Rise of the Zombie Deer - <AUTHOR> https://thecompost.io/archive/rise-of-the-zombie-deer <comment><USER2> I too find this disease terrifying.

Hunting of white tail deer is very popular where I am from. Everyone has family members who hunt and stock up on venison. It's very common for people to share their meat with friends and neighbors and cook venison around a camp fire. Many harvested deer have been tested and confirmed infected for at least a decade now. Most people do not get their deer tested. Certain WMU (wildlife management units) are mandated that all kills be tested. Also most people field dress their own deer which means lots of blood and fluids from the deer on their hands and clothes.

I have seen a CWD deer in the wild not far from my house. It was scrawny and shaking with the strangest look on its face [1] just walking down the middle of the road. Very abnormal behavior for a deer. It's just a matter of time before it jumps to humans.

Joe Rogan actually covered CWD on one of his podcasts [2] with a few biologists as guests. You can find videos [3] of CWD on YouTube.

1\. [https://www.thenews.com.pk//assets/uploads/updates/2019-02-1...](https://www.thenews.com.pk//assets/uploads/updates/2019-02-10/430256_4594270_deer_updates.jpg)

2\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHOUpczwcyA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHOUpczwcyA)

3\. [https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=cwd+deer](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=cwd+deer)

<comment><USER3> `It's just a matter of time before it jumps to humans.`

... thats not how that works.

<comment><USER4> Actually the parent is correct. "That's not how it works". Specifically deer prions (but not other cervids like elk) don't seem to be transmissible to cows, both in the lab and in the wild, and not to mice or humans in the lab. It goes in both ways IIRC, cows nor mice can't go to deer.

<comment><USER5> Here's a citation for that: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4981193/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4981193/)

If it appeared to be transmissible to humans, there would be much stronger recommendations against eating venison, like with prion diseases in cows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> OTOH, possibly the oldest known prion disease is scrapie, which has been known in sheep for centuries. Scrapie, unlike BSE, does not appear to be communicable to humans. But: susceptibility to scrapie is highly genetic and easily tested for. Most shepherds in the US are doing genetic testing and selecting specifically for genetic immunity in their flocks. My own flock is about 75% fully immune, with the remainders having one of the two genes needed, which makes them highly resistant but not completely immune.

To me this seems indicative that there could well be pharmaceutical treatments for prion disease. They just haven't been a big enough problem to really address yet.

It also _may_ indicate that genetic resistance could quickly spread through deer populations once the disease starts exerting enough evolutionary pressure.

<comment><USER7> The disease will never exert strong evolutionary pressure as the symptoms start appearing well after deer will have reproduced.

<comment><USER6> No, the disease starts exhibiting symptoms after 2-3 years. Deer average five years and can live for up to ten years in the wild, and are reproductively active that entire time. So there is definitely some evolutionary pressure; a deer infected at age 1 year would be expected, on average, to have less than half the offspring of a healthy deer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's not unusual to see deer around my house in the DC suburbs in VA(way beyond the zone depicted in the map), but we had a young one acting strangely last summer. It was just standing there, and wouldn't run if your approached it. It was very thin.

A neighbor called animal control, who came out and diagnosed this disease. They had to put the deer down, right there in the middle of the suburbs, which alarmed many neighbors.

<comment><USER9> fellow nova suburbanite here [vienna]

the degree to which deer have become comfortable around humans in the area in the last 5 years is incredible. I can be feet away from them on a jog and they won't flinch. I guess that's what happens when your only predator is a car

<comment><USER10> No coyotes and wolves around?

<comment><USER11> Coyotes will take deer, but they're not that quick to target healthy adult deer. In the suburbs, they generally end up in smaller packs going after both garbage and scrubland prey like rabbits, so they're not an especially good check on white-tailed deer. (Wolves would be, but then they're not going to be allowed to stay in most suburbs.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I bow hunt deer in New Jersey. Hunting is sacred to me and I do it for the meat. It's great to see this shared here. CWD can be contained. Most hunters are aware of it and are doing their part to fight CWD. If you don't hunt, a simple way to help is to call the police on the off chance you see a deer acting strangely.

<comment><USER13> We're screwed if it makes it into NJ. Deer population density is too high to contain it here.

My family has a 50 acre farm in the northwest part of the state and hunters usually take up to 20 deer per hunting season. I used to count herds of up to 50 deer roaming the hay fields in summer.

Wolves are not an option in NJ and while coyotes have come back I don't think they take down deer.

<comment><USER14> I live in North-central NJ and they literally wander down the middle of the road in herds.

<comment><USER12> Where I live, we have a deer problem but houses are too close to hunt. I drive to my folk's place about an hour away to do it. Some towns hire professionals to take some out, but it's expensive. The meat does go to feeding the homeless though. I'd happily pay for the ability to hunt right in my town. It can be done safely.

<comment><USER15> We have way too many deer in our suburban area. It's technically possible to legally hunt in the area, but not practical. The permissions and everything else you need to get are way too onerous. The level of knowledge about the need to manage the deer herd for safety, public health, and deer health is just not there. Every fall the roads are stained with redish brown stains of deer being hit by cars. People get hurt or killed, and their cars get damaged.

Instead, this beneficial activity has been driven underground. We hear the deer being poached at night (when the poachers are using rifles). I imagine the more stealthy poachers are using crossbows.

<comment><USER16> I doubt anyone is regularly poaching with crossbows. Following a blood trail at night _sucks_ , and while it's definitely possible to kill cleanly and humanely with a bow, the deer typically has the ability to run for a few dozen yards at least.

Most poached deer where I am (Arkansas) are taken with small-caliber rifles - mostly .22 LR, but some .22 Mag and .17 HMR. They're still loud but not nearly as loud as a centerfire rifle cartridge. They're also generally extremely accurate and inexpensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It is scary, but at the same time can be managed. Some of the best information at this time comes from a gentleman named Bryan Richards. More info here:

[https://www.themeateater.com/listen/meateater/ep-070-chronic...](https://www.themeateater.com/listen/meateater/ep-070-chronic- wasting-disease)

and

[https://www.themeateater.com/conservation/policy-and- legisla...](https://www.themeateater.com/conservation/policy-and- legislation/three-bills-whitetail-hunters-should-watch)

</comment><comment><USER18> I expect in a few years that map[1] from the article will have to be updated to make the northeast very red. Natural predators are long gone and except for northern New England there is tons of governmental red tape to discourage hunting so deer populations tend to hover around the maximum the environment can support. I expect that since the disease has broken into upstate NY it will quickly move throughout the rest of the region.

[1][https://thecompost.s3.us- west-2.amazonaws.com/newsletters/20...](https://thecompost.s3.us- west-2.amazonaws.com/newsletters/2019-02-25/cwd-map.jpg)

<comment><USER15> Coywolves have just started moving into the suburban and urban east coast areas.

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/coywolves-are- taki...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/coywolves-are-taking-over- eastern-north-america-180957141/)

We've seen a few around. I remember coyotes from when I lived out west and these are quite a bit different.

It'll be interesting what happens as they become more numerous. They are a lot more adaptable and flexible than coyote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> CWD has essentially wiped out the elk populations of SW Colorado. There was an research center in that area dedicated to breeding CWD-resistant elk, but it shut down in 2016.

More info: [https://durangoherald.com/articles/1824](https://durangoherald.com/articles/1824)

</comment><comment><USER20> At least in Wyoming and Colorado, overpopulation due to lack of predators has everything to do with ranchers killing those predators. Conservationists tell us the overpopulation either needs a sharp shooter's bullet to cull the herds, or we need more wolves and therefore wolves need protection from being shot by ranchers. And ranchers pretty thus far almost always win that contest.

What gets my goat is finicky meat eaters who somehow think they're entitled to a) beef and b) inexpensive beef. There's ton of game, in these two states, that eat plants which are basically inedible weeds to humans. Which is another thing that gets my goat, are vegetarians who want to rip out entire ecological systems to plant non-native plants so humans have food. Simple solution for all of our pest problems: eat more indigenous meat!

But then I look at this zombie map and I think, ugh. We've poisoned the well! Congratulations humans! You protected the cattle industry for so long that the native herds are contradicting disease you probably don't want to be eating.

<comment><USER21> I sympathize with a lot of your points, but take heart! People still harvest and eat deer in CWD-infected areas, they just test the deer before eating. If you get an infected deer, you destroy the meat and, I guess, take solace in knowing you removed an infected animal from the landscape.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > For example, prions in an infected deer's feces could bind to soil taken up > by plants, spread to its leaves, then infect another deer that eats the > leaves.

Terrifying. How old is this disease, and why is it only spreading now? Actually, there's not much in the article on the rate at which the infection is spreading - does anyone know more?

<comment><USER23> It is terrifying. For something even more terrifying, check out prion diseases in humans...Fatal Familial Insomnia, for one.

[https://medium.com/@arifakhtar/dying-to-sleep-the-waking- nig...](https://medium.com/@arifakhtar/dying-to-sleep-the-waking-nightmare-of- fatal-familial-insomnia-874126b43c3a)

<comment><USER24> CJD is the more common prion disease in humans and arguably even more terrifying.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creutzfeldt–Jakob_disease](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creutzfeldt–Jakob_disease)

<comment><USER25> Not so fun fact - the medication HCG is derived from human urine and can possibly pass CJD on. There is no warning on the label, and since CJD takes 20-30 years to kill you once infected we don't really know yet if it's a problem or not.

And I took it for years.

<comment><USER26> Somehow I had assumed such things were produced using recombinant DNA, but I guess only one brand does it this way.

