Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-three-years-misery-happiest-company-tech/ <comment><USER3> My eyes are hurting from seeing these articles whining about their misery while collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. Most companies have issues, and these issues are not "Company" issues but PEOPLE issues. Once you're large enough, you are going to have people with differing opinions, beliefs and values. These are going to clash. If you happen to be on the losing side and don't learn to accept it, you will find yourself miserable. Accept it and solider on to change if you truly believe in your fight.

There are folks out there working minimum wage jobs who are truly miserable, back breaking labor, standing on their feet all day, standing in the hot sun or out in the cold weather, avoiding dangerous machinery and avoiding trying to be maimed or worse loose their life. Dealing with stupid harassment and constant abuse from their boss who makes a $1 more above minimum wage.

Folks out there are really going through it. It doesn't mean that we don't have tough challenges in tech, but we have become spoiled and a bunch of whiners. The majority of the population are outside the industry and they roll their eyes when these type of articles come out and these incessant complaints don't endear them to us.

<comment><USER4> My inside-FAAMNG experience has been that most employees seem to be not interested in the politics and are primarily focused on doing good work (people in their 20s), or on putting in their 8 hours and going home to their families (people >30 mostly, of course they also want to do good work, just have additional new priorities in a young family).

Then there is a vocal minority who leverage that no individual's performance really affects the money printing machine. They blatantly view the company and its resources as a means to further their political goals.

They come across as incredibly entitled and tone-deaf against the actual working class or people actually suffering from oppression (say, women being incarcerated in Iran for decades for taking off their veils, or protesters in HK). No matter how petty and entitled the request, anything denied is interpreted as some larger act of "violence" against them.

What I didn't/don't understand is why management allowed that to happen. Either they actually believe in the political goals themselves, are afraid of the conflict, or believe it just does not matter for the company.

I think what management fails to understand often is that giving in to a demand is not viewed with gratitude but merely as accepting what's naturally right and good. In other words, giving in to demands 1..n does not give you credit when demand n+1 is posed. The ultimate conflict is just delayed.

<comment><USER5> I agree completely with this.

Keep in mind that true evil is MBS ordering the murder of journalist Khasshogi. True evil is invading and conquering Crimea. True evil is murdering your generals with anti-aircraft guns or watching dogs tear them apart while still alive.

Serving banner ads across sites does not even remotely compare.

<comment><USER6> Yes and no, some of the projects mentioned in the article, like Project Dragonfly, involved developing the kind of censorship tools necessary to prop up dictators like the ones you mentioned.

That's not whining imo, that's standing up to exactly the breed of 'True Evil' you define here.

We have seen this before in tech: Nazi Germany was probably IBM's second largest customer at the time. There is a moral imperative to not let something like that happen again.

We should all be disturbed that the executive team at Google felt that Project Dragonfly was appropriate.

<comment><USER7> My opinion is that someone is going to be providing that service, so it might as well be me (better the devil you know than the devil you don't).

<comment><USER8> Exactly the reasoning used by arms dealers.

<comment><USER7> The world is not absolute. It would be nice to be able to take an absolutist, moral stance against things I disagree with. But as I get older, I realize that one must be able to compromise and see in shades of grey.

<comment><USER8> Compromise is important, and one doesn't need to go the way of the Sith, but giving in on your morals is pretty much what leads to problems in this world.

<comment><USER7> I agree! But also being able to compromise so that you still can wield influence is important. For example, if an American company (such as Google) does not fill the need for this service for China, that leaves the door open for other countries to fill this void -- countries which America might not want to be furnishing this service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > To invent products like Gmail, Earth, and Translate, you need coddled > geniuses free to let their minds run wild.

That statement needs to be challenged. The Montessori method might be great at small scale in an educational context, but that doesn't mean it's a great way to run a company worth most of a trillion dollars. Yes, empowering employees is good. Yes, having a few "coddled geniuses" to drive basic science or radical innovation is good too. OTOH, having _every single engineer_ haring off in random directions all the time might not be so great. I believe this boundary-less freedom to focus on whatever's most interesting and ignore everything else is why issues like privacy and social impact have been routinely shortchanged at companies like Google and Facebook. We've seen where that leads. (It leads to some characteristic technical problems too but that's not the topic right now.)

"Don't be evil" and similar promises don't fulfill themselves. At FAANG scale, sticking to such promises requires a certain amount of focus and discipline _every working moment_ , not just a few people spending more time on internal groups/lists than doing technical work. I know that's going to rub most employees at those companies the wrong way, but that doesn't make it untrue.

P.S. I work at one of those companies. I do know how they work, and I'm not criticizing for criticism's sake. I'm trying to get at what I think is necessary for me and my colleagues to better ourselves and do things we can be proud of.

<comment><USER10>
      That statement needs to be challenged.
      The Montessori method might be great at small scale in an educational context, but that doesn't mean it's a great way to run a company worth most of a trillion dollars.
      Yes, empowering employees is good. Yes, having a few "coddled geniuses" to drive basic science or radical innovation is good too.
      OTOH, having every single engineer haring off in random directions all the time might not be so great.

Your whole post seems to be very reasonable, but there is one thing I'd like to mention, which is that you will immediately run into problems if you have rigid standards for what constitutes a "genius" and who is part of the just "the normal engineers". A "genius" can't very easily be defined. Historical examples like Mozart or Einstein make it easy to think that there are only a few geniuses whose talent is immediately entirely obvious to everyone, and the rest of society is merely average.

That is not true. To bring that kind of potential about in many people who thought they were not geniuses prior to encountering an environment where their skills are fostered is one of the greatest advantages a company could possibly have.

Some might just call this "good HR", or "caring about people". I have worked in companies where there were people who truly cared about their employees and about their strengths (and who could not afford the obvious "geniuses") and who thus almost "created" these geniuses. I know there are many ways in which I am simplifying this and I know that no company should try to employ purely geniuses. I have worked in a small team of six "very, very advanced" people in their respective fields. It was basically impossible to create any kind of cohesion. I would suspect it would be similar with other teams of "geniuses". Maybe not, but I think you are overall right in what you say, but it is so incredibly important to understand that the lines between a "genius" and a "run of the mill" developer may be more blurred than most people expect.

<comment><USER9> Fair point. To clarify, I think of "coddled genius" as a good-to-have _role_ , not a descriptor of a person. In fact, I think it's even better if multiple people rotate through that role. A permanent division between "people who play" and "people who work" (as I put it at one job) is bad for both groups, and for the product/company. The point I was making was that not everybody should be in that role, but I neglected to point out that it shouldn't be too limited either. Both the percentage of people in that role and the standards to which they are held (different than those in more traditional product- oriented roles) should be _intentional_ , not the result of applying a universal culture or management style more appropriate to an elementary school than to a place of business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I find it somewhat hypocritical that this article describes Google as a safe haven of dissent and open discussion, while it is pretty unanimous that expressing even slightly right-of-center opinions at Google will have you ostracized and possibly fired.

<comment> compiler-guy Google circa 2010 and Google circa 2019 are very different companies.

<comment><USER12> The article did a good job of explaining the events that led to that. Basically just a bunch of internal controversies involving shit-slinging, leaks, and basically what has become the standard for internet discussion in the past few years have combined to erode the trust and protections employees had to openly discuss even their far-right/left beliefs without retaliation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I sense there are certain parallels between this article and the one recently on HN about the challenges at Yale. As an "outsider" to both Yale and Google, I admit the problems in both cases seem over-wrought, but I can't deny that the people involved feel very emotionally invested so I am still curious to see what can be learned.

Both articles present insider perspectives lamenting how internal conflicts within highly exclusive organizations were pushed into the public sphere through leaking and protesting. Both organizations are experiencing disconnects between people in various roles (admins vs students, execs vs employees) and a sense of loss of culture.

So my thoughts are:

\- is this a generational culture shift? Less trust in internal systems and better access to outside publishing means young people aren't making a real effort to stay within the system to discuss?

\- is "internal transparency" an impossible thing at scale in the modern era? Keeping things internally private doesn't work because you only need one bad actor out of thousands to leak everything?

\- are the culture of Yale and Google really that special, or were they just really well marketed? Why are people so personally and emotionally invested in these organisations? Are all big orgs like this now, or were the cultures at these particular spots just well evolved for loyal following?

<comment><USER14> We're reading about them because they are the center of attention and they leak.

But I also have a sense that lots of things that were considered positives in the early days of the Internet have become negatives, or are simply taken for granted. For example, growth was once considered good, but now it's bad. Giving services away for free is ho-hum at best and maybe suspicious. Trying to fix Internet problems is greeted with deep suspicion based solely on who is doing it. Personalization was once good, but now it's bad. And so on.

