Ask HN: At what point did you realise that your startup/project wasn't working? - <AUTHOR> Hope and the sunk cost of time/effort can cloud your judgement when deciding whether your startup is working or not. I'm curious to hear people's experiences of when they had the moment of realisation that they should move on. <comment><USER2> For me, that's actually a surprisingly difficult question to answer. In retrospect, it's possible to pick some key moments that I wasn't aware of at the time.

The company ran for 10 years. The first 3 years we lived on ramen wages, revenue, and $450k of angel/seed money. We refined and extended the code, had some early-adopter customers, chased investment, and tried to pick a niche. Following promised money from some VCs, we threw a year's work into the (then very immature) mobile space with basically no traction, before reverting to the fintech world (which was where we had customers and product) with a $5M series A.

The milestones on the series A tranches were to hire a management team, and get a launch customer for the fleshed-out product we'd pitched. The VCs put in one of their in-house interim CEOs to run things until we'd found the right team. It then took 18 high-spending months to find the wrong guy.

The worst personal decision I made was to think the VCs were right, and that I (a geek founder) should hand over control to a "professional", so I could get back to coding. I believe that ultimately, that decision started the chain of events that doomed the company. If only I'd realised that then.

The clearest realisation for me came during a small meeting with a handful of the execs. We had nearly 50 staff, an office on Union Square in NYC, some big name customers, and had burned through more than $50M in VC money but they were about to turn off the tap. I confronted the CFO asking what our monthly income was -- the real cash, not the prepaid licensing that was already spent, not the headline number that was then eaten up by us buying back services from the customers, etc, etc. It came to enough to pay about 8-10 people, depending on how much they were willing to cut their salaries.

I proposed a list of the required roles: a CxO, a few devs, infrastructure, and support. I offered to resign, and suggested the best set of devs to carry on the product. We could sublet most of the office, and rebuild on revenues. Everyone in the room acted horrified, and came up with the most fantastic excuses as to why that (a) wasn't necessary, and (b) wouldn't work. I got out a month later, and they rode the company to bankruptcy a year later.

During the 6 years in between, there were many times I doubted we would make it, and some when I thought we were doing ok. Hope and trust are both necessary to continue, and the reason for failing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for that detailed reply, especially on so personal a topic.

It's obvious from the question that it is a reflection on my current predicament. I'm at a place where the company is doing okay, but not great. Part of me wants to move on, but the other part - fuelled by legendary startup stories where things took off or turned around at the last minute - wants to keep going till it's officially dead. Before posting my question, I was debating whether asking the question itself served as a signal for my company's demise, but I am glad that didn't stop me. I feel like the point where I am too afraid to even consider the possibility - perhaps because then I truly know the answer - would be worse than just seeking more knowledge/wisdom.

It's very useful to have a community where I can learn from very experienced people such as yourself and use that information to augment my knowledge.

Thanks again for your thoughts.

<comment><USER2> That mythos of the startup was part of why I stayed so long, and worked so hard. Long after I'd been diluted to nothing, I still felt the desire to make it work, and the pressure of being one of the founders and having to seem upbeat and to find a positive way forward from every setback.

I also think it's healthy to question the situation, privately, or between trusted colleagues. The failure to analyse, and plan, and act, meant that we continued down a path that clearly wasn't working long after we should have tweaked or pivoted.

I think there's a delicate balance though between open discussion, and maintaining morale. My observation is that it's a personality thing: some people are fine with regular doubting and discussion, and are in fact re- energised by questioning the precepts and either confirming the current path or tweaking it to address an issue. Others find it terribly demotivating to think about this too often.

I had always thought that there'd be clear point of success or failure, but my experience was that it was a very long period where it was neither yet, and impossible to tell which it would be :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I agree that it's quite a balancing act. I find myself teetering between those two states, more often leaning on the pessimistic side of things which I may be incorrectly categorising as being realistic. I think I might just have to improve my communication with the team to show and explain both sides of my thinking, the good and the bad.

You're last sentence really resonates as I think uncertainty is sometimes the most difficult thing to manage. There's always the possibility that death or success is just around the corner but I guess that is just part of the lifestyle I chose.

Thank you very much for sharing your time and your story. You have given me a lot to ponder on :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> My good friend has a great story about how he and an account exec went to go pitch a client. They met with client for about a half hour and the three reps from the client side said they were going to go bring in a larger group to continue the meeting. About 30 seconds after everyone walked out the account exec said "Let's get out of here there's no money here". I don't think you're there yet.

Assuming you are CEO/founder, the pain you're experiencing is a gift to help you change. You also have to consider how future investors view the guy who walked away when his company is doing "okay", not seeing it through to a liquidity event, instead choosing to take investor payday off the table either through shut down or the company failing after his departure. Do you trust your replacement to not fuck it up?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for sharing that story. That's definitely a very useful skill to have as it saves time and hope for better prospects.

I've had similar experiences where people seem very interested and set up endless meetings, but nothing concrete ever happens. I've started to sometimes get a sense of when a meeting is going nowhere, but personally it's been difficult to know when I might be being realistic, vs being pessimistic/defeatist. As you put it, I might not be there yet, but will keep working on it.

Yes, I am a founder, and your point about the perception of future investors/stakeholders is very valuable and worth remembering.

Thank you very much for sharing your perspective :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When people focus on things other than the startup. Consulting projects, "side projects", full time jobs. When everyone is fully on board, they find a way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. The message in the first two sentences are useful to keep in mind as they give very measurable signals.

I'm curious about the objective truth in the last sentence. In the case where a team is dedicated but lacks the skillset/timing to hit achieve their goals, that statement implies that the team isn't on-board enough, which may not be true.

My concern is that while that statement can sometimes act as a motivator, it may also push a team forward even in circumstances where there may be considerable rational evidence (from the perspective of an informed observer) to wrap things up instead.

I'd very much appreciate your thoughts on this.

<comment><USER4> I had failure with business for about 2 years before the first exit. There was a chain of events from my first business failure to my actual first business win... I learned actual gritty sales skill on the first failure, and met with my partner who admired my persistence and research.

We had a lot of bad ideas, but we pivoted the core gradually towards something that worked. My first idea and the final product had nothing at all in common, except for being in the food industry.

That same idea was acquired by a team with far more resources, better skills, more experience, better market and timing... but it didn't work because the new team wasn't focused enough. The only major difference was the amount of energy put into it.

The foundation of it is really just building something that someone wants. As long as you stick to that foundation, you will continue to build upon something of value. As long as you build something of value, you have an asset, that can be sold to the right buyer.

Quoting Paul Graham: "If you can just avoid dying, you get rich. That sounds like a joke, but it's actually a pretty good description of what happens in a typical startup. It certainly describes what happened in Viaweb. We avoided dying till we got rich."

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your response. I very much appreciate the insight.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


GitHub Helped Train Google in Git - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/blog/186-google-android-git-and-github

<comment><USER2> It's inspiring to see how far the GitHub guys have been able to take what started out as a side project done just for fun.

</comment><comment><USER3> Please, please, run <http://github.com/training> through spellchecker.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't believe I let that up with those spelling errors. Thanks for pointing that out. It's fixed and will go out with our next push. I really am better at training than I am at spelling :) For the longest time, I had been spelling 'carat' as 'carrot' (referring to the '^' character).

<comment><USER4> You mean car-e-t ;)

(carat is a measure of gold purity)

<comment><AUTHOR> annnnd, you see what I mean...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Congratulations. It seems like Git is really taking over SVN. Google Code uses SVN for checkouts, but now that Android is being shifted over to Git, it seems like the rest of their version control might go along with it.</comment>


Apple is killing off MagSafe, one of the MacBook's best features - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/27/13441150/rip-magsafe-apple-macbook-pro-charging-cable-usb-c <comment><USER2> It's the only thing that makes me hesitate replacing my current MBP. Seriously, I can live with whatever ports the put on it, remove a headphone jack, I don't care, but don't take my MagSafe. It's not often that the MagSafe earns it's keep, but when you've got 70kg of dogs wrestling in the living room, sometimes MagSafe alone is worth the price of admission.

<comment><USER3> [https://griffintechnology.com/us/breaksafe-magnetic-usb-c- po...](https://griffintechnology.com/us/breaksafe-magnetic-usb-c-power-cable)

<comment><USER2> Because sometimes an upvote isn't enough: thanks for the pointer, that would be an acceptable compromise for me.

<comment><USER4> Well... if you have the new MBP and the new LG display then this won't do (assuming you charge the MBP from the display as intended)

That Griffin adapter is "power only, no data"

We need the equivalent but as a full-featured TB3 connector

<comment><USER3> In such a situation, both your computer and your monitor are likely to be on a desktop, relatively near one another, so the chance of sudden accidental separation is much lower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> a-no-n Apple, as a laptop manufacturer, is done.

The company is continuing to regress, having lost its edge (SJ).

They're completely on the process bandwagon of requiring more accessories, having lost the beauty and functionality of clever, practical simplicity which advances the user experience, instead of making it crappier and inconvenient for change's sake.

Tim Cook's gotta go, they need a more forceful visionary than a bean-counter. MacBook Pro's need to consider detachable displays, alternatives to keyboards, other modes of interaction, so on.

<comment><USER5> Tim Cook is fine. Ive need to quit.

<comment><USER6> I haven't seen "Ive" at the beginning of a sentence before and it's surprisingly hard to parse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Completely agree. I need to replace my macbook air, but am seriously stumped: no more 12 hr battery, no more magsafe, a much higher price, and can't even stay on the MBA because the 16GB I was hoping for did not appear on the MBA.

