No, I still don't want to work for Google - <AUTHOR> http://infotrope.net/2012/10/29/no-i-still-dont-want-to-work-for-google/ <comment><USER3> I worked at Google for a short stint. I found the tech interview easy and I wasn't asked anything particularly ridiculous. I received a job offer shortly thereafter and accepted.

As someone who regularly interviews prospective engineers at my current gig, I see no problem with expecting candidates to arrive prepared to answer algorithm questions or questions about their strongest programming language. Ditto for someone who wishes to change assignment within their organization, however they arrived there. If you're unwilling to provide proof you're not a bozo, you're probably going to be just awful to work with as well.

However, the blind allocation policy at Google sucks, and it continues to suck. I came in as an expert in field D and therefore according to Google's magic sorting hat I ended up a natural for assignment in field Q. I tried my hand at it for several months, but as someone else has already said, bored employees quit: [http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2011/07/12/bored_peopl...](http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2011/07/12/bored_people_quit.html)

In order to avoid that fate, I futilely attempted to get reassigned to something close to field D (really, B, C, E, or F would have been just peachy) and that seemingly got me flagged as trouble internally. Shortly thereafter, I got a higher offer to go somewhere else and left.

However, unlike the author of this post, while Google recruiters regularly stalk my linkedin profile, none of them ever contact me, which is good.

<comment><USER4> I don't follow why being an "expert" in D would make you "bored" of Q. If Q is simply a boring field to you, that's one thing (and the appropriate response is to quit and find something better). But it's not your employer's job to give you your dream assignment. If they need Q geeks and you're available, then that's what you're stuck with. That's what being an employee is all about.

<comment><USER5> As if geeks are so interchangeable like sprockets! I'm an expert in my field, I have a PhD in it, if someone asked me to do machine learning or data mining or image processing, it would be a huge ramp up time for me, say about 2 or 3 years to get to the point of expertise I have in my current field. It would be a boring 2-3 years, and something that I'm probably not very interested in. If there are other jobs out there that make use of my expertise and interest, why bother with something else?

<comment><USER6> why would you be bored learning something new?

<comment><USER7> One of the things I disliked about Google was the tyranny of At Google. If you didn't do it At Google, it doesn't count. You don't really know the first thing about anything unless you did it At Google. It's an extreme case of institutional arrogance.

This explains the blind allocation policy. If knowledge that is not At Google doesn't count, then there's no point in matching people with their expertise or interests, because a Noogler by definition doesn't know _anything_.

In July 2011, I did some research on the strategy of the Google+ Games team and saw that the going plan was doomed to failure and seriously risked such embarrassment as to kill the entire product. (Lots of Zyngarbage, preferential treatment to mainstream publishers.) I had some domain expertise from designing a game and spending a lot of time hanging around game designers. So it was pretty easy for me to come up with a strategy that had a damn good chance of actually succeeding. I posted it internally and got a huge amount of engineer support. The strategy was to establish a quality-centered community first by providing a platform for independent developers, integrate it with Hangouts, and become a center for the "German-style" board game sphere. The high quality starting community would establish G+ Games as cognitively upscale, creating a comparative brand advantage that would persist in perpetuity.

By the way, the Google+ Games engineers also got wind of what I'd been proposing and they supported me. It was as obvious as it can be to humans (obviously, no one can predict the future) that this strategy would work. I got a ridiculous number of emails from engineers telling me that I was right on and that they wished they were implementing "Real Games" instead of giving ridiculous preferential treatment to mainstream publishers (who were throwing us mediocre product because they didn't expect us to succeed). What got me in trouble was that a lot of high-level people didn't like that an FNG had so much engineer support.

I was a recognized domain expert, but not an At Google domain expert. There were no At Google games experts, because Google had never gone into the Games space before (and that's smart, because Google did extremely well on web search by being ideologically non-editorial, but for the games space _quality_ is so damn important that you _must_ be editorial.) So it came down to politics, because Google's At-Google bias rendered it incapable of recognizing domain expertise and discovering a correct decision.

Finally I got an email to the effect of, "domain expertise isn't relevant here, deal with it. Besides, you're only a SWE 3." Well, fuck you very much. I don't see why job titles matter when you're about to lose millions of dollars and would have been _making_ as much had you listened to me.

A year later, I was proven right, but it doesn't matter in the least. Google+ Games is a non-concern, and I'm not a part of Google.

The lesson I learned from that ordeal is not to try to "save" a company from itself because you can't. You'll be seen as right, and possibly even lionized, long after you leave... but it won't matter in the least. Keep your head down, stay employed, and enjoy the middle-row seat to the show-- that "show" being the people in charge making fools of themselves.

<comment><USER8> Again, None of what you are saying seems to be a problem only at Google. These are really MegaCorp problems, and they apply to Google as well.

I knew even from the beginning even 5-6 years earlier, when there was immense desperateness among geeks to work there. It was only a matter of time when all MegaCorp problems will eventually plague Google.

<comment><USER9> > It was only a matter of time when all MegaCorp problems will eventually > plague Google.

this is really interesting - what is the cause of all these problems?

Is it inherent in a hierarchical organization? Is it because you have people who are responsible for the output of others (a manager), but isn't able to actually control that output directly, but is only able to indirectly affect it (and not very well at that)?

I think this issue of "control" is central. Facebook and valve seems to have their structure right (at least, the engineering department). But both is still young and small.

<comment><USER7> Open allocation seems to have one drawback. You still _do_ need (a few) managers and executives (not to order people around, but to keep track of the bigger picture) but it's hard to hire managers from outside into an open- allocation shop because typically they want promises of authority, and OA is directed through leadership rather than intimidation.

Most companies move toward the closed-allocation end of the spectrum because they perceive a need to do so in executive recruiting. Most executives don't want to take a position where they won't have the power to unilaterally fire people.

<comment><USER10> Regrettably rhetorical question: And this is not a useful filtering function for most of the executives you'd want to hire?

A company _must_ be able to fire people (I've been in ones that went down the drain because the founders were too nice to do this, or at least do it soon enough), but this sure sounds like Lord Acton's " _Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely._ "

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Back in 2007 I got quite far through the Google hiring process, up to an on- site interview and being told to expect an offer the Thursday after I returned home. I was ready to move half-way across the country and get started living in the bay area, moving my life to there.

That Thursday came and went, and I found out that due to some internal bar- raising I would not be receiving an offer. I stayed here in the Detroit area, moved up with my current company, married my wife, and settled into being quite happy here.

Five years on I regularly have Google recruiters contacting me both via phone and email, asking if I'm interested in a position, and exclaiming how good the interview feedback was. When I decline to revisit any opportunity which would require me to move across the country, the recruiters are universally flabbergasted.

Sorry Google, the time when I was excited to move across the country has passed. I still want to do interesting things, I'll just do them on my terms now.

<comment><USER12> I always thought that strange too. I get a fair number of recruiter emails, and almost all of them seem to assume out of hand that relocation is the least of my concerns, when it probably _easily_ the #1 thing. Every reply I give[1] ends up being a cheeky way of mentioning that I have a _life and a home_ in a place and I do not intend to abandon it for a mere job.

Perhaps my current job isn't the most interesting thing in the world, but I love my coworkers, my family, my friends, my little town. That's a lot for a job offer to compete with.

[1] <http://simonsarris.com/blog/626-why-i-love-recruiters>

<comment><USER13> Let's hope you can afford to do that for many years to come. When the choice is between relocating or unemployment, an average job offer suddenly gets much more interesting.

Unfortunately, here in Europe things are starting to change for the worse.

<comment><USER14> > Unfortunately, here in Europe things are starting to change for the worse.

For very geographically specific values of "Europe". Lots of places are on the contrary seeing things improving. Europe isn't a single entity.

<comment><USER13> If a growth rate of 0.5% for the EU is not a good indicator of an economic slowdown, then you must be talking about Europa, Jupiter's moon. I know that EU < Europe, but we're talking about almost all of Europe's greatest economies here.

Yes, I know some countries are doing better than others and that in some places unemployment is even decreasing, but taking into account the fact that Spain is on the verge of bankruptcy and countries such as France and Italy are being hit by austerity, I see no reason for optimism.

<comment><USER14> Averages across hundreds of millions of people easily mask that substantial areas and sectors are thriving. Yes, it sucks if you're in low level jobs in the weaker markets. If you're in other sectors and markets you will instead be hounded by recruiters. The place I currently work, we have to be lightning quick when hiring these days, because the candidates we want get snapped up within a couple of days.

<comment><USER13> And does that make the european crisis a localized thing? If any, such anecdotal evidence shows us that it is possible for a company to thrive even in the worst of scenarios (which is a positive thing, I agree), but extrapolating any macroeconomic data from that makes no sense.

Even considering that there are sectors that don't suffer as much (or even get some benefit) from this crisis and that you're working in one of those, everyone will be worse off in the long run. Or is your job the only thing in the economy that influences your well-being?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Key quote.

