Bay Area hackers: be prepared for the inevitable earthquake - <AUTHOR> http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/2005/15/

<comment><AUTHOR> I used to live less than a few hundred feet from the Hayward Fault in Fremont. Then I solved my earthquake problem by moving to Boston.

However, I was listening to a podcast of Mark and Mary Lou Zoback (the cheerful geologists of doom) giving a lecture at Stanford, and I was suddenly reminded that I know a lot of friends, colleagues, and websites that still live in the Bay Area, and it would be a terrible shame to lose any of them to collapsing bookshelves, cheap apartments, lack of fresh water, or week-long communication outages.

(You can find the podcasted lecture on the Stanford section of the iTunes store for free, if you search hard enough; a writeup of it is here: [http://daily.stanford.edu/article/2006/4/17/quakeCentennialT...](http://daily.stanford.edu/article/2006/4/17/quakeCentennialTomorrow) )</comment>


Are you still just a wantrepreneur? 7 ways to validate your startup idea - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2014/08/17/validate-startup-idea/

<comment><USER2> Dozens of new accounts were created to vote for this post and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8172521](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8172521).

Please don't do this. The votes don't count, and it makes the algorithms angry. Penalties ensue.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great tips!</comment>


Reddit is currently experiencing a malicious DDoS attack - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/redditstatus/status/325193410464055296 <comment><USER2> Reddit also got hammered pretty hard by legitimate traffic last night. There were many thousands of people in the Boston live update threads hitting refresh over and over all night. The admins actually locked the first update page because they said that so much traffic on an article with so many comments would crash the site.

If there's a malicious DDOS attack then this surge in legitimate traffic likely compounded the problem.

The update threads: [1] [http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1co395/live_updates_of...](http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1co395/live_updates_of_boston_situation_part_2/?sort=new) [2] [http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1cnwms/mods_removed_th...](http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1cnwms/mods_removed_thread_live_updates_of_boston/)

Where the updates moved when reddit went down: [3] <https://twitter.com/JpDeathBlade>

<comment><USER3> The traffic surge from the Boston incident is extremely marginal compared to the DDoS which we're facing right now. It is far and above any form of possibly being compounded, unfortunately.

But I wish it was :) Compounding I can deal with, astronomical is harder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hope this is a retaliation for the abhorrent behaviour of reddit users in blind smearing of innocent individuals in an attempt to prove the worth of social media/the internet/their "community". Information is dangerous when it is placed in the hands of these clowns and reddit needs to address their problems quickly before they ruin more lives.

[http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2013/04/reddit- bos...](http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2013/04/reddit-boston-and- missing-student)

<comment><USER5> > I hope this is a retaliation for the abhorrent behaviour of reddit users

You don't like vigilantes, but you hope vigilantes are punishing reddit users?

<comment><USER6> Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

<comment><USER7> "Who watches the watchmen" would have been simpler and spared me a google search.

<comment><USER8> But I wouldn't have learned a cool new latin proverb.

<comment><USER7> Although it should be noted that the Latin itself is a translation, since this quote is attributed to Socrates and would have originally been in Greek.

<comment><USER6> According to Wikipedia it's (incorrectly) attributed to the Socrates _character_ in Plato's Republic. Although a related idea is discussed in that book, the saying itself is attributed to Roman poet Juvenal, which was discussing marital affairs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As opposed to a non-malicious DDOS attack?

Sorry about the snarky remark, but the headline does feel a tad redundant.

<comment><USER10> Yes, as opposed to a non-malicious one.

The best example off the top of my head was a D-Link firmware update which added an NTP server operated by a third party for "public use." This wound up increasing the NTP server's traffic by 90% and costing them over $8K/year in additional bandwidth fees. See [1].

Then you have so called "slashdotting." Or linking to a small web-site with an interesting story and overloading it with legitimate traffic until it goes down. See [2].

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTP_server_misuse_and_abuse#D-L...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTP_server_misuse_and_abuse#D-Link_and_Poul- Henning_Kamp)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_effect>

<comment><USER9> Getting a slashdotting is not a "DDOS attack" under any definition although the practical consequence is the same. If the resulting traffic overload is caused by a (massive) router-configuration error or similar mishaps, it's also by definition not an attack.

Sorry about being picky around semantics, but still: No point in throwing words around to the point where they become completely pointless.

<comment><USER11> Well ... It's definitely a DDOS but you're right about the attack part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Could this have something to do with reddit's co founder speaking against CISPA and calling out major tech companies? [1] Considering reddit played a big role in killing SOPA, CISPA backers feel threatened?

[1] - <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5570670>

<comment><USER13> I think it's far more likely that someone decided to mess with the party all the Boston observers are having on Reddit.

It's all idle speculation, though.

<comment><USER12> Yes, reddit was up for a bit and I saw two (edit: now _four_ ) huge threads with 10k+ comments and live updates from the shoot out in Boston. So maybe they are indeed messing with the Boston live event updates thing on reddit. DDOSing reddit is no small feat, unless you have a botnet at your disposal. Should be more than just some "fun".

<comment> mh- I don't have data to back me up other than an anecdotal 'I seem to notice', but doesn't reddit often become unusable during exceptional usage spikes? the Obama AMA comes to mind.

if you look at their numbers[1] for 2012, it's plausible that they are simply overwhelmed during these bursts and they've judged it worthwhile to let these aberrations play out.

for many operations.. moving your availability from, say, 99.9% to 99.99% is simply not worth the cost.

uptime is hard; GitHub has only maintained 99.96% for the past month[2][3] (and, IMO, they're actively trying to improve it)

[1]: [http://blog.reddit.com/2012/12/top-posts-of-year-and-best- of...](http://blog.reddit.com/2012/12/top-posts-of-year-and-best-of-2012.html)

[2]: <https://status.github.com/graphs/past_month>

[3]: <http://cl.ly/image/0O2S0L3O0l3J>

edit: clean up links

edit2: learning \n

<comment><USER12> But reddit confirmed it's malicious, so the idea that reddit DDOSed itself is out of the question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> We're mostly recovered, at this time.

<comment><USER14> You might be overzealous with your bot blocking. I'm being told I'm actually a robot:

        you appear to be a bad robot
        check out the rules for robots. thanks.

<comment><USER15> Same here, are you using RES or anything else which might increase request volume?

<comment><USER16> I use RES, not having any issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is there a defense against DDoS attacks? CloudFlare? Incapsula? Does anyone have experience with how well these solutions work?

<comment><USER18> In ultra-simple terms you need to have a network capacity greater than the attacker and to identify the attack requests and discard them whilst still honouring valid requests.

That is basically what CloudFlare is.

Add in things like caches to prevent even valid requests from getting to the backend (so you've now added a CDN), and many peers to your network so that an attacker cannot saturate one or two peers... and you've got the essence of CloudFlare (sans features like optimising content for speedy delivery).

Ultimately the best defence to a DDoS is to be able to soak up the attack before it hits the backend, and to have enough spare capacity to keep serving regular traffic.

You can cache and distribute everything save for the valid requests to a dynamic resource (but even those you can optimise). So the whole game from a defensive point of view is to let nothing but valid dynamic requests through to the backend.

The attacker's side of a DDoS is about acquiring network capacity greater than your network capacity, identifying your weaker points (in an attempt to cause a domino effect, if they can take out a weaker peer then a stronger peer will need to do more work and itself becomes weaker). And then sending what appear to be valid requests without triggering an attack on themselves (having a 150 byte request respond with 100KB would wipe out the attackers). Bonus points for constructing requests that can get through to the dynamic resources on the site being attacked (as those are the weakest link).

<comment><USER19> how is adding things like caches adding a CDN?

<comment><USER18> I probably should have clarified that by caches I mean reverse proxy caches that can take up the work of serving static resources from the network edge.

The combination of adding caches and distributing those caches is to add a CDN.

You add caches to stop the request reaching a backend and doing the work twice, for optimisation. But in effect they become defensive shields as serving a static file or an in-memory file is less work and can be handled in far greater numbers than doing the work on the backend, and if one cache is attacked users accessing other caches elsewhere in the world continue to get their requests served.

If you then place a cache at every point at which your site is surfaced, for example you use DNS anycast to have your front-end appear to be surfaced from every Amazon datacenter and the closest one is nearly always selected... then you've helped stop requests at the first opportunity and to return them from a place which can handle far greater requests.

You've increase your network capacity, increased the ability to serve valid requests, and you've prevented all of that traffic reaching the backends.

And in doing all of this... placing caches for static resources throughout the world and using DNS anycast to return the cached item from the closest peer... well, you have created a CDN. A primitive one for sure, but it still is one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if it would be possible to generate a DDoS attack by reporting that a site is experiencing a DDoS, causing people to flock to the site to see if it is down.

</comment><comment><USER20> I was on Reddit until 2am (EST) with no issues. Back on at 6:45am with no problem.

Either they've been doing a wonderful job with mitigation, or I'm missing something (I suppose I did miss a few hours while sleeping...). If anything I figured they're getting hammered with EST sunrise/Boston incident traffic...but a simultaneous malicious DDoS attack "beyond any shadow of doubt"? Wow

</comment><comment><USER21> Total speculation, but: perhaps the police / FBI would DDoS Reddit to prevent the suspect from gaining intel on their operations? The Reddit live stream was all over Twitter...

</comment><comment><USER22> The chinese are trying to censor reddit because of that article about china censoring the term "censorship".

</comment><comment><USER23> Fark is down too, 4:21 am Pacific time.

</comment><comment><USER24> what is impact of this "DDOS" attack on reddit?