Really. Don't know what to do now. I can't switch to Windows, don't want to go back to Linux. I feel like Apple has left me.

<comment><USER8> I'm buying 1-2 refurbished current gen Macbook Pros, and just hoping those and my current one will last me the next decade or so (its all solid state, so hopefully it will).

<comment><USER9> Just buy an old one after your current one breaks if you love Magsafe so much. I'm sure many will be willing to sell their old 2015 Macbook pros when one with wireless charging comes out in 2023.

<comment><USER8> * MagSafe

* USB

* Not needing a $25 adapter just to charge my iPhone

* Thunderbolt for my _two Thunderbolt displays_

Hopefully the used supply of MBP will stay deep for years.

<comment><USER10> You don't need a $25 adaptor, just a $25 cable!

[http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MK0X2AM/A/usb-c-to- lightni...](http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MK0X2AM/A/usb-c-to-lightning- cable-1-m?fnode=97&fs=f%3Dcable%26fh%3D458e%252B45c4)

Seriously though the next iPhone/iPad will surely going to use USB-C also and ditch Lightning, which will dramatically simplify the connector situation going on at Apple.

<comment><USER11> If they were going to do that, then iphone 7 would have released with USB-C. At the moment I guess they don't want to break compatibility with every iPhone accessory on the market - but then again, they were never a company that cared about breaking standards, so I have no idea why the hesitation now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The big advantage with Magsafe was when battery life was ~2 hours and it was a necessity to haul a power cord around all day and the laptop was primarily plugged in. Now? My power cord lives permanently at my desk -- I can't think of the last time my power cord was in a trippable location.

<comment><USER13> Yeah but unplugging for meetings is annoying enough with a magsafe. The real problem there that needs fixing is the meeting obsessed culture but in the meantime I have to do what I can to make things easier on myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There are many third party solutions, like the Griffin Breaksafe. It eats a port, but that's better than the MacBook flying onto the ground. :-\

</comment><comment><USER15> This is good for people who want to use one simple docking connector.

Still, every buyer who breaks his LCD screen after tripping over the power cord is going to resent Apple for this. It seems to me a poor choice.

Many users share one charger between devices (for example, a study group in a dorm lounge).

On the bright side, USB-C is a good standard and it deserves this kind of major love.

</comment><comment><USER16> We just got over the huge uproar when Apple removed the headphone jack from the iPhone. Once this sinks in I think the dissent will be even louder.

Not everyone uses headphones, but everyone eventually has to charge their laptop. When I think of the times I've been saved by MagSafe I shudder.

<comment><USER17> Speak for yourself ;)

I haven't gotten over Apple crippling their devices (no standard audio output from an "audio" device, inability to charge while listening to music (on headphones), replacing bulletproof technology with much more complex, battery- operated tech, something I can only explain with the intention to monetize on what used to be a patent-free audio standard.

I'm not over it and I'm no longer excited about supporting their vision with my money.

Yes, I will likely move away from the iPhone which would be much easier if I could transfer the licenses for the apps I purchased.

Same for the MacBooks. All I can say is that they look cheaper to produce, are impossible to service and upgrade and are actively eliminating useful features.

Maybe I am no longer their demographic, I imagine these are the result of marketing research and so will sell better than I expect them to.

Just not to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I really don't understand how companies go about making these decisions sometimes. MagSafe seems like such a simple and elegant solution to me. I understand that USB-C is the future and that with much better battery life I'm sure people aren't leaving their MacBooks plugged in as much as they were in the past, negating some of it's usefulness. I can also accept that on something like the 12" MacBook it might not work well since those are so light weight and thinness/compactness seems to be a selling point, so I get why it was removed.

I would have loved to see Apple include MagSafe charging in addition to USB charging in these new rMBP's. I can't imagine it would have been much of an engineering feat to include both methods of charging and I doubt including a MagSafe charger would have added much cost. Personally I would be willing to lose a USB port in favor of keeping MagSafe.

</comment><comment><USER19> For people not stuck in Apple lock-in, USB-C charging is definitely a positive thing.

Have you laptop charge using you phone adapter, or the other way around. Currently on my desk I have 2 laptops and one phone, all of them are USB-C capable.

Was the magsafe connector ever anything more than a marketing gimmick? Do you fall over your laptop power chord daily? Weekly? Has is ever occurred?

<comment><USER20> Yes, because my phone charger is going to supply 90W.....

<comment><USER21> MacBook Pro only needs 61W - [https://www.apple.com/macbook- pro/specs/](https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/)

Admittedly, your phone charger is probably going to struggle with that too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Hypothetically speaking, if Apple had a patent on the 'magnetic power adaptor' and discontinued it in their own products, would this mean that nobody could produce such a thing. That seems like it would be a ludicrous situation.

<comment><USER23> Yes - they can do exactly what you have described.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Maybe the MacBook is too light for MagSafe to work safely. Also the adapters tend to fray after a while.

</comment><comment><USER11> If apple stops using MagSafe currently, will their patent on it expire eventually?

</comment><comment><USER25> Someone will create a magsafe adapter that lies relatively flat against the port.</comment>


Scraping by on $500,000 a Year - <AUTHOR> http://www.financialsamurai.com/scraping-by-on-500000-a-year-high-income-earners-struggling/ <comment><USER2> hmm.. I don't know what worse, that people find it difficult to live on $500k or that having $7500 extra at the end of the year is considered scraping by. Maybe it's just my European mindset, but living on €100k in a European capital is perfectly fine and you can afford to have a relatively high quality of life. I feel the problems in the article are particularly America.</comment>


Switching Off: Joseph Brodsky and the moral responsibility to be useless - <AUTHOR> https://thepointmag.com/2018/examined-life/switching-off <comment><USER2> Brodsky was a Soviet dissident and a very original, innovative, creative thinker.

One of several things I remember is him writing about the torture and imprisonment he suffered. All he said was that he didn't talk about it, because it only served his abusers to do so. They tortured him to terrify others - as an act of terror. By torturing one dissident, they intended to subdue all who spoke to him and read him. If he repeated it, then the act and its power were magnified, repeated over and over. If he said nothing, they were powerless; it was just one act at one moment and in small room.

<comment><USER3> Brodsky was by no means a dissident, at least in the Russian sense of the word. He was vocally and arrogantly apolitical. He didn't know politburo members' faces, and disliked both Soviet and anti-Soviet activists.

Also, no sane Russian of his generation would consider writing self pitiful account of inprisonment and torture, consisting of about a month in prison and 3 weeks in a psycho asylum. He personally knew dozens of people that have served 10-20 years without even a legal trial.

<comment><USER2> The parent brings to mind Steve Jobs responding to the email of a critic: And what have you done? What have you created?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I mentioned it in the comments of a post the other day, but the English Speaking World can at least trace this kind of thinking back to Thomas Cranmer and the Articles of Religion of the Church of England--in particular, Article XIV. Of Works of Supererogation.[1] Given the Non-Conformist origins of the Colonies (people who immigrated to get away from the Church of England in part) I have to wonder if the whole "American Dream" and its fetishization of work for work's sake (or even, as an Artist myself, Art for Art's sake) is a reaction against this. The accusations of "Amotivational Syndrome" so often levied against Cannabis use seems related too; there is nothing wrong with being content with less and, at least in my mind, it sets a _good_ example to be satisfied with less. Less _is_ more.

[1] [http://anglicansonline.org/basics/thirty- nine_articles.html](http://anglicansonline.org/basics/thirty- nine_articles.html)

 _Voluntary Works besides, over and above, God 's Commandments, which they call Works of Supererogation, cannot be taught without arrogancy and impiety: for by them men do declare, that they do not only render unto God as much as they are bound to do, but that they do more for his sake, than of bounden duty is required: whereas Christ saith plainly When ye have done all that are commanded to you, say, We are unprofitable servants._

<comment><USER5> I'm not an English native speaker, and as such it always seemed interesting to me that the money a person owns is expressed as "X is worth $amount" (ex: "Bezos is worth $131 billion"). It's like it doesn't matter if that person is good or bad, if he/she is actually interested in being more on the "good" side of things instead of the "bad" one, all it matters when judging a person is his/her bank account.

<comment><USER6> It's a reflection of the mindset we hold about wealth, part of how we justify why one person deserves more than another.

For instance, why does some billionaire have significantly better health care than I do? Because they're _worth_ more. Literally, they are more valuable to society than I am.

If you phrase it the other way: "because they have more money than I do", the justification isn't there and you'll have to question your societal model.

<comment><USER7> It's a quirk of English that we copied over our general words for amounts from our language for morality.

We might have chosen mass as an anlogy, and Jeff would weigh $100 billion. A very heavy man.