That's inevitably going to result in a different internal culture at an Internet company than back in the days when Google's search engine first appeared on the Internet and got near-universal respect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> As of now the most popular comments here seem to decry the notion that anyone making six figures could ever relay an experience of misery. This is utterly non-sensical.

The article, to me, seems to imply that perhaps working at a radically free corporation doesn't yield pure bliss and benefit.

Is there some reason this article needs to balance out any possible misery with all the luxurious amenities Googlers enjoy? Does anyone actually think that it's not possible someone could have a miserable experience at Google?

<comment><USER16> > that it's not possible someone could have a miserable experience at Google?

I think that. Google employees are at the top of the pyramid, so if the article was true, they would have left for an almost identical salary nearby. The fact that they don't means that either google pays way above its direct competitors (it doesnt) or these people are outright lying, and their actions speak louder than 12k words

<comment><USER17> Fong-Jones, Whittaker, and Stapleton did resign as per this story.

<comment><USER18> hi, I'm at honeycomb.io now, and having a blast! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wow, that was a fun read - a reminder why I support Wired with a digital subscription.

I have some sympathy for Google, as flawed as they sometimes might be. I base this on experience working as a contractor at Google and also having just retired from a job managing a deep learning team at a large financial institution. Both companies seemed (to me) to make a large effort in diversity, ethics, etc. training and a general atmosphere of fairness.

That said, problems occur in large organizations. Really off topic, but I dream of a world with smaller corporations, a more decentralized world. I don't know how we are going to get there.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have a feeling Amazon would not tolerate this level of push back to products and business strategy (and they have the corresponding "don't care" reputation!).

Google management seems to give in so much and if you are a GOOG shareholder you could have a real case here (re the Maven project). [Disclosure: I am not a GOOG shareholder]. Management has to keep the interests of the company at heart - they are legally bound to do whats best for the company. One could argue that getting involved in AI+Warfare is bad for the image of the company, but the revenue it brings in as well as getting an entry into defense dollars would be a huge benefit for its nascent cloud division.

Whether you like it or not, employees will have personal opinions and it is great to accommodate their expression of such opinions. However, as a public company, GOOG management has legal obligations too. As conflicts with and demands of management increase, and it impacts revenue, we shall see top level management excuse themselves from interacting this openly with employees.

Unfortunately, more open and liberal companies are also more susceptible to such attacks and lawsuits when compared to a corp that is more authoritarian.

<comment> compiler-guy For a company like Google, which is highly dependent on getting and keeping highly skilled tech workers, "What is good for the company" often involves keeping employees happy.

Google got to where it is by aspiring to have the best working conditions available, and much of its talent came for that reason. You can build companies other ways--just like Amazon did--but changing that deal out from under the employees who came based on that deal would be quite disruptive and result in turmoil during the transition.

Would things be better for the company coming out the other side of such a transition? Hard to say, but the costs would be quite high.

<comment><USER21> Yup, I think that summarizes what is happening there

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Everyone here seems to think that if you have a good job you shouldn't be involved in labor organizing, because everyone else has it worse?

Isn't the point that everyone should be organizing because working conditions everywhere are much worse than they could be, and the organizing at Google is a case study for how organizing works at one particularly unusual company?

<comment><USER23> Furthermore, those who have a good job are the most empowered to organize because they don't have to worry about how they will put bread on the table.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's disappointing that the author didn't take the opportunity to choose language that didn't provide a distinct slant to the article. An objective tone would have been totally achievable and this would've been marked as a fairly good summation of a rather tumultuous few years for the giant.

<comment><USER25> But half-credit for the summary of Demore's views. It was surprisingly even handed about that other than saying he thought women were per se neurotic.

Tonally, it is telling that some personalities had descriptions of their emotional states (from what source?) while others only had their actions and opinions described.

<comment><USER26> One key misrepresentation:

> In the memo, Damore wrote that hiring practices aimed to increase diversity > "can effectively lower the bar" at Google.

Damore wrote that Google "...lowered the bar _by reducing the false negative rate_." Unsurprisingly, almost every news outlet chopped off the last 6 works of the sentence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The comments here, paraphrased: those entitled tech they don't know how much better they have it than people under oppressive governments, how _dare_ they use their position to try to prevent their companies from helping oppressive governments!

</comment><comment><USER28> Lots of folks here are complaining there's no TL;DR, and I find that many of the comments (including my previous comment here) are essentially irrelevant to the article & simply rehashing the same old things we always talk about on HN... getting to be like old married people here....

So here's my TL;DR, in an effort to refocus the conversation to what I think is interesting about the article.

* First, the article does not discuss personal misery at all, so if you're talking about rich people whining about their problems, notice you're in old-married-people conversation mode, having an irrelevant yet comfortable and reassuring conversation.

* The article is long and has a broad arc, contrasting "don't be evil" with 1) Google's steps and missteps in China, 2) Google's tensions with the US government, and 3) Google's controversies over sexual harassment payouts and the Damore memo (HN's favorite!).

1 & 2) The article alternates employee walkouts over the Trump travel ban (tension with US gov), the initial entry into the Chinese market (tension with the employees and the US gov), the exit from the Chinese market (Google employees in China sad, US employees joyful), the Maven project (working for US Dept of Def, trying to downplay it to employees), the political backlash for dropping Maven (US Gov: Google is evil & unpatriotic), and the Dragonfly project for bringing Google back to China (unpatriotic like I said right?).

* The geopolitical push and pull is discussed in terms of employee opinions and government opinions. The harassment and diversity issues are discussed in terms of employee opinions and media and internet opinions/doxxing/etc. The larger idea is to compare the internal and external forces pushing on Google and Alphabet's C-suite and examine where they're going.

So. Do you think the comparison of internal activism re: Dragonfly & Maven to internal activism re: the harassment payouts is warranted? To what extent should Google be following the lead of its employees, and how should it do that when employees disagree? Do capitalism and "not being evil" fundamentally conflict?

<comment><USER25> The only thing the article conspicuously omits is that the controversies were regularly hashed out on HN, Reddit, etc. A Martian reading the article might assume the controversy mostly stayed on Google internal platforms and right- wing corners of the internet. As you point out, that was clearly not the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is the most shocking part

> "the only way to deal with all the heads of the medusa is to no-platform all > of them."

Shouldn't it rather be the heads of the hydra ?

<comment><USER30> Gorgons have snakes growing from their hair and presumably that's what's being referred to (though I agree that the author of the quote is probably confused).

But "the medusa" is also an error at another level, because one should write either "Medusa" or "the gorgon". Medusa was the name of a specific gorgon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> > To invent products like Gmail, Earth, and Translate, you need coddled > geniuses free to let their minds run wild.

A cute meme that people like to repeat because it 'sounds right', not really accurate. Gmail was someone's pet project, Earth was purchased, and Translate was a boring statistical analysis program for 10 years. I mean, really, how "wild" does your mind have to be to write a crappy CRUD app or design an algorithm?

<comment><USER32> To me, Google Maps/Earth seems to be one of the most advanced web apps in the world.

Gmail and Translate are, indeed, not extremely exciting.

<comment><USER33> At the time Gmail was introduced, it's hard to overstate how groundbreaking and influential it was. Totally raised the bar for web apps everywhere by making effective use of XHR, which at that time was hardly known even to web developers. An absurdly large amount of storage space (1GB when Hotmail was 10MB, IIRC?), fast and effective search. There's a reason Google was the most loved and respected company in tech for years, and IMHO Gmail was a huge part of that.

<comment><USER31> But does it really take a coddled genius whose mind runs wild to develop a modern web app and give it lots of storage space? Or was it just a cool idea that a team of regular-old software developers decided to implement?

<comment><USER33> Lots of teams of regular-old software developers have done cool stuff over the years, but in this case, it happened to be a coddled genius. At least that is the story we've consistently been told over the years. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Buchheit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Buchheit)

I'm pretty sure there were plenty of geniuses on the Hotmail team at the time, too--maybe they weren't being coddled enough in the Ballmer era! ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Read the 1st part. Didn't understand a thing.

What is this article about, anyway?

<comment><USER32> > What is this article about, anyway?

Privileged people making lots of of money acting like spoiled kids despite having limitless alternative options.

<comment><USER34> Got it. Skiping it.

Thanks for the tldr.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It's worth a watch if you haven't seen Joe Rogan's podcast with James Damore. I think it adds some much needed context: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ1JeII0eGo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ1JeII0eGo)

</comment><comment><USER16> This is so sad. You should guys all quit in protest. You deserve better than this. I mean it, goo

<comment> java-man goo is listening!

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> In my opinion, this is why workplaces should be neutral and no personal ideologies or beliefs shouldn't be allowed to be expressed to keep it that way.

