Former Google chief predicts the Internet will split by 2028 - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/09/21/former-google-chief-predicts-internet-will-split-by-chinese-web-an-american-one <comment><USER2> Article title includes the clarifying line: _A Chinese Web and an American one_. And that split effectively happened years ago.

<comment><USER3> Schmidt meant the Chinese net would extend beyond China.

<comment><USER2> Will the Chinanet also have a Great Firewall between Chinese and foreign connections?

<comment><USER3> Too soon to tell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How about Internet splitting up based on large companies?

Facebook already tried it with free basics. Google with its hold on Android devices is going to go down the same path sooner or later. Apple has already it's own closed garden. Netflix is doing that to entertainment.

It won't be a surprise if a few years later you have to buy a package web services from your ISPs and you only see what you pay for. Not like the free internet we imagined for sure.

<comment><USER5> I feel like Google is already doing it with AMP.

<comment><USER6> And chrome accounts.

<comment><USER7> AMP Is open source, Microsoft/Bing are on board, and Google recently stepped back from AMP governance to encourage more parties involved. No one group will hold more than 1/3 control.

<comment><USER8> Google AMP is not "open source". You might be able to offer suggestions about it, but it's not like a piece of software that you can fork and develop independently. Google controls the main reading device (Google Chrome). The "open source" line is marketing BS.

When I read "no group will hold more than 1/3 control" it sounds like 3 big players will wink at each other while they pillage the WWW and divide the spoils.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >Schmidt said he thinks people will likely see "fantastic leadership in products and services from China," noting the scale of the nation's business, the massive wealth being created there and the advance of global trade, according to the report. But he acknowledged the country's growing economic influence may have political consequences: "There's a real danger that along with those products and services comes a different leadership regime from government, with censorship, controls, etc.," CNBC reported.

this is doublespeak of the very highest order.

on the one hand, schmidt is praising china so that google has better chances of success there. on the other hand, he's admitting that china might be a totalitarian state presently or in the future.

the dupe is that it isn't a danger for china to start doing censorship or controlling speech. it's a reality, and now he's trying to gaslight us by claiming that the reality is false and his impression of it is what is really true.

china is a totalitarian state. and soon, with google's help and the complicity of google employees, they will continue to do so with greater efficiency than before. mao imagined a country where the state was the not merely the highest power in the land, but the only power. they're getting there.

if their internet splits definitively, they'll use their cordoned internet as an iron curtain. or perhaps a "bamboo curtain" is the more appropriate term. they are already well along this path. either way, over a billion people will be kept in the dark. some will enjoy it. some will not care. and some will die for their curiosity. schmidt knows this perfectly well.

<comment><USER10> > china is a totalitarian state. and soon, with google's help and the > complicity of google employees, they will continue to do so with greater > efficiency than before. mao imagined a country where the state was the not > merely the highest power in the land, but the only power. they're getting > there.

This isn't Google's problem. They're just a company out to make some money for the shareholders. If the people of China want Democracy and freedom they need to fight for it. So far, the Chinese have not done that and do not seem to care that much about western-style freedom. It is entirely possible that not all cultures and societies desire the same thing.

<comment><USER11> Some of the Chinese have done that - Tienamenn Square, Hong Kong democracy protests, and Taiwanese democracy come to mind. And yes it is Google's problem to extent Google is not an amoral monolithic entity but a collection of human beings all over the world for whom human rights are directly impactful, and will be even more so as totalitarianism grows and spreads.

At some point we have to stop hiding behind the belief that shareholder value maximization also inevitably results in human freedom. That's a post-Coldwar conceit that was financially lucrative for a time for Western companies, but which the CCP is doing their best to disprove now.

<comment><USER12> Man, when you read stuff like this you start realizing: China's firewall DOES work bidirectionally. There are constant protests in China.

> shareholder value maximization

The biggest causes of abuses in China are the world doing nothing, not when China was brutally taking over Nepal, not when brutally annexing Hong Kong (which was brutal despite the dog and pony show put up for the Queen). Hell, we are mostly choosing China's side over (tiny) annexations in India and Pakistan.

There were very little protests about the extreme abuses in Xinjang, the "criminal" organ donor scandals, the lead poisoning of (chinese and western) children just to use cheaper paint, ...

So yes, you can protest company actions, but first and foremost governments, most of all the EU, but also the US, are to blame. And of course things like the UN ... they're ... they're a farce.

The reality is that, imho, Google coming to China will make one hell of a lot of information available to Chinese citizens. I would expect this to have positive results, not negative.

We also know what the outcome will most likely be of not doing anything in China.

It seems to me A > B, do you disagree ? The attitude that doing nothing is superior to taking action is toxic and stupid. But yes, some very bad actions will have to be taken because that evil government demands it, and yes, some people here will need to do that.

But the first point is: the Chinese firewall clearly needs piercing from the western side as well. Here's more recent, mostly large scale, Chinese incidents, lightly categorized:

Labour abuse:

[https://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/13/china-coal-protests- highligh...](https://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/13/china-coal-protests-highlight- overcapacity-tensions.html)

(there have been years of constant protests everywhere in the Chinese coal industry, for at least years since 2013 or so)

[https://thediplomat.com/2018/08/communist-chinas- crackdown-o...](https://thediplomat.com/2018/08/communist-chinas-crackdown-on- labor-protesters/)

Racist state attitudes/discrimination:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2009_%C3%9Cr%C3%BCmqi_rio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2009_%C3%9Cr%C3%BCmqi_riots)

Pro-democracy and Hong Kong:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Hong_Kong_protests](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Hong_Kong_protests)

[https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/09/protests-hong-kong- hi...](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/09/protests-hong-kong-high-speed- rail-link-china-180922092549498.html)

[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia- china-40406429](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-40406429)

(one thing about the Chinese state total control, they want to control everything, including of course language. And they do it with a very heavy hand)

Generally protests against the state and party, with various focus points:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Chinese_pro- democracy_pro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Chinese_pro- democracy_protests)

[http://uk.businessinsider.com/china-students-missing- after-r...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/china-students-missing-after-riot- police-storm-apartment-to-stop-protest-2018-8?r=US&IR=T)

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-protest-over-cash- strappe...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-protest-over-cash-strapped- citys-school-plan-turns-violent-1535886485)

[https://edition.cnn.com/2018/07/31/asia/vaccine-protest- scan...](https://edition.cnn.com/2018/07/31/asia/vaccine-protest-scandal- china-intl/index.html)

[https://money.cnn.com/video/news/2018/08/08/chinese- lending-...](https://money.cnn.com/video/news/2018/08/08/chinese-lending- companies-government-protests-p2p-matt-rivers.cnnmoney/index.html)

[https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/protest- beatings-0906...](https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/protest- beatings-09062018124710.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's also spitting between EU and the rest of the world, e.g. a number of site block EU visitors due to GDPR.

And I routinely block China and Russia from servers I set up, because 95% of the break in attempts come from there.

</comment><comment><USER14> Archived copy without GDPR nag screen:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20180924153131/https://www.washi...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180924153131/https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/09/21/former- google-chief-predicts-internet-will-split-by-chinese-web-an-american-one/)

<comment><USER15> The irony...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The only way to truly split the internet is to have extremely harsh violation provisions. Otherwise citizens can use satellite phones.

Unless we consider China to already be "split" from the rest of the internet, which it isn't for people with means, but is practically for the everyday person.

<comment><USER17> Hacker News is the best parody of itself.

<comment><USER18> Can you explain this more? I'm not arguing with you, I just don't fully understand the context of the joke.

<comment><USER19> There is an unfortunate tendency for people on HN to think that HN is a representative sample of the population. They assume that the whole world cares about the same things HNers cares about, shares the same hobbies, has the same interest in DIY and technical things.

I'm not just calling HN out here. _Every_ community has some kind of bubble effect where members of that community think they're a representative sample of the whole world.

And, at times, that lack of self-awareness occasionally rises to such extreme levels that Poe's Law is invoked, and you can't tell the difference between someone caught deep in the bubble and someone taking the piss. Hence why HN can come off as a parody of itself sometimes.

One example is suggesting that people in oppressive regimes will just switch to satellite phones because they want a free and open Internet _that badly_. Another, which I linked elsewhere in the thread, is somebody poo-poohing Dropbox when it launched because "you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem" [0]. Really, how much of Dropbox's demographic is even going to know what these technologies are much less are willing to take the time and effort to build such a setup themselves? Or, for an example outside of HN, Slashdot's CmdrTaco poo-poohing the iPod with "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." [1].

And, yes, there are HN parodies out there where you can see just what kind of content here gets parodied. [2]

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863)

[1] [https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple- releases-i...](https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases- ipod)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6747373](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6747373)

(and as a side not, I do like how HN now has a rule against casually dismissing people's work, because it does help address this problem)

<comment><USER16> No I really think you misunderstand my point.

My point wasn't that sat phones are going to be ubiquitous it was that actually splitting the internet is impossible. Downlink is ridiculously fast and uplink is fast enough to ask for data. Once you get data on the ground its on the other side of the Internet wall, which means that if there are private networks at all they'll get the data.

You can't block the flow of information. You can just mold it and shift it now. And that is what the Chinese state is doing. They are fully aware who has real internet and they let some of them have it. They're essentially pragmatists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is pretty much a return to the mid nineties AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy, etc. era.

