The Office Is Dead - <AUTHOR> https://marker.medium.com/the-office-is-dead-16be89f25d01 <comment><USER2> There is a subset of people who are good at working from home and there is a subset that isn't.

There is a subset of each of these subsets that seems to be completely unaware that the other "side" exists.

This article seems to be written from the perspective of a person unaware of the subset of people that are just straight up bad at working from home.

(The same subsets also exist for companies instead of people.)

P.S.: Of course, by the same logic, forcing people who are bad at working in an office to do so regardless is dumb too.

<comment><USER3> How productive one can be working from home also depends on the type of job and level of experience.

As a new grad (hoping that my job offer survives covid), I'm terrified of a transition where WFH is the default. I recognize that I still have a lot to learn, and that I can't do it all on my own. Casual interactions with coworkers and the ability to passively absorb new information in the workplace are essential for entry-level employees like me. Plus, personally, I find the social aspect of work to be crucial to my well-being.

<comment> lame-robot-hoax I see this too in the way that older team members often have offices or dedicated spaces within their larger homes that they work from, making it easier to get into work mode.

I work from my small kitchen table that is about four feet from my couch which is about 7-8 feet from my bed. This makes it a lot harder to get into the work zone, as well, it makes it harder to leave it at the end of the day.

Secondly, a lot of my older team members are married or live with a significant other.

I on the other hand live by myself in a new city where the only people I know are the ones that are on my team. Or, were on my team, I should say, before my company internally shuffled roles to avoid layoffs and moved me from my analyst role that I was in for about six months (my first job out of college) down to support. So now the only people I talk to are people calling for help. Or my parents by video call. Other than that it's just me and my thoughts, which makes it a lot more difficult mentally. I don't have a spouse or significant other to talk to throughout the day, and the only people I do talk to, for 8 hours, are generally in a neutral to unhappy mood, which also does nothing good for my mental health. Which is just adding on top of the effect being moved from the role I went to college for, and I applied for, and that I thought would help get me on the right path for my career goals (data engineer), down to a support role less technical than the one I had as an internship during college, had on me.

I'm applying for data analyst/BI/Junior DBA/Junior Data Engineer roles across the western US, but I have a feeling it will be quite hard now with lots of experienced workers being laid off competing for lower level jobs, considering I only have six months real world experience. As well, I want to start a project for my portfolio to help learn some key technologies I don't know, but I'm generally so mentally drained after work I just don't want to do anything. I just want to nap or zone out. I took Friday and today off but it doesn't feel even close to enough time to fully recharge.

I'm rambling off subject, but yeah, as you can tell, this entire thing has definitely not been easy on some of us. I think I'd like WFH if it was an option, as in, Monday and Friday WFH, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I'm in the office. That would be a good balance for me.

<comment><USER4> Older married worker chiming in.

I can't imagine how bad this would have been if my wife and I had still been living in our apartment. Even then I had a separate small office and we had a treadmill in the living room.

This is in a relatively low cost of living area. So I'm definitely not bragging.

But now, it's not too bad. I have a large separate office, we have one bedroom converted into a decently equipped gym with exercise equipment, my son has his own room, my wife converted another room that was originally her study to an ad-hoc studio so she could continue to teach her fitness classes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I actually like going to the office, compared to working from home (good for putting a clear divide between work and home, and it means I don't have to squeeze _two_ home offices in my living space). I just hope COVID-19 spells the end of _open offices_ , at least for a a decade or two. Besides the increased disease transmission (which exists for colds, flu, and covid), I don't like how noisy and visually distracting the spaces are. They're really not conductive to focused work like software development [1].

With social distancing, there's literally no reason to not surround employee workspaces with tall cube walls, besides a desire to replace personal privacy with distraction.

[1] For a good discussion of this, see _Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams_.

<comment><USER6> > I just hope COVID-19 spells the end of open offices

Open offices are cheap. Re-configuring office space isn't cheap. So, no.

Some places are probably still hot-desking.

<comment><USER5> > Open offices are cheap. Re-configuring office space isn't cheap. So, no.

I think that's pre-covid thinking. The OP speaks about 1) companies dropping their office footprints due to increased WFH and 2) companies reducing office density and making other changes to accommodate social distancing. Both of those require office reconfiguration.

We'll be dealing with this pandemic for at least another year, and the psychological effects will last longer, so monomaniacal bottom-line focused thinking will have to accommodate it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Did any other introverts discovered that they're not as introverted as they thought they were during this pandemic? I got a pretty harsh awakening about 2 weeks into shelter in place. At the beginning I thought I would excel at this and even joke this is time for "introvert flexing". Two weeks in, I found myself anxious and kind of miserable. What I've never realized and always took for granted is how much social interaction I had with my coworkers and how those interactions help to lower my anxiety and stress. A joke here and there, etc. throughout the day really helped. I've gone back to running every day to deal with the anxiety and stress and really miss seeing my coworkers.

So I'm not so sure the office is dead. As someone else pointed out, this might be true for some people but we may still need office space for the other portion of the population.

<comment><USER8> I did not consider myself introvert until the pandemic. I have not had real human contact in more than 2 months, other than some audio-only standups and stuff + I live completely alone. I feel not that different compared to when I interacted with others on a daily basis, if anything, I would actually prefer to have even less contact with people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Pinpoint's $25,000-per-month lease with WeWork for 1,800 square feet

My god, is that what it costs now?! You can rent an 1800 sq ft house in the middle of SF for about $7,000 a month. You'd get three "offices", some common space, a kitchen, some parking. You could spend another $2,000 a month to hire someone to clean the place every day, and another $2,000 to have someone bring coffee and beer and whatever else you get "for free" at WeWork, and even $1,000 a month for an "IT person" so set up and maintain wifi and conferencing equipment, and _still_ save money.

<comment><USER10> That's 1800 sq ft of open space, you can cram way more people there than into a three-bedroom townhouse. They're not wasting any floorspace on a bathroom either, that's down the hall.

<comment><USER9> Sure, but let's say you need to rent twice as much space to get the same amount of free space. You're _still_ saving money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So all of this working life I always go to my office for work because at home I always found myself distracted about bunch of stuffs. I prefer to be in the office even though my companies always flexible in working remotely.

It is not until this pandemic that I was forced to work from home that I realized that I am the happiest I've ever been in years. I always felt tired daily when I used to go to office and also go to bunch of other social gatherings that I have. It turns out that I am definitely an introvert to the bone. Not only not meeting people everyday face to face has been beneficial to me, but cutting slack, social media, text, etc has been tremendously great for me. I also don't watch TV. Basically less human interaction in general (not zero at all mind you, I'm not anti social). Now I have more time to cultivate my various hobbies (which I've always been doing anyway) and become self absorbed lol.

I enjoy life better now, everyday feel fresh and energized and as a result my productivity with my work also shoot through the roof. I didn't know why I always thought I'd be distracted at home. All the simple things in life like running outside, walking outside, queueing for some snacks, just become delightful all of a sudden. Not to mention the great air quality.

I know it is bad for me to say this, but this pandemic I've been the happiest in years. I hope this pandemic is over soon but I don't hope to be back in office soon.

<comment><USER12> Do you have kids of toddler-age or younger and a spouse who also works during standard office hours? I find that makes the difference between "WFH works" and "WFH is hell on earth".

I have a 9-month old baby who is just starting to crawl all over the place and gets noisy and impatient when we don't pay attention to her. My wife and I work during office hours. Nursery is of course out of the question due to the lockdown and babysitters are illegal (because of the quarantine). Our stress levels are going through the roof. I want to go back to normality ASAP. Give me back my office, please!

<comment><USER11> Thankfully I currently don't. I'm sure it's gonna be zoo and hell on earth when I have one lol. My wife will most likely won't gonna be working when we have one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I can imagine this pandemic is going to push WFH into the vanguard... but to imply that companies no longer need offices seems too hyperbolic a conclusion.

The reality is that if a company says they don't need an office because you can work from home, they need to compensate you for the use of your office space. A place of work is physical capital, and you can't simply decide that your workers provide that capital as part of their employment.

<comment><USER9> > A place of work is physical capital, and you can't simply decide that your > workers provide that capital as part of their employment.

Back in the day when cell phones were new, companies provided them to you.

Now they just assume you have one.

Things that start out as work provided sometimes move into employer provided without extra compensation.

