Ask HN: What are some B.S. tricks management pulls on naive developers? - <AUTHOR> As a company gets older it seems like politics are inevitable, no matter how hard or well you work.
In your experience, how can you smell the B.S from a mile away?
How do you deal with it?
Thank you <comment><USER3> Never believe a hiring manager who tells you they'll hire you at level X-1 and promote you to level X after some amount of time. Make sure you get hired at the level you deserve.

Never believe that money is the only thing you can negotiate at a company. Most benefits are negotiable; the only question is who is authorized to negotiate them. Vacation policies are often negotiable, if that's a thing you value.

"Don't talk about salary" (or other compensation) is a common unwritten policy. Note that it carefully isn't written down anywhere, it's just an unwritten expectation. That's because 1) it's illegal in many jurisdictions to prohibit discussing salary/compensation, and 2) it's often to the employees' _benefit_ to discuss salary/compensation with each other, just not to the employer's benefit. (That doesn't mean you bring it up in unrelated conversations; it means it's completely reasonable to discuss and compare compensation when you're trying to figure out things like "am I being paid fairly" or "is this person I'm mentoring/advising being paid fairly".

</comment><comment><USER4> _This is what I observed in a couple of companies. The most amazing thing is that some developers think that all is fine, some even like it._

Set a deadline without asking the developers. Or ask them and ignore their estimates. Or ask them and ignore that they will know after some initial checks which will take two days ("nope, we must know the deadline now") - <USER2> it's basically just guessing.

Then the deadline is "set in stone". This means only that it's a good way to punish the developers. Then they are forced to work during weekends.

At the end they are punished with bad yearly reviews, decreased bonuses etc. Sometimes some are even fired.

Then the management just moves the deadline to another, equally stupid, term. Of course they will get the full bonus "you see, the developers are lazy, but we fired the worst one".

Then the cycle repeats. The most funny thing is when the deadline is for some internal stuff where the client is fully internal and really doesn't care if the product will be this month or the next one.

<comment><USER5> I worked with a non-technical manager (banking background, somehow wormed his way into managing development) who never asked devs what they thought a task would take. I finally convinced him that this could not possibly work. I sat with him the first time he asked a dev how long the current task would take. The dev said "4 weeks". This guy said "I think it should take 2, so that is what I am putting in the schedule". Mind you, this guy had never written a line of code and had NO basis for his "thought" on the task length.

<comment><USER6> Haha that's great. "Let's settle with 3! Ha, good deal."

Things like these make me sometimes think that the whole business world is just a bunch of people lying to each other. Very depressing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's not always a trick; sometimes it's quite sincere. My first boss as a programmer hired me because he tried to write the app himself and discovered that there were more efficient uses of his talents. However he did learn some important lessons that he passed on to me:

1\. instead of giving full word names to variables, it is more efficient to just name the first one `a`, and the second one `b`, and then on the second pass through the alphabet `a1`, third pass `a2`, etc. He couldn't understand why I didn't re-use his old code written with this scheme or why I didn't adopt it going forward.

2\. It is far more efficient to simply not write the bugs, as opposed to wasting so much time debugging them.

Thanks for the education Frank, I did learn a lot from you.

<comment><USER6> I have a feeling I know why he hired you instead of writing it himself...

Also contributing my part: a boss declining unit tests because they cost money. In the meantime, he's wondering how crucial bugs appear again and again and urges us to be more careful. It's always a relieve to leave those places :)

<comment><USER8> This mindset of "you don't need tests, just don't write bugs" sounds extremely naive and amateurish at first but having worked at many different kinds of large and small tech companies around the world for over a decade, I now think that there is actually real wisdom behind that mindset and I've met some very talented engineers who share that thinking to various extents.

Debugging trains you to think about code. I think most of my programming skill comes from my open source project work where I didn't write tests initially. Now I can simulate code in my mind without having a computer in front of me. This is a really useful skill - You need to be under some kind of mental stress to learn this kind of skill.

When you don't have tests to rely on, your mind is forced to hold on to more details about different interralated parts of the code and over time, this mental stress trains you to hold a massive amount of detail in your mind and this helps you to write much better code. Also, being forced to hold a lot of code in your mind gives you a strong incentive to design clean simple architectures.

Writing bug-free code is not difficult for me now. Even on very complex distributed projects. I do write tests for my open source projects now but I do it at the end after everything is working. The purpose of tests for me now is just to lock down the code to prevent regressions. For some complex projects, I do TDD but I focus more on high level integration tests.

<comment><USER6> If you are out of the loop because you didn't work on a project for half a year or even are completely new to a project, this approach seems pretty impossible for myself. At least with the dynamics I had at the job described above (which included lots of project rotation among devs). I'm sure there are fitting settings where this approach might work, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "We believe in work/life balance" ...or the closely related... "We reward quality, not just last minute heroics.

Yeah, right. I'm at employer #12 right now (30+ years in the business) and this has never been true. I've been at startups and big companies, I've built products and services, I've been on the good side and the bad side of this, but it has never been true. Cases where people are rewarded for doing the right thing and _avoiding_ crises are rare. Far more often the rewards go to the people who grind out tons of feature code regardless of quality, and/or to those who pull all-nighters to debug those avoidable problems after they've already bitten a user.

If you're the kind of developer who wants to do The Right Thing, and you want to be rewarded for it, find a company and/or manager who has demonstrably _done_ that. Do as much of it as you can, but don't rely on it to drive raises/promotions. Make sure you also do enough of the "move fast" BS so that you don't get written off before people even think to look at quality or team contributions to decide between you and the person in the next cube.

</comment><comment><USER10> I worked at a startup that would only hire SWEs who did a 3 month internship first. The startup would not disclose the post internship salary.

Of course, the post internship salary offers were significantly below market rates. Many would accept the offers anyways because they had invested time and energy into the company.

The lesson is to never enter into a contract without full knowledge of it's consequences and how it will play out.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you can just work overtime, and hit this deadline, then things will let up, and we won't do this ever again. :D

<comment><AUTHOR> This right here. I remember one night, after 9 hours at work, I was gonna log back in to make some additional commits.

I even cancelled a night out with some friends, because "I really have to make this deadline"

Then it hit me, if as a competent developer I can't hit the deadline, it's because management added some extra work on top of our usual capacity, hoping we'll do whatever it takes to make it.

There's always more work to do. If they don't like me, they can fire me.

Nobody on their death bed said: I wish I spent more time at the office.

<comment><USER12> > There's always more work to do. If they don't like me, they can fire me.

I was at a job were I figured this out. Management was a mess, scope was so fluid to be essentially non-existent, and it was always the devs fault. So I said "screw it", I work 40 hours and collect a pay check, and that will be the extent of this relationship.

Sure enough, about 8 months later I am let go out of the blue for "lack of productivity" and "failing to be a team player". The example cited? When we were asked to stay after hours to help the company move offices.

Unless its your company, the relationship should always be about the money. I am giving a skill for X amount of time. In return I an receiving $Y. Anything more or anything less either needs to be put in writing, or is effectively an unnecessary gift. Perhaps it may be one you want to give, but ultimately unnecessary. And anytime the company asks for more X without giving more Y, they are taking advantage of you.

<comment><USER13> Startups are typically awful for this because the business is the founder's baby and they can't understand why other people aren't willing to sacrifice as much as they are. I've felt it first hand and in the exit interview the founder didn't even understand I wasn't in it for the stock options are they're vested after 3 years and no way he paid me enough to actually buy in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It took me a few rounds to detect this trick. I had a boss who would pick up on clues from upper management on where they may be headed. He would come back to our team, and throw everyone at a problem. "This is a priority for management.", he'd tell us. We'd solve the problem. About half the time, the solution would die right there, because management never requested it.

