Is it better to avoid washing your clothes? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-48908413 <comment><USER2> > "Powder detergent creates more friction between the clothes [during > washing], so more fibres are released, whereas liquid is smoother. The less > friction there is in general, the fewer fibres are released."

Is this true or just something completely made up? Sounds like bs to me, powdered detergent is not sand, it quickly dissolves when it comes in contact with water.

<comment><USER3> Funnily enough, a large part of it is actually clay (wet sand :-), sometimes a clay called kaolin, mostly to give it a nice white color.

Whether that actually generates friction or not, I don't know

<comment><USER4> No, at used temperatures kaolin will dissolve pretty well. However it does clog filters and causes waste as it counters water softeners. Then you require longer washing with longer drying cycle, which in fact does damage fibers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Impossible if you have any skin conditions. I suffer from eczema (fortunately mild now, but in the past I was seriously considering suicide), and one of the things that reliably trigger a flare-up are unwashed clothes covered in dust mite excrement. Neither sun nor cold will help with that, only good old washing.

<comment><USER6> Did your eczema improve due to age, or improved practices and/or medicine?

(I'm quite far away from considering suicide, but I wouldn't mind a better quality of life)

<comment><USER7> I had severely dry skin and eczema to the point where my bedsheets were often covered with bloody spots because I was constantly scratching while asleep...

What worked for me eventually was _not_ bathing/showering regularly. I started showering at most 1-3 times a week but only with water, no soap, except on the pubic areas for hygienic reasons. Might sound disgusting, but it turns out that daily showering, especially with detergents, can harm your skin by upsetting its microbiome.

I still have drier skin than other people, especially in winter, but my eczema have pretty much disappeared.

However, if my eczema would return, I would definitely try out bleach washes: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_hypochlorite_washes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_hypochlorite_washes)

The studies endorsing dilute bleach baths came out well after my eczema resolved, so I have no first-hand experience with it, but it sounds cheaper and safer than corticosteroids.

<comment><USER8> N=1, very mild symptoms etc, but I rinse with diluted apple cider vinegar after shampoo and sometimes soap since the skin is naturally acidic. The slight scalp itch goes away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> And yet, stains happen. Smells accumulate on things we wear. I cycle to work every day, shouldn't I wash my tshirts? Ask my coworkers!

The solution would be to stick to cotton, denim, wool, and limit synthetic fibers. I cannot handwash everything.

<comment><USER10> Proponents claim sticking them in the freezer kills the germs. I'm not sure I'm convinced - I'd love to see some research om the topic.

<comment><USER11> It doesn't work on food why would it work on clothes?

Slow maybe, but not kill.

<comment><USER12> I don't think the bacteria are eating the clothes, they're probably eating your sweat and shed skin. Leave them at it for a few days and they should naturally starve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The one time I bought expensive jeans the guy told me to do this. Told me to put them in the freezer instead of washing them to preserve their color. Luckily I didn't have to deal with the problem as I got too fat for the jeans before they had the chance to fade.

<comment><USER14> I have a few pairs of expensive jeans that I wear _a lot_ and wash maybe once every 12 months. They're great and don't smell or anything.

<comment><USER15> Don't they feel gross? I can feel when clothes are dirty, even thick pants, and it's not very pleasant. I doubt putting them in the freezer fixes it.

<comment><USER14> Nah they feel great. On the occasion something happens like I hang out near a fire and they get really smelly I just air them out for a day and it's back to 100%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ok a little tabloid-y but definitely piqued my intellectual curiousity. Not that given how much I can sweat anyone will thank me for not washing but still it's interesting to see such a simple ingrained idea (wash clothes) being challenged with some degree of rationality - it reminds me of the question what taboos are so engrained in our society we simply don't see them

<comment><USER16> It's the old way of doing it though. Pre washing machine clothes wash tended to be underwear only, and brush and air the rest. Partly because washing was a more brutal process - boiling, wringing etc that the outer layers couldn't handle.

<comment><USER17> Eh? Maybe it was different in the West but in India everyone without washing machines would still have their clothes hand washed.

<comment><USER16> There weren't man made fibres, so cotton or wool, silk if wealthy, was used for underwear. Trousers, jackets, dresses, and the rest were mostly wool. Many people only had two sets of outerwear - one of which was kept for outside work and for church: their "Sunday best". Dyes were often non-colour fast.

Wool and silk doesn't like being boiled or wrung, or even heavily agitated. Underwear didn't need to stay in shape, outerwear did. Cotton is far more tolerant of violent washing.

India's climate would, no doubt, see far less use of wool and multiple layers, far more of lighter weight cottons than Europe. Southern Europe probably somewhere in between. :)

<comment><USER17> Yeah, that makes sense. Wool also seems to have strong antimicrobial properties so it doesn't really need frequent cleaning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > recommends sticking jeans in the freezer in order to kill germs instead

That's a myth, freezing jeans in a consumer fridge does not kill bacteria. For example, listeria can grow in both a refrigerator or a freezer.

Fortunately, the sun can kill bacteria, so take it outside and hang it to air.

<comment><USER19> The UV from the sun is what kills them, it's also great for breaking down dye and fabrics. It is doubtful the UV will reach all the cracks and crevices.

<comment><USER20> Slightly tangential, but can anyone on HN tell me what particle at what energy is most effective for killing bacteria while leaving pants unharmed? Presumably bombarding your jeans with gamma rays would work, but can those of us without easy access to radioactive substances use a microwave instead?

<comment><USER21> Yes, a microwave is very efficient at killing germs, if not one of the best and most reliable solutions available to consumers. Just watch out carefully for things on your jeans (or clothes in general) that you shouldn't put into a microwave please, like buttons made of iron for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A rich heiress who has likely spent a lot of time on private jets in her lifetime is pretty low on the list of people Ill take climate change advice from.

<comment><USER23> It seems like there is a sense that environmental/climate problems affect everyone, including wealthy people, and her ideas sound reasonable, constructive and fair. An initiative to wash clothes in a way that causes less ecological damage could very well come from the fashion industry (as it may require new types of fabric etc.).

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

<comment><USER24> The opposite of the ad hominem also applies. Why is she eminently qualified to provide the correct answer to this particular problem?

<comment><USER25> Because she's a fashion designer and surely that's _one_ perspective worth considering with respect to pretty much anything related to clothes? Not only is she eminently qualified to talk about it from a fashion point of view, she probably has good practical experience with fabrics and wear and tear (longevity being one of the reasons she advises against it).

It's not like she's an actress telling people vaccines cause autism or something.

<comment><USER4> I'd take a word of a material engineer and chemical process engineer way over anything she has to say... Fashion is not really a credential. They make clothes, not break them.

<comment><USER23> Sure, as long as we are focussed on the issue and are mentally prepared to change our ways a little bit, if needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm looking forward to a consumer grade Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Dry cleaner. Dissolve out the oils trapped in your clothing, sterilize them and perhaps deposit the oils where they can be used as fuel. It would probably work for other items such as soiled machinery, oil extraction from herbs and food, etc.

<comment><USER27> Kickstarter? But yeah, a small-scale device you can have in a regular self- service laundromat would be great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Please let's not let not washing your clothes become the trendy thing to do. Public transport can already smell bad enough. Just wash your clothes, keep smelling like flowers and pick something else to be different about.

