There are no adults in the room - <AUTHOR> https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2019/08/12/there-are-no-adults-in-the-room/ <comment><USER3> The adults in the room are the ones who aren't looking for some omniscient overlord to have all the answers.

If you've realized this, you are one of the adults in the room.

<comment><USER4> That terrifying feeling when you realize the world is being run by people just muddling their way through problems one at a time and big grand plans rarely last very long.

<comment><USER5> Even more scary, the people who running things who -think- they know everything and convince other people they do.

<comment><USER6> Or - they have the final say-so for projects and if they don't agree people either leave or they just learn not to present innovative (read different) solutions. Once the leader leaves, the ones left are so conditioned not to engineer (innovate) the status quo eventually sinks the ship (process, company, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> eh, coming from a blue-collar job Im seriously inclined to disagree. shops with questions are _good shops._ questions mean learning.

>there are no true adults in the room at any organization.

Im an engine mechanic by trade, and ive worked in shops with no adults. theres no OSHA "days free" sign because management is well aware that people are getting hurt and doesnt need to call attention to it. These are shops with a high percentage of "fatal 4" accidents: flying objects, swinging objects, rolling objects and lack of PPE. disability rosters are usually 3-4 people deep. guards on machines are routinely off, or if present, dangling by a bolt. your senior-most tech is a temp. Most of the people you work with can remember at least one amputation in the past year.

The absolute worst Ive seen had a mechanical maintenance tech with 3 missing fingers (crushed that year) and a manager with a bone growth stimulator on his arm from a mangling accident at a metal lathe he wasnt qualified to operate.

<comment><USER8> I think it's machismo. In a room full of people white knuckling everything, nobody wants to be the 'baby' who calls for rational behavior.

I see the same thing in white collar jobs, but the damage is harder to see. Physical and mental health rather than broken bones and lost limbs.

There's no reason everyone should have to be a hero all the fucking time. But often the only way to fix it is if everyone refuses. Not saying unionize, but if everyone slows down to a sustainable pace then what can they do about it?

<comment><USER9> Futilely reorganize your business units repeatedly until it's a Dead Sea and there is no distinction between working hard and slacking off.

Edit: I see I cut too close to reality for some here and I want to apologize if you felt this sarcasm was off base but really I feel that my comments are indicative of reality and I am bringing something new to the conversation here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I agree with the content of this article, but disagree with the central metaphor. "Adults in the room" is used to indicate a responsible person who stops malfeasance right? I think it's just a matter of once you start work you realize it's not schoolwork, not only are the solutions never clear, the problems are never clear either.

<comment><USER11> Rather than seeing it as an actual claim about adults, see it is a representation of someone's mental model that there will always be people who are like adults are to a child.

In fact, when you get a job, _you_ are now an adult in the room, so you better act like it. It's one of the many ideas that when you bring it up to the conscious level it's drop-dead obvious, but the idea that there will be other responsible people can lurk in the lower parts of your mind for a long time, and it can take a lot of time to clear the idea out. Thinking about it consciously is unfortunately not a full solution to that problem, but it certainly can be a huge help.

It's the same sort of thing as imposter syndrome; it's not that you're literally an imposter, in fact many sufferers of imposter syndrome may well be above average, it's a statement about internal perceptions.

<comment><USER12> When I first entered the workforce I remember someone pulling me to the side and used this exact metaphore. Told me there were adults and children and I needed to start treating certain people as adults rather than equals (more or less, I'm paraphrasing, but this was the meaning).

I was blown away that anyone actually had that attitude toward others. I was probably 21 I think?

I mean, I get it on one level with respect to politics, but screw that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >If you go into a company expecting to be handed work on a platter and to have someone know exactly what is going on, the way that, say, a college professor knows how to teach physics 101, you are going to be disappointed. It's much more likely that the folks who are senior to you are trying to stay one step ahead of the customer.

I had a "non traditional" education.

I was a great High School student, but once I was in college I struggled, mostly due to non educational issues (poor reading comprehension, depression, general issues I think would be termed ADHD) and I dropped out. I managed to work my way into the tech industry with luck and just making stuff work. The fact that I didn't and wasn't going to know what to do I chalked up to my own reading comprehension and other issues. So I just accepted it and kept "moving forward".

Meanwhile a lot of friend continued on through college being very successful and accomplishing a lot and then... really struggling when the working world wasn't fair, and perhaps most importantly didn't provide a prescribed path to high fives, good grades and knowing they were doing it right and would get good outcomes.

So I'm often working with CS grads and I see the same thing from some of them, folks struggling when they're not told what to do, how, and confidant in their own actions.

Education seems to provide a lot of specific environments that just don't exist outside that and it tends to be a bump in the road for a lot of people.

<comment><USER14> Great comment, I absolutely agree. I learned to code largely through problem sets, HIGHLY defined, clear issues with pre-cleaned (!!!) data. Once I'm out coding in the wild, I am the one creating the dataset, it's highly messy in its infancy, and most of my collaborators are in flux about what they want, how they want it, and which subgroup and sample they want to examine. The name of the game seems to be quick iteration and fast communication loops.

<comment><USER13> Just naming stuff, you'd think that would be obvious and easy and then things change and: "Why the hell did I name it that?" is a common thing I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Maybe the most surprising thing for me is that it is not only true at the entry level, but this is always true the higher you meet people in the hierarchy. Somehow I expected leaders to master their subjects, have grand long term visions or perfectly know the market/domain.

From what I can see, most people are trying to do their best but being a staff principal senior engineer does not necessarily you can answer everything (but usually they know who to ask or what to do to get an anwser)

It is not that people are incompetent, but you can't be an expert at everything.

<comment><USER16> Someone once told me an old USSR joke that went something like this:

"What should a student know?" "Everything"

"What should a lab technician know?" "Almost the same as the student"

"What about a graduate?" "In which book is that thing that the student should know?"

"And the associate professor?" "Where is this book?"

"And the professor?" "Where is the associate professor?"

<comment><USER17> Thats how I see career levels in my company..

The higher someone is the less overall they know. I know regulars that I would put way higher than some of our experts. And its not only technical knowledge but also problem solving, attitude and craftsmanship.

Thats what happens when promotions are given based on "years worked" or "office politics" instead of work excellence.

Sad reality in a lot of companies in IT.

<comment><USER18> >work excellence

Promotions to new positions based on performance in the previous position don't always work out great either.

<comment><USER19> yep. you get promoted to your level of incompetence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Very true.

I can't count the number of people I worked with who sold me their dev team as the universal weapon for software engineering. Just to see them cobble together a solution on outdated tech that they didn't even understand half as good as they said.

I think we should be more humble. Which is hard, because everyone wants to be seen as valuable.

<comment><USER21> You can be humble and valuable at the same time. When hubris creeps in that's when things become problematic - not just for that person or team but for the entire company. One thing that I was thankful to learn early on was to assume that everyone else (in the organization) knows things you don't.

<comment><USER22> Yeah but unless you have someone who sees your value, the loudest, not the most valuable, wins.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So this is the result of what I call "technical democracy". Or consensus driven management. The adults are there, but their opinion is mixed with everyone else.

This is the symptom of an industry that do not value experience and even oppose it.

</comment><comment><USER24> But some rooms definitely have more clowns. Don't mistake the message of "nobody knows everything" for "nobody has to know anything".

There are places and teams that do have competent, experienced people that know how to solve tricky problems, and there are also teams where too many key people basically don't know anything and attempt to silence the voices of anyone who have experience and expertise from making them look dumb.

In some places "everyone is trying their best" to solve tough problems, in other places "everyone is trying their best" to get promoted. These two orgs are not the same.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is true in general. "Adults" are just an idea for kids to look up to.

<comment><USER26> This. I was going to say essentially the same thing.

Every adult who becomes a parent seems to realize very quickly that their parents also had no clue WTF was going on.

So yeah, no different with what we do, since we're literally always building new things that haven't been done before.

<comment><USER27> > So yeah, no different with what we do, since we're literally always building > new things that haven't been done before.

"Where do people get the confidence to say that their work is so uniquely novel that it's "something that has never been done before in the history of the universe", that the field is obviously totally different from another field they know nothing about, etc. ?" \--Dan Luu

I think it is less that these things "have never been done before" and more "we haven't bothered to learn anything from people who've done things like this before". Same with parenting.

<comment><USER28> It's the same as with parenting - you _can 't_ really learn these things from people who've done this before, you have to learn them by doing it yourself. A large portion of potential parents put in a _lot_ of effort to read up and learn stuff before their first child, but that's really nothing compared to what they can learn from actual experience; when rising your second/third/etc child, everything you'll use will be from the actual experience with previous children and just a minority of useful things will come from the initial vague guidance of others.

