Kerala floods 2018 - <AUTHOR> Massive destruction in unprecedented floods in Kerala creating havoc for more than a week <comment><AUTHOR> People blamed many factors for the extensive floods and resulting damage but some natural calamities are simply unavoidable. The state received 2087.67 mm of rains this season when the floods started whereas the normal is 1606 mm. Rains haven't stopped since then and all 35+ reservoirs had to open shutters at the same time to contain the flow. This is the largest rainfall in almost a century. The largest rainfall state ever received was in 1924 exceeding 3000 mm of rain which even washed away a mountain. So man made construction alone is not the cause for the destruction. Comparitively the Uttarakhand floods of 2013 that killed about 5400 people was only from 500 mm of rain. [https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.indiatoday.in/amp/india/sto...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.indiatoday.in/amp/india/story/why- kerala-fears-repeat-of-1924-havoc-in-2018-rainfall-1315884-2018-08-16)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Rescue and relief efforts are largely powered by volunteers with various government agencies. Social media is helping in a big way, however the ephemeral nature of posts make the deluge of information unmanageable for volunteers. Kerala is the most literate and have most of its working population outside. With a population of 300 million and tech savvy relatives and friends outside the state retweeting and sharing sos calls and relief resources, volunteers are inundated with duplicate and sometimes heavily outdated information. Scanning the feeds with content mostly as images and in Malayalam language with contain images and content, data collection is a huge challenge. Another challenge was identifying the location of victims. After the road signs and two storied houses were almost under water even sharing google map coordinates proved to be difficult to be useful. India does not have a standardized address system. Landmarks were under water too. So were mobile towers.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The state of Kerala known as Gods own country in India received 257% rainfall this year, the heaviest in a century. $2.7 billion in damages estimated. More than 300000 evacuated to relief camps and thousands are still stranded in flooded areas. More red alerts issues throughout the state. Cochin airport the 4th largest in the country is closed for more than 10 days. Details [https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/08/18/asia...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/08/18/asia/kerala- floods/index.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Kerala_floods](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Kerala_floods)</comment>


1Password Leaks Your Data - <AUTHOR> http://myers.io/2015/10/22/1password-leaks-your-data/ <comment><AUTHOR> If anyone wants to contact AgileBits, I've found that they are pretty quick at getting back to you, either by email or via the forums.</comment>


8 Ways to Find IT Talent for an Undesirable Location - <AUTHOR> http://www.makingitclear.com/newsletters/newsletter58.html#article <comment><USER2> "I've seen companies that build proprietary systems around older or seldom- used technology (like the PICK operating system or dBase) and then wonder why they can't attract people to work on them. You're much better off using standard off-the-shelf software whenever possible and then building any proprietary software using currently popular products."

As a long-time practitioner of the PICK Operating System, I have witnessed hundreds of companies who would NOT be "better off using standard off-the shelf software".

Stop and think how illogical this argument is. The reason people choose seldom-used technologies is because they are better for them. There are plenty of good programmers everywhere if you bother to look hard enough.

This is like saying, "If you have deliveries to make but can't find a truck driver, buy a car and make more trips."

Addendum: This is what typically happens in a PICK environment:

1\. Company implements PICK based system and hires PICK programmers to make the system do whatever it needs. (A PICK shop typically has 10% to 20% of the people of a mainframe shop.)

2\. Company is successful for many years.

3\. Company is acquired by MegaCorp.

4\. MegaCorp MBA's don't understand why Company has such old proprietary technology and "not enough help". They spend $10 to $20 million to convert to SAP or Oracle.

5\. Halfway through failing conversion that is over a year late and $10 million over budget, MegaCorp calls edw519 to propose a project to "convert them back to PICK".

6\. MegaCorp MBA's move on and blog about stuff they know nothing about.</comment>


Ask HN: Best Pretty Web Font Solutions? - <AUTHOR>

I've increasingly noticed websites using pretty fonts that are not commonly included in the standard list of "web-safe" fonts.  However many of these sites simultaneously are not using services like Typekit.
Forrst for example appears to use Bakersville, and I saw a blog post via Hacker News the other day that's using "Helvetica Neue".  My question is this: what are the best practices for using pretty fonts on websites?
Are these sites just betting on most visitors having the non-web-safe fonts and then reverting back to generic fonts under the worse case?  Would love to hear more from the community about best practices surrounding pretty font usage. <comment><USER2> You don't have to use a service like Typekit to use a pretty webfont. The advantage Typekit has is that it gives you access to a lot of font choices to use (which you wouldn't otherwise have access to) and hosts/serves up the fonts for you.

Sites not using Typekit are most likely just using their own @font-face solution and hosting the fonts on their own server (which can also be a faster solution than loading in 3rd party font solutions).

Never use fonts and just hope a user might have it. It's not too hard to roll your own solution for serving up pretty fonts using @font-face. You will need to read up on it to learn the ins and outs, and what sort of goofy idiosyncrasies exits that you need to deal with.

I would recommend using the @font-face generator from fontsquirrel.com (<http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fontface/generator>). This helps you take a font you want to use and prepare it for the web, creating all the different font file types, as well as creating the css you need to use to embed the font for use.

When you use the font, be sure to use it as part of a font-family, so that you can plan what fonts to use as a fallback in case your @font-face declarations don't work out.

Understand that your font will be rendered differently between various browsers and operating systems. Sometimes using a css declaration like text- shadow (text-shadow: #FFF 0px 0px 1px;), and matching the text-shadow color to the background color the text is on, can help smooth out jaggies on the rendered font (works well for webkit browsers), YMMV. Definitely check out how your font looks in all the major browsers, as well as different OS platforms. For instance, I have found Windows XP to render some @font-face fonts much worse than say Windows 7.

Just know that things aren't quite perfect yet with @font-face, so think long and hard about using it in a production environment, and really test all platforms, browsers, etc to see how it looks. Understand how your choice to use a custom font might hurt readability for large blocks of small-sized text (like a blog post) because of rendering issues. Also, Remember to use custom fonts responsibly, you really shouldn't need more than 1 (2 max) custom fonts on a page. Some people get a little carried away.

Some free fonts you can use online. NOTE: Always check the font license to see if you are allowed to use it on your site. If you plan to make a profit on your site, always check to see if the font can be used commercially!:

<http://www.josbuivenga.demon.nl/>

<http://code.google.com/webfonts>

Recommended reading (these should help you get in the head space of what you need to do, and what the @font-face landscape looks like right now):

[http://paulirish.com/2009/bulletproof-font-face- implementati...](http://paulirish.com/2009/bulletproof-font-face- implementation-syntax/)

[http://nicewebtype.com/notes/2009/10/30/how-to-use-css- font-...](http://nicewebtype.com/notes/2009/10/30/how-to-use-css-font-face/)

[http://www.evotech.net/blog/2010/01/font-face-browser- suppor...](http://www.evotech.net/blog/2010/01/font-face-browser-support- tutorial/)

[http://blog.themeforest.net/tutorials/how-to-achieve- cross-b...](http://blog.themeforest.net/tutorials/how-to-achieve-cross- browser-font-face-support/)

<comment><USER3> "Never use fonts and just hope a user might have it."

I would question that statement. Specifying fonts a user "might have" is the entire basis of normal CSS font selection.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with specifying a somewhat unusual first choice. That's what fallbacks are for! For instance:

 _font-family: "Adobe Myriad Pro", Myriad, Georgia, Times, Times New Roman, serif;_

Just make sure that you order them from most desirable to least desirable and it will display the best installed font.

<comment><USER2> You are certainly right about that. I should have added more context to what I was thinking when I wrote that.

I was thinking more along the lines of having some non standard font on your computer that would differ greatly from a common web-font, specifying that as the top choice in a font stack, and then designing your site using that font. Which I was thinking was essentially the goal of the OP.

I think your font stack example isn't quite as extreme as I was thinking in my head. Even still, your example has two sans-serif fonts that may/may not be on a users computer, with your fall back choices then being serifed fonts. Already, that font stack is setting your site up to present some very different designs to various visitors. That font stack would fare better if it was something like _font-family: "Adobe Myriad Pro", Myriad, Lucida Sans Unicode, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;_

If you are going to pick a non-standard font to use without font embedding, then your fallbacks should be web-safe fonts that are similar in design and in rendering size. Exotic Font Y at 16px can look much different from web-safe Font Z at 16px.

So, if a very small percentage of your users will have an exotic font installed that you want to use, and you aren't embedding that font for others to use, then you are setting yourself up for design/rendering problems for all of the people who have to use the fallback. It just ends up looking goofy and unprofessional, as well as being a bear to get to render nicely for both varying font styles in a "pixel perfect" design. Font stacks should be about trying to get the same experience across multiple platforms and browsers, not 30% get the best experience and 70% get a crummy degraded experience.

<comment><USER3> Ha! Sorry about the confusion. I meant to type Minion, not Myriad.

I definitely agree that you should be designing with the majority in mind. But if you set up good fallbacks then you can get 30% with fantastic type and 70% with quite decent type.

I don't tend to do "pixel perfect" design. I prefer designing in the browser, but can see how the traditional approach would make things difficult.

