Ask HN: Good way to recognize and reward team members? - <AUTHOR>

I am a product manager in a startup and we are about to release our MVP.  Our team has worked hard and I want to recognize some individuals that worked hard to get it out on schedule.  For obvious reasons I need to keep it simple & cheap but also want to make it something that our guys would take pride in receiving.  The only thing that comes to mind are stickers like those seen on helmets that college football teams give to players that made big contributions.  I know Ohio State & Florida State are two examples the come to mind.  I would love any suggestions you all have.<p>Edit:  Would love to give raises and days off but given 1) we are in a startup and 2) I am their peer not their boss, neither of those are options at the moment.  Also, I should have added this to my original question, I have tried to be steadfast with my verbal encouragement & praise as we have been picking up momentum.  Therefore I was looking for anything that would be meaningful in addition to that. <comment><USER2> Honestly, I've found just acknowledging the hard work and effort they've put in, while in an all team context, is more rewarding than a trinket.

The best reward you can give is your respect and appreciation, especially if given publicly, signaling that you value that person. You'll be a stronger team if you can show true appreciation for one another.

(PS: Take the team out for beer too, obviously :) )

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. As a few individuals have really make some big impacts I have been sure to thank them personally for working hard and helping us hit our date. I intend to thank the team publicly as well once we are live but I guess I was looking if there would be something in addition to verbal praising that would be meaningful.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, by publicly I meant in front of the rest of the team, not like in a blog post (which could be nice as well). Really you want to make them feel like a highly valued member of the team.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I really appreciate field trips from my boss. Occasionally, he'll buy us lunch or take us to a ball game or to the premiere of a movie or something.

From a more permanent perspective, you can buy little statues/medals online for pretty cheap that can be customized for the product. As a runner, I really love medals, even if in the grand scheme of things they don't matter that much. It's nice to be able to say "See that? I got that because I did a good job." You don't even have to do medals. Maybe custom bobble heads, custom baseball cards (or any other kind of card).

Lots of options. But for the most part, I really just enjoy knowing that someone out there really appreciates my hard work. A nice speech and a bottle of champagne goes a long way, too.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd say it really depends on your company culture, but as a young developer I do enjoy free little things: company swag (hoodie, jacket...), free reward lunch and the like. It's cheap for you and yet feels way more rewarding than a sticker that is exactly what you get as a kid! (Cf the 20 other comments). You can also probably get approval from the hierarchy more easily for stuff like hardware upgrade. You know this guy asked a couple time for this 30" iDisplay but is still stuck with his 22" ViewSonic, well, maybe it's time to increase his productivity and make him feel special, boom one stone two birds!

</comment><comment><USER5> Good thing you asked here first, stickers would be an insult to the hard work they have put in. Public recognition and a week off is whats called for. Read PeopleWare if you haven't yet.

</comment><comment><USER6> \-- Make Stickers Regular --

Helmet type stickers would feel like a way to vey much marginalize any significant contribution. You might want to make stickers something regular, ie for any new feature. Sales guys often do stickers for each deal or every deal that they win against a competitor.

\-- Do an extra celebration --

Grab $100 from the budget and d o an extra team outing that they'll enjoy. Get a mini keg for the office, kick back and relax for the world cup one day.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't mean to be coy and snide, but I bet they'd appreciate a raise if you think they are worth it. Kind of goes up against, 'Need to keep it cheap'. If money isn't an option, then as was mentioned, some honest, sincere and public acknowledgement of their work is a great way to thank them.

<comment><USER8> I would find it hard not to be personally offended at being handed a sticker. If you're going to give a gift, make it booze. You know, adult stuff. Not kindergarten stuff.

Sincere public ack > sticker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Have a team meeting. Tell everyone what they did, how their efforts and contributions helped deliver the MVP, and give them a spot bonus. The spot bonus doesn't have to be large, I would say 100 to 500 dollars. The recognition and the bonus will boost their morale and make them happier employees.

<comment><USER10> For that size of bonus, it's nice to work out the net amount after tax, and hand the employee cash. e.g. if you want to give a 500USD spot bonus, then gross it up to 800 or whatever pre-tax, and hand them 500USD cash in an envelope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some good suggestions here (low/no cost): [http://hr.buffalo.edu/files/phatfile/No_and_Low_Cost_Ways.pd...](http://hr.buffalo.edu/files/phatfile/No_and_Low_Cost_Ways.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER12> places I've worked either do one off "bonuses" or trips or whatever.

Please don't give adults gold stars for effort.

</comment><comment><USER13> I suppose if you have no cash handy you could always give them equity grants.

</comment><comment><USER14> ice cream party and booze</comment>


Show HN: DNS Rebind Toolkit - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/brannondorsey/dns-rebind-toolkit <comment><USER2> Cool project, and excellent documentation. This is a truly rare combination in the security community! Nice work.</comment>


List of WIFI Adapters for Xbox One - <AUTHOR> http://www.bestusbwifiadapters.com/xboxone.html <comment><USER2> Huh? What's wrong with the Wifi adapter that comes built in?</comment>


Apple May Brick Jailbroken iPhones - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/handheld/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226500146

<comment><USER2> This headline is about as well supported by the article as saying "Apple may buy every jailbroken iPhone owner a steak dinner".</comment>


LLVM Programmer's Manual - <AUTHOR> http://llvm.org/docs/ProgrammersManual.html <comment><USER2> I was just looking into LLVM the other day as I was researching the possibilities of cross-compiling Rust to m68k on my Mac and now I simply can't stop reading up on LLVM!

Support for Motorola 68000 has never been finished but this guy's abandoned fork offers an interesting glimpse into how one might start going about it though:

[https://github.com/kwaters/llvm-m68k/commits/m68k](https://github.com/kwaters/llvm-m68k/commits/m68k)

A bit over my head for now but I'm using this as a fun occasion to get back into "proper" computer science. Dabbling is my favourite learning mode so consulting the LLVM Programmer's Manual while hacking on a more isolated and really simple task is something I'm very much looking forward to at this point.

Still, if there is anybody with more knowledge who could chip in a bit on supporting m68k or LLVM in general I'd be super curious to read about it :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I believe that the heavy use of iterators in LLVM was a mistake. The ownership mechanics has never not been a source of extreme confusion and annoying bugs. But, it's still a great backend.

<comment><USER4> Can you elaborate? Especially I don't really see the relation between "iterators" and "ownership".

<comment><USER5> If you insert something in vector, then all iterators will became invalid.

<comment><USER4> Sure, but iterators have nothing to do with "ownership", so your point isn't clear...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Notably, exceptions are not used. Instead errors are handled with assertions and error objects.

<comment><AUTHOR> I feel like people are realizing that exceptions were a bad idea. They are kind of like gotos.

<comment><USER7> Yeah finally. The problem with exceptions is that you lose context about where the error occurred, and you really need to know that to handle the error properly. That's why most exception handlers just print the error.

I think the only situation where exceptions help is in constructors, but there are better solutions to that problem, like explicit object construction methods that can return an error.

I think Go's approach to error handling is the best - explicit and in context. Rust's `Result` looks quite nice though I haven' tried it yet.

<comment><USER8> I don't agree neither :). Exceptions don't necessarily lost context. At least in Python. In my previous job, whenever a python exception raise, the code will catch it, with values of each variable, formatted in a beautiful html, and send as an email. You can never overestimate how much time it has saved us to debug. Go's approach to error handling remind me of the old COM days, while you handle error after each function call. I'm glad it's no longer popular.

<comment><USER9> Agree! I tried to move a program from Python to Go. Completely gave up on Go after comparing two language's implementation on exception. Python is just so much easier, cleaner.

Go's implementation on JSON parsing is also.....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder how hard it is for a coder with not a lot of knowledge about parsers and LR/LL stuff to quickly define a language and translate it in LLIR.

