I'm a woman CEO and it doesn't change anything - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/accelerators/2014/08/04/mathilde-collin-im-a-woman-ceo-and-it-doesnt-change-anything/ <comment><USER2> IMO, to be a successful CEO, women have to give up as much personal life as men do. if raising children is part of the equation, it just depends on how much either sex is willing to give that up for a career. i believe i've read that Elon's family is pretty hard-hit on the available-father standpoint stemming from his ambitions.

also, depending on the size of the company, i think women CEOs need to take on some atypically aggressive and assertive business characteristics that are unbecoming of either sex but are typically more acceptable in society for men to step into.

could a woman be the next Larry Ellison? certainly yes, but not without first taking on his asshole qualities. the aggressive characteristics that make him a great multi-$bn CEO also make him a pretty hated guy in many circles. there's a difference between business-respect and personal-respect, some people don't give a shit about the latter and will step on their partners' throats to get ahead.

<comment><USER3> > i think women CEOs need to take on some atypically aggressive and assertive > business characteristics that are unbecoming of either sex but are typically > more acceptable in society for men to step into.

I agree. I'm going to come out and say it, it's difficult for a woman to step into any kind of leadership position and do the tough things without being perceived as a "bitch".

One thing I've observed in women who might be perceived as successful in those roles is that they're able to find the right way of being in charge and overcoming those perceptions. I think it's a subtle attitude or behavior change, and it seems to be a fine line.

But I'll also say that for men, they risk being perceived as "an asshole" in much the same way. And demonstrating assertiveness and leadership, being tough when it's needed it also a similar skill. I just think that men have more societal support and a few thousand years more practice and training to figure it out.

Women have far fewer role models to pattern after.

<comment><USER4> In many circles being an "asshole CEO" is seen as a good thing. c.f. Steve Jobs.

<comment><USER5> But that's exactly the point. Men can be "asshole CEOs" and be respected. When women are "asshole CEOs" they are considered to be "bitches".

<comment><USER6> Isn't "asshole" as negative as "bitch"? Woman or man, you probably won't be loved by everybody.

<comment><USER5> Fine, throw out the word 'asshole' and replace it with 'unlikeable'. The point is that men can be unlikable and still _command respect_. Women are much less likely to be met with that reaction.

<comment><USER7> > Women are much less likely to be met with that reaction.

This does not seem to be the case in my small sample of anecdotal experience. Could you say a bit more on why you think it is the case in general?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >>Of course there are some drawbacks of being a female CEO. When you're a woman in charge, you do have to work a bit more to get credibility and have people listen to you...

The way my company's CEO, who is also female, put it: "when you're a woman, people in business don't take you seriously _until_ you are successful."

I'm a guy, but I see this phenomenon everyday when observing the way my female coworkers are treated by (male) managers. The good-looking ones have it worst, in my opinion: while their looks may give them an advantage in certain situations, they often have to work extra hard to get noticed, _and_ when they do become successful, their success is attributed to their looks instead of their intelligence and hard work.

<comment><USER9> You think Gabe Newell got a lot of credit for being a studly dude? He still gets tons of crap for being overweight. This happens at far lower levels than Gabe.

<comment><USER10> I think it is interesting that GabeN build a company that caters to a demographic similar to himself, with a product that minimizes face to face human interaction. It leans away from all the negative biases he would face in business.

Also, Gabe is a founder. Most CEO types are MBA raiders who float from job to job pillaging companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "We need to start emphasizing the success of women CEOs instead of the womanliness of successful CEOs."

I cried male tears of joy, and when I showed this to my friend, she smiled as well. I'd upvote more than once if I could.

<comment><USER12> >We need to start emphasizing the success of women CEOs

Why? I don't want to emphasize anything. Can these people leave us alone and stop telling everyone what they should be doing. Who do they think they are, I am so sick of this.

<comment><USER11> If you crop the quote like that, you miss the point, which is that if you're going to have a female-positive stance rather than an egalitarian one(I have the latter), you should at least emphasize the success rather than the womanliness.

This is so that you are talking about the potential for success regardless of being a woman, rather than the womanliness despite being successful, the latter construing it as though being a woman is incompatible with success.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So her title says "it doesn't change a thing" and then in the body she admits that there are some differences:

 _Of course there are some drawbacks of being a female CEO. When you're a woman in charge, you do have to work a bit more to get credibility and have people listen to you; it might be harder to recruit developers and make them trust you; and you will end up going to a few sales meetings where the other person is more interested in you than in your product.

There are also some pretty good advantages. It's sometimes easier to get press coverage, and sales can happen faster. People will usually be keener on lending a hand. And I'm not even talking about all the help I got from fellow female entrepreneurs, especially when I was trying to get things off the ground._

I agree with her general sentiment that being a CEO is hard, regardless of gender. I also agree with her agenda that women need more role models of what it looks like to be a successful woman. But I don't think this kind of dismissal of the issues women have is very helpful. Being a woman does change some things. Understanding that "it has its good points and bad points" is a much, much better message than saying "it isn't any different at all" which is what the title says.

<comment><USER14> She didn't emphasise it very strongly, in fact it was a very weak emphasis but she was saying that everyone has a different set of strengths and weaknesses. She might find it easier to get press attention as a woman but a guy could easily have a strength that makes up for this.

> But I don't think this kind of dismissal of the issues women have is very > helpful

I think she knows better than you, unless you are a female CEO.

She made the point that sometimes when a woman is doing sales the customer can be more interested in her than the product. But historically, a lot of women in sales have tried to use sexuality to get the sale.

<comment><USER13> No, I am not a female CEO. I am female and have struggled a lot with the ways in which being female throws up barriers to some of my goals.

The fact that it wasn't perceived by her as a big deal does not prove she knows better than I do. Statistical outliers are not inherently more wise than others about the problems that your "average" person has.

<comment><USER14> > The fact that it wasn't perceived by her as a big deal does not prove she > knows better than I do.

You've already said you don't agree with her on this point and yet again you don't say why.

> Statistical outliers are not inherently more wise than others about the > problems that your "average" person has.

I'm sure that formerly, she was not a CEO, she was an "average" person. So she knows more about getting to CEO as a woman than you do. I'm not arguing that she has had the same experiences as you but I think it's a given that she is not implying that it is the same for all women.

<comment><USER13> You weren't previously asking me _why_ I disagree with her.

If you are actually interested in a few of my thoughts on the subject, there are relevant posts on my personal blog that can be read. You could look for the tag "The Gray Zone" to get you started.

<comment><USER14> > You weren't previously asking me why I disagree with her.

I think the onus was on you, the person posting a comment that you disagree with the author of the article, to make your argument/point.

You can't join a discussion with "I disagree" and not say why.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sort of cleverly, she just used her gender as a means to tout her app in a national newspaper, while mentioning that being female makes it easier to get press.

<comment><USER16> Yes like any smart person she will use all the tools at her command.

I wish we would speak more about the role of chance in success rather than how many X chromosomes a person has.

<comment><USER13> Chance is far more interesting when the discussion is about things like "how to increase your luck surface area." Otherwise, it is kind of hand-wavy dismissal of success as "welp, they got lucky."

<comment><USER16> Yes I agree - we need to discuss those things that allow you to influence your probability of success. We don't seem to discuss this as frequently as we discuss gender.

<comment><USER13> Well, I think for some folks, gender is one of the things influencing probability of success. When I write about it, I try to write about how one might get around the problems it creates. There is a low-ish level of interest in that around here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> We have the questions in the debate concerning demographic bias in business or power completely wrong. These articles should disturb us because they aren't about examining what demographic bias means but a rather they produce fluff pieces meant to distract from the issue by saying "see look, a woman can run a country/company and it's no different." The debate is framed in the context of the glass ceiling, if it exists and if there are barriers to entry. What the debate should be about is the glass floor and the group think that is the result of in homogenic environments.

We have way too many articles by women describe how the ceiling works or is broken and way too few from men that look at the problem of the glass floor along the lines of "i'm a man working in a mostly male power structure and here's how this structure creates adverse results." We are so used to accepting the latter we can hardly imagine its effect. Until the entire power structure of a institution mirrors that of the social demographic makeup there is really no reason to take these articles seriously.

</comment><comment><USER18> Bravo. Love this.

This statement may come off polarizing, but the same applies to minorities.