<comment><USER2> Right on :) I've been tasked lately with a lot of "this needs to look the same for everyone on every platform" pixel perfect sort of stuff, so I have had to deal with getting everything the same and haven't had a lot of leeway. If you have the opportunity to give that 30% fantastic typography, and the other 70% still has a great experience, I'm definitely cool with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Not sure why your comment got killed, but you're welcome! I had been looking into using @font-face for a while but didn't get the chance until just recently. It's kind of a moving target right now so I'm happy to pass on what I have picked up in trying it out. I'm using Museo Sans (<http://www.josbuivenga.demon.nl/museosans.html>) right now for a site and its going pretty well. That font seems to render decently across various browsers/OS.</comment>


Why people leave companies - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/287876/this-is-why-people-leave-your-company/ <comment><USER2> _" 1\. People who love their job and the company will work all the time anyway. If you've hired good fits, you'll see this happen."_

People will "work all the time" only if they love their job and the company more than their significant others, their friends, their children, their health, etc.

If companies consider a "good fit" someone who is willing to give up their personal life for the company, it's not surprising that it's hard for them to find people to hire.

 _" 2\. People do better work when they have lives of their own..."_

This seems to contradict item #1: if you work all the time, how can you have a life of your own?

One more thing: The author of this article is an HR person, so the only thing she knows about why employees leave is probably based on what the employees choose to divulge during their exit interviews. Employees are generally not going to tell HR that "I'm leaving because my boss is an asshole", since that would be burning bridges - word could get back to the boss, and the employee would never get a decent reference from them. A smart employee would realize that they have nothing to gain by telling HR their real reasons for leaving, so they'd say something generic and inoffensive like "I'm leaving to pursue other opportunities".

<comment><USER3> I understand #1 more along the lines of "people will work _anytime_ ", be it Tuesday 2am or a sunny Sunday morning, as opposed to _all the time_ , which literally means you never stop working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The counteroffer argument is weak and simply not true. And it led me to think that this Guthrie guy seems to believe that the only way of people leaving a job is looking for another one.

This is particularly not true inside the tech industry: good employees are constantly harassed by other companies. They will offer higher wages, shorter hours and tons of other benefits to make a wanted engineer turn. Sometimes those offers are hard to turn down, even if you are pretty happy with your job.

What I've seen happen to me and friends is a simple matter of chosing to be honest or not. Last time it happened to me I sat down with my boss and told him:

\- Boss, these guys want me pretty bad, they have been harassing me for months now and I turned down every offer. Problem is, they gave me this X offer now and, taking into account that I'm getting married next year, the extra money would be handy, this is getting hard to say no.

He gave me a counteroffer and we lived happily ever after.

Bottomline: sometimes the employee does not really want to leave, but it's a tough market out there. If you want to keep your engineers (and other employees as well) you simply have to be a better workplace than the others. This includes money, benefits, hours, bureaucracy, stress levels and every other possible aspect that your employee might take into account.

It's not really that different than building a product which is better than your competitor. Problem is that H&R and Hiring guys want so bad to make a case for themselves that they try those magic and golden rules that simply won't work.

You are dealing with people, be nice to them and they will be nice to you in return. If they don't, you don't want them in your ranks anyway.

<comment><USER5> The problem is that on average, giving every employee what they want in terms of salary, work allocation etc. is going to be hard or impossible. So most companies don't and usually the squeaky wheel (or the wheel that is threatening to leave) will get the grease. It is not fair but then there isn't a totally fair way to deal with this.

There is no fair way to pay people. It is a supply / demand and negotiated marketplace. There is no such thing as I am work $100k/year because I did XYZ and know ABC. I mean that may be true this second, but it is as only as true as the most up to date data. And is not true in any absolute sense.

<comment><USER4> It's essentially a min-max problem. Optimization is achievable, but hard work.

It demands honesty from both parties and any employee must understand exactly what you said: companies can't give all the employees want. You have to know your own value and make yourself valuable to the company first, then ask for recognition.

<comment><USER5> That doesn't always work.

The Pink Floyd song put's it well "When you ask for a pay rise it's no surprise they giving none away".

What does work for getting a pay rise is:

1\. If you are genuinely paid less than market then prove it by getting an offer from another company.

2\. The other option is to get promoted into a new role. As a developer that usually means becoming a manager - so even if you could add 10* more value as say an "architect" it may be more profitable personally to become a manager.

There may be other more 'ruthless' ways too. I am not ruthless enough to know about them!

But all in all value and pay are roughly correlated but increasing one doesn't necessarily increase the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The note about wages is true except in the case that your employee can make more elsewhere. Recognition is important to good employees, and failing to recognize their value is insulting.

I have worked at places where latter hires made more than former hires (same equity), this disgruntled the former hires and there was a loss of experienced people. Simply bumping people up to the company average could have retained their better employees.

<comment><USER7> I should prob make an anonymous account, but whatever. One of our sales people left to get a job in a charity shop. The wages and hours were better.

You gotta laugh. Or cry. I forget which.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I didn't like this article at all. First - it states that putting insane pressure on people to work long hours is counter productive - and mandating week-end work leads to burn out.

The very next sentence then immediately says this:

"People who love their job and the company will work all the time anyway. If you've hired good fits, you'll see this happen."

Uhh.. so you want to replace mandatory week-end over time, with an informal criteria where good fits work all the time anyway - thus if you don't work on the week-ends (of your own """choice""") you confirm you aren't a good fit?

Now, there's nothing wrong with working on week-ends when there's a deadline or an important milestone, but substituting explicit expectations with implicit ones is flat out horrendous and it means that you have to constantly read between the lines to find out exactly what you have to do.

<comment><USER9> I didn't really read it that way. I read it more like treat people with respect, don't force them to create work that is a nice or should when they should be relaxing... but people who love their job will be happy to go the extra mile, work weekends, etc when there are Must or Mission Critical things that need to get done.

<comment><USER8> Sure - and I agree with all that. The issue comes with the circularity of the reasoning:

\- People who are a good cultural fit don't mind working all the time

Therefore:

If someone minds working on week-ends - then they weren't a great cultural fit. It's almost Calvinist in its logic.

As you said, there's absolutely no problem working on week-ends when it's needed, or getting really caught up in an exciting new tech and spending evenings getting it up and running. However - when this become (implicitly) expected as a marker of good cultural fit, you've basically placed it as a burden for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It sounded good until I got to #2. This is utterly false. I would go so far as to say canonically-untrue: the only reason any employee leaves is because of their boss.

A good manager will keep an employee engaged, challenged, and happy. In fact managers can achieve this even if the company itself is not engaged, challenging, and a happy place. Good managers can also shield employees from an array of terrible dysfunction at the company level. All good managers I've ever had have this skill. A bad manager will not only expose company dysfunction, but magnify it, making the employee's job more difficult than if the employee has no manager at all. I've had the latter several times, and it's soul-draining.

The rest of the article reads like a novice's take on the SF startup scene, which I happen to loathe anyways. One funny example is the #7 HR comment, which exposes a pretty big misunderstanding about HR. HR serves no useful purpose to the employee; it exists to shield the company from problems, nothing more. Improving HR will have no meaningful impact on employee retention.

<Edited for tone.>

<comment><USER11> I've left jobs because of my boss. I've also left jobs because of completely unrelated reasons. My boss at TripAdvisor was a fantastic guy who I still hold in the highest regard and I'd go work for again if it made sense. But I was offered an opportunity simply not available at that job because it didn't exist and didn't matter to the company.

I've also been privileged to work with HR people for whom the adage "never trust them" was completely false, because they were good _people_ who happened to work in HR. So there's that, too. They were excellent sources of advice and problem-solving help when needed, and I consider at least one of them a friend even now that I no longer work for the company.

So it sounds to me like you're projecting, and kind of being rude about it?

<comment><USER12> Eh, he's not wrong (even if he's being a Walter about it).

HR is not a union for employees. HR is there to protect the company: It just turns out that the company's theoretical (keyword there) interests and the employee's interests align frequently (e.g. keeping the workplace free of discrimination, keeping employee morale up).

<comment><USER11> The point is, when you don't approach every interaction in an adversarial manner, you're remarkably more likely to not have them be your adversaries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is very start-up-focused and US focused.

I have never worked at a company in 13 years that has done a pivot. There are companies out their doing the boring (but still profitable) stuff y'know!

Also I have never worked at a company that expects me to do routine unpaid overtime over the contracted hours. But I have worked in UK/Australia with different culture. UK is best 25 days annual leave + public holidays, and often no expectation to work more than the hours you agreed when you signed up (which is fair enough!).

Ahem yet people leave their cushy programming jobs in the UK!

Main reasons for me are substandard coding practices, low pay, not interesting enough work, major life changes (e.g. moving to another country), company going downhill.

Pro tip: Don't tell the potential employer or recruiter your current salary. Or if you do lie and add 20-30%.

<comment><USER13> FYI. Every company I've worked for in London (to date, 4), has given me the minimum allowed holiday: 20 days + 8 public holidays.

<comment><USER5> London is a different beast entirely!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was nodding my head until I read the second section on advice on how not to lose people. It seemed like the most unactionable crap I've ever heard outside of the self-help industry.

Something that is actionable that can help retain employees is encouraging candor and honest communication about office politics on the part of direct supervisors. It kept me from jumping ship and I consider myself underpaid. Knowing that at least one person at the company had my best interests at heart kept me from making a decision that would have hurt everybody but me.

<comment><USER15> I know that point of view too - if you leave now, we would have to look very hard for a long time to replace you. We have many projects and you're the only one that knows X, however, we don't have the cash to offer you a raise, here are some more options for $0.001 each.