<comment> mark-r I had a friend who was super excited to have his second child, because he'd be able to reuse the knowledge he had picked up with the first one. Then he discovered that his kids were polar opposites - he had to start over from square one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've found that while the majority of people are trying to stay one step ahead, there are always those that feel they do know what's going on completely. However, because they think they're in the know, it's very often that their opinions are scripture and it's impossible to change their mind on anything. If you're a new developer, this problem is exacerbated by the "I am a principal engineer, you're an associate so I'm correct."

</comment><comment><USER30> This reminds me of the Steve Jobs janitor story: [https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-on-the- difference...](https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-on-the-difference- between-a-vice-president-and-a-janitor-2011-5)

Except that line should kick in WAY before the VP level. Getting out of the "schoolkid mentality" is key to success in your career.

* if you're blocked on a task, you need to specifically tell your boss and/or the person blocking you

* if a task is stalled on someone else's desk, you need to go chase it down, not just say "not my problem anymore"

* if a process is broken, you need to work on fixing the process, not just complaining or shrugging

Basically, you need to focus on SUCCESS and RESULTS, not just effort and following the rules.

<comment><USER31> Sounds like a great way to burn out.

<comment><USER30> I'm not talking about running full tilt 24/7; I'm just saying don't be that guy that gets assigned a ticket, makes a comment on the ticket for clarification, and then spends the next four hours doing god-knows-what instead of reaching out and unblocking yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Well the "Adults" in the room are the ones who don't run out "once the maelstrom of chaos and uncertainty arrives". Most people we call adults do.

</comment><comment><USER33> Figuring this out really blew my mind. All of these giant corporations from Apple to Chevy to Starbucks are just a bunch of people trying to figure stuff out. When I was younger, even in college, I really thought of companies as these perfectly organized machines with flawless processes that allow for continual success. Now I realize it's a bunch of normal humans doing their jobs while they deal with the other shit in their lives too.

Putting that together really helped give me the push to start my own business... if founders are just people with an idea who do work to make a company, I can be a founder.

</comment><comment><USER34> I very much agree with this, especially the point on hubris. What I'm really looking for is advice on dealing on people in more senior positions that don't get this.

Being mostly self-taught, I often feel like I don't have any ammunition "against" the more academic folks, and it makes it difficult to maintain an open/curious mindset. What do I need to prove to stop the constant attempts to gaslight me? I strive to be a team player, but the amount of condescension is maddening sometimes.

<comment><USER35> My advice:

1) Focus more on assisting your peers with their work. This doesn't mean telling them what to do, but look for people who are struggling to keep their head above water on work that you know how to do well, and help them out of that place.

2) Let people win. Not when it's important to you, but know when you're in the "I'm right but this isn't going to sink our project" place and let them have those wins. It will help take their "make sure that one stays in line" radar off you. Bonus points if you can make them feel like you learned something from them.

3) Quit. I don't mean right away, but if you're not generally enjoying your workplace, for ANY reason, or even for NO reason—quit. Some of this is basically like dating. When you don't like someone, you just keep looking. There are more fish in the sea, as they say.

4) Remember that disagreements are fundamental to collaboration. There simply isn't time to reach consensus on everything, even in a zero asshole environment. So teams are built on sparse networks of trust. There are likely a very small number of bottom lines that hold the org together. Everything else is a "nice to have". Keep that in mind, and if you want to feel valued at a high level, you're going to need to figure out what those bottom lines are, who is trusting who to watch them, and how you can help them long enough to become part of that trust network.

5) I heard a quote recently that I've been thinking a lot... Paraphrasing: "The master doesn't convince anyone she knows the right way. She just works, and her work is flawless." Just something to think about when you've got an assignment that doesn't quite match what you think the ultimate strategic goal should be. You can still execute at a high level and feel good about that.

<comment><USER34> Hey thanks for this response. I'll have to work on #2 - I suppose I need to search for more opportunities to ask them for advice, maybe it will help build a bridge. Difficult to get past the initial dismissiveness, though. I'm not ready to quit but that is a good reminder too. I'm actually incredibly happy with the role (besides not feeling like everyone is 100% on board, anyways). #4 is a great reminder as well (and while we're butchering quotes - "tension on a string can create majestic music" :) ). Really appreciate the stoic point of view of that quote in #5, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> 1\. The general point this essay is making is correct.

2\. I do not think the expression "adults in the room" is meant to describe omniscient individuals, I believe it refers to the quality of judgment and motivation people have.

I believe adults and uncertainty are orthogonal.

3\. The general point this essay is making is correct.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is cute. This article is itself an example of no adult in the room - <USER2> author skips over the real causes workplaces are full of mediocrity and goes for the politically correct never-offend-anybody stance of 'nobody knows eeeeverything, right?'

Workplaces are full of people who are not good at their job, only think about their bottom line and will resist anyone threatening their safety by trying to 'help' as the author suggests.

I'm looking forward to a blog post on how to navigate office politics, because that is the most important skillset of working at any large corporation, as soon as you have a mediocre skillset that isn't obviously mediocre to the manager caste.

<comment><USER38> Where you see mediocrity and people not being good at their jobs, the author sees that "... no one knows everything and everyone is doing the best they can.".

> goes for the politically correct never-offend-anybody stance of 'nobody > knows eeeeverything, right?'

I feel like you may have unreasonable expectations - everyone starts out with a mediocre skillset. Do you expect everyone to be experts? Or are you simply frustrated with the corporate ladder?

<comment><USER39> The proper response to mediocre skillsets is to do the work to improve skillsets. Whatever else is meant by "adults", one would hope they're helping that process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Somewhat dangerous advice. Might make you too accepting of a place that is just badly run.

</comment><comment><USER41> So, the basic idea that no one in most adult organizations knows as much as a teacher who has taught that exact same curriculum several times before, is true and relevant.

What is not brought out much is, well if you cannot use the standard of knowledge and competence that school and childhood taught you to expect, what should you expect? The one-sentence answer is too vague to really serve as a useful guideline.

My wife, when working one of her first jobs, had a boss who was such a crack addict that she cleaned out the cash register of her own business every night, forcing my wife to ask the first several customers of the day for exact change. This, is not just not perfect, it's not ok, and you would want to quit any job where the boss is like that. But, she didn't have enough experience yet to know what was the actual, real-world level of expectation you should have for how together the people in charge should be.

Perhaps I am expecting too much from one article, but it mostly seems to say (properly): "don't expect the same standard of knowledge and competence that your childhoold trained you to expect", without saying much about what to put in its place.

</comment><comment><USER42> I've often thought.. If you feel like everything is under control you clearly don't know what's going on. It seems the higher I go in a company the more this is true.

When I was a junior being handed design or detailed work specs it seemed like part of an over-arching grand plan. Now I realize.. we just hang on and try to stay alive; albeit with-in something resembling a meta-narrative.

</comment><comment><USER43> I think an important aspect to this that maybe hasn't been mentioned is how important it is to understand what your values are - more specifically, what your boundaries both personally and professionally are.

Sometimes, regardless of age or experience, you have to decide when you should step up as the "adult" in the room and either leave or call something out as crossing a personal / professional ethical boundary.

Big tech co's and startups try to word HR legalese and cultural "principles" to subvert and minimize the affect of personal boundaries and expression.

If you want to learn about a company's workplace health, ask what they define "honesty" as, from the standpoint of a founder and that of a new college grad / employee working for them.

</comment><comment><USER44> This isn't a new idea to me either. I would have put it in words "The attic of the org-chart is empty" but same point.

But what bewilders me is that there ARE achievements in the world that you have to wonder how they succeeded. The engineers and scientists of NASA put men on the moon without email and mostly paper based information sharing systems. You can't just muddle your way though such efforts - how did that mission succeed? It is REALLY the case that a handful of "more aware than most" individuals had a such a strong direction providing influence on their peers (or subordinates - or superiors even) that made such an achievement possible? It seems like stretch to me.

How did they do it, if most of them were just muddling their way through?

<comment><USER45> They weren't. They had plans and formal improvement processes. They had Messengers and strong, well defined hierarchy with an inch of a clue.

Now, they also failed spectacularly a few times.

Email or Slack do not change anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I am reminded of a post entitled "older and wiser" to the listserve:

The archive of the comment is here:

[https://thelistservearchive.com/2013/09/13/older-and- wiser/](https://thelistservearchive.com/2013/09/13/older-and-wiser/)

("the listserve" was an experimental mailing list where a member was chosen at random to post to the rest of the list)

</comment><comment><USER47> It's a funny title for this idea. When starting your career, I think it's much more productive to think "ok I'm an adult now" rather than "there are no adults in the room". Maybe we're saying the same thing, but it's a mental shift.

