Ask HN: Competitive wages in elected posts, Ranked list voting, Voting tests? - <AUTHOR> The technology of governance moves at a snails pace.Voting only works well when there's good candidates to choose from. Giving a ranked list instead of a single name honors the intention of the voter better than a single name.  Combining everyone's ranked lists gives you a winner that everyone likes, instead of a polarizing winner that half hate and half like.
Paying candidates a competitive wage with the private sector, and the chance for financial growth in the position should attract better candidates.
You wouldn't let an unqualified surgeon operate on your body, so why are unqualified voters allowed to work on your democracy?  Voting tests are dangerous, because they can be written to disenfranchise people.  We've figured out fair tests for all other kinds of professional licensing, so there should be no reason we can't figure out a fair test for voting. I made a short video about this topic.
Avoiding the pitfalls such as an unfair test, or other; This should create a pool of better candidates, selected through a better voting system by better voters.
The question is, how do you repatriate a system that has been captured. <comment><USER2>
        Combining everyone's ranked lists gives you a winner that everyone likes, instead of a polarizing winner that half hate and half like.

I'd recommend reading about Arrow's Theorem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I found that: "Arrow originally rejected cardinal utility as a meaningful tool for expressing social welfare,and so focused his theorem on preference rankings, but now states that a cardinal score system with three or four classes "is probably the best".[[https://electology.org/podcasts/2012-10-06_kenneth_arrow](https://electology.org/podcasts/2012-10-06_kenneth_arrow)] (via wikipedia)</comment></comment>


Guide to Reversing Award BIOS DLL Support - <AUTHOR> http://sites.google.com/site/pinczakko/pinczakko-guide-to-reversing-award-bios-dll-support

<comment><USER2> Argh... it's articles (actually sites) like this one that make me wish there were either 30+ hours in the day or there was a non-detrimental way to do with less sleep. I think this is fascinating stuff and if I could I would ditch what I'm doing and just bury myself in it for hours.

Oh well.

</comment><comment><USER3> This sure is fascinating!

I wish I had learned assembler when I was younger -- for the projects I'm working on now it doesn't seem much of a gain, so I rather invest my time into the tools that get the job done (for me mostly C, Python and Java).

</comment><comment><USER4> And I thought reverse-engineering a C++ application with COM was hardcore...</comment>


Anyone wanna join on open source reservation tennis courts app? - <AUTHOR> I'm working on a tennis web/mobile app, and I want to open source tennis court reservation system. Anyone wanna join? I'm using Laravel / VueJS/ Tailwind for now, but any good tech stack are more than welcome. Sounds interesting? <comment><USER2> I'm interested in testing, and might contribute to the iOS app.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's cool...Please contact me at info at sliceer.net for details</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What skills did you learn from speeches at Startup School? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> "It's not about winning and losing, It's about doing something that is valuable."

"You only experience two emotions in startups. Euphoria and terror."

"As a startup CEO I slept like a baby: I woke up every two hours and cried."

</comment><comment><USER2> Some notes/quotes that I took:

"We'd rather make a small number of people really happy, instead of a large number of people somewhat happy."

"Investors are herders, not followers. You have to plant that they are going to loose out on the deal if they drag their feet."

"Be great at 1 thing!"

"You have to build something that is not slightly better, or even 2x better, but 10x better than an existing product/competition."

</comment><comment><USER3> if you are resilient and persistent you have a good chance to succeed</comment>


3 days fasting experiment - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/better-humans/a-surprising-thing-happened-when-i-stopped-eating-for-3-days-ee1fe8b426cf <comment><USER2> "The most surprising thing, indeed -- despite always -- being repulsed by articles with click-baity titles, in the past -- suddenly I found myself overcome by an irresistible urge to start posting with titles as gimmicky and catchy as my imagination could come up with!

<comment><USER3> Thanks, but please close your quote!</comment></comment>


"I guess you can't use NYU Libraries if you don't have Twitter or Facebook?" - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/dietrich/status/956937724983783425 <comment><USER2> So create a garbage account, that voids any premise of authenticity or identity to the social login.

Certainly this is jumping through hoops, and performing a silly dance to get a cookie.

One might suggest that it's not a terrible idea to share passwords to these kinds of accounts with random strangers (written in bathroom stalls at train stations and airports, passed around at bars and restaurants), in order to further confuse authenticity and identity, rendering any attempt at harvesting or collecting interesting information from these emphemeral accounts as fruitful as trying to feed one's self with the residue extracted from the insides of candy wrappers found in the garbage.

<comment><USER3> Harder and harder to do as these social networks require a phone number to create an account.

<comment><USER2> Which is why it's important to share intentional junk accounts with random strangers, forging a pool of vagrant hobo accounts.

Doing so renders burner identifiers more burnt than if one were to abandon them in a non-reusable state.

Sometimes such accounts will be hoarded or closed off by vigilantes who might opine that this behavior is somehow immoral or ethically reproachable, even though it isn't, but so what?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The response tweet from NYU:

"This is our login option for visitors. NYU community and consortium members are able to login with their school IDs. If you require assistance please use the Ask a Librarian chat on our homepage."

<comment><USER5> More relevant, further down: "NYU is a private university. The social media login option is only for visitors who are engaged in onsite research. Our materials are not available to the public online."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I assumed HN would guess this, whereas Twitter wouldn't:

Wasn't this most likely a simple technical implementation shortcut/limitation? (Which they're now having to defend as a "policy" decision against the tweetrage?)

In other words, I assume it's an organization with a limited technical staff and budget who just followed a means--social login--to an end (since everybody has one of those, right?).

<comment><USER7> Probably. Getting oauth2 to work with Facebook and Twitter is dead easy, and far more secure than rolling your own email auth.

<comment><USER8> Easier and more secure are debatable IMO.

You don't have to roll your own in order to signup users with email. There are plenty of libraries out there to do it just as securely as Twitter and FB.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From my experience in dealing with NYU (technical side of merchant dealing with NYU student cash cards), a bunch of stuff is outsourced. I think the last reply in the twitter feed "WTF" is a bit sensationalized.

Yes it's annoying but they have a revolving door of students and visitors. Managing security is tough. Outsourcing to 3rd party for validation makes sense and brings cost down, even if it pisses of a few folks.

<comment><USER10> > even if it pisses of a few folks

Are there only a few people who realize how big of an issue having no vender- neutral solution is? That'd actually scare me.

If you think this deeper, then why not organize the voting of the government through Facebook or Google? That'd outsource the identiy management, so it's cheaper.

It's depressing how many people are blind to consequences of technological decisions, especially when financial incentives are at play.

<comment><USER11> What would be a "vender-neutral" solution in this case? There are very very few people that host their own email servers on the internet meaning almost everyone hitting this login window have a gmail/yahoo/whatever email address.

<comment><USER10> A good way would be to accept gpg keys as identities.

<comment><USER12> Indieauth.com does just that: [https://indieauth.com/pgp](https://indieauth.com/pgp)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is very dangerous, the assumption that everyone should have an account on a specific private company, even if it is free.

</comment><comment><USER14> Ownlife is doubleplusungood.

</comment><comment><USER15> Really?

<comment><USER16> Yes. It would appear so, based on the 'conversation' on that there social media network OP posted.

<comment><USER15> I mean really as in that's batty. Probably should have put in a few more words. I can't give the written word a tonal inflection to add context. I could say "Really! How laughable is that."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> non-mobile link: [https://twitter.com/dietrich/status/956937724983783425](https://twitter.com/dietrich/status/956937724983783425)

<comment><USER18> Changed, thanks.</comment></comment>


What Metrics Every SaaS Company Should Track in 2020? - <AUTHOR> We recently had a mastermind call with an expert about SaaS Metrics that founders should track to succeed in 2020.
Ben Murray, aka The SaaS CFO shared his insights about the fundamentals of SaaS metrics
We discuss: : ▪ The fundamentals of SaaS metrics: the formulas, calculations, tips and tricks. ▪ 10 metrics that are relevant to your SaaS business. Ben shared a unique SaaS Metrics Template that you can download and use to organize all your metrics.
Let me know if you're interested to watch a replay, and I'll share the link to the video. <comment><AUTHOR> Saas metrics that really matter and how to track them correctly: [https://youtu.be/qGZa97pSMI4](https://youtu.be/qGZa97pSMI4)</comment>


Spartan – The Unified Development System for WordPress - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pressprostudio/spartan-the-unified-development-system-for-wordpre <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN Community,

We've been busy making some major updates to our Kickstarter campaign and we'd really appreciate any comments or feedback with any tips or ideas for improving our page.

You can check out the Kickstarter here: [http://kck.st/2n80yUh](http://kck.st/2n80yUh)

Feel free to leave a comment in this thread or, better yet, on the campaign page itself!

Thanks everyone!</comment>


The manager's schedule is holding remote work back - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@lukethomas14/the-managers-schedule-is-holding-remote-work-back-f9c1302ac6f3 <comment><USER3> I've worked in 4 very successful organization that were almost 100% remote work, the percentage of remote work employees by company, 98%, 99%, 92%, 98%.

These companies were no different than the 3 successful companies that didn't support remote work at all.

All 7 companies were process driven companies, with discipline. The processes were not overly complicated, nor bureaucratic in nature, but they were followed religiously. If the process wasn't working everyone still followed it, but the issues were raised and addressed quickly. Which meant everything worked and made sense.

