Ubuntu Rolling Release Proposal - <AUTHOR> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2013-February/036537.html

<comment><USER2> What's interesting is that they are in part re-creating the original problem they were trying to solve.

The complaints about Debian were that they only cut a release like every two years. The Debian response was that people who wanted more timely updates could run the "testing" branch, which was a "rolling" release.

Ubuntu promised to solve the slow release cycles and the instability of a rolling branch by cutting stable and well-composed releases on a rigorous six month schedule.

This announcement sounds a lot like the original Debian model they were trying to get away from.

<comment><USER3> A difference is that Debians testing branch was a testing branch, and as such did not have the same effort and priority put in to keeping it stable. Even as a rolling release, I would expect Ubuntu's main reopositories to be more stable than debian tesdting.

<comment><USER4> From extensive experience, debian testing is way more stable than Ubuntu's current LTS release even.

<comment><USER5> I would like to learn from others: how do you handle security with testing? I like debian testing very much, and occassionally I have the idea of using this in production, too, but I fear the responsibility to take care of many security fixes on my own. here are the high-urgency vulnarable sources for testing:

[https://security- tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/t...](https://security- tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/testing?show_high_urgency=1)

but even more surprisingly, this list for stable is even longer:

[https://security- tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/s...](https://security- tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/stable?show_high_urgency=1)

Can anybody explain this?

(Yes, I will take the shame on me and ask this on a debian mailing list, however, maybe anybody has a good explanation here...)

<comment><USER4> As follows:

1\. Read the vulnerability description.

2\. Ask yourself if you are vulnerable.

3\. No? Don't worry about it.

4\. Yes? External mitigation where possible or patch ourselves and commit back to debian (we a project member on our team).

We've not got to 4 yet, but have committed loads of fixes anyway.

<comment><USER5> OK, but real life (low budget) scenario is:

1\. aptitude update && aptitude upgrade 2\. ask yourself, if your system is vulnerable now 3\. feel the good hope and go ahead.

If I had the budget / time to research every single CVE I would probably not trust repositories at all...

do YOU trust repositories?

<comment><USER4> Yeah and that's pretty much good enough for most people.

That's what we do for our internal dev systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think that's a very well reasoned proposal and I'd be very happy to see it implemented. I might be unusual, but I find myself in both of the user groups that the proposal identifies. For my 'utility' machines (home server, XBMC host, web servers) I prefer the stability of the LTS series, but for my laptop I'm happy to trade that stability for getting new stuff sooner, particularly new usability features that are getting baked into Unity and other components.

One minor nit: in the section on benefits for Core/MOTU developers it suggests that only 2 releases would need to be supported. I think in reality that would actually be 4 releases, as with a 5 year support commitment for each LTS release there could be up to 3 LTS releases that are still being supported at any point in time. May be just a minor wording thing though - I'm sure the author knows what he's talking about.

<comment><USER7> Your use case is exactly what many of us Debian users have been doing for a long time. I use Unstable on my laptop and Stable (+ backports) on my VPS for those exact reasons.

<comment><USER8> Technically, Debian unstable is close to what I want, but I don't want to be using something that comes with 'at your own risk' warnings day to day.

I think the expectation is the important thing: if an update breaks something, the response I want to see is 'sorry, we'll fix that ASAP and try to avoid doing it again'. I get the impression that Debian unstable (and to a lesser extent testing) is only intended for people who're willing to put up with things breaking often.

<comment><USER7> Well, yes, it comes with absolutely no guarantees. That said, many Debian developers use it, and breakages have been rare at least for the last few years, since I started using it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm sure the decision wasn't taken lightly, and I'm sure Canonical has concluded that an 18 month LTS + rolling makes the most sense for the project. As a user, I am a bit worried about rolling releases though. Maybe someone here can alleviate my worries?

As I see it, software has to change. The question for distros is just _when?_ A rolling distro sees such changes continuously, and each package may in principle change at any point independently of any other package. Doesn't that mean that at any point, my workflow-critical programs may change their behavior or even stop working together? Sure, I can do upgrades more seldomly, but then I'm left without security updates. The main benefit I feel that non- rolling distros offer is _predefined breakage points_. I know that Ubuntu Quantal will work the way it works now until I upgrade to the next release. Even simply knowing in what way software _is_ (and will remain) broken is useful.

Now of course, one can stay with LTS and get the same behavior. I guess I'm simply complaining because the 6 month cycle was perfect for me.

At any rate, I would guess that most users only really desire rolling behavior for a few (dozens?) of packages. Ubuntu has that nicely covered with PPAs (and also "special status" rolling packages like Firefox).

<comment><USER10> The decision hasn't been made yet. Canonical's CTO may have decided he likes it, but the Ubuntu project hasn't yet given it a pass.

If you've got workflow-critical programs you don't want updating, use the LTS release. That's what it's for.

<comment><USER11> I think the real issue is when infrastructure things move.

How would the move to PulseAudio have worked in a rolling release? Would someone with a new install end up with PulseAudio, but someone with an existing install, would just never have it installed unless they knew what it was and started poking around for it?

The same for the transition to using evdev for (e.g.) mouse-handling in X.org rather than defining things in xorg.conf.

I know that Debian has lived through these transitions, but my impression was that the packages were setup in a way that allowed people to keep the old config, or move to the new one. That said, it seems like these issues could be more complex than a 'human being' (Ubuntu's target market) would be able to decipher.

<comment><USER10> It's not even clear that the rolling release will be intended for non- enthusiasts at this point, however as a matter of policy you can be pretty sure that any update applied to the rolling release will need to be tested against users as old as the last LTS.

That means the same sort of transition of config files and libraries that occur on release upgrade would just happen during a normal package install, which is pretty much how it works anyway (a release upgrade isn't much more than a giant group of packages being upgraded together -- all this logic is stored in the packages themselves).

<comment><USER11> I get the difference between a release upgrade and a rolling release schedule. My point was that when you are creating a release, you can say "this is the point where this change happens." With a rolling release, will a "apt-get upgrade" transition me? What if this was unexpected? What if this breaks my config?

For most normal upgrades this doesn't matter because the applications are usually fairly insular, but when you get into integrated systems like Desktop Environments it's different. Especially when Ubuntu is making a number of UI/etc changes to the desktop. It would be a bit surprising to have UI parts shift around. When you do a release upgrade, you know that there are going to be some major changes, and there are ChangeLog/notes on the release itself to tell you what major changes there are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This repeated notion of a truly converged OS is really annoying and it is very disappointing to see Ubuntu continue to pursue it despite the loud complaints of most of their users.

Lets point out the obvious: the user interaction of a small handheld device is very different than that of a computer with a full size monitor and mouse. Thus any os's on those two devices have to have different UI features. That's it.

Of course the parts of the OS that are not UI can be converged. In that sense Linux is already a fully converged OS.

But you are never going to fully converge the UI of two devices that use vastly different UI methods.

<comment><USER13> >Lets point out the obvious: the user interaction of a small handheld device is very different than that of a computer with a full size monitor and mouse.

And what happens in-between? What happens in the case of tablets? Notebooks with a touchscreen? Future devices like large format displays with full UI, and future paradigms like gesture control?

<comment><USER14> At this stage the key differentiation point is touch (ie. your finger as the pointer) v. the pointer (mice/keyboard, etc.) The UI for these two categories is naturally different, and convergence would be possible only when the UI can handle both. Even in the case of notebooks with touchscreens, the UI has to handle both requirements well, that of the finger and of the mouse/keypad. I personally feel Ubuntu is neglecting the latter. In time, that may well be the right choice. At present, it's definitely only part of the story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'll miss the bi-yearly fun with trying out a new release, and the name alliteration, but I think overall it's a smart move for Ubuntu. Does anyone have any reasons why they shouldn't move toward this? I'm curious.

<comment><USER16> A lot of the counter argument is based on FUD and bad experiences with OTHER rolling release distros. I'm not sure we can look at Gentoo or Arch as examples of what Ubuntu would be aiming to do (and I say this as an Arch user).

Within the proposal, it states that packages would be released when ready, and when stable. This doesn't mean that you are going to live on the bleeding edge like an Arch or Gentoo user may. You're going to get the updates after Ubuntu has done QA on them, and the maintainer will probably be peeking at bug trackers on other distros for tips on issues (Arch and Gentoo effectively expand their QA process).

It is true that there will probably be periodic UI changes in some of the applications. It is not necessarily true that these changes will happen any more frequently than they do now (since each application has different life cycles). What _will_ happen is you will potentially not need to wait 6+ months to get a new version of a package with a fix or improvement that is important to _you_.

If it lets them spend more time on QA and development rather than arbitrary deadlines and bundling, this sounds like a win-win to me. If and when problems happen, they'll get it figured out and hopefully not repeat their mistakes.

