Soti – A $1B firm built in a basement - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40504764 <comment><USER2> > One problem Mr Rodrigues says the company has faced, is struggling to > recruit enough good computer programmers.

Well yeah, he's trying to run a software business in Mississauga. As a developer who used to commute to the 'Saug every day: very few of us want to work there. No decent food, no after work fun, just suburb hell for miles around.

He's competing with the banks and Amazon downtown in Toronto proper. He's also competing with Google Waterloo 30 minutes in the other direction for people not interested in living in the city. And he's going to be competing with them on pay as well as location.

Edit: woo, this may be my most controversial comment ever based on the point swings. I welcome counterpoints! Discussion is always good.

<comment><USER3> What a world we could have if companies realized they could sidestep this problem entirely if they hired remote workers.

<comment><USER4> Or paid more. Whenever companies say "there's a skills shortage" or "we can't find enough good developers" or whatever, they are missing off the important "... for the price that we would like to pay" part.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. Soti is paying on average $80k/year for their non-senior devs (source:glassdoor). That's $20k/year less than the _median starting salary_ of graduates from my undergrad. Of course, they are in Canada, but still, it's no wonder they're having trouble hiring people. Just pay more for less positions...

<comment><USER6> Yes they are in Canada where they don't need their employers-sponsored health insurance, get more vacation time, don't have huge student debt, and can't get laid off with no severance and no notice.

<comment><USER5> Just as a rebuttal, I don't have student debt and get plenty of vacation time, and my employer has pretty amazing health insurance. Not everyone is lucky this way but I personally would never move _to_ Canada for a tech job and don't know anybody who has done so, while I have definitely met many Canadians who have moved here.

The Canadian and US labor markets are pretty interconnected so in my opinion these companies are going to have to start raising salaries if they really want to get talent. I feel like I read something on HN every week bemoaning the Canadian tech industry, when most of the problems have a pretty simple solution: pay more. Of course, that's easy to say but not necessarily easy to do financially.

<comment><USER6> No argument here that the jobs are more lucrative, on paper, South of the border. Just trying to point out that there are lots of aspects to consider when you're looking at compensation. Being young, healthy, and single in the US can net you a lot, but I suspect that other bills would quickly eat up the difference if you aren't all 3 of those things.

<comment><USER7> As a Canadian who moved south for work and is rapidly approaching or in middle age, this is my position on the healthcare here: If you have good insurance, it is AMAZING! I understand that others have it worse, but all major software dev employers that I've looked at had really really great HI. In Canada OTOH, the service is much worse for non-emergency things, but everyone gets to have it. From an ethical standpoint, of course I support some kind of 'everyone gets sensible healthcare'. But I pay less out of pocket here than I would in Canada for my family of 5. Financially, moving back to Canada would be a disaster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "I don't think they realised that they were talking to just one guy in a basement, so when the person asked to speak to someone in sales I came back on the phone with a slightly different tone."

This takes the "Fake it till you make it" mantra perfectly!

<comment><USER9> Jared does the same in the fourth season of Silicon Valley :O

<comment><USER10> "No, I literally eat his lunch." This was the funniest scene in the whole series for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I met somebody the other day who works for a tiny start-up and said their MD frequently hires a couple of extra actors to make the office look busier when they have client meetings.

</comment><comment><USER12> Yet another surprising aspect of this story is that someone born in Pakistan and now living in Canada is named Carl Rodrigues.

<comment><USER13> I was interested in this too, so I keep on reading and finally understood: "Born in Pakistan to a Roman Catholic family that had its roots in the former Portuguese colony of Goa". Rodrigues is a common Portuguese surname. Once again, the empire strikes back :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a very inspiring story and the quintessential manifestation of JFDI. It takes some serious guts to quit your job and say "i'm going to build a software product", with no ideas to start with. I hope Carl can keep growing Soti or even start something else once he gives the reigns to his managers.

<comment><USER15> This is also the quintessential manifestation of survivorship bias - for every company that succeeds there are plenty of examples of people who quit their job, start a company and then fail after losing a pile of money, and have to get a job again.

The important thing is to understand that and then use it to motivate yourself to work harder on your idea.

<comment><USER16> That was the overriding thought in the back of my mind too, when I read the article.

I sincerely mean "Well done" to Carl for what he has achieved, and how he did it, but I think that more than one person who reads this article will quit their job shortly and try and achieve the same thing to the same scale that he did. It is still somewhat a game of chance. Nothing is guaranteed. I've been there, and I know the scene well.

<comment><USER17> "somewhat" a game of chance? For each garage millionaire there's ten million penniless garage tinkerers. It's a lottery.

<comment><USER15> _It 's a lottery._

I don't think that's a reasonable interpretation of what makes someone succeed where others fail. There is an element of luck involved, but you can greatly improve your chances by doing things like working hard, understanding the problem you're solving, really talking to your customers, getting a mentor, saying no to distractions, etc. Those things wouldn't have any impact if it really was a lottery.

<comment><USER18> It's a lottery with some requirements to participate.

<comment><USER19> Three years ago before doing a startup I would say it is more talent than lottery.

After three years I'm bound to believe in the lottery. Sometimes those calls do fall out of nowhere and dictate the survival or death of your company (so was our case).

Related to this, there is a Portuguese saying: "A sorte favorece os audazes", meaning: "Luck favors the bold ones". This was derived from the Roman empire, so for sure there has to be some reason to stick around for so long.

<comment><USER5> I think the Latin saying is even cooler: "Fortuna favet fortibus", which is usually translated to English as "Fortune favors the bold".

<comment><USER20> The SAS motto: Who dares, wins

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Amazing story. Well done Carl. I don't think I would have had the strength of character to turn down an acquisition offer from Microsoft like he did.

Good to see a company with turnover in the $80M/yr range and still being 100% owned by him and his wife.

<comment><USER21> That to me would be a red flag unless the pay and other comp was phenomenal. Not talking about a facebook IPO or taking VC money, but thought train would be forget about any equity/options the company has been going for 15yrs, $1b turnover and thousands of staff and the owners haven't diluted any of their shares to even reward the longest most loyal executives.

<comment><USER22> If he has no intention of selling or going public why would it matter? Even if he was giving out equity it would have no value since there aren't going to be any liquidation events.

To me it would be more of a red flag if he was giving away equity because he would be giving something that he knows will never have any value.

<comment><USER23> Equity determines distributions, it's not like it's worth nothing until a liquidation event.

<comment><USER22> This may be different in Canada, but in the US if a company is owned 100% it makes more sense to have it taxed as an S Corp. In that case all "distributions" are salary that is taxed as ordinary income.

This is done because even though the income tax rate is high, it is lower than getting double taxed (paying corporate tax rates plus playing capital gains).

So generally if a company is owned 100% by one person there are no distributions. This means for a company like this equity has virtually no value and profit sharing is a far better deal for everyone involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't get it --- why would a supermarket chain be interested in software that allows one to control a mobile phone from a computer?

<comment><USER25> I don't think the BBC article really explains what Soti's software does. Especially considering the story took place in 2001, we're talking about Windows CE. A lot of stores and warehouses used (some still do) Windows CE devices to scan products and manage inventory.

I'm not terribly familiar with the product, but it sounds like Soti would be used to track all of these handheld scanners, possibly read what they're scanning and add it to the master inventory database, let the helpdesk reboot the device or push updates if something is malfunctioning, etc.

<comment><USER26> UPS and FedEx still use CE

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just to balance the hagiography out, the company has mostly bad reviews on Glassdoor:

[https://www.glassdoor.ca/Reviews/SOTI- Reviews-E156148.htm](https://www.glassdoor.ca/Reviews/SOTI- Reviews-E156148.htm)

<comment><USER28> Pretty cutting reviews even for Glassdoor, esp. the one accusing him of writing the reviews himself (a point that wasn't addressed in the reply). As people say, there's always two sides

<comment><USER27> Situations like these make me wonder about the Asian family-centric model of business. Many times it is touted as the way for minorities to get out of poverty, and here it seems to be the case because him and his wife are making out like bandits. However, it seems to be a terrible deal HR-wise where the founder's immediate community are favoured in hiring processes, leading to immense disgruntlement among the workers.

<comment><USER29> >Many times it is touted as the way for minorities to get out of poverty

The reason it is a good approach is that; when you think about poverty, one may go round and round in circles trying to uncover a panacea but it all comes down to productivity. Are a group of people/is a person able to produce goods and services? This (ability) could be hampered by a lack of skills relevant to the current economic environment among other things. To acquire said skills among other inputs, one requires capital. If you consume capital goods, it won't be possible to save up enough to acquire the aforementioned production inputs. Systems like the Asian family-centric one you mentioned earlier allows for 1) creation of capital goods through production and 2) preservation of capital goods through savings and reinvestment over multiple generations.

If there's capital for future generations in such a family, then acquisition of the relevant skills in an economic environment that's constantly mutating becomes plausible.

It starts with a sense of frugality in a bid to amalgamate capital that can be compounded over generations in the future. Without capital generation and preservation (by the subjects themselves in order to cultivate discipline), you have nothing in terms of wealth creation and poverty alleviation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This company, while impressive, was not built in a basement. It merely started in a basement, which is way different.

