1% the Code - <AUTHOR> https://colorforth.github.io/1percent.html <comment><AUTHOR> This is clearly a completely different take on the world of code. C is strongly typed, which is a cause of errors?

I guess if you compare Forth and C as operating on roughly the same level, in this alternative reality you could imagine Forth as the language that an OS Kernel is written in, and higher-level language compilers and interpreters could be written in. However that goes against the mindset that Forth programs should be small and simple.</comment>


Tim Cook: Apple won't create 'converged' MacBook and iPad - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/tim-cook-apple-wont-create-converged-macbook-and-ipad-34201986.html <comment><AUTHOR> Of course not.

Apple's plan is to unify iOS and OSX. It will be called Apple OS.

The iPad Pro is one step towards this.

Apple looking to replace Intel with ARM architecture is another.

Now that Microsoft have unified with Windows 10 and with Google on the path to Android and Chrome unification, Apple will unify.

There will be no OSX 11.

Currently Apple is on iOS 9 and OSX 10.11, so just 'by the numbers' the unification is not that far off.

</comment><comment><USER2> I hope this is true. OSX and Macbook are open computing systems (I can compile build run any app or OS along side) where as the iOS devices, well you could say that you don't really own them even after you pay the hefty price.</comment>


Ask HN: Is demand for software engineers rising during Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> In my area, yes.

The offline to online flow increased greatly: e-commerce, digital marketing. E-wallets were once dumb ideas, but with contactless, they're suddenly a great idea. Lots of bureaucracy moved from paper to digital forms, and are taking the next step of integrating into a database and analyzing the data. Anything to do with remote work increased greatly, and that's all software engineering too. Plus things like games, online writing. I have a little site for writers and we've had increased traffic lately without any extra marketing.

On the other hand, a lot of businesses shut down or are slowing down, mainly the oil industry.

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like the demand for software engineers is growing. Plus I have seen a lot industries are moving to cloud and amazon is hiring a lot of people at the moment

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nothing specific to my field (finance).</comment>


Show HN: HN Styles - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/spdustin/c6f40d752776dac06d17f6b409e72ee1 <comment><USER2> Neat. You might be interested in putting it on Sylish

[https://userstyles.org/styles/browse/ycombinator](https://userstyles.org/styles/browse/ycombinator)</comment>


A Fast, Simple, Queue Built on MongoDB  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.attachments.me/post/9712307785/a-fast-simple-queue-built-on-mongodb

<comment><USER2> Developer aversion to learning new tools is astounding sometimes. Background workers and message queues have to be the most reinvented wheel of all time. 99% of the time, something free and great will already do what you want, and they've thought of things you haven't. Why not redirect some of this energy into using a tool like Celery[1]? Surely it's simpler to learn a tool than it is to build a new one from scratch?

* What happens when job's crash, fail, or get stuck?

* What about when the machines running the workers die or are isolated from the network?

* What happens if the backing store dies?

* How do you start, stop, restart, grow, and shrink your worker pool?

[1] [http://ask.github.com/celery/getting- started/introduction.ht...](http://ask.github.com/celery/getting- started/introduction.html)

<comment><USER3> Your point is well taken, but doesn't Celery want RabbitMQ? That's an awful lot of machinery for what is (in many apps) a very small problem.

We get to look at lots of people's Rails apps, and it appears that Resque is emerging as the de facto answer to this problem. A nice attribute of Resque is that for all the machinery Redis provides, it _also_ solves the "memcache" problem and is probably a better utility player than $X-MQ.

If you have an app that already wants $X-MQ, Celery sounds very sensible. And having apps that want $X-MQ is a good thing, too.

And, not reinventing this wheel also makes sense.

<comment><USER4> I was going to ask about Resque as well. There's also a port of it (I don't know how well maintained it is, but it exists) that uses mongo as the backend instead of redis if you want to avoid adding another platform to your app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Perhaps I'm assuming too much, but it looks like you might be confusing _notification_ with _queueing_. As you found with SQS, queueing systems can make for poor notification mechanisms. Did you try using AWS SNS (<http://aws.amazon.com/sns/>) for your first two use cases? We have similar notification use-cases internally, and SNS has worked great.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know that this is quite what I'm looking for, a worthwhile read though. Never ceases to amaze me how many things Amazon can prefix with Simple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Doing a queue system where the workers wait in a busy-loop is pretty insane.

I'm saying that as the author of Delayed::Job so i'm pretty much responsible for those shenanigans.

<comment><USER7> Out of curiosity, what strategy would you recommend instead? Something like Redis' B[LR]POP, where the blocking can be handled on the network layer? Or a different strategy entirely?

<comment><USER8> If you put this behind, say a REST API vs using MongoDB directly, the clients could use long polling.

If you look at Twitter's Kestrel, it was implemented with a similar mechanism, albeit leveraging some capabilities that were intrinsic to memcached.

I built a little queuing prototype using long polling and it works very well. If you build it using an async server, you can run many clients while only using a few threads.

There's still the question of how to block and/or wake on an enqueue event to MongoDB vs. polling. The best approach may be to implement queueing using your REST API, leveraging all of the advantages of the async server and use MongoDB for a backing store or journal. This is similar to how Kestrel does it.

My prototype was very responsive, although I only got about 500 messages per second of throughput on my MBA.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see what you're getting at. Behind the scenes, I am ultimately using an event loop :) Having said that, since MongoDB is a persistent connection, does long pulling over HTTP make sense for the client?

I was thinking of doing a proof of concept in Node, that would at least behave like it's getting pushed messages rather than pulling ... But, I couldn't think of a way other than repeated setTimeouts.

Any thoughts?

<comment><USER8> Node would work well since it's designed to support async patterns. You're right that the challenge is the polling model that you have to implement when using MongoDB as the queue. To get throughput, you may have to use it as a journal and implement the queue within your process. Check out Kestrel on GitHub for an example.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


London Stock Exchange crippled by system outage - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSL01084620080908?sp=true <comment><USER2> When I was in college (not that long ago) I had a COBOL class. I learned exactly one thing from that class: It is astonishingly...astonishingly...easy to fuck up financial apps. If you see a webpage where the margins are off, or the text doesn't align...that's bad. But in a financial app, the equivilent bug amounts to catastrophe.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.onwindows.com/Articles/LSE-TradElect-system- goes-...](http://www.onwindows.com/Articles/LSE-TradElect-system-goes- live/843/Default.aspx)

<comment><USER3> From the article: "The new platform has been designed to the highest levels of resilience with comprehensive back up, which includes dual processing at two sites and recovery from component failure within a second."

Hmm...where was the recovery? Did it mention anywhere why the recovery didn't occur? I'm guessing, though, that the company won't actively explain what failed or why.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Hmmmm.... Maybe we should run the test suite one more time before we deploy._

</comment><comment><USER5> Windows priorities have been 1\. Usability 2\. Features 3\. Performance

Unix priorities have been 1\. Features 2\. Performance 3\. Usability

</comment><comment><USER6> And they chose windows over linux for Reliability: [http://www.idgconnect.com/software/windows/london_stock_exch...](http://www.idgconnect.com/software/windows/london_stock_exchange_achieving_record_reliability_using_windows_over_linux/)

<comment><USER7> Windows doesn't take 8 hours to reboot. I'm gonna guess that it was some data corruption or hardware failure that forced a rebuild of some large database node.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Probably caused by a faulty wind generating turbine.

