Shen Programming Language for Android - <AUTHOR> https://chatolab.wordpress.com/2017/12/26/shen-programming-language-for-android/ <comment><USER2> Chris Double ported Shen to Wasp Lisp, which is a very interesting combination. Wasp and MOSREF (a secure remote injection framework) are something I have been playing with over the years, and having Shen in there makes for an interesting combination [1]. He also ported Wasp Lisp to Android [2].

      [1]  https://github.com/doublec/shen-wasp
      [2]  https://bluishcoder.co.nz/2013/05/09/building-wasp-lisp-and-mosref-for-android.html

</comment><comment><USER3> Shen is a genuinely interesting Lisp that is implemented using around 46 primitive functions - porting Shen then just requires the implementation of this 46 function substrate in whatever programming language you are using.

In addition to a built-in Prolog and also optional type checker it also uses pattern-matching like other modern functional programming languages. This is unlike Clojure which to my mind wrongly downgrades pattern-matching to simply an optional library. (Apparently Rich Hickey isn't keen on pattern-matching).

Shen is certainly worth investigating if you have an interest in Lisp.

<comment><USER4> I'd be very careful of looking at it given the author's ...unusual... views on copyright/licensing. In particular the author claims that releasing derivative works of Shen under the GPL is copyright infringement; Shen's license is a standard license that is widely agreed to grant the right to release derivative works under the GPL, but few people would want to have that fight, or the unknown other fights you might get into with an author with a wildly different interpretation of their license from the common consensus.

<comment><USER5> > the author claims that releasing derivative works of Shen under the GPL is > copyright infringement

Do you have a source for this? The closest I could find was this[1]:

> Appropriating other people's work by copying the code and changing the > license is IMO immoral.

If this is indeed the source material, then I think your characterization isn't _necessarily_ correct. Saying it's immoral isn't the same as making a claim about law.

The link provided[2] does indicate that de Raadt thinks it is a violation of copyright law however. Finally, I question whether there is actually a consensus on this matter at all. If you relicense BSD code as GPL, then consumers needn't abide by the GPL; they can simply opt to use the original license. Does that really mean a relicensing has occurred? Of course, in non- trivial cases, there's likely additional code that has been intermixed with the original code, which would make it impossible to separate. But the release of the GPL code would still technically need to comply with the BSD license itself. Even at that point, it doesn't feel like "relicense" is actually correct.

(Note that I picked up on this because I firmly believe that such relicensing is indeed unethical, while simultaneously not knowing whether such relicensing is definitely a violation of copyright law or not, while also believing that copyright law shouldn't exist at all.)

[1] - [http://www.marktarver.com/fsf.html](http://www.marktarver.com/fsf.html)

[2] - [http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20070913014315](http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20070913014315)

<comment><USER4> > If this is indeed the source material, then I think your characterization > isn't _necessarily_ correct. Saying it's immoral isn't the same as making a > claim about law.

At the bottom of that page he says "my library work is BSD... I do not give permission to relicense my work under GPL", which I think carries my point since most people would understand the former to mean the latter. I think I remember a mailing list post talking more explicitly about derivative works, but I can't find it now and could easily be misremembering.

> If you relicense BSD code as GPL, then consumers needn't abide by the GPL; > they can simply opt to use the original license. Does that really mean a > relicensing has occurred?

People who wish to distribute derivative works based on copyrighted code need a license to do so. Some jurisdictions require licenses to be conveyed in writing, others allow oral or implicit transfers. I'm not sure any jurisdiction would be willing to acknowledge the conveyance of a license when there had been zero interaction between the parties. So it seems like if A were to license some code under the BSD license to B and B were to license it under some more restrictive license to C (which the BSD license certainly grants B permission to do), then in theory C doesn't necessarily have a BSD license to the code. Of course in practice it's moot since if B hasn't made any copyrightable changes then the only person who could ever sue C for copyright infringement would be A.

> the release of the GPL code would still technically need to comply with the > BSD license itself. Even at that point, it doesn't feel like "relicense" is > actually correct.

Technically the combined work (which multiple contributors hold copyrights on) can only be distributed in compliance with the requirements of both the GPL and the BSD license, sure. But since the requirements of the GPL are a superset of those of the BSD license, for all practical purpose the whole is GPLed.

<comment><USER5> Sure, I guess I can't really dispute any of that, but I'm not sure I buy that what you've written has any kind of strong consensus backing it.

Anyway, I do agree with your larger point. I'd stay away from this language for a variety of reasons.

<comment><USER4> I'd say there's a strong consensus that you can form a work that combines (3-clause) BSD-licensed and GPL-licensed content and distribute the result under the GPL - the FSF has been publishing its list of "GPL-compatible" and "GPL-incompatible" licenses for decades now, and copying BSD-licensed libraries into source trees (GPL and otherwise) without changing the license of the whole for a similar length of time. I'd agree there probably isn't any kind of clear consensus about what happens in the case where there is no substantive GPLed contribution in the first place, because that doesn't seem like a case that would come up very often. (To me it seems obvious, but I guess to other people some other interpretation might seem equally obvious)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just tried building shen-c[1]; it seems my gcc (5.4.0) doesn't like the code with -std=c99 and prefers the -lgc at the end of the line.

[1] [https://github.com/otabat/shen-c](https://github.com/otabat/shen-c)

        diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
        index 3ae5a55..458200d 100644
        --- a/Makefile
        +++ b/Makefile
        @@ -26,5 +26,6 @@ ${TARGET}: ${SRC_OBJS}
         #	cc -g -O3 -std=c99 -lgc -lprofiler -Wl,-no_pie -o $@ $^
        -	cc -O3 -std=c99 -lgc -o $@ $^
        +#	cc -O3 -std=c99 -lgc -o $@ $^
         #	gcc-6 -g -O3 -std=c99 -L /usr/local/lib -lgc -lprofiler -Wl,-no_pie -o $@ $^
         #	gcc-6 -O3 -std=c99 -L /usr/local/lib -lgc -o $@ $^
        +	gcc -O3 -o $@ $^ -lgc

