Airport Stuffed with Airliners - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/33141/these-aerial-and-satellite-photos-of-an-airport-absolutely-stuffed-with-airliners-are-nuts <comment><USER2> YouTube video of 500 foot above ground level (AGL) approach of the runway shutdown to accommodate storage: [https://youtu.be/zIbXai0l174](https://youtu.be/zIbXai0l174)

Airport details: [https://www.airnav.com/airport/KVCV](https://www.airnav.com/airport/KVCV)

Runway 3-21 is the temporarily closed runway being used for storage

<comment><USER3> So what fraction of operational airplanes are in flight at any given (pre- Covid-19) time? Are they normally "stored" in the air?

<comment><USER4> To a large extent they normally are "stored" in the air. A typical narrowbody aircraft in the US clocks 9-10 block hours a day (a little less in the air) and widebodies even more. So somewhere around 40% of all commercial passenger aircraft are in the air at any given time (higher during the day and lower at night, of course).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you want to see such a fleet of grounded planes in person, it's worth going to Tucson to visit Pima and take a tour of the Boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Pima is a normal museum admittance but the on-base bus tour requires preregistration and a background check.

For now since we can't travel, I definitely recommend taking a look in google maps satellite view:

[https://goo.gl/maps/5jo5jkpXPc9AtrW68](https://goo.gl/maps/5jo5jkpXPc9AtrW68)

In the SE corner of the base you can see long range nuclear bombers with their tails and wings clipped, for all the world to see.

<comment><USER6> That's amazing, thank you. Putting the location code 549R+27 into Google Earth also gives an interesting view.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> On a related note: Alice Springs Airport, in the centre of Australia, is being used by Singapore Airlines to store unused aircraft due to it's dry environment.

[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-28/during-coronavirus- pa...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-28/during-coronavirus-pandemic- planes-parked-in-alice-springs/12189856)

</comment><comment><USER8> Boeing Field looked like that even before COVID-19, with all the 737 MAX in storage.

Lots of photos online -- search "boeing field 737 max storage". I like the ones that show the reclamation of employee parking spaces: [https://www.pressclub.world/2019/07/22/boeing-737-max- ground...](https://www.pressclub.world/2019/07/22/boeing-737-max-grounding- charges-to-reach-8-billion/)

<comment><USER9> I have a mental picture of someone hitting the wrong pedal, hitting a 737 in the employee parking lot, and having to call insurance.

"I had an accident. The other vehicle is... kinda expensive."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This has happened before. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 north american airspace was closed. All those international flights from europe were not allowed into US airspace. So they started piling up on canadian tarmac. Small towns like Gander Newfoundland saw their populations double in a matter of hours as transatlantic flights landed on their tiny airport. We don't have drone footage, but I've heard stories about aircraft being parked on grass ... something everyone is loathed to do.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_Ey5ph4wW8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_Ey5ph4wW8)

<comment><USER11> > Small towns like Gander Newfoundland saw their populations double in a > matter of hours as transatlantic flights landed on their tiny airport.

This is dramatized in a delightful musical, Come From Away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So logistically, how does this work. The pilots fly the planes there, and have to catch a bus home? Of they have a small plane to take them back? They have special pilots that they fly out just to take them here?

And when they go back to work, the pilots all travel out to pick up their plane and start their routes?

Where these planes are stored, I imagine they must have constant maintenance on them. Or do they need to fly them back and get checked over by the airline?

This is such a huge undertaking that is mostly hidden from us.

<comment><USER13> A friend of mine was a ferry pilot for the airlines. But essentially, a crew flies the plane out to its storage destination, and there is usually transport arranged out for them - either a bus, or a smaller corporate jet or even a piston engine a/c would be flown out with them to carry them back home or to their next deployment location.

As for them returning to service, yes, you guessed right - they have to be checked while still on the ground by a maintenance team, then if they have been there for a while, they have to be flown to a maintenance base for fairly extensive servicing before they can be declared airworthy enough to carry passengers again.

With luck, this airport probably has a service hangar capable of handling these aircraft types and make them airworthy again, so I expect that the airline might find it more economical to ship an entire maintenance team with spare parts to be based out of here for a month or so while they get their planes back in the air.

<comment><USER14> Since the procedures require such extensive checks after those dormant planes' return to service, wouldn't you say that once all of them become airborne again, statistically speaking the risk of catastrophic failures is going to increase? I am afraid well see some accidents end of this year...

<comment><USER15> That's not likely. The checks to get the grounded aircraft back in air are quite extensive. And similar checks are regularly conducted under normal conditions anyway.

It might even be the case that we see less accidents, as more aircraft are getting extensive checks than before. As long as maintenance is done correctly that is. Which was true before already as well

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a terrifyingly large amount of capital sitting in one place. The part of me that wants to mitigate risk is thinking, maybe these planes should be spreadout around the country a bit. I guess there are no tornados in this area...but one freak weather event and a couple trillion dollars gets mangled into scrap?

<comment><USER17> What kind of weather event are you thinking of? I think airplanes are typically designed to withstand high winds. The weather in this region is dry, and that's really the only word that can describe it. On top of that, we're at the beginning of the dry season. It's more likely a landing plane accidentally crashes into these parked planes than the weather leaves us with a trillion dollars of mangled scrap.

<comment><USER18> Isn't this a region that's incredibly prone to wildfires?

<comment><USER19> Airports aren't generally very wooded areas... and the SCLA is in basically scrub land with barely enough vegetation for a good brush fire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There's something so aesthetically beautiful about these images. The repetition and contrast. And the rarity of the scene.

It all seems so... vulnerable though. That's a lot of expensive craft in one spot.

</comment><comment><USER21> VCV (Victorville) is often used for aircraft storage. While they have way more aircraft on their parking lot than usual, it's not abnormal for this airport to have a bunch of aircraft hanging out.

</comment><comment><USER22> Boeing doing so poorly is heartbreaking. Come on, Shopify is almost as worth as Boeing now by marketcap. Trying to let that sink in.

Also I live 20 mins from the Boeing Mega Factory in Everett and the technological marvel of making flying beasts have been a great source of inspiration.

Now Boeing is a source of "how to fuck up a great company".

<comment><USER23> To be fair, Shopify's prospects for the future look like they will scale far better (and also Boeing's uncertainty in the short-medium term is currently priced in).

Reports were that Boeing's expansion into South Carolina were done rapidly without training up the local workers. Quality control in SC was far below par with the Washington factories.

Perhaps Boeing's fall is a reflection on the US economy. We still make lots of things, but we pinch pennies and quality suffers. Then it catches up to us when it's revealed that we avoided regulatory scrutiny by obscuring a fairly large change in design. Now we hit severe headwinds and the future is scary and uncertain because this is the inevitable outcome of the direction we have been steering for 1-2 generations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The person writing the article went to the effort of obtaining this "exclusive" imagery, but didn't go to any effort to do any analysis: how many planes, which airlines, which models etc.

</comment><comment><USER25> How hard is it to reactivate these planes?

<comment><USER26> Generally they can turn around and activate a reserve plane in about 30 minutes. It's got everything it needs except food, water, and fuel.

<comment><USER27> Well, there's some nuances.

If they're mothballed (skin covered and various systems pickled), then about a month of work each.

If they're not mothballed and they do weekly or bi-weekly maintenance on each plane like they're supposed to, then an inspection, and then they're ready.

So the worst case is a month, and the best case is an inspection plus 30 minutes.

Also, note that in the mdoern era, a lot of avionics require periodic updates, which also have to be performed before flight.

But if I was the FAA, I'd be requiring crew-only acceptance flights before any revenue flights. You never know where those pesky wasps built a nest, or if those AOC sensors corroded, etc.

Source: commercially-rated airplane pilot.

<comment><USER28> Do they have to be maintained in any way or can they just leave them there for weeks/months?

<comment><USER29> They can be left wholly unattended but they will not be considered airworthy when their maintenance/inspection requirements lapse.

<comment><USER27> Not exactly.

To be left unattended with the intention of flying them again, mothball/pickling is needed. (Tape the outside including sensor ports, plug the engine nacelles, use the right hydraulic or motor fluids, disconnect batteries, etc.)

If you literally just park a 737 somewhere for months, especially a sandy desert, and walk away, then you might have to do millions of dollars of maintenance on the plane to be sure it's airworthy. Like pulling the engines and dealing with corrosion throughout the airplane.

I have a small airplane example. The danger of parking an airplane for an extended period of time, even in a hangar, is that if mice create a nest in the fuselage and urinate there, the aluminum corrosion can cause structural damage. ie. that plane will never fly again.

All those King Airs, Cessna 310s, etc. you see hangared are prone to that. So clean your airplane regularly!

<comment><USER30> > _if mice create a nest in the fuselage and urinate there, the aluminum > corrosion can cause structural damage. ie. that plane will never fly again._

Reading that evokes a somber reminder of how quickly our civilization could turn into ruins if left unattended for a few years.

<comment><USER16> I was just envisioning what this storage airport would look like in 10 years if the airline industry NEVER picks back up to its previous levels. Trillions of dollars worth of airplanes rotting in the sun???

<comment><USER27> I have a feeling the 800 or so 737 MAX aircraft will all be scrapped (or just the avionics parted out.)

Besides the AOA sensor system problems, there's been FOD in the fuel tanks, wire chafing and very long periods of AOG.

One of those might not be fatal, but all of them? Doesn't look good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I can't imagine we have anywhere like this in the UK. We don't have a lot of space, and it's too damp. Similarly for other Northern European countries. So where do airliners from those countries get parked up? Somewhere in Spain? Somewhere in the Middle East?

