R Notebooks - <AUTHOR> https://blog.rstudio.org/2016/10/05/r-notebooks/ <comment><USER2> What's the benefit of this over Ipython notebooks? I think Ipython notebooks can run R as well...

<comment><USER3> In addition to the rest of the replies - IDE tooling, like a debugger, variable explorer and other nice features like that.

<comment><USER4> Any process can connect to a running Jupyter kernel, just like IPython's IDE support. Emacs uses this to inspect variables and provide autocomplete suggestions for variables inside a running Jupyter notebook, for example.

<comment><USER3> yeah, debugging in jupyter is absolutely great!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use R notebooks on a daily basis now.

The ability to visualize your code and the output, with the intermediary steps all along if you want or need, is extremely helpful.

And I can just email the html notebook itself to anyone who needs to check the steps: the notebook easily outputs to HTML (which I can save to PDF on a webbrowser if I don't want to output to PDF directly, which requires installing gigabytes of latex files and fonts)

I believe research should be done this way: fully reproductible and transparent, text, methods and data, all included in one file.</comment>


VMware abruptly fires Fusion dev team, outsources to China - <AUTHOR> http://www.loopinsight.com/2016/01/28/vmware-abruptly-fires-fusion-dev-team-outsources-to-china/ <comment><USER2> Disclosure: I happened to speak to one of the former VMware Fusion product managers about this, but I have no affiliation with VMware right now.

This is technically true. The issue was that VMware Fusion was lagging because of political / budget / turf issues.

This could also actually be a move to get new blood and breathe new life into a fairly stagnant / de-facto abandoned product, which a lot of people depend upon for hypervisor-oriented local development, demos and many other enterprise use-cases that aren't always obvious.

I use VMware Fusion almost everyday, it's stable enough and it does what I need (nested virtualization) and no more. It's fine, I hope it keeps up but doesn't get crappier... It's unclear whether any "new" dev team can avoid teething pains, unplanned breakages or becomes too retail spammy as other solid but maintenance-mode apps have a habit of falling into.

</comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me of Twitter's 'firing' of 336 people to 'streamline' their development process, shame they didn't get a touching letter from their CEO though ([http://time.com/4071255/twitter-layoffs-jack- dorsey/](http://time.com/4071255/twitter-layoffs-jack-dorsey/)).

Really makes me wonder what VMWare's focus is nowadays if they've just fired the team responsible for their 2 flagship products. Looking on their website, they don't even list them in their Products tab anymore. Guess they're moving fully into B2B.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd like to see laws which prevent the US sales of products which don't support the US. We could restrict sales regions, channels, marketing, offices, or anything else we think is appropriate. If they pull out completely...great! We can start new companies to compete with them. Win/Win.</comment>


Neal Stephenson Joins Magic Leap - <AUTHOR> http://www.magicleap.com/#/blog <comment><AUTHOR> This is notable not just because of Neal Stephenson, but because his blog post contains what I think is the most detailed public description of the tech so far:

\--- Here's where you're probably expecting the sales pitch about how mind- blowingly awesome the demo was. But it's a little more interesting than that. Yes, I saw something on that optical table I had never seen before--something that only Magic Leap, as far as I know, is capable of doing. And it was pretty cool. But what fascinated me wasn't what Magic Leap had done but rather what it was about to start doing.

Magic Leap is mustering an arsenal of techniques--some tried and true, others unbelievably advanced--to produce a synthesized light field that falls upon the retina in the same way as light reflected from real objects in your environment. Depth perception, in this system, isn't just a trick played on the brain by showing it two slightly different images.

Most of the work to be done is in applied physics, with a sizable dollop of biology--for there's no way to make this happen without an intimate understanding of how the eye sees, and the brain assembles a three-dimensional model of reality. I'm fascinated by the science, but not qualified to work on it. Where I hope I can be of use is in thinking about what to do with this tech once it is available to the general public. "Chief Futurist" runs the risk of being a disembodied brain on a stick. I took the job on the understanding that I would have the opportunity to get a few things done. \---

<comment><USER3> Stupid question: Who is Neal Stephenson, and why is he famous?

Wikipedia suggests that he's a sci-fi author, is there a particular reason for his fame, could you recommend some of his works?

<comment><USER4> _Snow Crash_ for old school howling-metal cyberpunk.

 _The Baroque Cycle_ for a semi-fictional view of the beginnings of science - the Newton and Hooke era.

 _Anathem_ for an interesting take on the philosophy of science disguised as a sci-fi epic.

<comment><USER5> I would also highly recommend:

 _The Mongoliad_ semi-fictional view of mid-thirteenth century Mongol invasion of Europe

 _Reamde_ MMO gold farming, social networking, criminal methods of the Russian mafia, Islamic terrorists

<comment><USER6> ugh. Reamde.

Reamde starts off with a lot of interesting ideas, and then morphs into quite possibly the worst watered-down, airport-paperback, fourth-rate-Tom-Clancy- triller nonsense I have ever read. Avoid it at all costs. Unbelievable plot and character motives. ick.

<comment><USER7> I _really_ liked Reamde. It's a close second to Anathem as far as Neal Stephenson's books go for me.

If you can suspend disbelief at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation, it's pretty awesome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This Gizmodo article does a great job of demystifying MagicLeap's tech by digging into the founder's background, patent filings, and trademark applications:

[http://gizmodo.com/how-magic-leap-is-secretly-creating-a- new...](http://gizmodo.com/how-magic-leap-is-secretly-creating-a-new- alternate- rea-1660441103?utm_content=bufferb8afe&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer)

<comment><AUTHOR> That 1mm single fiber endoscope is just amazing, out of a spy/scifi novel.

<comment><USER9> Oh, it's that guy. Awesome. That's perked my interest more than Stephenson joining them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That's cool and all, but this has got to be one of the worst company websites I've seen recently. I get that they're stealthy, but this doesn't even build any interest.

It was only until I clicked "Wizards Wanted" (yes, I get it. Magic.) that I sort of got an answer.

Edit: Actually, the Developers section has some more information. But my point still stands.

<comment><USER11> I had no idea what the company does until I bailed from their site and read a comment here. Yes, I could have dug deeper, like the person posting that comment did (thanks), but damn, gimme a _reason_. And no, having $CELEBRITY in your company is not enough reason.

Two utilitarian sentences on what your thing is, and then all the literate prose you can produce. But gimme those two sentences.

<comment><USER12> Give you a reason for what? You're all acting like this company owes you an explanation of what it does.

<comment><USER13> They're selling something. If they want people to hand over cash, it might be practical to tell us what it is.

<comment><USER14> They're not selling anything yet. They don't you to hand over cash yet.

And so it is more practical for them to tease and build interest.

<comment><USER10> Right, except that this doesn't tease or build interest... at least for me.

...not that it matters, seeing as they seem to have already built interest with the people that matter, investors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The hype for me is tempered pretty heavily by what happened to Clang. I'm still very curious what Magic Leap is all about though.

<comment><USER16> What/who is Clang (apart from the compiler)?

<comment><USER17> A sword fighting video game Stephenson kickstarted for $526k and failed to deliver anything playable on. [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang)

<comment><USER18> I happily kickstarted it, but I had no belief it would actually deliver. $500k is 5 software devs or artists for a year. That's not very much money for a 3D game.

<comment><USER19> And it's only 5 people if you're offering below-industry pay, not paying taxes, no benefits, no office, no equipment purchases, etc. I'd figure 150k/person minimum, with more like 2-300k in more contentious areas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Will he bring as much success to this company and he did with Clang? [http://www.geek.com/games/neal- stephensons-526000-kickstarte...](http://www.geek.com/games/neal- stephensons-526000-kickstarter-sword-fighting-game-officially- canceled-1604892/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Interesting hire. As a startup it seems an unlikely one, Neal is a wonderful author, and has a sharp wit, but as he explains "his brain is not useful" to the work at hand. I could see _consulting_ with him, but hiring him struck me as odd. In terms of what Magic Leap purportedly does my guess would be that Daniel Suarez (Daemon, Freedom) might be a better choice in terms of a vision that applies somewhat directly.

