Saying Goodbye to Slack's IRC and XMPP Gateways - <AUTHOR> As Slack has evolved over the years, we've built features and capabilities — like Shared Channels, Threads, and emoji reactions (to name a few) — that the IRC and XMPP gateways aren't able to handle. Our priority is to provide a secure and high-quality experience across all platforms, and so the time has come to close the gateways.
We know this may affect your workflow in ways that are frustrating or disruptive, and we're here to help and answer questions. Thank you in advance for making this transition with us.
Please note that the gateways will be closed according to the following schedule:
* March 6, 2018: No longer available to newly-created workspaces
* April 3, 2018: Removed from workspaces where they're not in use
* May 15, 2018: Closed for all remaining workspaces
If your workspace currently uses gateways, your experience won't change until May 15th. But we encourage you to prepare for the transition soon. Feel free to contact our support team for help. <comment><USER2> > Our priority is to provide a secure and high-quality experience across all > platforms, and so the time has come to close the gateways.

The IRC gateway was the only way I was interacting with Slack. If it's gone, I'll just stop using Slack. That's ok, but is not exactly providing me a "high-quality" experience. (Meanwhile: IRC clients are capable of connecting to servers with TLS and authenticating certificates in the same manner as web browsers. So I'm not sure about the "secure" criticism either.)

Is there an API that _will_ continue to be available going forward that 3rd party software can interact with?

<comment><USER3> weechat has a slack api based plugin [https://github.com/wee-slack/wee- slack](https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It looks like Slack's page about this shut down is only available when logged in: [https://my.slack.com/account/gateways](https://my.slack.com/account/gateways) (linked to from [https://get.slack.help/hc/en- us/articles/201727913-Connect-t...](https://get.slack.help/hc/en- us/articles/201727913-Connect-to-Slack-over-IRC-and-XMPP)).

At least as of this comment, Slack's blog and status site don't say anything. It seems like this warrants at least a post on the blog, but maybe that's coming later today.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm very disappointed in this change. Having communication centralized in one place is important to me, and this means I cannot centralize on open, federated protocols.

</comment><comment><USER6> > XMPP gateways aren't able to handle

Yeah, sure. Though I only do bets in chocolate or beer, I do bet XMPP has some kind of extension built for it already, you just don't want to support it.

We so needed another walled garden of communication platforms.

<comment><USER7> It does (though these particular three I don't know how common they are); Probably in IRCv3 too for all I know.

UPDATE: changed because I read this wrong; but the answer is still "yes, this would have been relatively easy for them to do".

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I couldn't find any news about this, and I'm not really sure when they announced it, but I just noticed it so I'm posting it here.

</comment><comment><USER8> WeeChat with the wee-slack plugin is pretty good ([https://github.com/wee- slack/wee-slack](https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack)). That doesn't help folks that don't use WeeChat though.

I have been investigating Riot/Matrix lately. One of the things that really bothers me about the Slack desktop client is its lack of multiple windows. Participating in more than one conversation at a time is a flurry of clicks/keystrokes to keep up. Unfortunately the Riot client doesn't appear to have multiple windows either and the status of the Slack gateway is somewhat unclear.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is anyone aware of a self-hosted alternative?

<comment><USER10> You mean something like mattermost.com ?

<comment><USER9> I meant more of a direct replacement of the Slack IRC gateway rather than a replacement of Slack itself.

<comment><USER7> I've heard that using Slack with biboumi as a gateway is better than their gateway ever was, but can't say myself. I'd be curious to get your experience if you try it.

<comment><USER2> Does that help if they're also turning off the XMPP gateway?

<comment><USER7> I thought biboumi also supported Slack natively, but I might have been mixing it up with one of the others. Spectrum maybe? "I've always heard that using a third party gateway which uses the Slack API to communicate with slack is a better experience" is probably what I should have said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The full news (shown above) is tucked behind a your Slack login and linked from this page: [https://get.slack.help/hc/en- us/articles/201727913-Connect-t...](https://get.slack.help/hc/en- us/articles/201727913-Connect-to-Slack-over-IRC-and-XMPP)

</comment><comment><USER12> Another vote for WeeChat an the Slack plugin. Which utilizes the Slack API (so you are kind of out on your butt if one of your slack's won't allow you to get a token) Weechat is a bit of work to get it working/looking the way you want, but it's worth it.

</comment><comment><USER10> This could be an alternative solution: [https://github.com/ekmartin/slack- irc](https://github.com/ekmartin/slack-irc)

</comment><comment><USER13> RIP Slack. You followed the Microsoft strategy all the way to the end. Embrace, extend... but this extinguish will only be of Slack itself.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is what you get for using Slack. Meanwhile, IRC still works fine.

</comment><comment><USER15> Whelp, goodbye Slack, hello Mattermost.

<comment><USER15> The MOTD I got in my IRC client:

[https://ae7.st/pb/?6cb6e86dc5d27158#SKb8x+tKyazabJWuFaGjURqe...](https://ae7.st/pb/?6cb6e86dc5d27158#SKb8x+tKyazabJWuFaGjURqe3Thm1xncAVxNGTOKIas=)</comment></comment>


New printed version of the Emacs Manual - <AUTHOR> https://www.fsf.org/blogs/gnu-press/new-version-of-the-emacs-reference-manual-plus-gnu-press-discounts

<comment><USER2> "contains approximately 2.5 more years of Emacs documentation than version 24.2"

I really LOL'd on this.</comment>


Show HN: Feedback on my startup, a whiskey tasting site - <AUTHOR>

I've been working on this site (www.whiskeynotes.com) for a while and would love some feedback. It lets users browse whiskies, save their tastings, find places/events to drink whiskey and organize their next purchase. In the future I'd like to have some co-branded events and a recommendation engine.
I know it's a bit text-heavy -- I'm not a great graphic designer.
Does it make sense? Is it easy to use? Would you use it (if you like whiskey)? Thanks for any & all feedback! <comment><USER2> Overall, a nice idea. I'd have a very close look at what successful wine sites have done in this space. Allow the best of what they've done to influence your initial product.

Specifically:

1\. Hire a designer. Based on your design, you're a programmer. You're likely a very good one. Stick to that, there's more money in it :) The words you've used and the general block layout you've created are well done, but you need to have the site styled up. Whiskey is sold based on style and your site will live or die in it.

2\. This is a user generated content site but you're not promoting the ugen aspect of it. For example, check out this listing page: [http://www.whiskeynotes.com/releases/Jameson-18-Year- Irish-W...](http://www.whiskeynotes.com/releases/Jameson-18-Year-Irish- Whiskey) Without registering, it should be blatantly obvious (and attractive) for the user to contribute photos, video, reviews and ratings. It should also be easy for users to provide feedback on other user reviews.

3\. How can I see the highest rated whiskey's?

4\. Is there a way for users to buy the whiskey directly from your website?

5\. Have you called the sales reps at the whiskey companies that are highly rated? You should talk to them about how you can integrate your site in to their marketing. This extends beyond simple advertising. They will likely be happy to provide you with custom, unique photographs, direct people to add honest reviews, etc.

6\. You should sell an regularly delivered document to whiskey industry folks. They'd be interested in a summary of reviews, ratings and trends. I'd do this from the start and charge a healthy monthly fee for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, these are great suggestions - Thanks RobIsIT!

