What I mean when I say "I think VR is bad news" - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/rygorous/251b945aef2046ac7cee <comment><USER2> I think there's a good discussion to be had about what the future of VR means to advertising-based social networks, even if I don't share the authors cynicism.

I think their argument about the technology is batty though. It's the same argument that gets made every time a new creative medium is created. People making early motion pictures were basically filming plays, it took a while before the specific affordances of the medium become realized.

I fully expect that there will initially be a lot of shitty VR games. First there'll be existing games "re-skinned" to have VR support, and they'll mostly be terrible. Then there will start to be games that are designed specifically for VR. And most of those will be terrible too. But eventually game designers will discover what makes VR attractive as a platform, and generations of game developers will be born into a world where VR is actual practical tech; and they will make wonderful things.

The first generations of "tablet-optimized" games are awful too. Developers spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to superimpose a control pad on a touch screen that doesn't have any feedback (and obscures the screen when you use it). There will eventually be games for tablets that make use of the benefits of tablets (I think there's actually already a few of those).

I don't know what is so special about VR tech that would preclude that same thing from happening.

<comment><USER3> Well as far as mmorpgs go, the point isn't to sell ads. The point is to get customers hooked up and then gradually make them more frustrated so that they have to pay real money to alleviate the frustration.

<comment><USER4> I see someone has played SW:TOR recently (or something like it). It's shocking seeing my brother go through the exact same motions. Much like myself several years ago, beat for beat. Also surprising that it's so much worse. Much more aggressive with punishment of non-payers. To the point of the game design being egregiously jeopardised to make the game simply unbearable. Being quite committed at this point, you cave into this user-hating community of managers abusing design. All for the sake of selling subs.

If the future truly was anything like this, I would want out, too. Just awful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So let me get this straight, you have some cynicism towards the future of VR, which is a new platform. But you are an engineer at Valve, in on the ground floor of the platform, putting you in the top 0.001% of people who could possibly have an impact on the long term way it plays out. And you quit? Seems like you have given up before the battle has even started.

<comment><USER6> Fabian isn't a Valve engineer. He's an engineer at RAD who was contracted out to Valve. His beliefs are utterly sincere. He once threatened to quit RAD on the spot when he found out the main sales guy had gone to a predominantly military-oriented simulation conference. If you accept his sincerity as a premise, your suggestion is akin to saying that someone should continue working on an engineering project with inevitable and uniquely terrible military applications because they are in on the ground floor and should be able to influence future directions. Has that ever worked?

I share some of his concerns but not all his conclusions. Where I agree with him unanimously is in being extremely concerned about amoral engineers who are blithely pro-technology. The only thing scarier to me than an amoral engineer is an evangelical engineer for whom technological progress is not morally neutral but morally good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I dispute the author's point that the end goal of VR for most developers is the "optimal MMORPG" or whatever you want to call it. I think most VR developers and users are actually more focused on immersive experiences that weren't possible without a headset.

AR (including wearables that are not connected directly to vision) is almost surely a better medium for non-entertainment experiences, with the possible exception of teleprescence, such as computer applications or operating systems. And as the author implied, AR doesn't necessitate a complete withdrawal from the outside world for use. So I think games are the main context that people will use VR in.

I also think the race condition between AI good enough to make VR more compelling than the real world in any case and VR good enough to become mainstream is heavily weighted towards VR: we will be seeing commercial VR headsets in the homes of non-early adopters within 3 years. My guess is any kind of life-replacing game would have to involve incredibly advanced conversational AI and/or human interaction at a fidelity orders of magnitude better than we have available right now in the context of games. And even genuine human social interaction would have to somehow be way more interesting normal, real life conversations.

I think by the time VR content compelling enough to replace a user's real life rolls around, we will have developed social structures to deal with the implications of VR. That's why I'm optimistic about things like the Oculus, from the perspective of a potential user and developer of VR games that are more focused on personal narratives than an expansive, life-encompassing MMORPG.

<comment><USER8> As someone who stayed at home as a kid playing text-only MUD games and chatting on IRC, I think your minimum requirements for interactions in VR is way too high.

<comment><USER9> Sure, but requiring $500,000 worth of computer equipment for two people to play creates more jobs and is good for the economy! Especially when you keep pulling it off the table with the cables attached to your head that's blind to the real world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> tldr: I think VR is bad news because it will become the ad-infested oppressive MMORPG version of the cyberpunk future written about in books like Snowcrash, and not the idealized romanticized version that you remember reading about in books like Snowcrash.

<comment><USER11> The VRs of Snowcrash and Neuromancer _were_ ad infested. It would be silly to believe that any system that gets used by millions or billions of people wont have ads. But no one's going to use VR if the ads are ultra annoying. The author doesn't mention what exactly he thinks VR ads would look like.

<comment><USER12> What is annoying? The level of intrusive advertising that the median North American is subjected to now is annoying to me, as someone born about 40 years ago.

So, no, the ads won't be annoying to people who have been slowly conditioned to think the ads aren't annoying. It's valid to ask whether we, now, want that or not.

Also this:

> It would be silly to believe that any system that gets used by millions or > billions of people wont have ads.

Why? Given our current assumptions, perhaps, but why can't we try to innovate socially, as well as technologically?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This doesn't make sense because the current successful business model for MMORPGs is subscription fees, not advertisement.

<comment><USER14> If VR really gets traction it's probably just a matter of time until Facebook releases a Second-Life-like MMO VR platform tied in with their social network. There will always be good MMORPGs that are subscription fee based, but the majority of VR experiences will be ad-supported with paid premium options.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Here's some real problems I've had with it after using the Rift for over a year. Many of these things can ultimately be addressed in software (e.g. no use of your phone? mirror it or just use something like google voice):

It is more immersive than the movies. This is awesome, but also terrifying. When you sit down on your couch to play a game, do you want to be as restricted as you are when you go to the movies? Well, you are more restricted. You can't look at your phone and keep up with friends. Fine in a two hour movie you've been looking forward to, but in the game you are going to log 200 hours in this year?

You can't take a sip of your drink without learning what it means to be blind.

The movies are a bit more unforgiving in other areas--you have to block out time and get in your car and travel. But with Oculus what you end up doing is things like taking off the googles to give your long neglected and probably creeped-out-at-no-eye-contact dog some attention. Then when you put them back on, they fog up. You take them off and breath on them to get them up to the ambient temperature near your face so there won't be more condensation and wipe them off. Put them back on and opps, grease from your forehead just got on the lenses; back off again. Wipe them down, and finally back on. Sort of it's own car trip.

If you have a young kid or baby you will be seriously alienating to them and probably scar them by neglecting an internal drive for eye contact and attention. You might be pretty neglectful due to normal TV and web browsing, but this is going to bring it to a whole new level. So, many people will have to choose between making limited use of the tech or being seriously abusive towards and retarding development of their young children.

CastAR seems to solve almost all of the problems. Something like it, or pseudo-holographic displays (just a normal 3d display, with headtracking, perspective correct 3d, etc. It is a far superior experience to 3DTV viewing or gaming, which is usually viewed at the wrong field of view for the content, and goes wonky and immediately breaks the illusion with any head movement, especially tilting).

