Jobs was told anti-poaching idea likely illegal - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/21/us-apple-lawsuit-idUSTRE80K00G20120121 <comment><USER2> What is theft?

Apple is suing multiple companies in the name of IP theft. Well I think these anti-poaching agreements are a form of theft. Employees did not receive fair market salaries.

It's not black and white, but you can't say Apple is 100% correct in going after IP theft and yet they are 100% innocent in pursuing these non-poaching agreements.

<comment><USER3> >Employees did not receive fair market salaries.

Wait - what ? When consumer groups decide to boycott a product does that mean they are denying the producer a fair market price ?

<comment><USER4> Consumer boycotts are rarely about price, if the price of a good is too high people simply don't buy it, which is a clear signal to the seller. A boycott is not denying anyone any right as there is no 'right' that people are compelled to buy the product you are offering.

Contrast this with what this case alleges, that Apple, Google, etc.. entered into an active agreement that not only would they _not_ actively recruit (I am fine with _that_ agreement) but more so they would not even hire if someone came to them completely 'out of the blue' but happened to work for one of these other companies currently. Further, they would actually alert the employer, likely so the employer could take some action against their property...I mean employee.

The stupidity of ideas like this is they are counterproductive. If your employees are 'shopping around' or seriously entertaining recruitment offers it likely means they are unhappy in your employ. In this case it is best for everyone for them to go elsewhere. You know how you retain good employees? By giving them challenging work, minimizing stupid bureaucratic taxes, avoiding silly office politics, paying them fairly and treating them with basic dignity and respect. What a concept.

<comment><USER3> >A boycott is not denying anyone any right as there is no 'right' that people are compelled to buy the product you are offering.

As opposed to labor where you have a right to compel any company to hire you ?

<comment><USER4> Where did I say you should 'compel' someone to hire you? All I said (or rather implied) is that if you go to a place advertising employment opportunities, you pass all of their tests/criteria for hire and then they don't hire you because you work for someone with whom they have made one of these secret agreements, that is a dysfunctional market. The fact these agreements were generally secret says a lot about the people making them and the fact that they knew full well it would be viewed _very_ unfavorably by their employees. When you are instituting something you need to 'keep secret' from your employees maybe you should really think hard about the validity of what you are doing.

<comment><USER3> >The fact these agreements were generally secret says a lot about the people making them and the fact that they knew full well it would be viewed very unfavorably by their employees. When you are instituting something you need to 'keep secret' from your employees maybe you should really think hard about the validity of what you are doing.

And what about employee who goes to a job interview in secret - does that reflect on validity of his actions ? Again, the double standards are really bugging me with these sort of things, it's OK if a consumer does something, if a union pushes on employers and legislators to protect labor and act monopolistic/like a cartel - but when it's the other way around then all the sudden the moral fabric of the society is falling apart. It's likely that competing corporations are doing this because they are loosing more than they are gaining by stealing employees from each other. As long as they can't influence the legislators people will break the pact when it suits them, cartels have a very hard time enforcing their agreements and break up because of incentives for any individual entity to cheat. For the record I'm not an employer, I just hate double standards.

<comment><USER4> It depends I suppose. If your employer has absolutely no idea that you aren't happy, then I would say there is a communication breakdown going on. If your employees are 'testing the water' so to speak, and you are treating them fairly and paying them fairly then they will discover that in looking at other options, no harm, no foul. If you are treating them poorly, paying them poorly, etc.. they will also discover that, but then again they _should_ discover that.

I think this situation of employees looking around could really only upset people who desire the kind of blind company loyalty that simply doesn't exist anymore, for multiple reasons including a lack of loyalty/dedication from the employer.

Double standards implies treating two people in identical situations differently. This is not the case here as employees and employers aren't in identical situations, there is a definite information/power asymmetry in play.

Also, on one hand, there is a collusion between two parties. For an employee 'looking around' there is no collusion. Now if that same employee secretly tried to get his co-workers to quit and leave the employer high and dry at some vital point (or really any point), then they would be acting like just as big of douchebags as the kind of people that make these sort of agreements. But I haven't heard that is happening. I have basically heard companies say 'ohhh it is hard to retain super talented people because others are always trying to lure them away', yep, that sounds accurate. The solution isn't 'I know, let's all agree to NOT take each others good employees' but rather 'how can we stem attrition by understanding _why_ these talented people are leaving and taking steps to fix the problem?' Then again I suppose making shady agreements over the phone is a lot simpler.

<comment><USER4> Also, talking to myself now, upon further thought I think the proper parallel here is between employees looking for another job and employers planning on firing/laying off employees. The latter is generally not done in the open, or with any sort of advance notice, thus it isn't clear the former should be either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Its disgusting to see that in this day and age that large companies can be actively engaged in such collusive anti-competitive practices. I dont care who they are or whether or not they knew that what they were doing was illegal - the architects of this 'gentlemans agreement' should have time in jail for this.

<comment><USER6> Jail time for agreeing not to cold-call employees of another company? ~~There is no evidence for anything more, and I don't know if there is any evidence that they actually followed through~~ (the history of cartels show that those agreements were rarely adhered to strictly, it seems even more unlikely considering how those companies are hurting for talent).

Edit: OK, kryptiskt has a point.

<comment><USER7> > Jail time for agreeing not to cold-call employees of another company?

There are evidence of worse than that:

"The evidence states that the defendants agreed not to poach employees from each other or give them offers if they voluntarily applied, and to notify the current employers of any employees trying to switch been. They also agreed not to enter into bidding wars and to limit the potential for employees to negotiate for higher salaries."

[http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/19/damning-evidence-emerges- in...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/19/damning-evidence-emerges-in-google- apple-no-poach-antitrust-lawsuit/)

<comment><USER8> That enrages me.

For good engineers in the valley, we're easily talking the 110-160k range. So they're definitely not part of the poor, unrepresented masses.

Still, that these mega-billionaires sat in their executive suites and pulled strings to harm and limit careers, it sickens me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This headline is a good example of the problem with the passive voice. My first assumption when reading the headline was that an Apple lawyer told him that. A better headline would be something like:

"Palm CEO Told Jobs Anti-Poaching Pact 'Likely Illegal'"

In general, using the passive voice in a news context anonymizes the subjects of a particular story. In this case, the headline writer probably did so in order to make Jobs the only subject of the headline, but it hides very important information about the story.

You're probably thinking that the first sentence provides the information, but studies show that a large percentage of news readers read only the headline (I suspect that is especially true about news aggregators), and that there is a precipitous decline in readership in every sentence thereafter.

As a result, newswriters usually pay a lot of attention to making sure that headlines and article ledes have as much pertinent information as possible. As it should be.

<comment><USER10> I think the reason behind this title it to attract more eyes to the story. _Jobs sells. Palm CEO ? Who care what palm' CEO says?_

Yahoo News is a notorious example of using the titles to make people read the full story. And I think it's pretty common elsewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This completely fits with what we know about Jobs, he felt laws didn't apply to him. I hesitate to say this is an "Apple" policy when it was Jobs calling another CEO and proposing a gentleman's agreement.

<comment><USER12> Why do you hesitate to say it was an Apple policy? The whole HR staff at both companies were involved. The fact that it was personally negotiated by two people at the top has no bearing on the fact that the companies were abiding by it.

These types of whole-company-on-board policies change departments permanently as well. If HR were willing to poach they would have ended up with "specialists" whose entire jobs were to basically "infiltrate" (either literally or externally at social functions) other companies, figure out who to poach and get them. None of those exist at those companies because of this policy.

<comment><USER10> I think that qualifies as industrial espionage. There are laws that forbid that behavior. And it is punishable with jail time. I don't know how many CEO's are willing to bet their necks doing that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "They also agreed not to enter into bidding wars and to limit the potential for employees to negotiate for higher salaries."

But... but... but...

If companies can't be allowed to limit salary negotiations, how else can they claim there's a shortage of skilled talent in the US, necessitating importing cheaper labor?

</comment><comment><USER14> Apple creates such innovative products yet seems to subscribe to such regressive social policies. I have trouble gauging whether their products should be considered progress when things like this anti-poaching policy come to light.

<comment><USER15> They're a large corporation with shareholders to satisfy. With so much economic incentive to cheat it's not very surprising that they do. Disappointing, but not surprising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'd be interested to know what "anti-poaching" actually means. It could mean several things, which I'm listing from most reasonable to least reasonable:

* Don't try to sabotage the other company's projects by explicitly recruiting key people at crucial times for the project; but it's fine to hire for your own company's productivity.

* Don't use the competing company as just a pool of candidates (e.g. stand outside their door asking people to apply to your company); but if you happen to find them through other means (e.g. they come to you, you find them at a conference, etc.), then hire them.

* Don't ever hire directly from the other company.

* Don't hire someone from a competitor even if they already left.

* Don't hire someone that ever worked for a competitor.

So, how far do the actual agreements go? Did I miss a potential level of "anti-poaching"?

<comment><USER11> I agree with the first 3, as part of the "policy", not sure about the last 2. I don't think the last 2 could be considered poaching.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder how the Google fanboys will reconcile this with "Don't Be Evil". Colluding to keep salaries low and to prevent career mobility for your employees is pretty fucking evil in my book.

