Twitter sued for 'breaking' UK super injunction. Oh yes. - <AUTHOR> http://eu.techcrunch.com/2011/05/20/twitter-sued-for-breaking-uk-super-injunction-oh-yes/ <comment><USER2> I find it bizarre that the entire UK press can be censored from reporting on something as mundane as a footballer having an affair.

Does freedom of the press carry so little weight in the UK? Are you UK citizens not outraged by this?

<comment><USER3> In the UK it is deemed that people have a right to privacy. This is overturned when it is deemed that information is "in the public interest," but knowing the sordid details of some "celebrity's" affairs is not necessarily deemed important enough. there is a balance to be had between an individual's privacy, and the right to public knowledge.

In Europe in general, and in the UK in particular, some reporting in the US is regarded with distaste, encroaching as it does on what the British regard as privacy, all in the name of "freedom of speech." The converse is also true, with USAians being horrified that anyone should claim a right to any kind of privacy once the press decide they are interested in them.

I _never_ want to be famous.

And FWIW - I'm neither European, nor USAian.

<comment><USER4> As an aside, using "USAians" in your writing is probably not what you want here. Intentionally mangling the name of a group/nationality because you don't like the standard naming convention or because you want to get a little jab in to show your distaste for the group just undermines your credibility.

If I were to write a valid political commentary but use "Dumbocrats" for Democrats or "Republitards" for Republicans it would be hard to take me seriously, right? When someone online writes "USAians" it's very difficult to regard the rest of their writing as legitimate and not trolling or intentionally smug/antagonistic.

<comment><USER5> I'm also a US-native, and didn't take it as an attempt to offend. I used to live in South America, where people tend to get a little prickly about the US having laid claim to the term "American." They always call people from the US "Estadounidense," literally, UnitedStatsian.

It's really our own fault: we have a country that has an extremely awkward name. We're the United States of America, so "America" is, grammatically speaking, the name of our country, but we're also part of a set of continents that's also called "America." We could actually use a better term like Unitedstatsians or USAians.

<comment><USER6> I've heard about that about people from South America before, but it doesn't make much sense to me - the USA is the only country with "America" in its name. Every other use is for the names of continents, which have no actual political meaning (except maybe the EU, but not even all of Europe belongs to the EU, and how many Europeans refer to themselves as that before referring to themselves as a member of their country?)

<comment><USER7> well at least we're claiming to be the "united states of" america. those damned australians aren't even trying to be polite about it, claiming the entire continent themselves. those poor new zealanders can't even use the name of their continent to describe where they're from for fear people thinking they're from the country australia. instead they have to resort to being called the sheep fuckers of australia because that sounds better than being australian.

<comment><USER8> I had never considered upon which continent New Zealand is considered to reside before reading your comment. After consulting Wikipedia, I've discovered that the answer is a lot less straight-forward than I had originally thought.

Before doing my (minimal) research, I would have assumed they were part of Asia, if for no other reason than that I considered Australia the continent and Australia the country to be essentially one and the same (i.e. a continent consisting of just one country), but that doesn't seem to be the case.

According to Wikipedia's article on the continent of Australia [1], "New Zealand is not on the same continental shelf and so is not part of the continent of Australia but is part of the submerged continent Zealandia. Zealandia and Australia together are part of the wider region known as Oceania or Australasia."

Similarly, Wikipedia's "list of sovereign states and dependent territories by continent" page [2], does not use "Australia" as a continental group, and instead uses "Oceania" to encapsulate states in that region.

So I guess New Zealanders don't really have any right to complain about not being able to call themselves Australian, since they're not even technically part of the Australian continent. They could refer to themselves as Oceanians, Australasians, or even Polynesians [3], but not as Australians.

[1] - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_%28continent%29>

[2] - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_de...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_continent)

[3] - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oceanias_Regions.png>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow. Next up: suing the midwives who delivered the miners who dug out the coal that was burned to generate the electricity that powered the factory that manufactured the computer that was used to originate the offending tweet.

<comment><USER10> You know, I've been thinking about how great it would be to have a decentralized twitter/news system, but I wonder if that would actually make censorship like this easier because you could target users directly, which would be less absurd than targeting companies like Twitter.

<comment><USER11> Years ago Circle (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_(file_system)>) had a distributed news system call gossip. It pretty much operated as a trust network. You'd pull down gossip from people you knew and republish it (if you chose) along with a trust metric.

These days I'd probably go for something RESTful in website form. The trick would be to clearly define the various roles and make it easy for people to slot in and build compatible parts of the network. Then pump in the hype.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Someone commented on that TC.eu article the names involved, maybe TechCrunch should be sued as well.

As a Brit I think I speak for quite a few of us when I say that these super injunctions are quite fun. If an affair like that was reported I probably wouldn't even read the shitty gossip columns that published it, certainly I wouldn't care if I did come across them. As soon as a super injunction comes into play it turns it into a guessing game at first, and a "who will get sued" game second. Much more enjoyable to follow.

</comment><comment><USER13> <http://www.heyryangiggs.com/> \- I see the Streisand effect is in full force

<comment><USER14> Well _that_ would explain what the fuss is about: if true, it's just tabloid celebrity nonsense. Not like, oh, the Trafigura superinjunction (where exposing the nasty little nest of maggots behind the story was clearly in the public interest):

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/20/trafigura- anatom...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/20/trafigura-anatomy- super-injunction)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you are in the UK, how do you know which people you aren't allowed to publish stories about? How do you know if a super injunction is in force? Are they published somewhere?

<comment><USER14> You don't. That's what makes this whole deal so annoying -- you can accidentally break the law and be liable for imprisonment (contempt of court) or horrendous damages _without knowing why_.

<comment><USER16> I am pretty sure that the press are allowed to know about the injunctions, they're just not allowed to _report_ on them.

<comment><USER14> What about the rest of us -- those of us who aren't newspaper journalists and on whom the injunctions are not served, but who may nevertheless be liable for contempt of court if we tweet or blog about something we read on, say, a foreign web site?

We don't know that republishing the information is in contempt of court, but ignorance of the law is not (and never has been) a defense -- at best it's merely a mitigating factor for the court to consider when handing down a sentence.

<comment><USER17> > We don't know that republishing the information is in contempt of court

It's clearly not, since republishing information (in this case, a statement from an MP using parliamentary privilege) is how we knew about Trafigura and other issues covered by a superinjunction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The brilliant thing about super/hyper injunctions is that you could be breaking them without even knowing it, because you have no idea that they existed. What a complete perversion of the justice system.

</comment><comment><USER19> Could this be said Twitter account?

<http://twitter.com/#!/InjunctionSuper>

<comment><USER17> It could be, but according to some sources very familiar with superinjunctions (Private Eye) apparently they were all BS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The news reported earlier that reports that Twitter is being sued are incorrect and that they are just having the user details requested from them.

Which will no doubt lead them to a Starbucks on the Old Kent Road, but you have to try!

<comment><USER21> Would you please post a link to that report.

The article linked to in this HN post is poorly sourced. I'm hoping to read a credible journalistic article on this subject.

<comment><USER22> <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13477811> It is about half way down that you get the clarification

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Also <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2568192>

</comment><comment><USER24> Does Twitter have any obligations to UK law? Are they incorporated there somehow?

<comment><USER22> It looks like it [http://eu.techcrunch.com/2011/02/24/twitter-starts-hiring- sa...](http://eu.techcrunch.com/2011/02/24/twitter-starts-hiring-sales-people- in-london-but-remains-coy-about-euro-hq/)

But I wonder if they will start getting cold feet about having an office in London now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> A super-injunction isn't the same as a 'cover-up', it just puts a halt to the media circus. It doesn't provide secrecy, it just stops the tabloids scrambling for all the lurid details and publishing them to their giddy readership for weeks on end, probably ruining a few peoples lives in the process. Which is what usually happens in Britain. Wayne Rooney and John Terry, England's two most accomplished players, have both been the centre of a national debacle that lasted months, all in the last year.

</comment><comment><USER26> This reminds me about the discussion Canada was having where it is illegal to announce election results until all polls are closed; people were questioning the right to tweet results before all polls were closed.

Twitter really changed the game for information distribution and I am surprised that we are now just talking about the ramifications. News entities, countries, people all need to understand the power of Twitter and find ways to fix the current system and not just sue where things are broken.

<comment><USER27> It's not Twitter, it's the internet in general, Twitter's just exacerbated the effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It will be interesting to see how useful this action is if the people tweeting about this aren't even UK citizens.

<comment><USER29> i'm obviously not a lawyer, so my understanding may be utterly wrong. The injunction is covering whole world, though the judge can enforce it only in UK. That seems that if you ever plan on visiting the UK during statute of limitation for injunction violation, you'd think twice before tweeting and most probably decide against it :).