<comment><USER22> Well, they've got to do _something_ with that half billion dollars. Decisions that don't objectively make sense somehow become possible when you've got that kind of money to spend.

<comment><USER21> Sad as it is, that is a very real danger of the 'over raise'. Way too many startups have negotiated their bankruptcy in their own, soon to be someone elses, overly well appointed offices. I picked up an Aeron office chair for $12 that way, very sad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Anyone else enjoy the fact that Stephenson's 'Reamde' also featured a hightech VR company that employed famous fiction authors in their staff :)

</comment><comment><USER24> So they are a holographic augmented reality company?

From their site:

>Imagine being able to generate images indistinguishable from real objects and then being able to place those images seamlessly into the real world.

Sounds like you generate a hologram anywhere. And project it into the real world. Think Star Trek holodeck, but everywhere, or anywhere from what they are selling. And the holograms they're projecting would be almost indistinguishable from other objects (I highly doubt that honestly, subsurface reflection takes A LOT of processor horse power with 1 view alone n).

It will be interesting to see what they cook up.

<comment><USER25> The current most popular theory seems is that they are using the usual VR tricks, plus have the ability to track the eye so that the eye's accommodation (focus) matches the distance that the object is supposed to be from. From what I remember with my experiments with stereoscopy this should reduce VR sickness in about 10-20% of the population for which accommodation mismatching with stereopsis causes issues.

Note that this effect is why 99% of the content in feature-length 3d movies appears at an apparent distance of more than 10 feet from you; the amount that accommodation falls off rapidly with distance, so it's a much less strong effect at that distance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Unclear from their site what MagicLeap even does.

</comment><comment><USER27> Still can't figure out what the heck this company does.

Guess it plans to sell hype.

<comment><USER28> The last time I remember this much hype was in the lead up to the segway.

[http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/2013/1019/Inventions- tha...](http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/2013/1019/Inventions-that-were- going-to-change-the-world-but-didn-t/The-Segway)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> When I heard of Magic Leap, "Snow Crash" is one of the first things that came to my mind. I really want to see a Magic Leap demo!

</comment><comment><USER30> "...to produce a synthesized light field that falls upon the retina in the same way as light reflected from real objects in your environment"

Goes back to Carmack's idea presented in one of his Quakecon sessions (although obviously the idea has been in sci fi for a long time).

This is interesting, I have an idea of how it might work:

Producing a synthesized light field could be done with a huge array of tiny mirrors or refractive material (I know stuff like this has been done in the past). By simulating directional rays coming in, I'm guessing your eyes could be tricked into thinking there is depth since the movement of each eye would change the amount of light absorbed (i.e. "focusing" on different objects in the light field). I could be wrong about this, have not thought it through very well.

All that said, they've raised over $500 million from Google Ventures and others, so I'm guessing there is something here, as lacking as the website is.

</comment><comment><USER31> This quote "I sometimes feel that the creative minds who make games have done about as much as is possible in two dimensions. It's hard to imagine how the current crop of games, for example, could be more finely tuned to deliver that particular kind of entertainment." isn't particular inspiring coming from a Chief Futurist. I can imagine a ton of 2D (or text based, for that matter) games that haven't been attempted let alone perfected. I also feel like I play new novel 2D games all the time.

I say this as someone that is excited about VR, AR and would love to see whatever Magic Leap is cooking up, and is a huge Neal Stephenson fan.

</comment><comment><USER32> There's more information here if anyone is interested:

[http://io9.com/how-neal-stephenson-is-helping-to-make- snow-c...](http://io9.com/how-neal-stephenson-is-helping-to-make-snow-crashs- meta-1671621178)

</comment><comment><USER33> Hrm. I hope he doesn't get distracted from writing books. I love his books, but don't care much about video games. I wonder if he's tired of writing, or just wants to do something different...

</comment><comment><USER34> [http://www.faqs.org/patents/assignee/magic-leap- inc/](http://www.faqs.org/patents/assignee/magic-leap-inc/)

</comment><comment><USER35> _" I sometimes feel that the creative minds who make games have done about as much as is possible in two dimensions. It's hard to imagine how the current crop of games, for example, could be more finely tuned to deliver that particular kind of entertainment."_

Well PCs powerful enough for proper amount of voxels would let us do interesting things. Dwarf Fortress with a voxel-based high-res graphics could be interesting.

</comment><comment><USER36> It's too bad the economic incentives make this company take a stealth route. The problem is so large, and potentially so game-changing (both literally and figuratively) that I fail to see how one company could possibly capture all the value created, and it makes me sad that it would even try.

</comment><comment><USER37> Step away from goggles, glasses, etc. Start thinking about contact lenses and optical implants - the kind of stuff that requires FDA approval - <USER2> devices - then the amount of funding and interest they have received becomes instantly much more credible, and makes much more sense.

</comment><comment><USER38> For anybody curious about Magic Leap, I highly recommend this TED talk by the company's founder Rony Abovitz:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8J5BWL8oJY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8J5BWL8oJY)

It starts off kinda weird, you gotta give it a few minutes.

</comment><comment><USER39> I literally have no clue what Magic Leap does after reading through a few pages on their site. It's pretty absurd IMO to have a site like this that says so much but says so little. Honestly, why bother at this point?

<comment><USER40> eye projecting tech, THEY KIND OF WANT TO REPLACE OCULUS VR BY A COMPLETELY NEW VR TECH, where u'll see an elephant in times square because it'll be projected to you eye from somewhere, stuff like that, VR IN REALITY

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Did this "revolutionary startup hires top SF writer" thing ever happen before? If so, how it turn out last time(s)?

I hope it doesn't end up like the whole "revolutionary CPU maker hires Linus" thing.

<comment><USER42> It happens (sort of) in REAMDE. :P

There, it ends up precipitating a gigantic MMO war.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> There is literally and purposefully nothing to see here. Move along.

</comment><comment><USER44> > _We know what you 're thinking: "Who the heck are we?"_

Well, no, I'm thinking, who the hell are _they_. And I can't seem to figure it out from your website.

</comment><comment><USER45> Stephenson is a fairly well respected futurist.

The Magic Leap technology involves light field projection - kind of like the opposite of light field photography if you remember the Lytro camera.

</comment><comment><USER46> I wish we knew what their estimated timeframe on having some MVP of this tech available. 2 years? 5 years?

</comment><comment><USER40> MagicLeap is so secretive that it looks like their eye projecting tech. is far from being ready

</comment><comment><USER47> OMG. I can think of no stronger endorsement of a technology. _take my money NOW_

<comment><USER48> "Having a product" comes to mind...

<comment><USER47> Hence why I said "technology". If this gives Stephenson a jaw-drop moment, it's something I'd like to see turned into something we can all use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Is the blog down? I only see a picture of a submarine hovering above a street!

</comment><comment><USER50> This sounds so fake it is ridiculous. They hired a sci-fi author...come on.

<comment><USER51> Stephenson has some roots in tech too. Second Life, arguably the most successful _modifiable_ MMO-environment, was based on his vision of the Metaverse. One Laptop Per Child was influenced by his ideas in The Diamond Age (and a side project, Nell, was directly inspired by it). In the Beginning was the Command Line was an excellent non-fiction work of his surveying OS evolution. His books in general have a heavy technological focus.

I mean, I hear you, but this is more like Arthur C. Clarke joining a spaceflight organization. Yes, he's coming at it from a different direction, but plainly he's got some valid ideas because other people keep implementing them, directly or otherwise.</comment></comment>


Germany to close all of its coal-fired power plants over the next nineteen years - ____Sash---701_ https://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-germany-coal-power-20190126-story.html <comment><AUTHOR> Dupe [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19007493](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19007493)

</comment><comment><USER2> Deciding to turn off all nuclear power plants within a few years as a response to the Fukushima accident was probably the biggest mistake the German government made in the last decade, and one of the reasons we're reliant on coal so much right now. The decision was purely emotional as well, as unfortunately much of the environmental politics here is. It's sad that we lost our position as one of the leading countries in Europe regarding renewable engergy (baring smaller Skandinavian countries with lots of natural energy resources) and are now a laggard that's reliant on brown coal for our energy needs.

