Elite MBAs and Wealth - <AUTHOR>

"If you work your way down the Forbes 400 making an x next to the name of each person with an MBA, you'll learn something important about business school. After Warren Buffett, you don't hit another MBA till number 22, Phil Knight, the CEO of Nike. There are only 5 MBAs in the top 50. What you notice in the Forbes 400 are a lot of people with technical backgrounds. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, Jeff Bezos, Gordon Moore. The rulers of the technology business tend to come from technology, not business. So if you want to invest two years in something that will help you succeed in business, the evidence suggests you'd do better to learn how to hack than get an MBA." - http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html
I will argue that this is, nowadays, complete nonsense. It might well have been true if you were born early enough to start a company during the dot-com bubble, like Paul Graham was. But it is definitely no longer true.
If you look at the list of the top 50 wealthiest people in America (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_Forbes_400), you will indeed find a lot of technical people there. However, trying to succeed in the industry that has just made a whole bunch of people billionaires can be a sucker's game, because whatever market inefficiency those people exploited is probably gone by the time all of those people got rich enough for you to hear about them. It can be like trying to get rich off of real estate in 2008, or trying to get rich off of gold in 1981. Markets are anti-inductive (see http://lesswrong.com/lw/yv/markets_are_antiinductive/).
What you really want to look at is what things are causing people to become successful, right at this moment. How does technology stack up? Here is the list of the top 20 most visited websites in the US: http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/US. Of the ones that were founded after the Bubble:
- Facebook appears to be the only one which will give the founders a decent shot at becoming billionaires.
- YouTube was bought by Google for $1.6 billion- a nice amount, to be sure, but that's only a few hundred million per founder, not the billions that earlier founders got.
- Wikipedia is, of course, a nonprofit.
- Blogger was acquired by Google. The amount was undisclosed, but it was probably in the low-mid tens of millions range, a (comparative) pittance.
- MySpace was bought by Rupert Murdoch for $580 million, again leaving only a hundred million or so per founder.
- Twitter is an interesting case, but the large percentage of their users that are inactive makes me believe pretty strongly that they'll either burn out or sell out for a relatively low amount. I'd bet on that, if there's any way for me to short Twitter stock.
- LinkedIn has a fairly stable valuation of around $1B, again leaving a few hundred million per founder.
So, for whatever reason, the mechanism that allowed so many people to become billionaires by starting companies during the dot-com bubble and earlier appears to be mostly gone. On the other hand, there are few indications that an elite MBA is losing its value, because it's not tied to any one industry: if the coal industry or the drug industry or the computer industry went bust tomorrow, an MBA would still be a valuable asset. There are, as of now (2010), seven people with MBAs in the top 50 richest people in America. It is also important to consider that, out of those 50, 18 simply inherited their wealth; any idiot can become a billionaire by inheriting a billion dollars. So, out of the self-made billionaires, 7 out of 32, or 22%, have MBAs from a top business school. Those aren't bad odds.
Of course, there are matters to consider other than pure pursuit of the largest number of dollars. At a certain point, after all, having more money won't really improve your standard of living. A hundred million dollars should be enough to maintain any reasonable lifestyle. And there are certainly people here who would be very happy writing computer software and unhappy taking business classes.
So, what about becoming a "mere" centimillionaire? Well, I must admit that I don't have hard data here, but I suspect that you'll also do better trying to make a hundred million in startups by focusing on skills other than hacking. The reason is simple: the idea of Silicon Valley has spread so far that it's now seen as the way for technology people to get rich. Hence, the industry is flooded with technology people. So, if there's type of startup 1), which focuses more on pure technical skill, and type of startup 2), which focuses more on social skills and deal-making ability, it's probably going to be a lot harder to make money doing type of startup 1), because there's so much more competition. Hence, the most successful people tend to be people like Sam Altman, who is a good programmer, but who also does "businessy" things that a lot of hackers wouldn't like, like doing deals with cell phone company executives. <comment><USER3> What exactly are you arguing for here? MBAs are certainly still a great investment for certain types of careers. If you want to seriously invest your life into consulting/investment banking (advisory and relationship side)/climbing the corpoate ladder, go for it (at one of the Top 10-20 schools, otherwise it's just a total waste). It's all about jumping through the hoops for the rest of your life then. And you will most probably get rich - speaking some million dollars here. There is an absolutely low probability of hitting it really big. You would have to start your own company/fund whatever for that, and most MBAs just don't ever do that. It's for the risk averse, mostly.

If you ever want to hit it really big, in the dozens or hundreds of millions, there is no other way than working for yourself and swinging for the fences. Silicon Valley or Hedge Fund, it's basically the same idea: Doubling down with everything you have and going for the extremely unlikely chance that you will be the one-in-a-million guy who gets the billion dollar payout.

</comment><comment><USER4> ": the idea of Silicon Valley has spread so far that it's now seen as the way for technology people to get rich. Hence, the industry is flooded with technology people. So, if there's type of startup 1), which focuses more on pure technical skill, and type of startup 2), which focuses more on social skills and deal-making ability, it's probably going to be a lot harder to make money doing type of startup 1), because there's so much more competition. Hence, the most successful people tend to be people like Sam Altman, who is a good programmer, but who also does "businessy" things that a lot of hackers wouldn't like, like doing deals with cell phone company executives."

All of which has nothing to do with an elite MBA. Does Sam Altman have an elite MBA? let's check

From Wikipedia

"Loopt was founded during Altman's sophomore year at Stanford University[2] where he studied computer science with a focus on security and machine learning. He helped build an autonomous helicopter navigation system."

Doesn't look like he was one of the people who would be happy taking business classes. Skills other than hacking may indeed be the future of becoming an X millionaire, but these hardly correlate to having "elite MBA" s which was what the first portion of your post was about (not to mention the title).

You ask, "What you really want to look at is what things are causing people to become successful, right at this moment. How does technology stack up?"

Better than having and "elite MBA" The ability to write code _and understand customers_ , much more so than having an "elite mba".

An "elite mba" probably helps you become a business consultant or something corporat-ey more than become an entrepreneur building multi million dollar startups, which was the point of the portion of PG's essay you extracted. You set out to debunk it and didn't do so at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> "All of which has nothing to do with an elite MBA. Does Sam Altman have an elite MBA?"

Of course not. What I was saying was: suppose you accept that an MBA is more likely to make you a billionaire than going into technology startups, but you don't want to get an MBA because you wouldn't like it, and you're fine with the comparatively lower returns in the startup industry. In which case, I argue that you still shouldn't focus on programming _skills_ (which was Paul Graham's suggestion), because other skills will probably help you more. This does assume that you are already a good programmer to begin with.

"The answer is still, the ability to write code and understand customers, much more so than having an "elite mba". An "elite mba" probably helps you become a business consultant or something corporatey."

I was talking about the world in general, not just the startup world. Being a partner at a management consulting firm and making seven figures is "successful" by most people's standards.

"become an entrepreneur building multi million dollar startups, which was the point of the portion of PG's essay you extracted. You set out to debunk it and didn't do so at all."

No, it wasn't. Paul Graham was making a point about _being successful in general_ , not just _being successful in startups_. Read the quote:

"So if you want to invest two years in something that will help you succeed in business, the evidence suggests you'd do better to learn how to hack than get an MBA."

He's talking about _business in general_ , not just startups, which is why he talks about MBA prevalence among all billionaires, not just those that made their fortune in startups. I agree that getting an MBA will help you very little in the startup world, but both me and PG agree on that.

<comment><USER4> "I argue that you still shouldn't focus on programming skills (which was Paul Graham's suggestion), because other skills will probably help you more. "

You don't have much of an argument yet. You are just stating this as a conclusion and it still has nothing to do with the title of your post ("elite mba") and neither does it debunk PG's point (learn to hack _as opposed to_ trying for an elite MBA)

<comment><AUTHOR> I was making a related point that I thought was interesting, not a direct rebuttal of PG's statement. I was rebutting the related claim "if you choose not to get an MBA and go into the startup industry, you should focus on improving your programming skill, even if you're already a pretty good programmer".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think your analysis is correct despite of all the self-congratulations that goes on here on Hacker News.

A couple caveats though; I think your definition of technology is too narrow, Web 2.0 is only one segment. The smartest people have moved on from IT which has already matured, and are working on green tech and genetic therapy where supposedly the next break through will come.

Also, even in software since money seems to be the biggest concern to you, consumer-centric software isn't where the money is made - it's just what appeals to be the most sexy to the young & naive. High frequency trading, e-discovery, medical informatics, Sarbones-Oxley compliance modules - <USER2> are tons of enterprise software companies in those fields make revenue more than most of the Web 2.0 startup's you listed.

Finally, I don't think what motivates programmers aren't necessarily the same that motivates a business-person. The best way I can describe this is by the musician and A&R example; there are some musician's who want to make it big and appeal to as many people as they can (i.e., Linkin Park), there are those complementary record labels who can help popular musicians by handling the business side and tailor their records to the focus groups. But there are also those musician's who care more about pushing than envelope than selling records, and if they are successful, like the early black blues & jazz musician's in the 40's and 30's, their influence will get heard in the 60's and 70's (ripped off by white musicians). Most people in IT operates on this sliding scale between craftsmen and A&R as well.