<comment><USER17> I don't think it's so much on the bleeding edge in Arch as most people think and packages are usually upgraded in such a way so that dependencies don't cause problems in other packages (at least from my experience). The key has always been to always do a system upgrade and not upgrade individual packages, i.e. always run pacman -Syu or pacman -Syu <packagename>. In four years I've never seen anything break (knock on wood) aside from a minor issue with a pcre upgrade sometime ago. That has just been my experience though, I run Arch on my desktop, laptop and about 10 vps servers.

<comment><USER18> My experience with Arch has frequently been:

1\. Run pacman -Syu

2\. Pacman failed.

3\. Go to Arch website

4\. Learn that I shouldn't have run pacman just then, and now I have to follow these steps to un-break my system

The most notable instance was when Arch decided that /usr/lib should be a symlink to /lib. Yeah, barely recovered from that... it was also a reinforcement of my position that basic utilities should be statically linked.

I finally gave up on Arch when a GRUB update broke my system and locked me out of my encrypted root.

<comment><USER19> Yeah I got caught by forcing the /usr/lib update too. Went away for a month, came back and did a full upgrade, failed. Checked the website, the news had dropped of the front page, forced update, broke it horribly.

Despite the problems, I still find rolling release vastly preferable. If Ubuntu can bring some of the commercial support quality to a rolling release, they'd alleviate a lot of the difficulties that I have with Arch.

<comment><USER20> > forcing the /usr/lib update

That's the number one thing to remember with pacman, _never_ force an update. That is how 90% [citation needed] of problems arise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I definitely support this. Having a rolling release was the primary reason why I decided to go with debian (unstable) vs (x)ubuntu a few weeks ago. My previous install (oneiric; non-LTS) was about to become unsupported, and the last time I decided to ignore the official support status (years ago... I think it was dapper?), the main repository upped and vanished one day. That was not a fun morning.

<comment><USER22> The problem is that Debian can be faster or slower whilst Ubuntu LTS releases are on a schedule. For example I believe the currently stable Debian release includes Python 2.6 because 2.7 just missed it. I prefer Ubuntu's LTS releases to Debian because they are predictable.

<comment><USER21> Yes, I agree that ubuntu's time based releases are generally a better experience that debian's "whenever it's ready" stable releases. Debian's testing and unstable branches are rolling releases though, and those were the only alternatives I was actually considering.

<comment><USER16> Although, I'm not sure we can even look at the Debian when trying to predict what a rolling release Ubuntu would look like (even considering that they are "relatives").

The current difference in manpower and mind share is pretty big between these two related distros. Regardless of which one each of us may like better, Canonical has the manpower and mindshare to probably have a bit more success with this model. I really like Debian, so this is not a knock on them (I used Debian on servers for a very long time with great results).

Heck, we may even see Debian and Ubuntu working more closely once they take on this shared dev style (I know, I am pipedreaming, but hey...).

<comment><USER22> I was under the impression that the Debian team is much larger than Cannonical. This is why they have always said that they could not do what they do without Debian. The biggest problem with a rolling release is that you constantly have to reboot the server to apply kernel upgrades, which you have to do less with LTS (though the first 6 months after the release it feels like a weekly chore).

<comment><USER3> Doesn't Linux support hotswapping kernels?

<comment><USER22> Ksplice [1] lets you do that. For a while they had very limited support for it, but I just checked and they seem to support Ubuntu on the desktop as well [2]. Once this comes to the server edition and/or is bundled by Canonical, using Ubuntu would become much smoother.

[1] <http://www.ksplice.com/>

[2] <http://www.ksplice.com/uptrack/download-ubuntu>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I suppose derivative distros like Xubuntu and Edubuntu will need to follow suit.

I've had pretty bad experiences with non-LTS versions of Xubuntu. The last time I had a go on it on my laptop, things broke unpredictably, a little at a time. When I say unpredictably, I mean totally by surprise, not even after performing an update. First, Pulse audio stopped working. Spent a few days trying to fix it, then gave up and reverted to Alsa. Then the graphical login got stuck in an endless loop cycle. So reverted to text login, starting X manually after I'd log in. When wireless stopped working, I gave up. I run the LTS Xubuntu on two other machines and neither of them have had problems like this. I put my laptop on the LTS Xubuntu and it's been good since.

I'm guessing mainstream Ubuntu gets more QA and is more stable than Xubuntu. It might be harder for derivative distros to keep up with a rolling release. Or maybe not... this might give them more flexibility to QA stuff as needed instead of trying to keep up with a new release every six months. As long as Cannonical keeps the LTS cycle going, moving to a rolling release sounds reasonable.

<comment><USER24> One thing to keep in mind is that you're going to have far fewer problems with compatible hardware.

On my older laptop things were breaking on each upgrade. Most problems I had were with the Geforce graphics card included, but wireless stopped working at some point in combination with the router that I have at home (kept working with other routers just fine, so I guess it was a protocol issue). Anyway, it required constant tinkering.

So first of all, on that laptop I gave up on Nvidia's proprietary drivers and went with Nouveau, which for my needs works well. 90% of all problems I ever had were linked to these proprietary Nvidia drivers. Don't know how well Nouveau works with newer Geforce cards, but you should give it a try.

I also have a new Thinkpad with Intel HD 4000 graphics and the Wifi chip is also from Intel. I rejected other models with Geforce cards on purpose. With the latest Ubuntu everything worked flawlessly out of the box on this laptop, graphics, wifi, sound, everything.

People expect Linux distros to run well on any hardware they throw at it and many times it does, but if you're buying a new laptop / PC, do some research first and prefer models for which all drivers are available as open-source, or if you don't want that hassle, search for models certified for Linux. Thinkpads are good (if you get it with Intel HD at least), Dell also sells a couple of models that are Ubuntu-certified, like that new developer-targeted laptop, there's also System76 and I'm sure you can find others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> considering the tipping point of me leaving buntu was being tired of the upbreak release process, I second this idea.

they are basically adopting the debian scheme, only the stable releases will be more frequent.

<comment><USER26> I thought Ubuntu's original reason for existing was because Debian releases don't happen often enough?

<comment><USER27> It existed because testing wasn't stable enough and stable wasn't fast enough. The 2 year LTS releases are basically just the slow stable thing carried over, but having 2 layers of rolling release (like Arch) where you have a base repo and a testing repo lets them having the rolling release without all the continuous integration problems if it hits enough testing users first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I watch Ubuntu's recent steps with trepidation. I love using it for a home Linux machine (indeed upgrading just to LTS-es), and _I could not care less_ about its "convergence" aspirations. I don't want Ubuntu on my phone or my tablet, or at least I don't care.

I worry that eventually its mobile plans will bury the desktop Ubuntu, move it out of focus, so to say. When that happens, I wonder whither I should turn. Debian?

<comment><USER29> I used to use Debian, and I'm not sure I'd go back. On one hand, the stability was wonderful (Debian was pretty much bulletproof for me), but packages were, for stable, quite old. Hardware compatibility isn't quite as good: hardware (including a USB Wi-Fi dongle) that Ubuntu autodetects and has no trouble with became an adventure to get working.

I tracked stable, so maybe testing would be better in terms of package outdating, but hardware compatibility is Debian's achilles heel right now.

<comment><USER30> Depending on what you do with your machine(s), it might make sense for you to go with whatever versions come with the vast majority of the packages, but for the few that matter to you, manage them yourself. For example, I use Oracle's Virtualbox PPA, and it just updated as a normal software update last night. That's 4.2.x, compared to Ubuntu's 4.1.x. For things that aren't PPA'd, you'd need to pay closer attention. It's an option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I wonder how much this proposal is driven by Ubuntu's push into the mobile space versus improving the Ubuntu project at large. Clearly it's possible rolling releases would aid both.

I guess what I'm really asking is what are the possible negative implications of the plan for the more "traditional" Ubuntu users? Many of whom are likely sysadmins trying to maintain consistent package versions across their infrastructure. Sticking to the LTS versions is the first step. But then you would be delaying access to newer package versions without the interim releases.

</comment><comment><USER32> One thing I'd add as a suggestion: if they do a rolling release, hot-rebuild the package so that if you download an "Ubuntu rolling" ISO, you get a 100% up to the minute copy with all the latest security patches and so forth. This so that _starting_ a new Ubuntu install is not annoying (which it would be if you basically had to throw away and redownload the whole OS as updates as soon as you installed).

<comment><USER8> There's already a daily ISO of the development release, so I imagine that would carry on under a rolling release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Yes Please! I'm sick of PPA-ing for updated packages.

