Leaked documents show Brazil's Bolsonaro has grave plans for Amazon rainforest - <AUTHOR> https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/leaked-documents-show-brazil-bolsonaro-has-grave-plans-for-amazon-rainforest/ <comment><USER2> Excerpt:

"Leaked documents show that Jair Bolsonaro's government intends to use the Brazilian president's hate speech to isolate minorities living in the Amazon region. The PowerPoint slides, which democraciaAbierta has seen, also reveal plans to implement predatory projects that could have a devastating environmental impact."

My question is why would the government even put slides like this together. Who writes things like "We will use hate speech to implement predatory projects to devastate the environment".

Normally govts focus on things like we want to develop X area and give two shxxts about the environment. But they don't go out of there way to come up with evil powerpoints.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that part seems fishy to me. Like, I guess I've seen weirder things in the real world, but that just seems _way_ too cartoonishly evil to be real.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, what's next? A Bond villain running Russia? A racist blow-hard capitalist running America? Please...

<comment><USER3> Alright, fair point.

Makes me wonder if the world really did end in 2012 and we're living in a very-poorly-written video game attempting to preserve it.

<comment><USER5> Or something equivalent of Game of thrones 8th season

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Regardless of whether this particular article is fake news or not Western countries should join together and pay Brazil not to burn down the rainforest. Models show that reductions to the Amazon would lower rainfall in the western United states, a place with a growing population and already bad water usage problems nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/11/how-cutting-the-amazon- forest-could-affect-weather

<comment><USER7> _> Western countries should join together and pay Brazil not to burn down the rainforest_

I'm sorry, but, WHAT?! I agree we should preserve the rainforest but why should the West pay? That's like asking my neighbors to pay me to not burn down my flat.

<comment><USER8> Many countries in Europe, for example, have already destroyed majority of their forests. Not saying that destroying forests is good, quite the opposite, but unfortunately that's how it seems to go if you can't monetize the forests in some way and that's where western (and other) money could help.

<comment><USER7> _> Many countries in Europe, for example, have already destroyed majority of their forests._

You have a source for that? Last I recall, countries like Finland have more trees now than ever before.

<comment><USER9> They replaced forest that were destroyed. Planting new forest is great,but not as great if we had the old forest were still there. Once you lose biodiversity, it is gone forever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This long form article goes into way more detail than anyone not related to Brazil might care.

It's gaslighting as a political strategy:

[https://piaui.folha.uol.com.br/materia/the-environment-as- an...](https://piaui.folha.uol.com.br/materia/the-environment-as-an-obstacle)

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't particularly trust Bolsonaro, his constant twisting of the truth and his ignorance should put us all on alert.

But seriously, this is an article about an agency that is openly anti- bolsonaro and pro PT [1] (his opposing party) claming to have seen a supposed PowerPoint with incriminating evidence (with no source to the PowerPoint and much less any proof of its origin). We can't allow ourselves to drop to this level, it is no better than a witch-hunt this way.

[1] [https://nocaute.blog.br/2018/10/15/democracia-abierta- adere-...](https://nocaute.blog.br/2018/10/15/democracia-abierta-adere-ao- elenao/)

EDIT: It's really interesting to see I am being downvoted for stating an inconvenient truth. Got to love ideological blindness.

<comment><USER12> > I don't particularly trust Bolsonaro, his constant twisting of the truth and > his ignorance should put us all on alert.

The same can certainly be said about the United States.

<comment><USER13> This article is about Brazil.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> where is the "PowerPoint" though?

</comment><comment><USER15> While it's good to question things, everything alleged in there squares with Bonsonaro's public statements and actions since taking office.

<comment><USER12> Bonsonaro is Brazil's Trump, the worst thing that could possibly happen to that country.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> As a disclaimer, I don't speak Portuguese, like at all, so my half-assed attempt at translating these is based on my limited understanding of Spanish and the cognates between Portuguese and Spanish+English.

\----

First, the slide:

> 3\. Context

> Globalist campaign: relative to [something] of the Amazon Basin

> Strategy: PsyOps (external and internal) + International Pressure

> Arms [?]: ambientalist[?] / indigenist NGOs, media, diplomatic and economic > pressures; (something) of indigenous minorities and quilombolas; and > [something] of public institutions

> Result: restriction of the government's freedom to act

This looks like one of the slides mentioned in the article (paragraph right above the document), but not the one about the Brazilian government using "hate speech" as a strategy.

\----

Next, the document:

> CONFIDENTIAL

> Strategic Agenda

> (Presidential Directive)

> For prioritized consideration for government strategies.

> 1\. Aerospace Technology - Revitalization of VLS [Space Launch Vehicle?] > project, [something] of national satellite and vehicular property [?], > [something about Bolsonaro]

> 2\. Nuclear Technology

> a. Industrialization of a uranium enrichment process [something something] > to make Brazil self-sufficient and a potential enriched uranium exporter

> b. [something about politics and nuclear power; I suppose I could Google > Translate "fusão" to see if it means "fusion" (my guess) or "fission", but > I'm too lazy]

> 3\. Integration [?] [something] Amazon River [?] into the rest of national > territory, [something] international pressure around implementation [?] of > project called Triple A. For this, hydroelectric construction project on the > Trombetas River [something something] Amazon River, with implementation of > road BR 163 to the Suriname border

> 4\. Cyberdefense - Implementation of National Cyber Defense Plan, integrated > with existing security plans [?]

> 5\. Biotech - Establishment of a program to eradicate the primary diseases > in Brazil's rain forests (malaria, [some other diseases])

> 6\. Mining - Execution of the National Mining Plan, obtaining [?] minerals > critical for the nuclear [something] and the aerospace industry

> 7\. Science and Technology - Implementation of the national technology > [something] plan

All seems relatively mundane, though (as a side note) it's interesting that Brazil's actively pursuing nuclear and aerospace projects. Brazil's vast expanses of equatorial territory could make it a major player in space travel should it manage to capitalize on that real estate. I'm guessing that might be what that "VLS" project is. If those points are ordered by priority, that'd imply that aerospace projects are Brazil's #1 priority, which is pretty exciting for the future of space travel.

\----

I'm assuming there are other slides not shown in the article, but if the article's gonna claim that said slides document the Brazilian government's strategic use of hate speech, it'd be really helpful if it, you know, actually included that slide. Maybe that's part of entry #3 in that Strategic Agenda; there's a lot in there and I understood relatively little of it, but that also seemed to be the article's focus.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wow! How did this absurdly fake news make the HN front page?

<comment><USER17> How do you know it is fake news?

<comment><USER16> Did you read the article? Tell me where is the leaked document.

<comment><USER18> [https://cdn-prod.opendemocracy.net/media/images/b2d7aa17-e06...](https://cdn- prod.opendemocracy.net/media/images/b2d7aa17-e061-4cbd-a792-8b3346566c6a.width-800.jpg)

<comment><USER11> Do you understand Portuguese? That slide is nothing about what this article is reporting.

For anyone that doesn't understand Portuguese, this slide is about how the government feels threatened by what they see as (even agreeing that would be paranoid) a disinformation campaign orchestrated by NGOs, media, and other actors.

Also, besides this slide having nothing to do with the article being discussed here, it also begs the question on why we should trust an agency that was openly anti Bolsonaro and pro PT (the opposing party) in the elections without any substantial proof but showing a photo of a slide.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How YouTube thinks about copyright [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_stewart_how_youtube_thinks_about_copyright.html

<comment><AUTHOR> In summary, YouTube's "content ID" system attempts to match uploaded videos against a large database of registered copyrighted content. If it finds a match, it applies a policy that was defined by the copyright holder.

The system handles the full volume of uploaded video content (equivalent to "100 years of video per day"). Even more impressive is the fact that it can successfully identify multiple copyrighted portions of a video (think mashups).</comment>


Urinal protocol vulnerability - <AUTHOR> http://blog.xkcd.com/2009/09/02/urinal-protocol-vulnerability/ <comment><USER2> The typical workflow was documented over 23 years ago on Usenet: [http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/90q3/urinals.html](http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/90q3/urinals.html)</comment>


A Half Way House for NYC Startups - <AUTHOR> http://codybrowntext.tumblr.com/post/1076704651/im-starting-a-half-way-house-for-nyc-startups <comment><USER2> If anyone is in Jersey City, NJ we could do something similar. We have two apartments in which we operate 3 businesses and occasionally have borders staying here who also work in startups. Fast internet, multiple phone lines, lots of sun light and a sweet, huge, custom desk space. Drop me a line if you are in the neighborhood or living in JC and want a sweet place to work on your passion.

<comment><USER3> What area of Jersey City are you guys located?

<comment><USER2> Near the grove st path station.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is awesome. Bushwick is a pretty cool neighborhood too, if you keep a sharp eye out for nefariousness. I'm north side though, and this place is south side. (L train vs. M train)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a great idea. I think the same can be achieved in a lot of other neighborhoods in NYC, some closer to where action is, with a bit of planning, willing to share living space, and pure luck. For example, you can find a room in East Village/Lower East Side for < 700/month.

</comment><comment><USER6> After living in a thirty person co-op for three years I have always felt a housing co-op for hackers and startups would be awesome. Just about every skill you might need under one roof and a lot of support to keep everyone moving forward.

</comment><comment><USER7> Congrats Cody! This is an awesome idea … for all the reasons you laid out in your post and for the sheer audacity of the thing.

Your 'F* it, let's just do it' approach, bodes very well for this project!

