I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next - <AUTHOR> https://www.gamefromscratch.com/post/2020/05/26/I-Was-Blackmailed-Any-YouTuber-Could-Be-Next.aspx <comment><USER2> This might not be a popular opinion, but I feel like YouTube is doing their best with a really hard problem.

I see a lot of people complaining about things like this, but I also see a lot of people complaining that YouTube/Twitter/etc aren't doing enough to take down false/immoral/illegal content quick enough. [1]

It really sucks when a legitimate video is taken down by mistake. But it also really sucks when revenge porn is left up. YouTube is doing it's best to blend automation (fast but inaccurate) with human curation (more thoughtful but slower), and sometimes it gets it wrong.

I feel like most of the time I see posts like this, the situation is resolved favorably and relatively quickly. YouTube is dealing with two opposing issues, and is constantly doing its best to find a fair middle ground.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23316660](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23316660)

<comment><USER3> I don't think they are really doing their best. If other Google's support forums are any indicator of their effort, they are mostly trying to automate the whole process as much as possible which then causes errors like this. Which makes sense from the SV software engineer perspective, but really is unfathomable to the normal user who then has to live in fear if some malicious teenager decides to ruin their channel.

Instead of actually trying to create the best customer service, to me it feels that they treat it like a fun ML problem that they want to solve with magical algorithmic pixie dust.

Yeah I know it's terribly expensive to keep a horde of content reviewers, but then it would be nice for Youtube to be upfront about it that there is maybe a human in the process, but most likely not. I guess honesty is not anymore a valuable commodity in this world, yet it would feel nice sometimes to hear the truth, not some lawyer jargon to avoid all responsibility.

<comment><USER4> > Instead of actually trying to create the best customer service

I've worked in high volume customer services. It's not easy for the agents doing the work or the companies operating them.

I've worked in multiple call centers dealing with calls and tickets. I've worked in companies in which I dealt with mobile phone bill queries and hardware issues right up to Cisco networking problems and then eventually enterprise grade Linux clusters at Rackspace (UK). I've spanned a pretty large spectrum of industries from a customer services perspective. I've even done customer services in the food industry.

It's HARD. Not just for you as an operator, but as a company trying to offer the service to begin with. of all of the companies I worked for, O2 (a mobile phone provider and network operator) had tens of millions of customers. We had several call centers that spanned close to ten thousand agents doing everything from calls to tickets, emails to Tweets. The call queue for that company never dropped below a constant 200-300 on hold and emails took days to even get to.

Google has approx' one BILLION customers.

What is your suggestion here?

> they are mostly trying to automate the whole process as much as possible > which then causes errors like this

Damn straight automation, to a larger degree, is the answer. People don't scale at all. They can do one job at a time, for a limited amount of time, and are subject to all kinds of problems.

> Yeah I know it's terribly expensive to keep a horde of content reviewers

It cost O2 about $5/6 to answer a single call. That's the cost of the agent's time and JUST answering the call, not the cost of listening, understanding, resolving and ending the call. Humans are expensive.

I'm not saying don't use people. I'm saying automation at Google's scale is one of the few solutions available to them when it comes to dealing with the simply insane amounts of complaints they'll receive just via their YouTube platform alone.

EDIT: Apologies for being so crude in my original wording. I'm updating the comment to reflect a more professional, civil tone.

<comment><USER5> They might have 1 billion free users, but they definitely don't have 1 billion partners or 1 billion paying customers.

Google's customer service is horrible even for organizations that pay them +$10k/month or make them +$10k/month for ad sales, and that is a far smaller number.

You would think they could at least scale customer support properly for that much smaller number, but they don't because culturally they do not want to. Even people who have used google cloud services say the support is bad compared to AWS. Google stands out as a corp that is really bad at customer service.

While apple, amazon, AWS & many other companies provide customer support that mostly works for customers who provide maybe $40/month max in revenue. They don't even let you self pay for your own support at google in most cases.

I bet youtubers who live on their work on youtube would gladly pay $100 to deal with one off incidents like these that might happen once a year if it meant they had proper thought applied to their issues for example.

<comment><USER6> Personally I had very much opposite experience with Google Ads support. For the person who buy ads it's exceptional and with available phone support even if you only buy ads for $100. They can literally explain how every single thing work on their system, giving advice on how to improve campaigns or fix something.

It's very much opposite when it's come to AdSense, but again they don't really care when some webmaster lose his source of income since there will be other webmasters to replace him.

<comment><USER7> that's not true in my experience. the rep had no direct answer and sometimes it would take a couple days till they reached somebody that knows the answer. and for everything else that i asked that they did not know directly the answer was "it's algorithm, even when i found the answer later somewhere deep in forums or faq".

i have dealt with google europe, i even visited the offices in dublin but i do not have a confidence that they know the answer, most of them are there to try to convince you to try this new thing and incrase you budget.

<comment><USER6>
       > i have dealt with google europe, i even visited the offices in dublin

I guess I should be perfectly honest: ads is obviously no my specialization and I only worked with Google Ads for small businesses with quite a small budgets not more than $10000-$20000 a month.

So obviously my impression might be limited to quite superficial questions or problems. It's very much possible that if you work with something actually complex their support isn't anywhere as useful as it's for entry-level customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It seems like the extortionists can keep sending claims until they stumble across a YouTube moderator who guesses wrong and clicks the "this claim was legit" button. Even if 90% of the moderators would get it right eventually your video is going to be down for good. Even humans make mistakes sometimes, so human-in-the-loop isn't a perfect solution.

The thing that really doesn't make sense to me is that when a moderator marks a claim as invalid it doesn't switch the automod system to requiring the moderator to review the claim before taking the video down. Ideally you'd like that to be the case for all videos, but presumably that would anger the media cartels that dictated the requirements for the system and just want a way to do mass takedowns that doesn't cost them lawyer hours or have the potential of consequences for them.

<comment><USER9> Would be pretty interesting if some moderators (who are probably residents of low wage countries) not just simply "guess wrong" but are part of the scheme and mark some videos on purpose.

<comment><USER10> I feel like this is too deep into the conspiracy domain. There are so many videos and moderators, that, of course, there's assholes in there. But the chance that this one specific video ends up on the task queue of the fraudulent moderator just seems too low to be a feasible strategy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Google has an absolute fetish for making the ratio of profit to employees as large as possible. They will do it at any cost. There is no Google service without horrific customer support. Youtube, Google Fiber, Google Fi, doesn't matter. They refuse to accept that having 2x as many customers requires 2x as many support personnel.

<comment><USER12> Aren't YouTube's customers the advertisers paying to have their ads displayed? YouTubers are not customers. At best, I believe they are "partners" (like with Twitch)

<comment><USER13> They are the people making the content ad companies can plaster their drivel on.

Essentially YT is a middleman between billboard manufacturers (content creators) and advertisers (drivel manufacturers).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is extortion. Did Google disclose to you the identity of the party who sent the takedown notice. If not, a lawyer might be able to help here. You have a good case against the other party for extortion, and a weak case against Google for assisting them. There's a strong legal incentive here for Google to disclose the name of the other party, if they are being difficult about doing so. DMCA notices can't be anonymous.

<comment><USER15> Is a circumvention of technology claim part of the DMCA?

<comment><USER14> Yes. 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)(A).

<comment><USER15> Thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think this is called extortion, not blackmail.

<comment><USER17> Right?! This annoyed the hell out of me when i saw the vid on youtube. It sucks his videos are getting taken down, but to my mind he loses intergity by playing it up as blackmail. Extortion is bad enough, why not call it like it is?

<comment><USER18> Extortion is a worse crime than blackmail generally, in my opinion, ethically speaking. Extortion is using one's power and force to threaten harm to someone in some way if not paid, while blackmail is using knowledge of information to do the same. Extortion is the more "violent" and violating act. Either way, they're pretty similar, though

Your post is extremely confusing and bizarre to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> You can also mirror on PeerTube, [https://joinpeertube.org/](https://joinpeertube.org/).

PeerTube is a more distributed clone of YouTube, and this site explains what it is well: [https://framablog.org/2019/11/12/peertube-has-worked- twice-a...](https://framablog.org/2019/11/12/peertube-has-worked-twice-as- hard-to-free-your-videos-from-youtube/).

Technology used includes a HLS video player, and WebTorrent. Like Mastodon it also uses the ActivityPub protocol.

<comment><USER20> PeerTube sounds interesting, but going to their website I am lost. Why all those promotional videos and descriptions and confusing links? I expected to just see the videos in their directory and be able to search for videos, something like the YouTube interface. And I'm a technical user, I imagine the average user would close the page instantly.