<comment><USER18>
      > I wonder how the Google fanboys will reconcile
      > this with "Don't Be Evil"

Nope. This isn't likely to start a flame war/pointless Internet argument at all...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm not sure I understand why these anti-poaching agreements are or should be illegal. I understand the argument to be that, with no where else to go, they can lower the salaries of highly-skilled employees. But isn't there always somewhere else to go? If Apple employees can't go to Adobe, there's always Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Amazon, and a sea of startups.

Apologies for my ignorance on the matter, but I'm just not seeing what the big deal is.

<comment><USER20> I agree. If natural persons can form collectives, guilds, and unions why can't corporate persons do the same? This is, of course, assuming that there is no special grant or license issued by the government to engage in that form of work.

<comment><USER21> I don't believe corporate persons should have the same rights as natural persons and I'm not alone in that belief.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Elec...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission#Criticisms)

<comment><USER22> 1\. This has nothing to do with the decision in Citizens United. This is about anti-trust regulation, which regulates collusive behavior, not speech. Any speech incidental to such a conspiracy (whether to rob a bank or fix wages in a labor market) is not protected anyway, whether it's an individual or a corporation speaking.

2\. Please don't misrepresent the decision in Citizens United to make it stand for something which it does not. The holding in Citizens United was not that corporations == natural persons or that corporations have the same rights as natural persons. The holding was that that natural persons don't lose their rights to free speech (paid for with their own funds) because they join together into legal associations. Similar to how natural persons don't lose their 4th amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure or their 5th amendment protections against the government seizing their property when they form such associations.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


AT&T not happy with Verizon ads: 'There's a lawsuit for that' - <AUTHOR> http://www.tuaw.com/2009/11/03/atandt-not-happy-with-verizon-ads-theres-a-lawsuit-for-that/

<comment><USER2> It's interesting that AT&T isn't disputing the lack of 3G coverage claim. Instead, they're stretching to say Verizon was implying something else with clearly-labeled maps.

Pretty inane. I doubt they'll win. It reflects pretty badly on them, too.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Total waste of AT&T's money to pursue this. Embarrassing on their part, if you ask me.

WAIT! Here's an idea: The money they are spending on legal for this lawsuit they could use to improve the network!

Ha, I know, that's just craaaaazy talk. Silly me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If Verizon's PR people are good they'll milk this all the way to the bank. Let this drag on, generate a lot of press coverage, keep harping on the fact that AT&T really _doesn't_ have good 3G coverage.

</comment><comment><USER5> AT&T should counter with a pie chart of "percent of population with 3G coverage". AT&T's and Verizon's coverage will look identical then.

(I used to have AT&T, and traveled a lot, but was never out of range of their 3G service. Verizon certainly has a good network, but AT&T's is not horribly bad.)

<comment><USER6> I guess it depends where you live, and whether or not you travel. I frankly don't care if they have 3G in new mexico, as it wouldn't concern me, and I'd probably never go there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Both maps clearly state 3G coverage in the ad and do not say network coverage anywhere in it, why even go for a lawsuit like this?</comment>


Skim reading is the new normal. The effect on society is profound - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/25/skim-reading-new-normal-maryanne-wolf <comment><USER3> Did anyone else click through to the article and think: "okay, try not to skim the article about how bad skim-reading is!"?

I really like this article. It is aligning with very formless thoughts I have been having over the past year about the varying qualities of information and how it can affect your minds health. Much like a food diet, I have been thinking that it is wise to cultivate a healthy "information diet" in order to preserve good mental health.

Amid frustration with my degrading attention span last year, I swore off a lot of the social media things (Twitter, most of all) to see if I could regain the ability to actually get through some books. The results were quite astonishing in my case, I was able to crack through a few books and actually focus on side projects.

Unfortunately, I am not as optimistic as the writer here that we will be able to pull out of it. Much like modern society battles overweightness, diabetes and all kinds of ailments that stem from poor diet, I think we will suffer a similar fate when it comes to moderating our information intake.

<comment><USER4> Why do you think your attention span is degrading? Think about it this way: if you are able to concentrate enough to watch a movie, there is nothing wrong with you and nothing is stopping you from deep reading, but maybe just too boring and uncompetitive text (uncompetitive with other content and other forms of content).

<comment><USER5> There is some empirical research that our attention spans are degrading on average. I don't have any of it handy, but there's a great book I had to read back in high school called "The Shallows" by Nicholas Carr that goes into it.

<comment><USER6> I just finished reading it yesterday, amazing book! I came here to check somebody referenced it haha, it is exactly on this subject in its entirety.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this is good.

Reading and really understanding a text is not cognitively easy. It should be a privilege for a text to be read by me.

I am a productive and I work a lot with my head. I in my free time I listen to a lot of Audiobooks (fiction and factual) and I view that as the best vessel for taking in information in a causal way. If I really need to study something then I read it. But how dare you to think your text is important enough that I study it - especially in the age of click-bait and low quality journalism. If it is an extremely good text then I will recognize it as such by myself and study it.

<comment><USER8> I agree there's a lot of crap out there, but the point of the article is that even for text that is worth the effort, your ability to supply said effort will have been diminished by a lifetime habit of skim-reading. The ability to read deeply has to be exercised constantly. It cannot be turned on and off. The other thing is, will you still be able to recognize every text that is worth your time? These seem like worthy points to me.

<comment><USER9> I chronically skim read articles and emails, because people are generally very bad at writing those things. They will usually contain a lot more information that I don't care about than information that I do care about.

But I also read about 1 book a week, and I don't struggle to devote my full attention to them. I don't think switching between skimming and comprehensive reading is the problem, I think it's that if you never do comprehensive reading that you'll struggle to get back into it.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, and that's the other problem this article is pointing at--young children aren't developing deep reading skills like you have, because the girls are getting waylaid by social media and the boys by video games. They won't have the option of skimming the bad shit and deep reading the good stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Skimming through bs was normal in pre-screen era, iirc, it is amount of texts that increased. We simply have no time to dive into yet another attention seeking writer's subjective today.

Otoh, there are still texts that slow you down since 'objective meaning' per line ratio is damn high. The pace of reading naturally correlates with the quality of text as a medium of conceptions. If you're short of interests, then skimming everything is not a primary problem. If you develop a protection against drowning in bs, it's actually good, since it is not going anywhere.

<comment><USER11> Go back a century, and your "objective meaning" per line ratio goes down a significant bunch. Language has never be this condensed, and the number of words to convey an idea never this small. One of the problems in this, though, might be one of the ever-increasing over-simplification, over-abstraction and superficial impositions of meaning, where certain phrasings make a thing true just because this is the way young people would express it™... It's complicated.

<comment><USER10> I don't know much about century old articles, but if you're about classic books, then these were never concise. Good written, yes. But the usual writer's syndrome is also there. What could be said in few sentences and links went as a book instead.

Look at this article. It tries to be narrative of an airport, kids and older people doing something in their seats. Is this relevant? Is it a cool story worth a 'classics' badge? It is just bs that is mimicking an observation report. This imaginary airport arguably was not even a source of author's initial thought on topic.

Centuries — maybe. But I think that on the scale of _decades_ the trend is still being more wordy and attention/seo seeking.

<comment><USER12> > Good written

Joke?

I'm reminded of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) which I tried to read recently and couldn't get through due to the writing. Here is one of the most highly "liked" quotes from GoodReads:

>> Soon after the completion of his college course, his whole nature was kindled into one intense and passionate effervescence of romantic passion. His hour came,—the hour that comes only once; his star rose in the horizon,—that star that rises so often in vain, to be remembered only as a thing of dreams; and it rose for him in vain. To drop the figure,—he saw and won the love of a high-minded and beautiful woman, in one of the northern states, and they were affianced. He returned south to make arrangements for their marriage, when, most unexpectedly, his letters were returned to him by mail, with a short note from her guardian, stating to him that ere this reached him the lady would be the wife of another. Stung to madness, he vainly hoped, as many another has done, to fling the whole thing from his heart by one desperate effort. Too proud to supplicate or seek explanation, he threw himself at once into a whirl of fashionable society, and in a fortnight from the time of the fatal letter was the accepted lover of the reigning belle of the season; and as soon as arrangements could be made, he became the husband of a fine figure, a pair of bright dark eyes, and a hundred thousand dollars; and, of course, everybody thought him a happy fellow.

<comment> qu4z-2 What is it that bothers you with that quote? It seems fine to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've found that much high-brow literature (such as that found in The Atlantic which I like to read a lot) enjoys taking multiple sentences and paragraphs to explain an idea that only needs 10% of the words that are actually used. AKA fluff to give the appearance of intellectualism. It's why I skim.

<comment><USER14> There is the trend on so many articles linked from HN to not get to the point until 8+ paragraphs in. They don't even reference the headline and the main point.

Then when the address the point briefly they flashback to the subject's childhood and talk about some formative event that shaped everything to put him into the place where he might take on this problem.

I skim because I trust very few sources to actually deliver on the promise of a headline and I don't care to invest a page or two reading before the article actually starts and I can make a judgement.

