Linus Torvalds defends his right to shame Linux kernel developers - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/linus-torvalds-defends-his-right-to-shame-linux-kernel-developers/ <comment><USER4> I see a lot of confirmation bias in these kinds of threads. Because Linux is a success, it must be because of Linus's particular brand of being a jerk, for the same reason that Apple is a success because Steve Jobs was a jerk. That is, an effective leader must be a jerk.

But there are lots of other companies that are successful where people don't act like jackasses. For example, Google culture is anti-jackass, Googley means not being a dickhead. If you have a problem, explain what's wrong calmly and coherently, it's more efficient. Simply telling someone that they, or their code, is a piece of shit is not likely to be as efficient.

IBM is another, when I worked at T.J. Watson, people were very civil.

Civility is not about being "fake" or "politically correct", it's about being able to communicate your position by reason instead of by emotion, by shouting, by abuse, by reptilian brain.

Linus gets a lot of leeway because of his work on Linux, and we will forever be thankful for that. But I don't believe good works earns you a pass from criticism of behavior. The founders of the United States are forever thanked for the Constitution, but that doesn't let them off for being slaveholders.

I expect there will be some reflexive downvoting on this for criticizing the prophet, but honestly, Linus makes geeks look bad socially. Say what you will about Richard Stallman, there are lots of things he says I disagree with, but he says them with integrity and positivism and love, and not with angry denouncements.

<comment><USER5> Could you enlighten me, what did Stallman write about Jobs again?

<comment><USER6> "As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, 'I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone.' Nobody deserves to have to die – not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing."

Clearly, that was an _angry denouncement_... /sarcasm

<comment><USER5> No, it was passive aggressive bullshit, hidden in eloquent crap. The very thing Linus tries to avoid.

<comment><USER4> Seemed to be pretty obvious truth to me. Steve Jobs has created an ecosystem that is far more locked down than the 1984 he envisioned in the original Mac Ad. He has ushered in an era of computing in which the general purpose device is giving way to a device where you don't even control what content you can put on it.

We used to think that DRM on desktop PCs was bad, but for mobile devices it's 10x worse.

Now, see how I just explained the issue with Steve Jobs, instead of saying "He was a piece of shit who passed of Woz's work as his own, lied to him about money, denied paternity of his daughter, verbally abused employees and kept them in a state of fear, maintained an 'enemy list' of journalists, .....!" That's inflammatory rhetoric, and not relevant. The only thing that is relevant is the sea change in DRM'ed computing platforms have been popularized and his role in them, which is what Stallman was alluding too -- the effects of his leadership.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Please be sensitive to _my_ culture too.

> Google "management by perkele".

> Do you really want to oppress a minority? Because Finns are a minority > compared to almost any other country. If you want to talk cultural > sensitivity, I'll join you. But my culture includes cursing.

That made me chuckle. Based on my experience having worked with a few Fins; they are quite efficient and straight to the point. There is also a Quora answer [1] on why Nokia phones are so durable.

Israelis have a similar mentality. From [2]:

> Whenever there was a bombing, Israelis would run TO the blast to bandage > people and help out. They risked their lives without a second thought to > help each other with an 'of course' kind of attitude. Israelis don't even > realize this is unique to them. Most just silently believe everyone shares > the same attitude toward helping people in danger.

> When you're in that kind of society, fake politeness is actually offensive.

I've also experienced this mentality with Punjabi Sikhs.

[1] [http://qr.ae/INWWl](http://qr.ae/INWWl)

[2] [http://www.quora.com/Israeli-Culture/Why-are-Israeli- people-...](http://www.quora.com/Israeli-Culture/Why-are-Israeli-people-so- hard-to-work-with)

<comment><USER8> I believe that this Israeli-Finnish mentality of informality and "to the point" attitude has something to do with both still having military draft, besides the usual being small, educated, remote and history of living under threat. In both countries there is remarkably small difference in perceived (and acted upon) status, say between prime minister and common man should they engage in casual conversation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The core problem here is that there are two different ideas about tolerance in play here, which I think is poorly understood as people tend to fling around the term without understanding that the word can describe almost diametrically opposed things.

Linus is advocating for what you might call personal tolerance; as a human being, you should be prepared for the fact that not everyone in the world is like you, not everyone shares your standards or your culture, and that some people may be abrasive by your standards in a way that is acceptable in their culture or microculture. (And while it is talked about less, the alternative can occur too, where you encounter a culture that is more deferential than you are used too, and similar misunderstandings can easily occur.) It is for each person to accept these differences and learn to deal with them.

The American left/liberalism has embraced a different definition of "tolerance", what I might call social or societal tolerance, which is that each individual is responsible for learning what is offensive to the person you are dealing with, and treating them as the other individual expects. This is what has given birth to the concept of "political correctness", and this is the domain in which "You have offended me" takes on moral overtones; you have abrogated your social responsibilities in that case.

I mention this without endorsing one or the other. (I'll freely admit to thinking the former is generally more scalable and a better idea, but I could easily write an argument in favor of the latter as well. As a personal matter I tend towards a mix of both.) I just don't think you can really understand the full context of this discussion without having this idea clearly in your head.

<comment><USER10> This is similar to the difference between Ask and Guess cultures.

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/375/ask_and_guess/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/375/ask_and_guess/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The use of words such as violence and abuse is disturbing. We are talking about a guy thats swearing - not a rapist. Sorry, but swearing isn't very uncommon in Scandinavia.

I didn't sign an agreement to act according to some US code of conduct - <USER2> assume Linus is feeling the same way. Although I certainly wouldn't do what he does, I respect him standing up against the American CoC mafia.

I heard Steve Jobs was very rude to his employees, if they did a poor job as well - I guess all of this happened inside the Apple HQ as well - its just easier to be angry with someone who is not your boss (oh, and if everything happens on a mailing list).

<comment><USER12> Nobody called Torvalds a rapist. Engage with her argument or don't, but don't caricature it.

<comment><USER9> However, "Linus Torvalds is advocating for physical intimidation and violence." is something I just copied and pasted. I don't think it's _that_ out of line to observe that this is an attempt to win the argument by defining Linus' behavior as intrinsically beyond the pale without having to engage it directly. It's not like that's a particular uncommon rhetorical tactic....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> She says she will "roar back" and considers that a threat of retaliation that might deter them, but she is talking to people who don't mind roaring at all. She really is missing the point of cultural sensitivity -- cultures that are louder and more confrontational aren't required to play by the rules of cultures that work more quietly, just to cooperate with them. There isn't any accusation here that Linus unfairly judges the work or contributions of people who don't "roar." They just want him to stop yelling because their cultural bias causes them to perceive him as a threatening and potentially violent person.

<comment><USER12> The premise of your argument is that it's reasonable for a project manager to invoke "Finnish Culture" as a justification for calling people on their team names and singling them out for expletive-laced approbation in public. I don't know a lot of Finns, but do you honestly think a typical Finnish person would be comfortable with having their culture summed up that way?

<comment><USER14> I thought the Finnish culture excuse was pretty weak, but I think he'd be perfectly justified in saying "I don't plan to stop cursing at people who I think deserve it. If that means nobody wants to work on my project, then so be it."

Because it's pretty obvious that there are plenty of people with enough enthusiasm for working on the kernel that they're willing to work with a profane curmudgeon, or perhaps people who do it because they actually _enjoy_ that type of environment.

And trying to frame this in terms of Linus being an abuser or advocating violence or preying on the weak is just extremely dumb and insulting to people who are actually victims of real abuse. It's emails on a mailing list calling your code shitty and/or calling you stupid for writing shitty code. For fuck's sake, if you're victimized by that, maybe every open source project isn't for you.

<comment><USER12> She also didn't say she was "victimized" in any way.

<comment><USER14> She didn't claim that _she_ was vicitimized, but she definitely took it to that level on others' behalf:

> Good lord. So anyone that is one of your "top maintainers" could be exposed > to your verbal abuse just because they "should have known better"?

> You know what the definition of an abuser is? Someone that seeks out victims > that they know will "just take it" and keep the abuse "between the two of > them". They pick victims that won't fight back or report the abuse.

<comment><USER4> Maybe she should, some people are scared to speak up for themselves.

And look at the sexist flak she's getting [https://plus.google.com/photos/116960357493251979546/albums/...](https://plus.google.com/photos/116960357493251979546/albums/5901285206596474753/5901288095984358098?pid=5901288095984358098&oid=116960357493251979546)

<comment><USER12> I'd be hesitant to draw conclusions based on pseudonymous troll messages.

<comment><USER15> There's plenty of sexist garbage over on reddit, as well. It's definitely showcasing a problem the programming community has.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I dream of working for/with someone like Linus Torvalds. Seriously.

There is absolutely no pretense here, no guessing, no fakery. If you work with Linus, you know exactly where you stand. He doesn't hold anything back, including criticisms that are critical to your own growth as a developer.

And there can be no question - NONE - that what he does WORKS. Linux is on BILLIONS of devices worldwide, affecting BILLIONS of peoples' lives in as literal a sense as can be imagined. You have to be strict about that sort of software, you have to be hard, you have to have a very sharp edge, and you absolutely cannot afford to make mistakes.

