Linux touchpad like a MacBook: April 2020 update - <AUTHOR> https://bill.harding.blog/2020/04/26/linux-touchpad-like-a-macbook-pro-april-2020-update/ <comment><USER2> I personally find the Linux desktop to be never as polished as macOS because it's hacks over hacks.

One of the problems in inertia scrolling is that in Linux, it's implemented in the driver level — which means that while scrolling by inertia, if I close the window, the window below will scroll. This is basically a hack because of backwards compatibility with the legacy APIs that only concern mouse events.

The proper way to do this (which is implemented in macOS) is to do this inertia scrolling in the GUI toolkit, which in macOS is AppKit. (macOS implements this in NSScrollView.)

Fixing this in Linux will be hard, since it needs coordinated effort between at least GTK, Qt, libinput, and the harware vendors — it's an artifact of the fragmented ecosystem of Linux.

<comment><USER3> At this moment I'm just generally frustrated with the state of desktop OSs in general. I used a Mac for a decade, and was generally happy with it, but not so happy with Apple's direction and recent poorer hardware. I recently installed Windows on a couple of machines, and that's just a horrific experience, and below the shinier surface, the OS is still as clunky as ever.

I've been putting my hope on Linux, but what the world really needs, is for someone to create a unified vision for a Linux/BSD/open source based OS and hardware that basically takes the Apple approach, or at least the approach Apple had 15 years ago.

It's amazing how little progress there has been in this field. If I had money and some expertise in this area, I'd start my own company making better laptops with a Unix-like OS that's not afraid of breaking compatibility with old Linux ideas like this that are holding us back. But that's never going to be more than a dream.

<comment><USER4> > making better laptops with a Unix-like OS that's not afraid of breaking > compatibility with old Linux ideas

That's what OS X did, only for BSD rather than Linux.

<comment><USER3> That's why I loved OS X 15 years ago. But it's not open source, and it feels like it's getting less open with every new version. But worse is their hardware: I can't access it anymore. In a way, I think they peaked with the 2011 unibody design.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for the contributions!

Unfortunately the state of Linux as a desktop OS in the past decade has missed entirely the hardware developments. No proper support for scaling for hidpi monitors, scrolling with precision mice/touch pads, no touch UI, UI is that still not deep enough and casually requires the user to spawn a terminal, graphics drivers that are still not stable and do not support the latest standards like hdr.

I wish there was a for profit company that would focus on making a polished desktop linux distro. There is only that much that the oss community can provide for free, but it is simply not enough.

<comment><USER6> > No proper support for scaling for hidpi monitors

I'm sitting here with a 4k 32" monitor and a 1920x1200 24 inch side by side, scaled perfectly so both are pretty and readable, in xfce, and when moving things between screens nothing changes size, or re-renders weirdly, or can't be resized due to invisible boundaries, or ...

It's better than windows or MacOS can manage with the same setup.

I'm not sure what you count as 'proper', and yes I had to write a two-line script with xrandr commands so ease of use isn't massively present. But the underlying system absolutely has great scaling support.

Graphics drivers are also fine these days, I've not had any problems with my mouse either. Hardware in general "just works" better than windows these days, with older devices supported and no drivers to hunt down on the web.

I'm not trying to claim it's better for _you_ , only you can decide that. But it works great for a lot of people.

<comment><USER7> > I'm sitting here with a 4k 32" monitor and a 1920x1200 24 inch

You didn't understand the problem mentioned by GP. Neither of your monitors requires HiDPI scaling. Your first monitor has approximately 138 dpi and the second a paltry 94 dpi.

Compare that to a 2012 MacBook Pro that has a 15.4-inch display with a 2880x1800 resolution. That's 221 dpi. The hallmark of a HiDPI is that its DPI is so high that you need to render UI elements at 2x or more (though sometimes 1.5x also works), so that originally a one-pixel line becomes two pixels wide. This requires support not just in drivers and the OS, but the application. ArchLinux has an entire wiki page discussing application support: [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI)

<comment><USER6> > Neither of your monitors requires HiDPI scaling

I beg to differ, 4k/32 does need scaling to my eyes. I don't want things to be that tiny.

Not every application needs to support scaling, so long as the GUI framework they use does, and the window manager does (XFCE has support, which I have activated) that makes the 4K screen more usable to me (while allowing the full res to be used for smooth rendering), then I use xrandr to scale the lower-dpi screen back down so elements are the same size across both. Sure, there are a few apps that don't behave brilliantly, but they aren't things I use much.

Like I said, it works better for me than MacOS or Windows (I have both, and a 2103 Retina MBP I still use).

<comment><USER6> Of course I meant a 2013 rMBP, I'm not a time traveller :) I'm still impressed that it can do its scaling stuff on a 4K screen, using onboard intel iris graphics. It's been a great investment that little machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Noticed an update to this project. Here's some of the earlier posts by wbharding:

Linux touchpad like a Macbook: progress and a call for help (Mar 2019) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19485178](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19485178)

Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing? (2018) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17547817](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17547817)

NOTE: I should've read the 'WIP' comment at the top before posting this. Sorry if I shared this early!

</comment><comment><USER8> > Are you a developer interested in working for $50/hour to improve life for a > bunch of Linux touchpad users? Here are the job requirements:

> \- Has access to a modern Linux laptop

> \- At least a couple years experience with C/C++

> \- Proven track record of delivering projects on schedule (please provide > examples)

> \- Strong English skills

> \- Self-starter, able to make progress toward high level goals with minimal > oversight

> \- Positive, solution-oriented collaborator

> \- (Preferred) Has personally struggled with Linux touchpads.

These requirements are _much much lower_ than majority of programming job descriptions out there...

<comment><USER9> You are talking more about the usual job descriptions, but has he missed something important? Which other requirements should be added?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> [http://archive.is/9AnoX](http://archive.is/9AnoX)

<comment><USER11> Good old hug o' death :-p

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting, does this mean that a macbook's "superior" touchpad is actually software driven? I always thought it was a hardware issue vs software issue.

<comment><USER13> It pretty much is. Speaking from experience of dual booting macOS and Linux on a MacBook Pro.

Oh, and also from booting the same Dell XPS laptop in Linux and macOS, guess which trackpad experience is superior.

<comment><USER12> How hard is it to load Hackintosh on a XPS? Do you recommend a certain model? I hear the 9360 is preferred because something about the graphics card?

<comment><USER14> Somehow I never imagined an xps hackintosh but I want to try with mine now.

If it works reliably you could have great hardware with a good OS and a decent price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's one thing that's bothering me about this "project". How is it supposed to work with the upstream? Is this supposed to be a rivaling fork? How am I supposed to have it on my system?

Also, it rubs me the wrong way that the blog author is seeking a person to do all the dirty work — even for compensation — and then what? Have all the credit? Basically, act as a glorified Forward button?

If I felt up to the task enough, I'd slap a sponsorship button onto my github on my own. And here's the difference: prior to asking for the money, I'd have something to show to prove I'm not a phony.

The upstream is not without its problem as well. Right now it's being maintained by Peter Hutterer from Red Hat, and judging by his LinkedIn, it's pretty much his job description. Recently he did a talk about how overloaded he is with libinput[1], and how someone volunteering to comb through pull requests and issues would easily become his "number two". Which also is striking me as odd.

libinput, given its importance for Linux ecosystem as such in general, and Red Hat ecosystem in particular (especially since they bet on Wayland as the future, and there libinput is the only choice), is important enough that Red Hat better make sure it's well maintained. It's Red Hat/IBM, really, who should be interested in making sure the bus factor of libinput is > 1\. Thus the problem should be raised within Red Hat's management, and they should _hire_ additional people for fair buck to help. Otherwise it looks as if someone who's paid for X input stack maintenance is seeking free labor to help him.

If I asked someone to help me do my paid job for free, open source or not, I don't think it would even be ethical.

[1] [http://who-t.blogspot.com/2019/10/libinputs-bus-factor- is-1....](http://who-t.blogspot.com/2019/10/libinputs-bus-factor-is-1.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> Having used a Macbook for the last 10 years, I can confirm that the trackpad feels better than trackpads on windows laptops, Chromebooks, and Macbooks with Linux installed (IMO, that I've tried).

However, I think the tracking may change slightly with major MacOs releases. So which version do we prefer..?

</comment><comment><USER16> The touchpad on my current gen Dell XPS 13 is superb on a stock Ubuntu install. I'd love to know how much of the "bad touchpad" reputation that Linux has is down to low quality hardware versus software support.

<comment><USER17> Have you tried a Mac touchpad? I use both a Dell XPS13 (Ubuntu from factory) at home, and a MacBook Pro at work. The Mac's touchpad is miles ahead... and that's even after I spent a couple of days messing with libinput settings to make the Dell's touchpad more acceptable (it's fine now, just not really close to the precision of the Mac's touchpad).

<comment><USER18> In what ways is it ahead? I'm quite satisfied with the touchpad on Linux, so really wondering what I'm missing.

