Maxima – A Computer Algebra System built with Lisp - <AUTHOR> http://maxima.sourceforge.net/ <comment><USER2> Fricas (a fork of Axiom, which is a rename of Scratchpad 2) is another very old CAS implemented with Lisp, also now open sourced. I think Fricas is more powerful than Maxima (maybe much more) regarding symbolic integration and its type system, but it sadly has very few developers maintaining it.

Fricas links:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FriCAS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FriCAS) [https://fricas.github.io](https://fricas.github.io) [https://fricas.github.io/book.pdf](https://fricas.github.io/book.pdf)

Axiom links:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom_(computer_algebra_system...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom_\(computer_algebra_system\)) [https://github.com/daly/axiom](https://github.com/daly/axiom)

<comment><USER3> Does it come with proper equation printing?

A big problem for me getting into Maxima is that the frontends I've found are pretty unstable and the terminal version only does equations as ascii art, which I just cant' stand reading.

<comment><USER4> >pretty unstable

What do you mean? wxMaxima has worked fine for me.

<comment><USER5> I've had good success with wxMaxima as well, but none of the equations I've worked with can fill a blackboard. SymPy is very nice as well, but for obvious reasons, it feels a bit more forced when interacting with it.

<comment><USER6> I use Sympy interactively, and I don't know what you mean by "forced". It doesn't feel that way to me.

<comment><USER5> this is a bit rush, but an example setting up the quadratic equation.

      f(x) := a*x^2 + b*x + c
      solve( f(x),x );

      from sympy import symbols, solve
      a, b, c, x = sympy.symbols(('a', 'b', 'c', 'x'))
      y = sympy.Eq(a*x**2+b*x+c, 0)
      solve(y, x)

<comment><USER6> I would change the first two lines to:

      from sympy.abc import *
      from sympy import *

I would put that into a file, and auto-load it at startup so I don't need to run it manually every time - one way of doing that is using iPython profiles.

Also put this in your startup file to get more pleasant looking output:

      init_printing(use_unicode=True)

Once you've done that, you only need to type:

      y = a*x**2 + b*x + c
      solve(y,x)

<comment><USER4> SymPy already comes with `isympy` script that will import everything from SymPy and create some common symbols (x, y, z, t, k, m, n, f, g, h) using either `python` or `ipython` (default). To do what you said the following script may be run.

      #!/usr/bin/env python
      from sympy.abc import *
      from sympy import *
      import code
      init_printing()
      code.interact(local=locals())

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Of interest may be my project that implements a CLIM-based user interface on top of Maxima. It turns out that CLIM is perfect for this, as its idea of presentation forms matches the way mathematical expressions are represented in Maxima.

I have made a few videos showing how it works. It's also available on Flathub, or if you're brave you can build it yourself.

[https://peertube.mastodon.host/videos/watch/df751bd5-5a26-44...](https://peertube.mastodon.host/videos/watch/df751bd5-5a26-44da-90d5-f47624161649)

[https://peertube.mastodon.host/videos/watch/b003360f-97a9-4f...](https://peertube.mastodon.host/videos/watch/b003360f-97a9-4f77-b474-e78d9bb687cb)

[https://github.com/lokedhs/maxima-client](https://github.com/lokedhs/maxima- client)

<comment><USER8> I love CLIM, too bad it's not used much. The whole idea of it is very interesting, an evolutionary dead end that in many ways seems far superior then what "modern" GUIs provide

<comment><USER7> I think there are more practical reasons why it's not used more. What you say is absolutely true of course, but the bigger issue is that McCLIM still has some technical issues.

What is really needed is a multiplatform backend that implements everything completely. Right now the only production grade backend is the CLX one, and even that one requires you to jump though hoops to get complete font rendering.

I built all of this into the flatpak distribution, but few people are willing to go through that just to distribute some software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For a bit of a Maxima vs Mathematica perspective, it is worth reading Fateman's review of Mathematics:

[https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~fateman/papers/mma.review....](https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~fateman/papers/mma.review.pdf)

<comment><USER10> Beautiful writing: "... a critique of this aspect of the system will have to wait until the bugs are fixed and only the features remain."

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am often amazed that one can run Maxima on an Android phone (Maxima on Android), including Gnuplot graphics and MathJax math formulae:

      plot3d ([cos(x)*(3 + y*cos(x/2)), sin(x)*(3 + y*cos(x/2)), y*sin(x/2)], [x, -%pi, %pi], [y, -1, 1], ['grid, 50, 15]);

      /* gradient of the log-likelihood for a time-dependent accelerated failure time model */
      assume(t>0)$ H:-log(S(integrate(exp(alpha+beta*x(u)),u,0,t))); diff(delta*diff(H,t)-H,beta);

Axiom/Fricas is a beautiful language which provides a powerful mathematical type system.

<comment><USER12> Why are you amazed about that? A modern Android phone is a general purpose computer roughly as powerful as a 2010-2015 laptop. Math software like Maxima, Mathematica, Maple have a very long history and was widely used on 1980s/1990s hardware.

<comment><USER13> Because it is amazing? Intellectually I know all about Moore's law, but having a supercomputer in your pocket still feels like science fiction in reality. There's no reason to push that feeling away.

<comment><USER14> But things like plotting a simple function, 3D or not, are vastly less performance-intensive than almost all _other_ things that people do with their phones, like rendering just about any modern webpage. Never mind actually demanding things like playing 3D games (doing _that_ on a cellphone was indeed rather amazing back in 2011, being accustomed to mobile games mostly being simple 2D affairs).

<comment><USER15> I recently pulled out an old 2008 unibody Macbook pro just to play around on. It was a nearly %100 CPU utilization just attempting to play a 4K youtube video. That's something my $400 phone doesn't even break a sweat on. It's amazing how well cell phones have been optimized in the last decade.

<comment><USER14> That one's probably thanks to hardware h.264/265 decoding. That poor 2008 MBP likely has to do all the heavy lifting in software…

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Used Maxima to find some analytical differentials. It is very powerful but documentation could be a pain to decipher if you're new

</comment><comment><USER17> To my detriment, I avoided having to learn anything in my 2007 highschool online Algebra 2 class by simply feeding the equations into Maxima. That was the year I first started using Linux - a Ubuntu 8.04 install CD on a Linux magazine saved my laptop from a corrupted Windows Vista install while away from home.

<comment><USER15> I was doing my first Linux install around the same time. I ordered an install CD from both Ubuntu and Linux Mint; the Mint one came in first, so that's the OS I used for my first few years. I used the CD to make a bootable usb stick so that I could use the internet when my parents weren't home (they kept Windows password protected). I've never actually run Windows on a personal machine since I didn't have my own until college, and but that time I was a few years into my Linux journey.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> See also, computer algebra library for Scheme:

[https://github.com/dharmatech/mpl](https://github.com/dharmatech/mpl)

<comment><USER19> How does it compare with JACAL, which is the old Scheme one I know? [https://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/JACAL](https://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/JACAL)

<comment><USER20> According to a file mpl.org in the repo linked, JACAL uses SLIB. Not sure if MPL does not, but I would assume that.

Not sure what difference it makes, but probably some.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If you want to see what it can do for you, wxMaxima is an easier entry, with at least an attempt at a GUI: [https://github.com/wxMaxima- developers/wxmaxima/releases](https://github.com/wxMaxima- developers/wxmaxima/releases), although macOS is quite badly supported.

</comment><comment><USER22> There is a maxima to python translation tool. It's good for sharing your maxima code with everyone else. [https://gist.github.com/LakshyAAAgrawal/33eee2d33c4788764087...](https://gist.github.com/LakshyAAAgrawal/33eee2d33c4788764087eef1fa67269e)

<comment><USER23> This is nicee... With this we can bridge between historic Maxima and technology of present aka Python. As they say "It is in the roots, not the branches, that a tree's greatest strength lies."

<comment><USER24> Thank you for the kind words..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think sagemath uses this for their symbolic package

<comment><USER26> That is correct. We embed Maxima at the C level using ECL for much better performance than one might expect (basically call Maxima from python very efficiently in the same process!).

<comment><USER25> Prof Stein,

I am pleasantly surprised to get a reply from you! I have one question, How often is Sympy used in Sagemath compared to Maxima?

Or rather when I do symbolic math in sagemath, do I ever hit Sympy?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is this related to macsyma?

<comment><USER28> Maxima was the port of Macsyma to Franz Lisp at UC Berkeley done by Prof. Fateman and his students. Franz Lisp was written to be Mac Lisp compatible for the sole purpose of running Macsyma. Prof Fateman worked on Macsyma at MIT.

<comment><USER29> And today Franz Lisp is instrumental in running older maclisp programs because the Franz lisp binaries still run unmodified on current BSD releases (with kernel compatibility turned on).

<comment><USER28> That's amazing. VAX or 68k binaries?

<comment><USER29> Less exciting than that, the first BSD port.

Details are here: [https://github.com/turbo/netlisp](https://github.com/turbo/netlisp)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> How does this compare to Sage?

<comment><USER2> Sage is a python wrapper around other systems such as Maxima or Fricas.

<comment><USER31> Does sage also handle numerical stuff? The impression I got was that it was a bit more general than Maxima.

However, I am terribly frightened by programs like this, as I suspect they are much smarter than me, so I tend to avoid them.

<comment><USER26> Yes, Sage includes Python and the Python numerical stack (numpy, scipy, etc). It also has a lot of new code related to interval arithmetic (arbitrary precision numerical computation with proven error bounds).