<comment><USER25> hopefully that reddit is over and all reddit-users can leave the internet now ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Batten down the hatches, pg, here comes the redditors.</comment>


North Korea on a Bun: The Legendary Koryo Burger - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-north-korea-koryo-burger-201704210421-story.html?utm_source=Today%27s+Headlines&utm_campaign=231b665405-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2016_12_12&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b04355194f-231b665405-80983953 <comment><USER2> > "But what else would they serve? You can't give everyone a bibimbap [...]"

That's exactly what Korean Air does. I've never had a better in flight meal.

[http://www.inflightfeed.com/ireviewkorean-airlines- inflight-...](http://www.inflightfeed.com/ireviewkorean-airlines-inflight- meal-review-24-07/)</comment>


How it feels when everyone you know gets laid off - <AUTHOR> http://staringispolite.com/blog/2012/03/20/how-it-feels-when-everyone-you-know-gets-laid-off/ <comment><USER2> I've been in the social games industry for a couple of years now. Zynga may have gotten more attention for some of its negative tactics, but Lolapps takes the cake for shady social gaming.

They consistently provided grossly inflated (by an order of magnitude) numbers for their user counts and revenue. I honestly would not be surprised if they had lied to 6Waves in order get a merger in the first place.

They were almost banned from Facebook for selling user data to third parties.

Recently, they were contracted to help publish a game developed by an indie. As publishers, they got to see a game that hadn't yet been released. They stalled the indie shop in publishing the game while rushing to create a blatant clone. They then ditched the indie shop and released their own clone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps not surprising, but I think those are drastic mischaracterizations of the company. I was there for the merger and the almost-Facebook-ban From anything I saw, numbers weren't cooked.

The Facebook ban was due to one of many small ad tests (<<1% of users each IIRC) we did with third parties, and had already stopped. Turns out one of them was later banned from Facebook, as was anyone who did business with them, regardless of how small or how short. IIRC we weren't even working with them when we got the punishment. But once accused, this kind of thing tends to stick with public perception.

Can't speak to the indie dev thing as I wasn't there at the time and haven't followed it. I will say that the studio that shut down wasn't the same studio as this controversy, but another in the "6L" umbrella.

The fact remains that the people there were some of the best I've worked with, and no one I knew wanted to screw anyone over or copy games. If anything, we had to scale back our vision at times. They were mostly engineers/artists/etc just incredibly happy to be getting paid to make original games after trying to 'break in' to the industry for so long. And the many people who played our games & our competitors' - even other game designers - thought that ours were pushing the boundaries of the industry forward.

<comment><USER2> So you agree that you had 150 million users when Facebook banned you? LOL

And hey, I'm not saying you didn't have good engineers or artists. I think Ravenwood looked great and creating something like that is no joke.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have a reference for the 150M number? Disclaimer: This would've been over a year ago, and I don't remember specifics. I was an engineer, so my main focus was elsewhere.

1) We had a TON of users across many apps and not just our games (many thousands of apps when you include our user-generated ones).

2) These types of numbers were often "sum(MAU-app1 + MAU-app2 + ... + MAU- appN)". This point was always communicated clearly, but may not have been in the press, or could be a source of confusion? Even if communicated clearly, this may still seem like bloating the numbers: but my understanding is it more accurately represents the amount of impressions one would expect (from say a cross-promo with other games, or ad sales) than if you were to de-dupe them by Facebook ID. In other words, say you have 2 games with 10M MAU each, and 2M users play both: it's preferable to make decisions based on 20M as opposed to 18.

3) All apps' MAU/DAU numbers are public anyway, so there's not much to hide.

Thanks for complementing Ravenwood, btw. I really appreciate that. (I was a pre-alpha engineer)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's quite stressful when even half the people you know get laid off.

I worked at a startup that began expanding very quickly in early 2008 (i.e., the worst possible time in recent history). When the economy collapsed that summer and they couldn't raise capital, they had to do layoffs.

That in itself isn't really interesting, but the way they carried out the layoffs was... suboptimal. At some point on a Tuesday, they had the HR manager walking around the cubicle areas, tapping people on the shoulder and calling them in for a meeting. After that, they would return to their desk, pack up their stuff, and leave the building forever.

No one really knew what was going on and those of us who hadn't been tapped by this "Angel of Death" were confused and afraid that we would be next on the list. It wasn't until after the herd was culled that management told the rest of us what happened.

I'm no HR expert, but there must have been a better way to do that.

<comment><USER4> Did management explain that this was surely the only round of lay-offs, and did people manage to stifle their laughter, or keep from rolling their eyes so hard as to snap their optic nerve?

I bet installing a nursery for colicky babies in the now-empty cubicles would have less of an impact on productivity.

<comment><USER3> I don't quite recall what they told the rest of us, but another 20% of the remaining employees submitted their resignation within a few weeks. Those who stuck it out were given the option to receive payment as stock and take a pay cut.

I think they may have considered your colicky-baby-nursery idea as a way to make up for office space costs, but they eventually settled on renting 33% of the floorspace to another company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "How it feels when EVERYONE you know gets laid off"

Perhaps due to my imperfect English, from the title I thought that everyone he knows was laid off, instead of the developers at a former employer he no longer works for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Everyone I know at Lolapps - the company that moved me out to SF in the first place - and then some. Roughly 100 out of ~114 people. And probably 80% of my friends in the SF bay area. You're right that I did use hyperbole, but it wasn't to deceive, it was to avoid an awkwardly over-specific title.

<comment><USER5> "You're right that I did use hyperbole, but it wasn't to deceive, it was to avoid an awkwardly over-specific title."

I will use that line next time!

Update: NO, I really will!

<comment><AUTHOR> LOL well you don't know me so perhaps I should expect that you don't believe me. It's pretty obvious it's not /literally/ everyone I know - my parents, for instance, happily retain their jobs on the other side of the country :) I think the intent is pretty clear from the content of the article, but I'm sorry if you felt mislead

Update: Oh ok! I misunderstood

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Such is life as a games company employee. Been there, done that and will likely never go back unless a LOT of things change in that industry.

Good luck to all the guys who were laid off, I'm sure things will work out!

<comment><USER7> In terms of basic development best practices the game industry is easily a decade or two behind the software development industry as a whole. Death marches are commonplace. QA is often neglected. "Write the code, then fix the bugs" is a typical development style. It'll be interesting to see how long it will take to change, or if it does.

<comment><USER8> I think you'll find death marches, QA often neglected and "Write the code, then fix the bugs" are far more common than you think

<comment><USER9> I wasn't sure what you meant with the term death march, so I looked it up on Wikipedia. I am still not sure what you mean exactly, but I am sure it is not a fitting metaphor.

EDIT: removed the quote

<comment><USER7> "Death march" is a common term of art in project management: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_march_(project_management...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_march_\(project_management\))

<comment><USER9> That explains it. Maybe I am overly sensitive to this, because I am German, but I still think it is not appropriate to compare your own suffering of working hard for a couple of weeks, to that of those who were forced to march into their death during the Holocaust (or other times). That it is a common term does not excuse anything.

<comment><USER7> That's the way language works. I don't think the term trivializes real death marches any more than saying "I was sent to the gulag" when one means being sent off to do office drudgery diminishes the seriousness of real gulags, or saying "open-plan offices should die" diminishes the seriousness of murder or death, or using a term such as "viral video" diminishes the seriousness of the prevalence of viral infection such as HIV or the problems of cholera in the 3rd world.

<comment><USER9> You are right. I don't really feel offended anymore. It's just, that this type of thing goes against my upbringing. To give you an idea, if you used this metaphor in Germany it would be way worse than saying "We had to work like niggers".

<comment><USER10> It's interesting to me to compare those, and claim that "if you used this metaphor [of a 'death march'] in Germany it would be way worse than saying 'We had to work like niggers' [in America]".

(Note: I am neither American nor German, and all my problems are definitely of the first-world variety. I hope to be thoughtful, but I am sure to be ignorant.)

In the one case, millions of people (say 5% of the country?) were terrorized, then kidnapped from their homes, then treated astonishingly badly, and then many of them were murdered. And it happened during a brief period of 5 years or so, 60 years ago. Short duration, but pretty recent.

In the other case, first of all, consider only the so-called Middle Passage. The total number of people involved is roughly comparable (over 10M), and mortality rate was perhaps a little lower, but roughly comparable (millions died). There then followed generations of maltreatment; appalling as the physical treatment is, the long-term cultural impact of generations of forced ignorance is arguably worse. (I think we can all agree that the oppressed people of Germany are doing much better now [65 years after 1945] than were, say, the Americans of African descent in 1930 [that's 65 years after 1865].) The only thing that seems less horrifying about the era of slavery is that it's a little more distant, at least the really brain-wreckingly horrifying parts.

So, in conclusion, it's not at all clear to this outsider why references to "death marches" are "way worse" than references to "niggers". Seems to me like they're pretty comparable.

<comment><USER9> What I meant was: "If you used this metaphor [of a 'death march'] in Germany it would be way worse than saying 'We had to work like niggers' [in Germany]." The latter would still be very offensive in Germany as well. I honest don't know if it would be "way worse" than saying it in the US, maybe it's about the same category.

I don't really think there is a point in putting up a comparison whose crimes were worse. It's more an emotional response when people get offended than a rational one, anyway. Maybe it's only worth pointing out that genocide is seen a more grave category of crime than other forms of homicide in international law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you think the gaming industry is bad you should see how it is in the gambling business. Surprise reduncancies happen all the time, for example morning meetings with all scheduled employees where everyone is told to just go home.

When big legislation changes hit it's not uncommon for hundreds of people being fired overnight.

</comment><comment><USER12> Quite the shock to have the whole studio laid off like that, but I dare say that sort of thing isn't unusual in the games industry at large.

I worked at a big publisher studio for quite some time. They laid off people nearly every year, yet it felt relatively 'safe' compared to the rest of the industry.

</comment><comment><USER13> Seems overloaded. Anyone got a mirror?

