The Programmer's Guide to a Sane Workweek - <AUTHOR> https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/09/16/sane-workweek/ <comment><USER2> I went to a talk once on leadership. One of the suggestions was to get your "go to hell kit" ready. That is, get enough money in the bank (whatever that means for you) so that you can walk away if things cross your personal lines, be they moral / work-life balance, whatever. It's a good thing if there's pressure to work silly hours. In my first job (recent grad) before I left the job, I'd been working 5 weekends straight (at least a Sat/Sun). Looking back, insane, now I'd be having a conversation with my manager.

Sometimes it's hard when the "norm" is to work these extra hours. Where I live now, I have worked a normal 8:45ish to 5:15ish and haven't had to stay late or work weekends in years. It can be like that, I reckon it _ought_ to be like that. If your contract says 40 hours a week, why would you work more? You're just reducing your hourly rate. Now, I don't mind putting in extra effort if needed, no worries, but if it's the culture that it's just long hours, well that's crazy.

<comment><USER3> > You're just reducing your hourly rate.

This is how I've always explained to people who constantly work overtime in salaried positions where they don't actually get paid for that overtime.

You can at look at it one of 2 ways.

1\. Your billable self stopped at the 8-hour mark on a given weekday and every hour after that, including weekends, you're just giving away free labor to the company. Just think about that every time you're working overtime, every minute after 8-hours you're freely giving away to the company. This is your personal free time.

2\. Or, like patrickdavey said, you dilute your hourly worth. Say you're a dev who makes $90K, that's roughly $43.xx/hr for a 40 hour work week. But if you're actually working 50hr work weeks you're now worth $34.xx, and so on. The company just saved money on you (or they are making money off you).

<comment><USER4> Do you also account for the fact that you are way more likely to be promoted if you work overtime?

<comment><USER5> Promotions are a myth told to people to get them to work harder, aren't they? They're quite rare and usually come with moderate increments. Whereas the best way to increase your salary is to move jobs. Salary is only vaguely linked to job title.

(I was once promoted _en passant_ , when my first employer wished to inflate the number of Senior Developers assigned to a consulting proposal...)

<comment><USER6> I've never seen _en passant_ used outside of chess before. It makes sense though, so long as he didn't capture you afterward.

<comment><USER7> What's even better is that he did in a reply to a comment by _ThePawnBreak_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't know what's the perfect amount of work every week, but I'm sure anything > 40h is wrong, and you should add commute time if more than 30min/day, otherwise it's a fake figure. In 36-40h/week it's possible to do a lot of things. If you can't often is not because of the time, but because the same people wanting you to work more vaporize your time with meetings, conference calls, emails, phone calls, at a rate that makes it impossible for you to work. Or your coworkers are tempesting you with questions. Or your boss is switching your goal every day not allowing you to produce properly. Or you lack discipline to sit down and work instead of surfing random websites. Anyway whatever the problem is, the solution is NEVER to work more than 40h. Working more can just lead to a shitty life, depression, burn-out, and so forth.

<comment><USER9> I wouldn't necessarily draw the line there. It always depends on your situation. If you don't have a family, working 7.30am-5.30pm (my approx working hours) 5 days per week still allows you to have enough time to spend with friends and for side projects.

If your really dedicated to your project and have no family waiting at home, why should you always leave after 8 hours? Sitting in front of the TV at home isn't necessarily better than an interesting project at work. Will not always be the case, so it's (in my opinion) completely normal to work longer during some months of the year and shorter during others.

For me, flexibility is clearly more importan than working hours. It's great to have a workplace where you can go for a long lunch once in a while or a doctor's appointment without anyone raising questions. It's about being able to make plans. If I know that I can go out for Dinner next Wed on 5pm then it's no problem to work longer on other days. Not being able to plan this sucks, no matter how much you actually work.

But I agree that if the work environment is unproductive, working more is definitely not the solution.

<comment><USER10> I hope you negotiated an appropriate salary for the extra 25% a week you're apparently working as opposed to the standard 40 hours a week.

There are jobs with flexibility that don't require that amount of time.

<comment><USER9> No, I didn't negotiate a 25% bonus as I didn't choose the job based on the salary. Of course I need a decent salary, but I took the job because I like what I'm doing here and I'm fascinated by the work. Much of what I do now during working hours was what I did before on side projects. It's fun for me to work on it and the employer gives me flexibility to test my ideas. So both parties benefit from this arrangement.

I wouldn't trade my job against a better paying job with strict 40h/week if I don't like it as much. And I wouldn't want an employer where every working day is strictly 9-5, no matter what project you're on or how the workload is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One red flag is this: does a company zealously track every hour of vacation time but not even give you a _place_ to log overtime? These two things should be treated with equal importance because they are fundamentally the same measurement. If they expect you to take precisely 2 weeks of vacation a year then be sure to reward them by doing precisely 8 hours of work each day. If they have leniency in vacation, reward them with some leniency in when you are willing to handle emergency situations.

<comment><USER12> or four weeks' vacation in a jurisdiction with humane labour practices

<comment><USER13> I agree that 28 days is reasonable while 14 isn't really.

But if we start calling 14 "inhumane", then we are in danger of losing our grip on what what inhumanity is. Which is to lose our grip on our moral compass.

<comment><USER14> "inhumane relative to the developed world", then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think the easiest and most overlooked piece of advice revolves around cell phones.

When you start a new job, under no circumstance should you give them your personal cell phone number.

Tell them it's inappropriate, tell them it could turn into a conflict of interest, tell them you don't have a cell (true for me), tell them you can't afford a cell, tell them you can't afford roaming, tell them you only have data, not a number, tell them anything you have to so you don't give them your personal cell number. Don't ever, ever let them install anything on your phone either, "BYOD" style.

Same applies for your home number, if you have one, and your personal email address. Setup a different email and google voice number for the purposes of interviewing, etc. Once you have a job, don't respond to it "real time".

Now, if they want you to have a work cell, they can provide and pay for it, and _before_ you put a hand on it, you make them very, very clearly document under what circumstances and times you are expected to answer that phone, and what compensation you get for doing so. If they won't provide extra compensation, you make it very clear your home commitments (kids, sick family, make something up) are your priority, and you won't be taking that cell home with you. Leave it in your desk drawer at work, turn it on at 8:30am and turn it off at 5pm and leave it there.

If your employer won't accept that, find another one. Life is too short.

</comment><comment><USER15> _Finally, you 'll need to have the self-confidence or stubbornness to choose and stick to a path that most people don't take._

You don't need self-confidence or stubbornness, just commitment to your principles...

I have _never_ worked more than 40 hours per week for anyone else. Ever. I arrive at 8. I leave at 5. I don't work from home.

Except for emergencies.

My definition of emergency: If someone is dying or their production software isn't working. That's it. Anything else, I'll be in all day tomorrow and will be happy to talk about it then.

All you really need to do is reach an understanding with your manager about your boundaries and the definition of "emergency" at the beginning.

If they want to pay 40 hours for more than 40 hours of work or have a different definition of emergency, they I'll work somewhere else.

It's really that simple. I've been doing this for almost 40 years and have never had a single complaint about it.

And I'm not sure which "most people" OP knows, but "most people" I know have a philosophy similar to mine. We'll do whatever it takes to get the job done, but we won't be suckers.

OP, do you really need a whole book for this?

<comment><USER16> As a manager: If your code blows up in production on a Saturday afternoon, and you don't answer email/skype/phone, you've effectively left me in the shit. I know thats my job, and I will deal with it and survive, but your future work is going to be very heavily scrutinized - borderline micromanaged - until I trust you again

But the flipside, if your code blows up in production on a Saturday, and you spend four hours of a weekend fixing it, I'll say take 6 hours off during the week to compensate. I'd say take a day off, but our HR system will complain.

Aside from that, I expect 40 hours of "quality" braintime from you, and I don't really care where or when those hours occur, as long as you're collaborating with the team when they need you.

<comment><USER17> Others are recording the need for a real on-call rotation, so I'll just jump into this:

>Aside from that, I expect 40 hours of "quality" braintime from you, and I don't really care where or when those hours occur, as long as you're collaborating with the team when they need you.

There is no way you are getting 40 hours of "quality brain time" from anyone. If you believe you are, you don't know what "quality brain time" is.

Assign the amount of work you feel is reasonable. Let the worker do the work. If the work gets done, it doesn't matter how much time it took. Knowledge workers sell their knowledge to help you accomplish a designated task, not their time.

How much work really gets done in a 40-hour work week? Anyone who has been in any office environment knows that probably at least 50% of that time is _always_ just farting around trying to rack up butt-in-chair time. Consider also that promotions and political favors are usually withheld from people who do the "bare minimum" of 40 hours and that butt-in-chair time comprises 95% of an external entity's (like, say, your boss's boss) assessment of job performance, and the time constraints can become quite demanding.