</comment><comment><USER37> lesson learned: large companies can afford to be wasteful.

google can afford to fight all these ideological battles and employee spats because of their large revenue. If they weren't raking in so much dough, I doubt they would be willing to humor employees complaints on the scale cited in Wired (an entire social network for employees and supported by the company?). I'm sure similar incidents occur at other large corporations. They definitely happen at mid-sized companies, albeit with lower intensity. working in HR for google must be quite the safari

<comment><USER14> Well, yes, and there are lots of other things Google can do because they have so much money, like their various research projects.

But remember that Google+ was a company-wide initiative intended to compete with Facebook, which is kind of a big deal. Yes, they had lots of money to throw at it, but it was for a purpose.

The internal version was originally for testing. (Also, the business version of Google+ is still a product as part of G suite.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I don't think "misery" isn't the right word here.

</comment><comment><USER39> There's algae in the tube feeding the ice machine in my company's break room, multiple wet ceiling tiles all year long, signs telling us to literally not wipe our feces on the walls in the bathroom, shared desks with other shifts, a constant smell of mold and I make 35k a year, no chance of promotion at all without taking on tens of thousands of dollars of debt to get a 4-year degree in literally anything, at a rabidly anti-union company, in a state where an employee can basically fire you for no reason at all.

Man, I wish I had the problems of these Goooglers.

Sure, sexism and racial discrimination is bad bad bad, but this happens at the vast majority of employers. If I and/or my co-workers tried to do one of these walkouts, security would be there when we came back to take our badges and tell us to leave or the police would be called.

I find it _extremely_ difficult to feel any sympathy for these folks because they have it much better than I do, and extremely better than millions of people in the United States and billions of people worldwide.

A cursory Google search (ha, maybe I should have used Bing) on-site physicians, paid PATERNITY leave, death benefits, leave of absence to pursue education, having Google on your CV probably helps tremendously if you try and get a job somewhere else, Google allows employees to spend 20% of their time pursuing a project that they are passionate about, apparently Googlers can bring their pets to work, have access to all sorts of other benefits like shuttles/food/recreation that simply do not exist for the vast majority of people in the world.

The lifter in my work chair has been broken for years now, it has recently started tilting to the left as well, it is 12 years old. Our windows 10 upgrade removed a functional calculator, something I use every few minutes, requiring me to either buy a calculator or use Google for work-related maths. There are 3 microwaves and 2 small refrigerators for 100~ employees. In the winter the upper 60's are not uncommon in the office with the upper 70's and lower 80's not uncommon in the summer with business casual dress mandatory. Need to go to the doctor, be prepared to at least take a half day which you have to request well in advance most of the time with about a month and a half blacked out every year where no one can take time off. Need a personal day, well you better fake sick and call in and if you call in 2-3x in a 6 month period you're now on their radar and risking verbal warning territory.

I'm sorry, but I just can't feel sorry for them.

<comment><USER40> > signs telling us to lierally not wipe our feces on the walls in the bathroom

This is not like the other details. What the hell caused that?

<comment><USER41> > I make 35k

I can only imagine the people this company employees if they are spending 35K on a software developer. 90% sure the majority of staff is making minimum wage.

With such low wages, you can't expect quality.

<comment><USER39> > if they are spending 35K on a software developer.

You do realize not every human being on the planet, or even HN, is a software developer, right?

>90% sure the majority of staff is making minimum wage.

I make 65% of my state's annual HOUSEHOLD income and 2.3x minimum wage... this is a problem with HN, many of you make 6 figure salaries and assume that everyone is a software engineer making 6 figure salaries.

The 2017 nominal median income per capita was $31,786 in the United States.

<comment><USER42> I actually somehow expect everyone on HN to be a software developer/enterpreneur/anything-else-tech-related

Am I wrong with my assumption?

<comment><USER43> There's homeless people on HN. I've seen them post their stories before. There's all types.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> happiness = reality - <USER2>

<comment><USER45> if you expect reality, you have zero happiness?

<comment><USER44> Yes, but I interpret it as: you'd be content; no positive or negative change in happiness.

Of course it's just a pseudo equation.

<comment><USER45> so if you expect more then reality, you have negative happiness because you will never get it?

<comment><USER44> Yes, but not because you'll never get it. It's just that at that moment the reality of your situation is different than what you expected (in a negative way).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Tried to read article. It's long and meandering, lede is buried. Is there a TLDR somewhere?

</comment><comment><USER47> Notice, this is long article. Around 12 000 words or 30 pages.

<comment><USER9> Does Wired even have editors? Any editor who's not incompetent beyond belief would have told Nitasha Tiku that it's not necessary to include _every single detail_ from three years' worth of notes. In fact, the excess verbiage makes it less impactful than it could have been. A good editor would have trimmed this to one half or even one third of its current length, and it would have been better without the bloat.

<comment><USER48> Don't be ridiculous. The New Yorker regularly has articles of this length if not longer. It's ordinary longform journalism.

<comment><USER9> There's nothing wrong with something being longer if the content warrants it. Complex topics require lengthy exposition. But that requires the writer to _write_ , to arrange and connect things into a coherent narrative. That's not what happened here. This is a thin article, padded out to novella length with repetition and irrelevancy. Again, it's not bad that the article exists. It just needed a better editor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> What's the TL;DR?

Spend 5 min reading the first few blocks couldn't make out what's this about.

</comment><comment><USER50> Do Google employees understand that most people hate their jobs and you work because you have to?

<comment><USER51> Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs in action.

<comment><USER52> I never know how seriously to take Maslow. It resonates intuitively for some people I guess. But he just made the theory up. There's not a lot of scientific evidence to support it.

"In their extensive review of research based on Maslow's theory, Wahba and Bridwell found little evidence for the ranking of needs that Maslow described or for the existence of a definite hierarchy at all"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs#Cr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs#Criticism)

<comment><USER53> it would be very difficult to convince me that maslow's hierarchy is wrong.

I don't mean the specifics of the hierarchy, but the idea behind it. Sure, maybe the specific hierarchy isn't right, but the idea that some needs have to be satisfied before a person can contribute to other needs is absolutely spot on. I know this from life experience. So to convince me that the underlying idea is wrong would take a hell of a lot of evidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> There's some kind of lesson here.

99% of other companies, especially big companies, do way less than Google to accommodate social justice activists. Yet they seem to be least happy at Google.

Buddha was onto something about human nature.

<comment><USER55> Can you expand on the last sentence? I don't understand how it connects with the rest.

<comment><USER54> Desire is the root of suffering.

They've got the paychecks, the perks, and even their politics are constantly validated. But they're not happy.

<comment><USER55> I hope you don't mind me riffing on this idea. I'm very much compatible with this mindset, but in the case of those pursuing social justice, and still suffering, I think there is something more.

I have a colleague who ran into a software design problem lately. He is looking at all of the apparent possible options and none of them seem like they will result in good code. He's gone on the internet to see if someone else knows the solution to the problem, with no luck. Then he's spent time to see if anyone has written any frameworks that solve this problem. While some claim to have solved the problem, a purusal of the code show the cure to be at least as bad as the the disease. What can he do?

To me, this is the same kind of problem with the same kind of result. When we first see a problem, or instinct is to go and look for a solution. We go to experts to find out what the answer is. We look at proven best practices in order to find out what we need to do. Strangely, though, the advice of the experts and the best practices often lead to situations that are at least as bad as our original problem. Why?

The reason is that we are taking an _internal_ problem and looking for _external_ answers. Buddha said that life is suffering. This is not to say that we should give up and have a defeatist attitude, I think. It's more that you just can't escape it: life is suffering. And code is bad. (In case you are wondering just how crazy I can be, I once gave a talk in public about how code is literally karma ;-) ).

We have to accept the suffering first (or bad code) and then start "acting skillfully". There isn't an external answer that will solve our problems. The guru on the mountain doesn't have the answer because they don't know what the question is. The carefully built system does not work for our issue, because our issue never existed when the system was built.

One of the things I've found about people pursuing social justice is that, on average, they tend to be intelligent people. The more they pursue the justice, and the more the society gives them leeway to do so, the more unhappy they get -- because they discover that their answer is not matched with the problem they are trying to solve. All of that energy has been put forward to solve the problem and they very slowly learn that they might not have the correct problem. Of course some people are always blind and they keep burning the witches, even finding new witches to burn after they run out of the first ones. However, I have found that the majority get really unhappy the farther they progress down this road.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Utter self-delusion - either by the author, or by Google employees, or possibly both.

Google has been evil from... well, depends on how you look at it, but if not from Day One, then certainly by the time they started GMail. The whole point is to maintain a vast surveillance network over as many Internet users as possible (later also mobile phone users), to try to capture as much of what they do. The use is for deeply personal and intrusive ads, but also for mass government control (NSA gets copy of everything, remember), individual government control and intervention (through subpoenas by less-secretive agencies), and gradually - the shaping of public opinion and knowledge through more and more targeted changes of search results and content recommendations. And of course - nothing is ever erased, nor will it ever be.