        @@ -34,5 +35,6 @@ ${OBJ_ROOT}/%.o: $(SRC_ROOT)/%.c
         #	cc -O2 -std=c99 -fno-optimize-sibling-calls -c -o $@ $<
        -	cc -O3 -std=c99 -fno-optimize-sibling-calls -c -o $@ $<
        +#	cc -O3 -std=c99 -fno-optimize-sibling-calls -c -o $@ $<
         #	gcc-6 -g -O3 -std=c99 -fno-optimize-sibling-calls -Wall -I /usr/local/include/gc -c -o $@ $<
         #	gcc-6 -O3 -std=c99 -fno-optimize-sibling-calls -Wall -I /usr/local/include/gc -c -o $@ $<
        +	gcc -O3 -fno-optimize-sibling-calls -c -o $@ $<

</comment><comment><USER7> Presumably some readers bought the book when Shen appeared on the frontpage because its price on Amazon has risen from 40 usd to 230 usd: [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01K3JCGGI](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01K3JCGGI)

</comment><comment><USER8> Every time I hear about Shen I think about this talk: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMcRBdSdO_U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMcRBdSdO_U)

</comment><comment><USER9> Pretty cool language but there's no way to save your work in the app.</comment>


Walt Whitman's Letter for a Dying Soldier to His Wife Discovered - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2016/03/12/470214579/walt-whitmans-letter-for-a-dying-soldier-to-his-wife-discovered <comment><USER2> whitman, i think, is the greatest writer

rather than this being because of his work directly, it's more because he understood and lived the idea that change is inevitable and necessary

he only wrote one book his entire life

publishing edits through the years

it is amazing to see how the poems both change and remain the same over time

when i read a whitman piece i always read it as i know he himself would have:

         how can i make this more beautiful and inclusive?

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

<comment><USER3> Thanks for calling out the Whitman Archive! I worked to digitize the manuscript & early first editions of Leaves of Grass while an undergraduate at UVA, and both had a great time and learned a ton about Whitman and old books.

To make a modern comparison, scholars believe Whitman authored Leaves of Grass in a very similar way to how Kanye West is treating The Life of Pablo. He released a rough draft to a limited audience over a short period of time, but continued editing, revising and adding to it for years afterward, as his perspective and understanding of the world around him evolved.

Whitman was an amazing writer. I wouldn't hesitate to call him America's Joyce.

Editorial on The Life of Pablo: [http://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/could- kanye-s-tlop-update...](http://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/could-kanye-s-tlop- updates-change-the-way-we-see-albums)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was confused by the + signs, I read them like "plus" (is this a common use of this sign?) until I read the scanned letter, which was surprisingly easy to read. The signs looked much more like & ("and") than + to me.

<comment><USER5> Yes, "+" is often used in handwriting (typically with a loop) to mean "and". In casual speech or when teaching mathematics to young students, "+" can be pronounced "and", as in "one and one make two".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For some reason it causes me a bit of difficulty to understand the headline on first pass. Something seems to be off with the gramar. Why not just say "Walt Whitman's letter to wife of dying soldier" Easier to understand in my opinion.

<comment><USER7> Re-read the headline:

> Walt Whitman's Letter For A Dying Soldier To His Wife Discovered

Just make sure you separate the middle part- Letter For A Dying Soldier To His Wife- from the rest.

<comment><USER8> That is actually the part with the problem. One problem for me is that when initially scanning the sentence, "for" implies that the letter is intended to be sent _to_ the soldier; "on behalf of" would be clearer. Another minor unclarity is that "his" can refer to either the soldier or Walt Whitman.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is misdirected, we should take on the struggle against _capitalism_ , rather than _capitalization_.

<comment><USER10> We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11302538](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11302538) and marked it off-topic.</comment></comment>


Developers blog post: No, I won't do it. It would not be professional. - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.madebymonsieur.com/no-i-wont-do-it-it-would-not-be-professional/

<comment><USER2> Developers should absolutely push back and make sure that the person requesting the change has all the information needed to make a good decision, however they also need to understand that they, the developer, may only have part of the story and that they need to respect that the decision is coming from someone who may understand things that the developer does not.

Yes too often developers are ridden over roughshod, but I think it's important to put the other side of things.

In the same way that person may not understand the consequences of the dirty hack, the developer frequently will not understand the consequences of delaying the change. Unless the developer can honestly say that they understand the relevant part of the business better than person making the request, some humility and willingness to compromise and discuss is likely to be appropriate.

For me the issue is not with doing the hack, it's getting the agreement that we'll do the quick hack, but only if we're then allowed, in the very short term, to make the fix properly.

That way everyone gets what they want - the fix is made in the timescales the business deem necessary and the developer isn't leaving a mess for future developers to have to clear up.

Being a professional programmer in a commercial environment isn't about sticking rigidly to some definition of what's "right" (which will often vary from one developer to another anyway), it's about using code to fix real problems and provide real benefits in ways which are appropriate to the situation and balance all the variables.

It's a variant of the old "good coders code, great coders ship". Being a great coder is about finding ways to meet everyone's needs.

<comment><USER3> Shouldn't the business people in the organization also learn to understand the consequences to the company of poorly managed development processes and technical debt ?

It works both ways.

<comment><USER4> Yes, and that's what Tyrannosaurs is saying. The article is what's one-sided - it doesn't seem to understand that (unless you work for e.g. 37 Signals) software is in service of the business, and at the end of the day everyone's there to make money for the business.

<comment><USER5> "... at the end of the day everyone's there to make money for the business"

Really. It seems to me like everyone's there to make money for their departments / business units / lines of business.

<comment><USER4> Well, my company has only has 4 people full time, so maybe my perspective isn't representative. :) But I've had people who were writing code on a temporary basis get frustrated when things didn't stick to the spec 101% or when there wasn't time for them to follow all the software engineering practices they read about in a book and felt like trying...I understand all that stuff (I've been on both sides of the equation), but what bothers me is when people are inflexible on principle, to the detriment of the business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Business guys response to this:

1\. Tell the developer to cut whatever corner is necessary

2\. Forget that he insisted on cutting corners

3\. Complain that the next change is taking to long as well

4\. Bring in another Dev as "consultant" to "help" who says "hey this code is crap, and this shouldn't have been done this way"

5\. Fire the in-house developer for cutting corners

6\. Post on the web how hard it is to find good developers

</comment><comment><USER7> This is one of the many reasons why the software industry should be utterly ashamed of itself.

In other industries, it is a matter of professional ethics that you should never perform bodges or quick fixes, even if the client demands it. Architects do not allow themselves to be bullied into scrimping on foundations. Engineers do not build unsound structures if the client demands it.