As a black man, and a Jamaican, other black people and other Jamaicans don't need "black CEOs" to look up to. They just need other CEOs who happen to be black, and other successful entrepreneurs that also happen to be Jamaican.

It is for this reason that I don't support things like quotas. Make sure that X% of your executive ranks are female, or black or asian or any other "under- represented" minority. Quotas are bad policy.

The more people of minority origins that become successful is the more they will inspire others to do the same.

There is a reason so many young black men want to become basketball stars, and why so many Jamaicans are "running" (no pun intended) into athletics. It is because they have realized that they can excel in those fields because of the examples before them. Not that they are anyhow more advantaged in those fields. It is just that the glass ceiling is no longer there.

So Kudos to Ms. Collin for writing this article. Well said!

</comment><comment><USER19> We need more female entrepreneurs with attitudes like this. Although awareness for equality issues is undoubtedly important, Collin hits the nail on the head by re-focusing on the undeniable truth: running a company is just plain hard. Sure, being female, minority, short, nontechnical, etc can all be drawbacks, but I'd argue that they all pale in comparison to the difficulty that is successfully running a sustainable company. Full disclosure: I am relatively young (20) male hacker of minority descent, and I used to use some of these factors as excuses but now I treat them as irrelevant. Those things simply don't matter to me (in context of running a company or building a product) because it's not really in my power (and not really my overarching mission) to change the culture of the valley and the rest of the tech world. Just my $0.02.

</comment><comment><USER20> I know this doesn't really touch on the meat of her column, but I was kind of surprised that Mathilde uses "woman CEO" and "female CEO" interchangeably. Usually people have a strong preference for one or the other. (Personally, I prefer using adjectives as adjectives and nouns as nouns, and don't think there's much of a need to turn "woman" into an adjective.)

<comment><USER21> Technically and linguistically speaking, "female" is an adjective, and "woman" is a noun. You'd talk about a woman who _is_ a CEO, or a _female_ CEO. Some professions and niches, often in the sciences, use female and male as nouns: i.e., "the female of the species," or "the subject is a Caucasian male, 47." This latter usage is becoming increasingly common, to the point where the exclusively adjectival nature of "male" and "female" is being erased. Meanings and usage are pretty fluid over time.

Of course, words like woman, man, female, and male also have connotations above and beyond their technical parts of speech, such as the connotations Mathilde talks about.

<comment><USER22> Traditionally, as in decades ago, it was actually considered somewhat vulgar to use terms like "male" and "female" to refer to human beings. The term "woman CEO" would have been preferred for that reason. Somehow I like the aesthetic of "woman CEO" over "female CEO" for the same reason. It seems more dignified and humanistic.

<comment><USER23> Right; "female" and "male" bring to mind animals and base biology. "Woman" and "Man" distinctly separate us from the animal kingdom.

<comment><USER24> Hence why I tend to use "female" and "male." Mankind is not separate from the animal kingdom. Although I suppose male human and female human are the least ambiguous.

<comment><USER25> > I suppose male human and female human are the least ambiguous.

And make you sound like an alien anthropologist, rather than, well, a human.

<comment><USER22> "A human"? "Human" is an adjective. The term is "human being".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Isn't Front YCS14? I would love the author to revisit this another year into the company.</comment>


Show HN: A free, hosted RequestBin via API - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/PipedreamHQ/pipedream/blob/master/interfaces/http/README.md <comment><AUTHOR> Tod, one of the founders here. At Pipedream, we operate RequestBin.com which is used by over 100,000 developers a year.

This new release address the most common request we have received over the past year. It offers the functionality of a request bin (a URL that collects requests you send it so you can inspect them in a human-friendly way) coupled with the power of an API (a way to consume event data in your app using real- time REST or SSE APIs). In addition, we now allow users to trigger serverless workflows, with built-in integration to hundreds of apps and developer tools.

We think there's a lot we can improve and are eager for feedback so please send us your ideas and opinions.</comment>


Show all programs connected or listening on a network port - <AUTHOR> http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/324/show-all-programs-connected-or-listening-on-a-network-port

<comment><USER2> I don't work at the port level much, but understand that there are usual uses for several... so that monitoring those for suspicious activity could be part of an overall security strategy.

Anyone know of widgets or tiny GUI-based apps for Windows/ OSX / Linux that might periodically monitor (and maybe alert) regarding port activity of greatest concern?</comment>


Show HN: time-based comments with Youtube Javascript API - <AUTHOR> http://pocketwatchpundits.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Any questions, comments? :)</comment>


Teach Yourself Go in 24 Hours - <AUTHOR> http://leanpub.com/teachyourselfgo <comment><USER2> "Sample chapter":

Chapter One. Jumping In This is the only unique guide that will help you with learning Go in one day: • Go to your local market. • Buy a whole fish. Salmon or Cod is recommended but even a Catfish will do. Trout is also quite effective. • Go home and turn on your computer. • Start up your IDE of choice. • Now take that fish you bought and smack yourself in the head with it. • Repeat step 5 until the thought of "jumping in" leaves your mind. There aren't any shortcut. Don't rush yourself, learn the basics and build on them. Otherwise you're going to crash and burn.

<comment><USER3> Just to be clear: This is a complete quote of the "Free Sample Chapter" of the book.

(I first thought your comment was some kind of joke.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 8 'pages', and a waste of time. Good thing I paid $0.00 for it to check out.</comment>


Nintendo Announces New 2DS XL - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/27/15463842/nintendo-2ds-xl-announced-price-release-date <comment><USER2> You cannot do a system transfer from a 3DS XL to a 2DS. Will this same restriction apply to the 2DS XL? I hope not. I have no use for the 3D feature; if this system has a better battery life and is thinner, I am tempted to "upgrade".

</comment><comment><USER3> Gotta love 'fast processing power'! :D

</comment><comment><USER4> Funny they went for the white man / asian woman pairing in the ad. I thought that trope was kind of offensive?

<comment><USER5> Of course it's offensive, look at how many ethnicities and genders were left out.

How are us fat white slobs supposed to improve without any positive role models in the media?</comment></comment>


Organice – Using Org mode from a smartphone or browser [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQKc0hcFXCk <comment><AUTHOR> This is a preview of one of the lightning talks I'm going to give at EmacsConf next week^^

[https://emacsconf.org/2019/schedule](https://emacsconf.org/2019/schedule)

Right now, the discussions about it are the top posts on /r/emacs[1] and lobste.rs[2]. Screenshot[3].

1\. [https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/dn0ar3/introduction_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/dn0ar3/introduction_to_organice_using_org_mode_from_a/)

2\. [https://lobste.rs/s/jjcwou/introduction_organice_using_org_m...](https://lobste.rs/s/jjcwou/introduction_organice_using_org_mode)

3\. [http://screenshots.200ok.ch/screenshot_2019_10_26-706dc324.p...](http://screenshots.200ok.ch/screenshot_2019_10_26-706dc324.png)</comment>


Ask HN: Review our Web to Mobile Conversion Startup - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN,
Been following HN for more than a year now, and I am completely addicted. I love how like-minded we are in trying to resolve/help each others, from technical, business or even personal side.
I have a new venture that we are currently launching called WebtoSmartphone.com. It's still in the early stage (on production site), and we have been working on this for quite some times now. No VC/Seed funding, just bootstrapping aside of fulltime jobs + Ramen diet :) It's doing a pretty good job converting most of the websites we own (in our network).
I had the idea for the service based on the need of my firm to convert existing websites to mobile and keeping the mobile site as authentic as possible to the actual website, not a wap-looking site, and hassle-free. There was and is many options on the market and we can see in the near future more and more of those options. Our humble goal is to provide a service that is affordable, pleasant and easy to use and that constantly synchronize your website with the mobile site without having to keep or host two separate versions. This is why we went for "on-the-fly" conversion.
It was a technological challenge, but our developers (Kudos to Gero and Adrian!) did a fantastic job in helping us achieving our challenges.
I (we) need your help to review the following aspects:
1. What do you think of the idea.
2. What do you think of the landing page
3. What do you think of the checkout page
4. What do you think of the process in general
5. Most important is: What can we do better?
There is still work ahead of us in keeping up with the technical optimization side: development, improving conversion speed and Business side: Sales, Marketing, (By the way we are looking for white label partners, so if you are interested for that or just connect with us (we are socal based), please drop us a line to firstname.lastname@example.com, subject HN :))
This is my first time actually using "Ask HN", all your positives ideas and feedbacks are highly welcomed! We want to create a product that fits YOUR mobile needs.
Thank you in advance. <comment><USER2> 1) The idea is good.