<comment><USER31> I do numerical linear algebra stuff, but every time I hear about interval arithmetic my ears perk up. It just seems like our error bounds require caveats (a-hah, I actually gave you the backward error, nyaah!) while theirs are just numbers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Electric Scooters Are Causing Havoc? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/20/technology/electric-scooters-are-causing-havoc-this-man-is-shrugging-it-off.html <comment><USER2> Havoc? We dedicate 50% of space downtown to cars. But it's "havoc" when another form of transit takes 0.01% of sidewalk space.

That said riding on sidewalks should be discouraged, and individual offenders ticketed. But we should also create more biking like infrastructure in which these scooters can operate.

<comment><USER2> San Francisco is a continual disappointment to me in it's regulatory approach of banning things.

Allow docess bikes? Nope let's mostly ban them but grant Uber subsidiary, Jump, a monopoly on operating a very small number.

Allow electric scooters? Nope let's ban them!

Have dynamic pricing for parking in the Richmond? Yes, but let's severly restrict how dynamic it can be and have a huge freakout.

Build more houses? Nope let's downzone and empower local obstructionism.</comment></comment>


Using Ember.js and Firebase for powerful real-time applications - <AUTHOR> http://www.thomasboyt.com/2013/04/13/emberjs-and-firebase.html

<comment><USER2> In case anyone would like to compare, here's a similar example using Angular and Firebase:

<http://firebase.github.io/angularFire/examples/chat/>

Source: [https://github.com/firebase/angularFire/tree/gh- pages/exampl...](https://github.com/firebase/angularFire/tree/gh- pages/examples/chat)

<comment><USER3> And here is the 14 line jQuery version.

<https://www.firebase.com/tutorial/#session/pxkpekf5ze3>

Would love to see your angular demo implement authentication.

Also, your angular demo uses angularfire.js.

<comment><USER2> It's not my demo, it's firebase's demo. Why should it not use angularfire?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Regarding Firebase: * How do you access logs * How do you email users * How do you run cron-like jobs * How are passwords stored? Are they salted? AES256 encryption?

I've been reading the docs and questions like these are not readily accessible.

<comment><USER5> Firebase engineer here. For things like chron jobs / emails / any logging you want to do, you can run a node server that uses the javascript SDK. That lets you do things like, "any time a user writes to this location, send an email with the contents of the data".

You can also observe arbitrary data changes and log any info that is relevant to you.

As for passwords, we have a few details here at the bottom of the page here: <https://www.firebase.com/docs/security-quickstart.html>

The short answer is that we use bcrypt for password storage.

Hope that helps!

<comment><USER4> A node server that I run on my server accesses Firebase through the SDK, right?

<comment><USER5> Correct. There's a quickstart guide for using the Node SDK here: <https://www.firebase.com/docs/nodejs-quickstart.html>

You can also use the REST API (<https://www.firebase.com/docs/rest-api- quickstart.html>) to interact with Firebase from any platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I absolutely love Firebase. It's dead simple to setup and a pleasure to use.

<comment><USER7> Have you tried Meteor? I've been comparing the two.

<comment><USER6> I haven't played around too much with Meteor actually. Both seem like great technologies though. I've been using Firebase to store data whereas I know with Meteor you can still roll Mongo or any other DB.</comment></comment></comment>


Apply HN: THRIVE- Smartwatch Personal Trainer and Nutritionist - <AUTHOR> What if you had a personal trainer, would you workout more? Would you gain the body you truly want?
What if you had your own nutritionist? Would you eat healthier? Would you be less confused about what to eat and when to eat it? What if, you could have all this, from a single app for a fraction of the cost?
THRIVE is the worlds most complete fitness & nutrition application that guides you along your journey.
THRIVEfit:
- Smartwatch (applewatch, galaxy gear) guidance during workout
- AUTOMATED tracking of reps, sets, weight lifted, heart rate & REAL-TIME feedback of form, strength, power, volume and more using motion sensing tech in your smartwatch
- PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS that interpret your data and know when you'll plateau and adjust program for continuous muscle confusion
- MOTIVATION by challenging a group of friends or participating in regional/national challenges.
THRIVEfood:
- MEAL-PLANS tailored to you based of biometric info, daily routines, food preferences and exercise data.
- EASY tracking of macro nutrients for a balanced diet
- OPTIMAL meal timing with smartwatch notifications.
- AUTOMATIC meal adjustments based on exercise data and biometric changes
THRIVE is currently in development and excited to help people simplify nutrition and fitness so they can live a life that THRIVES.
Please ask us your questions and we'll be happy to provide answers! <comment><USER2> That sounds like a lot of stuff for a single app. If you had to choose ONE thing, what would you focus on?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi c1sc0,

Yes there is a lot going into the app.

The problem we're solving is that exercise and nutrition go hand-and-hand, but yet, there isn't a (great) way to manage these aspects holistically, especially with the level of accuracy and intelligence we're building, thus the inspiration of THRIVE.

Thats a great question. The predictive analytics is really at the core of the unique value we're bringing to the fitness industry. Thanks again for the great question!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> i have a moto 360 v2 and am looking for an app that will track my gps and distance i traveled without actually taking my phone with me on the run.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi DREADBOX,

I've not done enough research on running specific apps to be able to give you good answer. I do see the v2 version doesnt have a Barometric Altimeter while the sport version does and that might have something to do with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can it check form?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi noja, Yes, the app will sense your "plane of movement" for a given exercise. Thank you for the question!

<comment><USER5> How can a watch, worn on the wrist, have any idea of whether your back is straight, curved, or whether you're rolling your shoulders when doing a squat, or over-head press?

Edit: PS. "Muscle Confusion" is not generally regarded as a real thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Stevekemp,

Both watches which will be supported by the app have at least 3 axis accelerometers and 3 axis gyroscope, meaning the watch understands various plans on motion in relation to is position on earth and can track those movements very accurately.

Given the exercises you're using in your example, squat and over-head press, the wrist will travel through a specific plane of movement (when done properly) for each exercise respectively.

For example, Stand up and put your hands up as if your holding the barbell on your back, as you would in a squat and perform a proper squat....straight up and down.... Now tilt forward to curve your back as you describe in your comment and do a squat... Did you notice that you've now changed the plane of movement your wrist traveled between the proper squat and "bad form" squat?

This is how the app would work and though that may seem like subtle difference in the wrist to you and I, to these motion sensing technologies, its a major difference that can be detected.

Thanks for the great question and hopefully this helps!!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Yanis Varoufakis: How I became an erratic Marxist (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/feb/18/yanis-varoufakis-how-i-became-an-erratic-marxist <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9067355](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9067355)

<comment><USER3> Thank you so much! I just read through this about a half hour ago and just assumed no one bothered to comment.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Did your taxes increase in 2018? - <AUTHOR> I haven't done my taxes yet but very concerned about the cap on SALT (state and local tax) deductions kicking in in 2018 as someone living in California. <comment><USER2> Pretty much invariably this is what I'm seeing- if you live in states with huge state tax- ny, ca- then taxes increased. Otherwise decreased.</comment>


In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20120729/in-week-two-marissa-mayer-googifies-yahoo-free-food-friday-afternoon-all-hands-new-work-spaces-fab-swag/ <comment><USER2> One strategy for Yahoo:

Turn Google's strengths into weaknesses by opening up all of Yahoo's products (Search, Mail, Finance, Maps, Sports, News) to developers to be maximally programmable. Allow developers to monetize in any way they feel like (aside from fraud) and let them link together apps in creative mashups. This links together YQL, Yahoo Pipes, YUI, BOSS, and several other existing Yahoo technologies into Yahoo as the platform for the Open Web.

If Marissa wanted to really push hard on this: buy Blekko, take a big stake in Github, buy Mozilla, and possibly buy Meteor and/or DerbyJS. That gives you a tech stack which is pretty strong in search, best of class among developers, pretty strong in browsers, and the future of web development. Then let developers knit the pieces together and give them contractual terms which stipulate you won't go up the stack at them like Facebook, Apple, and Twitter did if their apps are successful.

Basically, if Apple represents ultimate centralization and Google is somewhat open, turn Yahoo into the ultra open, monetizable platform for the web. They have the traffic, they could make this a very attractive proposition for developers.

<comment><USER3> For the record, Mozilla is a 501(c)(3).

<comment><USER4> That is the Mozilla Foundation. There is also the for-profit <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation>

<comment><USER5> ...which is owned by the Foundation. I doubt the Foundation will hand it over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Free food is a big idea. As a one time Yahoo, I was shocked. This shows to me that Mayer is going to be different. I am not sure if every CEO previous to her had this choice, but none of them did it. It either proves that the board has given her a lot of leeway, or all the others have been weak kneed.

Seriously, food is a big deal, someone at my orientation asked a VP why we didn't get free food. She answered by explaining that the only people who liked the free food were the employees, and that share holders didn't like the free food, and that we work for the shareholders. With that everyone _clapped_. I remembered at the time that free food sounded good, especially because I was about the become a Yahoo employee.

So, I hope this is like the Canary in the coal mine, but in reverse.

<comment><USER7> Wow, what an awful, awful answer that was from the VP.

The shareholders probably didn't like her salary either, did it get cut?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks like Marissa has learned the lesson told by Steve Blank in his famous essay, the elves leave middle earth

[http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle- eart...](http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle- earth-%e2%80%93-soda%e2%80%99s-are-no-longer-free/)

It has bought her time with the engineers while she decides what to do.