That could be a fun thing to have a language competition that way, to see which language "feels" good: easy to read, expressive, etc.

<comment><USER11> Assuming that you are somewhat familiar with assembly programming and know how to produce a syntax tree, getting it to output compilable LLVM IR should take you at most a couple of days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Do LLVM have any support for coroutines?

If I wanted to implement a language with Lua-style coroutines, could I target LLVM?

<comment><USER13> Unfortunately, I don't think it does currently. I think you'd have to reimplement them yourself on top of LLVM... That might change though, this co- routine proposal just came up on the mailing list: [https://github.com/GorNishanov/llvm/blob/coro- rfc/docs/Corou...](https://github.com/GorNishanov/llvm/blob/coro- rfc/docs/Coroutines.rst)</comment></comment>


What's next Google? Dropping SMTP support? - <AUTHOR> http://eschnou.com/entry/whats-next-google--dropping-smtp-support--62-24930.html <comment><USER2> Everybody knows that SMTP is old, inefficient (hey, it's nearly plain-text!), insecure, diversified (so many different servers to choose from!) and generally just bad.

Clearly a closed web interface that only runs in Chrome would be much better for everyone! Then people could always be sure with whom they communicate, nobody could hack or social-engineer their way into other accounts, and everyone would have to follow The Rules or they'll have their account closed for good.

<comment><USER3> SMTP is worse than plain text. It's plain text and base64 (which increases file sizes by ~30%). It's a horrid protocol, but sadly it's what we're currently stuck with.

But this is all moot as the article is about XMPP, WebDav and RSS. The SMTP headline is nothing more than clickbait.

<comment><USER4> People keep banging on about "plain text, plain text" what is wrong with plain text? And what is wrong with SMTP?

Also email attachments can be binary encoded, base64 is just one option.

People are free to say that SMTP is "bad" or "broken" but they have to say exactly why that is the case. And "there are multiple different implementations" is a pretty poor justification, as a SMTP replacement would likely have the same issue (or worse).

<comment><USER5> Multiple implementations are a strength. In fact, you won't see a good replacement for SMTP without multiple independent implementations.

(What will it look like? I would guess it will look like a two-part service, with one protocol for servers to talk to each other and another for clients to talk to servers. Servers will send tiny notifications to other servers that mail is available for their subscribers; then the receiving servers will retrieve the mail and cache it or store it for clients. This changes the spam problem fundamentally by requiring some persistence on the part of the sending server.)

<comment><USER3> I would like to see the replacement of SMTP be designed along with a redesign of e-mails themselves as well.

I'd like to see the HTML that is supported in e-mails standardised, so there's no more issues about which clients will render what. I'd like to see the failure notices standardised, so that invalid e-mail addresses produce a standard "404-like" response, and so on.

The problem isn't so much that we have multiple implementations (I agree that can potentially be a strength). The problem is that there's very little that's consistent across the platforms.

<comment><USER6> _I'd like to see the HTML that is supported in e-mails standardised_

Count me out. It wasn't even two weeks ago that we had the story here about how The Onion was hacked because somebody clicked on an obfuscated HTML URL in email.

<comment><USER3> While we're at it, let's all abandon HTML5 and have every browser doing their own thing, because people occasional fall for fake anti-virus ads. </sarcasm>

We can't stop social engineering like that - it's completely unavoidable. Which is why banks and payment providers regularly tell people not to follow links asking for bank details (etc). Yeah it sucks that The Onion got hacked that way, but your argument is doesn't fix that. Your argument is nothing more than cutting of your nose to spite your face (ie advocating an inconsistent platform for legitimate e-mails despite anchor tags working on every client already).

At least if e-mail was completely redesigned, then we could have banks provide a unique cert that hangs in the e-mail header and can support the authenticity claim of the sender (I'm sure there's ways around that idea I've just presented - but that was just off the top of my head. Any such design would obviously need to be thoroughly thought out)

<comment><USER7> I think he's saying we should instead have text-only e-mail, because that's both standard and has a tiny attack surface.

<comment><USER3> That doesn't fix anything either. Many clients make URLs clickable (even with text-only emails) and even if those clients didn't do that, someone will just copy and paste a URL into the address bar without looking. Given that the average user isn't an expert on domain names, it's not actually that hard to trick them into thinking that face.book.com isn't the same as facebook.com (and even those that are savvy enough to know the difference might misread the link and get fooled occasionally).

So like I said before, it's impossible to prevent social engineering.

<comment><USER7> It's impossible to prevent all cases of social engineering with a purely technical solution, this is true. But that doesn't mean that we should disregard how much easier phishing attacks are with the advent of HTML mail. The goal here is not so much to stop social engineering dead in its tracks as to prevent some of the low-effort attacks that do happen.

<comment><USER3> But again, I refer you to my HTML5 example. Should we dumb down what websites are capable of rendering to prevent social engineering via the web?

What you're proposing is making things harder to work in the hope that human intelligence will prevail. But the problem is that these cases are where human intelligence has failed, so making things harder is just counter productive. And this is why you can't prevent social engineering from happening and why crippling technology and creating a worse user experience just to try catch a few fringe cases is just a backwards approach to handling the issue.

Instead what we need is methods in place to verify the authenticity of senders and better education to users so that don't make silly mistakes like installing random "virus scanners" from web ads or clicking strange URLs in e-mails (and the URLs themselves could be standardised. eg no sub-domains become clickable, to prevent people falling for face.book.com).

<comment><USER6> _But again, I refer you to my HTML5 example. Should we dumb down what websites are capable of rendering to prevent social engineering via the web?_

Strawman; we're talking about email, where the combination of header forging and HTML mis-labeling are what's really dangerous, not web pages.

<comment><USER3> No, we're talking about social engineering and the principle is the same regardless of whether it's e-mail or websites. You take a page -be that of an e-mail or website- make it look legitimate, and get people to follow dodgy links or download dodgy programs. You see the same thing with Facebook malware as well (which spreads by social engineering). So maybe we should close Facebook apps down.....actually, I'd be in favour of that last point hehehe.

Claiming this is a straw man argument only demonstrates how unwilling you are to view this from another's perspective. At least I've listened to your arguments and come up with potential workarounds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Youth geeks are just discovering that corporations are all alike.

Nothing that the older timers don't already know since the mainframe days.

Google is just arriving to the point where the shareholders have more to say than whatever a few geeks scattered around the world might think.

<comment><USER9> Well put, which is why I have reverted to using Google solely for search.

<comment><USER10> Which smartphone do you use?

<comment><USER9> I use a dumb phone. I don't have a personal need for anything more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 1\. Google creates a service and gives it away for free.

2\. Most alternative providers of the service die. The only ones that still provide the service must also give it away for free and leverage the service in some other way.

3\. Google kills service.

Someone might try to fill the void, but why would they? Google might just provide the service again for free.

I wonder how much of the economy has been lost by giving away services for free. There's something wrong with the model where you can give something away for free so you can learn more about them to serve ads.

I remember a time when a certain government would buy a factory in another country, decrease prices to destroy all of the local competition and then lay off all of the factory workers and shut the factory down.

Interesting times for companies like Google.

<comment><USER12> _There's something wrong with the model where you can give something away for free so you can learn more about them to serve ads_

There's nothing wrong with the model while Google or another corp do it for their own money (unlike gov.).

People are freely and willingly agree to see the ads in exchange to using free services. If you think they all wrong, that's just your personal opinion.

<comment> loup-vaillant > _If you think [X], that's just your personal opinion._

 _< meta>_ You're saying "I don't trust your opinion" without any justification beyond asserting that personal opinions have low status. If you suspect Markus can't back his claims up, then ask him to. Also remember that if you hold a contrary opinion, then one of you two (possibly both) is necessarily wrong as a simple matter of fact. _< /meta>_

When Markus said "there's something wrong with X", I guess he's actually saying "X does harm". In the case of Gmail, I'm inclined to believe that it _does_ harm: better brain hacking (ads) through breaches of privacy —Google is effectively reading your mail. Also the "destroying the economy" effect may be quite real, though I think it's probably limited to short term damages.