However, I usually found the minute you are inconvenient, you will be let go. Communication is important, but remember that businesses ALWAYS has their best interest in mind. Sometimes it is necessary to make tough decisions (bad for company, good for you - because you feel selfish) and quit a unwinnable situation.

<comment><USER16> I've been both an employee and an employer, and things are hardly so one- sided. For example, an engineer friend of mine works for a mega corp. He has cancer, and has been undergoing various treatments for years. The corp has bent over backward to be accommodating for his needs, such as time off for treatments, schedule adjustments, etc. For example, he's got chemobrain and they've found productive work he can do.

The corp has my respect and gratitude for this.

<comment><USER15> I believe it is because cancer patients are a protected class under ADA, I may be wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > One big difference is that the company didn't approach recruiting from a > purely skills-based perspective. "Honestly, we placed a high price on > 'hilarious' and hired wonderful people, I think partially because we were > willing to work with people who were awesome culture fits even if they had a > steep learning curve ahead of them."

I don't like the reference to "culture fit" since this is so nebulous and often abused, but the comment about skills-based hiring is really important for startups.

Lack of a willingness to develop employees is one of the big reasons startups complain about a "talent shortage." Far too many companies focus on people who can do X, Y and Z today because they've been doing those things for _n_ years, and they completely filter out smart, motivated people who, if given an opportunity and a good environment, could be developed into fantastic employees.

This has an underestimated impact on employee retention. Unless your company is a rocket ship, the person you hire on a perfect skills fit may start to feel like he or she is stagnating relatively quickly.

Growth is crucial to employee satisfaction and companies should consider the saying "a man's reach should exceed his grasp" when filling positions. Hire intelligent, conscientious people who have to grow to fit a role and chances are they'll be far more engaged and loyal than the employees who don't have to grow to do the job.

<comment><USER18> The catch, I suspect, lies in knowing how much runway you have to develop someone. The person needs a month to learn a language and framework? Sure, that's workable. Needs a year? Maybe not.

<comment><USER19> The real question is whether that person can produce usable work output while they're learning. The framework that takes a year to learn because it's composed of 12 parts that would each take a month to master is still equivalent to the other framework that takes a month to master, because your employee can be producing useful work output within a month either way. If your 12-part framework is useless until fully mastered, then you should probably pick a different framework.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I really like the note about few people leaving because of their bosses. My experiences with all companies, excepting one, has been that the person i reported to was hard-working, intelligent, well-meaning, skilled and all- around a great person; who was however constrained by decisions and outright mistakes of people above them, who sometimes manage to be so separated from the humans in their companies that i struggled to still consider them humans at all. (I'm talking outright abuse of people inside AND outside the company, as well as rampant and violent irrationality.)

<comment><USER21> Constraints are often linked to a lack of courage. People prefer to defend themselves more than what they do. They prefer to complain more than actually solve problems..

<comment><USER20> By constraints i mean managers being told "you can leave if you like" to their faces when addressing things that were actively, massively and negatively affecting the company's bottom-line and well-being.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Compensation compensation compensation. Companies _never_ value their current employees high enough. The guy who's been here for 3 years? His institutional knowledge is almost priceless. And yet, changes are, he can get a 15% pay bump by taking a new job. You should be paying him 15% above market and be happy about it. Maybe this is just the Boston area, but I have never left a job without making 15-20% more at the new job, and I'm no rock star.

And yes, don't expect people with lives to work crazy hours, but usually we just self select ourselves out of those jobs, because they're a bad fit. I suppose if you go from single to married and/or having kids, you might be stuck.

The only one I really agree with is loss of confidence, but even then, if I'm paid well, I'll probably be too lazy to go somewhere else, unless I start thinking working at the company is actually detrimental to my resume (which has happened to me once)

<comment><USER23> I think the problem is companies hire for say a web developer II position and assume after hiring they can stick to COLA (inflation) raises. Except, after three years truthfully they are now a web developer III which is a promotion and 10 to 15% increase. Since they have only been doing COLA raises (2 to 3%) it catches them and there budget by surprise. Just give 5% every year and don't worry about the cognitive dissonance you'd (the mangers) face. (I think managers have cd because they have rationalize why all of a sudden someone should be compensated 10% more when nothing much changed between yesterday and today. They need to see, think, and spread out the increase over a large period of time. Knowledge of existin outg systems doesn't happen in a day. Pay them more as they learn and know more.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I am skeptical that there really are good HR people out there who are capable of being effective in a startup environment. I think that's why startups so often don't hire any until it's too late.

<comment><USER25> Maybe not traditional HR people, but surely former startup people who were responsible for culture could be hired into head of HR roles. That's what I'd try for anyway.

<comment><USER24> Definitely. Culture is not trivial to get right, and the period of rapid growth when companies often mishire HR people is exactly when it is most needed.

I could see hiring a low level HR person in more of a clerical role and then hiring a community builder or evangelist or whatever to focus on culture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I largely agree with most of the points in this article but personally there's one thing that drives me up the wall that every company I've worked at has gotten wrong.

The author hints at "mandatory fun" with regards to company activities. I tend to be pretty strongly introverted and don't enjoy social outings very much. Yet every job I've been at when there's a company happy hour, a group going for drinks, a team lunch, or a holiday party and I don't want to go I find myself hounded for it. Made fun of for not wanting to "have fun" or ridiculed about not wanting to be "part of the team". To the point that I'll often just call out on the day of the event so I don't have to put up with it.

I guess I missed the part where me having fun by going home and sitting in front of my fireplace reading my new Henry Ford biography is against the rules. And lets not get started on how tired I am of being made fun of for not liking to drink alcohol. Team building activities and the such are fine, and I totally get why they exist and why most people enjoy them, but I genuinely don't have fun in most social settings. And I have even less when it's forced upon me or people go out of their way to try to force me into them.

</comment><comment><USER27> The article mentions trusting HR with the company's deepest, darkest secrets... Company secrets are probably one of the biggest factors of my work satisfaction.

If there are hush-hush meetings and rumors circulating, that's a huge red flag. Run your business transparently. You never know which of your employees might have a solution to whatever problem the business is facing.

</comment><comment><USER28> One of the mantras of all companies, especially tech, is that you've got to be always hiring. That means always out looking for great people who are also a cultural fit and bringing them in regardless of whether there is an open position. This is difficult for founders since their focus is typically on building the product, no matter what.

I speculate that there is a type of HR role that could fill this need, but not be a full-time payroll person for the startup companies they serve. Perhaps a type of retained recruiter but who has a much closer relationship to the start up than the current 'hunter' type that Founders never meet in person. They'd have a good working relationship with the founder and employees, actually understand the culture and the tech, and then only bring people in who they felt were truly a fit.

Do such types exist? If not, would founders find them valuable? How would you align their interest with the startup so they genuinely brought in candidates they felt were a fit?

<comment><USER12> > That means always out looking for great people who are also a cultural fit > and bringing them in regardless of whether there is an open position.

> I speculate that there is a type of HR role that could fill this need

We have this at my company (not going to name, just to remain semi-anonymous). There's a whole group dedicated just to finding people who seem like good fits for the company. They're employees the same as any engineer would be.

I don't think it's _that_ uncommon at bigger (i.e. > 100 employees) companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This article could be a lot better if it were more general and less focused on "startups"...

</comment><comment><USER30> I strongly disagree with the boss section. People leave bad bosses not bad companies.

She also assumes that a manager/boss is definitely doing a good job and therefore an employee leaving is a hiring problem. Not really... it's interesting if this is a common logic among HR

</comment><comment><USER31> i quit because after less than a year, the job is very repetitive. It's not very challenging, plus i got offered 60% raise somewhere else with some new cool stuff i want to learn -> insta-quit.

The project manager of mine was a terrible person. He made testers(female) cried in the toilet all the time. Think about it!!!

</comment><comment><USER32> The reason I leave is almost always the same: boredom and lack of actual interesting, challenging work.</comment>


Cats rival dogs on many tests of social smarts - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/05/cats-rival-dogs-many-tests-social-smarts-anyone-brave-enough-study-them <comment><USER2> Cats are not dogs which I think throws off people used to dogs.

Unlike dogs cats don't eat two meals per day they eat many small meals over the span of a day, often at a very specific time.

I also think cats throw off some people because they don't understand cats have an internal schedule. Even male cats that wander will do so at specific times and if they meet other Tom's will alter their schedule to avoid conflict.

My parents' cat puts my dad to bed each night. My mom said the cat will wait for him by his bed and if he isn't there at the "correct time" the cat goes to get him. Then once dad is asleep the cat leaves to perform other tasks on its list.

When my uncle visits my parent's their cat comes to greet my uncle. If he doesn't show up at the correct time she is visibly agitated.

Another time my parents cat saw a spider and my mother said the cat will go to the same corner at the same time to look for the spider, it's been going on for seven years.

There are many small things cats owners and we who have grown up with cats know cats have many subtle personality traits.

<comment><USER3> I've had both (but a cat first so bias) and I must say I really prefer cats for that reason: They seem to have more personality, or maybe that's not the right word but rather their behavior seems more diverse, and it's easier to map lots of their quirks and habits to human behavior. Dogs are usually praised as loyal companions and that's mostly how I experienced that too, but it was always a more naive thing. Like a little boy that understood that you're the one feeding him and being really happy and thankful for that. A cat is more like a teenager that needs a lot more space, but when they do spend time with you you enjoy it all the more.

