This is a bit f'd, Quora - <AUTHOR> http://giantrobotlasers.com/post/29340797003/this-is-a-bit-fucked-quora <comment><USER2> I can't help bit feel vindicated by moves like this because they're a sign that Quora isn't the Next Big Thing that many inside the bubble that is Silicon Valley seemed to think it is (eg [1]).

Actually Quora is better than that (for me) in that it's a double hit on the hype on both Q&A and social.

These kinds of moves:

\- requiring login to view content;

\- partially obscuring content on Google results to maximize sign-ins; and

\- showing what you view to other people.

come across to me as a company coming off hype and approaching a crunch point. I believe now, more than ever, than Quora will end up an acquisition for Google or Facebook or will simply slide into irrelevance.

[1]: [http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/08/23/the-power- of-q...](http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/08/23/the-power-of-quora-why- benchmark-was-right-to-pay-up/)

<comment><USER3> Quora is simply turning into ExpertsExchange. I haven't found anything terrible insightful on Quora that I can't find at the top of an HN, Reddit or StackOverflow thread.

Never quite understood the hype centered around it.

<comment><USER4> _Never quite understood the hype centered around it._

It had tech celebrities. It was known as the place where famous silicon valley / tech people (from google to even microsoft) would answer questions in their gated community away from all the noise of Yahoo answers. Of course now Quora is just another Q&A site but back when it first started, I remember it well. It felt so exclusive. Registration wasn't open to the public. When a question was asked it was answered by people who mattered or were in the industry. The answers weren't nessessarily better but they felt like they mattered more because of who they came from.

They used celebrity status to promote the site, then opened it to the public. Before they had something special. Now it's just another Q&A site. Looking back in hindsight, it might have been better to keep the exclusive gated community feel where only people with credentials (startups) are allowed in.

How would the community keep itself exclusive? I thought about that last year and came up with this: [http://www.chrisnorstrom.com/2011/02/invention- creating-and-...](http://www.chrisnorstrom.com/2011/02/invention-creating-and- maintaining-exclusive-communities-through-crowdsourcing/)

<comment><USER5> I could never figure out how to actually search Quora to find answers to _stuff_. Maybe you have to log in to do this, but I don't want to create an account just to see if I like the sites content enough to create an account, so I never used Quora and likely never will, especially after reading the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The new "social" web is really _creepy_. Browsing in an incognito browser and logged into nothing has sortof become my default.

I don't want google chrome saving my search history, or to accidentally read an article on some news website that then broadcasts that fact to all of my facebook friends.

<comment><USER7> Blhack,

I ran across this comment of yours - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4377315> \- and certainly appreciate your privacy concerns. A healthy private life is undoubtedly everyone's personal choice.

At the same time, HackerNews is YCombinator's tech blog, and highly visible. Frankly, your opinion comes off as somewhat paranoid. It's not that it isn't justified, I'm not saying that one way or another, but I would strongly consider the impact statements like this have on your image in the social space.

I heard back from Kenneth. He actually said that your social strategy is a "shambles", which is excusable, and also that you "had 0 interest in improving this" -- which is not.

He said that you were more interested in getting to the moon than in building a social network around the project.

blhack, the money we entrusted you with not appropriate to spend idly dreaming up conspiracy theories.

The world is social. People chirp, tweedle, and most recently iMessage those they care about and feel a community with.

This community is now your top priority. I want to be able to show Ken that you have put together at least 10,000 likes and 30,000 followers by the end of the year. Consider this "stage one" of your rocketry design phase.

While we are not saying that failure to meet this metric means the board will necessarily replace you, consider it a part of your job description.

We are also denying your proposed budget. Please work on your social program.

Your board.

<comment><USER8> What? I'm not sure what's going on here. If you want to send blhack an email, do that. This personal letter is not an appropriate use of HN comments. And sending private messages in public is quite non-cool.

<comment><USER9> I think it was meant as a demonstration of the 'creepy social web'.

<comment><USER8> The comment-stalking is creepy, but posting content publicly that you explicitly post publicly isn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is my post. I didn't expect this on HN, but I shouldn't be too surprised I guess.

I just want to stress that I really do love using Quora. It has some of the most unique content on the internet. It is because of this that I even care about my activity syndication there.

<comment><USER11> I upvoted your post for the same reason that you posted it - in hopes that Quora will decide not to kill privacy on the site. Now I kind of wish I hadn't since the sentiment on this thread is so anti-Quora.

I love Quora, too. The amount of knowledge you gain from even a few minutes there is truly incredible. If HN'ers could get over the fact that Quora is a social site started by Facebookers, I truly believe they would love it too. Quora (and the world) would benefit from more answers from the HN community.

<comment><USER12> I don't have much to add other than "yeah, that", and the fact that the breathless cry of "zOMG PRIVACY!" and the sanctimonious hand wringing about "Well what about people who don't want (some dangerous person) to know what they're doing" is starting to get irritatingly old.

There are a few people for various reasons who should stay the hell away from social media in all its forms. Okay, granted. For me, I don't see the point of privacy for privacy's sake. Oh no! An advertiser might know what I like! Oh no! The government might know what I like! Oh no! An ex might know what I like! And I care.... why?

Put another way, I can become some sort of privacy super-advocate which means hamstringing myself socially and professionally, making my online life more difficult in just about every fashion, (No social networking, no hosted anything.. have fun with that!), or I can pick my battles and realize that I'm not a spy and more likely than not have no reason to worry about targeted ads.

Rant off - I've needed to unpack this for a while. Quora is a great resource, and I'm sick and tired of seeing people slag on it for a feature they can turn off.

And I'd like to respectfully ask that any downvoters at least bother to explain themselves before clicking. I realize this is probably a highly controversial stance, but the least you could do is contribute to the discussion.

<comment><USER13> Agreed 100%. HNers belly-ache about Quora all day, but there is an incredible amount of information on there. If you doubt me, just go look at the best answers under the Machine Learning topic.

Part of Quora's value comes from identifying answerers' identities. HNers see this as a plight on the social web, yet they can (a) still turn off views in their settings at any time, and (b) use other forums with relaxed views on privacy if they wish.

<comment><USER14> "HNers belly-ache about Quora all day, but there is an incredible amount of information on there"

That's an exceptionally strange dichotomy, people are annoyed BECAUSE there is useful information there, and the company is enforcing mostly unnecessary "social" aspects to access the data. If the data was useless, why would anyone care when they change their policy to something aggressively anti-privacy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> And just like that, I no longer have a Quora account.

This is a "dark pattern", and it's sleazy any way you slice it. They could have _easily_ fixed it by popping up a dialog when I first sign in that says "Hey, do you want to share the things you read in your feed? Yes/No", and I could select "No" and be on my merry way. Instead, they decided that they would make a decision about my privacy for me, and they've lost me as a user in the process.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wow, this is a really big lapse of judgement on Quora's part. I'm contemplating if I should delete my account altogether.

In any case, thank you for posting it here - at least people can take the precautions.

Edit: That yes/no button is not at all obvious! They need some form of green/red color coding.

<comment><USER17> You'll have to send an email to firstname.lastname@example.com to delete your account. I did, and they deleted my account. I also told them politely that broadcasting what every user reads to the entire world is very creepy. It is a shame, as the quality of answers at quora is much higher than in other places.

<comment><USER18> See my earlier posts about this. I deleted my account and asked for confirmation this was done, they stated it was - but all my info, comments, edits etc are all still there just simply no longer under my name!!

<comment><USER19> I have had the same experience. I got a mail from them saying they deleted my account, but the questions I posted are still there.

<comment><USER17> Just checked, you are right, my questions are still there. Their email said (exact words)

 _you should find yourself completely removed from the site_

So in effect, our "info" is removed, but not our discussions/answers/questions?

Sorry, I should've checked before posting my above comment. It didn't even occur to me, that they might simply "de-link" my name, but keep the data as is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Indeed the problem - as with Facebook - is that these settings are constantly "opt-out". This is perhaps as bad as the Beacon program in that as the author correctly originally notes - some personal items might be "viewed" which subsequently detail their actions to other users which they never intended to be public.

Classic examples of mistakes in the past are like "How to propose?" or "What's a good engagement ring size?" and so on. All these problems were exposed with Facebook Beacon and purchasing decisions and after much revolt they shut it.

I honestly can't understand why Quora would implemented "User X viewed User Y" - I think that's taking the privacy perspective to a whole new level. Indeed, even on Facebook if they started listing things like "User A viewed your profile 55 times today" - it would essentially kill the service in it's tracks as would "User B viewed this photo 33 times" and so on. People have always used Facebook to stalk their friends - but that doesn't mean it should be detailed publicly for all the world to see.

This should be "opt-in" if not removed all together in my mind. As part of internal metric tracking - it's obvious that this occurs - but it shouldn't be public or should be entirely opt-in.

<comment><USER21> Even with opt-out, it can make you wonder if Quora is still keeping this data. What stops them from disabling the opt-out portion of the feature and "outing" everybody?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I get the impression that Quora is in a tough spot because of the perceived implosion of the "social bubble" after the FB IPO. They have $61M in funding [1], which means that their investors must be demanding bold moves. I don't personally know anyone who works there, so it's pure speculation.

[1] <http://www.crunchbase.com/company/quora>

<comment><USER23> > _"They have $61M in funding [1], which means that their investors must be > demanding bold moves."_

Like a business plan? Who knew that they'd be actually expected to offer a return on that money at some point?

I'd love to know where that money is going/has gone.

Edit: Oh.

[http://www.quora.com/Quora-company/Why-is-Quora-moving-to- Mo...](http://www.quora.com/Quora-company/Why-is-Quora-moving-to-Mountain- View)

<comment><USER24> 4 times their current size of 40 employees? This is Digg 2.0 all over time.