</comment><comment><USER8> nice idea. imho, Halfway house seems to be the wrong name for it though. Guild house sounds more apt.

</comment><comment><USER9> love it!</comment>


What are the most surreal places one can ever visit? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Travel/What-are-the-most-surreal-places-one-can-ever-visit

<comment><USER2> Sensory deprivation tank?</comment>


Show HN: Automatically add beards, mustaches, monocles, and more to any face - <AUTHOR> http://beardofevil.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I was quite inspired by Mustachio.me (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2878140>), and decided to take it one step further :)

There's a Greasemonkey script linked off the site that replaces images in webpages automatically, much like their Chrome extension.

<comment><AUTHOR> Uh, I mean <http://mustachify.me/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> This must solve for one of those "first world problems" I keep reading about.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool!

Your facebook like button and twitter button render wrong for me though. They get pushed underneath the picture. (Firefox 3.5.16)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, they're supposed to be down the bottom of the page in the footer. Perhaps it doesn't render correctly in older Firefox, I'll have a look at it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is cool. Check out <http://laserey.es/> to see a more fun and intuitive UI.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the mention! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would add one-click "beardify me" links for Twitter and Facebook. With some luck it could start a movement.

</comment><comment><USER7> Color for the last line of the page is pretty hard to read (dark blue on black background). Else it is pretty fun to use ! EDIT: you might wanna find a way to avoid NSFW pictures on front page (just had one ^^)

</comment><comment><USER8> A little bit in the topic. Trustworthiness of Beards: <http://visually.visually.netdna-cdn.com/2355_infographic.jpg>

<comment><USER9> "Note: based on absolutely no scientific evidence."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I kid you not, I have been in need of this exact service. Would you consider sharing the code? I have another beard-centric project idea that I'd love to see come to light.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's pretty rough, I hacked it together over dinner last night, then haphazardly bolted on a few more things this morning. I'm amazed it works as well as it does.

Shoot me an email if you want the code regardless though - paul [at] bieh.net :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> That looks suspiciously like my beard, for which I have just filed a patent application.

</comment><comment><USER12> Face.com api is amazingly powerful.

</comment><comment><USER13> For those of us with baby skin you are our friend.</comment>


RAGrid: Powerful intrinsic pure CSS flexbox grid - <AUTHOR> https://argyleink.github.io/ragrid/ <comment><USER2> This is very much just some aliases for flexbox properties. If you were planning on using it, I would advice just learning flexbox instead and be compatible with the rest of the world. Google "flexbox froggies" for an awesome tutorial.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, and it's right there in the docs that one should/could just copy+paste these aliases into their project, read the CSS, and understand how it's working. It's important to know how flexbox works, so you can write your own media queries that will help you align and distribute your objects as screen size changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> On topic question:

Anyone know how well flexbox polyfills work? I went to this website in IE10 and it is unusable (as I suspected).

I would love to use stuff like this but until it works at least 2 versions back in browsers I don't see how I can use it. Yes, it is only < 0.5% market share but when your market is consumers, losing 1 out of every 200 sales is a big deal if it can be avoided for a reasonable cost.

<comment><AUTHOR> Polyfills don't work great, but with some clever CSS, a floated layout can be applied that makes a decent (actually not that great) but works compromise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Suggestion for showcasing this:_ Make each section an overall fixed height (the examples within the sections can be variable height, but the overall height of the full page should remain static).

Currently, when resizing the browser to see how the examples work, the scroll jumps due to page height changes, so you can't actually see the changed example at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great suggestion</comment></comment>


Tesla workers speak out: 'Anything pro-union is shut down really fast' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/sep/10/tesla-workers-union-elon-musk <comment><USER2> > He added that management quickly finds reasons to fire employees who tout > their efforts to form a union and those who are fired are pushed to sign > non-disclosure agreements before receiving their last paycheck.

I'd hope this is just a misunderstanding of the facts or something, because wow that last part's just horrifying.

<comment><USER3> This is fairly common. Most severance payments are settlements, of which the first offer is made by the company.

Employees can refuse the settlement, then sue their former employer under various wrongful dismissal/common law severance heads, but that requires getting a lawyer, and lawyers are generally more expensive than the few extra months of wages you'll get back. The cost of getting justice is used to scalp workers for a month or two of earnings all the time.

... Unless you were sexually assaulted and offered peanuts, or recorded your immediate supervisor threatening you with physical harm or something. Then lawyering up pays off.

<comment><USER2> I'm hoping that's the misunderstanding: Severance != last paycheck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am progressive as it gets but living in NY and witnessing the current state of MTA plus attitude of other union workers my ideas about unions has changed completely. We have to find better ways to protect our workers without letting them abuse the system.

<comment><USER5> The article doesn't say anything about NYC or the MTA, did you even read it, or are you replying to the words "pro-union" in the submission title?

<comment><USER4> Since when discussions on a HN thread are limited to the keyword on an article? It seems like you are the one who did not understand the context of the article. My comment is about relevancy of unions in our day. I apologize if everyone else thinks my comment was off topic.

<comment><USER6> Imagine criticizing coffee shops as a whole because you got bad coffee at a starbucks. Is there something inherent to unions that make them generally bad?

BTW, the issues with the NY subway have little to do with the TWU and more to do with mismanagement by Cuomo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not surprising... the opposite would be the exception, this is pretty much the rule in 2018.

<comment><USER8> The US auto industry still has a pretty significant union presence, especially the US-based companies that aren't Tesla. The UAW has ~430k members[1] out of the ~950k total US auto manufacturing workforce[2].

Most of the foreign companies building cars in the US are quite anti-union though. Somewhat ironically the building that is currently Tesla's factory used to be Toyota's only unionized factory.

[1] [https://uaw.org/uaw-grows-almost-15000-new- members-2017-7500...](https://uaw.org/uaw-grows-almost-15000-new- members-2017-75000-new-members-since-2009/)

[2] [https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iagauto.htm](https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iagauto.htm)

<comment><USER9>
      Toyota's only unionized factory

To my knowledge, _every_ Toyota factory in Japan is unionized.

<comment><USER8> Yes, I should have been more specific. Only unionized factory in the US.

Japan and Germany both have heavily unionized domestic auto manufacturing workforces, it's just their factories in the US that don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If I were a shareholder I'd advise Elon to do something truly epic to distract from this. Like what if instead of the rainbow road easter egg they added a bacon road?

</comment><comment><USER11> Shitty if true.

If Tesla is anti-union, and they have every right to be, they can just fire people who strike. Firing them before they strike is not ok.

<comment><USER12> > If Tesla is anti-union... they can just fire people who strike.

I'm not so sure, it seems like they can't in many circumstances:

[https://blogs.findlaw.com/law_and_life/2014/10/can-you-be- fi...](https://blogs.findlaw.com/law_and_life/2014/10/can-you-be-fired-for- going-on-strike.html)

<comment><USER11> Weird. So I could get a job and then just hang out outside "striking" and not work and still get paid and they can never fire me?

I don't understand the laws here.

<comment><USER12> > Weird. So I could get a job and then just hang out outside "striking" and > not work and still get paid and they can never fire me?

Striking workers don't get paid by the employer while they're striking. That's why unions have "strike funds" \-- to keep striking members financially solvent while they strike.

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

> I don't understand the laws here.

They're meant to protect the rights of employees to strike. If companies were allowed to fire union members just because they're participate in union activities (like strikes), it'd be trivial for management to break union power for the low wage/low skill jobs that most need unions.

<comment><USER11> I see. Well in that case it seems like Tesla can just wait for a strike, hire more workers to replace the ones who are striking while keeping the strikers on the books without pay, and then if the strikers ask for their shifts back, just phase them in, while also doing rolling layoffs to get rid of unnecessary workers (strikers or new hires depending on who has the lowest performance).

Then unions could defeat this by doing rhythmic striking, but I think Tesla might be in their rights to fire a worker who is repeatedly striking in a systematic way to interfere with Tesla's hiring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I bet you could get sacked from Tesla for even mentioning the Union of Myanmar

</comment><comment><USER14> "Speaking Out" against standard practice, and getting the ear of a reporter because your company makes headlines more often. Yay.</comment>


Ask HN: kan haz FF/Chrome button to access bookmarks? - <AUTHOR>

I prefer to have FF's (and Chrome's) bookmark toolbar hidden, but I'd love to have a one-click-dropdown button for accessing them.  Any suggestions for either browser? <comment><USER2> There's almost certainly a much better place to ask this question. Might I suggest:

<https://forums.mozilla.org/addons/>

<http://superuser.com/>

<http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=38>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, but I received great answers for both browsers without having to register/post in multiple locations -- all in under 6 minutes. HN rocks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> In Chrome there's the CTRL+SHIFT+B shortcut that toggles the bookmark toolbar on and off. At first glance there doesn't seem to have a shortcut for that in FireFox but maybe you can configure a shortcut or a plugin exists for that?

<comment><USER4> CTRL+B brings up the bookmark sidebar on Fx.</comment></comment>


Friends don't let friends do Java - <AUTHOR> http://www.teale.de/blog/friends-dont-let-friends-do-java.html <comment><USER3> _Wow, a language that actually allows you to build such complex abstractions without getting lost in them, runs them fast enough, and gives you tools to debug them. That 's... COOL!_ It makes me a bit sad I spend my workdays in dynamic languages where sometimes the framework/runtime "swallows" any meaningful stack trace when some "magic code" gets called and you revert to stone-age print/log debugging...

