Why so many Dutch people work part time - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/05/economist-explains-12 <comment><USER3> Hey, I know something about this! I moved from silicon valley to NL about 8 years ago.

First off there are two ways to spin this: 1) women are less emancipated in NL because they participate less in the workplace or 2) women are more emancipated because they are able to choose to participate less in the workplace.

I first thought #1 was true, but I'm seeing a lot of new fathers taking advantage of Dutch part-time rules by taking a day a week off to participate in child care. So maybe instead of the measure of emancipation being women's values aligning with traditionally 'male' ones, maybe it's that male values are aligning with traditionally 'female' ones.

Subjectively I can also ay that the Dutch workplaces I've had the pleasure to experience are both more healthy and more 'efficient', and my previous experience has been exclusively in hard-working silicon valley. Plans are important, meetings are avoided unless necessary (and have agendas!), and there is a focus on getting stuff done so that people can leave at six and be with their families. Overtime is a sign that something has gone terribly wrong, and nobody bothers you while you're on your vacation. This culture allows part-time work to be an option... that is, a 32/36/40-hour contract is actually meaningful.

At my previous jobs in the US I wouldn't even think about reducing my hours... a 32 vs 40 hour contract is pointless if you're expected to work 50-60 hours a week, better to take as much money as you can.

<comment><USER4> Thanks. I'm from Europe, therefore really needing some explanations (to the opposite direction of the title subject of explaining European logic to the non-European readers):

> Overtime is a sign that something has gone terribly wrong

Why are there environments which don't think that the "overtime is a sign that something has gone terribly wrong?" How come that workers don't try to stand to their rights? Specifically:

> you're expected to work 50-60 hours a week

How come, if you sign the contract for e.g. 40 hours? The only thing workers are selling are their work hours, why do they accept to waste 25-50% of that?

At least Scott Adams gets it:

[http://dilbert.com/strip/2011-12-19](http://dilbert.com/strip/2011-12-19)

<comment><USER3> The American professional mindset is that you are hired for a role, and a good employee does what it takes to do that role. There are different rules (in California) for professionals who plan their own work and/or supervise others versus those in a service role, but the details are pretty meaningless... the effect is: if you're a professional you do what it takes to make the project succeed and make a good impression.

Combine this with another American trait, optimism, and you end up with over- ambitions projects that genuinely underestimate the effort and underestimate the resources, meetings that last twice as long because the first half was spent eating bagels and talking about something unrelated (oops!), and problems where everyone sincerely believes "we'll be able to solve later", and you end up with mad-dash, please delay your vacation, oh can you come in on Saturday, overtime. I also forgot to mention that you get bonus points for being the first one at work and that last one to leave, even if you're taking an awful lot of reddit breaks.

To Europeans it seems insane, to Americans it's funny but normal. The inverse also applies, it has taken me a long time to adjust to a detailed level of planning based on FTEs, make project plans that include unforeseen absences, and actually truly worry early on in the project.

<comment><USER5> I'm not quite sure most Americans find it 'funny' but rather do these things more so out of fear. Fear of job loss, fear of missed advancements, fear of missing out, etc. This also seems to explain why Americans as a whole take so little vacation time even when they are entitled to take time off [1].

[1] [http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and- workpla...](http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and- workplace/why-are-americans-so-afraid-take-vacation)

<comment><USER6> This is just it - worker protection in the Netherlands is much better than in the US or UK; an employer can't just fire someone, for one. An employee cannot work for more than X hours a week - and if it's requested to work overtime or odd hours, the employer has to pay for it (up to 200% if working Sundays).

And if there weren't laws and worker inspections and whatnot in place already, people would go on strike - and that usually has a major effect, like nationally crippled transportation (of any sort) or rapid accumulation of trash.

Which TBF makes me a bit depressed about the Americans. Have all the Walmart employees unionize and go on strike - there's nothing the management can do, not even enforce their 'you cannot unionize' contract thing, if everyone goes against them.

Some people are afraid pushovers TBF. And the employers slowly turned them into that, by making them poor.

<comment><USER7> _> there's nothing the management can do_

On the contrary. Walmart's policy to date has been to simply close the store:

[http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0210-13.htm](http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0210-13.htm)

They got in trouble for that one, so now they at least pretend to have other excuses:

[http://www.cbsnews.com/news/union-walmart-shut-5-stores- over...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/union-walmart-shut-5-stores-over-labor- activism/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Missing the main reason: child care is extremely expensive, to the point where a median full time salary would go _wholly_ to child care when one has two children.

For example, I have two children in day care three days a week, and we pay 1200+ euros per month. My friends in Belgium (where I'm from) pay literally 1/10th of that. Those in France and Germany also pay much less than we do, although I don't know by heart exactly how much.

The _reason_ child care is not subsidized (much) is the same as that mentioned in the article though - conservative popular opinion on how parents should be home with their children, and that having children in day care 5 days a week is tantamount to neglect.

<comment><USER9> Thats why we decided that my wife stays at home. Its anyway terrible to send kids < 3 years to child care. They can't even talk to complain.

<comment><USER10> How is it terrible exactly? It's standard practice where I live. My niece went to child care shortly after 1 year and she loves it. I'm sure she would be immensely bored just being home with mommy all day, every day.

<comment><USER11> Leaving a 1-year-old is typically a very different thing from leaving a 3-year-old to day care. And, even at the same age, children are different from each other.

My own kids are now all adults, but I remember how heart-breaking it was to leave a two-year-old to a day-care place where she did not want to stay. She'd cry all the way when going there, and stick to hug my legs "please don't go" though she could barely speak. It wasn't good.

Later on, she and younger brother were perfectly happy in another day-care place when they were a bit older.

Also, my daughter was all the time sick in her first day care place. She'd pick every infection there ever was around and we had horrible days with day care, horrible evenings queuing in the health center, and horrible nights without sleep. The daughter just had weak resistance as a 18-month-old, but was much stronger when she was 5 years.

My younger son on the other hand enjoyed day care tremendously from the very start, but he only went there at age of 4.

I would say that

1) there is variance in children, as individuals (some of them are naturally more dependent on their parents)

2) there is variance in day-care places (the first one we had was run by the council, the staff was inexperienced and they compensated for their insecurity by being rude; the other was a private one subsidised by the council, and the staff was really nice -- others have reported things being the other way round with very nice council-run places, so I conclude just that the human factor has a big impact).

3) there is variance in parents

(These experiences from the Finnish system which provides very extensive and affordable public service by North American standards).

<comment><USER12> I can echo that experience. We've been lucky in that our kids have generally really enjoyed going to childcare.

There was one place that my daughter was never really happy to go to. It was fine, and she was safe - she was just never happy there. We moved her to a new place and she loved it from the moment she walked in (though she knew some of the other kids from her first nursery).

I think sickness and childcare just go hand in hand. It flowed on to the rest of the family too. I've been sick so many times in the last few years - <USER2> I think we're through the worst of it now. Nothing like the happy embrace of a snotty child to make you ill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Dutch person here. The only friends I have that work full-time have partners that are at home for the kids. I don't know any couple that both work full- time. Couples that both have a career they want to keep go for 32 hours each and the kids go to daycare for 3 days. I hardly know anyone working full-time among friends my age (lower 30's), even without kids, they just like 3 day weekends.

When I applied at ASML they asked me: What if it looks like you will not be able to finish your work within the assigned time, what do you do?

I said: I would just work some more, if it doesn't happen very often, not a problem.

WRONG. Go to your project leader tell him: "I have time for either this or this, where should I put priority." We do not want overworked people.

ASML gave employees about 2 months salary as a bonus some time back, this is on top of a customary 13th month in December.

<comment><USER6> ASML is one of the Netherlands' most successful and profitable companies though, and I can imagine they have relatively few but high-skilled employees, especially in the engineering department.

<comment><USER13> The large (healthcare) company I work for is the same (minus the bonus).

Maybe the little value that is put in hierarchy (my boss has my respect because he is smart, never just because he is my boss). Displays of hierarchy are very badly appreciated here. We appreciate professors that want to be called by their first name. It balances things more perhaps.

<comment><USER14> Can confirm. There's nothing special about the ASML case.

There are a few exceptions in Dutch IT but, unsurprisingly, they are mostly staffed with internationals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "The Dutch government has said that by next year 30% of executive board positions should be held by women..."

I wish one day we can do away with this sort of 'reverse' sexism, and I think that next year 100% of executive board positions should be held by capable people, regardless of their sex.

<comment><USER16> >I think that next year 100% of executive board positions should be held by capable people, regardless of their sex

So, in theory, 50% of capable people should be women, no?

 _edit_ : If your point is that we shouldn't be positively discriminating to artificially reach equidistribution of men and women in the workplace, then I agree, but your line of argumentation is often used to imply that women are less competent.

<comment><USER15> I don't think so, as more men tend to choose an education that paves an easier path to acquiring a board position. This is not because women are less capable, but because they somehow feel less attracted to this field of work. This of course also has to do with our parents, media and other surroundings teaching us about gender roles and such.