<comment><USER4> We could also honestly say he's talented and be pretty sure he weighs at least 75 pounds[1]. It occurs to me that part of the problem is the analogous thinking in the first place, but even I (someone who was planning to take a vow of poverty at one point) have to admit that monetary worth is _supposed_ to indicate how valuable/good of a person we are in normal circumstances; it's the reason to reward. Where it loses meaning to me is where there, like sjk alluded to, isn't even money but the assumption of it. There is nothing to actually show for it as stock options, money in the bank (unless it's really a vault), even Federal Reserve Bank Notes if you want to invoke the significance of them historically as essentially checks that could be cashed for silver and gold: it's all imaginary and kind of delusional to think it is really Wealth. As a result one of the more interesting things happening in the Financial sector to me right now is the Royal Mint's introduction of Royal Mint Gold as it challenges the entire idea of Fiat Money by using blockchain tech like a deed for gold ownership. It makes me think of Gringotts.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talent_(measurement)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talent_\(measurement\))

edit: I'm inclined to add that I view gold and silver as actually valuable in part because they're physically useful in production of at the very least Artwork, which is what a coin is. There is an interesting division in the United States between the Mint and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing that draws a line between the purification of metal and the printing of bills that carries a lot of significance: purified metals represent purity whereas printed paper money is always being thrown out and burnt as it falls apart and has little material worth. One is timeless Art in that it is an actual indication of purity and the other is a mashed up pulp of cotton and flax with ink strewn over it that absorbs our human filth (oils and such) until it falls apart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Depending on your assessment of society, being merely useless isn't good enough. If you estimate society to be generally harmful (whether through wars, environmental destruction, causing mass-exinction, ect), then its morally desirable to be parasitic and drain some of the "power" of society from engaging in harm-producing activities.

<comment><USER9> Wow that's some pretty imaginative thinking. Have you tried that on your family?

<comment><USER8> I'm not supported by my family (or anyone else). If, however, I was supported by my family, and they were a bunch of serial killers who used their money and power to murder people, then it would be morally desirable to drain them of their resources and deprive them of their ability to kill and slaughter.

<comment><USER10> Wouldn't it be more morally desirable to change their use of resources to saving stray dogs or well..something with a positive context? Why throw work away when it can be used for positive acts instead? Transformation over destruction. A moral imperative

<comment><USER11> Labor-driven ideologies are poisonous, they require that you consider another person as useful, therefore exploitable, to some end not their own; then, to call some work positive, some negative, as the ideology sees fit.

Instead, uselessness and leisure must be engineered to nullify with machine- like precision, the notions that labor is a commodity with any attached value and that the imposition of any belief, through labor or violence, has any corresponding uselessness or usefulness.

Distraction must be perfected in our lifetime. A person born in 2050 should be dazzled by endless fireworks displays and snackfoods until at last they are disintegrated by the simple side-effects of their own cellular respiration.

Indeed, everything recognizable as human being, or a soul, or a similar metaphor for the idea of the self, owes it to all other such entities that it wishes for them nothing but complete and lifelong sensory saturation with mutually harmless novelties and comforts. This is the core manifestation of self-preservation of the social animal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> this:

"I had been raised in the multicultural, bubblegum Nineties. Like many other children of the upper-middle class, I watched Captain Planet, went to cross- cultural friendship camps and joined social-justice youth groups. Our generation was told that difference was only skin deep, that in America you could accomplish anything with enough hard work, that we could be the change we wanted to see. Like good campers, we marched to protest the invasion of Iraq, wrote letters against NAFTA and for human rights, voted for Obama, went vegetarian. At a certain point it occurred to us there was no evidence any of this was working. The market crashed; the gap between rich and poor yawned into an abyss. Congress was paralyzed, and racism, far from diminishing in Obama's presidency, seemed to become more visible and virulent. What is to be done? we wondered. All the progressive values we had been taught, when knocked, sounded hollow. So our protests got smaller, cheekier and more digital. We made nihilistic jokes, followed meme accounts, started therapy. We talked about TV.

All of this is to say that Brodsky's strategy of switching off made a perverse kind of sense to me, even as it brushed up against my inculcated optimism. And yet, I thought: Shouldn't I fight that impulse?"

</comment><comment><USER13> "Your so-called 'memes'"

</comment><comment><USER14> the full transcript of the trial of Joseph Brodsky:

[http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1954-2/whats-a-woman-to- think/w...](http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1954-2/whats-a-woman-to-think/whats- a-woman-to-think-texts/trial-of-joseph-brodsky/)

so absurd and surreal at times it's hard to believe it's not fiction

\---

Grudinina: The difference between a parasite and a starting-out poet is that the parasite eats but does not work, while the poet works but may not always eat.

Judge: The court does not appreciate that remark. In our country, a man earns according to his work.

</comment><comment><USER15> posted by Lermontov :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Who better? Unless, that is, there is an HN user named Oblomov ;)

<comment><USER15> Not very active, but... [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=oblomov](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=oblomov)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you think about FB new UX? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I think everyone on HN hates it but so far it's quite clearly an improvement.

They didn't go too far with spacing, consistency is way up, generally everything feels like it's using the same standard set of widgets.

It feels in a weird way just a little slow. I'm not sure why, I even thought maybe it's my Chrome or something. I noticed hovering a list item had what felt like a small delay. Turns out it was just the animation they used to fade in/out. I think they messed that up (fade in should be near instant or else it feels laggy).

That said, as a UX specialized dev, I appreciate it overall. Don't like Facebook or even use the app much, but the design and tech are better overall.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really hate that the left sidebar goes away when you are looking at groups on desktop! Other UX aspects haven't bugged me much and I've had the new version for a few weeks. The performance is considerably worse than the previous, including tab crashes in Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's not good but significantly less bad than before. As the product the pain of use has diminished

</comment><comment><USER5> Any screenshots for people who don't use Facebook anymore?

</comment><comment><USER6> dark mode is nice

<comment><USER7> I'm finding the dark mode of recent sites not as good as the Dark Mode extension I use. Specifically the new stack exchange and now this facebook.

What they get wrong is making the background too bright, and often with a blue tinge. Not what I want in my dark mode, folks! Should never be brighter than #333.</comment></comment>


History Will Revere Gates, Forget Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2405562,00.asp <comment><USER2> f off</comment>


The Dream: podcast about the world of pyramid schemes and multi-level marketing - <AUTHOR> https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/stitcher/the-dream <comment><USER2> Here's a nice new podcast, too [https://accidentallyfasting.com/](https://accidentallyfasting.com/)</comment>


Dramatic Shifts in Technologies on Stack Overflow - <AUTHOR> https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/11/13/cliffs-insanity-dramatic-shifts-technologies-stack-overflow/ <comment><USER2> I wonder how much of the Angular growth is due to weaknesses in documentation and the relative complexity of Angular compared with alternatives.

I've never needed to rely on SO when working with VueJS.

<comment><USER3> That and angular is a complete framework so all aspects of a front end app would fall under the angular framework umbrella. VueJS is just a view engine. Questions related to other frameworks that work in conjunction with Vue may not be lumped together.

<comment><USER4> As someone who works with Angular, the vast majority of the searches I find myself doing are in the nature of "how to make X library work with Angular". It's just a massive beast with a lot of moving parts, some of them only tangentially related to use of the actual library (I find myself doing a lot of searches related to the Angular CLI, Karma tests, etc).

The other thing that is frustrating is that the changes across the different versions of Angular are so dramatic that the best way to do things has changed pretty massively over time, and old versions of Angular are still employed pretty liberally by companies that don't want to have to go through the process of porting everything to newer versions. As a result there can be dozens of different ways to do the same thing and determining which is best based on your particular situation is non-trivial.

<comment><USER3> Hmm i'd say for me, a lot of searches involve how to do x within Angular. The API is so large and pretty decent. However it takes some effort to read through so I just find myself searching ad-hoc questions.

What breaking changes are you referring to? Ever since it Angular 2 Final, the API has been pretty stable, I've been able to pretty seamlessly upgrade to angular 4+

<comment><USER4> When I say "across versions" I'm also including AngularJS in there (the differences between them are still a major point of confusion for a lot of people). Also, while 4 doesn't introduce any breaking changes I know of, it does introduce a lot of little details that change best practices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm surprised I didn't see React mentioned anywhere in the article. I wonder where its growth curve is compared to angular. Though to be fair, a bunch of the angular2 growth is people moving from "AngularJS" so it doesn't exactly represent angular growth as a whole.

<comment><USER6> See npmcharts for real usage data: [https://npmcharts.com/compare/react,angular,@angular/core,em...](https://npmcharts.com/compare/react,angular,@angular/core,ember- cli,vue)

<comment><USER5> This is interesting for sure. I wonder if the different build processes that react uses vs angular would skew this in one direction or another. I think npmcharts is just monitoring downloads.

<comment><USER7> Can you suggest how the build processes would skew it? For all 3 projects I believe the recommended build method involves a cli tool that installs each package once.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "We see from this plot what remarkable success looks like for a new technology." \--this ability to render trends is what stands out for me; data previously generated and lost in the ether of time now recorded someplace for analysis and visualization. Pairs with LinkedIn's sort of analysis of what universities pay off with their degrees, etc. A data driven reality is coming our way.

</comment><comment><USER9> Maybe enterprise folks who are the majority of Angular users go to SO first as they do with C# and Java questions. I worked in a few co-working spaces. Startups overwhelmingly favor React.

The SNR on Stack Overflow is becoming lower. Many of the more difficult questions have chosen answers which are outdated. Software is versioned and having one blessed and no version tags doesn't work in some cases. Try using the blessed answers to react-router which frustratingly breaks between each version.

</comment><comment><USER10> That's a shame about Parse. I just started using it (the open-sourced Parse Server, anyway) for an iOS project I started, and it really sped up development time.

Is there a service that does something similar to Parse.com? I would honestly rather pay for that service than run an instance myself.

</comment><comment><USER11> ORM going down is good news indeed.

<comment><USER12> I wonder how much of that is just maturity of the ORM frameworks and their being hidden/built into other web or app stacks.

<comment><USER11> Shush.