<comment><USER30> Or more likely, decide against visiting the UK.</comment></comment></comment>


Direct Neural Interface Possible According to New Research - <AUTHOR> https://edgylabs.com/2016/11/28/direct-neural-interface-possible-new/ <comment><USER2> Direct neural interfaces have been on the market since the late 80s. Can't journalists fucking google before submitting stories like these?</comment>


DeepMind Can Now Beat Us at Multiplayer Games, Too - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/science/deep-mind-artificial-intelligence.html <comment><USER3> As discussed earlier this week (with link to technical paper)

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20055162](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20055162)

</comment><comment><USER4> While I am a fan of DeepMind's research (Alpha Go and Alpha Zero blew me away - I wrote a commercial Go program in the late 1970s for the Apple II so I appreciate the problem, and I used to work with DeepMind cofounder Shane Legg at Webmind), respectfully, I do have a criticism:

I would like to see them use their talent and financial backing from Alphabet to tackle the hard problems of common sense in AI and in general the science of what it will take to reach AGI.

Deep learning is brittle, as can be seen in the good science of finding adversarial attacks on trained models. I would like to see less accuracy on dev and test sets, smaller more general models, and especially not see convolutional models as the basis for vision systems in self driving cars. My intuition is that discarding information of relative positions and relative relationships of large features in an image is a bad idea for the self driving car problem.

They have really pushed progress for an old technology (reinforcement learning) and achieved fantastic results but in my experience if there are not many failures along the way, then perhaps goals are not being set high enough.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> People mentioned in the article seem to doubt about applicability in the real world. If nothing else, I think it brings video game development closer to being an automated process. A game could simulate various conditions and design an infinite number of complex environments. Am I way off?

<comment><USER5> I saw an interesting talk about proc gen which was basically saying a lot of studios are moving from hand crafting to procedural tools. For example if you want to fill a park with trees you don't place them by hand, you just specify the density and type of trees and let the computer place them. The advantage is that if you want to reshape the park later you can just click and drag. Then when you are happy you go though and hand craft more content on top.

They were saying there is a critical mass where procedural tools feed into procedural tools and a lot of the pipeline is automated, then it becomes extremely cheap to make more content.

So back to your point: I think this is where we will see AI more in game dev, it will be as smart tools to empower creators to make stuff more easily. I don't think the AI will make the game, I think it will assist the humans with the creation of it.

Here is a talk about Spiderman and how much proc gen they used there [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aw9uyj9MAE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aw9uyj9MAE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> An important detail is missing from the article (or perhaps I missed it). The AI had an advantage unrelated to intelligence. It's "plugged" into the game in a way that gives it a big advantage. Better reaction time, better aim, technical capabilities that a human player with "primitive" input devices and looking at the game through a low res window can't get close to.

Unlike a game of chess where the mind is basically the only one at work, this time the "body" might have had just as much of an input. Even regular bots were good enough for most players anyway :).

<comment><USER7> People said the same thing about DeepMind's SC2 wins. Its actions per minute spiked to inhuman levels briefly and its efficiency and precision of control was nearly perfect. These types of criticisms completely miss the point.

People were attempting to build StarCraft agents for 10 years. 50000 actions per minute, complete vision of the entire map, predefined scripted build orders, restrictions on human opponents - nothing worked. A moderately competent player would destroy those old bots in 10 out of 10 games, it wasn't close.

These games have so much more to them than reaction time and dexterity, these new agents are doing something that simply wasn't possible before.

<comment><USER6> > These games have so much more to them than reaction time and dexterity

Sure but they're still an important part of the end result which most people don't consider. For many the title just says "AI beats human mind". If you want to know which mind is better then compare minds, all else equal.

"Dumb" bots have been kicking player's butts for years now. Not because of intelligence but because everything else was not equal: great aim, great reaction time, great situational awareness. So aren't you curious how much the "intelligence" part evolved?

Imagine a 100m sprint where one of the runners has to wear army boots and backpack. Would you even bother drawing a conclusion?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So when can we expect DeepMind vs OpenAI?

<comment><USER9> You know that'd be really interesting as spectacle (in my opinion). You'd pick a game that neither company has worked on and pit them against one another.

From a research standpoint though, it'd be a waste of time.

<comment><USER10> It wouldn't be a waste of research on that game. But for the broader community it might effectively be. I think it'd be a great way to setup a competition among grad students though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nobody ask it if it would like a game of global thermonuclear war.

</comment><comment><USER12> A benchmark for me would be a game that can handle a MMOPG like eve-online. What with certain tactics in game valid - like griefing, spies etc. An AI can handle that would be not only impressive, but learn a set of skills that many would feel uncomfortable about being within the realms of AI.

After all, humans cheat, would we want that allowed by an AI. Equally an AI could stumble upon an exploit in a game and not realise it is an expliot - <USER2> item duplication.

But this opens up a whole new aspect of gaming that AI has yet to touch that I'm aware of.

Though I feel we are still a way of from having computers with a moral- coprocessor, and still very much early days with AI. But that is certainly something that is within our lifetimes.

<comment><USER13> > _A benchmark for me would be a game that can handle a MMOPG like eve-online_

I don't think they managed to connect Excel to their game environments yet.

<comment><USER12> MMOPG's are not all reducible into an Excel spreadsheet and the part were I said "What with certain tactics in game valid - like griefing, spies etc. An AI can handle that would be not only impressive, but learn a set of skills that many would feel uncomfortable about being within the realms of AI." was the part I was discussing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Multi-player games like combat?

</comment><comment><USER15> SkyNet is alive!

<comment><USER15> Not sure why I got downvoted so badly on this.

The reference is simple: SkyNet fought war, and a war is a type of multiplayer game.

Am I missing something?</comment></comment>


Facebook content moderation guidelines leaked - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/business/2017/05/facebook-moderator-guidelines-leaked-tory-internet-regulation/ <comment><USER2> Guardian article (mentioned in this post) is active on front page: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14393573](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14393573)</comment>


Extruding Ice from Steel Fences and Pipes with Diurnal Freeze/Thaw - <AUTHOR> http://my.ilstu.edu/~jrcarter/ice/diurnal/extrude/ <comment><USER2> I have never seen anything like that in my life. I had assumed they must be some kind of purposeful artwork or something—and then I saw that the author had reproduced the same effect for himself. It was like being introduced to a minor law of nature that I had never happened to meet before.

</comment><comment><USER3> This page demonstrates a true hacker ethic: playing with interesting phenomena to find out how they work. Aren't we lucky that you don't need electronics to hack!

</comment><comment><USER4> I far prefer this article to the one that's on Reddit's front page ( [http://unicurvedmirror.blogspot.com/2011/01/i-have-been- gett...](http://unicurvedmirror.blogspot.com/2011/01/i-have-been-getting- these-ice.html) ), if only because it doesn't make the ridiculous -50 degrees (celsius) claim. I'm in Victoria, and it's currently 2 degrees, which is about the coldest it's been in a month.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, ice certainly isn't going to do something that plastic if it's -50C...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fascinating! He quotes a description of something I've seen before in NW Washington, but could never explain:

>". . . ice-excrescences of soft, brilliant, asbestine appearance, and uncommonly delicate to the touch. . . ."

Saw it on a hike, growing from logs. Very soft to the touch. I would compare it to cotton candy, but the strands in cotton candy are more heterogeneous and less organized.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if a similar effect is responsible for the little stalagmites that occasionally grow in my ice cube tray. (Yes, stalag _mites_. No, there is no moisture source above the tray.)

<comment><USER8> There is more information in two links from the main page of the site:

* with explanations: [http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/icespikes/ic...](http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/icespikes/icespikes.htm)

* with more links: <http://www.fredandsarah.plus.com/ice/index.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Strange things in nature. I remember a natural' hologram produced on a car hood that had been waxed with a gritty cloth, when an ice sheet formed on the hood.

[http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a-Tool-to-Draw- Scratch-...](http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a-Tool-to-Draw-Scratch- Holograms!/)

</comment><comment><USER10> A little bit of basics to help myself :)

<http://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=1593>

</comment><comment><USER11> Keep clicking. There's lots of fascinating stuff if you keep exploring around.

</comment><comment><USER12> I suspect using a square steel tube would work better because it gives the pipe a very tiny bit of give relative to a round tube. It would allow a smaller hole and faster extrusion without cracking.</comment>


Silicon Valley Prefers Obama 2 to 1 - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/ovr.html <comment><USER2> I flagged this. No politics on HN, not even from PG.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't consider this to be politics. It is not advocating a political position, or discussing the merits of a political position, or advocating or discussing the merits of particular politicians. Rather, it is about how a particular demographic that is of particular interest on HN but that is not covered much in the mainstream press is leaning.

The distinction is subtle, but I think important. For instance, an article on Romney's attempt to take all sides on all issues so as to appeal to whatever audience he is speaking to at the moment would be inappropriate politics if the theme of the article is that Romney's campaign is setting the record as the most dishonest campaign in Presidential history.