Now, about the people that went on on to actually pile so many things on top of each other, just because they knew the language and tools were strong enough to _let_ them do this _up to a point_... nothing good to be said.

 _But I 've personally grown to admire languages and tools that give you enough high quality rope to hang yourself properly and thoroughly :)_ In the end, you can never blame _the rope_ for the idiot hanged with it...

</comment><comment><USER4> I can't post the actual backtrace, but looking at the most recent error email I received from a Rails app, the backtrace is over 300 calls deep.

50 New Relic, 50 ActiveRecord, 100 ActiveSupport, 50 misc Rails / Rack, and 50 everything else.

This is not a Java problem.

<comment><USER5> Rails comes with a backtrace cleaner, that by default excludes lines that aren't from your app; it's based on an extensible BacktraceCleaner in ActiveSupport.

[https://github.com/rails/rails/blob/master/railties/lib/rail...](https://github.com/rails/rails/blob/master/railties/lib/rails/backtrace_cleaner.rb)

Perhaps you've disabled this? (FWIW, I don't mind the longer backtraces as they help in understanding thornier problems.)

<comment><USER4> Yeah, we definitely need the full backtraces as we've significantly customized rails so seeing the full call stack is important.

It's not seeing a long backtrace that bothers me, it's the callstack being that deep to begin with. In my experience, it makes debugging slower and more difficult. If you're 30 calls deep, figuring out where you ended up in the wrong branch of a conditional is much easier than when you're 300 calls deep.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh no, a deep stack trace, better blame Java. Excuse me while I go roll my eyes for a bit.

<comment><USER7> It goes against the core UNIX tenets: simplicity and modularity, which state:

 _design for simplicity; add complexity only where you must_.

 _Write simple parts connected by clean interfaces_. [Kernighan-Plaguer]

[http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html](http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Now, I'm not familiar with Java, but I don't get what's supposed to be bad about a deep stack trace.

Sure, in the old days, we had one giant function that did all the work, and we had a shallow stack.

But if your code is composed of simple methods that do just one thing, you'll end up with very deep stack traces.

Every modern framework has deep stack traces.

Yes, you need to invest some time in the beginning to understand how the different parts work together, but once you do, you'll see the beauty and clarity when all the abstractions are in the right places, and doing what you want requires just a handful of carefully sprinkled lines of business logic, with the framework doing much of the heavy lifting for you...

<comment><USER9> Are you implying that a long call stack is better than a long function? At least you don't have to have a debugger to read the long function.

<comment><USER10> Long call stacks are better than long functions, yes.

If a function runs on for more than a few lines, it feels like it rapidly becomes more difficult to reason about it. More mental overhead is required and more moving parts are in scope.

Long stack traces might mean you have to read more whole debugging, but it also means there is less code to debug for a given failure - <USER2> modularity!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's not Java.

Friends don't let friends use Tomcat/JBoss, Spring MVC, AOP _Whatever_ , Hibernate and all that related crap.

Java is a big ecosystem. There's crap in it, as a consequence of it being big.

<comment><USER12> Although you're right, one could argue that this is the world you most likely end up in when you "do Java", as most Java job openings seem to list at least one or two of the frameworks you mention, as compared to the job openings for something that would look more like core Java oriented as opposed to "Enterprise" oriented.

I have learned that when choosing a language to specialise in, you also choose the culture around it, which becomes very important when you live in it every day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> More like Friends don't let friends do web development.

</comment><comment><USER14> Try a Scala stacktrace if you think that's bad.

You could argue it's a consequence of well designed abstraction, though.

<comment><USER15> I've never met with (large) stack traces in Scala because throwing exceptions is NOT ok in Scala. But can you share your experience?

<comment><USER16> So you're not supposed to tell people where errors occur in Scala? Is that like Inigo Montoya fighting with his left hand, because otherwise it's too easy?

<comment><USER15> > So you're not supposed to tell people where errors occur in Scala?

You're supposed to use the types `Option` and `Either` or if you're into scalaz then \/ ([http://eed3si9n.com/learning- scalaz/Either.html](http://eed3si9n.com/learning-scalaz/Either.html)) and Validation ([http://eed3si9n.com/learning- scalaz/Validation.html](http://eed3si9n.com/learning-scalaz/Validation.html)). Throwing exceptions is a childish way to handle errors in FP.

<comment><USER16> I don't see why anyone would find this superior to a stack trace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How did this poor trolling en up on the top of my HN opening page?

<comment><USER18> Everyone loves a graphic that illustrates information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> To be fair that's really "Friends don't let friends do Spring".

</comment><comment><USER20> People like to point at a Java stacktrace and mock... but actually that's a awesome part of the language. You can actually get a good grasp of what went wrong just from taking a close look at it.

Of course other languages have informative stacktraces as well, but IMHO Java has the most readable, complete and useful one.

</comment><comment><USER21> See the original: [https://ptrthomas.wordpress.com/2006/06/06/java-call- stack-f...](https://ptrthomas.wordpress.com/2006/06/06/java-call-stack-from- http-upto-jdbc-as-a-picture/)

<comment><USER22> Hahaha, click through to the RoR post, in which Zed Shaw leaps to the defense of the first Mongrel! Classic.

[EDIT:] Actually this link should replace TFA, since TFA is a single image ripped from this link which has additional material to boot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Meh. That's web programming.

</comment><comment><USER23> stacktrace from hell - a consequence of stacking frameworks over frameworks. This is the state of our craft as of today :(. This has nothing to do with Java as a prog language. Java stack traces are quite nice :-)

</comment><comment><USER24> Acegi was renamed Spring Security in 2008, so this is pretty old/legacy.

</comment><comment><USER25> Seems like J2EE (OK Spring / Hibernate) is the problem here.

</comment><comment><USER26> joking on Java is so 10 years ago.

<comment><USER27> luckily the example stacktrace is from a blog written in 2006, so it's all perfectly cromulent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> where is the retweet button?!</comment>


Seagate ST506 (The First 5.25" Hard Disk Drive) - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ST506/ST412 <comment><AUTHOR> Excerpt:

"The ST506 HDD was the first 5.25 inch hard disk drive, introduced in 1980[2] by Shugart Technology (now Seagate Technology). It stored up to _5 megabytes_ after formatting and cost US$1,500 (equivalent to $4,561 in 2018).[3] The similar, 10-megabyte ST412 HDD was introduced in late 1981. The ST225 was introduced shortly thereafter with 20 megabytes and half the height. All three used MFM encoding, a widely used coding scheme. A subsequent extension of the ST412 interface, the ST412HP interface, used RLL encoding for a 50% increase in capacity and bit rate.

The ST506 drive connected to a computer system through a disk controller. The ST506 interface between the controller and drive was derived from the Shugart Associates SA1000 interface,[4] which was in turn based upon the floppy disk drive interface,[5] thereby making disk controller design relatively easy.[2]

The ST412 interface was adopted by numerous HDD manufacturers such that the interface became a de facto industry standard for disk drives[6] well into the 1990s."</comment>


Obama Unveils Plan to Fund High-Speed Passenger Rail - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123989461947625407.html <comment><USER2> Just to put this in perspective - we currently spend $12 billion a month in Iraq. For roughly that amount, one month's Iraq budget, we can have high speed rail.

Pretty mind boggling.

<comment><USER3> And just imagine the infrastructure we could have had for the cost of the Iraq war + the bank bailouts!

Anyway one thing I'd like to mention that never gets highlighted is that buses are BY FAR the cheapest public transportation solution. Its not sexy but the good old fashioned bus is great since it can use the road infrastructure already built whereas trains need right of way and a lot of construction before they can be used.

<comment><USER4> " _And just imagine the infrastructure we could have had for the cost of the Iraq war + the bank bailouts_ "

It's _impossible_ to sell such a huge plan without an imminent threat/disaster. It makes no sense to think of other things we could do with that money.

<comment><USER5> You can always make something up.

See: Sending a man to the moon.

Granted it might be hard to sell a rail project like the space race, but looking back on just how much of our GDP we where spending to play golf on the moon was insane.

<comment><USER4> I'd argue the USSR was the imminent threat. According to wiki, Khrushchev openly & repeatedly threatened the West with nuclear annihilation. The space race was a bid to regain technological supremacy after sputnik.

Also back then it wasn't clear that it would be just the one trip.

<comment><USER6> There were six trips: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landings#Manned_landings>

<comment><USER4> yeah. Nothing new happened so i just lump them as one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Like everything, its all about tradeoffs: upfront costs, ongoing costs vs profit, time, environmental impact, convenience and capacity. All the transportation systems we should invest in (and all of them are somewhat subsidized by the government) should be the ideal balance of these tradeoffs for that particular distance range.

I believe there is a sweet spot in travel distance where high speed trains are the optimal solution over cars in the smaller distance range and planes in the longer distance range. Few would think to travel from LA to NY on a train but when you are talking about LA to SF, it makes a lot of sense. Time and destination wise it's more convenient, the environmental impact is less, frees up plane capacity at LAX and SFO for long distance flights, ongoing costs are similar, and the only question remaining is do these benefits outweigh the very large upfront cost? Would love to see how much these costs compare (a new high speed train route vs a hypothetical new airport + enough planes to service the route)

<comment><USER8> The sweet spot absolutely exists. When I went to school in DC, and wanted to go home to north NJ, taking Amtrak was about the same cost as a flight, about the same time (because of airport overhead, and because the airport was further away than the train station), and more comfortable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is it bad that I was thinking that Obama had gotten into Ruby? I really need to get out more...