</comment><comment><USER9> the trading bots did it on purpose - they are taking control of the system</comment>


Whitman Wins California Primary - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> And the speculating goes on: [http://californiawatch.org/watchblog/web- squatters-have-fing...](http://californiawatch.org/watchblog/web-squatters- have-fingers-crossed-whitman-win)</comment>


Klout: A New Service That Tells You Just How Powerful You Are On Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/appetite/2009/11/24/klout-tells-powerful-twitter/ Post Your Score!<p>I got 18 (@iHany) <comment><AUTHOR> Post Your Score!

I got 18 (@iHany)</comment>


Tool to recover files from FileVault 2 (Apple's full-disk encryption) - <AUTHOR> http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2012/08/06/analysis-of-filevault-2-apples-full-disk-encryption/

<comment><USER2> Original title of the page is: "Analysis of FileVault 2 (Apple's full disk encryption)" No idea why HN used the wrong one.</comment>


Rendering Worlds with Two Triangles on the GPU [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.iquilezles.org/www/material/nvscene2008/rwwtt.pdf <comment><USER3> Ah, the classic presentation that got me started in the demoscene a couple of years back.

The Google cache version of the pdf doesn't include any images, so I put up a copy over here:

[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2173295/rwwtt.pdf](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2173295/rwwtt.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the mirror.

Know of any novel techniques/rehashing of old techniques that have been developed since?

<comment><USER3> Well, for very small intros (4k/8k) distance fields are still hard to beat due to their compactness. A couple of examples not based on distfields, off the top of my head:

[http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=62027](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=62027) (No idea what this is, but it's great)

[http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=62974](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=62974) (reverse fluid simulation)

[http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=59613](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=59613) (particles)

For 64k intros and size unlimited demos the possibilities are too many to list. Procedural mesh generation is a classic approach which has found great modern use recently:

[http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=61204](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=61204) (if you follow 1 link in this comment make it this one)

<comment><USER4> Awesome, thanks!

What kind of mathemagical trickery is that reverse fluid simulation?!

<comment><USER3> Seven held a short seminar about it, it's the first one in this video:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ8eB_FORLo](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ8eB_FORLo)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the most elegant thing about this method is that it describes a scene in terms of its basic mathematical 3D objects and transformations on them (list here: [http://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/distfunctions/distfun...](http://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/distfunctions/distfunctions.htm) ) and then exploits the massive parallelism of the GPU for rendering all the pixels.

Here's a demo of someone playing around with it, complete with a Slisesix- inspired scene: [http://www.rpenalva.com/blog/?p=254](http://www.rpenalva.com/blog/?p=254)

This set of slides is also related: [http://www.iquilezles.org/www/material/function2009/function...](http://www.iquilezles.org/www/material/function2009/function2009.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER6> And if you want to try things out yourself, iq has created a playground for you here: [https://www.shadertoy.com/](https://www.shadertoy.com/)

<comment><USER7> and one similar to Elevated [https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4slGD4](https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4slGD4)

<comment><USER8> It is disingenuous for the author to not cite Elevated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I love these.

People might enjoy noodling around the Geisswerks pages which have many code snippets around ray tracing; graphic demos; and so on.

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

</comment><comment><USER10> You can download it from here [http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=51074](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=51074) It's been updated to run more reliably (edit: on Vista) but I can't find a version that will run on Win7.

Edit: I found a similar one on Shadertoy [https://www.shadertoy.com/view/lsf3zr](https://www.shadertoy.com/view/lsf3zr)

<comment><USER11> i just ran it on my mac successfully with wine..!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was working with distance fields back in 2008, and the idea of inverting the process blew my mind.

I had no idea Iñigo Quilez's image was produced this way and I'm so glad I had the chance to see how it was made.

Thanks for posting!!

</comment><comment><USER13> Is the demoscene a good place to get into graphics programming? The prevalence of older methods leads me to believe one could learn in a similar progression to the graphics gurus of today, moving from simpler old methods with performance and size optimization to modern techniques?

</comment><comment><USER14> This is a really impressive presentation -- after looking on from afar at the seemingly magical works of the demoscene, this finally helped me understand a little bit of how the magic happens. I've only got a bit of GLSL experience so far but now I want to learn a lot more.

</comment><comment><USER15> Could someone explain to me what the _" two triangles that cover the entire screen area"_ have to do with anything?

<comment><USER16> Basically you draw a single quad (2 triangles) covering the entire screen using OpenGL (or DirectX).

A Pixel shader is run when rendering each pixel of the quad. It's only input is often `time` and `resolution`.

At least in GLSL there's a global variable, `gl_Fragcoord` and provides the integer position of the pixel currently being drawn. So for example the pixel at the bottom left is gl_Fragcoord = vec2(0,0). The one directly to the right of that is gl_Fragcoord = vec2(0,1)

Given you're also passed the resolution can get a value that goes from 0 to 1 over the screen with

       vec2 zeroToOne = gl_Fragcoord.xy / resolution;

If you were to dump that value directly do the screen you'd get a red gradient going black to red from left to right and a green gradient from black to green going from bottom to top. See [http://glsl.heroku.com/e#18516.0](http://glsl.heroku.com/e#18516.0)

Now it's up to you to use more creative math that given just gl_Fragcoord, resolution, and time write a function that generates an image.

You can play with that in your browser here, [http://glsl.heroku.com](http://glsl.heroku.com) and here [http://shadertoy.com](http://shadertoy.com)

<comment><USER15> So the whole point of using a shader is that it's the GPU that's doing all the work?

<comment><USER17> Yes, that's what this trick is for.

In most standard 3D graphics, the CPU passes a description of the scene as polygons to the GPU, which then does two[1] shader steps - vertex and fragment[2] shading. The vertex shading works at the level of triangle vertices, effectively translating and and transforming the vertices, and then the fragment shader colors in each individual pixel.

So for a standard scene, the CPU tells the GPU: 'Right, we've got a room, with some pillars, and a monster, and a few lights, positioned like this', and then the CPU calculates what that looks like.

What Inigo is doing is that the CPU only knows there are two triangles - <USER2> quad covering the scene - so it just tells the GPU to draw a flat rectangle. The vertex shader does nothing but maintain the flat rectangle. However, because the fragment shader can be arbitrary logic, rather than just painting it with a solid color or even a texture, it is running its own simulation that involves drawing an entire scene.

\----

[1] More these days with Geometry shaders, but that's another topic

[2] Sometimes called a pixel shader, although really that's incorrect - Fragment is a more accurate term</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Paris Attacks Plot Was Hatched in Plain Sight - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/paris-attacks-plot-was-hatched-in-plain-sight-1448587309 <comment> baku-fr Parisian sysadmin here.