<comment><USER13> Companies will often compensate you for part of your phone bill, especially if being on the phone is a part of your job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A couple of thoughts, 1\. My company has been building new buildings that would add 3,000,000+ square feet of office space to the campus this year. I think they will probably nix working from home when this is all over just so they don't look dumb for building all that new office space.

2\. My company has been leaning heavily into not just open office space, but what they call freestyle office space. They only allocate enough desk space for 50-75% of the people working in the building with the assumption that people will be in meetings or elsewhere for enough of the day to make it work out. You do not have an assigned desk and are not allowed to sit at a certain desk for more than 2 hours. (Yes, many/most of us think this is the height of stupidity - it's like being back in college and everyone is working in the library and you have to have a backpack to carry all your stuff from place to place). Of course, this whole seating arrangement is a nightmare in a social distancing situation. What they are saying now is that when we go back you can sit at a desk the whole day, but every other desk must be empty. So, intead of having enough desks for 50-75% of people, there will only be enough for 25-37.5% of people. Clearly they are going to have to allow working from home to continue for a certain percentage of people. I'm honestly not sure how they is all going to shake out.

<comment> lame-robot-hoax How does this work if you need to use dual monitors or something? You just go to one of the desks with two monitors, plug in, do what you need to do, and then leave once you don't need two monitors?

<comment><USER14> Their solution is to provide very very wide monitors that the computer can be setup to see as 2 monitors so the 1 monitor is effectively split into 2. Not ideal (especially for someone like me who has 2 monitors, but keeps both of them vertical instead of horizontal), but better than nothing. However, they haven't actually moved any IT people into this kind of seating arrangement. I think it won't really work for a bunch of developers who are in their seats for the majority of the day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The office isn't dead [1].

There are plenty of people who didn't like working from home before and still don't. There are also plenty of people who just can't do their job as well from home.

What seems likely is that some managers who previously didn't think of work- from-home as a viable option before will probably be more open to the idea going forward. And some individual contributors will decide that working remotely suits them well. And companies will have a better sense of the tools required for effectively working remotely.

But the majority of people are going back to the office when this is over. It might be because managers will still be managers, and feel that they can have more control with people there in person. It might be because people like to get out of the home. Maybe they like socializing with coworkers in person. Maybe they don't have enough room at home. Or the proper equipment.

I certainly expect to see changes, but the concept of offices isn't going anywhere.

[1] and nor does the article claim it is, despite the sensationalist headline

<comment><USER16> It's one of those things that will have the rubber band effect, just like any other office trend.

First will be trendy tech organizations that will go the extreme and set a large window of WFH, then some will move a large chunk of operations to WFH, then a lot of tech companies will follow with bold claims of how good it is, and so on...

Then all of a sudden, one study or one article with the unpopular opinion - "working from home is not that good after all", then some people will vent out on how they dislike it in some situations, then one trendy company will make the bold claim: "We're bringing people back in!"

I can already see the headlines of Buzzfeed, Wired, and posts on medium: "The gold nugget of productivity! This company boosted their performance by bringing people back into what we used to call offices!", with comments of the CEO that's trying to lure in talent.

Just to end back in the middle term: some roles are suitable for work from home, while others make sense to bring in house, some people prefer work from home while others don't.

My prediction is this will all occur until 2022.

Just to make it clear: I like working from home.

<comment><USER17> my guess is most companies that were forced into WFH by coronavirus will try to return to "business as usual" as soon as reasonably possible. if you're already paying for enough square footage and operations people to have everyone on-site, you may as well get your money's worth.

my hope is that, after seeing that work still got done during the crisis, employers will be more willing to entertain a certain number of WFH days per week. this would be ideal for me. I love the flexibility and comfort of WFH, but I would like to have at least a small window where I can reliably find people on-site for a face-to-face meeting, without having to plan that interaction far in advance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I started working from home about 10 years ago. At first I was going back to an office every 4 months. I got sick twice a year, pretty much every fall/winter and spring trip.

Each job since then the number of required trips seems to drop a little. I think I'm pretty much permanently always home now. I really don't get sick any more.

I know it hasn't really hit specific articles, but NO, nail salons are not the cause of the pandemic. The specific cause of the pandemic was airplanes (or travelling in general) and offices, which quite aptly explains new york on both counts.

</comment><comment><USER19> I work in what the author describes as an "old school wall street firm". The senior management may be delusional about the impact of working from home (the senior management is often delusional about many things). But the consensus on the ground is that it sunk productivity massively, information is not flowing fluently, and for some people it is absolute hell (trying to work with screaming kids, young couples trying to do calls in the same room while their flatmates are trying to do the same in other rooms, etc).

<comment><USER10> Could that be a transitional period? Young couples with roommates crammed into shoeboxes live in those conditions as a compromise to be relatively close to their high-paying jobs in an expensive city. The line about "cities losing some of their lustre" resonated with me. We're basically living country life right now (not seeing much people except the odd neighbour, once a week groceries, etc) - I'd much rather do that in a country setting, if this is to continue in the long term.

<comment> lame-robot-hoax 100% agree. I live in a more expensive apartment in the middle of downtown so I get the amenities of living downtown. Except now those are gone. As well, I don't have a car because normally the rail system or busses or ride sharing was enough to get me around, but now I feel as if I'm trapped in this small area around my apartment. Can't go anywhere, and even if I want to walk somewhere, it'll be aimlessly cause everything is closed.

I'd rather live in a cheap apartment further out that had parking for a car so I could drive to the mountains or just anywhere really. Instead I've been within probably a quarter mile of my apartment at all times for the last ten weeks. I'm paying a premium for no return right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd been looking for a remote job for a long time before this. Never could get one, I was frequently turned down because I lacked remote work experience.

Now that I have remote work experience, everyone else does as well. So... no change in my competitive position vis-à-vis other remote job candidates. Booo, they'll just come up with new reasons to reject me :(

I like working from home, there are some disadvantages, but overall I definitely prefer it, and at a more macro level I think there's an opportunity here to fix some of the crowding issues (not to mention traffic and the concomitant pollution) in our cities by giving people flexibility in where they live and work. I for one, hate big cities, but a career in tech has generally meant living in a major metro area.

OTOH, companies are not going to just let all the office space they're paying for sit idle. If they can't divest themselves of some/most of it quickly (hello, commercial real-estate crash), all our asses are going to be back in our rickety office chairs under the flickering fluorescent lights.

</comment><comment><USER20> For a well-organized team with top of the line collab tools? Perhaps, if everyone is comfortable with working from home, but I'm still skeptical. Finding myself in a management position, coordinating the efforts of a medium- size development team across two organizations has become an order of magnitude more challenging. I cover a lot of meetings that the developers don't have to, but sometimes we still need to sit two to five people in a room to hash out the details of some technical problem. I have not seen an adequate substitute for that process. I believe that the people who worked from home full time prior to this (and I've been one of those before) are leveraging the time others spend in face to face interactions to their indirect advantage. When _no_ high-level planning or in-depth low-level in person conversations can happen, many organizations are simply going to move much more slowly and make more mistakes.

</comment><comment><USER21> I am super scared of a future where remote work could be the default. I see the amazing creative works in technology, art, etc that come from the simple act of pushing smart people into the same place and having them rapidly iterate. Do we know how to do this in a remote-first setup?

I get it; you're super productive in your _job_ during this pandemic but is this the same thing? It feels more like optimizing for efficiency in what you do now, vs. effectiveness to do something bigger than yourself.

I manage a lot of people who focus on making themselves x% better, where x ranges from 1% to maybe 15%. I believe to scale we need to make the system better, which is more like a fractional % improvement multipled by n. Is this easier to do remotely? not yet with the tools we have IME...

</comment><comment><USER22> I've worked about half my career in an office and half from home.

Working from home just doesn't work that well if you're on a team. The constant communication with the other team members helps a great deal. For example, you can bring along the new guys and get them up to speed on how things work and what to do. Misunderstandings don't fester into disasters. Somebody veering off in the wrong direction can be quickly brought back to focus on the team goal.

</comment><comment><USER23> Working in software, the idea that we should all report in at the beginning of the day, every day, feels like too much like school. It would be better if the office culture was to show up when you needed to show up, without any hidden expectations, or surprise bad reviews because the perception is you work less because you're not in early or stay late enough. Luckily this had to go away recently for obvious reasons.

</comment><comment><USER24> The really interesting thing I learned during covid19 is that, the fact that everybody is WFH, makes WFH better.

In the past, when I WFH, and everybody else is in the office. I was the odd one out and people start to talk amongst themselvces. Sometimes I don't hear well, sometimes I can't get into the discussion politely.