<comment><USER29> Not saying people shouldn't wash their clothes, but that flower (or other) smell you seem to find pleasant isn't pleasant for everybody. Don't know why, genetically probably, but I really dislike most synthetic smells. It's also not just the smell but also the fact it's constantly there, sort of annoying me. I'd rather have people wash their clothes using water (lots of clothes don't seem dirty enough to really require soap, as far as I can tell) and then hang them outside to dry. Though I realize that is not an option for the majority of the population. But it would me nice if most of those products would smell less, or if at least people would use less. It's not because the marleting department of a product decides X is the right amount to advertise, that it's also what is really required,.

<comment><USER30> They don't need to wash with only water. The best solution would be to use perfume free products for people with Asthma. I don't have Asthma but I always buy products for sensitive skin with zero perfume and no colors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Aren't we better off not using microfibre plastics to make clothes in the first place?

<comment> bjelkeman-again Yeah, I have been thinking that too. But something like cotton also has a big impact on the environment. I don't have enough info to mske a meaningful comparison of impacts though. [http://www.theworldcounts.com/counters/cotton_environmental_...](http://www.theworldcounts.com/counters/cotton_environmental_impacts/environmental_issues_with_cotton)

<comment><USER32> Cotton doesn't have the same lingering looking lasting effects.

<comment><USER4> It's all fine as long as your clothes are reused, even into rags. The very flexible microfibers _probably_ are not a hazard on the level of microplastics.

Edit: they actually do pose this exact problem, though the filter in washing machine is supposed to catch all that. It doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The real problem is

There is NON BIODEGRADABLE plastic in everything!

Stop blaming the consumers. And start making plastic PRODUCERS pay the negative externalities. Make an international fund to freaking tax the polluters and redistribute to other countries to reward reforestation.

Same with carbon And everything else I am tired of plastic straw and bag BANS while plastics and fossil fuels are used every day.

You will see biodegradable plastics appear faster than you can say "progress".

It's like Andrew Yang's idea to tax the gun makers for each gun death.

</comment><comment><USER34> I haven't used a conventional laundry machine in about a year. The way I clean things, everything looks brand new, the microplastics are captured, and stuff is smelling good.

At first, I just used a 5 gallon bucket from Home Depot, put some clothes in there, hot water, added All Free & Clear + Clorox2 Stain Remover and Color Booster, then shook about 100 times.

More recently I use one of those hand-crank-turned contraptions* that rotates on a stand (multiple are available from Amazon).

> But most importantly - never, ever, tumble dry.

When its time to dry things, I just hang them up on a drying rack and let them drip into a caserole pan.

When the dripping is done (roughly 45 minutes) I re-arrange them for best ventilation and point a small fan towards them, almost everything is dry within 2 hours.

You can use a GuppyFriend micropastic bag to catch the microplastics.

What got me wondering the most is that the dyes often come out of the fabrics, When you hand wash things its a bit more obvious. I wonder what their eventual fate is.

* none of these are really that great, lots of room for improvement here.

<comment><USER2> You don't rinse?

Sounds itchy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think we should be teaching how to care about the clothing properly kids in school. I have learned it myself and I am sure I am doing it completely wrong.

Unfortunately, various industries don't really want you to know. They want to sell you more stuff.

</comment><comment><USER36> > Instead, she says, the "rule" is to "let the dirt dry and you brush it off".

So her point is that people should just get used to wearing "dirty" clothes. I think a better first start is to recalibrate what people mean by "dirty". Most people I know (and certainly myself in the past) would usually wash many clothes (shirts especially) after a single wear regardless of whether they needed it. Now I only wash my clothes when they need it (which means there is some stain or it smells).

Of course maybe we should get used to wearing clothes that are visibly dirty, but there seem to be lower hanging fruit.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's sad that the myth of freezers killing germs is still a thing. I wonder how many deaths (or at least general "health incidents") per year are a consequence of this. The fact it's from BBC and they quote _someone_ that's apparently a professor (they don't even mention the profession, just some "head of fashion design curse", whatever that means ...) will make many more people believe such false claims and spread the myth and the implicated problems it brings even further.

</comment><comment><USER37> >Instead, she says, the "rule" is to "let the dirt dry and you brush it off".

A privilege reserved for people who live in areas that never need air conditioning. On the handful of occasions I've been forced by necessity to wear the same pair of jeans for multiple days the dried salt buildup is enough to draw blood by abrading my thighs.

Then again I don't wear anything but 100% cotton so I'm not the audience she has in mind either.

<comment><USER11> Why do you wear jeans in hot weather?

<comment><USER37> Briars. Insects. Safety regulations. And despite the many catcalls from attractive women my fashion advisor says the boots and jorts look is just so two-thousand-and-late.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The main problem described as modern clothing releases microfibers during washing. Why not just move to natural fiber as humans did for centuries?

<comment><USER39> People like stretchy fabrics which can't be made durable without synthetic fibers. Also cotton sucks to work out in, synthetics let sweat evaporate much more effectively.

<comment><USER38> Well, people like to smoke, drink and eat junk food. We have to to see beyond our liking at some point. To have a set of synthetics for a workout is not the same to have all synthetic clothing. And even on this, I would argue that while handling sweat better still it affects your skin.

<comment><USER4> The solution is to wear something tougher than polyester. Polyamides and nylon are much more resilient and should not get damaged by washing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Do these people not sweat?

<comment><USER19> I don't think the ultra rich really do break a sweat except when wearing their lulu lemon exercise gear. I doubt their clothes get muddy or stained very often. They probably have so many clothes that not wearing something for a month is not a hardship. Most likely, their maid is covertly washing their clothes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I now have two Turms t-shirts worth equivalent of 10 USD with both hydrophobic and antibacterial properties. They don't feel dirty even after sweating in them a few days. I'm determined to test them for 20 or more wears. But I wonder if they are counterproductive for the environment with the coatings.

</comment><comment><USER41> Can we not just install better filters in our water treatment facilities?

</comment><comment><USER42> Oh good, I finally have a justification for my behavior.</comment>


Ask HN: Why if visitors return, site does not grow - <AUTHOR>

I have a blog in blogger that has a very attractive subject, and it shows in the returning visits, but for some reason as the days go by the total number of visitors does not grow that much, has anyone have an idea why? How come is this even mathematically possible? <comment><USER2> Guest post on similar blogs with more traffic. If done right, they get free content, you get a link or two back to your site.

Use blog carnivals. blogcarnival.com

Make sure you point users to the subscription option clearly. That helped my numbers rise...

</comment><comment><USER3> Keep writing. Thats all I found I could do with my blog. I just have to keep writing and the more I write, the more posts I create the more search traffic I get.

Keep working on it.

How long have you been writing?

<comment><AUTHOR> About a year. I guess you guys are right as long as you keep doing it seo becomes easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> mathematically possible? Easy you have reached the X people interested in the subject and no one new comes to read the blog. Probably you don't have enough juice to get good ranking for search terms so not much search traffic is going your way.</comment>


"So you're going to write an iPhone app…" Tips from a dev using a preview of the SDK - <AUTHOR> http://furbo.org/2008/02/11/so-youre-going-to-write-an-iphone-app/

<comment><USER2> It doubt he's using a preview of the _real_ SDK, he's probably using the hacked SDK.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right.

His MobileTwitterific site says he's using the toolchain from the iPhone Dev Wiki. I incorrectly assumed that the headline (taken from reddit) was true since the article seemed so detailed.

