You have to follow the recipe - <AUTHOR> https://theoutline.com/post/8307/follow-recipe-baking-thanksgiving <comment><USER2> Much of the art of [non-professional] cooking, in my view, lies in knowing what must be rigid and what need not be. Baking is a science, relying on precise chemical reactions that must happen within pretty tightly defined windows. Making a curry is not a science, in that you can get a good curry by just making it up on the spot, tasting as you go, and fixing it if it needs fixing. (Maybe following a recipe precisely will get you the best results, but you can get most of the way there with just a few rough signposts; nothing will go disastrously wrong if you shake things up a bit.)

One of the things I found most annoying about watching someone trying to teach someone else how to cook (while at uni) was that the teacher never pointed out when something didn't matter. Whether it was "now you put in 1.5tsp of salt to the sauce" or "now you put in 1.5tsp of yeast to the dough", the method was presented as unyielding. In fact the sauce can be made in infinite variety, while the dough must be made just so. Know when to yield to the expert, and know when not to bother.

<comment><USER3> > Making a curry is not a science, in that you can get a good curry by just > making it up on the spot, tasting as you go, and fixing it if it needs > fixing.

Or it may be that the standard for curry in this example is lower than the standard for bread, perhaps because there is no set expectation for the taste of curry -- maybe one has it much less often and is less familiar with it -- while bread is something one has almost everyday and expectations are higher.

As an Indian, we don't even call any of our dishes 'curry'. They are all specific dishes with very specific tastes. If you're making a Rajma Masala, or a Punjabi kadhi, or a Gujarati kadhi, or a Khadi Dal, or a Shahi Paneer: it's very easy to screw them up and in most cases you wouldn't be able to fix them after one mistake. You might make a good enough something, but it wouldn't be Rajma.

<comment><USER4> I can't tell you how many times I've tried to make dal makhani like Moti Mahal (Deluxe) does and it always comes out wrong. Definitely a science (there are a lot of ingredients that must emulsify just so, the spices must retain their bite, it must simmer and reduce for hours, etc.), and it's ridiculous how many different "dal makhani" recipes there are and they almost never taste remotely alike.

<comment><USER5> Ha, I feel the same way about Biryani. You can eat a Biryani at N different places, and no two taste alike.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> With forty years experience cooking and some formal training, I'm much more comfortable experimenting with procedures and the technical aspects of a recipe, than with creative flavor combinations.

To be honest, I don't believe that creative flavor combinations often work, even in a $100 restaurant. It's the height of arrogance for an individual cook to believe that they possess genius exceeding the crowd-sourced collective imaginations of an entire people. And actually believing one "needs" to do something different, to make one's mark? It's hard to be a good cook, but it takes the barest modicum of emotional control and self-awareness to avoid falling into this trap. Just don't.

As in mathematical or scientific research, one is actually most creative and original when one is channeling with clarity what everyone else meant to say, wanted to say but didn't know it. In cooking, the hardest thing to do is to express a classical recipe using modern methods and ingredient sourcing, better than an entire people had managed before with conventional methods. Either this is too hard for elite restaurant chefs, so they instead play with their food, or there's no market, because one has to be on the same level to taste the difference? I don't believe that; perfecting the thoughts of others is the ultimate challenge.

Baking is easy. I have a spreadsheet going back fifty versions for sourdough bread ground from whole grains. It's a careful search algorithm in a high dimensional space, not cooking. Corn tortillas from scratch, via nixtamalizing and grinding landrace Oaxacan corns from masienda.com, is an ultimate baking graduation exercise. There's much conflicting information out there, but no reference recipe that guarantees success at home. Within a month one is at the research frontier for home cooks in a modern setting. One needs to be comfortable with research, not with following direction. And the results can be as truly spectacular as anything one can produce in a home kitchen.

<comment><USER7> > Baking is easy

Hmm, not for everyone!

I'm a competent cook (self taught, cooking for 20 years or so), and at home cooking western dishes, as well as thise from around the world (Chinese, Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Mexican, all sorts), yet baking is the one thing I seem to find difficult.

Firstly, it seems you have to get your measurements right - there isn't much room for experimentation with quantities, just follow the recipe. Aside from that, my mixture/dough always seems too wet, too sticky, too dry, too _whatever it shouldn 't be_! And I don't seem to have the knack for how to fix it, or an intuition to know when it's "right". Same deal when it makes it to the oven; things often end up over or under baked, because I just don't have the knack of knowing when it's done.

<comment><USER8> Weigh your ingredients. Get a scale that is accurate to the gram and if your recipe calls for cups and such find a conversion chart. I only follow recipes that give amounts in grams and milliliters. I'm American and baking is the only time I use the metric system. 90% of baking is technique and that only comes from practice so taking notes can help a lot while learning.

<comment><USER7> I do, and don't really have a problem with weighing things; my point was simply that I feel like I can't experiment. But you're probably right about needing practice - I tend to feel like I've failed when it goes wrong, and don't try again for ages.

I'm British, so always use grams/millilitres when cooking - TBH, I wouldn't even know what "a cup of flour" was!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Heavy imho: My girlfriend and I cannot cook together. She's more of the freestyle type, while I like to follow the recipe (programmer here). My reasoning is simple: Someday, someone tried the recipe and came up with a good way of achieving what we are trying to achieve. Which doesn't mean you should never alter it. But that's a task for another time, and shouldn't be performed while you are expecting guests. :)

<comment><USER10> We have a rule: make the recipe exactly like it's written the first time. After that we can experiment.

<comment><USER11> I follow this rule when making new food, and when trying new food. I will typically order something from the menu directly when at a new restaurant, but if I come back I'll make changes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I always found it strange that in school our 'food technology' course focused on baking and not normal cooking.

Baking, aside from maybe bread or pizza bases or something, is basically pure luxury, whereas cooking is actually useful.

I can probably count the times I've baked in the last few years in the single digits.

If you put too much flour in a cake it's going to ruin the consistency, potentially be too dry, whatever.

If you put "too much" spice or oil or vegetables or whatever in a curry or casserole or soup it's just going to taste different. It's quite hard to make a meal that's not serviceable on the hob.

<comment><USER11> On the other hand, if you can bake, you can cook. Cooking is the same thing, but a _lot_ more relaxed on requirement to follow directions.

If you're teaching something, you might as well teach something that tells the student they were wrong, instead of hiding their mistake.

<comment><USER13> This doesn't ring true to me. As a bread baker I'll just do the same recipe 1000 times, watching YouTube videos week after week, practicing different techniques, seeing if tiny variations in technique, weather, etc, affect the end product.

That's completely different from cooking, which is about learning to Google, evaluating whether to trust a recipe, menu planning, seasonal ingredient management, knowing the personalities of the people you're cooking for, understanding a wide range of cuisines... it feels like a fully different activity.

And being able to follow the recipe isn't really the key to either. It's the price of admission.

<comment><USER14> I can cook at this point, self made recipes and sauces and delicious foods.

But I find google (or ddg in my case) to be shit for finding recipes.

Too many results, lots of filler content about someone's grandma and yada yada yada.

These days I just pick up a few well rated cookbooks (or I receive them as gifts) and go from there.

Let someone else do the curation, it's very rarely the fun part of cooking, and I enjoy cookbooks because they have recipes for things I wouldn't have thought to even look up.

Plus, there's something very calming to me about looking through a cookbook. Maybe it's the same for others.

Cooking and baking shows are similar. It's just hard to be stressed watching someone make food.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This implies you're using the same ingredients with the same attributes as what the recipe designer used.

For instance, that your baking powder has the same "power" as what the original creator used, or that your flour has the same gluten content.

Ingredients vary by brand, and if you're in a different country, can be quite different (for instance, the majority of cream in Australia has added gelatin).