<comment><USER9> I love this comment on the @sgblank post:

 _When I started at mindspring as a startup (a dial up company) there were some very interesting rules._

 _1\. Drug testing policy. If you have drugs we will test them._

Classic stuff. That's the kind of culture I want to build at Fogbeam Labs when we get to the point of having employees. I like to say "let's be the Mötley Crüe of software companies." Hard partying, hard fighting, and ass kicking, that's the stuff we're going for - well, along with great software, world- class UX, and better integration of enterprise software than you can get anywhere else.

<comment><USER10> I wish you success in that endeavour. The danger is that you might try to be "the Mötley Crüe of software companies" but end up being seen as "the Winger of web apps". I just had some Beavis and Butthead flashbacks when I read your post ;)

<comment><USER9> Hey, I _like_ Winger!!! :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think it's obvious that Yahoo! needs some serious internal "disruption." I think the biggest thing they need is _relevance_. Incremental improvements to their search, email, etc I don't think will matter. If Yahoo's search started being 5% better than Google, by whatever metric you prefer, would anyone really care? I would still use Google. I think in many consumer's view, and even probably many of us, we have all just been wondering when this all Yahoo! thing was going to end, whether was from a buyout by MS or whatever. They need some kind of breakout product, surely they know this but we've been waiting for awhile now. Honestly, I think it's got to be something more than just acquisition. Honestly, just now I visited yahoo.com, (not yahoo answers or any of that, the homepage), I haven't done that in years. I'll say this, it's a strange place.

<comment><USER12> I'll sum it up for you in one sentence: Marissa Mayer needs to figure out what Yahoo! is supposed to be good at.

Right now Yahoo! isn't remarkably good at anything.

<comment><USER13> Just to name a few: on the consumer side, Yahoo! is remarkably good at Sports including Fantasy Football and Baseball, and on the technical side it's remarkably good at Hadoop.

<comment><USER12> It does an okay job with Hadoop. Parts of Hadoop are good (Zookeeper) and parts of it are well short of the mark (HDFS) and ought to have had more effort behind it years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is great. You need to start with foundational changes that positively impact the culture and morale of the staff. Providing free food is a good basic that should happen.

There needs to be a revitalization of the Yahoo staff if there is to be any success.

Then you take those thousands of reinspirired/invigorated people and point them at a problem.

Finding the right problem though is, well, the problem.

Personally, I have said several times here on HN that Yahoo should take YCombinator as their new directional model.

They should be seeking to foster startups in the valley VERY aggressively. Invest, incubate, incorporate.

Take the growth of the startup communities and incorporate their innovations into the Yahoo brand...

</comment><comment><USER12> Ah, yes, the new Caesar is throwing bread to the plebeians to silence the restless. What I am wondering is when she is going to start feeding the top two tiers of management to the lions. After all, the shareholders need calming as well.

Tick tock, tick-tock.

</comment><comment><USER15> At this point, in the year 2012, isn't this just called modern? Sure a decade ago google was the only one doing this. However, aren't most startups/competitive tech companies in the bay area offering free food?

If Yahoo wants to compete for talent against the SF startups, facebook, google, etc. It seems like this isn't googley, its just part of the modern benefit package.

<comment><USER16> A lot of companies don't provide free food, Apple, and Nest to name a couple.

Talent won't be attracted by free food, but what it will do is cause the morale to change. People already working there will start getting excited about these new changes. Things become a little more fun. When your employees have a higher morale, they feel better about working harder, and they become more proud about what they're working on.

The new all-hands meetings will be key in that strategy. A good CEO and a great CEO can tell you the vision of the company and why it will succeed. But only a great CEO can make his or her employees feel inspired to do better work after those talks.

The first signs that Yahoo is turning around will be seen on the streets of San Francisco and Sunnyvale. When yahoo hoodies and tshirts are being displayed as frequently as you see Google of Facebook swag, if the employees start showing they are _really_ proud of the company they work for, that will signal the earliest changes in Yahoo.

Edit: spelling

<comment><USER17> All hands meetings are morale boosting when they feature Oprah style handouts of fancy schwag. Business status reports, meh.

<comment><USER16> Sorry, but the people who only get excited with fancy hand outs won't be at Yahoo much longer if Marissa does her job right.

She needs people who want to work long hours, and/or weekends. That kind of work ethic doesn't come from handouts, it comes from inspiring people around you to build something really awesome.

<comment><USER18> i dispise company cultures that encourage you to "want to work long hours, and/or weekends". if thats the (unspoken) goal of these culture changes, then you will end up with a bunch of burned out "friday night major release" staffers.

it's about cutting the crap, getting rid of balast and setting the right priorities, not about "long hours".

<comment><USER16> That's fine, not everyone can live that kind of life. There are a few engineers, however, who do want to put in the extra hours to build something awesome.

The thing is, for that to be successful you will never be asked directly to work long hours. If you've never experienced that, it's impossible for me to explain it to you. It's just a desire you get when you work around really talented people who are equally dedicated.

<comment><USER18> i worked 60 hour weeks and sometimes 80 hour weeks, sometimes for companies in start up mode, some established market leader companies, sometimes i slept below the desk, sometimes i didn't sleep at all, for some i had (phantom)shares, for some i didn't (i get around a lot).

sometimes long hours are necessary, 95% of the time they aren't.

working 60 hour or more is a problem, never a solution. constantly working long hours leads to lousy decisions and to a lack of priorities (and a lack of priorities are the reason for another round of long hours).

one of the best CTOs i ever worked for was confronted with a lot of friday evening major releases, which more often than not lead to him loosing his weekends. he created a new policy that the last release would be thursday morning. code quality, bug occurrences an work/life balance improved significantly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > Better search!

Yahoo was known for collating links, while Google had a killer algorithm.

But Google's drive to make the algorithm work all the time for everybody is causing some discontent. Power users are disappointed at (for example) the loss of +, and don't like the weird word substitutions and stemming that Google has introduced. And naive users are confused by overwhelming choice. They don't know the difference between the various sponsored links; they have no idea what a domain is so they aren't going to know if they're going to a trustworthy site or to scumbags.

Imagine how nice it would be if you entered your programming specific terms into a search engine and got carefully selected links back.

I don't know if free food is going to get that, but it's worth a try.

EDIT: I've just visited the Yahoo page for the first time in many years. It is laughably hideous. Sorry for any Yahooers, but this version is even uglier than the 199x page (black on silver?).

</comment><comment><USER20> A lot of the changes listed in this article are as the title suggests "Googley". I am not that surprised by these actions though. It's easy to get used to the free food and the Friday meetings and then miss them elsewhere.

That said, if I was working at one of Yahoo's remote offices, I'd feel pretty left out of the free food / etc. Do HQ Engineers work any harder than the others?)

<comment><USER21> Well, who's to say they even have the facilities or personnel for free food at other locations? If it's an office with a break room it probably isn't set up to serve hundreds of meals a day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Yahoo gave up on being a technology leader when they killed their own search. If I was Mayer I would buy DuckDuckGo and say fuck it, we're taking on Google.

<comment><USER23> Isn't DDG just Bing w/ some logic to bump up anything that shows up in various authoritative sites like Wikipedia?

Yahoo already uses Bing.

<comment><USER24> yes, there's a lot of misconceptions here on hn about what DDG actually is. Indexing the web, now, is beyond the capabilities and budget of individuals, you need the resources and backing of a company like google, ibm or microsoft to do so. DDG is federated search, not a search engine. While they might crawl a few sites, it's Bing that you're seeing in the result, the work of Microsoft engineers (along with any remaining PowerSet guys.)

<comment><USER17> Gabriel seems to enjoy encouraging the misconception that DDG is a search engine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It sounds good. This may give her the moral authority to make less popular changes down the track - she's signalling that she wants to make the place like Google, which will make the troops more sympathetic to anything she does.

</comment><comment><USER26> So given all the hubbub lately I decided to visit Yahoo.com for the first time in years. I'm not really Yahoo's target audience, but my second-first impressions are:

\- That little "Make Yahoo! your homepage" thing that slides down and moves the rest of the content with it has got to go (especially considering there's a "Make Y! your homepage" link RIGHT below it).

\- Clicking on the dot in the exclamation point still does the "Yahoo!" jingle, which is nice, but I don't like the new jingle. It's too polished. Old one was better.

\- The actual search bar is a bit heavy and "2005 Web 2.0" looking, but I suppose it needs to be a little chunky to stand out from everything else on the page (and there's a lot).

\- Overall, I like the color scheme and design, but it still feels a bit "heavy". The fact that there's SO MUCH STUFF on the front page suggests that this real estate is a design-by-committee thing and that politics is heavily involved. There's so much stuff and it's packed so tightly together that I really can't decide what I want to look at.

\- The Olympics banner is neat.

\- The top news rotator is OK, but it's a little clumsy.

\- The subsections, like Yahoo! News and Yahoo! TV, feel too different from each other and too different from the main site.

\- Speaking of target audience, the "Trending Now" section is neat, but I'm not sure I like what it's saying. Between that, the "Must-See Videos on Yahoo!", and the "Most Popular" section below it, I get the feeling that I just stepped into a middle-class hair salon. I'm not trying to be elitist, it's just that this site really seems to scream "late 30-something suburbian white woman with a minivan" in a way that most other sites don't, so I don't feel very welcome here. Shouldn't the front page to one of the world's most recognized online brands start out a little more neutral and slowly BECOME about whatever it is you're usually interested in? ArsTechnica does a good job of this, building up a "Your Stories" section based on stuff you've clicked on an (presumably) how long you stuck around after you clicked.

