Could Student's Facebook Page Topple a Towing Company? - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=10763142

<comment><USER2> I wonder if this is the beginning of teens and 20-somethings realizing their Facebook (Twitter, etc.) postings can carry weight and bring real-world consequences. Creating a Facebook group out of frustration seems harmless enough but depending on the outcome here, it could prove to be a very big deal.

<comment><USER3> Judging by the number of "join this group to solve world peace" groups on Facebook, I think teens and 20-somethings vastly overestimate the real world consequences of their posts.

Yes, they can be influential in specific cases, and maybe more effective than traditional means, but these are exceptions, not the rule.

<comment><USER4> My favorite is the "I bet we can find 1,000,000 people" groups with 6,000 people in them. Anywhere else, 6,000 people supporting your cause would be a huge win, but they turn it into laughable defeat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is an interesting story in that social media is giving consumers some leverage against companies that are running almost absolute monopolies.

I don't know if this story is true or not, but the proliferation of video recorders on cell phones and things like this will, or should, cause a lot of laws to be rewritten.

From what I've read of this story, a _lot_ of people have complained about this company for these practices, and really, whats stopping them? IMHO, if they are caught doing this on video, they should be on probation, and if they are caught again, lights out.

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting that they claim they lost 10-15 good clients and the value of that business was $750,000 - meaning each client is (assuming similar size) worth up to $75K of business? How much are they towing each month?

<comment><USER7> Good question. The article mentions that a single tow costs $118, so they're claiming to have lost more than 6000 tows. Even if they were really busy that would take a few years.

<comment><USER8> I doubt it would take a few years to tow 6000 vehicles. They have more than 5 different kinds of trucks [1] and probably more than one of each. 6000 tows doesn't sound unreasonable for a ~4 month period, especially since they cover a pretty large area?

[1] <http://tjtowing.com/light_duty_trucks.php>

<comment><USER6> The URL you point to is for a company in MA, not MI. Not the same company - Joe Bird is the owner of the company in question, not (as on the URL you linked) Thomas Farber Sr.

<comment><USER8> Woops, don't I feel stupid now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While this company sounds shady, I think this is a little over the top until someone catches them in the act. Doesn't everyone hate tow companies in college areas?

"But claiming that the company scraped off the parking sticker" - seems like anyone could have taken his sticker off (or stolen it). I remember hearing on more than one occasion of stolen parking stickers at my school due to the ridiculous price.

I'm not on the tow trucks companies side, I just think this is way blown out of proportion for a hunch.

<comment><USER10> I don't doubt their story at all. A few weeks ago my girlfriends car was legally parked and towed. I know that it was legally parked because the night before, I parked next to her and noticed that her parking pass was a different color than mine, so I made a note to ask her about it in my cell phone. The next day, the car was gone.

The issue is, you are essentially powerless to do anything about it, except pay the extortion. I spoke with a police officer about it after I had to call them a week or so later about an unrelated matter, and he suggested that if something like that were to happen again, we should get an officer to come out and order the parking management company to have the vehicle returned. He said that he had the towing company in question tow a car back to where it was parked before, and did believe that they frequently tow legally parked vehicles in the area. Unfortunately, it could be very difficult (impossible?) to actually get an officer to come out, if the vehicle has been reported towed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There must be some law specific to towing companies that allows them to take and impound vehicles from private property at the request of a non- governmental property owner. How else could it be legal to take another's property and hold it for ransom? If I open up a coffee shop and place a sign on the door stating that no laptop may be placed on a table for more than 15 minutes, I can't legally seize the laptop and demand a fee, can I?

<comment><USER12> If a person fails to pay for a long enough period and doesn't own over a certain percentage of the vehicle (say doesn't default on a last payment or something; depending on where you live, in ontario I believe it's under 3/4) the object legally becomes property of the person it's defaulted to and is considered temporary property of the towing/repo company.

Repo companies have legal access to your property to remove it so long as they don't violate any law during the process. Trespassing doesn't count, because a gas man coming to check your meter isn't trespassing, if he breaks down your door then he's breaking and entering. Similarly a tow company only violates the law if they cut a lock or something illegal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Luv it, I don't hate a lot of things but I absolutely HATE Tow Truck companies, in my area if your car gets towed on street cleaning day the fee is $230 + $90/Day! Their parking lot is about 1/2 mile from my street! And you still have to pay the parking ticket. Such a rip off.

</comment><comment><USER14> How is their story even possible?

They tow away wrongly parked cars right? So what either the people stopped doing parking violations or they had to cease defrauding the people.

Or I'm to daft to understand?

<comment><USER15> The person that set up the page is claiming the company is removing parking stickers from legally parked cars and then towing them.

<comment><USER16> One of the reasons that this is possible is that towing companies are sort of like Judge Dredd; as far as I know, once your car ends up in the pound, there really isn't anything you can do. Technically, a towing company could just snag your car, say you were parked illegally, and you'd be screwed.

Now, they don't do this because of the ramifications if they got caught. This sounds like a company that did it a small amount, got emboldened by their success, and then got caught. Of course, that's all just speculation, but it's plausible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The lesson for the towing company and any other business is don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal, and don't be a jerk.

</comment><comment><USER18> Lesson I took from this: tape your parking sticker inside the car, and take a picture of it.</comment>


Fractal Food: Self-Similarity on the Supermarket Shelf (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://www.fourmilab.ch/images/Romanesco/ <comment><USER2> Chou romanesco is probably a regular thing for people living in southern Europe, but coming from central Europe, it blew my mind the first time I've seen it in a grocery store :)

</comment><comment><USER3> If you like this, then you'd almost certainly love the book "The Computational Beauty of Nature". It explores a lot of similar themes, and is very visual, too.

[https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/computational-beauty- nature](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/computational-beauty-nature)

</comment><comment><USER4> How do those holding opposing views of mathematical realism account for the presence of such plants and similar computed natural phenomena?

<comment><USER5> As I understand it, math realism says that the mathematical object (for example, a class of self-similar sequences) exists whether or not it was discovered by humans. That the mathematical object happens to model some physical phenomenon pretty well is independent of the philosophy of mathematical realism.

Are you arguing against mathematical realism by saying certain mathematical objects are _only_ discoverable through the observation and modeling of physical phenomenon? A pure math realist would respond that the object in question stills exists, whether or not it was discovered.

<comment><USER6> Opposition to mathematical realism also tends to bring in heavy doses of mathematical+cultural relativism, i.e. believing that if a culture decided 2 + 2 = 5 or that the interior angles of a triangle sum to 360 degrees, then those statements would be just as true as "2 + 2 = 4" or "the interior angles of a triangle sum to 180 degrees".

<comment><USER4> but this is more about definitions right?

culture 1 : 2+2=4

culture 2 : 2+2=5

translation between culture 1 and 2:

2==2

4==5

180==360

if you could agree on specific definitions: this is a triangle, this is interior, this is an angle, and this is a degree; you would be unable to come to opposing conditions on the sum of interior angles

<comment><USER6> Not really. The relativists aren't saying "oh, your 4 translates to their 5", and in fact are trying to say that such a statement is impossible to make. Your attempt at translation assumes the existence of some culture-independent thing, and tries to say "4" and "5" are different culture-specific symbols for representing that culture-independent thing, whatever it may be. The relativist position is that no such culture-independent thing exists.

In other words, the relativist believes that:

* If a culture decides this many objects (represented by dots): ". ." combined with this many other objects: ". .", produce this many objects: ". . . . ."

* Then that decision is just as valid and just as _true_ as our culture's decision that ". ." objects and ". ." objects make ". . . ." objects.

The fact that every culture we know of has adopted the second one instead of the first is then explained as some sort of massive coincidence, or perhaps the result of some very old "2 + 2 = 4" culture successfully imposing its norms on everyone else such that it has persisted as a cultural belief to the present day.

<comment><USER4> then how would a relativist, as you describe it, justify the forms inherent in this vegetable.. i mean, what's the 'culture' of vegetables?

<comment><USER6> I suppose on further reflection that it might help to pull back the curtain a bit and talk about what's really going on here, because this is an ancient philosophical debate (and I do mean "ancient" in a literal sense -- we're about to go all the way back to the Greeks here).

"Relativism" is a modern term for one side in one variation of this debate. The traditional names for the sides would be "realism" and "nominalism". And to understand the question they're arguing about, I'll ask a question: is a hot dog a sandwich?

The internet has taught us there are many people who feel strongly that a hot dog _is_ a sandwich, and many other people who feel just a strongly that a hot dog is _not_ a sandwich. They argue about how to define the term "sandwich" \-- does "sandwich-ness" come from the presence of bread? Must there be a certain number of pieces of bread? Must the bread be in one of a small set of permitted shapes? What types of things can be in or on the bread?

These people are searching for some thing they can predicate of all sandwiches. Some property that is indisputably possessed in common by every sandwich everywhere. What sort of thing is that?