2) The preview really needs to work. I tried a few sites (yahoo.com, reddit.com, drpepper.com, google.com) and only Google worked. Your product right now _is_ that preview.

5) As a potential customer, I would rather have the first month free than a money back guarantee.

<comment><AUTHOR> First of all, bwh2, thank you for your feedback!

1) Thanks :)

2) That is our challenge. We are working on this currently and will be releasing a newer version of the preview (emulator) very soon!

The main items we will be addressing in our next release are the following:

2.a) Preview Speed (It currently convert all data on page)

2.b) Preview Quality (Better engineering of pages previewed)

2.c) "Build your Mobile Site from Scratch" Module (for users that wants to)

2.d) Internationalization: Website will be translated and accessible in more languages.

2.e) "Self-taught"/AI Conversion Engine (Not all websites are build the same, therefore our ultimate goal is to have an engine that convert better everytime it converts based on aggregations on sites structures)

5) Thank you! I will work on that right away starting today and update you here as soon as it is implemented.

<comment><USER2> I would suggest pre-caching the conversion results for a bunch of popular sites. Grab the Alexa top 1000 or something. Basically, I can understand why my random site takes a little longer, but not big, fast, popular sites.

<comment><AUTHOR> bwh2: Great idea. My question is: Would it be kosher to pre-cache? ;)

There is a powerful caching module for the sites you access from your mobile phone though. I will have to ask my developers how to implement this in the preview.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> link: <http://www.webtosmartphone.com></comment>


Leveling up your CSS - <AUTHOR> https://medium.freecodecamp.com/leveling-up-css-44b5045a2667#.r94tdydxw <comment><USER2> I recently decided to upskill my CSS knowledge and find out all the new (for me anyway) bits of CSS3. The way I decided to do this was by inspecting some of the styles used in Bootstrap and manually building (no copy-pasting) my own clones of those, researching the new elements when I encountered them. I've learnt loads along the way, and it's been a quite enjoyable journey.

It also means that I will have a nice lightweight CSS style set that looks very Bootstrappy, but isn't.</comment>


Desktop Blogging / Publishing App - <AUTHOR>

I've spent the last 13 years as a blogger wishing that someone had created a desktop publishing app / client that was minimal and super-focused on what matters most: Writing.
As a software developer I eventually realized that I would probably have to create this myself. After 350 days of coding I released it last week:
http://desk.pm/
I'd love your thoughts on it folks! <comment><USER2> A few quick thoughts:

1\. How is this different than iA Writer?

2\. How about a trial for new users? That ways people know what they're going to pay for.

3\. Why not also create an online version like hemingwayapp?

</comment><comment><USER3> Try posting as a Show HN. For some reason it's showing under Ask HN.

Congratulations on shipping and wish you all the best!

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice looking site. I dunno what else to say, since I can't spend $29.99 to see how good Desk is.</comment>


Reasons to Turn Down That Startup Job - <AUTHOR> https://deardesignstudent.com/8-reasons-to-turn-down-that-startup-job-1f82a00ade34?source=tw-e7b19f32aae8-1440703593147&gi=61a178a8bb91#1bac--share-176-724 <comment><USER2> I don't know, because I'm an engineer, but what I learned from Apple, was not the work I was doing, but it was from being surrounded by such brilliance. I would go to lunch (or dinner) with the guy who wrote the javascript engine. Or pop into the office, during a beer bash, of the engineer who wrote the original UIScrollView and pick his brain about why they did things a certain way.

The actual day to day work though, was pretty routine. I was mostly fixing bugs and rebuilding parts of features that had to ship in yearly timelines. Every project I worked on that wasn't canceled was spent in refactor mode for a good portion of the year. Let's rewrite this for 64-bit for example, or let's rework this for this new framework. The actual customer should never notice a change in the product, and usually the visual changes are subtle if any. Lucky few got to work on the shiny demo-able new features and even fewer lucky folks got to lead teams from their new products.

Lastly, most of the tooling that I got really good at and used to great advantage was proprietary except for Xcode and Instruments. :(

So leaving to go to a startup I literally had to learn a whole new set of tools _and_ APIs. Then again, I learned so much more about how to build a product from the ground up at a small 11 person startup than I ever did at Apple.

At a company like Apple, I gained skills adding a feature to an existing product. At a startup, I gained skills building a product from nothing but an idea.

<comment><USER3> _At a company like Apple, I gained skills adding a feature to an existing product. At a startup, I gained skills building a product from nothing but an idea._

Being able to take an idea and turn it in to a product is a brilliant skill that startups absolutely need, but equally, once the product is out there being used, you need the other skill set to maintain the product and add new things without annoying the users. Having people around who can do both is exceptionally useful because it means the team continues to do productive work for much longer without having to bring new people in.

To that end, I always recommend people get at least a few years experience at an established company before joining a startup.

<comment><USER4> > Being able to take an idea and turn it in to a product is a brilliant skill > that startups absolutely need, but equally, once the product is out there > being used, you need the other skill set to maintain the product and add new > things without annoying the users.

But guess who gets the glory? :(

<comment><USER5> If you want the glory, you're either in the wrong position or the wrong industry.

<comment><USER6> "Fixing bugs and keeping the thing running" never sounds as impressive on a CV as "created this product from scratch using ....".

That's how I interpreted what was being said rather than expecting fame in the hacker community.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This should really be "8 reasons to turn down that startup job as your first job" as most of the bullet points are really only geared towards someone in or leaving college. This should be obvious from the website's name but without context it took me a minute before I realized.

That being said the #7 point of "The world needs fixing, not disrupting" seems to lose sight of what disruption really is and conflates it with simply taking advantage of people.

Disruption fixes things. In fact I think one could easily argue that disruption fixes things far more effectively than anything else. Telling someone to go find "real problems to solve" is simply useless. I don't understand the point of trying to make the "service economy" a place "Where entitled white boys figure out how to replicate their private school dorm experience for life".

Sure there are issues in this area with SOME start-ups but going right into calling it a race issue without providing anything useful just screams useless rant.

Just drop #7, rename to 7 reasons and update the HN title to make it more obvious of the target demographic. Just my thoughts.

<comment><USER8> Honest question: have you ever worked a job in that service economy and fallen seriously ill? Things turn in to a shitshow really quickly when six-figure bills start raining in from oncology, your for-profit insurer starts denying claims after you've cleared the massive $5,000 deductible and $6,250 out-of- pocket maximum, you're technically "self-employed" and have no access to employee protections like paid sick time or FMLA, every bad health day you have is another couple hundred dollars foregone that could have gone to medical bills, and then the IRS piles on with self-employment tax to add insult to (literal) injury.

Disruption in the US health care system would be great; until that happens, my excitement over having cat litter delivered to my door in an hour or less will, sadly, be dampened by the fact that some Americans are literally doing their own minor surgeries over a bathroom sink right now. Wart removal is a really common one, presumably because it routinely bills out $250-$350 per visit in larger practices, and the typical visit count is high.

<comment><USER9> Your an employee with cancer, and your for profit insurance still deny's your insurance, you quickly run out of paid and unpaid leave through the FMLA and your still up shit creek with cancer. The employee designation doesn't seem much better as far as I know.

The real problem are laws that try to offload welfare to employers when it should be paid through a govt. tax system.

You have to take whatever IC income you get and divide it by 1.4 to get the equivalent pay as an employee after benefits.

How is it like for people with no savings on medicaid or mediCAL?

<comment><USER8> Being an employee in the US can, in some cases, help preserve both your job and your employer-facilitated health insurance while you're sick. The company needs to have 50 or more employees for it to apply, IIRC, and you need to have worked there for at least a year. There are slightly more generous laws in some states. It's quite close to nothing, but still slightly better than nothing.

I definitely agree that employment (or lack thereof) should have nothing to do with health care.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While I agree with some of the author's points, such as considering your tolerance/appetite for working within a chaotic environment before joining a startup, the article seems less about deciding whether to take a startup job and more about why one should choose to work at an agency instead of in-house for their first role.

>4\. You need to be going wider than deep right now.