What he was actually doing was trying to guess what upper management wanted before they requested it. This way, when the request did come through, he'd have the solution on the spot. It made him look great. It wasted about half our team's time. One thing it did do for us is give us more experience in solving new problems, but at the expense of getting our day-to-day work done on time.

But I did get to the point of not being so eager to jump on his "call to action" meetings unless I had outside verification that it was an actual call to action by management.

He ended up being the head guy in charge of IT.

<comment><USER15> It has taken me a long time to realize that at least half of the prose I write, when writing a scientific paper, will be thrown away. Trouble is, until the full document takes shape, I never know which half.

If someone can predict and deliver what a customer wants, before they want it, with a 50% hit rate, that is excellent.

What appears to be troublesome in the narrative is, "It made him look great." It would be far more encouraging to see, "It made our team look great!" I get the sense that perhaps this boss wasn't sharing success, both credit and reward, with the team.

<comment><USER16> Haha exactly, most of that comment looked like a glowing praise of that manager honestly! A rising tide should lift all boats - would be nice if GP posted whether the team also got any credits and rewards for being the LITERAL definition of Innovative Risk Takers!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Management's idea of who "top performers" are tends to get skewed towards sycophantic or dishonest people, vs. the type that quietly gets the work done and doesn't care much about credit. But multiple times I have heard assurances, not to worry, they know who is really getting things done, and they know who is BSing them. When they say this, they never do.

</comment><comment><USER18> I like Patrick Lencioni's definition of politics on The Five Dysfunctions of a Team:

> Politics is when people choose their words and actions based on how they > want others to react rather than based on what they really think.

To know what others think and desire requires empathy. To counter B.S you have to do 2 things. Get to know yourself to create a carapace based on values that protects you, and get to know others, so you know the true reason why they want something from you. When these don't match (or don't match the proclaimed company values), this is the definition of B.S

If your values, their values and the company values match, then we can hardly call it B.S - and don't forget changing values and raising from naiveté is part of growth. It's ok to feel today you "gotta give 110%" then later realize this doesn't align with your life moment.

</comment><comment><USER19> Anything related to the "culture" of the workplace. The higher ups are raking in tons of money. That's it. That's why they are doing what they do. "Culture" is to keep the workers entertained while the execs scoop up all the cash.

<comment><USER20> nah, I don't buy this.

In a large company, most people _aren't_ making the big bucks and don't do it to make a fortune. They do it to make a living.

The "culture" of a place, especially at a bootstrapped startup where the higher ups _aren't_ raking in the big bucks is a huge draw to someone _where money is not the main reason for taking a job_.

For me, I'm paid well (probably 60th percentile for my location/position) but the flexibility I get from my employer which cultivates a nice culture and work-life balance is worth the cut in pay.

That said, if by culture you mean ping-pong tables, free beer and massages. I'm right with you.

<comment><USER19> In a startup the founders may not currently be making a lot of money but they have a ton of equity that they hope _will_ be worth a lot.

In a large organization the people at the top are making an enormous amount of money.

My experience is that "culture" is for the people who won't be getting rich from the company at some point.

I should add I don't consider flexible work hours "culture", that's a real, concrete benefit. I'm talking about the organized fun and structured loyalty attempts management puts in place.

<comment><USER20> Then yeah, I think I agree. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Scrum, which is "Agile" repackaged in a way that's in favor of management at the expense of engineers and the work they're doing and, ultimately, the stakeholders.

<comment><USER22> Have you met your new overlord, SAFe?

<comment><USER23> We have SAFe at our place for about a year now. I'd say there's a fair chance it will take over large enterprises fairly quickly. It's so process and management heavy that the people in charge will love it, and at the same time it claims to be agile so it's easier to push it down the throats of devs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Here, have some equity instead of cash. When the company succeeds, you'll be rich!

<comment><USER21> That or "we can't pay you now but we well... _eventually_."

Came across a ton of those when first starting out.

Like, dude, am I supposed to live on the streets of San Francisco or Los Angeles just to work for some no-name startup? lol

<comment><USER25> That's not just BS, it's straight up illegal in most jurisdictions (certainly California) if you'd be an employee rather than a contractor, as worker protections tend to include not only minimum pay but also timely pay requirements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Being a programmer is first being a human and second being one who writes code. Everything is politics. Everything is marketing and influence and leverage. The quicker you realize this and build these strengths, the more successful you'll be at engineering and all other endeavors in life.

Programmers are often surprised by this. "But I just want to write code" – that's just a very tiny piece of the puzzle.

</comment><comment><USER27> 1\. Refusal to accept that task estimates are subject to change.

2\. Managing people purely for their outputs; not as individuals with lives, career goals, interests, strengths, weaknesses.

3\. Insisting on process but not participating. E.g. scrums with no management present.

<comment><USER21> It depends on how you define management.

PMs should probably be present during sprint planning for Scrum, but any level of management above PM really shouldn't be there.

I worked at this one place where, as much as I dislike Scrum, we had a pretty good pace going without upper management ever getting involved. Then the manager of our department(not an engineering manager) decided to show up to all our meetings because, shit, why not, and it completely cramped our style. They also began to dictate that we do things in a specific way even though our productivity was fine before. Fortunately, like most non-engineers, they lost interest after a month and almost never showed up again.

Granted, I have found at most of my jobs that management is absent when it usually counts. At one place we had a "demo day" as part of our Scrum process, but relevant parties in management almost never showed up. They would even claim they would show up but always came up with an excuse at the last minute. It wrecked everyone's confidence in them because a manager can't claim to say things like "product is key" and then fail to show up to product demos every single time. Yet demo was something our management wanted us to have.

<comment><USER28> Your last paragraph is important. At a minimum management needs to understand scrum and play their part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> \- Hold a review for the customer. Insist that the story be simple and completely positive, to the point of lying. Terminate with extreme prejudice all references to "challenges", "complexity", or "risk" on the review slides.

\- Convince the engineers presenting the slides that you actually understand the challenges and complexities of the job. Make handshake agreements that none of this will be forgotten internally. Say "We just need a simple story to get through the review hoop."

\- Six months later, forget that any handshake agreement took place or indeed that anyone objected to the simple, straightforward, fallacious story presented in the review. The slides, after all, are the only thing written down. Insist that the engineers never conveyed any challenges to you. Blame them for delays, overruns, and missing features.

My lesson learned: never, ever sign your name to a fictional budget, schedule, or risk summary.

</comment><comment><USER30> I've rarely had any of that. Mainly I get pervasive bad management from poor but well-meaning managers.

Only thing I can think of is a long time ago being told if you hit this deadline here's £X thousand pound bonus for the team. We hit the deadline, they made me redundant next day and told me I wouldn't be getting my share because "you should have got it in writing"[0]

I took them to court and won eventually. Good fun.

[0] Which was a) true but b) plain nasty. Worth repeating at this point, the 3 laws of contracting:

1\. Get it in writing

2\. Get it in writing

3\. Get it in writing

<comment><USER31> Wow what was the asshole company that did this?

<comment><USER30> Long dead, don't worry you're safe!

Edit: useful lesson though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> General employment tricks:

\- Asking you your current pay. Not answering when you ask them their budget. A good answer is to discuss the other offers you have on the table.

\- Getting private info by asking you to correct something false. "So you made 80,000" will get an answer better than "How much were you paid?"