The obvious question: Why the HECK do they need 40, let alone 160 employees?!

<comment><USER25> Space for 160 employees doesn't mean they'll have 160.. They just have room to grow a bit. 40 is a lot of employees, but with their funding they can afford it, and it may just be essential, we can't really know from the outside looking in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The blowback from stupid share-everything policies is what will eventually collapse this social media bubble. I disabled Spotify-to-Facebook sharing completely, even though I wouldn't mind if the controls were more granular and the notifications were less obtrusive. Right now people put a lot of faith and trust in their social media providers, and the more said services violate that trust, the less users will share by default and the less valuable the services will be as a result.

</comment><comment><USER27> The forced login stuff really enraged me. This is the rant I posted to Quora on the topic in hopes of getting them to change their minds:

For a long time I've been meaning to write personal stuff about my mom's death last year from a brain tumor. The question "Death and Dying: What does it feels like when doctor says you'll just live X days / months?" popped up in my feed. So I answered it. In detail. Crying as I went. At some point I realized I was hyperventilating from the sobs, but I knew if I stopped I wouldn't finish. So I wrote and wrote and clicked "Add Answer".

Since I was sharing it with the world, I decided to man up and share it with my loved ones. I copied the link and posted it to Facebook, so that my friends and family could read it. Like you'd do with any other link in the world.

And then began the fucking tech support circus. Within an hour, somebody said:

 _I'd like to read this but I'm unable to without giving them my FB login info. Am I missing something?_

I immediately checked, and I wasn't bothered when I clicked through, even when signed out of Quora. No idea what was going on. I thought it might be some referrer sniffing plus cookies; I suggested they copy-paste the link. Another friend made other suggestions. But that didn't solve it for everybody; another person just now commented:

 _I wanted to read, but I got this thing saying I need to approve an app called Quora - an app which "may post on my behalf" - which seems like a rather large presumption for an app to take. Or am I misunderstanding something which is actually quite benign? Sorry to interject a facebook question into this thread, but I do want to read what you wrote...._

And they're right. It's a fucking giant presumption to ask for that just so my friends can read something I wrote and wanted to share with them. So I just gave up and copy-pasted the text into the little Facebook comment box, arguing meanwhile with Facebook about what the goddamn enter key means. (It means new line, motherfuckers.)

The end result: what I was hoping would be a solemn remembrance of my dead mom is now cluttered up with people trying to defend themselves against Quora's quest for better user numbers at their next fucking board meeting.

So thanks, Quora, for strip-mining my personal tragedy to up your AARRR metrics. I hope it was worth it, because you've lost a lot of my trust.

Edited to add links:

The rant on Quora: [http://www.quora.com/rage-against-quora/Rage-forcing- Faceboo...](http://www.quora.com/rage-against-quora/Rage-forcing-Facebook- signup-on-inbound-links-from-Facebook) And the answer I wrote: [http://www.quora.com/Death-and-Dying-1/What-does-it-feels- li...](http://www.quora.com/Death-and-Dying-1/What-does-it-feels-like-when- doctor-says-youll-just-live-X-days-months/answer/William-Pietri)

<comment><USER18> Quora was founded by facebookers. People who actually have the worst fucking view online about what should be private and what should be public.

People who have no digital-cultural compass because the only reference point they have is from working at Facebook, thus they think that "this is how it was thought of and done at Facebook - and Facebook is the most overly hyped company in history, so I must be a fucking genius!"

No thanks.

Done with quora forever.

<comment><USER27> I get your perspective, but I think Facebook is basically correct in the long term. Privacy is basically a historical accident belonging to the few hundred years in the west where transportation tech got ahead of information technology.

An excellent read on the topic is David Brin's "The Transparent Hand". He basically makes the argument that we face one of two futures: either all of us know everybody's business or a small elite controls the flow of information. Basically, our choice is a surveillance democracy vs a surveillance state.

I think he's right that there's no way to put the genie back in the bottle. That's not to say that Quora's moves aren't fucking annoying, but I do think just refusing to participate won't make a long-term difference in how things turn out.

<comment><USER28> > Privacy is basically a historical accident belonging to the few hundred > years in the west where transportation tech got ahead of information > technology.

I don't think privacy should be dictated by whatever is possible with technology, it should be explicitly decided by people. Whichever way they decide.

<comment><USER27> Sure, but the way it was historically decided by most people was a position of little or no privacy. In a small town, everybody knows everybody's business.

It's only urbanization, which only works because of good transportation, that made that untenable. So those of us who like privacy finally had some.

But information technology is making it possible for people to keep track of basically everybody they care to again. So we're going to go right back to what most people like, which is life as soap opera.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Quora clearly announced this change of policy. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of The Leopard".

[http://hitchhikerguidetothegalaxy.blogspot.com/2006/04/bewar...](http://hitchhikerguidetothegalaxy.blogspot.com/2006/04/beware- of-leopard-douglas-adams-quote.html)

</comment><comment><USER30> Also, you can't view some answers anonymously anymore (blurred out a la expertsexchange.com). Seems they are desperate for new users...

<comment><USER31> I really hope this blows back hard on Quora.

We need dramatic examples of companies' valuations being hit for making such privacy violations on a whim. Google and Facebook can mostly get away with similar violations since the large majority of users simply don't care and/or don't understand the privacy concerns, but maybe it's not too late to lash back at relatively insignificant companies like Quora for blatant disregard of privacy...

<comment><USER32> >We need dramatic examples of companies' valuations being hit for making such privacy violations on a whim.

They don't exist. Only a small subset of users even care and investors and stakeholders just want their site to succeed any way it can. While not expressly privacy-related, take a look at charts of LinkedIn stock after their massive security breach where it was revealed they weren't salting password hashes. Not only did it not dip, it rose on the news and held those gains until after the story was out of the news.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Smells desperate to me.

Quora launched with all kinds of "Former Facebooker!" hype that it hasn't really lived up to.

I've had some good reads on the site, but only from the cream of the crop threads that make it into the digest emails.

Searching out a general question on Quora seems more likely to lead directly to hordes of marketers linking back to their own sites.

<comment><USER34> I just can't tolerate a site where people upvote you based on where you work and not based on the content of your answer. A recent thread on using "bullets" to separate text elements on a single line wherein a Facebook employee responded by saying "I stole it from Flickr" had more upvotes by far when it was put in the newsletter than a post below it highlighting (with images and historical references) that we've been using dots-as-spaces since we were writing on stone tablets really drove this home for me.

<comment><USER33> That's exactly the kind of thing I feared upon hearing of Quora's focus on real names back when they launched.

I expect the bubbling up of such things (stuff that is somehow "interesting", but not useful) is a problem for the majority of social sites.

I tend to think the like button / upvote concept is just busted and largely to blame, but I certainly don't know how to solve or supplant it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Anyone remember Belkin's fiasco of selling a router which would randomly replace webpage requests with ads for their products? Some do, and still won't buy Belkin anything due to trust destroyed. Same here: Quora may survive this, but many users will never go there for permanent lack of trust.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is why you need Data Protection law (e.g. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Directive> )

<comment><USER15> Legislating this sort of thing is killing a cockroach with a shotgun. I'm of the opinion that they should be free to be sleazy with their users, as long as I'm free to not be a user (and I no longer am).

Quora is committing good-will suicide with this move, and them's the breaks, but a legal requirement preventing it is overkill.

<comment><USER14> "Legislating this sort of thing is killing a cockroach with a shotgun. I'm of the opinion that they should be free to be sleazy with their users"

Sounds like you have a high tolerance for living with cockroaches if you can just move from one apartment to another instead of rooting out the infestation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is completely crossing the line. Showing others what you have searched without notifying me about this is just offensive to me. I love quora and what they are doing, but this is completely below the belt.

</comment><comment><USER38> I personally agree - I would be annoyed if I discovered this (I haven't logged on to Quora in a long long time). They seem to have most recently updated their Privacy Policy (<http://www.quora.com/about/privacy/>) on August 1. Quoting " _Specifically, you consent to Quora's disclosure of information related to the ways in which you interact with the Service, such as: landing pages, pages viewed_ ".

On the counter-side, I would have been okay if they sent a mass-mailer saying "We have introduced a new feature on Quora - now you know how your peers are doing with Quora!" - making it sound marketing-like, but in reality, percolating the information to their users in the most seemingly-harmless way possible. This could have won them actual fans for this feature.

</comment><comment><USER39> Why don't they show something like "4 of your friends" read this answer without identifying the friend? They would need a lower threshold were you would need a minimum number of friends before this feature would kick in to keep the data anonymous. They could also just say something like "4 people within your network" read this and use the network effect of 2nd and 3rd degree connections.

I'm surprised that no adult websites implement a social sharing feature like that. No one is clicking on the facebook / google+ buttons on purpose, but it might be interesting to see what videos people in your network are watching if it was anonymous.

</comment><comment><USER40> Equally f'd up is the fact that you cannot delete your Quora account. Seriously. Try searching for any such option in your settings page. They only have a "deactivate" option, and once you deactivate, you can reactivate anytime by just logging in again :)

Found this quora post:

[http://www.quora.com/Quora-product/How-do-I-delete-my- Quora-...](http://www.quora.com/Quora-product/How-do-I-delete-my-Quora- account)

According to a Quora engineer, it seems you can delete your account by emailing firstname.lastname@example.com

Wow! This certainly sounds like something EFF (<https://www.eff.org/>) should try and do something about.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is apparently a new feature, just launched a 2 weeks ago: <http://www.quora.com/blog/Introducing-Views-on-Quora>

</comment><comment><USER41> FYI, you cannot delete your Quora account from there website. For that, you need to email: firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER42> I don't believe that's true. I see a "Deactivate" button in my settings. Or is that not the same thing as "deleting"?