\- A little more nitpicky, but I think it's another indication of Yahoo!'s most prime real-estate being driven by corporate politics and ladder-climbing (because I'm going to give the page designer a benefit of the doubt): take a look at all the section headings. You have "YAHOO! SITES", "TRENDING NOW", "MUST-SEE VIDEOS ON YAHOO!", "MOST POPULAR", "POLL", "FAVORITES". There doesn't seem to be much consistency in the color or font size with these.

\- So, yeah, "Favorites". How come I just NOW (within the last 30 seconds) found that? It's way below the fold of the sites list. Aren't my favorites kind of important? Shouldn't they be above "Yahoo! Sites"? And why are they already populated? Yahoo! on FB, Yahoo! on Twitter? How are those my favorites? I never told you I liked those... These are the kind of things that make it a little TOO obvious that I, humble visitor, am the product being sold.

\- The bottom footer (no, not the real footer, the footer above that) seems redundant. "More Yahoo! Sites" contains only slightly different content than the "Yahoo! Site" area, and there's already a way from right there to see more. If you want to promote new or underperforming sub-sites, why not try a sites recommendation engine based on the stuff you've visited? Follow Yahoo could be placed elsewhere, and the "About Yahoo" stuff can certainly be combined and replace the "About our Ads" thing on the real footer.

\- When performing an actual search, the results aren't too bad (they're powered by Bing, which isn't wonderful but it isn't terrible either). In fact, the search listings are a lot less cluttered than what Google's results have become.... it's almost refreshing.

<comment><USER27> "there's SO MUCH STUFF on the front page"

I haven't been there for a long time, so I went there to follow your critique, and my first thought was WTF is all this? This is like a 90s site map, with pictures.

<comment><USER28> I also checked the site out for the first time in a while. My first thought: "This looks like AOL.com."

But of course I haven't been to AOL in forever either, maybe they've changed. So I checked them out too. Yep, can't tell the difference.

<comment><USER29> In 2007, TechCrunch had an article showing that AOL and Yahoo even had the same page layout: [http://techcrunch.com/2007/04/26/aol-one-step-behind- again-n...](http://techcrunch.com/2007/04/26/aol-one-step-behind-again-new- home-page-identical-to-yahoo/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Seems like these are all moral boosting tweaks. Friday meetings that keep employees up-to-speed, free food, and updated swag. Gets people talking and they can see physical things happening! This is re-org 101. Make no mistake, the real changes that will turn Yahoo around, take months, if not years to get rolling.

<comment><USER31> >>> Free food is a bonus.

It's also good for Yahoo. It encourages employees to stay on campus for longer, so Yahoo gets more value out of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Just curious, how much Google stock does she have, and does that affect what strategies she can pursue with Yahoo? i.e. it may encourage a more cooperative stance with Google than a competitive one, even if the latter is better for Yahoo individually.

<comment><USER17> I assume and hope she would divest from Google so that more of her net worth is contingent upon Yahoo's success more than Google's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Definitely a smart decision by Marissa. The savings from feeding employees is definitely outweighed by the productivity and morale gained from satisfied employees. Make your employees feel proud and good to work there.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'd be more interested in what she's decided he WON'T change. What redeeming qualities does Yahoo have? (That's not a rhetorical question; I'm genuinely interested.)

<comment><USER34> Lots of content that attracts lots of traffic from all over the world. The people that create that content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'd like to work for / with her.

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://careers.yahoo.com/>

<comment><USER30> I'd be surprised if there wasn't a hiring freeze right now while they asses what they have. If you look around this site there is all of 4 listings!!

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, Yahoo is hiring like crazy.

<comment><USER36> Any areas in particular?

<comment><AUTHOR> Pretty much everywhere, but I know for a fact front-end (HTML/CSS/JS) is in high-demand. Just search for relevant terms on the careers site.

Also, Flickr is hiring -> <http://flickr.com/jobs/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Yahoo still has some buying power with serious engineers. I'm not sure what their plan is but cool projects + good perks are usually a sure fire way to get good engineers. I really hope that she turns the place around and makes another Google.

</comment><comment><USER38> I bet she'll do nothing more than turn Yahoo into a well-organized and well- fed train wreck. She really needs to bet on something big, not just get people into nice lifeboats. Maybe Scott McNealy would've been a better hire.

</comment><comment><USER39> Ahh I get it. Shes prepping Yahoo for a Google Takeover. Makes sense...

</comment><comment><USER40> Smart move. This helps her make friends w/ existing engineers within the company while also making it easier to recuit new talent -- two things she's going to need desperately.

</comment><comment><USER41> Wow, the smugness and adversity to Marissa Mayer is really evident here. Did these two have a run-in in the past or is that just KS's style of reporting?

</comment><comment><USER42> Yahoo's front page is 600kb and finishes rendering after about a second. Google is 17kb, and renders in a tenth of that. More Googlification awaits.

<comment><USER43> Apples and oranges.

Try comparing <http://search.yahoo.com/> with <http://www.google.com/> , difference isn't as large.

Here's what I get:

         curl -s http://www.google.com/ | wc
         20     397   14433

         curl -s http://search.yahoo.com/ | wc
          1     363   12616

<comment><USER42> You will need much more than the HTML for the pages to be usable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> A smart move.

</comment><comment><USER45> I wonder if Marissa will try to maneuver Yahoo for a possible acquisition by Google.

<comment><USER46> I doubt it. If Mayer wanted to play second fiddle to Page, she'd have stayed at Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I can't help but feel that this is a bit cargo cult. I'll wait to see the results.

</comment><comment><USER48> I know people always make fun of Yahoo Answers, with good reason, but I think that when it comes down to it, Yahoo Answers is one of the web's most important resources, just because there are so many questions and answers that it covers quite a lot of popular topics. True that a lot of it is stupid or nonsense, but there is actually also a lot of useful and timely information in there.

I also remember using the Yahoo fantasy sports thing and it seemed pretty good to me.

And to be honest the Yahoo mail program is really attractive looking to me and very functional.

Yahoo Groups is extremely useful also.

I guess however its hard to compete with things like gmail, reddit and meetup.com.

So anyway since half of the comments in this thread are basically going on a 'pretend you are the new CEO of Yahoo, what would you do' thing, I want to play also. Actually Yahoo has so much going on, its kind of hard to NOT want to play that game.

One thing to focus on making Yahoo Answers better. Maybe more ajaxy and realtime. Maybe make the app better (ask questions? voice input?). Maybe even do a deal with stackoverflow or something (although stackoverflow users might not appreciate that).

It seems like they have a ton of useful applications and other stuff. I forgot one: Yahoo Games. I guess the hard part is making money from all of those things. I think to figure out what to do I would need to know how much each of those different parts of Yahoo cost to operate and how much money comes in (mostly from ads I assume).

I guess one big issue is the brand. Ever since my old boss told me a few years back that Yahoo search was better, I associate Yahoo with idiots. And even though I do think Yahoo Answers is very useful like I mentioned before, the large number of retarded Yahoo Answers questions doesn't help with that idiot brand image problem.

One random idea: its really expensive to build Android, iOS (especially), HTML5, Windows, OSX and Linux apps. Especially if you want to target all of the above. Maybe they could throw some money at Apple and Microsoft and make an application platform with WYSIWYG components, a little bit along the lines of Wordpress, but everything is a widget, and somehow make it work across all of those platforms, and built on Node.js (or something). I say throw money at Microsoft and Apple because they are always (as far as I can tell) spending money on throwing up roadblocks to prevent good cross-platform solutions from becoming popular and practical.

One more random idea: I think the easiest way to compete as internet giant these days might be to create products that cross into the 'real' world. For example, the Google Project Glass project to me seems very exciting. So are things like 3d print-on-demand. Maybe Yahoo could build or promote a product/service along those lines?

Of course, those product/service ideas are extremely expensive, challenging and risky, so I dunno.

Other random idea: try to merge with one of the giant evil cable or media companies, such as Time Warner, if the government will let them. Then maybe if the CEO and people are persuasive enough to the Time Warner execs with all of the Yahoo customer numbers (like 700 million visitors per month), we could finally get HBO GO without having to buy cable. I mean I am not trying to make more gianter evil companies, but.. HBO GO without a cable subscription.

Other random idea: start converting to mainly telecommute by telling most people they can work from home and then eventually shutting down campuses. Use that as a selling point for acquiring talent and also a way to save money.

OK last last random idea: find a way to defeat ad block. Which would probably involve advertisements that actually weren't really advertisements somehow. Maybe something like reddit, or reddit+twitter+facebook, a way for people to recommend/vote up/review/rate products/services or apps, possibly filtered based on the relevance of the current page.. then maybe you just charge all of the advertisers a small fee to be eligible and don't let any of them pay more, so its entirely driven by consumers rather than the amounts companies are willing to pay.

Anyway that was fun.

</comment><comment><USER49> When did yahoo become people magazine?

</comment><comment><USER50> _I tried to reach a Yahoo PR person for comment, but my phone remains unrung, even here in Israel._

I don't understand this sentence. Is her phone more likely to ring because she's in Israel, or something?

<comment><USER51> The work week in Israel is Sunday through Thursday, so there probably were people in Yahoo! offices there.

<comment><USER52> Sunday in Israel was the 9th of Av, which is a very solemn fast day. I doubt if anything at all was open.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tisha_B%27Av>

<comment><USER53> No, everything is mostly open on Sunday.

Saturday night, which is when the 9th of Av actually started _, most (but not all) things were closed, but Sunday everything is open again, especially businesses.

