Riot Games is violating California employment law - <AUTHOR> https://zedshaw.com/2016/06/10/riot-games-is-violating-california-employment-law/ <comment><USER2> In this article, Zed demonstrates one of the tremendous screwups with the academic human trials system: actions that are perfectly acceptable normally suddenly become a problem if done for science.

I.e., if I personally want to pay people $5 to play a video game, and then pay them $10 if they win, there is absolutely nothing preventing me from doing this. I can also gather statistics on the result. But if I were a scientist at a university doing this, I'd suddenly need to get permission from an IRB.

This is a flaw with academia, not Riot Games.

The comparison to the Stanford Prison Experiment is nonsense. That experiment literally _locked people in jail_ , an action that is generally illegal in general. This experiment literally involves nothing more than a group of people statistically accessing records they have legal permission to access and then doing some math.

Note that I say this with no positive feelings whatsoever about Riot Game's PC-police behavior. I don't generally favor "no-asshole rules", or any of the other feelings-over-facts policies currently favored by the PC-left.

[edit: since folks reading this clearly think I'm criticizing Zed's entire post, Zed has 8 arguments against Riot. I'm disputing (3) and (4) only.]

<comment><USER3> I like Zed Shaw, his writing and learncodethehardway. I am not sure I agree with someof his conclusions here but I am not sure yours are correct.

One of the key issues for me, Shaw and many others based on comments, is lack of explicit permission. Most academic studies get explicit permission but they also _anonymize the data_. They also are objective researchers who do not take negative action against their subjects based on the results of their paper/findings.

For me, this hinges on how much was communicated to the employees and how it was handled internally. I do not have information about that which is broad and reliable so I won't speculate on the actual decision.

However, Zed is a hilarious and prolific writer and always has an agenda. If his rhetoric was an overreach or not entirely sound, it doesnt discount that the area between playing a competitive game with assumed privacy and professiomal overlap as an employee at the company is pretty gray.

tl;dr

* Academia is flawed

* Riot games decision making process is flawed

* neither of these have a causal relationship

* Rails is a ghetto

<comment><USER2> So if you run some statistics and then _use the result_ , that's somehow unethical?

Riot's decisionmaking process may be flawed - I have no evidence of this, but my prior is that it's likely (same as Zed). If this is true, they are firing good employees and costing themselves money.

But the fact that they didn't obey ridiculous university IRB requirements is NOT really a good argument against them. And that's all I'm criticizing.

<comment><USER3> I took his article and the analogies to point out that these studies must get approval before engaging subjects. He also states that the law requires explicit permission unless it is on or using company property.

Idk the legal requirements, but I thin, to underscore my previous point (and how I interpreted zsfa) that the issue is in how counterparties agree and the obligations they owe to one another.

I also find myself agreeing that it would be difficult to charchterize snarky. Although, I suspect that they say _snarky_ but mean using racial slurs and other threatening language. Clearly, saying horrible things to people is not positive but free speech is more important. I find in super reasonable that someone with a tagged Riot employee un shouting racial epithets gets fired. However, a private personal account without explicit consent should probably enjoy the expectation of privacy.

super complicated issue, however, I believe many people would look at this differently if it came out that every employee was told, signed paperwork, and was aware that it would be company policy to monitor and enforce known etiquette with known repetcussions

edit: also there have been studies that show people behave differently when watched. It seems reasonable simply telling everyone about this policy would bring about the desired results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> California is an at-will employement state.[1] Riot can terminate those employees for any reason not protected under federal or state law, such as being a member of a protected class. Being a gigantic dick does not grant protected status. The only liability Riot has here is for their unemployment, unless they can show cause for termination, which is probably more of a gray area.

[edit: forgot the link]

[1][http://business.ca.gov/StartaBusiness/AdministeringEmployees...](http://business.ca.gov/StartaBusiness/AdministeringEmployees/EqualEmploymentOpportunityLaws/AtWillEmployment.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER5> If the IQ test anecdote about the horse is real I'd like to see a source. It's extremely hard to believe that even a malicious scientist could convince himself that a horse cannot be ridden into town.

> One question in the early test asks, "A man comes into town but his feet do > not touch the ground. What is he riding?" The story goes that a young Native > American boy responded, "A horse" to which the tester yelled, "Wrong! It's a > bicycle!"

<comment><USER6> Yes, indeed. The stench of bullshit is quite strong there, as is with the claim that the tests were adopted with the _purpose_ of "resegregating the schools".

The closest I've been able to find is a claim (without references of any kind) in Gould's _The Mismeasure of Man_ , where the actual question involved a man "walking without his feet touching the ground". Clearly "bicycle" is a better answer for that question than "horse" (because your feet move in a quasi- walking motion when you're riding a bike, but not when you're riding a horse).

The "yelling" part appears to have been invented out of whole cloth. Also, I'm not sure where the notion that Native Americans were unfamiliar with wheeled conveyances in the 1920s came from.

<comment><USER7> I would not comment on that particular anecdote, but the entire structure of literacy tests in the South during segregation was that an ambiguous or downright impossible test was written, and the testers applied it inconsistently. [http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/06/28/voting_right...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/06/28/voting_rights_and_the_supreme_court_the_impossible_literacy_test_louisiana.html)

Don't assume good faith.

<comment><USER6> This particular test was created in France, and modified for American use by a Jewish professor at Stanford University in California.

It has no connection whatsoever with the "South".

<comment><USER7> I thought it was clear enough that I was making a general point about how tests can be applied, and illustrating it with an extreme example from the South.

In general, I think asking for clarification is better than being condescending.

<comment><USER6> Got it. Of course, your mini-lecture about "not assuming good faith" wasn't condescending at all.

I spent a fair amount of time researching this urban legend earlier today. I wasn't "assuming" anything.

<comment><USER7> Fair that it was abrupt of me to put it that way.

But to make clear what I was saying, I really should have responded to the parent, who says: "It's extremely hard to believe that even a malicious scientist could convince himself that a horse cannot be ridden into town."

My point being that a malicious test-giver could certainly deny that as a valid answer. I don't know that I believe that anecdote happened, but it is assuming good faith to think that it couldn't happen because no one would ever reject "horse" as an answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > I've never played their game...

It shows :( I have a number of issues with this article.

First, the "I don't know what methodology they used but I bet it's bad" is not something you can credibly say about Riot. They famously hired a big team of academics and they've been studying the issue for several years now. They have more data to analyze than any academic could dream of, they've had time to iterate (institute a new policy or algorithm, punish players based on it, and see if it reduces bad behavior by some metric) multiple times, and at this point it's likely that they know more about what constitutes bad behavior in a video game than any other organization on Earth.

Second, if Riot's analysis of player behavior constitutes an illegal trial on human subjects (which sounds dubious to me), their EULA certainly inoculates them for it. Riot has been very publicly doing this kind of analysis on players and using it to punish them (up to and including deleting the stuff they've purchased in game) and if that was actionable it seems like it would've been tried by now. Maybe the EULA isn't good enough or would fail at trial, but it's a little presumptuous to just casually assume that such a novel claim would be a slam dunk.

Third, I'm no lawyer but it seems to me that CA 980 is irrelevant. It pertains to employers demanding access to social media they wouldn't otherwise have access to, not just social media in general. Under 980 it's illegal to demand an employee's Facebook password, but AFAICT perfectly legal to fire them for something they post on Facebook publicly. In this case, not only was the speech in question made publicly, it was made in a way that Riot indisputably has a legal right to access.

Finally, the author repeatedly refers to the behavior that got these people fired as "being snarky," when a much more reasonable assumption is that the behavior was significantly worse, e.g. racial slurs and death threats (both of which are very common in LOL chat). The source article tells us that, once Riot had identified the group of problem players, a committee examined the cases individually and decided which ones to reprimand and which ones to fire. Do you really think that "would we lose if this person sued us" wasn't one of the criteria? Is it not reasonable to assume that each of the people who got fired did or said something so bad that Riot felt legally justified in firing them?

tl;dr: "I don't know by what methodology these people were measured or by whom, or what they signed, or what they did to get fired, but I'm dead certain they have a case" does not sound persuasive to me.

</comment><comment><USER9> > In addition to this, the employees are most likely expected to play the game > or have to play it to do their jobs.

It is an expectation, and the vibe I got from how they described it (albeit as a visiting contractor) it seemed like anyone who says "you know what chuck, I don't think I want to play the game" would basically "not fit in".

Honestly it seemed like a kinda weird place to work, but maybe that was culture too (I'm not American and was just there for a few weeks)

</comment><comment><USER10> This is nonsense. The employee usernames are RiotSoAndSo or RiotNameHere, so they are clearly representing the company with their behavior.

In fact one of the explicitly listed common bad behaviors is abusing their position with the company:

> the use of authoritative language, sometimes using their authority as a Riot > employee to intimidate or threaten others

There's no reason to think this shouldn't be a fireable offense, especially if there's a pattern of this kind of behavior.

<comment><USER11> People that work for Riot do not usually use their riot accounts when just casually playing.

To put into a perspective this isn't about someone using a "GM" or some community manager account, it's about people using their own private account.

This is a bad precedent, it's not even about people trashing the company, or even doing anything "wrong" it's about people participating in a behaviour that the company doesn't like.

Let me put it into another frame of reference for you would you support an employer that fired or did not hire someone because they liked, or even wrote a political post on facebook?

Keep in mind that most of the political speech on facebook doesn't exactly look like an Aaron Sorkin script draft.

