Ask HN: Organizing company knowledge? - <AUTHOR> In the world of collaborative systems and wikis, what are some good resources for learning how to organize and structure knowledge at a company level? <comment><USER2> I've found that the tool doesn't matter as much as the company culture. You need to foster a culture of documentation for EVERYTHING. It doesn't matter if you have the best tools in the world if nobody uses them.

Too often this falls by the wayside because documentation of processes and preserving institutional knowledge, while extremely important, isn't the type of work that gets recognized or rewarded.

If anyone can recommend a good way to align incentives here, I'd be very interested.

<comment><USER3> That is so right.

In fact one of the best organization I ever lived was in a small company (<30 employees) and everything was just organized in folders. Just Folders, no special tool, no wiki, nothing. In fact the main document describing the organization was maybe 10 pages long and the first thing you had to read when joining. As everyone was following it it made finding anything a breeze.

There was basically a semantic document number indicating what the document was about, which revision it was and where it was stored. Each Project/Product had an index linking to the document that was maintained by hand. This even extended to software versions where you had to publish some zipped version of your software at each release.

I wonder however how it would scale...

<comment><USER4> Agreed. I've long felt that the most effective tool is good curation of the material. You can use a wiki, or folders; I've used both successfully. The most important thing is that the material is organized in a way which allows for findings things efficiently. It can work if everyone knows the rules of said curation, but I've found it works best when one or two individuals are effectively the mods. The mods set the rules (folder naming conventions, hierarchy, maybe leave a README file in the root folder, etc...). If you use a wiki, you still have "folders", and the same rules apply. Otherwise, it becomes a big ball of documentation mud.

<comment><USER3> Would the mods also enforce said rules? Would everything has to go through them? Or do they just check that they are followed? What happens with what is not conform?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ours is here: about.gitlab.com/handbook - it's open source: gitlab.com/gitlab- com/www-gitlab-com/

My tips:

1\. Maintain a clear single source of truth

2\. Make sure everyone can contribute to it. We do this by requiring at least to edits to the handbook during onboarding

3\. Embrace it as an organisation: if not everyone is committed to it, it's hard to maintain it as truth

4\. Constantly iterate and improve it. Structure is highly dependent on the content.

<comment><USER6> Curious whether you really mean _everyone_ -- including non-technical roles like Sales? I notice that for instance Sales seems reasonably well document [1] so, maybe so?

[1]: [https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/resellers/](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/resellers/)

<comment><USER5> Yes, everyone == every single person employed by GitLab Inc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> At Airbnb we built and open sourced our own solution for this called KnowledgeRepo. You can find it here: [https://github.com/airbnb/knowledge- repo](https://github.com/airbnb/knowledge-repo)

it is used throughout the data org and has been extremely popular and useful. there is a blog post here with more information: [https://medium.com/airbnb- engineering/scaling-knowledge-at-a...](https://medium.com/airbnb- engineering/scaling-knowledge-at-airbnb-875d73eff091)

<comment><USER8> Airbnb has been an incredibly good member of the open source community. Airflow is a great tool, and this tool looks really good as well. I was just digging around looking at superset a while back, and that looks awesome as well along with Flask App Builder.

I just wanted to give a shout out to all of you and say thanks for giving so much back to the community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I believe the general field of how you structure information is called "Information Architecture" \- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_architecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_architecture) should provide some starting point, as will searching Amazon for books on the subject.

There are other strands of thought that may also be relevant. E.g. I think HR people often think about "workspace learning" or "training and development" (e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_for_Talent_Develop...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_for_Talent_Development)).

And in the world of management there's the concept of a "learning organization": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_organization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_organization)

(You will get a lot of answers involving tools. Tools are the last thing to think about.)

<comment><USER10> IA is part of it, but the I would say the broader term for the field is "Knowledge Management".

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

Also related is the field of "Organizational Learning".

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

It's a huge topic, and would be hard to do justice to in a HN post.

There are a lot of good books on the topic. A few I'd recommend include:

[https://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Organizational-Learning- Know...](https://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Organizational-Learning-Knowledge- Management/dp/0470972645/ref=sr_1_20?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1523458858&sr=1-20&keywords=knowledge+management)

[https://www.amazon.com/Wellsprings-Knowledge-Building- Sustai...](https://www.amazon.com/Wellsprings-Knowledge-Building-Sustaining- Innovation/dp/0875848591/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1523458932&sr=1-1&keywords=wellsprings+of+knowledge)

[https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Knowledge-Transfer-Michael- En...](https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Knowledge-Transfer-Michael- English/dp/B005ZOM87O/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1523458951&sr=1-1&keywords=winning+the+knowledge+transfer)

[https://www.amazon.com/Only-Knew-What-Know- Knowledge/dp/1451...](https://www.amazon.com/Only-Knew-What-Know- Knowledge/dp/1451697570/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1523458975&sr=1-1&keywords=if+only+we+knew+what+we+know)

[https://www.amazon.com/New-Edge-Knowledge-Management- Changin...](https://www.amazon.com/New-Edge-Knowledge-Management- Changing/dp/0470917393/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1523458975&sr=1-2&keywords=if+only+we+knew+what+we+know)

[https://www.amazon.com/Fifth-Discipline-Practice-Learning- Or...](https://www.amazon.com/Fifth-Discipline-Practice-Learning- Organization/dp/0385517254/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1523459009&sr=1-3&keywords=the+fifth+discipline)

<comment><USER9> Oooh, nice. Thanks for the detailed recommendations!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One trick I've used successfully, at least at the team evel, is to maintain a "doc of docs".

This is a document which exists to link to other documents. I use a shared Google Doc for it (which is almost equivalent to a wiki).

Since it's a document (and not a folder or a spreadsheet) each linked document can be combined with some explanatory context - is the document current? What does it cover? etc.

I also like splitting my doc-of-docs into different headings, for example:

Current

Outdated

Related projects from other teams

The key benefit of the doc-of-docs approach is that the answer to EVERY question about "where can I find documentation for X" is "Look in the doc-of- docs". And the follow-up answer if they don't find it there is "Go and find that document, then add it to the doc-of-docs".

</comment><comment><USER12> Try [https://www.notion.so](https://www.notion.so)! It combines docs, wikis, and todos; it's collaborative, and it's _beautifully_ designed. It's perfect for building knowledge bases for teams.

(Disclaimer / I worked there in the past)

<comment><USER13> At a glance, it looks like a product that's stored on the company's servers. Why would any company, startup or dinosaur, want to put their knowledge base and documentation in the hand of a new pretty and fancy product that might fold next month?

There's no Linux download, no github, and especially, no server - I stay away from products like that, sorry.

<comment><USER14> > Why would any company

Almost every company uses external services for this sort of thing right now. Google Drive, Confluence, whatever. Notion allows you to export to PDF/Markdown as well.

[https://www.notion.so/Export-to-PDF-or- markdown-5406d98f17d2...](https://www.notion.so/Export-to-PDF-or- markdown-5406d98f17d2412dafa7cdf9826977ca)

<comment><USER15> Confluence and a lot of other products allow the company to install the product on their company server. Not on the server of some "startup". A lot of industries does not allow you to just store think on Google Drive, think any industry working with sensitive information like healthcare and the defense industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not a direct answer, but I recently tried to get a documentation and organizational thing going. To start, I created a dictionary which contains all of the terms, topics, ideas, reports, systems, internal phrases, etc; basically anything and everything I could think of. It quickly grew to a double digit number of pages, and it was very useful for outlining everything I might want to document.

Now, documenting things is a different story...as gringoDan pointed out here ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16811654](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16811654)), whether or not your documentation process/tooling gets anything done is directly 1-to-1 correlated with company culture on documentation. I've personally tried numerous times to get documentation going, and it always fails because no one keeps up with it.

</comment><comment><USER17> I literally spent the last 2 weeks looking into this. Used Confluence and a few wiki solutions before. Both in context of a tech team in a large investment banking institution, startups and community organizations. In the end it was a close call between Confluence and a new product called Slab, for my small startup but we decided to go with Slab ([http://slab.com](http://slab.com)).

What I liked about Slab is the way better performance over the Confluence, quick integrations from their team (took them about 2 days to add draw.io integration on request). I liked how clean it was and easy for non-devs in my team to understand the structure.

</comment><comment><USER18> One thing that I've found to be helpful is to write automation scripts for core business processes. In particular scripts using the python library Fabric3 ends up very readable. It's like runnable docs...

How was machine X configured? --> read the setup script.

How do I import the CSV data from server Y? --> check the steps in the script.

How do I add a new user to system Z? --> check the steps in the script.

</comment><comment><USER19> I once used Drupal 7[1] at a previous company. It worked out well. Its OSS so cost was my time, time which I would still have spent on a proprietary solution. Drupal has a concept of nodes, a node is a type of content. In our case, we were documenting a BI system. I created a node for reports, which were related to database table nodes and in turn had field nodes. It's amazing how much documentation can be associated with a single field. This included historical information why some values differed, the different apps writing to the field and sometimes legislation documents were attached to the field. I used the Feeds[2] module for automated data feeds. I had a script that exported Information Schema from our DWH. I would then import new fields that had been created. We would then edit the new field nodes. I used modules that provided syntax highlighting a module that notified users of new content. I was also able to write SQL queries against the database to extract documentation as data.

The point I am trying to make in case it isn't clear is that a system that comes with plugins and allows you to structure the documentation to suit your organisation is best.