<comment><USER21> Think of it as email:

Peertube = email software

In order to have an email account you don't go to "email.com", you have to go to an email service provider. Peertube works in the same way so they have a list of providers: [https://instances.joinpeertube.org/instances](https://instances.joinpeertube.org/instances)

If you can understand email, you can understand peertube.

<comment><USER20> So the site is mostly promoting the technology, right? Is there any popular platform that uses PeerTube and actually has interesting or exclusive content?

<comment><USER21> If you want to think of it as promotion, yeah. You check out the promoted content.

It actually has a list of instances too where you can watch videos. I'd suggest picking one and simply having a look.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> DevFactor ([https://youtube.com/devfactor](https://youtube.com/devfactor)) was shut down several years ago due to a similar issue with automated copyright trolling that took YouTube about 3 months to fix per time it happened.

</comment><comment><USER23> It seems an obvious solution would be to incorporate historical data into future decisions on whether to take down immediately vs take down after manual verification.

If someone has been hit with these takedown requests over and over where the resolution was always to put it back up, what likelihood is there that future resolutions will be different? By standing by your content creators with a history of improper takedown requests you'll build brand loyalty. By making it just as difficult on content creators the 100th time as the first time makes me think YouTube isn't going to be the "platform of the future" for content creators.

<comment><USER24> This is how I naively assumed it worked back in the day and was constantly perplexed by how much trouble TeamFourStar would get into with seemingly every new upload.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> YouTube isn't even trying to protect the creators here. You could make excuses about how they have to review each claim to ensure it's valid bases on the DMCA or some interpretation of the DMCA. Having said this I have watched prominent channels get hacked and spread Binance (bitcoin) videos all their content deleted. After 90 days YouTube finally stepped in and stopped the hacker and very slowly restored some of the content.

Kind of super thankful I am not a YouTube Creator because having my channel hacked and my content deleted would be very hard to deal with.

</comment><comment><USER26> Not surprising given what other creators have said about YouTube's "moderation" system. I watch this channel regularly and am posting in hopes that this gets enough publicity that someone from Google steps in. It's sadly the only way for these issues to get resolved.

</comment><comment><USER27> More incredible is that they don't seem to have a system for "this account is being actively targeted" because even after this somewhat public attack and "fix", the same creator just got attacked again with the same thing on another video.

Tweet 4 hours ago from that creator: [https://mobile.twitter.com/gamefromscratch/status/1265579494...](https://mobile.twitter.com/gamefromscratch/status/1265579494217265153)

</comment><comment><USER28> It used to be that everyone on the internet were a Dog, nowadays it seems like the internet became a cesspool of stagnant hyper centralized services catering to the lowest common denominator (twitter, youtube, linkedin, facebook) with morally bankrupt somali-pirate types circling around them like vultures.

In the old days griefing was done for the lulz. Today it's done out of malice, or worse, out of greed.

</comment><comment><USER29> I keep reading these horror stories about YouTube. It must really suck, as there are alternatives, but they just don't have the audience YouTube has. I guess there just isn't much we can do about this apart from hosting elsewhere when necessary?

<comment><USER30> My personal, non-Toutuber theory is that people should use YouTube as a promotion channel, but have your main presence elsewhere: make your own website your hub, use Patreon as your main income, and post copies to YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, Twitch, pretty much wherever you can.

That way, if you lose one channel you don't lose your followers, and you can take your time to deal with getting your channel back. And you still get the benefits of YouTube's reach.

<comment><USER31> Unfortunately, if you want to monetize your Youtube, Twitch, or other videos, the partner agreements on those platforms explicitly forbid uploading the same content to other video sites within certain time periods or posting videos on one platform to send users to your preferred platform. In particular, I know that you have to wait at least 24 hours after a Twitch stream to upload the VOD to Youtube, you can't co-stream simultaneously or upload immediately after streaming and retain your Twitch partnership, and Youtube has killed channels for posting 30-second "I'm going live on Twitch in 5 minutes" notifications (Twitch notifications are notoriously broken). If your income is through advertisements monetizing video views that won't work.

I agree, though, that a website with merchandise (depending on the channel) or a Patreon, distributing your video hosting across platforms, is probably the safest way to go.

<comment><USER32> They could post a free teaser in YouTube with a link to their main platform.

<comment><USER33> Against YT tos, Linustechtips got channel blocked for it once.

<comment><USER34> How would that apply to movie trailers?

<comment><USER35> There is obviously different rules for big Hollywood players vs small youtubers, since YouTube also sells their movies in VOD, if you know what I mean. I mean that's already the case regarding copyright strikes where big corps, music labels and Hollywood can abuse the YouTube copyright system without any repercussion whatsoever. All YouTube channels aren't equal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Perhaps takedown requests should be accompanied by a fee: If the request is successfully appealed, the fee is kept. If not, it is returned.

<comment><USER37> Same problem only this time you'll leverage rich vs. poor while Internet is suppose to be the great equalizer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Yeah, our copyright laws are absurd but how do you change them when we spent the tariff wars forcing other countries to adopt US copyright laws? How could we go back now?

<comment><USER39> Many of YouTube's policies aren't required by law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> After a video has been reviewed by a moderator on appeal, why isn't a block on new reports put on it? If, say, they can tell that a video hasn't been altered since the last time it was looked at, why aren't things disabled after initial flagging and review?

"Malicious actors reports, and Youtube bots autoremoved, my video four times" should not be possible.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm not discounting that this was an annoying ordeal for this channel to go through, but if this is so easy, why don't professional criminals go after huge channels and take them down as easily?

There might be some subscriber count threshold or partner status that, once crossed, flags extra steps that mean a new violation is escalated for a closer look first?

<comment><USER42> How do you know they are not doing that already?

<comment><USER41> Because MKBHD isn't tweeting about this all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> In case of a popular channel: maybe the subscribers to a channel could be 'polled' in order to vet a channel's content?

If the majority of subscriber's vote confirms the content then the channel owner could be given a 2nd chance?

Just an idea off the top of my bald head.

</comment><comment><USER44> What are the reasons the creator could not just re-upload the video as a new video?

I don't use Youtube as a creator, so I can only guess.

Links to it from outside of Youtube? 'Millions of views' type of stuff? Ad revenue? Getting their account perma-banned?

</comment><comment><USER45> It seems like we are seeing the limit of "infinitely scaling business models". It is definitely going to be interesting to see what the future of content distribution / monetization brings!

</comment><comment><USER46> Just want to stress, that the root of the problem is the evil extortionist, not Google.

Google can and will try to do a better job, but as long as such people are around (i.e. forever) those problems will persist.

</comment><comment><USER47> With every new "takedown" please refer back to past reinstatements by Youtube. That's all I can contribute from my experience. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER48> Some comments/ideas/takeaways:

1) According to this video, it is very easy for some troll living in another country, who has a bot network, to extort money from YouTube creators by gaming YouTube's takedown request system:

"I'll get your video taken down unless you pay me" (Sounds a whole lot like patent trolls -- but applied to videos).

2) YouTube (or any other video sharing site, present or future), should conduct a thorough investigation as to how their system for user requested takedowns -- could be gamed by bot networks / multiple phony user accounts requesting takedowns -- and what could be done about it, using what happened here as a baseline for that investigation.

Note that this also applies to non-video sharing sites where user takedowns can be requested, i.e., craigslist -- if that process is automated in any way, it should be thought about from the perspective of "how do we protect against swarms of automated bots / fake user accounts, requesting takedowns?"

3) Any ML/AI algorithm that is used in the takedown determination process should consider the reputation of the user whose videos are being requested to be taken down.

This includes such things as 'how long has the user been a user', how many other videos have they uploaded, how many likes they've received over the years, how many video views, and how many real legitimate complaints, verified by an actual YouTube human staffer -- have occurred on that account over the years (feeding that data in only after human YouTube staffer review, etc.)

4) It wouldn't be a bad idea (if YouTube is short of staff), to create another tier of users, "review users", that is, these users would be / could be called upon to review content that was flagged for removal/deletion for one reason or another. If enough "review users" (randomly selected) collectively vote that the content should be removed, THEN and only then it gets queued for a human being staffer at YouTube for final review... otherwise it's not banned, and sticks around... but this would hopefully save a lot of work for human YouTube staffers -- much in the same way automated voice assistants do for human telephone operators or receptionists... any AI/ML algorithms could be the gatekeeper for this tier of users; if the AI/ML has a problem with the content -- escalate it to this tier of users for further review...