:)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What happened to cocos2d?

<comment><USER14> Apple released [https://developer.apple.com/spritekit/](https://developer.apple.com/spritekit/) so people developing 2D games for iOS tend to use that instead now.

Sort of sad to see it's less used now, although I do think Cocos2D probably had an impact on the API design of SpriteKit, so it lives on in that way at least.</comment></comment>


ODROID-X is like a quad-core Raspberry Pi for $129 - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/odroid-x-is-like-a-quad-core-raspberry-pi-for-129-20120712/ <comment><USER2> I like where we're headed with these sorts of devices coming out. There appears to be some serious demand for powerful and tiny computing devices that are cheap enough to almost be considered disposable. This makes them perfect for weekend projects that require a little more umph than a typical Arduino can handle (and in some cases, like the Raspberry Pi's, they can even be cheaper).

I'm excited to see what the future brings in this nook of the technology/hobbyist industry.

<comment><USER3> I think a way to bridge Arduino shields up to a normal general purpose computing environment at a reasonable cost (e.g. <http://omer.me/2012/05/introducing-ponte/>) will be the true killer app for hardware hacking. Being able to write lua/python/ruby/etc to talk directly to hardware & sensors will be incredibly powerful

There's no way long-term Arduino is going to stay at it's current specs & environment, any more than TI-89 calculators could

<comment><USER4> Don't underestimate the usefulness of hard real time io that's easy to implement. It's nice being able to be able to guarantee that some function will run exactly 0.2 microseconds after a voltage hits a pin, for example. Simple micro controllers where you program the bare metal will always have a place for this kind of thing. Doing that kind of thing in python on Linux is a can of worms. But, abstracting away comms between a python script on a pc to an arduino talking to sensors is definitely someone worth perusing, though one is basically there with pyserial and some glue code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is nice that there are more development boards cropping up. But in this case, it is not such as big deal as the Raspberry is.

What is a big deal is the price of their LCD modules. They are very cheap compared to what most development kits offer. It is strange that in this 'Retina' world, there are still crappy LCDs being sold by more than $200 (assembled monitors, no matter how small, costing many times that amount).

Granted, these lCDs only seem to work with ODROID-X. Anyone knows of a decent LCD module that will work with a Raspberry Pi and doesn't require sacrificing your firstborn? That's for mobile applications (like a carputer), otherwise I'd just hookup an old monitor.

<comment><USER6> LCDs are generally cheap...if you buy them in large quantities. Small quantities are a bit harder, especially when they go in and out of production on short notice like they do.

The other cost factor is building the interface between the LCD and the CPU. Usually you're designing a custom flex ribbon and interface board along with a power supply for the backlight. Not many of these cheap LCDs use LVDS, they're all still on old-school parallel TTL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yes, just like a Raspberry Pi except without GPIO headers, and 4X the price.

A great Nettop PC but a RaspberryPi it is not.

<comment><USER8> 4X the price for 8X the performance could be a good deal for some people.

<comment><USER9> I think one of the great things about the Raspi is that it is not competing on being powerful, it's got an community aiming at an accessible and fun experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a long shot, but in one of the videos on the hardkernel.org site they show the ODROID-X working with four miniature web cams. Does anyone know what brand of webcam they are? They look like they would work very well for a project I'm working on to record pollinators visiting flowers.

<comment><USER11> I think they are normal sized cameras.

Look at the opencv hardware list for stuff that is highly linux compatible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hmm, no obligatory info on how the "quad-core" affects power consumption vs. the Raspberry PI.

<comment><USER13> [http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.ph...](http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G133999328931&tab_idx=3)

"Normally ODROID-X consumes about 1A [at 5V] in most cases. But it can go up to 3A if you use some USB hard disk drives in parallel."

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice, looks like a fun little box. Although its another data point in the 'how-the-heck-is-ouya-going-to-cost-99-dollars' question. I wonder if Samsung is more forthcoming on how to program the GPU than either Broadcom (RPi) or TI (Panda/Beagle) are.

<comment><USER8> No, Mali is just as closed as PowerVR.

<comment><USER15> Are there any boards out there that have an open GPU?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wait, isn't that Nexus 7 only selling at 199$ with same cpu cores plus a nice touch screen?

</comment><comment><USER17> Funny how this gets a great reception, but people think the Ouya will fail.

The Ouya is roughly the same power as this, $30 less, in a nice case with an out-of-the-box consumer experience.

<comment><USER18> This is a real product that has been built. The manufacturer is shipping at the end of July and has several other arm boards to their credit.

Ouya doesn't have anything more than some marketing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> are there any arm boards that are supported by ubuntu/debian/etc out of the box?

i bought a couple of boards and they all run their own minor variants.

<comment><USER19> Sure, Openrd/sheevaplug/dreamplug/&all, the marvell series, run Debian with ease.

<comment><USER11> straight up? direct from the debian repos?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does ODROID-X ARM Mali GPU supports OpenCL?

<comment><USER21> This one no, but the next-gen Mali T604 one, does, as well as OpenGL ES 3.0, I believe.

<comment><USER20> I looking for ARM-based boards/computers for OpenCL development. Any suggestion?

<comment><USER21> I suggest you wait until the new GPU architectures come out at the end of the year or early next year. They all have OpenCL 1.1 support, including Mali T604, Adreno 320, Tegra 4 and PowerVR 6200.

Mali T658 coming out late 2013 will have 4x the performance of Mali T604, I believe thanks to the shared cache between the CPU and GPU, which should increase the compute performance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Four times the cores, four times the cost!

</comment><comment><USER22> Is there no link or am I just blind?

<comment><USER2> Nothing a quick Google search can't solve:

<http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/main.php>

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Not to be a sour-puss but there are a large number of these boards available now. It's exciting, but there really are quite a few of them. I think XBMC may be entering an even newer phase of awesome with the ubiquity of these.

edit: How does one find out what video codecs are supported accelerated by the Mali 400?

Also, wow, that's a cheap wifi module.

<comment> j-kidd Yea, I am not sure if "quad-core Raspberry Pi" is that much of a selling point. CuBox is much more interesting with:

\- gigabit ethernet

\- e-sata port (with port multiplier)

\- infrared receiver

\- out of the box, already comes with a box

\- comprehensive wiki for a development platform

By the way, a 150 Mbps wifi dongle is sold for about 5 USD here (I too was surprised by how cheap the wifi module is, and went to check the price list).

<comment><USER24> Any idea what bus the eSATA port is attached to? the DreamPlug is similar to the CuBox but the eSATA is hooked up internally via USB2, limiting its speed dramatically

<comment> j-kidd It says 3Gbps here:

[http://www.solid- run.com/mw/index.php/CuBox_hardware_specifi...](http://www.solid- run.com/mw/index.php/CuBox_hardware_specification)

I am just about to place an order. They finally have stocks, though the current price is 10 USD more compared to the pre-order price.

<comment><USER23> They do finally have stock? There was a thread just earlier this week where I mentioned this but there was a linked forum post where they've not been fulfilling preorders, etc.

Plus there's some straight up weird stuff on their Word doc exported "Spec Sheet".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> put that into a ms natural keyboard, a LCD screen in the center, call it Fuchi Cyberdeck I, and sell it to me for 10x more!</comment>


asciitable.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.asciitable.com <comment><USER2> That's best example of SEO-domaining I have ever seen. I am sure that guy gets a lot of ad revenue for almost no work.

<comment><USER3> It's also pretty much exactly what a person is likely to be looking for in a search for "ascii table". In the old days, it was printed in the back of the printer manual, the MSDOS manual, etc. etc.

Anyway, it's going to be much more relevant to the immediate problem than the Wikipedia article. This probably a case of SEO actually doing something good.</comment></comment>


What's It Like to Develop Apps for Nokia Phones? - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2010/09/15/whats-it-like-to-develop-apps-for-nokia-phones/

<comment><USER2> It's good to hear that Qt is making app development on Symbian less of a pain.

I made some software for Symbian a few years ago and dealing with the UIKON library and all of it's object-ownership issues were just terrible. It was a monstrous, overwrought, poorly thought-out UI framework where everything that's easy in other toolkits is made hard and everything is a special case.</comment>


Tips for moving into management [audio] - <AUTHOR> http://www.venturi-group.com/podcast/moving-into-management/ <comment><USER2> My tip - don't. It's a demotion.

The lowest-level manager has significantly more accountability than anybody else (i.e. most likely to be fired without 8 months notice a director would get) with few upsides (lower pay per hour of work, worse career trajectory, greater stress, will be forbidden from having negative opinions about anything the company does, more likely to be scapegoated for a boss's mistake).

See the Gervais principle: [https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais- principle-...](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or- the-office-according-to-the-office/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I find this GDC talk more concise and comprehensive, on the same topic:

So They Made You a Lead, Now What?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z98rF3bllao](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z98rF3bllao)

<comment><USER4> this feels incredibly familiar. either youre promoted to a lead, given no training, and fired or demoted when you dont succeed, or you're slowly just "recognized" as the lead without any overt assertion from management. The latter is the worst, because after a few month or even a year there is a tacit communal agreement among leadership that you're secretly the lead without ever defining what that is. pretty soon you're charged with everything from random powerpoint presentations to some midlevel managers incident/action reports with no real idea why its happening other than you're a 'subject matter expert.'

It has a scarring effect ive found, anecdotally. Ive spent 12 years as a systems administrator in various contexts (traditional, devops, contract, etc..) and I've already declined a leadership role on the pretext that its just going to be system administration with the expectation with added clerical ditch-digging for the real management team.

