University of California teachers' union aims to block online classes - <AUTHOR> http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/10/11/university_of_california_lecturers_union_says_it_can_block_online_programs

<comment><USER2> Who matters in education, the learners or the people who get paychecks from schools? As one of the most eminent economists of education has written, "The education system is a formalised, bureaucratic organisational structure and, like any bureaucratic organisational structure, it strives for maximum autonomy from external pressures as its cardinal principle of survival. While ostensibly devoted to the education of children, teachers, school administrators and local education officers must nevertheless regard parents acting on behalf of children as a force to be kept at bay because parental pressures in effect threaten the autonomy of the educational system. . . . I would hold that the stupefying conservatism of the educational system and its utter disdain of non-professional opinion is such that nothing less than a radical shake-up of the financing mechanism will do much to promote parental power." -- Mark Blaug, "Education Vouchers--It All Depends on What You Mean," in Economics of Privatization, J. Le Grand & R. Robinson, ed. (1985).

If learners have power to shop, because funding flows to learners rather than to institutions, all the change we need to provide better education will happen through the usual process of learners shopping for what works. Until learners have power to shop, there is little prospect for meaningful improvement in education. Public choice theory

<http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/PublicChoice.html>

<http://perspicuity.net/sd/pub-choice.html>

<http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/publicchoice.htm>

[http://www.gmu.edu/centers/publicchoice/pdf%20links/Booklet....](http://www.gmu.edu/centers/publicchoice/pdf%20links/Booklet.pdf)

in political science predicts that interest groups who gain a paycheck from the current system will fight harder to protect the current system from change than will voters in general who might benefit from changes in policy. So it takes a rare degree of political leadership by elected officials, or rather unusual coalitions of voters, to change a system that provides employment to as many employed people as the current education system does.

<comment><USER3> Econtalk is part of econlib. Its a nice podcast that talks about this problem alot. Here are some nice ones that are relevant. There are many more that talk about public choice.

Public Choice:

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/03/don_boudreaux_o_3.h...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/03/don_boudreaux_o_3.html)

Teachers:

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/08/hanushek_on_tea.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/08/hanushek_on_tea.html)

<comment><USER3> P.S. Here a old TV show by Milton Friedman on Schools (RIP). <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLVIrmG6Ysk> (There is always a documentery first and then the last third of it is disscution between friedman and others, thats probebly the most intressting part)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I actually see this as a good thing. The people who revolutionize education probably aren't going to be people from the old system. Because people from the old school tend to think of it as "using technology to emulate the current classroom experience"

The real innovators are going to be the people who come to the system from the outside and find a new way of teaching. And it will be much easier for those innovators to gain people's attention if the existing system isn't muddying the water with weak online offerings.

<comment><USER5> I don't think it's going to change that fast. While unemployment remains high, a degree from Khan academy (so to speak) is not likely to get anyone out of the resume pile and into a job. There's a shortage of STEM talent in the US so the tech world is a bit more open-minded about what constitutes a viable education, but in many fields you simply can't work without a qualification from an accredited institution.

Take law, for example. In CA, NY, and a few other states, would-be lawyers can study via apprenticeship, distance learning, or some combination of the two; although this can be a career handicap compared to attending a decent brick- and-mortar school, it doesn't impede one's ability to sit the bar exam and receive a law license. But in Texas (a large and growing legal market), it does - you can be admitted as an attorney to some other state bar and to federal bar, but if you got your law degree by correspondence then you won't be given a TX law license. Of course this won't last; eventually some attorney with a non-traditional legal education will win some landmark case in a federal appeals court, and barriers like this will be scrapped because nothing succeeds like success, and no state bar wants prevent a big client from hiring the star lawyer of the moment due to some ancient admittance rule. But right now there's much more supply than demand, so employers have little or no incentive to take a risk.

Of course, many jobs do not require same sort of rigorous standards that exist in the professions; you could make an economic argument that all credentialism is a kind of rent-seeking. But it's not going away until there's some alternative measure of skill that adequately predicts performance. Again, it's a bit easier in tech; you can sample the results of someone's work on their web page, and often it either works or it doesn't. It's less obvious how to do that in other fields.

<comment><USER6> _While unemployment remains high, a degree from Khan academy (so to speak) is not likely to get anyone out of the resume pile and into a job._

Consider all of the people who go to community college and transfer in to the prestigious school for the last two years, and get the same degree. You don't need to get a degree from Khan academy, you just need to get the knowledge. Then you can transfer to a prestigious school and get the degree that gets your resume noticed.

<comment><USER5> That depends on the credit-granting policies of the institutions you attend and the field that you want to work in. I'm not saying it isn't possible, just that it is not as simple as people suggest. As long as there is an excess of supply in the labor market, hiring is going to favor the status quo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The headline is deceptive here since the "teacher's union" doesn't actually represent professors, and professors don't actually prioritize teaching in the first place. This concerns lecturers, who have always had a very tenuous position in the UC hierarchy (since lecturers don't get tenure). It's quite unlikely that lecturers would go on strike over online learning; if they did, it's likely that UC would simply replace them with graduate TAs.

<comment><USER8> For whatever its worth, there is a position class called "Lecturer with Security of Employment" that allows essentially a tenure system for select lecturers. Typically, a lecturer must have at least a PhD to be considered for something like this, it's for people who want to focus on teaching but don't want any research duties.

<comment><USER7> That position is used very rarely by UC. In the dozen or so departments I worked in during my time working in UCSB's administration, I can remember one or two lecturers with SOE -- it would generally be used to attract or retain a superstar lecturer, but it's not the default. (Tenured positions in general are much harder to come by than they once were, particularly in the humanities.)

<comment><USER9> It's a shame too. Two of the best professors I ever had were SOE:

<http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~ddgarcia/> <http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/>

The system makes total sense. Everybody wins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just another example of teachers and schools finding ways to screw over the people they are supposedly trying to help. The schools are cutting classes making it harder for students to graduate on time, and then teachers are looking to shoot down a potential solution.

The unions in the University of California system are just ridiculous. For example, during 2008 the worker unions who tend to the schools thought it would be a good idea to protest at my graduation. Are you kidding me? Stop hurting the students. End of story.

<comment><USER11> I understand the sentiment of your first paragraph, but the thing about your graduation is a complete non sequitur. The quality of your graduation ceremony has nothing to do with the quality of your education, and protesting there doesn't hurt anything but your feelings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> From Stanford's online, open to all database course announcement page (login required) from yesterday:

<http://www.db-class.org/course/class/index>

"As of this morning we have 68,000 students enrolled in Introduction to Databases, and the number is growing daily. Wow!! The reception has been way beyond expectations -- we're pedaling like mad to keep up, and having a great time. Please visit the Q&A Forum if you have questions, or if you have answers! With a class this size we're certainly relying on students-helping- students. Welcome aboard."

It seems there's demand.

<comment><USER13> And next year, they can just show the same videos again, and lay off the teachers. Everyone wins! (Except the teachers, so maybe that's why the union should fight for it, eh?)

<comment><USER14> In other news, the Buggy Whip Assembler's Union has some concerns they would like to raise regarding the adoption of the new "Horseless Carriage" technology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If all hands-on education can be replaced with distance learning, the unions would not be a problem. We don't need teachers anymore, we don't need the union, they're gone - doesn't matter what they want.

But clearly that's not the case. The teacher's union still has something their employers want. Hence it's reasonable that they'd get collective bargaining power over a decision that will probably cost them lots of jobs in the long and not-so-long runs.

<comment><USER7> > We don't need teachers anymore

This is a common fantasy among technologists (and a common fear of teachers) when confronted with educational technology. But it won't happen in our lifetimes. It will not be possible to replace teachers with technology until we discover true artificial intelligence.

Educational technology, correctly applied, can be a force multiplier for teachers. So it may mean we can teach more students with fewer teachers. But it also means that access to education will increase (which may cause demand for education to increase).

One way or another, someone will always need to be available to answer students' questions. Books, videos, and clever programs running in web browsers simply can't do that.

<comment><USER16> > One way or another, someone will always need to be available to answer > students' questions. Books, videos, and clever programs running in web > browsers simply can't do that.

Can't we use a model similar to Stack Overflow for answering students' questions? Most questions are bound to repeat, so I don't think there would be so many questions for the experts to answer after a while.

<comment><USER7> I've been teaching people to code for 20 years. In virtually every course I've ever taught, at least one person comes up with a question that I've never heard before. If that person were limited to learning from a web site or a video, that's the point at which that person would get stuck. But because I can answer their question, they can continue quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder how long it will be before we come to recognize that virtual things are not the same as physical things and so should not be treated the same. I see luddites everywhere holding us back with insane policies that might make sense in the physical world, but have no bearing in the virtual world.

You can see examples everywhere: an e-book is priced at almost the same price as a physical book; the RIAA wants us to treat each copy of a song as a separate physical thing, newspapers have no idea how to deal with the deluge of more timely and vast amounts of news curated online for free. There are so many examples of established industries failing to innovate and thus try to hold back everyone else who is trying. I wonder how long it will be before the generations that are uncomfortable with technology get replaced with the generations that are.