Oh, also:

> To invent products like Gmail, Earth, and Translate, you need coddled > geniuses free to let their minds run wild.

Google didn't invent any of this stuff. They were just able to put a lot of compute power and storage behind it before others did.

</comment><comment><USER57> Google doesn't even pay well enough to treat people poorly. They're wagering an awful lot on the premise that working for Google is prestigious enough to sustainably attract and retain talent.

Meanwhile a smaller tech startup will pay better and give you way more of a hand in shaping the product, and maybe even not work you 80+hours a week. I'm not sure what the appeal of the big names is for devs.

<comment><USER58> > Google doesn't even pay well enough to treat people poorly. [...] Meanwhile > a smaller tech startup will pay better [...] maybe even not work you > 80+hours a week

Having worked both at Google and at smaller tech startups, this is pretty much the opposite of reality. I wonder where are you getting these ideas from.

<comment><USER57> Is google just particularly dogged about salary negotiations, then? The numbers I've seen for someone new to the org don't impress me relative to the competitive baseline. Maybe you have to ask way higher, or you have to come in at a high level already?

<comment><USER59> Where do you see significantly better salaries? You might be ignoring the stock compensation which is basically like cash for an established stable company like Google

<comment><USER60> This is actually a common complaint on Blind (anonymous social networking site).

Google seems to consistently low ball relative to other companies (Facebook, Apple, uber, etc.)

Obviously depends on the team/role but seems like google is trying to leverage its "prestigious brand" to pay less

<comment><USER57> exactly this.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Robinhood app isn't updating market prices - <AUTHOR>

Check for yourself. Compare real time data to the app data... <comment><USER2> Are you getting fills against the fake prices? If so, take liquidity from the fake world and hedge it by taking liquidity from the real world (on another account) and wait until the spread reverts by Robinhood coming back to reality. ;-)</comment>


How to DOS a developer  - <AUTHOR> http://who-t.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-to-dos-developer.html

<comment><USER2> When I read about this I always think about Joel Spolsky's observation about 15-minute distractions that affect programmers. When you start thinking about your day in those terms, telling the people talking to you to get bent (in nicer terms) starts to be justified.

 _Here's the simple algebra. Let's say (as the evidence seems to suggest) that if we interrupt a programmer, even for a minute, we're really blowing away 15 minutes of productivity. For this example, lets put two programmers, Jeff and Mutt, in open cubicles next to each other in a standard Dilbert veal-fattening farm. Mutt can't remember the name of the Unicode version of the strcpy function. He could look it up, which takes 30 seconds, or he could ask Jeff, which takes 15 seconds. Since he's sitting right next to Jeff, he asks Jeff. Jeff gets distracted and loses 15 minutes of productivity (to save Mutt 15 seconds)._

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000068.html>

The entire discussion about _the zone_ is enlightening. If you haven't read it, do so; it'll make you think during your day.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an example of my least-favourite type of HN story: "Devs are clever; users are stupid". While it is not untrue it misses the underlying problem: Devs are generally bad communicators and have an unrealistic assumption about the language and technical understanding of their users which they translate into "users are stupid".

To get a feel for how this feels consider the last time you took a car to be fixed and had to talk to the mechanic, or the first time you took clothes to be dry-cleaned. It feels belittling, doesn't it?

<comment><USER4> That is not the point, and Hutterer never said "devs are clever", much less "users are stupid". Those are your words. Read the article again.

I found it amusing, as it has been happening to me lately.

<comment><USER5> Just because those words didn't appear in the article doesn't mean that they're not an accurate description of the author's tone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "How to Disk Operating System a developer?"

Oh come on. It's DoS. Pretty please? Not respecting capitalization is definitely a way to DoS a developer...

<comment><USER7> Yeah, if you're gonna right a smug article about your profession, at least get the lingo write.

<comment><USER6> I see what you did there...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Be verbose. As verbose you can be. If you can say something in one sentence or three paragraphs (with three overlapping or identical examples), choose the latter. Searching for signal in lots of noise is a favourite pasttime of many developers."

Pot, kettle, black, etc.

<comment><USER9> I think he was making an example.

<comment><USER10> At one shop I worked at, the devs just started filtering the output of one tester to the trash. Not that she didn't have something useful to say. It just wasn't worth dealing with the other 99 posts that were noise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's similiar to my dating tactic: "Want to go for a drink with me?" "Want to go for a drink with me?" "Want to go for a drink with me?" "Want to go for a drink with me?" "Want to go for a drink with me?" "Want to go for a drink with me?" "FINE YES!"

<comment><USER10> Do you find yourself making telephone calls that are disconnected numbers or are answered by someone unexpected?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This DOS is easy to fix. Just ignore the person.

I find the following things quite easy to do: not replying to random emails, ignoring stuff on irc.

<comment><USER13> Even better solution: ask to be paid for (non developer-to-developer) support. The best way to prevent DOS is to have a price. Not that it makes interacting with such jerks fun, but at least you get something in return.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If anyone wants to contribute to a FOSS project but aren't confident about their coding chops: fleshing out bug reports and clearly defining their scope will make a HUGE difference.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think this illustrates why FOSS hasn't taken, and probably won't take the "mainstream" by storm.

Users communicating directly with developers is a nice idea that sounds good at first, but unfortunately it can't really work when

a) there are many orders of magnitude more users than developers

b) users are not technologically advanced enough to provide the developers with useful (and preferably _only_ useful) information about the bugs

This means that developers are effectively DoS:ed to death when trying to directly support a piece of software with lots of non-tech-geek users. What could solve the problem would be a group of people between developers and users which could translate normal language to and from tech-speak, and evaluate the importance of different bugs. I guess this can be automated to some extent with bug-tracking software, but I don't think it's enough when the software in question has lots and lots of users.

</comment><comment><USER16> Oh they're so sensitive these "developers".</comment>


Google is apparently taking down all/most fediverse apps from the Play Store - <AUTHOR> https://mathstodon.xyz/web/statuses/104765289307010207 <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24304275](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24304275).</comment>


Apple Just Shipped Web Components to Production and You Probably Missed It - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/ionic/apple-just-shipped-web-components-to-production-and-you-probably-missed-it-57pf <comment><USER2> I suppose 50 web components is better than 0, but isn't that still a drop in the bucket?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is just the start, they are expanding the surface area using Web Components pretty rapidly.</comment></comment>


Does More Money Motivate Higher Performance? - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/post.aspx?bid=358&bpid=25254&nlid=3049 <comment><USER2> Again?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1376655>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1370134>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1360285>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1357390> <<<\-- This one has the comments.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1360285>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1370134>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1376655>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1383943>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1385999>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1388904>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1389955>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1390588>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1397443>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1408731>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1410992>

There are probably more.

</comment><comment><USER3> Another lecture about how money can't make up for a good work environment where people can be proud of what they do. Problem with these articles is that money and a fulfilling job aren't mutually exclusive as it's being portrayed. It's not black and white.

How about trying to make people happy and giving them enough money that they invest themselves and take responsibility to maintain and even improve the status quo?

<comment><USER4> No doubt, I always feel like I am being feed an agenda with how many times this subject comes up. It surreal, almost like some paid think tank is spitting out studies to make the masses think that they don't need to be paid gobs of money for skills that most people don't have. I will take the high pay and job satisfaction please, because the two are not mutuality exclusive.</comment></comment>


Human waste shuts down Bart escalators(2012), Hazard team called - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Human-waste-shuts-down-BART-escalators-3735981.php <comment><USER2> How about putting up gates so people can't camp at the bottom of the stairwells and shit all over them?

If if there's not desire to lock them out... put in some bathrooms.

Seems like common sense, what am I missing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe crowd source the watching of the video cameras at night, and offer a reward to anyone reporting this kind of activity so that it can be ticketed and cleaned up?

<comment><USER2> Ticketed? I'm not sure you realize who is doing the shitting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of the richest cities in America can't even install (and maintain!) 24/7 public bathrooms.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We should do it like they do in eastern europe, such as prague, where you have to pay a certain amount of cents and they stay _pretty_ clean.</comment>


Google removed 1m DMCA links last month, 540,000 at the behest of Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/google-infringing-link-removal/

<comment><USER2> We are operating a company that is very removed from anything that one may commonsensically regard as copyrighted material: we do not stream videos, do not record videos, do not host videos, images or audio files. Our users send only text messages, somewhat like Twitter. We have public user groups. The number of defective DMCA notices has been rapidly increasing in the last 12 months, to the point that we spent multiple hours and signed an engagement letter with a well known San Francisco IP attorney, who called 95% of these notices "bogus", since they do not identify any infringing material. I think Google actually acts on a lot of deficient notices, removing the entire domains from its search, not just the deep links to copyright infringing materials, but the entire domains.