Addendum: I'm not against turning off nuclear power plants (I think we should eventually), I just don't agree with the time frame we chose for this. Letting plants run for a few more years wouldn't significantly increase cumulated accident risk and would have a significant effect on our CO2 emissions.

<comment><USER3> Why couldn't something like Fukushima or worse happen to Germany's nuclear plants?

<comment><USER2> Of course it could happen here in Germany as well, still I don't understand how an accident caused by two extreme environmental catastrophes (really strong earthquake + record-setting tsunami) changes the accident risk for nuclear power plants in Europe. Also, turning off our nuclear power plants didn't make us much safer, as our neighbors have plenty of them just near our border, some of which (Tihange, Cattenom), are much older and unsafer than the plants we turn off here.

Not saying that it's a bad decision to turn off nuclear power plants, just saying the decision should be based on science not emotion.

<comment><USER4> Don't blame the quake and tsunami. Its water did take out the generators needed for the coolants, the plant was wide open for such an accident. NAIIC found the accident to be forseeable and that TEPCO failed to meet basic safety requirements. TEPCO even had two internal studies on the risk of Tsunamis and how to defend against them but management ignored those warnings. If those warnings aren't enough. Japan's coast is full of physical markers from past Tsunamis, indicating the top of those waves and where the safe ground begins. [https://99percentinvisible.org/article/tsunami-stones- ancien...](https://99percentinvisible.org/article/tsunami-stones-ancient- japanese-markers-warn-builders-high-water/)

<comment><USER5> That, however, needs to be part of the risk calculation as well, in my opinion. Even when there's enough technological solutions to make something like nuclear power sufficiently safe, you can still count on human greed or ineptitude to screw things up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> By 2038. That's incompatible with the Paris agreement.

As a reaction to ongoing protests the government has started a so-called Climate Cabinet, that's working on plans to reduce GHG emissions sufficiently to limit warming to below 2°. They're supposed to present their results in about a month.

Incidentally, Friday's For Future is calling for a global climate strike on September 20th. Probably there is a demo in your city too. Join if you can.

<comment><USER7> We (the people of Munich) tried to get our local coal plant to close in 2022. We voted last year and the outcome was essentially ignored. Now it will shut down in 2030. Too little, too late. And Munich could have afforded it easily.

<comment><USER8> But to replace it with what? I assume not with solar and wind, as that would mean that you won't have electricity on windstill nights.

<comment><USER6> Solar, wind, storage and an improved grid. It's always windy somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great news, but 19 years. Man.

Things take time, I get that. But we're getting close to human lifespans there.

The world in the year 2000 was such a different place in so many ways. It's difficult to imagine what 2038 looks like.

Nineteen years ago, top end computing hardware was something like a Pentium III. Windows XP had not yet been released.

</comment><comment><USER10> That article is from January 2019 and it's not correct. There are no plans in Germany to shut down coal power plants completely.

</comment><comment><USER11> Oh stop and for a moment think at the effort to rebuild all our homes to highly energy efficient standards. Replace all conventional heating systems with heat pumps. Redesign cities to remove sprawl and car-centered lifestyles in favor of public transport, disseminated centers. Reorganize consumer supply chain around home delivery and less wasteful routes.

I see plenty plenty GDP coming from all this work, perhaps the only problem is that it wouldn't land in the pockets of the current lobbyist crop

</comment><comment><USER12> Finally. The coal plants in germany were pretty unfortunate considering how much EU cares about the environments (even if some people don't agree with it that much)

<comment><USER13> The EU as such doesn't care that much about coal. For example, Poland, Germany's neighboring country, has a high percentage of it's power come from coal, and no short-term plans to change that/no alternative energy source. The flip side of Germany abandoning coal is that energy has to be imported, and energy prices are among the highest (or actually the highest) in Europe.

</comment></comment><comment> lota-putty More Coal stats: [https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business- sites/en/global/c...](https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business- sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-economics/statistical-review/bp-stats- review-2019-coal.pdf) PDF

Germany best coal reserves have depleted; 20 years is a long time.

</comment><comment><USER14> On the other part of the world -> [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/15/climate/coal-adani- india-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/15/climate/coal-adani-india- australia.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> > JAN. 26, 2019

</comment><comment><USER16> So now will Germany depend on Russian gas, coal power imported from Poland and nuclear power imported from France? Can an industrial nation depend on imported electricity? For me this looks like pipe dream. I can guarantee, after this insanity Germany will have most expensive electricity in EU (after much richer Denmark as it is now): [https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics- explained/index.php...](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics- explained/index.php/Electricity_price_statistics)

Edit: typos

<comment><USER17> Well, if you refuse to look at the details, everything looks like a pipe dream.

In reality, Germany still exports electricity to "nuclear powered" France.

The plan to stop coal plants does not count on higher energy imports, particularly not in the form of electricity.

<comment><USER18> > In reality, Germany still exports electricity to "nuclear powered" France.

France imports very cheap electricity from Germany when wind/solar works very well and exports very expensive electricity when wind/solar works badly. It's a pretty much balanced trade between the two in terms of electricity but it's far from balanced in monetary terms, Germany pays the non-stability of their grid at a high price.

<comment><USER19> > France imports very cheap electricity from Germany when wind/solar works > very well

or when nuclear doesn't deliver enough electricity. Like in cold winters (high demand) or hot summers (low production).

<comment><USER18> There's no such problems in France right now. There's much lower consumption in the summer, it's the time planned for maintenance, producing more would be useless and I don't recall any issue with the winter load.

<comment><USER19> > it's the time planned for maintenance

also unplanned maintenance, overheating rivers, drying rivers, ...

Google is your friend:

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/france- nucle...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/france-nuclear- reactors-shut-down-edf-europe-heat-wave-a8477776.html)

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/30/heatwave-may- for...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/30/heatwave-may-force- nuclear-power-shutdown-france-cooling-water/)

[https://www.reuters.com/article/europe-power- supply/germany-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/europe-power- supply/germany-powers-france-in-cold-despite-nuclear-u-turn- idUSL5E8DD87020120214)

[https://energytransition.org/2017/01/france-cant-meet-its- ow...](https://energytransition.org/2017/01/france-cant-meet-its-own-power- demand/)

<comment><USER18> > also unplanned maintenance, overheating rivers, drying rivers, ...

Those are a very small number of reactors and not affecting in anyway the grid, it's totally planned, you do get clickbait article every year though. By the way, they are only being stopped by regulation as well, not any technical problem.

Additionally, renewables had more severe issues at the moment from the heatwaves, above 25 degrees, solar panel outputs drops a lot and generally there's not much wind either during this kind of weather to compensate.

[https://twitter.com/TristanKamin/status/1153624647243620355](https://twitter.com/TristanKamin/status/1153624647243620355), Here is the electricity production in France for this summer, there's definitely one source of electricity working better than the others during heatwave...

I don't know why people keep bringing this up, it's an non-issue and it's never been one.

<comment><USER19> > Those are a very small number of reactors and not affecting in anyway the > grid, it's totally planned, you do get clickbait article every year though. > By the way, they are only being stopped by regulation as well, not any > technical problem.

What do you think regulation is for?

> Additionally, renewables had more severe issues at the moment from the > heatwaves, above 25 degrees, solar panel outputs drops a lot and generally > there's not much wind either during this kind of weather to compensate.

We were breaking a lot of records with renewable energy here in Germany lately...

<comment><USER18> > What do you think regulation is for?

Those regulations are there to save fishes, they're not related to nuclear plants, coal plants also have the same issue. That's to save wildlife. If you don't care about fishes, the plant technically works.

Since there's a need for maintenance anyway and less demand, that's not worth killing the fishes with warmer water.

<comment><USER19> A nuclear power plant does not work 'technically', if it harms the environment.

<comment><USER18> I mean we're going in circles here, it's not needed to start those plants in summer anyway so...

<comment><USER19> Sure, you can always import German electricity.

<comment><USER18> The reason those plants are not needed (as I said multiple times they are not) is because you have 50% share of electricity heating. And you obviously don't need any heating in summer...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Renewable is not stable, what do they add to offset this risk, gas powered plants?

<comment><USER21> EU grids are interconnected. They will buy electricity from neighbors.