But, since everybody is WFH right now, the whole WFH experience became better and I am more productive in WFH as a result.

<comment><USER25> Agreed, this is one of the reasons working remotely for a 100% remote company is substantially better than working remotely for a team that is partially remote and partially in the office.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's more likely that the "giant monolithic office" is dead, and will transform into a hybrid of WeWork-esque distributed offices, complete with pay-per-minute only-works-half-the-time videoconferencing walls and $6 lattes.

If a new WeWork manages "subdivided office space" all around a city, then a company could lease space from all of them, and pay just slightly _more_ than they used to, with the freedom that their employees can spend _more time at the office_ because commuting is less of a chore. Supplement that with all the luxury add-ons and suddenly it looks like the office is reborn, not dead at all.

And remember: cities are getting bigger, not smaller. Why not rent an apartment in the same skyscraper as a coworking space, along with your co- workers who also live in your city? Especially if your job sets aside money to help pay for it? Again you can squeeze "more productivity" out of your little mechanical turks, but you don't have to deal with the management overhead of typical offices. Less logistics, more productivity, still (basically) an office.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm skeptical. Not just of this article but really of anything written in this moment that talks about how The Way Things Will Be.

We're thick in the middle of a pandemic right now. It will subside. No one knows exactly what waits for us on the other side, or what the societal impacts will be. Yes, we're all working remotely right now. But it's been an incredibly slap-dash, thrown together effort for many companies and that might mean they become _less_ receptive to remote work in the future, not more. We don't really have any data on what the economic impact of remote work is (separate from all the other economic impacts swirling around us right now), and until we do I'm going to hold off making too many wild predictions.

<comment><USER8> > we're all working remotely now

Except for the 33 million people out of jobs in the last 6 weeks.

<comment><USER27> Well, sure. I wasn't intending to imply that the entire population of the globe is working remotely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm going to the office even though I'm not an essential worker because working from home ruins my mental health. I stayed home for the first three weeks of social distancing and I couldn't be more stressed and unhappy if I tried.

</comment><comment><USER29> I suspect that if this really does become the new normal, in 5-10 years, part of that new normal will be providing your own equipment (computers, monitors, etc.). I predict there will be a non-trivial "startup cost" associated with taking most jobs.

<comment><USER30> My brother in law is a mechanic. I was shocked to find he's expected to provide his own tools at a job - even working for a dealership

<comment><USER21> I've never heard of a professional trade where they don't provide their own tools. The exception has always been big, expensive, infrequently used things but hand tools always and a lot of specialized and power tools.

<comment><USER30> This makes sense for independent contractors, etc. but I was really surprised to find out that he (and his coworkers) all have their "own" tools. To me that was a bit like bringing your own computer to work, which would run in to issues with invention assingment agreements and the like, if nothing else.

To be fair it _kinda_ makes sense in that each person will have their own preference for tools, but it's a pretty big expense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> A semi-permanent shift to more remote work will have large impacts on a lot of different industries. For example, the lunch joints near office towers will have to significantly rethink their strategies.

Companies that make consumables like toilet paper and soap will have to scale their residential arms and reduce their commercial arms, which in some instances requires building entire new paper mills or production facilities.

Gas, electricity, and water utilities will all see "weekend all day" patterns that they'll need to adjust for. Internet providers might start offering commercial-light plans for home offices that come with an SLA but not full business support.

</comment><comment><USER32> The $2.5 trillion question[a] is whether companies will ever go back to using as much office space per person as they did prior to the pandemic, given that:

* they can save a ton of money by using less office space per person going forward, and

* so far, they are seeing equal or better productivity from remote employees, as this article points out.

The question answers itself, I think.

\--

[a] That's the estimated value of office space in the US: [https://www.reit.com/data-research/research/nareit- research/...](https://www.reit.com/data-research/research/nareit- research/estimating-size-commercial-real-estate-market-us)

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm curious what will happen where I work. Upper management has always hated working from home and part time work. I think eventually they'll go back to their set ways, but it will be some time in late 2021.

<comment><USER34> Our company's business happens to be booming during this pandemic, and we've handled a massive amount of unexpected growth very well and entirely without an office. I'd hope that would be sufficient proof of the efficacy of remote work.

But our CEO hates remote work. Upper management is already talking about getting some people back in the office in a few weeks. It's a bit depressing.

<comment><USER35> > But our CEO hates remote work. Upper management is already talking about > getting some people back in the office in a few weeks. It's a bit > depressing.

Same story with mine. (Minus the business booming - ours is fluttering along)

I've brought this up to our management: "We work in a space where most people sit within arms distance of each other. How are you going to manage that aspect?"

They said, "Oh, maybe we'll do a thing where half comes in one day and half comes in another. Like business one day, engineering another, etc."

I responded, "But... the office isn't setup for hot swapping desks at all. So, you'd have half of some teams come in? You'd force us all in small meeting rooms again with very poor ventilation where we can't do social distancing? What's the point if half of engineering is at home and half isn't? We don't have many bathrooms so we'd have a lot of shared touch points. Same with kitchen - etc."

As usual - they're not thinking past the initial words coming out of their mouth. It's utterly amazing how inept people are at all levels of the stack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> for many companies that own their own properties I doubt they will maintain work from home policies long term unless Covid19 outlooks are dire but to be honest, if they get that dire and stay there then where you work is the least of the concerns.

the issue with work from home is that jobs which are suited for it or can be adapted this require that workers have discipline to do so. for companies willing to have a portion of their employees offsite then HR programs would need to be put into place to help train people how to manage their work life at home and then to train managers in how to properly employ a work from home team.

the issue not raised here is the tax component. a collapse of the real estate market will take the tax base down a few notches. this will lead to an increase in finding a replacement and this could include proxy taxes on an employees work from home setup and costs associated with it; a few fees and tariffs here and there. Then comes the non state actors, HOAs and property management companies, whose rules will need to moderated if not outright regulated to prevent putting undue pressure on work from home employees. most can fly under the RADAR because of no increase in external activity; think shipping and receiving; to give it away but cancel culture has its adherents everywhere with people who have nothing better to do than point.

</comment><comment><USER37> Offices won't go away, but the idea that there is a physical space permanently set aside for you in an office and that you use that space most workdays will largely be seen as a quaint relic of the past for many.

It's not a question of if there is about to be a bloodbath in commercial real estate, just how bad it's going to be.

If there's a plus side smart developers could quickly repurpose commercial spaces into residential and quickly fill needed housing shortages in many cities.

</comment><comment><USER38> The company I work for (insurance carrier) has seen the light with working from home and the big heads are starting to discuss what to do when the long term leases are up. I think even outside of tech a lot of places that can have people working from home will strongly encourage or require it. Not every job can, obviously but with the incentive to save money on expensive leases and what comes with them it's really a no-brainer.

</comment><comment><USER39> Honestly, if you have a commute, do you actually have an opinion on WFH? If you can't separate commuting and the office, then isn't your opinion on WFH really just the inverse of your opinion of your commute? I'm pretty skeptical of people's opinions of something in which they've had no options or choice.

<comment><USER40> Aren't commutes and offices inextricably linked unless you live in the office?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I dunno about the US, but my flat in London isn't suitable for both of us working from home. Most other flats in London aren't suitable for two people working from home either. Unless we build a lot of new, larger homes with live/work spaces, this isn't going to work.

<comment><USER42> The underlying assumption in a lot of these articles is that if you could work from home you'd move to the suburbs/country where space is cheaper. Very few assume people like living in a city.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> "$25,000-per-month lease with WeWork for 1,800 square feet"

That is absolutely absurd. _$25,000_ for an amount of space equivalent to a large 2 bedroom apartment? If this is what kind of rates restaurants are paying for rent, I can imagine why their margins are razor thin.

</comment><comment><USER44> > $25,000-per-month lease with WeWork for 1,800 square feet would be up in > August

Excuse me, but WAT

<comment><USER21> that's like $165 per foot, or roughly 3x the most expensive AAA corporate space in North America. Not sure what they're getting beyond floor space - maybe furniture, ammenities and technology?

<comment><USER44> Exactly. My company, rent + outsourced IT + utilities, etc is around $12,000/mo for 4400 sqft. So $30 per foot.

Problem I have with that is after the dot bomb we were looking at office space and it seemed that the high flyers that threw $$$[1] at their office build outs were all out of business. Where the ones where you had as a friends company, network cables stapled to the walls weren't.