You don't have to like it, and you don't have to agree with it, but you certainly don't walk into Linus Torvalds' kitchen and tell him it's too hot.

<comment><USER12> How many of those billions of installs were enabled by Torvalds telling Mauro Carvalho Chehab to "SHUT THE FUCK UP" after Mauro tried to explain a previous patch? Try to be as specific as you can, thanks.

<comment><USER17> How many of the people whining about this problem have ever submitted a Linux kernel patch or considered it and said they wouldn't because of him? Name names, thanks.

<comment><USER18> I will never submit a patch to the linux kernel, specifically, and only, because I cannot support Linus's attitude towards mailing list discussions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> He's wrong, the behaviour isn't acceptable. He's right: he can run Linux however he wants. It'd be a bit more honest to say "I can be a jerk because I wrote Linux." than all of this moral relativist survival of the fittest macho bullshit, though.

<comment><USER20> >> He's wrong, the behaviour isn't acceptable.

I agree that he's wrong, but clearly his behaviour _is_ accepted by his colleagues, because they continue to work on _his_ kernel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sarah Sharp is not messing around; here's her commit log:

[http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.g...](http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/log/?qt=author&q=Sarah+Sharp)

She's a USB developer and it looks like the primary maintainer of the Linux xhci driver.

<comment><USER21> Yep, she wrote it. I know because it says so in TFA.

<comment><USER12> Neat. I know it from looking at her commits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's clear that Linus, having spent his career working from home in his bathrobe, has absolutely no clue what professionalism means. It's less about the neckties and watercooler politics he imagines and more about treating your peers with basic respect and human dignity.

He appears to have the social skills of someone recently released from maximum security prison. He's like a homeschooled kid who bites the other children at birthday parties.

<comment><USER23> As a Swede, it seems to me he's just acting Swedish.

<comment><USER24> Sorry to break it to you, but he was born in Helsinki. Edit: OK I guess this is more complicated than I thought :)

<comment><USER23> Geographically, sure. Culturally - not at all.

<comment><USER8> Yes, I believe another Finnish Swede active in this scene is somewhat more culturally Swedish - Monty Widenius, founder of MySQL/MariaDB.

On the other hand Linus' father is a Member of the European Parliament for Swedish People's Party of Finland, and was until 2011 the party vice chairman. But he (Nils) has been quite relaxed about things like mandatory Swedish education, which most Finnish Swedes dearly cling on to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why is everybody so concerned about Linus being who he is? Every month there's yet another article about 'rude open source developers'. I thought we were hackers and not conformists. I could care less what Linus says it's his kernel, his project, his life, his personality. Linux is not a job, it has no sensitivity training or rules of social conduct. If you don't like it don't volunteer.

Nothing stopping you from forking the kernel, developing it yourself and calling it Sensetivlix: The GNUspeak conformity project.

<comment><USER26> You're absolutely right that it's totally up to him and he can act the way he likes, but I think the point of the article is that if you're claiming that open-source is a "community" endeavour, then perhaps being a giant asshole isn't the best means of accomplishing that end. He is discouraging potential developers from wanting to work with him for exactly the reasons you mentioned: it's not a job, there is no pay, he's not your boss. The last thing I want when volunteering my free time is some guy belittling me. As has been mentioned in this thread, there are ways of accomplishing the same task while being a reasonable human being. His ego and entitlement are justifying his behaviour and it's bullshit.

<comment><USER14> I'd say open source _on the whole_ is a "community" endeavor, but individual open source projects are not necessarily. There are countless projects that are a single author who accepts bugfixes here and there but in general it's a one-man show.

The linux kernel is like that: it's Linus' project that he lets some people help with. It's a dictatorship, largely ego-driven, and he has the last word on any philosophical, design, architectural, or even political decision. For better or for worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Am I the only one that thinks both sides are over the top?

Linus is overly abrasive and I can't say I would want to work with someone like that, and at the same time, Sarah Sharp and Linus' critics are exaggerating and being overly dramatic (e.g., Linus is "advocating violence") and I wouldn't want to work with someone like that, either.

<comment><USER28> I subscribe to your point of view.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Having experienced abusive behavior in the past, I feel strongly about neither engaging in nor tolerating it. But when I read Linus' rants, I don't get the feeling of someone being abusive. They're vociferous and profane, but they don't seem mean. Instead it feels like there's always a wry chuckle hidden in there (yes, even in "Mauro you are full of shit"), a sort of "You see what I have to put up with" winking to the side, and a kind of nimbleness in how he can take up or drop that tone very quickly.

Emotionally violent people, in my experience, aren't like that. They get stuck in anger, and the situation is usually about them personally (they've been insulted, are not getting their due, no one recognizes how smart/gifted/good they are, etc.) I don't read that in Linus. His ego doesn't seem so involved in those rants, which is probably why, even when he's yelling, there's an accompanying lightness.

I have no idea how accurate that impression is. One would have to know someone personally to say.

<comment><USER30> My feeling is they're still abusive, but I also agree with your analysis. They're so over the top that it's impossible for them to be completely serious.

<comment><USER31> > so over the top that it's impossible for them to be completely serious.

You are completely correct: [https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/ManagementStyle](https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/ManagementStyle) (ch. 2, but the whole thing is worth reading)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> So many words for nothing... Why don't we all just learn to judge others by their behaviour and not by their words? Sometimes, it looks that a well-spoken murderer would be better-perceived than a cursing saint...

<comment><USER33> Speaking words isn't a form of behavior?

<comment><USER32> It is, but people tend to take it too seriously.

Two examples:

1) Nigger. The word in itself is so politically incorrect, that it's inappropriate to use it even in conversations about the word itself! (E.g. to point out the "reverse"-racism, how blacks can use the word "nigger", but whites can't.)

2) Almost any topic that people have a very strong opinion about. E.g. feminism, chauvinism, and using rape threats against Adria Richards - <USER3> example, I could argue that people are wrong of accusing those who threatened her to be chauvinists, because if you want to threaten someone, it makes perfect sense to threaten them in the worst possible way - death, rape, hurting their children... so the problem aren't rape threats, but threats in general. But most people only hear the part of the argument "rape threats aren't the problem" and totally disregard the rest of the conversation or even the fact that I don't necessarily believe what I'm saying, I'm just presenting the rational argument!

In words of Aristotle:

> It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without > accepting it.

Many people don't get this. Attacking a good person because they swear is usually the symptom of this.

<comment><USER33> You're considering words entirely outside of their social, political, and historical context.

Context matters: if I point a gun at you, should you get upset? Why, I mean, I haven't actually _done_ anything to you, it's just a threat! Sure in an abstract sense a gun imposed no inherent harm. It's how you use it.

Also, this isn't very 'rational,' for example:

> so the problem aren't rape threats, but threats in general

If threats are a problem then rape threats are a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> "Sharp wrote: Linus Torvalds is advocating for physical intimidation and violence."

Please, show me where Linus is advocating for this. Sounds absurd.

<comment><USER35> Seriously, she had to be a fucking woman. Keep in mind that she made it about gender.

<comment><USER36> And good on you, kind sir - or, perhaps, fair ma'am - for not making it about gender yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Verbal abuse might be necessarily unprofessional, but nobody is asking Linus to wear a tie. It would be nice if he would just not bully well-intentioned contributers.

<comment><USER38> It would be nice if seasoned veterans did not submit crap and regressions. It would be nice if there was documentation coming out of our ears. It would be nice if P always equals NP. It would not be nice if Linus were a saint.

<comment><USER39> One of those things is in his control.

<comment><USER10> Yes, making sure that veterans do not submit crap by calling them out on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> this is why you have to keep mainstream out of technology. We're going to start acting like gossip girl. I've worked in all different fields, and IT has been the most efficient field by far, mostly because of the lack of coddling. I've done the nice thing, and all it does is create more work for me. Being more direct, and yes, rude may not be your favorite way to communicate, but it is direct, and at the end you have no doubts about what needs to be done, and what people consider important. Plus, people are a bit sensitive

</comment><comment><USER41> Why am I not surprised the majority of people complaining and _getting offended_ in the name of third-party developers are American? It's not like we don't have our dose of pc on the old continent, but you'd be surprised how much less of a fuck is given about such issues around here.

<comment><USER42> It's because we in the US have had actual intelligence beat out of us in our schools so that garbage like this is important. I think Linus is right on the money with this.

<comment><USER41> You will enjoy 'Finland phenomenon', a documentary about their education system, if you haven't seen it yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> He can't excuse foul language with his inability to express what he wants to convey. His lack of manners is really shocking.

<comment><USER20> >> His lack of manners is really shocking.

Yes, it is. But it's his kernel and people _choose_ to work on his kernel, and not a fork, in spite of his well known behaviour.

He gets away with his antics because of his rock star status. On the other hand, I find Linus' own behaviour much less bothersome than people who behave like Linus who aren't even remotely at his stature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Linus Torvalds not withstanding, I've never understood the "I can't be bothered with your idiotic questions because I'm so Goddamned smart" bullshit. I remember in the nineties if you had a question about Oracle or Unix and ran a search on most message boards all you'd find were snarky comments pissing on people for not following the posting rules or not reading some obscure documentation. It was completely counterproductive and one of the reasons I began to lose interest in development after college.