1\. Good point. I will start lookign for one. 2\. The generated content is really just whiskies and tastings. I don't really want people to contribute videos since I think that'll just add a lot of social-network style cruft. 3\. The browse button automatically sorts by rating. I have toyed with the idea of adding a 'leaderboard', but never got around to it since the browse button is the same thing. Perhaps once there are more tasting it'll be more useful. 5\. Don't I have to get more tastings first? 6\. Yes. This is a great idea that I've seen other sites in the genre do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks good. Getting 502s on individual whiskey pages though - [http://www.whiskeynotes.com/releases/Jameson-18-Year- Irish-W...](http://www.whiskeynotes.com/releases/Jameson-18-Year-Irish- Whiskey)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah crap, one second, I'll fix this...

<comment><AUTHOR> All set. Sometimes bad character sets get in and borks that page. Should be good now. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice timing, I'm in the process of replacing my beer snobbery with whiskey snobbery :) I needed something just like this, to help my find my way through the masses of new drinks out there.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks like I have a new site to start perusing in my spare time. :)

A couple questions:

\- What language / framework did you build this on?

\- Are you using a pre-built CMS?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for the delay, just noticed these replies. I built it using Ruby and a framework called Ramaze. I built it 100% from scratch, for better or for worse...</comment></comment>


If you don't trust your employees to work remotely you shouldn't have hired them - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/891537/if-you-dont-trust-your-employees-to-work-remotely-you-shouldnt-have-hired-them-in-the-first-place/ <comment><USER3> Working at the office isn't about floor plan or seat time.

Working at the office is about "staying in touch". When you are in the office you see new directions the company is interested in long before you get an assignment.

It doesn't matter if you are in an office with the door closed, or working from home: either way you miss things that you should have been told directly but nobody thought to tell you. So you end up doing otherwise great work that it leading the project in the wrong direction.

That is when you are in the office someone from marketing can see you in the hallway and ask about the hot new feature of today without invoking all the formal channels to take to the guy remotely. Thus when you are working from home you lose a lot of opportunities to do what is needed as opposed to what you are told. People who can figure out the right thing and do that are more valuable than people who only do what they are told.

Note that the title is correct: all employees should be trusted to work remotely from time to time. However that does not mean you should work from home all the time. You should be a regular at the office so that you don't lose touch. At the first sign of illness (you or your kids), bad weather, or a hard no interruptions problem: you should be out of the office and working from home. However you should also be a regular at the office for the benefits of being at the office.

Of course this depends on your job. If you are a contractor you might be in a situation where you do the letter of the contract and are gone - the only time you might want to do something else is if you are trying to turn the contract into a full term position. Even then though, some contracts are get release N out the door, with a possibility of renewal for release N+1 - in that case you may have the option to change what is in release N.

<comment><USER4> I had a manager for a while who would make a point of catching me up on watercooler talk once a week or whenever we met about something else. Somebody quit in a dramatic way a few days ago? New project everyone's talking about that has nothing to do with me? Only took about 3 minutes, but really helped me feel connected, be more aware of the big picture, what else was going on that might indirectly impact my projects. I understood when a team I communicated with might be stressed or distracted. I understood when resources were going to be harder to get. Really good practice.

<comment><USER5> Sounds like there should be specialist training for people who manage remote teams. I wonder what GitHub does in comparison to Google (which seems to be sort of anti-remote).

<comment><USER4> Great idea. I think it's the same with many management scenarios. You could put someone in charge of a group of employees from a very different culture, and without any training or other investment into learning about how to make it work, they're likely to end up thinking, "I just can't get the team to perform - let's not hire people like that."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I appreciate a lot of the sentiment of this article, but not the self- congratulatory, sanctimonious tone.

It refuses to acknowledge that there are people out there who are less productive when working remotely (for example, me, which I discovered after recording personal data on it), and those who are substantially less happy when working remotely. In addition, those of us who prefer an office environment sometimes find it more difficult to work with remote coworkers: something that is more or less important depending on what your day to day tasks include.

If I were running a company I would always permit employees to work remotely, or work from home when they want, but I think it's counterproductive to pretend that everyone wants that and would benefit from it.

<comment><USER7> I also think it absurd to presume that there's zero benefit to having folks face-to-face from time-to-time.

Wanna work from home 4 days out of 5? I say go nuts.

But I would want some amount of face-to-face time, not to see asses in seats (which seems to be what every work-from-advocate assumes... as though there's no other concerns beyond accountability, a strawman if I've every seen one), but because it helps build team camaraderie.

I've seen this first hand. I'm the Product Owner for geographically distributed team. Skype is used heavily as a mechanism for the team to communicate, but we also include quarterly face-to-face get-togethers where the team can sit in a room and whiteboard problems, pair program, or really whatever they want to do that feels useful.

The first time we did this _everyone_ , every single person, raved about how valuable the activity was. Not because they were inherently more productive, and certainly not because they were being held accountable. Rather, the simple act of people in a room together further cemented their bonds as a team.

Humans are social animals. We're used to physical proximity as a component of communication. Hell, the NYT had an article about why it's hard to make friends after 30:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/fashion/the-challenge- of-m...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/fashion/the-challenge-of-making- friends-as-an-adult.html)

Two of the three are proximity, and repeated, unplanned interactions.

That's just not possibility in a 100% remote working environment.

<comment><USER8> The two times I did this with two separate teams I hated it.

I'm a very social guy, so it isn't an introvert thing, but I work 100% remote, I don't want to meet and be confined to 'activities' or environments where I can't be productive. If I wanted to be in an office, I have plenty of job offers to do so. If I wanted to meet my co-workers on 'activities' (like the once a year retreats with parties and trust falls and what-not) I would join the local kumbaya group.

Just thinking I have to travel for a week, away from my friends, my family my routines for someone to have face-to-face time with me that could have been done on skype/hangouts is ridiculous, and whenever I hear about yearly retreats/trips I pass on the job.

<comment><USER7> _like the once a year retreats with parties and trust falls and what-not_

Nice strawman!

We got the team together, shared meals and drinks in the evening, and basically did engineering work during the day.

The team took the opportunity to do some broader architectural work that needed doing, and to do some knowledge sharing across silos that had developed. Basically stuff that's more amenable to a room and a whiteboard.

ie, they got some sh*t done while getting to know each other better.

But hey, if you can't be bothered to spend face time with your team mates on occasion, I'm sure you can find organizations that will cater to your particular whims. Ours would not be one of them, that's all.

<comment><USER8> And that is great, my organization actually respects this and doesn't force me to go to any annual things. To each their own, but shared meals and drinks in the evening is for me too much. I work 8 hours for you, after I want to see my family or friends, not my co-workers. Or do sports, or whatever else. The problem with these retreats is 8+hours work and then off time with co-workers. I don't care about that. AT ALL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "I am a night owl. You can tell me I have to have my butt in a chair within your line of sight at 8 or 9am, but that is very wasteful. You are wasting my time and yours. I am not a morning person. I will start being very effective around 11am and I really get going in the afternoon/evening. If you force your preferred hours onto me, both employer and employee lose. "

THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS!

Believe me I understand that it's a difficult problem to solve - <USER2> seems to have different "optimal" work hours. But right now, the standard work day is HEAVILY favoring the morning person's mind.

<comment><USER10> I second this enough to comment!

Furthermore, If your effective times starts at 11, consider yourself lucky. 11 is at the earlier end of my natural waking time. I start getting effective 2 hours afterwards.

<comment><USER9> I'm in the same boat. In fact, I don't REALLY come online until after lunch, sometime around 1 or 2. And if allowed to revert to my natural sleep cycle, my most creative and productive time is between 2pm - 3am.

Good luck finding an employer who is cool with that. Not to mention, a spouse.

<comment><USER11> My best hours are similar. I think the best option is a remote team distributed across time zones or one in a time zone that aligns with your ideal hours. Admittedly, much easier said than done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's a great deal of cultural and technical enablement that needs to happen to _allow_ remote work to be effective. A great employee won't be as productive if your environment isn't set up for them to succeed in a remote capacity.