It's not so much the money spent but the thought that those were the guys that didn't have a sense of how to prioritize their cash flow.

[1] Like 100-300 sqft on build out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Remote work was already starting to happen on a larger scale for a few years. The pandemic and the world wide panicked response to it is merely accelerating the trend. However, it's a logical trend and many of us were already dealing with remote teams for a few years.

IMHO many people will actually revert back to their old behaviors for the simple reason that offices are still there and as restrictions lift in the next weeks there will be lots of pressure to show up on people.

What will take longer is changing processes to facilitate working remotely. Many smarter companies are probably looking to make this a permanent thing in their companies; because it makes sense and it undeniably can work. For developers it's easy, just do what the OSS folk are doing for the last decades; it works. And the stuff they were doing instead always was in any case a bit challenged in terms of actually working as advertised.

However, the rest of the world will need a bit longer to discover how to work asynchronously.

Also there's the notion that a lot of work is actually completely redundant and pointless. Big corporations are just as bad about generating bureaucracy as governments are. Fat profits can cover up a lot of bad management. A cynical reason for remote work not being much of a disruption is that lots of people weren't actually doing anything important anyway. So, them doing a poor job of something that never mattered to begin with is completely OK. Of course the next logical step is getting smarter about eliminating such jobs. A curious thing in today's economy is that this does not seem to happen nearly as often as you'd expect. Rather the opposite and people self congratulate each other to ever more surreal levels of dysfunctional behavior.

In any case, seeing a productivity boost if you eliminate 1-2 hour (twice per day) commutes at stupid o'clock from people's life should not come as a surprise. Being well rested and non stressed does wonders for people's focus and concentration.

</comment><comment><USER46> In our office Covid-lockdown proved that office will never be dead.

A lot of people come to office not just to work but it's also some sort of essential social gathering for them. This is more true for those extroverted by nature.

</comment><comment><USER47> The premise of this article is largely based on anecdotes. The office will not be dead. Too many people will forever equate working from home with laziness.

</comment><comment><USER21> Maybe we're headed for smaller office footprints with the same # of people. We can pack them in tighter with the super-duper open floor plan!

</comment><comment><USER48> The big question is: with that $17,000 they save, is it going into higher worker salaries, lower prices for consumers, or executive bonuses?

<comment><USER49> Savings like these are generally passed on to stakeholders; existing contracts (e.g. vendors, clients, employees, contractors) are rarely automatically renegotiated to reflect lower cap ex

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> whats gonna happen is that companies will get rid of some real estate and convert existing office space into "agile" workspace - where anyone can come in with laptop and work. But it will be so packed, that most people will opt for WFH most of the time and come like for 1 day in a week.

</comment><comment><USER51> Reading all the reasons in the article, I think this applies to classrooms as well.

</comment><comment><USER52> On the flip side of this: I do not owe my employer space in my home. Having to dedicate some part of my home to their economic activity should be something I'm financially compensated for.

<comment><USER53> In the future employment contracts might stipulate such compensation in order to remain competitive.

Something to consider, though: Most employees today probably aren't compensated for the time and money they waste during their daily commute. What about car maintenance? Unless they're driving a company car to work most employees will have to pay for that themselves. Shouldn't the employer cover or reimburse these costs?

<comment><USER54> In many ways, including WFH explicitly in salary agreements would be unusual largely because workers incur a large number of other work related expenses that are not explicitly enumerated in the agreement. But those costs are implicitly included, as employers have to compete against each other to offer salary and benefits necessary to attract talent.

But practically speaking, it would not be surprising to see WFH companies offer slightly higher salaries largely due to the significant savings associated with no offices, as well as the reduced risk of not having a lease. If I save $27K a year per employee (from the article), I can easily offer candidates $10K more than my competitors with an office, increasing profit and attracting higher quality talent.</comment></comment></comment>


Pebble smartwatch review - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/28/3924904/pebble-smartwatch-review <comment><USER2> I can't wait to get my hand on it. The start of the wearables.</comment>


Ask HN: I come up with ace business ideas that I can never do anything about... - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
I have Schizoaffective Disorder w/ Bi-Polar subtype and to distract from poverty I come up with ace business ideas that I can never do anything about.
I receive a small stipend each month that covers housing and food but nothing more than that.
I am highly proficient in web programming and design but delusional thinking stops me from seeing the smaller steps of the big picture. So I quit each idea after a week and then start the same cycle over again the next week.
My latest idea [1] is fractions away from insanity and I need help.
What steps could I take to improve my life and become successful?
Thanks!
[1] (Fireworks export) http://i.imgur.com/9JvXaZy.png <comment><USER2> For what it is worth, lots of people on HN, and elsewere, struggle to finish a product! That's good news, because it means you might be able to overcome it.

That's where MVPs come in. Ship an MVP. Have you seen how atrocious Reddit was when it first came out? Remember when Facebook didn't even have a wall to post on? Google was called Backrub when it started. Ship an MVP. You also have to consider, that sometimes, the idea wasn't actually that good. You ship the MVP and get no traction, you can pivot and figure out how to make it better or move onto the next idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! This has actually shot me in the foot a couple times. To give an example: I think I was most productive in 2005 during the 4 months I was at UBC, where I did nothing but research recommender systems and design screens for a music album recommendation site (hivolume.net!). Which turned out to be far more efficient by the last.fm model of automatically submitting your played tracks to their service rather than having to add them each manually as my idea would have been. So that idea got shelved as have quite a few like that where the scope is beyond one person yet I pluck away thinking that something miraculous will occur to adjust reality in some way, where getting from A to B becomes doable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm having trouble seeing step #2 here:

        1. Start a farm out in the country
        2. ???
        3. Launch a startup based on step 2.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would it matter? We'd probably build a renewable energy farm to run Bitcoin mining gear, and have a field with vegetables and a grass area to kick a soccer ball around.. :-)

<comment><USER3> It matters in that you're basically asking us to fund your retirement.

I mean, that is an ace business idea if you convince enough people to just give you two million bucks for no reason, but I don't think quite that many suckers are out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting...can you describe your process when you encounter a delusion that prevents you from continuing? Provide an example if you could.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure. One would be coming up with a design for a site that has 100,000 users. Then starting to code some of the screens and planning the infrastucture. So I will need a private cloud on Amazon with horizontal web nodes and a massive Postgres database master-master. Now how much is that going to cost... Okay, well that's well over my budget of $0. But I have a $50 Linode credit so maybe I can just use that to start out. What's this OpenResty that's doing so well on the web frameworks benchmark? Maybe I should use that. So setup an Arch box and get that setup. Find Lapis and MoonScript and so I'll use that. Now back to the coding. Strip everything I have done in Grails, using Lapis now. Except I have to spend a day reading the Lapis documentation and then it's been 5 days and I need a rest. During said rest I decide the whole idea is stupid because how am I going to get an audience on TechCrunch or whatever to promote this site? Come up with another idea on Monday... Except I'm totally drained and don't know what I should be doing.

<comment><USER4> don't scale in the beginning. If you have linode credit use that. Also reaching 100,000 users is a huge assumption, you may not even get there.

Openresty and Lua is interesting but it takes time to learn those. Use what you already know.

Take a rest, re-evaluate the tools you are familiar with and use it. Then when you have a prototype to show, you can email people at TC or anywhere else, you may not even get a reply but try it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess it might be that simple eh? Thanks for the advice. I will definitely look into resuming with Grails.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Thomas Edison Succeeded - <AUTHOR> http://mises.org/library/how-thomas-edison-succeeded

<comment><AUTHOR> Doing One Thing 18 Hours Is the Secret

"You lay down rather severe rules for one who wishes to succeed in life," I ventured," working 18 hours a day."

"Not at all," he said. "You do something all day long, don't you? Everyone does. If you get up at seven o'clock and go to bed at eleven, you have put in sixteen good hours, and it is certain with most men, that they have been doing something all the time. They have been either walking, or reading, or writing, or thinking. The only trouble is that they do it about a great many things and I do it about one. If they took the time in question and applied it in one direction, to one object, they would succeed.

"Success is sure to follow such application. The trouble lies in the fact that people do not have an object — one thing to which they stick, letting all else go. Success is the product of the severest kind of mental and physical application."

