A Truth About the Glass Ceiling No One Wants to Talk About - <AUTHOR> http://throwww.com/a/68c <comment><USER2> I'm slightly apprehensive (terrified) about commenting on this topic or any relating to gender/race because it seems like the bar for public crucifixion is _somewhat low,_ even to those who just want to add data or other side- points to a discussion.

Anyway, and I apologize in advance if I derail the topic, but I think there's a semi important distinction to qualify this discussion, because I do think the discussion applies just as much to men as it does to women.

Casually attraction does seem like less important of a factor for men, but in data that seems to be because height is vastly important instead. So much so that a woman's attractiveness is _not_ congruent to a man's attractiveness, but his height.

I find this to be true casually and it certainly has some scientific backing[1]. In online forum threads (okay fine, AskReddit) and female friends have nearly universally expressed less interest in short males precisely because they are short.

In fact, I think if you replace "attractive women" with "tall men" you have a slightly better scientific basis for this article, because we can base it on studies and not the author's perceptions of attractiveness.

10% of Russel 3000 CEOs are women, and similarly 10% of (original source doesn't say) CEOs are below average height. Wikipedia says[1]:

> A survey of Fortune 500 CEO height in 2005 revealed that they were on > average 6 ft 0 in (1.83 m) tall, which is approximately 2.5 inches (6.4 cm) > taller than the average American man. 30% were 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) tall or > more; in comparison only 3.9% of the overall United States population is of > this height.[11] Similar surveys have uncovered that less than 3% of CEOs > were below 5 ft 7 in (1.70 m) in height. Ninety percent of CEOs are of above > average height.

[1] See especially the "unsolicited messages per week, by height" graph: [http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-biggest-lies-in- online...](http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-biggest-lies-in-online- dating/)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_discrimination#In_busine...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_discrimination#In_business)

<comment><USER3> Of course it's also possible that height and attractiveness are correlated with competence (e.g. because healthy diets as children influence all three attributes), in which case we'd expect to see more tall/attractive people promoted even in a meritocracy (though perhaps not to the observed degree).

<comment><USER4> In the developed world I would hope that virtually everyone has good enough health/nutrition and thus variation in height and appearance is due more to genetics.

<comment><USER5> Agreed, diet is a poor explanation for developed countries. What seems more likely is that the discrimination start earlier, in college or high school where athletic students have an easier time going to the best colleges simply because they are good at a sport (assuming height is correlated to being good at a sport popular in college)

<comment><USER6> I doubt this is very explanatory.

Height is doubtless correlated with athleticism, but it's fairly weakly correlated. Except in basketball, when you see a group of athletes, you'll tend to see a range of heights. A little taller than average? Sure. But not immensely so.

And then, athleticism is doubtless correlated with admission to elite universities, but, again, only weakly so. The top tier and second tier universities like to see some extracurricular activities on your record, but "being good at cross country running" is far from a sure-fire way to get into Harvard. The REALLY good athletes don't go to top-tier academic universities, and don't get corporate jobs -- they're on the pro athlete track.

You might get into Harvard due to being a good football player but not good enough to go pro, even if you were not otherwise academically capable of going to Harvard. But, first, you're now talking about a small percentage of Harvard students. Second, I'd like to see some data before I'd concede that IF you're clearly not elite-university quality academically, BUT you get in on your athletic merits, AND you go into a corporate track job, THEN you end up with an elite career path.

So, long story short: Is there probably some advantage to height through the path you suggest? Yes, probably some measurable advantage. Is it enough to explain the pretty substantial advantage that tall men enjoy according to the literature? I can't see how. It's passing through too many weak correlations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interestingly, I just spoke with a colleague yesterday who admitted (without shame) that he recently campaigned (successfully) to have an attractive female hired into his group. I asked him about her qualifications, and he said she seemed capable, but not exceptional. He stressed that, at least to him, her appearance outweighted her abilities.

Incidents like this make me wonder if some sort of anonymous interviewing could be implemented in certain industries, and whether the benefits associated with mitigating prejudices would outweigh the intangible benefits associated with getting to know someone as a whole person during the hiring process.

<comment><USER8> Not to mention that incidents like this debase the efforts of (possibly attractive) women whom are trying to compete on merits instead.

As far as I'm concerned blatant positive discrimination such as this should be treated as harshly as af it were negative discrimination based on race.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here are the female CEO's of the fortune 500.

Meg Whitman, HP (#10)

Virginia Rometty, IBM (#19)

Patricia A. Woertz, Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) (#28)

Indra K. Nooyi, PepsiCo, Inc. (#41)

Irene B. Rosenfeld, Mondelez International

Marillyn Hewson, Lockheed Martin (#58)

Ellen J. Kullman, DuPont (#72)

Phebe Novakovic, General Dynamics (#92)

Carol M. Meyrowitz, The TJX Companies, Inc. (#125)

Ursula M. Burns, Xerox Corporation (#127)

Sheri S. McCoy, Avon Products Inc. (#234)

Deanna M. Mulligan, Guardian (#250)

Debra L. Reed, Sempra Energy (#266)

Denise M. Morrison, Campbell Soup (#334)

Ilene Gordon, Ingredion Incorproated (#390)

Heather Bresch, Mylan (#396)

Kathleen M. Mazzarella, Graybar Electric (#451)

Mary Agnes (Maggie) Wilderotter, Frontier Communications (#464)

Gracia C. Martore, Gannett (#465)

Marissa Mayer, Yahoo (#483)

Beth E. Mooney, KeyCorp (#499)

Ironically despite being low on this list Marissa Mayer is by far one of the most recognisable, probably because as an attractive woman it's a good brand for Yahoo.

Just in my opinion, but the most interesting thing the article brought up is the attractive lawyer being fired for being incompetent. It seems like a company could get great talent by assessing women independently of their looks and hiring appropriately.

<comment><USER10> With image links so you can judge for yourself whether the conclusions of the article hold true or not.

Personally I don't think so. Whilst I wouldn't describe any of these hugely succesful women as unattractive, I think they would compare to the attractiveness ratings of male CEOs (also a bit above average).

Meg Whitman, HP (#10) [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Meg+Whitman&tbm=isch](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Meg+Whitman&tbm=isch)

Virginia Rometty, IBM (#19) [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Virginia+Rometty&tbm=i...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Virginia+Rometty&tbm=isch)

Patricia A. Woertz, Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) (#28) [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Patricia+A+Woertz&tbm=...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Patricia+A+Woertz&tbm=isch)

Indra K. Nooyi, PepsiCo, Inc. (#41) [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Indra+K+Nooyi&tbm=isch](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Indra+K+Nooyi&tbm=isch)

Irene B. Rosenfeld, Mondelez International [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Irene+B+Rosenfeld&tbm=...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Irene+B+Rosenfeld&tbm=isch)

Marillyn Hewson, Lockheed Martin (#58) [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Marillyn+Hewson&tbm=is...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Marillyn+Hewson&tbm=isch)

Ellen J. Kullman, DuPont (#72) [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Ellen+J+Kullman&tbm=is...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Ellen+J+Kullman&tbm=isch)

Phebe Novakovic, General Dynamics (#92) [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Phebe+Novakovic&tbm=is...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Phebe+Novakovic&tbm=isch)

Carol M. Meyrowitz, The TJX Companies, Inc. (#125) [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Carol+M+Meyrowitz&tbm=...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Carol+M+Meyrowitz&tbm=isch)

Ursula M. Burns, Xerox Corporation (#127) [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Ursula+M+Burns&tbm=isc...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Ursula+M+Burns&tbm=isch)

Sheri S. McCoy, Avon Products Inc. (#234) [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Sheri+S+McCoy&tbm=isch](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Sheri+S+McCoy&tbm=isch)

Deanna M. Mulligan, Guardian (#250) [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Deanna+M+Mulligan&tbm=...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Deanna+M+Mulligan&tbm=isch)

Debra L. Reed, Sempra Energy (#266) [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Debra+L+Reed&tbm=isch](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Debra+L+Reed&tbm=isch)

Denise M. Morrison, Campbell Soup (#334) [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Denise+M+Morrison&tbm=...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Denise+M+Morrison&tbm=isch)

Ilene Gordon, Ingredion Incorproated (#390) [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Ilene+Gordon&tbm=isch](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Ilene+Gordon&tbm=isch)

Heather Bresch, Mylan (#396) [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Heather+Bresch&tbm=isc...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Heather+Bresch&tbm=isch)

Kathleen M. Mazzarella, Graybar Electric (#451) [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Kathleen+M+Mazzarella&...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Kathleen+M+Mazzarella&tbm=isch)

Mary Agnes (Maggie) Wilderotter, Frontier Communications (#464) [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Mary+Wilderotter&tbm=i...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Mary+Wilderotter&tbm=isch)

Gracia C. Martore, Gannett (#465) [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Gracia+C+Martore&tbm=i...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Gracia+C+Martore&tbm=isch)

Marissa Mayer, Yahoo (#483) [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Marissa+Mayer&tbm=isch](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Marissa+Mayer&tbm=isch)

Beth E. Mooney, KeyCorp (#499) [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Beth+E+Mooney&tbm=isch](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Beth+E+Mooney&tbm=isch)

<comment><USER11> As a whole, I think that's definitely a good-looking group of women.