As others have noted, not many developers love documentation. In my experience, it seems to happen in bursts. It's remarkable how useful and relevant a piece of information is even 5 years down the line. [1][https://www.drupal.org](https://www.drupal.org) [2][https://www.drupal.org/project/feeds](https://www.drupal.org/project/feeds)

</comment><comment><USER20> We use a gnarly WordPress install with a user permissions plugin.

I hate it, but it is the only thing we've found that meets all of our needs, isn't $500/mo+, and gives our mid level managers control.

We use it for everything from on-boarding, to training, to system documentation, to competitive intelligence documentation.

Sure we could build something custom, but overall it works and it's given the team leaders control over their "domain."

<comment><USER21> Just curious: why WordPress and not a Wiki of some sort?

<comment><USER20> We had robust training/quizes setup on WordPress using gravity forms.

Also we found that making people specifically responsible for documenting their job/building training for others before they "moved up" into a higher role was really effective. Wikis didn't allow for the granular control we wanted over who got to see training/documentation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My team hosts a meeting every two weeks to talk about staffing - who's overworked and why. We also discuss what problems we're dealing with and solutions we've found for those problems...so the group's knowledge grows, but not in an official, legible way. It's still tribal knowledge, but an effort is made to at least increase the size of the tribe.

The only time when people are absolutely required to document something is when it's a deliverable to a customer...so the customer needs to understand the product we're delivering to them.

We're all supposed to be using an engineering notebook to help document designs...but those really only come into play when someone leaves the company and the company is trying to retain as much IP as possible. Though they are incredible useful on an individual level.

Other than that, it really comes to down to finding time to draw a diagram or do a brain dump into a document describing how something works. Maintaining ICDs (Interface Control Documents) describing software/command protocols or hardware interfaces is pretty easy and provides a lot of information.

</comment><comment><USER23> Team drive is a gsuite feature one found handy. It has to be turned on in older gsuites as it's a newer feature but it is on automatically in newer ones.

It is good for defining structure and permissions at an org level for files and folders and solves that pesky problem of documents not being accessible if the Creator of them has their account shut down.

</comment><comment><USER24> Honestly there is so much software out there I have trouble telling what is good from bad. I was amazed that some one can start and bootstrap an indie company knowledge site ([https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/generating-25-000-mo-...](https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/generating-25-000-mo- offering-wikis-to-company-slack-teams-f7e811e0c2)) since there's Confluence and Sitepoint and god knows what else (wikis are basically open source tho requires devs to integrate, you can always hack it with google drive and google docs, etc)

its honestly a market i dont understand, i'd love a high level primer on it.

</comment><comment><USER25> In my experience, something that already ties into your company's authentication platform can really simplify access-control problems.

For example, when I worked at a company that used Google Apps for Business for everything, I set up our documentation in a Google Sites Wiki. Now that I'm working somewhere that uses Microsoft for everything, I've set up a Sharepoint wiki.

In both cases, the tools wouldn't have been my first choice from a page- editing or layout standpoint, but the ease with which my less-technical co- workers can search and find information and process documents with their existing credentials has been key to encouraging broader use.

</comment><comment><USER26> Somewhat of an odd option, but we use Trello cards since we live in Trello anyway. Two of the most frequently used boards: a "Handbook" for employee matters and "Customer Knowledge" where we distill custdev and sales conversations into topic cards.

Just paste in new information into the comments section and then work it into the summary in the card description. You can also assign each topic to have an owner to make sure the card stays fresh.

When there's a much larger document, we create a card for it and link to a GSuite doc. For dev knowledge however, it's updated in our repos directly (e.g., README)

<comment><USER27> In that vein, I've tried to create something vaguely trello-esque but more geared toward knowledge management rather than project management: [https://www.contabulo.com](https://www.contabulo.com). Specifically, I think it's much nicer for longer articles/documents than what you would typically put in a "card" on Trello.

Very much still working on it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> We've started using StackOverflow for Teams ([https://stackoverflow.com/teams](https://stackoverflow.com/teams)). It's really good, most of the company knows the experience pretty well already.

But, as others have pointed out, adding a tool won't create knowledge. You need to foster a culture of creating documentation, writing notes, just writing everything down. It's so easy to relax after a hard problem, but if you document it, then it will be easier in the future.

</comment><comment><USER29> Very simply, you need at least one person to play curator. The curator maintains/publishes builds of the documentation and keeps everyone on task for docs. Even in medium-sized groups curation is not a full time job (usually this is a senior dev anyways, and they always have other stuff to do). The curator does not have to write everything, but they show up in the code reviews ask others for their docs and makes sure they are collated in a well structured and organized form.

Some other things I've learned... Wiki's suck, they become stale, they are disorganized, very informal. I recommend just keeping big ass user guides (can be different ones for different systems or even user guides about procedures that are not about products) using a well-organized documentation system and a well-kept table of contents. Don't waste tech writers on internal docs. They'll spend half their time asking the dev anyways, it will get stale, and asking a dev to write something is not asking too much. Keep the docs close to the code, but not in the code like comments. Docs close to the code can let people have less friction between code and doc commits. Each non-trivial repo should have a manual (a.k.a. user guide) anyways. And if you have to, say, grab a bunch of RST files from a few disparate Sphinx doc locations, so be it.

I personally use documentation as a point of pride. My favorite part of any project is documenting the awesomeness I did. I just make sure I order it in a reasonable order and don't bloviate.

</comment><comment><USER30> We used wikis, it was a nightmare.

If you don't have a librarian at hand try something that forces more structure at you.

<comment><USER31> Yeah I've learned that organiztion of data seems to come back to librarians or libraries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Use a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system. You get binary version control, automatic extraction of text for searching, automatic document type conversion, tagging, thumbnails, custom fields, etc. Everything can be sorted into a category hierarchy, with many-to-many relationships. You can control who can access what and when, and users can use native or web-based clients.

As others have said, your company culture has to support it, lest you use the resources to set it all up and no one uses it.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm working on something that aims to make this easier from a more ground-up perspective, but it is many years away from when we can say this problem has been solved completely. Here's something I've learnt in the process (as gringoDan said in a comment on this tread) company culture is the fundamental requirement. The limitation with organisation tools is that they amplify your company behaviour digitally.

If your company does not prioritise a written culture, then there is no tool that can come in and magically do it for you. Your tools will only amplify this phenomena (your team will use the tools for some time, and then quickly think of it as "another thing to do" when the shine wears off and stop using them)

This is because of the way current tools are set up. I have seen companies hire interns to help keep their internal knowledge updated. Despite this, there is always some document to update. I view updating documents as work that is required to keep other (perhaps more "important") work seamless. I can draw a comparison between maintaining internal documentation and writing unit tests (both equally important, while being underrated and easily postponed for later) At scale it either compounds to a technical debt and can bring the whole company to a halt momentarily.

</comment><comment><USER34> I like Nuclino personally. Good feature set without all the cruft of a wiki solution.

</comment><comment><USER35> For smaller windows-only companies I've recommended OneNote on a fileshare.

It is really simple, everyone who can use Word can use it. It is also very wiki-like in that it is quick to edit, searchable (and fast), versioned and it is easy to see when something has changed (bold tabs).

Personally I used to prefer dokuwiki (and before that I made a custom tool in Javascript to simplify use of mediawiki to document procedures.)

</comment><comment><USER36> There have been a number of comment stating something like "the choice of tool doesn't matter, the use of the tool and convention does". However can anyone recommend a good tool?

We've been using a moin moin wiki. It's ok, but we'd like to move to a simple, hostel solution so we don't need to maintain a moin moin server.

We don't need fancy, just simple with attachments, images and links.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is exactly what we built Topicbox for!

[https://www.topicbox.com/](https://www.topicbox.com/)

Because large amounts of knowledge are locked away in individual emails, having a central storage repository with good search and easy control over the flood of information makes it possible to find the knowledge in-context later.

</comment><comment><USER38> We have a monorepo. Many subdirectories have README.md files, plus things like godoc/pydoc/etc. We also have a top-level docs directory for stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else. All of this is compiled to a static HTML site during our builds and published to a spot we can all view/reference/link to it.

</comment><comment><USER39> I've been at two major companies and both used some form of Wiki or collaborative site. If any company had a good idea how to do this, everyone would be doing it that way by now. There are definitely still improvements that need to be made to existing platforms. For example, neither site had a great search engine.

</comment><comment><USER40> In addition to the right culture, great platforms enable great ecosystems. I have found that putting everything as Markdown on a collaboration platform like Github/GitLab works really well and enables collaboration in a number of ways:

\- people don't feel awkward to modify other people's content because there is a collaboration and review process in the form of pull requests

\- you can assign different people to oversee different parts of the knowledge base. They make sure the organization of the knowledge base doesn't get messed up by reviewing changes of other people to it.

\- you can keep others in the loop about important updates (big and small) by tagging them in pull requests

\- verification can be automated via bots and CI, for example using [https://github.com/originate/text-runner](https://github.com/originate/text- runner)

</comment><comment><USER41> I have used MediaWiki for unstructured information with additional extensions for structured data (Semantic MediaWiki or Cargo) with Page Forms Extension.

This is difficult and time-consuming to setup. But if you cann afford the effort, this gives you a very flexible system where you can decide what to store in a structured or unstructured manner. Structured data can of course be queried, aggregated, vizualized etc. Together with the Page Forms extension this can replace many Excel Spreadsheets and MS Access solutions.

If you really know what you're doing, you can even do moderately complex CRUD Applications. But then you really need to know your way around several extensions and of course wikitext.

