The Lonely Life of a Yacht Influencer - <AUTHOR> https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-lonely-life-of-a-yacht-influencer <comment><USER2> I'm reminded of an old colleague of mine. She worked as a food safety inspector for Cara Foods that service many airlines around the world. They have kitchens in airports and prepare the food for airlines. She would travel the world inspecting the kitchens. She would always travel business class and had an IATA pass/badge and had the ability to bump business class passenger and hold the plane. She wasn't paid well but was young, single and loved the idea of travelling the world in swank business class. She quickly learned two things, her company wasn't willing to give her time to take day trips into the city (so her sightseeing was airport hotels and the underbelly of international airports), and more importantly, flying economy feels really bad once you've spent time on business class flights.

So for this influencer, I imagine it's tough to live a regular life once he is forced to. If he wants to vacation with his friends, they are renting a 20ft boat rather than a 200ft boat.

<comment><USER3> That echos my experience really closely. I spent almost 4 years traveling twice per month with each trip lasting between 3-6 days, and each day, due to work schedules, being 12+ hours long. At the end of those 4 years, I couldn't tell you anything about the actual cities I visited, but I can still describe the intricate details of the hotel/conference centers in which I basically lived.

<comment><USER4> But how many million tax-free hôtel and airline points did you accumulate?

<comment><USER5> A million miles is a lot. If you flew roundtrip from New York to London twice a month, it would take over 6 years to have flown a million miles: [http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=JFK-LON](http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=JFK-LON)

<comment><USER6> You don't need to fly close to a million miles to get a million "miles"/points. Miles are based on spend now, not on distance traveled, so it's easy to rack up a million when you're flying business or first class.

As an example, let's say you're a regular business traveler flying a $5k business class round-trip from NYC to London on American Airlines. You have the highest status level which gives you a 120% bonus on miles earned. Each dollar spent on the flight thus earns you 11 miles, so that one round-trip is worth 55k miles. Source: [https://www.aa.com/i18n/aadvantage- program/miles/aadvantage-...](https://www.aa.com/i18n/aadvantage- program/miles/aadvantage-currency.jsp)

But wait, there's more. Of course you also bought the $5k flight on your AA credit card, which gives another 2 miles per dollar spent, which puts the total up to 65k miles earned for one 7k mile round-trip flight. Or maybe you put it on your Chase Sapphire Reserve card, which gives you 3X Chase Ultimate Rewards points for travel spending, so 55k AA miles + 15k UR points. Now imagine that you're doing this trip several times per month and the miles/points add up very quickly; you can get to a million in no time.

<comment><USER7> What airlines include card miles in your million miles count? Having a million miles is different from the million miles status which seems to be based on the first kind of miles you mentioned.

<comment><USER6> That wasn't the asked question though. And getting a million flown miles isn't all it's cracked up to be; you get a lower level of status guaranteed for life, but given that you're still actively traveling frequently for business you're gonna have a much better level of status anyway. And it all depends on the airline anyway.

American Airlines, for example, only gives you gold status (the lowest level) for life at 1M miles.

<comment><USER8> Delta did lifetime silver for 1M miles, which was their lowest level. They did give a nice Tumi suitcase at the 1M (or was it 2M?) actual miles mark, but I don't think it does much outside of a normal high status... probably zone one boarding, or something like that. Once you hit diamond status, upgrades domestically were pretty common. International... not so much. The flexibility was the really nice thing - they always would go out of their way to get you on the route you wanted if possible.

With status multipliers (but flying meat space), the most I ever hit was 623k miles in a year. I suspect it was close to 300k 'real' miles. Our travel person was booking 'round the world' tickets to save money at that point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _He now made a "comfortable middle-class living," but sitting there with me in the cabin, fretted that it could go away at any time. "This is me working a little network I've built using someone else's social media platform," he said. "If Instagram changes its algorithm slightly, there goes a bit of my business. If Instagram disconnects some of the tools I use to build and monitor my account, there goes a bit of my business. And if Instagram goes away and is replaced by something newer and better, I need to get there first, just like I did with this account. If I don't, I'm done. I'm totally dependent on a platform that's completely out-of-control."_

I think this man is a bit of a canary in the coalmine for the rest of us. Even for those of us who do not depend on social media for our income, enough of human communication is wrapped up in social media to affect our lives in a significant way, whether we want it to or not.

<comment><USER10> Can you elaborate? The only social media I do is here and I'm not seeing the connection.

<comment><USER9> _The only social media I do is here and I 'm not seeing the connection._

To me, HN is a refuge!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This made my day. I am now totally sure I don't want a super yacht. If I did have one, I'd want the toilets to be clean and the dining room to serve good dinner.

On the picture that asks if I want the yacht, the classic car or the private jet, I found myself thinking that I'd like to build a replica of the classic car. That'd be way more fun than owning any of the three and would save about 99% of the budget. I guess I missed the point.

<comment><USER12> I'll take a hotwheels version of the car, and the rest in cash.

Who spends $50 million on a car?

<comment><USER13> > _Who spends $50 million on a car?_

Someone who has so much money that $50M feels the same to them as the price of the hotwheels feels to you. (Also, people without that much money who are impulsive).

<comment><USER14> I don't think there are $50 million cars even one of the GT40's and Ferraris that raced at Lemmans a lot less than that.

<comment><USER12> Yea, the car displayed (250 GTO) sold for $48 million at auction in 2018

<comment><USER14> Ah I sit corrected - I seem to recall one of the Lemans Ferraris was $16 Mil

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Edited:

In my preferred world, no single person would be able to afford a large yacht. However, I have no problem with yachts per se. Yacht enthusiasts could join cooperatives, for example. Just like I think its silly that individuals can be so wealthy that they can afford massive private golf courses, but think that people who want to play golf should be able to join a golf club.

"But for the guy who owns the Eclipse [Roman Abramovich, a Russian oligarch], that's not the point. He's not chartering that thing out. It has a submarine and a missile detection system. See, the power of owning a magnificent yacht like that is in how you're telling the world that you're beyond buying and selling. You have more money than there is money to have. You've transcended. There are no frontiers left for you on dry land. I mean, true peace is only at sea."

<comment><USER16> And that attitude got us a luxury sales tax in the 90's that destroyed a lot of highly paid workers building luxury yachts. A lot of craftsman-style jobs rely on rich folks. A lot of manufacturing jobs rely on rich folks. Private golf courses need people.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1993/07/16/h...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1993/07/16/how- to-sink-an-industry-and-not-soak-the- rich/08ea5310-4a4b-4674-ab88-fad8c42cf55b/?utm_term=.6cbe1c746431)

<comment><USER17> This was quite a popular media thing among conservatives who were torqued about the evils of the 10% luxury tax in the early nineties. It was always about the yachts and yacht industry, too. It was the _opposite_ of persuasive because in reference to the luxury tax, they were _always_ going on about the freaking yachts. I imagine in the end, it did little more than make most normal people conscious of how little they cared about the yacht industry.

The way the repeated messaging was effective in getting everybody talking about the same (ridiculous) thing was an early taste of what was to come in right-wing media.

 _The yacht costs $2,995,000, but, thanks to the current luxury tax that kicks in at $100,000, you have to fork over another $289,500. Rich people aren 't happy about paying this extra money. Even if they can afford it, they think it's unfair. And in some cases, they're refusing to pay it -- simply by refusing to buy new boats and planes._

Funny stuff.

<comment><USER18> > This was quite a popular media thing among conservatives who were torqued > about the evils of the 10% luxury tax in the early nineties. It was always > about the yachts and yacht industry, too. It was the opposite of persuasive > because in reference to the luxury tax, they were always going on about the > freaking yachts.

>> The yacht costs $2,995,000, but, thanks to the current luxury tax that kicks in at $100,000, you have to fork over another $289,500. Rich people aren't happy about paying this extra money. Even if they can afford it, they think it's unfair. And in some cases, they're refusing to pay it -- simply by refusing to buy new boats and planes.

> Funny stuff.

Hilarious, and so transparently selfish and self-serving. Something tells me that if you can afford to spend $3 million on a conspicuous-consumption item like a yacht, _you 'll still find $3.3 million affordable_. They just don't like paying taxes. I'd bet they'd have to raise the luxury tax to a level quite a bit higher than 10% to negatively affect the yacht industry.

Even the tax did hurt the yacht industry, the important question is: _what did people spend their money on instead?_ If a tax kills the yacht industry, but strengthens industries more beneficial to the common good, I think that's a positive result.

<comment><USER19> The incredible depreciation of yachts is a much bigger part of the cost of owning a yacht. A million-dollar yacht will go down to like 200k if that after 10 years.

<comment><USER20> Boats are holes in the water into which you throw money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The cross-posting and multiple accounts strategy is rampant on IG. I have two major hobbies (very unrelated), and very much the same there.

It's kind of annoying, because in the end, there's no stylistic difference. So my IG feed gets bombarded with content from the same handful of people. Gets old real quick.

<comment><USER22> I have to think that what basically amounts to spam will bring about a quality vs quantity tipping point for the platform and ultimately cause people to abandon it if not mitigated.

<comment><USER23> I've been pretty aggressively unfollowing accounts in Instagram. I kind-of wish they'd create a "list" feature, but I'm OK with just cutting it down to my core group of friends. When I want to see the stuff of the influencers, other things I only need in small doses, I go to the search and look at hashtags or "videos I might like".