I absolutely applaud companies who have this figured out, or who enable very flexible arrangements. But if you as an individual (like the author) "need" a different work environment, _go seek it out_ , don't lambast the company as "non-trustworthy".

<comment><USER13> >There's a great deal of cultural and technical enablement that needs to happen to allow remote work to be effective. A great employee won't be as productive if your environment isn't set up for them to succeed in a remote capacity.

A good example of this:

At my company we used to have problems with people working from home accidentally being excluded from meetings because the meeting leaders would forget to set up a video conference room, or would forget to join the video conference room that had been created ahead of time. To fix this, we decided that every meeting would have a video conference room set up for it, and that the meeting leader would always join the video conference room, regardless of whether anybody in the meeting was expected to be working remotely. In other words, we always run our meetings as if there are remote workers involved. This eliminated the issue entirely.

Another benefit was that we no longer wasted time determining if we needed a video conference set up for a meeting. We just set it up in all cases. For recurring meetings, we have persistent video conference rooms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I get the most work done when I am the only one in the office, So I tend to take my lunch at a different schedule than my co workers, come in early, stay late, and take work home because during "normal" business hours is a constant stream of "collaboration" that interrupts me doing any actual work.

I love flu season, because I normally do not get sick, and everyone else is out of the office sick... sooo peaceful.

I would love to work remotely, only interacting with people remotely.

<comment><USER11> I can relate to this. Just curious if you've found any hacks for when the office is full of people? My best so far is noise isolating or noise canceling earbuds + a brown noise generator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Working hours being at 9am-5pm is not optimal for plenty of people. Working remotely has never worked for me, but a flexible work schedule time and the option to work from home occasionally is a really good strategy for companies. I always stay up late and there are many brain studies showing that people very often fall into two categories, early risers and late risers. Accommodating both is a good idea to get the most from your workforce.

<comment><USER16> 9-5 isn't optimal for many people, but as someone who does prefer a 9-5 (ideally a 10-6), it can be frustrating when you roll into the office, see an email sent from a colleague at 3am, and have to wait until 1pm or 2pm to ask any clarifying questions. Or on the flip side, when 6pm comes around and you're ready to leave, that same colleague is just settling into the most productive part of the day and wants to debug something with you. Worse still are the times when it's 10pm and you're getting ready for bed, only to find that your colleague has a few 'quick questions' over email.

In my experience flexible work hours are okay when your work is silo-ed off from the rest of the team, or if you are diligent about making sure other people can pick up the ball once you're done. When either of those things are not true it just becomes a headache for everyone.

<comment><USER17> why would you check work email when you're about to go to bed?

<comment><USER15> Yea I've stopped doing that more recently.. Good point.. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This article presumes that trust is the only reason that employers don't allow or support remote work. It's also assumes that the individual's peak productivity is the most important thing.

However, neither are necessarily true - I actually really enjoy a team dynamic. A team working well together can lead to amazing leaps in productively. And it's very hard to replicate that remotely.

Building remote teams is extremely hard and takes a lot of investment. If you look at the companies that do it well, it's almost a cultural obsession.

<comment><USER19> > Building remote teams is extremely hard and takes a lot of investment.

But finding, leasing, and maintaining an office is not hard and does not require a lot of investment?

<comment><USER11> The answer to the expense of office space varies widely based on arrangements and location. Outside of the coasts, there are definitely areas where commercial space that startups use is cheaper per sq ft than residential. A couple of years ago, I was talking with a VC from New York about his (non- fancy) Manhattan office space being $80+ per sq ft while there were good spaces in my city for $1 per sq ft without tenants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I always feel very conflicted about remote work. It doesn't work for me personally, I never work remotely unless special circumstances force me to for a day or two. But I realize that is a personal preference and many people have the exact opposite preference and I want to respect that.

But I have a couple of teammates that moved to different cities and are now 100% remote, and I find it very frustrating that I can essentially never talk to them in person. They fly in once or twice a year but that doesn't help the situation the entire rest of the year. They report that in their view video calls are working as an adequate replacement for face to face conversations but I completely disagree. I don't know the solution though. They are valuable team members and I'm glad they didn't have to leave the company when they moved, but at the same time I really don't want the trend to expand or for us to hire new people knowing they will be 100% remote.

<comment><USER21> Maybe you need to work on your communication skills? I realize that's a snarky sounding answer, so let me expand on that. Face to face communication is nice and has benefits. But there are tradeoffs. It's clear that your company has decided that when making a decision between having certain team members be remotely part of the team or not at all, the choice is clear. So maybe the appropriate course of action is to accept the benefit of continuing to have access to those individuals and work on adjusting your communication style to support distributed teams. Protip: a remote first workflow also improves documentation and communication if you have more than one office.

Personally, I welcome the chance to work with a group of minds that isn't restricted by the filter of "lives within x hours of office". The world is full of amazing projects created by people around the world working together.

I think your observation is valid, but in my experience the drawbacks of remote working are dwarfed by the benefits.

<comment><USER22> In the end, not everything that works for one will work for another. The previous commenter may need to work on their communication skills but so may the people who are now remote. I think the one problem is these discussions (this is the third in as many weeks) is that people tend to take a stance of "My perfect work environment is ______. Everyone should adapt to me".

I think we need to approach this differently. Have the team self organize around rules for availability, communication techniques, etc. Come up with plans for white-boarding and brainstorming when everyone is remote to each other. Or, come up with a plan to allow people in an open space to have some quiet and privacy to get work done. I find it rather silly that a single situation is what any employee needs 100% of the time and that if they think that, they aren't considering the needs of the rest of their team. Mostly everyone just needs a little perspective I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wow, don't know where to begin... 1\. this article seems to be aimed at startups, but the author then goes on to complain about having to work 8-5 ( good hours for a startup). 2\. "Let the bad actors fail" I've met very few people who are actually trying to game the system, the vast majority of people perceived as "Bad actors" need managements help to align their goals and values with that of the business. 3\. The title implies this is an issue of trust, where as it seems that it's more about preference and fit. Some software engineering problems lend themselves more to an in-person environment than not. For instance, when I was working on an oil sensing project, All I did was write software but I had to have the hardware close for testing my software. They sure aren't going to let me drag 20k worth of equipment home in my honda. 4\. ROWE, how do you measure the output of knowledge workers especially programmers? If anyone figures it out write a book you will make a bajillion dollars.

<comment><USER24> Experienced developers can work as well as, or better at home. Even in a startup; especially in a startup where time is important and commute can be expensive that way.

I work on embedded frequently; I have way more than $20K of equipment on my desk right now. Not to mention old projects in boxes and on shelves. That's absolutely not an issue. If I need it and need exclusive access to it, in the office or on my desk is all the same.

And measuring output? Why, by performance of course. And by the value of the work done. So I can earn well on embedded work whenever that comes my way, because its not a common skill and I can do it quickly. The market sets the value; there's no mystery to this.

<comment><USER23> Hey Joe, I also work from home full time but as a backend systems developer. I was not trying to highlight that it would be impossible for someone with hardware to work from home, simply that in some cases it's not feasible or doesn't make sense ofr the business.

<comment><USER24> Agreed. As usual, the article tries to overgeneralize. Reality is so much more complicated that blog entries or memes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > If you don't trust your employees to work remotely you shouldn't have hired > them

What an absurdly simplistic view of the world you have there, Yan. The real world is more complex, and people are not static things - they change. Your article applies excellently to you as an individual, but you seem to think you are right to generalise things to other people.