For simpler use-cases I've also used Drupal. For this use case it's not as flexible as MediaWiki, but you can do a lot through the GUI and build custom Forms / Views.

</comment><comment><USER42> Collaborative learning is a situation in which two or more people learn or attempt to learn something together. Unlike individual learning, people engaged in collaborative learning capitalize on one another's resources and skills (asking one another for information, evaluating one another's ideas, monitoring one another's work, etc.). More specifically, collaborative learning is based on the model that knowledge can be created within a population where members actively interact by sharing experiences and take on asymmetry roles. [https://www.besanttechnologies.com/training-courses/data- war...](https://www.besanttechnologies.com/training-courses/data-warehousing- training/big-data-analytics-training-institute-in-chennai)

</comment><comment><USER43> Reinforcement, not organization is critical. Its simply not enough to make knowledge available. You have to reinforce and reward its use, contribution, sharing and security.

At my company I do internal nurture marketing (thank you MixMax) to remind employees to use knowledge resources, and to contribute to them.

</comment><comment><USER44> Anything works as long as everyone does it.

I've seen companies using forums, Google docs, and even Github repos.

<comment><USER45> Every documentation system I've ever seen at any company -- large or small -- is almost always undermined by the inclination to: 1) not look things up, and 2) ask someone before looking things up.

The information is almost always 3 clicks away, but people just want to ask another person, or behave in a paralyzed manner as if the information couldn't possibly be found.

And if you work in a "lotta meetings" company culture, even moreso.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I'll rant a bit on the topic:

Starting out can be tough. Experience and observe the company/department/team you are seeking to organize and structure the knowledge for.

* Do they care about capturing, authoring, presenting and maintaining knowledge? How much do they care?

* Enough to insert steps into their existing processes or create new ones?

If so, you have a chance. Otherwise, focus on organizing and structuring YOUR OWN company knowledge. When others look over your shoulder at a meeting, read your notes, your reports, your guides, you may be able to entice.

Examples speak louder than words.

Tooling can be tough. If you work in a small outfit, you can likely spin up the best KM tools available. If you work for a dinosaur, good luck. They are likely already entrenched with some sharepoint mess that busily employs 10's if not 100's of people. Bringing your "new tool" to the IT department will get you the run around. (I've been trying to implement Gitbook (my fav KM tool) for over 1.5 yrs.).

Large companies may also have problems with cloud deployments. And honestly, in light of data breaches, etc, I get it. Many tools (most of the ones in this Ask HN) are cloud-based so this may limit your options.

I'm currently using OneNote to author and present ~300 pages of docs to ~3000 users. Being the SOLE author, this is fine. The style and structure are consistent, but I don't like it. OneNote doesn't support markdown (are you serious Microsoft?!? you don't have an f'ing markdown editor yet?), locks you up in a proprietary format, etc. etc.

Its also too "willy nilly". Its meant as more of a personal KM tool rather than a something for general consumption.

Where I lean:

* Static site generator under git version control

* Hook up with your local "Write the Docs" Meetup

* Check out the annual "Write the Docs" conference (coming up in a few weeks in Portland!)

* And start with YOUR OWN company knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER47> We started using Slite [http://slite.com/](http://slite.com/) 6 months ago with great success. We previously used Atlassian Confluence for our internal knowledge database, and it resulted in very static content and poor adoption. Slite is a much better choice: we use it for "static" company knowledge (like onboarding, processes, etc.), but also for most of our dynamic content (meeting notes, document drafting, sales support documentation, etc.).

Many people (including dev) use it on a daily basis, and most people on a weekly basis.

Definitely recommend.

</comment><comment><USER48> For me this was an oddly-timed AskHN. I am publishing a book on this exact topic in the next week or so.

[https://leanpub.com/info-ops](https://leanpub.com/info-ops)

<comment><USER33> Could you tell us more about how your book is relevant to the topic at hand? I've tried to read up on information operations, albeit in a different context.

<comment><USER48> Sure. I wasn't looking to pump the book, it was just weird.

I have spent my career with technology teams, either 2 guys in a closet or 40-thousand people working on multi-year, multi-billion-dollar efforts.

Something weird happens between the 2-guys scenario and the 40k version: critical information stops moving around effectively. Many times big organizations seem to exist and profit more out of a sense of inertia than strategy.

Looking at this, over the last several years I've been trying to identify why some organizations do well in how they handle information flow and how some (most) organizations don't.

There is a ton of detail here. It encompasses everything from Lean Startup to Business Modeling and Extreme Programming. (Way too much for an HN comment, sadly!) There are a few folks talking about how to think about information at the meta level, but not a lot. Happy to point folks to some free online resources. Just let me know specifically what you're looking for.

<comment><USER33> I'm working on something in the same domain, and it's very interesting to speak to somebody who has approached this problem from a scientific angle. I will email you shortly with some queries, if you please.

Best of luck with the book!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I set up an OpenGoo (now FengOffice) instance internally where I work many years ago. We use it to store Notes, categorized in Projects and Subprojects. The interface makes it easy enough for non-technical people to use it and search works well enough. There are also custom fields we've added to Notes, to make up checkboxes and dropdowns.

It's still our main point of truth for a lot of processes and details, though we've been considering moving to Phabricator which we're using for our code.

</comment><comment><USER50> I´m the COO of Zenkit, a project management tool. But that´s not the point right now. On our Blog [https://blog.zenkit.com](https://blog.zenkit.com) we want to try to show people how to work effectively alone, in teams and remote. We also show how to use systems like Zenkit to organize every company level.

</comment><comment><USER51> Confluence at my last job, it was a mess. If folks don't make an effort to keep documentation up to date & organized I doubt the tool used matters much. Finally find the stage db fqdn for that one app, but turns out it was moved twice in the year since the documentation was updated? Good times!

</comment><comment><USER52> Make all of your company's internal technical discussions archived and searchable forever, no matter where they happen (mailing lists, bug tracker, code review, chat, etc). That's more helpful to me than any amount of deliberately written "documentation" that instantly goes stale.

</comment><comment><USER53> Knowledge sharing will be effective when people get along well and care about what they do. I don't think the tools matter that much after that.

Create small teams that work well together, give them lots of responsibility and autonomy, and let them work on the things they really care about deeply.

</comment><comment><USER54> My employer uses Confluence [1]. I'm not a fan of Jira but confluence is ok.

[1] [https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence](https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence)

</comment><comment><USER55> there are a few commercial knowledge-base software vendor.

to use open source, wiki is not structured and i really don't like that much, folder-files are hard to manage once you have many files.

CMS could be used(e.g. drupal), however I hope CMS can support markdown _natively_ which is not the case for now.

I have spent so much time to find ways to organize knowledge myself, to no avail, I use drupal 7 along the year, which is not great, but I could not find anything better.

</comment><comment><USER56> Slite.com (YCW18) serves exactly this purpose. Full disclaimer it's my company, but this is the core issue we are tackling.

2 classic pitfalls with knowledge are \- what do you put in this word (for instance are meeting minutes "knowledge"?) \- how static you think it should be

If you only envision knowledge as static processes, traditional wikis work. If you want all your team to contribute and for this knowledge base to be a daily used tool, with all the information that matter you need another setup and we are building Slite for this (happy to have feedback!).

<comment><USER57> What makes Slite superior-to or differentiated-from Notion?'

Edit: I see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16476388](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16476388)

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> This is what I've studied, and taught in informal unpaid and paid settings. A presentation with audience teamwork is my favorite method.

</comment><comment><USER59> Evernote Business: [https://evernote.com/business](https://evernote.com/business)

</comment><comment><USER60> Recently we started using Slinkky [https://www.slinkky.com](https://www.slinkky.com) . It makes organizing information for your team and company really simple. There's a 30 day trial for startups so there's no loss if it doesn't work out. You can collaborate on personal boards with coworkers and add team spaces for shared content. You can restrict permission by user so only admins and managers can add content to team boards.

<comment><USER61> Never trust a website without an About page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Simple but powerful note taking: [https://notein.com](https://notein.com)

</comment><comment><USER63> I feel qualified to provide input here. Hopefully it helps. Ironically, it is quite verbose.

I position myself as

\- Virtual Chief Knowledge Officer aas

\- Virtual Chief Quality Officer aas

\- Virtual Chief Information Officer aas

\-----

Issue 1: "Knowledge and process is seen as a dichotomy, but shouldn't be".

All businesses that I have worked with, and all discussions I have seen or been a part of, draw a distinction between actual operations, and the workflow & guides that govern them.

The problem manifests as such:

\- The business doesn't update info, as it is buried away (out of sight, out of mind)

\- This fundamentally undermines the information immediately, making it even less likely to be used

\- The information is therefore less likely to be _updated_ , compounding the issue further.

Instead, these should be tightly integrated. For example - If a ticket/job is generated, the relevant guide should be proactively attached by the system _as part of that ticket_. When a human comes to that job, _the information is there waiting for them_. People aren't going to go out of their way to bring up information.

\-----

Issue 2: "The Business Manual is verbose, not effective or up to date, and people don't like it"

Most business manual's aren't encouraging use anyway, in that they aren't relevant, are too constricting in areas, and are verbose.

1\. Simplify (streamline the process, break the process down into procedures, break procedures down into atomic steps. Everyone in the organisation should know exactly what your processes are)

2\. Automate (any steps that can be automated, should be)

3\. Steer (Any steps that cannot be automated, should have a guide attached - But only to the extent that you need).

The last point is critical, as I often see strict, long instruction documents that stifle creativity, have a negative impact on job satisfaction, and don't cater for everything possible anyway.