<comment><USER3> Anyone using the real SDK who posted this kind of article would immediately be sued by Apple. But, more importantly, the kind of people who would have early access to the iPhone SDK just would never write something like this, especially not in their name. Nobody in the mac community wants to make an enemy of Steve Jobs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like a desktop guy running head on into the embedded world. And not even all that tough an embedded situation...GUI, 64 _megs_ , etc...

<comment><USER5> Yeah embedded is definitely different - and a lot harder.

I did a startup once where we were developing a new display technology, and my partner (who is incidentally the greatest hacker I have ever come across) had to fit all software, including screen drivers, communication, logic, etc. into 2K of ROM and 4K of RAM.

64 megs? phew... That's 16.000 times as much as we had...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> tip - dont bother building an iphone app - the installed base is tiny - you'd be better off targeting the wider mobile market ?</comment>


Biz Stone talks about Twitter's monetization strategy (audio) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0056hzb/Business_Daily_Twitter_Turns_its_Mind_to_Profits/

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe the BBC DRM allows this to be played worldwide, but can't verify that from here in the UK. Interview is the first 9 minutes of audio.</comment>


What IDE do you use for your JavaScript/AJAX development? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Netbeans has very good JavaScript support and in browser JavaScript debugging. It is the only one I know of so far that does in-browser debugging. VS and IE do but IE's debugger is primitive. Netbeans allows you to debug and trace through the entire stack in one location. I went through a lot of them Aptana, Eclipse, et. al. and found that Netbeans provided the best JavaScript development tools in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER3> Where applicable, I use MS Visual Studio - applies "intellisense" to your JavaScript code and supports "step though" code debugging with access to variable values.

</comment><comment><USER4> JetBrains WebStorm. Basically a stripped down version of IntelliJ IDEA for javascript. Moved to it from Aptana and have never looked back.

</comment><comment><USER5> VIM as well. Since you're advised to keep everything in one file, handling 5000+ lines of code requires a snappy editor.

<comment><USER6> Working on a 5000+ line file sucks. It's much better to have multiple files and serve a concatenated + minified version to the browser

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Aptana Studio (<http://aptana.com>)

</comment><comment><USER8> Emacs

</comment><comment><USER9> VIM</comment>


Ask HN - what tech skills are in demand, for freelancing? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a semi regular here, posting under a different name, because I am also a full time employee.
I am thinking of freelancing because a) my day job is very boring (I can't leave for a few more months) and  b) I could use some extra cash.
I'm primarily a PHP programmer (the usual - php, mysql, oracle) but I have worked with Java in the past.
Given my skillset, is it possible to get freelance work?  If no, what tech skills should I pick up?  I feel small when people put down PHP all the time.  I am confident I can learn Rails and Android (have spent some time with both in the past) if PHP is not enough to get interesting, paying freelance work.
I'm good in communicating, understanding requirements, managing time etc.  It is just that I am not so confident my tech skills are enough for freelancing.
Please advise. <comment><USER2> Pick up a skill that makes money rather than another tech stack. If you're capable of selling, planning, and implementing SEO strategies like, e.g., scalable content generation, you can charge triple what the "technical" skill involved would merit.

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand SEO, but I don't understand what exactly you mean by "scalable content generation".

Also, I never imagined that SEO work would pay thrice (!!!!) technical skills. I should definitely look into this more. Are there any other non-technical skill that are in such demand? I am willing to learn anything, as long as it is interesting and there is scope for finding work.

<comment><USER3> The difference is that with a technical skill it's hard to break away from $x/hr, but if you can leverage the technical skills into areas that have a direct impact on revenue for your client, you can charge some percentage of the revenue increase, which can be way more than your hourly rate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ruby on Rails. Get the Head first Rails book then the Agile programmer book, see amazon. There 2 excellent Ruby books:Beginning Ruby and Pragmatic Ruby but you can do those later.

Then practice like hell. meaning do each project in each book 10 times until you understand how to do it without look at the book. Then do some screencasts. Put all your projects even the ones from books and screencasts online. In the meantime, make something, anything. Take a project from one the books and modify it. Then make another thing. Then make something that someone else already made with rails.

Now you have 3 sites in your portfolio. A month has passed.

Send the links to your projects and a brief email to the companies that do rails regardless if they have opens or not.

Also list the 3 things unique about you. Why should they hire you versus another person who also knows some RoR?

With this you should be able to a choice from several junior rails positions.</comment>


Sequoia Capital Invests In Bump Technologies (YC W08) - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/24/sequoia-capital-invests-in-bump-technologies-the-iphone-tapping-data-swap-app/

<comment><USER2> It looks like BUMP received $3 million on a $10 million post-money valuation from Sequoia. It is a very nice app.

If Apple offered this app as a standard feature on all iPhones it would really set the iPhone apart even more from the competition in their advertising. Hopefully BUMP's IP on this is very solid, it can't be very hard to duplicate this feature for the customer under a different set of instructions.

</comment><comment><USER3> congrats to the team that will kill the biz card.

<comment><USER4> That's supposing everyone has an Iphone or Ipod Touch. You guys need to get out of the valley, heck, even take a trip out of the USA.

I love the idea, love the product. But will they kill the business card? Not in 10 years...not even 20.

I do see it happening if they become the standard. Not clear on how that can happen.</comment></comment>


Taste is increasingly dictated by algorithms - <AUTHOR> https://www.racked.com/2018/4/17/17219166/fashion-style-algorithm-amazon-echo-look <comment><USER2> > No one is original anymore, not even you.

Article opens with the quote, but that's the essence of a vast amount of art through the ages: only the thinnest bit of art is truly original, and looking to get rid of the non-original bits generates absurd junk.

I would argue that the cult of original and the cult of individualism-via- consumerism is largely an 1800s ideology filtered through post-war marketing. "only by consuming a unique set can you truly be yourself" is a fascinating and materialist way of looking at the world.

Gently, I would suggest that we are neither original nor should we find our identity in material goods.

Elsewhere in this thread the word "serendipity" is used - this is a true observation in my opinion. The internet removes serendipity, replacing it with "you may also like". While libraries have librarians making selections, they also allow for a free-range wandering over the stacks, rather than keeping you in one specific area of "you may also like". That is something worth thinking about, and, I think, solvable.

<comment><USER3> > they also allow for a free-range wandering over the stacks, rather than > keeping you in one specific area of "you may also like"

You mean like the "Random" links on Wikipedia and Reddit?

<comment><USER2> no.

libraries are curated, organized, and structured to allow browsing.

random does nothing of the above.

meaning is a polyspectral space, and libraries are a lower-dimensional reduction of that to allow perusal through multiple bands of meaning. while the result may be arbitrary, it's within the bounds of the arc in the meaning- space. In addition, the curation of books means that arrant nonsense is culled (hello r/ooer), and highly niche bits of meaning are stored in appropriate places - usually residing in academic journals housed in university libraries.

<comment><USER4> Libraries are also tiny though. Subreddits also have curated lists of related subreddits in sidebar. /r/popular and /r/all give you a sample of posts from various subreddits (curated by users), which then link to related subs. Each sub itself is a browsable and sortable collection of related content.

<comment><USER2> Yes, definitely. I would consider a subreddit to be something _like_ a daily magazine, and the curated lists to be something _like_ a collection of them.

Libraries.... are not precisely tiny. Depends on the library. And a shocking amount of internet statements have a shockingly small entropy.....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a film buff and I think so. A lot of people don't seem to go out of their way to obtain films aside from looking at Netflix recommendations. Back when I used OkCupid I could tell when something older went on because it immediately got listed under "favorite movies" by a certain type of hipster ;)

(I distinctly remember how overnight everyone looooovveeed Amelie when it went up)

Sadly it's a lot harder to find new (or new to me) films serendipitously. With the closing of rental shops, the last bastion seems to be the DVD section at local libraries.