\- Repeatedly asking you the same question because they don't trust you and have read they'll "get the real answer" if they ask three times.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is the wrong question.

If you feel like management and politics are making you not trust the company, you should find another job, especially in this environment with plentiful jobs. If we suffer some sort of recession in the next couple of years, we need to hunker down in a good company that takes care of their employees.

</comment><comment><USER34> "I worked hard to get you this token raise."

"Work hard and the promotion come. Eventually."

"You'll be a paper millionaire at IPO time."

"This bug needs to be fixed before you go home."

</comment><comment><USER35> Any time management uses the phrase 'other duties and responsibilities,' and anytime management is suddenly willing to implement an idea they previously fought against.

A few days after switching roles and organizations within the company from regular system admin work to my first real development job, my old boss realized they were completely unprepared to continue without me. Due to the overall importance of my former customer to the company as a whole I was horse traded among senior management back to my old organization and role on a part time basis under the 'other duties and responsibilities' clause of my employment contract.

Prior to switching roles I made the case that the company should back-fill my position due to overall workload, the likelihood for burnout among my old teammates, impact to customer, etc (the original intention was to drop the role via attrition). I knew that something was up when my old manager was all excited to tell me that the company took my suggestions seriously.

As for how I dealt with it - unfortunately I bent over and took it. I have a myriad of reasons as to why, but the most salient is I feel I need the development experience and don't think I'd be able to find job elsewhere just yet. This has definitely accelerated my overall plans to leave the company entirely, but in the meantime I'm trying to milk all the experience I can from my new role and am preparing to quit at the earliest possible moment.

The silver lining out of this is that my partner, family, and friends have all been incredibly supportive. Additionally the team lead on my new team understands the situation I'm in and is trying very hard to present me opportunities to grow and expand my skill set even though I intend to leave the company in the future.

<comment><USER36> If you were your manager, making your case. What would you say: Would you, in writing, enquire to know at what date you might expect to be relieved of your former duties? Who is provided for knowledge transfer?

Point is, having another role and being in the same company, you may reasonably expect some "support" for your old role. If you take this as failure of management, you _can_ make demands from strength (of course in a diplomatic and understanding way).

At any time, dev work may make you miss deadlines, and where's that replacement?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> "We don't have a training budget right now, for you anyway, but that will change next year."

<comment><USER38> Similar to "get certified and we'll see about getting you a raise".

Gets certified, no raise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I dont consider anything bs unless its about money or equivalent. I Dont say anything at first or something like 'I think about it'. Think about My response, and finally Ask on something around these lines: "So your suggestion is X? And it would, unfairly, cause me Y?"

</comment><comment><USER40> You need to understand the underlying dynamics of the modern corporation.

Each one is structured differently, but they have general similarities. It takes some time and study, though. One of the best lenses I have found to view the corporation is 'The Gervais Principle'[0], now about 10 years young. Rao uses 'The Office' to illustrate the dynamics of the modern corporation.

Broadly speaking: Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing Losers into Clueless middle-management, groom under-performing Losers into Sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort Losers to fend for themselves.

One of the key lenses is the idea of 'talk' and how people in a corporation talk to each other. Specifically, the 'power talk' of how the sociopaths talk with each other, and 'the 'posture talk' of the clueless to the losers.

Your question is about 'posture talk', how to deal with it, and how to 'baby talk' to your Clueless managers. The answer is to pull a Ryan and turn into one of the Sociopaths, not one of the Clueless.

Though it is only one lens, and one that is ~10 years old now, the 'Gervais Principle' is a valuable resource and mental model for viewing the modern corporation and may help you in understanding the kinematics that underly what is going on with your managers.

[0] [https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais- principle/](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/)

<comment><USER36> Research "gaslighting", especially the advice and emotional support articles about the theme from people with experience.

This is the Old Men's Club, currently undergoing demolishment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Unilaterally setting unreasonable deadlines in order get engineers to "work harder".

</comment><comment><USER41> Two questions I always ask a team: Do programmers on the team interact with users of their software directly and what are the technical chops of the leadership in charge of engineering.

Technical chops: do they engage in the wider software engineering community, what projects have they worked on, do they publish papers, give presentations, do they have a body of work, etc.

If the answer to the first is no and the answer to the second is difficult to find out then I don't even need to work with the team for a while to know there is going to be dysfunction. It tells me that this is an ego-driven team, inexperienced and politics will play a huge part in getting work done.

If the answer to the first is yes and the answer to the second is still difficult to find there's going to be _some_ bullshit. You will have a toehold to fight against it because you can get the data you need from your users.

The answer can be no on the first one and the leadership can come from a good history of delivering good work. There is a range of bullshit here. You can still have ego driven development with a lot of bullshit. If you can't talk to your customers it's hard to know whether your leadership is bullshitting or not. However if you have done your research on leadership and trust them then there can be minimal amounts of bullshit.

If the answer to the first is yes and the leadership has a strong background and is well known then go work on that team. This is going to be a great team with almost zero bullshit. This combination is extremely rare but wonderful when you encounter it.

How I deal with bullshit -- get a therapist if you can afford it, group sessions if you're strapped, or start a group with local people to vent and get support. Burnout happens when you can't escape an environment that puts a lot of stress on you and you feel like you cannot control it. You might need to deal with the bullshit because you need the job to support people who depend on you. You can't deal with burnout by believing in yourself. Get a support system.

Bullshit is everywhere. It's often not because you are smarter than everyone else and can see it. It is often because you can't see everything going on and nobody can read your mind either. Bullshit happens when well-meaning people with insecurities are trying to meet unrealistic expectations (whether self- inflicted or social doesn't seem to matter). The best way to not spread bullshit is to leave your ego at the door. Seek teams that minimize bullshit and don't put unrealistic expectations on people.

</comment><comment><USER6> \- working on project A \- jumping into unplanned tasks because of an emergency in project B \- PM whose managing both gets mad at you because project A is gonna delay

Making me feel guilty because I save our ass? Time to update my resume

</comment><comment><USER42> Manager: When can you have this task done?

Employee: I'll shoot for <day>.

Mgr: Why can't we do <day-2>?

This was common in my team meetings at my last company. The boss was an asshole in general. He would always reframe things to put tons of pressure on you to get things done in unreasonable timelines, but he insisted this was normal and the onus is now on you to explain why we can't get this done in a "normal" timeframe. In front of the rest of the team.

Needless to say, if you're shy (or too nice), you'll buckle and try to get it done, and work yourself too hard.

</comment><comment><USER43> I've been ploy several times to the "Mr. Jorkins" effect: when you have several managers, an unpopular decision will be the brainchild of the manager you are not speak to at the time.

</comment><comment><USER44> Anytime they say something like "Just do X now and we'll do Y in the future" where X is an idea you disagree with that will be a problem in the future, and Y is your proposed alternative to fix things now before they get out of hand.

Get ready to be fixing shit.

</comment><comment><USER45> Boss asks 'When?', I say 'You can have it now or in 3 days when it works'. Boss decides NOW to hit his deadline. Not allowed to book any more time to it. Slagged of un-mercifully in testing. Thanks Boss. £50Bn business is run this way.

</comment><comment><USER46> "I myself personally can't stand politics get in the way of work!" rather suggestive that they're thinking about it...a lot.

"why don't you be the team leader, but let's not tell anyone..."

Hmmm

</comment><comment><USER47> 1\. You need to reskill! Future is about x y or z technology

2\. You have already learnt x technology? We can move you of your current project manger can release you.