That's like saying "Apple - A $700B firm built in a garage"

I'd like to know what the actual largest single-founder business is that's being run out of a basement

<comment><USER31> It sounds like he was still solo in the basement when he got his first big order. That's good enough for me.

I don't know if a literal basement was involved, but Plentyoffish was solo for about four years and had a fair few users before hiring any staff.

<comment><USER30> yeah, I think POF may take the honors. Not sure about the guy that started Minecraft - he was also making a ton of money but not sure if he was solo.

<comment><USER32> PoF is the Unicorn of all the Unicorns. In fact, I would really call it the Mother of all Unicorns. There is no way you can get away with comparing it to anything and anything to it.

<comment><USER30> OK, I think you're going a tad too far now

<comment><USER32> Not really. Can you name a website that sold for anywhere near $500 million that required so little effort by the founder who was the only person working on the website? The creator of PoF had a work week that consisted of 1 or 2 hours of work. He did not even hire a another employee for 4 or 5 years after he started the website and the site was pulling in a million dollars a month at that point. The amount of work he put into the website is pretty amazing for the amount of money he got from it.

<comment><USER30> well, founder of minecraft sold it for $1 billion, and he was kind of a solo founder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I am still trying to wrap my head around the idea of a Roman Catholic Pakistani-born Canadian named Rodrigues.

</comment><comment><USER34> In Nepal, with 100k USD, one can rent decent office space, offer in-work benefits/recreations and employ 15+ professionals (including tech and non- tech), for 2 years. Yes, you can literally trade salary of 1 engineer with entire company fund.

</comment><comment><USER35> tl;dr: _He [...] spent a number of years working as a consultant, before launching Soti in 2001. [B]ack in 2001 he [...] started to try to dream up something. [...] After a month of working[...], Mr Rodrigues had come up with [an] idea - a software system that allowed the user to control his or her mobile phone from their laptop. [M]ost people have never heard of the firm - because it sells its mobile technology software systems to companies instead of consumers_

</comment><comment><USER36> Soti ONE platform, explained by Carl Rodrigues:

[https://youtu.be/MUXlTnFBOu8](https://youtu.be/MUXlTnFBOu8)

</comment><comment><USER37> What is the use case for controlling your phone from your computer? To enforce company policy on company phones?

Or Tech support? Like the Amazon Fire phone?</comment>


Robin "Roblimo" Miller Passes Away - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/robin-roblimo-miller-passes-away-richard-morrell/ <comment><AUTHOR> Anyone who is/was part of the slashdot community knows what a giant of the open source movement we have lost. He was our voice before we had a voice...</comment>


How to Interview Developers - <AUTHOR> http://swombat.com/2011/3/30/interview-developers

<comment><USER2> I've been interviewing with companies recently and it's interesting to see how some places just completely ignore these types of questions. My guess is that there's a bit of self selection when interviewing. Some places don't looks for passion because they themselves may not be passionate.

On the other hand, you do want to make sure they know how to program. Talking about side projects and areas of interest may bias the interviewer when they really just want to know how technically competent you are.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've had pretty good semi-accidental success with this method. Half the time I don't even get to the coding questions. Usually after 10 minutes of general technically-focused chatting I know if I want to reject the person. Knowing if I want to hire requires more, but I'm not always convinced throwing them at a whiteboard is the best way.</comment>


Ask HN: Where do you get technical books? - <AUTHOR>

The library system I'm a part of doesn't seem to have any technical books (e.g. Code Complete or Don't Make Me Think). Buying them is usually really expensive for a one time read. So my question is where do you get your technical books? <comment><USER2> Usually kindle, but I try to buy a few books/year at Digital Guru on Lawrence near 101, next to Madhuban (mmm) in Sunnyvale. + easy side trips to Unix Surplus, Weird Stuff, Fry's, Halted.

</comment><comment><USER3> I personally just buy a hard copy of the most important books and keep them for reference. Most of what I need can be found online so I don't usually have to purchase too many books, and I think the best ones are worth having around.

</comment><comment><USER4> Get a safari books subscription or if you have a (dot)mil address you can get a free account, just call support.</comment>


Coinbase has added margin trading to its Bitcoin exchange - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/21/coinbase-has-added-margin-trading-to-its-bitcoin-exchange/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&sr_share=twitter <comment><USER2> Just a few random thoughts after looking through their docs.

They keep talking about a "margin order", though they also stress that this order type is basically the same as a limit order.

I'm assuming they created a new order type so the trader is explicitly aware that they are using margin?

> Each time a Trader places a valid Margin Order that would exceed their > Available Balance, funding is automatically provided for the required amount > (Margin Funding).

Interesting that each "margin" order you put out counts towards your margin usage, rather than your fills. I mean, they are both prime broker and exchange, they could cancel out existing margin orders if you hit your margin limit.

I'm guessing this is a nod to simplicity rather than correctness in this case, Seems like it would make layering orders tougher, though maybe its one of those cases that wouldn't be hit in practice due to who they are currently allowing to trade on margin?

> Each Margin Funding must be Settled within 27 days and 22 hours.

That's a weird time frame, just short of the shortest month. This is quite a bit different from typical margin trading that most institutions have with their prime brokers. It's odd that it has an expiry at all. I'm guessing its because they aren't currently charging any margin interest?

> When a portion of your margin funding expires, a market order will be > executed to settle only the amount that has expired, and the size of your > position will be reduced.

Ouch, so if this is marketed towards institutional investors and you put on a say $1,000,000 position, coinbase will cross the spread on your behalf with a market order for the full amount? You can say buyer beware and maybe they'll have some sort of daily and then hourly email reminder but with out knowing more this seems absolutely terrible.

> This is the default behavior when closing a position. When you realize > profit / loss, the opposing market order will be executed for the entire > size of your margin position.

They can't really mean market order can they? I mean this is 2017, no one should be using a market order for any purpose at all. If this is indeed the default way that coinbase wants you to close a position, then I' going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that I must just be missing something because nobody, should be sending market order.....ever.

Requirements for getting a margin account.

[https://support.gdax.com/customer/portal/articles/2725812-wh...](https://support.gdax.com/customer/portal/articles/2725812-what- is-an-eligible-contract-participant-ecp-)

<comment><USER3> Why should no one ever use market orders?

<comment><USER4> Imagine you place your order just as "something" happens to make the best price it can match move dramatically.

If you truly want to sell or buy no matter the price, then sure, use a market order. But most of the time there will be a price that is too low/too high for you to want the order to execute.

This is _especially_ an issue for things like Bitcoin which can be extremely volatile, and where many of the exchanges have small enough volumes that they can suffer significantly more volatility than Bitcoin as a whole.

<comment><USER5> _If you truly want to sell or buy no matter the price, then sure, use a market order. But most of the time there will be a price that is too low /too high for you to want the order to execute._

Well...yes, exactly; bordering on a flat out "duh". Isn't this kind of the entire _point_ of a market order? If you're convinced this is the price you're going to enter a position at, you're able to do so; otherwise you'd open a LIMIT order if the price is too low/too high for whatever trade strategy you're utilizing with margin trading. That's the entire reason market orders exist as another commenter points out.

That doesn't mean no one should _ever_ use market orders. Traders have different risk tolerances that inform their trade decisions; saying "no one should do it ever" seems like leaving an awful lot of nuance about currency (and other securities) strategy and price action on the table.

If I've misunderstood your point, I'm open to a correction here, but I don't think what you've replied with is a wholly convincing argument on its face.

<comment><USER4> > If you're convinced this is the price you're going to enter a position at, > you're able to do so;

This is a prime examply of why to give the advice to never use a market order. This is _exactly_ the type of situation where a limit order is the right choice rather than a market order, as with the market order you _don 't_ know that this is the price you'll enter the position at.

If you enter a market order based on that thinking, you risk losing a lot of money, because you are making an unjustified assumption that the price can't/won't move all that much before it is filled.

It's unlikely you're looking at the market price and think "if I place that market order now, I might end up selling at 30% below that/buying at 30% above that". But that can happen. On crypto exchanges, not only can it happen, but e.g. on smaller exchanges trading lesser coins against BTC it's not at all unusual for it to happen (e.g. you have have coins fluctuating up and down between 3-4 satoshi).

Saying you should _never_ do it is hyperbole, but the cases where there is a good reason to not enter a limit order instead are exceedingly few. Most of the times when people use market orders it tends to be lack of a trading strategy or lacking tools (panicked issuing of market order to account for lack of having suitable orders in place to protect you) or lack of understanding of the risk.

I'd argue that the vast majority of the time, if you find yourself thinking you need a market order, maybe you do need it _then and there_ in an urgent rush, but if so you should treat it as a warning sign that you may be doing something wrong (e.g. you don't have the right tools or strategy in place to protect you against risks) and re-evaluate what you're doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > While the full list is here, the requirements include things like being a > corporation with a net worth exceeding $1,000,000 and trading on margin in > order to hedge risks associated with your business. Individuals need to have > a minimum of $5,000,000 invested on a discretionary basis in order to be > allowed to trade on margin.

Holy cow those are are some steep requirements. For contrast to trade on margin in traditional brokerage account requires only a couple thousand dollars (for up to 2x margin on most securities). Intra day 4x margin usually requires $25K+.

If they are attracting customers to trade on their platform with that level of disposable assets then color me impressed.