I'm kind of mind boggled at the concept of pregnant women selling their urine to medical companies. How does this work?

<comment><USER27> Both Progynon and Emmenin, the first forms of estrogen used (1928-29), were extracted from the urine of pregnant women. The material for Progynon was initially collected in a Berlin's clinic by Shering [1], and the urine needed for Emmenin was presumably sourced through similar channels. [2] mentions how the supply was scarce, as only women in low-income groups were interested in collecting it, and only while other sources of income were not available.

By 1941-1942 they had moved away from human urine to PREgnant MARe urINe, and Premarin was born.

[1] [https://books.google.it/books?id=Z3iTsU6_mHsC&pg=PA119&redir...](https://books.google.it/books?id=Z3iTsU6_mHsC&pg=PA119&redir_esc=y)

[2] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1661006/?page=2](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1661006/?page=2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> We had to shoot these "omg zombie" deer with CWD in our backyard in the 50s, just seems like nobody really measured it or panicked about it back then.

Is CWD more or less prevalent than it was in the past? The article fails to even ask this question as you'd expect from the title, it just sort of weaves some other irrelevant wikipedia info into clickbait hysteria.

<comment><USER18> To actually spread and not just maintain a baseline of X% of the population a prions disease needs to have a certain population density because it is transmitted through contact with bodily fluids of infected individuals.

Deer predators have mostly been eradicated in the contiguous US so that leaves humans and "the rest of nature" to control population density. In some areas (e.g. southwest) the land simply cannot support the density of deer population required for the disease to gain a good foothold in the deer population. In other areas human hunting is what's holding the deer population density down. Hunting has become a lot less popular since the 1950s and 1960s and the available places to do it has also dwindled so once CWD gets in it rapidly expands among the local population. See for example the massive red blotches on the map in the Chicago and DMV areas, places nobody is hunting deer so they're free to breed up to whatever population density the environment can support, a density high enough to permit the spread of a prions disease.

Assuming the current path I would expect to see CWD spread throughout most of the more heavily (deer) populated parts of the US and infect whatever % of the deer population it can given the local population density. There's a lot of untapped potential on the east coast.

<comment><USER29> _In other areas human hunting is what 's holding the deer population density down. Hunting has become a lot less popular since the 1950s and 1960s and the available places to do it has also dwindled so once CWD gets in it rapidly expands among the local population._

In that case, legislation which seems primarily crafted to annoy and alienate gun owners might have the unexpected consequence of increasing the spread of CWD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> My dog likes to roll around in deer excrement (well any poop she can find actually). I would imagine prion shredding is rampant in that stuff, right?

</comment><comment><USER31> >which cause the brain cells of an infected animal to fold improperly and clump together

It causes proteins in the brain to fold improperly and clump together, not brain cells.

</comment><comment><USER32> We need more wolves and less suburbs. Or at least more hunters.

Deer are out of control. They're being chased out out every development around here.

In the midlights, they commute to all the business parks. I guess for the lawns around the office buildings.

There's tons of them, and they don't all look so good. I imagine they're facing trash, exhaust, and fertilizer, all day every day.

We have too many little developments and too few predators.

</comment><comment><USER33> Terrifying. Knowing nothing about this at all, I am curious if insects that feed on blood like ticks or mosquitoes can carry or transmit CWD.

<comment><USER34> Also curious how it is transmitted through vegetation. The article mentions that's how deer spread it to each other, but deer are also constantly raiding human crops as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The "Spiroplasma triggering cascade of prions" theory from Frank Bastian is pretty interesting.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_O._Bastian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_O._Bastian)

<comment><USER36> Hmm, it looks like he is going to drop his institutional affiliation entirely when he moves to New Orleans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> CWD is a big deal here in Wisconsin. From what I've read, one factor in spreading the disease is when people put out salt and feed to attract deer. This causes the deer to congregate together and increase the chance of it spreading from one deer to another. There are kill zones within miles of my house where they're trying to eradicate the entire deer population.

</comment><comment><USER38> That's the scenario for 'A train to Busan'...just saying...[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hKlqRd0X7A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hKlqRd0X7A)

</comment><comment><USER39> I wonder if the increase in cwd is exacerbated by a lack of predation and a decrease in the ability to migrate long distances. Migration by non-fliers is severely constrained these days.

</comment><comment><USER40> Isn't this only communicable if you eat or handle the brains of the infected animals? How does a disease that only attacks the brain wind up in the feces or other excreta?

</comment><comment><USER41> I once ate deer meat in Sweden. Do you know if deer populations in Scandinavia are infected as well? Should I be worried?

<comment><USER42> Did you read the article?

>It's been reported in 24 US states so far, as well as Canada, Norway, Finland, and South Korea.

But to answer your question: No.

0 known human cases, only possible in theory. Read the article for more info ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > cooking temperatures are not nearly high enough to kill prions

Are prions alive in that sense? Can you kill a protein?

<comment><USER43> I've read that sterilizing surgical equipment will not remove human prions from the equipment, so they can be passed on to the next person that is operated on by that equipment. Apparently they are nearly impossible to remove without destroying the equipment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Prion disease is terrifying and probably under-studied and under-prepared- for...

<comment><USER45> It is terrifying certainly but I am not sure about understudied. We have studied them and found it just pretty lacking in countermeasures for deformed proteins - including avoidance because they are hard to detect. The whole field is hard.

Theoretically better protein understanding may allow for lack of better words "antigens" which bind to prions to make something harmless while not acting like prions in themselves but that would be one very big computational space and would call for a vast array to compare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> > _prions in an infected deer 's feces could bind to soil taken up by plants, > spread to its leaves, then infect another deer that eats the leaves_

How persistent are these things in nature? If there is selection pressure, they could be subject—unlike _e.g._ cancer—to evolution.

</comment><comment><USER47> is "zombie deer virus" a new term? I've known about CWD (and CJD, mad cow, and scrapie) for a long time but this is the first time I've heard it referred to as zombie deer virus.</comment>


ANA and JAL Ground Boeing 787 Fleets After Emergency - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-16/ana-s-boeing-787-makes-emergency-landing-amid-battery-indicator.html

<comment><USER2> Not just ANA and JAL, the FAA has grounded all 787s in the US: [http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/16/3884428/faa-grounds-all- bo...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/16/3884428/faa-grounds-all- boeing-787-airplanes-after-second-battery-related-fire)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is disconcerting. I'm pretty close to Everett plant so I see the plain white 787's first test flights (they just finished another one yesterday). For those of us who work on software, even complex distributed apps, the new plane is an unfathomably complex undertaking.

The Seattle Times commenters are a mix of Boeing employees, rational outside observers and angry lunatics.

[http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/reader_feedback/p...](http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/reader_feedback/public/display.php?thread=804762&direction=DESC&column=rating&offset=0#post_4567846)

<comment><USER4> Never read the Seattle Times comments. The angry lunatics outnumber everyone else by a wide margin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> All new planes have their issues. They'll take a few weeks (or hopefully days) to figure out what's ailing it & it'll be back to its beloved skies in no time. I hope Boeing has enough financial reserves to weather the storm of revenues-lost liabilities sure to hit them...& life goes on. I would fly that plane tomorrow if I could. I'm sure the FAA is being extra-careful.

<comment><USER6> Cockpit wiring issues will likely take more than just a few weeks to fix and be re-certified. There are miles and miles of cable in the front of an aircraft, just figuring out what went wrong, engineering a fix, fixing all the planes and getting the fix certified for passenger flights is a fair sized job. Nobody is going to take any chances with stuff like this.

<comment><USER5> Last thing I heard this was a battery issue. Have they already narrowed it down to cockpit wiring or are you just speculating based on your knowledge of aeronautics & place circuitry ?

<comment><USER6> Apologies, this is now outdated, the _first_ time I heard about it there was talk of a cockpit wiring issue, it seems that there is now more information available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What a bunch of classic media hype calling these "disasters," with all the b-roll and graphics striking fear into the paranoid and uneducated. No piece of engineering rolls into production bug-free, ever. What makes for good engineering is how issues are handled and the severity of the problems. There have been zero injuries or deaths, was that mentioned? This pilot brought some sobering common sense; the anchors are fail.

</comment><comment><USER8> Aw, I'm flying (or was) on one of these in just under 2 weeks with JAL. Was really looking forward to seeing how those windows work, and how the overall vibe of the thing is.

Safety first though, I guess.

<comment><USER9> I have traveled on ANA 787 between Narita/Tokyo and Seattle a few times. The planes are very comfortable - humidity and air pressure better than other Boeing planes. Windows are large but okay in blocking light. Windows could use darker shading to block out light during day travel.

As I posted in other thread, while sitting in emergency exit row at window seat, I could feel that the floor in front of the seat was unusually hot. After seeing location of the fire in pictures of JAL's 787, I get the impression that the emergency exit row seat was just above the cargo bay where fire originated. I am glad that ANA 787 I was on didn't catch fire.

Good to see that FAA, ANA, JAL making a decision to ground 787.

<comment><USER8> Yeah I've heard good things from various reviews.

I don't really travel that much, but was going on both an A380 and 787 to Tokyo and back to Australia, so was curious to compare them.

Going by what you said, it's a good thing it was grounded then. I'm surprised UAL haven't grounded theirs too (yet).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks like a good time to short Boeing.

<comment><USER11> Only if you knew the investigation was going to take abnormally long, or if it results in a complete recall and loss of 787. Otherwise the damage from this is going to be priced into your options.</comment></comment>


IT managers can get what they need from the HR department - <AUTHOR> https://www.hpe.com/us/en/insights/articles/how-it-managers-can-get-what-they-need-from-the-hr-department-1902.html <comment><USER2> > Begin by writing the job requisition yourself. You know what you want in the > "perfect" job candidate. Then work with the recruiter to refine the job > listing...