<comment><USER6> Do you think people actually like—or are claiming to like—a movie just because Netflix recommends it? To me, it seems more likely that this just reflects increase availability: more people suddenly have access to a movie, so more watch it and some of those will like it.

I can see how people, especially on a dating site, would feel pressured to mention something highbrow, but the social pressure itself isn't coming from Netflix.

<comment><USER7> They weren't pressured to like it, but without the "algorithm" showing it to them, they never would have discovered it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't see a significant difference between algorithmic and old-guard mass- media taste-makers. Your personality reflects the profile used to target you with ads for objects like Eames chairs and MCM consoles. Your same personality pushes you to choose Architecture Review, which contains objects of the same style. Fashion magazines get paid by advertisers to showcase products of a certain style and cache even in their non-ad sections. The thin layer of a Vogue editor doesn't shield you from market forces buying your taste and making you feel like the sort of person who chooses a certain style. The homogenizing tendency of mass-media is present in either circumstance.

Most people aren't underground reading fashion zines or choosing to follow edgy fashion designers from Serbia. The dominant culture perpetuates itself either way.

</comment><comment><USER9> Pop-up galleries designed for instagram selfie appeal, restaurant trendiness where one ramen place is the "internet approved" one and has an hour long line, and a place two blocks away with a different style - but not really worse, just not as trendy - has no line at all, etc - there are definitely ways in which there's more of a hive mind than ever. The meme popularity of bacon on the internet, even. For a more local example: growing up, Whataburger was just another Texas fast food option, not a tightly-held piece of people's online identities.

But at the same time, there's a lot of opportunities for increased individualism. You can buy clothes and furniture from far more places. You can much more exhaustively search restaurants. You have way more options in what you watch and listen to. Even the existence of "mainstream hipster" taste in movies is a change compared to just "maintstream" being a single thing.

So is personal taste really less present than it used to be? I don't think so, I think the domains just shifted around a bit.

</comment><comment><USER10> On the topic of algorithms helping you discover your own 'taste' (whatever that may be), some time ago when the topic came up on HN someone linked this interesting paper: "Recommender Systems for Self-Actualization" [1], which suggests some methods how filter bubbles could be avoided. I really liked it and its suggestions like having extra recommendation lists for things the user will likely hate, items that are very polarizing in the user base or things no one ever rated before.

[1] [https://sci- hub.tw/https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=295918...](https://sci- hub.tw/https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2959189)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool paper. Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reminds me of this [https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/3/12325104/airbnb- aesthetic-...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/3/12325104/airbnb-aesthetic- global-minimalism-startup-gentrification) article on how airbnb has changed the aesthetics of certain places. I feel like fears of algorithmic based fashion is overgrown but articles like this and that one show that something did happen that resulted in taste in certain places converging onto a similar style.

</comment><comment><USER12> Really interesting article. Weird thing is that in the social media era, humans ourselves seem behave in algorithmic ways. My Twitter feed is full of Beyonce worship every few months even though I've been mostly-indifferent to her music for 20 years. But when people come together like a hive and retweet how they excited they are about some shared interest, there doesn't need to be a recommendation engine pushing a specific artist—it's just people using tools to amplify their voices, creating the same algorithmic-bias effect. To paraphrase the Soylent Green line, "Algorithms—it's people!"

<comment><USER13> When I was in Japan in 2011, nearly every girl I talked to had the same favorite singer -- Lady Gaga. I noticed that Japanese pop culture diversifies in time rather than space: something reaches critical mass and then sweeps the entire nation like cherry blossom season, only to be swept away by the next big thing weeks later. Also trending at that time were the anime One Piece and the Disney character Stitch (who had just gotten his own anime which was the canon sequel to Lilo and Stitch and takes place in Okinawa rather than Hawaii). Previous trends are traceable even after they've left Japan: in the late 1980s, Nickelodeon suddenly picked up several shows featuring koalas. What had happened was, a few years earlier, an Australian zoo donated a breeding pair of koalas to a Japanese zoo, and that triggered "koala mania" in Japan with koala-themed anime becoming popular. A similar mania involving hamsters struck in the early 2000s.

Japanese people are individuals, but Japanese _society_ favors the collective, and the person who goes along to get along. Accordingly, people are rewarded for adding their voices to the throngs supporting something that is already popular or favored by the elite, much less so for cultivating individual tastes, which are pushed to the sidelines (think back-alley Akihabara with its tsundere maid cafés and other businesses of peculiar interest).

In the USA we put high value on "being an individual like everyone else". Social media has simply amplified the "like everyone else" bit by making it easy to keep track of what everyone else is doing. Something that's been ongoing in Japan for decades if not centuries. (The koseki can be considered a form of paper-and-ink social media.)

<comment><USER14> > Japanese pop culture diversifies in time rather than space

That's not diversity, it's simply pop culture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not mine. I'm still really fond of quicksort and BFS, and marvel at their elegance rather frequently.

</comment><comment><USER16> I cant speak for all mediums, but Spotify's "Related Artists" feature has grown my personal taste in music more then anything else ever has. The ability to easily find similar artists to the one I am currently enjoying drastically lowered the barrier to entry for me and music.

<comment><USER17> I've always found playlists or indie music stations with actual DJs worked better than Spotify's algorithmic selections.

Same with movie/TV show recommendations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a really thought provoking article. I especially like the reference to the movie The Devil Wears Prada, because in essence, what is being described is a very complex algorithm embedded in a large group of people observing a lot of things (fashion trends).

The question raised in my mind is this: where is the tipping point at which the answers / predictions in that algorithm become stale or shift rapidly and require an answer that is orthogonal to previews answers (!) but still "correct". This tipping point seems to be what taste is about to some degree. ..so now we need an algorithm to predict the tipping point; its algorithms all the way down.

</comment><comment><USER19> It is pretty difficult for Netflix or Amazon to have recommendations that appeal to me because their datasets are limited to their specific domains. In reality, my tastes and interests pull from such a wide range of fields.

One year, I decided to only watch movies filmed in, or about, the state where I live. One year I caught up on famous horror movies I hadn't seen. None of these ideas was "suggested" to me directly. Nor, do they really seem related to each other. For me, at least, it seems a long way off before computer algorithms are affecting the way my brain chooses something it likes or wants to try.

<comment><USER20> Yes, I see this issue with Netflix very often. Watching Narcos doesn't mean I'm interested in every mediocre drug-related documentary. Instead I'm looking for high quality, detailed, in-depth productions covering a wide array of very different themes, topics, locations and periods.

Algorithms don't seem to be able to solve this problem yet. Certainly not those used at Netflix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > That we are in the midst of this shift in taste might help explain our > larger mood of instability and paranoia (or is it just me?).

It's just you. There's always been a mainstream and an underground. Now the underground is _much_ larger and more diverse and arguably the mainstream is a bit better (due to said diversity).

Source: I lived through the 90s and was basically forced by Clear Channel to listen to Ozzy Osbourne 24/7 on every station on the dial.

<comment><USER22> Great point, they didn't have algorithms deciding our music in the 1990s, instead you had Clear Channel. Radio in the 1990s was the same 40-60 songs played over and over. Then for TV you basically had the 4 major networks,FOX Friday Night, Must See TV, TGIF, and all the rest.