<comment><USER32> Much of the BA fleet is parked up at Bournemouth airport - [https://youtu.be/qgPw1jWmdE4](https://youtu.be/qgPw1jWmdE4)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Are these airliners safe during a storm? Do they tie them down in some way when on the runway? I mean I guess that's why they're in the desert. But the question still stands in a hypothetical context. Do jetliners survive massive storms on the runway?

<comment><USER34> Storms wouldn't cause a problem. These planes travel through air at 800km/h, a storm with 100km/h winds is nothing.

<comment><USER20> > Storms wouldn't cause a problem. These planes travel through air at 800km/h, > a storm with 100km/h winds is nothing.

These craft are designed for lift. High winds can make planes "take off" while stationary. Not sure it's a problem for planes this size, but it's definitely a problem for smaller planes.

<comment><USER35> The stall speed for something small like a Cessna 172 is in the ballpark of 60 mph, so those definitely need to be strapped down if there's a chance of even a simple severe thunderstorm. But for something like a Boeing 737, stall speed is more like 125-150 mph (depending on flaps configuration). If surface winds that high are a real possibility, airlines will do their best to relocate the planes, because there are too many ways they can be severely damaged even without taking off while stationary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The Southwest livery really sticks out in these photos. Is it possible that this is close to their entire fleet? If so wouldn't seem wise to have some diversity in your storage facilities?

<comment><USER37> Wikipedia puts their current fleet at 745 planes[1], and I'm not seeing more than 200 Southwest planes out there by my quick count. Could be close to a third of their fleet, which is still bonkers to think about.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_fleet#Curre...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_fleet#Current_fleet)

<comment><USER27> FYI: Southwest started small, but they're one of the largest US carriers now - a major. I remember when they were the scrappy startup, but:

"As of 2018, Southwest carries the most domestic passengers of any United States airline."

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

LionAir, which had one of the 737 MAX accidents, has a similar story, and will probably end up being a similar size. Only started in 1999, most of the new aircraft model launches are done with them, and they have 234 planes on order.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> How did the pilots get home after they parked these planes?

<comment><USER39> Google says it's just a 2 hour drive from there to LAX, or 4 hours on a bus. Maybe their airline just bussed them over to LAX?

<comment><USER2> The non-shuttered runway is also still active, enabling flights back to pilot home bases. Could look at ADS-B traffic sites (FlightAware and the like) for details.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I was wondering. All these planes sitting idle for months. Can they just one day restart without problems? Or do they need extra maintenance?

<comment><USER23> Yes. All commercial aircraft have regular maintenance + inspections at time + mileage intervals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> how is the maintenance of these planes being addressed?

in general, i wonder how much maintenance in overall infrastructure has been canceled or delayed and how that's going to affect things long term. it really brings into question the u.s.' "let's drag this out as long and as painfully as possible".

<comment><USER23> The Victorville airport is home to ComAv[1], which is an aircraft storage and maintenance company.

The aircraft are still subject to FAA inspection + maintenance interval requirements once they are ready to be flown again.

[1] [http://www.comav.com/](http://www.comav.com/)</comment></comment>


Andy Matuschak's Notes - <AUTHOR> https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes <comment><USER2> Thorough indictment of productivity porn:

[https://notes.andymatuschak.org/zUMFE66dxeweppDvgbNAb5hukXzX...](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/zUMFE66dxeweppDvgbNAb5hukXzXQu8ErVNv)

"People who write extensively about note-writing rarely have a serious context of use Many bloggers and "life-hackers" have made a full-time job of suggesting how you should organize your journal, or how you should most effectively Write about what you read. We should take this advice seriously insofar as those practices have helped the authors achieve meaningful creative work: "Better note-taking" misses the point; what matters is "better thinking"

But most people who write about note-taking don't seem particularly accomplished in their own fields, whatever those may be. In fact, most such writers aren't applying their notes to some exogenous creative problem: their primary creative work is writing about productivity."

<comment><USER3> I suspect a lot of folks who are into note-taking methods have this mindset that if only we knew how to take better notes, we'd be able to reason better, produce better output and become more accomplished. I also suspect we are cerebral types and have rich inner worlds, so it's only natural that we think that more and better analyses will help us understand the world better. Yet, despite the many tools that we have, many of us only hover just a little above mediocrity in our accomplishments.

(I'm describing myself in the above paragraph.)

Outside of certain fields like academia and writing, I've observed that accomplished people tend to focus more on "doing" (including doing the "wrong" things) rather than constructing a super coherent model of the world. They rely on rough heuristics and feedback loops to learn, rather than careful analysis.

I read an article this week "Action Produces Information" [1] that made me think that maybe the more cerebral among us ought to step outside our mental models occasionally and actually try to interact with the gritty world and let reality be our teacher (instead of our models). By interacting with reality, we actually generate new information.

Quote:

 _Watch any group of entrepreneurs for a long enough period of time, for instance, and you would notice that the best entrepreneurs aren't necessarily the best calibrated Bayesian updaters or expected utility calculators. Instead, the best entrepreneurs tend to have a mix of bias-to-action and fast adaptation in response to new information._

It seems to me that better note-taking methods are great for sharpening the brain (which is a valuable thing in itself), but a bias toward action/empiricism might be better for sharpening the skills needed to do meaningful things in the world. They're not mutually exclusive, but given a finite amount of time, my intuition tells me that putting more weight on the latter will tend to have a higher payoff.

[1] [https://commoncog.com/blog/action-produces- information/](https://commoncog.com/blog/action-produces-information/)

<comment><USER4> I also think people get stuck in optimising their process because it's easy to see, easy to change and makes you feel productive. Versus most creativity which is very woolly and hard to make tangible. Both can be approached by doing and empirically evaluated though. For me at least it's more about biasing towards tackling the actual problem or challenge in front of you rather than polishing tools. Note taking in particular should be pragmatic and straightforward and I'm amazed at the complexity people can put into it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Right now, Andy is perhaps the most sophisticated thinker in this space sharing his insights and prototypes (meta-knowledge work, backlinked evergreen notes, spaced repetition, new UX/UI for these systems, etc). Here's some additional pointers:

\- Andy livestreamed a demo of him on a typical work session: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGcs4tyey18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGcs4tyey18)

\- this Patreon post explains in greater lenght his OS-level spaced repetition approach: [https://www.patreon.com/posts/bringing- ideas-36925173](https://www.patreon.com/posts/bringing-ideas-36925173)

\- Andy is working on a prototype of that system, called Orbit, which might be available soon: [https://twitter.com/withorbit](https://twitter.com/withorbit)

\- in regards to his specific writing/thinking system, here's a couple more clarifications: [https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z4AX7pHAu5uUfmrq4K4zig9x8jmm...](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z4AX7pHAu5uUfmrq4K4zig9x8jmmF62XgaMXm) [https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z6f6xgGG4NKjkA5NA1kDd46whJh2...](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z6f6xgGG4NKjkA5NA1kDd46whJh2Gt5rAmfX)

\- Obsidian has a plug-in which replicates the sliding panes of Andy's notes: [https://forum.obsidian.md/t/andy-matuschak- mode-v2-7-updated...](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/andy-matuschak- mode-v2-7-updated-for-0-7-new-panes/170)

I think the space of graph/backlinked personal notes/knowledge systems is taking off [1], with many solutions free and open-source. (Of that list, many have spaced-repetition plug-ins not referenced there.) It will be interesting to how the field matures in a couple of years.

[1] [https://www.notion.so/db13644f08144495ad9877f217a161a1?v=ff6...](https://www.notion.so/db13644f08144495ad9877f217a161a1?v=ff6777802811416ba08dc114e0b11837)

<comment><USER6> You seem to know a lot about Andy. Do you know which tools he uses to write his notes and keep track of back links?

<comment><USER7> If you check out the livestream on youtube, you'll see that he does the writing in Bear (Mac/iOS only app). Presumably there's some custom code to export everything and build the HTML with backlinks, but as mentioned in the link posted here, this code is not public anywhere.

<comment><USER5> He has shared part of his toolkit, namely the exporting and syncing of the Bear notes, and "link-janitor" for the backlinks [1]. Although I wouldn't recommend it in general - it's a brittle prototype. And right now there are better tools out there (linked above) many of which appeared in the last few months.

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/bearapp/comments/enbk65/sharing_a_s...](https://www.reddit.com/r/bearapp/comments/enbk65/sharing_a_script_which_maintains_a_backlinks/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was in Andy's dorm (house) at Caltech. When I matriculated, I chose begrudgingly to study a "real" science--physics--instead of what I actually liked--computer science. It was in no small part thanks to Andy's contagious and unabashed excitement for CS that I eventually switched over and became a happy software engineer.

<comment><USER9> Great to have such upperclassmen as role models as a student. Doesn't surprise me that it would have a big effect on what majors students choose. But sometimes we wonder if too many people take cs at caltech these days just because it is trendy or just easier? Guess I really Don't know if that's a "problem" Either, I am happy it worked out for you.

<comment><USER10> As yet another housemate of Andy's at Caltech, it is perhaps worth mentioning that he was also involved in updating Caltech's CS curriculum prior to it becoming as popular as it is today.

Hard to say how much of the trend is just what happened everywhere, but CS1 being in Python rather than Scheme probably helped a bit.

<comment><USER11> Was swapping Scheme for Python a good thing though? Scheme is a very good way to understand the concepts of CS in a more fundamental way. Python can be learned independently anyway through SICP.

<comment><USER10> IIRC, CS1 was a mandatory class for other majors (like MechE) and a course in Scheme was basically hazing from their perspective.

I forget if Scheme was moved to a later course or made optional.