</comment><comment><USER2> Pretty sure it was by stealing everything he could and putting his name an a marketing campaign on it.</comment>


Stephen Hawking Says We Should Really Be Scared of Capitalism, Not Robots - <AUTHOR> http://usuncut.com/news/edit-complete-hw-stephen-hawking-says-really-scared-capitalism-not-robots/ <comment><USER2> Yeah, and the invention of the washing machine put so many people out of work, and only the rich have them...right. He's a physicist, not an economist or philosopher, with the exception that his fame gives him a platform to express his opinions, but his fame buys him credit to speak across disciplines and for people to lend false credibility to his opinions.

<comment><USER3> Instead of such a cheap ad hominem rant, why not say one or two words about why do you think he is wrong?</comment></comment>


Incidental Findings on Brain MRI in the General Population - <AUTHOR> https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa070972 <comment><AUTHOR> I was inspired to spin-this out from a different post about full-body MRI scans.

This paper is asking the question, "If I scan the brains of 2000 people, what can I expect to find?" The findings more or less recapitulate the natural incidence of diseases. They found some brain changes related to aging, a few aneurysms, some benign brain tumors, and even a malignant brain tumor.

I'd like to focus purely on the emotional and economic implications, moving away from the case-by-case medical management side of things. Here are some of the implications of this study:

1) Congratulations -- your full body scan found a brain aneurysm. Being diagnosed with a brain aneurysm is scary and anxiety producing. Thankfully, there is pretty good literature to suggest when one should and shouldn't have their aneurysm treated by their surgeon (or neuroradiologist). After an expensive consult with a subspecialist, your surgeon would like you to have yearly checkups and repeat scans, and possibly even some invasive dye tests. Your new aneurysm may affect your ability to get insurance. It may result in you changing your lifestyle (not going on climbing trips, diving, buying more expensive disability insurance etc.). If may scare you into having the rest of your family getting screening exams for brain aneurysms. None of these outcomes are benign.

2) The kind of benign brain tumor reported from this study are meningiomas. On autopsy series, 1-2% of the population have meningiomas, and they are blissfully unaware of their presence. Finding one means an unnecessary trip to your local friendly neurosurgeon, committing to serial radiographic investigations, and also having insurance implications.

3) The study did discover a malignant brain tumor. I suppose one could make the argument that doing a full body scan is worth it to find a malignant tumor; yet brain tumors affect 1:10000 people, whereas the aforementioned (largely, but not always) benign conditions affect 1-2:100 people.

[0] [https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa070972](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa070972)

<comment><USER2> One of the things I really grew to appreciate in residency was the risk of iatrogenic harm from incidental findings on unnecessary tests.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why did those ideas to pool cryto mines for deep learning fail? - <AUTHOR> With cryto currency price hovering below profitable lines for most crypto mines, it seems to make so much business sense to pool these GPU resources for deep learning.
There have been quite a few attempts at it, such as https://aicrypto.ai/, https://vast.ai/, and https://www.reddit.com/r/gpumining/comments/86ofw2/rent_out_your_gpu_compute_to_ai_researchers_and/. However none of them seems to have gone anywhere.
Why? <comment><USER2> Is it profitable for a miner to rent out time on their mining systems?

The reddit thread says "double what he was making by mining Ethereum, and in return he would let me train my neural networks on his computer at significantly less than what I would have had to pay AWS." That is pretty significant but I'm kinda surprised it that much less than AWS, does AWS have a really high markup?

<comment><USER3> AWS has to cover taxes, vacations, datacenter construction, monitoring, duplication with enterprise level components, pay rate for electricity is higher for commercial companies and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Probably because our datasets are just as valuable as the neural network topology and weights, and as the founder of several companies that use deep learning theres no way I'd let our datasets go out to machines we don't control

</comment><comment><USER5> Who is doing deep learning at scale? Google, fb and nvidia? Do they really care about miners' spare GPUs. What about the risk of leaking training data to public?

Is model parallelization solved yet? Especially Without high speed connectivity?</comment>


Hacking U.S. Secrets, China Pushes for Drones - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/21/world/asia/hacking-us-secrets-china-pushes-for-drones.html <comment><USER2> Question: why were these computers connected to the Internet in the first place? So the drone design engineers could check their Facebooks? Computers doing real work should be airgapped, this is a no-brainer.

<comment><USER3> Just curious, how would airgapping be practical if you need Internet connectivity for your "real work"?

For example, let's say you run a quant trading firm and the algorithms you're concerned about being stolen need connectivity to download live trading info, and then after processing that info they need to communicate buy/sell orders to the outside world.

Are there any methods that could be used that would prevent all communication with a secure system (with an airgap level of certainty) besides the strictly defined data you need to do your "real work"?

<comment><USER2> Sure, you would just use Radianz, and that is in fact what everyone does. This is a very solved problem! Bloomberg also operates a private network, and there are others too. These systems can operate perfectly well without access to the public Internet.

A couple of jobs ago I worked at a financial services firm with 2 networks and 2 PCs on everyone's desk. Rednet for outside connectivity, and an internal network for real work, and never the twain shall meet.

NO-ONE needs the Internet for real work, let's be honest, just for goofing off. Time we all started to prioritize security over mere convenience.

<comment><USER3> Yep, maybe trading wasn't the best example, although they are still effectively at the mercy of the security of their data providers network - which admittedly is probably quite good.

Let's say you're a P.I., journalist, researcher, law enforcement, or intel agency, and need to automate news or people searches for some reason. If you were able to very strictly define the data you're expecting to receive, isn't there _any_ way you could automatically pass this data on to a secure system without opening yourself up to exploits?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hacking Unite nation. Media: China was doing that, too.

Hacking Encrypt Fax, Media: Quiet

we developed drone, attacks in pakistan. Media: Quiet

China developed drone, doing nothing, yet. Media: Hacking U.S. Secrets, China Pushes for Drones

Enforce human rights to third world countries. U.S.: -airline reservations are used to target illegal searches. -cellphone tracking by tower -20 miles interior check points, -100-miles Border Zone as "Consitution-free". As a result, San Francisco, Los Angles, Seattle, Chicago, New York, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Miami, Houston are Consitution-free.

Now what was the news again?

</comment><comment><USER5> Why not drop a mention of the NSA/CIA's spying and hacking on other countries and American citizens? Seems that it's only news for the media when China does it. Bunch of hypocrites.

<comment><USER6> The NYT and other major US media are pretty regularly reporting on the ongoing revelations from the Snowden whistle-blowing. I believe HN has instituted a "no NSA spying" story policy in general due to political arguments rather than discussions of the technical aspects involved. I could be wrong though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Amazing how fast China has started looking like a Johnny-come-lately, now that Snowden has opened our eyes to how the US/NSA/GCHQ were targeting their citizens, allies, enemies and the Internet itself (by coercing service providers and by weakening underlying cryptography).

<comment><USER8> I don't think that shoe has dropped yet. As far as domestic surveillance goes, NSA seems to be approaching the level in terms of capabilities of Chinese MSS. In terms of foreign surveillance, although we can safely assume NSA has access to more fiber and hence internet traffic, there seems little reason to think their hacking activities are any more prevalent than any other large intelligence agency. Those capabilities are, after all, rather cheap.

What we haven't learned of, at least yet, is rampant industrial espionage by NSA to steal R&D and a pipeline for dealing with the stolen results. China, at least according to US allegations, has precisely that.

<comment><USER9> > _What we haven 't learned of, at least yet, is rampant industrial espionage > by NSA to steal R&D and a pipeline for dealing with the stolen results. > China, at least according to US allegations, has precisely that._

China would still be late to that game.

France and Israel were famous for doing government-sponsored industrial espionage in the 1980s-1990s. Again, according to US allegations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hmmm. I wonder if maritime drone fleets are going to make carrier task forces obsolete, the same way carriers had been rendering battleships obsolete.

<comment><USER3> I think China's R&D in "Carrier Killer Missiles" is probably more likely to do it:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_killer_missile](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_killer_missile)

<comment><USER11> A CIWS will kick in at about 3 miles and has a 100% kill radius of over 1 mile. This will increase when the system has been upgrade to use lasers (soon).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close- in_weapon_system](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-in_weapon_system)

The CIWS is only used if the SeaSparrow missiles (which have a 40+ mile range) and RAMs do not hit their target.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESSM](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESSM)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-116_Rolling_Airframe_Missil...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-116_Rolling_Airframe_Missile)

Those would only be used if the jamming equipment/planes failed.

Don't forget that carriers always have several ships traveling with them with even more anti-missile firepower.