On the other hand, if the theme of the article was that in the age of the internet, when we have near instant access to news, and anything a politician says is widely reported, you might expect that the "all things to all people" approach would be a terrible failure, and yet it is working well for Romney, and so the article tries to explore WHY this is so, I'd say that would be quite appropriate for HN. It raises an interesting question of whether widespread access to information actually helps people make better decisions, or just makes it easier for them to find information to reinforce their preexisting beliefs and contrary information gets ignored. It could be the launching point of some very interesting non-political discussion.

<comment><USER4> The demographic here is "people will who answer questions like this from Paul Graham". It's not exactly a representative sample. We don't even know its operator vs. investor makeup. Some of the people in the sample don't even live in the Valley. But the headline...

I flagged it after 'ssclafani did, hoping it might just vanish (I've since unflagged it), but for what it's worth: I don't so much think it's radically inappropriate for HN (though it sets a disquieting precedent, because the world is full of cohorts that someone can claim are interesting to HN), just that it's not particularly valuable, and a little transparent.

(For whatever it's worth, I'm an Obama supporter).

<comment><USER5> Additionally, when there is a potentially negative association with a particular political choice (i.e. the choice of something other than pg's preferred option), one will obviously refuse to report, and will usually not make one's refusal explicit. That is to say, that even were we to assume that the 32 people pg asked were utterly representative of the startup community as a whole (which I don't think we have grounds to do, esp. given pg's own sensationalist headline), we have every reason to suspect that the 9 people who have refused to answer (including explicitly and implicitly) may have an answer other than the expected norm.

Take that into account, and you have 15 Obama 6 Romney 9 Refuse to answer

Where does that leave us? Well, with more questions than answers, to start with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Obama is very well in touch with the tech generation. He was the first presidential candidate to really put social media to use and his recent AMA on Reddit shows he is still able to relate. The JOBS Act didn't hurt, either.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is the implication here that choice is based on who is better for growth?

</comment><comment><USER4> Oh for God's sake.

<comment><USER8> I don't understand your problem with this. It's always interesting to know where SV's movers and shakers stand on various issues, and if you ever have to socialize with them, you'll know what views to express.

<comment><USER9> > if you ever have to socialize with them, you'll know what views to express.

I really hope you didn't mean that in the completely pathetic way that it sounded. Group think is a great way to fit in but certainly isn't a good way to stand out.

<comment><USER4> I think he's sort of joking.

<comment><USER8> Yes, I was trying to make a joke about how people on here have attempted to justify off-topic articles in a rather roundabout manner when it suits them, as well as how people are often so eager to suck the dicks of the "rockstars" in the industry.

Unfortunately, it seems to have gone over most people's heads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Assuming that these people are voting for Obama with economic growth potential as their metric (perhaps not a true assumption), can anyone explain why? Am wondering what Obama policies are pro-growth vs Romney's.

</comment><comment><USER11> Remember, HN, that the only way to success in startups is by slavishly following everything successful people do. Sit/stand desks, nerf guns, free food, and voting Obama. You heard it here first.

<comment><USER9> Thinking is hard. Group think for the win!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Shouldn't the title be "32 of Paul Graham's associates prefer Obama 2 to 1"?

Frankly I'm surprised he even took the time to ruminate on such a fundamentally biased poll.

</comment><comment><USER13> How much power does the 'king of america' really have? How much do they effect a country through their actions compared to the rest of the political apparatus?

<comment><USER14> They have an effect, but not enough of one to justify the level of collective hysteria we experience every four years.

<comment><USER15> They appoint Supreme Court Justices. Those appointments decide our constitutional rights for decades or centuries. For that reason alone, it's worth all the fuss.

<comment><USER14> I'm going to respectfully disagree. I disagree about the gravity, but I don't feel I can make that argument satisfactorily with the time I have now. But even aside from that, the relationship between my vote for a presidential candidate and the eventual appointee is very indirect--in my case, the presidents I have voted for have always chosen vastly worse Justices than the candidates I voted against. I think you'd have to somehow agree fervently with one of the major party's ideals, but also take the broadest reading, in order to really be satisfied with their appointments. I personally think there's a lot of value in combining a progressive legislature with a conservative judicial branch.

<comment><USER16> I want to respectfully disagree, but I'm afraid there's no truly respectful way to call your statement what it is: naïve and dangerous.

Based on the current composition of the Supreme Court, replacing a single judge could have dramatic, fairly immediate, and nearly irreversible real- world consequences to the citizens of this country. Whether you agree with those consequences or not, you'd be hard-pressed to argue that the stakes aren't high.

<comment><USER14> This is probably why talking politics is frowned upon here. I appreciate your perspective, and I especially appreciate your civility, but I don't think we can go further in this venue.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Popular is the iPhone Anyway - <AUTHOR> http://www.billshrink.com/blog/10071/how-popular-is-iphone/

<comment><USER2> The article makes the assumption that every company's primary goal is unit market share. While that is the conventional wisdom, and could very well be true for most of the players in the mobile phone industry, I don't think it is Apple's anymore.

Note the graph at [http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/09/21/pie-chart-apples- outr...](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/09/21/pie-chart-apples-outrageous- share-of-the-mobile-industrys-profits/) . Apple commands 39% of mobile phone industry profits. This is 39% of ALL mobile phones, not just smart phones. I'm simply astounded Apple can do this with just 2.8% unit share.

Why do I mention this? Because, IMO, the end goal of a business is to generate profit, not popularity.

</comment><comment><USER3> Really hate these SEO driven, English as a second language chart thingies. Seems like they are irresistible link bait though.</comment>


Linux Performance - <AUTHOR> http://www.brendangregg.com/linuxperf.html <comment><USER2> I recommend Brendan's book on Systems Performance[1], describes a structured approach to solving performance problems and is a good reference for various types of resource performance profiles.

[1] [http://www.brendangregg.com/sysperfbook.html](http://www.brendangregg.com/sysperfbook.html)

<comment><USER3> Has anybody else found this book a little too high-level? I've had a hard time getting useful, practical advice out of it but haven't read it cover-to-cover yet. For instance there's a bit about the impacts of using a GC'd language, but there's nothing new, just common knowledge. Does anybody know of a lower- level/more advanced resource like this book?

<comment><USER4> IMHO: I use it more as a reference book. "Oh, I'm having I/O problems, let me look up the sections on Filesystems and Disks"

It is _very_ dry, and hard to read from cover to cover, but it is filled with a mountain of info. I unfortunately don't know of a more introductory book to recommend, but would also be curious

<comment><USER5> The parent asked for more advanced book, not for more introductory book.

<comment><USER4> You are correct. <insert joke about me needing more coffee here>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A couple months ago I was looking for some courses that could cover the new tools available on linux to measure performance: in kernel and user space. My main frustration is that there was no sign of any structured course that instruct on all these tools, and as importantly, when to and not to use each of them. Before you tell me again: no, youtube videos and blog posts are not good enough: I need to be able to sing up multiple members of different teams and be sure we all receive a homogeneous knowledge. Can Anyone share any pointers about where I could find this kind of training?

<comment><USER7> I used to work at a consulting firm called EfficiOS[0], specialized in OS and application efficiency and performance. They maintain the LTTng[1] kernel and userspace tracers and related tools, and offer training. I'm not sure whether that responds to your specific needs, but if you get in touch they'll certainly be able to guide you.

[0] [http://www.efficios.com/](http://www.efficios.com/) [1] [http://lttng.org/](http://lttng.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://web.archive.org/web/20161206124221/http://www.brenda...](https://web.archive.org/web/20161206124221/http://www.brendangregg.com/linuxperf.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> That "Linux Performance Observability Tools" diagram detailing the utils to inspect every part of the stack is excellent!

</comment><comment><USER10> This site is a great resource and I hope Brendan keeps posting amazing content.

<comment><USER11> It is interesting to see a former Solaris developer embrace Linux like this, when others seems to consider it an abomination.

<comment><USER12> It's a tremendous boon to Linux that it happened, it would have been very easy for him to transition into Illumos while with Joyent or FreeBSD at Netflix. Both already ran DTrace. He stuck with Linux and spent time making their performance tools competitive.

<comment><USER13> I love Brendan's writeups and scripts, and use them everyday multiple times a day, but he didn't "make Linux performance tools competitive".

He's spreading and making available knowledge about perf, ftrace, eBPF that would otherwise remain relegated in Linux kernel development circles. He's also contributing to bcc (a tool in the eBPF ecosystem), but his main merit in my opinion is marketing, with his books and blog (I'm using the term in positive sense).