</comment><comment><USER48> I share the same experience. Rarely is there one colleague or superior who completely groks the problem space. But is this not what you get when you move fast and break things?

</comment><comment> ur-whale This particular principle also applies to politics and government, especially when it comes to economic policy.

But most people are completely oblivious to that fact.

</comment><comment><USER49> Spot on

</comment><comment><USER50> Absolute freedom is terrifying: you could do anything, who knows what to do, who knows if it will work?

It's much more comforting to focus on things like clean code, anything you can devise a set of rules for and read a big book about and then action the advice in the book. See, best practices say we should do this.</comment>


One is confident that this electronic voting system will not get hacked - <AUTHOR> https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/11/los-angeles-county-to-intoduce-vsap-e-voting-system-not-hand-marked-not-paper-not-hand-counted-in-public.html <comment><USER2> I've found neighboring voters pretty apathetic about vote counting, and my local poll workers actually contemptuous of my interest in the integrity of counting. I wish people were as interested in their vote counting as much as making it easy to cast. Filling in ovals with a pen is something we all learn in kindergarten.</comment>


Ask HN: When are you most alert? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sleep/crt/

<comment><USER2> I'm most alert in the late morning or late evening.

However, for me, alertness is almost negatively correlated with actually getting things done --- unless I'm working on the "1% inspiration" parts, I have major trouble staying on task.

For the "99% perspiration" that makes up any project, the early morning is often better. I'm not so tired as to fall back asleep, but I also feel as dull as a butter knife -- which actually helps with plowing through the necessary tasks that don't necessarily inspire excitement.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm a 'night' person, that's when I work best, when it is absolutely quiet around me.

But there seems to be no way to get that in there.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm more of a morning person, I will usually wake up (naturally, without an alarm clock) around 6am, which gives me a few hours to get some work done without any distractions.

I put my information into this survey, and it shows a dip in my "alertness" around 3pm. I've heard that a good way to calculate this is to figure out the midpoint of your normal sleep time (so if you go to bed around midnight and get up at 8am, your midpoint is 4am) then add 12 hours. I've found that napping briefly (10-15 minutes) around this time gives me a lot more energy in the afternoons/evenings.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm most alert in the mid-morning, about an hour after I sit down at the computer. My mind is active and energetic at that time, and I'm keenly aware of practical issues, such as schedules and customers. This is the best time to prioritize my tasks and do straightforward design work. I also spend this time figuring out what practical preparation needs to be done and making sure I have the resources (docs, working boxes, software tools, and so forth) to do it. If there are any bugs or broken tools that will hold back my work, this is when I'm most likely to have the initiative to fix them.

Later in the day I'm more theoretical and less practical. This is when I crank out the LOC, when I'm relaxed into a groove and really inhabiting the world that I mapped out that morning. I definitely don't get as much coding done when I'm super-alert. The right state of mind for coding is entirely different from the right state of mind for grunt analysis and design work. This can be a problem when I need to mode-switch back and forth between coding and analysis. HOWEVER, really difficult design questions that require imagination are usually solved late in the day, in my relaxed, theoretical frame of mind.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm a night person, but if I force myself to get up early and go for a run then immediately after I am at my most alert, no matter it is 12 hours away from what is usually my most productive time of the day. I guess cave people didn't have a choice when it was time to run from a sabre-toothed tiger.

<comment><USER7> At least not the cave people that survived.

<comment><USER8> Even though most animals won't eat carrion, I don't think snoring helps when playing dead. I'm a heavy sleeper and when something jars me awake, I could do a mile run in my boxers, so I really believe exercise has a serious effect on your alertness . . . although that could be the effect of adrenaline and dopamine released during exercise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Having a siesta seems to be hard-wired into us_

Good! I crash harder at 5:00 pm than at any time during the night. Glad to see there's a good reason for that.

I also like having a "siesta". Breaks my day into two distinct and effective work sessions.

<comment><USER10> I always wondered about that too - I talked to Jim a few years ago and was extremely interested in his research into circadian rhythm, travel adapation etc. Very interesting subject area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not in the mrnging

<comment><USER12>
      Woke early one morning,
      The earth lay cool and still,
      When suddenly a tiny bird,
      Perched on my window sill,

      It sang a song so lovely,
      So carefree and so gay,
      That slowly all my troubles,
      Began to slip away,

      It sang of far off places,
      Of laughter and of fun,
      It seemed his very song,
      Brought out the morning sun,

      I pulled back the covers,
      And crept slowly out of bed,
      And gently shut the window,
      And crushed his freaking head,

      Because I'm not a morning person.

I have this printed and stapled to the wall in the office :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am missing the 1am-6am period, this is by far the time I feel most alert and manage to get the most work done. Apparently having utter silence and few distractions help! (even though I always listen to music while I work)

</comment><comment><USER14> Generally around 11 am for a few hours and then again from maybe 6-10. I try to get to bed by 1:30 and wake up around 8:30.

If I don't eat and have coffee I'm like a monster.

</comment><comment><USER15> I am morning person. I usually design code most important functions,classes in the morning & surely introduce much lesser bugs in them.

</comment><comment><USER16> Around 30 minutes after I eat dinner, which I usually do around 8:00 PM, up to or through midnight, thereabouts.

</comment><comment><USER17> Hah, my schedule is just outside the bounds of the BBC poll. I must be a freak. My ideal day is 12 PM to 4 AM.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm most productive when it's light out, but I like to stay up late and get up late.

</comment><comment><USER19> 12 am.

</comment><comment><USER20> 6pm

<comment><USER21> At midnight when I go hunting the man eaters of Bengal Sunderbans

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> "# Afternoon tiredness can be overcome by coffee or a 20 minute nap (ideally both, since caffeine takes 20 minutes before it gets through your system). # If you like to limit your caffeine intake, you may want to save your quota for when you experience your natural dip. "

Evil! I don't drink caffeine! I usually get 6-7 hrs of sleep but I am most awake at around 10pm-12 or 1 am.

I found NOT drinking caffeine improves my overall alertness. Without it I set my own rhythm for waking up, sleeping, being tired, etc. With it I just get these spikes of alert after drinking coffee, then even more down, then more alert, etc. It makes my day completely unbearable, and god forbid I don't get my coffee.

However I noticed my most alert time is mainly due to the fact that around 10pm to 1am nobody bothers me. I can pretty much do whatever I want without anyone pestering me for "honey-dos" or any distractions.

<comment><USER23> Yes, I find that having no caffeine at all improves my average overall alertness, almost completely cutting out the highs and lows, both. However, I really like the hyperalert state that caffeine brings, and I don't know any way to get it without, so I put up with the lows that accompany it, going off caffeine every year or so for a few weeks to reset the effect (which gradually wears down so that the hyperalert state approaches mere alertness).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> When I'm being chased by zombies.

</comment><comment><USER25> When a gun is pointed at me by a man with very good aim.</comment>


Evenly distribute work across day (with blocked hours) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mittermayr/quick-math-problem-evenly-distribute-tasks-across-a-timespan-avoiding-blocked-out-spots-c7aaaa997097#.wv5liqpap <comment><AUTHOR> Any comments, ideas -- anything you've got -- would be greatly appreciated. I feel like someone looking at a calculator for the first time, unable to find the damn ON button. I have spent way too much time on what seems to be an overly simple algorithm.</comment>


Death of a Keynesian - <AUTHOR> http://cryptologs.com/death-of-a-keynesian/

<comment><USER2> > To be able to put ink onto a piece of paper and have every other human on > the planet willing to work for that paper: It is immense power, immense > control & it is being abused.

I would argue that giving politicians and the banks access to that power was the point of Keynesian economics, i.e. it is a rationalization for Socialism.

At its root, Keynesian economics rests on an equivocation on the meaning of "price" and "wage" and a misrepresentation of Say's Law. In his book "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money", Keynes argues that "Supply creates its own Demand" is false but this is a bad formulation of Say's Law which Keynes did not refute. The proper formulation of Say's Law is "Supply IS Demand" and that is not open to dispute even under a barter economy. In more advanced monetary and credit-money economies Supply and Demand can become disconnected and diverge (for various complicated reasons) which is a bad thing and why we need a science of Economics to design a banking system that prevents it. Unfortunately today, thanks to Keynes, we have institutionalized the divergence of Supply and Demand (i.e. fiat money and the ability to create Demand out of thin air, which I consider a type of fraud).