I've worked at 4 unsuccessful companies 2 that were almost 100% remote, and 2 that were almost 100% not remote. What these 4 companies had in common was a lack of process, or discipline. Chasing the "next thing", blowing up schedules because "we need it now", zero planning. These companies need everyone in the same location because nothing is written down, everything is rumor, tribal knowledge is key and if you don't get to sit in a room and look at everyone to figure out the politics nothing works.

Bottom line is if you want to be successful you need to plan, have process and be disciplined in your approach to running the business. If you do these things managing remote employees is no different than having everyone in the same room. If however your company is a mess, trying to manage remote employees is next to impossible.

<comment><USER4> Not that relevant, but caught my eye. A 98% or 99% remote company is effectively a 100% company right? 1% or 2% is not enough to be considered a _" headquarters"_.

<comment><USER5> There's an old adage that headquarters is wherever the CEO works. Most major corporate headquarters moves are to be closer to wherever the CEO calls home. Taking that adage to its literal extreme there will only ever be 99% remote companies as effectively the corporate headquarters is still the CEO's home. Though of course the adage isn't meant to be taken solely literally, and its more just a lens into a power relationship, and even a "majority remote" company may still need (or unintentionally build) the power of a headquarters on paper. (Maybe not directly to make the CEO happy, but accountants for tax reasons, shareholders for accountability reasons, or other reasons.)

<comment><USER6> >There's an old adage that headquarters is wherever the CEO works.

Is that an adage or it is the literal meaning of the word "headquarters"? The head's quarters - and the premier definition of headquarters if you look it up in Merriam.

<comment><USER7> I've worked for a company where the CEO's home office had less than 10% of employees, and the HQ (for lack of a better term) halfway across the country had greater than 70% of employees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a former software eng. who has been on the management side for a few years, I am quite ambivalent about remote work, and I find most arguments for it a bit naive. For example, the idea that the manager schedule is built around taylorism is not true IMO. I have never seen a single senior manager who do not have their life consisting mostly of 30 / 60 / 90 mins slots in my life, and I have worked in very technical environments, e.g. where the average engineer had a PhD.

First, to let it out of the way: yes, you can definitely have remote teams which work very well and produce high quality products. In my experience, those have the following characteristics: clear and fairly technical product definition (e.g viz software which are built for scientists), excellent teams with no bad performer, and healthy business environments.

The problem is when at least some of those conditions are not met:

1\. Most organizations are dysfunctional in some ways. Product and engineering are not aligned, or there are constant re-organizations, lack of ownership. It is extremely challenging for managers to improve this situation if everybody is remote, because communication is your main tool here, and doing so remotely is even more difficult. My experience in those situations is that face to face discussions are the most effective tool to untangle the mess.

2\. When things go south (e.g. you lose a big client, etc.), it is almost always the case that people will start to find teams / people to blame. Executives have shallow information, and most will rely on what is available to them (kind of availability bias, but for people instead of ideas). Remote teams will be at a disadvantage.

3\. When your team is not very good, or not very experienced, it is very difficult to improve their skills remotely. First, being remote means you lose a lot of very useful information, such as "do they often talk to other people when they are stuck". Instead of observing how people act, you have to ask, which paradoxically means more interruption.

Generally, my sense is that remote-first work is quite fragile, or said differently, is an unstable equilibrium. As soon as things go badly, it is much harder to fix things. As long as everything goes well, it may well be more efficient though.

<comment><USER9> I don't know why you got downvoted, your points are certainly good and reflect my one personal data point.*

I have also seen that face 2 face interactions are the best in order to align within or across product and engineering. Especially at the level of longer- term goals. Not so much at the level of weekly or monthly cycles.

And I've seen the exact same thing with coaching and mentoring people and teams. It feels like it's much harder. I think when you are the person who needs to upskill, it is a lot more obvious when you are sitting next to a person senior to you. That you have to grow becomes more "material" maybe?

I love remote work, the benefits brought up are very real. I'm curious about solutions to these very real issues.

* Although in my case, I'm sure someone could come and say "you are not doing it right!" We were fairly new to this.

<comment><USER9> And there's one more thing, I've found that building good interpersonal relationships are quite important to having effective discussions with someone. Especially when the topic is controversial. I've found this to be a lot harder when two people have never met each other.

How do people work around this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, I'm the author of the post and have been working remotely for 6 years.

There is no replacement for meeting up in person periodically. Anyone who tells you it's not a key requirement of remote work is foolish. Smart teams + companies have figured this out and do regular meetups.

With that being said, there are ways to "maintain" relationships with coworkers. I wrote a big post about this last week you might like: [https://www.friday.app/build-relationships-remote- team](https://www.friday.app/build-relationships-remote-team)

<comment><USER8> Did you write anything about remote team management ? The "value proposition" for remote work for IC is obvious to me, but much less so from a management perspective.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea - I will write about this shortly. I've written a "how to" post, but it's mediocre.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was part of a remote-work trial at my office (as a Software Developer). We were remote for about a year and honestly it was the best work experience I've ever had. I felt so productive working in an environment perfectly tailored to me (my own home).

It ultimately ended as several upper management thought we were too "disconnected" from the company although my e-mail was always open, phone forwarded to my cell and I was online in a company wide chat messenger during working hours. We even came on-site once a week for face-to-face meetings. But I guess some people picture remote workers negatively so we are now back on- site and all the things I took for granted during the trial year are making being on-site so much harder.

I commute an hour by car so I gave up a pay raise ~$6,000/yr. on gas alone. I haven't (and don't want to) calculate vehicle wear, snow tires, etc. I'm constantly interrupted by people throughout the day laughing at the nearby reception desk, asking me about lunch or just coming to talk because they are bored. Even right now I have someone using a leaf blower directly outside my window so I can't focus on code (why I am on HN right now). The office temperature is an uncomfortable 66F because the corner office gets so hot with the many windows it has and I am part of their HVAC line. I am using an underpowered laptop instead of my home desktop (32GB RAM, high end CPU, etc) and I require our IT Department to install all software for me because "company policy"... Needless to say my productivity has dropped.

Perhaps someday we'll be able to go remote again, or maybe it's just time to move on. I've been here now for more than 5 years and I enjoy the work I do and the people I work with but after having a taste of remote-work, it's hard going back.

<comment><USER11> I discussed the same points on Reddit recently and the one that I focused on as well was the aspect of just my physical health.

When I'm at home I have a fully stocked kitchen, my fridge with all my ingredients and no competition for any of it. What it means is when I'm working from home, I eat healthier and lead a healthier lifestyle. I save money on food because the laziness to not pack a lunch doesn't exist.

The commute in mornings is stressful (especially around this time of year where roads become treacherous with rain/snow with melt+freeze cycles). Without that commute I can wake up at 6:30, shower, eat and be "at my desk" by 7:00 while the on-site work has me waking up at 5:30.

There's just _so many_ benefits to remote work. I'm happier, and therefore more productive on that matter alone. I don't even need to get into all the reasons you covered why work at my office is far worse

<comment><USER12> Remote work saves me ~$300/month in extra child care, or else having to work so late that by the time I get home my kids are going to bed because the other option is not being able to reach an office until 9:30-9:45, by letting me get them where they need to be at the right time instead of early (which costs money—before-school programs, early care at daycare, that kind of thing).

Plus savings in gas and wear & tear on my car. Hell when all my kids are in regular k-12 school and I can just toss them on the bus, we could drop to one car easily, too, saving even more money.

So, remote work: worth probably $6000/yr to me now in sheer cash savings, call it $10k for time saved and lower stress. Worth maybe $15k in a couple years when all my kids can ride the bus. Not friggin' bad. Oh and despite the kids (disease carriers that they are) I'm still sick like 1/2 as often, so that's nice.

Plus I can prep ingredients for dinner over lunch or while on a call that doesn't need 100% of my attention or whatever. Measure stuff, chop some veggies, set it aside, back to work. We've been eating so much better (and cheaper) since I went remote.

Looking like that'll end soon which has me pretty bummed, though. Remote is just _so_ much better. Any music I want (or none), get up and walk around, work from any room or out on the deck. No shared bathroom, hahaha. Offices are expensive time-wasting misery factories by comparison.

<comment><USER10> You nailed my experience entirely. Every point. Working remote was incredible and I hope to find that again. I wish you the best of luck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The manager's schedule is built around Taylorism and the idea that if she (the manager) just figures out the exact mechanistic steps for squeezing all the productivity out of the worker, everything will operate smoothly.

Unfortunately, that's not particularly useful in knowledge work where most of the time, we're dealing with a non-deterministic relationships and creatively figuring out a problem. The expression of the symptom is the manager's schedule but the actual disease is the outdated idea of command and control as a way to manage knowledge workers.

<comment><USER14> The problem is that priorities are still to be managed. And there is no such thing as 10 people decide one priority. It's always one person who decides the priority either by signing a contract, pushing a button, committing some code, etc.

For this reason there will always be command and control, since an organization becomes dysfunctional when people act against decisions based on made-up priorities which are way mis-aligned with the real priorities which were decided.

Anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional. Of course there are different types of management styles like servant leadership for example. But that still doesn't change a damn thing. Now instead of the most aggressive person signing the contract, pushing the button, etc, now a nicer fellow signs the contract, then commands every one else to follow.

And having knowledge work on the table doesn't really change the equation either. That's why almost all IT companies these days use OKRs. An objective is to be set by managers and checked upon later (a.k.a command and control).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> 2 moths ago I started a work from home role (dev) for a company that is 200 miles away. I didn't even need to go to the office as everything was done via video call & they couriered me a decent MacBook Pro.