The author's argument is roughly that working a at a startup is limiting because you will work only a single problem because a startup is focused on solving only a single problem.

I disagree.

1\. A company that seeks to solve a single problem is a company that has focus; I would argue that many startups lack focus. Many startups do not know the specific problem that they are solving nor for whom. Much time is spent on product/market fit. So, I disagree with the premise that startups are solving for a single problem. Successful ones do, yes, and that brings me to (2).

2\. The idea that you will work more broadly at a successful, time-tested company than you would at a startup does not seem accurate. Startups are known for allowing people to wear many hats for a reason (because they often require people to wear many hats). For individual contributors, roles at a Fortune 50 company will be far more specialized – and opportunities to join projects even slightly outside your domain of expertise will be far less prevalent.

This is why I think the argument is really about in-house vs. agency work. Agency work will teach you their methods and provide you with exposure to a range of clients and industries, sure.

3\. The premise that because your startup is focused on solving a single problem, you will not get to work on a variety of problems or get to 'try different things' makes me scratch my head... If only solving a problem were that simple, that efficient!

<comment><USER11> I think your criticisms of the explanation given are valid, but there is something to be said for breath vs depth.

Programing and design are both hard in their own way, but fundamentally they are a skill you can hone. Once you have mastered those skills the rest of it becomes understanding your companies domain.

As an example from a programers perspective it is fair to say that every system that deals with money interfaces with accounting. I have been in enough places and exposed to enough systems, that I understand that these things will need to happen, and how they need to happen. I also understand how to speak with the accountants to make sure the data they are getting is what they wanted or expected. It was only by seeing this repeatedly that the patterns and language became clear to me.

I think it takes time to become a proficient coder in a professional setting, as well as understanding the language and needs that are common to almost every business. If your busy learning how to do your job, and how to deal with the person in accounting, and trying to focus on your startups domain it might get a bit overwhelming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> At a startup you'll have way more responsibility and be making decisions at a much higher level than at bigcorp. You'll learn way more, move much faster, wear more hats. It's not even close. That mentor will put you on some narrow meaningless tasks, especially if you have some talent because then he'll be afraid of you. I'd advise the opposite, go startup when you're young and have less to risk and more to prove. If you have the energy and the talent you can run circles around the big guys.

<comment><USER13> >>> You'll learn way more, move much faster, wear more hats.

That's true. However, you lose the 'have you thought about doing it in X way?' 'would have never thought of that' thing. There are advantages in wearing more hats but you absolutely must make sure that you constantly get some ideas from outside (blogs, friends, books, etc).

>>> if you have some talent because then he'll be afraid of you

If one engineer is afraid of other, that's an indicator of a toxic workplace. If it's the senior who's afraid because of someone much less experienced... He's probably not that senior anyway and definitely not a good mentor.

>>> If you have the energy and the talent you can run circles around the big guys.

It's not all black and white. Both have their pros and cons, as simple as that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> From the article: _" I hate to tell you this, but right now the startup world, or at least the ones making the majority of the noise, have their heads up their own ass and don't realize it stinks. They're solving problems for the top 5% of the population. How can I get poor people to do my chores? How can I get people to drive me around without having to pay them health insurance? How can a drone deliver my toilet paper within 15 minutes while the person who fulfilled my order sits at her desk crying because she's working a 15-hour day and can't take time off to get that lump in her chest looked at. This is known as the service economy. Where entitled white boys figure out how to replicate their private school dorm experience for life."_

YCombinator company list: [http://yclist.com/](http://yclist.com/)

How many of those fit the above criteria?

<comment><USER15> I find the rant of the article exaggerated and ridiculous. But actually a lot of those companies do fit the criteria.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Waiting for the perfect time and feeling not competent enough without a patronage (i.e. points 1-3) are my biggest educational regrets. Sure, in startups there is a bias for being too independent and confident. But virtually all other places (including academia) are not good for skilled minds and independent spirits - they rather expect you to respect hierarchy and status quo.

Surely, not everyone is mature enough to learn by trials and _erorrs_. But by listening to superiors one may never mature.

</comment><comment><USER17> As a developer my experience has been the direct opposite. Getting my first job at a startup was a the best decision for me. I think I have more width (rather than depth) of knowledge because of it, (since I worked in wider verity of roles).

Maybe for a designer this is different. Probably the title should point this out?

<comment><USER18> I'm with you here. After working at a startup for 1.5 years I became a solid full stack developer with the ability to very quickly adapt to the current task.

There's a point about going "wide" instead of "deep" in the article, and I can surely say that working at that startup gave more "wide" than anything else.

And by the way, at the job where I am at the moment, I had to use a severely limited skillset and had to use a couple of same technologies all over the place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think this rings somewhat true designers. However like any advice, it's very generalized and won't necessarily apply.

I definitely learned a lot working as a freelancer and in a agency solving different kinds of problems. The startup problem set is usually narrow with variety of random things. Many startups are also not that willing to actually invest in design (time or money wise), and it might not even make sense since they are just trying not to die.

Many startups are not also not founded by designers, and won't really understand design which also makes it harder to learn or practice good design. (As devs, think about a startup founded by sales MBAs and try to teach them good dev practices and make them understand what it is the value in it.)

I've also never worked at a startup where I could see someone as my design mentor. Most of the time, you will just have to figure things out by yourself.

I'd still say that you learn a lot at a startup, and it can be a good place for junior or more senior designers. It's about creating and nurturing one overall experience and product and learning as you go. To do and learn good design, as a junior design, the team you're joining matters a lot, as a senior designer, the management matters a lot.

</comment><comment><USER20> Boy do I disagree with these.

You're probably going to see more senior Agency people grumbling about startups for two reasons:

1) Agencies are getting priced-out of the market for talented designers. Go on glassdoor and compare how much mid-level designers at agencies make compared to tech companies. It's close to double. As an aside, #7 is really rich. There are tons of design firms out there who utilize of 1099 designers (some with masters degrees!) who gross less than 38K a year for full-time work. Mike's Mule isn't one of those companies, but the design industry isn't without it's own 1099 abuses.

2) The startup world requires "product designers" who have a specific set of design skills that agencies aren't well equipped to provide. Namely- ongoing data-driven product development (as opposed to "Just enough research"), systemized/componentized view of design (as opposed to "The customer is always right/Take what I have created for you or I'll walk like Saul Bass"), and a more collaborative "agile" workflow (As opposed to waterfall). Based on my experience as an engineer working with agencies, they are reluctant to allow their designers to directly interact with engineering teams -- we always had a PM or an senior designer (who wasn't on our project) act as this mediator, putting us in a time-boxed meeting when in reality we just needed to sit down with 1 designer and just work through a few issues over <1 hour.

Because of this, agencies aren't just losing talent: They're also losing potential clients. Startups tend to prefer tight-knit product teams, where the designer is (or at the very least SHOULD BE!) a major component.

</comment><comment><USER21> Let's not forget _for whom_ we work.

Replace the word startup with "that one inspired guy trying really really hard to accomplish something awesome who's personally asking you for help" and I think the post reads a bit differently. Like, do you buy their vision and feel the awesome vibes there? This rules out #5 and #6 and #8 as motivation. With what's on the line at startups, I doubt you'd even get an offer if they didn't think you were ready. This rules out #1 through #4.

Reason #7 seems more to me as reason _for_ than against working for a startup. Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Google... aren't places to go either to "solve real problems" as a designer.

Or am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER22> Please note: This advice is for designers who have just graduated from art school. The answers are for question:

"Q: I graduated from school this year and I've been looking for my first job. After interviewing around, I finally got a job offer at a small startup. How do I decide if it's the right offer to take?"

</comment><comment><USER23> Also relevant: Fuck You, Pay Me by Mike Monteiro.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U)

<comment><USER13> Although it's a good advice, I can't really see how is it relevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This article is aimed at designers, and maybe it makes good points for them.

But for developers beginning their careers at a startup, most of these points just don't apply. I cut my teeth at an early startup, and just for example: people taught me how to be a better developer (#2), I went wider rather than deeper (#3), and I had a great mentor (#4).

</comment><comment><USER25> I hate to tell you this, but right now the startup world, or at least the ones making the majority of the noise, have their heads up their own ass and don't realize it stinks. They're solving problems for the top 5% of the population. How can I get poor people to do my chores? How can I get people to drive me around without having to pay them health insurance? How can a drone deliver my toilet paper within 15 minutes while the person who fulfilled my order sits at her desk crying because she's working a 15-hour day and can't take time off to get that lump in her chest looked at. This is known as the service economy. Where entitled white boys figure out how to replicate their private school dorm experience for life.