</comment><comment><USER3> Google now makes it easier to find illegal content. The link [http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/...](http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/domains/?r=all- time) is a one stop shop.

I am wondering if that is annoying DMCA even more?

<comment><USER4> s/DMCA/MAFIAA/

<comment><USER5> I used to see these s/bad/better a lot around the web for many years. I could understand what it meant from the context so I never took the time to actually look around for an explication. I simply assumed it was an old BBS thing.

Well, until I started to learn Vim

<comment><USER6> Vim got it from sed :)

<comment> ezequiel-garzon And think it's fair to say that both vi(m) and sed got it from ed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Isn't taking down links because of "piracy" a _very_ legal grey area, if not even illegal? I thought DMCA was supposed to be about the actual content, not _links_ to the content.

And what the hell is Microsoft doing there? Are there really that many links to Windows iso's? I'd figure most would just get them through torrents. And speaking of which - does anyone still think Microsoft's banning of TPB links in MSN was just an accident?

<comment><USER8> Search engines aren't regulated, but clearly Google thinks it's legally safer to take down such links. I get the impression that some non-US sites don't comply with the DMCA (since they don't have to) and thus the copyright holders move their enforcement up the chain.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure if that's right. You won't get google for inducing infringement or whatever, but there is:

"A service provider shall not be liable for monetary relief, or, except as provided in subsection (j), for injunctive or other equitable relief, for infringement of copyright by reason of the provider referring or _linking users to an online location containing infringing material or infringing activity_ , by using information location tools, including a directory, index, reference, pointer, or hypertext link, if the service provider--

(A) does not have actual knowledge that the material or activity is infringing;

(B) in the absence of such actual knowledge, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent; or

(C) upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, acts expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material;"

<http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512#d>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting that filestube (a web search service covering links to filesharing websites) comes in well above the torrent search sites as no.1 for 'top targeted domains'. It seems a very abstract way of tackling the issue, preventing one search engine from linking to the results of another. Especially as (according to Wikipedia) filestube are happy to take down DMCA offending content themselves...

Also - it makes me wonder whether web-based piracy (through filesharing websites), which seemed to hardly exist a few years ago, is becoming the 'dominant' form of piracy...

<comment><USER8> I don't understand why Google even indexes Filestube given their policy against indexing SERPs (cf. Mahalo).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is an attempt by Google to create the community norm "protecting your IP is censorship". Notice who benefits - Google repackages, indexes, and otherwise uses lots and lots of contents that it didn't create, from webpages to feeds to books.

This is not to say that Google is evil, or that protecting IP is more important than a free internet; but it _is_ intimidating to see your "do not use my photograph/short story/program without permission" on the ominously named chillingeffects.org, and this is _not_ an accident.

<comment><USER12> According to <http://www.chillingeffects.org/about>, the chilling effects clearinghouse is not affiliated with Google. They just happen to contribute C&D notices heavily. (Similarly, Google does not own Linux, but they contribute source code.)

There seems to be some conception that contributing to non-profits or charitable organizations is wrong if you have an agenda. I don't understand that; though Google benefits from legal transparency and an Internet without censorship, isn't it nice that they contribute to non-profits that help further these causes? Do you want more censorship and hidden government proceedings instead?

As a published author, I certainly value free expression more than a few extra bucks from my book. Without what I've learned from the Internet, I'd probably be flipping burgers for a living.

<comment><USER13> What's hypocritical is that Google itself engages in "censorship" on a colossal scale, in the name of preventing spammy results (e.g. co.cc domains, not to mention Google's dealings with China). To be clear, I personally have no problem with this (in the same way that I have no problem with them removing links to copyrighted content), but they're obviously not handing over details of the sites _they_ unilaterally delist to chillingeffects.com. So there's evidence of a double-standard.

Furthermore, while chillingeffects.org may, nominally, not be affiliated with Google, it is also apparent to anyone paying attention that Google is waging a proxy battle against copyright holders, through large donations (e.g. 7MM grant for the Lessig and his "remix culture" shills at EFF) to non-profits or charities with agendas hostile to rights holders and sympathetic to their expansive view of fair use doctrines.

When one takes into account Google's recent spending on lobbying (in recent quarters, it is well in excess of that spent by the e.g. RIAA), and their cavalier attitude to laws that don't suit them (tax/privacy), then it becomes fair to question their motives in arguing for an "open" internet.

> As a published author, I certainly value free expression more than a few > extra bucks from my book.

You may well be a published author, but you are primarily employee at Google. You don't need to make money of your book(s); in fact, I'm sure you're quite happy to give the book away for free, since it bolsters your credentials and allows you to claim expertise in some area, which can then be monetized through employment. But this indirect avenue isn't available to musicians and non-technical writers -- there is no "mother Google" that will give _them_ cushy jobs with free meals and other perks.

> Without what I've learned from the Internet, I'd probably be flipping > burgers for a living.

I don't know your background, I don't want to be presumptive, and I realize you're being a bit flippant, but I'm guessing that if Google took you on, then you went to some top-tier university and you already come from a solidly (upper?) middle-class family. The idea that you'd be flipping burgers is inconceivable in the worst of possible worlds.

Just to be clear, I have nothing against Google; I think they do great stuff. I'm a big fan of Dart language, for example, and think Google has a lot of cool tech. And I think that on balance, they're probably more a force for good than for evil. But having worked for a (morally ambiguous) company like Goldman Sachs, I know from personal experience that the initial enthusiasm at working at a new (and wildly successful) company can have an effect akin to wearing rose-tinted glasses.

Incidentally, are Google hiring? ;)

<comment><USER12> When I first read your comment I thought you had a good point, but now that I've thought about it for a few hours, I disagree.

Takedown notices slow progress throughout our industry, whether legally justified or not. If you look at the comment threads below this one, many are asking questions like, "I want to start a website, should I worry about this?" to which the replies are, "yes, hire a lawyer". That's good advice in this legal climate, but it slows progress tremendously.

If someone just wants to share their weekend project, they're out a few hours and ten bucks a month to host the thing. But they're exposing them to potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal liabilities; perhaps they miss some takedown notes while they are away on vacation. That's a pricey lawsuit should someone be inclined to pursue it. (And there's no indication that rightsholders won't.) The initial legal consultation regarding a site you want to launch is not cheap either -- an hour with a lawyer buys you a year of Amazon EC2 CPU time.

The end result is that people that want to share their programming work won't because they decide it's too legally risky. Sites like The Chilling Effect Clearinghouse let us see what sort of takedown notices are currently popular and plan our services accordingly. If that happens to discourage rightsholders from enforcing their rights, well, that's fine with me. I want to see new ways of using the Internet, even if it comes at the expensive of the big copyright holders.

As for removing spam from search results; that's actually a warming effect. Because Google removes spam results, small companies have the opportunity to compete with or compliment Google here. All they need to do is create an "uncensored" all-spam-site web index and offer that to the wider Internet community. The people that want to search spam sites will then be able to, creating value and a new business model. (Look at how successful DuckDuckGo has been, and all they do is wrap Bing's results. A new index could be amazingly successful.)

<comment><USER13> btw, rereading my post, I see now that the tone is somewhat snarky and accusative, so I apologize for that.

> Takedown notices slow progress throughout our industry, whether legally > justified or not. If you look at the comment threads below this one, many > are asking questions like, "I want to start a website, should I worry about > this?" to which the replies are, "yes, hire a lawyer". That's good advice in > this legal climate, but it slows progress tremendously.

I agree that's a factor, but I think the case is somewhat overstated. If you look at the list of top targeted companies on the blog post, you'll see names like filestube.com, torrentz.eu, etc. As far as I can tell, copyright- infringing material is the bread-and-butter of these firms. If the legal costs go up for them, then that's actually the _goal_. But companies like Instagram, airbnb, ridejoy, etc... I don't think they would have serious issues with, or incur substantial costs because of, the DMCA. Basically, if your business isn't leveraging copyrighted material to gain popularity without paying rights holders for it, you'll be ok.

Also, Bastiat's dictum on "what you see, and what you don't see" applies: what you see is companies/units like YouTube getting embroiled in legal action and you think, "these laws aren't worth it". What you don't see are the companies that never make it (particularly in software) because of piracy, or the spectrum of business models that become unfeasible as a result of the fact that users have grown hooked to free content.

> As for removing spam from search results; that's actually a warming effect

I totally agree -- I just wish Google applied the same philosophy to copyright infringing links and material. IMHO the afore-mentioned sites/links are very much like spam in the copyrights arena -- they operate at the margins of respectable and honest practices. I think the internet would benefit, long- term, if rights holders were protected from infringement, as a result of the fact that the ad-based business model would be supplemented by a viable direct-payment model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So what kind of content is Microsoft asking for takedowns of?