</comment><comment><USER6> Learn business. Don't get an MBA. Don't plan your life by trying to extrapolate from the Forbes 400.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you are looking for a way to get filthy rich, read Felix Dennis - <http://sivers.org/book/HowToGetRich>.

In the context of your post, the key is hiring the best hackers. The problem is that it seems identifying good hackers is hard. You have to be one yourself! (<http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html>)

But I suspect you could hire pretty good hackers, if not the best. Most people want the safety and comfort of a job, not wealth.

In Dennis's words:

 _Talent is indispensable, although it is always replaceable. Just remember the simple rules concerning talent : identify it, hire it, nurture it, reward it, protect it. And, when the time comes, fire it._

As you will have noticed, this is also a recipe to be a douchebag. But you will be one rich douchebag.

</comment><comment><USER8> Are you measuring the value of an MBA by the odds of becoming a billionaire (or even >$100M)? People achieve that level of success without regards to their education. Hard work, luck, tenacity, luck and connections are more important. I considered getting an MBA from a top 10 school. Basically, it offers the easiest path and best odds of earning $200+K/year and more flexibility in terms of careers (tech management, consulting, banking, etc.). Being a lawyer is grueling and boring, a doctor is grueling and takes a long time, and a tech entrepreneur is a crap shoot. I ended up in the tech path because I enjoy it and I don't care too much about money.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Are you measuring the value of an MBA by the odds of becoming a billionaire (or even >$100M)?"

I admit that it's a quick-and-dirty metric, but that applies to PG's argument as well as mine.

"People achieve that level of success without regards to their education."

 _Some_ do, but the point is that education _helps_. Consider this list:

"One of the best ways to become a self-made billionaire is to attend an Ivy League school. 16 of the 52 self-made billionaires have Ivy League educations:

Warren Buffett, Columbia Bill Gates, Havard Carl Ichan, Princeton John Werner Kluge, Columbia Edward Crosby Johnson, III, Harvard Sumner Redstone (Viacom), Harvard Charles Bartlett Johnson, Yale Edward Lampert, Yale Steve Ballmer, Harvard Geroge B. Kaiser, Harvard Leonard Blavatnik, Columbia, Harvard Ronald Owen Perelman, Penn Michael Bloomberg, Havard Stephen Schwarzman, Yale, Harvard Eric Schmidt (Google), Princeton Jeff Bezos, Princeton

An additional six billionaires have near-Ivy quality education:

Sergey Brin, Stanford Larry Page, Stanford Philip H Knight, Stanford Charles Schwab, Stanford George Soros, London School of Economics James H Simons, MIT

The conclusion is clear. If you want to become a self-made billionaire, get the most prestigious educational credentials.

The best degree to get is an MBA. The following nine self-made billionaires have MBAs, and it's worth noting that eight out of the nine have an MBA from one of the nation's top three business schools: Harvard, Wharton, and Stanford.

Steve Ballmer, Harvard, Stanford MBA Geroge B. Kaiser, Harvard, Harvard MBA Philip H Knight, Stanford MBA Charles Egen (Echostar), Wake Forest University MBA Leonard Blavatnik, Columbia, Havard MBA Ronald Owen Perelman, Penn, Wharton MBA Michael Bloomberg, Havard MBA Charles Schwab, Stanford MBA Stephen Schwarzman, Yale, Harvard MBA"

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In order to get a job in this industry, you don't need knowledge, but mainly a degree. That said, people work for their degrees. There are only x billionaires out of 100million x person and y millionaires out of 10million y person.

Being a millionaire or a billionaire doesn't require an MBA, degree, high school... or any kind of education. It requires skills, luck, determination...

Nevertheless, people will still work toward getting one: 1 out of 5000 get rich, but 4500 out of 5000 get a job. MBA won't make you rich, but with little skills it will probably get you a decent job.

</comment><comment><USER10> "out of the self-made billionaires, 7 out of 32, or 22%, have MBAs from a top business school. Those aren't bad odds."

Correlation vs. causation. Enough said.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's certainly some element of correlation in there, but that doesn't mean that there's no causation. Going to an Ivy League school is partly correlation and partly causation. So is getting a Ph.D. from a top university, if you're going into academia. Why should business school be different?

I should also note that this point applies equally well to PG's original argument. What if it's purely correlation- that is, what if "programming IQ" and "business IQ" just correlate really well, so that lots of top businessmen are also top programmers? In that case, it would be relatively useless to learn programming.

<comment><USER10> Since the data points are solely about extreme wealth and Elite MBAs, the only thing that can be proven is some degree of correlation between the two. What you have is insufficient (by a lot) to prove causation.

If your thesis is that the Elite MBA led to the extreme wealth, you have to look at the volumes of Elite MBAs out there. HBS alone turns out 1000 a year. Only a small % of them get to extreme wealth (going back to your point that a few hundred million doesn't count).

As someone else noted, an Elite MBA is a worthwhile investment as a stamp of approval. I have one of these, and I can speak from experience that it helps. Is it going to get me to extreme wealth? No.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Since the data points are solely about extreme wealth and Elite MBAs, the only thing that can be proven is some degree of correlation between the two. What you have is insufficient (by a lot) to prove causation."

The conventional wisdom is that there is causation as well as correlation. Everyone who goes to one of those elite MBA schools- and a lot of smart people do- goes because they believe in causation as well as correlation. The burden of proof is on _you_ , to show that there is no causation, because the conventional wisdom says the exact opposite. See also:

"One who wishes to believe says, "Does the evidence permit me to believe?" One who wishes to disbelieve asks, "Does the evidence force me to believe?" Beware lest you place huge burdens of proof only on propositions you dislike, and then defend yourself by saying: "But it is good to be skeptical." If you attend only to favorable evidence, picking and choosing from your gathered data, then the more data you gather, the less you know. If you are selective about which arguments you inspect for flaws, or how hard you inspect for flaws, then every flaw you learn how to detect makes you that much stupider." - <http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues>

"If your thesis is that the Elite MBA led to the extreme wealth, you have to look at the volumes of Elite MBAs out there. HBS alone turns out 1000 a year. Only a small % of them get to extreme wealth (going back to your point that a few hundred million doesn't count)."

Agreed, but that's a lot larger than the percentage of people who "learn how to hack" that go on to extreme wealth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Well I agree that after a certain point having no money will by no way improve living standards. In that view, having an MBA would be much better. We must accept that MBAs have more opportunity of making money.</comment>


Moving away from 'free culture' - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/technology-liberal-arts/474f9f6957ae

<comment><USER2> " If we create great work and send it out into the world using a delivery mechanism conducive to piracy, it's no wonder we end up getting screwed."

That's the most important point in this piece, IMHO. People who sell digital content can't use the same business model as people who sell non-trivially reproducible goods and expect to have the same success. In theory consumers could build their own copy of a good like a pair of jeans or a bicycle, but few have the skill or desire to create a high quality replica, and the parts and equipment are specialized and most likely need to be purchased.

Digital media is trivially reproducible by unskilled people with equipment they already have on hand. Instead of a high quality pair of jeans, their good is more like a burlap sack you tie around your waist with a bit of rope: anyone who'd be tempted to buy that product would probably just make their own at lower cost.

This if course does not address the skill and difficulty of creating music or film, but rather the difficulty of reproducing it, given a copy to work with. Thus, it's reasonable to ask a large amount when crowd funding a film or album, because of course the artists should be well rewarded for their talent and effort and the many expenses in producing this good must be paid, but it's a foolish business model to put the product out and then stomp your feet when people choose not to pay when they can trivially copy it.

It's harder to copy a well-made T-shirt or hat and it's impossible to copy the experience of a live performance, so selling those is a sensible venture as well.</comment>


Show HN: Code Formatting API - <AUTHOR> https://www.neutron64.com/help/code-format <comment><USER2> I like seeing creative uses of the GraphQL library that shows that it can be much more than a simple SQL alternative.</comment>


Alphabet, Walmart join U.S. effort to speed up coronavirus testing - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-google/google-walmart-join-u-s-effort-to-speed-up-coronavirus-testing-idUSKBN21036R <comment><USER2> Google made the following statement on Twitter;

 _Google is partnering with the US Government in developing a nationwide website that includes information about COVID-19 symptoms, risk and testing information.

This is_ _in addition_ (emphasis added) _to other measures we are taking, including:

\- A Google "home page promotion" to promote greater awareness of simple measures citizens can take to prevent the spread of the disease;

\- Work being done by our sister company Verily to launch a pilot website that will enable individuals to do a risk assessment and be scheduled for testing at sites in the Bay Area;

\- Promoting authoritative information through Google Search and YouTube;

\- Taking measures to protect users from misinformation, including phishing, conspiracy theories, malware and misinformation;

\- Rolling out free access to our advanced Hangouts Meet video-conferencing capabilities to all G Suite and G Suite for Education customers globally until 7/01/20;

\- Advancing health research and science; and financially supporting global relief efforts."_

So one of two things happened. Either the media largely got the story wrong, claiming that Google was not actually working on nationwide website like Trump described, perhaps the media was confused by the multiple efforts underway at Google and misreported the Verily work the only thing that was going on.

Alternatively, after Google sent out their internal memo asking for volunteers and got 1,700 replies (the 1,700 engineers that Trump mentioned) they still weren't actually planning to build a nationwide site, but after Trump announced it on national news and praised Google for their work, he effectively forced them to volunteer to do the work. This seems less likely to me.

