Full Tilt Ponzi - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/09/20/full-tilt-ponzi/ <comment><USER4> Some backstory for those not all that familar w/ online poker:

Full Tilt, along w/ PokerStars, has long been regarded as a premier destination for online poker. A lot of marketing presence, a lot of players, a large range of games.

They rolled out an innovative way to play cash-game poker where you never had to wait for a hand. Several thousand people would join a, say, $1/2 game of NL Holdem, and as soon as 9 people were ready to play, they sat and formed a table and were dealt a hand. You fold? As soon as 8 other people fold, bam, you're in another hand. In practice, you never had to wait more than 1 second.

They certainly did make millions in profit on a "rake." However they have an aggressive and lucrative affiliate program that would see them paying out as much as 1/3 of a players lifetime rake to the entity that referred them to the site. (aka "Rake Back")

As an American player, until the crackdown earlier this year, I had no problems playing. When I cashed out, they mailed me a check drawn on a US bank. If I had to deposit more, I could do so from my credit card.

This is a big blow for the credibility of the industry IMO.

<comment><USER5> The 'rush poker' innovation was relatively recent and likely inconsequential. It definitely was only a tiny amount of their revenue stream

(It also seemed rare to not have your credit card blocked for making deposits. So I wouldn't express it as a commonality.)

The industry has been lacking credibility for some time. Players have been pushing to get it regulated to avoid something like this from happening.

<comment><USER6> if your average player is 1-tabling, he's getting (maybe) 80 hands/hour. that same player at a rush table is getting 250 hands per hour. rush poker probably tripled their revenue. who knows how many times it multiplies their profits.

<comment><USER7> You lose some competitive advantage with the rush style, mainly in reading your opponents tendencies in betting patterns, hands played, etc., so win- rates don't scale entirely with hands/hour.

<comment><USER6> House revenue and rake, not player winrates.

Edit as an ex midstakes amateur, frankly I speculate rush is unbeaatable after rake bc the nash equilibrium style is ez and widely known, good players have no edge, bot wet dream. Sent from mobile

<comment><USER7> That makes sense then - I completely misread what you were saying.

I only tried rush poker in passing once. By the time it came around, I had already been out of the online poker game (I pretty much gave it up after PartyPoker withdrew from the market), but if the tracking programs w/ heads-up displays still worked and you could get enough data on the people you were paired with, you could figure out people's pre-flop tendencies enough to probably squeak out an edge. Losing post-flop data hurts though, unless that data was still tracked even though you moved on after folding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To clarify a couple of points raised through the comments thread.

\- According to the DOJ, prior to black friday, FT had $60m in the bank and owed $390m to players. Shortly after black friday, in June this figure was $6m.

\- There are two main reasons for this - one is the exorbitant payouts - <USER2> $440m was paid out to FT partners who held equity in the company - that were taken from players funds. Named are 4 people, Bitar, Lederer, Ferguson and Furst. The DOJ alleges almost $120m was paid out to these 4 alone, and Ferguson is 'owed' another $60m in dividend payments.

\- However, unnamed are many others who also received payouts; the DOJ claims FT - even when they knew they were insolvent - "continued making payments of approximately $10 million per month" up until April.

\- Furthermore, they were making sizeable loans to their roster of professionals with players funds. One mention of "Player Owner 1" almost certainly refers to Phil Ivey.

\- Finally, they were basically fronting US players millions - the DOJ alleges $120m in total - because they were unable to process deposits.

\- The reason this is nothing like a bank investing a customers money and why the DOJ is alleging this is "fraud" and a "ponzi scheme" (nb there is nothing in the amended complaint that suggests charges of a ponzi scheme; but it did come from Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District in a statement) is because the money was not invested; it was used for dividend payments. Meanwhile, FTP was publicly claiming their players funds were maintained separately to operating accounts, deceiving players.

\- This really has nothing to do with affiliates "taking money out of the system."

If you're interested in reading more, I write for this online poker news site: <http://pokerfuse.com/news/law-legislation/fraud-tilt-poker/>

<comment><USER9> I like how their brand name invites writers to construct these headlines like Full Tilt Ponzi and Fraud Tilt Poker. A Google search reveals that a couple of forum posts actually have referred to them as Full Theft Poker which completes the set.

Which in turn leads to the inevitable mashup of nicknames: The eponymous Fraud Theft Ponzi. Zing! Pow!

<comment><USER8> You might be interested in the #FTPstandsfor hash tag.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Bank run in 3, 2, 1...

From the full tilt poker homepage:

"System Update

We apologise but the system is currently down. Please check back later. Please direct all enquiries to email@example.com."

wsj article:

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190410670457658...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904106704576582741398633386.html?mod=googlenews_wsj)

Layman explanation: Full Tilt Poker runs a wallet system, the sum all the users money is smaller than what they have in their bank accounts.

The 'Ponzi' element comes from their ability to attract new players at such a high rate that they can pay the withdrawals.

What makes it doubtful that this really is a Ponzi scheme is that - a bank run excepted - they probably would end up _not_ paying out a very large percentage of the money they owed if operations continue, simply because most of the those playing online poker get fleeced incrementally, every dollar placed as a bet has a rake associated with it and that rake could cumulatively be a large percentage of the total money deposited. I don't run an online casino so I have no clue how often a given deposited dollar passes the tables before being withdrawn.

If there was one part here that is sloppy/criminal then that should be that they overpaid their affiliates.

A typical Ponzi scheme does not have affiliates taking a bunch of money of the table.

<comment><USER11> Excuse my ignorance, but isn't this quite similar to how banks work? I was under the assumption that banks don't have enough cash on hand to pay out all clients if everyone decided to withdraw.

<comment><USER12> That's true. It's called "fractional reserve banking." ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking> ) In fact, most of the money in the economy _doesn't even exist_ as physical coins or bills because of this.

<comment><USER13> The difference is that a bank invest that money, when it receives the money back it can pay the clients. FT payed it as dividends to it's owners - <USER3> was no plan to return it to the players.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Even if the complaint is true, this is not a Ponzi scheme any more than any bank in a fractional reserve system, like basically everywhere nowadays.

In a Ponzi scheme you take new money fully aware that you aren't going to be able to repay in the medium/long term. In other words: you know you don't have a scheme that actually works well enough to pay the profits you are promising. This is not the case here at all. If the complaint is true - which may or may not be -this is theft, plain and simple.

Note that the difference between a Ponzi scheme and a recklessly run investment shop is sometimes academic. One can sometimes be unable to tell apart failed, unrealistic expectations and successful fraud. But here the business model is solid and they have simply taken from users pockets for fun and profit. Again, if the complaint is true.

Bit tired of hearing "Ponzi" misused time and again. I guess it makes for sensational headlines.

<comment><USER15> FWIW, the language comes from the DOJ attorney, so I don't think you can blame the headline writers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It will be interesting to see if Full Tilt has a solid defense behind how they handled the cash. Full Tilt (and most other poker sites) make their money by taking a rake (small percentage) of every pot. Theoretically, over the long run (i.e infinity), almost all of the money would end up in full tilt's pockets. If deposits were outpacing the withdrawals, then they could possibly argue that they didn't need to have much cash on hand to cover future withdrawals. Additionally, considering they are a poker site, I doubt that banking regulations apply to them.

<comment><USER17> Its not about having cash in hand. Thats cashflow, although businesses fail on cashflow issues, you are allowed to take that risk. However it is illegal for any company to trade while insolvent, when they have negative assets like here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Full Tilt had the best user interface and experience. I'd love to see someone write about their software.

</comment><comment><USER19> 2 things always bothered me about poker sites:

1\. No one ever takes a look if the code that is run by these poker sites is indeed valid.

2\. No one ever knows what happens with the poker players money once it's been deposited and it's never clear how easy it is to get it back.

There should be some kind of independent organism checking if the site is credible or not. Now the thing checking these sites are their users...

</comment><comment><USER20> This is further evidence the industry should be regulated and taxed in the US. The amount of money following around the poker/betting/online gambling industry is immense and there's no reason with a little oversight that this mess can be avoided.

</comment><comment><USER21> I agree with the statement that this is precisely why we should regulate it.

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't get it, a Ponzi scheme is an investment program, in what sense is poker ever considered an investment program?

</comment><comment><USER23> this is a perfect example of taking something that would normally be legit and because it is outlawed rules and regulations are flouted at best, a massive fraud and corruption at worse. When I see cases like this, I was wonder how people involved but they would be able to get away with this if you look at the amount they supposedly had on deposit versus what they actually had it doesn't take an accounting major to know there is a huge discrepancy that you will unlikely be able to pay back. It's clear the poker sites make some money through ads and transactional commission but since people play against each other they don't benefit from the advantages a normal casino would have. Although people lose their money they lose it to the person across the table not to the "house". With this high-profile company now under a dark cloud of suspicion, they are definitely putting a big if not final nail in their coffin. With player bots, player collusion and security vulnerability in their systems people start to think long and hard before they wager money online.

<comment><USER24> Financial "products" are regulated by the gov. That didn't seem to have the desired effect back in 2008.

I don't think fraudsters care about regulation. They care that they can sucker people.

<comment><USER25> The financial crisis (and gambling losses at legitimate sites) weren't the result of bankers diverting investors' funds into their personal bank accounts, as is alleged here.

That's illegal, and easily prevented at a regulated site where deposited funds are required to be accounted for (and preferably held in escrow). Regulation in banking or in gambling doesn't make it impossible to lose; it makes it possible for winners to get their money and impossible for the company handling the money to simply pocket it.