Instead, guides should be curated to the extent required only, using the following attributes:

\- Budget hours (if you exceed this let's regroup and decide whether to re- plan)

\- Instructions (only where specific and accurate steps need to be followed)

\- Considerations list (exhaust this before escalating, but allow creativity)

\- Notes (general hints and tips / knowledge base that should be added to over time)

\- Team (a section which shows who can train and undertake the task, and who is on the 'to-train' list)

\- Reference (reference information or items)

\- Tools (any potentially relevant tools)

This strikes a balance between paternalism and laissez-faire, and uses each where it is most effective. It solves a problem in that business manuals tend to be 'ineffectually authoritarian', so people resent them anyway.

\-----

Issue 3: Information gets stuck

The following should be standard practice (knowledge transfer is king):

1\. An entity is generated in the system

2\. Template auto attaches

3\. The template has a list of people authorised to undertake that entity, and a list of people to induct to that procedure/task

4\. One of those authorised people undertakes the task, along with someone on the 'to train' list

5\. Repeat 1-5 until trainer can 'pass' trainee. Trainee's name added to the top of the authorised list

6\. Trainer moves down the list of members as people are inducted and added to top of the list, therefore gets used less and less for that task and is freed up to move 'up the process chain'

This creates a moving machine within the organisation, where people are proactively provided information to complete their job, and proactively are able to pass that knowledge on and faciliate personal development within the company.

\-----

Issue 4: Reactive thinking, lack of proactive thinking

The following should be deeply ingrained into the culture:

1\. The business becomes aware of 'the system' no longer comprehensively and accurately reflecting reality

2\. The interface node (user / system) that discovers this difference should log it immediately in or as a system entity (service ticket, general client, technical documentation update, client information change, new client user, data breach, potential sale, etc.)

3\. All relevant information should be auto-attached

4\. Whenever any entity is being closed off, the team member considers whether there are any potential follow ups that they can derive (including improvements to the template/guide), and triggers them

\-----

"3 clicks away" is not good enough. "2 clicks away" [was never] good enough. Information needs to be a) in the user's immediate view along with their work, or b) a single click away (to hide peripheral information, so as not to overload the primary view).

Documentation is unfortunately often an afterthought, or at best is a follow- up task for a system that is not at the forefront of people's vision and mind.

As a final thought, here are two contributions to the suggested software so far (no affiliation):

\- IT Glue (if you are in the IT industry) (www.itglue.com)

\- Process Street (www.process.st)</comment>


IBM Throws Out Microsoft Office  - <AUTHOR> http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/IBM-Throws-Out-Microsoft-Office

<comment><USER2> The problem was never the application, but the file format.

The trick is to make sure everyone uses ODF, at which point I don't really care how they edit it (much like I don't care what text editor people use to change basic text files). If someone prefers Microsoft Office, they should still be able to use it.</comment>


Berlin social housing winning the residential race - <AUTHOR> https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/2015/11/21/berlin-social-housing-winning-the-residential-race/14480244002645 <comment><USER2> Berlin has a housing shortage, and these measures are just workarounds. Before the refugee crisis, a growth of 40.000 people per year was expected, vs. plans to build 10.000 new apartments. The decision against developing the the abandoned Tempelhof airport only makes it worse, and shows some of the social problems in the city. Bear in mind that everybody who got to vote on the referendum already lived in Berlin:

 _" Though about 20 per cent of the development was to be reserved for affordable housing, the locals decided to keep their expansive city oasis free of any new buildings. The rationale was that increased supply often only means more luxury dwellings and does not address affordability."_

"Luxury" here doesn't mean huge, it just means "well built, nice kitchen, 14 EUR/m^2". It's like saying: "I don't want anybody else to buy a car, because they might get a Mercedes, which I cannot afford."

The social housing system is also quite unfair, if you ask me. Social housing apartments are in regular buildings, not separated from the rest. The idea is to counter gentrification, and keep the population mixed. You are only eligible below some margin of income. So far so good, but if you work and earn one Euro too much, you need to pay twice the rent, for the exact same apartment.

<comment><USER3> What's the alternative to mixed-income housing? The US tried segregated low- income housing for decades, and the result was a disaster. The new system, called Section 8, is a privatized voucher system; it doesn't give tenants lower rents, but by subsidizing rents directly, it has the same fairness impact.

<comment><USER2> Mixed-income housing is not the problem, the implementation is: earn a bit more, pay a lot more. There's a similar argument against unemployment benefits: in some cases, unemployed people can earn less by accepting a job.

I don't have a solution, but I think a basic income would set better incentives.

<comment><USER4> Why not set a gradient percentage of income against the cost of social/public housing?

The hard cut off for social housing benefits incentivizes keeping income below that threshold to maintain the benefit.

Basic income does nothing to increase housing supply, so urban rents would increase as a result.

<comment><USER5> Presumably the people who set these hard-cuttoffs aren't totally oblivious to the results, Australia has a similar problem with social welfare payments.

My suspicion is this is by design because a certain level of unemployment is required to keep labour costs down - or so the theory goes.

I've met a lot of people who don't _want_ to work, some because they're slackers and some because they'd have to get full time employment because anything casual they're likely to get wouldn't be worthwhile as it eats in to their welfare payments. So the system 'works' for some definition of the term 'works'. It probably also catches a lot of people unnecessarily too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sorry the article is full of nonsense. Rents are rising quickly in Berlin, and the government is not paving way for enough new housing to compensate for the demand. Limits on rents are also a reason why fewer housing is being built.

As for the protesters on the street - yes, it happens, but usually they are not successful.

It's really weird to see Berlin cited as an example for successful housing policies.

It may be so that if you can stay in your flat, you are in a relatively good position. But there are many people moving to Berlin, and people having kids can also not always stay in their old flat. So that policy only helps a few old residents.

<comment><USER7> > It's really weird to see Berlin cited as an example for successful housing > policies.

Still better than Munich lol. In Berlin you can at least find a run-down shared punker flat or occupied house if you're OK with that, in Munich you're straight outa luck if you aren't best friends with a RE broker.

LPT: If you ever have the chance to befriend a broker, do so - it might save your ass in the future.

<comment><USER6> These things exist in Munich, too :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article covers Berlin. How is it in other cities and states in Germany?

Berlin, as far as I know, has a unique history so that it's not always representative of Germany as a whole, in general terms.

That's to say, while Berkeley, CA, has some interesting politics, it does not reflect state or national policies. Meaning, what works in Berkeley (or Berlin) may not be transplantable.

Meaning that while interesting and worthwhile to study as a way to address housing shortages, it may or may not hold a viable answer for other jurisdictions who don't share some of the reasons making this policy viable under particular circumstances.

What's the state of affairs in Hamburg, Essen, Frankfurt, etc.

<comment><USER9> Munich here. Most expensive city in Germany in absolute prices and second expensive relative the the average income (Freiburg is top there). 12 Euros per square meter average rent. In good locations, 20 is asked regularly. More than 30 for small 1 bedroom appartements.

Statistics says, 3300 Euros per square meter buying price. We try to find a good place since 3 years, and we have never seen anything below 7000 Euros (in good central locations). 10.000+ is asked for regularly. The market is standing still because few people can afford these prices any more. Berlin prices would be a dream come true here.

Laws are the same as in Berlin. But since there is much more money to win, there is more aggression to get rid of old tenants and thus raise prices and/or build new houses. We have seen places, where the real estate dealer did not tell us how nice everything is, but calculated how much we can make, if we rent to Engineers who work for big companies like BMW or EADS. In cash and percent interest rate for our investment. Never heard that anywhere before.

<comment><USER8> Does that mean Berlin's approach to housing is unique to Berlin and that the policies which make renting both the preferred housing option as well as making it economically rational, not the case in other large metro areas?

I'm curious because people point to Berlin as a model (for providing affordable and desirable housing) but it would not be a good model if it does not work elsewhere. But conversely soul be a good model to study if it were viable elsewhere (especially booming cities -- where the issue is pronounced)

<comment><USER9> To my knowledge, the law is the same everywhere in Germany. Berlin makes a good example with still low prices because of its history. But there is certainly more protest against investors in Berlin compared to Munich. And more protection from the traditionally less conservative government. In Munich it counts as embarrassing not to be rich.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm in full support of some housing/rental market regulation, but such regulation is not without its cons.

Similar to Berlin, in New York, tenants have very strong rights. For instance, if a tenant stops paying rent, the landlord can't evict that tenant for 6 months. This sounds nice--helping someone in need instead of the greedy landlord--but the overall effect is largely negated (as usual, the market seems to always adjust when you mess with it). It's now MUCH harder to get an apartment in New York in the first place. You need a large income, guarantors, or lots of savings, in addition to credit checks, bank staements, tax statements, etc. I'm pretty sure the same people that the law was meant to help are now unable to rent in the first place.

One idea I have is, instead of messing with the free market, create a futures exchange whereby renters and landlords can lock in rent. This market is possible because there are just as many people concerned about rent going up as there are rent going down.

If you want to keep renting, but you don't want to hedge yourself via the futures market or via buying a place, you'll just have to accept the risk that you'll be priced out of your neighborhood someday.

<comment><USER11> >create a futures exchange whereby renters and landlords can lock in rent.

Can't you just sign a longer lease?

<comment><USER12> Considering you and the landlord have opposite goals(you want to minimize rent, she wants to maximize it), it is unlikely you would find a situation where long residential leases are offered.

<comment><USER10> Why is that? You might be right, but your argument isn't intuitive to me.