5) To implement #4, User accounts, agreements, and YouTube's suggestion algorithm -- would have to be modified (basically you're adding another user account type and another agreement type) to support the functionality.

6) No matter how great YouTube is, it's a human created system like all others, and as such, subject to failure. As the old expression, _" Don't put all of your eggs in one basket"_ goes, similarly:

 _Don 't host all of your videos on one and only one video hosting site_.

Just like you wouldn't store your important files in one location only, without making/having backups...

</comment><comment><USER49> I'm sorry. I didn't really understand what was happening. What's the mechanism by which the attacker convinces Youtube to take down this guy's video?

</comment><comment><USER50> Hi so this is illegal. Call the FBI. Extortion and coercion are felonies in all 50 states.

<comment><USER51> "Hello, FBI? This random guy on the Internet is extorting me."

FBI: 'Go away and come back when you have a name and address, and can prove the guy is under our jurisdiction.'

<comment><USER52> Fortunately the FBI doesn't dismiss illegal activities of you lack this kind of information. They will investigate and can arrest individuals on US soil as well as consenting countries. Additionally a country's own law enforcement may cooperate and the perpetrators can be extradited for trial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Is there a legitimate, distinct, unique use case for cryptocurrency to weigh against it's use as an enabler for extortion??

<comment><USER54> It's in the post - the author was able to put the taken-down video back up on lbry.tv, which is a cryptocurrency-based decentralized media platform.

<comment><USER53> But he could have put it on Vimeo as well.

<comment><USER36> Perhaps he liked the monetization on libry more.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Re-entering U.S after post graduate U.S Degree  - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I am a graduate of a top 20 CS Univ in U.S , where I did my post-graduation.Due to an unfortunate sequence of events- culminating from graduating in 2009 ( worst year of the recession )and not finding a job in time,my visa restrictions implied,I had to come back to India. I am looking to re-enter U.S on H1-B this October. Yes,I know that there are lot of Indian post graduate students who shamelessly fudge their resume for fake work experience,and then work at a IT consultancy firm. I'm not one them. When I ultimately had to chose between paying my student loan in INR,and somehow staying in U.S on a loophole,I came back to India. I would consider myself as a decent hacker-who likes algorithm puzzles for a pastime,amateur guitarist,who enjoys coding in C,C++,and does not shy from disassembling on gdb,I would like to know if there is anyone else who had to leave U.S because of visa restrictions (for instance the recession of 2000),and came back to U.S to work.Sharing your experience would mean a great deal to me.I'm sure I'm not alone. <comment><USER2> I respect you for the fact that you never fudged your profile. I have seen many fellow Indians who do it and "somehow" make it. Sorry, I personally don't have any useful experience to offer though.</comment>


Are Hot Springs the Future of Farming? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180904-how-hot-springs-geothermal-energy-can-grow-food <comment><AUTHOR> I happen to love geodesic domes. I even submit to a friends website that's devoted to the topic. But I've never seen a geodesic greenhouse and it doesn't make a lot of sense to me as you're paying for vertical space you can't utilize.

<comment><USER2> > _a friends website that 's devoted to the topic_

link?</comment></comment>


Virtual Linux dev workstation: how to recover from crashes? - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/+TreyHarris/posts/8oysaczh9J2 <comment><AUTHOR> More generally: Trey makes an excellent argument for the importance of _user state_ , in a workstation context. This is a matter I've become increasingly despondant on myself, across numerous platforms: Linux desktop, Android, Mac, Windows.

The biggest sin I witness of _any_ user-oriented software (as opposed to server or controls systems) is of failure to maintain state. The atomisation of tasks among different applications, with increasing fragmented and kludgy means for data interchange plays into this. The increasingly widespread use of computers is itself a tremendous part of the problem.

A recent OECD survey of computer skills among the general population found that fully _half_ the general population has _no_ or at best only the very most rudimentary computer skills. "Advanced" skills -- defined as the ability, say, to use a Search or Search and Replace functionality within a word processing app, was roughly 5% of the population.

If you're a HN / YC coder, administrator, or designer, you're some small fraction of the 1%.

The flipside is that _general-purpose systems are not being built or designed with you in mind._ This was a view I first saw _voiced_ (explicitly stated) from the GNOME development leadership in the early 2000s, and more recently from both the Mozilla and Chrome browser development team leads. It's a cause Jonathan Zittrain has campaigned for, "generative computing", along with Cory Doctorow, for years. It's a battle we're losing.

And generally, tools for establishing and maintaining a complex system of state between numerous tools and applications ... is poor.

Trey's approach is to try to use VM snapshotting, at regular intervals, to create recovery points. That's an option, but it strikes me that it's operating at too low a level, and may well be preserving the state leading to whatever instabilities are crashing his system(s). Recovering to the point just prior to failure seems rather like _Groundhog 's Day_.

A generalised support for history within applications, allowing for recovery and rollback to _that application 's prior state_ strikes me as far more useful. I'm increasingly thinking that Emacs, and its various terminal-support modes, may actually be that generalised model for many instances.

And, as I write this comment, I see that Firefox/Android has once again wiped out the 100+ tabs I'd been trying to organise and sort through, something of a task-list organisational mode I've found I use on browsers, or rather, try to, though its a usage mode they support exceedingly poortly.

 _I am not the target userbase._

Oh well.

<comment><AUTHOR> In a further irony: Firefox crashed, again, as I was attempting to restore my prior browsing state, from history, one-at-a-time, as there is no mechanism for multi-recovering, or snapshot-recovering, previous state.

I was in the midst of attempting to file a crash report to Mozilla, and needed to reference a URL (Trey's initial article), but switching away from the crash-report screen itself, on Android, lost it.

It is 2017. Do you know where your user state is?</comment></comment>


Clojure 1, PHP 0 - <AUTHOR> http://briancarper.net/blog/clojure-1-php-0 <comment><USER2> Wordpress is the best example of spaghetti code I've ever seen.

You can compare any code you write yourself to it and you'll find your code better.

Last year I gave a conference talk at our local PHP web developer conference analyzing technical details of WP, Joomla and Drupal. I found WP a piece of spaghetti, Joomla a bloatware and Drupal somewhat cleaner than the other two and with some interesting ideas.

However if you look at the UI, you have to admit that WordPress really shines there. I haven't yet used anything that easy to publish a blog.

Taking all this into consideration I think the article title is greatly misleading. It really should be "Compojure 1, Wordpress 0". And the value of reading that article for me was zero.

<comment><USER3> Wordpress code is amazingly awful, but Wordpress is also a general-purpose blogging/publishing platform meant to be installed anywhere, be extended by plugins and themes, and serve the needs of many, many people. If you write your own blogging platform that does just what you need without worrying about drop-in installation, plugins, themes, or anyone else, and you _don't_ end up with a "pretty nice reduction in code", you're in sad, sad shape.

<comment><USER4> It is easy to allow plugins, themes, and easy installation without resorting to Wordpress' horrible architecture.

<comment><USER3> No kidding. My point was that the line count difference is probably not principally a matter of Wordpress being terrible or PHP being inferior to Clojure, but mainly of having a radically simpler feature set.

<comment><USER4> Yes, definitely. Now that I think about it, your point is especially relevant in light of the examples the article chooses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is pretty much incoherent. The author is really comparing Clojure to Wordpress.

His concluding segment is literally called: _A Brief Comparison: Clojure vs. Wordpress_.

Clojure is a language (dialect) and Wordpress is an application. This is worse than the common mistake of comparing a language to a framework.

<comment><USER6> Well in the end, he was actually comparing compojure to wordpress, which is still wrong, but a little better. Clojure is a pretty nice language and if you need to do anything related to concurrency, it's probably the best fit. For example, I recently wrote an app that would handle a request, and executed heavier background tasks in a java executor pool using just 20 lines of clojure in compojure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Clojure is definitely better than PHP, but this article does not show that. The two code snippets compare two different things -- the Lisp calculates the tag cloud, while the PHP declares some configuration options for the UI. How could comparing those two completely different problems tell you anything?

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't think it is fair to compare loc on an application that needs to support the needs of many thousands of individuals with an application that needs to support 1.

The more users of something like wordpress that you have the more edge cases you find. I can write a blog in 1200 lines of PHP but I don't think I could convince myself it has anywhere near the features, considerations or polish that something like wordpress will have.

As for the cloud plugin I haven't looked at it but it appears as though the boilerplate is just a way to add an easy method for customization something his lacks.