You can prove this to yourself by reading two books. First, read Henry Hazlitt's "The Failure of the 'New Economics': An Analysis of the Keynesian Fallacies". In this book, Hazlitt logically shreds Keynesian arguments step by step and was promptly ignored because people wanted Socialism and/or the power to manipulate the monetary system. Keynes provided the intellectual rationalization to Socialize the banking system. Second, get it straight from the horse's mouth, read Keynes' work "The General Theory..." but wherever Keynes writes "wage" cross it out and write "price" and you will quickly see that his work amounts to a repudiation of the principle of Supply and Demand which is one of the cornerstones of Economics. Also, read up on what Say's Law _really_ means and see if that is what Keynes refuted.

The title of the linked article should be "Keynesian Economics is Dead!, Long Live Keynesian Economics!" because this is a moral issue not an economic issue. As long as people want Socialism they will continue to advocate variants of Keynesian economics, even if they don't call it that. Unfortunately, giving the current primitive understanding of economics this is not going to end well.</comment>


Dyson moves vacuum giant's HQ to Singapore - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-dyson-singapore/british-billionaire-dyson-moves-vacuum-giant-to-singapore-idUSKCN1PG205 <comment><USER2> Dyson, a big Brexit supporter, plans also to build an electric car, in Singapore: [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/23/dyson- to-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/23/dyson-to-build- electric-cars-in-singapore-with-launch-planned-for-2021)

By the way, Singapore has an EU free trade agreement.

I respect engineering and entrepreneurship. But he sounds like a hypocrite. I don't consider buying any of his products.

<comment><USER3> I don't see the hypocrisy. Does the Singapore-EU trade agreement give EU citizens the right to vote on laws that will be binding upon Singaporeans? Or give EU citizens the right to reside and work in Singapore? If not, there is no hypocrisy in supporting Brexit while relocating to Singapore.

It is disingenuous to portray the EU as merely a trade organization. It may have started out that way, but today it is a supra-national government, capable of binding the citizens of member states to laws those citizens oppose (just as, e.g., the United States federal government can bind citizens of Alabama to laws those citizens oppose). See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_(European_Union)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_\(European_Union\))

<comment><USER4> That seems the wrong question. The better question is: why did he stay in britain while it was in the EU, and why is he leaving now that the UK is leaving the EU? Especially as he advocated that leaving would improve trade and industry.

The answer might be as simple as: "Signapore was the right place and we were planning this move before Brexit was on the horizon"

But it certainly gives the appearance that Brexit is bad for business and he doesn't want to operate with the consequences of the policy he advocated.

<comment><USER5> Not to be a pedant, and it it doesn't invalidate your comment, and probably for the benefit of others, but the UK is still in the EU.

<comment><USER4> Thanks, fixed it. Had meant to write leaving and not in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am not all that impressed with Dyson vacuum cleaners vs say Meile. A bit too much form, a bit to little function.

Dyson himself is not one of my favourite people. This move seems very hypocritical.

<comment><USER7> The Dyson urinals I see in pub bathrooms are awful, they spray everything everywhere, a bit too much form, a bit too little function.

<comment><USER8> Wait are we talking about urinals or hand dryers? I have yet to encounter a Dyson urinal, but my sense of humor really wants one to exist.

<comment><USER7> It was a joke that nobody seems to be getting, but I was implying that I pee unaware into the hand-dryers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Brexit will only affect the ordinary working class and the poor. The rich who funds this debacle will always have options cope or profit from it.

<comment><USER10> This seems to be a typical combination in a lot of countries nowadays. A donor class that advocate for populist policies with well funded advertisement campaigns that speak to the grievances of poor or less educated voters, ("hundreds of millions for the NHS!"), who then promptly pack their bag and leave as reality sets in, because as we all know capital is very flexible.

The misled voters however are not and cannot suddenly pick up a new career in Singapore or in the PR department of a big company, so they will have to foot the bill.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wait, he'd rather support another country's economy with his faster growing business than the economy of his own country and earn more money there/elsewhere, while supporting the opposite? Err? No, his statement doesn't make any sense which basically means it's a lie. His decision comes conveniently right after the house vote and May's failure to convince the MPs to take the EU deal. I suppose he is not such a Brexiteer after all.

<comment><USER12> He is a Brexiteer who has seen the writing on the wall. That Brexit is being thwarted and the probability of escaping the EU reducing every week. He is a realist and a businessman and a Brexiteer. He would have loved to have seen Brexit realised, I'm sure, but it wasn't to be. As such he now needs to turn his attentions to a Plan B - to secure his businesses in better free trading less bureaucratic locations - in this case Singapore.

<comment><USER6> He originally said he was moving to Singapore because Britain wouldn't join the Euro!

He seems rather confused..

[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2000/nov/05/theobserver...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2000/nov/05/theobserver.observerbusiness4)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am always amazed at corporate communications that are so inartfully constructed. The two statements _" Dyson's company said the move ... was not driven by Britain's looming departure from the European Union or tax implications"_ and _" the move was aimed at 'future proofing' Dyson."_

As I read it the second statement says "Stuff keeps changing in Britain and we can't be sure its going to be good for our company so we're pulling up stakes." And what has changed recently in Britain, oh I don't know, all the Brexit stuff maybe?

I wish companies would own their decisions but they never do when they can't spin them well.

</comment><comment><USER14> I used to do a lot of housecleaning for family and friends and recommended Dyson vacuums for their strength and robustness. Since then I have got into professional housecleaning and have found Dyson vacuums to be a terrible curse. They are aggressively priced which makes people emotionally invested in them beyond reason. They are typically too strong such that even skilled users get overwhelmed and damage fringes and drapes and anything that isn't super strong that gets too close. Although they may have been built to a high standard when introduced current models have many parts made with vulnerable plastic connectors. As such used Dysons tend to be coming apart in various places and tend to be difficult to use because their unusual mass and strength puts extra stress on the small plastic connectors they are built with. If you want to clean up for a reasonable price without a lot of unnecessary complications then staying away from Dyson products is a good first step. If they are going to be charging that much and putting that much design work into them then they should be advancing robustness and ease of repair. For the fraction of a single Dyson I keep a fleet of Sanitaire vacuums working over a period of many years because all of their components are reasonably designed and can be simply swapped out upon failure.

</comment><comment><USER15> His products used to be good. These days they are over priced, poorly made and fall apart quickly.

</comment><comment><USER16> Does anyone have any insight it is like to work in Singapore as a developer if you've previously worked in the West?

How are salaries? How is the work culture?

Is the industry growing such that moving there would be a good career play?

<comment><USER17> I have.

The salaries are low by western standards. I tripled my income coming back to the UK.

The work culture is shitty. Long hours are routine. Developers are cogs in the machine. The boss is always right. You need to do things by the book.

There's a hard class distinction between "worker bees" (includes developers) and "managers". Those managers were typically clueless about tech, also, which made interviewing a crapshoot.

<comment><USER18> This matches what the people I know said. It will of course depend on the company. Facebook has a significant presence there now, I've only met one person there but they were a local and said it's very atypical of the Singapore experience (the office was nearly empty at 5pm).

<comment><USER19> Global companies like FB or Google bring global work culture in Singapore, so general assumptions about work might not apply to them.

They are notorious here for paying below average salaries though

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The Remainers are desperate to portray this as hypocrisy by Sir James Dyson. It is actually the opposite. He has been moving more and more of his business out of the EU and UK to Singapore over the last 10-15 years and moving the headquarters is the final step. It is a ringing endorsement to what global free trade can do instead of protectionism, over-regulation and misplaced political projects such as the single currency. And Singapore was consistently held up as an example of what Brexit Britain could be like. Sir James Dyson has given up on Britain because, all things considered, he realises it will be many more years yet until a Clean Brexit is realised in the UK. And even then, it could be decades - judging by the displayed ineptitude of our political class - for the UK to catch up on the head start that Singapore has for high- tech.

<comment><USER6> He already was a hypocrite. His previous excuses for moving manufacturing to Singapore include Britain not joining the Euro (the European single currency). So the timeline

1) "I need to move to Singapore because Britain is not close enough to the EU"

2) "I want Britain to leave the EU"

3) "I am moving to Singapore anyway, so long suckers"

[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2000/nov/05/theobserver...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2000/nov/05/theobserver.observerbusiness4)

<comment><USER12> That was said by him in 2000 - the Lisbon treaty was 2009. In 2000 the only path possible for the UK and EU was "further integration". There was no ability to exit i.e. there was no Article 50.

One can imagine if exiting the EU was possible in 2000 he would have worked that into his comments at the time. As far as he was concerned he had a problem exporting products from the UK because of the strong sterling, most particularly in comparison to the Euro. He needed a solution. Joining the Euro was a possible solution at the time.