<comment><USER5> Heck, I'm pretty sure you can open a forex trade account with a retail broker for as little as $25 if you're fine trading nanolots and making fractions of a penny every trade.

<comment><USER6> I'm not familiar with the margin rules for forex but given how shady that business is (seriously it's just a bunch of sharks fleecing anybody they can get their hands on), I wouldn't be surprised if they give you leverage at such small amounts.

For a traditional brokerage account though the minimums are generally larger. Also, there are specific rules as to how much margin they can provide on a per security basis based on whether it's a actively traded, pink sheets, etc.

<comment><USER5> _given how shady that business is (seriously it 's just a bunch of sharks fleecing anybody they can get their hands on)_

There's definitely sharks fleecing people in the sense of "buy my automated trading bot!" or "pay $500 for my class and I'll get you pips for days!" or "Pay me $300 for this strategy that will win every time" but forex inherently isn't shady. It's no more shady for an individual trader than stocks, bonds and ETFs as you're legitimately and singularly acting on changes in the value of currencies.

This, and there are numerous respectable retail brokers who aren't in the game of anything other than opening/closing positions for their clients. The nature of the security makes it a lot easier for properly registered entities to create markets where trades can happen sans the sharks you're mentioning.

The idea that "forex is for scammers" is losing a lot of validity and it's an attitude that I-a guy who trades with his spare/drinking money-wish would go away entirely. At the end of the day, currency trading can be just as risky and loss-worthy as trading stocks to someone who A) doesn't know what they're doing B) is excessively risky with their positions C) all of the above.

<comment><USER7> There is a difference in that with stocks you can go long and reasonably expect a couple percent return in a year. Most people, even those who trade a lot are long overall. In forex you have to beat the market to make _anything_. It is only rational to trade forex if you have a good reason to believe you can outsmart the market, or if you are hedging currency risk that you already had for other reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13925803](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13925803)</comment>


UK scientists dropped from EU projects because of post-Brexit funding fears - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/jul/12/uk-scientists-dropped-from-eu-projects-because-of-post-brexit-funding-fears <comment><USER3> Large Multinationals like Unilever, even for incremental decisions - <USER2> changing the type of light bulb, takes years to execute. This is why a large change in their business is so difficult and you need a very good CEO ( ask Marissa Mayer )

The decision UK made to leave the EU is akin for Unilever to switch from selling shampoos to selling software - and we are not talking about a multinational with 100,000 employees. We are talking about an entire country.

The UK -> EU export is 40% but even the rest of the 60% happens through EU treaties with other non-EU countries.

Not only will the EU trade treaty need to be renegotiated, but so does the 50 other trade treaty with other nations - those treaties took a lot of time and over 600+ negotiators to write, the UK only have 30 negotiators and about 2 years.

A reworking of the economy usually results is a lot of unemployment and retraining. Imagine if the C standard library made a small change in some function. Retraining means public investment or as the austerity people put it - deficit spending - not sure how much appetite the UK govt has to do something like that.

Regardless of how much people hate on Java and Oracle - if they suddenly disappeared it would be chaos and lose of GDP for many years before we retool our software on Python/Go etc.

Also there is uncertainty - usually the horizon for bringing new laws into action are declared ahead of time by 4-5 years to give people/businesses time to plan.

<comment><USER4> I talked to a senior diplomat recently. He said that when talking to diplomats from China, Russia, the US in the beginning of his career some 30 years ago, nobody asked about the EU opinion on issues. In the last 10 years, however, he never heard "what does Britain or France or Germany think about XYZ" but only "What does the EU think".

What some leavers don't realise is that the entire world had gotten used to dealing with the EU as a whole and that the world probably doesn't care that much about what Britain (or England/Wales) thinks about tariffs, terrorism, refugees, wars, human rights, etc.

Britain will have to follow the EU on many issues if it wants access to the common market.

Britain is going from having a very strong voice in a very powerful organisation that the world has to deal with to being a rather small country the world can largely ignore.

<comment><USER5> I know little of Britain's political system. If Article 50 isn't being invoked until the end of the year, can Britain have another national vote on Brexit before then?

<comment><USER6> Technically yes. But I imagine that if they did everyone would be incensed and vote leave - to send a message. Whoever was in power at the time would be hoisted out in short order.

<comment><USER7> What makes you think that? The vote was met with such shock that it has re- raised the prospect of Scottish independence, and caused calls for referendums on Ireland, and has triggered the start of a small movement for independence for London (yes, most of the people who signed the change.org petition probably did it as a joke/out of anger, but there are groups organising more serious endeavours), and the signals all over the place is drastic increased devolution for London to placate anger here.

More than 4 million people signed a petition for a new referendum

On top of that we now know that most of the promises from the leave camp were flat out lies, and they've basically been shown to not have the faintest idea what they want to achieve.

I'm sure some would switch and vote leave out of spite, but frankly I don't think the vote was fair or democratic to begin with - it presented a false choice, in that "leave" could campaign on anything under the sun, with contradicting ideas about what leaving actually meant, and we see now the problems that causes: Did the 52% want EEA membership? Did they want full on isolationism? Something in between? We don't know. And we don't know how the results would be if they had to pick a specific option, but it is highly unlikely that they'd be unchanged.

<comment><USER6> It's sort of like D&D. Everyone in the country had rolled their character. Assume one roll of a D20. People who rolled 13+ were doing OK in life. 19s and 20s were rich. 1 to 12s are poor.

Cameron (our DM) came along and gave us all a free re-roll.

People with 10 or less voted yes. 11 - 15 were about 50/50 depending on risk aversion. 16 - 20 voted no.

The numbers are almost always going to sway in favour of change, there are too many people down at the bottom.

Sure, more options on how to leave would have been amazing, left-exit was interesting, green-exit was also interesting. Right-racist-exit was bonkers, but people liked it.

But remember that remain-the-same and remain-and-re-negotiate had both been tried. And for millions and millions of people it was shit. Utter shit. Credit card chomping, crappy zero hour job, minimum wage, second hand clothes, crappy car, no life insurance, no pension, crap.

Next time you're in an Oxfam shop look at us. Picking over dead man suits for our next job interview. The shame of it. Jobs gone. High streets gone. Only option is to move to London away from elderly parents, our kids, our friends.

<comment><USER8> _And for millions and millions of people it was shit. Utter shit. Credit card chomping, crappy zero hour job, minimum wage, second hand clothes, crappy car, no life insurance, no pension, crap._

Yep.

Except for one teeny weeny insignificantly minor detail: these things have _nothing whatsoever_ to do with the EU, and everything to do with the austerity/de-industrialization policies of neo-liberal UK governments, primarily Tory, but to a somewhat less extent also New-Labour.

And the EU was, if anything, a _counter_ to those forces, with structural funds, with labor standards, with investments by non-UK firms in the de- industrialized parts of the UK for access to the common market etc.

And leaving the EU will make these things worse.

So voting against the EU to protest these conditions is not even cutting off your nose to spite your face, it's cutting off your nose to spite someone else's face!

While it deserves the word "pathetic" I can't bring myself to it. It really is just sad. Very, very sad.

<comment><USER6> what other option was there? I'm genuinely interested. The vote card said IN and OUT.

Pathetic? Name calling, wow that's low. I love how butt hurt you are. The more furious rich people are the better the decision feels.

<comment><USER9> There probably should have been some more options on the paper, seeing as how people voted Leave for many disparate reasons and with many disparate ideas (or no idea at all) of what to do instead, and there is no way to keep all of them happy.

In fact there may be no way to keep any of them happy, since apparently many of them voted Leave for impossible/EU-unrelated reasons: to keep non-EU immigration down; to spend money we won't even have on the NHS; because they don't like what the UK government has been doing and will keep doing outside the EU with even greater impunity, etc.

"Pathetic" 1\. Arousing sadness, compassion, or sympathy, esp. through vulnerability or sadness; pitiable.

Seems fair enough. "Name-calling"?

"Rich people": I work for a university as support staff. I earn under the median UK wage and surely well under the median HN wage. We've had deeper and deeper cuts year on year for the past several years and post-Brexit an even bigger chunk of our budget looks like disappearing along with our best academics and researchers, not to mention other support staff, foreign language teachers/cataloguers/negotiators, etc. Education and research careers have been a route into the middle class for many and it's a shame to see that threatened - even more of a shame when the people who voted for it, the press, politicians have hardly even acknowledged it's a problem.

But have fun assuming that only rich people are interested in science or can get any benefit from cooperating with colleagues elsewhere in Europe...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just finished an EU funded CompSci Masters degree in Wales, the poorest country in the UK and it's devastatingly sad to think that once the EU research funding stops, those opportunities will be gone forever for future students coming through the department.

There aren't enough large tech companies in the area for there to be any sponsored degrees available, which probably means that when the funding finishes, the research will start to dry up and the interesting researchers will leave with it. Take away the research and what's left is a department of third-rate lecturers. That's not an inspiring way to learn.

Will the NHS get some of the £350m? Maybe, maybe not. It's likely to be up for discussion. Will the post-Brexit government allot research funding for CS departments in North Wales? Not a chance.

<comment><USER11> The UK is a net payer to the EU. For instance in 2015 alone, UK's net payment to the EU was about 8.5 billion pounds.