<comment><USER18> The neighbors generally have very similar wind/solar patterns so that's not going to help much. Currently when that happens, they just buy electricity from France at a high price like the other neighbors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is potentially good news for Europe, as I am sure Germany will force other countries to follow suit. Most likely using a diktat given via the EU commission.

</comment><comment><USER23> In 2016, nuclear + coal made up 30% of their energy production (including exported energy) so that's a pretty big chunk to replace in 20 years.

[https://energytransition.org/2017/01/renewable-energy- produc...](https://energytransition.org/2017/01/renewable-energy-production- stagnates-in-germany-in-2016/)

<comment><USER7> Your replaced your whole comment and now the replies don't make sense anymore.

<comment><USER23> Whoops I replaced it in 2 minutes and thought I got away with it.</comment></comment></comment>


Is Graduate School a Cult? - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/article/Is-Graduate-School-a-Cult-/44676/

<comment><USER2> I was looking at the BITE model of mind control [1] and I can see that a lot of social interactions in life can become cult-like, without the intention of making them such. For example, from early on, parents can be protective to the point where indivudial thinking is not really allowed. I have participated in sports and communities with similar dynamics. There should be some kind of level system for cults to identify their severity.

On the other hand, looking at the "symptoms" the model presents could be a lot like looking at health symptoms online - everything looks like cancer.

[1] <http://www.freedomofmind.com/Info/BITE/bitemodel.php></comment>


Show HN: Tempmail.de – Temporary, disposable, anonymous email address - <AUTHOR> http://tempmail.de <comment><USER2> What's the difference between this and say Mailinator [0]?

[0]: [http://mailinator.com/](http://mailinator.com/)

<comment><USER3> the fact that ATM mailinator is banned from mostly anywhere it's enough for me...

<comment><USER4> It's trivial to setup your own mailinator with a custom domain or subdomain -- [http://mailinator.blogspot.fr/2008/01/your-own-private- maili...](http://mailinator.blogspot.fr/2008/01/your-own-private- mailinator.html)

<comment><USER5> I use mailgun for that - it's easy to set up a catch-all on some unused domain to forward to your email address. Free for <10,000 mails per month.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Semi-OT. Having a b2c startup I have mixed feelings on this kind of services.

I totally value privacy (and security) and I support the existence of services like this one, even thought -as a user- I don't completely understand the difference between creating a random gmail address. The user's pain is usually related to change the address (i.e., notify all my friends), so a service like this one should actually resolve that pain specifically, IMO.

On the other hand, I also think this creates a mess with other businesses. Users register to services using username+password that they inevitably forget. If you just put the signup with Facebook + Twitter + Google, they complain that you're requiring a social account. Even if they don't complain, the sign up with Google and later they try to sign in with Facebook. In short, the email is the only way to come back via password reset. But what if they can no longer access the email they used to sign up?

<comment><USER7> One of the advantages of Mailinator and 33mail (two other services in this space) is that they allow you to receive email at your aliases for as long as you want, so they don't preclude password recovery. I think this service is somewhat hamstrung by the limited period when the temporary address is accessible.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is no limit after registering the address. The idea was to cover temporary needs as well as providing the posibility to use it persistently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Though there are several services that offer this same thing, it's always good to have more available should they be needed.

Since the concept is not really novel, why don't you tell us about the implementation? What's running on the backend?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure! It's just a postfix + mysql + php implementation. I got the domain some weeks ago and now wanted to use it in a designated manner. So I set up this site as a private project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> >Collection and use of customer information

>Every access to our website and each download of a file on this website are logged. The storage serves internal system-related and statistical purposes. The following data is logged: name of the file, date and time of access, data volume transferred, notification of successful download, web browser and requesting domain. In addition, the IP addresses of the requesting computers are logged.

While I'm sure you have your reasons for this, a service like this naturally attracts users who value privacy and anonymity. Ever thought about adding a warrant canary of some kind?

<comment><AUTHOR> This refers to default apache log files. IP address is needed for spam (abuse) prevention / captcha activation (e.g. too many new accounts per time). A warrant canary is a great idea, thanks... I will add it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anybody know how this compares to anonbox? ([https://anonbox.net](https://anonbox.net))

\---

Anonbox is a service provided by the CCC ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Computer_Club](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Computer_Club))

Source Code: [https://erdgeist.org/gitweb/anonbox](https://erdgeist.org/gitweb/anonbox)

<comment><USER2> Their SSL cert seems to be broken according to Chrome 37.

<comment><USER10> You may want to install the CAcert root certificate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Bug: Mails are opened by clicking on its 'subject', this results in invisible links for mails without a subject. You should consider to replace empty strings with something like '[no subject]'

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you! fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I like [http://www.stop-my-spam.com/](http://www.stop-my-spam.com/) much. It's a temporary redirect to your real email.

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting tool. Would be great if you could send from here as well, after all that is 50% of email.

Loved the examples you gave on the about us page, well said.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sending might be a problem because of massive spam abuse and maybe getting blacklisted in consequence. What do you think?

<comment><USER14> I think you could make it not worth it for spammers fairly easily-- only allow sending to one recipient, captchas, rate limiting by IP etc.

<comment><USER15> These 3 examples are easy to work around using zombies. Even whitelisting only people who have already written to you can be attacked.

<comment><AUTHOR> so, from your point of view, are there any better ways to prevent automated spamming ?

<comment><USER16> Look into how Cloudflare handles detecting abuse of bulk automated http requests (hint: browser trickery). RBLs will help, as well as basic rate limiting. You can also do heuristics on the rate of mails going out from multiple users in similar ways and impose a timeout on users when you detect something 'feels spammy'. Basically you just want to make it so annoying to send spam that they'll use someone else's service. You can also use obfuscation techniques to make it difficult for spammers to determine the method to use to automate requests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hmm, I use inboxalias.com which has persistent disposable anonymous email. Is tempmail better? if so, how?

</comment><comment><USER18> Anybody know of a good open source Mailinator like tool?

<comment><USER19> I created one: "MessageChecker" (MIT License) [https://github.com/hugs/message-checker](https://github.com/hugs/message- checker)

(It runs on Google App Engine)</comment></comment>


Amit Singhal, an Influential Engineer at Google, Will Retire - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/04/technology/amit-singhal-an-influential-engineer-at-google-will-retire.html <comment><USER2> I worked in Amit's organization for over four years and it was great. He was brilliant technically both in terms of writing the main search algorithm that replaced Sergey's janky code, and explaining tricky principles of designing search engines to other people as the search team massively grew. One conversation we had about when it made sense to take the square root of things, which I still recall which whiteboard it was on, in my noob-cubicle in building 43, was really the time when I realized, aha I get how to design search algorithms now. It was also always just a very fun, idealistic, and interesting team. And he was good at corporate politics and defended his minions well ;-) Oh also Amit clued me into the fact that Ardbeg is the best scotch.

This is certainly a loss for Google, but the guy was there for 16 years, so it's probably just time for a change. I will cross my fingers hoping something cool comes next....

<comment><USER3> Square root of relevance signals to "smooth" them out? I worked a bit on tuning search results, not at Google scale though and it's long time ago, but taking square root, or even logarithm of out of scale signals is a very common trick. Heck, even with the classic tf-idf signal, there are a bunch of heuristics like capping off tf, taking log of idf, penalizing doc length, etc. It's really a trial and error thing.

<comment><USER2> Yeah exactly - both that square roots are good for smoothing but more so that a it's trial and error thing. When I started out after dropping out of grad school I was working on search algorithms and a bunch of my coworkers had a background in informational retrieval and I did not, and I was kind of thinking about it in the wrong way. I was thinking about it like it was a math puzzle and if I just thought really hard it would all make sense.

So one day I was stumped in how to make this signal useful and Amit suggested, hey why don't you take the square root. I was like, why a square root, it doesn't make much sense, nothing is getting squared ever, and he went up to the whiteboard and just drew a square-root-ish-wiggle-arc-shape and said look you just want something that looks like this. Square root, log, whatever.