> _People are freely and willingly agree to […]._

You're assuming people are rational. They're not. People freely and willingly agree to bamboozle themselves all the time, sometimes creating a network effect that will make it easier for _more_ people to bamboozle themselves. Some people gamble too much and owe money to a Mafioso. Others join the Scientology. Or start doing drugs in a moment of weakness. Or use proprietary software, and eventually lose data. Etc, etc.

About the specific case of "cloud" centralized services (web mail, video streaming, blogs, social networks…), the main harm is a progressive loss of privacy, and increased dependence. I think it all stemmed from the thought that people are consumers, not creators. Technically this got translated by "people hardly need to upload". Hence the 'A' in "ADSL". Symmetry was sacrificed at the altar of download rate. Since then, any hope to have a decent server at home was basically crushed. Some providers even prevent you to host a server, or to send e-mail (they typically force you to go through their crappy, rate-limited relays).

Anyway, people did create. They wrote. They made videos. They shared their life with friends. And they continued to send e-mail. Well, the only practical solution to do all that was to use convenient centralized services. No way any given person would have enough bandwidth to host one's popular video. So it all goes to YouTube, creating a serious imbalance in the data transfer rates that makes some network operators uneasy.

Oh, there's an exception: Bit-torrent. It is an incredibly convenient _and_ scalable way to share big files on the internet. And it's quite popular. Alas, because of asymmetric bandwidth, it doesn't work nearly as well as it should. Which is basically why we used MegaUpload —until "Big IP" shut it down. With symmetric bandwidth, it would have had no use, and Big IP couldn't have annoyed so many people.

We _could_ have had symmetric bandwidth, convenient servers at home and all the privacy and independence that they can give us. However the market, people's preference for short term convenience, and network effects conspired against it. And the worse is, it works even if each individual choice _is_ rational. Take the web mails: it could be rational _for you_ to use it, but then, you participate in a network effect that get people to only accept email from the big players. This has already started: mails sent from home are often dismissed as spam right away. Most such mail _is_ spam, but the (possibly rational) rejection is hurting the legitimate users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm pretty disappointed by the recent dropping of standards that Google has been doing.

I'm quite a sceptical person and I've never been a fan of any big corp, but Google has been the one that I've trusted my data in the most and that I've been happiest with.

I still trust them with some of my data, but I'm rapidly losing faith in them and in fact I'm starting to think that Microsoft are a more "open" company... and I'd consider myself a one-time Microsoft hater, but I think they've turned things around.

The only reason I'm still with them for email/calendars is that they're just so very very good. But they're privacy policies for GDrive scare me, so I don't use that.

Frankly though, I'm starting to think that my data and services would be better off with Microsoft now...

<comment><USER14> >I'm starting to think that Microsoft are a more "open" company...

I am disappointed too. But why is Microsoft more open? Does Microsoft have an open messaging protocol that I don't know of? Or an open source operating system? Or an open source browser? The last I checked, they were forcing manufacturers to ship computers with locked down bootloaders so you can't install your own operating system.

>But they're privacy policies for GDrive scare me, so I don't use that.

Can you clarify exactly what point in the privacy policy you are talking about?

<comment><USER15> Locked down boot loaders? The spec says you must be able to change it. And you can. Same with Chromebooks (dev switches) and Macs (rEFIt or boot camp). This is about security of the boot process for those who desire it. TPM is a feature just like Chrome's default support for DRM now. Necessary evils or useful security, all depends on who is in control. What makes service lockdown worse is you're not in control if you let someone else run it. Google should have at least given a replacement protocol. Make XMPP better: push the web forward!

<comment><USER16> Actually in order to get a "Made for Windows RT" sticker on an ARM device, OEMs must enable "Secure Boot" and disallow changes. [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/microsoft-to-lock- out-...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/microsoft-to-lock-out-other- operating-systems-from-windows-8-arm-pcs-and-devices/10132)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Google never had SMTP support. They run services that look like and advertise themselves as SMTP but violate the parts of the relevant RFPs that they don't find convenient: <http://lee-phillips.org/gmailRewriting/>

<comment><USER18> They are even worse when it comes to IMAP. So if you have a sizable gmail account it is virtually impossible to switch to another client because gmail's labels doesn't at all match how IMAP folders behave. But it is hard to complain about a free service and it's quite possible that they couldn't have implemented all gmails features the way they did if they stuck to the IMAP standard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Don't forget, they tried "open" with Google Wave, which was a total flop. Developers did not buy into it.

You can't expect to have it both ways, especially since Apple has proven that a closed infrastructure (walled garden) works.

<comment><USER20> They've tried "closed" with Google+, which is also a total flop.

<comment><USER21> Yes, but they haven't realized that yet!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Embrace, extend, extinguish.

</comment><comment><USER23> Well it's quite clear that for Google, Google+ is where all the communication should be going on and Gmail is the legacy.

</comment><comment><USER24> Google is the new Microsoft. Nothing new. Move on.

<comment><USER10> Who is the new Google then?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I have been trying to move away from Google services for a long time, unfortunately it is very tightly integrated in my life (Gmail, Android etc.) and I am both lazy and loath to spend money. Google is fine for now but I won't hesitate to jump ship if I find myself looking at better options.

<comment><USER26> You don't have to spend very _much_ money. I pay Fastmail $40 a year for 10GB ad-free IMAP+webmail (+2GB file storage that I never use, but I guess that's nice too), I find that very reasonable. It works great with K9-mail on Android (and any IMAP mail client I should think).

I have OwnCloud on my home server with a free SSL cert from StartSSL (you need a domain though if you want to use StartSSL, but that shouldn't cost you much). This gives me contacts and a calendar, which I sync to my Android phone (I also sync the owncloud calendar to my Emacs orgmode files over caldav, giving me two-way sync between Emacs and Android; it's also possible to sync carddav contacts into Emacs, but I haven't tried that yet).

OwnCloud also has a code editor with syntax highlighting, but it's no Google Docs killer yet (but then, I prefer writing TeX with Emacs anyway).

Once it's up and running, it's just as featureful as the Gmail+Google Contacts+Google Calendar combo. If you have android, you do need a Google account for downloading from the Play store, but 1) you can use a throwaway account for that 2) there's also f-droid and other alternative stores.

I switched to Gnus+Gwene for RSS feeds, but I wouldn't recommend that unless you really like Emacs. In any case, Google Reader is dead and new alternatives are showing up everywhere.

I use Firefox sync instead of Chromium. Apparantly owncloud can work as an FF sync server, but I haven't tried that yet.

DuckDuckGo fills most of my search needs better than Google ever did, though I do use its !scholar and !i keywords which redirect me back to Google's Scholar, Image searches.

It is possible to wean yourself off Google, and even third-party control of your data in general, but it takes a bit of effort. I find it rewarding though :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Can someone confirm Google is killing XMPP and its server-to-server federation?

The Verge says Hangouts is not using XMPP but does it mean that XMPP (Google Talk) is definitely going away?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, the quote from The Verge is the following: "Singhal says Google had to make the difficult decision to drop the very 'open' XMPP standard that it helped pioneer."

<comment><USER27> That's for the new Hangouts service. If you can keep using XMPP with your Gmail account, then it's not that terrible. I don't know if it's a forced replacement.

We may need to wait for Google's announcement.

<comment><USER28> "Not federated support, but supports interop with XMPP clients. Meaning you can continue to use XMPP clients to log in to Google Talk and those messages will interop with folks on Hangouts."