<comment><USER15> For what it's worth, I had one of those make the front page a couple of months ago. I did a big background explanation lead in (that several people commented wasn't necessary) mainly because I wanted to establish a bit of a "right to have an opinion" on the subject.

Might not have been necessary but I felt like I needed to do it.

<comment><USER16> When a headline makes a big big biig case, and the body of the text doesn't immediately starts with the smoking gun, then I feel cheated. Sure, background and setting are important, but epistemically they gives us almost nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think the main point made by the author is that we should _be able to_ read properly and consciously make the decision to do so for some texts. I don't think anyone would argue that we should carefully read every single shallow, poorly written blog post out there.

"We need to cultivate a new kind of brain: a "bi-literate" reading brain capable of the deepest forms of thought in either digital or traditional mediums. A great deal hangs on it: the ability of citizens in a vibrant democracy to try on other perspectives and discern truth; the capacity of our children and grandchildren to appreciate and create beauty; and the ability in ourselves to go beyond our present glut of information to reach the knowledge and wisdom necessary to sustain a good society."

</comment><comment><USER18> The article claims:

> _English literature scholar and teacher Mark Edmundson describes how many > college students actively avoid the classic literature of the 19th and 20th > centuries because they no longer have the patience to read longer, denser, > more difficult texts._

Nothing new here, surely? I'd hazard a guess a huge majority of people, throughout eternity, will never read 19th and 20th century literature, myself included. Unless we come up with some way of uploading books directly to our conscious awareness or whatever.

Project Gutenberg was founded in 1971, and as of June 23rd 2018 contains over 57,000 books. If we ignore for a minute all of the online book stores where one can go to _buy_ books, and how well some of those stores are doing, then _Project Gutenberg alone_ has probably done _more for reading_ than we may have lost due to swipe-and-skim reading. How many of us have bought and pirated more eBooks than we've read paper books.

I work with tradesmen. I've asked so many of them "read any good books lately?" and they typically reply with something like "books? fuck off, I'm not gay". Seriously. But even the majority of these people, especially those under about 35 years old, are, in their spare time, _reading constantly_. Okay, so they're skim reading non-sense on Pinstabookwittertube, or whatever the kids are into this five-minute-period. I can't keep up, must be getting old, get off my lawn, etc. etc. I'd say that's still a _huge improvement_ over the nothing similar cohorts were reading a decade a go. I'm still convinced some of the older guys can barely read well enough to get through their every day lives.

And, generally speaking, I'm skeptical of most _' The Sky Is Falling: Younger People Are Worse at X (And Y and Z and A and B ...'_ positions, for all the obvious reasons.

<comment><USER19> Yes, the kids have always been delinquent:

"Young people are so pampered nowadays that they have forgotten that there was such a thing as Rhetoric"

Aristotle, 4th Century BC

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Maybe it's just because I read a lot of books and have been doing so for many years (I'm 45, so I've been reading a long time), but I don't feel like I've lost the ability to focus on reading. I still frequently pick up an interesting novel and read it in one or two sittings. A new novel by one of my favorite authors (say, Daniel Silva or David Baldacci) I'm quite likely to sit down and read in one single 8 hour session.

OTOH, what I _do_ absolutely struggle with is watching video content. I think it's largely to do with the fact that I consume most of my video content on my laptop, so the lure of another browser tab (with, say, Hacker News or Reddit) is always there. I'll start watching a ~30 minute episode of "The IT Crowd" and it'll take me 90 minutes to watch it because I'm obsessively hitting "pause" every couple of minutes to check my email, check HN, etc. :-(

</comment><comment><USER21> The underlying problem is not readers, but writers. Writers being underpaid because of the present economics of text.

 _Sorry to write such a long article, I didn 't have time to write a short one._ \- Cicero, Pascal, Twain, etc.

<comment><USER22> "present" with a citation to Cicero, ironic.

<comment><USER23> They weren't connecting Cicero with present writing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I agree with @gurumeditations who made a comment about how much padding / fluff articles tend to have in them and that for the majority of online articles it's more of an annoyance than anything that adds to the content.

Personally, I can't skim read - I've never been able to. I've always have to read word by word which can really affect my reading speed. This I've learnt over the years has had both positive and negatives as you might imagine.

In school it was a big negative, if something didn't hold my interest - <USER2> it - I wasn't going to waste my time and would get in trouble, but if it was interesting to me I'd spend the time and generally understand the content very well. In later life I've found myself to rely on article summaries to decide if I need to read the full source or not.

Reading a novel takes me a lot longer (say 2-4 weeks) than say my Grandfather who in his 90s smashes out 4-5 novels a week with great ease and while still leading a busy life, however he was saying to me that whenever he skim reads he knows he doesn't taken in as much information from the text and for him it's more about enjoyment of reading 'in the moment' rather than post-reading pondering of the book which I tend to do a lot more of.

Personally I find reading books on an e-ink screen a _lot_ quicker than an LCD screen like my iPad Pro and a still a little quicker than reading a physical book probably down to page turns and object weight.

</comment><comment><USER25> Life is short and there is very little written word that deserves the amount of your time that the author wants to take.

Don't let them guilt you into it.

<comment><USER26> The point is that you'll be unable to deeply read even the "very little" that's worth your time. Because we never practice it.

<comment><USER27> Sure we do. Most reading is really a form of search and then we re-read the stuff that seems important. (At least I do.)

 _If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

― Oscar Wilde_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> A related skill on the wane is listening.

A barometer of this in the UK is Radio 4 - the BBC's 'speech only' service. Nowadays there are plenty of listeners but they are stuck in their cars on some silly commute and needing to pass the time as they shuffle through fumes, therefore this new audience is only getting the government's version of 'news', not the full Radio 4 experience.

This audience doesn't tend to tune in to Radio 4 at other times to listen to stories, documentaries, 'Woman's Hour' and the other delights of Radio 4, when back at the ranch there is TV and the world of digital delights for ambient entertainment.

You can do stuff whilst listening to Radio 4 style speech radio (not to be confused with 'talk radio'), however I don't think many people do that these days or have the skills to patiently do so. I wonder how low the critical mass of listeners has to get before 'Radio 4' loses relevance and is no longer something that can be discussed in 'the shires'.

<comment><USER29> But there is perhaps a growing number of people who listen to podcasts instead. I listen to podcasts in my car either via the car's own system (Tesla S) or using my mobile via Bluetooth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think one of the problem is we try to know too many things but nothing well enough.

We have access to infinite amount of "snippet" information. We want an "answer", now, and not the reason of how and why we arrived at those answer in the first place. Lots of people searching for just an "answers" and not thinking, and we end up in a world where we have far easier access of information than any other period in human history and our time to think and learn has been taken up by social media and other easy access entertainment.

Another problem of long reading is the quality of writing has degraded over the years. Or may be we have far too many information so the average or median quality are lowered.

The last great pieces of long Tech article i enjoyed were written by Anand lal shimpi, founder of Anandtech, but he left the site and went to work for Apple.

<comment><USER31> I don't think it's the quality of writing that has degraded, but rather the democratization of writing. Now everyone can write and make their thoughts known and it's not unreasonable to conclude that much of it will be chaff. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but it does place a heavier burden on the reader to be more critical of the avenues through which they consume information & content. Curation is, I've found, a difficult process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Everyone that writes on the internet seems to assume everyone in their audience spends too much time on the internet. I know plenty of people totally outside this weird circle jerking ADD-ish skimming internet addict sphere who manage life just fine and has zero problem reading texts deeply without skimming. Just don't get stuck with the idea you also have to have bad habits just because everyone else has them (or that it's thus ok to have them).

</comment><comment><USER33> I've been studying Spanish to a medium-to-high intermediate level, and I find skimming something in Spanish to be very difficult. This is probably because my reading speed can average 1/10th of it would be in English (depending on the difficulty).

I think we take for granted the ability to skim an article in our native language. When we skim, our brain is probably taking advantage of so many fast "pattern recognizers" and models to make sense of the whole, sampled in parts.

Perhaps skimming effectively like "being able to go to a comedy show in that language and actually laugh" is a true test of language proficiency.

My Spanish teacher who is pretty competent with English agrees that skimming is something that she cannot just do either.

<comment><USER34> English is not my mother tongue, but I can skim it easily, maybe not easily than my native German.

A lot might also be about writing style: English has developed a very anecdote/story- heavy style. Try to find an article by an author with English as mother tongue - they breast universally use this approach. E.g. article about tax law starts with one story, article about politics goes in depth on some specific scene or encounter, etc etc. There is often much mention of 'unimportant' detail that fill the mental picture, and English language media often repeat and stretch out information (rather than strive for information density). In comparison of DE-EN-FR I even find this in more in-depth documents like textbooks, not universally but much more than in the other languages.

Of course fluency plays a major role. But i can skim a french-language fluff piece or story or recounting of an event, even if that's not exactly a strong language for me. At the same time I can't skim an in-depth description of this or that political conflict or technical report in EN or DE if I want to understand the course of events or details. So it's at least to some degree (at least for me) a matter of the writing style - stories read easily, and non- English media is much less story-heavy. For an English native you might be able to compare yourself skimming an Economist article or something academic vs e.g. guardian or independent and see if it feels different.