<comment><USER12> It was moved to a later course, thankfully. I'm a big SICP fan!

(Hi Chris!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >If you had to set one metric to use as a leading indicator for yourself as a knowledge worker, the best I know might be the number of Evergreen notes written per day.

Oy.

<comment><USER14> what's the problem with it? Isn't a good metric going to be numeric, kinda of necessity?...also since these are his personal notes, shouldn't we assume the "you" there means himself? So who's he keeping outside the gate?

<comment><USER4> I guess the biggest criticism is it promotes quantity over quality. Similar to counting lines of code or pages of a book written. Although I think it's safe to assume in this case there is some implicit notion of minimum quality to consider a note "written".

<comment><USER14> ah i see that and yeah after reviewing the concept of evergreen notes, I think your assumption is a safe one ...though the original post (pre-edit) was something like "oy using volume of notes written as a gatekeeper for knowledge work", which seems like a slightly different criticism of the statement.

<comment><USER4> I didn't see the pre-edit version so did wonder where the gate keeping bit came from. That sort of uncharitable take is why I'd never put my notes online. I'd find it extremely stressful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Some of the notes seem to be restricted? e.g. i get an error: unauthorized when clicking the link "Relationship between evergreen note-writing and Zettelkasten" on this note: [https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z2QvtE9w5zs49x7WUeG8Ut1vywHD...](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z2QvtE9w5zs49x7WUeG8Ut1vywHDLiG2Wkm9p)

<comment><USER12> Ah, sorry; some of them are indeed restricted, but that was just a broken link. Here's a correct link for that note: [https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z4AX7pHAu5uUfmrq4K4zig9x8jmm...](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z4AX7pHAu5uUfmrq4K4zig9x8jmmF62XgaMXm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Andy and Michael Nielsen put together a set of very nice, flashcard-enhanced introductory lessons for quantum information sciences at [https://quantum.country/](https://quantum.country/) where they explore some of the mnemonic techniques that Andy talks about in his notes.

</comment><comment><USER17> I watched Andy's presentation at one WWDC (probably 2010) and left thinking "This fella is really something".

<comment><USER18> In that same vein, I regularly think about a lightning talk on gestures he gave at React Conf 2016.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBYPqb83C7k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBYPqb83C7k)

<comment><USER17> Thanks for the link. I can't find the link to the WWDC presentation, but it was about the introduction of the same multi touch system he talked about in the talk you mentioned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Was expecting to bypass this pretty quickly, but this is great! Lots of interesting ideas about how to gain and use knowledge effectively. Spaced repetition for habit formation, non-linear reading as the norm, needing a writing surface to think...good stuff.

</comment><comment><USER19> Krystal plugin for TiddlyWiki mimics the sliding panes of notes on Andy's website. I have been using it for a while and it's been neat.

[https://crazko.github.io/krystal/](https://crazko.github.io/krystal/)

</comment><comment><USER20> > _" PS: Many people ask, so I'll just note here: no, I haven't made this > system available for others to use. It's still an early research > environment, and Premature scaling can stunt system iteration."_

Damn, looks like an interesting way to browse knowledge... I want it!

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://notes.azlen.me/g3tibyfv/](https://notes.azlen.me/g3tibyfv/) seems to be inspired by Andy Matuschak's notes. They have a Github that might implement this, though there isn't an obvious package to implement this: [https://github.com/azlen/azlen.me](https://github.com/azlen/azlen.me)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Andy's functional programming evangelism back in 2015 helped lead me swiftly down a path away from being a professional Apple ecosystem developer. I am now a professional Clojurist. Thank you very much Andy.

</comment><comment><USER22> Speaking of notes, is there some simple knowledge base system for someone that wants to keep its note in a web accessible place?

<comment><USER23> I use GitBook. It just takes in markdown files and renders it nicely on the web.

Scales well with number of notes too. I have over 30,000 lines of markdown thus far:

[https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge](https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge)

<comment><USER22> Yeah I am mostly looking for some place a little more private, so I can store ssh passwords or other stuff that I don't necessarily want google to index...

<comment><USER24> You might not want to store secrets in anything but a secret store/password manager/application explicitly built for storing secrets.

You can also run DokuWiki locally for notes you wish to keep private, it's rather easy to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting insight into a mind that works absolutely nothing like mine.

</comment><comment><USER26> > Knowledge work rarely involves deliberate practice

Hacking is playful practice.

</comment><comment> harry-s cool ux!</comment>


Y Combinator and Paul Graham are bad for the world (Part 1) - <AUTHOR> https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2015/11/06/y-combinator-and-paul-graham-are-bad-for-the-world-part-1/ <comment><USER2> Much more discussion on /r/programming: [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3rumq8/y_combi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3rumq8/y_combinator_and_paul_graham_are_bad_for_the/)

</comment><comment><USER3> test</comment>


PBR for Audio Software Interfaces (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.auburnsounds.com/blog/2016-09-16_PBR-for-Audio-Software-Interfaces.html <comment><USER2> So, now an audio plugin system has a physically based graphics rendering engine using OpenGL - in order to save diskspace by eliminating pictures of _KNOBS_?

Am I the only person who considers this beyond idiotic? So now the audio processing machine doesn't need only a powerful CPU for audio but also a good GPU with good OpenGL drivers so that a plugin (not even the main application, but a plugin!) can draw its knobs?

Seriously, what were they thinking? Why does a plugin even need photo- realistic looking controls? It is not like they work any better than a regular button or slider ...

There is a saying in engineering - "That you can do something doesn't mean you should ..."

 _double facepalm_

<comment><USER3> 1\. Dplug is using software rendering not OpenGL. Get your facts straight before "calling out" people on the Internet. So the OpenGL driver doesn't matter in any way. By the way, many audio plugins now use OpenGL, just not those.

2\. Do you think it's normal an audio plugins would weight more than 100mb of graphics, including memory? No, that's why Dplug uses rendering (in part). It uses less memory space AND installation space and with caching it's not any slower.

3\. I do not thank you for calling this idiotic on a public forum, without reading the article. What has became of politeness?

4\. Photo-realistic != rendering. We are not after photo-realism. Instead natural lighting effect can help getting into a software by making logical groups and also convey value. Dplug PBR system can be bypassed to support the subset of rendering that other framework do.

5\. Many other brands use OpenGL. We don't, exactly for the reasons you outline. Please amend your comment and drop the hate speech.

<comment><USER2> Re 1) Mea culpa - I saw the OpenGL part in the article and didn't read it carefully.

Re 2) Do you find it normal that an audio plugin now spends more time rendering its UI using a CPU renderer than processing audio? That physically based rendering, normal maps and what not are not free lunch!

Yes, 100MB disk space is a lot, but why to have that silly skeuomorphic UI in the first place? Drop it and you won't need those 100MB of textures.

Or do you believe that the user is so dumb that they won't recognize a knob from a button unless it is shiny, knurled and properly lit?

Re 3) This is not about being polite but about calling poor engineering decision out for what it is. So I am standing behind my comment.

Re 4) " We are not after photo-realism. Instead natural lighting effect can help getting into a software by making logical groups and also convey value. "

So not after photo realism but speaking about "natural lighting effect". Isn't that a bit of a contradiction?

And what value is being conveyed exactly? That I am getting a piece of nice, heavy, solid brushed metal? I am not a musician but the ones I know are pretty much all loathing this kind of stuff because it is only consuming loads of resources for no reason and in most cases makes the tools more difficult to use. It is a sound plugin, for heaven's sake, not something to exhibit in a vitrine!

Re 5) Well, you don't use OpenGL, correct. My mistake. However, you have reinvented the wheel using software rendering instead, which isn't even hardware accelerated. Not sure what is worse.

There is also no "hate speech" to drop. Hate speech has a fairly specific definition. Criticism is not hate speech, thank you.

<comment><USER3> I had written another long reply but I felt like it added nothing to the discussion and removed it.

I'd like to adress only the technical issue of CPU usage, in which you are a bit right and perhaps we could agree. Software rendering need to be fast too as you guessed.

The optimizations performed is that only subparts of touched elements are redrawn in intermediate buffers (widgets receive the order to redraw in subrects of their positions), mipmapping (SSE2) is used to help with glow and shadows, tiling and multithreading are used, and the output of PBR is cached. For realtime feedback like spectrograms, the system has a bypass channel in which case the lighting calculation is just a copy. This is what is used for realtime feedback at 60fps, no PBR is computed then. That still leaves big PBR widgets which can be invalidated at once.

It's still not at the level of quickness I wan't it to be (Issue #127), you may have the problem that while turning a big knob - in which caching doesn't help - Crackles may occur. I'm pretty confident it can be solved completely when #127 is fixed and lighting is more SIMD and less shader-like.

So it's an ongoing process of making this rendering faster, however the rewards in my opinion are numerous (and there we get in debatable material so I won't disgress).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone have any experience with the DPlug framework? I've used IPlug for a few plugins and have been impressed (considering the lofty goals of the project) but D looks a lot more mature and well-thought-out. I found a comparison on their Github page ([https://github.com/AuburnSounds/dplug#comparison-vs- iplug](https://github.com/AuburnSounds/dplug#comparison-vs-iplug)) but does anyone here have an opinion?

<comment><USER3> Dplug has two commercial users, you'll find the only opinion that is not mine here: [http://www.modernmetalproduction.com/dplug-developing-vst- pl...](http://www.modernmetalproduction.com/dplug-developing-vst-plugins-for- linux/)

It's designed to be easier than Iplug in practice, however there are some missing features.

