographical material to put it all in the context of the time and of Turing's life.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Okay I'll volunteer to be the dummy who says I don't get it. The cell of a Turing tape can contain an arbitrary number? The head of Turing machine can add?? I think my underlying assumptions have been violated, which means either I have something interesting to learn or this is a bad result. Probably the former.

<comment><USER5> There are many ways to define Turing Machines:

* only binary alphabet, or allow any finite alphabet on the tape(s)

* tape is infinite in a single direction or in both (and various possibilities as to how to handle reaching the edge)

* there is one tape or there are more

* the head has to move every time, or can it remain on the same cell

* etc.

And they are all equivalent in terms of computability (ie. they can compute the same functions), and mostly equivalent in terms of algorithmic complexity (ie. they take the same time to run, up to a polynomial).

So almost no one bothers actually saying which model they use, unless they are doing a rigorous proof.

However, when papers like this one say "Hey, let's take my favorite model of Turing Machines and restrict it so that [X]", then the results highly depends on what their favorite model is. Except they don't always bother saying which one it is.

For example, if you restrict yourself to Turing Machines with a single state, two tapes, and any alphabet allowed on at least one of the tapes, then it's enough to emulate any one-tape Turing machine, simply by writing the state on a single cell of the second tape and repeatedly read it. Which in turn are known to be able to emulate any conventional model of Turing Machines.

<comment><USER6> Looking at the first page of the linked PDF, it's not explicit about whether the alphabet must be finite, although it's implied by the summary saying that addition can only be done modulo some finite value.

It is explicit about having an arbitrary alphabet, a single tape that's infinite in both directions and that the head has to move every time.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone restrict a Turing machine in a novel way and not follow that up with a rigorous proof.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've never understood what the fascination with Turing machines is or what they actually are.

<comment><USER8> It's one of two(1) concurrently-developed mathematical formalisms that each have been proven to be at least as powerful as any possible algorithm, and were in fact used to codify what an "algorithm" is in a formal sense. It had only been a vague, intuitive concept before.

(1) The other is Church's lambda calculus

<comment><USER7> This is why I've never understood what it is. I see words, (and it's not that I don't understand what those words mean) but I simply don't know what is meant by them arranged in this way.

There's some understanding that I'm fundamentally lacking which I've been searching to correct for years. I've put it down to "Math" which seems to be a whole impenetrable language itself. A language that my lack of understanding of (despite many unguided attempts) means I'll continue to be downvoted and snorted at when I say I still don't understand what a Turing machine or a monad actually is.

<comment><USER9> You are correct; you can learn what these things "are," but without at least _some_ of the mathematics, it's going to be tough to fully grasp.

And yes, mathematics is a language; it is _the_ language for modelling the phenomena we experience in the world, including the non-physical (contracts, data / counting, etc.).

I so, so, so wish that people were taught that mathematics is a language of relationships rather than one of rote numerical calculation. I think more people would stick with it. It's a shame, because the doors it opens are huge.

<comment><USER10> I don't quite understand how mathematics are more adapted to model the world than a programming language.

<comment><USER9> The short answer, they are not;

The long(er) answer? Mathematics are more limited, and thus, at least on the surface, provide a more rigid model.

Plus, we have about 4500 years worth of equations that we know to be accurate; not so true for C or any other programming language. Plus, we can model all the way down in mathematics, as it is more abstract in nature.

The long(est) answer? It's turtles all the way down.

<comment><USER8> > Mathematics are more limited

The fundamental point of the Church-Turing thesis is to show that everything computers can do can be described by mathematics, so any programing language has either the same or less power than math. They are certainly easier to use for many problems, though.

Additionally, Gödel showed that there are true statements that can be described but not proven by math, ao it can never be a perfect model of the real world.

<comment><USER5> > Additionally, Gödel showed that there are true statements that can be > described but not proven by math, ao it can never be a perfect model of the > real world.

I assume you are refering to Gödel's incompleteness theorems; but this is not what they "say".

What they say is that any formal system powerful enough to contain basic arithmetic is either inconsistent (ie. it can both prove and disprove a particular theorem) or incomplete (ie. cannot either prove or disprove all theorems).

If you take the ZF set theory, for example, it is incomplete, because some statements cannot be either proved or disproved within ZF, such as the Axiom of Choice (AC) or Zorn's Lemma.