3\. _Sighs_ reskilling isn't working as per our expectation

</comment><comment><USER28> In my company they sometimes change "estimates" to "commitments".

<comment><USER42> How often is sometimes? Always?

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> flattering</comment>


Crispr gene-editing creates wave of exotic model organisms - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01300-9 <comment><USER2> Related, Australia just decided that organisms which have genes knocked out as in OP's article using CRISPR do not count as 'genetically modified' as they're indistinguishable from 'naturally' occurring knockouts: [https://twitter.com/GaetanBurgio/status/1117730407116500992](https://twitter.com/GaetanBurgio/status/1117730407116500992)</comment>


Slipping out of the Honeymoon Phase. Waking up Scared. Oh Shit, This is Real - <AUTHOR> http://about.retickr.com/blog/2011/10/spending-a-lot-of-money-user-retention-slipping-out-of-the-honeymoon-phase-waking-up-scared-oh-shit-this-is-real…/#

<comment><USER2> Duplicate of an article on the front page:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3115872>

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a duplicate of this post from a few hours ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3115872></comment>


CarverAI: The Next Go-To Contact Tracing Software? - <AUTHOR> Hello fellow Hacker News users, we at CarverAI are in the process of creating a contact tracing solution.
The problem we are trying to provide a solution for is centered around businesses looking to re-open safely due to COVID-19. We are a startup interested in providing that solution in the form of contact tracing software.
We would like to gather as much feedback as possible. If you would like, please feel free to check out our software demo Youtube video here:
Website: https://carverai.com YouTube Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhE4PLTTHmA
Thank you! <comment><USER2> You website does not talk about tracing, what problem is this solving? Seems like a questionnaire and reporting platform for SMBs?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello verdverm,

Thank you for your feedback! Along with the the screening forms for customers and employees, and our reporting platforms, we have a Health Department point of contact search that allows businesses to ask/report COVID-related issues to Health departments in their respective states. Also, our search platform allows businesses to search for customers in a given date range, and contact them should the customer was recently exposed to COVID-19 in their place of business. Hopefully this answers your questions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello verdverm,

We at CarverAI have taken your feedback to apply changes to our content--with more even more changes to come in the near future. We appreciate you taking the time to check out our website!</comment></comment></comment>


Why did everything take so long? - <AUTHOR> https://meteuphoric.wordpress.com/2017/12/28/why-did-everything-take-so-long/ <comment><USER2> Concerning the wheel, it might be useful to look at ancient Mesoamerica. They had children's pull toys with wheels, and other things which were wheel-like, but no wheels used in transport.

The common explanation, for example at [http://www.zoesaadia.com/real-smart- folks-but-no-wheel/](http://www.zoesaadia.com/real-smart-folks-but-no-wheel/) , is that wheels aren't very useful without draft animals, and without land which is conducive to road-building (vs, say, water transport).

<comment><USER3> The counter example is the Chinese wheelbarrow, which is useful without draft animals and without roads, but that also makes your point. It's sophisticated enough that it's not hard to understand why it took so long to be invented without anything simpler and useful to evolve from.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for pointing that out. I didn't know about that history. [http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/the-chinese- wheelbarr...](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/the-chinese- wheelbarrow.html/) gives more details, like:

> The one-wheeled vehicle appeared around the time the extensive Ancient > Chinese road infrastructure began to disintegrate. Instead of holding on to > carts, wagons and wide paved roads, the Chinese turned their focus to a much > more easily maintainable network of narrow paths designed for wheelbarrows. > The Europeans, faced with similar problems at the time, did not adapt and > subsequently lost the option of smooth land transportation for almost one > thousand years.

> ... It is interesting to note that the wheelbarrow appeared at least 2,000 > years later than two-wheeled carts and four-wheeled wagons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just because we haven't found evidence of progress in early civilizations doesn't mean it wasn't there. Any small marginal gains were probably immediately lost to time, though.

We needed civilization to spread out enough for commerce to protect new inventions from luddite regime changes to avoid losing progress (think Mao's book burning and communist regimes like Pol Pot's slaughtering academics/people who look smart - probably based on what Qin Shi Huang did 2000 years ago.)

</comment><comment><USER5> Why is a wheel even useful? Sounds like a solution in search of a problem. I remember the good old days when we didn't even think about needing wheels for all the made up problems we've created for ourselves.

Honestly though, just replace wheel with AI and that's exactly what most non- techie people I know think about AI. Humans probably haven't changed that much since 4000 BC.

</comment><comment><USER6> We hate creatve people who want to take our nice things and change them into sonething weird. We make an effort to kill that behaviour in people.

There probably is some good excuse for the instinct, some experience long long ago.

I'm coining the graffiti fish phenomenon to illustrate the concept. Tell me you didnt like it.</comment>


Creating an Angular application with a tiny footprint - <AUTHOR> http://www.syntaxsuccess.com/viewarticle/minimal-angular-application <comment><USER2> Angular cli app size is around 90k compared to react/vue's 40k. I dont think these sizes are huge. Just avoid adding hundreds of dependencies. I have seen Angular 1 apps ship like 5-10mb JS for first load. Embrace code-splitting.</comment>


10 Authors Who Wrote Gritty, Realistic Fantasy Before George R.R. Martin - <AUTHOR> http://io9.com/10-authors-who-wrote-gritty-realistic-fantasy-before-g-1695063524

<comment><USER2> And they're all as bad as Game of Thrones?</comment>


Domain Connect - <AUTHOR> https://godaddy.github.io/2019/04/25/domain-connect/ <comment><USER2> This is surprisingly neat. It sounds like anyone who has a GoDaddy domain can presumably use DDNS for free with this?

It's a little ironic, I probably just moved the domains I'd most likely use this with off GoDaddy a week ago. Might have to move one or two back.

The list of providers at domainconnect.org already on board is pretty solid too.</comment>


Show HN: Purelymail (Beta) – extremely cheap custom domain email - <AUTHOR> https://purelymail.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! Creator here. I've been working on Purelymail for the past few months because the state of paid email services bothered me. Relative to what they offer, they tend to be pretty expensive. $5 a month adds up.

I think it's important to have mail cheap enough that people won't be tempted to sell their personal lives to Gmail instead.

Purelymail only offers custom domain hosting to start with, which has the benefit of keeping final ownership of email address in users' hands. That said, I'll likely add shared first-party domains eventually, given that the friction of registering a website is probably too much for most nontechnical people.

This is a beta! I'm sure a lot of stuff is hilariously broken. Feel free to poke around, and I'd love to hear your feedback.</comment>


Weta Workshop – Blade Runner 2049 - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLxxbfsj8IM <comment><USER2> Cool stuff! Apparently Nolan's "Dunkirk" used a similar technique involving miniatures. Literally green plastic toy soldiers on the beach to recreate large assembled forces. No doubt, with enough texture and natural light this can look more cinematic than graphics ;)</comment>


A Critique of React Hooks Addendum - <AUTHOR> https://dillonshook.com/a-critique-of-react-hooks-addendum/ <comment><USER2> Maybe a good place to ask this:

I've been hearing a lot of "oh we don't use Redux, we use hooks" lately, as if this obviously makes sense.

Am I missing something? To me this seems like "oh we don't use Redux, we use arrays". I'm gonna need quite a few more details before I can make any sense of a statement like that.

Like... what? How... how does that explain what you're doing? One of these things is not like the other. "Oh we don't use doors on our buildings anymore, we've switched entirely over to trees". Huh? What the actual hell does that mean?