It's only since a few years that for example technical studies try to attract more women, as these were before considered 'a man's thing'.

It's going to take a few generations for all of this to 'even out' and then we might see 50/50, but it could also result in 70/30 or 30/70, if it turns out that in a gender-neutral unbringing, one gender might be more capable of leadership than another.

<comment><USER17> To me the answer is not gender neutral upbringing, but rather emphasizing that everyone has the dame potential to achieve and make the tools available to everyone.

Let's say instead of gender differences, we had people with different physics handicaps, we wouldn't pretend there aren't handicaps, ache same time we would not steer people but rather provide them all with the same opportunities and not encourage or discourage because of a particular handicap. Let the people, children, figure out what works and doesn't work for them, given their abilities and handicaps.

The biggest problem I see is people steering or lowlighting certain paths because of some preconceptions --a deaf person can't sing well, instead let them prove they can't sing, or that they can sing, regardless of hearing.

<comment><USER18> _the dame potential_

That sounds rather sexist lol :p j/k

 _instead of gender differences, we had people with different physics [sic] handicaps_

That might be considered rather insulting. Having a penis, vagina, or whatever linear combination of the above isn't really comparable to being handicapped.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > The Netherlands consistently ranks as one of the best places in the world to > live.

> However, the Netherlands' record for getting women into top management roles > is dire.

Isn't happiness what's important?

We had a neighbor in our village who had chickens, who always kept the same number of black-feathered and white-feathered chickens. I never saw how this helped with anything. He did it for its own sake I guess. He just liked symmetries and equalities, always keeping his things ordered and aligned, he was kind of obsessive like that.

<comment><USER20> Still, it's interesting that 80% of women and only 20% of men are most happy working part time. Why such large discrepancy?

<comment><USER21> Because working part-time you can't really advance very far in your career, and that is expected from men. From women, less so.

<comment><USER20> But that is the point. Why are women happy to sacrifice their career, for the sake of the family, and men not as much. So, is that really a choice for all these women, or perhaps a necessity?

<comment><USER22> I think the point is the reverse. Why are men happy to sacrifice family and everything else that really matters in life for the sake of the rat race, and women not as much? So, is that really a choice for all these men, or perhaps a necessity? What can be done to make it less of a necessity?

(As I understand it, some Scandinavian countries have brought in the legal right to paternity leave similar to maternity leave, which strikes me as a good start.)

<comment><USER23> What rat race? The work environment in the NL isn't stressful at all. I would almost call it enjoyable. It's one of the few remarkably pleasant things about living there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "Perhaps the Dutch are happy because they know that one works to live, and that living to work is a perverse waste of life."

This is exactly my statement when I told my boss I wanted to work part-time. Now, I only work around 20 up to 32 hours a week. Also, I feel I'm way more productive this way: I only work when I "feel like working". Because of that, I'm way more productive when I work.

I have dreams for my future. Doing a day-to-day office job isn't one of them. In my "spare time", I'm converting my hobby and passion into my own company so I can, hopefully, earn money with my hobby and stop working completely.

Yes, I'm from the Netherlands.

<comment><USER25> I have a friend who does hiring in Berlin for a tech company. He's complained about not being able to find full-time employees. Lots of talented people, surprisingly few want to be locked in for 40-50h/week, especially when they have 4 other quasi-work commitments (playing in a band, working behind a bar once a week, etc) as well.

<comment><USER26> That's because experienced software developers know they can only be productive for 4-5 hours a day and any attempt to forcefully extend this time results in lower quality work and hidden bugs. Then you get a senseless situation on your hands - you first waste a few extra hours to make things bad then you spend additional time to correct your mistakes. You might as well just go home and enjoy extra personal time, to come back fresh and energized the next day. In 20-25 hours per week you can actually accomplish a lot. A 40 hour week will wear you quickly. A 50 hour week can bring you one step closer to a burn-out and possibly damage your health in a long run.

Additionally, there might me some cultural issue involved. A few years ago I worked in Germany and the one thing I didn't like about the German workspace is that companies didn't really want their workers to be productive and efficient, they just wanted them to put in all of their official working hours and complete all of the formalities involved, while also frowning upon any activities outside work. That was one of the reasons why I eventually moved out. I wanted to accomplish things and grow, the companies I interviewed at wanted me to stay 9-5 and be satisfied with their routine. I grew to dislike this attitude and eventually made other plans for myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's worth noting that this article considers anything less than 36 hours per week to be part time, but a lot of Dutch people don't really consider 32 hours part time. It is very common for young dads to work 4 days a week, and people without children often think 4 days is plenty for a work week.

For the record, I've worked 32 hour weeks for ages now (and I've only encountered one potential employer who had a problem with that, though they agreed my request was totally reasonable). My wife works 36 hours a week, which is standard in government jobs (as well as in many other places).

<comment><USER28> I've often thought about trying to negotiate a 4 day work week in the US but it wouldn't be worth it. Since my 40 hours turn into 50 or 60 I could see 32 hours turning into 45 easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Another part of this mystery is that Dutch people don't really consider a 32-hour work week to be "part-time". Especially since in most sectors the official full-time work week is only 36 hours. I think I'm the only one of my friends working 40 hours.

</comment><comment><USER30> The article paints this as pretty positive, as such Britain looks good coming in 5th on the graph. In reality many of the jobs created over the last few years in the UK have been low paid zero hours contracts, not because people want the flexibility, but because employers want top pay as little as possible.

<comment><USER31> Same in the Netherlands. Solution? Create a law that requires employers to hire you on a contract after 3 years of solid work.

Now guess what happened :p

You get fired after 3 years, so they don't have to give you a contract. Then they hire someone new with less skills, but at least for 3 years they don't have to give a contract and can fire you whenever they need to and of course pay you like a temporary external employee instead of a full-time on contract employee.

<comment><USER32> This has been reduced to 2 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The popularity of part time work for women may have been a fluke, an accidental mix of choices, culture and circumstances that has lead to the current situation. A situation that is certain downsides.

However, the big upside is still underway: it is becoming increasingly normal for men to work part time. Already it's common for men to work no more than 32 hours, that's not even considered part-time anymore.

If this trend continuous, the Netherlands is shifting towards a much shorter working week than most countries, without any major upheaval or further government intervention. However much by accident rather than design, it does seem to put the country one step ahead of most when dealing with an economic reality in which full employment for everyone is never going to happen.

<comment><USER23> There is just one downside to working part time when you're young that not everyone seems to consider fully. The tax deductible amount you're able to save for retirement is a percentage of your income. Money saved when you're young accumulates more interest. Basically, the less you work now, the more you will have to work later, when you're old.

Young people don't seem to realize that there already isn't much AOW (social security) left for them. Unless you're 50+ now (the most powerful voting block is usually exempt from cutbacks), you will not be able to retire at 67. The retirement age is officially raised along with life expectancy. The 20 year old of today will not be eligible for AOW until their early 70's.

Because not everyone is physically capable of continuing to work until 70+, and employment opportunities for people over 60 are pretty much zero, you're going to need savings to bridge that gap.

<comment><USER15> It sounds awful that people have to work all of their lives, so they have built up enough social security and pension that they can spend all of this when they're too old and weak to actually enjoy it.

I retired at 30, not willing to take part in this craziness anymore, to live fully now and only work every now and then when I need money, although I'm also working hard on a solution that eliminates the need for money at all (and not only for myself, but for anyone willing to participate).

My motto about the future: If in my life I haven't made such an impact on at least one person that nobody is willing to take care of me when I'm not capable anymore myself, I have either done something wrong or society has become something I'm not willing to live in anymore anyway.

<comment><USER23> NL is too densely populated to live off the land, and the cost of living is rather high, so I'm not sure how you're doing it. But as long as you're not on welfare, don't have kids in school or use other tax payer funded facilities, I'm totally fine with your choice. It just wouldn't be my choice.

What also helps is that I don't hate my job. Maybe you just chose a career that didn't make you happy. Isn't there another kind of job that would make you want to work more?

<comment><USER34> most jobs are not fun. if it was fun somebody would do it for free. other than that welfare is indeed generous. the state subsidizes rent for those with less money (this and the tax system makes full time employment almost a waste of time). living is not that expensive when the typical lunch is a few slices of bread. a lot of people don't even own a car.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Reading some of the comments about child care makes me think that we have perverted the way we raise our children.

Isn't it plain backwards to send a kid to child care and go to work to pay for it? Unless you are earning an awful lot of money at your job, it doesn't feel right. It just makes so much sense to me to have one of the parents stay at home with the kids, spending most of this beautiful time together.

Heck, I want to have kids soon, but first I want to figure out how to earn enough money to maintain my family being the only earner + not working more than 30-32 hours a week. This could mean having a lot less money at the end of month, but it's temporary until the little ones are a bit older.