 _Since I've been out of the Silicon-Valley-centred tech industry, I've become increasingly convinced that it's morally bankrupt and essentially toxic to our society. Companies like Google and Facebook — in common with most public companies — have interests that are frequently in conflict with the wellbeing of — I was going to say their customers or their users, but I'll say "people" in general, since it's wider than that. People who use their systems directly, people who don't — we're all affected by it, and although some of the outcomes are positive a disturbingly high number of them are negative: the erosion of privacy, of consumer rights, of the public domain and fair use, of meaningful connections between people and a sense of true community, of beauty and care taken in craftsmanship, of our very physical wellbeing. No amount of employee benefits or underfunded Google.org projects can counteract that._

<comment><USER16> Google has historically both been reliant on fair use and the public domain and has defended such in court. I'm not saying they did it out of altruism, but substantial precedents that help solidify fair use come out of Google's activities in court.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Please don't propagate the myth that Google asks prospective programmers questions like, "How many golf balls could you fit on a bus?" Google interviewers list the questions they asked when they write up their conclusions, and anyone who asked a question like that for an engineering interview would be immediately contacted by the hiring commitee and told not to do it again.

<comment><USER18> Google was well known for logic brain teasers like that in years past - <USER2> was a time when Google recruitment was _defined_ by such questions.

They've since stopped, and sadly it looks like Microsoft has taken up the mantle for stupid irrelevant logic questions.

<comment><USER19> Were they well known for it because they did it, or because people assumed they did it? An awful lot of people immediately jump to "stupid brain teasers" when hearing "they ask technical questions". I have people write code and solve actual problems during interviews, and have gotten several "these kinds of riddles are a waste of time" responses from people who are offended by the notion that I want them to be competent.

<comment><USER18> From my limited anecdotes of the time, I believe Google actually did it. We're not talking about programming-related brain teasers here, we're talking about non-programming ones.

e.g., "3 light bulbs in a room" and "family crossing the bridge" being the classic examples.

<comment><USER20> Never heard the family crossing the bridge one. Which one is that?

<comment><USER18> You have a bridge that can only take a certain amount of weight at once without collapsing. It's dark at night and you have only one flashlight. A flashlight is required to cross the bridge, which is traversable in both directions.

You have a family of people of varying weights (the exact numbers you'd have to look up) - determine the optimal way for the family to make it across the bridge.

<comment><USER20> Thanks. I don't think that's a bad one. In fact, like the Towers of Hanoi, I think it has enough parallels with computer science and engineering to be a good interview question.

<comment><USER21> Indeed, it is a specific instance of <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I may be making the problem worse but both this post and the comments section are some of the worst I've seen on HN -- from linkbaity title to incorrect possessive pronouns (I barely speak English and caught it while skimming), and then the deep analysis of anonymity on G+ completely based on one or two anecdotes with no relation to G+, anonymity, or even the Internet.

Why is this submission at 80 upvotes? What value am I missing that others are seeing?

<comment><USER23> Some of what Google does is tech industry gospel - for example things like technical interviews. When there's faults with it, that's relevant to my interests, as I might want to avoid their mistakes at my own company.

That's why I found the article interesting, at any rate.

<comment><USER19> >When there's faults with it, that's relevant to my interests, as I might want to avoid their mistakes at my own company.

Same here, except that is why I found the article to be a crappy, linkbait, waste of time. It wasn't about mistakes in google's hiring process, it was a personal rant about what the author dislikes about google.

<comment><USER24> You're not providing much value with your comment yourself. I thought it was an interesting personal story of what can happen the company you work for gets acquired by a large company. Just because it's not "top 10 hiring mistakes" doesn't make it uninteresting. The comments also include far more insight than usual into things that aren't necessarily found elsewhere.

<comment><USER25> How would he provide value on top of something that he perceives of not having any itself?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I tried, but I found that I can't really identify with the plights of some. Thankfully (for reasons I'd rather not be challenged to justify, except to say that it's apparently good as measured by others) I'm a fairly normal white guy with no marginal traits that might cause me to have different viewpoints than I currently do.

This means that I support the notion real names on Google Plus, and I also believe that all speech should be free, but that you should also have the courage to attach your name to it. Yes, I understand that there are reasonable circumstances in which that would not be ideal, but perhaps due to my aforementioned luxury of being a 'normal' white male, I am ignorant to how much they would matter in real life. I am neither queer nor gender-queer, so while I am empathetic to their struggles, I just can't identify with what are possibly very real concerns about losses of anonymity, and as I've met people who are public with their genderqueer status who haven't been assailed or assaulted, I can't help but wonder if the fear isn't simply perceived fear or not.

Regardless, aside from that (which again, I empathy with, but cannot relate to) the only other thing I took issue with in the article was the categorization of the autonomous vehicle as a 'geek toy'. It isn't, and that marginalizes an entire category of technology that has a very real possibility of changing the world in a very positive way to 'something SV types are wasting money on', which I take issue with.

<comment><USER27> > I am ignorant to how much they would matter in real life. I am neither queer > nor gender-queer, so while I am empathetic to their struggles, I just can't > identify with what are possibly very real concerns about losses of > anonymity, and as I've met people who are public with their genderqueer > status who haven't been assailed or assaulted, I can't help but wonder if > the fear isn't simply perceived fear or not.

I live in an Eastern-European country, which also happens to be an EU-member. One of my (female) colleagues told me how two or tree years ago she happened to see a trans-gendered person (I don't know what's the politically correct term) who had just been beaten up during that year's GayFest. "Blood was pouring out of his/her wounds", was what my colleague told us.

That's why I down-votted you, btw, which I only do once every 2-3 months on HN. Not because I don't agree with you, which should not be reasons for down- votting people anyway, but because you kind of choose to view things through very narrow lenses, which is what the article was writing about all the way.

<comment><USER28> I think you chose an exceptionally poor reason to downvote him. You downvoted him because you disagree with his views ("view things through very narrow lenses"), which is different from downvoting him because you disagree with him only in phrasing.

Downvotes should be for comments that do not add to the discussion. Considering that most of the comments here are in response to him, his comment clearly added to the discussion.

<comment><USER29> Downvotes are for disagreements, too.

<comment><USER30> That just sounds like an easy way to rationalize your counterargument while avoiding being shown the error in your thinking. If a comment is worth disagreeing over, it is worth explaining why you disagree, otherwise nobody learns anything. Save your voting for the quality of the writing, not the arguments being made.

<comment><USER29> No, actually it has been discussed elsewhere in other comment threads that downvotes are used for showing disagreement, as well. I didn't come up with this myself; rather, it seems to be convention on the HN community.

If you disagree with this, please feel free to downvote this comment. This isn't reddit, or YouTube comments, where karma is some sort of aspect of prestige. It should be freely given and taken away as part of the natural discourse.

<comment><USER31> I once thought downvoting as disagreement was disapproved-of (as I would prefer), but in fact it is not: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2164087>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> One thing I can't stand is "recruiters" who invite you to come interview with them. Oh, great, you "invite" me to come torture myself for months on end just so I can have a snowball's chance in hell at getting a job? This is 2012. If you want to learn about me, go on my website and read my blog posts, look at my current projects, and download my resumé.

If you think I'm so great, make me an offer. Don't spam my inbox with "We're Hiring!" e-mails.

<comment><USER33> As someone who does a fair amount of hiring, I would never hire someone off the strength of their (supposed) work alone. The ability to problem solve under pressure and their ability to communicate effectively with others are really important factors I won't get from looking at their Github account.

<comment><USER32> I agree in situations where the candidates are the ones doing the outreach. However, what I'm saying is that I don't want to be recruited by a company unless they've actually heard of me before and think my work is on par with what they want. It's bullshit to me to be spammed by a company that claims you'd be great with their team, only to be dumped into the same candidate pool as 800 other applicants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I was interviewing at a startup in the Bay Area and the CEO insisted that since "being surrounded by people smarter than me and getting better at what I do" was a huge driver for my professional life, I'd be better served by working at Google.

I did not understand that then, and I don't understand it now. I don't blame the guy for saying that I guess, and maybe he's right. That said I don't want to work at a megacorp doing software engineering, even if that megacorp is Google. It's just not for me.

<comment><USER35> I worked at two startups and founded one before joining Google, and I have a friend that's been bouncing between working for and founding startups since he's left Google. I understand what the CEO was saying.

In a startup, there's a lot of grunt work that has to be done and there's nobody to do it, and so you frequently end up taking on a lot of tasks that really don't teach you anything. In a big company like Google, a lot of that work is automated, or there's a dedicated team of people who _like_ doing that work, and you can just forget about it. Think about carrying pagers, repairing hardware, corporate IT, installing software, setting up your workstation, doing logs analysis, cooking for you, etc.

It's less of a problem early on in your career when everything's new for you, particularly if you eventually want to found a startup where you have to do all that stuff anyway. A lot of engineers really want to be top of their field, though: they want to be the world expert in machine-learning, or in extraction of data from news articles, or in distributed parallel processing, and so on. You typically don't have the opportunity to do that in a startup, because you have to focus on the immediate business needs and on staying alive rather than on pushing the state of the art forwards. "Good enough" has to be good enough in a startup.

<comment><USER34> Interesting perspective. But like you said, at this point in my career I _want_ to know how to do all this stuff. Thankfully I'm in a position where I get/have to do basically everything, so I'm getting very broad experience.