Ideally, to me, my social network would be a small group of people I know and love.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So this guy has 800k followers, but most pictures only get 5k likes? I feel like I know where he got most of his following. I also don't get who he's trying to influence. Which millionaire is going to decide to buy a specific yacht because they saw an Instagram picture of it ?

<comment><USER25> So I don't know a thing about yachts, but I know a thing or two about really expensive cars. And the interesting thing is that 90% of buyers for cars $200k+ don't even try them out before buying. There are plenty of buyers who literally phone the dealership(or their assistant does) and they just make a phone order, wire the money, and they maybe come over to pick up the car unless it's delivered to them directly. The guess in the industry is that those people literally see an article or an ad for a new Lambo(or whatever) and they just buy one on an impulse. If they don't like it they'll just buy something else, doesn't matter. I can only imagine that it's somewhat similar with Yachts - you see something cool on instagram, you want it.

<comment><USER26> I can't find the source, but I read somewhere that the average length of ownership of yachts over 60ft is only 9 months. Or something, maybe it's 100ft & 18 months. But astonishingly short.

Which points to these not being well-considered deeply researched purchases. So I can see instagram playing a pretty big role.

<comment><USER27> I work for a client that designs and builds these 100MM+ yachts. They just can't build them fast enough to keep up with demand. Some of their clients buy a yacht, and sell it within a year for a hefty profit, then buy a new one, repeat. There is quite a business in selling 'used' yachts simply because it takes 2-4 years to build a new one.

<comment><USER26> Do you have any estimate of how many buyers actually want to sail around / host parties, and for how many it's some kind of tax evasion / money laundering scheme?

I don't know any details but always wonder about this... an easy-to-move super-expensive asset, physically in Cannes but legally in the Bahamas... there must be many schemes.

<comment><USER27> That kind of information is not something I'm privy to, but I'd say it's about 50/50\. It's definitely a laundering scheme for many. They deal with brokers obviously, and those just want a cut, never mind where it came from. But they deliver to a lot of Russian oligarchs. I bet there are tons of schemes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I wonder how much he makes, and how long he thinks this gig will last. He wants to own a Yacht, but unless he's making a ton, I'm not sure how that would be possible. Also, I'm not sure it's fair to say "lonely life", the article mentioned that he has a family. If anything, he just seems like a workaholic.

<comment><USER29> I think it's very fair to say he lives a lonely life. He doesn't seem to have much if any time away from the boats. I've sailed with many men that were so loney, a good number of them had been married and divorced 4 or 5 times. Others that had kids, rarely got to see them. That's one of the reasons why I quit being a Merchant Mariner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> There's a step beyond owning a yacht and an airliner sized private plane - having your own airport for your own private planes. The Google founders have that. They lease 1000 acres of Moffett Field.

Brin was rumored to be building a giant dirigible at Moffett, but not much has been heard since 2017.

</comment><comment><USER31> _I'm always on the clock, always tracking my time on these expensive wristwatches with the big clock faces. And so, I'm sure to never set foot on dry land when I'm working."_

This ending struck me as not how someone would actually speak in real life. Too poetic to be an actual quote.

</comment><comment><USER32> Interesting hustle. I hope this article doesn't spoil his gig with his clients.

<comment><USER33> I hope it does. Don't get me wrong, I don't wish the guy ill. I hope he expects that and was ready to get out anyway. But I also don't care much for the "Instagram influencer" thing. It's a lot like political astroturf, appealing to people's preference for real-person authenticity when there's really none involved. The harder it becomes for people to make money at it, the better off we'll all be.

<comment><USER34> I mean if you're going to hustle someone, better to hustle the rich.

<comment><USER35> > better to hustle the rich.

How so?

<comment><USER36> They've got more money.

<comment><USER35> I still don't understand how that makes it _better_.

<comment><USER18> If you hustle someone who's poor, maybe they won't be able to make rent on their primary residence next month.

If you hustle someone who's rich, they're probably still going to be rich next month.

<comment><USER35> "Maybe" and "probably" are a lot of assumptions. Hustling is a shitty activity that isn't made _better_ by the status of the victim.

<comment><USER33> Putting people in prison is a shitty thing too, but it's still better to do it to people who are actually a menace to society. Something doesn't have to be good in an absolute sense to be better (than an alternative) in a regular one. Even if we're just dealing with statistical probabilities, hustling the rich seems less egregious than hustling the poor. Would you have reacted so strongly if the same sentiment had been expressed as "preying on the poor is especially bad"?

<comment><USER35> > Would you have reacted so strongly if the same sentiment had been expressed > as "preying on the poor is especially bad"?

Nope. Preying on anyone is bad. A rich person could lose everything in a hustle the same as a poor person. It's only the extent of the hustle that makes it better or worse. E.g., hustling someone for a fraction of their assets is better than taking all of their assets. The value of the assets is not relevant.

<comment><USER33> Do you seriously think taking half of a poor person's assets is the same as taking half of a rich person's? I suggest a little reading on the concept of marginal utility before making more simplistic moral statements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Tangentially related but wow, these yachts are a pure expression of the excesses of fossil fuel capitalism. These personal boats are extremely inefficient, far more luxurious than 99.9% of human's domiciles, and they are only utilized some small fraction of the year by their ultra-wealthy owners. It's truly a shame that so much money is poured into such utterly wasteful possessions, rather than scientific research, philanthropy, or mitigating climate change.

<comment><USER38> > It's truly a shame that so much money is poured into such utterly wasteful > possessions

When the yachts are idle, which is the majority of the time, they are typically plugged into shore power and are thus just consuming electricity from the grid. The electrical systems of these things are typically far more efficient than your home because they must generate their own electricity when at sea.

As for the wasting of money, you'll note that most of the cost of building a yacht is labor because they are mostly one-off builds and can't take advantage of automation. The article mentions that they cost 10% of the purchase price per month in upkeep. The vast majority of those costs are labor.

These things are among the most efficient devices for transferring wealth from the rich to the middle class. I wouldn't discourage their use at all.

<comment><USER26> This all is true.

I also wonder how much of the yacht business is really about money laundering or tax-evasion. Like the art collecting world. If your company buys the boat in one country, reflags it to Panama, sells it in Monaco the next tax year... I don't know any details but I'm sure there's substantial room here to massage what numbers you present to various tax collectors.

<comment><USER39> Given how short the ownership tends to last (~9 months according to an anecdote in this thread), I suspect moving or protecting money is probably part of it somewhere. I also imagine a lot of it really is just wealthy people spending for fun rather than profit.

<comment><USER26> Heh, my anecdote is famous already :)

Indeed, it's pretty hard to tell. Both seem entirely plausible and I just have no way to guess how such buyers think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I will take the money for the Yacht and buy a submarine. Enjoy the depth before we completely ruin them via climate change and pollution.

</comment><comment><USER41> So basically the guy has ~1m followers on instagram, is helicoptered from yacht to yacht and gets paid to hang out with rich people and wear expensive watches, in the most beautiful places.

He also seems like a nice person.

In contrast author looks like a douchebag, portraying him in a bad light, as a lanky lonely person, whose financial security is at the mercy of instagram.

To me author looks like a petty jealous person who wants to gain by undermining others that are successful.

<comment><USER42> i didn't get that from the author at all. They both seemed pleasant.

<comment><USER43> I didnt get those vibes either. Wasnt it the yacht guy himself talking about his dependence on instagram? Anyways, props to instagram guy for getting his $$$ when he can. Dude is right, only a matter of time before instagram sucks and there is some new hotness.

This whole social media influencer thing is kind of funny. Of course I think it is trash and that likely some large percentage of followers are bots. However, it does have some degree of power in certain circles. Just yesterday on sports radio these talk show hosts (been working for 20+ years in journalism) are quoting people on facebook/twitter etc because they have 70k followers. The host literally said, I dont know who this guy is but he has 70k followers and knows Manny Machado's dad.

<comment><USER41> I got the feeling from: >lonely life >he's kinda lost at sea >next to a lanky guy >I began to wonder, "How could anyone spend their whole life doing this?"

and details, like him having a tiny cabin (you're on a boat).

And of course the fact that he published what seems to me a candid conversation in such a light.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Garzik: An Andre To Remember - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/Articles/508467/?re=1 <comment><USER2> I was going to respond to a few of the comments here, but then I realized I was going to say pretty much the same to all of them, so here goes:

I've got clinical depression. What this means is that there is something fundamentally wrong in my brain that causes me to be depressed. There is no direct environmental cause that makes me depressed. Now, here's what many people get wrong about severe depression:

 _Severe depression does NOT mean that exercise, a healthy diet and getting a social life won't help at all._

Rather, depression completely drains your motivation to do any of those things. Which in turn make you more depressed. Which makes you even less likely to do any of them. And so on and so forth. It's 'positive' feedback, but it _starts_ with a neurological problem. _This_ is why all the 'cheer up'-sort of advice doesn't help people who're depressed, and why it tends to only make them more miserable.

Of course, this is only my experience. I'm quite sure there are plenty of people who _are_ depressed for reasons found in their environment, and then get stuck in the same loop. But it would be ridiculous to presume that I'm unique in this regard.

<comment><USER3> I also have clinical depression, and this has also been my experience.

Something which also adds to the problems is that people so often condescend - 'you won't feel better unless you do X, Y or Z' and actually essentially accuse you of bringing it on yourself. And a lot of the problem is the guilt you feel about everything, so it's the worst possible thing you can do for a depressed person.