<comment><USER14> <https://gist.github.com/87207d332aabbef4c618>

<comment><USER15> With linebreaks added for readability: <https://gist.github.com/b69c536f31bc584e557d>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Oh....boy. Reminds me of the layoff at a social gaming company at which I used to work... Major layoff, and even though I wasn't affected, still felt sad and depressed to see so many people I worked closely with would be gone.

It's really tricky for the company... I don't think moral ever came back, and there had been continued attrition after the layoff. :(

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't know the details of the $35M raising, but it's quite unclear on whether the attempt to estimate their cash on hand was remotely accurate. A $35M round might be tranched to hell and back and a company that isn't hitting promised targets may not get all its tranches (experience speaking :-) ).

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a very good point, and one I didn't address in the post. In fact I may go back and add this.

From my understanding in talking with some of the ex-employees: it doesn't seem to have been the issue in this case. But it's a huge point to consider if you're looking for take-aways for your own startup.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Apologies for the overload, all. Currently resizing the server, should be better shortly

<comment><AUTHOR> Doubled the server, looks to be still a bit slow as the cache warms up, but loading again. Will keep an eye on it. Thanks for your patience!

<comment><AUTHOR> ...and going up another two server sizes. Rackspace Cloud is easily scalable but painfully slow in practice. Lesson learned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I thought social gaming was the future. What is going on with this company in relation to the market?

</comment><comment><USER19> The second dotcom bubble is bursting.

<comment><USER20> If this is what the second dotcom bubble popping feels like, we're doing really well as an industry!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Am I the only one who misread the title and looked over the "off" part?</comment>


An Analysis of Nespresso - <AUTHOR> http://www.jimseven.com/2015/05/21/an-analysis-of-nespresso-part-i/ <comment><USER2> "Speciality coffee doesn't offer anything to the consumer who wants to drink great espresso at home, but doesn't want a new hobby."

This is an amazing take away, and I think many coffee roasters, gin distillers and beer Brewers ought remember it.

<comment><USER3> I take the OA's point, however most of us (I assume) will be using a cafetiere or a paper filter based coffee maker at home rather than doing the full artisan roast and grind.

In my case, I'm using pre-ground coffee in foil bags from the local supermarket at around £3 to £4 per 227g standard pack. I make myself a large diluted coffee each morning using a 3-cup mokapot. The 5 minute prep time isn't onerous and the economics are much better than buying a machine of the kind in the OA along with all the capsules.

Coffee hacking question: If I got a grinder capable of grinding beans to the fineness needed for a moka pot, would I notice a significant difference in taste?

<comment><USER4> My personal experience is freshly ground coffee has a much better taste. Although not much better than when you first open a bag of store-bought ground coffee.

If you don't notice the coffee get less flavourful over the course of a couple of weeks, and then tastier when you open a new bag, then there's a reasonable chance you won't notice a sufficient difference in freshly ground coffee.

One thing you unequivocally get each morning is the smell of freshly ground coffee. It's possible this is what makes me believe I taste more flavour; either way, it's enjoyable.

<comment><USER5> > freshly ground coffee

This is actually the single most determining factor for a good coffee.

<comment><USER6> No, it isn't. Freshly _roasted_ is.

The aroma and flavor of coffee degrades rapidly after roasting, whether you grind it or not. Grinding it accelerates the process, but you can easily get coffee in unground form, and the difference between ground and unground is visually obviously: a vendor can't sneak you ground coffee if you want unground.

How long ago beans were roasted isn't visually obvious.

<comment><USER7> No, again ;-). Its freshly roasted, freshly ground, AND freshly brewed (at the right parameters). That's the gist of it, but of course the quality of the greens before roasting, the roast quality, and grind consistency all come into play. Also don't forget to use good water.

In short: quality in, quality out. Any discrepancy of the above will lead to a sub-par result.

<comment><USER6> But freshly ground and freshly brewed is something _you_ easily control as the consumer, which makes them taken for granted and irrelevant. The other parameters are the object of the coffee drinker's desperate search. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When people decide they want to start making good coffee, they often go and spend the best part of $500, or more, on an expensive espresso machine. I did, anyway. I've found though that the two biggest ways to improve your coffee are really simple and really cheap. Anything else above this - an expensive grinder or coffee machine - may help, but nowhere near as much as these two things:

1\. Get a pair of digital scales (learn to use the tare button) and spend half an hour making coffee of different strengths. Decide which you prefer and then always use that coffee to water ratio when you make it.

2\. Get some decent coffee. You can get a grinder if you want, but it won't make as much of a difference as just getting it from a good source. It can be freshly roasted, freshly ground, whatever - just get it from a good place, not from a supermarket. Personally, I buy a kilogram of coffee beans from [http://liminicoffee.co.uk/](http://liminicoffee.co.uk/) once a month. I used to buy it weekly from [http://pactcoffee.com/](http://pactcoffee.com/) but I found it's more convenient and just as tasty to get it delivered monthly.

Optional third improvement:

3\. Get an Aeropress or a Chemex (my preference is a Chemex - even easier to clean up than an Aeropress, can make multiple cups and can be kept warm if you have a hotplate, although I wouldn't recommend that). This is a good step but won't make as much of a difference as picking good coffee and measuring the amounts you're using.

There are so many optimisations you can do. Most of them won't have too much of an effect. I do them anyway - I have all of the equipment, have a fairly expensive grinder, spend time letting the coffee bloom (I swear that's rubbish) and am planning to roast my own beans soon - but they're by no means necessary. Do those two things first and then stop to see if you're satisfied.

<comment><USER9> I think one scale is enough...

<comment><USER8> Heh, you're right. That is a weird expression when applied to digital scales: a pair of scales makes sense for the old style[1], but doesn't really apply with digital.

[1] [https://mundabor.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/scales.gif](https://mundabor.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/scales.gif)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My parents bought a Nespresso machine recently, and we have a Lavazza one at home now (which also uses pods). The coffee from both machines tastes good, and the process is ridiculously simple. We used to have a Gaggia machine too, but we ended up relocating it to the garage, in a cardboard box, because making coffee using it was really just too much effort - buying the appropriate coffee, storing it, tamping it, and so on, just didn't really seem like all that much fun to us, and often the results were quite unpredictable (sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker). The Nespresso and Lavazza machines seem to produce identical cups of coffee every time, which I generally view as a positive. (All three machines were roughly the same price, ~£100.)

Sometimes I drink expensive coffee in fancy coffee places in London, where it's £3+ for a cup. The coffee definitely has different flavours from the cups I have at home, but I can't honestly say I very often think it's much, much better.

<comment><USER11> I'm with you on this. There's some great coffee in London - some wonderful nutty and bitter tastes in places around Soho that Nespresso doesn't seem able to replicate - but I'm perfectly happy with a pod or two in the morning at the cost of 30p instead of the £3 I'd pay at Soho Grind or the interminable wait for the laid-back bearded chaps at Carpo to stop chatting up the black-clad chocolate servers and make my damn drink.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The site is unavailable so I don't know what's in the article, but from the comments I gather it's looking at the benefits of owning a Nespresso machine at home?

Here in France _everyone_ has a Nespresso machine or two (I have three); you can buy Nespresso capsules from Nespresso shops, or alternative capsules in any supermarket, anywhere.

What Nespresso sells is simplicity and consistency, and an above-average taste.

I remember vividly the time before the Nespresso: when you went to have dinner at a friend's and they offered coffee at the end of the meal, you were terrified of what they might bring. I absolutely cannot drink the clear lukewarm water that some people (used to) call coffee.

Today you simply ask for your favorite Nespresso color, or choose among the ones available, and you're almost certain you're going to get something at least acceptable.

<comment><USER13> Interesting. So French people are ok buying coffee for €90 a kilo to get this convenience? I can understand this only because traditionally, the French "Expresso" was guaranteed to be a watery, bitter, creama-less wish-wash.

<comment><USER12> Expressos you get in _Cafés_ are usually good, if a little bitter (and not comparable to what you can get in Italy).

But coffee people made at home used to be, in my own experience and opinion, an abomination. Never hot enough, never strong enough.

The truth is, everyone wants something different (decaf, strong, stronger, lighter...)

The miracle of Nespresso is that you can serve different cups to different people, at the same time, which is impossible with most other means of producing coffee at home (or very difficult, complex and expensive).

<comment><USER14> > Expressos you get in Cafés are usually good, if a little bitter (and not > comparable to what you can get in Italy).

That's _really_ not my experience. I've found it consistently hard to find proper espresso in cafés in France; one usually needs to find the one place teeming with bearded hipsters (unfortunately), and you might be lucky to get an acceptable (not excellent) espresso.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My feeling last time I saw one in person:

Convincing the public to install a coffee vending machine in their house at cost to themselves by marketing it as a coffee machine was an impressive feat.

They're very small, stylish, and low-priced.

Until you start to buy the pods for your vending machine.

<comment><USER16> Eh if it means im replacing a $3-$4 cup of coffee with a 50 cent cup of coffee + convenience, sounds good to me.

<comment><USER17> This is exactly why I use a Nespresso machine. At $5 and ~10 minutes per cup of coffee from the coffee shop, with varying outcomes depending on the barista, vs 70¢ + milk per cup and almost perfectly identical every time, it just makes sense to use one.

Even at one cup per working day, that's a saving of over $20 per week for me. Even one of the top end machines would pay for itself in months.

<comment><USER18> You could replace it with... instant coffee, y'know? I've found the more expensive ones taste good, and it's only cents per mug.

Sure, it's not the coffee-shop mouth-experience (I put a lot of that down to the frothed milk), but a Nespresso doesn't provide that either?

<comment><USER19> Where I live, Nespresso makes a superior experience than I can find within a 3 mile radius. (fwiw, Los Angeles)

Yes, if I go to my absolute favorite coffee shop in town, it is superior to Nespresso.