Something like a 60" 4K curved LCD with lightboost allowing shutter glasses to be "open" more than 90% of the time, and thus not darken your vision or obscure eye contact is where I think the sweet spot will be for a while for having a serious workspace/playspace, when combined with accurate low latency headtracking. Panels fast enough for lightboost currently have bad viewing angles, but if you are tracking the users head you can just correct a lot of it with a simple shader. If systems like CastAR can get the resolution up they are even better, because two people can use the same surface at once and get the correct view. If the above setup sounds underwhelming, remember that Oculus is initially targeting a seated experience.

Full-VR approaches will start to overcome a lot of the issues once they can track your eyes facial expressions, give you an optional overlaid view of the real world from high field-of-view cameras on the headset. At that point you still can't make extended use of it if you have a baby or toddler or pet (or staunch non-participant) that you care about, but plenty of people could make it work and have very social lives. I completely disagree with the author's cynicism about something like a shared virtual world being a terrible thing.

If for one reason or another some business strategy involving heavy network- effect lock-in does arise and all development efforts, content, and friends are drawn into one fascist dystopian system, yeah we're fucked. But I don't see the path there (even assuming Facebook currently has John Carmack unknowningly working towards some kind of bizarro-world metaverse), and this guy didn't really lay it out for me.

(one extra thought after having left a job a few months back... the downsides of VR I outlined sound suspiciously like the downsides of a typical desk job...)

<comment><USER10> I don't understand why you're being down-voted for giving other examples of why VR might be bad in response to an article about why someone else thinks VR is bad.

<comment><USER16> Because VR good! Microsoft bad! Ruby good! Oracle bad!

No, but seriously, VR is still in the hype stage, which means a lot of people made up their minds whether it will be good or bad years ago based mostly on emotion. They won't be swayed at this point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There is no reason we need to be stuck in a giant interactive advertisement controlled by a large company. We will have multiple competing open platforms taking advantage of VR in many ways.

But good warning. We do need to start focusing on those open VR platforms rather than waiting around for Facebook to launch the Adverse.

Another big part of that is making sure that we have open standards rather than being locked in to Oculus or Control VR etc. or being stuck with whatever platform comes with a particular device.

I am hoping to see Oculus clones and modified versions of Linux Mint or CoreOS or whatever that boot to a type of holodeck with nice APIs for taking advantage of VR in open application programming environments.

So copy Oculus and fuck patents. Also copy Janus VR and anything else cool and start evolving it while at the same time standardizing on certain things.

There is no giant company that can ruin VR unless we decide to let them.

</comment><comment><USER18> Funny, I'm of the complete opposite view. I cannot wait for the day when that ultimate VR MMORPG comes. Sure, some of them may be owned by unscrupulous companies, and some may be intrusive or filled with ads, but eventually there will be a good VR MMO game by a good company, and it will be enormously successful and entertaining.

</comment><comment><USER9> Here are three goals for "good VR" from David Levitt, with whom I work at Pantomime Corporation, and who used to work on VR at VPL:

[http://pantomimecorp.com/pantomime-technology/virtual- realit...](http://pantomimecorp.com/pantomime-technology/virtual-reality/)

When Pantomime co-founder Levitt was a research scientist and product manager with VPL Research, the inventors of virtual reality, they had three prerequisites for a VR system:

1) a way to reach in, in 3D

2) shared reality — support for multiple users and viewpoints

3) graphically and physically realistic worlds

VPL offered a DataGlove to provide 3D input, while its flagship Reality Built for Two VR product offered networked multi-person worlds. Expensive graphics computers and custom hardware brought the full 1992 price to $500,000, which only a few huge corporations could afford.

When Dr. Levitt joined VPL, thanks to an amazing infrastructure by lead VPL engineer Chuck Blanchard, he added realistic gravity, collisions, and throwing a ball into the VR system for physical realism.

But two decades later, the public and technologists have become so impatient that the new systems calling themselves VR have punted even on the core original criteria.

Head-mounted systems like the Oculus Rift offer no way to reach in. In demos, visitors twiddle a 1980s style game joystick. And users don't natively network — in an Oculus demonstration you don't see the other users in the VR world — not even the other players sitting alongside you in the demo.

David asked Facebook's VP of Infrastructure Engineering Jay Parikh this revealing question about Facebook's acquisition of Oculus VR:

[http://pantomimecorp.com/2014/06/10/facebook-vp-to- pantomime...](http://pantomimecorp.com/2014/06/10/facebook-vp-to-pantomime- ceo-we-need-interactive-virtual-reality/)

David Levitt: "I work in Virtual Reality, and everyone's wondering what you can say about your acquisition of Oculus VR. In particular, I've had demos of it: I could look around but I couldn't reach in. Do you have solutions for that that you can talk about?"

Jay Parikh: "You can't interact with anything. These are big, hard problems … what you do with your hands, because you can't do anything with your hands — or it's hard to be using a controller when you can't see your hands and you have the goggles on — these are problems we have to solve in a good and seamless way."

More on the VPL DataGlove:

[http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/630181/virtual- rea...](http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/630181/virtual-reality- VR/253105/Entertainment#ref884340)

Zimmerman's glove would have the greatest impact. He had been thinking for years about constructing an interface device for musicians based on the common practice of playing "air guitar"—in particular, a glove capable of tracking hand and finger movements could be used to control instruments such as electronic synthesizers. He patented an optical flex-sensing device (which used light-conducting fibres) in 1982, one year after Grimes patented his glove-based computer interface device. By then, Zimmerman was working at the Atari Research Center in Sunnyvale, California, along with Scott Fisher, Brenda Laurel, and other VR researchers who would be active during the 1980s and beyond. Jaron Lanier, another researcher at Atari, shared Zimmerman's interest in electronic music. Beginning in 1983, they worked together on improving the design of the data glove, and in 1985 they left Atari to start up VPL Research; its first commercial product was the VPL DataGlove.

By 1985, Fisher had also left Atari to join NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California, as founding director of the Virtual Environment Workstation (VIEW) project. The VIEW project put together a package of objectives that summarized previous work on artificial environments, ranging from creation of multisensory and immersive "virtual environment workstations" to telepresence and teleoperation applications. Influenced by a range of prior projects that included Sensorama, flight simulators, and arcade rides, and surprised by the expense of the air force's Darth Vader helmets, Fisher's group focused on building low-cost, personal simulation environments. While the objective of NASA was to develop telerobotics for automated space stations in future planetary exploration, the group also considered the workstation's use for entertainment, scientific, and educational purposes. The VIEW workstation, called the Virtual Visual Environment Display when completed in 1985, established a standard suite of VR technology that included a stereoscopic head-coupled display, head tracker, speech recognition, computer- generated imagery, data glove, and 3-D audio technology.