</comment><comment><USER21> Previous discussion here:

[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/20/eric-schmidt-ex-google- ceo-p...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/20/eric-schmidt-ex-google-ceo-predicts- internet-split-china.html?__source=sharebar|linkedin&par=sharebar)

<comment><USER22> You mean [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18047825](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18047825)

<comment><USER21> Yes, thank you. That's what I get for posting too early in the morning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm tired of these kinds of big predictions because there is absolutely no penalty for being wrong.

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands This whole article reads like a promotion for China which comes on the heels of several reports about Google helping China cracking down on dissidents.

To me, this is a Google PR piece, nothing more.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is assuming that the communist party of china will be able to maintain their grip.

I'd say it's far more likely to see China split up much like the old USSR did by 2028. They are even making the exact same mistakes like building roads and infrastructure in central asia.

If you've been following China for a while, you will see how nervous the leadership is, and like Putin, opted for "military achievements" to rally troops, and now facing a recession born out of the US-China trade war and all the social revolt and ethnic separatism oppressed for so long will explode.

Information is like entropy. It can't be contained. China's internet only works because they are willing to kill people over tweets and harvest their organs. You can't keep this up.

<comment><USER25> > I'd say it's far more likely to see China split up much like the old USSR > did by 2028.

At the library the other day my eye was caught by a book on the shelf about the "looming collapse of China". I took it down, saw that the back cover augured that China would surely collapse within 5 years... and then I opened the book to the copyright page and saw that it was published in the early millennium. Forecasts that any country is going to collapse can really miss the target in retrospect.

> They are even making the exact same mistakes like building roads and > infrastructure in central asia.

The USSR's ultimately fatal mistake was a bloated military sector and the planned economy. Its development efforts in Central Asia are not typically viewed as a big mistake, and Moscow's ability to extract resources from Central Asia probably staved off the collapse for a time. If you have seen someone claim otherwise, perhaps you could post a citation?

> all the ... ethnic separatism

In fact, China's brutal panopticon police state has probably neutered ethnic separatism. Yes, Tibetans and Uighurs harbour grievances, but the sheer number of Han Chinese settling in those regions, and the total control of communications and people's movements, means it is unlikely that those peoples would ever be able to adequately network to push for change. For those of us interested in how ethnic minorities fared under the USSR, China's efforts to supress their minorities are at a whole different level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Obligatory xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/865](https://xkcd.com/865)

</comment><comment><USER27> Hopefully it will split away from JavaScript.

</comment><comment><USER28> It would be actually quite nice to split the Web into two very distinct parts, but not Chinese and American as Schmidt predicts, but into documents and apps. Documents is the traditional, HTML-based web, that must absolutely stay open. The apps part is the aspect that is constantly evolving, and that becomes more and more complex year by year, and already DRM and other non-free and non-open components are implemented in popular browsers so that people may use it to access protected content.

We might as well stop pretending there is one web and split it into two. I will continue to use the document-based web using lightweight browser that don't need any JS functionality, and will only venture to the app-based "web" when I need, probably using another browser, maybe even in a virtual machine.</comment>


Tired? The importance of letting ideas marinate and percolate through sleep - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/technology/28proto.html?ref=business <comment><USER2> After spending 8 years not getting any sleep, I finally realized that I'm more efficient with real sleep. I finally wised up. In retrospect, my dumbest mistakes have mostly been due to being chronically sleep deprived. Amongst engineers and scientists, a lack of sleep is a point of pride. We feel like those stupid liberal arts majors are getting no real work done and that we're tired because we are. Whether the conjecture about liberal arts majors is correct, the sleep part is wrong. I'm so much more efficient now that I'm getting more sleep. I've been trying to get my friends to sleep more, but we'll see how that goes....

<comment><USER3> artists, musicians, writers and soldiers also get macho about sleep deprivation. I'm not sure if they really fall into what people mean when they talk disparagingly about the "liberal arts." It would seem strange to stay up for days reading sociology textbooks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just started reading 'Founders at Work' and find it kind of funny that they cite Steve Jobs in this article, when during his interview, Woz said that some of their best ideas (when building Apple) came after several days of not sleeping.

<comment><USER5> _"... Woz said that some of their best ideas (when building Apple) came after several days of not sleeping ..."_

Don't confuse working on a problem for a long time, understanding it very clearly with having the idea in your head and regurgitating a solution in one long stint. Woz emphasized this in his 2005 Startup School talk. Understanding an idea so completely in your head you can simplify it no more.

<comment><USER4> I'm not confusing anything, just restating what he said in his interview with Jessica. The actual quote is "When you get very, very tired -- and I had been up for four nights all night long; Steve and I got mononucleosis -- your head gets in this real creative state and it thinks of ideas that you'd normally just throw out."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Bodybuilders and weightlifters know that muscle grows in one's sleep. I think the key to working on anything into the night is following up with lots of sleep. That way, one gets the benefit of both sleep and sleep deprivation.

Every once in a while in the past, when I was working on my own project, I've done it to the point where I would sleep from 2am to 1pm, and the next time living in the dark for a day due to going to bed around sunrise (5am) and waking up at sundown (6pm), and so on. Eventually, I would have a normal schedule again. :) This was when my only focus was on writing code for my software and working out, period. Since my software became better every week, and I grew stronger, bigger, and faster as well, my goals were pretty much met and I was happy.

I like my current life as a student, due to the social aspect of learning from, and working with, others. But I am nowhere near as productive at developing my own software on a daily basis nor working out as I was when those were my only two goals. However, I understand that it has only been a few weeks, and I will be able to figure out how to introduce software and personal development into my schedule as I get more used to the demands of my classes. And even though I won't be able to dedicate as much time as I could before, I have the experience and confidence to get in shape and create software more efficiently, as well as the benefit of a being around lots of potential users.

<comment><USER7> I've done this, and find that it works really poorly for me. If I'm not going to bed at roughly the same time and getting up at roughly the same time, I just stay muddled all day, even when I'm technically getting ~8 hours. If I stay on a schedule, I wake up without an alarm after 6-7 hours and I'm fully awake all day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> While I agree with the message of the article -- sleep can be really productive, the assumption with the connection to entrepreneurship seems to be that creativity is the key to success. At least at the point we're at, while creativity is not to be underrated, mostly it's just a mountain of stuff to get done and most of it less than brainiac work.

</comment><comment><USER9> As an undergraduate math major with plenty of difficult classes, I have discovered the power of sleep in solving problems. I have spent hours and hours on a problem to no avail. I then fall asleep and the next morning I solve it very quickly. Amazing stuff.

<comment><USER10> Von Neumann used to prove theorems in his sleep.

So sleeping did not impede him working 24 hours a day. It actually helped.

<comment><USER11> I agree. For me the trick is to balance: you can sleep 4 hours a day for several days, _but only after having slept very well for several days_. A.k.a. resting periods alternated with high tension, full-speed periods [in the order of days, not weeks].

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Some problems become easier when I'm sleepy because I can't think as clearly but I start to focus very well.

Other problems demand several passes of experimentation. For those it's easier to try a quick test during the day, think about it while doing other things, and then wake up with the (possible) solution the next day.</comment>


"The carpets are so clean, we don't need janitors" - <AUTHOR> http://machinesplusminds.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-carpets-are-so-clean-we-dont-need.html <comment><USER2> In this case, the downside to saving money by laying off expensive experience is clear. Unfortunately, the downsides are rarely clear before the upsides, and by the time the mistake is obvious, returning to the previous state is difficult, and an incentive has been created for short term savings at the expense of long term ones.

By way of example, several years ago I sold tools at Sears. Sears had spent decades building consumer confidence, particularly in their Craftsman brand. If you bought a Craftsman tool, and it broke for any reason, they replaced it, sans receipt. As a result, this warranty was transferable - there were no questions asked. While this policy certainly did not extend to every product sold at Sears, it did exemplify a commitment to service and quality: in the words of one older person I talked to once "if you bought it at Sears, you didn't have to worry."

As time went on, Sears was able to increase profit margins by slowly restricting the tool warranty, and using crappier parts. The obvious problem was that once Sears lost its reputation as a "you don't have to worry about it" store, it had to compete with stores like Wal-Mart on price[0].

The interesting problem here is not the Sears strategy, but the fact that it takes years for the effect of reduced quality to become obvious: in the short term, consumer confidence in the brand is still high, so the worse products are bought for the same prices, under the assumption that the quality is still high. By the time consumers on the average figure this out (when your drill wears down in 3 years instead of 10), someone that made the change has been able to demonstrate clear savings to the company and move on.

Several people have suggested solutions. The first one I hear thrown around is "get rid of executives." I think this is shortsighted in the same way that getting rid of a good IT department is. Certainly some executives are useless, but "get rid of the bad executives" is vacuous. A more compelling solution is to create incentive structures that encourage "bad executives" to be good ones, such as incentives which outweigh the short-term gains gotten by reducing, say, IT spending. For instance, I've heard it suggested that companies use long-term equity, say 15 years out. I'm not sure how that squares with moving from company to company, but it's interesting.

[0]This is not to say that the Sears quality-first business model was sustainable, merely that there was certainly a tradeoff, the effects of which take a long time to see in total.

<comment><USER3> _In this case, the downside to saving money by laying off expensive experience is clear._

Things like time developers spend doing traditional IT tasks are clear to developers. But it's amazing how little of that is visible to executives. They certainly don't get an hour-by-hour breakdown of where developers spend their time. And the time to develop software is notoriously difficult to estimate even using the best techniques out there -- and most people just eyeball it. So executives really can't quantify the loss of productivity, they just hear programmers bitching.