<comment><USER12> The lack of DTrace like tools has long been a criticism of Linux. The entire BPF team deserves a lot of credit for their work, but his decision to highlight this problem and help solve it rather than move to FreeBSD likely got it into 4.9 rather than some kernel in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is awesome, I haven't seen all the perf tools so clearly laid out in usecase ever.

<comment><USER15> You think this is awesome search YouTube for his talks and prepare to be blown away. Incredible engineer and funny guy.

<comment><USER16> One thing that I learned from him and have never forgotten is that you can reduce a harddisk (the spindle kind) performance just by screaming at it [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is awesome! Reminds me of how "IBM Tech Uses Hard Drives to Predict Earthquakes" [1]. And then it's just one guy screaming at the HDDs.

[1] [http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2371337,00.asp](http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2371337,00.asp)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 503, seems we torched the place...

<comment><USER17> I'm wondering why doesn't HN keeps a cached copy of each page that makes it to the front page (or maybe automatically post it to archive.is). I don't think it would be hard to implement and would avoid this quite frequent problem.

<comment><USER18> This post has only 30upvotes right now, I'm surprised that website couldn't hold it. My WP blog hosted for ~3euro/month was a few times here on top with 600UV, on reddit, according to GA with 3600 people online at the same time... and it didn't die to my surprise. I would rather say that hosting is... not performing well.

<comment><USER19> Upvotes are probably not a good estimate of traffic from HN hitting a site for a multitude of reasons, for example:

\- not everyone upvotes

\- there's probably a substantial number of users who are content to read articles but have never had a login (I did for two years)

\- social media amplification.

<comment><USER18> I know, that's why I mentioned reddit too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Previous discussion on Hacker News: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8205057](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8205057)

</comment><comment><USER21> His site is a great information source. I used some of his work to diagnose a JVM performance problem (discussed in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12505517](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12505517)).</comment>


Russia says Bitcoin is no longer a public danger - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailynewsgrabber.com/bitcoin-no-longer-labeled-public-danger-by-russia/ <comment><USER2> thedailynewsgrabber.com sounds like the most reliable source one could possibly have on the matter.

<comment><USER3> The same news on a well-known Russian newspaper's site: [http://izvestia.ru/news/626901](http://izvestia.ru/news/626901)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Makes one wonder if the crypto currency heists were state-sponsored in order to disrupt these before they ever get a real foothold.</comment>


Same-sex marriage. Share your experience - <AUTHOR> How long have you been married? Where did you get married? I know that same-sex married couples are able to adjust their immigration status and obtain immigrant visas based on their marriages. Share your experience <comment><USER2> I completely support same-sex marriage. . . but how is this relevant to tech news & discussion?</comment>


reddit variation: top instead of hot, random instead of new, vote up to discuss, vote down when done - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you think this variation on reddit would be interesting?

\- the front page would be like reddit's top

\- instead of a new page, there's a random page that shows links in completely random order (each refresh shows a new random order)

\- vote up if you want to bring a link to the front page

\- vote down when you want a link to disappear from the front page (e.g., you don't like it or you like it but don't want to see any more discussion on it)

<comment><AUTHOR> The random page could also take into account the link score so that links with higher scores have a better chance of ranking more highly.

<comment><USER2> that seems considerably less random ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This would stop working once the ratio of total submitted articles to current active users got too high. Articles would start to appear on the random page so rarely that nothing could get a statistically significant number of votes.

</comment><comment><USER4> I like it.</comment>


Ask HN: What would Parse for Deep Learning look like? - <AUTHOR> I saw Ilya Sukhar's tweet about this (https://twitter.com/ilyasu/status/725357333111398405) and was wondering what that service would look like.
A few services are mentioned in the replies (e.g. https://wit.ai, https://scaledinference.com, http://algorithmia.com) but Ilya notes that he "don't see any apis". Additionally, I don't think that any of the mentioned services are as simple and easy to get started with as Parse was for someone who has little domain knowledge in ML.
For a quick prototype I focused on iOS and made a simple Cocoapod library for "plug and play machine learning" that calls my server requesting item recommendations based on the user's "like" history. The backend implements a very basic KNN.
Any thoughts are welcome on how to approach this and if anyone is interested in trying out the prototype please send me an email at zkirill ... gmail.com or reach out on Twitter https://twitter.com/zkirill
Thank you kindly for your comments!
EDIT: Fix spelling. <comment> T-A Something like [https://studio.azureml.net/](https://studio.azureml.net/) ? It has both visual composition and API.</comment>


Show HN: Crypto Tab – Replace Browser New Tab Page with a Bitcoin Price Chart - <AUTHOR> https://crypto-tab.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> New Tab replacement page that instantly gives you information about the Bitcoin price.

Choose a period (hour, day, week, year) and be always up to date with the Bitcoin volatility index.</comment>


Ask HN: A lot of jobs, but little reputation. How to build it up? - <AUTHOR> I can't stay long enough in one job to be considered a "known quantity" that can be recalled upon to vouch for good work. To make matters worse, I usually lose/finish my current job before getting an offer for the next. 7 jobs, but I never get jobs through recommendations. It's always been some sort of blind job application, and I'm tired of the rat race. I'm a software engineer with a non-STEM degree but does the degree not matter much anymore(?). A lot of the problem would be due to the fact that I've only taken shorter-term jobs, all at very small companies.
Here's an summary of my work history as a programmer:
Held a total of 7 jobs over 11 calendar years. 90% web dev work. 5 of those are contractor (only 2 of which are 30-40 hrs/week), one short full-time job and one part-time job (those two were 8 and 10 years ago respectively). I might spend anywhere from 2 to 20 months unemployed in between. Out of all these jobs, I made connections from the 2nd job, and current job. But they usually don't know anyone that is hiring when I contact them, nor do they really contact me first about work.
So I am at a standstill on how to build up my reputation after so much time spent not building it. I can see myself with two options:
* Return to college and complete a CS degree as a BS or MS. Use the resources in college to network with people. Talk to professors, join career-oriented clubs, go to job fairs, hackathons and take internships, convert to full-time.
* Harder route: Apply to larger companies for full-time roles, and interview prep. I don't know of any good reliable sources for reading your interview approach. I'm talking to local developers through a Slack channel to see if anyone has time to mock interview, but opening up time is hard.
I am open to other options besides these two. Let me know what I should do to build that network effectively, and get better leads to jobs without cold applying so I don't have to be in the rat race forever. <comment><USER2> You have to rethink the work you do or you will stay in the same traps.

Here's what I learned doing a PhD. If you have an obsessive interest in something and put in an effort into something you can make "something that I've never seen before" that makes a good demo in a few months.

Larger firms are more stable than small firms, possibly more likely to offer health insurance and other benefits. However there are smaller firms that are better to work with than some others.

The consultant kind of company is a tough biz to be in because of agency problems between you and your tower of bosses and them and their tower of bosses.

Work on interview prep should be as much about social skills as technical. I used to joke that you could pass any data science question with "look it up in the hash table" or "look it up in the literature". I failed to define the word "Regularization" in an interview with a team and I did not fail the interview because I was too busy regularizing things. Showing enthusiasm is good.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have worked at small firms all the time but I rarely feel like I've done much impact. If I did I would ostensibly have more people vouching for my work and getting more interviews via referrals.

But I don't have this reputation, so it seems like I'm a major outlier. A person who has only worked for small companies but nevertheless feeling disposable or mundane in the grand scheme of things. I did not learn the importance of creating value.

Maybe it's due to my perpetual contractor status? As never working legally as an employee, I'm not expected to have much stake in the business, or its decision-making. I didn't intend to always be a contractor. I took a contract- to-hire job right out of school, but the "hire" part never came. The company moved the goalposts.

> Work on interview prep should be as much about social skills as technical.

This is exactly what I mean about having trouble finding good reliable resources for reading one's interview approach. There is no structured interviewing platform that focuses on soft skills, that I know of. No "cracking the soft skills interview" book.

<comment><USER2> Read this guy's work

[https://job-interview-answers.com/job-interview-tips/about-b...](https://job- interview-answers.com/job-interview-tips/about-bob-firestone/)

He sounds like a crazy marketer but he knows what he doing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It sounds like you're being let go from a lot of jobs. What feedback are you getting about why?

<comment><USER4> Usually I'm let go because they don't need the additional help, or that they reverted to a different tech stack and prefer hiring someone already familiar with it instead of giving me time to learn it. Plus it's easier for a company to let go a contractor than to fire an employee.

<comment><USER3> Ah, it wasn't clear from your post that these were contract positions. Those are generally expected to be short. Have you looked for/are you interested in full time work? It's not clear to me what problem you're trying to solve.

<comment><AUTHOR> >It's not clear to me what problem you're trying to solve.

