Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/verizon-to-sell-tumblr-to-wordpress-owner-11565640000?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> I'm super excited to have the Tumblr team and product join the Automattic family. We've been evolving Automattic to be more of a Berkshire Hathaway- inspired model and businesses with a lot of autonomy, and this continues that trend.

I was very impressed with the engagement and activity Tumblr has continued to have, and I hope that with this new ownership and investment the product will blossom.

<comment><USER3> According to this article [1], you plan to move Tumblr's backend onto WordPress. Considering that Tumblr's infra stores over 1 trillion distinct product objects, this would be one of the most technically ambitious migrations in history. Can you share any thoughts of how it will be approached? Will you be pruning/purging old content or inactive users?

[1] [https://poststatus.com/automattic-has-purchased- tumblr/](https://poststatus.com/automattic-has-purchased-tumblr/)

<comment><USER2> That's an excellent question! I don't want to be so presumptuous as to define an exact approach before the technical exploration has started, besides saying it'll be done incrementally and in an easily revertable way to be invisible to users, just like the big datacenter migration Automattic just completed a few weeks ago.

At the point when we start this the Tumblr team will have been part of Automattic for the better part of a year if not more, so there will be a lot of learning and evolution of the products on both sides to make any migration easier.

I promise we'll write about it afterward for anyone who is curious.

<comment><USER4> You should almost make it a documentary.

<comment><USER5> Yes! I'd pay more for real world business documentaries than anything on netflix.

<comment><USER6> Please actually do this.

Find a way to get Verizon to sign off on this, and then get in touch with an established documentary maker. Pair them with an engineer and follow the story of the migration efforts. It will take time, and it'll certainly have a narrative.

Nothing like this has been done before. I struggle with making what I do relatable to people, but having a technical or semi-technical documentary following this large project would be eye-opening.

We'll even crowd fund this if you give us the chance. I'm not kidding.

Please, please, please make this migration a documentary film.

<comment><USER7> From the documentaries I've seen, its lots of people walking to a meeting, meetings themselves, etc. For that kind of documentary, probably people walking into servers rooms, or having heated discussions.

In Automattic, we basically evolved to remove all that :) There would be basically zoom calls and slack discussions. The most ambitious project I worked on in Automattic were just me, looking at the code and trying to understand why something is happening. Or looking up Stripe documentation.

We get to sit in front of our laptops in nice places though :)

<comment><USER6> We don't need server rooms.

We need discussions about how to untangle integrations of your user model with Verizon/Yahoo's auth system, how you'll consolidate all the microservices, which ongoing migrations you'll halt, the puzzled looks you'll have at undocumented code that performs nested eager-loaded lazy migrations of data, etc.

I've been involved in a multi-year migration effort. I expect this may be the same for y'all. It'd be fun to have an account of something that is so prolific and well known.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So, the real question is: are the censorship policies going to be reversed?

To be specific, is adult content going to be kosher on Tumblr again? Because if not, I'd have very little faith in the platform (and I do have an account there).

<comment><USER9> Nope.

>Mr. Mullenweg said his company intends to maintain the existing policy that bans adult content. He said he has long been a Tumblr user and sees the site as complementary to WordPress.com. "It's just fun," he said of Tumblr. "We're not going to change any of that."

<comment><USER10> That choice boggles the mind.

If you're worried about cross-links between non-adult and adult content tarnishing the platform, add better features for user flagging.

They (before the Yahoo and Verizon cluster&#-1s) were essentially sitting on a gold mine of training data, and ongoing training data generation, for an industry-leading porn detection engine.

A subscription filtering product that would be worth $$$.

Throwing that away because of some overly prudish concept of brand identity is hilarious.

<comment><USER11> > That choice boggles the mind.

Serving ads is hard when there's porn on the site.

<comment><USER12> That boggles the mind as well. The purpose of an ad is to be seen. Whether it's seen next to porn should be irrelevant.

I guess, because prudery.

<comment><USER13> >Whether it's seen next to porn should be irrelevant.

It does not work that way. If some average person sees some brand advertised on WSJ and FT, and another competing brand on PornHub he will attach more 'premium' value to a first brand, and will pay more for owning product from this brand. It's only normal and a part of human nature.

People enjoy content from PornHub, but they want to be associated with something advertised on WSJ/FT/NYT/etc. People want to signal status, not just own a good stuff.

<comment><USER12> > _It does not work that way. If some average person sees some brand > advertised on WSJ and FT, and another competing brand on PornHub he will > attach more 'premium' value to a first brand, and will pay more for owning > product from this brand._

That doesn't explain the connection of "porn" with "less than premium". You call it "normal and part of human nature" but looks like totally cultural.

Historical prudery, and a past that associated looking at adult content with "low status", lesser citizens (and not what the "proper people do", does explain it.

(While we of course know that people of all statuses and walks of life look at porn, from the industrialist, to the bank executive, to the judge).

> _People enjoy content from PornHub, but they want to be associated with > something advertised on WSJ /FT/NYT/etc._

I'd understand it if we were talking about high status ads, yaugt ads, hi-fi ads, expensive clothes ads, and so on. But most people don't read or care for WSJ/FT/NYT -- that's a small minority. Most people read magazines just as popular/mass market as People, Reader's Digest, CNN, FOX, USA Today and the like, and advertisers have no issue advertising at those.

<comment><USER14> There is still massive stigma around consuming porn. Less than half of Americans think that watching porn is morally acceptable. [https://news.gallup.com/poll/235280/americans-say- pornograph...](https://news.gallup.com/poll/235280/americans-say-pornography- morally-acceptable.aspx)

Brands don't want to be next to content that has that stigma.

<comment><USER15> The people with that stigma aren't going to be looking at that content anyway.

<comment><USER14> They think it's immoral but they definitely still look at that content. For advertisers it's about brand perception and not appearing next to immoral content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It is worth noting that Tumblr was an indirect acquisition by Verizon when they bought Yahoo in 2017.

It seems to have had stable unique views up until Aug-Sep 18 [1]. At some point it suffered from country-wide bans in places such as Indonesia. The country bans coupled with a ban from the iOS App store [2] caused direct downward pressure on viwership. This has led to a rapid drop in viewership in the months after [3]. Considering the amount of legislation towards telecom companies and the potential risk to the Verizon brand by proxy, it was imperative that the company would sell Tumblr.

Due to the current political environment in the US, it is unlikely that Automattic will open the gates that partially made Tumblr what it was in the 17-18 era for the next 3-6 months, that is unless they take a very conservative take on reviewing that kind of content prior to it being posted.

[1] [3] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/261925/unique- visitors-t...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/261925/unique-visitors-to- tumblrcom/) [2] [https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/17/18100156/tumblr-apple- ap...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/17/18100156/tumblr-apple-app-store- ios-missing)

<comment><USER17> Their adult content ban in December 2018 probably also accelerated that decline: [https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/14/18266013/tumblr-porn- ban-...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/14/18266013/tumblr-porn-ban-lost- users-down-traffic)

<comment><USER18> I think the adult content ban was in response to being blocked in some countries and by iOS... they banned adult content so those bans would be reversed

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Surprised by this news. Tumblr has lost a ton of momentum since its policy change, and the site itself doesn't have a very strong "brand" audience attached to it.

Fun fact: I can't recall the last time I either opened a Tumblr link or saw one in the wild. But maybe that's just me.

<comment><USER20> Every time I go to visit Tumblr, it asks me to log in. If I can't lurk on a content site, I'm moving on.

<comment><USER21> Every time I visit a Tumblog subdomain it just kicks me back to my own Tumblr dashboard and has for around 2 years now. When it started happening people said it was a bug but seemingly it's intentional? Not sure I understand the point but presumably this is for some sort of metrics they push?

<comment><USER22> They set their blog to private. You can only view it from a sidebar in your main dashboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Axios now reporting [0] that the purchase price was under $3 million

[0]: [https://twitter.com/danprimack/status/1161038705295089664?s=...](https://twitter.com/danprimack/status/1161038705295089664?s=21)

<comment><USER24> $3 million for Tumblr seems like an incredible deal.

(As a comparison, Automattic bought a small bootstrapped startup [WooCommerce] in 2015 for $30 million)

<comment><USER25> Didn't Yahoo pay more than a billion for it? Yikes.

At this price it seems that this was more of a liquidation than a sale.

<comment><USER26> $1.1 billion cash [https://www.businessinsider.com/yahoos-board- approves-11-bil...](https://www.businessinsider.com/yahoos-board- approves-11-billion-purchase-of-tumblr-2013-5)

<comment><USER27> After-tax loss of around $877 million.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> > Mr. Mullenweg said his company intends to maintain the existing policy that > bans adult content. He said he has long been a Tumblr user and sees the site > as complementary to WordPress.com. "It's just fun," he said of Tumblr. > "We're not going to change any of that."