Having come from a company that was dead against working from home, it's a breath of fresh air and has completely changed my life.

I work 8-4. Finishing at 4 feels like I actually have part of the day left. No more commuting & setting off early in the morning / later at night to avoid traffic. I don't have to sit in a car for 2 hours a day. I can go to the gym and get home again before the masses start turning up at 5:30.

Technology is such a massive enabler. Need to talk to a team member? Video call them. I've never met any of them, but it feels like we're colleagues and know each other well. I'm more productive not sitting in an office - <USER2> interruptions because someone is bored or wants to talk utter nonsense. I'm in a relaxed atmosphere, I don't have to wear a shirt and trousers, don't get dragged into pointless meetings all the time etc etc.

Video call meetings seem to get straight to the point & speed along. People seem less inclined to go off-topic and faff - a big productivity boost.

I will never understand the mindset of the previous employer that had a natural mistrust of remote working. They've lost many employees because they haven't embraced flexible working, and that trend will continue.

Granted, it's not for everyone. You have to be mindful that you're at work (I have a separate space), and ensure that you're not disconnected from your colleagues. I find that making sure that I have a few video calls a day with a colleague keeps me in check.

</comment><comment><USER16> There's a big difference between remote work (which can function 100% perfectly fine in the "Manager's schedule") from "remote work across varying timezones". In my experience (3+ years working fully remotely, 10+ years working partially remotely), timezones (overlap of working hours) matter much more than physical geography.

Even among remote work in different timezones, there's still a huge difference between say a 4 hour timezone (say, covering all of North America) working with people from potentially ANY timezone where you have potentially 0 hours per day of overlap.

Even in an organization that does asynchronous work really well, very few organizations can do _everything_ effectively in async, meaning that you'll always want to have some overlap for synchronous discussions.

My advice for any company concerned about expanding remote work would be to simply limit/restrict which time zones you're comfortable people working in.

Our all-remote person team at Close.com has scaled up to 15+ engineers, 40+ people overall. We do have people all over the world, but we tend to focus our hiring around American & European Timezones, which provides a nice balance of covering a huge percentage of the world's population while still providing enough overlap to have synchronous meetings.

<comment><USER17> Or just require that people keep a schedule for your timezone. So you can _be_ in whatever timezone you want provided you're working 8-5 UTC-8, for example. Requiring someone _be_ in a specific timezone is just a slightly less of a burden than requiring they be local enough to commute it. You're still excluding a huge swath of potential employees.

<comment><USER16> Yes, I'm using "timezone" as shorthand for "the timezone of your working hours", which occasionally can/does include people who want to work odd hours to accommodate.

That said, we are always a little skeptical of people who are willing to work very odd hours (e.g. throughout their night), because for many people it's not sustainable for them long-term.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Probably has to do with Trust. Managers by definition exert some power in other people in a way that engineers do not, so they need to be trusted and build trust within a hierarchy. That's a social function so they think it's best done face-to-face. I 'm pretty sure it can be replaced with an social network though, we know it can be done since it works for social networks in general.

<comment><USER19> _> we know it can be done since it works for social networks in general_

I'm not sure we know that. We know that social networks enable people to communicate remotely, but I'm not sure we know that they actually help in building trust.

<comment><USER18> i think it works in closed networks. not in the open net

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I was looking for a bit more insight into why these diverging preferences have developed and didn't see it.

My 2c on that:

The chairman of the board at a company I know well has been in business for like 40-50 years and he reckons that CRM software has been transformational for managers. Apparently, before Salesforce, you had little idea what your salespeople were doing with their days -- especially if they were regional specialists (re: remote employees). Salesforce keeps them on track, keeps them disciplined, provides strategists with better on-the-ground facts, etc. And that's had huge effects, according to him.

But, if you're a chief marketing officer or biz dev person, and your success depends on engineers, you don't have a SF equivalent. Sure you can look at their Jira tickets or whatever, but if don't really understand what they're working on, that won't provide a lot of clarity. So maybe you look for clarity by asking them to be in the same room -- but ultimately that doesn't help much either (they just put on their headphones, deliberately avoid you, etc.). So you give up that battle.

But with product people -- you don't have a salesforce-type system to keep eyes on what they're doing. But neither is their work totally incomprehensible. So, drawing on how helpful SF has been, you conclude that transparency and oversight are needed to keep things on track. So you develop a strong preference for face to face conversations.

This is a theory to explain how a startup I know well has decided that its challenges getting to PMF are (in part) about a WFH policy that was 'too liberal' (CEO's words).

</comment><comment><USER21> Where I work all remote work was recently outright banned. Because one single person was found to be neglecting their work for years in favor of their second job, collecting two pay checks. Pretty absurd, considering that issue was at least as much the result of poor managerial supervision as it was unethical employee activity. I used to work from home frequently when my kids were home sick from school, it allowed me to put in at least a half day of work. Now, the work just has to wait, because unless there's an emergency I won't let myself be taken advantage of.

<comment><USER22> Given how poor the management sounds, that person could have worked a second job without too much trouble while in the office. I've seen it done in multiple companies.

<comment><USER21> Yes, though actually it's upper (the very top) level management that isn't so great. Many mid level are good, my boss included, who is understanding on this issue and says, "yeah, absolutely don't do work from home if you're not allowed to claim the time."

She's also extremely supportive of family time, taking an hour off to leave early for a kid's event, etc. She allows a very healthy work/life Ballance, which is part of why I stay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I worked as a fully remote software engineer for a very large company for several years and it worked great. Engineering is something that can be done well remotely. It was on me to build and maintain important relationships via Slack or occasional travel, but I made it work very well.

So well that they decided to promote me to manager of my team, which is arguably more risky than working as a remote engineer. They took a bet on me, and I think it has worked out well. I encourage my team to work at home as much as they would like to, and have even started hiring remotely.

I stand by remote work. Work is about more than enslaving code monkeys to do your bidding. It is a partnership that works well when you trust your engineers to get their work done, regardless of where they are located.

</comment><comment><USER24> It seems unlikely that differences in management schedules are the big issues holding remote work back. I mean, perhaps the first question to answer is whether anything is holding remote work back. It was my impression that it is gaining popularity, but I know there are companies and segments where it just isn't culturally a thing people do much of yet.

Maybe I'm a cynic (oh heck I should just be honest and say I'm a cynic), but I suspect that the big issues in those places that are resistant to remote work are about power, control and trust. I work on what I would say is a very successful fully remote team. However, we're small (~30 people), tightly knit, our work is essentially self-organizing with a little steering from above, and each of the people responsible for components of it is a domain expert with a lot of experience and little need for hands-on coaching. Our managers know every one of us personally and they know we're doing our best every day. There are no trust issues. We collaborate pretty effortlessly using the usual tools, and our ability to do these things has allowed us to keep our overhead low and attract skilled people from all over the world.

In short I think we're essentially a different kind of organization, and it would not surprise me to find out that it is hard to nearly impossible to convert an old-style organization, especially a larger and older one with hidebound traditions, into a new-style fully remote thing.

</comment><comment><USER25> Someone on this thread brought up trust as an aspect of successful organization remote work. I do like this take. As a manager I have observed that trust can be hard to come by if there's not a solid metric that can help establish trust where there is none. And one bad miscommunication experience can erode trust that has been built up for months.

Face-to-face is always one of the highest fidelity mediums for communication in expressing the verbal & non-verbal. And I would agree with the resounding opinion in this thread that periodic meet-ups are very good for keeping trust relations higher in the times when remote is the norm.

Sometimes even that is hard if you're managing a team from across the globe, and then trust is reduced to a metric of some kind - work output, quality of work, etc.

I like working with remote teams and I've had great and horrible experiences with them - first and third party. It can sometimes be cultural but oftentimes I've found it can be isolated to the individual - and working to remedy that weak link can oftentimes (but not always) turn a situation around.

Understanding how to build a team, identifying the needs of the team, and establish trust within that team, whether co-located or remote is important. It's also important to understand how those needs and methods are differ between co-located and remote work.

<comment><USER15> I've found that frequent face-to-face video calls works well to establish a rapport & make the remote working experience seem more "local".

<comment><USER25> I would definitely agree with this. Video conference has helped immensely.

A good example would the time my team (spread out in 4 different countries) was crunching for a launch where we set up a 'virtual' mega war room connecting 4 war rooms across the globe with live video feeds. Worked wonders for open communication when there was overlap in time zone working hours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> >For some, the idea of working remotely is equivalent to laying around, watching Netflix (while working of course), and happy hour at 3pm

Ironically, when I need to draft some long write up (e.g. perf evaluation, speech, etc.), I have the easiest time when I lie in bed watching some pausable movie or show. Nothing like passive entertainment to help me work through writer's block.

<comment><USER27> After years of remote work and guilt over doing stuff like this, I've come around to the idea that -- for some types of tasks -- there's no more efficient way of plowing through it than laying around on the couch with something pausable on the TV, or occasionally even a video game. I always end up spending much more time on pause than not, and it _actually gets done_. It has to be a pretty specific type of thing, but I no longer feel guilty about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'd argue that the tools and lack of understanding re: how to use them, and not understanding people's needs are holding back remote work.

The standard stack that companies use is Office 365. The tools in there are really awful and unreliable in many scenarios, and add friction to most interactions.