On the other hand _touchscreen_ is really disappointing on Linux (Ubuntu), just not a smooth experience at all for me.

<comment><USER19> It's really quite difficult to quantify what's actually different. It feels really precise without being "flicky", using it feels very natural and you sort of forget about the touchpad and just will the cursor on the screen to do as you wish.

<comment><USER20> I've always struggled to articulate why I prefer the MacBook's trackpad to every other trackpad I've used, and I think you've hit on something with that last sentence. It _feels_ so natural that I really just don't ever think about it, my brain skips straight to the actual interface I'm using it to manipulate.

I get the same feeling with high vs low quality touchscreens (e.g. my phone vs some ATMs), and especially with gaming controllers. With a good, ergonomic controller I sort of forget about the shape and weight of the controller in my hands after a while; my entire sense of it narrows down to the buttons/triggers/joysticks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can people who work on both platform comment on the biggest issues for them?

Nowadays I work mostly at my desk, but for several years I've worked 90% of the time on my laptop keyboard. Synaptics with a bit of customization (Area*Edge size for palm detection, single and double tap timings) worked extremely well, and I consider myself very picky.

Edit: this seems to be about libinput, in which case I understand, as the two times I've used libinput I gave up after a few hours of intense frustration

<comment><USER22> I use a mac at work and a Thinkpad with Linux (Fedora) at home. Personally I can't notice any difference (on the other hand the Thinkpad keyboard is glorius). I wonder if people refer to gestures, which I don't use.

<comment><USER2> It's about cursor acceleration — macOS uses an acceleration scheme so that you can get from one's end to the other in one swipe if it's fast enough — if the swipe is slow, the cursor becomes more precise and slower.

I'm not due how it is in Linux, but last time I tried running Ubuntu on my 2017 MBP, It wasn't possible to move from edge to edge in one swipe.

<comment><USER23> Every OS uses cursor acceleration by default

<comment><USER2> It's just my experience — it might be that Linux's cursor acceleration isn't as sophisticated and comfortable as macOS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > Since I don't regularly use a Linux laptop and haven't in a couple years

I'm in the opposite camp. I've been using a Linux laptop at home (by choice, obviously) for the last 5-10 years and have finally been able to setup a Linux-powered workstation at work.

It feels so refreshing and liberating. I can't imagine ever going back.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's funny... I have never touched a MacBook. I'm actually very happy with the Linux touchpad drivers. I went to the article hoping to get a clear idea what the author likes about the MacBook drivers that are absent in the Linux drivers... But he doesn't say. Instead there was a poll asking _me_ what I thought was wrong (which is nothing)... The parts about multi-touch were interesting because I _really_ like the way multi-touch works in the current driver. So I think I'm missing something.

So for those of you frustrated with the Linux touchpad driver... what is the problem? Or is it just that it's not the same (which is a completely valid complaint, IMHO)?

<comment><USER26> From using Linux on my MacBook, I remember poor palm rejection being one frustration. Also, I think multi-touch - such as scrolling with two fingers - didn't work.

Just all round it wasn't very pleasant to work with. Perhaps if you have been using trackpads on Linux all your life, you are used to moving your hands away from the trackpad when not in use -- and so accidental presses are maybe never an issue for you.

<comment><USER27> I've only ever used a MB once or twice; usually little more than trolling someone who's left their machine unlocked in the office, but I did find the touchpad intuitive.

As an exclusively Linux user, my only real issue with touch pads is palm rejection, I feel like it has never worked so I end up in all sorts of awkward hand positions trying not to tap it by accident.

As a 6ft4in male (with the large hands to go with it) it becomes painful when trying to do this for any period on my XPS 13. On the XPS 15 it's easier because there are large enough spaces either side of the touchpad to rest my palms.

<comment><USER28> I have repetitive strain injuries, so I simply cannot use Linux. The way I have to twist my wrists so the touchpad doesn't mistakenly register a palm print is obnoxious and pain inducing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I was very surprised to find out that XPS 15 touchpad cannot report pressure on Linux, felt so contrary to everything else I can adjust and tinker with under Linux. But touchpad tap is just tap / no tap and there is no middle ground. I'm coming from Linux->Windows->Mac->Linux background, and I can certainly feel the pain coming back to Linux from Mac (2014 models with the sane touchpad size). Palm rejection and tap sensitivity are two major issues, but you learn to live with it. Two-finger browser "back" gesture is something I also miss direly, and no amount of experiments with funky Ruby (!?) based gesture libs could fix that.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm sitting here at my dual 24" 1080p monitor, natural keyboard, vertical 5-button mouse, 32GB/500GB Linux (XFCE) desktop and I couldn't be happier.

Fuck touch pads and hidpi monitors. They're honestly dumb. Who wants to work all day on a laptop? People who optimize their equipment for working in meetings or working on the move are doing it wrong.

No wonder Silicon Valley is a bubble of Mac users. They're concerned with all the wrong things, just like the Mac OS UI or any other OS that has been tainted by its influence.

<comment><USER31> I work 90% of the day on a desktop. That doesn't mean that I want my 10% laptop time to be an exercise in frustration. Linux touchpads are exactly that. (It's the main reason I abandoned my short experiment with a Linuxified Chromebook and reverted to a MacBook.)

<comment><USER32> Understandable. I was initially confused - moving from Linux to MacBook? But 'touchpad' explains it.

My frustration with MacOs is, mousing around to all four corners of the screen constantly. They've separated everything into the corners. But with a touchpad, less frustrating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does Linux on a MacBook make the touchpad feel worse?

<comment><USER33> yes

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Looks like this has been posted before the guy has even got his sponsorship links ready, seems unfair to leave it up.

<comment><USER35> Yep. I went to sponsor him with a few bucks, but as you say, it wasn't set up.

Think the best we can do for now is to give a star to [https://github.com/gitclear/libinput](https://github.com/gitclear/libinput) although it doesn't feel very significant.

> I presume nobody is randomly visiting pages on bill.harding.blog, so you > aren't seeing this.

FeelsBadMan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> From a technical approach, is it even possible?

How many touchpads expose the raw touch data (ie. A bitmap of capacitance data) necessary to replicate macos gestures? Things like palm detection absolutely require that.

Is the project worth it if it only works on one model of hardware?

<comment><USER37> Microsoft "enforces" nowadays a generic touchpad interface they call Precision Touchpad. When your notebook has one of these, the Windows generic driver kicks in and the experience is MUCH better. I never owned a MacBook but I never again will accept a Windows laptop without a precision Touchpad.

So, I have good hope that Linux users will enjoy this experience also one day. Microsoft forces the vendors in it.

<comment><USER38> I have an HP laptop that supports the Precision Touchpad drivers, but it takes considerable effort to use them. By default, Synaptics drivers will be downloaded by Windows Update and override the Windows built-in drivers. It doesn't make much difference to the cursor motion that I have noticed, but the Synaptics configuration UI is just as bad as it was 20+ years ago and doesn't seem to offer the same range of options as the Windows settings page it disables.

<comment><USER37> This download is strange. Because synaptics was the role model for th e interface. Probably HP messed this up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> With big OEMs like Dell and Lenovo finally offering laptops with Linux preinstalled, is there any chance one of them could put in the investment required to solve this once and for all?

<comment><USER40> My XPS 13 has a wonderful touchpad out-of-the-box, one config line and natural scroll works (think you can enable it in settings on a stock Ubuntu install though).

<comment><USER41> Thinkpad is also adequate for me for basic pointing and two-finger scrolling. But I still miss the pinch to zoom feature. Also, natural scroll is nice, but it turns on for everything and it shouldn't imho. For example with natural scrolling enabled the gnome speaker icon requires scrolling up to decrease volume and down to increase, which doesn't really make sense to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Does Linux offer tap to click? Of all the many things I love about trackpads on the Mac, tap to click is very close to the top. Such a tremendous reduction of friction.

<comment><USER43> It's not default behaviour on MacOS. So many people are missing out.

<comment><USER42> Not only not default, but at least pre-Catalina it's buried in accessibility. Haven't run Catalina yet so don't know whether that's changed.

<comment><USER44> In Mojave and Catalina it is an option in Trackpad preferences rather than accessibility.

[https://i.imgur.com/d0EeOG7.png](https://i.imgur.com/d0EeOG7.png)

<comment><USER45> I think this has been there for a very long time, but my mind could be playing tricks on me.

<comment><USER42> Actually, I just remembered it's the 3-finger drag that's well hidden inside accessibility. Mea culpa.

<comment><USER44> Ah yes the three-finger drag is still hidden away in accessibility. It is one of the few options I enable there, such a great option I am kind of surprised it isn't the default as once you use it it becomes so natural.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I could not see the sponsor button on the linked github project. Has it been removed?

</comment><comment><USER47> the hug of death says it all: we wish!!!

</comment><comment><USER48> >so you aren't seeing this.