We already had a CEO of a company having to step down for donating to a political cause, and no matter how vile that cause might be, it's still a horribly regressive thing, not that they've donated to an anti-gay cause but that they had to step down over it.

Now CEO's and other fiduciary roles might be the "exception" rather than the rule, but let's face it employers datamine the hell out of your "online footprint" and it's a bad thing, I know people that weren't "hired" not because they had a bad social presence but because they didn't had one and the hiring manager thought that they were untrustworthy because of it.

What you say in public and in private should not have any bearing on your employment unless you wave the corporate flag at the same time, what Riot is doing is Philip K. Dick level of shady, and there are sadly way too many employers especially in the tech business that do the same thing and even worse.

We've already came to a point where your right to employment conflicts with your more important rights of privacy and free speech and we should strive to revert these changes not hail them as something good and somehow a victory for liberalism and social justice.

<comment><USER4> > Let me put it into another frame of reference for you would you support an > employer that fired or did not hire someone because they liked, or even > wrote a political post on facebook?

It doesn't matter whether I support this or not; its legal.

>We already had a CEO of a company having to step down for donating to a political cause, and no matter how vile that cause might be, it's still a horribly regressive thing, not that they've donated to an anti-gay cause but that they had to step down over it.

I'm assuming you're talking about Brenden Eich. He stepped down as a result of the PR optics of his politics, which made him untenable as the de facto head of the Mozilla community. He was not fired. I do not agree that it is repressive. If your views are so vile as to convince the majority of your users/customers that they no longer want to do business with you, then maybe the problem is your views.

> We've already came to a point where your right to employment conflicts with > your more important rights of privacy and free speech and we should strive > to revert these changes not hail them as something good and somehow a > victory for liberalism and social justice.

One does not have a right to employment. You have a right to not be discriminated against for status as a member of a protected class. These are not the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I know of other companies that have similar policies - e.g eBay - it's part of the application process to provide your username and background checks are done on it.

If you think you can be a jerk on the Internet and have it not potentially affect employment then you're being naive. Most interviewers will do an Internet search on your name and dig up as much as they can about your behaviour on platforms and social networks.

<comment><USER13> If true, I'd argue this is evidence the problem is more widespread than realized (rather than "normal." Just because something is common doesn't mean we should accept it).

I think this issue is particularly daunting because free-information seems good, but having been to ridiculous interviews before we are all aware how biasing a small amount of irrelevant data can be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm not sure I see anything illegal in there (from the perspective of PA employment law anyway). His biggest beef seems to be that they mined data without their employee's consent, but most of the places I work explicitly state that emails, chats, electronic and physical documentation (work products) all belong to the organization.

On one hand, this feels a bit scummy - on the other hand, I'd rather work somewhere that's not toxic. I think the biggest issue is that I doubt their technique is good enough to a) find all the toxic people (one of the most toxic people I ever met was outstanding at never putting it in writing) and b) will exclude people that could have improved the company.

</comment><comment><USER15> When I get to the point in my life where I'm ready to start a company I'll aim for the opposite of what Riot seems to be doing.

I don't feel as an employer I'll own my employees. Thus, I cannot control what they do outside of my office.

If it's off the clock, I don't care. I'll be hiring by ability, not by other traits.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm not sure if this is illegal, but it's certainly cause for privacy concern. Did they have to willingly hand over their chat logs to be hired?

</comment><comment><USER17> Not sure anyone would want to work for riot now.

</comment><comment><USER18> I respect Zed for his many contributions, but this is among the most ridiculous diatribe I've read all year. We'll ignore the whole at-will and protected class thing which is all that matters (legally).

> Their use of statistics to bucket employees into "reprimand" or "fire" > buckets is incredibly dubious

Do you really think HR looked at some bin graphs and said "Ok lets fire these a __holes! ".

Software helped surface specific data from a larger data set based on specific rules. This was then reviewed by humans - remember them? - that decided some examples of behavior were so horrible that they felt compelled to confront specific individuals. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt [1].

> ... using data based on their behavior without their knowledge

Anyone have a Riot employment contract handy? Even if it doesn't explicitly mention data collection, I'm willing to wager the LoL terms of service has it covered. Every employment contract I've at looked at in over 15 years in tech has had some sort of clause around data collection/monitoring being an open option. Does it give me the Orwellian chills? Sure. But it's not illegal or unethical. Some industries like finance are legally required to in many situations. Boo hoo.

> I'll bet you $100 the second this study was discussed all the managers went > and deleted their history.

Riot centrally logs chat deemed (subjectively) toxic. Middle managers at a company this size do not just walk up to someone with production access and ask them to delete data in a complex system, especially not en masse.

From the original re:Work article:

> Riot identified the 30 most toxic employees (all of whom were more junior > Rioters, new to the working world) > While these logs did factor into the > exits of a couple employees who had already had serious problems

Let's set some context. Smart folks at Riot had a hypothesis that ended up identifying 30 out of some ~2,500 [2] employees (~1.2%) by legally analyzing chat logs. Riot discovered, unsurprisingly, that all of the employees identified happened to be new to the workforce and the company and used this opportunity to meet with them individually to work out a plan to improve their behavior.

Unfortunately a "couple" with past incidents were let go. The question is whether or not these specific employees would have been terminated if not for this hypothesis. Bigger question is what Riot will do so that the problem doesn't escalate to this level again (new hire orientation sounds like a good start).

Great job Riot for using human process and technology to try and make a workplace better. Poor job re:Work for over-romancing the software involvement in the process and turning an awesome example of work place improvement into a bad PR puff piece on "people operations", and worse job Zed for turning this into an emotional appeal of fear of an authority state. "But what if they use your chat logs before you worked there?! Or recorded headset audio?" It holds as much intellectual merit as the mob responses we see when Facebook or Instagram make changes to how stories are sorted. Sorry pal, I've lived in California too long waiting for "the big one" to buy into world-ending FUD.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity) [2] [https://www.linkedin.com/company/riot- games](https://www.linkedin.com/company/riot-games)

</comment><comment><USER19> Can't really judge the employees tbh. I'm pretty sure I'd be pretty antsy if I was forced to play that crap game for a living.

<comment><USER20> Since the employees are working there voluntarily, it would be logical for them to actually enjoy playing the game rather than being forced to.

So yes, we can judge the employees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> As the saying goes, I'm not sure I agree with that policework, Lou. A bunch of things stood out but this one in particular:

>>> The probability that you'll have bad things in your Riot Games past is proportional to how much you play

and I'm not sure I buy that at all. "Not being a toxic asshole" is the easiest thing in the world.

<comment><USER22> But how easy is it to avoid an automated sentiment analysis system flagging you as being "passive aggressive"?

<comment><USER23> You can just choose not to speak in the in-game chat, although you might get reported for lack of communication.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "To understand how this happens you have to understand that the Stanford-Binet IQ test was explicitly created to re-segregate the California school system and prove that whites were better. "

This is nonsense... the IQ testing came out around the first world war. It was first used to test disabled children and then used to test military recruits.

\----

Two people without the courage to actually respond voted me down... sorry, but Zed Shaw is talking out of his arse... the idea that the "Stanford-Binet IQ test was explicitly created to re-segregate the California school system and prove that whites were better" is just incredibly stupid.</comment>


Twitter Sentiment Analysis with Machine Learning - <AUTHOR> https://sentiment.dijkind.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> The site is still super janky - but would love to get some feedback on the idea before a show HN sometime down the road.

<comment><USER2> Janky is ok for Show HN...</comment></comment>


Google Living in a Dream World - Why Android/GoogleTV/Chrome are Failing - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/20/google-inception/

<comment><USER2> Directionless article with numerous trying-hard-to-be-trendy Inception screen shots and one way over-stretched metaphor.

Is there any reason why this tired rag keeps getting HN posts ? Does anyone still find it even vaguely interesting or relevant ?

</comment><comment><USER3> MG Seigler: the trollmaster at work. Add this man to your "banned from my internet" list.

More bare assertions than anything else you will read today.

Best comment from Bamd:

 _The article makes a lot more sense coming from MG if you know that his original title was "Google is Dead."

Then he realized that quarterly results will be out before too long, which might make the article look a little silly, remembered some things from watching Inception again last night, and bam, here we are._

</comment><comment><USER4> This reads exactly like the 'why iPhone will fail' articles when it was first introduced. Apple would have had no idea about the actual world of telecom and blablabla.

</comment><comment><USER5> Android doesn't appear to be failing. We better not let the facts get in the way of a story.

<comment><USER6> Did you read the story, or just this site's headline?</comment></comment>


Show HN: An experimental Chrome extension for page manipulation - <AUTHOR> https://vimeo.com/118090094

<comment><USER2> Can you paste here the commands you already have? I didn't quite see all of them after you entered "help".

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently:

      exit - Close the terminal
      clear - Clear the terminal
      bugmenot - Launch BugMeNot for this site, or the site passed
      selectorgadget - Launch selectorGadget
      random_link - Open a random page link
      waybackmachine - Open this page in Archive.org's Wayback Machine
      help - This help view
      gist - Make a new GitHub gist
      namegrep - Grep for domain names
      pastie - Make a pastie with the given text
      requestbin - Make a requestb.in
      selection - Get the current document selection
      echo - Output to the terminal
      grep - Search for lines matching a pattern
      _ - Access the previous command's output
      text - Access the page's text
      collect - Grab all input into an array
      jquery - Access the page's dom
      tick - Read once per second
      yes - Emit the given text continuously
      pbcopy - Put data into the clipboard
      pbpaste - Pull data from the clipboard
      hn - Search hn
      bookmark - Manage bookmarks
      eval - Run inline CoffeeScript

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Pied Piper :P But please release with a dummy name first. This is really net :D

<comment><AUTHOR> It's now here: [https://github.com/cantino/chrome_pipe](https://github.com/cantino/chrome_pipe)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hi, just wondering, is this up yet? Btw, it looks really cool!