In a twist, I find it sometimes harder to read a FR language fluff piece closely/carefully - they tend to use words that are more slang/informal and which i won't know as well how to interpret them in the context. But getting the gist of easy. This might be particular to foreign language reading though.

<comment><USER33> Interesting. I think you are discounting your talent for skimming in any language though :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> [https://www.nngroup.com/articles/f-shaped-pattern-reading- we...](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/f-shaped-pattern-reading-web-content/)

Jakob Nielsen was making this observation ages ago with regard to Web pages.

I think it's a bit of a mistake to lump reading books on a Kindle in with checking e-mails on an iPad (at least assuming we mean the e-ink version); the former is much less task-oriented than the latter and I find I'm actually reading many more long and challenging books on the Kindle than I used to. Though of course I can't really explain why the students in the study mentioned had so much worse results.

</comment><comment><USER36> I don't buy that this has anything to do with the rise of the 'digital world'. The unfortunate reality is that adult literacy statistics are scary. A huge number of adults just aren't capable of understanding more than the most basic writing. See NAAL ([https://nces.ed.gov/naal/](https://nces.ed.gov/naal/)) and PIAAC ([https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/](https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/)) data.

</comment><comment><USER37> I've been reading a lot more poetry lately. One thing I like about it is that it directs focus very intensely but the works are small. You only need to bring one page worth of focus at a time.

<comment><USER38> Poetry can be longform, too. A single poem can range over several pages or even extend to book length.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think this just reflect that a lot of the writing available on the internet is just really bad now, it's not like readers are in a rush to get to the clickbait articles at the bottom of the page. I can't recall the last time I read an article that did not have a significant grammatical error in it. This sentence contain two as for example.

If an article doesn't immediately support the article's headline then people are going to skim until they find information supporting or refuting the headline.

</comment><comment><USER40> It was very hard for me not to skim this article but I forced myself to read every sentence and below is virtually all of its information content. Rest of the article just keeps repeating these same points over and over.

\- Reading ability required development of new brain circuits about 6000 years ago

\- This circuit adapts to new environment and mediums, currently digital media

\- Fast and multi-tasked reading has advantage for large volume information but comes at cost of ability for "deep reading"

\- College students now actively avoid the classic literature of the 19th and 20th centuries because of "cognitive impatience"

\- Anne Mangen did experiment to have 50% student read a story on kindle and 50% on print material. Later group showed superior comprehension, re- construction and retention

\- Many readers now use an F or Z pattern when reading in which they sample the first line and then word-spot through the rest of the text

\- Physicality of print material enables association with space and time allowing readers for re-examination aka "technology of recurrence"

\- Negative effects of screen reading can appear as early as fourth and fifth grade impacting comprehension and empathy

</comment><comment><USER41> Only seemingly unrelated:

[https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter- letter/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/)

Blaise Pascal (and more people after him):

"I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter."

</comment><comment><USER42> I'd be quite surprised if the problem were actually screen use rather than the cognitive and emotional effects of feed-based content delivery that optimizes for so-called _engagement_. By that term, web-oriented people usually mean staying on the site/platform, not necessarily engaging with the actual content or fellow users. Whether it's an endless-scrolling social media feed or auto- play on YouTube, we're up to our eyeballs in companies that are doing their damnedest to keep us in continual anticipation of the next blob of content coming down the pipe rather than looking away. To the extent that a difference is observed with screens, I suspect it's not some intrinsic inferiority in screens as a medium, but rather a behavioral link between being in that context and the activation of feed-conditioned habits.

Television has had a larval form of this pattern for decades, but with television there were at least times when the spell was broken because "nothing's on". Nobody could analyze all your habits and interests on an individual level and create your perfect "channel" that's on the air all day, every day. That's what we're moving toward now, and it's becoming more apparent with time that even being a few steps down that road doesn't seem entirely healthy. I don't have a fistful of neuroscience studies to cite, let alone a solution, but I have a bad feeling that this is going to get worse before it gets better.

</comment><comment><USER43> I question the article's use of the word digital which covers both e-ink and LCD devices. The Mangen study it mentions was e-ink vs paper, but it was only 50 people and her own later work appears to call it into question. In the other studies mentioned it's not clear from the article if they were LCD or e-ink, and I suspect they were LCD.

The "technology of recurrence" is interesting. I do use e-ink and I'm considerably less likely to go back a few pages to check something out than if I was reading a paper book.

<comment><USER35> The Kindle makes flipping back and forth tough and I won't use it for reference works for this reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Perhaps we as an internet generation just read too much?

There are so many articles/topics repeating themselfs. It starts to happen @hacker news for me as well and that makes it boring.

I don't need to read the 20.000th article about a specific topic in full. I only might wanna see if the author got something new, which is often just not the case.

I didn't read that much text when we only used newspapers. I read the paper after lunch for half an hour or so. Thats it. No newspaper on sunday.

</comment><comment><USER45> Also writing a concise, captivating text is a skill few master

</comment><comment><USER46> Skim reading is definitely a art and skill. At the highest levels of that skill, you're basically trusting your subconscious to alert your thinking mind that a phrase or passage is worth putting in that extra few seconds. It's also something I automatically do just to get a sense for the piece of writing once, whether or not I choose to read it deeper. It makes deep reading that much easier.

The way out of the problems caused by skimming is to skim more.

I skimmed the whole Atlantic piece to digest the point, then decided it wasn't worth a deeper examination. My own experience with the concept is probably way way better than the author's. And the stated thesis of the article just isn't important to me.

Writing a lot helps with reading. Spending lots and lots of time putting together arguments and points sets yourself up to recognize common patterns extremely quickly in recently-written prose. When dealing with older prose, or poetry, especially something like the Bible, my mind slows way way way way down to an almost glacial pace, the subconscious just isn't primed to understand the writing as the culture in which it was written is long long gone.

</comment><comment><USER47> I skim articles alot that are posted from HN because I need to evaluate if the article is worth reading. What would stop me skimming is to a straight to the point article.

I dislike a wafflely story that is of no interest at the beginning and I can't be bothered to read it. For example I could prefix this comment when "Back when I was a boy I stacked straw on the farm, ...", and that would be similar.

</comment><comment><USER48> As other commenters here have alluded, if you read a lot, especially a lot of non-fiction, you start to realize that much of what is out there is mostly fluff hiding the true point the headline alludes. That's why you see the rise of apps like Blinkist, which summarizes whole books in 15 minutes. As an avid reader, I don't care for the backstory, I don't care for how you arrived where you are, and I don't really care for your musing or anecdotes or examples or any fluff you use to make an article an article. At some point, if you're intelligent enough, you feel like you've heard it all and just want to meat. The sad truth is that most articles can be summed up in one paragraph, or even bullet points. The points can even be highlighted from the fluff and those who don't care to read it. Skimming isn't some degradation of society, its society adapting to the information overflow. A good, well written book will have quality content that keeps you from skimming.

<comment><USER49> > if you're intelligent enough, you feel like you've heard it all and just > want to meat

no, if you are intelligent then you value context, details, nuance and looking at the same point from varied angles. If you're intelligent you try to become deeply knowledgeable about one topic that you are passionate about rather than trying to memorize bullet points, which gets you nowhere. The unique feat of human intellect is deep excellence in individual domains, not being able to quickly absorb bullet points. Deeply intelligent individuals dive into topics to such a degree of detail that it would even bore the average 'deep reader' to death.

The answer to information overflow is not to trade detail for bullet points. Key is to be able to discern what is relevant to you and what is not, and to focus deeply on the things that are. The fact that people tend towards skimming is a sign that they are not able to do this.

<comment><USER48> > The points can even be highlighted from the fluff and those who don't care > to read it.

The best of both worlds.

You're correct, if I truly care for a topic, I will read the fluff. The vast majority of internet articles don't fall into this category.

I disagree, the fact that they skim means they ARE able to do this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> It's a fine line to draw... On the one hand, I feel like I have some form of "new information addiction". Even my dad, who is 70, has pretty aggressive surfing habits.

On the other hand, I skimmed books back in the 90's, before I surfed the web daily. (There was much less "new" high quality information online then.)

I would check out 5 books at a time from the library, and read the best one, and skim the rest.

I also studied for my AP History test in exactly one day by skimming, and got a great score. IIRC, I read the first and last sentence of every chapter in a 200 page book in one night. It's not a bad way to read if you're looking for the high level structure of stories and arguments.

Many authors are in love with their own prose, and it is too long.

My blog looks dense but I've gotten good feedback on it, mostly because I use skimmable headings, and delete words from sentences, so it's short and dense:

[http://www.oilshell.org/blog/](http://www.oilshell.org/blog/)

</comment><comment><USER51> Most journalists, authors, and college professors are still writing in the analog mindset, when most audiences are attuned to digital mediums AND are extremely time-constrained. Editors who have responsibility for major websites (and who have high double-digit mobile readerships) still hand out assignments like it's 1998 - "800 words on topic X" or "write me a 1500 word feature on Y."

A few new media publishers understand that they need to retool content for the new generation of readers (think TMZ and early TechCrunch) but they are still the minority in the English-speaking world.