Anyone who's sat through an intro to philosophy course probably knows Plato's answer. We are, metaphorically, chained to a rock in a cave, facing the back wall. We know there must be a source of brilliant light (perhaps outside the mouth of the cave), since although we can't see it directly we see the light reflected on the cave wall and can tell what direction it's coming from. We know there are other things out there, too, because there are shadows cast on the wall as they move back and forth in front of the light. The metaphor, of course, is that objects in the world are like the shadows cast on the wall of the cave: distorted representations of true forms which exist somewhere else, but that we recognize despite the odd angles or movements they make. Thus we get Plato's theory of forms, which postulates an ethereal-ish realm, inaccessible to us mortals, in which the ideal forms of things exist. We recognize disparate things in this world as sandwiches because they all, to some extent, partake of the Form of Sandwich. Or in cave-metaphor terms, they all are shadows cast on the wall by the Ur-Sandwich moving about in front of the light, and though they may look superficially quite different from each other, we recognize the common origin of them all (Plato had a quasi-religious explanation for our knowledge of the forms and what they were).

To be a realist is to be committed, on some level, to a theory not dissimilar from Plato's. We can dress it up in nicer terminology, and cover up some of the seeming absurdity of there being an ideal Form of Sandwich in some astral plane somewhere, but ultimately this is what realism says. In some cases it's used to talk about properties (such as color: "red" may refer to many different hues, but we use a single umbrella term for all of them -- in what sense do they all share "redness"?). In mathematical realism, it is used to talk about (roughly) theorems of mathematical systems. Mathematical realism is a commitment to the existence of these theorems in some form which is independent of human minds; the theorem would exist, and be a theorem, regardless of whether any human ever discovered or proved it.

In many ways this is a very convenient way to talk about mathematics (as well as to talk about a lot of other things). It allows us to say that "two and two make four" and "deux et deux font quatre" are in some way the same statement, though expressed in different words. It gives us an entity which can tie together many disparate things and serve as the commonality between them all.

But it also seems ludicrous and overcomplex to a lot of people. One of the earliest critiques of Plato's theory of forms was that they must be infinite in number (in brief: given any set of objects and a form they all partake of, it is possible to prove the necessity of another form to tie together the first form and the objects; from there, yet another can be proven as necessary to tie together the objects and the first two, and so on to infinity). Willard Van Orman Quine joked at the proliferation of entities in such systems (leading to absurdities such as the existence of nonexistence), dubbing it "Plato's beard" and claiming that it would dull the edge of Occam's razor.

Enter nominalism. Nominalism, simply put, says that there is no Form of Sandwich, or property of "sandwich-ness", or anything else that all sandwiches have in common apart from being given the label "sandwich" by people. Membership in the set of sandwiches -- or any of the other categories realists invent entities to provide commonality for -- is arbitrary, and we identify membership in that set not by recognizing some common property possessed independently of the label, but by rote memorization or heuristic application of cultural guidelines.

Nominalism, then, would deny that a mathematical theorem has any existence independent of the minds of humans. It does not sit timelessly, waiting to be discovered: it is created, it is invented, by humans, and insofar as it follows rules or has properties, it does so only because humans have constructed it, the rules, and the properties.

After the ever-increasing complexity of realism, nominalism can seem like a breath of fresh air, a welcome clearing of the tangled thicket of strange entities realists sooner or later end up committed to.

But, of course, nominalism comes at a price, and that price turns out to be heavy. A nominalist cannot admit that, say, your vegetable's physical appearance and a mathematical formula have anything truly in common other than a human desire to label them as such. The formula is not a natural thing, to a nominalist, and does not exist independently of the humans who invented it. The realist believes the formula would continue to exist, and the vegetable would continue to follow it, even if all humans suddenly vanished. But the nominalist _must_ deny this, and say that the vegetable only "follows" the formula because humans have said it does, and if the humans all vanished there would no longer be any humans to say things about the vegetable. Similarly, the nominalist must say that spiral galaxies would no longer be spiral, because this is a concept created by humans; absent humans to label them, they would not be spiral in any meaningful sense.

From there, the logical conclusion is more or less absolute cultural relativism. If the vegetable only follows a formula because we say it does, what if some other group of people came along and said it didn't? What if they had an entire belief system, as well-developed and complex as our own, for the vegetable following some quite different formula? Who would be right in that case? Since there is no independently-existing "real" formula for the vegetable to "really" follow, the answer is nobody can say who is right; we can only say that both sets of beliefs about the vegetable are equally human- created and equally believed by their respective groups.

This is, of course, incredibly unsatisfying and at odds with how much we've accomplished by believing that there is real correspondence between mathematics and the physical world. But to some people it's a better option to choose over the mess they feel realism will inevitably land them in.

<comment><USER4> How can nominalism be defined for a nominalist?

How does a nominalist account for Godel?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Instead of deleting account, NYT appends '1000' to username and email address - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/bicycult/status/1254789591283851264 <comment><USER2> How was it possible to discover it, though?

<comment><USER3> From the twitter comments: [https://twitter.com/bicycult/status/1255122953798328320](https://twitter.com/bicycult/status/1255122953798328320)

They were still logged in and refreshed the page; they found out by going to their user settings.

<comment><USER4> I noticed a similar thing being done for Bird scooters a while back. I forget the suffix but they did the same and I noticed because I was still authed on my phone after requesting deletion. My token has expired since then though so for all I know they have fully deleted the account since.

<comment><USER5> Having known people who worked at Bird, I doubt it. They had a real culture of "hack it up and then move on", going back and fixing stuff like that isn't in their culture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Doing real deletes on user accounts is a surprisingly challenging problem and I'd be willing to bet very few companies do real deletes where all of your data is wiped permanently from the company. For legal and financial reasons, companies often need to keep track of historical user activity. If a company states in their investor quarterly report that they had 1M active users, they better be able to prove it in an audit.

And in a naive relational database implementation, deleting a user would cascade and delete activity associated with that user.

The easiest way around this is to do soft deletes where the data stays in the db, but the flag deactivates the user's account. Looks like the NYT just did a poor implementation of a soft-delete.

<comment><USER7> I used to work where (not a service for the general public) there was an "is deleted" flag for everything, but every now and then a client would insist that data be _really_ deleted, and depending on who it was and how they asked, we might go and do it, which was a huge hassle and would cause no end of problems down the line.

On the other hand, "is deleted" flags end up causing issues when you forget to put "where not is_deleted" in your queries.

Lately I've faced kind of an inverse situation - I have a system that I can't control where things are permanently deleted once in a while for multiple reasons (rogue users, aging out of old versions) and so as I accumulate information in a little data warehouse for reporting, I decided to implement an "is deleted" flag there. Eventually though, deleting from the source was turned off because it's really not necessary.

<comment><USER8> >On the other hand, "is deleted" flags end up causing issues when you forget to put "where not is_deleted" in your queries.

My solution would be a view for every table. Are there drawbacks? Other solutions?

<comment><USER7> Eh, the situation that I've been in, if I recall correctly, is that one has read/write access to all data for reporting, but not the ability to create views (or stored procedures etc) to share.

Where I am now, (as far as Oracle goes) you can't even create your own tables under your own schema. A view requires a meeting with a DBA and their manager and really special, compelling arguments.

<comment><USER9> Can you just have a general policy where every table that has an is_deleted flag also automatically gets a view, and clients must use the view unless they have a particular need to access deleted data?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hah, Uber did this to me once. Someone signed up with my email and somehow the verification failed. So they started sending me details about someone else's trips! When I complained, instead of deactivating the account or trying to contact the user to find out their actual email, they changed the address on the account to the same thing but with "void" prepended. I have a gmail account and was pretty sure that email didn't exist... Sure enough, I tried registering the new email address with Google and got nothing but Uber spam. Oh well at least they're not sending me trip details anymore.

</comment><comment><USER11> Note that "anonymization" has been legally found (DSB-D123.270/0009) to be acceptable to meet GDPR "erasure" requirements. However, this requires irrevocable overwriting of PII rather than just slapping 1000 on the end ;-) If they'd changed the username and email address to some random string, however, they would most likely be compliant.

<comment><USER12> Wouldn't they also need to replace saved billing details, like address and full name, to anonymized garbage?

<comment><USER13> In Germany not; these are required by law (§147 AO, [https://www.gesetze-im- internet.de/ao_1977/__147.html](https://www.gesetze-im- internet.de/ao_1977/__147.html)) to be kept for ten years.

The legal base for allowing this national rule in European law is Art. 6, 1c GDPR.

<comment><USER14> I think something similar happens in the UK. It's generally believed here that laws telling you to retain data take precedence over the GDPR telling you to delete it. (I am very much not a lawyer, as you can doubtless tell.)

<comment><USER15> Yes. For example, HMRC requires that you keep various business records for 6 years (or longer, circumstance-specific) after the end of the company's financial year.

Generally, the rule is "Delete the data _unless_ there's a law that requires you not to" — and the UK's implementation of the GDPR (the Data Protection Act 2018) makes various explicit exemptions for this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> NYT is notoriously the worst at customer service and account handling. I tried to get a previous invoice from them previously and after 1 week of calling customer support and being passed around, I still wasn't able to get it.

<comment><USER17> I had this chat with their customer service department asking to "cancel" my account so that I don't incur any charges and they insisted that it wasn't possible without losing immediate access and getting a pro-rated refund. I thought that was stupid, but ok...