<comment><AUTHOR> Here it is: [https://github.com/cantino/chrome_pipe](https://github.com/cantino/chrome_pipe)</comment></comment>


Huawei officially reveals Harmony OS, its first party operating system - <AUTHOR> https://www.xda-developers.com/harmony-os-huawei-announce/ <comment><USER2> I wonder if this shares any code with Fuchsia. Both are open source and seem to be pointed in similar directions.

<comment><USER3> Certainly not. They need to be independent on US threats. Like the ones coming from Qualcomm or Google.

There are some good OS micro kernels, but writing one is trivial. The problem are the services which the kernel does not offer anymore. And keeping compat to existing apps. Java would be easy, but C not so. You really need a POSIX translation layer, even if it's horrible.</comment></comment>


Bruce Schneier: We're sleepwalking to digital disaster we're too dumb to stop - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/02/sleepwalking_towards_digital_disaster/ <comment><USER3> I don't see why it would be different for personal digital security than in the physical world.

Nowadays a house is no more protected against break-ins than a hundred years ago.

Usually people install an alarm system after the first break-in (ask me how I know ;-) and hope it will be enough. It usually is.

I think some companies will sell a kind of home firewall that will protect your vulnerable IOT things. It will be vulnerable too but like a physical alarm system raise the bar for the would be attacker.

The infosec guys all seem to think like soldiers at war and believe that if a breach happen, game over you lost forever.

For normal people, a digital security breach like with a break-in sucks, it costs money but life goes on, you just adapt your security to the most common threat and according to your budget while knowing that a sufficiently determined attacker will ALWAYS gets his way.

I still hate those IOT things though ;-)

<comment><USER4> I don't think the two compare that closely.

Generally, if you get robbed (in the UK at least) then people are looking for high-value, easily-fenced items that they can sell off, and that's it. I live in a borderline rough area of a decent town, and have been burgled - <USER2> neighbours more than once, so alas speak from experience and from what the Police have told me. They don't tend to go upstairs and nick your diary or your list of passwords, etc.

Being robbed in the virtual world can be much worse - while there may be no physical loss in many cases, having your identity truly stolen and the losses you get from it can devastate your life for years to come - spending a lot of time dealing with issues which the robbers created, such as poor credit, etc. And these attacks can come from anywhere in the world. You need to be physically present to be a burglar. To ream someone via an IoT security flaw, you can be anywhere. And given some of the "how did they miss that" security flaws in many such devices, it's leaving people wide open to all sorts of new attacks.

Plus there's also the parallel of people defecating in the houses they've robbed - it's a piece of cake to delete someone's photos, videos and backups, leaving them completely bereft of something that has no monetary value, but which has an immense sentimental one.

<comment><USER5> Being robbed in the virtual world isn't like losing your silverware. It's like being robbed of your very existence.

<comment><USER6> Uh, no. That would be murder.

<comment><USER5> If you're murdered you at least have an estate. Identity theft can, in some ways, be worse than that. You may end up having to fight to have a single cent to your name.

<comment><USER6> There's not a single identify theft victim who has ever or will ever rather they'd been murdered.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Keep baby's medical record online - <AUTHOR>

Would you be interested in keeping a whole medical record of your child online? By that I mean having vaccines, medicine, dental and growth control, and a lot more... I'll really appreciate your comments. <comment><USER2> Not really, since my kids' pediatrician does a good job of keeping those records and letting me have access to them.

But, just as a quick "do you know what you are getting into?" question. If this is going to be used in the USA, have you started going through the pile of HIPAA compliance regulations for storing and access of this information? It can get even hairier than credit card info with lawsuits and penalties if some cracker breaches your system and that info gets out into the public.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure on which HIPAA regulations will apply, but I'll research. Thanks.</comment></comment>


The Open-Office Trap - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Your link points to this thread, which I assume is not the intention.

</comment><comment><USER3> Its a trap!</comment>


Ask HN: Why are certain wikipedia pages 404s? - <AUTHOR> For example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittany_Kaiser seems like it's purposely left blank. Is this like a feature that wikipedia offers to leave your name out? <comment><USER2> The template mentioned in the delete note references this section: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Criteria_for_speedy_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#G7)

Seems like the original author requested the page to be deleted.

<comment><AUTHOR> ah thank u</comment></comment>


Marc Andreessen On Marissa Mayer Joining Yahoo: 'It's Great For The Valley' - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/16/marc-andreessen-marissa-mayer-yahoo/

<comment><USER2> Kind of annoying to focus on the "great for the Valley" - surely what's important is it being great for Yahoo. Having a product person in charge again is huge!</comment>


No Means Yes, and Yes Means... - <AUTHOR> http://www.dorianemouret.com/no-means-yes-monetization-privacy/

<comment><USER2> Great article thks</comment>


Why Google Stores Billions of Lines of Code in a Single Repository - <AUTHOR> https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub45424 <comment><USER2> [https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2016/7/204032-why-google- stor...](https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2016/7/204032-why-google-stores- billions-of-lines-of-code-in-a-single-repository/fulltext)

better link?</comment>


How busy are you at work on average? - <AUTHOR> https://strawpoll.com/47x15cf1 <comment><AUTHOR> I ask this since people's experiences really seem to vary. I copied the options for entry level, mid level, and senior employees because I thought it might be an interesting split in the data.</comment>


Beyond the Read-Eval Loop: The Artifacts System (1994) - <AUTHOR> https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA276589/mode/2up <comment><USER2> Just from the introduction, seems like they wanted to have abstractions for the amalgamation of tools one uses when doing science that uses computing. Git+interpreter+reproducibility, but like a graph that is manipulated by the user doing data/code mutation and invoking functions.</comment>


Brickyard Blues: Chicago's brick salvagers (1999) - <AUTHOR> http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/brickyard-blues/Content?oid=898211

<comment><USER2> _Brick peddlers trolled the city at night, razing abandoned buildings themselves. They pounded down walls with sledgehammers. They fastened chains between their truck bumpers and wrecking bars wedged into windows and hit the gas, yanking down bricks. A few people died when walls collapsed on them, but that didn 't deter the steady flow of peddlers, who hauled their loot to used- brick companies, stacked them in the companies' yards, and sold them for five times what they made at demolition sites._

This is still a big problem in St. Louis. Brick rustlers often remove just the weakest wall, resulting in "dollhouses" like this one:

* [https://instagram.com/p/0f9Ax2hAbj/](https://instagram.com/p/0f9Ax2hAbj/)

Of course, they sometimes get the whole structure. Sites like this one aren't uncommon:

* [https://instagram.com/p/tvZAKFBASH/](https://instagram.com/p/tvZAKFBASH/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Having owned a house built (ca. 1930s) with Chicago common brick, I say definitely say it looks great but it needs a ton of care. The brick is so porous that any hard set of freeze/thaw cycles (like we've had here in Chicago the last couple of years) will start some serious damage and spalling.

Use it to make your interior look trendy, but get something more durable for the exterior if you plan to build with it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Fascinating stories of these guys. The story is 15 years old - is the situation still like this, or has it changed in Chicago?</comment>


Ask HN: Why are so few developers with ML background interested in trading? - <AUTHOR> As someone who has briefly worked in HFT, I am curious why so few people coming from am software development (and especially AI/ML) background seem to be interested in trading. I found it to be a really interesting and intellectually challenging problem.
Recent ML techniques are being applied to a lot of fields, but I rarely come across someone working on trading. When I compare beating pros in Starcraft or Dota 2 from Deepmind/OpenAI to the complexity you are dealing with in trading, I think there some relatively long-hanging fruit to be picked up in the latter, all while working on an interesting real-world problem.
Is it because there is a cultural gap? Do developers believe finance is bad and want to "make the world a better place" instead? Any other reasons? <comment><USER2> I worked in banking (retail credit risk modelling, then markets as a quant) for just under ten years and left to work in a software company and am now an engineer. The main reasons for me leaving were cultural:

1\. Quant-types are generally not as highly recognized or valued.

2\. The pace of work in banking can be glacial. It depends on the institution and team, but in general I found it very frustrating to push through changes and I am quite capable of being assertive when needed.

3\. A lot of people working in banks are not particularly motivated or ambitious, let alone curious or interested in much outside their own concerns.

4\. More than once, I was put in a position where I was asked to compromise my ethical convictions. Not cool.

5\. The last bank I worked for was a toxic and abusive workplace. No thanks and never again.

I acknowledge that this is probably more characteristic of the larger banks and perhaps not hedge funds or HFT shops. 1 and 2 are probably true in any large company but I found them much less so in software. 3, 4 and 5 can also happen anywhere but in banking it seems endemic. Everyone I know from banking has a story, particularly markets.

To your particular questions around culture, I don't believe finance is bad and would return for the right company and role. I don't think software or tech has much of a claim on "make the world a better place".

Finally, from my experience in markets:

1\. The bar to displace proven and market-tested models and strategies in trading is very high. Traders don't want their P/L messed with.

2\. I found hedging and risk mitigation to be the most intellectually challenging part of being a quant. You can build a model to predict prices, but what happens if that model fails? Every model makes assumptions and markets are really good at demonstrating how wrong they are. Figuring out how to not get wrecked is hard and the meta-problem of model error is minimized to a degree by keeping models simple and interpretable.