\</comment><comment>

so. fucking. real.

</comment><comment><USER26> More like 8 ways to become another drone.</comment>


Where is my getter/setter Swift? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@sarunw/where-is-my-getter-setter-swift-7fe450eeec32

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for?

var myThing: myType { get { return something } set { //do something } }</comment>


Ask HN: I started a SaaS – now what? - <AUTHOR> I started SaaS that is generating revenue. It is all bootstrapped and I feel at my limit for managing a company that needs to grow and can flourish.
Looking for advice on how to bring on the right team and partners to help grow the company with the right trajectory.
I am also interested in learning about talking with investors or developing best business practices.
I've never had a SaaS before. I've managed a business before and currently do so but at most I've had two employees. <comment><USER2> Congrats on making it 'there'!

Aside from obvious advises (which i'm sure will come) on grow, VC, investment, outsourcing, scaling et cetera.

Please consider this approach: [https://sivers.org/book/StartSmallStaySmall](https://sivers.org/book/StartSmallStaySmall)

Start Small, Stay Small - by Rob Walling and Mike Taber [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0615373968](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0615373968)

Wish you all the best

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much kind stranger! Definitely a niche offering too.</comment></comment>


Bitcoin Core Developer Accused of Rape, Sexual Assault, Files Defamation Lawsuit - <AUTHOR> https://coinspice.io/news/bitcoin-core-developer-accused-of-rape-sexual-assault-files-defamation-lawsuit/ <comment><AUTHOR> Peter Todd confirms he filed the lawsuit:

[https://twitter.com/peterktodd/status/1114244703103397890](https://twitter.com/peterktodd/status/1114244703103397890)

Complaint [PDF]:

[https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.340308...](https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.340308/gov.uscourts.cand.340308.1.0.pdf)</comment>


Reddit holds the secret to fixing Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43383766 <comment><USER4> > In fact, I'd go as far as to say Reddit provides a model for how to create a > more interesting, fairer web. A model that doesn't drag down other > publishers in the process.

No, instead it drags down users who don't follow the hivemind and bolsters power hungry mods who set the narrative. Reddit, and it's system, is in my opinion the very opposite of fixing anything, unless you think echo chambers are good thing.

> With Reddit, though, it's right there on the homepage. As I write this, the > top item on the site - about a person conquering drug addiction - is there > because 49,600 people felt it worth my attention.

And a number of posts you don't see because they're either removed or because the algorithm holds them back. Also, the upvotes you see are _not_ how many people have upvoted that post... That number is much different.

> Under Reddit's upvote/downvote system, clickbait headlines often sink > quickly, while long, descriptive titles, leading to genuinely insightful > information, thrive.

How much time has this author spend on reddit? Clickbait is upvoted just as easily, as long as it goes along with what the hivemind thinks on that moment. And long descriptive titles do indeed thrive - because almost no one reads the article and most discussions that follow are bases solely on the title of the article.

Sigh so much wrong with the article, so much wishful thinking towards reddit..

<comment><USER5> If this article was 5-10 years ago, I would have agreed with most of it, but as it stands you are absolutely correct.

The Reddit algorithm now is incredibly opaque with constant tinkerings that make me think the "voting" is more of a placebo button on the front page. In recent memory, there were a few incidents of /r/The_Donald fully populating the front page, all with 0 upvote scores, which came off suspiciously as if they were deeply messing with the voting system.

Where it used to be a platform where you could be assured there would be minimal censorship, it is now commonplace to "shadowban" users who go against the narrative and the rules are arbitrarily enforced to ban subreddits. (Check out /r/shitredditsays for a subreddit that constantly breaks site rules but still stands unopposed)

Reddit is obviously striving for constantly more advertising friendly platform and it has been demonstrated multiple times upvotes are easily bought and advertisers are constantly sneaking in posts disguised as users to do their "viral marketing"

No, author, Reddit is moving right towards the direction of Facebook rapidly. It is only a matter of time before they begin to lock out content behind a login page, you can already see the transition today.

<comment><USER6> >there were a few incidents of /r/The_Donald fully populating the front page, all with 0 upvote scores, which came off suspiciously as if they were deeply messing with the voting system.

You know that reddit doesn't actually show you vote counts, right?

<comment><USER5> What I meant was that the numbered score they had next to every post was 0, which is incredibly atypical for that to show up on the front page.

And yes, Reddit removed the ability to see the number of upvotes/downvotes on any item a few years back. Just another way for them to obfuscate the actual results of a post.

<comment><USER7> Wasn't this when they were trying to ban /r/the_donald outright from /r/all? I feel like they were trying to penalize the "real" score but somehow kept that the same and accidentally set the "fake" score to zero instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the author missed the actual special trick that Reddit allows over other subs/forum systems - subreddits.

Look Reddit is transparently similar to many forums that came before it, and most of the old farts from slash dot will know this.

What major change Reddit enables is subreddit budding/splitting for forums.

Forums had a terrible problem with the noise to signal ratio- sometimes the topic (say pictures) was too broad to deal with. How the heck do moderators of a forum on pictures deal with memes? Or just cute baby pics? Or nature pics- and so on.

Well subreddits solves that - while giving you a single identity you can use to traverse all this stuff, with a relatively consistent set of functions over each subject domain.

This is a pretty major function and any large scale forum will have to enable this functionality.

Also subreddit creation is a snap.

—-

As for everyone who is bemoaning the state of Reddit - that's the state of any forum after it starts attract the full attention of the internet populace.

The truth is long since known. The net is generally an ugly place and assuming that the admins or mods are some how unusually responsible for this state of affairs is dismissive of reality.

I Once modded at Reddit - I've gone from pro free speech to defining a whole new set of rules and conditionals for working with speech online.

Free speech in the old net sense is long since gone, and it's not implementable at scale. Trust me, we've tried.

At best there's networks of ideas and forums working with or against each other.

<comment><USER9> > Free speech in the old net sense is long since gone, and it's not > implementable at scale.

This is the constant refrain from the pro-censorship crowd: "if we let people say distasteful things, they'll start thinking distasteful things!". Well, no - you have it backwards. They already think it, that's why they wrote it down. What you're trying to do instead is to make the people who believe X think that they're all alone in the world, being the only ones who believe X, which actually fails spectacularly - the people who believe X learn to speak and write in "dog whistles", and the fact that you're suppressing them in the first place helps convince them that they were actually right in the first place. Otherwise, why would you be so threatened by them?

<comment><USER10> What is this "free speech" on the net people that speak of? Has it ever existed?

With few exceptions the right to post in a forum has always been at the pleasure of the mods/sysop. In fact, the quality of discussion is usually proportional to how effectively the mods cull the off topic content and wield the ban hammer against the trolls. It has been this way since the days of the dial in BBS.

If the people who believe in X are unwelcome in a particular forum, then no one is stopping them from building their own. Maybe they don't benefit from the network effects of a Reddit, but a Reddit derives zero or even negative benefits from hosting them, so fair deal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reddit is much worse that Facebook. Yes, Facebook. Reddit is extremely fast to censor and hide opinions, even without the knowledge of the person silenced. Different opinions are not tolerated. Completely wrong and ignorant comments get thousands of upvotes and maintain very high visibility despite stating things that can be proven false by elementary textbooks or a single google query. There's a toxic pretend-academic mindset, based around "science" and "sources" as infallable, religious-type absolute proofs of opinions. Hundreds of the top thousand posts are covert advertisement, many with fake upvotes and comments, created by either PR companies, botnets, or Reddit's own ad services. And all that without going into the toxic environment of users mindset, corrupt moderators (yes, actually taking money from companies and scammers) and other problems.

Reddit is very close to everything wrong with the internet. And on top of that, they're trying to turn into a facebook-like abomination, because the anonymous, free-for-all nature of the past Reddit has not been proven to be profitable or controllable enough.

</comment><comment><USER12> Reddit is trivial to get started with as it's a streamlined, modern online forum with pretty basic rules. I've tried signing up to Facebook recently, and it's very difficult to get started. There are too many things to do, too many buttons and too many questions. I feel like I'm visiting a different country and have been thrown into the middle of a foreign marketplace.