I beg to differ, Bill.</comment>


Overworked? Good habits, not holidays, are the answer - <AUTHOR> http://theconversation.com/overworked-good-habits-not-holidays-are-the-answer-17744 <comment><USER2> Overworked?

Everyone is overworked. We live in a post scarcity industrial world, or very very close to it, and bad actors have gobbled up the spoils of the huge gains in productivity in the last 50 years.

How much of the entire economy is predicated on grey money? How much of _your_ time is indirectly consumed by this leviathan?

The more I think about it, the more i want to opt out of the entire fucking thing.

<comment><USER3> I really hope you're talking about taxes. That's where half of my salary is going to, not to some mythical "evil rich", but to pay for beurocracy and welfare programs.

<comment><USER4> My taxes are inflated so rich can pay a lower percentage than I do or even just skim off the government. Beyond that, my Rent and healthcare costs are ridiculously inflated, but you can find a lot of padding in other areas.

FYI even just at the federal level things are effed up. 33.9% of taxes collected are payroll taxes, but social security caps at ~120k. Hint it's just a tax, you can receive benifits without ever working and millions on disability are simply pulled off welfare rolls.

<comment><USER5> Top 1% of income earners pay 50% of all federal income taxes collected.

What would you consider a "fair" share of the top 1%'s wealth?

<comment><USER6> Volume and proportion are not the same thing. 50% of net is very easy when you have >10% of all wealth. No super rich individuals are taxed at 50% either of their net income either (if they are they are doing their taxes themselves and their lawyer is a fool), it is more common for ultra high wealth individuals to pay less than 10% of their net earnings.

<comment><USER5> I see your point, but don't forget that almost 50% of Americans don't pay any federal tax at all.[1] In fact some of them get EITC, so they are getting _free_ money from the government on top of keeping all of their salary.

So my question still stands, what would be a fair breakdown of tax burden? Top 1% pay 100% of all income taxes? 90%?

I'm not trying to start an argument, I'm asking an honest question.

Unless we know what "fair" looks like, we don't know what needs to change.

[1][http://dailycaller.com/2015/10/07/in-2015-45-percent-of- amer...](http://dailycaller.com/2015/10/07/in-2015-45-percent-of-americans- will-pay-no-federal-income-taxes/)

<comment><USER7> Asking the question what should the 'top 1%' pay is (in my opinion) the wrong question.

A better start (for me) is to ask what % of tax the people with the (for example) top 50% of income, or top 50% of wealth, should pay.

If the top 1% has (for example) 90% of the income, then only paying 50% of the tax might be considered unfair.

<comment><USER5> _If the top 1% has (for example) 90% of the income, then only paying 50% of the tax might be considered unfair._

The only number I could find is that the top 1% earns 22% of all AGI (adjusted gross income). This is income after all deductions, etc; the amount of income the tax rate is applied to.[1]

I'd be interested to see how much of all income is earned by the top 1%.

[1][http://taxfoundation.org/article/summary-latest-federal- inco...](http://taxfoundation.org/article/summary-latest-federal-income-tax- data-0)

<comment><USER4> AGI is a lie.

EX: Calculate bill gates lifetime wealth and lifetime AGI. Hint, that 30 billion he donated never counted as AGI.

<comment><USER5> AGI is not a lie, it's Adjusted Gross Income, that is the income you actually pay tax on.

It's not like it's some super secret formula that no one knows how to calculate.

<comment><USER4> Income is income, Adjustment is where the lie comes from.

Sure, you can pretend it's meaningful number, but ex: charitable donations are not deductible from payroll taxes so they are clearly not going to reduce income. Or for a more obvious example, donate 1 million in appreciated and you get to deduct the full 1 million from income. (see if you can spot the problem with that.)

PS: Hypothetically, if they said AGI was income - 95% of income over 10 million per year would you still use it? After all that's just an adjustment.

<comment><USER5> I have no idea why you are calling it a lie. The AGI is clearly "adjusted" and the formula is public.

This might be more interesting...

In 2011, households in the top, middle, and bottom quintiles received 52, 14, and 5 percent of the nation's before-tax income, respectively; the shares of federal taxes paid by those households were 69, 9, and 1 percent.[1]

So the top quintile earns 52% of the before-tax income and payers 69% of all taxes. The bottom quintile earns 5% of all before-tax income and pays 1% of the taxes.

[1][https://www.cbo.gov/publication/49440](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/49440)

<comment><USER4> Again with the biased (and federal only) numbers.

 _Market income consists of labor income, business income, capital gains (profits realized from the sale of assets), capital income excluding capita l gains, income received in retirement for past services, and other sources of income._

That 30 billion Gates donated would could for 0 on that scale making it BS. Use of a company jet for 1 year, 0.

PS: Of course it's also pretending the top 0.01% is the same as the top 1%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some are missing the point, most of the work we as software developers does not need long hours but deep focus. The best of the best are able to have 4 hours worth of deep focus, and we are lucky to get an hour or two of it. That would be huge. So the good habits that help us with focus and emphasizes on recovery like walking in the woods (our natural habitat), meditation etc. Its not the time, the hardware of brain is pretty much fixed, its the software, habits and mindset that make the difference.

<comment><USER9> On the same point, this is one of my primary frustrations as a sysadmin, because sometimes I need to be available lickety-split, but sometimes I need to be in deep focus mode, but my office environment isn't very conducive to deep focus mode... so sometimes I have to disappear myself to a hidden place just to get some thinking in.

Or, what happens more often, is that my productivity suffers and I end up staying late till everyone has gone away so I can actually not be interrupted.

Also, I really don't like shared open office spaces, and as a vet with ptsd, I really don't like having my back turned to the door, but management wants to be able to see everyones screen as they walk by.

While we are talking about overworked, the other issue that bugs me is disparity in expected work vs pay. To me, employment is a contract of goods and services. You pay me money to get a job done at a certain level. If you want me to be superman, you better pay me more like it! Instead, I continually hear the guys who have worked at a place more than 15 years say "You have to put in the work and effort and then hope they give you that raise, perk, etc...".

I don't think the baby-boomer generation realizes that there is no such thing as company loyalty in the big scheme of things anymore, especially in an at- will state. I'm tired of employees bending over backwards because they bring no power to the negotiating table on just about anything. I have a personal life and identity that is completely separate from work and I intend to keep it that way. If you pay me enough I would reconsider my work life balance, but I'm not going to do it for free and hope for it, it needs to be a deal struck in agreement between both parties and in contract form.

If there is one thing I could encourage we teach IT workers, it's the power of learning how contract law works, and all the stuff that comes with that. (eg: no you don't have to sign that, yes you can amend it, no that TOS is bad and unenforceable, that falls under the UCC, etc)

<comment><USER10> Any good suggests on where to learn how contract law works?

<comment><USER9> I would say start with some business law lecture series. I love the move from some of the best universities to put that sort of think online for free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So "instead of" taking an annual vacation, one should limit their work hours to 48 hrs a week, organize their time better, and take up a hobby like knitting.

I've got a better idea. Keep the vacation and cut work hours down to 40.

<comment><USER12> >I've got a better idea. Keep the vacation and cut work hours down to 40.

Pff, more like we should go to 35hrs with mandatory _paid_ overtime and also _increase_ vacation to 6 weeks.

And also demand reparations for all the stolen time. (Real pay hasn't increased since 1970.)

After that we can talk about taking it further.

<comment><USER13> Welcome to Norway except for the bit about reparations, and it's 37.5 hours.

<comment><USER14> Here in Austria its 38.5hrs, 5 weeks vacation, and in June and December employees receive a doubled monthly salary ("vacation money" and "christmas money").

<comment><USER15> If it's anything like Norwegian "christmas money", it's just a tax accounting rule where you pay for it the other 11 months in year.

<comment><USER13> Still a huge relief come December, as is holiday money in the summer. It probably works as a huge benefit to the economy too, although I have no evidence to back that assumption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > So if we need to work long hours, what can we do to recover?

 _Not_ work long hours? This is what unions are for (now, if we could just have one without dues/political contributions).

<comment><USER17> I've long been a proponent for hackers to "disrupt" labor by reinventing unions. (And call them guilds, because hey it's a name that works on multiple levels).

On the subject of dues being required to pay for full-time guild leaders as brought up in the sibling comments, that makes sense. But could it be supplemented by crowdfunding and alternate pay models, instead of mandating a set price? Tiered membership? Freemium guilds? Free 2 Protest?

On a less semi-satirical level about startups, hackers already voluntarily contribute willingly to non-profit endeavors, namely open source projects, and sometimes causes such as Wikipedia/Wikimedia, the Internet Archive, even tech- related lobbying like the EFF, etc. Surely some could put that same spirit of voluntarism towards supporting their labor class.

<comment><USER16> Maybe unions (which are large monolithic organizations covering many employers) are not what I'm looking for.

It just seems that more startup engineering teams should engage in collective action, because in many cases, if the entire team left, the company would be crippled.