However there is just a tremendous amount of arguing and misinformation in this thread claiming that Google is only doing the Verily thing, when in fact Google has come out and declared that they are in fact working on a nationwide site, at Google, in addition to the Verily work.

[https://mobile.twitter.com/Google_Comms/status/1238989460127...](https://mobile.twitter.com/Google_Comms/status/1238989460127338497)

<comment><USER3> I mean, I thought the media was right and I work at Google. I knew the Verily site existed (a member of my team helped with a production readiness review last week).

So if they went and looked for Googlers who knew about the national effort and came up bank, and then didn't get immediate confirmation from Google, then they ran with a story.

Obviously I am but a small part of this massive machine and even though I am in a lot of the COVID-19 chats and have been engaged with various technical readiness efforts since we'll before US took it seriously, so maybe I missed it. But also, I wouldn't be surprised if the Executive has just recently enlisted Google to do this.

The "1700 engineers" number is super weird. That's much too high to be any one reasonably sized team, but it's definitely smaller than the impact footprint I infer at Google.

So my prediction is Trump said nonsense but the Executive decided to try and make it reality afterwards. Google as a company would _definitely_ jump on doing this sort of thing for free.

<comment><USER4> The 1700 number is just replies then mistated in the speech.

That wouldn't be the actual size of the team I bet.

<comment><USER3> Source?

<comment><USER4> The article which has the word replies in it regarding the number of volunteers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In the meantime the Walmart in my home town is firing people for getting sick because they can't afford to go to a doctor for a sick note.

</comment><comment><USER6> > "I want to thank Google. Google is helping to develop a website, it's gonna > be very quickly done, unlike websites of the past, to determine whether a > test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient > location," Trump said.

It's important to watch the press conference on this topic for context.

The website is supposed the be the front line in the CDC's revamped testing effort. There are still far too few tests for everyone to get one, so they are being rationed. The website was to be the first stop made by a person who wanted to get tested.

No website, no coordinated testing effort.

All indications are that the president's announcement was premature and caught Alphabet, Verily, and Google flat-footed.

[https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03/13/google-says-its- not-p...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03/13/google-says-its-not- publishing-a-national-scale-coronavirus-site-anytime-soon-after-trump- announcement/)

The president's bald-faced attempt to use this bogus announcement to elevate the stock market should be transparent to anyone paying attention. The presser was held just before the market close, just for this reason.

This is very, very bad.

<comment><USER7> This was my interpretation, too. If you watched the presser, it was clearly about a website into which you could enter your symptoms and then be directed to a testing site if needed. Nationwide. Verily's first set of subsequent statements refuted this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Google, with their enormous warchest of money could be providing free test kits for everyone, not developing some chinch web site locator that could be built in an afternoon by a single developer.

They have clearly seized upon the moment for PR.

<comment><USER9> They maybe could. But so could the federal government and it's their actual job.

<comment><USER10> If I didn't pay taxes my mortgage would be paid off, I could quit/work from home for a decade.

How much abundance would we have without the federal government?

<comment><USER11> If we didn't pay taxes we wouldn't have schools, roads, or the internet, and maybe even your mortgage (along with countless other things). So imagine where you life would be without it.

<comment><USER10> None of those are paid by the federal government.

<comment><USER11> Actually it does for all of them!

\- Schools: The US department of Education contributed 8% of all funding to the entire public school system of the US in 2012-13. (source: [https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.html](https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.html))

\- Roads: "The Congressional Budget Office estimates that Highway Trust Fund tax revenue will total $41 billion in fiscal year 2018" (source: [https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what- highway-t...](https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-highway- trust-fund-and-how-it-financed))

\- Internet: Not only was the internet created by the Department of the Defense in the 1960's and 70's (source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet#History)) It's expansion is also subsidized by the FCC (source: [https://www.fcc.gov/consumer-governmental-affairs/about- bure...](https://www.fcc.gov/consumer-governmental-affairs/about- bureau/office-native-affairs-and-policy/federal-broadband))

\- Mortgages: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac provide important stabilization and support to the mortgage industry. (source: [https://www.fhfa.gov/SupervisionRegulation/FannieMaeandFredd...](https://www.fhfa.gov/SupervisionRegulation/FannieMaeandFreddieMac/Pages/About- Fannie-Mae---Freddie-Mac.aspx))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The New York Times has a story delving into the different levels of commitment that's been reported for Google (in a story last updated on Sunday):

"With Google executives eager to show they are working with the president, the company [Verily] is racing to meet the promise even as they acknowledge that the debut of the website will be far more limited than Mr. Trump has suggested..."

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/us/politics/trump- google-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/us/politics/trump-google- coronavirus.html)

"Mr. Trump's comments caught Google completely off guard and executives rushed to issue a statement on Friday afternoon to temper expectations, making it clear that the website is an effort led by Verily, not Google itself... Since then, Google executives have scrambled to coordinate with the White House in an effort to do as much as possible to make the president's vision for the website a reality."

</comment><comment><USER12> For what it's worth, here's what CNN was reporting Friday night:

Google will not be publishing a national-scale website for coronavirus testing anytime soon, contrary to claims made by President Donald Trump during a Friday news conference.

Instead, a health-focused subsidiary owned by Google's parent company, Alphabet, intends to launch a small-scale website next week to begin to triage California-based patients. The website will aim to serve a broader population only "over time" — not "very quickly," as Trump said.

"What we're building is a triage tool that will live on ProjectBaseline.com, and we plan to pilot it in California next week," said Carolyn Wang, a spokesperson for the Alphabet subsidiary, Verily.

"Our aspiration is for the triage tool to be used much more broadly over time. Initially, we're linking it with several sites in the Bay Area to test and iterate, and collaborating closely with organizations like Quest Diagnostics and Labcorp who are also working on additional approaches to making testing more accessible and expedient in other areas."

[https://www.siliconvalley.com/2020/03/13/google-says-its- not...](https://www.siliconvalley.com/2020/03/13/google-says-its-not- publishing-a-national-scale-coronavirus-site-anytime-soon-after-trump- announcement/)

<comment><USER13> This is older news. Latest news from today is Google is also working on a nationwide testing website.

<comment><USER14> Yes, after the speach, this is the point. Its trivial that google now is going to do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Found it strange that some parts of media decided to focus on the semantics of Google and Verily being different subsidiaries of Alphabet. This is an almost meaningless detail.

<comment><USER9> Because it's yet another detail that he's gotten wrong and shows that he's not paying attention. He made several incorrect statements about who is building the site, how many people are working on it, when it will be ready and who the target audience is. It's been a valve of mistakes this week that just show he isn't treating this seriously.

<comment><USER15> Yes but that's the point, the news coverage should help to focus on the important details that were wrong, like will this service ever be available and when. Misusing Google in place of Alphabet is not even worth correcting someone on in a casual conversation, much less focusing articles on during a crisis.

<comment><USER16> The media is also focusing on that. "The media" isn't one guy with time for only one thing.

There are thousands talking and writing for hours each a day. There's going to be a lot of trivia with the meaty content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Except that Google isn't doing that and said so.[1]

[1] [https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03/13/google-says-its- not-p...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03/13/google-says-its-not- publishing-a-national-scale-coronavirus-site-anytime-soon-after-trump- announcement/)

<comment><USER18> Can you point out to me the statement where Google denies working on the web tool?

<comment><USER19> Google Communications says here that Verily (a sister company to Google) is working on a small scale tool for the Bay area: [https://twitter.com/Google_Comms/status/1238574670686928906](https://twitter.com/Google_Comms/status/1238574670686928906)

<comment><USER20> Verily is an Alphabet subsidiary. To the majority of Americans, 'Alphabet' is Google, because Alphabet is the successor organization to Google the company. All these ridiculous technicalities are nuts. No one cares that Alphabet decided to reorganize to maximize shareholder value. Alphabet is literally Google, and still trades under that ticker (GOOG). When people talk about Google the company, they mean Alphabet, and you know that.

Like, most people on HN talk about how 'Google Fiber' is part of Google, but really it's not, it's part of Alphabet, which owns the trademark Google. Or again, when GV (formerly known as Google Ventures) invests in a company, people say 'Google invested in <blah> company', because GV is alphabet, which is Google because... Google the company means Alphabet in common parlance. Stop nitpicking.

<comment><USER21> The important part is not google vs alphabet, it's the fact that their site will only be available for the Bay Area.

<comment><USER22> And that there isn't 1700 people working on it.

<comment><USER20> Good point. The most important part of the speech is the number of engineers working on it. If we have 1699 it might not work but if only we could know we had 1700 then we would all be saved /s.

<comment><USER22> Number of engineers is a sign of the scale and significance of the project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Most people don't know what Alphabet is, or that Google and Verily are under it's umbrella. I think it's fine that they just used Google as a general place-in term for the article.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm more focused on groceries at the moment..

[https://www.walmart.com/ideas/discover-online- grocery/google...](https://www.walmart.com/ideas/discover-online- grocery/google-assistant-voice-ordering-for-walmart-grocery-pickup- delivery/354497)

<comment><USER25> I wonder how many people are actually using these voice systems. In public, obviously zero. Ok google was convenient for a while while driving, but I havnt used it for months.

Are these alexa/home gimmicks?

Id have to see reviews, quality, stats, visualize a purchase which is not easy to do over a speaker.