However, that doesn't imply that ZF cannot be "a perfect model of the real world", because the AC is irrelevant in a the real world, because the AC only applies to infinite sets, which do not exist in the real world.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Create unique Social Media Posts in bulk - <AUTHOR> https://postmaker.io <comment><AUTHOR> I created Post Maker to scratch my own itch of having plenty of Social Media Scheduling tools but with no content being shared for the majority of the time.

Using a pretty simple syntax you can generate, 10s, 100s and 1000s of posts with links/media/hashtags which can be exported to CSV and then brought into your favourite Social Media Scheduling tool</comment>


Ask HN: What are your favorite tech podcasts? - <AUTHOR> I'm a big fan of podcasts, but I wonder if I miss some cool tech podcast.(I follow a16z, The Twenty Minute VC, Changelog, Developer Tea)
What are your favorite tech podcasts ? (anything related to startups, coding, vc, marketing in startups, design etc...)
Thanks <comment><USER2> Some of my favorites:

\- The Ruby Rogues - [https://devchat.tv/ruby-rogues](https://devchat.tv/ruby- rogues)

\- Complete Developer Podcast - [http://completedeveloperpodcast.com](http://completedeveloperpodcast.com)

\- Coding Blocks - [http://www.codingblocks.net/category/podcast](http://www.codingblocks.net/category/podcast)

\- The Bike Shed - [http://bikeshed.fm](http://bikeshed.fm)

\- The Changelog - [https://changelog.com/podcast](https://changelog.com/podcast)

\- Hanselminutes - [http://hanselminutes.com](http://hanselminutes.com)

\- Developer on Fire - [http://developeronfire.com](http://developeronfire.com)

\- Software Engineering Daily - [https://softwareengineeringdaily.com](https://softwareengineeringdaily.com)

<comment><USER3> Ruby Rogues has really decreased in quality since the 'controversy' [0].

My pick is - GRSIOGR - [http://giantrobots.fm/](http://giantrobots.fm/)

[0] - [https://www.reddit.com/r/ruby/comments/5aokv7/what_happened_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ruby/comments/5aokv7/what_happened_to_the_ruby_rogues_podcast_almost/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> \- [https://www.functionalgeekery.com/](https://www.functionalgeekery.com/)

\- [http://www.fullstackradio.com/](http://www.fullstackradio.com/)

\- [http://5by5.tv/rubyonrails](http://5by5.tv/rubyonrails)

\- [https://devchat.tv/](https://devchat.tv/)

<comment><USER5> I want to come back to this on my computer at home and don't know how to save comments on HN.

<comment><USER6> Just upvote it, it will be saved in your profile, upvote stories.

<comment><USER5> Thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I launched a development focused podcast directory ([https://programmingpodcasts.com](https://programmingpodcasts.com)) last week. It features over 200 podcasts in the categories you mention.

Some I listen to regularly include:

\- Full Stack Radio - [http://www.fullstackradio.com](http://www.fullstackradio.com)

\- SERadio - [http://www.se-radio.net](http://www.se-radio.net)

\- The Changelog - [https://changelog.com](https://changelog.com)

\- Ruby Rogues - [https://devchat.tv/ruby-rogues](https://devchat.tv/ruby- rogues)

\- The Laravel Podcast - [http://www.laravelpodcast.com](http://www.laravelpodcast.com)

\- Bread Time - [https://breadtime.simplecast.fm](https://breadtime.simplecast.fm)

</comment><comment><USER8> The Security Now podcast from the Twit network is really good. I've really learned a lot about security issues and encryption from that podcast.

Other good podcasts I listen to: \- .NET Rocks \- Coding Blocks \- Hanselminutes \- Javascript Jabber \- Programming Throwdown

<comment><USER9> I've been listening to Security Now for over a decade. There's no doubt it's partly responsible for my current position as a software engineer at a large corporation. I can't recommend it highly enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Stanford eCorner[0]. I particularly like the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series[1].

Startups For the Rest of Us[2]

Entreprogrammers[3]

[0] [http://ecorner.stanford.edu/podcasts](http://ecorner.stanford.edu/podcasts)

[1] [http://ecorner.stanford.edu/podcasts/etl](http://ecorner.stanford.edu/podcasts/etl)

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

[3] [http://entreprogrammers.com/](http://entreprogrammers.com/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Accidental Tech Podcast[0].

Cortex[1].

[0]: [http://atp.fm/](http://atp.fm/)

[1]: [https://www.relay.fm/cortex](https://www.relay.fm/cortex)

<comment><USER12> Can't understand the attraction to ATP.