<comment><USER4> The problem there is that the CIO or equivalent isn't making these things clear to the rest of the executives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As fun as getting out our tribal aversion to managers who don't respect geeks is, let's focus on the actionable career point: do not work for cost centers.

<comment><USER6> Or better. Turn the perception of being a cost center into being a producer.

Most managers wouldn't dare tuch you so long as you say for every dollar put into the department, we save the business x dollars. You could even argue the margins too.

<comment><USER7> A similar tack is to get yourself perceived as an incremental value adder, as opposed someone filling a role.

For example, IT is generally seen as filling a set of necessary roles where each person is more or less interchangeable. Sales is generally seen as incremental value adds, and sales people get paid accordingly.

So how can you get seen as an incremental value adder if you're working in IT? Simple: start projects and clearly explain the impact to the bottom line. If you show the executives that you've saved the company $2MM/year forever, and that project wouldn't have happened if you hadn't dreamed it up, that's going to get recognized. Even at large, highly bureaucratic companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Also: good management is like oxygen -- you only really notice it, much less recognize that you need it, when it goes away.

<comment><USER9> Bad management is like mud. It get's on everything and is almost impossible to get rid of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A real life example:

In the last ten years Connecticut Light & Power made major cut backs on trimming the trees near its power lines. The state got slammed by a huge snowstorm last Holloween and a huge portion of the state lost power - for as long as 10 days. Not only did CL&P suffer a financial and public relations disaster in the aftermath of the storm, they decided to double their tree- trimming budget for the next year. But this just led to further problems - people who weren't used to the power company coming in with chainsaws created a fuss at town meetings about CL&P removing or damaging their trees, leading to more ongoing PR problems.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've read in multiple places and wholeheartedly agree that it's important to focus on visibility in your work.

If your managers can barely describe what you do, or how you do it, then your job is just asking to be cut.

When I show my clients an update, I always focus on what "looks" or "feels" different with the user experience. I wouldn't (maybe couldn't even) convey the awesomeness of all my fandangled SQL subqueries.

</comment><comment><USER12> I am brought to mind a quote by a god like galaxy: " _When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all._ "

<comment><USER13> For a long time, that was my email sig.

Then I realized the problem with it.

Now I still try to do things right, and then try to make sure that a few key people knew what happened.

<comment><USER7> Step 1 is to start bragging.

Step 2 is to have other people brag about you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In a somewhat related adventure, I am scheduled to give a talk soon (hopefully the same talk twice) about managing a security assessment project. I am hearing about this same sort of beheading happening in the infosec departments from various clients. The impact on me, personally, is that my client contacts are stretched so thin that they don't have cycles to prepare and make the best use of my time. I'm planning to have handouts with checklists. So this topic has been very much on my mind, lately.

One of the things I've learned from Tom is to keep track of how I spend my time. It is tedious and frustrating, but not unlike dieting: without data, you just have no proof. If I had found myself in the situation that the OP describes, my first reaction would have been to keep a running log of every task I had done, including start/stop time and a description of the work done. I've written scripts to do this in the past that generate PDF timesheets -- you could probably use Trac somehow. I'd keep this stuff on a device I owned, and bring the logs to my reviews. Yes, this adds to the stress. Yes, you'll get criticized for it. But when someone who has no clue why the carpets are always clean starts swinging that axe, you'll be wearing armor.

</comment><comment><USER15> I have put this in my very small file of "things to share when I leave."

<comment><USER16> Share it when you're not sure you want to leave. The reaction will tell you everything you need to know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A few years ago, my manager at the time explained to me how our company had acted as an incubator for 2-3 of our competitors. It worked like this: Our company would design a product over the course of a few years and once it was in the pipeline (being bought) it would have a life of a few years. More than once, the then current CEO of the company would decide to cut the engineering staff to save money and move on before the next product to fill the pipeline would be needed i.e. the lack of new products wouldn't show up on the bottom line for a few years. In the meantime, the talented engineering team (that they layed off) would go out and start another company to compete with us....

</comment><comment><USER18> Everytime I see a "for folks from HN" message at the top of a post I feel like I'm part of a school trip. Can we stop littering the web with these?

</comment><comment><USER19> Efficiency rarely correlates with headcount and budget. 9 years ago, our IT budget was $11 million. Today, it's a hair over $60 million. Adjusting for inflation, we should be around 13 million.

Most of the added budget has gone to bloated off the shelf software applications, retaining duplicate/redundant staffing from a pseudo-merger, and mismanaged consultants.

The OP has added a lot of facts in replies in this post, indicating that his staff was relatively lean (1 staffer for every 50 users).

But be careful in drawing too many conclusions from one instance of anectdata.

</comment><comment><USER20> I just started a new job two weeks ago, meaning that I've put in approx 80 hours in. I would guess that I was unable to perform my required functions for about 30 of those, due to setup inefficiencies. This has also delayed the onboard learning curve, because I have to stop and figure out who to talk to to get permissions, or wait for a machine, or an image, or whatnot BEFORE I could start figuring out how to do whatever it was I was trying to do.

</comment><comment><USER21> It sounds to me (and I know this won't be a popular opinion here) that the original IT department was overstaffed. A printer never out of paper? No projector ever found with a dead bulb?

Much like there being a "healthy" amount of unemployment (~3%, I recall?), there's a healthy amount of smaller items not met. It sounds like the company was overpaying for IT.

<comment><USER9> What would you say about a building maintenance team that left 3% of the burnt out/bad light bulbs around? Most of the stuff he's talking about can be monitored and caught before they become a real problem or dealt with as soon as they are discovered. (Projector bulbs have expected lifetime, network printers can tell you when they're out of paper, etc.) To me, it just sounds like they have solid monitoring and procedures in place for preventative maintenance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Techstop. That's all I'm going to say.

</comment><comment><USER23> Executives are day traders. I've known day traders to argue that they make more money trading in the first and last 30 minutes of the day than they do if they're trading all day, because they end up getting involved in "boredom trading" that is break-even at best (and blows out their variance) and quite possibly losing. As for executives, they're disciplined, they can enjoy their easy jobs and high compensation and accept the boredom associated with rarely being needed, because if things are running well, they aren't operationally necessary. Unfortunately, they're rarely content to work 2 hours per day at their cushy jobs. They become forces of nature due to a combination of (a) a need to feel active and important, and (b) a theater in which it's hard for them to have real positive impact (because performance assessment of executives is impossible and most just don't have the talent).

"Trading boredom" sets in. The executive's job is to Make Decisions and to gamble with the company culture and operations. In order to feel useful, executives pull this shit. Like "saving money" by gutting the IT organization.

What's worst about this is that the executives who do this sort of thing rarely suffer any consequences. They shift blame to subordinates whom they can fire, and if the heat is turned up on them, they move on to other jobs. The employees and the owners get fucked, but executives get to flit about from one cushy job to another on account of building a web of connections that makes them effectively invincible.

<comment><USER11> I hear nightmarish stories of micro-managers all the time. They feel that in order to do their jobs they have to tweak EVERYTHING that crosses their desk.

One memorable anecdote I came across was about an animation artist who was in charge of animating the queen for a 3d chess game. Because he knew his manager's weakness he threw in a duck... Yes, a duck. Fully animated with sound effects and everything.

Sure enough, when he showed his work to his manager he said "It's perfect, but get rid of the duck."

So maybe the moral of this lesson is that when things are running 100% smoothly, it's wise to toss your micro-manager a bone by doing something intentionally a little wrong to give them something to meddle with. ;-)

<comment><USER24> The duck story is battle chess: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?title=Talk:Battle_Chess#The_duc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?title=Talk:Battle_Chess#The_duck)

I've often had the opposite problem: companies where the CEO is so disconnected from the company (usually by working remotely 80% of the time) that the company doesn't have direction and languishes.

<comment><USER25> Speaking of managers ignoring things, I'm reminded of the last episode of the 90s sci-fi tv show 'Sliders', apparently the producers thought the network exec werent reading the scripts, so they deliberately broke a rule, and wrote a scene where someone was shot in the head and it wasn't picked up on.

cf. <http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliders#section_2>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> He never says what the company is or what it does.

After IT was cut, he says it would take a week before a computer was on their desk.

That sounds bad. But we have no idea what the company does, so we don't actually know if this is a problem or not.

Look, every division is not critical, and sometimes that division is IT.

We have no idea how much the inefficiency costs or how much was saved by the cuts. So we have no idea if this was a bad OR good thing for the company.

<comment><USER9> > That sounds bad. But we have no idea what the company does, so we don't > actually know if this is a problem or not.

That's true. The description of the company does lend itself to the belief that it was sufficiently large enough to make these things a problem. If you have people working in cubicles there is, more than likely, a need for them to have a computer, phone, etc. While it might be possible for them to not those tools, I would expect a different style of working environment if office work were not a significant component of their job.

> We have no idea how much the inefficiency costs or how much was saved by the > cuts. So we have no idea if this was a bad OR good thing for the company.

From the sounds of things, they didn't have a problem with inefficiency prior to the cuts. It sounds very much like they had just the right number of just the right people on hand to keep things running smoothly. At that point, it's like you have an engine and decide, I really don't need all this oil, let's get rid of some of it. You might be spend less on the oil but then you have to deal with the increased wear on the rest of your engine or risk having it seize up completely.

Yeah, we don't know the real size of the company or what the company did but, the kinds of things he's describing will lead to a degradation of overall morale and you'll find that "broken window syndrome" starts taking over. You'll find that the IT people hate everyone and that everyone start's hating IT which makes the whole situation worse.

So the question is, do you save a little money now to find you have a massive expense in lingering in the future?