There are specific areas where I want to focus -- search, data analysis, infrastructure -- and my next job I'll probably be looking for a focus in one or more of those areas (each of which Google would be a good option but without a degree and at my age I doubt I'd get hired). Be that as it may, I really, really don't want to work in a huge organization. I hate bureaucracy, central authority, people I never see in the organization making policy for me, etc. I spent my entire adult life in the military up til a couple years ago. I think that has something to do with it.

edit: This comment really crystallizes the type of thing I want to avoid, which means eschewing employment at Google, IBM, Microsoft,etc: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4713802>

>Those were (are?) the designations for certain types of jobs over there. You might think that if you're hired into the company, your possibilities are wide open, but they aren't. System administrator flavored SREs (site reliability engineers) could only get other SA-flavored jobs, of which there are relatively few. Meanwhile, software engineer (SWE) type SREs could go into any other SWE job, of which there are many. If you were hired on as a SA-SRE as I was, then you have to do an internal interview to get to be a SWE-SRE. If you can't make it through that, you're stuck. I made it, and a friend did too, but I know people who didn't. I'm sure that makes them feel great, especially if they're already doing SWE type work in their daily jobs. I was told repeatedly there was no difference between the types, but found out the hard way when it was time to transfer from a toxic situation and there were few alternatives. It took over a year to finally get it all sorted out.

<comment><USER35> Again, YMMV. I was hired as a UI SWE, told my manager (repeatedly) that I wanted to do more backend algorithmic work, eventually refused to do any more UI work, then taught myself enough about Google Search's backend systems that I became known as a full-stack engineer that knows everything. It probably delayed my promotion by about a year, but it was worth it, and it's not like anyone stopped me.

I'm now doing basically product-manager type work, despite officially being a SWE. Again, nobody stops me. I've found that if you're producing stuff of value, you can basically move into another role simply by doing the work entailed by that role. I know two other SWEs that are de-facto PMs, and one SRE who became a SWE (and core LLVM contributor in the process).

<comment><USER36> At google, you are thrust into a new environment, you are but a naked noogler, and your past a distant memory. Old, young, female, male, fat, skinny, likes sports, hates sports, prefers sushi, blah de dah, shut the hell up, no one gives a shit. It doesn't matter until you have proven yourself.

A lot of problems come from when nooglers expect the world to do their bidding, but have nothing to show for it. At the end of the day, profit matters, lines of code matter, cleaning up and maintaining code matter, how much you help your coworkers matter, these things lead to you creating new features, these things matter and increase profitability, but you wouldn't know which new shit to add if you didn't earn your licks. Do your job, then improve things around you while doing your job, then we talk.

Before I came to google, I was very successful, making kick ass fast, scalable systems, doing the job of many people, bringing glory to my managers but not to me.. Didn't matter though because for years I studied coding from what I would call masters, taking my licks, being humble and learning from anyone and anything. I didn't mention my past to my new team members at google.. Some of them ridiculed me at the first site of any minor bug I introduced, but inside I laughed like an insane hobo. The years of shit code I have refactored, bugs that drove me insane because they had to be fixed and no one else wanted or could tackle them.. I endured, so with a silent knowing I set out to rip apart the hearts of my naysayers with a blood curdling smile.

Now I'm being promoted while those who ridiculed me are not, they in fact respect me and head my advice, usually because when they don't, they get ridiculed when their code is the source of design problems.

What you did before google matters, not in how much you boast about it, but in that it gives you the skills to rise above the rest. Otherwise, you're just a blowhard talking about the olden' days that no one gives a shit about.

In that way, I have found that google is a meritocracy, with people challenging each other, making everyone better, and it's something I never got at a previous employer. Before google, employers just took advantage of me. So, yeah, I would defend google to the death and recommend it to anyone who isn't a whining wimp.

<comment><USER34> Is this a joke? I don't get it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The one thing I took away that really is a pain in the ass is recruiters hitting people up and asking them to apply. If a recruiter reaches out, in my opinion, they should already consider the person in question a genuinely attractive candidate and should be asking for a little more info, not asking them to start at step 0, they can do that on their own if they decide to.

</comment><comment><USER38> Like many people I have issues with Google. But let's not be silly about things I'd still love to work there.

Not out of any particular fanboyism, but because I've worked at plenty of places that are _not_ Google, and the normal day-to-day in a place like a large defense contractor are categorically worse than even the worst nightmare scenario I've ever heard about working at Google.

<comment><USER39> I think almost anything is better than a giant defense contractor. I had a friend who worked at the place she called "the bomb factory" (in a completely innocuous IT role) and her stories were universally depressing.

<comment><USER35> I have a friend who worked at General Dynamics for about 5 years and really enjoyed it. At least up until all the people he respected and liked working with quit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Interviews should go both ways. If the interviewer asks you for a "pop quiz" algorithm question you studied in college and forgot about it ever since, you should throw a "pop quiz" question back at them. Not for spite, but if they expect you to know the answer to their question you should expect that they know the answers to your question.

<comment><USER41> Depending on tone, I would treat a candidate who does this as either "really awesome" or "really an asshole." YMMV.

<comment><USER40> The tone is a major player here. :) But every candidate has the right to know who'll they be working with on a daily basis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I was with this post until I got to:

"Over time, I've come to consider that this situation is irremediable, given our current capitalist system and all its inequalities. To fix it, we're going to need to work on social justice and rethinking how we live and work and relate to each other."

Give me a break. Socialism isn't going to fix anything. Have you seen Europe recently? Capitalism and Democracy are the worst solutions for economies and governments, except for all of the others that have been tried. America and capitalism have given more opportunities to help people grow out of poverty into success than anything else in the world. If you think you are entitled to something, you're wrong. Get off your ass and do something productive and go take that thing you think you're entitled to. If you are sitting on your couch watching tv, the only thing you are entitled to is being overweight.

<comment><USER43> The US actually lags behind most of western Europe and Canada in social mobility. Especially among the poorest.

"European Socialism" is not that different from the US. In Europe you may get free child care, health care, etc. and industries that the government likes get subsidies. In the US, this assistance comes in the form of tax cuts. Tax exemptions for employers who pay for health care, the child tax credit, tax deductions for favored industries, etc. Including tax expenditures, the US spends more on social welfare than most of western Europe while doing a poorer job of ensuring it reaches the right people.

<comment><USER42> I find much of that to be a huge waste of money. Why are we encouraging people to have kids with a tax credit? There were a lot of people in my hometown on welfare who would have more kids because you get more food stamps and welfare than what the kid would cost them. Brilliant. We are subsidizing terrible parents bringing kids into poverty because these idiots want more food stamps.

Just because things are done a certain way doesn't mean it's a good idea. It certainly isn't a capitalist idea to have favored industries with subsidies or tax credits. America is far from being a pure capitalist society. It's a bastardization of capitalism and socialism, and while I may not be in the majority, I'd prefer pure capitalism over what we've become.

I'm all for helping people who can't help themselves, but I'd prefer it be done in the private sector. I give more to charity than I pay in taxes, and the money I give does far more good than food stamps and welfare ever will. If I didn't have that money wasted on taxes (note I don't think it all is, just a lot of it. i.e. roads are a good thing, military, etc.), I could give a lot more to the places I think are more worthy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 I think it's fairly obvious from all of these stories about the Google recruiting process - being pestered fairly regular by different people who appear unaware or indifferent to your past experiences with Google, either as an employee/contractor/failed candidate - that the recruiters have some sort of quota system and need to keep feeding potential candidates into the interview process to meet their own metrics. Hence why a lot of times it seems like someone is being contacted out of the blue based upon an "online profile" that someone stumbled upon through desperate-seeming research.

<comment><USER44> Correct! This is the main source of external Google HR issues. When there is a certain stretched goal to hire X number of people, this sort of situation tends to happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> >The very day after I blogged about that, my Google+ account was suspended, for using the name I was almost universally known by. Over the next couple of months, I campaigned tirelessly for Google+ to change its policies, working with the EFF and other advocates. My work was covered in Wired, The Atlantic, and a number of other mainstream press outlets. Obviously this was to no avail...

FYI, this policy has changed: [https://plus.google.com/u/0/+BradleyHorowitz/posts/SM5RjubbM...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/+BradleyHorowitz/posts/SM5RjubbMmV)

<comment><USER46> Note that they still want to have your "real" name in addition to the name that you're known by. The article says:

"Over the next week, we'll be adding support for alternate names – be they nicknames, birth names, or names in another script – _alongside your common name_."

So someone who is afraid of revealing their true identity still can't use Google+.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I am curious about responses to skud's call for seeking social justice, it doesn't seem to be addressed here. Personally, I don't have a formed opinion on it...

</comment><comment><USER48> I'm totally with the author here, I just wish we could also include some of the other large companies like Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER49> She is building a social network for hobbyist gardeners. Apparently this is what humanity needs more than geek toys like self-driving cars and augmented reality sunglasses.

<comment><USER50> That's a bizarre critique. It's just more likely she would be working on youtube ad code than self-driving cars or augmented reality sunglasses, which most people would consider less constructive than a social network.

Additionally, I think many people would consider Facebook more valuable than augmented reality sunglasses. If we're going to only build things that humanity "needs", we're going to needlessly limit our scope and put many people out of jobs. After all, our needs are considerably less than our wants.

<comment><USER51> The original article specifically mentions self-driving cars and augmented reality sunglasses as "geek toys", FYI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> So here's my experience with Google's recruiting process.

I exchanged a few mails with the recruiter, who offered a SWE position. Then two telephone interviews followed (with the recruiter and extensive interview with some developer), then they arranged an on-site interview. Apparently the 2nd tech phone interview wasn't needed.

For the on-site interview I got some paper-mail, where the position had been changed to SRE.. So I'm thinking to myself.. right, this is going to be interesting.

So I show up on-site, and 5 interviews follow, with a ~1hr lunch break in the middle. The 1st guy who interviewed me was a bit pompous [hey, he had a PhD!], but OK; the 2nd and 3rd guys were extremely arrogant; the 4th guy (my supposed team-leader) seemed to have had a bad day but was otherwise OK; the 5th guy was the ONLY with whom I felt I could build accord and have an engaging conversation. With him, it didn't feel like an "interview"; we were more like two equals talking about an interesting technical topic.