<comment><USER43> No, it's true.

[http://www.quora.com/Quora-product/How-do-I-delete-my- Quora-...](http://www.quora.com/Quora-product/How-do-I-delete-my-Quora- account)

I don't know what "deactivating" does, but the account is reactivated if you log in. I tried it and it didn't appear to do anything except log me out. I also sent an email to email@example.com to have the account deleted, but it hasn't happened yet...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Sigh, another day, another useful service decides to overshare on my behalf.

FYI, to turn off this setting, go to Views -> Allow others to see what content I've viewed in feed

</comment><comment><USER45> It seems that almost every week I read about yet another "social" company breaching longstanding societal norms regarding privacy. Quora is just the latest example.

What happens next has become rather predictable: a few voices criticize the company in question, the company (maybe) issues some kind of public apology, and then... nothing seems to change.

Maybe our society doesn't really care _that much_ about privacy.

</comment><comment><USER46> I honestly think having accounts on social networks is now becoming a huge liability. They start of as quite private and then morph into being open and you are left holding the bag. It just means the more networks you sign up for the more networks you have to main and the more networks you have to cancel later.

This is quite upsetting.

</comment><comment><USER47> Here is the thread screenshotted in the blog post, in case any one was interested:

[http://www.quora.com/Personal-Finance/How-much-money-have- mo...](http://www.quora.com/Personal-Finance/How-much-money-have-most-people- saved-by-the-time-they-are-30-years-old)

</comment><comment><USER48> Thanks, I posted a link to this post on Quora to my followers and deactivated my account.

</comment><comment><USER49> There is nothing certain in life but death, taxes, and monetization. It's Quora's time to start making money. It's reaching the social site late stage end of life phase. The internet's natural order.

</comment><comment><USER50> What's all the hullaballoo about?! LinkedIn does the same thing: you can see who viewed your profile if you enable your own views of other profiles to be seen by their owners.

Or do we only get riled up when the perp is a small startup that still holds the promise of cracking the holy grail of sustainability without charging a usage fee? ...Damn sell-outs, it's like all they care about is finding a way to make money.

</comment><comment><USER51> Hmmm. I wonder how Myoung Kang feels about this post...

</comment><comment><USER52> It seems to me there is only one good response to this type of corporate behavior: remove yourself from the equation. ou are free to quit and have them remove your data from the system. I did this last week and I feel much better now. To Quora's credit it only took 24 hours to be removed from the system. If you consider it abuse, staying in an abusive relationship is just plain stupid :)

</comment><comment><USER53> The views feature isn't enabled until you read the announcement which is forced into the view on top of the page when you view the web site, you have to specifically click Hide to remove it and acknowledge the new option.

If you turn it off, it will retroactively remove any of your views, you can turn it off here <http://www.quora.com/settings>

</comment><comment><USER54> So far I counted 10 fuck/ings and one nazi calling in this discussion. Please guys, I come here for a civil discussion and not some ragefest.

<comment><USER55> your username is stfu.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Question is, will it turn out to be "News Feed" feature of FB or FB Beacon?

Their founding team were present when FB introduced News Feed and Beacon. I'm sure they've given lot of thought to it.

Common sense dictates, it is screwed up move. I had the same thought when I saw news feed feature. But it turned out to be pretty rad and successful. Not sure what Quora team are envisioning here.

</comment><comment><USER57> This is exactly why I now stay logged out of Quora and use Spectacles ([https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kbckpcgmpkkfdjhmhi...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kbckpcgmpkkfdjhmhiomnnaabojgibch)) if I need to browse over to Quora.

</comment><comment><USER58> Quora must be doing well. They've outgrown their Palo Alto office and are relocating to Mountain View:

[http://www.quora.com/Quora-company/Why-is-Quora-moving-to- Mo...](http://www.quora.com/Quora-company/Why-is-Quora-moving-to-Mountain- View)

</comment><comment><USER59> I think this is the Quoraish way to answer the question - meta enough? [http://www.quora.com/Quora/What-do-Quorans-think-about- Quora...](http://www.quora.com/Quora/What-do-Quorans-think-about-Quoras-new- privacy-issues)

</comment><comment><USER60> I understand people's outrage at this invasion of privacy - but honestly why do people think that anything they have ever done online hasn't already been tracked and recorded (not being paranoid or anything - just being realistic).

There is a lot of value in figuring out who someone is, what they like and don't like and what they are likely to buy (ad networks/trackers etc.).

Hence you MUST assume that everything you have done, and ever will do, is, for all intents and purposes, PUBLIC FOREVERMORE.

Not "whisper public" but shared across YouTube public with 100 MILLION PEOPLE.

Once you assume that situation you attempt to mitigate possible pitfalls and these things don't bother you so much (they still will - but the sting isn't nearly as strong).

And no - the web isn't going in the opposite direction - privacy is dead - long live privacy!

You can try and shame or regulate it away - but seeing the web as it is today and where it's going - there is no turning back.

<comment><USER61> > why do people think that anything they have ever done online hasn't already > been tracked and recorded

Because their friends, family, and coworkers don't get to see those records, and it is difficult (important, but difficult) to care about the unseen omnisciency of Google/Facebook data junkies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I just got my quora account demoted to read-only for not using a real name .. wtf

Requiring login to view is their biggest problem. Requiring real names is their second problem.

This is just making things worse.

</comment><comment><USER63> I sent email@example.com a message to let them know I am very upset with this gross violation of privacy and Web norms.

I encourage you all to do the same. (Or call them, if you know someone.)

</comment><comment><USER64> With a security background, I'm painfully aware of how very little is private these days. But this is just a disgrace. I deleted my account. I hope others get the message.

</comment><comment><USER65> I am very surprised that there is so much support for this feature. I can't think of any other situation where such a passive action is made public.

</comment><comment><USER66> This is why you need to login to Quora (et al.) under a pseudonym. (It's against the TOS but 1/who cares? and 2/how are they supposed to find out?)

</comment><comment><USER67> This isn't much different from what Facebook does showing friends all your likes and comments, except Facebook doesn't let you turn it off.

<comment><USER68> There's a _huge_ difference between sharing what people have explicitly interacted with (making a comment, clicking "like") and sharing what people have passively viewed with no explicit action on their part.

<comment><USER67> With Facebook's f'ed up app ecosystem I've seen friends Like some pretty embarrassing stuff without realizing they had done so. And besides, the change has been recent, there has been a training period as people realized their Likes and comments were shared. I can't imagine how many millions of awkward embarrassing conversations have happened because these vampire companies don't care about their user's privacy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Yahoo does the same thing ... and i immediately uninstall it upon such discovery!

</comment><comment><USER70> You can disable that in your settings.

<comment><USER42> Yes, but the default is on. I didn't know that until I saw this post 5 minutes ago. Now I'm thinking of deactivating my Quora account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> This looks like a big gaffe by Quora.

</comment><comment><USER72> And that's why you don't use Quora

</comment><comment><USER73> You don't pay for it, thus you're the product, not the consumer. The product doesn't get what it wants. Not how things work.

</comment><comment><USER74> never understood why people bothered with this garbage

Expert Sexchange 2.0

</comment><comment><USER75> I see the author's point, and users should be aware Quora does this and have the facility to disable this but ... is this not an over reaction? Viewing a question titled "Should I come out to my parents?" or "What is the best way to hide an affair?" doesn't in any way imply you are gay or hiding an affair... just that you showed some interesting the question and possible answers. I'd be interesting in both those topics just to see the variety of responses. I don't think i would need to hide the fact that i viewed those threads.

If they were providing complete Quora browsing history of a user, which you could see a general trend towards topics a person reads over time, I would see a serious breach of privacy. But a single one off "so and so just read this" is hardly damning.

<comment><USER76> You are right, people shouldn't jump to conclusions, but, unfortunately, they often do.

<comment><USER77> +1. In fact our brains are wired/evolved to do so. Debating should vs. should not is ultimately philosophical at best. We should look at things like this from a framework of reality. Reality dictates people (including smart folks like us) will indeed jump to those conclusions and form opinions about others.</comment></comment></comment>


How firefighters are using tus, the open protocol for resumable uploads - <AUTHOR> http://tus.io/blog/2017/05/19/how-tus-may-help-to-save-lives <comment><USER2> The discussion back when tus was a 'show HN', [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5563569](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5563569)

</comment><comment><USER3> I never heard aboit tus before, so let me ask this: What ebcryption does it use? I couldn't find a word about it on theyr website.

<comment><AUTHOR> No encryption, it's plain HTTP (but you can easily 'wrap it' in HTTPS [https://github.com/tus/tusd/issues/86#issuecomment-269085671](https://github.com/tus/tusd/issues/86#issuecomment-269085671))</comment></comment>


Void Linux: Into the Void - <AUTHOR> https://michaelwashere.net/void/linux/culture/2017/09/18/into-the-void.html <comment><USER2> I usually refrain from distro- (and editor-, and language-) related discussions but I think Void Linux deserves an exception here:

\- Everything is remarkably simple, (mostly) well-documented and straightforward.

\- Friendly, dedicated and very knowledgeable community

\- Open development, very few hooks to jump through if you have something to contribute

\- No systemd, so: rebooting your system isn't a lottery where, if you lose, you get to wait for 90 seconds for some service to stop, your system doesn't start doing strange new things after every update because something that's been working fine since the 1980s has recently been declared broken, no binary logs to get corrupted (and no need to tweak your system and sidestep this brilliant scheme). Of course, you can't do much DevOps on Void Linux, but I'm pretty sure that's about as relevant as the fact that you can't run macOS on low-power embedded systems.

\- Completely community-ran and independent. Some things don't happen as quickly as in corporate-backed projects, but you're also not beta testing for their LTS or enterprise-grade releases, either. Also, no bureaucracy, no priority mismatch, no one to shove alpha-quality software down your throat.