It would literally take a nuclear missile, severe incompetence, or numerous malfunctions on multiple well-tested systems to hit an aircraft carrier with a missile. Plus balls, the US will come after you hard if you mess with one of it's carriers.

But yeah, shooting a missile with multiple nuclear warheads is about the only thing that can be done to take out a carrier, and that's a pretty awesome claim.

Oh, I guess a railgun would work too, those would be the real carrier killers. The US DoD should definitely assign some extra IT security personnel to the contractors working on railguns.

<comment><USER3> Just wondering, why do you think the U.S. military seems so paranoid about China's research into this? Everything I know about carrier killer missiles comes from mainstream media coverage in response to various U.S. generals sounding the alarm about China's progress in this technology, and its potential to end the U.S.'s dominance of the Pacific. Is it just budgetary saber-rattling?

Also, what happens if China fires, say, a few dozen of those missiles at once at a carrier group? After all, those missiles are a hell of a lot cheaper than a carrier.

<comment><USER10> This is just something I picked up and reasoned out, but you will probably want to verify this for yourself.

America fields the world's largest number of carrier task force in the world. The other Western countries have maybe one each. Apparently, it required not only technical skills, but also a certain culture and discipline of the crew manning the carriers. As such, the Soviets were unable field effective carrier task force and ended up building a submarine fleet instead.

With the Soviets gone, that left the US Navy as the undisputed power on the high seas, at least, if you are going by numbers of carrier task force. It's the primary offensive power of the US Navy.

... and if there is technology that renders it obsolete, it would be a major concern.

Note, in my original post, I was not talking just about carriers. I was talking about entire carrier task forces, where escort ships (like the cruisers fielding Aegis) are centered around the single carrier.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


WeWork Hits $20B Valuation in New Funding Round - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2017/07/10/wework-hits-20-billion-valuation-in-new-funding-round/#74ee8d1c1194 <comment><AUTHOR> I'd love any comments from folks who understand what their core value is or is not (independent of whether this valuation is justifiable - that's a hard case to make for any 'darling' company).</comment>


Ask HN: Orange dot? - <AUTHOR> What is this little orange dot I keep seeing around the comments?<p>Is it related to the now-missing comment ratings? <comment><USER2> I'm experimenting with not displaying comment scores. The orange dot is an alternate way to help users find high-scoring comments. More details here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=844979>

<comment><USER3> I like the idea. The dot is basically shorthand for what we use the score for, minus a kind of "attractor" effect whereby two high scores, one higher than the other, skews my mind one way.

Anyways, have definitely noticed a distinct difference in how I read thread. Instead of skimming scores, I now skim text.

<comment><USER4> I'm not exactly sure I understand what you're saying. Are you saying . . .

1\. You used to pay more attention to scores than to text? (i.e., "I used to skim the score to see if I wanted to read the comment, but now I skim the text.")

2\. You used to pay more attention to text than you do now? (i.e., "I used to skim scores, then read text more carefully, but now I just skim text and move on.")

3\. Something else entirely?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm surprised nobody suggested adding a mouse over to the orange dots. The first thing I did was mouse-over to look for a tooltip to explain the dot and got nothing.

<comment><USER6> I did exactly the same thing indeed, and probably tons of other people we can no longer count because of lack of score on your comment ;)

<comment><USER7> Suggestion for what the mouseover could read: "Our most sincere apologies; YC News has contracted a rather serious case of the chicken pox." (:

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In case pg or anyone else is still reading this thread, I just thought I'd throw out my opinion on the experiment:

Today was the best day on HN in recent memory, and by a large margin. I've followed almost all the links on the front, and the signal-to-noise ratio in the comments seems to have increased by a full order of magnitude.

Please return the old behavior of displaying comment scores. I suffered an extra hour's loss of productivity today.

(This is awesome, please don't go back to regular comment scores.)

<comment><USER9> I disagree -- to me, signal-to-noise looks somewhat lower.

I also found a thread which seemed to have devolved into the trading of personal insults without getting greyed out. I didn't like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=846343> and <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=846123>

</comment><comment><USER11> Hey admins, have you considered toning down the shade of orange a bit? It's pretty distracting right now, compared to the neutral colors of the rest of the page.

I'd suggest using something closer to #ff9955

</comment><comment><USER12> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=846123>

</comment><comment><USER13> In my usage, the orange dot is getting confused with the orange star of "this is my post". I like the consistent color scheme, but maybe there needs to be something else to make it more distinct.

Other than that, I really like it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Orange? Apparently PG sees it red :)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=846123>

<comment><USER15> The color was changed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> One prob w/ lack of score: I misinterpret time as score.

</comment><comment><USER16> Also, it should be topcolor, not orange...

<comment><USER17> Oh, dear. My topcolor is a light blue that looks good with orange but would be invisible in dot form.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I see, thanks guys for the timely replies.

</comment><comment><USER18> Silliness. A community far too self-aware.

By the way, suppressing these metrics is pointless. We are intelligent people who notice the difference between two comments with very similar upvotes and one that far outpaces the other and find these proportions to be of interest. The new portrayal of comment rankings keeps interesting information from users and will end up stunting the community's progress. If you're just trying to ward off users, maybe remove the nav and make the site even slower.

There are far more interesting ways to differentiate. I'd like to see this site be as light and fast as possible (would appeal to our hacker ethic) and allow users to customize the hell out of it given knowledge of Arc or similar (good chance to promote your language as well).

<comment><USER19> Agreed. The numbering, for me, is a good sign of which comments to keep an eye on while scanning the page, rather than get lost in text.

<comment><USER2> Doesn't the orange dot work for that?

<comment><USER20> Well, no. With the numbers I can get a sense of how quickly a comment is being upvoted by looking at the time it was posted. I can also compare a comment's total points to the those of surrounding comments for an indication of its relative worth.

These things aren't perfect measures, but I find them useful.

<comment><USER21> I think you are using the numbers to judge the comment, instead of finding an interesting comment, and forming your own opinion.

<comment><USER22> It's just a filter. By reading only high scoring comments you will get a combination of insightful posts and annoying witticisms. Only rarely do you get a false positive: a post that with a high score that is inane or simply wrong.

By reading every post you'll certainly find the "diamond in the rough", posts that don't get the recognition they deserve. But you'll also have to trudge through loads of posts of little merit. Given that there is an infinite amount of information on the internet, those 2 minutes can probably be better spent on wikipedia or reading the top post in a different HN thread.

Additionally: HN isn't just about opinion, it is also for a large part about fact. And insightful facts almost always rise to the top. On the bottom of threads you often find things that are wrong or subtly wrong.

Judging by the numbers may very well be the most efficient and reliable way to get to insightful content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To work hard is the only way to build great things. You can get rich by accident, but you can't build _great things_ by accident. Only working hard.

Still it is very important to realize that it's better to improve the quality of your work and work 6/8 hours a day and find the time to relax and enjoy the life. To work very well and focused for 6 hours a day without interruptions I think can be considered to work hard as much as working 12 hours a day with a lot of breaks, environmental noise, and so on.

Usually I work from home, but I have a company with five people working together with me, and from time to time I go to work on the office in order to organize the work, solve the hardest tech problems, and so forth. When I'm at the office I'm a lot less focused because I receive many questions, I can't just have my usual working patterns, and my productivity is something like 20% compared to my working at home productivity.

<comment><USER6> My score is -2 but I got no replies, I wonder if it's because you think that 6 hours of hard work a day are too little, or for other reason. Please feel free to comment even anonymously because I'm very interested in this issue. Thanks to downmodders for any hint, I believe that smart people should use critics to improve themselves.

<comment><USER23> you got modded down because your comment has nothing to do with the topic at hand. perhaps you meant your comment to go in some other thread.

<comment><USER6> Ooops sorry, I posted in the wrong topic indeed. This post was about "working hard is overrated".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The First Wave of Corporate AI Is Doomed to Fail - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2017/04/the-first-wave-of-corporate-ai-is-doomed-to-fail <comment><USER2> TLDR "AI will transform industries, it hasn't happened yet, some companies have given up because it's too hard, some companies haven't, mobile apps are cheap and so too will AI be."

This is the best business model for AI startups right now: Raise money (at least $10m) to start a private equity fund. Now find businesses that YOU know will massively benefit from AI but their management simply doesn't understand. Buy the company. Use AI to increase margins. Sell the company. Profit.

This is a massively better idea than selling your time for X to companies run by people who don't understand what you'd be doing for them.

Actually, there's a bit more to it, but that's where the next wave of AI profits will come from (PE funds, not startups and not VC).