<comment><USER16> I came here to say something similar. You're right to point out baking powder, because it's a mess. Think it's all the same chemically? Nope. Different brands use very different chemicals that can affect lift, and it can vary over time for the same brand.

Just about everything is like that. Whole wheat flour? Different bran and gluten percentages create really different loaves.

Pretending weights will solve everything is nonsense too. If humidity affects mass per volume, it's going to affect chemical identity per mass too.

Finally, everyone has different tastes. You might like a finer crumb to your bread; your spouse might like it more holely.

Recipes are like guidelines. Always. Experience matters because it reflects knowledge of how variations on the recipe matter.

Finally, if there's one thing I've learned, it's that a lot of things in cooking get passed down as critical when they're not, or even worse, are detrimental. This goes for traditional knowledge handed down, as well as half- baked "scientific" approaches to recipe development that are bad science and driven by a desire to establish authority above all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > You can control what is going on in a pan on a stove in a way you cannot > behind a closed oven door.

To use a missile metaphor: Stir-fry is guided, bread is ballistic.

</comment><comment><USER10> Great post! Reading recipe reviews on sites like AllRecipes is both frustrating and annoying. Most times you will see something like "5 stars!!! I loved this recipe. I changed these four ingredients and it was amazing!" And I just think, you didn't actually make the recipe!!!

</comment><comment><USER18> Not following the recipe risks experiencing recipe anxiety: the fear that you are going to eat something gross. Ok, maybe it only applies to me, but I actually am scared about not following the recipe.

My husband modified a recipe to make it easier to read, but in doing so had also corrected a "mistake". He's not a pastry chef. He changed the butter cream recipe from "until the syrup is at 238 degrees" to "until the syrup is at room temperature". It wasn't too bad, but it was off. I got upset when I realized the modified recipe differed from the original.

<comment><USER19> I'm surprised it turned out at all. Cooking syrup to a specific temperature serves to produce a syrup of specific concentration, i.e. ratio of sugar:water. So under-cooked syrup ends up containing a lot more water than desired, as well as not being hot enough to cook and stabilize the egg whites that are presumably in the buttercream recipe.

<comment><USER18> The texture was... lumpy

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Some recipes are just substandard and don't work. Can somebody provide me with a WORKING recipe for making ORIGINAL injera bread? Preferrably working at Edinburgh altitude.

<comment><USER21> This may be the only reliable one I've seen: [https://www.ethiopianairlines.com/gr/book/trip/flight- schedu...](https://www.ethiopianairlines.com/gr/book/trip/flight-schedule)

<comment><USER20> hahaha

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> You gotta do your cooking by the book: [https://youtu.be/ZD71JeX4Vk0](https://youtu.be/ZD71JeX4Vk0)

</comment><comment><USER23> The best thing that improved the consistency of my baking was better measurement. I started weighing my ingredients, as Cook's Illustrated found the mass of a cup of flour varied by as much as 15%. I bought a separate thermometer for my oven because I didn't trust its built-in thermocouple. After this, I never had bad batches of cookies.

<comment><USER24> I wish more recipes specified ingredients by weight instead of volume.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> _> the second best cooking movie after Big Night_

This pal hasn't watched "Babbete's Feast".

</comment><comment><USER26> And how was the recipe followed prior to its existence?

<comment><USER2> Before the existence of the recipe, skilled practitioners had their own folklore, built from decades or centuries of trial and error and experience. Now, anybody can simply copy a recipe and inherit that experience, no matter how skilled.

It takes skill and/or time and effort to discover a recipe in a field like baking, where the desired chemical reactions are fragile and easy to disrupt. The message of the post is: don't try and discover recipes in difficult fields like baking, unless you know what you're doing.

<comment><USER17> > don't try and discover recipes in difficult fields like baking, unless you > know what you're doing.

Or unless failure is an option! (And ideally, you're at least writing down what you did.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> That's a terrible article. Improvising is half of the fun of cooking. Once you learn some basic principles there's a lot of room for modification of what you're doing. Granted that baking is less forgiving than e.g. pan dishes (where you can sample and adjust), but even baking is not some unobtainable mystery.

<comment><USER28> Two friends who are pro bakers will make small adjustments based on the outside humidity, how much gluten they can feel in the flour and so on. Baking to high levels of quality _and_ consistency is actually very hard and requires precise measurement. The article rightly educates folks on some of the factors.

<comment><USER27> OK great, that's pro bakers who are presumably selling what they're producing, and need 100% consistency. I make bread weekly, and it turns out great weekly (for our home consumption). I'm constantly experimenting with different balances of whole wheat and white, different brands of flour, different amounts of leaven, different percentages of hydration, etc. If I hadn't experimented I wouldn't understand bread as well as I do. Dough, like pan cooking, is very forgiving if you understand what you are looking for.

"Follow the recipe" is an awful philosophy. Learn the recipe and then improvise is much better, because it helps you understand the domain much more significantly.

<comment><USER28> You're still missing the point that baking is far less forgiving about getting measurements wrong. No one is saying you shouldn't experiment and learn if you want to. The point is that you should be prepared to witness just how delicate some of the chemistry is. It's not pan cooking, where extra carrots won't matter at all.

<comment><USER27> That's exactly what I said in my initial comment.

<comment><USER28> You didn't say people should be prepared for how delicate the baking chemistry can be. The article said that. And you called the article terrible.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Neural network restored video of Tokyo from 1913-1915 - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/MQAmZ_kR8S8 <comment><AUTHOR> More examples at the bottom of the owner's page [1], some of which have been posted here before.

[1]([https://neural.love/](https://neural.love/))</comment>


SFGate on Friendster Founder and Socializr - <AUTHOR> http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/07/BUGBOP4F721.DTL <comment><USER2> I knew Jonathan from junior high.

I must admit that his (initial) success with Friendster encouraged me to pursue a startup.

So I ended up leaving academia to pursue a startup full-time.

<comment><USER2> Other famous people I knew from junior high: Randy Linden and Mark Vange.

Anyone recognize them?

As you might guess, I'm a bit jealous!

<comment><USER3> Where did you go to Junior High?

<comment><USER2> Zion Heights JHS

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

I also went to the same SS as these people:

Earl Haig SS

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love how you can't actually tell what Socializr does until you go through their very long and painful signup process.</comment>


Snap – Build Your Own Blocks. Beta - <AUTHOR> http://snap.berkeley.edu/snapsource/snap.html

<comment><USER2> Um, isn't this just an exact clone of Scratch? <http://scratch.mit.edu/>

<comment><USER3> From their site:

It is an extended reimplementation of Scratch (a project of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab) that allows you to Build Your Own Blocks. It also features first class lists, first class procedures, and continuations. These added capabilities make it suitable for a serious introduction to computer science for high school or college students.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I did not find this at all intuitive. Possibly because I have never worked with Scratch before. No idea what I was supposed to be doing and no obvious forms of help.

<comment><USER5> Documentation for Snap! is underway...