<comment><USER10> Aye, I thought the Engine Yard was up for a TARP injection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> ... That better have High-Speed Wifi!

</comment><comment><USER12> Map of today's Amtrak network: [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Amtrak_ne...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Amtrak_network_2007.svg)

</comment><comment><USER13> This is the wrong way to go. I would guess that high-speed trains will only reduce people's reliance on airplanes, which are themselves a form of mass- transit. This particular change should be easy to effect, as many casual travelers will be swayed by the (hopefully) greater convenience of train travel versus the airport hassle.

However, many who are over-reliant on their cars will continue to be so, as they are less likely to be the people traveling frequently by plane. Also, people will have no incentive to reduce their car dependence so long as they still have to drive everyday for work/groceries/practically everything, unless they are lucky enough to already live in one of the rare (at least in the USA) cities with public transportation that could be rationally argued as superior to individual cars.

So, I would argue that massive investment in intra-city public transport infrastructure would have a more significantly positive long-term effect, as its availability would be relevant to more people, and has a the potential to cause a significantly larger reduction in the number of miles driven per person in the USA.

Unfortunately, the negative stigma that seems to linger over public transport in many parts of this country would likely retard these benefits. The real utility of the simple bus systems that would be a reasonable first step, as opposed to metros/subways, would not become apparent until the use of mass- transit reached a critical mass, at which the density of cars on the road would be reduced to a point allowing buses to travel quickly. Though, the importance of reaching this critical mass, which creates a sort of chicken<->egg problem, could be reduced by dedicated bus lanes, as some others have already mentioned.

</comment><comment><USER14> I just did a quick text search both on the article and here in the comments, and I can't believe that no one has mentioned maglev? Please, Barack -- don't build your plain old wheel-based trains, no matter how fast; skip directly into 22nd century and mak a nationwide network of the fastest, most efficient and safest trains known to man.

<comment><USER15> Please don't jump on the bandwagon of the obsolete maglev technology - we need to put this money toward research into teleporters

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Since no discussion is complete if it is one-sided, I offer an alternative perspective:

(PDF link) <http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-625.pdf>

"Close scrutiny of these plans reveals that they do not live up to the hype. As attractive as 110- to 220-mile-per-hour trains might sound, even the most optimistic forecasts predict they will take fewcars off the road. At best, they will replace for profit private commuter airlines with heavily subsidized public rail systems that are likely to require continued subsidies far into the future.

Nor are high-speed rail lines particularly environmentally friendly. Planners have predicted that a proposed line in Florida would use more energy and emit more of some pollutants than all of the cars it would take off the road. California planners forecast that high-speed rail would reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions by a mere 0.7 to1.5 percent—but only if ridership reached the high end of projected levels. Lower ridership would nullify energy savings and pollution reductions.

These assessments are confirmed by the actual experience of high-speed rail lines in Japan and Europe. Since Japan introduced high-speed bullet trains, passenger rail has lost more than half its market share to the automobile. Since Italy, France, and other European countries opened their high-speed rail lines, rail's market share in Europe has dwindled from 8.2 to 5.8 percent of travel. If high-speed rail doesn't work in Japan and Europe, how can it work in the United States?

As megaprojects—the California high-speed rail is projected to cost $33 to $37 billion—high-speed rail plans pose serious risks for taxpayers. Costs of recent rail projects in Denver and Seattle are running 60 to 100 percent above projections. Once construction begins, politicians will feel obligated to throw good taxpayers' money after bad. Once projects are completed, most plans call for them to be turned over to private companies that will keep any operationalprofits, while taxpayerswill remain vulnerable if the trains lose money.

In short, high-speed rail proposals are high cost, high-risk megaprojects that promise little or no congestion relief, energy savings, or other environmental benefits."

And with that, I'm going to get a pseudonym. Hacker News users aren't just random people on the internet, they're people I'd like to work with someday. And I usually avoid discussing contentious political issues with my colleagues unless they bring it up first and seem thick-skinned. If there's going to be politics on hacker news, then I, as me, must go.

<comment><USER17> "These assessments are confirmed by the actual experience of high-speed rail lines in Japan and Europe. Since Japan introduced high-speed bullet trains, passenger rail has lost more than half its market share to the automobile. Since Italy, France, and other European countries opened their high-speed rail lines, rail's market share in Europe has dwindled from 8.2 to 5.8 percent of travel. If high-speed rail doesn't work in Japan and Europe, how can it work in the United States?"

The author who wrote that has in all likelihood never traveled by train in Europe. At least in Germany, high speed trains are a huge success and often overcrowded when I use them.

<comment><USER16> I usually assume that a statistic is more accurate than an anecdote, unless you have done some research that shows his statistic to be wrong.

<comment><USER17> Have you done some research that shows this statistic to be correct? Perhaps you might want to take a look at who is sponsoring this "statistic":

<http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/cato-institute>

<comment><USER18> So facts from people we don't like are to be ignored?

I just _know_ that you're not making the case that there are special groups that we can trust with statistics and special groups we can't. Because that's an insult to our intelligence. Sources have bias. We multi-source to eliminate them. No need to impeach the source. Argue the facts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> i am about as pro-green as it gets.

However, I am really uncertain about whether passenger trains are a good idea. In most countries they are subsidized. the upkeep costs are high...the US is a very geographically sparse place...

I'd much rather have them spend money on alternative energy, electric cars and funding startups at an arms length by investing in VC firms. (or running an independent VC arm)

<comment><USER20> The best way to do it is to have regional train networks, and use planes for inter-region travel. For example you would have train networks like L.A.- S.F., Chicago-Minneapolis, Chicago-St. Louis, Austin-Houston-Dallas-San Antonio, N.Y.C.-Boston-D.C., etc.

Unfortunately, that won't work politically. It basically treats red states like oceans that should be flown over, and puts all the high-speed rail in blue states (except the Texas network). It is probably more fiscally responsible to finance these networks at the state level than at the federal level.

<comment><USER21> The front range of Colorado & Wyoming is pretty decent a spot too. That's at least a purple area....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What does this have to do with software development or startups?

<comment><USER23> You're supposed to just flag it and move on. To another site that takes banishing politics discussions seriously?

<comment><USER18> "Economics of the Laffer curve and how it relates to taxation" -> flagged

"Obama adminstration installs Apache servers" or some such -> not flagged

That's what I love so much about standards. Everybody has them.

<comment><USER23> I flag pretty much everything that even remotely smacks of politics, and most economics, no matter which side it comes from or how much I agree with it.

<comment><USER18> I know you do. I've been watching.

I just enjoy watching the double-standards people employ. For example, in this discussion I'd love to see somebody bring up the point that passenger rail in the U.S. is a political idea and not a practical business idea -- take a look at Amtrak pricing. But by actually diving into the business side of the article, they'd call the resulting discussion political!

I think "political" just means "stuff I don't agree with that has some sort of tangential relation to politics"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Taste the Rainbow</comment>


Humans Who Dream Of Companies That Won't Need Us - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3047462/the-humans-who-dream-of-companies-that-wont-need-them?utm_content=buffer04e59&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> At some point we must get rid of all the humans on earth to keep up economic growth.

Not entirely joking.

Since companies are legal entities and can be run by algorithms, then it's possible that such non-human companies end up with all the capital and all the power. Of course nations and legal systems will also be automatized, with maximum growth as the objective. Then the algorithms can just starve people to death in a legal way.

Though human controlled companies weren't necessarily that humane so far either. At least they would try to keep the owners alive...

<comment><USER3> Why does trade require growth?

<comment><USER4> It doesn't. But trade requires calm politicans. Those aren't calm if people aren't calm. And people aren't calm the moment TVs don't get bigger anymore. That's what makes them angry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What I don't understand about the Blockchain hype (and I say that as a fan of Bitcoin): isn't the primary problem it solves the avoidance of double spending?

Or in the case of Ethereum, perhaps double contracts. But still, the issue seems a bit overblown to me: to double spend (or present fake contracts, or more generally, fake data), you somehow have to isolate the victims network before injecting the fake transaction into it?

Sharing data in a p2p network was possible before the blockchain. Maybe a lot of applications don't really need the bullet proof security of the blockchain to exchange data?

I don't see the real advantage for a self driving car company, for example. Why couldn't it just as well live on a server - maybe in the cloud so that it has backups? The issue of cheating could be countered with trust, just as normal businesses do (screw over your customers too often and they'll stay away).

The real problem seems to be political, I don't think it is legally possible to instantiate a business without human background?

Suppose I launch a contract on Ethereum that tries to buy a self-driving car and rent it out to passengers. How would that car get a license plate? And without it, wouldn't the police quickly remove it from the street?

<comment><USER6> Legally, creating a company without humans is impossible, but in practice, well:

 _Registering Planet Money 's Delaware company took one day and three emails. The company that set it up for us asked for absolutely no documentation. I gave them my real name, but I could have been anybody from anywhere in the world._

[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/27/157421340/how-t...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/27/157421340/how- to-set-up-an-offshore-company)

Of course, opening a bank account to receive the income of those rides would be a different story.

<comment><USER5> The bank account issue at least is solved by Bitcoin.

Maybe some businesses don't need to be real businesses - especially illegal ones :-/

I wonder about the consequences of running an illegal business on the blockchain, though. Say, a marketplace for drugs on Ethereum. Worst case it would make using Ethereum illegal?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like the first chapter of Accelerando.