_ Jewish Holidays go by the Hebrew Calendar, which counts days from Night to Night, not from Sunrise to Sunrise. So when the regular calendar says that the 9th of Av is on Sunday, the actual holiday is the evening of Saturday, then Sunday 'til evening.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Latest startup trends – which news sites covers that? - <AUTHOR> What other websites would you suggest beside HN to read about latest startup trends?<p>Why do I read about HouseParty app on HN only in Oct 2016? Recode featured it in June 2016, other websites in Sept - as I found out today. :( I am little interested about yesterday's news or last months news. I would favour a site focused on startup trends around the world, with daily updates. Can you suggest me sites can offer that? <comment><USER2> "...latest startup trends"

I dont imagine startups start their ideas based on trends, unless you mean technology trends. But in any case. This information would be very hard to come by as most people/companies dont announce what they plan to build until they have an MVP.

The only thing I can suggest is to follow a bunch of hackathons, hopefully ones that are not limited to sponsorship tech or industry. And try workout the trends from there.

side note: this could be a nice little machine learning project :)

</comment><comment> grif-fin [https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses) Mixture of trendy & failed startups - experience shared by founders. It is pretty new I think but the idea is cool.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://www.producthunt.com](https://www.producthunt.com)

Im not sure how timely they are, but you can survey some popular themes among app ideas.

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://www.techcrunch.com](http://www.techcrunch.com) seems the best to me for trends and informed content from startups

</comment><comment><USER5> One of my yet to be started side projects is an automated tech news aggregator. So far I have just bought the domain.</comment>


Rust Bug Minimization Patterns - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pnkfx.org/blog/2019/11/18/rust-bug-minimization-patterns/ <comment><USER2> I think this article probably deserves a passing mention to the classic tool for reducing compiler bug cases, creduce [1]. I know it's used for rust or at least it can be used for rust.

It uses delta debugging [2] to minimize the reproducer, and AFAIK doesn't know about Rust. But it could be taught these rust-specific transformations.

[1] [https://embed.cs.utah.edu/creduce/](https://embed.cs.utah.edu/creduce/)

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

<comment><USER3> c-reduce has been a godsend for me when I've had to figure out the cause of C++ compiler crashes. Manual minimization may be semi-mindless, but for that very reason it's really boring, and it takes forever. So much nicer to sic c-reduce at it, take a snack break, and most of the time come back to a nice minimal reproducer. (Though at least once it ended up reproducing a _different_ compiler crash than the one in the original code… Oh well.)

I'd love if there was a Rust version. In addition to Rust-specific transformations, you'd probably want to teach it how to simplify an entire crate dependency tree, involving multiple rustc invocations, rather than just one file. C/C++ header files may be crude, but they have an advantage here: after running a source file through the preprocessor, you end up with a completely self-contained file that (probably) behaves the same way. Thus you only need to reduce that one file, and AFAIK that's all c-reduce supports. Also, for anything that is declared in a header file but defined in a different source file, c-reduce doesn't need to know or care about the definition; if the compiler crash occurred on a source file not containing the definition, then the definition can't be responsible. Rust doesn't have that kind of natural separation, but maybe aggressively emptying out function bodies would be a good enough substitute.

<comment><USER2> > Though at least once it ended up reproducing a different compiler crash than > the one in the original code

I use creduce a lot and this experience is not at all uncommon. The fix is to make your interestingness test very specific.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is called "Test-case reduction". Bug minimisation would be about reducing the number/severity of bugs in code.

</comment><comment><USER5> > But it not always easy to toggle such comments on and off

Try:

      /*-* /
      non_pub_locally_unused_item(----) { ---- }
      //-*/

remove the space on the first line to re-enable it.

<comment><USER6> For A/B testing, I use this in C++; it looks like it works in rust (according to my syntax highlighter):

      //* //add/delete the first slash to toggle these blocks
      fooA();
      /*/
      fooB();
      /**/

<comment><USER7> I like this for C/C++:

      #if 1 // or 0
      A
      #else
      B
      #endif

This can even be nested.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, that's good too. When I don't need nesting, I like toggleable comments because the inactive block gets grayed out.

<comment><USER7> Some editors like vim also grey out the text with "#if".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Good job</comment>


4Chan Accepts Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://www.4chan.org/pass

<comment><USER2> Awesome, between /b/, money launderers, the Silk Road, and its arms-dealing offshoot, bitcoin may have attracted the attention of all the scumbags on the internet!

<comment><USER3> I'm strongly surprised that is not widely used for money laundering yet.

It seems perfect for the purpose of storing value and moving it semi- anonymously. Especially since you can just buy a bunch of very generic hardware with stolen money and mine pure money.

I'm hoping underground will adopt bitcoins widely before I'll be forced to sell the ones I own.

Maybe there has to be generation change for that, but luckily gangster generations are shorter than average ones.

<comment><USER4> Not enough coins. Money laundering is billions and billions of dollars. How does one anonymously move 1 billion dollars, without suspicion? Any large purchase or sale sticks out like a sore thumb.

<comment><USER5> Number of coins is pretty irrelevant (except for UX purposes, I guess). What matters is what's the total worth of the Bitcoin coins. Until all Bitcoins are worth hundreds of billions of dollars, with thousands of dollars per Bitcoin (at which point everyone will be using "micro-coins" for daily transactions), they won't be able to do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Reddit Accept Bitcoin"

"4Chan Accept Bitcoin"

"____ Accept Bitcoin"

Is this going to be a trend on HackerNews post?

<comment><USER7> HackerNews Accept Bitcoin?

<comment><USER8> Maybe it should be HackerNew Accept Bitcoin since we're dropping the s from every word.

Bitcoin needs to be plural and accept needs to be in the present tense. This makes no sense.

<comment><USER9> Does "Yen" make sense to you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I working on free woprdpress plugin that will allow anyone to build beautiful online store and accept bitcoins for sales of physical and digital products. Fully automatically and zero fees to a middle man! Ping me if you want to be notified about release.

</comment><comment><USER5> They're using Coinbase it seems.

</comment><comment><USER11> What can you buy @ 4chan?

<comment><USER12> A 4chan Pass, which allows you to bypass the CAPTCHA for a year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> But i dont accept 4chan.</comment>


What are the most in-demand programming skills for 2011 and beyond, & why? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Programming-Languages/What-are-the-most-in-demand-programming-skills-for-2011-and-beyond-why

<comment><USER2> The ability to think clearly about problems and solve them in a coherent, sensible fashion. If a programmer can't do this, and so many can't, it doesn't matter what buzzword tech proficiency is being claimed.

<comment><USER3> I agree with this. There's too much emphasis on the latest tools or upgrades.</comment></comment>


Programmable droplets - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2018/programmable-droplets-enable-high-volume-low-cost-biology-experiments-0119 <comment><USER2> "Using electric fields to manipulate droplets on a surface could enable high- volume, low-cost biology experiments."

This looks like quite an innovation, to reduce cost of biological tests by miniaturizing the process, using mobile droplets.

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks awesome! The one thing that seemed unclear to me though is wouldn't you still need multiple pipettes to move the fluid to/from the programmable workspace?

</comment><comment><USER4> Apparently nothing to do with DigitalOcean.</comment>


Ask HN: how can I practice negotiation? - <AUTHOR> With all this talk about negotiating salaries and benefits I've realised that I could do with some practice.<p>How would you recommend getting some negotiating experience? Additionally, are there any books you would recommend? <comment><USER2> Practice by negotiating every day on small things. Someone wants to schedule a meeting at 3? Push for another time. Buying new tires for your car? Ask for a discount, say you won't pay more than X.

That's how I've improved my negotiating skills. Start small, build confidence, learn how to deal with hearing 'No'. Everything is negotiable.

<comment><USER3> Part of negotiating is making tradeoffs... give something, and get what you want in return.

For example, if you and someone else are going to lunch and want to go to different places, offer to buy them dessert or something to go to the place you want. They get something, you get something.

Just being pushy can backfire - you might get what you want initially, but the social problems it may create might have negative results.

<comment><USER4> Great advice. People who negotiate for the sake of negotiating, without that give are highly annoying and soon will get themselves on the "avoid" list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Go buy a car. Go buy a lot of cars. Go buy a car while pretending to be broke. Go buy another one while thinking you've got a million in cash in the bank. Buy a used car. Buy a new car. (I don't feel bad about consuming car salespeople's time...)

Go to a market in Italy and try to buy anything without haggling. They can negotiate the price of a $10 necklace.

Go to a flea market and find something you want. Try to get a lower price.

<comment><USER6> I was going to suggest going to a car lot and offering a price of -%15 of asking price provided the vehicle is between $30,000 - $50,000.

However, an offer although verbal, is legally binding, and should the sales person accept the offer... trouble can arise.

<comment><USER7> This is completely false. The value of a verbal contract cannot exceed $500.

The sales person may try to pressure you into going through with the deal by telling you the contract is binding, but no court in the world would make you pay ~30k for a car just based on you saying you wanted it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I negotiate deals pretty much every day. Here is the best book I ever read on negotiation <http://amzn.to/ggXkLl>

For me, the key to negotiation is to try to get to a fair deal for everyone, not a deal in which someone wins and someone loses. Ask everyone involved what they want out of the deal, what they think would be a fair outcome. Where there is a gap between what the parties want, ask each party how far they are willing to move.

Don't do deals that are unbalanced or unfair because the deal falls apart a bit further down the track leaving people feeling annoyed, angry, let down, ripped off.

Remember if the parties are too far apart on what they want then probably there is no deal to be done. Just let it go - no deal, move on and do business somewhere else.