There is some help on <http://snap.berkeley.edu> (without the /run suffix)

Check out the Reference Manual, which is also a concise introduction to the IDE: <http://snap.berkeley.edu/SnapManual.pdf>

and some introductory tutorials on Youtube:

About "Build Your Own Block: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bbl2fh3igQ4>

And on how to add inputs to them: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZC2tDVYWBo>

Also, there are helpscreens in the context menu for each block

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Awesome, makes programming accessible to the uninitiated. I was able to create a simple event loop with asteroid like mechanics in a few minutes.</comment>


Moo.com shuts down Flavors.me (acquired 2012) - <AUTHOR> Hello,
With regret, we've made the decision to close down Flavors.me.
Due to a change in strategic direction, we've decided to move resources to focus on other digital projects and MOO's core heartland - helping businesses of all sizes look their best with beautiful printed products.
We fully appreciate how frustrating this is and hope you understand that we've deliberated over this decision for many months. Recent issues with Flavors have forced us to look very carefully at the service we provide and we no longer feel we can offer a robust service into the future.
We've already disabled new sign-ups and in the coming months we will begin to retire parts of the service. Due to this, we will be closing all free subscriber accounts on 31st March 2017. You are more than welcome to continue using Flavors until this date, but we'd encourage you to start looking for an alternative solution.
Below are a couple of suggested tools for building an online presence, from companies that we know and trust will provide a solid platform and a good customer experience.
Squarespace: We are excited to offer 10% off Squarespace for your new website. Try Squarespace for free, and when you're ready to launch, get ten percent off your first purchase with the offer code FLAVORS10. This offer is effective through March 31, 2017.
About.me: A simple way to create your free, one-page website in just a few minutes. There are paid upgrade options available if you want to use your own domain.
As it isn't going to be possible to automatically migrate your existing Flavors content, if you have any questions please feel free to get in touch with us via email@example.com
Best regards, Flavors Support <comment><USER2> There's something similar on Telnic [https://www.telnic.org](https://www.telnic.org)

</comment><comment><USER3> That-Is.Me is still up and running and domain mapping is included.

<comment><USER3> also [http://sincere.ly/](http://sincere.ly/) which started way before Flavours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Has anyone heard of flavors.me? Or even moo.com?

<comment><USER5> I knew moo.com existed, but not what it did.</comment></comment>


Why under-grads should start freelancing? - <AUTHOR> http://www.droidlabour.com/2014/03/16/why-under-grads-should-start-freelancing/

<comment><USER2> You mention they'll gain technical skills but they'll also learn the soft skills. This is often forgotten and not learned in school. They'll become better communicators with email, in person, and over the phone. They'll gain experience with deadlines, costs, prioritization, handling clients, and many more soft skills.

These soft skills will put them leaps and bounds ahead of other fresh graduates at their first job.</comment>


The Gender Pay Gap in Tech: Women vs. Men on Compensation - <AUTHOR> https://www.comparably.com/blog/the-gender-pay-gap-in-tech-women-vs-men-on-compensation/ <comment><USER2> This article appears to only look at whether or not people feel their compensation is fair, kind of pointless.

</comment><comment><USER3> I expected to see more people feeling they're not compensated fairly. Interesting.</comment>


Ask HN: What is your morning ritual? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Jump out from bed when the alarm rings, call my old parents to wish them a good day, play with my cat, coffe + croissant, shower and go.

I am trying to rush some things more and go to work a bit later so I can give more time to what I think is more important in my life, like playing with the cat and talking with my old parents.

<comment><USER3> I hope we all realise that `playing with the cat and talking with my old parents` is where life exists and not in cubes. Thanks for the reminder, you are awesome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow so many examples of a great morning routine. cold sea simming, meditation, calling parents with cat and croissant... I'm envious :)

My morning "ritual" is the following:

I wake up between 5 or 8 either by my alarm or one of my child. If I'm the first to rise then depending on my mood I get up and browse mindlessly some website(eg. HN) or if I have the upper hand on my concious that day I resist the temptation and just stare till my mind begins to turn. I continoue to do this until I'm nudged by family or work obligations to dress up and go downstairs. I either go early before everyone wakes or a little later after everyone woke up or very late so I can help dressing them up, help make breakfast and drink a coffee with wife. By then I realize I will be very late so I reculantly start my one hour commute to work. When my back starts to ache every night I start again my morning exercises which I am able to get up or not, and do it until the pain goes away then stop it as I want to sleep more and fantasizing about how good my shape would be if I would continue morning exercises instead of sleeping.

Meh :(

</comment><comment><USER5> I typically do my morning reading through HN fo 30min or more. Take a shower to actually wake up. I see the kids off to the school bus, then use the home gym with my wife for 60 to 90 minutes (CrossFit style workouts). I rinse off in the shower and walk across the hall to my home office and start my day.

</comment><comment><USER6> To give some background: Me and my fiancee live together in major city in eastern Europe. We do not have children. We both work for the same company. Me as a software engineer. She as a QA manager.

I wouldn't say our morning ritual is healthy or great. But it's just how we like it.

* Wake up when we wake up. No alarms. Usually around 9.

* Make a cup of coffee.

* Smoke a ciggarete while I catch up on HN and the news.

* Take a shower

* Do some dishes

* Head out

This isn't a particularly healthy morning ritual (smoking, no breakfast, coffee etc). Fortunately, we do get plenty of sleep. We are fortunate enough to have a very flexible employer who cares more about results than about when you show up.

</comment><comment><USER7> A (quick, 60 second) swim in the cold sea. You would not believe how good this makes you feel, both immediately and for longer when done consistently. A rare, genuine game changer.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wake up by 6am, 20 minute meditation, 15 minutes of back stretches/light body weight exercises. Do some sort of stoicism practice, usually negative visualisation to realise how lucky I am. Make breakfast for the family, either head to work (3 days a week), work on my own projects or plan my day with my kid. Evenings there's usually some sort of physical activity - sport/yoga followed by dinner/kids bedtime routine and veg in front of the tv.

</comment><comment><USER9> Waking up a 07:15, taking the kid out of bed and put her on the couch.

Dress myself. Start dressing her while she's still sleeping, so she'll slowly wake up through the dressing movements. Wait until the sitter of the day for the other child arrives and then the kid and I walk to kindergarden.

After that, I'll take a walk of ~30 minutes to the office with a cup of coffee, most of the time listening to some podcasts.

</comment><comment><USER10> Been doing this routine for just over a year now. I wake up at 4:45am, head the gym and do an hour workout. When I get home I make breakfast and eat. Then I catch up on news/tech articles for 20 minutes while drinking a coffee, followed by doing the dishes. Once that's done I get ready for work and head to my 9 to 5. Rinse repeat Mon-fri.

<comment><USER11> What time do you go to sleep at night?

<comment><USER10> I'm usually in bed 9:30pm. I find it hard to go to sleep that early though, so sometimes I get behind on my sleep and I notice it immediately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wake 90 minutes before work. Snooze the alarm repeatedly until an hour before work. Quick shower and dress. Leave the house 40 minutes before work. Either listen to a podcast or contemplate life as I walk my two mile commute. Get to work and drink a glass of water. First coffee of the day about half an hour after I get to work.

</comment><comment><USER13> \- Wake up at 6:20am

\- Start coffee.

\- Shower.

\- Eat small breakfast.

\- Get kids ready.

\- See kids off on the school bus.

\- Drive to work.

No meditation, journaling, or moments for gratitude, sorry.

</comment><comment><USER14> Snooze the alarm at 7, cancel the alarm at 7.09, get woken up by wife at 7.40, glass of orange juice, toilet pt.1, shower, toilet pt.2, dress up, get lunch from wife, drive to work.</comment>


A Practical Guide to Web App Success (2011) – now free and CC licensed - <AUTHOR> http://webappsuccess.com/

<comment><USER3> Could you talk a little about the commercial performance of the book, and what led to the decision to release it under CC?

And thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure! Though I don't actually have much in the way of commercial performance details - it's all split between many quarters of receipts over the last few years, that I'm too lazy to aggregate...

I'd guess that I didn't profit more than a couple of thousand (British) pounds (of both paper and digital sales), after all the publishing costs had been paid for. I think there's still quite a bit of paper stock; I'm still waiting to find out how much is left (though I'm unlikely to try to sell it - I'll probably give them away at conferences, etc).

The parent company that owned the publishing company was acquired by Monotype, and they made the difficult decision to close down the publishing arm as part of the acquisition. The contracts with all the authors were nullified, and all rights returned. As the book was a few years old, and some of it out of date, I figured the best thing to do with it - especially as I'm 100% focused on my startup, and it was never going to make me rich - was to "give it away" to see if it could have any extra life.