</comment><comment><USER3> Probably because many (most?) such people believe that markets are closer to a random walk than not. And beyond that, they probably believe that if you find "alpha", it will always be short-lived because over time the market will price in the effects of your trading decisions. If that's true (and I'm not saying it is) then you're looking at constantly spinning the gerbil cage, to not necessarily make much progress.

I think it's also believed (known?) that to do the _real_ good stuff with HFT and what-not, you need very expensive server co-location and peering connections to minimize latency to the highest possible degree. A lot of people probably aren't interested in doing all that, or can't afford it, or just don't know how to get started in that world.

</comment><comment><USER4> Here's my personal opinion. I'm mildly interested in HFT, in the same way I'm mildly interested in building a Chess engine, or a Poker AI, or trying to optimize a video codec.

Most of these things, AFAIK, require deep low-level skills in C/C++/ASM and would have enough potential to satisfy the tinkerer in my head.

However:

* If I had time to hone my C/C++/ASM skills, I'd rather join the Demoscene, which would equally satisfy my creative self, and generate a tangible artifact that is entertaining to watch and listen to. With HFT, the effect is ephemeral.

* I personally believe that AI/ML can't be applied to stock markets. No AI predicted the current pandemic, and in order to have it make complex decisions based on complex trading patterns, you'd have to constantly train/feed it with current (geo)-political, environmental and societal factoids that are interwoven and opaque that your job consequentially becomes being the Content Manager of your Ultra AI (assuming the AI is perfect and doesn't need tweaking). The complete opposite is true when you're working in a world with fixed constraits, like a chess game, or Startcraft: You know most of the variables and their mechanics, and how the world's constraints work enough that you can actually model an AI navigating it, and the amount of knowledge it has to be fed is constant.

* I've read somewhere that HFT, as a market niche, has a relatively tiny market volume, which doesn't make it that attractive. If I were to spend my time on something, wouldn't I chose something that has a bigger market?

* From an idealistic viewpoint, while I see nothing "wrong" or immoral with stock trading or HFT, I don't see any value either. When I was 19, when you feel you've got infinite amounts of time on this planet, I probably would have considered getting into HFT, but with each year I'm getting older, I ask myself: Does what I do have the potential to make people's lives easier? Does it make people smile? What does it do that I'll be proud of when retelling my life's battles? If it doesn't, is this really the thing I want to be spending time on right now? From this perspective, for me, working on HFT falls into the same category as working for any AdTech corp.</comment>


Show HN: A dataset of 40k professionally-written summaries of news articles - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/curationcorp/curation-corpus <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HackerNews, we have recently open sourced a subset of our database of human-written abstracts of news articles for use by the NLP community. These summaries have been written and edited by professional writers for use in our bespoke news solution.

We're hoping to spur development in AI abstractive summarisation, we've written an introduction here: [https://medium.com/curation- corporation/teaching-an-ai-to-ab...](https://medium.com/curation- corporation/teaching-an-ai-to-abstract-a-new-dataset-for-abstractive-auto- summarisation-5227f546caa8)

and technical posts on BERT-based abstractive summarisation here: [https://medium.com/curation-corporation/fine-tuning-bert- for...](https://medium.com/curation-corporation/fine-tuning-bert-for- abstractive-summarisation-with-the-curation-dataset-79ea4b40a923)

and BART-based abstractive summarisation here: [https://medium.com/curation- corporation/fine-tuning-bart-for...](https://medium.com/curation- corporation/fine-tuning-bart-for-abstractive-text-summarisation-with- fastai2-d7a2ad676a13?source=collection_home---6</comment><comment>0</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----)

If you're interested in the much larger commerically available dataset, please get in touch: email@example.com</comment>


Striped RAID Using SSDs in a 15" MacBook Pro - <AUTHOR> https://randomnerds.com/solid-state-drives-striped-raids-maximum-macbook-pro-performance/

<comment><USER2> How does striped RAID of two drives give you 4X the write throughput? That sounds like a writeback cache setting got changed.</comment>


Ask HN: What is your 'Theory of Everything'? - <AUTHOR> I've been thinking a lot about scientific progress over the last 500 years and it blows my mind to think that Alan Turing was less than a century ago. Look where we are today. I wonder how all this science and technology will converge tomorrow and what life will be like by 2050. <comment><USER2> All social problems stem from the fact that people believe it possible to be superior to one another. Once you get rid of this possibility, social problems, stemming from the "superiority problem" disappear. Utopia ensues.

<comment><USER3> It is just your opinion that people cannot be superior to one another. Define any objective metric, and it is possible for one to be superior to another.

<comment><USER2> I disagree. There's no such thing as an "objective metric." All qualities are contextual. Being smarter, strong, faster -- qualities one may say are "good" are not always desirable in all situations.

Even if it were possible for there to be an objective metric, that still doesn't mean one person is superior to another, even if they possess superior "objective metrics"

<comment><USER3> Yes, qualities are indeed contextual. In a specific, well-defined context (e.g., the Olympics) it is possible to be objectively superior to others.

Outside of this specific context, we cannot definitively say whether one is superior. It is subjective speculation. Hence why I said it is your opinion. I believe we cannot rule either way.

<comment><USER2> I'm not really sure what you're talking about. My original comment was referring to the general case. I'm sure, given enough constraints, anyone can prove anything.

Even your Olympic example is bad. Is being faster better? Maybe for track. Or maybe not, given the disadvantage sprinting has on long distance performance, etc.

Sure, you could say some qualities are best suited for certain situations -- but that was already obvious. My original point was that overall, in general, situation independent, it's silly to say one person is superior to another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ideology has a genetic basis.

We are all combinations of the r and K gene sets. (there is no ideology which falls outside the political compass). Epigenetics will bring out ideology lacking in a society. The ideological dialectic is never-ending and the only way the human race survives.

For example, if UBI ever became a reality, it would simply then give those ideologically opposed to it all the time in the world to take it down.

Recently Steven Pinker has come closest to getting the ideas of ideological genetic predisposition into the mainstream, refuting the theory of tabula rasa. But ultimately the truth is too 'racist' for academia.

also: True creativity is not to break out of cliches, but to install new cliches.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not a theory, but my "model of everything" is the network (or graph). I've never found a concept I can't understand in terms of nodes and edges

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm on a similar train of thought.

I look at everything in terms of plant-based mathematics (trees, branches, nodes, roots, fruits/data). I deduce everything to first principles and work up from there.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_(data_structure)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_\(data_structure\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can't provide a theory of everything, but I can predict the future:

\- The application paradigm will come to an end.

\- All apps will be replaced by a general purpose interactive language.

\- We will realize NLP doesn't work.

\- 80% of software jobs will disappear within the next 15 years.

\- Privacy will be revealed as foolish and selfish.

\- Transparency will become the norm within the next 30 years.

\- Money will be replaced with a social score/currency. Honesty, consistency and predictability will be the most valued traits.

<comment><USER7> Privacy is not foolish or selfish, and despite the ongoing momentum in decreasing levels of personal privacy, is an extremely precious and valued human desire and resource.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nothing really matters ?

<comment><USER9> Anyone can see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> 42

</comment><comment><USER4> P ≠ NP</comment>


Ask HN: Young, Lonely Boston Hacker - <AUTHOR>

I am a 23 year old small business owner who just moved to Boston.  I work in financial consulting; in specific, I partner with investment firms and utilize technology to innovate their investment framework.  My background is in Computer Science and Computational Finance.
I am extremely fortunate to be able to work for myself.  It provides me an incredible amount of freedom in my life and I love what I do.  The only downside, however, is that 90% of the time, I am working alone.
I have contemplated joining start-up office spaces in the area just for the social interaction, but can't really justify it as a business cost at the end of the day.  Plus, while I think I would thrive off the energy in the room, I would still be working alone at the end of the day.
I am extremely interested in getting involved in the start-up and angel investing community in the area, but have yet to really find a good way of going about it.  The angel community seems to be locked up by groups of business associates that are all much older than me; people with whom I will unfortunately probably never have much opportunity for social or business interaction.
I also don't really know how I could fit into the start-up space -- I don't have time to work on new projects.  I think that I am probably too young to offer myself up as a 'mentor' in the start-up space in Boston -- while I have learned a tremendous amount running my own business in the last several years, I don't feel like I am an expert by any stretch of the imagination.
Ideally, I am looking for the opportunity to,
1) Meet other young entrepreneurs 2) Develop mentor relationships with local angel investors (at this point, I am seriously just contemplating cold-calling some of the groups) 3) Listen to speaker series on start-ups, entrepreneurship and investing
I would love to get involved in some sort of weekly get together to discuss new business or investment ideas, real or fictional, to foster creative thinking and entrepreneurship.
I am even more interested in meeting with other young successful entrepreneurs and investors (no offense to you older guys) so we can push each other to succeed and begin creating a tremendous business network.
Does anyone have any thoughts or know about any weekly meetings or get togethers I could start attending where I could find these things?  Any thoughts on how I can go about finding mentors in the angel investment space?
I am willing to start these groups myself, but thought I would reach out to see if they already exist.
Any and all thoughts are much appreciated!
For anyone who wants to reach out, in public or private: e-mail: email@example.com / twitter: @choffstein <comment><USER2> Hi, I'm from the Wellesley area myself, and I really appreciate your initiative. Babson College is a really good school for you to look at because the students are known for their entrepreneur activities.

I would be very interested in joining the group if you ever get a chance to start it.

Please shoot me an Email @ email@example.com and maybe I could provide some assistance.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am actually keenly aware aware of the entrepreneurship focus at Babson. My father, who was an entrepreneur, actually received his MBA there.

