Web Tracing Framework by Google - <AUTHOR> http://google.github.io/tracing-framework/

<comment><USER2> Putting the project itself aside (which does seem quite useful), am I the only one who finds it intriguing the fact that Google is not using Google Code to host some of their recent open source projects?

<comment><USER3> Usually the justifications these companies give for such mandates is how it would look to outsiders if they are not using their own tools.

On the other hand I remember reading about how Google has a corporate mandate that their employees cannot use Microsoft Windows without providing a business justification.

<comment><USER4> One would assume that since they develop Chrome for windows, they would have some number of devs using windows.

<comment><USER5> Yes, that would be "providing a business justification".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hate to ask what I think is probably a stupid question, but: how are they creating that animation? It's not a simple .gif, and it looks like they're using something akin to a sprite: [http://google.github.io/tracing- framework/resources/anim_ind...](http://google.github.io/tracing- framework/resources/anim_index.png)

Edit: Looks like it's a modified version of Sublime's animation ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4532146](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4532146)).

<comment><USER7> Here's the repo with the modified version of the Sublime text animation engine: [https://github.com/benvanik/anim_encoder](https://github.com/benvanik/anim_encoder)

</comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady Great that it can support Chrome on Android for analysing mobile sites.

</comment><comment><USER8> The HUD does not display/inject properly on our JS web app wunderlist. Wouldn't it make sense that the HUD controls existed outside the scope of the page's DOM? e.g. available in the [wtf] extension popover itself or as context menu items? Or as a dev tools tab?

<comment><USER9> Have you opened a bug and/or a feature request? I'm sure the team would love to hear that it isn't working for you (since that probably means it isn't working for someone else as well)

[https://github.com/google/tracing- framework/issues](https://github.com/google/tracing-framework/issues)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks similar to SpeedTracer...is it related at all? The replacement?

<comment><USER11> Good question. So, there's this new Web Tracing Framework:

[http://google.github.io/tracing-framework/](http://google.github.io/tracing- framework/)

And Speed Tracer, as you mention:

[https://developers.google.com/web- toolkit/speedtracer/](https://developers.google.com/web-toolkit/speedtracer/)

And also PageSpeed Tools:

[https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/)

I'm surprised they don't address the distinction, history, or evolution plan anywhere prominently.

<comment><USER12> Also there is TraceGL which seems to be less about performance tuning and more about debugging and it's not free but looks like a great tool. [https://trace.gl/](https://trace.gl/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Web Tracing Framework a.k.a. WTF. Looks cool btw.

</comment><comment><USER14> Very useful! Semi-related question: is there a way to profile the stack within a requestAnimationFrame callback? I seem to remember having access to it in earlier versions of chrome, but now I just see the callback and garbage collection events if present.

</comment><comment><USER15> Best. Acronym. Ever.

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure, could get confused with the web template framework in WebKit.

[https://github.com/WebKit/webkit/tree/master/Source/WTF/wtf](https://github.com/WebKit/webkit/tree/master/Source/WTF/wtf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm so happy that I get to do mostly native apps. Building a good UI is hard enough without having to shoe-horn HTML into doing things it was never intended to do.

<comment><USER18> Yes, it sure is great that you never have to profile performance, trace call stacks, or find out where your heap is going in native app development.

Did people voting up this comment just not read the linked docs, or do you maybe not have the context to understand what this library does?

It instruments your code so you can get call stack traces with timing information associated. Unless your calls into the DOM are blocking, they aren't going to show up there (that's what the browser dev tools are for). There's a reason that the only HTML element explicitly mentioned in the docs is the canvas element. It even says, explicitly, "Though it's certainly useful to see the ways your application is interacting with the browser and vice versa, often there is much more work occurring within your call trees than not."

This has almost nothing to do with HTML. It's a profiling tool for a garbage- collected scripting language, and it looks more than a little useful.

<comment><USER17> For native _front-ends_ most of that work has been done for me already though. I can't remember the last time I've had to worry about performance profiling or heap management in a native front-end - and we build iOS, Android and Windows apps that process huge amounts of (medical) data. Hell, I don't even have to _make my own_ animations to have good looking apps because that's all built into the rich native components that I use.

On native platforms - if I stick to standard, well-known, stable components and if I follow good coding practices and recommended techniques - my apps are fast by default. And I'm _just gluing things together_ most of the time. Easy, scrumptious pie! I can save the work of "squeezing every drop of performance out of my code" for back-end processes.

Things just work for the most part - unlike the web where half the sites that try to do something "fancy" like fixed elements just serve to make scrolling slow and clunky - hence the need for this tool.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: DigitalOcean asking for government ID? - <AUTHOR>

Although I used Heroku's free dyno to host my side-project, I couldn't justify the cost to move it to a paid dyno. Instead, I looked for a lower cost VPS and found DigitalOcean. Reviews looked decent and the price was right.
However, after signing up and giving them my CC info, I was informed that my signup had triggered DO's automatic abuse detection and I needed to submit some supplemental information. I complied and submitted my name, physical location, phone number, and my personal twitter account as asked. Fair enough, I thought.
I then received another request, this time stating To help us verify your identity, please send us a scan of your government-issued photo ID or passport to firstname.lastname@example.com
Now, I like to think that I am not as stringent or even disciplined when it comes to privacy or shared data. However, am I off-base to feel that this request is beyond reasonable? I know the practical answer is "If you think it's unreasonable, take your business elsewhere". I understand that and may well do so (e.g. Linode).
I am in Canada and I do know that in the US it is common for merchants to ask for photo ID along with CC, but I am much more comfortable flashing my ID card in a brick & mortar store than I am sending a digital scan to an online business I have no experience or relationship with.
When I googled this type of request, I couldn't find previous references to it. How do people feel about DO asking for government photo ID to go along with CC information? Is this a common practice that I am just not informed about? <comment><USER2> A credit card transaction is a _promise to pay_ , not a payment. That promise is what you sign when you sign a receipt in a store. The merchant and its credit card processor need to identify someone who can be legally compelled to make good on that promise in order for the system to work. This is not a corporate conspiracy, just the nature of credit. Increased risk of fraud calls for more reliable identification; DigitalOcean is asking for a second factor to confirm that you actually own that CC. (Otherwise, they are at risk of eating the loss in case of a chargeback. An ID document, like a signature, gives them something to show in court to hold you responsible for the payment even if you chargeback.)

It is the nature of the credit card payment system that legitimate transactions are never anonymous. In any situation where you keep your identity private from your creditor, then either your creditor is brain-dead or you are committing fraud.

If you wish to purchase VPS hosting without revealing your identity to the seller, use (tumbled) BitCoin.

If your concern is for the security of your ID document (rather than the fact that DigitalOcean will know your identity) then insist on using email encryption or send via snail-mail.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your explanation. I do believe they are not outside of their bounds in wanting to verify my identity. You are correct that my concern is the security of my ID document.

I'm curious how email encryption would solve this problem. Presumably it would make for the secure transmission of the document, but I would still be left with DOs word that the document would be completely deleted after they viewed it and not kept on file. I just hate the thought of my CC info _and_ government ID sitting somewhere on their servers and then hearing they had a security breach (for the very reasons that you specified - CC alone == promise, CC + ID == identity theft?).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This isn't terribly uncommon. You should ask if you can redact certain information from the ID. They probably don't do this often and when they do it's because there is some significant signal that means that the cost of asking you for this generally excessive information, outweighs possibly losing you as a customer because of some inherent risk they see on their side.

If you trust them with your credit card number, then I don't see why you shouldn't trust them with your identification as long as you are sure this is not a phishing scam of some sort. All the same, I'd still see if they would let you redact anything you are uncomfortable sharing (like the license # or address) Chances are that they just want to make sure you are definitely who you say you are, which a solid, scanned ID will help to confirm.

As a slightly unrelated aside: bartenders ask for your ID, so do some vendors when using a debit/credit card, so this is not completely crazy, obviously they don't explicitly store it in digital form, which is probably where your concern comes from.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your helpful comment.

I asked if I could redact anything and received the response: _A scan of the entire ID would suffice. It 's for verification, we do not store it in anyway._ Hardly a response that creates confidence. Pardon me if in this day and age I don't exactly trust the public facing data retention policies of private companies.