We should do away with the Industrial-era culture of minutely managing hours (when time working was directly correlated to the quantity of products a company could assemble, and thus counting time allowed the company to reasonably reliably assign a portion of the revenue to its employees) and embrace the Information-era mandate of small, irregular work units moving the majority of the product.

We should accommodate workers such that they can cultivate a fruitful and creative mental state for use in employment when inspiration and flow is most likely to strike (which, for coders, is usually in the middle of the night when there is a solid block of 5-6 hours with 0 interruptions), instead of forcing our supposedly-revered knowledge workers into deadened, drooling blobs stuck to their chairs for 55 hours a week because they're vying for a promotion next year.

It's a major pet peeve to see someone treating knowledge workers like assembly linemen. More butt-in-chair time != more productivity, and in fact, once a certain threshold is reached (probably ~20 hours), it becomes counterproductive.

<comment><USER18> Before I dive into my comment, let me just state that I agree with you on the impossibility of delivering 40 hours of "quality brain time" and on the stupidity of measuring productivity in "butt-in-chair hours".

That said, I always get worried whenever someone starts advocating for getting rid of 40-hour work week without a very clear idea of how to replace it in concrete terms. See, maybe I'm cynical, but it seems to me that a lot of people forget that the whole concept of 40-hour work week comes from a compromise between the workers and the employers: it's supposed to mean you can be expected to work _no more than_ 40 hours a week. Naturally, the employer will expect you to work no less, otherwise they're "not getting their money's worth".

Whether we like it or not, there is a power imbalance between workers and employers and it's usually in favor of employers. I don't want to touch sensitive topics of how that imbalance might be redressed, but as long as the imbalance is there, having a fixed number of hours in a work week -- even if that's only nominal -- is still better than getting rid of that and making workers vulnerable to having their historically hard-earned rights eroded or downright stripped away.

If that sounds too jaded and bitter, consider the "unlimited" vacation policy. At best, it means you'll still take roughly the same time off as the rest of the team. At worst, everyone ends up taking less vacation time than before and the company profits because they don't have the financial liability of unused vacations anymore.

<comment><USER14> > _Whether we like it or not, there is a power imbalance between workers and > employers and it 's usually in favor of employers._

I wanted to chime in and mention this balance varies greatly by country. I've worked in Canada, Australia, USA for years, so has my brother.

I personally feel in Australia the balance is clearly in favor of the employee, in Canada it's over to the Employer and in the USA it's shockingly (scarily) in favor of the Employer.

After 7 years in the USA and Canada my brother went back to Australia. One month in I asked him what the most shocking thing was - what do you think he said? Going from years of -30C winter to +40C summer? Driving on the wrong side of the road? food? accents? Nope.

In Australia, you are a valued person at work, rather than a slave. I think that says a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Here's the somewhat passive aggressive approach.

1\. Make sure you either arrive at work before your boss each day, or leave after your boss each day, or at least the large majority of days.

2\. A couple times a week answer an email or two during the evening or weekend, preferably ones your boss will see. This doesn't have to take very much time. Don't force it, make sure they are emails that you are actually interested in and have a good response to.

3\. Work smart and hard when you are working, be above average on your team despite probably spending less time in the office.

4\. Work longer hours than you normally do when it's something really fun and you don't have much going on at home anyway. That situation does arise from time to time. Make sure, in a very natural way, that your boss notices when you do this, probably by telling him/her how fun it was.

5\. When you have to duck out for an hour or two for the dentist or whatever, don't tell your boss unless you absolutely have to (e.g., you have to miss a meeting with him/her). You are an adult, he/she doesn't need to know where you are at all times. You don't ask permission to go to the bathroom, do you? In short, don't emphasize to your boss, "I'm not going to be working for the next little while" if you don't have to.

6\. Keep _all_ commitments that you make to be at work at a certain time. Try not to make very many of those commitments. Instead commit to getting work done, not just being somewhere.

If you are doing all that, you can work less than 40 hours most weeks and nobody will care.

</comment><comment><USER20> The "paths to a saner week" seem pretty simplistic and unrealistic. Want fewer hours? Work fewer hours! Wow, you don't say?! That simple, huh? The quote from the article is "you always have the option of unilaterally normalizing your hours." Oh reeeeally?

Don't like your commute? Don't commute so much. Just snap your fingers and afford to live closer to work! Got it.

Want a shorter work week? Just "negotiate" (word mentioned 9 times in the story). Oh, silly me, I was forgetting all of that extra power most people have in the employee/employer relationship!

Any advice for those of us living in the real world?

<comment><USER21> If your employer expects constant overtime from you, start looking. When you have an offer from a sane place in hand, quit your current job. On the way out, _tell them why_. It might help the others who are still there.

In a world that complains about a shortage of programmers, you have more leverage than you may think.

<comment><USER17> There is risk involved in doing that. I've seen a lot of people come back to their former employer after trying out a new place and not having it work out. If you give a real accounting of your opinions in an exit interview, that escape hatch from the new gig would probably close.

The amount of leverage you have is heavily dependent on the perception of your bosses. If your bosses know how rare a good programmer is and truly do value you, then you shouldn't have these problems anyway, and I'm sure they'd rectify them ASAP if you brought them up. Many of us don't work for such enlightened people, though.

<comment><USER22> Everything worth doing involves some risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think it also depends on the industry and way you are paid. If you are getting paid $100k doing simple web work, CRUD database stuff, JEE plumbing type where, wiring together libraries with Spring, etc. then you are probably going to complain about working more hours.

If you are getting paid $250k or $300k doing something highly interesting that comes with tight deadlines like finance or trading, then you are going to push yourself a lot harder.

And especially if much of your pay is bonus-based, you will definitely push harder. For example, working in the front-office of a trading company where even developers are getting paid mostly in bonus it is very common to put in more than 60 hours a week. And people love it because the work it very exciting.

One of the most important questions is do you love what you do. I love working in front-office in finance, and i'll gladly put in plenty of hours, especially since getting the promotion to director or principal carries a huge pay increase.

I don't work for my current salary, I work for the next one. I don't do any side projects because getting that next strategy or gateway up and running is worth more than any project I could work on. My job is my side project. And I really like it that way.

Instead of figuring out to only work so many hours, why not try to figure out how to find jobs that excite you more. Find that field you really love and that pays you well or find that startup where you can really see yourself making a huge contribution.

<comment><USER24> Your point about comp is really important. In roles where I felt I was not paid enough, and the pay was not life changing to begin with, I definitely valued my work/life balance more. In roles where significant changes in quality of life came from the job or comp, I pushed myself harder if it materially improved my outcomes.

That said, if your goals are financial independence, everyone needs to do a real reality check as to whether their current job (or even career path if you are junior) will ever let you reach that with your target lifestyle. I know people who love what they do, but the reality is I can't see how they could ever retire with what they earn even with a relatively frugal lifestyle.

On the flip side, I have an ibanker relative who would be on track for financial independence in his early thirties if only he didn't live an ibanker lifestyle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I read up to the part where he said he worked at google, then shut my computer down and jumped out of a window.

<comment><USER26> Could you explain?

<comment><USER27> I've not worked at Google, but my guess is that:

1) Google is able to be flexible about many things that other companies are not

2) If you work at Google, you have many job opportunities open to you that others might not. So just leaving and finding or creating a job where you can work fewer hours is much easier than someone working in a lower-end position for a small company in a market with few opportunities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Just put in my two week's notice yesterday. I've been putting in a stupid amount of hours (80+) while my colleagues in other departments barely hit the 40 hour mark. This is a good omen.

<comment><USER29> Was that down to yourself or your employer ?

Sometimes we are our own worst enemy.

<comment><USER30> Does it really matter? Since he put in his notice, I don't think he'd have worked 80 hour weeks if he didn't feel he _had_ to. Either way, he feels pressured to do it and he is now out from under that pressure.

<comment><USER29> It does matter - we can fix self inflicted wounds a little easier than fix the culture of an organisation.

<comment><USER28> A little of both, actually. There was never a requirement to work more than 40 hours. In fact, last Friday I talked about how I'd probably work through the weekend to make the deadlines they set for the beginning of this week. They took pity on me and said I shouldn't even be checking my email over the weekend. I reluctantly agreed, and didn't work on the projects. But, guess who everyone was angry with come early this week for not having the deliverables to the clients?

