Herd Mentality - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2009/10/herd_mentality <comment><USER2> Gruber doesn't quite go all the way here, but it's important to note that no company can operate in a vacuum. However, what's important, _vitally important_ , is that you don't operate such that one of your key suppliers is a monopoly! Just look at Apple's suppliers: Intel? They better keep up with AMD or else Apple will do to them what they did to IBM. Flash memory providers? Apple plays so many of them off each other that you can tell when a new Apple product is about to launch just by watching the market price of Flash. Graphics? Apple's been bouncing between nVidia and ATI like nobody's business...

...so really, it's not so much about hardware vs software vs hardware+software. It's that the smart businessperson doesn't knowingly make a deal with a monopoly.

<comment><USER3> _It's that the smart businessperson doesn't knowingly make a deal with a monopoly._

I see what you're saying, but hasn't nearly every Apple customer effectively done that? A datacentre could maybe rip out Xserves and replace them with equivalent 1U boxes running some generic Unix apps (e.g. Tomcat) but anyone who has developed on the Mac platform is beholden to Apple.

Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, and not that there is an economic way to stay completely platform agnostic, but it does contradict what you say.

<comment><USER4> It doesn't contradict it. He talks about Apple, you talk about Apple's customers. Thinking of it from the company's position, _other's_ monopolies are bad for you, not necessarily your monopolistic advantages.

<comment><USER2> Yes, and as for developers, they're developing for a market (i.e. Apple isn't supplying materials, just opportunity). It's sort of like how Detroit was developing for the petroleum market. The idea there, though, is that in developing for a market, you should have general domain abilities that can span markets. In other words, if you're an Apple developer, you depend on the Apple market to sell your product, but you should be able to take your development ability and develop for Windows or Linux should the Apple market collapse.

Obviously, it's not guaranteed that you'll be that smart. Detroit _should_ have been smart enough to take their expertise in developing for the petroleum market and transfer it to success in the alternative energy market. But it's still not as bad as having a key _component_ of your product be supplied by a monopoly (just ask your local jeweler).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think a lot of people take Windows for granted. It's amazing that we have one operating system that can smoothly run on the most expensive and advanced PC hardware and run on a netbook that costs less than a really good dinner out. Hardware manufacturers can put other own drivers as easily as anyone can put out software. And the same software runs on PC models from dozens of manufacturers and whatever Frankenstein-PC you can build yourself. Developers can target one API for all that hardware.

The author doesn't seem to think much of that.

Apple is an exception, an outlier, and a niche.

<comment><USER6> operating systems are a natural monopoly, due to network effects. it's no surprise that one of them 'won' and captured most of the market. that doesn't mean it's good for the industry, though.

microsoft has demonstrated time and time again that, with windows, they value backward compatibility ahead of almost everything else. it still bears the mark of design decisions made in the eighties. that makes it pretty difficult to innovate in the windows space, even if microsoft wanted to, and they don't.

apple's macintosh is a viable competitor, but they're after a pretty clearly- defined market as well. they've got millions of customers they can't afford to upset.

three primary desktop operating systems is not enough. it retards the spread of new ideas. we are taking too long to get to whatever comes after the desktop gui metaphor, because any company that created such a thing today doesn't stand much of a chance of being able to sell it.

<comment><USER5> Microsoft values backwards compatibility ahead of everything else because that's what both users and developers want. Because Apple has never been in the business market, their is very little custom software written for it. They can toss out backwards compatibility every few years and someone will write a new zip utility or port a web browsers. If Microsoft broke backwards compatibility, zip utilities and browsers would be ported too. But companies that have invested literally millions of dollars in their software don't have the time or money to do that.

If Apple were to ever capture (and keep) more than 10% of the market, you'll see that they too will slave to maintain backwards compatibility. Their niche status affords them ability to make the sorts of changes you want.

I don't understand this intense desire for speedy change -- do we really need to replace the desktop metaphor as quickly as possible? Doesn't that just hurt, rather than help, adoption and understanding of computers? Everytime the GUI changes half the planet has to re-learn how to use their computers. If we had more than 3 primary desktop operating systems, all implementing new ideas, the learning curve for users would be impossibly high.

The fact that one operating system won is good for the industry.

<comment><USER6> yeah, i don't believe any of that. and i'm surprised to see so much of this attitude here, of all places.

you could have used all those same arguments to claim that guis are bad, let's just stick with ms-dos. back in the eighties, i remember many people making _exactly_ that argument. heck, in the back of my mind, i was sort of thinking that myself! i had a great deal invested in the status quo. i'd spent _years_ learning 8086 assembler and all the tricks necessary to write a dos tsr that wouldn't bring down the operating system. it was an ugly, stupid, convoluted system, but i was a master of it, and so i wanted things to remain the same.

apple is never going to stop throwing out old stuff and replacing it with new stuff, no matter how much of the market they get. not so long as steve jobs is alive, anyway. that's what makes the mac a healthy, thriving ecosystem. once an idea has outlived its usefulness, it's chucked for something better. the fact that the people in charge of windows are _not_ willing to do that means that it is just a matter of time before the entire operating system is obsolete.

i'm not saying there _shouldn't_ be a windows. it caters to a certain crowd that i am not a part of, thankfully, and i think that holds for most of us around here. but the idea that it has to be pretty close to the _only_ operating system _is_ a bad thing. fortunately, microsoft doesn't wield the kind of power that it once did, so there's a chance we'll get to see some real alternatives in the next decade or so.

<comment><USER5> You might want to take off those rose-colored glasses and take a better look at Apple. The classic Mac OS existed until 2001 and still lacked memory protection -- You had to remember to save your work before opening Netscape! Then they didn't even develop their own OS, but instead purchased NextSTEP which was already 12 years old at the time and circling the drain. Then, instead of throwing out the old stuff, they bolted the Carbon API onto it to allow classic Mac applications to be ported easily. So you really couldn't be more wrong about Apple.

On the other hand, the number of applications that Mac OS X must run to be accepted can be counted on the collective hands of the OS X engineers. They can almost afford to break whatever they want as long Photoshop runs. Microsoft does not have that luxury.

The command line vs. GUI argument doesn't hold water either. Instead we're comparing the desktop metaphor with some concept that doesn't exist yet. Operating system research is always on going and the really good ideas percolate up into all the current operating systems. You can't just radically change direction -- even Apple knows that. In fact, they've been removing features (like creator codes) that distinguished them from Windows and Linux basically because being compatible with the universe is more important than being innovative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't know where the folks responding to this statement by downplaying the significance of the OS by pointing to the increasing importance of the browser and the web in applications are getting this line of reasoning. It's a complete non sequitur.

Sure, web apps and AJAXian techniques may be putting a dent in domains formerly owned entirely by standalone desktop GUI apps.

But your browser is not going to implement your hardware device drivers, I/O subsystems, network stacks, filesystems, and, well, ${insert very long list of other ways in which the OS interacts with the fundamentals of the machine}.

To say, "Ah, well who cares, it's all about the browser now anyway" is really, really missing the point. Maybe Google Docs displaces Microsoft Office, but do you really think you're going to XMLHttpRequest your SATA driver, process scheduler, or IP routing FIB (forwarding information base) away?

<comment><USER5> The low-level aspects of an operating system are now available, for free, to whatever company wants them in the form of Linux. Both of Google's operating systems (Android and Chrome OS) are based on Linux. The Palm Pre is based on Linux. The fact is that even the device drivers, I/O subsystems, network stacks, file systems, and the X number of ways the an OS interacts with the machine are no longer significantly important.

What is important is how the OS interacts with the user. This is where Apple shines. This is also where Google is looking to shine as well. If the user experience can be provided entirely within the browser, why not?

<comment><USER7> _The fact is that even the device drivers, I/O subsystems, network stacks, file systems, and the X number of ways the an OS interacts with the machine are no longer significantly important._

Because it is readily available in free form, it is _no longer important_ , significantly or otherwise? Seriously?

Yes - it's become more commoditised. No, you can't just "replace" it with a browser. And yes, there is a qualitative distinction in degrees of hardware support and underlying engineering.

<comment><USER5> As you said, it has become commoditised. Is there really a qualitative distinction? Apple's operating supports Apple's hardware (Mac and iPhone). Linux claims great compatibility with most PC hardware and tonnes of other random equipment out there. Windows is Windows. Do you think the average person cares what file system underpins the iPhone or that Android and the Pre share an OS kernel?

But you are right, you can't replace an operating system with browser. However, you can treat the OS as just another layer in the stack in between the network card and the browser. It's even an interchangeable component -- swap out Linux or Windows or OS X and you have still have something that can push bits onto the net and run a browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If Apple had to compete with someone else innovating on the PC, it would force them to break even further away from the herd. Macs are great, but they still resemble PARC's Alto from _36 years ago_ far too closely. The times have changed quite a bit. The iPhone is a much bigger leap _as a personal computer_ (smaller leap as a phone, really).

The potential for innovation is there. It would be nice to see that happen on the PC. I hope that "someone else" shows up at some point. Better yet, I hope I can be a part of it. ;-)

</comment><comment><USER9> "Imagine how much better the industry would be if there were more than one computer maker trying to move the state of the art forward."

It would also be a nightmare of complexity.

<comment><USER8> Not necessarily. Web standards could be a great foundation. The web is open and anyone is free to push the state of the art forward. Yet the result has often been more interoperability, not less.

<comment><USER10> Do you seriously believe that webapps would eventually replace desktop apps ?

<comment><USER11> Some desktop apps yes, actually many of them have been already replaced. Other (data/processor intensive: graphic arts, multimedia, etc...) don't think so.