The original post lays out the problem and also the question for the solution I want.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tidelift - <AUTHOR> https://tidelift.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr: this is a platform that tries to help open source developers and maintainers to get compensated for their work (something I haven't really seen solved yet).

via @timbray & @bodil: [https://twitter.com/timbray/status/1042449698731175936](https://twitter.com/timbray/status/1042449698731175936)</comment>


Medium requires signin to view content if you have DNT enabled - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/m/signin

<comment><AUTHOR> Visit the page with DNT enabled in your browser config. Here's how the signin page looks if you enable DNT: [http://imgur.com/ljdBnih](http://imgur.com/ljdBnih).

<comment><USER2> isn't that what's supposed to happen with DNT?

If a site relies on such tracking methods, then this seems like exactly what should be happening.

<comment><USER3> Their is no reason to need to track you to show articles... if its your first time visiting the site, you see articles just fine, if you've never visited medium, you can read articles just fine... this is simply "you wont let us track you and sell your interests to advertisers then you cant see articles" ... which would be ok if they actually said that, but they hide the reason behind some kind of make-believe benefit to you..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Medium no longer receives my traffic. This is likely best for both of us, and I would rather sites were up-front about it, as it makes adding them to a blacklist much easier.</comment>


More Workers Are Claiming 'Wage Theft' - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/01/business/more-workers-are-claiming-wage-theft.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=LedeSum&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1 <comment><USER2> Other NYTimes coverage puts the obscenity of wage theft in much clearer terms:

> One of the causes of this epidemic of wage theft — which, according to Mr. > Lafer's E.P.I. report, involves sums "far greater than the combined total > stolen in all the bank robberies, gas station robberies, and convenience > store robberies in the country" — is lax enforcement of the country's wage > and hour laws. In 1941, there was one federal inspector for every 11,000 > workers. As of 2008, there was one for every 141,000 workers. "The average > employer has just a 0.001 percent chance of being investigated in a given > year," Mr. Lafer estimates. Because there is so little risk of getting > caught, one-third of all employers who have been found guilty of violating > wage and hour laws continue to do it.[0]

Hourly labor laws are ridiculous. And saying that 60 million workers hourly are harmed significantly understates how awful these laws are.

> According to one multicity study, in a single week, nearly two-thirds of > low-wage workers had, on average, 15 percent of their pay stolen by their > employers.

60 million of today's workers will lose wealth that could compound into more wealth. Then there are the million or so new workers who will join the workforce at the end of the year. In four decades of poor enforcement, a hundred million people have been harmed, two-third of them losing 15% of their paychecks every week that could have compounded over those 40 years into meaningful life savings.

[http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/the- republic...](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/the-republican- war-on-workers-rights/)

<comment><USER3> Currently working as a risk manager in a multi-mega-monster insurance company. We do a lot of analyses using the 99.5% value at risk, i.e., the value that there is only a .5% chance of exceeding. 0.001% is well into the range in which the risk would just be ignored.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My wife works in a hotel (housekeeping) and she tells me the same thing. Every week she has to go with great care through her payslip to check if she's been paid correctly. When they've made a mistake and we contact the hotels finance department it's like; "Oops, sorry." but my gut feeling is that they do this on purpose. Imagine, scamming thousands of employees per week on few hours here and there, must be quite a saving.

<comment><USER5> Yes, the less power you have, the more it happens. I see it happen all the time. The more powerful the people, the less seriously they treat any debt they owe you.

Of course, debts in the other direction (from the less-powerful to the more- powerful) are considered sacred.

This is more universal than just the US, and than a specific point in time.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> IMO, any company that asks employees to work more than 40 hours a week and doesn't pay for those hours is doing 'wage theft'. Classifying employees as exempt seem to be a common method used by employers.

It surprises me how often on HN startup employees claim to work 70-80 hours without any complaints. And, startup employers expect more hours without paying.

<comment><USER6> In the U.S., the classification of exempt vs. non-exempt employees is specified by federal law, so companies can't just make that decision on their own. Unfortunately, software developers are legally exempted from having to be paid overtime:

 _" More specifically, the special computer employee exemption applies to workers who apply systems analysis techniques and procedures to determine hardware, software, or system functional specifications, or who design, develop, test or modify computer systems or programs based on user or design specifications."_[1]

However, if a startup (or any other company) has non-exempt employees such as clerical workers or cleaning staff, they must be paid overtime if they work over 40 hours a week.

Of course, if a company wants to pay a software developer for overtime, they're free to do so. I've never heard of that being done, however.

[1] [http://www.flsa.com/computer.html](http://www.flsa.com/computer.html)

See also: [http://www.flsa.com/coverage.html](http://www.flsa.com/coverage.html)

<comment><USER7> _Of course, if a company wants to pay a software developer for overtime, they 're free to do so. I've never heard of that being done, however._

I'm going to add this to my list of "Harmful Assumptions That Developers Make".

If you assume that what your company does is normal, it's a small leap to classify it in your head as fair. From there, you can go your whole career never expecting something as basic as being paid for every hour you work.

But it doesn't have to be that way. I've personally arranged my work contracts such that I've been paid for every hour spent working for a company since around 2001.

You, and everybody else in tech, should do the same. We're not fast food workers who need to either take what we're given or face having no job. We're free to pick and choose from the single best market for developer talent that there has ever been.

<comment><USER6> _" I've personally arranged my work contracts such that I've been paid for every hour spent working for a company since around 2001."_

Just curious if you managed to negotiate this as a regular employee, or do you work as an independent contractor?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't know what is wrong with the united states. This idea that somehow a subcontracting relationship should wash the outer shell company clean of the necessity to comply with the law is just offensive, and if widely accepted, it renders our laws nearly meaningless.

Also, if you've never seen wage theft, you've never worked in fast food. It happened all the time to me and my friends in the suburbs.

</comment><comment><USER9> I used to watch kung fu flicks where a town of workers wouldn't get their wages, then the bosses would stomp them down if they let out the slightest peep. Eventually some hero would show up to fight the bosses and eventually win back the worker's wages.

I lived in China for nearly nine years, and saw wage theft on a regular basis. The working class is getting used and abused in the US, and I predicted several years ago that they would follow in China's footsteps. Looks like that time has arrived.

</comment><comment><USER10> > This has spread to multiple industries across many sectors. It's affected > not just minimum-wage workers, but also middle-class workers.

I have no idea how much of an issue this is and what the real-world implications for the individuals are, but if it has become a systematic phenomenon, then maybe it's worth rethinking the rules?

If it really is as wide-spread as they say, then having everyone play by the book might result in a redistribution of large amounts of money, thus impacting inflation .. which I guess is hardly in anyone's interest.

<comment><USER11> _might result in a redistribution of large amounts of money, thus impacting inflation .. which I guess is hardly in anyone 's interest_

This is the most plutocratic self-serving thing I've seen on HN today. You're arguing for the legalisation of wage theft on the basis that it _might_ disrupt prices.

Yes, if you have an economy where all the growth goes to the 1% and the 99% see no change, that might be good for price stability. But why in God's name would anyone want to live like that?

<comment><USER10> > You're arguing for the legalisation of wage theft on the basis that it might > disrupt prices.

No. I'm arguing that we're currently labeling something as "theft", that might not actually be theft, and that we should thus take a closer look at the issue.

> if you have an economy where all the growth goes to the 1% and the 99% see > no change

Yes and no. Growth (and progress) will go to everyone - Obviously, new technologies will be available to everyone, since there'd be little point in them if the average consumer couldn't afford them. Actual money however will only to to the "1%" (or whatever other small fraction).

The idea is that since, in total, those "1%" will spend less of that money on consumables/personal-indulgences, most of this money will either be taken out of circulation (and thus damping inflation) or handled by professionals (and thus put to good use).

> But why in God's name would anyone want to live like that?

(1) Because it makes for a more easily predictable future, resulting in less headaches.

(2) Because less of the work performed by humanity as a whole will be squandered on unimportant endeavours.

Like I said, what is the alternative? Give people more money to spend on things like booze and vacation trips?

<comment><USER11> _might not actually be theft_

I'm happy to call it fraud instead? Agreeing to pay people for a particular time and then failing to pay them is, at the very least, breach of contract. Falsifying records in order to reduce people's pay is definitely fraud.

 _most of this money will either be taken out of circulation_

It doesn't go in a Scrooge McDuck money bin. It goes straight back into circulation as investments or bank deposits.

 _handled by professionals (and thus put to good use)_

Profoundly elitist. We're taking the money off the poor because they might otherwise use it to enjoy themselves or even something really unproductive like feeding their children or receiving medical treatment!

<comment><USER10> > I'm happy to call it fraud instead? [...] at the very least, breach of > contract

Well, downloading youtube videos is a breach of contract too.

You can try to attach all sorts of alternate labels to this, it doesn't change the fundamental issue underneath. I'm not questioning how adequate the semantics of the label are, but rather how adequately our legal framework captures reality here.

Sometimes reality evolves in ways such that the legal framework around it needs to be updated/re-evaluated. There's nothing wrong with that, and it's part of the democratic process.