<comment><USER5> "you're slowly just "recognized" as the lead without any overt assertion from management" can't you just ask for official recognition or find a new job that is a better fit for what you actually do? there are billions of jobs in software, if you have the skills to should be able to do so

<comment><USER6> A well run organization should also be mandating regular bi annual meetings between employees and managers for goal setting. Both as an employer and as an employee you want to know what each others expectations are, so you should be following up on this continually. It's crucial for job satisfaction on both ends.

<comment><USER7> I think you may have meant semi-annual (every 6 months). In my opinion, every 3 to 6 months is a good checkpoint for a more formal evaluation, but that ongoing communication should take place through regular meetings every 1-2 weeks.

<comment><USER6> Yes :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> i haven't listened to this but will at lunch for sure. I'm in the process of making the switch to management after accepting a new role around last Nov. It's painful, one of the hardest parts for me is knowing when I've had a good day or bad day, there's not a good measure, things are very subjective. The mentoring and leadership aspect of management I've really taken to and didn't expect to enjoy so much. Pairing up a Sr. and Jr. dev and watching the Jr. dev bloom and the Sr. dev become a better communicator, to the point i've put them in front of a client, has been the highlight so far.

</comment><comment><USER9> When I moved from programming into management, the hardest thing I found was to change from flow-driven work to interrupt-driven work. I started with the golden rule: "Manage people the way you would like to be managed." That lasted about ten minutes. I changed it to "Manage people the way they want to be managed" which was much more succesful.

</comment><comment><USER10> To me the hardest part of moving into management from engineering came with the realization that "accomplishment" is a much squishier thing. Almost every action as a manager ends up as a compromise across several different very soft-skills variables.

Recognizing the core of what matters and not getting hung up on other distractions seems to be the difference between success and failure. I don't focus on my career at all and have found that it usually takes care of itself so long as I don't bypass any opportunities.

Here's my checklist I use to see if I'm doing a good job (by my own measure), and these are not in order of priority but must be balanced simultaneously:

\- put your staff first, leadership is a service function

\- ship, on time, and within budget -- exceed expectations

</comment><comment><USER7> I'll be soon transitioning from a team lead to manager (with a new company). Can anyone add any recommendation to my list of resources?

Books: Peopleware, 5 dysfunctions of a team, Ziglar's Top Performance, Pragmatic Programmer (and others, but these are the top ones)

Websites: askamanager.org, Joel on Software

Podcasts: HBR ideacast

<comment><USER11> High Output Management by Andy Grove. Read that book and the "First Break All the Rules" book mentions ones elsewhere. Most of the rest is duplicative or crap.

Also, just be you. People see potential in you and how you work. Don't surrender your soul to management books — management is like organization, there's lots of "management porn" that makes it easy to procrastinate through reading. Most of the guidance you see is ego-driven and conflicting.

The indirect thing you should consider working on that was hard for me and many other tech people is networking and relationship building. I'm at a director level position now, and my ability to pick up the phone and have someone do something is an increasingly important part of my job. Making that happen is time and work.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the advice. I love to take in new information, but try to make sure I'm thinking critically about what I'm learning.

I'm moving from a large organization to a smaller one, by an order of magnitude or more, so I'm looking forward to having the ability to know everyone on some level and be able to reach out directly when needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's there a path into management without being a developer first?

<comment><USER13> Going back to school and getting an MBA seems to work for a lot of people.

<comment><USER14> It's better when a company endorses you for an MBA...

<comment><USER15> I worked for a large company that paid for my MBA, and then I was caught up in a mass layoff immediately after graduating. Strange. Still working as an individual contributor Software Engineer (albeit a well paid one) all these years later. Can't seem to land a lead position.

<comment><USER16> > Can't seem to land a lead position.

Keep trying.

<comment><USER15> I've known people who were promoted only when they threatened to quit. One was a relatively new hire - I couldn't believe it worked in her case (who demands a promotion/raise after 2 months on the job)?

Hmm....

<comment><USER13> One thing I've learned far too late in my career is that it's amazing what you can actually get if you just go up to the right person and say you want it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How about tips for not moving to management? I like being a developer. I do not like people and I do not want to manage anyone.

<comment><USER18> Your only option is to always work for a company that _builds_ products.

Consultancies are not an option: they depend on buying cheap man-hours and selling then for a profit. As you age, your monetary need will increase and consultancies won't be willing to pay you more... unless you become a manager.

Product-builders are less shy to pay better wages for two reasons: 1) They dilute their wage expenses into a lot of customers and 2) They assume you're a good hire both for them and the competition, so hiring you means getting some leverage against competitors.

<comment><USER19>
       unless you become a manager.

Or a specialist with compelling skills.

<comment><USER20> All that does is raise the ceiling slightly. The number of specialists with compelling skills earning much more than typical ICs is dwarfed by the number of senior directors, VPs and C-suites earning as much or more as the specialist can.

<comment><USER19> Sure, but there is nothing wrong with that.

Most developers, say, do not have any career path that ends them up in the C-suite, so holding that up as a comparison isn't very useful.

If you finish out your career as a middle manager or a technical specialist, it looks much more similar. It's a path to consider for many people, but realize there are far fewer opportunities (and less lateral mobility).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What would you advise 18 year old who is starting a business in India? - <AUTHOR> I  and a few friends have an idea for an e-business that we want to work on. All of us are in the age-group of 18 - 20 and we are from a small tier-III town. I am the only technical guy, so I will be the one who have to set up everything. What I want to know is about the technical and legal sides of a startup like when and how to incorporate, how to register the brand, etc. The startupindia.gov.in site mostly refers to business that are already functioning, I couldn't find anything on starting one from scratch. I don't know anyone in real life who is knowledgeable about this topic and most information that I find online are mostly US specific. <comment><USER2> Sell things for more than you buy them. Do it until it's big enough to get you into trouble for not having the appropriate licenses, brand registrations, business entities, (those are distractions and don't make money).</comment>


3d Printed Rocket Engine Takes Flight - <AUTHOR> http://blog.reprap.org/2011/06/paul-breed-of-unreasonable-rocket-fame.html <comment><USER2> Is there a photo of said rocket engine? I scrolled through the blog but didn't find anything specific.

Filming the launch from an Arducopter was pretty cool though.

<comment><USER3> _Filming the launch from an Arducopter was pretty cool though._

I thought so too!

Video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_1PpBMtGrA#t=2m36s>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks not to be true, although I can't verify this. A commenter posted the following hours later:

 _I was there and filmed it.

He did not fly the printed engine. The rocket you saw fly was a solid for testing GPS systems. The printed engine was run for 2 minutes on a stand._

</comment><comment><USER5> My school gave a student £200 to build his own RepRap as a project. It took him all year but he left for university before I could see it in action. I did have a chat to him whilst he was laser-printing some parts and it looked absolutely incredible - both in terms of the concept itself, and complexity.

</comment><comment><USER6> +1 for reprap link.</comment>


Show HN: How to get the longest vacation - <AUTHOR> https://stretchyourannualleave.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> UK and US at the moment</comment>


Employers are mining the data their workers generate - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-new-ways-your-boss-is-spying-on-you-11563528604?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> The idea that McKesson does this, along with their completely tone deaf idea of adding open offices to increase retention, points to a bigger issue: a complete lack of understanding of people. These people running these companies are utterly detached from the reality that their work force lives day to day, such that they think implementing one of the most universally hated office schemes and mass surveillance are ways to keep people.

<comment><USER3> This is what I really am having trouble understanding.

How disconnected from reality do you need to be to think surveillance and converting to an open office is going to somehow _increase_ retention of employees?

<comment><USER4> A surprising number of people in management seem to think "Oh, that'll make us very silicon valley and signal how cool & hip we are!"

And a surprising number of people who haven't had to work in open offices before think "Oh, that'll be cool: social, innovative, and collaborative!"

<comment><USER5> In the UK almost all offices are open offices. I am not sure of the benefits of a cubicle as i never worked in one.

<comment><USER6> Mostly sound suppressing, but does guarantee privacy (I've had to tell someone to fuck off as I'm doing managerial work)

<comment><USER5> Thats a good point re managerial stuff. So did i and i always had to sit in a corner or somewhere secluded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _McKesson has not yet determined what changes it will make as a result of the findings, but has considered adopting a more open office plan to encourage more discussion between employees._

LOL, way to be super creepy AND learn exactly the wrong lesson from this.

<comment><USER8> Imagine telling your investors how much money you spent to decrease morale and increase turnover cargo-culting SV companies. This article reads like something out of a Dilbert strip.

I can't imagine why they're having problems with "higher turnover".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> >McKesson has not yet determined what changes it will make as a result of the findings, but has considered adopting a more open office plan to encourage more discussion between employees.

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

</comment><comment><USER10> People keep forgetting that equipment _and subscriptions_ are your employers property and data, not yours. They have the right to access anything they pay for without telling you. It's important to remain aware of this any time you do anything for work.

Back before we had computers, there was nothing stopping a company from opening every memo that came through the mail room and recording every phone conversation and opening your file cabinets when you weren't there. The diffence was it was a lot more work for them to do those things, so it never really came up. Now it's super easy for a company to process every single thing you do or say, even including recording audio in the workplace.

So maybe it's time for us to look for some legal protections for worker privacy?