I agree that brick and mortar vendors ask for ID all the time (in the US, at least), but as you said I'm comfortable having a human peruse it, not so much having them store it in a digital format.

<comment><USER3> It's up to you at this point. I think it's a bit unusual that they won't accept it after being redacted. You can try just sending it redacted anyways. Leaving name/address/dob/photo seems reasonable. If it's sufficiently high resolution, I can't see that they will be terribly bothered.

For reference, by the way, I work at Quora, and have done a lot of work relating to enforcing real names on the site. We have asked for photo ID, but specifically ask for details to be redacted. The only things that will escalate something to this level of scrutiny are multiple red flags that signal a suspicion of abuse.

I imagine that because there is a financial transaction involved, DigitalOcean has different procedures and looks for different red flags.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just got this myself too and my first thought was it has to be a scam. Submitting photo ID online is rather unusual for hosting company to ask for. DO does appear to be less favorable now given the level of verification they need. I wonder if this applies to most DO users though.

[Sent to support] Earlier today, I received a support ticket from DigitialOcean with the message below asking for government issued ID. This is an unusual request for hosting company. Can you confirm this? \--- ATTACHED MESSAGE BELOW --- To help us verify your identity, please send us a scan of your government-issued photo ID or passport to email@example.com with this ticket's ID in the subject, example: "Ticket #XXXXXX". Once you have sent that please let us know by replying to this ticket.

[Response from DO] We ask for IDs for accounts that have been flagged during verification. We apologize if it appears abnormal but we take abuse very seriously Alex

</comment><comment><USER5> What is a good way to pay then? I can't get a normal credit card so I have to make due with a prepaid card. To make it right from the getgo and buying a new domain as well as hosting my alternative idea was:

buy domain/mail at namecheap with bitcoin -> paypal on my bank account with that address -> pay digital ocean

I wanted to avoid bitcoin and paypal so I came up with a different plan buying a prepaird card and:

buy domain/mail at namecheap with cc -> pay digital ocean with cc.

This makes me wonder if I run into the same trouble in two instances. I don't have a scanner or a camera (believe it or not) so I'd have to run to a friend who lives an hour away. I'd rather avoid that...

</comment><comment><USER6> Hetzner also asks for government ID; I had to send them a scanned image of my driver's license. I do not see that as an issue; hopefully it will keep the malware/spamware guys off Hetzner.

</comment><comment><USER7> I just had the same, asking me for photoID or my passport. There is absolutely no way I trust anyone with my credit card information plus photoID / passport. It's like I'm trying to enter the USA. Surely they will keep the digital copy if they really did take us to court?

A real shame, specially as I heard a lot of good things with DigitalOcean.

</comment><comment><USER8> Consider photoshopping, not to falsify, but the claim of not storing is dubious....plus, they aren't a police organization, not like its perjury.

I think it's excessive myself. I'd flip them the bird and try amazon, dreamhost, or rackspace (although they are hardly inexpensive).

<comment><USER3> They'll spot this, so it's not worth it, it will only add to their suspicion. It's OK to 'shop it if you are removing stuff very obviously, but to hide/alter info they want will just cause trouble.</comment></comment>


Welcome to the Wikipedia of the Alt-Right - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/welcome-to-the-wikipedia-of-the-alt-right/ <comment><USER2> If the comments in the article are any indication, there's a lot of anger about people being able to fork Wikipedia and promote their own opinions on their own site. Amazing.</comment>


Big Cuts at Airy Labs, Ex-Employees Blame Management - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/11/airy-labs-big-cuts/ <comment><USER2> I have a deep interest in educational games.

When I found out about Airy Labs, I applied and interviewed with them in August 2011. I got the impression the engineers were very smart, and very overworked. When we got to discussing numbers, Hsu was interested in a low five-figure salary.

I sent him a few emails asking about things like revenue model. I was concerned that IAP corrupts the incentive structure around education. (Just imagine, your incentive is to keep kids playing games and spending money, nowhere does education enter into it).

I ultimately went to Google.

Andrew seems like a sharp guy, I hope he's successful.

<comment><USER3> I'm a co-founder of a profitable 11-person educational gaming company called MindSnacks, so I have a pretty solid perspective on what works in this space.

The key to making IAP work in an educational gaming company is keeping things really simple. We give away one lesson for free and then offer the remaining 49 for a one-time $5.00 fee. If you get greedy and try to squeeze payments out of your user at every turn, you might make a tiny bit more money, but you're certain to lose a long-term customer that might buy multiple apps.

We pay a lot of attention to our cross-use (users with more than one app) and retention numbers. We've found that the more you try to monetize like a traditional social games company, the more these numbers start to drop.

<comment><USER4> love mindsnacks! glad to see japanese under dev

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "They say the Hsus refused to commit anything to writing, and would become angry if anyone complained via email (rather than verbally)."

I've seen this before. This is usually so that there isn't any evidence of the communication stored anywhere. A _very_ bad sign of a Machiavellian management style that I've never seen end well.

 _Employees were warned against socializing or discussing their compensation with other members of the team. At the same time, office life was obsessively documented in photos, a practice that extended to people interviewing for jobs._

And here is where it gets really weird. _You_ can't have evidence about how the company operates, but they can document _you_.

<comment><USER6> It's not weird at all, it's the hallmark of any police state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Employees were warned against socializing or discussing their compensation with other members of the team."

People working in the US really need to know about the National Labor Relations Act and what it means in terms of discussing salaries. Not having this kind of information out there is a bad thing for employees and lovely for conniving bosses.

<comment><USER8> Oh yeah, the NLRA. As opposed to just quitting and finding a better job? Getting the government (or unions) involved in variably makes a situation like this worse. Just walk away.

<comment><USER9> I think you are misunderstanding the point. The NLRA grants you the right to discuss your wages with your co-workers. Companies are not allowed to prohibit this, and more people should be made aware of their rights under the NLRA.

<comment><USER10> So if you are making more than you colleague, and he finds out, then your boss has to spend a greater portion of the next pay increase funds to up his pay. Guess who's raise those funds come out of? It doesn't matter what is legal to do, sometimes it is still not a good idea to discuss compensation.

<comment><USER9> Whether or not it is a good idea to do so is not the point. The point is that it is against the law for the company to prohibit those discussion (as the company in the OP did). Companies that have policies in violation of labor laws are probably not the best places to be working.

<comment><USER10> I think I came across different than what I intended. I personally think it should all be out in the open, but if the employer has a policy against discussing compensation, and someone else comes up to your boss and says "Why am I not getting paid as much as Michael", then it is quite likely that your boss will try to rectify this situation (squeaky wheel and all). And since he is only given a fixed amount of money to distribute in raises, it is likely that yours will be affected negatively by that.

Now if you feel that the other employee is being under compensated, and you are getting too much, then that may work out. Or, it may be better to work somewhere else that has more money to spend on employee salaries. But the point still stands, that just because something is legal for you to do doesn't make it a good idea to exercise your rights in every situation.

<comment><USER9> If the employer has a policy against discussing compensation, they are in violation of the law. Full stop.

Companies not complying with labor laws should be avoided, for your own protection.

It's that simple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "when you bring up the "team" page of the Airy Labs website, you now get a 404 error message."

Because the team is now 404: not found.

"employees were told not to speak to anyone who had left the company."

Oh, so it's a cult then. Understood.

</comment><comment><USER12> This speaks to me against Peter Thiel's "20 under 20" program as it all seems to come down to lack of maturity and experience (and inflated ego).

<comment><USER13> I think this says more about entrepreneurs in the education space than it does about the program. For whatever reason this space seems to consistently attract shady and/or underqualified people. I think the reason is that education is an area where you can't really contribute anything of value unless you are well versed in the science. Because of this it's really easy to snow virtually everyone, from investors and the media to school administrators and teachers. So you consistently see lots of ideas that have zero chance of producing good results that still get lots of funding and even some initial traction.

<comment><USER14> _I think the reason is that education is an area where you can't really contribute anything of value unless you are well versed in the science._

As far as I'm aware, the #1 education startup was created by someone who was poorly versed in the "science" of education.

He seems to be improving things with science now, but that's a fairly recent thing.

<comment><USER13> "As far as I'm aware, the #1 education startup was created by someone who was poorly versed in the 'science' of education."

If you're talking about Khan Academy, they're a non-profit not a startup.