[https://plus.google.com/107968525907303243288/posts/HFe3W7A9...](https://plus.google.com/107968525907303243288/posts/HFe3W7A9Dor)

So Google Talk will continue to live on (which allows them to implement some sort of server side functionality which converts a Gtalk message to a Hangout message when both members have activated Hangouts), it's just not actively being worked on.

So really the only effective change is the Chrome extension and Android apps have been replaced so you have to use a 3rd party Jabber client if you do want to use GTalk on those platforms.

<comment><USER29> Being forced to use a third party client will hopefully improve the quality of the third party clients. I hate how the current gtalk android app forces you to see/use all Google accounts configured on your phone and there is no way to reliably turn off never logging into one (say, an account you are trying to deprecate). Unfortunately, every other XMPP client for android has some serious deficiency (often a terrible UI).

<comment><USER27> I use Xabber and I'm very happy with it:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.xabber.and...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.xabber.android)

But if I can't talk with my contacts using a Gmail account, then is not that useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Yes, something like this:

"Our users do not feel the need for SMTP so much as to make it profitable, we are pursuing other options, hence our SMTP servers will be closed down in 3 months' time. You can continue communicating using Google+ or Gmail."

Honestly, they look very much like losing some real-world perspective. I mean real as in 'the table holding my keyboard'.

<comment><USER12> If that was "Our users do not feel the need for Gmail so much as to make it profitable, we are pursuing other options, hence our GMail servers will be closed down in 3 months' time. You can continue communicating using Google+." I'd say yeah, they are losing some real-world perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm using Google apps for my business account and i am really annoyed that they are still not able to provide a sync tool (or a direct exchange access) for Outlook 2013. I know I could use SMTP or IMAP, but I also want to sync calendar and contacts (that is, in fact, the reason I upgraded to the pro version of apps in the first place).

Don't get me wrong, it is completely ok for Google to disable free stuff as they want. I would, however, prefer that they support their paying customers better. Or, at least, offer an option to got premium and pay for the stuff we would like to use.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is a good summary of a sad trend at Google. They fall from high, so we feel it unusually strongly. I still hope these are defensive moves as Google reacts to perceived threats from Facebook and others. I still hope they will eventually open up Google+ for interoperability.

It is good that people keep the pressure on Google regarding openness, it gives weight to the voice of the many employees there who want to do the right thing.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm not seeing in the link about them dropping XMPP support, not in the source link the author links to. I see them not building XMPP support into hangouts, but its not the same thing, hangouts are not an IM thing, they are a web conferencing thing.

</comment><comment><USER34> Okay, I'm slightly confused.Can someone please confirm if the following still works:

I'm logged into G+

I'm logged into GTalk with a Jabber client.

Someone messages me using the google web interface.

I get the message in my Jabber client.

<comment><USER35> In my experience, you get the message in both the Jabber client and Hangout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I am not 100% certain I understand the difference between XMPP support and XMPP federation support. I assume though if they are dropping the support to route between chat providers than my websites' Zopim chat widget that I use for live support will no longer be able to talk with my Google Talk and thus I will no longer be able to text chat with customers on my websites through my Android-based smart phone. If so, that's a real bummer.

</comment><comment><USER37> Don't give them ideas!

</comment><comment><USER38> No SMS support, no XMPP support. The new "Google Hangouts" messenger will be the next Google+/Buzz.

</comment><comment><USER39> They are trying to grab more of the market by making Apple/Microsoft suffer (mostly Microsoft), welcome to the world of business. Good for them.

</comment><comment><USER40> Does this mean I'll need to leave pidgin/finch?

</comment><comment><USER41> _Grabs popcorn_

I'm seriously just waiting for the anti-trust cases to roll in. Isn't this just like the 90's with Microsoft?

Same shit, different names.

</comment><comment><USER42> This is the slippery slope fallacy. Don't fall into actually arguing for or against it. The NRA does the same thing when it claims all gun rules lead to a gun ban.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope>

</comment><comment><USER43> !!!!! Don't give them ideas !!!!!

</comment><comment><USER44> Wait, so Google is dropping XMPP support because Outlook.com is supporting it to allow Gtalk users to chat on Outlook.com, so in order to perpetuate the GMail/GTalk lock-in by caging the Gtalk chat users to GMail, they're dropping standards support and killing access to all XMPP clients in existence including non-Microsoft ones? And they announce this right when Microsoft spent all the time and effort to allow Outlook.com users to chat with Gtalk friends and is rolling out that feature? Am I right? Someone tell me I am wrong!

That sounds unbelievable, coming from the supposedly open company even though it's coming on the heels of them trying lock out millions of Windows Phone users from Youtube by sending a C&D takedown on the app.

I guess open standards don't work when you're the guy trying to lock in users. If Google had a lock-in on Office products, looks like they will ditch "open data" and "open standards" in a heartbeat. They should change their policy to "open when it's convenient for us to flog it for PR purposes, else closed, oh and please store all your office documents on our cloud, we make it really convenient.".

This is not Open vs. Closed anymore, this is Corporations vs. Individuals, except for Mozilla which is becoming less powerful because Google uses its ad dollars to bundle Chrome with Flash, Acrobat and Java updates by default thereby reducing Firefox's share and has the nice side effect of reducing Google's payments to Mozilla for searches.

And Web DRM? Of course it's coming because IE, Chrome and Safari are going to be supporting it fully with 80% marketshare and people will blame Firefox if Netflix doesn't work in it and recommend you switch to Chrome to see movies! iOS, Android and Windows Phone, BBOS will add support for 100% tablet and phone support for the DRM. Firefox and Opera are powerless to stop it. We have already seen this play out with th h.264 HTML5 video support in Chrome fiasco when Google said it would drop H.264 from Chrome but did not and Mozilla was left holding the short end of the stick and had to recently had to eat crow and add support for H264. The web is owned by the corporates, not individuals anymore, there was some hope when Firefox was at 40%, not anymore. And we all willingly gave them the power by believing in "open" and "do no evil" and switching in droves.

I can picture Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon, Netflix etc executives sitting at a bar and giving toast to each other and laughing while we whine and debate fruitlessly with vitriol on these forums. All their stock valuations are up recently!

<comment><USER45> So, to be clear, Google is supposed to make video chat with groups of people, recording to YouTube, desktop sharing, and Google Docs live editing work with XMPP? Or else they're evil?

<comment><USER46> I don't care too much about video chat, YouTube, etc, etc… Just about the plain old XMPP/Jabber user-to-user that was the base for Google Talk and that has been around for many years. The ability to talk with users from different providers.

That is being open. Without XMPP federation, we're effectively locked into Google. And it's just a matter of time that they drop XMPP altogether and we have to use their own protocol for chatting.

<comment><USER47> Considering that they only enabled federation again a little while ago it's not like that's something new.

<comment><USER48> They enabled federation months after Google Talk came out actually.

<comment><USER47> And then they disabled it a good while ago except for a few servers that they had whitelisted, thus my "again".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Hyperbole aside (they won't drop SMTP) that is a very narrow and unfair view on the situation, they at least tried for years to make it work with these standards and failed.

They were obviously the last ones doing so, and this new approach is mainly about modernising their infrastructure.

Is there anyone else of any consequence out there who is building these sorts of messaging apps on top of XMPP?

Google was the last one standing, and it just didn't work out.

And why cherry pick "standards"? how about web standard? Chromium is a very big commitment to them.

Edit: I should be more specific as I meant a federated implementation of XMPP.

<comment><USER50> Lync 2013 fully supports XMPP federation. Cisco's IM offerings support XMPP federation. IBM's Sametime supports XMPP federation.

Numerous organizations have deployments of these and other, smaller XMPP IM servers.

As for cherry picking standards, isn't that exactly what you're doing with your statement on Chromium and web standards?