Turning of the light is already in the palm of your hand. I have a smaller 12 room house, light switches are right by the door of each room. Convenience might be to turn off all the lights in the house at once as I forget to turn off one or two most of the time. That would still cost a small fortune to replace all the bulbs.

<comment><USER26> In my experience these voice assistants are wildly popular among older and less technically literate people. I have an aunt who has around a dozen alexa- enabled speakers, tvs, and tablets around the house and constantly talks to them—weather, news, turning on the radio and music, ordering things on amazon. She doesn't appear to be bothered by having to change her behavior to suit the assistant, including occasionally ordering the wrong item on amazon (!) and simply saying "play (genre here)" rather than album oriented listening she normally does, which disturbed me a little bit. Other older people in my life have similar behavior, and on a related point I've gotten at least one assistant enabled device as a gift for each birthday and christmas for the last several years (I give them away, I already have too many damn electronics).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The timing of that press conference was really suspicious, and makes me think this is still all about the stock market and not a public health strategy.

It was scheduled to start at 3:00 PM, but they stalled until 3:30 PM to actually start it. 30 minutes before the stock market closed for the week. The longer they talked, the more the market went up. The market loved them. Everyone's confident that they are delivering competent leadership. Time to buy! Or so it seemed.

There were a huge number of short sellers in the stock market this week, and I think the white house knew that the short positions would be expiring at the end of the day on Friday. By bringing out this dog and pony show with captains of industry and making these big promises, I think they hoped to take credit for the inevitable upswing as short sellers brought up the market by closing their positions.

By doing this, the administration is trying to look like they have the power to restore confidence in the stock market, when in reality the market is still badly battered, and they are absolutely culpable.

<comment><USER28> This is a global health crisis that happens to impact millions of workers who are now worried they might contract coronavirus or they might lose their jobs if they were in some of the more impacted industries.

To be shorting and attacking the economy and businesses during this time (all businesses are interconnected, especially ones that provide food/energy/medical supplies) and be so distrustful of efforts to help ramp up testing and saving lifes, it's just wrong.

I happen to know many people who works in cruise industries and hospitality. These folks are worried sick right now. Those people are who you are shorting

<comment><USER27> I'm not supporting or opposing short selling, just pointing out that:

\- It was happening

\- The White House probably was aware of the extent of it

\- They wanted to get credit for the rise in stocks when their actions actually didn't have any effect (or perhaps even had a negative effect)

<comment><USER29> Seriously what do you want the White House to do? Run around like chickens with their head cut off? I am so damn disappointed at this site often enough to just delete the book mark. The partisan first, TDS, or call it what you will, on display here, makes me wonder if I landed on reddit/politics instead of a tech site.

The government's job is to assure calm, it that requires a little white lie or a bit of misdirection then so be it. the last thing we need is people in authority spreading doom and gloom.

<comment><USER30> Assure effectual calm, I would say. Not wallpaper a crisis for gain of self, cronies, or political points, which is what the original commenter was describing.

People need direction and understanding of the severity, which has been lacking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> What Is the point of increased testing now that it is so widespread in the community? The message needs to be social distancing even if you are not sick and if you are sick just assume it is coronavirus and self quarantine.

<comment><USER32> The point of increased testing is to identify cases, know the true denominator, impose isolation and allow for contact tracing, all to reduce R0

<comment><USER33> Isn't it too late? We seem to have cases spread thoroughly across all states.

<comment><USER34> No, it is not too late. The number of likely cases is still low enough to make contact tracing worthwhile to slow the spread.

<comment><USER33> Ok, I was under the mistaken impression that we likely have a lot of cases, just under reported due to lack of tests. Perhaps we really only have ~5000, I had thought it was >100000.

<comment><USER35> There's various factors that contribute to underreporting:

\- not enough testing / 80% of people have mild/no symptoms

\- cases reported today were contracted ~5 days ago, so there's always roughly a doubling in the pipeline

Right now the official case number is ~3k for the US. Focusing too much on the number doesn't help (it will keep going up for a while), what matters is doing things which will stop the spread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Why is Google (and for that matter Apple) not helping to track the prior movement of every coronavirus patient where possible to identify additional potentially exposed individuals?

Seems fairly straightforward given their massive surveillance infrastructure.

Anyone at Apple or Google actually going to pitch in here and offer meaningful help?

So far, crickets.

<comment><USER37> Because that would be an incredible violation of privacy and is probably illegal?

I'm not even sure China does that.

<comment><USER38> I found this site about Singapore yesterday. This kind of detail would never fly in the US. But they do seem to have used it effectively to track the spread of the disease:

[https://co.vid19.sg/cases](https://co.vid19.sg/cases)

<comment><USER39> Holy crap! That's an impressive set of data.

The first thing that came to my mind is HIPAA (I know it's US only). There are more than enough details for each patient to figure out who they are. They list employer, when they traveled, family members, etc.

<comment><USER40> That level of detail is definitely enough to unmask an individual but if you wanted to protect the infected person's privacy (while massively violating others' in order to join the data sets), it seems like it would be possible to notify an individual that they were exposed, and not leak the infected person's personal details.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> So, I'm gonna have to go to Walmart to get tested? Wtf? I should be able to go to my local hospital right now, but there's no tests, and no one will be wearing PPE when I walk in there.

Fuck this website. Exactly where, in each US state does one go for testing, right now? Any sources on this?

Edit: I may sound rash, but what I read is Google: it's only in SF Bay, Trump: there will be a website, and drive through testing, which sounds like in Walmart parking lots or something. Yes, I'm freaking out.

Can anyone out there answer my question above? Cause the local govt or healthcare facilities are unable to. Nor Trump, Walmart, or Google (even Google search)

<comment><USER20> Because Walmart already has the infrastructure to (a) set up drive-through testing sites, (b) employees to perform the tests, and (c) the distribution network to get this test to the majority of America very quickly. Your local hospital, not being part of a larger chain or system, does not.

These tests are all drive through, that is why you don't need PPE to go in, because you don't need to go in.

I don't understand the HN hivemind that American companies wanting to help out Americans is a bad thing.

<comment><USER41> Okay, if I haven't made it clear. Where do US citizens go get tested in each state? The answer is NOT Walmart!

<comment><USER42> In general, almost no one is being tested at this time. That's your answer.

If you are extremely sick, high fever, persistent cough, and quickly deteriorating then go to the hospital you may be tested.

<comment><USER41> Thanks. This is an answer, and reprocipates my point in asking it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Code review vs. Unit test - <AUTHOR> Hi,
Within our company there is an internal debat going on about what process should we focus on first to improve code quality. Unit testing frameworks or code review tools ?
IMO code reviews has become just a formality where developers just check for syntactical issues instead of overall design. This is mainly due to tight deadline where everyone is trying to finish their work.
Has anyone tried putting this process in large team ? What are the before and after effcts ? <comment><USER2> In reality, you need both. However, unit tests are code. If you're writing poor quality code, then you risk writing poor quality unit tests. Brittle, overly specific unit tests can be a major burden. Even just mediocre unit tests can weigh down a project.

Code reviews have an outsized impact in the organizations I've worked in. More people understand more of the code. Quality goes up not only because the bad code is spotted, but also the reviewers can learn good practices too. You also get better at reading code. This is a fundamental, critical skill.

For this reason, I'm a fan of having developers of all skill levels be reviewers. However, code reviews are a skill and take an investment for people to learn how to be effective.

So if you're really, really having to pick, do code reviews. Use the code reviews to drive sensible, smart adoption of unit testing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Honestly, you need both. Here's a comment on code review I wrote year ago or so that seems relevant:

Code reviews shouldn't dwell on style issues that can be handled by linting. To the extent that you can automate some of the review process, and prevent sloppy commits from being merged in by having them fail CI, you'll eliminate part of the problem. Another thing that helps is reducing the semantic distance between what a commit message says a commit does, and what it actually does. This is pretty easy to enforce relative to more subjective aspects of coding. The last thing that can make a big difference is not getting hung up on wanting to rewrite a commit as you would have written it, but focusing on improving understanding and clarity for whoever will inherit the code next. If there are serious issues with the architecture and patterns the code is using, CR can be too late in the process to address them effectively (depends on the scale involved). I'd try to collaborate with other engineers earlier in the process to help set them on the right path [1].

As for unit tests, make sure to isolate the unit (generally a class or function), and test its interface. Tests that are coupled to the implementation aren't as useful. Investing in writing unit tests now will increase your velocity in the long run. You'll be able to take on more technical debt in the short term with better terms, so to speak, since you'll have a robust test suite to refactor against. Obviously, this doesn't mean you should write bad code, but this will give you the option of considering performance and reusability tradeoffs if you need to hustle a feature out the door.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11257835](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11257835)

</comment><comment><USER4> I have tried a lot of times to enforce the code reviews because I have seen lot of bullshit being checked in to the source control but if you don't have support from other team members then even having the code review is waste of time. Code review should come from the gut feeling, you should be always self critical and let your code being evaluated by other people who care about software development in general and not by the people who just want to make their job done and to have something to mention during the stand up meeting. So depending on what kind of people you are surrounded with, you should decide is it worth to do it or not.

Code review is not a task or ticket, it should be more natural in all teams. Like it's normal to take a shower or brush your teeth, it's also normal to do code reviews and keep the code clean and good. But recently most of the teams are just skipping everything to make managers and owners happy. And they are always happy with beta, preview or even prototype - so sad.