<comment><USER10> Could you give me some examples please ?

<comment><USER11> Adobe Premiere for example?

<comment><USER10> I was speaking of webapps that had actually replaced desktop apps.

<comment><USER11> Ah, in many cases webmails have replaced desktop client apps. And in my environment the official suite is Google Docs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The irony of an Apple fanboi discussing conformity like this is deafening. Buying Apple is buying conformity.

I suppose with all the downvotes I'll expand.

The conformity is what makes Apple stuff work. A small range of hardware for the chosen operating system. Running Linux or Windows on Apple hardware is hard.

Conformity also happens with the iPhone. Unless I bother to jailbreak my iPhone, I'm forced to use the functionality on my iPhone agreed by my carrier and Apple through the carrier updates.

<comment><USER13> Did you ever stop to consider why Apple "fanbois" are? And why, for example, there aren't such people for other hardware or software manufacturers? (Microsoft has a good few, actually, and Linux certainly has some, but the numbers of fanatics for both combined are easily dwarfed by Apple. And no PC hardware company has anything like it.) Certainly many people will buy Apple just because it comes from Apple, but the point is that there was something about Apple that attracted them in the first place; hardware and software coming from a company that actually cares about good design and isn't as tonedeaf as Microsoft's attempts at it have been. There was & is actually koolaid to drink. In any case, Gruber is talking about industry conformity, not consumer conformity, which is a whole 'nother pigeon.

edit to reply to edit:

"The conformity is what makes Apple stuff work."

To a degree, yes. Or rather what makes Apple stuff "Just work." It certainly wouldn't be past Apple technologically to make OS X run on commodity standard boxes, but it wouldn't be a very good business decision. They're a hardware company.

"Running Linux or Windows on Apple hardware is hard."

No, not even a little bit. Well, Windows on PPC would be impossible (unless we're talking about maybe one version of windows NT, I think?) but that's Microsoft's thing not Apple's, in only supporting Intel. Apple's OS these days comes with a utility that makes installing Windows dead easy if you want to, and even if you don't use that it isn't any harder than installing it on any standard PC.

<comment><USER12> > Did you ever stop to consider why Apple "fanbois" are?

Some of them appear to need to follow the underdog, conform but not conform, or are spoken to through the marketing.

> In any case, Gruber is talking about industry conformity, not consumer > conformity, which is a whole 'nother pigeon.

The industry is conforming to follow Apple. HP through marketing. Dell through design. MS through marketing/Zune/Pink. Google through Android.

edit: You jump through additional hoops to get Linux working properly. Video drivers and sound drivers are poor, sound quality is poor. Getting used to the synaptics driver for the glass trackpad was hard. And you need the drivers from Apple for Windows, which they tend to take their time with.

<comment><USER13> "Some of them..."

Some of them, certainly. Are you honestly claiming that all or even most Apple users do so because of marketing if there's no quality product to back it up?

Edit: as per your post history/above, you appear to use Apple hardware. Just because of the marketing?

"HP through marketing."

Without a product behind it.

"Dell through design"

It is to laugh.

"MS through marketing/Zune/Pink."

Which might do something for them, as by all accounts the new Zune is decent, though with some of their typical tonedeaf touches (30-second ad plays before running an app? Puh-leease.), though their smartphone OS is still atrocious.

"Google through Android."

With their 7% marketshare to iPhone's 40% (numbers from AdMob, which is naturally not entirely representative of the smartphone market as a whole, but close enough for the purposes of argument.). And this despite Android's improved openess over iPhone OS and the wider variety of harder. Or possibly because of it... Only having one platform to develop for it certainly a massive competitive advantage for iPhone over virtually anything else out there.

"Video drivers and sound drivers are poor, sound quality is poor."

Considering that video/sound chips used by Apple are all (reasonably) commonly used hardware these days, Linux not having drivers for it is squarely the fault of the Linux community/hardware manufactures who don't provide drivers for them. Ditto goes for Windows, with the trackpad being the obvious exception there.

<comment><USER12> > Are you honestly claiming that all or even most Apple users do so because of > marketing if there's no quality product to back it up?

You said 'fanbois'. I replied to 'fanbois'. You took the 'fanboi' reply and blew it out.

> as per your post history/above, you appear to use Apple hardware. Just > because of the marketing?

I bought Apple because OS X 10.1 looked like a way of running Linux while still having access to commercial apps should I need them. That was in 2001. I've not bought a non-apple computer since (5 laptops, 2 desktops, 2 iPhones).

As for the other comments...

Dell's Adamo was meant to be a competitor in design and functionality for the MacBook Air but is strangled by CPU and price. There is also a thin 16" laptop but it too is strangled by CPU. It looks like they inaccurately forecasted a 15" Macbook Air, designed and implemented a competitor without Apple coming to the game, which they should have.

You also have to remember that Zune/Pink and Android are late to the market in comparison to Apple. If Apple were showing Android's AdMob numbers this early you'd be talking up their chances. Because Apple are leading the market and their competitors are in their early stages of market entrance it's acceptable to look at their total numbers and go 'pah' rather than focusing on the growth.

<comment><USER13> WinMo and RIM certainly aren't in the early stages of market entrance. For that matter, the only competitor that still is anywhere close to Apple's marketshare is Symbian (which surpasses it somewhat, I believe.) But sure, let's look at it in a year or two.

"I've not bought a non-apple computer since"

Why not?

"Dell's Adamo was meant to be a competitor in design and functionality for the MacBook Air but is strangled by CPU and price."

And thus isn't. And part of Gruber's point is that better designed hardware is worthless with shit software, which will still be Dell's problem no matter what they do.

Edit:

"You said 'fanbois'. I replied to 'fanbois'"

Well, technically I replied to you saying "fanboi" in the first place. For that matter why do you think Gruber specifically is a "fanboi"? He certainly doesn't blindly agree with everything Apple does like many Apple fans, and has been very vocally critical of them at times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> He seems to be neglecting the most difficult aspect of releasing your own OS: getting most developers to port/write software for it.

Apple has followed a peculiar path that has allowed it to successfully accomplish this, but it is very difficult to imagine how Dell could successfully found their own operating system at present.

Moreover, I'm not convinced the recommendation to license their operating system is motivated by herd mentality. It's probably just that people did not believe Apple could get as big a market-share for its own machines as it appears to be getting. As for the recommendation to put Windows on their machines, that just seems, well, stupid, but perhaps I am missing something.

<comment><USER15> That's kind of the key idea behind Microsoft's building of its monopoly: paying developers to produce software for its OS. Eventually you could get everything for Windows and software at random for another OS. The equilibrium here seems to be a for a single dominant OS maker.

Reminds me of the Dvorak v. Qwerty keyboard layouts. The market has space for a single dominant keyboard type. Individuals can choose between Dvorak (and variants) or Qwerty, but since so many people use Qwerty, everything is designed based on that. If Dvorak reaches a tipping point, everyone would likely abandon Qwerty.

Does anyone thing the expansion of open source makes it more likely that the OS market is trending towards being a multi-power field?

<comment><USER3> _That's kind of the key idea behind Microsoft's building of its monopoly: paying developers to produce software for its OS._

Well, it is more subtle than that. If you are a large corporation, you might have 100,000 desktops, and since Windows came out you might have bought 0.5-1M licenses. That's an awful lot. Why would you do this? Because the software you absolutely depend on to run this business is written internally, and the cost of doing this in a Microsoft tool like VB (historically) is low enough to make it worthwhile. Microsoft has always cultivated its developer ecosystem well. Apple are good now, but I remember the dark days of the 90s when you never knew when a key Apple technology you depended on they would simply abandon (e.g. OpenDoc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There are companies that do well by making brilliant things, and there are companies that do well by making commodities cheaply. It's nice when a commodity company, like Acer, makes something that seems brilliant, like a good netbook. And it's nice when a company holds a streak of brilliance for many years, like Apple has.

What makes the HP example sad is that it's a company that has recently been running on the vapors of it brilliant ideas, and is now stuck competing in commoditized markets, where you can really only compete on price. That's not to say HP couldn't survive, or even become more profitable; but for hackers who cherish the creation of brilliant things, it is a painful thing to witness.

On the other hand, this is progress. We have Microsoft's early PC OS monolopy to thank for the wonderful range of cheap, standardized PC hardware that makes linux boxes easy and macs/ipods/iphones mass-marketable.

<comment><USER17> The thing about HP, is they have always made commodity crappy consumer systems as long as I can remember. Compaq, which they devoured, was the quality system maker.

<comment><USER18> I suspect you're a bit younger than the people who remember HP's greatness, especially their scientific instruments and engineering tools. They also used to be good at making big iron servers (I'm thinking pre HP-UX). Also, one of the companies HP devoured was Digital, who ruled the world with their VAX systems.

The hardware giants used to be the likes of IBM, Sun, Digital, HP, Data General, Wang, Honeywell, and a few others I'm forgetting. The only ones left now are IBM (a services company) and HP (a commodity consumer hardware company). I'm not counting Sun because I expect the Oracle deal to go through.

<comment><USER19> And HP's laserjet printers. Those things were amazing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't know why he had to bash hp at the end; of course hp is going to be making bargain PCs they need to compete with other producers, apple is about the only one that does not offer full computers for ~$500 but they are most definitely not their rival the rest of the industry is.

<comment><USER8> > _I don't know why he had to bash hp at the end; of course hp is going to be > making bargain PCs they need to compete with other producers_

So, you're saying that HP needs to follow the herd? The entire point of this article is that they don't and shouldn't. That's _exactly_ why he needed to bash HP at the end.