I find having some project that gives you an output is important, to contradict the standard 'oh don't spend so much time on a computer project' points. The alternative a lot of the time for me is spending all day in bed because I feel so low, so having an outlet matters. But of course you then find it hard to balance that.

Having said that, all the standard healthy advice is important too. It's just really important to differentiate between mild and severe depression - it's like the difference between having the flu and people recommending painkillers and having a serious chronic disease. The advice is good for mild depression but really not going to touch anything for the severe variety.

For people who are lucky enough not to suffer from severe depression - don't presume to know what it's like because you've felt a little bit low before.

/rant

<comment><USER4> "clinical" depression is meaningless. Literally, it has no meaning. Perhaps you mean "Diagnosed by a real doctor", as opposed to "self diagnosed from a check list"?

But when we look at depression diagnosed by experts we see a variety of forms, and a variety of strengths.

I agree that well meaning people sometimes offer really bad advice.

But advice about developing a healthy lifestyle (being careful with caffeine, alcohol, recreational drugs; eating better; sorting out sleep; getting exercise) and developing a social life are important, because these thing help people with very serious, life threatening, illness. In combination with therapy they can be part of an effective cure for many people. (At least leaving others with several years of recovery). If needed, this advice can be combined with medication. And, if needed, all of this stuff can be started if the patient is in hospital. (At least in England all MH hospitals should have programmes of OT to start social life outside hospital and they should have some kind of exercise stuff, and contacts with local gyms.)

I've known people who are ill enough to require electro convulsive therapy and they said that this other stuff was important to them, but that they needed help to apply it.

And that's the important thing. Saying "I am to ill to do this stuff" is not the same as saying "this stuff would not be helpful to me if I did it". What people need is help to apply this stuff.

<comment><USER3> Well, to me 'clinical' depression implies diagnosed by a doctor, yes.

Sure, and it does vary a lot. So perhaps I meant to say severe vs. mild.

People overstate these things to a degree. Like I said, sure they help, but it's scratching the surface IMHO. What's more important is to attack the depression itself, directly.

And, though anecdotal, I've been through periods being severely depressed despite going to the gym a _lot_ , and eating relatively well, and had it make very little difference. I've also socialised a lot and had that make no difference. So this isn't just conjecture.

I guess part of it is that it varies from person to person. Also the degree of the depression at any given time waxes and wanes.

And agreed, a key thing is to admit you can't do it all by yourself, and go and get help.

The key thing, however, is for people to lose that attitude of 'go get a life doing things I think are healthy/fun and you'll be happy' because, basically, that's b.s. projection, and for some it borders on blame-the-victim mentality.

I think diseases like depression are particularly problematic because people don't take them seriously and imagine that they're not all that serious, perhaps slightly made up, or not as solid and easy to diagnose and understand as a physical illness. Perhaps people need to come to respect it more.

<comment><USER4> In most cases CBT & exercise and better food is attacking the depression itself, directly.

> _The key thing, however, is for people to lose that attitude of 'go get a > life doing things I think are healthy/fun and you'll be happy' because, > basically, that's b.s. projection,_

Yes, I agree.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I guess I'm saying CBT (+ related, I find SBT[1] very effective myself) >>> lifestyle improvements.

[1]:<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schema_therapy>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> And as usual with this issue, this post shows little understanding of depression.

> _There is no computing project that is worth your life. Turn off the > computer. Seek help. Get outside, enjoy the green grass, the birds in the > trees. Talk to people you know. Talk to strangers! Drive to Wisconsin, and > find out whatever it is they do there. Build a treehouse. Park on a parkway > and drive on a driveway. Make a macaroni necklace. Visit a dairy. Climb a > rock. Seek life._

Every point except for Seek Help is just "cheer up, pal" bunk.

<comment><USER6> What do we mean by "seek help"?

Currently, we have two gold standard treatments, SSRI drugs and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

SSRI drugs probably sort of work a bit, depending on how much weight you place on non-publication bias. The most flattering data suggests that SSRIs beat placebo by about 30%, meaning that over 75% of the effect of SSRIs is accounted for by placebo - the patient's own beliefs about the efficacy of the treatment.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is based upon the idea that a patient can learn to think differently about daily events and their emotional responses to them, and in doing so improve their overall mood and reduce specific symptoms of psychological distress. The entire basis for CBT is the idea that people control their own moods through cognition, with the goal of making the patient self-sufficient in managing their mood. The notion that only clinical intervention can improve depressive symptoms directly contradicts the most effective treatment for depression.

In the best case, either of these treatments is only marginally more efficacious than arbitrary interventions that generally improve wellbeing - exercise, better diet, mindfulness practice etc.

There is simply no scientific basis for arguing that depression can only be alleviated through clinical intervention. Study after study has shown (though rarely highlighted in the abstract) that placebo is an incredibly powerful treatment for depression, to the extent that basically anything is a good treatment so log as the patient believes in it.

The belief that clinical intervention is the only way to improve depressive symptoms is at best inaccurate and baseless, at worst actively harmful. It is an irrational and essentially depressive belief and propagating it runs counter to all our interests.

<http://ccdan.cochrane.org/>

<comment><USER4> Exercise is not an "arbitrary" intervention, because it also has an evidence base.

Starting someone on a course of CBT (whether applied by a skilled practitioner, or self guided[1]) and then pushing them to exercise and to social life improvement, with meds if needed, is an excellent treatment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's hard to disagree with the general sentiment, but trading a life for a computing project is not really what happened here. Software development does not cause mental illness. In some cases, stressful jobs contribute to a person's mental degradation - but it's not like there was ever an option of trading in this guys passion for technology in exchange for a healthy brain.

<comment><USER8> I feel the real message of the article/letter is to take better care of yourself. No project is worth ending up in a situation where you feel life is not worth living, and while software and other computer things are cool and for most of us probably both work and a hobby, it's important to take a break from things.

I know I would go absolutely crazy if I could not go outside to do things like ride a mountain bike, eat some ice cream or simply just not sit in front of a monitor every day.

If you are feeling stressed, take a break. :)

Edit:

I know it can be hard, and I know people who suffer from depressions can seem perfectly fine.

A girl I went to school with recently killed herself, much to my surprise, as through my very limited contact with her these past years she seemed very happy in a relationship and about to finish school. The next thing I know she had ended her life. Depression is not something to be taken lightly.

I wish I had known, and I wish there was something I could have done or said.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Get outside, enjoy the green grass, the birds in the trees. Talk to people you know. Talk to strangers! Drive to Wisconsin, and find out whatever it is they do there. Build a treehouse. Park on a parkway and drive on a driveway. Make a macaroni necklace. Visit a dairy. Climb a rock. Seek life._

This is advice for someone who had a bad day. This is not advice for someone who is depressed! These suggestions assume that the person has hope. Or even considers the possibility of ever having hope again. There's just no way I can tell someone who hasn't been on this train what it's like to ride it. It's like being dead in a way. Would you tell a dead man to get out and enjoy the grass? It's a bit like that.

<comment><USER10> You sound like someone personally familiar with depression?

If so, may I ask a question?

I imagine it is true that people who are depressed may have a mental blockade to self-diagnose and independently coming to the conclusion that they may be suffering from depression. But is it also true that people who are depressed may also (always, sometimes) be resistant to _the suggestion from others_ that they _may_ be suffering from depression? ie: Is it common that depression may be accompanied by a self-defense mechanism whereby the afflicted may be highly resistant to the suggestion or any discussion of the topic?

Secondarily....if you are worried about someone, what would be a good approach? Talk to them on one of their "up" days, hoping that they may be thinking more clearly than usual?

<comment><USER11> >> But is it also true that people who are depressed may also (always, sometimes) be resistant to the suggestion from others that they may be suffering from depression?

I had a girlfriend once, who suffered from bipolar disorder. The problem is the feelings that you have while having a depressive episode are real problems to you, in the sense that they affect you very deeply at that point. When someone suggests to that person that maybe you are just depressed, it often seems to them that you are trying to ignoring the issue and instead trying to shift the blame on them. This infuriates them further and they either lash out against you or shut up. After screwing up a couple of times,every time I realized she was possibly having an episode I tried to put it very gently to her and only after talking about whatever is bothering her. I will also suggest going through this link to understand how people having a depressive episode feel(Even though the article is about lupus). [http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by- christ...](http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by- christine/the-spoon-theory-written-by-christine-miserandino/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This story hits close to home for me. As one of the countless others like me on Hacker News who started out their educations and careers with so much promise, all I feel anymore is this tremendous sense of failure and missed opportunity.

These days I think of programming the way I think of working out: intense bursts of focus on creativity for maybe 2-4 hours if I'm lucky, and then hours to days of melancholy because the tools and methodologies I'm using are all garbage.

Examples of mainstream trash: ios, objective-c, flash, php, c++, 802.11, usb, xml, html5, mpeg, mp3, dram caches, opengl, just on and on and on. Literally every tool I use on a daily basis, every file format, every communication protocol, everything, all fatally flawed in some way. My life has been an almost complete waste.

I don't know much about IDE/ATA but it must be quite a garbage dump to traverse. Turning that into something clean like a socket/file reference is remarkable. Just think of all the things that don't work on hard drives: how they fail to write the last bit of data in a power failure or maintain directory consistency, how they were so far behind on caching and hybrid flash/platter drives, just on and on, a tower of babel of remarkably cheap but inadequate hardware. Dealing with that, and the layers of politics that perpetuate such monstrosities would be enough to drive a person mad.