<comment><USER36> So you don't imagine you being the one home with your children, day in and day out? Life with children is demanding. It's a bit more complex than what you allude to. Not that I'd recommend not having children, I love mine and love taking care of them, but a more realistic view is appropriate, e.g. try googling "toddlers are assholes". :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Major benefits like health and child care are tied to government rather than employment. Therefore you don't have to play games with 2nd careers and minimum hours. Probably a good idea for US to consider.

</comment><comment><USER38> Unfortunately, in the rest of the world "part-time" is not considered as something professional, but it's reserved for cheap labor force (shop assistants, baby-sitters, call-center guys) or for students. Most of "serious" companies won't even think about hiring a professional for 25h.

</comment><comment><USER15> On a less-serious side note, this article reminds me a lot of this blog post: [http://stuffdutchpeoplelike.com/2012/03/20/not- working/](http://stuffdutchpeoplelike.com/2012/03/20/not-working/)

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm Dutch and I work part time (32 hours), which was sort of by accident. Since I've started, 5 other people in the company I work for (including the two owners!) have started working 32 hours instead of 40, either to spend more time with their kids or just for themselves. Overall, this makes scheduling work a bit harder for my bosses but other than that there's been nothing but positive results.

I'm male by the way.

<comment><USER40> This is amazing for me to hear. As an American who is tired of the brainwashed "work at all expenses" cult like mantra here - we've been considering a move to more sane places.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The chart / figures are a bit misleading though; it lists an age range of 15-64. People in the 15-25 age range will generally work part-time (if they work) because they're still in school/college/university. Also, people above 55 (iirc) get 'free' days off (because they're old), I'm not sure if that counts as part-time (since iirc they get paid full-time).f

</comment><comment><USER41> Instead of companies hiring a full time engineer that works 50-60 hours (causing him/her to burn out and quit), how about hiring 2 part timers working 30 hours, allowing more family time.

Paying salary for 1 full timer may seem a little lower than 2 part timers initially. But with better family life, I would think you will get better productivity and recover the investment by retaining workers better.

<comment><USER11> The bean-counters will throw in fixed costs per head. There are facility costs, IT costs (computers probably can not be shared, nor some software licenses), etc. Overheads from support functions (HR etc) are often allocated per head. There are medical insurance etc costs per head.

So, bean-counting makes you prefer fewer heads, and some of that cost is not just due to bean-counters, but very real.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Anyone else notice that the United Kingdom is listed as "Britain" in that graphic? I don't think Britain is a country.

<comment><USER43> > Anyone else notice that the United Kingdom is listed as "Britain" in that > graphic? I don't think Britain is a country.

"Britain" is, like "the United Kingdom", a common less-formal name [0] for the nation-state whose full name is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (and is the source of the usual adjective form associated with that nation-state, "British".)

Britain, of course, isn't a "country" as that term is used in the UK, of course; England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are the countries of the UK. But the use here isn't to identify a country in that sense, but a sovereign state.

Better pedants, please.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom) : "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a sovereign state in Europe."

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> well screw that i'm dutch and i don't get to work part time. would like to though. the new rules are only there 'on paper'. they're not rules as employers can ignore them 'if they have pressing concerns'.</comment>


Airlock – Facebook's mobile A/B testing framework - <AUTHOR> https://code.facebook.com/posts/520580318041111/airlock-facebook-s-mobile-a-b-testing-framework/

<comment><USER2> Interesting, but not a very informative article. I'd be curious to hear more about the technologies behind the framework.

Is Airlock entirely server driven, or are there aspects of it (say, data storage or selecting which variation of a test to display) in the app code itself? Would it make sense to create a framework that lives entirely in Cocoa and only syncs with a server? Why or why not?

<comment><USER3> I helped build the server-side component of this framework during my first internship at Facebook. The framework is server driven, in that experiments are defined in another tool and then loaded on the client framework. Essentially, an experiment is parameterized by name and a user's ID. The server code then determines which experimental condition the user should be placed into, and it returns the values of the parameters corresponding to that condition.

The framework was initially designed for the web, in an effort to make a simple framework for running experiments with parameterized text content. Copy needs to be translated to launch on Facebook, as many people use the site in non-English languages. The framework integrates with several other internal tools to make running experiments with text a lot easier - mainly, the translation services and Gatekeeper for targeting specific countries, languages, etc..[0] The framework is also dead-simple for running experiments with other scalar parameters - as an example, testing the number of results returned from a search.

I'm sure you could write a framework that exists solely client-side, but then you also have to re-write all of the experiment logic for each platform, rather than the 'wrapper' required to sync server-side and handle edge-cases like delayed exposure, etc. The wrapper is already non-trivial, so it's also nice that you can ensure the core framework is well tested without having to worry about testing in different environments. As I said before, integrating with other services is also really great, and for Facebook, most services are in PHP or exposed through Thrift, so accessing them on the server is very straightforward.

Another upside to being server driven is that updating an experiment can happen on the fly, so the moment you determine your experiment's best variant, you can disable the other ones without waiting for Apple to review the app again, etc. I'm sure you could implement this with a client framework, but it seems less elegant if you are relying on the server for key information about the status of the experiment, but still trying to retain all the experiment logic on the client.

0: [https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook- engineering/building...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook- engineering/building-and-testing-at-facebook/10151004157328920)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing your insights and a little bit of what's going on behind the scenes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Would love to see Facebook release this, rather than just talk about it!

<comment><USER3> The issue is that any service at Facebook written in PHP inherently contains a lot of artifacts that are only relevant to Facebook's tech-stack. Services written in C or another language have a greater chance of eventually being open-sourced; and though I didn't mention it in my other comment, the server- side component of the framework is written in PHP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh, it's not open source. I'm disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER6> Checkout mobile A/B testing framework Vessel.io ([https://www.vessel.io](https://www.vessel.io)), Supports iOS,Android, Windows, PhoneGap etc. Easy to use.</comment>


Spotify keeps big lead over Apple Music but disappoints with 108M subscribers - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/spotify-subscribers-earnings-hit-108-million-apple-music <comment><USER2> Does Spotify include their free tier in their subscriber stats? It'd be interesting to see how many paid subscribers Spotify has vs. Apple Music. As an investor I'm more interested in the recurring revenue.</comment>


Making Anime Faces With StyleGAN - <AUTHOR> https://www.gwern.net/Faces <comment><USER2> gwern, first off I'd like to mention I absolutely love your work! It's always a pleasure to read your longform writeups on StyleGAN, even if half of it admittingly goes over my head. :)

Can I ask what was modified recently about the write up? I remember reading it a few days back but I see at the top that it was recently modified.

As an aside, I wonder when we'll see the first "fake artist" using TWDNE and Waifu2x then photoshopping/cleaning up some of the irregularities of the generations to output a bunch of "well drawn art". Someone who's decently talented could also use it as a shortcut to avoid a lot of time spent drawing faces/hairstyles and use the generated faces as a starting point.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Can I ask what was modified recently about the write up? I remember reading > it a few days back but I see at the top that it was recently modified.

I've been writing it from the top on down. So the past few days I spent adding the preliminary whole-Danbooru2018 StyleGAN runs ( [https://www.gwern.net/Faces#anime-faces- danbooru2018](https://www.gwern.net/Faces#anime-faces-danbooru2018) [https://www.gwern.net/Faces#anime-faces-ffhq- danbooru2018](https://www.gwern.net/Faces#anime-faces-ffhq-danbooru2018) ), the FFHQ transfer experiments ( [https://www.gwern.net/Faces#ffhq- variations](https://www.gwern.net/Faces#ffhq-variations) ), the appendix ( [https://www.gwern.net/Faces#appendix](https://www.gwern.net/Faces#appendix) ) with all my past GAN experiments (required quite a bit of spelunking through my Twitter & dusty source code repos), the encoding/editing of StyleGAN images ( [https://www.gwern.net/Faces#reversing-stylegan-to-control- mo...](https://www.gwern.net/Faces#reversing-stylegan-to-control-modify- images) ), and of course a whole bunch of formatting & copyediting.

<comment><USER2> Thank you! Sounds like I need give it another read. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I had a thought once, years ago, about trying to work out the math behind the bezier curves that make up a cartoon image of a human face - it seems like you'd have to be able to work it out to a series of control points relative to some reference point. I never had the free time to pursue it, and the fact that nobody else never did makes me think I must have been underthinking how complex that actually would be - still, I find it surprising that you have to apply the complexity of a neural network before you can generate a believable cartoon image of a human.</comment>


The lost [meaning of the] art[?] of trolling. - <AUTHOR> http://www.tombell.net/?p=125

<comment><USER2> What a good laugh the article [http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.12.2.42056.2147.html](http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.12.2.42056.2147.html) mentioned on the link.</comment>


Behold The Most Insane Crowdfunding Campaign Ever - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2014/08/03/behold-the-most-insane-crowdfunding-campaign-ever/

<comment><USER2> Considering all the media coverage listed at the end, I'd say the copper foam was an effective marketing gimmick, enough to have actually funded the project were they not frozen. After that they could have run with the money or tried to implement it. If they had tried to implement it they would have eventually fallen back to reference boards or commodity parts in a slightly larger size, and probably just had the hardware clock down when overheated due to the badly designed heat sink, so I think they could have delivered. There are successful companies out there that rely on marketing gimmicks, like Bose.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not convinced that copper foam is a good idea for a heat sink, but this article doesn't give enough detail to convince me that it's a bad idea either.