Just seems it's 3 guys complaining the Mac isn't like it used to be for 2 hours every week.

<comment><USER11> Sometimes I get _really_ annoyed with it, as it can be three guys complaining about Apple in general, which I don't care too much about.

The real good stuff comes when they talk about programming, gaming, and cars, which happens every episode. They also had a good interview recently with Chris Lattner that is worth the listen.

<comment><USER12> I agree, the Chris Lattner interview was really interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not startup-y, but tech podcasts...

I like the SANS Internet Storm Center daily podcast because it's short, to the point, and gives just enough detail that I can use to follow up on if I need/want to. I listen to some BSD Now episodes that sound interesting. I previously liked TechSNAP but had to quit listening after they recently changed hosts.

</comment><comment><USER14> Software Engineering Radio - [http://www.se-radio.net](http://www.se- radio.net)

</comment><comment><USER15> RR, Ruby Rogues - [https://devchat.tv/ruby-rogues](https://devchat.tv/ruby- rogues) This was the one must fun and favorite, until panel split to [https://www.greaterthancode.com](https://www.greaterthancode.com)

They had around 15 episodes where they discussed books with their authors, for example:

\- RR Book Club: Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns with Kent Beck

\- RR Book Club: Understanding Computation with Tom Stuart

\- RR Book Club: Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture with Martin Fowler

\- RR Book Club: Refactoring Ruby with Martin Fowler

Another cool thing was picks at the end of each episode [https://github.com/ryanburgess/ruby-rogues- picks](https://github.com/ryanburgess/ruby-rogues-picks)

Software Engineering Radio - [http://www.se-radio.net](http://www.se- radio.net)

FLOSS weekly - [https://twit.tv/shows/floss- weekly](https://twit.tv/shows/floss-weekly)

The Amp Hour - [http://theamphour.com](http://theamphour.com)

</comment><comment><USER16> \- Software Engineering Daily (hosted by Jeff Meyerson)

\- The Indie Hackers Podcast (hosted by me!)

<comment><USER17> I've been enjoying the podcast Courtland!

<comment><USER16> Glad to hear it! Got some really good episodes on the way with John O'Nolan from Ghost and Nathan Barry from ConvertKit. Can't wait to get those released in mid-to-late March.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Along with the other great suggestions:

\- Daily Tech News Show: [http://www.dailytechnewsshow.com/](http://www.dailytechnewsshow.com/)

\- Tech's Message (UK focused): [http://www.natelanxon.com/podcast/](http://www.natelanxon.com/podcast/)

\- PacketPushers Network: [http://packetpushers.net/series/weekly- show/](http://packetpushers.net/series/weekly-show/)

\- BBC's Click Podcast: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p002w6r2/episodes/downloads](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p002w6r2/episodes/downloads)

</comment><comment><USER19> Futurecommerce [0]

ShopTalk [1]

Recode Replay [2]

The Changelog (as you mentioned) [3]

Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots [4]

Those are a few that I listen to regularly. I have too many podcasts (but I have a feeling I'll pick up some more from this thread...)

[0] [http://futurecommerce.fm/](http://futurecommerce.fm/)

[1] [http://shoptalkshow.com/](http://shoptalkshow.com/)

[2] [http://www.recode.net/recode-replay- podcast](http://www.recode.net/recode-replay-podcast)

[3] [https://changelog.com/podcast](https://changelog.com/podcast)

[4] [http://giantrobots.fm/](http://giantrobots.fm/)

Edit: [4]

</comment><comment><USER20> The Elixir Fountain - [https://soundcloud.com/elixirfountain](https://soundcloud.com/elixirfountain)

Dot Net Rocks - [https://www.dotnetrocks.com/](https://www.dotnetrocks.com/)

Startups For the Rest of Us - [http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/](http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/)

Bootstrapped Web - [http://bootstrappedweb.com/](http://bootstrappedweb.com/)

</comment><comment><USER21> I personally haven't found any quite as good as the Bike Shed([http://bikeshed.fm/](http://bikeshed.fm/)). It does often focus on Ruby, but overall the types of problems they cover are not limited to Ruby in scope. I mainly like it because I get to hear some developers significantly more experienced than myself talk about how they solved certain problems.

<comment><USER22> I would second this. For me, the fact that they often talk about Ruby helps me understand more easily, but I really listen because I like the hosts and it's interesting to hear how people in a successful consultancy and a SaaS company work.