The VPL DataGlove was brought to market in 1987, and in October of that year it appeared on the cover of Scientific American (see photograph). VPL also spawned a full-body, motion-tracking system called the DataSuit, a head- mounted display called the EyePhone, and a shared VR system for two people called RB2 ("Reality Built for Two"). VPL declared June 7, 1989, "Virtual Reality Day." On that day, both VPL and Autodesk publicly demonstrated the first commercial VR systems. The Autodesk VR CAD (computer-aided design) system was based on VPL's RB2 technology but was scaled down for operation on personal computers. The marketing splash introduced Lanier's new term virtual reality as a realization of "cyberspace," a concept introduced in science fiction writer William Gibson's Neuromancer in 1984. Lanier, the dreadlocked chief executive officer of VPL, became the public celebrity of the new VR industry, while announcements by Autodesk and VPL let loose a torrent of enthusiasm, speculation, and marketing hype. Soon it seemed that VR was everywhere, from the Mattel/Nintendo PowerGlove (1989) to the HMD in the movie The Lawnmower Man (1992), the Nintendo VirtualBoy game system (1995), and the television series VR5 (1995).

</comment><comment><USER19> That's a little silly. This makes the assumption that everyone will be playing this "ultimate" MMORPG, and our society will turn into a dystopian future. People who play MMORPGs now, will play it. People who don't play them now, will probably not play it then either. Doesn't really change the overall landscape though...

</comment><comment><USER20> Today's VR is likely just a stepping stone to augmented-reality systems which should remove the shortcomings and concerns presented. But even in this early development stage, bringing people together digitally, has the potential to increase human interaction rather than decrease it.

</comment><comment><USER21> Author takes a long time to get to the point - (s)he doesn't like advertisers, or advertisement-based business models.

</comment><comment><USER22> Cool, thats your opinion. I still want VR.</comment>


One-on-one meetings are underrated, whereas group meetings waste time (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://www.smashcompany.com/business/one-on-one-meetings-are-underrated-whereas-group-meetings-waste-time <comment><USER2> I hate "meetings" but I am big fan of conversation. When I worked in a team room with 3 other engineers we just naturally had good conversations from time to time. There was no schedule, no agenda, no start or end time. But we solved a lot of things that way. I also chat with my manager several times a week about stuff. I feel if there is a need to schedule formal one-on-one meetings it indicates a dysfunctional environment.

<comment><USER3> I'm the exact opposite. Short meetings with a small group (preferably just one other person, as discussed in the OP) at a scheduled time with an agenda are a much more efficient use of my time than ambient conversation. I've worked on teams and with people who feel like you do and it drives me pretty nuts. I'm constantly getting pulled into low value conversations that are a distraction from what I'm doing. I can't determine ahead of time whether the conversation is more or less valuable than whatever else I'm doing because there is no agenda for "hey you got a sec?".

What I don't know is: am I just wrong about this, or are you, or is it just pure subjective preference? If it's just subjective, what's the best way to structure teams with respect to this? Is it all or nothing, or can you build a team with both kinds of people in such a way that they respect each other's preference?

Edit to add: To make a different point, I'm a big fan of standing closed-door 1:1s with your manager, because the conversations you can only have with your manager are the most awkward ones and asking for a one-off closed door meeting when it's uncommon makes it way worse. For instance, if you're having strife with a co-worker that you need to bring up with your manager, the last thing you want to do is walk over to their desk and say, "can we talk privately?". Waiting for your next standing meeting is a much better option.

<comment><USER2> "What I don't know is: am I just wrong about this, or are you, or is it just pure subjective preference? "

Yes. It's subjective. It probably also depends on the people you work with and the nature of the things you are working on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > _They can offer negative opinions about their co-workers, without worrying > that their co-worker will find out and retaliate._

In my experience, if everyone on the team knows that they're expected to comment on each other in one-on-ones with the manager, that does wonders against team cohesion and morale.

<comment><USER5> I think you're reading more into the quote than is fair -- he says they _can_ offer opinions, not that they _have_ to.

Also you're leaving out that he mentions it gives people an opportunity to praise teammates, whereas in a public context it might be awkward/seen to have ulterior motives. (Maybe I'm weird but I've done this a lot in one-on-ones with managers. Especially if I was mentioning someone that might have been shy/didn't want the spotlight)

<comment><USER6> I think you need to look into the intent of that statement, and by doing so understand its consequences.

<comment><USER5> The intent seems to be to create a safe space for employees to share opinions about the status of the team. Is that not what a manager should do?

<comment><USER6> Or you can see it as a manager getting plenty of ammunition on members of the team to use at his or her whim. You're not creating a safe space, but rather a miasma of fear. Trust will break down in the team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In my experience a 1 to 1 meeting cane help avoid defensive impulsive responses. Removing the reduced fear of broad judgement I think is a factor. They also covey personal respect which helps and feels good. Cutting out distractions from uninformed meeting participants also helps IMO.

</comment><comment><USER8> The best way I have seen to handle this was by a former manager who made sure we ate lunch together most days as a team. It wasn't mandatory, but it was informally expected to happen. That team had zero communication problems.

<comment><USER9> Having lunch together is the most overlooked things ever in team building aspect.

It sounds so insignificant, so silly, but it is the natural way to build camaraderie between team member. People lower their guard, and have nothing to 'prove', unlike...uh, work.

<comment><USER10> > It sounds so insignificant, so silly, but it is the natural way to build > camaraderie between team member.

This strongly depends on the type of people you are working with. If I knew I'd be expected to have group lunches every day I would not even bother applying to the company. Based on my experience with team lunches, it means that I can expect at least an hour(often even more) of every day to be lost to uninteresting, forced conversations. I am so much more productive now that I have a job where I can casually continue my work while eating lunch alone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article is quite nefarious. I would not recommend this kind of management in order to instill fear and division among your team.

<comment><USER11> I have to agree. The premise in the headline is so obviously agreeable, but the application described sounds like it would make for a terrible place to work. This isn't an article about building a supportive work environment that sets realistic expectations and fosters a mutually-supportive team environment. It's about the one-on-one meeting as the most effective tool to extract as much work as possible out of each individual worker—which obviously _is_ quite hard in a group meeting.

Of course, a manager who does that effectively is also doing their job as a manager well. One reason I will always refuse to become a supervisor is that being a good manager (i.e. nice and reasonable to work for) and being a good manager (i.e. extracting the maximum surplus value out of each worker) are often directly in conflict, as this article shows.

ETA: In fact, I can think of a manager just like this at an employer I recently left. Individual meetings were a tool to push each of us to the limit, try to pit us against each other, &c. Employees hate this boss, but management loves them!

<comment><USER5> > One reason I will always refuse to become a supervisor is that being a good > manager (i.e. nice and reasonable to work for) and being a good manager > (i.e. extracting the maximum surplus value out of each worker) are often > directly in conflict, as this article shows.

You seem to think that getting the most out of the employee is harmful to the employee, but I don't think that makes sense. If you're not asking them to work extra hours, it just means you're figuring out the best way to make them efficient. That's good for THEM (promotions, new skill-sets, new opportunities). It's also good for the business.