That's all I'm saying, and I fail to see any formal, moral or legal issue with this.

> It goes straight back into circulation as investments or bank deposits.

Some of the money in bank deposits effectively is in a "money bin". Meanwhile investments on the other hand will (at least most of the time) flow through certain desirable channels that "disposable income" for the most part doesn't.

> Profoundly elitist

Is it? Isn't this the standard economic theory that's being tought to everyone currently?

> We're taking the money off the poor because they might otherwise use it to > enjoy themselves

You fail to realize that it's not money that people need/crave but rather goods and services. Taking away money, in order to ensure a steady supply of goods and services, improves the situation for everyone.

> or even something really unproductive like feeding their children or > receiving medical treatment!

Having a growing and healthy workforce is in any society's best interest, and a large part of its competitive advantage. Which is in part why children are subsidized by the governement in so many ways. After all, what's point of money if there's no one to exchange it with?

At the same time though we must figure out how to maintain this growth in a sustainable fashion - and I doubt that the optimal solution here is to simply hand people more purchasing power.

\--

You, much like the author of the article, seem to fail to understand that there's no perfect answer here. This is an issue that needs fixing, and there seem to generally exist 2 solutions, both of which present a compromise.

While we currently don't have all the data necessary to make that decision, the article clearly seems to prefer one of those 2 alternatives while carelessly neglecting the negative impacts of it.

I on the other hand think that it's worthwile, for everyone, to consider the negative aspects too, before rushing to a conclusion. Do you see anything wrong with this line of reasoning?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Disgusting, but not surprising. A corporation is a soulless entity with one goal: maximize profits. That doesn't produce ethical, human-friendly actions.

<comment><USER13> Not really - a corporation is a group of people. Sometimes those in control of it have no goal other than profit maximization, but by no means always.

<comment><USER14> Well, often if those running a corporation do not have profit maximization as their primary goal, they are voted out by investors. Essentially, maximizing profit becomes the job of the leaders as requested by those invested. There are some exceptions where corporations are profitable by targeting towards environmental things, or other causes, but the bottom line of profit is still there... Especially so with larger corporations.

<comment><USER15> I suspect those downvoting gress don't understand what he's saying at all. His claim that "sometimes", thos ein charge aren't only thinking about profit maximization is excluding the case you're describing, where "those in charge" is some combination of investors and the actual execs (specifically, in your example, "those in charge" _are_ in favor of profit maximization).

There are a fair few examples in tech where founders have managed to hold on to a disproportionate amount of control and can much more accurately said to be fully "in charge", and those are the cases gress is claiming exists.

<comment><USER13> Thanks - that is part of what I'm saying. Also, as another point, 'profit maximization' is predicting the future, and there is a lot of room for different views of what the future will be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> i have an applicable anecdote: .. in terse

i worked 120hrs in a week, was refused overtime by splitting my duties into three 40hr positions, did research, went to the DOJ, they sat on it for 9 months, then refused and threatened me, i sent the DOJ lawyer's secretary my research, she went over his head, and i got the pay due to me

..

i lost a job in nyc, at the time of employment i was 'wearing many hats' which really just meant i was doing the work of three people: managing five properties, running a catering service, doing the accounting at four of the five properties;

i was putting in 14-18 hour days 7 days a week, i was homeless and was just glad to have something to do instead of sleeping on the F line, also.. making money

the way the payroll avoided paying me overtime was by splitting my check into these three different positions, by doing this i could work 90-120 hours a week, my 'personal best' was 123 but individually each of my personalities would be working less than 40 hours

the firing was abrupt, ugly and full of calculated politics

i was upset and wanted validation of my hard work so i went to the local library and looked up NYC wage laws

i found out that forbidding this 'task splitting' tactic is baked right into the law so i knew i had a case for getting the overtime i felt i deserved, again, i was homeless so i spent countless hours in the stacks looking over legal decisions to find precedence

i even covered potential roadblocks along the lines of 'we are unable to find his old timecards' from my former employer by investigating the law as it pertains to how long documents on employees must be kept by an employer

confident in my case i went to the DOJ, they appointed me a lawyer, and he assured me he'd look into it

9 months later and i still have yet to hear anything, i was told it may take 30days to 6 months, and i had moved on emotionally at this point so i was giving the guy the benefit of the doubt, at 9 months i decided it was time to do my own follow up, lawyer is unable to remember me or my case and has to call me back in a week after he finds my old file, explains that he did an investigation consisting of interviewing the owner of the establishment who claimed he paid all overtime wages and interviewing random employees who all said they were paid what was owed them, his conclusion? i was a crazy person, he told me to stop calling and hung up on me

i called back immediately, i asked if he had looked at my timecards, looked at payroll, looked at accounting logs, he said that kind of work is only necessary if other employees state concern as well, hung up on me again

i called back and the phone rang for an hour before i gave up

i called every day for three days, if he answered he'd hear my voice and immediately hang up on me

i went down to the offices myself but he had gone home for the day, the next day when i called he threatened to have me arrested if i come to the office again and then hung up on me

i called back but this time, instead of screaming i was welcomed by a friendly voice, she explained that she was the lawyer's secretary and asked what i did that was making him so upset everyday, i explained my situation and that i had a stack of documents: paystubs, timecards, precedence, verbose and organised personal logs; that expressly showed i was owed overtime

she told me to come in after the lawyer went home for the day and show her this folder, i did the next day and she looked stunned at the work i put into it, she took my research to her boss's boss and three days later i got a check in the mail signed by my former employee

the amount was for the exact value i had calculated in my logs, down to the penny

..

the story ends there, but if you wonder why i was fired, read on:

i was interviewing for a position to sell coffee at a major, yet private, cafe in manhattan, i got the job but in the course of working there for ten days i was promoted to a managerial position

i was running the main cafe and its four satellites throughout the island, doing everything from organising shifts to organising private parties, i did daily accounting at the main hub, and the full books at all the satellites

my quick promotions were the work of an employee whose job i was doing at the height of my employment, it was the holiday season and he wanted a three week vacation but was told he was too crucial to leave for so long, i was his plan out

by putting me in his position, while still expecting me to do the other positions i was already working, he was able to take his vacation

i am unsure what he thought would happen but when he came back i was kicking ass, and developing a rapport with the owner.. mind you, i had only been there ten days prior to taking the reigns so i was still very new to the company, when the old manager returned i was put into a 'positional limbo', the old manager led me on with promises of once he settled back in that i would run the satellites and he would only run the main hub, for three days i would come to work and do little things around the cafe and office that needed doing but everyone knew could go ignored, in those days the old manager had hired two new people into my catering job and my accounting position, again, with reassurances that i would get my managerial duties back running the satellites

on the third day the owner came in and i greeted him and asked if he'd be interested in opening a cafe in london because at the time i was interested in relocating there myself, he said it was the first time he'd thought about it, and he'd need some time to think about it more, but that he would

the next day i came into work and i was told i was fired, i asked why and the owner said the old manager 'no longer felt comfortable around me', i was stunned, just the day before we took our lunch break together.. this would be the last time i saw him, i told the owner this whole thing felt shitty, he apologised and explained the old manager had been there for five years and he had trust his opinion

..

in case there are any lingering thoughts on whether i did make the old manager uncomfortable stead it being some weird conspiracy that he felt his position was threatened by my presence or some such: i ordered a book off amazon, interestingly O'Reilly's 'Learning Perl, 6th Edition', since i was homeless, and spent all my time there anyway, i had my packages sent to the cafe, the book had yet to have arrived before my termination so after being fired i would periodically stop by and stick my head in to see if the book had arrived, after about three weeks the owner went from being friendly to thinking i was some insane holder on, weaving lies about 'a book', so that i could 'have an excuse' to come to the cafe, now i was getting emails from amazon saying the package had been delivered, i told the owner and he became furious trying to explain to me that the package was some delusion of mine, i went to the post office that checked the package in, and they had a signature from someone who had recieved the package at the cafe, it was the old manager's signature

i went back to the cafe and explained this and now the owner was threatening to call the police if i ever came back, i went back to the post office, explained the situation to them, they sent a representative, on his lunch break, the same day, and then called me later that day to tell me my package was waiting for me at the post office

when i went to claim it i was told the guy who went to the cafe to get the package wanted to personally give it to me, he came out smiling and told me everything happened as i explained it: first the owner yelled at him about how i was a crazy former employee, then claimed the package was a figment of my imagination; but then the postal worker showed him the signature, the owner then tore the office apart looking for it and concluded something must be off, that maybe i already had the package and was lying about it, at that point the old manager came back from his lunch break and the postal worker explained the situation to him, he denied having it, then the postal worker started threatening him with legal repercussions because i was claiming i had yet to have received the package but the post office had the mangager's signature for it, then the old manager apparently walked over to his filing cabinet, pulled the bottom drawer all the way out and took my boxed book out of from the behind all of the files, i am unsure of his fate after that, the postal worker said he was happy to get out of there and just took the box and left

i bought a plane ticket to london, two weeks in advance to avoid the price hike, and spent that two weeks up all night learning perl in Yaffa Cafe: bottomless coffee, open 24hrs, and free wifi

<comment><USER17> I hope you are doing fine now.