People don't remember how much that sucked.

<comment><USER23> Actually, in the 1990s was the peak of major commercial broadcast networks with 6, not 4 (the old big 3, plus Fox, plus UPN And The WB.)

<comment><USER22> Ah yes, the Wayans Brothers channel and the Star Trek Voyager channel

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It would probably help the argument if all of the 'data-driven' products: dropshipped watches, Echo Look, whatever the hell 'Svpply' is, and virtual Instagram influencers weren't completely obscure. None of these things represent mainstream culture in any way, and as a result this article starts to look more like an exercise in the writer showing how smart and well- connected he is.

</comment><comment><USER25> No, social media exposes us to a bigger world making it more easily to find people like you online that share the same interests or "taste". If you only take into account people on your close social circle, you will still be "the one with that unique taste" around your bubble like everyone used to think they had -a unique taste- before social media.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think lot of media seems to misunderstand the idea of algorithms - They are not there to do the job for you, they are there to help you.

Taking the dating example from the article - it speaks less about intimacy and more about people's expectation. Does matching means a sure shot chance of intimacy? Not really. Algo thinks that two particular people might go well together. A role previously played by a mutual friend.

Similarly, there are tons of people who want to wear better clothes but given lack of knowledge turn to YT or a personal stylist. So, the app might help them make better choices. Surely, people who are stylish might never use the app.

That said, technology companies do have a habit of overselling features sending media into a tizzy.

</comment><comment><USER27> I find the illustrations in this somewhat profoundly undermine the thesis of this article, given that they are rooted in the "vaporwave" aesthetic, which basically comes from Millennials sorting through their faint memories of the 80s culture they were born into.

</comment><comment><USER28> This submission is rather more substantive than the titles it's had so far ("Have Algorithms Destroyed Personal Taste?", which we renamed to "Style Is an Algorithm" per [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)), so I've taken another crack at it. If anyone suggests a better title—one that is accurate, neutral, and preferably uses representative language from the article—we can change it again.

</comment><comment><USER29> These algorithems don't destroy our taste, they shape it. If it woundnt be for IMDb recommendations, I'd be wasting a lot more time watching bad movies.

<comment><USER30> _If it woundnt be for IMDb recommendations, I 'd be wasting a lot more time watching bad movies._

You'd spend more time watching movies that registered IMDb users didn't rate highly. That's only "bad movies" if you enjoy films for the same reasons that registered IMDb users give them high scores on IMDb. There are plenty of films that don't score highly on there that _millions_ of people who are a bit less invested in the film industry absolutely love. Maybe you would too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> When it comes to these things, I remember when I was younger, how "metal" always was an interesting study object. I would have to decide myself which of it was "artsy" and which of it was just "for the masses", and the further back you go, the more you find that it's not mutually exclusive. E.g. we're not going to argue over the Beatles, Pink Floyd or Iron Maiden.

I listen to various music these days, but I waste "comparably little" time in algorithmic maybe land. As opposed to the constant consumption pressure some people expose themselves with ... whatever the hell that camera does between watching women change.

</comment><comment><USER32> Definitely – services like Spotify or Apple Music make it easy to listen to the same top n tracks as everyone else but the lack of an effective training mechanism makes it really hard to break out of the recommendation loop and the cumbersome UI discourages attempting to find things yourself because everything is built on the assumption that the recommendation engine is worth using.

Since they're widely used, there's no room for local color or taste the way you used to have local reviewers, independent store clerks, etc. Everyone in the country gets the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER33> Worth remembering is Clay Shirky's Point about taste, recommendations and power law curves. A paradox of the situation is the growth of these systems, and their elimination of other systems, can ensure that each individual has more options than before, while the total of all options declines.

[http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/powerlaw_w...](http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/powerlaw_weblog.html)

</comment><comment><USER34> Clickbait titles does a disservice to the purpose of the body of an article in the sense that it gives easy ammunition to naysayers who will default to pointing out that the degree to which the argument is valid is incorrect. Yes, algorithms may have influenced personal taste in some ways. But has it "destroyed" personal taste? No, that's probably too extreme.

</comment><comment><USER35> Again, the core "meat and potatoes" of this article is that neural networks that do the thinking are black boxes. We know not how they are trained, know not their biases, and know not how they come to a specific decision.

But we are supposed to trust the NN in my life? I think not!

</comment><comment><USER36> Shorter this article: "I liked it better when my taste was dictated by who paid the most to advertising agencies, not algorithms"

In all seriousness, consider the bit listed under "how to resist the algorithm" (quotes indented):

        I might only read books I stumble across in used bookstores,

...which have been filtered by publishers deciding which manuscripts to publish, a past consumer deciding which book to buy, AND a used bookstore deciding which books to purchase for resale

        only watch TV shows on local channels,

...which are frequently central-planned from a national network, as well as the massive filter that decides which stories should be TV programs

        only buy vinyl,

...which is filtered much like the used books

        only write letters,

Got me on this one, but letters != culture IMO

        forsake social media for print newspapers,

...which have editors who decide which stories to run, and advertisers those editors want to keep happy

        wear only found vintage.

...which is subject to not only the filters applied to fashion when the garments were made, but also filtering at the used clothing store.

These processes aren't new - ever wonder why so many pop songs are under 5 minutes (hint: it's not because that's an artistic decision)? In a lot of ways, digital technology demolishes the old barriers; for instance, releasing music doesn't take a significant up-front investment in pressing physical copies & distributing them to stores, so it's easier than ever for that content to get out. _Out_ is key there, IMO - just because it's released doesn't mean anybody ever hears it. Seems like "the algorithm" might actually help in that situation, however: maybe the music only has 200 people that want it, making an old-school marketing push totally impractical.

<comment><USER37> The difference is that those old ways allowed for greater personal agency. Perusing old books requires selection and even a bit of curation on part of the buyer, whereas algorithmic recommendations make deciding fairly mindless.

You write as if the filters you lament are bad. I think, given the overabundance of mischaracterized crap that seems to clutter up 'algorithmically' filtered exchanges (YouTube, Netflix, etc) I will take human curation and filtration any day of the week, biases and all.

Pandora and Spotify still can't build or execute a playlist like a good DJ can. Netflix's recommendations still miss the mark way more than talking about movies/shows with friends.

<comment><USER24> > Pandora and Spotify still can't build or execute a playlist like a good DJ > can.

Spotify's playlists are at least in part human curated, so not sure how you got to that conclusion.

<comment><USER38> He's obviously talking about the ones that aren't, such as the 'Discover Weekly' and the way it will guess at what to play next after an album finishes.

I believe his point is that the algorithms don't generate playlists or dj mixes with the same polish as a professional human and I'm inclined to agree. That said, I do think their recommendation engine produces decent results, but I don't think the composition of the list is something it focuses on. Rather its just a list of unrelated tracks it thinks you'd be inclined to enjoy on their own.

<comment><USER37> Exactly. A playlist full of tracks chosen at seeming random lacks the inter- track context that a DJ can add through his choice in selections. Auto- generated playlists have no sense of flow and transition.

You can similarly ruin a good, curated playlist by hitting shuffle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> How are recommendation algorithms robbing anyone? I can understand a credit score algorithm denying a loan as potentially robbing. Recommendations seem at the worst to be as annoying as a poorly curated catalogue. Am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER40> 'Yer ugly and your Echo dresses you funny.'