<comment><USER24> My point was that regulation and scrutiny didn't prevent the likes of a Bernie Madoff providing a financial product and running a ponzi scheme.

In addition, the financial industry at large can legally provide all kinds of leveraged products which pass scrutiny and result in hefty bonuses (personal profit) but which can end with ruin for the individual and group investors because they are structurally unsustainable (i.e subprime lending had to come crashing). On top of that, the institutions which benefitted during the boom then turned around and asked the people to prop them up despite the questionable risks they took because the world could not afford to have them fail --we blinked.

<comment><USER26> Your premise seems to be that all regulation is the same. Correct me if I'm wrong but your argument essentially is saying: "financial products were regulated in 2008, well see how that worked out, therefore regulation doesn't really work well"

Sorry I don't buy that. Financial regulations put in place during the great depression worked pretty good. Then they were slowly pared back over three decades starting with Reagan. All the evidence I've seen is that the financial products were massively under regulated.

<comment><USER24> I see what you are saying. I think regulation helps and it provides a way for redress. Those are good byproducts of regulation. I think my point was that bad people will still try to pull fast ones -regulated or not. I imagine the frequency of fraud could be reduced by regulation.

So, from that standpoint it might be better to have it on the up and up and supervised -but supervised with a very keen eye and a regulation with teeth, as it were.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The numbers don't add up.

        Owed to the players: $390,695,788

        In the bank:          $59,579,413

        Lederer took:         $42,000,000

        Ferguson took:        $85,161,305

What happened to the rest $204 million?

<comment><USER28> I imagine they had a ton of employees, server costs, other executives that got paid well. They could have also given out lines of credit to some players and never collected the actual $, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is the government fishing for a law to prosecute unrelated behavior that is insufficiently regulated or completely legal. This was not a ponzi scheme as many others have commented. They kept enough cash to pay more than enough of the anticipated withdrawals, and had an operating business that could quickly earn any need for more funds should withdrawals spike. This is standard practice in banking and insurance. I hear Warren Buffet heads a big ponzi scheme too.

If FTP did not segregate finds as advertised, perhaps they committed some sort of fraud, but theft and ponzi this is not.

<comment><USER17> No, they were clearly trading while insolvent. Saying you can cover liabilities from notional future profits is illegal. As this is hacker news, recommend you dont run a startup while you do not understand this.

<comment><USER29> "Saying you can cover liabilities from notional future profits is illegal"

Almost every business does this, so I suppose they should all be prosecuted and we should send our financial system back to the Middle Ages. If I take out $1M loan and invest it in my business, my intent is to pay that liability with notional future profits. If I purchase something Net 90 and don't have the money in the bank, I'm apparently violating the law. Off to jail I go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> If FullTilt is a Ponzi, then any startup is a Ponzi. Investors put money into the startup, the founders spend that money (in part on their own incomes), and based on the company's business model, the investors reasonably expect to get a return on their money.

FullTilt made probably $1M+ per day in rake alone. Even taking costs into account, FullTilt could rake enough to pay out all accounts within a couple years. That is decidedly _not_ a Ponzi scheme, which has no hope of ever being able to pay back its investors.

<comment><USER31> The difference is that players were not _investors_ , they were _depositors_.

When you invest money in a company, you do so with the understanding that the money becomes the company's and will be spent. In return, you get equity (typically). You don't have an "account" with the company from which you can make withdrawals.

By contrast, poker sites operate like banks, taking deposits from people with the understanding that those deposits will be held in trust. You're not buying equity in the poker site, and your money doesn't become their money. It's still your money; it's just being held in an account they manage. This is why commingling is bad--it obliterates the distinction between their money and yours.

Obviously, these poker sites are not FDIC insured like banks. But a legitimate poker site would still take all reasonable precautions (such as segregating the company's funds from depositors') to protect your money.

<comment><USER5> Another angle is that players might not even legally be considered depositors.

There is a payment processor whose funds were seized where the government even put on a display of the giant check of funds seized. These funds ultimately belonged to players (good or bad). The situation is still unclear, as information is limited, but it appears that players will not be legally entitled to any of the seized funds.

As far as poker sites go, they may also not be considered depositors. Some sites/casinos view it this way: you're buying chips.

<comment><USER17> Hard to say you are buying chips when you do not receive anything, would be hard to argue that. I dont think regulated operators are allowed to work like this. Aside from the US issues, Fulltilt was actually shut down by the gambling regulator in Alderney, so they were not unregulated.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


My simple ways to be a happier, smarter 30-something - <AUTHOR> http://blog.asmartbear.com/happier-30-something.html

<comment><USER2> "My simple ways to be a snobbier, more annoying 30-something"</comment>


Startups: Stop Trying To Hire Ninja-Rockstar Engineers  - <AUTHOR> http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/87890/Startups-Stop-Trying-To-Hire-Ninja-Rockstar-Engineers.aspx?source=hn

<comment><USER4> What he should be saying is don't hire pompous pretend-to-know-it-alls. That is something all of us can agree with. But if you've spent the better part of the last two decades learning how to be a good developer and have applied your skills across various technologies, projects, and industries, you deserve the six-figure salary. Why? Because ten mediocre singers cannot sing as well as Aretha Franklin.

Hire nice, competent, hard-working people with the requisite experience/knowledge and pay them what they deserve. If the project needs junior developers, hire junior developers. If it needs senior developers, then hire senior developers. Don't expect junior developers without any guidance to automatically turn into proficient veterans just because they've been doing it for five years. They could be doing the sub-optimal thing for a decade and not know it.

Stop making lists of who/what/why not to hire and just give the promising candidates a chance to prove themselves before/during/after the interviewing process. Also realize that if you make it a company policy to not hire anyone who is "senior", you could be violating federal laws against age- discrimination, depending on how senior is defined. It's no different than saying "must be a former Boy Scout", which immediately disqualifies all females and thus is discriminatory.

<comment><USER5> Have you seen the job postings here on HN? They all use that exact language - rock star or ninja or some other silly adjective. It sounds like they're specifically looking for pompous know-it-alls. I think what he says is exactly what he should be saying (and for the most part, exactly the same thing you're saying).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Are they really talking about Ninja-Rockstar engineers, or "only" developers at the 10x end of the Mythical Man Month spectrum?

Because you _can_ hire a junior engineer close to that end of the spectrum. It's just harder to know whether they are really that good without seeing a track record.

From the article:

>The rationale you'll typically hear is along the lines of "a great developer is 10x as productive as a mediocre one." That might be true, but it is an impractical startup hiring strategy.

So...they grant that "it might be true," but recommend that, instead of hiring someone on the 10x end of the productivity spectrum, you should instead hire ten "cheaper" developers? At the bargain of $70k/year each instead of an expensive $107k per year for one of them?

Oh, and don't forget to throw in the cost of a more experienced lead to manage those 10 junior programmers, because they won't manage themselves.

Someone isn't really thinking about the math here. Or they like to spend their Series-A funding like it's going out of style.

Don't get me wrong; there's a place for junior programmers in a start-up, after you've gotten enough 10x programmers. There are lots of programming tasks that don't _need_ the 10x programmer and frankly are a waste of his or her time.

But there are also a lot of tasks (depending on the start-up) that _require_ a 10x programmer (or better). Past a certain level of complexity, 1x programmers will _never_ be able to solve a problem well. Even if you had ten of them. [1]

What people don't realize is that the 10x programmer isn't a rock star/ninja -- as Joel said a while agao, you're not actually hiring the top 1%. [2] The best developers all just have jobs and aren't looking most of the time.

[1] <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html>

[2] <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html>

<comment><USER7> _The best developers all just have jobs and aren't looking most of the time._

Sounds like another good reason to focus on hiring recent grads, career changers, etc., to me. You just have to figure out a way to predict - <USER2> than chance - which ones will become great developers. Whether or not that's doable is, I suppose, an open question.

<comment><USER8> I guess the question is whether startups, who are usually in intense competition and working against the clock, have the time and energy spare to lead people through that process. I wouldn't have thought so.

A good place for juniors to start would be in normal web shops, not high- pressure startups.

Do you think Tesla Motors grabbed a few engineering grads and shop floor assistants, chucked them in a room and hoped they'd "grow into" knowing how to make an electric car? Of course not - for a startup like that, timely and accurate execution is absolutely critical and they would have hired the best, most experienced people they could get. I don't see why software startups are any different.

<comment><USER9> > _"I don't see why software startups are any different."_

You don't see how a photo-sharing app is different than starting an electric car company?

That's a problem. I also think that's the point of the article: 99% of startups don't need rockstar developers. They aren't doing earth shattering engineering. Most startups need competence and nothing more. If they actually hired on that basis, it would help the eco-system.

<comment><USER10> We're talking about _software_. If what you're doing is easy, you're doing it wrong; automate it and shatter the earth under the competition that's still doing it by hand. There are always opportunities for earth-shattering engineering in software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _The average starting salary for a senior Ruby developer has climbed to $94,000 ($107,000 in Silicon Valley). Compare that with the average salary for a junior Ruby developer, $70,000, ($80,000 in Silicone Valley)._

These numbers strike me as _wildly_ below current market rates in the Valley, based on my discussions with people in it trying to hire. I'm willing to be wrong on that.

<comment><USER12> Here in the DC area tech talent is cheap. You can get senior developers for around $60K.

<comment><USER6> Seriously? Why wouldn't they move somewhere else then? They LIKE living in DC?