<comment><USER15> Software piracy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So if Microsoft requested 543,000 links be removed from Google's index in just one month, it really makes me wonder how much of Bing is censored.

</comment><comment><USER17> The fact Microsoft is the #1 requester isn't a surprise to me. The 2nd most popular search engine probably automatically identifies "bad" content then siphons off this list to Google. If Google had more paid products (that weren't ad driven), I'd expect Google to be the largest referrer of Bing DMCA requests.

</comment><comment><USER18> _"Overall, Google received 1.24 million requests from 1,296 copyright owners for removal the past month. They targeted 24,129 domains."_

Must be a full time job to fill out all those forms.

<comment><USER19> > Must be a full time job to fill out all those forms.

If you look at the list of the top submitters of notices, you will see several organizations which do exactly that on behalf of IP owners, like Web Sheriff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> the suffix 'm' means 'one thousand'. if you want to abbreviate 'million', use 'mm'.

<comment><USER21> not really [http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_proper_abbreviation_fo...](http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_proper_abbreviation_for_1_million_dollars)

<comment><USER22> Yes, really. Your own link confirms it at the top:

> _The standard financial abbreviation for million is MM, e.g. $300 MM._

If you use MM, basically everyone will understand. If you use M, some people will assume million but anyone with experience in finance (or anywhere close) will read "thousand".

I pretty sure the blurb at the bottom of your link is wrong, though. 'M' as an abbreviation doesn't come from Roman numerals. That claim is all over the Internet, but I don't believe it's true. The 'M' is for _mille_ , meaning "thousand". We use this in all sorts of terms, like millennium, millipede, "per mil", etc.

<comment><USER6> Just use kk (kilo*kilo) for million :) everybody is happy?

<comment><USER22> Nope, because financial people are set in their ways. :) MM isn't going away any time soon.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bruce Schneier joins startup (Inrupt) focused on privacy - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/02/inrupt_tim_bern.html <comment><USER2> Interesting. Lots of projects bubbling up on digital personal sovereignty; rightly so.

Cool times ahead!</comment>


Essential has sold just 5,000 phones since launch - <AUTHOR> http://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/essential-has-sold-just-5-000-phones-since-launch-baystreet <comment><USER2> Who would buy this thing? The phone doesn't look to be anything special, the name makes it sound low-end, there's zero brand recognition. The magnetic wireless accessory thing is irrelevant to vast majority of consumers, especially since Bluetooth has already solved that problem and works with any device.

I can't imagine a scenario where someone is looking to buy a phone in the ~$700 range and chooses this.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure we are talking about the same bluetooth here. I have yet to see a bluetooth device that just works (I am a non apple user, so I can't speak for IOS devices).

The worst example are my wireless headphones. When I get into the car the car radio tries to connect to my phone, so it stops the wireless headphone output. I then have to scroll through the menu and disconnect the car radio, which tries to reconnect after a while.

But that is not even the worst. If I have an audiobook playing while I connect the headphones the audio switches immediately to the headphones as soon as they are connected (which is the expected behavior). But if I start the audiobook after the headphones are connected it takes several minutes until I can actually hear something and I have not figured out a way to speed this up apart from disconnecting and reconnecting after I hit play.

I for one love my wired headsets, they just work. But I have to buy some new ones every other month because I regulary rip them when they get caught up in something.

<comment><USER4> > I have yet to see a bluetooth device that just works (I am a non apple user, > so I can't speak for IOS devices).

Indeed, if you go all-in on Apple they really do "just work", and come pretty close when you use a non-Apple BT headset with Apple gear. I can't say if this is because the standards are inadequate and Apple does some extra work, or if the BT implementations on cheap hardware are simply terrible. I kinda lean to the latter, but really either could be true.

> When I get into the car the car radio tries to connect to my phone, so it > stops the wireless headphone output.

BTW if you are in California it's a crime to have an earbud in both ears or cup headset covering both ears. You're unlikely to be stopped for that specifically, but if you get stopped for erratic driving, speeding, or have an accident the cops are quite willing to load that one on too, and in the case of an accident your insurance company may not cover you. So your car may have a crappy implementation (see my comment above) or it might be attempting to do the right thing.

<comment><USER5> Apple's Bluetooth products "just work" because they don't use Bluetooth for the pairing part.

<comment><USER6> Do you have a citation for this?

<comment><USER7> [https://appletoolbox.com/2016/12/airpods-not-auto-pairing- sy...](https://appletoolbox.com/2016/12/airpods-not-auto-pairing-sync- problems-fix/)

This page mentions it in the "Setting your Airpods up" section.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if the name also hurts. When I see the word "Essential" I think "basic/stripped-down". When I see the price of $699 for an "Essential phone", I think that I might as well get an Apple iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, or Google Pixel.

<comment><USER9> It's also at odds with the gadgety stick-on camera. I don't think I've ever seen anyone use an add-on camera lens with their phone, much less the black sweater crowd they seem to be calling out with the "Essential" name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Trying to break in to the high end of the smartphone market as a newcomer is a mistake. That's Apple and Samsung's territory, and they have the muscle to fight you intensely for it. The Chinese manufacturers have the better idea: start with cheap phones, build a user base, and move up.

In particular, the camera is the ace in the hole that the established players have. People spending $700 on a phone expect a top-notch camera, and from the reviews it sounds like the Essential Phone isn't cutting it. Unfortunately the camera is the main reason why there won't be any Cinderella stories about new high-end phone makers: Apple, Google and Samsung probably have teams of hundreds working on camera software now that the low-hanging fruit has been plucked, and new companies can't hope to match that.

<comment><USER11> Isn't that what Tesla did, though?

<comment><USER12> No, basically nobody had expensive luxury electric cars before Tesla. This is more what Faraday Future was trying to do - be late to the game and copy, maybe change a few details to try to marginally improve it.

What Tesla did is more like what Apple did - massively expand the "smart phone" segment in the first place.

If you compare the Essential phone to a V30, S8, or Pixel, there's nothing anything near the difference of comparing an iPhone to a Nokia N95. Something that is so compelling it makes you not care about the other things the iPhone _doesn 't_ have that the Nokia does, like GPS and 3G. Similarly the Model S vs a 7 series: one has more bells and whistles, one is a fundamentally different product that a lot of people not very interested in the old option find much more compelling.

<comment><USER11> "No, basically nobody had expensive luxury electric cars before Tesla."

But high end luxury cars were a thing. Tesla wasn't competing with just electric cars, they were competing with all cars.

<comment><USER13> Tesla would have gone precisely nowhere with a mass market luxury gas burner. Established brands had that market pretty much locked up and beating them on quality when starting from scratch is basically impossible.

Small players in this market have to go to the ultra-niche extremes where you sell like 20 cars a year for millions of dollars per and usually still lose money.

The electric drive was the killer feature on the Tesla. Without it the car has no reason to exist.

Also, by luxury car standards the interior of a Tesla is absolutely subpar. They were competing against cars with handcrafted mahogany dashboards and precision stitched leather seats where people will spend hours and days fine tuning the static and moving resistance on the heater control knob to get it just perfect.

<comment><USER11> But their strategy was still go to after the high end market, instead of try to target the low end market and go up.

<comment><USER13> That is true, and it works because there is a market for high end vehicles. The market is there because the high end companies make a product that is measurably better than the mass market product from traditional manufacturers.

Such a thing really isn't possible in the cell phone market. A tiny shop can't build a phone notably better than an iPhone or a Galaxy. The only luxury phone provider I know about just glued diamonds on old dumbphones and went out of business.

Essential was apparently banking on people finding the modularity concept to be a killer feature worth a price premium, but that has not been the case apparently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Value. Early adopters recognize and act on it. This is how OnePlus succeeded with its first phone. No bloatware, great specs, fair price.

Essential is about $250 too expensive. It would have been enough if they had released a cheaper phone with the same specs, branding anonymity, and durability - less the attachments.

Value. Value. Value. This concept is key.

<comment><USER15> The attachment system would be a huge selling point if it gave it the ability to do significant improvements or upgrades to the unit. But so far it appears to be a novelty thing. If they released several addons at launch to show the versatility of the system, then they'd capture the market that wants modular phones. But they didn't.

The specs are nothing spectacular. It's not as great, stats-wise, as my Oneplus 3T, though a titanium body is a better selling point than an aluminium one.

<comment><USER14> Yes, the Ti body almost had me. Give me this: a Ti body phone with replaceable CPU/Memory. Give me an heirloom quality phone (like the pocketwatch of old) that has strong utility for 5 - 10 years.