</comment><comment><USER18> Great, let's just stop educational progress and innovation to save a few jobs. Because the economies of the world will stop innovating too to save a few jobs for us. They would never just leave us behind.

</comment><comment><USER19> I smell communism... Joke aside, I can't stand it when people dismiss great ideas because of the fact that it will cost some people (temporarily) their job. It's the same with every major revolution in technology, e.g. industrial revolution, Computers, Internet, Cloud Services, Chips to analyse biological data, ... Yes, there will be some people who will lose their teaching job because the system gets more efficient but they will find another job (maybe even involving the new system).

</comment><comment><USER20> Essentially, what this says is that doing more stuff online shouldn't be an excuse to fire teachers. That seems very sensible: online education scales better than classroom ed, but that doesn't mean that it's a self-evident thing to do, and we still haven't figured out the best practices, so until we do, we need as much professionals as we can to make sure those online classes are up to scratch.

<comment><USER21> > Essentially, what this says is that doing more stuff online shouldn't be an > excuse to fire teachers. That seems very sensible

No, it isn't sensible at all.

This is an attempt by an entrenched interest to stave off and destroy innovation for their own benefit. The more teachers that work, the more dues they collect. They couldn't care less about the quality of the education rendered.

Imagine a kid from a poor neighborhood sitting in on a lecture from a top tier university. That's what we're talking about. That kind of educational opportunity. And the unions are trying to destroy that.

It's heartbreaking.

<comment><USER22> The lectures are already online for the poor kid.

What this is proposing is that you turn up at UC, pay your $50K tuition, are given a list of youtube URLs to the MIT lectures and collect your diploma.

<comment><USER23> The lectures may be online, but he's not getting credit for learning from them.

Have you ever sat in a lecture with a couple hundred other students? It's not like the teaching is the least bit personal, so what does the medium matter at that point?

<comment><USER22> If the lectures are online and the lecturers are re-deployed to do supervisions and one-one tuition that's great.

If as we all suspect, the whole dept is reduced to an admin person to collect the names and fees and a sys-admin to install the multiple choice problem set software - then that's less good !

<comment><USER23> Why is that less good? Let the market decide whether it's an effective alternative or not. If somebody can learn just as well from that medium then let them. Eliminating an entire department isn't a bad thing -- education is about the students, not the teachers -- regardless of what the unions would have you believe.

<comment><USER22> >Let the market decide That's the clever part of MIT/Stanford etc putting all their lectures online.

Whats the point of paying to go to UC when you can learn the same stuff at home? And then the UC diploma becomes worthless because everyone knows you just watched the same stuff as the guy at home.

The only diplomas worth having will be those that still have real lecturers - like MIT and Stanford!

A similar thing happened in the UK 10years ago. All the equivalents of community colleges were renamed universities. This was supported by all the UK's IVY league schools! The problem is that somebody going for a job with a degree from a mid-ranking uni is faced with an employer who isn't sure whether that is a 'real' university or a former college. So to 'play it safe' they only look for IVY league degrees. By pretending to support wider access to education - the top 5 places destroyed neatly all the competition!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A manufacturing union would aim to block jobs being moved offshore. Why wouldn't a teacher's union do the same? Just because "management" is the public / government?

</comment><comment><USER24> People here may be interested in this.

"Creativity in Mathematics, pt. 1 of 3, Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) and the Moore Method" <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLVTV-vXJBg>

I think its relevant in the current debate of the different learning styles: Physical presence lecturing, Long-distance lecturing, Class participation, Team problem solving, Individual problem solving, Individual rote learning.

If anyone has any studies comparing the end result problem solving ability of students who have gone through all the different combinations of the above learning styles, I would love to see them.

</comment><comment><USER25> Bad move. A step backward for humanity. All efforts should be made to make knowledge available easily and on large scale.

</comment><comment><USER26> The dangers of factions slap us in the face every day. (See Federalist 10, James Madison, 1787 AD.) Someone save us.

</comment><comment><USER27> Also they aren't really blocking online classes. The title is just a little fluffy. They are simply stopping implementation of online classes that would change any teacher's employment for the next 3 years. They can still create online classes and teachers can still choose to teach online and hybrid classes.

Anyway, they cited a case of laying off two developmental math teachers and replacing them with supervised computer testing. LOL. Even here in the south I don't know many dev classes that are any different. And the teachers all don't really care anyway.

</comment><comment><USER3> Its always the same some trie to stop it others embrace it. Examples:

-Radio people start podcasting

-Jurnalist start bloging

-Muscians putting up there stuff for free.

-Programmers started doing opensource

-Sientists move away from publishing in journals

More will follow.

The field of education is way behind. But its started allready in the lower levels Khanacademy and in the higher levels universitys like stanford and mit.

Nice future.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think it us unfair to see the education system only from economic standpoint. Every one regardless whether they are poor are reach needs to have access to education. Technology bridges the gap caused by economic status by offering classes to mass audience (Stanford) as well as for people who cannot attend class because they are in some other part of world.

IMO, the competition needs to be based on quality. If institutions offer a quality education, people will recognize that and choose that instead of online system.

Over the time both class room based as well as technology based classrooms are bound to get better.

<comment><USER29> "If institutions offer a quality education, people will recognize that and choose that instead of online system."

Absolutely on the dot.

As an aside, there are intangibles associated with actually going to a University, e.g. interacting with people in person (serendipitous learning), that online classes cannot undermine.

I see online classes as a excellent supplement to what's being taught in class and in cases where in-class learning is not an option for an individual (monetary, time or location based constraints). It is such an exciting time to be around; we can witness exactly how social networking and online education can interplay vis-a-vis in-person, in-class learning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Every time someone tries to manipulate the government into legislating them out of obsolescence, I am equal parts amused and disgusted.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is great news! No competition from these dinosaurs!

</comment><comment><USER32> how dare people want to learn stuff.

</comment><comment><USER33> I hope they succeed and I fully support their efforts. Distance learning programs will never be a substitute for genuine classroom-based interaction, and under no circumstances should they ever be used to replace skilled teachers.

And even if that weren't the case, unions have every right to fight for the interests of workers, and should do so at every available opportunity.

<comment><USER34> I think 'never' is way too strong a statement. As mentioned in other comments 100+ student lectures are pretty much as impersonal, the only difference is you can rewind an online lecture, and usually have it taught by one of the best in the field.

Additionally I've supplemented poor university teachers with excellent online classes to much success. Personally I think the future of education should be something like students taking Stanford's ai class with local teachers acting as TAs and adding a few supplements + classroom interaction. You read Norvig's textbook, why not have him teach the material if you can?

Having taken far more than my fair share of classes, my experience is that, aside from project heavy courses, only upper level grad classes are really something you couldn't replace with a mass-audience, online course. And these are just training wheels for researching closely with a professor or research team anyway.

For lower to mid level undergraduate courses I actually feel that online classes (given that they are top tier classes) are better. A good teacher is much, much more important in earlier learning than later (a smart grad student should have no difficultly learning advanced material even with an awful teacher)

<comment><USER6> _Personally I think the future of education should be something like students taking Stanford's ai class with local teachers acting as TAs and adding a few supplements + classroom interaction._

I like that model, especially since you can break geographical boundaries and get the best instructors into places where it would be impractical to get them otherwise (e.g. the remote village in a developing country). You can also break time boundaries, by taking classes when they suit you, instead of when they're offered, and it allows future classes to learn from teachers who may no longer be living. It is impossible to take a physics course taught by Albert Einstein or a business class taught by Steve Jobs, but with new methods of education, this would be possible.</comment></comment></comment>


Planimeter - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planimeter

<comment><USER2> No one I know knows what these are. When I message a coworker about what I'm doing, and later talk about my dev team, they almost always pronounce the word "plan-e-meter" instead of "pla-nim-e-ter".

I love the tool, though. So I named my volunteer contributor team after it. [http://www.andrewmcwatters.com/planimeter/](http://www.andrewmcwatters.com/planimeter/)</comment>


Paul Stamatiou Shutting Down Skribit - <AUTHOR> http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=6f09392e419203769469526a5&id=c3016fc211

<comment><USER2> Sad day. I was at the Startup Weekend where Skribit came about. Glad Paul is doing good things at Notifo though. Onwards and upwards.

Also want to echo Paul's shoutout to Georgia Tech's ATDC. They are happy to help any entrepreneur whether or not you went to GT, and they are awesome, so if you are in or near Atlanta and building a solid startup, do yourself a favor and look them up.

</comment><comment><USER3> I tried Skribit and found it very hard to gain traction with readers, it ended up being more of a site suggestion box than a post idea resource.

I've followed Paul for a while, as a fellow GT alum, so I look forward to seeing what he's got to say on the closure.