I'm so appalled by this article. Our government voted absurd laws allowing law enforcement to sniff all Internet traffic in France (and beyond). They did this while taking advantage of post-January ruckus. Yet they cannot stop terrorists using their _real_ id. On top of that, I read that policemen were aware of an imminent terrorist attack on 11/13 (but I've not yet confirmed this with reliable sources).

What can we do when nobody gives a damn about their freedom? Most acquaintances I hit up with this topic just don't care "as long as I'm safe". We're rolling down a dangerous hill which will lead to the defeat of our freedom _and_ the victory of terrorists.

Pardon my French.

<comment><USER2> > ... Yet they cannot stop terrorists ..

The 'incompetence theories' are getting thinner by day. Analog to this is the "Muslim" terrorist du jour group's 'oil production' in plain sight of God knows how many intelligence platforms are in use in air and space over the area.

Possible that they don't want to stop these attacks?

Possible that they actually create these events?

Is is possible? Or is the narrative that the Western civilization managed to get to their pinnacle of achievement in spite of being governed and guided by "incompetent" leaders, systems, and institutions?

<comment><USER3> > getting thinner by day

Source? Any proof at all that they aren't just incompetent? Its not a stretch to believe gov agencies are just incompetent, considering how useless they are in general when it comes to technology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > [...]suggests the challenges in identifying would-be terrorists and > preventing further attacks in the fluid, digital and transnational world of > today, especially when they are European citizens.

> Likewise, Mr. Abaaoud exploited Europe's porous border system,[...]

> [...]where he and another man took a ferry to Patras, Greece, Italian > officials said. "We are talking about citizens with regular European > passports and with the right to travel freely,"[...]

I guess they're trying to explain us that Europeans have too much freedom ... better take it from them, for the children you know.

> Rental companies in Belgium don't vet clients as long as their driver's > license, government identification and credit cards are valid.

Of course every rental company should ask their customers if they plan to commit a terrorist act before renting a car ... lying will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law !

> [...]Appart'City hotel, where clients have access to a secondary stairwell > that leads directly to a parking lot without ever passing the front desk. > The two-star hotel doesn't require guests to register their cars to use the > parking lot. Nor does it have security cameras.

A pity, with cameras and registration they surely could have thwarted the attacks (do I really need to put a sarcasm tag here ?).

This is not journalism, it's pushing a political agenda and a shitty one at that. You don't need to watch all EU citizen to prevent terrorism.

By the way, I'm French but I refuse to be guided by fear.

<comment><USER5> And coming from the WSJ I'm even more surprised: you can argue that the US has a porous border system, given you can get a ferry from New Jersey to New York City, talking about citizens with regular American passports and with the right to travel freely.

<comment><USER6> The problem is supposedly with people getting into Europe, via the poorly resourced Greek islands, using false passports. Once they're in they can travel across the Shengen area.

For your US example to work you'd need terrorists to travel from Mexico through a poor and overworked US border town.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yet this whole event is being used as a catalyst for further degradation of freedom and encryption.

How can we take the powers above seriously when they can't even catch a fairly large network of terrorists scheming over the clearnet?

This is a lesson in the ineffectiveness and incompetence of the spying apparatus of the free world.

We've given up so much already for no benefit, and whenever they fail it's never because they were bad at their job, they just didn't have enough power or money to do their job.

<comment><USER8> You make a good top level point that I think most would agree with - successful terror plots degrade our freedom because we fearfululy grant our government more power.

But to broadly call spying apparatus ineffective and incompetent weakens your argument.

There have been dozens of publicly disclosed terror plots interrupted against the USA alone, surely many more we will never know about.(1)

There is a clear underlying reason for survellience - it works.

The complexity in the discussion is that it clearly doesn't work 100% of the time and comes at a significant cost

But this isn't a black and white issue, we are in the grey.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsuccessful_terrori...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsuccessful_terrorist_plots_in_the_United_States_post-9/11)

<comment> sjm-lbm The real complexity of the discussion comes from the unknown number of attacks that would be prevented with very mild pre-9/11 security measures.

Earlier this year, I read _The Looming Towers_ , an overview of various historical factors that led to the 9/11 attacks. Its focus is really more on the origins on Islamic extremism, not logistical planning of the 9/11 attacks, but it did cover several aspects of 9/11 specifically that were very interesting. Importantly, the FBI and CIA - between them - had enough information to stop the attacks but did not collaborate well enough, mostly due to the differing goals between the CIA and the FBI. To the CIA, a potential terrorist is an _asset_ \- they hope that person, if left on the street, will attempt to contact someone higher up in (say) al Qaeda and therefore generate more data for the agency. To the FBI, such a person is a _suspect_ , and really needs to be taken off the street as soon as enough evidence has been gathered to build a criminal case against him. During the summer of 2001, the FBI was blocked form getting the full CIA info on several important 9/11 figures because the CIA knew they'd be immediately arrested with that information.

(that is, of course, a broad overview, but the main point is more or less correct)

It's frustrating to see so many people embracing their lack of freedom as a security blanket. We don't need to use terror to grant our governments more control over our lives, we need just need to hold those who claim to be keeping us safe accountable.

<comment><USER9> The pre-9/11 CIA/FBI power play detailed in your comment was portrayed to some degree in the 1998 movie "The Siege" by Denzel Washington. Any chance you've seen it before?

<comment> sjm-lbm I haven't, but I might give it a watch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This was an intelligence community failure - and even though they clearly failed to thwart the attacks, they are asking for more power. If this article proves anything to me, it shows that these attacks are not preventable. So giving up more freedom and supporting dragnet policies is obviously not going to do anything, given they used their real names and public websites (as opposed to encrypted communication).

I wonder what is stopping people from seeing it this way?

<comment><USER11> A generation or two of very calculated, expensive propaganda put toward instilling immense amounts of fear among the general population - any moment now, you could die of a terrorist attack. It's wildly irrational, and being pushed 24/7 by the most powerful and richest entities on earth (huge central governments), how do you counter that?

There's only one way to counter it: you have to change the culture of a nation, which ultimately determines its politics.

300,000 people will die in car accidents over ten years in the US. In a typical ten year span, maybe 0.5% as many will die from terrorism in the US (and really, only 9/11 skews that, otherwise it'd be so small as to be completely irrelevant). It shouldn't take anything more than that simple comparison to get people to understand the context. But then you throw in: propaganda of random sudden death by a foreign attacker, a foreign culture, or the idea of massive scale death from wmd - then you get wild, irrational panic among the vast majority of any people anywhere on earth.

I'd argue we should all be willing to accept an extremely small risk of terrorism death, in exchange for a proper vast amount of liberty. It's a trivial compromise, if a person is not a coward and prefers to live free. There was a time the general population agreed, but that was long ago now. Today, what I just said is more often considered very offensive, politically incorrect, and will be shouted down nearly anywhere it is proposed.

It's clear you often can't stop a terrorist from killing a room full of people. Governments around the world accumulate more power by pandering and pretending you can. If a terrorist is willing to die for it, there is nothing that can stop most small scale attacks. The best a nation can do, is try to limit that, act on intelligence if there is any, and try to prevent large terrorism attacks. That reality however, doesn't win votes, and very few politicians would ever dare tell that truth.