It's about 80,000 words and I wrote it over the course of a full year (of traveling; I was also doing some consultancy, so it wasn't full time). So I'd rather that effort was 'available' for other people to possibly use.

<comment><USER4> You might as well put a "buy the dead tree version" link on the site - it's a potentially useful resource for start ups to buy and put on the shelf, and it might make you a few extra quid?

What are you working on now?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that might actually be a good idea, thanks!

I'm 100% on [http://bipsync.com](http://bipsync.com) (as I have been for the last year or two), a startup initially targeted at Hedge Fund analysts and other professional investors. We were lucky enough to raise a seven figure seed round, so have had the time to go through quite a lengthy customer development phase with some reference customers to really nail the product- market fit. We'll have a public beta out later this year.

<comment><USER4> Awesome! Bip sync looks really nice, I'll keep an eye out in case I ever go back into finance :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I read a couple of paragraphs and I liked it. Will read it, even if it's not up-to-date :-) Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER6> Does the CC license allow me to update and sell it? The license itself isn't clear on this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, you certainly can do that. [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

You may adapt it for any purpose, including commercially. The only terms are that you need to credit the original source (the website will do) and indicate if any changes were made. There are no other restrictions. Have at it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have just started reading it.And I am excited to read it all. Thank you @spxdcz / Don Zambonini

</comment><comment><USER8> Any particular chapters that contains the really important lessons?

<comment><AUTHOR> Surprisingly, at least to me, I think the chapters on marketing are some of the more interesting ones for the HN audience, and have aged pretty well.

It's quite a high level book, so doesn't go into anything in TOO much detail, but instead is supposed to give an entrepreneur - even non-technical - a good understanding of most aspects of building a web app (or at least, what that consisted of a few years ago).

The dev chapters probably won't hold much interest to HN visitors (as they'll know much of the advice), but the marketing ones, maybe some of the design ones, might have some new insights if you've been focusing mostly on tech in your day to day work.

<comment><USER9> Given the breadth of information covered, I think you did a remarkable job on providing one of the better, succinct and balanced introductions on the Search Engine Optimization chapter (#23). If I could make one suggestion - <USER2> alternate text attribute markup for the images is non-descriptive at best.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, sorry about that - I did a fairly quick (and lazy) conversion of one of the eBook files to make the website. Thanks for letting me know!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Either Namecheap or INRegistry is wrong - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/mohitsinghs_/status/1271358817301913600 <comment><AUTHOR> I had a long email discussion with Namecheap and they said that INRegistry is the one to blame. Now INRegitry said opposite of what Namecheap said. I am seriously confused which of these two are wrong. One is wrong for sure.

Update:- Looks like INRegistry and Namecheap will communicate directly.

<comment><USER2> .in has forbidden whois privacy for literally years, since its formation. India is also not exactly.. subject to GDPR

<comment><AUTHOR> That's right but their email response says that they and their all registrars hide sensitive information. When I checked manually, most does but not Namecheap. Even if Namecheap does not violates GDPR, Namecheap still blamed registry while registry says otherwise.</comment></comment></comment>


Time is an illusion – challenges in distributed computing synchronization - <AUTHOR> http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?ref=rss&id=2878574 <comment><USER2> _Few programmers have read the most important paper in this area, Leslie Lamport 's "Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System" (1978)_

If you want to be one of the few:

[http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/lamport/pubs/t...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/lamport/pubs/time-clocks.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Don't stop there:

[http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/lamport/pubs/p...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/lamport/pubs/pubs.html)

<comment><USER4> And if you want an easier job of it, here's my summary: [http://swizec.com/blog/week-7-time-clocks-and-ordering-of- ev...](http://swizec.com/blog/week-7-time-clocks-and-ordering-of-events-in-a- distributed-system/swizec/6444)

<comment><USER3> Oh cool, that's worth posting in its own right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You don't actually need absolute time for distributed systems to work, only independently verifiable order. Independent venerability can be achieved through Merkle structures and Merkle proofs. In a way, through the proofs you can communicate anybody you're "perspective" on the order of events. If you get several "perspectives" you can therefore independently infer the absolute order of events.

You would still be left with race conditions between the communicating nodes, but that is something you can't get around anyway.

<comment><USER6> The deductive approach to system ordering (e.g. via computing hashes) sets a fairly high floor on latency. If you have deep pockets like Google, you will opt for the expensive GPS/Atomic Clock and work within the epsilon bounds.

<comment><USER7> The atomic clock is intended to bound timing skew, not latency exactly.

As long as clocks at different places are synced with high precision, you could still sync operations within the epsilon bounds, despite a huge delay. Of course, that requires the system to be design accordingly to accommodate the huge latency.

<comment><USER6> Late reply but noted this now.

We disagree. Perfect clock obviates the need for _protocol_ based consensus mechanism. Paxos & friends have substantial latency costs. Secondary effects of protocol based approach include NAK storms, reduction of available bandwidth (consumed by the chatty consensus protocol packets). Tertiary effects include triggering of congestion control mechanisms.

There is zero question that a distributed system built on high fidelity clocks will mop the proverbial floor in terms of performance.

<comment><USER8> A couple responses:

Even with the hardware, google can't shrink the window past 7ms or so, based on published reports.

To preserve consistency there are situations where you need to wait out the clock uncertainty.

Spanner still uses paxos for replication because ordering is only part of the problem consensus solves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "A typical laptop or server, left without any type of external time conditioning, will drift out of sync within minutes and after a few hours may already be several minutes away from good synchronization with other systems."

This doesn't match my experience at all. I've had smartphones disconnected from the network for weeks at a time without drifting "several minutes away" from the consensus time. Drift is a thing, but it seems like that estimate is several orders of magnitude larger than anything I've seen in practice.

<comment><USER10> Not to mention what it'd mean about watches (the dumb kind). Digital watches as a whole, even the cheap ones I'd own as a kid, never drifted that far that fast. I can't imagine that the cheap ones had better crystals in them than a laptop.

I think it may just be badly phrased. "will drift out of sync within minutes" was meant as it'll almost assuredly have gained/lost a few microseconds from what it should have, given the progression of 'real' time for its frame of reference, but that it -may- be that bad. Which, yeah, sure, it -may-. Not bloody likely, but maybe.

<comment><USER11> I'm not quite sure what's in my laptop right now but it used to be that there was a separate crystal for time keeping, typically around 32KHz. I believe digital watches used similar crystals. Those drift a lot less than the high frequency crystals used to generate the CPU clock. Their accuracy is on the order of 10ppm. The other thing that matters is the temperature variation as the frequency will change with temperature. A wrist watch probably sees more uniform temperatures (esp. if it's worn all the time and e.g. has a large metallic backing). Laptops can get quite hot and quite cold.

You can get temperature compensated oscillators down to about 1ppm accuracy over a larger temperature range. 1ppm is about 1 second/week.

Back in the day I wrote a little utility where every time you adjusted your computer clock it took notice of the drift and fed that back into the time calculation. I.e. it continuously adjusted the clock based on the corrections given to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Kind of what got Einstein started on special relativity: Is is possible to exactly synchronize railroad station clocks? And the answer is no. There will always be a causality uncertainty due to the finite speed of signals. Sequencing could depend ont he location and velocity of the observer. On Earth the planetwide uncertainty would be a fraction of a second. But across planets you'd have minutes and so on.

<comment><USER13> Why is this downvoted? To a laymen (me), this seems like like an interesting post.