So after the Brexit there will be more than enough money to continue the research funding. But as you mention already, it is another question if the government will be wanting to pay it. But is this really such a bad thing? The difference will that instead of the EU, the UK itself will decide which of its research projects it wants to fund.

<comment><USER12> That's assuming tax revenue remains the same, which _all_ economists agree will not be the case.

Whether or not Brexit will boost public finances is entirely down to how much of an impact it'll have on the UK economy. No one knows what the impact will be, but almost everyone agrees that it will be negative... though no one agrees to what extent.

So there's really two questions here: a) just how much more/less public money will be available? and, b) if there is more, how much of it will go to research?

No one knows the answers to either question, not even the government.

edit: a very quick back-of-envelope calculation based on the forecast tax receipts for 2014-2015 of 648.1bn[1]: 8.5bn makes up a whopping 1.31% of tax receipts. Unless I'm mistaken, tax receipts correlate strongly with the strength of the economy, so any more than a ~1.3% decline in the economy _as a consequence of Brexit_ , would consume the "savings".

[1]: [http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn09.pdf](http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn09.pdf)

<comment><USER13> "That's assuming tax revenue remains the same"

And it's assuming that a new government is inclined to take the money and give it to the kinds of projects that the EU used to give it to - I can think of a lot of reasons why that might not happen.

<comment><USER6> A lot of EU funding went to stupid stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A few months ago I attended the "Quantum Europe" conference in Amsterdam, where the new EU flagship project on quantum computing was kicked off and celebrated. With a total funding volume of 1 BN € this initiative is huge, and there are several British universities and research centers involved. Now with the BREXIT it's unclear whether they will be able to still participate in this project, which will start in 2018. And if they can't it will be at least doubtful if the UK government will allot them a similar amount of funding for quantum technologies...

I can only start to imagine how disappointed these researchers must be now, as winning the EU flagship was such a huge deal to everyone involved and took years of preparation from dozens of industry & research partners. It really is a shame.

<comment><USER15> So tell the EU to let British universities continue to participate regardless of EU membership.

If you believe they will say no for purely political reasons, then there's the problem. There are lots of academic collaborations that span the globe. It's only the EU that artificially ties quantum computing research to immigration policies.

 _edit: There is a massive amount of political downvoting going on in this thread. Voting is NOT intended to express agreement or disagreement._

<comment><USER16> As the sibling comment points out, the participation involves money. If the UK stops paying into the EU, it stops recieving payouts.

<comment><USER15> But it hasn't stopped paying in money, and the EU could easily strike a separate deal to allow continued participation in Horizon 2020 if it wanted to.

My point stands: the EU allocates research funding based on political concerns that have nothing to do with science. And that needs to stop.

<comment><USER17> Research/Science is one of THE main political topics for every country and also for the EU (and other European institutions involved in science). 'Science' was never and will never be free of political concerns. It's just the opposite.

> continued participation in Horizon 2020

My impression was that the UK wanted to distance itself from the 'EU superstate'. Research is just one topic. Get rid of centrally planned and funded research projects, which are for the political benefit of the EU. ;-)

> if it wanted to.

'cherry picking'. Probably easier for Britain to concentrate on non-EU research projects. Since they save money from not paying to the EU, the UK can now freely invest that money into their own research projects and attract partners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is it really likely that Oxford, Cambridge and other Russell Group universities are no longer going to be allowed to do Science alongside European universities?

Is Theresa May and the conservative government against investing in Science?

It seems to me that most of this is is just knee-jerking, and it's likely that there are quite a few people who will work to ensure that things continue to work as they should.

Edit: That University Ranking chart posted earlier says it all really. The US and UK dominate the charts - you don't see EU universities until page two. This is just a few people cutting their noses off to spite their face.

<comment><USER19> They'll of course be allowed to do the research - the question is who is going to pay for it as much of the funding comes from the EU.

<comment><USER20> EU money doesn't come out of thin air. It comes from taxpayers. The UK is a net contributor to the EU so the UK government could choose to fund all current commitments and still be better off.

<comment><USER8> Except for...revenues are not going to stay the same.

For example, George Osborne has just proposed to slash the corp. tax rate from 20% to 15%, in order reduce (not eliminate) the almost certain reduction in UK investment.

Last year, CT net receipts were £ 42 billion[1]. At the current 20% rate. At 15%, that would be £ 31.5 billion, for a reduction of £ 10.5 billion. Let's divide that by 52 weeks and you get £ 200 million. Which happens to be £ 10 million more than the UK's net contribution to the EU budget.

So all your "savings" just evaporated just with corporation tax _alone_ , and that's assuming that Osborne's plan works and there is no reduction in activity/investment, which is dubious.

[1] [https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/524565/Corporation_Tax_Statistics_May_2016.pdf)

<comment><USER20> It isn't that simple. There isn't a linear relationship between the tax % and the revenue to the treasury. Lower taxes encourage more companies to set up in the UK.

We saw this recently in the UK when the top rate of income tax was raised to 50% and the income to the treasury actually fell.

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

<comment><USER8> As I wrote, the tax cuts are being proposed to compensate for lower investment due to brexit, and it is unclear whether they will be able to compensate fully.

<comment><USER20> Ok but the numbers you quoted assumed a linear relationship.

In no way is it "almost certain" that investment in the UK will decrease. The evidence currently suggests the complete opposite. Look at the performance of the FTSE100 since the referendum to see the flood of foreign investment coming into the UK listed companies thanks to the weaker currency.

I'd also point out that decreasing tax rates is the exact opposite of what the chancellor said he would do before the referendum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As a founder who tried to apply and build a couple of consortiums with my previous startup, for FP7 and Horizon2020 project funding, I totally understand the fears. This is the key part of the article:

> _Only 12% of bids for Horizon 2020 funds are successful, a rate that falls > by more than half in highly competitive areas. Given the low probability of > winning funds at the best of times, Gorman said it was natural risk aversion > to be cautious of UK partners. UK politicians simply don't understand this, > and think it is 'business as usual', at least until negotiations have been > completed. They are wrong, the problems start right now_

Brexit could endanger a whole project if british companies are members of your consortium. There's quite a bit of research money at stake, and some companies depend _a lot_ on this kind of funding.

Once you find the companies that are going to partner with you and apply, then starts a long journey together, of several years (2 to 5) until the projects are finished... you can't just start the projects, and "do business as usual" and then see how UK companies are forced to abandon ship after few months for political reasons. The projects could collapse, and this is too much uncertainty.

IMO until the doubts are 100% cleared and we have a new EU <-> UK treaty for science collabs in place, many EU companies will be reluctant to partner with UK companies/institutions. Brexit is bad for UK research and UK scientists knew this...

[https://www.facebook.com/scientistsforeu](https://www.facebook.com/scientistsforeu)

</comment><comment><USER22> It's always a tragedy when political maneuvering gets in the way of good science, and you know, advancing the human race.

<comment><USER23> We have enough trouble overcoming the challenges of nature, we don't really need people making it harder for us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> A lot of these concerns have been dismissed as "fearmongering". This case shows that whether the fear is justified or not, it affects the behaviour both in the UK and out.

This is the real reason experts were warning about the consequences: perception trumps reality. There may not be a direct impact, but the fear of an impact affects behaviour which in turn can create the exact impact itself.

</comment><comment> torrent-of-ions Again, this is exactly what was expected and we were told by the experts.

<comment><USER25> Exactly, they warned that the EU would be as punitive as possible. Their reaction to Brexit it shows that was necessary.

<comment><USER8> Wut?

There are certain benefits you get by being a member of this club.

I am leaving your club.

Then you no longer get the benefits that members of the club get.

YOU ARE UNFAIRLY PUNISHING ME!!!!

<comment><USER15> It makes no sense for relations between countries to be structured as an exclusive "club". This just retards progress and leads to stagnation when it becomes impossible to get all the members of the "club" to agree.

<comment><USER26> It makes every bit of sense. When governments differ, the laws differ, and the free exchange of research money is slowed.

When you're in the same "club" you can be assured of how things will go. When a country decides that it wants to leave the club because they want to have their own rules that are different, and that they don't want to share finances, then that makes agreements take longer.

<comment><USER15> Free exchange of research money has no requirement to be connected to immigration or trade policy, these are unrelated things. Countries can easily collaborate on research without something like the EU, as evidenced by the number of CS papers I read that are for example USA/Israeli collaborations.

The EU is failing because its blind, ideological insistence on connecting lots of unrelated things together to make an artificial club (really: the beginnings of a new country). The EU's petulant "retaliation" is treated by far too many as a given, when in reality it is a policy choice driven by a quasi-religious devotion to an abstract vision.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > One university said it had serious concerns about its ability to recruit > research fellows for current projects.

I have heard rumblings of researchers' reluctance to work in the UK due to concerns about funding availability in 3 years. No one I know personally, but I have heard that active offers are being reconsidered.

If the UK can demonstrate a commitment to funds, that would mitigate the reluctance, but given recent events uncertainty is high to say the least. And science is uncertain enough already. Put another way, the UK might have to commit much more resources to attract researchers than before, to compensate for the added risk.

</comment><comment><USER28> If there is one deal that can be negotiated successfully, then it's probably to continue existing science cooperation. Still, as a researcher myself, I'd also be wary about participating UK institutions in a Horizon2020 project right now, until more details have been negotiated and Article 50 has been triggered. Nobody knows for sure now what's going to happen, and the administrative burdens are already high enough as is.