The guy who I had lunch with was... interesting. Suffice it to say that I had the impression that he was on the verge of explicitly telling me NOT to take the position I was interviewed for. (As in, crappy job and crappy place to live in.)

They tried to impress me with how every employee gets two big screens, a laptop of their own choice, how big systems they're working with, how good the food in cantina was, the fancy office space, etc.. Their attitude was in general as if they were interviewing a teenager whose "wet dream" was to work for google.

I never found out what kind of project I would be working on. Everybody's attitude during the interview was "you ask, and we'll tell you if it's not confidential". The SRE position was briefly described as "root on google.com".

It turned out that I'd also be required to be periodically on-call (since the position went from SWE to SRE underway), and that the people I'd be working with would be the same people who interviewed me.

So I got an offer, a contract came in paper-post and I found out that I'd only be having ~15 workdays of paid vacation per year. Incidentally, in the country I was supposed to move to, it was allowed by the law to work NNN hours _unpaid_ overtime per year... Guess whether NNN matched (or maybe was even greater!) than the number of paid vacation days.

I didn't take the offer, and it turned out to be a damn good choice.

I'm rather sure that somebody without other hobbies or desires to have some free time to spend on things other than computers would have had a different subjective experience.

[This post is deliberately vague about some details in order not to reveal too much about the persons involved.]

</comment><comment><USER53> The last recruiter I talked to was hilarious. Like the author here, I pulled my Linkedin profile and I feel like I am fairly hard to find. However, I have a food blog and I guess I might have mentioned some tech stuff there. So this recruiter calls me and starts talking to me about food, I guess as a way to get me interested, but he totally and hilariously botches it because it's pretty clear he knows nothing about it. I told him "You live in one of the best food cities in the world, so even if you aren't looking to recruit you should to to these restaurants/food purveyors." I sent him a list of them and told him I wasn't interested in a job.

</comment><comment><USER54> at least you aren't bitter about it :)

<comment><USER55> I'd call that more justifiable anger than bitterness.

<comment><USER56> I agree. Google should have done their homework before contacting a past employee (including contractors). Google as a large organization should know why people left their company and the context of situations around it. Some employees aren't vocal about it, but I don't think this is the case.

<comment><USER57> At risk of being callous, why should they? If an employee already dislikes a company to the point that a recruitment letter angers them, why should the company go out the way to accommodate them? The amount of effort it would take to throughly research every recruitment letter recipent seems like it would be a largely pointless endeavor with minimal returns. Most people aren't going react negatively to an email feeler and the ones that do are already a lost cause.

<comment><USER58> >At risk of being callous, why should they? If an employee already dislikes a company to the point that a recruitment letter angers them, why should the company go out the way to accommodate them?

So that they don't write blog posts like the one we are commenting on? So they don't actively try to convince other (possibly talented) potential employees to ignore your recruiting efforts?

The entire comments section here seems to be "is Google a horrible company to work for and does Google+ suck, or are they merely ok?" If you're looking for new talent, wouldn't you rather have prospective employees asking "is Google a fantastic company to work for or an outstanding company to work for?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> If you're really, really serious about getting them to stop bothering you, accept an offer from them but then don't show up for work.

</comment><comment><USER60> TL;DR: Worked at Metaweb which was acquired by Google to develop for Google+. Left within a year because of a disagreement over policy against pseudonymity and the affect it has on victims of harassment. Received email from Google years later offering job.

</comment><comment><USER61> I've been turned off by Google's recruiting style as well. I don't understand why the current state of tech recruiting is to blast out (almost) generic recruiting emails to everyone. It feels like this style of recruiting should have gone away by now.

P.S. I just wrote a blurb about this last week: [http://robdotrob.com/post/33737357324/recruiting-for- bigco-p...](http://robdotrob.com/post/33737357324/recruiting-for-bigco-please- try-harder)

</comment><comment><USER62> As a side question, is it common practice for Google to hire people using employment contracts with fixed terms? Is there an underclass of employees who join as a result of an acquisition, but who have expiration dates?

</comment><comment><USER63> Fascinating article. A truly unique voice and perspective, although after reading all the comments and reviews, maybe their is a groundswell here!? Nonetheless, thanks for opening one brain, and keep on keepin' on!

</comment><comment><USER64> Megacorps self-destruct eventually.

</comment><comment><USER65> Strangely, the link is blocked by BlueCoat at my workplace. Can someone pastebin the text?

</comment><comment><USER66> Man, I just wish a big company like Google was interested in me, but since I just mostly suck at everything that will never happen.

</comment><comment><USER67> Ah, the Hacker News brag. Nice.

</comment><comment><USER68> Oh wow, I have not seen such a self-important wall of text in ages. Pull yourself together.

</comment><comment><USER69> Hi, can anyone pls post a mirror? I am unable to access this from work. Thanks in advance.

</comment><comment><USER70> I agree with you on the unnecessary puzzle solving. I don't even solve Sudoku. How can I even come up with a reasonable solution in 45 minute? The only puzzle I ever solved with C++ and Java was minesweeper and it took me a month in each language. I do think algorithm design problems like fitting 1 million 8 digits into 1 M ram is an OKAY question. Google's scale is big, and they want to test you how quickly you can arrive an OKAY solution in 45 minutes, even if it's wrong.

<comment><USER71> Dude if you can really solve minesweeper, publish the paper and become famous and rich, because that shit is NP-complete.

[http://www.cs.montana.edu/courses/spring2004/spring2004/curr...](http://www.cs.montana.edu/courses/spring2004/spring2004/current/513/resources/minesweeper.pdf)

<comment><USER72> NP-complete problems aren't impossible, they just get very computationally expensive the bigger they get.

OP would only be rich & famous if they had developed an algorithm that solved minesweeper in polynomial or better time. (i.e., a time complexity on the order of O(n^k), where k is some constant)

Many NP-Complete problems are trivially solvable, just not trivially solvable in an efficient manner. - like the Travelling Salesman Problem. You can just try every possible combination. It's not fast, but it works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Yes, it's probably somewhat frustrating to be laid off by Google and then later receive recruiting emails. But Google is a big company. The right hand doesn't always know what the left is doing. Or maybe the recruiter thinks you really do want to come back to the fold. Who knows.

It's pretty unfair to blast Google for "eroding" the public domain, fair use, and consumer rights. Google has been a champion of all three of those things, unlike some other companies I could name.

Does it really matter if Google+ doesn't support anonymous comments? It's not like there's a shortage of places online to make anonymous remarks.

</comment><comment><USER74> Just another dreamer.

<comment><USER75> affirmative!!</comment></comment>


He made something lots of people want: "Adobe Hires Co-Inventor of Image Resizer Technology" - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/28/adobe-hires-co-inventor-of-image-resizer-technology/ <comment><USER2> _Hires?_

<comment><AUTHOR> It would be hard to make a startup from the idea. The video everyone linked had enough information for me to make a free version. Open ideas that are features rather than products make bad startups, right?

The question is how much else he could do on his own vs. at adobe.

<comment><USER3> You really think you could have duplicated his work from that video? He didn't get into the math and I assume that was the hard part.

<comment><USER4> Maybe I'm just being extremely naive, but I think I could implement it based on the description given in the video and some experimentation. The elegance and simplicity of their algorithm as they described it in the video is pretty damn impressive.

My real question is how carefully they had to select the source images for that demo. How well does that algorithm work on any random image?

<comment><USER5> It seems like it would work a lot better for a picture of a beach than one of my living room. The resized image of the woman and the baby has screwed up anatomy (even after the face is fixed).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> success is being able to do what you want: if he's an image-geek, working with the premier image software company might be a real plus for him/her. i don't see many people hassling norvig for be 'hired' by google...</comment>


How we track API requests with MixPanel and Gearman - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nodesocket.com/how-we-tracking-api-requests-with-mixpanel-an

<comment><USER2> Couldn't you just hit the MixPanel API after the response has been flushed? It means responses are returned as fast as normal and you don't up the complexity of the whole thing by introducing other processes and potentially bottlenecking queues.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, we could echo the response, then call the MixPanel cURL request, but still our API requests would continue blocking waiting for the cURL request to MixPanel to complete. We want API requests to complete as quick as possible. Also, if ever MixPanel's API went down, our API requests would quickly back up, as cURL requests to MixPanel timed out (10 seconds).

<comment><USER3> And Gearman takes care of re-trying failed tasks for you, too. I just wish there was a good web interface available without having to roll my own (there's <https://github.com/brianlmoon/GearmanManager>, but it requires php- pcntl rather than the supervisord setup)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Live Reloading WebGL Shaders - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mattdesl/shader-reload/# <comment><USER2> Shaders are a good use case for live reloading because their output is discarded 60 times per second, and nothing depends on that output except our eyes and brains.

<comment><USER3> You can feed the output of a shader back into a shader, even itself, to have it feed into itself over time, but yes.</comment></comment>


LLVM-tutor: collection of out-of-tree LLVM examples for teaching and learning - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/banach-space/llvm-tutor <comment><USER2> It looks as though this is largely a copy of other people's work with comments added and no attribution. That is a bit odd.

[https://github.com/nsumner/llvm-demo](https://github.com/nsumner/llvm-demo)

<comment><USER3> Odd, indeed. MIT is just about the easiest license to comply with. I've put in a PR to fix this issue.