So we end up with less code but less features and more difficult to get up, keep up or customize. I fail to see how this is a point for Clojure.

<comment><USER4> Wordpress doesn't have polish. It has some HTML that looks nice, but doesn't perform well and is completely unmaintainable.

FWIW, I am also writing a real replacement for Wordpress: [http://blog.jrock.us/articles/Ernst,%20Angerwhale,%20the%20F...](http://blog.jrock.us/articles/Ernst,%20Angerwhale,%20the%20Future%20of%20Perl%20Web%20Frameworks,%20and%20Deleted%20Email.pod) (that article also rambles on and on and on about unrelated things).

<comment><USER8> If wordpress is unmaintainable then why do they keep releasing new versions of it? How come so many people use it?

And you're writing it in Perl? Sounds maintainable!

<comment><USER4> Some people like hacking things, making them work, and then leaving it even more broken for the next person. I don't, which is why I can't work on Wordpress. Every time you change the code, it should be cleaner than it was before, especially if the code is a project that you expect other people to be able to easily start working on.

As to your other point, nice troll.

<comment><USER8> But other people work on Wordpress all of the time. The sheer number of plugins, themes, etc. all testify to that. And if it's so broken, then why do so many people deploy it day after day?

Can you cite specific examples of where it is broken?

Or why don't you say what you really mean: Because it's written in PHP it must be junk.

And, seriously, who is trolling who? You posted how broken it was, and that you're building something new and better, but don't provide any examples of how Wordpress is broken exactly.

I can have Wordpress installed and working in under 15 minutes. I'm not sure how that is broken.

<comment><USER4> Like I said, it's easy to hack _anything_ to do exactly what _you_ want. The hard part is making your hack work with other hacks. How many Wordpress plugins can you install before things randomly break? How do you detect breakage, anyway? (Do all plugins have test suites? Can you compose these test suites to ensure that two plugins don't break each other?) How are variable and class namespace conflicts handled? How are conflicting database schema changes handled? Is there a way to request similar information from the database in two places without doing two queries? Is there a cache that can consistently share pieces of data between two plugins?

I could go on and on, and the answer to most of these things is no. Most of the time, it doesn't matter because the plugin is "too simple" to break things. But simplicity has its limits -- there are a lot of features that Wordpress is missing that I trivially implemented in my Angerwhale prototype (cleanly).

As to the number of extensions, it's simple. Wordpress is the only blogging solution out there, and there are millions of PHP programmers. (OK, there is MT also. But MT killed itself with weird licensing, and lost all of its mindshare. Oops.)

Those two factors combine to create a huge ecosystem. But it doesn't say much about the design of Wordpress, other than "it works well enough for people with simple needs, and rewriting a whole blogging engine would take a little more time than hacking Wordpress for this one site."

Anyway, sometimes good enough is good enough. Sometimes it isn't.

<comment><USER8> I still don't think you know what you are talking about.

We modified the shit out of wordpress to use it as a makeshit CMS to power a large portion of the marketing generated content on our site. We even added workflow to it.

It wasn't that hard. The codebase for wordpress isn't that messy. It's not ideal, but what OSS project is?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I especially didn't like the rant about the "horrible boilerplate array declarations at the top of the Wordpress plugin". That array looks like it provides some declarative information to the backend on how to display the configuration UI. So the 226 lines of PHP code plugin does incredibly much more than his ~25 lines of code: It has runtime configuration settings and it provides a HTML UI to set said configuration options.

All that in addition to the actual functionality.

I would even go as far as to say that rebuilding all the Wordpress functionality in Clojure would not take significantly more or less lines of code than what WP already has.

Or in other words: If I only need a small defined subset of Wordpresses functionality and if I have the time to actually write a blogging engine from scratch, then it will always have significantly fewer lines of code than WP - regardless of language.

Once I add features, the line count will increase - regardless of language.

This article is comparing apples to oranges: It's comparing a small, custom- built solution to a configurable out-of-the-box solution designed to satisfy the needs of the whole blogging community.

Of course that's more complex.

But it spares you the procedure the author later describes as "When I find a bug, I SSH in, re-attach to screen, fix it in Emacs, hit C-c C-c to recompile just the functions I need to update, and then detach from screen again.".

</comment><comment><USER10> Regarding a glaring XSS vulnerability in the comments, Wordpress 1, Clojure 0.

</comment><comment><USER11> Trying to give clojure some expojure starting a flame war?

Nice try...

<comment><USER4> I've noticed something really interesting about articles that criticize Java or PHP. The comments defending Java or PHP are always attacks, they are never technical arguments. (This is a perfect example. It's clear that the parent is a PHP fan, but can't think of any technical grounds to argue on.) This is really sad -- if you like something, you should know why. You should also like things for reasons other than "it's the only thing I know".

(As for Java, I wrote an article about things I don't like about Java on my blog, and all of the comments were either "I agree" or literally, "U are the dumbest person in the world." Maybe, but at least I can spell "you".)</comment></comment>


One small change to New York's intersections is saving pedestrians' lives - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1315305/one-small-change-to-new-yorks-intersections-is-saving-pedestrians-lives/ <comment><USER2> Everything has trade-offs. The auto manufacturers use massively wide A-pillars high belt-lines and deep seating positions to try to win the pissing contest over crash test ratings. The trade-off is reduced visibility, apparently to the point where we need backup cameras to not back over things and redesigned streets to not hit pedestrians.

How do these rubber speed bumps and plastic posts handle snow removal? Do they just not use them for 1/3 of the year.?

<comment><USER3> Plenty of places rarely have snow.

<comment><USER4> Still a valid question, New York gets plenty of snow. I imagine they have to pull them out or the snowplows would quickly do it for them.

<comment><USER5> I would rather deal with snow problems than with dead people

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Saved you a click:

Rubber bumpers that force cars to slow and not cut corner of left hand turns

</comment><comment><USER7> Someone in the NYC's DOT has been on a PR juggernaut with "Vizion Zero." I'm guessing this has been really good for someone's career there.

The reality is that NYC does almost zero to enforce cars respecting pedestrian in cross walks at present. You will never see a driver getting a ticket for blocking a cross walk even the MTA bus drivers do this as a matter of course. Similarly you will never see someone being ticket for entering a cross with pedestrians it.

As the traffic has worsened, if anything drivers have become more brazen in their behavior and their cavalier attitudes toward pedestrians.

While I applaud the effort described in this post I think it's important to temper these PR pieces with reality. And the reality is safety enforced along multiple axis and there doesn't seem to be very many of those at the moment.

<comment><USER8> The article says traffic deaths have been declining.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Left turns.

Around here, we continue to have more and more intersections "upgraded" to "left turn on arrow only". However, the traffic has not changed, and too often neither have the turn lanes.

A lot of turning traffic ends up substantially slowed and stalled. Sometimes to the point where it has started blocking and hindering the through traffic, as well.

It's made getting around much more of a pain in the ass. In the name of "safety", I guess.

Like my IKEA chair, that won't roll without weight present on the seat. A minor pain every time I'm sitting down at my desk or moving around my office. Because some kids and a few adults (more than a few adults?) would try to stand on a rolling chair and end up falling off.

I've started to lose my sympathy for people who can't negotiate a left turn in traffic, nor use furniture in a sensible manner.

Like the pedestrians who now amble into the crosswalk while staring at their phone, and lounge in it, making no effort either to keep themselves safe nor to keep traffic -- the vehicles waiting for them, as well as their own -- moving at a reasonable pace. Not frantic, just making a reasonable effort to clear the intersection and make room for the next guy.

Sooner or later, there's going to be a backlash against all this safety for those too... something, to take care of their own.

</comment><comment><USER10> Do we know if drivers are taking more care because they're a bit confused, and whether when they stop being confused they go back to being dangerous?

Or is the safety a more or less permanent thing?

<comment><USER11> The article points out: The rubber bumps encourages fewer corner cuts on the left turn, and the street marks encourage fewer left turns from parking lanes or dangerous maneuvers around slow traffic or the pedestrians that you can see. Both should be permanent safety benefits.

The corner cuts are a big thing that are easy to under-estimate, but left turn corner cuts are something you can see a lot at common intersections if you pay attention. Cutting the corner means more of an angle (versus "head on") coming into the lane, and more importantly more of an angle when crossing the crosswalk. More of an angle means decreased visibility.