Thank god I'm not depressed though. I was severely out of it from 2000-2010 for a lot of obvious reasons but I finally let everything go and have never been happier. I. Am. Not. Depressed. It's glorious to say, I feel it all the way to my core. Life can turn around, and one day you'll wake up and realize that you don't give a crap about solving the world's problems anymore, because it's all too far gone. It's not your fault. Just find your niche and reach some level of sustainability, and save the world later.

<comment><USER13> Alan Kay's STEPS project is a non-mainstream paradigm you might find inspiring. Saw this pdf recently and it blew my mind, which happens much less often than it used to (like you, I'm becoming more prone to irritability and frustration).

<http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011004_steps11.pdf>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> That's a sad story, and one that's too common in our industry. Mental health issues in software are sadly under-discussed.

If you feel like making a difference I'd recommend donating to the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation. They fund studies into mental health disorders, an area of science that is still only vaguely understood.

<http://bbrfoundation.org/>

<comment><USER15> They're probably not just under-discussed in software but in any industry, because they're under-discussed in society as a whole. I don't know about the US but I believe mentally ill people often refuse to seek help even after they recognized their condition simply because they realize they're "not normal", afraid to be put in the drawer labeled with "crazy guys".

I think though that mental illnesses are a lot more common than we realize, and to some degree society is actually breeding them. It's a very complex topic though, so take that as an opinion, not as facts or anything.

<comment><USER16> I think it makes more sense as just another means by which business consumes workers. I know that sounds all profound and over-generalized crypto-Marxist, but if you look back upon history I think you'll see a consumption metaphor where business is basically treating workers as fungible, resisting healthcare benefits and other quality-of-life exchanges. Margins are to be applied to productivity, and the underling's health is not necessarily a primary concern where they can be replaced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I had the opportunity to meet Andre last summer while interning at Cisco. I had no idea who he was at first, until I looked him up on LinkedIn and "googled" his name.

Towards the end of my internship, I was there until 10 PM some days working on code. Andre would see my cube lights on and come over to talk to me. Considering how I was just working all alone when there that late, I really appreciated the brief talks, as they provided me when an opportunity to think about something other then the problems within my code for a few moments. He would often share a few technical tips or an interesting story with me during our conversations.

Although I didn't work with him much, it's disappointing to hear of his death. It seems like most of the comments in here (on HN) are regarding mental illness -- something which I never observed during the brief period of time that I knew him. Regardless of his reason for taking his life, I'm glad I had the opportunity to meet him and thank him for those brief conversations.

</comment><comment><USER18> I haven't been formally diagnosed with bipolar, but I sure as heck have many of the symptoms, including feeling elation and depression at the same time. I also have chronic depression.

What does that mean? Nothing, except I completely see myself in Andre's description. What am I doing about it? Exercising, reading affirmations, trying to watch the diet (tough when broke) etc, etc.

But I read Andre's story and it makes me very sad.

</comment><comment><USER19> I had a good friend from high school who was brilliant. We were academic rivals, but he definitely outworked everyone in the entire school. He got into Duke and graduated with a double major in engineering and economics. He got his law degree, and then his Master's in Law, and passed the bar exam in New York and I think CA.

He was working in patent law in NYC for a few years, and then abruptly quit and moved back home. He said he had some ideas on businesses, and it seemed rational. He started venturing into religion, not for the sake of religion, but to explore the concept of morality. He didn't have a Jewish background, but he became very interested in Judaism because of it's views on morality, and I even bought a book on the Talmud at his insistence, so that we could talk about it. We would have pretty elaborate discussions on morality, etc, over email. He was engaged to get married to a lovely girl, and things looked fine.

Then, just before they got married, they abruptly cancelled their wedding. I emailed him, and I asked him "How are things going? Enquiring minds want to know!"

His only response was "Who are these enquiring minds that you are asking on behalf of?" We exchanged a few emails after that, he accused me of being immoral, and then I never heard from him again.

I contacted his fiancee, and apparently he was exhibiting signs of paranoid schizophrenia. He had become increasingly paranoid over the last few years, and become more and more disassociated with reality.

After that, he basically disappeared. He was always a bit paranoid about leaving his mark on the Internet, and had multiple fake email addresses, so trying to track him down was basically impossible.

Last year, after many years of no contact, I got a phone call from him, presumably from a number that wasn't his, because he had recently realized that in one of his discussions on his business over 10 years ago, he may have gotten me to agree to terms that would have been personally unfavorable, and he wanted to release me from all obligations from this agreement. I didn't know what he was talking about, but we never did anything more than talk about things, and his "businesses" never amounted to anything except talking. But I agreed to be absolved from those obligations. Then asked how things were with him, and he was extremely vagued, and then hung up on me.

It's very sad, because he was very brilliant, but it's clear he is mentally ill. And there's nothing I can do about it. He has no siblings, and both his parents are dead, so there's no one I can even contact.

It sounds similar to the case of Garzik in that I don't know if the concept of "take care of yourself" is relevant. He probably didn't realize he was mentally ill, if what the original emailer said was true about him being paranoid. It probably would have been something the family would need to pursue, but getting someone evaluated, etc, is hard, and as the emailer said, it would only increase the negative feedback loop for Garzik, since he would suspect everyone was out to get him, so it's a really tough problem to solve.

<comment><USER20> In the UK it is quite easy (and free obviously, NHS and all that) to get somebody seen by a mental health professional. I have suffered from several mental health problems over the past 3½ years and the only reason I am here today replying to your post is because of the fantastic support provided by the NHS (and my family of course).

I feel so sad when I read stories like yours of friends and loved ones who need help but don't get it :(

<comment><USER21> For the edification of all the people in the USA regarding current events, this kind of a support system is what helps people who are having issues, and would likely have prevented the tragedies that happened in Aurora or Tucson.

Not to say that other solutions could contribute to a more whole solution, but fundamentally it's people with problems either becoming a danger to themselves and others. And we have no support system for this.

<comment><USER20> I wonder how much people spend on firmarms, learning how to use them, ammunition, guns safes, etc. ?

I saw a news report that the number of people applying for a gun license in Aurora after the shootings at the cinema went up quite a bit.

To me, as a non-American, that is quite scary. A guy kills and injures a lot of people and the reaction of the public is not "how could we have prevented this?" but "I need a gun so when this happens again I can kill the guy before he kills as many people!"

Scary and quite sad :(

I do not know if James Holmes is suffering from mental health issues and if they are the cause of his violent attack on the people of Aurora however I would suspect mental health problems are involved somewhere and perhaps this tragedy could have been averted had he had the proper help.

<comment><USER22> I don't think a non-mentally-ill person could do what he did. Pretty much by definition, he's mentally ill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't know Andre but I know Jeff and he's the most nicest kernel developer out there there is not many that are as much great listener as him

</comment><comment><USER24> RIP Andre. This makes me think about the people I interact with every day, I have friends who won't accept they even have a problem and believe everything is fine. They seem unble to see it, how do you convince someone like that to go to a therapist?

</comment><comment><USER25> _Perhaps it is the nature of intelligence itself, or just the nature of computer science, but our profession seems to have a higher than average rate of bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses._

Citation needed.

</comment><comment><USER26> On the other words: All this software development shits are NOT for EARTH. They are for the price competition of capitalist system and can only impact prices in capitalist cities, nothing more than this. Don't put so much meaning and don't think you're becoming a better person when you commit to a repository.

<comment><USER27> That isn't true. Software is just a kind of tool. Some software is fart apps, some is enterprise CRM but a lot is really useful in tangible ways that have nothing directly to do with capitalism.

I also disagree with the implication that there is something inherently unworthy with selling things on the free market. This is the way most people on earth get most of the things they need and in many cases it is the most efficient rationing mechanism practicable.

Beyond all this, it's good to do things you love. If someone really enjoys the activity then it is none of my business to say they shouldn't because it is at worst quite harmless.

<comment><USER26> study economics, read history, learn the truth my friend.</comment></comment></comment>


It's time to call bullshit on the entrepreneurship hero myth - <AUTHOR> http://www.zeusriver.com/blog/2012/11/its-time-to-call-bullshit-on-the-entrepreneurship-hero/

<comment><USER2> I agree. I'm not against entrepreneurship per se but this industry suffers from a special breed of entremanures. It seems each new generation has a subset with a misplaced enthusiasm for Randism. If you have put yourself through a degree in computer science then you've already sacrificed time and income. Now make sure you get paid a fair amount for every hour worked. Why risk getting Zyngered when you can pay off your mortgage, read books to your kids and have a beer with your wife.</comment>


Unpaywall scours the web for free versions of scientific papers - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/05/unpaywall-scours-the-web-for-free-versions-of-scientific-papers/ <comment><USER2> If you are wondering how to do that manually, just type "<name of the article> filetype:pdf" in Google or DuckDuckGo. It worked like a charm last time I tried.

</comment><comment><USER3> It sounded similar to [https://oadoi.org/](https://oadoi.org/) . Turns out this tool uses their database.</comment>


Ask HN: Interesting Slack channels at your company? - <AUTHOR> What are some of the interesting Slack channels at your company?
- Build bot integrations - Web comics RSS - ... <comment><USER2> We have a #world-is-on-fire that's only meant for doomsday-like events e.g. the API servers are down, slow queries exploded or a deploy resulted in 10 fold exceptions. Pingdom and Datadog triggers post to it, so if you see the channel name in bold, you'll know you need to drop everything you have and start panicking.