The other thing that an individual contributor won't grok is that your people are usually on a bell curve. Your most self-motivated workers thrive remote and often are more productive. But many workers either don't perform as well without direct human-to-human feedback or don't perform well remote for various reasons. We tend to assume that people have home lives and environments that are stable and amenable to work -- many _do not_. Many people have difficulty being alone all day. Still others fear (rightfully) that they will be held to a higher standard of performance/accountability because they aren't present to informal conversation.

</comment><comment> kube-system > I find this is more prevalent for non-technical people. The boss allows > remote work up to a certain point, but they can't cross over into being > fully remote.

> That would be too scary. We can't have that!

It could also be that non-technical members of the team don't have the combination of tools, technical ability, and training to make remote meetings effective.

I've seen a lot of remote meetings completely wrecked by inability to use the meeting software, failure to adjust audio settings properly, faulty or improper hardware, inappropriate use of hardware, etc. After a few frustrating interactions, many might conclude that this mode of communication isn't effective.

This is definitely a cultural issue that needs to be addressed from the top -- these people need to be assigned the proper tools, trained to use them, and expected to use them.

</comment><comment><USER29> I thought this post had some good insights and am looking forward to seeing the finished book. I had a question about the following statement:

>"For example, I'd argue that Slack is a tool that has made the idea of remote work much more realistic for people on the manager's schedule. While it's technically an asynchronous communication tool, it's also used as an alternative to being in the same room, powering constant back-and-forth communication (which can be annoying)."

I remember this being an issue when I was doing remote work. I would be curious what the fix is for this. It does seem like simply moving the interrupt driven physical office to an interrupt driven virtual office defeats one of the key benefits of remote work.

<comment> 52-6F-62 > _I remember this being an issue when I was doing remote work. I would be > curious what the fix is for this. It does seem like simply moving the > interrupt driven physical office to an interrupt driven virtual office > defeats one of the key benefits of remote work._

Maybe. In some offices, it only means that you get both: constant pings from even unrelated teams' chats, etc, _and_ the in-office interruptions. I'd like if this were limited to one form...

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I was told when I started my current position that remote work would be available for any employee with 12 months of experience. Then, upper management changed, and my boss's hands are tied: he can only request remote for special circumstances. All of my older co-workers were grandfathered in with their old remote access, granted before I arrived, but I essentially have zero chance of gaining remote work, all due to upper management not trusting its employees to know what's best for themselves.

<comment><USER31> Now is a good time to start looking for a better job. And be sure to tell them when you leave what the reason was.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> They're using a different measuring stick for these cases. They equate being in the office with "being constantly interrupted". Well, sure. Obviously that's bad! But does it have to be that way?

In other words, remote work is how people give themselves private offices when their company refuses to.

For 10 years, I've seen people write articles which dance around this fact. Everybody is afraid to say "private offices", even when that's exactly what they're describing.

</comment><comment><USER33> this is interesting, and something i've experienced from both ends of the conversation.

from the perspective of managing technical teams i've only found the "manager's schedule" (as described) to be a bother to _me_ and _my_ time management. this has been a major pain in the ass when i had to kick out feature work and caused me to spend several super late nights to wrap things up. this didn't affect my team directly; no doubt my exhaustion impacted my mood and thus my interactions. not sure if i was a total dick (never got that kinda feedback, direct or indirect...but how knows...), but i certainly more than once had the posture of defeat as i shuffled from a pairing session to a strategy meeting.

i tried my hardest to create a big sandbox the devs could own and (mostly) self organize. with the help of sympathetic product managers we switched from scrum to kanban and dropped physical standups (and their associated shitty conference call experience) for a dedicated slack channel. we leaned heavily on tech and a couple basic asks such as "try to post status around the same time every day", "important communication goes in email, not in slack", "if you know your schedule, add it to the team calendar" and so on. it was not perfect but it worked out...for the that team, project and business conditions.

now, i have also certainly (and most commonly) experienced shitty remote situations where people on the speakerphone are forgotten, work from home is viewed as a negative and local time is gravely disrespected.

</comment><comment><USER34> I've managed multiple remote, distributed, asynchronous teams over my career. When remote teams work well, it's a great experience for everyone.

However, I'm more convinced than ever that these pop-culture articles and thought pieces about remote work are counterproductive for remote workers. Most of the remote work thought pieces that make it to the HN front page are very one-sided; They make remote work sound like a panacea, or a way to boost productivity and happiness with zero downsides. This creates very unrealistic expectations of remote work for job seekers, especially the more junior remote devs that I've worked with in recent years. When it comes to remote work, we want to believe that it's the golden ticket to solving all of the problems of the modern workplace.

In my experience managing remote, on-site, and mixed teams: It's much more difficult to make remote teams work well. Some key things to watch out for with remote employees:

\- Communication is everyone's job. Async, text-only communication can be more efficient when done right, but it's much more difficult to foster friendly, accurate, and rapid shared understanding over Slack or e-mail than in a well- run face to face meeting. Successful remote work depends on everyone making an effort to seek out information they need, proactively share understanding via accessible documentation, and develop healthy relationships with their peers and managers.

\- Remote employees are not contractors. A common misconception is that remote work equals total freedom about when, where, and how you do your job. Pick your own hours, vacation without taking PTO as long as you respond to e-mails once a day, batch your e-mails to once a day or less, and work on your own terms. This can work in certain situations if everyone agrees to it, but it's not a given. If you're a remote employee, the only guarantee is that your working location is not at the office. Having the team working together during specific core hours is hugely valuable if any collaboration is required. It's not efficient to have two people ping-ponging e-mails back and forth with one response per side per day when they could hash things out with a 5-minute chat during overlapping business hours.

\- Some people can't handle remote work. It just doesn't work for everyone. My biggest surprise as a remote manager was how many people's productivity dropped off a cliff after they went remote, yet they were convinced they were being more productive than ever. Some of these employees can be trained to be productive remotely with intense hands-on management, but it's a lot of work. I give new remote employees very explicit instructions about expectations for process, check-ins, and team discipline when we start. Continually update these remote onboarding documents as you learn how your remote team works best.

\- Remote job listings attract a lot of bad apples. Remote jobs are synonymous with slacking off in some circles. Watch out for digital nomads who want to collect a paycheck while they travel the world. Avoid startup founders who think they can put in a couple hours of remote work and collect a paycheck and benefits while they focus on building their startup on someone else's dime. Watch out for remote applicants who try to work two jobs at once, doing the bare minimum for whichever of the two companies is paying the least attention to their work. When hiring remote at scale, you'll run into more of these bad actor applicants and employees than you might expect.

\- Meetings are still helpful in remote teams. There's another common misconception that remote work == no meetings. Some conversations are still most efficiently handled as an N-way video call for 15-30 minutes, rather than a never-ending Slack conversation where participants are half-distracted as they alt-tab between Slack and their work.

<comment><USER35> As an EM, these points are quite helpful. Regarding your fourth point, how do you filter out or deal with bad apples?

<comment><USER34> At the hiring phase: Check their LinkedIn and public social media closely. If they have a recent startup or freelancing business listed on LinkedIn, ask them for details about it and how they ended it. For freelancers, I directly ask if they plan to continue freelancing and how they plan to separate the work.

As with all hiring, references are key. There's an art to getting an honest reference out of remote employee referrals, though. Don't neglect to follow up on reference checks. Be polite and professional, but don't hesitate to ask hard questions or ask for more appropriate references if they try to give you softball answers. Also have your hiring department follow up with the previous employer to confirm start and end dates. It's tempting for remote workers to stay on with their old employer for a few extra months, double-dipping both paychecks while they can.

Ask people why they want a remote position. There are many valid reasons to work remote, but having other obligations during the day is not one of them. For example, if someone wants a remote job so they can stay home and watch their toddler during the workday to save on daycare costs (actual answer from someone I interviewed) then they aren't going to be very productive. Make sure they can allocate a proper amount of time for focused work.

After hiring: Proper performance management is key. The important thing here is to treat on-site and remote employees the same with regards to performance management. Technically, there's no reason an employee down the hall couldn't also be sandbagging their performance while they work on a side hustle for 75% of the work week.

The biggest pitfall with remote employee performance management is the idea that people have a finite amount of work that can be finished early. Specifically, it's difficult when people get attached to the idea that the number of hours worked shouldn't matter as long as they get their work done. The flaw in this argument is that if your employees are running out of work before the end of the work week, you're not managing your backlog and roadmap effectively, or you're grossly overstaffed. Set the expectation that if someone finishes their sprint work by day 7 of a 10 day sprint, they need to spend those last 3 days taking on additional tickets or helping coworkers.

Watch out for people padding estimates, sandbagging, and playing other games to minimize their hours worked. Your job as an engineering manager is to make sure they're not worked too hard, but also ensure they're not sandbagging. Again, this isn't unique to remote employees, but in my experience remote employees have far more temptations to sandbag a little bit here and there that most people just can't resist. Don't nag, but let them know you're watching closely.

Most of all: You need to build mutual trust with the remote employees. Without watercooler conversations, shared lunch breaks, and other office mingling you need to make an effort to get to know people. I've found that the more you build a healthy personal connection with remote employees, the less likely they are to try to abuse the system. Be wary of anyone who insists on purely transactional communication arrangements with odd working hours that suspiciously never line up with anyone else's working hours. Also be wary of anyone who always has excuses for why they couldn't finish their work each week, but always rushes to be the heroic person saving the day when something goes wrong. The remote work abusers are always trying to make themselves look indispensable at key moments while dragging the team down on average. Don't let heroism overshadow underlying problems with someone's performance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> It took me until 2019 to discover Paul's blog post - Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule and it has been invaluable [http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html)

I now run a mix of densely packed manager schedule and maker schedule whilst maintaining a number of large OSS projects and a consultancy business.