</comment><comment><USER9> Get married

<comment><USER10> Not as idle a comment as it would seem. In a marriage, the stakes are high, the "opponent" is someone you know well, and the difficulty can increase faster than in the "outside" world where civility is still maintained even when upset. The pay-offs are also much greater when you succeed.

Alternatively, negotiate with family members.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Might be a bit off the wall, but playing strategy games has helped my negotiation skills fairly substantially. Anything where you sit down and hammer out alliances/agreements with other players, so Diplomacy (both face- to-face and online), Settlers (face-to-face; online tends to be a bit boring) and other more hard core ones like Olympia and Atlantis.

Alternatively, head down to your local markets around closing time :)

<comment><USER12> I don't think that's an off the wall idea but I haven't felt my negotiation skills improved from that. With games, there is less on the line so I'm more inclined to push back as well as have far less hesitation to walk away from a deal.

<comment><USER11> Depends on the game, how seriously you take it and how seriously the other players take it. Some of the play by email games that I've played in run for more than 12 months (with weekly turns), and the negotiations over borders, terms and conditions put the Cold War to shame.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you can get some people to play with you, both Northwestern University (through the Dispute Resolution Research Center), and Harvard (through their HBR cases) have negotiation scenario games that teach specific, learnable skills. Totally worth the effort, but it'll cost you to buy the cases. Both use those tools in teaching MBA negotiation classes.

</comment><comment><USER14> If you're looking for a book on the subject, try: [http://www.amazon.com/You- Negotiate-Anything-Herb-Cohen/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/You-Negotiate- Anything-Herb-Cohen/dp/0553281097/)

You Can Negotiate Anything is a classic, and very inexpensive investment considering the upside.

I can't give you any advice that you won't find in this book.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER15> _Getting to Yes_ and _Mind and heart of the negotiator_ were required texts for the college class I took on _Negotiation and Conflict Management_. IIRC, they are both research-based. The first is a quick read, the second is a lot meatier.

[http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Heart-Negotiator-Leigh- Thompson/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Heart-Negotiator-Leigh- Thompson/dp/0131742272/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1302739545&sr=1-1)

The class is available online via CSU-Bakersfield if you care to spend some mulah and a few months on it. When I took it (a zillion years ago, not terribly long after my pet dinosaur and rotary phone went extinct), we did a round of practice negotiations towards the end of class. It was awesome. I have no idea if it has changed any.

Peace.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'll give you a full answer for $10. In the meantime, try this: [http://changingminds.org/disciplines/negotiation/tactics/tac...](http://changingminds.org/disciplines/negotiation/tactics/tactics.htm)

<comment><USER17> The value in you giving an answer resides with you, you should pay me the $10 and give us the answer. You win in karma and self-discovery.

Don't waste time thinking about it, you don't have much time in which to maximise your karma. Step on it!

The opposite sex will find you more attractive and you'll be healthier and more fulfilled if you give me the money ....

<comment><USER16> I think this is an important demonstration of the need to research your negotiating partner. Not only do I have more karma than I know how to use (or a way to use it); more importantly, I'm already married so it's important for me to avoid publicly increasing my attractiveness. Which is, of course, already overwhelming.

<comment><USER17> You think you have enough karma, your wife assures you it's not an issue but really she's sneaking a peak at the guy next door with those few extra points ... in studies 95% of women said online karma scores were as important to them as looks.

Be the man you always wanted to be.

But wait, that's not all ...

Send the money know and get an authenticate certified "Mighty Man of HackerNews Award", hurry awards are limited! Awards independently valued at $250 USD, that's right, you'd have to be an idiot to miss out on an offer like this. Act now!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Learn negotiation and make $ while your at it ...

Go on craigslist, search for a hot turn over market such as blackberries or iphones -- most people have their contact # on the actual ad.

Shoot them an offer of 15% below lowest listed price to market median .. i.e blackberry 9700, 175 - 200 - 225 - shoot them an offer of $150-160 -- if you get it great, resell for $200/225.

Repeat with any high turnover product you're comfortable with on the pricing.. its a good foundation for real-life negotiation practices.

</comment><comment><USER18> Signing up for a mediation course through your local legal system would offer you both hands on experience and a chance to build a lucrative side business as a mediator. It would take some time and effort but with the overburdened dockets most judges are dealing with the push for pre trial mediation is growing as is the need for mediators.

</comment><comment><USER19> Theres a book i read 'What they dont teach you at harvard" heres the link [http://www.amazon.com/What-Teach-Harvard-Business- School/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/What-Teach-Harvard-Business- School/dp/0553345834) Read this one for sure...its like a negotiation and deal making manual

</comment><comment><USER20> Go to a bar or other public venue. Pick up chicks. Or guys. Whatever gets you going. Rinse, repeat.

<comment><USER21> This is not negotiating (unless you're paying for the person you're taking home). I can't remember ever negotiating to get someone to go on a date with me. There is definitely a two-way process/interaction going on, but I don't think it's anything like negotiation.

<comment><USER22> I would argue that there are a lot of the same things going on, just abstracted away several times through layers of misdirection and hidden meanings.

Different for different people I guess.

<comment><USER21> I could go work at an amazing company and they could be really happy to have me, but we'll never both have the same idea about an ideal outcome. I'll want more and they'll want to give me less. I think that's more what negotiating is about, i.e. giving up something you don't want to so you can come to an agreement.

If you're chasing guys/girls, you're really just working towards a common goal with pretty much the same desired outcome (whether it be coffee, dinner, sex, whatever). One party is rarely giving something up in order to make the other person want to come to an agreement. That usually comes later in the relationship ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Actually this is kind of mean and will probably be downvoted, but the way I found best to practice negotiations were in job offers.

Over the last year, I racked up job offers and had to negotiate them, which gave me practice and made me realize I had room to improve.

</comment><comment><USER24> Negotiation Genius - best book out there and a good read.

[http://www.amazon.com/Negotiation-Genius-Obstacles- Brilliant...](http://www.amazon.com/Negotiation-Genius-Obstacles-Brilliant- Bargaining/dp/055380488X)

</comment><comment><USER25> Go to a flea market and haggle. It's fun.

</comment><comment><USER26> Get a kid. Seriously.

</comment><comment><USER27> get married... the entire institution is negotiation.</comment>


Ask HN: How to obtain a QNX non-commercial license? - <AUTHOR> Recently I have taken interest in studying real-time operating systems. While reading about the topic, of the available commercial platforms, QNX seemed to be among the most widely adopted ones, thus I naturally went on and explored the possibilities how could someone with no previous connection to the QNX community get started with it, experiment and learn. To my surprise, the QNX website openly states that they do support and even encourage such activities, as described here: http://www.qnx.com/company/education/ and here: http://www.qnx.com/legal/licensing/non_commercial.html
As the only viable option shown there was to mail email@example.com and ask about non-commercial licenses, I did so, explained my situation and goals, but I was informed that they don't support such licenses anymore, only the 30day evaluation period is available. 30 days might be enough for someone that has prior experience with RTOSes, for the exact purpose to evaluate the platform whether it satisfies their needs or not, but it's just not enough for someone who wants to learn it.
I understand there are freely available RTOSes as well, such as FreeRTOS, but given the industry position of QNX, it seemed to me as the most interesting option, as many job advertisements put exactly experience with QNX as one of the bonus points.
My question is, did I do something wrong (or did I not do something that I was supposed to do) which resulted in me being rejected? Or, are those licenses really no longer available, and they just didn't update the website for a very long time? <comment><USER2> My random intenet advice:

Use the thirty day license. Then write back and ask for an extension as it draws to its end. Your situation is not uncommon and keeping contact every thirty days keeps you as an active lead in their sales funnel and makes it easier to keep tabs on licenses that are out in the wild. It also separates serious tire kickers and hobbyists from those who will lose interest in a six month license after two days. Basically, the company wants to know what someone is doing with their software when they grant more than thirty days of license.

The good news is that you already have contact with the company and so when you ask for a renewal/extension there's already a basis for granting it. That basis can be strengthened by writing back to the person who responded to your request to thank them and let them know that you downloaded the thirty day version. Then you can ask that person for an extension in a few weeks.

None of which is guaranteed to produce an extension, but at least you got thirty days worth of learning out of it.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm this sounds very reasonable, I guess it's worth giving it a shot, thanks for the tip!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I understand your frustration. I actually had what they called a "hobbyist license" up until 6.5. Around that point QNX stopped granting new ones or upgrades to old ones.

I'm not sure why it's still on the website or what the criteria to get one now. Every time I've tried to contact licensing regarding the license type - I've gotten an abrupt brush off.

The evaluation license is the best bet. QNX has amazingly good docs and I think it just requires a support account.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for replying. I also don't understand why don't they just remove that section, they kinda played me that way, just like that.

<comment><USER3> Micrium has a make hobbyist/maker license as well. I just got contacted by them after putting in a license request ~30 days ago.

Did you end up doing the 30-day eval of QNX?</comment></comment></comment>


The JavaScript phenomenon is a mass psychosis - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@richardeng/the-javascript-phenomenon-is-a-mass-psychosis-57adebb09359#.efr6s0vle <comment><USER2> > I've been writing web applications for over a decade and it's utterly > shocking how little JavaScript I know!

I'm glad he admits this, but then what exactly makes him qualified to opine on the language?

Look, Javascript is not great, and I'm perfectly open to the thesis that Node.js in particular is a Bad Thing -- I'm C# junkie, for crying out loud -- but supporting that thesis with a series of assertions from someone with little relevant knowledge is not terribly convincing.

<comment><USER3> > I'm glad he admits this, but then what exactly makes him qualified to opine > on the language?