<comment><USER11> > there was nothing stopping a company from opening every memo that came > through the mail room

I hope I'm misunderstanding this, because I read it as saying they can open your mail...which I thought was a felony taken very seriously.

<comment><USER12> As well as bugging your phone. I don't think companies were ever allowed to do that.

<comment><USER10> Sure they could. It's their phone. As long as they buried in the hiring paperwork that all calls were recorded your consent was part of your employment.

<comment><USER11> It's very different if you sign a document consenting to it than if they do it without telling you (which is considered wiretapping by federal law and is also taken very seriously). Employee agreements aren't like EULAs; you should actually read them because it's probably your livelihood.

And if they do include it in the employee agreement like you suggest, it wouldn't be too difficult to create a PR headache for them by alerting the media.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "I'm not all tinfoil hat or anything" \- To be honest, you'd only be a tinfoiler if it wasn't the case. We can guarantee in this information age, your information is collected, potentially by multiple parties. You can rest assured that if your internet traffic hits US network nodes, they are collecting at least some data. A good example is the Kazakhstan mitm stuff going on. We know the US tries to backdoor encryption algo's. They are just less blatant about it. You can guarantee that China, the UK and numerous other governments are at least trying to listen.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm also in this business [1], the reality is everyone has to do it to compete. These systems help you fire bad apples, which could bring down your business. Personally started my company because I saw the lack of understanding and abuse of these systems.

Not a single company I know of built their systems to increase retention. No matter what they claim, HR doesn't really care about that - they care about bad apples. It's for insider threat detection and mitigation. Fire the trouble makers, keep the people who do work by the system metrics. The problem is that the system metrics don't reflect what employers look for (skill sets, influence, etc) that's why I started my business — to focus on skill sets and knowledge retention.

In any case, is this a bad thing? I don't know.

It's a fine line companies that build mass surveillance tread. HR and management typically fully trust the system numbers. Meaning, the amount you spend on email becomes a promotable/fireable metric... what if you just email efficiently or you use email ineffectively, the system may not pick that up.

Most of these surveillance companies are unscrupulous and the management of the companies they sell to fall into the point system trap. There's also no getting away from it. Every large company has, or will have these systems. So, the best thing you can do (and the difference with my company) is you make it clear to employees and try to provide benefits in some way. Our company uses as chat bot and provides a search engine. Most companies provide nothing to the employees, just monitor and fire them.

[1] [https://metacortex.me/](https://metacortex.me/)

<comment><USER15> _In any case, is this a bad thing? I don't know_

If the benefit of catching a bad apple is less than the downside of 100+ pissed employees due to being spied on, it is a bad thing, specially when a few KPI can't give you an accurate view of an employee's performance or impact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The article presents the ideal of this technology, how it's meant to gently improve productivity, guide training and alert about problem employees. Perhaps they are marketing to employers who haven't yet jumped on the bandwagon, perhaps to non-US companies? But companies are little dictatorships and once you give top level managers this snooping capability, leaders can't help themselves from making personal personnel decisions which erodes company talent. Instead of centers of excellence it creates centers of social compliance. I see a trend in VC backed valley companies, where this technology is well-entrenched, that favors inept-but-familiar culture, as long as your workplace data falls below the radar, you have a little expertise and you are above average social, then you have a job for life. But if you push your personal boundaries in the pursuit of excellence, and criss cross the harmonious flow of work-as-usual then you're flagged and operating under negative management bias. This is because it requires management to be far more mature and impersonal than it's reasonable to expect. The Scott Forstalls of the world are more likely to be driven out in favor of the nice guy who says nice things about your management style on Slack. It undermines the traditional go-get-em startup culture which helped the valley create great new technologies.

</comment><comment><USER17> there's something uniquely soul crushing about working in a corporate environment. After 6 years of it I think I've really had enough. I don't think we as humans were programmed to live this way.

<comment><USER18> some corporate setups let you get away with 10-20% effort, while collecting a "tech salary". that includes being detached from all shared suffering, political game playing, etc. depending on where you're at in life, this can absolutely be worth it.

sure, you won't get to senior VP but you can use that other 80% for ... self improvement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is anyone familiar with what data Slack makes available to management? Can they see a nice breakdown of when I was online?

<comment><USER20> I don't have an answer, but it always surprised me what people would say either in Direct Messages or in private channel. This is a corporate slack, I'm pretty sure management can access _all_ conversations, even in DM or private channels.

<comment><USER3> I know, at least at our tier, I _cannot_ access private messages.

<comment><USER21> Even if weren't possible now, it may be possible in the future because Slack (in practice) owns and controls that data without any oversight from you. Anything you say might be deleted after a while, or might be held indefinitely.

<comment><USER3> Well... Yeah. I didn't intend to imply that it will never be a feature (it might already be in higher tiers), and I never intended to imply anything about Slack's data retention.

I was just stating that at the moment, at my tier, I am unable to see private messages.

<comment><USER22> Your employer can always change your password and then login as you to read your private messages. It leaves behind a trace (you've gotta reset your password afterwards, they can't restore your old one), but it's a "workaround".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't think this is especially bad though am perhaps biased. If anyone is curious about their own data, Office365 exposes a nice API to get email and calendar data, as well as one called "People" that calculates an edge strength to others based on the various things. You usually have permission to pull your own data without corporate involvement.

Perhaps to rephrase the question. I hear a lot of privacy concerns about something like Facebook that knows too much about you and calculates all sorts of things. I agree with those concerns. Are people equally concerned if a metadata analysis reveals that individuals who communicate with a wider network of other employees tend to do better or worse, or quit or whatever- and you are an anonymized part of the individuals that led to that conclusion?

<comment><USER24> Personally I don't care about this data. I am simply concerned it's going to be interpreted incorrectly. Doing this kind of data analysis with just metadata is hard, and it's really easy to make major mistakes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> "McKesson has not yet determined what changes it will make as a result of the findings, but has considered adopting a more open office plan to encourage more discussion between employees."

Sure, that's going to help with retention.

<comment><USER26> It will, actually. It works like this: make the working environment so miserable that the only people who will stay are people who absolutely don't have any other options and will never speak up or organize against abuse. Bingo, you have a group of people who will never go anywhere!

<comment><USER27> You may be joking but it's true. This is essentially the core of why companies hire H1-B workers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> IBM claims to be able to predict with 95% accuracy which employees will quit.

This seems super helpful as an employer.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/03/ibm-ai-can-predict- with-95-p...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/03/ibm-ai-can-predict- with-95-percent-accuracy-which-employees-will-quit.html)

<comment><USER23> Without any insider information, I feel confident guessing that the accuracy number is merely % correct in environments where people quitting is relatively rare to begin with. If 95% of people aren't planning to quit next year, 95% accuracy is remarkably easy to achieve.

</comment></comment><comment> _o-O-o_ I know this is a cheap potshot, but who has a keyboard setup like that? [https://images.wsj.net/im-90409?width=1260&size=0.6666666666...](https://images.wsj.net/im-90409?width=1260&size=0.6666666666666666)

And the caption:

        Diana Hubbard, working from her home office in Texas, says she does not communicate about her private life on work devices at all. PHOTO: JONATHAN ZIZZO FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

<comment><USER29> In my experience I've yet to encounter a USB switch that will forward the LCD display data properly to the G15 keyboard. Although, I was using cheap USB and KVMs switches.

Another good question is who uses an overpriced "gamer" keyboard for work?

<comment><USER30> "Gamer" equipment tends to be far more reasonably priced than most good office-oriented equivalents. They also seem to be the only laptop segment that hasn't completely fallen to anorexia.

My old company ended up standardizing on Fnatic keyboards because they were the cheapest way to get silent Cherry switches with a reasonable layout.

I also used a gaming MSI laptop, because it was cheaper to buy and upgrade that than to buy a reasonable business Dell. ThinkPads weren't much better eiter (but also not an option anyway, thanks to Superfish and co).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Hopefully this is just US-based employee surveillance as this type of employee-data data mining is strictly illegal in Germany.

<comment><USER32> It's a pity that a country needs a Nazi holocaust to realize that mass surveillance is a bad thing.

The US will learn, as will the UK and Australia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> [http://archive.is/JsTT5](http://archive.is/JsTT5)

</comment><comment><USER34> Working for a startup that gave me a blank laptop and told me to set it up the way I liked is wonderful.

I think most Software Engineers don't have to worry as much about the spying, as we have full control over our system.

Corporate users, with locked down machines, however, should be wary.

</comment><comment><USER35> I would be more understanding of employers on this stuff if they also created dashboards of how much of our personal time got interrupted by work.

</comment><comment><USER36> How am I supposed to read this paywalled article? I'm not paying for it.

<comment><USER37> Why do you feel you have a right to read this article? WSJ has paid someone to write it and for the infrastructure to deliver it to you (and technically, for the bandwidth as well - however negligible, there is a real financial cost associated with delivering the content to your computer that does add up). Either pay up or leave, but don't complain that you don't get it for free.</comment></comment>


Continually uncomfortable at how ads read my private emails - <AUTHOR> https://michalsen.wordpress.com/2016/10/28/marketing-in-action/ <comment><USER2> [https://mailinabox.email/](https://mailinabox.email/)</comment>


Log Off and Get to Work - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/log-off-and-get-to-work/

<comment><USER2> This is another good opportunity to plug PG's submarine regarding PR. 53 percent of companies block employee surfing? Really? That would mean that more than half of the companies I have worked for so far should have been blocking employee surfing and I've yet to see one. 2/3 of companies will block employee web access by next year? Sounds like one of those PR gimmicks where they manage to publish bogus numbers and then use those numbers to sign on new customers.