BTW the reception here on HN can be entirely explained by the first negative comment...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Obligatory OT comment complaining about the site:

I think this is one of the worst performing sites I have ever visited. When the gears in the top right are visible, my whole phone (oneplus one) stutters and when I scroll down, it takes up to a second for the page to follow and render in.

I understand the need to make your site special, but if it's at the the cost of this much performance you should really overthink it.

<comment><USER3> Good point, I will perhaps remove it. On my phone tests if was okay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh skeuomorphic hell in DAW software...

I love this rant/gallery:

[https://theoutline.com/post/2157/why-are-there-so-many- knobs...](https://theoutline.com/post/2157/why-are-there-so-many-knobs-in- garage-band?utm_source=TW)

<comment><USER7> analog metaphors to physical world objects are INTENTIONAL here!

otherwise why would you pay MONEY for software when you already bought the computer and you could instead shell-out for a glorified paperweight ermmm a dedicated processor running the same software in a fancy box! (replete with slow knob-control response, just like the plugin running on a 486 and the worst midi interface the market doesn't even sell anymore, as it was made with desktop software tools and that guy who coded the original 6502 synth that ran 500 oscillators oversampled 5 million times retired last year and he's busy doing cobol for money anyway...but I digress)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article itself is very interesting but the skeuomorphic UI looks horrible to use - especially the knobs, because there is no intuitive AND practical way to emulate twisting stuff with a mouse pointer.

Can anyone with practical experience with this tool share their opinion?

<comment><USER9> Music plugins have to have skeumorphic UIs, nobody wants to twist generic looking knobs. C'mon man, these are artists, they are not the average muggle.

If designers from this world got ahold of the music scene from that world plugins would get considerably worse, as UI's would be the focus of intense simplification, leaving complex features and their power users by the wayside.

<comment><USER10> Is there any actual evidence that "nobody wants to twist generic looking knobs"? It seems like a widespread assumption, but I don't know to what extent it's been measured or tested.

I, for example, am a nobody (a hobbyist musician) who dislikes most custom VST UIs. Back in the day, FL Studio (nee Fruityloops) shipped with a bunch of plugins that looked like they had an autogenerated UI, with every parameter getting its own controls (a knob, numeric readout, and visual bar)... and I liked them. No cruft, and it was easy to systematically manipulate each control to determine its effect on the sound.

<comment><USER9> I know exactly of that auto-generated UI (I also do hobbyist stuff with FL) and I hated it. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

There's also the unintended side effect that now I know how to operate studio recording equipment because skeumorphic UI taught me how so many of these things work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi, author here. Just a reminder that we don't use OpenGL, and that it's not skeuomorphism if you don't have virtual screws :)</comment>


Mobile Service for water - <AUTHOR> http://my.charitywater.org/from-programmers Hello My name is Sardorbek. I am Software Engineer and Mobile developer.
You never heard about me, so I am not famous. My dream is to help everyone in the world to have basic needs.
SO, I am creating this donation campaign.
I promise, if this camping will reach its goal, I will create Parse.com kind of service for a mobile software developers, with more functionality and with fair price. People who will donate will get 1 year free usage of my service.
Lets help http://my.charitywater.org/from-programmers <comment><AUTHOR> Hello My name is Sardorbek. I am Software Engineer and Mobile developer.

You never heard about me, so I am not famous. My dream is to help everyone in the world to have basic needs.

SO, I am creating this donation campaign.

I promise, if this camping will reach its goal, I will create Parse.com kind of service for a mobile software developers, with more functionality and with fair price. People who will donate will get 1 year free usage of my service.

Lets help [http://my.charitywater.org/from- programmers](http://my.charitywater.org/from-programmers)</comment>


Ask HN: Random Traffic Spike from Bing - Any Ideas? - <AUTHOR>

Earlier this week, my traffic from Bing shot up over 60x what it normally is, for one day and one day only. The spike was not limited to any particular keywords or content I'd added to the site. The traffic went all over the site, and then, the next day, was back to normal. Any ideas as to what might have happened? <comment><USER2> MSN.com will often include direct links to Bing searches relevant to articles or news items. If you rank well for the linked term, then you'll see a traffic spike. For me, the pattern has been a massive traffic spike for a single keyword which trails off for the next twelve hours or so.

This doesn't sound like what you experienced, but perhaps it's a helpful clue.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is good to know; thank you for sharing this.

The spike I saw was across many different keywords and content areas, but only lasted one day.</comment></comment>


Ikea Manual for Building an Urban Neighborhood - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/welcome-to-ikea-land-furniture-giant-begins-urban-planning-project/article2388705/page1/

<comment><USER2> I don't get the creepy-corporation-controlling-your-entire-life angle of this. You would rent a place there, not be owned by them.

I admittedly don't know much about american property management, but aren't suburbs commonly highly controlled, with strict rules of what is allowed to be visible on your front yard etc?</comment>


Some tech startups in Germany - <AUTHOR> http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-best-tech-startups-in-germany-2015-5 <comment><USER2> I always ask myself when does a startup stop being called like that and become a company or enteprise. Some of the "startups" on this list are clearly pretty grown up and calling them like that seems a bit odd to me.

This, or they keep calling themselves startups because it's cool and you can pay your employees a lot less.

<comment><USER3> A good rule is that it is a start-up as long as everybody knows everybody else by name and is allowed to talk to the CEO directly.

<comment><USER4> I worked at a small technology company where that's still true and the company is two decades old by now (very successful in a very small market). There are probably small watch-makers that are over a century old and still a start-up by this measure.

<comment><USER3> Apologies, I was assuming recent entry on the corporate scene and a goal of growth but if you feel that small watchmakers over a century old are 'in scope' then I should have probably been more clear.

<comment><USER4> The problem with that is that in Europe "entry on the corporate scene" is not as much a thing as it is in the US. Most companies here are comfortable staying small or growing slowly, while American companies seem to generally seek out drastic growth. It's a culture difference that makes classifying things as startup or not startup more difficult.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ok so Research Gate employ their moderators on short term contracts (<6 months) at minimum wage (€8.50/h) so they don't have to give them much in the way of workers rights and the managers of said mods are technically interns.

<comment><USER6> All non-CS entry-level jobs at startups that I've seen in Berlin are "internships" and pay unliveable wages, if at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have an impression that one of the main selling points for Berlin particularly is the cheap labour - experienced engineers salaries are within 50-60K EUR range...

Some time ago, Berlin had a reputation as a cheap place to live, and "poor but sexy". I think this is no longer the case.

<comment><USER8> I can only agree; if you optimize for money, Berlin does not pay. As a junior developer with a master in CS from a top European school, the offers I got from Berlin were around laughable 40k Euro for a web-dev gig.

40.000 Euro gross amounts to 2000 Euro per month in net-salary. My living costs in Berlin would be around 800 Euro.

I chose to go to Zurich instead. Here, I am making 92.000 CHF also as a junior web-dev. Due to the low taxes, my net-salary is 6.500 CHF and I live on 1300 CHF all-in.

Zurich is the only place in Europe where salaries are comparable to NYC or the Bay-Area. If you are interested in moving here to work in IT, shoot me a mail. Contact details can be found in my HN profile. Alternatively, check out my medium-story: "Eight reasons why I moved to Switzerland" ([http://goo.gl/EIX4UX](http://goo.gl/EIX4UX)).

<comment><USER9> I second this anecdotal evidence. It's a very tight real estate market but somehow, cheap compared to salaries, with high quality options and a high quality of life. Thanks to EasyJet, Swiss (the airline), and the always great Swiss public transport, you're also next to a budget hub (ZRH) allowing you easy access to the rest of Europe.

I moved cos my next job took me to Geneva (which is nowhere near as nice) but remember the city fondly. Switzerland is generally a wonderful country to live in and work, if you can cope with not being in a culture hub (which is the only real drawback, relatively easily mitigated by weekends elsewhere).

<comment><USER8> The events that are important to me are about technology, UX, design, business and entrepreneurship. There are plenty events happening covering these topics. Usually, I am attending two to four meetups per week.

Also, people tend to forget that Zurich has 320.000 inhabitants and one should account for this when comparing it to mega-cities like Berlin, which is literally ten times bigger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-best-tech-startups-in- germ...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-best-tech-startups-in- germany-2015-5?op=1)

link for article as one page

</comment><comment><USER11> Clue are doing really great work in grass roots women's health. ResearchGate often also often flies under the radar but is really changing the way science gets done. Wooga has a pretty great culture with a lot of ownership and independence.

Berlin is a great place to live, so if you've thought about making the move I'd seriously consider applying at any of these companies.

</comment><comment><USER12> Crytek a startup?

<comment><USER13> According to Wikipedia[0] it sounded like the current Crytek is not any longer the same company as it used to be.

[0]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crytek#Restructuring](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crytek#Restructuring)

<comment><USER12> Sad to read.

Crytek seemed to be the only international relevant game company from Germany.

<comment><USER13> For PC Games. (Or does Crysis also run on consoles?)

There are quite a few browser game companies though ;)

And don't forget about our heroes of old, Blue Byte, Ascaron and surely a few more.

<comment><USER12> As you say: "of old"

Seems like there is not much game-dev left in Germany :\

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> OK they are startups, but most don't seem to be _technology_ startups.

I liked living in Berlin but this is excessive boosterism.</comment>


Social networks, gender, and job placement - <AUTHOR> https://www.pnas.org/content/116/6/2033 <comment><USER2> Most of the abstract seems to be saying that unlike men, women can form tight cliques with other women, which gives them an advantage (the 2.5x boost) apparently unavailable to men.