The fact that you'd need to say "it would not be professional" is proof that software development is not currently a profession. Qualified doctors and lawyers don't talk about professionalism much because it has been drilled into them during training and has become implicit in everything they do. Software failures can be every bit as costly and damaging as those in other industries; Usually our failures just cripple a business or leak confidential data, but we have killed people - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25>

I'm not sure regulating software development is a great idea, but we need to do something.

<comment><USER8> Quite arguably the most highly regarded professional industry we have, medicine, regularly does quick fixes. Paramedics and ER doctors regularly do "quick fixes" that will have to undone later. Their goal is oten to keep you alive long enough so that the right thing can later happen. Because once your dead, it's a lot harder to do the right thing by you.

I've also seen similar things done by civil engineers with respect to transportation. Adding these bikes lanes isn't perfect, but until we get the new trail built it will be the best way for bikers to get from A to B. This just seems commonplace.

Likewise, if the client is needing to get a new auditing system in place to comply with some gov't regulation, and you're saying, "We need to use IoC containers here... I don't care if that means the client will be shut down, not doing this means I will have to refactor a big chunk of the code in the next release and I'm not doing it" seems a bit absurd to me.

It seems like being a professional IS about understanding costs and making tradeoffs.

<comment><USER9> That's not a good analogy, since doctors don't generally "forget" patients that the paramedics bring in. The situation for many developers is, first aid is _all_ that you're gonna get no matter what the injury, good luck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Steve McConnell, in his book "Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art" [1] gives this advice (paraphrased):

 _Never give off-the-cuff estimates, no matter who is asking._

Bosses and project managers tend to hold you to those estimates regardless of the caveats you give. Also, of course, an off-the-cuff estimate is very likely to be more wrong than a detailed estimate.

Here's why this is relevant to the OP: by withholding your estimate until you've had a chance to give it enough thought, you relieve the social pressure that is created in the moment by the project manager or boss who is saying, "we must have it and it must be easy, can you do it today?" Just say, "let me get back to you," and follow up with a reasonable compromise that is healthy for the project and meets the business goal.

 _Never give off-the-cuff estimates, no matter who is asking._

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Software-Estimation-Demystifying- Pract...](http://www.amazon.com/Software-Estimation-Demystifying-Practices- Microsoft/dp/0735605351)

</comment><comment><USER11> As a developer of custom business webapps, I have been in this situation many times and I desperately wish I could take this advice. Really, I do.

But when a _client_ makes a request like this, often unaware of what may _actually_ be easy or fast or simple or consistent, I can't say no to it. Saying that we need to take more time to write tests and document it properly would likely come across as similarly unprofessional and reflect badly on the company. And the consequences are every bit as bad as you say they are: the code rots and becomes volatile and obnoxious to maintain.

That's why it hurts to read this post--it feels so painfully true. I'm lucky in that at my company, my project managers are coders themselves who understand the programmatic constraints and the danger of software rot--but my clients usually aren't. I have no solution for this; it's a fine line to walk.

<comment><USER12> The answer to this is _educating your clients_. This is an important part of running a company. You need to be able to tell your client in _their_ language why something is hard to do. it's best to do this via metaphors or analogies concerning their profession.

You wouldn't believe how good a relationship with a client will be if they understand ehat you do ;)

<comment><USER13> Agreed. Technical Debt is a great metaphor for explaining these concepts to non-developers.

[http://forums.construx.com/blogs/stevemcc/archive/2007/11/01...](http://forums.construx.com/blogs/stevemcc/archive/2007/11/01/technical- debt-2.aspx)

Short-term technical debt can speed development, but like credit card debt, it quickly accrues interest. If you let your technical debt accumulate, then eventually you're spending all of your energy servicing the debt instead of improving your software.

<comment><USER14> It would be neat if there were some way to make this "debt" more visible to non-developers. At the moment it could be easily forgotten (by non-developers) after the initial deadline is hit, leaving no time to pay it back before the next "crisis" emerges.

The hardest part would be having some way to quantify the debt. But you could, at least, make a record of the corners cut, and make any accumulation extremely visible to management. Does anyone know of anything like this?

<comment><USER15> (estimated time - implentation) time over the course of the project + an interest rate. Older hacks tend to cause more hacks, so interest rate would be necessary (and more scary, which is a good thing )

We could have a pretty accurate debt precision in time, that time could be used to fix things ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is nice and I completely agree with the sentiment. Do it where I work and you'll be out of a job. If you can afford to do that, go ahead - maybe you'll enact change.

<comment><USER17> _Do it where I work and you'll be out of a job._

You might be out of a job anyway, even if you decide to go along.

Companies do not fire people just for matters of insubordination, they fire people for budgetary reasons as well. If whatever change is pushed for costs the business millions of dollars because the lowly develop who said it was dangerous was right, that developer is still at risk of being fired.

The only think that might save you is a culture which _demands_ that companies be loyal to their employees at the expense of everything else.

Everwhere else, obsequiousness isn't as safe as everyone thinks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> 3 hours and no one's posted the Software Engineering Code of Ethics that was written jointly by the ACM and IEEE??

Read it, learn it, follow it

<http://www.acm.org/about/se-code>

Let's try and bring a bit more professionalism into the industry.

</comment><comment><USER19> I never say "No".

I just say, "Yes. And this is what it will cost you to do it right:"

      - Projects X, Y, Z will all be pushed back 2 weeks.
      - Prerequisite Project <x> will have to come first.
      - <x> weeks overtime for <y> people = $z.
      - Joe and Mary will have to be pulled away for 3 weeks.
      - Interim solution <x> will only take 1 week, but <y> won't work.
      - We will need your top supervisor full-time next week.
         or, best of all:
      - We don't know.  We need a project to find out.

Note that "doing it wrong" or "doing it quick & dirty" are not options.

People understand "this is what it will take" a lot better than "no". They also understand the trade-offs and sacrifices needed. Then they will work with you to make the best decision for everybody.

<comment><USER17> _I never say "No"._

 _I just say, "Yes. And this is what it will cost you to do it right"_

You have a number of "this is what it will cost you" options which will only work if the party you are negotiating with is reasonable. There are teams and managers out there who will happily assert that they can violate the laws of space-time in order to avoid making the sacrifices you'll tell them they need to make.