I've also started listening to Go Time: [http://gotime.fm](http://gotime.fm). The hosts are good, and deeply involved in the Go community, so they always get really excellent guests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Ubuntu Podcast: [http://ubuntupodcast.org/](http://ubuntupodcast.org/)

</comment><comment><USER24> Python Podcasts:

1\. [https://www.podcastinit.com/](https://www.podcastinit.com/) 2\. [https://talkpython.fm/](https://talkpython.fm/)

Rust Podcast:

1\. [http://www.newrustacean.com/](http://www.newrustacean.com/)

</comment><comment><USER25> Exponent — tech business analysis: [http://exponent.fm/](http://exponent.fm/)

Release Notes — the business side of being an indie dev: [https://releasenotes.tv/](https://releasenotes.tv/)

</comment><comment><USER26> I like the WAN show: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ1DxElRebg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ1DxElRebg)

They don't really cover programming/engineering topics, but it's fun to listen to.

</comment><comment><USER27> How I built this is not a tech podcast but I think there is a lot of good lessons to learn.

</comment><comment><USER28> Sorry for self-promoting, but if you like some of the podcasts listed here you might like one I just started: Harajuku Data Lake ([http://hjdl.space](http://hjdl.space)).

</comment><comment><USER29> Anything from Jupiter broadcasting, but specifically the Linux action show and bsd now

[http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com](http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com)

</comment><comment><USER30> Sorry for hijacking. Is there a podcast which talks about big, distributed systems and their architecture? I'd be really interested in that.

<comment><USER31> Hi Rajath, Dhruv here :) SE daily (mentioned above) is just what you're looking for. [https://overcast.fm/itunes1019576853/software-engineering- da...](https://overcast.fm/itunes1019576853/software-engineering-daily)

<comment><USER30> Good to see you here, Dhruv! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Loving Software Engineering Daily. Jeff makes all of the music. Check out 'The Prion' on Spotify or SoundCloud.

</comment><comment><USER33> Since I'm in DevOps: [http://devopscafe.org](http://devopscafe.org)

</comment><comment><USER34> Late Nights With Trav And Los - It's a Design/Coding podcast covering a wide range of topics.

I really like their perspective.

</comment><comment><USER35> Grabbing coffee w/ AI researchers [0]

[0] http:ai-guild.com

(Self Promo)

</comment><comment><USER36> For the Python-interested, both "Talk Python To Me" and "Python Bytes" are very good.

<comment><USER37> Thanks! I'm really enjoying talk python to me. It has a great mix of topics.

[https://talkpython.fm/episodes/show/82/grokking- algorithms-i...](https://talkpython.fm/episodes/show/82/grokking-algorithms- in-python)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> RoguelikeRadio -- if you're into that kind of thing.

</comment><comment><USER39> Hack To Start is inspiring sometimes

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! added to my list!

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Foundation

The Pitch

Startup

Data Stories

Flux

<comment><AUTHOR> I LOVE The Pitch...instead what is "Startup" ? by who ?

<comment><USER41> It's by Alex Blumberg, former producer on "This American Life" and "Planet Money" by NPR. He recorded the podcast while founding a podcasting company named Gimlet Media and it documents how he got started, chose a name, got investment, found a partner, and various other parts of being a startup. I'd highly recommend the podcast for its amazing story telling and its transparency in including details that most companies would prefer to keep secret.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Data Skeptic

Linear Digressions

Not So Standard Deviations

Partially Derivative

New Books in Mathematics

Talk Python

Podcast.__init__

Ask an Astronomer

</comment><comment><USER43> front end happy hour

javascript jabber

.net rocks

software engineering daily

soft skills engineering

Tech stuff

<comment><AUTHOR> Tech stuff ? any link ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Might find some useful answers at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9836023](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9836023)</comment>


Pakistan on Pace to Become Third-Largest Nuclear Power - <AUTHOR> http://www.voanews.com/content/report-pakistan-third-largest-nuclear-power/2935812.html <comment><AUTHOR> Ok there is a lesson for us too (startups)., when you are a small, and can not fight conventional war with bigger competitors, you have to be unconventional. or simply nuke your competitors don't compete them if you want to stand a chance

anyhow more: [http://www.hindustantimes.com/world/pakistan-could-be- world-...](http://www.hindustantimes.com/world/pakistan-could-be-world-s-3rd- biggest-nuclear-power-in-10-yrs/story-yqG5CyOVSzw8JImIL37blK.html)</comment>