The radiative emissivity might be a bit of a red herring, since heat sinks typically rely more on conduction and convection than on radiation for cooling. So then it comes down to some hand waving about boundary layers.

<comment><USER4> Most heat sinks rely on conduction and convection because they use fans. A passively cooled setup is dominated by radiation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not sure I understand how this is more insane than scores of other crowd funded hardware solutions.

<comment><USER6> Like solar power roads for example.. (youtube thunderf00t's videos about solar roads for fun videos where he debunks the entire project)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If the author reads this: 's/decent/descent'</comment>


Coffeescript: Joyful and Unreadable - <AUTHOR> http://allenc.com/2011/11/coffeescript-joyful-and-unreadable/ <comment><USER2> Looking at things in a vacuum is not very productive. The equivalent code with just raw JavaScript - that is, with no templates, no CoffeeScript, no backbone - would be MUCH more verbose, complicated, and hard to read/maintain.

For example, the => actually makes the code shorter and _more_ readable than the equivalent versions (var that = this all over the place). The el and @template have nothing to do with CoffeeScript: they are from backbone and underscore, respectively. And once again, they are better than the raw JS alternatives (document.getElementById()? and inlining HTML into your JS).

<comment><AUTHOR> Right - what I'm saying is that it's okay to be slightly more verbose if it means added readability. My point was that it was the comb. of 4 libraries that's causing a lot of context switching on the same line of code.

<comment><USER2> If your central point is about context switching, you probably should've picked a different title for the post :)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is There a "Gigster/Uber for Marketers"? If Not, Could One Work? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> The root of my question is whether a marketplace to find vetted, top-tier marketers could be successful.

With almost every industry becoming freelance/on-demand, there are many marketplaces for things with clear outputs (engineers = give me an app. Designers = give me a landing page), but I don't see a lot of marketplaces to hire growth teams or marketers to take products from 0 to 1,000 customers. Or 10,000 to 1 million customers.

Do these marketplaces for marketers exist? If not, could one work? Why or why not?</comment>


Learn SQL on Your Company's Data – For Free - <AUTHOR> https://www.teamleada.com/?ref=hn <comment><USER2> That totally sounds safe!</comment>


Google confirm Chrome to highlight Not Secure websites from January 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.servertastic.com/google-confirm-chrome-to-highlight-not-secure-websites-from-january-2017-19c14a87d584#.58917zwtp <comment><USER2> "The Not Secure highlight will only appear if the website asks for password or credit card information."

This was exactly my suggestion on a previous thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12442379](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12442379)

(Not bigging up my original comment, just linking to a recent relevant discussion)</comment>


Show HN: NewsBox – newsletter reading and subscribing made easy - <AUTHOR> https://getnewsbox.com/ <comment><USER2> I had this idea to build something like this last night ! Good job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Give it a download and let me know what you think</comment></comment>


Swedish ISP Protests 'Site Blocking' by Blocking Rightsholders Website Too - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/swedish-isp-protest-site-blocking-by-blocking-rightsholders-website-and-more-181102/ <comment><USER3> As a Banhof subscriber I'm a bit saddened that they have to engage with blocking any sites at all, but since they do, I'm happy that I'm paying an ISP with some sense of courage and integrity.

As with all copyright related issues, the application of hilariously outdated rules onto modern situations never cease to amaze.

<comment><USER4> > As with all copyright related issues, the application of hilariously > outdated rules onto modern situations never cease to amaze.

What do you view as the justification for having copyright before modern situations, and what about modern situations makes that justification no longer applicable?

Most of the time I hear arguments that some older law is outdated in modern times, the underlying human and economic relations that the law is dealing with have not changed. All that has usually changed is that it is now easier to violate the law. That usually strengthens the case for the law, not weakens it.

For example, I've seen arguments that libel laws are outdated when applied to online forums, comment sections, mailing lists, and similar. (Reminder: libel is written defamation, as opposed to slander, which is spoken defamation). Due to those outlets, compared to a few decades ago a much bigger fraction of our communication is in writing. It's also much more informal now, more off the cuff, and more often with people we do not have an in person relationship with. This makes it a lot easier to commit libel.

If the basis of libel laws is that it is wrong to intentionally falsely damage the reputation of someone else, then the technology changes over the last few decades do not change that. If it was wrong to make some accusation in a printed flyer posted around your town, it is is wrong to make the same accusation posted to Facebook.

On the other hand, we might justify libel law as a way to limit the power that comes with access to printing presses. When producing and distributing printed material was expensive, those who owned the presses or those wealthy enough to afford to hire them would have a lot of influence over public opinion. Libel laws would put some restraint on that power.

If that is how we justify libel, then you can make a case that it should not apply online because there is much more equal access. (I'm not sure, but I think historically the justification for libel law is the "wrong to intentionally falsely damage" justification, not the "power restraint" justification).

<comment><USER5> There are several ways copyright and patent laws are outdated, though most aren't directly relevant to this discussion.

Scientific journals are an especially interesting case. They way copyright law applies to scientific journals is certainly broken, but I think it has been broken for a long time. Afaik, in most cases scientists are not paied royalties for the papers they publish in journals, and in some cases even have to pay for the privilege of submitting a paper. Peer reviewers also aren't paid for their time reviewing papers. Yet publishers charge very steep rates for access to the journals. Essentially all the publisher does is, well publish the papers, and select which papers they think are important enough to include in the journal.

Technology changes the landscape in three ways. First, digital publishing is significantly cheaper and more efficient than publishing hard copy journals, so in a competitive market you would expect the price for journals to go down. Second, in digital publishing, there is less need to limit the number of published papers in an issue to a set number, which again should reduce cost. Finally, it makes it much easier for "pirates" to distribute copies of journals without restrictive paywalls.

I would also be very surprised if many of the scientists whose papers were "pirated" would complain that their papers are easier to access by other scientists. I mean, the more scientists that have access to the papers, the more likely the paper is to be read and cited. And most scientists will care much more about that, than how much money the journal is making off of it. The only people that benefit from high pawalls for access to scientific papers, is the publisher.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What a great way to fight back. I hope other ips take notice and block elsevier elsewhere.

If someone put another domain up could the court be unable to assess whether it breaks the law with the court blockage?

More interestingly could the isp put a rule in there terms forbidding anyone employed or hired by Elsevier from assessing the isp services so anything submitted by this company becomed null and void?

<comment><USER7> Discriminating against someone because of their employer sounds like a very dangerous precedent to set.

I don't understand what you mean by "assessing the isp services". Could you clarify?

<comment><USER8> Is it though? It is always interesting to me how some seem to not be concerned with their employers' conduct, isn't that what led Adolf Eichmann to do the bureaucratic work for concentration camps in World War 2?

How is this different to engineers writing the code for drones that murders children in Yemen? Does anyone have any thoughts on this, or if they see it differently?

What is a government or corporation but a group of individuals? What about the collective behaviors and values? Should we not use our human empathy and evolve them?

I've come to think about it as American imperialist/colonialist/domination thinking. It reminds me of some American's attitudes to non-Americans - <USER2> dehumanization used by it's corporate controlled media, e.g. 'terrorist'/'thugs'. Black Mirror has a great episode on dehumanization called 'Men Against Fire', for me the eye lens tech is a metaphor for being in control of the narrative: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WkiZaWvE4Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WkiZaWvE4Q)

If you're not following me, check out the book 'Columbus and Other Cannibals' by Jack D. Forbes to understand where I'm coming from. Or anything by Howard Zinn or Noam Chomsky.

<comment><USER9> Copyright stuff is just not comparable to death camps, so extreme forms of protest are not justified.

<comment><USER8> Isn't it though? Copy 'right' \- think about it. Would you really charge a friend to borrow a book from you?

Can we think of a better way to share cultural wealth and sustain ourselves and meet our needs?

-

"Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You'll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.

There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it. But even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in the future. Everything up until now will have been lost.

That is too high a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money to read the work of their colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks at Google to read them? Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to children in the Global South? It's outrageous and unacceptable.

Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords with colleagues, filling download requests for friends.

…

Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by. You have been sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating the information locked up by the publishers and sharing them with your friends.

But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It's called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn't immoral — it's a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy. Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate require it — their shareholders would revolt at anything less. And the politicians they have bought off back them, passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decide who can make copies.

There is no justice in following unjust laws. It's time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture.

We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access.

With enough of us, around the world, we'll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge — we'll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?"

\- Aaron Swartz

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good

As Elsevier is behind the copyright lobby I really hope they enjoy being blocked.

<comment><USER11> Well, given the market size of that ISP, I am sure Elsevier has noticed and are running scared already ...

Sadly the only people being hurt by this sort of protest are researchers that happen to use the same network (i.e. Bahnhof's own customers) and now are unable to access neither the legit website nor the pirate one.