I was like, oh... am I allowed to write code that doesn't make any sense? I thought I wasn't supposed to do that. And he was just like, well, just don't worry about it, you are overthinking it, you can take all the square roots you want, multiply by 2 if it helps, add 5, whatever, just make things work and we can make it make sense later.

At that point I realized that real world software engineering was much different than research had been, and also that this was going to be way more fun.

<comment><USER4> When I started working in Information Retrieval this was something that I enjoyed right away. It was quite easy to come up with a metric that could give more value to some things instead of others..

A few years later I did a PhD in Information Retrieval doing the same kind of things, like it was an art and always exploring new metrics and ideas. I do miss those days, but it is hard to find remote work in this area (IR/NLP)..

<comment><USER5> I keep seeing Information Retrieval. How is it different from general search algorithm and are there grad programs famous for search? The only thing comes to mind is private information retrieval in security.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As discussed in _Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!_ [0], Mayer's feud with Singhal was responsible for her 'demotion' to Google's Maps/local team, and eventual departure for Yahoo!:

> Singhal loathed how, when his team was ready to roll out a change, Mayer > would insist it pass through her UI review—a process that could take weeks.

…

> [I]n 2010, Larry Page decided that Google was moving too slowly. He wanted > the whole company to move as fast as its Android and Chrome divisions.

> One impetus for this decision was a memo from a longtime Googler named Urs > Hölzle. It reminded everyone that social networks, and Facebook in > particular, had become a dominant force on the Internet. It said that Google > was nearly blind to all the knowledge stored on Facebook. Hölzle pleaded > with his colleagues to focus on social media, or else the company could be > swept away in an oncoming wave.

> Page took the memo to heart, and put Vic Gundotra in charge of developing a > social network for Google. The project was code-named Emerald Sea, after a > Japanese painting in which a boat is about to be wiped out by a huge wave. > Gundotra's team built a prototype in a hundred days.

> The speed impressed Page. He realized that one thing Android, Chrome, and > the Emerald Sea project had in common was that each had a single person in > charge. He wondered if it was time to put one person in charge of search.

> Gundotra, suddenly vested with influence thanks to the Emerald Sea project, > made it known that he did not like working with Mayer. With all her reviews > and processes, she slowed things down too much.

> Page thought about the future of Google and its past. To him, the strength > of the company was that it developed machines that could learn what humans > wanted and then provide it to them. He believed that Singhal better > understood how to make the technology that powered those machines. Page > believed that made Singhal more capable of pushing Google products to their > technological limits…He summoned Mayer into a one-on-one meeting and told > her she was done working on Google search.

0: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LLIJ22W](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LLIJ22W)

<comment><USER7> I don't know if it has anything to do with Mayer/lack of review per se, or if it's more about the scattered focus of G+, Android, etc., or if companies of a certain size are just inevitably incapable of solid UI implementation, or what, but Google's UI polish on its flagship browser apps has taken a nosedive in the past 5–6 years. They used to be lightweight, fast, and reliable. Now they are bloated monstrosities packed with weird glitches that devour browser resources.

<comment><USER6> I think Mayer's direct focus was more on UI than on performance, although a simple UI could certainly lead to better performance:

> One time, an APM brought a product to [Mayer] for review and she told him, > "This page is too busy. What you need to do is look at every font on the > page, every font size. And every time you see a new color or a new font > size, you add up a point. I want this page below five points."

> The comment about "five points" ended up in the meeting notes, and then it > became a rule. No pages with more than five points.

> Another rule was: Design a product for the "98 percent use" case. For Mayer, > the best example of a product that followed this rule was the Xerox copy > machine. It could do all kinds of fancy things: staple, collate, copy, and > fax. But if you walked up to one and pressed the giant green button, the > right thing just happened. Mayer believed on every good product there should > be a big button like that for the 98 percent use case, where if the user > clicks it or taps it, they get a delightful, fluid, simple experience.

> During a product review, Mayer would count the number of keystrokes it took > to get every job done. Too many, and it was back to work.

<comment><USER8> Another rule was: Design a product for the "98 percent use" case. [...] Mayer believed on every good product there should be a big button like that for the 98 percent use case, where if the user clicks it or taps it, they get a delightful, fluid, simple experience.

This is all good, but hereis the thing that many designers with great responsibilty doesn't seem to get: As much as there is one big button/search field etc, DON'T REMOVE advanced options for advanced users. Example: For a long time Google Maps on Android it would be impossible to look up a route from anywhere but where you were now. It was not only streamlined to start with current location but rather neutered so you couldn't. To add insult to injury it used to work fine before someone started their UX work :-/

<comment><USER9> > For a long time Google Maps on Android it would be impossible to look up a > route from anywhere but where you were now. It was not only streamlined to > start with current location but rather neutered so you couldn't.

I almost lost my mind trying to do this exact thing.

<comment><USER10> Google maps refusal to make offline reasonable has pretty much killed my use of it. You can use OSM data pre-download the whole set of countries you're driving through and not worry about poor signal / roaming charges / data use.

Or you can use Google maps and get screwed. Guess it works better if you're in the US.

<comment><USER11> Does offline not work where you are? [https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/6291838?hl=en](https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/6291838?hl=en)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My dad went to college with Amit in India - he and his friends always speak incredibly well of him but simultaneously express wonderment as to how it was he who made the rise, given that many others were more 'brilliant', class- toppers, etc. so to speak. I think it's amazingly interesting how true brilliance manifests itself in different ways than we could expect a conventional system to indicate.

<comment><USER13> A testament to the perhaps under-appreciated role of luck in our life outcomes; those with the most success are not necessarily destined to it by intrinsic greatness, but just by capricious random events swinging their way as opposed to others'.

<comment><USER14> A very wealthy man once told me the phrase, "There is no such thing as luck. 'Luck' is where preparation meets opportunity."

I'm sure he had some random events placed in front of him, giving him an unique opportunity. But he executed phenomenally. And we should not discount that. Many have had the same kinds of opportunities and failed to execute.

<comment><USER15> That said, I'm always surprised by how people are so quick to discount luck. Or consider a bad thing if they got lucky.

You can be both prepared and have an opportunity and still fail because of factors outside of your control. Likewise, you could be unprepared, flail your way through a solution, and still manage to be very successful at the very end because the stars aligned. Maybe the market was super ripe, your competitors were going through some rough patches, etc.

Success stories are often carefully crafted with a narrative fallacy. I can think of several very successful companies today that would've been sold a long time ago had it not been for the potential buyer rejecting the deal. Or entrepreneurs who have one success, and then were never able to create a majorly successful big startup after.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Here's a video of him leading a search quality meeting in 2012: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtRJXnXgE-A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtRJXnXgE-A).

<comment><USER17> That was a great video, thanks for sharing! I wish Google would have continued putting out these videos, it's somewhat rare to see a technical discussion outside of a conference/talk setting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ok, wild guess here but Sundar is cleaning out the house? It's kind of hard to give direction to some who's been there forever, actually achieved more technologically and financially, and more critically would not listen to you.

No wonder Larry decided to create Alphabet, stayed out of all the office politics. I would take a bet that Jeff Dean and Urs Holzle will leave in the next year or two.

<comment><USER18> I'll take that bet. What are your terms? They must both leave by Feb 3, 2018 (and I would not count some sort of alphabet-like spin out as "leaving").

<comment><USER19> Heh, me too. He says that so nonchalantly it's obvious he has no personal experience with any of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm surprised the media is billing this as "a push for AI".

I was on both Giannandrea's and Singhal's teams at Google (I left last year). Giannandrea doesn't really have an AI or machine learning background (LinkedIn page: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/johngiannandrea](https://www.linkedin.com/in/johngiannandrea)). He was put in charge of machine learning relatively recently, IIRC less than two years ago. Before that he was doing Knowledge Graph - he came into Google through the Metaweb acquisition - and that technology stack really doesn't have much AI or ML in it. Google has tons of good AI people; if it wanted to, it could easily have replaced Singhal with any number of engineers with more AI experience.

<comment><USER21> Google's problem in search has never been a lack of good engineering, its been a lack of vision for search. The fact that someone from the search team isn't leading the company says everything.