But they also end with "Women who have networks that resemble those of high- placing men are low-placing, despite having leadership qualifications comparable to high-placing women." As they don't otherwise mention leadership qualifications, nor even define the term, it's unclear what's being hinted at here.</comment>


Emotional resilience and burnout in leadership - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/document/d/18FfZ86PGA_uSFf425EzKXAmiFQLFBPqjqPN7iu1TZRw/edit?usp=sharing <comment><USER2> As someone who has just started a 4 week break spurred on by a burnout-induced breakdown at work, this is very timely. I do wonder if it's reasonable to think that 4 weeks is enough.

I've struggled with mental health issues for most of my life due to complex developmental trauma during childhood, and in 2020, I've found that it's very difficult to tell the difference between work burnout, residual issues due to my trauma history, impact of world events, etc.

One thing I do know for sure: research like this is so encouraging. Normalizing the conversation about mental health is so important.

<comment><USER3> I have had burnout in the past, and I'm sorry to say 4 weeks is likely not enough.

For me it was about 1 year to recover.

Sure I could have returned to work after a month or two, because I would no longer have been "exhausted" physically, but going straight back into it would have burnt off that top layer of rest, and still revealed the ruined core within, to truly heal it took a year, then my excitement for programming came back, the excitement about not being able to sleep because there's so much to enjoy, and the pure joy of creation

I hate that it took a year to come back, being hyper industrious this long period killed me. But I am grateful that it came back.

I appreciate not everyone has the financial ability to take a year off. I didn't either, but I was lucky that I could adapt a simple, frugal existence to survive. I support UBI or whatever form of support anyone can give people who burnout because it's real and it's painful.

I wish you all the best in your recovery, and wrote this to tell you there is light at the end of the tunnel

<comment><USER4> I took 6 months off after a bad case of burnout and I think you are spot on at 1 year. About 6 months after going back to work (and clearing my plate of a lot of superfluous BS) I finally felt like I was beginning to hit my stride again. It was a big financial hit, but in the grand scheme of things it would have been far worse on my long term career prospects had I not taken that time away. Six months was, in my opinion, the bare minimum for the kind of burnout I was experiencing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I see that this research is aimed at leadership positions and this must surely be a problem, I feel obligated to point out that the issue of burnout could be an _even worse_ problem in non-leadership positions.

It seems that a lot of the suggested solutions (take time off, be more honest about your emotions, etc.) are necessarily things that are difficult to do for people who are not in management positions. Requesting long blocks of time off or being forthcoming about your emotions are easily things that can be used against you in employee reviews and other similar situations.

In cases of _severe_ burnout, the situation is more dire since people earning a lower salary might simply not be able to step back from work to take a year off, for example (something that was suggested by another poster here).

<comment><USER6> While I understand the intention to highlight the other side of the problem, all these issues are significantly more severe for people in leadership positions.

I can't imagine taking more than 2 weeks off from work. These solutions aren't really solutions unless the person in question decides to quit their job. There is no snowballs chance in hell that a company will tolerate absence of their management staff that is longer than 4 weeks. A replacement or substituion would be required fairly soon.

Being open about one's emotion in a leadership position is a ridiculous advice, it's obvious that the authors have no idea what they're recommending.

<comment><USER7> > There is no snowballs chance in hell that a company will tolerate absence of > their management staff that is longer than 4 weeks.

I've worked in places where, at any given time, at least one something- something manager was on a one- _year_ sabbatical. One of them literally requested it -- and got it -- in order to spend more time with their daughter, who was going to college the following year, since that was their last chance to spend quality time with her for a few years. Lots of people in a non- management positions have trouble attending their kids' graduation ceremonies if they're out of state -- getting a whole year off to see them off to college is pretty much science fiction.

Yes, they generally didn't leave smack in the middle of a project, but there's a lot of no man's land in-between projects.

I don't understand how any of this is surprising. Justifiably or not, benefits and perks are clustered around leadership positions, that's literally one of the reasons why people are seeking them.

Plus, in many large companies, it can easily take 6-12 months to recruit someone for a leadership position. Granting three-month vacations to the people you already have is a really good idea.

<comment><USER8> Manager? How high up were they?

<comment><USER7> Way closer to a junior dev than a C-level position ;-).

Edit: one-year sabbaticals aside, which aren't that common outside large companies, longer vacations are normal simply because extra paid vacation days are a standard benefit you get with a promotion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wish every leader gets access to these frameworks and takeaways. The #1 issue I face with every single client I've worked with over the years as an executive coach is exactly what they are pointing out here: that dealing with our emotions and inner worlds is the biggest challenge of all. Learning to deal with that has the highest ROI on both success and fulfillment/happiness compared to any other activity for a leader imo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Leo, we have you to thank for introducing us to the concept of 'emotional debt'. I totally agree that for the majority of us, navigating the inner-world + increasing self-awareness has an absurdly high ROI on success/fulfillment.

What I also find fascinating is how running a company or leading a team appear to be an incredibly efficient vehicle for surfacing one's own sh*t—and once this new perspective is adopted—it becomes more potent than any self-help program out there for one's own personal growth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Really relate to this. I shut down my startup in April. On paper, we ran out of money.

Behind the scenes, I finally paid the toll/ burnt out after 1-2 years of constant unexpected, unpredictable shocks. As a solo founder with investors, there was no escape, no one to run things while I took time off, and no way to leave without ending the company. At points, if my phone buzzed with a text message, I would go into a panic attack, expecting another problem.

I'm now reading a book on the impact of trauma on psychology and while my experience was nothing compared to people who went to war, etc - I see a lot of similarities. Eg there are external triggers that shock your body without your control.

One of the frustrating parts was that I knew it was happening as it was happening. I had the language to identify I was burnt out, had a coach, a therapist, tried to leverage a support network, etc. I do wish there were more solutions for this.

At a minimum, it's good that this issue is getting talked about more and more. An important requirement to take a sabbatical as in the example in the paper is having buy-in from board members, investors, or team mates, so getting more people on board with mental health is key.

Question - curious if anyone has seen any books on burnout recovery. Thus far, 4 months in, it's quite a long process.

<comment><USER11> it's very individual and you may not find a "recovery template". Personally, I find that best remedies are 1) attaching yourself to a bigger goal, where even "at least I tried" and "at least I've advanced X area by a few steps" are fulfilling narratives. 2) finding something no matter how small, where you excel. Hobbies are great. Maybe your startup is a mess, but your bird dog yoga pose is pure perfection. (1) helps deal with the shocks of failures and (2) helps refill your confidence tank to try at the problem one more time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just my tidbit:

I am 8 months into my journey after severe burnout (decided to take n amount of time off till I felt "right" last December).

I am not a founder, but have worked in high caliber roles for the last few years (I am still fairly early in my career). My last job was at a YC company.

I started out thinking it'd be 2 months. Then 4. Then it turned into 6. I panicked a lot in the beginning, I am used to overworking or nothing. It just took time, and things started to fall into place mentally (and even physically).

Now I've accepted that at a year, I believe I'll be ready. I'm happy to report I feel motivation creeping in - and my creative wheels have been turning. It's really about where to channel things next. It is the most refreshing and rewarding feeling in the world, to see light at the end of the technical-block tunnel.

If I'm completely honest, there are still days when I dread the thought of returning to the screen, even when I don't want to - but those days are less and less. I'm extremely fortunate to have been able to do this.

Burnouts are like bad breakups - our nerves are likes wounds, and it just takes time to heal them after putting them on overdrive for extended periods of time. The emotional toll is taxing, a high and illogical price to pay when you consider resting like we are designed to do. Just my two cents, good luck!

</comment><comment><USER13> This is really insightful, thanks for sharing.

I've had my own challenges with burnout. It's why I ended up leaving the corporate world. I've been working on a startup for about a year and while I feel a lot better, I have noticed that I'm not taking any time off. I fortunately have a good group of coaches & mentors around me now that are looking out for me, which has been life saving. I will definitely dive deeper into the report and use some of these tools to build resilience for myself and my team.

</comment><comment><USER14> Despite the praise, I don't see much of value. This is taxonomic in nature, giving you some loose categories to decompose sources of stress and emotional debt, but tons of research has been done in these areas, and this survey is a bit contrived with not very much data in the scheme of things.

None of that is a big deal really, but what bugs me is nothing in the document offers concrete strategy or tactics to resolve emotional debt or burnout. Advice like "be self-aware" and "go for a walk" and "get enough sleep" is _terrible_ because _everyone_ is already trying all that and burnout hits you specifically when circumstances prevent you from adequately "just" doing them.

It's empty non-advice, very similar to saying "eat right & exercise" to a depressed person.

It reminds me a bit of this discussion of severe life events as a major explainer of most depression,

[https://grasshoppermouse.github.io/2018/12/16/seven- reasons-...](https://grasshoppermouse.github.io/2018/12/16/seven-reasons-why- major-depression-is-probably-not-a-brain-disorder/)

It's the same with burnout.

You can torture out "shadow" reasons all you want, but it's really deflecting from the big obvious fact that un-live-with-able circumstances are un-live- with-able and you need to actually fix and remove traumatic circumstances. You should not talk about or endorse "being resilient" to them, because it's just victim blaming "you need to take care of yourself" dressed up in pseudotheory.

Honestly I see more harm than good in analysis like this. Especially in terms of letting corporations and HR departments deflect and ignore fixing toxic work environments rampant with major burnout stressors, by supplying braindead platitudes like "go for a walk" or "be self-aware" and even worse saying, "look our _leaders_ are doing it, so they're not asking you to do something they themselves aren't doing."

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, appreciate the feedback (I'm Jonny, one of the co-authors), writing this we were conscious of framing this report not as a finished artefact, but as the beginning of a multi-year resilience research study and we fully acknowledge that it raises more questions than it provides answers.