<comment><USER4> That's only for city folk who essentially trap their cats or dogs in their apartments to help with their loneliness. Frankly I think pet ownership in cities should be made illegal because it's harmful to the pets and wild animals.

What a dog is like or a cat is like depends on setting. A dog is far superior to a cat on a farm or out hunting or in nature. You'll notice a lot more "quirks" out in nature with a dog than a cat.

It's why dogs were domesticated long before we domesticated any animal.

The only thing cats have over dogs is their athletic ability. But in terms of human qualities and interactions, dogs pretty much evolved to be with humans. People who think otherwise might have that parasite that cats give to their owners.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Clara leaves. Lyla begins to circle, seemingly in a panic, and then creeps > toward the door where Clara exited. Then Lyla meows. And meows. And meows.

Growing up, I had always assumed my cats didn't care didn't when I left them alone. And maybe those cats didn't. But of the 3 cats I've had as an adult, I've been able to get recordings of 2 of them standing at the door and meowing for a few minutes when I leave the house. They also run out and greet me and my husband when we return home. Those two never even met each other, so they each developed those behavior independently. They each had another cat at home to keep them company - but they really do have a strong social attachment to their humans. The other cat... not so much. But I definitely am not surprised to see that studies are finally confirming that some cats are socially quite clever and capable - but it's highly dependent on the particular cat, relationship with the human, and the environment they're in.

<comment><USER6> Cats that are raised as kittens and that you've had since they were young basically view you as their mother.

If they are more independent/feral then they don't really bond as strongly and are more wild.

<comment><USER7> My cat would disagree. He was a stray we got from the pound. He gives me zero personal space and wants constant love. Greets me when I come home and is very affectionate.

He has markings of taking a beating in the wild so I think a full belly and safe environment makes him appreciative.

<comment><USER8> I have a very similar cat. Rescued him last year. Will not let me out of his sight unless I've been home for 5 days straight and played him out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anecdotally, when I volunteered at an animal shelter, we had to undergo training to work with both the dog and feline populations. Something they taught us, and eventually witnessed ourselves, is that cats form much more complex social systems than dogs do. Dogs have the typical alpha/everyone else system, whereas cats seem to have more specialized roles in their organization. Some monitored the food rations, some were on watch at the door, some controlled certain areas or furniture, etc. They even rotated night shifts! Hard to verify experimentally, but work with them often enough and you start to notice the patterns. I think they're much smarter and more sophisticated than we give them credit for, especially when it comes to social behavior.

<comment><USER10> Athens, like many Mediterranean cities where winter is easy, has a massive urban feral cat population. In that environment they form colonies, often inhabiting the ruins and other protected spaces scattered about the city. Networks of cat-loving residents feed and support the colonies as best they can.

Cat-loving friends there have told interesting stories of observing complex political behavior, e.g. turf wars between rival colonies operating as if they were street gangs. Night ambushes, targeted assassination of enemy leaders.

I took it with a grain of salt, but now I wonder...

<comment><USER11> After hearing of seagull gangs having turf wars, and observing a ritualised duel between two seagulls with a circle of watchers who proctored it (the whole thing looked like Greek wrestling using beaks), believing in organized warfare between cats... Is easy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Even the most antisocial of wildcats exhibits complex social behavior in one phase of its life: as a kitten, interacting with its mother and littermates. Kittens meow if they get separated from their mother, they pick up cues from their mother in unfamiliar situations, and so on. Those experiments were very reminiscent of how a kitten interacts with its mother.

Domesticated cats and dogs exhibit neoteny: the retention of several juvenile traits in adulthood. What's more, neoteny appears to naturally result when you selectively breed a canine or feline for a sociable, human-friendly phenotype.

In housecats, social behavior may be a neotenous trait, exhibited by their wild ancestors only in kittenhood. Our pets can be seen as living in a sort of a prolonged adolescence and perhaps even regarding us as surrogate mothers of a sort.

What's especially interesting is that _humans also display neoteny_ , and it is likely related to the theoretized "self-domestication" of ourselves that the article refers to.

<comment><USER13> It's worth noting that in a way, social behavior is a neotenous trait in wolves as well. Wolf packs are basically families.

The "Alphas" are in fact the father and mother; the rest of the adult wolves are their offspring who haven't yet left the pack to try to establish their own. If the parents are still hale and healthy when the young adult wolves are ready to reproduce, they'll leave the pack to seek mates and establish their own pack.

So pack-style social behavior in a dog is essentially neotenous as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think cats have gotten a bad rap relating to how much they care about their owners. They don't show their everlasting love like dogs do but they love their owners just as much. Cats are independent by nature vs dogs that are pack animals so they behave differently.

In terms of intelligence, cats are usually a top predator so they by definition have to be smart to be able to outsmart all their prey.

In terms of social smarts, they are geniuses. How many species live in people's houses and are completely cared for and it goes on generation after generation? Cats are one of the top ones. If they didn't have social smarts that would not be the case.

None of what the article says should be a surprise to anyone.

<comment><USER15> I had a cat who was almost doglike in the amount of affection he showed me. I was often like, dude, don't you have cat things you can go do?

I only say almost though, because he could definitely be normal-cat-moody sometimes. The most dog-like cat I've ever known. He was a good boy. :)

<comment><USER16> My cat will not leave me alone. She's in my lap all day when I'm at the computer, then on my chest at night when I go to bed. If I try to lay on my side, she'll meow until I roll over.

She becomes agitated when I prepare to leave the apartment. I can't sit down to tie my shoes, else she'll get in my lap and try to stay put.

She'll be eighteen this or next month. I was in elementary school when my parents got her as a kitten.

She's not independent. I don't think cat's being extremely loving is that unusual. My mom complained that her cat also will even follow her trip the bathroom and try to get into her lap when she sits down.

I think highly social cats are much gentler, less in-your-face, than dogs. Cats match my rhythm better, and if I'm working home all day on a computer, it's nice to have a vibrating buddy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> 20 years ago, I made the stupid comment to my wife that cats were not intelligent, just parrots of behavior for food. She argued and said "we're getting a cat!" "Sure, whatever" I said, thinking it would be "a dumb cat" and nothing more. Blow my mind, our first cat was a 3 month old feral, scared and pooping everywhere for the first few days. After just short of a week, my wife gained trust, and soon the cat was freely independent and appreciative. (He was scroungy, near death thin when we got him.) Then his personality began to show: he loved my wife painting and gardening, and he loved me working on 3D modeling. He would sit next to my monitors watching me modeling. After about a year of this, I realized as a model neared completion his purring would gain volume. Renders with shadows would get him acting out. I suspected he was reading me and my satisfaction, but that reading was pretty intuitive, and I felt intelligent. Also, he liked to be fed around 2am, and would wake me with a gentle purr to my ear and once waking he'd touch his mouth with his paw take it to my mouth and meow in a unique way he used at no other time. Often we'd stay awake for an a hour after his 2am feeding, and he'd take me into the garden and show me what my wife had been working on, pointing out the new plantings and places where she's trimming. His hunting skills were remarkable too. He was a jumper, and would suddenly leap 6-8 feed into the air and eat a fly. We rarely had flies in-house, thanks to him. Sad to say, he developed feline leukemia, hid it until his body smelled like rotting fruit and died the day we realized. After he was gone, we realized he always positioned himself downwind from us for the last year of his life. He was such an intuitive soul, he solidly taught me the intelligence of cats.

<comment><USER18> I'm sorry for your loss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Cats are definitively smart. I was once training my dog how to sit and rewarding him with food. A stray cat caught on the action and come a bit close and sat/stood up as I said the words. At first I didn't get what was up but then I gave him food like the dog. His behavior definitively surprised me.

I have a friendly cat now that lives in my garden. He/She was astray but figured out how to extract resources at my will from kitchen. It is interesting how quickly he learned to respect boundaries, learn my schedule and sense my presence when I'm back home.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's not surprising that cats are smart. Many things are... but humans oddly assume that anything that cannot speak their language is not smart unless tested and proven so.

As for the dogs vs cats, my experience with both tells me that dogs often seek human approval and attention. Cats only seek attention (or food or petting), when they want it.

So testing cats would also be a test of human patience and persistence.

<comment><USER21> yes, trying to understand cat and dog communications is half the fun of having them as companions. both of my cats have meows i can understand by sound and context, whether it's hunger, attention-seeking, calling for help, etc., but each has individual tendencies. for instance, my older one uses short fast meows to wake me up to feed him, while the 9-month-old meows her disappointment when i disrupt her play by picking her up. she also tries to talk to me, watching me with her curious eyes to see if i understand her. =)

<comment><USER22> One of my cats understood a small vocabulary. I first noticed it when I mentioned "catnip" in a sentence and she got excited. She learned a number of words during her life, mostly - but not all - food related. She had no problem picking them out of a sentence, so we learned to avoid saying certain words when not appropriate.

<comment><USER23> It's funny when I ask my wife if she's hungry and the cats chime in.

<comment><USER20> That's really funny!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've been reading the book "Alaska's Wolf Man", which talks some about the behaviors of wolfs. I was impressed with the stories of there intellect and their ability to work together. Obviously, a lot of the intelligence we see in dogs is inherited instinct from their wolf ancestors.