I think the IBM's Watson, Wolfram Alpha, Freebase etc were more much visionary than what Google has done in search in the last 10 years. Even Bing's API's are much more useful. The WolframAlpha and Watson kind of NLP queries have been around for almost 6-7 years now. And Google still can't handle most of them. Whats the use of having all the AI experts on the planet?

Search should be its own company split apart from Chrome and Android. The empire defense game distracts from what Search can be,

<comment><USER19> I think this gets back to the aforementioned point about Marissa's statement re: serving the 98%. Yes, WA & Watson are super useful, but they're useful in ways a huge majority of the population will never miss and thus never know about. Google has been far more focused on addressing the "obvious" problems and low hanging fruit ... it's only a matter of time before they start encroaching, imho.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Combined with Matt Cutt's "indefinite leave", this seems somewhat curious. Pure speculation, but it's somewhat interesting to me that both are the "old guard" in search, and during their tenure, the pure AI sort of approaches, like Panda and Penguin, were implemented outside of the main algorithm, as bolt-ons that were very klunky and separate.

Feels like a move to to clear the way for AI to drive the algorithm, versus running outboard and afterwards as a tweak/tune cycle.

Edit: Er, okay. It's not curious that an < 50 years of age superstar is suddenly retiring for personal reasons?

<comment><USER5> > Feels like a move to to clear the way for AI to drive the algorithm, versus > running outboard and afterwards as a tweak/tune cycle.

Well, to be honest, you still have to tweak and tune your AI model so that it works. Data speaks for itself. You have to run experiments, so the approach they have is going to be the same ANYWAY. AI isn't magical. It may just happen that both sides feel it is time for someone to take a new position. I think that's the better way to put it. But why this new guy not other seniors on the same team? That's a good question.

<comment><USER22> The tweak tune that I referenced as klunky wasn't the AI per se, but the way Google integrates it into the search results. Awkward enough that they would go more than a year between running/integrating it, and when it was deployed, the search results would swing wildy for weeks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Google owes a great deal of our success to him, so congrats to him that he can enjoy the fruits of his labor as well as give back to the community.

</comment><comment><USER24> How does one become so great and intelligent?

<comment><USER25> Go to Netflix and make a list of your favorite TV shows. Then every evening, instead of watching two episodes from your favorite shows, read papers and implement stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Does anyone know why the Google search results page had 2 copies of the top navbar for a while? One with a ghastly black background? Was that Marissa or Singhal?

<comment><USER27> Seriously? You don't get to be a senior vice president by picking background colors.

<comment><USER28> Though you can be CEO by redesigning a logo :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Hope the new guy reveses the recent change to presentation of Google results on iPad. The so called - Mobile Friendly - is truly horrible - it's such a pain having to - request desktop site - for every single search, shaame there is no auto option for this on safari or even better change user agent in settings. Some app browsers let you do this, but they are slower and flackier than safari. I tried Bing because of this, but still no where near in relevance of results for me.</comment>


I Wrote a Book About Jagged Alliance 2 (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/why-i-wrote-a-book-about-an-obscure-90s-computer-game/379181/ <comment><USER2> One of my dream projects is to clone JA2 as a modern, open-source game with a campaign editor. What OpenTTD is to TTD.

<comment><USER3> thats Jagged Alliance 2 v1.13

[http://thepit.ja-galaxy-forum.com/index.php?t=i&cat=21&](http://thepit.ja- galaxy-forum.com/index.php?t=i&cat=21&)

[http://ja2v113.pbworks.com/w/page/4218339/FrontPage](http://ja2v113.pbworks.com/w/page/4218339/FrontPage)

<comment><USER2> That's an excellent addition to the game but there's a lot more that could be done to bring it up to modern usability standards and more importantly, to fuel more content for the game not just more items. What if anyone could write new campaigns like Unfinished Business?

I think this game, Project Zomboid, is a nice demonstration of how fluid and interactive an isometric world _today_ can be.

[https://store.steampowered.com/app/108600/Project_Zomboid/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/108600/Project_Zomboid/)

<comment><USER3> The hole game is open sourced, you can add whatever you want.

<comment><USER2> Very awesome, I did not know that!

<comment><USER3> Afaik there are two main source trees/forks. 2 v1.13 is the highly customized/hacked/updated Windows one with all the mods/bells and whistles, and Straciatella vanilla/bugfixes only cross platform branch [https://ja2-stracciatella.github.io](https://ja2-stracciatella.github.io)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


One Employer Stuck a New Mom with a $898,984 Bill for Her Premature Baby - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/how-one-employer-stuck-a-new-mom-with-a-bill-for-her-premature-baby <comment><USER2> "Dignity bills itself as the fifth-largest health system in the country...In 2018, the organization reported $6.6 billion in net assets and paid its CEO $11.9 million in reportable compensation, according to tax filings. That same year, more than two dozen Dignity executives earned more than $1 million in compensation, records show.

Dignity is also a religious organization that says its mission is to further "the healing ministry of Jesus." Surely, Bard remembering thinking, they would show her compassion.

Bard could see no way out. On Oct. 7, she posted a photograph of the $898,000 bill on Facebook. "When Dignity Health (the company I work for) screws you out of your daughter's insurance…" she wrote. A week later, ProPublica, which had been flagged to Bard's case while reporting about health insurance excesses, contacted a Dignity media representative.

The next day, Bard got a call from the senior vice president of operations for Dignity Southern California, who apologized and said she'd heard about the situation from the organization's media team and would help. Two days later, Dignity added Sadie to the plan, retroactive to her birth date. It would cover the bills. Dignity officials told ProPublica that they'd learned about Bard through her Facebook post. Bard said she doubts Dignity would have reversed course without the questions from ProPublica."

\---

Makes me think about those whose stories don't make it into the news.

<comment><USER3> Hope you learned end of story. Dignity didn't reverse it.</comment></comment>


Walmart open sources cloud portability platform OneOps - <AUTHOR> http://www.walmartlabs.com/2015/10/14/walmartlabs-oneops-open-source/ <comment><USER2> I can't get over the outdated copyright in the footer.</comment>


Where is your startup? (for me Atlanta) - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I'm in Melbourne, Australia, but my main developer is in California. We communicate with Skype.

I think user-oriented sites need good communication between designers and coders, so having a native English speaker was a top priority. Additionally I've generally been impressed with US coders. I also needed someone with a good knowledge of multiple programming languages (rather than a 'solve everything with Perl' guy), and AJAX experience which is surprisingly lacking elsewhere (check out the development history of all those Indian and Hungarian companies on eLance - they might be a fifth the price, but they're generally pretty terrible).

Somewhere after public beta I'll head to SF again for a few months, maybe permanently. When I do, my dev team team will already be there.

</comment><comment><USER3> Valley Forge, PA; anyone near me? rokhayakebe, where in Atl? I grew up in East Cobb (Marietta).

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool. I live in Marietta (vinings).

<comment><USER4> My family also lives in Marietta (east Cobb), although I go to school at Auburn.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cleveland, Ohio. I travel regularly to Detroit, San Francisco and Atlanta for business though.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm based in Belgium. My co-founder lives in New York.

</comment><comment><USER7> Wow...I didn't expect to see 64 comments and then be the first one chiming in from New York City. But here I am.

<comment><USER8> go NYC! go baby! One more here!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> epi0Bauqu and Riley, I'm in Plymouth Meeting, PA. Hit me at codeslinger _AT_ gmail _DOT_ com to rap about stuff.

</comment><comment><USER10> Milwaukee, WI 1.5hrs north of Chicago.

</comment><comment><USER11> ... On the internet ...

Me: located in Innsbruck, Austria

Servers: located somewhere in Texas

DedaSys LLC: registered in Eugene, Oregon

<comment><USER12> Why Eugene? Is is easy to register a company long-distance in Oregon? (I have relatives there and I'm out of the country, so I'm thinking about that angle for a contact address myself :))

<comment><USER11> My parents live in Eugene, and I visit from time to time. This summer I set up the bank account, which had to be done in person, but otherwise, I was able to create the LLC itself remotely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> San Francisco, CA. Although I'm taking a detour to Paris for awhile, long story.

</comment><comment><USER14> Chicago, IL

<comment><USER15> I'm also in Chicago.

<comment><USER16> chicago. and birmingham, al.