I give a ton of credit to dhh and Joel Spolsky for bringing development to the masses by speaking in terms people not completely socially inept would respond to.

As an aside, most developers I've worked with who put on the dickhole computer prodigy facade were just unhappy shitty programmers with zero communication skills.

Obviously Linus is not who I'm referring to, but I think buffoonery displayed in abusive emails is emblematic of that attitude and sets a terrible example for developers who aren't Linus Torvalds. I can just picture a thousand mid level managers running around yelling at their reports thinking they're the next Steve Jobs.

</comment><comment><USER45> I will take a 24/7 roaring colleague who roars about all of good and bad to you without reservations than a colleague who will put on smiling face, and back-stabs you when the time is right.

Sadly for most people, it is more about Corporate Culture and Interpersonal Skill and Street Smart and blah blah blah than being really competent and getting real things done.

</comment><comment><USER46> This will sound rosy until something like this actually happens to you. It is very emotionally taxing and traumatic.

And worse, once people like Linus start advocating it, all these fan boys (who have in no way made a significant contribution like Linus) will start following suite. Imagine, that guy who setup your repo at work or your QA, come and tell you to diaf and jump off a bridge in front of everyone in the office for making an off by one error.

I think people need to realize the insignificance of the things they're doing. Yeah you think you optimized the hell out of your app, ok big guy, take a trip to Africa, no one gives a shit.

</comment><comment><USER47> A developer does not understand sarcasm, more news at 11.

<comment><USER24> I think it's hyperbole she's missing. "You may need to learn how to shout at people" is not literal, but it's not the opposite of what is meant. It's just exaggerated.

<comment><USER48> The parts about Kroah-Hartman being able to 'squish' you were quite obviously sarcasm/banter and not actually meant literally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I'd like to hear some advice from another leader of an open source project of similar magnitude and diversity of contributors.

It occurs to me, there is no such other person. Maybe, the way Linus sets standards and decides who to communicate and how, works for his situation.

If most people are put off by his philosophy and would rather contribute through intermediaries, well, mission accomplished. Somehow he has to whittle down the 10,000 people who would like to communicate with him constantly to maybe, 20.

</comment><comment><USER4> I find the "I'm Finnish" defense to be somewhat strange. Let's say someone comes from a culture with rampant sexism and racism, and he manages a project by throwing sexist and racist epithets at contributors, would we excuse it? Then why do you get a pass just because you were raised to be a jerk? At some point, you've got to break free of some of the bad personal habits you were raised with.

<comment><USER10> A cultural relativist view would disagree with you. What is superior about this specific breed of American culture some think Linus should conform to? As a Swede I do not see Linus as being particularly rude. Linus seems to be of the view that people should try to cooperate despite cultural differences instead of trying to remove them and all conform to a single culture (which one should they pick?).

<comment><USER4> Why is being civil all of a sudden an American property?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> If you don't like working with Linus, the answer is simple: Fork his repository and work without him. He encourages you to do this. He publicly states that people give his fork of the Linux kernel far too much authority, and he even designed a version control system to make it extremely easy for anyone to fork his work.

However, contributing to Linus's git repository is not the same as working for an "equal opportunity employer."

I think it's unfortunate that, being a dad, and with all that he's given to the world, he doesn't show a little more kindness and empathy. I think this would benefit everyone.

Maybe the linux community could just try being super extra nice to Linus, and see if it wears off on him? Every time he says something mean, we try even harder to respond with polite and kind language. I'd like to see that.

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm just wondering if Linux would have been different it it wouldn't have been built on this "management by Perkele". I personally think there are a lot of competent developers around the world that could have contributed to the kernel but chose not to because of Linus style of communication Personally I uust feel embarrased by his behaviour, it's not typical for working in an international environment

</comment><comment><USER52> While I wouldn't express my vision for linux the exact way Linus does if I were in his position, but I actually agree with Linus' argument. Sharp shouldn't be trying to enforce her cultural bias on Linus; it is just the way he is, and she should just put up with it. Linus, so far, has shown how to move linux forward, albeit Sharp not being comfortable with his colorful/abrasive use of the English language.

</comment><comment><USER4> Look at some of the private emails sent to Sarah: [https://plus.google.com/photos/116960357493251979546/albums/...](https://plus.google.com/photos/116960357493251979546/albums/5901285206596474753/5901288095984358098?pid=5901288095984358098&oid=116960357493251979546)

</comment><comment><USER53> The best kind of friends are those that right out calls me idiot when they see I'm doing something idiotic. It's liberating, because we both know that the harsh tone is not due to my whole being being defined as a idiot, but that specific thing I did was indeed stupid and he/she cared enough about me to tell me straight out...

<comment><USER54> If your friend is acting like an idiot, you pull them aside and tell them so. You don't yell "_SABE_, SHUT THE FUCK UP" in front of the whole world. You can be a good friend without resorting to acting like the asshole that is Linus Torvalds.</comment></comment>


Why I Studied Full-Time for 8 Months for a Google Interview - <AUTHOR> https://medium.freecodecamp.com/why-i-studied-full-time-for-8-months-for-a-google-interview-cc662ce9bb13#.ow801987l <comment><USER2> Extensive previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13194185](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13194185)</comment>


Ask HN: Nonprofits hiring web devs / software engineers? - <AUTHOR> Hello HN.
Lately I've been looking at working remotely for a nonprofit organization. I'm a web developer with experience on the full stack, and it's something I'm willing to take a pay cut for.
I'm realizing it's actually quite difficult to find lists of nonprofit organizations hiring developers. Any of the usual outlets (angel.co, indeed, etc.) seem to make it almost impossible to filter on nonprofits alone.
Does anyone have any advice on some good places to find such nonprofits?
Thank you! <comment><USER2> Look for nonprofit-oriented job boards such as Idealist.

Find a list of nonprofit orgs and pick out the ones you might want to work for. Reach out to them directly. Chances are at least one of them needs developers and doesn't know where to start with hiring (or is having trouble finding people to work for the salaries nonprofits can offer).</comment>


Lattice Reverse Its Anti-ReverseEngineering EULA Clause - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lattice-semiconductor_lattice-propel-license-activity-6674864964295114752-fe-5 <comment><AUTHOR> I think it is a really interesting turn of events, as the Lattice bitstream (for FPGA) has been the first to be successfully reverse-engineered, and to have a trully opensource toolchain. The fact that the company is cool with this is unprecedented in the FPGA world, and announce maybe a futur a bit shinnier for hobbyist ?</comment>


Our Approach to Employee Security Training - <AUTHOR> https://www.pagerduty.com/blog/security-training-at-pagerduty/ <comment><USER2> > 2\. Don't shy away from technical details.

> The mere mention of the word "hashing" is probably enough to make non- > technical employees' eyes gloss over. So instead I just call it "Magic".

What..? Why state a principle and then tell us how you violate it a few sentences later.

<comment><USER3> I think the point is that technical terminology and technical details are different things, and the latter is much more important.

The alternative is to say "hashing is a technical topic, and technical terms intimidate and confuse people, so we won't mention hashing". Instead, the article says that you should try to make hashing approachable and non- intimidating, since understanding the ideas around hashing will help people understand why strong passwords and password managers are important.

<comment><USER4> I've taught this exact concept to a non-technical audience before. I simply told them it was like scrambling an egg--you can't "unscramble" it and then explained with hashing, you could scramble an identical egg and get identical results and compare the two scrambled eggs to see if they were identical before being scrambled.

That said, I do wonder how well they understood that explanation.

<comment><USER5> A non-technical audience's ability to understand depends entirely on their willingness to even try. Most people just don't care and want you to stop wasting their time, so they put no effort into internalizing an explanation. If you want to teach people security, first make them care about it beyond not getting caught: from an employee's point of view, they don't need to be faster than the tiger, they just have to be faster than their slowest colleague.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very interesting read, can't emphasise enough how important _practicing_ for security is as opposed to mere education. A couple of folks I went to Uni with launched a startup that helps companies conduct automated phishing awareness training and continuous employee sensibilisation by sending "white-hat" phishing emails: IT-Seal [https://www.it-seal.de/en.html](https://www.it- seal.de/en.html)

I can highly recommend giving it a try. The first few levels of difficulty are easy to spot, but it's been eye opening for me how sophisticated phishing emails can get.

<comment><USER7> > by sending "white-hat" phishing emails

I hate those tests. I've been doing anti-phishing work since before the term was coined, and I fail every one of those tests. Why?

Because I load up a virtual env and click on every link in them to see how good of a phish it is.

I suspect this is a problem limited to a very small set of people, but none the less, it's annoying when our head of security comes over and says, "shouldn't you know better?"

<comment><USER8> In my experience (at a large institution) these phishing tests haven't flagged a user until personal info was actually entered, or some other vulnerable action was taken. Seems like there would be so many false positives otherwise.

<comment><USER7> Maybe they've gotten better since I started ignoring them. But back in the day they flagged you the moment you clicked.

<comment><USER9> As a security goon, you get pretty detailed reporting on who did what with the email... but you have to decide what to do with it. Punishing and mocking people doesn't work.