I think it's the right move based on those numbers, no reason to keep a slowly dying animal alive with little hope of a miraculous recovery.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm curious, any chance this was in response to the earlier HN post about Dropbox and mediocrity and startups languishing[1]? I know @stammy has moved on to Notifo, so it would seem like it fits.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2459376>

</comment><comment><USER5> I loved Skribit's idea in general, but never could get any traction with it on my site. Hope Notifo goes better for @stammy and team over time!</comment>


Nation's uninsured rose 700K in admin's first year - <AUTHOR> https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/nations-uninsured-rose-700k-in-trumps-first-year/561072/ <comment><USER2> Maybe these people had to because they would be fined by the IRS for not having it, which when it expired they stopped paying? Hurray for Congress fixing anything with 3500 pages of political negotiated solutions...</comment>


InfluxDB 0.9.4 is out Here's what's new - <AUTHOR> https://influxdb.com/blog/2015/09/16/InfluxDB-0_9_4-released-with-top-order-by-time-desc-and-more.html <comment><USER2> Ah yes, still with stupid way of building broken packages for Red Hat and Debian.</comment>


A fast, Cross-VM attack on AES [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://eprint.iacr.org/2014/435.pdf

<comment><USER2> Virtualization is not a security implementation. I've been saying this for years and I'll continue to keep my tinfoil hat on.

As Theo DeRaadt said

      You are absolutely deluded, if not stupid, if you think that
      a worldwide collection of software engineers who can't write
      operating systems or applications without security holes,
      can then turn around and suddenly write virtualization
      layers without security holes.

I caught someone in a meeting last week trying to sell another employee on the security benefits of virtualization and I nearly bit my tongue off.

<comment><USER3> Virtualization does offer additional security if it's used to isolate things that otherwise would have been running on the same host. For example, at my old job we used OpenVZ to isolate wordpress, twiki, and roundcube, whereas historically we would have had them all installed on the same webserver.

I think this is the original source of the confusion, which has since disseminated to those who don't understand the nuances and think that virtualization adds security in every case.

The PCI DSS requires that each server just has one purpose. I was surprised when in a later version they explicitly allowed virtualization as a way to comply with that requirement.

<comment><USER4> same webserver would have had users and groups - you have bought complexity instead of using the existing mechanisms

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The paper only talks about T-table AES implementation, but it should probably mention at countermeasures this paper "Faster and timing-attack resistant AES- GCM" by Emilia Käsper and Peter Schwabe at CHES 2009, which I found when looking at 'No data-dependent array indices' feature of NaCl: [http://nacl.cr.yp.to/features.html](http://nacl.cr.yp.to/features.html)

<comment><USER6> I'm curious about NaCl, would it be possible to replace OpenSSL with something based on this library? If not, why not?

The feature list certainly looks impressive!

<comment><USER7> It depends on your use case.

If you need something that speaks TLS, then no. NaCl is a different (simpler) protocol that does not have TLS compatibility as a goal.

If you're building a new application then NaCl is probably a good choice. There are some problems you may need to solve yourself, if your application calls for them. For example, NaCl has no notion of a CA hierarchy.

<comment><USER2> Lack of a CA hierarchy sounds like a problem has just been solved for you

<comment><USER7> Yeah, it's arguably a plus.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Oxytocin Modulates Sociosexual Behavior in Female Mice - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867414011696

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I love it when some two-bit mouse study is blown up by people who obviously don't have an agenda as though it supplies some universal truth about human behavior.

[http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/06/are_certain_behaviors...](http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/06/are_certain_behaviors --_and_jo.html)

> _I 'm telling you this not because I care about finger lengths, but because > you are being corrupted._

> _The article doesn 't even have to spell it out for you: they just have to > write "there's a relationship to testosterone " and we'll make the > cultural/social value judgments ourselves. But they leave nothing to chance; > thus Time Magazine._

> _That 's not an unfortunate, unexpected by product of science-- it is the > very point of it. In order for you to obtain this knowledge, you have to > lose some other knowledge of equivalent value._

> _Once it 's happened, once you've allowed this into your brain, there is no > escape, ever, any more than there is an escape from oil. No matter what else > they discover, you will always have the suspicion that trading-- and > lesbianism and risk taking and hand eye coordination-- are masculine > traits._

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this news? There have been studies for years showing Oxytocin (and also Vasopressin) is an important neurotransmitter in feelings of affection. I imagine the degree of the effect could be interesting, but I suspect this was voted up because of the original clickbaity title combined with being outside the typical domain for HN articles.

</comment><comment><USER4> Non clickbait-y description of the paper (from their abstract):

 _" We report the discovery of a population of somatostatin (Sst)-positive, regular spiking interneurons that express the oxytocin receptor (OxtrINs). Silencing of OxtrINs in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) of female mice resulted in loss of social interest in male mice specifically during the sexually receptive phase of the estrous cycle. This sociosexual deficit was also present in mice in which the Oxtr gene was conditionally deleted from the mPFC and in control mice infused with an Oxtr antagonist."_

<comment><USER5> I feel like there's an in-between to be found

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you're getting a feeling of déjà vu, this paper was discussed 15 days ago on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8437022](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8437022)

</comment><comment><USER7> The graphical abstract is the best part about this. I don't read many real scientific papers anymore, so it was nice to see that.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow! This is interesting and kind of motivating also

</comment><comment><USER9> Even with oxytocin, I would find it very hard to choose between a box of mice and a box of lego, if offered.</comment>


Linux code contributions cannot be rescinded: Stallman - <AUTHOR> https://www.itwire.com/open-source/84683-linux-code-contributions-cannot-be-rescinded-stallman.html <comment><USER2> As I have become to understand this problem from dozens of articles that have been written about it.

Yes, you can't remove code from a previous release, that is even technically impossible with the mix of different releases being in production and forks and derived works. But what you can do is remove your code from the source, the living document from which these releases are produced, practically removing your contribution from subsequent releases. This has to be possible since it's technically probable that old code is removed from source by the author or replaced by someone else, and this happens all the time during development.

But what really makes me sad, is that every article written lately has focused on developer reaction and whether it is right or wrong. One author even pulled a quote from Ian Malcolm's character from Jurassic Park, lamenting that we are preoccupied with if it is possible to do so, not if we should do so. But failing to critically scrutinize the source of the problem, mainly the CoC and the peddlers of this document. It's not a question if the Kernel community could or could not adopt it, but ask should it be adopted at all.

It seems like the adoption of the new CoC is a foregone conclusion not up for debate, and now we are forced to argue in circles over the impact of this document since all talk regarding the adoption of CoC is forbidden.

</comment><comment><USER3> People often want to be reductionist about things like this and assume there is some mandatory legal symmetry to things but that's not how it works. Things cannot be rescinded but they can be dropped or removed. So, no, they are not implicitly always in Linux as shipped. And they might not even be in a git repo forever.

</comment><comment><USER4> The software freedom conservancy has tendered its response: [http://sfconservancy.org/news/2018/sep/26/GPLv2-irrevocabili...](http://sfconservancy.org/news/2018/sep/26/GPLv2-irrevocability/) [http://copyleft.org/guide/comprehensive-gpl- guidech8.html#x1...](http://copyleft.org/guide/comprehensive-gpl- guidech8.html#x11-540007.4)

"" "The GPLv2 have several provisions that, when taken together, can be construed as an irrevocable license from each contributor. " ""

It cites:

              " That license granted to downstream is irrevocable, again provided that the downstream user complies with the license terms: "[P]arties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance" (GPLv2§4). "

However this is disingenuous

The full text of section 4 is as follows:

"" 4\. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance. ""

The "You" in section 4 is speaking of the licensee regarding sub-licensees, it is not speaking to the licensor/copyright-holder.

IE: if the licensee loses his license, through operation of the automatic- revocation provisions, the sub-licensees do not also lose their licenses.

IE: The language is disclaiming a chain topography for license distribution, and instead substituting a hub-and-spoke topography (all licenses originating from the copyright holder, not the previous-in-line)

GPLv3 added a no-rescission clause for a reason: the reason being to attempt to create an estoppel defense for the licensees against the licensor. You will notice that Eben Moglen never speaks on these issues. (He preumably is aware of the weaknesses vis a vis the US copyright regime.)

Section 6 further clarifies the hub-and-spoke model: "" 6\. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License. ""

The memorandum posted then goes on to a discussion of estoppel, detrimental reliance, etc; noting that users may have relied on the software and their licenses may be estopped from being revoked from said users since doing so might cause them unanticipated loss. This is speaking of already published, existent, versions of the program used by end users.

The memorandum seems to ignore what happens to "upstream" once said project receives a revocation notice. Thought it may be possible that users of a published piece of software may have defenses to license revocation, the same is not true regarding the rescinded property vis-a-vis future prospective versions of the software nor of future prospective licensees of said software.

That is: once the grant to use the code in question is rescinded, future versions of the software may not use that code. Current users of the software may be-able to raise an estoppel / detrimental reliance defense regarding the current published software, however the programmers working on the next version of said software cannot continue to use the property in future versions of the software (such would be a copyright violation once the gratuitous license is rescinded by the grantor).

Additionally, prospective-licensees, once the grant was rescinded and such was published, would have no same-such estoppel defense (not being user-licensees at the time of revocation).

(Ignoring this eventuality in the published memorandum, is, of-course, by design.) (Now, to note: the free-software movement is focused on the freedom of the user, not the progenitors of the software, so one could certainly say that ignoring some developer-focused analysis is consistent with their prerogative...)