[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/fiction/accelera...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> It should be noted that ethereum does not scale any better than Bitcoin, which is to say not much at all. Unlike a lot of people in the crypto currency scene Vitalik acknowledges this and is working on upgrades to fix this. He is a very, very smart guy but this would require solving extremely difficult technical and economic problems.

</comment><comment><USER9> They're not talking about automated companies. They're talking about distributed companies. That's entirely different. This is the micropayment dream, again - everything is making tiny micropayments to everything else. I knew some of that crowd back when Xanadu was a thing. (Xanadu was Ted Nelson's thing, a predecessor of the World Wide Web. Everything is pay per view in Xanadu.) They were all fanatical libertarians.

Somebody read "Atlas Shrugged" too many times. (Part 3 of the movie is out, and in Redbox, if anybody cares. "The weak cinematic trilogy derived from Ayn Rand's 1957 screed-cum-novel limps to its merciful end." \- Variety)

</comment><comment><USER10> There is probably already some "thing" out there running in the AWS cloud that both cashes checks and pays it's bills and is still running after the demise of its owner.

</comment><comment><USER11> Vitalik Buterin's response:[http://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/3ai4pm/the_humans_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/3ai4pm/the_humans_who_dream_of_companies_that_dont_need/cscu4pa)

</comment><comment><USER12> I find the title to be somewhat misleading as it tries to get readers' attention.

Most of the article is related to the Blockhain, but "won't need us" makes most assume it's purely related to automation.

<comment><USER13> What would be a better title?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Companies are simply a tool that helps a group of people to make a profit. If you remove the group of people then what would be the point?

<comment> bjelkeman-again In some contexts we have nearly removed all the people in this equation already. 85 people own as much as about half the world's population [1]. So, capitalism in the form we have it today, which includes companies, are simply a way to concentrate wealth among the few. Some of these few use the money IMO vicely, but a more equitable system would probably work better. I say this after having lived and worked in the US and the UK (less equal) compared to Sweden and Netherlands (more equal).

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jan/20/oxfam-85-ric...](http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jan/20/oxfam-85-richest- people-half-of-the-world)

Edit: clearer argument

<comment><USER15> All that statistics says is a lot of people have debt. I personally have more wealth than about half the world _in my wallet_ \- I've got about $150 in there, and billions of people have negative net worth.

Global inequality is actually declining, by the way, so can't modern capitalism get some credit for that?

[http://www.maxroser.com/economic-world-history-in-one- chart/](http://www.maxroser.com/economic-world-history-in-one-chart/)

[https://www.gc.cuny.edu/CUNY_GC/media/CUNY-Graduate- Center/P...](https://www.gc.cuny.edu/CUNY_GC/media/CUNY-Graduate- Center/PDF/Centers/LIS/Milanovic/papers/2014/Where14.pdf)

<comment><USER16> No, you don't. The report makes clear that you need wealth of USD 3,650 to be in the top 50% in the world, and USD 77,000 to be in the top 10%.

[https://publications.credit- suisse.com/tasks/render/file/?fi...](https://publications.credit- suisse.com/tasks/render/file/?fileID=60931FDE-A2D2-F568-B041B58C5EA591A4)

<comment><USER15> You are missing the point. Let me make a mathematical example. Suppose the population distribution is $[-100000 (1M people), 100000 (1M people), 200000 (1 person)]. Then anyone with $1 in net assets has more wealth than the bottom 2/3\. In particular, the top person also has more wealth than the bottom 2/3.

All this fact says is that a bunch of assets minus a bunch of debts adds up to small numbers.

(Also note that I said "about half the world" \- I don't claim to know the exact cutoff.)

<comment><USER16> Your point appears to be that if enough people have debt, you don't need to have much to be above them. In short, you're trying to argue that there aren't many actual poor people and that there aren't a small number of super rich people (as the report suggests). Your point is wrong.

Most people are not in debt, as illustrated by the fact that you require USD 3,650 to have more wealth than 50% of people. If most people were in debt then USD 1 would be _more_ than required.

Your figure of USD 150 is ludicrously inaccurate. That's nowhere near half the world. That's my point.

<comment><USER15> _In short, you 're trying to argue that there aren't many actual poor people..._

I never claimed this. I merely said the specific statistic used to argue this is a poor one.

Again, let me tweak my counterexample to _precisely_ debunk your claim, since you seem to believe $3650 is a magic number while $100k (what I used) is not: [-3650, -3650, 3650, 3650, 3651]. This is a population with median wealth of $3650. The net wealth of the bottom 4/5 is $0 < $1 < $150.

Thus, you have not debunked my claim. Median(x) > $150 does not imply cumsum(x) > $150.

<comment><USER16> > I merely said the specific statistic used to argue this is a poor one.

No, you claimed, "All that statistics says is a lot of people have debt."

It does not say any such thing. The fact you can choose a contrived set of figures to match the median wealth figures doesn't mean that those figures are representative in any way of the _actual_ distribution of wealth in the world. They certainly are not.

Your claim that the value of the median is mostly due to debt is flat out wrong. Your claim that possession of $150 puts your wealth above 50% of the planet is flat out wrong.

Your claim that Median(x) > $150 does not imply cumsum(x) > $150 is correct, assuming you don't know the distribution. One out of three ain't bad, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Ethereum components are:

\- cryptocurrency \- blockchain \- consensus mechanism \- miners \- virtual machine \- programmability \- browser client

As an open source project it leaves it open to developers, entrepreneurs and organizations to use it and create the applications they wish.

All external political and social dramatization is personal opinion and judgement.

<comment><USER18> One thing which I think could hold projects like this back a little is the cryptocurrency component. I haven't delved into developing with Ethereum yet... would it be possible to use the non-cryptocurrency components with a FIAT payment system such as Stripe or Paypal?

<comment><USER19> Banks don't normally give bank accounts to robots.

<comment><USER17> They do and very frequently. A big chunk of intraday trading of currencies and bonds is done by bots that connect through APIs to brokers like interactive brokers.

There a some mutual fund companies that have "black box" investment managers, which are computer programs that manage whole portfolios and trade their institutional accounts at investment banks.

Program trading on the NYSE has been active since the 1980s.

<comment><USER19> They gave the account to a company and the company delegated access to a robot. However the account is not in the name of the robot.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Learn Programming Concepts Not Languages - <AUTHOR> https://remotedevdaily.com/learn-programming-concepts-not-languages/ <comment><USER2> Learning enough of a language just to do something with it is not necessarily learning the language. It can take a while to actually learn the idioms of a given language and make full use of it. So if your Python code looks like JavaScript or C#, you're not there yet. This is an older post, but still interesting to consider: [https://skien.cc/blog/2014/04/09/unpythonic- python/](https://skien.cc/blog/2014/04/09/unpythonic-python/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, that's a fair point. There is definitely good value in learning the idioms of a language in order to unlock it's full power. I've definitely seen many examples where people for example are writing java code in python.

Though, being able to learn a language in-depth enough to write good, maintainable code probably is a sign that you do have a pretty good grasp of programming concepts and fundamentals I would imagine.</comment></comment>


Chyrp v2.0 released - <AUTHOR> http://chyrp.net/ I've been working on this project as a hobby for years, and finally reached a major milestone today. Version 2.0 has been in the making for a very long time, constantly improving and stabilizing. I'm very happy to finally have it out the door. I hope some of you guys will find it useful. :) <comment><AUTHOR> Hrm. I had a paragraph of text in that field, is it not showing up because it's a link?

Edit: Here's what it said:

I've been working on this project as a hobby for years, and finally reached a major milestone today. Version 2.0 has been in the making for a very long time, constantly improving and stabilizing. Honestly it took way too long, but I'm very happy to finally have it out the door. I hope some of you guys will find it useful. :)

<comment><USER5> That will only show up if you don't include an external link afaik.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, ok. Thanks.

<comment><USER5> It appears you're the main developer behind Chyrp. In that case, grats! LAMP needs Wordpress alternatives.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep. :) Thank you.

<comment><USER6> congrats on my part, too!

I had a look at the code (<http://chyrp.net/code/files/includes/common- php.html>) and after I clicked on "Blog" in the navigation on that page I got a 404 (seems like all links in the navigation point to an _old_ version of the page, but the other links work). naturally it's nothing serious, I wanted only to inform you about this one :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When the huge color bar appears in the top nav bar, I want to click anywhere in the color bar, but to my annoyance I have to click on the text itself. If you're going to use the color bars as navigation indicators, they should show up only when the mouse pointer is at somewhere where you can actually navigate.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm aware of this, a fix will be coming up. I didn't want to postpone release for something so minor though. I've added it to the Chyrp Site tracker.

Note: It's not really completely simple, because what's lighting up is the <li>, which contains both the header link and the nav link. But I'll figure something out, and probably end up having the area under the header clickable for the nav.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You mention in the blog that the changelog for the v2.0 release would be huge and so you didn't provide one.

I'm assuming there are numerous behind the scenes tweaks and improvements, but are there any up front, noticeable features that are new or noteworthy to this release?

<comment><AUTHOR> Depends on what version you're wanting to compare it with. 184.108.40.206 or 2.0 RC3?

From 184.108.40.206 to 2.0 it's an entirely different system, basically. From 2.0 RC3 it's just the occasional fix here and there, and minor backwards-compatible additions (like `{% url "foo_bar" in Admin %}`.