It's basically like OpenBSD with more drivers but based on slightly worse and less cohesive technology :-).

<comment><USER3> _No systemd, so [...] you can 't do much DevOps on Void Linux_

How so? How is DevOps linked or dependent on systemd in your view? Personally, I find systemd gets in the way of devops.

<comment><USER4> I don't understand, what can't DevOps do much without systemd where most of the DevOps culture involving around automations?

<comment><USER5> I found the question interesting as well especially since the original post mentions how michael works on void and distributimg it with ansible (many of the things he mentioned sound like devops to me)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A while ago I started looking for alternative linux distributions and void linux is my new darling that came out of this search.

It has many binary packages, out of the box musl images, images for many of my arm boards (raspberry pi *, c2 and cubieboard for instance) and a nice packagemanager with source support and arch like syntax (it's splitted like the debian apt-get/apt-cache but worse... I still like it)

If someone knows where I can report bugs for the live system I would appreciate a link (or I have to do it over the forum/mailing list).

It uses runit as init system and I nearly forgot how nice a system without systemd could be.

I have a little project on the backburner where I started porting arch to musl, but since I found voidlinux I completly stopped.

It has an arch package to install void in a chroot and it has void packages for an arch like init system (mkinitcpio). The packages are updated regulary and even thought it's a larger distribution than alpine linux (it doesn't start with a barebone busbox base, but without wget and curl :D),but has a way larger precompiled package list than it (it even has some precompiled packages missing from other distributions like toybox the bsd licensed busybox like tool)

Anyway since it still offers 32bit x86 binaries I will maybe use it in time for my old hardware. Up until now void Linux has made me very happy and I wonder why I didn't see it 10 years ago when it's first release was born. If you haven't yet give it a try.

<comment><USER6> I also used to use void-linux for many of these reasons(after arch for a few years). But i have now moved to nixos. It offers me the benefits of replicating system setup(i don't backup my system folders anymore, just my homedir and the nixos configuration files), cleanly removing system-wide packages(no more stale config hanging around) and of course the benefits of using nix for isolated/reproducible builds.

<comment><USER7> With Darch (I'm the author), you can use VoidLinux with a replicated setup.

Also, each boot is a clean boot (tempfs overlay). This ensures you capture your OS changes through your build script.

[https://godarch.com/](https://godarch.com/)

This gives me what I love about Nix (scripted setup) with OSs I love (Arch and Void).

<comment><USER8> I just automated my laptop setup with Salt [1]. I want to keep using that instead of bash scripts (what Darch uses, by the looks of it).

I like the idea of having "images" with tempfs overlay. Is it possible to combine Salt with the image feature from Darch?

[1]: [https://github.com/atmoz/workstation- formula](https://github.com/atmoz/workstation-formula)

<comment><USER7> I'm not familiar with Salt, but it looks interesting!

Does Salt allow you to run from an already-built (but minimal) Arch installation? The base Darch images (godarch/arch) is bootstrapped manually.

Would I have to create a godarch/arch-salt image that is bootstrapped from salt files, so that you could further salt the image?

How would salt handle the inheritance that Docker provides?

<comment><USER8> Yes, have a look at how I bootstrap an Arch installation: [https://github.com/atmoz/workstation- formula/blob/master/boo...](https://github.com/atmoz/workstation- formula/blob/master/bootstrap)

All you have to do is install Salt, and then you can run salt-call to apply states.

Yes, Salt states can depend on other states, and you could choose to apply only selected states.

<comment><USER7> By the sounds of it, you could do this currently.

1) Create a root image for your use that installs Salt in your Arch image. See here: [https://github.com/pauldotknopf/darch- recipes/blob/master/ba...](https://github.com/pauldotknopf/darch- recipes/blob/master/base/script)

2) For the rest of your recipes/layers, create a script/bash file like you would normally, but just pass execution to Salt.

I'll look into Salt more. Maybe there is a way to extend Darch to support different "executors" to support things like bash/Salt/Puppet/etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I liked the sound of this, so i tried to install it. I'm not sure if im just a complete idiot but i can't get it to install. Their liveCD image only lets me connect to WEP/WPA networks, so i can't connect to the WPA2-Enterprise network my school is on. They also don't let you connect to an unsecured endpoint so i cant connect to the alternative network provided.

I also couldn't get it to boot in UEFI, had to switch back to legacy bios. The partition manager is also a little confusing, i can't figure out which sizes to use or how to create them, i like debians ui here alot for this.

I stopped after seeing all that.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A new(ish) from-scratch Linux distro designed by an old NetBSD dev.

<comment><USER10> thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Distribution homepage: [https://www.voidlinux.eu/](https://www.voidlinux.eu/)

</comment><comment><USER12> I ran the musl libc version of Void Linux for a while on one of my laptops but ran into a lot of problems and buggy behavior.

If you are going to use Void Linux I would _strongly_ recommend _not_ picking the musl version unless you are specifically interested in improving musl support by filing and/or fixing bugs.

<comment><USER13> Do wonder how much of that was from code having adopted GNU-isms...

<comment><USER14> honestly not that much since adopting a GNU-ism or Glibc-ism will in most case result in errors at compile-time.

<comment><USER15> Nope. This 'self is the standard' way of GNU software is one reason I'm not a big fan of GNU.

[https://wiki.musl-libc.org/functional-differences-from- glibc...](https://wiki.musl-libc.org/functional-differences-from-glibc.html)

<comment><USER14> We are referring to buggyness during execution (what the parent of the comment i'm responding to says) while most problems with GNU-isms come hit you at compile-time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I just installed Void Linux a VM.

My first impression is that it feels _really_ snappy. I am not sure if I like the cli interface of the package manager. But I will give this one a try.

Can someone share their experiences regarding Void's stability? I am currently using openSUSE Tumbleweed on my desktop and primary laptop, and while I am mostly happy, things sometimes kind of break after installing a batch of updates.

<comment><USER17> I used Void on my previous laptop for about a year with no stability issues. The only reason I stopped using it was because I wanted to experiment with a no-grub EFI stub booted whole disk encryption using LUKS non-systemd setup, which I only really had an idea of how to do on Gentoo, so I went back to that. [Edit: I think I might have almost had this working on Void, in fact, but there was some piece that I couldn't get right, if I remember, but that I could do more easily in Gentoo. But I can't remember what that might have been. It's been a while since I did that.]

Otherwise, I probably would have stayed with Void for a while more. It was pretty nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nice, my past distros of choice were slackware & archlinux. This feels like a successor to those. I'm sold.

<comment><USER19> Slackware and Arch are still very much alive as projects.

By 'successor' do you mean 'works in a similar way and I happen to like it better' or is there something that you think Void has got that slackware and arch don't have?

PS: downloading the void live .iso now for a bit of distro-hopping on a spring morning.

<comment><USER20> As someone who switched from Slackware to Void several months ago, Void boots far faster. Also, though I haven't used Arch, Void really feels like a combination of a slimmed down Slackware + NetBSD (the author of Void is a NetBSD commiter IIRC). Of course, Gentoo portage was inspired by BSD ports, which I believe was an impetus for Arch's package manager.

I don't know what the story is for Arch, but I find that Void strives to make the system dead simple: it is even more minimalist than Slackware (it feels more like a BSD). It isn't just small, though: it has good defaults. There isn't a whole lot of documentation beyond the well-written man pages, and I believe this is in part because it isn't necessary.

Like Arch, though, it is a rolling release system: an update may break your system, and package indices quickly become stale as old packages are deleted from the server. You can easily fix this by updating the index.

<comment><USER21> Our initial author, and the primary author of xbps, came directly from the NetBSD community.

<comment><USER19> Installed on an old Thinkpad X61s from the xfce4 live .iso (< 600Mb) dd'ed to a usb stick. Boots into an xfce live graphical session with network-manager recognising the Atheros wifi card. Minimal install - xfce 4.12 plus Web browser and image viewer (1.5Gb on hard drive).

Ran the installer script from a terminal in the live session - result is an ncurses dialogue that walks you through the steps. Disk already partitioned and skipped the network set-up stage and selected install from local. Rebooted into (graphical, xfce4) installed system in a few minutes. Network manager up and running, needed to log-in to local wifi again.

Probably because I skipped the network stage in the installer, I needed to set a repository for updates.

         echo 'repository=http://repo.voidlinux.eu/current/' \ >
         /etc/xbps.d/00-repository-main.conf

(somewhat reminiscent of OpenBSD's 6.2 new installurl)

Now installing some applications. LibreOffice is version 6 'fresh'. A bit like OpenBSD, installing Libreoffice brings a metric tonne of dependencies.

Edit: you need to install alsa to get sound

         xbps-install alsa-utils

gets you basic sound functionality. The 'stem matches package name' logic is very reminiscent of OpenBSD pkg_add (I've never used NetBSD).

<comment><USER20> It looks like you've already figured out some things like sound, wifi, and xbps, but: I found the following guide helpful in complementing the man pages:

[http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/void/voidtips.htm](http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/void/voidtips.htm)

More articles on Void from the same author, including an install guide:

[http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/void/index.htm](http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/void/index.htm)

<comment><USER19> Thanks.

I worked out that root defaults to /bin/sh before reading the voidtips page above. Also worth mentioning here that Firefox-esr (52) is installed by default from the xfce4 live iso. Firefox release (59) is also available as is Chromium (65). Some font-puggling is needed (fontconfig stuff) to get sub- pixel rendering.

In all, quite nice. I'll see how long it takes me to break this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A year ago or so I switched to Void Linux from Debian and my conclusion so far is that Void is a near perfect Linux distribution. Stable, simple and systemd free. The package manager is simply a pleasure to use.