But, in comparison to instant coffee (in my humble opinion), it is night and day, and its miles and miles ahead taste wise than coffee bean or star bucks.

<comment><USER18> I need to try a Nespresso somewhere (not sure where/how).

At the moment I'm reduced to decaf, and I'm finding Percol Decaf Colombia excellent: [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Percol-Fairtrade-Decaffeinated- Colom...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Percol-Fairtrade-Decaffeinated-Colombia- Instant/dp/B0043PS12M)

Though next I want to try a Peruvian coffee,.

<comment><USER20> Find one of their stores. If you can handle overly pretentious staff for 5 minutes they'll let you try them for free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I bought a "real" coffee machine for me and my colleagues (Jura impressa F50 -- [https://us.jura.com/en/homeproducts/machines/IMPRESSA-F50-Cl...](https://us.jura.com/en/homeproducts/machines/IMPRESSA-F50-Classic- UL-13684)) and, despite being a bit more complicated than a nespresso one, it cost less (despite buying pretty good coffee beans, freshly roasted, and despite the high cost of the machine), and the taste is IMHO better (but this is only a personal opinion).

The only cons: cleaning a bit the machine the morning, filling coffee beans time to time (the machine is almost entirely automatic otherwise, with an embedded grinder, etc.), filling water (water can be connected to a water pipe, however), and changing the water filter time to time.

Oh, and we can choose the quality/origin of the coffee, and (one more time) it is freshly roasted - yes, call me hipster, but I really like good coffee.

<comment><USER22> Best advice on this page. Instead of buying the Nespresso, and enjoying the comfort and consistency of that, buy a grinder and an espresso machine... and enjoy the craft of making espresso, cappuccino of whetever you like.

I have the classic Quick Mill 820 (around $600) and buy quality beans from a local coffee roaster: $30-35 for a pound of their best kinds. Using 7 gr. for a standard espresso yields 70 cups, thus 50 cents per cup.

Nespresso capsules are at least 75 cents. The flavor might be the same, the comfort might be higher... but it's more expensive, and you'll never learn how to make a cup of coffee yourself.

Bonus track of buying beans and grinding them yourself: you can make a pour- over filter coffee, a cold brew, a cafetiere, Moka pot coffee with the same ingredients: water and freshly-ground coffee, and enjoy the variety of flavors because of the differences in making the drink. Try that with Nespresso...

<comment><USER23> >"Speciality coffee doesn't offer anything to the consumer who wants to drink great espresso at home, but doesn't want a new hobby."

<comment><USER22> I don't have a new hobby :-) although I like the ritual of serving (myself or friends) a nice cup of cappuccino. For a small additional effort, with a grinder and a machine, you'll get a excellent cup of coffee for a third of the price of a cup of Nespresso. Your priorities may vary though...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I would have expected at least a comment pointing out that Nespresso is a Nestlè brand. I'm no treehugger boycotter, but I at least try to avoid the products of tentacular food multinationals as much as I could. I'm not saying that everybody should and I won't ever disregard those who buy their products, but I think that the real origin of the food-based products is always a much neglected point when we talk about them in broader terms. A piece that poses itself as an Analysis of Nespresso should probably tackle this angle, too.

<comment><USER25> Why is multinational bad food?

<comment><USER26> It's not multinationals in general, it's that Nestle has a horrendous ethical track record. For example, they pushed for powdered milk in Africa with absolutely tragic consequences.

[http://www.theguardian.com/business/2007/may/15/medicineandh...](http://www.theguardian.com/business/2007/may/15/medicineandhealth.lifeandhealth)

This is not like Microsoft using their market position to push their products. This is poisoning children for money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Site's gone down, so here's Google's cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.jimseven.com/2015/05/21/an- analysis-of-nespresso-part-i/&strip=1)

</comment><comment><USER28> There is a lot of assumed knowledge here, which hasn't really gone explained. What are "fines" and what are "extractions?" Why is the percentage important, and why are the slight differences in grams important? Without an explanation, it is quite hard to really follow the conclusions of the article.

<comment><USER29> Quick explanation:

Fines are the very small coffee particles created by the grinding or crushing of the bean. They are generally undesirable as for even extraction of the coffee you want uniformly sized coffee particles. Fines also tend to end up in your cup and can make the brew gritty.

Extractions can mean a few things but in a nutshell, it's the amount of flavor compounds in the bean that end up in your brew. If you say '20%' extracted you mean that 20% of the weight of the coffee ended up taken out by the brewing process (I believe you brew then dry the grounds and weigh before/after).

Slight differences could be the difference between bold flavor and over-brewed bitterness. Also different coffees will want different extraction amounts depending on their flavor profile and such; as a general rule most people use too little coffee and overextract it, thus getting all the bitter compounds from the coffee and thinking it tastes bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I would be on board with these if it wasn't for their terrible environmental impact. I'd be interested in an analysis on that - but until these capsules can basically compost I'll be sticking to loose grounds thank you.

<comment><USER31> They are compost only if you put them there. Nespresso has a pod recycling program in place as does pretty much every developed country (not for pods, of course, but the aluminum).

<comment><USER32> While this is true, it's worth noting that recycling is not the preferred step in eco consumerism. Refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle, compost. Nespresso pods cannot be reused, unless someone has hacked a kludge for that, and I doubt the recycling process composts the grounds (more info on that would be great). Extracting aluminium from its ore is hugely energy-consuming. So the most sensible thing to do is simply not use Nespresso, and avoid contributing to the aluminium problem.

There are Nespresso-compatible pods made by third parties, but they tend to be plastic. I'm unconvinced that these can be effectively recycled.

FWIW, before my landlord bought a fancy-pants bean grinding espresso machine, I'd use a stove-top espresso maker. A mokka/mukka, spelling varies. 3 mins to make a perfect espresso from grounds, and I could compost the grounds.

<comment><USER33> In the US, at least, Nespresso's recycling program extract the aluminum and composts the grounds. [http://www.nespresso.com/ecolaboration/us/en/article/9/3068/...](http://www.nespresso.com/ecolaboration/us/en/article/9/3068/collecting- and-recycling-used-capsules-in-the-usa.html)

Also, a Moka pot is definitely not the same. I like what comes out of a Moka pot if it's brewed well, but it isn't really espresso.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The site's down for me; here's Google's webcache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:XXtPHag...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:XXtPHagIaPMJ:www.jimseven.com/2015/05/21/an- analysis-of-nespresso-part-i/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk)

</comment><comment><USER34> OA here - there's a mirror here: [https://archive.is/P9IYd](https://archive.is/P9IYd)

Yes, bluehost sucks.

Happy to answer any other questions.

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't think the pods are expensive. At 70-80 cents each, that's under a fourth the cost of having an espresso of comparable quality made for you outside of your home.

<comment><USER36> A real espresso pulled by a professional will run you €0.90 in Europe (unless you live in a the center of Paris, in which case you might get to spend as much as €1.50). There's usually one of those professionals within 50 yards of your home, possibly even on your walking route to work.

So it's not always even saving you money. Certainly compared to driving out of your way to a Starbucks and paying US (or god forbid, UK) prices. But like everything, it depends.

On the other hand, coffee brewed in your $10 stovetop espresso machine will run you $2.50 for a bag that lasts 2 weeks, and will add roughly four minutes to your morning coffee ritual.

I'm curious about these machines, but the thing that keeps me on the fence is that it would suddenly make coffee drinking expensive.

<comment><USER12> > _unless you live in a the center of Paris, in which case you might get to > spend as much as €1.50_

Or €2. Or €2.50...

But I don't really get why people are comparing Nespresso to having coffee outside the house. I need an expresso the moment I wake up, before I wash, before I dress.

It's really not about the money; it's about convenience, reliability. Peace of mind. Nespresso makes uncertainty go away. Your morning coffee becomes one less thing to worry about. It's going to be perfect. Every time.

Nespresso doesn't try to hide the fact that they're ridiculously expensive; their stores look like jewelry shops and are tended by weirdly handsome individuals with perfectly manicured hands, and one or two guards at the front will open the door for you.

Or if you prefer, you can have capsules delivered at home, in a 2-hour window, by a special messenger on a scooter... for free!! (nobody else does this, not Amazon, not anyone).

They can afford all this and more, and people pay for it, and can't get enough of it. It's like iPhones.

<comment><USER36> Well said. I get something of a free pass on this by being American (Edit: In France, in case that wasn't clear).

I can roll out of bed and walk down to said cafe without showering, perfectly coiffing myself, or even wrapping a scarf around my neck (seriously! leaving the house with no scarf!!!) and know that I won't actually lose any more status in anybody's eyes for my shabbiness. When you've got nothin' you've got nothin' to lose, and all that.

I think you're right in this though. Check back with me in a few months and I bet I'll have one of these machines in my house.

<comment><USER37> When I wake up I really don't feel like dressing, going outside, walking to the nearest coffee shop, ordering and waiting, paying 5x as much as for Nespresso, walking back home, drinking the coffee, undressing, showering, dressing properly this time, then walking to the coffee shop again to order a second one.

No, I'll take the device in my home which instantly produces a cup of coffee at the press of a button.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I have a Nespresso and like it very much. As an occasional coffee drinker it's just way more convenient.

"Real" coffee is of course better, but the grinding & brewing process is a pain in the ass and after a week or two I have to throw the beans into the trash anyway, since they lose their flavor so quickly after being exposed to air. Even putting them into air-sealed containers and into the fridge doesn't seem to help much.

So in the end, the Nespresso might even be cheaper for me, since the capsules last months without noticeably losing flavor. Also, at least in Germany Nespresso's patent on capsules is expired and there are now many cheaper alternatives available. A coffee capsule from a local supermarket costs me about 18 cent, half the price of the original ones.