<comment> jagged-chisel Your issue was deleted and your PR closed without explanation or merging.</comment></comment></comment>


How to Choose a New Programming Language - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nickcox.me/2014/06/14/how-to-choose-a-new-programming-language/

<comment><USER2> When I started Scala, mature jvm and wide libraries were the main reason. But out of many other jvm languages Scala became winner because of its mixture of oop and functional. And those Actors. The best thing about Scala, it still surprises me with kind of stuffs we can do (scalaz). Most other language I find very limited or less encouraging.</comment>


How to trick your Facebook friends into reading your political opinions - <AUTHOR> http://fusion.net/story/340971/how-to-trick-your-facebook-friends-into-reading-your-political-opinions/ <comment><USER2> Use click bait titles like this one?</comment>


F.B.I. Agents Faced Arrest and Ruin After Trying to Conceive a Child - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/28/us/politics/fbi-matt-litton-fertility.html <comment><USER2> Live by the sword, die by the sword. They're just lucky they weren't prosecuted under 18 U.S.C. 1001 for making false statements to the government.

</comment><comment><USER3> An agent's secrets -any secrets- (including "embarrassing" medical information) represent a security vulnerability that can be used to blackmail them. If he doesn't understand that, he has no business being an FBI Agent.</comment>


Show HN: Snitch.io – SSL auditing and alerting - <AUTHOR> https://snitch.io/ <comment><USER2> I think you're trying to solve a non-problem since the company that sells the certificates warns you (sometimes even more than those intervals), afterall, they want you to renew as well. As for checking for quality, that should be the sys admin task or the webmaster. good luck though!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback but I strongly disagree and I think recent history supports that CAs don't do much for you once they've collected your payment.

CAs won't alert you if someone breaks into your server and replaces your certificate. They won't alert if you if you accidentally push a config change and start serving the wrong certificate to customers... And they certainly will not alert you if you are using a revoked certificate in production.

I've bought multiple certificates from different reputable vendors - I only ever got one Heartbleed notice. (This pattern repeats itself)

Many shops don't have a dedicated admin / webmaster auditing their certificates and even those that do have had public issues (Akamai, Apple, GitHub, Stripe...etc)

The value in a service like Snitch is that we worry about your SSL certificates. Many people don't have the interest or time in rolling their home grown monitoring of this stuff...

<comment><USER2> "CAs won't alert you if someone breaks into your server and replaces your certificate. They won't alert if you if you accidentally push a config change and start serving the wrong certificate to customers... And they certainly will not alert you if you are using a revoked certificate in production."

You have valid points, my advice would be to make that part of the message as clear as possible. as a sys admin I could be a potential customer but then again, I already have to worry about certs I implement.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for that feedback! It is very valuable to hear that I didn't message this effectively - I'll work on improving that.

I'd love to chat more out-of-band - would you mind emailing me (this username at currylabs.com or gmail.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We built Snitch to make it simple and easy to get a handle on your SSL certificates. Our mission is to help people avoid getting blind-sided by SSL issues - losing customers, reputation and business in the process.

We've been working on this for a few months and would appreciate any feedback - thanks!

If anyone wants to email me directly it is my username at currylabs.com or gmail.com

PS: If you are an Open Source project we offer free subscriptions.

<comment><USER3> Who's "we"? You need an about page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Idea is great, but pricing seems a bit expensive.

Have >25 certs? Add this check to Nagios: [http://exchange.nagios.org/directory/Plugins/Network- Protoco...](http://exchange.nagios.org/directory/Plugins/Network- Protocols/HTTP/check_ssl_cert/details)

Saved you $200/month :)

<comment><USER5> Yeah especially since some people offering this same service for free

[http://voodooalerts.com/free](http://voodooalerts.com/free)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, but that is not factually correct.

These are very different services.

Voodooalerts requires you to place JS on your page. Because of this I am sure they cannot run the full suite of audits that Snitch does.

<comment><USER5> No, Voodoo Alerts FREE has no JS. Its a server ping just like Pingdom or this service, except its free.

The full paid version of Voodoo Alerts requires JS to be installed but that is for RUM alerting

Edit: you're right about it not doing everything that snitch.Io does, but saving $10 a month on simple alerting sounds good to me

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for visiting Snitch.io. Unfortunately, your statements are still not correct.

I signed up for a free account on VA and put in a site with a revoked SSL certificate. It has not generated an alert. It has been over 12 hours. It is still prompting me to insert the JS on my site, by the way.

As to your second point. Snitch isn't simple alerting.

It runs a full range of tests on an SSL certificate: checking for expiration, checking for revocation, checking that all of the intermediate certificates have not been revoked, checking the certificate is valid for the domain (including SNI), checking that the certificate isn't signed with a weak algorithm such as SHA-1 that Chrome is about deprecate, checking that the certificate has not been changed (incorrect server config, malicious intent...)

Snitch is not targeted at people who just need to know if their site is up or down.

If you are are a business and users browsing to your site get a big red warning in their browser because your SSL certificate is expired/revoked/weak/misconfigured - that is a problem and you lose money. That is what Snitch is addressing.

<comment><USER5> I should have mentioned that I am in the beta for VA and that feature doesn't open up until next week for all users.

In fact I'm probably breaking terms mentioning it...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the clarification.

I was wondering if you were also going to mention that you are VoodooAlerts' founder?

I, personally, think it is poor form to advertise features that don't exist while pretending to be a customer of VoodooAlerts.

I wish you the best of luck with VoodooAlerts!

[https://twitter.com/Leesfer](https://twitter.com/Leesfer)

<comment><USER5> Being a #2 employee isn't exactly a founder, now is it?

Good luck in this field, it's competitive :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is seems potentially quite useful. It would be nice if it could also notify you if your server is not configured according to best practices in terms of things such as protocol versions and cipher suites.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback!

That is definitely on the roadmap and will go out soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great idea, will definitively check it out.

Where are you incorporated, if? The terms says nothing about it. Who is my contract party when I signup?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback.

We're in Oakland, California.

<comment><USER7> And who's behind it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great idea, will certainly give it a try.

Not a big fan of pricing plans that mix volume with features, always makes me feel I'm being screwed when I only need one or the other. (Even though I might be perfectly fine with paying the same amount if the pricing structure was different.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback!

Definitely something we'll consider. Email me if I can help out in any way! hn username at currylab.com / gmail.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think this is a brilliant idea, and seeing what you've built I'm sort of kicking myself for not having acted on the same idea. It's the sort of thing that is feasible for a company to do on their own but is difficult enough that it is very seldom done.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the kind words, msane.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> $10 a month for one certificate seems kind of expensive, considering a script with openssl can do the same thing for free.

And only 25 for enterprise? Our midsize business is currently using 416 certs.

<comment><USER11> Can I ask how you've created 416 certificates for a mid size company? Holy shit, lol.

Unless those include SMIME certs, but still...

<comment><USER10> Lots of internal web services, web servers, VM hosts, MQ channels, LDAP stores, etc (times 5, for different platforms and locations). Everything gets a cert, haven't been using wildcards. Lots of internal signed certs, but they suffer the same problems that this service is trying to solve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I use and really like [http://wormly.com](http://wormly.com).

Their monitoring includes SSL cert validity, among many other things.

</comment><comment><USER13> Cool idea. I had the same idea back when Heartbleed was in full swing. Nice to see that someone has actually executed the idea. Bravo!

<comment><USER14> There are various implementations of the same idea out there and they've been there for long.

In any case, very nice execution on the front end. Good job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

We're constantly improving and adding extra checks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Considering you can get much of this functionality from programs created by CAs (for example, [https://www.digicert.com/cert- inspector.htm](https://www.digicert.com/cert-inspector.htm) from my CA), this seems... way too expensive.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are some pretty crucial and obvious differences between these two products.

Does DigiCert provide any guarantees on how often they monitor your certificates? Do they offer any alert mechanisms other than email? Do they let you monitor certificates that are on your critical path but not necessarily ones you own (partners...etc)

You also mention cost..but since you are not paying them you are not their customer - you are their product.

Snitch is clearly aligned with customers since our goal is to help you succeed at securing your site. Our goal is to make it easy for you (site owner) to do the right thing and provide a good experience to your customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> You do more than that but really the CA should handle alerts about expiring certificates. They have full knowledge of all certificates, and contact to the responsible party.

<comment><USER17> true but then you need to actually renew it amd then install it....too many times tickets are filed but get put at the bottom of this list until last minute, or worse a customer reports the nasty browser security warning page

though i do wonder if "this is a feature, not a company"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback.

We're constantly improving and rolling out new features. We're confident that over your question will become less of a question :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Better off using your own solution with Nagios or something similar.</comment>


wxPHP for Desktop App Development - <AUTHOR> http://wxphp.org/

<comment><USER2> Version 220.127.116.11 was released and binary builds for various platforms: [http://wxphp.org/wxphp/blog/v3002-binaries-and- installers](http://wxphp.org/wxphp/blog/v3002-binaries-and-installers)</comment>


Show HN: A Markdown web component for Angualar2 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/evanplaice/ng2-markdown-component <comment><AUTHOR> A working demo is also available @: [https://github.com/evanplaice/ng2-markdown-component- demo](https://github.com/evanplaice/ng2-markdown-component-demo)</comment>


Spacius A Space Adventure (in javascript) - <AUTHOR> http://scriptnode.com/article/spacius-a-space-adventure/

<comment><USER2> It's a SPACE ADVENTURE! You know you wanna play.