The population wouldn't be nearly so afraid of terrorism, if they weren't being constantly told to be, and or intentionally terrified by the propaganda. The risks were just as high in the 1970s and 1980s, and people were not nearly as terrified.

<comment><USER4> > It's wildly irrational

I'm not completely disagreeing with you, I know that the probability of dying in a terror attack is small.

But I have a Muslim colleague that went to Mecca last year. He came back transformed, not smiling anymore, refusing to shake hands with female colleagues and has been surprised praying in the toilets and in a bus (he's a bus driver) and made a big scandal about having to take of his woolly hat (which apparently he attached religious significance to).

So now I wonder if one morning he'll decide to come at work with an AK-47. And living in France, I'm sure you would agree it's not irrational to think that.

<comment><USER12> It is irrational because you're scared due to recent events. You're proving OP's point.

You can't apply reason and logic to his going to Mecca, and arrive at a conclusion that he may come in to work with an AK-47.

<comment><USER4> It would be irrational to be scared of him just because he's a Muslim. For the record I have several other Muslim colleagues that are absolutely not worrying me.

I don't find it irrational to be scared of someone that shows signs of radicalization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's amazing how you well WSJ has spun everyday things. Of course car companies only care about your license and ability to pay? What the else should they be checking? Apparently it's also terrible that the terrorists stayed in a hotel.

I just realized something else that was left out of the article. The terrorists were probably buying food too. You know those grocery stores don't vet their customers other than requiring payment. Scary, right?

I don't normally wear my tinfoil hat in public, but it's hard to see this article as anything but an attempt to sway public opinion on encryption and monitoring laws.

<comment><USER14> I think the suggestion they're making is that if intelligence agencies instead tracked data like who is renting cars/ hotels etc they would be able to better track potential extremists activities.

Tracking license plates + who is renting hotel rooms is common place in many parts of the world and is less intrusive than reading everyones email.

<comment><USER15> So then low-paid hotel night-clerks are part of the front lines of the intelligence services. I just rented a hotel room with no reservation in the US a few nights ago. I gave ID, credit card, and car's license plate number. I was like 80% sure I had my license plate number memorized, but didn't feel like going outside to check, so I just wrote what I thought it was (without even indicating which US state it was from, I realized later) because I figured it didn't matter if they weren't going to verify it. Hopefully my memory was right, or it's a good thing my ID was not a convincing fake and that I'm not a terrorist, because the clerk would have failed to feed Big Brother good data even if there was a real-time national system to enter it into.

After writing that, I realized your "tracking license plates" may have referred to automated plate scanners. I think it would still be too easy to fake or mislead that, and it's going to cost a lot to deploy everywhere. After they are in every conceivable public location, another attack will happen and somebody will write, "if we had just known X car was in Y private house's garage..." and now we have to put surveillance equipment in every home, or concede that we're founded on ideas that preclude surveillance that intrusive and there will be times when that prevents law enforcement or national security.

<comment><USER14> You can probably use fake ID + fake plates & a fraudulent credit card... However in this situation in France the terrorists - who were on watch lists - did none of these things.

Not saying that data would have helped identify that an operation was in progress but it's data that exists that isn't being recorded. Meanwhile they want access to our metadata and more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's even worse. Apparently a critical phone call was intercepted by the DGSE (the french intelligence) before the attacks (Thursday), and transferred to the DGSI (the french counter-intelligence). The two are supposed to cooperate but the threat level could not be assessed by the first one. So, the second one scheduled a meeting on Monday (3 days after). The attacks took place between the two events.

Further infos, in french, here: [http://www.canalplus.fr/c-emissions/c-le- petit-journal/pid65...](http://www.canalplus.fr/c-emissions/c-le-petit- journal/pid6515-le-petit-journal.html?vid=1334771) [VIDEO]

<comment><USER15> This is very interesting. I have mixed feelings about focusing on these types of things too much, because I don't want to accept the premise that we can stop everything if we just try hard enough. But it can at least demonstrate that we should think hard before making further compromises of our values, if we can't even properly handle the capabilities we currently have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Actually, this article does not say anything about how the plan was "hatched" (i.e. thought up and planned), it just talks about the final days/hours.

</comment><comment><USER18> There is so many ways one can contact each other without 3rd party being able to know, that it makes whole "make encryption illegal!" thing seem to be a work of terrorists. People holding office and demanding backdoors of any sort, should be investigated or simply removed from the office, because they are not fit for the job.

</comment><comment><USER19> Since the spies can't find people using the data we have now in the clear, we should not give them access to encrypted comms, because that would be even _more_ data that they can't deal with; it would make their jobs _harder_ , not easier. (That is, depending on what we and they think their jobs actually are.)

</comment><comment><USER20> As someone who has been to Israel many, many times I feel that the French would benefit greatly by consulting with the Israelis regarding running their anti-terrorist security apparatus.

As things stand, the French and the EU in general have been quite critical of Israel's attempts to fight Islamic terror.

</comment><comment><USER21> Car rentals seem like a weak point for terrorists. The options for obtaining a private vehicle are very limited. Stealing a car is a good way to get busted. So it hijacking a car.

If the "Do Not Fly" list is a good idea, it probably makes sense to apply it to car rentals if they don't already.

<comment><USER22> You could always just buy a used car. Makes things a little more expensive, but not much more.

Terrorists will find a way to terrorize if they want to. The world is so chaotic and leaky that you can't stop people from doing stuff like this.

<comment><USER21> Requiring police verification to buy a used car doesn't seem crazy. If that's the only other way of getting a car, it seems like an easy loophole to close.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> After the attacks one of the attackers while on the run was stopped a total of 3 times and never apprehended.

</comment><comment><USER24> Couple thousand disgruntled young men capable of being terrorists. Its a numbers game. Insufficient resources to follow all of them. Only a few have to sneak through.

The questioned is how to prevent young ethnic men from becoming dissatisfied and and radicalized.

<comment><USER25> Cultural integration, social welfare, education.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think they need to do more to cross check data, one person making multiple car rentals and room reservations and of course cross check this with the various watch lists.

Like staunch commented, if someone is on a no fly list, flag car rentals, room reservations, etc too.

<comment><USER27> Are you legitimately suggesting intelligence agencies should be permitted unfettered realtime full-take access to arbitrary private companies' registration systems?

<comment><USER28> That is what people "think" will help. Let's just allow the government and all business unfettered access to everything we do. That will "make us safer".</comment></comment></comment>


Don't make the Demo look Done - <AUTHOR> http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/12/dont_make_the_d.html

<comment><USER2> It may be true within big companies that you should keep expectations low by making your prototypes look bad, but that's just further evidence big companies are broken.

<comment><USER3> In our UI class we were taught that if it is a prototype, that it should look like a prototype.

The concern was that if you over-do the UI to make it seem in between a prototype and a finished product, then you are confusing yourself and others judging the design whether to take this as a finished product or a prototype.