Not surprising, but in light of that statement one wonders what the value proposition of this acquisition is aside from an acquihire.

<comment><USER28> They haven't published a sale price. Doubt very much if Matt Mullenweg over paid for it. If the price is low enough that Tumblr cash flows or close to it with existing advertising revenue then it was a pretty smart purchase.

<comment><USER29> Techcrunch says the number is "nominal:" [https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/12/verizon-is-selling- tumblr-...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/12/verizon-is-selling-tumblr-to- wordpress-parent-automattic/)

<comment><USER30> I think after Verizon failed so hard on their Oath thing, they probably just want to dump all the crud they bought in the process.

<comment><USER31> I've been wondering if you could trade successfully just by shorting literally everything Oath buys into. Their acquisition list is basically just a subset of the Startup Graveyard at this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Automattic will probably be much more effective at handling Tumblr since they have experience with content platforms. Whereas for Verizon, Tumblr was way, way outside their core competency.

It was always a shame at how Verizon seemed to mismanage Tumblr so it's exciting that Tumblr may become relevant again!

<comment><USER33> Yeah, Automattic probably got a steal. I doubt they would've been able to afford Tumblr in its heyday, or pay the price Yahoo paid.

Wordpress doesn't seem to ever have been able to push into the "social" discovery space. I bet Automattic folks have a bunch of half-baked ideas that didn't make sense for Wordpress but would be great directions for Tumblr. Seems like they were able to "buy low" so-to-speak and get access to a whole landscape they not only competed with but couldn't have afforded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I know there are a lot of nay sayers in this thread about the viability of this acquistion but consider this:

> Even still, Matt says Tumblr's user base is, "several times larger than > [WordPress.com]."

I don't know what Automattic paid exactly, but the story speculates that:

> Dan Primack of Axios is reporting a "source familiar" put the price, "well > south of $20 million."

So even if Tumblr is plateaued or declining still, it has several magnitudes of declining (for lack of a better term maybe?) before it even hits the _same size as wordpress.com_

Using the $20 Million Dollar as the ceiling here, all they would need to do is convert:

\- four million users to their $5 month plan to make back $20 million dollars

\- two million five hundred thousand users to the $8 a month plan to make $20 million dollars

\- eight hundred thousand users to their $25 dollar a month plan to make $20 million dollars

\- forty five thousand users to their $45 dollar a month ecommerce plan to make $20 million dollars

Now, if you figure they'll likely monetize _some_ of these users on a wide variety of these plans, the numbers start to pan out quite quickly. This doesn't count things like ad revenue on free tiers, for instance.

<comment><USER35> Like others have quoted, south of 20m means south of 3m. At that price tag grave digging makes complete sense if you can stem the running costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Tumblr is in a free fall for years, especially after last december. What is there for wordpress to take? the domain name? it's not that great ;) Maybe it's worth it to convert the few remaining blog owners?

I _don 't_ think tumblr is a valuable brand name, most of its adult blogs have moved to twitter and newtumbl, and judging from google trends that was ~50% of the searches.

Anyway automattic seems a good fit , but i hope they didn't pay too much for it.

[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=tumblr](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=tumblr)

</comment><comment><USER37> Facebook bought Instagram for $1B. About a year later, Yahoo bought Tumblr for $1.1B.

<comment><USER38> That's crazy (and true).

Instagram is worth $50B-200B today based on their revenue contributions to Facebook on the conservative and their growth contributions on the generous end.

Tumblr as it turns out, is worth less than $3M [https://twitter.com/danprimack/status/1161038705295089664](https://twitter.com/danprimack/status/1161038705295089664)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> As someone who used Tumblr more like Dribbble and not for 'adult' content, I think this is a great move. I like Automattic as a company and I trust Matt will find a way to make Tumblr relevant again for creators without having to resort to the LCTG - lowest common traffic generator.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm not sure if tumblr can still be saved, but if it can, Automattic is probably a place where it could happen.

I wish them the best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER41> With Verizon selling off chunks of Yahoo like Flickr and Tumblr, what did they even want from Yahoo?

<comment><USER42> In theory, the Yahoo acquisition held a lot of potential for Verizon. In reality, Verizon operationally mismanaged many parts of the business and destroyed most of the value. Tumblr is one visible example of that. It's unfortunate but not uncommon. Once the deal closes, internal politics rather than common sense and innovation rules and a small handful of bad leaders or a small set of perverse incentives can sink the whole ship.

I view the ability to successfully execute on acquisitions of Yahoo's size as one of the key differentiators between tech giants who will survive into the next generation and those who won't. Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft all have a much better (by no means perfect) track record than the older more traditional businesses trying to catch up to them (telecoms like Verizon included). Telecom is a capital intensive business. Tech is a human capital intensive business. Just one extra word but a big difference.

<comment><USER43> Yahoo still has some strong brand recognition in some sectors, and COULD make a massive comeback if Verizon made the right moves.

Yahoo Finance, Yahoo News, Yahoo Fantasy, Yahoo Email/Messenger.

Verizon should release a WhatsApp, FBMessenger, iMessage competitor and let you pick if you want it to be Verizon, Yahoo, or AIM themed. Nostalgia is all the rage. Being able to use AIM (like facebook chat at the bottom of a page) while I browse Yahoo News and Yahoo Finance, and Yahoo Fantasy....

<comment><USER38> No one outside the US has heard of Verizon and most of the products (whatsapp, messenger) you named have the majority of their users outside the US. Most internet users today have also not heard of or have any nostalgia for Yahoo Messenger or AIM.

<comment><USER43> have most people heard of Verizon OR Yahoo OR AOL or ICQ? They are sitting on a bunch of brand names that DO have some sort of recognition.

If facebook can have three separately branded interoperable products, why cant someone else try. They can market the four products to different markets with different aesthetics, and under the hood, its one messenger base. Verizon absolutely has the power to force and plow themselves into the market through sheer will and stubbornness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I think we all know who's going to be the ultimate owner of Tumblr.com

[https://blog.pinboard.in/2017/06/pinboard_acquires_delicious...](https://blog.pinboard.in/2017/06/pinboard_acquires_delicious/)

</comment><comment><USER45> This is interesting, given Automattic has one of the...weirdest views on free speech there is today.

Near-absolute free speech, within the means of the law, with really odd exceptions.

<comment><USER46> Isn't that majority opinion in America? I only see opposition to free speech in niche communities.

<comment><USER47> Most sites start that way. That was our policy on reddit too. If it was legal it was allowed. But you can see where that leads -- as you get bigger you attract a crowd that may be legal, but not one you want to support.

The best analogy is that I support your right to spew your hate speech if you want, but I'm not going to open my house and let you do it in my living room.

Most sites eventually decide that they don't want to be associated with that speech and clamp down.

<comment><USER48> Steve's take on Reddit these days almost seems like he's doubling down on the whole "free speech" thing for better or for worse.

I personally left the site after eleven years. Steve actually permanently banned me after I had pointed out a few instances where racism was not only allowed to live, but seemingly encouraged.

<comment><USER49> I can think of at least one subreddit that often hits the top of r/all that will limit posts only to people who have sent a picture of their forearm to the mod to verify their race. Somehow that is allowed. Literally submitting a picture of your skin for the color to be judged. _headdesk_

<comment><USER50> Why not, forearms are still pretty identifiable, all the pictures of forearms, user names, and IP addresses will subject to administrative subpoena the next time something happens.

Or if someone feels like it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> For me the most important aspect of this acquisition is that Automattic is a fully remote company. Tumblr's office space in New York City must be very expensive, I wonder if they're getting rid of it and transition everyone to remote.

<comment><USER2> Automattic has had offices in the past, so there is some precedent. The Tumblr team has a strong office culture, so we don't want to break anything that's working well. Simultaneously we believe the future of work is distributed, and over the next decade that's the direction we firmly want to head. If you want to learn more about this, including hybrid organizations, check out my new podcast at distributed.blog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> CW Old man comment: I tried to use tumblr years ago but the UI was so baffling I quickly gave up. Specifically: I never knew what would happen if I clicked on something. Does this "favorite" the post? Reblog it? Take me to the users page? How do I see the original post page (not the reblog)? How do I see the 6000 people who responded to this post?

Maximal violation of principal of least surprise. I could never figure anything out so I gave up.

</comment><comment><USER53> Medium isn't the Medium it used to be. WordPress.com and Tumblr are now controlled by the same outfit. Then there's Blogger, a Google toy.

How long before someone else sees opportunity in current limited amount of choice for blogging consumers?

<comment><USER54> I've seen it already.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Two things I loved about Tumblr that were very much not the social aspect (something about the community did just never work for me) were the stupid easy to use publishing tools and simple template language. I may have made some 600 of those site templates over the years and it was FUN. Later design changes tried to push the social thing more to the front (which, again, idgaf about) and so I left. But it'd pretty cool to start seeing SOME of that in wp, which is in this kinda weird middle spot right now where it's not hard to work with but enough of a chore to pay someone to do it for you.