However, we also did make an effort to outline some concrete strategies for relieving emotional debt in section 7 and also outlined in the [wiki]([http://resilient.wiki/](http://resilient.wiki/)), which include daily/weekly/monthly/annual activities ( _although by no means an exhaustive list and invite readers to contribute additional suggestions_ ).

> re: _Especially in terms of letting corporations and HR departments deflect > and ignore fixing toxic work environments rampant with major burnout > stressors_

This may be well the case in some organisations and part of our intention with the 'Shadow Stressors' framework was to shed light on those sources of stress in the 'ambient/external quadrant' which would likely fall under the responsibility of the organisation's leadership to address.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a good discussion of burnout overall, but it's missing a key part:

Sometimes you're in a terrible environment and need to leave. The company you work for could be terrible, and no amount of emotional calisthenics will prepare you for trying to breathe on the surface of the moon.

</comment><comment><USER16> Here's a handy link to the PDF, which is easier on the eyes than google docs: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KaPv- yVxjLb8b4WlF0nsAA5b6ft...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KaPv- yVxjLb8b4WlF0nsAA5b6ftAsYw3/view)

This was a phenomenal read and led me to ask my own question: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24265697](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24265697)

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate that Tom, and yes the PDF is a more readable summary for those who don't have time to read all the way through the 60+ page Gdoc ;)

And a support group / Slack channel for Software Engineers sounds like a superb idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Protect yourself from Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), Narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), Psychopathy (lack of remorse and empathy), Sadism (pleasure in suffering of others)

</comment><comment><USER18> On a vaguely related note, the 'How I built this' podcast has recently been running a 'How I built resilience' series, focusing on how founders and entrepreneurs are navigating turbulent times. [https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built- this](https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing this, I'll have a listen!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> There are 13 responses from Canada, but _89_ from Toronto. Did the author intend to write _9_ ?

<comment><AUTHOR> The author did indeed (fixed) thanks for catching that (it slipped by us & our proof-reader)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> cold showers - recommend Wimhoff</comment>


Stand up for your freedom to install free software - <AUTHOR> https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/secure-boot-vs-restricted-boot/statement <comment><USER2> I tried to sign the petition and got this:

>>>CiviCRM Profile Create >>>Sorry. A non-recoverable error has occurred. >>>The requested Profile (gid=37) is disabled OR it is not configured to be used for 'Profile' listings in its Settings OR there is no Profile with that ID OR you do not have permission to access this profile. Please contact the site administrator if you need assistance.</comment>


Taurus – Load Testing Automation Framework - <AUTHOR> http://gettaurus.org/ <comment><USER2> Would like to know what differentiates this from locust? [http://locust.io/](http://locust.io/)

Easier for more basic tests?

<comment><AUTHOR> Taurus is more generic than Locust. Taurus doesn't perform load testing by itself, but it can delegate it to a number of actual test executors (JMeter, Gatling, Locust.io, Selenium, Grinder, ApacheBenchmark, etc).

Another difference is that in Locust you define tests in Python while in Taurus you define tests with simple YAML syntax.

In addition, with Taurus you get nice graphs and ability to execute tests in cloud, independently of the executor.</comment></comment>


Hammerspoon :  the best Mac software you've never heard of - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@robhowlett/hammerspoon-the-best-mac-software-youve-never-heard-of-40c2df6db0f8 <comment> up-n-atom I get it.. that is, the reasoning for Hammerspoon to exist as an alternative or extension to Automator/AppleScript. Who wouldn't prefer Lua over AppleScript? The best, that's a stretch.

As for the authors original use case.. all the overhead could simply be avoided by correctly setting up their network preferences in the first place!

Step 1. Prioritize your preferred Wi-Fi networks, either by Network Preferences>Advanced... or using: networksetup -addpreferredwirelessnetworkatindex via the command line.

Step 2. Select SushiNet and uncheck "Automatically join this network" via Network Preferences.</comment>


Losing To The Social Web: Visualized - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/loosing-to-the-social-web-visualized/

<comment><USER3> the general trend is probably correct - social websites are gaining moment. still i don't like these graphs.

we can not measure visitors (only devices, but you can do some statistical approximation - that's what they do for sure). but this gets even vaguer if you are not the owner of the site and don't have total access to all data.

we don't know how google calcs those "numbers", not even how they get approximated (they are not really statistics - Y axis is not labled).

it could very well be - and probably is, i've been in the webstats buiz - <USER2> the way they come up with this is by adding some artificial, best-guess multiplier to correct for not having enough real data.

\---

the way to do those web statistics right is:

* have an open consortium with all the major players come up with an algorithm that satisfies them [1]

* apply that algorithm, it will output numbers that are in some correlance to the real, but unobservable truth [2]

* more important: the statistics of those websites are now comparable to one another. because the algorithm & factors are the same for everyone [3]

* rinse, repeat, adapt

[1] it is unlikely that they will publish this algorithm, since it will contain strange, seemingly arbitraty factors like "multiply by 1.2 during summertime, because people are less online and we don't want tooo much of a down curve"

[2] like "visitors" or "time spent on site"

[3] no, we don't know that's the case with google's data

<comment><USER4> monos - if you log into your Google account and then use Trends for Websites, you should see the y-axis numbers. The numbers are not shown when you're not logged in.

<comment><USER3> right, thx.

doesn't change the diagrams in the linked article though, they are images: [http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/wp- content/uploads/2009/10/Br...](http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/wp- content/uploads/2009/10/Brands-Trending-Down.gif)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How is hulu.com social?

Most of the non-social sites are places you'd only go if you're looking to buy something of a specific brand. They're probably losing to amazon (not shown) and the recession. Others are old-school news sites, which are losing to blogs, aggregaters and specialized sources.

In short, the article fails to make its claim.

</comment><comment><USER6> So in short:

\- Online resources for real stuff (things that cost money) experience drop of visitors in recession

\- Free, recreational and bitching-about-life sites show increase in visitors in recession

<comment><USER7> yep. people would only go to bmw.com if they plan to buy or if they see an ad.

in a recession, both cases would be false.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The traffic lost by the brand sites may not be the same traffic gained by the social networks.

<comment><USER8> Yes, especially since traffic on the web is not zero-sum. I can visit both, or neither, and a visit to one doesn't mean I didn't go to the other.

Although I think that the data supports the general trend in people looking to social media for information before looking for brand sites, I would throw out there that people also google brands and use blogs and review sites for information, which could account for lower visitor counts.</comment></comment>


Architectural Implications of Function-as-a-Service Computing [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://parallel.princeton.edu/papers/micro19-shahrad.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Just attended a talk by Jonathan Balkind titled "Fixing Serverless Computing in the Post-Moore Era With Open-Source Hardware" and this paper is addresses a lot of what was covered in the talk.</comment>


Google labs:word frequency in books over the last 200 years - <AUTHOR> http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=fuck&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3 I was surprised to see the high popularity of the word "fuck" prior to 1820 <comment><USER2> The example in the OP (fuck) was so common until the early 1800s because of the typographic convention to substitute an f for an s. In other words, the word "suck" was being written as "fuck", which is why the word appeared so often until the early 1800s.

<comment><USER3> Any background on the origin of this typesetting convention? I'd like to know the whys and whatfors...

<comment><USER2> The technical term for this is a "long s", which Wikipedia describes at great length: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s>

<comment><USER4> thanks, that was incredibly fascinating and enlightening, especially the examples.

 _The long s survives in elongated form, and with an italic-style curled descender, as the integral symbol ∫ used in calculus; Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz based the character on the Latin word summa ("sum"), which he wrote ſumma. This use first appeared publicly in his paper De Geometria, published in Acta Eruditorum of June 1686,[2] but he had been using it in private manuscripts at least since 1675.[3]_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Utterly awesome. [http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=My+name+is+Inigo+...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=My+name+is+Inigo+Montoya&year_start=1800&year_end=2011&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

Potentially even more awesome is that they have the entire dataset available for download o_O

edit: case sensitivity is more fun than insensitivity: [http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Star+Trek%2Cstar+...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Star+Trek%2Cstar+trek%2CStar+trek%2Cstar+Trek&year_start=1900&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3) vs [http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=star+trek%2CStar+...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=star+trek%2CStar+trek%2Cstar+Trek&year_start=1900&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

edit2: there are a whole bunch of geek-term bumps around and just after 1900. Anyone know why? E.g.: [http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Star+Wars&yea...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Star+Wars&year_start=1900&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

<comment><USER6> I have no idea, but my guess is that they don't know the dates for some books and the system automatically classifies the publication date as "1900" or "1901." If you search the word "quark," you also get a bump at around 1900 even though the word wasn't coined until Joyce's _Finnegans Wake_ in 1939.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find it kind of interesting that a lot of words peak around the middle of the 19th century and have been in decline ever since. I'm guessing this has something to do with the increasing number of books published but it is still kind of hard for me to imagine that "the" is less commonly used now than one hundred years ago. The pattern holds true for a lot of common words...

</comment><comment><USER8> Is this weird ? :)

[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=google&year_s...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=google&year_start=1800&year_end=2003&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=terrorist&yea...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=terrorist&year_start=1800&year_end=2011&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

</comment><comment><USER9> They had smartphones in the 1900s? Could this be related to that woman supposedly seen speaking on a cell phone in the Charlie Chaplin video?

[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=smartphone&ye...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=smartphone&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=1)

(Actually, "internet" also has a similar spike. I suspect some books are mislabeled in their dates.)