</comment><comment><USER26> I wonder how the author feels about the #NoEstimates movement. Both ROWE and #NoEstimates are very popular trends these days, but they are mutually incompatible. A results-only-work-environment works only if the results (ie quality + time-taken) are clearly defined, and all employees are held accountable for those results. This is fundamentally incompatible with the #NoEstimates movement which says that it's impossible to figure out how much time a task is _supposed_ to take.

<comment><USER27> Are after the fact, retrospective estimates viable? It looks more possible to me than the before the fact variant.

Anyway, I don't think butts in the seats management deals any better with the lack of correct estimates.

<comment><USER26> Retrospective estimates could work better, but I imagine it lends itself to a lot of credibility problems. If you're popular and well-liked, you'll get retrospective estimates that exceed how much time you actually took. If you're unpopular, your manager/teammates can screw you over by giving estimates that are lower than how much time you took. Not to mention the fact that things always seem so much simpler in hindsight, especially when someone does a really good job with design.

Butt-in-seats management, despite being much maligned, is much more consistent with the NoEstimates movement. Instead of trying to estimate how much time something is supposed to take, just mandate that they spend X hours working everyday.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The reason why open floor plans are so popular is likely due to cost. Think about how much more space / structure complexity you need to implement a non- open floor plan. Decision makers likely look at the options and think 'hey, not only will everyone be forced to communicate and collaborate, we will also be much closer to fitting the office project into our budget and cost projections. '

</comment><comment><USER29> Face to face interactions are often orders of magnitude more efficient than textual interactions, which is particularly important during highly collaborative activities. Really, even face-to-face is the wrong description, since it implies something like video conferencing can be used as a substitute: human-to-human interaction might be better. Body language, the ability to recognize when a conversation is not making progress or a point is generally accepted and can be set aside, trust building, humanization of The Other, etc.

I say this as someone who works remotely, but who recognizes the shortcomings of it.

<comment><USER30> Sometimes face ti face can be good, but I often prefer email, for the reason that everything gets documented.

A previous line manager of mine would never document anything, and his standard response was "I thought we talked about that". Sure we did, but you changed your mind then changed it again, then again after that. I can't remember what the final outcome was.

<comment><USER7> Meeting notes are a thing for a reason.

Here's a recipe for a successful meeting:

1\. Start by setting the agenda, and critically, the desired outcome. "At the end of this meeting I want to have a decision on X, or a date for when we can make that decision."

2\. Have your meeting. Minimize attendance. 3 is perfect. 5 is okay. 7 is pushing it. Have a very clear moderator/leader for the discussion.

2b. Moderator/leaders should be hard-asses about forcing tangential discussions offline/into a parking lot. This is probably their most important function.

3\. At the end of the meeting, the leader summarizes the outcome to all participants. This is a _critical_ step. "So, Joe, you will come back to me on Friday with a decision on X. Phil, you'll be working with Joe to pull that answer together."

4\. Write the meeting notes down in a permanent place. Email is too ephemeral. A document management system of some kind with an email notification is ideal. Record actions for those who have them, with associated dates.

Stakeholders should also follow-up on actions with due dates to make sure they're closed out. This can feel like nagging/cat herding, but it's vital.

The reality is, many decisions/discussions are too complex to do over email, particularly if the number of stakeholders grows beyond 3. There's far too much room for confusion/ambiguity and a lack of ownership on follow-up actions. Mix in the ease with which emotional components can be lost or mis- interpreted over email, and my tendency is to push for a voice or in-person discussion the minute an email thread goes on for more than a day.

<comment><USER31> You need a dedicated person to take meeting minutes, ideally someone who isn't otherwise part of the meeting because humans are bad at multitasking. I especially find it hard to take notes and focus on the meeting (nevermind actually contributing).

<comment><USER7> I agree. In a meeting with 3 or more people, designating a scribe is a great idea!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge)

Humans transfer knowledge most effectively when they are communicating in person. Of course this does not mean you will achieve the highest productivity in an office by putting 20 people in the same room, but it still says a lot about in office vs complete remote work.

A lot of companies create the type of culture where it's not pleasant to work in the office. However, having half you team work remotely on random days of the week isn't the right solution to this, and I don't think it could be justified by saying "I trust my employees". Just create the right team and the right environment. People will want to spend time together when there is inspiration and motivation involved.

There is a lot more to the implications of strong tacit information transfer that extends to how innovation ecosystems work. For anyone curious I would suggest finding the research around the subject.

</comment><comment><USER33> ROWE - Results Oriented Work Environment. If only the world were so simple that everyone's contribution can be put into a nice neat box. When work can be so well defined, it doesn't get outsourced to a 1 bedroom in San Francisco, it gets outsourced to the cheapest spot on the planet.

Creative work (R&D included) can be hard to define. It depends on random interactions between people. It requires both collaboration and periods of quiet. And the outputs can be very hard for a CEO to define in advance.

Remote-only can work ok for "Designed for remote-only" companies, but they are the exception not the rule.

100% remote can also work for employees who spent a lot of time in the office building their networks, reputations and relationships.

It's ok for people to say "I'll only ever work remote" but you can quickly find yourself in a very tight box.

</comment><comment><USER34> Management/Educators/Government will always cater to the lowest common denominator(LCD). It only takes one person to screw it up for everyone. This is the real upside to working for a small company. The larger the company, the lower the LCD is likely to be.

I admire large companies that have the balls to delineate between groups. Most don't. If you work as an IT professional for a company that has a large call center, God help you. Call center work is some of the highest turnover work out there. Managers of call centers resort to treating they're employees like children.

It is frustrating when you find yourself as a college educated, fully formed adult, being lumped in with cretins.

IMO, this is largely why work from home is squashed. Because if we let you do it, everyone will want to do it, and we can't have that.

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't think it is black and white. Also trust is not black and white, and trusted persons can turn bad and unrealiable persons can develop to be reliable and trustworthy.

If you are sure that you bring the best value by working remotely, then just do it and explain the situation to potential employers. Some might be happy with that, some not. However to me it looks like the remote job market is about 100x more competitive than on-site. Employers seem to value being able to talk face-to-face etc, and in principle I don't think there is a lot wrong with that. If you don't like it, start a competing company which hires remote people - it is a free market. If remote working is truly more effective, remote work should get more common.

</comment><comment><USER36> _If you don't trust your employees to work remotely you should_ tell them that work is expected onsite. If it is important to them to work remotely, they should _n't have_ let you _hire_ or have pai _d them_

also, people who obsess over issues tend to have issues with the issues they obsess over. Con-men, for instance, obsess over matters of trust, as do people who have been conned. Don't work for or hire people who obsess over trust. People with trusting and trustworthy personalities and a good sense of boundaries expect it and don't obsess over it because it's built into their (metaphoric? literal?) DNA.

</comment><comment><USER37> Yes and no, I suppose. I consider myself to be a pretty good employee, but I know that I would struggle a lot working remotely. Someone who's used to working remotely probably has that discipline, but for now, I know I lack it.

</comment><comment><USER38> "no evidence that an open office supports collaboration" \-- sure, but the choices aren't just open office or working remotely. Face to face interaction is valuable for collaboration, regardless of the office layout.

<comment><USER39> Also destructive to productivity.

Things I'd happily pay for right now:

\- for people to stop "collaborating" in the office I sit in; even over-the- ear headphones and loud music aren't enough to cancel that out

\- for people to stop standing behind me and having (work-related) conversations

\- for the guy working next to me to actually sit on his damn ass and not move around the office every 10 minutes

In general, I absolutely _hate_ feeling presence and attention of other people when I'm trying to focus. With each new day I spend in a modern workplace, I more and more understand why cubicles are a _fucking awesome idea_.

One day I swear I'll build myself one out of pizza boxes.