Unit tests are something else. Good, clean and testable code starts from good and clean requirements that are easily understandable. From there you are able to write clear unit tests and imagine the whole story. If your manager or someone who is defining what needs to be done doesn't have the clear vision or plan then you have a good chance that your code will be bad - then unit tests are implicitly bad.

</comment><comment><USER5> My intuition based on 20 years of working on large-ish projects, is that code reviews are always helpful, and mandatory unit tests waste a lot of time and effort, at least for statically typed code. I don't have much experience with dynamic languages. This doesn't mean don't write any unit tests, but to use discretion instead of enforcing coverage. So, it's perfectly reasonable for a code reviewer to say, "a unit test could be really helpful here."

</comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like it's worth taking a step back and looking at your processes from a high level. If there's pressure to push code more quickly than is possible while maintaining effective code reviews, then you may want to consider where that pressure is coming from. If velocity is causing quality control issues, then velocity is likely too fast. Not to mention that limiting quality checks will reduce velocity in the long term.

Once you have both product and engineering (or whatever forces are at play) on the same page about reasonable expectations, I'd recommend using both. Code review and automated testing both serve distinct yet important roles.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, if code reviews are just syntax checks, then they're doing it wrong and no tool will ever fix their problem. However if they have more junior devs and want to prevent major design mistakes before they happen, pair programming is a thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you're in a tight deadline environment, I'm guessing people aren't going to spend quality time on unit testing or code reviews. It's quick and easy to write terrible unit tests that are counter productive; it's also pretty easy to just stamp all the code reviews without taking a real look.

Not every piece of code needs to be high quality. Instead, you should indentify the parts of your system that need higher quality and spend real time reviewing code and writing appropriate tests (not just unit tests, also do performance tests and integration tests of key components). Especially in an environment with tight deadline and changing requirements, focusing on key areas will save a lot of effort.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think unit testing and automated tests are the way to go with pull requests that require two developers approval.

Two developer number is important on the reviews to keep everyone honest and to keep everyone interested.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd spend time trying to fix the environment where deadlines are so silly that you can't do proper code reviews.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you have to pick one, pick code reviews. Without them you really can end up with shitty code and not know about it for months or years and have it bite you. Unit tests without code reviews can be useless if they are testing the wrong things or not deep enough.

</comment><comment><USER12> We do both. Unit tests can help with the review process, by making it clear the intention behind certain aspects of code changes.

Code reviews and unit tests are only as effective as the developers who participate though, can't escape that.

</comment><comment><USER13> Code reviews come first, because you can't write good unit tests without them. And poor tests can make your life horrible.

</comment><comment><USER14> What are the actual problems that your company is encountering? Bugs? Spaghetti? Unmaintainability?

</comment><comment><USER15> Code reviews are not a good substitute for unit tests; and it sounds like what you're describing your team as doing is more like linting, which you should use an automated tool for.

The purpose of unit tests is to catch regressions. They can also be an excellent tool to speed development in real time by using automated tests to confirm the code does what you want it to, instead of repeated click-through testing, which is often slower.

A habit of unit testing _can_ (but doesn't always) encourage developers to adjust their mindset about writing code and to get into better habits. For instance, feature-oriented spaghetti code is hard to test. API-oriented code is easier to test, easier to maintain, and easier to extend. Developers thinking ahead about testing, or writing tests and application code in parallel, are also more likely to use patterns like dependency injection.

Code review is a terrible way to catch bugs, but it can be an excellent way to share knowledge. Both knowledge of the craft, shared from seniors to juniors; and domain knowledge / institutional memory of business practices, ins and outs of existing code, and the like. It's also a great opportunity to review design decisions and teach best practices in that regard.

You mention code review failing due to tight deadlines and everyone "just trying to finish their work". I see two potential issues here.

The first is the obvious one that it sounds like your team is a little overworked/understaffed. There are all sorts of reasons (that I'm not going to go into here) why it's bad for a team to have zero slack time. But not having time to step back and assess the outcome of the work is - as you've discovered - a major one.

The second issue is that it sounds as if your team might be a little short on cohesion. One way this might manifest is that they don't trust one another to give or receive feedback in an empathetic way, so they're afraid of requesting or providing in-depth feedback. Another is that they don't feel a personal obligation to one another to make time to provide the sort of in-depth feedback that anyone should desire if they want to continue improving at their craft (and which is one of the primary benefits of working on a team instead of solo). A useful code review on a 1000-line changeset doesn't have to take more than 15 minutes.

I don't know exactly what sorts of code quality issues your organization has been encountering, but I can add an anecdote.

My team has introduced both code review and unit testing in the past 18 months.

Code review was adopted hesitantly at first, but then with enthusiasm. I wouldn't say it's had much impact on typical code quality or caught many bugs, but it has improved communication and caught a few architectural mistakes that might have been painful to deal with if they'd made it to production.

Unit testing didn't really catch on until we implemented continuous integration to make sure the tests ran - and passed - after every change. In fact, getting the first green build took a week of fixing tests that hadn't been run or updated in months. Since then we've also added a Slack bot to shame anyone who breaks the trunk build, and our test suite has expanded from roughly 25 tests to about 600. And our tests have uncovered or prevented more regressions than I can count.

Some team members have taken to unit testing with more enthusiasm than others, despite a directive that all new development must have test coverage. One team member uses it proactively, even to reproduce bugs before fixing them; another uses it only for green-field development; another I have to pull teeth to convince to add tests (even though he concedes that they're enormously useful for catching regressions and verifying that dependency upgrades are safe, and even though his design decisions have leveled multiple levels up since we started testing); another built an entire back-end feature by running his code only in the test suite because he didn't have a UI to run it in and the setup was too complex to run comfortably in the REPL.</comment>


The Myth of 100% Utilization - <AUTHOR> http://manage.techwell.com/articles/weekly/management-myth-1-myth-100-utilization <comment><USER3> I've never understood this point of view. I wonder if these same managers drive down the highway with their gas pedal pushed all the way to the floor in an attempt to get 100% utilization out of their car purchase.

Silly.

It feels so natural to want to keep some headroom in the "system" so that your team can respond to unanticipated events.

The recent Godaddy/SOPA thing was a great example of this for us. In September we completed a customer service efficiency analysis and confirmed that we could deal with 20% more customer service inquiries without hiring any additional people. Instead of relying on this 20% to cover future growth, we made arrangements to increase the workforce by an additional 14% which increases our capacity to handle customer questions by an additional 30%. While the influx of new customers over such a short period of time (2 months of customers in less than 7 days) pushed us to our upper-limits, we never entered the red zone and coming into January, I know that we're right on track with our ability to continue to provide great customer service and aren't scrambling to hire, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe the problem here is the definition of "utilization". Arguably 100% utilization should be what you get when someone is performing at peak efficiency, not when they're doing work every minute they are at work. And peak efficiency is shown in many places to require NOT doing work every minute you're "working", both for physical and non-physical work.

Even ignoring serendipitous thinking and the other mentioned advantages of not being at 100%, you have a simple benefit you get from not being at 100%: rest. Sometimes it isn't thinking time. Sometimes you don't spend it exploring. Sometimes you don't innovate. Sometimes your brain (or body) just needs a rest. To think about the TV show you like. Or about what you're doing tonight. Or what your kids are up to at school. Occasional rest during the day is as important, in my mind, as getting good sleep at night. And acknowledging that that's a part of being productive is important, because otherwise you start feeling guilty when you take those short rest moments (or you don't take them at all), and that eliminates half the benefit.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. While it's harder to do, the goal should always be to measure output rather than input-lines of code is better than hours in the office, features built is better than lines of code, and dollars added to the bottom line trumps everything. Utilization is about as close to input as you can get.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a whole book that goes much deeper into this subject: "Slack" by deMarco (of "The Mythical Man Month" fame. Edit: _Crap, it was "Peopleware", thanks for pointing it out_ ) It describes some negative effects of 100% utilization efforts. The funniest one is that the workers quickly adjust to the 100% utilization metric and achieve it by slowing down so that their inbox is never empty.

Google Books link: [http://books.google.pl/books/about/Slack.html?id=563gvssRPvk...](http://books.google.pl/books/about/Slack.html?id=563gvssRPvkC)

<comment><USER7> DeMarco wrote Peopleware with Timothy Lister, Fred Brooks wrote The Mythical Man Month.

<comment><USER6> My mistake, added edit. Thanks for pointing out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I do a lot of "Capacity Planning" for businesses - reviewing their current capacity for output and then planning future growth steps to maximise profitability, achieve vision blah blah etc. I've a few tech / startup clients, but mostly I work with businesses where the pinch points are the capacity of people.

I build every model with a maximum output of 70-80% (depending on the exact business). Anything more than that is unsustainable because it relies either on perfection (no traffic jams, sick days, clients who forget to show up) or on driving staff too hard. In a professional services firm, staff billing 7.5 hours a day aren't 100% utilised - they're working 10 hours or more to achieve it.

My more fun clients are those that don't even want to get to 70% utilisation. Know your numbers and you can choose to grow faster by building in forward capacity (staff, suppliers, servers etc) right _before_ it's needed.

</comment><comment><USER9> "What if I told you you were probably getting more value than what you were paying, maybe one and a half to twice as much? Would you be happy with that?"

The Manager calmed down, then turned to me and said, "How do you know?"