The EU also had no trade agreements with countries like Singapore or Japan in 2000 either - or even 2009 for that matter - further reducing his strategic options.</comment></comment></comment>


What UPS Drivers Can Tell Us About the Automated Future of Work - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/opinion/2014/02/dont-fear-work-automation-overlords-welcome/

<comment><USER2> If I remember correctly UPS already pre-determines the shelf location of the package inside the delivery van before they even show up in the destination city so to some extent the drivers' routes have already been predetermined but their system is capable of last-minute changes pretty much every step of the way.

<comment> at-fates-hands I had a buddy whose Dad was an Industrial Engineer who specialized in efficiency systems. He worked a lot in the mid 90's on completely revamping UPS's warehouse sorting and ability to get packages into the trucks and on the road faster.

I'm pretty sure what your referring to was probably the next phase on a larger scale of what he was originally working on. He always joked that, "When your an efficiency expert, people don't like it when you show up at their business."

<comment><AUTHOR> "Efficiency gains" -> "Strategic workforce rightsizing" -> "Here is a week's salary for every year that you worked for us"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I worked on a project for a firm with a large base of field technicians. Their scheduling system didn't allow options. You were told where to go, in which order, and in what route. The drivers were told to turn off their minds.

I find this article interesting because the drivers are being recommended a solution, rather than mandated a solution. I draw the analogy to a person and a chess computer playing a match together, rather than one or the other.

</comment><comment><USER3> 15 years later and the UPS-no-left-turn story is still going strong.

</comment><comment><USER4> This isn't just about UPS. This is about Trello, and Basecamp, GitHub, and email.</comment>


RSS feed for newest YC News - <AUTHOR>

Took 5 seconds to do with Feedity: http://www.feedity.com (a startup I founded)
Newest YC News RSS: http://www.feedity.com/?xccH2xIG%252bIhCywXfu149J8ltp3V3aMhk...
YC News Jobs RSS: http://www.feedity.com/?http://news.ycombinator.com/jobs
Btw, I'm seeking micro seed funding or angel investment for Feedity's 2nd major iteration. The startup is based in Melbourne, Australia. <comment><USER2> I always wondered if there was a feed for New Items. Thanks for this.

One question would you be able to include a link to the YC site to view or leave a comment? If not, it's still cool.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sweet!</comment>


Flush Indian startups face shortage of skilled workers - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/flush-indian-startups-face-shortage-of-skilled-workers-1446978604 <comment><USER2> I had to get to the article using google.

Well, I suppose India won't be sending that many engineers to the US on an H-1B once the Indian companies lobby the Indian Government cut off the export of their local talent.

The only losers here are US tech companies which will have an even tougher time importing tech talent from India.

Additionally, US companies will now have to compete against Indian companies with Indian C-level counterparts making a fraction of what they make.

Africa may start to look good long term source of tech talent to US tech companies, but I suspect that American companies using H-1B visas are going to have to pay more or use American engineers in the short term.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just hiring the middle management from Yahoo (Anand) and Motorola (Puneet) does not solve the problem. How on earth such recruitment helps hire the top talent, the talent that can design and write code. Sure, this middle management can use their networks to hire the real programmers; again, this boils down to the pay: pay the competitive rate and equity to the people. But we all know, programmers are seen as fungible.

Once some profession is fungible, it becomes the service sector: There is no need to be trained; there is no need to train. So, this will leave the one group of people: those who are super passionate about programming, and have mastered the stuff. Apply the principle of 'passion' to medicine, law and business: How many of Stanford GSB/HBS MBAs are so passionate about business that money is secondary to them? How many of MD's are so passionate, they pursue medicine to serve the public, but not for money? How many want to go to HYS lawschools to serve the poor in the states?

1\. So, make the programming profession like HYS Law, H/S MBA, MD; in which case, you are not going to get enough talent.

2\. Make it one for the super passionate, same result as the above

3\. Make it fungible like service sector jobs. You can find a lot of talent, but you don't find the quality. This is what has happened in India. Getting an IT job in India is a smart move for average hardworking people, one of the reasons has to do with the reservation system imposed on govt jobs. Even here, people take some training, then present 'fake' experience on resume to get interview calls, if you are not from well known schools. Some do succeed in interviews and work hard on the job.

What is missing here is the lack of true mentorship. When you want to become a security guard in California, you take some 30 hours of training and background check, you will get the guard card and start working for some security guard companies. In Indian IT, it is similar: go to Hyderabad, get 2 months training in Java, present yourself as a guy with 3 years of experience, face three or four interviews, you will get hired by some offshoring companies. They are hired because these candidates are happy to get a job for the least amount of pay.</comment>


Ask HN: How to negotiate startup salary? - <AUTHOR>

I'm working in a big corp and I just got an offer from a growing startup. The offer is around 2X my current unvested public stocks. What do you think? How can I improve my negotiation skills and negotiate? <comment><AUTHOR> 1\. How does the startup salary compare to your current salary?

        It's 15% increase on my current salary.

2a. What is the startup option package as a % of the company?

        50 Engineers already and company is of size 300. Options % is around 0.026%.

2b. What is the vesting schedule?

        One year cliff and month by month.

2c. Also -- (i) how big is the startup? (ii) How much money have they raised? (iii) Where is it based? (iv) How much experience do you have?

       They have raised over $50Million and bay area. I have 2.5 years of experience.

</comment><comment><USER2> You need to be more specific:

1\. How does the startup salary compare to your current salary?

2a. What is the startup option package as a % of the company?

2b. What is the vesting schedule?

2c. Also -- (i) how big is the startup? (ii) How much money have they raised? (iii) Where is it based? (iv) How much experience do you have?

With this information we can give ideas on what comparable companies offer.

You have several paths. The best way to negotiate the vested stocks is probably: "Over the next year, if I joined you guys, I would vest $X worth of public stocks. Therefore in order to join I would need a signing bonus of $X in order to compensate me for losing this."

</comment><comment><USER3> Try www.offerletter.io

<comment><AUTHOR> How was your experience with offerletter.io? My package is kind of good already. Will offerletter.io help it push further up? Can you share what kind of strategies you have applied to negotiate more?</comment></comment>


Letter of Recommendation: The Nakagin Capsule Tower - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/02/magazine/letter-of-recommendation-the-nakagin-capsule-tower.html <comment><USER2> This building makes me think of the currently popular "Microservices Architecture" and wonder what many of the systems that have adopted it will look like in a few years.

Particularly, this paragraph: "There are dozens of tiny problems that contributed to its decline, each one of them minutely nudging utopia into the grot of reality. There's no hot water. The capsules were initially lined with a three-centimeter layer of asbestos for insulation, but within a few years, the toxicity of that substance was a matter of public knowledge and as a result, the large ventilation systems taking up a significant chunk of each living space had to be permanently disabled. Rearranging the capsules turned out to be much more expensive than originally anticipated and very rarely happened. The promise that they could be upgraded or replaced over time was never fulfilled; the original and occasionally very shoddy materials are still in place. (For instance, the paper blinds that once decorated the tower's portholes have mostly rotted away. Now, some residents paste newspaper to their windows to keep the light out.) But all these swarming problems just feed into the singular, large, incontrovertible one. The idea was beautiful but unworkable; it wasn't at home in the world."

<comment><USER3> I found that paragraph a bit perplexing: it attributed overall failure to problems due to lack of maintenance. Sure, you fail to maintain something that needs it then it will develop problems. That doesn't indicate a design problem though. The article cites a bunch of such problems, then concludes that they are evidence of an unworkable idea, which doesn't follow.

I wonder whether the building could be refurbished, using lessons learned. Replace the asbestos with some other insulation that is non-toxic, and clean the ventilation system. Lack of hot water provided by the infrastructure can be point-of-use hot water heaters. The comment about the rotting window-blinds is just mystifying to me: those have nothing to do with the building itself, any building with similar blinds would be prone to the same problem, either regularly replace them or use something more durable. And with respect to the problems rearranging the capsules, they never specify what problems impeded this activity: perhaps something could be done to alleviate such problems, but it is hard to say in the absence of any concrete information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Human relationships simply don't work, at any scale, from the most intimate > to the most abstract. The nuclear family is a repressive disaster, but > monogamy and polygamy each have thousands of tiny, fast anxieties scurrying > under their surfaces. Socialism and capitalism each unleashed unprecedented > horrors racing across the world's surface. We don't know how to deal with > one another; all we can ever do is fail in different ways.

I'm not going to try and pick this apart or disagree with it.