<comment><USER13> No, he's not serious. Actual salaries are double-to-triple what he's saying.

<comment><USER14> Wow, where would you find triple? I've never heard of a developer making 180K in DC.

<comment><USER15> $180k+ isn't inconceivable, but it's certainly approaching a salary range typically reserved for Architects and team leads (in my experience).

It's fully realistic for non-management senior engineers to earn up to $150k, however.

<comment><USER16> We really should be talking about total compensation, not just cash salary. $180-250k isn't unreasonable cash+%+bonus for a sales engineer or consultant who puts in huge hours, or for a senior developer with bonus/stock/etc. I think a lot of people at Google end up hitting $180-200k based on total compensation once they're at the 5-10 year of experience tiers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't disagree with a lot that's being said here, but:

 _At that rate, you can give a junior developer a 10% raise every year for 3 years at the end of which you'd have an experienced senior employee_

This won't work, because of the "short-termism" that permeates through startup culture. A great many companies have no intention of still being a startup in three years time- they want to be acquired or be absolutely huge (at which point that individual programmer means less). There is a huge (and perhaps damaging) focus on early results, and in that environment waiting for a junior to get to grips with stuff will be seen as a weakness.

<comment><USER7> Personally, I think "short-term'ism" is a disease that plagues business (if not society as a whole) in America these days. I also think taking more a of a long-term view can be an advantage on many levels, and I have often said that - when we get to a point where we can hire employees - one thing we will do at Fogbeam Labs is focus on hiring younger, less experienced folks and provide training, education, and mentorship... and build a "promote from within" culture where we aim for long-term relationships. Some sort of profit-sharing plan would seem to be a good idea as well.

Then again, we have all sorts of radical "against the grain" ideas. Like, the idea that you don't need to recruit at Stanford and MIT and Harvard to get great people. We believe you can recruit at, say, NCCU[1], UNC-P[2], ECSU[3], etc., - or even WTCC[4] - and find talented people who will not demand the same salaries as the Ivy Leaguers, but will also be hungrier and have a something to prove.

Time will tell...

[1]: <http://www.nccu.edu/>

[2]: <http://www.uncp.edu/>

[3]: <http://www.ecsu.edu/>

[4]: <http://www.waketech.edu>

(disclaimer: by saying "younger" I don't mean to say that actual age will be a factor... it's just that less-experienced folks _tend_ to be younger by nature. But we would hire a 65 year old who had just undergone some sort of career retraining program, for example, if he/she was qualified. Discriminating by age, color, religion, ethnicity, etc., isn't just illegal, it's _bad business_. Why narrow down the pool of quality people you're working with?)

<comment><USER18> It won't work. you won't do the promote from within step, or you will promote one guy, or you won't pay enough money with the promotions. It will take your employees 2-3 review cycles to learn what's up. At that point your (now experienced) people will leave for places that pay more for experience.

<comment><USER19> What's with the cynicism here? I've worked at at least two companies with a great train & promote from within culture, and heard of several more from my friends.

<comment><USER18> It's not cynicism, it's just logic and my observation of how several tech companies operate. It may seem great that a company would want to promote its novices, but the fact that it operates with novices doing the work precludes this. It's not economical to promote and pay more just for the sake of promotion. All they need are novices so why pay senior wages? Turnover does have some cost, so companies will either bait there employees into staying a bit longer by promoting one or two people and letting everyone know that person's new salary, or they will just not promote anyone. Either way, most people are going to look elsewhere after 2-3 years of flat salaries.

<comment><USER7> OK, I don't know what other companies do (or will do, or claim to do), but what I'm talking about, vis-a-vis the company I'm working on, is _not_ a situation where we have "novices doing the work." We're definitely working on hard problems that require smart, experienced people. All I'm talking about, is having a mix of both very junior and very senior people, and then focus on adding senior people by helping the n00bs advance to that level over time.

This may have veered away from what original article was proposing, so I may be muddling the conversation here a bit.. but I definitely believe we can build a company that has a strong "promote from within" culture, that provides a very supporting environment that helps people grow, and provides a career path for technical people that doesn't require them to move into management in order to advance their careers.

 _It's not economical to promote and pay more just for the sake of promotion._

But you don't do it just for the sake of promotion... you do it to keep a person's compensation in line with the value they create and to stay competitive with the market. As people gain new knowledge and skills, and gain experience, they become more valuable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Before the discussion goes too far, do keep in mind that the author of the article runs a school/e-Learning company that teaches Web Development to its students.

It is, definitely, in their best interest to have their graduates being hired by popular startups.

The content of the article seems to argue with that goal in mind. Whether the content is true or not, it is yet to be proven: I have not seen a modern statistical data of every single argument in both the article and the discussion here in HN.

Especially when it comes to "10x more productive engineer" since in our field, we haven't done a good job measuring anything at all except some data of failed software projects and how bad workers negatively influence the company (just like any other sector...).

</comment><comment><USER21> As a side note to the article, it's interesting to contrast the author's RoR school ( <http://flatironschool.com/> ) where the goal is to get people from zero to junior level with that of Hacker School ( <https://www.hackerschool.com/> ) that wants to take people from average to "ninja-rockstar" level (or at least a better engineer). I don't think that the goal of having more junior level engineers out there is a bad one, but in terms of what the market is currently looking for, I see the advantages of a program like Hacker School in the social proof of being one of the "ninja- rockstars."

I also personally agree with having one strong senior engineering being more advantageous to an early stage startup than a handful of junior ones (but not just from the programming side of things). A good senior engineer is easily worth double the salary of a junior one if they can provide both overall technical direction as well as general team direction and mentorship. Otherwise, a team composed and lead by only junior level people can quickly feel like the inmates are running the asylum for any one you're trying to bring in (junior or senior). The examples given in the article are all of places that have a strong, established tech team. If you're early stage and don't have a strong foundation to build your tech team on top of, getting three junior engineers for the price of one good senior one might not be the deal you think it is.

</comment><comment><USER8> > By hiring junior engineers, and giving them the training and development > they need to flourish

If you don't have battle-hardened, experienced, senior programmers around, who's going to train them? Who's going to answer questions about design? Who's going to come over to their desk and teach them how to test X?

Actually, I somehow think I know who the author wants to train all these juniors:

> Avi is the Dean of The Flatiron School, an intensive program to learn Ruby > on Rails in New York

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm no ninja-rockstar! I'm a cybernetic Viking berzerker, battling each and every bug and feature to the death. I might have scars from my many encounters, but I won... eventually. My software is a well honed and polished, though sometimes nicked, piece of work.

Seriously guys, ninjas were criminals! They were outlaws that killed mainly via indirect confrontation, OCD-like planning, and typically poison. They deserve no praise or idolization for that. Just like I wouldn't hire a diplomat-rockstar programmer either...

<comment><USER23> What's wrong with diplomats?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> There are certainly some important take-aways in this article.

What certainly hit home was the reference to high turnover. In my experience, attracting and _retaining_ (perceived) top 1% developers is no small feat. It's damaging to a project when a "rockstar" developer builds out a product set in her chosen (often bleeding edge) framework / language, and then departs at the sign of another "fun" opportunity elsewhere. No one needs to sign an oath of loyalty in blood or commit to a project for life, but fickle engineers - no matter how talented - can be a net loss to a team.

Insofar as the salary requirements are concerned, the numbers are a little off. Top developers in this area (DC) command north of $120k, with junior developers starting at anywhere from $50-60. Regardless, however, I tend to regard salary (within reason) as an appropriate investment.

Lastly, as he mentioned - not all teams are equipped to handle & mentor junior engineers. This requires a formalized and _real_ commitment, which unless executed properly - will result in un-productive junior hires. Like the author, I believe that mentoring and training junior staff (and interns) is a fully achievable goal, but one that requires planning and forethought.

<comment><USER12> Personnel retention is easy - just demonstrate on any level that the contributions of the workforce is appreciated.

Since I'm in the DC area too, with clearance, the number you're throwing around are a bit of a stretch. We've got junior developers in the high $30K range and senior in the mid $60K range.

<comment><USER13> Since I'm in the DC area too, without clearance, the numbers _you're_ throwing around are not realistic. Junior developers will start in the 50's-60's (with BS), usually 70-80 with MS, and seniors will generally be 110+... In the contractor sphere with clearances, it will be correspondingly higher.

I do know that some agencies tried to give peanut wages to certain fresh-out- of-college students, but everyone I knew scoffed at it and found positions that paid twice as much elsewhere.

<comment><USER12> 10+ years of working in the DC area supporting the Columbia customer, McLean customer and the Quantico customer for a variety of companies and still no one paying close to the rates you're claiming. It obvious you can't distinguish between the billing rate and a salary rate.

<comment><USER13> Ok, then enlighten me. Are you claiming that an average dev in your business will make high 30's before tax?

<comment><USER12> Yes. We have some on sight, for a government agency, as part of a government contract, for which we are the prime.

Additionally, we've taken people from help desk, put them on the server team, then placed them doing host based security and paid them upper 40's (before taxes).

Clearance level is TS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> True ninja-rockstar engineers are professionals that don't exhibit the traits described.

The senior engineer described resembles more of the _diva_ who is actually rarely that good, because he cares too much about his ego to question himself and progress.

<comment><USER25> Does "ninja-rockstar engineer" sound modest to you, like someone who doesn't care about their ego?

<comment><USER6> Doesn't someone who can do 10x-20x the work of an average employee deserve a bit of an ego boost from time to time?

And that's if the "average" employee can do the work at all.