<comment><USER9> Really? I've always felt that they give me the perfect balance: the distro itself is non-rolling, so breakages (possibly) happen at known intervals, yet PPAs let me "go rolling" for a subset of packages where I want the latest and am prepared to handle breakage at any time.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if there is a way to build this process more into the package management system. Maybe have to sets of repositories, a 'stable' repository that would behave like current, non-rolling repositories, and a 'rolling' repository that would get new versions of software once they've been tested. By default, software would install from the stable repositories, but you can do something like 'apt-get make_rolling python', and get the rolling release version of python. Such a system should then be able to handle dependencies that would need to be made rolling as well.

This clearly means more work for the maintainers, but only because the PPA method is so clearly a hack that there is no expectation that it must just work.

<comment><USER34> Apt supports this. However, no distribution officially supports that scheme.

<http://wiki.debian.org/AptPreferences>

[http://serverfault.com/questions/22414/how-can-i-run- debian-...](http://serverfault.com/questions/22414/how-can-i-run-debian- stable-but-install-some-packages-from-testing)

[http://blog.drewwithers.com/2011/06/mixing-debian-stable- and...](http://blog.drewwithers.com/2011/06/mixing-debian-stable-and- unstable.html)

Debian stable + backports is probably closest. Unfortunatelly, there are few backports. Partially, because few people use it and partially because upstream rarely cares for Debian stable.

<comment><USER35> Can't you do this with Synaptic? Include apt lines for multiple versions, then select "prefer versions from Oneiric". That lets you force a version for specific packages while not updating the whole system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This could work, rolling-release + LTS. Archlinux seems to be doing quite well under the rolling-release auspice, so why not.

Of course, never in my experience has rolling-release ever worked in anything close to production environments - it's what killed FreeBSD in the data centre, however, if you're a techie with some time on your hands it could be cool.

<comment><USER37> totally dead <https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect/software>

<comment><USER36> Not totally dead, it still has some strongholds left, but I'm sure Netflix doesn't use the rolling-release side of it (ports mainly). :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> No one has ever tried this with an OS before.

<comment><USER39> What do you mean? Arch and Gentoo are two pretty successful distributions and both use a rolling release approach.

<comment><USER40> Sarcasm doesn't translate very well over the Internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'd like to see them balance out dropping the interim releases with doing slightly more frequent LTE releases. Maybe every 1 or 1.5 years instead of 2. But obviously there might be manpower issues there. I just think they're abandoning a middle ground of stability that's still a very valuable space.

</comment><comment><USER37> I really like the way FreeBSD does it: stable base system but all (ok, most) 3rd party software is still fresh.

</comment><comment><USER42> This seems like a reasonable proposal to me. I've starting using the LTS releases exclusively for my desktop and server systems. I'm planning to use the Ubuntu phone heavily, and would love that device to be on a rolling- release schedule.

</comment><comment><USER43> Canonical should just wait until the 64 bit of 14.04 LTS for ARM is ready before they put it on mobile. Should greatly simplify their lives when it comes to upgrading later.

</comment><comment><USER44> I can't use Ubuntu, I've tried countless times, the experience sucks. I'm trying mint, and i can't even access latest libraries, everything is old, no partition resizing during installation, lack of distro tools and lack of polish; in mageia everything is fresh and if it not the free support quickly updates them.

Mandriva had rolling releases with cooker and mageia has also with cauldron. Sorry for looking like a troll but i never got the hype with this ubuntu distro, i wish HN supported mageia more since distrowatch even reports mageia as the number two more popular distro.

<comment><USER45> If you need the bleeding edge of a package, install that package from a pinned archive (or similar). If you need the bleeding edge of _everything_ , I don't believe you. If you just want the bleeding edge because 'hey, it feels cool', then you're not the target demographic for ubuntu - something they stated from the outset.</comment></comment>


The right to hyperlink - in response to the Canadian decision - <AUTHOR> http://balkin.blogspot.com/2011/10/freedom-of-speech-and-right-to-link.html

<comment><USER3> I always hate when "kiddie porn" is brought up as a counter-argument to something. #weak

The whole crux of the Supreme Court of Canada's decision is that, when linking to something, you have no control over the content of the destination. So today it can be a nice picture of a kitten, and tomorrow someone can change it to something defamatory and illegal.

Or today its a link to a public domain song, and tomorrow someone replaces it with something copyrighted with the same URL. You can't control that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious as to why extreme examples are "weak" in the context of evaluating a framework to evaluate hyperlinks. Whatever policy the courts put in place, they have to handle both extreme and non-extreme situations.

Following your line of reasoning, we'd accept that building a website with the sole intention of linking to kiddie porn would be OK - because the author of those links has no control over what's on the other side.

As with most discussions like these, the trick is in how to draw the line, how to strike the balance.

<comment><USER3> If we had this discussion about pirated movies and music, then you and I can have a reasonable discussion about the merits of one side or the other. And if you are strongly against copyright infringement, or feel that the music and movie companies have too much power in the law, there are reasonable merits to either side of the debate and a real discussion can take place.

The moment you bring child porn into it, then anyone who would "accept that building a website of the sole intention of linking to kiddie porn would be OK" is then labelled a sick, twisted individual for supporting such a thing. It's an argument designed to shut debate down before it even starts.

It's like Godwin's Law. Eventually someone mentions Hitler and that pretty much ends the discussion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel like his solution is to let others decide what is or is not a "legitimate use" of a hyperlink. The Supreme Court decision is correct in that it protects all "free speech" on the internet. The takeaway here is that we, as a people with rights to free speech, have those rights protected in new media. It's not about how the underbelly of society can abuse those rights.

Tor also serves a particular goal that exposes itself to abuse, but should the project start discriminating on what content to allow based on that fact?

</comment><comment><USER5> I see no need to restrict linking. Let's take a closer look at the child porn example here. This person has links. How did they get them? If they verified the links then right there you have direct illegal behavior. Even if they didn't visit themselves, if they know who is hosting child pornography then they are expected to report it. On the other hand, if they are some kind of impartial link aggregator being fed by third parties then I don't see a problem. Go after actual promoters.

<comment><AUTHOR> In the example you cite, I agree - if someone just aggregate links generally, and had no intention of pushing people towards verified child porn, there was no intention there. Those link shouldn't be penalized.

On the other hand, if someone did verify the illegal content, and posts links with the clear, sole intention of driving others towards the illegal activity - then what?

I don't think you can decouple the link entirely from intention - links are sometimes expressive, as this article points out.

Instead of just giving ultimate, endless rights to link to anything for any reason, we say: base case, free speech, link to anything. But if someone can prove your intentions were illegal (no easy task), you're not necessarily protected.

Intention is a tricky gray area, but this would be in sync with other free speech protections - e.g. someone can press charges for libel on things you publish, but the burden of proof is on them to show the statement was false, harmful, and was made with malicious intent.

<comment><USER5> If they verified the links then go after them for the much nastier charge of downloading child porn.

While it's possible to make a directory that encourages illegal behavior, it's also possible to make a directory that sits idly by as a repository of factual information. Yes, the court should check for direct encouragement of illegal behavior. But I'm not comfortable letting the motivation in _creating_ the site matter very much because it is so difficult to prove one way or the other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Extending such a constitutional privilege does not mean permitting linking > when it clearly intends to facilitate illegal behavior.

In what way would this not just be a return to the status quo? Cue thousands of copyright lawyers getting right back in line to issue random lawsuits.

No, a blanket statement "linking is not illegal" is both constitutional, and will drastically reduce this drain on the efficiency of the courts.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is actually making a very strong argument to protect hyperlinks and the right to use them - but to do so under the lens that hyperlinks are free speech.

Much like newspapers have the right to say whatever they want. Of course, there are limitations. People can sue the NY Times, but it's not easy - <USER2> burden of proof is on the people bringing the suit. The 'strict scrutiny' standard, as I understand it, would make it very difficult for someone to attack hyperlinking. It does, however, enable that discussion in the case of extreme situations.</comment></comment>


Twitter's Chief Technology Officer to Leave Company - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/20/technology/twitters-chief-technology-officer-to-leave-company.html <comment><USER3> Bigger to me is the VP of Product - Josh McFarland - just bailed out 30 minutes ago too:

[https://twitter.com/crazyfoo/status/811331557608652800](https://twitter.com/crazyfoo/status/811331557608652800)

AKA outside of Dorsey, who is a split / shared CEO, who is in charge of Twitter?

<comment><USER4> I hope using a tweetstorm to announce his departure was a subtle shot at the company's inability to ship a product the way people want to use it.

<comment><USER5> I know I might sound like a vim user, but tweetstorms are honestly one of my favourite parts of twitter. Maybe there could be a better UI for authoring and displaying them, but there's something I really enjoy about reading a story 140 characters at a time.