I smiled, and said, "That's a different conversation."

Welcome to why your manager doesn't understand this sort of thing - <USER2> you're passing up great opportunities to educate him. I honestly don't see why it's a different conversation, he's asked about value, she's talking about value but won't support the argument.

<comment><USER10> I interpreted that as blog-speak for "That's my next blog post".

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The 100% utilization mentality comes from the factory assembly-line manufacturing process, where everyone is just a cog doing simple and repeatable thing. It's easy to get close to 100% utilization.

However, it fails miserably in the creative process of software development. But unfortunately many managers at all levels adhere to it and use it in planning and project management. It's one of the reasons software project is often over budget and late in delivery. Of course the developers are miserable, too.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's sensible to build some slack capacity into your scheduling because it increases your ability to take advantage of unexpected opportunities.

If you (or your staff) are all 100% committed to one project (and the schedule is based around this estimate) then you have few choices if another low-effort but high-payoff project comes along.

On the other hand, if you (or your staff) tend not to be fully utilised at all times then you will have reserve capacity to pursue these bonus opportunities as and when they arise.

</comment><comment><USER13> It seems to me that measuring utilization is like measuring the coastline of Britain. The more accurately you try measure it, the more meaningless the question becomes.

</comment><comment><USER14> "The Goal" - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goal_(novel)> \- is an excellent business "novel" that digs into this topic. Recommending just because I found it such an eye opener.

</comment><comment><USER15> "If your head is always in the rushes, you'll never get the opportunity to see the water, until its right upon you." <USER15>
</comment><comment><USER16> Do these same managers consider themselves to be 100% "utilized"? What would that mean for a manager?

</comment><comment><USER17> tl;dr: don't treat your employees like cattle.</comment>


Why You Should Quit Your Job to Be a Founder - <AUTHOR> http://jeffmatthewsmith.tumblr.com/post/31345255466/why-you-should-quit-your-job-to-be-a-founder

<comment><USER2> Terrible advice - quitting your job to be a founder does NOT instill you with the necessary skills and mindset to be a successful founder. The skills required to succeed as a founder does not appear just because you call yourself a "founder". Things like negotiating with difficult co-workers, identifying what defines good team work chemistry, charming your boss, charming your underlings, etc., are all challenges better encountered in your current work environment than when you start your company (and screw it up due to lack of experience).

Jumping into the water before learning how to swim because somebody said "hey, the best way to learn how to swim is to just do it - that's how I did it!!"

The most difficult challenge for young adults inexperienced in the adult world of employment/business (corporate politics, backstabbing vendors, non-paying customers, unscrupulous business partners, etc.) is separating the noise. I believe this post (although well meaning) is "noise" that will harm more than help.

<comment><AUTHOR> "quitting your job to be a founder does NOT instill you with the necessary skills and mindset to be a successful founder."

I don't think I advised anyone to quit one's job and become a founder in the strict sense. Dorsey redefined what it means to be a founder (someone foundational to an organization, regardless of when they joined) and I advised that the skills founders possess are valuable as an employee and founder alike.

<comment><USER3>
      > I don't think I advised anyone to quit one's job

You should change the title to "Why you should be a founder" (or "Why you should think like a founder") rather than "Why you should quit and be a founder". Just as I suggested that changing the title is something you should do, your article title suggests that quitting one's job is something one should do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My practical reason against this? I'm young. I have 80k in student loan debt. I can make headway into my indentured servitude (and create space to later accept greater risk) even as an early developer in a startup, throwing money at those loans. I can also learn from that experience, and build up my own projects with friends in my spare time that will likely blossom into a company someday. But I can't yet afford to pay myself on a shoestring.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I'm young as well and working through debt. The point isn't necessarily to venture out and start a company but to begin inculcating a founder-like outlook on how you work and approach life, even in the largest organizations. Finding opportunity, approaching work with a beginner's mind, etc. can be done in any organization, large or small.

<comment><USER4> As I re-read your article with less quickness to reply, I see you're making exactly that point. I'm mostly pre-occupied lately with that very tension between working for one's self and working for others, so my response had a fair bit of that going into it. Great post.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really appreciate that. Best of luck - sounds like we're in similar spots in life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The OP gives great advice. But I was amused by the Dorsey quote referring to _"...founders - who may not have been there at inception."_

Let's take some highly desirable attributes in an employee and give them a label "Rockstar". Er, no. "Founder".

When words are the currency of persuasion, expect inflation.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Growth hacker" => marketing "hustler" => sales "ninja" => ...um

<comment><USER6> are those arrows or equality operations?

<comment><AUTHOR> arrows

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> At 40, I am reminded of how little I knew 2 years after finishing my schooling. Yet, I had the audacity of believing I had it all figured out...for 5 minutes at a time. Then, I would tell myself "You're foolish, but that's OK, now is your time to be foolish."

When I read articles such as this one, I rejoice at the idea that youth is eternal.

<comment><USER8> As a fellow old man, I laughed out loud at your comment. Thank you for making my night.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's the point of redefining "founder" to mean "good employee?" There is nothing magical about any of those criteria you listed; they're just basic aspects of being an effective human being.

</comment><comment><USER10> payola 2.0 is your pitch? Uh... don't quit your day job...</comment>


Simple solution to host multiple HTTPS sites on the same cloud server - <AUTHOR> http://brightbox.com/blog/2012/04/18/port-translation/

<comment><USER3> All this is doing is having multiple IP addresses for that server. The fact that it's done through port translation is mostly irrelevant. It isn't getting round the fundamental problem that without SNI (which is out because of WinXP) there's still a one IP address/one host:port restriction.

<comment><USER4> _> without SNI (which is out because of WinXP)_

More specifically: IE on XP. IIRC Firefox and Chrome support SNI when running on XP and I would guess Opera does too.

Obviously you would still risk alienating some of your market, but if "try another browser" won't offend that part of your target audience that use XP+IE too much you could consider SNI. Unfortunately if a significant part of your market is corporate users this simply isn't an option and won't be for a while as many of them are locked to XP+IE by their IT setup.

<comment><USER5> _More specifically: IE on XP._

No, SNI is fully broken on all platforms. I tried it for a while, save yourself the headache.

It fails intermittently on _all_ browsers (including latest Firefox and chrome) under various conditions. These failures usually manifest as "Certificate does not match"-warnings for the user.

I have not fully understood all scenarios, but a few seem to be: Keep-alive connection to vhost A, then browser tries connection to vhost B. Loadbalancer doing funny things. Intermediate proxies doing funny things. General implementation bugs (I've seen the cert-warning even on a freshly booted chrome for no obvious reason).

And let's not get started on mobile browers... (hint: the built-in browser may actually seem fine but the http-library in your app still fails intermittently, older androids [widely deployed] have no SNI support at all)

Do yourself a favor and either switch to a wildcard cert or stick with separate IPs.

<comment><USER4> I've not implemented SNI myself yet as a chunk of our clients fall in the "stoneage" category, running XP+IE8 or in at least one case XP+IE6.

I'll take your warnings as things to thoroughly test if I ever need to try implement it.

You are right in noting that mobile platforms apparently don't support it well at all.

Really IPv6 is the answer, but for out clients at least that is even more "future magic" then running a decent browser...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is somewhat of an artificial problem caused by how popular cloud server providers (e.g. EC2 and Brightbox) have chosen to implement their networking. There's no inherent problem with cloud servers. For example, Linode lets you have many public IP addresses associated with a server, just like a traditional server. But it also lets you move IP addresses around between servers in the same data center, so you still have the convenience of the cloud.

<comment><AUTHOR> NAT-style floating IPs have other benefits though. Putting multiple IPs on a cloud server is a mistake imo (it makes them less cloud-like :) - it's not usually needed, and you lose the benefits of having the IPs at a different layer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> VirtualHosts on the same Apache setup can run different HTTPs certs as long as each host is listening on a separate IP address. So for at least some people facing this problem, the simplest solution may be upgrading to a standalone server with 5-10 assigned IP addresses.

<comment><USER8> Back in my teenage years I worked at Bluehost and they did this exact thing for their shared hosting platform. It was simple and worked well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's a nice solution, but it's specific to their platform. The title made me hope for a platform-abstract solution.

<comment><AUTHOR> The same concept could be added to any "floating" IP style platform though, like Openstack or Amazon EC2. Shouldn't be hard to add it to Openstack at any rate!

<comment><USER10> But why would you? Normally a server can differentiate the src interface and dst ip.

<comment><AUTHOR> because NAT-style floating IPs have many benefits. See my other comments for details!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >You can map multiple Cloud IPs to the same Cloud Server, but the server cannot differentiate between connections made to different Cloud IPs.

This may be the case for Brightbox, but in general a server can differentiate between connections to different IP's. This is how multiple SSL certificates have been supported on one server since forever.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's the case for many "floating ip" style systems, like EC2 and Openstack too.

NAT-based floating IP style systems have some great benefits, in particular that the cloud server itself doesn't need to know anything about them. So you can move Cloud IPs between them without changing any configs, or doing anything particularly special on the servers themselves.

Adding multiple IPs to a _cloud server_ adds quite a bit of complexity - <USER2> it harder to just move the floating IPs between servers (because you have to maintain a mapping to each IP, which is different on each server) and it makes configuring the web server more complex too (because the IPs will be different on each server).