My only critique is that most packages will install everything but the kitchen sink, so even if I only need "Writer" I have to install every single component of LibreOffice and this makes the system a little bloated.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hey guys. FYI, Darch (my project) has support for VoidLinux.

[https://godarch.com/concepts/recipes/distributions/](https://godarch.com/concepts/recipes/distributions/)

<comment><USER21> Question - is there any reason your project can only be used on x86_64? I can't readily find documentation about godarch that suggests it even requires 64bit hardware.

<comment><USER7> The base docker images ([https://github.com/godarch/distributions](https://github.com/godarch/distributions)) only supports x86_64. Docker images have support for having multiple embedded rootfs tarballs for multiple platforms, but it gets complicated. Maybe in the future.

Also, you have to build your recipes on the same target arch that you are going to deploy to. Irrelevant to your question, but something to note.

<comment><USER21> I'm having a .... not fun time updating darch to the latest version. Does your makefile still require git, or can I kill that code?

<comment><USER7> You can remove the git stuff, as long as you are not building containerd and runc as well.

What issues are you running into? The AUR and VoidLinux package don't have an issue. Skype (paul.knopf1) me?

<comment><USER21> Why does a go get pull in docker and everything else?

I'm trying to clean up the Void package to make it more maintainable.

<comment><USER7> Darch isn't "go get"-able. Things need to be vendored and you'll need a certain version of containerd and runc (which isn't "go get"-able either).

Are you having a problem with the Void package script? The go build template for Void is very naive, I wouldn't use it. It uses symlinks which doesnt place nice with vendoring tools. Things will be a lot smoother when vgo is done and their template is updated accordingly.

<comment><USER21> Except that the makefile really depends on submodule updates and other mechanisms that require a git clone (hard on the build servers) instead of a tarball that can be cached and checksummed.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, when I added the package, I told them the next version will not require vendoring and can be built without git. The next version will do this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I love Void. It's like Arch was back when I first tried it. My main machine still runs Slackware, but my Raspberry Pi 2 runs Void and I've been mostly satisfied with it. The unsatisfying bit isn't really Void's fault; a bug in Xorg prevented it from working with musl on ARM. this has since been fixed.

</comment><comment><USER24> How do people compare this to Alpine Linux? I'm interested in both.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h I use both as daily drivers on laptops, and they are both very nice systems. Some differences:

* Alpine is lighter-weight. As at least one point, Alpine packages are split into small parts (usually at least app, app-dev, and app-doc, respectively containing the actual program, the development headers, and the manpages/docs). Alpine also defaults to using Busybox for coreutils.

* Void is rolling release with regular updates and a surprisingly large repo. Alpine has a rolling "edge" release and stable releases that are supported for 2 years.

* Void works on a traditional install to a writable root filesystem; Alpine can do that ("sys" install), or can run in RAM, optionally persisting state).

* Alpine uses hardened kernels. They used to use grsec, not sure what code they use now. Additionally, they configure the system to be locked down; for instance, on the laptop I'm using to type this comment, I can only check the battery status as root, and powertop outright doesn't work (as I understand it, they completely killed off the debugfs interface it needs).

* Void seems to be more into cutting-edge tech; ZFS and wireguard come to mind.

In general, Alpine is designed for embedded, Void is a general-purpose system. Both can do the others' job, but that's their tendencies.

<comment><USER25> The alpine userspace is also great to run in containers

my LXC container basically runs up DHCP to get an IP and a SSH server to provide a remote shell, everything else is per-server setup like webservers and stuff, compared to the ubuntu containers I run Alpine uses a _LOT_ less memory and CPU.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Package manager sounds like a worse version of ~~Nice~~ Nix, but distro's choice of services is neat.

 _Edit_ stupid autocorrect. Also further research indicates xbps is way more traditional. Sigh...

</comment><comment><USER27> Why would one use Void instead of NixOS or another Nix-based distro?

<comment><USER28> If you're into programming in C, and like simplicity, you might find more likeminded people there, similar to OpenBSD. Nix is more popular among functional programmers.

<comment><USER27> Nix is for everybody; I don't do functional programming but I still use Nix for everything. If OpenBSD is simple, or C is simple, and Void is also simple, then it sounds like I should not bother trying out Void.

<comment><USER25> I've explored potential Nix usage but I found it far to complicated and documentation on production usage rather lacking.

I would rather love something that explains me how to setup Nix on Alpine Linux and then deploy Nginx + PHP 7.1 with several websites. For desktop usage I enjoy tinkering with edge and upstream releases too much to consider Nix anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> _" after all the package manager is really just keeping a database of files and unpacking archives onto the disk."_

err..... what

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h What what? That's more or less what a package manager does; take archives ("packages"), unpack them into the system ("install"), and then keep a database of what archives are unpacked and what files each one owns. In practice there's a lot added to that (pulling the archives from a central repo, dependency resolution, searching, managing config files...), but the simple case is barely more than tar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The matrix background on that page is cool but it does not go past the first page of scroll which sort of ruins the effect.

</comment><comment><USER31> Without systemd? Shut Up And Take My Money!

<comment><AUTHOR> For more variety: [http://without-systemd.org](http://without-systemd.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> "Because of this, _xbps-src is in fact not a binary, it is a collection of very intricate shell scripts that use standard tooling_ available on almost any Linux distribution to bootstrap a compiler, build chroot, and XBPS itself."

When he stepped away from NetBSD, I remember reading that it was because he wanted to work on a package manager.

It might be that the entire raison d'etre for Void Linux is a package manager consisting of shell scripts.

Not sure what he thinks of pkgsrc but IMO their work has made things so easy that, e.g., one can easily use a set of shell scripts instead of pkg-add, etc. I do this to save space on small systems. IME, the pkgsrc bootstrap scripts are a very _reliable_ way to build a gcc toolchain. (build.sh as well)

One project I have had on the list for many years is to build Linux on BSD. Could it be done? Has it been tried?

Also, maybe S6 deserves a mention as another daemontools clone, with the added bonus that it may lead one to discover execline.

Nothing against runit. I use socklog and occasionally udpsvd by the same author.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h > One project I have had on the list for many years is to build Linux on BSD. > Could it be done? Has it been tried?

How do you mean? Compiling the Linux kernel on a BSD machine? Using GNU on BSD (if so, the answer is yes; see Debian GNU/kFreeBSD)? Linux kernel with BSD userland?

<comment><USER32> Compiling Linux on computer running BSD. User has no computer running Linux, but she has computer running BSD. She builds needed toolchain, downloads and compiles Linux kernel. Its relatively easy to build BSD while running Linux. But vice versa?

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Okay, so I tried it, and I'm going to say, "not easily".

Started from base FreeBSD install, installed gcc and gmake, pulled down a tarball from kernel.org. Did a `gmake x86_64_defconfig` to get started. First problem: FreeBSD calls it "amd64", Linux calls it "ia86". Exported ARCH=ia86 and retried. It gets further now but appears to blow break trying to build some .S files (FreeBSD uses as from GNU binutils, but it's like a decade old). I couldn't figure out how to fix, so gave up:)

I suspect it would work in a Linux jail, though, since that's a GNU userland with a Linux ABI from the kernel. Didn't try, though.

I also won't speak to whether it would work on netbsd/openbsd/etc.

<comment><USER32> chroot into /emul/linux directory/jail with GNU/Linux libraries, headers and GCC toolchain as Linux binaries, not BSD ones, then build.

There are probably obvious reasons this wont work but without trying I do not know what they are.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


OpenDNS adopts faster and more secure alternative to DNSSEC - <AUTHOR> http://blog.opendns.com/2010/02/23/opendns-dnscurve/

<comment><USER2> This is fantastic news. DNSCurve is a good and technically sound alternative for the extremely complex DNSSEC protocol stack.</comment>


How DreamHost Builds Its Cloud: Selecting Hard Drives - <AUTHOR> https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/2016/10/01/dreamhost-builds-cloud-selecting-hard-drives/ <comment><USER2> There's something I don't understand about the enterprise vs consumer (or "client") SSD classification: According to the widely quoted JEDEC standard, JESD218A, [0] these are the date retention standards:

Retention Use (power off):

* Client: 30° C, 1 year

* Enterprise: 40° C, 3 months

It's not a typo, I've seen it in many places: It appears that the power-off data retention standard is only 3 months in enterprise drives (1 year in client drives isn't great either).

Can anyone explain it? My only guess is that the "enterprise" classification refers to drives designed to churn data 24/7, not store it long-term. But I think many people understand the term 'enterprise' to mean much greater durability. I'd be very disappointed if I experienced dataloss from leaving any drive on a shelf for 3 months, much less an expensive enterprise drive. (Or maybe I misunderstand what's meant by _Retention Use (power off)_?)

[0] Available here: [https://www.jedec.org/standards- documents/results/jesd218b.0...](https://www.jedec.org/standards- documents/results/jesd218b.01) and quoted here in the table here: [http://www.kingston.com/us/ssd/enterprise/best_practices/ent...](http://www.kingston.com/us/ssd/enterprise/best_practices/enterprise_versus_client_ssd)

<comment><USER3> How many studies have been done verifying that enterprise SSDs perform significantly better than consumer SSDs in any metrics?

My belief is that the consumer SSDs actually have very similar performance and reliability requirements to the enterprise because they are generally deployed without redundancy, and so any failures can be catastrophic for consumers. And then there are lots of consumers that will go on Amazon or Newegg etc. and leave very bad reviews.

So I personally believe the 'enterprise' distinction is mostly a scam, and developers who are looking for inexpensive hosting have been mainly waiting for A) datacenter providers to realize that or B) a slow market perfusion that mitigates it.

<comment><USER4> > How many studies have been done verifying that enterprise SSDs perform > significantly better than consumer SSDs in any metrics?

Define perform. But short answer, lots.