That makes sense. If I want a critique of my application's layout, then giving colors to buttons isn't a good idea since I just want feedback on the layout. The colors are just a distraction.

<comment><USER4> It's not about looking 'bad' vs 'good', but finished vs unfinished.

You're mixing two related but different things: managing expectations in order to prevent disappointment, and accurately conveying the maturity of a project in order to get suitable feedback. Unfortunately, the article starts as if it was just about the first aspect.

In zaidf's example, the button colors not only are a distraction; they actively inhibit criticism to the layout. Unconsciously, the 'cost' of criticising the fundamental design features (layout) has raised, since changing these implies having to rethink many of the details designed on top of them (color of the buttons, or whether you'll be using buttons at all).

Someone with design experience will be less shy about asking you to do big reworks. Design professors are all too happy about this. But most people will block criticism in a direct correspondence of the rework it would involve. In big companies, that may be a conscious political decision. In startups, it may be an unconscious bias due to social factors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I want to take a stab on solving the parallax between what the blog author writes (which I love) and pg's comment above (which I also love.)

Most YCombinator founders (and YNews readers) are young, and venture capitalists or techcrunch readers know this. Every ounce in any skill set that shows we are competent helps sell us. Anything, be it as little as a great visual prototype, helps.

On the other hand, this article discusses how the non-silicon valley customers, managers, and investors (even Microsoft) will confuse images with reality. An even bigger problem is that the author assumes all programmers will be using a desktop programming language (with no frameworks) in most articles I've seen on that web site, not realizing that web frameworks allow anybody to have something up and running within a week. I think this advice would be more true pre-Ycombinator and pre-web framework days (in 2004.)

I trust that both observations are genuine; and, on a personal note, I prefer pg's attitude more, because I like hearing when people denounce or offer alternatives to "plan for the lowest denominator no matter what" type of business blog advice.

</comment><comment><USER6> I disagree with this. You'll get so much more respect if you spend time making everything you do look easy.

</comment><comment><USER7> This has never been my experience. If your managers can't believe you when you say the gloss is just good design and not a sign of completeness, get a new manager.

If your manager doesn't understand anything about infrastructure, and reacts to a poor interface with talk of program cancellation, get a new manager.</comment>


Ask HN: Asking to co-own a web app with employer - <AUTHOR>

Got hired as a marketer. Wrote software during my free time, job related. Brought that software into my work to do things faster/easier/smarter, team adopted it and now its an important part of our methodology.
Now we are moving to make this concept into a SaaS offering.
I came up with the idea, made the first implementation (proof of concept), now I will likely be the only person doing dev on the SaaS prototype.
I told my employer I want to co-own it with the company.
Now, the question is - how would this be done? What type/amount of ownership should I request?
I believe I am legally the owner of this tool. I never signed any IP agreements, and I believe creating software is outside the scope of my employment as a marketer.
Any advice, thoughts, criticisms -- would be very helpful while I contemplate next steps here.
TL;DR Made a software tool to assist with my job, now my company wants to make it into a SaaS offering, and I want co-ownership. Seeking advice, those with similar stories. <comment><USER2> It's pretty simple. You need to negotiate a deal with your employer now, quit the company or keep working at the company with the knowledge that they will own it. By doing nothing it will be regarded as a work-for-hire owned by the employer.

How would this be done: If they are open to negotiating with you, then I'd keep the deal pretty simple. Incorporate a company, figure out the structure of the cap table, and figure out how you are going to handle any obvious possible future disputes that will affect the continuity of the business. Eg. they stop paying you, you stop working on it, etc.

What type/amount of ownership should I request? In business you should try to be equitable and leave some money on the table. Don't forget about all the time they have spent testing and giving feedback on the product. Figure out how much time each side has invested in this product, and also figure out who is going to be a better custodian of the product if there is a dispute in the future. Change the cap table accordingly. You can if necessary separate these two concepts. For example, one side can have dominant voting power over the company, but distributions of shares could be (if deemed appropriate) payed out 50/50 between the parties.

Any other next steps (eg. like getting a lawyer involved) would be a dumb idea.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looking forward, what are the interests of both sides?

Could the company develop this SaaS offering without you? Could you develop the SaaS offering yourself, without the contacts, infrastructure and salary that the company is currently providing?

If you want a cut of the product, then it probably needs to be in a separate company. This may not be what you or the employer would like, as you're effectively getting into the same discussions about equity split, vesting etc. that multi-founder startups do.

If you just want a nice bonus based on revenue the product brings in (reflecting the value you bring, but also the value the company brings and the fact that you have a salary), then negotiate that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think we both want to make this thing a reality. For them, I think they believe this will be the doorway to becoming a software company instead of a service one. I've told them a million times I am about building systems, and not trading time for money... I am excited that there is some potential that I can focus on building systems with more of my work time.

They couldn't make it in-house without me; I'm the most technical guy in the firm but the idea/tool is so ingrained into our methodology now they could definitely reimplement it with some 3rd party developer. It's not rocket science, but as a service - we are confident it has market potential.

I could create and market the product without them. I could go without a salary for a little bit; but not longer than a few months without cracking into longterm savings.

I hear you on the 2 options. Bonus does sound easier; but I am starting to think maybe my pitch should be for a 'software division' \- where this SaaS offering is the first project; and then I try to negotiate equity in that 'division'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been in this position and it didn't go well. Definitely avoid this scenario in the future. You can ask but I wouldn't be too optimistic and the conversation may not go well and impact your relationship with your employer.

A long time ago I owned the domain name saintlouis.com and had started a site that somehow eventually came under the wing of my employer. Needless to say I didn't own the saintlouis.com domain when I left not long after.

<comment><USER4> As a follow up, you'd be better protected if you DID have an employment agreement and things were spelled out. By not having one in this situation it puts you in a bad spot. Here's some more information that discusses this type of scenario: [http://labor-employment-law.lawyers.com/employment- contracts...](http://labor-employment-law.lawyers.com/employment- contracts/ownership-of-work-product-depends-on-your-status.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the replies.

Did you ask for 50/50 or what? how did that discussion go for you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You probably shouldn't have told your company about this product. You came up with the idea, and implemented it, yes but in the company's eyes, you did it under their watch, time, and salary (even if it's partially true). Basically, they're going to keep all the profits if this succeeds, and you're just going to be in the same position, as lead dev supporting it. Good to put in a resume, but not potentially life changing.

</comment><comment><USER6> You just created a work for hire for your employer. You should have negotiated this earlier, and especially before voluntarily donating it to be used at your company.</comment>


Zharkova solar-planetary theory predicting Grand Solar Minimum temperature rise - <AUTHOR> https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2019/06/25/zharkova-uses-solar-planetary-theory-in-new-paper-predicting-earth-temperature-rise-to-2600-following-imminent-grand-solar-minimum/ <comment><USER2> The whole solar cycle argument has been well studied and understood, it's effects are minimal on the climate. But still, this is used by anthroposophic climate change deniers over and over again.

<comment><USER3> I think you're denying the evidence that partical forcing from coronal hole streams and CMEs have significant effects on climate.