A good head of security should be _excited_ for someone who's interested in digging deeper. There's a lot of talk in our field about outreach for security-minded devs and sysadmins (usually called a security champion program).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Are there any initiatives out there that offer training/guidance in designing systems where even if someone's credentials are compromised, it doesn't really matter. When there are systems out there that still store passwords in an insecure manner and don't require a second form of authentication, then all the training in the world about password hygiene and recognizing phishing attempts won't fix the actual problem.

<comment><USER11> In the research this is called "capabilities", limiting your account, not giving everyone root. Also, there is fraud detection, stuff like automatic alerts when the same credential is used in two places at once, or with unusual access patterns.

Obviously it's impossible for compromising credentials to have no consequences -- if case, why do you have credentials?

<comment><USER10> > Obviously it's impossible for compromising credentials to have no > consequences -- if case, why do you have credentials?

For systems that only require a username and password to log in, someone else obtaining/guessing my credentials would have the consequence of someone being able to access my account. But if there's a second credential I have to enter in addition to the username and password, then someone trying to use the username and password alone would not be able to access the account.

Where I work, this second credential is the RSA token along with a PIN. But this could also be accomplished by using a client side TLS certificate on the work provided device or U2F with a work issued Yubi key.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Concepts such as rainbow tables can then be explained without having to > refer to the actual name; we can just demonstrate that you can create a > lookup and call it a "magic list".

Names are there for a reason. "magic list" instead of "rainbow table", seriously? You're teaching a concept and then giving it a slightly different name just to make it sound more edgy. People won't be able to find anything about "magic lists" when they want to read more about rainbow tables. Let alone the completely mad communication you'll get with people in the company.

> We implemented magic sodium suffix in our application this week, attackers > won't be able to use magic lists when our magic data leaks.

>> What?

> You know, irreversible magic?

>> ...

<comment><USER13> How many non-engineers would you expect to take the interest/time to investigate rainbow tables after this? Also, if you follow the link to the actual presentation ([https://sudo.pagerduty.com/for_everyone/#hashing](https://sudo.pagerduty.com/for_everyone/#hashing) for the lazy) then you'll see the author DOES indeed call it hashing, before switching to "magic" so as to make it easier for individuals without a technical background to not have to constantly think about what the term means.

Also, if you continue to RTFA,

> That said, I didn't want to mislead people. So we chose to be clear to them > that there is a technical term; it's just not going to be important for the > rest of the content.

If it's someone job to provide reports/updates on something related to the concept, yes they should know it, for anyone else in a non-technical role, why does it really matter?

<comment><USER12> > Also, if you continue to RTFA,

I RTFpresentations even. Naming Hashing and then switching to Magic is just confusing for everyone involved. Again; it completely ruins effective communication.

> for anyone else in a non-technical role, why does it really matter?

They're getting security training on the topic of hashing. How does it not matter?? Employees will have to adjust their communication to toddler level anytime they need to talk about security to others.

<comment><USER14> > _They 're getting security training on the topic of hashing. How does it not > matter??_

They're getting taught good password health. You don't need to know what hashing is to know good password health.

I shouldn't get upset over comments but it's headdeskingly frustrating to read comments like yours from people _who should know better_ and who, ultimately, contribute to worse personal security for everybody. Comments like yours are one of the causes behind many people turning their head away at security, not bothering because the barrier of entry is too high and they're made to feel like if they don't have it perfect why bother.

Damn it. The guy communicated pretty damn well if he got 30 employees switching to password managers on their own without actually saying it's required. So instead of criticizing, take it as an opportunity to learn and revise your beliefs.

<comment><USER15> There's no reason to get personal. We're all on the same side here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wonder if Fox will demand their artwork be pulled down.

</comment><comment> cup-of-tea If they can't understand hashing then there's no hope of teaching them security so why even bother?

<comment><USER17> No, if they can't understand hashing, then you've failed as a teacher.

What Rich has done amazingly well here is use the correct term, but then made the "magic" analogy that allows the concept to be more easily understood by people not within engineering. Think sales, marketing, HR, biz dev, etc.

For those who are interested, they can look up more about hashing afterwards. But for everyone, the concept of how hashes are used was taught with high retention rates.

<comment><USER18> I'm all for the power of analogy, but I agree with others here that "magic" is a pretty lame choice of words. Anything you don't understand can be described as magic, it's a meaningless analogy that doesn't have any more explanatory power than the word _hash_ does to people who don't know it. The presentation was good, but I bet it would have had similar impact if the word hash had just been used throughout.

<comment><USER19> I think there's some value for swapping out one semantically opaque word that seems intimidating/"engineer-y" for another equally semantically opaque word that instead connotes "hey, I'm on your side in helping you understand this".

Ie, the value isn't in the word choice itself, but rather in signalling that you empathize with your audience's discomfort.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Valve's Steam Hits 5 Million Concurrent Users - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2012/01/04/valves-pioneering-gaming-platform-steam-hits-5-million-concurrent-users/ <comment><USER2> Though isn't that just people signed on to Steam at any given moment, not the number actually playing games? I have 3 computers that are generally signed on to Steam all throughout the day, none of which are playing anything.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, this is people just logged in to the service (unique accounts online). At the time of this comment there are 3,066,704 logged in and just under 300,000 playing.

<comment><USER4> yeah i thinks it's normal a 10%, but still awesome numbers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would love to know what comparative figures look like for the 360 and PS3.

<comment><USER6> somewhat related...quick googling suggests that SWTOR hit 350000 concurrent online players and that the chinese company responsible for WoW once hit 1 million.

<comment><USER7> The Chinese company responsible for WOW? Who's that then?

<comment><USER8> NetEase. They are responsible for all things WoW in China and run the infrastructure for all of Blizzards online games there

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think if they pull off CS:GO correctly it could bring quite a substantial portion of retired CS 1.6 players back online... boosting that number a bit.</comment>


Can Sweden tackle the throwaway society? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/business-37419042 <comment><USER2> From approx two months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12579879](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12579879) \- "Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff"

One way or another, something ought to be done.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the idea in principle, but the cost of repairing something is so huge - due to direct labour costs and related social expenditures - that it is very difficult to change this balance with just VAT rate adjustments.

Fixing a five-year-old TV might cost 200$ (but you don't know, there's no guarantee). A new TV costs 300$. Now, if you reduce the VAT for fixing work from 25% to 12 %, the repair cost goes down to 180$.

Is that big enough difference to change the way people act? Mostly not. We still realise that the fixed TV might break at another point next week, and there is no warranty. If I just throw away the old thing and buy a new TV, it'll have 6 or 12 month warranty and 2 year defect liability. So it's still a better buy to get a new one.

Plus the new TV probably has more features than the old one.

<comment><USER4> you just came up with arbitrary cost to arbitrary appliance with arbitrary lengths of time. Unless these figures are based on some statistical relevance this whole argument is moot.

<comment><USER5> It's less arbitrary than you might think. I've been half-heartedly shopping for a new TV in the past couple of days and it's amazing what you can get now. Here's a 49-inch 4K LED TV for $350: [https://www.amazon.com/Sceptre-U508CV- UMK-49-Inch-Ultra-Mode...](https://www.amazon.com/Sceptre-U508CV-UMK-49-Inch- Ultra- Model/dp/B00S4HI7CO/ref=sr_1_18?s=tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1480280634&sr=1-18&refinements=p_n_size_browse- bin%3A3578042011)

Sure, it may not be exactly what people here would want, but it's not necessarily a bad TV, if we hypothesize someone who is choosing between repairing something 5 years old or buying a new one. With what the TV industry has done lately, it's almost certainly better than what they're replacing.

And at the very least, you're _risking_ $200 for a repair. Labor may not cost that much out of the gate, but repair parts can get expensive fast simply because stocking obsolete panels for several years before someone finally buys one has a certain cost associated with it. Factor in the risk of expensive parts, factor in the risk that the repair won't actually work for one reason or another (misdiagnosis, the repair fixes one worn part but there's a dozen others ready to break), and it doesn't take much before replacing the TV is the better choice for the consumer.

That said, TVs are also the worst-case scenario, because TV prices have plunged lately in a way that even the computer industry would be a bit jealous of. It makes the case for repair pathologically poor. Many other things have much better cases to be made; appliances haven't plunged in price, and have large landfill footprints. Bicycles can last a long time if you care for them, and bicycle shops have the ability to repair most things quickly enough that they don't have to charge "by the hour" but can just charge flat fees for various tasks. etc.

<comment><USER6> And funnily, most people _do_ repair large appliances, bicycles, and even computers. Even clothes, when expensive and high enough quality, get repaired instead of replaced.

It's almost like people already have a decent grasp on when it does and when it doesn't make sense to fix something.

Nobody demolishes a house and builds a new one when a window breaks. And nobody throws away a car with a flat tyre or a bicycle with a broken chain.

<comment><USER7> I think you'd be surprised by just how many bicycles with flat tires and/or broken (actually, usually rusted solid) chains end up abandoned in the backs of garages, never to be ridden again.

I volunteered for a couple years at the Ohio City Bicycle Co-op[0], and helped fix for sale countless bikes that needed 15-30 minutes of work to correct whatever the original problem was.

You're right that a bicycle with busted chain remains viable transportation given a little elbow grease. That said, people who bought a $150 bike probably aren't that invested in cycling anyway, and so when it breaks, even with a trivial repair, it's effectively done for.