</comment><comment><USER36> Price has tumbld to $3M apparently. At this price the original founder could buy it back. Despite their shenanigans they could reengage their users (including the adult themed ones)

</comment><comment><USER56> I see this as great news; my first reaction to hearing it was excitement. A lot of comments here are talking about the porn but outside of that, tumblr has a community with a uniquely sardonic sense of humor and is a platform for a host of independent artists and creators, and I would be incredibly sad to see it die. IMO Automattic will make for decent stewards of the platform (hell, anybody would be better than Verizon + Yahoo) and I have cautious optimism for tumblr's future.

<comment><USER2> Thank you — the combined teams will do our best to make your optimism deserved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I got an email yesterday asking to confirm I wanted to keep a very old account. I wonder if they are firming up their user stats?

</comment><comment><USER58> This is such a good news for tumblr. It's sad that key internet services like del.icio.us, tumblr, and I'm sure others got destroyed be Yahoo! But, it's good to see that some managed to stay alive and might have another life after having been Yahoo!'d

</comment><comment><USER59> It's looks like Tumblrs strict new moderation policies aren't going to be reversed.

I've long been a Tumblr user and because of these policies I created Libr to replace Tumblr [https://app.librapp.com](https://app.librapp.com)

The front end progressive web app is open source [https://github.com/cipher- code/libr](https://github.com/cipher-code/libr)

It'll be interesting to see if Tumblrs code gets open sourced. I used to run the biggest WordPress deployment in the world outside of WordPress.com and worked with a few Automattic devs in the process.

<comment><USER60> Hi just to let you know your acronym for the LGBT+ community (LGBTQIKAP+) is unecessarily long and it comes off like you're trying too hard. I'm pretty into tumblr identities and queer politics and I can't think of any identity which starts with a K. Queer is just as good as the common LGBT+ but some people still associate it with the slur and don't feel comfortable with identifying with it. The plus really is the umbrella for asexual, intersex etc that is "left out" by just using LGBT+

<comment><USER61> Kink.

[https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=LGBTQIAPK](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=LGBTQIAPK) (#2)

They use a slightly different order, but I'd imagine it's the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> It should be interesting to see how this proceeds. When I was a Tumblr they invested a huge amount of effort in being as nasty as possible to Yahoo and fighting/rebeling against each and everything Yahoo asked of them. I left right at the Verizon merger so I can't say if that has changed, but if that culture is still there it will make it challenging for any purchaser. Not to reward their behavior but it might have worked out better in the long run, yahoo's tech environment was heavily customized and integrated, it would be very difficult to extract any other Yahoo property from their portfolio.

</comment><comment><USER63> Does anyone want to try to elucidate whatever bull case Yahoo! modeled out to buy it in the first place? Because God knows anyone with a brain should have probably been able to see that it was going to be a disaster.

<comment><USER64> Back in the '90s, Yahoo! owned some of the hottest properties on the Internet. But by the end of the '00s, those properties were all Web 1.0 dinosaurs that had long been surpassed by modern platforms. They wanted that old relevance back; they wanted to buy a modern platform that was popular with young people and had a huge userbase and cultural influence.

And Yahoo!, being Yahoo!, never really knew what to do with that acquisition and just let it start to die on the vine, and when Verizon took over, they pissed away whatever goodwill they had left by gutting Tumblr.

<comment><USER63> Sure, but that's not really a model, right? (Sorry, not to attack you.) I really hope the MBAs on the M&A team for Yahoo! didn't just say "Well, we used to be cool, but we're not anymore, so.."

Tumblr was growing, but it was extremely young (read: low HHI, difficult to target, resistant to advertising) and extremely brand un-safe (read: impossible to monetize). So they had to believe one of four things:

1\. The brand would grow into an older demographic, despite being not designed as such

2\. Users would not leave in mass once brand-safety initiatives were to be put in place and/or advertisers wouldn't care

3\. Some other business model would emerge, despite that not happening to almost any other similar consumer product ever

4\. Display advertising would reverse the trend of CPMs plummeting and being sucked up by Facebook and Google

I can't imagine any competent M&A analyst actually looking at Tumblr and the state of the Internet ultimately believing any of them, which is why the deal was hugely baffling then.

<comment><USER65> I would presume that the business model for Tumblr is the same as the business model for Snapchat. Whatever the heck it was/is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> According to Axios: Price less than $3 million.

[https://www.axios.com/verizon-tumblr-wordpress- automattic-e6...](https://www.axios.com/verizon-tumblr-wordpress- automattic-e6645edd-bc73-45c2-9380-9fe8ca34291f.html)

[https://mobile.twitter.com/danprimack/status/116103870529508...](https://mobile.twitter.com/danprimack/status/1161038705295089664)

<comment><USER67> That's sad. I am sure Yahoo could have made more than that in 3 months by just injecting 3rd party ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> I'm surprised how low the buyout price was. Like Verizon basically killed Tumblr with the adult content ban but only $3million? I'm sure the net worth of Tumblr's employees is worth more than that. They should've sold Tumblr to the employees and then turned it into a co-op if they were going to sell it for that little.

</comment><comment><USER69> I have a very old Tumblr account that I got locked out of (I forgot to update my email address, don't have access to the old domain email, and therefore can't reset. When I tried contacting Tumblr recently, they wouldn't help me even try anything at all to verify the account.

Will Automattic allow me to get my old account back?

<comment><USER70> If you don't have access to your identifier, what should they do about it?

Social engineering is a surprisingly large attack vector. I'd be concerned if it were possible to gain control over an account this way.

<comment><USER69> Not necessarily true. I understand what you mean but there are other ways to identify and verify an account. In fact, I had an account with one other company where I forgot to update my email address and they were able to verify me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> That's actually a good fit. Bravo. I expect Automattic understands the space infinitely better than Verizon.

</comment><comment><USER72> For reference:

"Tumblr sold for the cost of 2-bedroom San Francisco home in Noe Valley"

Source:

[https://twitter.com/backlon/status/1161069910392393729](https://twitter.com/backlon/status/1161069910392393729)

</comment><comment><USER73> I wonder if the new people will do anything about the "site is actively hostile to photosensitive people" thing. I used to use tumblr, and we reported, pretty much every year or so, the thing where login pages or "not found" pages always had full-page flashing or fast-moving animated GIFs, because that was a horrible source of seizure-inducing experiences, migraines, etcetera.

I always assumed it was a considered and intentional choice by the tumblr staff to actively drive those people away.

I also note: I didn't go there for porn, but I left over the porn ban, and will not even consider returning while the porn ban remains. I had >40k posts, I met the kid we ended up adopting there, and so on. I had a lot of engagement with the site, but while porn wasn't emotionally important to me, the side- effects of the porn ban made the site completely useless.

</comment><comment><USER74> Pretty amused to see a billion $ go up in smoke because people were upset about porn.

<comment><USER14> It wasn't worth anywhere close to a billion long before they banned porn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/yahoo-tumblr-havent- screwed-u...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/yahoo-tumblr-havent-screwed- up_n_3607706)

</comment><comment><USER76> This is so confusing to me. They're in the same sector but completely different in terms of technology and approach.

It's almost like Tesla buying a petrol powered car company and just keeping it as is.

</comment><comment><USER77> I was lucky to get out of Tumblr on the first part of it's decline. Very very sad to see one of the best blogging platforms getting shuffled from one team to another :(

</comment><comment><USER78> If Automattic could transform Tumblr into a better alternative to Medium, that could be a good strategy to revive the platform

</comment><comment><USER79> I blogged on the Wordpress site for a time. They like to lock options down tight. A -little- less tight than Stumbleupon, but not much Keeps it simple? Yes, that and nothing more. As a blogger, there's not much room for innovation.

At one time Tumbler (tried it a bit very early on) -did- have that option going for it. But Tumbler's obviously been fading. If WordPress tries WordPress-like 'reforms', I see little hope for Tumbler.

</comment><comment><USER80> So they bought it, murdered it then sold it for scrap. How is this not considered gross financial incompetence?

</comment><comment><USER81> So, Dan Primack is reporting that it sold in the neighborhood of $3m.

So the porn was the part worth a billion dollars. Huh.

<comment><USER82> Someone on Blind mentioned that this is about the cost of a midrange house in the Bay Area. Incredible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> how is nobody talking about the absolutely terrible decision to purchase or manage this acquisition by Marissa Meyer? How do you spend $1.1B on something in 2013 and then sell it 6 years later for $3M? I mean that's about as total of a loss as exists.

</comment><comment><USER84> Well, I guess now we'll see how committed Automattic really is to FOSS...