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-- \</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

Gnu GPL version 2, section 0: "Each licensee is addressed as "you". "

The "you" is not referring to the licensor (copyright owner). It is referring to the licensees and then future sub-licensees/additional-licensees receiving the work from said previous licensee.

It is independently clear from the context of the clauses if you read them in full.

...and then section 0 comes around and makes it _explicit_ that "you" refers to the licensee. (if you had any doubt)

Additionally, you should know that the copyright owner is not bound by the gratuitous license he proffers to potential licensees regarding his property. The licensees are bound to his terms: he is the owner. They take at his benefaction.

<blockquote> GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

      0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains

a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "you". </blockquote>

</comment><comment><USER4> Spurned linux contributors SHOULD revoke the license grant they have given regarding their code. In the case of the linux kernel; These are typically gratuities and can be rescinded at the will of the grantor.

> ecree wrote: > That is presuming my consent against me, and consent is very > important to me.

>mjg59 (Matthew Garrett) wrote: >It's not presuming your consent at all, it's adding a condition to your future participation. If you find that condition unacceptable then you should let your employers know - they can either make a case to the Linux Foundation or move you to another role. Remember that participation in the kernel is a privilege, not a right, and our involvement as always been at the whims of Linus. I'm well aware of how much it sucks when he makes decisions I don't like without consulting with the rest of the community, and I'm also aware that there's nothing I can do about it.

Consent is important, keeping the rights-holders happy is important. A gratuitous license is revocable at the will of the grantor. If ecree holds copyright to his contributions, and he sought no consideration (usually money) from the licensee, he can revoke the license grant at any time under US property law.

Contributors to the linux code base do not typically sign over their copyrights to linux or a foundation, instead retaining the copyright themselves. Contributors (here specifically: copyright holders) to the linux code base do not typically take money from those to whom they license their work.

Do the math. Property 101. There is a reason Moglen required assignments to the FSF for gnu related work, and the public story does not give the whole truth regarding intent. (estopple won't save you, nor will it save would-have- been potential future licensees)</comment>


GitHub to replace "master" with alternative term to avoid slavery references - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/github-to-replace-master-with-alternative-term-to-avoid-slavery-references/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23500093](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23500093)

</comment><comment> Seb-C This is getting ridiculous and annoying.

When I hear about slavery, I think about the poor people that did not have any freedom, not about black people. There have been african slaves in africa, asian slaves in asia, european slaves in europe and native american slaves in native american civilizations for thousands of years.

American people are projecting their very own and specific segregation problems onto the whole world by banning words universally useful.

Forbidding vocabulary like this only reduces the quality of debates on the long term and does not make anything better. That is how dictatorships works.

If you cannot say the words "slave" and "master", you cannot have a discussion about it, its history and influences on our society and on real people, because otherwise you would be deemed racist. In my country it became racist and implicitly forbidden to say "black people" or "arab people" because otherwise you are instantly deemed to be racist. So now we cannot talk at all about this topic. Politicians certainly won't risk their career by talking about it. So nothing changes, and nothing can actually improve (including the lives or people living today), because we cannot talk about it...

I will continue to use words however I want.

<comment><USER3> > When I hear about slavery, I think about the poor people that did not have > any freedom, not about black people. There have been african slaves in > africa, asian slaves in asia, european slaves in europe and native american > slaves in native american civilizations for thousands of years.

Yes, slavery has been around for a long time in many countries, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to improve our terminology.

> Forbidding vocabulary like this only reduces the quality of debates on the > long term and does not make anything better. That is how dictatorships > works.

This vocabulary hasn't been forbidden. The word is still used, it's just not used re Github.

That said, I consider Github's proposed change to be virtue signaling. Was anybody actually upset at this, or are changes being made just because they can be?

Update: Let me know who disagrees with what. I've disagreed with points made on both sides, so maybe that guarantees ire?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I always understood a VCS "master" branch to be in reference to "master" records / the "mastering" process of audio mixing, which in turn is a use of a sense of the verb "to master" akin to "to master one's courage"—not conveying dominance, but rather the reaching of an apex in skill.

If you're in the market for a replacement that keeps the metaphorical power, though, I might suggest having a "mother" branch. "Mother" functions similarly to "master" in language, forming compounds like "mother ship", or "mother sauce", with very similar connotations: being something from which other elements in the set descend/derive; and to which other elements in the set return for some kind of maintenance or synchronization.

<comment><USER5> It's not. It comes from master/slave, and I'm desperately trying to find the mailing-list email where someone (I wanna say on a BSD mailing list, but it could be anything tbh) traces the etymology backwards through different VCS branches until we get to one where the concepts are clearly "master/slave". If anybody has the link handy I'd really appreciate it.

<comment><USER6> This mail discusses some of the origins [https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel- list/2019-May/...](https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel- list/2019-May/msg00066.html)

It argues that git's master branch is most likely directly derived from the master and slave repository concept in bitkeeper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We could have a bunch of reform: from reducing the police force size and budget, to removing pointless offenses ("no victim no crime"), to reduce interaction with police, to eliminating all government programs so to eliminate financial dependency on the government (create a toehold for systemic racism)...

Yet, we're renaming git master to git main. The profound and widespread impact of this will surely sweep the nation and cure systematic racism. /s

Point being: Everyone is more than willing to say they support change, nobody is willing to do anything difficult, so they put forward crap PR moves like this that are completely non-consequential.

<comment><USER8> Even incremental progress is progress. And sometimes, incremental progress can happen at such an obtuse angle that it becomes completely unmergeable back to `main`. But you can always point to the spirit of the branch.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure this is incremental progress.

If we rename the branches beyond Github's UI lots of things will break. And will it really affect racist attitudes even marginally? I can't see it myself. In which case, rather than progress, it's a distraction from anything that otherwise could afford real progress.

<comment><USER7> ^ exactly my point. It's a distraction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Welcome to the discussion the Netherlands has been having about Black Pete the last few years. It won't be pretty and there's little you can say against someone who goes "[now that you mention it,] yeah, this is offensive and you know, back in middle school someone did call me black pete once!" so this might go down a similar way.

I would think "but nobody was ever called 'master' or 'blacklist', that just doesn't work" but look at some of the comments here already. This is looking super polarized. And I'm not talking about the etymologist that brings to light the racial background of a word like blacklist, that's still stating facts even if it legitimizes the claim.

Not sure I should be posting this comment anyhow but if you value your time you might want to just stay away from the discussion. There are no winners that I have found.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm a very anti-racist and anti-fascist person. I'm in favour of removing slavers and white supremacists statues. But these silly debates in the tech world makes me cringe a little and I wish our community was different. Isn't it of little importance how a branch is named? Let's focus on politics, on inclusion, on essential debates that our societies need to improve and let's not waste our energies changing stupid little things that have no meaning other than to a minority of rich white males from Silicon Valley, as a method to self-redemption. Like giving some money to charities and be done with it, instead of rolling up our sleeves and do some direct work. Very White, American, Protestant thing to do. And very easy. And it's also free marketing, the cynic in me thinks.

<comment><USER12> That's a false dichotomy. You can worry about politics and other "essential" debates, and still worry about language and better defaults. It's low- gain/low-effort, but that's not really a reason to object.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > but also terms like "blacklist" and "whitelist" for "allow list" and > "deny/exclude list."

Seriously?

<comment><USER14> Without the racist background, how does one know which list does which? The new names actually describe what they do.

The reason it may seem ridiculous is that racism is very, very deep in American culture. The country's culture goes back hundreds of years and is still slowly working on being less so.

Here's an example: [https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/05/11/310708342...](https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/05/11/310708342/recall- that-ice-cream-truck-song-we-have-unpleasant-news-for-you)

<comment><USER15> > Without the racist background, how does one know which list does which?

By basic knowledge of the English language. Terms like "black market", "black death", "black tuesday", etc. etc. By the expressions like "looking at things in black and white". It is a part of language, it has nothing to do with race. These colors are used in the same way in other languages of other countries that don't even have racial slavery history.

What is your example supposed to prove? That there were in fact some racist songs? How does that make the whole American culture "racist"? If there is a song saying something bad about males in general, does that make the whole culture of that whole country anti-male for some reason?

<comment><USER16> It sure was convenient that both "black" in English and "niger" in Latin meant "evil" during times of dehumanizing and enslaving others based on the color of their skin.

Basic knowledge of the English language also shows us that the word black does have to do with race. It means something for sure to black people.

The word black is both a personal identity around race, and it is often used to mean "evil" or "bad" in the modern workplace. While "white" is used to mean "good" in the workplace: whitelist. And white is also a race. I would hope that just about anyone can see why moving away from using black to mean "evil" in the workplace and moving to using _more accurate_ words like denylist is not just easy, it would also make the workplace feel intentionally more welcoming to our black colleagues.

<comment><USER17> It's really funny how you fail to realize that "slave" comes from "Slav".

<comment><USER16> I'll add that to my list of reasons for removing master/slave from technical terminology. Thank you.

<comment><USER18> Are you a Slav?

Because I am, and _I did not ask for this_. Find me _one_ Slav who requested this.

And yet, you _thinking_ about the word association is all it took to imagine you you're _helping someone_ with that. Because, hypothetically, there might be someone who is offended. For some reason.