<comment><USER14> I guess because it is more or less wrong. Relativity establishes that time is observer dependent, i.e. observers moving relative to each other will in general not agree on which events occurred at the same time. But there is no uncertainty because of the finite speed of light and nothing that prevents synchronizing clocks although it is admittedly not easy because relative motions and gravitational fields influence the speed at which clocks tick. There is also still a causal structure in spacetime defined by the light cones of events so that different observers agree on the ordering of events that may have a causal relationship. It's all pretty complicated and way more nuanced than popular science usually presents it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was at one of the open tech talks at Xerox PARC that Leslie gave where the discussion of time synchronization came up. Xerox had a naming system called Grapevine[1] and it used timestamps in a number of places. I was working at Sun and dealing with time issues in RPC and came away from the tech talk understanding that "perfect time keeping" was like "perfect security", if you could assume you had it a whole host of problems became much easier to solve.

The point that the author makes about needing higher and higher precision though got me thinking about ways one might achieve that. I'm wondering if you could actually provide a master clock, a 1Ghz carrier, over network cables that originate from the master clock. If the master clock is synchronized with the bit stream, and you're seeing the bit stream locally, you first calibrate your clock with the master and then drive it from the bit stream and you should be in sync with respect to cable and time of flight delays.

[1] [http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~cs4513/d07/Papers/Birrell,%20Levin,%2...](http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~cs4513/d07/Papers/Birrell,%20Levin,%20et.%20al.,%20Grapevine.pdf)

<comment><USER16> As a former sunnie that worked on distributed systems, how would you cope with packet loss/out of order packets/weird socket states especially on Solaris? Would you do clock-per-socket and then merge them via internal buffers? How about when one/many of your nodes go down or you end up with a split brain? Or you'd just use 0MQ or similar super fast protocol, do some simple checks and if they fail, you'd just resend everything?

<comment><USER15> NIS+ used "relative" timestamps, which were basically the delta between the server and the originator. So the originator would say "here is a packet and I think it is time 1415151515.5" and the server would get that packet and say Ok, since I think it is 1415151520 your delta is -5 and I'll subtract 5 from all of your times to put them into my time context. Then when you compared time stamps you did so in the servers frame of reference. But as the article points out it still suffered from jitter given the various subsystems between the packet and the service endpoint.

As for out of order and lost packets the TCP layer prevent out of order, but retransmissions on lost packets resulted in big jitter spikes. Those were rare enough to pull out as a special case. And there was layered on top an optimistic transaction protocol where you could ask for the current transaction id, increment it by one and send your transaction with the assumption that if someone landed before you it would fail and you would have to restart. That worked well for read mostly applications (like a name service).

The NoSQL database that Blekko designed uses a more complex promise system to preserve transaction ordering and it uses idempotent combinators which help manage time syncronization issues. But again, if we could wave a magic wand and get perfect synchronization it would be pretty interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Most of what we do in distributed systems is provide the _illusion_ of a consistent, shared memory space. We literally pretend that we can violate the laws of physics, to make the programming for everyone else simpler.

<comment><USER18> This is true all the way down to the chip level as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > If an interval time needs to be measured, then rdtsc, or a library wrapped > around it, is the best solution, whereas getting the system time for use in > log files probably ought to be carried out using clock_gettime()with a FAST > option; or, if clock_gettime() is not available, then gettimeofday().

If I remember correctly RDTSC suffers from other issues like being affect by CPU throttling and also might be different if your process is re-scheduled on another core.

</comment><comment><USER20> Time is an emergent property. Ie: fundamental particles don't experience time, but things made of them do.

<comment><USER21> Everything that has mass, must experience time. That includes electrons, protons, neutrons, which are considered fundamental.

<comment><USER22> To put it another way: Time cannot exist without mass. Time only exists because everything is always in motion (at least a little bit) and--in our perception--we have a memory/frame of reference.

From the perspective of a photon it lives and dies in an instant. Even if it crosses the entire universe!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Related: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wteiuxyqtoM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wteiuxyqtoM)

(Showing clearly why simultaneity does not exist in an absolute sense.)

</comment><comment><USER24> It's even worse. Not only is time an illusion but your observation is being sabotaged by sysadmins that make one of the nodes of your distributed system jump back in time several hours (by changing the time zone info) and other naughty deeds.

</comment><comment><USER25> It'll be fascinating to watch how time unfolds on the blockchain.

Some will strive for absolute standards, while others maximize the net benefits of relativity.

</comment><comment><USER26> Got fired on my last job saying this. Such a shame I don't have a PhD like their CSS coder.

My understanding of the root causes of the time problem is a poor education.

Basic definition of time : time is the accident of the accident, and the same causes giving the same effects, some of them being irreversible they define an ordered direction of events. Time is like temperature, it is measured relatively to the pulsation of an harmonic oscillator. A closed absolute system time does not exists. Since Einstein we also have to decorrelate the physical speed to the speed due to the geometrical expansion. (Cerenkov effect, yes you can go faster than the speed of light playing on this). Since quantum mechanics we know time is quantic and its uncertain capped by hbar/2 < dEdt

Hence a lot of problem when due to poor rigor and understanding (which amplify the aforementioned effect) time becomes that its nightmarish physical beast. And you are stuck with idiots, that even thinks that the colour of the skin influence your quality as a coder.

So here is my understanding of coder's problem with time. The mindset of coders I have met and boss alike is stuck in the 1800's. Where statistical physic, the dual nature of light, quantum mechanics, Einstein's relativity are known as trivial pursuit boring questions but no one cares of the implications.

Then they sux at understanding geometry vs physics but most of all they are stuck in the wrong physical world.

They live in a world of determinism where they would prefer compute the position and speed of every molecule in a gas than use the 'unpure' perfect law.

For time they are puzzled: \- time is a length of vector; (how much time since)

\- time is a point - deducted from an implicit 0 origin when taking a length;

\- time is 1D vector so it behaves like a scalar, so it must be a scalar; (computing resulting size by adding/substracting as length/vector))

\- there is a lot of politic involved in "time measure" (GMT, TZ, calendars, interstitial seconds) and politic is buggy thus it results in bugs;

\- heisenberg DOES exists; they never care to measure the error and think it is wasted time;

\- my time as a coder is always free;

\- time cannot be uncertain since we have these high resolution clocks (the exactitude of time is such we never encounter uncertainty (and our code is executed in 0s)));

\- GPS is a measuring instrument that magically corrects this, because it is perfect and has no errors because it is USA spatial "godly" "star streky" in the sky;

\- acausality cannot locally happen because of asymmetries in topologies (slow/fast router vs short long path);

In short, most of coders are insanely crippled by their own culture of ignorance and their self importance.

Common scientifical knowledge that is more commonly understood by mc donalds employees has still not reached the brain of our elite architects/coders. And time - frequencies is one of the most important dimension of all applications.

The question I wonder is "how?". How is it even possible to have such a bias in the mass recruitment of coders that they select over confident thinkers that are lacking of curiosity so much they can blindfold themselves comfortably.

If the lack in scientific domain is that great, and reflects arrogant lacks in other domain ... then I think of creeping lack of culture in "business", "ethics", "legal", "cryptography", "probability", "algebrae" ...

I have provoked enough computer pro and made stats to know for sure their level of confidence should be dangerously inversely correlated to their level of actual knowledge.

I am very confident that IT has a corporate culture bias of valuating arrogant ignorant that "can do it" over careful thinkers that may say "it well never be doable" __*

 __* yes, the Cretan paradox revisited

<comment><USER27> I tried, I really did, to understand what you are saying here and to give you the benefit of the doubt.

Unfortunately, if your intent was to communicate some idea to people who read your comment, then it didn't work because I honestly can't say what that idea might be.

I could make some witty remarks on certain things you've said or how you've said them, but that wouldn't be useful for either of us. So I won't.

<comment><USER28> I agree, that made absolutely no fucking sense. That was some Youtube comment level stuff right there.