 _Note that "doing it wrong" or "doing it quick & dirty" are not options._

What if you are told directly to do it "quick & dirty," and you refuse? Is that not the same thing as saying "No"? Or by never saying no, do you mean never say no without providing what qualifications would turn it into a yes? What do you do about people you know will attempt to spin things later on to bolster their claims that they weren't advised of the costs ahead of time?

In other words, what do you do about people who don't have an impeccable sense of ethics? It seems like you would need that before you could feel safe being this agreeable.

<comment><USER20> "You have a number of "this is what it will cost you" options which will only work if the party you are negotiating with is reasonable. There are teams and managers out there who will happily assert that they can violate the laws of space-time in order to avoid making the sacrifices you'll tell them they need to make."

Generally speaking though, it's less a matter of reasoning with them as it is a matter of finding the right buttons to push. Is it that their goals are misaligned from yours? Phrase your response in terms of their goals; they can't be too out of line if they need something from you. Do they not trust you? Point out that they're going to have to trust you whether you do it your way or theirs.

If they're being genuinely unreasonable and out of touch with reality and they are completely unwilling to change their approach, I'd personally rather spend my time finding ways to not have to work with them. Chances are they really aren't though. They just have a different way of looking at things that you can't meet without learning to think like they do a bit.

<comment><USER21> But what if they don't trust you until you can do things that they ask ? The difficult situation is people who do not trust you _and_ ask you to do their own way until they do - not realizing that doing it their way is exactly what prevents you from doing your job. It is fairly typical in my experience, but I have not found a way to deal with it effectively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm not sure author distinguishes well enough between different kinds of kludges. For me, personally, here are some non-negotiable issues:

1\. Security.

2\. Unit tests.

3\. Budgeting for enough time to address pressing "technical debt."

If I can't address (1-3) properly, then my sustained development performance decreases sharply, and I provide less economic value. No thanks. Any organization which I can't educate about these issues will probably be a long- term loser, anyway.

But client in the article who said, "Oh yes, the specification was wrong, but we need to do this right now. We cannot launch without. Everyone has it. It such a small change. It must be easy and fast to do."?

Usually, these requests are very easy to handle in a well-run development shop. Tell the decision maker, "Hmm. That's a 2-point feature. Let's see how it affects the schedule. We should be able to get that out tomorrow, at the cost of slightly more technical debt in module X."

Developers need to be able to respond to last-minute changes. And you'll never get a complete, correct specification up front. So you need to learn to deal with changing requirements without wrecking the code.

<comment><USER2> I'll negotiate anything, but I'll only do so with someone who has shown they really understand what's being traded off.

Of course those people rarely ask for stupid things and when they do it tends to be obvious why it's necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I always love developers that value their work enough to consider the Hippocratic Oath. The problem is that any oath attributed to a creative art such as programming will be subjective.

 _I will never name a variable horribly._ \-- A great mantra until everyone on your team thinks AcquiredContentLockSerializationPolicyBeanFactory is a good class name.

</comment><comment><USER24> It doesn't look like this will be a popular opinion but I think this attitude is totally unprofessional.

Coders and managers should be working together to reach the same goals. They should trust one another. If a manager walks into your office and tells you he has an important presentation in 20 minutes, a critical feature was missing from the spec, I think the professional thing to do is whatever it takes for that important presentation to be a success.

Why would you be ashamed if doing some dirty tricks in the code if the result is a big new client? You should be proud you were able save the day.

This attitude reeks of "not my problem" syndrome where programmers only care about the quality of the code and not the overall success of the business.

Make the hack, save the day, then go back and clean up after.

</comment><comment><USER25> An important bit of context is missing - what is the application doing? If there is a safety element then yes it would be highly unprofessional, if this is something that is reporting the earnings of a large public company then yes, unprofessional.

However, if the business impact of it going wrong is low (and there are plenty of apps in that category) then make the change and catch up with the docs and unit tests later.

<comment><USER2> Absolutely. If I were writing embedded software for a heart monitor my standards would be very different to if I were knocking up a department intranet site for a division of a large corporation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This may be a huge motivation for people doing their own start-ups and side- projects. The continual compromises, crappy legacy code, spurious feature requests and unsavoury hack jobs of day-to-day business development spur developers to go off and do something on their own - even if it's just a weekend project on GitHub - so they can remind themselves that software development is a fun and challenging activity.

</comment><comment><USER15> Almost every time I implemented something where my guts said no was a disaster. Business types need to learn if we say no at first, insisting to get a yes is a really bad idea. Tech is not negociable, we aren't doing a deal at that point. Sometimes we are too tired to find detailed and convincing arguments why it's wrong and explain the little tiny details to convince you :

Yes programmers should give options, and learn to works with business guys. Don't worry we know that lesson. But, we are all on the same boat and as scary as it is, you have to learn to work with us too ... If you get a no, try to understand why is it a no, but never try to change it to a yes.

Actually even if you get a yes you should probably give arguments against too, because sometimes we can miss a thing too.

</comment><comment><USER26> Always push back if something is wrong. If both parties are willing to meet halfway, it sometimes leads to a better solution (as a tradeoff between man- hours and functionality) than if one of the developer or the manager completely got their way.

</comment><comment><USER27> If the only reason for not doing something is that it is "unprofessional", then that is not a good enough reason in itself.

There are many good reasons why something "unprofessional" should not be done, but there will be specific details for that.

Quick dirty hacks are often why the software industry is great. If you can fix something quickly that can save your business you're a hero.

If you obstinately refuse to fix a problem _only_ because doing so would be unprofessional, at the expense of your product, your business, your colleagues jobs, you're an idiot.

</comment><comment><USER28> You can try all the tricks in the book to do things the right way - but in the end, what _really_ matters is who pays the bills.

I'm not underestimating the value of good code, or the damage BAD code can do in the long run - but in the typical business case the code exists to serve the business. If you push back too hard just because you want to do it 'right' - you might very well find yourself replaced with someone who delivers faster.

</comment><comment><USER29> If you're a developer saying _no_ is appreciated. If you're in management say no _diplomatically_.