Also, as long as they're using ethical means, why would the business trying to get the most bang for their buck be an implicitly bad thing? As an _employee_ (I'm not a manager), I'm happier if I feel like my time is being used productively, and I'm less happy if I feel like I'm collecting a pay check but my services are not being put to good use. I want to work reasonable hours, but I'm an adult and I'm not there to slack, I feel better about myself and my situation if I'm earning my paycheck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16002687](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16002687)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not a manager, but it seems to me that one of the biggest obstacles managers face is that they often have less information than the people they manage. Humans are gossipy creatures, but we tend to gossip with peers, not with those we perceive to be higher or lower status. (A lot of times the person that is most clued into the happenings in the office is the receptionist). I think managers would be smart to focus more often on one-on- one meetings. I'm always baffled when managers don't have time to talk to low- level employees. If I were a manager, I think I'd definitely want that.

</comment><comment><USER13> The problem with one-on-on meetings is they proliferate information silos where relevant parties aren't aware of impoprtant details because they weren't involved in conversations.

Group meetings don't _always_ waste time. They _nearly_ always waste time, for very simple and fixable reasons:

1) There is often not a clear leader for the meeting. Oh, the ranking manager make be the "leader" but the actual leadership is lacking with no clear attempt to keep things on track. From this follows the next two issues:

2) They nearly always lack a clear agenda, or given an agenda, it is not strictly followed. Issues arise that are allowed to derail things. These frequently involve only a subset of participants that should address these issues "offline" but instead waste everyone's times.

3) Given the agenda slippage, each person ends up feeling they need to say something, to be heard, in order to be seen contributing. So everyone comes up with something they think they have to say, further breaking the agenda for the real reason for the meeting and making it longer.

The above contribute to nearly any scheduled meeting I'm involved in going 50% to 100% over time. I however am known for generally being quiet in meetings because I self censor for "is what I need to say relevant to the direct purpose here, to all members of the meeting?" When the answer is "no", I follow up afterwards. Often on issues I wouldn't have been aware of without the group meeting, but that only concern one or two other members, and I would have wasted the time of 5 or 6 or 10 other people to go into detail on it in the meeting itself.

In short, group meetings aren't the issue, poor leadership of the meeting it the problem.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think the author should consider acquiring some facilitation skills, rather than rejecting any other model than him and someone else talking.

</comment><comment><USER15> The reality is that both need to happen regularly. Issues that are too sensitive for the entire group are talked about during the regularly scheduled 1 on 1 or an ad hoc 1 on 1 if the issue is urgent.

</comment><comment><USER16> I am bootstrapping a 1:1 meeting tool, so I always pay attention to the subject here on HN.

I chose the idea because I believe it is a great resource for a manager to build trust and a team as a whole improve.

This is the article that was most upvoted in HN about the topic and it has a complete opposite take. It goes for a _"divide for conquest"_ tactic that seems very hostile to the team members.

</comment><comment><USER17> As someone who manages people I think the author's approach will lead to a culture of fear. Ultimately it will lead to poor results and retention. I prefer the guidance given by Manager Tools ([https://www.manager- tools.com/](https://www.manager-tools.com/))

<comment><USER18> Manager Tools is amazing: the single best source of practical guidance for managers that I know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nice article but some people may not feel comfortable telling the truth in a one on one meeting either. In the article the author even admits that if he deems that his one one one participant falsely blames someone else (which could be subjective) he'll try to boot them off the team if possible.

</comment><comment><USER20> Lost me at having a meeting with marketing people. No one should have to do that.

</comment><comment><USER21> So the author basically proposes everyone to go behind others' back to stick it to each other and promotes to rat on each other. And he even feels good about it. Wow.

<comment><USER22> regardless of meeting size in any company where people don't trust each other there will be more gossip and backstabbing</comment></comment>


Dejavu, a pythonic ORM (PyCon presentation) - <AUTHOR> http://pycon.blip.tv/file/1949237/ Very interesting presentation! Dejavu is an ORM similar to SQLAlchemy and Django Models. It has a lovely pythonic syntax for doing queries with lambda expressions, e.g.:
box.recall(Comic, lambda c: 'Hob' in c.Title or '#' in c.Title)
Instead of for instance Django's
Comic.objects.filter(Title__contains='Hob') | Comic.objects.filter(Title__contains='#')
I also loved the approach to converting the python queries to SQL code: Dejavu converts the python queries into an AST, which is then deparsed into the desired SQL dialect, an approach that apparently was used long ago by Glorp, a Smalltalk ORM.
Dejavu can also work with non-relational backends, such as flatfiles, LDAP stores, memcache, RAM and even the Python shelve.
In the question round, Robert also showed a very simple syntax for joins:
Table1 & Table2 represents an inner join. Table1 | Table2 represents an outer join. Table1 << Table2 represents a left join.
One question that was left unanswered was whether Dejavu supports the distributed key-value stores that are becoming increasingly popular, such as CouchDB, Amazon S3 and Amazon SimpleDB. <comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting presentation on Dejavu, an ORM similar to SQLAlchemy and Django Models. It has a lovely pythonic syntax for doing queries with lambda expressions, e.g.:

box.recall(Comic, lambda c: 'Hob' in c.Title or '#' in c.Title)

Instead of for instance Django's

Comic.objects.filter(Title__contains='Hob') | Comic.objects.filter(Title__contains='#')

I also loved the approach to converting the python queries to SQL code: Dejavu converts the python queries into an AST, which is then deparsed into the desired SQL dialect, an approach that apparently was used long ago by Glorp, a Smalltalk ORM.

Dejavu can also work with non-relational backends, such as flatfiles, LDAP stores, memcache, RAM and even the Python shelve.

In the question round, Robert also showed a very simple syntax for joins:

Table1 & Table2 represents an inner join. Table1 | Table2 represents an outer join. Table1 << Table2 represents a left join.

One question that was left unanswered was whether Dejavu supports the distributed key-value stores that are becoming increasingly popular, such as CouchDB, Amazon S3 and Amazon SimpleDB.</comment>


How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco's Life - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html <comment><USER2> This was discussed at considerable length when it was first submitted 2 years ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9039274](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9039274) (569 comments)

The top comment there recounts a personal experience of something similar.

There is some more discussion here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10792915](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10792915) (12 comments)

... as well as other, discussion-less submissions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12094265](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12094265) (no comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9162051](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9162051) (no comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9048986](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9048986) (no comments)</comment>


Ask HN: What do you guys think of Kiip? - <AUTHOR>

Kiip just launched and I don't think it's that scalable (due to the difficulty of app integration and advertiser acquisition). Anyone else have an opinion? <comment><USER2> Why would you say it's difficult to integrate into the app?

I think it's an interesting business model and I'd love to see how it plays out. The one thing I'd be worried about is being constantly bombarded with promotions (as a gamer) as I get my achievements.

It's complicated to scale up though - you definitely need to have enough games and advertisers on the system to make it worthwhile.

Definitely want to see how it plays out.