<comment><USER11> Also, having to properly corner instead of assuming you can cut the corner, does tend to require more careful maneuvering in general, and at slower speeds for some drivers.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does anyone need a cheap way to move data OUT of Amazon S3? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I've recently come up with a method retrieving data out of S3 indirectly using another AWS service for less than the posted egress rates. It is not an exploit of a security vulnerability or anything remotely similar. Also doesn't rely on compression, nor does it use the AWS Export services like Snowball. Technically this could be applied to any data within AWS, not just S3.
I can do this for less than 2 or 3 cents per GB, potentially less, and reliably. I have benchmarked this technique with some data of my own moving files from S3 to Google Cloud Storage.
Does anyone have a use to hire me to implement this technique for them, or know anyone who does? It would be a significant savings over the standard egress rates for people needing to transfer many terabytes of data.
Email is in my profile. <comment><USER2> Interesting. Does this scale / act responsively enough to serve data to the public, or is it restricted to bulk transfers?

<comment><AUTHOR> In theory not impossible to serve a request with this, but the performance would be poor in terms of TTFB. More likely useful in bulk transfers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Does this get around the s3 request costs? or is this just a cheaper way to account far large data volumes.

<comment><AUTHOR> It still requires regular requests to S3, so large objects would see the most savings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lightsail?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, this isn't related to Lightsail. It may be worth investigating though! I haven't looked at all their bandwidth pricing rules.

EDIT: It looks like there is a hard limit of 20 Lightsail instances per account which would provide a limited amount of bandwidth. The docs and the website conflict so I can't confirm that for sure. Either way, not related to my technique.</comment></comment>


Adam Neumann planned for his children and grandchildren to control WeWork - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/18/adam-neumann-planned-for-his-children-and-grandchildren-to-control-wework/ <comment><USER2> The more we learn about this guy the more I can't wait for him to ride the wave into obscurity and irrelevance except for in the immortal pages of case studies of what not to do.

<comment><USER3> Agreed.

I also use this opportunity to learn how these con artists present themselves.

So watching interviews with them to learn their verbal and physical expressions (and people around them).

This is one particular interview I find useful in the above context.

[https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/01/14/watch-cnbcs-full- inter...](https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/01/14/watch-cnbcs-full-interview- with-ashton-kutcher-and-wework-ceo-adam-neumann.html)

Between this and another con artist (Elizabeth Holms, Therano's founder), there a representative sample developing.

<comment><USER4> Generally speaking, people know how to spot a con artist intuitively. The difficulty is figuring out who is part of the con, and who is a mark. Sometimes one person is both, or changes from partner to mark overnight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is not really anything wrong with having a family business. Many of the German automobile makers are run that way. In this day and age where pump-and- dump short term trading often prevails, the security benefits of limiting the power of public shares often seem worth considering. Indeed the market has spoken on Wework, as it always does, but it had little to do with this. It had to do with him flying around in things the company could not afford.

<comment><USER6> Well it's a bit like trying to "have your cake and eat it": if you want to run a family company, fine, but you can't ask the markets for capital and yet keep the control! Those dual class of shares have always seem odd to me; I mean, I kind of understand the point for your average young startup - where the voting power somehow represents the risk everyone took, and you don't want to destabilize the company. For a mature company, the justification is less clear.

<comment><USER7> Dual class structures are easier for investors to swallow in good times. When things go bad, those investors will discover the downsides.

I own shares in two dual-class companies:

Berkshire is one, and there, the dual class nature has the effect of giving more-serious/rich investors more votes. The coming century will test whether that is a good idea.

Starrett is the other; there the dual class structure is designed to protect a once-family business that is still run by the family. To me, at present, it is a feature, not a bug. Without the dual-class, Starrett probably would have been bought out in a hostile takeover/leveraged buyout. Instead, the company endures, with a long-term vision. The coming decades will test my optimistic thesis.

<comment><USER8> > Without the dual-class, Starrett probably would have been bought out in a > hostile takeover/leveraged buyout

Recently, in Switzerland, there was a company (Sika AG), where the founding family held 54% of the vote with 16% of the shares. When they wanted to cash out, they simply sold their shares to an outside investor at a sizable premium, and the remaining shares could potentially have ended up worthless (ultimately, after a multi year lawsuit, a compromise prevailed).

<comment><USER7> Interesting -- thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > "It's important that one day, maybe in 100 years, maybe in 300 years, a > great-great-granddaughter of mine will walk into that room and say, 'Hey, > you don't know me; I actually control the place. The way you're acting is > not how we built it,'" he said.

> These may sound like more outlandish proclamations from Neumann, who has a > flair for the dramatic.

<comment><USER10> Does anyone know what sort of " _moral compass_ " Neumann may've been imagining his great-great-granddaughter imposing in 300 years?

I mean, that's just a really weird scenario. Even ignoring the implausibility of modern offices being a thing in 300 years from now, much less being controlled by the same company, what exactly would've motivated Neumann's great-great-granddaughter to walk into an office space in which she'd apparently be an unknown stranger to critique the behavior of someone in it?

To be clear, I'm not asking for someone to make this sound reasonable -- just, what sort of scenario, reasonable or otherwise, might Neumann have been imagining here?

<comment><USER11> In fairness, this is kind of how people expected great media dynasties (like the Bancrofts or Sulzbergers) to work. And this is also a bit weird, because while now the idea of publishers as having a critical democratic function—and being more than just profit-seekers—is well-established, fifty years ago they were also brash big businesses, a bit like tech companies now.

I guess my point is that "changing the world" vs "making a buck" seem to be weirdly in the eye of the beholder.

Neumann seems to have either believed or tried to convince others that WeWork had some sort of greater mission beyond merely short-term office space. I think it's nuts, frankly, but this is the logical extreme of the more well- established phenomenon of trying to convince investors your food/cookie/pot- delivery website is a "tech company" to justify insane PE ratios.

I don't know my point. Maybe there are just a lot of idiots out there. But is it the founder, the VC, or the customer who's the idiot? Seems to generally depend upon timing.

<comment><USER12> My theory is when you are trying to run a business that doesn't generate cashflows and have no idea how you are going to get to that point, you start wasting your time with crazy stuff.

Everyone knows there is a big difference between a company like WeWork and Apple. There is also a big difference between other money losing unicorns that have a path to generating positive cash flow, albeit perhaps at a much smaller valuation.

Consider this is a person who was operating a company with a (SoftBank granted) valuation of a company that should have been throwing off billions of dollars in free cashflow. Instead, this guy had never run a successful or positive cashflow company in his entire life. If you pulled the average person off the street, told them they were extremely smart and successful, and put them in the exact same position as Mr Neumann, I'm going to guess they would be doing things as weird as he was if not much, much stranger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I kept wondering what would be the pets.com of this second bubble. I wonder no more

<comment><USER14> I think all the 'Uber-for-X'/food delivery apps that popped up circa 2015 and went under a couple years later were actually the pets.com equivalents. That bubble popped and people didn't think much about it, because Facebook, Google et al were doing well.

WeWork is an outlier case since Softbank caused the problem by giving them all this money but will probably keep them afloat as well.

<comment><USER15> All the Groupon copycats largely failed too. Including Living Social. The other related companies that survived were around before and weren't focused or only doing Groupon's schtick (Retail Me Not, Coupons.com parent company, Slickdeals, and the cash back sites like Ebates/Rakuten). Otherwise they all died.

The gig economy startup scene was much much bigger. But it also didn't completely die out. Airbnb is wildly successful. Apps like Taskrabbit have survived. Handy was surviving. Probably a number more that survived outside the big names.

<comment><USER16> [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/17/airbnbs-quarterly-loss- repor...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/17/airbnbs-quarterly-loss-reportedly- doubled-in-q1.html)

Airbnb is successful but is it sustainable? That's the question we need to be asking of the Uber generation.

<comment><USER15> Yeah good thinking. Maybe not sustainable at a $35B+ valuation. However it is likely sustainable as a $10B+ company.

Their marketing is largely the reason in that article. Their growth has slowed so that makes sense. Airbnb has been slightly profitable before. And unlike Dropbox who have been in the same position, they don't have the same competition level.

Article also says they still have $3B in cash and a $1B credit line which is a good sign vs total raised amt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The dual share class thing needs to be phased out, at least as it pertains to separating voting rights from economic rights. (Seems fine for other purposes like cross border listings.)

It's a bubble symptom that investors are happy to go with reduced influence, both wrt equity share classes as well as looser covenants on debt.

As for planning for your kids to own the company, that's pretty common.

<comment><USER18> There's nothing wrong with setting up company structures that have radically different rights wrt. Shares; what is important is that the market prices them correctly. And the market clearly has no idea how to price the control. Look at Facebook or many of the other major tech exits that have allowed ords to be priced from a 'control' perspective.