And no, as a researcher you rarely have a choice to not publish in Elsevier ran journals and conferences when your university/department is evaluated (and funding assigned) based on number of publications in these venues. This is often imposed by the government, the uni and even less the individual researchers have pretty much zero say in it.

I have worked at a uni in Denmark where the government literally had lists of "approved" journals and conferences. If you have published there, you have got a score weighed by the importance of the publication. If you have published elsewhere, you got nothing and were effectively working for free because the university funding was directly tied to those scores.

For some fields this was pretty much a death sentence because the "approved" publications were either stuff where most people never manage to get a paper in (like Nature) or most of their usual conferences/journals were not on the list (a lot of humanities and arts where otherwise producing an artwork or composing a piece of music counts as a publication).

<comment><USER12> The "Elsevier block" is just a PR stunt, there is a button on the bottom of the page that directs to the (unblocked) Elsevier website.

<comment><USER13> > The "Elsevier block" is just a PR stunt, there is a button on the bottom of > the page that directs to the (unblocked) Elsevier website.

Better would have been to provide instructions on how to evade the Elsevier block using general purpose anti-censorship tools.

<comment><USER14> On that same "blocked" page there's also this:

 _Would you like some tips about avoiding DNS blocking? Take a look at our practical guide about VPN and DNS blocking here!_

Which links to this (in swedish): [https://www.bahnhof.se/press/press- releases/2018/11/01/bara-...](https://www.bahnhof.se/press/press- releases/2018/11/01/bara-patent-och-marknadsdomstolen-verkar-tro-att- blockering-av-sidor-fungerar)

Google DNS and its IP addresses are mentioned, so they are probably enforcing just DNS blocking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder if the order was vague enough that it would allow them to comply by blocking the scihub domains but resolving elsevier to a scihub ip

I mean technically the requested URL was blocked, right?

<comment><USER16> As the article says, they have also blocked Elsevier's website :)

<comment><USER17> Whoosh...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So am I understanding correctly that this is just DNS blocking? Surely this court-ordered blocking can be trivially bypassed by switching your DNS server.

<comment><USER19> Depends on the method used. Virgin Media in the UK intercept HTTP requests (and send resets to HTTPS connections), so even tunneling my DNS traffic over a VPN doesn't help.

<comment><USER20> For dns blocks, DNS over HTTPS should work Firefox supports it, or you could run a local DNS resolver, or use host file for domains that you use and are blocked.

Also I am not even sure it is possible to intercept any traffic over VPN without having the keys, so not sure why tunneling over VPN is a problem , DPI and MITM techniques are not even used by the Chinese government for the most part and people can generally VPN out if they want to.

<comment><USER19> For clarity, the HTTPS were in the clear. Only DNS traffic was over the VPN, to ensure I got an untampered DNS result (and I later verified that hosts files do not help either). You can obviously VPN out, I was just curious how the system was implemented (as the typical advice of change your DNS provider does not help).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm sympathetic towards the ISP and the readers of academic journals.

However, this is also a gross violation of net neutrality. The ISP's power over a website is evident from their ability to block a website they have differences with. This is both encouraging (that the ISP cares) & frightening (that the ISP has total control)

<comment><USER22> Seems eminently fair and reasonable to me.

Elsever got a court to order a gross violation of net neutrality.

The ISP had no interest or desire to implement blocking of any sort. Once it's hand is forced via legal means, it needs to obtain that capability - and using it with discretion as a protest is a perfect demonstration as to why they should _not_ have that capability.

<comment><USER21> About ideals and philosophies - they only matter when pushed to their limits. Free speech only matters when the said speech is disagreeable, ISP power only matters when the ISP disagrees with a website.

Yes - we all approve of the ISP's action, but this instance was in our favor. Will the next be against? Power begets corruption.

<comment><USER22> "The next"? How about "one of the previous"???

[https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/03/07/comcast- xfinity-...](https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/03/07/comcast-xfinity- paypal-net-neutrality/)

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080213/133855251.shtml](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080213/133855251.shtml)

Banhof's stance is that they do not even want the capability to block websites. This is something I wholeheartedly agree with. It certainly means some speech with which I strongly disagree is protected as well as speech with which I do agree. ISPs should _not_ have this kind of power. Banhof do not want it, but since they're being forced into acquiring and using that capability, using it to protest against it seems eminently reasonable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In case of DNS blocking, I'm always wondering what would happen if ISP wouldn't provide DNS resolver? Instead recursive resolvers could be run on customers routers. Would they still be obliged to block it, even as this is not their resolver?

</comment><comment><USER24> Blocking the court from accessing the company's own website seems like a strange move. Do the courts in Sweden write laws or regulations, or are they enforcing the laws and regulations that were already written? Does anyone with the power to change the decision even see the company's protest?

<comment><USER25> Courts establish precedents in how they rule cases. While they don't write regulations per se, they certainly clarify and establish how far they reach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> A taste of their own medicine. I wonder if the court will try to order Bahnhof to unblock Elsevier?

<comment><USER27> They cant without a legal reason. It's quite brilliant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> That's funny as hell. I dunno about the effectiveness of the tactic, but, the comedy is top-notch.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is just a rewording of [https://torrentfreak.com/swedish-isp-protest- site-blocking-b...](https://torrentfreak.com/swedish-isp-protest-site- blocking-by-blocking-rightsholders-website-and-more-181102/)

<comment><USER30> Thanks! We've updated the link from [https://boingboing.net/2018/11/03/balkanizing-the- balkanizer...](https://boingboing.net/2018/11/03/balkanizing-the- balkanizers.html).

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> How do we feel about this with regard to net neutrality? Are we ok with the blocking they choose to do here because we agree with them ethically in this case?

<comment><USER32> I'm pretty sure that this is not in line with EU NN law where blocking access to sites is only allowed for security, legal reasons, or to preventing impending network congestion (Article 3(3) of Regulation 2015/2120) Blocking arbitrary websites out of spite is probably neither of these reasons and therefore not justified.

<comment><USER33> Protest is legal.

<comment><USER34> Presumes corporations have free speech rights.

<comment><USER33> _shudder_ This is the closest I've come to identifying with the Mitt Romney quote "Corporations are people, my friend." I recognize corporations are a collective entity comprised of people and people have free speech rights. I'm trying to figure out for myself where the boundaries of those rights are, since a collective naturally has more power to impact others than an individual, simply because it takes less individual energy for a collective action than it does for an individual action of the same magnitude.

I have to meditate on this. Anyone have thoughts to share on this to help me find clarity?

<comment><USER35> Well, it depends on how you think rights should be granted. I personally don't agree with how rights is handled in a lot of cases, giving a sufficiently powerful entity freedom is equivalent to taking away freedom from every other lesser entity it happens to dislike.

Only an entity with greater authority than yourself can grant you any rights, so what happens when it reaches the point where a company is as influential as a small government? A national government?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Sounds like a pretty significant violation of net neutrality to be blocking companies that they don't "like" out of spite. Doesn't Sweden have NN laws?

<comment><USER37> This seems to be a different conception of net neutrality than we have in the US where registrars have a right to terminate service at will.

<comment><USER36> I just find it ironic that in NN threads here, the prevailing thought is "NN is necessary to prevent censorship!" and then in censorship/deplatforming threads like this one, the prevailing thought is "this is a good thing and actually necessary"

<comment><USER38> I don't. The isp is forced to censor, so they choose to also censor the entity that abused the system.

The difference is astronomical. The purpose is also to send a signal...

<comment><USER13> > I don't. The isp is forced to censor, so they choose to also censor the > entity that abused the system.

Exactly. There is a huge difference between wanting to censor your enemies and not wanting to censor anybody but being forced to, and then responding by doing so in a balanced rather than asymmetric way.

It would be best for the ISP not to be blocking anything, but given that is not a permitted option...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Let me get this straight an ISP is choosing to censor a website of it's own volition out of spite, and people are cheering for it?

This is a protest move, and arguably political. I don't want my ISP to have a tantrum. What if next time it decides that some party or movement doesn't fit it's views and block that?

<comment><USER40> I think the context matters here. The ISP is demonstrating the dangers you've pointed out in site blocking by blocking a site that opposes site blocking -- that's genius. Why wouldn't people cheer? Clearly this is indicative that the ISP wouldn't support any kind of block in the future, even for material that doesn't support its views.

If your argument is that this should be put into law and enforced, I imagine this ISP would also agree with you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> OTOH, maybe blocking sci-hub is for the best. Blocking sci-hub is a bigger inconvenience to scientists, who often take it for granted and use it as a cop out to keep publishing with closed access.

Oh , and maybe google should consider pushing Elsevier's websites down in their search ? I mean almost all articles are indexed in pubmed which even loads faster.

<comment><USER11> 90% of scientists have no choice. Your funding and career as a scientist are directly linked to where you publish (impact factors and so on). So if you have a "choice" between publishing in a major journal published by Elsevier and a no-name but open journal, guess where you send your paper ...