<comment><USER26> _From the sounds of things, they didn't have a problem with inefficiency prior to the cuts._

He includes no details about the IT staffing levels in the company, what the budget was, the size of the company, what the company did, what the employees did, the reason for the cuts (other than speculation), or anything else.

For all we know, it was a company with 5 non-IT employees, and a staff of 50 IT people who flipped a coin once a day to decide which of 1 of them was going to work that day.

Prove me wrong. How many people were in the IT dept? What was their budget? What did the company do?

You have no idea.. because there are no details in the article. So you do not have enough information to say if there was an efficiency problem.

<comment><USER13> A company of about 400 total on-site staff, about 8ish internal IT staff before, and 3 internal IT staff after.

FOAD, Hope that Helps, Have a Nice Day.

<comment><USER9> 8ish is significantly less than I was expecting. My hat's off to them for keeping things running so smoothly!

<comment><USER27> 8 to 400 just keeping a system going (assumed MS from the vocabulary in the original article) sounds like a reasonable metric to me assuming no big business application development. 3 to 400 sounds very small, especially if there needs to be a Windows roll out (e.g. xp -> 7).

Disclaimer: I'm an observant end user who has worked in organisations ranging from 70 to 1200 staff total, and who has seen huge differences in basic it function. As others have pointed out, the cost of the less efficient IT support is 'hidden' in other budgets and in people 'just getting on with it'. I've seen newly appointed people share logins with established people just to be able to _do_ anything which is an obvious security problem. My current employers have noticeably good IT support, but need to make savings, so I am worried.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


LinkedIn, Stop Hiding People Behind Links - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/linkedin_stop_hiding_people_behind_links.php

<comment><USER2> The gist of the article is that linkedin isn't entertaining enough. And I think it misses the point of linkedin.

It's a professional network, not a playground.

Their customers (the paying ones..) don't care about tagwalls, feeds and whathaveyou. They care about serious business contacts. And the site caters to that pretty well. I'm not saying that it is perfect, just that it looks and feels boring because it isn't meant to be facebook.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. LinkedIn isn't going to do a killing this quarter because people want entertainment. They're going to do great because when you need a job, the first thing you're doing is updating your LinkedIn profile.</comment></comment>


David Cameron: TV crime dramas prove we need warrantless electronic surveillance - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2014/01/30/david-cameron-tv-crime-dramas.html <comment><USER4> This is so typical of the British attitude - its on TV, so it must be true, or have weight, or .. something.

I cannot fathom how an entire nation of people can allow themselves to be duped so well, by so few. The entire 'keeping people safe' position is a button that gets pushed and pushed - do the English really fear for their lives so much that they are willing to give up so much freedom, and to allow a powerful elite to rule them? The answer, centuries old: YES.

It is my belief that the English zeitgeist is so riddled with guilt over what _IT_ did to its colonies and foreign possessions, that it is currently in the death throws of a society crippled by its own crimes against humanity. This notion of the elite nature of the British Empire serves no purpose other than to polarize the people of that tiny nation against all others .. and this is terribly shocking.

The British people will _never_ be truly safe for as long as they continue to deny their own empires criminal behaviour. What England did to Ireland; what it did to its colonies; what it continues to do in foreign lands, daily - <USER2> is the true source of danger for the English people. No amount of pontificating/Mind Control being force-fed on the British public will ever address the dire straits in which England has forcefully left millions of people, not subjects of their empire but nevertheless victims, all over the world.

<comment><USER5> > I cannot fathom how an entire nation of people can allow themselves to be > duped so well, by so few.

The same reason as in every western democracy, including the US: massive marketing budgets & the media.

> It is my belief that the English zeitgeist is so riddled with guilt over > what IT did to its colonies and foreign possessions, that it is currently in > the death throws of a society crippled by its own crimes against humanity.

What absolute nonsense. So many countries have committed atrocities on a similar level, and many more recently than the British empire. Should the Norwegians be crippled by guilt for the actions of the vikings? Should the Americans be crippled by guilt for crimes against the native people? Should the Japanese and Germans be crippled by guilt for atrocities committed in WW2? People don't live in the past.

<comment><USER4> Nobody should be crippled by guilt - but todays generations ought to damned well be held responsible for the wealth they enjoy as a result of the slaves their parents owned. It wasn't that long ago, and we still have people in modern society who _are_ responsible for atrocities, yet are nevertheless getting away with it - because, as you say, 'people dont live in the past' ..

<comment><USER5> > but todays generations ought to damned well be held responsible for the > wealth they enjoy as a result of the slaves their parents owned.

No. People should by all means recognise the privilege they have and make ethical decisions based on that privilege - but they shouldn't be 'held responsible' for it as if they're criminals themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know. His parents spent all that money to send him to a public school (that's private for most of the world) and then a top university. And it turns out he gets all his ideas from newspapers and TV drama.

</comment><comment><USER7> Shitty source means people are not commenting on what he actually said. The actual law any how right / wrong it is is ignored; what happens if that law is broken is ignored.

This is a type of article that Hacker News fucking sucks at - <USER3> flamebait attracts indignant comments which get many upvotes. Ignorance is spread and people don't bother finding out the reality.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have to admit that I think I understand where this idea comes from. I watched The Wire a while back. In the series, the ability to tap phone lines is vital to uncovering the criminal activities they seek to end. So vital, in fact, that they named the whole show after it. It proved to be an important tool.

The problem is that it is fiction, so I don't worry all that much about privacy of characters, because they don't exist. It is also absolute, in terms of us knowing who the bad guys are, and why. So while it might be a realistic enough view on events that happen in real life, it's still bound by it being a TV show and therefor I'm not too sure if we could ever use it to illustrate, let alone prove anything this important (our privacy).

I should hope that the prime minister of the UK makes this distinction, too, before basing any actual decision on it.

</comment><comment><USER9> The actual BBC article linked on boingboing is less editorialised and contains the actual quote: "In the most serious crimes [such as] child abduction communications data... is absolutely vital. I love watching, as I probably should stop telling people, crime dramas on the television. There's hardly a crime drama where a crime is solved without using the data of a mobile communications device."

While I strongly oppose any warrant-less surveillance bills. I can agree with the statement. Nothing makes me a sympathise with the police more than crime dramas. So much to the point where I feel some American TV procedurals are almost propagandist and a lot of people assume the police have more rights than they do because of TV. But this is reality and things aren't as black and white as that.

<comment><USER10> > "There's hardly a crime drama where a crime is solved without using the data > of a mobile communications device."

All you can really tell from that statement though is that script writers enjoy adding in wiretapping, etc as it's both reasonably engaging to watch and really easy to write about. It says nothing whatsoever about actual policing or indeed the ramifications involved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> From the BBC article referenced by boingboing - "He said TV crime dramas _illustrated_ the value of monitoring mobile data."

From the boingboing article - "David Cameron: TV crime dramas _prove_ we need mass warrantless electronic surveillance"

<comment><USER12> I am not sure that makes it any better.

Crime dramas illustrate many things, not all of them related to reality.

<comment><USER13> Yes, all passwords can be cracked by using a unix terminal and typing fast enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The April Jokes season is starting early this year.

</comment><comment><USER15> Wat.

Wat.

 _blinks_ Wat.

This must be stupidest thing I've ever read in my entire life. It's like saying that we should all affix a gun to our hand because it works so well in FPS.

Or that hiding in a corner makes you recover from cancer. I don't care if he didn't say it really.

I blame either him for saying or the journalist for writing so illogical.

<comment><AUTHOR> The exact quote from the linked BBC article is:

 _" In the most serious crimes [such as] child abduction communications data... is absolutely vital. I love watching, as I probably should stop telling people, crime dramas on the television. There's hardly a crime drama where a crime is solved without using the data of a mobile communications device."_

<comment><USER15> Ok, then the writter is just a moron.

It's a weak position, but he is using an analogy, so that makes (slightly) more sense.

I wonder how much of such data can be used in a police investigation? I'm actually Ok that they use it to prevent a crime, but charging you for it, if they don't have any legal evidence is also fine by me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Damn. I look forward to his thoughts on driving.</comment>


Video Demo of the Much Awaited Adam: Notion Ink's Tablet - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/05/notion-ink-adam-hands-on-preview-video

<comment><USER2> I am very disappointed with the browser demonstration.

Contrary to the video commentary, it didn't look smooth at all and the zoom was horrible compared to how it works on my HTC Desire and to on Apple devices.

It's a shame, because otherwise it looks like a tablet I would happily use.

<comment><USER3> Considering it's an Android tablet (hence it shares the browser implementation with other Android devices), the problem looks like in the video driver and it leaves some room to improve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think this might the tablet for me. My main reservations are: 1\. Some of their UI design choices seem quirky---I may need hands on time with an Adam to be sure it's for me. 2\. All things being equal, I'd prefer higher resolution than 1024x600. Will that be good enough to comfortably read PDFs with smallish type (e.g., academic CS papers)?

The pixel qi and rotating camera (that could face towards the speaker when the tablet is flat on the desk) seem like killer features to me.

What other tablets have got people excited?

<comment><USER5> The PixelQi screen has four times the resolution in reflective mode, perfect for reading!

I'm waiting for mine, getting in in two weeks, they say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I applaud their Eden overlay, but also hope that it doesn't interfere with the Adam getting timely OS updates as has apparently happened with some phones...