</comment><comment><USER85> @photomatt can we have our (blocked) tumblr blogs back please?

</comment><comment><USER86> Tumblr was censored to drive traffic to Reddit and Twitter, which creates a more centralized crowd. The decision to censor Tumblr makes absolutely no business sense for tumblr, which means the main motivator is something else.

<comment><USER87> Wait, so Verizon/OATH censored their platform to drive traffic to competitor's sites? What master plan is this?

<comment><USER86> Vanguard is the major shareholder in both, so they aren't really competitors.[1]

[1] [https://www.econ.uzh.ch/en/newsandmedia/opinions/Index- Funds...](https://www.econ.uzh.ch/en/newsandmedia/opinions/Index-Funds-and- Monopolization.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> Welp, can't get worse. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER89> Tumblr took away all the porn and that was more or less the only real reason to use it. Instagram is better.

</comment><comment><USER90> They should buy MySpace also

</comment><comment><USER91> This move excites me a lot. Tumblr isn't really about "brands" (in spite of what Oath would've wanted you to believe)— it's a lot of things, but at the end of the day, at it's core, it's a blogging platform.

IMO it had a lot of potential in the late 2000s but the execution just wasn't there, and I have a few theories why that could've been:

\- Cost of revenue. Tumblr was pretty media-heavy from the start (vs Twitter for example, which started as short snippets of text, reddit which didn't host its own images/video until much later, etc). The cost of this, per user, was probably huge. Moreover, they had to power things like custom themes, custom sub-domains, 7 different kinds of posts, etc. That doesn't sound cheap.

\- Location. It matters a lot, and growing a company like this in NYC was probably harder, especially at the time, then it would've been in SF or the bay. Be this in terms of getting the right engineers, investors, managers, etc.

\- Ambition. I've heard from a reliable source that David Karp, originally, simply didn't want Tumblr to grow huge and become this behemoth of a tech company. He kept it at about a dozen engineers for as long as he could, and even when the company started growing more, he doesn't seem to be an empire- building entrepreneur like Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates. Now that he's out of Tumblr, he's fallen completely off the radar. I doubt he will build anything else. He's got the money he needs, so it wouldn't surprise me if he just retires.

I think it had, at one point, the potential to compete with the likes of Instagram and VSCO for the younger creative demographic (Can't beat Tumblr's customizability, and some themes make great portfolios). Or with twitter as a place to post random thoughts and follow celebrities (Taylor Swift, afaik, still uses Tumblr. Tumblr invented reblogs before Titter invented retweets afaik). Or with Snapchat and the like for the younger demographic who likes privacy and anonymous features (it had an anonymous question/answer feature before tbh, a company since acquired by Facebook).

But it didn't happen.

At this point, I don't think it makes sense for them to even try to make it happen. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. They're here to stay as the primary players in their respective markets. The space where I feel there's still room for Tumblr to shine is back in its core competency, which is the fully customizable "personal site".

The fact you can follow Tumblr sites and be followed is icing on top of the cake but not a core competency to be leveraged because the feed market is crowded with all the aforementioned players. The fact you can take any content, and publish it on the web in any format you want (thanks to how highly customizable Tumblr profiles are) is amazing and should be the primary focus.

Essentially, Tumblr cannot compete in feeds, but it can compete in profiles and use its feed as a killer added benefit.

Let's look at what Automattic has achieved with WordPress. It offers you a fully-customizable site, to post your content, and _a third_ of the top 10 million sites (by Alexa ranking) are using it [1]. What I want to see is WordPress building up Tumblr to be like this— an option for people looking to set up websites.

Square just bought Weebly for $365 million, and it accounts, at the moment, for 0.4% of the top 10 million CMSes [1]. The space for small-shop online commerce is evidently valuable.

Lets say WordPress pitches Tumblr as a competitor to Squarespace or Weebly in the e-commerce field. It's already-existing social features could boost the value of its commerce features considerably. Maybe as a competitor to Squarespace or Behance in the personal-portfolio field. Again, its already existing feed could have amazing added value. As a creative I'd consider it over Behance right away for exposure. If you were an artist, would you prefer a SoundCloud that also allows you to set up a personal music site, complete with custom url, online shop, cool looks, etc? Imagine a writing and discovery experience that is as good or better than Medium, but you can customize the front page of publication to not look anything like medium.

Long-term, and if they align the protocols, Tumblr could become a follow button for the web. But first it has to become a larger part of the web and this is where Automattic I think can really excel with Tumblr.

I'm very excited.

[1]: [https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management...](https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management/all/)

</comment><comment><USER92> I get why Verizon is selling it, but I don't get why Automattic buying it is news.

</comment><comment><USER93> Full text (since Wall Street Journal is known to put stuff behind a paywall):

[https://pastebin.com/xmKTutBq](https://pastebin.com/xmKTutBq)

</comment><comment><USER94> Cool.

</comment><comment><USER95> Good

</comment><comment><USER96> I guess they're doing this only for the traffic. Because I don't recall any interesting Tumblr to visit. Everything interesting can be found in other places, like Medium or their own hosted websites.</comment>


FreeBSD on EC2 FAQ - <AUTHOR> http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2010-12-20-FreeBSD-on-EC2-FAQ.html

<comment><USER2> I've been a FreeBSD fan since 1997. It is nice to see FreeBSD running on EC2. However, for die hard performance junkies, I have built something faster and more efficient. For people that love all the BSD variants out there, my startup - tegataiphoenix.com - offers FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD virtual machines (in addition to all the other usual suspects). The performance we are getting is around 500%-600% faster than Xen based BSD virtual machines. Mention HN, and get a discount. :)

<comment><USER3> _The performance we are getting is around 500%-600% faster than Xen based BSD virtual machines_

I don't know where you're getting your numbers from, but Xen doesn't have a 5x performance penalty. I'd believe you if you said that QEMU or Bochs had a 5x performance penalty, but Xen is more along the lines of 5%. (Of course, if you run an instance and give it a small fraction of a CPU, you get what you pay for.)

<comment><USER2> I'll go ahead and publish the benches shortly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know much about virtualization, but could anyone explain how sites such as [1] and [2] are able to virtualize OpenBSD? Do you think they develop the Xen support internally?

[1] <http://bsdvm.com/>

[2] <http://www.rootbsd.net/blog/2010/openbsd-4-8/>

<comment><USER3> Short answer: There's two types of virtualization.

With full virtualization, you can run unmodified operating systems (in theory, at least). VMWare is an example of a fully virtualized system. Recently Intel and AMD added features to their CPUs which make this much easier.

With _para_ virtualization, the guest operating system is aware of the hypervisor and cooperates with it -- for example, rather than modifying page tables directly, it sends a message to the hypervisor saying "please map this page for me".

(There's also a hybrid 75%-virtualized model, where the system is fully virtualized except that some devices are exposed via hypervisor calls -- this is seen most commonly as Xen "HVM with PV drivers".)

<comment><USER4> Great, thanks for the explanation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I see virtualisation as a promising way forward for FreeBSD. Hardware support has always lagged Linux (and still does). The limited resources of BSD hackers could be more appropriately concentrated on needed areas instead of constantly playing hardware catch-up.

<comment><USER3> _Hardware support has always lagged Linux (and still does)._

Not everywhere. Last I checked we do considerably better for 10GbE, for instance. We certainly consistently lag behind Linux for desktop hardware support, but I think we hold our own pretty well in the server space.

As a BSD hacker who hates anything hardware-related, however, I do love the idea of outsourcing such irritants, though.

<comment><USER5> I held this view ("hold own in server hardware") until I actually tried to run FreeBSD on modern server hardware. The Intel 10G NICs worked, but slower in benchmarks than Linux and Opensolaris.

SCSI/SAS support has been rotting slowly, with the now industry-standard LSI cards I tested, working, but without interrupt coalesce and thus using more CPU and reaching only 60% of the speed of the same card in Linux or Opensolaris. Infiniband support is nearly all happening in Linux.

Then there was the problems with the new Core i7 CPUs and Turbo Mode. NUMA support has been missing until 9.0(unstable), and even now its only for the allocator and not the scheduler. The final straw was when I had USB issues (modern server motherboards have mostly dropped PS2 ports) which meant keyboard wasn't working at all on a server.

ZFS is less stable and slower than in OpenSolaris, and for all these years FreeBSD has lacked a journalling filesystem. Which I consider basic stuff, after all, Linux has had XFS for 10 years now. Linux has several virtualisation options, and while VirtualBox has been ported to BSD, it isn't really suited for server use. FreeBSD Jails have stagnated for years and still cannot handle running multiple copies of PostgreSQL because of SYSV support.

I believe FreeBSD is the best and most enjoyable OS for hacking on, but this was 2 years ago, and things have further stagnated since then, so like many others, I have been forced to give up and move on.