<comment><USER6> I've been saying this for a little while now: Twitter should really try to capitalize on Tweetstorms. What they don't seem to realize is that Tweetstorms enable Twitter to be a kind of inverse annotation platform. Most annotation platforms enable large chunks of text to be dissected by readers, but a Tweetstorm is the opposite: the author specifies the exact segmentation of the text as they release it, and each segment can be individually commented on or shared. It forces authors to present their ideas as a sequence of small interlocking arguments. The medium enforces rhetorical granularity, for better or worse.

I can't be the only person who sees this potential. Come on, Twitter, build this out... I'll even let you hire me to work on it. :)

<comment><USER7> (Shameless plug) I've been working on an open-source tool to visualize twitter conversations and I've come to appreciate tweetstorms a bit more.

Here's this tweetstorm visualized with the tool: [https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-website- staticfiles-25g9k/tvp.h...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-website- staticfiles-25g9k/tvp.html)

<comment><USER8> Wow that's cool! Making it obvious which branch is part of the actual storm rather than someone replying would be nice. Once zoomed in my avatar recognition doesn't work as well.

Or maybe the tweet storm is always the left most branch and I just didn't realise that? :)

In any case super cool stuff!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think its valid to ask if Jack Dorsey is the next executive to leave.

The moment Anthony Noto went to Twitter, all wall street could talk about was that he was brought in to sell the company.

Who ever the next CTO is, they're going to have some tough decisions to make. Twitter already has to pay out an extreme amount of compensation in stock options just to get and retain talent.

I don't want this to seem inflammatory to people as twitter obviously has some serious engineering talent, but does anyone consider them to be a big name in tech anymore? They seem to be in the range of say PayPal in that they have a decent reputation but they aren't really a name that gets you any resume recognition anymore.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/27/business/dealbook/twitters...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/27/business/dealbook/twitters- steep-premium-the-cost-of-employee-stock-grants.html)

> By way of comparison, the company reported $2.2 billion in revenue for 2015 > — meaning that it paid out 31 cents in stock-based compensation for every > dollar of sales it collected.

You're going to be fighting several battles that aren't really engineering related,

\- how to finally fix harassment that seems to be much more pronounced on your platform than pretty much any other mainstream social media site.

\- how to get alot more advertising dollars on your site to an audience that short of reddit, seems to dislike advertising more than most social media sites.

And on top of all of this, you're probably going to have to shrink your engineering head count to make yourself look more appetizing to potential acquirers.

Yikes......

<comment><USER10> Was Twitter ever really about tech excellence? My perspective as an outsider who doesn't live or work in Silicon Valley, it always seemed more of a communications and media company founded on a tech backbone. Beyond their early scaling problems, which they spent a long, long time fighting, what really exciting tech has emerged from Twitter? Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook all have much more impressive technology to show for themselves over the last several years.

<comment><USER11> Twitter's Github: [https://github.com/twitter](https://github.com/twitter)

Apache Aurora, Bootstrap, Storm, Heron, Pants, ThriftMux, DistributedLog, Apache Cotton, Iago, just to name a few.

<comment><USER12> Your post implies they made the libraries you listed, but they certainly didn't make Mesos or most of those things.

<comment><USER13> I think Mesos is the only one from that list they didn't make, they were just an early adopter on that one

<comment><USER11> You're right, they didn't make it and open source it. But they did work closely on it's creation, as far as I know.

(edited above post to remove Mesos mention).

<comment><USER14> You're actually right Benjamin Hindman now CEO of Mesosphere Inc. started what became the Apache Mesos project while a PHD student at Berkeley, He later left Berkeley, interned at Google, then took a full time role at Twitter where he built out Mesos at scale.

His linkedIn bio: Member of the Technical Staff Twitter March 2010 – May 2013 (3 years 3 months) Built out Apache Mesos ([http://mesos.apache.org](http://mesos.apache.org)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Twitter can make money, all it has to do is reduce its operational costs first. Then launch new products to grow. Twitter isn't going to become the new ad-sense or Facebook if it isn't a platform at first place. And you don't become a platform if your product isn't relevant to a lot of people.

People use Google for search. People use Facebook to connect with friends and family. Who needs a Twitter account aside from journalists and attention- seekers? my grand mother doesn't need a twitter account. Nobody cares about her cooking a chicken or planting cucumbers in the garden BUT her closest relatives. And there is already Facebook for that.

<comment><USER16> What twitter SHOULD have done, and should probably re-consider, is leave the API _open_ , but charge a fee to utilize it at scale. Let startups come up with creative new uses for your platform, and if they get traction - <USER2> them. You print money and find an easy target for growth.

Twitter's problem is their continued refusal to recognize themselves as a platform. It's probably too late at this point, but I don't think they have anything to lose.

<comment><USER17> Similar to aws? micro-pricing, or some free level? paying, say, 1c per 100 tweets for my app(s) would probably be doable. Or perhaps giving more metrics for paid accounts, or prioritized delivery?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> No one is asking my opinion, but here it is:

Trifurcate Twitter into three distinct parts:

* The social--what users actually use it for. * The ad platform. * The realtime gestalt/search platform.

The latter is what is inadequately funded and considered.

Twitter has a latency advantage on the pulse of thought across the user base. The user base is already high-value for this relative to the morass of Facebook users. This is the key differentiator. This is what you base the platform and the value of search upon. You don't bury it by restricting the API, or trying to shift it into the realm of the social platform with "Moments"\--you build dependency upon it, and monetize that unique value by those who need to keep the pulse. This creates value for the other two parts. It is also woefully underfunded.

Someone mentioned an AWS-like model. That is thinking along the right track. Make the gestalt a utility that people will pay for.

Yes, you still have all the spam/hate issues on the social platform, and those need to be solved. But those only become a corporate imperative if Twitter is resigned to merely being a social network rather than a platform.

Maybe it's actually 4 parts--I forgot about the live event deals (e.g., NFL games). There's a raw, traditional media part, but I'd align that with the advertising part.

<comment><USER19> Didn't they buy out Gnip precisely for this reason?

<comment><USER20> I have no way to verify this is true, but I was told that they bought GNIP because (this sounds too ridiculous to type) they forgot to invoice them for two years for firehose access...when they remembered, GNIP couldn't afford the invoice, so buyout!

Like I say, it's a rumor that may have shades of truth, but that's what I heard.

<comment><USER21> As someone who worked on that acquisition, that rumor is total horseshit.

<comment><USER22> I love apocryphal tales like this.

There's a kernel of logic to the original assertion. It has a "gee whiz" irony, coded as a moral story: the biggest brains in the world forgot to get paid. Twitter's perceived revenue problems are juxtaposed with the obviousness of just taking the money they were owed, as if the answer to Twitter's Big Question were there the whole time. Finally, it explains a really major acquisition in Twitter history; it answers an outstanding question in everybody's minds. That little vignette has all the fixings for a great Silicon Valley tall tale.

The fact that it's totally false, by public refutation, seals the deal. I love it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm sure it's simply arm chair quarter backing but I feel like Twitter could be turned around and I think almost anyone could do it as long as they can force them to take action and quickly.

Honestly I feel like I shouldn't even post this because it's half on topic and half off topic. But I was thinking about some ideas I think Twitter should do and, well, screw it I'm curious to see what the HN community thinks of any of my ideas.

Twitter should:

\- Lay off approx 60-70% of the staff. Seriously Twitter is way, way, way over staffed. I mean I don't _want_ to see this happen but Twitter is so employee heavy I don't understand how they can sustain themselves _without_ losing a large amount of employees.

\- Longer forms of communication. Yeah yeah I know "Twitter is short it makes people be concise" yadda yadda yadda; look a lot of the top Twitter users _constantly_ do tweet storms. Many post photos of long form content. Sure maybe you keep the same limits but allow a way to stitch together multiple tweets should you want to do something long form. Right now the dialog gets ruined because comments get spliced during the user posting their thoughts.

This __has __to be addressed somehow. They 're losing out on too much conversation and context when people post things like photos of text.

\- Need some focus around various types of media. Video is especially important. Look at Instagram, they copied Snap's stories and BOOM, big success. Twitter is positioned to be a messaging pipe for the internet. Let's get more types of media flowing through it! Make Live even faster to start (dedicated button). Make image taking native, too. Single button, type text, posted. Done.

\- Better ways of handling discussions. Something threaded, not counting usernames in limits (to a degree; can't have someone spamming hundreds at once). In a similar vein create groups so conversations / discussions can rapidly happen inside of groups.

\- More tools for filtering, maybe creating separate views for different types of people you follow (like it would be great to see what my friends are saying versus what news sources are saying etc without going through the cumbersome list UX).

\- Verification so if someone wants to use their real name they can have it verified and can even filter by verified so they can filter out the noise if they want. Facebook is pretty damn successful at real names but you can also create alternate personalities via Pages. I think Twitter should mimic this functionality to a degree.