In the majority of use cases I've seen, you don't actually need multiple IP addresses on the same cloud server, so it's overkill to support them when port translation can solve the most common problem so neatly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> While a neat solution, I feel this is going the wrong way with things. One of the primary reasons to use the cloud is to get away from SPoF. This solution is simply putting lots of sites on a single instance, which is fine, but how does the port translation work across multiple instances? We ran into this problem recently while architecting a solution for our customers and we ended up using multiple ELB's to point to multiple EC2 instances. Sure at $20/mo its probably a slightly more expensive route, but it solved all the benefits of what is being promoted here. For those that don't realize ELB's can act as SSL endpoints. I believe RackSpace allows a similar such thing. It also means that no complex port/ssl configuration occurs on the web servers, they are actually much easier to deal.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unlike Elastic IPs, Brightbox Cloud IPs can be mapped directly to load balancers, so you can avoid the SPoF that way (load balancers are highly- available, across zones): <http://brightbox.com/#load_balancers>

But we also have some other upcoming features for Cloud IPs that address this in another way :)

<comment><USER12> Ah, that is certainly helpful. I didn't realize that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is no rocket science, I've implemented it years ago on an EC2 cloud managed with Scalarium. I'd expect any self respecting sysadmin to come up with such a solution.

<comment><USER14> Be interested to know how you did this tbh. Pretty sure EC2 doesn't let you map multiple elastic IPs to an instance afaik?

<comment><USER15> I've also done something similar on EC2, with two different load balancers both forwarding to the same instance, but to different ports. Of course then you could also just handle the SSL on the ELB level, but sometimes it's handy to pass it all the way to your web servers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> And why this is considered new or even relevant? Network admins have been doing this (and other approaches) for years.

<comment><USER16> OK, downvote reality.</comment></comment>


Ask PG: What are you up to - bra-ket

? <comment><AUTHOR> Enjoying some well-deserved privacy and quiet time to read books?

[pure speculation on my part of course]</comment>


Startup Confession: I need to fire 10 employees to extend my startup runway - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/talk/fire-10-employees-to-extend-startup-runway <comment><USER2> Do it sooner rather than later. The bigger question is, whom to keep? Got to be ruthlessly practical, never mind who was hired first or who's a friend.

Remember, its not going to ruin their lives. Instead of working for you, they'll go work for somebody else.</comment>


Uber settles with family of victim in fatal self-driving vehicle accident - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-selfdriving-uber-settlement/uber-reaches-settlement-with-family-of-autonomous-vehicle-victim-idUSKBN1H5092 <comment><USER2> The stallement of the further development of autonomous cars seems rather a marketing thing on Toyota and Uber side than actual analysis of what happens. Still think that self-driving cars are already much safer than a human behind the wheel. As Musk said, it is not difficult to get to 99.9%, the important things is to get to 99.99999% of accuracy and reliability

<comment><USER3> How do you know this? From the video I saw, the advanced sensors didn't pick up the pedestrian at all. I would have expected some braking forcing the human driver to move forward abruptly. It would have been interesting to see the tail end of the video before impact to see if the car made any evasive moves at all. It wasn't evident to me the AI was 99.9% better in that situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It should be said that a settlement is in no way an acknowledgement of culpability.

It's just a hell of a lot easier to not even get into a case at all, for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow, that was fast.

<comment><USER6> There are some very uneasy questions regarding this case. I'm not surprised they do what they can to stop prodding into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Victim's family agrees to gag order in fatal self-driving vehicle accident" would have been a better title.

 _The terms of the settlement were not given. The law firm representing Herzberg's daughter and husband, whose names were not disclosed, said they would have no further comment on the matter as they considered it resolved._

</comment><comment><USER8> I wish they were forced to release amounts in settlements. I wanna know numbers!

<comment><AUTHOR> I was surprised they didn't share more details. The settlement has been reached, why wouldn't they disclose the numbers?

<comment><USER9> To avoid establishing a baseline for future incidents. And also to avoid being judged on the amount at which they settled.

<comment><AUTHOR> That makes sense, thanks for your answer!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What is ActivityPub, and how will it change the internet? - <AUTHOR> https://jeremydormitzer.com/blog/what-is-activitypub-and-how-will-it-change-the-internet/ <comment><USER3> It can maybe change the Web, but not the Internet, and only a portion of it :)

ActivityPub is based on HTTP/JSON standards, for real-time solutions in other "out of Web" environments I'd prefer to use something like XMPP-Pubsub (that is built on top of TCP) directly.

XMPP can pretty much covers what ActivityPub offers (feeds, comments, articles publication) with a lot more related features (presences, contact list, video- conferencing, chatrooms…). Also, social features on XMPP are basically Atom 1.0 on top of Pubsub, so no need to convert Atom to some new JSON format, you simply embed it! (ArsTechnica on XMPP Pubsub [https://nl.movim.eu/?node/news.movim.eu/ArsTechnica](https://nl.movim.eu/?node/news.movim.eu/ArsTechnica), or my personnal blog [https://firstname.lastname@example.com](https://email@example.com)).

<comment><USER4> I don't think XMPP has a concept of standard federated authentication, let alone social media controls you might expect. It seems like a subset of the required functionality.

<comment><USER5> XMPP federation certainly is authenticated, so that your identity to other servers on the network is never in doubt.

As for social media controls, you certainly can publish items only visible to e.g. certain groups of people, unsure if that's what you meant.

XMPP is not the narrow subset of XMPP that Pidgin implements, but sadly that's how most people are familiar with it. Projects like Movim for example provide a much richer view of how XMPP can also be used for social media.

Personally I'm a fan of ActivityPub if it gets more people federating. It's not impossible to bridge the two protocols (we did that in the past with OStatus, the previous iteration of federated HTTP social networking).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They list a whole bunch of services built on top of AP, except for events. Please give me decentralized events (including the rsvp option), and I might be able to leave Facebook.

<comment><USER7> Not ActivityPub, but this has been implemented in with Scuttlebutt[0] with availability polls to decide when to schedule an event, RSVP options, and it's all done completely P2P with no "instances" required to act as central servers.

[0]: [http://scuttlebutt.nz/](http://scuttlebutt.nz/)

<comment><USER8> Scuttlebutt has a lot of work to do before I'll consider it as even approaching usable, mostly to do with the protocol layer. It works great for very small (<1000 member) communities, but it scales extremely poorly, and the protocols are poorly designed and cumbersome to work with.

<comment><USER7> Could you point out why you think it scales poorly? I've never heard those complaints, and my laptop benchmarks 100,000 basic messages in only a few seconds. Even so, you only replicate friends of friends, which for me is about 2500 people.

I'd appreciate your input, thanks!

<comment><USER8> So the protocol issues are not to do with the scaling, but with the fact that the choice was made, early on, to support node.js as the primary implementation language, and little thought was put into the protocols from that point on. It's nearly impossible to implement in anything other then node.js at this point.

I suppose I am a little off in my <1000 estimate, but 2500 is still hilariously small compared to the internet as a whole. Try it with 400 thousand users and 20 million messages (which activitypub type stuff can handle)

<comment><USER7> > little thought was put into the protocols from that point on

It's currently being implemented in Rust, and I'm personally working on off- chain content that would allow data to be passed in any syntax: JSON, YAML, TOML, ProtoBuf, or your favorite binary syntax. I believe there's also a Python implementation.

> Try it with 400 thousand users and 20 million messages

Why would I want to do that? I download and replicate the feeds of the people that I follow (and the people that they follow), and that ends up being about 2500 people out of the 8000 Scuttlebutt users.

Do you also scoff at apps like Signal that only download the threads you're a part of? My friends and I aren't sending each other millions of messages, we're chatting about life and playing chess and pushing Git commits. I think we can do better than ActivityPub.

<comment><USER8> I implemented it in Go myself, so I do speak from experience..., and the issues are known by core scuttlebutt devs(Just scoffed at and ignored).

> Why would I want to do that? I download and replicate the feeds of the > people that I follow (and the people that they follow), and that ends up > being about 2500 people out of the 8000 Scuttlebutt users.

Scuttlebutt gets actively clumsy in conversations that involve people that aren't in your FOAF range, whereas stuff like ActivityPub (and others, like IndieWeb) don't. So yeah, scuttlebutt is worse, IMO.

Oh, and scuttlebutt is also a constantly growing append only log for each person, so no way to garbage collect really old stuff. Again, a tradeoff, but other systems let you choose to remove old stuff, scuttlebutt just breaks if you try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Haha, didn't expect my blog to ever get to the front page of HN and my $5/month DO droplet couldn't keep up. I resized it and now I'm putting Cloudflare in front of it, so hopefully it will stay up now.

<comment><USER10> You might want to look into caching (either at the wordpress or nginx level). I have a $5 DO and it can handle a good bit of traffic before being hugged to death. Now I do use Ghost as my blogging platform but I haven't enabled anything special in ghost for caching, I did it all in nginx.

<comment><USER9> Thanks! Yeah, I haven't looked into any sort of performance optimizations. Better late than never, I suppose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The site is currently inaccessible, possibly due to being "hugged to death".

Would ActivityPub be able to solve this issue?

<comment><USER12> That's probably a better term, but I kinda miss when that was known as "slashdotting" or the "Slashdot Effect".

<comment><USER13> I will never call it anything else. Now will you and any Anonymous Coward reading this get off my lawn. Or maybe install NetBSD on it.