<comment><USER14> I don't see how that changes things, unless you believe "underqualification" only matters for people with a profit motive.

<comment><USER13> The difference is that Khan would be underqualified if he were trying to do something innovative, but he's not. He's just making a bridge technology, a collection of mostly mediocre content that's designed to be moderately useful until something better comes along. There's no way a for-profit could get funded if this were their goal, at least not if they were upfront about it. Plus even if it's not the greatest site ever, at least it serves a purpose and he's not actively trying to scam people.

<comment><USER14> The lectures are fairly standard, the exercise scheduling system he's attempting to build is not. While I've criticized him for not being ambitious enough (Khan often stresses he doesn't want to replace teachers), he is building far more than just video lectures.

Also, he had several funding offers from VC's, so your assertion about what VC's might fund is incorrect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Working for a 19 year old would be a very tough sell. You learn so much about real life in your early 20's and answering to someone who hasn't gone through that "seasoning" process would not be something to look forward to. Yes, Zuckerburg pulled it off but he is definitely the exception.

<comment><USER16> I'm sure it also helped that zuckerburg's parents weren't secretly doubling as the company's senior management. YIKES.

<comment><USER17> That must have been the most awkward workplace ever. Working for two asian parents...that's probably a recipe for disaster

<comment><USER18> Perhaps you could take your racist stereotypes elsewhere?

<comment><USER19> I don't condone racist stereotypes but at the same time this isn't the first, second, third, or fourth time something like this had happened specifically with a typical traditional Chinese family-run business.

Same patterns, similar "cut the oxygen" strategy, same outcome.

<comment><USER18> This is textbook confirmation bias, you're focusing on the most visible factor that you expect to see. It's a very common way for people to rationalize their racist views.

<comment><USER19> FYI my race is the same with Hsu's family. Part of the issue is cultural.

While I don't agree with stereotyping or generalization, sometime certain cultural knowledge have helped me avoid frictions or troubles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'll probably get flamed/negative karma for this, but here goes. I actually know the folks involved so I won't comment on any of the details. Anthony and Andrew are both doing their jobs. How well they are doing it is up to you to decide.

I will say that taking one startup's stumble, or even their eventual demise, as a data-point to slam a whole program is pretty harsh. I'm a Mentor for 20 Under 20 and I certainly don't think the mission is to get kids to drop out of college, but it's easy for the media to push this little sound bite. If you've meet any of the Fellows you would know they're out to change the world and would likely do so with or without Peter's money. Failure is the expected outcome for the vast majority of startups. All you Founders here know that, or will learn it first hand. Most of these kids have never failed at anything in their lives, and will unfortunately face these hard lessons in the public eye. It's really easy to criticize and grab pitchforks online.

You can think whatever you want about the situation at Airy Labs and you are entitled to your opinion of Andrew Hsu as well. But to try and lump all the other Fellows into this is unfair to them and quite disappointing.

<comment><USER21> if you don't think 20 under 20 is an attack to get kids to drop out of college (and not attend in the first place) you've paid no attention to Thiel over the years. He's viciously anti-university due to his opposition to multiculturalism.

<comment><USER22> I had never heard multiculturalism mentioned in reference to Thiel (I'm no expert on him), but apparently he co-wrote a book called "The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and the Politics of Intolerance at Stanford". Looks like there were 1996 and 1998 editions with slightly different titles. [0], [1]

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/Diversity-Myth-Multiculturalism- Politi...](http://www.amazon.com/Diversity-Myth-Multiculturalism-Politics- Intolerance/dp/0945999429) [1] [http://www.amazon.com/Diversity-Myth-David- Sacks/dp/09459997...](http://www.amazon.com/Diversity-Myth-David- Sacks/dp/0945999763)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This sounds like a culture clash. Asian cultures (Korean and Chinese specifically) have a really unique family dynamic which you could describe as boundaryless; I worked for a Korean entrepreneur for a while and he said it's a foregone conclusion that if the business strikes it big his family members get to come share in the success.

Hsu should have tried harder to understand the cultural dynamic in the US.

<comment><USER24> Not that I know for a fact, but I'd think he was born in the US.

<comment><USER23> I'm speculating as well. From the article it sounds like he is second generation Korean or Chinese.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> With 20 people riding in a $1.5M raft, you need to know exactly where you're headed and why. Security-wise, you'd almost rather be in an actual raft.

<comment><USER26> Indeed. That's absurd. My rule of thumb: $1m is ~8 staff in full for one year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think it's unfair to jump on the guy as being naive or young. I don't know if people who setup these dysfunctional workplaces ever improve. He probably is just not great at running a business, end of story.

If you're a controlling person when it comes to your personal relationships, you won't likely be a great founder. You need to understand that everyone has their own goals, dreams, and desires in life. Your employees are not just things you put money into and productivity out of, they're _people_ who will produce way more than you expect if you treat them well.

Maybe I'm biased though. My dad ran four small businesses in his life and the main thing that kept both the employees and customers coming back was that he was well-liked and personable with everyone.

Being a recent co-founder of a startup, I am managing a team of 8 contractors and consultants right now. Each one has their benefits and flaws, but I'm happy to work with them and willing to be flexible around schedules, etc. It would never enter my mind to setup such a draconian system and I think anyone who does is probably inherently broken as a founder.

<comment><USER28> take "founder" out of the equation. systems like this (no written communication, no talking to ex-employees, etc) are just not good, full stop. It may be easier to get away with in larger companies because there's already a revenue stream (and presumably profits) in place to continue to fund bringing in new blood, but regardless of a "startup" vs a long-standing company, these are just bad practices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> "We thought when we started Y Combinator that the most important quality would be intelligence. That's the myth in the Valley. And certainly you don't want founders to be stupid. But as long as you're over a certain threshold of intelligence, what matters most is determination. You're going to hit a lot of obstacles. You can't be the sort of person who gets demoralized easily."

</comment><comment><USER30> Good luck to everyone involved. Hope you continue to live your dream. Here is to treating others as you would like to be treated.

</comment><comment><USER31> TL;DR: I have had this experience. Don't try to reason with creepy management. Don't work somewhere that you're not being fairly compensated for (Even if its not cash, it needs to be fair.) They'll never change, and if you let them give you a raw deal, they'll never give you a fair one.

I've worked in this situation. No way to know specifically what happened at Airy, but I worked for a company that was almost exactly as Airy is being described. Paranoid management, a creepy family dynamic, micromanagement, lots of promises never honored, loyalty lectures and under pay over worked staff, who bought into the vision and were essentially being exploited.

When I realized what was what, I went and found a better job. After I quit, I was talked into coming back to help answer some questions to help the person who I'd handed my work off to (I had reached a good stopping point, the code was shippable and gave them plenty of notice.)

When I got there, I got talked into the CEOs office who proceeded to lecture me about how I was disloyal, and demanded I give them several weeks of extra work. I told them that I couldn't do this and made to leave. The CEO _physically barred me from leaving_ , and I was held against my will, until I promised to give them a couple weeks of free work. They didn't hold me long because I quickly agreed to do it....luckily they didn't try to make me sign anything right then and there, and once I got out of there I sent them an email telling them that I'd be happy to do the work, and naming an outrageous price for it.

The really sad thing is, I'd showed up for free, to help them, to do the work, and instead of taking the offered help, they tried to manipulate and coerce me into giving them a lot more.

This disturbed me for several years until I came to understand the deal.

I had been exploited. The person who ran the company knew nothing about technology but was basically a grifter-- a manipulator-- a conman.

So, obviously to them, there's no difference between getting uncompensated work when I was an employee, an manipulating me into uncompensated work after I'd decided to leave.

The lesson I learned- - and the reason for this long story is this: These people cannot be reasoned with. Just leave. Don't engage them, don't debate them, and don't expect them to be reasonable. They aren't operating by the same rules you are.

I've been in the startup scene for two decades-- since well before the first dotcom boom. I've seen a fair number of this stuff, and pretty quickly got to where I could tell when a company was that way during the interview. (In Seattle, in the 1990s there were a lot of ex-microsoft millionaires who'd never worked anywhere else and thought their microsoft experience made them competent to run companies...it was quite a minefield for awhile.)