Yes, it's sad that long-form reading and comprehension levels are in decline. But this is the evolution of media and communication at work, and people who publish need to adapt to new ways of communicating. Humanity has had shifts like this before (orality to the written word, hand-copied text to the printing press, the impact of broadcasting, etc.) and we'll still survive.

</comment><comment><USER52> My hypothesis is that the measurable difference between skim reading and deep reading is small if even statistically significant. The difference between reading at all vs not reading is large.

If I have to be ready for deep reading before I read anything, then I'll never read anything.

</comment><comment><USER53> Apparently they equate "length" with "depth", which _can_ correlate but they don't have to. You can always have both brilliant quotes and dumb tweets, and you can have both insightful tomes and rambling messes.

The need to skim is more a comment on how quickly many things can now be accomplished. People are trained to think that _anything_ should be quick these days.

Unfortunately, it takes time to condense good material into bite-size chunks. It's not hard to see, in a zero-time-to-publish society, how the "easy" and poorly-written bites win out over anything better. A person can spew out 100 dumb tweets in less time than it takes to compose one well-researched concept in a sufficiently short space to be consumed.

</comment><comment><USER54> The only way I'm going to deeply read an entire article is if (a) it's relevant to my strongest interests, (b) it's concise, and (c) the author has credibility on the subject. Very seldom are all of these fulfilled, even in peer-reviewed academic literature.

For example, I didn't read this article because "the effect on society is profound" implies that the author doesn't have a strong conslusion, meaning that it's uninteresting (a) and probably not concise (b).

Alternatively, if the writer has a strong voice or unique style, I'll read the article just to appreciate that.

</comment><comment><USER55> the new new normal is to check the HN comments first...

</comment><comment><USER56> The problem with most texts is that they're linear and structure-less, which means it is hard to efficiently extract information from. I should be able to decide exactly how much of a text I want to read, depending on how interested I am.

If text would be hierarchical, with top level items being summaries, and each successive (indented) level going into more detail, I could tailor the reading of the text to my needs, interest level, and prior knowledge of the subject.

Why do we not write like this?

<comment><USER57> I have some ideas/prototypes around this, drop me a note if curious (not ready for show HN).

adam dot sah at gm

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> There's skim reading and there's selective reading.

I tend to read only what I need to move forward either in thought or on a project.

I learn faster this way. And I can do this now because of the power of search.

</comment><comment><USER59> Sometimes the phenomenon is annoying; like when you think you are having an interesting discussion on an Internet forum/social network and when you actually write something longer than 1 sentence which you are passionate about and thought about longer than 1 second, you notice that people only respond the start of the first line and end of the last line. Which makes everyone sound stupid including you who thought was actually having a good convo.

</comment><comment><USER60> The reality is long-form articles are probably not the future of conveying complex ideas to a mass audience. Skimming is the only way to sift through the insane amount of content produced daily. Of course, if you skim an article and find it interesting, switching over to slow comprehensive reading is the next step.

<comment><USER61> Yes I think modern mediums provide better ways than long text for exploring deeply complex ideas.

<comment><USER35> Such as?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Contrarian opinion: repetitive writing is actually important in helping us remember what the article or book is talking about. Humans learn via repetition. If we took out the fluff, the article/book would be <50% as effective as it is with fluff and repetition.

</comment><comment><USER63> It really feels like I need to skim read at times. I'm in engineering school, and the textbooks don't have very much depth, but god help you if you try and understand it all instead of jumping ahead to find the information you desperately need for your homework.

<comment><USER64> I did the same. After grad I was marooned so I read them end-to-end. Bag of tricks becomes coherent incremental subject.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> We have so much information to take in, and it is so often something we already know, or a well worn trope being repeated that skimming becomes a survival trait. We cannot ingest this amount of input without disqualifying a few bits in the data stream.

</comment><comment><USER66> It's pretty ironic to have an article decry skim reading that itself is littered with distracting (and pointless) text extracts and useless photos, all designed to distract. It took me deliberate effort to resist the distractions.

</comment><comment><USER4> As far as I remember eye tracking usability studies skimming was always the norm on the web. Since people have to process a lot of information to get anything done. And deep reading was always special kind of activity for rare things.

</comment><comment><USER67> It's worth noting that programming requires a kind of extreme reading comprehension so the premise of this article probably doesn't apply to programmers (or scientists, writers, lawyers, etc).

<comment><USER68> The best books I read were written by scientists, people who think they are scientists (sociology, and mostly due to failing rigorous approaches), and books written for teens (I no longer read fiction). All have in common that the reader has an aversion to fluff, by way of not finishing it/not buying another book by the same author. These also don't really work for making you feel intelligent among your friends, who will likely not understand much of it anyway.

Some of the papers I read recently, like the "Instant field meshes" one, also exhibit this careful balance of concept density without going to the point where you need Kant-level mentality to comprehend the conveyed concept (referring specifically to Kritik der reinen Vernunft).

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> This is scary. I used to read 2-3 books per day in the summer as a kid. I used to read books on planes or at coffee houses. Now I skim iPhone or iPad. I need to start reading real books again!

</comment><comment><USER70> I don't know whether this is the effect of me having read a lot of documentation by skimming, now I skim almost everything that I read.

I think most non-tech people that I met still reading normally.

</comment><comment><USER71> Personally I skim read in order to evaluate the text. If it grabs my attention, then I read it carefully.

I read works of art normally, without skimming.

</comment><comment><USER72> If only we could "skim-watch" videos ...

<comment><USER73> Youtube-dl, then play at your desired speed in mpv, xine, mplayer, or VLC. Keyboard control to skip forward and back. There's mps-youtube for audio-only playback (it also supports video).

Even with this, shitty production -- say, couple of jokers' completely unedited stream-of-blather 2 hour vlog that only got remotely near the point by 20 min in, but failed to hold together through the 30m maark, where I bailed (skipping through, aggressively) -- is intolerable.

Mind: there _is_ very well-produced material. Lectures, audiobooks, documentaries, etc. But like any large complex work, it takes skill, preparation, a goal in mind, and time.

<comment><USER74> Why would I jump through all these hoops when I can just find a text based article on the subject?

<comment><USER73> It depends, of course, on what you are interested in. I find that the presentation of a true expert or master beats, or at the very least complements, text. There are also times listening is more conducive than reading. A Feynman, or academic lecturer, or a truly goog author discussing their work, generally.

Mind: typical news or opinion pieces rarely reach this level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> ur-whale "Skim reading is the new normal" says the 10k word article.

"screen reading is the problem" says the internet article.

</comment><comment><USER75> I do it because otherwise I'm a really slow reader.

Somehow I have to read every word on its own.

</comment><comment><USER64> I blame writing classes in high school. Expositions are useless. Get to the point.

</comment><comment><USER76> I can do better than skim reading. I just save to Pocket.

</comment><comment><USER77> I never read the first paragraph. Works every time.

</comment><comment><USER78> I skim articles that are unnecessarily verbose, like this one

<comment><USER79> Define unnecessarily

<comment><USER80> Anything you wouldn't read-out loud if you were presenting the article verbally to an audience.

My wife occasionally reasds BBC news stories to me and it's remarkable how much 'blah blah hang on a moment til I find the story' even those contain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> Skim reader since 1968 grew up in a house of books. Can somebody give me the tl;dr? I've got about three on the go right now, too busy to skim /s

</comment><comment><USER82> I skimmed this article, and I skimmed the comments here too

</comment><comment><USER83> This was a mental test not to tl;dr

</comment><comment><USER84> TL;DR

<comment><USER85> Right? I thought that was the new normal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> I skimmed anyway.

</comment><comment><USER87> Skimmed this article. Looked pretty decent.

</comment><comment><USER88> All the more for machine learning to crunch texts and provide a succinct summary for the reader.</comment>


Can Agile work for a team of experts?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.brendel.com/consulting/blog/2009/07/can-agile-work-for-team-of-experts.html

<comment><USER2> This is why a methodology, whether it is agile, waterfall, or some bastard spawn of RUP, is not enough to direct a project. What you need is someone who can take on the role of _project manager_.

A project manager has many roles, but one of the most important is to figure out which bits of the chosen methodology do apply, and which don't. There is no such thing as a "best practice" - only a "good practice within a certain context". The PM's job is to figure out which practices match the current context, and monitor them as the context changes and certain practices drop out (and others drop in).

What you end up with, if you have a good PM, is a unique methodology tailored to your specific project, which is the only sensible thing, since all combinations of project and project team are, in fact, pretty much unique.

It's worth adding that the PM doesn't need to be full-time - but I'd say that even on a 2-3 people start-up dev team you need at least one person who's experienced enough to take on that role.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, much of the methodology can still work. This is like multiplayer Extreme Hacking (<http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?ExtremeHacking>). The full-on testing, DRY code, tight iterations, and frequent releases to the user all still apply.

Each user feature probably requires spiking through the expertise of all 4 devs. If people don't work together, APIs and workflows can diverge and then integration becomes horrible. So everyone (+client) has to get together to build acceptance tests and integration tests between different layers of the framework.

And I think the article is wrong - pair programming _does_ work here, but not on domain-specific issues. The most useful way is to pair program the interfaces between layers/silos.