<comment><USER2> There is no evidence of a _significant_ effect. Especially compared to the effects of the added CO2 in the atmosphere.

<comment><USER3> Dr Kong Pop UYen has published a paper or 2 showing significant correlation between solar flare, CME and coronal hole stream impacts and intensification of tropical storms.

And that's just the beginning, if you look with an open mind you will fine many quality scientists questioning this status quo.

<comment><USER4> > And that's just the beginning, if you look with an open mind you will fine > many quality scientists questioning this status quo.

This is an interesting twist on the balance fallacy (issue has two sides, so each side has merit) in that you're implying refusal to acknowledge the other side is a lack of an open mind.

Someone suggesting solar flares can impact tropical storms is not a significant fact in the claim you're refuting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's quite the lookout. Is there a good book / resources on these long solar cycles?

<comment><USER3> The Weathermans Guide to the Sun is a good place to get started on the new ways were identifying how the sun is the min driver of climate change.

<comment><AUTHOR> Seconding this recommendation [https://otf.selz.com/item/united-states-pre- order-weatherman...](https://otf.selz.com/item/united-states-pre-order- weathermans-guide-to-the-sun-1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> HN, HN, HN.

This is a climate change denialist blog.

I am not a scientist and cannot effectively assess Zharkova's claims directly, but I can't help but notice the sidebar (pasted below). About 4 out of every 5 links are basically FUD:

        Alan Carlin: Unilateral US Decarbonization Could Have Serious Economic Consequences
        More Failed Predictions: May Was The Second Wettest Month In US History
        Natascha Engel: UK's Net-Zero Carbon Target Is Reckless And Unrealistic
        Now 20 years with no trend in ice breakup dates for Western Hudson Bay polar bears
        'Triple whammy' threatens climate progress, says BBC News
        Zharkova uses solar-planetary theory in new paper predicting Earth temperature rise to 2600 following imminent Grand Solar Minimum
        Big-Idea Energy Alternatives Are Costly And Puny
        Mercury climbs as Europe braces for summer scorcher
        Scientists map huge undersea fresh-water aquifer off US Northeast
        Experts say there is no 'climate emergency'
        New York State's Energy Future: Lighting Candles?
        UK Minister suspended after grabbing climate activist
        Mysterious Moisture in the Mesosphere
        Record-Setting Noctilucent Clouds
        UK commits to 'net zero' emissions by 2050

Top Posts

        Study: Tesla car battery production releases as much CO2 as 8 years of driving on petrol
        Zharkova uses solar-planetary theory in new paper predicting Earth temperature rise to 2600 following imminent Grand Solar Minimum
        Alan Carlin: Unilateral US Decarbonization Could Have Serious Economic Consequences
        Discovery of massive volcanic CO2 emissions puts damper on global warming theory
        A remarkable discovery: All Solar system periods fit the Fibonacci series and the Golden Ratio. Why Phi?
        Uncertainty: The origin of the increase in Atmospheric CO2
        Tom Van Flandern: Was the planet Mercury once a moon of Venus?
        Back to basics 2: Lapse rates and atmospheric stability
        About me
        Germany's Renewable Energy Fail: German CO2 Emissions 10 Times Higher than Nuclear-Powered France

        Alan Carlin: Unilateral US Decarbonization Could Have Serious Economic Consequences
        More Failed Predictions: May Was The Second Wettest Month In US History
        Natascha Engel: UK's Net-Zero Carbon Target Is Reckless And Unrealistic
        Now 20 years with no trend in ice breakup dates for Western Hudson Bay polar bears
        'Triple whammy' threatens climate progress, says BBC News
        Zharkova uses solar-planetary theory in new paper predicting Earth temperature rise to 2600 following imminent Grand Solar Minimum
        Big-Idea Energy Alternatives Are Costly And Puny
        Mercury climbs as Europe braces for summer scorcher
        Scientists map huge undersea fresh-water aquifer off US Northeast
        Experts say there is no 'climate emergency'
        New York State's Energy Future: Lighting Candles?
        UK Minister suspended after grabbing climate activist
        Mysterious Moisture in the Mesosphere
        Record-Setting Noctilucent Clouds
        UK commits to 'net zero' emissions by 2050

Top Posts

        Study: Tesla car battery production releases as much CO2 as 8 years of driving on petrol
        Zharkova uses solar-planetary theory in new paper predicting Earth temperature rise to 2600 following imminent Grand Solar Minimum
        Alan Carlin: Unilateral US Decarbonization Could Have Serious Economic Consequences
        Discovery of massive volcanic CO2 emissions puts damper on global warming theory
        A remarkable discovery: All Solar system periods fit the Fibonacci series and the Golden Ratio. Why Phi?
        Uncertainty: The origin of the increase in Atmospheric CO2
        Tom Van Flandern: Was the planet Mercury once a moon of Venus?
        Back to basics 2: Lapse rates and atmospheric stability
        About me
        Germany's Renewable Energy Fail: German CO2 Emissions 10 Times Higher than Nuclear-Powered France

<comment><USER4> I'm curious why people are downvoting because this appears to be a correct assessment.

The paper here is probably legit (perhaps correct, perhaps not) but it's claiming a 2.5 degree change by the year 2600, and not claiming to contradict climate change. In fact it kind of hints that a large portion of its trend analysis may be driven by human activity

> Although, it is not clear yet if this trend in the terrestrial temperature > and solar irradiance is caused directly by the increased solar activity > itself or by some other factors of the solar-terrestrial interaction in the > whole solar system and human activities.

Feels a little too heavy on the doubt propagation for my tastes. The blog however claims this is direct evidence that man made climate change is wrong.</comment></comment>


Can your employer fire you after you quit? - <AUTHOR> https://lifehacker.com/can-your-employer-fire-you-after-you-quit-1834123872 <comment><USER2> It can get a lot worse in states with onerous non-compete laws.

When I quit Tudor Investment, they forced me to work for an extra 3 months. If I didn't, they threatened to fire me 'with cause' which under NY state law means they could enforce my non-compete without paying me.

1 week before I was supposed to leave, my manager tried to sandbag me with a list of 30 tasks so that he could force me to stay longer. So I terminated my employment using the 'right to work' clause and they carried out their threat, firing me after I legally quit (twice!).

This kind of non-compete abuse is probably illegal but fighting it through arbitration would be expensive.

Those assholes still owe me money in fact. Don't ever deal with the wage thieves at Tudor Investment.

<comment><USER3> Your state Department of Labor probably takes nonpayment of wages very seriously.

<comment><USER2> You're responsible for hiring a lawyer and suing the company if you make over $900/week, which probably every developer in NYC does.

[https://labor.ny.gov/workerprotection/laborstandards/workpro...](https://labor.ny.gov/workerprotection/laborstandards/workprot/lshmpg.shtm)

<comment><USER4> Ouch. Hopefully you left a factful glassdoor review for the next person.

<comment><USER5> Likely this comment is worth 10 glassdoor reviews, and could alert others still working there as well to these practices.