Sorry I wasn't able to get an actual changelog out, I had the release planned for today and working on a changelog (from 1.x -> 2.x) would easily add another week to the release date.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Gorgeous design.

The Extend -> Themes (and others) link doesn't work (404).

<comment><USER10> I agree. The site design is truly stunning. I especially like the choice of colours. It's hard to subdue such bright colours but it was pulled off very well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I used Chyrp in the past and actually really liked it. Looking forward to trying this release out when time permits.

In our industry (photography) its hard to convince people to use something other than WordPress (which I don't mind working in, but often find bloated and unnecessary).

I hope that Chyrp (or something like it) can start catching up to WP in terms of community and market share (for self-hosted blogs). I don't know if WP has too much momentum, though.

Nice work

</comment><comment><USER12> This is really well done, and the demo is easy to use. A few comments:

Alternate URL is confusing. What exactly does this do? Can I use my own domain name? (it seems like it will change the Chryp URL, but not sure..

On your blog page the date is shown off the left side of my browser window. My window is 1024px wide....

Looks nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> There should be a little blue question-mark icon next to the Alternate URL setting that explains it, but essentially it's for letting you have a /chyrp folder with the chyrp internals and stuff, and just have an index.php where you want your site to be.

Sorry about the blog date thing, I'd forgotten to do the blog area until the last minute so the whole thing's kind of rushed. I'm planning on fixing that later.

Edit: Fixed the blog being too wide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There seems to be a small bug in the navigation.

I clicked on Code and on that page all the navigation links have /old/ in them and 404 if you try to follow them.

The rest of the pages seem fine, it's just the code page that breaks the navigation. I have a feeling it wasn't updated for the 2.0 release?

<comment><AUTHOR> You're correct. The documentation system we use is NaturalDocs, and I had to modify the source to get it to spit out decent HTML (plus HTML that matched the theme). I haven't updated it to use the new look, but the documentation there is accurate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> SO what is the main differentiating factor between Chyrp and Blogger/Wordpress.com/Tumblr/Posterous?

<comment><AUTHOR> Blogger:

      - <USER4>
      - Self-hosted
      - More flexible templating (though I haven't used Blogger in ages)
      - <USER3>

WordPress:

      - <USER4>
      - Good code (ok, that's not really a feature, but I think it's worth noting as it's the only self-hosted one listed, despite it being a low blow)
      - Better templating (not just straight PHP, a custom  engine similar to Jinja/Django)

Tumblr:

      - Self-hosted
      - Easier to extend/theme
      - Ability to manage content types (Feathers), not locked down the same 6 or 7

Posterous: Not sure, never used it.

\</comment></comment><comment>-----

There are many other differences obviously, but these are the major feature differences I can name off the top of my head. Also, I haven't used either of those in ages aside from making sure importing works so I may be off a bit.

<comment><USER13> Thanks. I am somewhat familiar with those systems, so I was mostly curious about how the Chyrp is unique (from those other mentioned).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks very nice. I wonder why it matters that it is built on PHP and SQL enough to put that in the front of the marketing blurb. Is the audience primarily PHP developers? I'd generally prefer marketing text focused on features rather than technology stack.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's something I'd want to know if I was looking for a blogging engine. Maybe mentioning SQL doesn't matter as much, though. It originally said MySQL, but it actually supports other databases as well, so I removed the "My". Now it doesn't really bear any importance (PHP+MySQL being a pseudo-category of software), so I'll just remove it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Alex - I wanted to use Chyrp as an alternative to WordPress last year (before I went back to my own blog system) but, as you may recall, had problems with stability after importing my 15k+ comments. Is this issue resolved now?

<comment><AUTHOR> I do remember, but I don't remember what the problem was in particular. If you want to you can send me your export file - I'd be happy to test it out.

<comment><USER15> I converted to a custom blog so I'll need to get it into the right format first - will be in touch some time this week. Cheers :)</comment></comment></comment>


StatSheet Changes Name To Automated Insights - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/12/statsheet-changes-name-to-automated-insights-lands-4-million/

<comment><USER2> Headline buries the lead, $4 million round! Great stuff. Very exciting.

</comment><comment><USER3> Huge congrats to Robbie and team!

</comment><comment><USER4> Congrats, Robbie and crew! You guys deserve it.</comment>


Yahoo tries to stop users exporting contacts that originally came from FB - <AUTHOR>

Yahoo tags all contacts imported from FB as "Facebook Contacts" which prevents them from being exported. It used to be that adding them to a list removed the tag, as described here:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/newcontacts/impexp/ctfbexport.html
That no longer works. The only way to remove the tag at the moment is editing the contacts individually. <comment><AUTHOR> Link's now dead.</comment>


Tesla factory will stay open as an 'essential business' despite Order - <AUTHOR> https://www.autoblog.com/2020/03/17/coronavirus-tesla-fremont-factory-open-elon-musk/ <comment><USER2> > But CEO Elon Musk says workers should 'not feel obligated to come to work'

Were I an employee in that factory, I would have a hard time taking that comment at face value.

</comment><comment><USER3> If Elon says so, it must be true.</comment>


The Wrath of the Killdozer (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://www.damninteresting.com/the-wrath-of-the-killdozer/ <comment><AUTHOR> The Russian film _Leviathan_ was inspired by this story.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(2014_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_\(2014_film\))

</comment><comment><USER2> There is a documentary about it called Tread that showed at SXSW last year. Have never been able to find it available to stream, buy/rent, or even torrent.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can still vividly remember posting in the Something Awful thread for this event on the day that it happened. I can't believe it's been sixteen years! I was fourteen. Holy shit I feel old.

</comment><comment><USER4> Should be noted this article contains several inaccuracies, including that road access was cut off from his property.

Its pretty obvious that Marvin Heemeyer was completely insane, not some kind of reasonable person pushed over the edge by an evil government.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yvl_7_Up7zU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yvl_7_Up7zU)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is basically the story of a domestic terrorist playing real life postal. The article mentions his name and even concluded with a bit of admiration. I know that 2009 was a simpler time, but this seems way off base for our current world.

<comment><USER6> I mean, its a pretty reasonable case of someone being forgotten by the system that was meant to protect him.

Also he doesn't really fit the definition of a domestic terrorist, he never seemed to be pushing a narative and didn't actually kill anyone.

<comment><USER7> "didn't actually kill anyone"

Sure, but the intention was clearly there. He had guns inside, had shot them from a gun port in the chassis, destroyed structures that were occupied until they were hastily evacuated, and had people's names on his kill list.

<comment><USER8> Seems like the guns were for his own defense? You don't get shot unless you get in his way.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google App Engine experimental Python 2.7 support - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/python27/newin27.html

<comment><USER2> Note to people rushing out to try the new version: the development server doesn't work with it yet. You can only deploy to production at the moment.

Some very cool features with this upcoming release:

\- Cross entity-group transactions

\- Bundled libraries (with multiple version support)

\- More quotas being increased

\- Native WSGI support

More info here: <https://sites.google.com/site/gaepython27testing/>

[http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine- python/brows...](http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine- python/browse_thread/thread/7fd615a6502546ce)

</comment><comment><USER3> NumPy! Woo! This is a big deal for writing data-intensive backends. There was a great outcry of happiness on the ticket system when this got announced.

Now all we need is SciPy and matplotlib and we'll be in business...

</comment><comment><USER4> FYI, the Python 2.7 runtime is only supported for apps using the High Replication Datastore.

This is important to note for any 'older' apps that were created before HRD was enabled.

[http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/datastore/hr/#S...](http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/datastore/hr/#Selecting_a_Datastore)

<comment><USER5> I can totally appreciate the fact that they've kicked it in the ass to get python 2.7 working for concurrent requests, in light of their recent pricing changes.

But I have an old app (thathigh.com) that does not use the high replication datastore. I never transitioned it, because quite frankly it wasn't worth the effort.

Now I have to do three things: move from django 0.96 to 1.2 (no small feat), bring my app down in order to migrate everything to high replication datastore, and then ensure all my queries work like they did before.

That's not a small amount of work, especially since it's a side project.

<comment><USER4> I just migrated an app.

I had to make a few updates to app.yaml, remove use_library() references in the code, create a new config file that permits the old app to write to the new app, disable billing on the old app and enable it on the new one (will take a few days for this to resolve), disable writes on the old app, switch over my Google Domain config to point to the new app, and a few other things I'm forgetting.

Not as bad as I thought it would be, but still non-trivial and this was for a relatively simple app.

If you're considering making the switch, take a look at [http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/adminconsole/datastore...](http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/adminconsole/datastoreadmin.html#Copying_Entities_to_Another_Application)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Official docs here:

<http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/python27/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Finally, native JSON support.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is huge news. GAE's making advances that are making it more of a viable prototyping way to get MVPs out in absolutely no time. I'm excited by the possibilities!

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm not sure if this belongs here, but what about Python 3? I haven't seen too much about Python3 in the late days as the way I have seen about 2.7.

<comment><USER9> I'm sure Python 3 is on the radar. But given the choice between spending the time to support 2.7 or 3, choosing 2.7 is a no-brainer. Compatibility for Python 3 has improved quite a bit, but hell, Django doesn't even work on it.</comment></comment>


Conventions in Math- just to make the rules work or more? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2011/09/conventions-in-math-just-to-make-rules.html <comment><USER2> Field medalist Terence Tao's reply at the submitted link nails it. His Google Plus post linked there

[https://plus.google.com/114134834346472219368/posts/hTVJiP5L...](https://plus.google.com/114134834346472219368/posts/hTVJiP5LoPb)

is well worth reading.</comment>


Where Can the Middle Class Buy a Home? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2013/10/10/where-can-the-middle-class-buy-a-home/?mod=trending_now_1 <comment><USER2> This seems to be a WSJ re-spin of some nice original research by Trulia[1]. I'd read it there.