I've also given some thought (based on other reading) about how only a small portion of our brain is responsible for thought, and what we would consider our "self" to be. We are the thinking portion of our brain "riding" on the rest of our animal brain. This explains why willpower alone does not easily change our behavior, our lower-level animal brain is a physical thing (and intelligent in it's own way) and we must reason with it and give it time to adapt in order for us to change our behaviors. (Of course, all this is probably as much imagination as it is science.)

Perhaps many animals are more equal in "raw intelligence" than we would think, it's just that their intellect is "riding" on a different set of instincts.

<comment><USER25> > Perhaps many animals are more equal in "raw intelligence" than we would > think

I think the incredible difficulty of something like machine vision versus, say, boolean logic says a lot about how similar most animals, and especially mammals, are. We consider the parts of our intellect that are most logical to be what distinguishes us from the other species. But it turns out that kind of stuff is really simple, computationally. Computers have been better at it than humans since basically as soon as computers were invented. Whereas all the stuff we have in common with most other animals turns out to be _really fucking hard_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Both cats and dogs are animals that have been domesticated by humans. Thus, they both understand human social norms to an extent necessary for their survival. Saying that cats are smarter than dogs or vice-versa seems silly. Both have adapted to different human social norms that humans find desirable.

Humans have tons of social norms that animals can exploit to their genetic advantage. A domesticated animal does not need to master all of them to be successful.

This is a long way of saying that dogs are "smarter" at some things and cats are "smarter" at some things, can't we just accept that?

<comment><USER27> > Both cats and dogs are animals that have been domesticated by humans.

From the article : _Dogs and cats traveled different roads to the human home: Dogs evolved from the social, cooperative gray wolf and are the product of thousands of years of intensive breeding and selection by humans. Cats, by contrast, descend from the fiercely antisocial and territorial Near Eastern wildcat, and they largely domesticated themselves, as the tamest cats began to hang out and hunt rodents in early farming villages._

<comment><USER26> > they largely domesticated themselves as the tamest cats began to hang out > and hunt rodents in early farming villages.

This is the problem. Cats didn't domesticate themselves any more than dogs. Dogs chased away predators, cats chased away rodents. Both were domesticated by humans, albeit based on different desirable traits.

<comment><USER27> Dogs today are essentially a human creation, through genetic selection and breeding, not so much domesticated as, for all intents and purposes, created. And cats, by and large, aren't.

<comment><USER28> The breeding of the modern dog into all of it's varied forms was something made possible by domestication, not a factor of domestication.

<comment><USER27> That's a good point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I love this thread. My wife and I have 7 cats, and they range the gamut of smarts and emotional intelligence. But all know their names, and 4/7 will come when called by their name.

<comment><USER29> Strangely, I can confirm those numbers _exactly_ , except exchanging 'wife' for 'labrador retriever'.

Top of the range is a guy with a history much like Carl in the article (whom he even looks like): Rescued as a small, scrawny, lost kitten. Now ten years old, still small and scrawny, but wickedly smart. There's all the basic stuff like opening doors, if necessary climbing nearby furniture to reach the handle, and then there's all the less easily quantifiable behaviour - foreseeing my actions, picking up the gist of relevant conversation, integrating smoothly into domestic life, balancing resources (food and litter) between upstairs and downstairs, and undoubtedly lots that I no longer notice, because I've come to take it for granted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> it's good to see a study confirm the behavior that i've seen with several cats i've had as an adult. while not with all, i often feel that it was because of not caring rather than not having the intelligence.

my current companion, a 3 year old tuxedo, loves to travel wherever she can with me in her bubble backpack, and meows heavily when i leave her behind. she always comes when called (either to her name, or to "kitten") and acts extremely intelligently. i feel that many cat "owners" who have had multiple cats have seen great intelligence in them that easily rivals dogs.

<comment><USER31> Please tell me more about the bubble backpack, I have a cat that might like traveling with me.

<comment><USER30> i bought mine on amazon, it shipped from china. from what i understand, i got extremely lucky in that only somewhere near 50% of cats seem to like it. this is the review that i learned about how many cats like it vs not liking it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mS-F4k4TnY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mS-F4k4TnY) and mine (hers) is similar (but blue) -- i had the backpack before i saw the review.

she doesn't like to ride in cars, and is wary of elevators, but loves going to the pub. she's happy to sit in it with the backpack open when she's not at home, and simply purrs and rubs her face/head on my hands when i reach in to pet her.

one warning: it is an attraction, she has had many people wishing to take photos of her ... thankfully she loves getting her picture taken.

editing to add: this is the one i purchased - [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01J2V5LOM](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01J2V5LOM)

i can provide a photo of her in it if _really_ needed

<comment><USER32> That doesn't seem like enough ventilation.

I've seen someone wearing something like this one once [https://www.chewy.com/pet-gear-i-go-plus-traveler- black/dp/4...](https://www.chewy.com/pet-gear-i-go-plus-traveler- black/dp/49442) seems like a better idea.

<comment><USER30> the sides are mesh (you can see completely through the backpack on its sides), along with the 3 ringed holes per side, so there is constantly air moving through it. she prefers the bubble attachment (the other is a perforated round disc) so that she can watch everything around her, and thus know she would not like the one you linked.

she is never in high heat while in her backpack, and airflow is very good throughout it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> One time I ran an overnight ultra marathon. It was 12 hours of running, and I managed 62 miles (100 kilometers).

Anyway, I made it home and I was laying on our bed not asleep, but about to be. Our family cat jumps up and sits on my feet purring. The cat somehow knew, and massaged my feet. It had never done such a thing before, and never again after. I have never had my mind blown more by an animal.

<comment><USER34> Your feet were probably extremely warm from all of the blood and lymphatic fluid pumping through them to heal the damage.

Unfortunately, the cynic in me says your cat was most likely being a mooch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I feel tests like these are odd. The theoretical conclusions you could draw, at best, are vague curiosities.

I also think they should not treat all cats equally. Maine Coon cats, for instance, have always struck me as an order of magnitude more intelligent than average cats.

<comment><USER36> The difficulty is in comparison. Dogs and cats will be motivated by different things thus the form of any cognitive test will differ between species. This tends to mean that you cannot directly compare mean scores between species. What this usually resorts to is a testing strategy in which you test for minimal competencies. This comes up in infant reaearch all the time. Can we set up a test in such a way so that we can show that infants remember X. Unfortunately, this rarely gives you information about how good they are at it, how able are they to do it when the context is not perfectly arranged to support that type of cognition, etc. So I suspect that cats and dogs both show some set of cognitive competencies, but how they actually compare in intellectual ability will be quite difficult to assess.

<comment><USER35> Precisely my point. Theoretically it's not useful, at best

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> "In ancient times, cats were worshiped as gods. They have not forgotten this"

— Sir Terrence.

</comment><comment><USER38> N=1 story of great childhood cat: he was a Russian blue, which I later came to understand as a particularly smart and affectionate breed.

He would come like a dog, knew many words like "peanut butter," was very clever at opening and closing all manner of doors, and was very affectionate, if you were the only one around.

Literally would grab your ankles and try to restrain you from leaving. But only if you were the only one around.

Incredible sense of spatial awareness and time of day, too. Both seem common traits to cats.

</comment><comment><USER34> I find it hard to believe that it took until 1996 to figure out that dogs can follow gaze and points.

That's the basis of how bird hunting dogs work. They follow the end of the firearm like a finger, see the fowl, see the fowl fall, then go retrieve it.

</comment><comment><USER39> For anyone wondering if cats are smart, here are two of ours after I was done playing with them with their bird feather toy one night. I figured I would stash it on a chair and maybe they would entertain themselves. And they did!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46rROBUDPYI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46rROBUDPYI)

Tulie, the one on top working the toy, is the smarter one. She had been studying how I work the toy and decided she could do it herself!

Sephie, who Tulie was entertaining, is not quite as smart, but super sweet.

They and the dogs are best of friends.

</comment><comment><USER40> Dogs are disturbingly human in their flaws, something I haven't noticed in our cats (other then them being mean). Our dog is racist and misogynistic. Smaller and younger dogs are picked on and bigger dogs are pandered to. Most of this has been stamped out, but it flares up periodically. Having dinner served and permission to eat granted by a female who goes out the door first is both amusing to watch and educational for him.

<comment><USER41> This is the most bugman comment I've read here in a long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Amongst all the domestic cat love in here please let's not forget the devastation they cause to wildlife. The same isn't true of dogs.

</comment><comment><USER43> Cats are clearly smart, but also narcissistic egotistical psychopaths that are liable to try to tear your head off if you don't let them win. A dog would never do this:

[https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-48167754/catwalk- ga...](https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-48167754/catwalk-gatecrasher- becomes-surprise-fashion-star)

<comment><USER44> Research actually shows that dogs start munching on their dead owner much sooner than cats:

> _In 24 percent of the cases in the 2015 review, which all involved dogs, > less than a day had passed before the partially eaten body was found. What's > more, some of the dogs had access to normal food they hadn't eaten._

[https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/pets-dogs- cats-e...](https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/pets-dogs-cats-eat- dead-owners-forensics-science/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Cats are extremely intelligent, it only takes spending a few days with one and it becomes quite obvious. Dogs on the other hand, I haven't quite figured them out...