<comment><USER16> i'm guessing you are referring to the homeless aspect of my well being..

without sounding too much like an a hole: i was fine then too;

this was 8 years ago, i was traveling in france, i ran out of money but had a return flight, i landed in nyc with 40$ and i had a decision to make: do i call someone for some help or do i make it work?; i chose to make it work

when i was in india my understanding of poverty shifted dramatically, i even to this day say that the states are devoid of any poverty

the exploitation of individuals with less in the states seems hinged on flaws in our general system

i wanted to help both poverty of the world, and those disenchanted and alienated by the country that let me stay the longest without a visa.. my birthplace

but, i am really bad at helping other people,

what i am really good at is helping myself

institutionally or bureaucratically offering my services to provide aide often calls for me to perform tasks for goals that i already think are futile, or refuse to try new things due to established procedures and participant seniority and frustrate me to stop trying to help others, and individual help is time and emotionally consuming, only helps a single individual ignoring others' suffering, and ultimately feels manipulative

but! if i become homeless, if i am without a place to live and without a cent to my name, i was confident i could crawl my way out of that caste, what i found was living in public spaces made sense under certain circumstances, the first time around i spent 4 months in new york's underbelly, then a year later i came back for another 4 because i knew how to play the game.. and i could play it really well

one thing i learned in my time living on the streets of many cities around the world, and meeting and living alongside many people doing the same was that homelessness is a choice

i know this is an unpopular sentiment.. the best of the worst rationalisations these days seems to be 'mental illness', people without a clue love to say 'homelessness is a mental illness issue', somehow people have convinced themselves that there is compassion in undermining other peoples' choices

now, to say 'it is a choice' is a pithy simplification of a vastly complex idea: we need to determine what are bad choices both for individuals and for our collective happiness and comfort, and how to interact with people making those bad choices

we need to determine why the choice is being made, honestly a lot of the people i got to know or chose to avoid were just doing what they wanted to be doing and either our dominant society rejected them or they saw it as abhorrent and opted out of it: i need to do your work for you for a pittance of your benefiting off of said work in order to pay a monthly fee for a stronger box with a lock on it so i can collect things in it free of constant fear of it being taken from me when my guard is down? i think i'll just accept the consequences of living without employment then, those seem more manageable to me;

but i love being able to have a shower, it is really difficult to enjoy the rain when you are without a shower and dry clothes to go home to and i love to enjoy the rain

so that became my baseline: getting people jobs they already knew they were uninterested in having is ridiculous, but creating a culture where anyone can take a warm shower and get warm clothes when they are needed, now that is something.. so i dedicate my free time to dreaming up my favourite way to achieve this

o, and food, everyone needs food food should be free.. "When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?"(i) food will be free in the future

(i) [http://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/america](http://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/america)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> When I worked in construction and restaurants, I saw people agree to work off the books (at the restaurants) and the construction companies would "bank" the overtime hours so they didn't have to pay time and a half, even though they were union companies. Scumbags both, plain and simple...

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm left wondering how this missing overtime pay continue past the first short paycheck? I'd stop working overtime until it arrived.

<comment><USER11> So you'd be fired.

<comment><USER19> Unlikely that would be needed, but its a two-way contract, if either side doesn't meet their obligations, it can be canceled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Certainly was with the Apple-Google deal, if we need a more relevant tech- related case.

</comment><comment><USER21> Yeah, I know how they feel. I worked in the US for several years and something like a tenth of my salary was stolen by something called "Social Security".

Do I ever see any of that money again? Nope! Only if I work in the US for ten years do I have any hope of getting some money out of the Social Security system (if it's still going in its present form when I retire, which I doubt).

</comment><comment><USER21> Before people get too worked up about this they should consider it from the other point of view.

If you're going to get strict about getting paid for every hour you work, you'd better believe I, as your employer, am going to start getting strict about making sure you're _really_ working for every minute of those hours. No goofing off, no idle chit-chat, just work.

How many of us would be willing to be held up to this standard? I sure as hell wouldn't.

<comment><USER22> First of all, low level low pay employees are held up that standard you cite. They do not get breaks and other similar perks.

Second, I would much rather work 40 hours with very little chit-chat then mandatory 60 hours with 30 hours that time being wasted. I actually worked in such environment and liked it. I would note that it was team culture, not something enforced by a set of punishments.</comment></comment>


Different sort of free Wi-Fi starts to thrive - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2008/06/12/MN6N117KJU.DTL <comment><USER2> Previous, less favourable coverage:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=143874>

</comment><comment><USER3> _"Meraki is donating the devices plus free Internet access to any San Francisco resident who wants them. Neighbors within a block's radius of the device can tap into the Internet for free, too."_

It's ad-supported internet access. They insert a thin javascript ad toolbar at the top or bottom of every web page you view.</comment>


What does !-- do in JavaScript? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/34323527/what-does-do-in-javascript <comment><USER2> It is interesting that this question spawned such criticism/discussion as to whether it should be done in Javascript or not, but not as to why the OP did not know such basic language operators in the first place.

Alright, he did not know them and hence asked (thats after all what a forum is there for) but then simply explain it and carry on. Discussing the "evilness" of basic negation and decrement operators is useless and counter-productive.

</comment><comment><USER3> Calling a function exactly once after a group of operations have completed is a pretty common pattern in Node.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right. Even in normal js world, I have seen people using + for converting their types to Number.</comment></comment>


Adobe shambles – Why subscription software should be illegal - <AUTHOR> https://www.eoshd.com/2019/07/adobe-shambles-why-subscription-software-should-be-illegal/ <comment><USER2> I don't like Adobe's 12 month lock-in pricing, but saying subscription software should be illegal is ridiculous. Especially using a single company's practices as proof.

This just strikes me as an angry rant post with a selfish premise. There is no consideration about the sustainability of a software business and why they tend to move towards subscription-bases. And consider how much value you are getting out of the tool.

Does $50/month for the tool that allows you to do your trade (and always having access to the latest features) really seem ridiculous? Seems like a fairly trivial business expense to me.

But if you don't like it, don't use premiere. There are plenty of options out there that aren't subscription only.

<comment> yvan-eht-nioj The problem is that they've trapped businesses in with proprietary file formats, and are now using that to bend everyone over a barrel and hold them hostage.

You want to move to Affinity? Good luck when your corporate client requires you to edit an .indd file created years ago when the license didn't require large sums of money regularly thrown at it.

<comment><USER3> Cory Doctorow lately has been on a kick for something he calls adversarial interoperability. He's advocating for things like making it legal to reverse- engineer file formats.

Maybe instead of banning subscription formats, make it unenforceable for a TOS to ban reverse-engineering for compatibility reasons.

<comment><USER4> >> for something he calls adversarial interoperability

Cory Doctorow has had a lot of interesting ideas, but he didn't coin the term adveserial interoperability. It's a concept and term that predates the Web, and is absolutely the appropriate solution to many of our current predicaments.

All of this has happened before and it will all happen again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hot take: Subscription models actually reflect the costs of software development better than an one-off purchase. They link the value provided by updates/maintenance to a tangible cost. If we agree that software isn't ever finished, shouldn't the economics reflect that?

Adobe expects businessess to pay for the tools of their trade, not hobbyists. Consumers are better served by a front-loaded buy-once model that includes free updates, but Adobe doesn't want to be in the B2C space.

The author also describes Adobe's products as "basic tools". As someone who doesn't use them, they seem anything but.

<comment><USER6> > Hot take: Subscription models actually reflect the costs of software > development better than an one-off purchase. They link the value provided by > updates/maintenance to a tangible cost.

I don't agree with this at all. I believe subscription models encourage laziness and/or introduction of unnecessary or complex features (to show that busywork is being done).

Sell a license for applications with support included for a year or whatever, like developers used to and still do. If you continue providing more value to customers, and if you aren't too greedy to introduce new versions and upgrades for trivial updates often, why would the majority of your customers not purchase a paid upgrade every couple of years or so?

I feel there are many areas that are saturated and that developers struggle to figure out how to add more value...or rather, extract more money from customers (1Password in recent years is an example of this, in my experience).

<comment><USER7> Note that for mobile apps, paid upgrades aren't really an option for developers due to the way the app stores work. Also, developers constantly need to update apps to be compatible with new OS releases. Only the subscription model aligns with this.