Who thought about renaming master? As far as I know, a white person. Somehow, all these fuckups are started by white people in the US on behalf of minorities. I can imagine how it went:

"master branch... hmm, where does this naming convention come from anyway? Maybe master/slave? Hm, _slavery is bad_. That means the term master here might possibly offend someone. Welp, let's change it then! Oh, and it'd also excuse my job role of Dev Relations. I'm definitively useful!"

Or an academic in very-soft sciences instead of Dev Relations. I just saw some Dev Relations people on Twitter being _very srs_ about this crap.

Meanwhile, all the software is broken. Feeling like it's held together by duct tape. Consuming more and more resources as time goes on, while functionality decreases.

All of this is excused by talking about programmer time. "Programmer time is more valuable".

Yeah, so valuable we'll be wasting time on this crap. And some things will break, maybe. Some will be fixed, some not. Some manual/help resources will be left in their original, __horribly racist __form. Some will be rewritten.

Oh, and there's the little cost of making politics just _a tiny bit more_ toxic.

Anyway: when I learned the term for my ethnicity is basically the same word as slave, I thought "Hmm, that's interesting/cool fact" I'm pretty sure all the people react this way if at all.

I don't believe Blacks in the US are as unreasonable as you all paint them. I think you're all pretty damn racist for implying otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How many of these activists own a MasterCard? How many black people own one?

Ironically, outside the US the "Black edition MasterCard" is the top offer (named so, because ( _surprise_ ) the card is black).

<comment><USER20> Isn't the American Express "Black" card the top of the heap too?

<comment><USER21> Although the color of the card is black the official name is Centurion

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> You know there is all of this talk that if you can make just one more person not have to feel discomfort then all of this is all worth it.

This stuff makes me extremely uncomfortable. I can't keep up with the way that these rules change, and it makes me fearful that I'm going to accidentally say the wrong thing and have my life ruined, despite what my intent might have been.

It's gotten to the point where during this latest culture war flare up, I am avoiding going to work, my anxiety has increased to the point where I have to use xanax to manage it again, and my productivity has dropped off completely. I am terrified of saying the wrong thing, or meaning to say the right thing but saying it in the wrong way. I have done my normal "hacker" thing and tried to research as much into the grievances that people have so that I can understand them and help work towards change, but that has led me to finding out that some things are considered "hate facts" and you can be labeled a racist for even knowing that they are true.

These things are effecting my relationships. I'm avoiding some of my friends because of this. I'm afraid to read anything about this for fear of not knowing which things are "hate facts" and which aren't. This is terrifying.

The state of the world as it is right now is legitimately terrifying to me. I've worked my whole life against racism, against ever biasing myself in any way against people because of things that they can't change, and right now there are so many things, every day, telling me that I'm a monster because of who I am. I almost can't describe to you all how depressing this all is.

I'm not a monster. I care about people a lot and I go out of my way as much as possible to help them when I can.

</comment><comment><USER23> I know this is going to be a PC war, but, I'm curious how they technically intend to do this. Is "main" just going to be a visual alias on the site? If so that will be really confusing if the branch is still technically called "master" and needs to be referred to that way in the command line. If they intend to actually rename the branches I don't know how they can do that without breaking all sorts of scripts and build tools.

<comment> GuB-42 Branch names have no meaning on git. "master" is just the default name for the initial branch when you create a repository using "git create".

Github just wants to change it to "main". It won't change existing repositories and you can rename it to anything you want afterwards, including "master".

<comment><USER24> Actually master is used as the default for submodules branch tracking [1]. I maintain a Git client application that deals with submodules & I have to take this use-case into account.

GitHub must work with Git & make this a proper change if they want to do this. Change the submodules specification as well.

[1] [https://git- scm.com/docs/gitmodules#Documentation/gitmodules...](https://git- scm.com/docs/gitmodules#Documentation/gitmodules.txt-submoduleltnamegtbranch)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I guess now the whole master/slave tech should be renamed

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master/slave_(technology)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master/slave_\(technology\))

<comment><USER26> I remember as a kid running into that terminology for the first time, as it related to HDDs connected to a motherboard. Didn't like it at first, still strikes me the wrong way, but does seem like the best terminology for the paradigm.

<comment><USER4> It's a slightly wrong-headed connotation for drives, in that the metaphor just doesn't fit well: something called a "slave" should probably be something unwilling, but _forced_ by the master to obey; rather than something that follows the master willingly, or something that takes its cue as to its role from an external third party (i.e. you, the system integrator setting the DIP switches on the drives.)

If you're already willing to use metaphorical terms with unsettling connotations for things just because they're fitting, then a more precise pair of terms for the setup on a drive cable would be "dominant" and "submissive"! (It's not like we don't already use "dominant" metaphorically in tons of dry ways, e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_(genetics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_\(genetics\)) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominator_(graph_theory)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominator_\(graph_theory\)). We tend to avoid "submissive", though, and that's a shame; "voluntarily relinquishing control" is a very useful concept to get across in a single word.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's not the words that hurt us it's the meaning and weight that we give them ... at this rate, soon, we won't be able to say anything and the lack of communication will deepen the divide.

</comment><comment><USER28> On the blacklist etc. issue, when you think about it it's actually the other way around. "black" was historically "bad" (not related to race), but it was super convenient that slaves had a darker skin that you could call "black", and things got blurred. No "white" people are actually white and no "black" people are actually black. "white" people are pinkish to light brownish and "black" people are light to dark brown. Of course it doesn't help that "dark" and "light" also have a value associated historically. This is a super unfortunate geo-graphical and historical coincidence that's gonna be hard to untangle (as in we probably can't disassociate the words from their pre- slavery historical meanings that are pretty universal, as in people are afraid when they can't see things -> night -> darkness -> black).

<comment><USER28> And on the original issue it's good to point out that there were millions of slaves throughout human history who were not black... That doesn't make the concept any better, but it hasn't been historically a racial issue (people were enslaved because of a difference in religion, place they lived in regardless of ethnicity or solely social status).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> One day we might find historical record of a slave owner holding "main" as a title. Any terminology that implies hierarchy can be construed by social justice to represent a slavery reference.

In reality, they should just drop this, or call the branch "non_feature", better yet "non_feature_not_that_there_is_anything_wrong_with_being_a_feature"

</comment><comment><USER30> I kind of understood when people didn't want to use "master-slave." I didn't agree with it, especially in the context of databases or other redundant distributed systems where the "slaves" really were required to follow all of the commands from the "master," and this relationship was better captured by this term than the bland "primary-secondary." (However, I actually prefer "primary and secondary" when talking about storage drives, since the "primary" drive is more like first among equals rather than something issuing commands.) But I could always understand it, given that "master-slave" has certain connotations.

This from GitHub, however, makes no sense.

The word "master" is overloaded. In the sense used in source control, the term has nothing to do with slavery or servitude; it simply is "an original from which copies can be made." In fact, in all of my 10 years of using git, I have yet to see a "slave" branch or anything implying servitude of any kind. And this is ignoring the fact that distributed source control is an inherently egalitarian and liberating proposition (centralized services like GitHub itself notwithstanding).

And who will benefit from this? What person suffering from oppression is going to be helped by being spared from seeing the word "master" (even without a concomitant term suggesting servitude)?

Count me out. I'll keep naming my default branch "master," because that's what it is: an original from which to make copies.

EDIT: In fact, I'd go so far as to say this will only harm the people it's trying to help. How much documentation exists out in the wild referring to the "master" branch? Who is more likely to rely on cobbled together Internet documentation when learning something new and relatively complicated like Git: a person of color without much support or mentorship, or a person from overrepresented groups who can likely just find a friend to ask? How is a person without much of a support network and trying to get into tech going to react when she has read about "checkout master," only to get to GitHub and see only "main."

<comment><USER31> > The word "master" is overloaded

Overloading of words is no longer allowed. See also: people can't refer to their non-binary gender as "NB" because that means "non-black" in the context of race; polyamarous people can't refer to their relationship style as "poly" because that is stealing the word from the Polynesians; etc :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> How is master in terms of git racially charged? (The article doesnt explain)

Its the master copy/record.

Its not the same as like the db master slave which i totally think needs looking at.

<comment><USER33> [https://twitter.com/tobie/status/1270290278029631489?s=21](https://twitter.com/tobie/status/1270290278029631489?s=21)

<comment><USER34> First: that's just stringing assumptions together.

But etymology doesn't matter. If it would, "negro" wouldn't be a word to avoid. Actual use would matter, but the context doesn't seem to warrant that.

<comment><USER33> Etymology matters if enough people think it matters. Language has meaning that is social, and if enough people dislike a meaning or see a word a different way, that word will change its meaning.

So right now we are watching words change meaning.

<comment><USER32> One dude? on twitter is enough people to change the meaning of the word?

And that has something to do with explaining the long string of assumptions that nobody is willing to address?

<comment><USER32> Well, the dev responsible addressed.

[https://mobile.twitter.com/xpasky/status/1272280760280637441](https://mobile.twitter.com/xpasky/status/1272280760280637441)

Woops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I don't understand the racist connotations given that there are no "slave" branches. Every similar mention of "master" can't change. What words can better describe a master boot record, for example?