True Hiring managers know -- begin searching for the candidate yourself. Think meetups, conferences, personal network.

Sadly, most HR folks are administrative functionaries who rely on the post & pray method to source potential candidates. Which, seldom yields WHO you need for the job.</comment>


Working with the Cron Jobs syntax - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/working-with-cron-jobs-3d9e893c4361 <comment><USER2> The title is misleading and the content seems a bit pointless. The author doesn't appear to have solved any problems, just created further abstraction from cron itself...</comment>


Ask HN: Problem with finding good Offshore Devs - <AUTHOR>

I'm exploring the market for finding good (Offshore/Nearshore) developers from a service provider perspective. How do you rank who's good? What's your score card? How do you find these people? <comment><USER2> The following is probably going to be unpopular with non-US people on HN, but I realize that it's anecdotal. I hope it's helpful anyway.

I've had first-hand experience with about a dozen off-shore devs, and I've heard about dozens more from friends and clients. Every single one of these experiences has been a nightmare. I don't mean "some of them were pretty bad". I mean that 100% of them were disasters.

There are many contributing factors to these problems:

1\. Dev shops (in all countries) lie about how good/experienced their developers are

2\. It's very hard to judge code quality, especially as the code is being written

3\. Hourly contracts give companies an incentive to cheat (taking longer to do things, billing for things they didn't really do, etc.)

4\. It's almost impossible to hold a company accountable for bad dev work

Every time I've managed an off-shore team, I've caught them lying and writing criminally terrible code. And these aren't disreputable, no-name companies. The CEO of Rack Space had personally recommended a company to us, in one instance. They were based in Wisconsin and had US-based account execs, but the devs were in India.

I've had many more experiences of coming onto a project after an off-shore team has failed to deliver. In every case, the code had barely been worked on or had to be scrapped entirely. Those situations often result in lawsuits.

Not only have I never had a good off-shore experience, I've never even heard of one. In the circles of businesses that I interact with (pre-revenue startups), "some off-shore developers did it" is usually a sneering implication that the work was terrible.

So I assume you want to use off-shore developers because they're cheaper. I'd submit to you that they may actually be much more expensive. Paying someone great to work for 100 hours is a lot cheaper than paying 2 terrible people to work for 100 hours each, especially in the long-run where some amount technical debt is a guarantee.

The ability to sue in a US court is also incredibly valuable, although out of the many lawsuits I've heard about, none had contracts that were clear enough to result in a quick recovery of costs. (That's a whole other rant: having thorough contracts!)

<comment><AUTHOR> Very valuable, much appreciate your perspective!

Have you found any other regions with talent more reliable than India-- say Ukraine, Croatia, Colombia?

<comment><USER2> I've worked with people from India, Ukraine, Croatia, the Philippines, Romania, and Poland.

The cultures differ wildly between those places. The Romanians I worked with, for example, were very non-confrontational and agreeable to a fault. That made it really pleasant to work with them, but it also screwed us over many times because they wouldn't admit that they were going to miss a deadline or that they disagreed about something important.

The quality of work also differed. On the low end of the quality spectrum, the work was so bad that it was actually laughable. I wondered how someone could write code that bad without trying.

On the high end of the spectrum, the code was organized semi-logically into objects, but without any consistency or rationale. It wasn't much better than spaghetti code, and it was still utterly unusable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great stuff, thanks again!

Just one more question (if I may)-- How do you scorecard these guys? If I find someone, who looks good on paper, comes across well during a Skype interview-- is there anything you look for, probing questions? Or can you only know by giving them a 2-4 week trial run?

<comment><USER2> I've never found a reliable way to identify a good developer vs a bad one.

At an individual level, you ideally want someone who has written an entire application many times. With shops, you often get junior guys/girls who have only written modules to fit into other people's architecture.

How to find, afford, hire, and retain tech talent is probably the hardest and most common problem for startups, and there's nothing close to a repeatable, universal solution.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, Thanks! :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rich Americans are trying to buy their own personal ventilators - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-rich-in-us-trying-to-buy-their-own-ventilators-2020-3 <comment><USER2> I'm working on an emergency ventilator project with an anesthesiologist friend of mind, as I'm sure a lot of people are right now.

Being perfectly honest, if I was rich, I'd seek to buy an AED, a portable ventilator, an O2 concentrator, and other life-sustaining equipment for every place I stayed at. One difference is I'd be willing to wait until after the fat part of this pandemic passes.

Because I'm not rich (and not that much of an AH), I've chosen to just buy a pulse-ox, a thermometer, some vitamins, and OTC meds and if I get a serious case, will turn up into the public healthcare system.

<comment><USER3> Oxygen concentrators and AEDs are relatively inexpensive and common, fwiw.

It's really the ventilator that's the costly bit (and these days the bottleneck); those things are quite expensive as they are regulated medical devices (AEDs are too but they are cheaper for some reason).

I don't know that having one at home is ideal unless you are also rich enough to have someone on staff to provide medical treatment as well.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Seems like rich Americans and rich Russians have something in common:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22651004](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22651004)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is hilarious. Will they also buy their own intensive care doctor to intubate them?

<comment><USER5> Quite likely they'll staff an entire medical unit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My dad died from multiple strokes this Feb. When he was transported to another hospital for a brain surgery he was intubated. A couple of days later, the ICU doctor came and told us to prepare to fulfill his wishes. They said to have him intubated again would cause a great pain for him. Also, chest compress would be lots of pain. We did let my dad go in peace.

Here I am, wondering if people know what it feels like to be intubated? It is not something you can do off and on when you feel like it. There was a team of anesthesiologists there to seduce my dad when they shoved the tube in his wind pipe.

<comment><USER7> This is being completely ignored everywhere. The bottleneck is on medical professionals, not hardware

I'm sorry for your loss.

PS: You mean "sedate", not seduce.

<comment><USER6> Lol: yes, it's "sedated".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is the jet-set version of ordinary people buying big-packs of face masks. Despicable, but entirely expectable.

I hope the manufacturers keep their stance of not selling to individuals. Though it would surprise me if some billionaires weren't already busy setting up fake "medical" companies as a means to buy survival gear and recruit standby medical personnel for their dozens of mansions.

</comment><comment><USER9> Unless you are in a fantastic shape buying a ventilator is fool's gold. Life is not "Chicago Med" or "Resident" \- needing a ventilator means you are probably screwed.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8404197](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8404197)

The survival rate is 30% at a 1 year mark.

</comment><comment><USER10> They'd best make sure their staff - particularly bodyguards - don't lose a loved one to a lack of ventilator access.

</comment><comment><USER11> #pitchforks</comment>


4M gmail addresses with passwords leaked (large html file, 150megs) - <AUTHOR> https://pred.me/gmail.html <comment><USER2> This is from 2014 and likely not a Google hack or leak but a subset of credentials revealed by hacks or leaks from other sites.

[https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail/4q3AYMi...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail/4q3AYMiUEsk) and [https://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1423764](https://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1423764) refer to this link.

Edit to add: [https://haveibeenpwned.com/PwnedWebsites#BTSec](https://haveibeenpwned.com/PwnedWebsites#BTSec)

<comment><USER3> Indeed... My email is listed here, but it shows "password" as its password, which is completely false.

I only use "password" in random websites that force me to register (but that I'll never visit again).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Caution, this is a link to the actual emails.

<comment><USER5> As a 150MB HTML file. Good luck, mobile users.

<comment><USER6> Did not see that coming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I looked at the paste file. It had my gmail address (which is mostly what I use for public stuff) but the password came from only one place: travel.travelocity.com; however that user database is long gone as Travelocity is now just a brand of Expedia so that old account no longer exists. Of course I don't reuse passwords so it's not an issue. I wonder how it got there.

</comment><comment><USER8> Probably passwords from other sites, not gmail. Lists my email next to a password I've never used on gmail, or any other important site.

</comment><comment><USER9> I give this dump 12 more minutes until someone at Google uploads it to an internal tool to invalidate all of the emails listed.

<comment><USER10> Unfortunately, I wouldn't be shocked if someone out there had a tool that can escalate this exploit just as quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> fake, checked 3 gmails. not only are the passwords wrong, they are random garbage that was never used with those accounts

<comment><USER12> One returned me the error "You changed your password 5 months ago"

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Fascinating. Any thoughts as to how this came about?

<comment><USER5> I think this is the "bitcoin gmail dump". My email is listed here, but it has a throwaway password that I've never used as my gmail password.

[https://haveibeenpwned.com/PwnedWebsites#BTSec](https://haveibeenpwned.com/PwnedWebsites#BTSec)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Mirror?

</comment><comment><USER15> Can anyone see if my name is in there?

<comment><USER16> I'm sure it'll get added to haveibeenpwned.com fairly quickly. That said I'm trying to grab it for the same reason. If your email is in your HN profile I'll give it a check.