<comment><USER29> Sometimes things need to fail to improve...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Lots of work isn't always bad, but we move in the direction of where we spend our time. First decide, where do I want to be in 1,3,5 years? Map your time usage (including work & leisure), determine how much truly free-time you have left and split it into 9. Spend 5/9 of free-time positioning for where you want to be in 1 year, 3/9 positioning for where you want to be in 3 years, and 1/9 positioning for where you want to be in 5 years. If your 1,3 & 5 year goals relate to climbing ladder at company you're in now, then your work weeks may be many hours (Jeffrey Immelt of GE for example), if your goal is successful completion of a project your managing due in 1 year, so you can move to another company in 3 years and then do whatever after that, your workweeks this year will be standard hours + 5/9 of your free time. The further the goal, the less time you devote today, but if you devote no time, the goal won't ever happen. This is the cost of leadership.

</comment><comment><USER32> Where I live IT workers are not fairly valued, the average one can charge and still get contracts is around USD $30/hr. As such, reducing working hours will make it really difficult to pay bills (forget about early retirement). So, instead of working less I work on developing products that bring in passive income. These products are not the next ubers, just small B2B apps that serve local/niche markets. I started this strategy a couple of years ago and now half my income comes from _selling my time_ while the other half comes from selling saas. Furthermore, time is limited so income from selling dev hours can only increase if rates increase or if extra hands are hired. Selling saas does not have this growth restriction.

<comment><USER24> Can you share some examples of these projects?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I think this really boils down to self regulation. In some/most cases no one is forcing you to work 50+ hours a week.

I remember a sign a coworker used to have in his office. The gist is - are you happy? If so, keep doing what you're doing, if not, change something.

</comment><comment><USER34> I can't stress how important it is to cut commuting out of your life. I know many people who commute an hour each way, each day. Two hours per day. ~500 hours per year. Thats 20 to 30 days of your life each year wasted commuting, depending on whether or not you just count waking hours. And not only are you not making money those hours, you are spending it - on gas, insurance, the life of your vehicle, etc.

<comment><USER24> Last year I moved from 1.2 miles away from work with a ~10 min. door-to-door commute whether I biked or drove, to roughly a 16 mile 30-45 min. commute each way (depending on traffic) in order to buy a house, get more space, etc.

I desperately wish I had my old commute back, but am making the sacrifice for the time being and enjoying the gorgeous drive home on 280 as the sun sets while listening to some relaxing music or podcasts.

That said, the car maintenance costs have gone up, gas has gone way up, and my free time has gone down. Those are all real costs. I did the math on them before the move, but the real cumulative impact of the reduced free time was something that didn't really hit me until I was doing it.

If only non-engineering jobs had as much flexibility with remote work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The problem is never more working hours. Nobody minds working extra hours as long as they are paid for it.

The problem really is companies expecting people to do far more then anything they are ready to pay for. Sometime its even more worse when a few people have to make up for other people, and then watch the lazy group get rewarded better for political reasons.

The real issue is resentment not extra working hours.

<comment><USER36> > Nobody minds working extra hours as long as they are paid for it.

"As long as they are paid for it" may already be fairyland. A usual clause in employment contracts for developers in Germany goes like "The salary is X per month. Overtime is satisfied by this."

<comment><USER37> Don't larger companies in Germany usually do flex-time (Gleitzeit) for non- management employees?

So, my boss can require that I work an extra 10 hours this week, but I need to get it back at some point, right?

<comment><USER38> I know it as "Zeitausgleich". You don't get paid overtime but you accumulate time off. Pretty much like getting additional vacation days. And to be honest, I kind of like this system. I'm happy to work >40h every now and then, but I won't work >40h on average.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> What do people consider an average work week?

I do 37.5hrs religiously and have never had a problem. A good fraction of developers at head office do 30-32hrs (4 days/wk).

<comment><USER37> I consider 40-ish to be "normal" but I don't always organize my time that way, it's just some ingrained cultural thing because I'm from the USA.

When I feel like I'm working much less than 40, I check my productivity. If my productivity feels good I stop worrying; if not then I try to work more. (I've been in the game long enough to have a pretty good sense of this.)

When I feel like I'm working much more than 40, I worry about my time- management and try to correct it.

I would find it completely reasonable for someone else to do the same reckoning with 30 instead of 40 hours, as long as they get shit done.

On the occasions when I've found myself stuck in crazy ruts, like six months at 80 hours per week, in hindsight it's always been because I followed some wrong lead -- a workaholic boss, an arbitrary deadline -- that I didn't actually have to follow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> If your biggest concern with work is how many hours you are doing, then you have bigger problems.

</comment><comment><USER37> Does it count as irony that the only hope for a sane work week is coding _with_ rules?

</comment><comment><USER23> Let me come in with a contradictory opinion especially on the overtime.

You don't work for your current salary, you work for your next one. If you are one of those 9 to 5 ers, don't complain when the guy working 60 hours and more gets that promotion over you.

The higher up the ladder you go, the more that will be required of you. Also, startups or high paying jobs will require more of you since you will get getting more in return for better performance.

It is a trade off, and as you get older your priorities change. But there is a trade off to be made. 60 hours is the norm in my field, and often I'll put out more (including the random 2am call), and sometimes much more.

<comment><USER23> Why am I getting down voted for this?

<comment><USER41> While I didn't down vote, I would say: because you're wrong.

You seem to suffer from the delusion that number of hours a person works is what matters. Most people aren't productive above 40 hours a week, any high number of hours and you're just wasting time.

Then there's the fact that working 60+ hours of week simply isn't health, and you're advocating that the thing you need to do to advance in the world is to trade in health for promotions, and increased salary.

If a job requires a person to work 60+ hours per week, then may it should be two jobs, not one. So now you're not just encouraging people so scarifies health, family and friend for you job, you're basically under biding a another person by doing their work for free.

Edit: May not wrong, but the advocate for a work environment that should be illegal. In fact it is illegal where I live.

<comment><USER23> There are highly competitive fields where this is the reality. Those also tend to pay very well and include large bonuses. And some of us like working in those fields. We don't just work on web projects or droid apps.

<comment><USER41> That's hardly the point. The point is that if not regulated, at a level where the average person can keep up, be healthy and have a life outside work, then some employers will push and exploit people.

Also employees shouldn't be rewarded for self destructive behaviour. Sadly many companies can't tell the self destructive from the people who just happen to enjoy what they do. And some of the self destructive actually do love their job.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


IBM introduces "Pointing Stick" (TrackPoint) (1990) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4Ss6F1qIHU <comment><USER2> Noice find. TBH, on my T480, I only use the trackpad because the pstick is a smallish, delta-only pointing device that takes too long for me... it's too much like moving a cursor around with a joystick for my taste. YMMV and there are different cursor-moving religions.

</comment><comment><USER3> Otherwise known by its NSFW name, the 'clitmouse'.</comment>


Project Euler - <AUTHOR> http://projecteuler.net/

<comment><USER2> Fantastic resource, and mentioned here many, many times. Here are some previous submissions:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1262968>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=203317>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=86365>

You can find many, many references with this search:

<http://searchyc.com/projecteuler?sort=by_date></comment>


Summary of the 2008 GitTogether - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/blog/196-gittogether-2008

<comment><USER2> "four core Git developers trying to figure out how to use git send-email for 10 minutes"

Heh, that sounds about right.</comment>


Did Brendan Eich (@brendaneich) close down his Twitter? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/brendaneich/ <comment><USER2> Looks to me like it's gone now. Still in Google cache, but now gone on Twitter.</comment>


Programming in Idris: a tutorial - <AUTHOR> http://eb.host.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/writings/idris-tutorial.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> From the website ([http://www.idris-lang.org/](http://www.idris-lang.org/)):

> Idris is a general purpose pure functional programming language with > dependent types. Dependent types allow types to be predicated on values, > meaning that some aspects of a program's behaviour can be specified > precisely in the type. It is compiled, with eager evaluation.</comment>


Cloudflare cache issue breaks a lot of website - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/Cloudflare/status/1108172054996676610 <comment><USER2> Now my friend is swearing at that. He had to work that night. :D To understand the problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> Any more notes about this? I couldn't find much info about it.

<comment><USER4> Yeah. Seems like quite a claim without and details.

<comment><USER3> FWIW Cloudflare is fairly forthcoming so I'd expect something. "Cache is broken!" sounds like a fairly generic claim...

<comment><USER5> If someone has a clue what the OP was talking about I'd be happy to hear about it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


.co TLD takes over default search on GoDaddy  - <AUTHOR> http://domainnamewire.com/2010/11/13/godaddy-replaces-com-with-co-now-default-choice/

<comment><USER2> this is a dick move, people will search for domains, see that an awesome domain is available...then buy it before realizing that they bought the crappy .co version

<comment><USER3> This is straight from GoDaddy's playbook. I lost all respect for that company years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hope they get chargeback'ed to death.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a terrible idea. Americans have been socialized to add ".com" to everything for the past fifteen years; consumers will never remember to drop the "m".