And the "open access" options offered by Elsevier and others are just an insult added to injury - "pay $4000 for making your work publicly accessible" or "pay nothing but then we put your work behind a paywall, will own the copyright on it and will charge you exorbitant subscription fee to access it".

Unless universities and governments start to actually boycott this and outlaw these practices, nothing will change. That's really not in the hands of the individual researchers that are pressed to publish publish publish and collect "points" for their departments by doing so.

<comment><USER42> And I feel like governments can easily change this, simply by requiring that all publicly funded research must be published in open access journals. So, y'know, the people who actually fund it can read it.

As it stands, I'm fully behind Sci-Hub simply because I'm not affiliated with an academic library, and can't afford to pay all their damn fees. It harms individual researchers as well as individuals who are just plain interested in the material.

<comment><USER11> The problem with open access is that typically you, as an author, get a choice:

\- assign copyright to the publisher, have your work paywalled and pay for the access to it via exorbitant subscription fees the university pays

\- ask for having it available as open access - and then the publisher charges you thousands of USD/Euro ($4000 is common) for the privilege as a condition of having it published.

Very few university departments can afford to pay such fees so you can guess where the papers end up.

And if you mean open access journals that don't demand these fees - well, that's of little use to an average researcher when their career depends on _peer reviewed publications in reputable journals_. Publishing it wherever, in a journal nobody heard about with who knows who doing the reviews has zero value and you won't get any credit for that.

<comment><USER42> That's definitely part of the problem, and would inhibit laws since the publishers know they'd get the free money. Perhaps the government could also regulate the publishers and say they can't charge any more for open access than they can for subscription fees?

Or, perhaps the different agencies can create their own journals for their funded projects and let the research appear in them? Basically, create new reputable journals precisely for open access? Or make it where a paper has to be submitted to a "prestigious" one _and_ an open access one a year or so later (i.e. author keeps copyright, period), which would hopefully build up the prestige of them?

I'm not sure the solution, just trying to think of ideas.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mark Pilgrim: how to root Nexus One - <AUTHOR> http://diveintomark.org/archives/2010/02/28/android-extravaganza

<comment><USER2> NOTE: installing custom ROMs can ban your Google account from accessing paid apps on the Android Market (but may not necessarily do so). Google 'Forward Locking' for info.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm wondering if there are any recovery firmwares that just let you install unsigned builds and do _nothing else_. Even this Amon_RA one adds things like extra menus, a partitioning tool, and an "awesome care-bear version".

I don't want any of that, I just want to be able to use applications as root. That's it. No care-bears. Any suggestions?</comment>


Hot-Desking Will Kill Your Company - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonconstable/2019/06/20/how-hot-desking-will-kill-your-company/#35087b8232e9 <comment><USER2> At one point my company moved offices and the technical support team sat next to some of the HR people.

It was a culture clash that never ended. The HR folks complained that the support team never left their desks and we're downright unfriendly, and we're "always on the phone". (That was their job...)

The support team hated the constant noise and drama (such as crying, yes crying, and petty infighting going on in HR land).

Eventually support was moved "because it was closer to the lab".

I can't imagine the results of hot desking.</comment>


Teen boys rated their female classmates based on looks. The girls fought back - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/03/26/teen-boys-rated-their-female-classmates-based-looks-girls-fought-back/ <comment><USER2> _"I feel it when walking home from school, I get catcalled by a man in a truck who repeatedly asks me to get in his car, and follows me home when I don't," said Rose Frank, one of the senior girls_

That's a creep committing a crime: soliciting a minor.</comment>


Apple Lifts the Curtain on App Store Approvals - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/apple-lifts-the-curtain-on-app-store-approvals/ <comment><USER2> _Apple's letter said that "contrary to published reports, Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application, and continues to study it."_

Is this not a blatant lie? I'm sure they were "studying" it really hard before the FCC letter came. Also, how about the other apps such as GV Mobile that were unceremoniously yanked from the App Store around the same time?

<comment><USER3> Google never said that their application was rejected:

 _Apple did not approve the Google Voice application we submitted six weeks ago to the Apple App Store._

(As pointed out by Gruber, over at <http://daringfireball.net/2009/08/apples_fcc_response>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _The company said that 95 percent of iPhone applications are approved within 14 days of being submitted._

This sounds like fun with statistics/semantics. It could just as easily be read to mean that only 5% of apps are approved after a wait time longer than 14 days.</comment>


Creating an iOS application to recognize, detect, and extract license plate - <AUTHOR> https://heartbeat.fritz.ai/license-plate-recognition-detection-and-plate-number-extraction-on-ios-827035bffa41 <comment><USER2> Please don't repost the same content day after day</comment>


TCP incast: What is it? How can it affect Erlang applications? - <AUTHOR> http://www.snookles.com/slf-blog/2012/01/05/tcp-incast-what-is-it/

<comment><USER2> Computer Science includes research into networking. TCP incast is a way of describing network traffic statistical properties, particularly in data centers [1]

A typical CS student's view of the network is that "everything is so random that it averages out." The exact opposite is actually the case most often, to the chagrin of your local network admin.

Network traffic tends to act like everyone knew you were going to youtube right now, and everybody jumped on the network all at once. The statistical term is "self-similarity" and the Hurst Parameter (H) measures how badly a network's traffic is _not_ averaging out, but bursting as if everyone knew you were going to youtube.

It might help to mention another place we see self-similarity: fractals.

This article just breaks down the situation in a cluster. Again, self-similar traffic patterns mean everyone tries to talk at once, and their TCP stacks all back off randomly, so the total bandwidth of the network is poor.

Unfortunately, the blog post says, "What's the remedy? We don't have a good remedy for this yet."

Sure we do. Please google some of the relevant terms for great articles on network traffic analysis and optimization. For example "self similar network traffic" and "hurst parameter." Even the CMU site linked from the blog post has a great writeup under the section "SOLUTIONS" :) [2]

Additionally, as a comment on the blog points out, larger buffers on routers can be a really _bad_ thing! Buffer bloat tends to hide core issues with larger latencies, but not solve them.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-tail_traffic>

[2] <http://www.pdl.cmu.edu/Incast/>

<comment><USER3> That's right -- bufferbloat introduces more problems than "solving" incast.

One of the main reasons for incast is the synchronised bursts+backoffs causing senders to timeout. As the CMU paper pointed out, the 200ms min-RTO is too conservative for senders to recover from timeouts. Reducing it can go a long way in mitigating the incast effect.

There's a project called "R2D2" at Stanford University that proposed adding a tiny shim layer that rapidly retransmits lost TCP segments. It was done in a transparent manner to hide packet losses from TCP thus preventing TCP from experiencing a timeout. You can read more about it here: <http://sedcl.stanford.edu/files/r2d2.pdf>. EDIT: The highlight (relevant to the blog post) is that it is a loadable kernel module requiring no changes to TCP stack!

Disclaimer: I work in the same group, and I am familiar with R2D2.

<comment><USER4> The degenerate/extreme/unrealistic case of Incast is you have switch buffer capacity to store N segments, you talk to M servers that each return one segment, and M >> N. Although RTO is calculated based on RTT and RTTVAR, in the extreme case you can get clumps (and waves) of retransmissions (depending on the properties of the network) such that even eliminating the minRTO altogether may not solve the problem at some scale. In simulation we experimented with adding an adaptive staggering to the exponential backoff algorithm and found that it helped at high server counts [1], but it was only simulation so I'd take that approach with a grain of salt.

The R2D2 work is pretty neat: different than a lot of other approaches I've seen. I'm excited to see how the FPGA implemention works!

Some comments: 1) I think any significant change to the control algorithm requires careful analysis: the variance in throughput with the multi-client experiment looks interesting, though I don't know whether that is steady state. From the graphs, R2D2 suffers more with larger filesizes whereas TCP actually improves. 2) Real datacenters can have very different traffic patterns that can break some of the assumptions about bandwidth uniformity and latency, though it's harder for academics to tackle that. 3) If you are going down the path of TCP offload, you presumably can avoid the overhead of CPU interrupts/timer programming when reducing the RTO into microseconds :). I'd be interested in seeing how R2D2's algorithms/constants work when you're able to reduce the 3ms timer to microseconds in hardware!

Also, if some kernel programmer wants to fix my once-working patch to support microsecond-granularity TCP retransmissions [2], I personally know a bunch of people who would be happy :)

[1] <http://vijay.vasu.org/static/papers/sigcomm147-vasudevan.pdf>

[2] <https://github.com/vrv/linux-microsecondrto>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yikes, that switch is only buffering a third of a millisecond's worth of packets. Easy to see why the connections would collapse.

<comment><USER6> Yeah. Cisco 3750s are notorious for having small buffers. They are more appropriately used for connecting desktops in a office.

Cisco 4948s are better positioned for top of rack and are more comparable to the Juniper EX4200s that were shown to be better in the Tolly Report shown in the post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > ... head-of-line blocking ... What's the remedy?

I don't know anything about Erlang or the software they're dealing with, but I'm surprised that "program your software to avoid unnecessary head-of-line blocking" didn't make the list.