Are you aware of any events at Babson where the general public is allowed to participate? Do any other of the business schools in the area (Harvard, MIT, et cetera) have forums for public participation?

<comment><USER2> there was this Founder's Day at Babson two days ago which gathered many entrepreneurs / investors around the area, but that's a bit late already. I'd keep you posted since I'm currently studying at Babson, and if there are any open forums and activities around the area, I can give you a heads up

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> read bostinnovation.com and/or stop by our office whenever (110 Chauncy street). we know a decent amt about the young entrepreneurs in the area</comment>


Scientists slow down the speed of light travelling in free space - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150123144158.htm

<comment><USER2> If By reshaping,they slowed a photon, is a photon the optimal shape in nature, or could you speed it up by reshaping?</comment>


Gnome 3.12 Released - <AUTHOR> http://www.gnome.org/news/2014/03/gnome-3-12-released/ <comment><USER2> Looks great. I've been extremely happy with Gnome UI after switching from OSX. It's fun being able to play with a desktop that is constantly improving on a rolling-release platforms like Arch Linux, where new updates stream in constantly. Instead of having to wait a year or more for big waterfall releases like OSX (Mavericks was also pretty disappointing).

My only complaint is how every gnome upgrade the majority of gnome shell extensions break and the dev community is really slow to update them.

<comment><USER3> Just the fact that people need a ton of shell extensions to make it barely usable is a problem in itself. The fact that they break (and some are let to rotten) after every major release is just to beat a dead body.

Just a few weeks ago I tried Gnome 3 again (again!) and it still sucks as a productivity environment. I have better things to do. But as a geek, I'll be checking Gnome 3 again maybe in a year or more. No holding my breath for any surprises.

<comment><USER4> Gnome is very usable for many of us. I'm tired of seeing the same 'it sucks as a productivity environment' comments.

If it's not your preference, you can say that, but Gnome Shell is perfectly fine when it comes to productivity. Quick app switching, searching, app launching, etc... How do these things hurt productivity?

I personally dislike KDE, but that's just my taste. Some people love XMonad or XFCE, and some people even like Unity.

Dunno, I'm a developer and my workflow involves several different tools, Gnome Shell certainly doesn't hurt 'productivity'.

<comment><USER5> > I'm a developer and my workflow involves several different tools, Gnome > Shell certainly doesn't hurt 'productivity'.

I'm also a developer whose workflow involves several different tools. One of those tools is Firefox, and I currently have several hundred tabs open in more than a dozen Firefox windows. I want to be able to instantaneously switch from Emacs to a specific Firefox window. I don't want to switch from Emacs to Firefox and then switch to a specific Firefox window (e.g., using Alt+`) like some desktop environments force their users to do.

The best solution I've found is to use a desktop environment or window manager that will display the Alt-Tab window list vertically with full titles displayed for all windows (which is similar to how I display tabs in Firefox using the Tree Style Tab extension). KDE and Openbox support this setup, and the last time I checked, Gnome didn't. So using Gnome would hurt my productivity.

<comment><USER6> _I currently have several hundred tabs open in more than a dozen Firefox windows._

This is not a typical use case. I do periodically see people leaving comments which claim that they usually have the entire World Wide Web open simultaneously, but not often enough for it to be a use case worth optimizing for.

<comment><USER7> Look up OneTab, it improved my quality of browsing the web x100+

<comment><USER8> Onetab basically refuses to load all previous tabs when you open the browser. By default, Firefox doesn't open old tabs until you move to them. Firefox also offers tab groups by default as well. Most importantly, Firefox uses only around half as much memory as chrome and (in my use) seems to be more responsive with lots of tabs open.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are many annoyances in these new unfinished desktops, but one I miss the most was the Gnome2 clock applet. A must if you have people in other timezones:

[http://i.stack.imgur.com/1Ftcd.png](http://i.stack.imgur.com/1Ftcd.png)

Note the map with day/night marked. Allows one at a glance to figure out if it is a reasonable time to make contact.

I've managed to get a version almost as good on a Saucy laptop, but now Locations doesn't stay open by default, and has some new bugs.

These are the kinds of rich functionality that consistently get lost in the "reinvention shuffle" linux software goes thru every 5 years.

<comment><USER10> Gnome used to have lots of things like that that were just really wonderful touches.

The calendar integration is still there, at least- if only I could get EDS to work with exchange...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I love Gnome, and it just keeps improving. It's got some annoying issues, such as when the designers decide to willy- nilly drop important features inbetween releases (like the Ethernet connection indicator, and the backtracking in gparted), but it's been great otherwise. A genuinely good desktop manager for linux.

<comment><USER12> No change they made ever had consequences as dire as when they removed transparency from GNOME Terminal.

Never forget.

<comment><USER10> It's sad, but I've switched to xterm

<comment><USER13> a strange switch, xterm doesn't have transparency eitiher and as far as correctness goes, gnome-terminal is very correct compared to others. So I have no idea why you would switch to xterm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If anybody uses Fedora 20 and wants to test out the new release, Richard Hughes set up a COPR for 3.12. I've been using it for a couple weeks without any major issues.

[http://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2014/02/24/gnome-3-12-on- fedo...](http://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2014/02/24/gnome-3-12-on-fedora-20/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Gnome is a perfect example of what designing with too much sense for aesthetics and no usage experience looks like.

It's nice looking, yes. On the surface things seem to be good enough. But start using the software, and discover how little though most of the features have been given.

Window cycling is one thing, but the issues go _way_ deeper than that. Small examples come from the file open/save dialog being into "Recent" mode by default, despite being totally useless since the dialog has no notion of what has been done outside of other applications (and come _on_ , on Linux having a terminal open to script is pretty much the norm). There's an option to switch the dialog to directory mode (in "current cwd") [1], but of course there's no such fine-tuning in gtk3. I'm supporting users using Ubuntu in our facility, and they all hate this "recent" mode.

[1] [http://askubuntu.com/questions/63202/can-i-stop-apps-from- se...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/63202/can-i-stop-apps-from-selecting- recently-used-by-default-in-file-chooser-dialog)

The list of gothas like this would be so awfully long that I stopped caring about Gnome first, and then Gtk3 entirely, since they are pretty much on the same development line of thought.

Luckily, thanks to XDG and several other common practices, a full DE like Gnome or KDE is pretty much useless on Linux. There are some many alternatives to choose from, that any complaint is largely irrelevant.

My suggestions to people liking Gnome though is this: dont' focus on looks, please try the alternatives. If you miss some "integration", ask for a standard or some consensus, not for any DE-specific feature.

<comment><USER16> _but of course there 's no such fine-tuning in gtk3_

The startup-mode was apparently brought back in Gnome 3.10.

[https://mail.gnome.org/archives/commits- list/2012-November/m...](https://mail.gnome.org/archives/commits- list/2012-November/msg05423.html)

[https://git.gnome.org/browse/gtk+/tree/gtk/org.gtk.Settings....](https://git.gnome.org/browse/gtk+/tree/gtk/org.gtk.Settings.FileChooser.gschema.xml?h=gtk-3-10#n98)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I still don't understand why they insist on removing window-based task management when they continue to use window-based applications and workflows, so I will continue to complain about this

<comment><USER18> I'm confused, what's window based task management?

<comment><USER19> Window-based task management is "Windows", App-based task management is "Metro".

We spent the last 25 years of computer history teaching both the users and the computers how to multitask, only for the most recent user designers to try their damnedest to take it away from us.

<comment><USER20> > App-based task management is "Metro".

App-based task management is also pre-CS5 Photoshop on OSX. Programs which have multiple windows per document need those windows brought to the front together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> In case there are some people who still avoid Gnome3 due to experiences from the early versions, I strongly recommend giving this one a chance. I myself was a Unity user for a couple of years because I liked the fact that they were trying to do something new. I had tried Gnome3 as well but the first versions were pretty messy. Now, though, after getting fed up with Canonical and switching to Manjaro (highly recommended as a fairly easy rolling release distro), I've been very positively surprised about Gnome's progress. It looks good, fits my usage patterns very well, and the minor annoyances I had were pretty much fixed via a couple of extensions.

</comment><comment><USER22> They talk about better Hi-res (i.e. "retina") display support. Does anyone have a screenshot or video of this working?

<comment><USER23> I'm curious about this as well. Having a nice HiDPI laptop but being stuck using 1366x768 sucks :(

<comment><USER24> There are many tweaks that can help. For instance, I'm currently using gnome 3.10 on a 11.6 inch laptop at 1920x1080, without any major issues.

For my setup, I've done the following:

* Increased the font scaling in gnome-tweak-tool to 1.5

* Made the cursor larger with a setting in gconf ([http://askubuntu.com/a/66216](http://askubuntu.com/a/66216))

* Adjusted the zoom level in the firefox about:config. Updated layout.css.devPixelsPerPx to 1.6

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> So it is pronounced "ga-nome" and not "nome"? Interesting.

It looks good too, I like the way modals open from a thin line to its full size.

<comment><USER26> Yep, just like GNU: [https://www.gnu.org/pronunciation/pronunciation.html](https://www.gnu.org/pronunciation/pronunciation.html)

<comment><USER27> Even though I'm fully aware of the 'correct' pronunciations, my preference for "Gee Enn You" and "Nome" is too strong. The standard way of pronouncing those is too cacophonous for me.