<comment><USER6> While I do like your last name, I have a hard time believing that "it's had an m for 15 years" is really the best argument against .co.

For example, does a .co domain inherently carry any security or SEO problem?

<comment><USER5> You missed the important part of my point, the part that came before the "15 years" part. If your business model involves teaching the whole world how to spell, you're doomed from the start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Underneath the box it says "New .COMs only $11.99* per year". most people will see this and not notice the missing "m" until they realize they've been charged $30 for a less valuable domain. Nice.

</comment><comment><USER8> Isn't .co to similar to .com? If I'm going to use something outside of .com/net/org, I prefer to go with .me.

<comment><USER9> Similar to .com? Not really.

.co is the TLD for Columbia.

<comment><USER10> It's _Colombia_. Sorry for the nitpicking, but it's a common misspelling.

<comment><USER9> Either don't nitpick, or don't apologize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm having a hard time evaluating this. Is there a member who can accurately explain the real differences in value between owning a .com and .co domain?

For example, I imagine that .com just being the socialized norm does not come close to telling the whole story. Thanks.

<comment><USER2> a) .com is where all users go by default. "Go check out ycombinator" means to you that it's a .com

b) .com has a ton more value for search engines...once again the same idea...if you have a .com, then you are the real business...if you have the .co you are just a pale imitation

c) .com has a ton more monetary value, creditcards.com might sell for 20 million, creditcards.net, might sell for 20K

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> wonder how they rank compared to .com's.</comment>


Show HN: Building a open Threat Intel page - pure-xx http://www.threat-intel.xyz/ <comment> pure-xx Hello,

longtime reader here.

For the last month I am trying to build an inventory for open and free threat intelligence sources / feeds. I notice a commercialization of threat intel, so I think it is important for the community to know what options they have.

It is still a very basic version. So would love to get your professional feedback.

Thank you!</comment>


Justin Bieber Just Shot My Startup in the Face - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/mobile-culture/c222beffdc59

<comment><USER2> Go create something that enriches society, rather then whining when someone steals your obvious app that exploits humanity's most despicable traits.

It's poetic justice that one of our most vile, vapid celebrities has stolen your vile, vapid idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> brb curing cancer

...

Damn, didn't work. Back to doing what I know.

Seriously though, like I said the app makes people happy.

<comment><USER2> You say it as a joke but I've been interviewing web and software developers for the past couple days to develop new tools to interact with data generated by a method our group has developed that combines next generation RNA sequencing with fluorescent in situ hybridization. Cancer biology is an obvious application. So yes, developers can help cure cancer. They don't understand the biology - that's my job. But I, and many other scientists, don't understand software/web development, so we rely on others to create the tools that enable our work. Not only are these efforts resistant to others coming in and stealing the idea, they can enrich the developers (financially), and they enrich society.

Sorry for being so nasty above, but there's a lot of wasted talent in silicon valley developing technology that allows teenagers to post dick pics while still spouting pious claims of social benefit. The arguments resemble the business plans... we do good like we make money, because people use us, right?</comment></comment></comment>


CopperheadOS has imploded - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/DanielMicay/status/1006299769214562305 <comment><USER2> Context from when this showed up last week: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17239259](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17239259)

The CEO, _jayy, posted a number of comments, then deleted all but one. The deleted comments were preserved by yegortimoshenko. Links: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17241694](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17241694)

<comment><USER3> There's even more context about how this CEO managed the business in a reddit thread in response to those tweets as well, which includes some detailed and revealing comments from the developer:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8oq1l3/cos_fu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8oq1l3/cos_future_questions_and_concerns_from_a_customer/e06a4cr)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8oq1l3/cos_fu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8oq1l3/cos_future_questions_and_concerns_from_a_customer/e0drnyv)

<comment><USER4> That's the most detailed explanation of things I can find in this thread. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "I already prevented any possible compromise of the OS. I am not capable of compromising it anymore so no form of coercion can make me do that. It's very unfortunate that things ended this way and now I guess the little money I earned from this will go to legal fees, etc." \- Daniel Micay

[https://twitter.com/DanielMicay/status/1006331205682384896](https://twitter.com/DanielMicay/status/1006331205682384896)

Apparently he's deleted the signing keys.

[https://twitter.com/DanielMicay/status/1006334186725224448](https://twitter.com/DanielMicay/status/1006334186725224448)

<comment><USER5> I'm wondering if destroying the signing keys will have legal consequences. Are signing keys considered company IP when their identity is "fused" with the main developer?

Reading online posts it seems that the community is trusting the developer, not the company behind him.

<comment><USER6> If those keys were generated before the company existed, and there is no explicit assignment, then they clearly belonged to him.

If they were generated later, it gets very hairy. Were they created with company resources? On company time? Is there a record of this happening? Etc etc.

Going to court would be a huge waste of money for all parties involved, at this point.

<comment><USER7> His twitter says he originally generated them in 2009-2010 to submit packages to the aur. So he's probably in the clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ultimately, who cares who's morally right or wrong? Lets skip the drama and try to see the legal angle, with the goal of figuring out a way to "save" the source code (of possible).

The way I see it (with my limited legal knowledge, IANAL) is that Daniel Micay got paid for his services, and therefore the copyright is assigned to the company behind CopperheadOS. I'm not sure if Daniel can be fired, that'd depend on the legal entity of CopperheadOS (for example, in a general partnership both partners bear responsibility and liability which levels the playing field). I tried looking it up on the homepage, but I've been unable to figure that out. What is the legal entity behind the company "Copperhead Security"?

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

<comment><USER9> Also IANAL,

As a SWE, all of my employment contracts explicitly state that code that I wrote for the company is owned by the company. Just because he was paid for services does not mean that the company owns the copyright of the code he wrote.

<comment><USER10> Sorry to be even more anal but that has nothing to do with Sweden.

I live and work in Sweden too and I am able to dictate those parts of my contract. Especially as I do a lot of open source work.

<comment><USER11> SWE refers to software engineer, not being a Swede.

<comment><USER10> Oic, I had never seen that term used before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not a huge surprise if you followed rust a few years back:

[http://slash-r-slash-rust.github.io/archived/2u1dme.html](http://slash-r- slash-rust.github.io/archived/2u1dme.html)

<comment><USER13> didn't know Graydon Hoare left rust o_o

ps: the archived date confused me, just in case, this is a 3yo thread [https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/2u1dme/daniel_micay/](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/2u1dme/daniel_micay/) (enjoy the art)

<comment><USER14> yikes, what happened here?

<comment><USER15> /r/rust mod here, strcat asked us to remove the thread in order to keep it from being associated with his real name in Google search results etc. In order to keep the useful discussion in that thread from being lost entirely I created the archived version seen above, with his real name redacted.

<comment><USER16> Hang on a very very large second here.

 _I thought you couldn 't edit post titles on reddit_, and especially not 3 years ago.

Please please clarify.

Context:

      From       Title           ID      Date
      github.io  "[strcat]"      2u1dme  Thu Jan 29 02:39:34 2015 UTC
      reddit     "Daniel Micay"  2u1dme  Thu Jan 29 02:39:34 2015 UTC

_It 's exactly the same post._

EDIT: This is now at 0 points. If I have missed something or misunderstand I welcome clarification. Thanks very much!

<comment><USER17> Check the URL of the archived thread.

<comment><USER16> Okay, I've done that. The only thing I can think of to specifically look at is the ID fragment. I see the same ID in the archived thread on reddit.com and the archived thread stored on github.io (I'm not sure which source to disambiguate "archived thread" to).

My point was/is that the threads are identical, and given the different titles points to an supposedly-impossible ability to change thread titles. This is very interesting to me.

In case I'm [still] missing the point you're trying to get at. Further clarification and patience is appreciated.

<comment><USER18> he explained the point. The archived copy has been redacted, the whole reason the archive exists (and the original deleted) is because its impossible to redact the information on reddit while leaving the rest of the post intact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What a shame. I used to hang out on Rust IRC when Daniel was still engaged with the project. He always seemed so knowledgeable and he fought for what he thought was best for the language.

</comment><comment><USER20> So the tweet makes it sound like someone seized control but the email just makes it sound like this guy was just fired. I'm pretty confused

<comment><USER21> They were the two co-founders of the company, and both still own 50% of the shares of the company, with Daniel having been the CTO and sole developer of its products.

<comment><USER22> What does the other guy do then?

<comment><USER23> Handle the "business side".

From 30 minutes reading about this and no prior knowledge about the project or the people involved, this seems to be the probably wrong timeline:

1\. Developer starts a project, hacks on it for a while.

2\. Developer decides he'd like to get paid for hacking on project.