Landlords are afraid of rent going down, and renters are afraid of rent going up, so a long-term contract would be nice because it could simultaneously reduce stress for both of them.

These are the trades that create value--trades that reduce risk for everyone!

<comment><USER12> Each party has different acceptable levels of risk, and different outlooks on the market. Imagine a hot market. What landlord would sign a long term contract? Imagine if a landlord in silicon valley rented a house out on a 20 year lease 15 years ago. Big mistake.

<comment><USER10> This happens in other futures markets all of the time. The price/month of a long-term lease ends up being a bit more than the price/month of a short-term lease.

The same thing happens in interest rate markets: if you want to borrow money short-term, the interest rate is pretty low; long-term borrowing is scarier for the lender, though, so the rate charged is much higher ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yield_curve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yield_curve)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Two years ago I moved to Berlin from a different country and it took me 6 months to get my own apartment. Which was pretty good, because I knew someone who was leaving and he vouched for me. Then I understood that I subletted from someone who was subletted from another one who rented from company who rented from owner.

Normally you need credit score, letter of recommendation from previous slave- own^Wland lord. Then you can try to rent one. By which I mean you go there with 20 other people and land lord does... casting. They pick the best tenant out of quite big group.

Truly, the best way to rent!

<comment><USER14> It's gotten a lot worse in the past two years, more like 60 people showing up for attractive places and the whole job / income / vouching paperwork dance even for small apartments in the 500 Euro range.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What is the vacancy rate in Berlin? Is it at all possible to actually get your foot in the door and rent a cheap apartment?

The typical argument against price controls is that it reduces returns and discourages investment and new development, which can make it extremely difficult to find an apartment. The article didn't touch on this much, but this one line suggested that developers were still happily involved.

 _"...the large institutions that own much of the city's housing stock are looking for a steady return rather than boom-and-bust cycles..."_

Of course low vacancies happen in aggressively pro-development cities too. Canada has similar pro-homeownership policies to Australia and Vancouver's real estate market is similarly high priced as Melbourne's. New condos in Vancouver are being developed aggressively and yet the vacancy sits at 0.5%.

</comment><comment><USER16> _And yet the tens of thousands of new investment properties in Sydney and Melbourne that sit empty while waiting for a capital gain – labelled "speculative vacancies" by non-profit lobby group Prosper Australia – or which are rented to tourists at highly inflated rates, indicate that the market is not always a panacea for affordability._

Is that not just a glut that hasn't yet taken hold? If there really is over- supply, the investors will eventually end up competing with each other once they try to realize their capital gain.

I don't mean to suggest that a growing glut of empty properties ending with a bust is the best way for this to go, but it does seem to me that on a long enough time scale, supply & demand principles will still hold true.

<comment><USER17> "Empty" doesn't necessarily mean that it still owned by the developer and not yet sold on. It can mean that it has been purchased, but that whoever has purchased it has no use for it other than as an investment.

We've had this problem in London for years now, mainly in the west towards Vauxhall and beyond, but there are pockets of it all over, and it doesn't seem to be going away any time soon. Large new tower blocks containing "luxury apartments" are built, purchased by and often marketed solely to foreign investors and offshore companies as a way of parking large amounts of money into what is seen as a relatively safe investment, with several tax loopholes: Unlike many other investments, property in the UK is not subject to capital gains tax, inheritance tax etc. Also, if the property is owned by an offshore company rather than an individual then stamp duty (5% on £675k or more) is not payable. AFAIK this last loophole was closed last year, but only for properties over £2 million (and, I think the tax is only payable on the remainder that exceeds that).

As well as adding to an existing under-supply in the market for actual houses in which actual people can live in, the speculative feedback loop caused by this only drives up property prices further.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you want rents to go down, you need to incentivize builders to build more property.

Some regulation is good, but if there's too much in favor of the tenants, building more property becomes unprofitable, and you're stuck with the same problem.

</comment><comment><USER18> > It's like saying: "I don't want anybody else to buy a car, because they > might get a Mercedes, which I cannot afford."

It's funny how often envy is a motivating factor behind socialism.

</comment><comment><USER19> Pretty much the only way to be kicked out in Berlin is if the owner needs the apartment for themselves (or a close relative) to live in. It is called Eigenbedarf.

</comment><comment><USER20> The way markets boom and bust so frequently these days, one could almost interpret this as unveiling how ludicrous purely free markets can and probably will behave if they're given free reign, in the modern world, to "discover" market value.

Instead markets are in many ways indistinguishable from casinos anymore.

<comment><USER21> yes but markets these days are anything but free - with the fed (and its equivalents around the world) fixing the price of money then doing their Quantitive Easing tricks I would argue that we have a highly manipulated market now. On top of that the bailing out of banks etc also show that the market isnt free.

<comment><USER20> Very true. I think I was mostly attempting to point out "Shiny Object Syndrome" and how it applies to financial markets, and how quickly (in today's world) it can reinforce itself given the real-time nature of how information is distributed and consumed.

[http://impossiblehq.com/shiny-object- syndrome/](http://impossiblehq.com/shiny-object-syndrome/)

As soon as all day traders (not just my circle of friends, but every single active investor in the world) get word that the new big trend is going to be real estate in Brisbane Australia, that's where we're going to put our money, which is going to push the price up, which in turn is going to attract additional investors, which is going to push the price up even more, etc..

That is until the market starts to turn. In which case all people who have bought into the real estate market craze in Brisbane Australia (who don't actually live in Brisbane Australia) pull their money out, which in turn causes prices to drop, which in turn causes everyone else to start pulling their money out. Because they all knew it was way over priced. It's not their fault after all. It's not illegal. They were just riding the bull as long as they possibly could. Doesn't matter what kind of devastation they leave behind because they don't live there and won't feel its effects.

Oh, and by the way... Now that the Brisbane Australia bubble has popped, I heard the next big thing is going to be tulip bulbs. Great, I'm all in!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > And yet the tens of thousands of new investment properties in Sydney and > Melbourne that sit empty while waiting for a capital gain – labelled > "speculative vacancies" by non-profit lobby group Prosper Australia – or > which are rented to tourists at highly inflated rates, indicate that the > market is not always a panacea for affordability.

Easy solution: for any period longer than 3 months in which the property is not rented with a minimum lease time of 12 months, the owner has to pay a fixed sum per square meter of the property; said sum should be based on the asked rent price.</comment>


Rosetta: The ambition to turn science fiction into science fact - <AUTHOR> http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Rosetta_the_ambition_to_turn_science_fiction_into_science_fact <comment><USER2> I'm excited to see that ESA appears to be experimenting with various means to pull the broader public into their projects (like this video, or the super- neat cartoons tailored towards a younger audience: [http://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/Videos/2014/07/RosettaAreWe...](http://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/Videos/2014/07/RosettaAreWeThereYet_ --_Once_upon_a_time)). Perhaps we can someday have another big set of space programs that enchant millions and drive young people to dream big; to become the engineers and scientists that we need so dearly. It is hard to grasp how much of an impact the Apollo program (and the paradoxically symbiotic competing Soviet programs) had on a solid two generations of not only Americans, but on people from all over the world.

</comment><comment><USER3> It currently produces 1-5 liters of water vapor per second and gases include: carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, ammonia, methane, methanol.

[http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/10/03/measuring- comet-67pc...](http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/10/03/measuring- comet-67pc-g/)

We could put a self sustaining base on it or on similar comets in the future.

<comment><USER4> Also the surface temperature seems to be -68.15C (avg) - typical Syberia, only there is no atmosphere and sufficient gravity and magnetic field to protect from radiation.

Otherwise it's fine.

<comment><USER3> Sarcasm?

Nobody is going to walk on it naked. The conditions on the comet are amazing compared to the ISS, which is currently supporting life.

The comet has everything you need, water, organic material, shielding from radiation, decent size, raw material, energy.

<comment><USER5> That "magnetic field to protect from radiation" part is pretty important, though. (ISS is inside the Earth's magnetic field.)

<comment><USER3> All you need is a couple of meters of water or earth. The base would be inside the comet at complete safety anyway, and detection can warn you to get inside in case of increased sun activity.

It is really easy if you have just a little material:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_protection#Shielding](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_protection#Shielding)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The short film is very much worth a watch, if folks are wondering.

<comment><USER3> Good visuals, but the script is nonsense. They are really trying to invoke that warm feeling inside. Unfortunately watching Littlefinger posing as a deity, forced me to laugh. Using an unknown actor would sell it better.

( I'm not trying to be mean, that was just the impression I got. )

<comment><USER7> His character isn't a deity. I believe the background is that they're on an alien planet some time in the future and are just beginning to terraform it. They happen to be using "sufficiently advanced technology" (in the sense of Clarke's third law).

<comment><USER8> Exactly. I'm pretty sure that's how it's intended to be read.

For what it's worth, I thought the dialog was excellently written. A scene like that more or less invites overwrought, ham-fisted lines but the writers exercised some remarkable restraint (and Gillen and the newcomer match it with their deliveries).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm very much looking forward to the lander doing its thing. The photos will be breathtaking!

<comment><USER10> Indeed, the mind bounds ahead with such endeavors approaching - what don't we just send a hundred micro-bots designed to harvest raw materials sufficiently well enough to construct on-sight new micro-bots, designed to harvest raw materials, and so on. Seems real easy, the more I think of it, to capture a comet and do something with it. Like, within the next 100 years or so, 'easy', that is - as in, well .. maybe getting easier and easier. Rockets and robots, babies, its all we'll need to get there and do stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> That was a damn fantastic watch. NASA take note.