<comment><USER28> I still pronounce it "new" and "nome" and I don't care :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> One of the best news for Gnome is their (updated/clarified) stance on portability, that I found linked in the section for developers[d] linked from the actual release notes[r]:

[http://blogs.gnome.org/desrt/2014/02/19/on- portability/](http://blogs.gnome.org/desrt/2014/02/19/on-portability/)

"GNOME is not "Linux-only" and it never should be. People are running GNOME on FreeBSD, OpenBSD and very many other non-GNU/Linux systems. People are running GNOME on GNU/Linux systems that don't have systemd. This will continue to be the case. We need to continue supporting these people."

[d] [https://help.gnome.org/misc/release- notes/3.12/developers.ht...](https://help.gnome.org/misc/release- notes/3.12/developers.html.en) [r] [https://help.gnome.org/misc/release- notes/3.12/](https://help.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/3.12/)

<comment><USER30> Those are encouraging words, but what do they mean in practice? E.g. are they reverting the changes that had gnome's login manager depending on systemd?

<comment><USER29> I read it like the intention is to introduce comparability layers for certain "rough" APIs such as logind, and have Gnome depend on those, rather than eg: "just" logind.

I've yet been able to track down any recent comment from the _bsd side of things (I don 't follow the _bsd-dev lists) -- so I'm not sure what the schedule is like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've been a Gnome user since the start of the month and it has been the best Linux experience I ever had so far. I was thoroughly impressed by its performance too.

</comment><comment><USER32> I think GNOME3 is breaking *nix philosophy: do one thing and do it well; to be highly configurable. You have freedom to use compiz in GNOME2, but not in 3. There are a lot of good GTK2 themes but gitg and d-feet have hard-coded styles so only default GNOME3 theme will look sane. Super+p is somewhat hard-coded and you cannot customize it ... and there are more annoying issues. I am happy that mate-desktop is still alive.

<comment><USER13> No the difference is that GNOME is moving towards a 'product'. Everything is designed to work together, to be consistent everywhere. When you mix and match, you just get medicority because none of them were designed to work together at all. I would not call that even a Unix philosophy, it's just something that happened organically.

Doing what GNOME is doing is hard. Making hard choices on what to keep and what not. Fixing the things in the other parts of the stack instead of band aiding it in their own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> If any Gnome developers are reading this - please disregard the bullshit (of course constructive criticism isn't bullshit) - you guys are doing an awesome job, and I wouldn't trade Gnome for any desktop environment out there. Period. Yes, including OSX. I think this will finally have me upgrade my 'buntu.

</comment><comment><USER34> Honestly I don't use any of the extensions anymore. I just install Docky and call it a day.

</comment><comment><USER35> Hey what do you know – I find myself not caring very much. After using Gnome 2 for a long while as my main work desktop and actually really trying to use Gnome 3 for a while. Now I'm not even curious to know what's in the new release.

<comment><USER36> I understand the initial shock as a long-time user of gnome as my primary desktop. (since gnome 1) I was like you but now have to admit, since 3.8, I am very happy with all the changes. I prefer its look and feel over everything else these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> The best feature for me is automatic text reflow in terminal. It's finally here!

</comment><comment><USER38> Gnome is usable only with gnome do. [http://do.cooperteam.net](http://do.cooperteam.net)

</comment><comment><USER39> So these updates are only available for Ubuntu 14.04 and other flavors? I'm unable to upgrade from 3.10 to 3.12

<comment><USER18> I think these updates are available for everyone, I just don't think ubuntu is going to do it for you until a later release.

<comment><USER20> Not just Ubuntu; it's not even close to being packaged for debian-testing yet. ([http://www.0d.be/debian/debian- gnome-3.12-status.html](http://www.0d.be/debian/debian- gnome-3.12-status.html))

<comment><USER39> Damn, they need to hurry up on that ^-^</comment></comment></comment></comment>


If you find yourself competing with the Internet, find a way out. - <AUTHOR> http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/07/21/evanWilliamsVsTheInternet.html

<comment><USER2> If Dave Winer's writing ability was half the size of his ego, he'd be the next Shakespeare. I still get a kick out of the sheer arrogance of putting permalinks on _every paragraph_.

This is a typical piece of his. Not very well thought out, kind of rambles for a few paragraphs, ans basically says that so-and-so is lame because they're not internetty enough. (Now, if Twitter could do something _really_ awesome like inventing RSS, then maybe they'd be worth talking about.)

<comment><USER3> To his credit, though, unlike many other Web celebs Winer at least has some code to back his ego. Twitter has ways to before its impact is comparable to RSS.

<comment><USER4> It's worth noting that the TechCrunch article goes so far as to call out RSS (again), as seen through the eyes of Twitter.

"Don't just connect RSS feed," the notes read. "What if all feeds went through twitter: would be expensive."

But Winer's also probably alluding to the "we're creating a new Internet" vibe that's so palpable in Twitter's notes.

The Twitter meeting notes: [http://cache0.techcrunch.com/wp- content/uploads/2009/07/tw-s...](http://cache0.techcrunch.com/wp- content/uploads/2009/07/tw-strat-feeds.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I read this twice - and I'm still not sure what he's trying to say.

<comment><USER6> My thought exactly. I came back here to check the comments in case someone explained it more clearly...

<comment><USER7> He's trying to say that Microsoft refused to embrace the internet because it was something that they had no control over (instead, Microsoft planned to launch their own closed online service in 1995 called Marvel), and as a result they fell far behind in the internet space.

He goes on to make a comparison to Twitter, and how they are concerned that if they make the service too open, then developers might create something that competes with the service or renders it obsolete. And he's saying that reluctance to embrace the openness of the internet will result in failure in the same manner that it did for Microsoft.

(not that I agree with this piece; this is just my interpretation)

<comment><USER6> Thanks. Maybe it was building up on other posts that I haven't read...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd be interested to hear his proposed solutions. If controlling a platform on the internet is impossible, what is twitter to do?

Is their only chance at longevity to publish a protocol spec and allow twitter to become a decentralized messaging system like email, for which anyone can write and run their own server?

That might actually be the case. Internet services rarely last long, but protocols often do (relatively speaking), for better or for worse.

<comment><USER9> He's been calling for a decentralized Twitter-like service since about late last year, and seems to have recently begun work on his own out of frustration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like this observation:

 _[The Internet] doesn't employ any engineers, and when they leave one company to work for another they still work for the Internet._

This perspective also makes work histories much more straightforward. For example, mine becomes:

      WORK HISTORY

      2003-2009 Internet, San Francisco, CA
      2000-2003 Internet, San Francisco, CA
      1999-2000 Internet, Austin, TX/Sunnyvale, CA
      1996-1999 Internet, Austin, TX
      1995-1996 Internet, Austin, TX
      1993-1995 Internet, Sunnyvale, CA

I may have to get business cards made up.

<comment><USER11> It seems to me though that the best Companies (and Eras) focus the Internet through a vector set. Were you working on Infrastructure or Retail in 1997? Search or Marketing in 2001? Cloud or Advertising in 2008?

We may work _for_ the Internet. But it only becomes what we choose to work on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not completely sure that Evan Williams is trying to exert control in the same way Microsoft has. Much of the great stuff that happens online is due to a "benevolent dictator" approach. Someone (or a team) needs to shepherd the "big new idea" through many phases, in an environment where a lot of people are trying to muck it up (trolls, spammers, you name it).

Giving anyone the firehose could cause all sorts of problems in the short- term. It seems reasonable for Twitter execs to think carefully about the right way to do that.

</comment><comment><USER13> The firehose is pretty revolutionary really. Being able to get every public feed in one feed is pretty easy compared to having to index the whole web like Google do with blogs and news.

I can see one of the reasons they shut it down is that bandwidth cost is going to be very high. I expect if they could charge for it they could open it up - but I expect many of the companies who would like it don't have business models or can't afford it.</comment>


The entire CVE-2015-2419 IE bug debacle (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/yuhong2/status/620144615098744832 <comment><AUTHOR> Original Stack Overflow post: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28114732/internet- explore...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28114732/internet- explorer-11-crashes-when-angulars-http-post-is-used-with-large-complex) Blog post: [http://www.h0wl.pl/2015/06/browsing-stackoverflowcom- for.htm...](http://www.h0wl.pl/2015/06/browsing-stackoverflowcom-for.html) An exploit kit adding support for this exploit in a month: [https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat- research/2015/08/cve-201...](https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat- research/2015/08/cve-2015-2419_inte.html)</comment>


In The World: Easy on the eyes - <AUTHOR> http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/itw-eyes.html

<comment><USER2> My understanding is that in addition to determining the proper prescription, grinding lenses to fit them is something that many third world countries don't have the infrastructure for. Self-adjustable, 3rd world-friendly spectacles do exist[1], but at that point, does one really need a prescription, or can you just dial in until you can see well?

[1] [http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/josh-silver-adaptive- eyewe...](http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/josh-silver-adaptive-eyewear)</comment>


Show HN: Go Concurrency Patterns - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dsinecos/go-concurrency-patterns <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, While learning about goroutines and channels, I implemented different types of pipelines (fan-in, fan-out etc). I wrote comments extensively so I could review later and to help someone else learning about these. Sharing here for feedback. You can check out the annotated code here - [https://cranky- franklin-0e76f2.netlify.app/](https://cranky-franklin-0e76f2.netlify.app/)</comment>


Show HN: Unsolved – A Stack Overflow for Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> Hey folks. I have been working on Unsolved.xyz for a bit now.
The idea was to help idea stage entrepreneurs make progress using a combination of a self serve game and Founder to Founder problem solving
1. Automated To-Dos that help them make progress from one level to the next
2. As you progress you get access to a network of high reputation founders
3. You gain reputation by helping other founders solve challenges and getting unstuck
Reputation is live, but not the To-Dos.
It looks a little like a mashup between product hunt and stack overflow. But it is for ideas
I really was hoping you would consider sharing what you think about what we are building <comment><USER2> Have you seen [https://pioneer.app/](https://pioneer.app/) ??