Some key signs:

\-- Primary thing: If any of the people are super creepy, or come off as hustlers, fratboys or conmen, be careful. If it feels like you're talking to a Winklevoss (as portrayed in the movie anyway) that's a big red flag.

\-- Ask arbitrary questions that they wouldn't have a pat answer for about employee benefits or having to do with how they treat employees. I used to always ask about parking. If they provided a parking space for me that was a good sign, but most didn't.... when they didn't they'd have all kinds of BS about it. (Downtown seattle there is no good parking, not once did I have a job there with decent parking... I started making a requirement of being hired that they get me a spot in a lot and pay the monthly fee. Its only $160 a month, or so, not a big hit on the salary, but the hard part is acquiring the spot.) A lot of people would BS me about parking, because I was coming from out of Seattle so they'd assume I didn't know the score.

\-- Ask them if they provide a bus pass. Ask them if they provide cell phones or subsidize employee personal computers. Ask them how often they take employees out for dinner. It doesn't matter whether they do any of these things, it matters how they answer.

\-- talking to individual employees will often give you the reality. Ask them how often people go to lunch together and if the employees ever associate outside the office. It doesn't matter the answer, but you're looking for employees who are fearful of management, or who have that form of stockholm syndrome that shows up in startups.

\-- Read the NDA they ask you to sign. IF they ask you to give up rights to your inventions _in the interview_ its a big freaking clue that management is psychotic. (Yes, I have been asked to sign that kind of document before even interviewing. Its normal when you take the job, but not for an interview.)

\-- If their NDA gives them the right to audit you for two years, including sending investigators to your home and office to search for stolen documents-- and they ask you to sign this before the interview- the company is psychotic. (And yes, this happened to me too.. the HR person was absolutely shocked that I was unwilling to sign it, and thought I was being a prima donna. I asked her if she'd actually read it, and she hadn't, and when I suggested she should, she said "Its just a standard NDA."

\-- If the receptionist is the kind of person whose Facebook profile would have a duck face, and she acts snooty to you, that's a big clue right there (I can't explain this one, but there's a strong correlation.)

\-- Always try to talk to the CEO or management. Ask them pesky questions and see how they react. Often I'd be told the company was profitable or that they'd be "filing for an IPO in a couple of years." I'd ask to talk to the CFO (and the CEO afterwards). I'd as the CFO questions like "What's the total number of shares outstanding on a fully diluted basis?" If they don't know, you don't want to work there. If they refuse to tell you, then any offer they make that includes stock options is a meaningless offer. Most people don't ask questions like this, but they are actually reasonable. (Of course if you're interviewing at Facebook, you're not likely to get to talk to the CFO, but I am talking about small companies.) If they were profitable I'd ask the CFO about margins. If they were "going public" I'd ask the CFO what he thought about that and what kind of a valuation he thought they might be able to get. Some questions they can't answer or might want to be careful about making too much commitment....

\-- Ask the CEO how he feels about computers (or some piece of technology relevant to the business.) The CEO doesn't have to be a programmer-- but I've had CEOs denigrate technical skills, or pretend like they're just as technical as the technical people even when its obvious they aren't. Its better for a CEO to admit his limitations than to BS you, and even if he's computer illiterate, his attitude is what's important. Is he the kind of guy who will shove technology decisions down the throats of engineers? Ask some questions of the CTO or head of engineering, will he dictate technology decisions?

The real question you want to find out is this: Is the CEO or anyone in management a grade a bullshittter conman? Or is he making absurd claims or promises? If he is, then he's not trustworthy, and any job offer from him is meaningless. (Once took a job with a very new company that said they were just starting to set up health insurance... over a year later they hadn't gotten around to it, but it turned out that the executive management was, of course, on a health plan.)

Another key- if they're in super fancy digs- temporary or otherwise- its a big warning sign.

Sorry this is so long. Sure there are companies that might have one or more of these qualities that are actually legit, good places. This is just some of the stuff I started to look for.

<comment><USER32>
        Another key- if they're in super fancy digs- temporary
        or otherwise- its a big warning sign.

What's "super-fancy"? Seems most successful companies (albeit also many that aren't and just living off of investor money) have pretty nice offices.

E.g. would that raise a warning sign for you with google?

<comment><USER33> I wish I could remember the source... I'd heard a few years ago that an investment company had started a "corporate corruption index" and that "super- fancy new offices" was one of twenty or thirty indicators of corruption. Taken by itself it might not mean much, but taken together with the other items in the index it was a warning flag.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> It's almost funny to see the screwed up founder and his family desperately defend themselves, against the whole world. Learn from your mistakes! You ruined the lives of 20 ex-employees!

</comment><comment><USER35> It's the valley. People learn and move on. Same for Hsu and same for the people working there. Most importantly at what price? In this case it's 1.5M and a whole lot of reflecting.

</comment><comment><USER36> What a vulgar article. I don't know Andrew Hsu and from the sound of it, neither did Anthony Ha or anyone who commented on it (there, or here).

Airy Labs may be poorly run. There are dozens of small, well-funded startups that are poorly run.

The scale of what Anthony is writing about is so small, but he's done real damage to Andrew's reputation.

Was the schadenfreude worth that? Articles like this are one of the worst aspects of startup culture. It's our version of reality TV -- taking smug delight in the bruising (merited or not) of another person.

And if you say, no! Honest! This is an important article. Now people know to avoid this awful company.

I suppose we'll have to disagree. Anthony wrote this not because it's a public service, but because everyone loves juicy gossip. Especially gossip about a wunderkind getting knocked down a few pegs.

I also think the employees are cowards for giving up that gossip, e.g., the firstname.lastname@example.com email address, but remaining anonymous.

<comment><USER37> > _"The scale of what Anthony is writing about is so small, but he's done real > damage to Andrew's reputation."_

If the claims in the article are true, the company was being run like a police state, worse than most of the Big-Company shops that we love to deride here on HN. A borderline abusive work environment that's policed over by the family patriarch and matriarch... that's "small stuff"?!

Damage to one's reputation is only unfair if the claims leveled against you aren't true. I suspect we haven't heard the last salvo fired in this whole brouhaha, but if these claims are on the mark, I'd say reputation hit deserved.

<comment><USER36> Internet-scale vigilantism has an awful side effect: it can never be entirely walked back.

The damage has been done and the crowd is happy. They have their circus.

<comment><USER36> 'A single article, quoting sources, and even giving the founder a chance to respond right in the article itself, is not "internet vigilantism".'

Yes, it is. This isn't meticulously researched. This is not a 60 Minutes exposé. Did Anthony do any fact checking? Did he spend time researching the company and verifying these people's stories?

No, he wrote an article in the Fox News style. Who needs fact-checking when you can just get people from two opposing camps to contradict each other?

It was gossip. It worked. It's no better than an article about how such-and- such celebrity yelled at a waitress and made her cry.

'In your books, me blogging about a terrible previous employer is "vigilantism".'

Again, yes, by definition.

If you put your name to it I'd think it was distasteful and a little petty, assuming we're talking about bad management and not something criminal.

If you didn't, I'd think you were a coward.

(This is my last response, so you can have the last word if you care to.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


7 ways to destroy feeling helpless while looking for work - <AUTHOR> https://www.markpearce.net/single-post/2018/01/30/Looking-for-work-7-ways-to-destroy-feeling-helpless-in-your-job-search <comment><USER2> Your site doesn't work without JavaScript turned on. Then you have this annoying pop-up and then I gave up.

If you want people to read and critique your article try and help them out a bit?

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed the pop-up issue. Thanks for that. As it's a Wix site, the JavaScript issue appears to be something they're working on.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Would welcome critique to this article if people have the time. It has been written to help a group of unemployed people see things differently.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, Dazc. How would you recommend I get around the Javascript problem? I can fix the pop up.</comment>


Porsche drives Taycan EV at high speed for 3,425 km in 24 hour endurance test - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2019/08/19/porsche-taycan-electric-car-24-hr-endurance-test/ <comment><USER2> Ah, so much for "Porsche will never make an EV competing with tesla".

[https://insideevs.com/news/323053/tesla-model-s-fails-to- lap...](https://insideevs.com/news/323053/tesla-model-s-fails-to-lap- nurburgring-under-full-power-video/)</comment>


Reactive UIs with React and Bacon - <AUTHOR> http://joshbassett.info/2014/reactive-uis-with-react-and-bacon/ <comment><USER2> Maybe I am not getting it, but to me react.js seems like a bad way of wrapping your view html in javascript.