</comment><comment><USER7> When two way video chat on mobile phones is better and less blocky than your hosted web content you know it's time to turn up the bitrate a smidge.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have been following them for a while - in the meantime a NookColor is working out very nicely. Perhaps in 6 months I will buy one of these with the PixelQi screen.</comment>


The Virtual Goods That Lie Beyond Facebook - Heyzap (YC W09)  - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.forbes.com/velocity/2009/11/26/the-virtual-goods-that-lie-beyond-facebook/ <comment><USER2> To be fair, Facebook hasn't released its own payments platform yet. It's been severely delayed and a long time coming but I'm excited to see how linking your social network and payment credentials will work out.

Once people are able to "Buy with Facebook" rather than just "connect" with it, a lot of interesting things can happen. When my friend is able to pay me back instantly for that crate of beer I bought him using Facebook I'm immediately incentivised to hook my payments details up to it so we never have to do a bank-transfer again. If the friction of a transaction is reduced to a single click and a confirmation then I would say it has the upper-hand on any mobile-phone payments system.

Mobile payments will no-doubt be awesome for all kinds of things. Whether they will transfer power from Facebook I'm not so sure.</comment>


Ask HN: What's a good reliable wireless router? - <AUTHOR>

I'm moving to a rural area.  Looking for a good reliable wireless router. Something that has a good number of security features, perhaps a flexible firewall. Any with packet shaping functionality?<p>I'm looking to make sure that I can work from home and have the bandwidth I need while my son gets less during working hours for youtube, etc. <comment><USER2> I'd recommend taking a looking at The Wirecutter's guide here: [http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-wi-fi- router/](http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-wi-fi-router/)

I'd quite highly recommend the Archer C8 if you are okay with the fact that it doesn't support HFS or ExFAT on external drives: [http://smile.amazon.com/TP- LINK-Archer-C8-Wireless-1350Mbps/...](http://smile.amazon.com/TP-LINK- Archer-C8-Wireless-1350Mbps/dp/B00N2ROH0C?sa-no-redirect=1)</comment>


Front End Developer – Interview Questions - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/h5bp/Front-end-Developer-Interview-Questions <comment><USER2> This looks like a giant list of trivia that has almost no bearing on the day- to-day effectiveness of the candidate.

For example, I don't have the slightest clue what the answer is to probably half of these and a lot of my job is to write javascript that gets run millions to billions of times a day. The "code questions", by contrast, were all ridiculously easy.

So, would it really matter if you are hiring someone who doesn't remember the difference between .call and .apply off the top of their head?

<comment><USER3> Call and apply are core concepts to writing good javascript. I would not hire someone (at least for any sort of senior role) that could not tell you exactly how both of them work. Many of the other things on this page are certainly "trivia" that could be addressed by google when they come up, but not those.

<comment><USER4> How often do you use call and apply? I've been a JS developer for a long time, have written a lot of JS code, and rarely need to use call and apply.

Unless you're writing all your code from scratch and not using any frameworks / util libs (which you should) you won't need them very often.

<comment><USER5> Agreed I can't even recall the last time I used call or apply. We might have only a handful of cases out of roughly 200,000 JS lines of code.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps that is why y'all have 200k LOC of javascript :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I know this repo. I've used it a lot of times while interviewing front-end developers.

I would give anyone using it a tip of advice :

Use this list not as a TOC or a check list. Use it to remind yourself what you could actually talk with the person that is applying for a job.

I usually start with the questions and present them not as a real question, but as a more of a "topic of conversation". Like for example :

Question => Transformed into topic

"Which version control systems are you familiar with?" => "Have you used VCS on your previous job? Which VCS is your favourite?"

"Name 3 ways to decrease page load (perceived or actual load time)." => "Have you ever tried to improve google page speed index or your page speed at all?"

Next I will ask in a similar ways questions about HTML, CSS and so on. I could go deeper if I see a person is interested in what we are talking about.

Anyway I've been interviewing more than 10 persons with this list in front of me. I highly recommend it as a base of your interview.

</comment><comment><USER8> As an interviewee: "This is what I've in my career. If you'd like to give me money then I can do those things for you."

As an interviewer: "Tell me what you've done in your career. We'd like to give you money to do those things for us."

That's all I really want or need for either side of the table.

<comment><USER3> Without asking technical questions, how would an interviewer weed out the people who say the former but can't actually back it up? Because if the above is the entire hiring process, your junior developers aren't going to have to be concerned about their imposter syndromes, because they'll be working along side actual imposters.

<comment><USER9> Employment probation. We fired a few people right off the bat within 3 months because they very clearly bullshitted us. One guy fucking used notepad to code. I'm not joking.

<comment><USER10> What exactly is wrong with using notepad to code? No syntax highlighting?

<comment><USER11> Aside from all the helpers other editors for code give, Notepad adds a BOM to the UTF-8 encoding, which can screw up html files and more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anyone else feel like there is a lot of esoteric information here? For instance:

> Are there any problems with serving pages as application/xhtml+xml?

I've never had to or considered serving pages as application/xhtml+xml, there's no reason for me to know the answer to this question and I've been working on the front end for ages. If I ever had reason to serve a page application/xhtml+xml I would thoroughly research it. Although I would say the JS questions look decent.

<comment><USER13> > I've never had to or considered serving pages as application/xhtml+xml, > there's no reason for me to know the answer to this question

I think VML's response is valid here, it's to check for experience and if you were engaged enough with the happenings of the web at the time.

Background (not a 100% accurate, I'm writing from my admittedly poor memory):

XHTML and later XHTML2.0 were being pushed a while ago (early 2000s) as the next HTML language (succeeding HTML 4). At some point the community split and people from Mozilla, Apple and Google (I think) formed WHATWG to pursue a different (and faster) direction which is where HTML5 was formed, then later adopted back by the W3C.

One of the issues at the time when people pushed for wide XHTML adoption was that most people served pages as text/html which was basically wrong.

Serving pages as application/xhtml+xml triggered the XML parser instead of the HTML parser which is the "proper" way to parse XHTML.

The problem some people ran into was that the XML parser is way less lenient than the HTML parser. You _have_ to close your tags, you _have_ to escape entities, and if you had a single mistake anywhere in your markup the browser would render an error page instead of working around it.

There were also issues with in-lining JavaScript and having to wrap it in a CDATA block to stop the XML parser from attempting to parse it.

This was a headache for sites with user generated content and people in general seemed to not like the idea of having to clean their markup for what some perceived as very little gain.

Anyway, long story short, HTML5 won, XHTML didn't.

<comment><USER12> Makes sense I don't know any of this, I was in high school in the early 2000s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't really care for this style of interviewing. A technique that really works is to take a problem the company is currently facing, slim it down and present it to the candidate pre-interview. Then when he comes in you ask him to explain his solution, and the choices he made.

It allows the candidate to be far more relaxed and puts him in a situation a lot more akin to the work that he will be doing for your company.

<comment><USER15> It's also kind of sleazy as you're getting them to do work for you for no pay. I've been in interviews where similar questions were asked, and they had me go into more detail as I was actually solving problems for them.

<comment><USER16> Less sleazy would be to ask them to solve an already solved problem (whether you tell the candidate it's already solved or not is up to you).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Can you say 'CSS specificity' without jumbling it up, first go?"

</comment><comment><USER18> I really like this js question (whiteboarding):

Implement function foo which takes an integer size, and returns an array of that size where each element in that array is a function that returns the index of that function in the array. Testcase: 42 === foo(1000)[42]()

There are 3 different correct solutions. Discuss which solution is better, worse... etc (if they get there)

(could probably be worded better, I'm not an english major)

<comment><USER19> I feel bad, because as I was writing a solution to this I knew why it wouldn't work and why (returning my counter variable returns the value at the end of the count) but I still couldn't come up with a fix :(

Edit: A good Google seems to suggest using JSON.stringify and JSON.parse to copy the value.

Edit 2: But even that doesn't seem to work :(

Edit 3: Got it, using a generator function. Which makes sense. I guess I'm not an expert yet! :)

<comment><USER20> Using a closure:

      function foo(s) {
        function generator(i) {
          return function () {
            return i;
          };
        }

        var r = new Array(s);

        for (var i = 0; i < s; i++) {
          r[i] = generator(i);
        }

        return r;
      }

      console.log(foo(1000)[42]());

Using Function.prototype.bind():

      function foo(s) {
        function generator(i) {
          return i;
        }

        var r = new Array(s);

        for (var i = 0; i < s; i++) {
          r[i] = generator.bind(window, i);
        }

        return r;
      }

      console.log(foo(1000)[42]());

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This has been around for a few years and it's due for some major updates. The CSS questions are becoming very, very dated.

> Have you played around with the new CSS Flexbox or Grid specs?

Flexbox is well past the point where you should be "playing around" with it. It's time to straight-up learn it, if not start using it in production. It's ready. And if that leads you to the question of "well what about crappy old versions of IE?", well there's another interview question for you.

Only one question about preprocessors—and a vague one at that? Not even a mention of things like Grunt and Gulp, pattern libraries, style guides, or even the terminal?

This stuff is integral, not optional, these days.

I interviewed a lot of people last year for a senior front-end position that we never ended up hiring for. We made a few offers that fell through but for the rest, I would have ended up teaching them how to do the bulk of the job had we hired them.

<comment><USER22> >It's ready. And if that leads you to the question of "well what about crappy old versions of IE?", well there's another interview question for you.

So what is the other interview question?

I really haven't dove into flex box because I am stuck supporting IE 9 on both of my projects. If I were to try and implement it on one of these projects it would be a wasted effort when 90% of my users are still using IE 9 on their corporate Dells.