<comment><USER20> Well neither you or he offered any useful alternatives for what hp should do and I offered reasoning on why they need to sell cheaper PCs

<comment><USER21> I'll offer one useful alternative: better software integration, and use their scale to push MS into tighter integration with HP's own software. This advice applies to Dell as well.

Suggesting that HP should build its own OS is a pipe dream, and completely unrealistic. They will be running Windows for the foreseeable future. The question is: why do they have to run the same shitty old Windows that everyone else is running?

I just had the fortune of happening upon a decent Gateway desktop at a bargain-basement price, and the sheer lack of software integration is appalling to someone who's been using a Mac for the past 4 years.

Let me enumerate some concrete examples:

\- Display settings are handled by vendor-specific utilities that have _zero_ UI consistency between Windows and the actual computer manufacturer (Dell, HP, etc).

\- Sound settings are handled by vendor-specific utilities and drivers that are also not configurable in a consistent way. On a HP machine practically nothing is badged "HP" except the box itself - and certainly the usability reflects this.

\- Complete utter reliance on third party (both in brand and design) software that fails to integrate deeply into the OS. The whole experience feels very jarring - because it's really a bunch of code haphazardly stuck together without any thought or concern.

Imagine if you buy a Windows laptop from, say, Dell, and out of the box you get a nice Dell splashscreen, and a streamlined setup process that takes care of all your basic configs transparently (as opposed to default Windows, which loads a ton of setup upfront for clueless users)? How about the ability to use your hardware volume up/down buttons without terrible screen flickering (bad drivers)?

There are a bajillion ways that all of the standard PC manufacturers can use software to compete in the marketplace - they simply aren't doing so right now.

<comment><USER22> > why do they have to run the same shitty old Windows that everyone else is > running?

I'd say Microsoft has a thing or two to say about that.

<comment><USER3> Microsoft will stop you deploying Windows with your own branded apps and custom drivers pre-installed? _Really?_ I don't think so...

<comment><USER23> Of course not, the real problem is that hardware makers generally don't do good software. By good software I mean useful and elegant, there's a reason there's products like PC-decrapifier out there.

<comment><USER3> Yes, Sony is the classic example of this. A company like HP ought to be capable of it, tho'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Something tells me that the author was never around for the rats nest of incompatible micro computers that arrived in the early 80's: kaypro, osbourne, pet, commodore, texas instuments, ibm, apple, atari, coleco...

All of those computers companies made their own computers and OS's and a completely different stack of software and hardware peripherals. IBM getting into the game and creating a defacto standard with their hardware and software choices helped create a boom in the computer industry that we're still riding.

<comment><USER6> oh man, do i ever _not_ agree with that. i _was_ around for the birth of the microcomputer, and those were very interesting days indeed.

here's somebody else who thinks so as well: "[...] But I think that there will be a good long period of cheerful chaos, just as there was in the early days of microcomputers. That was a good time for startups. Lots of small companies flourished, and did it by making cool things."

<http://www.paulgraham.com/road.html>

as the micro situation "stabilized," with most of the competitors going out of business, the fun went with them. the darkest period in the days of high-tech was when microsoft so thoroughly dominated everything that they were stifling innovation.

<comment><USER25> Less fun, but it meant computers went from being a novelty to the core of the vast majority of businesses. This was not a coincidence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The web is just another OS, with an enormous API and constantly-changing revisions of everything. OSs are not even what most folks mean when they mention Windows etc. They mean the execution environment (runtime,libraries,shells). And the trend is to develop portable environments - JBOSS, .NET, whatever. We are at the beginning of the end of proprietary OS wars - OS will be no more important a decision than your editor or drive vendor, eventually.

</comment><comment><USER27> Without competition you have one company telling you what a product is. With competition you have consumers telling you what a product should be.

</comment><comment><USER28> "Operating systems aren't mere components like RAM or CPUs; they're the single most important part of the computing experience"

I think this is rapidly becoming less true with the increasing utility of the browser + web. These days, what I value most in an OS is speed, stability, and staying out of my way.

</comment><comment><USER29> _It was at the root of long-standing punditry holding that Apple should license the Mac OS to other PC makers_

They did until Steve Jobs killed it.

<comment><USER30> It was self defense. No jury will convict him.

Edit: for those who don't recall. The clones were intended to speciate and fill all sorts of niches, but they mostly just built the Apple provided reference designs with maybe the odd extra bus slot or two. They then cannibalized the high end and low end of the market.

They got the high end because as Motorola was ramping up each faster chip, Apple would not release with it until they could ship in sufficient quantity to satisfy demand. The cloners had no such qualms and would happily take the piles of money off of the high paying 'must have the best crowd' with the trickle of fast chips at the front of the production runs, simultaneously robbing Apple of the lucrative consumer's business and delaying the time when Apple could get enough chips to launch their own.

The cloners ate the low end of the market, despite their disadvantage of scale, by making machines a little bit crummier than Apple wanted to build, but also by not paying a large enough licensing fee for the OS to cover their share of development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Its fun to talk about "breaking free" of your OS vendor. As a foundation for software, and about the cheapest software on the machine, I'm not sure I know what the benefit is supposed to be. "Less unhappy"? With a platform that by definition hosts incompatible apps?

</comment><comment><USER31> This is a really misleading article. I think people wanted to Apple to license it's hardware in the days of Macs. Then Apple stopped producing original hardware for the desktop/laptop and people wanted them to license their OS for the nearly identical hardware that other manufacturers were making.

The iPhone is a mobile device and lots other companies have produced their own mobile device and OS (or more likely heavily customized from another base). Microsoft itself have produced the Zune and Xbox. Palm has it's line. Nokia uses symbian, which it now owns.

Apple have made good hardware and software, but this is fanboy drivel.

<comment><USER31> Let me put it another way. Apple has stopped making unique hardware for the PC. Yes it sells PCs, but it doesn't innovate on the PC hardware anymore. It innovates on the cases and configurations, but these systems could all run windows or linux. Essentially Apple did start making its operating system for PCs, it just makes it a requirement that you buy the PC from them.

As for the iPhone and mobile market, any number of manufacturers have built hardware and software for mobile market. Apple simply did this by far the best.

<comment><USER13> Well, assuming by cases you include things like the magsafe power cord, which is undeniably brilliant and which I hope all laptop manufactures manage to miniskirt around the probable patents for. Or battery life for laptops which unless I'm missed something absolutely puts to shame all similarly-specced generic manufactures.

<comment><USER31> Actually the point I'm making was more directed at the article in question, not innovation at Apple in general. In that I don't think maintaining the exclusive relationship between hardware and software has been necessary for innovation. If it was there wouldn't be a need to specifically ban non-Apple PCs from running OSX. Expanding the point to the mobile market seemed dodgy when you consider the number of manufacturers that have their own OS. Game console manufacturers have also controlled the hardware and OS in their markets. I don't think it's nearly as unique as this article tries to make it.

<comment><USER32> Their value they offer is the UI software but they're determined to get their money from marking up hardware. Presumably they have figured out people are more willing to pay the same premium when it's a smaller portion of the total price (even when it means they have to replace an entire computer to do it). In the same vein, they charged cloners too little to cover the development costs of MacOS, which is why losing desktop hardware market share to the cloners (who were more efficient hardware producers) almost killed them instead of freeing them from the 10% ghetto.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is a short list of the computers and their makers who have broken from the herd:

Microsoft XBox

Sony Playstation

Nintendo Wii

Apple iPhone

Palm Pre

RIM Blackberry

HP digital cameras

</comment><comment><USER34> The only equalizer will be applications online. Right now running web os apps suck compared to PC equivilents, but when they don't and people start using them instead of Office, or other programs, then who gives a rats ass what OS we use. We'll all be on dumb terminals and we won't give a shit. That will be Microsofts fall.....or will it? I heard somewhere that their office online product was way better than googles. I don't know.

<comment><USER29> Hey, it sounds like the late 80s or early 90s! Dumb terminals are coming back in style! Nice, _turns up the Nirvana_

</comment></comment><comment> anon-e-moose What a fucking joke!

Because there aren't thousands of different types of PCs of every shape and size, tablet, netbook, professional laptop, gaming laptop, gaming desktop, small form factor desktop, workstation...

All of these computers could run OS X, but Apple doesn't want them to.

And lest we forget, Gruber's job is to talk up Apple('s stock price). Why anyone should take his opinion seriously is beyond me. He has a vested monetary interest in Apple fanboyism.</comment>


Ask HN: I want to get hired for an entry level, developer role - <AUTHOR> tldr; I graduated. I need job. I'm only good at computer science stuff. Language agnostic.
Proficient: JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Java, C#
What is this: I'm going to keep making these threads until I get hired. I haven't been able to find a job since graduation. I get rejected practically from every new grad role. Even for roles posted by my university (my resume doesn't pass the resume screen, even though the university reviewed it). I don't know why; I've never done a tech interview. Even passing HackerRanks leads to rejections. I do know that I've bombed irritating framework trivia (no, I don't know the order of arguments).
About me: located right by New York City. I have a B.S. degree in Computer Science. I graduated in May 2015. I am a U.S. citizen. I can relocate. I can't work anywhere that requires me to drive a car. Programming is all I know; I have done this for my entire life.
My skills:
Disclaimer: some are ugly and incomplete; others are great. It's a variety of stuff that I put many weeks into for each.
- Spent one year working on an eCommerce website for a business. I worked on the front end, back end, and simple database work involving entering products.
- Volunteer coding for a non-profit involving using the Google Maps API, JavaScript, and XML.
- Contacts manager using ASP.NET MVC and Entity Framework.
- simple Chrome extension that a startup stole code from, and proudly displays on their page.
- 2 month Node.js contract at a startup, involving developing features for their app platform.
- Lib for reading embedded data from TIFF files using C#.
- API that serves RESTful endpoints through Node.js.
- To-do app written in AngularJS 1 and PHP.
While a lot of this is related to web development, I love all areas of computer science.
Other stuff: volunteer at PropellerFest (Hoboken), and meetups and stuff.
Finally, thank you for reading this, and sorry if I annoyed you. <comment><USER2> If you are not getting interviews there is something wrong with your resume. Why don't you share it with us so we can comment.