<comment><USER36> I guess remastering audio recordings and movies is out now, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Good one. Nearly had me for a moment.

</comment><comment><USER38> It seems to me that black people are asking to not be killed for no reason, to not be treated like second class citizens, to have equal rights not just in law but it reality. In the meantime, white people respond by changing the master branch name. Yeah, they got the message alright. This is going to make black lives matter. Changing words completely unrelated to the oppression of black people is somehow going to help. Or this is just a PR move like most responses, designed to placate and pretend to support the cause without actually doing so.

</comment><comment><USER39> Great, so "main" now means "master"?

So, what's the difference?

<comment><USER40> Maybe direct that question to someone who's dealt with the effects of systemic racism their whole life, you might find the answer enlightening.

<comment><USER41> I'd direct the question instead to all the white people who have no idea what the black experience is yet seem to have no problem editing the language on PoC's behalf so they can feel like they're "doing something" while PoC's freedoms and lives are being eviscerated by our justice system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is such a low impact and harmless change. Even if someone is not to agree with it, why be against it?

It's not like a small team inside GitHub is going to deplete the world's activism budget and this will hinder the advance of other definitely more important changes.

I'm sure they will find a way to offer minimal impacts, specially because it's just a default value that can be easily configured.

<comment><USER42> That's my thought as well. I'm willing to change the terms I use if it makes this industry even a little bit more inclusive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Wait, git by default creates master branch.

So if you push master to Github, how is this going to work ?

Is it not better to make the changes to Git ?

Ask Linus Torvald in Finland.

<comment><USER44> Git isn't a great role model, however. It still uses the "blame" terminology which ascribes a needlessly negative and confrontational tone whenever you need to tell someone how you discovered the author of a line of code from your team's codebase. This kind of vocabulary debt is something we should be paying off more of, more regularly, since it's just as important — arguably more important — than functionality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I don't think "main" is a good replacement because it loses the notion of it being a branch where the finalized and production ready code goes. It could just as easily mean "where we do all the work" (i.e. trunk based development, which I also dislike the name of), and I think that's potentially confusing to new people even more than "master" (although not as offensive to some people apparently).

If I'm going to rename my default branch, it'll likely be "release" or "final" or something.

<comment><USER46> I just use "trunk" as my root branch.

I remain astounded that nobody seems to want to use this, when there's already existing architectural practices surrounding it.

<comment><USER41> Has anybody thought about how "trunk" might make elephant coders feel?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I'm surprised it wasn't called "main" given it was all C wizards who developed git in the first place.

<comment><USER40> "Trunk" fits the branching metaphor better, but I think "main" will be easier to uptake (autocomplete, muscle memory, etc).

I feel the same way about "denylist" versus "blocklist". "Denylist" is more precise, but I think "blocklist" would make for an easier transition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Well on the bright side, "main" is shorter to type than "master".

</comment><comment><USER49> Git being a cli and "main" being shorter to type might help motivate those that are not convinced by the histoial arguments.

</comment><comment><USER50> When they ask you what virtue signalling is, show them this.

<comment><USER51> It's not. This is more like a swear word. No one would expect that calling it the "fuck" branch would be OK. Just because more people are OK with "master" doesn't change the fact that it bothers other people who are just trying to code. This isn't hard to understand.

<comment><USER9> Master isn't a swear word. This isn't hard to understand.

<comment><USER52> Not a swear word, exactly, but some find it genuinely offensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Ridiculous. What exactly is this going to achieve? It's not like using the words with this meaning "celebrate" racism. For those like me who are liberals I can tell you this crap will guarantee populists like Trump continue to get into power.

</comment><comment><USER54> how are we going to call the master branch in git?

<comment><USER42> main? trunk? origin? so many possibilities!

<comment><USER55> Origin already has a specific meaning in the git nomenclature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Let's figure out the whole AD and BC year thing while we're at it.

<comment><USER57> They've been effectively replaced in academic literature at least with BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era)

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> companies like github should remain apolitical. this is pure nonesense, merely a show of force by otherwise impotent and misguided liberals. take your outrage somewhere else.

</comment><comment><USER59> .

<comment><USER60> The text on this page shows as the color black.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> trunk, anyone?

</comment><comment><USER62> Flagged?

</comment><comment><USER63> git = "a foolish or worthless person"

Wonder if some people want to push for a rename. I won't be surprised

</comment><comment><USER64> From a purely technical standpoint, maim is a way better fucking name than master. Why should I put up with a technically inferior solution just to accommodate their backwards opinion?

Just a lot of bitching and moaning. Why are y'all so offended? What we call things matter, read Wittgenstein

Anyone who is bitching about this doesn't do shit to help With race relations in real life so why do people here give their opinion so much credence, besides this being a WASP nest</comment>


Facebook Acqhires Founders Of Carsabi (YC12) - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/01/facebook-acqhires-founders-of-carsabi-who-will-sell-off-their-car-price-comparison-site/

<comment><USER2> Does that mean the Carsabi idea is a failure?

<comment><USER3> It means it wasn't as much of a financial success (from a business standpoint) as its founders hoped, and they have departed for greener pastures.

Carsabi is/was a great site, and well designed and well coded, but its revenue model was lacking.

<comment><USER2> Is there any potential sustainable business in the area Carsabi tried to tackle? I personally feel lots of pain points there but I guess it might be too hard for Carsabi to solve alone? Relatively, it might be easier or more tangible by just joining Facebook and get a quick good exit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Edit: YC W12

<http://hackerne.ws/item?id=4393921>

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm interested in buying carsabi as well as teaming up with developers. It needs a different model to make money and I know of a great one which I already developed. Contact me if you want to tackle the used car market.

</comment><comment><USER6> I know someone who may be interested in purchasing the IP assuming it is for sale. Email me in my profile if you guys want his name and contact info.</comment>


The Glory That Was Yahoo - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40544277/the-glory-that-was-yahoo <comment><USER2> IT's amazing that something so simple as a not having a clear vision/mission could take down a successful company but that's the essentially what happened at Yahoo! When I worked there in 2004 it was just confused, chasing competitors and ideas, never deciding on what it wanted to be when it grew up. I left a year or so later and from what I saw it never figured itself out.

I always wanted the company to focus on a mission about being "useful" \- like the digital WD-40/duck tape of your life. Finance, news, fantasy-sports, email, messenger, groups, My Yahoo!, Delicious, Flickr... They're all _useful_. They could have continued to happily and profitably offer all of these services - and expanded to dozens more - under the mantra of being useful to our every day lives, but Yahoo! was never content with that. They wanted to be eBay, or Google, or Facebook, or YouTube or whoever else was a big player at the time, instead of focusing on the customer loyalty they had already generated.

Having that clear core vision/mission seems like a small thing, but not having one crippled Yahoo! and caused infighting, turnover and confusion that eventually killed it. (Oh, and also Mayer was an idiot.)

<comment><USER3> Google seems to be falling into a similar pattern with it's many different attempts at chat apps

<comment><USER4> Google's income stream from advertising is not as vulnerable as Yahoo's home page for the internet model as far as I know.

<comment><USER5> They still haven't demonstrated that they can make significant money on anything other than advertising. They do a lot of stuff but nothing really turns into a profitable business. Compare that to Microsoft who have shown over decades many times an ability to get into new lines of business profitably.

<comment><USER6> [https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204418...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204418000007/goog10-kq42017.htm)

Take a look at Google's earnings. in 2017 Google made $95 billion from ads, and $14.2 billion from "other revenue". Which is classified as:

Other Revenue: Apps, in-app purchases, and digital content in the Google Play store; Google Cloud offerings; and Hardware.

So Google is making money from other places, just not near as much as Ads yet.

<comment><USER7> Around 13% of total revenue then, growing year on year, that's nice. I would like to know what percentage of net profit is contributed by that fraction.

<comment><USER8> The other category is producing an operating loss.

Just as a stray example, for 3Q17 Alphabet generated $7.8 billion in operating income.

Google, the subsidiary, generated $8.7 billion in operating income for that quarter.

With continued solid growth of Google's cloud business, and the pull back on burning red ink on Google Fiber, maybe they'll push that other category to break-even soon. Regardless, Google is generating all of their profit. Google is a cash production marvel, nearly on par with the iPhone at this point. They should be able to hit around $40 billion in operating income in that subsidiary this year.

<comment><USER9> You are confusing Alphabet other with Google other. Google other is material and their fastest growing segment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _> "We didn't want to call it a portal, because a portal is a door to somewhere else, and we wanted people to stay there," says Shannon Brayton, a senior manager in Yahoo's corporate communications department from 1998 to 2001._

Of course the company that eventually killed them, Google, found its earliest success by explicitly rejecting this ethos. Google was a search engine, they didn't care if it sent you away; they _wanted_ it to send you away, because that meant it was _working._ It meant you had found what you were looking for. A search engine's entire _job_ is to send you away.

But then came AdWords and the IPO, both of which applied pressure on Google to become something else, something other than a search engine. Something that herded eyeballs together, rather than pushing them out. Something that eventually became what Google ironically is today: a better Yahoo than Yahoo ever was.