</comment><comment><USER41> Answer: no.</comment>


Marissa Mayer is killing telecommuting, and that's a good thing - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/02/28/marissa-mayer-is-killing-telecommuting-and-thats-a-good-thing/

<comment><USER3> This post makes no sense.

Author mentions Facebook's "lockdowns" as evidence that other people are killing remote work. Except lockdowns are highly exceptional events - <USER2> asking your employees to stay late in a disaster situation _at all_ like asking them not to telecommute?

> _"It's okay to say that. Sandberg and Mayer are giving up everything, so why > can't they ask that of everyone else?"_

I'm going to be frank: because I have several dozen recruiter emails piling up in my inbox, and that's just from the last week. I have people swinging large six-figure paychecks in front of my nose day in, day out, all of whom are doing interesting things. I'd take them all if I could clone myself 100 times over.

That's why you can't ask me to give up everything. Free market, people, it cuts both ways.

You can ask your employees to come to work every day in lederhosen, too. We'll see how far you get with that.

As someone who dislikes remote work, but has no problem with other people doing it, the irksome thing about this topic is that is resembles the vegetarian/omnivore "debate". You can't seem to champion for one side without slamming the other.

Proponents of remote work constantly portray brick-and-mortar offices as stodgy, inflexible, archaic, etc.

Proponents of on-site work constantly portray remote work as lazy, inefficient, and for many reasons inferior.

Can we just accept that people work differently? And that people who subscribe to one way of working aren't out to destroy your way of life?

<comment><USER4> > "It's okay to say that. Sandberg and Mayer are giving up everything, so why > can't they ask that of everyone else?"

They're not giving up everything. In an immediate short term sense, they're giving up some things, but they also have a far more secured financial footing to deal with the next 50 years of their life. They can, tomorrow, stop everything, and do whatever they want to. Most of the rest of the company can't, and need to balance their current obligations with their wants/desires/dreams and family life today. And if they don't, they don't have the 8 figure bank balances to fall back on.

<comment><USER5> Mayer is surely not giving up everything. She's using her wealth to balance things out in ways her employees cannot:

"Alas, with her blink-and-you'll-miss-it maternity leave and her new policy banning working from home, it feels like Mayer is throwing darts at working parents everywhere. Her stand is even more egregious considering she's apparently built herself a set-up most moms can only dream of: a nursery — paid for out of her own pocket — adjacent to her company office. "I wonder what would happen if my wife brought our kids and nanny to work and set 'em up in the cube next door?" wondered a husband on AllThingsD. His wife, a Yahoo employee, will soon have to stop working from home."

Source: [http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/28/how-yahoo-ceo- marissa-...](http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/28/how-yahoo-ceo-marissa- mayer-is-building-a-nursery-by-her-office-and-dissing-working-moms/)

<comment><USER6> If all parents could afford daycares and nannies to pick our children up when school calls and says, "little Johnny is sick ," I could agree with the decision to remove workplace flexibility. However, we aren't all as wealthy as Mayer. This is bound to have an adverse effect on Yahoos.

<comment><USER7> Right, because only remote workers can take care of their kids when they are sick.

Yahoo has not removed workplace flexibility, PTO, or sick time. They restricted remote working, which has little to do parenting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "The message here is that if you want to work at a company where people are doing big and important things, you have to give up everything. It's okay to say that."

No, it isn't.

Yahoo! is certainly not doing 'big and important' things. They are a search engine that can't figure out how to get it's rapidly decreasing market share from rapidly decreasing. And the CEO wants everyone in the company to give up everything - happiness, work life balance, a life outside of search engine work -for that cause.

Unless Yahoo! decides they don't need you all of sudden - you know, if headcount is too high or they decide your department isn't part of the 'goal'. Then they can cut you loose, despite the fact that you gave up everything for them.

So, translation: Yahoo! and other companies want you to give up everything for them, but they will give up nothing.

Deeper translation: Yahoo! is doomed.

<comment><USER9> Especially if the CEO creates services at her workplace to mitigate her own need to give up her own family life [1].

[1] [http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost- blogs/weird-...](http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird- wide-web/marissa-mayer-yahoo-ceo-telecommuting-nursery)

<comment><USER7> I'm so, so, sick of this line of argument. Remote work has nothing to do with raising kids or family life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >Family historian Stephanie Coontz writes that today's workforce is so demanding that families can only handle having one person in the workforce. She shows how the average work week does not allow for people to take care of children, which means that one partner needs to drop out of the workforce and take care of kids.

No, no, no, no, no. This is not the way of the future, or even the way of today. This is a throwback to the past. Yahoo has a productivity problem because of incompetent management that cannot measure productivity, and sees butts-in-seats as the only way to start. They are regressing. Because of their dysfunction, they are trying to solve a problem that better companies already solved years ago.

A person simply cannot work productively for 12-16 hours a day over a career. You start to see diminishing returns at about six hours, and after nine or ten, the only reason you're still there is social climbing. And because you know you're not going home early no matter what, because you basically live at the office, you will naturally take breaks, screw off, and procrastinate. Working 8 to 8 for an Asian megacorp, I have seen it so many times. On the other hand, bankers, management consultants, lawyers, and startup founders who actually work hard 12-16 hours a day do not and cannot do it for a long career, they are running a sprint not a marathon to maximize short-term earnings in the hopes that they will reach their finish line, achieve "f--- you money" and be able to retire before they burn out.

</comment><comment><USER11> The author of the piece, Penelope Trunk, has a well-established pattern: write a highly flammable headline followed by a long, off-the-cuff piece intended to grab attention and generate page views via controversy de jour.

The article does not even broach any of the important issues being discussed around telecommuting: trust, productivity, team gelling, etc. But instead takes advantage of a recent controversy and adds a little spin from Trunk's tired routine in order to generate page views and comments.

She once wrote that travelling is a waste of time (for her, but she projects it to everyone). After reading this a few years ago, I actively started to dislike this person immediately.

[http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/08/17/4-reasons-travel- fo...](http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/08/17/4-reasons-travel-for-fun-is-a- waste-of-time/)

Let's discuss the actual message of the post. Two paragraphs in I'm already in full rage mode. Giving up your life for a company is ok? I understand dedication, even the occasional extra few hours, but what Mrs. Trunk is proposing is literally living at work, which we all know is unmaintainable and unhealthy for most of us. Research has shown that there is a tiny portion of the population that can get 4 hours a sleep and maintain 16 hour days, but that's only about 1% of us. The rest of us have bodies and lives to maintain.

</comment><comment><USER12> At the end of the post is this biographical gem: "She lives on a farm in Wisconsin and homeschools her sons."

<comment><USER13> Actually, that sounds pretty awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The author is just as out of touch as Mayer is in her morale-killing decision. The author seems to have a bone to pick with those of us who would _dare_ to have a life outside of work. If I earn a seven-figure salary and bonuses out the ass, then I'll happily put in more hours. Especially if the livelihood of others depends on my performance. However, in a wage-slave position, expecting double (or triple) output from employees is idiotic and borderline evil.

</comment><comment><USER15> At this point, I think the author is just trolling.

> _Mayer doesn't want to work with anyone who is working 60 hours a week. She > is in Silicon Valley where an 80-hour week is full-time and 50-hours is > part-time._

> _I have written before that the reason women are not startup founders is > that startups require 120-hour workweeks._

Really? People at _Yahoo_ are working 80 hours a week?