<comment><USER8> It's in the post. Cmd + F "backpressure/feedback mechanism built in to Erlang"

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I get that it may be non-trivial to avoid head-of-line blocking in that context, but I doubt that it's impossible. If it is impossible, maybe Erlang just isn't the best tool for the job.

From what I've read, I think you could create a separate process dedicated to sending stuff to B, and have other processes deal with other clients. It's probably not possible, but it would also be nice if you could detect these hung processes and start more workers to deal with other clients, each dealing with potentially more then one client. (yes, I may be totally wrong)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice article, with good related references-an excellent read-Didn't know about Tcp incast before- good way to start a Saturday morning!

</comment><comment><USER10> Sounds like they're using wrong kind of switches and/or haven't configured ethernet flow control correctly?

</comment><comment><USER11> The question might be, can we use iproute to change TCP's RTO in Linux yet?

<comment> mh- yes.

[http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/networking/ip- sysctl...](http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/networking/ip-sysctl.txt)

look at rto_min, rto_max, rto_initial.

you can do something like:

      ip route replace dev eth0 rto_min 10ms

<comment><USER11> Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Angst and the Empty Set (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/76/language/angst-and-the-empty-set-rp <comment><USER2> It does seem a bit crap: "Science, too, seems to suggest that there exist many "nothings" that have a positive existence: the vacuum, the number zero"

Pretty sure that's confusing the positive existence of a label eg. the word 'vacuum' with the thing itself.

He sort of addresses that: "But according to quantum mechanics, a vacuum contains quantum fluctuations and has non-zero energy."

But this sounds crap too - prior to discovering quantum fluctuations (QF), was space empty or not? No it wasn't in reality because QF must have existed already, but did we consider it empty? Yes because we didn't know about QF.

he goes on

"And in any case, if a vacuum is a region of space, it contains space"

And WTF is space? How can it contain it? It is space.

more

"And just like an empty plastic shopping bag is not nothing, an abstract empty shopping bag is not nothing, either."

Actually it may or may not be depending on what you want. It is a _concept_ , purely a concept, so it can represent utter void if you wish.

This seems a sloppy, un-rigorous use of anything. I'm not impressed.

and he winds up with this

"All of this still leaves us with our original question: Are absences fundamental in perception?"

Always questions. Some 'philosophers' seem to be just engines to turn questions into more questions. I'd prefer answers if you don't mind, and if you can't provide them then at least frame the questions such that some testable hypotheses can be made.

<comment><USER3> >All of this still leaves us with our original question: Are absences fundamental in perception?

If my memory doesn't cheat on me, this question is long answered. Expectations are fundamental in our perception. We (and advanced animals) ignore/stay calm at expected and react to unexpected. I read a book of Vladimir Levi (russian poppsy author, iirc) where he described an experiment with a sleeping cat. It was disturbed by knocks at regular intervals, but then fell asleep according to neural activity, since no threat was posed. After some time knocking suddenly stopped and the cat woke immediately. Even in a sleep its brain expected the sound and when expectations failed, it ringed an alarm.

It is really hard to justify this sort of philosophy which cannot even do its homework.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> >Take any number x, and do not multiply it by any number. Then you get the number x back. Now take x, and multiply it by one. The result is the same (x). Therefore one is nothing. No one would agree with the conclusion of that argument!

One is nothing under multiplication. You just got that "no one" here. JK, this entire argument has a false premise in it.

Take a number x and multiply it by zero. Then you get zero. Divide it back by zero... Therefore zero is anything including nothing, and anything is zero by the rule of identity commutativity. Now wrap your wounds and go on without math analogies.

</comment><comment><USER4> One relevant philosopher not mentioned here is [Henri Bergson]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Bergson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Bergson)), whose critique of the concept of nonbeing distinguished him from the existentialists he spawned. I believe his argument was that nonbeing is a complication of the idea of being (nonbeing = being + negation), rather than a truly distinct and opposed concept, and that philosophical questions having to do with nonbeing were just poorly stated problems.

</comment><comment><USER3> >According to the scientific picture of the world, absences do not seem to be fundamental building blocks of either the concrete (physical) world or of the abstract (mathematical) realm.

Sorry for nitpicking again, but aren't holes in concrete, along tear-tension lines and in pipes there for exactly physical reasons?

<comment><USER5> >According to the scientific picture of the world, absences do not seem to be fundamental building blocks of either the concrete (physical) world or of the abstract (mathematical) realm.

Not only is this assertion vague and devoid of actual meaning beyond a flimsy analogy, but it's also wrong. In a lattice an absence of an electron (literally, a hole) is a physical quasiparticle object which obeys the same rules as a particle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Surprised he didn't mention negative numbers which I always thought of as the mathematical concept of a "hole".

</comment><comment><USER7> The more I read articles like this, the more I am convinced that philosophy, when it turns its eye towards mathematics and the sciences, is complete and utter nonsense, and a total waste of everyone's time.

Philosophical ramblings on scientific notions are akin to how GPT-2 models string together sensible sounding passages, but which upon closer inspection are actually devoid of any useful insight or meaning. Of course, in the act of stringing together esoteric words to make ourselves sound smart, by the rules of brownian motion, once in a blue moon, these ramblings accidentally cross over into formal logic proofs. That is, to put it plainly: we've blindly, or perhaps drunkenly, stumbled our way into the domain of mathematics and the sciences -- behold: Gödel's incompleteness theorems. The shining beacon in a sea of utter and complete nonsense.

<comment><USER8> You might be interested in "Antiphilosophical Dictionary".

Downloadable PDF from this page: [http://www.naur.com/](http://www.naur.com/)

<comment><USER7> Thanks, that was an interesting read. Too bad my parent comment was shadow banned. I think discussing the merits (or lack thereof) of philosophy applied to the sciences would have been far more interesting than what this post's article had to offer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What a delightful little article.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you "un-Google" your digital source of truth? - <AUTHOR> (Sorry if the title doesn't make sense, I'm struggling to put a word to the important place that a Gmail account has in most peoples' lives)
After seeing some harrowing stories of people having their google accounts banned, I'm increasingly concerned about how important my Gmail account is in my life.
Essentially everything digital I have is tied to my Gmail account. Many services even use two-factor auth tied to email, so were I to be locked out, I would be locked out of all of these services.
So it got me thinking about what the safest "source of truth" would be if I were to switch away from Google. Privacy is nice but more important is reliability since losing that loses everything.
In the ideal world, self-hosting your email would be a good option, but you risk reliability there.
It seems to me that the best solution is to use a personal domain rather than an @gmail.com account since if you get google-banned for whatever reason you can just point your DNS at another service.
Not completely without risk, it's easy to accidentally uncheck the auto-renew button with your domain provider. But you do have the option to add many years at a time, so it is easy to deal with that. <comment><USER2> I have the same question.

The problem is picking a company you can be confident in for both:

1\. Competent security

2\. Good support

Google meets 1. but fails at 2. Every time this topic comes up there are many suggestions meeting 2, but without any arguments or evidence that the suggestions also meet 1.

According to HN security guru tptacek the top three most secure companies are Google, Apple, and Microsoft. (Paraphrasing from memory, any errors are my own.)

Apple and Microsoft both have retail locations unlike Google, which could in principle be used as a last resort for recovery, but I don't know if they actually are. Without good process and training that could open a weakness from social engineering, similar to SIM jacking at cell phone shops.

Does anyone here know if Apple, Microsoft, or any other company meets both 1 & 2?

Does anyone here know if Apple or Microsoft account can be recovered at retail locations with an ID? And if that process is social engineering resistant?

Edit: the thing to consider with self hosting is that there is no such thing really. You have to register your domain somewhere. What is _that_ provider using to authenticate you? Not saying you shouldn't have your own domain, just that it's also a thing that can be lost or attacked. You also have to run your VPS or server somewhere. Do you own a datacenter? Do you have a backup generator and redundant internet at your house? Not saying you must but there's always trade-offs.

</comment><comment><USER3> Buy your own domain, dns, and email. DNS made easy is low cost and very reliable. For email use Fastmail. Amazing product.</comment>


Obama Opens NSA's Trove of Data to Entire Intelligence Community - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2017/01/13/obama-opens-nsas-vast-trove-of-warrantless-data-to-entire-intelligence-community-just-in-time-for-trump/ <comment><USER2> This is the US counterpart to the UK's Investigatory Powers Act 2017. The barriers between the hugely invasive but relatively passive intelligence agencies and the more "executive" parts of government are being dismantled. This is an extremely not-good thing. "Turnkey totalitarianism" is now basically one or two crises away.</comment>


Macintosh Garden – Celebrating macintosh abandonware - <AUTHOR> http://macintoshgarden.org/ <comment><USER2> I've been a fan of this site for a long time, great resource if nothing else then for nostalgic purposes.</comment>


Algolia (powering HN Search) just launched a free hacker plan - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/01/search-as-a-service-provider-algolia-debuts-free-plan-opens-west-coast-data-center/

<comment><USER2> This free plan is available from our pricing page: [https://www.algolia.com/pricing#Hacker](https://www.algolia.com/pricing#Hacker)

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome! Very excited to use the hacker plan on some smaller sites.</comment>


MongoDB, count() and the big O - <AUTHOR> http://www.coffeepowered.net/2011/07/17/mongodb-count-and-the-big-o/

<comment><USER2> MongoDB _really_ sucks at count. It's a problem I've run into repeatedly with games that automatically submit highscores (ie without a name field/submit button) using an API call of ours that saves then returns the rank by checking how many scores are higher or lower than X.... on games that get millions of plays.