I do find it deeply fascinating that there is such a pronounced divide (or spectrum) between people who prefer solitude and those who prefer companionship. When we here of someone old dying alone our first thought can be "Oh, that's so sad," but we might learn that the person was alone entirely by choice.

It takes all kinds. Or, I guess, 十人十色.

<comment><USER5> According to google translate, "十人十色" means "various colors." Pretty sure the machine translation lost some original nuance ;)

<comment><USER6> Ten people, ten colors/ways/tastes/opinions.

"To each their own."

</comment></comment></comment><comment> david-given (How can you have an article about a building with just one picture _of_ the building?)

Here's a more in-depth article, with lots of photos, of the Tower, written by a couple of architects who lived there for a year:

[http://www.failedarchitecture.com/nakagin/](http://www.failedarchitecture.com/nakagin/)

<comment><USER7> That's a much better article, thanks.

And here's a newspaper article from Oct 2014 describing the current status of the Nakagin:

[http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2014/10/03/arts/tokyos-t...](http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2014/10/03/arts/tokyos- tiny-capsules-architectural-flair/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Pop culture tends to be fond of ruins ... Architectural failure doesn't get the same regard. It tends to be demolished as quickly as possible or blankly ignored or, if neither of those are possible, widely moaned about." :-)</comment>


Google announces mandatory privacy settings change across products - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-tracks-consumers-across-products-users-cant-opt-out/2012/01/24/gIQArgJHOQ_story.html

<comment><USER2> _"The policy will take effect March 1 and will also impact Android mobile phone users, who are required to log in to Google accounts when they activate their phones."_

As much of a PITA it can be to delete Google accounts and reroute everything, I'm glad I'm not stuck in a 2-year contract with this nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER3> Corporate PR non-sense: _"The company said the change would simplify the company's privacy policy — a move that was encouraged by regulators."_</comment>


Gevent 0.13.0 released - coroutine network library for Python - <AUTHOR> http://www.gevent.org <comment><USER2> I'm a happy customer. I use gevent for a small program that resolves every short link in the Twitter firehose. The code makes ~100-200 HTTP requests per second, waits on a few thousand outstanding connections, and streams out the results.

</comment><comment><USER3> I pity anyone who has to debug problems caused by monkeypatching the socket module... I wish people would stop trying to solve problems with monkeypatching in python. There are better solutions. Cool idea other than that, though.

Does anyone know of any large-scale projects using this library? It would be interesting to see how it performs in the real world - not needing to use OS threads means that maybe you won't have as much trouble with the GIL, but on the other hand, operations like socket.read() are supposed to release the GIL while they block anyway.

<comment><USER4> Well, you can either monkey patch the socket module OR do the callback hell + completely alienate you from the Python ecosystem.

I'm not saying these are perfect solutions. But gevent with greenlet addresses the problem at the right level. Making developers care about asynchronous I/O only when they need it. Not the other way around as with many other async/event based frameworks.

We're actually using it for our real-time web framework Planet (<http://www.esn.me>) and our cloud-hosted WebSocket service, Beacon (<http://beaconpush.com>). So far, so good!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Also note a similar library named Eventlet: <http://eventlet.net/>

<comment><USER6> The gevent author wrote up an article regarding what led him to writing it after working on eventlet for a while: <http://blog.gevent.org/2010/02/27/why- gevent/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Gevent seems to be the fastest Python async server after Tornado: <http://nichol.as/asynchronous-servers-in-python>

I'd be interested in seeing node.js benchmarked against these.

<comment><USER8> I find it highly suspicious that the linked writeup doesn't include pyevent (barebones libevent wrapper).</comment></comment>


Tsunami is a general purpose network security scanner - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/google/tsunami-security-scanner <comment><USER2> Apache licensed, comes from Google.

Related blog post: [https://opensource.googleblog.com/2020/06/tsunami- extensible...](https://opensource.googleblog.com/2020/06/tsunami-extensible- network-scanning.html?m=1)

<comment><USER3> And written in Java.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting looking project, although at the moment it's only useful for a small range of issues.

One of the harder parts of vulnerability scanning is building and maintaining the plugin database. Nessus, which is one of the older and better known VA tools has 10's of thousands of plugins...

There are other, open source, vulnerability scanning tools available as well like OpenVAS [https://www.openvas.org/](https://www.openvas.org/)

<comment><USER5> Nessus used to be FOSS (before 2005). OpenVAS is a Nessus fork.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The name ("Tsunami") and the description ("network scanner") reminded me of the architecturally very innovative " _Paketto Keiretsu_ [1]" from the very early 2000s. Very fond memories. I remember that the speed it achieved compared to (say) _nmap_ was truly astounding.

[1] [http://freshmeat.sourceforge.net/projects/paketto/](http://freshmeat.sourceforge.net/projects/paketto/)

</comment><comment><USER7> What data flows back to Google from an internal Tsunami server?

<comment><USER8> we need another scanner for that.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: GDPR for Deceased Persons - <AUTHOR> I am hosting a website for a funeral parlor. There's a part of the site dedicated to obituaries, where the names of the deceased are fully accessible.
IANAL so I was wondering if it can be a problem regarding GPDR as the deceased clearly didn't give any consent, but won't complain (obviously).
I'm not really concerned as I just host it (and all is encrypted on my side) and, to be honest, it's a small company very local.
But yet, the question hit me so if someone as an answer, thanks. <comment><USER2> [https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-27/](https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-27/)

Recital 27

1 This Regulation does not apply to the personal data of deceased persons.

2 Member States may provide for rules regarding the processing of personal data of deceased persons.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you !</comment></comment>


What Startups Must Know Before Signing a Lease - <AUTHOR> http://www.jasongrimes.com/blog-8-things-startups-must-know-before-signi

<comment><USER2> This is a good article and the same scrutiny should be applied when signing any contract.

In the past I was burned by contract with a data center for colocation of servers. The contract had a really _ugly_ termination clause.

The lease term was one year and company required 30 days notice of termination or the lease would auto-renew for another one year term. After 3 years of hosting our servers at this data center the company I was a part of dissolved. When we called to cancel the colocation we missed the notification deadline by a month and the contract renewed for another year. The data center had our servers and was unwilling to negotiate an early termination.

Lesson learned.

</comment><comment><USER3> he didn't mention the 'co-sign the lease yourself or not' question... perhaps that's obvious to those of you who have funding and lawyers and stuff, but for those of us who don't, it can often be difficult to impossible to get leases without personally co-signing.

</comment><comment><USER4> One key thing to remember is that for commercial spaces, you are bound to the text of the contract. If it's in there, you've agreed to it. If it's not, then don't count on it. This differs significantly from residential where you can't sign away certain rights.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nowadays, there are co-working arrangements in most major cities with month to month leases. In the early stages, why bother getting locked into a lease at all?

<comment><USER6> There are also coffee shops and 101 other ways to work without a physical nexus.

I think at some point, however, when you're growing, having everyone in one location that is "home" can be very useful, and these tips are good for if you get to that point.

<comment><USER7> At Ontela, we thought that working virtually from home was awesome until we got office space. Then we realized that the office increased our productivity massively. It was a combination of no home distractions, less inclined to do pseudo-work things like checking HN, and being able to ask questions of and be inspired by folks around you.

The article is great... and I can't emphasize enough "short lease = good".</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How did you find your cofounder? - <AUTHOR>

As a technical person ... i find it increasingly difficult to find a suitable, reliable cofounder to work on one of my ideas, or one of theirs.
If you can please explain how you met your cofounder? Were you out looking for one, or was it a thought in the back of your head? Explain.
Thanks <comment><USER2> And what for a +40 someone? Can't go and waste time at school again.

I got contacted by my cofounder. Back when Rails was hot, he looked on forums, found some posts of mine, investigated further and contacted me.

Didn't work out though. Project got started, has been making profit for years, but not enough to drop the daytime job.

I find that reliable people my age really have such an outdated view on business that I know in advance we're not compatible... younger people lack experience.

I'm thinking lately of switching roles. I had been looking for a non-tech cofounder, as I've got more than enough coding/sysadmin experience. But the last 7-8 years, I'm the director of a small business (not my own), learning marketing, pr, bizdev, hr, ... so I'm thinking I might rather look for someone to handle the tech part.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been involved with three startups, and met all three co-founders under radically different situations. The first startup was a game studio, Blazing Griffin ([http://blazinggriffin.com](http://blazinggriffin.com)) -- I was doing hobbyist iOS game dev as a creative outlet during my PhD, and demoed one of my prototypes to a guy who I ended up starting the studio with at a regular gamedev drinkup ([https://twitter.com/GameDevEd](https://twitter.com/GameDevEd)). We eventually parted ways (difference of vision), but I wouldn't say we were unsuccessful as a co-founding team, since the company is still doing great and we parted under good terms.