1 month later, still no refund. Account is still scheduled to be auto-renewed, talk to CS and they're basically ignoring me at this point (I'm using text messaging support on a secondary number), so I issue a chargeback with my credit card...

1 month later, I get a refund, no email, no text message explaining the delay and now I have to deal with that or else they'll probably put my account in collections. /facepalm

<comment><USER18> My credit card number changed and they sent my account to collections with no notice. The lesson I learned was never to subscribe to something on the company's own website; go through Apple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'd bet (a small amount of) money they have no ability to delete accounts at all, and it goes all the way down to foreign key constraints introduced by a well-meaning but inexperienced developer that unnecessarily couple the accounts table to many other records.

<comment><USER20> In that case it seems simpler to introduce an IsDeleted flag than to have a convention that 1000 goes on the end of the name.

<comment><USER21> This reminds me of a good use case for the Laravel Soft Deletes: [https://laravel.com/docs/7.x/eloquent#soft- deleting](https://laravel.com/docs/7.x/eloquent#soft-deleting).

<comment><USER22> love this feature so much

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A _lot_ of companies do this. My buddy found out that he had two EA accounts, so he asked nicely for them to merge them into one and they "did". Well what they actually did was grant the games to the new account and "delete" the old account.

Of course "delete" meant rename it from email@example.com to email@example.com. He owns the entire domain (and has catchall) so he got the notification of the changed email to the new email address.

Now he has two EA accounts with all the games on both!

<comment><USER24> > Now he has two EA accounts with all the games on both!

oh what a great service

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's odious that it's impossible to delete accounts except in rare circumstances. Ever try? All anybody does is temporarily disable them unless you go through an hour with their tech support. Dark pattern at best, holding on to your data forever to continue selling it at worst

<comment><USER26> Now a days it is a dark pattern. But in the days before "sell everything you can about your users" became the rule, businesses optimized for the accidental deletion by users. They could easily reinstate you and your data would still be there. It used to be considered good customer service. Times change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> No information on how they found out? Did the service rep tell them?

<comment><USER28> One possible way I can think of is they're hosting their own mail server and route messages for all unknown addresses to some mailbox (not that uncommon as far as I know - people do that to avoid bouncing mails with a typo in the address).

With such a setup it would be possible to notice that NYT mail started coming to foo1000@... instead of foo@... after requesting account deletion. Username change could also be evident directly from the mail, or it was a trivial guess.

<comment><USER17> He's saying they append 1000 to the user and domain.

/edit I was wrong. It's the user and email. Your theory would work

<comment><USER29> >/edit I was wrong. It's the user and email. Your theory would work

Why? My interpretation of "append 1000 to email" is that 1000 gets added to the very end, not the local part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> They are not alone in this practice. I still receive emails from sitepoint to my email (As recently as March 10th), and the user name finishes in _DELETED (Not kidding).

</comment><comment><USER31> Netflix does that too. You can't delete your account so they just append a string like "csr_morgan" in the domain so that your account is "deleted" (you can't login anymore, because your email address technically doesn't have an account anymore) and you can re-register with your email later if you wish.

But I'd you use the altered email and the same password, everything is still there.

Pretty sure this goes against GDPR but I was totally unsuccessful at getting my account deleted.

<comment><USER32> What happens when you re-register with the same email address and then later cancel again?

<comment><USER33> WP:BEANS

[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:BEANS](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:BEANS)

Uh-huh

[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:BEANS/U...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:BEANS/Uh- huh)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> What happens if I create an account at both email@example.com and email@example.com (or even firstname.lastname@example.com and firstname.lastname@example.com), and then delete the first one?

<comment><USER35> 1001

/s

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> "instead of actually deleting it, they simply appended '1000' to both the username and the email address. anyone could thus create an email address with that suffix and request a password request to access my info."

<comment><USER37> not an issue as long as there is no tld which ends with 1000 though

<comment><USER38> Most likely the 1000 is appended to the local-part of the email address, not the domain, as any tool they are using for changing details most likely validates emails somehow.

<comment><USER39> The email address doesn't really need to be valid though. I have an old client that appended '|disabled' after the email address (and torched the password) when "deleting" accounts because they needed them in the DB for audit logging.

Unless someone figures out how to register a domain ending in '.com|disabled' I'm not sure how someone would be able to access those accounts.

<comment><USER40> Every week we see multiple articles about security researchers who abuses some part of the tech stack to do something weird that shows the danger in this sort of thinking.

I believe it's easy to spoof emails from the .com|disabled domain. Receiving messages, I agree, seems harder. Maybe spoof an unencrypted DNS response at the right moment? No need to actually register a domain when DNS is spoofable.[1]

If you really need to use a hack like that to disable an email, consider adding some code to your email sending logic that skips such email addresses (and always use that logic). Otherwise clever hackers have a foothold to try their tricks against.

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

<comment><USER41> My guess would be that they don't want to have that email accidentally used, but they would have a check in the codepath anyway, because no-one wants to see its logs spammed with myriads DNS errors when this can be avoided. And in fact, if a DNS error shows up in the logs, devs would know that somehow their code path is not completely safe, so that change on the email is perhaps a way for them to ensure that the disabled account is indeed seen as disabled by their code in every situation.

A lot of people are complaining about NYT approach, but perhaps their only fault - if one consider that not deleting for good an account is not an issue, and it seems to be a common practice in the industry - is to not use a transaction when disabling user accounts (disable email -> disable account), which is perhaps difficult with NoSQL setups?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Not suprising from the Times. They don't like to publish retractions.

<comment><USER43> Bazinga

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Is it also possible that since they have a subscription model, they have to build their system around people leaving and coming back?

I mean imagine if HBO had deleted accounts during GoT and Westworld instead is suspending them. How many people had a 9 month subscription per year for years at a time?

</comment><comment><USER45> Many companies do this

<comment><USER46> Yes especially in New York. I once asked the Curb cab app to delete my account. They replied with an email that they did and I checked the app. My session was still valid and I could see my account details. All they changed my email address domain to @aol.com and 555'd my phone number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Gives a different meaning to _The Privacy Project_.

</comment><comment><USER48> How ironic considering they were pointing their fingers at "Big Tech" for not being "GDPR compliant".

</comment><comment><USER49> XBox live used to have a similar thing, may have changed since GDPR. When I asked for my account to be deleted they sent me instructions that said basically unfriend everyone i know and change my name to deleted - this was after several days of them looking into it for me :/

</comment><comment><USER50> Why 1000? Probably arbitrary but I can't help but wonder why 1000 instead of the faster 1111 or 1234, perhaps someone using NumPad?

<comment><USER51> Because the change was done manually.

Their system probably doesn't implement a function to delete account, or it is not easily discoverable in the UI, or it is known to be bugged. So the employee who did that thought that renaming an account was a good idea to make it appear "missing". A big numeric suffix is an obvious idea to avoid collisions with the existing and future accounts.

But when people are asked to choose a large number, numbers around 1000 and its multiples are chosen particularly often. So 999, 1000 and 1001 are very likely numbers to be picked "randomly". I don't find the reference on that, but I suppose we all have enough anecdotal evidence. Just recall what are the common port numbers of various programs. X*1000 + Y is a very common formula, where |Y| < 100.

<comment><USER52> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law)

Maybe this is what you're looking for?

<comment><USER53> That's about numbers from "real-life" distributions, so that's a different thing.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bat: A cat(1) clone with wings - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sharkdp/bat <comment> star-techate I wouldn't care much for the git features, but this is probably a bit faster than [https://github.com/ofavre/vimcat](https://github.com/ofavre/vimcat)</comment>


The Old MacDonald Hackathon  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dwolla.com/cows-code-and-money-the-old-mcdonald-hackathon-haveacow/

<comment><USER2> Wait, what type of cow we talking here? Jersey, Guernsey, Holstein, Angus? Male or Female? How old? Sorry, former dairy kid OCD kicking in from a state that has more cows than there are Iowans.

And a rooster? Can I get it processed (plucked, gutted, and in a bag ready for a pot)

<comment><USER3> A rooster is an interesting choice of a prize. Few farmers, even the locavore/small kind, breed their own chickens anymore. And they tend to be banned in a lot of areas. The type of cooking they are perfect for (chicken soup from scratch)is not something the average person tends to do anymore. So not many people want roosters.

<comment><USER4> There has been a lot of commotion around the Cedar Rapids, Iowa area for the past few years, with a legal motion to allow a modest number of suburban chickens on residential personal property being repeatedly brought up for discussion.

Thankfully, the motion has thus far been shot down in my immediate area, but I think it has passed somewhere.

And there are still a few properties that have been owned by the same family for longer than the modern livestock laws have been on the books, and thus they are permitted to keep sundry animals. I rather enjoy the llamas. :-)

<comment><USER3> I have known people in NYC who kept chickens. It didn't seem like it caused a problem for anyone. But if they ended up with a rooster, that was a big issue because they are banned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a terrible idea and perpetuates outdated stereotypes of Iowans for a cheap laugh. Our specialty is pigs, not cows.