</comment><comment><USER3> I know of a company that has a "#sbrocco" channel suited to unleash your rage and just let it out.

</comment><comment><USER4> #pokemon-go</comment>


Apple's iCloud is down for users around the world - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/14/18265985/apple-icloud-down-worldwide <comment><USER2> Really starting to suspect these could be some kind of coordinated attack. Or at least a dry-run.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, there's been outages from three giants this week!</comment>


Get top 5 links from Hacker News in your mailbox - <AUTHOR> http://top5hn.launchrock.co/ Get top 5 links everyday from Hacker News in your mailbox. <comment><USER2> In a similar vein, I'd recommend [http://www.hackernewsletter.com/](http://www.hackernewsletter.com/). I subscribed a few weeks ago and have enjoyed it quite a bit. An example of their latest newsletter: [http://us1.campaign- archive2.com/?u=faa8eb4ef3a111cef92c4f3d...](http://us1.campaign- archive2.com/?u=faa8eb4ef3a111cef92c4f3d4&id=77cba52715&e=bb77257227)

</comment><comment><USER3> But how do you choose which ones are top 5? based on votes?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! This will be based on the total votes!

<comment><USER3> Always articles drop in different categories: Web, news, hardware, security , ... Don't you want to categorize articles and send top 5 in each categorize? For example a person just care about web article. So send top 5 in web category to him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Receive top 5 links from Hacker News everyday!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This would be great for people on the go.</comment>


Tech's Troubling New Trend: Diversity Is in Your Head - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/10/16/opinion/diversity-tech-women-silicon-valley.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage <comment><USER2> " and who deserve to work in tech as much as anyone"

Is working at a "tech" company, a social benefit that we should be "doling" out evenly to all groups as a reward? What does that mean "deserves to work in tech"?

The only measure why anyone gets to work anywhere is they have the skills and mental ability to perform , at the minimum, the necessary tasks. We should simply be ensuring that we are not systematically biased against any candidates as to hire the best possible workforce.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you, but there are many who believe that a person has a right to a job, and that it is fundamentally unfair for one person to have a job that is better than another. They also believe that basing employment on merit is an anti-pattern, and that it is not fair that some people have educational and employment opportunities that others do not have, purely as a result of their parent and/or birth situation. I worked with a guy who would argue that the entire society should reap the reward because without the provisions from society (roads, structure, etc) the business would not be possible.

<comment><USER4> but the entire society DOES reap rewards, in the form of taxes on profit and contribution to the progress of mankind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article is basically a response to Apple's recent drama, and claims it is part of a trend, with no evidence.

It would actually be interesting if it were true, but I've seen literally nothing to support that aside from this one anecdote.

My guess is that the article is coming from a place of, "it would be horrible if this happened, let's scare people about it so that this one case doesn't become a trend."

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you are right! I am curious about the research behind this one. I do see a lot of tech companies consciously looking for all kinds of diversity - gender, sexual orientation, varied college majors, different cultural backgrounds etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think I agree with what the author is saying, but I also think diversity "in your head" is pretty important too, even if it is difficult to measure (as the author points out).

We're getting to a point where people of different political orientations won't even talk to each other anymore. People with different religious beliefs won't even serve one another as customers. There's people who won't even talk to their family anymore over politics!

Tech is becoming that way too. I have worked with hundreds of people and I can only think of one Conservative I worked with. The rest were either Libertarian (~20%) or Progressive (~80%). As nice and comfortable as an echo chamber can be, I see this as net negative. I think this is a real problem.

Sadly I don't have any solutions to offer though, because it's obviously inappropriate to ask someone about their political views in an interview. I've just been trying really hard to listen (and it is _hard_ sometimes). If enough people start listening on all sides, I think it will make a difference.

</comment><comment><USER6> you can get banned here on this site for saying what you think. dark times, fools in charge

<comment><USER3> FWIW, I haven't yet seen anyone banned for having an incorrect opinion, so long as it's communicated respectfully. You will get down voted into oblivion tho

<comment><USER6> you haven't seen exactly because they were banned and their comments hidden. Everyone who has an opinion different from the gender/racial what not equality BS get banned. Fools are running the world and sites like this</comment></comment></comment>


Motorola asks ITC to ban every Mac, iPad, and most iPhones - at-fates-hands http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/09/motorola-asks-itc-to-ban-every-mac-ipad-and-most-iphones/

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow that's a crazy amount of devices. I guess Apple has the money to pay any fine but it's the "do not steal our innovation" image that could really be damaged if this goes the wrong way. Once again I think Apple might have the advantage, if this goes to trial, because of the technical aspect of the claims. It's sickening how smart it is for Apple to sue over easy concepts that non-technical people can grasp.

</comment><comment><USER2> It sounds like the patent in question is describing the system and transactions of a basic chat program. If Motorola just applied for this patent in 2001 and granted in 2006, it seems a little behind the times. Isn't this the same system any IRC like system would use?

</comment><comment><USER3> They won't do it. ITC has been very pro-Apple from what I've seen. They tend to agree with Apple's accusations against Android manufacturers, but not the other way around.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you stay motivated when working remotely? - <AUTHOR> I have a lot of trouble finding motivation when working remotely. Some days require a lot of activation energy to get started.
Note: I like my job. Really, I do. I just find that I'm much less motivated to do as I much as I used to.
Has anyone felt a lack of motivation and/or job fulfillment when working remotely? What strategies have you used to combat these feelings? <comment><USER2> It's a bit micro-managey, but since my performance did drop substantially with WFH, I've been sending updates to my boss more frequently. It helps to keep me going on days when I'm struggling with motivation. At the end of the day, I don't want to send in a report that says: I did nothing.

My anxiety has also been a bit worse (understatement) through all of this (I don't do well in social isolation). I've also had to force myself to do what should be habit, but breaks down when stressed. When I'm stressed I have a hard time viewing an activity as a set of smaller activities, it becomes a monolith. This stresses me out even more, even for stupidly small tasks. So I'm explicitly writing down the steps I intend to follow, where in normal times I wouldn't have to. This gives me smaller, more tangible things to accomplish. I've also increased my accountability. Not just with the boss, but with colleagues. I'm writing a paper and I'm sending out short snippets to everyone periodically to review what I've done (as I'm still relatively new, their feedback is important anyways to ensure accuracy). So every couple of days I want a section completed (draft) to send out, and I take their feedback and update the previous sections. Repeat until done. Even if I only get a couple people sending me feedback it's something that helps.

Anxiety makes me hypercritical of my work. Getting positive feedback on my work gives me a bit of confidence back (it shouldn't be lacking, I'm a competent technical writer, but anxiety wrecks me). Seek out those small victories, and break things into smaller tasks to make them a bit more frequent. Waiting a month for feedback is not going to keep me motivated, but days or a week is perfect.

Another issue for me is just _starting_ work. Once I'm moving I'm moving. The office gave me a delightfully crappy laptop for teleworking that struggles with even a handful of open applications, but I suffer the sluggishness and keep working copies open in the appropriate editor. Even small amounts of friction can have a major impact so removing it (by keeping the documents or source code or whatever) open and just an alt-tab away makes a big difference for me. I minimize reboots to once or twice a week (which really makes it struggle after a few days) for the same reason. Getting back into a good working state is friction, so always have the system in the proper state.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a great response, thanks for sharing.

I think over-communicating actually is a trait that the most successful remote workers share. I like the accountability point you made as well: you don't want to send your boss an empty email at the end of the day. I think I'll give this a go.

Why do you think your performance dropped with WFH? Is it the social isolation bit?

<comment><USER2> I moved in January, so I had 2 months in the new job before we were sent home. I knew only one person socially (and barely a second, his wife) in this city. We had just gotten settled into the home enough that I was ready to go out and join a local gym (BJJ or similar) and find local game shops to get back into my hobbies and meet people. My wife and I had just joined a church and were joining a social group (group dinners with other parishioners) to meet people there. Then we were sent home. My tasking was very light and we had limited access for the first few weeks so I couldn't really do anything useful.

Between the social isolation and the low level of work in those few weeks, it killed my momentum. I hadn't actually become part of the team here yet (not the fault of any person, just the timing). All of that, plus my tendency toward anxiety problems, just mounted and my focus and motivation were lost. When things started opening back up with a limited return to work I was still outside any of the development teams in most ways. I was in the office every 3rd week, and the people I had been working most closely with (due to social distancing requirements and the size of cubicles) were there the other 2 weeks.

Then I started really falling behind, and when I finally got my head cleared up a bit I took a while to get moving properly again. I'm mostly back on track now, finally had a good talk with the boss. It was also very hard to finally call him (I hadn't seen him in person in months because of the rotation) and say, "Hey, I've had crippling anxiety for a couple months and restarted therapy. I'm getting better but I'm behind." That was anxiety inducing on its own. But like getting started on work, once we spoke it went well (that's been my experience throughout my career when this has happened, now three times over the last 15 or so years).

</comment></comment></comment><comment> blaser-waffle Inertia is a thing. Getting up and moving around, be it a morning commute, or just wandering around, makes a big difference. Walk your dog, get a coffee, grab lunch, or just wander 6 blocks.