<comment><USER3> Have a look at: [http://docdro.id/fyQKon0](http://docdro.id/fyQKon0)

<comment><USER4> My opinion (I interview and hire engineers):-

\- Education goes at the bottom

\- Tech skills go at the top

\- The aligning on the work/url/date is really hard to read, just left align it, separate with -'s.

\- The additional experience is almost a waste of space, I'd personally use the equivalent space to expand more on tech skills.

\- You have 'proficient' then 'other', does 'other' mean not proficient? Use similar complementary terms to describe your skill levels i.e. 'Proficient at' and 'working knowledge of' or something like that.

\- What's the difference between employment and technical projects? Some of your tech projects read like paid work so it's hard to tell what your skill level would be if I brought you in for a interview. if it's volunteer work I would put it under work but do something like '(volunteer)'

Basically your CV makes me have to think wayyy too much, I'm having to interpret things and guess what you mean, so I'd have no idea what to expect your quality to be if I got you in for a interview therefore I probably wouldn't bring you in.

Also if you're not doing it already then people connections is key (meetups etc)

<comment><USER5> I agree with most things:

\- Education goes at the bottom and tech skills at the top.

\- Proficient and 'other' don't make much sense to me. I would actually remove the 'other' section, unless you are applying for a job in one of the technologies listed in that section.

\- Remove the additional experience, it does not provide much value for a dev job.

\- There is something with the resume that makes hard to get an idea of who you are and what you are looking for.

\- Remove the word "technical" from technical projects, it's implicit if you are applying for a dev position.

Also make sure you tailor the resume for the position you are applying to. Ideally you should have a different version of your resume for each position you are applying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is it possible to rewrite your points to be "achievement" oriented rather than "technically" oriented?

As an example, your best point is last on the list: "Optimized the website to serve pages from 5s down to less than 1s via Apache configuration and caching."

It should also be worded as such: "Increased page speed by 5x faster with optimization techniques".

Be a little more sparse on technical details, and more bold on your achievements. Assume the reader doesn't know or care about the technical details. All they want is to be persuaded that you get shit done.

Avoid redundant information like "Consulted with ownership to establish project scope and business needs." Like seriously? You talked to people and worked on a team? No shit. Embellish your achievements, you must sell yourself.

Also move your education to near the bottom, lead with experience first.

</comment><comment><USER3> I had a quick look at your resume. My suggestions:

Put your education near the bottom. Sorry to say, what you have written in that section is not compelling.

The first section could be something along the lines of "Key Skills". Just list JavaScript, Java and C#. I know it's a foible, but for me HTML and CSS are not "real computer languages", i.e. they are not Turing complete.

Then a sentence about experienced in building web apps, both front-end and back-ends.

In your post you mention "stole" \- that is not a accusation I would be making in public. Even if it is true. Most hiring managers recoil at such attitudes.

<comment><USER7> I absolutely despised putting a small paragraph describing experience along with a blatant list of skills instead favoring working it into bullet points under each job... it felt like fluff.

However, when I did that, I started getting MUCH better response to applications. Having it at the top made it easy to connect my skills to keywords in postings for a recruiter who likely spends, maybe, 30 seconds reviewing a resume.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Take exactly what you wrote here, remove the tl;dr and what is this. Go on AngelList, (create a good profile there), go to jobs, select "seed stage". Now, start sending this note to EVERY company. Your note will go to the founders directly.

Install rapportive plugin for gmail (or whatever gets you email addresses). Email those founders REPEATEDLY say every 2 days. Offer to do a free project, ask them to try you out. Don't give up until they say "go away". Silence != no.

One of them will respond.

My friend, resume is bullshit. You want a job? HUSTLE.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER9> You really shouldn't be looking for a job, you should be creating one......It's always best to start at the top of the food chain.

And I like your persistance but this is the wrong place for it. You need to be in the marketplace with that persistance.

<comment><USER6> "You really shouldn't be looking for a job, you should be creating one.."

You should expand on that advice, since its so unorthodox.

<comment><USER9> Well, the quickest way to create a job is to create one for yourself. This can be done many ways but here are two of the simplest. Pick one thing and become an expert at that. It could be as simple as "I only do email signatures....but my email signatures have a 97% click through/conversion rate." It does not need to be profound or exciting but you can then market yourself as THEE guy that does X. And when I want X done I will know that you are my guy and I will most likely tell everyone that has a need for X that you are the guy to call regardless of what you're charging. Specialties usually breed efficiency which will allow you to compete at a higher rate of perceived valuation. It may seem a little scary to pick a specialty but I can tell you that I won't call a plumber for brain surgery and I wont call brain surgeon to fix my motorcycle. There is more work than you think for whatever you choose.

The second way is to find a specialist and create yourself a position as saleman of his specialty. You will then have created two jobs, one for you and one for him. See? Easy! Plus you can start that part time while you are busy perfecting your craft as whatever you want to be in life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Look at my recent history to see a link to my resume. I'm doing ok with it. Something like that and expand more on each job/project what you did (i should too but i'm lazy).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Update: I've been reading every post.

<comment><USER4> Please link to your new updated resume, I want to make sure we set you up for success.

And if you haven't made a new resume yet then please commit to a date to do that by and tell us....and yes I am pushing you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am very carefully considering what to do with my resume.

In the past, I paid this guy ([https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=fecak](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=fecak)) to make me a resume. I didn't post the link to that version of my resume. He said to do stuff like put my education on top, while people in this thread are saying to put it on the bottom. There are other conflicting points that I'm not going to mention for now. Needless to say, I have to be careful with this; I used to have education on the bottom.

Next, two things happened:

1) One person is giving me his time to help me with improvement. I want to hear his resume advice.

2) I received an invitation to do remote work for food money at a startup, which I agreed to do.

So I don't have any guaranteed date, until I hear back about my resume from the person I'm talking to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Maybe it's just me, but putting "www" before tlds is not a good look. It seems amateurish</comment>


Stealing Ur Feelings, an interactive facial recognition AI movie - <AUTHOR> https://stealingurfeelin.gs/ <comment><AUTHOR> More on the project: [https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/campaigns/snapchat- stop-st...](https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/campaigns/snapchat-stop- stealing-our-feelings/)

<comment><USER2> I was about to submit this and decided to check first. I'm really surprised this didn't get more traction!</comment></comment>


My Airbnb page generates a $1,129 CPM - <AUTHOR> http://josephsofaer.tumblr.com/post/8475650684/my-airbnb-page-generates-a-1-129-cpm

<comment><USER2> This might just be my conspiracy radar turned to 11, however, it seems very suspect that a blog with only 1 post ever, is using that post to rave about AirBnB right in the middle of their storm.

I want to supplement this by saying I really admire AirBnB and have no doubt that they will over come this security lapse with the killer product and marketplace they've built. However, this suspicious orphan blog post has my BS antennae throwing out sparks.

<comment><USER3> Definitely not conspiracy.

AirBnB is probably flailing around trying to figure out what is the best way to get to turn around this month long PR nightmare.

Orphan blog post probably sounded like a brilliant idea, until it hit hacker news and everyone sniffed it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> To clarify, the poster is making $1,129 in rent per thousand views of his property page on Airbnb (as opposed to, say, craigslist). He is not trying to suggest that advertising (something besides his property) earns any revenue.

</comment><comment><USER5> that's like saying that your car dealership website generates $20,000 CPM because they sold a car from their website.

CPM would be for AirBNB and they make a lot less than that.

<comment><USER6> It does points out how valuable and high quality their traffic is though

<comment><USER5> is it though? No way to tell with one data point. We'd need to at least compare that to 1000 page views on Craigslist.

<comment><USER6> Yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> CPM is COST per impression. He's talking about revenue per impression (RPM) which is a completely different metric.

</comment><comment><USER8> It feels good to read this kind of article after all taht storm. I'm pretty sure that guys at Airbnb are doing a great job.

It feels really nice when the community stands up and somehow defends/promotes the products they like, specially when that product is a result from hard work.

</comment><comment><USER9> Just checked out my Airbnb stats, they're equally impressive.

All Page Views: 246 Money Earned: $1,249 Total Bookings: 2 So less than 1% conversion rate though.

<comment><USER10> Page views and site visitors are usually different metrics. I don't know how the Airbnb stats are calculated, but I'm guessing you've had fewer than 246 visitors—which means your conversion rate would be higher than 1%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are you sure you want to use your real name on this blog? You are advertising the fact that you are breaking the law in San Francisco (short term rental without a license) and violating your lease (subletting your apartment).

<comment><USER12> Not all apartments are rented. Not all short term rentals are illegal. And not all leases forbid subletting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not sure it translates. I've got a place, listed on AirBnB which is almost always available for rent. It's a vacation home. <http://www.airbnb.com/rooms/59577>

We've had 458 page views and made $262. Hardly astonishing. We do rent it locally through a property manager, they get much fewer page views, but have repeat clients and make us $5k to $10k per year. At least in South America, AirBnb might as well not exist at all. Nobody uses it to rent.