<comment><USER13> What I noticed about signing up on Facebook in 2018 is that I was immediately inundated with friend requests from Africa. I can't imagine how that plays out for your average random older, non tech savvy American signing up for the first time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There are many major problems with reddit,

the foremost being the abusive mods on each sub reddit who let their power delude themselves into forming a god complex, the second being the voting system where it costs nothing to down or up vote leading to extremely bigoted subreddits where those in opposition to the hivemind are quickly banned and their opinion suppressed. lets not even get started on the karama junkies who will repost anything of significance repeatedly if it means getting another 100 or 200 karma, reddit is a cesspool of spam and ignorance fueled by a failed system.

</comment><comment><USER15> All Reddit users will disagree. I prefer to use Reddit, but he is not an example of anything right now. It is suffering as much as any other platform that offers a space for discussion. Besides being completely populated by Bots and groups that act in an orchestrated way.

</comment><comment><USER16> Reddit and Facebook are completely different concepts. The former is a forum, the latter tries to digitize real-life friendships. The difference in MAUs might also be a hint, everything is easier at smaller scale.

<comment><USER17> As businesses, both companies are trying to hold their audience's attention and sell that attention to advertisers.

Also, Reddit is a high traffic site, so the MAU argument doesn't really hold water. Generously, maybe facebook's popularity in more diverse international markets adds additional challenges?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Surprised and then not-surprised to see this discussion turn into a shitshow. I never spent much time on Reddit until relatively recently, but I think they're doing a pretty good job, and that's speaking as someone who ran an online community of a few thousand people for a while.

A lot of my favorite corners of the internet are places where people obsessively talk about some fairly narrow niche, and for me assembling a stream out of such forums ends up being pretty delightful! Plumbers post plumbing in-jokes in /r/plumbing, but explain them to anyone who asks and help out the non-plumbers who wander in with questions. I never bump into the darkest corners, and I'm glad that they've been sweeping them out. Periodically I'll see a pile of [deleted]s, but generally in some thread clearly vulnerable to inappropriate comments or dumb yucks jokes.

I'll assume all the "power hungry mods" people here aren't idiots having their "that's what she said" comments and race theories deleted. Is the mod dynamic significantly different in much larger subs than I frequent? Are people frustrated at having comments deleted, or are they running afoul of some subs' (sometimes very persnickety) posting requirements?

</comment><comment><USER19> What a weird article. Why comparing Facebook with Reddit?

"Bikes hold the secret to fixing traffic jams". Ok, sure...

</comment><comment><USER20> The problem with Reddit is this... not sure how to fix it.

I like to play a game where I make up sort of believable 'true stories' about minor celebrities. I always make sure they are VERIFIABLE FALSE to someone who did the tiniest bit of fact checking.

Sometimes they only receive a few up votes... but a lot of times they get thousands. Eventually someone will call bullshit, but that person is just crushed by the avalanche of up votes. Lying about minor things isn't something most MODS will ban you for, or even delete your comment, so most of them still stand.

There has to be some mechanism where one person who can prove they know the truth, has more voting power than the general visitor who does not. It's just like something Sheryl Sandberg said to me at a women's leadership conference. "It takes a lot of people working together to build something great, but it only takes one asshole to fuck it up."

<comment><USER8> There's no way to do that because it relies on a naive understanding of truth.

Sometimes the celebrity themselves may have selective recall of an event - <USER2> even a statement from the subject of the rumor could be false.

Two video cameras catching the same event from different angles can imply vastly different stories.

Basically the plot of rashomon unfolds everyday and at scale.

</comment></comment><comment> nikki-9696 Does the author even know how reddit works? The vote numbers you see aren't real (sidebars and faq on the site itself explain this see [https://www.reddit.com/wiki/faq](https://www.reddit.com/wiki/faq) ) and many subs don't let you downvote unless you join them. Reddit is no panacea or utopia and has plenty of issues of its own, as pointed out by many already.

<comment><USER21> The numbers are fuzzed by generally a good indicator.

There's no way to disable downvoting on reddit. Some subs try to hide the button using custom CSS, but this doesn't affect those with custom CSS disabled sitewide, per-subreddit (with RES) or mobile users (presumably the majority of traffic).

Tangent rant: giving your sub some character with a custom banner is ok, but the ability to hide or change _basic_ UI like the logout button or voting buttons is a huge flaw in the design of reddit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The only reason he's saying that is because reddit has given BBC "special status" and BBC's social media team controls a bunch of subreddits.

Reddit has turned into a crazy echo chamber - a crazy echo chamber that is in line with BBC's goals.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is hilariously ignorant.

Reddit just in the last few days banned /r/uncensorednews and /r/european for some of the most racist, xenophobic content you can find on the internet. And the admins allowed this behaviour to persist for months and years.

Or maybe they should spend some time in /r/incel or /r/kotakuinaction to find disturbing sexist and mysognistic communities that again is unparalleled amongst the rest of the internet (4chan included).

The depths of Reddit is truly an horrific and appalling place to be. And no self respecting website should ever follow what Reddit does to stop it (i.e. not very much).

<comment><USER24> This is like complaining about the internet because it contains websites that you have no obligation to ever visit.

<comment><USER25> It is not. In fact, OP states exactly how it is not, by saying that Reddit does very little to stop the toxicity of reddit.

Are you shielded from the "bad parts" of reddit if you don't subscribe to that type of sub-reddit? Well, maybe, unless you hit /r/all in your top navigation. It's all right there lurking under the surface. Reddit gets very dark very fast and it is factual that they don't control it nearly as well as they should.

So no, it is not like "complaining about the internet because it contains websites that you have no obligation to ever visit" because the internet has no mechanism to surface bad content on the whim of its users. All it takes on reddit to surface something terrible is coordination and hitting the upvote button.

<comment><USER26> This is clearly coming from someone whose views generally align with the progressive/leftist/globalist reddit hivemind.

As someone very much on the other end of the spectrum, it might be interesting that everyone in my circles _loathes_ reddit for the censorship and manipulative propaganda. I hate how well they "control" it, and I despise your euphemistic use of the term.

<comment><USER25> I am willing to have a pondered discussion about this, because it is most certainly true that we both have biased (to one side or the other) views of what they do. It can even be that neither of us is right.

I am obviously not for censorship of ideas, but reddit goes deep into the worst mankind has to offer. There's a line that each individual will draw on what is acceptable to them or not. I think that reddit often crosses that line for many people (would say most, but I don't know and am trying to avoid bias). I _do_ think they need to stop the proliferation of racism, pedophilia and other societal maladies. You may draw different lines.

But I would love examples (and you have what appears to be a throwaway account here, so I think you can be comfortable sharing) of what you think is reddit's censorship or their manipulative propaganda. I mean this in earnest. I don't see it, but we all have different views of the world.

<comment><USER26> >I am obviously not for censorship of ideas

You are though. What's the point of including this little disclaimer if you're going to render it meaningless in your next breath?:

>I do think they need to stop the proliferation of racism, pedophilia and other societal maladies

I think they have every right to do this, but I condemn them for it.

If the ideas are so terrible, beat them with rational arguments. If you have to ban an idea, it seems inherently evident to me that the idea contains some irrefutable truth that can only be silenced, not defeated. It disgusts me the same way that critical discussion of the holocaust is punishable by imprisonment in some places, in contrast to virtually every other historical incident which we encourage fact-checking and debate and almost invariably acknowledge that there are two sides to every story.

I wonder if I could appeal to you by taking this approach... When you drive people away from relatively mainstream places like reddit, where they are exposed to alternate viewpoints even if sticking predominantly to their politically incorrect echo-chamber subs, you don't magically change their opinion. You don't make the idea go away. All you achieve is creating a persecution complex within these people, reinforcing their belief that they know some inconvenient truth, you create solidarity within that community of exiles, and you drive them into a pure echo chamber of ever-increasing radicalisation without objection.

I personally grew disillusioned with reddit after being banned from all my favourite subs for reasonably tame (and relevant) comments condemning the mass 3rd world invasion of Europe and the West, and the increasing push by socialists and Marxists to manipulate and destroy our culture. My most frequented sub I now haven't visited in, I estimate, over 18 months, because it's infuriating seeing the leftist circlejerk and knowing I'll be rate- limited or banned even if I create a throwaway to offer a reasonable and polite comment in opposition.