<comment><USER29> from the comment history it looks like OP is (a non native English speaking) extraordinarily bitter physics major who had a falling out with a coworker during a programming job</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why use Redis? - <AUTHOR> Why not skip network path completely and use in-process, embedded instance which still does replication in the background.
I love Redis but I prefer all those, GETs  are not sent over the network each time I need that data.
Is anyone aware of such implementation? We are using Rust and Go in our app. <comment><USER2> Hazelcast supports distributed data structures and also takes care of replicating them across all nodes in your cluster. But it's written in Java. I am not aware of any similar library in Go or Rust.</comment>


Apple Sues Nuvia's CEO, a Former Employee - <AUTHOR> https://www.eetimes.com/apple-sues-nuvias-ceo-a-former-employee/ <comment><USER2> I'm really surprised that this might be pursuable in California. At first, as Williams is a chip guy, I thought it might be in Texas where you can screw employees six ways from Sunday (up to and including successfully asserting IP ownership of the contents of someone's head, as the DSC case showed).

California is much more strict, and several of the assertions don't appear to hold up in my understanding of employment IP law (IANAL but have hired many people and have dealt with several close employee cases on both sides - company and employee -- over the years). The lines in the law are pretty clear and broad.

Most strikingly to me from the complaint is the fact that apple claims that he 1> used his design knowledge to found another company (jeez, people do this all the time) and 2> did so while working at apple (ditto).

The worst thing you can do is use Apple's property to start another company, which is a strict no-no. But apple doesn't claim he used an apple-issued phone (or computer) to set up NuVia, and if they thought that it would be a trump card they'd brandish right up front. Instead they have the weak "knowledge" grounds which is pretty vague.

Likewise they claim he solicited employees, but non solicitation clauses are likewise no longer enforceable in CA as of this year.

This smacks of intimidation: they don't care if they lose; they want others to know that if you leave apple to start a company or work for a competitor they'll sock you with an expensive and distracting legal battle. Which is pretty sad given that Apple was on the receiving (and losing) end of such a case a few years ago...relating chip design!

<comment><USER3> Pretty much, I expect California to dismiss unless he has a contract where he waived his rights.

<comment><USER4> Well that's the thing, you can't waive your rights. That's the whole point of these clauses being unenforceable. This is a really disappointing move on Apple's part. The guy isn't pursuing something competing with any Apple product, or even anything trying to sell back to Apple. He's just going off and doing something else.

<comment><USER5> I take no position on the enforceability or the wisdom of the case. That said…

It seems completely reasonable to me that there will be ARM-based desktops and laptops from Apple in the next five years and that they plan to offer them in hardware or software configurations that are suited to server work; macOS Server is still a thing.

I three-quarters expected, when the new Mac Pro was announced a year or two ago, that it would be the first ARM-based desktop Mac. I was wrong, but I think I was wrong on timing, not on whether it would eventually happen. Apple cares a lot about having control of every key technology that makes up its offerings.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h > macOS Server is still a thing

It is? With no server hardware except for _maybe_ a rack-mounted Mac Pro ( which doesn't really strike me as server grade hardware)[0] and most of the actual server services gutted[1]?

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Pro#Mac_Pro_Server](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Pro#Mac_Pro_Server) & [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Mini#Mac_mini_Server](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Mini#Mac_mini_Server)

[1] [https://9to5mac.com/2018/01/24/major-changes-macos- server/](https://9to5mac.com/2018/01/24/major-changes-macos-server/)

<comment><USER6> I have seen many macos server installations on Mac mini.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The complaint is here: [https://regmedia.co.uk/2019/12/10/apple_v_gerard_williams.pd...](https://regmedia.co.uk/2019/12/10/apple_v_gerard_williams.pdf)

Paragraph 24 is interesting. Apple's breach of contract claim is based on Williams' alleged creation of a competing business in violation of his Intellectual Property Agreement with Apple. Apple appears to concede that Nuvia is targeted to servers and Apple doesn't make servers. So they have a hook in there that they've considered developing or customizing servers. (As a factual matter, I'm not sure anybody would consider customizing servers for internal use to be in competition with selling chips for commercial servers, but that seems to be Apple's story.)

It's not clear what Apple's beef is. Nuvia's founder clearly did some organizational work while he was at Apple. Maybe that's enough to technically breach the agreement. (Or maybe not. Without purporting to know anything about California employment law,[1] Nuvia's motion to dismiss seems pretty robust in its reliance on California law and public policy against non-competes and restraints on employment, as well as preemption of the contract action by trade secrets law.) But what I'm curious about is what Apple thinks the damages are from Nuvia starting a business in a sector (servers) Apple hasn't competed in for more than a decade?

It's also curious Apple didn't bring a trade secrets claim. The architecture of Cyclone, etc., is famously under wraps compared to AMD and Intel's designs. Apple has gotten amazing performance out of these chips, but nobody is entirely sure how they're doing it.

[1] Obligatory disclaimer: Not barred in California, not an employment lawyer, etc. For entertainment purposes only.

<comment><USER8> There is a pretty clear conflict of interest here. The guy was building his company and recruiting Apple employees to it while he was getting paid by Apple. I'm not entirely certain what California's non-compete laws say, I thought they only applied _after_ you left an employer (or in situations where you leave to join another company), not while you are still getting paid, have access to confidential information; recruiting internally; and are using Apple's corporate resources to further your own personal business.

<comment><USER9> Anything done on the employee's own time, using their own equipment, and not relying on IP owned by the company is owned by the employee, and non-competes do not apply. There's a standard form outlining this attached to every CA employment agreement.

<comment><USER10> You missed the part where you can't work on something that is in the same field.

<comment><USER11> Has this actually held up? My understanding is that what specific and specialized areas of work on off-time is considered company IP have to be enumerated, and must depend upon availability of unusual proprietary information.

<comment><USER9> I haven't found any cases in my (admittedly brief) search that actually rule on this, but there's a pretty clear pattern in CA jurisprudence that suggests that a broad application of "related work" is unlikely to be looked upon positively. To me, it's pretty clear that use of trade secrets would be about the only thing that courts are _likely_ to agree upon as out of bounds for personal work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> To the Apple PR folks reading this thread now : Unless there are facts of the case that relate to _actual_ IP theft, you've just done more damage to your hiring pipeline than you can imagine.

Take steps internally to fix this. It isn't a bad look to step down. In fact, you'll improve your standing if you consider how the engineering community views this.

This action is hostile and will greatly impact your hiring and retention of talent.

<comment><USER8> I doubt it's going to affect their hiring and retention at all. This isn't like the guy left Apple and started a company. He started a company, ran it on Apple's dime while it was getting started, then wandered the hallways recruiting people for it.

It's pretty easy to see the huge conflicts of interest here.

<comment><USER12> > ran it on Apple's dime

I'm sorry, but when I go home at night and choose to spend my remaining hours awake on my own project, that's 100% mine. I bought and paid for it. Instead of spending time with friends or loved ones, playing video games, going out and having fun, I labored.

> wandered the hallways recruiting people for it

This makes it sound like you can't have professional relationships or friends at work. Or that you wouldn't want to work with those people after joining another company.

<comment><USER8> > I'm sorry, but when I go home at night and choose to spend my remaining > hours awake on my own project, that's 100% mine.

The problem comes in when you blur the lines between your personal project and what you are paid by Apple to do. At what point are you working on your thing versus Apple's and who is paying you to do it?

The big question is what he was doing while purportedly on the clock. Was he using Apple provided hardware, software, and time to further his own personal ends?

> This makes it sound like you can't have professional relationships or > friends at work.

Ethics are hard, lines are blurry. It's best to avoid the blurry bits and keep to the places where you are clearly in the right.

Maintaining relationships while working is fine. Recruiting for a side business on the other hand is a clear conflict of interest and crosses an ethical threshold IMO.

Calling your existing friends up after you quit and offering them jobs is fine.

I have no idea what this guy did, but it sounds like he was definitely in the grey areas of ethics and from the sounds of it the law.