<comment><USER12> Lync looks really nice with that

 _edit:_ XMPP federation feature is not available in Ofice365 Lync options, that's sad

<comment><USER50> To be fair, while the Office suite itself is pretty decent these days, Office 365 is terrible. Microsoft is still very much a software company and not a services company.

<comment><USER12> If you are talking about Office web-apps, maybe. But what is wrong with their hosted Exchange and SharePoint?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Stop relying on Google for everything. Stop building things on Google. No company should have such a big impact on your life and society as a whole.

Several months ago I moved everything to the Microsoft ecosystem. In some ways its trading one taskmaster for another, but if we don't exercise our freedom of choice in the marketplace we soon won't have a choice.

<comment><USER52> > No company should have such a big impact on your life

> Several months ago I moved everything to the Microsoft ecosystem.

So now Microsoft has such a big impact on your life?

Wouldn't it make more sense to spread things out over a variety of services?

<comment><USER51> _Wouldn't it make more sense to spread things out over a variety of services?_

For reasons of workflow efficiency, no.

<comment><USER52> You're right, but that conflicts with "No company should have such a big impact on your life."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> DanI-S Just because something is Open doesn't mean it is worth supporting when most people don't care about or use it anymore.

Web Search Interest for RSS; down 78% from its peak in 2006:

<http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=RSS>

Web Search Interest for XMPP; down 33% from its peak in 2010:

<http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=XMPP>

As Bob Dylan once said: _the times, they are a-changin'_.

<comment><USER53> And with SMTP down 80% from its top in 2004 or imap down 58%, the question of the op should seem perfectly legitimate to you.

<comment> DanI-S Clearly not, since SMTP and IMAP are still in far greater use than RSS and XMPP ever were. But do you think that question will never be legitimate? Will we still be using SMTP in 2113?

Google is planning to be around for a long time. What percentage of the resources of _your_ organization do you devote to supporting old technologies in limited use?

<comment><USER53> Of course, IMAP and SMTP might be replaced by better protocols in the future (as POP3 was). However, my point was that the fact that the search trend for a protocol is downhill does not mean it is no longer used and should be scrapped. I argue that XMPP is in wider use than it has ever been. And that RSS has not been replaced by anything yet. Hence stopping their support in favour of a locked proprietary platform is bad and explaining this move by google trends is absurd.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Yahoo Gets Closer to Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/yahoo-gets-closer-to-twitter

<comment><USER2> Now that IS interesting.

What if Microsoft buy Yahoo?</comment>


Did something change in the Hacker News RSS feed? - <AUTHOR> Re: https://news.ycombinator.com/rss<p>The HN RSS feed is no longer working for me in my preferred reader. Also in Chrome, when you now view the feed, Chrome only shows the first 8 entries, and not the full 30 but Firefox still shows them all correctly, so something has changed. <comment><USER2> This also broke for me a few days ago. I sent an email to the contact address.

</comment><comment><USER3> Contacting the mods using the |contact| link at the bottom of the page is probably the best way to get an informed answer or letting them know of a bug.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point - didn't think of that!</comment></comment>


Chrome removed shortcut that makes "backspace" return to the previous page - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/google-chrome-backspace-fix-rollout-2016-7 <comment><USER2> Happy to see this go. When using online tools this "feature" ruined more hours than I want to count. Love shortcuts but this one was a problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> i have never understood why browsers are so slow to do things like that. firefox still has this bug open: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52821](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52821)

</comment><comment><USER4> TL/DR - Backspace no longer takes you to the prior page in your browsing history, the way hitting the back button does. Now it is:

Windows: Alt + Left arrow

Mac: Delete or ⌘ + [ or ⌘ + Left arrow</comment>


Its Products Make You Feel Good, but Apple Isn't Your Friend - <AUTHOR> https://www.macobserver.com/columns-opinions/editorial/apple-isnt-your-friend/ <comment><AUTHOR> FTA:

> _[Y]ears ago the idea was that China's participation in the global economy > would let Western democracy and values slowly trickle over. Instead the > opposite has happened. Corporations are letting Chinese authoritarianism > spread to the West._</comment>


ERCO Ercoupe - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ERCO_Ercoupe <comment><USER2> There was an Ercopue based at my local airfield for many years. It was the survivor of three bought postwar by the flying club, but they proved unsuitable for pilot training; not only due to the rudder-aileron linkage but also their inability to spin. Neither was a good basis for pilots moving to more advanced aircraft.

The club used a couple of Austers as a replacement before adopting the Cessna 150, and that was that for the next 50 years!

Early Piper Cubs had the linked rudder-aileron as an option but it was soon abandoned.</comment>


Introduction to Python's Collections Module - <AUTHOR> https://stackabuse.com/introduction-to-pythons-collections-module/ <comment><USER2> This article's quality is questionable. Right from the start, it incorrectly links to the Python version 2 collections module documentation. The article content doesn't vary much from what you'd find in the documentation if it does so at all save for changing the names of variables, values, etc.. Other parts seem handwavy at best. The "Conclusion" is just bizarre.

The Python documentation for the collections module[1] is actually quite good. The page offers the usual API documentation as well as a fair amount of examples for each component.

[1] [https://docs.python.org/3/library/collections.html](https://docs.python.org/3/library/collections.html)</comment>


Did you ever wanted to crowdfund your idea but don't know how? - <AUTHOR> http://crowdfundedbook.com

<comment><USER2> Here is a free Udemy course produced by someone I have sponsored a Kickstarter for who has finished a few projects:

[https://www.udemy.com/reaching-your-kickstarter- goals](https://www.udemy.com/reaching-your-kickstarter-goals)

It is a promo for the paid version.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not a native English speaker but I find the construct of this sentence "Did you ever wanted to crowdfund your idea but don't know how" false. Maybe I'm wrong.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the sharp eyes bndr..hmm yeah I've gotta admit, now the construct looks pretty strange to me too. By any chance, how would you rephrase the sentence if it were you?

<comment><USER4> Did you ever want to crowdfund your idea but didn't know how?

<comment><AUTHOR> Compared to the original, this sounds much better, and looks grammatically correct!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe you could get a proof reader first?

<comment><AUTHOR> great suggestion ajbetteridge. Yes I'm definitely going to hire a proof reader when the first draft's ready!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can a bootstrapped startup reach international audience? - <AUTHOR> Hi I am Co Founder of Adalyz http://www.adalyz.com , We Provide Analytics and Reporting for Your Adwords, Facebook Ad Campaigns in one unified dashboard. We also help you decide which ad network(google or fb or instagram) should you invest your money on.
We recently launched Adalyz in Ad Tech India. We got good traction. But For us reaching out to an international audience is one of the biggest challenges. Since we are bootstrapped we dont have enough of cash to burn out on ads.
How do you guys reach out to international audience for your product ? <comment><USER2> Start writing things which are useful to people who advertise across AdWords/Facebook/Instagram, or who should advertise across AdWords/Facebook/Instagram. Capture email addresses on those pages, trading them for some immediate value plus the promise of additional things 2X per month or so that will be useful to them. An easy way to provide immediate value is with a guide to constructive creatives and/or landing pages which convert well on the various platforms.

Promoting your content is a lot easier than promoting your offering, which you'll be doing primarily to people who are pulled in by the content. You can give away the content and charge for the software. You can also reach out to people with relevant audiences like e.g. SmashingMagazine and offer them additional free, exclusive high-quality writing in return for permission to link their readers back to your website, where you'll have a specially prepared guide for SmashingMagazine readers at the ready.

There's no cash cost to writing a mountain, and no particular barrier which makes it any harder to do from India than it is from Ogaki or Kansas.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the response, we are already doing blogs on ads and similar content once a week. Do you think thats the right frequency or should we write more often ?