The database guy and the kernel guy should pair program the kernel module that spits data out, and the DB module that loads its up. This gives each person a feel for the other's assumptions, and lets them lay out a smarter interface that takes advantage of both devs' silo'd domain knowledge.

Also, even if you don't do cross-silo pair _programming_ , code reviews are still useful. This can be totally informal, but saying "Hey can I walk you through my code?" discovers a lot of bugs, stupid misunderstandings, etc. Doing it frequently (daily) is useful because it makes you code with the understanding that you'll have to show it off later to someone who _won't_ get it unless it's really clear - so the code stays clean, thus (hopefully) better. Once again, the bonus is that a common metaphor emerges even among more disparate members of the team.

The point of Agile is that it's _agile_. As in, nimble. Flexible. Suited to your requirements. Subject to your needs and intelligent application.

</comment><comment><USER4> My current team is facing the exact same problem. We're doing Scrum, but our team isn't nearly as interchangeable as the Scrum dogma would like. Example: some of us are better at UI, some of us are better at IA, and so on. So while we're all supposed to take what's next on the list, it never really works out that way, and we actually end up picking what we're most comfortable with.

I'm curious as to how other people deal with this.

<comment><USER5> We do exactly what you do. And that's fine.

A good methodology is not like SQL programming. The system doesn't explode if you don't follow every rule to the letter. In the immortal words of R. A. Heinlein, a methodology is an art that you pursue rather than a goal that you expect to achieve.

A methodology is like playing Dungeons and Dragons. There are rules. You gather together, you play the game, and you generally follow the rules. But the DM is empowered to bend or break any specific rule if it makes the story better or brings the game closer to the goal.

Many RPG designers have suggested that you don't even need the rules. You could just gather everyone in a room and say "okay, let's all pretend that we are elves and dwarves". And that can work. The very _best_ storytellers can get away with this. But, in general, people prefer games with rules, even if they're very sparse and loose rules. They provide important structure, and they give you an excuse for saying or doing things that other people might not like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's more to agile than pair programming. One person can be agile. Things like compressing the requirements and design phases. Do things in small steps to get them in customers' hands. Release often. Iterate.</comment>


IdentityCache: Improving Performance one Cached Model at a Time - <AUTHOR> http://www.shopify.com/technology/7617983-identitycache-improving-performance-one-cached-model-at-a-time#axzz2PV7hpXfu

<comment><USER2> I'm curious: how does Shopify handle database migrations with the cached models? Do you explicitly invalidate the caches when a migration is run?

The reason I ask is because in the .NET/NHibernate world, this is akin to a 2nd level cache provider. I maintain a Redis caching provider for NHibernate (<https://github.com/TheCloudlessSky/NHibernate.Caches.Redis>) and I've been trying to find a decent solution to this problem. When NHibernate fetches a cached model with mismatching columns etc, it'll blows up with an exception.

I like the generational approach that is part of Rails 4 but it really only works for the views. Maybe incorporating some sort of generational identity of the model's configuration could be used for cache busting?

<comment><USER3> The way schema migrations are handled is by making a hash of the current schema part of the cache key, so yeah, effectively every time a cached model's underlying table schema is changed all the cached entries become invalid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One risk of not using expiration at all is that if the database is updated but the after_commit hook doesn't finish (crash, out of resources etc.) then the cached data remains outdated until the record is updated again (which could be never). Setting a generous TTL won't increase your load much, but will let problems like that eventually fix themselves.

<comment><USER5> Core dev on IdentityCache here. Excellent point, and truth be told we hadn't considered setting an explicit expiry to let those unavoidable problems fix themselves. We do have a finite amount of space in memcached so the LRU there accomplishes something similar but gaining complete control over the expiry duration does make sense for the reasons you listed. Truth be told however I think I value the flip side of explicit expiry more: we can use any corrupt/un-updated information for debugging which we have done and found really useful in the past. We're also in a way forced to deal with anything which might interrupt our after_commit hooks instead of letting the problem just go away in a day. Hooks firing is also critical for other services we have (like elastic search) that rely on them, and for which I'd rather not create other auto-healers for.

Thanks for the intelligent suggestion!

<comment><USER4> In some systems the problem is that you can never be guaranteed that the after_commit hook will always run. This is especially true in multi-server systems where the cache, database and front-end servers are separated. The front-end server can update the database and then completely die (power outage, networking, reboot) before talking to the cache.

On the other hand I can see how you would want to drive out bugs instead of just sweeping them under the carpet with auto-healing...

<comment><USER5> Indeed: it will never be 100%, so perhaps a very, very long TTL on the keys would be wise. We do end up flushing the cache incrementally if we ever ship a bug by accident or notice there is more in the cached blob than we want which I think accomplishes the same thing.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Clojure Concurrency (2008) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDAfZK8m5_8 <comment><USER2> I only watched the first few minutes because I have a lunch date soon, but thank you so much for this link. I've been wanting to understand the basics of Clojure and I can already tell Rich's oratory abilities are exceptional. I'll definitely be watching this video in its entirety.

<comment><AUTHOR> I also found the introduction in the beginning quite interesting to listen to. Good summary of the motivation behind Clojure and its design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I recently built a side project that utilized core.async. My thoughts on it are that the use of go-style channels combined with immutable data structures makes for a really nice experience when reading and writing code.

My main problem was with the frustrating debugging experience: Clojure is so concise that breakpoints can be difficult to place, and macros are almost completely off limits. On top of that, figuring out which part of the code would pick up after blocking on a channel was just tiresome. These are the main reasons I decided not to continue with Clojure personally.

<comment><USER4> It's probably not what you want to hear, but there's a "I get it" moment I reached at one point, where my intuition just all of a sudden was able to quickly pin point all my errors. There's a lot of these moments in Clojure. There's one for reading the code, one day you wake up and you don't see the parenthesis anymore. There's one for prefix notation. There's one for recursion, where you suddenly figure out how to convert any loops to it. There's one for the documentation, it goes from not making sense to perfectly explaning how each function works concisely and clearly. And there's one for error messages and debugging. There might be more.

So, the community and core team is aware of the learning curve hump, and always trying to improve it, but after you get over the learning hump, the challenges of debuging almost go away, and it becomes equal to any other language. At least it did for me, and it was almost an epiphany.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ant Simulation Code: [https://github.com/juliangamble/clojure-ants- simulation](https://github.com/juliangamble/clojure-ants-simulation)

</comment><comment><USER5> Concurrency question:

Is their a good rule of thumb for this? In a web app, how much concurrency should one pursue? If a lot, one user can potentially hog all the machine's cores while computing a view function. If a little/zero, then the server is computing view functions slower than it could if it used more then one core or thread per page view.

<comment><USER6> for a web apps concurrency is usually abstracted away into the database. concurrency within the web worker is usually boiled down to parallel access to separate blocking resources that don't interfere with each other. it's quite rare to see web worker sharing some state between requests (because as soon as you hit multiple workers you need to care about session stickiness, not to mention the fact that state itself becomes sharded, so not very useful for most purposes) or request having to do enough heavy lifting to require parallelisation.

it's a capacity planning issue which is somewhat related to how you parallelize the work but in the end, roughly `work per request W * number of requests N must be <= worker capacity C * number of workers M` or you will have a growing backlog. i imagine sync vs async resource access affects request timing variance more than it affects the median when the system is saturated but that depends on how resources respond to contention.

so to answer your question - there is no general rule, every system has it's own scaling characteristics, but simpler system is better than complicated one so start with sequential access and measure a lot as you change it.

<comment><USER5> makes sense. given how much folks talk about concurrency you'd think it would be at top of mind from the beginning of a project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> did the situation change since 2008?

<comment><USER8> STM is not sold as a headline concurrency feature anymore, apparently people prefer more traditional ways.

<comment><USER9> I think the main thing is that the use case of modifying multiple references at the same time where it is critical that all changes take place at once is less common in idiomatic Clojure than people might have expected.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, this is exactly it. Atoms were added as a cheaper alternative to Refs for when you didn't need transactions, just compare-and-swap. Turns out that atoms work well enough for even huge single-JVM systems, and are much simpler.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Using Open Source to Create a Video Thumbnails Service - <AUTHOR> http://blog.flavioribeiro.com/using-open-source-to-create-a-video-thumbnails-service/ <comment><USER2> With a service like that, it helps to have scene detection capabilities as well - so you don't end up having to look at lots of very similar looking thumbnails. So - as opposed to extracting frames at pre-set intervals, extract them when things sufficiently change in the video. That also lets you vary extraction interval between fast action and static talking head-type scenes.

We've done a lot of similar work, will be happy to compare notes.

[https://twitter.com/iTrendTV/status/814543110399229952](https://twitter.com/iTrendTV/status/814543110399229952)

<comment><AUTHOR> that's awesome, would love to know more details about the stuff you guys are doing!

<comment><USER2> will send you a note!

<comment><USER3> I'm very interested too!

<comment><USER2> Feel free to connect on LI or otherwise, info in profile. I should probably blog about this!