<comment><USER13> My employer is allowed to recruit for my position while I'm still working in it, and kick me to the curb only after they've found a replacement they like (whether they're cheaper, or whatever else). Besides being a dickish thing to do, this causes me to incur a real opportunity cost corresponding to the time I could have spent searching for new employment.

It's unethical, arguably, but most companies show again and again that they're willing to behave unethically toward their employees, so I'm not sure why I should feel bad for them given that employment is a two-way business relationship. The pervasive focus on employees being "bad employees" and simultaneous tacit acceptance of corporate dickishness is an insidious and toxic double standard that should not be tolerated.

<comment><USER8> You are similarly "allowed" to search for another job while working for a company, which is 1:1 comparable to your idea of the company looking for your replacement while you are still there.

What the company isn't doing is billing you for the time they spend doing it, or having you spend your free time doing it while you are at home.

What someone does in their own free time with their own resources is their business. What they do while they are at work, getting paid is "company" business and should be treated as such.

<comment><USER12> These aren't at all comparable unless the employee can use the employer's time, money, and resources to search for a better job.

Beyond this, I find it ridiculous that you're comparing humans with thoughts and feelings and limited time on this earth to wholly inanimate corporations. We should err on the side of giving humans more freedom and liberty.

<comment><USER8> > These aren't at all comparable unless the employee can use the employer's > time, money, and resources to search for a better job.

That's exactly what Apple this case is about, an employee who is being accused of using his employer's time, money, and resources to not just search for a better job, but to create a multi-million dollar company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have been waiting for a case like this. The boilerplate SV Software Engineer contract says that the employer basically owns your whole intellectual output. In practice it's extremely common for people to leave FAANG companies and start companies that are basically more agile "forks" of whatever they were working on before. I have seen this so many times at Google. Someone makes a cool internal tool/service, leaves, makes it into a SaaS company.

A famous example is Foursquare. Google bought Dodgeball, which was the original product. The founders got paid then left Google and ... started the same company again but called it Foursquare!

My assumption is these companies don't sue because they can't afford the negative impact on hiring. If you thought Apple would own your mind forever you'd never work there in the first place.

<comment><USER15> > If you thought Apple would own your mind forever you'd never work there in > the first place.

Only a very small fraction of Apple's employees will ever attempt to be entrepreneurs. It's no threat to the extreme majority of all employees in Silicon Valley. Outsized total compensation and great benefits is all most tech workers in SV are after, entirely reasonably so.

I agree that it will scare off many employees that are heavily inclined toward starting their own thing. It's an interesting question as to whether companies like Apple are better off or worse off in that scenario. People that are particularly entrepreneur-minded often don't make for great employees (I'm in that group).

<comment><USER16> > People that are particularly entrepreneur-minded often don't make for great > employees (I'm in that group).

No boss, I can't meet that deadline, I'm too smart.

<comment><USER17> Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? You've done it a lot already, and we're trying for something better than that here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER16> Please do not deny my right to free speech.

<comment><USER17> There's no right to speech on HN, but there is a duty: to follow the site guidelines.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'd bet my house that the founder just pissed off some big Apple guy, probably took some talent with him when he left, so now they're throwing the book at him.

<comment><USER19> "Took some talent with him when he left" is a clear violation of his contract.

So that's not a "just". That's something he deserves to be sued and heavily penalized for.

<comment><USER20> > That's something he deserves to be sued and heavily penalized for.

Sued for making job offers to your ex colleagues ? Even in the US that wouldn't fly.

<comment><USER21> No, sued for actively recruiting them _while still employed by the same company_. He had a contractual duty of obligation to work in the company's best interest and instead spent dozens and dozens of hours on the phone with his co-founders and recruiting coworkers to leave with him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is the same company that screwed our profession royally for years by colluding with other big companies not to hire each others employees.

<comment><USER23> Yep, Apple, along with Google, Adobe, Intel, eBay, Intuit, Pixar and Lucasfilm[1] all colluded with each other not to hire each other's employees, effectively depressing workers' market value.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation)

<comment><USER24> Think off all the people that would have moved for life and live, but were imprisoned in their cars for that commute.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Summary:

The lawsuit alleges that he started a new company (while employed with Apple) with technology that he was working on (iPhone and iPad processors), and luring away other Apple engineers.

Nuvia, the company of which he's the CEO, has attracted $53 million in venture funding.

<comment><USER26> This is why you don't work on that side project while still working at your main job. Every large company I've worked at has been _very_ clear during orientation: they will assert ownership of anything you do while employed, on or off the clock, using your own equipment or theirs. It's not worth the risk to moonlight bootstrapping your startup. Not saying it's right but saying that it is. These companies have a lot of lawyers.

<comment><USER27> How do they have the right to own what you make off the clock on your own equipment?? Do they own you outside of your contractually agreed-upon hours?

<comment><USER28> Obviously it varies by employment region, but my contract doesn't say "You work 40 hours a week". It says "We own everything you create while you're employed by us".

<comment><USER29> This is common but not universal. The agreement I have with google, by contrast, gives them a perpetual, irrevocable, nonexclusive right to use anything I create while I work here. This is not the same as owning those things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Reminiscent of, "Apple Files $5-Million Lawsuit Against Jobs"[1]

[1] [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la- xpm-1985-09-24-fi-18710-...](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la- xpm-1985-09-24-fi-18710-story.html)

<comment><USER31> That's what I was going to say! It's very like when Steve Jobs started NeXt in the 80s, and Apple sued claiming theft of intellectual property and poaching of key staff.

In my opinion the Apple claims had no merit, particularly in California, but Apple still managed to get a settlement that put a lot of limitations on NeXt.

NeXt had to show Apple their prototypes before release, were not allowed to ship a computer before July 1, 1987, and were only allowed to make high-end machines, not compete in the consumer market. They also had to agree not to hire any more Apple employees.

[https://www.nytimes.com/1986/01/18/business/steven-jobs- sett...](https://www.nytimes.com/1986/01/18/business/steven-jobs-settles-suit- filed-by-apple.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The most extraodinary claim is here:

> To further intimidate any current Apple employee who might dare consider > leaving Apple, Apple's complaint shows that it is monitoring and examining > its employees' phone records and text messages, in a stunning and > disquieting invasion of privacy.

<comment><USER21> This just seems like them attempting to be sensationalist. Anyone who has a company device managed with MDM that _doesn 't_ think their employer can monitor everything that happens on that device should go back and reread the terms they accepted when they got the device.

<comment><USER33> MDMs can, but no employer in their right mind ever should actually take the steps to enable sms tracking.

I used to work in IT, and have rolled out MDM programs for startups before.

What needs to happen is a signed contract between the employer and the employee stating exactly what the current capabilities of the MDM are, and under what scenarios the employer can change those capabilities. This needs to be separate from their employment agreement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Why is Apple so focused on him being misleading in casual conversation about his post-Apple plans? Their whole case seems so weak, even before considering how hard it is to enforce a non-compete in CA.

</comment><comment><USER35> I hope Apple loses. This case of ex-employees starting a company is a classic example of improving competition in the market. You need to have the domain knowledge to be successful, so ex-employees are probably what companies fear.

</comment><comment><USER36> > [Nuvia] also allege [in their counter suit] that Apple's evidence in its > complaint, notably text messages he exchanged with another Apple engineer > and conversations with his eventual Nuvia co-founders, were collected > illegally by the highly paranoid iPhone maker.

</comment><comment><USER37> Friendly reminder: if you work in the US, and you _don't_ live in California, Montana, North Dakota, or Oklahoma, your non-compete is enforceable.

Nuvia would likely not be possible in Washington, Oregon, Texas, or Massachusetts.

</comment><comment><USER38> I said before that Apple needs to produce and rent servers that can run high- performance Metal. Maybe the Nuvia guy sees it the same way but could not convince anyone at Apple of it.