What can you do easier using react.js (and backbone) that you can't already do using knockout and plain html or whatever markup you prefer?

To me, there is a reason to abstract javascript and similar logic outside the plain html -- however the workflow of including script sources inside html that in turn include html that gets rendered is backwards.

<comment><USER3> Knockout is pretty good, but the big deal about React vs. Knockout is _components_ and the reusability you (can) get from componentizing your view code/html.

This is something that you might not notice (and it might not even be relevant) if you just need to drizzle a little Knockout throughout your app/site for a little interactivity, but the lack of abstraction really starts to hurt once you go beyond simple interaction.

EDIT: Oh, I should also mention the Virtual DOM, but that's not really that relevant unless you're experiencing performance problems. It might also be very handy for server-side rendering, but I don't have actual experience with that, so YMMV.

<comment><USER4> I think angularjs is better than knockout if u r looking for full blown mvc app in Js as it supports DI and testability. On the downside, angularjs have lot of configuration

<comment><USER5> Angular is a framework, knockout and react are data binding libraries. You can get dependency injection and testing with both, its just something you have to set up yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Perhaps this example is a little too contrived, but the real power of reactive streams becomes apparent when you want to do something more complex."

What is that something? This is indeed a recurrent problem with all these new tools and technologies: small examples that don't reveal the issues you will have when your system starts to get larger and more complex.

</comment><comment><USER7> My team has been using React full time since half January. What felt like a gamble initially, turned into mad love. I understand why people still use e.g. Angular, but only for the same reason as why people still use PHP: legacy. React is simply _that_ much better. I hope its ideas will spawn many followers.

Our design/css/markup person loves it, because with JSX she can trivially write familiar HTML, and at the same time she's highly encouraged to make little reusable building blocks (components, in React lingo).

The result is that our view codebase is remarkably well structured, even though very little of it has been touched by seasoned hardcore programmer types. React pulls us into this "pit of success" of locality, reusability and clarity.

I'll braindump what we do, for those interested, just to share an alternative approach as the one listed in this blog. I'm not sure whether it's better or worse - we're probably doing some things in ways that could be better, so I'm very open to questions and critique, too.

Our frontend architecture is Model-View-Nothing. Our view is pure React components, with a root component called View which has, as its state, the current page and the model. We also have a thin "proxy" with a function for each backend API call, but it has no state so it's not very interesting in terms of architecture.

The model is a simple hierarchy of classes. We use TypeScript for these classes, but it could've been CoffeeScript, ES6 or JS-hacked classes as well, no difference. Our root model class owns all other model objects, hierarchically.

A user action typically causes our model to want to extend or update itself. It does API requests to our backend for this. In the case of PUT/POST/DELETE, we update the local model first, and then asynchronously send it to the server - our data is such that we can assume that most of the time, the operation will succeed. This is great, because we can re-render the view before the server even acknowledges the operation's success. This makes the app is _very_ snappy.

We even do the same with GET requests: very often, we already have _some_ of the data we're getting (e.g. if you go to a user profile, you typically clicked a link with that user's name and avatar on it). When it makes sense, we just show the page immediately with what data we have, and show a little loading animation for the rest. Again, this makes the application feel very responsive.

This works for us without any additional tools, because our model layer _somewhat_ resembles the structure of the view. I suspect that this is quite common (e.g. if you're displaying a list of tweets by a user, you probably have a "root -> user -> list-of-tweets" structure both in the model and the view). It allows us to pass only the model data to a React component that it needs, making our React components very slim and reusable.

In effect, our model layer is one big client-side cache. The methods on the model deal with synchronizing this cache, and the view just re-renders whenever the model tells it to. Another benefit is that if users navigate to pages they've seen recently, we still have all the data, and can show it right away (and refresh it in the background).

All of this works great on mobile too. Especially when viewing a page you saw before (e.g. by hitting "back"), the difference is enormous: many mobile browsers cache very little history (at least my Chrome doesn't do it much), but for our page, it's instantly there.

We would've gone for this dynamic no matter what, because we want to make a web app that feels like a native app. Nevertheless, I believe that React allowed us to do it with amazing simplicity and effectiveness. Other tools, such as Spine[0] encourage the same asynchronous dynamic, but I believe that without React, we would've spent a lot more time fighting with state, asynch timing issues, and all that.

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

<comment><USER8> > I understand why people still use e.g. Angular, > but only for the same > reason as why people still use PHP: legacy.

Not an Angular lover, but devs use Angular because it's the quickest way to build LOB clients with javascript. It's no legacy or whatever,just pragmatism. People coming from flex/wpf know what I mean.

Angular doesnt answer all problems and is not for all use cases but for LOB clients it handles 90% of use cases and problems. Same cannot be said for React without 3rd party libraries.

No framework can ever be a silverbullet, I would not use Angular for an app with a lot of transitional states and animations.

In theory you could use React with Angular but frankly I dont see the point.

> but only for the same reason as why people still use PHP: legacy

? You just cant compare apples and oranges, a javascript framework and a serverside scripting language.

<comment><USER9> Angularjs first release was about 6 years ago so it's hardly legacy. It's almost as if the OP was trying to plug React..

Anyway, in my experience angular is half the code, half the time, and half the cost.

[http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Angularjs](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Angularjs)

Well will you look at that, angular seems to never get less popular.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The use of setState in React strikes me as a code smell. React has two ways to provide state for components: props and state. I prefer using React in a more functional style: your model is managed separate from the view and updates are handled just by re-rendering the view from the top (which React handles efficiently).

In other words: I haven't really seen a need for a library like Bacon when using React, because React provides a means for generating a view without "wiring it up" as you do in a typical reactive app. You just regenerate the view whenever an action is taken that might have changed the model.

<comment><USER11> I agree. Using setState within a nested component should be limited to UI-only functionality, such as tab views or toggling menus or the like.

Even then, if one were to have a single object that store the entire state of the application, this object could easily be saved to localStorage or pushed to the network for syncing to other clients. If the user were to reload the application or perhaps resume use on another device, they would be presented with exactly what they left behind. The infrastructure and code to do so would be very trivial.

The days of state being spread over and managed by a number of objects has come to an end, at least for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Am I the only one frustrated by the seeming lack of communication and mindshare between devs working on React and those working on Web Components (polymer.js).

There's so much overlap yet I can't find a detailed comparison or discussion of the two directions. The mailing list discussions I've found the devs seem very dismissive of each others projects.

</comment><comment><USER13> All of this complex front end framework stuff I really don't see that it is necessary. You can write basically the most important part of the framework into a very small coffeescript file.

[https://gist.github.com/Kequc/11083050](https://gist.github.com/Kequc/11083050)

Then your class:

      class MyApp.Cat

        constructor: (data) ->

          @element = $('

')

          @update = new MyApp.Update @,
            name: (v) =>
              @element.text v
            color: (v) =>
              @element.css backgroundColor: v

          @update.all data

      new MyApp.Cat
        name: "Gary"
        color: "#FF00FF"

<comment><USER14> Ok now let's try to write a Todo List app. We'll have a TodoListView that shows a set of TodoViews. The TodoListView will need to initialize instances of TodoView for each item in the list, and react to model change events to know when to create or destroy new child views, so somewhere we'll need a map from model id to TodoItem view to do the book-keeping and cleanup. The child views will be displayed in order based on one of the model attributes, so whenever that attribute changes on a model, we'll need to find the relevant views and manually reorder them in the dom. And what happens when something in the todo item changes: do we re-render the whole thing (don't double-attach event listeners!) or selectively change individual parts of the dom?

If you've built large-ish things manually or with Backbone, as I have, this kind of thing is about 80% of your code. Just doing bookkeeping and manually futzing around to keep the dom in sync with your data.

Now compare with React, Angular, or Ember. Your list view just says: take all my todos, order them, and display each one in this way. It's the framework's job to deal with creating and destroying, reordering, and updating those views in order to keep the DOM in sync. This ends up cutting out lots of code while producing better results, since the framework is written by smart people and thoroughly tested, whereas ad-hoc list view implementations are generally either buggy or have memory leaks.

<comment><USER13> Build a javascript object.