The second was a mini-publishing house (a very strange and very different business...), which I co-founded with a group of university friends. We had a couple of common interests, and all had ideas for different projects that could overlap. These were folks I originally met socially, mostly through a dance class we all took, but we've had a great time working together and shipped some pretty excellent things. It may be because we were friends first and co-founders later, but our working relationship has been consistently really great.

The third startup is different again. It's not launched yet, but I'm building it with a three-person team of folks I put together from my day job. We're all a little disillusioned with corporate work, and realised over a couple conversations that we we had the technical and business development chops to put together something really awesome, if only it was something that we had real ownership of. Hey presto, a team of founders was formed and off we went in search of ideas (our current prototype is a no-nonsense classified listings site for apps; read about it at [http://blog.theappclassifieds.com](http://blog.theappclassifieds.com)).

I'm not sure what the takeaway from all of this might be, other than to just consistently surround yourself with smart people. Find a place where people are smarted than you and interested in building the same kinds of things, and get going.

</comment><comment><USER4> My cofounder is my former manager. We worked together for 6 years before leaving and chasing the common dream we had of starting our own business.

I made friends at school but very few of them would I consider doing business with, much less starting a business with. I suppose it depends on how you select your friends.

</comment><comment><USER5> I met my co-founders at school, after 11 years I finally figured out it did not work and that it never would work, been a single founder for the last 6 years and is never going to have a co-founder again.

Remember some people work better as single founders.

Ps. I have employees and always will, I loce being around people at work.

</comment><comment><USER6> I had great co-founders and bad co-founders. The great ones are people I knew, whom I respected. I told them my idea. They got excited about it. We discussed it more and more, until it was clear we were all passionate about it. And we did it.

I wrote my lessons here: [http://foundrs.com/find-a- cofounder](http://foundrs.com/find-a-cofounder)

</comment><comment><USER7> There is a PG paper explaining that the best place is at school.

<comment><USER3> I think the PG essay you're referring to is [http://www.paulgraham.com/startupfaq.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/startupfaq.html), which includes literally the single line "the best way to meet co-founders is to go to school with them." While this is almost certainly true, it isn't exactly actionable advice -- either the OP is still in university, in which case she's already looking amongst her classmates, or she's graduated, in which case it's too late.

Although going back to do a postgraduate degree and intentionally looking out for co-founders is a perfectly valid tactic, so I guess there is something actionable about it.</comment></comment>


Eliminating Global Locks in Ruby through Hardware Transactional Memory - <AUTHOR> http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view_person_subpage.php?id=5206

<comment><AUTHOR> I saw the first author of this paper present this work in my building a month ago. Myself and others were impressed with both their results, and the rigor in their analysis. They experiment on multiple hardware platforms, and even compare against other VMs. In short, this is what good systems research looks like.

Note that this page links to both the full paper and the slides from their conference talk. I should also disclose that I also work for IBM Research, so I may have some bias in liking this paper.</comment>


PGP: Backdoors and Key Escrow (2003) - <AUTHOR> http://www.rossde.com/PGP/pgp_backdoor.html <comment><USER2> The strangest thing about these law enforcement wish lists (that Obama is so in favour of) is that they don't actually work; terrorists will still be able to find or build software that doesn't have back doors and the rest of us will have our privacy and security compromised permanently.

I'll also note that you never seem to see the laws (RIPA in the UK for example) that do exist used against paedophiles and terrorists; more often they are used against peace campaigners, whistle blowers and reporters.

Has it always been that the government doesn't trust the people? It certainly looks increasingly that we should not trust our government.

<comment><USER3> > I'll also note that you never seem to see the laws (RIPA in the UK for > example) that do exist used against paedophiles and terrorists; more often > they are used against peace campaigners, whistle blowers and reporters.

Where are you getting your list of targets of RIPA action?

<comment><USER2> [http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/nov/04/police-ripa- pow...](http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/nov/04/police-ripa-powers-spy- journalists-sources)

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8868757/Council...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8868757/Councils- have-mounted-millions-of-snooping-operations-in-past-decade-finds-report.html)

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/bbc-and- royal-...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/bbc-and-royal-mail- using-ripa-terror-powers-to-spy-on-public-8070057.html)

[https://firstname.lastname@example.com/ssl/spybl...](https://email@example.com/ssl/spyblog/2014/01/15/first- ripa-s49-encrypted-usb-devices-conviction-involving-national-security--- sy.html)

[https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investig...](https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_Powers_Act_2000/Part_III#Cases)

Good enough :-D

<comment><USER3> > Good enough

Not really, no.

For example:

> Twenty-six local authorities used Ripa to spy on dog owners to see whose > animals they believed to be responsible for dog fouling,

Before RIPA they would have done the covert surveillance and we wouldn't have known and there wouldn't have been much control over it. After RIPA they have to follow a legal framework, we know about it, and there are controls. This is exactly what ripa is for. It's supposed to regulate, not eliminate, regulatory powers. RIPA brings the surveillance that was always happening under tighter legal framework. This is not an abuse of RIPA. This is RIPA working as intended.

If you want to say there's too much surveillance you should just say that. There probably is too much surveillance in the UK.

RIPA: [http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/contents](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/contents)

You want part two: [http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/section/27](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/section/27)

RIPA has several sections. Only one of the cases you've linked to are under the intelligence service authorisation level. The rest are under the

<comment><USER2> If you want to knitpick, right back at you because that's 100% not true; the last link is about all known cases of RIPA being used.

I feel that if a judge orders you to hand over encryption keys you probably should, but I worry about these laws being misused; for example we are sold on them being about paedophiles and terrorists and most of their use cases are simply not about that. That's the basic premise of my argument, I'm not saying (at least here) that there is too much surveillance. Instead I'm saying the powers are given for one reason and then used for another. I don't see how you can disagree with that given what I've provided as evidence.

More generally are you asserting that anti-terror powers are never granted and then used for the wrong reasons?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> To the other commenter:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_King...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_Kingdom)</comment>


Show HN: Writebin, an inline markdown editor - <AUTHOR> http://writebin.io <comment><USER2> This is really cool and I'm really a big supporter for this type of editors!

Some suggestions:

* There should be an option "demo page",

* Paragraphs should be drag-n-droppable,

* Arrow keys should take me to the previous/next paragraph,

* There should be "a plus icon" above and below each paragraph,

* Inline editor should contain buttons for "bold", "italic" etc..,

* Pressing "the bold button" when there's a highlighted word should wrap it in two stars etc.;

Is the thing open-sourced? I would like to help improve it and use it in my blog for writing things.

<comment><USER3> The buttons for surrounding text with one or two asterisks/underscores should not be "bold" and "italic", but rather "strong" and "emphasized". Those are the HTML tags they generate, which need not look bold and italic. To generate actual <b> and <i> HTML tags in Markdown, you have to write them inline; there is no syntax shortcut.

Also, to add on to your suggestion that buttons should interact with highlighted words, the link-making button that already exists should also wrap a highlighted word with the link instead of overwriting it. For example, if "here" is highlighted, clicking the button should replace it with "[here](|)", where '|' is the cursor.

<comment><USER4> Great point regarding link insertion. We'll definitely add that to our todos. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You might want to be careful about security. Here's a harmless (at the time of writing!) XSS vulnerability: [http://writebin.io/d/GTFx9CxV](http://writebin.io/d/GTFx9CxV)

        <img onerror='alert("uh oh")' src=z> ← that there is an example of the sort of security hole (XSS) this has. Remember: Markdown is by default a *horribly* insecure format.

<comment><USER6> Gruber's decision to include html in the markdown "spec" has always perplexed me.

<comment><USER7> I'm pretty sure that's because Markdown was written specifically for pre- processing HTML blog posts. It was never meant to be a full-on replacement for HTML, but simply a way to make the HTML that you're most likely to use when writing such a post easier to write. If I'm the only person who can post to my blog, there are no security issues introduced by using Markdown. (Or at least, no more security issues than would be introduced if I could use pure HTML for posting on my blog.)

<comment><USER8> I've used it for that, and the inclusion of HTML is sometimes a nice "escape hatch": you can write pages mostly in Markdown, but include inline HTML when you need to add formatting or interaction to a page that Markdown's own syntax doesn't support.

Some Markdown parsers have an option to sanitize embedded HTML, e.g. Discount, and its bindings in various languages, does a very basic s/</\</g when the "no html" option is used: [http://www.pell.portland.or.us/~orc/Code/discount/](http://www.pell.portland.or.us/~orc/Code/discount/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This looks great. I did think the demo would be like [http://raphaelcruzeiro.github.io/jquery- notebook/](http://raphaelcruzeiro.github.io/jquery-notebook/) \- might be a good "distraction-free" mode.