<comment><USER18> The continued success of professional sports players unions supports this idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> >>> So instead of having large breaks every few months or once a year, it's better to incorporate simple recovery practices into your everyday routine.

Is this some Orwellian nightmare? Rather than have the workers do less work through holidays, let's have deal with the stress during their off hours. Don't take a 2-week holiday, just exercise more every day. Sitting at a desk all day isn't making you fat, it's that you're spending the hour between work and sleep with your kids rather than at the gym.

Some things matter more than productivity. Give your people the time off they need. Or how about just allowing employees to exercise and de-stress on company time.

<comment><USER20> Agreed, I'm kind of shocked people aren't seeing this for what it is.

Like the much ballyhooed open office plan, or the typical "we don't track vacation time" policy in modern startups, the real bottom line, so to speak, is always the bottom line.

It may very well be that employees who don't take vacations are more productive, overall than those who do. But by placing the burden of self- repair entirely on the employee, on their personal time and dime, the employer effectively washes its hands of the matter. If we take this article to its logical conclusion, burnout is your own fault, even in the face of pathological organizational structures, workloads, etc. That's an outward radiation of risk and responsibility par for the course in the new economy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If anyone's interested in the tl;dr bullet points:

      * At home have a sense of separation (psychological detachment) from work:
        * avoid work emails at home
        * incorporate a ritual like changing out of work clothes
        * get fully immersed (no negative work thoughts) in a sport, exercise, volunteering, musical instrument, or other creative pursuit
      * At work reduce nagging thoughts of "unfinished business"
        * plan and organize your work day / develop a clear picture of what you can realistically get done during the day
        * do not start a new task right before leaving
        * take rest breaks, and seek out natural environments if possible,
        * do not do errands on a break

</comment><comment><USER22> As someone who routinely has more work than they can finish in an 8-hour work day, the headline and article strike me as tone-deaf and victim blaming. It's simply not possible to solve the overwork problem entirely by 'good habits' alone. When you do a good job digging ditches, often your reward is a bigger shovel. When you do well, somehow more work finds it's way to your desk. I don't think you can always be finding ways to optimize when your workload is constantly expanding. Sometimes you have to get up early and stay up late to finish a project.

<comment><USER23> First, it's clearly talking about steady state, not emergencies. And if you're always in emergency mode these are even more important to know about in terms of the psychology...

Maybe you can't stop reading email or have time to go biking after work, but ten minute breaks to go outside scattered around the day? Creating a ritual to help your brain to switch from hard core work mode to resting mode?

It can literally just be a cup of tea when you get home. It doesn't have to be hours of time and energy, but the point that not doing so will cause you to become sick is certainly accurate.

But I think the point of the article was how to cope with overwork and reduce your stress, not to actually reduce your work load.

<comment><USER22> >it's clearly talking about steady state, not emergencies

I'm also clearly talking about steady state, not emergencies--that's what I meant by "routinely." Yes, taking breaks helps and so do rituals but it doesn't make the work go away or let you get home any sooner. My point is that some jobs always have a backlog or glut or work to catch up on. Usually this is because the company purposely under-staffs the position/department. However, I don't see these systemic issues as something the individual can change. They can merely cope or find a new job--neither of which provide an 'answer' as they headline implies. Healthy work habits are great, but it's no solution to simply being overworked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> These points are spot on, but I also believe these are common sense things everyone knows. The issue is that its extremely difficult to detach from the digital world and many jobs require you be available at any time. A a previous job (they named themselves after a fruit) I couldn't even think about turning my phone off. I was pretty much on call 24/7\. Companies are global, and there are always problems to deal with and any time of the day.

<comment><USER25> Yep, my company has the same tendencies. Some folks I work with have their phones configured for company email which I refuse to do. When I'm home, I'm home and it's the only time I have with my family. When they're all asleep and the wife is watching her netflix, I'll usually jump on the VPN but turn off email and IM so I can get real work done. Most of my days are sadly filled with meetings and email, the 30-60 minutes of extra work I occasionally do at home does wonders for my productivity.

<comment><USER26> While I understand your pov,why don't you flag to your boss if your feel you are spending too long on meetings and emails and find time during your actual working day to do that work. I'm a family man too and I've made a decision that any evening work except emergencies will be stuff I enjoy such as researching a new technology experimenting in code watching tech videos or reading tutorials not corporate "work"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I have an idea. What if some startups began incorporating hiking and/or climbing (easy/moderate skill level) into their process ? You can find trailheads that have wifi at various waypoints. The team could plan challenges and expeditions that span multiple days, but instead of hiking all day like the pros they set a less grueling pace and hack more. The company could purchase gear, and could rent private wifi-shelters along the way that are stocked with modern amenities, tiki torches, rest rooms, ready-to-go-bonfire pit, gormet catered cuisine, and more. This way there really is a comfy environment to spend time resting and working (perhaps for more than one day) at each major waypoint. There could be pre-planned short nature hikes around the waypoint, and the team could engage a nature conservationist or an expert on the local geography.

I imagine that this kind of expedition planning could even be provisioned somehow as a service, so there might be a startup idea in there somewhere :)

I'm imagining a good way to ease into it might be first climbing the flatirons in Boulder or Stone Mountain in Atlanta.

</comment><comment> q-base From reading the comments a lot of people take a really negative spin on this for some reason. I only see it as trying to explain that if you rely on vacations alone then you could still be overworked and stressed. They only dim the symptom but does not cure the disease. If you are overworked and stressed a vacation might help in the short run but if you go back into the same routines, then of course you'll end back where you were before taking the vacation.

What they do advise instead is working on the disease itself and try to manage your day-to-day better instead of ONLY relying on annual holidays. They aren't saying you shouldn't take holidays only that they won't cure all your stress permanently.

I think this is good advice. Not groundbreaking or new knowledge, but still - good advice!

</comment><comment><USER28> I always thought there was something wrong with me because I don't feel "recharged" after a vacation. Of course, sometimes a break is desperately needed, but there always seems to be a period of readjustment where work was harder than before I left.

</comment><comment><USER29> You might get better organized daily and find a good hobby but vacations are important, especially if you spend it with some traveling. A good hobby I recommend everyone that will help you totally tune out from your work is jiu jitsu.

<comment><USER30> >A good hobby I recommend everyone that will help you totally tune out from your work is jiu jitsu

Yes! If people only knew the type of escape that was possible, both mental and physical. American blackbelt Chris Haueter once recalled how he would eagerly drive hours to the gym in his shitty car, from his shitty job and shitty relationship, because he knew it would all roll off him when he hit the mat.

<comment><USER29> Learning to escape is part of the mental chess, what jiu jitsu is. Many people bring a bunch of sacrifices for the love the gentle art. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Regardless of how much time you you spend at work I think having a couple of weeks in a year for yourself to explore the world or be it just mindlessly staring at the sea waves is a reality check and time when you can evaluate whatever you are doing. It is also a good benchmark - if your current job doesn't allow you to do that then - is this a good job? Or you can't really afford to go at the other side of the world, then - am I being paid right? Go figure...

<comment><USER32> Vacations also can bring interest in your work back. I used to do freelancing and take off at least 8 weeks a year. When I worked I was really interested in my work and put a lot of effort in. Now I work in a corporation with only 3 weeks vacation and it's just one big long never-ending drag of the same thing again and again. The quality and creativity has gone down a lot. I just don't care that much anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> forgive me for saying this but the title sounds like an employer (or someone paid by industry) feeling bad about that employees are complaining they get no holidays. corporate ethics is the answer. not a blog article.</comment>


Ask HN: Advice on starting an outsourcing webdev company - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone,
I moved to Poland in October of last year, and thought that after a couple of months of settling in, I'd be fine getting a job locally. That's proved to be an issue: I've 12 years of development experience, but don't have a university degree, and most importantly my Polish is at a basic level (although I'm taking lessons to improve that). Viewing things through an employer's eyes, I'm not surprised that I haven't had a single callback.
I've been earning a modest income via my first experience of freelancing. I've started this via sites like RentACoder, and have gained a lot of follow-up work from my clients.
About once every couple of months I have /way/ more work than I can deal with, and this makes me think about hiring computer studies students locally. I've investigated local rates, and I could hire a single student for around $1,000 a month, taxes etc., included.
I would aim to take a mentoring role, specifying how a given project (or subset of a project) should be coded and what should be avoided. I would also expect a high turnover of staff once every year or so, although I'd be delighted if anyone wanted to stay on longer.
Is this is a viable business idea? What advice do you have for me going forwards? My main concern is regularly gaining enough work to keep paying the bills and earning a profit. Whilst I haven't struggled as a freelancer, this is my main paranoia.
Thanks for any input you can give me, Tom. <comment><USER2> Hi Tom,

Yes, I think its a viable business model. But I worry you're jumping the gun a bit bringing someone on fulltime.

In general, I think a good progression for freelancers looking to expand capacity is this:

1) timeshift to increase your own capacity (can you schedule customers, or is it always now-or-never?)