<comment><USER8> _developers constantly need to update apps to be compatible with new OS releases._

It could be sold as a paid upgrade. Customers will complain, but they complain more about subscriptions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Adobe could easily crank up the price up to 10000$ per month and still, with total certainty, it should not be illegal.

Sponsor GIMP or any other competition if you don't like Adobe product. If you think the competition is inferior in quality, well, now you know what you pay for.

</comment><comment><USER10> I also got very upset with Adobe subscription model and simply switched to Affinity Photo / Designer and DaVinci Resolve. Never looked back.

</comment><comment><USER11> The mass market is use to paying little up front and expect updates and fixes forever for that one time fee which of course is non sustainable, subscription software is/can be. I certainly hope we are not a place where something should be illegal because you disagree with one company/person. How is this on HackerNews?

<comment><USER12> In fairness it wasn't always like this. People used to buy a box copy of SW for a fair price. then software shops started offering the $.99 app when app stores got into vogue. Now they want to migrate everyone to subscription models.

<comment><USER13> The definition of "mass market" changed hugely too from the shelved box software era to app stores, so much so that I'm not even sure how fair it is to compare anymore.

I'd argue that the majority of customers in the software market didn't really evolve with the distribution model; phones arguably just expanded distribution to a great many people who previously weren't software customers of any kind or rarely made software purchases at all (beyond that which came for "free" on their devices), many of whom appear to think paying for software in any fashion is almost unthinkable.

<comment><USER12> > many of whom appear to think paying for software in any fashion is almost > unthinkable.

I still don't see how the fault lies with the customer. Look at all the software they get to use for free or cheap because the software shops made it available for free (with ads) or cheap ($.99 apps). This is not the customer's fault; they were _trained_ to think this way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/cirhpc/100_pr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/cirhpc/100_price_increase_for_creative_cloud_in/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app)

By coincidence I saw this rant on PCmaster race today. 100% price increase.

</comment><comment><USER15> Did they ever explain why Photoshop used to be priced so much more in Australia?

[https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/it-is-cheaper-to- fl...](https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/it-is-cheaper-to-fly-to-us- than-buy-adobe-software-in-australia/news- story/158aa7824a22e1e66611c2afb5e7a61a)

<comment><USER16> Australia tax. It's not specific to Adobe unfortunately and basically it exists because what else are we going to do? Not buy things?

Same with games. Latest fire emblem: US: 45 USD = 65 AUD. Australia: 80 AUD. 23% more because they can.

<comment><USER17> It's the same with poor countries. I don't play games now, but when I was young and lived in Eastern Europe, by some miracle my mother brought me PS1 with one free game included for Christmas. The non pirate games cost about 50 dollars at the time. My middle class mother Made 250 a month...

I got the machine modded and bought few pirated games... It was impossible for us to afford originals.

<comment><USER18> That's different, you're just getting the same price as the entire world. Purchasing power is different, yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why is he talking about subscription software being illegal while also talking about how Adobe sucks? If he was happy with his subscription, I doubt he would have written this post. Yet, being happy with a subscription has a little to do on the morality of it.

Of course, no one actually thinks subscription software should be illegal. Maybe he's making a distinction between software that can operate offline and internet dependent software?

> I also think that paying once to OWN software should be practically a human > right. It's my operating system, my computer, and I don't see why I should > be renting part of it from some greedy little fuckwits.

It's not even your operating system, or computer. You can't do anything you want with them. For BSD, you have to keep the copyright, for Linux, you have to redistribute the source if you redistribute the binary, and for Windows you can't really do anything.

If he doesn't want any new Photoshop features, I'm sure he can find an old binary that works for free on the internet. Or he could just switch to something else.

<comment><USER20> Happy GIMP user here. GIMP is probably the most apparent "something else".

But talking to my friends who use Photoshop, apparently the learning curve of GIMP is too steep. It doesn't work the way Photoshop does, and so they don't use it. I find this odd.. they'd prefer to carry on paying hundreds of cash each year to use a buggy piece of software that they know, instead of using this awesome piece of software for free with the minimal investment of a few days learning. People are weird.

<comment><USER21> Yes, when it comes down to it if money is on the line a few days of downtime can lead to thousands of dollars in lost time and work. Your friends are probably well aware of GIMP, made the calculation dozens of times, and each time decided it wasn't worth the risk. It's not just the learning curve. It's a whole different workflow.

I learned photoshop in middle school. And if I resumed using it today not a lot would change. I've tried to learn Gimp for 2 decades. I still can't figure out the GUI, CLI processing was easy, I get that.

<comment><USER20> So why is the GUI so hard to learn? I mean, I'm not a huge fan of it, I still find it tricky to do the right thing sometimes. But is it that much harder than PS?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > I don't like the deal company X is offering me so the government should ban > it.

</comment><comment><USER23> Switched to Affinity last year. Never been happier with my tool selection.</comment>


Thinkgeek partners with Playmobile to offer Apple iStore - <AUTHOR> http://www.thinkgeek.com/interests/looflirpa/e8bb/?pfm=Carousel_20110401_Apple_Store_2

<comment><USER2> Sorry, the "Bonsai Kitty Plush" mops the floor with the iStore.</comment>


MapKit JS – Embed interactive Apple maps on your website - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/documentation/mapkitjs <comment><USER2> The API is rich and neat, just hacked a little demo with driving directions [https://github.com/vasile/mapkit-js-demo](https://github.com/vasile/mapkit- js-demo)

<comment><USER3> Nicely done.

The window scroll gesture DOES NOT zoom the view.

THANK GOD.

<comment><USER4> This is absolutely stupid and hinders usage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Between this and the Apple Music player, it's great to see Apple finally take baby steps into actual web services (beyond the app clones inside iCloud.com)

</comment><comment><USER6> First impressions:

\- Doesn't seem very performant, panning behavior and zooming seems to redraw a lot unnecessarily, low framerate and not very smooth on good hardware \- Poor support for touch events, pinch zoom and pan didn't work for me on touchpad \- Looks to be using (PNG?) image tiles but and over-scaled canvas element, my laptop's fan came on during simple zoom and panning. I closed the tab and it promptly shut off.

The API seems okay but nowhere near as good as leaflet. MapboxGL has better performance imo.

I'm trying to understand what the compelling reason to use this would be? If you want the best quality basemaps, use Google Maps. If you want the most customizability and a great API, use leaflet. If you want a fancy map, use MapboxGL. If you like apple, use this??

<comment><USER7> This thing has been out for less than 24 hours. I'm sure they'll need some time to refine and optimize it. Anyone remember how the very first Mapbox version compared in performance with respect to Google Maps?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't see anything about use limits (as in number of maps generated per day). Has anyone seen this documented elsewhere?

<comment><USER9> There is no information about use limits, but you need a paid Apple Developer Program account.

<comment><USER10> > but you need a paid Apple Developer Program account.

Where was "paid" bit listed? You don't have to pay the yearly fee to have a developer account. I let my paid subscription expire a few years ago, and I can still login and do various things.

<comment><USER9> You need to generate a certificate in the Developer backend, and for that you need a paid account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is Apple Maps still far behind Google Maps?

<comment><USER12> It really depends which country you're looking at. Usually Google Maps is better, but not always. China is a good example of a place where Apple Maps is far superior.

<comment><USER13> >It really depends which country you're looking at. Usually Google Maps is better, but not always. China is a good example of a place where Apple Maps is far superior.

What you really mean is that Google is so artificially handicapped by the Chinese government that Apple Maps is actually decent in comparison. I do not envy that situation.

<comment><USER14> So what you say is Apple maps is better in China.

<comment><USER13> In the same way that Yandex is better in Russia, sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Too bad Apple Maps < Google Maps, still.

</comment><comment><USER16> mapkit.js is 500 KB after unzipping; I don't think low-end phones can handle that well (^_^;)

<comment><USER17> I just tested it on 512MB $49 Chinese Android 6.0 phone and it works. Not the fastest but perfectly usable.</comment></comment>


Ask YC: Will the bailout make it easier to get a loan for a startup? - <AUTHOR>

The politicians said entrepreneurs need credit to start businesses - to create jobs and pay employees, it seems like we should all go take out some bank loans and do our part.<p>Are the loans going to be of a lower interest rate than before or has nothing changed and the bill just enabled what existed before to continue? <comment><USER2> it'll probably just become a more stringent process to obtain a loan. if your business is sound and you aren't overreaching, you'll be fine. i doubt it'll be _easier_ though, because garbage loans are the reason why we got into the mess in the first place.</comment>


Well designed color sensor datasheet [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlas-scientific.com/files/EZO_RGB_Datasheet.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Stumbled upon Atlas Scientific's pH sensor (via an Adafruit tutorial) and was very surprised at the clearness of their datasheets. It's colorful, informative, has clear do's & don'ts.

These do seem to target hobbyists -- but (as an electronics hobbyist) -- I don't see anything wrong with that. :-)

Cheers</comment>