</comment><comment><USER14> Are you saying you are generating revenue from something other than people renting out rooms?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, it's just renting out the rooms. I know the "CPM" analogy doesn't really fit perfectly but the point is that the Airbnb service is so effective at driving traffic it makes me more than a dollar per pageview on avg. Of course it's their site but you can think of it sort of like an e-commerce platform where I can open a store and sell my extra space. It works super well.

<comment><USER15> The title is so obnoxious that I flagged your post. Also, I'm pretty tolerant of linkbait. This just takes it to the extreme.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Good job on the earnings but there's not a whole lot we can take away from the CPM figure. I'm not sure there is anything to compare it to besides other AirBnB listings and the only other data point we currently have is an order of magnitude better (246/$1129).

</comment><comment><USER6> That's really impressive numbers! Great post.

</comment><comment><USER16> wait, do you actually make that money?

<comment><AUTHOR> yes

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What's the point of this? Using terms like CPM makes no sense in this context. Come back to us when you're making $1129 with a million impressions, buddy.

</comment><comment><USER18> This may be the biggest steaming pile of astroturf to ever hit Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER19> You'd be wise to pull it down until the new AirBnB insurance kicks in later this month.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't worry, we don't keep our Airbnb earnings under the mattress</comment></comment>


Boeing May Never Recover from Its 737 Debacle - <AUTHOR> https://www.truthdig.com/articles/why-boeing-may-never-recover-from-its-737-debacle/ <comment><USER2> This is the first article I have seen that put a name to the person apparently most personally responsible for the institutional failure.

As guilty as he might be, behind him are those at FAA whose pushed him into the role and at corporate who must have pressed him to suppress whatever better instincts he might have had.

There will be no reason to believe the ship has come right until we see a wave of resignations and firings of top management in both the agency and the company.</comment>


Soaking Up the Sun to Squeeze Bills to Zero - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/science/15building.html

<comment><USER2> Really amazing that they were able to do this without using tons of fancy new technology.

Several great ideas for me to try at home to hack my energy use.

</comment><comment><USER3> A sign-in wall. Mega fail.

<comment><USER4> One up for the post id! 2222222</comment></comment>


JSHint, a fork of jslint. - <AUTHOR> http://jshint.com/

<comment><USER2> Since JSLint is not open source, how is this a fork? Do the authors have a special license?</comment>


Twoyeur - peep pics from twitter in realtime - <AUTHOR> http://twoyeur.com/

<comment><USER2> If I have to refresh the website myself it is for all intensive purposes not real-time :p

Or maybe it's just broken for me? Firefox 3.5 on linux.

<comment><USER3> Hmmm... I'm also viewing it in FF3.5 on linux, and it works for me. You just have to wait a couple of seconds until the page refreshes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this your startup?

<comment><AUTHOR> yes. how much of an investment can I put you down for? ;)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why Don't HN stories open up in a new tab? - <AUTHOR>

Is there some kind of best practice philosophy?  I work with many things running at once and it always confused me why sites would push you exclusively to the link you clicked.<p>Weigh in Gentle Fops and Courtesans. <comment><USER2> _it always confused me why sites would push you exclusively to the link you clicked_

They don't. The browser gives you a choice (via mouse-buttons.) The alternative, forcing links to a new tab or window, is what takes away user choice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, but "displaying on the same tab" seems to be the default standard. I was interested to hear how people felt about both sides.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Because forcing me to open a new tab is evil. If I want a new tab, I'll middle-click.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I was using HN as an example. I have noticed that many sites do this (non tech sites as well).

On something like a Macbook, or other one button mouse computers most consumers aren't as quick with their understanding of "right click menus" and other options.

Does anyone have a strong feeling when building a site about this?

In my experience when I am on a site with many things I want to interact with, if I am pushed out of the site to interact I am less likely to come back.

</comment><comment><USER4> Choosing to open in a new tab must be muscle memory territory for geeks. I must have done it thousands of times on my MBP and I can't remember what I do. I think it's holding the Cmd key.

I'm browsing with a Kindle right now which is actually a non-tabbed browser with only one type of click. Hilariously it in fact refuses to open links that try to force a new tab.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand why this isn't just a setting on each of our account preferences; if you want links to open in a new window you'd just 'check' that option. Choice solves the debate (aka each their own...).

<comment><USER4> Ask every site on the web to implement an account option

vs.

Let the browser handle it

<comment><USER5> Given the relative ease of adding something like this I don't think it's as absurd a request as you are making it out to be.

Also, if you are on the 'pro new tab' side of this and occasionally forget to hold down whatever extra key you need to for your particular OS, yeah it gets old; not to mention the hassle this adds when browsing on an iphone/ipad/etc.

This change would have zero effect on any anyone; you'd have to go and turn on this option if it were added.

<comment><USER4> Myself I guess I decide whether I want a new tab on a link by link basis, not site by site. Regardless, an account option on every site just seemed like epic logic bloat in aggregate. I do see the problem with touch screen browsers. Maybe a gesture like press and flick could open a link in a new tab.

So my take is: never force a new tab, browser implementers should make it quick & easy to decide for yourself for each link.

<comment><USER5> Ah yeah, see I hadn't even consider that. I suppose for most it's probably not an all or nothing choice. It's an interesting yet deceptively simple usability 'problem' the more I think about this now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is right-clicking and selecting "open in a new tab" that much more difficult? (FF 3.6.X). You're clicking a mouse button either way...

</comment><comment><USER7> Use middle-click. Many users don't like things opening in new windows.</comment>


Why people's faces are different from one another? - dnt404-1 http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/09/140916-faces-evolution-cognition-social-recognition-genetics/

<comment><AUTHOR> Face is not a singular object. Its a collection of colour, hair, nose, ears and so on. Wont the tenet of evolution is that each generation there will be some random change to these aspects, which makes the face unique across the humans ?</comment>


HTML: font color="red" becomes green - <AUTHOR> http://jsfiddle.net/WGSNX/7/ <comment><USER2> [http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current- work/multipage/...](http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current- work/multipage/common-microsyntaxes.html#rules-for-parsing-a-legacy-color- value)

      = "red"
      = 0red0 (" is not ascii so make 0)
      = 00ed0 (r is not hex so make 0)
      = 00ed00 (pad)

<comment><USER3> Sorry, this isn't correct. Red is a perfectly valid color value. This is not about property expansion.

This is because the source uses curly quotes, which are not recognized as a parameter bracketing, and so the curly quotes are trying to be interpreted as part of the value.

Change the quotes to actual quotes and it starts working as expected.

<comment><USER4> No, the OP is correct. You're right that <red> is a valid CSS color keyword, but <"red"> is not. Because of this, the CSS spec treats it as a "legacy color value" and attempts to interpret it as a string of characters (including the quotes) rather than a keyword.

<comment><USER5> yeap

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow. I haven't seen a  tag in years. My thought processes loading this:

• Ok, that is in fact green.

• I wonder if this is related to the colour name parsing weirdness that was on HN a couple of weeks ago?

• Heeeey, those aren't ASCII quotes!

<comment><USER7> Green - with ascii quotes and an invisible seperator. [http://jsfiddle.net/WGSNX/264/](http://jsfiddle.net/WGSNX/264/)

<comment><USER8> Maybe it's just late at night, but how does this work? I understand the words "invisible separator", but for lack of better phrasing, I don't see an invisible separator.

<comment><USER9> Between the _r_ and the _e_ there is a U+2063 "invisible separator"

<comment><USER8> Ahh, thanks, that's the actual name of the character! 3am and I've already learned something new for the day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There was a big Stack Overflow post on HTML color rendering[0].

Basically, the browser thinks it's looking at a malformed hex number and strips the invalid chars, in this case turning "red" into 00ED0. This is padded with 0s until it's divisible by 3, giving 00ED00.

[0][http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8318911/why-does-html- thi...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8318911/why-does-html-think- chucknorris-is-a-color)

</comment><comment><USER11> I fixed it for you: [http://jsfiddle.net/WGSNX/170/](http://jsfiddle.net/WGSNX/170/)

</comment><comment><USER3> 1) Curly quotes are not a valid surrounding for values.

2) <foo bar=baz> will usually be interpreted as a value by browsers, even though it's illegal, because everything on the web is wrong

3) The browser sees curly quotes as part of baz

4) For lord only knows what reason, the most basic interpretation of that curly quote appears to be the color green. That'll be somewhere in the CSS spec. I don't care to look it up.

If you change those to straight quotes, suddenly it'll start working. Notice that JSFiddle also highlights the source differently.

[http://jsfiddle.net/WGSNX/1876/](http://jsfiddle.net/WGSNX/1876/)

By the way, the "font" tag is over, and setting color that way is also over. Like this please if you need to do inline styling.

<comment><USER12> I believe that HTML 5 allows for unquoted values. As long as the attribute doors not contain HTML special characters or spaces, it's legal to omit them.

<comment><USER13> Correct. The HTML5 spec includes "unquoted attribute values," which have some special restrictions (no spaces, can't be the empty string, can't use HTML characters like >, <, or =, and — duh — no quotes). [http://www.w3.org/TR/html-markup/syntax.html#attr-value- unqu...](http://www.w3.org/TR/html-markup/syntax.html#attr-value-unquoted)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cute. Use normal quotes ;) HTML colour parsing for invalidly specified colours is odd to say the least.

<comment><USER15> Hard to spot. I can imagine this happening in the real world.

Several blogs engines seem to like automatically converting normal quotes to curly quotes in an attempt to prettify their text rendering. I remember copy and pasting code snippets in the and having to fix this.