<comment><USER6> For the curious: <http://www.iowaagriculture.gov/quickfacts.asp>

_Corn value of production (2011 crop year) $14.5 billion

Soybeans value of production (2011 crop year) $5.50 billion

Cattle and calves, cash receipts (2011) $3.41 billion

Hogs, cash receipts (2011) $6.70 billion_

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This has brightened my Monday up. One question... How do the logistics work out here?

 _I can't think of anything more amusing than 4 neck-beard hackers winning a cow at a hack._

</comment><comment><USER8> Maybe first prize can be a pardon for the cow. Something like what the president does for turkeys every Thanksgiving.

</comment><comment><USER9> As someone born & raised in Iowa, I'm glad to see them embrace the startup culture. Iowa is a great place to live, and it could use some new sharp minds to help it grow.

As for the people complaining about prizes --- why don't you donate something more enticing than cow, chicken, and rooster?

</comment><comment><USER10> Who's up for a road trip from the Bay Area? Bonus points if you have a livestock trailer or something to tow it with. Somehow I don't think my Prius will cut it...

<comment><USER11> Bay Area ... Prius

Our second stereotype of the thread!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Jordan Lampe is a genius. This is exactly the sort of thing thay makes me miss Dwolla so much. I may actually head back to Des Moines for this.

Also anyone know if butchering services are included?

<comment><USER13> Genius he is

<comment><USER12> I suspect you had a hand in this too :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As a coder who raises his own meat, I want to go to Des Moines --- but I have enough roosters to fill my freezer. That pig, though . . .

</comment><comment><USER15> BRB... Waiting for an African Hackathon where I can get an elephant or zebra.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is it a live cow or meat?

<comment><USER16> That's totally your up to you... We'll give it to you anyway you want it.

<comment><USER3> What kind of cow? How was it raised?

<comment><USER17> Is it local?

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2LBICPEK6w>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I appreciate that they didn't go for the 'brogrammer' stereotype.

</comment><comment><USER19> Really unhappy to see animals being given away as "prizes".

<comment><USER8> Why?

There is a long history of animals as gifts/prizes such as for dowrys in marriages.

<comment><USER19> There is also a long history of parents arranging those marriages - doesn't make any of it a good idea.

<comment><USER20> You didn't provide any reasons for your position. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but the reasons I can think of are:

1\. You don't support domesticated animals and/or the farming of animals

2\. You dislike the idea of living things being transferrable goods

3\. You fear for the welfare of the animal after being given away

Is it one of these or is there another reason? I think it's an interesting conversation to have.

<comment><USER19> zevyoura, you actually did a great job of summarizing my positions (especially for someone I assume does not fully share them). This is just such an unnecessary combination of something I happen to love and something I happen to hate.

<comment><USER21> You do realize that nobody's going to be keeping a live cow or pig in their apartment, right? It's most likely that they're going to give away a butchered cow.

Not that it makes it better if you don't support raising animals for slaughter at all, but you shouldn't worry that it's going to be _more_ cruel to the animal.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How do you teach sales guys about basic internet and web design things? - <AUTHOR>

I run a web design company and we are starting to hire sales people to help sell our services. Many of the people coming in do not have alot of knowledge when it comes to the internet, and basic web design things. For example, how sites work, what is a domain, etc. I am wanting to put a packet together to issue every new sales person. Does anyone know of any pdf's or books that go into basic detail of these things? Thank you for the help. <comment><USER2> It sounds to me like you want/need to write some sort of "for dummies" thing, as many salespeople think along the lines of "a good salesman can sell anything" so that they tend not to know/learn about what they're selling.

Maybe 2 books to give an idea what sort of things _an absolute newbie might not know_ :

[http://www.amazon.com/Building-Site-Dummies-David- Crowder/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Building-Site-Dummies-David- Crowder/dp/0764507206)

[http://www.amazon.com/Internet-Dummies-John-R- Levine/dp/0764...](http://www.amazon.com/Internet-Dummies-John-R- Levine/dp/0764506749)

Leave the books with titles like "for dummies" or "for idiots" at home, because you don't want the students to think that you're talking down to them. You shouldn't be, but if they think you are, then you've got a higher hurdle to deal with than what you want to be dealing with.

A long time ago, I had a job where part of what I had to do was train car mechanics and electronic technicians how to diagnose and repair electriccal problems. Since the division of GM that I worked for made the computers, radio, ac controls and instrument panels (aka dashboard [the speedometer and blinkenlights]) for cars, those were things I had to teach too. Educational levels ranged from high school dropouts to master's degrees.

 _Teaching_ is a different skill from _knowing_ , but at least with technical subjects, _knowing_ the subject is necessary for the teaching of it.

 _One way to tell whether a field has consistent standards is the overlap between the leading practitioners and the people who teach the subject in universities. At one end of the scale you have fields like math and physics, where nearly all the teachers are among the best practitioners. In the middle are medicine, law, history, architecture, and computer science, where many are. At the bottom are business, literature, and the visual arts, where there's almost no overlap between the teachers and the leading practitioners. It's this end that gives rise to phrases like "those who can't do, teach."_

<http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> I would probably just point them to some beginner Wikipedia articles e.g. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_sites>.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> To clarify: I am a horrible writer and would like links or ideas that will kick start my process of creating this packet. thank you.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would set each sales guy up with a small site, point them in the right direction and have them learn the basics on their own.</comment>


What Life Asks of Us - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/opinion/27brooks.html?hp <comment><USER2> I'm not a big Brooks fan. We get on the rhetorical boat in this article thinking we're headed for deep water, a la Viktor Frankl, who saw people grapple with what life expected from them in a deeply personal and horrifying way in the Nazi death camps. Instead, Brooks takes us on a lightweight fun- filled harbor tour, telling us that working at the seafood house is its own reward. Lecturing us that traditions deserve to be respected and that personal desires minimized.

What _life_ wants out of you is a deeply individualistic thing. Life is not the same as Baseball. It's not the same as reporting, or college. College might expect you to study and get good grades. Life expects you to continue to learn and grow. Life is anything but an institution. E-gad, man. Drop the poetry book and take a look around.

I don't know what he's smoking, but whatever it is, I'll pass. It sounds like the prelude to a call to arms to support tradition. This philosophy of the group or the tradition being greater than the individual is strangely narcissistic -- I'm very important because I'm part of a very important institution. Whatever it is, it's not American in origin. At least I hope not.

As a former service member, I'm deeply aware of tradition and the higher value of culture and civilization above the individual. But that only exists in the context of supporting the individual's right to reject, to reinvent, to be stubborn, ugly, and ornery. Without that, institutions become machines to eat people and their lives.

Thanks for the ride, David, but next time I'll stay home.

<comment><USER3> True, but, as GK Chesterton says, tradition is just democracy extended temporally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article argues the general conservative view of life, I believe. The valuing of customs and culture over the new. I can't say I agree with it, but I definitely understand it. There was a great TED talk on understanding the divide and each viewpoint: [http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_mor...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html)

<comment><USER5> Has anyone ever examined how TED became so damn watchable? You could learn more by watching their free online videos than by watching the presentations of a dozen other conferences.

<comment><USER6> Though the artistry of live presentation is part of the best TED talks, I still wish they had transcripts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The comments here are disappointingly one-sided. Nowhere did Brooks suggest that he wanted to return to the good ol' days with all its warts. Incremental evolution of systems is a known good strategy. There's no reason whatever to believe that that doesn't apply to institutions, too. If you find yourself unable to see how tradition can transmit useful information through a society made up of people of _varying critical thinking abilities_ , you may be letting your politics unreasonably bias your analysis.

Considering what value traditions and institutions may serve can be an intellectual exercise. It doesn't mean you suddenly want to rescind female voting and return to slavery. It seems impossible to have interesting discussions with about 99.5% of the population, because they show not even the remotest ability to avoid emotional reactions to words.

<comment><USER8> _"Incremental evolution of systems is a known good strategy."_

Not always. Evolution keeps multiple branches around and sometimes discards the most prominent one. There is something to be said for admitting failure and starting from scratch rather than continiously patching a non-working solution.

<comment><USER9> >> "Incremental evolution of systems is a known good strategy." > >Not always.

That's why he wrote "good" instead of "optimum".

Besides, keeping around several branches and discarding one, even the current "most prominent", is incremental. (The system in question consists of all branches.) FWIW, evolution is almost entirely incremental.

Note that advocates of the new often overstate the failings of the old, which frequently did handle many cases. Sometimes those cases are no longer important, other times they're less important than new cases, but even when both are true, a given new system may not be better.

Advocates of the new also tend to forget that the fact that there are possible new systems that are better than the status quo does not imply that the new system being pushed is better.

New can be more fun. That's both an advantage and a disadvantage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think I'm with Wonkette on this one:

 _David Brooks comes from a magical time when people could have a single profession or employer for their entire working life, and might feel like their personal sense of self-worth was related to how well they did their jobs. (This was long before the invention of men's room attendants, debt collectors, and fryolater de-greasers.)_

[http://wonkette.com/405797/david-brooks-explains-why-we- shou...](http://wonkette.com/405797/david-brooks-explains-why-we-should-honor- the-sacred-rites-and-rituals-of-our-crappy-jobs)

<comment><USER4> This also reminds me of a Robert Heinlein quote I recently read:

 _A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects._

<comment><USER3> Can't we do both? In a way, I prefer specialization. Then I don't have to think so much about what I'm doing, and can spend more time thinking about more interesting things.