3\. Enter guy. Developer and guy incorporate, with guy as CEO and director, developer as CTO and person who does all the coding. Ownership is 50-50, company assets and personal assets are a mess (domain name & DNS are on the CEO's personal card, copyright for the code CTO writes is not assigned to the company, CTO controls private keys, and some are his personal private keys from before the incorporation).

4\. CEO & CTO have a falling out wrt company direction.

5\. CTO takes this personally, as a betrayal, seeing the falling out as the destruction of the project he has built basically single-handedly at great personal sacrifice.

6\. CTO destroys private keys, plans to sue over copyright. Project is now imploded.

<comment><USER24> Insert between 5 and 6: CEO "fires" CTO (while simultaneously asking him to sign an employment agreement in the first place)

strncat seems to have conceded that despite the 50/50 ownership, "guy" has the ultimate power since he's a "director" and strncat is not. Does that even make sense? I'm no expert in American contract law, but usually the director(s) serve at the pleasure of the majority of stakeholders and if the stakeholders reach an impasse it's up to the bylaws or a court to figure it out. The way I see it, strncat is still 50% owner of Copperhead and could succesfully challenge all of guy's actions.

<comment><USER21> Note they're in Canada, so American contract law has no say in this case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I figured it was only a matter of time. It's absurd to think you can run a company with a product like this, with only one full-time developer. RIP folks who bought devices from them, who will not longer be receiving updates.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Reddit discussion:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8qdnn3/goodby...](https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8qdnn3/goodbye/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Note to technical cofounders - always keep 51%.

<comment><USER8> That's an option, but not necessarily the sole one. This problem isn't new. I'd say its one of the primary reasons why a general partnership is a legal entity, or a good choice in this case [1]. It'd level the playing field between both partners, creating a mutual interest from an authority higher than themselves (ultimately, the government). I'm not saying it is without problems though (imagine one of the partners becomes terminally ill).

Another option would've been to call it earlier, before burn-out, when it turned out there was no market for this. If people don't wanna pay or donate for the product, there's no demand apparently. No need to work for a minimum wage. Get a regular job, and use your leisure time as you see fit (for EXAMPLE on a project like this but without pressure or obligation).

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

<comment><USER27> The fundamental tension of "unprofitability" was there from the very start, as real security is directly at odds with traditional business models. The goal of the businessman is to become a middleman, but security precludes having a man-in-the-middle!

Which is why these projects overwhelmingly flame out. The engineer figures there can't be much harm from a business type trying to design a business around their project, as they assume the _project philosophy_ will remain unaffected. Meanwhile the business type is excited about having a new in- demand raw material to which they can _add inefficiency_ to derive a revenue stream. The engineer figures they own the code, so whatever games the business monkey plays, they can only end up back in the same spot. Meanwhile the business type is busy conjuring and documenting bureaucracy like corporate structure and implicit contracts with which to seize power over the raw resource (the project) if the coder doesn't submit to his "real world" supervision.

It's likely that the engineer could prevail and end up owning the code, but only after an expensive and draining legal battle - it's simply easier to move on to productive non-zero-sum things. Meanwhile the business type is all too willing to fight said battle, as investing real money into paperwork games was basically their entire operation all along.

IMHO the real shame in this case was licensing the code base something other than GPL. GPL would have made continued _use_ unambiguous even in the presence of ambiguous ownership.

<comment><USER8> I can follow you until

> IMHO the real shame in this case was licensing the code base something other > than GPL. GPL would have made continued use unambiguous even in the presence > of ambiguous ownership.

I don't understand how GPLv2 or GPLv3 or BSDL and many (any, AFAICT) FOSS license would _not_ have done the same. The problem is CC non-commercial. Its actually an anti competitive license. Imagine RedHat using that for all their software. Oracle not allowed to compete?

<comment><USER27> Yes, the non-commercial license is the bigger problem as it's an ambiguous club that a hostile copyright holder could FUDgeon any sizable community with.

I had been thinking that with BSD, a gone-hostile company could make an argument that more recent changes were not actually intended to be released under BSD, whereas with GPL we know they would have had to have stuck with the license to build on top. But that latter part isn't true if they're arguing that they're the copyright holder.

edit: Actually what I was thinking is true IF there is an _additional_ contributor who's patch got accepted into the main tree. But in this case, given that the ostensible goal of CC non-commercial was so that the code could be dual licensed, we'd expect any such contributor to have been shuffled into copyright assignment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Between CopperheadOS and CyanogenMod imploding, what's left? LineageOS and Replicant? Anything else?

<comment><USER29> I didn't hear about CyanogenMod imploding. What happened there?

<comment><USER30> Cyanogen Inc, the company founded to do commercial work on it and running a lot of the project infrastructure, ran out of money after some weird things like cancelling a licensing deal with OnePlus suddenly and closed. community part of the project rebranded to LineageOS

<comment><USER31> Right. The community part - which is still alive and well in its rebranded form as LineageOS - was doing the most important work anyway (or, even if that's a loaded statement, the community part was extremely productive and still is).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It seems a little silly to me that someone would trust a "secure OS" from a situation where one guy could "seize control" of the company and infrastructure. This is largely why I've never seen third party ROMs as a significant solution to the security situation with mobile phones.

That being said, I'm curious what the other side of this story is. The email makes it sound like the guy's being fired.

<comment><USER33> I disagree, at least to some extent.

CopperheadOS is open source. The scripts to build a ROM are open and it's possible to audit them. In fact, if you don't want to pay for COS you are free to build your own image using said scripts. I've done it. It's easy.

I think the whole mistake CopperheadOS did was switching to a Creative Commons license that prevented commercial use by third parties. This has effectively made it tricky for Daniel Micay to continue his great work on CopperheadOS elsewhere once the company imploded.

It's sad, because it's IMHO the very best ROM out there. I don't want to use anything else. I think they should have gone for a more sustainable business model. In his shoes, I'd restart COS by doing a crowdfunding round and aiming at a few other devices (which may not be hard now with device-agnostic ROMs made possible by Treble).

COS has had a reduced target market since Google decided to price Pixel terminals much higher than Nexus. There are rumours that they might release a cheap Pixel to compete with iPhone SE. That might be good for COS.

<comment><USER34> CC non-commercial isn't open source.

<comment><USER35> Yes it is. Open source literally means that the source is public. I think you mean CC non-commercial is not "free software".

<comment><USER34> No, open source means the license meets the OSI definition of open source, which CC NC doesn't.

<comment><USER35> opensource.com would beg to differ. I suppose it depends on where one gets their definition from.

<comment><USER36> CC NC forbids using the material for commercial purposes [1]. On 'use', opensource.com defers to the four freedoms [2], which includes the freedom to use software for whatever you like. So by opensource.com, software licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 is not open source. Also they don't mention creative commons when discussing open source licenses [5] because it doesn't make sense for code.

I can see why you might think opensource.com says that open source "literally means the source is public" if you only read the first sentence in their defining article [3]. Fair enough, this is a common misunderstanding [4].

[1] - [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc- sa/4.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/)

[2] - [https://opensource.com/law/10/10/license-compliance-not- prob...](https://opensource.com/law/10/10/license-compliance-not-problem-open- source-users)

[3] - [https://opensource.com/resources/what-open- source](https://opensource.com/resources/what-open-source)

[4] - [https://www.forbes.com/sites/wenjiazhao/2012/07/06/beliefs-a...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/wenjiazhao/2012/07/06/beliefs- and-misbeliefs-on-open-source-software/)

[5] - [https://opensource.com/law/13/1/which-open-source- software-l...](https://opensource.com/law/13/1/which-open-source-software- license-should-i-use)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> fwiw, the screen-shot: [https://paste.xinu.at/QIWIC7/](https://paste.xinu.at/QIWIC7/)

<comment><USER38> On the upside, the damage that's there remains in plain sight thanks to the guy who made the opposite of the last paragraph happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Does anyone have any idea how many devices run CopperheadOS? The market has to be extremely tiny. How many people are capable of manually flashing an image onto a Nexus/Pixel, and then what subset of that group is interested in a "more secure" ROM?

<comment><USER40> >How many people are capable of manually flashing an image onto a Nexus/Pixel, and then what subset of that group is interested in a "more secure" ROM?

It's mostly their commercial clients. Very few regular people can use COS for recent devices (for free) since you need to build it from source.

<comment><USER41> It's not that hard. I'm a mechanical engineer who happens to care about privacy. I was able to build it by following a guide. There are many tutorials if you search. I don't have any degrees in computer science or IT, if I could build it I would guess anyone could.

<comment><USER40> Yeah, it's not hard. The steps are pretty well documented. It's just not very practical. You need to do it every month and flash manually. You lose the OTA mechanism unless you also set up an update server and hack on the code to point to your update server. I don't know how well that stuff is documented. In any case, all this is extremely niche. You need a good HPC like system to have reasonable build times. Note that you are also building chromium in addition to the ROM. The parent's point was about user numbers, and I am pretty sure that that's minuscule outside of their paid users.