<comment><USER10> Some dates are mislabled, but mostly OCR errors:

[http://www.google.com/search?q=%22internet%22&tbs=bks:1,...](http://www.google.com/search?q=%22internet%22&tbs=bks:1,cdr:1,cd_min:1600,cd_max:1681&lr=lang_en)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Given the birther-related news today, I was curious about another uncouth term. Sad results:

[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=nigger&year_s...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=nigger&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't know in what context they could use Geek in 1800. [http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=geek&year_sta...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=geek&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

<comment><USER5> Or the 1700s: [http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=geek&year_sta...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=geek&year_start=1000&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

Perhaps weirder, "Woot": [http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Woot&year_sta...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Woot&year_start=1500&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

<comment><USER12> Seems like some are incorrect when i look at the scanned pages and one of those says Geck instead of Geek [http://books.google.com/books?id=gvYqAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA497&#...</a>

<comment><USER5> Ah, good point. This _is_ generated by OCR + reCAPTCHA, error is guaranteed to creep in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> some interesting results: (sad about liberty)

[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=liberty&year_...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=liberty&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=l33t&year_sta...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=l33t&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=hacker&year_s...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=hacker&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

</comment><comment><USER14> while love is going down [http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=love&year_sta...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=love&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=5&smoothing=3) sad..

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm going to have an impact on google's internet bill this month.</comment>


Warren Buffett's Berkshire dumps most of Goldman Sachs stake - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/bc7816bb-fbff-4b68-89f5-b186ad2e7ee8 <comment><USER2> Speaking somewhat anecdotally, Goldman Sachs in 2020 does not resemble Goldman circa 1998 or even 2008. A lot of brain trust was lost following the post- crisis de-risking and vilification. The move into retail finance, to me, solidifies its mystique shedding.

<comment><USER3> > _move into retail finance_

Whistleblower: Wall Street Has Engaged in Widespread Manipulation of Mortgage Funds [1].

Commercial real-estate was already going to absolutely hammered.

> _Some of the world's biggest banks — including Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank > — as well as other lenders have engaged in a systematic fraud that allowed > them to award borrowers bigger loans than were supported by their true > financials, according to a previously unreported whistleblower complaint > submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission last year._

> _Whereas the fraud during the last crisis was in residential mortgages, the > complaint claims this time it's happening in commercial properties like > office buildings, apartment complexes and retail centers. The complaint > focuses on the loans that are gathered into pools whose worth can exceed $1 > billion and turned into bonds sold to investors, known as CMBS (for > commercial mortgage-backed securities)._

> _Lenders and securities issuers have regularly altered financial data for > commercial properties "without justification," the complaint asserts, in > ways that make the properties appear more valuable, and borrowers more > creditworthy, than they actually are. As a result, it alleges, borrowers > have qualified for commercial loans they normally would not have, with the > investors who bought securities birthed from those loans none the wiser._

> _ProPublica closely examined six loans that were part of CMBS in recent > years to see if their data resembles the pattern described by the > whistleblower. What we found matched the allegations: The historical profits > reported for some buildings were listed as much as 30% higher than the > profits previously reported for the same buildings and same years when the > property was part of an earlier CMBS. As a rough analogy, imagine a > homeowner having stated in a mortgage application that his 2017 income was > $100,000 only to claim during a later refinancing that his 2017 income was > $130,000 — without acknowledging or explaining the change._

> _It's "highly questionable" to alter past profits with no apparent > explanation, said John Coffee, a professor at Columbia Law School and an > expert in securities regulation. "I don't understand why you can do that."_

Exact same trick as last time, just last time residential and this time commercial.

Time to start anti-trust breaking up the 'too big to fail' banks, they are a national security issue and ultimately a bad actor in fair markets.

Commercial mortgage backed securities are severely overvalued since deregulation after the Great Recession largely because people weren't watching commercial as much and there was a hypernormalization of the idea that the economy was somehow good. All it was was over leveraging, opportunities zones that have less tax revenues if any, that led to stagnation in other areas, so other loans were taken out on future good economic conditions that will not exist for years if not a decade now.

The carnage is going to be immense with the attack vectors of less retail, restaurants going under, less consumers buying physical places, less people and retail/restaurants able to pay rents to landlords that then owe these commercial real estate entities, less office need with more remote, etc etc.

Retail was already on a downtrend but valuations and loans were going up in commercial real estate. This is going to be a problem.

The only area that might be possible is more commercial real estate that is more about moving products back to the US but that really is a fantasy in many areas.

[1] [https://www.propublica.org/article/whistleblower-wall- street...](https://www.propublica.org/article/whistleblower-wall-street-has- engaged-in-widespread-manipulation-of-mortgage-funds)

<comment><USER4> So this was a solved problem with the Glass–Steagall Act (1933) brought in after the, you guessed it, great depression [1]. It was of course repealed (by Bill Clinton), as we'd learned our lesson thoroughly and completely. This led to 2008. And 2020.

So naturally, given the broad-based success of the repeal, there's no interest in reviving it.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass–Steagall_legislation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass–Steagall_legislation)

<comment><USER5> Congress passes laws, not the President.

The repeal passed the Senate on a near party line vote (R over D), sponsored by 3 Republicans, and passed the House will nearly all R and 2/3 of D.

Clinton could have vetoed it, though, since the Senate didn't have a two- thirds majority.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act)

Of course, looking to the future from the future, a veto would likely be irrelevant since Bush took over a year and a half later.

<comment><USER6> Clinton did not oppose the repeal at all. He was a cheerleader for the process.

Here's a snippet from his signing speech.

>You heard Senator Gramm characterize this bill as a victory for freedom and free markets. And Congressman LaFalce characterized this bill as a victory for consumer protection. And both of them are right. And I have always believed that one required the other. It is true that the Glass-Steagall law is no longer appropriate for the economy in which we live.

[https://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press- releases/Pages/l...](https://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press- releases/Pages/ls241.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Fun fact: The CEO of Goldman also makes pretty bad EDM music

[https://soundcloud.com/djdsolmusic](https://soundcloud.com/djdsolmusic)

<comment><USER8> Maybe it's because I'm an amateur musician and hear some truly awful music, but by EDM standards, that's at least mediocre, not "bad".

<comment><USER9> The only thing you're missing is the requirement to hate anything a banking CEO produces, no matter the quality.

He could cure cancer, and angry people online will complain he contributed to overpopulation.

<comment><USER7> Oh I have nothing against the fact that he's a bank CEO, I just thought his music was pretty bland and generic. Maybe I was too harsh. You would think that bank CEOs would be the kind of person to not really have any hobbies or interests outside of work, so I guess it's kind of cool that he's putting himself out there like this

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Many in finance think we're headed for deflation. If that's the case, dumping equities for cash is a sensible move. He may be expecting chaos in the banking sector as bankruptcies roll in, and these mortgage fund fraud allegations gain traction.

It's going to be a wild decade. Watch the government use this to vastly expand surveillance powers, too. Not going to be good for the average American.

<comment><USER11> The positions in GS and WFC have been reduced over the last few quarters, these sales should not be interpreted as "dumping equity" \- besides the large private holdings (insurance, rail, energy, lots of manufacturing, retail etc), Berkshire still holds $200bn worth of equity.

<comment><USER12> Wasn't the WFC reduction you keep BRK under the 10% limit for banks?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What does he know that we don't?

He just dumped most of his airline holdings, after losing some $5 billion dollars.

It seems he might be going into cash, and sitting things out, until a true correction hits, and then he'll go back in and pick up companies for pennies on the dollar.

<comment><USER14> He lost a huge pile on Kraft Heinz, and that was pre-Corona. Didn't yet realize those losses AFAIK.

He lost a pile on the airlines and even decided to realize those losses.

He lost a pile on that petroleum company that I forgot the name of, but which crashed and burned recently due to oil prices plunging.

He hesitated a long time with tech stocks and lost a lot of money in the last decade due to opportunity cost. His only good bet in that area was Apple, and admittedly that paid off nicely, but even his big stake doesn't compensate for missing out on basically all other tech stocks. Especially since the size of his Apple investment suggests that he played a significant part in raising the Apple stock value, which means that he probably can't pull that out again without depressing the stock price.

Bottom line: I think Warren Buffett is overrated. He fails, just like anyone else.

<comment><USER15> Warren Buffet is currently overrated because he doesn't invest in a lot of tech stocks because he claims to not have a complete understanding of the business.If you look at his record from the 70s-90s, you will realize he is the greatest investor ever. We all have our strengths and weaknesses, don't judge a fish on its ability to fly.

I think its great that he doesn't invest that much into tech and is very public about it. It influences other people to not invest in every little thing that is popular if they don't understand the business mechanics behind it.

<comment><USER16> > Warren Buffet is currently overrated because he doesn't invest in a lot of > tech stocks...

He's also overrated because of all the insider trading he engages in....he would be a lot poorer if the SEC had the resources/will to investigate his moves.

<comment><USER12> Lol, that's clearly untrue. There is zero evidence he has done any insider trading ever.

<comment><USER16> >Lol, that's clearly untrue

I don't think you know Buffetts track record.

<comment><USER12> I know more than you. Have you read both his biographies, his annual investor letters back to mid 70s, and have copies of all his Buffett Partnership letters from the 50s and 60s?

His track record and methods are an open book. And have never included insider trading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> He doesn't seem to be picking up stakes elsewhere, which makes these moves seem like a flight to safety, seeing few investments worth the risk. Of course he could have deals in the works: he hasn't personally told me anything yet.

</comment><comment><USER18> [http://archive.is/b7h3A](http://archive.is/b7h3A)

(fo, li, md, vn, ph, and today are alt TLDs: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today))

</comment><comment><USER19> Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway owns a range of companies, giving him an insight into the fundamentals of economy. However, retail investors and many hedge funds just focus on the market psychology, and hence, momentum. So, Buffett knows something that other don't know.