<comment><USER24> It might be too late for devs to trust them again, but they had an ideal situation maybe like 5-6 years ago where every developer out there was thinking about and experimenting with the Twitter API and you'd see a cool new project released basically every day. That all stopped when the suits wanted to grab control of Twitter and started discouraging and forcing out lots of companies that were trying to invest on that and build actually innovative software.

As a company, what's better than having others doing your work for you and promoting your service at the same time? Getting rid of that situation to me was the beginning of the end for them. There was such a rapid enthusiasm for Twitter that died off for a lot of influencers with that.

<comment><USER15> > It might be too late for devs to trust them again,

Stupid mistake from Twitter.

Basically Twitter has a long history of shutting down API access to any product or client that becomes remotely popular. Did they think being unpopular among developers would be something positive ? It's like they didn't realise ALL these twitter clients actually helped create MORE content on Twitter. That was stupid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> While it's a topic about twitter I'd like to ask a question that always puzzles me. Twitter has 3900+ employees and good portion of those are developers, I just don't understand how can such a basic product that almost never pushes any updates or radical changes/improvements require so many employees. What the hell are they doing except for burning investors cash? Just curious...

<comment><USER26> It's probably harder than we think because of the scale of it.

<comment><USER27> Yeah, but that only really applies to specific engineering teams like backend services and ops right? Web (frontend), iOS, Android, etc. don't really care about scale.

<comment><USER28> Seriously. The amount of people on the android team can't be more than 5 people devs, right? Maybe allocate 10 so you have some redundancy when people get sick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Tweet from the CTO: [https://twitter.com/adam_messinger/status/811326653339025408](https://twitter.com/adam_messinger/status/811326653339025408)

</comment><comment><USER30> I hope the best for Twitter, as it's probably been the most beneficial of the social media network services (unless you count GMail) for me. I wish I could devote more of my programming class curriculum to teaching the Twitter API, as it has so many rich use-cases and students really enjoy it, but I expect that if Twitter survives for the long-haul, its API probably won't. At least, I expect it to be constrained in the same way Facebook has constrained its previously liberal (in the sense of data scope, not political) data endpoints.

edit: grammar

<comment><USER31> Interestingly, Facebook is surprisingly liberal with their public data endpoints, with no apparent rate limiting for API retrieval from public Facebook Pages and Groups (source: I develop a scraper and have not been yelled at by FB, yet: [https://github.com/minimaxir/facebook-page-post- scraper](https://github.com/minimaxir/facebook-page-post-scraper) )

Twitter, meanwhile, still has that stupid 3200 most-recent tweet limit on historical data, which is apparently a "technical limitation."

<comment><USER30> It's been awhile since I've used the FB API, but one thing that's nice about Twitter is that you have a lot of room to crawl networks of users; for example, I always like getting the list of accounts that U.S. congressmembers follow (based on the Twitter account list maintained by the unitedstates project [0]), as a proxy for such things as perceived political bent of media organizations.

An example of the FB limitations I'm thinking about is how you can't query the graph API by username, e.g. [http://graph.facebook.com/mark.zuckerberg](http://graph.facebook.com/mark.zuckerberg)

There were other changes made before that, that's just one I remember in my latter days of using their API. Granted, I've always been impressed with the analyses you've done with FB data and have put it on my list someday to learn through your examples :).

[0] [https://github.com/unitedstates/congress- legislators](https://github.com/unitedstates/congress-legislators)

<comment><USER32> I tried to use the FB API, expecting a mature API with bindings and libraries all over the place, lots of simplifying modules etc. I was left with the impression that I wasn't really allowed to use it all, because I wasn't writing an "App" (or perhaps because it wasn't running on a "Device"). Totally confusing experience, where – even if I'm not particularly accustomed to walled garden situations – the terminology and workflow just doesn't seem to match expectations at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Twitter is a business model that will be studied for years IMHO. No clear path to revenue, viral adoption, and very little product development away from its core competencies. I use Twitter often, but it has always seemed like a platform most useful if you have something to promote. One big flaw has been trying to find value to ordinary users who want to do something beyond typing into an echo chamber. If Twitter goes away it would be interested to figure out what would take its place.

<comment><USER34> > No clear path to revenue

I don't know about that. They have $2.2 billion in revenue last year. Get the employee count down to 300 people and you have a great business.

<comment><USER33> No you're right. However, aside from having ad revenue I don't see anything they can do to accelerate their revenue growth. But yeah, cut spending, get employee count way down, and they could break even sooner than later.

<comment><USER35> bull. twitters growth stalled because its way to hard to join and sort through. look how long you can be part of reddit before you make an account. you can even bookmark [http://reddit.com/r/tech+askhistorians+bestof+askscience](http://reddit.com/r/tech+askhistorians+bestof+askscience) and have a custom mix without having an account. their logged out front page is a pile of shit. imgur.com is better at what twitter is trying to be, twitter should chase digg/medium not lowest common denominator memegrabs.

<comment><USER34> > twitters growth stalled

I think maybe Twitter's growth stalled because it's mostly done growing. Do they need more users? They can already generate billions of dollars every year and maybe that's enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> A lot of Twitter's management in product/engineering seems to be from a very particular demographic. Graduated Stanford in early 2000s and quickly rose up the ladder in Google -- Alex Roetter, Josh McFarland, Keith Coleman.

Aside from being what I assume to be exceptionally talented individuals, what do you guys think separates these people from their peers to make it to the VP level so quickly?

As someone just getting started in my career, what steps can I take to put myself in a position to grow so quickly?

<comment><USER37> The first question is what you want out of life, do you want to be manager, and executive, a technical lead or do you want to be purely technical? All four offer promotion paths at large and (increasingly) small companies although staying technical will hit an age issue eventually. They are also very different tracks.

That said, it sounds like you want to be an executive and let's say one at a larger company (ie: not a paper executive but an actual one). The skills you need for that are going to be leadership, management, charisma, politics, and networking. Since you're not going the technical track your technical skills are secondary at best.

You want a nice title on your resume so pick a top company and join there. Find a manager who is not afraid of your ambition (a career middle manager will likely be, find someone with ambition), act like a leader and get promoted. This will give you pedigree while also teaching you about politics and management. You will eventually hit diminishing returns.

Then, like the people you mentioned, jump to a startup as one of the founders or the person running it. This will teach you how to be a standalone leader, build up a network, and give you some executive-ish experience. It's vital you have the skills at this point to impress people at first impressions and maintain a networking relationship with them.

Then either get acquired by a larger company or switch after a while using your network to find the new position.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Twitter's Senior Management rating on Glassdoor is a 3.0/5 (where the goal is 4.0/5 or higher), one of the lowest among Bay Area companies. It's down there with eBay (3.0), HP (2.7), PayPal (3.1), etc. That is, they clearly need to replace their entire management structure.

For reference: Facebook (4.3), Google (3.9), Uber (3.9), Snapchat (3.8), AirBnB (3.7), Quora (3.7), Dropbox (3.6), Abobe (3.6), Apple (3.5), Pinterest (3.5), and Microsoft (3.4).

</comment><comment><USER39> Jack is now doing political activism. Against the administration.

<comment><USER40> Twitter's book burning of conservative accounts was horrific. One of the grossest displays from a tech company that I can remember. I have no idea how employees at Twitter aren't up in arms over it.

<comment><USER41> Bold of you to refer to a Holocaust event when the banned accounts were filled with hate speech, harassment, and neonazi views

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I don't think this is as big a deal as the Twitter departures earlier this year. Several years ago Adam Messinger was already more or less sidelined from the engineering organization when Chris Fry was made VP of Engineering (CTO does not imply the VP of Engineering reports to the CTO). Later Chris Fry would be replaced by Alex Roetter (thanks commenter below).

After Roetter left, Messinger was put back in charge of the engineering organization. But given he had been removed from it (and passed over) in the past, it's not surprising he would leave, voluntarily or involuntarily.

<comment><USER43> It's a bigger deal than that because he was put back in charge of the engineering organization for real. That means that from when I started there to now, the engineering leadership has been:

Mike Abbott

Dick Costolo -> (Chris Fry, Adam Messinger, Mazen Rawashdeh)

Chris Fry

Alex Roetter

Adam Messinger

???

Not as bad as product, but illustrative, and there were far more VP/Director changes in there along the way. In general you knew you were in for a re-org that affected you in a material way every 6 months. I had 10 managers in well under 5 years. It's not surprising many people just crawl in a hole and hope they get ignored while they vest and get stuff done.

<comment><USER44> Those guys may have had the fancy titles but the real engineering leadership at Twitter was Raffi.

<comment><USER43> Depends on your org. Alex had just as much pull as Raffi, arguably more since he got the org he wanted eventually. (Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Raffi and Alex has the empathy of a gnat, but in terms of sheer influence it was Alex/Raffi and then everyone else).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I think it's sad that Twitter is facing so many departures. It's unclear what is really happening but I do hope this service doesn't collapse. It's mind boggling to me that something so useful is struggling to stick around.