How do you learn and develop new skills if your stuck supporting older browsers?

<comment><USER21> > So what is the other interview question?

The question would be "how do you handle browsers that don't support flexbox?"

My answer would be to use Modernizr to detect lack of flexbox support and write some fallback styles.

If you're supporting an extremely higher than average percentage of users on IE 9, then it's worth basing decisions on this fact. Globally IE 9 accounts for 2.13% of usage and that number isn't going up.

There's no way to really learn this stuff other than to just start doing it. Just write fallback styles to support crappier browsers and remember that pixel-perfect designs across browsers was _never_ a realistic goal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Lets imagine the two worst case scenarios here:

1st: A company asks those questions because they don't know better. Someone is good at remembering stuff and does so. He gets the job.

2nd: A company asks those questions because they don't know better. Someone is a good developer but fails at these questions – with no specific reason. He doesn't get the job.

<comment><USER3> While there's definitely a lot of useless trivia (worse, useless trivia from 5+ years ago that no longer applies at all) in this list, the good parts of these questions _are the job_. If you don't know how to answer the relevant questions in this list, you aren't a good developer. There is currently an explosion of "front end developers" who don't know anything at all beyond "here's where I put in the bootstrap class to make the page look right" and "here's where I put in the angular expression" (or jquery plugin). Asking questions like this weeds them out.

<comment><USER23> 1st scenario.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> These questions make me angry by being so fucking dumb. No I don't know off the top of my head what splitting on an empty string does and if you give a shit whether I do that tells me all I need to know about whether I want to work for you.

</comment><comment><USER25> Man, the hardest questions for me to answer was the first one: "what did you learn yesterday/this week"? I do so much reading and research in my free time and then to realize how hard it was for me to summarize what it was exactly that I learned. Maybe I just read this stuff for the short term stimulation. When it comes to comprehension and retention maybe I'm not getting out of it what I thought I was. Maybe I should start asking myself what I just learned after everything I read and take some notes o_O

</comment><comment><USER26> IMHO this can go as an example of a totally wrong way to formulate questions. Interview questions should be about the general concepts, not the tiny details, leave that for quiz shows. You want to know if the person understands how things work, not to test her memory. People can always google out the details that they can't remember, as long as they know what to do with this info...

</comment><comment><USER27> The 'make this work' examples are kinda silly, no?

        var add = function (x, y) {
          return (
            y !== undefined ?
              x + y :
              function (z) { return x + z; }
          );
        };

        var duplicate = function (a) {
          return a.concat(a);
        };

</comment><comment><USER28> A few selections from this list might make up a fraction of a phone screen, not so much a full in-person interview.

But it's a good list of things frontend developers should know, nevertheless.

</comment><comment><USER29> This one is a joke right? "What's your favorite feature of Internet Explorer?"

<comment><USER30> Alt+F4 or "the X button", shurely?

(I'd probably answer with HTAs - handy, compact way to distribute small JS- based tools/apps if you work in a Windows-based office and can eat the IE9 restrictions)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> > i'm a lasagne hog

I think you meant: "i'm a lasagna hog"

</comment><comment><USER32> Not a bad list of questions. I think I will use some of these.

<comment><USER33> just avoid the fizzbuzz questions, they aren't a good benchmark for good developers.

<comment><USER34> fizzbuzz isn't meant as a benchmark for good developers, it's meant to weed out the obviously bad.

<comment><USER35> Yes, exactly. I wouldn't hire someone because they can implement fizzbuzz, but if someone fails to implement fizzbuzz I can't imagine that I would want to hire them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Is there anything like that for Android developers?

</comment><comment><USER37> Turns out that most of these questions can be answered with just "arson", and I might even consider giving a further interview to someone that actually did.

</comment><comment><USER38> Any similar resources for back end devs too?

<comment><AUTHOR> One that I am aware of is [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2t227g/front_e...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2t227g/front_end_developer_interview_questions/)</comment></comment>


The Problem with App.Net - <AUTHOR> http://www.trevormkay.com/thoughts2013.html#ADN

<comment><USER2> "You are seeing this page because website has reached CPU usage limit of the server, and it was temporarily disabled."

One of the most annoying messages to be presented with on following a link. I wonder if there is a cache anywhere of this? I'm dying to know what the problem with App.Net is..

<comment><AUTHOR> That did not take long! :(

The text is worth reading, I hope the site will be back online as soon as possible …

Something like a default mirror of all links on the HN homepage would be useful in such situations.

<comment><USER2> I agree. Something like what IHackerNews does with Viewtext.org - the text from the article is here: [http://viewtext.org/article?url=http://www.trevormkay.com/th...](http://viewtext.org/article?url=http://www.trevormkay.com/thoughts2013.html#ADN)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, very useful!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here's the Google cache link [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:B2ljkJQ...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:B2ljkJQGGfUJ:trevormkay.com/thoughts2013.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=my)

<comment><AUTHOR> This Google Cache link does not show the originally linked article on App.net.

<comment><USER3> It's the first one

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you have some time, I'd recommend this podcast with Dalton Caldwell laying out his vision for App.net:

<http://www.muleradio.net/newdisruptors/13/>

For more, Zeldman has a similar discussion with Caldwell:

<http://5by5.tv/bigwebshow/84>

</comment><comment><USER5> Sorry about the free hosting. Never expected to be on Hacker News :P

I've moved to better hosting, for the moment the temp URL to the article is: <http://cp27.stablehost.com/~trevormk/thoughts2013.html#ADN>

<comment><USER6> Thanks; that was thoughtful. What about Wikipedia's sign-up process? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The problem with App.Net seems to be an overheating CPU.

No Google cache available, as far as I can see.

<comment><USER8> The site owner needs to get a real host instead of an unreliable free host. (I and many others have had bad experiences with 000webhost.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Due to HN effect, the Server seems to be down. I am getting CPU limit reached error.

</comment><comment><USER10> The HN effect , make sure you can handle the load before submitting you news( if it is yours ofcourse ).

<comment><USER5> Wasn't me who submitted. But here is the temp URL until hosting sorts itself out <http://cp27.stablehost.com/~trevormk/thoughts2013.html#ADN></comment></comment>


Five ways Apple might become better with Steve Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/news/five-ways-apple-might-become-a-better-company-without-steve-jobs-6323073?click=pm_latest

<comment><USER2> With -> Without</comment>


The one book you need to read to get in YC - <AUTHOR> http://www.entrepreneur2be.com/2008/02/13/book-founders-at-work/ Did I forget to say you may be quizzed on this book on the interview... ;-) <comment> a-priori Picked it up about a year ago, and I've read it twice now. I lent it to my partner when we went into business together... she hasn't returned it yet. I don't know if that's a good sign or not. :)

</comment><comment><USER2> Wow, my copy of this arrived 30 minutes ago from Amazon. Talk about topical.

In the same pile of boxes was "Software Engineering for Internet Applications" which may well be a bit dated now, but I'm sure that the basic idea of using the fewest and fastest components available still holds good.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cannot wait for Livingston's new one. I heard it follows the same theme, but focuses more on engineering.

<comment><USER4> The next book will be quite similar to the first, but with different founders. Founders at Work actually isn't affiliated with Coders at Work, other than having similar names and the same publisher.

<comment><USER5> I've read FAW at least 6 times cover to cover and some of the individual interviews even more. Dying for more. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Excellent job.

Would it be fair to say that the advice centers around a few principles?

1\. Maximize possible courses of action.

2\. Allow the environment (users, VCs, etc) to select the best course at the time.

3\. Select the environment most representative of your goals.

</comment><comment><USER7> yeah, it's quite a fun book. i read it before last investor day.

the only part i didn't like was the Lycos story. basically, a guy gets a call from a VC: "hey, we've got the idea, the technology, and the funding. can you please run the company?"

<comment><USER8> I liked that there were a variety of stories... it gives you a sampling of how differently things work out. The RIM guy, for instance, sounds like an order of magnitude better engineer than some other people in the book. Others definitely got lucky because they were in the right place in the right time, and were smart enough to take advantage of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yeah, definitely a must-read. I'd just open up the book randomly and start reading wherever I was. The particularly memorable ones were Max Levchin, Sabeer Bhatia, Josh Schachter, and TripAdvisor .

</comment><comment><USER10> Good analysis. I'm half way through reading F.A.W. but I have a bad habit of switching books. Right now I'm on _How to Win Friends and Influence People_ and then I'll go to _7 Habits of Highly Successful People_ and then I'll read a few more cases. It keeps my mind fresh for each book.

<comment><USER11> burning a copy of "7 habits ..." would be a greater symbolic gesture.

<comment><USER12> I agree. "How to win friends..." is great, but "7 habits..."| sucks.

<comment><USER13> Yes! Put down 7 Habits right now! Pick up FAW! Both can change your life. One for the better. The other for the worse.

FWIW, one is full of theoretical fluff from someone who earns through selling books and tapes. Do what he says and you make actually take your focus OFF the ball. The other is about the best of us who have achieved remarkable things. Now which one do you really want to read?

(As far as habits are concerned, I just changed ONE HABIT to be more like some guy named Wozniak. This changed my entire thinking about my project and has made all the difference. I would name the habit something like "Loading all of the details about one thing into my head's main memory at the same time". Reread Chapter 3 to see what I'm talking about.)

<comment><USER10> It's funny that you all say that about 7 Habits. It's the hardest for me to get through. I only got through the first chapter and I haven't learned anything that I can really use.

FAW is great for case studies of other startups (both successful and otherwise).