The market believes in a BDFL model at the moment and is being taught a bit of a lesson

<comment><USER19> I guess if you are going to have a benevolent dictator, check they really are benevolent.

<comment><USER20> The hard of a benevolent dictator isn't finding a benevolent person. Its ensuring they stay benevolent. That type of power has a track record of corrupting the holder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Isn't Walmart controlled by the children of Sam Walton? [1]

"Sam Walton's heirs own over 50 percent of Walmart through their holding company Walton Enterprises and through their individual holdings. "

Where does this writer think shares go when someone dies?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart)

<comment><USER22> The difference is that they actually _own_ those shares. This is about different kinds of shares being issued, i.e. the founder gets some that have 10 times the voting power of normal shares. He now only needs more than 5% of the company to provide the majority in votes.

<comment><USER21> But the story is talking about "generational ownership" of companies, that pass control to heirs when the founder dies.

Whether through dual class shares, or retaining a large % stake, it's the same. The Ford heirs control Ford. The Walton heirs control Walmart. There are many, many companies in this world controlled by the children and grandchildren of the founder. That's never been a huge problem.

I just think this Techcrunch story is poorly written. It's acting "shocked" that a child or grandchild of a founder could still control a company. Nothing to be shocked about there.

<comment><USER23> > _Whether through dual class shares, or retaining a large % stake, it 's the > same._

But is it the same?

In one case, the family owns the majority of the company and controls it. In the other case, the family only owns a small percentage, yet still controls the company.

Can a family that doesn't own a company be trusted to act in the company's best interests, or can they be trusted act in their own interests, using their control to extract as much money from the company into their own pockets, destroying the company in the process?

That's what I think the story is getting at, but it's poorly written.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This quote sums it up very well:

Warned Jackson, "Those companies are asking shareholders to trust management's business judgment — not just for five years, or 10 years, or even 50 years. Forever." Such perpetual dual-class ownership "asks them to trust that founder's kids. And their kids' kids. And their grandkid's kids . . . It raises the prospect that control over our public companies, and ultimately of Main Street's retirement savings, will be forever held by a small, elite group of corporate insiders — who will pass that power down to their heirs."

<comment><USER24> I don't see it as a problem because of this line: "Those companies are ASKING shareholders..."

Don't invest in companies that are making dumb decisions, or divest from companies that are making changes you feel are dumb.

<comment><USER25> As someone who is at least somewhat well-informed, I literally never heard this. How would you expect investors to know that? Wouldn't it be better to just live under a system of laws that prevents insanity like this? And then you could spend your time learning and being productive instead of poring over the details of how you're being duped in any given situation?

<comment><USER26> > How would you expect investors to know that?

Something called due diligence.

Plus, this insanity is removing power from investors. If they are not even going to look at the company share structure, what kind of decision were they going to make?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Why is this news? This guy has been pretty solidly shamed, removed from power, and his former company practically destroyed.

At this point it seems pretty shallow celebrating more stories of missteps here.

<comment><USER28> I could dance on the grave of WeWork, softbank and the general "startup" culture for a little longer.

Strike up the band!

<comment><USER29> Please don't. Critique is welcome, but curiosity withers under repetition and internet rage is uninteresting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> So imagine Niander Wallace from Bladerunner 2049, CEO of Wallace Corp, whose headquarters is a massive pyramid building about 2 miles tall and has plans of expanding business to other worlds.

Now imagine instead of doing something important such as solving the world's food shortage or building replicants, Wallace Corp simply rented out office space to fledgling startups, and now you will have some idea of the future Adam Neumann envisioned for himself.

<comment><USER16> More human than human indeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I don't believe this for a second. This is a hybrid fine-art / Ponzi scheme. Investors pay over the odds to inflate the valuation, hoping that more will follow after them, raising the value further, repeating the cycle.

</comment><comment><USER32> Noob! He needs to institute primogeniture to make sure the power stays consolidated

<comment><USER33> Ah, my favorite Crusader Kings II minigame: stitching my kingdom back together after a gavelkind succession.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is also an interesting one:

> _WSJ: WeWork Founder Mixed Spiritual Group With Business_

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/wework-founder-mixed- spiritual-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/wework-founder-mixed-spiritual- group-with-business-11571232391?mod=breakingnews)

</comment><comment><USER35> I am curious what their hiring strategy was. I met someone who worked there a few weeks ago at a networking event. This was after most of the bad news had broken. Wow, was he drinking the Kool Aid. I felt like I was getting an Amway or Scientology pitch (the main thought going through my mind was "you should really be using this opportunity to look for a job"). It made me wonder if they systematically hired people who were easy marks, like the type of people cults would look for, and did they have a hiring protocol for screening them.

</comment><comment><USER36> I thought that it was a headline of the Onion.

</comment><comment><USER37> I know founders can sometimes be eccentric, but for Adam it's just delusion and that's well evident from his first venture [1].

> Working out of his Tribeca apartment, he started Krawlers, which sought to > make baby clothes with knee pads to make crawling more comfortable. The > slogan, he has said: "Just because they don't tell you, doesn't mean they > don't hurt."

Are founders like Adam really incapable of seeing obvious holes in their ideas? Or they just conveniently ignore them?

[1]: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/this-is-not-the-way- everybody-b...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/this-is-not-the-way-everybody- behaves-how-adam-neumanns-over-the-top-style-built-wework-11568823827)

<comment><USER38> I don't get what you're saying. This seems like a good idea and a good tagline for our times.

<comment><USER39> Babies don't have (ossified) kneecaps - their knees are already padded. And, as 100% of parents will agree, babies will definitely, definitely tell you when they hurt.

<comment><USER20> Father of five, and I can confirm. They will most definitely tell you when something is uncomfortable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> > _The outlet reports that in a speech Neumann gave to employees in January of > this year, footage of which it says it has viewed, Neumann is seen saying > that WeWork isn't "just controlled — we're generationally controlled."_

Maybe Business Insider (who first reported this, but for their premium paywall offering) has some info, but I'm really curious to hear how WeWork employees, including mid level managers and executives, took this proclamation? I'm assuming some of WeWork's workforce has some regard for the concept of meritocracy. Hearing your CEO declare that he foresees WeWork to be controlled by his bloodline for the next 300 years would seem to be off putting.

<comment><USER22> > Hearing your CEO declare that he foresees WeWork to be controlled by his > bloodline for the next 300 years would seem to be off putting.

Unless you're that deep into the cult that you actually believe in him being the prophet and you're calmed by the thought that his eternal consciousness will stand watch and defend the company from outside influence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Is there a specific reason that WeWork comes up so much on HN? I've never heard of it otherwise, but I see at least one story on it hit the front page a week.

<comment><USER42> for the same reason theranos used to come up all the time. because investment and hype didnt appear to align with the true value of what the company in question was offering.

<comment><USER43> There really isn't much to compare to theranos, as it was based completely on a lie. The only thing in common here is just a crappy CEO. WeWork has a solid premise, it's just highly over-leveraged and over-valued.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> [https://web.archive.org/web/20191019022454/https://www.busin...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191019022454/https://www.businessinsider.com/wework- adam-neumann-said-family-control-company-300-years-january-2019-10)

</comment><comment><USER45> I don't think public shamig works anymore, .... Wait, did it ever work ? Would love know know cases where it did.

</comment><comment><USER46> "Research Reveals That Publicly Announcing Your Goals Makes You Less Likely to Achieve Them"

[https://www.inc.com/melissa-chu/announcing-your-goals- makes-...](https://www.inc.com/melissa-chu/announcing-your-goals-makes-you- less-likely-to-ach.html)

<comment><USER47> One instance where the (otherwise insultingly bad) Mitchen translation of Tao Te Ching makes sense:

> The slow overcomes the fast. > Let your workings remain a mystery. > Just > show people the results.

36 ([https://terebess.hu/english/tao/mitchell.html#Kap36](https://terebess.hu/english/tao/mitchell.html#Kap36))

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is actually a point in favour of Neumann since it shows he actually believed the bullcrap he was selling around what WeWork was. Like many have noted, it was a landlord with a particular focus on the startup and tech markets. That's it.

<comment><USER48> It could also be that this was just something he was using to look more sincere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I like the idea of WeWork but my god it's not worth anywhere near what they were trying to IPO for, also their CEO is an idiot. Good riddance.

</comment><comment><USER49> If someone as dumb as Neumann can go so far, how smart are all the people leading all other tech unicorns and corporations?