</comment><comment><USER29> There is nothing discriminatory about this. They broke up with us and are on their way out, of course we're not going to keep paying their bills.

I think there is a lot of truth in this "British organisations will have to bring more to the table to justify the risk of them being included in a consortium", not only related to science but business in general. If EU businesses are supposed to trade with non EU members, of course they need to offer more.

</comment><comment><USER30> I wonder how many other things like this will be impacted. By "like this" I mean not terribly obvious, but when you hear about it; you realize it should have been.

</comment><comment><USER31> Unfortunately it's understandable.

<comment><USER32> How so?

<comment><USER33> It discusses this in the article. The challenge here is related to funding that is primary delivered by the EU structures. Now that the UK is leaving the EU, there is some concern that projects that contain UK representation, or are lead by UK researchers, will not be funded on time.

This is due to the confusion around what Brexit will mean, how long it will take, how far it will go and what agreements the EU and UK will sign.

<comment><USER34> Right, but while there is confusion and lack of clarity, it's not clear that immediately removing UK investigators is appropriate. Some amount of this is just petulance or telegraphing unhappiness, rather than rational decision making.

<comment><USER35> The proposals for the big EU calls like Horizon 2020 contain detailed work packages and plans for how the research effort is going to be orchestrated to be successful. To my knowledge, the quality of this planning is a decisive factor in the acceptance of a proposal.

If a research partner drops out halfway through the project, the whole effort may fall apart - and with research institutions and industrial partners booking the alloted funds each month, such a failure is hard to justify for any EU officer.

Of course, it is ridiculous to simply require that the UK partners be dropped from the project without a significant change of plan or adequate substitution.

Edit: Also, the aim of these projects is always to strengthen industry or scientific progress in the participating countries - so politically, if the UK really drops out this would be giving something for free to a competitor.

<comment><USER34> I'm having trouble seeing why UK partners here are specifically going to drop out of a funded research project simply because Brexit.

<comment><USER36> They may struggle to recruit staff needed for the positions, or even lose existing staff¹. For

Successful projects often lead to future projects, so people thinking of projects in a few years time might not want to start collaboration in the UK, at least if there's an alternative elsewhere in the EU.

¹ For example, the UK lost me — after the 2014 European Parliament elections in the UK, where UKIP won most votes, I started looking for a job elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This isn't really political.

If the UK exits, they are no longer paying their EU club dues, which means the EU will no longer fund UK people/project in return; and it is easier to preemptively block further UK funding that hasn't already been funded and then (re-)fund it in the near-future if Brexit doesn't happen (no reason currently to think it won't, the UK just needs to get their shit together and actually do it), than it is for the reverse, semi-funding UK people/projects until Article 50 is signed by the UK.

This is the path of least bullshit, as far as I can tell. Given that the UK has to leave the EU to survive, wants to leave the EU, and the EU has given them significant reason to go ahead and leave the EU and not go down with the ship. I'm trying not to judge anyone, but France/German bailout of Greece, and the failure to save Spain in any respectable manner; all the while Iceland did the correct thing (and from the viewpoint as an American, our founding fathers would be applauding Iceland), the EU's economy is going to have their own Japan-style Lost Decade over this.

Side note: The point of investments is that they are not guaranteed. This is why investments have return, and there is an entire industry around calculated risk and the mathematics that go into it. As in, a low risk investment pays little (but most likely will pay it), a high risk investment must, in turn, have the chance of paying out a lot (but also has a high risk of paying nothing).

Given that (something everyone on HN should know, given HN was started as YC's news outlet, and grew into a rather nice community later on), if an investment fails, it must fail if that is the only way out. Continually bailing out bad investments is almost literally theft from everyone else who _didn 't_ fund that investment.

FDIC in the US exists for a reason: disconnect people's non-investment money from banks being commercial enterprises, and let people rationally choose to invest (or not invest) using a safe and well understood system. Telling Wall Street (or the European equivalents) that it's okay to just aim for the stars and pretend to get there every single time, teaches them that hyperinflation is okay and the little people don't matter.

The little people matter, because there's several thousand of us for every one of them, and the only "us vs them" mentality going on isn't some white collar vs blue collar shit, and it never will be, no matter how much CNN, Fox, and MSNBC bang that drum; instead, the only "us vs them" mentality I see going on is really is the 99% vs the 0.1%.

When push comes to shove, we shove back with several times more force. I'm already seeing an unprecedented push for locally grown/raised/manufactured/built/whatevered food/products/services. As in, city first, metro/county/whatever area second, state third, region of the US fourth, the US fifth, and first world countries that don't treat their citizens like shit sixth, with India/China/etc being firmly rejected as they are vehicles for legalized slavery, and only serve to enrich the already enriched.

There has always been this movement, but now I'm seeing poor people, people who simply can't afford to do this... doing it. And it's working. Hell, I'm not rich, I'm not even middle class (I'm probably the poorest regular on HN), and I'm buying $3 a dozen eggs because the money stays local, and the guy raising the chickens buys Blue Seal seed, which they themselves are largely anti-anti-nutritional (ie, not using garbage protein and fat sources, and not loading it full of corn and soy), are medium businessy (13 mills across the US, maybe only employing a thousand people across all of them), and only small local businesses are dealers for it. Their chicken feed is higher quality (== healthier chickens that live longer and produce more, and == better eggs with more nutrition, AND == more eggs), and less expensive than the garbage Purina/Cargill produces and sells to small time farmers.

So, yeah. There is my rant for the day. Good morning, everyone.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'd actually go hard for British (elite) universities as partners for the next round of Horizon. It'll take longer until they get no funding and others will avoid them. Most importantly there's still going to be plenty of Brits from said universities reviewing the applications :D

</comment><comment><USER39> This is sad. :-(

</comment><comment><USER40> The UK is still in the EU for at least 2 more years, and discrimination against another EU citizen is illegal.

</comment><comment><USER41> This sounds more like political retaliatory BS than actual financial concerns. End the project when you lose funding, not in anticipation of losing funding at some point in the future.

<comment><USER42> European research projects I know about get their expenses reimbursed after the fact. For example, you buy some (potentially very) expensive equipment, claim the expenses in the yearly financial report and (if the Commission accepts your claims after review) receive money to your institution's account. That can be a year and a half after you had to pay for your equipment and in the mean time your research institute, university, etc. must cover it for you. I don't find it surprising that people are anxious to proceed with projects when there is uncertainty whether they will get their expenses paid in the end.

<comment><USER41> Interesting. I work in a US research lab and while I do not manage finances, I am under the impression that we are never in debt.</comment></comment></comment>


Metric anomalies detection - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/eleme/banshee <comment><USER2> I am interested in how it compares with Etsy's Skyline project: [https://github.com/etsy/skyline](https://github.com/etsy/skyline)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, skyline is a great work, here is my views:

1\. Skyline has many built-in detection algorithms. Banshee only uses the 3-sigma rule.

2\. Skyline's algorithms are pure and simple, without considerations of burr points, scatters (like counters).

3\. Banshee comes with alerting rules management panel. Skyline's webapp is a simple analyzation results viewer.

4\. Banshee uses the anomaly-factor trending (via weighted moving average) and skyline doesn't. The trending follows the analyzed score (which is to describe how anomalous the current metric is), thus, alerts only happen if the metric is anomalous enough (i.e. with a very big value) or if anomalous time is long enough.

5\. Banshee has the management for projects, users, rules.

6\. Banshee uses statsd as data source, skyline uses carbon.

7\. Skyline uses redis as storage. Banshee has no external storage server dependencies. Metrics are stored on disk via leveldb, and rules are stored on disk via sqlite.

8\. Banshee is young and skyline is no longer actively maintained...

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the break-down. It looks interesting. At work, we have been testing Skyline for a number of different metrics coming in from a large distributed network. I'm interested in seeing how Banshee performs in there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Eagle-X Good!</comment>


New Zealand is officially Covid-19 free, final case has recovered - <AUTHOR> https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/121752568/coronavirus-new-zealand-is-covid19free-last-remaining-active-case-has-recovered <comment><USER2> Having had 1504 confirmed and probable cases across the country New Zealand now has no active cases at all. There have been 294,848 tests completed, with testing still being active both in the community and at borders. New Zealand's first case was on February 28th.

<comment><USER3> > Having had 1504 confirmed and probable cases across the country

There's more than that in my SF neighborhood.

Which is why I tell Americans that it's too late for general testing and tracing, and come up with a realistic plan.

An example would be:

\- PSA to go home if you're sick

\- gatekeeping at nursing homes and hospitals

I'm curious what the next step for NZ is though. Keep the borders closed for a year until a corona vaccine?

<comment><USER4> Reopen borders (with appropriate controls) with other countries that have no cases. NZ is in talks with Australia to figure out what the right border controls will be. There are some obvious Pacific Island candidates too. And then Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, and so on.

I think the world's bifurcating into two blocs and there's a Viral Curtain between them. Within each bloc it makes sense that there can be free movement -- if you've given up hopes of eradicating it, then you have nothing to lose by visiting another country.

Infected people coming into a virus-free zone are a clear and present danger and will require tests and quarantine. This is what happened for the cast and crew of the Avatar sequels, who recently re-entered New Zealand to finish filming. They were tested at the border and are in hotels for a period of managed isolation.