</comment><comment><USER46> I acknowledge that CEO is not an easy job, but in light of all the departures and drama, I honestly wonder if @jack really is the right person for the job?

Seems that the problems with product, PR, and investor relations got worse when he came back. How much rope will the board give him before he hangs himself?

<comment><USER47> It seems like the model of "Strong Investment Banker elbows everyone else out" is winning over "Charismatic founder surrounding himself with talent."

[http://www.recode.net/2016/12/6/13814264/twitter-anthony- not...](http://www.recode.net/2016/12/6/13814264/twitter-anthony-noto-growth- promotion-jack-dorsey)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Twitter's failure is a failure to embrace an open web. The next CTO at Twitter should take a deep hard look at decentralization, protocols such as OStatus, and how to provide an open platform (like email) not a walled garden.

Say one manages a government agency or any other large organization -- Why the heck would they put all eggs into a provider's basket rather than set up their own GNU social infrastructure? Does anyone not realize the power of controlling their own namespace?

<comment><USER43> I'd love to hear how you think they make money in this world.

<comment><USER48> advertising, same as any other company.

edit: oh are you talking status quo, or an idealized business model?

<comment><USER49> Oh neat. So, in order to avoid having ads filtered at federation boundaries, thus delivering zero value to ad buyers and zero revenue to themselves, they now have a very strong incentive to come up with advertising only imperceptibly different from everything that is not advertising.

<comment><USER48> see edit, I assumed the question was referring to the status quo. A better model than advertising would be to charge those broadcasting their message to a large number of recipients (your CNNs and Trumps should be the ones paying to play).

<comment><USER43> So you drive away your biggest draw? In the media-centric view of the world, those people would be asking for a cut of revenues. There's clearly a major disconnect from reality on one side or the other here. Any examples of successful businesses that do it the way you describe?

<comment><USER48> > Any examples of successful businesses that do it the way you describe?

Billboard owners

<comment><USER43> Billboards work because it's captive traffic. Very few if any sites on the net have captive traffic. Twitter certainly doesn't even in the current model and I think the model you're describing would be even harder to manage in terms of spam and abuse, not to mention coordinating with law enforcement. So likely even less captive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> It feels like Twitter the company should be imploding, but it must be a secure business if its the next president's primary communication channel.

<comment><USER30> Frankly, I wouldn't mind if we saw an end to Trump's tweets. Not because of their content, but because of their impulsiveness, which is a behavior that Twitter's design encourages. Which is cool when it comes to celebrities and such in which it's fun to see what they think about sans filter.

But the president of the United States speaks with the executive authority for an entire nation. It's questionable enough when a company's stock falls because Trump lashes out at them, and means it [0]. But what about the times he makes a typo, or just doesn't have all the info he needs at that moment when his emotions arise? Even asking that he types something to be sent through a Wordpress-powered system would give him the same megaphone, but adding a little more friction so that things that deserved to be trashed/called-out in his voice actually deserve so.

For those who say this amounts to making Trump less "real" of a man...sure. But he's no longer just a man, he's the chief executive of the world's greatest power. He gave up the privilege of "just sayin what I think" for the privilege of being able to unilaterally launch a nuclear war. Keep in mind that there _are no checks and balances_ against this power -- it is utterly unilateral: [http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2016/11/18/the-president- and-...](http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2016/11/18/the-president-and-the- bomb/)

Giving up frictionless communication in 140-character-sized comments seems like a reasonable thing to pass on, given the many extra responsibilities he has, and the extra weight each of his words have.

[0] [http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/trump- threaten...](http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/trump-threatens- cancel-air-force-one-order-boeing-stock-slips-n692511)

<comment> angry-hacker You do realize he's not the one posting there? Neither was Obama. These accounts are ran by teams...

<comment><USER30> That would go against most public accounts of how Trump has been using his phone for tweeting.

For one thing, Obama's personal account (i.e. not @POTUS, but @BarackObama) explicitly says in its profile: "This account is run by Organizing for Action staff. Tweets from the President are signed -bo. [0]

No such disclaimer has been made about Trump's account, which tweets with the same characteristics and tone as it did well before his current presidential campaign [1]. You're right, though, that Trump's team does tweet for him on occasion. Either that, or Trump, who is famously not a computer user, has mastered the art of using two different mobile operating systems [2]

[0] [http://imgur.com/a/ZGyzo](http://imgur.com/a/ZGyzo)

[1] [https://github.com/sashaperigo/Trump- Tweets](https://github.com/sashaperigo/Trump-Tweets)

[2] [http://varianceexplained.org/r/trump- tweets/](http://varianceexplained.org/r/trump-tweets/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> It is disappointing because I personally still believe Twitter has a lot of potential, and it seems like they can't catch a break.

I don't work at Twitter, so it is hard for me to tell how much this exec drain has had an effect on delivery and execution, but I'd imagine a good amount.

The NFL Thursday Twitter has been super disappointing. I wish there was a way to get the video screen mostly full, and have a live feed of MY timeline on the feed. I definitely am tweeting a ton during sporting events, and feel like I never see targeted ads or well thought out products surrounding that.

</comment><comment><USER52> I won't be surprised by this activity. Exodus of employees sometimes points towards a possible impending discounted acquisition.

<comment><USER53> Why? Do you have historical examples?

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Can someone please tell me why the press hate Twitter so much?! It seems that every Twitter story these days is spun so negatively...

</comment><comment><USER55> Is it just me or do people feel that images/video are the future of digital interaction?

Looking at IG/Snapchat and I feel like I'm viewing the future world of interactive social media being born. It's not that text based media is incorrect, it just feels like the communication form of the past.

I want to be shown experience, not just read about them.

<comment><USER56> > Is it just me or do people feel that images/video are the future of digital > interaction?

I feel images/video are the future of digital interaction in the same way that candy is the future of food. It is nice to have in moderation, but try to replace the basics completely and you'll have cavities and bad health.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I have mixed feelings about twitter. On the one hand I see it as a nice way to make interesting conversations surface and reach a wide audience. On the other hand I see it as a constant stream of ads. I don't know if I'd be happy if it all goes down, or if something better comes along. Which problem is twitter actually trying to solve?

<comment><USER57> > Which problem is twitter actually trying to solve?

Somewhere between a real time news platform and wasting time ala social entertainment?

<comment><USER26> Yeah, can it really do both properly?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Same old story: Making it up on volume...

</comment><comment><USER59> when will we see the same for Facebook? If Twitter falls then it's a shift in investor's attitude towards "should make lots of money at unknown time down the road".

Money today is more valuable than money tomorrow. Tech seems to have been a curious exception as it was in the 2000 bubble.

<comment><USER60> I don't see it happening any time soon if at all. Companies spend an insane amount of money advertising on Facebook platforms. If you're at all familiar with how companies buy ads in digital marketing, you'll realize how Facebook's targeting is super valuable and companies pay a pretty penny to target specific users.

Not to mention, Facebook is quite the pioneer in tech. React is one of the most used front end libraries and the community around it is super positive.

Then there's VR and their progress in 360 video. The list really goes on with Facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Twitter need CIO, not CTO.

</comment><comment><USER62> I heart this

</comment><comment><USER63> And why is this newsworthy?

</comment><comment><USER64> ELI5 why this is important?

(tell me the future of twitter)</comment>


Parking meters in NYC malfunctioning since the 1/1/2020 due to software end date - <AUTHOR> https://gothamist.com/news/y2k20-parking-meter-software-glitch-causes-citywide-snafu <comment><USER2> Apparently each meter is capable of asking for a credit card authorization but can't download a software update via the same communications channel. Ouch.

<comment><USER3> Looking at pictures of meters, I wonder if the cellular connection is part of the card/payment processing module, and if that module is discrete.

Wouldn't surprise me to learn the cellular connection is contracted/bundled from the payment processor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just as chemicals have an associated MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet), I imagine hardware and software might come with a DSDS (Date Sensitivity Data Sheet). This inspired by Year 2000, Year 2038, and now Year 2020.

<comment><USER5> Oh no, we totally need Personal Info Data Sheets, replete with scary icons for things like third-party access.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> reminds me of a Warren Ellis blog post about the speed cameras all having long since run out of film & that being the best possible outcome</comment>


How I Learned to Love Bonsai - <AUTHOR> https://thewalrus.ca/how-i-learned-to-love-bonsai/ <comment><USER2> Years ago I was at a Chipotle and while chowing down looked at my cup. They had an interesting text there, called "2 minute personality test" by Jonathan Safran Foer. I loved that test because, for the first time, I saw in print a question that I had thought about many times before, which this post made me remember: "Are bonsai cruel?" (The test has many other great questions, google it).