HTWF I've also only gone through the first chapter but I've gotten a lot more out of it than 7 Habits.

<comment><USER13> I love the whole self-help genre. I love anything that helps people to think more positively. For many people, that's half the battle.

I just don't think that hackers are affected nearly as much as others. Do affirmations, examine past lives, move your body, make lists, think good thoughts, everything will be alright, etc., etc., etc. All good stuff.

The problem is that it's just too easy to get caught up "doing all that good stuff" that you lose focus from your project.

OK, I'll compromise a little. Read HTWF and Think and Grow Rich. Then get back to work.

<comment><USER10> Here's an interesting question: What informational books could NOT be considered "self-help?"

+1 for the final sentence, "get back to work."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would be very interested in a digital copy (pdf) to read on my Iphone (usually in places where a book is very incvonvenient) I'd be willing to pay (to the author of course) :)

I was just recently reading about Macros in PG's _On Lisp_ on my Iphone - excellent work PG.

<comment><USER12> What places is a book inconvenient?

<comment><USER15> Founders at work is quite bulky whilst an iPhone fits in your pocket. When you've got 10 mins free on the bus you can whip out your phone and read an interview or two.

<comment><USER16> I read Practical Common Lisp and OnLisp on my Windows Mobile phone while commuting.

Incidentally, being able to manipulate the file system is the biggest advantage I see in WM vs iPhone. At least for geeks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow, I really admire your initiative in bookmarking sentences, taking notes, etc. If I can ask, what's your motivation for doing a startup? What drives you?

<comment><AUTHOR> Money Ego Women FOOD! :)

<comment><USER13> 2 chicks

<comment><AUTHOR> Organic pls :}

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Good article, but its unfortunately also a good example of how misspelling and using the wrong words can really hurt public writing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hopefully the only one hurt will be the author(me) for his spelling and awkward wording.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Agree with the rest. FAW is a must-read. My copy has so many notes you can barely read the text anymore. :P

</comment><comment><USER20> great book picked it up and about a month ago, when i get down i read it. .rb

</comment><comment><USER21> hussle + luck = opportunity

<comment><USER22> hustle + opportunity + preparation = luck</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is your workspace/hardware setup? - <AUTHOR>

Similar to a recent Ask HN about software tools you use [1], but I'm interested in hearing what your physical setups are like. Desks/chairs, monitors, peripherals, computers, etc.<p>[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6153721 <comment><USER2> MBP Retina 15" maxed out, sits on mStand

27" Thunderbolt monitor

Bose QC 15 headphones

Magic Mouse, wired Apple keyboard

cheap WalMart office chair - was given as a gift when I was coming back from being down and out, so it's sentimental, but needs replacing

2 4'X5' whiteboards

4 drawer file cabinet

large old desk that my wife got for $25 when she was working at JC Penney (they were getting rid of it) - not fancy, but about 6'x6' L shape with about 3' deep of desktop space in each direction

</comment><comment><USER3> When I'm not out at a coffee shop or working from the waterfront, my setup consists of:

Ikea Linnmon/Alex[1] desk setup

30" high drafting stool

Monoprice monitor arm[2]

11" MacBook Air i5

27" IPS display[3]

USB hub to "dock" the Air with a USB sound card & two hard drives (one for Time Machine)

Magic Trackpad & generic Apple BT keyboard clone I don't mind beating the crap out of when I type.

Crappy Altec Lansing desktop speakers

iPad for podcasts & testing

Two cat beds for my "co-workers"

[1]: [http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S09932691/](http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S09932691/)

[2]: [http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=109&cp_id...](http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=109&cp_id=10828&cs_id=1082808&p_id=5401&seq=1&format=2)

[3]: [http://www.microcenter.com/product/384780/EQ276W_27-Inch_IPS...](http://www.microcenter.com/product/384780/EQ276W_27-Inch_IPS_LED_Monitor,_WQHD_2560x1440,_HDMI,_DVI-D,_DisplayPort,_USB)

</comment><comment><USER4> 13" 2013 MBA, Magic Mouse, wireless Apple keyboard, RAZER Sphex mouse mat [1], ACER 23" s236HL IPS [2], Herman Miller Aeron chair, Bowers and Wilkins p5 [3], Bose SoundLink mobile [4],

[1] [http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/pc-accessories/pc-gaming- acces...](http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/pc-accessories/pc-gaming- accessories/gaming-surfaces/razer-sphex-gaming-mouse-mat-06874873-pdt.html)

[2] [http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/desktop-pc-monitors/monitor- pr...](http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/desktop-pc-monitors/monitor- projectors/pc-monitors/acer-s236hltmjj-23-full-hd-ips-led-monitor-with- mhl-21313401-pdt.html)

[3] [http://www.bowers- wilkins.co.uk/Headphones/Headphones/P5/Ove...](http://www.bowers- wilkins.co.uk/Headphones/Headphones/P5/Overview.html)

[4] [http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/tv-dvd-audio/audio/portable- au...](http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/tv-dvd-audio/audio/portable- audio/portable-speakers/bose-soundlink-wireless-portable-speaker-ii- nylon-18019172-pdt.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> I have an old spartan desk/chair from the 1960's with a 20" LCD monitor, keyboard, mouse, table lamp, speakers, BlackBerry & coffee that fit on it, but that's about it. The desk set is all wood, & was a gift to graduate students from Syracuse University in the 60's to my late father, who I inherited it from.

Then I have 2x 2 drawer high file cabinets next to each other to my right which makes a small table where I have my small form factor PC, with a laptop on top of it on one. On the other is a wire inbox for paperwork, & 2x external hard drives for backups.

I use the PC for an rdp terminal to rdp into the laptop where I do all my real work, so I can take it with me on the train/plane if I travel & nothing's unavailable on the PC.

Then next to the file cabinets at a 90 degree angle against the wall is a small table with the IP phone, printer/scanner, router, modem, on top & a shredder / trash / power strips below it. It's got 2 drawers to hold things like tape, label maker, printer ink, etc.

</comment><comment><USER6> 6 Year old Dell laptop running Windows 8/Ubuntu.

I was looking into a Macbook Pro but can't afford it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Steelcase leap chair, corner desk with about 20 feet of organizational desk wrapping around room, a few bookshelves of books, reference level cans, topped out Mac Mini with two 27 inch thunderbolt displays, topped out MacBook Air for going portable, and a 42u rack of servers for processing for those times when a guy needs several hundred gigs of ram/ECUs worth of proc power.

A Mac Mini and MacBook Air combo gives you MBP specs on the mini with more portability via the Air for less than a higher end MBP. Also, get a good rep on your Amazon seller account and you can have the latest and greatest for a few hundred per refresh. Apple gear one generation behind holds value well.

<comment><USER8> What modal mac mini are you using? I have a 2012 i7 one with the HD4000 graphics card, I also use a 27 inch monitor and find it to be a little laggy. Are you using a SSD?

<comment><USER7> Late 2012 with 2.6GHz i7, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, and Intel 4000 with 768 RAM. I don't experience any lag on 2d. I never use 3d.

<comment><USER8> Thanks. I've got the same processor but the default 4GB RAM and 1TB 5400 drive. I think I may need to upgrade them...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well I work from home (a single room) so nothing fancy like others but this is how it looks [http://i.imgur.com/Aop0Xit.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/Aop0Xit.jpg) and [http://i.imgur.com/rCQdzfe.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/rCQdzfe.jpg). Couple of tables and a chair. for some reason, I like to keep things simple and seems comfortable working on a single laptop and doing all work from it. The third table I uses for reading books.

The laptops I uses are Sony vaio and Dell XPS which I bought in 2009, still going strong but I think I should retire it now and invest on better hardware.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is how the cheap guys do it:

Dell Vostro 3750 (Laptop) + Samsung SyncMaster P2770

Dell Dimension E510 (Desktop) + Dell 22" Monitor

Tie the 2 computers together w/ Mouse Without Borders for 3 Monitor Setup

Logitech Wireless Mouse

Logitech Keyboard

Sony MDR-V6 Studio Headphones

Seagate 4TB External Drive

Seagate 1TB External Drive

Ikea Office Table (like a Galant w/ wood top)

ITALMODERN Bradley High Back Bungie Office Chair (highly recommended)

Old Table found on the street to my left

</comment><comment><USER11> Work issued Dell laptop. Dont have one of my own.

A simple wall mounted desk and a chair.

For the little bit of freelancing that I'm starting to do, and the paltry pennies I make from content writing, yeah, this works!

I dont have a machine of my own and hope that pretty soon, someone will ask me to write a lot and let me earn enough to buy myself a macbook air.

</comment><comment><USER12> At Home (Work is same, just aesthetically different)

      Black ikea desk, finely tuned height, otherwise plain
      Steelcase think chair
      Two 21.5" Dell Monitors, 1920x1080 IPS panels, usually in vertical position
      Kinesis Advantage Keyboard
      Logitech M570 Trackball
      Alienware M14xR2 running Arch Linux

<comment><USER13> Can I ask why Alienware? I always thought they were super overpriced.

<comment><USER14> At a much lower cost than an Apple system (which seems to be the standard for many developers) you can get significantly more power, along with a couple of drawbacks that may not matter depending on your situation.

The base model 17" laptop at 1499 includes a Haswell i7, a GTX765M, 8GB of ram, a 750GB HD, and a 1600x900 screen.

For 1399, you can get the 14" with a Haswell i7, a 1080p screen, 16GB Ram (Not sure if you can install 32 in this machine) and an Nvidia 750M (which will be the $2k+ Haswell rMBP's dGPU if it even has one.)