The end-game is a vaccine, which lets us intermingle without unchecked exponential growth.

<comment><USER3> > The end-game is a vaccine, which lets us intermingle without unchecked > exponential growth.

If one can be made. I'm not aware of any approved coronavirus vaccines, and HIV still doesn't have one after almost 40 years. Many Americans are opposed to vaccines (anti-vaxxers) anyway.

Herd immunity FTW!

[https://theconversation.com/the-mysterious-disappearance- of-...](https://theconversation.com/the-mysterious-disappearance-of-the-first- sars-virus-and-why-we-need-a-vaccine-for-the-current-one-but-didnt-for-the- other-137583)

<comment><USER5> There's medication that will reliably prevent you from getting infected by HIV which is almost functionally identical to a vaccine.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre- exposure_prophylaxis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre- exposure_prophylaxis)

<comment><USER3> Well, it's good to know about, but Truvada is a pill you have to continue to take, and has a long list of side effects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Australia and New Zealand have done well with their coronavirus response:

[https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html](https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html)

Better organised, less politicised and their economies will recover faster because of it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Great result.

But worth some context.

We were the 60th country with a reported case, providing us time to prepare.

We are a remote country with a lot of low population density space.

We had time and space.

</comment><comment><USER8> That's some fabulous news.</comment>


Nobel winner Stiglitz: "American Dream is a myth" - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbsnews.com/news/nobel-prize-winner-joseph-stiglitz-american-dream-is-a-myth/ <comment><USER2> Studies have shown that intergenerational social mobility in America since the 80s has been a bit lower than is popularly assumed. Stiglitz's book about this is newsworthy because most people still don't know that, despite the fact that economists and sociologists have known it, and talked about it, and taught it to their students, for decades.

</comment><comment><USER3> The American dream is like the pony express. It was the product of a great many particular circumstances. It did once exist, for a handful of people in a few chosen places, but disappeared before anyone realized. It's a romantic ideal more important as fiction than practical reality. It is something to be talked about, not something that ever actually happens. So it is no more dead today than ever because it wasn't never really alive in the first place.

<comment><USER4> Just for perspective for those unfamiliar with what short a period the Pony Express[1] actually operated its 2000 mile long, 184 station mail delivery system: it started in April 3 1860 and ended October 24, 1861.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pony_Express](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pony_Express)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am optimistic that this "American Dream" could still be a reality. The United States absolutely has the resources to put a hard floor on living, health and education standards, thereby helping people to break the rut of family poverty.

That the US people collectively don't have the will to do it is another story. The amount of psychopathy in this country towards the unfortunate is astounding.

<comment><USER6> Part of the issue is that many people are ready to perceive themselves as correct before perceiving another as correct. So the U.S. divides into numerous positions with everyone casting blame on others and making unsubstantiated generalizations. And progress then becomes elusive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> When was the myth born anyway? II. world war ended the depression and the job market became shortaged of workers - I'm sure those of that generation profited. Before that there was the campaign in the 1800:s to colonize the vacant fertile lands and farmers could get all the land they could farm dirt cheaply. But other than those two episodes - was there actually that much socio-economic mobility compared to other areas? In the mid 1800:s the americans were massively more literate than e.g. english (something like 80% compared to 50%?) so I can belive the comparable opportunities were much better in the US than in the UK but I'm short of statistics...

<comment><USER8> Post World War II, you had a bunch of other things leading to compression of the income distribution, from very high top marginal tax rates (90% through 1960; 70% through 1980) to low cost education (subsidized for just about everyone through better support than currently for good state schools -- and even more for returning troops in particular, a substantial fraction of all college-age men, through the GI bill). And of course, there were much stronger labor unions, present in most large workplaces.

Anyone who thinks the '50s were a good time because they came before "big government" has managed to forget about the New Deal, the GI Bill, and a National Labor Relations Board that still had teeth. Among other things...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've always wondered if 'affirmative action,' but conditioned on household wealth instead of racial origin, could create more social or economic mobility. Has anyone else considered this strategy?

<comment><USER10> The issue is that you can game wealth, you can't game skin color. (or at least, few have tried! [0]) If you can get job or university positions on the basis of household wealth I think we may see increasing abuse of this system.

Beyond that, affirmative action attacks a real issue which is a low level of racism, which is unintentional, not malicious, but exists in the form of bigotry that has real effects.

This has been studied quite a bit. For example, teachers who are told who the top students are in the class at the start of the year and told that they're predicted to do the best, end up being affected by this. Because at the end of the year, these very students have the best outcomes. Makes sense you'd think, until you hear that the choice of the students at the beginning was totally random. Similarly, studies show that students who are told they'll do great, actually do better than those who're told the opposite.

The combination of these facts, with the fact that teachers perceive minorities as being less able (again, not intentionally, a teacher won't say or even think a student is less able because he's e.g. black, but when perceptions are studied it is what, on average, shows up in the numbers), given teachers negatively affect students who they perceive as less able or low-opportunity, and the fact students respond to this, creates issues.

And similar things happen in the workplace, too, when applying for say a job, or indeed across society. I remember a German on hackernews a year ago who wrote a script to apply to housing via mass email with auto-generated profiles. He sent thousands of them. A guy named Hanz got a virtually 100% response rate. A guy with an arab name 1%.

In such cases, affirmative action can help. It doesn't matter how poor or rich you are. Hypothetically, a rich, educated, hard-working arab would face mostly the same issue, and a poor guy with no ambition or work ethic named Hanz would not. Affirmative action attacks the inherent discrimination based on ethnicity in that process, affirmative action based on wealth would not.

Affirmative action based on ethnicity is imperfect in obvious ways, of course. But I think it better targets the issue better and can't be gamed or manipulated as easily.

Of course there are obvious ways to use household wealth to affect policy and they're very common. For example here in the Netherlands you can get free healthcare, full coverage, if you earn little. You get deep subsidies for housing. If you're young and your parents can't afford recreational stuff (whether it's karate or playing violin) the government allocates to your child roughly the entire amount of what these things would cost. Education is de facto free, but if your parents earn little (i.e. can't support you financially), then you get an extra $250 or so per month, and an extra $500 or so if you don't live at home anymore, as a stipend. (after all, if you study full time, you can't work full-time. So this will help cover part of the bills. And again, tuition is already covered. To lower barriers to education and make it accessible to all, equal financing is important). If you're a single parent with children, this amount is drastically increased, specifically for the possibility to study. All of these things mean that kids aren't ostracised based on wealth and class (as much). Kids whose parents aren't rich can actually participate in sports, recreation and culture to a large extent. Kids whose parents are poor can go to top universities. They get full health care coverage and support with housing. All of these things mean that if you're poor, you're not immediately relegated to a social circle of poor people, and you're not forced (financially) into making short-term decisions (like going to work straight out of highschool because bills need to be paid), and room exists to plan for the long-term (like spending years in uni).

This does wonders for social mobility of minorities, which leads to better outcomes, a stronger workforce which is less dependent and generates more tax revenues, which means the generous social welfare system isn't leaned on as much as a meagre one which keeps people locked into it. Not to mention all kinds of social cohesion benefits, between classes as well as ethnicities.

It's far from perfect but it seems like the right approach. Affirmative action alone is no solution, not without a system that helps minorities create similar outcomes like the one described. Without that, disadvantaged minorities (and indeed poor majorities, e.g. white people in the US) can't make transformational gains between ages of 1 and 22, end up actually less capable than the ethnic/socioeconomic majority, and this creates resistance to policies like affirmative action and perpetuates the problem, and importantly also doesn't solve the issue of social mobility issues for the poor people in the majority population either.

[0] [http://www.vice.com/read/everything-we-know-so-far-about- the...](http://www.vice.com/read/everything-we-know-so-far-about-the- washington-white-lady-who-pretended-to-be-black-932)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The days if simply being able to work hard and do well are long gone. All the straight forward factory jobs are long gone and never coming back. So that American dream is probably dead.

</comment><comment><USER12> Maybe for Stiglitz it is, but for hard-working people with real skills, America provides great opportunities.

<comment><USER13> i think you mean hard-working people with real skills - and copious amounts of luck. America used to be a place where most hardworking people could improve their living standard, now it's a lottery where a small minority do.

<comment><USER14> Lottery based on what?

Are you willing to send your kids to a non segregated school and live in a non segregated neighborhoods?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hmm ... I disagree. America still seems to be the place with the greatest civil liberties, technological and scientific advancements

<comment><USER16> Not to mention the largest incarcerated population in the world. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2...](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2page1.stm)

<comment><USER15> I'm genuinely surprised that USA has such a high incarceration rate, and even so much higher than China which I consider still a police state.

But in terms of science, technology and programming , civil liberties ... can any other country compete with America ? Google, Apple, Microsoft, FaceBook, Yahoo ... all the most innovative companies are made in America ... . You can express political dissent in America without getting jailed (as far as I know). You can't do that in China or Singapore

<comment><USER10> > in terms of science, technology and programming , civil liberties

Well if you look at nobel prize winners (scientific, too), most are from the EU, not the US. Based on population levels they're roughly the same. If you look at top internet companies then yes, Google, Apple etc are in the US. But I think we have to consider that a lot of that is because of network effects.