It's interesting how now we think being a fulfilled person means being able to do a bunch of stuff. That just seems exhausting to me. People aren't really so interested in the skills, anyways. It just makes them look cool to others, which is what they really care about. Then the process becomes self perpetuating. It's a very roundabout and unsuccessful way of making good friends.

<comment><USER11> "Can't we do both?"

Yes. If I may interpret Heinlein, he wasn't saying that you need to be an _expert_ in each of those things... he was saying you should be _able_ to do it.

You still can be an expert in some things too, as long as it's not at the expense of those things.

(I'm not saying I agree; I don't entirely disagree or agree. I'm just trying to explain what he was saying, as best as someone else can divine his opinions.)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I think that's a good reading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Would Sandberg have been so dedicated to the institution had he not made millions in it? Maybe. But baseball is far too respected given its spotted history of cheats and over-paid egomaniacs.

Important and meaningful institutions like teaching and medicine are filled with individuals who will not be getting a bailout or make millions like baseball players or bankers. Most true adherents to vaulted institutions are individualist chiefly educated in the "liberal" studies that Brooks pans.

In fact, JP Morgan (a liberal individualist), is seen as the savior of US 19th century banking after a crisis that is eerily similar to today's. Brooks' claim that "there is another, older way of living" rings hollow because educated liberals did not destroy even older institutions like the Magna Carta or the Enlightenment over the last eight years.

A nation in crisis should ask where have all the liberal individuals gone and not lament the status of institutional group think.

<comment><AUTHOR> I suspect that that if we could measure great teachers and great doctors to the extent that we measure great ballplayers, there would be orders of magnitude improvement in their salaries as well. Baseball is a market economy like any other.

If I had the skills to play professional baseball, I certainly would. The problem though isn't that the money isn't good in the minors. You can make 100k/year in AAA. It's that their careers are so short and their skills are highly in demand. Unless you make it to the big leagues and stick for more than six years, you still need to find another profession.

<comment><USER12> Orders of magnitude? Are you arguing that the only thing standing between the best 2nd grade teacher in Harlem and millions is an efficient means of measuring talent?

Major League Baseball is certainly not a market economy like any other - it is a federally-protected monopoly, or American Institution if you like.

<comment><USER13> If we could the quality of teachers with the precision that we measure baseball players, then yes, the best teachers could make millions teaching the children of the super-rich. Additionally, colleges would pay a premium to have the top teachers if they were measured by a universally acknowledged standard. You have to remember that there would only be a few hundred of them.

I also expect that if you could educate a child with the best teachers, you would reliably get very effective adults.

History is littered with geniuses whose students went on to make groundbreaking discoveries as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> You were not supposed to analyze the words deeply. The words were shaped to elicit the emotions of safety, security, and familiarity that presumed to exist in the "good old days". On the surface it might feel good. Yet to live it as we approach the singularity of almost vertical rate of change, its all but impossible.

I agree with Heinlein: "Specialization is for insects." Humans are not indistinguishable and interchangeable hive creatures. We are competitive/cooperative individuals each with unique and changing combinations of capacities, skills, interests, drives, and dreams.

</comment><comment><USER15> "New generations don't invent institutional practices. These practices are passed down and evolve."

This is simply incorrect. Institutions are made by people and can be changed by them. As said in the article institutions can be very important the lives of people, so people should think about them very critically and improve them continuously. Don't accept the status quo!

<comment><USER16> Institutions "can be changed" is the same as saying that institutions "evolve."

Seems the disagreement is on the semantics of "invent institutional practices." How different does a practice need to be to be considered newly invented, rather than an evolution of an old one?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This view is not only ignorant, I think it is dangerous.

We should only trust institutions that are capable of meeting the real challenges we face _today_. But neither the problems of hosting 6->9 billion people on earth nor figuring out how to capitalize on the vast knowledge we've gained over just the past 100 years were anticipated by existing institutions.

We don't have longstanding traditions around the roles of 'internet entrepreneur' or the 'genetic programmer'. Why? Because they're not old enough; they haven't been around long enough for a halo of rich meaning and culture to form around them. The real economic value (let alone environmental/social value) of modern roles have not had time to become embedded in longstanding tradition.

If we make decisions based on tradition, we blind ourselves to everything that is made possible by the unique place in history we find ourselves in. I think it's a dangerous time to do so. You cannot live as though nuclear warheads have not been invented, just because it feels good to respect old institutions. You cannot live as though there are 500 million people on the planet, when there are 6 billion, just because it feels good to follow in the footsteps of your forefathers.

Human culture does a fantastic job of making people feel important by building rich traditions around important roles in society. For 99% of human history that was probably very useful; most of the time it made sense to adapt to existing institutions, because they were likely to be around for the rest of your life. But that's no longer true.

I think "life" asks us to wake up and smell the coffee. Neither the problems we face today nor the tools that may solve them are embedded in tradition and institution. The slower we are to adapt, the longer we remain stuck on old habits, the more harm we'll cause by pouring energy into systems designed to solve yesterday's problems.

</comment><comment><USER18> His argument could be completely reversed and make the same amount of sense. Could probably even use the same quotes.

</comment><comment><USER19> I feel sorry for David Brooks, because he may never experience life.

He may never experience that moment when one knows he or she truly exists, that there is no blue pill, no "way we are supposed to act", and that life is not about climbing the ladders constructed by those who have come before us.

</comment><comment><USER20> "They impede personal exploration. They enforce conformity."

I believe there is a battle going on which is not referred to as a battle, but has been going on since the dawn of civilisation I think. The battle is between those who are pro-choice and those who are anti-choice. This guy seems to be anti-choice, he does not seem to want us to think, he seems to want us to be sheep, to accept what we re told without question, to be, well, peasants in the 13hundred and obey the modern priests and all their mights or be condemned to hell.

I did not know who the pro choice fighters were until I was acquitted with TED. Those guys seem to be all about empowerment, creativity, being open minded to different perceptions, etc. But even amongst the scientists there are many anti choice, but not so many as the politics lobby to which seems the newspapers belong also.

Life directed by institutions, by national patriotism, by religious devotion, by obsession with any one thing I believe is stagnation.</comment>


Mistakes business students make when founding a startup - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Mondable/top-10-mistakes-business-students-make-when-founding-a-startup-7f4845315035#.h5f640h5o <comment><USER3> Is there a similar post on the developer side? I could imagine that you could already start with the equivalent version of point 1:

"I have a great service/app/whatever, where can I find a business person to get it to the market for X% equity?"

<comment><USER4> Or worse still - "if I build a great product people will love it and tell their friends, I don't need anyone in product/marketing/sales"

<comment><USER5> Yeah, that's kind of the thing a lot of developers skip. I've done it. When I have an idea, I assume the market exists, and just start driving.

Now, when I have an idea I do an exhaustive search for keywords. I look for any data I can find that will tell me what the market would look like if I could get to the top. Almost every time I've done that, i've realized that there's very little people actually searching for the thneed I was going to build.

I've started to learn more about SEO, and marketing, but there's just SO MUCH I don't know, that I never considered, that having the right guy would help with. They really are an equal founder in my opinion. Building a product no one wants is a worthless activity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Non-technical people can make excellent business people, though there is some truth to the vapid MBA stereotype. However, if you're an MBA lacking the experience and wiring of a Jeff Bezos, then the "convince other people to paint my fence approach" is highly probable to result in failure. I would agree with one point from this post, which is that non-technical first-time founders should select ideas that they can learn to prototype working alone. This has numerous advantages, including:

1) learn the real-world problems of your idea through trial and error

2) if the idea does not become a profitable business, you reduce the risk that you will disappoint others and lose a lot of money that doesn't belong to you

3) develop technical skills that will be useful no matter the business outcome

<comment><USER7> Wouldn't call Bezos non-technical.

From wikipedia:

>After graduating from Princeton in 1986, Bezos worked on Wall Street in the computer science field.[20] Then he worked on building a network for international trade for a company known as Fitel.[21] He next worked at Bankers Trust.[22] Later on he also worked on Internet-enabled business opportunities at D. E. Shaw & Co.[23]

<comment><USER6> I could be wrong, but my understanding is he was working in a business role and not programming computers in those jobs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Love No. 4.

Me and my friend (both business students) tried to start a business with having the Business Plan as our first step. It went to hell.

Now we started with validating the idea - selling! It worked soooo much better. More people should try that instead!

<comment><USER9> Don't get sucked in to the all business plans aren't worth the paper they're written on parade.

Sure, a 200 page document that takes you six months to write that you work on to the exclusion of everything else? Yeah that's bad.

However a short few pages on the idea, the target market, some guesstimates on sales targets, expenditure and so on is a small piece of work that in my experience can be very useful.

It gives you a document to go back to as a bad line for progress. What is measured can be improved and all that jazz. Also, just taking the time to scope out your business, even at a high level, will make you think about areas of work that a founder might not otherwise consider until it's too late.