<comment><USER16> And Word.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "chucknorris" is also a colour, it will turn the text redish.[1]

[1][http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8318911/why-does-html- thi...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8318911/why-does-html-think- chucknorris-is-a-color)

</comment><comment><USER18> Everybody knows that you have to use `chucknorris` if you really need the red color: [http://jsfiddle.net/WGSNX/1379/](http://jsfiddle.net/WGSNX/1379/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Weird. On mine, it's blue: [http://jsfiddle.net/Ta7xp/](http://jsfiddle.net/Ta7xp/)

</comment><comment><USER20> LOL I love it. I would never find out the trick without read the comments here.

</comment><comment><USER21> "chucknorris" will make it red:

Red, anyone?

</comment><comment><USER22> A recent HN discussion [1] on a less recent Stackoverflow thread [2] has some more examples, and some good answers.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6662342](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6662342)

[2] [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8318911/why-does-html- th...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8318911/why-does-html-think- chucknorris-is-a-color)

</comment><comment><USER23> Wot? Didn't that use to work?

I remember that HTML had named colors, like "goldenrod" and "peachpuff". Or was that just css?

<comment><USER23> Hah, got it. The snipped used curly quotes instead of regular ones :-)

[http://jsfiddle.net/WGSNX/122/](http://jsfiddle.net/WGSNX/122/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't know why is considering that as a RGB notation instead of the color red, but following this progression seems correct: [http://jsfiddle.net/7ACky/2/](http://jsfiddle.net/7ACky/2/)

red => #red => #0ed => #ed => #ed0 => #eedd00

Could be this?

EDIT: That was wrong:

red => #red => #0ed => #00ed00 seems the correct one.

<comment><USER25> Thats odd but I see it all light green on Chrome, Windows 7. [http://i.imgur.com/0mRarjC.png](http://i.imgur.com/0mRarjC.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think it is a bug with jsfiddle. It render you code: Red, anyone? like this: Red, anyone? And if you try like: Red, anyone? it works.

</comment><comment><USER27>
       Green, anyone?

       Blue, anyone?

       Red, anyone?

</comment><comment><USER28> color="red"

and

color="red"

Note the difference between " and "

"red" is in fact red.

"abc" is still green!

</comment><comment><USER29> hmm... if i set colour to #000000 and use the correct quotes it changes the background and not the foreground.

isn't this just a case of using something incorrectly and getting an undefined result? just leaves me wondering why errors like this aren't reported or at least warned about by the browser.

if this was the compiler for any language that wasn't HTML (cringes at the thought of that being a language and not just a data format) it would never ship in such a poor state...

</comment><comment><USER30> Now I'm positive that we're all wasting our lives.

</comment><comment><USER31> the reason it didn't work is you were not using ASCI values. HTML even though it supports multi-byte strings, the constructs which power the html spec do not support multi-byte strings. Also smart-quotes are note part of that spec and will be interpreted incorrectly. replace smart-quotes with normal quotes will make it work correctly.

</comment><comment><USER32> CSS has spoiled us! It took me a while to realize that the font tag's color attribute only accepts hex color codes.

</comment><comment><USER33> I just can't believe this made it to the front page of hacker news... oh well, Black Friday.

</comment><comment><USER34> Obviously, it was implemented by a developer suffering from red–green color blindness.

</comment><comment><USER35> Changing the curly quotes to normal double quotes will make it behave normally.

</comment><comment><USER36> This works: (font color='red'>Red, anyone?</font)

</comment><comment><USER37> You're not using "-quotes, but the fancy styled ones.

</comment><comment><USER38> I swear something like this was posted about a month ago.

</comment><comment><USER39> This is exactly the kind of post we need more of on HN!

</comment><comment><USER40> Not only "red" it's #ff0000 or #ffff00

</comment><comment><USER41> so is "asdf"

[http://asdf.com/asdfgreen.html](http://asdf.com/asdfgreen.html)

</comment><comment><USER42> What the fuck kind of quotes are those?

</comment><comment><USER43> Should put style="color: red"

</comment><comment><USER44> I think were all just color blind.

</comment><comment><USER45> try font color="crap"

</comment><comment><USER46> Change to quote to "

</comment><comment><USER47> wrong quotes used " as opposed to "

</comment><comment><USER48> it should be "red" not "red".

</comment><comment><USER49> I changed " to " and the text is red.

</comment><comment><USER50> haha! Awesome thanks for this

</comment><comment><USER51> Oops.

</comment><comment><USER52> Mean!

</comment><comment><USER53> another day, another XSS exploit vector

</comment><comment><USER54> OP, you didn't realize you had the wrong quotes?

</comment><comment><USER55> The  tag is not supported in HTML5. Use CSS instead.

Source: [http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_font.asp](http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_font.asp)

<comment><USER56> Lol, truism, yet, for older frameworks, layers of code that are always "in front" of the css (for whatever damned reason) this might still become an issue in some form or another. That said, it should obviously show through when the "test-phase" is there to verify every line of code. nice find though, nice find.</comment></comment>


What a Russian Smile Means - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us//issue/61/coordinates/what-a-russian-smile-means <comment><USER2> > There is even a Russian proverb on the topic: "Smiling with no reason is a > sign of stupidity."

No there is not. There is a saying that "laughter without a reason is a sign of a fool" ("смех без причины - признак дурачины"), not smiling. I doubt any American will consider unreasonable laughter to be normal.

<comment><USER3> I'm Russian, and I parse "смех" as equivalent to "laughter" and "smiling". Yes, they're technically different words, but a person who smiles without a reason looks equally as idiotic as another who laughs without a reason.

<comment><USER4> In Romanian we inherit the same proverb and its direct translation would be something akin to laugh like a fool (for no apparent reason)

<comment><USER4> Romanian is not slavic but our cultures intermingle quite a bit

<comment><USER5> Proverbs are not exclusive to one ethnic group.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As an American who spent a year as a visiting researcher inside Russia's Foreign Ministry, I can confirm that these differences in decorum are very real.

They are common knowledge in Russian society, and Russian diplomats are trained to take them into account when emulating Western social graces.

Broadly speaking, in my experience Russians conceive of smiling as something precious, to be shared with friends or family, not wasted on strangers crossing your path. However, if you have occasion to interact with someone (e.g., asking for directions), they may smile, particularly if something about the conversation generates a feeling of closeness. I got a lot of smiles and handshakes in Moscow from strangers when they found out I was studying at MGIMO, since they (incorrectly) assumed it meant I'd snubbed Harvard or Yale.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm from Poland and here people don't smile like they do in USA.

Don't even get me started on "How are you?", I always want to reply honestly to that, and I don't feel much obligation to reply back (I usually don't care how some stranger feels, why should I?). That's probably the hardest in learning English for me.

<comment><USER8> As an immigrant, that was one of the cultural adjustment that I had to do in the US. In my home country in SE Asia, people usually ask "Have you eaten (have you had a meal)?" as a greeting. It's easier to answer with "No, I haven't." or "Yes, I just had lunch" for example.

But when I moved to the states for college, I was perplexed as to how to answer "How're ya?" or "What's up?". :D I learned to answer that question with a standard, "I'm good. Thank you". But even nowadays, I sometimes venture to answer it honestly like, "I'm okay. [insert some really honest reason why I'm just okay]" or "I'm busy, but it's all good".

This is just a small example of adjustment that I made as I try to settle in my new home.

<comment><USER9> I am in Russia now. I can say that people do smile normally if they feel like the conversation warrants it. But there's not so much "fake" tinseltown hollywood pleasantry.

Americans in the US have a saying "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it at all." It is a culture very much fine tuned for business, which is why you want to make sure to grease the wheels of an interaction, and there is nothing to be gained by being straightforward with what you actually think. It's avoidance of conflict and closing of a sale.

I remember when my grandparents immigrated to the USA they would relate stories like:

1) A woman would approach and say "hi, how are you"? And they would start answering but she would just walk on by LOL

2) My grandfather would offer a seat to a woman but she just started yelling at him for doing it.

Later, they adjusted. But even the word "you" — which Russians thought is "rude" because there is no "polite You" for strangers — actually _is_ the polite version of Thou, because (unlike the Amish) the English got so polite that they just stopped using Thou altogether!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would rather look at smiling people around me, even if the smile means nothing, than looking at sad faces in Russia. Everytime I go back to visit friends I notice how grumpy and angry most people look and you become to look like that too - the more you look at them.

<comment><USER11> Not this. Having lived in Russia, this is something which is neither good nor bad. It just is. The faces are not sad or grumpy, they are relaxed. Nobody pretends to be happier than they are.

You just got used to smiles everywhere. There is nothing more to it.

At least in Russia, when someone smiles at you, it means something.

<comment><USER10> When an average American is forcing his smiling just to make my day better it means more to me than a grumpy face of an average Russian, and makes my day better, and I don't care if he is really happy or not, he made me happy, that's what I like about American smiles

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm a US person. While going through aggressive cancer treatment and concomitant depression, I was encouraged by my caregivers to smile as much as possible to elevate my mood. They even encouraged me practice smiling while alone. N=1, but this did seem to help. It seemed to lower my stress when around other people, and I noticed that they would be smiling more too (although this may just be because I was finally noticing something that was going on around me.)

Otherwise I have "resting porg face".

</comment><comment><USER13> I see the smile, in my personal slice of American culture, to be a sign that "I mean you no harm, I have positive intentions towards you", which is a valuable piece of information, both to give and receive. And truthfully, someone who is not feeling well disposed towards me and intends to make my life more difficult rarely approaches with a smile. Perhaps in Russia people are not so open about their intentions to each other and these outward indicators have less value?