</comment><comment><USER46> Have a Siamese, he's smarter than any dog I've had or met.</comment>


What Did Ada Lovelace's Program Do? - <AUTHOR> https://twobithistory.org/2018/08/18/ada-lovelace-note-g.html <comment><USER2> "Her program calculated a number that she called B7, which modern mathematicians know as the eighth Bernoulli number."</comment>


The Rootkit Of All Evil – CIQ - <AUTHOR> http://www.xda-developers.com/android/the-rootkit-of-all-evil-ciq/

<comment><USER2> Ah, and just as I read this, I find that cyanogenmod for the galaxy s has recently become stable. I now have a hot date with an exploitable bootloader.

I've been running some sort of dodgy leaked nightly build from samsung that doesn't have any carrier shite on it since I got the thing, so maybe it hasn't been there all along. Either way it's high time for some new firmware.

As others have said here, you can remove this stuff all you want, all you're doing is shutting off the simplistic application layer backdoors. There is absolutely nothing you can do about the backdoors built into the baseband firmware itself, which is what law enforcement agencies use.

Well, absolutely nothing except flashing your own open source baseband firmware from the fine folks at the OsmocomBB project. Unfortunately that project only targets a very small set of simple featurephones, which won't do much to excite HN types. What may whet your appetite however, is the possibility to inject arbitrary packets straight into the GSM network! The possibilites for fun, learning, and prison time are endless.

<http://bb.osmocom.org/trac/>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0LCgxe24Po> [27C3: Running your own GSM stack on a phone]

<comment><USER3> You don't need an exploit to install ROMs on Galaxy S variants (and in general most/all Samsung smartphones). The first stage bootloader supports partition rewrite over USB using a leaked "Odin" tool (or the open source "Heimdall" tool built through reverse engineering).

<comment><USER2> I used to use the Odin thing, but it makes me nervous. Heimdall doubly so. There's now that "ROM Manager" app in the market, which manages to flash firmware starting from userspace. I haven't looked into how it works, but I assume there's an exploit involved somewhere.

<comment><USER4> I believe ROM manager works after you have successfully gained root on your device and not before. It may have changed since I no longer have an android phone but when I had my droid the process was install a rooted version of your current OS then you upgrade from there. ROM Manager just made the installing other OS's and extras and keeping cyanogenmod up to date easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Where is the proof that this software is installed onto phones other than Android? I would like to know what made them say that it's installed on Nokias for instance...

Also, is this something that is US-only?

</comment><comment><USER6> You Americans need some privacy laws. Badly. (Yes, the EU has issues. But the privacy stuff is a step in the right direction.)

<comment><USER7> are we sure yet that EU carriers are not also using this?

<comment><USER8> It probably differs between carriers, but here in the Netherlands it's not very common for Android phones to be customized by the carrier. At least my phone (Samsung Galaxy S2) was not changed in any way.

Though if you're paranoid it's probably best to buy a simlock-free phone instead of choose from the carrier. It can even be cheaper overall if you take a sim-only carrier subscription.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is CIQ put on phones at the behest of manufacturers or carriers?

Is the data sent by CIQ charged to the user?

Regardless of the answers, this is bad, bad stuff. Given where we are with something as basic as SOPA, I doubt we'll ever see anything done to protect consumers against this type of privacy invasion.

</comment><comment><USER10> Yet another reason to never buy a phone from a carrier, or a phone running a proprietary OS.

<comment><USER11> there is not a phone on the market that does not have a locked down and 100% proprietary baseband firmware (basically the part of the phone that does the actual celltower signalling/interactions).

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

There is strong indications this is used to essentially pre-empt/backdoor the main OS for monitoring and surveylance purposes, and many models suffer from serious security weaknesses.

[http://www.zdnet.com/news/fbi-taps-cell-phone-mic-as- eavesdr...](http://www.zdnet.com/news/fbi-taps-cell-phone-mic-as- eavesdropping-tool/150467)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_listening_device#Remotel...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_listening_device#Remotely_activated_mobile_phone_microphones)

[http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/mobile-attacks-reign- black...](http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/mobile-attacks-reign-black-hat- dc-012011)

<comment><USER10> Currently in the process of getting fixed. For general efforts in this area for the entire family of GSM technologies, see <http://osmocom.org/> ; for the specific project to produce Open Source GSM baseband firmware, see <http://bb.osmocom.org/> .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is why corporations _give_ smart phones away at no cost. People pay for the phone many times over by giving away most all of their data and privacy to the corporation that gave them the phone. Most people just don't realize this.

<comment><USER13> And here I thought it was the guaranteed monthly payments for 2 years at over 100 dollars a month well after the phone's values is gone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't see reasons for such dramatic headlines.

Isn't this similar to your syslog (on linux atleast)?

There is no indication that this logging is being used for anything but debugging purposes in case of failure or crash.

<comment><USER15> syslog never leaves your local system unless you specifically do something with it.

This data is collected and sent off-device without your consent or knowledge.

Also syslog collects information on events, not specific keystrokes or commands issued and so on.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why are my Echo Dots uploading 300MB of data in 3 days? - <AUTHOR> I have several Echo Dots scattered throughout the house as well as Google Mini's.  Finally trace mac's to their data usage and found two of my 2 Dots that are most heavily used (heavily I mean may be 5 commands total throughout the day to do simple things like lights and outlets, nothing at all complicated like read me news, stories etc.)
In 3 days, each of the 2 Dots uploaded over 500MB of data I don't know what. WTF?
Has anyone scoped it out and see what kind of data is sent?  I haven't wiresharked it or anything outside of finally now realizing the data usage.
As a comparison, I use my Google Min for about the same amount of commands of similar types; lights/plugs on|off and also exclusively talk to my harmony remote.  Actually G's Mini gets about 3x more commands but in the same period of 3 days, it only uploaded 24MB.
I realize voice files can get large, depending on sampling but damn.. 500MB in 3 days??!  That's 500MB each! <comment><USER2> Possibly this: [https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/08/ai_in_brief/](https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/08/ai_in_brief/)

" Yet punters noticed their Google Homes had been recording random sounds, without any wake word uttered, when they started receiving notifications on their phone that showed the device had heard things like a smoke alarm beeping, or glass breaking in their homes – all without giving their approval.

Google said the feature had been accidentally turned on during a recent software update, and it has now been switched off, Protocol reported. It may be that this feature is or was intended to be used for home security at some point: imagine the assistant waking up whenever it hears a break in, for instance."

<comment><USER3> Echo dots are from Amazon, this article is about the competing product from google. OR you wanna implicate that amazon is doing the same?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, actually Amazon has had this feature for awhile now. Although it is supposed to be enabled as you leave the house, no really telling if its on by "accident" or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think you wanna correct your numbers. Is is 300 MB? 500 MB? Total or each? Or is this some kind of parody I don't understand?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, clarification; I have 2 Echos where one had >500MB upload while another had 300MB. Here's a snapshot: [https://imgur.com/a/8EIFDA0](https://imgur.com/a/8EIFDA0)</comment></comment>


Individual behavior in clonal fish despite near-identical rearing conditions - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15361 <comment><USER2> It seems possible to me that it would be advantageous for there to be randomness baked into personality, to avoid things like 'decision making deadlock'.

For instance, suppose a tribe of headstrong individuals who would never back down in an argument, and would resort to violence before losing face. It might be beneficial for random personality variation to exist to allow them to settle such a debate nonviolently. Maybe one individual randomly becomes able to laugh off conflict, or becomes more meek, or is more easy going.

It's kinda like how four cars that pull up to a four way stop at the same instant decide who goes: some randomness in the timing of their reactions leads to one pulling out a little before the others, and they're allowed to go, gracefully resolving the deadlock. Four naively designed AIs might get stuck in that situation (of course, simultaneity is implausible, but there are similar cases that might be more realistic).

<comment><USER3> I apologize in advance if I'm being overly pedantic, this weekend I took the time to do a cursory study of chaotic complex, systems emergence and fractals and i'm still trying on this new knowledge, but is it really considered random? (I dont know the precise definition)

Even if raised in identical conditions, a small perturbation in a social interaction (say one od the fish is looking directly at an event whilr another only catches a glance at it from the side) can bubble up to produce large changes in behavior?

<comment><USER2> It's not (probably) random in the sense of true, quantum mechanical randomness, but random can be thought of existing 'with respect to the certain knowledge'. So if you flip a coin and have as input the precise physics of the launched coin and the air, the result isn't random; if you only know 'a coin was flipped' then it's essentially random.

So I imagine chaotic systems' outcomes seem random if you have only approximate the initial conditions (since small perturbations will greatly modify the outcome) (that's probably a good, equivalent definition of a chaotic system, also).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This study's result should really not be surprising to anyone. The idea that somehow genetics + big picture environmental conditions are determinative of outcome seems so superficially unlikely to be true to me that I'm kind of baffled that anyone thought otherwise.

I'm sure many aspects of an individuals development _are_ largely determined by genetics and big picture environment (anything else would be non-adaptive). But it kind of seems obvious that within the range of reasonably adaptive differences, the outcome is likely often chaotic. That should be the default presumption, and absent some clear reason to expect otherwise, is what they should have expected.

<comment><USER5> I think you're engaged in hindsight and rather glibly biting that bullet. Large swathes of sociology, medicine, nutrition, health research, governments (even where genetic influences are accepted) are premised on the assumption that one's environment and shared environment especially causally affect outcomes in ways that can be measured and quantified and used in research and provide paths towards understanding, control, and amelioration. Parenting, or air pollution, things of that ilk. It certainly is not obvious to most people that those are all minor effects of small importance compared to random developmental noise or other things.