</comment><comment><USER12> Pretty darn awesome short film. Well done.</comment>


Ian Ross, Who Led Bell Labs, Dies at 85 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/business/ian-ross-who-led-bell-labs-dies-at-85.html?ref=technology <comment><USER2>
      "It's a foolish thing to tell a research person what
       the problem is - you'll get the answer to that problem
       and miss a brilliant discovery in the process,"
       Dr. Ross said.

Priceless.

<comment><USER3> He sounds like the perfect boss for an R&D department.

I never heard of him before, but now I feel like back when Dennis Ritchie passed away unnoticed outside of the tech crowd, while everyone was mourning for Steve Jobs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> a great view inside of bell labs in its heyday is the book "three degrees above zero".

[http://books.google.com/books/about/Three_Degrees_Above_Zero...](http://books.google.com/books/about/Three_Degrees_Above_Zero.html?id=qM_eAAAACAAJ)

it sounds like the kind of place i would have liked to have worked. not sure if any place with that magic (or PARC's magic) still exist in the corporate world.

<comment><USER5> MS research probably comes closest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _"If we had had the same progress in the aircraft industry, you and I could be flying between London and New York in 500,000-seat planes and the fare would be about 25 cents," he once said._

What kind of progress/innovation does he refer to in this?

<comment><USER7> ENIAC to your phone. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selectron_tube></comment></comment>


China piracy cost U.S. firms $48 billion in 2009 - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/18/us-usa-china-piracy-idUSTRE74H6CO20110518?feedType=nl&feedName=usdai

<comment><AUTHOR> It always strikes me as overly audacious when anybody makes a quantitative claim about how much piracy costs, as if they know how many people would have paid, had pirated alternatives been unavailable, and the benefits of viral marketing.

Also: "It also concluded 2.1 million jobs could be created in the United States if China complied with its current international obligations to protect and enforce intellectual property rights."

Really?

<comment><USER2> Yep. There are way too many other factors. Many people who pirate may never have considered paying for the material in the first place, and pricing would probably be quite different if piracy wasn't ever an option.

This is just more finger pointing from big corporations trying to blame consumers for all their woes. While movies aren't quite the same as software in general, they should take the hint from Netflix success that there is a legitimate problem on the supply side when much of what is watched on Netflix is easily pirated via upload sites and torrents.</comment></comment>


Diary of a Corporate Sellout - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/message/diary-of-a-corporate-sellout-587479c215f4 <comment><USER2> I worked on Upcoming briefly as a contractor in 2006, and it was a strange thing to witness. At the time Yahoo was acquiring a bunch of small sites but seemed to have no idea what to do with them. They just hung there suspended, like raisins in a jello mold, waiting for something to come along and digest them.

Eventually Yahoo solved the dillema by wrapping these projects in successive layers of management, like a bureaucratic oyster reacting to some irritant it doesn't understand but can't get rid of. Vast amounts of time would be spent on things like requiring integrated login, rather then stepping back and figuring out how to really fit Upcoming or Flickr or Delicious into a vision of what Yahoo was for.

I'm really happy Andy got the domain back. I'm still holding out for Joshua to reclaim Delicious!

<comment><USER3> Excuse me for being off-topic and awkward. But whenever I read something like

 _They just hung there suspended, like raisins in a jello mold, waiting for something to come along and digest them._

I pause and take a look at who wrote this.

And almost always it was written by that Pinboard guy.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, it was one of the best comments I've read in a long time. Well-chosen words and imagery, great metaphors.

<comment><USER5> Second metaphor about the oyster seemed perfect. Can't say I have had raisins in jello before, but it was easy to imagine and understand what he was getting at.

Really like the oyster pearl one though, gonna have to steal that one. I'm sure I could use it daily at work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "My hope was that I could use a social network to solve other first-world problems"

I like this piece of self-awareness.

</comment><comment><USER7> "So… Yahoo bought my website." "I don't think I can counteroffer that."

That put a smile on my face. Thank you for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER8> Here's a great podcast hosted by R.U. Sirius (of Mondo 2000) with the author, Andy Baio, as a guest - mere months after he sold Upcoming.

Lots of discussion about his foray into copyright infringement.

[http://mondoglobo.net/neofiles/shows/neofiles-034.mp3](http://mondoglobo.net/neofiles/shows/neofiles-034.mp3)

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if we'll see more 'resurrections' of good ideas that were acquired and killed simply due to bad business rather than bad ideas. Is there a list of companies/ideas somewhere that went down the acquisition path only to be killed ?

<comment><USER10> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Yahoo)!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Microsoft)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Google)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Facebook)

This page ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Amazon)) doesn't exist though interestingly enough

<comment><USER11> Amazon's list isn't long enough (yet) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com#Acquisitions_and_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com#Acquisitions_and_investments)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am rather shocked that people are _paying_ for it to come back.

I mean, the original was done as a side-project by the owner who did not have the money that, I assume, said post-acquisition owner now has.

<comment><USER13> This article is a candid perspective on making things, making money, integrity and other nuanced topics. Crying ' _You 're rich, do it out of pocket._' is the opposite.

People donate to projects like this on kickstarter because they want a project to go ahead exist and they want to be a part of that. The writer is getting (reasonably modest) resources with which to make it happen, perhaps even some compensation. He gets the support of 1000 true fans who put $40 where their mouth is. That knits together some valuable forms of validation, encouragement, responsibility and other small nuanced things.

Why would you inject your negativity into this mix?

<comment><USER14> So, I had a similar thought and I think there is more here than just hating on people who supposedly have access to resources. It goes more into the question about why people support Kickstarter projects that are more business than art. When you contribute money to a business venture, it is reasonable to expect either ownership in the company or interest payments plus your original principal down the road. In this case you get neither. While a $75 t-shirt is nice, it's probably not going to turn into a $100 t-shirt.

That being said, it looks like people have pledged over $100K so far, so as they say, "the market has spoken."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anyone know how much Upcoming was originally acquired for?

<comment><USER16> No one involved ever released details about the acquisition, I know it was for cash - but they likely didn't allow disclosure of the actual price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The author is right that no one really scratched that itch, at least up until recently. I spent a few years building something in my spare time to try to scratch the itch (and did a fair amount of research on the space) after Upcoming fell into disrepair but couldn't get enough momentum on it.

That said, Sosh seems to now be finally scratching that itch, just as Upcoming is trying to make a comeback.

<comment><USER18> Same. Learned a lot doing it but the events space is very difficult to grow a business in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This was a great story to read, and the ending hit me like a surprise twist, so much the better for being a real event. Thanks for sharing it.

</comment><comment><USER20> Wow what a story!i was an avid upcoming user in London back in 2007 and inspired my own startup back then.. Insane to learn now it was a side project! The first refusal idea should be part of a startup code or guidelines that all adhere to..

</comment><comment><USER21> Luckily, I think even Yahoo has improved since these days, thanks to Marissa Mayer.

</comment><comment><USER22> Great post.

It seems quite similar to French [http://www.sortiraparis.com/](http://www.sortiraparis.com/) that exists for more than 10 years I think.

</comment><comment><USER13> This guy really has a shrewd mind for nuance.

I'd never heard of upcoming, but I will definitely check it out in the future.

</comment><comment><USER23> This was back when every new websites monetization strategy was to be acquired by Yahoo.

</comment><comment><USER24> Good ideas should survive. What technology are they going to use to build the new site?

</comment><comment><USER25> Andy, any reason this is on Medium and not waxy.org ?

</comment><comment><USER26> Acqui-hire by Google in 3... 2... 1...</comment>


Scientists say most likely number of contactable alien civilisations is 36 - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jun/15/scientists-say-most-likely-number-of-contactable-alien-civilisations-is-36 <comment><USER2> Who are "Scientists"?

All scientists?

The authors of the paper?</comment>


Online Platforms: Examining the Dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google - <AUTHOR> https://judiciary.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=3113 <comment><USER2> Direct link to the stream on (yes!) YouTube: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBFDQvIrWYM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBFDQvIrWYM)</comment>


Ask HN: Would a SaaS tool to handle webhook delivery be useful? - <AUTHOR> It seems like delivering webhooks to customer endpoints, handling retries, logs and failures is a common problem every app needs to solve. Would you find an ultra low cost SaaS option that handles URL registration, delivery, logs and retries for you useful? <comment><USER2> Thinking about webhooks... do not sell webhook tools.

Only coders with no time to spend will want to use that... and they will feel bad because they haven't code the stuff and probably they would be able to code it.

If you want to sell to coders, make libraries and sell support and services around (think about Cucumber, or Sidekiq for instance).

For other kind of people, sell outcomes instead.

If you have a webhook that notifies you someone has unsubscribed from mailchimp, DO SELL that insights to a marketing company. Either as a SaaS or as a one-shot operation.

Outcomes sell much better than technologies.

</comment><comment><USER3> If the problem is important, then "ultra low cost" is not a requirement. If you build something that solves the problem, don't be afraid to charge meaningful money. 10 customers at $10,000 per month is better than 10,000 customers at $10 per month. Less support, fewer transaction fees, easier to talk to and get feedback...and a business model viable in a smaller market.

In general, customers who want to pay $0 tend not to be good for business.

Good luck.

<comment><USER2> "Ultra low cost" can be also a sub-$1000 monthly bill sent to a huge corporation ;-).

If you can sell them something in that range, they won't stop paying you (even if they don't use the service).