<comment><USER5> Pretty sure it's already there, looks like [https://haveibeenpwned.com/PwnedWebsites#BTSec](https://haveibeenpwned.com/PwnedWebsites#BTSec)

<comment><USER16> Oh nice, I missed it in there. Sometimes it takes an hour or so before I see new ones in there.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to create a natural baseline in CSS - <AUTHOR> http://joecritchley.svbtle.com/bring-back-the-baseline

<comment><USER2> very cool,

thanks!</comment>


Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot - <AUTHOR> http://geekchick77.dreamwidth.org/472.html <comment><USER2> _"It has been fascinating to watch the ongoing reactions. There have been complaints that we have too many bots in the channel now. There have been complaints about it spamming the channel. There were several "Make them shut up!" responses. These are not reactions I have seen the other bots elicit, certainly not with such intensity. One person even complained about the name being too long, though to his credit he realized right after he said that that several other people in the channel also have very long handles. To me, all of this seems like typical geek behaviour: something is making them uncomfortable, and so they attack it on "rational" grounds. Most likely, they aren't even aware of the gut reaction fueling their logic."_

This is excellently picked out: most of the disagreements over the term "sexism" hinge around this point. Stuff that doesn't bother you (that another poster here describes as being "tuned-out"), as a man, because your gender plays no part in your job, is experienced differently by your female colleagues, because their gender does. Their experience of seeing "that's what SHE said" (and the death by a thousand cuts of other gender policing) is just as distracting and annoying as the "that's what she really said" bot. If your reaction to this post is "the first one seems harmless but the second is really overstepping the line", please take a few minutes to consider how you would feel if everyone's reaction to that (and everything else you objected to) was "just lighten up".

<comment><USER3> What I find the most fascinating is that she did everything exactly right and people still feel like she did something wrong.

She didn't go to her supervisor and she didn't turn it into a drama. Instead she fought the problem in its own arena by making a IRC-bot to combat the problem, and not only that: _the IRC-bot is only selectively used in the exact situation that is seen as problematic and it does so by writing enlightening quotes!_ In mathematical terms: the function has the exact same range and its value is consistently higher in the absolute majority of all cases.

I honestly can't think of a better way to tackle this particular problem, and yet there's all this criticism to her approach. Really? What more do you want her to do? Her quote at the end of the article rings even more true after reading some comments here:

 _To me, all of this seems like typical geek behaviour: something is making them uncomfortable, and so they attack it on "rational" grounds. Most likely, they aren't even aware of the gut reaction fueling their logic. Interestingly, the intensity of emotion seemed to carry over into subsequent discussions, including one about women in the Python community._

<comment><USER4> _Really? What do you want?_

We want women to shut up and stop telling us that there's a problem with how we behave, because it's rude to tell people there's something innately wrong with their behavior. Also it takes so much time and effort on our parts to try and behave like better people that it hardly seems like we should bother.

The problem, for many people, is not that the issue is being handled indelicately. It's that the issue is being brought up at all. Aren't there already systems that are supposed to handle discrimination, in private, so that we don't have to witness it being discussed firsthand? Why are people so self-centered that they have to make every innocent joke about _politics_ or _gender_ or _society_? I just thought it was funny that Dave said something that sounds like sex talk, and wanted all of you to know! And don't you know that men are discriminated against just as much as women?

As you can see I've got perfectly _rational_ explanations for why I'm so irritated by women calling out sexist behaviors. I want them to stop calling things sexist so that I can stop worrying about their feelings.

<comment><USER5> LOL - this is my fav comment on this thread. I feel like I have seen a shift in the comments on women in tech related articles on HN over the past few weeks. 2 weeks ago I had a really hard time reading the comments because they seemed either hate-filled or ignorant (like the comment above is mocking) but I feel like lately the discussion has become more intelligent. Or is that just wishful thinking on my part?

<comment><USER4> > I feel like lately the discussion has become more intelligent. Or is that > just wishful thinking on my part?

Knock on wood. (THAT'S WHAT SHE SAoh god damn)

<comment><USER6> How is it okay for you to respond to every comment in this thread decrying men for being unaware of the horrifying effect these comments have on women, and also make the exact same joke that caused the original complaint?

<comment><USER7> That's not the same joke. The interruption and reaction makes it a metajoke.

<comment><USER6> Like most people caught out doing something wrong, now you are trying to make "rational" arguments against it.

<comment><USER8> Er, the poster who replied to you (wpietri) is a different account from the one you replied to (unalone).

Also, now you're engaging in vacuous sophistry - you've made an assertion of wrongdoing without backing it up, and yet neither of them could reply here to defend themselves without seeming to dig deeper into the hole you insist they're in, because "oh look more 'rational' arguments".

<comment><USER9> I think the technical term for this is a "fully general counterargument": one that can argue equally well for true and false ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What a great idea.

I find it's too easy to be ignorant of injustices when you see yourself as principled and everyone else as ignorant brutes. I've been guilty of this. It's the kind of thinking that leads you to conclude that TWS-like bots are just a bit of light-hearted humor. It's the kind of thinking that allows sexism to fly under your radar. You don't participate because you want to live in a world where sexism doesn't exist. It's a noble ideal but it is ignorant.

Truth is that even what you _don't_ say has an impact on the people around you. If other people make sexist jokes at the office and you don't say anything about it (especially if it actually does bother you) then you're encouraging the people making sexist jokes.

I admire the author for taking a stand. And such a clever way to do it too.

</comment><comment><USER11> So how can I write a bot to fight the sexism in Microsoft's TV ads? You know the ones... where the husband is the bumbling idiot and the wife is the smart capable one who shuts down his plea to play golf on Sundays.

I would love to set that bot loose on all TV shows and ads. So often, a flipped situation would cause outrage of being sexist, whereas if the man is put down, it's "funny."

It really bothers me, especially with the "mancession" still going on (outside of IT) and widespread anti-male laws (in family court and other places).

<comment><USER12> Yes, ads (etc.) that portray people as bad based on their gender are wrong. However men are still in an advantageous position.

 _widespread anti-male laws_

They are small in number compared to the widespread anti-female laws and customs.

<comment><USER11> Can you give an example? In almost all states, if the wife gets pregnant by another man, the man is still on the hook for child support for the next 18+ years... even if she divorces him and marries her lover.

I can't think of an equivalent anti-female law with such devastating long-term impact on the woman.

I know this message might be off tangent for the HN board. But if we're discussing anti-female sexist culture and try to erase every incident of women being treated unfairly even in the slightest way, I think it should be allowed to point out that in today's culture, men are also often treated extremely unfairly... and you don't see scores of women jumping to their defense (like the men did in the "Lighten up" thread).

<comment><USER13> Your argument says "since (unfair child support laws) then (men treated unfairly) thus not(sexist anti-women culture)"

The problem with your argument is that you are not espousing a widely held belief about child support laws being "unfair to men." Thus, a discussion about your argument is likely to devolve into long exchanges about children's rights and anecdotes about ridiculous edge case judgments on both sides.

Which is fine, but I think it would be two steps removed from what you're trying to establish, namely that the unfair sexism is somehow balanced. If you're going to construct an argument of the form A -> B -> C, I suggest you pick an "A" that is beyond dispute so we can focus on the validity of A -> B and B -> C.

<comment><USER11> I actually think that "A" is beyond dispute. Your married partner cheats on you, divorces you, marries the biological father of the child, and you are still on the hook for child support? I can't imagine someone NOT thinking with every moral fiber of their being that this is wrong.

Regardless, I think my point is already self-evident in the answers. Which is: we accept without second thought that (A) our society is sexist and women are oppressed and objectified. So A -> B -> C: when a woman claims sexism, we all have to focus on eradicating that sexism immediately (i.e. reign men in). No thought is given to the possibility that the pendulum has possibly already swung too much in the opposite direction, and it is actually the men who are treated unfairly in most cases whenever gender issues come up. Just see e.g. the topic on reddit's front page this morning "I called the cops on my GF after an argument we had got violent, the cops come and arrest ME".

I think any discussion that is about treating both genders equally and fairly that does not take into account current anti-male inequality misses the point. We need to question ALL social conditioning to reach a point where everyone is treated fairly.

<comment><USER14> Is it really the case that someone has to pay child support for a child that is proven to be not theirs?

I did some superficial googling and found the case of one man who has to pay child support even though a DNA test proved he is not the father, because he missed all the deadlines for challenging the ruling. That seems like an unfortunate edge case to me, not some general pattern one has to be worried about.

I think you might be mistaken about the legal situation, but I'm more than happy to be proven wrong.

<comment><USER15> It depends on your definition of "not theirs". The law doesn't look at biology only. (Same gender parents, adoptive parents, grandparents as primary caregivers, etc).

If you accept a child as your own for several years, the law is likely to look at them as yours regardless of DNA. I think that in the majority of cases, this probably works out for the better.

<comment><USER14> Well, that makes perfect sense. I do not understand what's "anti-male" about it.

When it comes to child support, who matters first and foremost is the child. That's who it's all about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow. I would argue that you have quite a bit more than "relatively few moments of 'brogrammer' culture" there. A TWSS bot? I can't imagine that ever being okay on any dev team I've ever worked on, including my present team which includes no women. Good on you for fighting back in a way which really speaks to those who needed to hear it most.

</comment><comment><USER17> sex·ist [sek-sist] adjective 1\. pertaining to, involving, or fostering sexism: a sexist remark; sexist advertising.

sex·ism [sek-siz-uhm] noun 1\. attitudes or behavior based on traditional stereotypes of sexual roles. 2\. discrimination or devaluation based on a person's sex, as in restricted job opportunities; especially, such discrimination directed against women.

I don't think the bot is exactly sexist. It's stupid, immature, and beats a dead horse, but actually sexist?

While you should probably have a talk with the _supervisor_ , not the general office, about this issue, maybe polluting the chat space with yet another stupid bot isn't the greatest idea? "Annoying" your coworkers into compliance isn't a good strategy, as it will grow resentment towards you and mask the real problem.