</comment><comment><USER30> Do this on one of my teams and I'll fire you that day. I KNOW it's a hack. That's why I asked you to hack it in! Do you think I like it?</comment>


YC: Tales From the Startup Crypt - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently working for a startup that has lasted 6 years without a series B. I was talked into joining it 7 months ago by a friend, but ever since then things have been downhill. Recently the VCs brought in a consultant who basically was the CEO of another failed startup which died before it got off the ground. He in turn connected us with another consultant who was key in turning a couple of startups around that are now major companies (if you've ever bought anything online you've used their services).
This guy was given the task of forming contacts with other companies that would be interested in our technology. We receive a forwarded email about a month later by our CEO (who has now basically given up most control to the VCs). In it is an email forward from this consultant to an interested company. The email is chock full of features and promised to be beta ready by June 1st. Our CEO sent this out to us and has denied in emails going back and forth that there is anything to worry about.
Engineering is ticked because none of this information was even checked with us to see how much work would be involved. Meanwhile, our CEO founder keeps saying we just need to get this one feature and this other company won't care. It really sounds more like a case of overpromise, under sell. Whether he realizes it or not, 4/5 of the engineers are actively seeking new employment.
Unfortunately, it gets more dysfunctional than this. <comment><USER2> All salespeople overpromise, if they could have made the sale without doing so they would have but that is not usually the case. It's your job to support the salespeople who bring in the money by making what seems impossible, possible. You are not angstrom any longer you are now "Super Angstrom" who pushes out web apps as easily as you breath.

<comment><AUTHOR> All _bad_ sales people overpromise. A real solution would not be shopping a list of 'could have' 'should have' 'currently have' 'will not have' to the partner company as 'already implemented and will have' so that the requirements are realistic on both sides.

<comment><USER2> Customers have custom needs. You have to give the customers what they need and if you don't have it then you have to build it. That means promising things and hiring people to create those things you promised. You can't tell the customer "take what we have or nothing" and you can't tell the customer "come back in a year". Sure there is some stress in getting the programming done and tested and yes there are bumps along the way, but so far the "take it or leave it" approach has not been working out and it seems like someone at least is trying something new... its the "pay us and we will build it" approach.

<comment><USER3> I agree completely, gscott.

You do whatever you gotta do to get the sale.

That's no excuse, however, for sales people to operate in a vacuum. It's better for everyone if the entire team understands the plan.

And it'll be a lot easier for angstrom to become "Super Angstrom" if he has a clue about what's going on instead of being nailed with an unreasonable demand at the last minute.

If you want anyone to do anything "above and beyond the call of duty", doesn't it naturally follow that you should do everything you can to help them do it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. The problem with over promising is that in every case that I've seen it done (I've seen this 3 times in my short 4.5 year career) the promises were made without analyzing if the agreement fits what's _needed_ not what's _wanted_. And in every case the cost to satisfy a customer that has been deceived was higher than the profit from the sale that was made.

<comment><USER2> That is funny because that is what I do, I fill the gap between what is needed and wanted. I believe it would be uncommon for the customer to spec out everything down to what each screen looks like and the logic behind each page and it would be uncommon for the saleperson to do that too. Someone has to be the "interpreter" between the customer vision and the salespersons vision (both of which are valuable) and come up with a working prototype or at least page by page html screens.

I guess that begs the question who in your company is the interpreter. Sounds like you would be a good fit for that position. An approach would be "Hi my name is x in x position, great job on the sale with x company. I would like to help define the x features that will be released upon launch and a timeline for the customer to launch as quickly as possible and help define launch dates for the remaining features".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's interesting. Why do you think he's doing this? Assuming the guy isn't an idiot (and there's no reason to assume he is), why would he do this? Has he gotten enough of a payout that he wants to bail out? Or have you misunderstood the situation? Or both? Or what?

Daniel

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll know more come Monday when our CEO gets back from a meeting.

He didn't want to explain things over email...which is probably a good sign that whatever he has to say needs to be fluffed in order to sound right. I honestly think that if you can't make your argument in text, you can't make your argument. We'll see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unless you are able to seriously influence things for the better, you should also consider your options and leave if need be. 6 years is a long time in the startup world and they have had lots of time to get things right.

</comment><comment><USER6> take a cue from the other engineers and start looking. you don't need to jump ship, but find out what your options are, and if you do actually like them better, get out of there.

edited to add: if you find a good option but don't want to necessarily leave, you can then have a heart-to-heart and try to direct the flow of things back on track, or jump ship.

</comment><comment><USER7> While Larry Ellison built an empire on over promising+, it doesn't sound like you have much chance on even getting close to delivering, if all of engineering is on the point of leaving.

There are two sides to the phrase "don't confuse selling with installing". Delivering custom solutions, that can be productised, to key reference customers, in a valuable niche, is good strategy (see "Crossing the Chasm"). Promising anything to get a sale to get some money, and worrying about how to deliver later, is usually a sign that people's jobs are on the line and they are taking desperate risks.

+Causing the SEC to rewrite rules on revenue recognition, and hence causing headaches for every sales rep in the IT industry ever since.

</comment><comment><USER8> Sounds painful, but I have seen startups succeed by over-promising before. Most salespeople will do this, and when you don't have much, it's often the only way to get by. You can get mad, or you can try and make it work.

</comment><comment> patrickg-zill Get out now.</comment>


All Flint water crisis criminal charges dismissed by AG's office - <AUTHOR> https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2019/06/13/flint-water-crisis-criminal-charges-dismissed/1445849001/ <comment><USER2> This is just a legal maneuver that can at first seem confusing. After taking office the Attorney General's staff found a room full of Flint documents. The previous team had missed them because they weren't filed where they were supposed to be. According to a buddy in state government they very cleverly were hidden in plain site.

Later the AG made a big press release on how they had 'seized' the former Governor's phone and laptop. But it turns out they were in the room with the missing documents as he'd turned them over as is practice on his last day in office. Stay tuned, it's likely a few people will be going to jail.

</comment><comment><USER3> Check your paranoia: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/22/opinion/flint-lead- poison...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/22/opinion/flint-lead-poisoning- water.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> I remember reading about some of the criminal charges that were being filed, and in one instance at least, someone was being charged for "criminal negligence" (or whatever) in the water testing that they did. But after reading about the procedure they used, I thought to myself that AFAIK their procedure seemed valid, so I couldn't understand why they were being charged.

Now granted, it could probably be argued that their procedure could have been more comprehensive. But for the testing they were actually trying to do (determine how much lead was leaching from the main water lines) the procedure they did use seemed to me to be a valid one.