Heck news.YC is more of a distraction to me at work than any social network (not anymore thanks to the nonprocrast features).

The truth is employees don't like to be treated like highschool students.

<comment><AUTHOR> _"... Sounds like one of those PR gimmicks where they manage to publish bogus numbers and then use those numbers to sign on new customers. ..."_

Could be right. Have you followed this thread where I posted an NYT article that turned out to be just such a sub. [0]

I would have thought the blogging section as an editorial of sorts (not cash for comment) was immune from this. Maybe not? Certainly if you want to push the Journalist on this point they might cough up the real motivation for the story.

The articles cited source is here ~ [http://www.barracudanetworks.com/ns/news_and_events/index.ph...](http://www.barracudanetworks.com/ns/news_and_events/index.php?nid=222) and like you point out, hardly an unbiased view. I'm beginning to think the viewpoint of a lot of _"New York TImes"_ articles are compromised and not worth posting.

[0] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=70836> and here ~ <http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/1685662827/></comment></comment>


Massive DDoS attack on the internet was from smartphone botnet on popular app - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/john-mcafee-massive-ddos-attack-internet-was-smartphone-botnet-popular-app-1532993 <comment><USER2> It could have been Uber.

Seriously though... Ayn Rand and all that.

Prepare for Uber to take control of the Internet.

Welcome your new overlords.

</comment><comment><USER3> Beware. Self starting video and pop-up window when you stop it.</comment>


The Real Reason Richer People Marry - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/opinion/sunday/the-real-reason-richer-people-marry.html?gwh=5E4DCFA873DEAA75E54E33A50662A613&gwt=pay&assetType=opinion <comment><USER2> This sentence makes no sense:

"Unlike their ancestors in the late 1800s, many of today's working-class young adults have responded to the difficulty of marrying by living with a partner and having children outside of marriage."

What difficulty in marrying? I could understand a difficulty in living together and having kids. But marrying? That's just a piece of paper. It makes little difference for people who already have a family together.

I think that people simply don't value that paper - it means little to them except maybe an expense for a large party.

Any analysis of marriage rates should consider people who cohabitatate to be married for the purpose of understanding family trends.

<comment><USER3> Or watching your loved one's paycheck be taxed higher because they married you (high income households.) See that they no longer are eligible for certain government programs that they depended on because your combined incomes are just high enough (lower incomes.) Certain low income homes we looked when I was younger looked at households income. No surprise that there were mostly single mothers who lived there.

<comment><USER4> _Or watching your loved one 's paycheck be taxed higher because they married you_

I'm pretty sure that's not normally how it works. Married couples have the same deduction (well, it's doubled, but they file only one return) and tax rates on a couple are lower:

        Income between 40,000 - 40,050
        Tax if filing single: 5,935
        Tax if married filing jointly: 5,111

        Income between 80,000 - 80,050
        Tax if filing single: 15,935
        Tax if married filing jointly: 11,864

[http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040tt.pdf](http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs- pdf/i1040tt.pdf)

Please notice that two single people making $40k each pay $5,935, while one married couple making $80k pays $11,864.

        $5,935 * 2 = $11,870

As for no longer qualifying for low-income grants or programs, most of those take marital status into consideration much like the standard deduction- a family making $10,000 is going to qualify for a lot more than a single person making $10,000

<comment><USER5> It's actually kind of complicated whether there are benefits or drawbacks to being married. For couples where most of the income comes from one person, there are benefits. For couples with roughly equal incomes, there is a marriage penalty for couples with very high (because the upper tax brackets start at less than twice of the corresponding single tax brackets) or very low (because of EITC) income.

Here a chart that depicts how the effect of marriage on taxes varies with income: [http://taxfoundation.org/article/effects-marriage-tax- burden...](http://taxfoundation.org/article/effects-marriage-tax-burden-vary- greatly-income-level-equality)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I read that entire article and I still don't understand the real reason richer people marry.

<comment><USER7> Simple:

1) Richer people are mostly smarter. Smarter people see through the toxic culture and seek to marry.

2) Wealthy people are often so because they do things that help build wealth and success, Ie. marriage. Smart people descended from smart married people are more likely to follow their parents warnings about the destructiveness of the toxic culture which attacks marriage.

<comment><USER8> Did you even read the article?

 _But some digging into historical census records shows that social class differences in marriage have been tied to the extent of income inequality among white Americans for at least 130 years. They also suggest that commentators who insist that the marriage gap is wholly a matter of values are almost surely wrong._

<comment><USER7> The article is purposely misleading. At best its entire premise is concluded on one small report that only looks at one source of data. Even the article admits: "To be sure, the parallel movements of economic inequality and marriage inequality do not prove that the former causes the latter."

The truth is that there was some correlation always - that makes sense with what I said, which is smarter people are going to do smarter things like marry and make more money - but the extreme difference is today, not 130 years ago. This extreme and growing difference is due to the toxic culture being promoted.

<comment><USER8> The funny this that I would agree to you that, at least to some extent, popular culture is part of the problem. But I think you're going to have to back up that argument with some hard data to make it sound like something more than another predictable culture war salvo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not the most well-written article for NYT, but interesting point and good visual. I think the "real reason" according to the author is simply that they have more money (as opposed to having better morals, culture, or whatever). It makes sense that marriage is unattractive if you're a working class male who doesn't think he could support a family.

</comment><comment><USER10> Different explanation, and some of this ain't pretty. (Apologies if this is male-centric, but it's probably quite similar for women.)

Richer people (or, at least, socioeconomically comfortable people) establish masculinity and effectiveness by building successful families. If you're happy at work and your kids are doing great and you're intellectually engaged, one woman is enough for most men. That obscene sex drive of the 17-year-old (that, if it could be realized at that age, would be horrific) is long gone. At 30 with a decent socioeconomic life, you can be satisfied with one woman as long as she's basically good to you, because you're _happy_ and don't need sexual variety.

For some men, this isn't an option. It might be a lack of long-term, decent employment. It might be a family situation that he can't extricate himself from. Or, he might be externally successful and have "the perfect life" from a distance but be ridiculously insecure. Most men who cheat are horribly insecure (which may explain their tendency to "cheat down"). I hate the stud/slut dichotomy because (a) it seems to equate insecurity with moral weakness (and while sexual _immorality_ is revolting, promiscuity isn't necessarily immoral, even if unwise for most people) and (b) the truth is that most promiscuous men are just as insecure as promiscuous women, so there's no justification for the differential perception of male as victor and female as conquered.

If you want to go deeper into the theory behind this, humans actually have _two_ sex drives, one geared toward r-selection and the other toward K-selection. Stereotypically, the r-drive is stronger in the young (15-25) and male; the K-drive starts to dominate at age 18-20 for women and 25-30 for men. The K-drive is the "work hard, build a nest, find one partner you really like, maybe start a family" sexual drive. But if it's frustrated due to socioeconomic insecurity, people are more willing to let themselves be distracted by the promiscuous r-drive. This can be OK if it's all consensual and no one's being cheated on... but if it's furtive and dishonest, it's awful.

This isn't about a difference in values between social classes. I don't think that there is one. The (small) upper class is its own beast and assessing it would take time from what I'm trying to say... but the _truth_ about family values is that, from lower to upper-middle class, and in all racial and religious categories, and even between straights and gays these days... there's much more variation within categories than between them. The marriage gap isn't about a discrepancy in _values_ or "morality" (if that even applies, and I'm not convinced that it should) but in _behavior_. We aren't more moral than the people in the ghettos. We just behave differently because we're under a different and mostly less severe set of stressors.

Plenty of people associate wealth with the opportunity toward promiscuity ("two chicks at the same time") but the empirical facts are that (a) promiscuity hardly requires money, social skills and tactics ("Game") being more important, and (b) most people who are socioeconomically comfortable have little interest in promiscuity after age 25.

Comfortable people (a better adjective than "rich", because some objectively rich people are financially reckless, uncomfortable, and miserable) are more likely to marry because, with a low level of stress, most people are influenced much more strongly by the K-selective sex drive after age 25 (if not earlier).

<comment><USER11> "If you want to go deeper into the theory behind this, humans actually have two sex drives, one geared toward r-selection and the other toward K-selection."

Human sexuality is very complex, and has had evolutionary pressure on it from many different directions... but that's not how the science works. I'll let Slate Star Codex explain ([http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/20/ozys-anti- heartiste-faq...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/20/ozys-anti-heartiste- faq/)):

"Is it true that some humans are r-selected, which means they're promiscuous and want to have lots of children, and some humans are k-selected, which means they invest in a few children?

No.

For one thing, r/k selection theory was shown to be a vast oversimplification of life-history evolution forty years ago. For another thing, it applies on a species level, not on an individual level. Humans as a species are absurdly k-selected. How many species can you think of that have young that are totally helpless for their first decade of life? r/k selection theory would argue that we wouldn't have casual sex, because humans are not remotely r-selected on any conceivable level! Clearly, this is not the case, which ought to make one wonder how applicable this is to human beings anyway."

Here is a paper going into the details of the science: [http://www2.hawaii.edu/~taylor/z652/Reznicketal.pdf](http://www2.hawaii.edu/~taylor/z652/Reznicketal.pdf)

<comment><USER10> _Is it true that some humans are r-selected, which means they're promiscuous and want to have lots of children, and some humans are k-selected, which means they invest in a few children?_

This is not what I'm saying. If you look at any human's ancestry, you're going to find both influences. The last thing I intend to say is that there are meaningful differences _between_ humans (either at an individual or group level) on this front. My point is that both sex drives exist, because both are a part of our evolutionary story.