<comment><USER14> Or petrify it and cover it with hot grits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So.. I like this direction, but haven't the "decentralized social network" been tried a few times already? What different this time?

<comment><USER16> > So.. I like this direction, but haven't the "decentralized social network" > been tried a few times already? What different this time?

It seems to be all an evolution. Gnu Social -> OStatus -> ActivityPub -> PeerTube.

As all things open source, every few years, a new innovation builds on top of already established communities and tries something new. True, ActivityPub / Masteodon are relatively new, but the roots of the network are well planted in the general Fediverse.

<comment><USER9> PeerTube is actually built with ActivityPub ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you're one of those people reading this and thinking "oh here comes another alternative social media" just stop reading and steer clear.

Mastodon is compatible with OStatus used by GNU social servers and Pleroma is basically the spiritual successor to GNU Social and is fully activitypub compliant (moreso than Mastodon is). This network has existed for a very long time and will still be there when you're ready to take alternative social media seruously. So if you're skeptical, check back when you're ready.

<comment><USER18> You might have a point, but the way you phrased it sounded arrogant. People might have various reasons to avoid social networks or consider them irrelevant and might not need to "get ready for it". While potentially useful, it's not really a must.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Just to tone down the "yet another..." aspect of the title, I might suggest, "What is ActivityPub, and how could it help change the internet?"

<comment><USER9> Yeah, it is kind of click-baity. Honestly, I wanted this to spread so I gave it a provocative name. And here it is on the front page of HN...

I won't be offended if the mods change the title of the submission though, I realize that's the sort of thing that rubs people here the wrong way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Also take a look at DIF's Identity Hub - a large-scale initiative that goes far beyond a social server/mailbox, and incorporates solutions for the identity issues people here have flagged: [https://github.com/decentralized- identity/identity-hub/blob/...](https://github.com/decentralized- identity/identity-hub/blob/master/explainer.md)

</comment><comment><USER21> Federation doesn't actually solve the issue. What we need is everyone publishing from their own device. No need to join a federated server of any kind.

<comment><USER4> What does this solve?

<comment><USER21> Deplatforming for one... If everyone can publish right from their own device, there are no middle-men. And that would be true P2P.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > No more walled gardens

I somewhat doubt this, though. Already, Mastodon instances can block other instances from showing up on theirs. Likewise, a major instance could simply block _all_ other instances from showing up on theirs, or the other way around. Walled gardens can arise when single players become as large as Twitter is, and that isn't prevented (though perhaps somewhat obstructed) by federation.

<comment><USER4> I always interpreted a "walled garden" as a wall you don't want, not a carte blanche critique of walls. What's the appeal of a single massive instance over a federated set of them for end users?

<comment><USER22> The appeal could be that everyone's on there, and you can't read their posts elsewhere. It needn't start out like that, but it could become that - <USER2> like Twitter has been limiting third-party access more and more.

<comment><USER4> Well, it could, but I see zero reason to think so. More likely is people never leave twitter or facebook in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm wondering how decentralized systems based around ActivityPub plan to combat problems like spam and astroturfing? These seem to be easier to address in the walled garden platforms due to the administrators having a global view of the social networks. Decentralization on the surface seems to allow bad actors to more easily mask their activities from effective moderation.

</comment><comment><USER24> If the site is down, there's also...

Could activity pub be the future [1]? Yes, it could be [2].

[1] [https://blog.digitalscofflaw.com/articles/activitypub- could-...](https://blog.digitalscofflaw.com/articles/activitypub-could-be-the- future/)

[2] [https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2018/06/why-activitypub-is- the...](https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2018/06/why-activitypub-is-the-future/)

</comment><comment><USER25> How does ActivityPub compare with RSS and Atom? Would it make sense for blogs, podcasts, and/or news readers to add support for it?

<comment><USER22> It doesn't just allow people to subscribe to your blog, but also to respond to it with their own ActivityPub account, and have those responses show up both on your blog/podcast and on their account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm getting an "Error establishing a database connection" page

</comment><comment><USER27> So like... RSS... But way less awesome?

</comment><comment><USER28> What could help Mastodon grow significantly is if the moderation on a large number of instances was toned down a bit. What happened to Wil Wheaton was a bit nuts. And conservative opinions are often banned due to being agressively labelled as hate or racist when they are usually not technically so. Most people don't want to be part of a social justice warrior authoritarian "fall in line or we will ban you" community.

Sure, people could set up their own instance. Federation is awesome. But if almost all other instances don't talk to them, they have to build a community from scratch, and it's usually not worth it.

<comment><USER29> For those who were unaware what happened to Wil ([http://wilwheaton.net/2018/08/the-world-is-a-terrible- place-...](http://wilwheaton.net/2018/08/the-world-is-a-terrible-place-right- now-and-thats-largely-because-it-is-what-we-make-it/))

<comment><USER30> Why do people like Wil blame Twitter for Alex Jones & Donald Trump? The only people being bothered are the people that want to be bothered. You can 1. Block people you don't want to see 2. Ignore it. Twitter is __not __forcing you to view pages you don 't like. There are entire other extremely large groups of people that enjoy this stuff and are completely harmless.

<comment><USER31> A thought exercise:

Let's say a popular HN user with a large following (let's call them "Dex") starts a campaign on HN to harass you. They start posting lies all over the site, claiming you hit puppies, spit in the coffee of blond people, and talk at the theatre. Dex has rabid fans that take his word over their own research, and those users start to hate you. You start getting hate messages, and they eventually dox you.

> The only people being bothered are the people that want to be bothered.

You don't want to be bothered by Dex's actions. You may not even have a clue who he is. Yet you are being bothered by his actions and those of his fans.

> You can 1. Block people you don't want to see

You can't block people in real life, when they start sending packages of excrement to your house or start swatting you.

> 2\. Ignore it.

Pretty hard to ignore AFK harassment that is targeting you and your family in your own home.

> Twitter is not forcing you to view pages you don't like.

By now it should be clear it's not about being offended by words you don't want to see.

> Why do people like Wil blame Twitter for Alex Jones & Donald Trump?

In our parallel, let's say you and a large portion of HN know Dex's actions are spiteful and based on lies with the sole objective of harming you, and you can prove it. Yet HN does nothing. Instead, it keeps making excuses as to why they won't silence Dex, thus allowing the attacks on your person to continue.

Do you see the problem?

<comment><USER32> Easy solution: don't be a celebrity.

Incredible, I know.

<comment><USER13> Well... Didn't the followers of Alex Jones harrass the parents of children that died in the Tony Hook school shooting?

Not being a celebrity didn't work for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The idea that you should be able to shield or blind yourself to content is a flat out stupid one. Not to mention that the way Mastodon works kinda lends it self to the old issue of jerk forum admins. If an instance owner doesn't like what you say for any reason they boot you off. They can also share that information with other instances to block you from going to those instances as well. Sure, you could start your own or join an instance that doesn't do that kinda stuff, but then what's the point of federation?

Those are really the only two issues I have with Mastodon.

<comment><USER5> > Sure, you could start your own or join an instance that doesn't do that > kinda stuff, but then what's the point of federation?

That is _exactly_ the point of federation.

Maybe jerk admins are a real problem, maybe they aren't - but they can't boot you off the network, and you'll always have options.

<comment><USER33> Well more specifically, what I was trying to say is, if you wanted to be part of, say - the cross-stitching community, and you made a post about how over- under stitching sucks, and so the owner of that server banned you, and then let every other cross-stitching based mastodon know about your terrible stitching beliefs, then while you can still "join" another mastodon instance, you are effectively removed completely from the "cross-stitching community".

From what I'm aware of, this has kinda happened with certain instances have essentially been blackballed by the groups of instances which don't like them, or whatever.

<comment><USER34> Well in that case couldnt said person create their own community? Assuming there are those in Mastodon that don't agree with the (possibly repeated) actions of the server admin people will start to leave.

So no matter what there is still an option. Unlike Facebook/Twitter. I mean technically even InfoWars and Alex Jones could start their own community and by the rules of Mastodon not get kicked off.

Please no one tell Alex Jones about Mastodon.

<comment><USER35> No, someone please _do_ tell Alex Jones about Mastodon. The sooner a problem is encountered, the sooner a solution is found.

The alternative is to bump into that problem farther down the line, where solving it will be much costlier.

And if Mastodon will crumble because of Alex Jones, it would have crumbled eventually because of someone else like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Every community I know that's been started for the goal of 'protecting' some group has ended up as the most toxic tarpit imaginable.

Mastodon seems to be headed in the same direction.

Tone down the rhetoric of protecting peoples feelings and have actual human conversations instead. You will only attract the worst people from both sides of that debate if you keep it up.

You just made me orders of magnitude less likely to use it because all I heard there was "prepare for lots of drama".

<comment><USER37> Agree. These isolated communities just serve to divide the world more. Mastodon is treating a symptom not a root cause. It's one solution to the problem of humans being bad to each other: avoidance rather than fighting it head on.

Combine that with the product issues it has in regards to walling off people and ideas, the need to self host (so many wasted resources, not to mention the bar to running one is high), and the extremist admin issues.

ActivityPub is cool. Mastodon is gonna be a flash in the pan methinks. If the protocol catches on and services like Wordpress, Twitter, FB et all begin to adopt it then the individual instances are going to be less attractive.</comment></comment>