<comment><USER3> you should write more often, higher quality and at more places. read more on content marketing. content marketing is powerful, cheap but takes plenty of effort. so it's a great way to get traction as a bootstrapped business without marketing budget. as with any business, being where your clients are is what counts most. check out [http://affbuzz.com/](http://affbuzz.com/) . it's a great affiliate marketing blog aggregator. reach them out and offer guest posts or work out some mutually beneficial arrangement</comment></comment></comment>


SimCity Developers' Reddit AMA Swiftly Turns Into WTF With The Online-Only DRM? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121214/16262621391/simcity-developers-reddit-ama-swiftly-turns-into-wtf-with-online-only-drm.shtml

<comment><USER2> Reddit communities are a minefield, at least in terms of the larger subreddits; Reddit is a site which has a significant young, male, socially liberal audience that is suspicious of advertisers. On Reddit, companies are seen as inauthentic, because people pushing a product cannot contribute to a community that was created without a profit motive (i.e. Reddit). For many users, this suspicion extends to corporations as a whole, since the profit motive poisons any interaction a company has with consumers; any interaction is dismissed as inauthentic. This sense of cynicism has become pervasive throughout the site, such that any self-promotion is questioned, even when money is not at stake.

And EA thought it would be a good idea to advertise on Reddit? I can sympathize with the team members who have no control over the business decisions. I am sure they are great at making awesome games. However, a cursory search of Reddit would show that more vocal Redditors hold extremely hostile views of EA's games and business practices; these opinions cover such grounds as studio acquisitions, DRM, game quality, content distribution methods, DLC pricing schedules, and artistic vision--just to name a few topics of scorn. Given the extensiveness of the Reddit echo chamber, I wonder who at EA made the brave decision to send the SimCity 5 team into it.

<comment><USER3> Reddit also has a fairly dim view of IE, but that didn't stop the IE9 team from having a fairly successful AMA[1]. The difference was, the Redmond boys owned up to past failures and seemed genuinely interested in fixing them. EA's response to customer dissatisfaction appears to be to claim that they're wrong, and should not be dissatisfied. Two different approaches led to two entirely different outcomes.

An AMA on reddit can be successful for anyone, so long as they're primed on how best to interact with the reddit community. Obama was well-primed, and his inclusion of several reddit in-jokes in his replies (no doubt at the insistence of staffers) made for a very successful AMA, even if it was an easy crowd for him. On the other hand, Woody Harrelson should also have faced an easy crowd, but his ignorance of what's expected in an AMA led to that infamous clusterfuck.

EA should have known that online-only DRM would be a big issue, and they should have prepared a better answer to it. That they didn't is only their fault, especially given what I suspect is fairly high reddit usage among the rank and file there.

[1] [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dkk3l/iama_we_are_memb...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dkk3l/iama_we_are_members_of_the_ie9_product_team_here/)

<comment><USER4> Last year I had a few weeks between real internet connections at my house, and it really drove home how bad an idea these systems are. Even Steam, which ostensibly has an "Offline Mode" did not do as well as I'd have liked because one of the residents didn't have it set to log in automatically.

So now we're in a situation where all of her games refuse to open and we won't be back online for a while. But you'd think Steam would have no problem authenticating through a tethered EDGE connection. It's not a ton of data, and it doesn't need low latency. But it didn't work. Even if webpages loaded (albeit not quickly), Steam would not log in.

So it strikes me as incredibly arrogant for companies like EA and Ubi to come along and tell me that these always online systems aren't a problem. They are. And it sucks how many users accept them. Even when we're not talking about days/weeks like I discussed above, small Comcast outages here are not uncommon, and it's crazy that games will quit or entirely refuse to run when they happen.

I absolutely agree that they should have seen the reaction coming. The same kind of systems have been in place with games like StarCraft 2 and Assassins Creed, and they've all gotten similar receptions on sites like Reddit.

<comment><USER3> It's interesting that you had issues launching Steam games without an Internet connection. I've never had a problem with it, although I've got a MBP and so my library of games is quite limited. Might the issue have not been Steam, but rather something the game publishers had included that caused it not to work?

<comment><USER4> If you have Steam set to remember your password and log in automatically, it's fairly reliable. If you prefer to not leave passwords remembered, Steam will not launch even in Offline Mode until you restore the connection and authenticate. This is by design.

<http://i.imgur.com/NXCpk.png>

While I understand the reasons for designing it this way, it's still very annoying to be caught off guard by it. I'm glad that nobody could get access to any actual account data like my friends list, time played, etc. But I'd much rather it be a system like the Mac App Store, where software will run no matter what once it's been downloaded, and running things I've installed is entirely separate from my account authentication and anything with personal information in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The TechDirt article says this:

> [Developer] Kip's followup was downright laughable. > > "We will allow you > to play for as long as we can preserve your game state. This will most > likely be minutes."

Everyone seems to hate on the DRM, thinking that it's just a business decision that is not at all integral to gameplay, but they all seem to be forgetting one key thing:

The new SimCity is, at its core, a multiplayer game!

Sure, it's a multiplayer game with the majority of the user experience dedicated to non-social, intra-city interactions. But your city lives within a global economy, and if it's possible to mutate your offline state without mutating your online state, then sync becomes a huge problem.

Consider the server that models a consistent virtual entrepreneur who's moving or visiting from one city to another (which the new AI actually might do, from seeing the videos). Now, say the destination city goes offline for hours. Both the source city and the destination city could end up _believing_ that the virtual entrepreneur is helping their city grow. If the offline time period is short (i.e. the "minutes" that the developer refers to), then the offline city can "snap back" to the correct state much as laggy players see themselves jumping across a map in a shooter. But if it's a long offline period, they could be snapping back in a very visible and jarring way. And it's near impossible to test all of the edge cases unless you can make assumptions about maximum latency before a disconnect.

The developers can only be faulted for not _communicating_ the intricacies of an MMO to their audience well enough. Instead, they allowed their game server to be characterized as a DRM device, and tried to respond to criticisms as if it was just a DRM device.

I want to be able to play Skyrim offline. But I have no qualms about WoW disconnecting me if I go offline for more than a few minutes, or if I tried to log on with a stolen or copied account. I'd expect them to do the same to other players who did so. On that note, we should really just be glad that they're not making SimCity a subscription service!

<comment><USER4> I think that a lot of people are aware of that; they question whether it actually adds value to the game. Given the choice between an entrepreneur that moves between cities (and other similar features) or a game that works when the internet goes down for 5 minutes, I'd take the latter.

Having interactions like pollution between neighbors is pretty cool. But there's no good reason it couldn't work with AI neighbors too. The online only features feel tacked on to force players into staying online all the time.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps a more important point that I should have mentioned: I can still play Sim City 2000 (published in 1994). Games like this that depend on online servers for basic functionality? I doubt they'll work in 18 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One thing about this DRM method that worries me is what happens in the future?

I still occasionally play my ooooold copy of simcity 2000. So if I do like the new simcity, what happens ten years down the line? Will I still be able to play it? Or will I not be able to authenticate/save/access old saves because the official simcity server was taken offline?

It seems to me that we are buying digital products with an expiration date. And that seems wrong to me.

<comment><USER7> That is broadly the reason why I don't have the Kindle, for example.

EA has in its bowels made a choice that Sim City fans will become its new cash cow. They will be now free to sell you the game and turn it off when they choose that releasing another version is more profitable. They easily could have allowed the game to function without inputs from neighboring areas or could have simulated it.

As a Sim City fan I am deeply disappointed since I have fond memories playing the game from the very first release. But these days I have chosen to only support and reward companies who do not make relationship with their customers a power play.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Capitalism is the answer to DRM.

If the games put out by bloated clueless bigcorps are filled with draconian DRM, then their lunch should be eaten by agile indie startups that know better.

If you buy video games, take note: Minimize or boycott entirely games that have DRM. Reallocate that part of your video game budget to buy DRM-free games. Use Gamersgate and Good Old Games; avoid Steam.