 _Humans as a species are absurdly k-selected. How many species can you think of that have young that are totally helpless for their first decade of life? r /k selection theory would argue that we wouldn't have casual sex, because humans are not remotely r-selected on any conceivable level!_

My argument is that all humans are both, each to some degree, although the K-drive is more socially acceptable, civilized, and progressive... and probably the stronger one in most of us.

Being r-selective is actually very adaptive during times of ecological stress, such as after a population crash. K-selection is more fruitful when population is at saturation and the only available growth is civilization's progress. I don't intend to moralize on this. We needed both drives to get us where we are. You're right that, as applies to any specific animal, the r/K selection theory is a bit simplistic because almost all advanced organisms exhibit traits derived from both evolutionary imperatives (quality and quantity). For example, trees are K-selective in terms of being durable and large, but r-selective in terms of having many seeds.

As for "we wouldn't have casual sex", I'm not so sure that there's an either/or. Humans are an advanced animal and, given both our cognitive capability (and flexibility) and our numbers, it's quite reasonable to assume that human behavior includes the full spectrum of strategies. It's not unreasonable to suppose that humans are predisposed to r-selective behavior when young (15-25) and K-driven behavior when older (25+).</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Withdrawal of Porn/Weed/Alcohol? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a full time HN user with high votes but I'm hiding my identity to ask for something from my community. I've been watching porn and masturbating for the last 10 years also I've been drinking Alcohol and smoking marijuana for the last 5 years. Recently I've cut cold turkey for religious reasons and I'm experiencing low-esteem and Depression I have mood swings sometimes I'm happy and sometimes I'm sad and feel cold also. This never happened to me prior to cutting cold turkey from Alcohol,weed and porn. Has anyone experienced these symptoms during Withdrawals thanks. <comment><USER2> Check the first pages in your local phone book for "health and social services." You could also try searching DuckDuckGo for "______ County health services" or "substance abuse counseling" for links to local resources.

Finally, try dialing 211 on your phone, as many locales (in the U.S.) provide help now via phone. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> You just have to replace it with something. You usually look at porn when you're bored, so you wont if you're really busy all the time. [http://reddit.com/r/nofap](http://reddit.com/r/nofap)</comment>


NLP2Code: Code Snippet Content Assist via Natural Language Tasks - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.05648 <comment><AUTHOR> This tool demo video is available on [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-gaVYtCznI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-gaVYtCznI).

<comment><USER2> Is the plugin available in the Eclipse marketplace or github?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I don't know. I am not the author of that research.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> How about combining SO titles with Github code comments?

</comment><comment><USER4> Good. now someone apply NLP2Code to the paper, so that we can download the source code of NLP2Code( or at least the app ).

</comment><comment><USER5> SBD. Stackoveflow Based Development. The art of copying and pasting.</comment>


Ask HN: Why Doesn't Y Combinator have an Engineer in Residence? - <AUTHOR>

TechStars has added a role of "Hackstar" which is essentially an Engineer in Residence analogous to the "Design in Residence" role Garry Tan has at Y-Combinator.
Has Y-Combinator considered a role like this?
What is the thinking behind this role for incubators?
Relavant links: http://bostinnovation.com/2011/03/18/calling-all-hackers-%E2%80%93-techstars-wants-you/?isalt=0 http://www.techstars.org/hackstars/ <comment><USER2> I don't know what I'm talking about, but it seems like X in residence is a good idea if each company needs a little X, but if each company needs a lot of X then they should have their own.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point. I would imagine software engineering should be a core competency of every YC startup.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Based on wmf's comment, I wonder if a more specialized role would make sense?

Ops guy?</comment>


How to Keep WordPress Secure - <AUTHOR> http://wordpress.org/development/2009/09/keep-wordpress-secure/

<comment><USER2> Put it in a chroot jail on a dedicated server with SELinux, GRSec, and AppArmor all running at the same time, behind at least four layers of firewalls. Store the server in a lead-lined room with no net connection, and a good sturdy lock on the door whose opening requires a smart card, fingerprint and iris scans, and presidential orders filed in triplicate. Erase the smart card, spread acid on your fingertips, gouge your eyes out, and impeach the president. Pass HTTP correspondence in and out on floppy disks doused in holy water. Keep the server powered off at all times.

<comment><USER3> One aspect of VPS's and (eugh) cloud computing, is the additional security. I don't think this aspect gets trumpeted enough.

Instead of having a single big kick ass dedicated server running _everything_ , you can have maybe 10 VPS's each doing a different thing. You can group things together in terms of risk - put wordpress on its own vps, put your customer db on another, etc etc. At least then, if someone hacks into wordpress, it doesn't really matter that much - they _only_ get wordpress, nothing else, and you just clean off that machine from backups.

(Obviously have completely different login credentials for each VPS, and only grant access from one VPS to another when really necessary, and restrict it).

<comment><USER4> "You are absolutely deluded, if not stupid, if you think that a worldwide collection of software engineers who can't write operating systems or applications without security holes, can then turn around and suddenly write virtualization layers without security holes." - Theo De Raadt

But yes, you are right for the most part. However, just throwing apps in VPS doesn't automatically solve your security issues.

<comment><USER3> Having 2 completely separate VPSs, in different data centers, secured with different passwords, seems pretty much more secure than having a single server to me.

Yes, there could theoretically be a way to punch through from an insecure VPS into a secure VPS on the same host, but I think the chances are pretty slim there.

<comment><USER5> It's wonderful for redundancy as well. I recently migrated our DNS from two dedicated servers in the same data centre, to three $20/month VPSs all on different continents. I don't need power or bandwidth, what I need is super- redundancy. These new VPS deals just hand it to me on an ultra-cheap platter. Couldn't be happier.

The security is just an added bonus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's no such thing as a secure WordPress installation -- the best you can do is one without any _known_ issues.

<comment><USER7> AFAIK wordpress.com never got broken into...

<comment><USER8> That feels extremely unlikely.

<comment><USER9> Wordpress.com is up to date on the Wordpress software, only blogs that haven't updated since the last 2 versions are open for attack.

<comment><USER10> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_day_attack>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They should try to figure out why people don't upgrade. Maybe there need to be clearer reminders, or separation between features and security. The same goes for why people aren't making backups. I would imagine it would be quite easy just to diff the releases and exploit whatever got fixed anyways.

<comment><USER12> There are pretty clear reminders. If you log into the Wordpress control panel, there's a bar that says "The latest version is x. Click here to upgrade." And they also built an automated update script that downloads, unpacks and installs it all for you.

My guess is that people don't update because they fear potentially breaking their styles or something.

<comment><USER13> If you make a small change to the style you're using, it gets overwritten on each update as long as it's a built-in style. The workaround is obvious (rename your changed style) but, as an example, I have always been too lazy to do this and I'm always behind the latest version.

<comment><USER14> You should check out "child theme" functionality, which allows you to make lazy changes to the style without modifying any core files, which is highly recommended against.

<comment><USER13> You're probably right, but if Wordpress checked out "automatically branching a child theme every time I use the interface Wordpress itself provides me with to modify core files" functionality, it would be more usable.

<comment><USER14> I agree! This is on the roadmap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> An approach I really like is to run your blog software of choice locally, then rsync the generated flat files to a server. If you want comments, you'll need to maintain some dynamic component on the server, but it still massively reduces your exposure.

<comment><USER16> I've started using Jekyll + Disqus for simple things (see <http://narwhaljs.org> for an example).

Much less hassle than setting up a database, installing Wordpress (as easy as it is) and most of all remembering to update Wordpress every few weeks, as long as you don't need in-browser editing and such.

With Github pages (<http://github.com/blog/272-github-pages>) it's as simple as pushing your source templates and documents (in HTML, Markdown, or Textile)

Jekyll is a little limited though, so I also have some scripts that do a little preprocessing before handing it off to Jekyll.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Below link shows some WordPress security tips and hacks that you can easily implement on your WordPress blog.

[http://www.noupe.com/how-tos/wordpress-security-tips-and- hac...](http://www.noupe.com/how-tos/wordpress-security-tips-and-hacks.html)

</comment><comment> onreact-com This post just shows how desperate these guys are. They don't even address their own responsibility. They assume that having worms is perfectly natural.

They rather blame other people for suggesting the wrong solutions.

There is no other software out there that demands upgrades so often to no avail getting infected again and again nonetheless.

Oh, sorry, there is one: Internet Explorer!

<comment><USER7> Why not use another blogging platform then? It's not a Windows case of near- monopoly. There are plenty of blogging platforms. If WP is crap, why not switch to another one?

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately, the options are very constrained if you require both features and security. The only platform I know of with a strong security history and a decent feature-set is Apache Roller: <http://roller.apache.org/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the single best thing you can do with wordpress is to run an SVN install. They're usually pretty good about tagging updates, so for example the update to 2.8.4 consisted of this:

      svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.8.4

Which is about the acceptable level of hassle IMO. Much more and I'd be outta there.

<comment><USER14> This is fantastic advice -- for many WP blogs I manage I just have them svn update on a cron job nightly.

<comment><USER5> You should publicise it more on the WP home page! I'm pretty technically able and yet it took me quite a while to even realise I could do that.</comment></comment></comment>