According to this 2009 HN poll, 5% of respondents work 80+ hrs. 16% worked 60+.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2843979>

</comment><comment><USER16> Marissa's gesture applies to Yahoos who been doing lots of personal and "side projects" away from premises at Yahoo's expense and not necessarily for Yahoo's benefits. As a matter of cleaning the house - she's is 100% right. Everyone should get a sense of discipline at least for the time being.

Sincerely - I been working from home for full-time clients for a long time and having two dogs and two kids and kitchen smells around the house does not help to focus and be productive.

I actually like being [in the nice] office and communicate with [nice] people.

Marissa is cleaning the house and everyone is invited! :)

<comment><USER17> > Marissa's gesture applies to Yahoos who been doing lots of personal and > "side projects" away from premises at Yahoo's expense and not necessarily > for Yahoo's benefits

Does it? Because from all the information provided publicly it seems to apply to all remote workers - are you sure they're all lazy moonlighters? Doesn't seem probable.

And don't apply your own experience to everyone else where it doesn't apply - I work from home a lot too - I have no dogs, no kids, no smells - in fact I have a very nice office, with better equipment and environment than any client I've ever worked with. But that's just me, of course.

<comment><USER16> Well she cannot babysit every employee, and I understand her and understand your point too. All are valid.

She needs to save the company and that's her choice.

If you work for Yahoo you choice is either [optional: bitch and] comply or find a better place to work :)

<comment><USER18> _Well she cannot babysit every employee, and I understand her and understand your point too._

Hacker News, Reddit, Slashdot, 9gag, and countless other sites exist upon the 9-5 of office workers who aren't actually working. The notion that office workers are more likely to actually be doing something of value is utter nonsense.

Any manager who doesn't know what their employees are contributing to the company is completely incompetent and incapable of doing their job. The physical location of the staff is irrelevant.

 _If you work for Yahoo you choice is either [optional: bitch and] comply or find a better place to work_

No one is arguing with that. They _are_ saying, however, that the end result for Yahoo will probably be much worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> One question that I can't seem to find the answer to is, is Yahoo! willing to pay relocation expenses to those telecommuters that have been asked to come into an office? Or is it basically, "we don't care if you live in Des Moines. We want you to move your family to San Jose and come into the office"?

<comment><USER4> idle speculation ahead:

I suspect they'll make token offers of, say, $5k towards relo expenses, and you'll be on the hook to pay those back if you stay less than a year.

<comment><USER19> Well nobody seems to be asking _that_ question and in my mind, it changes the equation significantly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some thoughts:

"Companies move more efficiently if everyone is at the office"

Some companies do - companies that are geared towards physical face time. Many people work best like that - some don't. I'd say, more importantly, there are periods of time when I work better face to face with people - often a few week portion of a project, then there are other times when I'm _far_ more productive getting stuff done working from home.

"that innovation happens faster if people work at the same office"

Yahoo's problem has not usually been innovation specifically, but following through on that innovation (how many things have come from yahoo's labs - yui, etc - that get half-hearted support, or then get killed?)

You can't tell me past leadership at Yahoo were all telecommuting. All those top-brass managers had plenty of in-office shared space facetime, and it didn't do a lick of good for them.

I understand Mayer is coming in and trying to change all of that, but I suggest changing people vs changing policies will get better results in the long run. I realize it's more problematic to define 'better' people, and policies are much easier to define, but they must realize they're also going to be excluding some otherwise great contributors because of the policy. Might these losses be offset by gains in productivity and innovation? Who knows?

<comment><USER4> Another thought here - if they kept telecommuting staff, it would actually be a bit easier to keep some of these people 'in line' or 'on message', because the threat of losing a nice 'work from home' position is greater than forcing people to be in a tech-rich metropolitan area, often just blocks from lucrative offers, and trying to mandate stricter working conditions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is what you should always ask yourself before you start making sacrifices for your company:

"If the CEO had to choose between firing me or taking a pay-cut equal to my salary, what would he choose?"

The answer is almost always immediately obvious.

</comment><comment><USER21> The strange irony whereby the place that has benefited more than anywhere on the globe by the reduction of friction in communication can't find a way to harness that same technology to improve productivity.

</comment><comment><USER22> What a strange article.

I kept looking for the <sarcasm/> tag.

<comment><USER23> I think it was hidden behind the very last line:

"Penelope Trunk founded Brazen Careerist and two other startups. Her career advice runs in 200 newspapers. She lives on a farm in Wisconsin and homeschools her sons."

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Oh hey, we have this technology that lets large groups of people collaborate on almost any kind of work, from anywhere in the world! It saves money on gas, office space, and is good for the environment to boot!

Let's not use it though. It comes with a few problems that can't possibly ever be solved. It's just a fad. It will never catch on.

</comment><comment><USER25> So do they have a policy of no instant messages or emails? I'd be pretty upset if I was forced to come into work only to continue to communicate with my coworkers through IM and email.

</comment><comment><USER26> The article's summary of Stephanie Coontz is distorted. The author claims:

Family historian Stephanie Coontz writes that today's workforce is so demanding that families can only handle having one person in the workforce. She shows how the average work week does not allow for people to take care of children, which means that one partner needs to drop out of the workforce and take care of kids.

This is not Coontz's point at all. Coontz considers the status quo to be about "bad working conditions," and concludes ([http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/opinion/sunday/why- gender-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/opinion/sunday/why-gender- equality-stalled.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&)):

Our goal should be to develop work-life policies that enable people to put their gender values into practice. So let's stop arguing about the hard choices women make and help more women and men avoid such hard choices. To do that, we must stop seeing work-family policy as a women's issue and start seeing it as a human rights issue that affects parents, children, partners, singles and elders.

In other words, the the status quo is hard on people; the problem is in the nature of work. My bet is that Coontz would have a lot of issues with Mayer's order.

</comment><comment><USER27> I continue to ask what the big deal? Remote work doesn't work for everyone and every company. That is a hard fact.

And Yahoo decided not to do it. ( For a lot of reasons only they would know )

And yet the internet is making a big fuss about it.

<comment><USER18> _And Yahoo decided not to do it. ( For a lot of reasons only they would know )_

We all know why: It is a stealth layoff. It's an easy way to cut some staff (many of whom will leave for greener pastures) without the negative market news of cutting staff.

It is important to the rest of us, however, as it's held as some sort of qualitative change for excellence. That it is proof that remote work doesn't work/office work is better, etc. We've seen dozens of articles using this as proof of...something.

When it's really just a way to save some costs -- even if longer term it hurts the company.

<comment><USER28> "We all know why: It is a stealth layoff. It's an easy way to cut some staff (many of whom will leave for greener pastures) without the negative market news of cutting staff."

Of course, the first to leave will be the better employees who have other options.

That's some awesome managin' there, to be sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> She's giving up everything? Bullshit. She built a nursery next to her office. Screw her.

People say Yahoo did it because people were abusing work from home. What makes them think the people who didn't get any work done at home aren't just going to not do any work done at work? The problem is that people aren't productive, not that they're at home. So you fire the unproductive people. Except evidently yahoo can't tell who isn't productive or they would have already done that. So how is being in the office going to change anything?

</comment><comment><USER30> When I was working in engineering R&D for a manufacturing company, one of the most productivity-killing things was to be in the office during normal business hours.

</comment><comment><USER31> this is so ridiculous it is sad that it will receive a huge amount of comments and drive traffic to this utterly ridiculous post.