<comment><USER3> _The Intel 10G NICs worked, but slower in benchmarks than Linux and Opensolaris._

That's interesting. Which NICs are these? For most 10GbE cards we blow linux out of the water.

 _ZFS is less stable and slower than in OpenSolaris_

That was true a couple years ago; I don't think it's true any more.

 _for all these years FreeBSD has lacked a journalling filesystem_

True, but we've had softupdates, which is better in most circumstances. (And in HEAD we now have journalled softupdates, which gives you the best of both worlds.)

 _FreeBSD Jails have stagnated for years and still cannot handle running multiple copies of PostgreSQL because of SYSV support._

You have an interesting definition of "stagnate". Jails have recently gained full network stack virtualization, for instance. I can't remember if SYSV has been virtualized yet, but if not it's certainly coming soon.

 _I believe FreeBSD is the best and most enjoyable OS for hacking on, but this was 2 years ago, and things have further stagnated since then_

Personally I'd say that the past 2 years have been the most exciting years of FreeBSD development for a long time. Maybe when 9.0 is released you'll give FreeBSD a chance again.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Internet History of the 1960s - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerhistory.org/internethistory/1960s/ <comment><AUTHOR> _" After installation in September, handwritten logs from UCLA show the first host-to-host connection, from UCLA to SRI, is made on October 29, 1969. The first 'Log-In' crashes the SRI host, but the next attempt works!"_

src: [https://twitter.com/HamishMThompson/status/65963668851226214...](https://twitter.com/HamishMThompson/status/659636688512262144)</comment>


Researchers find a planet they can't see - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/05/researchers-find-a-planet-they-cant-see/ <comment><USER2> This is the real story here: "[HEK] has no official funding, despite its large computational needs. So they've tried to crowdource the money for a $10,000 cluster using the science-focused donation site Petridish.org."</comment>


How LinkedIn did it: From Startup to Stalwart - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2009/06/02/smallbusiness/linkedin_startup_story.smb/index.htm?postversion=2009060204

<comment><USER2> From the article, "One of the things we need to do is find really cool products. We're building some but we'd also like to broaden out our offering and buy a cool product with a good development team and add it into the service."

So what kind of products/services do you think would be a great fit for LinkedIn?

<comment><USER3> I think it would be great if they would fix their "Add New Contact" page so it stops giving an error when there is nothing wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If I remember right, based on his presentation at Stanford Enterpreneur Corner, Hoffman was about to go sell jumbo juice after college, not thinking about SocialNet...</comment>


Idea: a machine that eats dirt and prints roads - <AUTHOR> http://shindyapin.tumblr.com/post/48427945/idea-a-machine-that-eats-dirt-and-prints-roads <comment><USER2> Machine, equipped with AI, goes on to learn how to eat children and other small mammals and print roads

</comment><comment><USER3> I think I've seen this in Thunderbirds. Thought it was good then. Still do!

<comment><USER4> Can you post a link?

<comment><USER3> I can't sorry. Maybe someone else remembers the episode?

<comment><USER4> Hadley posted a youtube video in the comments of the blog post: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f28_zrU0X4A>

<comment><USER3> Thanks. That's fantastic! (The road layer debuts at 5:02).

I'm not sure if it's using the plasma process but it must be doing something similar because a large chunk of the mass of the vehicle is empty hanger space. So the materials to make the road must be coming from the ground itself. Either that or the 'road' is just a layer of black paint. I choose to give Gerry Anderson benefit of the doubt however.

At university my mate had to design a road maintenance vehicle that allowed traffic to drive over whilst in use, a kind of rolling mobile bridge. I was very jealous. My CS degree assignments never approached anything like designing real thunderbirds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd buy one.

</comment><comment><USER6> except our roads aren't made of dirt.

<comment><USER4> They were at some point, and are in a lot of developing countries.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Instantly turn any API into a native app, with a single JSON markup - <AUTHOR> Hi guys, I've worked on several apps in the past couple of years, and found that it takes too much effort going from having an idea to building an app and having the world use it.
I wanted a way to have an idea, turn it into a fully functional native app, and share it with the world, all in the next 5 minutes, as quick and as easy as writing a blog post. That's why I built Jason.
Basically Jason lets you build a native interface to display and interact with any data format (csv, rss, html, json), any website, any API in any way you want, simply by writing a JSON markup and loading it. There's no need for compiling, building, deploying, or anything like that. It's like loading a website but instead it's your JSON that turns into a native app. Everything from defining elements to styling to executing actions is described in a single JSON markup.
I really hope Jason can be helpful for anyone who have great ideas or great content but never bothered to build an app because it's too tedious or haven't had resources to do so.
Anyway I hope you guys like it, please let me know what you think, or ask any questions. Thanks!
The url is www.jasonclient.org <comment><USER2> This is very interesting.

How is it different from a web browser with strange markup syntax?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry I just saw this because for some reason this post got dropped off from the listing, I heard that I get penalized for not directly linking on a show HN post. I'm thinking about reposting tomorrow since only few people seem to have seen this post because of that. (If you see it again please upvote haha)

Anyway, it IS a web browser with strange markup syntax, if you put it that way. But there are many things I can point out, I'll just post some I can think of from top of my head:

1\. It's native. Doesn't matter how you package a website, it still uses an HTML/JS/CSS engine to let you interact with it. Jason lets you effectively build a native app without actually building an app. The JSON markup is just an instruction to remote control native elements and native functions directly.

2\. it's JSON based, it's meant for interacting with APIs, not a website. Websites don't work well because html/js/css have evolved to become something of monstrosity--which is both good and bad.

3\. It assumes session. It assumes that you will be the sole user of the app, which browsers can't do for many reasons. So it has authentication/key management system built in.

4\. More coming soon: This is just a first version, I intentionally cut down on many features I could have implemented because I wanted to see what people think first. I have a couple of production apps from which I extracted Jason. For an example check out www.ethan.fm It's running on Jason.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable url: [http://www.jasonclient.org](http://www.jasonclient.org)</comment>


Shamer: Gamified code coverage and automatic Github integration - <AUTHOR> http://info.localytics.com/engineering-blog/your-code-coverage-is-bad-and-you-should-feel-bad

<comment><USER2> Honestly, I'm still on the fence about what acceptable code coverage is. There's people who claim 100% is ideal, others (like DHH) think aiming for 100% is detrimental. My company is at 89% right now, which I think is commendable for a codebase of our size (100k+ lines), but how do we really know? Acceptance tests can cover broadly without needing to test every line of code, but if that gets the job done, what are you really achieving by improving that number from 89% to 100%?</comment>


Content Farms Are Dead - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/read/content-farms-are-dead <comment><USER2> Today's seniors were sharing stupid viral content via email when the millenials were in diapers. In 1995 my 50 something relatives would email each other with jokes about Viagra, now they are 70 something's.

Look at Yahoo finance and it is clear that Trump voting oldsters who want to get the government out of their Medicare fall for clickbait as much as anyone.

</comment><comment><USER3> > _Consumable content can't be harvested or consumed, much less sold for a > respectable price._

I wonder what it could mean, to say that consumable content can't be consumed.</comment>


Rust Language Server Now Available with Rustup - <AUTHOR> http://www.jonathanturner.org/2017/04/rls-now-in-nightly.md.html <comment><USER2> The language server protocol is revolutionary for providing features like intelligent autocomplete to text editors. It basically brings proper separation-of-concerns to language tooling. In particular, because it's based on JSON messages over sockets, you can implement the tooling for each language in that language. I'm the author of [https://github.com/georgewfraser/vscode- javac](https://github.com/georgewfraser/vscode-javac) which uses the Java compiler tree API to implement a Java language server---the task was made radically easier by being able to implement it in the target language.

<comment><USER3> > The language server protocol is revolutionary for providing features like > intelligent autocomplete to text editors.

There have been similar things recently. Jetbrains built an out-of-process version of resharper in order to power Rider.

[https://www.jetbrains.com/rider/](https://www.jetbrains.com/rider/)

Omnisharp, which is aimed at providing features like autocomplete to various text editors, has done out-of-process as well: [https://github.com/OmniSharp/omnisharp- server](https://github.com/OmniSharp/omnisharp-server)

<comment><USER4> Language server protocol is a specification, hopefully all tools will work towards compatibility:

[https://github.com/Microsoft/language-server- protocol](https://github.com/Microsoft/language-server-protocol)

<comment><USER5> > Language server protocol is a specification

This is indeed the important bit, and out of process is in that regard merely a implementation detail (although a practical one).

Right now we have a situation where the N editors and M languages gives us NxM language-plugins matrix if we want complete support.

If a new editor or language comes along, the job to implement complete support across the line is astronomical (thus noone does). Right now you may even have to switch editor to get "full" support for a given language, if any support at all.

LSP replaces this with a much more manageable situation where we have N editors (with LSP clients) + M languages (with LSP servers), and that yielding a N clients + M servers solution-space instead.