<comment><USER4> > 1\. attitudes or behavior based on traditional stereotypes of sexual roles > [...] devaluation based on a person's sex

Here're the categories you could argue the bot falls into. The point of the "that's what she said" is to point out when phrases sound like something a woman might have said in bed or during some sort of sexual activity, furthering the already _staggeringly_ vast perception our society has of women as primarily sexual objects. It's not what I'd call "grossly" sexist, but if somebody's objecting to it, she absolutely has a reason to feel uncomfortable about it.

I disagree that the supervisor is necessary here. First off, that's making an appeal to authority and such appeals can be pretty irritating; second off, that's trying to solve the problem _privately_ rather than in public space. By making this bot, Jessamyn says that her voice is as valuable as anybody else's voice. If somebody else wants to make a bot that makes crude sex jokes, she can make a bot that quotes notable women. And rather than making a bot that's irritating or one-note, it sounds like she made a bot that has a variety of colorful responses, to the point where one of her coworkers told her how much he appreciates it.

Remember that sexism is about the reinforcement of cultural stereotypes, rather than being just about gross bigotry or discrimination. What's sexist is that people assume, in a workplace, that jokes about what women say in bed are acceptable. Those jokes make me a little uncomfortable even in a casual environment; it's kind of gross that people are okay with them at work. The sexism isn't one person consciously thinking "Oh man let's women the butt of jokes about sex!", it's that women-as-sex-objects is such a pervasive trope that we _don't_ notice it unless somebody like Jessamyn points it out to us.

<comment><USER18> > jokes about what women say in bed are acceptable

If they're actually funny (most of the "That's what she said" jokes are not), why not?

I can also totally imagine the following situation:

Coworker: Did I come too early? Another coworker: That's what he said!

Come to think of it, men are also under a lot of pressure in bed, so such jokes are just as in/appropriate as jokes about women in bed.

<comment><USER4> > If they're actually funny (most of the "That's what she said" jokes are > not), why not?

It depends on the audience. I think that sexist jokes are in as poor taste in a workplace as racist jokes would be. I'd also be against black jokes or Mexican jokes or Jewish jokes or jokes about Catholic pedophilia. Even if the extent of the joke was something like "I'm not going to the pub with you all, I'm such a Jew", I'd feel uncomfortable; if somebody wrote a bot that was _designed_ to repeatedly make those jokes, I'd be upset.

As Jessamyn says:

> Now, I admit to having made this joke myself, at times. Once in a while, I > even find it funny. What I don't find funny is a bot we have in our general > IRC channel at work, that has some basic AI devoted to determining when to > interject TWSS into the conversation.

And the joke is not that women say funny things while in bed. The joke is, "Oh, that thing you just said reminded me of fucking a woman." It's funny in high school when everybody's a virgin, and I've found that as my college friends have gotten themselves laid, it's ceased to become very amusing. The same way I haven't heard a black or Mexican joke in a few years that managed to rise above its racism to become even remotely amusing.

Jokes about people having sex can be funny; "that's what she said" will always be a joke the brunt of which is the faceless fuck-object woman. Maybe that's fine in moderation, especially if "that's what he said" jokes are mixed in, but I think we all agree that if somebody's feeling upset by the jokes, it's not a huge loss to our comedic palettes to have to find another source of humor, right? We're all capable of rising beyond that?

<comment><USER19> And in the end there will be no jokes.

      > I think we all agree that if somebody's feeling upset by
      > the jokes, it's not a huge loss to our comedic palettes
      > to have to find another source of humor, right?

No. I strongly strongly disagree. I don't want a thermal dead of society, I don't want knee-jerk reaction to anything I say because I just mentioned some forbidden word, no matter with what intention and what context. We are slipping toward the concept thought-crime, and I surely don't want what. Neither do I want to live in the world where all must pretend, that genders don't exist.

You ar offended but what I say? To quote Stephen Fry: "So fucking what?".

To think that it is impossible to tell and be entertained by non-PC jokes is as moronic as thinking that you cannot write (or enjoy) crime fiction without being a murderer.

<comment><USER4> > To quote Stephen Fry: "So fucking what?".

Fry was saying that in response to people who were offended by his being gay. I hope you find at least a little humor in the fact that you've taken a quote from a man trying to _fight_ bigotry and used it to _defend_ bigotry? No?

It's not thought-crime to say, "Hey, women are people too, and women are way more interesting when they're treated like people, not like sex toys." It's not gender-invisibility to say that there's more to a woman than her vagina, or even that there are _funnier things about a vagina than your bragging about being in it._ It's not political correctness to say, "When the things you say make women – not just a single anecdotal woman, but women plural, _many_ women – uncomfortable, then probably you can find a better way to get laughs than through their uncomfortableness."

Humor is at its finest when it's used to prod those in a position of power. Satire, farce, bawdiness have all been used as tools to make the oppressed in society feel better about themselves, to make people who don't notice oppression realize that it's there, but to laugh at their own uncomfortableness. Humor's at its lowest when it's used to kick people who're already down. When it's used not to help humanity rise above itself, but to remind the lowly of their lowliness.

The great comedian Louis CK, of whom you've doubtless heard, has a routine where he goes after white people who get pissy about not being allowed to say the word "nigger". Like, it's racist that black people can use it, but not white people. And his response is: Dude, does it really matter that fucking much to you that you don't get to use a word? Is your being asked not to say "nigger" really as unjust as the fact that, fifty years after the Civil Rights Movement, we still have to have a conversation about why a word associated with lynchings and segregation is maybe not a word to be used lightly?

After decades of women fighting for equality, we still live in a society whose pop culture revolves around the sexualization and objectification of women. Where women make 81 cents to every man's dollar (source: narrowthegapp.com, made by Hacker News's favorite Gina Trapini). Where our government is primarily male, and its two highest positions have never been occupied by a woman. Where these male-dominated governments try to pass laws that deny women control over their own bodies. Where nearly every Fortune 500 company is headed by a man. Women have it better now than they had it, say, a hundred years ago, but that's not saying fucking much.

Do you really care so much about "that's what she said" that this is where you feel like making a stand? Buddy, it's a stupid joke, it exists only to make men feel manly for bragging about their penis, and it's not even very funny. Want funny? Watch Bridesmaids. There's a hilarious movie written by and starring some very funny women. They even make jokes about sex and vaginas! OMG so un-PC!

George Carlin once said, "Have you noticed that most of the women who are against abortion are women you wouldn't want to fuck in the first place?" I'm going to paraphrase him: Have you noticed that most of the people who defend idiotic sexist jokes are people who aren't actually funny?

<comment><USER20> While I wholly agree with 95% of your post, especially your liberal use of comedians as references, I think the whole basis of this "that's what she said" is grossly misunderstood by those opposing it. It's a phrase that highlights innocent phrases that could have a sexual meaning. Generally, they would be something a woman could say, however I've heard many a "that's what he said" as well. It's a stupid, immature joke that I'm shocked would be propagated by anyone over 17 but let's not ascribe some deep Freudian meaning to something a 15 year old came up with.

<comment><USER4> Oh definitely! It's a silly grade-school joke. Which is one of the reasons, I think, why this conversation is so difficult: nobody's thinking "Let me go out and reinforce the patriarchy", twirling their evil mustaches, they're just making a silly joke that incidentally revolves around treating women like objects, TOTALLY UNINTENTIONALLY. But that doesn't mean it doesn't have an effect on society.

Part of my undergraduate thesis, which I'm currently working on, revolves around this idea that when systems break, it's rarely due to anything malicious. It's because life is really weird and complicated and it's hard to design bug-free social structures. But that's why we have to be aware that such bugs exist, and develop ways to fix them when they pop up.

<comment><USER20> Ah I wasn't aware the effect was so pronounced, although I can definitely see how that would happen. Out of curiosity, what's the consensus on how an overtly sexist or racist joke told among friends in a non-serious way affects social dynamics? I'm sure we're all familiar with this type of humor and I would hope that the joke would serve to make fun of the stereotype and not reinforce it but I'm not sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Huh, it had never occurred to me that some women would be offended by that joke. In my mind, it was sometimes somewhat amusing because it turns the statement your friend just made into one about a penis.

I was going to say that now I'll be on the lookout for statement about clams, things that are wet, and so on, in order to bust out a TWHS, but it seems to me that it could be construed as just as offensive to women, because again it reinforces the idea, apparently, that men just think of women as sexual objects. Lose-lose.

Personally, I don't think either TWSS/TWHS is "sexist", but they're certainly not appropriate for a work environment.

<comment><USER22> "omg i'm offended ur heteronormative comment its fucking disgusting take down now"

Seriously, after seeing Basho Troll raise such hell last week, I've been quite unsympathetic to anyone who might seem like they're working themselves up to win 15 minutes of fame from the PC flash mob.

But this bot is an _awesome hack_ , and exactly the kind of thing people need to do to empower themselves in the face of quiescent low-level offensiveness. It fights the battle in the lighthearted realm of wits, and like all games of wit, whomever caves to forceful methods (say crying to management about too many bots) loses by default.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have noticed an interesting double standard on HN: while working in porn is perfectly fine, saying TWSS jokes is sexist because it objectivizes women as sexual objects.

<comment><USER2> There's a lot of disagreement as to whether porn is "anti-feminist". The school of thought that says it isn't stresses the importance of female agency (that it's up to the porn actors to decide where they work). I don't see any agency in appearing in a "that's what she said" joke, so I'm afraid I don't see the double standard.

<comment><USER19> As if there is agreement that "sexist" jokes (or people telling them) are antifeminist.

<comment><USER24> Among feminists there is. Heck, there's science: "exposure to sexist humor can lead to toleration of hostile feelings and discrimination against women" [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071106083038.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071106083038.htm)

The only people trying to argue "lighten up" are anti-feminists.