First of all, I don't believe Mayer or Sandberg are asking/ demanding/ or hinting that employees need to give up everything. The economics of the job market and organization health don't really back that up (whether you're 'changing the world or not'). Second - as many people are mentioning here - the demand and economic returns to different employee levels completely skew the "Mayer gives up everything" - she (and Sandberg) also receive completely different benefits and calculate their commitment/ lifestyle tradeoffs with a totally different set of inputs & outputs from the hypothetical Yahoo! front- end guy who has been off-siting for 18 months... the whole thesis is beyond comprehension. The author of this post who "lives on a farm homeschooling her 2 children" has lost touch with reality/ is actually quite smart at driving page views, but is nonetheless wrong.

</comment><comment><USER32> Ummm ... I am gonna call this one - bullshit. What's even more painful is that this is on HN front page.

</comment><comment><USER33> What a piece of shit. This article is a heteronormative sexist big piece of shit. But besides that, if i leave the office early, i have finished everything i had to do, I don't fucking care if someone stays 5 hours longer because he don't know how to manage time, for god sake.

<comment><USER34> seriously. +1

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> People who aren't doing great work at home, are less likely to do so at the office. Plus, there is overhead because you'll need to have someone to take of those people (lack of self reliance, proactivity, dedication).

</comment><comment><USER36> _at Google, where hundred-hour weeks are de rigueur_

Really? Maybe for execs, but that's not the impression I have from people I know there. Anyone care to comment on Google's work/life balance?

</comment><comment><USER37> Penelope Trunk is entertaining, but sometimes you need to take what she says with a grain of salt because she is trying to stir the pot to get eyeballs/$....this is one of those times.

</comment><comment><USER38> Am I the only one who thought that this article was tongue-in-cheek? I mean, who seriously advocates for such a dystopian world? It has to be ironic!

</comment><comment><USER39> "they are giving up their time with their kids so that they can run companies"

I cry for America.

</comment><comment><USER40> Obvious troll is obvious.

</comment><comment><USER41> Everyone not in the Yahoo bay area offices is "remote" to them. Talking to engineers in New York is talking to "remote" engineers from the perspective of someone in the bay area. Does it matter that much if they're in an office in new york vs a home in nebraska? Maybe sometimes in some situations, but should companies all locate into one single building?

If you take this to its logical conclusion, every company should build a massive campus and locate everyone there, in the same time zone, even the same building.

I don't buy that Meyer is "giving up everything". She just had a nursery built next to her office (at her expense) so her infant can come to work with her. Is Yahoo going to give space for all the previously telecommuting young moms with infants to have a little nursery too?

Some companies _may_ "move more effectively" if everyone is at the office, but I'm aware of several that have fully distributed teams, or significant numbers of employees who don't come into the office who are moving pretty fast- Basho and Automattic are two. (I think Couchbase does this too.)

I'd rather have someone living in one of the "flyover states" working for me from their home than the overhead of an office... offices are a cost and the assumed benefit may not exceed the increased cost. Certainly it can't be said that it always does.

The assumption that telecommuters are "less dedicated" is a prejudice. I've seen some evidence that they are more dedicated and put in more time. But further, it's assuming that you don't want to hire people who put in less time (for less pay, say a part time telecommuter.) Which seems silly. There are some people who you'd like to hire, but which you're going to be forced to pass on if you've got this "butts in the seats" policy, some of whome are quite good but due to family situations or simply optimizing their own lives, aren't interested in relocating to whatever big city you located your offices in.

Imagine DHH decided to go freelance. As the creator of rails it's safe to say he's the foremost expert, but this example works for anyone with significant expertise that would be valuable to lots of companies. Would DHH's value be maximized by working for one company 40 hours a week, and having all the work that doesn't require his particular expertise along with the really key stuff...or would it be better for him to work 10 hours a week for four different companies, maximizing his efforts on the areas where his expertise is completely unique? I know this is an even more radical idea, but I think it's the future of work.

<comment><USER42> Thank you - totally agree.

I envisage it something like decomposing systems into micro-services, where the service is a independant, deployable _thing_ (probably HTTP / Rest but who cares).

Then its a lot easier to outsource specific parts and bring in specific expertise - and also a lot easier to bid for those parts.

I like your DHH idea - and I suspect he or people like him do best at short bursts in many companies.

We destroy a lot of inprocess speed, but I suspect we shall rely on Moores law to help.</comment></comment>


Pex: Deploy Python executables - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pantsbuild/pex <comment><AUTHOR> I was linked this very interesting tool in #python. I'm surprised it's not popular / we don't hear more about it. Twitter uses it in production.

More info:

[http://www.pantsbuild.org/pex.html](http://www.pantsbuild.org/pex.html) [https://pex.readthedocs.io/en/stable/whatispex.html](https://pex.readthedocs.io/en/stable/whatispex.html)</comment>


How long would it take to learn a web framework like django or rails? - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently a student and I'm not sure what career path to take. I enjoy research and I enjoy building things. I want to pick up a practical skill so that I have extra income and I'm not sure if learning a web framework will be worthwhile for me. I fear it may be too time consuming (first to learn, then to keep up with updates and best practices).<p>a second question: Do I need a comprehensive understanding of the framework to build secure and overall "good" quality applications? <comment><USER2> It really depends on how much knowledge you have about programming and if you enjoy programming. Of course django or rails let you develop a web application relatively fast but if you don't know anything about programming, the learning curve could be time consuming because different languages (client side/server side) are required . I would say if your only aim is to have an extra income then don't go for it because you can get that easier doing other stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> The question was posed under the assumption that I already do know the languages and am a competent programmer.

I think I'm somewhat experienced with programming (and I enjoy it).

>I would say if your only aim is to have an extra income then don't go for it because you can get that easier doing other stuff.

What do you suggest?

<comment><USER2> >The question was posed under the assumption that I already do know the languages and am a competent programmer.

In that sense I would say you can learn the framework fast and start using it. so go for it. >What do you suggest? Thats not something I can tell. It really depends on you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> A better question is do you enjoy building websites/webapps? Try to answer this question first. To do that you should pick one of the frameworks, find a few tutorials, and try and build something. If it turnes out you hate the process of teaching yourself that tool you probably want to look for some other way to spend your time because you will be iterating on the process of teaching yourself indefinitely.</comment>


Inside the MSF Hospital in Kunduz - <AUTHOR> http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/10/13/inside-msf-hospital-kunduz-afghanistan-taliban-us-attack/ <comment><USER2> Oh man, I didn't hear about this until today. Tragic -- and inexcusable.</comment>


SF Mono Fonts with Line Gap Baked In - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kentliau/SF-Mono-LG <comment><AUTHOR> This version exists purely for Xcode, which lack of option for controlling the line height in editor.</comment>


Kaspersky's Analysis of Equation Group's RC6 Is Wrong - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.uic.edu/~s/musings/equation-group-rc6/ <comment><USER2> I wonder if this is a result of the Q32 macro not containing the "u" suffix and defaulting to a signed int.

Of course the result of the calculation is the same, but that old level of gcc may prefer subtracting when adding negative constants.</comment>


Modded Atari 2600 runs at 22,000 times the processing power of the origina - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/modded-atari-2600-runs-22-000-times-processing-005208442.html

<comment><USER2> You can't just take the quotient of the processor clock frequencies and multiply by the number of threads! A current generation processor does a lot more in a single clock cycle than they did 30 years ago. Pipelines etc... didn't exist back then. The 6502 only had a single 8-bit general purpose register (although the index registers could also be used when not accessing memory).

An Intel Core i7 is probably more than a million times faster.</comment>