[1] [http://trends.truliablog.com/2013/10/middle- class/](http://trends.truliablog.com/2013/10/middle-class/)

<comment><USER3> From that it seems to assume a four times salary purchase that is largely borrowed. The calculation is based on current borrowing cost and looking at historical interest rates a doubling of the current rate seems plausible in 5 to 10 years potentially putting those buying these currently affordable houses into trouble.

<comment><USER4> Which is why you get a fixed-rate loan...

<comment><USER3> Can you get a multi-decade fixed rate mortgage in the US? I don't think that they are obtainable in the UK, most fixes only cover the first couple of years. Is it a two way commitment so that you are locked in for that time period and it makes it harder to move/downsize or can you pay it off early?

<comment><USER4> Yes you can. The product most people get these days is the 30-year fixed rate. 15- and 10- year are also available; as you shorten the term, the APR decreases. They typically don't have any pre-payment penalty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "For those of you in the coastal elite who are reading this post for the perverse pleasure of finding out just how unaffordable your city is . . ."

You caught me.

</comment><comment><USER6> SF better go high-rise or they will suffocate their economy.

<comment><USER7> The market-god spin is that San Francisco has an advanced economy, with advanced jobs, which is why there are so few poor paying ones.

<comment><USER8> The article is saying housing in San Francisco is unaffordable compared to _San Francisco 's own_ median income. I'm not an economist (nor a San Franciscan,) but that sounds unsustainable no matter how you spin it.

<comment><USER7> This can occur when an influx of high paying jobs raises prices but the original, poorer inhabitants are unwilling to move out. Eventually the median income rises as people retire, die or can no longer afford the property tax on their now-very-pricey homes. The few remaining low income jobs are staffed by commuters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting topic and relevant to SF for a non-obvious reason. Most people don't know this, but if you earn between 70% and 90% of the SF median income, you are eligible for below market rate housing in the city. This means you can buy a apt in a brand new building for far about 1/3 of market rate. i.e. a $900k 2 bedroom in Hayes Valley would be around $300k BMR. Why do I bring this up? Because if you aren't in that narrow range, then you need to earn like 3-4x or more of the median income in SF to afford a house otherwise. This leaves an entire chunk of the market without any options for purchasing a house. I find it strange that the city feels that a solution like this that favors one small group and ignores everyone else is an acceptable solution to the problem. Programs like BMR need to be replaced in favor of permitting enough housing permits to satisfy demand so that housing is accessible to people earning the median income and above.

</comment><comment><USER10> I make almost exactly what is listed as the median household income for my area, and I would never dream of buying a $200k+ house. My price range when I was house hunting was around $120k, which is around 2.5x my salary. I didn't find anything worth buying, so I rented.

Who buys a house that's 4.5x their salary?!

<comment><USER11> The historical "best practice" max home loan ratio was 3x your gross income. However, that was at a time that interest rates were significantly higher. Therefore the amount you are paying now over the life of the loan is smaller and thus more manageable. This assumes you make a large enough down payment that you don't need private mortgage insurance.

However, this presumes you will have 20-30 years of (more or less) uninterrupted prosperity which I think is unlikely.

People also do things like rent out a room or two to give themselves more of a cushion.

Here are some calculations using this site: [http://www.mortgagecalculator.org/](http://www.mortgagecalculator.org/)

I assumed a loan of 250k, 30 years, with no property tax or PMI since this is just for comparison.

Right now rates are ~3.5% so over 30 years you would pay $404k and $1122/month. Over the past 30 years the average interest rate has been 7.45% so over 30 years at that you would pay $626k and pay $1739/month.

So a very significant difference.

<comment><USER10> I guess I'm either making significantly more than people in my area who are my age or I must spend a lot more, but there's no way I could afford a $1122/mo house payment with my student loan bills and a small car payment. I mean, I _could_ afford it, but I would be incredibly uncomfortable every month knowing that one missed week of pay meant a bill that wasn't going to be met that month.

I did at one point rent a room from someone who was making $35k/yr who had just bought a $90k house and couldn't make the payment. It wasn't much cheaper than an apartment and the person made it clear almost every day that I was only welcome in the house because I paid more than half of his mortgage every month. He was an ass and I had no rental contract with him, so I left. His house got foreclosed upon a couple months later; I was going to buy it from the bank but he had trashed the entire inside and ripped out chunks of the exterior wall. Anyway, this was just a long winded story to say yeah, I can see what you're saying about renting a room to pay the mortgage. It would still make more financial sense to just buy a house you know you can afford.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I did a little research in London a while back:

assume that the Rich dad poor dad idea of 2.5x income is the value of an affordable house, and the average median UK income is 25k that leaves houses at ~70k. Do you know how many houses are for sale in London at less than 70k, in this city of 8million? 6. just six.

ridiculous

<comment><USER3> Median London salary is probably higher. This[1] says about £35K.

Now it doesn't change the reality that much, prices have been driven ridiculously high by the escalating levels of borrowing. We need a strategy to limit the amount of borrowing taken rather than government encouragement for even bigger mortgages.

[1] [http://career-advice.monster.co.uk/salary-benefits/pay- salar...](http://career-advice.monster.co.uk/salary-benefits/pay-salary- advice/uk-average-salary-graphs/article.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm reminded of Brain Burn's "Welcome to Texas": [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPQHghD3Ddw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPQHghD3Ddw)

<comment><USER14> Why are Texans so sensitive? I would never make fun of a Texan in Texas. I only do that when they're seen skiing in jeans in New Mexico.

<comment><USER13> If you're an older native Texan, you might remember the days when the majority of the residents were actually born in the state and also had parents born in the state. Fast forward a couple of score of years and if you're not a farmer and don't live in the sticks, odds are that you are surrounded by people from the surrounding states, from the coasts and around the world.

So culturally and demographically the state has changed tremendously over the last two censuses. The urban sprawl and traffic is starting to remind people of California. And the people from California remind people constantly they are from California. And the neighborhoods could be from California. (Sans the climate since we have earthquakes here now, too...)

Plus the growth is fueled by short-sighted policies of the modern slick version of the good-ole-boy, fake Christian, supposedly conservative state government. (Don't blame me, I didn't vote for them...) In the long run, lack of water resources, too many damn people and a stupid government will crash the state hard. The area around Austin is as flammable as SoCal, the traffic is DFW is becoming a monster and the social net is non-existent except for federal money.

But hey, my house would be worth 9 times as much if it were in San Francisco. :)

<comment><USER15> I've been considering moving to the Austin/New Braunfels/San Antonio region for a while now (I'm currently in Arlington, VA). Any reasons I should reconsider, other than what you just mentioned? The housing prices here are insane, and are only affordable if you work for a contractor. Hence my motivation to look for a more private sector fueled economic area with sane prices.

<comment><USER16> Austin is OK. San Antonio is better. Definitely move there.

<comment><USER15> I recognized your username, but couldn't remember where I remembered it from. I then looked in your comment history. After seeing the medical malpractice comment you left, I don't think I want to live in Texas anymore.

My wife and I were victims of malpractice in 2006. The result of it was our son was born 3 months early when otherwise he could have been born full term. We lucked out. He appears to have no complications from being so premature. But the emotional hell that dumb bitch doctor caused us I will never forget. (yeah, dumb bitch is a nasty term, but we were in a Christian hospital due to proximity, and she judged us for our hippy-like appearance and failed to do the most basic diagnostic activities before sending us on our way)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This doesn't seem to fill in the gap of where people are living if most of the housing is above median income. They did imply that the median income was calculated per city so that rules out any wealth concentrations. This seems more of a market/response problem than a 1%er debate.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, I would bet that the SF numbers were heavily influenced by the <2000 DOTCOM bubble

</comment><comment><USER18> Building smaller starter homes, with more "basic" decorator options would help, e.g., does a starter home _have_ to have 2.5 bathrooms? The counter- argument, right or wrong, is that builders say that with the proffers they are required to pay, they can't make a decent profit on smaller, more basic homes _and_ that the buying public doesn't want them.

<comment><USER19> No. Homes they are unaffordable are not expensive homes, they are expensive land. Building a mini house is a waste of effort and drives costs up, as it will need to be knocked down or mangled later to support expansion.

<comment><USER20> Mini houses use less land. More likely, they are small apartments, though; single dwelling houses are not very practical where land is expensive, even if Americans tend to pretend so.

<comment><USER21> So much this. I will never understand why somebody would want to own a one- family house if they aren't going to at least have a goat or something.

Doesn't have to be a farm, but houses are for people who want to work the land at least in some capacity. Hell, at least have a solid garden!

<comment><USER20> You can have a community garden in an apartment complex, or at least garden on your balcony.

<comment><USER21> Yes you can. But it's stupid to have a whole house and _not_ have any of that.

I've so far lived 3 months in the Valley and those houses are ridiculous. Super big, with a yard that is huge, but useless for anything other than parking your bike, possibly having a few deck chairs, and keeping the front- lawn perfect for absolutely nobody.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's interesting that the affordability is calculated relative to median income. If SF is the most expensive, relative to household income, doesn't that imply that either San Franciscans are living above their means, or there are more renters in SF than any other city in the country? Is there another possible explanation?