To be fair, consumer SSDs these days are pretty solid, and will perform great for most workloads - even many workloads which enterprise drives would be used for.

The big difference though, is with extremely heavy write workloads. The endurance of enterprise SSDs in terms of how much data you can write before the drive will fail, is a couple orders of magnitude greater than consumer drives. For example, I have an 800gb Intel S3710 SSD. It's rated to handle 10 DWPD (drive writes per day) - meaning that one could write 8,000 gigabytes of data a day, 365 days a year, for 5 years (~17 petabytes), and the drive will still be chugging away just fine.

A 1TB Samsung 850 Pro (which has some of best endurance of consumer ssds), on the other hand is only rated to 300 terabytes of data written. So the enterprise drive has a 60x improvement in endurance.

<comment><USER3> Do those ratings reflect actual tested durability or mainly marketing?

What is the real average durability requirement?

Have there not been some relatively large providers using consumer SSDs in the datacenter successfully for some time?

<comment><USER4> > Do those ratings reflect actual tested durability or mainly marketing?

They reflect what the manufacturers will offer the warranty until. A quick google search suggests about 2 petabytes of writes is the max you can get on a samsung 850 before it completely fails (and after 1 petabyte you will have many failed sectors and data corruption starts creeping in)

At the same time, I bought my S3710 used and when I got it, it had almost 8 petabytes written and it's still just like new.

> Have there not been some relatively large providers using consumer SSDs in > the datacenter successfully for some time?

Yes, that wouldn't surprise me at all. Like I said, for many workloads, consumer SSDs are acceptable. But that doesn't mean enterprise drives are a scam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is only my personal experience, bu I am embarrassed to report that I have been in DreamHost customer for over 10 years for hosting some small and unimportant personal projects. I have been consistently disappointed with the level of their engineering and systems. Their systems are unreliable, their custom build ticketing system is atrocious. I would take any technical advice from them with a handful of salt.

<comment><USER6> As a counterpoint (and this is only my personal experience), but I'm happy to report that I've been a DreamHost customer for over 10 years for hosting some small and unimportant personal projects. I've been really happy with everything. Not sure how our usage of their service differs (probably lots!), but I would hate for people to dismiss DreamHost without hearing about a positive experience with them.

<comment><USER7> Also been a customer for over 10 years. Mostly quite happy.

What bugs me about them most right now is their new control panel design. The _log out_ link is at the _bottom left_ , so it gets _pushed off the screen_ when you expand the menus.

I have sent at least 3 tickets to them over the course of about 4 months telling them that they need to move the log out link to the top of the page, somewhere in the _copious_ amounts of empty space they have up there. They have responded every time saying they would look into it, pass it along, etc. But nothing's changed. I could fix it myself in 30 seconds by copying and pasting the code in the template.

And I can't help but wonder, if they are so incompetent as to not realize that, when the _log out link gets pushed off the page_ , their design is _broken_ , what else are they incompetent with? Security? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how broken it is--do their middle managers or higher- ups not recognize the problem? If not, what other problems do they not recognize? And if my messages to them are not getting through to those who could fix them, that's a problem in their support system.

So I would keep an eye on them. I hope they are not beginning to decline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> I recently looked at SSDs for a project I'm working on. By far, the biggest performance impact is in using PCIe rather than SATA interfaces. (The performance boost also may rely on M.2 and/or NVMe; because I don't have a PCIe controller on the system I was working on, I didn't look into it further). An example:

Samsung 850 Pro, reputedly one of the fastest SATA SSD drives (SATA 3, 2.5", AHCI):

* Sequential read/write: 550/520 MB/s

* 4K random read: 100K IOPS

Samsung 950 Pro (PCIe 3.0 x4, M.2, NVMe):

* Sequential read/write: 2,500/1,500 MB/s

* 4K random read: 300K IOPS

Source: [http://www.anandtech.com/show/9702/samsung-950-pro-ssd- revie...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/9702/samsung-950-pro-ssd- review-256gb-512gb)

<comment><USER8> I use the 850 Pro, and it is very fast, but has many issues with Windows 7 (which is what I have).

<comment><USER9> Care to elaborate? I was about to pick one up but now you have me hesitating.

<comment><USER10> I'm unaware of negative interactions with Win7 and the 850 Pro, having used one in my Win7 desktop for over a year at this point.

I can't immediately find anything but one-off reports online that don't line up with each other, either - maybe they're thinking of the 840 line?

<comment><USER8> Sorry, that was a typo, I have a 950 pro, and Windows 7 doesn't include an m.2 driver, which causes constant problems with booting and starting up after crashes. The 850 and 840 are both great drives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been with drramhost for at least 10 years, but Im about to move everything because of their recent move from open source webmails to only atamail or whatever the new one is called. I spent a lot of time locking down my squirrelmail install, only to login one day and be greeting by a completely different client. Sure they had warnings, but none of those warnings clearly stated the forced move, I thought I could opt out.

As for the rest of their service, Their actual server performance is decent, but their VPS offerings dont seem competitive these days, so Im strugling to find a reason to stay.

<comment><USER12> I had their VPS, but they do not give you root access. (In fact removed root access from one I used for a few years, screwing a bunch of my stuff up). Kind of a strange definition of VPS they have now.

<comment><USER13> This is managed VPS, which is kinda convenient if you don't want to manage servers yourself. For the more "normal" unmanaged VPS with root access, there's DreamCompute. It's even cheaper than DigitalOcean — $4.50 for 512 MB. I recently switched [https://iwl.me](https://iwl.me) to it, and it works well.

<comment><USER12> That is fine, but I was using it before those restrictions, which is annoying. Then I switched to Dream Compute and lost the email hosting for the domain.

<comment><USER13> Oh, I didn't know it was unrestricted before. (Re-read your comment) Yeah, not good of them to remove such a major feature if it was there before.

Why did you lose email for domain? It seems like I still have this option for the domain on DreamCloud (although I also still use their shared hosting).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Forgive my ignorance, but how is this "cloud" instead of VPS?</comment>


Ask YC: What to do when someone copies your text? - <AUTHOR>

Hi there. They say that imitation is the highest form of flattery. We've just found a competitor (with a nicely designed site) who has taken our text and only slightly re-worded it. Most of it still reads the same as our site and I recognized it as it as it reads just like I write :)  To be honest, they've created a good sales site (and I have no issues with competition) but its annoying that they couldn't think up their own ideas for their FAQs or text.  Just curious to see what people here would suggest or do I just ignore it and push our own product/site as much as possible.? <comment><USER2> What we did was ignore it. It's annoying, but (a) there is not much you can do and (b) someone who has to copy your site is probably not that much of a threat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Paul. We've been in competition on various products before and its all been good, fair competition. This is a new one for me. Appreciate the advice and we'll just roll our sleeves up and carry on. In a sense, this has spurred us on today :) Thanks for a few people who sent me suggestions and best wishes privately

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Absolutely nothing.

You are one paragraph of time in the hole on this already, but don't throw good time after bad. Every additional quanta of time spent on worrying about this or implementing (ineffective) solutions is time you are not using to make money.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Thats pretty much what I'd thought. Absolutely disgusting though. I mean, look at the competition and try to improve on what they've done but word-for-word copying is low. Anyway, thanks. Going to get on with doing business!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://freelanceswitch.com/freelancing-essentials/how-to- pre...](http://freelanceswitch.com/freelancing-essentials/how-to-prevent- hijackers-from-ripping-off-your-website/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Since they have a good design, steal it.</comment>


Safari Will Stop Accepting HTTPS Certificates That Last Longer Than 13 Months - <AUTHOR> https://www.macobserver.com/news/safari-https-certificates-13-months/ <comment><USER2> Google's Ryan Sleevi has also pushed for this previously. Back in 2017 when the CAs were reluctant to go below 39 months (the rule prior to 825 days) Sleevi's position was that if nothing less than 39 months could get agreed Chrome would just clamp certificate lifetimes to 90 days.

It's interesting that this came from Apple though, and seemingly (from memory and a brief review of the list archives) without much prior discussion. The CA/B Forum is an inherently asymmetrical body, its rules recognise this, and there is always the threat that the relationship it embodies could break down or cease to be relevant.

<comment><USER3> Here is an article talking about Ryan Sleevi's efforts: [https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-wants-to-reduce- lifespa...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-wants-to-reduce-lifespan-for- https-certificates-to-one-year/).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> non-blog: [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/20/apple_shorter_cert_...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/20/apple_shorter_cert_lifetime/)

<comment><USER5> (more to the point, this is the actual source article)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What is wrong with 3 year certificates? Genuine question.

<comment><USER7> A certificate is a secret. The longer you have a secret the more likely it is to be learned by others. Expiry is about risk mitigation, the shorter the expiry the smaller the risk.

Here risk is exposure of the key or the certificate being compromised. If it takes X time to break a certificate then an attacker will know your secret for expiry - X. We're being hopeful that 13 months is unattractive to attackers given the current values of X even at the nation state level, and with cryptography we always have to look into the future not what's capable today. There's also a "herd immunity" thing going on if we all have shorter expiry as there are no easier targets and the attacker has to become much more focused.

IMHO there's also benefits in rotation your cert more often. If you do it once every three years it's more likely the folks who did it last time aren't with your company or just plane forgot what they did. I think 13 months is still too long, I'd prefer every quarter because it forces the investment is a control system to facilitate rather than half-automated manual tasks. But that's not what this proposal from Apple ios about.