I've pulled so many "average" developers' nether regions out of the fire when they've gotten stuck that I've lost count. I don't care what term is used, but it's nice when the term actually describes the discrepancy between my performance and most developers.

Ninja-rockstar will do nicely, thank you. ;p

Seriously, though, MANY high-end developers in the start-up space are probably on the 10x-20x end of the spectrum. At least at the successful start-ups.

I'm sure there are exceptions for when the start-up is more about pushing data around in a mundane but novel way, and where the primary business value is NOT technically challenging. But even in those cases when the company scales it often has a problem, because the developers haven't done things optimally, and once you're already having scaling issues it's really hard to rearchitect everything to work better without messing up the existing site. YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> hm. From what I've seen? senior salaries are rather higher than the article mentions, and Jr. salaries are rather lower. (in Silicon Valley) - <USER3> types are still having a hard time finding work at all, as far as I can tell.

That said, I think that the key is "what skills do you have?" If you are (or have) someone good already, hiring on a apprentice can be a great thing. But you need someone at the company that is good at what you are doing. That could be you, and that could be an employee. But, for instance, _I_ am not going to train up a new accountant. (or for that matter, a new webapp developer.)

</comment><comment><USER27> Are we really STILL talking about those terms? I don't mind those terms myself, because what I think everyone ACTUALLY means is they want a A++ player, someone who's deeply involved in the specific tech, a cut above your average senior dev cube dweller. These are the best sort of people for startups where your small size and large goals mean you can't afford any dead weight. Who cares what term you're using?

<comment><USER28> 'A player' is another one of those obnoxious, means-nothing words like 'ninja' and 'rockstar'. In practice it means 'my kind of guy' - and someone acculturated to the same self-promotion ideology - more than it means anything about qualifications.

It's funny that EVERY company says it will be crippled unless it hires only people who are far above average. Because if developer quality is even close to normally distributed, about half of the actually employed population is below average (let alone top 1%).

Big companies, of course, need people with years of deep specialization. So if you aren't deemed to be "crushing it" in the top 1% and you don't have 10 years of experience in some extreme specialization - regardless of what you can actually do - you are COMPLETELY useless to the industry and will save your time if you just start mowing lawns and waiting tables.

<comment><USER27> Okay so what term(s) are acceptable to you?

I've worked at many large F500 companies, and trust me they can and do employ a much larger group of average and below average people, including developers. There are tons of people at F500s that if I brought them into a small startup, would KILL the startup because they simply can't produce.

Not sure what you actual work experience is but there are absolutely a range of skills/productivity/involvement. If you don't call them A/B/C or Ninjas or whatever, you have to call them something. Having worked with a wide range of folks, I have my preferences:)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think a good team has a balance of rock stars and junior devs. I don't find it usually the case that a rock star will do 10x the work of a junior dev. In fact they will often do less work - however the work they do is easily 10x or 100x smarter and better for the company long-term. Junior devs tend to work very hard but also can cause a lot of havoc if a someone is not helping to guide them. Many times in fact the work that junior devs do winds up being a mess that the senior has to fix or re-do entirely. Junior devs can also suck up a lot of time from the senior devs, so in fact they may at times be reducing productivity. On the positive side the junior guys tend to bring a lot of enthusiasm and fresh ideas. They keep the senior guys on their toes. And they will grow into senior devs, hopefully giving you a few years of solid work when they reach that point.

"rock star" status to me is somewhat based on age and experience. But in fact some rock stars are young and some mediocre devs are older. I think it has to do more with personality and motivation on the part of each individual.

</comment><comment><USER30> Too, the whole puerile "ninja badass" nomenclature is a social signalling device that will turn off many excellent hackers. Stop it immediately.

</comment><comment><USER16> This article seems like an excellent example of "understand the biases of the author to understand why he wrote what he did."

He runs a ruby on rails cram school and some kind of non-infrastructure e-commerce site. From the first, he has an obvious incentive to talk up the market for his graduating junior developers, both to increase demand for the classes and to get them jobs when they graduate.

Designer Pages doesn't look like it has any particularly unique or difficult technical challenges -- it's not Facebook scale (highly interconnected large userbase), it's not super high availability, it's not computationally intensive, etc. That's the kind of thing where a couple of senior developer+ founders plus some junior developers might be useful.

</comment><comment><USER31> "Silicone" valley? Really?

</comment><comment><USER32> Then how do you expect YC companies to write a job ad on HN???

</comment><comment><USER33> Sure, and hire a bunch of people who don't know what they are doing.

Do remember that Google has hired away pretty much all the top engineers already. You won't be able to get good people for cheap prices anymore.</comment>


For sale: LangPop.com - <AUTHOR> http://journal.dedasys.com/2011/04/13/for-sale-langpop-com <comment><AUTHOR> It's surprisingly tough to do this even though it's not really making me any money, and maintaining it is pretty easy. But I want to eliminate the distraction of having N side projects, so that my thinking about "what could I go hack on today" is limited to fewer things.</comment>


Cinderella - CLI app to manage open source dev on OSX - <AUTHOR> http://www.atmos.org/cinderella/

<comment><USER2> Needs virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper. These days, almost no one develops in Python without them.

</comment><comment><USER3> What extra does the user get from an additional installation of Python and Ruby as contained in this package? (OS X already has Python, Ruby, Perl, PHP and a lot more, since forever.)

<comment><USER2> Python 2.7, and a canonical install of Ruby (the native install has problems, or at least it used to).</comment></comment>


New Leaked Documents Reveal NSA Datamining Program Called "Boundless Informant" - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailypolicyjournal.com/glenn-greenwald-on-fire-breaks-story-on-top-secret-metadata-mining-program-called-boundless-informant/

<comment><USER2> Pure blogspam. Here's the original article.

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-boundless- in...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-boundless-informant- global-datamining)</comment>


Test HN: need a simple answer - <AUTHOR>

This has me stumped - or rather annoyed :) A friend asked a simple question on a BB I frequent (dont worry, he's kosher and well out of school/uni age so it's not a "do my homework" query :D) regarding calculating monetary combinations.
Here is the brief summary in his words:
Probably not interesting to most people but I've again I've just underestimated an algorithm I thought would be very simple ...
I get paid a weekly total for many small daily jobs. All is well if I get paid for everything but if I don't then which jobs haven't I been paid for?
i.e. last week I was paid only paid £153.00 for the following list of [potential] jobs £24.10,£45.40,£21.30,£7.55,£24.90,£24.50,£7.45,£1.25,£9.60,£30.00,£17.20,£21.05,£7.40,24.10,£9.35,£14.65,£4.25
Which payments am I missing?
My first answer was that there is approx. 130,000 (interesting anecdote: Wolfram Alpha was a bitch to get working on complex combinations, I did by hand in the end :D) combinations of the payments. So just compute, store in Sqlite/Mysql and then query for the total you get each week to retrieve the list of payments.
But I cant help feeling there must be a nicer way (i.e. one that means adding a new payment doest mean you need to reprocess). Maths is not my strongest focus.... so, HN, am I missing the obvious? <comment><USER2> This is an instance of the subset-sum problem. It's NP-Complete. If there were a polynomial-time way to incrementally update the solution, then you'd have a polynomial-time way to solve any instance.

So finding an easy way to solve this problem efficiently would be a major breakthrough for CS.

Note for your application it probably doesn't matter whether you can solve the problem "efficiently" because it's feasible for you to check a hundred thousand possibilities. I'm just saying that you shouldn't expect to find a dramatic shortcut.

<comment><AUTHOR> cheers. it was more an interesting mind experiment than trying to imporove on the obvious answer (it beign such a small set). The question being: can I build a system that works for both 17 jobs and 1000 with reasonable speed.

Now I know why we ran against brick walls with the maths, thanks. (and actually a practical version of the NP-Complete issue helped me get my head round it better! many thanks).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You are right; there are 131,072 possibilities. Just have a computer go through them each week and see which ones match the weekly total. I'm sure there are nicer ways in terms of mathematical beauty, but if your friend is just trying to get work done, it doesn't really matter. Computers are fast.</comment>


A new way to get electricity from magnetism - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160418120049.htm <comment><AUTHOR> Sorry just realized the source link is from Nature magazine - unfortunately I cannot edit the HN link above, so posting the original paper here [http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nmat46...](http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nmat4618.html)

<comment><USER2> For future reference, you can simply delete an entry and then submit a different link. Or just submit the better link, and leave the original to sink or swim.

<comment><USER3> I personally preferred the editorial version, after having peeked at both.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Energy consumption of the microwave generator is the first thing that comes to mind - any 'cheap' sources of microwaves?</comment>


Virtual Linux Remote Desktop - <AUTHOR> https://technicalsourcery.net/posts/virtual-linux-remote-desktop/ <comment><USER2> I do this often but a little less complicated than what is proposed here.

* Start with an Ubuntu Server base

* Install tasksel: sudo apt install tasksel

* Install the Xubuntu core desktop: sudo tasksel install xubuntu-core

* Install XRDP: sudo apt install xrdp

Then two small changes to make XRDP work:

* sed -i 's/allowed_users=console/allowed_users=anybody/g' /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config

* echo "startxfce4" > ~/.Xclients

Give the machine a reboot and you're good to go. You can log in with an RDP client and continue configuring as you see fit.

<comment><USER3> What's the difference between "taskel install xubunutu-core" and "apt install xubuntu-core"?