<comment><USER12> The only way we're going to resolve this is some manner of blind comparison data gathering like the ancient "hotornot" dotcom from a decade or so ago, assuming the only people interested enough to provide data aren't already so interested in the topic that they recognize the CEOs on sight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is the author here? If so, a note:

> What does this have to do with the glut of female leaders?

"Glut" is the wrong word; it means _too many_. You might replace it with "lack", "dearth", or "paucity".

</comment><comment><USER14> Another funny fact about the 'halo effect' discussed here: when rating individuals for aptitude on a variety of tasks, straight men have a positive bias towards attractive women, whereas straight women have a _negative_ bias towards attractive women (a kind of 'jealousy' phenomenon). This jealousy phenomenon seems less apparent when it's straight men rating men.

<comment><USER15> These kinds of biases are also interesting and definitely are present everywhere.

<comment><USER16> And yet, people are still so eager to buy in to the (often) self-serving meritocracy myth.

<comment><USER15> Haha, for sure.

I believe in meritocracies, but am well aware that what people do, say, and say they do is often 3 separate continents.

If you have any thoughts on my other post in this thread, I'd be interested to read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I recall reading about a similar prejudice in the promotion of men. In the case of men it's height not prettiness.

EDIT: simonsarris beat me by 3 minutes wit better data, so I'll throw in another data point. In the past 25 presidential elections the taller or tying candidate won 19 times. Before that it is more even, perhaps because it was harder to see the differences.

<comment><USER18> This is true. There is indeed a biological explanation for many of these behaviours. We are programmed to believe that tall men would infer strong mating partners, or someone to avoid in the case of a male.

For females, it is quite similar. Women who possess certain qualities appear more attractive and we generally look more favourably upon them in society.

This problem is indeed real, but it is perhaps more subconscious then we wish to believe.

<comment><USER19> Beware of using biology to explain behaviours when those behaviours re-enforce the status quo. Evolutionary psychology is struggling to seem legit and using it to make 'that's just how things are' statements sound scientific is not helping at all.

<comment><USER20> You're barking up the wrong tree if you think sex selection for height and attractiveness are anything but biological in origin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does anyone know of a study on this that breaks down the effect between different _types_ of leadership positions? In particular, I am wondering if positions that involve sales or otherwise interacting with the customers or general public exhibit this phenomenon more strongly than engineering or "internal" positions.

The reason I say this is that it would help identify where the problem really lies. If it affects all categories of work equally, then I would be more likely to say that organizations themselves are basing decisions on attractiveness. On the other hand, if this is affecting people who interact with the public to a greater degree than those who do not, I would point to a broader problem: that perhaps such people are simply more successful at their jobs, because their attractiveness is an asset in their work (which would make a solution pretty tricky).

</comment><comment><USER22> "What does this have to do with the glut of female leaders?"

"glut" means the opposite of what you think it means.

<comment><USER23> We have a glut of female leaders who don't have companies to lead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> So the theory presented here is:

=

Attractive women are disproportionately hired and promoted.

Many of these attractive women are not intelligent enough for upper management therefore there is a limit to how high these women reach in an organization.

At the same time, less attractive women languish in the lower rungs, far below their intellectual potential.

Furthermore, this phenomena does not affect men because they are judged based on their ability.

=

Well, there seems to be a lot of assumptions baked into this theory, but one I think is most likely to sink it is this one: Attractive women are, on average, less intelligent and capable than their less attractive counterparts. Seems a bit prejudicial to me.

Edit: You all are right, of course -- I shot from the hip. While it would be relatively easy to fill a single position with someone who is both attractive and intelligent, when taken across a workforce (assuming it is a widespread practice -- widespread enough to skew the curve) you would end up with a smaller pool when taking anything but intelligence into account.

I've got to wonder, though, how ubiquitous it is when hiring for skilled positions that can eventually lead to management and how much those types of factors differ compared to men?

<comment><USER25> The assumption is that women selected for attractiveness are, on average, less intelligent than women selected for intelligence. That doesn't mean attractive women are less intelligent than unattractive women.

<comment><USER26> Yes. More generally, the principle here is _you can only optimize for one thing_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Couple hidden assumptions:

1) Intelligence is a single digit number which can be optimized for, and (even more incredibly unlikely) the interview / hiring process is capable of properly determining and ranking applicants in a ridiculously short amount of time and effort.

2) Beauty (see above, although this isn't as strong of an argument).

I would say based on decades of observation, other than eliminating perhaps the absolute bottom 10% of the population, the overall hiring process especially the interview process is utterly ineffective at determining intelligence or effectiveness. On the other hand, internal promotions either select for that, or brown nosing.

This made the original article rather comical when it claimed hundred of women applied and they seriously think they'll be able to select the smartest?

Clearly, given the proven ineffectiveness overall of corporate hiring process, the average IQ of new hires is going to average 100 or so, regardless if the women are hot or not. So the question becomes given two individuals both IQ of 100 or whatever other ranking system you'd prefer, why do the hot women not get promoted but the men are promoted?

</comment><comment><USER27> I have a suspicion that there's a cognitive bias at play here, whereby men unconsciously overrate the competence of attractive women and underrate the competence of unattractive women. While I have no evidence to back it up, it does a better job of passing the sniff test than the implicit assertion that men are consciously hiring unqualified women simply because they're attractive.

<comment><USER28> > _a cognitive bias at play here, whereby men unconsciously overrate the > competence of attractive women_ [...] //

Only men?

I don't consider it likely but it seems mathematically possible that men are entirely even handed on the appearance of women but that women are highly partial to more attractive women. That would mean that as more women entered higher echelons of companies there would be more bias towards hiring attractive women [for top positions]. If the effect was greater amongst more attractive women - like stereotypical high school girl groups of Hollywood movies - then the effect would quickly magnify until only the most attractive women were allowed, by other women, to attain top positions.

I'm not at all saying this is the case but just questioning whether there's a basis in science for your apparently pinning the apparent bias on men [alone].

It also strikes me that perhaps the person writing the story is attracted to power. That would make those women appear more attractive than they otherwise might. A further possibility is that after attaining positions with good wages they then were able to acquire the ability to stay (or become) more attractive - basically flipping the cause and effect.

<comment><USER27> I questioned whether or not to include women, and elected not to because I simply don't know enough about how their minds work. In addition, most of the people making the hiring decisions are currently men, so the influence of a cognitive bias in women on the overall makeup of the pool of employees would be considerably less than one in men. It may well be that the same bias exists in both men and women, but I strongly suspect it does in men, whereas I have no idea if it does in women.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I feel compelled to include a link to Roy Baumeister's "Is There Anything Good About Men?": <http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm>. It is possible that there are fewer women in the upper echelons of business because evolutionarily women didn't have to take as many risks as men in order to reproduce. So men are biologically programmed to take risks, and either spectacularly succeed or spectacularly fail. Hence there are more male CEOs, but there are also more male homeless, for example.

<comment><USER30> how dare you bring biology into a gender debate. it was well established decades ago that a billion year old evolutionary trait is no longer relavent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Born into the most visible of minorities, I grew up comfortably and amongst the majority while being unable to change how I looked, or pick the family I was born into, or the color of my skin.

The single thing I've seen over and over:

The only way ignorance is destroyed is when we take a minute to turn a stranger into a person by first acknowledging their existence as a member of our human family, and if possible learning a little about them and realizing, they're not that different than us.

Some truths I've yet to disprove about Glass Ceilings:

You can generally only bet on people to pay attention to glass ceilings that also affect them. Too many people don't understand, nor can they empathize very well with those who do.

I've learned to generally ignore every word anyone ever says about diversity of any kind in an organization and only pay attention to the actions.