</comment><comment><USER39> Got a Tassimo here which is a barista in a box I.e. similar.

The killer for me isn't the quality which is 90% as good as my local shop but the lack of hassle - it requires virtually no maintenance or cleaning unlike a grinder/machine setup, no trips down the road, 1/4 of the cost, no fighting for a table, not having to queue up and no horrible paper cup that you have to buy in case there isn't a table.

Its a great concept and selling well here in the UK.

</comment><comment><USER40> What is wrong with just using these: [https://imgur.com/kXtDUnV](https://imgur.com/kXtDUnV)

<comment><USER12> Here's what's wrong: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9586941](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9586941)

<comment><USER41> Are you familiar with Moka Pots? According to Wikipedia, they are sold in 1,3,6,9,12 shot sizes -- but I think the 3 is the most common. I rarely see large Mokas. You're not really throwing much out.

<comment><USER12> > _Are you familiar with Moka Pots?_

Not very familiar, no. I have seen them, my grandmother used to have one -- but I don't think I ever used it myself.

Many people here (who try to resist the Nespresso tsunami) use a thing that I just found out is called a "French press":

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_press](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_press)

or for a better picture:

[http://www.crateandbarrel.com/bodum-chambord-34-ounce- french...](http://www.crateandbarrel.com/bodum-chambord-34-ounce-french- press/s202525)

It's quite popular and makes decent coffee (my wife uses one) but it's still more complex than pressing the button on a Nespresso!

<comment><USER42> FWIW the aeropress is a very good alternative to french presses, significantly simpler cleaning (just pop the coffee plug in the compost/trash and rinse the components), almost no fines (if you use paper filters). Though the rest of the operations (grinding coffee, pouring boiling water in the press and pressing down) are the same.

<comment><USER43> I've had really good experiences too. Although I'm normally wary of kitchen gadgets that depend on consumables.

I switched to this steel filter, which is pretty good :

[http://www.amazon.com/Filter-AeroPress-Ultra-Stainless- Coffe...](http://www.amazon.com/Filter-AeroPress-Ultra-Stainless- Coffee/dp/B00A1GVVMY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1432291948&sr=8-1&keywords=aeropress+s-filter)

<comment><USER44> We have the steel filter, but find it only works for coarser grinds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I had a higher end Nespresso. The killer was how little espresso it makes. I don't consider myself a heavy coffee drinker because I only drink one cup in the morning. However it took 4 Nespresso pods (black ones) to get a decent amount of caffeine and not get headaches. And I usually order single shots when I go out.

<comment><USER46> You can adjust the amount made from a single pod. You can actually make a full mug from a single pod and it still tastes great (and not watery).

<comment><USER47> Well more water in the cup isn't the issue. It's that there's not enough caffine in each pod.

I tend to agree. I only get two shots of expresso and I'm usually fine with that, but with Nessprso's machine I couldn't get enough caffeine unless I put 4 shots in it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I been keeping an eye on this Roast-grind-brew coffee machine startup and still can't make up my mind if it is worth it:([https://www.bonaverde.com/en](https://www.bonaverde.com/en)).

I'm still happy grinding my own beans and slow brewing them in a vacuum press. Seems though that the all-in-one roast to cup would be tastier for a cup of coffee (not an espresso).

I drank Nespresso for a few years at work. Always went for the dark/espresso roast but it never compared to a decent cup of coffee or espresso. I could tolerate it, but it was barely a step up from a gas station, vending machine joe.

<comment><USER34> I'd be genuinely astounded if they manage to build that machine and it works, let alone works well.

<comment><USER49> I'm a backer of that project and plan to write a review when it's released.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Interesting! Please author, pull through all the types of pods, and give us a tasting-analysis and subjective rating! You did not like the one you tried, but each type do taste quite differently.

<comment><USER51> This is addressed in the article, and the author limits the article to the technical feat of producing consistency in espresso production from a cold- start in 50 seconds.

To quote:

> What I haven't really talked about here is how it tasted. I didn't really > like how the shots tasted, but I have a very different preference for many > aspects of coffee and espresso compared to the typical (Nespresso) consumer. > I've repeatedly tried to make the point that thinking we are somehow safe > from the dominance of Nespresso, because we can make coffee taste better, is > not a smart way to think.

Taste isn't the argument (and that argument has been had and is being had many times per day on countless other sites).

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I invested in a mid-level DeLonghi machine. It's semi-automatic, and although it works with standardized pods, I use ground coffee.

It's a fantastic little machine. You can make a high-quality latte in under three minutes with it. I just can't get passed the amount of waste involved in the nespresso process. That, and when compared to an authentic espresso, I find the nespresso to be bitter and watery.

<comment><USER53> Which machine did you buy?

<comment><USER52> It's called the Dedica. [1]

I'm very happy with it. I'm enough of a coffee person that I sometimes think I could have gone for a more "prosumer" machine, but for the price point this is a solid machine.

The barista grade beast at the office is certainly superior, but this home machine can hold its own.

1: [http://www.wholelattelove.com/products/delonghi-dedica- ec680...](http://www.wholelattelove.com/products/delonghi-dedica- ec680-espresso-machine)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Haven't used one of these and only used to Keurig plasticity but find that a French Press is a reasonable compromise between convenience and taste. Not a huge factor in my decision but the French Press option is also a hell of a lot cheaper too.

</comment><comment><USER55> I got one of these last year, and it gets an awful lot of use. I think if you're a coffee gourmet, then it's not for you. If you're someone that wants a latte at home then (together with the milk heater) they are great for that.

</comment><comment><USER56> The "fines" that result are so few that I wonder if most of the pod contents are basically 'instant coffee' espresso powder.

</comment><comment><USER57> With an Aeropress and a coffee grinder you can make much better tasting coffe, much cheaper, and almost as fast.

</comment><comment><USER58> The font is so huge on mobile. I get about three words to a line, which makes the site very hard to read.

<comment><USER34> Noted - will fix once the site is back up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This was a great read, really enjoyed it.

I am a big fan of Nespresso. It saves me a lot of time, a little money, and consistently provides (for my tastebuds) better coffee than I can get within a 3 mile radius of where I live. (somewhere in los angeles).

I buy capsules 50 at a time, for .70c a capsule + 7 dollars shipping, no tax. So that comes to about 42 dollars total, or $0.84 per cup of coffee.

That enables me to consume 2 capsules per day for $1.68 per day, or $11.76 per week, and usually I drink less on weekends.

Coffee sold locally in the stores of high quality here tends to be a minimum of 10 dollars per pound, and normally to really "select" one I prefer, would cost around $13.00. I like to brew my coffee strong, and still would drink 2 cups of coffee per day, so this tends to run out for me about 6 days of my 7 day week.

So while its slightly cheaper for me to drink nespresso, its almost the same price.

But, with nespresso, I go from rolling out of bed to the kitchen, and within 30 seconds I have really good tasting coffee, no mess, and I can easily select the type of pour I want, capsule I want, etc. It is truly extremely convenient.

Furthermore they are an example of outstanding customer service. My machine had a malfunction once. Called them on first day, they over-nighted me a replacement machine while I sent my in for free repair. Got the original back a few days later. Hardly any downtime w/o a machine. Total cost: $0.00, and the machine wasn't even under warranty. Obviously they want to keep selling me coffee. I have no issue with that.

Finally, they offer recycling programs which work good, so I don't feel like I'm being a bad citizen of the earth by supporting them.

I see it as sort of a Spotify of coffee. You pay repeatedly one company for good service, and if it meets your needs, it is going to save you time and money if its something you do a lot. For those that are into coffee on a deeper level, is sort of those who are into music on a deeper level.

For me with regards to music, I am a bit of a control freak, I like to know what bit rate file I am playing, I like to back them up carefully and managing my music collection I invest time and have lots of pride about - so Spotify (While I generally like their service), is not for me.

The same can be said of Nespresso. If you love the entire process of making espresso, getting into the gear, and the execution of how its made and putting that kind of time into it and getting a specific kind of joy out of it, Nespresso would probably not be the right choice.

I guess I have enough hobbies, but I still really like well made espresso at home. Nespresso is right there in that intersection.

<comment><USER11> Wow. The pods are 70c a go in the US? Amazing to find a product that is substantially cheaper in the UK. It's 30p a go here - 45c or thereabouts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> "Error establishing a database connection"

</comment><comment><USER60> I have used many varieties of coffee machines. I do have a nespresso machine amongst them, and it seems to work quite well. The volume of espresso/coffee it produces is low per unit time of water running through the coffee though.

When I use a normal espresso machine, with my own tamped grind, it puts out espresso/coffee at a higher rate, and I find it is smoother/less bitter due to that.

I do tend to prefer a less strong cup, so for me it is nicer to use my own grind as I can vary: 1\. The quantity of ground beans 2. The fineness of the grind 3. How much coffee I get by how long I pull it. ( I realize running it too long will make it bitter )

In the article I am gathering he is measuring what percentage of the "grind" is removed in the process of brewing?? It would have been nice to see this compared amongst a variety of machines, not just 1 nespresso machine and 1 manual drip. Also an acidity test of the resultant coffee would be neat.

For the interested, here are the various machines / methods I have used:

1\. Standard junky drip machine ( yuck... )

2\. Bodum dual glass bowl vacuum I find this to be the strongest method of brewing, but it also makes the coffee way too bitter for my tastes.

3\. Keurig machines Have used 5 or so different ones of these. The higher end commerical ones tend to be a little better but mostly they produce weaker coffee and let a lot of grounds through into the coffee. I don't think the water is hot enough from these, nor is the pressure high enough to get crema of any worth.