<comment><USER15> Unfortunately modular phones haven't become a thing yet. Google tried that with Ara, but it's in indefinite hiatus. Of course, the next problem with making phones modular like that is a lack of standards. One developer makes the modules and keeps others from making them, thus entering the walled garden model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> [https://www.essential.com/](https://www.essential.com/) I'm sick of articles about products with no links to the official product site.

<comment><USER17> I haven't decided if "journalists" haven't embraced the fact that they're on the web yet or if they're trying not to link off site for SEO juice or just to keep people on their site.

<comment><USER18> If its for SEO they could just use rel="nofollow"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't get what problem this phone is solving. I think that's how everyone else feels too.

We already have good phones by a number of other companies, and some of them actually cost a reasonable amount.

<comment><USER20> It's supposed to be a long-term purchase, which is how they will explain low sales volume. But this makes it hard when they'll want to release a better version of the phone. Or not. Not sure though about their long-term pricing strategy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is going to be a great budget phone when it's getting cleared out on various sites for $3-400 early to mid next year. At $700 it just can't compete, especially with a mediocre camera, but once it drops under $500 then it'll be a lot cooler than most of the stuff in _that_ price range.

I tried one out, and it's not a hunk of junk in any way... it just doesn't do anything to wow you at that price _besides_ the screen. And it screams "brand that will push one big update if that then quit making phones"

</comment><comment><USER22> Selling is hard beyond any specific product criticism. Critics here in HN think it is more related to the product than to the marketing/selling aspects but 5000 are really few units sold.

</comment><comment><USER23> A shame. It's missing too many features I'm interested in but it's definitely the nicest looking "flagship" Android phone imo

</comment><comment><USER24> I have higher hopes for their next phone. This first edition was way too basic for my taste. It also showed a lack of experience in dealing with camera.

With the funding they have, I'd rather have them do some sort of acqui-hire over an OEM rather than just hiring a bunch of MBA / former Google employees. They should realize that making a good phone requires years of experience by now.

</comment><comment><USER25> The Essential phone does nothing fundamentally new. The Librem 5, on the other hand, will if it gets crowdfunded: it'll be the first phone to not lock its users into the shitty app store paradigm where you rely on the manufacturer for a max of 2-3 years of support/security-updates while renting siloed closed-source programs that sell your usage data and show you ads. The Librem 5 will run regular Linux that keeps working until the hardware falls apart (and then some), that can be updated by anyone, not just the manufacturer, will have its kernel kept up-to-date via efforts of the entire community of Linux kernel developers, and will run applications that aren't rented and that respect their users.

The Librem 5 will have open-source drivers and a non-Android operating system running a mainline Linux kernel (atop which Android compatibility is trivial if folks want to run that).

Lots of HN readers have tech jobs and can afford to make history by crowdfunding: [https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/](https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/)

<comment><USER26> Jesus Christ, HN and the creators of this (ugly, toy-like)phone seem to never get basic, rudimentary supply and demand in action that anybody running a business should already understand. People don't care about being tracked and they certainly don't care about running some obscure Linux distro on their damn phone. A million people showing dislike on how the market works won't magically change how it works.

People buy fast, sexy, bleeding edge smartphones with GREAT CAMERAS (not surprised the whole website decided to omit this, it's probably terrible). Companies that make these phones thrive (see: Apple, Samsung, etc. ) while companies that focus on things only a handful of programmers like (for free)wither away into obscurity, see: the Ouya, Firefox OS, opensolaris, etc.

<comment><USER27> Have you ever heard of the concept of niche targeting? I definitely recommend checking it out if you haven't. :)

<comment><USER28> Niche targeting is how you end up selling 5,000 phones.

<comment><USER25> With ~1000 more preorders the Librem 5 will be fully funded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> In my phone I want a good camera and a reasonable price. The Essential misses on both.

(they say a software update will improve the camera, we'll see)

</comment><comment><USER30> I just started to see the commercials on TV for Essential, in addition to the online ads just started few days ago.</comment>


Ubernomics: Social costs of ride-hailing larger than previously thought - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2018/11/03/the-social-costs-of-ride-hailing-may-be-larger-than-previously-thought <comment><USER2> Study results in an increase of roughly 1000 deaths a year due to extra traffic on road but $7B in utility gained. Easy trade.</comment>


TC - "Apple Is Evil Boycott The iPad – Sent From My iPad" - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/01/i-quit-quitting-the-ipad/

<comment><USER2> I usually agree with MG, at least in principal. Apple has been consistent on the buying in app means using in app purchase rule. That is why Amazon went to the browser to purchase altogether. But if Apple cracks down on all purchases made from the device have to be through Apple then that is a different issue. That means I can't get access to my Highrise data because I subscribed outside the app store? Seems like a slippery slope and also seems unlikely that that was what the rejection was for.</comment>


Google Chrome Web Lab is now live in beta. - <AUTHOR> http://www.chromeweblab.com/#home

<comment><USER2> Heh:

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1237941/copy.png>

A major feature of the web platform _is_ that it has multiple implementations, you know. ;p

edit: The live video in the Universal Orchestra experiment seems to work. Weirdly enough, "play online" shows the text "You need chrome" (sic) if clicked directly, but is accessible (and seems to work fine) if accessed via "play in museum".

Universal Orchestra appears to be silently broken in Firefox, although at least Teleporter works.

edit 2: And when I got into a live session in Safari, it didn't work correctly. (actually, it doesn't work right in Chrome either.)

<comment><USER3> yea too bad safari doesn't support webm like firefox and chrome do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's going on here? <http://i.imgur.com/8Ukx4.png>

First I get a blank grey page except for a language selector in the corner, then after changing language to force a refresh I'm told Chrome isn't supported and I should download Chrome.

<comment><USER5> All I get is the language selector, though I'm on chrome mobile.

<comment><USER6> Works fine for me in Chrome 20 and 22 on OS X.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Every time I get a place on the Universal Orchestra I don't appear to have any available notes to use. Sucks, I'd love to get in on the action.

</comment><comment><USER8> chrome 21 on ubuntu shows a blank page (not even an compatibility issue message).

[edit] I got it to work by removing the #home from the url. By "work" I mean not being blank, it is still broken ("please install chrome" even though I am running chrome 21)

<comment> mh- same here on chrome 22, ubuntu..

<comment><USER9> Here all works as expected. Running 21.0.1180.15 dev on Ubuntu 10.04 64bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd expect this to show something other than a blank screen on older versions of Chrome (18), at least.

<comment><USER11> Why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Web telelporter is great especially since a cute girl is working at Amélie's Bakery.

</comment><comment><USER13> The Universal Orchestra is simply awesome.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is truly awesome.</comment>


MPs overwhelmingly back Brexit bill - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38833883 <comment><USER2> This was expected. What surprises me is that nobody tried to use the leverage of the parliament to get influence over the implementation of Brexit. For example Theresa May has said Britain will leave the single market, but that was never on the ballot. A couple of weeks ago the news said MP likely would, but then it just went quiet.</comment>


Is It Time to Quit Your Job?  - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/hmu/2013/01/is-it-time-to-quit-your-job.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29 <comment><USER2> No. Betteridge's law of headlines <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_Law_of_Headlines>

<comment><USER3> The answer given in the article isn't exactly "no".</comment></comment>


Clang Format Tanks Performance - <AUTHOR> https://travisdowns.github.io/blog/2019/11/19/toupper.html <comment><USER2> Author here, happy for any feedback.

I'll own up to misleading-and-possibly-clickbait title, I just gave up trying to think of anything better without revealing the conclusion.

<comment><USER3> Just to make sure I'm understanding this correctly: the performance issue you found actually amounts to include-order dependent behavior in _GCC_ and glibc; clang doesn't really have anything to do with anything here except that you used its code formatter to sort your include statements.

If that's the case, the clickbait-y headline's bordering on useless, since the performance differences here have _nothing_ to do with clang itself-- you'd see the same results if you had ordered your includes the same way by hand.

<comment><USER2> I'm talking about clang-format, a formatting tool for C and C++ code, which has nothing to do with _compiling_ your code with clang. You can use it with any compiler.

That said, the title is still a lie in that clang-format is not really at a fault here at all: clang-format _triggered_ the issue on my codebase, by sorting header files, and this in turn triggered a libc performance issue.

So as I initially say it, a commit which purely clang-format 'd my codebase caused a massive regression - but the full story is doesn't implicate clang- format at all, really.

<comment><USER4> The title would be a /little/ clearer with a dash between Clang and format.

<comment><USER2> Good point, I put a hyphen a few places but not everywhere nor in the title. It seems hyphen is definitely the standard though.

Fixed now [1], although the HN title will remain hyphen-free free I guess.