Is forcing your will on something to make it more beautiful (shaping trees is called espalier, btw) a good thing? How about the similar question for people? Is forcing your child to take piano lessons knowing (or hoping) that s/he will thank you in the future cruel?

<comment><USER3> Is mowing your lawn cruel?

<comment><USER4> You know the smell of freshly cut grass in summer? I really like that smell, it triggers some intense memories. Then I read that the smell is away for the plant to signal distress. Now the smell triggers the memories and then a wave of gilt.

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140922145805.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140922145805.htm)

<comment><USER5> Without natural predators like wolves, bears, or bobcats, the deer population in certain areas of the United States has exploded(1). This negatively impacts overall biodiversity(2). I doubt deer like being eaten, but that's the process of life, and its vital to maintain the existing biodiversity we enjoy today.

So why would you feel guilt for the cycle of nature? Without deer, buffalo, or other herbivores in suburbia or urban environments, there has to be _something_ to check plant growth.

(1)[https://blog.nature.org/science/2013/08/22/too-many- deer/](https://blog.nature.org/science/2013/08/22/too-many-deer/) (2)[https://sciencing.com/purpose-deer- ecosystem-8659608.html](https://sciencing.com/purpose-deer- ecosystem-8659608.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Smartphone 'successfully produced' in North Korea - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/smartphone-successfully-produced-north-korea-says-north-korea-6C10904039

<comment><USER2> They must have heard that todays smartphones have the same power as the Apollo computer. I cant wait for the "launch"</comment>


Polaris Opens Dog Patch Labs in Cambridge - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2009/09/10/polaris-to-open-dog-patch-labs-incubator-in-cambridge/

<comment><USER2> The EtherPad team has been working in Dog Patch Labs SF for the past 3 months, and we love it. Great community of hackers and entrepreneurs, and the Polaris guys are awesome.

</comment><comment><USER3> Funny, I just talked to Mike Hirshland thinking he was a fellow hacker. They're sharing office space with the company we rent our office space from!

</comment><comment><USER4> If only the announcement came before the ritual September 1 lease signings here in Boston!</comment>


UK poised to invest £500m in satellite rival to EU's Galileo system - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jun/26/uk-invest-satellite-rival-eu-galileo-system-oneweb <comment><USER2> This is to be used for defence and critical infrastructure. What is that? I mean, I'm sure there are <£500 phones that tell you where you are based on GPS, Galileo, Glonass and Beidou. The UK will hardly be at war with all of the US, EU, Russia and China.

</comment><comment><USER3> Feels like a shrewd purchase. Build your own from scratch for 3 billion or take a stake in one already built for 500 million.

Interesting it's only 20% though</comment>


Setting out for calls and conferences - <AUTHOR> https://dino.im/blog/2020/08/setting-out-for-calls-and-conferences/ <comment><USER2> it's been a long time since I've been excited by an XMPP implementation, but Dino made me feel that old zing. I would like to see some monetization strategy than just donations though. I'm old and paranoid.

<comment><AUTHOR> The developers from Conversations have their own managed server offering [0] and IMHO are really setting the bar for XMPP nowadays. I am also running a paid/managed offering via Communick [1] and I hope that I can make it profitable to be able to get a share of the profits to them.

Question is, would you pay for a hosted XMPP server? If not for you (because you probably already have your server) would you pay for other people in your contact list to make it easier for network effects to kick in?

[0] : [https://account.conversations.im](https://account.conversations.im)

[1] : [https://communick.com](https://communick.com)

<comment><USER2> If I had my own company and 4 people I would pay. Especially if that way I head off people deciding to use slack while I was busy getting business :)

<comment><AUTHOR> You can still do it for a personal account and the prices are so low that you really have no excuse not to.

Conversations.im is 8€/year. I am offering now Communick with XMPP/Matrix/Mastodon hosting for 5€/10 users/3 months. It is almost as low as the average donation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> With their given timeline of 12 months, I think this project will complete after the horse has bolted (the horse being a metaphorical Pandemic/crisis)

<comment><USER4> I think it's not unlikely that the pandemic has not gone away by next year.

<comment><USER5> Or that secure teleconferences are irrelevant come 2022.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Congratulations on acquiring the funding.

> Support for encrypted two-party calls that are compatible with Conversations > should be ready by the end of this year or early next year.

Exactly a year ago I made the same announcement with the same timeline for Conversations. In the end it took me until ~April of this year and I giant kick in the butt from a global pandemic to finish it.

Let's hope that they beat my timeline.

</comment><comment><USER7> Since Dino has been packaged for OpenBSD now I just tried it out. It seems to be a simple XMPP client with a nice clean interface. Supports OMEMO and OpenPGP for encyption. Could use a scarier icon for the unencrypted case...

Probably worth checking out if you are looking for something simple and straightforward. Adding video support in the same way would make for a nice experience.

</comment><comment><USER8> Having deployed my own Jitsi server which works well any reason why I might consider moving to Dino (just for video)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Dino is an XMPP client, so you will be getting chat. You would then need to connect to an XMPP server and set up the client to use your Jitsi server as the place for conferences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I absolutely love anything and everything to do with XMPP. keep up the good work!</comment>


Returning from a Year of Isolation in Antarctica - <AUTHOR> https://www.rd.com/article/isolated-for-a-year-in-antarctica/ <comment><USER2> This was the part that surprised me the most:

"Viruses do not live in Antarctica. When I was in the harsh and bitter cold, I was perfectly healthy. When I returned back home, I picked up every virus in Australia. I was totally unprepared for the way my immune system reacted."

I didn't know that our immune system could change so much so fast.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely. I moved to Vietnam from San Francisco. Spent 4 years there. Got reliably food sick off and on solid for a year and then it eventually just stopped. I could eat anything and not get sick. Hardly got any 'colds' while I was there.

Came back to the US end of January (terrible timing considering the way things are going) and ended up getting sick with flu (not covid thankfully) and lots of digestive issues again. Now, heading into July... I haven't gotten sick again (likely from the isolation) and the digestive issues went away.

Our bodies are complex beings.

<comment><USER4> Wait! Are we becoming less immune with this isolation :o

<comment><USER3> Yes. :o

Even worse, people aren't getting their flu shots (and other elective things) because they don't want to risk going to the doctors.

So when we get out of this covid jail... get ready for some interesting charts from the CDC.

<comment><USER5> Do you still trust the CDC? One unfortunate side effect of the pandemic is that my trust in the CDC went from absolute to non-existent. They've shown themselves willing to bend to politics instead of siding with science.

<comment><USER6> Well, I blame this administration generally seeking appointments that will bend the knee over science.

Plenty of prior administrations appointment science-bound officials that held the line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> m-i-l My dad spent much of 1958-1965 in Antarctica, overwintering at places like Halley Bay, and including a period as scientific leader at Scott Base (for which he was awarded the Polar Medal). That was in the days when overwintering meant no supply ships or aeroplanes or any contact with the outside world beyond radio contact for 7-8 months. Anyway, there are a few things he mentioned about leaving Antarctica that aren't mentioned in the original article:

\- the smells: "In the cold atmosphere of Antarctica your sense of smell has become acute and now, wafting in through the door of the aircraft, is the smell of tarmac on the runway, green grass, hundreds of flowers and dozens of different scents ... for the first time ever you can smell your Antarctic clothing. The heat has brought out a hundred different smells, seals, huskies, penguins, kerosene and many more."

\- the flies and other insects

\- and perhaps one of his main and lasting experiences, the spirit of international co-operation brought about by the "common problem of survival in Antarctica"

On that last point, the last 2 sentences in his book were "The nations of the world can just as easily work on a common problem outside the Antarctic as in it. Let us hope this understanding by common knowledge and experience will not fail us now."

I had hoped the current pandemic would help people realise that we are all in this together on the same planet, that it is better for everyone to work together rather than to fight.

<comment><USER7> Is his book available for purchase anywhere? Sounds fascinating.

<comment> m-i-l Thanks. It is available at [https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1704809576/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1704809576/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_w6A1DbM6GTGFK) . It wasn't actually published in his lifetime. In fact, I only discovered the manuscript last year, and decided to self-publish primarily for the benefit of surviving relatives. I have a post about the whole process on my personal site if you're interested in that as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I found alot of the bulletpoints insightful and most seem to be related to covid-19 lockdowns but a few stood out:

>Life felt like it was suddenly zooming by (after leaving Antarctica)

I feel like right now in quarantine time is just flying by, I don't know really why this is, maybe its the fact that both me and my wife are extremely busy with our jobs while raising a toddler and no daycare makes every day seem the same/very busy with the weekend having little demarcation from the work week. Maybe if we weren't working and just sitting around this would be different. But it seems almost the opposite from what was mentioned.