Offtopic: where can I learn to make sites that look like this?

</comment><comment><USER10> This looks really great, and I had fun playing around with it.

One small thing that stuck out: there isn't any way to make a newline. You have to make an entirely new comment. Or is there some shortcut key I'm missing? On a lot of text editors, it's Shift + Enter.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. We chose not to allow hand-wrapped paragraphs because the newlines have no effect on the resulting rendered HTML. In some cases, it will allow newlines (lists, blockquotes).

<comment><USER11> It would be great to autoindent next line when writing code blocks (that start with 4 space, for example).

<comment><USER12> Sounds like you're looking for tabIndent.js

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is great stuff. Writing markdown is much more rewarding when it pops as you write it like this. I usually write using half of my screen, using another window as a reference, so side-by-side never works for me. This works well!

small suggestion: would be great to have a way to navigate by keyboard between paragraphs (tab / shift-tab?). if that feature exists, I couldn't find the keystrokes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for trying it out. We spent some time trying to get arrow keys (and crtl+p crtl+n) to move to the next/previous paragraph when you hit the bottom/top of the current one, but a cursor position bug prevented that from working so we cut it for now. This something we definitely want though, we'll bring it back as soon as we can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm bothered by the overuse of the word "beautiful". Please reconsider using that to describe your product. It's 2013's "epic".

Also, you need much better keyboard support. Jumping between sections shouldn't require using the mouse.

<comment><USER4> I think that's totally fair feedback regarding the product description. Any suggestions? Also, we agree on the inline navigation. There's some complexities based on the limited information textarea exposes regarding caret positions, but we'll be working on an alternative solution.

<comment><USER14> I'm not convinced that you need an adjective to describe the documents. Describe the process/tool instead.

Something like: "An elegant markdown editor for..."?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It seems every time I have a dream for something, it appears on HN the next day!

In academic writing, everyone I know uses MS Word. My fantasy is to use a markdown editor that could take the generated html and produce pdf's. If this editor had a way to generate insertable references along with nicely formatted tables, it could easily be a replacement for such a thing.

It would also be nice if something like this had a git backend to it that would allow a version control of the document that allowed multiple authors to contribute. Also, author notes would be nice. Anyhow, that is my wish list. Awesome project.. really dig the simplicity!

<comment><USER4> That's a great use case that we'd love to support. I like the versioning suggestion as well. Thanks for the great feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Firefox 28 beta: I end up with an all white screen and this in the javascript console:

        ReferenceError: _Logger is not defined toolbar.js:1
        TypeError: ToolbarView is not a function app.js:1

</comment><comment><USER17> For a reason, new documents show an empty page under:

        Chromium Version 32.0.1700.107 (248368)

console shows:

        GET http://writebin.io/f/js/logger.js  2ZNsPsJy:21
        Uncaught ReferenceError: _Logger is not defined toolbar.js:1
        GET http://www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js  2ZNsPsJy:29
        Uncaught TypeError: Property 'ToolbarView' of object [object Object] is not a function app.js:1

<comment><USER4> Thanks for pointing this out, we'll take a look.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is an awesome concept for markdown UI. I know this is still in early stages with more features coming but allowing up/down arrows to move between blocks would make it a lot easier to navigate.

Undo doesn't work which is kind of annoying. That is something that plagues most of the editors using ace, showdown, et al. Could you get away with just text areas?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We're trying to deviate from the common side-by-side pattern. It's not perfect, but we couldn't wait any longer to share it. We're working on accounts. Be sure to leave your email in the sidebar if you'd like to participate in the Beta. Let thauburger and I know what you think. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER19> Nice work. I did encounter a double space "bug" when editing existing content. Visually the double space won't appear in the HTML output, but you do notice it while editing and is slightly annoying.

Perhaps a "write to PDF" feature could be a nice addition?

</comment><comment><USER20> Support for selecting your inline position per touch on mobile browsers is missing. I often start a list by writing a sentence and adding the "-" afterwards.

Otherwise it is very useful. I would love to use something like it for my own projects.

</comment><comment><USER21> Shameless plug for [http://bigwhoop.github.io/lyme/](http://bigwhoop.github.io/lyme/). It's a jQuery plugin, open-source and supports up-and-down movement via hotkeys. ;-)

</comment><comment><USER22> i am polishing an app that's "highly similar", (a.k.a., nearly identical), so... first of all, let me compliment you on your excellent insight. :+)

your website says "accounts coming soon". and i'm curious what that means. whatever it is, i should probably inform you that my app is javascript that works exclusively client-side, saving where you like, including your own site. (with a "last-resort" option to save on my site) and i will be encouraging people to _take_it_, for free (as in beer and speech), which means there might not be much money in this arena...

-bowerbird

</comment><comment><USER23> Looks good, though I wish it had emacs bindings to search back and forth and move through paragraphs and lines.

I also wish it had support for various markdown extensions like table of contents and in page anchors.

But certainly looks terrific.

<comment><AUTHOR> Noted. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Cool product, but when I read "inline" I thought it would render the markdown in real time (this editor waits until you press Enter to go to the next paragraph).

</comment><comment><USER25> Looks like AdBlockPlus blocks it!

Filter in effect '/logger.js'

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops. Thanks! I'll try to get that fixed :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Things that go across more than one line more or less don't work; for example, links where you specify the target on another line.

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't have a solution for reference style links yet, but lists, blockquotes, and code should work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You have no contact details in your profile or on writebin.io - someone here has posted an XSS vulnerability.

</comment><comment><USER26> because you cannot host jQuery on your own site, you may or may not need jQuery.

edit: turns out, adblock didn't like logger.js. but the jquery and underscores are still refusing to be served. You may or may not need underscore as well.

</comment><comment><USER27> Excuse me for being skeptic, but what is the problem you are going to solve?

</comment><comment><USER25> Some feedback:

When you say inline, I expect up/down arrows to work.

<comment><AUTHOR> We do too, but it wasn't working well enough so we cut it out for now. It will come back soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks for the awesome feedback.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best way to making money on the internet? - <AUTHOR> Blogging, SaaS, Ebook Selling, Affilaites, Etc... <comment><USER2> When it comes to product types, your best options are:

\- Info products (Ebooks, Video Courses, etc)

\- Software products (SaaS)

\- Services (Web Development, SEO, etc)

\- Affiliate links

The first two are by far the most profitable ones, but also the most challenging to make. Affiliate links are the easiest but also least useful in the long term.

The most profitable niches are:

\- Business - anything that helps people to make money

\- Education - anything that helps people to be better at their craft

\- Health

\- Relationships

\- Entertainment

Find where your skills, profitable niches, and profitable product types overlap, and that will be a good place to start.

Then it comes down to a simple formula:

> Traffic * Conversions = Profit

The best way to get traffic is to create value and share it for free (Articles, Videos, free software, etc).

You can use SocialMedia/SEO/Ads to drive traffic to your free value, and use that to build mailing list.

Then you share more value with your subscribers to develop trust, and eventually you can sell your products to them.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have seen a few online videos about a _fantastic_ method that can get you started at 10000 eur/month _guaranteed_. The sky is the limit.

On top of that you only have to work like 4-6 hours a week, without commuting. You can travel as much as you want. You can stay at home if you want. Stay at home mums and wives and dads and husbands are elegible too, no matter how busy they are taking care of their families! There are no gender, age, religion, race or country of origin requirements. It doesn't matter how you look either. You can be thin or fat, big or small, cute or ugly or totally average. You can be shy or outspoken. No prior education, formal or informal, of any kind is required. It doesn't matter if you speak English as a second language and not too well. You don't need an expensive diploma from a fancy and prestigious University and waste years of your life to get it so you can be accepted and maybe over the years recognized and respected after you spend at least a few years as an intern or entrepreneur or start-up founder or a mix of them in the corporate world. And, by the way, the business model is hand fed to you; you don't really need to come up with it by yourself, although if you have any business ideas you can ensure they'll succeed by themselves and make you rich _in days_ by following this method. If you are a little suspicious don't be. Believe it or not, _it 's all legit_.

So, now you know. You can follow the hard way of making money off the Internet or simply contact email@example.com_ and we'll get you all set up and started on these few simple tricks right away!!

</comment><comment><USER4> Using competitive intelligence and spying techniques to find out what is making money on the internet. Then evaluate which of those you can replicate the easiest to take some of that margin.

</comment><comment><USER5> Selling your mom</comment>