Instead, I spend most of my time on voat and a little on 8chan, and in the space of a couple years I've gone from libertarian race realist to full 'gas the kikes' and 'niggers ruin everything'. It's a redpill I can't unswallow now. It's a redpill I maybe never would have known if I hadn't seen subs banned, subs manipulated, inconvenient news censored, algorithms altered, etc and said fuck it, I'm out.

If they were at least honest about it, I could accept it. Perhaps it's the perverse nature of it that frustrates me the most. /r/politics is an egregious example: the name implies neutrality, when in fact it's a cesspool of anti- White, pro-globalist, leftist hysteria and propaganda.

<comment><USER27> >If you have to ban an idea, it seems inherently evident to me that the idea contains some irrefutable truth that can only be silenced, not defeated. Expecting a "rational" debate while spouting such irrational views is quite absurd. Most people, and that probably includes myself, will hold some views in high regard; convinced that are rational, whilist being just like your example pretty much a fallacy.

I find quite laughable that some jerks cry about censorship when a private company denies them access to a site, while they propose to use physical force and violence to deny access to other people to a physical place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> tl;dr: Reddit's "secret" to fix Facebook is the ability to downvote stuff. Because Facebook only measures engagement and doesn't care if users like it or not. Reddit (or downvoting in general) provides a better filter.

The article ends awkwardly with something that makes no sense at all:

> _On the same day that Mr Huffman appeared at SXSW, the web 's inventor - <USER3> > Tim Berners-Lee - published a letter._

> _" What was once a rich selection of blogs and websites has been compressed > under the powerful weight of a few dominant platforms," he wrote._

> Reddit has the power to help reverse this trend.

By centralizing discussions on a single website? Odd.

<comment><USER29> Even with the downvoting option of Reddit, I found implementations like StackOverflow's to be more interesting (at S.O., "down" doesn't remove as many points as "up" adds, _and_ it costs the downvoter personal points to do it).

<comment><USER30> The SO model seems tricky to generalize. I like that downvoting has a cost but for political topics that's vulnerable to sock puppets & trolls unless there's a very healthy karma threshold.

<comment><USER31> Do we really need to put an idiotic comment at -150 points to make a point though ?

<comment><USER30> I was thinking more about the situation where a bunch of accounts are registered and upvote each other into prominence or coordinate downvotes. That can have a pronounced effect on community norms and many communities don't have enough genuine participants with spare time to stay on top of even minor troll infestations much less a GamerGate, Russian political operation, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> this recently appeared on HN and New Yorker article makes an interesting (though bit long) read on how Reddit manages its network behind the scenes:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16569778](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16569778)

</comment><comment><USER33> HAHAHAHA no. Reddit is not a good model for much of anything.

To start with, they're solving a much simpler problem. A large percentage of their claimed 1.6B users per month are pure drive-bys - outsiders who followed one link one time and then left quickly. That's not the same as two billion users actively posting and interacting with content. Also, their data model is simpler. Even a hundred thousand subreddits are easy to model and manage compared to the "social graph" which is unique for each user.

Even with that smaller scale and simpler model, they're not even trying to address some of the interesting problems such as privacy. You post something to a subreddit and it's visible or not - even to those casual visitors - according to the subreddit's settings. You don't get individual control of each post's visibility, which is essential for many people to control which sides of themselves they show to which groups of friends.

Reddit is shouting in one of many town squares, and _can be nothing else_. Facebook can also be used that way, but for many it's more importantly a way to have more private interactions. Reddit doesn't even try to solve the interesting problems, so it could hardly be considered a model for solving them.</comment>


Ask HN: Where else can I buy O'Reilly eBooks online? - <AUTHOR> I know it's actually been a while, but I've only recently learned that they stopped selling eBooks online in favour of their subscription service. I do tend to prefer physical books over eBooks, but at the right price, I'd get both. I'm lucky to get access to all their contents for free through my current place of employment, but I hate using their mobile app (in both iOS and Android) to read anything, so I still find myself wanting to get a copy of their eBook so I can read them through another app.<p>I know Amazon Kindle, and Google Play Books have them. I prefer to get them through Google Play because there's a good chance I'm allowed to download the eBook through them. I'm curious if there are other places that sell them at competitive prices. I checked InformIT but they don't seem to carry them (at least not the books I'm currently looking for). <comment><USER2> Apple: [https://www.apple.com/apple-books/](https://www.apple.com/apple- books/)</comment>


One fast vaccine strategy could protect against Ebola, H1N1, and more - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/07/new-vaccine-method-could-allow-quick-development-target-multiple-diseases/ <comment><USER2> Would sure hope that this vaccine will prevent [this]([http://www.metaculus.com/questions/195/will-the-next- ebola-o...](http://www.metaculus.com/questions/195/will-the-next-ebola- outbreak-kill-less-than-1000-people/)) to resolve positively.</comment>


Generics for Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/StabbyCutyou/generics <comment><USER2> Summary:

        // G is an interface under which all possible types apply
        type G interface{}

Actually, this is not a summary. It is the full source code of this project.

<comment><USER3> Elegant, simple, and idiomatic.

The perfect solution for Go.

<comment><USER4> That's just beautiful. I think it also made my projects a bit faster.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Have you ever quit because a code base was incomprehensible? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I haven't yet. I'm currently dealing with such a project at work, that to be frank is impacting my mental health.

In the end, we are problem solvers first, programmers second.

If it's just bad code, you can solve it by just dealing with it as is whilst slowly improving it.</comment>


Ask HN: I need to make extra $20k for a mortgage balloon payment. Any advice? - <AUTHOR> I'm in a tight spot and need to figure out how I can make an extra $20,000 dollars for a balloon payment on my mortgage. It's been a rough year personally and this somehow slipped off my radar and it's become an urgent issue.
I'm very experienced web developer and I do mostly contract work and sell a few products. I have easily made $20k in a month several times before, but those months are unplanned, and I just happened to book a lot of work.
Does anyone have any advice about how I can book $20k in work this month? Or sell one of my existing products?
Some of my work:
https://duetapp.com
https://theanchorapp.com
http://getsoloapp.com
http://boulevardjs.com/examples
I also have lot's of client work, mostly startups and some enterprise customers, which I'm happy to share privately. <comment><USER2> The quickest way would likely be to borrow it from somewhere else. Do you have any shares in an investment portfolio by any chance?

If you transfer those to Interactive Brokers, it's quite easy (and relatively cheap -- 3.7% a year) to borrow money against them (margin debt). Unless markets crash tomorrow that should allow you to bridge things.

<comment><USER3> The stock market has been falling hard lately. If ever there was a time NOT to take such a risk, now is probably it.

<comment><USER2> Depends on how much you borrow, and how large your portfolio is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can use Plastiq ([https://www.plastiq.com](https://www.plastiq.com)) to put it on a credit card, but this comes with a 2.5% fee (which will be $500 in your case, so quite steep).

</comment><comment><USER5> With your income a personal loan, say over five years, should be doable.</comment>


Forensic analysis of the Windows telemetry for diagnostics - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.12506 <comment><USER2> Telemetry data is stored in: "%ProgramData%\Microsoft\Diagnosis\Events_*.rbs"

The paper describes the format of these files, and what data can be obtained from them, including a comparison with other sources of similar information.

Recorded data includes: (1) Windows version, registration details, installed and uninstalled programs; (2) hardware devices with serial numbers; (3) process execution data (at Enhanced or Full levels only, data might not include processes that only ran briefly); (4) partition table and boot timestamps (when the system was powered on and off).

In the analyzed examples the data was available for roughly the past three months.

<comment><USER3> > hardware devices with serial numbers;

Ouch. That sounds a lot like personally identifiable information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Since PII have not found so far and Microsoft stated privacy principles with > no personal content

I'm going to have to disagree with the authors of the paper, here.

Whilst the information they've found may not appear to be PII at first, it is very far from anonymous.

It has everything required for active fingerprinting of individual devices - namely, the UIDs of the hardware of the computer. Things that don't regularly change, and things that may show habits.

Combining this dataset with another is all it would take to break from pseudo- anonymous to known individuals. However, enough information is there to uniquely fingerprint most users.

<comment><USER5> Still not legally PII. Correlated assumptions don't qualify. Bad PR but not PII. PII means very specific things,"a person called jack ryan owns this PC" is not PII, "the owner of this PC was born on 01/02/03" is PII.