10 customers @$999 / month that don't make you work at all....

<comment><USER3> I don't disagree. I'd probably describe such pricing as "directly expensable pricing" and try to get it on a credit card subscription to avoid an invoicing process. With enterprise, or even small and medium businesses, invoice processes often involve discounts for timely payments and 90 day cycle times if the company thinks they can get away with it.

In terms of presentation for B2B, I think "high value" in the elevator pitch is better than "low cost." _Low cost_ tends not to distinguish between value and price. And _low price_ is a risk factor because low priced services tend to make the service provider less financially stable...and service provider stability is valuable for an enterprise.

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure about using a credit card for this. Simply put, credit cards are usually issued to (high-level?) employees that leave, change contact details, etc... so your customer lifetime value is capped by the credit card expiration date.

I've seen bills coming for backup ISDN lines located in offices dismantled several years ago. Why? because the cost was small and it was already pre- aproved in the budget.

Only after a _huge_ review we found out cases like this. But, that kind of reviews are unusual and expensive.

If you can afford to invoice a company and make them pay the bills for small quantities, you've got a business.

I do agree that _low cost_ is a bad idea to start with, unless you can own all the market and start raising prices... _BUT_ in that case you open easily the door to new competition and since your customers are price sensitive, you're asking them to churn as soon as possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This could be a positive or a negative, but… from personal experience selling to savvy developers and engineers, a very small percentage of customers actually use a custom webhook. Think 1%, not 10%. Also, that percentage trends down as the product gets better.

The downside: that's reason not to offer webhooks at all (that "every app needs to solve" them is not accurate), and certainly not to put much effort into them - maybe not even enough to migrate to your product. That's a low ceiling on the amount of value you can add.

The upside: prospective customers aren't likely to seriously consider building an equivalent, so their choice is not offering them, offering them with relatively little visibility, or using your thing.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everyone, some useful thoughts there. The "ultra low cost" comment was just recognising that the value of the tech here would be compared to the staff expense of building it yourself. It would just be saving some precious dev time, but not enough to charge $1000s for it.

I think it's a fair point though that only a small percentage of customers actually use webhooks, so the value is further constrained by that.

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes - depends on the pricing model but definitely sounds useful.</comment>


Coronabot: Chatbot for help and info around Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://coronabot.org/ <comment><USER2> Resource that collects all sorts of info about COVID-19 ("coronavirus"), using sources like the WHO, CDC, NHS, and ECDC. Uses a chatbot to help you find answers to your COVID-19 questions</comment>


Russian company (mail.ru) had access to Facebook user data through apps - <AUTHOR> https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/10/technology/mailru-facebook-russia/ <comment><USER2> Facebook managers are so happy to make money that they sell data to anybody.</comment>


Getting Meteor to 1.0 - <AUTHOR> http://www.meteor.com/blog/2013/10/01/geoff-schmidt-at-devshop-8-getting-meteor-to-10

<comment><USER2> After seeing the first, extremely slick demo of meteor, I was, as I believe a lot of people were, extremely excited to see where the project would go. Then came the funding, and some twelve or sixteen months of development, and I finally decided to dive in.

I really wanted to like it. I was predisposed to do so.

But from the very beginning, I was confronted with something I consider a deal breaker. While I am wary and generally disinclined toward the increasingly popular pattern of curl an installation script and pipe into sh, in this case it is not only skeptical, it is downright ludicrous. Why would I, nay anyone, want to install an npm package this way? Should not the installation instructions simply be `npm install -g meteor`? And what if I need to work on multiple meteor projects with different versions? Surely there is support for adding it to your package.json file, but why is this not the primary means of installation and well documented?

Maybe I am being overly sensitive to these issues, but it really baffled me that the very foundation upon which a meteor project is predicated would be contradictory to the typical node workflow. I will probably try meteor to spike out a project at some point in time, but I do not foresee myself using it extensively in the near future.

<comment><USER3> Thank you.

Saying that Node has a package manager is a huge understatement. Node has one _hell_ of a package manager, but you have to hack[1] around Meteor to use npm modules, even in the latest version.

My impression of Meteor, and the impression a number of node people seem to share, and which I've seen reinforced on HN, is:

Meteor is in an almost adversarial relationship with the node.js open-source community, because while they're good hackers building something cool, they took millions of dollars in funding[2] and want to keep their options open for monetizing that codebase.

This makes every decision they make differently than other open-source real- time frameworks (to build their own package manager, require a contributor agreement on an MIT licensed project, and use a nonstandard install process[3,4]) considerably more worrisome.

And it's frustrating, because there's nothing going on in Meteor that necessitates going outside of the "node.js ecosystem" \-- aka NPM [4,5,6].

That impression might be unfair in some way, and obviously the meteor people spend a lot of time responding to just these sort of concerns from the node.js community.

But "Meteor" means "worry" to me.

\---

[1] [http://meteorhacks.com/complete-npm-integration-for- meteor.h...](http://meteorhacks.com/complete-npm-integration-for-meteor.html) [2] [http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/25/meteor- funding/](http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/25/meteor-funding/) [3] [https://atmosphere.meteor.com/](https://atmosphere.meteor.com/) [4] [https://github.com/meteor/meteor/pull/516#issuecomment-12919...](https://github.com/meteor/meteor/pull/516#issuecomment-12919473) [5] [http://derbyjs.com/](http://derbyjs.com/) [6] [https://github.com/substack/node- browserify](https://github.com/substack/node-browserify)

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure what your problem with contributor agreements are; basically every sizable open source project has one. You know, like... Node: [http://nodejs.org/cla.html](http://nodejs.org/cla.html)

<comment><USER5> Meteor is awesome. It considerably simplifies web-development. I just want to let the core team know that many many people really appreciate your efforts and I sincerely hope that negative comments such as those by Mr. Luc don't discourage your team and do not distract you from the really awesome work you are doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Congrats to the MDG team on having 1.0 within reach, and thanks for releasing an amazing platform.

Meteor is one of those platforms that you should try. I could give you a menu of features, but the productivity boost from Meteor is one of those things you really should experience. The productivity boost is very real and its quantifiable.

An experienced developer can get a very good feel for Meteor over a single weekend: 1\. Buy the book: [http://www.discovermeteor.com](http://www.discovermeteor.com) (the book is $39...I did not purchase the other packages) 2\. Spend a weekend doing nothing but coding

Come Monday morning you'll know what Meteor is about.

PS: I am not part of MDG, and I have nothing to do with the book (other than having bought a copy).

<comment><USER7> Co-author of Discover Meteor here, glad you liked the book!

<comment><USER8> Curious to learn about meteor but probably will end up needing an up to date book when I actually get around to programming with it. So if I purchase the $40 package, will that include updates up to maybe a year from now?

<comment><USER7> Yes, we'll update the book for free at least until Meteor reaches 1.0.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Earlier this year, I did an experiment: I implemented the design for a reasonably simple rich web app using two different stacks: Clojure on the server Clojurescript for the client, and the other being Meteor.

I have lots of Clojure experience but little Javascript experience. Still, the Meteor implementation took me half as long and had more features. That was a surprising result for me.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you're curious about Meteor, I recently wrote a short introduction to it from the point of view of front-end JS developers: [https://www.discovermeteor.com/2013/09/17/meteor-for- front-e...](https://www.discovermeteor.com/2013/09/17/meteor-for-front-end- engineers/)

</comment><comment><USER10> I made a meteor app and it was one of the best experiences I've ever had making a web application. Even though what I made was fairly basic, the ease of creating a real-time application was amazing.

</comment><comment><USER11> Thanks for posting this. Great overview of what to look forward to. As someone writing an app in production based on 0.6.5, should I plan on any big "rewrites" as the framework approaches 1.0? A better question might be, what will be backwards compatible and what will I have to scrap? It sounds like packages are the one area I should be the most careful with...

<comment><USER6> There will be breaking changes as Meteor moves from 0.6.5.1 to 0.7 to 0.8 up until it reaches 1.0. This is part of the bargain of working with pre 1.0 software (APIs etc. will be stabilized once 1.0 is reached).

I have found these "breaks" are minor and usually require a few minutes to fix. That said, I also tend to lag behind by a few weeks as other in the community work through the details of the breaking changes.

Meteor Hacks ([http://meteorhacks.com](http://meteorhacks.com)) and EventedMind ([https://www.eventedmind.com](https://www.eventedmind.com)) are two great resources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd love to see freebsd support for the install scripts. Last I looked support was in its infancy. Maybe I should revisit.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've read through the documentation twice (once when it was released and again a week ago) and reviewed the basic demos. Meteor's front end structure seems like it's missing something. It has a data layer and a view / template layer but nothing else. No routing, controllers, etc.

Is there a good demo / tutorial that integrates these missing components, either from meteorite libs or well known projects like Angular or Backbone?

<comment><USER14> I agree, it's missing a good routing system. iron-router is a 3rd party solution but I didn't have good luck with it. Seems this is functionality that is core to the framework (it's hard to build anything more than a tech demo without routing).

<comment><USER15> Once you understand iron-router, which takes an hour or two of going through the documentation and trying examples, it really does everything you could ask a router to do. I think its worth a shot of trying it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been using Meteor since its release and its been great at making apps at maximum velocity.

You mentioned that some people are already scaling Meteor across multiple servers. Looking at it, round robin load balancing won't work given requests to a server seem to be stateful. How is that being done as of now? Do you guys have any guidance on how to do that?

<comment><USER17> Yes, if you're using DDP over sockjs instead of just over websockets (which Meteor currently does out of the box to support older browsers), you'll need to use a HTTP proxy with sticky session support.