<comment><USER8> See, that link should be nearer the top of this thread. That's food for thought right there.

On the other hand, _"The only people trying to argue "lighten up" are anti- feminists"_ is a nasty false generalisation -- it ignores apath-feminists (damn, that doesn't work nearly as well as 'apatheists'); those who are thinking "can't we all just get along?", with absolutely no motive to stymie feminism; those who've never done the research, who think feminism's all well- and-good, but tell themselves they're too busy worrying about other things; exactly the sort of people who would find that article insightful, and who might be pushed toward feminism by it.

I fear you risk scaring them off by lumping them in with 'anti-feminists' and its implications of misogyny, and may taint that link by association.

<comment><USER24> The trouble is that the default setting, the do-nothing, don't-care follow- the-norm setting, is anti-feminist. It's the "double standard" in dating. It's women as decoration. It's compulsory sexuality. It's misogynist porn. And, as here, it's sexist jokes. This is why feminism says we live in a patriarchy still.

<comment><USER8> I see where you're coming from, and agree wholly, when I put a feminist hat on. The thing is, when I then put an 'indiffeminist' (thanks zem) hat on, I feel like you're throwing insults, saying "Oh, you're not a feminist activist? Then you're a misogynist pig."

I think it boils down to the technical meaning in feminist theory of 'anti- feminist' (anything that holds back feminism) not really matching up with what the layperson seeing the word for the first time would take it to mean -- 'anti-feminist' intuitively sounds like it only applies to active, concious opposition to the ideals of feminism; misogyny, denial of female autonomy, Rush Limbaugh, that kinda thing. Laypeople may not think to also consider apathy that unwittingly enables the sexist status quo as part of anti- feminism.

I'm definitely not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying you risk alienating your target audience by... well, to be flippant, by using big fancy words they may not understand ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What a BRILLIANT social hack. Jessamyn Smith, I am thoroughly impressed.

<comment><USER7> Absolutely. It's also a fantastic resume piece. Two of the things I look for in a resume are a) contributions to an open source project, and b) ability to take a problem and solve it from beginning to end. As a bonus, she's clearly aware of workplace culture and committed to making it better. All good signs, especially for the startup context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think this would never happen where I live. Honestly this seems like its the same thing as you guys in the US not being able to say merry christmas because it might offend someone. What's so wrong with being offended anyway? [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHMoDt3nSHs&t=3m30s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHMoDt3nSHs&t=3m30s)

I think people over there just take everything to seriously.

<comment><USER27> <http://therealkatie.net/blog/2012/mar/21/lighten-up/>

Lighten up, I didn't mean it, I didn't intend to upset you, so it must be ok!

<comment><USER26> What I said is that where I live its not like this. Girls wouldn't make a fuss about this, and would probably make more sexual jokes then guys actually. So yes maybe in comparison you guys need to lighten up as a society or something.

<comment><USER28> Making/enjoying sexual jokes in the right context and finding other sexual jokes sexist are not mutually exclusive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Update: The creators of the TWSS bot at work volunteered to take it down a few days after my original blog post went up. It is no longer in the channel. Many people seem to have missed that some of my coworkers didn't like TWSS, either, and many of them thought the TWSRS bot was great.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is tangential to the discussion, but as an obtuse non-American I'm glad to have the phrase in question explained to me (you wouldn't believe I have actually spent some time in the US). The UK equivalant is "as the actress said to the bishop", which combines a Cromwellian suspicion of the immorality of the theatre with the implication of the hypocrisy of the clergy. Is it any better, though? I'm sure the bot could be adjusted to come back with quotes from actresses.

<comment><USER2> I thought about this earlier today, and I think it _is_ less sexist, because we no longer have the same stereotypes of actresses--it's not an invitation to lazy thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think this issue is obviously on a per-company basis. We have a light- hearted attitude towards TWSS jokes here in the office because the female members are as just as bad as any one of the males. We also do Thats What He Said.

Jessamyn was obviously uncomfortable, and that's when it should have stopped. Without question. I don't think her gender was a deciding factor in that, more so sensibilities.

I appreciate her pro-active stance too. Rather than complaining she tried to beat them at their own game, though I'm not sure it'd help her in the long run. I think it'd piss the rest off - but saying that, is there any way around it? They obviously have not given her the respect she asked for when she told them it was offending her.

<comment><USER32> She definitely did the right thing by not complaining to management but a startup is not a suit company and therefore there are things that go on there that would not have been accepted in a suit company.

There are plenty of employees who like their company that way and if she didn't she is not really suited for the company culture. She can (and should) seek employment elsewhere. She will be better of there.

Finally she didn't beat them at their own game. Yes she wrote a bot, but it takes a bit more cleverness to match phrases that to simply reply to a string that is going to be the only thing that bot ever quotes.

Too bad too, since she could have made her bot do something that would have been impressive, and perhaps convince others that the bot was sexist by calculating how often the joke was mad at the expense of a male ('it is small and hard to see') versus at the female. That bot would have been impressive and it would have been a much greater hack.

<comment><USER7> Hi! Startup cofounder here. Working in and with startups since Web 0.8. I see you're a student, so I want to take the time to be clear:

Suppose you worked at my startup. Suppose further that you suggested to one of your colleagues, as you did now, that they quit because they weren't inclined to put up with what they saw as a hostile work environment. You know who would be gone? You.

Startups are a team sport. We don't require suits, because how somebody dresses won't change the quality of the product. However, driving off perfectly good people because they're different will definitely change the product. The same applies for a culture where people don't feel respected, or aren't encouraged to fix the problems they see.

<comment><USER32> I see that I need to update my bio...

The reason I am so pissed is that I work in a company where we do things and make jokes that would get you kicked out the door in most suit companies and everybody enjoys it -- including the girls (who are often the best) -- and yes there is the guy who doesn't find it funny to change his screen, so we don't. To him. If he finds it obnoxious that we make those jokes with others, he can deal with it or leave.

And yet, if somebody where to join us who would get annoyed working there do you suggest the rest of us should leave?

I wouldn't make the joke I did in a company that didn't appreciate it but I wouldn't stand for it being change just to fit a few people either.

<comment><USER25> Since everyone in your company enjoys this attitude, it's nothing but good, clean fun (or good dirty fun, depending on the color of the joke).

But someday you may hire someone who, as it turns out, does not appreciate the jokes. Or perhaps, like Jessamyn, enjoys the jokes sometimes but feels that they are overdone to the point of being irritating.

I would not advice you to tell this person "If [you] find it obnoxious [... you can] deal with it or leave." Because in the US (I can't speak for other places) that is illegal. If this sort of behavior is pervasive it is said to "create a hostile (or offensive) work environment", and if someone is fired (or effectively forced to leave) because they do not enjoy the behavior then they are well within their rights to sue your company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> _There were several "Make them shut up!" responses._

May I introduce the gentlemen to the glorious _/ignore twsrs_ command.

<comment><USER34> _gentlemen_

Also women. And small fuzzy creatures from Alpha Centauri.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> She handled it very well.

TWSS is funny only as a reference to its use in The Office, where it is said by a clueless sexist imbecile of a boss, always inappropriately. So its use was a sort of in joke between Office fans, and said not seriously. Using it as an actual funny joke, without intent as an Office fan in-joke (which is only funny a few times) is kind of clueless, and it is worthwhile to question it.

Using it as an invitation to create an automated system that educates people to women's contributions to the arts and sciences is pure genius. Those at her place of employment who do not respect her solution are simply clueless and are deserving only of pity.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm struggling to come up with an answer to this question: Has technology ever solved issues with social etiquette?

<comment><USER37> Yes. An example was posted here in the last few weeks - there's a startup whose name I can't remember that plans meetups of three men and three women. They had a serious problem with cancellations, which was solved by requiring the canceller to record a voicemail to be played to the other people. Cancellations fell off 80% or more. (I'm sorry, I can't remember more specifics - anyone have the link?)

<comment><USER38> Grouper?

([http://blog.joingrouper.com/intro-to-social-hacking-how- we-l...](http://blog.joingrouper.com/intro-to-social-hacking-how-we-lowered- our-ca))

(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3695748>)

<comment><USER37> Yes, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The TWSS bot is an interesting application of machine learning. However, it was a mistake to install it on the company's IRC channel, and the Smith was justified in asking for an irrelevant bot which she found offensive to be removed.

On the other hand, writing a bot which responds with feminist quotes is just as ridiculous and passive aggressive.

The real answer here is for management to step in, exercise some authority, and remove both bots.

</comment><comment><USER40> One potential reason the guys in the channel get irritated with it, apart from them being actually sexist and therefore uncomfortable/guilty, is that your starting assumption that they WERE sexist was wrong.

To have a preachy bot post nominally inspirational quotes from women, with the ostensible goal of demonstrating with child-like simplicity that women are people too, would get on my nerves for two immediate reasons:

1) I get it, I get it! How many cliches do I have to scroll past before we reach mission accomplished?

2) Someone really thinks I'm stupid.

It's propaganda, but worse than that, it's propaganda with an assumed audience of evildoers to thwart -- and I'm included.

I get the frustration with the male-centric dev culture and I'd fight back on that for sure, but this kind of holier-than-thou brute force attack levels a possibly undeserved accusation at everyone forced to read it, and it also flouts some of the most basic aspects of psychology in its strategy.

<comment><USER41> > _I get it, I get it! How many cliches do I have to scroll past before we > reach mission accomplished?_

I don't know, you tell me? If you are objecting to the OP's bot but not to the original TWSS bot, it sounds like the mission hasn't been accomplished.