</comment><comment><USER5> As per the other comment, I sure hope it's a clever legal maneuver.

It is absolutely shameful that a city in the richest nation in the world cannot have clean water. I don't understand how no one's been to jail, no one is taking charge, nothing seems to be urgent. Sitting on the West Coast where things are comparatively amazing, it's really sad to see such negligence from the local leaders, due to either incompetence or helplessness. Human beings deserve better. Fix it already.

<comment><USER6> The pipes were in place for many decades. Jailing decades worth of city officials would be unjust.

Neighboring cities were better run. They struggled to fund pipe replacement without any state or federal help. They did it. If now Flint gets handed money for being irresponsible, shouldn't those other cities get paid the money with interest? We're providing an incentive to be irresponsible if we reward Flint. Voters chose irresponsible people to run the city.

Flint was so badly run that the state had to intervene, sending people to make difficult emergency decisions. If somebody is to be blamed, it should be the people who came before. It should be the people who ran the city into the ground for decades, not the people who got stuck trying to salvage a far-gone hopeless mess.

<comment><USER7> The emergency state management were the ones that knowingly skimped on water treatment chemicals that everyone knew needed to be used, not to mention there are known falsified water tests. If the water was properly treated, the pipes being old or containing lead wouldn't have been a problem and would have been used for decades more without any problems. The previous local government have little to zero liability for their state-appointed forced replacements fucking up. On top of that, both the people in the state and the local city population voted against the emergency manager takeover.

What actually happened is very simple. They changed the water source, knowing full well that it required treatment, and then the treatment was not done, while the water tests were falsified to make it look like it was treated, and pretty much immediately there was complaints. Within a few weeks the local hospital reported their stainless steel sinks corroding from the untreated water, a local automotive plant shut off their local water source and had their own well dug and water treated because it was so corrosive it was destroying parts, among the endless complaints from residents. Some people even contracted legionnaires and died because of the water. Then when the managers got called out, they started partially treating the water to prevent legionnaires, but continued to falsify water tests and not ordering or utilizing pH balancing treatment chemicals.

There was more than a few people that knew 100% what was going on, even if they didn't fully realize the consequences at the time.

<comment><USER6> You are demanding to punish people for running a city without money.

The water could not be properly treated. Better water could not be obtained. This is how things go when you are out of money because you squandered it over decades.

So, what would you have the emergency state management do? The obvious choices seem to be...

a. bad water

b. fail to pay for good water until that supplier shuts it off (then NO WATER at all)

c. shut off the water

I guess they could try to steal good water, and then go to prison for that. We all want nice stuff, but sometimes we can't have it. This is how life works.

I suppose there might be one more solution. It's a bit weird. There may be an affordable flavoring agent that would prevent people from consuming the water. We do this with rubbing alcohol. We make it intensely bitter so that people don't drink it. City water with that treatment would still be fine for flushing toilets.

All things considered, I think the emergency state management did a reasonable job with the hand that they were dealt. The city was broken when they showed up to make painful decisions. The city needed some adults to run it.

<comment><USER7> They had the money specifically because they decided not to renew their contract with Detroit water to save money. If they couldn't afford to treat their water, they shouldn't have ever tried switching water sources from Detroit. Not to mention they had even more money to fund the Huron pipeline project to get off Detroit water which would also need to be treated.

The people who switched water sources was not the Flint local government, it was the state appointed manager, which was against local and state wide voter's wishes. WNot sure what you are talking about with 'stealing water', it makes no sense, it is government owned infrastructure, not private enterprise. They had a literal pipeline already working and connected to the Detroit water supply and had it for decades and they decided to turn it off for cheaper Flint water. The costs of treating flint water was 100% known beforehand.

They knowingly falsified water test results specifically to not pay for water treatment, what are the costs of killing people, destroying an entire city's worth of water infrastructure, and paying off people to falsify water tests?

The water would have been fine if it was treated, it would have been fine if they kept buying Detroit water for another 2-3 years like they had been for decades. If water test results weren't falsified every sanitation engineer in the country would be calling them up telling them the billions of dollars worth of damage they were doing to their pipes.

Okay so you don't want them to drink the water, fine. How does that prevent the acidic water from destroying 50 years worth of water infrastructure in a single year? How does bad tasting water prevent billions of dollars in damages?

The EM did a horrible job, they killed people, first via legionnaires disease, then via lead poisoning, not to mention the decades of population with reduces IQ and increased violence, crime, and incarceration costs. Then they cost them Literally billions of dollars destroying the entire pipeline system.

The biggest damage to Flint wasn't the poisoning of the people, which is bad enough, but the destruction of billions of dollars of government property. It is like burning piles of $100 bills so you don't have to pay for your gas to be turned on. If you think the EM did a good job (and the water crisis is only the tip of the iceberg) then I don't think you have been paying attention at all.

<comment><USER6> What I mean by stealing: If they continued to use the nice Detroit water, but they didn't pay Detroit for that water, it would be stealing. Detroit would shut off the water. If they then reopened the valves or broke into the pumping stations to continue getting Detroit water, that would be even worse.

The savings produced by switching to the bad water shouldn't be viewed in isolation. The rest of the city budget matters too. If they are not in the black, then bills can't be paid. That includes important things like water treatment chemicals.

Basically, bad stuff happens when you are out of money. Budget problems started long before the emergency managers took control.

If somehow the city was in the black, then I'll agree that the emergency managers screwed up. I don't however think that they should be held to a standard of perfection, so "screwed up" doesn't mean anything criminal or even seriously malicious or inappropriate. Mistakes happen.

If the city was still in the red, as I'm led to believe, then disaster of some type was unavoidable. It's just a matter of choosing the disaster. They could have laid off the entire fire department for example, which would likely mean that fires spread from building to building. They could have shut down much of the school system, eliminating school lunches and school buses. Tough choices had to be made.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


China Tortured Me over Hong Kong, Says Former British Consulate Employee - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2019/11/20/world/asia/20reuters-hongkong-protests-britain.html <comment><USER2> I suggest you to read the first hand report of the tortured Employee of the British Consulate. [https://www.facebook.com/notes/cheng-man-kit/for-the- record-...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/cheng-man-kit/for-the-record-an- enemy-of-the-state/2490959950941845/)

It's far more detailed and interesting than the article, and it clearly exposes the mindset of a 21th century secret police.