</comment><comment><USER3> Scalability and acquisition is not going to be a problem, this startup is well funded and probably won't have any issues with either of these. What I find the bigger problem is that ads can be expected at intervals, but to directly tie them to the quality of the game, I find the more difficult proposition.</comment>


Hack allows linux users to play OnLive games - <AUTHOR> http://onliveinformer.com/2011/09/04/community-hack-allows-linuxwine-users-to-experience-onlive/

<comment><USER3> The slashdotters already got to this and eviscerated it in typical "Proprietary anything is automatically bad" fashion.

I for one think this is awesome. You can play some cool things with online for cheap if your system can't handle the latest and greatest.

<comment><USER4> I think it's a great idea, too, except for 2 things:

1) If you buy the game, you pay the same price as getting it at a store, but with no recourse if the company goes under.

2) The video is pretty bad. It's 720p with a lot of lossy compression. I tried it for one of the Lego games (which I'm quite familiar with on my consoles) and it felt really fuzzy and indistinct. It wasn't a very pleasant experience.

I could forgive both of them if the games were cheaper, but they aren't. (And can't be, really, since the game publishers aren't going to give them a break... At least, not until they realize their DRM is unhackable.)

<comment><USER5> Personally I've found two things great about onlive :

1/ It's an alternative to downloading demo - 30mn is enough to see if I like a game, and saves me the hassle of downloading, installing/uninstalling etc - <USER2> don't understand why every new game demo is distributed this way now

2/ Their $4 for a week-end rental - for a lot of games, this is enough for me to play and get out of

Video quality is good for playing on a laptop - not on a gaming desktop.

Note though that many of the games on onlive are very aggressively discounted on steam at every steam sale - so I usually end up buying them from steam instead.

<comment><USER6> > Note though that many of the games on onlive are very aggressively > discounted on steam at every steam sale - so I usually end up buying them > from steam instead.

They're doing pretty well at matching Steam. For example, there was a Labor Day 75%-off sale on OnLive this weekend. Also in another promotion they were offering Batman Arkham Asylum for $0.99.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Wake Me Up When It Launches - <AUTHOR> http://wake-me-up-when-it-launches.com/ <comment><USER2> All I see is a gray screen (Chrome 42 Linux).

Console errors:

      Uncaught TypeError: Object.assign is not a function     bundle.js:21

      Uncaught ReferenceError: ___onError___ is not defined   (index):79

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah thanks for the catch. It should be fixed now :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Website Design looks awesome, but i feel the domain name is quite lengthy.,</comment>


Ask HN: Who uses vmware over virtualbox for vagrant? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I did for about 9 months; it may have been better/faster/more stable, but I ultimately went back to VB: There are way more vb boxes readily available, it's far easier to share boxes with colleagues, and using > 1 computer it became too costly. I try not to leave boxes in vb running as long since that seems to be where stability issues occur, but otherwise i don't really notice a difference.

</comment><comment><USER3> i have - it works fine, and is faster.</comment>


How Steve Jobs pitches a startup - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9dmcRbuTMY#t=44

<comment><USER2> Steve at is best at NeXT.</comment>


Forget Facebook and MySpace – Wall Street Journal Shares Your Information Too - <AUTHOR> http://staynalive.com/articles/facebook-myspace-wall-street-journal-privacy/

<comment><USER2> Whenever I give anyone my information or know anyone has my information, I accept that it is no longer private. That information can just be the fact that I walked by a camera, or said something near a microphone that was recording, or perhaps used a credit card. I can request that things be private, but I cannot expect privacy.

Government cannot effectively enforce privacy, nor can consumer pressure on business.

As collection and sharing of information is made easier, privacy deteriorates. Eventually there will be almost no privacy because it will be considered first antisocial and then morally repugnant.

If you don't believe me, think of the amount of privacy we had 20 years ago compared to today, and what we would have thought of webcams pointed at (name some location here) 15-20 years ago. Today many of us check out traffic cams. But, I remember when people were throwing a fuss about security cameras on street corners. Years ago, there were Twilight Zone episodes about big brother cameras, etc. Now, we watch Big Brother on T.V.

WSJ is the least of my worries. What about a system that truly understands my psychology and can manipulate me personally? It is inevitable that such a system will one day exist, with greater collection, aggregation, and analysis of data day by day.</comment>


Ask HN: CANBus vs. Ethernet vs. MODBUS - <AUTHOR> Environment is moderately noisy, think automotive, marine or light industrial.  The requirements are that you need to potentially send the same message to more then one end point.  80% (by volume) of messages are relatively small in nature, say < 100 bytes, a few (< 10%) are as much as 1k in size.
Then say as an option you wanted to add reasonable quality video and still images to the same network occasionally.
Which topology, physical and protocol infrastructure would you think makes the most sense?  The field is green so no predisposed environment is defined and it is open to definition.
Appreciate any feedback/input. <comment><USER2> Have you seen this?

[http://www.ti.com/lit/an/slyt560/slyt560.pdf](http://www.ti.com/lit/an/slyt560/slyt560.pdf)

 _" Conclusion So which interface is best for automotive communications? They all are—but each for its own purpose. The CAN bus reigns supreme for low-speed control applications where cost is a driving factor. When bandwidth requirements move up, Ethernet can step in as an enhanced interface to support moderate bandwidth requirements. When the highest bandwidth and lowest-latency link are required, such as for a surround-view camera system providing input to an autonomous vehicle pilot, then FPD-Link is ready to meet the challenge."_

</comment><comment><USER3> ModbusTCP can be routed over ethernet, as can the video (h.264/h.265). Video over Canbus can be a challenge. Only use modbus, if you already have modbus(TCP) or intend to set up a traditional SCADA system.</comment>


Moneta - a unified interface to key/value stores - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/wycats/moneta

<comment><USER2> Interesting, and potentially useful. However:

"All stores support key expiration, but only memcache supports it natively. All other stores emulate expiration." Redis doesn't support volatile keys??

Also, does it allow access to a DB's tuning parameters? It makes a great difference whether to use Tokyo's B+ tree database or its hash database ...

<comment><USER3> That was my first thought as well. The expire/expireat commands are one of the main reasons why I chose Redis.

I'm honestly not sure why wycats would make that statement. It's not like the interface for expiration is particularly opaque.

<comment><USER4> Because moneta is not new at all, look at the commit dates :-) It only seems to have made it to HN because someone resurfaced it on Reddit recently.

I asked wycats about this and he said he plans to do some serious reworking on it soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Using this with Redis (at least) misses much of the point of Redis, which has an especially rich API.

<comment><USER6> On the plus side, I used something similar to use my caching store back when it was MemcachedDB, and switching to Redis required a one-line change in a config file rather than refactoring. (Learn from my mistake, everyone: skip MemcachedDB, go straight to Redis, collect $200.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is similar to the CHI and Cache modules for Perl: <http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?CHI> <http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Cache>

</comment><comment><USER8> API-cache is a convenient caching layer that works on top of Moneta:

<http://github.com/mloughran/api_cache>

I use it on multiple sites (to cache http downloads, delicious tags api calls etc). You can start with a simple filesystem store (moneta/basic_file) and move to another store when needed.