<comment><USER3> One of the problems Redux is used to solve (as a global store) is peace of mind that you won't need to refactor large swathes of component trees to reparent state and callbacks that need to be shared or persisted across different subtrees as new business requirements arise. Hooks (especially custom hooks, which are just a composition of other hooks packaged together as a single function) make the reparenting/hoisting/anchoring of state and callbacks trivial compared to other mechanisms, providing similar peace of mind that you're not boxing yourself into an inextensible component tree. (This is regardless of context; passing down props isn't a large pain point, and is often misguided to try to solve because it leads to importable components and hidden contracts.)

Render props and HoCs solve similar problems for composition/reuse of functionality (these are all mixins at heart), but the hoistability of hooks is really the distinguishing mark in my experience.

<comment><USER4> Replacing redux with hooks that return local state can be a road to hell, as calling the hook somewhere down the tree will duplicate the state and there is no good way to prevent developers doing that.

<comment><USER5> IMO that's not much different than introducing a new variable in your global state to represent the same thing because you didn't realize there was already one there.

If you have a team you need discipline, code reviews, and leadership. No state solution is going to solve this for you.

<comment><USER4> It is not a matter of discipline. Avoiding this gotcha requires you to manually inspect your entire parent component hierarchy looking for uses of that hook - sometimes that is a plain grep away, but it is a very much invisible error. You also have to be familiar with the inner workings of the hook itself, and any other nested hooks, to verify if they use any local state or not. If it does, and you _need_ to share that state, well, that's a big rewrite which kind of defeats the initial argument.

Maybe extra tooling could be built to avoid this, if we weren't already drowning in linter plugins...

<comment><USER5> Again this isn't a problem with hooks. You could easily connect a redux store and reducer to some component low in the hierarchy with it's own state. Or use a class based component with some state. A developer can introduce random state anywhere and it has nothing to do with hooks themselves. If you can't trust your team to make the right decisions about where to place state, then you need to provide more guidance.

I also disagree about the big re-write. Converting a hook's data/state to come from a prop instead is a very simple change.

<comment><USER6> I love how every criticism of hooks is like "if you don't take care to use them well, you get bad code".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not quite sure what the point of this quiz is. I don't know the answer to those questions, and yet I seem to have no trouble building very large react applications (with hooks) anyway.

I would also struggle with similar quiz based on the callbacks for class components. And those I actually had to deal with on a frustratingly regular basis! At least with hooks I can remain blissfully ignorant of what happens under the covers of useEffect().

Maybe the answers don't matter and this is a pointless exercise.

<comment><USER8> I'd definitely agree there's nuances about hook behavior that a lot of folks aren't familiar with. (Dan Abramov's mammoth post "A Complete Guide to `useEffect`" [0] ought to be required reading for all React devs, and a lot of the info in that post ought to be better integrated into the React docs directly.) That said:

\- The "effect behavior runs bottom to top" has always been true about class lifecycle methods like `componentDidMount` / `componentDidUpdate`. So, nothing new there.

\- Somewhat similarly, the aspect of new prop references causing some logic to run every time is not completely new, either - it's similar to how attempts to optimize rendering via use of `PureComponent`, `React.memo()`, and `shouldComponentUpdate` can "break" when the parent component passes down new callback or data object references every time.

\- The complaint that "there's more stuff to learn" seems superfluous. If there was never anything new to learn, that would mean that the API was completely stagnant and that nothing new could ever be introduced. Yes, the ecosystem is in a somewhat uncomfortable transition state atm given that there's two different APIs that offer equivalent functionality, but "learning more stuff raises the barrier to entry" is not a particularly meaningful argument against hooks.

[0] [https://overreacted.io/a-complete-guide-to- useeffect/](https://overreacted.io/a-complete-guide-to-useeffect/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I thought the quiz was really missing the point. The whole point of reactive programming is to not worry about execution order.

</comment><comment><USER10> A clear, concise & clever blog post.

Quizzing the community on its supposed expertise, is such an effective way to separate rhetoric from reality.

<comment><USER11> While I like the post and associated quiz, I feel like execution order is not the most important thing to understand with hooks, but it's the main theme of the quiz. If you're designing your components in an effective way, execution order shouldn't _really_ come into play. It typically only comes to bite you if you're manipulating some global state outside of React, or doing some direct DOM manipulation.

Questions 3 and 4 about anonymous objects and useRef are definitely the kind of knowledge that someone who aims to understand React and Hooks should focus on, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This was a great follow up. I completely agreed with the first post, and I couldn't help but think those critiquing it didn't quite understand what they were critiquing. It's rare that you're able to actually definitively prove that out, but these results are about as conclusive as it gets.</comment>


The Quest For Every Beard Type - <AUTHOR> http://www.dyers.org/blog/beards/beard-types/

<comment><USER2> This is amazing. You should arrange these by trustworthiness [http://themetapicture.com/the-trustworthiness-of- beards/](http://themetapicture.com/the-trustworthiness-of-beards/)</comment>


Too many people have peed in the pool (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://www.stephenfry.com/2016/02/peedinthepool/ <comment><USER2> 1\. There is a 4chan meme that goes approximately like this:

Newbie: "Remember the time when 4chan was good?"

Veteran: "4chan was never good."

"4chan" can be easily replaced with "Twitter" or "The Internet" here.

2\. There's a universal tendency for people to reminisce fondly about the good old days and contrast them with the ostensibly bad present. It has nothing to do with the truth. It is simply a syndrome of getting old. People were doing it 3000 years ago.

<comment><USER3> > 2\. There's a universal tendency for people to reminisce fondly about the > good old days and contrast them with the ostensibly bad present. It has > nothing to do with the truth. It is simply a syndrome of getting old.

Nothing to do with the truth? Maybe in your cases, but in others it very much does. In the good ol' days Democrats and Republicans weren't as hostile and unwilling to work together as they are now. In the good ol' days it used to snow _way_ more in some places than it does now. In the good ol' days many places were less polluted than they are now. In the good ol' days people had to learn to actually ask each other out instead of swiping right on their phones. In the good ol' days businesses had longer-lasting relationships with their employees and didn't view them as disposable goods. Yeah, totally nothing to do with the truth, just people imagining things.

<comment><USER4> Maybe that's your perspective, but...

LA is way less polluted than it used to be. People used to go to speed dating events where they have a pool of maybe 15 people who might be compatible. Democrats and Republicans both used to be racist and sexist. The weather in New England is much more pleasant in winter than it used to be. These days it isn't a black mark against your name if you've changed jobs 3 times because you wanted to try something new.

All about perspective. If you want to reminisce, go ahead, but there are two sides to the coin.

<comment><USER3> (a) I didn't say "everywhere", and I wasn't talking about LA. I'm glad you lived somewhere where that wasn't the case. The world is bigger than LA, or than the United States for that matter.

(b) My point was _not_ that the good ol' days were paradise and we're all rotting in hell now. My point was that old people are not necessarily making $h!1 up in drawing comparisons with the good ol' days, in contrast with what the parent said. I thought this was obvious but evidently not.

<comment><USER4> Of course they're not making shit up, but they do have a selective memory, which was GPs point that you seemed to miss.

If things are distributed between bad and good, it doesn't matter how that distribution changes over time if the bad things from the past are forgotten in the comparison. It is still dishonest.

<comment><USER5> You are implying "the bad things from the past" have an objective weight. They could be insignificant, and in someone's eyes the past is truly "good".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Usenet

Slashdot

twitter

I've been in a lot of "discussion things" over the years and i've seen them go bad. As they become more well known the worse they get. Initially somewhat- like-minded people are drawn to something for somewhat-similar reasons. When things become popular the noise from people of all walks of life drowns out the signal of like mindedness. In the case of twitter some of the noise Actively tries to ruin the signal.