If you make video games, take note: There's at least some subset of people who hate DRM, and they'll presumably be attracted if you use the words "DRM-free" somewhere in your website/app description/marketing.

</comment><comment><USER9> Online only DRM depresses me slightly, until the internet is available "everywhere" we shouldn't be restricted to having to be connected to it.

I play games on the tube, trains, on holiday without wifi and many other places where I don't have internet access.

Some of the most successful gaming devices of the past few years (iPhone/iPad), don't require an internet connection to work, neither do the major consoles. Why should be users be forced into this? Haven't they heard of laptops?</comment>


Offer HN: Free Maths Lessons - <AUTHOR>

Hi all,
Would anybody like a free, eight-week course of maths (or related fields: see below) lessons?
About me: I've been tutoring up to A-level mathematics and physics for about 10 years now.  I would have thought of trying to teach maths to HN as teaching grandma to suck eggs, but this comment thread (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2737510) led me to believe there are at least a few HNers who don't have calculus etc. as part of their toolbox, and Steve's flamboyant OSCON talk (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2811818) got me thinking there might be quite a few who would like it.  FWIW, I've a bachelor's degree in physics and a master's in machine learning.
What you get: Eight one-to-one hour-long lessons on any mathematical subject(s) of your choosing.
Who qualifies: Exactly one person who wants to, based on the following criteria:
1) You ask for something I can actually teach you.  I've a lot of experience teaching maths and physics up to A-level standard (see the UK bit in here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Further_Mathematics), and I know some linear/vector/matrix algebra, more advanced differential equations, some machine learning and statistics well enough to teach with some brushing up.  I'm slightly more likely to pick someone who wants something I can teach really well rather than something I can just about teach.  You can ask for anything, though; bonus points for asking for something I didn't know people wanted.
2) You can be available at a regular time each week which I can accommodate, ideally sometime between 9:00 and 13:00 BST (8:00-12:00 GMT) on a weekday from late August
3) You provide a compelling case of how this will help you, particularly if it would be hard to get this kind of help elsewhere.  I.e. you may find some mathematics useful to your coding / business / love life; you know why better than me.
Again, apologies if slightly better than high-school maths seems like a trivial thing to arrogantly parade in front of the extremely smart and well-educated people at HN, it just occurred to me there might be a few people who might want it.
(EDIT FOR CLARITY) TL;DR: Free online lessons!  Apply in this thread. <comment><USER2> Clickables:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2737510>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2811818>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Further_Mathematics>

</comment><comment>==

ADDED IN EDIT: WTF - I got a downvote for this?!?

From <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

        Resist complaining about being downmodded.
        It never does any good, and it makes boring
        reading.

_(breathe deeply - calm - don't complain - does no good - breathe deeply - screw 'em - don't bother making life easy for people who follow - don't cross- reference - don't point to previous discussions - don't try to help - just, don't bother - not worth it - go to a calm place and chill)_

</comment><comment>==

FURTHER EDIT: Now had more upvotes - thanks. I must remember that HN has a wide-range of participants, and that while many may appreciate the cross- referencing, _etc,_ some don't. If they get there first, you get a downvote.

I still don't understand why the downvote though. There's been a long tradition on HN of adding the clickables. Maybe someone is new and doesn't know that, maybe they're just quick on the trigger finger. Don't know. It just feels, unpleasant. Genuinely makes me not want to be here.

<comment><USER3> Colin, don't let the down-votes get you down... if you pardon the pun. Some people mistakenly think clickables are just karma whoring because they don't realize it is (intentionally) impossible to put clickable links into a submission. Additionally, they're also probably not thinking beyond their own use-case, where the (intentional) annoyance of copy-paste is painful on mobiles.

<comment><USER2> tl;dr - thank you.

<rant>

It's just that there are days when I get depressed by the fact that so many people on the 'net and using sites like HN have a sense of entitlement - insisting that they really understand everything and that - God Damn It - they'll impose their own way of working and thinking and voting, without taking the time to become enculturated.

At least, that's how it feels. I just need to take another break. I'm finding that my breaks from HN are getting longer and longer, and then time back before I need another break are getting shorter and shorter.

It's said that a specialist is someone who knows more and more about less and less until eventually they know everything about nothing, whereas as generalist is someone who knows less and less about more and more until eventually they know everything about nothing.

I'm getting more and more irritated and annoyed by the actions of a small minority who just spoil my enjoyment of HN. Maybe I've just outgrown it, but I really hesitate to say that because there's always more to learn, and there are some great people here.

</rant>

<comment><USER3> I hear you, and read your HN profile missive, but this is taking us off-topic. Unfortunately, you don't have an email address listed in your profile, or I'd take it up with you off-site per se. My email address is in my profile, contact me if you want to discuss it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> On behalf of all of HN, thank you for the kind and generous offer of your time and expertise. Though a lot of people excel at learning on their own, many human beings are trained to learn better through courses. The examples, direction and structure provided can really help.

I never bothered to take calculus in school (distant decades ago), and never bothered to seriously study on my own (e.g. dedicated learning working through an entire book), but I have managed to learn various, incomplete chunks of it. In short, I just learned the parts I needed to know at various times to do something, and admittedly, I've probably forgot most of them. It's somewhat unfortunate to publicly admit only remembering random, disjointed chunks of calculus (and also lambda calculus for that matter), but I'm certain I'm not alone.

Being that you've worked as a math and physics tutor for a decade, you've most likely seen quite a number of calculus texts being used in courses and possess an extremely valuable opinion on the merit of various tomes. You're possibly even familiar with on-line courses such as MIT Open Courseware and similar.

Since there's no way you'll be able to tutor everyone, would you provide your opinions on books and courses for the self-starters?

<comment><USER2> "Calculus Made Easy" by Silvanus Thompson (updated by Martin Gardner).

[http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Made-Easy-Silvanus- Thompson/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Made-Easy-Silvanus- Thompson/dp/1409724670/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1281003280&sr=8-1)

(And you probably know this, but "Calculus" isn't the same as the "Lambda Calculus" - your comment makes it appear that you've confused or equated the two.)

<comment><USER4> <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33283/33283-pdf.pdf>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Please record these sessions and upload them to YouTube, so they'll help more than just one person. Thanks for volunteering.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion, and I share the sentiment, but I'm not going to do that. I'm happy for the student to record them and later upload them if (s)he wants to, but I don't want to commit to broadcasting because:

1) I'd rather not have the distraction of thinking "is this going on YouTube?" permeating the lesson and changing the student's (and my) responses. You'd be amazed how much harder it is to think when you suspect the entire internet may get to hear your answers.

2) Things that come up might not be interesting to other people; I take an extremely interactive approach, ideally with the student doing about half the talking.

3) Given the audience, it's possible people might want to ask me about how to apply some mathematics to their business. They may not want relevant information published.

That said, if at the end of the lessons it turns out that they might be a useful resource, _and the student agrees_ , I'll be happy to do this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> first of all, thank you very much for this generous offer, it is very kind of you.

\----

i am currently working in networking support (cisco stuff), but i know some python and common lisp. i am very interested in programming, compiler technology, languages (i speak 3 and currently learning 4th) and teaching (i worked as a trainer for cisco networking academy for 7 years).

i am mostly self-taught, learned english mostly from reading books/docs and listening to music/tv. i know little about many things and much about few, if any.

currently i am trying to change my job to programming because i want to gain experience in the field and ultimately get a chance to implement some of many ideas and help develop some which i would love to see advance (e.g. what sal khan is doing).

i see mathematics as a very important skill that i need to master since it is in big part connected to all of the domains i am passionate about. my current skills are pretty slacking but i do have good imagination and learn fast.

the most recent physics/math problem i have is directly connected to one particular job opportunity. i am developing a python application which does certain sound singnal analysis and will also include various software testing practices including some code analysis. this project will serve as a demonstration to my potential employer that i have mastered the skill enough to be hired. i am using khanacademy heavily for basic stuff, but most of the things are not covered there and many a time i have to rely on wikipedia solely.

if you are interested in any of the following areas i can teach you in exchange: learning a rare and unique foreign language, programming basics, networking, linux stuff. i am in a bit of a trouble with time-frame though since i am in CET zone and i don't really have flexible work hours.