</comment><comment><USER50> Not uncommon in Canadian companies. _cough_ Bombardier _cough_

</comment><comment><USER51> > The moral compass of the company

Neumann seems like a black hole of arrogance.

</comment><comment><USER52> This just shows that people with a bad mission and values eventually get exposed only to crash and burn.

</comment><comment><USER53> WeOwn

</comment><comment><USER54> After seeing a lot of headlines on HN I finally understood that WeWork is a company and not some sort of US institution or some communist worker union (no pun intended, we have those in Europe).

<comment><USER55> If Neumann is to be believed, WeWork is no mere company.

<comment><USER56> If the trend in current valuations is to be believed, it's not even a company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Kinda off topic: is there a way to opt out of tracking on sites like techcrunch that seem to use a seriously obfuscated opt out screen?

I've never dared to click past the second dialog for fear that I'll opt in to something by mistake.

<comment><USER58> Good question. I haven't found a way around, so I've stopped visiting. Presumably one day they'll get a kicking from a GDPR regulator - but they have bigger fish to fry at the moment.

<comment><USER59> If you copy the URL fast enough after clicking, you can check Archive (.is) to see if it's been archived. In this case, it was.

[http://archive.is/NLqpE](http://archive.is/NLqpE)

There's also Outline. Not sure if one service is better than the other.

<comment><USER60> Instead of copying, you can just click Stop on the browser before the dialog opens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Very much like a Jobs, Musk, or Holmes styled persona. They have a very peciliar way to cultivate their image among very trusting people.

Just have a conversation with a kid working for a client about all those guys. In conversation about Mr. Musk: "If somebody gives you $1.8B credit in cash, and you still manage to screw up, you must have been doing something wrong"

How do you call them in America? "New ageians?"

<comment><USER8> Except that Jobs, to my knowledge, never tried to have his kids run Apple.

They're still rather young, of course. For all we know, in 5 years Reed Jobs will ride up to Apple Park on a white stallion, wielding a sword he pulled from the SF Bay…</comment></comment>


Apple/swift-nio: Event-driven network framework for high perf. protocol servers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/apple/swift-nio <comment><USER2> Very nice to see some activity on the server side of things for Swift. But it would be important that major players really get on board and create some kind of standard. I would love to see something like the Phoenix framework for Swift.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely. I tried writing some server side swift code about a year ago, and at the time there were 4 competing async networking (raw / http) frameworks. Each one used similar but incompatible primitives to handle concurrency. (Libdill / threads / libdispatch / kqueue). As a result anything written on top of any of those libraries would stay tightly coupled to that library. I was worried I'd pick the wrong winner and need to rewrite all my code in the next couple years of churn.

For comparison, Nodejs and Go both have streaming IO, networking and HTTP built into their core libraries. As a result interoperability between 3rd party libraries in those ecosystems is way better.

So I'm excited to see a canonical async promise library out for swift! Between this and Rust's futures 0.2 RC coming out last week[1] it looks like the new generation of modern C-replacement languages are starting to mature enough for useful network services to be written on top of them. I'm excited to see what the next few years will bring. And I'm really looking forward to using all the language features Swift and Rust have that are missing from my standard workhorse languages. (Parametric enums + pattern matching! Yay!)

[1] [http://aturon.github.io/2018/02/27/futures-0-2-RC/](http://aturon.github.io/2018/02/27/futures-0-2-RC/)

<comment><USER2> I'd say Swift isn't really a C-replacement as it uses ARC which is slower and doesn't need manual management to work (except for a few weak references here and there). It's generally/potentially faster than Java and C# code as it's pre-compiled and it can use C and C++ libraries (perhaps also Rust?) without bridging cost. But ARC is a reliable and constant but slow way to manage memory. The good thing about ARC is that it's the same every time, no weird GC peaks at sometimes difficult to predict intervals.

<comment><USER4> Only temporarily. One of the next Swift versions (my bet is on Swift 6) will include an optional memory ownership model:

[https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/master/docs/OwnershipMan...](https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/master/docs/OwnershipManifesto.md)

It will not have lifetimes but still allow to opt out of ARC for performance critical code.

<comment><USER2> That's interesting. I bet a lot of people doing performance critical stuff like graphics or audio are going to be interested in this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Would this also work with Objective-C?

<comment><USER6> No, unfortunately it looks like it makes heavy use of non-ObjC-bridgeable Swift features including structs, rich enums, etc. It _might_ be feasible to write a wrapper around it using ObjC-compatible Swift, but I don't know enough about it to say for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting. It is 11 month old but I am seeing this first time. I guess Rust has tried something similar though not to great effect so far.

<comment><USER8> It was only just made public today at the trySwift conference where an Apple engineer working on Swift NIO presented a talk.

<comment><USER7> Got it. I was surprised because every once in a while I browse through Github Apple organization and I never noticed this one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is it something like Tokio Rust?

<comment><USER10> Looks more like it's at a lower level like MIO.</comment></comment>


The vision for Foursquare 3.0 and beyond - <AUTHOR> http://blog.foursquare.com/2011/03/08/foursquare-3/ <comment><USER2> This might be a very important upgrade for Foursquare. Of course, my views are biased, being in SF and with many of my friends heavy foursquare users.

The release brings to focus some uses of foursquare that were only tangentially possible:

\- What coffee shop in [neighborhood I only occasionally visit] do my friends prefer. \- Searching for a bar similar to my neighborhood bar in Seattle when visiting.

\- The rankings page was a pain to get to, and most people find it hard to understand what they meant.

\- Once a mayor, mostly a mayor. foursquare has been changing the points and mayor mechanics so often, that it seems almost random. Hopefully they will extend mayorships to be different titles. It seems they are starting with the different Loyalty targeting options for merchants.</comment>


A scientist is trying to cure his own cancer using a custom-made vaccine - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/how-cancer-researcher-tom-marsilje-is-working-to-cure-his-own-cancer-2016-9 <comment><USER2> A very moving article. But despite the authors elevated tone I felt a wave of depression on reading it.

An issue bothers me: why would the researchers exclude someone from a trial because his condition would confound the results? This seems callous to me. Is dying a more acceptable outcome? Why not give him every chance at living and exclude his data from the spreadsheet if need be?

<comment><USER3> I don't know the specifics of this particular situation, but one possibility is that there is a limited number of seats available. If he is admitted, then he is taking the place of someone who has a better chance at recovery (so far as they understand the disease).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What was the best book you've read this year? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas Kuhn.

Science is not a purely additive process. New facts and theories are not simply added to the pile of existing ones. New knowledge and understanding often requires abandoning or drastically reconceiving old theories and observations. Kuhn explores this in great detail, and I found it fascinating and insightful.

For example, prior to the invention of the telescope, the celestial sphere was viewed as fundamentally different from the earthly sphere. But a simple look at the moon in Galileo's telescope reveals it to be a body that is very similar to the Earth. It has mountains which cast shadows as the light moves across them, and so on.

The "moon" must now be be viewed as a rather different concept, and this new conception is invoked every time one looks at it. This new "paradigm" affects other observations, such as those of Jupiter and Saturn. They are not pure, static points of light like stars, and some color and a circular shape can be see with the new telescope. Must they be bodies like that of the Moon or Earth as well?

In the book, as Kuhn presents his analysis, it seems we are also taking a deep look at epistemology, and the subtleties and differences between how something is perceived and how it is conceived. Grounded in the historical narrative of scientific advancement, I found this investigation of those difficult and elusive topics to be more enlightening than usual.

I believe that some criticize Kuhn for how sharp and discontinuous he describes his paradigm shifts to be. For me, this was not a main point. I enjoyed his detailed analysis of how paradigms change in general, and why this is a more accurate description of how science progresses, compared to additive models.

<comment><USER3> If you like Kuhn, you'll like "Theories On The Scrap Heap" by Losee. A chronicling and criticism of the different views of science.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "A Man For All Markets" by Edward O. Thorp

The incredible true story of the card-counting mathematics professor who taught the world how to beat the dealer and, as the first of the great quantitative investors, ushered in a revolution on Wall Street.

[http://www.edwardothorp.com/books/a-man-for-all- markets/](http://www.edwardothorp.com/books/a-man-for-all-markets/)

This is the best book published in 2017 bar none and a great inspiration to booth...

<comment><USER5> > "A Man For All Markets" by Edward O. Thorp....

Seconded. I started reading the book last night and it's a can't-put-down. You just sense the genius and greatness of the man shine through with every page you covered.