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting looking at the network graph on this repo. Lots of forking but no merging in the months since features where added to wycats' repo. Seems the project could use a maintainer!

<http://github.com/wycats/moneta/network>

<comment><USER10> I've been working on a rework on a branch that should be merged in this weekend. It takes a lot of the feedback I've gotten and existing forks into consideration, as well as lessons learned from Rack.

It was originally an experiment, and I didn't notice the activity around it until recently. Stay tuned :-D</comment></comment>


Why I won't speak at women-only events - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/women-in-leadership/2013/jul/03/why-i-wont-speak-at-women-only-events?CMP=twt_gu <comment><USER2> The reason I don't listen to women in tech presentations:

1\. I'm basically not allowed to voice an opinion that isn't completely aligned with the feminist status quo (I believe in equality, fuck me right).

2\. I'd rather learn how to build a better emberjs app. Or learn more about thorium.

3\. Unlike the vast majority of problems, there are few concrete steps to be taken to correct the imbalances that do exist.

Edit:

I can't believe I had to self sensor, just to hit the post button.

<comment><USER3> _1\. I 'm basically not allowed to voice an opinion that isn't completely aligned with the feminist status quo (I believe in equality, fuck me right)._

Many people not involved with feminist groups often think feminists think the same about everything. Which shows they know nothing about actual disagreements within feminists groups. Just look up transexual issues & feminism. That's a big source of disagreement right there.

<comment><USER4> That doesn't mean there isn't a significant amount of mythology that is widely agreed upon in feminist circles. If you expect insane conspiracy theory nonsense like "patriarchy" to actually be supported by evidence rather than accepted on faith, then you are not welcome in feminist discourse, plain and simple.

<comment><USER5> Do you really think societal structures that privilege men are a myth? Apart from being quite obvious to anyone who is not extremely biased, there are whole academic branches that study this. I'd say calling that "mythology" puts you into conspiracy theory territory.

<comment><USER6> _> Do you really think societal structures that privilege men are a myth?_

Nope. And neither are the societal structures that privilege women.

Western women have always been among the safest, most privileged human beings on the planet. Predictably, and unfortunately, modern western feminists never compare the plight of the average man with the plight of the average woman when determining who wins the Oppression Olympics; instead, they look jealously toward men at the top of society and declare that because women aren't a part of that, they're more oppressed.

And sadly, it gets more ridiculous than that. I've seen people on this forum actually say, with similar words:

 _Institutionalized misandry cannot exist, because most people at the top of society are men. Women don 't have the institutional power to oppress men. Any oppression men face is a result of The Patriarchy._

Ignoring the fact that oppression can come from outside of congress (university policies, for example), those people are defining patriarchy to simply mean "Oppressive policies written by people with penises, even if feminists support those policies".

And that's what makes it dogma.

<comment><USER7> _Ignoring the fact that oppression can come from outside of congress (university policies, for example), those people are defining patriarchy to simply mean "Oppressive policies written by people with penises, even if feminists support those policies"._

You are of course entitled to your opinion, but I think you'd be better served by engaging with a more nuanced and complex version of these views. What you describe here is caricature. And in all I think it says more about you than feminism.

A common refrain in feminist circles is that patriarchy hurts everyone. A good example is parental leave as it applies to men. Paternity leave in the US is absurdly bad, suggesting that we as a society do not value the time a father spends with his child. Along those lines, men are typically graded on a patronizingly terrible curve when it comes to childcare. And so on.

Note that these aren't just laws, but societal norms, especially the latter where people praise you for doing basic shit like picking up your kids from work or whatever. If you view patriarchy as an emergent property, then the idea that "laws written by men" are a sufficient description of the concept is just absurd. You _could_ of course take the least coherent out of any group which espouses a belief and engage with that, but that's not an honest way to have a discussion.

So like I said maybe don't engage with the most ridiculous possible presentation of feminism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I spoke at SpainJS. It was a small conference, and unsurprisingly, most of the audience were from Spain.

I obviously was not reaching "everyone," but so what? I reached 300 people, and the politics of why a conference was put together to appeal to Spaniards (is that a word?) is of no consequence to me.

If I were a politician I'd attend Church pancake breakfasts and lunch with the Greek Business Chamber. Humans clump and cluster for all sorts of reasons. I support some, am indifferent to others, and frown at a few more.

But in the end, if the people in attendance are people I want to reach, I'll go. If their politics don't appeal to me, I'll avoid discussing the subject.

JM2C, I can't tell anyone else what to do.

<comment><USER9> A better analogy might be if you wanted to reach Italians (because you thought Spaniards already completely grasped what you had to say) would you keep going to an event that ends up only being attended by Spaniards. I suspect not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> She nailed it: _it 's a waste of my time to be invisible to half the people I need to talk to._

The danger with women-only events is that they become perceived as a ghetto. By opening the doors to all, the entire community has a voice, which is as it needs to be if women are to be full, mainstream members of tech communities.

There's a place for "safe spaces" if people are sharing extremely personal stories (e.g. sexual assault, legal issues), but those tend to be done best as small groups anyway - it's a lot harder for a 1000 person auditorium to be a true "safe space".

<comment><USER11> How would you feel about an event with a female only speaker list?

Instinctively, it raises my hackles, because positive discrimination is still discrimination, but I've seen it work really well in stand up comedy.

Women standups only events have a very different feel, but you are also more likely to see women do standup that is normally male territory. So you might see an angry female political shock comic, whereas mainstream female comics tend to do observational humor about life.

I'd suggest that there is value in creating a situation where vacuum causes people to fill roles they normally feel they don't fit the expectation for.

<comment><USER12> Are they all qualified speakers who are insightful and sharing something I can learn from? In that case, I wouldn't mind one bit.

<comment><USER13> This reminds me of a joke. HR person comes to the boss and says "I've got two candidates for the job. Joe and Jane."

The boss interrupts the HR person. "You know, I've had it with all this affirmative action and diversity crap. It's a waste of time. Let's just stop all this. I just want to interview the best qualified person."

The HR person says "Ok, boss." The next day Jane shows up for the interview.

<comment><USER14> So... where's the joke?

<comment><USER15> The idea that HR could actually pick the most qualified person?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've attended several gender balance events (in politics, more than tech) and been one of the 2-3% of the audience who were male. They were some of the best I've been to, and I wish more dudes would turn up and learn from them.

<comment><USER17> The few female focused technology events that I have seen promoted locally give off the vibe of a private members club. They don't say it explicitly, but hint with words like attendees are welcome to take their partners etc. It just seems strange to me because other events have nothing like that style of language.

<comment><USER18> > They don't say it explicitly, but hint with words like attendees are welcome > to take their partners etc.

How is an invitation for guests to bring their partners make an event a private club?

<comment><USER19> It means that the partners wouldn't be invited except they happen to know someone in the club.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If I had one suggestion for these types of events - focus more on what you're building, less on "issues".

Show, don't tell!