<comment><USER8> True. But what about a BMC instead of a 200 page business plan? Sure, it takes time to create a good BMC but man, they've helped me so much!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> No. 1 should be mandatory reading for HSG students.

<comment><USER11> What's "HSG"?

<comment><USER10> University of St.Gallen (Business school in CH)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> After graduating with an Economics degree, I was keen to create a start-up. Unfortunately, the rigidly logical approach I initially took wasn't helpful. Perhaps it was symptomatic of studying economics.

I began to 'think on my feet' more as I got good at networking and listening. As I began to suss out demand, I realised that I would always be hampered by my limited coding ability. I had a friend who was doing the coding for our team, and as he went for a PhD, he encouraged me to go for a MSc. So I did!

Long story short. I'm studying CompSci and got in largely because of the late- night coding I was doing on the side of my regular job.

</comment><comment><USER13> A couple of comments here:

1\. I don't agree with the general premise of the author.

a) I'm of the opinion that successful people are successful. Regardless of their background, if they have an idea, a goal, a desire, they'll make it happen. They make the leap from, "Want to go skydiving tomorrow?" to, "We're going skydiving tomorrow. Obviously this can't be true for _everything_ they do, but they always demand success from themselves.

b) I can speak from personal experience going in the opposite direction. I started out technical, ended up biased towards the business side of the work when we sold. Business is tricky because the knowledge required (and applied) runs the full gamut of being so boringly easy (payroll and accounting) to mind-numbingly tricky (payroll and accounting). Jokes aside, the author seems to be herding all business students into the "marketing and sales role". There, you can only be good at your job if you have the guts to go out and get experience. For those who don't have the guts, networking is the alternative. It's much easier to pitch an idea to a group of friends than it is to pitch to an audience of strangers. As such, an MBA from Stanford makes perfect sense. Half of your friends from B-school are already VCs or Angels, why would you have to cold-sell to anyone else? (The converse is true also, an MBA from Stanford lets you get in on tech deals earlier.)

2\. "The almost obligatory 'I have a great idea, where can I find a developer to build it for me for X% equity?' Facebook post."

The fourth option, not listed, is convincing the technical side that the idea is wonderful and that _both_ sides are willing to sacrifice to get the job done. If the non-technical side is any good, that should be one of their primo skills. I've interacted with lots of amazing salespeople and by-golly they are amazing at making _anything_ sound fun.

3\. Writing a business plan.

Oh god. Please do it. There is nothing worse than seeing a promising company wander around in circles with no idea what's going on.

Not having a business plan may work out if:

a) You already have a secure source of funding and you don't care how long it's going to take to get to market.

b) Working on your idea has no opportunity cost (instead of playing video games, you're working on your idea).

4\. Applying to startup competitions

I actually agree with the sentiment by the author here. I think that applying (or just working on an application) to a single, established competition/incubator is really useful (see business plan) because it _forces_ the team to know their stuff. Applying to 50 just for publicity's sake is useless.

5\. Hiring too quickly.

This may be different in Europe because laws there are very biased against the business when it comes to employment, but in the United States, debt is not a bad thing at all. In fact, using debt correctly allows for a win-win-win (business - investment - customer) situation. The business wins because it can bring product "x" to market 1 year earlier. It then uses revenue generated by "x" to fund "y". Repeat. The bank wins because interest collection is a thing. The customer wins because product "x" \-- something which helps their life -- makes it to market a year earlier.

So yes, hiring _too_ quickly is bad. Hiring quickly is really, really important. What's the difference between the two? I have no clue.

6\. Your wage.

Most founders I know don't really care what they're being paid. They just want to see their idea take root. This applies to both technical and non-technical. You don't need school to teach you that: "Me need money to get food to eat". There are people from both sides who value a $400,000 luxury car over the success of the company, but those folks don't make it too far.

7\. Lack of perseverance.

This applies to _everyone_.

The author's example of "scientists working for 3 years on research...without feedback" is certainly wrong. Along the way, their RA moderates their thinking, they publish papers and grants, they present at conferences. If that's not constant feedback, I have no idea what counts.

I didn't respond to all the points, but I didn't agree with most of them, the ones I named were just the _most_ wrong in my opinion.

<comment><USER14> Having run through a few startups (and dealt with some business school grads), I agree with the general premise because it is how most business schools train students to think. There's two types of business schools in general - <USER2> that focus on forging middle managers (working with spreadsheets, managing employees, etc.) and some that focus on entrepreneurship (writing business plans, dealing with contracts, etc.) Both are not very helpful in the early going, because the reality is that EARLY STAGE startups are only about one thing: validating a business. A lot of the "lean startup" movement lessons apply: test your assumptions as quickly and cheaply as possible, spend as little money as possible, don't work on things that don't forward those goals.

My first business my partner and I felt like impostors the whole time because we weren't raising millions of funding, we weren't renting huge offices or blitzing marketing, we simply were working to make our business better and make money faster. It's the most obvious thing, but it tends to be forgotten when dreaming too big too fast, and having all these business school lessons to lean on tend to make things even worse because they only confuse the situation at the earliest stages.

I'm not saying these aren't useful things to know, but first-time founders tend to lack awareness of where their company is in reality. The best person to work on a startup is the guy who knows how to make a buck from nothing, the guy who fixed computers when he was 12 or paid kids to make things he sold on Etsy when he was in high school or whatever. "Doing" gets harder and harder the more time you spend on "how to do things right."

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The remark on selling, suggesting that selling can't be taught, was not right:

E.g., I have an uncle who taught his sons selling, right, not for, say, P&G, GE, GF, UGE, IBM, but for his own business.

The son's business? Private label industrial floor cleaning supplies, major supplier for all of on US state. Why _private label_? Because the basic supplies are from a stable, old industry. The main issue is the one on one selling of those supplies to actual customers who actually use the supplies. So, the old industry that makes the supplies to fill some train of railroad tank cars is plenty eager to put the supplies in 55 gallon barrels or just 10 gallon buckets for the selling, with private label, my cousin did.

I have a childhood friend whose father taught him about selling. The father's business? Leading wholesale supplier of beer for about 1/4 of a US state. The son got an engineering degree, but he found that by far his best career opportunity was to take over the family business and use what his father taught him about selling, e.g., to small grocery stores, bars, restaurants, vendors at sporting events, etc.

I have a friend whose father taught him about selling. The father's business? Killed about 5000 hogs a day, chilled them overnight, cut them into pieces, put the pieces in boxes, put the boxes in 18 wheel refrigerated trucks, drove the trucks from the US Midwest to the US east coast. The selling? The father sat in his office in the Midwest with a head set and a spiral bound notebook and did the final selling. How to teach the son? For a start, when the son was 16, gave him the keys to a nice car and a credit card and sent him, alone, on a _selling_ trip to each of the customers. Later the son started a business and was really good at selling.

Again, we're not talking _marketing and sales_ for some business worth $100 billion but selling for some _life style_ , family business.

Is there something to teach that is teachable and valuable? Darned right. E.g., in the first case, the son came home and told his dad that he had the order signed but, still, lost it. Why? Once he did get the order, trying for good customer relations, he stayed around the customer's office for a few minutes making small talk. Suddenly the guy who signed the order had some second thoughts. Lesson: When have the signed order, go away, go away nicely, but definitely go away, essentially ASAP.

Another lesson? When selling, emphasize your really good customer service. So, for the first order, have something wrong with it, say, some missing parts. When the customer calls, make a heroic effort, maybe drive all night and get there at start of business the next day, and hand deliver the missing parts with apologies. It worked.

There's lots of this stuff. If the father is really good at such selling, then there's lots of stuff he can pass down to his son that will work, well enough to be a big help in having the son have a nice standard of living and, e.g., pay full tuition for his children at some B-school where the professors circumvented the challenges of selling by being professors of marketing and sales at a B-school, and I used to be a B-school prof!

</comment><comment><USER16> That layout is pretty wasteful. The title of article isn't even shown until somewhere into the second page.

<comment><USER8> That's how it is if you use full size "hero image" on Medium. I wish Medium would allow its users to add the title in the foreground of the image.</comment></comment>


"Bike butlers" tackle problem of Copenhagen's illegally parked bikes - <AUTHOR> http://road.cc/node/21738

<comment><USER2> What I don't understand is: how do they move the bikes without damaging the locks?

<comment><USER3> The bikes are locked but not fastened to something. So the butlers simple lift the bikes, locked and all, and put them in the right place.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why I'm being flagged on all new submissions? - <AUTHOR> Can you at least give me an option to ask what is wrong? <comment><USER2> It may be helpful to read [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html), and [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html) as well.

Here's a few common topics:

"please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait" (title rather than a summary or ad)

"If a story has had significant attention in the last year or so, we kill reposts as duplicates. If not, a small number of reposts is ok."

"Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with. HN users can try it out, give you feedback, and ask questions in the thread."

(Also, it's not stated because it's self-evident, but: don't do disingenuous things to focus attention on a submission, such as submitting it from multiple accounts.)

</comment><comment><USER3> HN users likely consider those submissions spammy.</comment>


J & q for Lispers - <AUTHOR> http://www.vector.org.uk/?vol=24&no=2&art=blazeski <comment><USER2> Big Dave Thomas (OTI) came to Sydney recently and did a talk about how they are using J & Q for large scale financial processing. Looks like vector languages are making a comeback!