If their diversity isn't already reflected in management, there's little chance they'll get there.

Discovering Glass Ceilings:

It doesn't seem misleading to feel those who are equally capable but an identifiable minority have to be twice as good in as twice as many ways as others to get half the respect. You get the idea.

I've spoken as an expert for a particular enterprise and government grade tool across North America. Imagine the biggest corporations and government departments in one room. Get some nice exposure, recognition, people even keep in touch..

Still, my oldest clients are the best, teach me so much about life and living, and I couldn't ask for anything more as I move forward.

Glass ceilings as fuel:

I figure getting where you want to go with hardwork is fine. It only helps build my entrepreneurial hustle.

Sometimes there's a few more bridges for me to build if someone hasn't dealt with someone who is "like them".

On the whole, I find this helps me build my ability to connect to people's needs that much better

To those who find glass ceilings:

Decide if you want to break through it. You can. (Often if you're not the first, you will be the last to try).

On the other hand, if you're that high caliber, you can probably start your own organization (and probably should). It's not to say going on your own is any easier -- you just have more ability to find the people who see life and the world like you do. Life is crazy anyways, having better people around makes the extremely tough balance out with the extremely good.

I understand this may be heavy maybe for some, but life with depth is where meaning and fulfillment is.

If anyone wants to chat about this and is afraid of being painted as a *-ist, feel free to contact me offline or reply here. If it makes you feel more comfortable, I can offer immunity/protection for what may seem like poorly worded questions (but are often well intended).

<comment><USER31> _have to be twice as good in as twice as many ways as others to get half the respect_

To have a really open discussion about this I think it's important to mention the disconnect between what people think is important and what get's people promoted. One of the least obvious examples is a willingness to leave.

<comment><USER15> Absolutely. Great point. It certainly doesn't happen alone in the one scenario I mentioned, but can otherwise too.

Generating more value than which you are paid is the ultimate measure.

The poisonous corporate cultures of winning favor and loyalty and trying to silver tounge their way up the ladder on the backs of others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> To me, the main point has to do with the unseen consequences / victims. It's similar to situations where the government creates winners in an industry, where people applaud the act of job creations, but nobody sees the lost opportunities elsewhere because they are not easily identifiable.

>In reality, she was not qualified for the job. Literally hundreds of other women had applied, many of whom would have been more competent. The real injustice was not hiring one of them in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm no expert, but this hasn't convinced me yet:

1\. The author shows one anecdotal example of the effect being claimed, and then claims that it's a large factor based again, on wholly anecdotal factors. 2\. The author uses as evidence that two CEOs _that they can think of_ are attractive. I don't need to go into the statistics to point out how ridiculous this is. 3\. Of CEOs who are women, there aren't any exceptional levels of beauty present, v everywhere else in the world. 4\. There are several more likely explanations for this effect than this one. 5\. That attractiveness is correlated with pay doesn't mean that attractiveness is being selected for. It can also imply that self-confident people are more likely to be successful, which I believe studies have shown in the past. 6\. While claiming not to, this article feeds into the narrative of 'attractive women must be stupid,' by implying that attractive women, having clearly been selected for their attractiveness, will tend to be less intelligent.

I'm not saying this isn't something that happens. I'm stating that I'm not convinced attractive women getting hired is a primary problem, rather than, perhaps, sexism in hiring and promoting practices, which has been demonstrated at just about every level of employment.

<comment><USER21> "While claiming not to, this article feeds into the narrative of 'attractive women must be stupid,' by implying that attractive women, having clearly been selected for their attractiveness, will tend to be less intelligent."

This is not the right way to read it. The article is saying that if your promotion process selects the men with the most merit, but where the appearance of women takes precedence over their merits, the women who make it to higher levels will be less likely to have strong merits than the men (due to different selection criteria). It is not saying that attractive women are less likely to be intelligent, it is saying that they will be competing against men who were selected for their talents (including intelligence).

<comment><USER33> Perhaps I'm not being clear enough; I'm aware that wasn't what was being argued,but it did very little to dispel that narrative, which it plays into. Still, looking back, it seems to be a somewhat overblown critique.

I didn't feel that it explicitly addressed how an individual should be running their promotion process, but I could have missed something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is a ridiculously hard issue to discuss, especially with anyone who identifies with a group they feel has been victimized. Which can stretch to almost anyone these days.

The only thing I wanted to add here is that the article & subsequent discussion seems to be about whether or not it's acceptable for men/women/other to be judged based on anything except their competence. I think that's what can make this topic tricky - because companies, in my (admittedly limited) experience don't just hire based on competence.

Most people would think it was acceptable not to hire someone because they didn't "fit" with the company's culture. Maybe they were a jerk, maybe they were hugely arrogant, maybe they didn't shower, maybe they showed up in a three-piece suit to your shorts and flip-flops interview, whatever it is. So really this whole discussion ought to be about what things are acceptable to discriminate against to determine "fit" and what things aren't.

Which I think requires taking a look at what it means to assess someone for "fit" - because I can see how easy it is for "attractiveness" to be a part of that definition. So should it not be? What should - and on what grounds? I think the discussion becomes subjective quite quickly...which is what makes it all so hard to discuss.

</comment><comment><USER35> The author mentioned only two top females Marissa Mayer and Belinda Stronach. How about the very successful Chanda Zaveri we just had a post about? [http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130126/jsp/calcutta/story_164...](http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130126/jsp/calcutta/story_16488020.jsp)

I'm not saying looks don't affect interviews, I think they do, but I'd like to see a little more investigation and a little less assumption.

<comment><USER36> Sounds like she founded the company with money she earned as a talented student, rather than rising through the ranks of an existing company (where hiring and promotion bias takes effect).

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I haven't had a long career but I've heard quite a few times "Hey, we'll have a girl onboard!". My initial concern is usually, I'll admit (is she cute?) but I don't like to look like an asshole so I ask "Is she good?". Almost everytime, someone tells me that "it doesn't matter".

So yes, the article is right, some women get hired for their looks regardless of what they do.

</comment><comment><USER38> I think change will be exponential. For example, look at the change in the makeup of Canadian provincial premiers. All 10 premiers were men 20 years ago, but now: Ontario: Kathleen Wynn (Last weekend) Quebec: Pauline Marois (September 2012) Alberta: Alison Redford (October 2011) British Columbia: Rita Johnston (1991), Christy Clark (March 2011)

</comment><comment><USER39> In my experience, all women that could advance and take a senior/executive/managerial positions declined to do so,because the increased responsibilities that would come with their new position were too much, especially since most of them were young and had a child within the last 5-6 years. It was the case for 100% women I know, both my friends and in my family.

</comment><comment><USER40> Part of the problem is that we mostly don't know how good managers do what they do (and they don't either).

Their knowledge is tacit. And we have to make a tacit judgement when hiring -- which means that memes about gender necessarily exert an unquantifiable influence.

</comment><comment><USER41> What's the point of hiring based on attractiveness? What's the probability of one actually getting the drawers? Everyone can't be Keith Rabois you know....

<comment><USER21> Well, here's a dilemma for you: if you were hiring someone for a position in sales, and I told you that attractive women were more likely to make "the deal" than unattractive women, would you exclude attractiveness from your hiring criteria?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> 250 words and he said nothing.

I'm getting so sick of tripe like this that thinks men and women want the same things in their lives and careers. I would like to know:

\- Of the working men and women, how many actually want these executive positions?

</comment><comment><USER43> Anecdotal, but in my experience smart girls are uglier and cute girls are stupider.

This is verified by comparing 2 groups: nightclub girls and science research nerd girls.

 _As a group_ the nerd girls are uglier on average, because there are several severely plain nerd girls, though an _individual_ nerd girl may be very attractive.

 _As a group_ the disco girls are stupider on average, because there are several severely ditzy disco girls, though an _individual_ disco girl may have brains.

I believe the reason for this is that it takes _effort_ to make yourself _attractive_ , just as it takes _effort_ to make yourself _smart_ , so there is a trade off.

<comment><USER20> You are very off track.

All the evidence I've ever come across points to the opposite conclusion: there is a positive correlation between beauty and intelligence.

A few seconds of googling turned this up: [http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific- fundament...](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific- fundamentalist/201012/beautiful-people-really-are-more-intelligent)

I've seen actual journal articles on the matter as well. Facial symmetry is influenced by genetics, the oxygenation of the womb, as well as other factors. A lot has to go right for a person to have a beautiful face and a lot has to go right for someone to have a high IQ. It shouldn't be remotely surprising that they are correlated.