</comment><comment><USER37> All my work ( my own ventures and consulting ) was remote since 2000. Sure there were some real meetings with subcontractors and customers but I think it was less the 3% time wise in total.

</comment><comment><USER38> I see two problems with remote work being the norm at most companies:

1) most people don't have the discipline to work remotely. I've been working remotely for a decade. I'm a self-starter and have run my own businesses. I find that the same discipline needed to build a company is almost the same as it is to work remotely.

You don't have the possibility of the boss coming in to see what you are doing or a manager right across the hall. Many people have a hard time succeeding in this environment, especially if you are working from home with lots of distractions.

I've seen many companies struggle to keep remote employees because if this.

2) Managers need to be excellent communicators to manage a remote team. At my last remote gig, I eventually had to quit because the manager was extremely introverted and passive aggressive, which made working remotely almost an impossibility.

I think if we were in an office, I might be able to work with his personality, but instead he just avoided any sort of non-slack chatting and intentionally assigned me tickets that had misinformation or left out important details for a task that I needed to complete (and then acted shocked when I missed them).

After it happened the first time, I thought I was the problem and tried to get more information about specific tickets. Something important would always be left out...and then I was always blamed for the mis-communication.

It finally came to a breaking point when I worked on a month-long project and was asked to merge it with a junior developer's work right before a vacation. The Junior developer's work broke everything. I explained the situation and asked the manager if he wanted me to fix the code that was a result of our merge, when I came back.

He said 'no' and then sent me a long list of issues while I was gone (I saw them in the airport on the way home..1 day before I was returning to work)..which all resided in the junior developer's code base.

He then had a conversation with me about not being a 'senior' enough developer and that they felt they were paying me 'too much'.

This conversation was odd and funny at the same time because In the previous 6 months, I had written large additions to the application, which were still in production with almost no issues and I was praised by the owner of the company. I was also getting paid 60% less than my market value, which I negotiated because their original offer was laughable. I only took the job when my business had a couple of slow months.

I should also add that the manager built the application we were all working on 7 years prior..and it was steaming pile of garbage. Spaghetti code, bad practices, and I would find so many bugs that needed to be fixed when I was working on a feature request, it would delay everything.

It's been a couple of years since I worked there and they still haven't gotten out of beta and launched. I'm guessing it's because of the managers inability to communicate and effectively manage a team.

</comment><comment><USER39> Why people don't tell the definite and super obvious reason for that: people will scam their employers! I know many people who work fully remote. All of them have 3-4 "full time" jobs, and just do the minimum necessary on all of them to not get fired, or outsource work. Making a good Valley salary in a place where rent is $400 a month. Good? For them yes, but a company that allows remote work is just making a mistake: it WILL be scammed by the vast majority of people who work there.

High-level employees need collaboration and frequent meetings making remote work impossible (execs), low-level ones can't be trusted because they have nothing to lose.

<comment><USER40> If they meet expectations, how is that a scam? "Full time job" is a weird idea for salaried workers, anyway. They're paid $X to produce $(X + Y) value. Hours spent producing that value shouldn't mean much to the employer.

<comment><USER41> As a manager, it's extremely difficult to figure out how much work can be reasonably and sustainably achieved by a particular person/role. Performing this estimation and planning is part of the inherent transaction costs in working with contractors.

The perceived benefit of hiring a full-time employee is that they will strive to be as effective as they can be in achieving the firm's goals filling the entire work-day. Obviously this is not quite as easy as that, but if you hire good people who share your vision and treat them well, then it gets quite close. And this is equally true for remote employees.</comment></comment></comment>


Miami Fashion Goes Head to Head with Gilt on Glass  - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYprO-9rrmQ

<comment><AUTHOR> Phew - 24 hours without sleep! At least I'm getting a little better at the Mirror API. Making cover cards with pictures from inside the bundle, etc..</comment>


A Journey of Thousand Miles Begin With One Step (Or Summer) - <AUTHOR> http://michellelsun.tumblr.com/post/32327494767/thousand-miles

<comment><AUTHOR> I am relatively new to actively posting / discussing on HN (have been a passive reader for over a year now). This blog post is my attempt to share with the community what I thought of my experience learning to program this past summer.

There may be some people in the community that are considering attending one of the full time programming courses in SF/NYC, and I'm happy to share more here about my experience and answer any questions.</comment>


A new green file format: WWF - <AUTHOR> http://www.saveaswwf.com/en/what-is-it.html

<comment><USER2> Coming soon: A WWF file viewer that uses the revolutionary capabilities of ink to allow you to read your files away from your computer. This will cut down on the green house gas produced while generating the electricity needed to view your files!

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm intrigued. So many email signatures for example plead that you don't print them out unless necessary.

Are there really people in the world who print out every email and document they receive?

</comment><comment><USER4> Is this a joke? I can't tell.</comment>


E-Mail Leaves an Evidence Trail - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/02/e-mail_leaves_a.html <comment><USER2> Not to defend the intelligence of crooks, but...

Although you can convert a PDF to Word and back in a few clicks, the layout won't match perfectly (depending on how the PDF was generated). If you're trying to forge a PDF document, you want it to look exactly the same as the original, which probably requires some fiddling with formatting. So it's not unreasonable to delegate that to a trusted henchman.

<comment><USER3> The correct solution is to use a paid version of Adobe Acrobat, which will let you do minor revisions to text. Bet he's wishing he shelled out that $150 or so now.

<comment><USER4> Many software packages let you edit PDFs directly without ever converting it out of PDF; uncompressed PDFs can even be edited as text (and if there's no encryption, decompressing a compressed PDF is a simple task).

But usually if you want complete control, without weird artifacts here and there, the easiest way is to completely recreate the document from scratch (depending on length and complexity of the original).

The people you're sending the doctored version to, by definition don't have access to the original (or they would spot the fake), and usually can't compare the doctored version to a similar original document, and even if they could, probably won't.

They want a document; you give them something that sort of looks like what they're expecting, and they're happy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > The FBI is 100% wrong that they're going dark; it's really the golden age of > surveillance, and the FBI's panic is really just its own lack of technical > sophistication.

Does it even have to be lack of technical sophistication?

No matter how good the FBI is at doing its job it will almost always be better for it to argue in favor of whatever will make its job easier.

Exception: If FBI ends up giving everyone the impression that they are truly incompetent then there should be no reason for the public to want tax payer money to fund its continued operation.

</comment><comment><USER6> That's why a lot of people at the top avoid email completely, not only is it an evidence trail it can be open to interpretation later on.

Remember reading that bank CEOs use email very sparingly, all the details are worked out in person, Trump also doesn't use email.

<comment><USER7> Keep your email entirely in a jurisdiction that doesn't cooperate with your country's law enforcement. I can think of three off the top of my head. Sensitive topics are only discussed with someone located in the same domain as you.

Quite easy to avoid criminal charges when your email is out of reach of a subpoena.

<comment><USER8> In practical terms it is impossible to keep your email in a particular jurisdiction. The proposal gives you no way to ensure it. And any steps you might take only serve to reduce everything that makes email useful.

You are safer just not using it and will probably have a better user experience as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Remarkably, it was less than 30 minutes before some troll posted a comment on Schneier's post, trying to change the topic from Paul Manafort by ranting about Hillary Clinton's irrelevant misdeeds.

<comment><USER10> I also found this very weird.

Correct me if i'm wrong but while this blog seems creditable and by a good author it isn't "huge" in any sense which makes it even more confusing that someone shows up that fast to comment on topics relating to Manafort and Gates.

Comment is deleted now sadly but it basically stated that "the US needs to investigate HILLARIOUS CLINTON" etc etc, completely unrelated to the content of the article.

<comment><USER11> Schneier's blog is a regularly visited blog for many in the security space. With HN linking to a page on this blog, it's very possibl that page will have uncorrelated comments that are not security related.

<comment><USER12> And given the prevalence of Russians associated with the government in the security space (to be fair--a lot of security people are associated with their own governments), I suspect that it has a tight feedback loop with the troll factories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> While the email exchange certainly didn't help things, the feds could have easily uncovered this anyway by looking at the data given to the bank and comparing it to his actual income. It's possible that they only discovered this because of the emails, but whether or not that happened isn't clear.

My guess is that issuing subpoenas for loan application data of a given target is standard practice among federal prosecutors when looking to destroy or pressure someone in cases where there is little evidence of the crime that actually sparked the investigation. They fire a shotgun and watch to see which pellets hit. Income inflation is one of the most common types of fraud perpetrated by consumers - even innocently overstating one's income by rounding up ($100k stated vs $95k actual) on an online credit card application can technically lead to felony charges like this. So it's at least possible that they discovered the crime at issue here through subpoenaed loan documents, and the emails only provided additional evidence. Once you're on the government's shit list, it's only a matter of time before they find _something_ that you may not even know you did that is technically a crime.

<comment><USER14> I dunno, I think conflating adding a _minor_ $3.5m to your income and rounding $95k up to $100k is silly. And lying about your income by $3.5m or so is not a minor detail, that's serious fraud substantiated by forged documents.

<comment><USER15> indeed the emails shows deliberate intent to commit fraud.