Simplified a wee bit: One new editor only needs to implement a single LSP- client to support all languages with a LSP-server, and one new language only need to implement a single LSP-server to be supported in all editors which already has a LSP-client.

This really is a revolutionary change, and I'm surprised how little attention LSP has gotten in the grand scheme of things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This looks awesome. Great to see more folks adopting this. We're using the language server protocol (LSP) pretty heavily over at Sourcegraph ([https://sourcegraph.com/](https://sourcegraph.com/)), and we're loving it.

We wrote up a couple of blog posts with general info about LSP and how we use it for other languages:

[https://text.sourcegraph.com/how-sourcegraph-scales-with- the...](https://text.sourcegraph.com/how-sourcegraph-scales-with-the-language- server-protocol-a4e8fd3fbae5)

[https://text.sourcegraph.com/part-2-how-sourcegraph- scales-w...](https://text.sourcegraph.com/part-2-how-sourcegraph-scales-with- the-language-server-protocol-73b86175f38b)

We also maintain an unofficial listing of language servers with a matrix of supported features: [http://langserver.org/](http://langserver.org/).

</comment><comment><USER7> Is this similar to Racer?

[https://github.com/phildawes/racer](https://github.com/phildawes/racer)

Edit:

Just found this on the github repo[1]

>The RLS gets its source data from the compiler and from Racer. Where possible it uses data from the compiler which is precise and complete. Where its not possible, (for example for code completion and where building is too slow), it uses Racer.

[1] [https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/rls](https://github.com/rust-lang- nursery/rls)

<comment><USER8> Yes, but in principle slower (as it cannot update its status incrementally--- referred as to "end-to-end" incremental compilation and harder than the normal incremental compilation producing executables) and accurate (as it leverages the compiler itself). AFAIK Racer has a heuristic engine that is faster and less accurate, and RLS falls back to Racer whenever it's appropriate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is there a list of editors which support RLS or is it just VSCode at the moment?

<comment><USER10> From further down in the thread:

[http://langserver.org/](http://langserver.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Because everything's better with cloud.

<comment><USER12> Language Servers are not "cloud" or even remote, they're local daemons with a standardised protocol, the "server" comes from the fact that you run a language server and various clients (IDE, refactoring systems, documentation, …) can connect to the server to query it and get information about files/projects in a given language without needing to understand the semantics of the language itself.

See [https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/extensions/example- langua...](https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/extensions/example-language- server) for more.

<comment><USER4> Being pedantic, why is it called server? Wouldn't service be more appropriate? Or deamon for that matter, service is already over used in our field but a daemon has a specific meaning.

<comment><USER12> > Being pedantic, why is it called server?

Because it serves data to clients connecting to it. Hence e.g. Emacs Server[0] or X Server[1]. Historically server doesn't imply a network operation.

> Or deamon for that matter, service is already over used in our field but a > daemon has a specific meaning.

It's a subset (well not exactly you can have non-daemon servers but close enough), most daemons are not servers, in fact many daemons are client (e.g. ntpd).

Service is basically the windows name for daemon, so it has the same lack of connotation, a service can be a client, a server, neither, both.

[0] [https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Em...](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Emacs- Server.html)

[1] [http://www.linfo.org/x_server.html](http://www.linfo.org/x_server.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Open Sourcing super expensive proprietary software - <AUTHOR> http://www.usethetree.com

<comment><AUTHOR> So I have been open sourcing the heart of a super expensive IBM software product, which IBM currently/today sells regularly for 100 tsd (Dollar or Euro, doesn't matter much) per CPU core (discounts of 40% to 95% usually apply). This product is IBM WebSphere Message Broker or now IBM Integration Bus (IIB) and was thought to be IBM's "SOA" offering. Let's say mildly that SOA failed and unfortunately the remaining parts are not "a lot" (also not worth that much). I was in fact able to understand them and it's been possible for me to open source the very most important parts in a POC. So the very most important part is the message processing and transformation language "ESQL". IBM implemented it in c and I implemented it in Java. I called the project "use-the-tree" and open sourced it on github. A deployed version is online at www.use-the-tree.com.

Actually it turned out that I added a couple of improvements which makes my implementation superior to the one IBM has.

There are open source ESB's and Broker's, but I did not find (and I think it is unlikely that there are) comparable proper implementations.

I managed to work in this SOA trouble and Integration world for about 8 years and I am the contributor of important components to IIB which I open sourced as "GenericESQLUtilities". My contributions are confirmed (by IBM Hursley) and by the community (on www.mqseries.net) and are actually used. Basically I proved that xslt is a performance disaster and on the other hand I showed how to properly do message transformation and processing. I also just implemented stuff that IBM didn't know how to (implement), since they bought the product from another company (NEON) and certainly had some brain drain during that process.

Main areas of future work are (also documented in the git hub wiki):

      - Add support for JSON
      - Add all quirks that XML has
      - Investigate if JavaScript can be used (instead of Java) (and implement it)
      - Sorting (super cleverly with Tree Map ofc)
      - On-Demand Parser (would be awesome, probably to hard for 3 months)
      - Investigate on open source solutions for parsing flat files standards like EDI/EDIFACT or HL7/ORM formats and it's usability together with use-the-tree

The project is very new (a couple of weeks old), it's a POC and there is nothing in production. Though it is confirmed to hit the point.

So... I have already successfully contributed to open source (in this area) and there is constant change in the IT world (I see a clear decline of SOA and a push towards open source), so that I think that this project can have a significant success in the future. Again ... "use-the-tree" is the only thing which is left of SOA if you remove all the bad parts or the ones that have just failed... it is "SOA - the good parts" :). It provides strong guidance on how to do message transformation (to end up with the most efficient transformation code) as opposed to IBM's approach, which is "we provide you with every possibility and you better choose wisely".

Xslt would look like it, if xslt would be done properly.

<comment><USER2> SOA as a buzz-word has fallen out of favor, but SOA as a means of segmenting a large problem to later solve it in "chunks" has been an accepted practice since the dawn of engineering. I'll agree that Microsoft, IBM and Oracle (Tibco, etc) would prefer that you were passing SOAP/XML over enterprise busses, but our layer's of RESTful services are still a "Service Oriented Architecture" ... the loss of statefullness was a big win.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I'll agree that Microsoft, IBM and Oracle (Tibco, etc) would prefer that you > were passing SOAP/XML over enterprise busses

They better say bye to this idea... it's hard to see why curly braces are good and angle brackets are evil... they get used differently.

> Enterprise (Service) Bus

Buzz word, snake oil

There is no problem, there never was a problem: Build on existing (de-facto) standards and just don't reinvent the world (with WS-*). And do not use the beginning of the payload (like SOAP does). The solution was there already and the solution is HTTP and the 2048 characters of the URL (to encode a function call) and yes a machine readable data format, but NOT XML and yes, JSON is likely/probably good enought.

You usually pay the bill for what you are doing

Open Source is free (as in freedom) but also free of charge :)

<comment><USER3> > yes a machine readable data format, but NOT XML and yes, JSON is > likely/probably good enough

I thought so too, until I realized json is terrible for binary. on it's own it can't reproduce the full capabilities of REST ie: http multi-part uploads.

You need a performant streamable binary format too, and my vote for that is protobuf.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


No Hardware - <AUTHOR> http://blog.alexandretestu.com/post/496393076/no-hardware <comment><USER2> Argh. Nothing against the submitter since this is relevant to HN, but for those of us who truly feel that every single relevant thought regarding the iPad has already been uttered and heard, it would do us a huge favor to mark iPad submissions as such.

I'm a fan of the device, I'll be getting my 3G one soon, but for the love of all that is holy, make the voices stop!

</comment><comment><USER3> >> Hardware is not the center of attention anymore.

The iPad is _all about_ hardware ... all of Apple's products are about making hardware look sexy and trendy, even without the UI. Apple doesn't mention the internals because Apple products are often under-powered compared to similar- costing competitors.

>> The UI is everything

I would say that the _looks_ of the UI are everything, to your average consumer. As sad as it is, the visuals are what drive customers to new operating systems (e.g. Aero), new versions of software (e.g. the Ribbon in Office), etc. Microsoft puts lots of new behind-the-scenes innovations in each new OS, but nothing sways customers more than screenshots -- often the least relevant part of the operating system.

<comment><USER2> The ribbon is about a lot more than just looks - it finally groups like operations into clusters that account for Fitt's Law - as does the big "Office" button on the top left corner now. It's disingenuous to claim that Office's new UI is primarily a visual facelift - ditto for Aero (again, many Fitt's Law improvements among other tangible, quantifiable changes).