4\. Tassimo machine This is my favorite taste thus far. The programmed t-discs allow the setting to be varied ( heat and brew amount ), and has produced the smoothest coffee I've had of all the machines I have used. I own 2 of these machines. My only complaint is I cannot use my own grind.

5\. Senseo This is my favorite machine overall. The pods are small cloth bags, and the pressure seems to be high enough to produce good crema. Also; I can use my own grind in reusable filters that go in it. Great consistent taste and very easy to use. Also; very easy to clean the whole machine. I own 4 of these. ( for extra parts )

6\. Starbucks "instant" machine. One company I worked at had a huge automatic like starbucks branded machine. This thing tasted horrible. The coffee was the most bitter I have tasted from any machine. It also tasted like it was never cleaned and had a high amount of grinds left in the coffee.

7\. Super automatic espresso machine. Another company I worked at had one of the various $5000 automatic espresso machines. Unfortunately I forget the brand at the moment. It worked well, auto grinding etc. I used my own grind with it also. This was nearly equal to the taste/quality of using my own espresso machine, but I could not vary the tamp pressure. The auto internal tamping seemed too loose so the coffee seemed to have a bit less crema. It was convenient as it had less cleanup though.

8\. Capresso EC100 This is my go-to machine that I use for my daily coffee. It is just a basic espresso machine. No real thrills here, but it has adequate pressure and heat. I grind my own beans to my desired fineness, add my own amount of beans to my taste at the moment, and typically brew like 4 shots worth out of the same tamped unit. This would seem to cause it to be more bitter but it does not and produces lots of crema. I also often rip open free keurig pods from work and use them in this machine. It improves their taste over keurig machines by far.

9\. Old style large reservoir steamer with huge spring/lever. I picked one of these up from a yard sale. Takes forever to heat up. Needs to be cleaned constantly. Feels very finicky. I am way too lazy to be able to get anything consistent out of this. Far too much effort for little gains.</comment>


Now: Guillermo Rauch's hosting service adds paid plans, custom domains and SSL - <AUTHOR> https://zeit.co/blog/now-alias <comment><AUTHOR> It's super cool since you can have hundreds of micro services deployed using SSL for only $14.99 a month.

[https://zeit.co/now#pricing](https://zeit.co/now#pricing)</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone using flutter in favour of electron to build prod desktop apps? - <AUTHOR> - Anyone using flutter in favour of electron for side projects for desktop apps?<p>- If so what is your impression especially if you have used both?<p>- Do you have all that you need out of flutter for desktop that you could have gotten in electron?<p>- Is it faster to build in flutter or in electron?<p>- Do you have all the components you need?<p>- Is there enough support?<p>- Do you find easily answers in google?<p>- Do you feel like it's immature?<p>- Do you regret and wish you used the other?<p>- In terms of development speed is one 1,2,3X the other?<p>- Is tooling mature for any?<p>- For CRUD applications what would you recommend? <comment><USER2> I use Flutter Desktop for my presentations. It's faster to make presentation in Flutter for me. Especially after several presentations already done I have my custom "framework" and a lot of helper methods for animation or transitions. You just need to clone desktop embedding repo and have fun with example.

Now with plugins for notifications and file access I think about porting one of password managers to Flutter Desktop. This would take a lot of work but might be a great case for lightweight crossplatform password manager.

<comment><AUTHOR> it's faster for you to make presentations in flutter rather than standard presentation softwares (ppt, google draw etc)? :)

<comment><USER2> When I have some helper widgets then yes. Some things are really hard to do (e.g. stepping through animations), but other are very easy (responsive layout, so I can present the same file on 4:3, 16:9 or other ratios).

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting... Do you embeed then the animation in a standard presentation (like PPT or something n like that) if so how?

<comment><USER2> No, everything is done with Flutter</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Stopping the Shortsigtedness Epidemic - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427331.100-generation-specs-stopping-the-shortsight-epidemic.html <comment><USER2> About 17 years ago I took instruction from a teacher of the Bates Method (as refined by some woman whose name I cannot recall). It's a lot of work. You can expect to put at least an hour a day into it if you want any results. My results were a big improvement, but not an improvement to even close to 20/20 after about a year, so I lapsed and my eyesight eventually deteriorated back to very myopic. I went from -7.25d for 20/20 to -2.00d for 20/40. Not correcting your vision for perfect 20/20 with lenses is one part of the method, and I also tired of never having perfectly corrected vision.

"Outdoor seeing" has a big role in the Bates method with emphasis on horizon focusing and outdoor lighting, as mentioned in this article too, but as well as brighter light, Bates put emphasis on full-spectrum natural lighting. I went so far as to buy full spectrum light bulbs for my house. Unfortunately I could never come up with a good solution for doing computer work in natural lighting. Bates had some downright wrong ideas, so his entire work was never taken seriously by established medicine.

During this time I also ran across an Israeli teacher of his own method (pretty much the same as Bates), who liked to say he had a blind certificate from the state of Israel and a driver's license from the state of California, and he didn't wear any corrective lenses. However, when his son was born with the same defect he had, he had his son undergo an operation removing the lenses and making his son dependent on contact lenses. He said the natural vision thing was just too hard and he didn't want his son going through it.

<comment><USER3> I have also benefited from the Bates Method (at least portions of it). The new findings about spending time outdoors particularly accord with Bates' idea that sunlight is beneficial to eyesight. Bates said that pointing the head towards the sun and swinging the closed eyes through the path of its rays could relax muscles in the eye. It feels good but I never spent much time purposefully doing it. Instead, the biggest benefit for me was the knowledge of eyestrain and the damage that over-prescribed lenses could do if used in close-work for prolonged periods. I saved my vision from deteriorating further by reducing my prescription and even wearing reading glasses over my contact lenses while reading in order to reduce the prescription (negative diopters in the contacts plus positive in the reading glasses = reduced prescription).

I'm still longing for a time when I can take off my glasses and live outdoors for an extended period to see if I can manage some real reversal of my nearsightedness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> With longer eyeball you don't tire muscles in your eye by looking at close objects so it's actually a gain not a loss.

I'm attributing my ability to look at screen for 8-16 hours per day, every day for last 15 years to this.

Of course progression of myopia is very bad but I think it can be almost completely attributed to wearing corrective lenses. If your eye elongated to adapt and you trash benefits of this elongation by wearing glasses without changing you lifestyle then you encourage further elongation.

<comment><USER5> Interesting, so do you wear glasses only when you need to be able to see distant things?

<comment><USER6> I don't wear them in front of a screen because they reduce contrast an there are reflections - however clean they are. But I wear them to drive home.

As far as I am concerned I have evolved from something that needed to spot lions on the horizon to something that needs to spot trolls 0.5m away

<comment><USER5> That makes sense, but for me it would be more convenient if I could wear glasses while using the computer and not while doing other activity, which hopefully will be possible with the research that's going on.

<comment><USER6> Wait for old age! As you age your ability to focus closely gets worse (the eye muscles weaken) but your distance vision generally doesn't change much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have both myopia and astigmatism, in which the image is warped as well as blurred. I would be interested in research to see if astigmatism is also correlated with these same factors which help induce myopia.

Also I wanted to point out the spelling error in this entry title:

"Shortsigtedness" should be "Shortsightedness"

<comment><AUTHOR> sigh - too late for me to fix it - thanks though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I thought this was going to be about our short-sighted vision about the future.

<comment><USER9> That isn't an epidemic, that have been with us from the beginning of time.

<comment><USER10> I'll admit it's always been here and that it's incredibly hard to measure in any case.

But still _feel_ that shortsightedness _has_ increased in the last twenty or thirty years. The housing bubble is closest I can come to concrete verification of this but that's a long way, I'll admit.

It would be nice if someone could do a study akin to Bowling Alone, to study shortsightedness instead of social isolation.

<comment><USER11> At least you can do something useful with a house, even when its value drops 50%. The 17th century Dutch imploded their economy with _tulips_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Myopia is one of the characteristics of bright but late-talking children that Thomas Sowell talks about In his book, "The Einstein Syndrome: Bright Children Who Talk Late" ([http://www.amazon.com/Einstein-Syndrome-Bright-Children- Talk...](http://www.amazon.com/Einstein-Syndrome-Bright-Children- Talk/dp/0465081401)). Other characteristics include above-average math and music abilities, good memories, and strong wills.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've had to wear glasses since I was in preschool. Anecdotally, of course, I doubt conditions had that much to do with my poor eyesight.

Ah well. One day I'll get Lasik.

<comment><USER14> Equally anecdotally, I've spent pretty much the entirety of my 34 year long life indoors, either staring at a book or staring at a computer screen and my eyesight is absolutely perfect.</comment></comment>


Newly evolved ransomware is bad news for everyone - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/04/ok-panic-newly-evolved-ransomware-is-bad-news-for-everyone/ <comment><USER2> Petya ransomware is known in the infosec community to be specially simple to solve because instead of using an AES cypher it applies XOR to the MBR/GPT and MFT of the filesystem (cyphering the MFT was the new method here).

If you know what a filesystem begins with and other common filesystem signatures (NTFS FILE records, for example), then you can derive the XOR key used and reconstruct everything without paying the 0.99 bitoins they demand.

Even then, if it just affected the MFT, you can do file carving and recover most of the files (there are always those pesky important files that will rebel and be fragmented or disappear completely). This last part is speculation of mine, I haven't been able to work on a Petya-infected system yet.

<comment><USER3> One thing future malware might do is to encrypt the drive using the BitLocker API/command line, since BitLocker already knows how to do this reliable and with minimal system impact.

Or change the key if it's already encrypted.

<comment><USER2> Don't know if that's possible, I haven't worked in the details of BitLocker, but... It derives the key from a secret that is stored in hardware (a trusted key platform module I think it's called) or somehow related to the user (MS account? password?), so I don't think it'd be posible to encrpyt something through BitLocker that can't be unlocked by the legitimate user.