Speaking of which, if anyone is doing something similar, feel free to contact me.

<comment><USER3> The subset of people who can raise >$10m for a private equity fund and that understand current AI is probably quite small.

<comment><USER2> It's a pretty open strategy at this point. In a few years, everyone will be doing it.

Also, PE itself is such a messed up industry. Very conservative, hasn't changed their playbook in 2 decades. The guys at KKR aren't the ones that are going to figure this out.

<comment><USER3> Maybe a PE expert should partner with an AI expert. They seem rather different skill sets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Except: early AI has already succeeded. Things like Siri and Alexa work everyday for millions of people. Then there's also the hidden AIs we so ingrained in our life we don't notice like Google's searching or even credit card fraud detection.

The AI industry has a terrible problem: once we create an algorithm for something it's no longer AI, it's just an algorithm.

It feels like there should be a corollary to Arthur C Clarke's famous law: Any sufficiently advanced algorithm is indistinguishable from intelligence.

<comment><USER5> At this point, it's clear that the only version of AI that'll be acknowledged by the hard skeptics is "a system that thinks and works exactly like the best humans in history along every single individual axis, except a kabillion times better."

<comment><USER6> Well, that's what AI is always hyped as, by its proponents, and its detractors who want us to beware of a singularity where godlike machine intelligences take all the jobs and then turn the entire universe into paper clips.

After being fed a diet of daily articles about the immense power of AI, it's pretty natural for someone to look at a program which gets your spoken song and movie requests right 75% of the time and say "that's not AI".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I actually think this misses the biggest reason that this AI cycle could fail. A great deal of machine learning talent is concentrated in big companies right now, because of the nice salaries and stability it provides research initiatives.

But the real disruptive applications of AI will necessarily apply to new, untapped markets. It won't fit into search or ad markets, for instance.

Until AI moves out of research at labs and bigco into the startup space, it will be necessarily limited in scope.

Interesting because it could be the failure of this cycle that 'releases' talent into a startup ecosystem that lays the seeds for the distruptive next phase.

<comment><USER8> > Until AI moves out of research at labs and bigco into the startup space

Sounds like what OpenAI ([https://openai.com/about/](https://openai.com/about/)) is trying to achieve.

<comment><USER7> Somewhat. As I see it, openAI is trying to build the tools (and research papers, IP, etc.) in a publicly facing venue that could power the frameworks that ultimately power the disruptive wave of startups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article reads as rather lazily-written. Consider:

 _Allstate car insurance already allows users to take photos of auto damage and settle their claims on a mobile app. Technology that's been trained on photos from past claims can accurately estimate the extent of the damage and automate the whole process._

How do we make the jump from very well-established (even boring) use of tech-- sharing photos--to computer vision and analysis that can value a vehicle, understand the damage both visible and concealed, and assign useful figures for both repair and value? And won't such results be disputed at an astonishing rate? I mean, sure, it's a nice idea, but there does not seem to be any bridge at all from one concept to the other.

 _The good news is that emerging marketplaces for AI algorithms and datasets, such as Algorithmia and the Google-owned Kaggle, coupled with scalable, cloud- based infrastructure that is custom-built for artificial intelligence, are lowering barriers._

Renting someone else's algorithm sounds like a very risky proposition, as they can easily drive you out of the market when it becomes worthwhile to do so (see also Amazon's strategy around fungible third-party items that are profitable).

</comment><comment><USER5> Was it just me, or did the title have little to do with the actual article?

Everything written except the title seems pretty reasonable to me, and I'm an AI optimist.

</comment><comment><USER10> Yeah, those spam filters sure are a big failure all right.

/s</comment>


Privacy and Security Risks of Android VPN Permission-enabled Apps - <AUTHOR> https://blog.csiro.au/tinker-torrentor-streamer-spy-vpn-privacy-alert/ <comment><USER2> People should NOT trust free VPN services at all, as you don't pay level of service is not guaranteed. What's worse, who knows what the service provide is doing with the data flowing through the tunnels (to)? cover the operational cost (and goal for profits)

Install and configure your own VPN services (IPsec or OpenVPN), use strongSwan (Android native client which works great with RSA authentication with x509 certs, now supports importing VPN profiles in json format, cool) and OpenVPN.

Several past discussions on hacker news to start with:

\- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13351211](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13351211)

\- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13425728](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13425728)

<comment><USER3> > People should NOT trust free VPN services at all, as you don't pay level of > service is not guaranteed.

The corollary is that ones you pay for should not be trusted either: a service can both take your money _and_ insert ads.

huh.... reminds me of pay/cable tv....

<comment><USER2> Actually, I missed this point. Thank you for pointing out ;-)

I think that's why more and more open source tools (scripts or automation {cook,play}books, etc.} have been made available to enable people to self serve and build their own VPN service ;-)

<comment><USER4> The problem with personal VPN services is that it can be pretty trivial to reverse who the traffic is coming from (eg by requesting the billing address from the VM hosting provider).

This may not be an issue for some people and for those who it is an issue, there are ways around it (I'll leave that part of the post for someone more experienced than I as I don't want to risk giving out bad advice). But it's worth baring in mind when signing up for a VPS in view of running a VPN.

<comment><USER5> And your VM hosting provider can still MITM you.

<comment><USER4> I think that's pretty unlikely to be honest - or at least easily avoided. There's enough reputable hosting providers out there (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, OVH, Digital Ocean, etc etc) that there isn't really any excuse for signing up with a provider who does MITM your VMs traffic.

That all said, I'm not excluding the possibility of providers logging network connections passively. The way around that is to run more than one VPN; that way any particular provider only has visibility of either the destinations but not the source, or the source but not the destinations. I'm not recommending that people _need_ or _should_ run two VPNs though - just adding it as a workaround against passive snooping by hosting providers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From TFA:

> We test individually each one of the 150 VPN apps under consideration.

> Two people executed a total of 5,340 tests manually for three months and > connected to all end-points mentioned in the GUI of a given VPN app.

Okay, that's brilliant, but I'd love to see the actual data as well. Even if it's impractical to include the data in an appendix (page number limitations in the published work, et cetera), hosting it online and linking to it in the article would be great.

I'm a scientist and geek. Show me the data!

</comment><comment><USER7> It is no surprise that 'free' VPNs don't work or compromise security.

Would be good to see the actual list of VPNs that comply with basic security requirements.

<comment><USER8> TorrentFreak maintains a list of providers that responded to a questionnaire about anonymity, including one about encryption used: [https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-anonymous- review-160220/](https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-anonymous-review-160220/)

Personally, I prefer the "roll your own" approach mentioned above. A VPS from DigitalOcean or something beats most providers' pricing.

<comment><USER9> There is no anonymity if you roll your own.

The whole idea of VPN providers is that a lot of users have a connection to the same server so it's hard to monitor who talks to who.

<comment><USER10> Perhaps you're confusing VPNs with Tor. The latter seeks to provide anonymity; the former protects traffic traveling over a potentially untrustworthy network. Sure, a lot of folks seem to use VPNs lately as just a proxy to bypass geoblocking or whatever, and that works if the upstream endpoint is in the right place - but that's no reason to get confused about what the tool under discussion actually is able to do.

<comment><USER9> I am not confused there are just more cases.

A lot of people are using VPN providers to download illegal content via torrents. And in case there are no logs on the servers (which most providers advertise) the copyright holder has no way of knowing who you are since they only see that the traffic is coming and going from the providers IP address.

<comment><USER10> Those people are in for a series of nasty surprises if copyright enforcement ever grows teeth, because whoever's providing such a VPN service with backhaul certainly has enough information to tie them to their activity.

<comment><USER9> If they don't store logs they don't have enough information. That is the reason why a lot of companies that provide this service are incorporated in countries that don't require them to do so.

<comment><USER10> I can run a VPN service and not store logs. I can't prevent whoever sells me that service's bandwidth from storing logs, which they likely will do for troubleshooting purposes if nothing else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why would you need a third party app on Android? I just use the native VPN support over ipsec. Or are people using them for older Android installs?

<comment><USER12> What I've noticed is that if you pay for premium service, the apps keep the connection up way better and offer nice features, like switching your country from an easy menu.

Tha being said I've been quite happy with [http://privateinternetaccess.com/](http://privateinternetaccess.com/). A good Android client, fast, don't ask any personal information when you register, they say no logging, the Android app doesn't ask any permissions and so on. I can choose the key length and additionally block all connections if the VPN is not connected.