<comment><USER4> In content sure, but not in reach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It sounds like the person received unemployment benefits until their intended resignation date. That seems fair, right? You certainly wouldn't receive unemployment benefits after you resigned. As for wrongful termination, I don't know the law behind that, but this certainly doesn't _obviously_ seem wrongful to me. What am I missing?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the employee made a mistake by giving 60 days notice; generally, that is only called for in very senior-level positions. Beyond that, the employeee didn't have another job lined up. So (at least from the employer's point of view) it seems as if the employee intended to use those 60 days to find another job, and I think an employer could reasonably assume that they would not be putting in their all during that time, so best to cut the line.

All that said, it's not fair for the fired employee to receive unemployment benefits only until the date on which they would have stopped working if they had not been fired.

Unemployment assistance is a public benefit that people (generally) qualify for if they are fired without cause; it helps them get by until they are able to find another job. You can qualify for unemployment assistance even if your work has a defined end date. I have a buddy who works on film sets, so his jobs typically last 4-5 months. But even if the film is scheduled to wrap up filming in a week, he would still qualify for unemployment if he were let go, and not just for the single week he would have been working.

The implicit understanding of giving notice is, "I intend to work for you until this date." But if the employer fires them prior to that date, it totally invalidates whatever notice was given.

Keep in mind that date of notice and date of separation are different. Between those two dates, the employee has the same expectation of employment, and the public benefits associated with it, as any other employee. If you get fired prior to your date of departure, whether or not you have given your employer the courtesy of notice, then you should qualify for the same unemployment benefits as someone who has not given the courtesy of notice.

Think about it. It would really suck if Employee A and Employee B both intend to stop working two weeks from now; Employee A is a jerk and plans to give no notice; Employee B is nice and gives two weeks' notice; both employees are fired without cause several days later; and Employee A gets at most 10 days' worth of unemployment benefits, while Employee B gets the standard 6 months.

<comment><USER6> I'm not saying you're wrong legally, but I don't quite follow your argument. You say "between those two dates, the employee has the same expectation of employment" but then immediately follow it up by saying that the unemployment benefits should extend indefinitely outside of that date range.

You may be right legally, I really couldn't say, but it makes perfect sense to me that the unemployment benefits would extend only to the announced separation date.

<comment><AUTHOR> What I mean is that even in an at-will state, employees have an expectation of continued employment, unless their employer has given them a defined end date. An employer can decide to fire an employee at any point without cause or notice, but until that happens, the employee has an expectation that they're going to be coming in to work and doing their job. To put it another way: Even in at-will states, you're employed until you aren't.

But if an employer fires an employee, that upends the arrangement, whether or not the employee was planning to stop working at future date, and whether or not the employee has given the employer notice of that fact.

Frankly, the only reason it's considered common practice to give notice is because there is an implicit expectation that you will continue to be employed until your date of planned separation and can make arrangements based on that fact. If employers regularly fired anyone who gave notice, and offered them no severance, no one would give notice.

So, for the purposes of qualifying for unemployment benefits, it should not matter whether you had planned to stop working for your employer on some future date. The firing has nullified those plans. The employer has prevented you from working until the date on which you intended to stop working, and so it's almost nonsensical to say, "Well, now you're out of a job, but let's treat you as if you still have a job that you're still planning to quit on the date you specified."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The best thing for the employer to do would be to accept the resignation with only 2 weeks notice and tell the person not to come in for the 2 weeks (and pay them for the two weeks). This assumes that the employer doesn't trust the employee and doesn't think they will behave during the time between notice and termination. If an employer things the employee will behave there is usually no harm keeping them on for the notice period. Not a lawyer this isn't legal advice, consult your lawyer before doing anything like firing an employee or accepting a termination notice for any period other than the one in the notice.

<comment><USER8> This is what usually happens. The employee is terminated everywhere but on payroll, so they can't come in, have to return all equipment, don't have any access etc. The company basically didn't want to pay those extra checks so they pulled this stunt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Funny. In Spain (and I'm sure other countries) you are owed severance pay and can claim unemployment benefits in case your employer fires you/laids you off, but not in case you resign on your own.

Few employers would "fire" an employee resigning (also, "asking" to be fired is highly illegal), unless he/she were a very recent hire for which severance pay would be low.

<comment><USER10> In the US fired means for cause. When you are fired they are legally saying you are a bad employee and they can/will tell others not to hire you. This implies they can not give your severance because the time you "worked" for them without doing your job is your severance. You don't get unemployment because you were not actually working. Contrast this with laid off which means you were a good employee, they just don't need you anymore: you can get severance (if there is any, it is not required).

If/when you employer is going to fire you ask if you can resign on the spot instead. Most will say yes: because you resigned of your own violation you cannot sue them, but in turn when someone checks references they will carefully say "yes s/he worked here, s/he left in good report, we have nothing more to say", which doesn't look bad.

<comment><USER11> This just isn't true, at least in New Jersey. For NJ Unemployment, being fired only renders you ineligible if you are fired for misconduct, which is further defined as requiring intent or sufficient negligence to imply a disregard for the job. Meanwhile, employers aren't limited to firing you for misconduct or layoffs. You can be fired because you're just not a good fit for the team/position. In that case, you are eligible for unemployment because you didn't quit but didn't commit misconduct. If you asked to resign instead of being fired, you'd be giving up your right to collect NJUI.

I can't speak for other states, but I'd be surprised if NJ is entirely unique.

<comment><USER12> No, what he said is true in NJ and generally all over the US.

While being "fired" is commonly used by laymen as a shorthand for being laid off, the two have very different meanings in practice (and very different legal consequences).

Being "fired" in the US means a termination "for cause", where cause generally means commission of a felony, morally reprehensible acts, deception in the hiring process, or violation of rules set forth in the employee handbook.

Being "laid off" means a termination for any reason other than for cause. For example, if you are terminated because you are a "Bad fit", you have been laid off, not fired.

If you asked to resign instead of being fired, it would have not affect on your right to collect NJUI, because you wouldn't be eligible either way. No one in their right mind would choose to resign over being laid off unless the company was offering a termination bonus that exceeded the foregone UI.

<comment><USER11> I've never heard of a termination based on individual performance being called a layoff. In fact, I'm fairly certain it's defined as a termination due to factors outside the employee's control. A layoff is when the position itself no longer exists due to downsizing, restructuring, etc.

Being terminated due to poor performance or a bad fit is not a layoff, by any standard I've heard of, and some brief googling seems to support that. Terminating an employee for being a bad fit and calling it a layoff would almost certainly invite legal action.

But I'm no lawyer, so if you've got a source backing up the claim, I'd love to see it and be enlightened.

<comment><USER12> _I 've never heard of a termination based on individual performance being called a layoff. In fact, I'm fairly certain it's defined as a termination due to factors outside the employee's control. A layoff is when the position itself no longer exists due to downsizing, restructuring, etc._

You admit that you're not a lawyer, and then continue to argue about the meaning of terms which have defined legal consequences?

Your colloquial understanding of what "layoff" means is just that--a colloquial _but not correct_ understanding. A layoff is legally just a not- for-cause termination of an employee by the employer. Down-sizing is a type of termination (and a type of layoff) which usually has additional legal requirements and consequences (mostly for the company).