<comment><USER17> Lafayette, IN, but Chicago soon

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Delft, The Netherlands. But ready to move the moment it's neccessary.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'd like name an exotic location, but I am in good old New Jersey :) If all goes according to plan, I'll be moving to the SF area in January 2008.

</comment><comment><USER20> Portland, Maine (seriously) and SF/Mountain View, CA.

<comment><USER21> Hey - I live in Maine too. Grew up in Chicago - but have been here for about 8 years. Shoot me an email sometime.

<comment><USER20> Uh... what's your address?

I'm aguvench on gmail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Mannheim, Germany, not exactly the Silicon Valley :-)

</comment><comment><USER23> Turku, Finland (Northern Europe). Partly in Espoo.

</comment><comment><USER24> Providence, RI

<comment><USER25> I'm also working on a startup in Providence. Do you go to Brown?

<comment><USER24> No, moved here a couple of years ago from NYC. You?

<comment><USER25> I just graduated from Brown. Ive been out in Palo Alto for the summer, but ill be going back to Providence in September. Whats your email?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm in a third-world country - Manila, Philippines (there are some talent here!) but poorer infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER27> St Louis, MO

<comment><USER28> I was also born and raised in STL.. left 5 years ago for the west coast, moved to Asia at the beginning of 2007.

Palish, I'll be in STL 9/13 - 9/19 for business meet ups. If you have availability I'd love to buy you a drink and hear about what you have going there. Curious as to how the startup scene in STL is evolving.. -frank{&at&}actercompany.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Daly City CA

</comment><comment><USER30> Tro, Taro... Toronto, Canada.

<comment><USER30> using Serverbeach in California.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Also in Atlanta. Planning to move to Portland in the near future, though.

<comment><USER32> Also in Atlanta. Interested to hear about how things are "heating up" here. I'd love to chat with some of you from ATL too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> DC

<comment><USER34> Reston, Virginia

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Lima, Peru

<comment><USER30> cool, I know someone from Ricoletta

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> San Francisco, CA - Financial District & North Beach ;)

</comment><comment><USER37> Lisbon, Portugal

</comment><comment><USER38> Tulsa, Oklahoma

</comment><comment><USER39> part shanghai, part silicon valley =)

</comment><comment><USER40> Gent, Belgium

</comment><comment><USER41> Pittsburgh, PA

</comment><comment><USER42> Tirana Albania, and San Francisco

</comment><comment><USER43> washington, dc here, the cap city!

<comment><USER44> dc as well!

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Los Angeles

</comment><comment><USER28> Taiwan

</comment><comment><USER46> Boston.

</comment><comment><USER47> Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

</comment><comment><USER48> Christchurch, New Zealand

</comment><comment><USER49> SF Bay Area (Peninsula)

</comment><comment><USER50> Cape Town, South Africa

</comment><comment><USER51> South Bend Indiana

</comment><comment><USER52> Marseille, France

</comment><comment><USER53> Tel Aviv, Israel

</comment><comment><USER54> Belgrade, Serbia

</comment><comment><USER55> Hamburg, Germany

</comment><comment><USER56> chicago... kinda

</comment><comment><USER57> Munich, Germany

</comment><comment><USER58> Los Angeles, CA

</comment><comment><USER59> Charleston, SC

</comment><comment><USER60> Dubuque, Iowa

</comment><comment><USER61> Orlando, FL

<comment><USER62> Jacksonville, FL / Austin, TX

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Boston, MA

</comment><comment><USER64> San Diego

</comment><comment><USER65> Prague

<comment><USER66> Also Prague! Abhishek2, contact me: david(at)anemach(dot)com

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> bangalore ,india

</comment><comment><USER68> melb ~ au

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> THIS IS TRULY A GLOBAL PHENOMENON. And what we see now is just the start of it. Loving it man.

</comment><comment><USER69> in the Cloud!</comment>


Skype mess: How far will this go? - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2011/06/24/skypes-latest-stock-option-mess-how-low-can-skype-go/ <comment><USER2> I have to say that I've been surprised by the reaction to this story on HN. I think the behavior of Skype's owners and executives was revolting and (echoing PG's comment on the other thread), not at all common from what I've seen & heard in my career.

I think there is also at least one clear lesson. First and foremost, choose who you work with based on their character. I think if you're across the table from Silver Lake, Tony Bates, Brian O'Shaughnessy or (as much as I hate to say it) Andreessen Horowitz, you should build in a significant "character multiple" based on how they acted here. You should also have MOFO or another top legal team on your side. If you're an engineer at any company any of these people are invested in, you should also be reading your contract extremely carefully, perhaps also with legal help. Having options that vest with "no value" is just absurd.

I'll note that I have no stake in this whatsoever, but it just makes me sick. My partner and I sold our company (for a tiny fraction of this deal's value) and spent a significant amount of the deal time negotiating on behalf of our employees after eliminating buyers who we wouldn't want to work for or didn't fully trust to take care of them. I don't want to portray us as saints (we're not, but we both highly value our reputations), but it was the right thing to do and most people I have worked with would do the same.

We're in an amazingly tight market for engineers right now. Please, choose your employer very carefully based on their reputation.

<comment><USER3> I worked for start-ups from my first job on up to three years ago (that's 10 years, because I am old). I have worked 60, 80, 100 hour weeks sometimes. Each of the start ups in which I was an engineer were successfully acquired. The owners got millions in each case, I got a net payout over the course of four start-ups of about 15 grand. Not 15 grand _each_ , 15 grand _total_. Sometimes I think about what a fool I was, and how much more money I could have made working for large companies at market rates, instead of killing myself for substandard salaries, even though there was some "love of the game" involved.

Why is it that we need to _exploit_ people in this game? Especially young engineers or execs with their first VP experiences. Some people get rich, most people are pawns.

<comment><USER4> Funny thing...the startup where I'm working is about to face this exact situation. If the acquisition being planned does happen, I'll probably gross a few grand and that's it.

As the only software engineer in the startup I've apaprently been identified as a key person in the move. I'd like to think this gives me some leverage, it would take them 3-4 months to find a replacement and get them up to speed. It was my work on early customers and technology demos that helped land the deal, yet I feel like none of that is being recognized.

What would you do if you were me?

<comment><USER5> > It was my work on early customers and technology demos that helped land the > deal, yet I feel like none of that is being recognized.

You've already gotten whatever compensation you're going to get for that work. If they think that they'll need more of that going forward, your next deal should reflect that.

> As the only software engineer in the startup I've apaprently been identified > as a key person in the move.

Why do you think that you're a key person? Seriously - being the only software engineer isn't enough.

> I'd like to think this gives me some leverage, it would take them 3-4 months > to find a replacement and get them up to speed.

If you're really key, the acquirer should be negotiating with you, not them. (I'm assuming that you don't have an employment contract that your current company can sell.)

Think about things from the acquirer's point of view. Your current company doesn't actually know what it will take to keep you around.

And from your point of view, is your current company really going to care what kind of deal you get?

<comment><USER4> All really really good points. Thanks for the reality check.

I know I've been identified as a key senior person in the organization from seeing some documentation that is being used in the negotiation. I was also handed a second round of preferred stock right before the talks started. There was no explanation given, but I'm guessing it was meant to temporarily keep me happy.

I realize being the only software engineer isn't enough. It our company was a web-based concern, especially so. (We're in manufacturing). Like I said earlier, I know they can find a replacement but it would steal momentum which is something the acquirer wants.

What I'm most uncertain about is how the transition will take place. I know one day we'll just be told to show up at a new office and ohOneMoreThing here's your new comp package which has been decided for you kthxbye.

I'm pretty certain the acquirer won't be approaching me. To them we look like a turnkey operation. My current company knows what it will take to keep me around because I told them so. Whether or not it's communicated upward is my concern.

<comment><USER5> > I'm pretty certain the acquirer won't be approaching me. To them we look > like a turnkey operation.

Huh? "turnkey operation" does not imply "won't fall apart if the wrong people leave".

> Whether or not it's communicated upward is my concern.

Then you're hosed, going to feel used, ....

You're the only one who cares whether you get what you deserve. If you don't care either, then no one cares.