Judging by your incredibly stereotyped conceptions of "disco" girls the limited dating experience you had was probably a few decades ago. Judging by your silly, evidence free post you might not be particularly smart or attractive.

Better put in some effort on both.

<comment><USER43> 'Judging by your incredibly stereotyped conceptions of "disco" girls'

Go down to eg Thai Square nightclub in Trafalgar Square, London UK on midnight Friday or Saturday and tell me what you see.

'silly, evidence free post'

I never claimed evidence, I claimed anecdotal experience. Go down to the EE PhD labs in eg Imperial College, London UK, any time of the day, any time of the week, and tell me what you see. I bet you the girls in there would be offended by comparison to the Thai Square girls.

'you might not be particularly smart or attractive'

Stay off the ad-hominems asshole.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Explain Meg Whitman...

</comment><comment><USER45> If you do a google image search for "pictures of fortune 500 ceos" you will see that most of the women coming up are just as ugly as the men. I think this has more to do with the industry attracting people who are ugly on the inside and by the time they get to the top they just say "fuck it" and let their monstrousness show.

<comment><USER46> What in the bloody heck are you talking about?

<comment><USER4> Sounds like a 19th-century-style theory linking sociopathy with unattractiveness. Might as well throw in some phrenology while he's at it.</comment></comment></comment>


Growing a Fruit Snack Business for a Good Cause - <AUTHOR> https://www.starterstory.com/stories/peaceful-fruits <comment><USER3> 30 employees and 15000 dollars of revenue per month?

500 dollars worth of revenue per employee per month? This is not a viable business.

<comment><AUTHOR> The employees are not full time and work very minimal hours. Check out a bit later in the interview he talks about it more.

The founder also addressed more on this in this reddit post: [https://www.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/comments/9pbf...](https://www.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/comments/9pbf6i/15kmonth_selling_fruit_snacks_shark_tank_profit/)

<comment><USER3> That doesn't really address the issue as much as it acknowledges it.

It's like someone is pointing out a hole in the bottom of the boat, and the captain looks at it and says "yes, there's a hole in the bottom". A good thing to be sure, but not one that actually fixes the issue,...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It used to be that this model was common for charity startups and I was sort of ok with that. Uninspired... but ok. Its a bit of wealth transfer capitalism-style, and at least then the profits do to go to help someone in need, maybe by donating back to the people with disabilities, or building infrastructure in the Amazon. But this is just nah we'll keep 100% of the profits ourselves instead! Innovation!

\- Find a packaged product with raw material sourced from an "on-trend" country (founder's words), buy at market prices, claim to be "creating opportunities" there in a vague way.

\- Find laborers subsidized by grants to do the packaging, use this to apply for your own grants. Enjoy "the incredible feel-good aspects of providing jobs" (founder's words) with subsidized labor costs. Also enjoying "effectively ... zero-interest loans" is a nice benefit as well. PROTIP - <USER2> you automate away those same workers once you have used them to bootstrap the business you can still use the pictures in your origin story PR pieces.

\- Target "higher-income consumers with the values and means to vote with their dollars - whether that's in support of high-quality food, progressive community development, or both." (founder's words) to avoid having to justify a premium-priced but ultimately commoditized product.

\- Do a kickstarter, not because its necessary to get product validation, just because "the most concrete, useful lesson is definitely that nearly anyone has a $10,000 crowdfunding campaign in them."

</comment><comment><USER5> What's with the silly and dishonest non-GMO label? It doesn't bode well for the credibility of this product.</comment>


Don't bust up big tech. Scott Galloway is wrong - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dont-bust-up-big-tech-scott-galloway-wrong-west-stringfellow/ <comment><USER2> I'm not creating a LinkedIn account just to read some rando's opinion on why we shouldn't enforce existing antitrust law and do to Google, Facebook, and Apple what we once did to AT&T and Standard Oil.

Why doesn't this guy have his own blog?</comment>


Fully managed PostgreSQL databases - <AUTHOR> https://www.digitalocean.com/products/managed-databases/ <comment><USER2> Love this new offering. What I don't love is they are charging for egress bandwidth ($0.01/GB), even in the same data center [1]. I can understand it for outbound to internet or other data centers, but this is hard to swallow for the same facility.

Hopefully DO will reconsider this!

It also makes me wonder if all access to these databases is via the public network. I'm guessing so.

[1] [https://twitter.com/digitalocean/status/1096087824066101248](https://twitter.com/digitalocean/status/1096087824066101248)

<comment><USER3> To clarify here and from the launch blog post [0].

> Ingress bandwidth is always free, and egress fees ($0.01/GB per month) will > be waived for 2019.

In other words, we're not charging while we build this out.

0: [https://blog.digitalocean.com/announcing-managed- databases-f...](https://blog.digitalocean.com/announcing-managed-databases- for-postgresql/)

<comment><USER2> Well, while I appreciate you coming here to clarify, and waiving charges for 2019 sounds nice, there's nothing in that post that says those charges won't come into effect for the long term.

I guess I personally would want more color on that whole post-2019 egress situation before committing to using the service. That's just me, though!

<comment><USER4> It's not just you. Paying for egress within the same DC/vendor seems crazy to me.

Edit: It sounds like that might not be the case though. Eddiezane said "We do not plan to charge for private network / VPC traffic."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As of Wed, Jul 11, 2018, Digital Ocean Support has said there is no HIPAA compliance[1]. I hope this has changed.

 _DigitalOcean is very interested HIPAA and has been exploring the requirements to become compliant. As of right now, we are not HIPAA compliant and unfortunately, we don 't have a public ETA I can share with you. If DigitalOcean is still useful for segments of your infrastructure needs, we're happy to answer any additional questions you have about our platform, but at this time cannot provide a BAA for this purpose._

[1] [https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/does- digita...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/does-digital- ocean-provide-baa-certificates-for-hipaa-compliance)

EDIT: I'm delighted to hear that DO will sign HIPAA agreements, but I'm unable to find any documentation of this on your website.

EDIT: Since I got down-voted for pointing out a fact from your website, I've added the link and the quote.

<comment><USER6> No downvotes intended (new HN account, so I can't even downvote yet :))! It was a good question and a great call out.

I'll talk to the team about getting a click through BAA process in-place, perhaps somewhere in the control panel. Right now they tend to be executed once our customer success team gets engaged.

I did post an update to the thread you linked.

<comment><USER7> That's good news, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Free daily backups with point-in-time recovery Your data is critical.

> That's why we ensure it's backed up every day. Restore data to any point > within the previous seven days.

Seems very similar to Heroku's model at that price. Which is actually pretty fair. I'm so happy to see DO doing this because there is always part of me worried that if Heroku were to go out of business, change their pricing model, start dipping in reliability that I'd be stuck spending a bunch more hours on dev ops instead of focusing on development.

More quality competition is great to keep Heroku on their toes (though I've had nothing but love for them).

<comment><USER9> They state (1) free daily backups and (2) restore to any datapoint within the previous seven days.

But if they only create a backup once a day i can only restore to any point in time before the last full backup. Did they mean the constantly backup the postgres WAL files so effectively you have backups only a few minutes old?

<comment><USER10> They are probably doing log shipping or even streaming replication:

[https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/warm- standby.html](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/warm-standby.html)

Sending all changes to another machine and they can be applied in the event of a failure of the primary node. The backup process allows you to truncate the logs up to the point of the backups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really love seeing what DO is doing.

We use a lot of providers, and seeing DO making this available while immediately making the API available is really impressive.

A company that thinks about API first when enabling a new service (like Amazon) enables real developers.

In comparison, we use CircleCI and often you wait for months for features to be available through the API.

<comment><USER12> Have they fixed their IPv6 support yet?

<comment><USER13> Last i checked, they still issue a single IPv6 address to each droplet (eg a /128, not a /64) and silently block certain ports on IPv6, so no.

<comment><USER12> Well, I guess they will continue not getting my money then.

<comment><USER14> Can someone explain the significance of this?

<comment><USER15> It's basically a non-standard use of IPv6, which is to ideally issue a /64 to each end point. Personally I don't mind, but some people think they need 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 addresses per host.

The idea being with all those addresses you can create subrouters to manage your network topology. Unless you're doing some weird tunnelling setup through your VPS, I can't see why you'd need or want such a huge block.

People complain about only getting a /64 on their home routers.