<comment><USER40> If I were you I'd push _hard_ for an office to work in at your job. Like, go out and get some job offers and tell them you'll take one of these jobs if you don't get your way.

Work environment is everything and once I started taking it seriously, my life enjoyment improved immensely.

<comment><USER39> I'm not pushing too hard, because beside the points I raised, I'm generally happy about my job. A nice and fair company, with good atmosphere and friendly people. I guess today was one of those days when my inner introvert reared his ugly head.

Either way, right now I'm considering moving out of town, so I'm trying to push them into letting me work remotely part of the week ;).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Question for remote workers here: I'm forced to work remotely during the next 3 months (thanks to the US Visa system) and with my coworkers, we're struggling to find a good communication software for our daily huddle.

What we use right now is Hangout for the video and a VOIP solution for the sound. The video quality is not so bad but the sound sucks.

We tried Skype, Slack video and couple of other software but I'm not really satisfied by any of them. Discord has a perfect sound but I'd like to know if there's a software out there more "professional"?

<comment><USER42> We tried a number of voice options last year. The best voice quality we've found that works internationally is TeamSpeak.

<comment><USER41> Yeah, Teamspeak uses the same sound codec (Opus I think) as Discord. I use that to talk with my friends and famility that are 6k miles away and the sound is almost perfect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> If I'm hiring for a candidate that has expressed a need to work remotely, I interview them very differently. First, I give extra importance to the communication with the candidate over email/LinkedIn to set up the phone screen, and also the phone screen itself. I know that I will be interacting with the person primarily this way. It's extremely helpful to obtain referrals from people who have worked with the person remotely before, so they can provide feedback about how frequently and engaged that person has been with the on-site team in the past. I also look for and ask questions probing the persons communication skills more than my usually technically-focused interviews.

The reason for this is that I've experienced different results working with the same people from remote than when they are on-site. For that reason I don't think it's enough to assume that because a developer is a good remote worker they will work well in an office setting or that if they are a productive office worker they will function highly from remote.

Basically, people are hired into specific roles. If you've hired someone for an open space agile environment and the role/work dramatically changes (going remote, acquired by "waterfall method inc", etc) the hiring decision very well may no longer be informative.

</comment><comment><USER44> At work, we just figured out a weird problem and resolved it quickly, because five of us are sitting side by side and we could quickly discuss it. Meanwhile, the two remote people are still somewhat confused, and I'm trying to explain it in chat - and likely by the time I'm done explaining the problem, a commit will be added to a pull request to fix it.

Granted, I'm probably not the best communicator, but being on location can speed things up _a lot_.

But that's also not about trust.

<comment><USER45> So, uh, we usually just hop on video chat for this. They should have _been_ on video chat when you were talking about the problem. The issue with your company is not that remote working is less collaborative, it's that you're not doing the _basic_ , _minimum_ effort required to make remote working even possible.

<comment><USER44> We usually do - we're in a remote office, so we have 4 people in Austin, TX, 6 in New York, one remote in San Diego, and one of the Austin folks was working from home. So for standups, etc., we do a video call.

But this time, it would have literally taken more time to dial up the two remote-and-interested parties than it did to solve the problem.

If we were all remote, we would probably have done that, since it would be almost a necessity. But five heads is enough to solve the problem, and we have five heads here...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> There's more to working from home than the worker.

Sometimes the management team or coworkers can't work well with remote workers. There are lots of reasons for this, both good and bad.

</comment><comment><USER47> Author of this needs to run a company for a while. If you really are the 110% employee you say you are, you are an edge case. The reality is, most people need to be told to go here, sit there, do this, for X hours, and I need these results. Otherwise, nothing gets done. And as far as work environment is concerned, literally everyone is different. I need a TV on playing reruns of The Office to be productive. We are all strange creatures.

<comment><USER48> Does it really need to be sit there and do this for X hours and I need these results? Would "I need these results (in X timeframe)" not also work?

I'm not saying there aren't benefits to working in an office with fixed hours (e.g. despite the advent of email and IM communication is often better in person).

But:

1\. At jobs with fixed hours I often spend a couple of them a day effectively doing nothing because I'm burnt out that day. And conversely I will go home at home time even if I'm being given really productive at that time.

2\. I often work more effectively at home due to lack of distractions and precisely because I'm not expected to be looking like I'm doing some all of the time. For example, sometimes it can really help to get out of the house, go for a walk, and think for a bit. Doing this for 20 minutes can be more productive than 6 hours of sitting at a desk trying to work on the same problem while looking at the a computer screen. But you can't really do that in an office.

<comment><USER47> Why not be a contractor then? You get to do whatever you want whenever you want and get paid when the job is done, and done correctly (granted you've setup your contracts this way).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Sure, as a rule of thumb. But what about young people, still learning how to be a professional? Structure, consistency, being surrounded by people smarter and more accomplished than you... these are the best ways to learn. Of course, there are plenty of self-motivated kids out there who don't need college to learn and prep for life, but for the majority, immersion in an environment raises the bar.

</comment><comment><USER50> I am easily distracted and also like the team environment because you can tighten the feedback loop and communicate efficiently. I am the same way as the author-- night owl, ect. Going to an office is a solution for me and an option I wish I had, and enjoyed in the past. I would ammend the authors point:

You should trust employees who have a good track record to work remotely if they want and are sufficiently operating independently.

JR employees should be allowed to work part time remotely after some time in office.

There isnt a good way to inprint culture remotely, and there is a learning curve for jr devs who need senior devs for support/the internal support structure. So most Incs would be in bad shape if all there strong engineering talent worked from 6pm to 9am (as I would left to my own devices) because their jr devs wouldnt grow and other devs with supporting software on dif schedules have to wait.

Tldr not all offices are open plan, growing a team (culturally & skill-wise) is easier in the office, part-time remote work and coordination is a good tradeoff/reward for employees of all skillsets and functions.

</comment><comment><USER51> I don't disagree with the the underlying points, but I do think it's hard to take a full stock of something like this. Workplaces as places where people work is a fairly big piece of culture to just change.

It's clearly true that work can be done elsewhere, but that doesn't mean workplaces are something we can just abandon and leave everything else the same. Imagine if a parliament decided they didn't need to see each-other in person. The whole system would be different.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't get a remote job. Maybe whole companies should be built this way from the ground up. Companies are cultures of a sort, with their fair share of cultural pathologies. Being in physical proximity is one of the ways companies function culturally, at present. All these things will need to be resolved some other (probably cultural) way for companies to function remotely.

</comment><comment><USER52> I've worked with several devs who are trustworthy in general, but the days they work from home they are curiously unproductive. Or you try to get in contact with them on an issue of theirs and they never seem to be around. Yet in the office they're perfectly functional and available.

Not to mention that tech staff are a seller's market at the moment - trust or not, most companies don't get a lot of choice with the staff they get to have. The article's author is supremely selfish in assuming all staff are like them.

</comment><comment><USER53> Has anyone found a truly workable remote alternative to everyone standing around a whiteboard for shared, interactive sketching?

Let me stipulate that I'd pay a sizable sum ($5K per location wouldn't be out of the question at all) if I could find something that gave me very similar dynamics to 5 people standing around a whiteboard and taking turns drawing, talking, correcting, improving a shared diagram. (So, this doesn't have to be "cheap", but does have to be "awesome".)

<comment><USER20> [https://business.smarttech.com/en](https://business.smarttech.com/en)

I've only used these in an academic setting and I don't know how much they cost but I think it's exactly what you're asking for.

<comment><USER53> I've used a couple generations of them and have an older one in my basement. IMO, they're better than nothing but still a very great gap between these and a shared single-location whiteboard.