<comment><USER11> > Google was a search engine, they didn't care if it sent you away; they > wanted it to send you away

... only seems obvious in hindsight, though. I worked for a string of internet companies in the late 90's back when people were still trying to figure out what an internet company was supposed to be. The biggest task that they consistently put on me, the tech guy who actually understood what "internet" meant, was making sure that users didn't use too much of the company's internet, because internet was expensive. When I first heard of MySpace, I was floored - they're just letting people upload stuff to their servers? Like... whatever they want? As often as they want? They don't charge each individual user by the individual byte? This was heresy! (And then I checked to see if they were hiring...)

<comment><USER12> So how was MySpace able to do that back then? Did they just have a lot of funding that they were able to use to give away all that free space?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm surprised that AOL isn't really discussed in this article. I always assumed Yahoo's ethos, as the one-stop shop on the internet ("We didn't want to call it a portal, because a portal is a door to somewhere else, and we wanted people to stay there") came straight out of AOL's playbook. What I know for sure is that I, and a lot of other people, immediately felt comfortable with Yahoo when we first started using the internet because we were so used to AOL's vision of how you connect "online".

I think the connection run strong - I'd go as far as saying that Yahoo and AOL failed for the same reason. To survive at their inflated valuations they had to be everything to everyone, which stretched their vision thin. Meanwhile, it was always impossible to do everything, so smaller, more agile players came in and etched away at their business models.

<comment><USER14> > To survive at their inflated valuations they had to be everything to > everyone, which stretched their vision thin

Your comment is spot on.

It also handcuffed them to their established business model(s) and "properties", because they couldn't afford to take a revenue hit or self- cannibalize to transition to the next S-curve eating the world. Given that, demise is inevitable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The Google search comparisons in the article are strange. Google did not win the search engine war because it had integrated ads, I think it won because the search results were so much better. There might be some indirect connection - less revenue because of a different advertising model, leading to less investment - but I rather think this was just about the technology not being there. Which is maybe not that surprising when coming from curated links and suddenly fighting, well, Google.

<comment><USER16> IIRC, Google was one of the first search engines to AND your search terms by default, returning relevant pages from long tail sites. Other search engines at the time would OR your search terms, returning irrelevant pages from popular sites. I think this simple difference in defaults had almost as big an impact as Google's PageRank/BackRub algorithm.

<comment><USER17> Every search engine of Yahoo's era supported ANDing terms. It didn't help. The result you wanted was still swimming beneath 7 pages of trash. Commonly it wasn't even in the results because the AND was too restrictive.

Backrub is what made Google so much better. Google also really focused on search and made numerous improvements, but the linchpin was backrub.

<comment><USER18> It was also ludicrously fast at returning results compared to everyone else at the time. I was shocked at the time that a dynamically generated page could return so quickly.

I still to this day miss Altavista's advanced operators though

<comment><USER19> Yes google was so much better than all those other sites it was like night and day.

I was in high school at the time in the 90's. Where I lived the internet wasn't very widespread only place I could access it was via dial up in our school library I remember trying to do school projects having to go through the search engine dance you'd start by searching yahoo, then infoseek, then lycos, then altavista one by one slogging through pages of useless results trying to find what you were looking for.

I was in 8th or 9th grade we were given an assignment to write a report about the "G8 forum" none of the search engines I used at the time were capable of returning meaningful results for all the possible combinations of "G8", "G+8", "G and 8", "Group of 8", "G AND 8 AND Summit OR Forum" I could think of. I'd just get pages and pages of nonsense compounded by the fact my school's dial up was so slow - a 33 kb modem I think it was an exercise in frustration.

I complained to my parents about it over dinner and my Dad said 'oh you should try google.com' First time I'd ever heard about google, the next day at school I tried a google search and got meaningful results on the very first page. I don't think I ever used Yahoo or any of those other sites again after that.

<comment><USER17> That was pretty much my experience as well, though I was in college. Someone pointed me at Google when I was struggling to find something and it was just clearly so much better that I basically just never used Yahoo again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> From Paul Graham, inside view: [http://paulgraham.com/yahoo.html](http://paulgraham.com/yahoo.html) "What went wrong? The problems that hosed Yahoo go back a long time, practically to the beginning of the company. They were already very visible when I got there in 1998. Yahoo had two problems Google didn't: easy money, and ambivalence about being a technology company."

<comment><USER21> >> easy money

Some time around 1995-6, yahoo reported earnings $0.05/share above expectations after the markets closed, and the stock shot up more than $200.00 in after-hours trading. Can any company survive that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What glory? All these points were acquisitions. Everything this article celebrates were destroyed by Yahoo. The only thing they ever did well was build a portal.

<comment><USER23> I worked for AOL, who Verizon recently merged with Yahoo . It was inevitable they destroyed the startups . Yahoo processes made us look lean in comparison, and we were another old web 1.0 company . The first thing they make you do is port to their tech stack and so much time is spent on that process and approvals from central teams that it's a wonder anything gets done . They've got their own package manager, own internal ec2 clone, own build system, own Linux distro, own deploy system, and if any of those things were good it might make sense, but they're mid-2000s tech in quality .

Flickr disappeared for a crucial year post merger, and apparently they were porting to Yahoo's internal account system: [https://gizmodo.com/5910223/how- yahoo-killed-flickr-and-lost...](https://gizmodo.com/5910223/how-yahoo-killed- flickr-and-lost-the-internet) . At least that produced some user facing unification compared to some of the tasks we had . The attitude has not improved since .

<comment><USER24> > but they're mid-2000s tech in quality .

This was the most disappointing part of being acquired. It was quite a wake-up call to realize that the culture inside Yahoo actually believed that their tech stack was good and competitive and that they were as innovative as Google/Facebook/Microsoft/Amazon.

Nope. Yahoo obviously had a bunch of really clever people working there up until the year 2000, and they had to build a lot of things that didn't exist back then, because they were the first internet behemoth. But then all of those really clever people quit, and the company was left trying to steward the existing systems, while not having enough brainpower to create successor systems. So they were stuck, and a myopic "we're hot shit!" culture developed.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world went on, and "Yahoo scale" just aren't very impressive numbers anymore, and their 2000's tech stacks are just horribly overly complex solutions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I remember back in 1995 getting on Yahoo one day and going through every single category and clicking every website link in the entire directory (I was in college and bored). I like to tell my kids that at one point it was possible to visit every singe website on the WWW ;-)

<comment><USER26> There was a brief period of time where visiting a link felt like a new adventure. We take the simplicity of a "link" for granted today, probably because most links are just clickbait now.

Eventually links turned into time-consuming traps of "under construction" animations and icons and popup advertising hell. But even then, the Internet truly felt like the wild west.

<comment><USER27> I miss the diversity in web design back in the day. From blinking, colorful and seizure-inducing to very dark pages with little torch gifs. Weirdly enough every website now looks the same (ok maybe we have 3 archetypes of web design) even though the number of sites has grown exponentially for decades.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > Yahoo Briefcase, for instance, did cloud storage long before the likes of > Dropbox, Box, and Google Drive.

Ha. Yahoo! had an internal idea portal and a review team. Expanding Y! Briefcase storage was the first thing I submitted to that portal upon joining the company in 2005 (I am sure I wasn't the first to think of it, but there was no way to see previously submitted stuff).

The response from the ideas counsel was that Briefcase at the time was primarily used to illegally share music/video, and expanding personal storage would only exacerbate bad behavior. It would be in company's interest to sunset the service, not expand it.

<comment><USER29> Has there ever been a time where a lawyer helped promote a new product idea? Seems like they are in the business of saying (kinda like accountants). This is a useful protective function, but can definitely cause stasis. Not sure how to balance it.

<comment><USER30> Two of the four founders of Intellectual Ventures were attorneys[0].

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> GeoCities in the early 2000's is where I first created and built something with a computer and the Internet and the experience started the journey towards becoming a software developer. I still remember using a hit counter to track how many people visited my cartoon fan-site (I was 10, 11 years old) and getting excited over 20 visitors.

</comment><comment><USER32> Wow. I didn't know about Yahoo! Music. That was definitely a service ahead of its time. I can see why it failed in the early 2000s (less trust in internet transactions, slower bandwidth) but it's basically the same service that Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Pandora, etc, offer nowadays.

<comment><USER33> IMO, Yahoo music failed because you couldn't take it with you anywhere and because the music industry wasn't ready to part with their $10+ per album mindset.

Did I love that service...

<comment><USER34> You could for a fee - you could transfer songs to an MP3 player with the appropriate DRM.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Yahoo was great for like the 2 years between when the web started becoming useful and when google figured out search.

They never figured out what they were after the hand edited index of the internet stopped being its reason to exist.

</comment><comment><USER36> I still think the ideal search experience was the era when Yahoo! would search the Yahoo! Directory by default, and allowed you to switch over to "Web" results that were actually Google search results. It was a cool way to have a default search for "official" or more curated content in Directory (reminds me a little of DuckDuckGo marking a result as "Official Site"), and the option to search web content at large too for more specific or obscure stuff. RIP Yahoo! Directory.