Note that the sellers want to argue that you aren't essential, because if you are, the acquirer needs to take care of you. Taking care of you increases the cost of the acquisition. (That can put the deal at risk and can reduce their payout.)

No, an earnout clause doesn't change their motivation wrt you much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _"The key thing here is that Microsoft is going to be the company that is > left holding the bag."_

It's not as if Microsoft is getting a company gutted of people with technical expertise or domain expertise - and the key assets of brand, infrastructure, and technology are not being affected.

Looking at the people who have been reported to be affected by this, it is hard to see any key personnel involved. Yee Lee appears to be just another employee and the executives alluded to were at least in large part, fairly recent hires; and none of them were founders or early employees - any of those who were eligible would almost certainly have cashed out in 2005 when eBay bought the company (and potentially cashed out again when Silverlake purchased from eBay).

[<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2693496>]

[<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2672786>]

I would suspect that most employees who stick it out through the acquisition are looking forward to the differences of workplace environment which will come with the transition from a private equity culture to Microsoft's corporate culture.

This story seems to have traction on two fronts, both as a Microsoft bashing peace and as a cautionary startup tale neither of which is accurate: it is unreasonable to imply that they could (let alone should) have made Skype's existing employee stock purchase agreements a point of negotiation. Likewise, Skype is not a startup. It's the Jeep of the digital age - Skype has been little more than an asset within a portfolio since 2005's purchase by eBay.

<comment><USER7> >it is unreasonable to imply that they could (let alone should) have made Skype's existing employee stock purchase agreements a point of negotiation

If Microsoft knew that Skype's agreements exposed them to significant legal liability, which now seems the case, they would have made it a point of negotiation.

<comment><USER6> <IANAL>I don't see any meaningful legal liability for Microsoft there. </IANAL>

Microsoft might have some financial exposure which presumably they have covered - and of course it is not in Silverlake's interest to create poison pills because the relatively small profits are unlikely to balance the financial exposure from a potential Microsoft lawsuit. Not to mention that it is almost certainly in Silverlake's interest to get the deal closed, deliver profits to the LP's, and move on to look for new investments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would expect nothing better from a PE firm in a restructuring, but I'd like to see Andreessen Horowitz (and ideally also Microsoft) respond to this. a16z's reputation among top-tier hires at portfolio companies (and thus their reputation with entrepreneurs) is worth more to them than their gains from the Skype deal.

<comment><USER9>
      a16z's reputation among top-tier hires is worth
      more to them than their gains from

I really doubt anyone's reputation is worth more than 6 billion dollars.

<comment><USER8> They didn't own 100% of the company; probably more like 5-10%. So it's really less than 1x on one of their funds at stake here.

Plus, it's not like it was "do this deal like this, or walk away entirely". What is at risk is either the $100-200mm to fix the options concerns for everyone, or at most, the breakup fee for this deal with Microsoft. Skype _probably_ could find another buyer, even without the Microsoft deal.

Maybe Microsoft overpaid by 2x their nearest competitor. So, a16z only made $200-400mm on this vs. the best alternative (and really, I think it's less than 2x).

The reputation of a top multi-stage fund is worth more than $400mm for sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a great chance for Google to take over the market with an open source VOIP alternative. Microsoft has already started driving Skype into the ground, and if Google can integrate their new service well with Android, they would have a good shot at establishing themselves.

<comment> muuh-gnu I have been using Google's Voice&Video chat exclusively since the day Microsoft announced the Skype purchase. Compared to skype, the experience is horrible. The audio and video quality is sensibly worse, the number of random disconnections and video freezes is pretty high. After a few minutes there is a noticeable lag in the voice connection, which gets higher with time. The general audio quality is worse then I remember having with "Speak Freely" back in the 90s, while I used a dial up modem. The Firefox plugin randomly refuses to work, and returns also random numeric error codes. Skype had, in my experience, none of these issues. Everything "just worked". Google is far, far away from that. All in all, it is so bad that it should be embarassing for Google to have it associated with its name.

The only thing going for Google is that it is, after Skype, the only cross- platform voice&video offering existing on the market.

<comment><USER11> Huh. I switched to Google Video for speaking with my parents on the other side of the world, because Skype video just plain stopped working for some weird reason. It's slightly better both in terms of sound and video, and so far I've experienced less stuttering and freezes.

<comment><USER12> Skype is a P2P based application so performance can vary considerably based on your location and network topology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This poison company will simply be another footnote in history. Mainly because of this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2689512>

Microsoft should have stayed far, far away.

<comment><USER14> WebRTC is a better reason to be ringing the Skype-is-now-a-commodity bell.

<comment><USER15> Technology is only one part of a solution. And in this case arguably a small one. The reason people use Skype is because all other people are on there. It's also synonymous with voice and video calling. Owning a "position" is an other important value.

Facebook seems like the only company that can bring a real network of users to something like this. Google has GMail, but they haven't been able to translate it into any type of social experience at scale.

<comment><USER13> Interestingly, Facebook is another player that also uses XMPP for messaging. If they really wanted to get into the VOIP game it would be relatively trivial for Facebook to roll a client, implement federation and allow the network effect to run wild.

<comment><USER15> Agree Facebook is the player that could be a serious competitor to Skype.

But their strategy would indicate that they wouldn't implement federation. They would create their own closed system. Facebook is all about growing the value of their social graph, but with very limited interconnection or federation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I take back my earlier thoughts about the deal -- Skype sounds like a perfect match for Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER16> Boycott Skype. If this is how they treat their employees, how do you think they will treat customers?

</comment><comment><USER17> I am a little bit surprised Microsoft seems OK with this. I believe they still can take a stand and tell Skype management they are not going to get away with this.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wonder how much more bad publiciy it will take to torpedo the deal, or for MS to hit the pe guys up for a bit bigger holdback.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder when/if FaceTime will support video conference calling.

<comment><USER20> Also, "Upon the launch of the iPhone 4, Jobs promised that Apple would work in due course with standards bodies to make the FaceTime protocol an open standard." (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facetime>)

I wonder when (or if) it will happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if this is a side-effect of (relatively) high engineering salaries. Financiers say 'ok, fine we can take paying $100k a year because we can write out your options at will.'. It may be a wider symptom of VC starting to attract more cut-throat PE firms.

<comment><AUTHOR> The valuation is $8bn. Worrying about $100K is pointless. Stealing equity should be criminal.</comment></comment>


Jobster: $55M investment was sold for almost nothing - <AUTHOR> http://www.techflash.com/mobile/seattle/2010/10/recruitingcom-finds-a-buyer.html

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) Here's Jobster's traffic for the last couple of years: <http://www.quantcast.com/jobster.com>

2) Remember GoJobby.com -- Alaskan' startup that Jobster bought while on $55M shopping spree? GoJobby.com redirects to jobing.com now.</comment>


Ask HN: What does "consulting" mean in the software world? - <AUTHOR> I was reading this discussion (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14629533) and some of you were discussing the merits of consulting. I have a vague idea what this means for business, but realized that this is unlikely to be the same for software. Hence the question, what does it mean if you say you are consulting in the software world? <comment><USER2> In some industries and areas of the US 'consulting' can mean temporary employment of various kinds.

In other, IT consultants might be employees of a large firm like IBM who show businesses how to modernize their IT. This would typically be architectural work, very similar in nature to normal business consulting.

There is a middle grey area where a business outsources development or IT work to a specialist company.

Here in the UK, we tend to say contracting instead of consulting in the first context.</comment>


Anonymous Hackers Announce Operation India | Press Release - <AUTHOR> http://www.thehackernews.com/2011/06/anonymous-hackers-announce-operation.html

<comment><USER2> There's also operation turkey:

[http://anonnews.org/?p=press&a=item&i=1005](http://anonnews.org/?p=press&a=item&i=1005)</comment>


Apple Confirms New Warning Affecting Almost All iPhone Users - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2020/04/25/apple-iphone-exploit-vulnerability-ios-13-mail-problem-iphone-11-pro-max-u-iphone-xs-max-xr-update/#2582355a1d36 <comment><USER2> [http://archive.is/QXeGs](http://archive.is/QXeGs)</comment>