> _your starting assumption that they WERE sexist was wrong._

You sure about that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> "I pointed out that it's trivially easy to have the bot not say anything: don't say TWSS"

That's the best part right there. Perfect tit-for-tat.

</comment><comment><USER43> "something is making them uncomfortable, and so they attack it on "rational" grounds"

I don't think this is confined to just geek behaviour -- in my experience, it is typical _human_ behaviour.

</comment><comment><USER44> Great post! A couple critiques though:

      > Since the IRC channels I am normally in use SSL, I
      > had to set up my own channel on a public IRC server
      > for testing. It took a while to get the settings
      > right, but finally I succeeded!

This part was a little confusing because it wasn't mentioned until Step 3 that LogBot didn't have SSL support.

      > There have been complaints that we have too many bots
      > in the channel now.

      > There were several "Make them shut up!" responses.

This part is a little confusing because up to this point of the post you've only mentioned the TWSS and TWSRS bots. It would be clearer had you mentioned that there were a number of bots in the channel. (Unless I missed mention of other bots, in which case disregard.)

For example, in my work IRC channel there is a single bot that does everything vs. several single-purpose bots.

</comment><comment><USER45> Sex is not sexist. TWSS is immature, and inappropriate in a group workplace, as is (my personal favorite) replying "YOUR MOM is X" when some X is mentioned. This bot is a cool hack and a nice way to win a battle on your opponent's terms. But TWSS isn't sexist.

</comment><comment><USER40> I never took TWSS to be demeaning to women (i.e. sexist), rather that it's usually a generic boast about a guy's prowess.

Would it make a woman more acutely feel in the minority through juxtaposition? Sure. And obviously jokes to do with sex can make ANYONE feel uncomfortable and are probably inappropriate at work, but it depends on where you work.

Making the leap to sexism from that age-old schtick of a guy playing up his junk, though, is a stretch. It's more about the ego of the guy saying it than the hypothetical woman used as a foil.

I wonder if gay guys make TWHS jokes.

</comment><comment><USER46> Not sure if anyone realizes this anymore, but 'that's what she said' is a shortening of "that's what your mother said" - a generic jokey insult (sleeping with someone's mom has been a way to show someone up since the old days). It's not really saying anything about women in general with the "she" - it's referring to a specific 'insult' that's been around for ages.

I wouldn't consider 'that's what she said' to be a sexist comment at all, but if others still do that's ok. Just a little history : )

</comment><comment><USER47> Jessamyn finds some of the TTSS jokes to be funny and has even indulged in some herself. Therefore, I don't think TTSS is sexist, per se. Tired? Yes. Childish? Yes. Sexist? No.

</comment><comment><USER48> _There have been complaints that we have too many bots in the channel now. There have been complaints about it spamming the channel. There were several "Make them shut up!" responses. These are not reactions I have seen the other bots elicit, certainly not with such intensity._

I'm curious whether there were bots responding to bots before. I personally find bots that regularly talk to other bots several degrees more annoying than plain bots.

</comment><comment><USER49> A great response to a lousy situation. Mad props to her.

</comment><comment><USER50> What's sexist about the "that's what she said" jokes? Maybe it's because these jokes never caught on where I live (UK), but I don't understand why would anyone be offended by that.

Any clues? I'd ask my American coworker but she's not in the office.

<comment><USER51> It highlights accidental double entendres: [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=thats%20what%...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=thats%20what%20she%20said)

I think it's an objection to making the topic of sex more prominent at work, rather than anything specifically negative about women. The original bot might have been funny for about one day, and I can imagine getting annoyed at the preachiness of the countermeasure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> _Step 1: I copied the LogBot code into local files, and tried running it._

And the code is pretty much that, with a few extra lines ... a copy and paste job. It really isn't difficult to write an IRC bot using the standard library ... here's my shit one that sits in ##javascript: <https://github.com/pigdude/pigbot>

Edit: I became more curious about what the author works on -- by the favicon, I thought she must be involved with the Debian project! Turns out "Dreamwidth Studios" thought that flipping the Debian logo was an original idea. Digging just a little deeper on the Dreamwidth site makes it seem that the author mostly works on documentation and things like that. So I guess it makes sense that the code is copypasta?

<comment><USER53> You probably found the wrong person. I know the author personally, she is a great hacker and worked for FreshBooks for years before moving to her current job.

<comment><USER52> Maybe I did! It seemed the posting account was a "Denise", and recent changelogs on the project website only attributed documentation changes to her.

Her approach to "hacking" sure differs from mine ... from using "#!./tbenv/bin/python" (rather than "/usr/bin/env python" which will find the virtualenv link) making the code unusable for most people out of the box, to requiring a bunch of third-party libs to complete a simple task, to copy-pasta even preserving tutorial docstrings, you have to disconnect from the IRC server to reload the application logic ... it just seemed very sloppy to me.

<comment><USER29> I'm not hard to find, if you are interested: <http://www.linkedin.com/in/jessamynsmith>

I didn't know there was a more elegant way to do the shebang. I've fixed that now. It hadn't occurred to me that there was a particular advantage to being able to reload without restarting, but I am considering that now.

Personally, I prefer using libraries to reinventing the wheel. YMMV.

<comment><USER52> For me, that depends on the size of the library and how much I am using it. I really don't need a library to handle the logic of connecting to a server and sending things as simple as IRC messages. This is not something that I really expect to use outside the context of a bot. However, if there were a _good_ library for creating a flexible bot (which would thus include the small low- level IRC stuff) then I would be interested. But investigating what was out there for creating IRC bots in Python, I really wasn't impressed. Most every bot framework is designed for sitting in one channel and listening for specific commands or command prefixes. Nothing wrong with that, but that only covers one sort of IRC bot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I was about to get really angry that management hadn't done anything when she complained, but she doesn't specify whether she talked to her manager, a superior or HR at all. If all she did was ask the guys who ran the bot, this is not enough to resolve the issue. On top of that, adding a new bot to antagonize the guys who wouldn't relent only creates a more hostile environment without working out the issues at hand. Bad for any kind of grievance at work.

If she did talk to management and HR and still nobody did anything, that place fucking sucks and she should keep fighting or leave. Only the biggest assholes would ignore a person who was offended by an official work bot that makes sexual commentary, about men or women. That shit needs to stay outside the workplace.

</comment><comment><USER38> A very nice write up.

I say this politely[1] but I thought this was odd:

> _Now I could run it from one of the development servers at work._

Really? Is that kind of thing common?

[1] because I don't want to add to the air of general negativity around HN.

<comment><USER55> Depends on what you mean by a developoment server. You probably don't want to run something like that on a build server, or test environment. On the other hand some places have a general-purpose hosts too. For example at one of my previous places we had a host which basically was just an optional ssh hop (if you needed to run some batch process, it had much lower connection latency) / ad-hoc reporting node / whatever you needed at that point.

I don't see anything wrong with running chat bots at that host - at least for internal services. It's a bit different if you wanted to connect to public IRC servers, but it's not obvious from the post whether it was internal-only service or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Hats off to Jessamyn Smith. Great way to respond to sexist stuff.

</comment><comment><USER57> The fact that it's called the "talk back bot" automatically puts the author in the victim's chair. To think that a TWSS joke in a chat room not directed at you personally is offensive to you smells of deep irrational insecurity to me. A suspicion supported by the project name. I know women who wouldn't like that joke directed at them, and I don't direct it at them, and I know some who drop more twss jokes than I do. If you overhear someone on street say one though and your first reaction is to be offended to the point of writing a bot that spews quotes of famous women in the chat room, that seems pathological to me.

</comment><comment><USER58> "I took it for granted that everyone was familiar with the "That's what she said," joke, but a recent conversation with a consultant friend made me realize some industries don't feature it on a daily basis."

Jessamyn Smith seems to be trying to tarnish a whole industry based on her personal experience. I work in the same industry as her, and it is not a joke I hear very often at all.

What she also seems to be missing is that the response of "that's what _he_ said" is also used. The choice of which to use is dependent on the phrase being highlighted.

</comment><comment><USER59> So she essentially wrote a spam bot and justified it by saying that it's to combat sexism. Sweet.

</comment><comment><USER60> Why not just patch the current bot to interject "that's what he said" as well?

</comment><comment><USER61> :D :D it's a wonder that white guys never make jokes about white guys in general.

<comment><USER18> We make jokes about black guys having long dicks...

Which is, in a way, a joke about white guys (precisely because you never say a joke about white guys having long dicks).

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I hereby move that all further article submissions focused on gender roles or "sexism" be banned from HN. They aren't intellectually interesting, they aren't productive, they tend to bring out the worst in terms of quality of discussion. Yes, I know some of you may disagree with me, but that does not make me evil or less enlightened than you are, so spare me the downvotes. For those of you that do agree with me, I recommend we all start flagging any such articles we do see. Since we're not allowed to downvote articles directly. Sound good? Let's act.

<comment><USER63> We shouldn't stop following the guidelines just because you don't like the subject. This was clearly a social hack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> > I would write my OWN bot, that responded to TWSS with a quotation from a > notable woman.

I'd write a bot that would answer with a TWSS-trigger and watch the IRC channel going up in flames :]

<comment><AUTHOR> You can actually use a copy of her own talkbackbot to do just that. Just wire up your own trigger like so:

        def contains_twsrs_response_quote(chat_line):
            return bool(re.search(r'~ [\w ]+$', chat_line))

Edit: This presumes the responses you're trying to detect match the form "Quote goes here ~ Author of Quote" seen in her quotes.txt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> _There have been complaints about it spamming the channel_

I have to point out the obvious: the example quote was 34 words long, and presumably it's of unpredictable length and content. TWSS is four words, repeated, and easily filtered out mentally. I don't like TWSS, but I don't think it's fair to call others' reactions irrational.