It's hard to capture the dynamics between people. (Reading the room for understanding, quickly collaborating on a drawing, etc.) Smartboards always felt like taking turns playing some laggy VR game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> To play devils advocate: How can you have a ROWE, if you can't really measure engineer productivity? This just seems to lead back to the most lines of code added = most work done attitude.

This is a problem with traditional butts-in-seats as well of course, but (one could argue) less so, as your employees at least have to spent X hours trying to solve the problem. And if you already going to spent so much time, why not do it right.

</comment><comment><USER55> When I worked at a startup, we had a local office and an office on the other coast. To keep communications open we had an iPad facetime 100% of the time with the other office.

I feel like this is what remote working is missing, you may not have legs and be able to strut into the lunch room to talk about non-business but at the very least you can some presences improv the "brain-storming" sessions

</comment><comment><USER56> This means also trusting their home (cheap door, no alarm, landlord, kids, wife...) and malware-infested computer with business data. It kind of implies that company data is on computers with internet connections, which is a no-no if you care about security.

</comment><comment><USER57> This is basically a repost, the same text but on Medium passed a couple of weeks ago.

Also, the fact that it works for the author doesn't mean it doesn't work for everybody else.

<comment><USER58> There is a note at the bottom of the post that it originally ran on Medium (which freely licenses its content in this way in the absence of explicit revocation of consent from the author). The piece also explicitly acknowledges that working remote doesn't work for everyone, and states "That is fine."

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> There are exceptions to this, especially if you work with governments and classified material. You obviously can't work from home.

</comment><comment><USER60> the biggest mistake people do is assuming one size fits all. working for home is not for everyone, some people are more productive in a group settings when they other people around are working, and they get more incentive to work harder.

Personally, I prefer giving the choice to allow people to work from home if they are productive; but we need to remember it's not for everyone

</comment><comment><USER61> What a pile of straw man BS. Most objections to working remotely have nothing to do with trust (at least for decent developer or designer jobs) but instead are about quality of collaboration and company culture.

People who write cocky condescending articles like this are almost always just stumping for doing what _they_ want which is to work at home themselves.

<comment><USER62> > Most objections to working remotely have nothing to do with trust

For business types, it absolutely does. I've had to answer the question before "if people are working at home, how will we know they are working?" My response is "how do you know they are working at work? The same way."

<comment> T-hawk The disconnect here is about the definition of "working". For many managers, that means "attending my meetings" and "easy to ask for status reports" more so than it means "producing good software". The former are what's easier to know in the office versus remote.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> The article contains in total 61 occurrences of "I", "me", and "my"; yet somehow the problem of the author is not narcissism, but open offices.

</comment><comment><USER64> your presencial influence as leader matters.

I can't imagine facebook or amazon being built using remote workers. grinding is hard, painful and demoralizing. but a close team of uber-focused engineers led by example, frequently beat the asses of the 'work-from-home-is-so-comfy' guys.

about why I hire these people: they are gems, who need a coach to make them achieve greatness as a team. this is moneyball.

</comment><comment><USER65> This title ensures I ignore the article. Wrong wrong wrong. Might as well say "offshore is just as good as in-house"

</comment><comment><USER66> have nothing to add. AMEN!

</comment><comment><USER67> Working from home was removed from our office because of "abuse".

Who was "abusing" it?

We have 7 Indian (not American) females working in our office in various functions. All (100%) of them were found to have been "working" from home on multiple occasions where they were inaccessible (not logged in, not responding to emails). Their reasons for working from home ranged from children to car troubles. By all measurable attributes, their work output was less than their peers.

Now before you knee jerk, please understand that I'm simply pointing out the measurable facts of the situation. I'm not making any claims regarding cultural background. I am, however, questioning whether or not there exists a cultural component here that leads to a different understanding of the "work from home policy". To that degree, the statement, "If you don't trust your employees to work remotely you shouldn't have hired them" can perhaps come across as a bit racist.

<comment><USER68> Indian: feathers or dots?

Seriously, what's the point of mentioning their ethnicity and gender, exactly? I'm thankful that I'm not your co-worker.

<comment><USER67> Your comment is racist.

I am also pointing out that the article itself has a racist undertone.

Culture exists.

<comment><USER68> Wtf is "culture exists"? Like "culture of Indians"? You're digging yourself deeper in a hole. My comment about feathers and dots was ironic to highlight your dog-whistle. India is a country of 1.2 billion people with "many cultures". In any case, tarring people of certain ethnicities or race with "cultures" IS the problem with racism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> > Treat your employees like adults.

Adults get up and go to work.

I do treat my employees like adults, but I expect them to act like adults. Like making a decision to join the rest of the team in the office for an agreed set amount of time.

Our official policy is it's up to the Manager. I prefer a team, and not just someone who produces code. So I prefer people to be in the office.

Children expect the world to revolve around them. Adults do not.

<comment><USER70> > Children expect the world to revolve around them. Adults do not.

It seems like the sentiment is "you have to come to where _I_ am to do work, just like _I_ do", which smacks of wanting the world to revolve around you. Who has childish expectations in this scenario?

<comment><USER69> > Who has childish expectations in this scenario?

So any employee who sets boundaries for their employee's behavior, is being childish?

> "you have to come to where _I_ am to do work, just like _I_ do"

Should read

"you have to come where the _team_ is to do work, just like the _team_ does."

<comment><USER69> *employer who sets boundaries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Article is clearly written by an idealist.

I've worked with plenty of people who are _superb_ in their field, but need constant whipping to stay on track.

The threat of your manager sticking their head round the corner is a stick that keeps on-site employees grinding along.

Good management helps, but positing that you should only hire people you trust with your life (or whatever nonsense it is they're saying) is silly.

<comment><USER21> > need constant whipping to stay on track

> The threat of your manager sticking their head round the corner is a stick > that keeps on-site employees grinding along.

I would appreciate it if you'd share your current company/team, I'd imagine some other hner's would appreciate the heads up too, so they can avoid it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> > Here's the cycle when I'm forced to be in a chair in your office at 9am

This is where the author lost any sympathy from me. It just seems petulant. Go to bed earlier. Your body will get used to it.

<comment><USER73> Seriously? Some of us are night owls. Maybe musicians who need to be up late for shows (like me). Not everyone is you.

<comment><USER74> I am such a person.

I got a job that requires me to be in the office at 08:30 and I do it. I have no difficulty going to bed at 11:30 and being asleep by 12:30. I have no difficulty getting up at 06:40 and starting my day.

I can do all of these things because I am a responsible adult.

But I don't feel right. I'm not a morning person. I am most productive in the afternoon. Telecommuting from 10:00 to 18:00 would make the most sense for me but I understand that most employers simply do not have the flexibility to come up with custom solutions for everyone.

<comment><USER75> > I can do all of these things because I am a responsible adult.

You are saying that if anyone is not willing to do these things, they cannot be responsible adults. How rude and arrogant of you, if you really mean what you say.

<comment><USER76> If you cannot go to bed at a reasonable time in order to function at a job you have been hired to do, then no, you are not a responsible adult.

<comment><USER75> You should ask someone who actually knows about that topic, e.g. any doctor that works with people with sleep problems, what they think of your statement.

<comment><USER76> I suppose I should have said "willing to go to bed at a reasonable time" but I don't supposed that would have left you satiated.

> You should ask someone who actually knows about that topic

The irony of you calling someone out for being rude is almost palpable.

<comment><USER75> I understand you are angry because of how I reacted.

See, you are talking bad about other people, people you don't know, whose stories you might not even have ever imagined. And denying someone to possibly be a responsible adult is very bad in my book. Look how society treats people who are not adult or considered irresponsible.