</comment><comment><USER3> The element frequency counting example (in the grey box) is pretty ambiguous. Are you just supposed to ignore the numbers and instead count the frequencies of the strings? Or is the first element of each sublist to be the addend? I.e. should it be the number added to the total count of string elements?

Either way, Clojure looks pretty good. If the first case, then it's

(frequencies (flatten (map second l)))

If the second interpretation, then this works:

(apply merge-with + (map (comp (partial apply hash-map) reverse) l))</comment>


The Tax Overhaul Could Cripple the U.S. As a Leader in Science - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609738/the-tax-overhaul-could-cripple-the-us-as-a-leader-in-science/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_content=2017-12-11&utm_campaign=Technology+Review <comment><USER2> American universities that provide taxable benefits to student employees can offer them tax relief by simply paying the tax on their behalf. This solution seems obvious to me, but those who argue against taxing tuition reimbursement always ignore this point.

<comment><USER3> People aren't ignoring that point, it's just that for the university to pay the tax it means that they would have to pay thousands of dollars per student and that funding has to come from somewhere.</comment></comment>


Physical Limits of Computation (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/Articles/286233/ <comment><USER2> Side note: comments at the bottom on singularity and moore's law are IMHO also highly interesting.

Direct link: [https://lwn.net/Articles/286739/](https://lwn.net/Articles/286739/)

<comment><USER3> > To be blunt, the singularity phenomenon is the quasi-religious expectation > that a brighter tomorrow through technology is "certain" and universal > deliverance of mankind is just around the corner.

This sounds like a mis-representative view of the Singularity. Indeed some people think the Singularity will bring some kind of techno-utopia, they get excited about living forever and so on, but this only is an assessment about the Singularity, it is not a definition of the concept.

As of today, the Wikipedia definition is :

> The technological singularity (also, simply, the singularity)[1] is the > hypothesis that the invention of artificial superintelligence will abruptly > trigger runaway technological growth, resulting in unfathomable changes to > human civilization.

That sounds much more accurate imho. Most notably, the important point is that the Singularity will bring unforeseeable changes. No-one knows if mankind will be better or worse out of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dr. Lloyd is a physicist more than anything (even though his department at MIT is MechE), which may explain why he eschews the manufacturing approach to Moore's Law. The author should have mentioned this; Dr. Lloyd is brilliant but he isn't an EE or CS and can't reasonably be expected to base his theories on those disciplines.

<comment><USER5> Since the topic is the limits to computation imposed by the fundamental laws of physics, knowledge of the details of modern semiconductor manufacturing seem much less relevant than of quantum mechanics and gravity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Joe Armstrong gives a very good talk about ideas in the article in "The Mess We're In" (2014):

[https://youtu.be/lKXe3HUG2l4?t=26m12s](https://youtu.be/lKXe3HUG2l4?t=26m12s)</comment>


Pingendo – Free, simple app for Bootstrap prototyping - <AUTHOR> http://pingendo.com <comment><USER2> Slightly OT: Is it just me or is Bootstrap a bit of an overkill nowadays? I know you can import what you need and keep the lib size small but the overall framework feels aged and many feature are no rocket-science anymore. Still some features are handy but again, is it worth it?

Without any customization you have this typical thousands times seen Bootstrap look. Only few of the available Bootstrap themes have an original and from Bootstrap outstanding look but then you add even more bloat to your site figuring out what CSS you could leave out. You could also customize yourself but again why not quickly do the stuff without Bootstrap? FE development got quite far these days and today's CSS and JS is not your daddy's HTML anymore, Flexbox is great and there're tons of specialized and modular libs.

Besides, Sass and Less were never my favorites but this would be a minor pick. They are ok to get along.

Last but not least they claim to be mobile-first which is IMO far off and the biggest deal breaker. Just open the Bootstrap page on a newer iPhone (eg 6) and open the menu. There's some significant lag until the menu opens and then the menu-open animation sluggishly stutters running at very low framerate. This could have be done with native CSS and hardware-accelerated 3d-transforms in a responsive and butter-smooth manner with a just few lines. Just having a responsive grid-system doesn't make Bootstrap mobile-first.

I believe that Bootstrap could be good for non consumer facing sites where the audience is less demanding. Eg you need to build an internal reporting dashboard for some company departments and it doesn't have to slick, smooth or sexy. Just a dashboard which is faster and more flexible than sending Excel sheets back and forth. Then yes, Bootstrap is a good choice.

Don't want to be too negative, maybe it's just my cluenessless but could somebody enlighten me: why do I need else Bootstrap in 2016?

<comment><USER3> I agree. Ask clients why they _really_ want Bootstrap and it comes down border-radius on buttons and that blue background color.

It's definitely not a better way to create fluid-responsive viewports.

And the whole grid obsession has gone too far. Among graphic designers and studio artists, a "grid" was always just a fun-to-try curiosity for noob artists to learn composition. Grids are only seriously used by "op" (optical illusion) artists and a few OCD artists with an unhealthy obsession with geometric alignment, like maybe Edward Hopper.

<comment><USER4> Your ideas that grids and therefore alignment is some quirk among a few OCD artists is quite wrong. Good designers break grid all the time, but they all use grids and guides to some extent. Not using a grid is the sure sign of an amateur. Just because a grid is a well-known concept to everyone doesn't make it amateurish.

<comment><USER3> I have a BFA in this subject and 30+ years of experience designing graphics and interfaces back to Deluxe Paint and Photoshop 1. So I can't take an anon post seriously. What your saying demonstrates my point, it's a self- reinforcing trend that's gaining more traction, and I blame the popularity of Twitter for that. It was not common to see so many CSS grids until Twitter Bootstrap.

The problem is, non-designers are buying and selling these frameworks and themes. Often designers aren't even part of the purchase process. And how many designers would object: "You're making a mistake because you will regret the technical debt of this." Hey, more billable hours for everybody when it comes time to maintain the grid within the grid from hell, which was FUBAR code from day 1, further obfuscated by some proprietary WYSIWYG. Wow, the screenshot looks great though! How many designers even use the Bootstrap grid properly, assuming it was a good idea in the first place?

The fundamentals of composition haven't changed in hundreds of years. This is false: "Not using a grid is the sure sign of an amateur." Yes, grids go back to the Renaissance, but it's more often a crutch for a new artist copying a master, or for an OCD personality like Edward Hopper. You can feel the cold, painful rigidity of his work, it's amazing--but if the guy was my personal friend, I'd say he needs to loosen up and take off the training wheels. But hey, that's just my opinion ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a web developer who works almost exclusively with Boostrap and finds the beginning stages of building a site with Bootstrap to be very tedious, I love this. My boss (does a lot of web design work but not coding) might find this interesting too. He's been wanting to be able to sit and make mockups but can't find the motivation or maybe time to do it.

<comment><USER5> Also, some quick feedback: The HTML and CSS panel was hidden by default for me. It was a little hard to find. There's also no quick way to hide it again that I can see. I have to resize it to minimum. Might be worth exploring how double clicking works with PHPStorm (maximizes it) and adding a minimize option to right click context menu. Also undocking options for CSS/HTML would be nice for dual screen use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Suggestion for you FAQ:

> 4) Why use Bootstrap? > Because Bootstrap is the most widely adopted > development framework, with the largest thriving community and most > extensive documentation.

How about something a little better than "because everyone else is using it", such as:

"Bootstrap gives us a common vocabulary of classes and components that makes it easier for beginners to build fully-functioning markup, and makes it easier for developers of all levels to communicate with one another. It also provides constraints on the otherwise-unlimited possibilities of HTML+CSS which makes it possible for us to build this GUI tool that interacts with it."

<comment><USER7> There's too much fluff in that description. If i were a potential user and saw that line, i would just close the tab without trying to understand what you're trying to say. The op rightly described the essence of what makes bootstrap compelling imo.

<comment><USER6> Not being able to understand something doesn't make it "fluff". I believe that there is actual meaning to what I wrote (maybe you disagree, and that's okay... but it would be nice to hear what exactly you think is "fluffy" about my explanation).

<comment><USER8> As opposed to the original explanation, yours actually applies to virtually any CSS framework, so makes no argument after all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm very impressed, thanks for this app. Until now, I used Pencil for prototyping on linux, which was not very efficient because it's more focused on desktop app building.

Totally love the fact that there's a real browser behind and I can just add bootstrap classes on elements I want. Great job, instant hook.

</comment><comment><USER10> What is up with every app requiring 10.8 and above? It's fine for others but very unsettling for developer tools. I still know devs on 10.6.x!

This is even more weird when you consider that laptops that came with 10.7 went out of AppleCare a few months ago.

<comment><USER11> Why can't everyone just upgrade?

<comment><USER10> It can be very messy to upgrade for a sizeable chunk of developers. Linked libraries, lost compatibility. If the system gets unstable you lose years of installed dependencies. I mean some of the unix apps take literally hours to install, and a faulty upgrade can lose tens of them. You forget how you resolved conflicts, gotten stuff to work.