Not just common stupidity which seems to otherwise be the best and most effective defense for members of the current administration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well, sure. And so do fraudulent loan applications. But unlike them, email can be secured. IP addresses can be hidden using VPNs plus Tor. Identities can be hidden with unlinked personas. Messages can be encrypted in transit, and stored on encrypted disks.

So yeah, focusing on the email trail is silly. When the fact of the fraud is sitting in banking records. And furthermore, having a conspirator who knows the whole story is a huge fail.

</comment><comment><USER17> Alternative link if the site is still down:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20180226230019/https://www.schne...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180226230019/https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/02/e-mail_leaves_a.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> Um, duh?

Who would think at this point in history, with all the very public data leaks and hacks, that email does not leave an evidence trail?

<comment><USER19> Evidently, a lot of people. Powerful people.

<comment><USER20> So why are we trying to tell them this? Isn't it in our best interest for them to remain stupid about it, so we can bust them when wrongdoing happens?

<comment><USER21> The measures you need to take to actually be secure are impossible for the powerful to take on their own volition because they do not understand how insecure everything really is. They'll take shortcuts.

Clinton wanted a Blackberry so she set up a email server in her garage. She didn't understand why the NSA didn't want to make her a Blackberry like they made for POTUS at great cost so she broke the rules and she got nailed. A shit ton of work goes into just keeping one person (mostly) cyber secure.

<comment><USER11> Ascribing any intelligence to Clinton would mean that she setup that server for other reasons, not in order to use a Blackberry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Be glad the current administration don't know technology better, as this undoubtedly will be a main part of their downfall.

I am sure that not only emailing that file back and forward would have been sufficient to prove anything if the email-trails were deleted, however i suspect these emails were all still in Paul's inbox when the fed's ceased his computers.

So when does Trumps impeachment start? Need to get my popcorns ready.</comment>


Workflow in tmux - <AUTHOR> https://coderwall.com/p/_g2vpq

<comment><USER3> I really like the status bar with the arrow-breadcrumbs look. I will definitely be incorporating that into my config.

If others are looking for a great config to start out with definitely check out Brian P. Hogan's tmux: Productive Mouse-Free Development [1]. It is a great quick intro to tmux that demos and steps through the creation of a great tmux.conf

[1] <http://pragprog.com/book/bhtmux/tmux>

<comment><USER4> The status bar with the arrow breadcrumbs is powerline: <https://github.com/Lokaltog/powerline>

There are bindings for tmux, bash, zsh, vim, and ipython (among others).

<comment><USER5> The status bar with the arrow breadcrumbs _looks like_ powerline. If you read his tmux config, he's not actually using powerline, he just duplicated the appearance.

<comment><USER4> He is using the vim-powerline bundle for vim, but it looks like you're right about the tmux config.

<comment><USER6> tmux has its own powerline: <https://github.com/erikw/tmux-powerline>

<comment><USER7> Actually that's been deprecated in favour of the one powerline to rule them all that "th" posted above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I understand using console window managers when logged into a headless system where you don't otherwise have access to a UI, but I'm baffled by the desire to use console-based window managers within well defined GUI like OS X.

In OS X, there are multitudes of tools to allow you to manage windows. Spectacle is a simple one, Slate is extremely customizable.

Why not use the built-in OS X window manager to manager various windows rather than a console-based one? If you say the advantage is the shortcut keys, Slate lets you setup shortcut keys to do just about anything.

Can anyone give me a list of pros/cons for using a console-based window manager over a native one?

<comment><USER9> it is lightweight, contained, and excellent if you have a "unix-like" workflow. Typically I'll have a watch script, server, and vim in a given window, and it is super compact. Some cons are probably the learning curve required to see any advantage, and the fundamental lack of any respect for mousing, which can be in the pro column for many.

<comment><USER8> That's interesting. I practically never use the mouse to switch between windows in OS X or Windows.

The biggest problem I have with tmux is vertical splits don't work with native copy-paste because the selection goes across both panes. Using multiple terminal windows, on the other hand, doesn't have that issue.

<comment><USER10> Native copy/paste typically requires a mouse. using tmux's copy-mode and pasting doesn't require a mouse an still stays inside panes.

<comment><USER11> Using a mouse, you can use tmux's new (in 1.8) pane expansion. prefix + z causes the current pane to take up the entire window. prefix + z again and it goes back to normal. Essentially, it's a maximized/restore capability.

<comment><USER9> rad, learned a new trick. thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> OT: Tmux/Screen are a little bit RSI inducing to me, to be used effectively. Any tips?

<comment><USER13> Remap caps lock to be a ctrl key, then preferably remap your prefix key to a. Caps+a is way easier to type.

<comment><USER14> Ctrl+L is good because it's on the home row and typically used for uninteresting stuff anyway (like refreshing the terminal window).

My sequence to actually refresh the window is "Ctrl+L L"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The single most irritating thing about tmux is that viewers have to look at the same window or whatever it is called. My typical usage pattern is to connect twice, have one window where there is a long running task I want to monitor and a second where I am typing commands. But I can't show one in one connection and the other in the other connection.

Note that I use byobu to front end things, and when using screen this can easily be done. I have seen workarounds that involve using multiple copies of tmux talking to each other in various heroic configurations but that is silly.

<comment><USER16> I believe tmux 1.8 supports this use case.

From the manpage (for new-session): If -t is given, the new session is grouped with target-session. This means they share the same set of windows - <USER2> windows from target-session are linked to the new session and any subsequent new windows or windows being closed are applied to both sessions. The current and previous window and any session options remain independent and either session may be killed without affecting the other.

<comment><USER17> I've started running tmux in all my terminals automatically, and conveniently sharing a "master" session between them all.

Instead of running tmux directly, I have a small script which creates a session named TMUX-MASTER if it doesn't already exist, and immediately detaches it. All the clients that I actually interact with are created separately and automatically grouped with the TMUX-MASTER session.

To prevent my system from being clogged by dozens of detached client sessions, I rebound prefix+d to kill-session, killing the client session but leaving my TMUX-MASTER session untouched. Closing terminals while running these client sessions, however, still leaves my system cluttered with dormant client sessions.

I'd like to see if a "ephemeral" option (it'd need a better name) could easily be added to new-session, which would cause the created session to just die when it's told to detach, or receives the HUP signal. It'd simplify things a bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I started using tmux.. then switched to stumpwm which is too awesome to explain here. Embrace the full power of emacs and your Window Manager.

<comment><USER5> stumpwm is a window manager. tmux is a terminal multiplexer. They are not the same thing and using one does not preclude using the other.

<comment><USER18> *Started using tmux, then realized for my needs stumpwm was better. Obviously these are two different beasts. I still often use tmux on remote server for instance. However, if you use tmux locally, then a tiling manager might be better.

<comment><USER19> Exactly. I've been using xmonad for years now and I've tried to start using tmux for several occasions. I've never found any advantage of it compared to my different xmonad layouts: tabbed, tall, tall mirrored and grid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is there a way (short of writing a script) that will allow me to shuffle windows left and right, and/or move a window and slide the rest down?

Imagine having windows A, B, C, and D respectively in positions 0, 1, 2, and 3. I'd like to move D into position 1 so they end up in this order: A, D, B, C.

Haven't figured out how to pull this off yet.

<comment><USER21> I do it like this:

        bind-key ) swap-window -t +
        bind-key ( swap-window -t -

So "<prefix> (" swaps the active window with the one on its left, and "<prefix> )" swaps it with the one on its right.

It seems to be what you want.

<comment><USER20> That works beautifully! Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> To get copy/paste to play nice in OSX you have to go through some Herculean tasks. I made it work with netcat yesterday. I was running an http server to do it :)

<https://github.com/base698/tmux-copy-paste-mac-osx>

<comment><USER23> I gave up of tmux. Now I just use iterm2 split pane. It's working fine for me.

<comment><USER3> You may not realize it but iterm2 is using tmux for its split panes. :)</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook files patent for credit worthiness based on your friend group - <AUTHOR> http://www.psmag.com/nature-and-technology/mo-friends-mo-problems-might-have-to-defriend-joey-with-the-jet-ski-bankruptcy

<comment><USER2> This is toxic. The article is right, this should be illegal, and there should be a supreme court ruling to make sure this can't happen.

The implications for social mobility are egregious. It's difficult enough for those who come from lower-income backgrounds to succeed, meet the right people, and flourish. Now we're looking at dictating the access to capital somebody has based on not merit, not individual trustworthiness, not potential... but the sum of their friends? This creates even more of a positive feedback loop for the status quo at each and every level of income, making it harder to move up or down.

Not okay with this. Zuck, or somebody that can, needs to squash this.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand, if I friend the right billionaires, perhaps I will be autoapproved? I can't say I would mind this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We could foresee some awkward conversations...

 _" Hey John, don't take it personally but I had to unfriend you because you've been behind on a few car payments and at the moment, I'm trying to qualify for a mortgage."_

or

 _" Sorry, I couldn't accept your friend request because you've been unemployed since graduation and still live with your mom."_

(Profiling via "guilty by association".)

If Facebook turns users' friendship data into weapons against them, we could end up with people creating _two_ sets of friends: 1) the "unofficial" friends hidden from Facebook and 2) the "official" friends that won't hurt FICO credit scores.

If that happened businesses would have to go to the cell phone companies to more accurately analyze friendship nodes (wireless phone #s). It's harder to hide "real" friends on the cell network since people only use one phone.

Facebook's idea can be extended beyond credit-worthiness to "moral character assessment". If a friend has a DUI charge, you unfriend them (or never accept a friend request) because you don't want to hurt your chances when applying for an FBI or nanny job.