Then again, I'm a bit sloppy on BitLocker mechanisms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ransomware demands money. The electronic money transfer services are amongst the most surveilled and spied-upon of all electronic services. So why doesn't law enforcement follow the money and arrest the culprits? (Unfortunately I think I know the answer: because they've got their priorities wrong)

<comment><USER3> Ransomware typically uses Bitcoin, which is rather hard to track if you do it properly.

And it's not like solving a $1K ransom is a high priority case for LE, so you are partially right.

Like the saying goes, there is a lot of bike stealing because LE doesn't really care about stolen bikes.

<comment><USER5> LE doesn't care about stolen bikes because their constituency doesn't care about stolen bikes. Do some back- of- the- envelope math about what it would take in terms of person/hours to seriously investigate a single bike theft, then multiply that by the fully loaded cost of a single police officer.

If a municipality decided to take bike theft seriously, by paying increased OT or expanding the police department employment rolls, law enforcement would be all over it.

A similar problem exists for ransomware. Ransomware attacks are less frequent and more targeted, but _drastically_ harder to investigate. We could spend many billions more to build an infosec investigative capability in state governments, and that would help, but we would rather spend those billions on other things.

<comment><USER6> Kinda OT, but this made me think of what would be involved in really cracking down on bike theft. You'd probably have to start by registering bikes and putting license plates on them, just like cars, and aggressively enforcing the maintenance of those registrations and license plates. So you'd start off by hassling legitimate riders first so that in the future it would be easier to spot a stolen bike and prove that it's stolen. Probably more trouble than it's worth, considering how many kids and low-income people use bikes for transportation.

Similarly, getting serious about tracking Bitcoin movements would probably involve a lot of new regulations around the use of Bitcoin, and somehow enforcing them worldwide.

I suppose the point was more that the police are likely to be very interested if you rip off one company for $50k, but it's harder to get them interested when you rip off $1k from 50 people spread around dozens of jurisdictions.

<comment><USER7> The point I've seen made about bike theft is that although the reward from a successful bike theft is small, the risk -- the probability of being caught times the likely consequence if one is caught -- is extremely small in most places. So the reward/risk calculation easily supports committing the theft.

But if a municipality devotes even a small amount of resources -- an officer or two, full-time, I guess -- to prosecuting bike theft, that can raise the odds of getting caught for a single theft, I don't know, maybe three orders of magnitude -- from 10^-6 to 10^-3, let's say. Someone who steals hundreds of bikes a year is then looking at a real chance of getting caught for one of them.

What I've seen argued, and I seem to recall there's even experimental evidence to support this, is that that's enough to reduce the reward/risk ratio to the point where bike theft as a career, at least, is uneconomic. You might still get occasional opportunistic thefts -- leaving a bike unlocked would still not be recommended -- but the bulk of the problem would go away.

Coming back to the topic, the same principle probably applies here. You don't have to even try to solve all the ransomware crimes; you just have to solve enough of them, and come down hard enough on the perpetrators, to change the reward/risk calculation. That will probably be a lot harder to do, though, since they're unlikely to even be in the same country as the victims.

<comment><USER8> Get caught stealing a bike (maybe 2nd offense, whatever), you get 3 months in a labor camp. 2nd offense, one year.

2 years in run the stats and see if there's been an effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is a silver lining to ransomware and other forms of malware. The more people get bitten by them, the more security-conscious they'll become. This is the social piece of the technology/society security puzzle falling in to place. Pity it comes at the cost of so much misery.

<comment><USER3> From the OS point of view it should be pretty obvious when massive number of files are suddenly being re-written.

Maybe the OS could put a dialog up, along the line "Excuse me, I've noticed that a large number of files are being modified/deleted. This could be an active attack going on. Do you know about this, is this something that you are trying to do?"

Of course, malware will fight back by maybe encrypting only the file-system index (like some recent one does), or by slowly encrypting files over a period.

But still, changing large number of user files should be noticeable.

<comment><USER10> It's unfortunate that SSDs and the disappearance of HDD activity indicator lights has made it harder to notice things like this. Massive filesystem activity 10 years ago would be immediately recognisable from all the drive noise, the slowdown, and a solid indicator light. Now it's maybe a barely perceptible slowdown.

<comment><USER11> Good point. I remember specifically discovering a drive-by download this way back in 2004-ish. Hard drive started going crazy on my desktop when I visited an A/V review website that otherwise seemed benign enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As good a time as any to switch my workstation to OpenBSD.

</comment><comment><USER13> I find myself caring less and less about ransomware on my laptop because everything is in the cloud. I wonder if that is exactly what they (insert evil cloud provider here) want me to think? (removes tinfoil hat)

<comment><USER14> Like dropbox? I would expect the malware to encrypt it like any other folder, you will just have encrypted files in the cloud. Unless your provider gives you incremental backups.

<comment><USER13> No, like google drive. The files do not exist on my computer, only in my browser.

<comment><USER15> IIRC there is a Google Drive application which allows the users to have a similar "virtual folder" functionality as Dropbox has.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> systems-admins-we-need-to-talk

[https://offensivetechblog.wordpress.com/2016/03/29/systems-a...](https://offensivetechblog.wordpress.com/2016/03/29/systems- admins-we-need-to-talk/)

</comment><comment><USER17> What I don't understand is how can any malware get installed on a server storing critical hospital data? And why is it running Windows? Do hospitals store their data on workstations used by employees?

<comment><USER18> > And why is it running Windows? Do hospitals store their data on workstations > used by employees?

You are aware that there are server editions of Windows right? And that they don't exist for the fun of it?

<comment><USER17> Yes, but I could not imagine some admin installing the malware by mistake. Reading more on it, I stand corrected. The malware gets installed thanks to a buggy version of JBoss allowing remote execution access to the server.

<comment><USER18> Yes, and the malware may not even have to be installed on the server, there are many companies and systems with dodgy security practices (either just because, or because a legacy application needs that, or whatever). If the hospital has its stuff on a NAS, any infected computer with write access to that NAS will be able to hit it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is just linkbait.

<comment><USER3> Why do you say that. The article is pretty informative, despite the title.</comment></comment>


Research summary: When and how to use caffeine to be more productive - <AUTHOR> http://lesswrong.com/lw/1w1/coffee_when_it_helps_when_it_hurts/

<comment><USER2> To take advantage of caffeine, it must be used sparingly. If you drink 5 cups a day, that extra cup will do very little. OTOH, if you drink 1 a week, that single cup provides an amazing boost. Remember, a single cup of coffee a day is enough to addict most people. If you're addicted, that cup of joe you drink in the morning isn't "waking you up", it's eliminating your caffeine withdrawal symptoms.

The other benefit of caffeine is that it provides a significant effectiveness booster to many other drugs, like ASA, ibuprofen and acetaminophen.

</comment><comment><USER3> A grab-bag of study links ending in "But the issue is convoluted enough that I'm unsure."</comment>


Bitcoin as a Protocol for Trust - <AUTHOR> http://sophisticatedfinance.typepad.com/sophisticated_finance/2013/11/bitcoin-redefines-trust.html

<comment><USER2> Wait - Bitcoin-like elections? He may be on to something there. Everyone could have their own Bitcoin-like address, that can't be recreated and that person could only vote once. Then maybe we can finally have online voting.</comment>


Reddit CEO eliminates salary negotiations for new employees - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2015/04/06/ellen-pao-reddit-salary/ <comment><USER2> Possibly unpopular opinion here, but I don't think this policy will change much. At least, it is not as universally anti-employee as people make it out to be.

Already, the best way for anyone to get a better salary is to have a competing offer in hand. "Asking for more money" will just get you back the ~$5K that the company low-balled you in the first place, figuring that you would ask for it. Folks in the comments here are talking about getting a raise of $7.5K by asking for it - I've had multiple offers (at the same time) differ by ~35%, and doubled my compensation by switching jobs after about 2 years.

What this policy will do is ensure that Reddit will lose candidates who shop around to a higher bidder. This is not a loss for the candidate - they get the higher-paying job anyway - it's a loss for Reddit. Or maybe it's not, if Reddit is looking to employ "true believers" who care about the site itself and not their salary.

Or Reddit could up its base salary so that it has a reasonable likelihood of being the highest offer for any candidate it wants to employ. That's a win for all of Reddit's _current_ employees, a financial loss for Reddit, but may be a cultural win for Reddit.

<comment><USER3> That's what I was thinking, but TFA is too thin on details to draw any conclusions. Like your example about a candidate having a better second offer and asking Reddit to bump theirs - I guess that counts as negotiation, but is that the kind of behavior this policy is supposed to "level"? It seems like the easiest kind of negotiation there is, and the kind I imagine would help women the most. Especially since if you remove the opportunity for negotiation later, the initial offer becomes that much more important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How is this not a win for Reddit and a loss for new hires? I have often heard, and seen first hand, that you can easy take home 20k+ more, just by ask for it during the hiring process. It is in the employers best interest, to low ball you, and lock you into making less money. Is this just a negotiation tactic, saying that they do not negotiate, maybe...

<comment><USER5> I see it more as leveling the playing field. Women are less aggressive and ruthless in negotiations, and that contributes to the staggering pay gap we see in tech and elsewhere. This gap needs to end, and such a measure might well prove effective.

Such a measure will also mean that aggressive salary negotiators will go elsewhere after their attempts at negotiation are rejected by Reddit HR. Since these people are almost always male, that's a win. It will result in a workplace with less men : )

<comment><USER6> The goal should not be to hire more of any particular gender. The goal should be to hire the best, most qualified people (although I believe it is okay to use diversity as a factor if one has to choose between two identically qualified applicants).

Eliminating salary negoiation just because woman are not good at is stupid. It baby's them.