<comment><USER2> Really not sure. I've always just done it with tasksel. If "apt install xubuntu-core" gives the same result, then there's no need to install tasksel first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > systemctl disable unattended-upgrades

That's a bad advice and it really has no place in this article. Please leave your automatic update in place.

</comment><comment><USER5> Cool guide but I'd change one thing:

      echo mynewuser:mynewpassword | sudo chpasswd

If you set the password using echo like this it will log the plaintext password in the current user's .bash_history file.

<comment><USER6> depending on the bash version, prepending a space will cause the command to not be logged.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> These types of setups have their uses! I have tried to achieve similar setups in the past using a Fedora VM running VNC server and a Chromebook running VNC client. One pain point that you might not expect is how the client handles the Crtl, Alt, and Windows key modifiers. Browser-based clients especially will not pass these through, and thust interfacing with the remote system is usually not as convenient as many newcomers expect.

</comment><comment><USER8> Maybe I am missing something, but why doesn't he just do an xforward via ssh -x?

<comment><USER9> Using x2go means you get a persistent desktop: your apps are left running when you close the session, and you can resume where you left off when you reconnect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I appreciate the general sentiment in having a reproducible work environment. But I must ask if the complexity of running and tunneling X is needed -- what desktop software are you running in this environment?

</comment><comment><USER6> personally I found xrdp server w/ RDP client works great.

<comment><USER11> Same here. Works great. I've used x2go before years ago, and it works fine but it's just over-complicated IMO. xrdp is simple, easy to setup, and just use and RDP client.</comment></comment>


Europe's largest meteorite crater home to deep ancient life - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-10-europe-largest-meteorite-crater-home.html <comment><USER2> The meteorite impact provided an ecosystem for microbial life (fracture zones, heat and water). But why speculate that the actual microbes _came with the meteorite_? Why not a terrestrial origin? It's not like we're lacking microbes here.</comment>


Declarative vs. Imperative Programming for the Web - <AUTHOR> http://www.codenugget.co/2015/03/05/declarative-vs-imperative-programming-web.html

<comment><USER2> As someone who isn't familiar with FP this was kind of hard to understand, the sentences were often too convoluted.</comment>


What We Know About Last Week's Accident - <AUTHOR> https://www.tesla.com/blog/what-we-know-about-last-weeks-accident <comment><USER2> > It is worth noting that an independent review completed by the U.S. > Government over a year ago found that Autopilot reduces crash rates by 40%.

They always put this out there. You could reduce crash rates but still have a higher chance of death under failure. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's ready for primetime, especially as it's been marketed.

If this was a result of an Autopilot failure (perhaps because the crash attenuator was not fixed from the prior collision as they noted) then Tesla is screwed.

</comment><comment><USER3> Curious how they have logs everywhere these days. Maybe they should start keeping these logs in a "black box" \- like airplanes have, from which they can retrieve information after a fatal crash.

<comment><USER4> My beef with tesla, is that is is their black box to access, and not yours. I think you should own your data. That is to say nothing of their toxic assult on right to repair.

<comment><USER5> Your beef is with the entire auto industry then. No one gives you access to the flash memory in the airbag module storing these last values prior to an incident.</comment></comment></comment>


China: High GDP, 64 million empty apartments. - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPILhiTJv7E <comment><USER2> Nicely done video, but I think it gets the story wrong. The bubble is not illogical to start with. Thanks to currency controls most people have no way to invest outside China. The Shanghai stock market meanwhile has huge problems with adverse selection (bad companies pay to list -- successful companies list in Hong Kong or the United States).

There are no property taxes in most of China, so people with money park it in real estate. And developers keep building these assets because they're insulated from loss in any case. If you're connected you can get zero/low cost loans. And local governments are complicit because they make money "selling" the land and don't have alternate income sources.

So no-one really cares if someone builds a massive complex and it doesn't sell: the government and developers are covered by the bank, and the bank is covered by the Central Government. This is just a distributional game in which China pays for infrastructure by using public policy to inflate bank earnings and then banks approve questionable local projects. And sometimes these things make a lot of money, so it isn't as if they're taking a hit on every single complex.

<comment><USER3> This is mostly what happens.

Additionally, these new apartment complexes are often build in "new areas" of the bigger cities, to grow the city. China is trying hard to reach a level of urbanization comparable to the west, so they need to "grow their cities" somewhat aggressively.

I have lived in two of those newly build complexes myself. First there is not much around, roads, maybe a supermarket and a few stores. The local gov't or the developer offer the shop owners rent-free for a year or two to get them to set up their stores in the new area, because there are almost no people yet. But two or three years later, the apartments are mostly filled (either rented or sold) and the shops are paying rent too, new supermarket have arrived, and suddenly the area has become part of the city center.

Same goes for big roads. In the southern part of the town I live in, there is a huge road grid (6 lane roads, etc) already build, but there is only grassland. Come back in five to ten years, and it will be inner city area. Smart to finish the roads before it is crowded.

<comment><USER4> Everything you've said assumes these cities are going to explode with 1) enough people to buy the apartments and 2) enough people who can afford them.

Could you clarify your view on those two issues?

<comment><USER5> Why does the price on failed buildings have to stay high? Why couldn't the government (through a bank, likely) reclaim a bankrupt project, restructure its books and basically "give away" the units?

China certainly has its share of problems. Having lots of extra housing for people to eventually move into is far from the top 10. Something related that is a bigger deal is the energy of heating and cooling housing built without 21st century insulation.

I think its useful to _not_ compare how the U.S. and EU have handled bailing out its financial institutions. China does not have to bail out its financial institutions in the same way if and when it comes to that. They could simply just let the rich take a haircut and give away a bunch of empty apartments to cool the angry masses.

<comment><USER2> Hey Jon,

What is Shanghai like these days? In Beijing there is a ton of vacant commercial real estate, but most of it seems to be owned by organizations with no need to lease (else why not lower prices?). Where developments like SOHO are competing is by selling rather than leasing smaller condo-style units. And while the market for apartments has slowed down, there are still people buying. Fifth ring road near Echo's place is 30,000 RMB per square meter.

I wonder more what the actual cost structure is for the complexes cited in these videos. They should be the lowest of all since they're being built on satellite territories. That said, even in a worst case scenario of total default, I wouldn't expect banks to seize the property of people they've been pressured to lend money to. And I wouldn't expect the property to remain "unowned" if it seemed like that would happen. The developers would just sell the assets to a property management company and go nominally bankrupt.

Agree about the differences between China, US and EU too, but my guess is that banks are safe, and that as individual markets get overdeveloped local governments will start adopting property taxes to raise revenue. This is NOT going to be popular with people who've already taken out a 30-year mortgage to buy a 60 square meter apartment, but that coupled with price stagnation should curtail people's tendencies to treat real estate as assets for investment instead of places to live, and push prices to whatever is logical given demographic and migration trends. Soft landing?

<comment><USER5> From the numbers I've seen, Shanghai is not far behind Beijing...lots of available space in less desirable/developed areas, tight in others, pricing that makes no sense for buying as a home. Certainly, there is nothing "fair" about this.

What do I expect will happen? I expect a lot of people will eventually take paper losses but get to keep the home they live in at adjusted terms. Larger holdings will take losses relative to how connected they are, with a few making out very well. Municipalities will test a variety of tax schemes.

How much social instability will there be in between now and this eventuality? I can't say but can only hope level heads prevail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can't view the video from here in China, but...

I've noticed lately developers/local govt tearing down buildings after evicting tenants, then canning the new building project ("running out of money", maybe), instead turning the land into a carpark. This creates more demand for unsold apartments nearby, (as well as giving vehicles somewhere other than footpaths to park on :).

<comment><USER7> Or the development was found unsafe (after a number have already fallen down), or they realized that the permissions were not done correctly (or at all).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How many apartments are vacant in the US, just as a comparison, does anyone know? That would make the number much more meaningful.

Also, are these apartments dirt cheap and do they speak english in these areas at all? Maybe they could be a haven for startups, which are somewhat less bound by geography, if they were extremely cheap. I might just be dreaming though.

<comment><USER9> You may be dreaming, but you're not the only one.

What would be the hurdles to get a startup running in China? The Great Firewall?

It's a big country so it's always possible to find a place that fits your personal taste. For example Sanya is a tropical island. Not much infrastructure there yet though.

<comment><USER7> Hurdles?

1) Language, especially when getting stuff like visas, work permits, incorporation, etc. You can stay on non-work (or business) visas, but it's not terribly legal.

As for the English standard, imagine you have a country with 1 point something billion people, and speaking English was discouraged until about 20 years ago (except if you were in intelligence). How do you teach it? Only young people tend to be fluent. Most English teachers have never left the country, or had much one-on-one interaction with people who can speak good English. Students are great at certain elements of formal written grammar, if it's in an exam setting. Vocabulary can be OK. But fluency can be a problem.

2) Red tape. It's non-existant for the old woman selling wonton soup by the side of the street (as long as she can run faster than the local city management, or can afford to give them lots of free soup), but not likely to be fun for foreign businesses.

3) Talent. I'm sure it's there, but you won't know how to find it. You can't tell if people are bright, unless you can communicated easily. Also,expect programmers with great geometry, good algorithms, and no idea how to work in a team; kinda like most countries, really.

4) Honesty. Chinese believe that "actions speak louder than words". If you don't understand this, and you won't, you won't understand why _everyone_ is telling white lies to you. People may explain this as "face" related, or "high context communication", but to some people it looks very dishonest.

<comment><USER9> So, except for point 2, it's a matter of learning the language and culture thoroughly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >> There are no property taxes in most of China, so people with money park it in real estate.