I think you're infantilizing the consumer too much - your users are a lot more than dumb bricks that react to "Ooooh Shiny!". When geeks (more specifically, geeks who have no appreciation for UI) rant about how people buy the shiny UI, they're not really grokking the fact that people like it not because it spins and moves, but because it _actually_ better conforms to how they want their computers to work. Animation between switching windows? Geeks call it eye candy, I call it necessary preservation of context.

<comment><USER3> Customers do react to "Oooh shiny!" -- it's a permanent part of our psychology.

Ask your average consumer what was new in Vista? Aero. What's Aero? Neat visual effects. What was new in Office 2007? Ribbon. What's Ribbon? It's that new bar at the top of the screen. Consumers remember the visual changes in these products best.

Like it or not, those superfluous window animations in Mac OS were exactly what screamed "creative" and "cool" to a lot of customers, over the then "business-like" Windows XP. Video games invest in graphics so they can have impressive screenshots. Office suites tweak their UI so that they can communicate "new and improved" visually.

Of course there are other benefits than looks. But the looks, the screenshots are your product's first impression -- if it looks the same as the last version, people just might not buy.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: First time founder, company growing, can't find advice/mentorship - <AUTHOR> I'm a first time founder for a tech startup in the midwest. Our area has virtually no mentorship & advisory resources for tech startups. I've tried emailing/calling places out west, but they seem to assume I'm soliciting an investment (can't blame them I suppose).
I have meetings with VCs in about a week, and I really need some guidance on some strategic questions. Is there anyone here who is a founder or investor that would let me pick their brain for 30 mins or so? I know time is valuable, and I'm always willing pay a consultation rate if need be.
A little about the company:
- Concept: we're a platform for women to buy, sell, and share their style. We currently cater to a specific niche
- Founded: 6 months ago
- # of Users: 40,000+
- Sales: around 600k
- Business model: 15% of all transactions on the platform. <comment><USER2> When approaching people, lead with the advice part. "I would love to go for coffee to get your advice on how to grow an e-commerce business. I know you have expertise in X, y z. My startup has $600k RR after 6 months".

If you lead with mentorship or a description of your company it could scare some people off.

Also try and leverage your network to get intros. Ask everyone you know if they could intro you to sometime who might be able to help you

</comment><comment><USER3> We do network analytics delivered as SaaS, selling to enterprise and service providers, but I'm happy to talk (for free, of course) about VCs and the funded life.

I have felt like a cultural anthropologist in the land of VCs (mostly positive, some not) over the last 4 years. I know a bit about the Chicago VC environment but more about SF, NYC, BOS.

Email is my first name @ kentik.com

</comment><comment><USER4> I suggest you reach out to EFN [https://www.enterprisefutures.org/](https://www.enterprisefutures.org/) It is non profit, 501C3 designed to link entrepreneurs and advisors. It is FREE and I know there are hundreds of contacts in the midwest.

</comment><comment><USER5> Megan can help, she helped my former startup and works extensively with early stage companies. More info + contact form here: [https://interimcmo.co/](https://interimcmo.co/)

</comment><comment><USER6> > I have meetings with VCs in about a week

If your asking now it is way too late.

However your starting to network - this should be part of your pre/post meeting chat.

Also - VC's & angels are a dime a dozen out in CA.

I am fairly curious why your seeking investment, and to what end?

<comment><USER7> Sorry for asking a naive Q. Could you tell why it is way too late?

<comment><USER6> Because the most useful advice a mentor, or a friend can give one comes because they have an understanding of history and context. Someone brand new isn't going to make that meaningful of a contribution in a week or two. Mostly because it isn't their Job.

Good mentors are like good friends they don't happen over night.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Congrats on your success. 40K users and 600k in revenue is awesome. If you don't mind sharing how did you get there?

</comment><comment><USER9> Do you actually need VC? It sounds like you have an audience that you can tap into.

</comment><comment><USER10> I can help. Pm me at my hn handle @ gmail

</comment><comment><USER11> curious what your website is?</comment>


Genetic Weapon Against Insects Raises Hope and Fear in Farming - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/28/business/energy-environment/genetic-weapon-against-insects-raises-hope-and-fear-in-farming.html?hp&_r=0

<comment><USER2> I get the rather cynical impression that Monsanto may need to rethink the nature of the problem. Unless I'm mistaken this strategy is still going toe- to-toe with evolutionary biology and ends up causing individuals who are not succeptible to this target to flourish.

I also don't like the idea of spraying stuff around that is built to silence genes--I'd like to have some mention on how specific the targeting is i.e. are you knocking out specific codons, frame rewrite or transposons, and if it's that general how is it contained/delivered?

It's the vast crop monoculture that is the problem, not the "pest" who evolves and then takes advantage of it.

<comment><USER3> I presume the RNAi described here targets regions of DNA of about ~20 nucleotides. Off-target effects are par for the course, but if you pick your 20 nucleotides carefully, you can get pretty precise. Common off-target effects also come from an orthogonal RNAi pathway that would would affect particular endogenous RNAs sharing the first ~7 nucleotides in that sequence.

Your argument about "toe-to-toe with evolutionary biology" is a little misguided. Everything about agriculture and pest control is going toe-to-toe with evolutionary biology. You either let evolution run all over you, or you try to keep up. Monoculture _is_ a problem, but crop diversity wouldn't eliminate the evolutionary challenge - it's just another mitigating strategy.

<comment><USER2> Informative! thanks!

Though I never ment to suggest that the evolutionary challenge would be eliminated--it just changes the approach to the problem, rather than looking at specific pests and targeting them individually, (which is actually an endless fight--but may provide continued revenue for Monsanto) look at the systemic relationships and the patterns they create as they persist. If you eliminate one pest, you still have broad homogenous crop, which is a natural draw for all sorts of similar 'pest' problems.

In any case I see it as being symptomatic of our highly optimized food system --which has problems in all sorts of places (input/output and stderr), as I think we are optimizing for the wrong thing in the long term.

Slightly circular, and OT--sorry.

<comment><USER3> You're absolutely right about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> if anyone feels like indulging the fears this provokes, i recommend reading the windup girl by paolo bacigalupi

 _> The Windup Girl is set in 23rd century Thailand. Global warming has raised the levels of world's oceans, carbon fuel sources have become depleted, and manually wound springs are used as energy storage devices. Biotechnology is dominant and mega corporations like AgriGen, PurCal and RedStar (called calorie companies) control food production through 'genehacked' seeds, and use bioterrorism, private armies and economic hitmen to create markets for their products. Frequent catastrophes, such as deadly and widespread plagues and illness, caused by genetically modified crops and mutant pests, ravage entire populations. The natural genetic seed stock of the world's plants has been almost completely supplanted by those that are genetically engineered to be sterile._

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Windup_Girl](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Windup_Girl)

</comment><comment><USER5> The next glyphosate?

Thats nice, we have glyphosate resistant Superweeds, now we need insecticide resistant Superbugs.

</comment><comment><USER6> Genetic pesticide No.

Some sort of contraption built by Google Boston Dynamics with "Weed OCR" software that yanked weeds and smashed bug called the Weedernater. Yes.

<comment><USER7> Ending monoculture would be another option.

<comment><USER8> Yes! Is there anyone in the industrial farming industry that's actually pursuing industrial scale polyculture technology?

Monoculture is not nature and is not just not how plants evolved to grow. We can continue to force it as we have been but that obviously isn't working all that well.

<comment><USER9> Actually, the Chinese, who naturally have serious concerns about feeding a billion+ people, have been looking at this for a while. They actually had some fairly promising results for test farms and plots. However, its still pretty small scale by industrial standards.

Official paper: [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v406/n6797/abs/406718a0...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v406/n6797/abs/406718a0.html)

Full text alt: [http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Rice-Diversity- Yield.htm](http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Rice-Diversity-Yield.htm)

Polyculture ag. production's not a bad idea, and it obviously can improve yields under the right conditions, but to be widely adopted it either needs top down advocacy from a larger body (Gov) or be so compelling economically that individuals / companies push for and adopt it at the personal level.

Yields are one thing, but there is also the additional logistical difficulty, and cost, that comes from planting many different crops. Particularly tough when you're talking about some midwest, intensive crop farming, where machinery, layouts, and storage have been designed and optimized for monoculture operations over literally millions of acres. Adapting those operations while maintaining economies of scale is one of the greatest hurdles.

Also, while folks sometimes decry our farming, America isn't as bad as we often make it out to be, and many areas do significantly mix crops. Example:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Crops_Kansas_AST_20010624....](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Crops_Kansas_AST_20010624.jpg)

Shows fields of wheat, sorghum, corn, and sections left fallow that are fairly well mixed in Kansas.

<comment><USER10> This is the most excellent comment on this thread! Thank you for the links! To add to the last part, living in rural Southwest Missouri, I see a great deal of diversity among our local agriculture- from rice to wheat to cows and corn, and trees (Black Walnuts are a major part of my local economy).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ultimately, it's not for us to decide. Things like these are always decided by economic viability and lobbying.