2) hire a contractor

3) hire an employee

If you can increase your own capacity, do that first. If you have to bring someone on, do it on a contract basis to limit risk. Eventually it might make sense to convert that contractor to an employee, or bring someone else on full time.

I would also put up a website and focus on getting business through your own brand, outside of RentACoder. RAC is great, but its never good to be dependent on one revenue source.

Best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> You left out a few things that might be helpful:

1) What kind of work are you doing? Web sites? Mobile Apps?

2) What does that $1000 get you? Full time or part time, and how much of that work is completely independent?

Also, if you ask me, having too much work is a good problem. Still a problem, but frankly too much work is better than not enough. That said, you're leaving money on the table, so if you think that hiring someone for $1000 month will get you more than that, it's probably not a bad idea. Being a CS student myself, I'd say an extra $1000 a month is probably worth being intermittently employed if you're worried about occasionally not having work, but thats my personal opinion.

</comment><comment><USER4> What kind of jobs are you looking at? Is there any businesses you can find where the Polish owners speak English and are looking to expand their business overseas to English-speaking audiences and the fact that you're an English speaking native would be perfect for customer support, e-mail and so on?</comment>


Show HN: Snipjournal – A Text Message Journal - <AUTHOR> https://www.snipjournal.com

<comment><USER2> I liked the idea, but personally, 6$ looks like a lot of money.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Which took longer to develop, the app or the sales site?</comment>


Ask HN: Any books/resources on logging and monitoring? - <AUTHOR> I've been running a few distributed web services, but except for a few rudimentary nginx access logs, I have no idea how they're functioning.
I have the following goals and questions regarding implementing a logging & monitoring system to get better insights of them:
- What are the best practices to instrument source code to collect general logs and exceptions? - How to determine if the services and databases are performing efficiently? More specifically, what I can do to discover if they are doing unnecessary work or there are any hotspots? - Are the servers being run on overloaded? If so, what are overloading them? - How do I know if some one is trying to break into the servers? - How can I be alerted whenever a bad thing previously mentioned happens?
And then there is the business logic side of things. like how many users are online, how many transactions are currently being processed, etc. I don't suppose directly querying the production database is a good idea.
My own research online surfaced a great deals of tools like prometheus, ELK stack, fluentd, Nagios, bugsnag, New Relic, Datadog, etc, which overwhelmed me, and I reckon without a good understanding of logging and monitoring in general, I'm likely to pick the wrong tools.
This feels like a really big topic. Any books/resources that have a comprehensive introduction? <comment> sid- [https://dzone.com/articles/distributed-tracing-with- zipkin-a...](https://dzone.com/articles/distributed-tracing-with-zipkin-and- elk) [https://github.com/jaegertracing/jaeger'](https://github.com/jaegertracing/jaeger') A quick search yielded these interesting projects.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, but as mentioned in the post, without a good understanding it's really difficult to choose tools.

I'm looking for materials that put these tools into context & perspective so we can make a more informed judgement call.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> The Google SRE book (online here: [https://landing.google.com/sre/sre- book/toc/index.html](https://landing.google.com/sre/sre-book/toc/index.html)) might be useful. Specifically chapters 6 and 10 on monitoring and alerting.

<comment><AUTHOR> This seems like a pretty comprehensive book. Will check out. Thanks.</comment></comment>


The finest machine: qphysics, materials science, and the microprocessor - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nickblack/the-finest-machine

<comment><AUTHOR> With preliminary contents found here: <http://dank.qemfd.net/the-finest- machine.pdf>

More info in the description.</comment>


Twitter refused to join PRISM - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22824379

<comment><USER2> Twitter _refused_ PRISM, yet Facebook and Google had never heard of it? Doesn't sound very plausible.

I'm actually assuming this is just bad reporting; someone's source saying "refused" instead of "never heard of."

Zuck's response sounded pretty genuine in terms of his knowledge (or lack thereof) of PRISM. He would have zero incentive to say what he said if he _did_ know something.

<comment><USER3> This is the BBC; they are usually very careful about what they print.

Having said that, it does seem odd. They present a (if true) very newsworthy note about Twitter in a two-liner at the bottom of the article.

Would be good to hear more on this.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The key takeaways:

1) There's at least one tech company that was approached about joining Prism. Presumably similar approaches were made to other companies.

2) The participation was at least in this case voluntary

3) Without that participation Prism was unable to access Twitter data (based upon the slides).

<comment><USER4> 4) Twitter has no non-public data stored of any significance (or such a small amount that it is easy to get a dump once and then just delta from taps) and the realtime data is coming from Gnip or an optical tap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Meanwhile, the BBC has learned that Twitter was invited to join the Prism programme last year, but rejected the approach from US authorities."

According to the NYTimes article, Twitter chose not to build extra systems to help the NSA collect data more easily for FISA requests. Obviously we need to be careful here, but if that's the wording that was used, PRISM could be just that voluntary system to give easier access to NSA requested data.

<comment><USER6> "Obviously we need to be careful here, but if that's the wording that was used, PRISM could be just that voluntary system to give easier access to NSA requested data."

Isn't that exactly what the leaked PowerPoints and original Washington Post article suggested? They had time-line when companies joined. And specific Special Source Operations seal for the operation and companies.

>The technology companies, whose cooperation is essential to PRISM operations, include most of the dominant global players of Silicon Valley, according to the document. They are listed on a roster that bears their logos in order of entry into the program: "Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple." PalTalk, although much smaller, has hosted traffic of substantial intelligence interest during the Arab Spring and in the ongoing Syrian civil war.

>PRISM is an heir, in one sense, to a history of intelligence alliances with as many as 100 trusted U.S. companies since the 1970s. The NSA calls these Special Source Operations, and PRISM falls under that rubric.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us- intelligence...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence- mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret- program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story_1.html)

<comment><USER5> The Guardian leak claimed direct access, which is the wording being used in denials also. It doesn't seem like a system for easier FISA requests, in the form suggested, would qualify as direct access. I said we should be careful, because if there really was direct access under PRISM this wouldn't fit.

Also interesting is that Twitter claim to have been approached about "PRISM" while all the other companies claim not to have known about that program. Would the NSA approach a company using the operation's actual codename? I suspect Twitter are jumping on the good PR after not appearing on the slides.

<comment><USER6> Considering that PRISM is secret government intelligence operation, it should be clear that those who participate can't reveal that they are part of it. I mean, if for example Google is participating, would anybody expect Larry Page just admit it: "Damn. You caught us."

<comment><USER5> Right, and if Twitter were approached would they be allowed to go tell the press about it? I'm finding it hard to believe they were the same program.

<comment><USER6> You can't forbid people or companies from revealing contact attempts if they have not signed any NDA's.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Questioning of Equifax CEO by Congress - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1100459600824815617 <comment><USER2> Great Job congresswoman! This is a good start, but more has to be done. Equifax and the others should not exist imho. Where is the accountability? These entities have to much power and too much data on us.</comment>


Wolfram Alpha: Our First Impressions - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/wolframalpha_our_first_impressions.php

<comment><USER2> On that note, any other HNers planning to be at the demo in Cambridge on Tuesday? <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2009/04/wolfram>

It seems like it's worth going to - and it's directly related to something I'm doing at work (inference over topic maps).

<comment><USER3> I'd like to, but it's full! I'll be watching the webcast ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wolfram Alpha doesn't compete with Google, it competes with Wikipedia.

I expect students who use and quote Alpha as their source of information won't get the same scorn than the ones who quote Wikipedia.

It will be an interesting battle: crowdsourcing vs. proof.

<comment><USER5> And perhaps Freebase: <http://www.freebase.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> this sounds like something that spans the (rather wide) gap between google and aws + public data sets. I wonder how far you can go in terms of combining data/hacking on it?

For example they mention real-time financial data. So can I write something that would connect online discussion/activity to stock movements?

A platform for doing large scale, real-time data analysis in a rich descriptive language without doing any of the dirty work would be quite something.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is really interesting on many fronts... Google queries are trivial and dumb - they take virtually no CPU power to execute (on a per-query basis) in the grand scheme of things. But I'm trying to imagine how Wolfram Alpha will scale, and I'm not really seeing it. You can't precache results, queries require the aggregation and manipulation of huge data streams, and so on and so forth.

Wolfram Alpha is going to be _expensive_ to keep up. It's good to see they've already thought of this (with their Pro offerings), but the thought of the sort of power this thing would consume if it becomes popular en masse makes me shudder.

</comment><comment><USER8> Expect bugs and funny search/result pairs to show up in blogs soon. But this is a great contribution to humanity.

</comment><comment><USER9> Didn't knew that something like that could be coded in Mathematica.

<comment><USER10> Indeed, Wolfram himself once solved a Google puzzle (to encourage job applicants) using Mathematica. It was, what's the pattern here, and what's the next row?