<comment><USER14> > I mean you no harm, I have positive intentions towards you

But what is the point of smile as "intention indicator" if literally everyone around are smiling to each other? Do you want to say that in the US seller that trying to sell defective goods wouldn't smile?

<comment><USER13> Well usually everyone around you means you no harm. The person who looks at you and doesn't smile is legitimately more likely to not care if you get hit by a bus or not, even if they have no ill intention towards you. The crazy guy whose alternate personality is telling him to stab you is definitely not smiling but staring at you and muttering to himself.

Of course context matters. I don't trust a smile from a used car salesman. I trust a smile more from someone I am playing basketball with, or that I pass while hiking in the woods as they have no incentive to deceive me. And if I don't get a smile from someone I pass while hiking in the woods I would be more on my guard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sometimes I wonder how these sorts of cultural subtleties are compensated for, when defining a set of clinical psychological personality disorders.

Cluster A (paranoia): [https://www.mentalhelp.net/articles/dsm-5-the-ten- personalit...](https://www.mentalhelp.net/articles/dsm-5-the-ten-personality- disorders-cluster-a/)

Cluster B (drama): [https://www.mentalhelp.net/articles/dsm-5-the-ten- personalit...](https://www.mentalhelp.net/articles/dsm-5-the-ten-personality- disorders-cluster-b/)

Clister C (anxiety): [https://www.mentalhelp.net/articles/dsm-5-the-ten- personalit...](https://www.mentalhelp.net/articles/dsm-5-the-ten-personality- disorders-cluster-c/)

Take either culture's description, and stack it next to the other, and the incompatible resolution or reconcilliation between the two certainly sounds like it could add up to any of those disorders.

When you listen to the sort of discomfort and culture shock that seems implicit in these stories of adaptation, to the wrong set of ears, this all might sound like mental illness.

Growing up in one place, and then living in another, only to feel the longing pangs of nostalia and familiarity for what your childhood instict defines or recognizes as normal, clash with the reality of a world turned upsidedown, feels like a recipe for being plied with medication, if you tell the wrong person.

It feels like this process scaled up to millions of people, is exactly the sort of thing that drives conflict around the world.

</comment><comment><USER16> I get tired of articles and people that put us Americans all in the same smiley "how's your day going so far?" box. Maybe the average is like that in most places, and sure you can draw contrasts to other places. But as a grumpy east coaster living out west I find it somewhat irritating too, and I know I am not alone in this.

<comment><USER17> Hey, UK person here. Every time I visit the US or deal with customers from the US, I'm bombarded with fake well-wishing, accompanied by equally fake grins. You've given me some glimmer of hope that it's not quite _everyone_ in the US who is like that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> As a Russian, living in America, I would suggest not to take any clues about social behavior from Russians. It's all shades of dysfunctional from the bottom to the very top.

</comment><comment><USER19> _Even dealing with a simple "How are you?" felt complicated. People in Russia didn't engage in this kind of social script, and to her it seemed unnecessary. Did they really want to know how she was? No._

This reminds me of my younger self. I would pause and reply with an unvarnished and detailed analysis of my current status. Is it just me, or do other people think that some cultures shifted a bit on the Aspergers spectrum from other cultures? I certainly think that's the case for some subcultures.

</comment><comment><USER20> It means you're drunk.

</comment><comment><USER21> > If she answered honestly ("I'm tired"), which is what felt most natural, she > worried she'd come off as rude.

I'm not understanding the word "natural" here. Would her honesty be given in a spirit of satire, confusion, fear, something else?

For example, suppose in response to her saying, "I'm tired," I replied, "Now that we've established your propensity for reflexive honesty in response to unexpected questions, what is your bank account and routing number?"

Would she take the joke in a spirit of playfulness, or alarm?

Edit: clarification</comment>


Show HN: Lean Canvas generator - <AUTHOR> https://leancanvas.co <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, I built this lean canvas as a side project to learn vue.js. I decided it could be cool to launch it to the public, any feedback on the generator itself, the concept or a way to monetize it would be highly appreciated.

Thx for your time</comment>


Swiftly, a new service from 99designs - <AUTHOR> https://swiftly.com/

<comment><USER2> This is a great idea.

I'd love to have this option but for code. I often find myself struggling with something, whether it's not knowing the best way to handle a situation, not understanding a concept or just not being able to get something to work and I'd easily pay $15-$25 to have access to a developer who can answer a simple question.

Like right now, I am having a hard time understanding pointers in C, and it would be great if I could talk to someone on the phone for 10 minutes and they could help me understand the concept. I know there is Stack Exchange, and that is a great resource, but this would be more of a 1 on 1 consult.

I realize that most developers time is worth more than $15-$25 for a short amount of time, so I don't know if this is viable, but it would be nice.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like we're entering the Mechanical Turkination of graphic design. At first blush, I think this is awesome, especially for small consultancies/businesses/side projects. Converting a logo to vectors, for example, is something that would probably take me at least an hour and I'd be more than willing to pay someone $15 to take such a task off my hands. It's no replacement for an actual graphic designer, but often you don't need an actual graphic designer.

(The caveat, of course, is that the commoditization of graphic design relies on the assumption that you can treat graphic designers as commodities; if value swings wildly from one of 99design's members to another, then the attractiveness of the service plummets.)

<comment><USER4> Perhaps the way of addressing your caveat is to have a strong reputation system, such as what Amazon has implemented with their reviews.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just used this and received a great result within 1 hour. Excellent stuff.</comment>


Ask HN: How should I secure virtual machines on developer laptops? - <AUTHOR>

I love having Ubuntu installed on a VMWare Fusion virtual machine on my Mac for development. It means I can code anywhere I take my laptop. I generally work off a data snapshot with any user details sanitized, but I worry about what would happen if my laptop were stolen. I understand that 99.99% of all laptop thefts would result in a quick formatting, but I'd love a solution that doesn't leave my codebase floating around.
My current line of thinking is an encrypted root partition on the virtual machine and then making sure that I shut down my virtual machine rather than simply suspending it.
Any other brilliant ideas? <comment><USER2> I don't see why the fact that it is a VM is a factor here, you should secure the HD of the laptop anyway. A VM allows you to do that twice, so it's better rather than worse, or am I missing something here ?

Have you considered sticking the sensitive data on a USB thumbdrive and removing that from the laptop when not in use ? That would be pretty cheap and very effective.

</comment><comment><USER3> Consider PGP Desktop and whole-disk encryption. You can still can lose your laptop, but you won't compromise your data. Also, power off (shut down) the laptop when transporting it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps you could use a TrueCrypt encrypted volume, in an external disk (pendrive, USB disk), and mount the volume from within the Ubuntu Virtual Machine.</comment>


Aaron Klug, 92, Dies; His 3-D Images of Bodily Molecules Won a Nobel - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/30/obituaries/aaron-klug-dead.html <comment> shaki-dora His wife's name is "Liebe". If they shared a last name, she would appear to be named "Liebe Klug".

Translated from German, it's "Love Smart", or "Love Wise".

Also, quite possibly the only case of _self-fulfilling nominative determinism_.

</comment><comment><USER2> Lol : "Bodily molecules".

Previous discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18530367](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18530367)</comment>


LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53484764 <comment><USER3> I find it a little disappointing how when any large company reduces staffing it always makes the news.

I'm not at all saying these people at LinkedIn deserve this, I bet they're smart people and I hope they find new employment very soon.

But speaking generally ... many of us have worked at or worked with big bloated companies. We all know that many of them could be improved by slimming down. But we report on it like its a sign of the downfall.

<comment><USER4> I always think "Those 960 people had jobs there for a while - that's a positive". I've worked for myself the last 20 years so I'm occasionally jealous of anyone who's had even a year of stable, predictable income.

<comment><USER5> How does your self-employed career compare to a parallel salaried career in your industry across 20 years? (In terms of year-averaged income, hours worked, etc.)

<comment><USER6> Seconding this question. It'd be fascinating to hear a detailed perspective from someone who has spent 20 years working for themselves, without also reaching traditional "success" (i.e. getting rich).

It's starting to feel like getting rich is overrated when it requires so much of your life to make it happen. Hearing from someone who ended up with similar freedoms (working for yourself is no small one!) would be cool.

<comment><USER7> 5 years experience web development/full stack/mobile here. 29 years old. I've never had a salaried job in my life. I'm able to pull down $150/hr for a couple months a year (8 hour days), $125/hr for another 6 months full time, then take a couple months off and I'm making a decent salary when it all shakes out. That's fully remote and working for friends or friends of friends, occasionally taking a contract with a mega FAANG corp for a while, but usually working the contract with a buddy.

If you're savvy, good at networking and self motivated, you can make money which is comparable to most full time jobs. Just gotta be careful about the taxes and make sure you save for the lean times.

<comment><USER6> Any tax tips? That's an interesting observation.

(Thank you!)

<comment><USER4> Personally I have an offset account against my mortgage and stockpile funds there. Then live well within my means so I can handle tax when it arrives. Someone who doesn't naturally live within their means could estimate in advance and push money to a separate account to isolate it.

<comment><USER8> Don't you have to pay estimated taxes anyways? Or do you just mean within the quarter between estimated tax payments? (I am salaried and already just budget by quarter for everything)

<comment><USER4> Where I live, a salaried person will have tax automatically withheld and paid to authorities by their employer each week/fortnight. Someone self-employed usually has an estimate they pay quarterly or monthly, and then adjustments at the end of the financial year if the situation has varied from the estimate. I'm just saying I stockpile between tax bills (holding the cash against my mortgage to minimise interest) and my general style of living/spending means I can just redraw from the mortgage to make tax payments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 960 is 6% of the global LinkedIn workforce. I am baffled by how many people work for LinkedIn.