Nice search engine, btw. Small bug - comma in "Year given".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> ju-st Should have used an image thumbnailing service for the blog post (15MB of embedded images)

</comment><comment><USER4> > We decided not to open source Lumberjack. At the end of the day the whole > project is just some business logics around the open source projects I > mentioned on this post.

:-/

<comment><AUTHOR> once we fix caching and improve the nginx locations I'll make sure to release under github.com/nytimes but you'll see that there's no much going on over there, just some config files and the lua app. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As retarded as this question could be? Why not just use Ffmpeg? It's the ultimate tool for such tasks.

<comment><USER6> Please don't use the word "retarded" like this. If you suspect you're asking a question with an obvious answer that you've missed, try saying "forgive my ignorance" instead.

There's nothing wrong with asking questions without self-deprecation, but if you're going to self-deprecate, try not to use hurtful language.

<comment><USER7> Is 'retarded' actually harmful/hateful? Or is the attitude toward people with mental retardation (hence the name, retarded) harmful? The way the word is used, more specifically the attitudes that are demonstrated when the word is used, is generally done with avarice.

Now I see your point, though, he is associating his slowness-to-the-punch with people who are unfortunately physiologically slow-to-the bunch, and according to you this type of lateral association is bad because...?

Because it is shameful to be wrong or ignorant, and therefore associating the shameful act of a non-retarded person with the unshameful reality of being retarded creates a subconscious association between being retarded and shame--- is that it?

If so, isn't it harmful to consider being publicly wrong or ignorant shameful? Should we not have patience with others who know less?

I understand there's a spartan-esque utility to being brutal in a highly competitive skills-based situation (like most engineering). So I am unsure as to where to position myself with this question!

Shed some light?

<comment><USER8> I'm not the person you asked, but I agree with their post.

It's often hard to have this discussion without it devolving into an argument over "political correctness" [0] so hopefully that can be avoided.

Easiest answer is that the term retarded originally was an acceptable term for people with disabilities, but now has a negative connotation, and when used pejoratively as OP did carries the (possibly unintended) implication that people with disabilities are of less value.

I think Wikipedia entry on Retard (pejorative) [1] is a good summary.

It's also worth mentioning "ableist language" and "ableism" here. [2]

[0] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness)

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retard_%28pejorative%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retard_%28pejorative%29)

[2] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ableism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ableism)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Manage Stress Before it Kills You - <AUTHOR> http://www.simple-talk.com/sysadmin/general/manage-stress-before-it-kills-you-/

<comment><USER2> So what was it for you, job stress? And how did you manage to overcome it?</comment>


IE6 Upgrade Warning - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/ie6-upgrade-warning/ <comment><USER2> The library code made me sick. Look at all the globals and where is the indentation and organization? [http://ie6-upgrade- warning.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ie6/warn...](http://ie6-upgrade- warning.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ie6/warning.js)

Edit: Wow, the main function, e, ( _great name_ , definitely _not_ going to collide with other names) has >50 var statements. I don't think the guy who made this library knows that you can var a, b, c, d;

<comment><USER3> Maybe open up a bug report? <http://code.google.com/p/ie6-upgrade- warning/issues/entry>

From the looks of it, the author is a junior coder or new to this sort of JS library code. He may not know any better, but keep in mind he's just looking to help by releasing this-- we were all newbie devs at one point.

Overall, I'm not a fan of disparaging any code people release for free. There are too many developers who keep useful code locked away on their disks because they're afraid people will mock their work.

Don't get me wrong, it's very helpful for potential consumers to know about the issues you mention, but there may be a better way to phrase your criticism.

<comment><USER2> Sorry for coming off so rude. Anyway, I was just going to send a message offering it up for the author due to it not being that large of a codebase and was going to offer to make neater version of the code. I'm going instead to send a bug report as you suggested as that seems best for tracking it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unfortunately, here in Greece the situation is so ugly that not even those warnings have any change of convincing people to upgrade. I can imagine most of them simply closing the window. Among the reasons for this is that we've got a huge pirated windows xp installation base, uneducated users that ignore anything non-microsoftic and think that taking the ECDL makes you a computer scientist, and there is a large amount of amazingly badly written IE-only web apps. Open source is much less known here than in other countries. Our only hope is for people to upgrade to Vista, in order to receive IE7 automatically (hey, did I just say that?)

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't know why people keep on trying to aggressively get rid of IE6, it will die of it's own accord anyway.

Even according to the W3c's web stats (<http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp>), who are probably early adoptors, IE6 has 17% market share. IE6 still has more than Opera, Safari, Chrome and IE8 put together.

I don't see that it makes any business sense to annoy a large section of your users, just to save a little bit of development time. I know for example in some internet cafes in Eygpt in December last year they were still using IE6 and no warning message is likely to fix that soon.

I say just fix your sites until it's 2-3% of the market, like when Netscape 4 died.

</comment><comment><USER6> When I saw this page, it hit me: all browser logos are round.

Is there a reason for this?

<comment><USER7> I'm guessing it's just the desire to look like the IE logo. Even others are round: Maxthon, Flock, xB Browser. Netscape also went from square to round:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Netscape_classic_logo.png>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Netscape.svg>

Also, Phoenix/Firebird wasn't round:

[http://www.martijndevisser.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2007/...](http://www.martijndevisser.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2007/06/firebird.jpg)

<comment><USER8> I think a lot of program icons went from square to round (or irregular) once transparent backgrounds caught on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From the title/domain, I thought that the upg warning was from google. Is there a solution to this problem? Would adding cases such as code.google.com be worthwhile?

</comment><comment> andrewl-hn Browser versions are really messed up. IE8, Opera 9.6 are out already and Chrome 2 is not released for general public yet.

By the way it's interesting to know how the newly released IE6 for Windows Mobile reacts on conditional comments like this. Does anybody have an idea?

</comment><comment><USER10> thats the way we do it, force the suckers to upgrade or deny them service!

</comment><comment><USER11> "Shut up, I'm at a public library, I don't have a choice."

And hundreds of similar reactions to pretentious frontend web developers who assume that every computer is a personal one.

<comment><USER12> If I'm not going to support IE 6, I'd rather have something like this than for my site to just be broken.

<comment><USER13> "I'm not going to support IE 6"

I think you're missing his point...you should support IE6. We all know it sucks, but why risk alienating 20% of the Internet just because you don't want to take the time to make sure your site complies?

<comment><USER14> If it takes twice the work.

Anyway I would just add a small notices on the top of the page saying something like you have an old browser, so this page may not render correctly.

<comment><USER15> I concur. Yesterday I spent an hour building a dropdown menu for a client that rendered correctly in Safari 2+, Firefox 2+ and Opera. Then I spent two-and-a- half more hours getting it to render correctly in IE6 and 7, rendering my page invalid in the process. Ick.

<comment><USER16> Yesterday I spent 10 minutes implementing the 'Son of Suckerfish Dropdowns' that works in all of those browsers. Why make more work for yourself if there are solutions already out there? :)

(I am of course assuming you mean a standard css navigational drop-down menu - you didn't specify.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


QDeFuZZiner fuzzy data matching software - <AUTHOR> https://matasoft.hr/QTrendControl/index.php/qdefuzziner-fuzzy-data-matching-software <comment><AUTHOR> Fuzzy data matching is set of techniques used to determine same identities, i.e. related records in two different datasets, when there is no unique identifier. In such cases, records are compared based on approximate string similarity. Records that have calculated string similarity above a custom threshold are considered to be same entities. QDeFuZZiner is a powerful, yet intuitive and user-friendly fuzzy data matching, record linkage and data de- duplication software, which can help you to consolidate and cleanse your messy master data. [https://matasoft.hr/QTrendControl/index.php/qdefuzziner- fuzz...](https://matasoft.hr/QTrendControl/index.php/qdefuzziner-fuzzy-data- matching-software)</comment>


Paper for iPhone - <AUTHOR> https://www.fiftythree.com/paper <comment><USER2> This has always been my favorite drawing app. Great to see it on the iPhone.</comment>


It's time to study the value of college (rising costs, falling benefits) - <AUTHOR> http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/04/16/frum_commentary/

<comment><USER2> The real culprit is credentialism.

In the 1800's, a high school drop out could architect the New York Public library. Abe Lincoln became a lawyer by reading in his spare time and passing the bar exam. Today, the law requires you to have 7 years of college to practice either occupation.

Why did this happen? As far as I know it was not because buildings were falling down left and right. The most likely answer is that people who work an occupation want to erect barriers to entry, thus forcing up their own wages. The policy has a ratchet effect, as a large interest group is now created of people who are dependent on those barriers. Thus the policy is extremely difficult to roll back.

If we really want to open career doors for the most people possible at the lowest cost, we should eliminate legal schooling requirements for all occupations. Then we can return to the 19th century apprenticeship system, which was completely free and gave better career preparation.

<comment><USER3> "The most likely answer is that"

There are books on the history of education you know. It's not like you have to guess.

<comment><USER2> You can read in the history books ( and I have) that these laws were pushed hard by the relevant professional associations. But the motives are a matter of interpretation. They aren't going to come out and say, "We want to establish legal education requirements so that we can make more money". The argument they make is that we need to make sure everyone is "qualified." Perhaps they were being sincere, perhaps not. But if even if they were wrong out of ignorance, the idea could out compete the truth because it has a built in ratchet affect.