I also eat lean and avoid most foods during the day. At the office I can force my self to focus -- no bed or TV nearby -- but at home even a large sandwich can put me to sleep.

Also, certain activities I just don't do during the day while working remotely. No TV, no sitting on certain chairs and couches, only certain kinds of clothes, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, I felt the lack of motivation. It seems that the closer interaction with others helped me stay focused. (Within limits - too much interaction and I can't get anything going because I'm interrupted all the time.)

But the same kind of thing happens now that I'm going back to the office, but nobody else is here.

Sorry, I don't have a solution...

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agreed. The closer interaction with others helped me stay focused too (though there's a balance there.)

Don't know if it's because working remotely lacks that, or if there's something inherently just different about video calls for collaboration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Walk at least 15 mins everyday before your work day and do it for a week without any execuse and just dream new things. Dreaming limitlessly imo is the key for motivation. In other words your achievement bycle reached your dreaming bycle.As you can not take your achievements back only way is to move your dreaming bycle further. If you move your dreaming bycle to far a way it may cause you become hopeless or over-ambitious.

</comment><comment><USER5> When I lack motivation, I set a timer for 30 minutes and commit to begin work on one task. Then I reward myself with a 5 minutes break (yes, I set a timer for that too). Usually, I get so into my project and keep working past the 30 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER6> I had a lack of motivation even in the office. It's gotten worse now that I'm remote. I've become disillusioned by the promises of the company (and the world in general) and don't see much of a future.

</comment><comment><USER4> I am looking for a remote job but can not find one, i will be highly motivated when I get one. You already have it just think about how lucky you are as a starting point.

</comment><comment><USER7> Try focusmate.com</comment>


7 Tactics to Get the Most Out of Your Startup's Advisors - <AUTHOR> http://firstround.com/article/Get-the-Most-Out-of-Your-Startups-Advisors-with-These-7-Tactics

<comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: [http://firstround.com/article/Get-the-Most-Out-of-Your- Start...](http://firstround.com/article/Get-the-Most-Out-of-Your-Startups- Advisors-with-These-7-Tactics)</comment>


Startup Quote from Aaron Patzer, Founder, Mint - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/12566815371

<comment><AUTHOR> Turn a perceived risk into an asset.

\- Aaron Patzer (@apatzer)

<http://startupquote.com/post/12566815371></comment>


One weird trick for turning your HTML/JS website into a smartphone app - <AUTHOR> http://kizu514.com/blog/manifest-json/ <comment><USER2> If you use [http://realfavicongenerator.net/](http://realfavicongenerator.net/) it generates all the relevant icons, incorporates this very same 'one weird trick' (a manifest.json), plus some additional extras like a SVG macOS touch bar icon.

No affiliation, just a user of their free service who was impressed enough to donate to them as it's extremely useful and well done.

</comment><comment><USER3> The title is clickbaity and against the guidelines, can we change it to something like "How to turn your ..." or "A trick for turning your ..."?

<comment><USER4> I think the title is being satirical of the current state of web development, which is often needlessly complex.

"One weird trick" is something we associate with class of false advertisements. The irony is that we don't expect turning a website into an app to be easy, but it turns out it is.

Perhaps you were being humorous as well?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Android only, or have I missed some news? Really wish iOS would support this already. HTML5 offline does similar, but cache/update scenarios can be tricky.

<comment><USER6> Well one can wrap a url into a cordova view, then distribute that. not as immediately easy, but can be made a one click self service. I sense there's enough space/demand for a startup there.

<comment><USER7> Maybe Apple will come to their senses when >50% of Android apps are PWAs.

Till then I'll use Exponent I guess</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What "retro" PC game(s) do you miss but have not played in years? - <AUTHOR> We currently have a service available which allows you to play Warcraft III in your browser.
http://www.arcadeup.io
The time has come to expand beyond Warcraft.
We're looking for other games that the HN community would like to see available in our catalog. <comment><USER2> Civilization I was the best of the series, and my vote for best video game of all time. The only one that improved on it was Alpha Centauri, which got a lot of the automation right. All the other Civ sequels have just found ways to add more "work" without actually making the game any more fun.

Master of Orion (again, the first one) was pure awesome and I still dig it up to play it at least once a year. It's one of those games where you wish that somebody would build an interface that ran the original executable in the background to power a more modern UI. There's nothing that needs changing. Nothing that _could_ be changed without making it worse. As MOO2 and MOO3 demonstrate.

Ultima 3 & 4 were the best of their series, and (combined with a hex editor) got a lot of my generation thinking about the mechanics of game programming.

Lode Runner would be cool to see again. Not sure how a modern version would work for today's audiences. At least you have the several failed remakes to look to for inspiration on what not to try.

There are lots of others. Entire genres, in fact.

<comment><USER3> I would second Civilization. I think it was my first videogame, my dad showed it to me. One day I tried democracy because it should be the best thing since we were using it in real life, what a disaster every decision I make was denied, I couldn't do anything. My dad told me to just put communism and do whatever I want. Easy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I used to miss Theme Hospital, but like many DOS retro games it's been cloned. CorsixTH [https://github.com/CorsixTH/CorsixTH](https://github.com/CorsixTH/CorsixTH) has a day old beta for a release [https://github.com/CorsixTH/CorsixTH/releases/tag/v0.50-beta...](https://github.com/CorsixTH/CorsixTH/releases/tag/v0.50-beta2)

</comment><comment><USER5> I miss The Dig [1], one of those SCUMM games. Maybe Age of Empires I/II?

Also, Myst & Riven are classics.

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

</comment><comment><USER6> If it has to be IBM PC (not other classic machines like Apple II, Commodore64, Atari ST, ...), then Sopwith comes to mind:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sopwith_%28video_game%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sopwith_%28video_game%29)

Haven't played in around 27 years.

Wow, a whole site dedicated to this: [http://www.sopwith.org](http://www.sopwith.org)

</comment><comment><USER7> There's an old collection of games called Aviation Adventure that I was addicted to as a kid. One of the games that came with it was "F4U Sortie" (or something like that), involving having to fly an F4U Corsair through German radar defenses in order to deliver messages to people or something. That would be a fun one to play again.

</comment><comment><USER8> I can't think of a game right off the top of my head (I don't, and honestly haven't, played that many).

But I wanted to comment on your site. Wow that's pretty awesome! Can you share a bit more about the technology behind it and who you are? It looks like you are using Meteor at some level or another. Very neat idea!

</comment><comment><USER9> I'd say Heroes of Might and Magic 3...

But I'd be lying because I still play it occasionally at small LAN parties with friends.

Also, not retro by any measure but Supreme Commander (1) is still my favorite RTS by far.

<comment><USER10> Ah, so close. I was going to say M&M 6. My uncle introduced me to the game when I was a kid, and it was the first game I ever got hooked on. I read through the walkthrough book he gave me like it was a novel. I knew everything about everything in that game!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Freeciv [https://play.freeciv.org/](https://play.freeciv.org/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Planetfall, by Infocom. It was a text based game that I never quite finished. Funny and with good puzzles.

</comment><comment><USER13> Xcom was a lot of fun. The Incredible Machine - I hope my kids can play this when they get a little older

</comment><comment><USER14> Dungeon Keeper is an all time favorite

</comment><comment><USER15> For me it has to be: Ultima 7: The Black Gate Ultima Underworld 1 Master of Magic Pizza Tycoon

</comment><comment><USER16> Not sure how "retro" it is but I played a lot of Tribes 2 and would play it again.

</comment><comment><USER17> Carmageddon!

</comment><comment><USER18> Theme Hospital & Sim Tower!

</comment><comment><USER19> space empires 3! my favorite indie 4x game

<comment><USER19> also betrayal at krondor

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Kings quest 1-5

</comment><comment><USER21> Commander Keen.

</comment><comment><USER22> Crystal Cave

</comment><comment><USER23> everquest and leisure suit larry

</comment><comment><USER24> Red Alert 2

</comment><comment><USER25> Xonix

</comment><comment><USER26> Below the Root

Robot Odyssey

ZZT

Bolo

. . . a lot more retro than Warcraft. :-)</comment>


CurveCP in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/thomasdelaet/curvecp <comment><AUTHOR> CurveCP ([http://www.curvecp.org/](http://www.curvecp.org/)) is Dan Bernsteins proposal to encrypt all internet traffic using high-speed high-security elliptic-curve crypto. Thomas Delaet has implemented it in JavaScript.

The implementation 'works', but is not yet compatible with the reference implementation in the NaCL package ([https://nacl.cr.yp.to/](https://nacl.cr.yp.to/)). Check out github issues list before using this.</comment>


Obama's rogue state tramples over every law it demands others uphold - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/09/obama-rogue-state-tramples-every-law

<comment><USER2> Maybe the solution is for the non-five to quit, and all form a new organization. Maybe one day they're let the five join.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry, but I just couldn't parse whether you were being sarcastic ("let the non-five quit and form a new org") or serious ("maybe one day the non- fives will let the five join")? :)

<comment><USER2> Serious, although flying in the face of practicality. If an organization of 150+ is dominated by five members and those five are against the interests of the non-five, then it's not an organization for the non-five.</comment></comment></comment>


Mozilla Ubiquity: a ridiculously useful Firefox extension - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/1561578?pg=embed&sec=1561578 <comment><USER2> In my humble opinion, this is simply a command line with defined shortcuts. It may look all great when he uses it, normal, he designed it, with his words, his sentences. But honestrly, after trying this ubiquity for a while, i have difficulties finding it "user-friendly".