</comment><comment><USER3> Loved it!

</comment><comment><USER4> awesome. simply awesome.</comment>


numbr: Auto expiring, free anonymous phone numbers for online safety. - <AUTHOR> http://numbr.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I love this kind of startup. It's a single straight-forward hack that is unbelievably powerful.

<comment><USER2> But what's their business model? Ads i presume?

<comment><USER3> I would consider charging a small fee per minute (to the person calling you).

[edit] I absolutely love this idea! I love to see this kind of thing, too.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to compete with a large web company for a gig? - <AUTHOR>

How do I compete with a large web company, for a client?
I was approached by a potential client about developing a website. He is not tech savvy at all. He has an expansive spec in mind, which is technically challenging. Basically a social network + ecommerce site + beautiful web design.
Working in my favor, I showed him a previous social network that I built.
However, I am competing for this client with a larger design shop with a large portfolio. Their focus is on ecommerce and slick design. I believe they are a PHP shop.
I don't think price is the concern with the client. He values low risk and safety and full-service. He is also interested in hosting and security.
I showed him the work of my web designer to whom I subcontract, which is also very beautiful and slick. I also pointed out that my competitor might not have much experience with building a social network, which means it could be months before they deliver anything.
He responded that they showed him a huge social networking site that they are building. Also, that they have a big portfolio and are "a company", whereas I am a single person. (I do have collaborators with whom I subcontract, though.)
What can I say to sway the decision in my favor?
I don't want to compete on price, because I don't think that is the deciding factor.
[edit: I'm already using a Python open-source social network, Pinax, which is very good.] <comment><USER2> Consistency and Availability.

If he chooses you he knows that he can 1) reach you more readily, and 2) you will always be on top of his project. Using a big company means tasks get passed around and between teams, so even the best project manager will often be slower in knowing where things are at and then communicating any client- instigated changes.</comment>


The Late (Internet) Telecom Revolution Is Not Such a Big Deal - <AUTHOR> http://www.ianwelsh.net/the-late-internet-telecom-revolution-is-not-so-big-a-deal/ <comment><USER2> He's right about most of this. Refreshingly different article. I counter mainly on productivity:

1\. As mirimir said, we can get information and training faster than ever. That has directly implications for labor force. We predictably see more talent than the market is even willing to utilize in some areas.

2\. VOIP and video conferencing make collaboration easy between people that likely would've had to travel.

3\. Retrieving files on people, the law, whatever is a process that takes minutes instead of hours to weeks.

4\. My taxes are filed and refund received quickly.

5\. Self-checkouts can handle 6 customers in the time it takes a regular checkout to handle 1 or 2. Doesn't mean they'll move that fast but productivity & cost savings were proven out.

6\. Planning algorithms on computers let us quickly produce optimal schedules, division of raw resources into parts, routes, industrial steps, and so on. The gains here are real.

7\. Scheduling itself deserves special mention. Well-designed scheduling systems dramatically reduce waste throughout the organization while getting the mission done. First case study I saw was HCA spending about a million on one to save $300 million across their hospital chain. I call that computer- driven activity quite an economic result.

8\. The combination of computers, cloud, and competition make many services formerly requiring specialists nearly dirt cheap for startups or small businesses. Each can therefore get more done with less money.

Just a few to counter his point that there's been no productivity gain. If he's measuring macroscale, what he's probably seeing is productivity gains all over the place combined with competition that keeps financial effects in check. If anything, we're hyperproductive these days to the point where computers' capabilities require us to do too much. It's hard to simply break even today much less have numbers wildly ahead of the competition.

</comment><comment><USER3> > The one, unqualifiedly great thing the Internet has done is provide access > to information. Movies, books, news, technical papers–all of that. Today, I > can find out information which I would have needed to visit a library to > find out in 1990. Often, I can find out information I would have need a > university library to find.

This deserves more than a throwaway paragraph! Forget libraries. In an hour of Internet searching, I can get information that would have required weeks of work in 1990. Visiting libraries. Calling people, asking who might know something, tracking them down, talking them into helping me, etc, etc.

> As one of its negative side effects, the Telecom revolution enables a > panopticon surveillance state which is far more intrusive than what Orwell > imagined in 1984 or which the Stasi created in East Germany.

True enough. But it's not all that hard to obfuscate identity.

> Information doesn't "want to be free" and the rise of the Internet has seen > a vast tightening of copyright and patent laws, rather than a utopia of free > information you are actually allowed to use.

Unjust laws are commonly ignored.</comment>


Ask HN: Did you stop buying O'Reilly books after they ended their online shop? - <AUTHOR> Now that's everything is on Safari, and there's not even book releases on O'Reilly's site, did you guys stopped buying/accessing/learning from their books?<p>I am usually more connected to Manning and PragPub ATM. <comment><USER2> I've had a Safari Books subscription since before they closed the shop. Unlimited access to so many books is just invaluable. Also being able to access books before they are officially released.

I still occasionally buy a random tech book but just a couple per year vs viewing dozens to hundreds per year on Safari.

I'm a big fan of Pragmatic as well. A lot (all?) of their stuff is on Safari [1].

[1]: [https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/publisher/pragmati...](https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/publisher/pragmatic- bookshelf/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I liked Safari, but I stopped buying computing books in general. The information contained within is often outdated almost immediately, misses a lot of nuance found in discussion (e.g. Stackoverflow), and is often harder to search than other digital resources.

There's a couple of books that I still buy, but the concepts contained within are evergreen (e.g. people management, project scheduling, Windows Internals, etc). Web development just moves too fast, even if you're stuck supporting IE11.

<comment><USER4> This is _WHY_ I primarily look for pre-release stuff on Safari. I consider it one of the best investments a tech person can make in their own continuing education, because by the time something gets to print, it's often obsolete already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I used to buy both print and ebook format books from O'Reilly from time to time. I now have a Safari subscription (via my ACM membership), so I've stopped buying computer books almost entirely. Safari isn't perfect, but it's got a lot of books, covering most of the computing-related subjects that I'm interested in. I'd rather have DRM-free PDFs, but Safari is good enough for now.

</comment><comment><USER6> Well, technically yes, but technically no. I definitely didn't subscribe to Safari, but I still pick up a significant volume of O'Reilly books via Humble Bundle. (This bundle is still going for the next five days: [https://www.humblebundle.com/books/web-design-development- bo...](https://www.humblebundle.com/books/web-design-development-books))

I will only buy ebooks if they are either totally DRM-free or "watermarked". I have no desire for subscription access, login-required ebook schemes, etc. I had previously very much classified O'Reilly as one of the "good ones" for offering their books DRM-free, and mostly had to remove it as my go-to place to find books I need. Currently I lean towards Informit/Pearson if I need to buy a specific subject book on the spot.

</comment><comment><USER7> I used to buy over a dozen ebooks every year, but closing their store meant they lost me as a customer completely.

</comment><comment><USER8> Yep I went on and had a look the other day because I used to buy a book from them every 2 months but I haven't looked at their books for 2 years their website made this nearly impossible.

</comment><comment><USER9> I never started buying. My local public libraries got enough copies that I could read them when they came out in dead-tree.

</comment><comment><USER10> I buy paper copies on amazon.</comment>


Xfce not default in future release of Debian - <AUTHOR> http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=tasksel/tasksel.git;a=commit;h=56f8dffd7e7d0cd013a1251e1f12a4a1124262d7 <comment><USER2> I don't know why people focus so much on "default" desktop environments. No desktop is more supported than another one, as long as there is a package (and a maintainer! come join us, all hands are welcome) for it. This commit is from tasksel's git repository, which is used when you decide to install "tasks" from the debian installer.

Choosing to install a particular desktop environment when you want a "graphical environment" is only a matter of convenience : proposing GNOME from a CD install is getting harder because of the size of new versions. Several ideas were proposed : changing the default DE in tasksel, changing the compression scheme for .debs (using LZMA instead of bzip2), or even dropping CD installations IIRC (keeping just CD and USB netinstalls, and DVD installations).

<comment><USER3> One problem with defaults is that if you put, say, a modern version of Unity on a live cd, and try running it in some system with a really crummy integrated GPU, you will have a completely unresponsive experience because hardware acceleration isn't on.

Starting with something light and making eye candy available as an option sounds better than having extreme eye candy (gnome3, kde, Unity) and having to endure extreme slowness to get to lxde or openbox.

<comment><USER4> Make both install-able and working and pick automatically at install time?

When running on old hardware offer something light (all the way down to text, say for mainframes).

<comment><USER3> This actually happens with the netinstall of Fedora, and I imagine you can do it with the netinstall of Debian as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 3 months ago here: Debian Now Defaults To Xfce Desktop

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4356197>

Read the thread for the back story.

</comment><comment><USER6> You can choose Xfce under Advanced Settings in the Debian installer, giving you a very lean desktop environment.

</comment><comment><USER7> Anyone got a good summary of the back story?

<comment><USER8> [http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=tasksel/tasksel.git;a=co...](http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=tasksel/tasksel.git;a=commit;h=2a962cc65cdba010177f27e8824ba10d9a799a08)

Here is a summary of the changes:

[http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/p=tasksel/tasksel.git;a=sum...](http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/p=tasksel/tasksel.git;a=summary)

And this as well:

[http://www.neowin.net/news/debian-drops-gnome-chooses- xfce-a...](http://www.neowin.net/news/debian-drops-gnome-chooses-xfce-as- default-desktop)

Basically a while back, Joey Hess changed Debian to XFCE from Gnome. Someone else has just changed it back. But looks like it's probably temporary. We'll see.