<comment><USER7> >>many a time i have to rely on wikipedia solely.

As a more readable alternative, try this <http://inperc.com/wiki/index.php?title=Category:Courses>.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Thank you very much for the offer, this is something I love to do and would be ideal for me, I was a lazy teen and dropped maths after GCSE when I really shouldn't have (I droped just about everything hard, I was a very kevin and perry teen and went to a bad school). 10 years later I really regret this, I would love to understand the basics of things like analysing algorithms, encoding/encryption stuff etc. I've moved into CS relatively late and the lack of maths has caught me out when it shouldn't. I am currently finishing off a masters in Information Systems which has gone fantastically well but my maths is still lacking by miles. Networks was particularly hard when it came to understanding things like encryption.

I have watched a couple of MIT videos on introduction to Algorithms but they were a bit beyond me so I need to take a step back first. I've watched a few kahn videos but there is just so much I am not quite sure where to put my time. I have thought about taking a Maths A level course at some time when I get time but this year has been full on with other learning.

I start my first professional developers job at the end of September and being able to just do some basic big-O would be amazing. This thread is actually becoming valuable for links and recommendation to other resources I should explore.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm building something that makes this easy to do online, would you mind sending me an email and I could see if it helps you with scheduling and video chat + screen sharing?

</comment><comment><USER10> Honest question. Why specifically just math and not physics or machine learning since those are also things you've specialized in?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) _Much_ more practice at teaching maths and physics, and it's much fresher in my mind, so I reckon you'll get higher quality out of me that way.

2) I expect more demand for maths than physics

3) A lot of physics and machine learning is maths anyway; particularly with machine learning, the bit of it I'm good at is more mathematical (statistics, bayesian inference, etc). When I took my MSc, the coding exercises were always harder for me (lack of background and formal training) but some of the mathematics was stuff that I'd actually been teaching for years. I seriously doubt I can teach anyone _here_ much about implementing, well, anything, but if you want to get a good idea of probability theory and Bayesian inference, I'm more useful.

For clarity, though: I'm offering _anything you request_ that I also think I can fulfil. Edited original post to make it a bit clearer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am just about to begin a part-time open university mathematics degree (mature student) as part of a process to get over my fear of mathematics. I have a GCSE in higher mathematics but sometime between being a school kid and starting a PhD I got the fear. I messed up 2 attempts at AS level, mostly due to other priorities of being a 17 year old, I mucked up my PhD due to the fear (who would have thought robotics & vision needed maths huh?) ignoring important papers simply because they were impenetrable to my maths reading skills. I am currently spending 2 hours a night reading through GCSE, AS & A level revision guides to prepare for the start of the university course, however any additional help would obviously be superb.

<comment><USER12> I'm doing this right now - MST121 and MS221. I'm finding it a pleasant challenge without having done anything more than GCSE maths. It's finding the time to do the study that's tricky. Say hi if you've got any questions about the course - doing the revision you've mentioned sounds a great idea.

<comment><USER11> You mention that your doing both 121 & 221 at the same time. When I was reading up about the course they recommended only doing this if you had A level (or above) and could commit 16 hours per week. How does that stack up to your experience? Does the course have a good staring gradient? I spend my life coding (in the finance industry) and am un-fazed by the mathematical challenges it throws up daily but am utterly petrified of starting out on the course (maybe combined?) and being presented with a sheet of impenetrable symbols and vast amounts of expected ability, knowledge of processes, terms etc... It's the notation and vocabulary, the superior knowledge of superior men, that worries me the most.

<comment><USER13> I had that fear too (like yourself, the last time I touched mathematics was during my GCSE's and I wasn't exactly a prodigy then) and it was exactly why I did MU123 first rather than jumping into MST121 despite that fact I think I could have handled it.

I reasoned that by being thorough and starting from the beginning (i.e. the most basic module) that I was not likely to encounter any concept later on in the course that had not previously been introduced to me. Hence no ambiguity. Rather convoluted logic I know, but it worked for me.

<comment><USER11> Given that the course starts in October I thought that a good old concerted effort on revision might get me past the need for MU123 (would be nice to aim for a 6 year degree not a 7 year one) now wondering if it is an incorrect assumption... I wonder if they would let me see some past papers from MU123 to make sure I followed it all (again, the hard work is never a problem it's the fear of not even being able to read the damn question!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> alok-g This is a great offer! Thanks!

I would be interested in learning (1) Machine learning, (2) Godel's theorems, (3) Group theory.

While especially #1 and #3 are not hard to find elsewhere, I have found it difficult to "break into" these topics, not having formal education in mathematics and computer science. (I am fairly smart person otherwise, so believe would be able to follow the subjects, just that books and articles often make tacit assumptions about the readers, leaving a plenty of reader's questions and doubts unanswered.)

The time slot looks suitable to me. It's middle of the night, right after my kid sleeps!

</comment><comment><USER14> Hi, I have been trying to Learn to work hands-on on Machine learning/AI algorithms(for about 4-5 years). But somehow, have stopped with reading and understanding the algorithms in the text books/blogs and stop there. Recently came across Fractals and love them. Got a Fractal Geometry(Kenneth Falconer, thanks to library.nu) book but i seem to have lost the ability to learn from books(too much interaction addictivity). Anyway, i would be glad if you can teach Fractal Geometry.(sorry, if that is outside your offer). Thanks and Regards, anand jeyahar

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I'd like to know about fractal geometry too :)

Sadly not in my field, but good luck!

To help with book learning, try adding interactivity back in, e.g. by writing a short blog post on each small topic you want to learn. This will switch on the bits of your brain that like getting stuff done, and also challenge you to understand things more fully; having to explain something to someone else really points out what you didn't know that you don't know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Check Khan Academy. Why don't you do something similar applied for CS? :)

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm building a simple Android 2D game on my free time which involves some maths (ball bouncing, colliding algorithms, ..), what I would really like is some refresh of Linear Algebra (Vectors, Projections, ...) and Physics that I may easily apply to the game itself. How may I contact you? I can't see any contact details on your profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Now fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for the delay everyone, I'm currently working on a consulting project, which was going to finish mid-August, but is now potentially slipping... I'll have to confirm my exact availability before I can accept anyone. I should know by the end of the week. Anyone who's still interested, send me an email to let me know.

</comment><comment><USER17> I mostly wanted to add some upvotes and some encouragement for other people to do this in the future. I see you've already accepted a student, so "happy mathing" to the two of you!

</comment><comment><USER18> I would like to echo dougk7's comments regarding statistics for ML. The fundamentals of ML would be of great interest - moreso with ML becoming more en vouge.

Cheers!

</comment><comment><USER19> Can you please provide your email address? I'm sure that there are plenty of people who want to apply, but would like some privacy to state their case.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sierra dot charlie hotel india uniform dot double-zero at G's mail service. Let me know here if that's not clear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Me! For statistics - I discovered its beauty after failing it once, then trying to do machine learning tasks without a solid knowedge of stats.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've accepted a student for this offer now.</comment>


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Is .org the new .com? - <AUTHOR>

Anyone noticed an increase in the number of websites that use .org? <comment><USER2> i believe it's called domain exhaustion.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are plenty of other extensions to choose from.

<comment><USER3> ...but are more expensive, or tied to a specific country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> any tool to get this trend??</comment>