<comment><USER3> So we might not be able to determine the absolute truth, but we can still do significantly better than taking a wild-ass guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's an interesting idea and one that has merit. One of the smartest programmers I know didn't go to college. He spent his formative years building pipe organs and having 5 kids.

However, this makes the mistaken assumption that college's only role is to prepare you for a career. I majored in Philosophy at a Jesuit college in Chicago. Currently, I'm a software developer. College was about getting introduced to new ideas and read books I would have never sought out on my own. Really... who reads Augustine or Kierkegaard anymore? I learned how to live on my own in college; how I wanted to spend my time and my money, how to survive in my first apartment and make rent money. I also met a great bunch of friends I still keep in contact with.

Bottom line: college should never be treated like a trade school. It's not designed for job training. If you consider it so, it never makes economic sense. College, and liberal arts degrees in particular, teach you how to think.

<comment><USER5> Also: networking.

One thing I disagree with you about college is teaching you how to think. At mine anyway, I'm assaulted every day with worthless crap that makes me want to shut off my ears. Mostly liberal crap like 'diversity,' 'cultural appreciation,' and 'the bees are being killed by cell phone waves.'

On the other hand, I do learn all kinds of wonderful things from fellow Computer Science students. It may be worth it.

<comment><USER6> If you don't feel challenged, then take harder clases then. I thought my first year was really easy, and started getting agressive in choosing harder classes. Major CS, Minor Math and Physics, and by the second semester of the third year school was kicking my balls. Plus I was busy doing TONS of extracurricular activities, meeting people, and of course having some fun and going to parties once and a while.

Overrall it was an exellent experience. If I was 18 again, I'd do it again in a heart-beat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The guys is arguing that because degrees are held more widely now, they are less differentiating. That's not a reason, necessarily, to stop valuing a degree. Perhaps it indicates that employers and resumes need to look past "went to my classes, got As, was in fraternity F and honorary H" and look for things like "dual major in CS and Film, part of student team who designed university online film archive."

In other words, look for people who demonstrated non-rote talent while in college and were ambitious enough to capitalize on their education. Otherwise, I could say that almost everyone goes to high school so why go to high school and fund it with taxes or private fees? That's a bit unfair, but also a bit fair as an extension of the argument.

I don't have anything to say about the rising cost of college. I need to look into this. I know it increased every year I was in college due to projects like a new gymnasium with a big rock wall (to impress the alumni foundation) and other things like that. Much of what universities do could probably be student designed and run on the cheap, while providing practical education of the above-mentioned kind.

<comment><USER8> Exactly - just because every car has air condition now, doesn't mean that it's no longer worth putting air conditioning in the cars you sell.

<comment><USER9> But it does make your car a whole lot less special since every car has one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Subsidies are definitely part of the problem, since they make students less price sensitive.

Another part of the problem is that there is no incentive for cost control in the university.

I can give a great example of this, from my current university. I'm currently teaching a "Quantitative Reasoning" class right now. Basically, take Weeks 1-2 of Prob&Stat and expand it to fill a whole semester (half a semester, due to poor planning and miscommunication). Some of this is my fault, some of it not (2 syllabuses floating around, both of which I was told to ignore). Plus, my students are all art/history/literature majors, and just don't need it. Everyone in the room would be better off keeping their $4,000 and not sitting through my class.

So why is this abomination required? Because the department needs money (1) and requiring everyone to take our courses is a way to get money.

In principle, someone in the university should put their foot down and say "this is nonsense, lets just require 1 less class and charge $4,000 less". But there is no such person in the modern university system.

(1) I'm told some of our "beat the Soviets through mathematics" grants were finally cancelled. But I'm not sure about this one.

</comment><comment><USER11> We went to a financial planner and he projected how much it would cost to send our kids to college. He plotted out these graphs and then told us "we'll assume that college costs continue to outpace inflation by 2%, since they have for the past 20 years..." I appreciated what he was doing but I know there is no way that can continue. At some point in the very near future, you can live off the interest of the cost of 4 years of college.

</comment><comment><USER12> A key to making student performance highly predictive of job performance is customizing curriculum. As nearly as I can tell, this customization requires the introduction/popularization of particular online markets.

Naturally, I'm working on said intro :-)

The BigCo-praised details of my analysis are online at <http://www.loveatmadisonandwall.com>.

Best,

</comment><comment><USER13> No matter how rational it would be to not attend college or reduce the emphasis on college educations, I doubt it's gonna happen. Too many people and institutions are already vested in the system, and I doubt a parent who went to college will be happy when their child does not want to go. It just seems very self perpetuating to me.</comment>


Ask HN: Virtual gifts vs real-world prizes? - <AUTHOR>

I am currently working on a project that features a social network in which people can earn points for different actions around the site.  Just like most forums or social networks, rank increases with the total points a user earns.  I've been considering taking this system to the next level in order to give added incentive for participating in the site.  There are a few options but the two that seem to stick out to me are:
1. Virtual gifts - User able to 'buy' digital gifts using points earned.
2. Real-world prizes - User able to claim real-world prizes using the points they have amassed, which are then shipped to the user.  These prizes would obviously be much harder to obtain than virtual gifts.
I have seen many examples of sites using the first model, however the second seems to be a bit harder to find.
Has anyone else considered these options for their project before?  Any insight would be useful. <comment><USER2> For #2, you might want to check out Zuckerbucks, which is a virtual currency for Facebook that paid out real prizes. Careful if you go that route, I know the guy who built it and it can be difficult to constantly be mailing out physical items to people.

<comment><AUTHOR> That has been my main concern so far. It's a great incentive but it seems somewhat risky as well. Thanks for your input and the link.</comment></comment>


Factorli, an Early Casualty of the Las Vegas Downtown Project - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2014/09/30/factorli-an-early-casualty-of-the-las-vegas-downtown-project/

<comment><USER2> "For McCabe, being in Vegas felt like being on a spiritual journey." Perhaps not the right person to get into prototype manufacturing. There's no indication in the article that anybody associated with the project had any manufacturing experience. Or prototyping experience. Or even basic machine shop skills.

"With the funding closed, Factorli is setting out to buy a whole bunch of equipment, and also to build software that helps all the systems talk to each other and work at full capacity." That's a hard, but mostly solved, problem. There are commercial solutions from most of the CAD vendors. The ones that do the whole job almost automatically are not cheap. (Here's what you get at the high end, for $22,000 per seat, using a $700K 5-axis mill: "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knuz38oT2kc"](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knuz38oT2kc")) If you're prototyping electronics, there are already services that do that. That's mostly a remote business; you send in files in standard formats and get electronics back.

Similar services are available for machined parts. See "emachineshop.com". They have a cute little free CAD program which understands what they can make, and will price the job for you, giving advice on how to cut the manufacturing cost.

There's a serious effort at Octopart to standardize the parts and process for building little computer-interfaced devices, so the "Internet of Things" crowd doesn't have to do so much original engineering for each new product. They might have gotten on board with that.

Another solution would have been to buy a TechShop franchise. Then, alongside that, set up some services which make prototypes using TechShop facilities. Such things have grown up around other TechShop locations, although with only modest success.

It's disappointing that this outfit produced nothing.

<comment><USER3> Also, you don't need millions in equipment to start producing useful stuff that people will pay for. I've been able to get a lot done with just waterjet and laser cutting.

<comment><USER2> Yes. What I observe at TechShop is that the flat cutting machines (laser cutters, water jets, CNC routers, and plasma cutters) produce most of the output. While TechShop has both manual and CNC mills, and 3D printers, they're used far less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There's got to be a lot more to this story.

Factorli sounds like a viable business, but not really something that would attract venture capital money.

What happened to the millions of dollars in tools and equipment?

<comment><USER4> We are buying != we bought. I've been quoted 30% deposit and 70% due after a 6 month manufacturing lead time for heavy equipment (>250k). I'm not sure what they were buying but a lot of machines I've dealt with are made to order for application considerations. Most likely she had not purchased anything yet. If she had, deposits were probably lost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That was quick! Article never explained McCabe's falling out with the Hsieh posse. Curious about that.

<comment><USER6> Did you miss this?

 _" At least one employee had complained to Downtown Project management, calling her "a bully," one source told us. Also working against McCabe was the fact that she did not follow Holacracy, the flat power structure favored by the Downtown Project leadership."_

<comment><USER5> The way those two sentences followed the first seem to convey to me as additional problems but not the cause of the falling out. Also the first sentence of the paragraph is oddly constructed. Also those two items don't sound like a sudden falling out to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The write up is so brief that it is really hard to tell what happened.</comment>


Show HN: Flowcast, click-and-type sticky notes for website feedback - <AUTHOR> http://getflowcast.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, one of the co-founders here. We started Flowcast because we wanted to make it really easy to give and get feedback on websites you're working on.

We looked around and saw designers giving design feedback directly on top of designs with tools like inVision and developers giving code feedback directly on the code with things like GitHub. We decided to do the same thing for product teams working on websites.

We'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback on Flowcast, and I'm happy to answer any questions!</comment>