</comment><comment><USER5> Here's the language from the patent causing all the uproar:

 _In a fourth embodiment of the invention, the service provider is a lender. When an individual applies for a loan, the lender examines the credit ratings of members of the individual's social network who are connected to the individual through authorized nodes. If the average credit rating of these members is at least a minimum credit score, the lender continues to process the loan application. Otherwise, the loan application is rejected._

</comment><comment><USER6> I think the best part of this is that you might be able to sell yourself as a friend if you have high credit.

Of course assuming this is a two-way street, your credit would also be impacted...

</comment><comment><USER7> Hasn't this been going on for years?

E.g., [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7028744](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7028744)</comment>


Backlift's Tunnel API: connect to 3rd party APIs without JSONP - <AUTHOR> https://blog.backlift.com/entry/tunnel-api

<comment><USER2> It's just a proxy, you could do the same with a single line of PHP, e.g.: <?php readfile('[http://api.example.org/?key=APIKEY&action='](http://api.example.org/?key=APIKEY&action=') . $_GET['action']); ?>

<comment><USER3> Of course, or a line or two of just about any server language.

But someone using using Backlift as their server wouldn't have that option; this API is for them.

[http://backlift.github.io/docs/](http://backlift.github.io/docs/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can use YQL for this and many, many other operations that you would normally not be able to easily do on the client. It is free, deployed in 5+ datacenters worldwide, will cache both directions, and widely used by Yahoo so very unlikely to be turned off. It even offers persistent storage.

[http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console/](http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console/)

</comment><comment><USER5> This article would be easier to read if it started off with a quick overview of Tunnel (creates a path in your app that proxies to another site), rather than the how-to. A couple of sentences in the first paragraph would do it.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's sort of like [http://getr.ws/](http://getr.ws/) but bound to a specific application platform.</comment>


ISRO: Reusable Launch Vehicle - <AUTHOR> http://www.isro.gov.in/technology-development-programmes/reusable-launch-vehicle-technology-demonstration-program-rlv-td <comment><AUTHOR> More reading : [http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/science/isro- rlv...](http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/science/isro-rlv-science- india-takes-baby-step-towards-reusable-space-shuttle-today-2814507/)</comment>


Ask HN: When will you ride an autonomous taxi? - <AUTHOR> Take a guess.<p>I think by Dec 31 2020.  But hopefully sooner. <comment><USER2> Never.</comment>


Elon Musk AMA (2017) - chupa-chups https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/76e79c/i_am_elon_musk_ask_me_anything_about_bfr/ <comment> chupa-chups Q; Raptor's s/l thrust was reduced from last year's ~300 tons-force to ~170 tons-force, which change appears to be too large of a reduction to be solely dictated by optimum single engine TWR considerations.

What were the main factors that led to this change?

Elon: We chickened out</comment>


Thoughts Google I/O's diversity, most promising ideas and disappointments - <AUTHOR> http://blog.carbonfive.com/2015/06/17/io-2015-thoughts/

<comment><USER2> Just a reminder to think twice when reading "diversity", to be aware if _legally mandated_ diversity is being discussed or the human concept. Gender is but one dimension. Modern corporate responsibility is important, but the overall issue I believe is vital to keep in mind if the goal is a truly diverse population.

Diversity at the least encompasses race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, and other ideologies.

Source: [http://www.sfcollege.edu/diversity/?section=defining_diversi...](http://www.sfcollege.edu/diversity/?section=defining_diversity)

</comment><comment><USER3> Why was the jump in women attendance so much higher between 2013-2014 than 2014-2015?

<comment><USER4> 2014 is the first time Women Techmakers actively started targeted women and giving them the opportunity to purchase a ticket outside of the lottery system.</comment></comment>


YoAfter - <AUTHOR> http://yoafter.appspot.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Reminders using the Yo App. It's only my second GAE project. Be nice! :)</comment>


Physicists announce graphene's latest cousin: stanene - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/physicists-announce-graphene-s-latest-cousin-stanene-1.18113

<comment><USER2> They avoid mentioning this being a superconductor because it's not what it is. However having 0 resistance is a typical property of a superconductor, it's not the only defining property. I think the established defining properties of superconductors:

1\. They have 0 resistance.

2\. They have Meissner effect [1].

Being a topological insulator and only conducting along the edges I think (2) is not possible for this material. It's not like it makes it any less interesting.

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

<comment><USER3> Are there any previously known zero-resistance materials without the Meissner effect?

<comment><USER4> I was sure carbon nanotubes matched your description, however the relevant Wikipedia article[1] mentions the electric properties without refering explicitly to resistance.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_nanotube#Electrical_pro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_nanotube#Electrical_properties)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bismuth is some weird shit. My daughter said "it looks like computers" when I showed her the crystals you can make with it. Faraday was using bismuth coils to try to unify gravity and was plotting to build anti-gravity devices with it. It's the most naturally diamagnetic element, meaning you can use it to make a magnet permanently 'float' in thin air and has one of the lowest values of thermal conductivity among metals.

It's also what makes Pepto Bismol pink.

<comment><USER6> Got a good source for bismuth?

<comment><USER5> I ordered a pound off Amazon for $24, but the supplier has it cheaper: RotoMetals.com. I would caution that even though Bismuth is considered non- toxic, there is some evidence that it will fuck up your brain temporarily. I strongly suggest heating it outside with ventilation.

<comment><USER6> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can someone explain what it means to carry current at room temperature without any heat loss.

As a layman I interpret this as the material not having any resistance. If it does have resistance, what is that resistance generating if not heat? What happens if I put 200 amps through a thin stand of it?

<comment><USER8> "Loss" is the term we use when we _want_ heat, but it's going away against our wishes. The correct term for generating and eliminating unwanted heat is "dissipation".

That this is the intended meaning is clear from the later wording "... being able to conduct electricity without generating any waste heat".

> _What happens if I put 200 amps through a thin stand of it?_

That's a good question. Even if a material can carry some small current with apparently zero R, that doesn't mean the same R value applies at a high current. It could be non-ohmic, that is.

<comment><USER9> If you want to read the details on how it works, I suggest this paper [1] "Large-gap quantum spin Hall insulators in tin films". The real hope is that this will be a replacement for the conductors in traditional silicon. You still have the heat bottleneck when you hit a traditional conductor. The dissipation free property breaks down at about 100C for this material, so you are going to have an issue with what ever is interacting with that 200A. [1] [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1306.3008](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1306.3008)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So, if their predictions are correct - this is a room temperature superconductor, right?

</comment><comment><USER11> Modeling indicates that a strip of stannene decorated with fluorine atoms at the edges may be a room temperature superconductor. Here's a link to pretty modeling pix: [http://www.gizmag.com/stanene-topological- insulator/29976/](http://www.gizmag.com/stanene-topological-insulator/29976/)

I'll try to add a link to the actual modeling paper later today, sorry but out of time right now.

</comment><comment><USER12> This would be better if scarcity is not an issue. Carbon is abundant. Tin is not. It is even more scarce than Lithium.

<comment><USER13> So maybe we only use it for long-distance power and communications? I'm reminded of the Utopia story where, having no need of currency, they used gold for plumbing, because of its corrosion resistance.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Email me when new episodes come out - <AUTHOR> https://episodemailer.com <comment><AUTHOR> Created with Vue.js and a simple Rails API server-side. Ready to answer any questions :)

<comment><USER2> Where do you get the new episode feed from?

<comment><AUTHOR> The tbdb database [https://www.thetvdb.com/](https://www.thetvdb.com/) has an open API.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who is using Facebook's GraphQL in production? - <AUTHOR> I could only find this thread: https://github.com/facebook/relay/blob/master/USERS.md about companies using <i>Relay</i>, and none about GraphQL. I have a feeling that GraphQL adoption is substantial, but I have a hard time finding hard data to prove it. <comment><USER2> We considered it 12 months ago, but there wasn't yet a compelling Python GraphQL backend.

Our architecture has quickly evolved in that direction however: Higher-order React components mediating almost-declarative store accesses with all the back-end fetching, optimistic updating, etc handled transparently by common store logic. All objects within a store are flattened down into an id -> object immutable map with conventions for indicating a given object is loading, loaded, in-error, etc.

We'll be having another serious look at it soon. It will be interesting to see if we'll have an impedance mismatch between how we've built our data model on the backend such that GraphQL isn't a good abstraction. The idea of being able to declaratively express what you want to have in a given React component without having to write any store logic, etc, is super compelling.

</comment><comment><USER3> It looks like Artsy.net is using it, according to this blog post from one of their developers: [https://ashfurrow.com/blog/lets-steal-other-developers- best-...](https://ashfurrow.com/blog/lets-steal-other-developers-best-ideas/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Buildkite is using GraphQL:

[https://graphql.buildkite.com/explorer](https://graphql.buildkite.com/explorer)

[https://github.com/buildkite/graphql- explorer](https://github.com/buildkite/graphql-explorer)

</comment><comment><USER5> Anybody using Falcor?