<comment><USER8> Couldn't one also argue that more frequent renewal exposes a larger attack surface?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Side-project website creation tools?  - <AUTHOR> Hey Folks, A friend and I are thinking of working on a (small) side project and I'm stumped over what tools to use to create our website. Basically it will be a listing of all the organic meat farms in our state that a user can search to find the products being sold near their location. For example, you could search for a grass-fed beef farm within 20 miles of your zip code.
I haven't really worked with websites using lots of data and needing search capabilities before. I am ok with using a bit of CSS and a small (emphasis on small) amount of HTML to tweak the design, but I'm really not familiar with anything more complicated than that. Ideally, I would like a solution available for free or a low monthly cost (this is a side project after all).
Here are the goals/workflow/revenue thoughts:
A farmer/rancher would register for an account and fill out a form with their address, the types of meat they sell, whether they deliver or require pick-up, the characteristics of the product (organic, grass-fed, hormone free), and any other relevant data.
A consumer would come to the site, not need to register, and search for products by type (for example, hormone free, grass fed beef), and be able to limit a search to a certain distance from their zip code or see the results on a map. If they click on a result they would be taken to the farm's website or a results/bio page with a phone number.
Revenue would probably come from email marketing to customers who sign up, or from ads shown on the page or a yearly fee to farmers.
Any thoughts? Wordpress, Weebly? I'm not really sure how all the options available to me would work with all the searching users would be doing. Mapping seems an important component, and registration is a biggie. But I DO NOT need eCommerce abilities, as its a side project and I don't want to get into the business of selling food products over the internet. Ideas, suggestions? <comment><USER2> Hire someone to do it in wordpress or any decent PHP framework for you. If you expect to make money on it you should expect to pay for the labor of making it, after all. What you're proposing is a complex implementation. Just because you consider it a side project, doesn't mean it would take any less work to pull off.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you know of any providers that would charge a monthly fee instead of setting it up from scratch? Maybe I've misjudged, but this (searching data added in by users) is something common that a web service out there would already offer.

<comment><USER2> There are services which would charge for hosting, and provide a general purpose UI for a database backend. You could check out Wordpress' hosted service or Adobe's Business Catalyst, maybe, but if you're looking for a turnkey solution which won't require any real effort to pull off, you're not going to find it. Unless you want what basically amounts to a blog and some static pages, someone's going to have to build it from some value of "scratch."

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I'm a little surprised by the answers in this thread. I guess I run into what I'm kinda looking for so much I thought that it wouldn't be a big deal to find a turnkey solution. Everyday I use mobile apps that show me where things nearby are and how far away and allow me to search product listings. I dunno, I guess I thought it would be a thing I could set up in 30 minutes like Shopify because it seems so ubiquitous. The fact that I couldn't find a solution after Googling should have been a hint, but I figured it was just hiding and HN would know. Thanks again.

<comment><USER2> Simplicity isn't easy. Chances are if your idea hasn't already been implemented elsewhere, and it's any good, then it can't be whipped up in half an hour. Good luck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What makes you think someone will do this for free for you?

You're asking for a custom site with custom data that is searchable in many different ways. You're asking someone to come up with an entire implementation to your idea.

I can't give you an accurate quote with such little info but what you're looking at is likely going to be north of free. I'd expect somewhere in the few thousand dollar range.

<comment><AUTHOR> I said free or low cost. I'm not looking to low-ball anyone here or ask for free work on one of my ideas from the HN community. I'm looking for something out there that I can shoehorn my idea into at a low cost. It seems like what I'm looking for is done a lot on the web, and I was looking for ideas on who does it at a low cost. I can get a cheap e-commerce site done for practically free or for $7-$30 a month that charges cards, ships packages, calculates taxes and has stats and searches. It seems like someone, somewhere would be offering something less technical for the same price or less. So do you know of anyone?

<comment><USER3> Comparing an e-commerce site to what you want is like trying to compare a tarantula's fangs to the rudders on a speed boat.

I'm not trying to bust your chops but I'd be curious as to what makes you think your idea is less technical than an e-commerce site. What basis did you use to make that conclusion?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, it seems that a shopper would search for different characteristics of a product and be given search results, much like I want a user to be able to do. They could then calculate shipping, which is analogous to calculating distances between two points. A user could enter product data, much like I want users to do, and site registration could keep data from different users separate.

I'm actually thinking of using an e-commerce site and just not putting product data in, rather each "farm" would be a product and have tags associated with it and when you narrow down the tags you get the farms as a result. Seems like the cheapest option at the moment given the other answers in this thread.

<comment><USER3> It's not as simple as you think it is.

You mentioned wanting to allow farmers to make an account and add in their details of various stuff along with having their own profile.

That is __much __different than a typical e-commerce setup. Most product sites have products. Which account added the product doesn 't matter. There's no "show me all shoes filtered by the user of Mary", it's "show me all shoes by price filtered by size, etc.".

I also encourage you to research shipping cost calculators that let you use them seamlessly in your custom site.

Also I'm not trying to discourage you from executing your idea. You're free to do whatever you want but I'm just saying you'll have to spend a decent amount of $ to get exactly what you want up and working as a reasonable solution.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How did they do this? - <AUTHOR>

First of all, I'm sorry for the nondescript title. I don't know how else to ask.
I visited this website (http://chemistry.tutorvista.com/organic-chemistry/nitro-group.html) and was immediately greeted with a Google Chat-like message in the bottom right corner. Here's the transcript:

  Tutor:  Hi, I'm a Chemistry Tutor.
  May I help you?
  Do you want to take a free tutoring session with me?
  me:  o.O
  Tutor:  Let us start working on the whiteboard.
  Please wait while the whiteboard loads
  Redirecting to whiteboard
 In less than 30 seconds after loading, someone had managed to engage a conversation with me and redirect my browser, without my consent, to their "Whiteboard" page. I am using Ghostery with NoScript in Firefox 20 on OS X. The only page with JS enabled was TutorVista's, so everything was apparently done on-page.
How did they do this, and does this pose a security threat?
By the time I finished writing this, FF pushed an update. I'll try again under 21 to see if it still works.
Update: It still works in 21. It seemed very real at first, but I'm pretty sure it's a trigger-redirect. The messages are exactly the same. Still, I'm suspicious of how kosher the script is. <comment><USER2> It isn't a real person, its all done in Javascript. Seems to me like your NoScript isn't working properly, or isn't configured properly.

The Javascript is run from here: <http://image.tutorvista.com/js/top_chat_box_popup.js?17>

The code responsible for redirecting you is here: function startMsg_popup(type) { if(type == 'payment'){ addMsg_popup(tutor_name,"We have the right package for you.",1500,function(){ addMsg_popup(tutor_name,"Please answer a few questions on the following page.",1500, function(){ addMsg_popup("sys","Loading Questionare",500,function(){ gotoquestionare_popup(); }); }); });

        }
        else{
            addMsg_popup(tutor_name,"Let us start working on the whiteboard.",2000,function(){
                addMsg_popup(tutor_name,"Please wait while the whiteboard loads",2000, function(){
                    addMsg_popup("sys","Loading Whiteboard",1000,function(){
                        gotowhiteboard_popup();
                    });
                });
            });
        }

}

Edit: More details there is a function called "areakeyup_popup" which is called every on every keyup event. It checks to see if the enter key was pressed. If it does it calls "startMsg_popup" which springs into action the "Please wait while the whiteboard loads" message, before calling, "gotowhiteboard_popup" which creates and submits a form for you pragmatically, `redirecting` you to their `whiteboard`.

</comment><comment><USER3> Presumably, they either used Javascript via:

document.location.href = "<http://www.google.com/> "

or the HTML meta redirect:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=<http://www.google.com/> ">

Both of which can redirect your browser to another location.

<comment><AUTHOR> So the redirect was there all along, waiting for a trigger?

<comment><USER3> More than likely, the way I would do it would be to wait for content entry, IE, your "o.O", post my message along with a redirect for a few seconds lag. To give you time to read that you were being redirected before redirecting you.

<comment><USER3> I was wrong

\</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

After reviewing the source code, they use javascript to submit a form which redirects you to another website, carrying along some marketing data such as what brought you to them, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> They have an iFrame of [http://www.tutorvista.com/iframe_container/iframe_popup_buyn...](http://www.tutorvista.com/iframe_container/iframe_popup_buynow)

with their own JavaScript of <http://image.tutorvista.com/js/buynow_popup.js?9>

It's not a real person.</comment>


Ask HN: Does Google censor search suggestions? - <AUTHOR> When I search 'Joe Biden' on DuckDuckGo, the first search suggestion is 'Joe Biden dementia'. On Google, if I search 'Joe Biden' or even 'Joe Biden dementi', it still won't suggest it.
In contrast, Google suggests the result "Trump Derangement Syndrome" upon typing "Trump Dera" into the search box.
Does this imply that Google is manipulating search suggestions in a way that could influence the 2020 election? This could be an unintentional side effect of their algorithm, but seeing that search engines are able to greatly impact  voters [1], it seems like an important conversation to have.
Is there a more systematic way that this bias could be investigated rather than just sampling a few potential search queries?
[1] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/how-google-c... <comment><USER2> Absolutely the results are biased. If you bring this up though, you get publicly shamed and called a conspiracy theorist. When covid 19 was spreading in China, fringe information about the virus that implied it would be a world wide pandemic was suppressed and removed from search results as well as reddit. All major conduits of information, google search, reddit front page, youtube, facebook, etc are heavily moderated. Information that is raw still sits in the long tails and corners of these websites, but the majority of what you see is hand curated.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, it does, this is well covered in the news.

<comment> officialSEA-1 I totally agree with you.

<comment><USER3> Okay... I mean, Google literally says they do on their website, you don't need to agree with me.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Put anything in a spreadsheet - <AUTHOR> https://www.gettyper.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Typer is a simple spreadsheet with Scheme-like syntax (e.g. "=(+ 1 1)" evaluates to 2). What's different is that cells can contain: numbers, operators, sliders, checkboxes, files, images, URLs, colors, YouTube videos.