The initial users of tv, radio and even cars must have felt a similar despair (after the initial thrill of their interest becoming used by more people).

It's not nostalgia, things were better "back then" where "back then" is a point between gaining users and acceptance by the general population.

<comment><USER7> Yet HN is so far managing the onslaught. Part of that is of course very tightly controlled moderation where crass behavior is immediately and severely punished, but maybe requiring civility at all times is the only way to have a meaningful discussion.

<comment><USER8> HN is widely know for being full of self absorbed white tech guys.

Yes it got more civilized in the last years, but while not being offensive it's still filled with one sided views of the world by <1% of its population.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As someone once put it: "There's a sort of Gresham's Law of trolls: trolls are willing to use a forum with a lot of thoughtful people in it, but thoughtful people aren't willing to use a forum with a lot of trolls in it."

[http://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html)

I've seen any number of fora over the ages, and the debasement problem is a significant one. It's not limited to online, as the saga of _The American Mercury_ illustrates:

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

My preference, increasingly, is to be acutely aware of the limits of my own time and attention, to block fuckwits with abandon, and to treasure both the individuals and fora which actually _do_ deliver quality.

On which, a thank you to HN's mods, dang and scbt, both of whom put in a hell of a lot of work, much of it gentle, and for which HN is decidedly one of the better, and longer-lived, discussion platforms on today's Internet.

(Metafilter also seems particularly resilient.)

</comment><comment><USER10> >A stalking ground for the sanctimoniously self-righteous who love to second- guess, to leap to conclusions and be offended – worse, to be offended on behalf of others they do not even know.

That's been the majority of comments / forums since at least 2001. It also sounds a whole lot like the modern "tabloid" news.

<comment><USER11> I've been on the Internet since the late 1980s (and the WWW since the mid 1990s). It started _long_ before 2001.

<comment><USER12> Online discourse has certainly declined in recent years. But you're right, people seeking conflict online is nothing new. What I believe HAS changed in more recent years, however, is the heavy subject matter being invoked today by these trolls. Flame wars over PC hardware and Linux distros on message boards is nothing new, but the very aggressive accusations of racism, bigotry, marginalizing, and sexism that get lobbed at people on social media is a new form of online viciousness.

<comment><USER13> Its effect on the off-line world is that much greater as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It is inevitable. Why? Because the paid "influencers" such as PR firms will be attracted to any popular and/or influential discussion forum to promote the "point of view" they are paid to promote, or viewpoints they are paid to muddy or obfuscate.

Once the site/forum reaches a certain level of influence they show up, and to the casual viewer it appears as added noise.

</comment><comment><USER15> Stephen has since returned to Twitter, though he tweets much less than he used to. I wonder if he is now treating it as a write-only medium.

I'm one of the lucky 50K people he still follows (he used to follow everyone who followed him, in the very early days of Twitter, but that quickly stopped), but when you have 12 million followers, I imagine your use of Twitter is somewhat different to most peoples.

</comment><comment><USER16> People have a tendency to forget that famous public figures are people and feel comfortable saying mean things without thought. I think Few's experience of Twitter is probably an amplified version of what most of us know.

I still like Twitter. Compared to other online forums, it still has the most thoughtful discourse I know of (except for HN). Even if it means tolerating a bunch of unpleasant garbage along the way.

<comment><USER17> I think the fact that Twitter made a name for itself by restricting the degree to which you can actually express your thoughts (by constraining response length) doomed them.

It's far easier to be snarky and mean in 140 characters than it is to be rational and respectful.

<comment><USER18> You think, if only they were given more space, the trolls would suddenly find themselves unspinning their vitriol into coherent, well-expressed and thoughtful sentiment?

Or would they just shit-talk with more words?

<comment><USER19> Or just continue to be terse and shitty. Unless the also implemented a minimum, I don't see how raising the maximum would help very much. At least that has been my experience in forums for many years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What I dislike about Twitter is how much significance things that happen on it are given.

With over 300mln active users if something has been retweeted, say, 15,000 times it still can't be reasonably counted as a "storm".

<comment><USER21> There is this interesting phenomenon that in some regions, Twitter activity is not particularly high (e.g. Germany), so according to an analysis I read a while ago, a few hundred tweets within a few hours are enough to get a topic trending in the region.

So there is this effect where a small group of activists (20-30) can easily coordinate to launch a 100 tweets. They then reach out to online media outlets, which in turn report that a topic is trending, so it is officially 'news', and thus the cycle begins.

In particular, journalists are disproportionally over-represented on twitter and thus seem to (somewhat self-importantly) overvalue it as a discussion medium. At least where I am from, it is almost exclusively activists, journalists and politicians in their own Twitter bubble talking to each other and reporting about what they say about each other.

So as they believe in its importance, it becomes important, and thus opens avenues to manipulation by pr agencies or state actors or political splintergroups.

<comment><USER22> This has been working exactly the same ever since the invention of the media. This problem is not specific to Twitter. Actually doing something like this (creating something out of nothing) is PR 101.

If you are not familiar but interested in learning more. This book is a good primer: [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0074VTHH0/ref=dp-kindle- redirect?...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0074VTHH0/ref=dp-kindle- redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11104006](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11104006)

</comment><comment><USER24> Not to Godwin myself, but an example someone once used was that in Nazi Germany, only a small percentage of Germans actually were firm Nazis. The moderate majority, however, let the radical minority dictate the agenda for everyone, and that's how Nazism gained power.

In the same way, I see this phenomenon all over our world. I don't know if it's because of 24-hr news cycle, Twitter/Facebook or whatever, but we see the radical, loud minority dictate the agenda. So even Fry says that it's only a small percentage of trolls that are ruining it for him, but it's enough to drive him off Twitter, despite all of his fans that want him on Twitter.

In other words, the signal-to-noise ratio is very low, but people are now taking the noise as signal and reacting to it. It's not a good thing when trolls and radicals dictate the agenda for the silent, moderate majority. All the noise from the media and anti-Trump haters is a good example of where people who listen too closely to the noise end up missing the signal where it matters, and don't react properly. I think if the Democrats really know how Middle America was feeling, they would have conducted a much different campaign, but they listened to the wrong things.

<comment><USER25> It's fascinating that, in your analogy, folks sharing progressive views on Twitter are the Nazis, considering that _literal_ white supremacists tend to favor the other side.

<comment><USER24> Nope, not what I said at all. I was talking about the trolls on Twitter. My point is that if you listen to the noise, rather than true signal, you might take the wrong path or get the wrong idea. In the case of the election, EVERYONE thought Clinton was going to win in a landslide, and the real signal was that it was a lot closer than that. But you never would have seen that from Twitter or the media. And that's the problem. If the Democrats were able to root out the true signal, they probably could have stopped Trump with better communication to Middle America, and stopped this debacle that we're currently in.

<comment><USER25> The "trolls" Fry is talking about here are progressives. At least, that is the signal I'm getting from the following: "It doesn't matter whether they think they're defending women, men, transgender people, Muslims, humanists . . .."

He is essentially invoking the "snowflake" meme. And, in what might perhaps be called an instance of the Law of Snowflakes, it's in a context where he is whining about discourse not taking the tone he prefers.

(If it seems weird that I'm ignoring 80% of the parent poster's content in his comment, it is because its initial iteration of that comment only contained the first two sentences.)

<comment><USER24> Trolls exist on both sides of the spectrum.