This will be in the official docs at some point, but for now, Arunoda's blog post about this is a great starting point:

[http://meteorhacks.com/load-balancing-your-meteor- app.html](http://meteorhacks.com/load-balancing-your-meteor-app.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm very impressed by the technology behind Meteor, I just wish it weren't quite so "opinionated". It relies on standard parts of the node/js web stack, it would be great to have a stand-alone library that supported DDP for front- ends and servers of the developer's choosing.

</comment><comment><USER19> Any hope of writing/supporting meteor with python backend? :)

<comment><USER17> Sure! The Meteor client and the Meteor server speak a protocol called DDP, which runs over websockets or HTTP long polling. Meteor clients can connect to any DDP server and vice versa. So you just need to implement a DDP server for Python.

DDP is pretty simple (just a few messages) and the spec for the 'pre1' version of the protocol is in Git: [https://github.com/meteor/meteor/blob/devel/packages/livedat...](https://github.com/meteor/meteor/blob/devel/packages/livedata/DDP.md)

This is pretty close to version '1' of the protocol that will be locked down in Meteor 1.0: [https://trello.com/c/kMkw800Z/53-official-ddp- specification](https://trello.com/c/kMkw800Z/53-official-ddp-specification)

<comment><USER20> I love the DDP as a concept. It's akin to REST-on-steroids, over a websocket with pubsubhubbub sprinkled on top. I really wish more people knew about it, I hope drivers are adapted quickly (some have been). Interoperability & extensibility will make it a killer web feature.

<comment><USER21> I know I sound like a fundamentalist, but how is anything like REST? It's an RPC protocol! Nothing against RPC, but it doesn't fit any of the REST constraints, except for the client-server; it's not stateless, it can't have middle-man caching and it doesn't really follow an uniform interface. It's nothing like REST (and as such it doesn't get its benefits).

<comment><USER17> Speaking as the protocol designer, the eventual intention for DDP is to model reactive data set publishing in a sufficiently semantic way that it can be cached by proxies. We didn't get there in pre1 and decided to not let that block Meteor 1.0, but it is the goal for the future when we have some post-1.0 breathing room (and when the Meteor community needs it.)

The idea behind DDP is that HTTP got us three huge benefits: (1) shared tooling (I can write a caching proxy, and anyone with a website can use it); (2) interchangeable parts (your client and your server can be built with totally different languages and frameworks); and (3) easy APIs (I can describe my site's REST-y API to you in a page or two). These days, a lot of sites are moving away from REST/HTTP and toward ad-hoc, custom publishing schemes that run over websockets or a HTTP long-polling transport that is emulating websockets. Since they use these ad-hoc protocols to move around data rather than something like REST, they lose (1), (2), and (3). But all of these ad-hoc protocols are basically isomorphic to each other. DDP is an attempt to nail this kernel of data publishing functionality down semantically to the point that you can get those three benefits back.

As an aside, what's the pressure that's pushing these apps away from REST? The two big ones are:

\- They cache data locally and need to keep the cache fresh (say they are apps that run in your browser and never reload the page, or they are native mobile apps), and they don't want to poll for updates. And/or,

\- They need to do joins and they care about latency. (When you are loading the news feed, you want to fetch the feed stories, the comments, and the userpic URLs in one round trip, not first request the stories, and then only once you have them request the comments.)

Also, many modern apps have verbs that don't map well to REST (a RPC like transferBalance affects multiple objects and doesn't map well to the idea of updating the representation of an object identified by a URL), and many modern apps need to perform some form of latency compensation (predicting the outcome of a RPC and simulating it locally to update the client's display while waiting for the server's answer, but then reverting to the authoritative outcome chosen by the server.)

DDP attempts to address these needs and run over a stream transport like websockets, while recovering some of the benefits of standardization that made REST so successful.

<comment><USER21> Thanks; I can perfectly understand the advantages of having a standard protocol, and if DDP becomes an effective standard for applications outside of Meteor, it'll be a great achievement. I just wish people were more aware of what REST really means.

DDP seems like a good technology _for webapps_ , but the issue is that I find webapps a really uninspiring trend in web development; my vision for the web is much more data-oriented than the code silos we're all making. And I believe the lack of understanding of what REST means is preventing people from seeing a bigger picture.

 _Also, many modern apps have verbs that don 't map well to REST (a RPC like transferBalance affects multiple objects and doesn't map well to the idea of updating the representation of an object identified by a URL)_

I've heard that a lot, and I don't doubt that it's true in many cases, but usually it seems more representative of a difficulty in the modeling process.

For example, a transferBalance call certainly doesn't map well to updating any object, but creating a new Transfer (and passing the URLs of both Accounts) would be perfectly RESTful, in my opinion.

<comment><USER22> > but the issue is that I find webapps a really uninspiring trend in web > development; my vision for the web is much more data-oriented than the code > silos we're all making.

Can you tell me more about your vision?

<comment><USER21> I'm sorry, I started a reply, but after two paragraphs of rambling I had to delete it all.

If you want, I can try to form a more cogent reply later, but in a short summary, it would be keeping the current trend of sending structured data, but restoring the principles that made the web great - decoupling code from data, connecting it across services and communities (turning Hypertext into Hyperdata) and aggressively adopting standard formats.

I see a web where I don't go to Hacker News; messages come to me from everywhere, to where I want them to. Where I don't open an issue on Github, but on my personal tracker, which federates with theirs. Where businesses work for consumers, responding to their demands, instead of pushing their crap on us.

This view is mostly based on a mix of the concepts such as the Semantic Web / Linked Data, VRM, the Intention Economy and other ideas.

<comment><USER17> I'm totally there with you, and my hope with DDP 1 was to make some progress on that first step: decoupling code from data, so that a standard DDP client can connect to any DDP server and pull data out of it.

In the future, I'm super excited about investigating ideas like DDP discovery (asking a DDP server what data and methods it has) and description (having a DDP server publish metadata in some standard format that explains the semantics of the other data that it's publishing in terms of microformats). I think the main place we differ is that I think that these formats should use something more like a relational model rather than a hypermedia model, or a formal knowledge representation model like RDF. Isomorphisms exist between these models, and used properly they are all equally powerful, so really this just a design decision about what will be easiest to implement and adopt. And of course I believe that it has to be server push (websockets) rather than poll (HTTP), and that it has to support server-side joins (doing 1 query rather than N+1 queries, and taking 1 roundtrip rather than 2, to retrieve your newsfeed stories plus the comments on them.) I can't tell from your comment whether you agree with that or not, but like I said, these are two of the main things that motivate DDP.

All of that said, I think that by far the hardest part of the puzzle is the product design and federation issues. In your federated Github and HN, the technical work is the first 10%, the next 90% is finding a user experience for it that makes sense to and is ergonomic for a large number of real users, and the final 90% (really should be more like 9000%) is convincing the industry (read, creating incentives to force the industry) to cooperate with the federation and to resolve all of the political squabbles about advertising, control of the data, licensing, and so on. I mean, Google pulled out of XMPP federation -- all practical evidence suggests that keeping these federation together is wicked hard.

So that's why we're just trying to build the first 10% of that first 10%, which has a very clear use case for building rich browser apps and mobile apps -- and hoping that we will be a stepstool that others such as yourself can stand on to build the full solution that everyone dreams of.

Anyway, if you are sympathetic to this line of argument, I hope you'll check out DDP and see what interesting discovery and self-description features could be built on top of it, or suggest how its semantics could be strengthened!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hope you finish soon. I am excited than for an review of meteor and derby, i think that this are the two most exciting projects at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER24> Metheor got about something like 16M $ in funding, if I remember good, and they can't afford a proper microphone for the speaker? :)

<comment><USER24> comeon, downvoters, don't you have a sense of humor? ... man...

<comment><USER17> Doing AV right is hard! You can devote your whole career to learning how to do AV well, and I have a ton of respect for the skills of the people that choose this path. It's a lot more than plugging in a microphone.

We do try to improve AV with every Devshop, and we have recently started to bring in AV professionals to help. But honestly, pre-1.0, I think it's way more appropriate for us to be spending our time and money on advancing the framework than on super slick video presentations. In many ways it's more like the Meteor community's time and money.</comment></comment></comment>


Trans-Pacific Hawaiki cable secures US landing site - <AUTHOR> http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK1311/S00505/hawaiki-secures-us-landing-site.htm

<comment><USER2> 20 terabits/second

[http://hawaikicable.co.nz/index.php/network](http://hawaikicable.co.nz/index.php/network)

<comment><USER3> Hmm - it tells me to get flash player. My phone says no.</comment></comment>


BitCoin FlashCrash - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1X6qQt9ONg

<comment><USER2> A bit off topic, but this video brings to mind my favorite U.S. equities flash crash video:

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

<comment><USER3> "Talk about exuberance." It seems like this fellow wanted the stock market to crash and burn. Sad.

Here is some additional information regarding the 2010 Flash Crash: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Flash_Crash>

<comment><USER4> I would want it to crash and burn - so much potential would be freed, no companies who could afford to buy senators.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "This is going to be the biggest story ever" ...hearing this made me smile and realize that in the larger scale of things there are probably worse things that could happen.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is it me or is it odd that it bottomed out at 0.0123456?

<comment><USER7> There are few to no orders at that price level on the exchange; in this case, the person who sold down the BTC also posted buy orders at that level. Look for .01337 next time there's a hack like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was in that forum while that was happening....lol.</comment>