Having that in mind, I reacted rather direct and rude, but hopefully understandibly so.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Can the flying car ever become a reality? - <AUTHOR> https://www.topgear.com/car-news/future-tech-top-gears-brief-history-of-the-flying-car <comment><USER2> The only way flying cars will happen is if they are self-flying. People are too unpredictable and they are quick to break the rules. Self-flying will guard against that.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting topic, vacuous article (in a tone that I find too chatty).</comment>


How a Bunch of Silicon Valley Rookies Out-Launched the Veterans - <AUTHOR> http://blog.udemy.com/udemy-launch/

<comment><USER2> That was very open, which you don't see all that often.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Glad to see people liked it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wish more startups were this transparent about their efforts. Nice job with the article and the PR.

</comment><comment><USER5> Well written article.</comment>


Why I Love Working Out - <AUTHOR> http://www.zacharyburt.com/2011/01/why-i-love-working-out/ <comment><USER3> Actually, I can honestly say that I love working out. It helps regulate my sleep and moods, a lot of my workouts are focused around skills like martial arts, so I'm learning new things while I do it, and to be quite honest, this xkcd says it all:

<http://xkcd.com/189/>

I didn't get into working out until I started treating it like the geek activity it always wanted to be. Biology, anatomy, physics, math, it's all there.

I always wonder how high school would have been different if Phys Ed. had been as challenging of a class intellectually as any other science.

<comment><USER4> Incidentally, the startup my partner and I are working on is very much inspired by the same notion found in this XKCD comic. We're entering private beta in two weeks so if you're interested, shoot me an email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Man I love working out. Actually, I don't. Anyone who tells you that working out is awesome is probably trying to sell you something. Most of the time I spend in the gym is suffering and generally unpleasant_

Really? For me the unpleasantness is a fraction of the total time I spend there (pretty much all concentrated in coming out of the hole on the last set), and there's a definite pleasant component as well (any time I do squats after being away for the gym for more than a few days, I come away bouncing up and down, I suddenly feel so good)

<comment><AUTHOR> ya, really, i would NOT exercise if it weren't for the endorphin, metabolic & aesthetic benefits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _Man I love working out. Actually, I don't. Anyone who tells you that > working out is awesome is probably trying to sell you something._

The author lost me at the second sentence. I love working out and I'm not trying to sell anybody anything. Pushing myself is exhilarating! The human body is built for activity, not sitting on its ass 12 hours a day.

<comment><USER7> The whole post moved in a different direction, with "working out" being a metaphor for accomplishing other things. Take a chill pill...

<comment><USER6> I didn't get to the rest of the post. The author lost me at the beginning. No chill pill needed, the internet provided me plenty of other reading options while eating my lunch ^_^

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Since RunKeeper discounted it's Pro version (it's free for all of January - <USER2> am not affiliated, I promise) a lot of us at work have started competing against each other. I used to run a bit, and it's given me the motivation to start up again. Colleagues who have never ventured off a treadmill are giving it a go. Who can run further? Who can run quicker? Personal bests!

This is my first real notable encounter of peer and game theory, and it's having great results. I can honestly say that I now enjoy working out, thinking about working out, and strangely, analysing my workouts.

</comment><comment><USER9> Read his post again, and pretend he's talking about unit testing instead of working out.

The emotional and psychological kick I get from running is in some ways very similar to the feelings I get from writing good unit tests. Everything is under control. I can do anything. Life feels good.

And then I get shin splints or find a heap of spaghetti. :)

</comment><comment><USER10> Maybe the author should try something else than going to the gym. I do bouldering and besides being tons of fun, it has improved how my body looks immensely.

</comment><comment><USER11> Man, working out is awesome. I used to do two hours of weight lifting every day, but eventually stopped due to monetary reasons connected with protein powders and gym membership fees.

These days I have a short 15-ish minute routine every morning and do two hours of boxing thrice a week. It's painful and sometimes horrible, but my god it is awesome!

Sure wish my sexy would come out of all this flab though, but that would require too much care with diet.

<comment><USER12> hey i was thinking about taking up boxing as a sport. i am essentially waiting for my gear [gloves] to arrive. i have access to a punching bag / speed ball.

would you recommend a DIY approach to learning the basics, or is it essential to learn it from someone who already knows it ?

thanks.

<comment><USER11> I've been doing it with a guy who knows his stuff for over a year and I still can't do a lot of things perfectly. Not to mention all the whacky combinations he comes up with.

It's pretty essential you do it with someone who can coach you, at least in the beginning otherwise you'll be doing more harm than good imho.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am a cyclist and it is all about suffering. Sports or workouts where I don't suffer just seem kind of boring now. v02 for life. :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Does anyone know of a forum like Hacker News except for business? Where successful people hang out and post? I'm happy to pay a monthly "not successful, noob" tax...

<comment><USER7> Business people don't understand forums and are not good with computer. :)

But seriously, business people spend a lot more time talking to people in real-life instead of communicating online. They probably tend to be extroverts, and the silent-light-box method of communicating is just not for them. I really don't think you're going to find anything of decent quality. At best, you're going to find a "successful introverted businessman" forum... which would actually be really interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> dude, get real.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook will let users livestream self-harm, leaked documents show - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/may/21/facebook-users-livestream-self-harm-leaked-documents <comment><USER2> The headline makes it sound so sinister and profit seeking!

TFA actually says that the actions that Facebook's strategy is based on consultations with organizations who prevent suicide for a living.

<comment><USER3> If anything, what's alarming about this more than anything is that Facebook are now becoming the first responder. The concern is what happens when people start to trust that Facebook will do good in situations like this and then fail to do so for some reason or other.

<comment><USER4> You're speaking like "Facebook" is its own entity. The first responders will be the friends of the victim who clicked on their video feed. How could the software itself understand what is and isn't self harm?

<comment><USER3> I'm speaking like "Facebook" as an organisation.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you struggle with getting more customers? - <AUTHOR>

I'm not looking for advice or tactics and tips. There's plenty of that online and more than enough people telling me what to do. Sometimes, it just doesn't work, no matter how awesome your advice is. Getting customers is hard.
Do you or have you struggled with this? I figured all the founders on here would relate and thought it'd be helpful to have a thread where people can just share their struggles instead of being bombarded with all sorts of advice. I'll start:
I started my own online business with much hoopla and announced it to everyone. Big mistake. Now that I'm struggling to get customers, everyone is coming out of the woodwork to tell me what to do and telling me not to quit. Ironically, their support now makes me feel like more of a failure. If I stop now, it's like I'm letting everyone down. If I don't, I may just be digging a deeper hole. I feel like I've tried everything, I invested my time and money, but it's just not working out.
TL;DR - Instead of asking for advice on how to get customers (there's plenty of that elsewhere), join this thread to share and vent about how difficult it is to actually find new customers. <comment><USER2> We tried to get feedback prior to release. We put up a website and tried to get some postgres people to engauge. We were lucky, when no one was interested we were able to pull down the website and no one was harmed.

We use our product internally for a few customers so no harm done that no one was interested but, to be honest, it stung a bit.

I think it probably would be easier to build for consumers or businesses. Our product was a developer tool so we knew our chances were slim. We actually got only two email addresses and when we tried to reply to one we never heard back. A couple days later we pulled the site and went back to the drawing board.

We now have a plan to go B2B with a product and we have a first client so we're moving forward. I thought it would be tough to get the team to change focus but its actually been energizing.

I was also afraid we'd have more than one idea with the team split as to what to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> It sounds like you knew your chances were slim but it still stung a bit? Why? I'd think if you braced yourself for that it wouldn't be as painful.

That's awesome that you were able to get the team to move forward and focus on the new product. Is there any fear or struggle with getting customers for that one?