<comment><USER13> I agree, PIA is fantastic, been using it for years. Works great on mobile, I use it on my Android phone and iPhone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Paper (PDF) at [1]

[1] [ [https://research.csiro.au/ng/wp- content/uploads/sites/106/20...](https://research.csiro.au/ng/wp- content/uploads/sites/106/2016/08/paper-1.pdf) ]

</comment><comment><USER14> looked at the report to see if they'd reviewed torguard and apparently they... don't realize it's a VPN service and think it's related to the onion router. Kinda undermines they're credibility a bit if they can't even identify the tools they're auditing properly.

<comment><USER15> Actually, their report is much more credible because they note the difference between TorGuard (and a few similar apps) vs normal VPNs. To actually quote the report[1]:

 _67% of Android VPN apps claim to provide traditional VPN services (labeled here as "VPN clients") including enhanced security and privacy, anti- surveillance or tunnels to access geo-filtered or censored content. Note that we consider Tor clients (e.g., Orbot, Globus VPN] and TorGuard VPN client) as a separate category._

That seems a pretty fair distinction.

Notably, the report doesn't include the word "onion" in it at all, so I'm not sure where you got "[they] think it's related to the onion router" from.

[1] [https://research.csiro.au/ng/wp- content/uploads/sites/106/20...](https://research.csiro.au/ng/wp- content/uploads/sites/106/2016/08/paper-1.pdf)

<comment><USER16> Tor == "The Onion Router".

TorGuard == something completely unrelated to Tor. Per the TorGuard website ([https://torguard.net/faq.php](https://torguard.net/faq.php)):

"Is TorGuard related in any way to the "tor" project? No, The reference to "tor" in TorGuard relates to "torrents" and guarding one's privacy when using bitorrent. We are not related in any way to the "tor" project however the company does support through donations."

Orbot, OTOH, is part of the Tor Project ([https://www.torproject.org/docs/android.html.en](https://www.torproject.org/docs/android.html.en)) and Globus ([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.globus.vpn...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.globus.vpn&hl=en)) claims to support Tor.

<comment><USER15> Well that's.. stupid.

Ok, I entirely agree they (and I) are wrong. But obviously I'm going to take the position that it isn't unreasonable to think something called "TorGuard" has something to do with Tor.

<comment><USER14> If you're just doing a google search then yeah it's reasonable. It's less so when you're a professional who's supposed to be an expert on these things. If you can't spend more than 5 seconds double checking the accuracy of your research why should I trust it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As far as I know, Android VPN API does not expose setting up IPSec or IKEv2, it just creates a TUN device and forwards all the IP packets to you, it is upto you to handle it, therefore most devs I guess just sends the packet without encrypting. This does not mean they should be insensitive, but it is not suprising the most people have chosen the easy way. I guess iOS allows setting IPSec and IKEv2 VPN profiles, but did not try it. And, to actually create a TUN-device like functionality, it requires manual permisson from Apple, as OpenVPN did.

</comment><comment><USER18> Many I know who have recently started using these free VPNs only do so to skirt content filtering on free wireless networks. They do not have any expectation of security or privacy and are not conscious of the possibility of their traffic being collected or inspected by a rogue third party.

</comment><comment><USER19> Slightly off topic, but I'd be interested while I have the VPN people here to hear opinions about Softether. I've been using it for a while and like it. But I can't get much independent information about it from a security point of view.

<comment><USER20> I once looked extensively into Softether. It's the work of a Japanese professor and his lab. It's over a million lines of code because squeezes different VPN protocols into one server. IIRC it might even require some binaries as a prerequisite to installation. Nobody has ever audited its source code (how could they? it's million+ lines), and it has not popular long enough to have faced serious scrutiny.

I would assume it to be insecure against a motivated attacker.

<comment><USER19> That's interesting. Guess that might be a problem for the people who use [http://www.vpngate.net/en/](http://www.vpngate.net/en/) which I know the Softether guys created expressly to help people circumvent Governmental level firewalls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> They don't really mention anything about Opera VPN... but they do call out it's previous incarnation, Surfeasy, for the use of tracking/ad libraries. I wonder if the current Opera branded version has removed those or not...

</comment><comment><USER22> I wonder what's the breakdown between free and paid apps

But yeah "free VPN" sounds exactly like "free credit card check"

</comment><comment><USER23> considering 99% install a vpn on android for two reason:

1\. bypass content restrictions by geoip (e.g. pandora, netflix)

2\. a vpn that is just a local traffic monitor to tweak iptables(?) and block apps from using the network (to download ads). (e.g. netguard)

</comment><comment><USER24> >Only less than 1% of the negative re- views relate to security and privacy concerns, including the use of abusive or dubious permission requests and fraudulent activity, for the 9 apps listed in Table 7.

Of course. People don't install these VPN apps because they want their traffic to be "secure" or "private". They install them because they want to bypass geographical restrictions for content.

Nobody cares about traffic being insecure, or ads being injected in pages-- users just want to see that geolocked video and get on with it.

</comment><comment><USER13> TL;DR Get yourself a good, paid VPN service

</comment><comment><USER25> Wait, there are people who don't use OpenVPN when they set up VPN on Android? Nice.</comment>


Eric Schmidt: We'll pull Facebook's data by hook or by crook - <AUTHOR> http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/09/15/schmidt-well-pull-facebooks-data-by-hook-or-by-crook/

<comment><USER2> "by hook or by crook" is the article editorializing. Eric Schmidt did not say that, as the link text implies he did.

<comment><USER3> It's not only that, the whole article is pretty much editorializing. When will the MSM learn to just cover the facts & then STFU?

<comment><USER4> > When will the MSM learn to just cover the facts & then STFU?

The moment people will pay for facts in stead of for entertainment. Advertisers will pay for eyeballs, if you don't have eyeballs you can have all the facts you want it isn't going to make a business.

<comment><USER5> cnn is a readership business, not a news business

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The money quote:

 _"The best thing that would happen is for Facebook to open up its data," Mr. Schmidt said. "Failing that, there are other ways to get that information." He declined to be specific._

What is google gonna do if they're not authorized to access the users' private social graph? Any sniffing/MIM/deep-inspection trick they might pull off would be illegal and unauthorized. Are they gonna bury the consent form in some google ToS/EULA that people will need to click through to read their emails?

Seems like an empty threat to me.

<comment><USER7> For a quote out of context, by "that information" he could have easily meant "the real-world social connections between people", which Google could probably infer from Gmail.

Such articles are meaningless.

<comment><USER8> The other alternative is that he may have been talking about getting Facebook's data with its users' authorization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd imagine they already _do_ have a decent portion of Facebook's social graph. The FB graph that Pete Warden harvested with a crawler, and then later deleted after lawsuit threats ([http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18721-data-sifted- from...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18721-data-sifted-from- facebook-wiped-after-legal-threats.html)), didn't violate robots.txt in its crawling at the time. Given that Googlebot is pretty quick to acquire any web content not robots.txt-protected, I wouldn't be surprised if Google has a copy of something similar.

</comment><comment><USER10> This particular quote is not newsworthy, but has anyone started to wonder if Google might have to cut ties with Schmidt at some point? I started using bing this week in no small part because I find Schmidt creepy.

</comment><comment><USER11> Information in social networks are so valuable.The information can be used to generate targeted ads to the user or better search results. Everything in the facebook world can be tracked and mined to generate some relevant information on you. Based on that they can generate a targeted ad platform, identify who the opinion leaders are in your social network, etc.

That is why google wants to create a popular social network or wants facebook's data. Google is in the business of targeted ads, facebook is as well.

Facebook alone with that data and a platform to utillize it is worth billions. Soon they will get it right.

That being said, sometimes walled gardens are good, because if facebook didn't protect this data a competitor will use it and take away the facebook's money making opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER12> Or: Google these days is sounding more and more like MSFT...

<comment><USER13> Read the article, he never said that.

<comment><USER14> What he did say was pretty close though:

"The best thing that would happen is for Facebook to open up its data," Mr. Schmidt said. "Failing that, there are other ways to get that information."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> World Web War III is very real. not a hype word anymore...</comment>


Singapore Airlines have ability to spy in your flight seat with hidden cameras - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/SingaporeAir/status/1097124432848527361 <comment><USER2> So they bought in-flight entertainment centers from a manufacturer whose design happens to include a camera, and have disabled that part.

And the Twitter outrage engine explodes.

The end.</comment>