The fact that he has been using the language for a decade.

> Look, Javascript is not great, and I'm perfectly open to the thesis that > Node.js in particular is a Bad Thing -- I'm C# junkie, for crying out loud > -- but supporting that thesis with a series of assertions from someone with > little relevant knowledge is not terribly convincing.

Why are you so worried about the person who states the argument? If he would claim that he is an expert who knows everything, would you just automatically believe him?

I personally would verify his claims regardless of who he is. If you just watch the referenced video, you might get an idea of where he is coming from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > As most people well know, all programming languages have their faults. ... > However, JavaScript is especially bad.

> I've been writing web applications for over a decade and it's utterly > shocking how little JavaScript I know!

I've noticed that most people slamming js either have zero or very little knowledge of the language itself as well as environments it works in. Maybe, just maybe, it's worth learning a bit more about how and - more importantly - when js works.

<comment><USER5> I can only speak for myself, but I practically never run into any of those popular Javascript "gotchas" after using the language for so long. I've fallen into plenty of PHP traps, they tend to be a lot more subtle (especially that older one where a missing quote would error on the next line containing a quote), but JS's tend to be pretty avoidable, even in larger apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Theory: Javascript is bad not because of its syntax but because front- end/back-end is a new way of coding on the web and we have to redesign a lot of things (Json format, API, etc) in order to figure out the best way for it to work.

I am not saying I don't hate the syntax as much as the next person, but syntax is only so annoying.

The real issues come up with, for instance, execution contexts, callbacks etc because they are created for this new environment we find ourselves in.

(For those who say: hey, we have had client-servers for years, and we didn't face these issues, I think we have to start pointing to actual code, the problems, and the attempted solutions.)

<comment><USER7> I actually like JS syntax. It's pretty bland and, with const/let block scoping + await/async, it's easy to understand.

What sucks about JS is its lack of a type system, type coercion, and lack of a standard library. And those things really, _really_ suck (and lead to terrible code). There's a reason MS, Google, and FB have all moved to static-typed JS (TypeScript, TypeScript, and Flow, respectively).

<comment><USER6> Well, the syntax has this one issue that I just cannot forgive: multiple exceptions to rules.

Like why should a beginner have to figure out when the semi-colon is optional, required, and to be avoided?

For anyone who says it is easy and then launches into an explanation, please compare your explanation to that in, say, Java and realize the error of your ways.

<comment><USER8> When are semicolons to be avoided in JS? I assume daft styleguides pushed by people desperate to show how smart they are don't count.

I agree with your broader point, of course; certainly making them optional hasn't helped matters.

<comment><USER5> I don't know of a single instance where it's advised to omit a semicolon, nor one where a semicolon is strictly required. They are always optional. About all I've seen is Standard's guideline to put a semicolon before your entry point closure:

        ;(function() {
            // .. snip
        })()

And even that isn't required, it's just a function of another guideline: "Never start a line with (, [, or `." But still, that is only relevant to Standard, not to Javascript in general. It's completely self-enforced by deciding to use Standard if you want. I can't remember ever needing to put one of those characters at the start of a line outside that particular instance, anyway.

<comment><USER8> I think the reason was to work around too simplistic minifiers and concatenators.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Someone who knows little JS writes a few bad words about it, without much detail, and provides alternatives he knows. He also attributes the fact other people don't write in languages he knows, to psychosis, despite not being a psychologist.

</comment><comment><USER10> Um... what's with the NSFW picture at the top of the article?

<comment><USER11> Seriously. I'd like to share this, but with that picture attached it limits my ability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> JS still puts the bread on my table. Not the perfect solution, but it is in high demand.

FE:

I'm surprised the OP didn't mention Elm [1]. Elm is not ( maybe yet ) popular enough for production uses ( at least outside of Silicon Valley ) and the better alternatives ( TypeScript, Flow ) are actually JS with sugar.

Frameworks

BE:

NodeJS is much more than JavaScript itself. It is quite easy and cost- effective. Because of NodeJS we have "full-stack developers" again ( I'm coming from Perl CGI Scripts - when everyone was "full-stack" back then ).

Go is super strict about it's formatting, so you practically have ES/JSLint in the compiler itself. I don't see a big problem in this sense.

> I won't regurgitate the web only to say that a simple Google search will > reveal JavaScript's many internal inconsistencies and traps that literally > make JavaScript a "digital minefield."

Sorry, but I know the JS traps and I'm pretty well paid, because of that. I am not in psychosis and I love what

1: [http://elm-lang.org/examples/hello-html](http://elm- lang.org/examples/hello-html)

<comment><USER13> Same here.

        - Servers? Node.js
        - Web apps? Browsers
        - Cross-platform desktop apps? Electron
        - Cross-platform mobile apps? React-Native

Will it deliver the best possible solutions (performance, size, etc.)? Probably not.

Will it deliver economically acceptable solutions? I think so.

Most of my customers don't even care which language I use, they just want their app idea implemented somehow. And many react positively when I say JavaScript, because they know a bunch of people developing in it, so when I get hit by a meteor, they don't have to find one of those rare Qt C++ gurus.

<comment><USER14> Is your motivation for writing backend code in Node.js code sharing or just avoiding the mental burden of changing languages?

<comment><USER13> A bit of both.

I seldom write my own libraries I could share, but I use many 3rd party libraries on client and server.

So using the same language AND the same libraries helps a lot to minimise "the mental burden" of developing in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I disagree with the premise of the article. Javascript is what it is. I think at least most JS developers recognize that.

We use javascript because it does what no other programming language can do which is make the browser come alive. And we're done our best to minimize the displeasure of using javascript. I am not thrilled with the language, but I'm enthralled by what javascript can do.

To paraphrase Douglas Crockford unless you are going to revive Java applets you don't really have a choice if you want a dynamic web app.

The move to Node.js is a double edged sword. I like using Ruby on Rails and adding enough javascript to make the app more pleasant to use without constantly requiring a page reload. But the advantage of writing code on the server and the client in the same language is hard to pass up on. Trying to decide what to put which logic on the server versus on the client is a perpetual stress point.

</comment><comment><USER16> While I agree there is some level of mass psychosis surrounding JavaScript, I think there is a lot more nuance to what's going on.

I don't think the onslaught of new frameworks and transpilers has been due to JavaScript's weaknesses as a language. I think it has been due to the rapidly changing landscape of _what users expect from web apps_ and the corresponding changes we need to make in the way we develop.

FRP is a great example: many of the recent shiny new toys have been different approaches to implementing this concept in the browser (React, Vue, Elm just to name a few). But this isn't just a trend because web developers are fickle, it's a trend because web applications are growing in size and complexity, and we're all sick and tired of implementing the same boilerplate to make the value of an input get assigned to some variable, or to make the changing of some variable trigger a change in the DOM.

I think there is some overlap, but in general conflating changing development practices with the problems of JS as a language, is drastically over- simplifying it.

Where I do see a psychosis is in the choice of JS as a configuration/build language. Systems like Gulp and Grunt make no sense to me. Why would you want a build script to be in a language with asynchronous I/O and callbacks? Build scripts are always one step at a time, feeding the result of one thing into another. JS just doesn't fit that kind of workload. I see that as a psychosis, and as the result of more junior devs wanting to choose a tool they are more familiar with, as opposed to the one that does the job better.

EDIT: Another example of a psychosis has been recently discussed on HN: the choice of embedded web browsers for implementing text editors[0]. Again: other than 'psychosis' mixed with the desire to pick a more familiar tool, what makes a web browser a good tool to build a text editor? Nothing!

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13940014](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13940014)

<comment><USER7> > _I don 't think the onslaught of new frameworks and transpilers has been due > to JavaScript's weaknesses as a language._

I whole-heartedly disagree. TypeScript, Flow, and Babel are all ways to address JavaScript's weaknesses. You could argue Babel is a result of out- dated browsers, of course. But fragmentation of targets is certainly an issue of the language -- earlier versions didn't have to be so poorly designed.

Would we have all these transpilers if we were using a fully-formed, general- purpose language for the web from the start? No. If JS had a type system, there would be no TypeScript, Flow, NativeScript, PureScript, etc. If JS had a sane way to handle parallelism from the beginning, Babel wouldn't be nearly as useful.

Yes, it's true that JavaScript wasn't designed for what it's being used for now. That doesn't mean it's a good language (or ever was).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was most surprised by this CEO who goes around messaging randoms on LinkedIn to start friendly conversations. Does that happen?

</comment><comment><USER18> As a language, JS is what it is - therefore you can use or ignore parts of it, target it from a transpiler, etc. It's Node, its de-facto execution environment on the server side, that's the travesty - a hardly-glorified version of the browser's execution environment. Sure, a well-designed Node app. is better than your average long-running, thread-holding CGI script from 1998, but there have been servers for ages that can do async thread sharing/pooling like Node (and with proper language support, if you want it) but don't _force_ you into this model if your task happens to require true task parallelism rather simple asynchrony, which require hacks that range from just ugly to truly horrid.

</comment><comment><USER19> The designer/engineer identity and personality disconnects are definitely a big part of the story of Javascript in the last five years.

SF (design) took over as the bleeding edge when Javascript finally burst on the scene, and Palo Alto (engineering) faded.

The interesting thing to me is the amount of identitarian-style thinking that I see around the arguments in technology (macs, linux, javascript, etc.) where it is obvious that in-group/out-group factors nearly completely dominate discussions, rather than technical issues and trade offs.

</comment><comment><USER20> JavaScript has many challenges, but I think the biggest by far is the lack of "batteries included" standard libraries.