<comment><USER3> Torture, threats, solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, and when he gets home to Taiwan he is followed. The detail he puts into describing how they manipulated forms to start his prison stay to be contributed, to the number of times they took prison photos, makes it a crazy read. It reads like science fiction as an American - I hope he is able to hide out and find a job in a new country.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nytimes is paywlled, here is Cheng's own account of the events:

[https://www.facebook.com/notes/cheng-man-kit/for-the- record-...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/cheng-man-kit/for-the-record-an- enemy-of-the-state/2490959950941845/)

Edit: archive link for the above [https://archive.is/LWyz2](https://archive.is/LWyz2)

(I guess I'm on some kind of list now)

<comment><USER5> Absolutely horrifying read. I couldn't help but think about Julian Assange going through similar treatment in the UK. Just goes to show: All governments are criminal and terrorist organizations, oppressing and enslaving the people.

Edit: sources for perennate

> Two medical experts accompanied Melzer when he visited Assange at Belmarsh > prison in the UK, he said on Tuesday. "We came to the conclusion that he had > been exposed to psychological torture for a prolonged period of time. That's > a medical assessment." Melzer's message fell largely on deaf ears, as only a > handful of reporters attended Tuesday's press conference at the UN > headquarters in New York.

[https://www.rt.com/news/471016-assange-torture-violations- un...](https://www.rt.com/news/471016-assange-torture-violations-un/)

Physically and mentally his condition has gotten pretty bad. He could barely speak in front of the judge recently. Listen to John Pilger who met him: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLXzudMCyM4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLXzudMCyM4)

<comment><USER6> Please provide sources for describing incidents where the UK government physically tortured Julian Assange by forcing him to stay awake, or strapped him to a chair so he couldn't move his limbs, or hung from a crossbar and forced into an eagle pose, etc.

I doubt there are sources though since I'm pretty sure you just made this up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Perhaps it is time for the citizens of the Western liberal democracies to stop doing business with Chinese interests.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've been watching both _For All Mankind_ (Ronald D. Moore, in which the Soviets beat the U.S. to the moon) and _The Man in the High Castle_ (based on the P.K. Dick novel in which the Axis powers win WW II), and have generally always enjoyed alternate history fiction.

So, I find myself wondering how this would have all played out if the Cold War hadn't ended and Soviet Union hadn't fallen apart before 1999 when Britain was required to turn HK over to the PRC.

<comment><USER9> Do you mean that it's reasonable to assume that the USSR wouldn't have backed China? Or what's the "alternate" part of this history?

<comment><USER8> > Or what's the "alternate" part of this history?

I'm not sure what you are asking. The alternate part is the part where the Soviet Union doesn't collapse a half decade before the handover of HK back to China.

Would a Cold War Britain have really handed over HK? What does China look like without the West's influx of money for manufacturing? (Maybe that still happens.) If it leads to war, how does that play out? Is it another Korea/Vietnam or does it blossom into WW III? Does it end with a new lease or an armistice? If 9/11 still happens during this crisis, how does a Cold War world respond to it?

A major part of such works is that they allow us to look at ourselves and our real history through a different light.

<comment><USER9> I just think you're vastly overestimating the impact a still standing Soviet union would have on Hong Kong. My personal guess is that it would play out in about the same way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For all those that say "I have nothing to hide" wrt privacy issues, Chinese people thought so too. Now they can't even afford to care about such horrile things because lack of privacy means all dissent will be crushed.

</comment><comment><USER11> The best smartphone security doesn't help when you are forced to unlock your phone.

<comment><USER12> Until the "best smartphone security" is two passwords: The second you enter when under duress, and it populates your phone with pro government content based on your current location. Or just wipes your phone. Or permanently locks, encrypts, and sends decryption key to some trusted source.

<comment><USER13> And then we beat you up for deliberately sabotaging our investigation. If you didn't have anything to hide why would you wipe your phone? Clearly you must be a spy or worse so we have no choice but to send you to the re-education camp.

<comment><USER14> The action should be indistinguishable from a remote-wipe if possible.

<comment><USER15> So it was working right up until you put in the special password? How would you make it look like a remote wipe?

Also, keep in mind, remote wiping your phone after the police take it is evidence tampering. In the US, that alone can get you imprisoned.

<comment><USER14> Well yes, it's not trivial. The lock screen would have to remain unaffected and the filesystem would have to look like it was rebuilt a few hours ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How should the rest of the world explain to China that being evil is bad, and they should stop being evil?

<comment><USER17> Being evil by western standards is a small price to pay for huge quality of life improvements - from going to sleep hungry to central European wages, from dirt roads to biggest (if not best) rail and highway network in the world, from planting rice knees deep in mud to nice city apartment and office/engineering job. To Chinese population this rhetoric might sound like F you I got mine.

<comment><USER18> HK and Taiwan both don't like torture and political persecution. Not a "western standard". Plus CCP government ideas of communism is a west/Russian idea. I would say the CCP that destroyed its own Chinese history is more western than Taiwan

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The problem is that moral outrage like this is used to justify war.

Nothing justifies war. Please remember that. War is innocent people mass murdering other innocent people.

<comment><USER20> The problem is that you want to look the other way. What could ever justify that?

<comment><USER19> I did not say that we should just look away.

I am saying the answer is not to have millions of Chinese and American innocents engaged in slaughtering each other or activities that support that.</comment></comment></comment>


Why are some venture capital firms not funding women? - <AUTHOR> http://gust.com/blog/2014/05/04/why-are-some-venture-capital-firms-not-funding-women/ <comment><USER2> No stats, not even a applied-vs-accepted comparison. Empty words.</comment>


Ask HN: What's your favourite personal website? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> This one, by far: [https://charlie.bz/](https://charlie.bz/). I love the idea of using Javascript to connect to a Windows 95 machine using VNC, just to display a very basic HTML page.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://aprilzero.com/](http://aprilzero.com/)</comment>


Show HN: Groundera – Indie books by entrepreneurs. 90% are free - <AUTHOR> http://groundera.com <comment><AUTHOR> I made a site that aggregates 60 indie books on business by entrepreneurs. 40 more books are in a queue. If you want to add a book that should be on the site, please use «submit» button.