\---

[1] [https://github.com/travisdowns/travisdowns.github.io/commit/...](https://github.com/travisdowns/travisdowns.github.io/commit/95c6788e011eaa9638e12223d6d7dbd0465e5d8f)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I may eat downvotes but here's an honest opinion nonetheless: this article shows almost exactly why I wouldn't touch C++ with a ten-foot pole still, after running away screaming from it 11-12 years ago.

Not saying it's an unique problem with C++'s tooling. I'm just saying that it has been my experience that one is much more likely to stumble upon such horrors while working with C++ as opposed to at least 7 other languages I worked with.

I'll take the slower Rust and Go and Elixir, thank you very much.

Don't take this as trash-talking, though. I simply want to get things done, not fight my environment.

<comment><USER6> Rust is slower than C++?

<comment><USER7> Yes, at best 20% slower but can be far more slower if you hit worst case scenario.

<comment><USER8> Where did you pull those numbers?

Looking at [https://benchmarksgame- team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/...](https://benchmarksgame- team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/fastest/gpp-rust.html)

While the worst case is 40% slower (where even C perfored abysmally), most of the time the Rust is within a 10% margin of error, and in quite a few cases it's faster.

<comment><USER9> Strange benchmark, comparing llvm(rust) to gcc(c++ code)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Isn't the correct way to write this loop actually:

      void toupper_cmov(char* buf, size_t size) {
          for (size_t i = 0; i < size; i++) {
              char c = buf[i];
              buf[i] = c - 32 * (c >= 'a' && c <= 'z');
          }
       }

Because that persuades gcc and clang to transform the conditional branch into a conditional move which avoids the branch mispredict penalty and removes the need for a lookup table.

See [https://godbolt.org/z/xHYKft](https://godbolt.org/z/xHYKft)

Disclaimer: I haven't actually run this function. That would be too much like work.

<comment><USER11> Why not use -march=native? When I look at it, I hope the compiler knows what it's doing wrt cache and whatnot.

[https://godbolt.org/z/zRQRkr](https://godbolt.org/z/zRQRkr)

<comment><USER10> > Why not use -march=native?

The conditional jump remains even with -march=native.

[https://godbolt.org/z/2p7uAB](https://godbolt.org/z/2p7uAB)

<comment><USER11> Yep just noticed it.. wanted to delete the comment but was to slow apparently

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> You also get the slow version if you include <cctype> instead of <ctype.h>.

[https://godbolt.org/z/cbeGc4](https://godbolt.org/z/cbeGc4)

<comment><USER2> Yes, I saw that too and mention it:

> As a corollary, if you include <cctype> rather than <ctype.h> (the C++ > version of the C header which puts functions in the std:: namespace) you > also get the slow behavior because <cctype> ultimately includes > <bits/os_defines.h>.

<comment><USER12> Oh, so you do!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Please give us more than one pixel of color in the legend of your graph.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is both technically in-depth while so hilarious. Love this post!

</comment><comment><USER15> Can the std::transform version be written without a lambda?

        std::transform(buf, buf + size, buf, toupper);

<comment><USER2> Yes, it can!

In fact I had that at some point and clobbered it with a git reset (the perils of developing on two machines and once and using git a sync mechanism).

Fixed [1] and credited.

\---

[1] [https://github.com/travisdowns/travisdowns.github.io/commit/...](https://github.com/travisdowns/travisdowns.github.io/commit/cff0322d9b45d9ec18a8a069f7429589574b8b83)

<comment><USER16> This could actually change performance though as the lambda version gives you a unique templace instantiation of std::transform while the non-lambda version requires std::transform to be inlined into the caller (or cloned to an argument-specific version) before the compiler can make any optimizations based on its knowledge of toupper.

<comment><USER2> Good point. I would _usually_ expect std::transform to be inlined, since it is quite simple - but it may not be and it's a very good point in general regarding the optimization probability for function pointers versus lambdas.

Ultimately, I ended up reverting the change, so using a lambda based on the advice the taking the address of a standard-library function is verboten, since they may introduce overloads at any time [1].

\---

[1] [https://twitter.com/foonathan/status/1197051249822195712](https://twitter.com/foonathan/status/1197051249822195712)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Messy (esp. standard library) header files like in this case is why C/C++ isn't really fun today, for me anyway.

</comment><comment><USER18> > I was including stdlib.h just to get the definition for size_t.

size_t is also defined in stddef.h, and including that likely won't cause the same issues.

</comment><comment><USER15> A fascinating read. Is there a sane way to fix this in a future version of glibc?

<comment><USER2> I mean if you wanted the inline body to be visible to C++ you just have to slightly reorganize the ctype.h header so those definitions are available to C++ code (i.e., visible when __cplusplus is defined), because right now the bodies are getting caught the same #ifdef net that macro definitions are (but the body is not a macro).

That said, any exposure of implementation details, including inline bodies like this, is risky and constraining for future changes, since you bake in part of the implementation and also commit to supporting that implementation as far as you backwards compatibility strategy requires.

So it is entirely possible that the non-inlining is intentional, but then the part about include ordering mattering doesn't make sense, and if you are willing to commit for C programs, you are probably willing to commit in C++ too. You'd have to really spelunk the history of this files or ask the people responsible to be sure.

It seems more likely that that conditional compilation block is intended to avoid implementing standard library functions as macros, which is probably barred by the C++ standard (e.g., so you can use the name `std::tolower`) - and the inline bodies just got caught in the crossfire.

</comment></comment><comment> john-radio Yeesh, I can't read assembly. Is there somewhere I learn what all movsxd, lea, cmp, ja, and friends do in plain english?

<comment><USER19> Follow the links in the article to the godbolt compiler explorer. The disassembly there has a short description of each instruction when you hover over it, and links to the full reference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Order of headers should not matter in any sane language. This just proves that C++ is not a sane language. Yet Bjarne Stroustrup keeps getting engineering awards! If I were king of programming languages, I would forbid any new lines of C++ to be brought into this world, and install mandatory programmes for rewriting legacy C++ code in sane languages.

<comment><USER21> But the root cause here lies with GCC or rather glibc and not the language? C++ is but a tool, just like every other language.

<comment><USER22> It likes with C++ not having a proper module system enforcing properties like module import order being irrelevant, and the glibc developers apparently failing to produce modules having such properties even if the language doesn't enforce it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> cctype is such garbage. not real functions, takes/returns int, not contexpr, and now this trash. bleh

</comment><comment><USER24> Link time inlining would solve this.

<comment><USER2> In a sense, yes - specifically if libc could be link-time inlined.

I don't think many people are proposing that for libc though because it would shut down the possibility to patch libc for anything that has been link-timed inline, and more generally expose the internal implementation of libc in a way that will make evolving it very difficult.

That is, link-time inlining will see a lot more use within an application before it will ever apply to system libraries.

<comment><USER25> Applying LTO to libc would be no worse than statistically linking it. I don't like static linking, but on Linux, we're stuck with supporting it.

<comment><USER26> Isn't glibc almost always dynamically linked on linux? I thought half the point of musl was that it supported static linking.

<comment><USER25> Almost everyone _does_ dynamically link Glibc. You should dynamically link glibc too. But if you really want, you can statically link glibc.

        $ dpkg -S '*/libc.a'
        libc6-dev:amd64: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.a

But please _don 't_. Static linking doesn't give you a compatibility advantage: dynamically linked glibc is specifically designed to be forward and backward compatible. Static linking only makes life more difficult later, since it complicates use of NSS and PAM and precludes nice, clean shims between user and kernel mode. Seriously. It was a mistake for Linux to make the kernel-user transition the stable system ABI instead of putting that stability boundary at the libc layer like most other operating systems.

As for static linking being a competitive advantage of musl: I don't know where you got that idea. Musl is less featureful than glibc, not more. In particular, I'm not going to use it until it supports dlclose like every other full-featured computing platform.

<comment><USER26> > As for static linking being a competitive advantage of musl: I don't know > where you got that idea.

That's how I've been told to build fully statically linked rust binaries, I can't say I've dug into why glibc isn't used for those.

<comment><USER4> The usual reason is that if you want a binary that can be used "everywhere", you can't just build on your machine without more thought if you use the glibc because chances are you're going to be using symbols that aren't available in older versions of the glibc, making your binary incompatible with many (older) distros. musl is an easy way out of that. Another is to build against an old glibc.

<comment><USER25> The right way to solve this problem would be to teach the linker to link against the set of glibc symbols that existed as of a particular version number or date. Then you'd just pass a flag (along with a preprocessor macro, so the headers would know to define the right version of the linker symbols) specifying this version target when you built your program. For want of this relatively simple toolchain feature, we have people statically linking entire C libraries. It's a shame.

You can do a moral version of the same thing using linker scripts, but nobody bothers with linker scripts.

<comment><USER4> The macOS SDK does this better. It is indeed a shame that the glibc doesn't care.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's 2019 and people are still using languages where order of imports matters...</comment>