I however wouldn't go so far as say it is the "best book published in 2017 bar none"

<comment><USER4> What is your choice for book of the year? I am reading all the time and I am always on a look out for my next read... Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Blindsight by Peter Watts - really interesting high concept sci-fi about the nature of life and consciousness.

Designing Data Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann. This book really made stream processing and Kafka click for me.

</comment><comment><USER7> League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions and the Battle for Truth by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru

Excellently written, impactful stories, solid science and a scandal as big as Big Tobacco... I couldn't put it down and read the whole thing in a weekend.

Absorbing and disturbing. I used to glorify Iron Mike back in the day. Hearing his story and that of his family trying to take care of him as his cognitive function deteriorated was heart-wrenching. All the while as the NFL suppressed data and fought him tooth and nail from paying disability.

Key takeaway: Letting your kids play football is akin to child abuse.

</comment><comment><USER8> "Sapiens" by Yuval Noah Harari. It was published back in 2011, but I just got to it this year.

It's a concise history of humans. Common for books to aim at this, rare to hit it.

The most interesting thought I took from the book is that humans and civilizations biggest advancement was the ability to accept collective fictions to assemble greater than just small tribes. Nations, currencies, religions, morality.

The concept has been stuck in my head like me moving a smooth stone slowly around my mouth.

The description on the conflict and resolution between Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens was interesting as well.

</comment><comment><USER9> Shogun by James Clavell. Probably the best fiction book I've ever read. Fascinating characters, amazing descriptions of feudal Japan's culture, society, and philosophy. Great storyline and suspense.

Truly an all around masterpiece. I've been to Japan once before and now I want to go back based entirely on reading this book. I feel like I'll see the country (and it's people) in a whole new light now.

<comment><USER4> I would suggest the whole "Asian Saga" my childhood favorite (and re reading it when I have nothing else) a must read for sure...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I´ve read the book "Behind the Cloud" by Marc Benioff and Carlye Adler. It tells the story of how salesforce.com was founded and how it has developed into the strong brand it is today. The book is full of valuable insights into many different fields of business and development.

</comment><comment><USER11> An American Sickness, detailing he misaligned incentives and "brokenness" of the American healthcare system.

</comment><comment><USER12> Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller. Read about John D Rockefeller and the likes of Bezos and Zuck seem like amateurs.

I have ways of making money that you know nothing of - John D Rockefeller.

</comment><comment><USER13> "Big Business and Human Values" by Theodore Houser.

Pretty amazing take on how to run a business when compared to how we see things happening now. And prophetic in it's critique of how Wall Street and stock holders change the human values of how businesses are run, especially considering the position he held and his comparative and actual counterparts now.

It's a short book and an easy read, but it's very well thought out and articulated and it covers some very important aspects of the responsibilities of big business that seem to be popular to ignore right now.

I highly recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Charlatan by Pope Brock. It's a thrilling non-fictional account of a medical quack who got rich putting goat testicles in men's scrotums. Due to his talent for speaking straight to the people over a new communication medium that nobody understood the power of (radio), he very nearly became the governor of Kansas.

I heard about it through the excellent Reply All episode from late last year, and the book is even better.

<comment><USER7> Sounds like Trump!

<comment><USER14> That was the _strong_ subtext of the Reply All episode: [https://gimletmedia.com/episode/86-man-of-the- people/](https://gimletmedia.com/episode/86-man-of-the-people/) They talked about how this was a story from the early 1900s that felt like it was happened last week.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Rembrandt's Eyes by Simon Schama - verbose but fun writing. Very good analysis of the painter, his life, and how it was reflected in his art.

</comment><comment><USER16> "Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World" by Cal Newport

</comment><comment><USER17> Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson

</comment><comment><USER18> Feeling is the Secret - Neville Goddard

</comment><comment><USER19> "2666" by Roberto Bolaño.</comment>


What A Physics Student Can Teach Us About How Visitors Walk Through A Museum - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/art/2012/05/what-a-physics-student-can-teach-us-about-how-visitors-walk-through-a-museum

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately the article appears to be a lot of conjecture based on about 20 minutes of manual observations. While it's interesting, there's a lot more work required before you could get close to drawing conclusions.

I think a really interesting thing to do would be to place some cameras overhead, facing down, and then use either image recognition techniques (eg OpenCV), infra red cameras and heat tracking, or even something like a kinect to track the points at about head height. You could build data up over days or weeks rather than minutes, and get a much better idea of how people move through the space.

</comment><comment><USER3> Could this be used to further analyse websites? Instead of just the usual eye heat map, and optimising for that would it be better to optimise for each page based on the content on that page?</comment>


Ask HN: Are you using Go for web development? - open-source-ux If you're using Go for web development, how have you found the experience?
What made you choose Go? Did you come from another language associated with web development (e.g. Python, PHP, Ruby)? Or did you pick Go as your first language for diving into web development? Have you run into any stumbling blocks?
I've just starting learning Go for web development and would be interested to hear comments and thoughts from anyone using Go for web development. <comment><AUTHOR> Coming from C++/C# and having previously used PHP for my web projects, I absolutely love Golang!

I never really liked dynamically-typed languages ... actually I really dislike PHP, but it was ... easy and familiar.

But after just a few days of playing with Golang it just felt right. It's a language to get shit done fast and easy ... and that's the most important thing IMHO.

And yes - I don't miss generics ... at all :>

For the last 14 months I've been working on a self-hosted server for building complex CRUD apps using drag-n-drop in the browser and building it with Go was a great decision.

</comment><comment><USER2> You'll want to take a look at Sameer Ajmani's (Go Team Manager) talk "Program your next server in Go"

[https://talks.golang.org/2016/applicative.slide#1](https://talks.golang.org/2016/applicative.slide#1)

As well as this post on "Go Concurrency Patterns: Pipelines and cancellation"

[https://blog.golang.org/pipelines](https://blog.golang.org/pipelines)

You'll get a feel for how you can use Go to quickly build and compose distributed microservices that can "time out" but still won't bring down the entire house of cards ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> I use Go for this sort of thing because it's _easier_ than any of the interpreted options. The language itself is very simple, but the killer feature for me is the simplicity of deployment. I can deploy a Go app simply by sending a single file onto another machine, plus or minus some init scripts.

<comment><USER4> This, no intricate dependency management or whatever, you just pick what you need, import it and get stuff done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have built a lot of random stuff in Go.

I picked up go about two years because it seemed to be a really cool middle- of-the-road language. It wasn't great at anything but was pretty good at most things. Before, I had written a lot of PHP on the web.

No stumbling blocks after getting set up (GOPATH, getting newest version installed). It's always slow to learn something new.

My advice. Do not return dynamic content with Go. If you build a backend webservice in Go that is meant to serve complicated dynamic content (like the way it is possible to do with PHP), you will have a bad time. htmltemplates in Go are not good and you'll waste a lot of time try to live with them. It's better just to return a little bit of info that a front end js app can bootstrap the front-end with.

<comment><USER6> You know you can use almost any template language with go right? Just look for a package that'll compile into templates then execute them. There are packages for pug (Used to be jade,) amber, handlebars, mustache etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have used it since 2 years ago or so to implement JSON REST APIs and some small admin pages for app backends. I compare with Python which I have also used for this.

Cons:

\- More verbose than Python (returning errors and static typing make it not as succint as Python)

Pros:

\- Static typing without being too ceremonius (compared to Python it's nice to have some errors catch by the type compiler that would popup in runtime. Refactoring also is nicer with a static typing safenet).

\- Easy deployment (rsync the binary to the server and of you go, no more Pip and dynamic libraries bullshit)

\- Low memory usage (nice to have the production backend running and see that it uses 15MB of mem where in Python it would be like 10 times more and with worse concurrence)

\- Performance (somewhat minor plus for me because the bottleneck is almost always on the database)

</comment><comment><USER8> I started using Go a few years back for my web based food project. I have loved it so far. I usually program things in Perl, so Go is a nice supplement for me.

Having a single binary to deploy and 1.x compatibility have probably been the two features I like most about the language.

The community is great, and they are always very helpful. I think a great community around a language really makes or breaks a language.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's a great language for webdev as long as you stick to REST api's with frontends that consume the json returned from it.

<comment><USER10> In this context, a lot of languages become great for webdev I guess.. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> almost all of Golangs core libraries are written in Go and are fully open sourced. This makes jumping from your code to the std liberary super easy. Besides all the amazing open sourced projects, the best and easiest way to learn the language is by looking at the Golang source itself.</comment>