The RAM and HDD can easily be upgraded with 32GB and an SSD.

If the ultimate goal is as much power as possible, even this base model (Without any self-upgrades) is significantly better than a Maxed-out rMBP. In fact, it's significantly better than the next rMBP is going to be as well.

If you step it up to the next level, you get a 17" laptop with a 1080P screen, 16GB RAM, and one of the fastest mobile GPUs available, the GTX770M. It's $1900, but it's important to note that the GPU itself probably costs 500-600 dollars or more, and the i7, over 300.

If you throw in another 16GB Ram ($80) and an SSD ($160 for 240GB), you have a machine that makes the rMBP an embarassment at a much lower price $2140 VS $2799.

Please note that I'm speaking purely in terms of power. There are many other reasons that one might choose the rMBP. For example, I own an Alienware m17x r3 and now that I all of a sudden find myself traveling frequently, I wish I had a MBP instead. The Alienware weighs 10 lbs and it gets about an hour of battery life unless I disable the dGPU. It's also ugly, and it doesn't have a retina quality screen. Yet, if you don't stray to far from a power source, but still want the ability to move from room to room with your system, the Alienware is a great option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> 1x Herman Miller Aeron. I couldn't recommend this enough.(I have another one I take from job to job)

1x MBP Retina

2x 27" Apple Displays

1x Wired Keyboard (for number pad)

1x Magic Mouse (great for work, terrible for play)

2x Ikea Gallant Desks (white finish)

</comment><comment><USER16> toshiba laptop, big ass samsung monitor, logitech wave mouse and keyboard... I need a new chair, monitor swingarm, headphones but really what matters is the mouse and keyboard, I really love this keyboard it's the first keyboard since my old clacker that I really "clicked" with</comment>


'Robin Sage' Profile Duped Military Intelligence, IT Security Pro  - <AUTHOR> http://www.darkreading.com/insiderthreat/security/privacy/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225702468

<comment><USER2> From the article: "He set up a Blogger account under the name Robin Sage, named after the U.S. Army Special Forces training exercise. Robin Sage is the final phase of special forces training before becoming a Green Beret -- but even that apparently didn't tip off some military and intelligence community people who accepted LinkedIn invitations or Facebook friend requests from her."

I wonder if that helped. It should've been a red flag to any former special forces, but for others who had only heard about it once or twice in passing, it might've reassured them. "Robin Sage, that name sounds vaguely familiar".

</comment><comment><USER3> ROFL this finally hit the news? I remember grilling the guy who invented her about her trying to friend me on facebutt. She's awesome.</comment>


Azure Mobile Services launched: A Cloud Backend For Mobile Apps - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/28/microsoft-launches-windows-azure-mobile-services-a-cloud-backend-for-windows-8-apps-ios-android-windows-phone-support-planned/

<comment><USER2> Looks interesting. It provides a RESTful service running on a managed, scalable node.js instance providing a CRUD interface over a SQL Database. You can set access levels and customize the service through JavaScript scripts. They apparently run in a sandboxed or restricted environment.

<comment><USER3> Interesting that it has a SQL backend, I wonder what they are using as an ORM to enable querying in the collections.

<comment><USER4> You'd probably assume if any, they'd be using the Entity Framework.

Anyway, looking at the comments in Scott Guthrie's blogpost ([http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2012/08/28/announcing...](http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2012/08/28/announcing- windows-azure-mobile-services.aspx)) he also mentioned that they "will also support unstructured storage in the future so if you don't need rich querying you can use that too."

Also, from the comments he mentions they'll be publishing documentation for the REST API soon'ish (as well as "pre-built REST helper methods for Win8/iOS/Android/others").

<comment><USER5> _We will also support unstructured storage in the future so if you don't need rich querying you can use that too._

I got excited for a moment. I've been using Azure for a few years now and I was thinking that this could have been a hint of them offering something more similar to MongoDB in the future. But, then it hit me that he's probably only talking about the Table Storage (Now called Table Service?) which I will never touch again.

<comment><USER2> Table Storage could be much more useful if it had indexes. A managed, reliable MongoDB hosted service would be very interesting.

With that said, SQL Database (formerly known as SQL Azure), specially with the Federations feature, is an interesting option for LOB applications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the sort of thing that makes me fear for the Parses, Kinveys, and StackMobs of the world. Today it's Azure -- how many tomorrows is it going to be before it's Amazon or Rackspace?

Once the major cloud hosting players are in on the easy cloud-backed key-value store field, how much oxygen is there in the room for players like Parse? Especially when they themselves are built on EC2? I've got to think we're no more than 6-12 months from seeing that happen, and then they're going to have a tremendous fight on their hands, venture funding or not.

</comment><comment><USER7> So it's Parse, but pushed by Microsoft?

<comment><USER8> When they have an entire cloud service structure behind them, that's no small thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well this is stiff competition for Parse and the like. However, Parse still has seamless ways to query location data. Not sure if I'll be able to do that with this Azure backend.

<comment><USER10> I'd be shocked if they can't add that in in < 100 lines of c# or whatever they use.

If Microsoft continues learn from their mistakes they will be very scary. Scary in a good way for once.</comment></comment>


Strategies Travel Brands Are Using to Outlast an Industry Downturn - <AUTHOR> https://clevertap.com/blog/travel-app-marketing-strategies/ <comment><AUTHOR> Read what strategies top travel brands are using to keep their businesses stable during the temporary downturn.</comment>


Frontend dev is getting exhausting - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/2tfo30/frontend_dev_is_getting_exhausting/ What are your takes on this? <comment><USER2> _" I have to learn & master yet another framework like Ember and Backbone. And all of the hard work that I've put into learning Angular would have been for nothing."_

Would it be awkward to send him that Angular 2.0 changes presentation?

This is the reason we see so many JS job posts. It's not that it's popular, more like nobody wants to deal with that crap. Not only the language is hopelessly broken (which cannot be fixed by ES 6 syntax sugar due to compatibility reasons AFAIK), the frameworks are changing every month. I did not even start giving a f..k about React and now I am supposed to be caring about some Riot 2.0 or whatever?

<comment><AUTHOR> Please send him the Angular 2.0 presentation :D

One needs to think what is relevant to the product's requirements -- at the "current point of time" and use the framework that fits the bill.

The secret to success is to stop worrying about all the changes that are happening. It's imminent.. we are witnessing the evolution of JavaScript frameworks, which will definitely slow down at some point of time and become stable. Till then what's important is to keep yourself informed at a high- level and dive into something, if required.</comment></comment>


Was the MegaUpload raid planned to draw attention away from SOPA? - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57362437-83/anonymous-goes-nuclear-everybody-loses/

<comment><USER2> No.

NZ Police started working with the FBI on this in early 2011.

The level of coordination required by the US Fed Gov, the NZ Gov and the FBI, not to mention being in agreement is no small deal. To suggest that this all happened in the space of 24hrs is pretty ridiculous.

NZ isn't exactly an American lap dog.

</comment><comment><USER3> No. In fact, it would be a violation of federal law for Congress to interfere in a Justice Department investigation in the way this story describes.

</comment><comment><USER4> Stuff like this doesn't happen by accident under Obama. Osama Bin Laden was killed basically a week before Obama announced his candidacy.</comment>


Server-Side Tracking Without Cookies in Go – Update - <AUTHOR> https://marvinblum.de/blog/a-quick-update-on-pirsch-me1VJzz1Xy <comment><AUTHOR> Hey Hackers, this submission is a follow up on my Show HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23668212](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23668212)</comment>


WikEmacs - a new Emacs wiki - <AUTHOR> http://wikemacs.org

<comment><USER2> Congratulations bozhidar, WikEmacs looks good already. I wish you well on this endeavor and hope it can live up to the objectives you outlined in your last post. I look forward to contributing.</comment>


Finally, a judge stands up to Wall Street - <AUTHOR> http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/finally-a-judge-stands-up-to-wall-street-20111110

<comment><USER2> I agree this shouldn't be posted on HN but just to clarify. My issue with this article is it doesn't spell out the law behind the case. If the SEC doesn't think they can win a case against Citigroup and they were settling to impose whatever punishment they could then this judge isn't a hero at all. In fact he'll be facilitating Citigroup by letting them get away with this completely.

By not telling us what law Citigroup violated and giving us the language in the law so we can make our own judgment this article prevents us from discussing the issue intellectually. Which makes it just an emotional argument and hence inappropriate for HN

<comment><USER3> > If the SEC doesn't think they can win a case against Citigroup and they were > settling to impose whatever punishment they could then this judge isn't a > hero at all.

If the SEC can't prove their case, then they shouldn't be imposing any fine at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Summary: Details how Citigroup almost got away with paying a $125M fine for defrauding its customers $700M.

"The amazing thing about the wave of corruption that has overtaken the financial services industry is that most of it couldn't happen without virtually every player at every level signing off on these deals. From the ratings agencies to the law firms to the accounting firms to the regulators to the bank executives themselves, everybody had to be on board in order for a lot of these fraud schemes to work.

"Judges are a part of that picture, and too often, members of the bench sign off on dirty deals made between banks and regulators when the law says that such settlements must be "fair, reasonable, adequate and in the public interest."

Edit: changed Bank of America to Citigroup. Wrong bank.

</comment><comment><USER4> 1\. Politics

2\. Editorialising

3\. Inaccurate in its implications (what, no judge has ever _"stood up to Wall Street"_ , whatever that means, before?)

4\. From Rolling Stone, and not on the subject of music.</comment>


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