<comment><USER25> That is no doubt true, although hardly relevant when one particular side is called out by various signals in the linked blog post, one of which I have already explained. If he were talking about conservative trolls, this would be a very different article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've never really seen the point in twitter. I know it's popular, and for Dutch politicians, tweeting seems to be a requirement, but to me it has always seemed like a medium that's primarily for shouting into the void. And some people clearly love shouting abuse or inane crap into that void.

In any case, it's not a medium for discussion, and it seems designed to provide as little context as possible, so it's easy to take things out of context.

</comment><comment><USER27> What about Marc Andreesen? He quit Twitter but I see him lurking around liking things and stuff. Not sure why he went into a read-only mode.

<comment><USER28> Gave away too many secrets

<comment><USER27> What do you mean?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> He should come to mastodon. Way nicer place and a better feature set. Not to mention a WAY better UI. Oh, and no ads.

<comment><USER30> Sorry but I think mastodon is DOA. The user experience for on-boarding is atrocious. Think of what the _average user_ would do if you tell them to join mastodon.

First if you search for it and go to the first page it talks about open source (no average user knows what that is; _some_ have vague ideas but in my experience _none_ of them know what it is beyond the very rare person who heard a report on TV and thinks it's "nerds doing something for free"). Then it talks about "blah blah blah social should be decentralized blah blah blah you cannot sign up here because we believe in decentralization!" (paraphrased, of course)

Now the user, the average user who very likely doesn't understand why this pure decentralized thing is better than Facebook or Twitter since he or she can go to one one place, sign up and immediately start posting, has to somehow find somewhere else to sign up because of some purity stance?

Look I'm all for decentralizing things. But it's _never, ever_ going to see the growth of average users having this much friction. When you want to take growth away from highly popular incumbents you need a way to have less friction than them (at least usually, in my experience). Decentralizing, at least in this form, adds an order of magnitude more friction.

<comment><USER31> Why is it DOA just because the average user can't signup? If anything, it might help with the problem described in the article.

<comment><USER30> A social network being accessible only by a specific niche will severely limit its growth and reach. If that's all the network wants then that's fine but that's by far NOT how I've seen mastodon marketed.

Regardless, even being accessible by only people who know what's going on still doesn't guarantee success. There is _still_ significant friction there. I know HN decentralized everything is pretty popular but when it comes to UX I've never seen it test well because I haven't seen a good enough UX to just about any decentralization of a normally centralized service that also lowers friction of use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The Internet is great for information and light-hearted banter but not necessarily discussion. Most discussions are plagued by trolling, astroturfing, brigading and gratuitous rudeness.

Anonymity is important but it also allows pointless discussions and arguments between let's say a child or someone not interested or versed in a subject and an expert.

The value of discussion remain low and people behave in ways they simply wouldn't face to face. In the real world these kind of discussions would be a pointless waste of time for all involved and would simply not happen.

You could try to change this by taking away the anonymity or extremely strong moderation but as we have seen with Facebook and even here the lack of anonymity doesn't stop snarky or bad behavior and there are far too many people who by default assume a tone of authority when they don't really know what they are talking about.

</comment><comment><USER33> More people should read this:

[https://www.joe.co.uk/news/why-gary-lineker-lily-allen- and-y...](https://www.joe.co.uk/news/why-gary-lineker-lily-allen-and-you- shouldnt-comment-93236)

</comment><comment><USER34> You should check out Lyra, a conversation service which isn't designed to recirculate its own waste.

www.hellolyra.com

</comment><comment><USER35> Twitter isn't really suitable for intelligent conversations; 140 characters is too short.

But it's enough to share links, hence it replaced / is replacing RSS, trolling, and pingbacks. [http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-killed-rss- and-thats-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-killed-rss-and-thats-a- bad-thing-2014-3)

<comment><USER2> >Twitter isn't really suitable for intelligent conversations; 140 characters is too short.

A lot of people break that rule by posting images with walls of text.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> "A stalking ground for the sanctimoniously self-righteous" \- clearly Mr Fry doesn't spend a lot of time looking in the mirror!

<comment><USER37> As eevee put it [https://eev.ee/blog/2016/02/15/everyones-offended-these- days...](https://eev.ee/blog/2016/02/15/everyones-offended-these-days/) :

>I love Stephen Fry, really I do, but this oft-repeated quote is bullshit and he is perfectly demonstrating why that is. What he's really saying is this: everyone else's feelings don't matter, but his do, because he frames them as universal rules of discourse rather than feelings.

>Look at his post again — that's exactly how he words his point of view. "Too many people have peed in the pool." "Now the pool is stagnant, …frothy with scum." Fry's feelings aren't feelings — they are a universal and objective standard of behavior, which everyone else is violating. All those angry people, yelling that Fry has violated a universal and objective standard of behavior? Ah, they're just perpetually offended, you see. Totally different.

<comment><USER38> There at least an order of magnitude more crap and less eloquence and content in the kind of comments Fry complains about than in the stuff he writes.

The author has seen the average Twitter/Reddit/forum comments, I presume. Do they look anything like what Fry (or any talented writer for that matter) posts?

So, yeah, Fry is right, what he complains is people actually breaking "universal rules of discourse".

<comment><USER39> Give me a break, since when does sophistication count for anything? The most sophisticated /b/tard in existence could write a magnum opus about how he dominates you in every conceivable way, it still wouldn't count for anything based on the verbiage alone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Twitter is and always has been a pile of trash. It's the "please limit your response to 30 seconds" of the internet.

</comment><comment><USER41> Is it still distasteful if you just use it as fire n forget to broadcast your thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER42> TL;DR: Stephen Fry quits Twitter in early 2016.

</comment><comment><USER43> > Where Stephen Fry discovers the concept of the Eternal September.

</comment><comment><USER44> Fry was at the forefront of those who weaponized Twitter, with an army of sycophants attacking any of his real or imagined foes. He was instrumental in creating the problem he bemoans.

<comment><USER45> > _" Fry was at the forefront of those who weaponized Twitter, with an army of > sycophants attacking any of his real or imagined foes. He was instrumental > in creating the problem he bemoans."_

A comment like this absolutely requires sources. OP might be correct, but without any attempt to justify or corroborate, this just smacks of trolling and is a perfect example of what is wrong with Twitter.

<comment><USER46> It is kinda unfair to blame twitter for accusatory comment on hacker news.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why hasn't JVM become the defacto implementation for dynamic languages? - <AUTHOR> The JVM has been around for a while now.  It's stable, mature, and fast.  Lots of languages have started to get ported over to the JVM, and things like Scala exist to make the JVM a great computing platform.
With recent dynamic language implementations on the JVM meeting or surpassing performance of the "native" VMs, why hasn't there been a move to have the JVM become the default implementation?
Jython is a great example. It's fast -- faster than CPython in a lot of cases, and it doesn't  have the GIL.  And it gets access to the full Java environment if it wants it, presumably including things like Clojure, JRuby, Scala, etc. where appropriate.
This seems like a win/win to me, yet there is almost no traction in this direction.  I can think of a couple of reasons why this might be:
1. I'm wrong and Jython isn't actually any faster.
Even if it isn't faster, the better environment should make up for this.
2. Integration with Java land isn't that much of a benefit.
Having access to all of this stuff -- but not being forced to use it -- seems great to me.  There's no real downside and lots of potential upside, including increased market penetration in enterprise environments.
3. The JVM won't benefit from dozens to hundreds of programmers from python/ruby/etc applying what they've learned in their respective languages to it.
Maybe this is a case of too many cooks in the kitchen.  Linux seems to do well with the "shittons of developers working simultaneously" method of doing things, why can't the JVM?
Even if the language developers don't work on the JVM at all, so what? See points 1 and 2.
4. Lagging behind by a few versions (Jython is at what, 2.5.x?) is a bigger deal than I'm imagining.
This could be made up for within a year or 2 if languages committed to the JVM as their default implementation.
5. Non-perfect compatibility breaking lots of stuff
This is a major concern, right?  It's not like Python3 isn't doing the same thing right now, or seemingly every version of Ruby doing the same thing.  Oh wait, they do.
Maybe the JVM isn't the right vm to standardize on; maybe LLVM would be more appropriate.  I don't know.  What I do know is that it seems silly for a bunch of language designers to all be having a big case of NIH and writing their own vms and bytecode interpreters.
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> One of the really big issues with the JVM (outside of the "It's Java" or "Scary Oracle" stuff) is startup time. Many dynamic languages came into being to scratch an itch for scripting. In those cases, being able to start up quickly is important.