Their leaderboard looks really cool.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> P.S - Please access from a mobile browser.</comment>


Why We Often Blindside Companies - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/20/why-we-often-blindside-companies/ <comment><USER2> This callout is absurd and misplaced. Entrepreneurs do not owe TechCrunch their scoop. So Caterina left Hunch 6 months before it was announced? Really? Well then guess what Mike - she had the info 6 months before you did. Why does Mike Arrington deserve right of first refusal on anything that goes to print? Call founders or don't call founders but don't cry foul just because a founder wants to control his or her own (in this case personal) story.</comment>


Poll: how many people click on the pdf, [scribd] or use a script? - <AUTHOR>

Huh. I have near 900 points but couldn't find a poll link anywhere so this question will have to be answered via comments until someone else creates a poll. apologies for the confusion.
QUESTION: how do you view HN pdf's?
1. click the pdf to download and open with whatever application you want.
2. click the pdf to open in your browser via a plugin
3. click the scribd to view via scribd
4. use a greasemonkey script to view via something else
5. i'm a hacker i view pdfs raw!!1 <comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll>

</comment><comment><USER3> I use Okular embedded by kparts (I think) in Konqueror.</comment>


CMC Markets to my request for 2FA: "Password and trading pin is enough" - <AUTHOR> https://i.imgur.com/tznSq1q.png <comment><AUTHOR> The trading pin is just a few fixed numbers that you remember alongside your password. It's obviously not a second "factor". If one of my browser extensions gets hacked (or whatever), there goes my life savings.

Even my note taking app has 2FA! It's kinda absurd to me that I'm emailing back and forth with a massive financial institution arguing about whether 2FA is necessary. They put me through to the development team, and this is apparently their response. I'll probably be moving my savings to a different company.

<comment><USER2> Who is responsible for losses, them or customers?</comment></comment>


Abortion rates go down when countries make it legal: report - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/abortion-rates-go-down-when-countries-make-it-legal-report-n858476 <comment><USER2> What a surprise, the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute, an organization dedicated to "promoting access to abortion services" publishes a report claiming this.

Here's counter evidence from Nate Silver:

[https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/pro-life-states-have- lo...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/pro-life-states-have-lower- abortion/)

[https://www.guttmacher.org/united- states/abortion](https://www.guttmacher.org/united-states/abortion)</comment>


Stopwilson.com: a website reimagined as an MS-DOS program - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Direct link: <http://www.stopwilson.com/>

The simulation is leaky, all drive letters are possible and they all contain the same thing. There are no delete commands, there is no shell and no text editor, it doesn't come with QBASIC.

<comment><USER3> I like the wit though ...</comment></comment>


Another park.IO success story – 2,389.9% profit on know.ly - <AUTHOR> http://blog.park.io/articles/another-park-io-success-story-know-ly/ <comment><USER2> Does no one else see this as disgusting?

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually everyone involved in this transaction is very happy with the outcome. The buyer is happy to get the domain that they want, and the seller is happy to make money.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What was your failure in 2015? - <AUTHOR> Hey,
Yes, I know we all are not open to admit our failure. And actually I started following hackernews to get inspired by others success. But reality is, we all fail.Some of those we share when we get successful but most of the failure we hide or just pretend we did not fail.
Somewhere I read, "smart people learn from others mistake". So here is our chance, lets speak about our failure, it will help everyone. I am starting with my own failure:
"I wanted to switch job because I got too comfortable with my job, not being challenged and most importantly not learning new staff (technology, process and etc). But I got a promotion which came with a handsome raise so I did not switch. But when I go to bed, most of the night I got the feeling I did not do anything significant , basically a wasted day. And when I looked for new job I found I am getting paid well above average and most of the new offer is around average of my level. So the plain the thing is I am afraid of switching because I will be less paid and I can not afford it. But I am still looking for new challenge who knows what will happen in 2016".
Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> My failure was not following my dream sooner. Once I realized this I fired toxic clients and got rid of toxic people in my life. Now I am back to actively working on MY dream, and yes there is less money involved right now. However, I've simplified my life and really reeled in the spending and it's working. I'm getting a lot more interest in my new project and funding is just around the corner - I fully expect first seed funding in Q1 2016. In the end you have to do what makes you happy and the sooner you do it, the better your life will be.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not managing my time wisely. I keep choosing escapism over learning/reading and that is impeding my learning of new tools/languages/etc that can help me get a new job/better pay.

I've been "drifting along" for years at this point, unable to get out of my own way.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not staying focused on one idea. If you try to work on more than one idea, you spread yourself too thin, and all the ideas suffer in quality and execution. Also, feature creep, focus only on the minimal features needed to launch. Decide on additional features after you have users and they start to ask for things and patterns start to form.

</comment><comment><USER5> My biggest failure in 2015 was probably that I was too reactionary. I lacked the autonomy that I often had in the more distant past. Instead of making and following long-term plans, I found myself doing small projects and waiting for people's reactions before proceeding to do something else. What I would do next was too often based on the responses I received. There have been times in the distant past where I was the opposite -- too much autonomy for too long -- leading to building a large project that nobody really wanted. In 2015 I saw the opposite end of the spectrum. Recently recognising this phenomenon has helped to remind me that both ends -- heavy autonomy and heavy interaction -- are bad for productivity. I am now thinking that perhaps autonomous spurts of 3 to 9 weeks at a time are best in the long run. Waiting for a reaction after just a few days of work is too short a time, and building alone for 9 months without validation is too dangerous.

</comment><comment><USER6> I (we) have been building an app for [http://timeblock.com](http://timeblock.com) since we invented the TimeBlock method last january.

Sometime after the summer vacation I panicked since I realized that I would not be able to reach the 6k MRR goal I had semi publicly stated.

Instead of openly accepting this I started making bad decisions to boost the MRR, this in turn led to some (of the right customers) feeling abandond and therfore they churned.

That made me realize I was fucking up and in the end I agreed to part way with one of the wrong clients and now we are back on (an even better) track with our app and vision for the product.

But damn it was a hard realization and some hard months living the lie.

</comment><comment><USER7> Trying to drink from the firehose without taking a break to breathe every so often. I usually don't think about it till the body starts freaking out and refuses to let me keep going.

This year I started 4 new jobs. 1 at a startup after an 8 year long position that I basically grew up in. There were some layoffs and so I picked up 3 contract positions to try to learn new things and pay bills and junk. I also went from a 10 minute commute to almost 1.5-2hrs... which is a big jump for me. The 3 contract thing worked for awhile until the holidays rolled around, and then everything became too much. I was able to exit one contract gig somewhat gracefully and told the others that I wouldn't be working much during the holidays. Just in time for anxiety to kick in. :P On top of that, currently studying for interviews, which I haven't done, ever.

I think I know how to pace myself better, but we'll see...

</comment><comment><USER8> My failure isn't the good kind of failure.

Mine was inaction.

</comment><comment><USER9> I didn't dip my toes into affiliate marketing as a side venture like I wanted to.

</comment><comment><USER10> Putting blind trust into a business partner. Not doing due diligence properly. Foolishly signing a letter of intent. Litigation. Losing my life savings. Saving my startup to only have it fail. Having to start over from square one.

I've learned from my mistakes and I know 2016 will be better. Wish me luck.

</comment><comment><USER11> I tried to solve the problem of secure code delivery, but the community didn't care about that problem at all.

</comment><comment><USER12> In Brazil, there is a foundation called, "Fundação Estudar" which is funded by Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles and Beto Sicupira, some of the wealthiest guys in the world (specially Jorge Paulo Lemann).

They select top Brazilian students and give them scholarships. They usually choose by assessing the candidate's academic and professional track record, besides considering their personality.

They usually select very, very, very impressive young folks.

Fundação Estudar's alumni are really strong. If you are approved, the network you will be part of is a much better gift than the scholarship itself.

For instance, the current CEO of AB InBev (the company which is the owner of Budweiser - among other beer brands) is a former fellow of Fundação Estudar.

Actually, he is won one of the firsts fellows and won a scholarship for an MBA at Stanford.

Every year, some candidates apply for MBA's/LLM's scholarships at top American universities and for undergraduate's scholarships.

I applied for an undergraduate scholarship in a Brazilian university.

I must emphasize that I did not need the money, what I really wanted was to be part of their network.

Actually, this year was my third try. I also made an application in 2013 and 2014.

Previously, I was eliminated on the semifinal phase. Going until this phase means that I was among the best 40/50 out of 80,000 candidates.

This year (2015) I went to the final interview with other 19 students.

On the last interview, there were 20 candidates applying for an undergraduate scholarship for a Brazilian or American university. They chose 18 and cut out me and a girl who was going to Yale.

I was really sad when I received the result because I wanted a lot to be part of their community. And this year I was really close of finally achieving it. I almost got it!

Being refused three times by Fundação Estudar is my greatest failure so far in my life (I have 22 years old).

This third elimination happened in the middle of July.

It has been awhile and I have been reflecting on it a lot lately. The feedback they gave me about why I was not chosen is also clearer now.

The lessons that I took from this experience are:

1 - I am really glad I tried. If I had not tried I would be wondering for the rest of my life what would have happened. I am quite happy that I will not regret not trying.