<comment><USER9> Mr Hess has commented on the Debian tradition that the first CD image of the CD installer set is able to install a complete functional desktop. See

<http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/debian-cd_work_at_DebCamp/>

The implication is that I draw from this is that the XFCE as default suggestion was related to getting the first iso size below 700Mb.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anyone know why?

<comment><USER11> Gnome was taken off as the default because it wouldn't fit on a CD. After some work to get it to fit on again, Gnome is back as the default.

<comment><USER10> Thanks. I assumed it was this, but wanted to be sure.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft's cancellation process - can this even be legal? - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/103057574769082015687/posts/hoyG8isu8XN

<comment><USER2> Temp credit cards are really handy in these cases. You can cancel on your side, let them call you.

</comment><comment><USER3> He works at an SEO agency. He's making a big stink about it for publicity.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have any proof of the latter? Not sure what one might gain by raging about Microsoft...

Or is this just some ad hominem attack for which you have no evidence? Sounds a lot like, "he's a developer. He doesn't understand people."</comment></comment>


2011: The Year Android Explodes - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/26/2011-android/

<comment><USER2> _I can't help but think sometimes that it looks as if Google actually did the carriers a huge favor in the long-run because they've taken many of the bells and whistles that drove users to the iPhone in the first place and opened them up for the carriers to use as glittering lures to rope customers back into their traps._

Remember the ever-half-joking, half-serious talk of open-source zealots of the mythical, promised "year of Linux on the desktop"? Strange indeed how the first truly mass-market Linux distribution ended up skipping the desktop entirely, and then excelling at _restricting_ users.

<comment><USER3> _The carriers (again, in the U.S. in particular) are using Android's openness to perform many of their same old tricks._

This is just incredibly woolly thinking, if not actually disingenuous.

Carriers have power to influence or dictate handset features because carrier promotions are the primary means of distribution for handsets, because they (not the handset manufacturers) own the consumer relationship, and because carrier subsidies are the only way anyone but power users will buy any but the cheapest phones. (This is true in the UK, and seems to be even more true in the US.) They'll exercise that power in some way.

In the case of dumbphones they do so by having their own brand dominate the manufacturer's, so consumers associate with their carrier instead of their handset manufacturer.

With "closed" smartphones (whatever "open" and "closed" mean, but let's assume the iPhone is "closed") they used to do so by only allowing customised and branded variants of the phones onto their networks. The iPhone was the first carrier-sold smartphone to take a stand against carrier customisation. This is one explanation for why the iPhone was so successful: most people's experience with every previous smartphone was actually of variants loaded with carrier crapware.

The iPhone is a desirable handset, and Apple has the marketing skills and brand to reach consumers directly, which takes back some of the bargaining power from the carriers, but it's hardly out from under their yoke. Most obvious piece of evidence: AT&T exclusivity in the US. The features you can use over WLAN but not 3G are also very likely to be carrier-influenced.

So how exactly does the "openness" of Android, whatever that means, _help_ the carriers? They can read the source code... but why bother when they can dictate features directly to the handset manufacturers? They can install apps on the phones, even _write_ custom apps... oh wait, they were doing that already. It's plausible Android might ship with some nicely documented compiler flags for carriers to switch off the features they don't want, rather than their engineers having to actually dive into the source drop they got from the handset manufacturer and disable the features themselves, but other smartphone platforms have been doing that for the last ten years - and anyway nobody is claiming Android is open because of its nicely documented feature killswitches.

The actual situation is that Android phones are getting loaded with carrier crapware and nerfs not because they're "open" (whatever that means), but because that's what's happened to all phones throughout history. The iPhone is an exception _to some extent_ , not because it's "closed" (whatever that means), but because of Apple's ingenious strategy of actually giving a shit about the user experience, not to mention their world-class marketing department. The only way this ridiculous TechCrunchism makes any sense at all is if you're not really talking about "closed" vs "open", but "iPhone" vs "not iPhone".

So although the author protests that he has no skin in the game, this silly argument is actually yet another instance of the standard fanboy cry: "Why won't all these other handset companies just admit that Apple has won, and move into some other industry like flowerpots?" (Which is pretty irritating to anyone who doesn't think the game is over yet.)

<comment><USER2> My impression of your closing paragraph is that you may be looking a bit too hard for that sentiment – I've seen it and been annoyed by it too, but I don't see it in Siegler's post. If anything, it's the opposite, equally annoying sentiment that the game is over because Android's destiny is now manifest. The game is far from over, though, and I don't see anyone credibly claiming otherwise.

<comment><USER3> I read Siegler's post as basically an attempt by him to reconcile those two annoying sentiments, both of which I detected in the text. They both share the misconceptions that this is a two-horse race, and that "winning" is meaningful in a market which (due to the inertia caused by factors like carrier behaviour) takes years to evolve.

One interesting point Siegler didn't make is that Google is making some modest strides toward weakening the carriers' grip on the handset market (e.g. selling Nexus One unlocked themselves, and Nexus S unlocked through vendors). Sure, they're niche devices and the Nexus One direct sales model didn't work out that well, but they're testing the water. I'm pretty sure their goal there is to increase general consumer acceptance of buying unlocked, carrier- untouched phones. And that helps every smartphone maker, perhaps especially Apple (who probably stand the best chance of selling large numbers of $600 handsets without carrier subsidy).

Apple themselves could have made this play, by offering (and promoting) the iPhone unlocked at launch (or since), but they chose instead to work with the carriers (a reasonable decision to maximise short-term success).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Forget about the phone market for a second.

What I want is for Android to replace Windows Mobile 5 in all those annoying Symbol barcode scanner and other data entry devices - ever priced them out? $1500-2000 for a basic model on a dead-end platform with horrible dev support.

I really want to know where are the industrial portables based on Android or another unix variant? Imagine being able to write a web app with hooks into all the data entry bells and whistles that a device like that could have.

<comment><USER5> This is already happening with the iPod Touch.

I'm currently working on a similar project for a large retail company. We're using the Linea-Pro [1] cradle, which has both a barcode and magnetic strip reader. (Same device as used in Apple stores.)

[1] <http://www.ipclineapro.com/>

<comment><USER6> Wow! That's awesome. Any idea how expensive the cradle is? I hate spending $1500 for an MC70 with crappy touchscreen.

<comment><USER7> I wasn't able to find LineaPro pricing, but Adwords found a competitor: LightSpeed - <http://www.xsilva.com/en/store.html>

Entry mobile device hardware is $1000.

<comment><USER5> I think the cradle goes for about $500. Add any iPod Touch and you're still under a grand for each device.

They have a very nice Cocoa API for the device as well. I've had a blast developing for it.

LightSpeed is actually an entire retail service stack which uses the Linea-Pro cradle for their mobile platform. Most of the cost is licensing their retail software. Your $1,000 quote is a bit off...

From the pricing page:

        In order to purchase a Bundle including the
        LightSpeed Mobile Hardware Kit, at least 2
        user licenses need to be added to your order. [1]

So that's a baseline of $1,823. When you toggle on the "Mobile Hardware Kit" the price jumps by $549, which sounds about right for the hardware and setup.

I do contract iOS dev work, so feel free to ping me if you're looking into this sort of thing.

[1] <http://www.xsilva.com/en/store.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I recently switched from an iPhone to an Android and haven't looked back, even though I still see the iPhone as a best-in-class device. The best Android phones are just a few percentage points shy of the iPhone in usability, and the availability of Flash for Android alone makes up for that, IMHO. Even though I have a healthy dislike for Flash.

Add to that the fact that you can get an app written and deployed for Android in a fraction of the time it would take you on the iPhone...

\- Because you're not required to use horrid tools like Objective C

\- Because there are no imperious App Store overlords deciding the fate of your app's life or approval

\- Because you don't need to make a several-thousands-of-dollars investment in Apple hardware and software

...and I think it's likely that Android will eclipse iPhone, not just in numbers of handsets (many orders of magnitude more coming for Android), but in mindshare, pop culture relevance, developer sentiment, and every other thing.

The iPhone will always be the phone that launched the smartphone revolution, and Apple and Steve Jobs have been well rewarded for it. Android to me represents the democritization of the iPhone, and the democritization of designer tech has always been the bane of Steve Jobs. Put another way: iOS devices are going to seem much less compelling when they've been copied, perfected, rebranded, and sold for half the price. It's Mac vs. PC all over again.

<comment><USER8> Just a friendly reminder to whoever downvoted me: you're really not supposed to downvote on HN for differences of opinion. I understand a lot of people have a lot invested in Apple, but having used and developed for both devices, this is my best, somewhat educated but possibly incorrect, guess as to the future of these platforms. And none of this is really new. So rather than anonymously downvoting, why don't you venture an opinion of your own?

<comment><USER9> I didn't downvote you, but having read your comment I imagine some of the motivations of those who did were:

\- 'Horrid tools like Objective-C' is a value statement made without justification.

\- 'Imperious App Store overlords' sounds rather like a straw man.

\- 'several-thousands-of-dollars investment in Apple hardware and software' is inaccurate.

The problem in general with iOS vs Android is that is has indeed become like Mac vs PC, in that individuals who have decided on their allegiance feel the need to promote their chosen platform in comments, often through (probably unintentional) exaggeration. I'm not being patronising here, I'm quite sure I do the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wait, is this article about phones or the author? Is it mandatory at tech crunch now to ensure each feature has the maximum amount of smugness allowed by law?