Blocking certain outbound traffic is another matter: that really stinks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is actually some of the best news I could have received. I'm a recovering NoSQL user who's currently working on an app that I hope to eventually grow to scale... I just don't have experience managing clusters manually, so I'd honestly be more than willing to pay for auto-management.

<comment><USER17> Why is everyone concerned with scaling databases and clustering before even launching?

<comment><USER18> DBs are great when everything works fine, but then when it stops working fine for whatever reason, your hair are on fire and you end up having to learn real quick a whole lot of stuff about your DB... then you wish:

\- You had learned and practiced this stuff ahead of time; or,

\- Had paid someone to do it for you, so you can focus on your core business.

<comment><USER17> Focusing prematurely on scaling and replication is the exact opposite of "focusing on your core business". The only thing that I always recommend in terms of databases is having a backup system in place. When need be and you're one of those 1% that needs scaling, aws, google and azure are there for a warm welcome.

<comment><USER19> Making sure that scaling is practical for the platform(s) you choose is not the same as focusing your efforts on premature scaling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wow, I thought this was gonna be cheaper than Heroku Postgres by a lot, but really it's only slightly cheaper in terms of CPU/mem, and actually more expensive in terms of storage. Would love to see someone benchmark the two offerings for comparisons, especially disk speed.

<comment><USER21> Heroku's ecosystem around their Postgres offering is pretty advanced. It will certainly take a lot of time for DO to even catch up to this.

<comment><USER22> Can you elaborate a bit more about that? What does "advance" mean in this case?

Right now our apps are deployed on Heroku but our Postgres is RDS. We didnt want to plan long term on Heroku. And I don't even know if that makes sense.

So I've been always wondering about RDS vs. Heroku Postgres.

<comment><USER21> Hard to put into words except for "it just works". But let me try:

\- The CLI / toolbelt is pretty amazing. You can do all sorts of analysis right in your terminal.

\- The upgrading/crossgrading is pretty easy to.

\- Attaching multiple, different apps is really nicely done.

\- Extra, third party, services can tap into the logs and give you full insight into what the hell is going on.

The experience is really good, because there is no "experience". It gets out of your way and feels really robust and reliable.

<comment><USER23> Indeed; don't forget the follower databases (read replicas that can be upgraded to master).

<comment><USER24> RDS has read replicas and a process to promote to master that's just as easy as Heroku.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wrote a blog post showing off the service here and just did a live demo capturing GitHub data into Postgres. Check it out for some screenshots and to find out more [https://www.openfaas.com/blog/serverless-single-page- app/](https://www.openfaas.com/blog/serverless-single-page-app/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Eddie from the DigitalOcean DevRel team here. Over the moon to get this in everyone's hands. Here to answer what I can.

<comment><USER25> I have to say, I'm extremely disappointed by the pricing. It doesn't seem any cheaper than AWS's managed SQL offering (through Lightsail), nor cheaper than Cloud SQL.

I'm trying to run a side project at a low rate, which is usually why I go to DigitalOcean - it's much cheaper, than, say, spinning up a bunch of Heroku dynos. In fact, I just moved a project from Heroku to DO to go from a $14/mo hosting bill to $5/mo on the cheapest VPS.

My one problem has been Postgres - I don't want to self-manage a database. However, Cloud SQL is ~$9/mo at the cheapest, and RDS/Lightsail are both $15/mo at the cheapest. I'd really been hoping that DO would provide a lower- cost alternative.

I'm really sad that the pricing structure doesn't bring managed databases down to hobby-tier. I don't even want a free offering; I'm happy to pay gig of space for $5/mo to run in perpetuity, with restrictions on backup retention or something.

Right now, if I'm an actual startup or even bootstrapped company with money, I see _zero_ reason to use DO's offering over your more-established competitors, and as a hobbyist user, I can't justify spending money on it for a no-income side project.

<comment><USER26> At the point you care about backups and standby nodes, you're already sort of outside the cheapo hobby tier.

As for getting the $5/month option: Digitalocean Droplets have a 1-click Dokku install, and you can use [https://github.com/dokku/dokku- postgres](https://github.com/dokku/dokku-postgres) to instantly pop up a postgres instance.

<comment><USER25> That's kind of fair. I've been doing some thinking since posting this, and I've been sort of debating what a "reasonable $5/mo version" of this would be. The more I think about what managed database services usually entail, the more I concede that my original request probably isn't really a viable product (unless it was a "free tier"-style loss leader). Like, disk space and bandwidth aren't really the primary cost involved.

I think what I really want is managed backups that live outside of my box, and the ability quickly restore from one if my database crashes or becomes unusable. I think automated failover to another node may not be a reasonable ask for such a cheap product.

Of course, at that point: I could spin up a 1GB DigitalOcean volume for $0.10/mo, and set up scripts to run `pg_dump` every couple hours, clean the volume of older backups to free up space, and ideally a script to reset the database to a given volume. _That's all stuff I don't want to do_, but maybe someone's built a reusable set of scripts for it or something - that Dokku container is promising as a starting point, though I'm a little annoyed it only works with S3(-compatible).

<comment><USER27> Dokku is a management platform kinda like a self-hosted Heroku.

I've used it instead of Flynn in the past with a lot of success.

Edit: If S3 is the problem, backup to a minio instance on your dokku ([https://github.com/slypix/minio-dokku](https://github.com/slypix/minio- dokku))

<comment><USER25> I suppose I could also use DO's Spaces, which is S3-compatible, though also has an annoying minimum (I do not need the 250 gigs you get for $5/mo) [https://www.digitalocean.com/products/spaces/](https://www.digitalocean.com/products/spaces/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> With Kubernetes and managed Postgres, under the wonderful Digital Ocean UX and product design, I'm keen to try this on personal projects.

That said, I do wonder who the pricing is targeted at.

Our database primary is around the same price as the highest spec DO are offering, but for that we get 3x memory, 6x CPU, and 2x the disk.

For some things there are definitely huge benefits to using a hosted product, Jenkins for example costs us a fortune in engineering time. Postgres though is fairly straightforward for a simple setup, requires little ongoing maintenance, and scales well to bigger boxes without much work.

I can see spending up to $100 a month of this perhaps, but for the ~day it might take to set up Postgres on $50 of hardware with twice the performance, I can't see going much further beyond that. Equally, higher up the scale, the top end is not that high performance for ~$2500 a month. The point in time backups is fantastic, but I'm not sure how necessary they are for most customers, over a standard Postgres hot replica setup.

</comment><comment><USER29> This looks pretty sweet.

With that said, I seriously think they're missing an opportunity by not offering GPUs. If DO offered a product similar to PaperSpace, basically a dead-simple GPU to connect to your notebook, I don't think small teams would need to look anywhere else for their cloud computing needs.

<comment><USER30> GPUs are on the product roadmap at DO.

<comment><USER29> oh - are they? I read this [1] blog post a couple weeks ago which has no mention of GPUs.

[1] [https://blog.digitalocean.com/whats-new- for-2019/](https://blog.digitalocean.com/whats-new-for-2019/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Full list of extensions and versions off of a live instance: [https://gist.github.com/peterc/e4f7a288ed0eb7e4ffe2d8383a086...](https://gist.github.com/peterc/e4f7a288ed0eb7e4ffe2d8383a086306)

Interesting to note that TimescaleDB is installed by default.

<comment><USER32> Thanks for the heads up, good news indeed!

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> DigitalOcean keeps knocking it out of the park with this and other offerings. I plan on migrating to their platform at some point, but wish they offered a free/hobbyist tier (something like what is offered by Heroku) for exploring ideas before committing to that price point.

<comment><USER34> The $5/mo is billed continuously by the hour, and you can store snapshots for $0.05/GB/mo. Basically, throw a few bucks on an account and you can do a lot of exploring so long as you shut down the droplets when you're not using them.

Personally I like the idea of putting up a bit of play money at first vs. the prospect of higher recurring charges for a site that doesn't sleep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Ok, I do love this feature because it fits perfectly with the kubernetes offering. It's getting easier to manage things in Digital Ocean k8s.

</comment><comment><USER36> I love DO.

However, in this case, it would cost me at least $800/mo. That $9,600/yr can buy a lot of hardware/upgrades.

<comment><USER37> For most businesses, people cost way more than hardware.

<comment><USER36> Sure, if you run dedicated PostgreSQL hardware you also need someone to maintain it (probably).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Any chance of a cheaper, low-performance tier for hobby projects? I was hoping to see something at $5/mo like the the lowest droplet tier.