1 11 21 1211 111221 312211

<comment><USER11> Google is smart enough for this:

[http://www.google.com/search?q=1%2011%2021%201211%20111221%2...](http://www.google.com/search?q=1%2011%2021%201211%20111221%20312211)

<comment><USER12> But why Google when you can OEIS? <http://www.research.att.com/~njas/sequences/>

<comment><USER10> This is an awesome resource.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> WOW, this made my day... this is AWESOME. Can't wait to try it out!!! I'll def be watching the webcast.

</comment><comment><USER14> I really hope this works good!

</comment><comment><USER15> The first question I'll ask WA is:

"What is the answer to life, the universe and everything"

Don't disappoint me...

<comment><USER16> "Can entropy ever be reversed?"

<comment><USER16> I'm actually going to be really disappointed if Alpha doesn't have the right answer to this.</comment></comment></comment>


Google's Environmental Report - <AUTHOR> https://environment.google/ <comment><USER2> there's some pretty shady reporting on the summary page: [https://environment.google/projects/environmental- report-201...](https://environment.google/projects/environmental-report-2016/)

9.2M sqft LEED certified - they display percentages for most stats, but only an absolute for this one? going to make me dig to find their total office square footage to find out what this means?

Then the next stat, 31% LEED Platinum. oh good, a percentage. except it's not, it's a _percentage of their LEED certified buildings_.

or "100% landfill diversion, in 6 of our data centres". surely google has more than 6 data centres, but let's only look at the environmental stats of the ones that are doing a good job. [The stat is 84% across all their datacentres.]

"100% renewable energy". sounds good, except oh no, it's "we will achieve". What's the percentage right now? [it was 44% in 2015, the last year they report.]

[edit - skimmed the report, added in some numbers to my comment] The report itself appears to be mostly the same marketing fluff, until you get down to the "environmental data" appendix on page 66, which actually looks like a pretty solid report of their environmental footprint. And it looks like they're doing a decent job, so i'm not sure why the real numbers are buried so deeply.

<comment><USER3> More importantly, LEED is bullshit.

LEED is a private entity that you pay to get LEED certification based on your _planned_ designs. Once you have certification, you could build literally anything else. If you buy a LEED certified building, you could convert it to be heated and powered by burning tires and endangered animals- still LEED Certified.

There is no decertification process, because that would mean spending money to reduce the number of buildings with the very-public name on it. Why would LEED ever want that?

<comment><USER4> Oh my goodness. I work in the architecture industry at a firm that does a great number of LEED projects, and there is not a shred of truth in this claim.

<comment><USER2> LEED's own website seems to say it's true: [http://www.usgbc.org/help/will-my- project-be-decertified-if-...](http://www.usgbc.org/help/will-my-project-be- decertified-if-it-performs-worse-projected-my-certification-level)

<comment><USER4> Yes, it's true there's no LEED "decertification" process, but everything else the parent comment claimed or implied is false, including the implication here that "LEED decertificaiton" is a thing that's needed due to any sort of prevalent LEED fraud.

<comment><USER5> Let's fact check the post:

LEED is a private entity... true

that you pay to get LEED certification... true

based on your planned designs... true

Once you have certification, you could build literally anything else... true

If you buy a LEED certified building, you could convert it to be heated and powered by burning tires and endangered animals- still LEED Certified... speculative

There is no decertification process,... true

because that would mean spending money to reduce the number of buildings with the very-public name on it.... speculative

<comment><USER3> The parent is right to call me out, I'm a bit of a dickhead when I get onto topics like this. And you're also right in that some of my claims are speculative.

I don't think anyone has tried the 'burning tires and endangered animals' move quite yet. I should give it a try!

<comment><USER2> I look forward to your follow-up post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Big respect for Google!

Creating that site is a really cool move, and it will encourage other people to do the same.

I especially like the fact that they'll mount sensors for air quality on Street View cars. And the fact that they're using almost 100% renewable energy.

This is what I call leading by example.

<comment><USER7> > I especially like the fact that they'll mount sensors for air quality on > Street View cars

There was a really good article on Ars about using this to detect natural gas leaks just a couple weeks ago:

[https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/04/natural-gas-is- leaki...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/04/natural-gas-is-leaking-from- city-pipes-but-spotting-leaks-is-getting-easier/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is a great need to hurry up with enthusing and glamorising the most sustainable human consumables and activities and interests, by the truly effective means of our Age (mass commercial and public advertising) This also means stigmatising and depreciating many kinds of commerce and spending which have to date been marketed and defended as rightful livelihoods.

It is past time to be just tending our own very fine gardens. We need to make it difficult for each other to pollute and mis-consume, like we did with smoking.

<comment><USER9> I agree. As soon as someone shares a number, such as with diversity, it now opens up the questions of why others yet do not or will not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The office component is such b.s. that it throws the rest of the report into doubt. While solar panels and shuttles are small gestures in the right direction, Google continues to make the wrong large decisions by putting their offices in the middle of nowhere, miles from any real place, surrounded by acres of parking. The sustainable thing would be to put their buildings in cities and adjacent to mass transit so employees can walk and ride to work from their nearby homes.

<comment><USER11> Disclaimer: I work at Google but the following comments are just based on personal observation and public information.

I think you're talking about the Mountain View campus and I agree it seems superficially to be an example of what you're talking about... I imagine with the benefit of hindsight and with modern (post 2000s :) sensibilities in mind both Google and Facebook would have tilted more heavily towards building up their SF presences back when that would have still been plausible/affordable.

However the parking restrictions are actually enforced by municipal regulation; I believe Google and many other companies (including my previous employer, VMware) would prefer to build campuses with much less parking but they are required to have a certain ratio of parking spaces to employees due to these antiquated regulations.

Meanwhile the other Google campuses are in fact located in large cities, though I believe transit access (Seattle?) is still an issue. One of the main reasons I choose to live in New York and work at the New York office is because I am a huge fan of the set up here where the office is centrally located and highly transit accessible.

<comment><USER12> I think it's more that the fact of having a giant, expensive separate campus is itself not a particularly progressive situation, regulations aside. Just a few common sense examples of the problems with this approach: massive, custom- built complexes are very hard to re-use if and when search advertising revenue declines; tax revenues go to random places that don't need them, instead of cities that could use rich companies headquartered there to better support public services; many employees still have to do business in big cities, so there is a massive amount of unnecessary travel to and from cities and international airports; etc. The issue is "campuses" as much as it has anything specific to do with parking regulations, which I assume all of these companies knew about when they made the decision to build the campuses.

<comment><USER11> Yep, I agree with you to an extent but I was also using "campuses" and "offices" interchangeably.

The Google New York offices follow exactly the model that you are suggesting.

<comment><USER12> Agreed! Here's hoping they cancel the Mountainview expansion and focus on replicating the New York approach.

<comment><USER13> Where would you locate an office for 20,000 people in Northern CA in a city? SF? You'd make housing in the city much worse, and you'd be hard pressed to find the land or permits for it.

<comment><USER10> Salesforce somehow manages to house 7000 of their employees in San Francisco, and Wells Fargo somehow seats 8000 of theirs. Nobody is suggesting that Google should move all of their people to SF, but I am suggesting they should consolidate into larger offices in the centers of principal cities: San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland.

<comment><USER14> And most importantly, outside the Bay Area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How does a data center run fully renewable, do they have huge battery installations or is it one of those "credits" things where, their consumption is compensated by production equal amount of solar and wind contracts they signed up to?

<comment><USER16> [https://environment.google/projects/announcement-100/](https://environment.google/projects/announcement-100/)

> We were one of the first corporations to create large-scale, long-term > contracts to buy renewable energy directly; we signed our first agreement to > purchase all the electricity from a 114-megawatt wind farm in Iowa, in 2010. > Today, we are the world's largest corporate buyer of renewable power, with > commitments reaching 2.6 gigawatts (2,600 megawatts) of wind and solar > energy.

<comment><USER17> Still don't get how that works. A 114MW wind farm almost never produces 114MW. In fact, it's output is fairly unpredictable, and can swing from 10MW to 90MW and back to 20MW over the course of 30-40 minutes.

When a company that requires high levels of constant power "buys" that power, what are they buying, exactly? Because they're still just as reliant on nuclear/coal/natural gas as they were before they bought that power. Are they just signing up to pay a higher rate for those 114MW of power they get from the grid?

<comment><USER18> They are guaranteeing for that producer their power is purchased at x$/whatever for 20 years. Massively lowers the risk profile for the wind farm, and lets them focus on potentially expanding. Google is basically acting as a subsidizer of renewable energy here. So while yes they rely on the grid, they're a market force for increasing the percent of the power produced on the grid to be renewable.

Every MW produced by the renewable is a MW not needed to be produced by natural gas/coal

<comment><USER17> I guess that makes more sense. It's more an act of corporate goodwill on their part, helping to build a certain level of renewable energy.