Exactly the case in India. Most people there park money in real estate. Also in the suburbs the official land value (determined by govt) is far less than the real market value. So investing in that kind of land is way to park black money (or corruption money).

The usual real estate factors like rent-to-own don't apply, Infact the prices in the suburbs of even a 3rd tier small city like Coimbatore is more than that in a major US metro!

<comment><USER3> >> There are no property taxes in most of China, so people with money park it in real estate.

There are now in Shanghai, Beijing and a few other major cities. That's quite new and started just this year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> 64 million empty apartments in a country with population of 1.3 billion is sub-5%, hardly reason for panic, and typical of any rental market in the US.

<comment><USER12> 64000000/1300000000 = 4.9 percent is only a correct estimate of the vacancy rate if you assume that each apartment is to be occupied by only one person, which is surely an untrue assumption about China and any other country I have ever lived in. And see elsewhere in this thread

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2746312>

a more nuanced comment posted hours earlier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> An article in SF Chronicle provides some good perspective on these vacancy rates in China to backup this video: [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/07/07/...](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/07/07/investopedia54293.DTL)

Even in the huge industrial cities of Shanghai and Beijing the vacancy rates of approximately 50% and 35%. The peak for the US during the recession was 18.5% in Michigan.

</comment><comment><USER14> Nouriel Roubini on the investment bubble in China, including these ghost towns:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4yN00qGBbI#t=10m39s>

</comment><comment><USER15> Could this type of economic activity by China be characterized as similar to the "New Deal" that the US embarked upon in the 30's? Except in this case China is attempting to stimulate their economy to "keep up" with western society?

The sheer level of organization and determination to build all these assets only to have them go uninhabited surely means that there are very conscious decisions being made at very high levels.

I suppose capitalism keeps this kind of stuff from happening in the US, since no one is going to put their own money on the line when no one is going to buy. But the flip-side of that argument could be made in that Freddie and Fanny (Government backed entities) were formed to entice the American public to finance and build the American dream home. And we see what happened over the past few years...

Those of you that are Economics or Econ/Poly Sci type folks... what is the reasoning for this type of Government behavior? I'm curious as to _why_ China would embark on such a quest.

</comment><comment><USER16> Give the empty apartments to poor folk. You solve the high income inequality and property bubble at the same time ;)

<comment><USER7> Whenever that happens in China, the "poor" folk who actually get the free apartments aren't always poor.

Welfare fraud is not unique to the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> As long as these empty buildings don't fall down from neglect, and the money couldn't have been spent more wisely (i.e. these will serve a valuable service some time soon), then I don't see this as a big deal. But more than likely, the glut of resources devoted to housing means neglect in some other place of the economy.

 _The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design_ -F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

</comment><comment><USER18> They do have 1,000 million people and counting. 64million is only 6.4% That isn't that high in reality. Give China a break. USA has a rental vacancy rate of 9.7% and an owner vacancy rate of 2.6%. So combined vacancy rate of 12.3%. So yeah, US's is higher. <http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/hvs/hvs.html>

</comment><comment><USER19> It's starting to sound like we need an HN China meetup...

Where's everyone at? I'm in Kunming, I know maxklein was in Shenzhen for a while.

<comment><USER20> Fuzhou! Garden city of the south! i would love a China HN meetup. Organise/post it and I'll come.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The US has the empty housing, we just need the high GDP.

</comment><comment><USER22> Ghost cities also keep construction workers employed.

<comment><USER3> Why is this downvoted? It is a valid point. Especially in 2008/09 they were rebuilding every second road in the Chinese city I life in, even though the roads where perfectly fine and had just been finished a few years earlier. Same for apartment buildings. They can not just stop building them, because there are literally tens of millions of people getting their income from constructing those buildings.

<comment><USER8> >They can not just stop building them, because there are literally tens of millions of people getting their income from constructing those buildings.

Don't you see why this is obviously disastrous? There are so many analogies that can be drawn -- that I'm not even going to try. If you don't see why this is obviously ridiculous then read some stuff about the invisible hand of the market (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand>). It is only a valid point from the narrow perspective of the workers involved and the employers of those workers selling their services.

<comment><USER3> Of course I "see" this. But I also see short to medium term considerations by the CN gov't of political stability in the country. Especially at a time of imminent power transition to the next political generation.

Its called "political reality".

But yeah, I read about the theory you linked to, about 10 years ago, when I studied it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This was posted a bunch of times

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2431869>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2386584>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2669432>

</comment><comment><USER24> Same thing as Dubai: A sprawling ghost-megacity.

</comment><comment><USER25> Would it not work if they did what Henry Ford was doing. Price them so the workers can buy them? That way the money stays in your pockets while the workers enjoy a better life? Win-Win.

<comment><USER26> The problem is the expenses in building these things are capitalized (or worse, booked at a greater value), so when they do sell at the much lower value, the developers/banks/government will need to take a loss. So long as the selling can be delayed, the losses can be hidden. If these were just private entities, they'd take the losses and go on, but the government purse is much larger.

<comment><USER27> The losses aren't hidden, it's what one would call a long term investment. Because the Chinese government isn't beholden to a two year election cycle they're able to think over a much longer term horizon. Whether this is good/bad in the long term remains to be seen, as a more dynamic business environment might threaten their long term vision.

64 million surplus homes in China could be filled in a heartbeat. China is not America where everyone for the most part already has a pretty decent home. The current US estimates are similar per capita, but the issue is that US doesn't have a massive supply of peasant farmers who would like much better houses in the city.

China has started to reach the point where it is fueling the demand for it's own goods similar to what happened to the US in the 20s and continued in the 50s and 60s as a generation moved from the farm to the city. In the US the fuel was lend/lease and marshall aid, for China it's trinkets for Wal-Mart.

At 100,000 USD a pop the surplus represents 6.4 trillion dollars, if you assume the units are overvalued similar to USD real estate meaning they have a 3.2 trillion dollar bubble. A 3.2 trillion dollar bubble is similar to the costs of the US bubble plus a war in Iraq and Afganistan. The only difference is the Chinese have peasants who will ostensibly drastically increase their economic output and the fact that building modest housing probably has a better ROI than war.

<comment><USER26> For every year they sit empty, they depreciate physically and they also need regular maintenance. Those are actual resources being used. And if the buildings are in the wrong location altogether, it may be cheaper to just tear them down than try to find a market for them.

<comment><USER28> Regular maintenance may be a lot lower ongoing cost in China than America, maybe because of that it makes more sense to build ahead of demand.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Vendor Prefixes and Market Reality - <AUTHOR> http://www.otsukare.info/2015/07/02/vendor-prefixes-market <comment><USER2> This is why I applaud browser vendors who are ceasing to use prefixes, and instead hiding experimental features behind flags.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are some good reasons for vendor prefixing. For instance, the 'user- select' property is implemented differently between in each prefix, so CSS styling should explicitly state which implementation it wants.

These properties need to be standardized. But, we're going to start running into trouble if we start pushing to get rid of prefixes for unstandardized properties.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/user- select](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/user-select)

<comment><USER4> There were some good reasons behind the intent for vendor prefixing, but it was a flawed solution to a real problem. As vendor prefixed made it to production builds, we ended up not with experimental properties that we could still change willy nily, but with strangely named properties that we have to support forever (since content depend on them working correctly), and without even the benefit of being able to evolve the design of the unprefixed version anyway we like, since "best practices" mean that css authors very often writen the unprefixed property in their stylesheet along with the prefixed one for future proofing.

What browsers are mostly doing (and the CSSWG is in the process of formalizing) is that experimental features should be included in nightly/preview/developer builds, but not in production builds (or be off by default, to be turned on via user settings). That way we can still experiment, but we don't use experiments in production, and avoid creating a legacy compat problem on things that were not meant to be permanent.</comment></comment>


How Boeing Is Fixing the 737 Max MCAS Software - <AUTHOR> https://viewfromthewing.boardingarea.com/2019/03/27/heres-how-boeing-is-fixing-the-737-max-mcas-software/ <comment><USER2> Badly?</comment>


A new shape called the scutoid has been discovered in our cells - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/2175297-a-new-shape-called-the-scutoid-has-been-discovered-in-our-cells/ <comment><AUTHOR> Nature Communications paper: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05376-1](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05376-1)

</comment><comment><USER2> Related question on Math Stack Exchange:

[https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/2864794/the- scutoid...](https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/2864794/the-scutoid-a- new-shape)

</comment><comment><USER3> Relevant and probably off topic, but this conversation about the scutoid was posted on reddit and made me crack up, laughing out loud.

[https://i.imgur.com/8Z0f6fk.png](https://i.imgur.com/8Z0f6fk.png)</comment>


Drug Wars, TI-83+ inspired game coming to your iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.drugwars.mobi

<comment><USER2> As a point of contention, Drug Wars was popular back before even the TI-83 (not TI-83+) came out. My sister had it on her TI-82, and I had it on my TI-83, both long before the TI-83+ was ever released. Would be interested to find out who made the "original" version of the program, when they made it, and if the 82 was actually the first model they made it for, or if even that was an updated release...

Edit: as a btw, there has been a "drug wars" game available on the Android market for at least 3 or 4 months; long enough that I played it to the point of "beating" it and got bored.

<comment><USER3> The Android version is also open source :)

<http://code.google.com/p/dopewars-android/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For the record, some of us played drugwars on our 8088 machines... <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drugwars>

<comment><USER5> Yup. I think I actually played it more often as a door/chain on some local BBSs. (Still, from my 8088.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Vaporware. It's probably not going to get approved by Apple, unless they're easing up on their approval requirements these days.