<comment><USER39> Apple doesn't have the tech skill to build anything for high performance. They are a hardware aesthetics company.

<comment><USER40> Are you specifically referring to high performance in the context of servers or workstations? My impression has been that Apple is absolutely dominating in the low-power, mobile-first segment with fabrication processes more advanced than all their direct competitors.

<comment><USER39> They can do mobile for sure, but even then the chips that they use are not really ahead in performance intrinsically, they are just bigger (and generally more expensive) which naturally gives them better performance. And a lot of the speed improvements comes from just better direct compilation rather than JIT like Android does.

For server architecture, Apple has never been competitive. The only reason to get Mac workstations in the past before was that they were more stable than the Windows counterparts, but those days are long gone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> If Apple thinks engineers are valuable, they can pay them more.

It's unfortunate that the big companies in CA (with Steve Job's support) worked with business leaders to surprises the wages of scientists and engineers.

Note: this moment we are living in is a historic shift in power centers as have always existed in western democracies; that is, business/law/finance have always held the keys to the kingdom. These nerdy engineer types were never a threat to the power structure until now.

</comment><comment><USER42> Regardless of how this turns out, I am not a fan of employers insisting on non-compete agreements and preventing you from working for a competitor or starting your own competing company after your employment ends for any reason.

Permitting workers to change companies and/or start their own companies is how a competitive labor market is supposed to work. Worse, non-compete agreements make it hard for employees to find work in their field after being laid off.

Imagine if I were to insist, as a condition of accepting employment, that in the case that my employment ends for any reason my employer refrain from entering into any new work agreements with other professionals in my field, for a period of at least two years. That would get nowhere fast, but of course it's the same sort of non-compete agreement that employers are requiring for employees.

If there's a patent or trade secret issue, sue on that basis. Don't artificially restrict the labor market.

</comment><comment><USER42> > Williams hid the fact he was preparing to leave Apple to start his own > business while still working at Apple, and that he drew on his work in > steering iPhone processor design to create his new company

1a) "Hey boss, I'm preparing to leave Apple and found a competing company, but I want to keep my job for the next year, OK?"

1b) "Tell us what your plans are for the next 5 years" Oh, I want to work for Apple to learn as much as I can about processor design so I can quit and found my own company. Will you hire me?

I wish companies were more OK with alumni leaving to start competing companies, and it might be less of an issue in countries with different labor laws, but in the US it's a quick road to unemployment.

2) Requiring employees not to learn from experience is laughable; I also think it will be hard to prove that he steered iPhone processor design away from Apple's interests and toward his own competing interests

</comment><comment><USER43> The primary goal seems to be a clear warning to its employee rather than the lawsuit itself. It's pretty well known that Apple's chip department has been losing tons of talents to a bunch of start-up and other big techs. I don't know why, but given all ML hypes and new opportunities in hardware businesses this could be just a natural trend.

In this case, it seems many other talents already have joined Nuvia (including John Bruno and Manu Gulati in a leadership group, who already left Apple a long time ago) My guess is that Gerard was the irreplaceable key person to Apple's processor strategy as an engineer and a talent hub. Apple may expect his leave to accelerate its predicament with hardware talents and this lawsuit might be a desperate attempt to stop this flow. Not sure if it will work though.

</comment><comment><USER44> I hope Nuvia's CEO wins and that Apple must pay them back for the time and damage made by this suing. Only from the presented facts, it looks like pure intimidation and anti-competitiveness.

</comment><comment><USER45> The article talks about non-compete agreements as if that concept is relevant here, but those are illegal in California, where Apple is headquartered and the bulk of its employees are. (I don't know where Williams worked, but if I had to guess...)

</comment><comment><USER46> >Apple's lawsuit filed in August alleged Williams hid the fact he was preparing to leave Apple to start his own business

you have to give an honest reason you're leaving a company? that's dumb

</comment><comment><USER47> I wonder if this is in response to Tony Fadell leaving Apple, forming Nest, and then hiring a ton of people for Nest that he then sold to Google...

</comment><comment><USER48> What are you afraid of Apple? Rising salaries?

</comment><comment><USER49> Apple might see this as a warning to existing engineers but it is also a warning to potential hires. Don't work at Apple.

<comment><USER21> Or maybe "don't work at Apple if you plan to spend dozens of hours of company time on the phone with your startup cofounders and use proprietary HR information to poach employees while still employed yourself."

<comment><USER33> Even if this was being done at home while not on the clock?

Oh wait, we're all suckers and are _salaried_. Does that mean the company owns 100% of our time if desired?

<comment><USER50> Not in California.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Dirty</comment>


Show HN: People's Voicemail – a voice-based message board - <AUTHOR> https://peoplesvoicemail.com/lines/1 <comment><USER2> Wow this is really cool. I would love for something like this to get popular. I don't know why, but this concept seems so early 2000s ... no profile pictures... no logins... no b.s. - Just free and open discussion. Sucks that there aren't any active conversations. OP, did you make this service?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm touched that you think it's cool. It's my passion project I built to try and make an impact on the divisiveness and polarization in society but it hasn't been well-received.

Thanks to your comment, I'm wondering about a new approach. Before, I was pitching politicians that they should get their own number to have a forum for community discussions. But maybe I should try to start my own community about politics and incline people to call in to share their perspectives. You think that could lead to somewhere?

Idk, but if you have any thoughts or ideas I'd love to hear em. The project is in its death throes right now.

<comment><USER2> Dude, I would tell Twitch.tv streamers about it, so their fans could call in and talk... I would promote it on college campuses... They're in need of something like this after the death of the Yik Yak app. You could push this project on Twitter, etc.

I'll personally shill this on my university's campus for you, but don't give up on this. I'm sure there are a lot of other people who feel the same way that I do. This is a REALLY cool idea!!

<comment><AUTHOR> Those are brilliant ideas. You've really inspired me man. I really needed this to keep going on it.

<comment><USER2> So I just realized to get a number to use for a discussion forum, it's $20 per month. That basically stopped me from creating one. An idea I had was to make a few fliers with a QR code linking to my (hypothetical) number, and ask for student's opinions on the COVID-19 situation on campus anonymously.

I could post some of these fliers at my student union, in other common areas. But I think marketing this as anonymous discussion would work pretty well, because people don't have a way to do that anymore in 2020. The compression would mask /some/ identifying vocal intonations, and the area code isn't that relevant, considering a lot of kids at my school are from other states.

I'm not telling you how the site should be run, but I've actually had an idea for something like PeoplesVoicemail before, so now that I found this, I'm pretty hype. I'm willing to help as much as I can, just let me know what I need to do. I believe in you, dude. Keep pushing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Two Cats In A Sack: Designer-Developer Discord - <AUTHOR> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/05/13/two-cats-in-a-sack-designer-developer-discord/ <comment><USER2> If I had to just choose one thing to stop the discord, it would simply be communication.

As a dev, interesting to see it from the designers side.</comment>


Rdio Joins MOG, Spotify In the Big Digital Music Giveaway - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20110914/free-music-for-everyone-rdio-joins-mog-spotify-in-the-big-digital-music-giveaway/

<comment><USER2> I haven't checked the others, but Mog requires me to login with Facebook to get free music. Is there anyway I can do that without signing into Facebook?

They should at least offer other alternatives like Twitter and Google. Grooveshark does it.</comment>


West 'ignored Russian offer in 2012 to have Syria's Assad step aside' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/15/west-ignored-russian-offer-in-2012-to-have-syrias-assad-step-aside <comment><USER2> Please do not post ordinary political stories to Hacker News. There needs to be something unusually interesting about them.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment>


Tweet Repeating Done Right - <AUTHOR> https://repeeet.com?hn

<comment><USER2> I'm not clear on what this this is doing that I can't already do with Buffer or Hootsuite (free versions)?</comment>