<comment><USER10> I'm baffled by that number given how bad the product is.

It has a lot of potential, but is completely ruined by the social media aspect and their attempt at making it yet another cesspool like Twitter or Instagram, all the way down to the algorithmic feed, likes and reactions.

They should step away from the nonsense and make the tool (because yes it should be seen as a tool and not a lifestyle) _easier_ to use, not harder. Stop getting in my way trying to make me use the algorithmic feed (it forgets your choice after a few hours) or nagging me to add a profile picture (I've said no for 2 years, why are you still trying?) or certain profile details I might not want to share, or "following sources" (whatever that means, I guess it's about following bullshit hashtags so you can have even more crap in your feed). The UI is absolutely terrible and slow for no good reason and makes it painful to use.

The worst is that you might think "okay well the free version for the plebs is nasty because it tries to drum up engagement, but the premium version should be better, right?" WRONG! The premium version is just as bad but instead of wasting just your time it wastes your time _and_ your money.

<comment><USER11> > I'm baffled by that number given how bad the product is.

That's because the "product" isn't the social network. The "product" is insight and access to much of the professional workforce. Sales and HR use it extensively.

The social network aspect is likely to keep people semi-engaged with the platform and voluntarily disclosing things that Sales and HR can use as signals.

<comment><USER12> Indeed, "talent solutions" and "marketing solutions" are Linkedin's biggest revenue drivers. Subscriptions come after that.

<comment><USER13> That's kind of a chicken and egg problem though, Linkedin never developed much features outside of recruiting activities so that's the revenue they have.

Linkedin has a much bigger potential than that though, just the social aspect and networking impact could be pretty significant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > "Our Talent Solutions business continues to be impacted as fewer companies, > including ours, need to hire at the same volume they did previously."

We're in a recruitment-related field (online background checking) and we can clearly see that recruitment activity has dropped way off, even in sectors that are largely unaffected by the pandemic.

My theory is that people are clinging on to their jobs tightly as unemployment rises, so discretionary turnover is way down.

<comment><USER15> I'd err towards this direction too based on the megacorp I work at. Curious if you have ballpark #s to how much less companies are hiring.

<comment><USER14> My guess would be about 50% for retail. We are in NZ, so unique circumstances apply - there is no Covid on the loose, so things are all normal as far as retail goes, but entire industries such as overseas tourism have vanished for now, so there are many candidates for every job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Companies commonly use layoffs as an easy way to get rid of under-performing staff, realize cost savings from previous investments (e.g., automation) ahead of schedule, or efficiently reorganize divisions whose execs fall out of favor. Not going to say this is good, but a <10% layoff is not unreasonable for a healthy company, especially when some business units may be stagnating.

However callous it is, roles on the margin get cut when prospects for growth dim.

<comment><USER17> Yeah doesn't Amazon lay off 10% of devs every year as part of their stack ranking?

<comment><USER18> That was Microsoft for the longest time and it destroyed their work culture.

<comment><USER19> But it funded the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Silver lining.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A lot of the very big companies are quite reluctant to start layoffs if they think the situation can be survived for a few months. They don't want to be seen as evil firing-their-contractors, people-as-expendable, etc. They are an easy target as "big corp".

But if they can see this is going to go on more than the end of 2020, they will start having to confront the need to layoff people seriously. Interestingly, the more certainty they have about how bad it is, the sooner the layoffs.

<comment><USER21> Or, they've really been wanting to do this for a while, and the economic situation provides political cover.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow, this means linkedIn has ~16k employees? What on earth are all those people working on?

<comment><USER23> Ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's got to sting a little to use the platform you were laid off from to look for a new job. I wish everyone the best.

</comment><comment><USER25> Looks like all cuts are across HR/Sales.

<comment><USER26> > "Our Talent Solutions business continues to be impacted as fewer companies, > including ours, need to hire at the same volume they did previously."

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> _LinkedIn would be investing in other parts of the business which would result in some job creation and the firm would "work with employees impacted by today's announcement to explore these opportunities"_

Good to know that they will first consider rehiring/interviewing the laid off employees and they are public about it.

Curious question: does the employee get to keep the severance package if rehired after being laid off?

<comment> compiler-guy I don't know how linked in is handling it, but in a typical layoff situation (I'm unfortunately familiar with several personally, and many more corporately) if you are rehired after your official termination date, you get to keep whatever the termination package was. The company considers you a new employee.

It needs to be this way for certain legal reasons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm sorry to hear about people losing their jobs. It sucks, especially now when there is so much uncertainty.

LinkedIn makes a lot of money through recruitment ads - five years ago it was at least $300/month for professional positions in hot markets. If companies stop posting ads or switch to cheaper alternatives (some companies still use Craigslist) the impact will be significant for LinkedIn and its employees.

</comment><comment><USER29> What the heck do close to 10k people do at LinkedIn? Serious question. Why does this site/company require 10k people?

<comment><USER30> This question comes up on every post about a big tech company. LinkedIn in a global company operating commercially in probably almost every country. The "social network for work" part is easy but when you start talking about things like job listings across the world and then the sales and account management and local office management and compliance and the internal tools and billing and everything else, it's quite easy to get to 10k.

I wouldn't be surprised if they have 1000 people in the US just dedicated to sales & account management for the job listings.

<comment><USER31> >This question comes up on every post about a big tech company.

And in turn, there are always replies that justify these head counts in ways that I _still_ have a hard time buying into.

All I have to go off is on my own experience, but I worked at a large retailer/wholesaler that had:

      - 1500 retail store locations.
      - Probably a half dozen warehouses.
      - A couple high volume ecommerce sites (not at LinkedIn scale, but scale was a concern).

To support those operations, they employed people for:

      - Staffing the retail stores and warehouses.
      - Call centers for customer support.
      - Sales for the wholesale division.
      - Advertising/marketing for the retail division, all run internally.
      - Logistics/shipping.
      - Real estate.
      - Merchandising.
      - Inventory management.
      - Product design.
      - Sourcing product manufacture.
      - All of the boilerplate corporate crap (HR, recruiting, accounting, etc.)

Almost all of the above had software to support it that was written and maintained in-house, including a custom built ecommerce stack.

All of the above took roughly the same headcount LinkedIn now has. The technology team writing and running all that custom software was maybe 200-300 people.

So even after I hear all the reasons LinkedIn has to be so huge (sales, support, scale, etc), I'm still left scratching my head.

<comment><USER32> This is one of those things you can't tell anyone¹. You just learn it by trying differently and failing.

¹ [http://habitatchronicles.com/2004/04/you-cant-tell-people- an...](http://habitatchronicles.com/2004/04/you-cant-tell-people-anything/)

<comment><USER33> This can be summarized as, "I can tell you what it is, but I cannot understand it for you".

In such cases I've invariably found that the failure is on part of the person who is telling the thing - they are simply failing to communicate effectively.

They are not emphasizing the important points, they are not working backwards from the result that they want to achieve and merely listing steps to get to the result, they don't empathize with the audience so they cannot customize their narrative in a way that resonates with the audience.

This is exactly why in your 16 or more years of education with dozens of teachers, you can only name a handful that actually were good teachers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm surprised. LinkedIn has to be one of the major sites whose traffic has gone up in recent months, with so many people looking for work and stuck in front of a computer.

<comment><USER35> LinkedIn makes most of its money out of companies posting job ads, not on people applying for them. And companies paying for ads are going down.

<comment><USER36> I always figured LinkedIn makes their money selling candidate data to recruiters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Microsoft is doing its usual fiscal year-end layoffs, but fewer than usual - [https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-is-doing-its- usual-f...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-is-doing-its-usual-fiscal- year-end-layoffs-but-fewer-than-usual/)

</comment><comment><USER38> It's awful to see such a large reduction in force when MSFT overall is up 30% year to date. I haven't heard of other FAAMG companies making similar moves.

</comment><comment> mark-r So maybe this means I'll be getting less spam from LinkedIn? Unfortunately it will probably mean the opposite.

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm sure they can find a job on LinkedIn.

<comment><USER40> If their marketing had a bit of creativity, they would get the people laid off into new jobs. Potential customers might notice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> On top of everything else, I think this goes to show how expensive Azure infrastructure really is.

<comment><USER42> How is this related to this news? Yes, I know both are owned by MSFT, but I'll need more info.

<comment><USER41> Linkedin wasn't on Azure until MS bought them. Now the TCO has gone up. GitHub has also shown signs of the Azure infrastructure.

<comment><USER43> Considering they last posted about moving to Azure in 2019, I doubt they've moved everything to azure in <12 months.

<comment><USER41> You're right. I think downtime is holding them back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Does that mean i don't get 960 emails a week now?

</comment><comment><USER45> Hmm, title looks wrong lets fix it:

 _' Microsoft to extinguish 960 jobs worldwide'._

There, fixed it for you.

</comment><comment><USER46> The downward spiral for all industries that are primarily US based because of the overreaction to COVID has not even begun to be felt.

But you know, keep posting about how this side won't wear masks and people are jerks all day instead of facing the fact that haircuts aren't the goal - <USER2> stable economy is essential, not secondary, to a country's survival.

<comment><USER47> As is tradition, we managed to get all the downsides of both shutting down and not shutting down, with none of the benefits of either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Doesn't LinkedIn(Microsoft) has a shit ton of money in reserves? Is cutting down these jobs in the midst of a pandemic really essential for the company's survival? Especially when the economies has started recovering in many parts of the world.

<comment><USER49> It's a business not a charity</comment></comment>