I know I'm invoking stereotypes about people who aren't invested in something and get into it in the cheapest way possible, but easily-fixable cheap bikes are the bread and butter at OCBC.

[0] [http://ohiocitycycles.org/](http://ohiocitycycles.org/)

<comment><USER6> You're right, plenty bikes get abandoned out of pure laziness. But I think most people realize they can be fixed, which is why they're abandoned in the back of their garage rather than thrown in the trash and replaced.

Right?

For example, my mum has a bike like that. She's been putting off repairs for some 15 years now. Mostly it just needs some love from someone to adjust gears and stuff to work again. She knows it's still a working bike so she doesn't toss or replace. But it's easier to just avoid using a bike than to invest the energy to fix that one. We've tried a couple of times but it's juuuust bad enough to need a professional, which increases logistics exponentially.

My point is, abandoned and unused is very different from thrown away and replaced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are similar systems in Sweden for renovation and house cleaning, so this can be implemented very straightforwardly. The invoice will contain the deduction and the repairer will report it to the tax authority. Works really well.

</comment><comment><USER9> Where I live we have big disposal fees for tires, dishwashers, etc. Isn't that just the free market form of an incentive? Does Sweden not have garbage disposal fees?

<comment><USER10> Do these fees result in more appliances being repaired?

<comment><USER11> Not directly. They are more often than not replaced by brand new AAAAA (or whatever) efficient products.

Throwaway society stuff is generally dumped on Eastern European outlets (prime example are used cars, white goods, even clothes etc.).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Repair labor is a huge percent of the repair cost, and includes no warranty, and hence the incentive to just buy new. If the government is going to intervene, maybe what they ought to do is a.) reduce the VAT on repairs, b.) require a 90-180 day whole device warranty, c.) increase the VAT on new products. a) and b) would approximately cancel each other cost wise to the consumer, but give them more confidence in the repair process, which a) alone doesn't do; and c) increases the spread in cost between repair vs new which was the point of a).

Of course the ideal would be to make it just as easy to disassemble consumer devices as it is to assemble them. i.e. if the cost of disassembly were equal to or less the value of physical materials in the product.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is anecdotal for sure, but I've noticed in travels that poorer countries tend to value repairs and older appliances more. Presumably, this is because labor is cheaper. Perhaps a more streamlined way to sell (or even donate) old stuff to poorer countries could combat the wastefulness in a productive way.

</comment><comment><USER14> A change in mentality is needed, that's for sure.

I was browsing Kijiji the other day and was shocked to see how many people sell their perfectly working appliances just because they are tired of how they look (white) and prefer the newer trend of "stainless steel"...

<comment><USER15> But ... selling them means somebody else will use them. Its not the same as throwing them away. Its called 'reuse' which is actually much better than 'recycle'

<comment><USER14> Sure, they're not throwing them away. They sell their appliances to buy new models, but new appliances obviously take resources and energy to build and transport. Same for cars, TVs, gadgets, etc.

<comment><USER16> And presumably someone is buying the old appliance and uses it, instead of buying a new one: one appliance more bought new on one side, one less on the other.

There is of course the factor that through this people can afford appliances that otherwise wouldn't have them, but that at least has a clear benefit for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Providing an incentive to repair through the tax system may have a limited but positive effect. A better choice would be to mandate long lifetime design and manufacture with penalties to the manufacturer for early failures.

</comment><comment><USER18> Perhaps they could start by talking to Ikea and H&M as part of this initiative?

These are two of their largest exports, both of which have flooded the global retail market with cheap and disposable goods.

The fact that both of these companies produce more "stylish" designs of throwaway goods does not diminish their impact on the environment or lessen their very sizable contribution to and promotion of disposable culture.

<comment><USER3> Practically none of Ikea or H&M stuff is manufactured in Sweden and exported, though. Sweden is the hub for brand management and such, but the manufacturing is distributed to where the contractors do it cheapest: China, Russia, Bangladesh, India, Vietnam.

So the disposable goods are not exported from Sweden, they're imported to Sweden and other Western nations. And typically a part of the brand management is quality control that makes this cheap stuff slightly better, quality-wise, than the generic imports from same countries.

<comment><USER18> Both Ikea and H&M are Swedish companies that have exported a brand that is synonymous with disposable culture, which is the point in the original article.

Why does it matter that they source their cheap labor and manufacturing from elsewhere? Furthermore Ikea and H&M are not quality goods.

<comment><USER3> Export a brand, but not export the stuff.

H&M is crap in my opinion, but I actually think IKEA makes a lot of quality stuff.

<comment><USER18> What is this distinction between a brand and where the goods are shipped from? The profit from those sales are booked to a Swedish company.

From a very recent article - July 4th of this year:

'IKEA Group Chief Executive Peter Agnefjall said the push was due to customers increasingly demanding more durable products.

"Customers expect us to do more (on quality). And nowadays you can't really make products that are throwaway: when you buy a sofa table it needs to be built to last," he told Reuters.'

I mean there you have a C-level Ikea officer admitting there's an issue. What more do you need?

Source: [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ikea-quality- idUSKCN0ZK1IX](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ikea-quality-idUSKCN0ZK1IX)

<comment><USER3> A significant distinction is that the manufacturing and exports are not controlled by Swedish laws, which the OP was about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does it make you happy?</comment>


Green500 (Top500 re-ranked by FLOPS/W) released at Supercomputing 2010 - <AUTHOR> http://pressroom.nvidia.com/easyir/customrel.do?easyirid=A0D622CE9F579F09&version=live&releasejsp=release_157&prid=688517

<comment><AUTHOR> The website ( <http://www.green500.org> ) hasn't been updated yet, but this seems to be an accurate top 10 from the BoF session at SC. Looks like GPU- powered machines are in #2, #3, #9, #10, #11, and #12.

A corollary I'd like to see to the Green500 list is the Cheap500 list (MFLOPS/Dollar, either purchase price or TCO including power and cooling); we're not likely to ever see that data, but it seems incredibly relevant to someone looking at the list trying to figure out how to build their machine.</comment>


One Regulation Is Painless – A Million of Them Hurt - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-04-27/one-regulation-is-painless-a-million-of-them-hurt <comment><USER2> This reminds me a lot of the tax code. One special case is painless. A whole pile means that millions of worker hours are wasted trying to fill out the forms correctly, and millions of dollars paid to CPAs to do what any citizen ought to be able to do in minutes.

Both with taxes and regulations, it's death by a thousand cuts. If you try to fix it, you'll hear "but soy farmers _need_ tax breaks" and "but workers _need_ to have good office chairs". Individually, each claim sounds reasonable. Collectively, it's a mess.

I sometimes fantasize of ways to limit this. Eg, have all laws sunset, so we have to prioritize renewing the most important. Or set absolute size limits on areas of regulation - like a one-page tax code (with specified font and margins). But likely none of it would work, humans being so good at exploiting systems for personal gain.

<comment><USER3> I appreciated this description of the difference between American and Swedish tax preparation by some who files both:

 _Our US federal and state forms tax forms were more than 30 pages long last year, downloaded completely blank. During the two weeks we 'll spend in Wisconsin this summer, our main job will be to get our taxes done.

I'll wade through stacks of bank and credit card records line by line, documenting all professional income beyond our wages and scanning for every possible business or charitable deduction. Once this is done, we — like the majority of US taxpayers — will hire a tax professional who charges us $500 to review and co-sign our work.

Tax-preparation services cost American taxpayers more than $32 billion per year. My wife, Betty, and I each have a PhD, but that's not enough to understand IRS instructions. Finally, with a great sigh of relief, our marriage still intact, we'll sign the forms and send them to the IRS.

Of course, despite our great efforts, we don't know whether the IRS is going to be happy or not. We might get audited and have to dig up all this stuff again, because the government has three years to check and revise our returns.

In Sweden, the four-page tax form comes in the mail already filled out. On a Saturday morning, Betty and I take our coffee to the couch and review the forms. Seeing they look reasonable, as they always do, we "sign" with a text from our phones. In 15 minutes we are done. We don't have to hire a tax consultant, and we avoid fights about whether a print cartridge bought at the drugstore is a business expense or not._

[http://www.vox.com/2016/4/8/11380356/swedish-taxes- love](http://www.vox.com/2016/4/8/11380356/swedish-taxes-love)

<comment><USER4> In fairness, that's a lot of information that Americans would consider private, going out through the mail in clearly marked envelopes. They can only be so casual about it in Sweden because they also have the social practice of being less secretive about how much they make.

With that said, if we could nail down the authentication process, we could do here (and should). It wouldn't improve _everyone 's_ situation -- e.g. if you have a lot of income from hard-to-track sources -- but for most people it would be a godsend.

<comment><USER5> W-2s are usually sent in the mail currently, which have all the stuff you would want to keep private. I have never heard anyone complain that W-2s in the mail are dangerous.

In fact, what extra information would be on this pre-filled form that isn't already being sent via mail? Bank statements, retirement statements, pretty much all financial info is sent in the mail every day.

<comment><USER6> >>W-2s are usually sent in the mail currently, which have all the stuff you would want to keep private. I have never heard anyone complain that W-2s in the mail are dangerous.