<comment><USER19> Partly. But it's also an act of risk hedging. By locking in prices for 20 years, the buyer is insulated from rising prices and the generator is insulated from falling prices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The contrast of the text of those articles is absolutely abysmal.

</comment><comment><USER21> Does the fact that they released this on WWDC day, a high traffic tech news day, suggest there may be something in here that they're hoping gets overlooked?

<comment><USER22> They are linking to it directly from the www.google.com homepage, complete with a colorful custom Google animation. If they're trying to bury this report, they're doing a very bad job of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hey everyone!

I'm a developer at Aclima. We are working with Google on the mobile sensing tech talked about here: [https://environment.google/projects/airview/](https://environment.google/projects/airview/)

Honestly I'm really excited about it, but of course I'm just a tiny bit biased :)

If anyone has any questions I would love to do the best I can to answer them. Cheers!

</comment><comment><USER24> Is Google the only large company to own its own TLD?

<comment><USER25> No, see [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top- level_d...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top- level_domains#Brand_top-level_domains) for many more examples (.amex, .bmw, .canon, ...)

Google is certainly making more public of use their TLD than many of those other brands, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> How did Google get a TLD? I read [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/26/google_turns_on_goo...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/26/google_turns_on_google_internet_extension/) Can anyone do this with enough $?

<comment><USER27> Yeah, pretty much. There was an application process to go through as well, but if it's your trademark it's pretty much yours. (Though who knows when the next round of application opens..)

I believe we own our TLD as well, but don't use it, yet - it's for brand protection. If you have a look at my comment history and deduce my employer, you might understand why with our name...

<comment><USER28> I wonder why you wanted interested commenters to look through your history. You thought you would be viewed as shilling for BBC?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> When they talk about refurbished components, are they really refurbished or just "overstock" sold as refurbished? It just seems odd that there would be that many refurbished components... or maybe they don't do that many server upgrades and just replace the whole things.

</comment><comment><USER30> There's something funny about them reporting market-based emissions in the appendix. Mostly, that they're reporting them all the way back to 2011 when this was only approved by 2015. It's not really a big deal, but it's a bit unusual.

You can read a bit about the market-based scope 2 method here:

[http://www.wri.org/blog/2015/01/scope-2-changing-way- compani...](http://www.wri.org/blog/2015/01/scope-2-changing-way-companies- think-about-electricity-emissions)

Let me explain a bit: market-based emissions are electricity power grid emissions computed the market-based method. The method measures your emissions differently depending on whether or not you bought a green instrument. Roughly speaking, green instruments are money you pay the power company that they will invest into green sources of energy, like wind and solar.

Under the market-based method, if you bought a green instrument, you can then report lower emissions, as if all of your electricity only came from the green energy you purchased. Conversely, if an instrument was available for purchase but you didn't buy one, your emissions will look like they all came from non- green sources of energy, like coal (these are called residual emissions). Of course, this is all a bit of an accounting lie: when you use the power grid, you can't tell the power company to not send you electricity from their coal power plant. Therefore, you also have to report your location-based emissions, which is the "normal" reporting that has been used in all previous years and is still being used. Roughly speaking, the location-based method is, take the total emissions of the entire power grid you're using, and multiply that by your fractional of the power usage of the grid over all other customers. Your emissions are then computed as your proportion of all green and non-green emissions that the entire power grid produces.

The market-based method is supposed to incentivise companies to buy green instruments because they can then report lower emissions under one method. The purchase of green instruments in turn is supposed to incentivise power companies to invest in green energy. The whole thing, however, is kind of based on an accounting "trick". This is why the greenhouse gas analysts at my job aren't huge fans of the market-based method.

WRI was pressured by many industry leaders to adopt the market-based method as part of the reporting protocol. If Google is reporting market-based emissions all the way back to 2011, way before it was approved last year, I wouldn't be surprised if they were one of the companies that lobbied WRI to include the market-based method. They are also mentioned as a motivating example in that link above.

</comment><comment><USER31> Google has their own TLD? Not sure how I feel about that. Then again, we do have a myriad of others.

<comment><USER32> I'm the lead engineer of the Google Registry, which runs .google as well as the other dozens of TLDs that we run. Feel free to ask any questions. Our site is [https://www.registry.google/](https://www.registry.google/) and our code is released as Free/Open Source Software at [https://nomulus.foo](https://nomulus.foo) (another one of our TLDs).

<comment><USER33> So, why?

Companies shouldn't have ownership of TLDs, so why did you register so many TLDs that have nothing to do with Google, and which you don't allow to be used freely? Profits?

This is disgusting. The fact that corporations can control TLDs in the first place is disgusting, and I'd by far prefer if every TLD would have to be controlled by cooperatives (like denic) or other kinds of nonprofits, completely independent of everything else.

Especially in the current situation, where Google is cybersquatting on entire TLDs, just because they can. And while domains are frequently removed for squatting, nothing's done with TLDs. Open the TLD for everyone, and use it, or get rid of it. But the current situation is disgusting. (I fundamentally disagree with companies controlling any kind of infrastructure)

<comment><USER32> That's the way it's been since the earliest days of the World Wide Web. You can read the history of .com here [https://icannwiki.org/.com](https://icannwiki.org/.com) , but the TL;DR is that it was run by a private company as early as 1991, then acquired by Network Solutions in 1993, which was acquired by Verisign in 2000 who still run it to this day. .net has a similar history. I don't see any a priori reason why profit-driven companies should be excluded, and as you point out, there are plenty of non-profit registry operators to choose from (including Public Interest Registry, the non-profit that runs .org), if you care strongly about that.

denic is a ccTLD operator, whereas what we're discussing here are all gTLDs.

<comment><USER33> My issue is that there's corporations squatting on TLDs, which no normal person can afford.

Not only does this increase the advantages an established corporation can have over individuals or startups, it also ends up with Google literally domainsquatting entire TLDs just because they can.

And there's no registrar above them that could simply revoke their domains for squatting.

And de is as much a ccTLD as .io – it's not really the actual case anymore. DE is one of the largest domains overall, even counting gTLDs.

And we could simply solve this – use the power of democracy (aka, governments) to force TLD ownership to be entirely non-profit.

I don't want to see large corporations buy massive amounts of TLDs (as google has done) and then sit on them. In addition to the antitrust issues that can appear with this.

How should a startup ever be able to compete in a reasonable timeframe with Google if we allow these corporations to grow ever further, and gain ever more power?

<comment><USER32> I can't really comment on the rest of it, for obvious reasons, but this part is not accurate:

> And de is as much a ccTLD as .io – it's not really the actual case anymore.

.de is clearly still the ccTLD for Germany. It's not at all like the situation of .io, which is run by a British company as, effectively, a two-letter generic TLD that has nothing to do with the actual Indian Ocean territories. .de clearly has a lot to do with Germany, including being widely used there (but not anywhere else), and also being run by denic, a German company headquartered in Frankfurt. I was just in Frankfurt last week talking with a bunch of denic people, actually. They absolutely do consider it a country code TLD, proudly and unapologetically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Alphabet can move anything heavily polluting outside of Google and do their environmental press from Google.

<comment><USER2> Look at the appendix, they report three different "scopes" for emissions. yeah, they could move anything polluting to somewhere else in the alphabet umbrella, but it's still in-scope for reporting.

"Scope 1 emissions are direct emissions from sources we own or control, such as company vehicles or generators at Google's offices and data centers. Scope 2 emissions are indirect emissions from the production of electricity we purchase to run our operations. The location-based category reflects the average carbon intensity of the grids where our operations are located and thus where our energy consumption occurs. The market-based category incorporates our procurement choices, i.e., our renewable energy purchases via contractual mechanisms like PPAs. Scope 3 emissions are indirect emissions from other sources in our value chain, such as business travel or our suppliers"

<comment><USER30> By the way, the scopes are all part of the standard WRI greenhouse gas protocol for reporting emissions. You might be interested in how the market- based method works.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14489412](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14489412)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Finally catching up with Apple.

<comment><USER36> Besides the other comment, also worth staring at : [https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexepstein/2016/01/08/the- trut...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexepstein/2016/01/08/the-truth-about- apples-100-renewable-energy-usage/#4df63c2f189c)

<comment><USER37> Nothing in this silly post doesn't also apply to Google. Google datacenters are connected to the grid as well. It's not feasible for Apple stores in cities and shopping malls to be connected to solar or wind farms. It's still all renewable energy.

<comment><USER13> Google's datacenters are large, but they don't consume the resources needed to produce 1 billion smart phones.