For example, some of the best football in the world is in Spain right now. But on the pitch at Barcelona the top 3 players (of arguably the most successful team the past decade) you find one player from Argentine, a player from Brazil and a player from Uruguay, playing a style of football introduced by a Dutch player and trainer, and it's not exceptional in this regard. If you look at the world cup however (teams of native players) you find that Spain won only once and very recently, while Brazil won 5 times. Yet all the top players from Brazil come to Europe. The net result is that Spain has terrific football, yet isn't responsible for the majority of the talent or tactics, and other countries like Brazil or the Netherlands are net suppliers of talent to countries like Spain.

I feel the US, Silicon Valley mostly, is very similar, it attracts all the talent, but that's different from saying that it's responsible for it. (just like in the above example with Spain who is a net receiver of talent, and becomes the talent capital of the world within football, without doing anything particularly special outside of network effects).

For example, look at the CEO of Microsoft and Google, both India born, partially India educated. SV attracts them, but isn't necessarily responsible for them. You may use that as an argument that SV somehow is geared towards innovation better. But I think you'll be hard pressed to identify any big forces outside of network effects. In very direct ways we can see it with e.g. Skype being bought by Microsoft (a swedish company), or a guy like Linus Torvalds doing the vast majority of his work from his native Finland and deciding in his 40s only a few years ago to move to the US.

Beyond that I think we fail to sometimes put the achievements in perspective. You mentioned Google and Apple etc, but if you look at the fortune 500 for example you find in 2015 that China had 3 companies in the top 10, the US had 2. In the Fortune 500 all together the US had 128 companies, China 106 and rapidly growing (they had just 10 in 2000 when the US had 180). UK-France- Germany, a combined population of just 210 million people, has almost 100 places in the Fortune 500. Add Japan to get to a population of the US, and you're ahead of the US in spots on the fortune 500.

I mean you mention Apple and it's an absolutely wonderful company on whose hardware I'm typing now, but my machine is loaded with parts from third parties who drive a ton of the innovation, too, like Samsung parts, a company whose revenue is much bigger than that of Apple. And we're seeing genuine innovation from China, too, like WeChat (there was a thread on this recently).

Anyway I'm rambling on with lots of examples and anecdotal evidence. I don't really like it as there's a lot of counter anecdotes to present. But I think there's a case to be made that the US isn't any better or better structured or more competitive, but benefits from tremendous network effects still, and that this is more and more being contested by the rest of the world. We're seeing a wave of new companies that don't feel the need to move to the US to commercialise the product, or to find themselves in a startup hub, or to be able to network with financiers. From startups like Spotify who're comfortable staying in Sweden or like WeChat in China, to the biggest companies in the world, both the traditional (e.g. utilities) to the more innovative (e.g. Samsung). Sure I pick Apple any day, but I can easily pick a load of non-US companies that innovate more than say Yahoo. Not to mention it depends on the industry, too. A ton of innovation in e.g. automotive or renewables is in Europe or Asia. And we're seeing markets being addressed that I don't think the US is geared to address, like Xiaomi in China and India, which are becoming increasingly more important.

As for civil liberties, a loooong road to go for China, but no big deal in e.g. the European Union. The US doesn't lead the world in civil liberties. For example the Economist intelligence unit does an annual ranking, the US came in 19th last year. But better than 2010 it came in last place of all 'full democracies' in place 46.

<comment><USER17> >or a guy like Linus Torvalds doing the vast majority of his work from his native Finland and deciding in his 40s only a few years ago to move to the US.

Torvalds emigrated to the US in his 20s.

(Wikipedia says that 2 of his daughters were born in the US, which means that the daughter that was born in 1998 was born in the US. Another way of putting an upper bound on when he emigrated is to look at when he started working at Transmeta, which Wikipedia say was in February 1997, which is more than "a few years ago". Torvalds himself was born in late 1969.)

<comment><USER10> Ah great point! I was referencing his naturalisation.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Building the Team That Built IBM's Watson - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/jobs/building-the-watson-team-of-scientists.html

<comment><USER2> I had the opportunity to visit the Watson Research labs a few weeks ago and meet with several researchers working on dynamic languages there. IBM is not like any Silicon Valley company, researchers have individual offices, there isn't tremendous shared space, and you pay for stuff in the cafeteria. But they have brilliant scientists and engineers there. It sounds like Ferrucci's attempts collaboration were much closer to a Bay Area startup than the IBM I saw.

<comment><USER3> Well my first Job at a high end RnD place it was all small 2 or 3 person offices.

Some times you need a quiet place to think - though we did have some interesting brainstorming sessions in my office - one on the best way to measure the efficiency of flushing toilets was one I remember.

I remember looking into using machine vision to help with this but when the base cost of the kit was £250,000 we had to give that up (this was in teh early 80's)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pity there's not really any detail here on who they chose and why.

<comment><USER5> I had the exact same question popup in my head. I browsed through the IBM Watson page to get an idea. [<http://www.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/research-team/>]

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this Jeopardy challenge was so interesting in terms of general AI that it'd be a shame if the original team completely shifted their focus onto new fields. There are a lot of goalposts left, such as beating humans without the advantage of the instant reaction time or beating humans assisted by the Internet.</comment>


Usability Nightmare: Web Forms - <AUTHOR> http://www.rogueamoeba.com/utm/2009/02/07/usability-nightmare-web-forms/ <comment><USER2> basically: if you can't make forms as nice as wufoo ... use wufoo.</comment>


Web History: Browsers - <AUTHOR> https://css-tricks.com/chapter-2-browsers/ <comment><USER2> Very nice read. I love history and was using the web fairly early, before that Gopher and such.

The mind expanding concept of putting images, in cells of a table to create layout really captured my imagination. I remember sitting with my brother creating 3x3 table, fancy border with content in the middle cell. Heady times.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd been on the web 5-6 years before the Mosaic browser came along and the experience went from OK to terrific. I had to change ISP's because my current one said that the web was 'a fad' and 'a waste of bandwidth'. I think they were out of business in under a year. I knew some of this early history but learned an awful lot from this piece.

My father was an early antique car collector and by heading the first group of collectors in Detroit he met a lot of retired employees of the car company's, guys who invented a great many of the stuff that seems like it's always been there. Somebody had to be first. If it wasn't for the collectors a lot of this information would have been lost to history.

You think Ford Motor cares to publicize who invented the Ford script, once called the most famous logo in the world. He's the first employee at Ford and the chief designer of the Model T and his name was C. Harold Wills.

Now people are going to learn who first thought up bookmarks or cookies. Henry Ford is famous for saying 'history is bunk'. But I believe knowing this early web history is important if only for the fact that it will convince future engineers they can invent something meaningful.

<comment><USER3> "History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history that we make today." (Chicago Tribune, 1916).

<comment><USER4> learn from the past live in the present prepare for the future.

saying by someone

<comment><USER5> Those who quote George Santayana are doomed to repeat him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Unix-like operating systems like X-Windows"

Huh?

<comment><USER7> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System)

<comment><USER6> I know what it is. I just can't understand how anybody could be confused enough to call it an operating system.

<comment><USER8> X-Widows is the first Fully Modular Software Disaster.

[https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-x-windows- disaster-128d39...](https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-x-windows- disaster-128d398ebd47)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I did not know NeXT/Macs were so central to the Web's origins!</comment>


Google Paid $1 Billion More For YouTube Than It Thought The Site Was Worth  - <AUTHOR> http://paidcontent.org/article/419-google-paid-a-billion-dollar-premium-for-youtube-over-its-own-valuation/

<comment><USER2> I often wonder how much of the big-company dynamics (especially overhiring and personnel inefficiency) are driven by the desire to impact competitors.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very wise words for anyone negotiating an acquisition:

 _In the deal dynamics, the price, remember, is not set by my judgment or by financial model or discounted cash flow. It's set by what people are willing to pay._

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I'm not even sure what else it could possibly mean. Perhaps they thought that other companies would probably pay a billion dollars less, but they upped their offer by this much just in case? That's the only way I could make sense of this.</comment></comment>


Facebook PR: Tonight We Dine In Hell - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/17/we-will-fight-in-the-shade/ <comment><USER3> Wow. Techcrunch defended journalistic integrity, and i actually believe them. They're right, this is a problem, and it's being highlighted in the correct manner.

The other broader issue that has to be dealt with is that this is the face of the new media landscape. Where do you think journalists and writers have left to go in the collapse of the news media? PR flacks often times have journalism degrees, and the only people left paying for flacks are big corporates and their pr departments.

<comment><USER4> A journalist arrogates to himself the right to take your confidential code and splatter it on the internet in return for advertising pageviews.

Siegler profits directly from leaks. Do you deny this?

And FB does not profit from leaks.

So this has nothing to do with integrity. What does printing something marked "confidential" have to do with integrity? Siegler is just mad that FB got someone to post their side of the story.

<comment><USER5> When I read this my concern was that journalists like to see things in a narrative of battle and conflict. Even non-war journalists want to be war journalists, so they write about war, even when there is no war. Personally I don't see enough evidence to support Siegler's certainty of an all out attack on Apple by Facebook. He's even more likely to see it this way I guess because of his open bias in favor of all things Apple. (I say, as an Apple fanboy myself.)