<comment><USER12> His returns were far better before he owned any companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's 5% of GS shares. Did it push the price down?</comment>


Show HN: How fast and accurate is this layout? - <AUTHOR> https://jessekorzan.github.io/qUizList/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here's the results of this A/B test: [https://jessekorzan.github.io/qUizList/scoreboard/](https://jessekorzan.github.io/qUizList/scoreboard/)</comment>


Ask HN: How do I get my software to stop being flagged by anti-virus vendors? - <AUTHOR> Our .NET desktop application has been detected off and on by anti-virus software as a false positive for over a year now.  It is not obfuscated or packed in any way.  Nothing in the binary does anything that could be construed as malicious, I think.  The binary is digitally signed by my company's EV code signing certificate.  It's detected as Generic/MSIL.  I have tried contacting the vendors several times through their report false positives system, and have never gotten a reply.
I'm losing clients because of this.  I'm really at a loss here.  Hopefully someone here can help.  Any help would be appreciated.
Edit: Here's a link to a virustotal scan:
https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/f4550f0c64925bca64c3759a6e279f3a5ecf88fb29d281d2b1103c6c6f5a6320/details <comment><USER2> And what does the application actually do, what libraries does it use, and how is it packed and distributed?

At some point completely innocent netcat and tcpdump were marked as viruses or rootkits, because they used some low-level network API.</comment>


How Google Could Rig the 2016 Election - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/how-google-could-rig-the-2016-election-121548.html?hp=m3

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's a link to the paper mentioned in the article. The paper is a little less strident in tone.

[0][http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/E4512.abstract](http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/E4512.abstract)

</comment><comment><USER2> I doubt they would notice any change in or towards the company and or culture regardless of any change that did happen. Therefore they wouldn't potentially have any reason to change, other than pure bias. The problem with changing though is that it needs to go through so many people to finally actually get to the production system, surely there would be some whistle blower around to get a nice PR on this one should it ever happen?

</comment><comment><USER3> But why do anything detectable when they have the cash to buy a candidate in the time-honored traditional manner?

<comment><USER4> Maybe they don't much care who gets elected; in that case there'd be no reason to buy a candidate.

Maybe they'd make a lot of money if people paid Google to influence an election in some direction. Or if not money, then regulatory or legislative relief.

<comment><USER3> I think Google is very interested in who might win. If for no other reason that for future planning of products and services. Some candidates may be more favourable than others regarding certain issues.

Whether it's their influence or cash, either way would be buying the candidate. Providing under the table services for preferential treat by authorities is also well-engrained in most countries.

Sad, but factual.</comment></comment></comment>


HiDPI support in Gnome - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.gnome.org/alexl/2013/06/28/hidpi-support-in-gnome/

<comment><USER2> Glad to see someone's working on it, though as an end user, I won't care all that much until it lands.

For what it's worth, I've been using the `-dpi 239` flag in xserverrc and openbox scales just fine for my Chromebook Pixel. Some apps don't, but for the most part, it works for me:

[https://github.com/appsforartists/pixel_webdev/blob/master/r...](https://github.com/appsforartists/pixel_webdev/blob/master/root/etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm very glad that people in the linux community are working to support HiDPI displays. I recently tried to use a new MacBook Pro Retina with linux, and my outcome was that it was marginally usable with a HiDPI display.

</comment><comment><USER4> Kinda shameful that DPI scaling has never been a thing in Linux. I'm glad it's being worked on. I'll keep a Linux install kicking around once Wayland and/or Mir land with this stuff.

<comment><USER5> It's a really hard problem -- especially for fractional scales where hairlines become blurry (or too wide, or too thin, or inconsistent).

<comment><USER6> It's not a hard problem at high pixel densities. We should be able to just specify the display density in DPI and sizes with device independent units. We've been doing this with print for ages.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is there no secondary market for computer parts? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I thought it was called Ebay. That's where I get my refurbished T-series ThinkPads for personal use.</comment>


Ask HN: Alternative for email verification? - <AUTHOR>

Just few minutes before I came across this post[1] about how the webapp email verification takes so longer to complete, and it got me thinking the same issues I have been facing for recent time. Not just at the sending end, but at the receiving end..
Some webapps doesn't let you proceed without verifying your email and I have to wait painfully for the emails to arrive at my inbox, worse - I have one of my email forwarded to another account and if the verification email lands at my old email's junk, its done... So, is there any other alternatives? some available workarounds  -
OAuth / OpenID Allowing the user to continue using the service and let them verify at their convenience
Also, rather than confirming via a link which then takes to the webapp for the confirmation, why not confirm them using say a reply email? this way the user doesn't have to leave their mailbox (more convenient for a mobile user)
Are there any alternatives, or am I just not in the reality?
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8427577 <comment><USER2> _Also, rather than confirming via a link which then takes to the webapp for the confirmation, why not confirm them using say a reply email? this way the user doesn 't have to leave their mailbox (more convenient for a mobile user)_

Historically, because parsing email is hard, because a _lot_ of reply emails will fail to include your magic verification token in them, and because (if you don't use a magic verification token) spoofing email addresses is trivial.

The easier solution is to simply not verify email addresses.</comment>


Show HN: Search Grader. Check out Amazon, Craigslist & others' scores - <AUTHOR> http://grader.algolia.com/

<comment><USER2> Is it fair to use the "Show HN" tag if the product was released (and later received $1.5M seed funding) a year ago?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=jlemoine](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=jlemoine)

<comment><AUTHOR> It is the Search Grader that is new, we have just released it today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This isn't really helpful. I have no clue what the scoring is base on and why it determines how good search is for any of these sites. Is there some kind of break down. Why a delay? Is it designed to be manually reviewed?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes for the moment this is manually reviewed, we will try to make it fully automatic but this is a very complex topic.

We will write a blog post that explain the whole ranking.

<comment><USER4> We released the blog post: [http://blog.algolia.com/search-grader-engine- performing](http://blog.algolia.com/search-grader-engine-performing)</comment></comment></comment>


5 Twitter Avatar Styles You Really Don't Want To Use - <AUTHOR> http://www.velocitydigital.co.uk/5-twitter-avatar-styles-you-really-dont-want-to-use/

<comment><USER2> You should look at adding examples of the various types of avatars you are suggesting not to use. Visuals would make this article even better! ;)</comment>


Pure CSS Animated Progress Bar  - <AUTHOR> http://www.cssglobe.com/post/1468/pure-css-animated-progress-bar <comment><USER2> Pure CSS... and an animated GIF. Progress bars that aren't actually tied to an underlying progressing quantity annoy me. Why not just use some spinning activity indicator instead of lying to the user? Or trying a little harder to quantify the processing going on? Or _maybe_ even optimise/background the processing so it's fast enough not to need a progress indicator.

<comment><USER3> yeah when they aren't connected to actual load progress it sucks. The concept still works (hold the users attention just a tad longer...) but I think if its just a looping character it should be a spinning wheel etc.. then the user knows to expect to wait but isn't anticipating and amount of wait time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me of the "CSS rounded corner" scripts that replace 1 simple image with 721 lines of CSS.

Some people actually need to make a living building websites ...I'll pass.</comment>


Money Interpreted as an IOU - <AUTHOR> http://heteconomist.com/money-interpreted-as-an-iou/ <comment><USER2> The hierarchy at the bottom is interesting, because going down the hierarchy doesn't get you a bunch. Why do I want gift cards? Or your shitty voucher? Mostly, I don't, though airline points are interesting because I can get them faster than money if I fly a lot.

There's another way to go down that list, and it's risk for monetary instruments. Cash is always at the top, with government bonds lower than that. Bank deposits like CD are lower and a bit riskier. At the bottom, you have things like sketchy companies issuing bonds with 20% interest, or vague promises from a founder that "this 1% equity will be worth 1% of a billion dollars!". Sounds better than cash, but definitely risky.

Anything that doesn't fit somewhere one that curve doesn't exist. Your IOU doesn't get me more money, and I incur a bunch more risk. Since nobody wants that, you don't see it unless it shows up on the price / risk curve somewhere sane.

</comment><comment><USER3> David Graeber wrote about the origins of money as IOUs pretty extensively in his book "Debt: The first 5,000 years"

</comment><comment><USER4> British money is - or was - explicitly an IOU. The notes bore the phrase "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of (n) pounds ..." Used to be gold, not sure what you get these days. Other countries also, like India.

<comment><USER5> Even the term "banknote" makes it explicit: a note (of credit) issued by the central bank. Coins are not formally IOU's, because historically they had intrinsic value.</comment></comment>


How to Convince Your Company to Go with Golang - <AUTHOR> https://sendgrid.com/blog/convince-company-go-golang/ <comment><USER2> I'll never understand the need for affirmation when it comes to new languages. Go is a great language, but why is it necessary to have incessant commenting and articles to convince others to jump in. Evaluate, and use what makes sense for your project.

The entire last section is recognizing how library support is not very mature. How they'll need to invest a ton of time into training engineers, how the pool of applicants is small, but they are going to stick with it anyhow. For such a large established company, it just doesn't make sense to me "switching over" to the hot new language of the year.

Though I suppose this is just a recruiting piece for their jobs page.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article is dated March 6, 2014 - that's over two years ago. At this point it would be more instructive to learn how the decision to Go panned out for them? Were there any unforeseen downsides they could warn us about? Were there any unforeseen upsides one could use when assessing Go for their organization? They're in a position now where they can tell us about Go from the trenches.</comment>