<comment><USER25> Well, you can't do any of that if there's even a hint of commercial use because of the CC BY-NC-SA license they (CopperheadOS) used. So you can basically only build it for yourself.

<comment><USER30> And the uncertainty of what Creative Commons means for code. It likely extends to the produced binary. Does it extend to the use of that binary - are you violating the license if you use a phone with self-built CopperheadOS for work purposes?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Reddit suspended strncat's account: [https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8r9su6/reddit...](https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8r9su6/reddit_suspended_strncats_account/)

</comment><comment><USER43> Is it possible for them to fork under a new name? I ask because it depends on how they have structured the copyright of their code and open source licensing. I don't see any other simple solution besides forking and creating a new entity he owns 100% of.

<comment><USER44> I asked strncat, he said it's not possible even if provided a substantial amount of funding. (Something about having to rewrite tools or something like that.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> damn i was about to buy a phone compatible with it...

<comment><USER46> what was the price of yours vs iPhone 7?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> iOS is better :)

<comment><USER46> I was a techie, thinking Android is open source and I get SD slot. Busted big time. Android is Google's child, tied to its services, like Chrome, phoning home on every step.

iOS is years ahead in security and privacy. Read its whitepapers, read forensics blogs - they're all about iOS, mentioning Android in the passing, as too easy to be a blog post - blog.elcomsoft.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Another Theo

<comment><USER46> I love Theo, no compromises. Theo Victor! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> His employment is suspended with pay, stipulating signing an employee agreement?

OK so you're suspended, and we will pay you only if you sign this agreement that any ethical company would have had you sign at the start of employment.

This sort of duress after the fact is unethical and possibly illegal. And the demand for control of a personal GPG key predating employment is eyebrow raising and properly should invite ridicule.

</comment><comment><USER49> If the underlying hardware is compromised(it is) then it doesn't matter what the os does.\ EDIT: If you are downvoting me - state why.

<comment><USER50> The first rule of vote club is you do not talk about vote club. Also, people who vote on your comments either up or down don't owe you explanations. Both of these are standard HN practice.

<comment><USER25> Not GP, but I don't consider it harmful or whatever to ask why folks disagree with you if you don't understand why folks would disagree with you. Sure, none of us owe them an explanation for voting a certain way, but maybe someone will come along and explain it, and they'll learn something new.

I don't think the system is strictly "you're right" or "your're wrong" and providing any supporting explanation is discouraged.

<comment><USER50> _I don 't consider it harmful_

It pretty much always devolves into pointless meta. If someone wanted to tell you how right or wrong you are, they'd reply to your comment. Sometimes, perfectly reasonable comments get downvoted. Sometimes, truly awful comments get upvoted. Sometimes people fatfinger the wrong button on their phones. Every poster and every thread is better off just living with it, not worrying about it too much and sticking to the quality of the conversation itself.

<comment><USER51> We _are_ the quality of the conversation itself.

<comment><USER50> No.

<comment><USER25> Yea, we literally are, unless all other commentors on HN are bots...

<comment><USER50> No you literally aren't. You are you. The conversation is the conversation. Those are two distinct things. Nobody can ask you to be mindful of the quality of other _people_. It's trivial to just avoid interminable discussions about voting.

The most telling thing about this is that nobody ever demands explanations for upvotes so it's obviously not because there's some real belief these explanations would make the conversation better. It's just that being downvoted feels bad. But really, at worst, you'd eat -4 points here or there. Best is to just put on your wizard hat and Epictetain stoic robe and move on. And this isn't merely a good idea - it's the law.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Re-designed Chart for React - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@arcthur/re-designed-chart-for-react-fbb31cf78415 <comment><USER2> nice, I use D3 for most of my visualizations, but indeed React might be interesting too</comment>


InDinero's Jessica Mah: This Is A 20-30 Year Company - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/20/indinero-jessica-mah-tctv-intuit/ <comment><USER2> It's interesting that Jessica didn't distinguish between revenue and income when she talked about the problem she ran into with the business she started. "We thought we had lots of revenue but it turned out our margins weren't that great." Revenue = money in. Income = Money in minus money out.

Revenue != Income.

<comment><USER3> It depends how you read it. She could have meant that they thought they were taking in a lot of money (revenue) but in reality they found they weren't keeping much of it (discovered their margins were thin, implying profits were lower than they expected because they just knew they were making lots of revenue).

I really need to stop using brackets so much.

<comment><USER4> Brackets are great (when used correctly).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it's really cool that Web 2.0 entrepreneurs actually want to build businesses that have a clear business model, sell a product that people want, and have a clear path to long-term, sustainable profitability.

That said, I don't know how well this type of business correlates with raising such a large angel round- are all of those angel investors on board with that plan?

<comment><USER6> what they say in public doesn't always match what they say in private.(i.e. just take the whole demandmedia "we are super profitable...HONEST!")

in private, I'd bet that they are looking to build this up for 4-5 years, then sell it off to intuit.

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't immediately assume Intuit is automatically the most likely acquirer.

<comment><USER8> They seem the most likely....who else might be in the mix? A large progressive bank?

<comment><USER9> Inuit already bought Mint, why would they need inDinero? Mint has way more users, and already does the hard part - syncing with banks securely and categorizing expenses. Mint/Inuit could add a cash-flow module to their product and be done with it.

Depending on how Jessica decides to position it, I could see it exiting to a buyer like Freshbooks, where the combination product makes a suite of small- business finance tools. Like a mini-Microsoft Financal-Office (except in the cloud).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> She gripes about the A/R and A/P pains of a small business owner, but has never owned a SMB...I'm rooting for her, but hope she has added people to her team that really know this market.

<comment><USER2> Actually, she did own a small business[1]. She ran one from 12 until something like 15 (the source below gets the ages wrong), and one of her biggest problems was keeping track of the financial complexities, projecting cash- flows, etc.; out of that frustration has come InDinero.

[1] [http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090301/university-of- californi...](http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090301/university-of-california- berkeley-a-place-to-find-great-int.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Question is...

How long until FreshBooks partners with Yodlee, builds some reports and has a more complete solution?

Or... Intuit creates a version of Mint.com for small businesses? They have a lot more cash and overwhelming marketshare in the SMB market. They'd be able to do this in 5 years, not 20-30. I think this poses a huge threat to InDinero.

That being said, the product that Jessica has already built is quite impressive. But, if it takes 20-30 years to iterate towards solving all of the financial pain points of a small business, you'll be too late because Intuit has a huge head start.

<comment><USER12> You could have made the same arguments about Mint and Intuit. If it's so easy, why haven't they done it already?

For Intuit, this is close to the textbook example of the innovators dilemma. Intuit cannot do this easily because it will cannibalize their existing business. How would they introduce it?

They can't just add the features to their existing product, because the market for this product is different (business owners, not accountants).

They can't sell it as a separate add on, because that makes InDinero seem really good value for money.

They can't sell it for the same price or less than InDinero because it will eat profits from their existing products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Good for her. Even if you are open to an acquisition, being ready to be 'in it for the long haul' puts you in a better position to negotiate - especially if there's only one really good potential acquirer out there. If you don't like their price you can always tell them 'see you next year', rather than becoming more desperate as the acquisition drags on.

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't think they can afford to solve those problems in 20 years time. Somebody else will do it instead.

</comment><comment><USER15> I was unimpressed by Jessica's failure to disclose that Eventbrite is a "paying customer" because its CEO is an investor.

I think the product has potential. I have worked on something similar for many years myself. I'll have a hard time rooting for its success, though, when Jessica seems to routinely make mistakes like this.

<comment><USER16> "I'll have a hard time rooting for its success, though, when Jessica seems to routinely make mistakes like this" is both pompous and mean. She's 20, and seems to be doing a pretty good job all considered. If you really believe she's screwing up, perhaps you should email her directly.

<comment><USER15> Last time I did it was with a customer service issue with InDinero. No one replied, so I canceled my account.

Also, I started consulting at age 11 and incorporated at 15, so I think I have the right to call out young people in business when I feel like they could do better.

<comment><USER17> I made an InDinero account to kick the tires a bit, and made a few comments when closing the account. I received several emails from Jessica within 24 hours and an offer to discuss things on the phone.

Maybe she has increased her attentiveness since you canceled. Maybe she is only attentive to people who are closing accounts. However it came about, I was impressed with her responsiveness to my comments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A while back I was in an early-stage situation in which I was arguing for using quickbooks so as to at least have some semblance of double entry accounting (at least while we got our venture started). Another team member insisted on implementing our own solution... in excel. There is a market for this! Unfortunately, many small business-types just make-do, with paper if they have to, so it may be difficult for InDinero.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm totally not in the market for InDinero but I've seent his happen on multiple sites before. How do people agree to give the credential info of their bank account ?