</comment><comment><USER2> looks great. Did you use any frontend framework?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I use Bootstrap.</comment></comment>


Facebook Hits Record $75 Billion Valuation - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/04/facebook-valuation-secondmarket

<comment><USER2> _Full disclosure: I have a horse in this race (Appleseed)._

I used to think that the problem was that Facebook wasn't worth what it was valued at. Now, I'm starting to rethink that, but not in a positive direction. I think maybe Facebook may be cursed by it's valuation.

Right now, Facebook is like a developer-oriented gravy train. They can work on cool features, do redesigns on a whim, play with heavy scale, and there's enough investment to keep it going in every which direction they want.

But profits aren't there, not on this level. And remember that, for as indispensable as Facebook is, most people can survive without it, and the achilles heel of social networks is that the trickle of users leaving can quickly become a flood. Myspace found this out, and they were twice as profitable, per user, as Facebook is (although they did have many problems that Facebook hasn't, terrible engineers being one of them).

What I'm wondering is, will the valuation force Facebook to make the kind of hard decisions they're putting off right now. Are ads lucrative enough to appease the investors? If not, where do they go? Do they start heavy data mining? Do they push the boundaries of privacy even further?

I'm starting to consider the fact that these astronomical valuations may end up contributing to Facebook's eventual demise by setting expectations that they cannot meet without fundamentally alienating their users.

We'll see.

<comment><USER3> The higher you get, the harder you fall. Their foundation is built upon false assumptions of invincibility and permanence. People WILL leave when something 'cooler' and/or 'smarter' is created. Facebook is not exempt from this basic fact of business. People are fickle and are converted with the right words, images, and features.

Facebook has an Achilles heel that can't be overlooked, that is it's complete dependence on people sharing as much as they can with as many people as possible. That is going to eventually turn something that was once clean and simple into something cluttered and complex. It's already happening...

Another major factor, they have hit their ceiling for media attention. They have actually broken it and are now starting to get on some people's nerves. It's only natural...it happened to Apple and Google too. Remember how innocent and perfect they once seemed?

P.S. (I am not a "Facebook hater" or anti-Zuckerberg. I respect the founder and his baby. This is just plain obvious to me.)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> At this valuation, Facebook is worth almost 1/4 the value of Apple, a company which is now generating $75 billion a year in revenues. Facebook is reported to have generated between $1.2 billion and $2 billion for 2010. To compete with Apple's valuation, Facebook has to generate at least $18 billion a year.

Am I crazy or is something wrong here?

<comment><USER4> Revenue is not a good comparison, e.g. Ford has much higher revenue than Apple. Net retained earnings [profit] is what matters and that is unreported because Facebook is a private company.

<comment><AUTHOR> Apple made $16.64 billion profit in 2010, how much profit do you think, if any, Facebook made on their $1-2 billion?

<comment><USER5> well, since the valuation of FB is clearly a random smoke and mirrors number...I'd say FB made between $300-400 billion on their $1-2 billion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This secondary market is far from liquid, take the crazy valuations with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER7> Not only that, but these kinds of figures are always used in an attempt to attach a folklore of value to something, in the service of creating an expectation and therefore a "real" value once the IPO comes along or whatever. They're laying the foundation now, and it's FB executives' job to maximize value, after all. How could it possibly be worth any less than what they say? Wouldn't that expose them to impossible-to-prove-anyway fiduciary incompetence? It just has to be believable... _enough_.

<comment><USER5> A big problem I have with these absolutely ridiculous numbers is the assertion then that Zuck is a multi-billionaire. Unless he's figure out how to turn investors dreams into a Scrooge McDuck vault full of money of course.

<comment><USER8> If I understand it correctly, though, couldn't Zuck have just sold some of his shares to an investor and gotten some money? Yes, not several billion, but he's rolling in a couple hundred mill right now, I'm sure.

I remember reading how several investors bought into Twitter by buying $100 million from one of the founders...

<comment><USER7> By the same token, he could have already sold _most_ of it. $70B is the valuation established by those who have already bought shares, after all. It's in their interest to convince the rest of us that they got a good deal. Heck, if $70B is such an insane valuation, you'd have to be insane not to sell out at that price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I haven't really questioned facebook valuations in general, but the last month or so is definitely feeling like pump and dump.

Hype around Second Market, the Goldman-Sachs deal - I get the feeling that there's lots of people working very hard to find a larger set of fools to dump the stock on. The SEC investigation of Second Market seems timely.

Combine that with the fact that facebook is less exciting as a product, the APIs are a huge, buggy, expanding mess, and their market is looking saturated.

Techcrunch on the bandwagon kind of seals it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Next week, "Facebook Hits Record $1 trillion dollar Valuation (techcrunch.com)"

Yay! let's make up numbers!

<comment><USER7> TechCrunch:Facebook::FoxNews:Republicans

EDIT: and MSNBC:Dems, and...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This just confirms that for the layman trading stocks is nothing more than legal gambling.

I personally work for a company whose P/E is > 200, while this is nice for me at the moment, I realize that the value in this situation has _nothing_ to do with performance.

Facebook will probably be slaughtered once they go public have to adhere to reporting standards.

</comment><comment><USER11> There will be some justification for the high valuations when Facebook enters the display advertising space. Facebook will use like button log data and user profile information for superior ad targeting. Their ad targeting might not be very good now, but they are going to figure it out because that's where the money is.

<comment><USER12> Google has been at that for so much longer, though. While Facebook can mine my profile, Google has years of AdSense data about the actual sites I visit and what I do there, in addition to profile info from several different portions of my Google account (assuming they use that, I don't actually know).

<comment><USER11> One of the reasons reasons that Facebook is implementing features for third party sites (like buttons, the new comment system) is that Facebook wants to collect the same type of data that Google collects with AdSense.

The profile data and the interactions between users on Facebook is much richer than the interactions and profiles on Google. Facebook will eventually derive more value from their data than Google does from theirs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> shortage of supply, therefore demand goes up. Simple economics. Definitely not a true value, you can call it bubble, or you can call it whatever you want.

I would just ignore it.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's a growing bubble!

</comment><comment><USER15> This is insane.</comment>


OrientDB v2.1 announced and the global roll-out of 24×7 support - <AUTHOR> http://orientdb.com/orientdb-2-1-and-24x7-support-release/

<comment><USER2> Will follow a series of blog posts about all the new feature in OrientDB 2.1 and how to use them. Stay tuned.</comment>