Without those, ecosystem fills the vacuum with a large, evolving mix of overlapping libraries that don't interoperate.

How often have you considered library X, but then found it doesn't work with your project's other libraries and frameworks?

<comment><USER9> I don't think so. PHP has batteries included, yet there's bazillion of frameworks too. People just like to create their own stuff, doing ever smaller improvements, or disimprovements if they overengineer because of being dogmatic about OOP, patterns, etc.

Libraries you can't avoid. There will be always something missing that someone needs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > What other modern programming language is so bad that a linter is most > recommended for safety sake?

Python, for one.

</comment><comment><USER22> As someone who doesn't use Node: Do most of these arguments apply to Node? (Silent failures, callback hell, weak typing brokenness).

I acknowledge that most of these are very bad in the browser, although I have good things to say about Typescript.

<comment><USER7> > _Silent failures_

Yes

> _Callback hell_

No, if you're using a version of Node released in the last few years. The most recent versions support async/await syntax in addition to promises, which fix callback hell.

> _Weak typing brokenness_

Yes

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> please add NSFW to the title on this!</comment>


Intel Optane and 3D Xpoint Updates from IDF - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/10568/intel-optane-and-3d-xpoint-updates-from-idf <comment><AUTHOR> In the last discussions on HN [1] the opinion seemed to be 'show us products first'. Now the first products are coming out next year. How will this change computing as we know it? Been trying to understand what this will do, but the step in speed seems bigger than anything I've encountered in my life. Like going from spinning tape to floppy, but the speed difference is even bigger.

As far as I understand, this will change the layout of PC's in a pretty far reaching way in the years to come. First the memory will fill products that can saturate PCIe x4 and NVMe easily. But what will future products look like? I guess the whole divide GPU - CPU and cache - RAM - storage can become obsolete?

I envision that this revolution can help (finally) the push towards manycore programming, since the buffers can more easily be filled. But I'm very far out of my area of expertise, so would love the input.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9962913](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9962913)</comment>


I made a simple tool to search for talents across different social platforms - <AUTHOR> I've always had better luck hiring from social and professional platforms (GitHub, CodeCanyon, Twitter, Dribbble, Behance...etc.) than posting jobs on job sites. A few weeks ago, I had the idea of creating a simple tool where I can conduct search across these sites - and it's now live on ProductHunt! (https://www.producthunt.com/posts/talent-search)
If anyone's interested in how it's made - leave a comment and I'll get a blog post up to explain. It's a quick project but I like the idea - if enough people find it useful, I'd love to go back and turn it into something more complete.
Please have a look, and I'd appreciate a vote on ProductHunt if you find it interesting. Thank you! :-) <comment><USER2> How does it work? Did you crawl all those sites, or hook into an API, or are you simply using their search functionality? Something else?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's using Google Custom Search [https://developers.google.com/custom- search/](https://developers.google.com/custom-search/). I thought about hooking it up to all the APIs and decided to do a quick prototype first this way first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Explanation is required.

<comment><AUTHOR> Explanation on how to use it? Maybe I'll link the youtube video I made on the site to show how it works.</comment></comment>


Microsoft/Satya Nadella: Addressing racial injustice - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/06/23/addressing-racial-injustice/ <comment><AUTHOR> While I think it is admirable for companies to think about how they can help with racial injustice, I am a bit shocked at how far Microsoft is going with their actions. I feel it crosses a line from fighting for equality (meaning equality of opportunity) to being discriminatory itself (seeking equity, or equality of outcomes).

This post indicates:

\- Microsoft will set hiring quotas based on race (seems illegal)

\- Microsoft will create promotion programs and pipelines that are only available if you belong to certain races (seems illegal)

\- Microsoft will change compensation for executives based on their Diversity & Inclusivity numbers (seems illegal)

\- Microsoft will select vendors based on their demographic composition

This looks and feels a lot like the controversy involving Harvard and other universities that practice "holistic admissions", which is essentially a discriminatory affirmative action process under a different brand.</comment>


Tumblr is Down – Fans Angry - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/tumblr-down-dec-5?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Centernetworks-+%28CenterNetworks+-%29

<comment><USER2> > Tumblr appears to host their status blog on the Tumblr platform

Words fail me.

"How do we find the index file? Of course, if we had an index file, we could look it up in the index file under 'index file'."—Tegan, _Doctor Who_

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://status.twitter.com/>

<comment><USER3> Ya, <http://status.foursquare.com> is also on Tumblr. Due to tumblr reliability issues we've been thinking about moving it. _sigh_

<comment><AUTHOR> Tumblr was perfect platform to create these types of blogs. Simple, customizable, free.

<comment><USER4> Keyword, I think, being "was."

<comment><USER5> It still is a great blogging platform. They just really need to sort out reliability issues.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not right now for sure, Maybe 1 hour later..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is that "down in <cityname>" some kind of meme or do all those commenters think that's helpful?

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't be surprised if people really think it's location-specific.

<comment><USER8> The main text of the article says "As always please report in if Tumblr is down where you are – either the main Tumblr site or your personal Tumblog," so it's not just the commenters who are confused.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Tumblr's Tweet about downtime : <http://twitter.com/#!/tumblr/status/11570891053862912>

</comment><comment><USER9> Frustrating, sure. Something to be "angry" about? No.

Its a free service. With no advertising. When you use Tumblr you are consuming their resources which they are giving to you free of charge. Its not like they deliberately pulled the plug either. They can deal with the problem in their own way.

Honestly people need to get over this sense of entitlement to online services. We should feel blessed that Tumblr or Twitter or Facebook or HN exist, for free, in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER10> Tumblr has grown to be one of the 50 biggest sites in the world with over a billion page views a month. They've done this with (iirc) a fairly small team.

Sure they've got growing pains. It saddens me that some here are labeling them "morons". The problems they're now facing aren't trivial. How they handle them will really be the test,

Twitter had huge stability problems. They got over them. Even Google has had serious downtime (not since 2001 however).

It's not whether or not you make mistakes that matters. It's how you deal with them when you do.

<comment><USER11> Well put. It's embarrassing, but it's the sort of thing that is bound to happen when you scale so fast so leanly. I'm sure they'll come out of this with a number of improvements and be much the stronger for it. And if they don't, then that tells a different story (but it's one I don't expect to hear).

Different type of growing pain, but this reminded me of when Foursquare forgot to renew their domain back in March (<http://tcrn.ch/gk73zQ>).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nothing new there then.

</comment><comment><USER13> Posterous must be planning some marketing stunt around this. :D

</comment><comment><USER14> I get frustrated when sites I use are down, but I don't get angry. It's not like they're down intentionally.

<comment><USER15> Just my opinion, and I certainly don't speak for everyone, but as an engineer, it's frustrating to see a talented group of devs and boatloads of funding behind a great site, yet almost zero transparency about downtime. When was the last time they used the staff blog or Twitter account to do anything besides promote popular users? I'm fine with unscheduled downtime — it happens — but when there are few/no announcements, and barely any post-mortems, that's when (at least for me) it gets very frustrating.

<comment><USER16> Totally agree. Look at the responses on the Github blog after they explain outages. Transparency builds loyalty instead of frustration.

<comment><USER17> In fairness, Github's complete transparency is likely to be understood by Githubbers. A technical explanation from Tumblr is far more likely to be met with "so what, where are my cat macros?" than Github's explanations are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So many entitled morons. It's pretty sad.

<comment><USER19> why does this get downvoted? its a free service that probably hosts 98% kids who normally would hang out on myspace if that hasnt lost all its flavor.

<comment><USER17> Some folks have paid to use Tumblr - premium themes, for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Bring on the kittens!

</comment><comment><USER21> we have reached the pronosingularism. p0rnography is sentient.

it is engaged in simultaneous cyberwars, battling skynet & the alpha-centauri- based bi-located lobster uberbeing, normal service will be resumed shortly.

(and no, joe lieberman uber-alle, there is no agent whom you can call for help with your cyberwars)

added: lol, so many geek refs, and still, hyper sensitivity to discussing the evil surrounding us in our times (joe, not porn) and i am cast out. u down voters suck so hard it just makes me so very lovely happy. this is a sartre moment for me, philosopher borne of french collaboration, his own countrymen: you have created the troll, it wasn't a troll it was humorous references to the darkness...u have created it...oh the humanity, the darkness is you. oh yes, revel in your satisfaction that i am not genteel like you. revel in your blind eyes turning away from the mirror of your own willful ignorance. enjoy the silence of your moneyed minds, the green lawns of hegemony will one day with your hope and silence be restored)

</comment><comment><USER22> The self-entitled brats flailing their arms is to be expected with someone like this, but with Tumblr, it puts things in a different perspective considering the demographic. I see blogs with _thousands_ of pages and an activity upwards of 50 posts a day. I know I had a lot of time in high school (that I more or less wasted), but it just boggles the mind how much time some people devote to Tumblr and its community culture.

I guess it jives with the anecdotes of people sending scrupulous amounts of text messages every day, but in this case, I feel that I have a better grasp of why someone would react so vociferously to something so seemingly inane.

<comment><USER4> "… scrupulous amounts of text messages …"

      scru•pu•lous |ˈskroōpyələs|
      adjective
      (of a person or process) diligent, thorough, and extremely attentive to details
        "the research has been carried out with scrupulous attention to detail."
      • very concerned to avoid doing wrong
          "she's too scrupulous to have an affair with a married man."

What?

<comment><USER23> > _What?_

Parent is just exercising parent's scrupulous vocabulary. It's enough to drive one inane.</comment></comment></comment>