Of course no one would be surprised to find non shared-environment variance components which were non-zero, but it's very surprising to find that they are _so_ large: often larger than shared-environment effects, and sometimes as large or larger than heritability. This is one of the most interesting and counterintuitive findings of behavioral genetics, and experiments like OP put this in extremely stark relief. If clones in as exactly identical environments as researchers can create and perceive still wind up with such dramatic individual differences, how is science even possible on what causes the differences?

See:

\- "Three Laws of Behavior Genetics and What They Mean" [http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/three_laws.pdf](http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/three_laws.pdf) , Turkheimer 2000

\- "Why Are Children in the Same Family So Different? Nonshared Environment a Decade Later" [https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4091/dbfb736a4e793281e6b1aa...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4091/dbfb736a4e793281e6b1aa4a0a0974874832.pdf) , Plomin et al 2001

\- "Epidemiology, genetics and the 'Gloomy Prospect': embracing randomness in population health research and practice" [http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/3/537.full](http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/3/537.full) , Smith 2011

\- "Top 10 Replicated Findings From Behavioral Genetics" [https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/2016-plomin.pdf](https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/2016-plomin.pdf) , Plomin et al 2016

<comment><USER6> I have a shaky understanding of "non-shared environment", I get the sense that it is based on the context of the study. e.g. If I do a study on genetically identical mice and control their sugar intake, "sugar intake" would be shared environment and something like "exposure to lead" would be non-shared. If I did the same study and controlled their exposure to lead, it would be "shared" in that case.

Is that an accurate understanding? Is "non-shared environment" basically the "everything else" category after genetics and shared environment have been controlled for?

Also,

> If clones in as exactly identical environments as researchers can create and > perceive still wind up with such dramatic individual differences, how is > science even possible on what causes the differences?

Another point in favor of simulation theory? :)

<comment><USER7> > Is "non-shared environment" basically the "everything else" category after > genetics and shared environment have been controlled for?

Yes. For instance, in a study of childhood development, "shared environment" is the things that can plausibly be controlled since they are inflicted on all children in a family (e.g., household income, or frequency of family dinners), and "non-shared environment" is the "other" category that captures the infinite number of uncontrolled influences that different children within the family experience differently (e.g., having a scary fall down the stairs).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Worth pointing out the movie The Boys From Brazil which explores the same concept in humans: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boys_from_Brazil_(film)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boys_from_Brazil_\(film\))

<comment><USER9> A bit corny but worth watching.

Also, (spoiler alert) -- Man in the High Castle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am not biologist (that is the following is pure speculation based on ignorance) but it feels to me that the method of their cloning leaves in opportunity of minute changes in the offspring DNA.

This then still leaves open possibility that different behaviour is cause by genetic mutations but this variation it much more amplified that presumed previously.

I would be happy if somebody with more knowledge finds time to comment on this.

<comment><USER11> Would a DNA sequence comparison on the clones not be sufficient to rule out such a basic mistake?

<comment><USER5> No, because DNA sequencing has lots of errors in it. This is why you might've seen numbers like '30x' or '50x coverage': to get a decent sequence, it gets done again and again and hopefully the random errors wash out. Identical twins or clones are not _perfectly_ genetically identical, but the differences are so rare that any difference in your sequence is almost certainly a sequencing error unless you do an expensive number of passes like 70x costing several times as much. Interestingly, this comes up a lot in criminal contexts now, since you can, if you want to spend the money, figure out which of two identical twins left DNA at a crime scene.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Biological systems are non-linear. In other news Jurassic park will be opening today!

</comment><comment><USER13> Free will has been proven!

</comment><comment><USER14> Would this be called "personality"?

</comment><comment><USER15> We need Pshycohsitorians a la Harry Seldon</comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage your Twitter timeline? - <AUTHOR> I was just curious how people managed the tweets in their timeline. I struggle at them, and written below is why:
Assumptions:
1. You follow around 100 people.
2. 50% of them tweet 5 times a day.
3. 20% of them tweet once.
4. 10% of them tweet once in a week.
5. 10% of them tweet 10 times a day.
This is a rough estimate for the people I follow.
If you calculate there is a total of 250 + 20 + 100 = 370 tweets per day.
Ignoring 50% of tweets as junk.
You have aproxly 200 tweets.
How I use twitter?
I like going to twitter.com and reading all the tweets.
But skimming 200 tweets is again a pain, so much of trouble. Besides few of the tweets might call for action. There would be some links that you would want to read later, there would be some friends who would be going out for coffee, and you might want to join them, etc. etc.
One idea would be to unfollow people, few of them might get offended and then your relations might ruin or something like that.
Another would be to create a fake profile and then follow only the ones you want to and are interested in.
Third would be to have some desktop plugin that would notify with the tweets, but that would be a distraction if you are working and are in the middle of something.
Fourth way is via lists, I do not like going to twitter.com/<my_user_name>/lists/xyz  // the url does not look good.
So here is the question:
1. How do people on HN manage their timeline?  (Like there are things like Zero Inbox http://inboxzero.com/ rule for managing email)
Is there something for tweets as well, or collectively can we brainstorm over here and come up with something?
2. What other functionalities do you wish tweeter had, like categorizing a tweet in your timeline, saving it for further action etc. etc. <comment><USER2> I've been using it since 2006 and I now follow 1500ish people. I dip in and out. It's like a river.

I don't visit Hacker News or Reddit every 2 hours to ensure I don't miss a single story. Similarly, I don't want to read every tweet, RSS item, or whatever. E-mail is the only thing I do that for and even then half of it is filtered.

I'm considering creating a Twitter list for people for who I wish to see _every_ tweet (e.g. my dad who just joined) but it hasn't been important enough to do yet.

</comment><comment><USER3> I started using twitter as it comes, then when it became unmanageable I started using TweetDeck, but notifications were annoying and the client was way too heavy for my machine. The tab kept freezing all the time. That was a long time ago, I haven't checked it out for a while.

After all this, I switched back to plain Twitter and built my interest lists (smalltalk, music, friends, etc), but having to visit all these lists all the time became tedious too.

It's been around half a year I haven't read my Twitter timeline at all.

I know it sounds stupid for the way Twitter is meant to be, but until there is a functionality allowing you to silence people you follow, I just can't use it.

I know, why would you follow people if you were not interested in what they tweet? I guess I'm stupid.

<comment><USER4> "why would you follow people if you were not interested in what they tweet?"

Well, yeah. Who are these people that you want to silence but don't want to unfollow? What would unfollowing do, which you don't want, which silencing would not do?

<comment><USER3> There are basically three kinds of people I follow: people from the Smalltalk world (or closely related tech guys), people from my musical background, and friends and acquaintances from my town.

From the Smalltalk world, I'm pretty much interested in every single tweet. Besides, people in this group don't tweet that much.

As for musicians and bands, we usually follow each other in order to stay aware of gigs, recordings, etc. But following is also an act of befriending, so there are bands and individuals who tweet way too much but to whom I still want to show interest, so I can't unfollow them.

Friends and acquaintances from my town, however, you've got to follow them... and some of them are really annoying. I don't want to unfollow them because, as OP said, «few of them might get offended and then your relations might ruin or something like that». If you live in a small enough town, you'll know what I mean :)

<comment><USER4> Thanks, that's interesting, and makes me realise how much my Twitter use is conditioned by being pseudonymous and, as a result, almost entirely freely- chosen relationships. I only really follow people because I'm interested in what they have to say, not because I have some other connection to them; but if people who I know in some other context could find me on Twitter, I guess I might find myself in the same position as you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Fourth way is via lists, I do not like going to > twitter.com/<my_user_name>/lists/xyz // the url does not look good.

This seems like a ridiculous reason to me, but to each their own.

</comment><comment><USER6> 1\. I used Tweetdeck with lists to manage my timeline in the past, but I just end up reading the main feed anyway. Now I simply follow/unfollow based on what content I want.

2\. These days, after streamie stopped working, I have my own streaming twitter client. Easier to get exactly what you want when you are your own customer.

I find that getting a near-real time flow of messages is more engaging than twitter.com telling me I can now press a button to get tweets from 1-5 minutes ago, but maybe thats just me.

</comment><comment><USER7> I like to just follow people whose tweets I actually want to read to begin with. Before following anyone I check their last few days worth of tweeting to make sure they don't post junk and that I will be interested in what they have to say. Twitter is not meant to be a friendship or connection manager like Facebook or LinkedIn so much as it is a way to get concise info delivered quickly. Obviously it can be a great networking tool, but by getting others to follow you by sharing good content, not by following junk tweeters in the hope that they'll follow you back. If you're too afraid to unfollow those whose tweets are junk you're not using Twitter correctly.

Edit: That being said, I feel like a client that would let people sift through tweets more efficiently could be great for those who don't agree with me and end up following 10k+ people, and that approach definitely isn't uncommon.

</comment><comment><USER8> I just do not manage it; I read it from times to times (and different times show different people because of timezones, too), since I believe useful stuff will be retweeted anyway.

Sometimes I think I may start using a list of "close relationships accounts" to make sure I don't miss anything personal, but I've yet to start doing this.

</comment><comment><USER9> 1\. I use Hootsuite website (and Falcon Pro on my phone). Hootsuite allows you to have 6 lists (and more, with horizontal scrolling) in the same page. Falcon brings me to the beginning of my timeline's unread part, so it's easier to know what I have to read.