On the other hand, some company executives like to see things in a violent narrative too. They're all about crushing the competition and storming the market. So maybe Facebook's leadership sees their relationship with Apple the same way Siegler does. Hard to know.

<comment><USER3> That's fair enough, the narrative frame here is certainly needlessly hyperbolic. I guess that i've (depressingly) become acclimated to the level of breathless ranting that TC operates at.

Certainly we can say that there is a tension between native and HTML5 apps, which is of interest to any dev that's interested in mobile devices. That Apple's and Facebook's interest do not align here is an interesting story. Especially with Facebook throwing their weight behind HTML5 apps.

How that relationship is actually handled between Apple and Facebook is indeed another matter, and also something that would be interesting to know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hey, HNers,

Here's something I would pay money for and maybe other publishers, as well.

Through WindyCitizen.com, I get about 40-50 press releases a day trying to get one our writers to cover some event or celebrity appearance in Chicago.

This is absurd considering our site is all user-generated content. But we're on lists somewhere and so the PR industrial complex thinks we want to hear about all their fake news. It's really annoying.

I would pay money for a gmail plugin that lets me specify the e-mail addresses of X PR people, and then responds to their press releases automatically with an e-mail from me telling them what it will cost them to buy advertising on our site that promotes the event they're touting.

If they're going to spam me, I would like to be able to spam them.

Most of them will just ignore the e-mails, but they'll get the picture eventually.

Meanwhile, some of them will convert into advertisers. If I pick up $1500/month worth of advertising from this tool, I would gladly pay $30-40/month maybe more for a service that lets me do it.

It could be free for one e-mail address, $29/month for up to 50, and so on and so on.

This way, the indie bloggers out there who can't sell an ad to save their lives but who get bombarded with PR pitches in their inbox all day can automate their sales process a bit AND get the satisfaction of annoying the crap out of the PR people bugging them.

<comment><USER7> You'd pay $30-$40 per month for a service that generates an extra $1,500 in revenue per month? I don't think your argument for someone to build this tool for you is very compelling ;-)

Oh how I long for the good 'ol days when people just paid for value...

<comment><USER6> Well, I'd still have to close the sale, get the ad creative, have a web site that gets enough traffic to deserve an ad spend of that kind, run the ad, answer questions from the advertiser as the ad runs, take down how the ad performs, answer questions from the advertiser about their numbers....

So yeah, the thingie that makes it easier for me to do step zero in this process is worth about $40/month in that value chain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I truly do not get it.

PR exists to serve its clients. Control and spread specific messages is the job. I don't think anyone has any illusion about that.

Tech industry and tech journalism is weird. Most of the writers do not investigate or do any leg work for that matter (hauling their asses to WWDC is apparently too much work and too costly, so they demand realtime webcast). The majority of tech blog posts are dressed up PR pieces maybe with some attempt snarkiness and editorialization, the others are scoops(with fuzzy pictures!!!) or reviews or personal opinion/rant.

The gist is this: we do not get truth or plain news anymore (or ever did). The media have their angles and the companies represented by the PR firm have agendas too, but together they produce large amount of purposeful info everyday and millions of clicks. If this symbiotic relationship can be defined as war, then yes and Oceania is at war with Eurasia.

<comment><USER3> I mean... that's the same sort of argument that politicians wield to depress voter turnout, so that only partisans will vote (thereby polarizing political narratives further).

There are partisans in the world, get over it. We have to deal with their bullshit, or be overwhelmed with it.

The fact that nobody is giving it to you straight doesn't mean that we don't have interests that should be served, nor does it mean that we shouldn't speak up.

"A pox on all houses" is a convenient expression to reach for when frustrated, but it's not a functioning strategy to live by. I know what my interests are. I'll take the story, when it's relevant.

<comment><USER8> I think you misunderstand me. I absolutely agree that the audience should have a say and be more proactive in this whole thing. My point is PR firms have no obligation whatsoever to serve the readers, or to make bloggers' life easier. They are not representatives of the mass after all. MG's moral high ground and his holy crusade seems rather odd.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This reminds me too much about Henry Kissinger's comment on the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s: "Pity they can't both lose." Leaving out the issue of the particular companies and personalities mentioned here, there seems to be considerable suspicion that journalism has deep problems, especially when reporting on the economics or technology base of high-tech companies, and meanwhile the blurring definition of what "journalism" is seems to make it easier than ever for public relations personnel to manipulate the story lines the public reads. Maybe there needs to be some other outcome for this war than one of the two sides identified in the submitted article winning the war.

</comment><comment><USER10> I actually think MG went _really_ out of his way to look for a controversial reason for Facebook's choice of platform for Project Spartan. And I think he is wrong, this time.

Facebook could have gone with a native iOS app, granted that's what most companies do who are specifically trying to target iOS.

But is it really necessary to reach for far fetched reasons why they'd want to go with the web app approach instead? I mean, Facebook _is_ a web app. Their developers are _web_ developers, the _vast majority_ of their developers are hired for their skills and penchant for _web_ development.

As is evident from the regular Facebook.com, they have some pretty great web developers on board as well, knee deep in javascript, css and stuff like that every day, I'm sure. Wouldn't it be really practical to just leverage that expertise for Project Spartan as well, rather than have some other team work with some other code base for some other platform?

Then of course we have the slew of other good attributes of web development, to which Facebook are already _accustomed_. Like being able to update the app several times a day if they so choose, without Apple's adult supervision and delay.

Do we really need to look any further than that for reasons why Facebook went with the web as their chosen platform? I don't think so, I think it makes _a lot of sense_ for Facebook to go with the web app approach. That Project Spartan uses mobile _Safari_ , not webkit in general, as their target platform kind of shows that there isn't a hell of a lot of anger towards Apple anyways.

<comment><USER11> You can only have in-app payment inside a native iOS app if the payment goes through the appstore, or Apple rejects the app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think this is a little of the pot calling the kettle black. They are one of the biggest tech blogs out there, and Michael Arrington is an active investor in the same companies they cover or lack of cover. Integrity is questionable.

</comment><comment><USER13> It bothers me that TC writers, when called out on their bias, claim to just be mere "bloggers" who are supposed to be expose their bias so you know where they're coming from, but now they're claiming to be holy "journalists".

</comment><comment><USER14> Facebook creating a new mobile app platform? I doubt they are capable of producing of high enough quality software to serve as a platform - <USER2> iPhone app is _the_ buggiest app I have ever used on the iPhone (constant crashes, stuck interface elements, mismatch between pictures and their thumbnails), and their web site is likely the buggiest web site (duplicate items in news feed, missing items, the message counter is _never_ correct). Basically, on Facebook nothing ever works right. I don't see a lot of people rushing to discard their iOS apps in favor of _that_.

</comment><comment><USER15> In other news today, giant social networking site wishes to own your data and the applications you might use to create even more of it.

Facebook's PR people have an even harder time of it after their privacy settings fiasco. More people take what they say with a larger salt pill than other companies because they have earned a reputation of saying X but doing Y. Not surprised that the TC article implies they are doing the same here.

</comment><comment><USER16> How can you possibly be surprised by a company PR-spinning things that make them look weak?

<comment><USER17> The story is a bit too self-involved, there's no need to write about it. They should sort these issues in the background and maintain a professional image.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This felt like a TMZ piece, the only difference being that TMZ recognizes what they are, while TC tries to play both sides of the fence, depending on what they need from the post.

I fail to understand why anyone would take TC seriously these days, as there are much better sources of tech information where you don't have to worry about journalistic integrity.

I'm not a Facebook fan, but I don't blame them one bit. If MG is complaining about a broken unwritten rule of PR/Journalism, then he should realize that we don't care.

</comment><comment><USER19> "Journalist" breaks story containing confidential information about a product in development. PR team kicks into damage control, trying to dismiss and deny the leak.

What is the story here? That's the job of PR! Whether journalists buy into the mess is another matter...

</comment><comment><USER20> It's not just the tech industry - read Nick Davies Flat Earth News for more on PR and the massive impact it has on "news".

I wonder if this will become the norm or if there will be a backlash and people will start to prefer unspun unvarnished truth ?

</comment><comment><USER21> It seems like this is a war whose outcome rest solely in the minds of the readers.

</comment><comment><USER22> _While I like many of Facebook's PR team on an individual basis, as a whole, they are probably the worst in the industry when it comes to manipulation, double-speak, and all around slimeballishness_

Their PR team are a prefect example, in Zuckerburg's words, of a "lack of integrity".

</comment><comment><USER23> It certainly don't help that Zuckerberg is a sleazy businessman.

</comment><comment><USER24> MG has got to be my favorite TechCrunch writer.

</comment><comment><USER25> The war over the internet is intensifying. Now, why should you care? Do you think Google is going to "not be evil" for the rest of eternity? You're already seeing politicians going down for doing stupid things...the global elite fears the power of the internet, as well they should.

The internet will know what you are thinking, and it will use that against you. At some point, a tipping point, those who control the internet will be able to control the rest of society.

The internet can survive a nuclear war. Whoever controls the internet will control the future.</comment>


Two Ways you can use Sublime Text for Data Science - <AUTHOR> https://mlwhiz.com/blog/2019/03/31/sublime_ds_post/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here I tried to provide some use cases to make your life easier with Sublime Text</comment>