<comment><USER39> I guess for hobby projects, you can run your DB on the 5 USD droplet.

<comment><USER38> Well yeah, of course. I was hoping they would offer something managed to compete with Heroku's free/$9 tiers, but this is the cost of three droplets and isn't worth it for me at the moment. I'll probably test it out for a bit though but it will be too expensive for hobby/throwaway projects.

<comment><USER40> As mentioned in another thread, may want to consider dokku with the postgres plugin.

<comment><USER38> Sounds cool, I'll check it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> It costs $100/mo minimum to get failover support, pretty high for a starter package. That's a high end laptop a year to get a low-performance database with one standby and a daily backup.

</comment><comment><USER42> How does DO compared with heroku and RDS in terms of price, AZs, APIs and etc? And what is the vertical scaling process like (don't seem to find anything on a quick google search)?

</comment><comment><USER43> Love it. The experience for creating is great as usual (for DO).

I really like the built-in pgbouncer, easy to configure connection pooling thing too!

[https://i.imgur.com/zcS6a3a.png](https://i.imgur.com/zcS6a3a.png)

</comment><comment><USER44> Not sure if I'm missing something here, but the pricing seems quite high (in relation to DO's other products and competition).

For example, if we take 8GB ram node, that's $120 p/m. Add in 2 standby nodes, and we add another £160 p/m. That equates to $280 per month.

AWS RDS, by comparison, is about $260 p/m for an rds.m5.large instance (also 8GB ram) on multi AZ. This can be reduced further via reserved instances.

Admittedly, the DO has more processing power, but all-in-all, I don't get this pricing at all. I was very excited about this, but the pricing is putting on the brakes.

</comment><comment><USER45> It is good to see cheap managed PostgreSQL getting steam. Back in 2006, the startup I was with moved from PostgreSQL to MySQL because the support we were able to find was both expensive (300 USD/hr) and not satisfactory. Back then MySQL AB (this was before Sun) gave us a 10K two year deal on three servers and they had excellent response times and knowledgeable support. So for a long time I was biased against PostgreSQL because of support. It's time to put that to rest :)

</comment><comment><USER46> I love DO. Personally I don't understand the pricing/appeal over getting a 5 dollar droplet and setting yourself up with automated daily backups on the droplet instance.

<comment><USER47> Well there's the standby nodes with automated failover, and the fact that maintenance and security are fully handled. For a lot of people that's well worth the extra $10 a month. Plus setting up daily backups is one thing, but verifying that it is done correctly and that they are easy to restore is almost always skipped "until it's needed", which of course is too late.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> How do I see the detailed pricing of this offering if I don't have an account? I want to know what $15/mo gets me before I decide whether I want to sign up.

</comment><comment><USER49> Sweet, but personally, I very much prefer to use a standardized approach like a Docker (or even K8S) PostgreSQL cluster rather than having to deal with a vendor API.

</comment><comment><USER50> Can anyone give me an overview of why I'd want to consider looking at DO if im already comfortable with AWS? I don't really have any issues with RDS.

<comment><USER51> From my own subjective experience:

DO has huge reliability issues, particularly in NYC. Over the course of several months I had repeated brief network drops on random VMs (during EST business hours, lasting up to a couple minutes). Their object storage in NYC3 (only location at time I used the product) would constantly drop uploads of larger files (experienced in multiple locations behind different firewalls, not environmental) and was also down for several days at one point not too long ago.

Perhaps things have improved, or my experiences with roughly 20 VMs distributed between Toronto and NYC was abnormal given the overwhelmingly positive sentiment in this thread but I figured I'd offer my $0.02 if only to play the contrarian.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> To me, this actually makes digital ocean a "real" platform. And it's still cost effective. Very exciting.

</comment><comment><USER53> I've been a Linode customer for 10 years, but now this is too awesome. My next project will be hosted on DO.

</comment><comment><USER54> Are there any big differences to this compared to Heroku's Postgres? (Not that there need to be, just curious if there's reason to prefer one.)

I'm still waiting for one of these providers to crack infinite scaling (similar to Aurora). Seamless patching is a good step though.

<comment><USER55> You can add additional DBs, I think in Heroku you can't. So you can do multi tenant or host multiple projects

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> It would be great if they allow to install extensions like PipelineDB and Citus

</comment><comment><USER57> Yeah come on DO don't charge me for transfer within your own Datacenter

</comment><comment><USER58> What is the orchestration layer for this? I saw a few DO people at the FoundationDB Summit, but that probably wasn't related and you're just using ZooKeeper ;)

</comment><comment><USER59> Very exciting news! Any plans or ETA for mysql?

<comment><USER60> What's the benefit (to you) of MySql over Postgres? I've moved completely over to PG, and am happy as a clam.

<comment><USER59> As a pretty basic user, it is mostly about adaptation costs regarding tooling, infra and code. My current stack mostly includes mysql as the default db, so my applications and tools also default to mysql and for now I don't see a huge benefit since all I mainly do is CRUD. I am considering pgsql for some new stuff, but for the existing applications I don't see any benefit to move to postgre for now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Do these use dedicated VCPUS or Shared VCPUS?

<comment><USER3> Shared. We're exploring using dedicated as part of our roadmap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> For Compute Droplets there are "standard droplet" using shared cpu and "optimized droplet" can use 100% of a cpu. Then for the databases, can user use 100% cpu even for $15 plan?

</comment><comment><USER63> Is it true that Digital Ocean has no staging environment, and just deploys straight to production?

<comment><USER64> Other cloud providers have staging env? We just have our own VSs on DO that plays the role of staging.

<comment><USER65> I believe he's referring to a staging environment for changes on their side.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Does this have some SLA?

</comment><comment><USER67> Using fancy words like egress does not change the fact you are gouging.</comment>


Why dumb toys make kids smarter - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-10-01/why-dumb-toys-make-kids-smarter/ <comment><USER3> I'd say that getting caught up in a stupid craze is one of the most important learning experiences that a kid can have. One day everybody suddenly starts talking about a new thing, and it seems like it's going to be around forever, so you put all your pocket money into getting as much of it as possible. Then, a few months later everybody starts talking about some other new thing and you're left with no money and a whole lot of stuff which you now realize was worthless all along. Suffer that a few times in childhood and you'll be more immune to it in later life. Spend $30 on football cards when you're eight and you'll be less likely to spend $500,000 on suddenly-inflated real estate when you're 35.

The lesson doesn't work if your parents actually buy you the cards (rather than giving you pocket money and watching with bemused tolerance as you spend it all on slips of cardboard), though, like this kid's parents apparently did.

<comment><USER4> Today, I took my three year-old to our town's annual Fall-at-the-Farm (or whatever it's called). There was a woman there with two of her Alpacas. These animals are the greatest but least discussed bubble. Their only economic value is their wool, and a single alpaca produces about $50 worth each year. Feeding one of these beasts during that time costs $300! Yet, these animals will sell at auction for tens of thousands of dollars. It's the same story as every other bubble, "You make the money when you sell them." If I could figure out how to short sell these beasts, I would.

It's too bad I didn't read this comment earlier today or I would have quizzed her about her childhood obsessions.

<comment><USER5> _If I could figure out how to short sell these beasts_

Go to a farmer, say, "Let me rent your Alpaca for 100 dollars per year", then sell it on the open market for (whatever) 1000 dollars. Then, wait for the prices to crash, buy them back for 50 dollars. Profit. That's what short selling is. Warning: One Alpaca could just as easily bankrupt you.

<comment><USER4> I had thought about this. Some problems that might have solutions:

1\. Short selling works for commodities because both sides of the deal agree on the equivalence of entities (a stock, gold brick, whatever). However, what are the specs that make another alpaca equivalent? Some negotiation would be involved.

2\. Trust. The seller has to trust me to return an alpaca. To them, someone approaching with such a deal might as well be Bernie Madoff. Ironic given that they themselves have already opted into a bubble of equal proportion.

Anybody have any ideas? The effective value of these animals will approach zero. It's just a matter of when.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pokemon cards and most trading card games are not "dumb." I used to dabble in a few (notably Magic). Let me go through some of the complexities.

At the simplest, it is a player versus player game. You are playing against peers that are getting smarter and more experienced matching yourself. This is way more meaningful than playing against computers.

A few more insights in order of skill.

Critical thinking is key. There are usually multiple ways to win. When direct damage is not going to cut it, you might have to go to plan B or C. Given your collection of cards, you can make multiple types of decks. You have to categorize all your cards and try to build a team out of them.