It's really hard to create an outrage strong enough that people will just stop buying it, and go to a competitor. But this is the only message big corporations understand.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wouldn't a highly specific pesticide also be susceptible to quick resistance?

<comment><USER13> Yes, and that was brought up, a previous modification is facing resistance:

"Corn growers need a new tool. For a decade they have been combating the rootworm by planting so-called BT crops, which are genetically engineered to produce a toxin that kills the insects when they eat the crop.

Or at least the toxin is supposed to kill them. But rootworms are now evolving resistance to at least one BT toxin."

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The advancements in genetic technologies are dangerous because they deal in creating inherently extreme solutions. A lot of evolutionary stability is dependent on a statistical distribution of genotypic/phenotypic traits that have roots in a complex reservoir of genetic material. Personally I feel one cannot simply hinge an entire 'solution' on one inserted gene. The process can probably be considered analogous to 'monkey-patching' the genome IMO.

</comment><comment><USER15> Evolutionary incompatible approach like this will lead to defeat in the end.

Co-existence is the only way that is compatible with evolution.

<comment><USER16> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal)</comment></comment>


We Don't Need New Laws for Faked Videos, We Already Have Them - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/we-dont-need-new-laws-faked-videos-we-already-have-them <comment><USER2> Yeah, I don't know of this argument against holds water.

We already have many laws against child abuse and sexual abuse, etc., etc., never the less we introduced new laws to specifically require that accusations by young athletes be acknowledged and addressed within 24hrs[1] sponsored by no less than CA Sen Feinstein.

Murder is already illegal, yet we have many laws to control firearms, etc.

Sometimes you just have to make laws specific to new kinds of behavior in order to specifically address those unwanted behaviors.

[1][http://www.thisisinsider.com/law-protects-young-athletes- sex...](http://www.thisisinsider.com/law-protects-young-athletes-sexual-abuse- larry-nassar-2018-1)

<comment> GCU-Empiricist >Murder is already illegal, yet we have many laws to control firearms, etc.

Adding more laws to enforce when existing laws are not effectively enforced is good why? Law enforcement efforts aren't like processor cycles. We (society) accumulate capital overhead by growing the body of law, and make the law less useful.

I would suggest law is like policy, and needs a lot more looking at second and third order effects, they way you would think when commenting on a RFC. There seems to be a lot of: we have to do something sentiment these days.</comment></comment>


tell HN: finding the right startup for your personality - <AUTHOR>

I've been reading HN for a couple of years now, and got bitten by the same startup bug as so many others. I work as a developer in the financial industry, so I started thinking of web-based services to help consumers invest more wisely. Some of the ideas were likely very good, but I always seemed to burn out after a couple of weeks and move onto the next thing.
Then I read a puff piece the NY Times published about tech executives wearing colorful socks. I had been doing so for years, and the article made me realize there are many others like me. For whatever reason, I started to dream of the perfect retailer for such products: constantly rotating selection, only a few options that are carefully selected, etc. That was a few months ago, and today we launched http://www.northbranchmerchants.com
The road here has been interesting to say the least - I had never worked in retail, and had to learn all the logistics of working with distributors and building relationships with brands. Most importantly, I realized that it's best to work on what keeps you interested - I never gave up on this idea like the others. Unfortunately it seems like the only way to get there is through trial and error. Do others have a similar tale?
PS Any tech feedback on the site is very much appreciated, since I'm new to web development. We're using Shopify as the platform, with Stripe for payment processing. Both products have been great so far. <comment><USER2> On Firefox, your footer is very difficult to read. The font is too light on the background. Hope it is not intentional.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, not intentional. I'll darken that text, thank you!

<comment><USER2> You fixed it. looks good now.</comment></comment></comment>


Firebuggin' - <AUTHOR> http://ejohn.org/blog/firebuggin/

<comment><USER2> Firebug is one of those tools you use and then can never go back to not having again. Awesome to hear a big ramp up in development. I'd be happy to pay for some kind of special version.

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome! Looking forward for the development on Firebug to ramp up.

</comment><comment><USER4> That is awesome news. Thinking back to pre-Firebug days is almost like thinking back to pre-Internet days.

<comment><USER5> I was thinking the same thing.

On a side note, I think I understand why John works for Mozilla now. I used to think "Damn, John is such a great hacker. Why isn't he just starting startups". But working at Mozilla gives you a chance to really have an impact on the web at a much higher level. Working on a great tool like firebug or planning out new JS language features has a potentially larger impact....your work could be part of the success of many startups!!

<comment><USER6> Wasn't John a former YC fellow?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Three cheers for supporting Firebug.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you talk about in 1-on-1 with manager? - <AUTHOR> I work in a company that has suffered from many organizational issues in the past and present (basically bad management making bad decisions and slowing them company down). The issues I would report in a 1-on-1 could only be fixed at the C-level, so it's not productive to talk about them. Everybody knows what the issues are but there's a lot of inertia and I'd rather focus on the technical.
So I don't have much to talk about in 1-on-1's. It's clear what work I have to do. If that benefits my career or not, it still needs to be done, so what then? I get along with my coworkers (sure, they have weird ideas from time to time but I'm one to call them out in a 1-on-1 or demand something be done, it feels arrogant).
I'm told 1-on-1's should be more than just status updates but that's all I have to talk about.
Manager starts 1-on-1 with "What you got?" and I'm dreading these meetings. <comment><USER2> Previous discussion here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18264245](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18264245)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm going to assume you don't have anyone reporting to you. If you do then there'd be stuff to add to this.

Start with what you've accomplished since the last 1-to-1. Go onto things that you expected to accomplish but didn't. Explain why without griping.

Then go to what you're expecting to do by the next meeting. Highlight any concerns you have with achieving those things. If you have seen any issues that might get escalated, point them out. I prefer to know things that might go wrong and don't than be surprised by stuff.

Fundamentally, you should be letting your manager know what's going on and what might come up. BTW just because something is obvious to you, it doesn't follow that it's obvious to them. They can always tell you that they don't want to know about something.

Periodically, say every couple of months, ask for feedback on how you're doing, what you can do better etc.

If you have expectations for promotions, salary changes etc if can often be better not to wait for year end reviews. Even if your manager can't do anything with the info early, it's just another form of the no surprises rule.

</comment><comment><USER4> One of the manager's biggest jobs is helping employees be as productive as possible.

I think one of the most important topics to talk about in a 1-on-1 is what parts of the business are conducive to you doing your best work, and what is hurting your ability to do your best work, or as much work as you think you can do.

Obviously you shouldn't be a diva, but I think these meetings are the time to talk about distractions or interruptions to your work that your manager can fix.

</comment><comment><USER5> I do a thorns and roses with my manager.

1\. What I have observed and liked since the last 1x1

2\. What I have not liked since last 1x1

3\. What I've been working on to move things from 2. to 1.

</comment><comment><USER6> Unless there are some glaring work performance issues that need to be fixed, I talk about about hobbies and how they're spending their free time. I'm interested in their mental health and want to know if they're able to do what they want to do.

</comment><comment><USER7> In my 1:1's, I talk about what I'm working on, any challenges I'm facing, and what I want to work on in the future (some combination of those three). You might be able to talk about the issues you mentioned if you can frame them as directly impacting your day-to-day work.

</comment><comment><USER8> 1:1 is more about personal and career growth.

My typical 1:1 goes like this

5mins - What's completed or achieved on the work side.

5 to 10mins - Career goals, training, new initiatives, poc, new tech stack, and other tech discussion

5 to 10mins - non-tech and about family, vacation, movies, sports etc...whatever applicable on non-tech.

</comment><comment><USER9> 1-1 is good time to talk about personal growth , promotions , salary increments , inter-personal issues etc. be prepared for it (at least few hours) and have clear-cut actionable items to follow up or put the agenda in meeting invite itself, otherwise it will be just a random talk.

<comment><AUTHOR> Out of that list, I only feel comfortable talking about personal growth but that also gets tiring. My personal growth goals don't change every week.

Promotions & salary increments, maybe when the time come but it's a once a year talk?

And inter-personal issues, I get along fine with my coworkers. Should I complain about them more often?

<comment><USER9> Nope don't wait for last minute. have an agreement in 1-1 that this is what you are planning to do this year and then have a regular follow-up with him on progress(once every month for ~15 minutes). Normal manager needs clarity on what exactly you are doing with quantifiable data. If you can present that to him , it make his life much easier ...then yon can negotiate that with some perks.. i know we(as engineers) feel very uncomfortable with these discussions but fact of matter is this is what needs to be done in any company where there is a "manager" title.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would highly recommend reading the short book The Coaching Habit. The seven questions and their discussion have been instrumental in improving the 1 on 1s I have with my team of developers.</comment>