<comment><USER7> Seconded. I actually considered making a clone of this game for the iPhone. It appears that there are actually lots of other people who thought they could do this, and needless to say, they were all denied.

Here's one of them, called Dope Wars, which was rejected and is now on the Cydia marketplace.

[http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2008/04/14/dope-wars-for- ipho...](http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2008/04/14/dope-wars-for-iphone- released/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I believe there is an app called "Candy Wars" that is essentially a remake of dope wars... but without all the drug references so it would actually pass the approval process.

<comment><USER9> Perhaps you could make a customizable "Candy Wars" that lets the user change the names of the candies. That'd probably be the best way to get it through the approvals process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ha, I remember having a version of this in TI-BASIC. I got tired of the cops busting me all the time so I modified the bust probability to 0.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd like to point out that I made hacky iphone web app back in Jan 09.

<http://iphonedopewars.com/>

I chose js/html because I knew that apple would never approve it. However, I wasn't really happy with the performance so I never did any marketing.

</comment><comment><USER12> Well, I hope you make it to the iPhone, but, without Apple's approval it is still only a hope.

</comment><comment><USER13> Special edition bag of weed? I've been promoting all wrong...

</comment><comment><USER14> What looks awesome about this isn't quite that they've simply taken the TI-83+ game and brought it to your iPhone but that they've instead tweaked the game to take advantage of the iPhone's features. Adding a traditionally popular game to the social gaming / location based gaming sphere is a really cool idea.

</comment><comment><USER15> For the Apple ][ fans there was Taipan

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taipan>!

I spent many, many hours playing that game.

<comment><USER16> BAD JOSS!!!

I played Taipan a lot on the Apple II. Great game. I liked the overpay exploit with the moneylender. Many years later I heard about Drug Wars and played it. It looked like it was a mechanical clone of Taipan, just with a different world setting and superficial changes.

<comment><USER15> Various Apple ][ emulators do a fine job of playing this game if you are so inclined for a stroll down memory lane.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Drug Wars was my introduction to programming (probably not a good sign).

I started tinkering around with values and ended up making a notecard retrieval system that also simulated the OS clear programs function so my friends and I could cheat in geometry class even after the teacher caught on. There was also a tasteful Simusex-style easter egg game built-in.

</comment><comment><USER18> how come no one did this already? i spent countless hours in calculus class in high school playing this. could be why i suck at calculus now...

though you could argue zynga's mobster games are all inspired by drug wars.

<comment><USER19> People have tried, Apple did not approve due to "adult" content. I doubt this one will get approved, either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> There's a Debian package for dopewars, which is pretty much just a remake.

</comment><comment><USER21> Played it on the first 'computer' I owned: the palm m100

</comment><comment><USER22> US only?

<comment><AUTHOR> if there's enough interest outside the U.S., we'll figure out a way to make it work

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> And Apple's going to approve it for distribution? This is the company that rejected a dictionary for 'adult content.'</comment>


Sucuri Introduces PHP Obfuscation Decoder  - <AUTHOR> http://ddecode.com/phpdecoder/ Hi All
Happy to release our new PHP obfuscation Decoder. What's unique about it is that it will decode all the various levels of obfuscation. Most tools will do one layer at a time and you, the user, would have to manually go through the process.
Go ahead, give it a whirl.
Cheers
Tony
Sucuri <comment><AUTHOR> Hi All

Happy to release our new PHP obfuscation Decoder. What's unique about it is that it will decode all the various levels of obfuscation. Most tools will do one layer at a time and you, the user, would have to manually go through the process.

Go ahead, give it a whirl.

[http://blog.sucuri.net/2012/10/sucuri-decoding-obfuscated- ph...](http://blog.sucuri.net/2012/10/sucuri-decoding-obfuscated-php.html)

Cheers

Tony Sucuri</comment>


Visual GraphQL Tutorial for Beginners - <AUTHOR> https://app.graphqleditor.com/?category=tutorial&visibleMenu=code <comment><USER2> Would be nice if at the end of the tutorial they let you play with it abit as opposed to just deleting it all and saying thanks for playing :/

<comment><USER3> Ctrl + c -> end tutorial -> ctrl +V . But yes you are right :)

<comment><USER4> there are plenty of graphql playgrounds on the web. This, for example [http://try.sangria-graphql.org/](http://try.sangria-graphql.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am doing a short 'primer' for my developer colleagues on GraphQL, this came up just in time. Thanks for the terrific resource!

</comment><comment><USER6> i think the editor is well implemented. Am interested in learning the design consideration in making the editor itself</comment>


The Beards of Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/11/20-12-st_beardtaxonomy/

<comment><AUTHOR> Anyone sporting the "cofounder who left pre-IPO" one?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The social media coordinator one could play a part in 'Gangs of New York'.

</comment><comment><USER2> That feeling when one of this fits you, both in title and beard.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unix Admin is glorious.</comment>


Theresa May loses Brexit deal vote by majority of 230 - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/15/theresa-may-loses-brexit-deal-vote-by-majority-of-230 <comment><USER2> Were it not for the silly Fixed Term Parliaments Act 2011 this would be the end of the government, there'd be a resignation, a visit to the Palace, and an election on the way.

Not now. The impotent government will limp on, and on. We'd either need the DUP withdrawing their support (no sign yet), or Tory MPs voting against their own party (one way to resign) in a vote of no-confidence in the government. Or the govt losing enough seats in by-elections to lose their DUP supported majority.

I really don't know what the LibDems were thinking pushing for this Act.

<comment><USER3> It's actually hilariously (if that's the word...) possible now that we'll have a People's Vote and May's government will have to deliver a Remain result.

<comment><USER4> There already was a People's Vote. The first time.

<comment><USER5> It was advisory, so we can ignore it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a historic loss:

> Government defeats by more than 100 votes are vanishingly rare; the only > ones recorded in the past century occurred during the minority Labour > government of 1924. Postwar, the only government defeats on a similar scale > were by 89 in 1979, and 86 in 1978.

The "No" lobby was packed [1].

[1] [https://twitter.com/CMonaghanSNP/status/1085257330432884737](https://twitter.com/CMonaghanSNP/status/1085257330432884737)

</comment><comment><USER6> Thread with more comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18914290](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18914290).

</comment><comment><USER7> how the boys f'd it up and asked a girl to fix it just so they can blame her at the end.</comment>


Control your server using Whatsapp - <AUTHOR> http://funnybretzel.com/control-your-server-using-whatsapp/ <comment><USER2> "Lately, I've been working on a project to automate lots of stuff on a continent wide scale... My programs sometimes fail, sometimes they work well but I need to supervise them. They are not even 6 months old."

Thinking about this, it feels like the author is adding bandage on a leg, after breaking it. If you need to supervise your programs so you can't even leave the computer, feels like your time would be better spent on writing your software so it CAN (and will) fail but can recover by itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the best point in the whole comments section. I am still learning Python a bit and it's my biggest project.

If you have any advice, methodology or anything that would make me a better programmer please share it with me.

<comment><USER3> Not OP, but the best lesson I've learned in the past couple of years is that the code you don't write doesn't break.

I used to write code to fix existing problems; now I see if there's code I can refactor or remove first. Big difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why on earth would you build anything remotely critical on a closed, proprietary, for-profit service such as WhatsApp? That's not even to mention that this sounds like a humongous kludge! A bit like proudly proclaiming that your Facebook-over-DNS-via-carrier-pidgeon is your super cool way of remoting to your server... If and when whatever API provider decides that you're not abiding by their EULA you're hosed.

That's aside from `diggan's point, which i agree with: if you need to babysit your server to such a degree, something is wrong.

<comment><USER5> > this sounds like a humongous kludge

We're on Hacker News, right?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is not about using whatsapp as an SSH client, I presented the whole thing wrong. My main concern, is, when you have programs that run in the real world, they sometimes break without you even being able to fix the screwups. I use whatsapp just to remotely run predefined functions, no SSH involved.

I agree that allowing SSH would be a real issue, and better use an SSH client for that purpose.

But then, let me just clarify one thing for the people thinking that "Oh Whatsapp is owned by facebook it's evil". Do you really think that app on your Android device or your iPhone device will be foolproof secure? Both are owned by Google and Apple, there are some drawbacks. But tinkering about what if and what not is not my business. It does the job and if someone really wants to hack me, it's not that SSH app on my phone that will prevent him or her.

Programs break, like humans, this is just a way of giving a quick aspirine shot when I am not in front of my computer, which happens seldomly, but still.

I like the fact that when I wake up, i can message my server "start_tests with some new parameter" and he does the job while I enjoy my coffee. Cronjobs have to be defined beforehand, this is meant to be dynamic.

Don't allow shell access if you don't want.

<comment><USER4> I'm actually not in the camp which is saying SSH on your phone is a bad idea because the NSA can log into your server. I would actually advocate _for_ using SSH from your phone, instead of this setup. My point is that for all intents and purposes, SSH will work forever. WhatsApp on the other hand, might disappear tomorrow, rendering whatever you built here useless. The crucial point is open vs. closed software and ecosystems. You're putting effort into developing something inside a walled garden which may be shut down tomorrow (or where you get kicked out tomorrow, but the end result is the same).

Support libre software! :)

/rant

EDIT: pedantry

<comment><AUTHOR> All in all, you are absolutely right. But then, other problems breed another set of solutions. This is just one, even if not optimal. It took 3 hours in the making, tops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> pi-rat There are perfectly good SSH clients for ios [1].