      MyApp.CatManager =

        init: ->

          @container = $('#cats')
          @collection = {}

        add: (cat) ->

          @collection[cat.data.id] = cat
          @container.append cat.element

        remove: (cat) ->

          delete @collection[cat.data.id]
          cat.element.remove()

        all: ->

          $.map @collection, (cat) -> cat

        get: (id) ->

          @collection[id]

        arrange: ->

          sorted = @all().sort (oa, ob) ->
            a = ob.data.name
            b = oa.data.name
            if (a  b) then 1 else 0

          $.each sorted, (i, cat) =>
            @container.append cat.element
            true

Allows you to maintain full control over configuration and of what is going on. I have a question, Angular was built by very smart people at Google that is undeniable. But, does Google use Angular in their products?

I think that if the application needs to be sufficiently complex and the complexity maps to exactly what an existing framework does then you should use the framework that it fits.

Generally often does that happen?

<comment><USER14> This implementation will be incredibly slow for large lists. Every time any one of the elements moves, you will make N dom changes rather than the needed one or two. In an individual case, you can hand-write the faster version. But when you have multiple components like this interacting, knowing how to do a minimal change is not an easy task.

Unless you have experts writing these things by hand, using a framework is the quickest way to minimize performance problems and memory leaks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Are you required to mix coffeescript and plain javascript like that?

What's the advantages to writing half your app in js and half in coffee script?

at least it isn't half coffeescript half typescript this time.

</comment><comment><USER16> A lot of this is over kill. FRP has a lot of complexity overhead before things get easier. For task like simple data binding as shown by author, your regular data binding library (angular, knockout) is enough. Doing the same with Bacon only makes it more complex.

FRP only starts to excel when you need to weave multiple signal sources together. Examples includes key combination for certain hot key. Or signal switching when implementing drag and drop.

</comment><comment><USER17> I love how Reactjs is getting more and more popular, i was yearning for something of quality to reach the top in the js world this days, and React seems like a very good competitor. And what i like most of it, is as simple as jQuery.

</comment><comment><USER18> There is also a todomvc with undo using baconjs. It's pretty neat when you can use Bacon model:

[https://github.com/hura/todomvc-react- baconjs](https://github.com/hura/todomvc-react-baconjs)

</comment><comment><USER19> Thanks to so many sharing their experience here.

I am considering using React but am stuck supporting IE7(!). Can anyone share their practical experience using React with clunky browsers?

<comment><USER20> React is ie8+. I think it could be made to work on 7 fairly easily, we just didn't need it for FB so we never tested it.</comment></comment>


Node.js Foundation – Node.js and Io.js Convergence - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nodejs/node

<comment><USER2> "In season 2 of Javascript, Node.js and io.js attempt to set aside their differences, but will they succeed?"

<comment> gr8b8m8-88 I don't know why I'm arguing this, but having worked as a network TV writer for some years, this is clearly a season 3 plotline. Season 1 was nodejs getting popularity, and it ends in the season finale of it splitting apart into node and io. Season 2 is nodejs and iojs each doing their own thing and their paths seemingly to diverge hopelessly (i.e. io does es6 while node gets on the raspberry pies or something). The season finale of s2 is node and io announcing they'll get back together again. Thus, season 3 is when we find out if it will work out or not.

It's this way because you necessarily need to build their getting back together by stretching and emphasizing their time apart. If you break up at the end of s1, and get back together at the beginning of s2, people will watch and think "wow, this is dumb, they're clearly just drumming up dumb drama" and then s2 is going to experience the linear slump in ratings and no one will watch s3.

By the way, the season 3 finale of Javascript can be Alex Gaynor returning with another extremely pointless and controversial pull-request that riles up bad memories.

<comment><USER3> Turns out, all this will-they/won't-they drama was really just for ratings. Good move, Joyent. Good move.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What is the advantage to creating a new foundation to manage Node.js vs joining the Apache Foundation? Or is the Apahe Foundation not an option for some reason?

<comment><USER5> The foundation is being created with help from the Linux Foundation. [http://blog.nodejs.org/2015/05/15/node-leaders-are- building-...](http://blog.nodejs.org/2015/05/15/node-leaders-are-building-an- open-foundation/)</comment></comment>


Opigno - <AUTHOR> https://www.opigno.org/en

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea is to provide an end product in the form of a distribution (Opigno) based on Drupal, but at the same time to provide a framework. The user can download different apps separately and create their own, customized e-learning solution.</comment>


Ask HN: Is Dropbox good enough to sync code between computers? - <AUTHOR> I'm sure a lot of people have this problem. You code on one computer, then want to pick it up on the next computer.<p>Yes, we could use Git and Github to do pull requests, but there is a lot of stuff I put in my gitignore file that would just be nice to have synced across (like bower components). <comment><USER2> I had to take this one step further and actually use dropbox as a deployment mechanism. I was working for a government department and could not get remote access to the servers. This meant a one hour drive each way anytime I had to make a change to the code. I couldn't test, get updates to the data model, deploy or even check that the server was up without driving two hours.

This wouldn't have been bad if I could have spent a day out of every 5-7 at this clients offices which is what I did do for the first few days getting their very simple data services setup. However, after initial development there were many configuration changes and problems with their data and network that meant I was hopping in my car to spend ten minutes changing a line in a config file.

I couldn't install remote desktop software or get access to the right machines over their VPN, but I did convince the sysadmin to let me install dropbox on the web server. I simply setup a deployment profile that pointed to my local dropbox folder on my dev machine and when I needed to push changes I would just build against that config and deploy to the dropbox folder. A few seconds to a minute later I could reload the clients web page and see my changes.

The actual setup was somewhat more complex than this. I had to configure dropbox to run as a service so it continued to run even when my user was not logged in and I took some extra security precautions with the dropbox user permissions.

</comment><comment><USER3> I previously used Dropbox to sync my code (in addition to having it on Github).

But once, it had some sort of a conflict and simply replaced some of my files with incorrect versions when I edited on another PC while forgetting to run sync on previous PC (my mistake). I freaked out and stopped the practice because I felt like Dropbox does not handle conflicts well.

I use OneDrive for syncing my projects folder now. Haven't faced any problems yet (apart from OneDrive changing permissions on all my files). However, I treat this strictly as a secondary backup in addition to Github.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've moved my personal working source-dir to Dropbox, and symlinked it to ~/src on both my computers (in addition to my editor's workspace and session files, amongst other things).

It has worked like a charm in my case, though the odd conflict does occur when changing very quickly back and forth between keyboards. I've also experienced some sync failures when rapidly changing lots of small files, but this can be remedied by pausing and resuming sync.

Though I've been doing this for years, I have never experienced any bigger problems that I were not able to fix with a quick rollback via Dropbox' web interface.

</comment><comment><USER5> I do this, but be aware, it's mainly for going from my office computer to my home computer. I don't know if it would suffice if I were using two computers at nearly the same time. Dropbox takes at least several seconds to sync files, longer for big ones, so if you're literally going back and forth between two keyboards you may need to wait for Dropbox to catch up.

</comment><comment><USER6> How about using syncthing instead?

[https://syncthing.net/](https://syncthing.net/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I mostly write small 1 file python, PowerShell scripts along with some VB.Net utilities. I just save my work in my drop box and I'm able to work on them on any computer. Works pretty good for small projects that you're working on alone. I should figure out git one of these days I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER8> No. That sounds enticing, and I tried that, but there are just too many things that can go wrong and you'll end up with corrupted repositories.

</comment><comment><USER9> I do this for a few personal projects between work and home. It works on a small scale, not the most efficient method however.</comment>


Videos for MIT 6.00 - Python Version - <AUTHOR> http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer-Science/6-00Fall-2008/LectureVideos/index.htm Not entirely sure how new this is. <comment><AUTHOR> A bit disappointingly it appears that they have also lowered the bar. The concepts thought appears distinctly less advanced compared to previous years when the class was thought using Scheme.</comment>


Riot tells pro League of Legends players they can't stream competing games - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/12/riot-tells-pro-league-of-legends-players-they-cant-stream-competing-games/ <comment><USER2> Currently, pro gamers have a lot of downtime between League of Legends games due to having to queue up for a game after finishing a previous one.

These queue times range anywhere from 10-25 minutes on average, during which here is literally nothing to do besides playing other games, like Hearthstone.