<comment><USER2> Its one thing for me to fail, its completely another thing for my two sons to not get the recognition our customers and I know they deserve.

RE: getting customers for the next product. Again, we're building for a specific client so the bills will be paid. If it fails to generate interest to people beyond that we'll live. But we have a lot less anxiety over that since a straight B2B product is a lot easier crowd to sell to than your peers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Getting customers directly is actually not the problem. The usual marketing and growth hacking tools worked quite well. Our problem is getting partners that refer customers. I don't mean affiliate partners but real partners that include our service into their service as a complement product. Potential partners happily include Google Maps and phone call back forms but shy away from using our service, even though it would make them money and could be really useful for their customers. The opportunities are there. We've spoken to a couple of promising partners but they a dragging their feet. If they would at least provide some feedback as to why they balk at using our service, that would be great. But that is apparently too much to ask for.

</comment><comment><USER4> I struggle with it too. Sometimes there's loads of work then sometimes none. There's plans to start that never materialise. They always think you're too expensive. And they're always SO persnickety with their damn PSD layouts!

<comment><AUTHOR> I've heard the "you're too expensive" too many times. How do you handle that? It's actually made me second guess myself and my rates in the past.

<comment><USER2> I refuse to talk cost until they have a way to judge value. For example, i might turn a spreadsheet into a program. It won't have everything but they'll be able to see something. Then I can say, OK, this is what I did, this is working, this isn't, and it took me X hours. Now I can tell them my rate and they can judge value. I've never failed to get a client once I was able to get them to that point.</comment></comment></comment>


The Four Painters: A Video Work Created with Deep Learning - <AUTHOR> http://odoruinu.net/blog/2015/12/23/the-four-painters-a-video-work-created-with-deep-learning/ <comment><USER2> I produced something similar to this shortly after the release of [https://github.com/karpathy/char-rnn](https://github.com/karpathy/char-rnn):

[http://i.imgur.com/rb0GJvQ.gifv](http://i.imgur.com/rb0GJvQ.gifv)

Basically, you create a video, dump the video's frames with ffmpeg, run each frame through the RNN, and stitch them back together. It took me several hours to produce just ten seconds of video. Unfortunately, unless you have a Titan X GPU the max size of each image is quite small (certainly less than 1080p), which may be why the frames in this video are split into four quadrants.

<comment><USER3> Nice result! About 5 years ago, I did the same technique of frame dump->process->join but with a custom algorithm instead of a NN for the process stage. A more manual effort to tweak the filter, but it was fun and came out nice.

I got a new GPU recently and have been doing mostly text RNN these days, but it's fun to look back on this occasionally:

[http://binarymax.com/reality_remix.html](http://binarymax.com/reality_remix.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Something about the current deep learning hype reminds me of fractals and cellular automata back in the day.

They're all very important and useful scientific advances that can be used to produce visuals that seem to automatically create something strikingly natural. This seems to make people kind of overreach about exactly how much of nature can be represented by this one method alone.

The world is probably not a fractal, the universe is probably not a cellular automaton, and the mind is probably not a "deep learning system" either (of the specific type currently implied by the term).

<comment><USER5> Deep learning shines when there is a lot of data and computation power. A lot of important problems don't have that much data and there are much better algorithms right now for those problems [1]. Deep learning is definitely faddish though it has its uses.

[1] [http://www.sciencemag.org/content/350/6266/1332.full.pdf](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/350/6266/1332.full.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The trouble with neural networks is that they're just good enough to keep us from continuing to question our assumptions about human intelligence.

A thousand years ago, even Ptolemy's geocentric model was good enough. After all, it offered an effective means for simulating and predicting planet movement and solar eclipses. But it was complex. It took men of "great learning" to understand the solar system according to Ptolemy's model --something that most current grade schoolers understand intuitively.

In all likelihood, concepts like string theory and neural networks are comparable traps for us today. This is not a pleasant thought. So we're not motivated to search for better alternatives until the current model evidences an insurmountable flaw.

I'm not saying that string theory or the neural network approach is wrong. Obviously it's not. Just remember that Ptolemy's model wasn't wrong either, at least with regard to the moon.

<comment><USER7> > Just remember that Ptolemy's model wasn't wrong either, at least with regard > to the moon.

Yes, it was, even with regard to the moon. Though, since the Earth-Moon barycenter is within the Earth, it may have managed to be _tolerably wrong_ with regard to the Earth-Moon system. But, still wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am making jellyfish, lily pads, whales and flowers via Fractal Flame software. All expressionistic and/or impressionistic. [samples: [https://twitter.com/SCAQTony/media](https://twitter.com/SCAQTony/media) ]

However, there is something about digital that degrades the art by allowing it to be massed produced. One print is equal to another and therefore it almost becomes trash. Example: Imagine an original Mickey Mouse drawing versus a rendering of Woody and Buzz from Toy Story?

<comment><USER9> As a fractal artist myself as well, I've been ranting about this to myself lately. I've been thinking that the problem is inherent to algorithmic art in particular; I guess I can actually see some worth in renderings of e.g. Pixar characters, but maybe that's because I have kids who appreciate them, or because I've browsed Pixar art books.

What I've noticed is that in order to make fractal art that typical art gallery-types find worth their time, you have to take on a kind of Simon Cowell role and inject your own intuition or library of culturally-attuned sensation memories into the creation phase, turning it into more of an audition phase. "This one just sucks...this one is OK...this one needs a little tweak and it'd look great, kind of like a rainy summer day." In order to make your product useful to other humans, you have to typologize, sometimes really brutally, and especially moreso since your computer can just keep pumping this stuff out.

If you go the other way and shun the story, shun the critique, and say "typology is for the closed-minded," you can end up in scientism, completely free of such hyperbolic typology but lacking a compelling presentation of a set of convergences. Lacking a story, lacking any depth with which humans really identify.

No matter how much machinery goes into computing scientific results, the results are still somewhere along a normal curve, and unfortunately that's not super useful to humans. But psychologically we find extreme typologies very useful. As a group, we'd rather say "ooh, a sports car" or "oh wow, dripping ice cream!" than "oh, it's a blob that could be any number of things."

At its most vain, the typology-free approach can end up as a sort of pornography, an obsession with process to the exclusion of context, and to the deep satisfaction of barely anybody.

That's why I really get frustrated with fractal art or generative art. After a point I have to put on my designer hat, and I might as well have painted the thing from scratch anyway. Or I might as well have used the software more like an artist would use Alchemy, as a sort of imagination cue.

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

<comment><USER8> I am going straight to the public - I am also going to diversify (Catwoman panting in the works). Going to rent a gallery, have a party, get photos of people staring at a few giant Chromaluxe prints on aluminum and then set up a site. The art will feature anchoring pricing: 60'x80" limited edition Chromaluxe prints for $4,000 or a 24x36" lithograph for $35. Hoping I sell 10-posters a month of each. I wish you well.

<comment><USER9> Hey, I really appreciate you sharing that. Those seem like great ideas to me. Best of luck to you as you get that into motion!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Would be more interesting to apply this photo transformation given, as an input, not only the painting the artist produced but also a photograph of the thing the artist was trying to represent. Otherwise all you are doing is recreating the artist's visual tools, not the way the artist translates what they see into the visual palette.

But then, if you tell the algorithm that _The Scream_ is just a painting of a man on a bridge... you're not going to get a very good result.

</comment><comment><USER11> Does anyone have any idea the style of painting that he was actually doing? (In the first one)

<comment><USER12> It looks like colored paper covered with black pigment, then then black was scraped away to make the lines.

<comment><USER11> thanks.</comment></comment></comment>