</comment><comment><USER21> I wouldn't believe for a second that Meg Whitman, Marissa Mayer, Virginia Rometty, or Carly Fiorina have this problem.

Parmer's column is accurate but not perplexing given what she said about being the CEO of Lady Geek. Her choice of target market (explained fairly well in its name) defines the context of her target audience.

<comment><USER22> "Meg Whitman, Marissa Mayer, Virginia Rometty, or Carly Fiorina"

Terrible examples. I was motivated enough to wikipedia them to gather the following data. Whitman and Fiorina have no tech background at all and have never worked tech jobs, pure management material all the way. Fiorina is legendary for destroying HP not exactly a glowing endorsement for women in anything. Mayer and Rometty went to school for tech but between the two of them they've only got about 5 years experience in tech/engineering before succumbing to the dark side of management.

If anything the message to young women with a list like that is women should get out of tech and into mgmt/marketing/beancounting ASAP because tech is a dead end for women.

Now, rather than 1%er management crooks, why not an example of a techie like Limor Fried? There's a real engineer, who happens to be female, someone who would make a good hero for young women in engineering / tech / programming. If you don't know who she is, you should look her up on wikipedia. There are of course a zillion other good techies who happen to be female, but an EE- chauvinist like myself is going to promote another EE. I can think of a relatively famous FPGA dev and many others.

<comment><USER21> Very fair point.

I pointed them out mostly because these are "celebrities" in the tech world that you could easily find giving talks at various venues. Real people who get real work done tend to not have time for such nonsense :)

I could/should have noted Mayer only because I consider her to be one of the most influential people in the (FTSE equivalent mentioned by Parmer) NASDAQ. While the jury is still out on her tenure at Yahoo!, several of Google's recent missteps _could_ be attributed to her absence at Big G.

<comment><USER22> I think you're still missing my point. A management drone, or at least a more or less non-techie, prognosticating about cultural issues in tech, is almost meaningless other than maybe simple P.R. "we care about diversity" and such. Unless you have techies in the executive suite, the answer to techie problems is not going to come from the executive suite, or at least not any more likely than any other random unqualified group. Its not enough for one's subordinates 8 times removed be techies, or to have a PR campaign aimed at techies.

There's an impedance mismatch. It would be like sending me as a missionary to encourage young black men to enter the religious seminary, and then being surprised at my remarkable ineffectiveness. Why, VLM has a lot of karma on HN, how could he not have been effective?

<comment><USER21> I don't disagree and I think the only fair balance is to have stronger technology-oriented personalities at the table for balance to be achieved.

I think without engineers or at the very least representatives that can be the true voice of the engineers any company is doomed to produce waste and a disconnect between what is, what can be, and what isn't.

My point is management drones love to talk, and techies by a large majority are much more comfortable staying out of the executive suite and staying in the labs. Until a balance occurs, the mismatch will always be present.

I think this is more of a cultural divide issue than a gender one, however.

<comment><USER22> "stronger technology-oriented personalities at the table"

Women Techies dream team version 0.001:

Limor Fried, Jeri Ellsworth, Radia Perlman (noobs probably don't know who she is... hint... Spanning Tree Protocol and a epic 90s book titled "Interconnections"). "the table" needs techies like those three women, not some famous bean counters.

I would much rather have my daughter look up to those three (or about a bazillion others) than, say, "Job Destroyer Carly"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The blog post conflates two issues. First there is the societal issue of the gender gap in tech. That involves discussions and education with the community at large regarding why women are underrepresented and _how the gap can be closed._

The second issue is an implementation of the first. Women only events are one of many contributing solutions to the gender gap. A woman only event ending with an invitation to a larger general event will likely do more to bring women into that event than sitting on a panel with a 95% male audience lamenting the fact that women seems to be missing.

</comment><comment><USER24> I disagree with this. _Only_ speaking at women-only events is a bad thing, but _refusing_ to speak at women-only events is just as bad. It seems like women act more passive around men (at least in engineering). If there are only women in an audience, they might be encouraged to speak their mind more and feel less awkward about it.

Here is an example of women being passive in engineering: An engineering club at my college had 30% to 50% women at almost every meeting. Most of the time, the women didn't do anything for the club's project - they stood nearby, talked, and sometimes cut foam or got something for a guy. This was in a machine shop.

If they had put themselves forward and tried to get involved, they would have learned a lot _and had more respect from the guys in the process_. As it is, I'm afraid their behavior only reinforced the stereotype of "women engineering majors aren't serious" and left them with fewer practical skills than the guys.

\---

I don't know how effective having a women-only audience and speaker would be at reversing situations like this. If the talk was on "be more assertive" and "here are the potential problems you might face", it might be helpful. men- are-evil and similar lines are not.

In the example given, having women-only clubs might help more - _if_ the focus is primarily on building things, learning new tools, or completing some major project. It would increase womens' confidence and their assertiveness, as well as giving them an opportunitity to learn stuff a lot of the guys in the regular engineering club already know - without feeling awkward/stupid/embarassed.

Regardless, though, any women-only group opens up the door to women who might be uncomfortable speaking out and asking questions otherwise.

Edit: fixing some italics :/

</comment><comment><USER25> Men created the problem. Women like her can solve it. I knew it would come to this and other absurdities. All these men, accusing other men of anti-women sentiments, even when there weren't any. Some(mostly men!) have make it a personal crusade to vilify all men by definition. Some men are awful, some women are awful too. This kind of behavior will only sterilize our environments in the worst possible way. I'd like to see more women like her seeing the problem - and men taking notes.

</comment><comment><USER26> I wouldn't speak at male-only events either.</comment>


German government hiring developers to make spyware for computer surveillance - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/09/07/chaos_computer_club_german_agency_bka_hiring_developers_to_create_spyware_.html

<comment><USER2> Ah, der Bundestrojaner :/

The concept of "federal trojan" and "western, liberal democracy" don't seem to go together, in my mind. The former sounds like something Orwellian, perhaps from the northern half of the Korean peninsula.

<comment><USER3> You mean Torwellian? Reference: 4:35 @ <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o66FUc61MvU>

<comment><USER2> For future reference: appending &t=MM:SS to the end of a YouTube URL links to that position in the video.

And what does an irrelevant YouTube rap have to do with this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's a result of joining the German Democratic Republic (GDR) 1990.</comment>


Microsoft is killing Yammer Enterprise plan in January 2017 - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2016/09/26/microsoft-is-killing-yammer-enterprise-in-january-2017-will-start-integrating-office-365-groups-first/ <comment><USER2> Too bad.

Yammer was cool in that you could point normal people at it and they got it -- Facebook for work. My team unleashed it in a large organization and got like 90% of the users signed up without announcing it formally, and had a core user community of 20-25% of the workforce engaged for awhile. They self-organized some cool communities and we had less trouble than we thought that we would. Unfortunately, there were some procurement issues that prevented us from moving forward with it.

The O365 tooling around groups, social via Sharepoint, etc is a half- completed, inscrutable mess. Our IT kids have a 6 page manual for signing into Skype for business. All of their new, cool stuff is either just built on mail or is some sort of Sharepoint skin. The only good thing about it is that we don't need to try to run the thing on-prem anymore.