It teaches economics. Kids are (usually) limited by your allowance. Some cards are really good (or rare) but maybe buying 10 cheaper alternatives makes for an overall better deck. You already have certain cards, can you trade for the remaining ones? (Bartering and sales is a skill in it's own right) Can you feel that in the new season the archetype will be an aggressive deck causing this card you own to go up in price?

It involves next level thinking. Your opponent executed a seemingly unfavorable move. Is it because he has a trick up his sleeve? Or is he trying to bluff you? Is he trying to read if you have a trick? This of course varies based on skill but it is something experienced players learn (even young ones)

You have to deal in possibilities and assess your situation. You know your opponent has used x out of his 4 possible copies of this card. He has only (4-x) left in his deck of 50 so he is unlikely to draw it. Maybe the current board position is favorable for you, you are ahead in life so you should win within 4 turns. Or maybe you have 2 cards left in your whole deck that can help you win, you have yet to draw them but you need to set up the board position so that if you do draw it...

(In all card games, advantages can be distilled into two types: tempo and card. Tempo is when you are getting out ahead of an opponent in terms of board position. Card is when you have more cards in your hand. Aggressive decks sacrifices card for tempo, control sacrifices tempo for cards. Control decks chance of winning increases as the game wears on.)

<comment><USER3> Playing the game isn't dumb -- or rather it's no dumber than any other card game, and smarter than most.

Buying and collecting the cards is the dumb part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I played Magic: the Gathering on and off from grade school until I started dating. One thing it definitely taught me is the importance of a consistent vocabulary. The rules to the game are written in a sort of legalese - there's some strange wording, but it's all for the sake of precisely indicating how to deal with >99% of all situations.

We always kept a rule book around for disputes, and I became the guy entrusted with settling them - interpreting applicable rules and coming up with a judgment.

Fast forward a decade and I figured I would try my hand at the LSAT. Lo and behold - I got 172 without ever studying for it. Never went to law school, but analytical thinking is still a useful skill, regardless.

</comment><comment><USER8> How many of you have considered toy related startups? It is a massive industry ($26B) facing disruption from two angles (consolidation of retail and competition from games) and the major players have a history of working with small partners and no real internal R&D.

This is a great opportunity for hackers to build large, profitable businesses.

<comment><USER9> Personally, I'm very interested in the combination of games and education - <USER2> think the next a "disruption" in the field of education will come from games.

<comment><USER10> People've been saying that for going on 2 decades. There has yet to be an educational game that is truly compelling or a regular game that has significant educational value.

Actually, I guess there is Typing of the Dead...

<comment><USER11> _Actually, I guess there is Typing of the Dead..._

Sadly, it's discontinued, and a used PC version now sells for more than the original price. There's a sequel, but it's unlikely to see a port to English. Kids are doomed to a zombie-free Mavis Beacon typing experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's a fair bit of information compressed into Pokemon cards and other card games so it's no surprise that if you're that into it you get good at it despite being so young. Same with sports - there's a hell of a lot of information in statistics for a sport like baseball or cricket.

My impression of 'dumb' means stupid - to me the complexity involved in these cards raises them above dolls and the like.

It may have something to do with the American use of the word 'dumb'?

<comment><USER3> Perhaps "dumb" in the sense of "that looks like a dumb way to spend all your free time and money".

I guess that the appeal of Pokemon and similar dumb phenomena (somebody correct me if I'm wrong, I'm too old to have played any of these games myself and too young to have children who have) is twofold -- there's the "game" part and then there's the "collection" part. The "game" part is pretty "smart" as a game, and one could easily imagine a card game with a similar sort of game mechanic that could be bought for a few dollars. But it's the "collection" part of the game that makes it so addictive, expensive, insidious, and the source of much needless (and dumb) social anxiety among children.

<comment><USER13> The two end up being intertwined though.

When I was younger I played Magic. At first, I did okay. I had some decent cards and, with some luck, would win often enough. However, as the game evolved, better and better cards came out and if I wanted to have any success I needed to keep buying cards. So no matter how much strategy I came up with, I just didn't have the cards I needed (its possible that I was too young to really come up with good strategy, but given that most of the other people were about the same age, buying cards was probably my best chance at winning).

If this weren't the case, then the card manufacturers would not have a way to keep making money. I got into some other card games as well, and I remember one was particularly well balanced such that new cards weren't "better" than old ones. As I remember, the game didn't last long and was soon discontinued. Anecdotal, yes, but the key is that "game" and "collection" intertwine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> _"... Heavily used neurons were learning to fire together, and these chains of neurons were becoming myelinated in thin sheaths of fat; by this process, "gray matter" is converted into "white matter." The sheath surrounding the nerves acts as an electrical insulator, increasing neural speed by 100-fold. Active repetition also began tuning up the nerve capsules that connected his prefrontal cortex to his parietal cortex in the back of the brain. When these superhighways of nerve tissue come on board, the brain learns to delegate math to the back of the brain, making computation speed radically faster. ..."_

Practice, repetition, rehearsal.

 _"... Something else happened early in second grade. One afternoon, while watching the Phillies march to their World Series title, my wife taught our son how to read a box score—how math and symbols represented the game's progress. Within a two-month span, our son lost every last drop of his interest in Pokémon, and he fell in love with sports. ..."_

Motivation.

 _"... According to Dr. Silvia Bunge, a neuroscientist at U.C. Berkeley, the presence of dopamine triggers a meaningful tweak in the tuning function of brain cells. Dopamine depolarizes neurons and improves their firing rate; their response to optimal stimuli becomes sharper, and the background buzz of relevant stimuli is quieted a little. In other words, each neuron operates sort of like a motivated child: It becomes focused, less distractable, and when it does something right, it recognizes that in the moment—it hangs on to that information, ready to use it again. ..."_

Distraction.

</comment><comment><USER14> If Pokemon cards are good for you when you are young, are Magic the Gathering cards good for you when you older ? :D

<comment><USER15> To paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke: _Any sufficiently advanced card game is indistinguishable from Magic._

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Meh, I thought this would be about toys like Lego. The ultimate dumb toy that makes smart. I mean dumb in a sense that the normal lego stones(?) are simple things but with imagination you can build anything with them.

<comment><USER17> Just because it hasn't got a microcontroller in it doesn't make it dumb, IMHO.

<comment><USER16> It's hard with my limited language skills. I rather meant the roughness. For example the older modular lego sets where you had lots of similar bricks (=dumb). Not complex parts (= not dumb). Like a clay brick versus a door. Ok, that's a bad analogy but it might give a better idea.

Maybe I just have the wrong thing in my mind for the word "dumb" though, I am not sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Isn't this just a parent-targeted rip-off of _Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter_?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_Bad_Is_Good_for_You>

</comment><comment><USER19> Very very interesting. We've been fighting our daughter's fascination with Webkins, but it's quite similar when I look at it from the perspective of Pokemon cards in the article.

</comment><comment><USER20> Here's my belated take on it: <http://geekstack.com/blog/opposite-of-a-dumb- toy/></comment>


Earth-Imaging Start-Ups to Watch (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/satellites/9-earthimaging-startups-to-watch#.V1L2uuXsWnk.hackernews <comment><USER2> Hey there,

Just wondering the reason why you posted a 2 year old article. Is the point to show that the situation has changed very little, or that most of the info is now outdated?

Fro example, in this 2 year time span, Skybox has been bought by Google and became TerraBella, while NovaWurks has disappeared and planet-labs has changed main website :).

It could actually be interesting to have a more updated article!

EDIT : My bad, NovaWurks still seems to be alive : [http://www.novawurks.com/](http://www.novawurks.com/). The main page simply has changed.</comment>


The Future Is Big Data in the Cloud - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2009/10/25/the-future-is-big-data-in-the-cloud/ <comment><USER2> "disclosure: Accel is an investor in Cloudera, the company behind Hadoop"

Um, kinda... no.

This is a decent article, and he's free to give a plug to his portfolio even if it's disguised as a disclosure. But it's disingenuous at best to call Cloudera "the" company behind Hadoop when 80% of the code flows from Yahoo. It's like calling Transmeta "the" company behind Linux.

<comment><USER3> Hey,

As a founder of Cloudera and a participant in the Apache Hadoop community, I'm dismayed whenever the press writes something about Cloudera "creating" Hadoop. No one here believes that, and we try to acknowledge the great work done by the community, especially at Yahoo!, Facebook, Amazon, Powerset, et al., whenever we can.