It's like calling a unix-shell "user-friendly" because with all commands, and pipes, and possibilities to combine them you can do everything. It's possible, sure, but who really can, besides like 1-2% of computer users ?

I get the same feeling from this thing. It's supposed to make you feel like you only ask your computer for something and it comes naturally, but basically, it's only typing a command to make an action. And the main flaw of it, is that words that are obvious to one person, are not to another.

And last point, I know, it's still alpha software, but not everyone does everything with their keyboard. I do, i'm quite a big fan of utilities like Launchy, for example, but most of people prefer to use a mouse for their actions, they want a flow of action, they want drag and drop.

Basically, this ubiquity, it's just a unix command line adapted to a browser, but i can't see that becoming very useful to most people.

<comment> old-gregg I agree with everything above, except this one: _"they want drag and drop."_

In my experience users _hate_ to drag and drop. And they never drag and drop, with an exception of very few Apple old-timers, because Apple GUIs historically have been using drag&drop more heavily, as opposed to Windows users who are more conditioned to right-click on everything.

Drag&drop never works in user interfaces because 99% objects in everyday software are not draggable and _users are not conditioned_ to even try. Buttons plus menu is what people are used to.

P.S. This opinion comes from reading hundreds of support emails and replying "have you tried dragging it?" over and over and over again.

<comment><USER3> They hate D&D on the systems you've seen them use. I've seen them use it for many years on an OS called RISC OS, written by Acorn, designers of the ARM chip. There, users loved it. Everything supported it on the desktop. You had `filer' windows, and to save an application would just pop up a little window with a file icon and a text box for the leafname. Enter `foo' and drop it on the filer window where you wanted it.

But better than that, you could drop it on another application. Consequently, you could create and edit a pixmap, and drop it into a vector drawing program where it would become an embedded object. Want to edit it again? Drag it from there back to the pixmap editing program's icon on the icon bar. Neither of these touched the disc; it was in memory transfers. And the program code didn't need to know the difference between saving to another app., or saving to disc through a filer window.

Other aspects of the desktop were also novel and worked well. It had a three button mouse. A proper one. No silly scroll wheel. The right button did what the left button did, but altered in some way. So you'd pop up a context sensitive menu with the middle button. Select an item with L and the menu would disappear. With R the menu would stay there. Great for when you want to do several menu items in a row, e.g. adjusting an object's attributes.

Scrollbars worked better. Firstly, the mouse cursor on the screen only moved in one dimension once a drag with L was started. None of this cancel the drag if you wander off orthogonally a bit. But if there were two scrollbars, dragging with R would control both; an instant `pan' widget.

Hold the `up' arrow with L and it would scroll up. Switch to R and it would scroll down. No need to move to the other end of the scroll bar. Same with `paging' by clicking either side of the thumb.

Drag a window by it's title bar with L and it'll come to the front of the stack at the same time. Use R and its depth is unaltered.

Double-click a folder icon in a filer window with L and a new window opens with its contents. Use R, the current window switches to show that directory. Close a filer window with R and it becomes the parent folder.

Note, you didn't need to know all these uses of R to use the system. You could manage with L. But the paper User Guide it was shipped with explained it and you soon got used to the productivity gains.

This was back in the 1980s and 1990s. Today, you can find remnants of it in the ROX (RISC OS on X) Desktop. <http://roscidus.com/desktop/>

Acorn did some smart stuff. Today, the main vestige is the ARM chip and its instruction set, designed by Sophie Wilson.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been using it for a couple months, and I've had some problems with it, as it's still alpha software.

As ubiquity gets updates, the ubi scripts get out of step. The command to email a page to someone is pretty handy--if it worked most of the time.

Also, the algorithm to do real-time narrowing down of commands that you might mean gets slower and slower (seemingly exponentially) the more you type. After a while, I find it gets bogged down and unusable.

The only use I've had for it was to make it easier to twitter something, only because I don't have twitter clients installed.

That said, it's still early. I think the concept is good. And even better when you can have context specific commands for each web app that you visit. That way you don't need to download each ubi script as you want them. They dynamically load and unload with the web application.

</comment><comment><USER5> There is something very similar to Ubiquity by a startup called Wundrbar. Here is a comparison of Ubiquity and Wundrbar.

[http://blog.wundrbar.com/2008/08/wundrbar-vs-ubiquity-our- th...](http://blog.wundrbar.com/2008/08/wundrbar-vs-ubiquity-our- thoughts.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Very cool. I love how some software is approaching the point of almost transcending the UI. If you combined something like Ubiquity with voice recognition I think you'd basically have a real version of 60s campy sci-fi tech: "computer, cross reference joker's last known whereabouts with..."

<comment><USER7> There's a project at the University of Toronto working on voice recognition for Ubiquity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you like Ubiquity, you should also look at Inky, "a sloppy command-line interface for the web":

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1llZnsye0M>

[http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16861/1/uist08-inky- preprint....](http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16861/1/uist08-inky-preprint.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER9> Why not link to a more useful page?

<http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/>

<comment><USER10> Because I already submitted it, just over 100 days ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=310045>

Glad people finally saw it - the submitter was smart to point out it's a FF extension in the title.

<comment><USER9> I see. Is it not possible to submit the same URL twice? (serious question, I've never tried).

<comment><USER11> It's not. HN will automatically link you to the previous submission.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Projects like this make me love Mozilla even more. This type of extension is beyond useful and is outright intuitive. Can't wait to try this out!

<comment><USER13> So then don't wait: <https://ubiquity.mozilla.com/xpi/ubiquity-latest.xpi>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I tried Ubiquity, but I found the requirement that you be in Firefox to use it a little to restrictive to make it truly useful. I still only spend ~30% of the time on a computer inside a browser.

On the other hand, Google's Quick Search Box (<http://code.google.com/p/qsb- mac/>) is looking a lot like Ubiquity without the browser!

<comment><USER15> Quick Search's launching capacity is getting there, but the real place to be if you want maximum flexibility is the open-source version of Enso (the original linguistic-CLI project from the people behind Ubiquity). It's all in Python, so it's very accessible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm so glad I switched from commenting to this.

In about a month, Ubiquity will be the Linux, and I'll be the Windows.

</comment><comment><USER17> But watch out for the many security problems associated with Ubiquity's system for installing and updating plugins.

<http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-10053044-46.html>

<comment><USER15> The bulk of the work on Ubiquity 0.2 has been to address these sorts of problems.</comment></comment>


React.js: VelocityTransitionGroup, a replacement for ReactCSSTransitionGroup - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/tkafka/0d94c6ec94297bb67091

<comment><USER3> There's been a few React animation experiments (including my own: [https://github.com/chenglou/react-tween- state](https://github.com/chenglou/react-tween-state)), but I think there are two main problems here and this library, albeit nice, is mingling the two:

\- Actual transition API (e.g. fade in over a period of 1s while moving in from left). Interruptible and composable. My lib and most libs I've seen are geared toward this.

\- API for transitioning in/out and moving around. This is the actual hard part that TransitionGroup is trying to tackle. How do you express an "animating out" API (that's also interruptible?) when the item doesn't exist anymore at the next render? Can you stop the component from unmounting midway, and potentially bring it back through an "un-unmounting" API? I haven't seen a library that actually tackles this problem. We can debate about a good API all we want for animation but as long as this problem isn't solved, the whole animation problem isn't imo.

These two are separate issues. Ideally I think you should pull out the velocity part and create a wrapper API around it, and solve transitioning in/out independently.

(I'm actively searching for solutions, so please ping me in #reactjs if you have good ideas. Here are a few messy ones to begin with: [https://gist.github.com/chenglou/40b75d820123a9ed53d8](https://gist.github.com/chenglou/40b75d820123a9ed53d8)).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, this is important, but definitely out of scope of my tiny component.

Stoppable and revertable transitions - does it really need to be a same component (A:child -> B:parent -> A:child)? Wouldn't adding another component instance with a same props suffice (A:child -> B:parent -> C:child)? Then I guess it could be hacked with transitions, but if you require (A -> B -> A), then it seems to me like something that would need some support from higher layers (router?)...

<comment><USER3> I don't think it has to do with router; just pure, simple state (router is just another part of a component state anyways).

For your example, I think it should support both. You can distinguish an A from another A through a different key or something. If it's the same key, you'd want it to "unmount back".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Excellent. I was looking at CSSTransitionGroup a few days ago and would have definitely have used this if it was available. Baking in a couple of default transitions is a great idea. Are you planning on creating an npm package?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, guess I could, this is just a result of 2 hours fighting with bugs in iOS Safari's CSS transitions. Compared to that, velocity JustWorks™.

However, I'm not sure about how to let user provide his own transitions, especially in cases where they'd like to use this in multiple controls - <USER2> something like require('velocity-transition-group')({ myTransition: {...} }); work for you (so that we wouldn't be passing transitions to each instance)?

Plus, there is this issue I found: [https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/2456](https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/2456) \- it seems that if eg. you use require('react') while a component uses require('react/addons'), they both seem to get 2 different instances of React, and the events don't propagate from one to another. I'd like that to be resolved before packaging this into module people will use without reading the manual :).