<comment><USER23> It implies that there's a housing shortage, and that housing is purchased by the rich and those willing to live above their means (or willing to skimp in non-housing areas of their budget) bidding up the small quantity of available housing, and everyone else moving away. A similar thing happens in most expensive housing markets, driving the population growth in low-wage, easy-to- build areas of the Sunbelt like Texas, Arizona, and Nevada.

<comment><USER24> Or alternatively, that everybody else doubles up and lives the bachelor lifestyle for a long time. Roommates are very common in the Bay Area, as is youth. The large number of 20-somethings just starting out in their careers skews median incomes downwards, and many of them don't have the same housing needs as someone with a family.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Yep... in LA and just watched a hundred-year-old, boarded up crack-house across the street list and sell for almost $700k.

</comment><comment><USER26> But then you have to live in Ohio.

<comment><USER17> As someone from Ohio, I can understand why so many others here have felt the need to leave the planet. [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gesERte...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gesERte16GAJ:www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/about/bios/ohio_astronauts.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&lr=lang_en%7Clang_de)

<comment><USER14> Have some pride in where you're from! [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV_E8SPc_jo](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV_E8SPc_jo)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is absolutely perverse and unsustainable.

I don't know what "fixes" this - a massive correction in tech wages? Another recession? Not sure.

<comment><USER14> I thought this way too, then I moved to London and took around and European real estate, and now I think maybe it's just the future.

<comment><USER28> Is all European real estate ridiculously expensive?

<comment><USER20> Yes. Most people rent flats also, and it works fairly well.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Hire an Amazing Customer Support Person off Craigslist - <AUTHOR> http://www.gettingmoreawesome.com/2010/12/how-to-hire-amazing-customer-support.html

<comment><USER2> I think having some sort of application form is key when hiring anyone off of CL. It really helps weed out the ones who just won't put forth much effort.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. It totally weeds out the people that aren't really that into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I do wish Americans (and it seems to be an American peculiarity) would stop using "off" (and its heinous derivative, "off of") as a general-purpose preposition. "From" will usually suffice.

<comment><AUTHOR> good call. I will keep that in mind next time. thanks for pointing that out.</comment></comment>


Apple, Set to Move to Its Spaceship, Should Try More Moonshots - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/05/technology/apple-set-to-move-to-its-spaceship-should-try-more-moonshots.html?ref=business&_r=0 <comment><USER2> Perhaps Apple should consider restructuring in a way similar to Alphabet. Take big risks within individually branded subsidiaries. If a subsidiary startup- like company fails, it disappears, and Apple can easily distance the parent brand from the failure. If a moonshot subsidiary wins, Apple wins too, and they've potentially created a new, valuable brand in the process.

Or maybe Apple should attempt a partnership with YC or some other incubator (or perhaps even start their own iNCUBATOR). Apple has lots of money. They need to take on riskier projects, but perhaps want to limit risk to public perception from failed projects. So they fund startups and compensate YC for vetting ideas and founder teams. In return, Apple gets equity and/or some kind of acquisition option. More startups get to be funded, with more ideas and founders getting tested, and YC reduces their risk of initial funding.

<comment><USER3> > If a subsidiary startup-like company fails, it disappears, and Apple can > easily distance the parent brand from the failure.

Trying things in secrecy has the same effect, and Apple already does that.

Tim Cook also said in a recent interview that they acquire a company almost every 3-4 weeks.</comment></comment>


TimeChi – Your smart productivity tool - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/timechi-your-smart-productivity-tool <comment><USER2> Another gadget to light up and distract you while you try to focus.</comment>


Cult Creation - <AUTHOR> http://blognewcomb.squarespace.com/essays/2010/10/14/cult-creation.html

<comment><USER2> Lots of gems in here. One humorously self-effacing anecdote:

"At that time we knew that a talented engineer in a tough to get tech was worth about $1.5 million per head. Thus, I knew with relative assurance that since we were going to hire at least 70 people with our Series A money, that our worst case scenario was about a $100 million exit.

If anyone is paying attention, you are now saying, wait a minute! Didn't Powerset sell for $100 million to MSFT? .... Yup, we nailed our worse case scenario!"

<comment><USER3> Reminds me of P.A. Semi, the embedded PowerPC design company bought by Apple in 2008. Obviously Apple had no intention of using PPC anymore, so their product was discontinued.

P.A. Semi had 150 engineers, and Apple paid $278 million for the company. That's about $1.85MM per head. Seems to match the Powerset story pretty well!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find it mildly annoying when writers co-opt words for their own [marketing] purposes and then redefine those self-same words in order to validate their point. I am quite sure this is a logical fallacy of some kind. I'm just not smart enough to know which one it is. Let me provide an example:

First, the author says,

"Over the years, I've been accused by the press of many things, but one of my favorites is the articles that claim that I create cults or even religious orders in my companies."

Then, he goes on to say,

"...by 'cult' what I mean is a group of super high quality people who trust each other and have similar ways of thinking, learning, reacting, problem- solving and working together. Further, this team needs to bond together under a leader they trust and respect."

Well, no dictionary I can find defines cult in that way and the press were probably not using it in that manner either. In other words, he isn't addressing his favourite of the "many" accusations leveled at him. Instead, he is skirting the debate--if there is one at all--and repurposing it in order to aggrandize himself.

<comment><USER5> It seems to me to be a type of Begging the Question[1] since the conclusion - 'leading a cult is a good thing' - is implied by the premise 'a cult is a group of people with good attributes'.

1 - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question>

<comment><USER4> Thanks for that. Related to your reference was a link to "Fallacies of definition" which I think might also be a feature of this article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Engineers Suck at Negotiating, so Don't Negotiate, Be Fair - from me, after being pissed off about hiring practices I experienced from bad founders."

God yes. This should just be basic employer-employee decency. Don't fuck around with people's lives just because you might save a buck. ESPECIALLY when you're getting much more from them (Which is just how employment goes).

<comment><AUTHOR> That's one of the points that stroke me most. I was at a company where two guys same level of competence could have up to 20%! difference in package because one knew how to negotiate and the other one did not (=was "nice&cool" imo, "naive/a bit immature" in their opinion). The company was very secretive about compensations (you always had the impression they knew stuff that you should also have known, too bad you did not know!). When I discovered about that (I was remote), my guts really hated this aspect of the company culture, but then I thought ok maybe I have no idea of what real hard ("winners") business is. I am so glad this post makes me go back to my 1st impression once for all. Be hard & clear, but fair.

<comment><USER6> My contract actually bans me from discussing compensation. I was trying to come up with a single, reasonable explanation for doing so, and I couldn't.

It basically enshrines the idea of employees not being treated fairly. If you can't discuss your pay, you can't know you're getting gypped.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> i was trying to explain to a friend yesterday what a "meaty" article is, I think I'll just show him this and forget it.

1\. Speaking from experience and with expertise as opposed to random analytical arguments that may or may not be true.

2\. Holds back very little, tons of useful and concrete advice.

3\. Not common sense, lots of insight that leaves you thinking "wow, yeah."

This is the kind of article that makes HN a great place.

</comment><comment><USER8> _The best way to prove to yourself, potential investors and to any potential future employees that you have a killer idea, is to get a number of A-level engineers to join full-time with equity-only deals._

Um... given all the advice to never work for equity only, can anyone here actually claim to have pulled this off?

As far as I can tell, this statement is about employees and doesn't cover co- founders.

<comment><USER9> I think he's talking about "late founders" -- early engineering hires who have enough personal wealth from early exits (or spousal income, savings, etc.) to potentially be founders on their own, who end up joining. In a lot of cases you give them 83b stock too, instead of options.

Most of what he described is just best practice/common wisdom, although well presented -- the A-A, B-C thing especially, perks like monitors, etc.

The "unique" points he raised, which I agree with, are salary/budget transparency within the organization, not trying to pay engineers as little as possible (but instead having fair compensation ranges without negotiation required), and minimizing commutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This advice is hard earned. Great write up.

We're on the opposite side of the spectrum as a company in that we're not well known, we're not well connected, we don't have outside capital, and we're not creating the next generation of search. We do, however, have similar goals of finding and retaining the best people, building an enduring and rewarding culture, and continuously exploring better ways to do things. We actually blogged today about what we've learned as a startup in trying to find the best people who are also the right cultural fit.

[http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/inside- braintree/re...](http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/inside- braintree/recruiting-for-a-start-up-when-youre-not-a-recruiter)

</comment><comment><USER11> Steve was on my board of directors.

This advice is 100% golden and it works.

Favorite advice: Maintain your high hiring bar. This ends up being difficult in the face of big competition and looming deadlines. Hold out and your team and product will be much better for it.

</comment><comment><USER12> The critical thing about have open and public pay scales is that it incentivises people to make the team better - not make themselves relatively better by hoarding information.

I worked at a big corporate which had a culture of individual bonuses and it was a shambles. All employees ended up being 'above average' and the bonus pool was shared out on a 'project managers pet' basis which sunk any business improvement techniques or any 'pay now, save later' which are the meat and drink of cost improvement.

</comment><comment><USER13> Was this the same PowerSet Zed Shaw was writing about ?

<http://oppugn.us/posts/1282122987.html>

</comment><comment><USER14> Nice magazine cover too bad it's straight rip off of The Cult's 'Electric' album cover.

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Cult- Electric_(album...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Cult- Electric_\(album_cover\).jpg)</comment>