 _Being terminated due to poor performance or a bad fit is not a layoff, by any standard I 've heard of, and some brief googling seems to support that._

Cites needed. HR and legal sites only. You might be confusing the Canadian and EU sites that pop up as the first results as authorities on US law, which is very different. (Note: Canada _does_ define "layoff" and "termination" to mean different things. The US does not.)

 _Terminating an employee for being a bad fit and calling it a layoff would almost certainly invite legal action._

Literally anything can invite legal action in the US. But terminating an employee for being a bad fit is precisely within the meaning of "layoff" and would not result in a _successful_ legal action by the terminated employee.

 _But I 'm no lawyer, so if you've got a source backing up the claim, I'd love to see it and be enlightened. _

I charge $600/hour, if you want cites, however, Google is free if you remember to limit yourself to US sites. This ADP article ([https://www.adp.com/spark/articles/2018/09/firing- employees-...](https://www.adp.com/spark/articles/2018/09/firing-employees-vs- laying-them-off-making-the-difficult-decisions.aspx)) confusingly notes the difference between the two from a non-legal/non-HR perspective intended for layman employers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If the employee's 60-day notice was non-binding or aspirational it seems to me that their unemployment benefits should not have been cut off at the 60-day mark. Because the employee always had the option to change their mind and withdraw their notice to quit.

In the unlikely case that it was impossible for the employee's employment to extend beyond the 60-day mark after giving a 60-day notice, it seems reasonable for the unemployment benefits to be cut off at the 60-day mark.

But absent some express contract term or law, just giving notice would not prevent an employee from withdrawing notice before leaving the job.

<comment><USER8> They said the company chose not to accept their resignation notice, so the dates are void anyways. It is a firing, plain and simple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I worked at a Microsoft affiliate a few years back, and it was common knowledge that if you put in your two weeks notice, a couple of days later armed security would come and escort you out.

<comment><USER15> Other than armed security, this is common in many sectors where you will be walked out the same day. You'll get paid as expected but won't have access. It's not worth the potential data and customer risk to companies once you've stated your intent to leave.

<comment><USER16> How are you any more of a risk after you let them _know_ of your intent to leave than before you let them know? You had an intent to leave the minute you started looking for a job.

If you wanted to harm the company, you wouldn't have given them notice.

<comment><USER17> Probably comes down to HR and Corp security not taking the chance.

Obviously, if you had malicious intent, you would have ample opportunity to act before giving notice.

They just want to make sure they did what they could in case you should in fact have malicious intent. 'Oh, we escorted him off the premises within the hour; this one is not on us...'

<comment><USER14> This company was more about humiliation, they took people leaving personally, as if it was an act of betrayal. Not a good place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why in the world would you give an employer 60 days notice instead of the accepted two weeks.

<comment><USER18> Presumably because you (unlike the employer in this case) aren't a nasty person and would like to let your employer have time to hand over and tidy up tasks, hire or train a replacement and so on.

<comment><USER19> You don't owe the company you work for anything. You worked, in exchange for money. End of transaction. Two weeks is being courteous, sixty days is being ridiculous. See the comment below, where Microsoft guards escort you out two days after giving them two weeks notice. This is not unique to MS. Do companies normally give you 14-60 days to find a new job before firing you? Nope.

<comment><USER20> I don't know US laws, but in Canada you have to give an appropriate notice that can extend far beyond 2 weeks. Your loyalty obligations also extent after the employment period. For instance, a dentist who gave the usual 2 weeks had to pay 45,000$ in damage[0]. There is many more examples like that for high- skill hard-to-replace employees.

[0][https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/rgd/2006-v36-n1-rgd01560/10...](https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/rgd/2006-v36-n1-rgd01560/1027103ar.pdf)

<comment><USER19> There is definitely no law requiring you to give any notice to an employer. I can walk out right now if I want to. The only benefit of giving a company two weeks, is not burning bridges. The unfortunate situation up North seems like the classic Canadian stereotype, where you're always sorry for it somehow being your fault.

<comment><USER20> That's interesting. Up here the employer still have to prove damage in court. I can understand the reasoning. If are a the only highly specialized engineer in a small shop, quitting unexpectedly could jeopardize the whole operation and put more people out of work. But then again, maybe I'm just a stereotypical Canadian ;).

<comment><USER19> If one person leaving jeopardizes the entire company, then that sounds like a serious issue with management and the business as a whole. What if they fall ill, or die suddenly? Everyone is replaceable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have always wondered if you see a termination in the future can you trump it by submitting a 6 month resignation...

<comment><USER22> Of course you can tell them that you're leaving in 6 months. Whether or not they accept that is really up to them... I'm also not sure what resigning to avoid being terminated would get you, since, depending upon the termination reason, you would be eligible for unemployment benefits but those wouldn't apply at all if you were to resign.

<comment><USER23> Resigning allows you to answer no to "Have you ever been fired or asked to resign from any past position?" on future job applications.

<comment><USER24> I've been fired before. I'm up front about it when people ask. It's never been a problem. Not sure why this is considered a stigma unless you were really doing something wrong.

<comment><USER25> Because being fired is associated with incompetence, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> So wait this person was going to quit, but then got fired. So after getting fired they receive unemployment benefits which they would not have received otherwise (obviously they would have gotten fully paid for 60 days). But now are mad that the unemployment isn't lasting past the 60 days (in which after 60 days fired or resigned they wouldn't have gotten anything anyway). I guess I just don't understand what this plan was. Were they hoping to just milk out 60 more days worth of pay, and then travel or something. It appears there was no plan of a new postition lined up at all.

So we may not be getting a whole story here and I would like to know the whole story. Sure it seems bad by the employer, but we still are unsure of what the employee was planning here either. Maybe after 2 days of working after giving 60 days they weren't performing their duties anymore so they fired them. They could have been just hoping to get 2 months worth of pay, but been not expected to do anything since they were leaving. I can't make any assumptions, but without a full story this is impossible to judge who is truly in the wrong.

I actually once put in two weeks for a job, and then later when the CTO found out he said they didn't accept and I was asked to leave before 2 weeks. I, however, never thought of that as being fired, and I was leaving for a better position so it was no skin off my back. I just got a break between jobs I may not have had before.

<comment><USER27> Maybe he was due to vest something after those 60 days?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> >1 week before I was supposed to leave, my manager tried to sandbag me with a list of 30 tasks so that he could force me to stay

How does that work? If you don't finish them he can fire you for poor performance? I find that hard to believe.

<comment><USER13> In at least some states, being fired for incompetence (including failing to finish assigned tasks on-time) is not disqualifying for unemployment benefits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> "We do not accept your resignation."

"Well _I_ don't accept your termination!"

</comment><comment><USER30> I don't know how many tv shows I've seen that go like this:

Boss: "You're fired!" Worker: "You can't fire me, because I quit!"

I always thought that was an odd ordering.

</comment><comment><USER31> i fire people who don't work for me all the time :)</comment>