Clojure, Groovy, Scala, and others have shown ground-up dynamic languages on the JVM can be very good and very successful. But that doesn't mean there isn't value outside of the JVM, too.

Once you say "All languages must be on the JVM", you significantly limit innovation, since you are tied to what Oracle decides is worthwhile. For example, it probably makes sense for there to be no tail-call optimization in the JVM, but that is pretty important for a very large class of languages.

<comment><USER3> Scala is pretty much the opposite of a dynamic language...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the reason is both technical and social.

The JVM has a very hard time integrating existing C code and extensions. For instance, in the case of python, Jython lacks the ability to take advantage of the significant number of modules written in C.

Consider what this means for performance. Imagine a pure python module that attempts to import a C submodule for performance, and falls back on on the pure python implementation specifically to allow it to run on non-CPython implementations. json is an example of such a module.

This module was likely engineered and architected with C module optimization in mind. I'd assert that in most cases the pure python module is a crutch to allow a CPython-targeting module to run on other implementations.

This leads into the social reason. Community takes a long time to build and using the JVM for dynamic languages is a relatively new trend. The JVM is a very mature, well-optimied technology for static languages. It is only now that dynamic languages are starting to gain traction on it.

</comment><comment><USER5> There's a recent blog post[1] by one of the CPython core devs. He talks about Pypy, not Jython, but I think it applies too:

 _Personally, I think the status quo in this space is in a pretty good place, with python-dev and CPython handling the evolution of the language specification itself, as well as providing an implementation that will work reasonably well on almost any platform with a C compiler (and preferably some level of POSIX compliance), while the PyPy crew focus on providing a fast, customisable implementation for the major platforms without getting distracted by arguments about possible new language features._

[1]: [http://www.boredomandlaziness.org/2011/08/of-python-and- road...](http://www.boredomandlaziness.org/2011/08/of-python-and-road-maps-or- lack-thereof.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> When Oracle bought Sun, Java lost its mojo. Sure, Java still has many more installs, but who would trust Oracle with it medium- to long-term. Microsoft was clearly evil when Java was born, and in the late 1990's. But Microsoft turned, created C#, and has slowly nurtured it so it's now better than Java in many ways, e.g without Java's rotten type erasure, snappier in Visual Studio than JVM-anything in Eclipse, with the dynamic keyword, ... Now everyone knows Oracle is more evil than Microsoft, and the JVM is just one of many platforms, alongside .NET, javascript ..., we can develop to.

</comment><comment><USER7> Dynamic languages were not very well served until invokedynamic came about.

If you have a careful look at the Java bytecode, every non virtual function call is resolved at compile time. However, for dynamic languages, function resolution is at run time. And at the moment, it can only be done via reflection, and not amenable to JIT optimizations. However, this is all changing, and if Java could shed some of their static classes (which affect start up time), it has a good chance going forward.

</comment><comment><USER8> Sun was a supercomputer company. Java is the alternative to IBM operating system VM's running on mainframes. Nobody has that kind of hardware just lying around. Java was designed to run on $1000 SCSI hard-drives and 32Gb of RAM. The focus is on standardization, scalability, portability, buzzwords and expensive catering.

The guy that made the Chrome Javascript VM sat with a laptop in a small house in the Danish countryside. Because the focus was on normal everyday hardware. And guess who that was ? A former Sun Java VM programmer. So the "just use Chrome" developer demographic is sort of unintentionally ironic when they, well, open their mouths. Why do they think Chrome is so memory hungry anyway :P Well, the problem is actually the same problem that you have in other UI frameworks where event listeners and DOM references never gets released from the UI side. And there are some strange issues with anonymous functions and closures, but I do not know enough about that to comment.

Java is fine, but Javascript does not need to be Java. Apple just screwed up the LiveConnect bridge in Safari just to piss us off.. transition us all to a better state of mind. Or maybe that was Oracle, I have no clue anymore. The guy that worked on Jython probably felt very alone doing all the work and JRuby is only here because of desperation from Sun. And Scala is the solution for people who never finish anything. So maybe I should.. oh shiny..

[http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/nov2008/gb2008...](http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/nov2008/gb20081112_082312.htm) [http://labs.teppefall.com/2011/08/why_not_use_java_and_invok...](http://labs.teppefall.com/2011/08/why_not_use_java_and_invokedynamic.html)

<comment><USER9> > Java was designed to run on $1000 SCSI hard-drives and 32Gb of RAM.

This is plain wrong. Java was originally developed as a language for embedded devices, not servers. Later, it was targeted for the web (remember applets?).

These days Java may be best known for being "enterprise", but that is hardly its origin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The JVM is mostly nonfree, controlled by Oracle, and isn't easily or readily available on systems other than Windows. I cringe whenever i see an application of some sort that relies on the JVM, as i know there's a rather small chance of that application working properly.

In theory it's great, but in practice it sucks.

<comment><USER11> The JVM is available on Linux and Mac OS X, too.

<comment><USER10> Sure it's available, but it's error-prone to install, often an old version, and generally breaks all over the place.

<comment><USER12> There are other implementations too, like IBM J9 and GNU Kaffe. I remember using J9 in place of Sun Java when I was a desktop Linux user.

<comment><USER13> Oracle has demonstrated a certain eagerness to sue alternative implementations, so I'm not sure those really get around the issue

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If JVM is purported to be so good in terms of performance, why not just create a JOS too? The VMs is only as fast as the OS from my basic understanding. It would mean an easy port of applications in JOS to other JVMs too.</comment>


Cloudflare down in the UK? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cloudflare.com/system-status

<comment><AUTHOR> My CF-hosted sites have been unavailable for the last half an hour or so and according to Twitter I'm not the only one.</comment>


India's $35 tablet said to ship in October, do dreams really come true? - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/29/indias-35-tablet-said-to-ship-in-october-do-dreams-really-com/ <comment><USER2> well this product looks to be promising but what we need to see is what is being offered. promises have been many, but how many of them are delivered is to be seen. production problems might be seen and $35 tag might be for short duration of time and then no one knows how much will the govt. earn from all this :P

</comment><comment><USER3> If this is true, I was wondering when this was going to happen. US companies have long since outsourced their technology to be built. In a lot of these Third World countries production materials and labor are extremely cheap. It will only be a matter of time before these companies began manufacturing their own products to sell to us therefore cutting out the middleman. Although I'm not a fan of huge multinational corporations, this could be detrimental to them thereby being detrimental to us. And we can easily see the economies of the world shift.</comment>