That's because opening someone else's mail is a federal felony. [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1708](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1708)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think a fair bit of regulation around employment has stepped up as unions have been weakened. Strong unions allowed people to band together to prevent unfair working conditions, but since the unions were dependent fundamentally on the business, they had to keep in mind real business requirements in their asks. Governments trying to protect workers from unfair situations don't have the give and take of collective bargaining.

I feel like most businesses would probably prefer to pay workers more because of collective bargaining and worry less about compliance, but a variety of legal and social changes keep collective bargaining from happening. Unions in California were criticized in a recent forbes opinion piece I read for wanting to exempt union run shops from the minimum wage, but frankly, that seems like a sensible position to take.

Unfortunately most advocates of the free market seem to hate unions, so any advantage collective bargaining might have over government regulation in terms of giving employees a fair deal while keeping regulatory costs low gets downplayed.

edit: I put a space between any and advantage to fix a typo.

<comment><USER8> > Unions in California were criticized in a recent forbes opinion piece I read > for wanting to exempt union run shops from the minimum wage, but frankly, > that seems like a sensible position to take.

I can _sort of_ see that, because those employees (supposedly) have the union to take care of them. But if below minimum wage isn't enough to live on, below minimum wage plus having to pay union dues isn't enough, either. And "it's legal to do that to union employees but not to non-union employees" reeks of double standard.

<comment><USER9> It allows them some leverage over their constituents. For instance, in Michigan, a big union state, there is no state law mandating lunch or other breaks. That way, unions can say to employees, "Without a union, your employer can deny you a lunch or bathroom break."

From a naive perspective, it has historically been ironically anti-union politicians who have backed worker protections, precisely because it takes ammunition away from unions. Why do you need a union if all the benefits are already written into law? Less union shops mean less union voters.

But, to argue for the unions, not only do they negotiate wages, but also benefits. Maybe you aren't getting the minimum wage, but you might be getting better health care, a retirement account, overtime, paid vacation, sick time, flex time, etc. Whereas a non-union employer can say "We're paying a $15 minimum wage so we can't afford health insurance, vacation, etc." With a minimum wage, all you're guaranteed is that wage (other state laws aside).

<comment><USER8> I fail to see why it is the state's business to write the laws in such a way as to give unions leverage over their constituents.

I also fail to see why other benefits that a union could get should exempt them from minimum wage laws. Employers could give non-union employees benefits, too, but that doesn't exempt _them_ from the minimum wage laws. I fail to see how a union being in the mix should change anything.

<comment><USER9> It's not that the state writes a law that gives the unions leverage. They write laws to /take away/ leverage from a union.

There's nothing to guarantee any kind of break from work for an employee, unless it's a law or it's part of the agreement between the employer and the employee. So if the state makes it a law, that is one less benefit a union can negotiate for their members.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> George McGovern, Democratic Presidential candidate in 1972, wrote in 1992 about trying to run a business after getting out of politics

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240529702034064045780705...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203406404578070543545022704) (google the headline for the full article)

"I also wish that during the years I was in public office I had had this firsthand experience about the difficulties business people face every day. That knowledge would have made me a better U.S. senator and a more understanding presidential contender."

and

"The problem we face as legislators is: Where do we set the bar so that it is not too high to clear? I don't have the answer. I do know that we need to start raising these questions more often."

<comment> mark-r Does that mean Trump is the perfect presidential contender? Nobody's going to understand business concerns better than him.

<comment><USER11> Trump has the experience. If he will work towards resolving the issues in good fashion is a question worth debating though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is exactly how I feel as a small business owner. The total amount of tax paid is paltry; I could afford to pay more (and indeed I generally vote along liberal lines). But the constant nagging, begging, and hands out from 20+ different government departments for money and my time while providing absolutely terrible customer service in return... I can easily see why small business owners vote Republican, even if that won't even solve the problem.

<comment><USER8> Has it gotten considerably worse in the last, say, 15 years? Or am I just more aware of it? (I am not a small business owner - I'm looking at it from the outside.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> As someone who both has done business in Denmark and in the US I am always reminded how relative it all is.

So yes it's burdensome but it shouldn't be something that you as a business owner should deal with. You have lawyers and financial advisors and staff for that when your business become too complex.

On the flipside you have access to a huge huge market which every other country in the world is envying.

The problem is that because employees don't have proper representation as most unions have been wiped out, or have too much representation through too powerful unions, the government is forced to go in and implement regulation.

Denmark have something called the Danish model which basically ensures that the employers and the unions on their members behalf negotiate the basic terms only with the government as an intermediary.

It's not perfect and it's showing signs of erosion because unions across the world are loosing the battle against the employers. But it would probably be a good thing for the US system to implement something like that on a state basis.

<comment><USER14> > So yes it's burdensome but it shouldn't be something that you as a business > owner should deal with. You have lawyers and financial advisors and staff > for that when your business become too complex.

But how do the lawyers and advisors get the information? Someone has to collect it.

Then, as someone collects it, it must be validated and/or reviewed in some way to be considered "trusted" in some regard.

Then the other side - regulators - must have a way to spot check and confirm/validate the information which implies investigators and potentially field investigators. Since most companies aren't going to allow strangers to roam around the office, these investigators probably need to be escorted while on site.

Unless your underlying goal is really "full employment via regulatory burden" and then this is on the right track.

<comment><USER13> Problems like these are opportunities. An opening to build a business which helps making complexity easier.

It's actually in many ways a feature not a bug.

<comment><USER15> But for society, and the economy as a whole, these problems are "dead-weight loss" [0]. No productive output is created by jumping through the necessary hoops to comply with every increasing complexity.

And there are opportunity costs to spending time and money on tax / regulatory compliance vs. the actual business.

If your above statement was true, then wouldn't it be more true the more complexity we added to the system?

Maybe instead of working till the middle of April [1] to pay the government our tax bill, we could be working half the year.. or longer? Surely all of that complexity would create even more openings for businesses wanting to solve the complexity problem...

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss)

[1] [http://taxfoundation.org/article/tax-freedom- day-2015-april-...](http://taxfoundation.org/article/tax-freedom- day-2015-april-24th)

<comment><USER13> It is true the more complexity we add to the system. The more complexity the more problems the more opportunity. Of course a system can be so complex that becomes unworkable.

But technology allow us to take a lot of that cumbersome complexity and make it trivial.

Denmark has one of the most streamlined and optimized tax-reporting systems yet you don't see it nourishing because of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is precisely the focus of the 10000 commandments: [https://cei.org/10KC](https://cei.org/10KC), which says regulation is tantamount to a backdoor tax more or less.

"Ten Thousand Commandments, points out: regulations impose enormous burdens on American consumers, businesses, and the economy. Unnecessary and meddlesome overregulation and intervention create uncertainty that slows innovation and economic growth. But unfortunately, regulations get little attention in policy debates. Unlike taxes, they are difficult to quantify because they are unbudgeted and often indirect."

</comment><comment><USER17> Regulations are great for handling tragedy of the commons scenarios. Eg, it's in a single business's best interest to dump chemicals in our shared water supply, but it is in the common people's interest to have clean water. So we regulate polluting the water.

However, most regulations I encounter are more of the Baptists and Bootleggers variety. They both want highly regulated liquor for totally different reasons. Just like many large businesses are fine with extra regulations that well intentioned Do-Gooders suggest because the big businesses know it will block small innovative competitors from entering their market.

It's so frustrating to see the anti-Corporate crowd cheer for more regulations. They're just cementing their place in society.

<comment><USER18> > Regulations are great for handling tragedy of the commons scenarios.

I have never seen any actual evidence for this. There is strong reasoning to say markets are bad at handing tragedies of the commons, but it does not follow from that that government is good at it.

<comment><USER6> Markets _may_ be good at preventing tragedies of the commons, but they may also fail to do so.

Consider the case of a lake fished by several fishing boats. Each fishing boat consumes a percentage of their daily catch and sells the rest for profit. The nature of the lake makes it a zero-sum resource: if one fishing boat catches more fish, it means less fish for the others.

The problem: every fishing boat has a short-term incentive to overfish, since more fish lead to more profits. This incentivizes every fishing boat to catch as much fish as possible, until there's no more fish. That's the tragedy of the commons, and there's nothing the market can do to fix this.

By the way, I didn't make up this scenario. There's a ton of examples of this exact same thing happening all over the world, not just with fisheries but with any kind of shared resource ("the commons"). You can read more here: [http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/ten-reallife- examples-...](http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/ten-reallife-examples-of- the-tragedy-of-the-common.html)

<comment><USER18> I think you missed my point. Your example and others are a clear demonstration of how externalities cause individual incentives to lead to a sub-optimal outcome - that is not in dispute.

What I was saying is that just because markets are bad at solving a problem does not mean that government is good at solving that problem. It doesn't even mean that government isn't _worse_ at solving it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Everyone is familiar with the idea that companies pay politicians to weaken regulations, but more people need to realize that they pay politicians to strengthen regulations as well. Expertise in regulatory compliance is a competitive advantage that all incumbents have. They can create barriers to entry by making regulatory compliance harder.