To the best of my knowledge, we're the only company to provide a commercially supported distribution of Hadoop. I'm pretty sure that's what Ping meant when he says "behind"--supporting, not necessarily solely creating.

Anyways, it's an open source project, and the copyright belongs to the Apache Software Foundation. In the case of Linux, no one organization contributes more than 13% of the code (e.g. <http://lwn.net/Articles/222773/>). The same distribution of contributions will likely be the case for Hadoop as it matures, and it's reasonably close to that state now: there are subprojects to which neither Yahoo! nor Cloudera is the primary contributor, and it is most certainly not the case that 80% of all Apache Hadoop code comes from any single organization.

Either way, Hadoop is the most interesting open source project with which I've been involved, and I hope the increasing attention doesn't distract the community from its primary goal of producing kick-ass code.

Later, Jeff

<comment><USER4> Ping seems generally confused about how to discuss commercial support of open source projects, not just Cloudera. Note his reference to "Northscale, parent company of Memcached" is even sillier. AFAIK, the only "parent" I'd think of for memcached, Brad Fitz, is still ensconced at goog.

I've talked to the Northscale guys, sounds like their onto good stuff and I'm not faulting them (just as I wouldn't fault Cloudera), Ping just needs a copy editor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A future is big data in the cloud.

<comment> loup-vaillant Good point. I'd rather have small data (e-mail, personal website, shared files…) at home. It has a smaller "Big Brother" potential.

<comment><USER6> All the traffic to/from your home is monitored. Encrypted data in the cloud is much safer and more available.

<comment><USER5> Why can't traffic to/from your home be encrypted?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Happiness Project - Making Yourself Happier - <AUTHOR> http://www.happinessproject.typepad.com/

<comment><USER2> I dislike Happiness Research because it sets the dangerous precedent of thinking you know better than other people what is best for them. Happiness study results reflect averages, not perfect happiness equations. I see this type of thing leading to a BNW scenario. I find BNW scarier than 1984 because 1984 is _obviously bad_ while BNW doesn't really bother a lot of people, happiness researchers probably included.

</comment><comment><USER3> I haven't read through many of these here yet, but surely its advice wouldn't hurt. Doesn't look too much like your ordinary fluffy-self-help from my initial glances.

In some respects, hacking more happiness out of life might be one of the most worthwhile kinds of self-help things one can do. If you can be happy despite economic, social, or personal tribulations, you've got something right.

<comment><USER2> OTOH being happy _all the time_ seems like an obvious failure mode of human cognition.

<comment><USER4> But it's certainly possible to increase your average level of happiness. I wasn't happy at all in junior high, for example, and my life has gotten monotonically happier since then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Going to the library or bookstore to read makes me happy. I just finished reading "Peaks and Valleys" (by the author of "Who Moved My Cheese"). peaksandvalleysthebook.com

</comment><comment><USER6> All you need is love.

</comment><comment><USER7> OT: how come in Alextra the site is ranked very low, ranked l,000,000 +, and supposly has 22K subscribers?

Still I like it and subscribed to it.

<comment><USER8> because Alexa rankings are BS

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> sats v maxs is a good point, but shallowly addressed in the blog post. i didn't like how the research intoned one thing, while the author wrote the mother was a maxs just for fun, and that she herself felt guilty about being a sats. that emotional reversal doesn't make sense.

and that's the only point it made. meh.

</comment><comment><USER10> I do martial arts and taking out my aggression or anger on a punching bag makes me feel better, is it me or does a list of what should make me happy or to be happy really getting tiring. I am all for trying to understand the nature of happiness but please don't tell me what should make me happy.

<comment><USER11> You would have been better off actually reading what she wrote rather than knee-jerk reacting.

She's writing about the fact that expressing an emotion is bidirectional. No longer expressing that emotion will cause it to pass quicker.

You're talking about relieving stress by doing something physical and/or violent (both have been shown to work).

Unless you are punching that bag with a look of utter disgust on your face the two scenarios are unrelated.</comment></comment>


Perl 5.22 released - <AUTHOR> https://metacpan.org/pod/release/RJBS/perl-5.22.0/pod/perldelta.pod

<comment><USER2> Lot's of good stuff here. I especially like the double diamond operator, safer behavior. However that string of punctuation is terrible and I wish they would have changed the behavior of <> with a pragma.</comment>


Physicist Leon Lederman died age 96 selling his Nobel Prize to pay medical costs - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/leon-lederman-death-nobel-prize-sell-physicist-higgs-boson-god-particle-medical-bills-a8569761.html <comment><USER2> How our society values accomplishments/fame...

A symbol for a lifetime of distinguished work vs an interesting but small part of a career.

This may contribute to many youths choosing fame and fortune instead of putting in the efforts to advance science and civilization. How this will play out in the long run could be worrisome.

"The American scientist later auctioned off his gold medal for $765,000 (£665,000) to help pay medical bills after being diagnosed with dementia. "

"The Nobel gold medal of the scientist who coined the phrase "God particle" to describe the Higgs boson – the subatomic particle that accounts for matter having mass – has been sold for $765,002 (£510,000) at auction in Los Angeles."

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/leon-lederman- dea...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/leon-lederman-death-nobel- prize-sell-physicist-higgs-boson-god-particle-medical-bills-a8569761.html)

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/nobel-laureate- go...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/nobel-laureate-god-particle- physicist-leon-lederman-sells-nobel-prize-medal-for-510000-10285376.html)

"Well, Banksy's phone booth is in the arms of the buyer who was able to pay $960,000 for it at a Phillips, De Pury & Luxembourg auction in 2014 – quite possibly after seeing it at the 2006 Barely Legal exhibition in Los Angeles – one which intended to draw attention to the legal aspects of graffiti art and was billed as a "three-day vandalized warehouse extravaganza."

[https://www.widewalls.ch/10-most-expensive-banksy- artworks-a...](https://www.widewalls.ch/10-most-expensive-banksy-artworks-at- auctions/submerged-phone-boot/)

<comment><USER3> 'How our society values accomplishments/fame...'? It does of course. How much was Lederman's $100,000 in 1988 (360,000 shared with two collaborators) in today's money? The interesting question is how much more should society single out for further special consideration those who have accomplishment and fame over and above the great mass of folk who have neither?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Back in 1998, I was 13. For some longer period (at least 8 weeks) I was in a very low mood - sort of existential crisis. By self-diagnosis, I would call it a (mild?) form of depression. When in bookstore my parents asked me to choose a book for myself and ended up with Polish edition of 'God Particle'. Not sure but probably I was more interested in the _god_ aspect than _particle_. Till today I remember some parts of the book quite well. Reading the book gave me a lot of hope and - very likely - directly triggered some recovery processes, which took another 3-5 months btw. I definitely would be a totally different person if - for longer time - spiralling down the dark thoughts rabbit hole.

Just now I realised, I wish Dr Lederman knew this story. Too late, unfortunately.

</comment><comment><USER5> I never understood if the people who are willing to buy those (same goes for Olympic medals) are doing it out of some sort of "dignified charity" or are they so cynical that they are willing to own a badge of merit that someone else got.

I always wonder what they do with these afterwards how often are these returned to the original recipient or family? I've seen stories about people who found medals of honor at pawn shops and bought them to returned them.

I just simply can't fathom owning something like this as a trophy.

<comment><USER6> Strategic investment, they purchase it now in the hopes that in the future someone else will purchase it for more as a historical artifact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> lol... america should definitely get its healthcare game sorted...

<comment><USER8> Medicaid covers long term assisted care. But it requires you to spend down all your assets first, which is not unreasonable for end of life care. You can't take them with you, and why should you get to save your assets to pass on to your kids while having taxpayers pay for your long term care?

<comment><USER9> Then if we are too follow your logic, wouldn't it a much bigger priority to put a huge tax (at least 75%) on all inheritance over a certain amount (let's say $10 million)?

<comment><USER8> What is all this love for middle class welfare? If your dad requires $50k a year in end of life care, why should he be able to leave you a $500k house in the suburbs? I guess it's unlucky for you if you build up some assets then expensive end of life care wipes it out, but so what? Why do those folks deserve taxpayer support when so many, not even poor people, but median people, never managed to build up any assets at all?

I don't have any problem with tax dollars helping the neediest, people who would fall below the minimum standard otherwise. I have a huge problem with tax dollars going to help protect the relative financial status and security of middle class families.</comment></comment></comment></comment>