[1]: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/serverauditor-ssh-shell- cons...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/serverauditor-ssh-shell- console/id549039908?mt=8)

<comment><USER6> And even better SSH / MOSH clients for Android [1]

[1]: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sonelli.ju...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sonelli.juicessh)

<comment><USER7> AFAIK, JuiceSSH is still closed-source, which means I and a lot of others won't be using it. AFAIK, there's no _good_ ssh clients for android, only tolerable ones.

I'd love to be proven wrong about that though.

<comment><USER6> Have you read the source of connectbot? Have you compiled the version you are using yourself? If not, the version of connectbot on the play store is no different then JuiceSSH.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone knows if there has been any movement wrt an official Whatsapp server api?

The reason I'm asking this that I work with communication/payment solutions for developing countries. Whatsapp usage is quite high in our user base but as long as there is no official api I figure I can wait.

(As for why not Telegram: I like Telegram, I just got one of my extended family groups over there yesterday, the problem is that unlike Whatsapp it doesn't work on things like s40 and s60 phones which means it isn't an option everywhere.)

</comment><comment><USER9> "Lately, I've been working on a project to automate lots of stuff on a continent wide scale... My programs sometimes fail, sometimes they work well but I need to supervise them. They are not even 6 months old."

He's deploying a project that's failing and he needs to manually restart processes on the server. He can't find a good SSH client for android, so he has his server execute commands messaged to it through WhatsApp. WhatsApp. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp#Security](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp#Security) And he open sources it!

This is either an April fools day joke or a 14 year old

</comment><comment><USER10> Au contraire to the "why are you replacing SSH" comments, I actually feel that this is really cool and you're on to something that's extremely interesting to certain kinds of hackish/pet projects :)

A good use-case I can actually imagine myself using on the get go is allowing our part-timers to whatsapp our bot for their roster and scheduling, or make plans to what kind of days they want to work.

The beauty of this is that any new part-timers can come and go and with a simple server/authentication system in place it can be quite useful.

Love that it can work with Telegram too since my daily operations use both Telegram and Whatsapp.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why not just use ssh?

<comment><USER11> First line of article: "I still haven't found a decent command line app for Android/iPhone." ;)

<comment><USER12> Personally I'm very happy with ConnectBot for Android. I'd like to know why he considers this a better option.

<comment><USER7> Personally: ConnectBot has weird formatting issues, problems with keyboard input, and doesn't play nice with tmux.

Ultimately it's what I use because it's the most tolerable, but I've yet to find a _good_ Android ssh client.

<comment><AUTHOR> Friends and people on my blog told me JuiceSSH is cool, maybe try that?

<comment><USER7> Closed source, unfortunately |:(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can anyone comment on the legality of this?

<comment><USER14> Whatsapp's lawyers will complain. [https://github.com/venomous0x/WhatsAPI](https://github.com/venomous0x/WhatsAPI)

Best to use a different protocol and avoid whatsapp.

<comment><USER15> I like the fact that WhatsApp's lawyers required the guy to preserve any digital evidence so they can use it to screw the guy later .. Yeah, let me help you screw me

<comment><USER16> Legal notices frequently tell you not to delete/shred/burn/"lose" potential evidence so that you can't later say you had no idea you were supposed to keep that stuff around. And if you did delete stuff they can try nailing you for spoliation

<comment><USER17> What happened to not being forced to incriminate yourself?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For sane remote control of servers, I've found Salt hard to beat. This is it's original purpose, and it really does a good job of managing multiple remote servers from a single interface.

Throw an interface around that, and let's talk. :)

</comment><comment><USER19> Probably would have been easier to just fix your app to not require constant attention.

</comment><comment><USER20> Give us paid api access please WhatsApp!

<comment><USER21> Why not use the free telegram API?

<comment><USER20> Because it doesn't work with WhatsApp

<comment><USER22> But WhatsApp is the Internet Explorer of messaging apps, only by supporting the alternatives like Telegram we will have better messaging apps in the future.

Remember when IE had around 90% of market share 10 years ago? Well, the history repeats.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


For the next month,Scribd's library is free - <AUTHOR> https://www.scribd.com/readfree <comment><USER2> Fuck Scribd.</comment>


inspirational videos to push you forward when you're down - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's a commercial I like:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No1MxAnHuJM>

And a news story that you might recall:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6cOp6EDFlI>

A commencement speech:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA>

Which ones are your favorites?

<comment><USER2> Not a video, but... this is the only inspirational thing I have ever read. A blind entrepreneur gets a stem cell transplant and he can see again, but his brain has to learn how to process information.

<http://web.archive.org/web/20040401192741/www.senderogroup.com/mikejournal.htm>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "the office" TV series and "office space" are good ones if you want to know what the rest of your life will be like if you don't start a successful startup.</comment>


Instagram founders left because of changes imposed from above - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/27/opinion/facebook-instagram-systrom.html <comment><USER2> I don't believe this will make much difference. I think the platform had already been in decline for at least the past year, because IG seems to be moving away from what made it compelling in the first place.

I don't know what algorithmic changes they've made, but my experience is far less "organic" content from real people, and far more exposure given to the local IG celebrities, low-quality meme stuff optimised for engagement, and impersonal marketing stuff.

It used to be about people. I don't think it is anymore.

<comment><USER3> I think it's the same with every social network. People start using it, they're excited, put their stuff out there, it's fun to use. Then, after a few years the marketers realise that is a thing, and all of a sudden all the content from your friends sits next to all this professional content. People don't feel like their stuff is good enough, and they stop posting, preferring to browse all the awesome stuff from other people. And at the end, everyone stops checking in as frequently, because they realise that none of the fun, exciting stuff is left, it's only marketing for crappy products with a thin veneer of thoughtfulness sprinkled on top.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > "Social media is in a pre-Newtonian moment, where we all understand that it > works, but not how it works," Mr. Systrom told me, comparing this moment in > the tech world to the time before man could explain gravity. "There are > certain rules that govern it and we have to make it our priority to > understand the rules, or we cannot control it."

This is the person I want running a social media today.

</comment><comment><USER5> Lately, Instagram has become very pushy. If you go to your profile page in the app, it shows notification badges at the top right corner for stuff that might have happened in the Facebook app. It's so unnecessary! I'm sure FB wants to push more changes like that. All good things must come to an end ... sigh.

<comment><USER6> Man I hate notification dots that won't go away. Like in PayPal, there's a "notification" that I have a "to-do" for setting up a new profile! That is something I will never do, it's not something I can mark as "read", it's just a damned red dot in the corner forever now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Facebook is going to get worse and so is Zuckerberg. I would short FB if I had a position.

The reasoning is, once you see a CEO installing loyal lieutenants. Who does not value conflicting, and opposing views. You know the company will loose the plot soon. With out any moderation from others I believe that FB will accelerate their disregard for their users while publicly communicating something else.

Fundamentally the Instagram founders and WhatsApp founders leaving is due to a values conflict with Zuckerberg and the culture at FB. My theory is there are the values they talk about and communicate externally, which is not congruent with what is practiced.

There was conflict due to these unspoken values and Zuckerberg took the easy way out. Install people loyal to him. This is a sign of weak leadership.

Edit:

It also seems like ego is getting the better of Z

"Severe cutbacks ordered by Mr. Zuckerberg in how much Instagram was promoted on the main Facebook platform"

Either that or instagram ads are not as profitable as FB?

Edit2: "That's a shame, since that's exactly what Facebook needs. Which is to say, people willing to challenge the groupthink that for too long included a stubborn resistance to admitting and addressing the company's flaws."

This is the biggest danger

<comment><USER8> The problem with shorting is that everything they're doing is driving towards higher revenue. Any negative effects of their actions could be measured in years, not months or quarters.

The other issue is that more than anyone, Facebook very shrewdly mitigated their competition by M&A; where would users go?

<comment><USER9> Exactly.

Shorting leaves you vulnerable to an infinite amount of debt. It's not as easy as it sounds.

<comment><USER10> Outright short-selling has unbounded losses, but there are other ways of "being short" (i.e. betting on a price drop) where the loss is limited, such as buying put options, though these tend to be time-limited as well, to a couple years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can tell they left. Right after they left, the number of ads nearly doubled and I was prompted to upload my phone's contacts.

<comment><USER12> >I was prompted to upload my phone's contacts

Maybe I was naive and willing to give the benefit of the doubt to tech corporations, but I always hoped this was requested for benign purposes (not that I ever allowed it except maybe once in my life because there was an incentive bonus). I'm glad you've cleared up my misconception on this.

<comment><USER13> I thought the same, but my reaction now is to have deleted my account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder what drives people at this stage of success.

The article talks about a fight regarding weather or not to implement a TV like service into Instagram.

When you have built something like Instagram, is that really the next step you deeply care about? Implementing the next feature?

<comment><USER15> I guess it's hard, sort of like staying for the kids. The thing is they built ig, and now they are literally letting it go in fb's hands just to get away from Zuckerberg. Either "six years was enough" is at least 30% or some small fraction to make the difference or they must have faced some serious strife and conflict to prompt them to leave under these circumstances.

<comment><USER16> I'm not a fan of Zuck or FB, but they did sell it (for more money than most users on this board will see in their lifetime). It's not like it was stolen and they have to walk away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So that is why longer Instagram videos aren't a thing yet? Zuck not wanting to risk competition with videos on FB? How stubbornly short sighted.</comment>