Companies bribe politicians who hate regulations to remove regulations they hate. Companies bribe politicians who like regulations to add regulations that they can comply with more easily than their competitors. Centralized democracy is fundamentally flawed because votes can be bought.

<comment><USER20> Regulatory Capture and Public Choice Theory should be taught in high school. It's counterintuitive on the surface, but makes a lot of sense when you see it in action. Regulations are incredibly hard to remove and very rarely are removed; on any level, state, local or federal. It's much easier to write new regulations and starve your competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I agree completely with this article; as the son of a contractor, I've heard countless stories about how city regulations, without exception, cause good business practices to become frustrating.

Not only is it frustrating, but even in principle such regulations are definitely overstepping the bounds of government; no government should regulate how a business should operate. The market will decide that.

<comment><USER22> I'm very happy my governement makes regulations : * the market didn't decide VW should not fake emission * the market didn't decide Fukushima to be secured * the market didn't decide bisphenol-A is dangerous * the market didn't avoid asbestos * the market didn't choose forbid to sell cigarettes to people who can be hurt by them (i.e. children) * the market didn't decide tax avoidance is a bad thing

Eventually, those things will get fixed, but when the damage is done (see asbestos), i.e. when it's too late.

The problem is that market pushes business to make money, not to be virtuous. That's because when a business must choose between "closing" and "going on but being less than virtuous", the business says "I don't have choice, it's either live or nothing", so I choose "live on".

I understand that not all business operate like this. But many people will make that choice because it's practical. Much like choosing between free software (politically fine but economically broken (that's an approximation)) and proprietary software (ok to enslave people but economically viable).

<comment><USER23> I am in favour of fair and reasonable regulations, but your examples are unconvincing. Faking emissions, avoiding taxes... those are illegal actions, just because you are trying to fool government for profit. Fukushima most likely followed regulations that were inadequate.

The key word here is _responsability_. If businesses are made responsible and have to pay when they behave recklessly, the only measures needed are those preventing unreversible damage.

Also there should be some kind of limitation to what government can regulate and how.

<comment><USER24> > Faking emissions, avoiding taxes... those are illegal actions, just because > you are trying to fool government for profit.

Huh? Without regulation, VW could just claim whatever they wanted about the emissions of the car and it wouldn't be illegal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > But it also falls most heavily on smaller businesses, which cannot afford > staffs of pricey compliance specialists to make sure that their desk chairs > meet the new California workplace seating requirements. This may help > explain why the number of firms is falling, and markets are consolidating.

The inefficiency with which small businesses deal with regulatory compliance is just one example of a general phenomenon. Small businesses are inefficient at pretty much everything. For example, there is no way cab companies, the largest of which may have a few hundred drivers, could ever deploy the kind of software infrastructure Uber has developed. Mom-and-pops can never compete with Amazon's or Wal-Mart's integrated and unified systems for warehousing, picking, shipping, and logistics. As technology makes it easier to manage increasingly-large enterprises and unlocks economies of scale, consolidation will continue apace, with or without the impact of regulatory compliance.

At the end of the day, someone has to make sure workers aren't being abused by being forced to work for more hours than they are paid for. As long we consider that a legitimate burden we put on businesses, we have to face the fact that the relative difficulty of compliance is just one of the many disadvantages of being small.

<comment><USER26> _For example, there is no way cab companies, the largest of which may have a few hundred drivers, could ever deploy the kind of software infrastructure Uber has developed._

No, but a small business could build and support the software for many of them, as a service. In fact, there are plenty of startups doing just that. Scale doesn't have to come from building up, it can come from building horizontally, in a web of small businesses supporting each other.

Unless you're facing a stupid number of regulations, which scale linearly with the number of firms, encouraging the centralization and monopolization of markets.

<comment><USER25> So some company builds the software. Can cab companies afford to run that software on their own server farms? Of course not. So the software company sells it as a service, running everything on its own AWS instances. At that point, there is zero reason for that company to not just be Uber.

<comment><USER26> Why would you need a server farm to handle a few hundred users? A gaming host, which does essentially the same (push location of players around in realtime, just in a virtual world) can support hundreds of players on a single server, and not a particularly beefy one at that.

That said, even if the company does host the servers, in what way does that mean they should also vet and hire drivers, handle (non software related) support calls, invest in marketing and advertising, and all those hundred of other tasks that a taxi business needs, all in many countries and languages?

And the reality is that there are already dozens of companies doing just the software and renting it out to taxi companies, they must have some reason for doing so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I mean, OK, yes, regulation costs money. So? "It costs money" is not, in and of itself, a reason not to do something.

<comment><USER8> Well, when "things" (regulation, or taxes, or transport, or transaction costs, or whatever) cost less, then more things become economically viable, _so more things happen_. That is, the overall economy grows.

We've had a stagnant economy for the last 6 years (at least). It is my impression that we have also had an increasing burden of regulation in that time. Are they related? I can't prove it, but I suspect yes, at least to some degree.

<comment><USER24> And what is that impression based on?

<comment><USER8> It's primarily based on working in business. But it's hard for me to tell if the regulations are becoming more burdensome, or if I'm just becoming more aware of them as my role becomes more senior.

It's also somewhat based on my perception of how many regulatory hoops I'd have to jump through to start a business. Again, though, I don't know if the hoops were always there and my awareness of them grew, or if the number of hoops increased.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> You can have both a safely regulated economy as well as a non-burdensome one. America has it particularly bad because a good portion of the population doesn't believe in regulations _at all_.

A smarter strategy would be to see what other countries in the world do that is both effective and efficient.

<comment><USER24> America's case is particularly complex, I think, because of the extent to which rules for everything vary between states or even municipalities.

<comment><USER28> Canada is in the same boat, with taxes and regulations changing between provinces. Yet they don't manage quite as much complexity in their tax code!

<comment><USER24> Yes, there are a handful of federal systems like this, but I think they end up increasing costs pretty significantly for people who want to operate nationally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So California requires employers to document their employees' lunch breaks. Does anybody think that this law was passed simply on a whim?

Of course not. And the same is true for nearly other regulation that is taking up business' time and money.

The people at fault here are those employers that did _not_ let their employees have lunch breaks. And the companies that did not provide safety gear, and that refused to hire non-whites, and that wantonly dumped toxic chemicals in the rivers.

We need regulations because some people are scumbags.

<comment><USER30> I can't believe how far down in the comments I had to scroll to see this sentiment, and that it's sitting partially grayed no less!

To me it's completely obvious; if businesses could be trusted not to abuse their employees, then nannying regulations mandating lunch breaks wouldn't be necessary. Since businesses repeatedly abuse the power imbalances they have over their workers (including removing lunch breaks), there you have the regulations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Lets see. The poor Mr. Warren Meyer is crying about being forced to document and prove he is not taking advantage of his employees.

Or in other words, California is doing the job of government: protecting those who cannot defend themselves from being ripped off.

Mr. Meyer needs to understand that businesses have been engaged in wage theft for a very, very long time. ( read more here: [http://www.wagetheft.org/](http://www.wagetheft.org/) )

No business owner should cry crocodile tears about the government doing its job of protecting citizens from being forced to work off the clock or being denied lawfully entitled breaks.

The regulations were put in place because businesses ripped off workers. This is the same reason why minimum wage is needed, child labor laws, health and safety regulations, etc.

</comment><comment><USER32> To me this is extremely similar to change control requirements on systems - yes there is a very good reason for them, but if in practice the people administering these rules lose track of _why_ the rules exist, have a lack of understanding of the technology involved (therefore unable to properly judge risk), and then throw some political chicanery where some people are eager for any new tool they can use to "enforce their authoritah" on those below them in the organizational chain, and you end up with an environment where doing things takes twice as long, but you're not actually any safer than you were without the controls.

</comment><comment><USER33> There is nothing surprising about this. All government regulations are like this at one point people simply stop giving fucks to these rules.

I am pretty sure everyone company out there violating some kind of regulation. Do you know that it is illegal to throw a dry cell in your usual waste basket ?

In such systems people who have complete disregard for law, who are exploitative who are willing to bribe or threaten government official tend to succeed at faster rate than usual law abiding citizens leading to India or China like situations.

</comment><comment><USER34> A huge part of the problem is that many legislators and regulators don't understand the economic theory behind regulation and government intervention in the first place. Generally speaking, the goal is to price in negative externalities. In some cases, that can extend to disincentivizing certain behaviors as well.

You also have to acknowledge that, just as certain market forces can cause distortions, so too can government actions. Regardless of your school of thought, there's no escaping the realization that regulation is an incredibly nuanced issue. It's not black and white, and never has been.

There's also a ton of room for abuse, both willful and through neglect. In general, this is probably what most people are thinking of when they talk about regulations being bad.

As an example, and apologies in advance for the length, my dad's family is in the cemetery industry. Over the past few months, a few members of the Pennsylvania Senate have pushed a bill—Senate Bill 874—that changes how cemeteries handle funeral merchandise (caskets, vaults, bronze markers, etc.). Currently, 70% of retail price of pre-need merchandise is put into a trust fund until the merchandise is delivered. It's been this way since the 60s in Pennsylvania and most other states, and there have never really been any problems. The money sits in trust, earns interest, and when the merchandise is ready to be delivered, is used to pay for the merchandise. Very, very simple stuff.