Examples (read only): gettyper.com/w/3uw1/?autoplay , gettyper.com/w/paht , gettyper.com/w/2ivlx</comment>


Heirloom Technology - <AUTHOR> http://www.conservationmagazine.org/2012/12/heirloom-technology/

<comment><USER2> As I see it, many of the technologies mentioned in the article are still very much in a frantic phase of development. The technologies are far from mature but once the technology reaches a maturing level, most of the problems will go away. Once your phone has better than eye resolution, battery power to last a full day without charging, sufficient computer power to run any realistic phone app, then attention will turn far more to durability and quality, at least that is my hope.

There are at least a couple of excellent science fiction short stories (whose names escape me now) that address this very issue of the disposable society and quite frankly the downside is quite frightening.

<comment><USER3> It could also turn into a price war at that point.

<comment><USER4> More likely is that it'll do both-- there'll be cheap Chinese smartphones that compete feature-for-feature with much higher-quality products, some of which might be heirloom quality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really gave much thought at the way we spend money on gadgets until a friend of mine told me he wanted to buy an iPhone 5 for his girlfriend as a birthday present. And then it dawned on me that an iPhone 5 (without a contract) costs as much as some really nice jewelry that this her granddaughter will probably inherit.

It's not even about conspicuous consumption versus a more frugal lifestyle, it's about spending 800$ on something that is going to be tossed away or broken in 24 months.

<comment><USER6> FWIW, and iPhone does hae somewhat more "utility" than jewelry. Sure, it's partly a "shiny thing", bit it's a shiny _useful_ thing. (Whether its utility is worth the ~$400/year it costs if you break/lose one every two years is a good question.)

<comment><USER5> Yes, but this person already owns a fully functional Android phone that costed about 200$. It is not as shiny, but it does more or less everything the iPhone does (at least in term of usefulness).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In the context of this article, I want to recommend Design For The Real World by Victor Papanek. Many of the ideas mentioned here have been made popular by Papanek decades ago.</comment>


Building and Running a Geographically Distributed Engineering Team - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/initialized-capital/how-to-build-and-run-a-geographically-distributed-engineering-team-609ffc897a79 <comment><USER2> "Hiring remote engineers by flying them in turned out to be a disaster. Great engineers — and great people — can sometimes turn out to be shitty at being remote," Smith said. "The reason is they've never worked remotely before and they're not used to distractions at home so they're on their best behavior."

That's an interesting argument. I guess it's just an example and I shouldn't read too much into it, but to me the opposite is true: at home I am completely in sync with my surroundings, have no distractions and have certain "rituals" that make me more productive. It's the constant interruptions and distractions at the office that would make me terribly unproductive if someone would fly me in to assess my abilities on-site.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely this for me, too. I find it hard to buckle down and hack productively in flow in _any_ open office plan (which is all startups). I end up going to one of the "meeting rooms" and staying in there holed up all day with headphones on facing away from the windows into the hallway just to get any work done, and even then, I get constant interruptions because I end up having to turn the lights off because they're too bright, and people think the room's empty and available (even when "booked" through those fancy systems some companies use).

Meanwhile, working remote, I can lay on the couch or in bed and hack meaningfully for 12 hours and do it again the day after. Actually, this is what I do for side projects while I'm on vacation, and it's how I truly de- stress and relax. It strikes me as completely strange that I have to explain this to pretty much every single (non-recruiter) person that emails me about a job about why I am only interested in remote positions. How can the tech industry be so old and this idea still so foreign?

<comment><USER4> _I end up having to turn the lights off because they 're too bright_

Hear hear; I work remotely and check-in physically maybe twice a month when delegates come down to our satellite office. I find artificial lighting absolutely _grating_. Working from home it's a rarity for me to turn on a light until as late as dusk.

<comment><USER5> I work from home 3 days of the week and usually go into the office twice a week. In every location I've worked (we tend to get moved about every two years), I invariably end up standing on my desk to twist some/most of the fluorescent tube lights directly over/around my desk so they disengage and go dark. The only challenge then is fending off well-intentioned facilities personnel who want to replace the "failed" light.

<comment><USER4> First job I ever had was as one of those well-intentioned facilities personnel, at the Denny's corporate HQ. First couple of months on the job was pushing a cart around a 40 story office tower replacing lightbulbs and ballasts before adding other tasks-it was meant to, and served a good purpose of helping me orient to getting around the building.

Anyway, there were a few corner offices I eventually set up a little system with: if that office owner _didn 't_ want their bulbs replaced, to put a sticky note covering the light switch. I'd come through, check for a sticky "okay, no new bulbs for this manager" and move along. Was a pretty good system until our facilities manager politely asked me to stop and change the bulbs anyway.

<comment><USER3> I am disappointed I can't give you more upvotes for building and maintaining this anti-bright-light system. Kudos!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> On the "running" side of things, lately I've been looking for solutions to fact that distributed teams can't gather in front of an actual whiteboard for discussion / design.

I've been surprised by how hard it is to find cheap, effective alternatives. Cost is a particular concern when each person works from his/her own location.

(1) At the high end, you have dedicated large-screen devices with dedicated software, like Google Jamboard. Gorgeous, awesome, very expensive. $5k+ USD.

(2) Next step down in terms of price and glitz: the combination of a real whiteboard + a projector + special hardware for monitoring pens and/or hands. About $1k USD if you have to buy the whiteboard, and already have the computer.

(3) Next step down in terms of size, but about the same price: tether a touch-/pen- sensitive display to your computer. E.g., iPad Pro, or Wacom Cintiq or a cheap knockoff. ~$400-$1200 USD, depending on device and size. Pros: Portable. Cons: Much smaller area to draw.

(4) Status quo: Each person sits at his/her desk, using a mouse or (if they don't mind smudges and/or gorilla arms) a touch-sensitive laptop screen. Pros: Ubiquitous. Cons: Not fluid way to draw / annotate for most people.

* Note: The breakdown above focuses on HW. I'm assuming that the SW side is at least somewhat solved by online, shared docs such as Google Draw, Realtimeboard, etc.

* Note 2: A lot of the online collaboration sites are a hard sell in corporate environments if sensitive information is to be shared.

<comment><USER7> I've experimented with zoom.us whiteboard + wacom tablet. I thought it was pretty good, though as you can imagine you quickly run out of space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I strongly (very strongly) disagree with the idea of a "hack week". Having multiple rounds of interviewing and a programming challenge seems reasonable to me, but if you think you've found someone who is the right fit, hire them. Everyone makes mistakes, but have some courage, and be willing to fire fast if it isn't a good fit. People want to work at places that value them, and "conditionally" hiring someone does not convey that message

<comment><USER7> It's part of the continual corporate drive to push risks off the company and onto the employee. No self-respecting employee should do a take home exam, or do a "hack week", because every time you do, you normalize and reward this behavior.

<comment><USER9> Yup. And when one does make a mistake and do it once, one quickly learns it's almost always not appreciated. I've done it twice before. Once it landed me a free trip to SF and a rescinded job offer after (I aced their interview and almost finished the problems they said no one finishes but they didn't actually want to hire remote). The other time I did something it was immediately ignored and never looked at by the company. Mind you, I knew better but I was desperate at the time so I still did it. In other words, I was an idiot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> OMFG. their hiring process is ... worrying. An online test, phone screen, hour of paired hacking then a conditional offer and a "hack week" \- a weeks try out.

I balk at doing screening tests like hackerrank. I don't get how you can expect someone to spend a probationary week, with no real guarantee of work. they stop the job hunt, tell other employers no thanks, and bang 50/50 pass rate perhaps?

I don't get it. Hiring remote is hard but this seems too much.

<comment><USER11> I'm in the same boat. I take a hard pass on any company/exercise that can't be done in the span of 2 hours.

The one time I took one that was 4 hours it was (luckily for me) a disaster

<comment><USER12> There is one company in Hamburg that sends their candidates a test from Codility whose difficulty is way higher than the ones from Google/FB, all for positions that pay between 40-100k (heavy bias to lower bound), in office where utmost discipline is required. They use bad results in negotiation to lower offers and then are surprised when most candidates walk away and they can't get any people working for them.

<comment><USER11> Yep, many companies are choosing beggars; wondering why they can't attract/retain talent. I actually saw a megacorp quoting some study that said millenials "...don't care about money and are looking for fulfillment". While I'm sure that's true for some percentage of any population, I'd be surprised if they raised their wages and their hiring troubles persisted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Companies employing the strategy of "everyone has to take the test" are missing out on great candidates. The best employees respect their own time enough to not spend time on an exam/busywork. The best employees often also have copious Github repos that you could read up on, or quiz them about.

But maybe the "take home test" strategy is about identifying candidates that will sacrifice their free time for your company.

No matter how you look at it, it doesn't look good.

<comment><USER13> Like everything in life, encoded into those decisions are tradeoffs.

Just relying on code on Github is okay -- until you realize some people don't like to work on non-proprietary code in their free time, preferring to spend it with family.

Just relying on deep questioning is okay -- until you realize some people are excellent at learning and communicating complex topics but haven't actually implemented it yet.

Just relying on live coding is okay -- until you realize some people have bad anxiety and can't perform in that sort of environment.

Just relying on take home tests is okay -- until you realize people don't like working for free on the off chance you'll hire them.

While I don't like some processes more than others, I've also never been truly satisfied with any hiring process I've put together (and we've tried all types) -- perhaps because hiring is a fundamentally flawed process. Perhaps the best advice is: don't work for a company that interviews in a way you don't like, and don't hire people who don't like the way you interview. The best we can do at that point is be transparent up front.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It all sounded reasonable until a conditional offer with a week of trial... I'm a consultant and certainly used to that but WTF for an employee that's going on a fraction of my rate.

I guess if you hire really remote folks from other countries (that might not have internet connection or be on the right time zone), but still.</comment>