</comment><comment><USER11> By MG's usual standards the post can actually be called borderline reasonable.

The trouble with getting a handle on the mobile phone market is that most analysts often pick up only the US market or the smart phone market and form their conclusions based on it.

Another issue is when most of the online discussions on the iPhone/Android competition turns into an all-out brawl with only the usual talking points thrown in.

I use a Galaxy S I9000. I like the phone. It is not perfect. I could probably have aimed for the iPhone, but it was at least $100 more where I live (India). Keep this price in mind, it is very important.

What is the cheapest iPhone you can get today, without a contract? Most of us India buy the phones pretty much at the full price. Even if I assume that the iPhone will be priced at half of what it costs here, it would still be more expensive than some of the Android phones made by the local manufacturers here. I don't ever see Apple doing an iPhone Starter Edition.

There were some 100 million-plus mobile phones that were sold in India in 2009. I am sure that 99% of those were not either a Samsung Galaxy S or an iPhone. Between iOS and Android, the odds are much better on Android to tap into those potential 99 million sales.

This is the reason why Android will grow even stronger next year. But it won't be at the cost of the iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER12> I do not get what the problem is with having carrier applications on the phones. It is non-sensical to argue that things forced on you, the consumer, by a corporation A are bad but things forced by corporation B on the same consumer are somehow magical.

Leaving aside everything - let's stick to the case of Android carrier customizations and their impact on user experience. I have used 2 different Android smartphones and my wife has used 2. I had a Nexus One and now have a T-Mobile G2. My wife had a EVO and now has Epic 4G. We never felt like the carrier customizations (or lack thereof in case of Nexus One) made any significant negative impact to our user experience. We actually liked some of the differentiations of both software and hardware (Music/Video player and physical keyboard on Epic, HTC UI on the EVO etc.). Having a few extra icons or having the Sprint Navigation app instead of Google Navigation wasn't actually a big deal in any way.

Plus, for those who prefer close-to-pure-google experience - there is Nexus S or G2. If you are on VZW and are a bit technical or know someone who is, Droid Incredible and Cyanogen is another choice. Optimus S is also close to stock Android and on multiple carriers.

For years Windows computers have shipped with vendor customizations and no one seems to have cared enough to give Apple the 50% market share. Microsoft had made some effort recently to work with the vendors to fix the outright problematic stuff and you can buy a laptop with clean Windows install from Sony for example.

The problem on Android is not nearly as bad or annoying as Windows bloatware and there are plenty of choices available that go either way - fully stock to fully customized. It's not as if the customized phones are bogged down to the point that they don't function or anything like that. It's just a minor inconvenience if you want to make it one.

So who is complaining about Android customizations? Technical people with a certain taste to see uniform world view. The reviewers that measure everything by Apple standards. Normal users don't seem to be caring - they buy one Android phone and use it for 2 years - if it doesn't work they are just going to return it and buy something else and it is very much doubtful that users are returning Android phones because of the carrier customizations.

On the other hand - if I don't happen to like iTunes on iPhone I have no other choice in the iPhone land. If I need wireless syncing I need to wait. With Android I can choose which media player I like - Samsung's or HTCs, which wireless sync I like - DoubleTwist Airsync or WinAmp etc. So I would argue that the benefits of Android approach pretty much outweigh the little consistency issues it poses.

EDIT : I actually went and read the original article and it struck me that the main point it made was the dawn of ultra cheap ($85 retail) Android dual core smartphones for the 3rd world! If it does work out well (and I am not sure why it wouldn't) Nokia and other dumb phone makers are in for huge trouble and we are going to see Windows vs. Mac all over again with the iPhone finding itself restricted as a luxury brand at the best and at worse they will see some erosion even in that category. Apple now a days do most of the things on their own - including the CPUs. It will be hard for them to keep up with the likes of Nvidia/Broadcom/Samsung who will bring out dual core CPUs for Android handsets - not quite PPC vs Intel but sort of.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've made three well-meaning attempts at starting this article but I can't get past its innovative distributed introduction. Someone needs to send MG the memo that free-writing is only the first step in developing an orgnanized argument that others can follow.

</comment><comment><USER14> Developers, developers, developers, developers, developers...

I was just thinking that all of these Windows vs. Mac comparisons are focused on market share and end-user-y things, but what really enabled Windows to dominate for so long was it's appeal to developers. I have dabbled in iPhone development, and not done any android development, so I'm not qualified to judge -- but from the outside it seems that there is a lot more interest in iPhone than android for developers (based on what I read on HN and elsewhere, and the kinds of freelance jobs I've been offered over the past year). Also, seems that it's easier (well, more straightforward anyway) to make money selling apps on the iPhone vs. android.

I'd love to hear thoughts on this matter from people who have actually developed for both platforms (or made an informed decision to work with one over the other).

<comment><USER15>
          what really enabled Windows to dominate for so long
          was it's appeal to developers

This was a chicken-egg situation: Windows appealed to developers because it was popular. It was popular because it appealed to developers.

It got there through other means, like IBM's endorsement, timing, marketing and indeed an open SDK (contrary to other alternatives at that time).

About iPhone development: I had to buy a Mac-mini just so I could run XCode. But all my development for the iPhone starts with PhoneGap (i.e. web apps with some native functionality exposed). I prefer Android just because I can use my favorite tools with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if/when Android will make into automobiles. Could be good for Google. That's a lot of cool analytics and potential eyeballs.

<comment><USER17> I want an Android tablet / embedded computer on my dash with full screen Google Maps and Navigation. That would be so awesome.

<comment><USER16> Mixed with the rumored gingerbread AR that'd be amazing in a vehicle. Can't wait to see what Google pulls off with Android.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Every December from 1998 to 2009, we have seen "The next year will be the year of Linux (for the desktop)"

Alas, it never happened.

</comment><comment><USER19> What really bothers mr is the ad nauseum "Android 4 Eva!!!" [sic] opinions like this is that they treat Android like an homogenous product when clearly it isn't. The iPhone is both a brand and a product. Androi ids... A philosophy.

I've had 3 Android handsets now (HTC Desire, DroidX, Nexus S) and I still find them frustrating, inconsistent and illogical and not something I'd recommend to the non-tech savvy.

Many of the pundits don't seem to realize just how myopic their view is. Example: the ceaseless litany about how crap AT&T is and it is... In NY and SF where you'll find most of the journalists and pundits. Or just how much the simple and ubiquitous UI/UX of iOS matters to most users, far more than the ephemeral notion of an alleged "walled garden" at any rate.

The real story is that one product from one company on only one major carrier (in the US) at the very top end of the markets competes with Android at all. Don't underestimate that brand loyalty. There is an awful lot of unsatisfied demand for the iPhone that won't be realized until other carriers get it and/or the price comes down (which it slowly will).

The idea that Android allows carriers continue to screw their consumers is basically wrong. The carriers have far less power than they did 5 years ago and you can thank Steve Jobs for that. Verizon (in particular) is still kicking this dead horse but it's still a shadow of it's former self.

Fred Wilson is right: Android is good. It's really best for Google more than anyone else.

Scoble is wrong: Android won't kill the iPhone, at least not for the foreseeable future at any rate (but he is right that it is a superior product IMHO).

Predictably this post doesn't even touch on the biggest competitive advantages: the iTunes ecosystem and gaming.

So it is good we have Android to keep Apple honest but, to paraphrase, the news of iPhone's death have been greatly overexaggerated.

<comment><USER20> You logic is flawed. MacBooks and mac computers have existed far long more than iPhone and their price isn't getting lower. I fail to see why the iPhone, another great premium Apple product, will drop it's price in the future.

<comment><USER19> Um yes they have. Today you can buy a pretty good spec MBP for $1500. 4 years you'd be spending $3-4k+.

The same applies to Windows laptops. I bought a 17" Dell Inspiron 9400 in 2005-06 for A$3k (actually it was a $4k spec where 2 coupons collided bringing it to about $2.8k). At that time a similar MBP was A$4.5k.

This year I specced a 15" Dell for my sister for $1k. A gaming laptop is under A$2k. My 2009 13" MBP cost A$1800. The top (base) MBP is <A$3k.

Macs have a gentler slope of price decreases as Apple tends to increase the (relative) spec ate the same time but it's a complete lie to say they haven't dropped price.

IMHO the iPhone will be no different.

In fact the first iPod Touches were more expensive than the current batch so it already has happened.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Oh Siegler. Where's the real original article instead of this TC shit. I don't know which is worse, TC's blatant attitude in their posts or Engadget's terrible perspective on everything.

[http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/12/22/2011-will-be-the- year...](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/12/22/2011-will-be-the-year-android- explodes/?section=magazines_fortune)

<comment><USER22> At least engadget is witty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> <http://blog.yafla.com/The_Biggest_Lie_That_Ever_Was_Told/></comment>


Why a Sudden Surge in Tech M&A? Startups Pay Attention - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2010/05/18/why-a-sudden-surge-in-tech-ma-startups-pay-attention/ <comment><USER2> This article would be orders of magnitude more helpful if it had some stats on the increase in M&A's or acquisitions when compared to a similar time period last year/decade/etc. Otherwise it's not too helpful.</comment>


Millions are being poisoned every day in Bangladesh. Why is nothing being done? - <AUTHOR> https://undark.org/article/bangladesh-arsenic-poisoning-drinking-water/ <comment><USER2> Probably because Bangladesh sits at, or near, the bottom of the corruption index.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Bangladesh](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Bangladesh)</comment>