Among other things, SB 874 would change that funding requirement to 100%. The biggest problem with that is that there are costs associated with the sale—offices, marketing, sales staff, etc.—that can't be deferred. So you have two options: (1) you quit selling pre-need merchandise altogether, or (2) you raise non-merchandise prices (lots, mausoleum crypts, etc.) to compensate. And you start making significant cuts, starting with the sales staff. The significant hit to a cemetery's cash flow also means it's harder for them to pay for maintenance costs without tapping into their perpetual care funds (a big issue for smaller cemeteries and those that are mostly full), meaning that money isn't there earning interest for the future.

SB 874 also makes some other changes like ending constructive delivery on caskets and vaults and applies the FTC Funeral Rule to PA cemeteries. There's an argument to be made about constructive delivery of caskets, but existing regulations still apply and the practice is rare to begin with. So even if you're worried about a casket "rotting away in a warehouse" as one person put it, the cemetery is still responsible for it as it's under their care. If the casket is damaged, they have to make good that damage. And as for vaults, they're large concrete boxes that go in the ground. They're very tough, hard to damage, and installing them in bulk leads to significant cost savings. By not permitting cemeteries to constructively deliver them, you wind up raising the cost of both the vault and the installation to the detriment of consumers. As for the Funeral Rule, even the FTC says that "[many] of the disclosures required by the Funeral Rule make little sense if they are imposed on cemeteries" and that "there is insufficient evidence that commercial cemeteries, crematories, and third-party sellers of funeral goods are engaged in widespread unfair or deceptive acts or practices." They advised the PA Senate that SB 874 would "lessen competition, resulting in potentially higher prices and fewer options for consumers, without countervailing benefits to consumers."

So basically, we have a bill that would make significant changes to the cemetery industry for no verifiable reasons. There's no evidence of any malfeasance in PA cemeteries over the course of decades, and no benefit to the consumer for the changes. And any benefit there might be would be wiped out by the increased costs elsewhere, to say nothing of the decreased competition as cemeteries exist the pre-need merchandise market. And the other regulations and contract law protect the consumer in the few specific hypotheticals that they're worried about. So why push it?

Well, that's where it gets interesting. One of the senators sponsoring the bill happens to own a large funeral home near Philadelphia. With cemeteries not selling merchandise, people would have no choice but to go to the funeral director. The bill originally came up after a public company, StoneMor, signed a lease agreement to operate the Philadelphia Diocese's cemeteries, including the right to sell merchandise for them. So Philly funeral directors came up with this bill as a means of fighting back, and the rest of the state's funeral directors went along with it because it would benefit them significantly.

At the very least, it's a massive conflict of interest and a classic example of political corruption for private gain. Why should any elected representative be permitted to push legislation that would have a direct benefit on their own business's bottom line?

When people bemoan government regulation and intervention, it's stuff like this that they're thinking about. Every time a legislator jumps the shark with something like this, they make it that much harder for legitimate government intervention. The end result is the sort of gridlock we have now, where things are black and white and each side shouts slogans at one another.

Sorry for the length.

<comment><USER35> tl;dr: A few members of the Pennsylvania Senate have pushed a bill—Senate Bill 874—that changes how cemeteries handle funeral merchandise (caskets, vaults, bronze markers, etc.) ... One of the senators sponsoring the bill happens to own a large funeral home near Philadelphia. With cemeteries not selling merchandise, people would have no choice but to go to the funeral director. ... Philly funeral directors came up with this bill as a means of fighting back, and the rest of the state's funeral directors went along with it because it would benefit them significantly. At the very least, it's a massive conflict of interest and a classic example of political corruption for private gain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Businesses cannot be trusted. If they could be trusted, you wouldn't need all this regulation. Even as it stands, many businesses don't follow regulations and there are generally no repercussions for that. It's the employees who always suffer, who don't get their lunch breaks or health insurance or whatever it is they are legally allowed by law but denied by their employers. Sorry, it's impossible to side with businesses on this one given the track record of most businesses.

</comment><comment><USER37> While the tax code should be simplified, it's possible to automate most of the rules anyway. It should be as simple as upload W2(s), link your trading accounts, answer a few questions and be done with it for most people. The software need not satisfy every usecase for everyone in the country. Are there an free/open source tax filing software?

<comment><USER38> Note that this is basically what the 1040-EZ[0] is. It has the benefit of being one page, with simple instructions and it covers a lot of people.

• Your filing status is single or married filing jointly. If you are not sure about your filing status, see instructions.

• You (and your spouse if married filing jointly) were under age 65 and not blind at the end of 2015. If you were born on January 1, 1951, you are considered to be age 65 at the end of 2015.

• You do not claim any dependents. For information on dependents, see Pub. 501.

• Your taxable income (line 6) is less than $100,000.

• You do not claim any adjustments to income. For information on adjustments to income, use the Tax Topics listed under Adjustments to Income at www.irs.gov/taxtopics (see instructions).

• The only tax credit you can claim is the earned income credit (EIC). The credit may give you a refund even if you do not owe any tax. You do not need a qualifying child to claim the EIC. For information on credits, use the Tax Topics listed under Tax Credits at www.irs.gov/taxtopics (see instructions). If you received a Form 1098-T or paid higher education expenses, you may be eligible for a tax credit or deduction that you must claim on Form 1040A or Form 1040. For more information on tax benefits for education, see Pub. 970. If you can claim the premium tax credit or you received any advance payment of the premium tax credit in 2015, you must use Form 1040A or Form 1040.

• You had only wages, salaries, tips, taxable scholarship or fellowship grants, unemployment compensation, or Alaska Permanent Fund dividends, and your taxable interest was not over $1,500. But if you earned tips, including allocated tips, that are not included in box 5 and box 7 of your Form W-2, you may not be able to use Form 1040EZ (see instructions). If you are planning to use Form 1040EZ for a child who received Alaska Permanent Fund dividends, see instructions.

As for free offerings, these can also be found via the IRS[1], but generally apply to lower income amounts.

[0] - [https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs- pdf/f1040ez.pdf](https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040ez.pdf)

[1] - [https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile/jsp/wizard.jsp?ck](https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile/jsp/wizard.jsp?ck)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> If you'd like to know more about the libertarian blogger who wrote this piece, check out her profile on the S.H.A.M.E (Shame the Hacks who Abuse Media Ethics) page: [http://shameproject.com/profile/megan- mcardle/](http://shameproject.com/profile/megan-mcardle/)

<comment><USER24> Excellent. I love the SHAME Project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Documentable, reasonable, compliance costs should be a tax credit.

(Yes, "reasonable" is quantifiable. Think about courts awarding reasonable attorney's fees. There are decades of history around this concept.)

</comment><comment><USER41> What is the OP suggesting instead?

<comment><USER24> "Just let me do whatever I want; trust me."

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> TIL people who claim to be 'smart' on this site (of all sites) thing regulations == solutions. Too cute.</comment>


Gender Pay Gap at Uber Not Caused by Discrimination - <AUTHOR> https://www.statista.com/chart/14660/male-uber-drivers-outearn-their-female-counterparts <comment><USER2> This isn't the pay gap "at Uber", no info on corporate pay here. More like this: "Gender Pay Gap for Uber Drivers Not Caused by Gender Discrimination."</comment>


Ask HN: What's up with this type of superannoying ads? - <AUTHOR>

http://davidadewumi.com/2008/07/06/why-are-black-nerds-so-unpopular/
On this site and a lot of others, most often serious bloggers, there are really annoying ads.
Insetad of having them in a nice column on the side some #"#¤#¤ decided it is a good idea to have them pop up when point the mouse to a special word.
I fidn this to be the most annoying from of ad ever.
It is very intrusive and makes me close the site immediately.
It makes some sites unreadable.
Is it the html so it is the site-designers fault or is it some sort of special ad-network? <comment><USER2> Neither. It's a snapshot of the website being linked to along with related keywords you may be interested it search for.

The annoying ads you're thinking of are contextual based links that are created automatically by the ad networks such as kontera.com

</comment><comment><USER3> I keep using the 'snapshots' internal options to 'block' for 'all sites' -- but the preference never sticks.

Next up: using AdBlock or NoScript to block JS from *.snap.com domains, which should do the trick.

<comment><AUTHOR> Mozilla has no block for this?

<comment><USER3> I don't believe core Mozilla/Firefox offers any user-configurable URL- or domain-based blocking. It has popup blocking, and it has 'safe browsing' which checks against a central blacklist, but nothing the user can adjust. That takes add-ons.</comment></comment></comment>


Improved GitHub commenting with Markdown - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/2097-improved-commenting-with-markdown?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=markdown-toolbar-intro <comment><USER2> now it's good</comment>


Angela Merkel urges EU to seize control of data from US tech titans - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/956ccaa6-0537-11ea-9afa-d9e2401fa7ca <comment><USER2> They already have GDPR, don't they?

<comment><AUTHOR> The article is about servers. They want a European version of AWS/Microsoft/Google instead of "outsourcing" their data.</comment></comment>


CentOS 8 Available for Download - <AUTHOR> https://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2019-September/173484.html <comment><USER2> What's the best way to upgrade from CentOS 7 to 8 if my site is running on CentOS but I'm not a technical person?</comment>