I can't imagine giving out a login/password that is not restricted to just viewing my banking info. It seems to me that they are asking for full access to your bank account just to retrieve your data.

<comment><USER9> As Facebook-privacy scary as that sounds, many accounting start ups ask for this information. Xero, inDinero, Less Accounting, and Mint all do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is anybody here using indinero? How does it compare to quickbooks?

<comment><USER21> It's nothing like quickbooks. It's literally like the main tab of mint.com, it shows your current balance and you can drill down into transactions. If you want a proper quickbooks-like experience, I recommend xero.com which is, unlike indinero, actually useful for a small business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> She is fearless!</comment>


DotConnectAfrica's Second Motion to Stop the Delegation of .Africa GTLD Rejected - tefo-mohapi http://www.iafrikan.com/2017/02/16/dotconnectafricas-second-motion-to-stop-the-delegation-of-africa-top-level-domain-has-been-rejected/ <comment><AUTHOR> Don't you mean DotKonnectAfrika?

... and the .afrika GTLD?</comment>


Review of Android's App Inventor - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/12/android-app-inventor-demo/

<comment><USER3> While block based programing environments like this make programming look easier at first glance, I'm unconvinced they actually make things easier. For instance, I don't really see how the example screen is different than something like the following:

      when Button1.Click
      do
        TinyDB.StoreValue(tag: SearchQueries, valueToStore: TextBox1.text)
        Label1.text = TextBox1.text

Text also has the advantage that you can manipulate it in standard ways - <USER2> as copying and pasting it.

The difficulty in programing is understanding the abstraction, and thinking algorithmically. Displaying programs in a nice GUI won't make that easier.

<comment><USER4> A GUI won't make programming easier in the long run, but it will probably make it look less intimidating to newbies. Ideally, Google would offer a "text mode" with an API equivalent to the block mode so that users could upgrade after they have been "suckered in" by the easygoing look of blocks and learned a bit more about abstractions and algorithms.</comment></comment>


YouTube Said to Be Fined Up to $200M for Children's Privacy Violations - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/30/technology/youtube-childrens-privacy-fine.html <comment><USER2> All: this seems to be quite a provocative topic, as with many submissions that involve children and parents. If you're going to comment, please post thoughtfully and follow the site guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). If you can't do that, please don't post until you can.

</comment><comment><USER3> This whole thing feels like Monopoly money. First, it's $200m to a company valued at more than $800B.

Imagine you had 100k in the bank. That would be like a $25 late payment fee.

But on top of that, it's $200m into the black hole that is our dysfunctional and bloated federal government. How do The Impacted children whose privacy was violated actually benefit.

It's all ridiculous.

<comment><USER4> > This whole thing feels like Monopoly money. First, it's $200m to a company > valued at more than $800B.

> Imagine you had 100k in the bank. That would be like a $25 late payment fee.

No, it isn't. A company's valuation is not money in the bank. The proper comparison is to profit.

<comment><USER5> Proper comparison is the reaction of a CEO - if the CEO responds by firing the upper management->product management responsible for the part that caused the fine then the fine got a point across.

<comment><USER6> It's okay for a fine to be insignificant. Parking tickets are insignificant fines too, but in aggregate act to control parking behavior.

What's needed is better enforcement, not more stringent fines.

<comment><USER5> Not at all. Those who have cars and can afford the fine consider parking fines to be a cost of doing business. Get a ticket, pay it on the web.

Now if the car is _towed_ that becomes a problem because just pulling out a credit card does not fix it.

<comment><USER7> I don't believe for a second that this represents the minority. One might be tempted to conjure reddit-like images of Chads and Karens who park their cars where ever, when ever, and for however long they like, but the majority of people aren't like this.

<comment><USER5> [https://data.cityofnewyork.us/City-Government/Parking- Violat...](https://data.cityofnewyork.us/City-Government/Parking-Violations- Issued-Fiscal-Year-2018/a5td-mswe)

That's 11.7M violations for fiscal 2018.

<comment><USER7> And? What does a page full of data tell me? At a quick glance I can see a lot of violations made repeatedly for the same licence plate; there's no data on whether certain violations are made multiple times by the same person with different vehicles; it's not easy to tell what kinds of violations there are, how much of each, and which are easy to get tickets from unscrupulous parking attendants or which would require actual lack of action by the vehicle's driver or owner… this isn't evidence of anything.

The population of New York may be only 8.5 million, but that doesn't make 11 million infractions an indicator that the majority of those people are the sorts of people to accept parking fines as the cost of owning a vehicle.

<comment><USER5> This actually illustrates that the same license plates get tickets i.e. getting parking tickets is the cost of doing business.

<comment><USER7> That doesn't say anything about whether these people represent the majority, which was my point, though. Not sure why those stats should matter to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To be honest, I see quite a lot of inappropriate content on YouTube's tending section pretty often. This can't have a net zero effect on youth.

<comment><USER9> I think humans are a lot more robust than commonly assumed. Most of us do not break due to their mere experiences as long as their fundamental needs (food, being loved, goals and so on) are fulfilled. Once these needs are not fulfilled they may be more vulnerable though.

<comment><USER10> I feel the opposite. Based on how people (and myself) behave, humans love to prioritize short term dopamine hits with long term costs. Whether it be children addicted to YouTube, people addicted to sugar and inactivity (see obesity), refreshing Twitter/Facebook/Reddit/instagram/Hacker News for new bits of information, etc. We're even willing to trash the planet if it gives us the satisfaction of living in single family homes with parking and some land for heavily fertilized grass.

As a species, humans are getting better at using our susceptibility of the short term pleasures to operate businesses, but the long term effects are probably not going to be desirable.

<comment><USER9> The points you are raising (addiction) seem to be somewhat unrelated to what was being discussed (inappropriate content).

Of course addictions are bad, but do you have any data supporting your claim that technology has increased the number of addicts? People vulnerable to be drawn to short-term dopamine hits have always existed, whether to food, gambling, or actual drugs.

<comment><USER11> There are many negative responses to inappropriate content, and with regards to the subtopic of "breaking", addiction is one. Addiction can exacerbate other responses such as depression or anxiety, but I wouldn't rule it out as a response.

As for increased number of addicts, I think the fact that there are technology addicts where there didn't used to be (before tech), should be a sufficient logical claim.

Speaking of which, do you have data on your specific claim on the resilience of human psychology against negative tech/media experiences?

<comment><USER9> > As for increased number of addicts, I think the fact that there are > technology addicts where there didn't used to be (before tech), should be a > sufficient logical claim.

No, because those people may have engaged in other unhealthy lifestyles if the technology didn't exist.

> Speaking of which, do you have data on your specific claim on the resilience > of human psychology against negative tech/media experiences?

Yes, I've linked some in a comment below.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That's nothing compared to their ad revenue, not even a notable one time loss.

<comment><USER13> I agree. There are many people who I've seen say "this is just a warning to other companies" or "this is just the beginning" but it seems like that's _always_ the case.

The fact is, the fine needs to be multiples of quarterly revenue. It needs to be so high not to destroy the company, but enough to make it limp and force it to borrow money to make it through. THEN these will be taken seriously. Until then, these aren't fines. These are price tags for unethical, law-breaking behavior, and these companies are more than happy to pay it.

<comment><USER14> Force them to borrow money? How big a fine we talking in your authoritarian world? How many people's jobs is it worth losing?

No. It does not need to be so damn high.

YouTube is aware of the warning, and yes it likely deserves another (order of magnitude larger) fine if they do nothing. But arbitrary fines right out of the gate just hurt everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Will this create a new virtual 18+ wall before you can view/access content/services. Not that it is illegal by any law to offer such services to those younger, just that the lawyers and the accountants sat down and concluded that the risks can outgrow the rewards.

Be interesting how the industry and various platforms navigate this whole area, but I'm mindful that they may well just cut them off period as just less hassle for them.

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure of your age but I grew up with the internet and this "18+ wall" has already existed for a long time. I don't think I know anybody who didn't lie about their birth year on a signup form at some point to get around an age check.

<comment><USER15> That's kinda the point, the whole age verification avenue has no credibility and personally I've lied for privacy reasons as why do you need the day and month if the year is 18+.

But the area of concern I was raising was such walls being used for no other reason other than risk liability exposure dictated by liability insurance costs. That with age verification systems that are that do credable checks being an area of growth thru demand. Such systems will become easier to implement and the ability to just lie, becomes much more complicated. Hence people being cut off, not thru legal reasons, but for effect - accountants. That's the worry I was raising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The fine feels as a millionaire got fined $200 for the same violation.