</comment><comment><USER37> Only thing I ever found useful(and still do) is Yahoo Finance.

<comment><USER38> Guessing you're young / missed the beginning of the net, because that's when yahoo was king.

<comment><USER39> Even back in the day, I preferred Altavista. I have never perceived yahoo or any of their products as good, or used any regularly, other than a few that were acquired like Flickr.

<comment><USER40> yahoo was before Altavista. When they started a table of contents of the web it was great - back when the web was small enough that you could make a table of contents (at the time gopher was bigger than the web and growing faster, and gopher was mostly accessed via the table of contents). When Altavista came yahoo's index was better because instead of having to figure out the right search terms you could navigate a logical table of contents quickly. Then the web exploded (gopher was already all but dead) and it wasn't possible for yahoo to keep up, at which point search became the only hope.

If Altavista hadn't quit updating their index for several months, they could have killed google just by keeping their index up to date and continuously refining their search algorithm. Of course this last is speculation but it is reasonable, google wasn't that much better.

<comment><USER41> When I first saw Google I'd been using AltaVista almost exclusively because it allowed phrase searching and keyword exclusion. Google seemed primitive by comparison.

However, it was light and fast at a time when most of my access was via 64k lines or dial-up. AltaVista had become increasingly cluttered with GIF advertising and 'portal' nonsense.

AltaVista became slow and cumbersome, while Google was fast and clean. For me, that was AltaVista's downfall.

<comment><USER42> Yes, this. While I appreciated Google's relevancy for search it didn't blow me away that much -- the real special sauce that early-Google had was the extremely lightweight search page. At a time when Altavista, lycos, Yahoo, etc. were just piling on goop after goop onto their landing pages, Google did a really smart thing and disrupted the whole space with its very minimal style. Not even sure how deliberate that was, but it was a huge advantage.

<comment><USER41> I think it was deliberate, because when they did include advertising in search results, they innovated with text-only ads (and on an unobtrusive part of the page).

I recall that I grew to appreciate these ads - they were often relevant to what I was doing at that point in time. Much more civilised than the garish GIFs that were the norm at that time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Great quote from Paul Graham on Yahoo's demise: _Hacker culture often seems kind of irresponsible. That 's why people proposing to destroy it [replacing it with "suit" culture] use phrases like "adult supervision." That was the phrase they used at Yahoo. But there are worse things than seeming irresponsible. Losing, for example._

</comment><comment><USER44> Couple of comments about Yahoo being dead or killed off... Yahoo is still around doing the exact same things it's been doing.

It hasn't even changed it's name. Technically it's bigger now that it's merged with AOL.

</comment><comment><USER45> Yahoo died because it forgot it was a technology company and stopped innovating. I've also heard that it developed an internal culture dominated by non-technical sales types who didn't understand how to manage their acquisitions or run a technology business and who de-valued those parts of the business. Didn't take long for them to get left in the dust by more innovative rivals.

</comment><comment><USER46> Yahoo could not decide whether it was a technology company or media company...

<comment><USER47> The same could be said for most current tech titans. Some are just at different points along their lifecycle than others.

<comment><USER42> Well, really, Google deliberately kept out of content provision for years in a way that Yahoo didn't. Google was only interested in being the gateway or the platform, not the publisher. That seems to have worked for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Yahoo was poorly managed for its entire existence. They tried to do everything and ended up doing nothing well. The products that they were best known for search, email, finance, sports all stagnated for years while their attention shifted towards the newest shiniest thing.

They never seemed to ask the question, "Why do people use Yahoo in the first place?".

</comment><comment><USER49> Once I went to Stanford to attend Donald Knuth's Annual Christmas Lecture. During the talk he wanted to show some search query on google. What he did next was interesting. He typed yahoo.com in a browser's address bar and then searched for google on yahoo's search to reach to google!!

<comment><USER4> That had to have been a joke - that's a common old person meme in IT.

<comment><USER50> Definitely not a joke. Well, perhaps that specific instance is, but at Yahoo! many of the most common search terms were domains; one argument had internally for not putting cursor focus in the search bar was precisely because people just used it as if it were the address bar, and the appetite to support that use case was low. (Source: ex-Yahoo! staff, albeit not in search and with a fallible memory).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> While Yahoo! is mostly a memory in the U.S., it lives on (or at least its brand does) very strongly in Japan. You see Yahoo! Japan logos everywhere in big cities.

Yahoo! Auctions is just about the only game there, sending fleaBay to the woodshed.

<comment><USER52> Also in the Philippines! I can't begin to tell you how many Filipinos I know who, to this very day, have @yahoo.com email accounts and still use Yahoo! Messenger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I think my biggest takeaway from this article is how few names I recognise in it, apart from all the CEOs, despite working for Yahoo! from 1999 to 2011. Mind you, in Europe I rarely felt particularly connected to what was going in in Sunnyvale. Still proud to have worked on the official FIFA world cup website, among other things.

The Google misstep (as it was considered by many) hurt for a while. The high traffic mailing list for unmoderated developer chat eventually begat a "what would Google do?" offshoot because Gmail this, search that, page rank the other were dominating too many threads.

</comment><comment><USER53> It's almost exactly 10 years since Yahoo rejected Microsoft's acquisition offer. Even at the time it was pretty clear they should have accepted it, but it seems like Yang was too proud.

Microsoft offered $45 Billion(!) for Yahoo.

[https://www.thestreet.com/story/13655197/1/what-would- have-h...](https://www.thestreet.com/story/13655197/1/what-would-have- happened-if-microsoft-had-bought-yahoo-in-2008.html)

<comment><USER54> Altaba (Yahoo!'s Alibaba assets) is worth $68 Billion[1], so no, they probably did the right thing.

[1][https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AABA/](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AABA/)

<comment><USER53> I mean, we're comparing 2008 money to 2018. If you put $45 billion in the stock market in 2008 when this offer was rejected it'd be worth ~$90 billion now.

If they were given MS stock as part of the deal, that $45 billion would be worth around $130 billion.

So, still probably a bad idea to reject the offer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Yahoo Labs was innovative and inspiring. They seemed to make stuff that was useful, wasn't killed immediately and had an independent life. I don't think today's tech behemoths can approach where they were. Maybe it was just the frontier back then...

</comment><comment><USER56> With every re-design, their services get worse. Yahoo Sports used to have easy access to boxscores and game recaps. My Yahoo's RSS content fetching has been broken for a while. Problem is, there are no real alternatives either.

</comment><comment><USER57> no mention of Yahoo Pipes?

<comment><USER15> No, but the mainstream impact of that nice site was probably just too low.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Partner was glued to yahoo as a landing page for years. I never understood why, suspect it was the familiarity of it.

</comment><comment><USER59> The article doesn't even mention the whole Yahoo-Alibaba fiasco.

</comment><comment><USER60> A huge part of what yahoo were _was_ the dotcom bubble. They're like a personification (firmification?).

People could see the internet was a big deal. People could see that oligopolies would be important. They assumed early movers would own the market. Investors and startups were right about a lot of things, but it was enough to be wrong about one or two things... Yahoo did better than most.

No one knew how long it would take for the internet to "get there," and the implications for early movers. In retrospect, I think this was knowable, but everyone made this mistake.

More importantly, no one knew what businesses would be valuable online.

Servers would become amazon's main moneymaker. They _achieved_ (along with others) the goal of becoming a retailer on a scale not yet seen then, but servers are a better business. Go figure.

Search, holiday rentals & distinct categories of social networking became monopolies, and great businesses. The Encyclopedia became better than anyone imagined, but not a business. Retail margins never improved. Free online video never became a business. Online news is barely a business. Email is not a business. ebay would stay exactly the same. Go figure.

Stress on the news point. News was the centrepiece business of almost any other media sector, print, tv, radio, teletex... online, it's a dud.

All this stuff had to be figured out.

Yahoo started from logical premises. You couldn't find anything online, so they made a directory. There wasn't much online, so they published stuff for people to read. They surveyed the two, saw more potential in the latter. Huge mistake.

It just wasn't obvious at the time. The better the directory/search got, the less time people spent there. People spent time looking at news and stocks and stuff. ...That's where the ad money will be, like TV. It was not ilogical, it was just not true.

Who knew that search advertising would be a $100bn blue chip business and "content advertising" would be mostly penis enlargment and diet tricks? Surely yahoo finance would be a premium ad seller? no? really? search & facebook, the online tabloid?

A lot of stuff still doesn't make sense. Youtube. Why isn't youtube a serious business? People watch 1bn hours of youtube per day! TV ads are a thing. A big deal, in fact. They don't pay anything for content. Google already has a massive ad business. For the life of me... youtube should be as bigger business than facebook.. certainly bigger than netflix.

Incidentally, almost every news site tries to force/trick me into watching videos (not even always ads). ...hints at how bad a business news is, that they want a sliver of what youtube have so desperately.

TLDR: Yahoo had to guess a lot of future, and place bets. It turned out that these bets could be placed 5-10 years later, with much better chances of being right and without missing out on much. Hard gig Yahoo.

</comment><comment><USER61> good job jerry yang</comment>