<comment><USER35> Android does. Google can't claim credit for Android when it likes and disown it when there are unpleasant side effects.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Real Time Collaboration for Jupyter and beyond - <AUTHOR> https://jupyter-rtc.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ <comment><AUTHOR> The Jupyter development team is doing an excellent job gathering resources and thinking through the foundations for implementing Realtime Sync for computational notebooks, all very publicly and collaboratively...</comment>


Shebangs and busybox, and why it's impossible to write portable shell scripts - <AUTHOR> http://xn--rpa.cc/irl/shebang.html <comment><USER2> See also [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/33126309/why-do-usr- bin-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/33126309/why-do-usr-bin-env-var- val-command-gets-into-an-infinite-loop)</comment>


Buffett makes $3.7B profit from $5B investment in Goldman Sachs - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-18/buffett-generates-3-7-billion-from-goldman-investment-made-during-crisis.html <comment><USER2> I loved reading about that deal. Buffett handled it with aplomb and secured terms which warmed me to the cockles of my blackened capitalist heart. (It was very close to being a five billion dollar juice loan, because Buffett was standing on a large stack of actual money when the private equity markets were in barely restrained terror, and the BATNA to taking his money was probably bankruptcy or nationalization.)

Edit to add: The "juice loan" remark is in reference to the guaranteed 10% yield _in perpetuity_ on those shares, which isn't actually a mafia interest rate but is such a worse deal than large megacorps usually pay for capital that it it had been done to a natural person I would hope a court would rule it unconscionable. At the level of megacorps though, shucks, you pays your money and you takes your chances.

<comment><USER3> At the time for example the UK government was taking lots of 12% preferred bonds/shares in the UK banks. So GS probably saw ready money and ~ 2% better terms from Buffet than other sufficiently large lenders.

[http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/30-second- guides/article.html?i...](http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/30-second- guides/article.html?in_article_id=455609&in_page_id=53611)

Barclays also took lots of foreign investment, which I think they too have repaid.

<comment><USER4> Barclays took a lot of money from Saudi. If memory serves the terms were in many ways worse than the UK government were offering but they were keen (potentially rightly so in hindsight) to avoid the political / PR entanglements of being in debt to a government which was under pressure from a banker hating electorate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've read two books recently that shed light on Buffet's investment strategy - "Seeking Wisdom," which quotes a lot of the principles Buffet and his partner Munger use, and "The Intelligent Investor" which deals primarily with assessing fundamental investment values and making intelligent investments instead of knee-jerk reactions to booms and busts. Buffet has said "The Intelligent Investor" is his pick for best book ever written on investing.

They're both quite good. Seeking Wisdom is more about mental models and getting better heuristics for quick decisionmaking and assessment of complicated things. Derek Sivers's notes on it are good:

<http://sivers.org/book/SeekingWisdom>

I don't know a great summary of Intelligent Investor to link to, but it's definitely recommended - it's a finance book so not beach reading, but it's light and casual enough and not too academic. It's as about as readable as you can get for a serious book on finance.

<comment><USER6> I'm reading Seeking Wisdom now, and loving it.. I'm so blown by the fact that awesome stuff like these are often hidden deep in the web and not so obvious even for a regular reader.

<comment><USER7> I'd love to get a copy, but Amazon is seemingly out of stock (only new copies at $30). Where did you get your copy?

EDIT: answered my own question, here's the publisher's order form: <https://www.poorcharliesalmanack.com/orderform_v4.php>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it's easy to forget what the atmosphere was like when Buffett made the deal. Even the saner news outlets were entertaining some of the the financial armageddon scenarios.. and on HN, Buffett's attitude was mostly met with cynicism or disbelief: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=335452>

As always, life and business went on and the brave made a profit. Unlike me who didn't invest during the last dip. D'oh.

<comment><USER9> "As always, life and business went on and the brave made a profit."

I agree with you, but we mustn't forget that this is partly survivor bias, too... Much money was lost on bets that turned out wrong. I remember being glued to the news for hours in autumn 2008, and doing the maths over lunch with my colleagues on how much I would've made on a local bank's stocks had I actually bought the evening before, like I said I was going to (didn't have the balls in the end :) ). Either way that was on a Friday, and on Monday they were nationalized and many people lost their life's savings... I would've been really screwed had I gone through with it.

<comment><USER10> Too true. I remember AMD being at $1.80 at the bottom of the trough, and thinking to myself "What a bargain!" Of course, that was the day that Lehman had collapsed and who knew what else was going to go down with it, so I held off. It went up to over $10 at one point since, and today it's around $8.50. Would've made a killing off it :-/

Still, hindsight is 20/20... and for every winner there are scores of others who were severely burned by taking the risk. I don't regret not going for it much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This was more than just Buffet's good timing in making an investment. He was also renting out his reputation. Goldman Sachs's future was in question, so the vote of confidence from Warren Buffett, the so-called Oracle of Omaha, was very valuable for them. Thus, the deal was structured to be very lucrative for Buffett. No comparable investment opportunity was available to the public at the time.

Warren Buffett is very good at what he does, but he also has opportunities which just aren't available to the general public.

<comment><USER12> He has also long argued that investors with much money have far more attractive investing opportunities. If you're controlling tens or hundreds of billions, small caps don't even move the needle on your portfolio if you buy the whole company! At Berkshire's size high growth investments are very hard to come by. The almost have to be something exceptional like this.

<comment><USER13> Well, you can invest in Berkshire Hathaway stock and be sure that, unlike the evil idiots at Goldman Sacks, Buffet will be managing your money in your long term benefit, and putting it in those far more attractive investing opportunities in your behalf.

<comment><USER14> Last I heard, BRK.A trades at a pretty hefty premium above the market value of its assets (not something you normally want to see in a holding company), and nobody knows whether a protégé of Buffet will be able to come anywhere near his celebrated performance.

<comment><USER15> Buffet himself does not believe that will happen. If you read the 2010 letter to shareholders, he states that going forward he does not expect growth in the order they have in the past.

That he and Charlies biggest challenge is to maintain a solid baseline of market matching, and occasionally beating, performance. They can't really go for the big wins any more - due to their market cap, a big win would have to be astronomical to give them growth like they had in the 80s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Your tax dollars at work, kids:

      http://goo.gl/DDw8e

Don't let Uncle Warren, or the finance kids around here, tell you different.

Jus' a simple capitalist from Omaha, 'spectin the govt. to make me whole, is all.

 _barf_

<comment><USER17> There's no reason to use a URL shortener. Please don't since it makes it impossible to tell what you are linking to. Also, I don't see how that article in anyway suggests that Buffett's support of a bailout was due to his financial interests as you imply.

<comment><USER18> > Please don't since it makes it impossible to tell what you are linking to.

I just assume shortened URLs lead to being Rick-rolled or worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Goldman Sachs is buying back their stock from Buffet. Buffet calls the redemption by Goldman Sachs as "unwelcome". And rightfully so. Buffet bought the stock in 2008 while it was incredibly undervalued.. Goldman Sachs is buying it back from Buffet before the stock price gets too high to ever get it back.

<comment><USER20> Theoretically speaking, would Berkshire Hathaway be able to prevent selling back to Goldman Sachs? Or would there most likely have been a clause that would have forced them to sell to GS whenever they wanted to buy back?

<comment><USER21> I'm almost certain that GS can buy the shares back no matter what. For one, the deal would have been _too_ painful otherwise; additionally, Berkshire clearly doesn't _want_ to sell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Can Buffet now either redeem the warrants at $115 and sell them back to Goldman in this transaction or is that a completely different transaction altogether ?

I guess they don't call him the Oracle of Omaha for no reason.

Kudos Mr. Buffet.

You licensed the rights of your name for a cool $3.7B for 2 years. I would love to know if that is the most lucrative licensing contract to date.

</comment><comment><USER23> People are missing half the story here. Buffett made such a killing because he was the only person with cash in the bank. For years and years before the crisis, while everyone was leveraged to their eyeballs and making tidy profits, Buffett was complaining how his cash was piling up because businesses were overvalued.

So although he made a 75% gain over the last 2.5 years, that was only because he made around a 20% gain in the previous 5.5 years. Still, doubling money in 9 years is far better than the Dow Jones.

</comment><comment><USER24> Of all the investment bigwigs, Buffet -- the Oracle of Omaha -- has been the man to follow. Not only making good on investments, but he generally seems to care (where needed) about what he is investing in.

</comment><comment><USER25> There's an investment saying, "buy when bloods are running on the street." Buffett certainly lived it to the fullest. Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER26> I've been listening to The Snowball, a biography of Warren Buffett. Fascinating guy.

[http://www.amazon.com/Snowball-Warren-Buffett-Business- Life/...](http://www.amazon.com/Snowball-Warren-Buffett-Business- Life/dp/0553384619/)</comment>


Three words for every location on the planet - <AUTHOR> http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/01/three-words-any-place.html <comment><AUTHOR> I don't completely understand why the unique three word combination has to be different per language. While this makes it easier to communicate intra language, it makes it a lot harder for international helpers from different backgrounds - as the use case seems to be able to put names on locations in areas where help is necessary but no developed naming system for places exists.</comment>


Study links restricting screen time for kids to higher mental performance - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/09/27/study-links-restricting-screen-time-kids-higher-mental-performance/ <comment><USER2> The brain works with the information it is presented with. Also related to seating position vs achievement in a classroom.</comment>