<comment><USER9> Yeah that's interesting, I feel the same way. It absolutely blows my mind that it's about to be July. I feel like I've actually been _more_ busy being at home every day!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's interesting to read her experience but I can't get past a few things.

> Because I was leading the expedition, I couldn't have any physical contact > with anyone else—zero. There were no handshakes, no flirting, and no hugs.

No handshakes? This behavior is so far outside the norm it's hard to believe her experience is in any way relevant to the general populace when it likely reflects her bizarrely anti-social approach to leadership. Apparently she gives lectures on leadership now? That is terrifying.

Also, as an avid alpinist, this is absolutely not the kind of person you want to be in a dangerous environment with, let alone be subordinate to. She refused to touch people and had apparently only seen the snow once before arriving in Antarctica.

<comment><USER11> The very next sentences:

"I couldn't afford for a simple gesture of empathy, such as a hug or a placed hand on the shoulder, to be misinterpreted as a sign of romantic interest. It went against my natural desire not to comfort someone who was distraught with a big hug, but it's what I had to do to maintain professional boundaries."

<comment><USER10> I read that. Restrictions on sexual relationships given an uneven power dynamic are common, but an inability to shake someone's hand or put a hand on a shoulder? That's not maintaining professional boundaries, it's paranoia.

It is also a standard that she is clearly imposing on herself, which is what makes it so bizarre. She wasn't just conforming to some overbearing rule of the organization, she thought this was a necessary component of effective leadership. Which makes me question her judgement in general.

<comment><USER11> Ask some women in leadership positions what they think about this. You'll probably be surprised at how many agree with her.

<comment><USER10> I wouldn't be surprised. But who is going to put up with that kind of aloof and standoffish behavior? You're probably going to come across like a monarch that doesn't want to come into contact with the common folk.

<comment><USER12> As a female seafarer (26 years at sea), I know exactly where she's coming from. Never mind touching, the times I've sat and talked about anything other than work (non-sexual, just friendly) have invariably resulted in at least one or two crew members either taking it as an invitation to harass me or assault me, or caused friction with the rest of the crew.

In my experience, I can be friendly, but I have to stay distant for safety (mine) and discipline (the whole crew).

<comment><USER10> This is interesting, were you the captain for many of those years? I could totally understand a crew member being antisocial, but it seems like the crew would resent a leader who acted this aloof even if they were doing it for the reasons you mention. It just seems very different than the usual distance that hierarchy creates.

I've only done a few casual sailing trips where everyone got nude as soon as we were out of sight of land and it was so cramped you'd have to be a contortionist not to touch anyone. A tanker ship or something would be vastly different, but it still seems like there would be plenty of situations, e,g, rough weather, where you need you need to be willing to touch other people. I doubt you'd get on a crab fishing vessel if other crew members refused to touch you.

<comment><USER12> No, I worked my way up from deckhand to chief mate on deep sea cargo ships. Got my master's ticket in January (finally).

The crew don't generally resent it - I'm friendly and approachable, just distant. I shut them down when they ask personal questions, but I listen if they want to talk about their problems. In a public area. With the door open. The rest of the time, I study, work, eat and sleep. It helps that I'm usually on 00:00-0600 & 12:00-18:00 watches, so I'm working during two meals and sleeping during the third.

Where there's a practical reason for physical contact, of course I touch people. Apart from anything else, I'm often the medical officer, but there's a difference between, "Help me with this mooring line," and, "I'm having a bad day, can I have a hug?" Even if I really could do with a hug.

And the types guys who do get in a huff about it? They're invariably the same personality types that make that rule necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Because I was leading the expedition, I couldn't have any physical contact with anyone else — zero"

Wait, what? I would love to get more details about that because that sentence (no matter the rest of the paragraph) makes it sound way too much World War I kind of cold leadership with no rational reason.

On the noise aspect of her isolation I think it's quite more nuanced than that IMHO. I've been to Antarctica too and I've been working alone from home for the last 5 years as well, and isolation during pandemics is nowhere similar to the isolation in Antarctica. The silence there is beautiful, not frightening. They are just different beasts and even the noise from the street outside is enough to break the monotony but not actually going out hurts more. I think she tried her best to be empathic but 1 year in the ice is much harsher, kudos to her.

<comment><USER14> Everything about living on the Ice is more intense; it often feels like the station and crew is the entire world. Romantic relationships are a perpetual source of tension and conflict, and little squabbles can grow to have truly outsize effects.

A silly example (from the US program several years ago) - we had summer-season emergency response drills be completely derailed because the leads of the two main groups were a couple and had squabbled the night before - one had their people simply not show up. Never mind that these two people's main roles were exactly to be in charge, one was completely unqualified for that role, discipline/replacement would be relatively easy for either, and everyone knew what was going on.

So, I can see why the rules would stipulate that the leader can't become romantically involved with a crew member over winter. But of course rules like that have no teeth, so it's really up to the integrity and ability of the leader.

<comment><USER15> > I can see why the rules would stipulate that the leader can't become > romantically involved with a crew member over winter.

And i guess some people think a pat on the back is romance. ;) It seems easy to clear up any misunderstandings, but maybe it was because she was tempted?

<comment><USER14> This is not about whether the author thinks a pat on the back is romance, nor about her temptation.

Imagine a scenario like that emergency response drill, but where higher-ups took notice and decided to make a rule to prevent it from happening again. Since those higher-ups had authority over hiring both individuals, they're not likely to lay blame on the immature (to put it nicely) behaviour of the couple, but instead on the romantic relationship. How do they encode "station managers can't start dating crew members" in bureaucrat? So, a stupid rule gets added to the books, which doesn't really solve the problem, and upstanding managers have to pay attention to it forever more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This happened 15 years ago, December 2004 to February 2005. The headline and editor's insertions about SARS-coronavirus-2 made it seem like she returned in the middle of the pandemic.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachael_Robertson_(writer)#Rob...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachael_Robertson_\(writer\)#Robertson's_year_in_Antarctica)

<comment><USER17> She says early in the copy text that she was in Antarctica in 2005. To me the article read like she was recounting her experiences and her return to civilisation as a mechanism to explore how others will come out of Covid lockdown, therefore the references to coronavirus did not seem out of place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > After being in isolation, the noise in the outside world seemed louder. > Noise will be huge after lockdown. I think about how New York City is a > cacophony of sounds and now the streets are empty. Gosh, it took me about > six months to get used to how noisy life is.

Noise pollution is a huge, mostly overlooked problem in urbanized areas and is often thought to exceed the recommendations for residential areas with little room for easy remediation or enforcement. Many of us remember the days before leaf blowers took over and flooded the natural morning landscape with 100 dB in all directions, in areas that are still limited to 50-60 dB. The impact on human and non-human health is well known.

</comment><comment><USER19> >After I emerged from isolation in Antarctica, I wrote two best-selling books and became an international motivational speaker. Being in isolation as the leader, without anyone telling me what I was doing right and what I was doing wrong, meant I had to do a lot of self-reflection.

These two sentences don't go together very well.

</comment><comment><USER20> A bit off topic, but the audio book "Ice Bound: A Doctor's Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole" about the Dr who got cancer while serving at the base is quite an interesting ride. That book kept me wide awake on a long road trip a couple years ago and the couple people I lent it to had nothing but good things to say about it too.

<comment><USER21> Another slightly off topic remark, there is the famous case of this Russian doctor taking out his own appendix while stationed in antartica: [https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32481442](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32481442)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Maybe it's versus I've been reading up on the torture of solitary confinement, but "Leading 18 strangers around the clock for a full year" - is not what I would consider as isolation.

She does go on to qualify it further: "As the youngest and only second female expedition _leader_ at Davis Station", but it still feels like a huge stretch in my opinion to consider that a year of isolation. How many leaders has Davis Station even had?

<comment><USER23> It is small group of people isolated from rest of society. If you notice her points, none of them is about being alone and all of them are about being away from rest of us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Slightly off topic, she had a book out in February called "Respect Trumps Harmony", which said out loud in 2020 seems a possibly ambiguous title for what turns out to be a book about group dynamics rather than a glowing assessment of a certain President.

</comment><comment><USER25> Interesting to see an article about Antarctica that doesn't mention the effects of global warming on the ice sheets. Kudos to the writer for keeping the story focused on the personal insights in cold, isolated world instead of the usual decrying (which is of course important but an off-topic to this story). So I do believe that the writer gained sheer amount of focus.

<comment><USER26> Why Kudos? Do you not believe in it's reality?

<comment><USER25> Did you not read the entire comment?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> My life already looks like isolation all time here at canada after moving from India for masters program. So no big deal.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm not trying to be funny, but I'm sure the author is wishing that he started his year of isolation... a year later. Like, in March 2020. That would have been great timing.

<comment><USER22> Author was a female</comment></comment>