<comment><USER11> Why would you figure out how to install something, and then not automate it so you didn't have to do it again? I think if you can't recreate your system in an afternoon with just a backup of your user files, then you're already on borrowed time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Every tool that makes prototyping cheaper & faster is more than welcome!

<comment><USER13> I've made an app & website that lets you quickly try out java snippets on android, e.g. if you see a code snippet on stack overflow you can just copy paste it and throw it in and let it run on your phone. But I didn't continue with it because no one uses it :) [https://runondroid.com/](https://runondroid.com/)

<comment><USER14> Yo that's pretty neat right there...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The website says they are funded, how do they intend to make money? or this a nonprofit?

<comment><USER16> From the FAQ:

3) Is Pingendo free? Yes. What is free today will be free tomorrow. Premium services are coming and they will pay our bills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Free beats the rest ;)

</comment><comment><USER18> This thing is amazing. I am a backend developer, and over the last couple of years becoming "full stack" for web projects. For me I can do CSS/Photoshop stuff but I'd rather hand code assembly language than CSS wrangling anyday. So this tool is great.

I think if the target audience is "non designers" who just want to get something done, it's perfect. I generally throw together UIs at work and pass them on to our designers who of course throw it out and put in real stuff, but at least they know they're starting with a functional product to work from. That's where I think this tool will really work for people.

</comment><comment><USER19> Pingendo for Bootstrap 4 preview available here [http://v4.pingendo.com/playground.html](http://v4.pingendo.com/playground.html)

<comment><USER20> This is amazing, best yet! Wondering what's the status of that? Can't see save button..

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Anyone have details on the technology behind it? I mean is it a cross platform single app written in JS/Electron or individual native languages etc?

<comment><USER22> It's an Atom/Electron app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Would have loved if they'd signed the code so I didn't get the "unidentified developer" message when I try to run it on OSX.

<comment><USER6> FYI, if you right-click the application icon and choose "open" from the popup menu, it will let you run the app.

(I agree that it's annoying to have to do that though)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> is it a coincidence? Bootstrap also introduces something similar today - bootstrap studio ([https://bootstrapstudio.io/](https://bootstrapstudio.io/))

is there any difference?

<comment><USER25> Is Bootstrap Studio really from the Bootstrap devs? According to this website ([https://bootstrapstudio.io/](https://bootstrapstudio.io/)) Bootstrap Studio is a tool developed by Zine EOOD, a Bulgarian company: [http://zine.bg/](http://zine.bg/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This looks very very similar to [http://blocsapp.com](http://blocsapp.com) (as in the UI being almost an exact copy).

</comment><comment><USER27> I've been using Pingendo for about 1 year now at home and at work. Super fun app to use, and makes some really nice and clean code in the end.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm on Safari trying the demo (v4), it's missing the scroll bar :/

</comment><comment><USER29> froze 5 min into using the app, whilst browsing stock photo to insert as the hero image...

the app felt very clunky. As a developer, I felt very restricted.. This definitely not intended for developers...

</comment><comment><USER30> I downloaded it one day and realized it was a attempted closed software atom app...just unzip it if you want to comment out their JavaScript security line. Other than that it seems like they took most of their code from a similiar atom project that is completely free and open source.

<comment><USER19> I'm the author of Pingendo. Which is this "similar atom project" you mention ?

<comment><USER30> Sorry got pingendo mixed up with the pinegrow devs pushing their 100$ software around here when there are great alternatives such as this. Sorry for the trolling. I'll delete my comment once I'm on a desktop. Question where is the "pin" in these bootstrap editors names coming from?

<comment><USER31> [http://pinegrow.com](http://pinegrow.com), now that you mention it :)

Pine in Pinegrow comes from Pine trees and no code comes from Atom. Besides Bootstrap, PG also supports Foundation, plain HTML, converting HTML pages to WordPress themes, master pages, smart components etc and aims to be a kind of modern Dreamweaver replacement.

And sorry that you feel offended by my kids having to eat.

<comment><USER30> Not offended your kids have to eat but does it have to be filet mignon every night? I'd gladly charge $20-$40 on my card for software anyone can easily get the source for and unlock the saving functionality but I feel like I have to pay $100 because half of you user WILL just steal it. Wrap some security around it and prove the business will be around for a few years and if I missed the boat and still hate front end work then I guess I'll have to pay. But it's a free world charge what you want and I'll stick to firebug.

<comment><USER4> early adopter of pinegrow here. I even bought multiple licenses early on, just to support them. It's become a critical part of my work now. And it's pretty affordable. Any software isn't going to be worth it if you don't find use out of it or use something else. But I'd be quite unhappy if I didn't have pinegrow to work on UI at my current job. I love how easy it is to copy and delete objects and I build screens for stakeholders (and then devs to work on)

firebug / chrome dev tools are great, I still use them along side pinegrow, but they aren't pinegrow. And pinegrow doesn't do everything perfect. I will ocassionally open up the same files I'm working in pinegrow inside a code editor for more robust tools, BUT pinegrow has been excellent to work visually on some of the mindnumbing things I'd have to do in code if I didn't have it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Prizm, the perfect music on your speakers. No phone, no laptop - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/21/prizm-automatically-plays-music-you-like-to-transform-your-living-room-into-your-favorite-coffee-shop/

<comment><USER2> I've talked to these guys, they're so nice and humble. (+ great product!)

<comment><USER2> Oh, is it you Olivier?;) //Marcus from Shortcut Labs

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for the nice comment ;)</comment></comment></comment>


Trader Joe's founder Joe Coulombe has died - <AUTHOR> https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/02/29/joe-coulombe-obituary-trader-joes-founder-dies-89/4884608002/ <comment><USER2> I worked for Trader Joe's for seven years before I finished school. It was a great place to work and although I make a lot more money now I miss things about it. TJs and Costco were always in the same discussion about great places to work in retail and as such it seemed to attract "high performing misfits". By this I generally mean really smart and hardworking people who didn't or couldn't go to college. Joe Coulombe built a very good company that I'll continue to shop at for a long time!

</comment><comment><USER3> There's really an untold story in Coulombe's career of how he managed to keep the soul of Trader Joe's intact all this time, even through an exit and his retirement. Corporate cost-cutting and hyper-optimization should have turned Trader Joe's into just another faceless grocery chain decades ago, yet somehow, it never did.

<comment><USER4> When a founder creates a corporate culture based on strong values, it will last for hundreds of years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Basically, I won't live anywhere without a co-op or a Trader Joe's, and a Costco. WinCo (employee-owned) is a bonus.

<comment><USER6> So...Boise? (Winco is based in Boise...and I have no idea how widespread that store is actually)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Trader Joe's_ is my favorite grocery store.

Its size is not too small as to feel claustrophobic, nor too big as to feel overwhelming.

But most important, they have a great selection of high quality and reasonably priced items.

I wish more companies would be like this.

</comment><comment><USER8> Trader Joe's is one of the few corporations I like and admire. Ave atque vale.

</comment><comment><USER9> What an empire. Can you imagine what it must feel like to accomplish so much?

<comment><USER10> What did it cost in terms of missed experiences? I always wonder if people like this thought it was worth it in the end.

<comment><USER11> He sold the company in 1979 to Aldi and retired in 1988, according to the article. It doesn't speak anywhere about an overworked person. Maybe he had a great time and was energized by his work?

<comment><USER12> It's interesting because the experience between Aldi and Trader Joe's is very different. I personally find Aldi to be a depressing experience, and I don't know why people say such great things about it, whereas Trader Joe's is an excellent example of success created in large part by treating employees well. The culture of Trader Joe's doesn't seem to have been incorporated into Aldi in any way. Then again, maybe the Aldi locations in California are subpar compared to elsewhere?

<comment><USER13> The Aldi that owns Trader Joe's (Aldi Nord) is not the same Aldi that owns Aldi in the USA (Aldi Süd). The two companies split in 1960.

<comment><USER5> Yeap. There's Trader Joe's (Aldi Nord) and Süd in Texas. I'm curious how similar are Aldi Nord in Europe and Trader Joe's, because I heard there's some resemblance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Finding "Sunny" the toucan is always a fun activity for the kids at TJs. And the reward is an organic lollypop ! Even I get one sometimes :)

</comment><comment><USER15> Hopefully now they stop sending me spam catalogs. Nobody reads them and they are bad for the environment.

</comment><comment><USER16> Trader Joe's ain't a health food store, that's for sure . . .

Miles of Aisles with processed sugar in everything . . .

<comment><USER17> That's actually the one thing I don't like about Trader Joe's. They still put sugar in things I don't want sugar in. I imagine the long term trend is away from this, but maybe that's wishful thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> HN has turned into the obituary pages of the internet. Every day the top post is some random person who died.

<comment><USER19> This wasn't some random person, it was Trader Joe himself.

It's also a story about how a quirky startup created a culture of quality and value and treating their employees and customers well - and kept that culture after being acquired.

I think there is a lot for all founders to learn from Trader Joe's.

And who doesn't enjoy the _Fearless Flyer_?

<comment><USER20> The'anti-Walmart', where Walmart is the world leader of mediocrity.</comment></comment></comment>