</comment><comment><USER66> but at the same time, she consider a victory when the bot affects another demographic.

</comment><comment><USER66> now, every time someone says "i will write a bot for that", i can amend "that's what she said" and proceed to the high five. And I didn't even like that joke before.

</comment><comment><USER67> She has a huge problem with "that's what she said", but no problem with using the term "brogrammer culture".

If she was a co-worker and used that term, I would go to HR because it offends me. Why? to make a point about the ridiculousness of our society. You get the least bit offended and instead of just ignoring it, you need to make the person go away/get fired.

It reminds me of Elementary school. When is this bullshit going to stop?

<comment><USER7> You realize that bro culture and brogramming are actual, existing things started by guys, yes?

And you also realize that she intentionally didn't go to HR about the problem?

And you realize that women have been oppressed in our culture by men for, oh, millennia?

<comment><USER68> I agree that a job post for brogrammer might not seem welcoming towards woman.

>You realize that bro culture and brogramming are actual, existing things started by guys, yes?

Please tell us your definition of brogramming and brogrammer.

From watching the initial joke video on brogramers I understood that brogrammer is a prejudice term for male coder which likes to party, drink alcohol, flirting and is usually more interested in main stream culture. There is nothing wrong with any of those qualities but we still talk about brogrammers as bad people. Aren't we also sexist and prejudice?

What would you say about an equivalent sisgrammer term for woman?

<comment><USER7> I would say that you seem to have a poor understanding of pop culture in the US. Bro culture is a prexisting thing. See, e.g.: [http://www.mediaed.org/cgi- bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action...](http://www.mediaed.org/cgi- bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=246)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I'm tired of women wanting men to quit acting like men. If she doesn't like it, is she a woman acting like a woman? I don't want her to behave that way so maybe she should change HER behavior. Get along with others. Nobody's calling her names. Nobody's targeting her.

</comment><comment><USER70> Are TWSS jokes considered offensive now? If so I'm going to have to go to work with tape on my mouth because usually I just can't turn it off!

</comment><comment><USER32> Man this proves that -women- python programmers have no sense of humor.

Yes it is a lame joke. Really lame and yes it should probably have been turned of.

But dammit that joke is not sexistic -- just because it involves naked women (and presumably the the guy) doesn't mean it is against women. The joke has been said plenty of times in response to 'it is very small and hard to find', 'it doesn't look like much yet', etc.

Go be a feminist somewhere else.</comment>


Show HN: Android Weekly - free Android development newsletter - <AUTHOR> http://androidweekly.net <comment><USER2> I really hate Mailchimp for not allowing me to use a spam@ _domain.com_ address. For starters, it is a valid email address. Shouldn't that be enough? I don't know what all those subscriptions will get me into so I first let them pop up in my spam box for a while and when it's good, I move them over.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why not using a firstname.lastname@example.com tag? Gmail and many providers understand it. PS: We will not send you shit :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Android Weekly is an excellent newsletter to stay on top of Android Dev news.

I have read each week's newsletter so far and always look forward to the next one.

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://androidweekly.net/toolbox](http://androidweekly.net/toolbox) \- uh thats handy thx

</comment><comment><USER5> cool! i like their compilation of dev tools. handy!</comment>


Ask HN: Who's running a profitable productized service? - <AUTHOR> What's the service? What are you generating? What's your biggest takeaway? <comment><USER2> I'm running [https://userflowpro.com/](https://userflowpro.com/) which is currently making just under 1k a month, so not quite profitable yet, but still young.

The service is competitor product monitoring. I essentially get recordings of competitor products and highlight any changes since the previous recordings. It's common for product managers etc to check what their competitors are up to, so this saves them time and ensures they don't miss anything.

<comment><USER3> Your infrastructure costs more than 1k/month?

Or people?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I ran Appaftercare.com until I sold it last year. Biggest thing after a while became being able to sell using traditional SaaS/enterprise software methods

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow! How did you manage to sell a service that relies on your personal skillset? Care to share the $ region it sold for?

<comment><USER4> When it sold, I was not doing any of the technical stuff. This took some time to execute on though, as it did start out with just me doing everything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm in the process of productizing a part of my ETL consulting services (building data intensive SaaS apps, ETL jobs or ETL-baked apps, or more generally any data transformation / data sync / migration), by shipping a reusable toolbox of Ruby ETL components (which is called Kiba Pro and is a yearly subscription enhanced version of [http://www.kiba- etl.org](http://www.kiba-etl.org)) then later training resources for subscribers.

What I'm generating is improved skills & results in terms of data processing for the team, accelerated ETL workloads or "onboarding" on new ETL.

My biggest takeaway is that it's great to have both a sellable toolbox & a closely related consulting offer, because the components are nurtured by my consulting experiences and the reverse is also true. My efforts are fairly aligned together, which is great.

Before starting that, I made sure to be clear on IP and build a contract which makes me keep ownership & IP of the code I write & adapt, all while apportioning rights fairly for my consulting clients to use.

</comment><comment><USER6> i think we need to define what a "productized service" is.

they are not: apps, saas, products (books, courses,..), fixed bids on custom projekts or anything you bill by the hour.

a productized service is:

something you do very well, has a very narrow and fixed scope, you normally would bill this by the hour. think of it like writing a custom proposal but sell it to anyone at the same price.

some examples:

\- i change the car oil for x usd.

\- checking a website for responsiveness and show you the biggest mistakes and how to fix them for x usd. (website teardown)

\- a/b testing an online shop to increase conversion by 5%

i myself am in the middle of turning my freelance sysadmin/devops business into a productized service, so i am eager to hear what ppl on hn had success with - and what did not work out for them.

a great ressource on this topic is pretty much anything Jonathan Stark is publishing: [https://expensiveproblem.com/](https://expensiveproblem.com/) and [http://www.ditchinghourly.com/](http://www.ditchinghourly.com/)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for defining "productized service", @bmaeser.

My training service qualifies. It's private on-site training; with a small but growing course catalog. After a couple of false starts, I've priced it to guarantee profitability: I take into account my time off regular work (initially salaried, and now hourly-billed consulting), travel expenses and student materials.

List price is 3K per day plus 2K admin fee. My last sale was 5K for a day of training on GitLab CI. My biggest sale was 25K for two one-week classes on configuration management.

Productizing my service allowed me to streamline sales -- I don't have to think about how much to charge -- and it guarantees profitability.

I need to learn/do more marketing and sales to get to 6 figures. This is still "hobby" grade, income wise. (Can't support a family on it!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I find it challenging to figure out how to do productized consulting as a developer other than the ol' 'I make you an entire MVP for X dollars'.

It's probably because the deliverable is hard to narrow down. Whenever I see examples of productized service businesses, it's something that provides relief for an on-going pain or has a clear deliverable.

Examples of the former: A/B testing, App After Care, Dan Norris' Wordpress support, FB / Google Ad management

Examples of the latter: Design a thing and deliver it to you, Write a blog post/do content, SEO.

Anybody have any luck approaching doing a productized service as a developer?

I think I'm approaching it wrong. I think what it should look like is that you have a 'product' or set of components built and you do a little bit of customization for each client and deliver it.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm running a profitable productized service called LinkPeek ([https://linkpeek.com](https://linkpeek.com))

Web page screen shots as a service.

My biggest take away is that Hacker News is typically not my target market. I don't think I have ever converted HN user into a paying customer.

<comment><USER10> Probably because we all think it's easier than it is to roll our own webdriver-based solution.

Source: rolled my own screenshot-diffing webdriver service

<comment><USER11> That's the blind spot of being technically competent.

You would be amazed at what the average person considers hard. For example, the idea of converting a repeatable calculation into an Excel worksheet is regarded as arcane black magic by a fraction of the professional population.

Automating a repetitive task with Excel macros? Whoa there, cowboy... Gonna have to get IT involved...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm running iPanoramaPrints ([https://ipanoramaprints.com](https://ipanoramaprints.com)).

It's a niche site for printing panorama photos.

Profit under 1k/month.

</comment><comment><USER13> We started apptype.io as a service to convert PSDs, Sketch files etc into mobile app front end code. Going well from our existing network but not sure how to market it otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm running [http://fairpixels.co](http://fairpixels.co), a logo design service which we've set up as a productised service (removing all the back and forth hassle and packaging it as a product)

It's been doing well, with over $80k made last year.

Biggest takeaway is that packaging a service like a product doesn't just make things easier for the service provider, it's actually a much better/smoother experience for the customer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I saw you guys launch [http://logodust.com/plus/](http://logodust.com/plus/) the other day. Very cool

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> You can read about some of them at [https://indiehackers.com](https://indiehackers.com)

<comment><USER16> Most aren't services but products and apps. Finding the services in a sea of products/apps is going to be more work than it is worth for a question like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> [https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses) Have a nice list with interviews

<comment><USER16> The problem with just linking to Indie Hackers is that most are not productized services but actual products. That means people are going to have to search through each business to try and find an actual productized service.</comment></comment>


China Can't Keep Growing Like Mad Forever - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-05-21/china-faces-end-of-fast-growth-that-made-it-biggest-economy <comment><USER2> They haven't been to China. There are gobs of development required still even in the big cities. For decades to come, if the government deregulates and allows more private enterprise. Entire city blocks need to be refurbished or razed.</comment>