My solution ultimately ended up being to put the leaderboards that are doing that particular thing into a special "truncate" list that periodically deletes everything after their 50,000th score.

<comment><USER3> I run/built mogade.com, which does the same thing. I blogged about how I switched to Redis for this specific feature (it made it top of HN, weren't you paying attention that day!?). Maybe you'll find it useful, simple test went from over 5minutes to 147ms:

[http://openmymind.net/2011/5/8/Practical-NoSQL-Solving-a- Rea...](http://openmymind.net/2011/5/8/Practical-NoSQL-Solving-a-Real-Problem- w-Mongo-Red/)

<comment><USER2> I distinctly remember The Little MongoDb Book, I must have missed (or not had the problem at that time) the leaderboard one heh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Currently painted myself into a corner with this and trying to find a workaround that I'm happy with. Using mongoid as my ORM and subclassing models seemed like a great idea, that is until I've got 20M instances of these models. Its currently making my dashboard functionality both useless for the user and slowing the system down considerable when its requested.

Understandably this is the cost of using things like mongodb. Until now I've been very happy with the benefits and tradeoffs but the problems with count() for reasonably sized collections was a particularly nasty surprise.

<comment><USER4> Author of the article here. The count caching solved the problem for most practical production purposes (CRITICAL ALLITERATION), but it's still uglier than I'd like. However, if the use case is pagination, then "faking it" once you reach a certain size works well, and is unlikely to be noticed by the user. If your counts are on relatively static pieces of your dataset, then keeping counts manually somewhere (via $inc) will get you that performance back, but obviously at the cost of having to maintain it all manually. Incremental map/reduce isn't a bad idea, but again, depends on the complexity of what's being counted.

All in all, it's something of a sore spot in an otherwise very enjoyable development experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Count can be done with an incremental map-reduced. CouchDB does this automatically, but you could easily (read - with some difficulty) replicate this with any stack.

This would be much easier to do if Mongo had triggers.

</comment><comment><USER6> On a related note, skip(n) is also O(n) so the farther you paginate the slower it gets.

<comment><USER4> Yup, but the slow part of count() is the value comparison over _n_ documents, moreso than the actual iteration. So while the point holds true, it's less of a practical concern.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had the same problem with a dataset of 1m+ records in mongo and really slow pagination with will_paginate. I have since swapped it out with the 'kaminari' gem (<https://github.com/amatsuda/kaminari>). This should solve your problem and is _almost_ as simple as will_paginate to drop in. FYI im using mongoid and not mongo mapper

<comment><USER4> Kaminari should suffer from the same issues; it's still invoking count() on the scope (at least, it appears to, from the source), which is going to trigger the problem. If you're counting the whole collection, it's going to be very fast, since mongo will just return the number of records in the collection, but if you're viewing a subset of the collection, it's still going to iterate over each record and do a value comparison.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You can combine limit() with count by passing true to the count function. So if you only care about counts greater than, say, 10000, you can do db.collection.find({criteria:'123}).limit(10000).count(true) and you will only get back a max of 10000. This puts an upper bound on waiting for some large counts to come back.

<comment><USER4> That's awfully handy. It unfortunately doesn't solve the pagination problem, though. :/

<comment><USER9> it does, if you change your pagination interface to only care if there are more results after this page...

<comment><USER4> If your pagination interface is simply "Next", then why not skip the count all together, limit(N+1) documents, and offer the "Next" button if the result set is N+1 large?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think that SQL databases are bad at count too.

I think the right map reduce view in Couch is good for count.

<comment><USER4> Postgres is notoriously bad at count. MySQL seems to handle it quite well, though, for some reason.

<comment><USER11> This is only true of the MyISAM backend (which has poor concurrency and has more complex table repair). If you use InnoDB, count(*) will be a full table scan, just as in PostgreSQL (as this is a direct tradeoff on those other properties).

<comment><USER12> That's only true if you don't have any WHERE conditions. If you do, and they're indexed (as described by this author), it'll return the count fast.

<comment><USER11> Right... but PostgreSQL does that as well, so it really isn't relevant to a PostgreSQL vs. MySQL comment, which is what I was responding to. ;P PostgreSQL and InnoDB have the exact same constraints and tradeoffs with respect to count() performance, AFAIK.

(That said, an index doesn't make this magically faster... the fast performance that people credit MyISAM with is that asking for the total number of rows in a table was O(1), as its lack of intricate transaction concurrency allowed it to just keep a global counter; one which of course was difficult and costly to repair after an unclean outage. In comparison, that indexes can optimize a count() over a where is obvious and true of any sane database engine, whether it be PostgreSQL or any of the common MySQL backends.)

<comment><USER13> There is a big difference with regards to PostgreSQL and InnoDB when you have an indexed COUNT(*) clause.

MySQL can do index only queries, whereas PG currently can not (it is part of the next release iirc). This can often result in a fraction of the disk I/O being done for MySQL.

<comment><USER11> Interesting; I did not realize that InnoDB supported covering indexes. That said, it is still "only" a constant factor: the difference between O(n) (looking at just the index) and O(2n) (scanning the index, but having to also pull that original record, which you now know the exact position of, to see if it is alive for the current transaction).

Thanks for pointing this out, though! I'm going to go look into how InnoDB manages to handle that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> /rant/ You know what I think is "a big fat pile of suck"? This guy and his hack blog post. Congrats, you figured out what O(n) means. You know, this stuff is not magic. You can't magically say, hey database, give me everything I want and do it for me immediately. Oh, and make it open source, aka free. Oh, and on and on and on.

This stuff is hard. Nothing comes for free. I don't even use mongodb in any production project and am really feeling for them. All these pseudo functional developers think they know how things should work and then get all indignant when stuff doesn't work the way they want it to or think it should.

In this season of Thanks, let us give thanks to the real engineers who make these databases (and other software) and then give them out to everyone for free. Go send a polite email to their mailing lists and say "Dear OpenSource Developer, Thank you for all your hard work."

Re. this specific problem - cache your data and stop crying about it or simply don't present counts to users.

<comment><USER4> Hi, big fat pile of hack-posting author here. I know it's not magic. I'm a huge fan of Mongo. I blog about the issues I have with it, because the issues I don't have with it are far less interesting. The solution wasn't "AMG, MONGO SUX", it was "here's how I band-aided the problem".

The impetus for this particular post was that it was somewhat surprising that counts were still doing full scans, even if the query conditions were on an indexed field. My expectation was that the index might have some information on how big a particular part of the index tree is (given two bounds), but it turns out that it doesn't, so you end up looking at each document and doing inspection per row. This isn't normally a problem, but the comparison is relatively slow, so the whole thing starts to drag down faster than you'd normally expect.

When the problem is hidden below several levels of library/ORM candy coating, it's not going to be immediately obvious that this _is_ a problem, especially if the queries against that field are otherwise performant thanks to proper use of indexes. It's non-obvious, and given that someone else found it interesting enough to post here, I'm apparently not the only person in the world to ever have this problem. There are multiple open tickets in the Mongo JIRA system, as well as multiple discussions on this topic on the mailing list. This isn't me whining that 10gen won't fix my software, it's an acknowledgment of the problem and steps towards fixing it.

10gen themselves have acknowledged via the mailing lists that counts are slower than they should be, and it's on the list of things to improve. Until then, we have to make do with workarounds.

<comment><USER15> I think that more than the content of your post, siculars is responding to the somewhat inflammatory title. As soon as I saw the title I thought, "Someone is going to be complaining about mongoDB having a slow operation, and it is going to be upvoted endlessly because mongoDB is webscale." Upon closer inspection, it became clear that this title is only inflammatory because it is on HN, and also that the title was not designed for HN: on your blog, it is simply a description of what the post is about. On HN, it becomes a honeypot.

@cheald, clearly this isn't your fault, and you don't control the tenor of the discussion of mongoDB. What follows isn't a criticism of you, but more a general comment.

I don't think that criticism of mongoDB should be stifled on HN (it clearly still has huge flaws--the lack of granularity when grabbing the write lock comes to mind), but it seems like it's a little hard to have an intelligent conversation in this context. It might make sense to encourage HN to discuss mongo in a way that it's not criticizing a performance detail (no database can do everything for everyone), eg where it can be compared against other databases. When criticizing a performance detail, it might make sense to move that discussion to the MongoDB Jira, where your voice can actually help influence decision making.</comment></comment></comment>