2 - Every application process I tried, year after year, I noticed that I was getting better. I was better in interviews and my professional and academic track record were improving on the last years.

3 - Due to the application process I met a lot of people and made some new friends. And they are very impressive guys. Hence, my network has been enhanced.

4- It is clearer for me now my strengths and my weaknesses. Knowing what I need to improve is great. Getting this "no" is an excellent way of reducing the asymmetrical information between my perception about myself and what other people think about me.

5 - Self-knowledge is something weird.

Really difficult to measure, usually with little or no science when people talk about it and absolutely important.

This "no's" that I received were the best (and the hardest) way I have ever experienced to improve my self-knowledge.

6 - The process did not change much from 2013 to 2015. I was also older on the third try. But a funny (and IMHO cool) thing is that my preparation was better and harder year after year.

I put a lot of effort every time I tried. And this increased. I read books, searched for info on the Internet, rehearsed, created a notebook for self- assessment and spent many hours thinking about how I could pass. My preparation was definitely over the demand.

7 - I have a few idols. Two of them are Americans: Michael Jordan and Bob Knight. Jordan used to say: I do not accept not trying. And bob knight used to say: the will to succeed is important, but more important is the will to prepare.

I am in peace with the philosophy that two of my idols used to preach.

8 - I took lessons from it.

Hope you guys have enjoyed reading this long answer. My English writing has been a little rusty, sorry for the minor mistakes.

</comment><comment><USER13> Not to travel.</comment>


Ask HN: PHP library/script for site analytics - <AUTHOR>

I have a web app that allows members to create custom pages/profiles (think Facebook). I would like each member to be able to see their own analytics. Do you know of a php script or library for storing, and then nicely displaying visitor stats/analytics? <comment><USER2> <http://www.openwebanalytics.com/>

<http://piwik.org/>

You will definitely need to do some customization with these. Also whatever you use, consider that most analytics GUIs are written under the assumption that very few people will have access to them. This will affect both security and performance. Your best bet is using one of the above for the backend and making an optimized stats viewing interface for your users.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great! I found piwik.org but not the other. I'll look into it. God point about performance. I'll keep that in mind and use caching or something. Thanks!</comment></comment>


German union wins right to 28 hour working week - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/e7f0490e-0b1c-11e8-8eb7-42f857ea9f09 <comment><USER2> I don't keep up with the EU, but I hope this mindset that time is more valuable than money spreads.

</comment><comment><USER3> Non-paywalled article [https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/german-union- ig-met...](https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/german-union-ig-metall- wins-right-to-28-hour-working-week-and-4-3-pay-rise-1.3382445)</comment>


Out of the Tar Pit (2006) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://shaffner.us/cs/papers/tarpit.pdf <comment><USER2> Any framework built using this principles?</comment>


Sony is making the same mistake that hobbled Microsoft and almost killed Xbox - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/sony-playstation-4-xbox-one-mistakes-2019-1 <comment><USER2> If the Steam Machines come out with Windows 10 on them, they can beat the XBox and Playstation units with the unlimited library of games for Windows. I think SteamOS is not ready for prime time yet.

The PC Master Race has an advantage with Windows 10 and a gaming PC being upgradable. Valve's Steam really delivers the video games and has sales as well. I don't think that can be beat.

Video game consoles use PC technology now like AMD or Intel processors, etc.

You'll never see an AmigaBox or AmigaStation because they lag behind in technology, but the Amiga plays classic games alright. The Armiga does that just fine: [https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/armiga-amiga-emulator- giveaway...](https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/armiga-amiga-emulator-giveaway/)

So don't forget about the competition out there, I heard rumors that even Sega wants to make a new console. The old retro video game systems like Armiga and that new Atari box will compete as well, unless the XBox and Playstation emulate the retro games as well.

<comment><USER3> Are any companies planning to release new steam machines? I believe I read none of them sold well enough to warrant new models.

<comment><USER4> I think people would rather want a gaming PC than a Steam Machine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hard to say. Xbox has the Xbox live network you have to subscribe to for muliplayer. Playstation network is optional and sometimes gives free games.

500 bucks is too much if they can get it under 400 it will sell more and they make the difference up in selling games.

<comment><USER3> Multiplayer on PS4 requires paid subscription too. Both platforms give you 'free' games each month (with only the previous gen games on xbox still playable if your subscription lapses)

<comment><USER4> Thank you for correcting me. I haven't used a PS4 yet. I don't think people should pay for multiplayer over the Internet but I guess it is their business model?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For your convenience: [https://outline.com/TPMZcB](https://outline.com/TPMZcB)

</comment><comment><USER6> This sentence is basically a tl;dr:

> Sony trying to convert its very popular gaming service into an > "entertainment" service demonstrates a lack of understanding about why > people love PlayStation. It handles gaming very well, and attempts to > broaden that are likely to be balked at by its most loyal users.

It seems like everyone is trying to become a platform that locks you in these days. You'd think that Sony's terrible history with security would keep people away, but that doesn't appear to be the case. I'm not sure if I agree with the author's conclusion; while I'm personally a fan of compartmentalizing everything, I'm not sure if others share my enthusiasm. For example, I'm quite happy with my Nintendo Switch since I only use it for gaming, but I've had friends express their displeasure at the general lack of apps (e.g. web browser, Netflix, Hulu, etc.). My guess is that we have different perceptions, i.e. gaming device vs multimedia device.

</comment><comment><USER7> This article said absolutely nothing. It was a nice history lesson though.</comment>


CEO Scott Thompson's letter to Yahoo employees - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/04/04/read-yahoo-ceos-letter-to-employees-about-layoffs/

<comment><USER2> "Today we are restructuring Yahoo!" A pretty lousy way to stay optimistic. Too bad history repeats itself.</comment>


Ask HN: How will using containers save me money? - <AUTHOR> I am in a situation, where I am running multiple small independent apps in the cloud. They are each very low traffic with occasional traffic spikes, so they require very little resources on a day-to-day basis.
In the ancient world they would be running on a large colocated server under different users, perhaps using something like chroot, etc. The resources would be very well utilized but it would be a security and operations nightmare.
In the IAAS world I can rent instances of various sizes, one per my small application. This would improve on security and operations, but the resources are horribly allocated. I need every server to be sized so it can carry it's app at peak traffic, but otherwise they are all idling most of the time.
In the container (CAAS?) world security and operations are basically solved, but I am still not convinced about resource utilization.
Both AWS and GCE promise to deploy containers on top of their "compute platform" and charge me for used instances + some more for the management of the container platform.
So it seems by using containers to deploy my application I am still paying for the same underutilized resources, while giving the platform provider the possibility to optimize things behind my back. Basically I am saving THEM money.
I know could just pay for one big box and run all my applications on it, running docker and deploying containers by hand, but then I would be back managing things myself.
So how can I use containers to better utilize resources and save ME money? <comment><USER2> Not all application resource demands fit nicely inside instance types.

Once you determine your application needs, you can set your cpu/memory resource needs per container/service. Then you can run these containers inside your fleet more smartly.

This really comes into play for memory and cpu ratio. Look at the price difference between:

one m4.2xlarge = 32gb mem, 8 cores = $350 a month

eight t2 medium = 32gb memory, 8 cores = $300 a month

You get twice as much compute for less money with the ability to mix and match service needs instead of being constrained to individual instances.

<comment><AUTHOR> The key thing I missed is the fact that I am not limited to running a single container per instance. I never actually tried to run anything on either container engine and from their high level marketing blabla this was not immediately obvious.

<comment><USER2> Yep, you can run as many containers as resources available.

You set the cpu limit per container based on cpu units. There are 1024 available per core.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am still running micro-services outside containers. The main problem for me is upgrading the various programs nginx, postgresql etc. I have to recompile code by hand in many cases instead of having it automated in containers.

This is where I think containers would save me the most time and money.</comment>


Adobe: 25 Million AIR App Installs, Actual Number Likely Higher - <AUTHOR> http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/09/10/adobe-25-million-air-app-installs-actual-number-likely-higher/ <comment><USER2> It's intriguing that Adobe appears to have fudged the numbers and estimated the number of AIR App installs when, in fact, the more interesting number (for developers) is how many people actually have the runtime..!

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd love to see AIR get more traction, but I rarely hear about it these days. Why?

<comment><USER4> Too many competitors. You've got Silverlight. You've got Chrome. Both are trying to do the exact same thing. And AIR doesn't have much going for it beyond the fact that it got there first. Not many killer apps for it. Therefore, it doesn't get nearly as much attention as the much larger web sphere, which hasn't been relying on AIR for anything yet.

<comment><USER5> Silverlight is more of a Flash competitor than an AIR competitor. Chrome + Gears is kind of AIR-like, but it's a different approach to the same goal. More like Mozilla Prism.

I think offline/desktop access (whichever way you get it done) is an important step for the adoption of rich Internet apps.

<comment><USER4> I know it's bad to say this here, but I'm not really that eager to see rich Internet apps. It adds a layer of abstraction that doesn't need to be there, and I think development suffers when you're doing an Internet app rather than a desktop one.

I think the better solution is making desktop apps that emulate Internet apps. It's faster for the end user and it takes less effort for the developer. I think MobileMe is a perfect example of that. Make a powerful Internet app - but when you're not USING the Internet, just make sure it syncs with whatever app you're USING for your stuff.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Working at Causata - <AUTHOR> http://www.causata.com/blog/2009/10/working-at-causata.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, this has been picked up by TechCrunch: [http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/05/causata-launches- custom...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/05/causata-launches-customer- interaction-platform-with-4-5m-from-accel-partners/)</comment>