From a PR perspective it sort of looks bad but please look at the comparison table on the paper where similar data is collected in the registry,logs,prefetch,etc... Unlike *nix,windows does a ton of activity logging and it has been this way for a long time. Most people know of application,system and security logs for example but in the same log directory there are usually 100-200 other log files including IE browsing related logs.

<comment><USER3> Sure. But most other places (unsure about Apple) _don 't_ automatically ship those logs off to the maker of the OS for centralised bulk collection, analysis, and monetisation.

<comment><USER5> Did not say it was nice of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> RBS file parsers (Python) the authors wrote, along with the sample telemetry data files used in the study: [https://github.com/JaehyeokHan/Windows- Telemetry](https://github.com/JaehyeokHan/Windows-Telemetry)

</comment><comment><USER5> Excellent paper.

I have questions:

1) is turning off telemetry (opt-out) effective against this? 2) How will this be different between licenses? I would be very interested to see what is collectes when you have something like an E5 license and have Defender ATP and AIP turned on (I don't have that currently). I recall it sends a ton of data (>2000k dns requests/hour for an active user just for new connections to MS) perhaps some of that is left on disk? Would file classification with AIP (e.g.: new document/email is created) be logged? Is it fair to assume the Win10 they tested with is not for enterprise?

<comment><USER7> Regarding your first question: there's only one edition that let's you turn off telemetry completely: Windows 10 Enterprise. You can set it to "Security" which means nothing but the following information is sent: "Information that's required to help keep Windows, Windows Server, and System Center secure, including data about the Connected User Experiences and Telemetry component settings, the Malicious Software Removal Tool, and Windows Defender."

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was hoping to find out if it collects keystrokes but authors seem not to mention it.

<comment><USER9> MS Teams does when you type into a chat box, but it depends on whether your company is opted out somehow or maybe whether they use EU servers. There's a setting that gets pulled down and overwritten every launch.. had to create a mitmproxy edit to save my own config for the Windows client.</comment></comment>


Any web developers in Chicago survive Snowpocalypse? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, first time posting. I'm a newbie on Hacker News and have no programming background, so I hope I'm not intruding. In fact, I'm a resident physician but am an avid follower and fan of the startup community. Unfortunately, there are no established incubators out here in Chicago or at least I haven't seen any on Groupon. Anybody have good advice or resources on finding a technical co-founder out here in the bitterly cold Midwest? I'm ready to get some of my not-so-stupid ideas off the ground. Would love to partner with any skilled web developers who are enthusiastic and not just interested in getting free medical marijuana prescriptions. :)<p>Your feedback is appreciated. Thanks! firstname.lastname@example.com <comment><USER2> <http://www.theincubator.com/> is located on Davis St in Evanston (adjacent to Northwestern University's campus).

Do you have an idea of what are looking to develop? Feel free to share as HN is trustworthy (no one is going to steal your idea).

Also, what do you bring to the table? I'm assuming you have access to capital or something along those lines.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have visited and toured the Technology Innovation Center. My impression is that it provides resources for a wide gamut of startups and less specifically for web startups. I will definitely send out feelers again to their listserv. Thanks for your suggestions.

I have a couple of ideas I'm looking to develop. One of which attempts to shake up the online dating scene and another centers around a hyperlocal communication platform.</comment></comment>


Cjdns: the technology behind the Hyperboria meshnet - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns

<comment><AUTHOR> For those who don't know what Hyperboria is:

<http://hyperboria.net/about>

<http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1160466>

<https://projectmeshnet.org/></comment>


Game Development with Unity 2D, Part 4: Oplites, Back to Basics - <AUTHOR> http://designagame.eu/2014/02/game-development-unity-2d-part-4-oplites-back-basics/

<comment><USER2> I'd like to try Unity, but it is just so incredibly expensive. $1,500 bare bones, and more if you want pro add ons.

<comment><USER3> If you just want to try it's free: [http://unity3d.com/pages/create- games?gclid=CNn4_OHL07wCFSYO...](http://unity3d.com/pages/create- games?gclid=CNn4_OHL07wCFSYOOgod2E4AMQ)

And $1500 is not expensive for a game engine, or really any type of professional content creation tool.

<comment><USER4> To expand on this, the free version is very capable and doesn't restrict the ability to publish your game. If you're an independent developer it's unlikely that you'll find yourself constrained.

<comment><USER5> Nitpick: an individual or entity with $100,000 in revenue per year cannot publish using the free version. Per their license[1], it does not matter where the revenue comes from. There is probably some sort of legal gymnastics you can perform to get around this, and one could argue that if you have $100k in revenue you shouldn't be worrying about a $1500 one-time purchase, but it is a limitation.

[1] [http://unity3d.com/company/legal/eula](http://unity3d.com/company/legal/eula)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I found [http://pixelnest.io/tutorials/2d-game- unity/](http://pixelnest.io/tutorials/2d-game-unity/) is a fantastic unity 2D tutorial.

</comment><comment><USER7> Why link to part 4? Why not link to the start?

[http://designagame.eu/2013/12/game-development-with- unity-2d...](http://designagame.eu/2013/12/game-development-with- unity-2d-part-0/)

<comment><USER5> None of the posts have forward links to the others, only backward links. Part 4 has links to parts 0 - 3, but if you start with part 0 there is no easy way to get to the others, or any indication of how many there are.

<comment><AUTHOR> Will add forward links, thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


New Firefox Sync protocol for Firefox Accounts - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mozilla/fxa-auth-server/wiki/onepw-protocol

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm submitting this not just for general interest (as a fascinating cryptographic account system) but because I'd like to hear about any analysis experts have done on this protocol. Does this protocol really provide the properties it purports to provide? In particular, does it protect against the server or attackers with access to the server, as the old Firefox Sync protocol did?</comment>


Can you solve the mystery of the Gold/Blue Dress? - <AUTHOR> http://www.buzzfeed.com/catesish/help-am-i-going-insane-its-definitely-blue?bffb&utm_term=4ldqpgp#.og3O9MzQG

<comment><USER2> If I stare at it and let my eyes go unfocused it starts to look blue and black but when my eyes are focused it look white and gold. Also for me the distance from the screen matters. Close up it looks white/gold and far away it looks blue/black.

If you crop the image and just look at the top 1/3 I bet more people would say it is white/gold. If you crop it so that you only see the bottom 1/3 I bet more people would say blue/black.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a white dress with golden/brown accents lit by a cold blue light from behind the camera.

That messes with people's perception of color since the store seen in the background is lit by a warm light. People who see it as blue are intuitively correcting for the light of the background.

It's a simple optical illusion easy to replicate:

[http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/col- context/index.html](http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/col-context/index.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ok. My wife and I can only see White and Gold. However, she has several friends that insist that the dress is Blue and Black. I'm trying to come up with possible technical reasons for the discrepancy. My best guess is that AMOLED displays are displaying the colors differently than conventional displays. Can anyone test?

<comment><USER4> Nope. My buddy and I just looked at the same screen and saw different colors.

It's probably a genetic quirk?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This appears to be the store that sells the dress (listed as blue).

[http://www.romanoriginals.co.uk/invt/70931](http://www.romanoriginals.co.uk/invt/70931)

</comment><comment><USER6> My wife insists that it is white and gold. And I see blue and a light brown.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is it possible that different images are being displayed randomly depending upon cached media or something strange like that? I don't favor a physiological explanation, this seems like a technical issue.

<comment><USER4> No, you can have people in the same room look at the exact same image on the same screen at the exact same time and describe vastly different colors. I've been trying this with my co-founder. We've tried different monitors, angles, screen, and so forth. I consistently see white/gold. He sees blue/black. Physiological is the only explanation that makes sense to me.

<comment><USER7> Ok, I believe you, I have pulled in several coworkers who haven't seen it yet and I am convinced that they are not trolling me. Half of us see white/gold (including myself) and half see blue/black. We are arguing.

<comment><USER4> Here's the most reasonable explanation I've heard: [https://twitter.com/andyrexford/status/571118728164872192/ph...](https://twitter.com/andyrexford/status/571118728164872192/photo/1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> photoshop color picker says dress is Blue and Dark brown.

<comment><USER5> I see it as blue and dark brown, too.</comment></comment>