I don't think Riot thought this one through. Instead what they should do is figure out a way to fix the queue times at the highest level, and this would honestly not even be a problem. At this point, they just appear overly controlling.

<comment><USER3> There really isn't a way to fix those queue times, though. When you have a small player pool (like you do on the far end of the skill curve), you have two choices: Accept long queue times or accept the likelihood of wildly unbalanced matches.

<comment><USER4> Gamers understand that Riot has no way to shorten the queue time dramatically, and that's ok. That's not the root of the problem. The root of the problem is Riot's attempt to prohibit players' behavior to the point where people would consider to be way too invasive and way out of the norm.

With this event going forward, I just hope that the progamers get paid more for agreeing to this clause. This is pretty ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not familiar enough with physical sports to know: do professional sports organizations generally do this kind of restriction? Worldwide? Is there any kind of cross-sport prohibition? I could believe it, since I've never actually seen or heard of players showing off without a contract of some kind... and yet, that might simply be because I don't hear about it.

<comment><USER6> This would be an appropriate comparison if they had restricted all competitive games (although the Hearthstone ban is fairly damning), but given that they didn't, I think it would be more enlightening to ask if pro sports leagues prevent their players from participating in other leagues for the same sport.

My knowledge of professional sports is pretty limited to the US, where there is essentially a monopoly in each sport. Does anyone know about this? I suspect soccer or cricket, both fairly international sports, might have good examples?

<comment><USER7> The answer is a big "it depends." Most times it is simply not feasible for an athlete to participate in two different leagues in the same sport due to either the overlap in their seasons or the geography involved (the highest paying leagues almost all end up as monopolies in their region in that particular sport).

One notable example is female basketball players. The two most popular and highest paying leagues are in Russia and in the USA and have seasons that do not overlap. It is pretty common for good players to play in both leagues. As far as I am aware, there is no restriction on this by either league.

Another example would be in football/soccer. Player's who play in the US are often "loaned" to teams in Europe in order for them to continue playing during the duration of the off-season. This allows them to stay in shape, face better competition, and improve their game. The team that receives the player will generally pay the team that loans the player an agreed upon fee in order to compensate them for the risk of injury. If the two teams can't agree on a fee, the player will be prevented from playing for the second team.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Riot has never heard of Deion Sanders (A professional two sport athlete in the MLB & NFL)...

It's a shame to limit people's personal pursuits

<comment><USER3> I remember there was a huge advertising campaign back in the '90s around the fact that Bo Jackson was an all-star player in both the NFL and MLB.

<comment><USER9> Bo Knows

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There was a bit of discussion about this on the subreddits for LoL[1] and Dota2[2]. I don't think any esports fan or player is happy that Riot is going this direction.

[1] [http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1s38ea/lcs_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1s38ea/lcs_2014_contract_stipulates_players_cannot/)

[2] [http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/1s38uc/dota_2_censore...](http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/1s38uc/dota_2_censored_by_riots_season_4_lcs_contracts/)

<comment><USER11> And over on /r/Starcraft. It's pretty bad, but frankly I'm not surprised. At a convention they stopped Dota2 from being played there.. I wish I had the link for that.

<comment><USER12> That was just recently at PAX IIRC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Update from Riot - [http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1sa59j/upda...](http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1sa59j/update_on_the_lcs_streaming_policy/)

Basically, they changed the terms so players can no longer accept sponsorship from other game companies to stream their games.

</comment><comment><USER13> Alright so this only concerns SPONSORISED STREAMS, and it's not that big of a deal (calming people down before they go crazy on articles that do not provide full details to a story)

This means they can stream other games during the LCS they just can't be paid to put company logos. It's just a commercial agreement more than anything

<comment><USER3> That isn't right. These players are not allowed to stream the games at all as long as they are affiliated with Riot. From the original source:

"onGamers has confirmed with the team representatives that LCS players are disallowed from streaming the games listed below outright"

<comment><USER14> I had the impression that LCS players were only disallowed from streaming those games if their stream advertised League of Legends content.

At the top of the Elo ladder, queue times can be up to half an hour as the matchmaking service tries to build a fair game. Many of these pro players will play another game (Super Meat Boy, LIMBO, Dust, Mark of the Ninja, Hearthstone) on stream while they're in queue. This ban seems to target other games that could be competitive e-sports, specifically the new Blizzard game Hearthstone.

<comment><USER3> > _I had the impression that LCS players were only disallowed from streaming > those games if their stream advertised League of Legends content._

They're not allowed to stream those games if they have any affiliation with Riot.

> _This ban seems to target other games that could be competitive e-sports, > specifically the new Blizzard game Hearthstone._

It does lean that way, though I'm not sure there's much of a danger of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans becoming a competitive e-sport.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Riot are a blight on the pro gaming scene. Sigh.

<comment><USER15> Not that I agree or disagree, but as a counter-point: Riot has sunk many dollars into organizing leagues for LoL teams, and has put on numerous high- profile events in attempt to push professional gaming into the mainstream.

With what do you substantiate your claim.

<comment><USER16> They do that because they think it makes sense financially.

They have a history of trying to corner out the market by trying to force traditionally multi-game events into only hosting LoL and not hosting competitors games. They aren't supporting professional gaming, they are supporting their marketing, under the guise of helping out e-sports. This is my opinion on the matter. Riot is also known for many shady business practices, especially with regards to competitors, and they are also owned by Tencent, arguably a company with one of the worst reputations in the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Didn't Saintvicious say it was an old contract? And they are now allowed to do it? Confirmed on saint's stream.</comment>


New – AWS Application Load Balancer - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/ <comment><USER2> This is essentially [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12268737](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12268737) without the complete URL.</comment>


A curated list of data science blogs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rushter/data-science-blogs <comment><USER2> Shameless self promotion of my own blog with a lot of data analysis/visualization resources: [http://minimaxir.com](http://minimaxir.com)

Currently working in a blog post (hopefully will be up tomorrow morning) on how I reverse-engineered the Taxi Map of NYC which was posted in the HN comments this week ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10004007](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10004007)) using only R and ggplot2 as visualization tools: [http://i.imgur.com/WzMnCbU.png](http://i.imgur.com/WzMnCbU.png)

<comment><USER3> I've been a big fan of your blog and also tried to recruit you at one time to no response!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yet another list of helpful data science resources: [https://github.com/okulbilisim/awesome- datascience](https://github.com/okulbilisim/awesome-datascience)

Also, the most useful single piece of info I have found regarding machine learning: [http://scikit- learn.org/dev/tutorial/machine_learning_map/in...](http://scikit- learn.org/dev/tutorial/machine_learning_map/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone have a "top 5ish" version of this list for people who want to keep up with the major stuff, but don't want to flood their reader with data science? I can't tell if this repo is ordered (so that I could just take the top X), but I suspect that it isn't.

</comment><comment><USER6> Could they add a line or two explaining what is covered in each blog?

</comment><comment><USER7> Shameless promotion of my list of data visualization resources: [https://github.com/fasouto/awesome- dataviz](https://github.com/fasouto/awesome-dataviz)

</comment><comment><USER8> You guys forgot [https://medium.com/@Semantics3](https://medium.com/@Semantics3) !!

</comment><comment><USER9> Tangent- I just saw this AMA with Zachary Neal and Randy Olson (starts at 1pm EST) and thought it might be of interest here:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3fzs8v/science_ama...](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3fzs8v/science_ama_series_we_created_a_map_of_reddit_to/)

</comment><comment><USER10> The Stitch Fix Tech Blog is also nice: [http://multithreaded.stitchfix.com/blog/](http://multithreaded.stitchfix.com/blog/)

And has recently covered GAMs, mixed effects models, word2vec, and tools like Pyxley.

</comment><comment><USER11> I kinda did the same thing but I put mine in opml format so people could import them into their reader.

[https://github.com/jhwhite/datasceinceblogs](https://github.com/jhwhite/datasceinceblogs)

</comment><comment><USER12> Another repo I like to check out for CS research papers and the like: [https://github.com/papers-we-love/papers-we-love](https://github.com/papers- we-love/papers-we-love)

</comment><comment><USER13> hadoop hands-on tutorials [http://hortonworks.com/tutorials](http://hortonworks.com/tutorials)

</comment><comment><USER14> What's a good RSS reader tool these days?