<comment><USER7> Whether it is gender-associated or not, if negotiation skill isn't what your company is seeking in employees, it shouldn't be providing premium compensation for it (and,consequently, inferior compensation for people with the skills you do want that lack negotiation skills.)

<comment><USER8> Negotiation is not directly required skill, but refusing to negotiate will deprive them of candidates with other valuable skills, just because they would take better offer from elsewhere. It's not like negotiation is like performing some circus trick and getting paid for how well you performed it. It's finding a balance between what the company thinks you're worth and what you think you're worth and what you can get in the market. If Reddit says "we have predefined price and won't move" then either they would consistently overpay (which I have hard time believing in) or they would lose candidates that have better options. Usually such candidates are not the very worst ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This may be an unpopular opinion, so forgive me in advance, but this new trend of non-negotiable salary is about one step away from Apple's anti-competitive employment agreements that became public after Jobs' death. In fact, that's exactly what it is: anti-competitive.

What is stopping all of the top SV companies from colluding on what a "fair salary" is? This just reeks of a glass ceiling that rewards nobody but the corporation. And now it comes in the name of feminism?

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder how they expect it to work out in practice. Are they increasing the amount of their offers to compensate for this, or are they just planning to accept that better negotiators will go elsewhere (for more money).

</comment><comment><USER10> So in other words reddit now will only take those who will agree to lower pay. Hardly a strategy to strengthen developer team.

<comment><USER11> Or they will simply have to offer the higher pay up front, to everyone, instead of reserving it only for people who ask specially for it instead of taking their offer literally. This is a step toward improved transparency in the hiring process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> While I completely understand that by eliminating negotiations for new hires helps to level the playing field, this is just a short-term bandage on a much larger wound.

I would have much preferred she change their hiring policies to educate their hiring managers on how NOT to be biased against women and to NOT penalize women who negotiate for themselves. Treat women who aggressively negotiate their own salaries THE SAME WAY YOU WOULD IF IT WERE A MAN! Education, ultimately, is the answer to a long term solution. It would also help to make sure you have an equal balance of sexes that comprise your hiring team to truly level the playing field.

For a capitalist society, if you're a stronger negotiator, then you should absolutely reap those benefits, and if you're a weaker negotiator, then you have something to strive for and improve. By eliminating it altogether, I'm not sure how you can achieve sustainable, long term success. This decision also seems to undermine or belie the accolades thrown on her for being a Feminist icon in the tech/vc world. If you're trying to level the "playing field" then LEVEL it, don't eliminate it.

<comment><USER13> Being a good negotiator is not well-correlated with being a good performer on the job for most jobs, perhaps least of all for software engineers (who tend to be conflict adverse and not particularly socially adept). It's absurd that playing hardball during hiring negotiations counts for more than anything I could possibly do once I'm actually working a job.

If anything, awarding massive rewards to stronger negotiators is a market failure in a capitalist society, in the same way that paying more to taller or more attractive people is.

<comment><USER14> If that's true, that it's not well-correlated, why haven't companies figured this out yet? You'd think someone would be paying attention when there's money involved.

<comment><USER13> I'd say several reasons:

1) People are people and ingrained biases and social pressures are incredibly powerful forces.

2) The amounts of money are tiny ($1,000-$20,000) relative to a large company's operating budget. It's the same reason businesses overspend on airfare and SaaS products.

3) The hiring manager isn't spending _their own_ money. It's no skin off their back if they pay a new hire an extra five grand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have incredibly mixed feelings about this. Zero-negotiation policies are great tools for eliminating unfairness _if executed well_ , the problem is that you still force the employee to end "trusting someone at their word", and _every company_ claims they're going to make a fair, standard offer. Here's the thing:

1) Yes, being strict and almost formulaic will reduce inequality and increase probability that folks are compensated according to actual value.

2) But you need _meaningful transparency_ around this. I guarantee you, 100% that if I had a live offer at Reddit, I could find some way to negotiate some additional crap that amounted to a meaningful compensation bump in the end.

3) _Every_ company that does this ends up making exceptions for people the higher-up you go. Wealthfront, Stack Exchange, and now Reddit, will join the club of companies that negotiate with execs they hire, VCs, and bizdev partners, suppliers - basically, everybody except their employees. And even then only "most of the time"\- there are always exceptions - just hold out for a higher comp band. Get a stronger inside referral. It's always possible.

Something very close to the Buffer model is the only real way to do things. You can tweak the variables, but you need strictness _and_ transparency. [https://open.bufferapp.com/buffer-open-equity- formula/](https://open.bufferapp.com/buffer-open-equity-formula/)

Ellen, Alexis - If you're reading this, I'd love a chance to understand your challenges in crafting these policies, and see if I could offer any input from my perspective as well.

(Source I founded [http://OfferLetter.io](http://OfferLetter.io) \- we help engineers and other tech workers negotiate for what they're worth. I've personally had literally hundreds of conversations with folks about this.)

</comment><comment><USER16> That is a way to say that women are inferior to men at negotiating. Isn't that sexist?

BTW best negotiators I've ever met in my life were all women..

<comment><USER17> _BTW best negotiators I 've ever met in my life were all women.._

Are you sure? I suspect your data set might be missing some; the best negotiators I've ever seen were basically invisible. The people they were negotiating with didn't even realise it was a negotiation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The solution here is to help teach everyone how to negotiate their salaries. Not to let companies completely dictate the terms of your employment.

Also "We come up with an offer that we think is fair. If you want more equity, we'll let you swap a little bit of your cash salary for equity, but we aren't going to reward people who are better negotiators with more compensation." is a contradiction.

They are saying they won't negotiate and that you can negotiate in the same sentence. Asking for a swap is a negotiation unless you have an offer that gives you multiple salary to stock option balances to choose from to begin with.

<comment><USER7> > They are saying they won't negotiate and that you can negotiate in the same > sentence.

No, they aren't. You are inserting assumptions not in their statement to come up with that interpretation.

> Asking for a swap is a negotiation unless you have an offer that gives you > multiple salary to stock option balances to choose from to begin with.

Since nothing in what they say indicates that they are not not providing offers that give multiple salary to stock option balances to choose from (or a base salary/equity balance and a defined swap ratio and range in which swaps are allowed), and as you yourself note the only way the statement is internally consistent is if it _does_ do that, why do you _assume_ that the offers aren't structured that way?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The arguments in favor of such an elimination seem... contrived. Hell, I'd even figure them to be sexist with their implications of "oh gee, well women are bad negotiators, so we won't even give them the chance to negotiate in a very-visibly-male-dominated environment".

</comment><comment><USER14> If this catches on, I wonder how long it will take the federal government to decide it's such a good idea everyone needs to do it. I can imagine a database of approved salaries that map to job titles, geographic metadata, and whatever else - and that's what you'll get paid.

<comment><USER9> If this catches on, I wonder how long it will take for a class action lawsuit against the companies involved. A widespread "take it or leave it" policy across an entire industry would basically be akin to wage fixing. If nobody in an entire job market will negotiate with employees on salary, they could effectively lock out truly competitive wages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Reddit CEO Ellen Pao, feminist hero,

What?

<comment><USER5> She is.

She had the courage to stand up against sexism and bullying, and take on a stronger adversary (KPCB), when many would have just given up. She fights for what she thinks is right, and her fight is empowering all women in tech. If that's not heroism, then I don't know what you need.

<comment><USER21> Have you thought about how many vile, insane people in human history match your description of heroism?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This policy might not change much, but it will level the playing field for Reddit's diversity recruiting efforts. It's too bad that the few feminists there are in tech like Ellen Pao get so much criticism for trying to change an extremely male-biased industry.

</comment><comment><USER23> That's certainly one way to address gender-bias issues. What issues will crop up as a result? Only time will tell. (Maybe none, but honestly I doubt it.) I respect that they're trying this.

<comment><USER14> "I want more money, so I'm not going to apply at Reddit" is one of the issues that comes to mind. Only time will tell if it works out for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If women are not good at doing something that men are (e.g. negotiating), then don't let men or women do it.

Is this feminism or sexism?

</comment><comment><USER25> seems like a bad idea to me and i struggle to understand how not negotiating salaries makes it a more fair workplace.

<comment><USER7> > seems like a bad idea to me and i struggle to understand how not negotiating > salaries makes it a more fair workplace.

Paying people for the work they are being asked to do rather than for that adjusted by their negotiating ability is more fair (unless the work they are being asked to do is something closely relating to negotiating, in which case paying for negotiating ability could reasonably be interpreted as paying for job-related skills.)

As for why it might be a good idea, if they set the non-negotiation offers at a level that pays what the average employee would end up with _with_ negotiation, it suddenly becomes a more attractive place to apply for people whose skills are more in the area of the work of the job than in negotiating (and, until other firms adopt similar approaches, may produce a particularly strong retention advantage for those people.)</comment></comment>


Yahoo Smush.it - <AUTHOR> http://www.smushit.com/ysmush.it/ <comment><USER2> This really needs to scan for images in a page rather than taking just image urls.

<comment><USER3> Really strange that it doesn't, given the description. They describe it as working on an entire page.

<comment><USER2> Hopefully it's just a bug and someone'll push a change because it's definitely interesting.

It also needs an API so you can replace images automatically as part of your build or upload process.

<comment><USER3> Archive.org shows it's been like this since at least Jan 1, 2011 (did't check any other or earlier dates), so it seems like fixing it must be really low priority.

[http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://www.smushit.com/ysmu...](http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://www.smushit.com/ysmush.it/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple iOS in-app purchases hacked; everything is free - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/apple-ios-in-app-purchases-hacked-everything-is-free-video-7000000877/

<comment><USER2> Sounds like a rather clever way of getting a bunch of people to enter their itunes login/password as they test this crap out.</comment>