Edit: Thinking over it, I also need to read about how does browserify + react + components as standalone modules work out: Can it happen, that if a component specifies 'react' dependency in package.json, and containing project uses different version of React, that browserify would actually package 2 versions of React into a resulting file? That would really really suck!

<comment><USER4> Not to mention that if you want cross-browser animation then you'll be using vendor prefixes with CSSTransitionGroup.</comment></comment></comment>


New York Times Edited Bernie Sanders Article for Hillary Clinton's Campaign - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Starkweather/new-york-times-edited-bernie-sanders-article-for-clinton-campaign-5156a43755ca <comment><USER2> Related to this are emails between Clinton campaign advisor Philippe Reines and Marc Ambinder, a politics editor at The Atlantic. The emails showed a quid pro quo in which Ambinder used certain words and descriptions as requested in exchange for an advance copy of an HRC speech.

[http://gawker.com/this-is-how-hillary-clinton-gets-the- cover...](http://gawker.com/this-is-how-hillary-clinton-gets-the-coverage-she- wants-1758019058)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is corruption even if no money was exchanged this should be prosecuted.

<comment><USER4> Our of curiosity - what laws do you think we're broken? I am legitimately asking. If favorable press coverage is a sign of corruption, what national politician isn't guilty?

<comment><USER3> They are giving favorable press coverage in return for exclusive interviews that will gave them more viewers ie money so I mean its corruption just money hasn't changed hands directly</comment></comment></comment>


Sourceforge is down - <AUTHOR> http://sourceforge.net/?March31

<comment><AUTHOR> So far it looks like the whole site is down. Not a single project I have tried to access works. No word on their Twitter as of 16:58 GMT [https://twitter.com/sfnet_ops](https://twitter.com/sfnet_ops)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also not sure if related but Slashdot is also down as of 16:59</comment>


Big Macs vs. The Naked Chef [2001] - <AUTHOR> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000024.html

<comment><USER2> Mystery: Why is that when I make a huge generalisation, I don't back it up.

You see, consulting is very similar to cooking. I think I read a book about this 'Hackers and Bakers'

...

More seriously, I think this comment sums up this style of article:

'This review captures what's been driving me crazy over the last year... an unbelievable proliferation of anecdotes disguised as science, self-professed experts writing about things they actually know nothing about, and amusing stories disguised as metaphors for how the world works.'

<comment><USER3> I think the article is SPOT ON. And here's little background about me before I tell you why.

I am from India, graduated in 2001, worked for Infosys for little over 2 years. I have been in US since 2004 and I have been doing independent consulting for 5 years now. I have quite a friends who work for Wipro/Satyam/TCS or IBM/Accenture.

Let me share my experience working with Infosys. I worked on 5 projects for Infosys and all of them were disaster. Infosys hires fresh college graduates, trains them in programming langauges and asks them to do coding for the project. They have processes for _everything_. Requirements documentation, design documents, the actual code, deployment, you name a task and I can bet that they have a document which tells how you are supposed to do the task. And you can't really divert from the laid out process very much even when you know that the process doesn't make sense. Compound this with the fact that they have many employees who are not really in to technology, so if you suggest an alternate way of doing anything, you will get shot down. [Infosys hires graduates who have no prior Computer Science/Programming experience and some graduates join Infosys because of the brand name and the salary even when they have zero interest in technology.]

Let me give you a concrete example. In 2003/2004, CMM (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model>) was all rage. Infosys was obviously CMM Level 5 compliance company. As part of the certification, every project needs to do analysis of the bug count after every release. So it's like, there were 30 bugs during the first release of the project and 25 bugs during the second release of project which means that bug count went down 16% which is less than 25%, the number required by CMM. So we need to fudge the bug tracker. Unfortunately, you can't delete bugs. So we go back and add dummy bugs for the first release increasing the bug count from 30 to 40 and match up the numbers. I called it bullshit and no one would listen to me. In fact, I was threatned that I will not get good performance review (don't get me started on performance reviews) if I don't follow 'the process'. I left Infosys after 2 years and sweared that I would never join a consulting firm again.

Based on my heated discussions with friends, I can assure that the story is similar at other consulting companies.

I am sure when Infosys was started, it was full of smart people who did the right things and made it into a billion dollar company. But as it got bigger and bigger, the net output is of low quality.

And this validates Joel's main point in the article:

1\. Some things need talent to do really well. 2\. It's hard to scale talent. 3\. One way people try to scale talent is by having the talent create rules for the untalented to follow. 4\. The quality of the resulting product is very low.

I started reading Joel in 2003/2004 when I was really frustrated with Infosys and this article hit a home run for me. If you think his analogy doesn't describe the state of big IT consulting companies, I can gurantee that you have never worked at one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd have read more if he could have done it without continually calling McDonald's workers idiots.

My wife worked at McD's in high school. She's now an attorney who graduated with honors.

<comment><USER3> Please. Joel did not write that ALL McDonald workers are idiots. He wrote that McDonald created process that anyone can follow to create a burger which has certain taste. To quote Joel,

"The rules have been carefully designed by reasonably intelligent people (back at McDonald's Hamburger University) so that dumdums can follow them just _as well as smart people_." (emphasis mine)

<comment><USER5> You're missing the point over a technicality.

Yes, while he didn't say that all McDonald's workers are idiots, you don't write sentences like this if you're saying it's like any other workplace, with it's share of smarties and dumdums, to use his term.

If it's like any other workplace, it's not noteworthy for his essay and he wouldn't have brought it up.

(worked there for a year, age 13)

<comment><USER3> No, I am not. The OP wrote 'continually calling McDonald's workers idiots' and Joel didn't write anywhere in the article that McDonald's workers are idiots.

<comment><USER4> Maybe I'm paraphrasing or reading too much into it, but this line implies as much

"The other secret of Big Macs is that you can have an IQ that hovers somewhere between "idiot" and "moron" (to use the technical terms) and you'll still be able to produce Big Macs that are exactly as unsurprising as all the other Big Macs in the world."

<comment><USER3> Let's read the sentence again.

""The other secret of Big Macs is that _you can have_ an IQ that hovers somewhere between "idiot" and "moron"

He did not say that you must have an IQ of an idiot or moron to work at McDonald. He said that _even if_ you have IQ of an idiot or moron, you can make a Big Mac which tastes like other Big Macs in the world. It's a big difference.

<comment><USER4> You can read it as many ways and with inflection wherever you like. But even if the insult is indirect, I don't think most would feel better when told they "could" be an idiot as opposed to they "are" one.

For me he could have made a more compelling argument without ever using the terms "dumdum", "idiot" or "moron".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Perhaps our collective sensibilities have evolved so much since 2001 so that this article is no longer novel.

<comment><USER7> yeah, really. i'm not a fan of submissions like that aren't at least tagged with the date. sometimes it's not until the fifth paragraph when you read something suspect like 'dotcoms bursting... high-end c++ gui programming.. the hell?' that you realize you're reading a fossile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry.. I didn't even realise it was from 2001 until now... I've updated the title now!

<comment><USER6> I actually like the article but simply wonder if, in the context of 2001, it was not widely believed that organizations like Accenture were incapable of building wonderful software. Reading this is kind of like reading an article from the 1950's arguing that black people ought to have the same rights as whites. The premise is still valid, but the doubt which justified the article's existence has since been erased.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The takeaway I have is a question. Why isn't there a good equivalent to the big mac in the consulting world?

Every time you go cheap, or with the "big consultants" that joel describes the expected outcome is massive time overruns and massive budget overruns.

The closest thing to the big mac model I can think of is installation of existing software, with customization for the environment, but even there you get the 3 year long SAP projects that cost tons.

What prevents software from being put into a manual? I'm hoping the answer is something beyond "requirements don't match up exactly to previous problems... ever", but I fear that's all it is.

<comment><USER9> I think there is: the Microsoft product line. They are the company everybody loves to hate for their mediocrity. If you want an office suite, email, calendaring, etc., they are what most of the consultants install.

On the other hand, when you (metaphorically) want the same consultants to go beyond "twoallbeefpattiesspecialsaucelettucecheesepicklesonionsonasesameseedbun", like a McBurger flipper trying to make basil aioli, it usually doesn't turn out well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Imagine that The Naked Chef gets bored doing "telly" and opens a restaurant._

Like his venture 'Fifteen' that is not only a top restaurant, but also a program for troubled youth? Or more like the half-dozen or so "Jamie's Italian" that have opened?

Or like the dozens of additional "Jamie's Italian" that are planned for Europe and Asia in the next couple years?

Come on, Joel. If you're going to use a metaphor, please make sure it fits... at least a little. Jamie Oliver is already executing on the exact thing you say he can't do; creating a repeatable process to make delicious food and opening a chain of restaurants that sell it.

<comment><USER11> Spolsky has a talent for using very specific examples in his just-so-stories that then later turn out to be the purest counterexample he could have picked.

Like using Netscape -> Mozilla as your example of why you should never ever rewrite software from scratch.

<comment><USER12> Mozilla Firefox was forked from the rewritten Mozilla codebase

From the original Spolsky:

> Netscape 6.0 is finally going into its first public beta...Well, yes. They > did. They did it by making the single worst strategic mistake that any > software company can make: They decided to rewrite the code from scratch.

<http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/releases/0.1.html>

[http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-users@linux- sxs.org/msg067...](http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-users@linux- sxs.org/msg06717.html)</comment></comment></comment>