<comment><USER15> Feedly? Honestly almost every single one of them is identical and they fall into two camps: one is the utility feed reader where all it does is display things in lists and keeps unread statuses (feedly, bunch of other misc apps) and the other camp tries to make them fancy / look nicer (instapaper, pocket, even evernote) but also keeps track of unread statuses, etc.

They're all "good" though I'm not convinced anyone provides a great experience in the read-it-later game. But now I'm getting off topic and ranting.

<comment><USER16> Feedly might be great, but until I can sign up with my email address (not through connecting it to another social account), then they're not really an option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> No [http://www.datatau.com/](http://www.datatau.com/) ?

<comment><USER18> Well, it's not a blog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> mmm, no R-bloggerS?

<comment><USER20> For the uninitiated [http://www.r-bloggers.com/](http://www.r-bloggers.com/)</comment></comment>


Windows 10 is free – for all 7/8.1 users for first year - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/01/windows-10-free-for-all-windows-8-1-and-windows-7-users-for-first-year

<comment><AUTHOR> Nadella is on the right track, but this move wasn't bold enough, the Windows clients should adopt the OSX free model while still charging for server licenses.

It's about 20% of revenue so it would be a big hit to earnings, but the mobile ecosystem game is too critical to play around with. If they don't start doing better soon they could become relegated to a cloud/server only model completely within 5 years.</comment>


United Airlines: A first-class cock up - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2015/02/united-airlines-0 <comment><USER3> CFR Title 14 § 399.88 (a): Prohibition on Post-Purchase Ticket Price Increases.

[http://airconsumer.dot.gov/rules/EAPP_2_FAQ_01-11-2012final....](http://airconsumer.dot.gov/rules/EAPP_2_FAQ_01-11-2012final.pdf)

Section 399.88(a) states that it is an unfair and deceptive practice for any seller of scheduled air transportation within, to, or from the United States, or of a tour or tour component that includes scheduled air transportation within, to, or from the United States, to increase the price of that air transportation to a consumer after the air transportation has been purchased by the consumer [...] even when the fare is a "mistake."

This is done specifically in case an airline decides to publish a $1 transpacific business class sale, too many people jump on, and then the airline retroactively decides the price was too good and voids peoples tickets out or comes knocking for more money.

It will be interesting to see which side the DOT takes this time around.

<comment><USER4> If the bookings were on United's website (it doesn't say exactly) then they should be liable regardless of how it got that way. If the bookings were on another website then the DOT will likely agree with United. Having worked for a large travel OTA, the rules for the taker of money are different than for a third party who only collects the data but not the money.

<comment><USER3> I think you're conflating consolidator/unpublished fares with published fares. These were all published fares. Even OTAs have the plating carrier collect the money on published fares. Either way, point of sale doesn't matter for DOT to apply, just that you're flying to or from the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > "And even more so it is not fair to revoke the tickets that were already > purchased."

I'm always amused when people whine that a company didn't honour an OBVIOUS pricing error. It is one thing if the price was 10% off, but in this case it is like a 90% reduction if not more (depending on which first class fare class the tickets were in, £52 instead of £1000-1500).

The only thing I will add as far as fairness goes, is that customers are often held to a different standard. If a customer makes a mistake in their booking, they have approx. 24 hours to fix it for "free." If a company makes a mistake they often have near unlimited time to fix it (until check-in?).

But as far as cancelling mistakes in general? I have much more sympathy when the company takes too long to do so, or the pricing error is more subtle than in this case.

<comment><USER6> > an OBVIOUS pricing error

How does the average person know when something is an obvious error? Pilots and other airline personnel often fly standby at ridiculously cheap rates. Sometimes airlines fly planes almost completely empty: [http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/13/travel/man-alone-delta- flight-...](http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/13/travel/man-alone-delta-flight-feat/)

It seems plausible that United could offer extreme discounts for some unknown reason.

<comment><USER7> When you can buy something at a 90% discount that is at an unadvertised price by buying it in a different currency than it was quoted, it should be completely obvious that it is a pricing error.

As for pilots flying standby, it's a perk of being an employee in the industry. Every single industry has perks for those within it.

<comment><USER6> Why is it obvious? Many goods and services are sold discounted for pennies on the dollar.

I might have thought it was a pricing error or I might have thought it was some sort of bizarre Danish Groupon-esque marketing ploy.

bookingbuddy.com is currently advertising 80% off sales. I don't see how 90% becomes unreasonable compared to that.

<comment><USER7> 1) It wasn't for Danish customers. It was English customers who were trying to paying using Danish currency.

2) Booking buddy is advertising the sale.

3) "Bizarre Groupon-esque marketing ploy" depends on marketing.

Companies don't intentionally, and without advertising, discount shit for 90% off, but only when you find a backdoor method to get there.

You're either really grasping at straws to legitimize this, or you're completely clueless about how the world works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Talking about switched prices: I read recently about Amazon and Squaretrade. Apparently, Amazon pulls in the Squaretrade warranty price dynamically when it renders the page for an item; and Squaretrade uses some sophisticated model to determine the price. So if you add it to your cart when you're buying the item, you are not guaranteed to get the same price you saw; the price of the warranty in the cart can often be much higher.

<comment><USER5> That's pretty damn shady if true.

Also likely illegal in Europe at least. There have been cases of prices magically increasing as items are moved to the cart/checkout, and companies have been fined (see EasyJet for one example).

<comment><USER8> Here are screenshots: [http://imgur.com/a/qGLAc](http://imgur.com/a/qGLAc)

Seems like a legit case of bait-n-switch to me. Granted, it's not a lot of money, but still something to lookout for.

<comment><USER5> I was able to reproduce that. In fact I witnessed THREE prices, one of the item page, another on an "add coverage" popup and a third in the basket.

That's really shady.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Airlines make less than a dollar per traveler per flight correct? They expect little year-over-year growth, and likely see little more than the baseline return on their marketing spend.

If that's their worldview, I can't see how they would ever justify such a large comparative loss for a little PR bump.

<comment><USER10> > Airlines make less than a dollar per traveler per flight correct?

No, that is wrong. Very wrong.

United: $1.13 Billion Profit 2014

The so-called ancillary revenue alone — fees for everything from checking a bag to more legroom — amounts to more than $22 per passenger.

<comment><USER11> It's hardly _very_ wrong. United carried 139m passengers in 2013, that's just over $8 per passenger.

If they do indeed make more than $22 per passenger on ancillary revenue, that means they loose $14 per passenger if you look at the fare in isolation.

<comment><USER12> Profit != Revenue

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article's conceit assumes there will be a measurable PR hit from this, a dubious assumption at best.

</comment><comment><USER14> $80 for 5 hour flight seems like reasonable price. Ryanair has similar distance for $40 (London Athens). 1 hour flights are often for $12.

Edit: NY to London is actually 2x distance between London and Athens

<comment><USER15> For a first class ticket?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So what was the total value of the "loss"? And could that not have been made up in creating some goodwill around the incident or avoiding bad will?

</comment><comment><USER17> ughh! Paywall article, apparently I've exceeded the 'article limit'...

</comment><comment><USER18> Surely an article like this belongs on reddit, not here?

</comment><comment><USER19> I can't believe that people are so shameless that they will actually complain when they attempt to rip off a company and their trick is discovered. I can kind of sort of understand making the attempt in the first place, but surely one should have enough human decency to let it go once you get caught.

Edit: the points history on this comment is interesting so far. Up, then quite a bit down. I wonder what you're downvoting. Do you just dislike the straightforward language of calling a spade a spade? Do you actually somehow think that it's OK to rip off a company like this?

<comment><USER20> When the cable or water company does it to me (overcharging on a bill), it takes months to get solved, and they make you feel like you're trying to rip them off, so, no - it has to go both ways or none.

(Cue me last year walking into a Comcast office with my lawyer in tow to discuss them charging me a modem rental fee whereas I have my own modem - <USER2> truth, we just were in the neighborhood)

<comment><USER19> Two wrongs don't make a right, especially when they're unrelated companies.</comment></comment></comment>


DilbertFiles.com | Send Large Files and Big File Transfer by Email - <AUTHOR> http://www.dilbertfiles.com/

<comment><USER2> is this for real or it's a part of a joke?</comment>