2\. All that I want is provided by others apps (Pocket for "read later", Hootsuite & Falcon for conversation history)

Twitter website is really useless for power users, it's a shame they try to kill every others clients with their API restrictions.

</comment><comment><USER10> I use the old "dip-in-dip-out" technique.

If I miss a load of tweets then I just have to accept that I missed it. It isn't the end of the world.

</comment><comment><USER11> I like to use Twitter to get in touch with the world without being overwhelmed too much stuff.

I try to keep my following list < 50\. It's usually a mix of real life friends, interesting people on Internet and services I rely on. A couple of those should not be there but my current client (Tweetbot) allows you to mute them.

</comment><comment><USER12> I only read Twitter on my iPad. If I have some time, mostly with a fresh cup of coffee, I open the app, load all new tweets and just read them. I follow ~80 people so this works okayish.

Some people are in a separate list. They basically tweet everything they can find or sometimes cry about stuff I'm not interested in for days. I just skim, over this list to see the interesting tweets.

Works for me, would likely fail horribly if I would follow more people.

I don't really need more features. Send 140 characters, read what others say, get a notification for mentions / DMs. The only thing I would find useful would be a synchronization between all clients. So my iPhone knows where I stopped reading on my iPad e.x.

</comment><comment><USER13> I like the Android app called Fynch.

The official description says "Fynch enhances your Twitter experience by automatically analyzing your timeline for interesting patterns of activity. It is intended to be a tool that decomposes your timeline into smaller sets of tweets that are easier to consume. Fynch is great for identifying extremely high rates of activity, trending topic mentions, and the tweets of less active users in your following list."

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rn.fynch&h...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rn.fynch&hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER14> I used to have a Twitter clients with tabs, and one tab for the people I always wanted to read (~40), and another for the rest. Since I don't have that client anymore, my Twitter usage has declined dramatically.

</comment><comment><USER15> I follow about 80 people, and I tend to read my timeline in its entirety. I look at most links that people post, and any articles that seem interesting I mail to myself to read properly later, or favourite the tweet so I can take a closer look at it at some stage in the future.

I make extensive use of lists, divided into about ten categories, each with over 150 members. I add people to lists without compunction, whereas users I follow are subject to much more stringent examination.

The alternative, which I've been thinking about doing, is just following everybody and treating the timeline as a river.

</comment><comment><USER16> Tweetbot for Mac is for me the best client by far. I follow 200 people but I have a list called "Light Timeline" that I first created to catch up my Twitter feed when I was off from it for too long. But now I only use this list, since Tweetbot deals with your lists as if it was your Timeline, you see absolutely no difference, except I now only follow 20~30 people, and I am much less distracted. (idem on my iPhone) Why not forget about Twitter web and give desktop apps a try ?

</comment><comment><USER17> I have tried a lot of different solutions to manage my twitter feed. All from Desktop apps (Tweetdeck, Metrotwit) to commandline apps (TTytter + more). In the end i settled for Tweetbot[1] for iOS (Mainly iPad) so i have limited myself to only check Twitter when i'm on my iPad, which fits me quite nicely, so i dont get distracted when working on my PC.

[1] [http://tapbots.com/software/tweetbot/](http://tapbots.com/software/tweetbot/)

</comment><comment><USER4> "Skimming 200 tweets" in one go might be a bit of a pain, but all 200 tweets don't arrive at once. If you briefly check Twitter during short pauses of work throughout the day, your 200 tweets would probably come in blocks of 10 or 20, and that number of tweets is easy to skim. And if you find there are more tweets than that, just don't read them all - anything really important will surely be tweeted again, or (more likely) arrive via other channels.

</comment><comment><USER18> I follow just a little under 100 people. A lot of those tweets are just some comments about current affairs, tech or random funny tweets. While I use no particular client to filter my tweets, but when I skim through my timeline I usually look for links.

If the tweet doesn't have a link, it is basically 140 characters of someone commenting on something and can be ignored. If it has a link, maybe it could be a tweet pointing to something interesting.

</comment><comment><USER19> 1\. I am a Twitter junkie, and have been since '08\. It's rare that you'll find a time when I don't have Twitter open in a tab; I'm checking 24/7.

2\. I just think the DM feature could be improved. It's too hidden in the current UI on desktop and mobile.

What I've found over time is that, somewhat unsurprisingly, following people I __know __always results in more interest and engagement when I 'm scanning.

<comment><AUTHOR> so how many people do you follow? and do you read all the tweets in the timeline? have you never got irritated by the crap that people come up with? for me its like, i get irritated and my fuse shorts :) and then hit back with a biting tweet, which is actually a result of getting irritated on the BS tweets which I find in the TL.

due to these reactive tweets I have lost couple of followers over time ;)

having read your thoughts, do you think, there can be something like zero inbox for twitter??

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think it all depends on what you're using Twitter for...

If it's just your personal account, just check the most recent Tweets, and ignore the rest when you get bored of scrolling down. Weed out any people you follow that do not post interesting things.

If this is for business, the more followers the better. It's best to break followers into lists so that you can see the conversations you want to participate in.

</comment><comment><USER21> Before Twitter made them kill it, I used IFTTT to append all the tweets to a text file. Then I could massively filter it in vim - I gave it it's own filetype so I send macros and bindings to do this.

Now I use a Twitter vim plugin to do the same. [https://github.com/vim- scripts/TwitVim](https://github.com/vim-scripts/TwitVim)

</comment><comment><USER22> I used to use it quite a lot, but since using iOS7 on my iPhone and losing the quick tweet button in the notification center, my tweets have dropped. [http://twitter.com/jbrooksuk](http://twitter.com/jbrooksuk)

I wish Twitter had an App.net-type system where you can continue reading from where you left off.

</comment><comment><USER23> Like other people, I use the 'dipping in the stream' approach. Still, vocal people drown some of the other people. I am experimenting a bit with machine learning methods to rank tweets based on how interesting I find them. Does anyone know of similar solutions?

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't always check all the tweets (I follow 108 people). What I mostly check and is excited to is the Twitter Interactions. Mentions, replies, follower notifications go there. And those are relevant for me.

</comment><comment><USER25> Much like email, Twitter becomes noisier than it is useful if if it has too great a presence in your life. The root of the problem is the volume of people that you're following, so I'd start there.

</comment><comment><USER26> I filter out most of the noise with a Greasemonkey app I wrote a while ago: [https://github.com/cakebaker/lessnoise](https://github.com/cakebaker/lessnoise)

</comment><comment><USER27> Some of the appeal of Twitter is that, unlike Facebook, there is no algorithm showing you just what it think is important.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Can we all collectively come up with something like zero inbox in the context of tweets?</comment>


Chrome OS joins forces with VMware to accelerate the adoption of Chromebooks - happy-go-lucky https://www.blog.google/topics/connected-workspaces/chrome-os-joins-forces-vmware-accelerate-adoption-chromebooks-enterprise/ <comment><AUTHOR> Are these Windows apps being deployed and made available to Chromebooks? Article is very light on technical details.</comment>


P(Success in starting a startup) - <AUTHOR> http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/jj8/why_dont_more_rationalists_start_startups/

<comment><AUTHOR> Basically, all the commenters said that I'm taking an Inside View when I should be taking an Outside View. I disagree - [http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/jj8/why_dont_more_ratio...](http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/jj8/why_dont_more_rationalists_start_startups/aezn).</comment>


Get the new YouTube - <AUTHOR> http://www.omgchrome.com/how-to-new-youtube/

<comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR

Steps to activate the new YouTube UI:

1\. Load youtube.com in Chrome

2\. Run the following in the JavaScript console:

        document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=jZNC3DCddAk;"

3\. Reload

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's so Google'ish .. I love it!

They should make it the default asap.</comment>


Demystify GNU/Linux boot process with Systemd - <AUTHOR> https://www.linux.com/blog/demystify-gnulinux-boot-process-systemd <comment><USER2> Non-deterministic boot order is incapable of being demystified, making the title of this article a contradiction in terms.

<comment><USER3> It is deterministic. If there is no priority difference between units, the first to be loaded will be the first to be executed.</comment></comment>


What CouchDB brings to HTML5 - <AUTHOR> http://jchrisa.net/drl/_design/sofa/_show/post/What-CouchDB-brings-to-HTML5

<comment><AUTHOR> More information for the curious:

[http://jchrisa.net/drl/_design/sofa/_show/post/HTML5-Storage...](http://jchrisa.net/drl/_design/sofa/_show/post/HTML5-Storage- Continues)

[http://jchrisa.net/drl/_design/sofa/_show/post/The-P2P-Web-p...](http://jchrisa.net/drl/_design/sofa/_show/post/The-P2P-Web- part-one)

</comment><comment><USER2> Four paragraphs of fluff. The author makes one interesting point I would love to hear more about, "I think the biggest change will be in our perception of privacy." but, why? Sadly, they never delve deeper into that topic.

<comment><AUTHOR> You should read up on CouchDB. CouchDB actually helps preserve privacy. CouchDB supports P2P style applications- that is you only have to replicate the data you actually want to share with remote instances. Your data remains your own and private to your machine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Whenever I see CouchDB my dyslexia sees DoucheBag.

Related: apologies for my tourette's.</comment>


How to Start a Company (and Kiss Like Angelina)  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/business/12howcast.html?_r=1&hpw

<comment><USER2> "Part of the trick to winning on the Web is having a distinct personality"

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that's about the level of sophistication of this article.</comment></comment>