<comment><USER3>
        90% of the users signed up without announcing it formally

Considering you can automatically provision accounts and get 100% signup, that's a pretty low number.

They rolled it out at my organization and everyone was automatically signed up and receiving notifications. We put together instructions for deleting your account and passed it around because that was the only way to get out of notifications.

Even still our communications department tried to push it as the primary platform to disseminate information and it was pretty worthless. It was destroyed in the annual survey they sent out and quickly faded into obscurity.

I guess it just depends on how you roll it out. I personally don't see the value in a social network for the office unless you're trying to identify who wastes time in the office not being productive.

<comment><USER2> We used the standalone free Yammer that requires opt-in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I used to have to administer Yammer. One of the worst, most pointless and most time consuming tasks I had to do.

At one point they "upgraded" half of the organizations we had setup, and clean forgot to upgrade the other half. Despite me repeatedly asking their support people why a variety of odd things were occurring, it took 3 months before they noticed and somewhat sheepishly told me what had happened.

Yammer, quite simply, is a pile of crap. They constantly changed the UI, which meant I'd have to field support calls to help end users because of their brain dead changes. I not even once got forward notice of these changes, so it was a giant pain in the arse, and often happened right when I was trying to get more important revenue generating work completed.

If it's getting killed off, I for one won't be shedding any tears at all.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've never understood the appeal of these business Facebook-clones. I really don't get what business problem they are supposed to solve, unless it's just ticking the "social" box.

I've worked with a number of them, mostly doing data extraction and munging for compliance reasons, and whether it's Lotus Connections, Yammer, Salesforce Chatter, or the other ones I'm forgetting, they seem like somebody went through a lot of effort to create something that's anti-productive.

<comment><USER6> I am working in a global company (>200K) with people in all timezone. Sure we are connected at the top by the same executives but at the bottom of hierarchy we are mostly working in silos, while we are facing the same issues regarding regulations, suppliers, technologies.

So even if it is superficial it is a way to reach out and connect with people facing the same challenges. I don't expect someone from another business to solve my issues but at least I can get some input/ideas/feedback.

This is still a rather poor way to connect, but I don't see any better solution at this scale. Much better than a mail @all-company "is anyone else working on X?"

<comment><USER7> I have to agree. I've found many helpful resources and people through our corporate yammer (fortune 200 company).

It's the perfect tool for "hey I'm struggling with __, got any recommendations?" in very large corporations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> At my company, we adore O365, but we looked at Yammer honestly didn't understand what it was for, and didn't understand why you'd want a social network at work for any company size, small or big.

What we actually needed? A logged chat that isn't inherently tied to any other service (ie, if O365 problems arise, we can discuss it, etc etc), and we tried HipChat early on and swapped it out for Slack.

Re: comments about Slack desktop clients being webviews... Slack seems to be much faster and use less RAM than Hipchat's desktop client which was also a webview. I can't tell Slack's desktop client is a webview tbh, even though I know it's one.

Slack also has that killer feature of knowing when you're not at your desktop and can interact with your phone in certain ways based on that knowledge.

<comment><USER9> Seems like Microsoft is working on what you want, [https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-working-slack- competitor-s...](https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-working-slack-competitor- skype/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am sorry but Yammer has been the single most atrocious thing that has been unleashed in organisations.

It is normally touted as some form of magic where everyone needs to get involved and keep everyone up to date. It is simply a waste of productive time as it tries to recreate a twitter/facebook style social media mess of which its value is over inflated.

Use Slack or a wiki or any other sort of collaboration tool that allows for better communication without the hyped hipster propaganda of corporate twitter. I have never worked in an organisation where Yammer added any real value to those who had to deliver. It seemed a great way though for those with too much time and too little output to look busy and impress their often clueless managers come annual review time.

<comment><USER11> IME There's barely any difference between Yammer and Slack? One is a little more permanence-oriented than the other, but only slightly. What were the differences that you saw that make you say Slack is so much better?

<comment><USER12> The fact that slack actually works in a relatively bug free manner and has proper desktop clients.

<comment><USER11> Slack's desktop clients are just a webview, no more proper than yammer's. I didn't notice any bugginess on the yammer side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The popup makes it practically unreadable on mobile

</comment><comment><USER14> Title is somewhat misleading. Seems like they are just discontinuing it as a standalone service and bundling it in with O365. That being said, not sure where they are going with this as I believe they are also building some sort of Slack competitor.

<comment><USER15> Thanks; we've reverted the title to the original. (Submitted title was "Microsoft is killing Yammer Jan 2017".)

Submitters: the HN guidelines ask you to _Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Dealing with Lazy Coworkers - <AUTHOR> My officemate/teammate is lazy.  He spends most of the day browsing youtube/reddit, making personal calls, and socializing.  Management can't tell the difference between large and small tasks, so he easily gets by with doing a few small bug fixes a week.  My team lead is very hands off, unorganized, and engages in a fair amount of non-work related activities himself (shopping, phone calls, etc), so even though he knows about my officemate, he doesn't really care.
My question: what should I do, if anything?  I'm contemplating making detailed notes regarding my officemate in my end of the year status/performance report, but I'm not sure that would be productive. I could talk directly to my team lead, who, despite his ambivalence about the job, seems mature enough to engage with.  I could also go up the chain to the next boss (our VP), but he's not a developer and might not understand.  I could also not do anything, and see what happens.
At this point I'm not even sure what I want.  If you haven't already guessed, the work culture is relaxed to the point of absurdity.  I'd hate to turn it into some sort of police state, but I feel that my coworkers are really taking advantage of it.
Part of me thinks that this is an amazing opportunity to work on side projects (at work), but that just doesn't feel right to me.  I also feel like I could be doing a much better job as team lead, but I'm not sure how to go about even hinting at that.
Background: medium sized company with small number of developers (~10).  I have been at the company for less than a year, but have several years of experience. <comment><USER2> You might consider posting this to workplace.stackexchange.com - they have a good track record for these kinds of questions. If you do, please post the link so I could follow along.</comment>


Show HN: ScrumBLD – A Network for Building Products Together - <AUTHOR> http://www.scrumbld.com

<comment><USER2> This is a really cool website, I love the concept and think this can go a long way. I think the website will need some tweaks and the experience can be more intuitive. Unfortunately Im not a developer but I'd love to give you my input on how to make the website flow smoothly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I agree, I meant to include that it is in beta and I wouldn't mind a full redesign. I don't consider myself very skilled with design and would love to hear any input you may have.

<comment><USER2> Sweet man I would love to help you out. Shoot me an email lets collaborate!

<comment><USER2> email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the idea, but not sure people will be willing to put out there best idea for anyone to see...

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think it's for everyone. I would compare it to posting your idea on kickstarter, it's just that kickstarter is a more established platform so it feels safer.

I've also tried to address this feature with a "private" feature. Which lets you post a snippet of your idea and users can request to view the whole idea if it sparks their interest and they want to know more.</comment></comment>