<comment><USER6> Me and I live it's simplicity. GraphQL and Relay (monolith tool) vs. Falcor (small smart library) is like an Angular (monolith tool) vs. React (small smart library) ... check this article as well: [https://reactjs.co/2016/02/03/what-is-netflix-falcor-and- why...](https://reactjs.co/2016/02/03/what-is-netflix-falcor-and-why-you- should-care/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> still alpha but we using it at priceposts.com

</comment><comment><USER8> we use it at Avant</comment>


Why Google Will Never Be Apple Cool - <AUTHOR> http://fourreasonswhy.com/2008/01/29/google-will-never-be-apple-cool/ <comment><USER2> Well, I think Google is cool. So there's one customer.</comment>


Ask HN: Reporting domain name registrars for abuse inaction? - <AUTHOR> Namecheap.com has become the domain registrar of choice for SMS scams in Australia. This includes everything from fake news sites encouraging people to download malware to phishing scams.
I've reported multiple domains to Namecheap and the "legal" team cares as much as telling me to go bother someone else about it even though it's in violation of their TOS. Namecheap of course also hides the WHOIS information so it more or less stops any action from being taken.
I'd like to think ICANN requires registrars to be a bit more proactive about abusive domains, so the inaction is fairly confusing.
Is there any way to try to have Namecheap enforce their abuse TOS? As it stands it appears to exist only for show. <comment><USER2> I am in a similar situation, a couple of domains are copying our site and the domain registar [https://www.cscglobal.com/](https://www.cscglobal.com/) it's not doing anything to solve the situation.

They even have an abuse email email@example.com but they never reply (not even an automatic reply)

After contacted them via customer support email on their site, they say that they have scalated the case to their legal team but that I have low priority since I'm not a customer.

What I did is filling this form [https://forms.icann.org/en/resources/compliance/complaints/r...](https://forms.icann.org/en/resources/compliance/complaints/registrars/standards- complaint-form) but I don't know if this will change anything.</comment>


Iran Parliament to Debate Death Penalty for Bloggers - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/iranian_deth_penalty_for_bloggers.php#.ThnjYq18NSY.hackernews <comment><USER2> it's a classic situation.The old conservative regime can't understand that it's time has passed.I hope they won't accept such laws and Iranian society and people won't be scared to write and speak what they want.In other case, I won't envy iranians</comment>


Doing "Big Science" In Academia - <AUTHOR> http://idleprocess.wordpress.com/2010/06/15/doing-big-science-in-academia/

<comment><USER2> I was surprised by the lack of mention for PlanetLab and Emulab.</comment>


Ask HN: How would you take over the world? - <AUTHOR>

Most of us have a little bit of evil genius in us, stuck in the back of our minds. Some of us go so far as to day dream about going further. How would you take over the world? Military action? The ballot box? Media? <comment><USER2> I'd use the United States as it's already the biggest military and has the largest influence on the world. Get to know the political system there, it's ins and outs. Figure out how to hack it, by saying just the right thing to just the right groups. Take lots of acting classes. Get damn good at it.

Start out as a Republican, get to be a senator or house member or something.

During this time make sure to be slavishly devoted to the military. Fight for veterans benefits, pay increases, increased recruitment. Treat the military like royalty. Allow the military to join public employee unions, strike, take up dues. This will fuel all your political campaigns to come.

Then switch to a 3rd party and use your military union backing to run for president. Spend all your time attacking the two parties using the other parties standard attack lines (republicans: heartless, democrats: weak). There's lots to attack on each side, present yourself as the "3rd option". Take your existing 10%, then pull in an additional 15% percent (of the total vote) from each party. You'll win with 35%.

After being elected, ally with the Republicans to get your pro military policy passed. Ally with the democrats to turn on the fairness doctrine again and support everything the public employee unions want. Increase their funding so they can give it back to you in donations. Implement a flat tax, remove corporate taxes, and jack up government spending at every level. All your spending will be fueled through the Fed, guised as economic stimulus. Ridicule those worried about the value of the dollar as pessimists and enemies of the state. Convince them a lower dollar will mean more exports and jobs at home.

Crack down on the internet in the interests of protecting jobs, preventing piracy, and increasing fairness. Keep control over all methods of communication. Controlling the internet will be key to all other steps, in controlling information, and keeping a consensus in your country supporting your radical foreign policy. It'll also be a key weapon of economic warfare with other countries.

Appoint 1 or 2 members to the supreme court and then through an act of supposed foreign terrorism, neutralize the rest of the members. Set up a war against those terrorists, with wartime powers. Resist any acts to appoint new supreme court members. Cancel all further elections until the threat is taken care of.

Be a strong and resolute leader. Target China as an opponent since they are one of the biggest threats to US domination. Turn Japan, South Korea, and India into US territories in the interests of protecting it from China. Take down China by pledging support of protecting the rich coastal regions. Start a war with the communist regime, and take it down. Switch China to the US dollar and establish it as a commonwealth of the US empire.

Then take on Russian using economic warfare (force oil prices down to 20/barrel by subsidizing overproduction in the middle east).

Take down the EU with your monetary policy. Low dollar means less imports from Europe. Make it against the law for any bank to lend to a foreign government. These small steps will provide the weight to collapse an already weak EU. Eventually subvert and take over the union. Establish the US dollar as the currency in Europe.

Invade Mexico under the pretense of stopping the immigration problem. Boycott and blockade Canada until they collapse. Trade policy is the weapon of choice for taking control over North America. They already depend on the US for survival so selectively cut their oxygen until their governments collapse, and then step in to pick up the pieces.

Take over South America by controlling the flow of goods and information. Then install puppet governments.

Leave Africa for last. That one can be done by traditional military invasion, preceded by 6 months of propaganda about how horrible it is for those living there (mostly true). Demonize the dictators of each African state, then invade each country one by one in wars of compassion and establish each as a US commonwealth.

That just leaves Australia. Use a sustained democratic subversion campaign to convince a majority of the population to support being annexed by the United States.

Go down in history as the man who unified the world, brought peace and happiness, and reigned over the next golden age.

</comment><comment><USER3> Slowly, over the course of hundreds of years, through a well-funded secret society that slowly ingratiates itself into institutions at all levels across the political spectrum all around the world. I would focus especially on international NGOs, central banks, top world universities, global media companies and missionary religious orders.

The members of this secret society would stay buried in the middle of these institutions, at levels with hiring and executive power but no public visibility. Especially no top leadership positions.

As new generations are brought into the society, older members give the new generation a hand up, making it much easier for them to advance and prosper.

It would use front organizations to offer scholarships and fellowships to young people around the world, drawing in and indoctrinating ambitious people who would then, at least psychologically, "owe" something to this society, or at least to the front organization, if they couldn't be indoctrinated directly.

After, say, the first hundred years, the oldest members of the order would start incrementally implementing policies that would appear to simply be good ideas that emerged organically, but which were actually circulated among members of the society.

This also happens to be my mental model as to why obnoxious ideas like neoliberalism, or the current wave of "austerity programs", catch on around the world as if they were good.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you are fine with the 'evil' part of 'evil genius': Start a religion. Sue people who out you for copyright infringement on your scriptures.

Otherwise, seastead and attract the best talent by being really good and out- innovate every other country. Important note: Don't sell to hypocrites who don't believe in science but still want your antibiotics, vaccines and nanobots. Let natural selection do the rest.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd bankrupt nations around the world by dodgy banking, then slowly replace their elected governments with autocrats who used to work for me.

That or invade Poland.

</comment><comment><USER6> As a benevolent billionaire, I would relocate to a poor impoverished 3rd world country that ideally has resources and opportunity to grow and improve rapidly in terms of economic well-being (people love jobs!).

After building infrastructure and winning the hearts and minds of the people, I would either try running for public office legally, or with the support of some military force, overthrow the government in a revolution.

</comment><comment><USER7> Start with one country. After a major attack on home soil, incite fear in everyone and claim that country X supported the attackers. Attack country X. Then claim that country Y also helped the attackers. Attack country Y. Continue convincing the population that they should be afraid of more attacks from unknown attackers that are all around us. Repeat for more countries.

</comment><comment><USER8> I found the following classic an interesting guide:

[http://www.amazon.com/True-Believer-Thoughts-Movements- Peren...](http://www.amazon.com/True-Believer-Thoughts-Movements- Perennial/dp/0060505915?tag=duckduckgo-d-20)

</comment><comment><USER9> I'd go back in time and start Apple.</comment>


Massively scalable relational database using TABLE tags and jQuery - <AUTHOR> http://pivots.pivotallabs.com/users/nick/blog/articles/434-now-i-understand-what-they-mean-by-tabular-data-or-building-a-relational-database-using-jquery-and-lt-table-gt-tags-

<comment><USER2> I've really been having a tough time lately figuring out whether people think hacks like this are a good idea.

<comment><USER3> As his extensive suite of benchmarks and product comparisons shows, this elegantly overcomes the problem of diminishing returns that come with adding more read-only slaves in a classic master-slave RDBMS replication setup without resorting to extensive use of non-relational solutions such as memcached.

Just kidding, he did it cuz it's fun to write cutesy JavaScript hacks that leak memory like hell and turn any machine slower than a Core 2 Duo into a paperweight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very cool - this is pretty similar to microformats.org's design principles. I could see this kind of HTML markup used as an alternative to maintaining a separate REST based API.

<comment><USER5> Possibly.

But less ambitious: it's actually not a bad way (I think - I don't know enough about JQuery to have an idea about the performance of this) to do client side filtering of data presented in tables. His technique, at least, is more readable than the kludges I've come up with to do that.

In any case, this is fairly cool indeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pretty neat, but how useful can that be, surely not scalable; How about Insert and Update statements?

</comment><comment><USER7> I think that's pretty cool. Not sure about the "massively scalable" part, though

<comment><USER8> "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thanks for the link to the comments form! :/</comment>