</comment><comment><USER18> I for one am glad at this though I am sure the fine could have been exponentially larger. The fact that YouTube can go here and say their platform is only intended for 13 year olds and up is a joke. Their are thousands of shows targeted directly at my kids. I can even clearly hear one video my kid likes to watch starts out with saying "look kids" so tell me how that is not directed at kids. I use an adblocker but when I go to my moms she doesn't have it set up on her iPad. The kids shows are bombarded with ads for adult products like cars or you name it. They are marketing towards kids and I can't stand it.

<comment><USER19> You need to be a parent and not expect regulatory fines to watch your children. You've identified a problem, you've identified the cause, and now you need to do something about it within your household.

You're literally talking about a video you let your child watch, while bemoaning the FCC needing to step in.

> The fact that YouTube can go here and say their platform is only intended > for 13 year olds and up is a joke

The joke is that you understand YouTube is for 13 year olds and up, and you still allow your child on there. Personal responsibility needs to come first.

> They are marketing towards kids and I can't stand it.

What kind of home router do you have. I'll show you how to block YouTube. Your mom can do similar things at home. There are plenty of blocking solutions out there. Which ones have you tried?

<comment><USER11> How is demanding fines not being a parent? They are not mutually exclusive.

The comment about moms blocking YouTube is a bit ridiculous. Seems hard to believe likelihood of finding one could be higher than the likelihood of finding a kid who can work around it.

<comment><USER19> One should come before the other. You should parent before calling for regulations.

> The comment about moms blocking YouTube is a bit ridiculous. Seems hard to > believe likelihood of finding one could be higher than the likelihood of > finding a kid who can work around it.

It is not hard to block domains at the router, and restrict the devices your child has access to. Of course they might use a friends, or find a way around it. But the OP is literally talking about overhearing the video on the couch and not doing anything about it.

That's why I asked what they tried... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOTyUfOHgas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOTyUfOHgas)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That number is missing two zeros for it to be anything other than a mosquito bite

</comment><comment><USER20> This is literally a Silicon Valley plotline. Right down to COPPA. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5QUZMNLT3M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5QUZMNLT3M)

</comment><comment><USER21> I must say I'm perplexed how every single top level comment is downvoted. This isn't normal.

<comment><USER2> The topic turns out to be unusually emotional and many of the comments in the thread are pretty bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> With all the complaints against Youtube, I don't know how they can still be so out of touch with everyone.

It's almost as if they're doing it deliberately. They're begging for competition to take over their unprofitable business. Nobody wants to step up.

<comment><USER23> It's a two sided market; the player with the largest catalog wins. Youtube has also negotiated the copyright minefield extremely well - starting a competitor would have to deal with takedowns.

<comment><USER24> A competitor who finds a way to deal with copyright better, has a sane advertising policy that doesn't randomly demonetizes people, with a patreon system built in, and has a modern UI (YouTube has a lot of room for improvement) it could possibly compete with YouTube.

A whole lot of major YouTube channels who are constantly attacked by false copyright claims or have to push product placements due to no ads would love to push users to a better platform. So marketing wouldn't be impossible.

They could also push privacy and fine tuned data controls which helps with kids.

There's enough of a market for two to exist.

Maybe with some type of semi decentralized platform approach so individual hosts who deal with copyright poorly can take the hit, making the system more resilient. Chrome style apps and mobile clients could be the interface and the ad/patreon system is controlled by the primary software developer but the rest is an open protocol with a linear license for non commercial stuff (at least non commercial as far as not competing with the monetization platform). The network effects of managing the ad buyers, subscriber accounts with credit cards and one click subs could stave off the competition without fully controlling the full video network and hosts.

<comment><USER21> Sure, just build a video streaming website with good UI, a good recommendation/discovery algorithm, it's own avertising network (that is able to compete with YTs excellent personalized ads while having a more creator- friendly policy), spend more on human review of copyright claims than YT, establish a revenue share system for creators, as well as a system to pay monthly pledges similar to YT channel memberships or patreon (of course both need to comply with laws and regultions of all major countries), and have the budget to finance multiple months of video streaming and encoding servers.

There's space in the market, but I don't think anyone is willing to pay for that after so many others failed.

<comment><USER24> This is a perfect project for a successful entrepreneur who wants to solve a hard problem just like the Duckduckgo founder.

This is the type of hard problem I'm getting more and more interested in. Someone has to bring the future open and privacy oriented Web about some day. The current model is broken and the early Internet showed us what is possible. Web 2.0 brought none of the democratization it promised largely because of the old world model it attempted to deliver it with.

Plus none of the things you listed are hard. Technical problems are easy, it's the market and growth that's hard.

I'm personally focused on Reddit, mostly theoretically atm, but YouTube is something I've considered as well.

<comment><USER25> > Web 2.0 brought none of the democratization it promised

It introduced formula "If you're not paying for a product, you _are_ the product", while in old world model delivery of value is more about givers/takers ratio.

<comment><USER26> Web 2.0 didn't invwnt anything. Plenty of pre-web services expect you to pay them, and also sell you. Cable TV, for instance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> As I understand it, YouTube remains unprofitable to this date. What game is Google playing at here? Creators are unhappy with the strong arming, users are displeased with the ads and the comments and, well, everything. Parents are unhappy with the creepy videos targeting children. YouTube music is a travesty and is likely to fail like all the other half-baked Google products. YouTube gaming... is dead. Now they're getting fined for something they could have easily avoided.

What in the hell is Google doing, and why do they suck at this so bad? I can imagine so many better product experiences. Why can't they get their act together?

<comment><USER28> Yeah right. The competition is doing so well. Try running a video hosting service within the frameworks of the law. It's still the most popular service by a longshot. Classic HN being delusional again.

<comment><USER27> Reddit, Netflix, HBO, Disney+, Twitch

Edit: Facebook, Twitter

<comment><USER23> None of those compete directly with user-uploaded content of arbitrary length. Vimeo and Dailymotion are the nearest competitors.

<comment><USER29> doesn't Facebook do that?

<comment> yoz-y Do people go to Facebook directly to just watch video from their non-friends? Is it even possible? Genuinely asking, I haven't used FB for quite some time.

<comment><USER30> Yes, people go to Facebook to watch videos.

However, I think it's too restrictive to only consider platforms to be competitors of Youtube only when the use case is analogous, and it's incorrect to imply that Facebook can only be competing with Youtube if their users exclusively use it to watch videos.

Any platform that supports video streaming is potentially competing against Youtube. The specific use case of the platform is irrelevant, only scale and mindshare matter - the degree to which people spend time there rather than on Youtube.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Playing House: More artists are moving their shows into living rooms - <AUTHOR> http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/9610-playing-house

<comment><USER2> _Musicians_ \- not denying that they're artists, but there are artists who are not musicians.

Based on the headline (didn't notice this was linked to Pitchfork) I thought this was an article about moving away from the dominant white cube-model of contemporary art galleries and a return to living rooms. Because before the modern form of art galleries existed, expositions were in fact held in living rooms quite often!

<comment><USER3> That was my inference from the headline, as well. Unless the context has already been established, my mind doesn't equate music with the term "artist."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's a community-driven app waiting to be built here.

<comment><USER5> I've been going to house shows for most of my life and the idea of an app scares me. In a lot of places this is illegal and you can catch a ton of heat from the police regarding it. Putting the information out there where it is publicly accessible is a big no-no for a lot of DIY house/basement show promoters. If I ran a house/did shows in a semi-legal space like this I'd cancel any show that somehow got put into an app.

<comment><USER6> Yeah. Some people I know got caught up by this, and an app would make it too easy. [http://gawker.com/5992924/lamestain-boston-cops-google- punk-...](http://gawker.com/5992924/lamestain-boston-cops-google-punk-rocker- use-results-to-crack-down-on-diy-house-shows)

<comment><USER7> ASCAP/BMI monitor shows as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Been to 100+ shows/concerts and my favorite was the one I set up with a friend's band who played the cramped kitchen in our party house. I was only making $5/hr working part-time so I offered them gas money and beer, but they said they would do it for free it I couldn't spare it. More recently I offered a rap group to play a local park for my birthday for $150 bucks and they loved the idea.

</comment><comment><USER9> hi guys, we are working on a global website that will allow artists to create their own shows and also connect with people that host "Home Concerts". www.chipili.com

<comment><USER10> May I suggest two small changes?

1\. Make English the default language, unless you detect the visitor's IP to come from a French-speaking country. Or viceversa. Point is: if you are aiming for a global website, showing me the language I don't speak is not the best way to go.

2\. Replace the flag of the UAE for either the British flag or the one from the US. I mean, the UAE's official language is Arabic, so it doesn't tell me "English version" at a glance.</comment></comment>